Such shall be the _Life of Napoleon_, by the _Author of Waverley_." He wished to controvert "the vulgar opinion that the flattest and dullest mode of detailing events must uniformly be that which approaches nearest to the truth."[413] There is no doubt that his histories are readable, yet we feel that Southey was right in his comment on the _Life of Napoleon_,--"It was not possible that Sir Walter could keep up as a historian the character which he had obtained as a novelist; and in the first announcement of this 'Life' he had, not very wisely, promised something as stimulating as his novels.

Alas! he forgot that there could be no stimulus of curiosity in it."[414] A recent critic has said, "Scott lost half his power of vitalizing the past when he sat down formally to record it--when he turned from his marvellous recreation of James I.to give a laboured but very ordinary portrait of Napoleon."[415] His partial failure in this instance may have been due to an unfortunate choice of subject.

Only a few years before he wrote the book Scott had been thinking of Napoleon as a "tyrannical monster,"[416] a "singular emanation of the Evil Principle,"[417] "the arch-enemy of mankind,"[418]--phrases which, in spite of their vividness, hardly seem to promise a life-like portrayal of the man.[419] In one notable respect, Scott's conception of how history should be written was very modern: he would depict the life of the people, not simply the actions of kings and statesmen.

His historical novels, said Carlyle, "taught all men this truth, which looks like a truism, and yet was as good as unknown to writers of history and others, till so taught: that the bygone ages of the world were actually filled by living men, not by protocols, state-papers, controversies, and abstractions of men."[420] One who has the academic notion that a novel, to be great, must be written with no ulterior purpose, is almost startled to observe how definitely Scott considered it the function of his novels to portray ancient manners.

Speaking of old romances as a source which we may use for studying about our ancestors, he said: "From the romance, we learn what they were; from the history, what they did: and were we to be deprived of one of these two kinds of information, it might well be made a question, which is most useful or interesting."[421] He wished to make his own romances serve much the same purpose as those written in the midst of the customs which they unconsciously reflected.