Scott at his very readable. Just a plain good read.

I think the possibility to read Scott in the original was the chief motivation for me to study English. I'll try to learn some Scots, too.
This is a very enjoyable book, quite in Scott's style. Describes many of the customs and habits of the past.

IVANHOE is still my favorite of the few Walter Scott books I've read, but I enjoyed the humor of this one. The Antiquary himself is pedantic and always buttonholing people to bore them with landslides of information, but Scott describes these assaults in funny ways. There's a little romance, a little peril, a duel, a long-kept secret, and even a treasure hunt. Quite fun at times.

A lovable novel that can be strongly recommended to any fan of 19th Century fiction.

I’ve read three or four Scott novels, and this is my favorite. Humorous and light, insightful, with wonderful variety of characters, it’s fun and enlightening. Some of his books can be a bit heavy on the impenetrable Scots vernacular, but The Antiquary has just enough to lend flavor and atmosphere without getting frustrating. A delight!

It's been quite some time since I've read a classic novel; I had forgotten what a pleasure it is to become lost in a way of thinking - and writing - that has not survived the advent of television. It took me a bit to get into it, perhaps because I'm out of practice. But the story is charming and Scott's observations on the absurdities of life are laced with humour, and I was soon caught up in the tale. I thoroughly enjoyed this and highly recommend it to anyone who can still enjoy pre-twentieth century literature.

Me ha decepcionado bastante porque la historia en sí estaba entretenida pero las extensas y aburridas disertaciones de 'El anticuario' hicieron la lectura bastante cuesta arriba.

No me ha aportado nada así que, sintiéndolo mucho, no lo recomendaría.

Irreverente, jocosa, más una comedia de enredos que un documento histórico, esta equilibrada novela tiene romance, conflicto, una vuelta de tuerca (que se adivina tras leer dos terceras partes)... entretenida, en una palabra.

I think the person who recommended this to me might have mistaken it for Redgauntlet (next on my Walter Scott reading list), because there wasn’t anything formally unusual or otherwise captivating about The Antiquary. Actually I got pretty bored of what was a heavily plot-driven book. It’s funny that it delivers less in the way of historical drama than Scott’s other novels, according to the critical consensus here on Goodreads, but I suspect political plots and Highland charges would only have squandered my attention without the concession of making for a tranquilizing read. I remember being engrossed by Waverley because of its technical specifications, its formal artistry, and I was disagreeably surprised to see it called “a costume-drama thriller” in the Oxford introduction to this title. Despite the editor’s contrary opinion, I found The Antiquary less sophisticated, less subtle than Scott’s masterful debut: I think it had more dialogue, whose highest recommendation was perhaps its ethnographical interest; it traded on the conventions of Gothic romance; and, most disappointingly, it lacked the self-reflexive angle promised by its title.

Now I feel obliged to make an apology for Scott, so here it is:

1. Scott writes a superlative sentence. Someone once asked me, in one of my less complimentary moods, whether I ever encountered as tidy a sentence as Austen’s, to which I frankly answered, no, but Scott bears witness if anyone does to the case that there are higher virtues than economy in prose. I’m willing to bet that Scott was at least partly entitled to his knowledge of Latin for the precision with which everything falls into place in even his most peripatetic of sentences. The very first paragraph of this book affords a sufficient example:

“The tickets, which conferred right to a seat in this vehicle of little ease, were dispensed by a sharp-looking old dame, with a pair of spectacles on a very thin nose, who inhabited a ‘laigh shop,’ anglice, a cellar, opening to the High Street by a straight and steep stair, at the bottom of which she sold tape, thread, needles, skeins of worsted, coarse linen cloth, and such feminine gear, to those who had the courage and skill to descend to the profundity of her dwelling, without falling headlong themselves, or throwing down any of the numerous articles which, piled on each side of the descent, indicated the profession of the trader below.”

And even when all the subordinate clauses fall a little out of step, the result is sooner a curiosity than a failure. For instance:

“The watch who kept his watch on the hill, and looked towards Birnam, probably conceived himself dreaming when he first beheld the fated grove put itself into motion for its march to Dunsinane. Even so, old Caxon, as, perched in his hut, he qualified his thoughts upon the approaching marriage of his daughter, and the dignity of being father-in-law to Lieutenant Taffril, with an occasional peep towards the signal-post with which his own corresponded, was not a little surprised by observing a light in that direction.”

This is not to say that Scott writes the best sentences (though I’m pretty floored), but that his sentences are superlative: he shows you what you can could do with the resources of the English language such that you’re able to better discriminate among styles. It was Scott who opened up to me, in fact, how surprisingly idiosyncratic was long-eighteenth-century prose, making me wonder how such diversity fared in other periods.

2. I haven’t determined whether it’s because of his verbal adroitness that Scott’s descriptions are remarkably evocative. I don’t have a habit of grazing over long passages, but even so there’s typically a sort of film between a picture in a book and an image in my mind that renders astonishing how immediately Scott’s scenes appear before my eyes. The imaginative exercise is effortless and instantly complete.

3. I kind of want a mind like Walter Scott’s. It’s so informed – and bewilderingly retentive – of poetic, linguistic, historical, and cultural data that his novels teem with all manner of felicitous allusions. I can’t judge of poetry I haven’t read, but he made a reputation off his verse before he turned to fiction (having apparently turned down the poet laureateship that went to Southey in 1813?!), and seasoned his publishing career with a Life of Napoleon, a first translation of a Goethe closet drama, and a periodical essay on jurisprudence written in his municipal capacity – among other so-called miscellaneous works! His occupation, by the way, aside from popular poet and mega-influential novelist? Barrister, then lifelong sessions clerk and county judge.

4. Scott has a keen eye for that staple of storytelling, human nature. I shouldn’t have to say that this isn’t the same as a fetish for psychology, nor especially that it isn’t at all inferior. Scott’s characters aren’t inordinately profound, and his chauvinism could use reforming, but he has an organic sense of humor and a vision of people as they are that likens him to an author such as Dickens (to whom the first two points may just as well apply). These moments of intimacy with human habits, foibles, niceties, quirks, and other ostensible minutiae happen in passing, almost as casually as they do in real life, and they aren’t loaded with any symbolic importance beyond the fundamental value of announcing about someone, “here I am.”

It is for these four reasons, provisionally, that I expect I’ll keep returning to Sir Walter.

Con un nivel de lectura más avanzado que las anteriores obras leídas y un argumento confuso al principio pero satisfactoriamente esclarecedor al desenlace. Escrita en la Escocia del siglo XIX y basada en el mismo país y en la misma fecha. Excelente historia de amor.

One of my new favorite classics. Reminds us to hold on to the past, while venturing into the future. To never forget where you come from, and who fought for the way of life one leads today. Not to mention, the character 'The Antiquary', with his witty shrewdness and staunch passion for the old and ancient, makes him one of the more interesting and engaging people of fiction I've read in a while.

‘Here were editions esteemed as being the first, and there stood those scarcely less regarded as being the last and best; here was a book valued because it had the author’s final improvements, and there another which (strange to tell!) was in request because it had them not. One was precious because it was a folio, another because it was a duodecimo; some because they were tall, some because they were short; the merit of this lay in the title-page, of that in the arrangement of the letters in the word Finis.’ This for its erudite yet genteelly comedic prose.