The opinion is expressed often in his reviews, and in his journal and letters is applied to his own work.

So it was that when any one of his books seemed partially to fail with the public, his immediate impulse was to look for something new to be done.[402] One of his schemes was a work on popular superstitions, projected when _Quentin Durward_ seemed to be falling flat; but the success of the novel made the immediate execution of the plan unnecessary.[403] It was largely his desire to secure variety that encouraged him to undertake historical writing.

He had also a theory about how history should be written, and so he felt that the novelty would consist in something more than the fact that the Author of Waverley had taken a new line.

He wished, as Thackeray did later when he proposed to write a history of the Age of Queen Anne, to use in an avowedly serious book the material with which he had stored his imagination; and he believed he could present it with a vivacity that was not characteristic of professional historians.

The success of the first series of _Tales of a Grandfather_ served to confirm the opinion he had expressed about them,--"I care not who knows it, I think well of them.