convey more interest to our mind than the account of his habits and occupations, which, uniting with the favourite subjects of his study, formed the entire character of the poet and the novelist. Inspiration, and that of the purest and brightest kind, came to Pope and to Gray in the studious seclusion of their libraries, and among the artificial refinements of social life; but Scott's poetry breathed the wilder and more enthusiastic spirit of the ancient time. The poet diffused his own character through his poetry. He lived among the scenes of his own creations; he not only read books, but studied men, and worshipped nature. The man of active life was not lost in the student and the recluse; and he is probably the first great poet, who ever planted, built, felled timber, hunted, shot, coursed, speared salmon, waded fords, leapt torrents, commanded a troop of cavalry, presided at matches of football between rival clans, and whose poetry was the result of the active powers of his mind, as well as of its sensibility and refinement. The blood of the borderer and the mosstrooper was mingled in his veins with that of the poet and the knights of the Morte d'Arthur.* Scott's Life was indeed a poetic action going on through its changes. Speaking of Marmion, Mr. Lockhart says:

"There is a knoll with some tall ashes on the adjoining farm of the Peel, where Scott was very fond of sitting by himself, and it still bears the name of the Sheriff's Knowe; another favourite seat was beneath a huge oak hard by the Tweed, at the extremity of the haigh of Ashestiel. It was here that, while meditating his verses, he used

To stray,

And waste the solitary day, &c.

He frequently wandered far from home,
however, attended only by his dog, and
would return late in the evening, having
let hours and hours slip away among the
soft and melancholy wildernesses where
Yarrow creeps from her fountains; but
when the theme was of a more stirring
order, he enjoyed pursuing it over brake
and fell at the full speed of his Lieute-
nant. I well remember his saying, as I
rode with him across the hills from Ash-
estiel to Newark, one day in his decli-
ning years,-Oh! man, I had many a
grand gallop among these braes when I
was thinking of Marmion; but a trifling
canny poney must serve me now.'
friend, McSkene, however, informs me
that many of the more energetic descrip-
tions, and particularly that of the battle
of Flodden, were struck out while he was
in quarters again with his cavalry in the
autumn of 1807. In the intervals of
drilling, he says, Scott used to delight
in walking his powerful black_steed up
and down by himself upon the Portobello
Sands, within the beating of the surge; and
now and then you would see him plunge
in his spurs, and go off as if at the

His

charge, and with the spray dashing about him. As we rode back to Musselburgh he often came and placed himself beside me to repeat the verses he had been composing during these pauses of our exercise.

man.

"Mr. Morritt's testimony of Scott's character harmonizes with the preceding account. He describes him as the friend and neighbour of every Selkirkshire yeoHe carried us (he says) one day to Melrose or Newark,-another to course with mountain greyhounds by Yarrow braes or St. Mary's Loch, repeating every ballad or legendary tale connected with the scenery; and on a third we must all go to a farmer's harvest-home, to dance with border lasses on a barn-floor, drink whisky punch, and enter in all the gossip and good fellowship of his neighbours.

"At this period (says the same accomplished and observing friend) his conversation was more equal and animated than any man's that I ever knew. It was most characterised by the extreme facility and fun of the illustrations drawn from the whole encyclopædia of life and nature, in a style sometimes too exuberant for a written narrative, but which to him was natural and spontaneous. A hundred stories, always apposite, and often interesting the mind by strong pathos or eminently ludicrous, were daily told, which, with many more, have since been transplanted, almost in the same language, into the Waverley novels and his other writings. These and his recitations of poetry, which can never be forgotten by those who knew him, made up the charm

* See vol. iii. p. 131.

Mr. Lockhart bears testimony of Scott's capacity for practical dealing and rule among men.

It is, then, to this ready and powerful memory, to this ever-active imagination, to this profound and poetical sensibility, to the well-arranged masses and groups of his knowledge, and to the quickness of his associtions from which he could command and distribute them, that we are to attribute the otherwise almost marvellous rapidity of his inventions. The two last volumes of Waverley were written in three weeks. Mr. B. Hall says,

When Mr. B. Hall turns from the writer to the man, he thus gives his opinion of Scott's character :

powers. If any man can be said to have a right to be presumptuous in consequence of possessing acknowledged talents far above those of his company, he is this man. But what sagacity and intimate knowledge of human nature does it not display, when a man thus gifted and thus entitled as it were to assume a higher level, undazzled by such enormous praise, bears steadiness of head enough not to be made giddy, and clearness enough

***

of moral vision to discover that so far
from lessening the admiration which it
is admitted he might claim if he pleased,
he augments it infinitely by seeming
to waive that right altogether.
On no occasion has he betrayed the
smallest symptom of vanity or affectation,
or insinuated a thought bordering on pre-
sumption, or even a consciousness of his
own superiority in any respect whatso-
ever."

