The Monastery | Page 8

each endeavours to pursue its own
course, are in every case more influenced by the winds and tides, which
are common to the element which they all navigate, than by their own
separate exertions. And it is thus in the world, that, when human
prudence has done its best, some general, perhaps national, event,
destroys the schemes of the individual, as the casual touch of a more
powerful being sweeps away the web of the spider.
Many excellent romances have been composed in this view of human
life, where the hero is conducted through a variety of detached scenes,
in which various agents appear and disappear, without, perhaps, having
any permanent influence on the progress of the story. Such is the
structure of Gil Blas, Roderick Random, and the lives and adventures
of many other heroes, who are described as running through different
stations of life, and encountering various adventures, which are only
connected with each other by having happened to be witnessed by the
same individual, whose identity unites them together, as the string of a
necklace links the beads, which are otherwise detached.
But though such an unconnected course of adventures is what most
frequently occurs in nature, yet the province of the romance writer
being artificial, there is more required from him than a mere
compliance with the simplicity of reality,--just as we demand from the
scientific gardener, that he shall arrange, in curious knots and artificial
parterres, the flowers which "nature boon" distributes freely on hill and
dale. Fielding, accordingly, in most of his novels, but especially in Tom
Jones, his _chef-d'oeuvre_, has set the distinguished example of a story
regularly built and consistent in all its parts, in which nothing occurs,
and scarce a personage is introduced, that has not some share in tending
to advance the 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.
The author, therefore, had his days of grace allowed him, and time, if
he pleased, to comfort himself with the burden of the old Scots song,
"If it isna weel bobbit. We'll bob it again."
ABBOTSFORD, _1st November_, 1830.
* * * * *
INTRODUCTORY EPISTLE
FROM CAPTAIN CLUTTERBUCK, LATE OF HIS MAJESTY'S ----
REGIMENT OF INFANTRY, TO THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY.
Sir,
Although I do not pretend to the pleasure of your personal acquaintance,
like many whom I believe to be equally strangers to you, I am
nevertheless interested in your publications, and desire their
continuance;-not that I pretend to much taste in fictitious composition,
or that I am apt to be interested in your grave scenes, or amused by
those which are meant to be lively. I will not disguise from you, that I
have yawned over the last interview of MacIvor and his sister, and fell
fairly asleep while the schoolmaster was reading the humours of

Dandie Dinmont. You see, sir, that I scorn to solicit your favour in a
way to which you are no stranger. If the papers I enclose you are worth
nothing, I will not endeavour to recommend them by personal flattery,
as a bad cook pours rancid butter upon stale fish. No, sir! what I respect
in you is the light you have occasionally thrown on national antiquities,
a study which I have commenced rather late in life, but to which I am
attached with the