?Of Sir Walter Scott I have heard Maturin speak in terms of rapture. He considered his extraordinary productions the greatest efforts of human genius, and often said that in the poetry of universal nature he considered him equal to Shakespeare. So sensibly imbued was he with the characteristics of those magic fictions, that he apprehended the publication of an intentional imitation of Ivanhoe. I believe the public however never perceived any imitation beyond that into which every novelist falls who happens to write after Sir Walter.?