Read it through once

It is a tribute to Miss Mitford’s critical faculty that she found little difficulty in probing the mystery as to the authorship of _Waverley_, that “half French, half English, half Scotch, half Gaelic, half Latin, half Italian—that hotch-potch of languages—that movable Babel called _Waverley_!” as she termed it. “Have you read Walter Scott’s _Waverley_?” she writes. “I have ventured to say ‘Walter Scott’s,’ though I hear he denies it, just as a young girl denies the imputation of a lover; but if there be any belief in internal evidence, it must be his. It is his by a thousand indications—by all the faults and by all the beauties—by the unspeakable and unrecollectable names—by the hanging the clever hero, and marrying the stupid one—by the praise (well deserved, certainly, for when had Scotland such a friend! but thrust in by the head and shoulders) of the late Lord Melville—by the sweet lyric poetry—by the perfect costume—by the excellent keeping of the picture—by the liveliness and gaiety of the dialogues—and last, not least, by the entire and admirable individuality of every character in the book, high as well as low—the life and soul which animates them all with a distinct existence, and brings them before our eyes like the portraits of Fielding and Cervantes.”