attack upon him in the “English Bards” had been long forgotten; forgiveness it had never needed from the exquisite sweetness of Scott's temper, who had laughed, praised the writer's power, and added only, “spleen and gall are disastrous materials to work with for any length of time." These two great men now met, each with equal esteem for the gifts of the other; and Scott sought Byron's friendship with that alacrity of warm admiration for force of mind and character which marks him through life, and is one of the surest signs of genius. Soon after came the final "Hundred Days" of Napoleon; Scott was among the first to visit the scenes of the campaign, and he found at Paris,-then a city representative of everything except France,— a renewal of his English popularity from the politicians and soldiers of the "allied armies." Some animated letters, and an Ode on Waterloo (not equal to the occasion), were the fruit of this journey. Now followed several years of a splendid, and, on the whole, a singularly well-enjoyed prosperity. "What series,” says Mr. Carlyle, "followed out of Waverley, and how and with what result, is known to all men; was witnessed and watched with a kind of rapt astonishment by all. Walter Scott became Sir Walter Scott, Baronet, of Abbotsford (1820); on whom Fortune seemed to pour her whole cornucopia of wealth, honour, and worldly good; the favourite of Princes and of Peasants, and all intermediate men.” That there was another and a more poetical side to the "wealth and worldly good” in Scott's mind has been already noticed; Abbotsford, with its relics and historical territory; its visitors from all lands, including many of the best of his contemporaries; its happy life among friends of equal age, and children fast growing up to be friends (two sons and two daughters), and healthy pleasures in forest and moor ; and now at last, full enjoyment of the creative power, "the vision and the faculty divine, "- —was a realized romance to Scott, the past living again in the present, common existence enriched and beautified by poetry. Mr. Lockhart here gives several pleasing and brilliant pictures of his father-in-law's life in town and country; a day at Abbotsford and a dinner at Ballantyne's are hardly inferior to scenes in the " Antiquary” or “Rob Roy" in vividness.

These descriptions would suffer by abridgment; in place of them, let us try and form some image of the man. The first impression seems to have been that of a stalwart Liddesdale farmer, shrewd and quiet; the figure of good height, the forehead lofty, though not to the exaggerated measure of the bust; complexion ruddy; features massive, and inclining to heaviness. When he spoke, this rather inanimate air kindled into brilliant life in his eye and mouth, equally capable of expressing humour or pathos, and produced a greater effect by the force of contrast. The mutability of his features is noted throughout his life, and must have tried beyond their powers the artists who attempted his portrait. Whether through the early fever and its lameness, or some excess in field-sports and genial living, or the corrosion of a mind that never left him at leisure to "do nothing," or through all causes combined, when little over fifty he had already the look of a

"gallant old gentleman ;" and the sense of premature old age is written on every leaf of his later journals. "I think I shall not live to the usual verge of human existence; I shall never see the threescore and ten." Yet Scott preserved the spirit of his youth, and to the last was characteristically unwilling to allow himself beaten, even in climbing a slope without assistance. In these external details one reads the man; Scott, with his many contrasts and antitheses of disposition, was eminently made "all of a piece." This harmony of nature was not less shown in his conversation, which left the sense of quiet power, inexhaustible variety of anecdote, study of human character, and wealth of the well-stored memory, rather than of brilliancy. "He did not affect sayings; the points and sententious turns, which are easily caught up, were not natural to him. The great charm of his table-talk was in the sweetness and abandon with which it flowed, always guided by good sense and taste; the warm and unstudied eloquence with which he expressed rather sentiments than opinions; and the liveliness and force with which he narrated and described." Abbotsford was a centre of life and society in its brightest, most enjoyable, and most cultivated form, unique in England, and which unhappily has never found a rival. No house, except it were Voltaire's at Ferney, is reputed to have been equally thronged. Scott's hospitality and kindliness were unlimited; he had the open nature which is the most charming of all charms; was wholly free from the folly of fastidiousness; had real dignity, and hence never "stood upon it; " talked to all he met, and lived as friend with friend among his servants and followers. "Sir Walter speaks to every man," one of them said, as if they were blood-relations." Let us complete the picture in his own words; they give us the two contrasting sides of his character. "Few men have enjoyed society more, or been bored, as it is called, less, by the company of tiresome people. I have rarely, if ever, found any one, out of whom I could not extract amusement or edification. Still, however, from the earliest time I can remember, I preferred the pleasure of being alone to wishing for visitors."-Need it be added that he was fond of the company of youth, and delighted as a mother in his children's presence? The letters to his eldest son's young wife are the most attractive and graceful in the series.

