The enthusiastic welcome given him by the Irish when he visited Dublin caused him to say in one of his letters, "Were it not from the chilling recollection that novelty is easily substituted for merit, I should think, like the booby in Steele's play,[392] that I had been kept back, and that there was something more about me than I had ever been led to suspect."[393] He assumed that he had studied popular taste enough to have some knowledge of its shiftings, so that he might "set every sail towards the breeze."[394] "I may be mistaken," he once wrote, "but I do think the tale of Elspat M'Tavish in my bettermost manner, but J.B.roars for chivalry.

He does not quite understand that everything may be overdone in this world, or sufficiently estimate the necessity of novelty.

The Highlanders have been off the field now for some time."[395] His comment on _Ivanhoe_ was still more emphatic.

"Novelty is what this giddy-paced time demands imperiously, and I certainly studies as much as I could to get out of the old beaten track, leaving those who like to keep the road, which I have rutted pretty well."[396] Believing from the beginning of his career that novelty was the chief merit of his work, he was prepared to live up to his principles.

So it was that when he was "beaten" by Byron in metrical romances, he dropped with hardly a regret, so far as we can judge, the kind of writing in which he had attained such remarkable popularity, and turned to another kind.