actor, by possessing in a preeminent degree the external qualities
necessary to give effect to comedy, may be deprived of the right to
aspire to tragic excellence; and in painting or literary composition,
an artist or poet may be master exclusively of modes of thought, and
powers of expression, which confine him to a single course of subjects.

But much more frequently the same capacity which carries a man to
popularity in one department will obtain for him success in another,
and that must be more particularly the case in literary composition,
than either in acting or painting, because the adventurer in that
department is not impeded in his exertions by any peculiarity of
features, or conformation of person, proper for particular parts, or,
by any peculiar mechanical habits of using the pencil, limited to a
particular class of subjects.

Whether this reasoning be correct or otherwise, the present author
felt, that, in confining himself to subjects purely Scottish, he was
not only likely to weary out the indulgence of his readers, but also
greatly to limit his own power of affording them pleasure. In a highly
polished country, where so much genius is monthly employed in catering
for public amusement, a fresh topic, such as he had himself had the
happiness to light upon, is the untasted spring of the desert;—

“Men bless their stars and call it luxury.”

But when men and horses, cattle, camels, and dromedaries, have poached
the spring into mud, it becomes loathsome to those who at first drank
of it with rapture; and he who had the merit of discovering it, if he
would preserve his reputation with the tribe, must display his talent
by a fresh discovery of untasted fountains.

If the author, who finds himself limited to a particular class of
subjects, endeavours to sustain his reputation by striving to add a
novelty of attraction to themes of the same character which have been
formerly successful under his management, there are manifest reasons
why, after a certain point, he is likely to fail. If the mine be not
wrought out, the strength and capacity of the miner become necessarily
exhausted. If he closely imitates the narratives which he has before
rendered successful, he is doomed to “wonder that they please no more.”
If he struggles to take a different view of the same class of subjects,

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