think-as far as it is possible to human nature | world, wished not the world to elevate itself, to --not of the good that may be coming to him, amend itself, to do this, or to do that, except but of the good that is to go from him. simply to pay him for the books he kept writing." Death, in dropping from its subtile balance not clay alone, but all mere externalities of time and circumstance, and in weighing only merit and utility, calculates not its own gains only, but steadily computes the great sum of the best issues of life, and so holds the victory of the true worker secure. Haply his hour is late; but it comes. In common with Lockhart and the Ettrick Shepherd, Carlyle considered Scott a man of remarkable healthiness of nature, of robustness, geniality, and cordial heartiness, and as having a stock of humor, courage, and energy that knew no abatement, and an aptness for anecdote which made his company captivating to all. Carlyle bestows a largess of eulogium covering many directions of merit, and full of the most searching cognizance of his subject, reverting again and again to Scott's health, and the endeavor, endurance, and clear vision which were his in consequence. "Were one to preach a sermon on health," he says, "as were really worth duing, Scott ought to be the text." Impatient of all insufficiences, Carlyle lamented only that this strong soul, with its various gifts, powers, and wonderful industries, "had no message whatever to deliver to the Few could have spoken more highly of Scott both as a man and as an author, or been more impressive in the speaking, than Carlyle in this review of Lockhart's life of Sir Walter; and perhaps not one would have so thrust through and through the praise with the very Ithuriel spear of criticism. Very different is the meed of James Hogg. In all the Scott literature there can hardly be found any thing so altogether delightful as the "Anecdotes"* related of him by the Ettrick Shepherd. These anecdotes are so simply yet tersely told-a series of recollections evidently treasured with fidelity, recalled with love, and related by the Ettrick Shepherd with that candor, unabridged, characteristic of all his sayings and doings, and which lent them a marvelous interest and charm. Moreover, they are an actuality, transpiring as one reads. It would be difficult not to see Sir Walter, so eager as he was for every scrap of legend and tradition, listening delightedly to the "Shep A little volume published in 1834 by Harper and Brothers, and containing also an interesting sketch of the life of James Hogg. herd's" mother chanting her ballads "auld as great degree original, was full of point and in- "In coming through a place called the Milsey Bog, I said to him, 'Mr. Scott, that's the maddest deil o' a beast I ever saw. Can ye no gar him tak a wee mair time? He's just out o' ae lair intil anither wi' ye.' 'Ay,' said he, 'he and I have been very often like the Picts these two days past-we could stand straight up and tie the latchets of our shoes.' I did not understand the allusion, nor do I yet, but those were his words."* He gives an instance, perhaps the most remarkable any where recorded, of the wonderful memory of Scott. They went one night, about midnight, "leistering for kippers in Tweed." Finding their peat gone out, they sent one Rob Fletcher for another, and meantime sat down to wait upon the brink of Tweed. The Ettrick Shepherd's account of the manner in which he and Sir Walter criticised each other's writings is unique indeed. They behaved to each other with absolute frankness, each having evidently the greatest respect for the other's opinion, and a strong desire for the other's approval; yet each sharper upon the other than the whole world beside. To cite an instance: After a merrily caustic conversation about a literary venture of the Shepherd's, Scott exclaims: "Well, Hogg, you appear to me just now like a man dancing upon a rope or wire at a great height; if he is successful and finishes his dance in safety, he has accomplished no great matter; but if he makes a slip, he gets a devil of a fall." It was well for the Ettrick Shepherd that he, better than any other, knew how to be wittily even with his friend. Near the close of the "Anecdotes" the Shepherd says, "Those who knew Scott only | from the few hundreds, or I might say hundreds of thousands, of volumes to which he has Scott asked the Ettrick Shepherd to sing his ballad, "Gilman's Cleuch." This ballad had never been printed, and had never been repeat-given birth and circulation through the world, ed to Scott but once, about three years before. The shepherd began, but failed with the eighth or ninth stanza, whereupon Scott rehearsed it-eighty-eight stanzas in all-without mistake or hesitancy, from beginning to end. The mirth and unquenchable jollity of Scott "An' gin the boat were bottomless, which singing, the boat departed from under It seems matter of wonder when Scott could * I comprehend Scott's Pict allusion as little as the Shepherd, but remembering that son of Erin who, passing a neglected burial-place, gravely declared, "Well, thin, Pat, so long as I live, I'll niver let the likes o' this happen to my grave; I'll pull the weeds meself first;" and