catastrophe.

To demand equal correctness and felicity in those who may follow in
the track of that illustrious novelist, would be to fetter too much
the power of giving pleasure, by surrounding it with penal rules;
since of this sort of light literature it may be especially
said--_tout genre est permis, hors le genre ennuyeux_. Still,
however, the more closely and happily the story is combined, and the
more natural and felicitous the catastrophe, the nearer such a
composition will approach the perfection of the novelist's art; nor
can an author neglect this branch of his profession, without incurring
proportional censure.

For such censure the Monastery gave but too much occasion. The
intrigue of the Romance, neither very interesting in itself, nor very
happily detailed, is at length finally disentangled by the breaking
out of national hostilities between England and Scotland, and the as
sudden renewal of the truce. Instances of this kind, it is true,
cannot in reality have been uncommon, but the resorting to such, in
order to accomplish the catastrophe, as by a _tour de force_, was
objected to as inartificial, and not perfectly, intelligible to the
general reader.

Still the Monastery, though exposed to severe and just criticism, did
not fail, judging from the extent of its circulation, to have some
interest for the public. And this, too, was according to the ordinary
course of such matters; for it very seldom happens that literary
reputation is gained by a single effort, and still more rarely is it
lost by a solitary miscarriage.