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Our sketch, inevitably incomplete, must not be concluded without some note of Scott's taste and feeling towards literature. This, says Mr. Lockhart, "engrossed the greater part of his interest and reflection." Beside his original works, and the voluminous editions of Swift and Dryden, Scott edited or superintended as many reprints as would have made the fame of an ordinary antiquarian. His own taste evidently led him by preference to our older poets. With Shakespeare his novels show a close familiarity. Scott's admiration for Dryden is expressed in the Life prefixed to his edition: that which he felt for Johnson's two "Satires" was little inferior. He deplores, in mature life, his ignorance of the Greek literature; of the Latin he had no intimate knowledge; nor does his early interest in Goethe, "my old master,"

appear to have been followed by the appreciation of those works compared with which "Goetz was but crude and feeble. Dante, who represents rather the Roman than the Gothic mediaevalism, he did not admire; finding him "obscure and difficult," and remaining even seemingly ignorant till the year of his death that his own ancestor, Michael Scott, had found a place far down in Hell, where he is lodged by Dante in company of Amphiaraus, Teiresias, and other reputed sorcerers. In obedience not only to his own taste, but to a traditional fame now greatly faded, Scott was in the habit of reading through the "Orlando" of Ariosto yearly. The judgments preserved on modern English poetry are few and uncritical. In an undated conversation he spoke of himself and of Campbell as much inferior to Burns; and ranked Miss Joanna Baillie far above each. He even couples her with Shakespeare in one of the "Introductions" to Marmion. But Scott's impressions fluctuated. Thus he knew no man (1820) "more to be venerated" than Wordsworth for "loftiness of genius:” again, he “always reckoned Burns and Byron the most genuine poetical geniuses of my time, and half a century before me :" (1826):—an opinion founded on that predominance of the impulsive character in them, which was the inspiration of his own poetry. On the other hand, Scott more than once expresses deep admiration for Miss Austen; the most unlike himself in style, if second only to him in genius, among all the novelists of the time. "This young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with."

After "Ivanhoe," published 1819, the sale of Scott's novels in some degree declined: : a fact of which his partners in commerce never informed him. To this reticence, ultimately as unwise for themselves as for him, the negligences which grew upon Scott as a writer may be partly due. But to all eyes he increased in fame and wealth; was caressed and courted as kings have seldom been, but without any taint to the simplicity and beauty of his nature; and reached perhaps the height of his visible popularity with his fellow-creatures on his triumphal progress through Ireland in 1825.-This was a year dark with panic and commercial ruin ; Scott's firm, which had been always insecure and carelessly conducted, soon felt the shock. The poet, perhaps the least unbusinesslike member of the house, must have gradually withdrawn from active superintendence; and the clearest knowledge he ever obtained of his own affairs was when his bankruptcy, early in 1826, had been declared. The trying circumstances of the time stood for much in this failure, and Scott might have accepted it without discredit: but the shock roused all the determination in one of the most determined of men, and he resolved to pay the debt in full, and save by his own single-handed exertions what might be saved of his beloved Abbotsford for his family. "Scott's heart clung to the place he had created. There is scarce a tree on it that does not owe its being to me." His creditors consented; and the "Life of Napoleon," with the last volumes of the "Waverley" series, were among the results of this decision.

