department will obtain for him, success in another, and that
must be more particularly the case in literary composition, than either in
acting or painting, because the adventurer in that department is not impeded in
his exertions by any peculiarity of features, or conformation of person, proper
for particular parts, or, by any 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 talents 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 Scotch 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