proof of her author's power to probe a woman's soul. Scott did not care to do this thing. The experiment was too painful for his hands. But critics who talk about the subtleties of modern novelists, as compared with Sir Walter's "frank simplicity,"—patronizing phrase!—have forgotten "The Bride of Lammermoor." There is nothing more artistic within the whole range of fiction than our introduction to Lucy Ashton, when the doomed girl—as yet unseen—is heard singing those curious and haunting lines which reveal to us at once the struggle that awaits her, and her helplessness to meet and conquer fate.
There are fashions in novel-writing, as in all things else, and a determined effort to be analytic is imposing enough to mislead. We usually detect this effort when men are writing of women, and when women are writing of men. The former seek to be subtle; the latter seek to be strong. Both are determined to reveal something which is not always a recognizable revelation. In the earlier "novels of character" there is none of this delicate surgery. Fielding took his material as he