Hitherto something had been left to complete Scott's character. He had still to prove his complete fidelity to his vocation in literature. He had to give the far more arduous proof that he could bear evil fortune in exchange for unusual good. We cannot choose the date of our own trials. Scott's came upon him, not as with most men of genius, at their first experience of life, during the strength of youth, but after years of romantic success, and when the approaches of mortal disease had already enfeebled the powers of endurance. In the eye of the world,-perhaps in the eye of the philosopher, it might have been the wiser part to let things take their course, submit, and decline a struggle of no doubtful issue to his own health and life. But, if these pages present a true picture, all this was simply impossible to Scott. It would have been to break with what lay deepest and broadest in him,—the nature of the poet. Accepting then his decision as that which alone he could adopt, the record of these later years, as told by Mr. Lockhart, and illustrated by Scott's journal, gives to his character the completeness of poetical unity. It is the fifth act in the drama of his life; it displays how the hero met the catastrophe, and overcame it, and rested at last from his labours. The words of an aged uncle, who did not live to see the evil day, were never more completely borne out than now: "God bless thee, Walter, my man! Thou hast risen to be great, but thou wast always good." It must have been with no little effort that he reappeared in the capital of which he had for many years been beyond comparison the most distinguished inhabitant. "I went to the Court for the first time to-day," Jan. 24, 1826, "and, like the man with the large nose, thought everybody was thinking of me and my mishaps. Most were, undoubtedly, and all rather regrettingly; some obviously affected." Though deeply moved by the sympathy shown with him, he did not hold up his head until some pamphlets which he published upon a Scottish commercial question had succeeded. Then he writes, "People will not dare talk of me as an object of pity;—no more poor-manning." But adversity now came in no measured proportions; the cup was filled, and ran over. Poverty was not the only or the worst evil of the year. One son was absent in the army, the second for his education; the care of a sickly and much-loved grandchild detained the eldest daughter; and Scott, leaving his wife ill beyond hope at Abbotsford, was compelled to set himself to solitary labour within a narrow lodging at Edinburgh. Soon a few pages in his journal, fearful in the pathetic struggle which they betray, tell us of the irremediable loss. Yet throughout the whole Scott maintains that noble and submissive courage with which, years before the time of calamity, he had looked forward to the unseen future; whatever pain or misfortune might be in store, "I am already a sufficient debtor to the bounty of Providence to be resigned to it."

This resignation bore its fruits: and a kind of after-summer of mild and peaceful radiance,―cheered by the fidelity of friends and the love of children, relieves the bodily infirmities and painful task-work of Scott's old age. At this time occurred

own.

an interchange of interesting letters between him and Goethe. Scott gives a characteristic sketch of his own position: "My eldest son has a troop of Hussars; my youngest has just been made Bachelor of Arts at Oxford. God having been pleased to deprive me of their mother, my youngest daughter keeps my household in order, my eldest being married," to Mr. Lockhart, “and having a family of her Such are the domestic circumstances of the person you so kindly enquired after: for the rest, I have enough to live on in the way I like, notwithstanding some very heavy losses: and I have a stately antique chateau (modern antique), to which any friend of Baron von Goethe will be at all times most welcome, with an entrance-hall filled with armour, which might have become Jaxthausen,” the castle in Goethe's Goetz, "itself, and a gigantic bloodhound to guard the entrance."

After a visit to London, where he was received by the best men of the time with affectionate respect, and a short excursion to Paris, he completed the "Life of Napoleon" in 1827. A crowd of other volumes followed this massive work, `amongst which the "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft" (1830), written under the pressure of imminent illness, are only sufficient to give an idea how that curious subject, for which he had made large preparations, would have been treated by Scott in his better days. There was much in him of Michael Scott, the magician; much also of Reginald Scott, the courageous advocate of reason and humanity in a superstitious age. Half shrewdness, half or more than half belief, -the poise of his mind between the romantic and the critical, eminently fitted him to write impressively on witchcraft and ghostly legends. Perhaps no single point is managed with more supreme skill in the "Novels." Let us add that, beside all these labours, his warm liberality of heart led him to give others freely that assistance with his pen which his purse could no longer supply. Already he had cleared off a vast load of debt, when Nature, on whom, between physical and mental exertion, he had pressed hard since youth, avenged herself by serious strokes of paralysis in 1830 and 1831. "Such a shaking hands with Death," he said, "is formidable.” Scott resigned his legal office; but it was in vain that those about him tried to enforce the quiet of mind which was essential to Euthanasia, if not to life. No longer master of the creative imagination, the power which had long obeyed his bidding now compelled him as a slave; and do what his friends could to restrain him, more than one of the novels was produced within these months of decay. At length he was persuaded to try the southern climate. A final gleam of the Scott of younger years broke forth for one moment when Wordsworth came (Sept. 22, 1831) to bid him farewell. For the last time the two great poets who, while following the different paths which led both to masterworks, appreciated each other with the deep sympathy of genius, together traversed the vale of Yarrow. This day was commemorated by Wordsworth in one of the finest occasional poems in our language. A serene beauty characterizes the Yarrow Revisited. Perhaps Words