Editing Waverley (novel) (section)

===Tolerance===
Scott's work shows the influence of the 18th-century [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]]. He believed every human was basically decent regardless of class, religion, politics, or ancestry. Tolerance is a major theme in his historical works. The ''Waverley Novels'' express his belief in the need for social progress that does not reject the traditions of the past. "He was the first novelist to portray [[peasant]] characters sympathetically and realistically, and was equally just to [[merchants]], [[soldiers]], and even kings."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.goabroad.net/users/resourcefiles/2007/April/123/admingroup/14828613c4b8d11210605884.pdf 
|title=Sir Walter Scott, Scottish Novelist and Poet |date=17 August 2005 |publisher= Lucidcafé Library |access-date=22 June 2018 <!-- url shown on document is a dead link, http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/95aug/scott.html, so actual link used --> }}</ref>

According to L J Swingle, discussing the writers of the Romantic period:

<blockquote>This inquiry as to the distinctive natures of different things explains why particular mental orientations or crucial turns of thought in the literature of the period are frequently marked by some kind of "species" identification. Probably the most dramatic example occurs in ''Frankenstein'', when the title character -- after wavering between opposed truth-possibilities in a manner that recalls Scott's Edward Waverley -- finally finds himself (literally) in identification with his own species<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/swingle.html
|last=Swingle |first= L J |year=1979 |title=The Poets, the Novelists, and the English Romantic Situation |journal=The Wordsworth Circle |volume=10 |issue=2 |pages=218–28|doi=10.1086/TWC24040916 |s2cid=166198555 }}</ref></blockquote>