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favour as a professional man. Every moment spared from his office was given to literature and literary friendship. It is a wonder to the minnows how this triton, like most other great men, found time for all his labours; for Scott was a keen sportsman. Coursing was his favourite amusement. It drew forth his attachment to his horses and his dogs, and gave himself the hearty and exhilarating exercise he dearly loved. 'Tis something to a book-worm, jaded with his toil in the close atmosphere of paper catacombs, to feel the free air of native hills and dales distending his cramped lungs. And he who, on his own pinions, raises into ethereal regions the solid work-a-day world, may be allowed to feel enjoyment on the back of a noble, if inferior animal, springing forwards on buoyant sinews in the chase that gives the beast at least the keenest pleasure. Walter Scott, at any rate, thought so. His horses and his dogs knew how he enjoyed the sport, and these dumb friends loved him and sunned themselves in his keen eyes as if they, too, saw the work he did. At this time Miss Seward looked on his face at Lichfield. She thus describes him: "On Friday last the poetically great Walter Scott came like a sunbeam to my dwelling.' This proudest boast of the Caledonian muse is tall, and rather robust than slender, but lame. Neither the contour of his face, nor yet his features are elegant; his complexion healthy, and somewhat fair, without bloom. We find the singularity of brown hair and eyelashes with flaxen eyebrows; and a countenance open, ingenuous, and benevolent. When seriously conversing or earnestly attentive, though his eyes are rather of a lightish grey, deep thought is on their lids; he contracts his brow, and the rays of genius gleam aslant from the orbs beneath them. An upper lip too long prevents his mouth from being decidedly handsome, but the sweetest emanations of temper and heart play about it when he talks cheerfully or smiles-and in company he is much oftener gay than contemplative-his conversation an overflowing fountain of brilliant wit, apposite allusion, and playful archness,while on serious things it is nervous and eloquent; the accent is decidedly Scotch, but by no means broad."

Next came "Marmion," published in February 1808; "a dumpy quarto," the author calls it. Had any one but he applied the epithet even to the shadow of the material volume, the man should be consigned to Dante for everlasting punishment. But even the affectation of Scott is catching. So much does the man endear himself.

Along with his works of imagination, Scott was carrying on his studies by the studious criticism involved in editing Dryden and Swift. These, doubtless, contributed to preserve the power and

balance of his judgment.

In May 1810, "The Lady of the Lake" came out, with a portrait of the author.

It is needless to exhibit the criticisms of the period upon those works. They were received with delight by all readers. A time may come when language shall have put on another dress; and of the diction of these poems may then be thought what we think of Chaucer's. Other generations may arise who shall not be able to enjoy the externalism of these poems. Neither their purpose nor their moral is of the highest scope. But, while objects are included within the domain of poetry as of themselves worthy of its charms, the word-painting of these exquisite pictures will remain to delight the world. Scott did not aspire to teach. It was his province to please.

Next year appeared the "Vision of Don Roderick."

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In 1812 the poet entered upon the income of his office in the Court of Session, and thus enjoyed until near the close of his life a professional income of £1600 a-year. This did not relax his literary labours, and in the same year Rokeby" was written. His letters begin to date from Abbotsford, of which he says to Lord Byron, "I am labouring here to contradict an old proverb, and make a silk purse out of a sow's ear,-namely, to convert a bare haugh and brae, of about a hundred acres, into a comfortable farm." This was the nucleus of what was afterwards developed into a great mansion and a wide estate. Nearly simultaneously with Rokeby" appeared, anonymously, "The Bridal of Triermain." Few were so dull as to mistake this for an imitation of Scott by an inferior hand, as he seems to have desired might be the public judgment. Even the Greek quotations in the preface deceived none of the friends who knew that Scott was ignorant of that language. In this freak, however, we discern that desire for a literary incognito that was afterwards gratified by the mystery attending the authorship of "Waverley." Scott had hitherto occupied the chief place in the field of contemporary poetry. But he discerned in Byron a rising star who was to carry the force of words into a deeper region of the soul than his own poetry could stir, and whose powers were sufficient to command as wide a range of popularity as his own. He began seriously to meditate prose. The discovery in an old cabinet of a fragment commenced some years before, attracted his notice by the force its words exerted upon himself, now become, in the lapse of time, a comparative stranger to his own composition. Before "Waverley " appeared, in July 1814, he had been offered and had declined the laureateship, which he exerted himself successfully to have bestowed on Southey. He wrote prose in earnest when he began. The original fragment contained nearly the

