In the second place, Scott’s fame rests upon one genuine basis. He could tell a story. He had the primitive power of keeping the reader in suspense and playing on his curiosity. Let us paraphrase The Antiquary —not analyze it, analysis is the wrong method, but paraphrase. Then we shall see the story unrolling itself, and be able to study its simple devices.
It was early in a fine summer’s day, near the end of the eighteenth century, when a young man of genteel appearance, having occasion to go towards the northeast of Scotland, provided himself with a ticket in one of those public carriages which travel between Edinburgh and the Queensferry, at which place, as the name implies, and as is well known to all my northern readers, there is a passage-boat for crossing the Frith of Forth.
That is the first sentence in The Antiquary —not an exciting sentence, but it gives us the time, the place, and a young man—it sets the storyteller’s scene. We feel a moderate interest in what the young man will do next. His name is Lovel, and there is a mystery about him. He is the hero or Scott would not call him genteel, and he is sure to make the heroine happy. He meets the Antiquary, Jonathan Oldbuck. They get into the coach, not too quickly, become acquainted, Lovel visits Oldbuck at his house. Near it they meet a new character, Edie Ochiltree. Scott is good at introducing fresh characters. He slides them very naturally, and with a promising air. Edie Ochiltree promises a good deal. He is a beggar—no ordinary beggar, a romantic and reliable rogue, and will he not help to solve the mystery of which we saw the tip in Lovel? More introductions: to Sir Arthur Wardour (old family, bad manager); to his daughter Isabella (haughty), whom the hero loves unrequited; and to