however, as she had personally observed it, but as drawn from books,
recreating the atmosphere of a long gone time by the power of
imagination.

The earlier works of Scott are drawn from memory and personal feeling,
rather than from the knowledge he had gained by study. Of "Old
Mortality" he writes to Lady Louisa Stuart: "I am complete master of the
whole history of these strange times, both of persecutors and
persecuted; so I trust I have come decently off."

The divisional grouping of these earlier novels by Scott himself is
interesting. In the "Advertisement" to "The Antiquary" he says: "The
present work completes a series of fictitious narratives, intended to
illustrate the manners of Scotland at three different periods. WAVERLEY
embraced the age of our fathers [''Tis Sixty Years Since'], GUY
MANNERING that of our own youth, and THE ANTIQUARY refers to the last
ten years of the eighteenth century." The dedication of "Tales of My
Landlord" describes them as "tales illustrative of ancient Scottish
manners, and of the traditions of their [his countrymen's] respective
districts." They were--_First Series_: "The Black Dwarf" and "Old
Mortality;" _Second Series:_ "The Heart of Mid-Lothian;" _Third Series:_
"The Bride of Lammermoor" and "A Legend of Montrose;" _Fourth Series:_
"Count Robert of Paris" and "Castle Dangerous." These all (except the
fourth series, in 1832) appeared in the six years from 1814 to 1820, and
besides these, "Rob Roy," "Ivanhoe," and "The Monastery."

With the publication of "Old Mortality" in 1816, then, Scott introduced
the first of his historical novels, which had great fascination for
students. Who ever painted the old Cameronian with more felicity? Who
ever described the peculiarities of the Scottish Calvinists during the