whole of the first volume of "Waverley;" the two last volumes were written in three weeks. The secret of the authorship was confided only to two or three of the author's most intimate literary friends. The veil of incognito was easily penetrated by the discriminating few who stood next without his most confiding regard. To the world at large "the author of Waverley" became a myth of magnitude, not to speak of the transcendent merit of "Waverley" as a work of art. There is an aroma belonging to it that suits the public taste. Notwithstanding that our idols are stripped generation after generation, and even day after day, of their gilded cheeks and diamond eyes by poets, novelists, and satirists, we yet remain, by virtue of humanity itself, their worshippers. In vain does a Shakespeare cast the blazon of his genius alike over gentle and simple, king and peasant, combining them all in one common kith, where human nature makes of the whole one united world. In vain a Smollett holds the mirror up to the universal coarseness that underlies all our refinement of the surface. In vain, too, a Hogarth and a Thackeray paint us all, at bottom, snobs and common fellows, and show us, by their Rakes and Crawleys, that Virtue alone is fair. We will have it that there is a lofty class, within which reside all the majesty and the peace that our ideals faintly realize. Your Sir Charles Grandisons are the heroes of every successive generation. A democracy becomes an oligarchy by virtue of success, and the struggling multitude accepts it. Principles of this sort are recognised in the oldest and most popular volume. There it is an aristocracy that perpetually leads the movements of the subjacent masses. After all the shifting scenery of the world-wide drama is displayed, the curtain of revelation itself finally descends on the triumph of the true, though tried aristocracy.

In order that men may be elevated, some of them must be placed within a line of privilege towards which the rest are drawn. The pale of the author of "Waverley" appears to be taken from the most vulgar prejudice of his nation. It consists in the possession of the soil, and includes the correlations of rank depending on the family ramifications of the landed proprietors. In a word, his philosophy is feudalism. His feudalism is indeed gilded with all the powers of fancy and the consummate decorations of art. It is genial withal, and whilst class remains within class there is the utmost cordiality and good neighbourhood. Unfortunately, in the world class will not remain within class; men will not be contented simply to do their duty within the station in which God has placed them. They will aspire. The interest, perhaps, of all Scott's works, depends more than we are aware on the touch of nature everywhere applied, that amidst

these distinctions makes the whole world kin. We feel that, notwithstanding the extent of factitious distance, we are really near his characters. Lofty as they are, they are bone of our bone, ---sweet flattery which the author teaches us to apply to ourselves! We claim kindred with his noblest heroes, and they admit us to their table, although, perhaps, "below the salt." Red Murdoch is the kinsman of his chief, and is pleased while he lives. But his death by no means fulfils the omen :

"Think ye because a wretched kern ye slew,
Homage to name to Roderic Dhu?"

Scott himself naively confesses this with feelings which few persons, except his countrymen, distinctly understand. "We are not a little proud of being greeted as Laird and Lady of Abbotsford. We will give a grand gala when we take possession of it; and as we are very clannish in this corner, all the Scotts in the country, from the duke to the peasant, shall dance on the green to the bagpipes, and drink whisky punch."

The difficulties of Scott's partnership had already begun. The Ballantynes were short of money, and Scott is pestered with shifts to raise the wind. Expresses are going to and fro between Edinburgh and the country wherever he may happen to be, as their bills become due, and the lack of funds becomes apparent. Yet he buys Abbotsford with money borrowed from his friends, and on the security of "Rokeby" still only in his brain. He afterwards, notwithstanding continued financial difficulties, makes further purchases by the mortgage of his future labours. The "Lord of the Isles" begins to loom in sight immediately after a six weeks' voyage made in the yacht of the lighthouse commissioners in the summer of 1814, from Leith to the Clyde, round the north of Scotland. This was the period when "Waverley," just published, was engrossing the public mind. "The Lord of the Isles" was published on the 18th January 1815, and next month "Guy Mannering" issued from the press. The ensuing summer Scott visited the continent, a few weeks after the battle of Waterloo. As he witnessed the scenes which were then in all minds, he wrote the series entitled, "Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk." The poem of "The Field of Waterloo" was also written in these circumstances. The element of romance was wanting to the subject, to which the poet, therefore, fails to do justice. Its details were too visible.

His

Space does not permit us to follow our author through all the triumphs which succeded this, the manhood of his career. lucubrations in verse were now nearly fulfilled. The fame which subsequently awaited him as a novelist has somewhat obscured

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