Nay, I will hash history with anybody, be he who he will."[404] Scott had a very just sense of the value of his great stores of information.

He did say that he would give one half his knowledge if so he might put the other half upon a well-built foundation,[405] but as years went on he learned to use with ease the accumulations of knowledge which in his youth had proved often unwieldy; and more than once he congratulated himself that he beat his imitators by possessing historical and antiquarian lore which they could only acquire by "reading up."[406] Though he testified that in the beginning of his first novel he described his own education, he could hardly apply to himself what is there said of Waverley, that, "While he was thus permitted to read only for the gratification of his amusement, he foresaw not that he was losing forever the opportunity of acquiring habits of firm and assiduous application, of gaining the art of controlling, directing, and concentrating the powers of his mind for earnest investigation."[407] It was otherwise with Scott himself.

The result of the wide and desultory reading of his youth, acting upon a remarkably strong memory, was to put him into the position, as he says, of "an ignorant gamester, who kept a good hand until he knew how to play it."[408] So it was that he said of those who followed his lead in writing historical novels, "They may do their fooling with better grace; but I, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, do it more natural."[409] His knowledge of history and antiquities was that part of his intellectual equipment in which he seemed to take most pride.

He had the highest opinion of the value of historical study for ripening men's judgment of current affairs,[410] and indeed there were few relations of life in which an acquaintance with history did not seem to him indispensable.
But he felt that historical writing had not been adapted "to the demands of the increased circles among which literature does already find its way."[411] Accordingly he resolved to use in the service of history that "knack ...

for selecting the striking and interesting points out of dull details," which he felt was his endowment.[412] The original introduction to the _Tales of the Crusaders_ has the following burlesque announcement of his intention, in the words of the Eidolon Chairman: "I intend to write the most wonderful book which the world ever read--a book in which every incident shall be incredible, yet strictly true--a work recalling recollections with which the ears of this generation once tingled, and which shall be read by our children with an admiration approaching to incredulity.