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peculiar mechanical habits of using the pencil, limited to a
particular class of subjects.

Whether this reasoning be correct or otherwise, the present
author felt, that, in confining himself to subjects purely
Scottish, he was not only likely to weary out the indulgence of
his readers, but also greatly to limit his own power of
affording them pleasure. In a highly polished country, where so
much genius is monthly employed in catering for public amusement,
a fresh topic, such as he had himself had the happiness to light
upon, is the untasted spring of the desert;---

"Men bless their stars and call it luxury."

But when men and horses, cattle, camels, and dromedaries, have
poached the spring into mud, it becomes loathsome to those who at
first drank of it with rapture; and he who had the merit of
discovering it, if he would preserve his reputation with the
tribe, must display his talent by a fresh discovery of untasted
fountains.

If the author, who finds himself limited to a particular class of
subjects, endeavours to sustain his reputation by striving to add
a novelty of attraction to themes of the same character which
have been formerly successful under his management, there are
manifest reasons why, after a certain point, he is likely to
fail. If the mine be not wrought out, the strength and capacity
of the miner become necessarily exhausted. If he closely
imitates the narratives which he has before rendered successful,
he is doomed to "wonder that they please no more." If he
struggles to take a different view of the same class of subjects,
he speedily discovers that what is obvious, graceful, and
natural, has been exhausted; and, in order to obtain the
indispensable charm of novelty, he is forced upon caricature,
and, to avoid being trite, must become extravagant.

It is not, perhaps, necessary to enumerate so many reasons why
the author of the Scottish Novels, as they were then exclusively
termed, should be desirous to make an experiment on a subject
purely English. It was his purpose, at the same time, to have
rendered the experiment as complete as possible, by bringing the
intended work before the public as the effort of a new candidate
for their favour, in order that no degree of prejudice, whether
favourable or the reverse, might attach to it, as a new
production of the Author of Waverley; but this intention was
afterwards departed from, for reasons to be hereafter mentioned.

The period of the narrative adopted was the reign of Richard I.,
not only as abounding with characters whose very names were sure
to attract general attention, but as affording a striking
contrast betwixt the Saxons, by whom the soil was cultivated, and
the Normans, who still reigned in it as conquerors, reluctant to
mix with the vanquished, or acknowledge themselves of the same
stock. The idea of this contrast was taken from the ingenious
and unfortunate Logan's tragedy of Runnamede, in which, about the

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