saint or martyr; for there will be no generation of men speaking the English tongue, from whatever remote region they may come, who will not long to survey the scenery which Scott has immortalized as his own, and end by a reverential visit to his grave.

There is little more to add, for we have made a few observations on the different incidents of his life as they occurred. On the whole, we think the reader will agree with us, that Walter Scott may safely be pronounced a great and good man. On his greatness in genius and poetic power we believe all the world is agreed; for though among some people it is a fashion to say his poems are merely versified novels, and that he did not reach the height other men have attained to, there is no author of any period whose poems retain such hold of the popular mind. Where one person is intimately acquainted with the "Childe Harold" or the dramas of Lord Byron, there are hundreds who know by heart "The Lady of the Lake," and the "Lay of the Last Minstrel." We do not know who can be considered a poet, even a great poet, if Walter Scott may not be. To move the heart, to arrest the attention, even to soothe the ear-if these are constituent portions of the poet's task, surely they never were done to a greater extent by any other man. His versifi

cation is sometimes careless, for he wrote with great rapidity, under the impulse of a spirit rioting in its own strength; but you might as well find fault with the rough banks and irregular course of a great mountain torrent swelled with rain, and complain that its outline was not so regular nor its waters so smooth as those of a canal. To deny the possession of poetry in its very highest sense to the author of those dashing poems, because it is possible to discover in them some feeble rhymes, or even ungrammatical expressions, is worthy of the sages who should deny military genius to the Duke of Wellington because his fighting soldiers in the Peninsula were not so trimly dressed as certain show regiments at home. The same power and the same immense imaginative fertility are to be found in his professed poems as in his prose works.

You are quite welcome to say he is not a sparkling poet like Moore, nor a correct poet like Campbell, nor a philosophic poet like Wordsworth; but take him in his vigour, in his characters, in his incidents, and descriptions-he is worth them all. There is courage to be gained in the manliness of his style; and no man who ever wrote, whether in prose or verse, whether describing the lighted hall of chivalrous nobles, or the simple habits of ordinary life, or the ways and feelings of the lower ranks, no man ever left

such an impression on the reader that he was in presence not only of a man of surpassing genius, but of A PERFECT GENTLEMAN; not that this arose from his knowledge of what is called high life, or his possession of the ease and dignity which we call characteristic of lofty breeding; but it proceeded from the conviction that comes upon you as you read that here you are listening to the language of a brave and noble heart-of a man whose mind never harboured one base or dishonourable thought; who, as we learn when we inquire into his life, grudged no sacrifice to fulfil what he considered a duty, and whose ambition, "that last infirmity of noble minds," led him at last rather to die at his post than suffer any person to lose a shilling by reliance on his word. This is to be a gentleman. This is a race worth running-a reputation worth dying for.

Sound, sound the clarion! fill the fife!

To all the sensual world proclaim,

One crowded hour of glorious life

Is worth an age without a name!

And this is the moral to be drawn from all we have said; that Genius requires to be combined with something else—not mere rank or wealth, but with strong energy and "perseverance in well-doing”—to lift a man into the great eminence on which Scott now stands.

No man ever lived for forty years so full in the eye of the public as he did, and left no single spot upon his fame. His life was before the men of two generations; and the old man of the one was the same kind, earnest, unselfish, honourable individual as the youth of the other had been. There is no whisper in all those years of literary jealousies, or even political hatreds. With all the great authors of the time he was on the kindest terms; with Whigs, and all varieties of political opponents, he was as friendly as with his own allies. With lords and ladies he was the pleasantest of companions; and in the cottages of the poor he was a no less welcome guest. If any of you feel the glowings of the poetic fire, turn it, as he did, to high and useful purposes,

But if no poet thou, reverse the plan,
Depart in peace and imitate the man.

THE END.

November, 1857.

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