viewing the whole matter in the light of an Hibernianism, it might mean that Scott sank so deep in mire that, had his feet staid on the surface, he could without stooping have tied his shoes. knew only one-half of the man, and that not the best half either." Thus generously does the eccentric bard of Ettrick Vale pay tribute to his illustrious brother, and in every anecdote cracks for us a nut filled with the meat of character. The Ashestiel autobiographical fragment, written in 1808 (when Scott was thirty-seven years old), though unfortunately brief, is very interesting, and it is a noticeably modest selfestimate, when his great popularity and the uniformly high opinion of his reviewers and critics are considered. The fragment stops abruptly, with his assumption of the advocate's gown, and contains no positive indication and but faint suggestion of a future literary career. Autobiographical sketches might be written of thousands who never reached any eminence in any direction who were much more faithful to their early studies than Sir Walter, who yet loved the wild, romantic, and fanciful, and devoured it as incontinently as he. Such indications are either superficial or significant according to the stamp of mind evincing them, and according to its capacity for using instead of being used by circumstances. With all that appeared frittering and desultory in Scott's early youth, attributable, as much of it was, to illness and the indulgence attending it, with all the laziness, love of ease and mere amusement, of which he accuses himself, and of which others accuse him, his mind was essentially active and unresting. Of whatever he heard, or saw, or read he made himself the possessor in the most positive and vital manner. Through all the idle rambles, the erratic vagaries and dreaming, of his boyhood, and while passing for only the witty A A marvel of delight was opened to them, and, what was better, a thought-strengthening school of philosophy, of which they acquired unsparingly. It was Matthew Gregory Lewis, the once famous author of the "Monk," a romance writ and careless lad, the "Greek blockhead," the best story-teller, and the universal favorite, who knew but little of what he ought, and a vast miscellaneous quantity that could apparently serve no possible purpose, Scott's mind was, consciously or otherwise, filling to the brim those affluent springs of imagination and feel-ten when twenty years of age, and of the beauing that at a later time should overflow, with scarce an effort, in the beauty and rhythm of the Scottish minstrelsy. He knew, or he knew not, what he was about, but in either case he was about it. Says Bulwer, who writes of him at this period with eloquence and discrimination, "The boyhood of eminent men, especially poets, has usually been marked by desultory habits; and self-occupation, unseen and unconjectured, earns for them the character of indolence." An ardent admirer of beautiful scenery, Scott longed and even indefatigably tried to acquire the art of placing his favorite views on canvas, but failed to realize the desire. Yet must he have been an artist; for, as the Ettrick Shepherd, who knew him intimately well, testifies, "A single serious look at a scene generally filled his mind with it ;" and his pen so perfectly reproduced these scenes that they were invariably recognized by those ocularly familiar with them. In music also Sir Walter declares himself an absolute failure and the despair of his teacher; yet there must have been music in him; for all his poems, more especially the "Lady of the Lake" and "Marmion," are not only written in rhythm's smoothest melody, but, if not so uniformly mellifluous as Moore's, are in some stanzas so felicitously phrased as to reach the acme of poetic tunefulness. It is interesting to know that Sir Walter, educated for the bar, and already an advocate, was nearly thirty years old before he definitely turned his attention to literature, and even then it was seemingly the work of chance. In April, 1788, when Henry Mackenzie, the author of "The Man of Feeling," read his critical essay on German literature before the Royal Society, and the daringly impassioned and dramatic German school of literature was thus first forcibly presented to the attention of Edinburgh's cultivated minds, a small class of young men, Scott being of the number, was formed specially for the study of this literature, of which Mackenzie spoke with such enthusiasm and authority. Gesner's "Death of Abel" was their first attempt in translation; and though in the subject or matter of it little to their lively taste, it served to open the way, and soon they were poring with charmed attention over the "Sorrows of Werther," the heroic animation of the German dramatists, dipping into the philosophy of Kant, and glowing in the poetic atmosphere of Schiller. tiful ballad "Durandarte," whose success in imitating the German taste and style first inspired Scott with the possibility of a similar triumph. He translated from the German Bürger's "Lenore," then new to the English reading public, though written nearly twenty years before. This translation was published in 1796, and after Scott had translated and "balladized," to