He meets Bonnie Prince
Charlie, is present at the famous ball at Holyrood, fights at the
battle of Prestonpans, and marches with the rebel army into
England.
Thus we have the beginning of the historical novel. Scott takes
real people, and real incidents, and with them he interweaves the
story of the fortunes of make-believe people and make-believe
incidents. Scott does not always keep quite strictly to fact.
He is of the same mind as the old poet Davenant who thought it
folly to take away the liberty of a poet and fetter his feet in
the shackles of an historian. Why, he asked, should a poet not
make and mend a story and frame it more delightfully, merely
because austere historians have entered into a bond to truth. So
Scott takes liberties with history, but he always gives us the
spirit of the times of which he writes. Thus in one sense he is
true to history. And perhaps from Waverley we get the better
idea of the state of Scotland, at the time of the last Jacobite
rebellion, than from any number of histories.
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