Before we put a concluding stroke to the portrait of this eminent person, we must make an extract from some observations which Mr. Lockhart has very judiciously and fairly given, on what may be called the worldly part of Scott's conduct.

"I dare not deny that he set more of his affections, during great part of his life, upon worldly things, wealth among others, than might have become such an intellect. One may conceive a sober grandeur of mind not incompatible with genius as rich even as his, but infinitely more admirable than any genius,-incapable of brooding upon any of the pomps and vanities of life, or caring about money at all, beyond what is necessary for the easy sustenance of nature. But we must, in judging the most powerful of minds, take into account the influence to which they were exposed during the plastic period; and when imagination is visibly the predominant faculty, allowance must be made very largely indeed. Scott's autobiographical fragment and the anecdotes annexed to it have been printed in vain, if they have not conveyed the notion of such a training of the mind, fancy and character, as could hardly fail to suggest dreams and aspirations very likely, new temptations presented, to take the shape of external active ambition,-to prompt a keen pursuit of those resources without which visions of worldly splendour cannot be realized. But I think the subsequent narrative, with the correspondence embodied in it, must also have satisfied every candid reader that his appetite for wealth, after all, was essentially a vivid yearning for the means of a large beneficence. I must say one word as to the matter of rank, which undoubtedly had infinitely more effect on him than money. In the first place he was all along courted by the great world, not it by him; and, secondly, pleased as

*

*

*

he was by its attentions, he derived infinitely greater pleasure from the trusty and hearty affection of his old equals and the inferiors whose welfare he so unweariedly promoted; but he made acute discriminations among the many different orders of claimants who jostle each other for pre-eminence in the huge and complicated system of modern British society. His imagination had been constantly exercised in recalling and embellishing whatever features of the past it was possible to connect with any pleasing ideas, and an historical name was a charm that literally stirred his blood. But not so a mere title. He revered the Duke of Buccleuch, but it was not as a Duke, but as the head of his clan, the representative of the old knights of Branxholme. In the Duke of Hamilton, he saw not the premier peer of Scotland, but the lineal heir of the heroic old Douglases; and he had profounder respect for the chief of an old highland clan, without any title whatever, and with an ill-paid rental of 2 or 30007. a-year, than for the haughtiest magnate in a blue ribbon whose name did not call up any grand historical remembrance. Sir Walter's own title came unsought; and that he accepted it, not in the foolish fancy that such a title or any title could increase his own personal consequence, but because he thought it fair to embrace the opportunity of securing a certain external distinction to his heirs at Abbotsford, was proved pretty clearly by his subsequently declining the greatly higher but untransmissible rank of a Privy Coun. cillor."

Scott himself, in his journal, confesses the prevalence of the imaginative power in his mind.

"My life, he writes, though not without its fits of waking and strong exertion, has been a sort of dream spent in chew GENT. MAG. VOL. X.

ing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. I have worn a wishing cap, the power of which has been to divert present griefs

D

by a touch of the wand of imagination, and gild over the future by prospects more fair than can be realised. Somewhere,

it is said, that this castle-building, this wielding of the unreal trowel, is fatal to exertions in actual life. I cannot tellI have not found it so. I cannot say, like Madame de Genlis, that in the imaginary scenes in which I have acted a part, I

ever prepared myself for anything which actually befell me; but I have certainly fashioned out much that made the present hour pass pleasantly away, and much that has enabled me to contribute to the amusement of the public. Since I was five years old, I cannot remember the time when I had not some ideal part to play for my own solitary amusement."

Mr. Lockhart's observation on Scott's mental powers, in another part of the work, may be considered a just commentary on the foregoing confessions.