the great satisfaction of his friends, several other poems of Burger. His success was neither Still on the spot # His conner's pose Lord Marmien slaid For fairer And to market the de the wafflonne ex coulter scene he neve that peopled all the plain below When sated with the meiitial show survey d with FAU-SIMILE OF PART OF A STANZA FROM "MARMION." gloomy splendower real glow city glow XXVIII ABBOTSFORD, FROM THE NORTHI BANK OF THE TWEED. surprising nor discouraging. His next venture, the publication of "Glenfinlas" and the "Eve of St. John," came to naught. They did not appear independently, but in a collection made under the auspices of Matthew Gregory Lewis, entitled the "Tales of Wonder," an attempt of undoubted merit in many respects, but, from a singular combination of causes, an inevitable failure, though Scott's contribution escaped in a measure the general censure, and even received some separate praise. Many so circumstanced, creditably and remuneratively launched in the legal profession, would have thrown aside the pen; but Scott's healthy indomitableness held him to his attempt, and the more that Fame seemed coy. Perseverance soon sung the "Lay of the Last Minstrel;" William Pitt and Charles Fox hearkened favorably to the strains, and Reputation ran for the young author with open arms. The literary courage of Scott, and his conceded indifference to fame for its own sake, s well illustrated in his reply to a dear friend, who, after the assured success of "Marmion," cautioned him against attempting the "Lady of the Lake." "Do not be rash," she said; "you are al "If I fail," he continued, "it is a sign that I ought never to have succeeded, and I will write prose for life; you shall see no change in my temper, nor will I eat a single meal the worse." Yet he felt the excellent judgment of the true and friendly warning. He was glad of his fame, enjoyed it simply and naturally, was healthily, not inordinately, proud of it. He made use of it. It brought him acquaintances, associations, and facilities that he greatly desired. He made much money with it, and generous use of his money; but withal depended not upon his fame for any deep comfort or lasting joy, and never forgot its instability, its way of forsaking merit for ill desert, of passing from any possessor at any time, asking no leave for its errantries. In another autobiographical sketch of Scott, published in 1831, when Scott was sixty years old, an account is given of the long incognito he maintained with reference to the authorship of the Waverley Novels, and his reasons for the secrecy. "Waverley" was a venture in a new department, and Scott sent it forth to make or fail to make its own way, unassisted by the prestige of his name. After the assured success of "Waverley" it was not so much any one reason as a jumble of reasons that led Scott, still issuing the successful Waverley series, to keep their authorship concealed; nor, long and inquisitively as the matter was investigated by a curious public, would it have transpired at all, except posthu Hills. mously, but for the disarrangement in the af- | Mannering," once verily live among the Cheviot fairs of his publishers, Messrs. Constable and Co., involving in the exposure of their accountbooks the disclosure of Scott's humorously guarded secret. It is pleasant to be able to claim Jeanie Deans as one of ourselves-to know that the truest charm in the "Heart of Mid-Lothian" was drawn from the life. These instance in an illustrious manner what is being constantly demonstrated, that fact generously supplies fiction with its most startling, unusual interests, and that the truest parts of the most vivid and daring romances are those receiving'generally the least credence. high-souled Rebecca with the love of Ivanhoe, and with other pleasant things of this world, instead of lavishing such good fortune wholly upon Rowena, is twofold and adroit, exhibitive of Scott's tact. "Ivanhoe" was Scott's first attempt to depart The grave of Helen Walker, the original of from the strictly Scottish interest and character Jeanie Deans, lies in the "church-yard of Iron-in romance. His excuse for not rewarding the gray, about six miles from Dumfries." She had a sister condemned to death for infanticide, and actually refused to tell the lie by which that dear young sister's life might be saved; but, the fatal verdict given, Helen made haste to the queen, traveling wearily on foot, armed only with a clumsy petition, received the grace she craved, and returned just in sufficient season. He says, "It is a dangerous and fatal doctrine to teach young persons-the most common readers of romance-that rectitude of conduct It is this incident that is wrought so effect- and of principle is either naturally allied with, ively in the "Heart of Mid-Lothian." The dark or adequately rewarded by, the attainment of climax of the "Bride of Lammermoor" is also our wishes;" and to the universal sympathy for founded upon tragic events that really happen- Rebecca replies, "The internal consciousness ed in a Scottish family of rank. So also did of high-minded discharge of duty" produced for Meg Merrilies, the very weird salience of "Guy | her "a more adequate recompense in the form |