Westminster Review (1864)

A few decades after Scott's death, the Westminster Review [vol 81 (1864), p.264] summed up the enduring appeal of Scott's long poems:

Did Sir Walter Scott really revivify the past in his poems and romances? No, he stopped short on the threshold, preferring that which would interest to that which was true. Had he painted the past as he knew it to have been, the picture would have shocked the majority of his readers. He dared not draw either the voluptuous enthusiasts of the Revival, or the heroic brutes and ferocious beasts of the Middle Ages. His real glory lay in throwing a poetical and unfading halo over his native land, in making Scotland forever attractive to mankind.