who spent the day in darkness and the night in vigil, and never breathed a murmur of weakness or complaint," is as immortal in men's memories as the actual heroine of the White Rose, Flora Macdonald.
Her place is with Helen and Antigone, with Rosalind and Imogen, the deathless daughters of dreams.

She brightens the world as she passes, and our own hearts tell us all the story when Osbaldistone says, "You know how I lamented her." In the central interest, which, for once, is the interest of love, "Rob Roy" attains the nobility, the reserve, the grave dignity of the highest art.

It is not easy to believe that Frank Osbaldistone is worthy of his lady; but here no man is a fair judge.

In the four novels--"Waverley," "Guy Mannering," "The Antiquary," and "Rob Roy"-- which we have studied, the hero has always been a young poet.

Waverley versified; so did Mannering; Lovel "had attempted a few lyrical pieces;" and, in Osbaldistone's rhymes, Scott parodied his own blast of that dread horn On Fontarabian echoes borne.
All the heroes, then, have been poets, and Osbaldistone's youth may have been suggested by Scott's memories of his own, and of the father who "feared that he would never be better than a gangrel scrapegut." Like Henry Morton, in "Old Mortality," Frank Osbaldistone is on the political side taken by Scott's judgment, not by his emotions.