his audience larger. He apprehended in advance the immense enlargement of the reading public, which almost dates from the era of his books, -which his books and Byron's inaugurated; and which, though until then unheard of, has become familiar to the present time. If the success of his poems, however large, was partial, that of his novels was complete. The tone of strength in Waverley at once announced the master, and was more than justified by the superior genius of the following romances, up to the Bride of Lammermoor, which almost goes back to Eschylus for a counterpart as a painting of Fate, leaving on every reader the impression of the highest and purest tragedy.' His power on the public mind rests on the singular union of two influences. By nature, by his reading and taste an aristocrat, in a time and country which easily gave him that bias, he had the virtues and graces of that class, and by his eminent humanity and his love of labor escaped its harm. He saw in the English Church the symbol and seal of all social order; in the historical aristocracy the benefits to the state which Burke claimed for it; and in his own. reading and research such store of legend and ΧΙ renown as won his imagination to their cause. Not less his eminent humanity delighted in the sense and virtue and wit of the common people. In his own household and neighbors he found characters and pets of humble class, with whom he established the best relation,- small farmers and tradesmen, shepherds, fishermen, gypsies, peasant-girls, crones, and came with these into real ties of mutual help and good will. From these originals he drew so genially his Jeanie Deans, his Dinmonts and Edie Ochiltrees, Caleb Balderstones and Fairservices, Cuddie Headriggs, Dominies, Meg Merrilies, and Jenny Rintherouts, full of life and reality; making these, too, the pivots on which the plots of his stories turn; and meantime without one word of brag of this discernment, - nay, this extreme sympathy reaching down to every beggar and beggar's dog, and horse and cow. In the number and variety of his characters he approaches Shakspeare. Other painters in verse or prose have thrown into literature a few typefigures; as Cervantes, De Foe, Richardson, Goldsmith, Sterne and Fielding; but Scott portrayed with equal strength and success every figure in his crowded company. His strong good sense saved him from the faults and foibles incident to poets, from nervous egotism, sham modesty or jealousy. He played ever a manly part.' With such a fortune and such a genius, we should look to see what heavy toll the Fates took of him, as of Rousseau or Voltaire, of Swift or Byron. But no: he had no insanity, or vice, or blemish. He was a thoroughly upright, wise and greathearted man, equal to whatever event or fortune should try him. Disasters only drove him to immense exertion. What an What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities. Under what rare conjunction of stars was this man, born, that, wherever he lived, he found superior men, passed all his life in the best company, and still found himself the best of the best! He was apprenticed at Edinburgh to a Writer to the Signet, and became a Writer to the Signet, and found himself in his youth and manhood and age in the society of Mackintosh, Horner, Jeffrey, Playfair, Dugald Stewart, Sydney Smith, Leslie, Sir William Hamilton, Wilson, Hogg, De Quincey,- to name only some of his literary neighbors, and, as soon as he died, all this brilliant circle was broken up. |