"We should try to picture to ourselves what the actual intellectual life must have been, of the author of such a series of romances. We should ask ourselves whether, filling and discharging, so soberly and gracefully as he did, the common functions of social man, it was not, nevertheless, impossible, but that he must have passed most of his life in other worlds than ours and we ought hardly to think it a grievous circumstance, that their bright visions should have left a dazzle sometimes on the eyes which he so gently re-opened upon our prosaic realities. He had, on the whole, a command over the powers of his mind; I mean that he could control and direct his thoughts and reflections with a readiness, firmness, and

easy security of sway, beyond what I find it possible to trace in any other artist's recorded character and history; but he could not habitually fling them into the region of dreams throughout a long series of years, and yet be expected to find a corresponding satisfaction in bending them to the less agreeable considerations which the circumstances of any human being's practical lot in this world must present in abundance. The training to which he accustomed himself, could not leave him as he was when he began. He must pay the penalty, as well as reap the glory of this life-long abstraction of reverie, this self-abandonment of fairy

land."

Such was the person and such the wonderful combination of rare and eminent intellectual qualities which enabled him, with comparative ease and inconceivable rapidity, to gratify and instruct the public mind with a series of romantic fictions and ideal creations, such as no single mind, as far as we know, had ever poured out before. Unlike the productions of other authors, which have to be planned with care, and elaborated with vigilant and delicate attention to every part of the structure, Scott's were emphatically like the magical creations of the enchanter, which rise up at once without any labour of foundation, and unite and harmonise without any artful preparation of incident, by the all-pervading and vivifying force of genius. He says that he has not the slightest idea how such a story is to be wound up to a catastrophe ;* he never could lay down a plan-or, laying it down, never could adhere to it. Personages were rendered important and insignificant, not according to the original agency of the piece, but according to the success with which he could bring them out. His object was to make his writing diverting and interesting, and leave the rest to its fate. When his mind was strained to acquire ideas, the vivacity of the original conception vanished, the poetic landscape became cold and spiritless, and the sun that was to animate and gild and harmonize the beautiful creation, had altogether disappeared. Thus, then, not only by the effect produced upon us by his works, but by the manner in which those works that interest us, were created, do we acknowledge the hand of the master,-the creator,

*See Diary, vol. vi. 232, 357. "A note to the end of a chapter, knowing no more than the Man in the Moon what comes next."—P. 261.

-the man of original genius, who stands altogether removed, not only in degree, but in quality and order, from all his imitators, whose flimsy productions might indeed be described in the words of a French critic, "C'est un ouvrage composée aujourd'hui avec l'erudition d'hier." *

We have only one reflection more to make before we conclude, and that has taken its rise from an observation more than once repeated in the Life of Scott, alluding to his works, but probably confined to his romances and novels,-"You know I don't care a curse about what I write, or what becomes of it;" and he in other places declares his dislike of looking into his own works of fiction. "How is this?" doubtless, many of his admiring readers will exclaim ;-is this, then, the severe tax laid on the sons of genius, that they shall even loathe and abhor what is the desire of all other eyes?—is there no reward after such mental toil in contemplating the fabric of wisdom and learning successfully raised by this powerful will?-or do they alone know the mockery and emptiness of the creations outwardly so glittering, and which look so fair to all beside ?-do their keen eyes pierce through the semblance of life and animation that adorns the lovely" region o' the element," and gives it an appearance of humanity; and can they at once recognise the poor, common materials from which it is deceitfully made; and behold, where others see the roseate smile of angelic beauty, and the warm voluptuous breathings of celestial love, nothing but a few grains of common earth-a handful of vile dust and ashes, the cheap unworthy instrument of the enchanter's skill ?—or rather is not the very facility with which works of fiction are created, the cause of the transient pleasure they afford? All will acknowledge a difference between such works as the novel and romance of modern days, and poems of high heroic devices-such as the epics of Homer and Milton; though both contain a history, both are built upon a progress of events and the conflict of the passions, and both are so constructed as to affect the feelings, and awaken the curiosity of the mind. But the poem attains its end by different means. It does not depend, as the novel or romance, on the rapidity of its movements, on the surprising nature of its changes,—on the breathless surprise with which we are hurried onwards from action to action, and event to event, till the wheel of our glowing imagination catches fire, and even the coursers of ætherial race are panting and breathless with our speed. He who has skill to construct a probable and well arranged fictitious narrative, and genius enough to invest it with the realities of life, literally commands the empire of another world which he has created, and we become for a time its inhabitants, and obey him. But then this creation, so wonderfully and suddenly formed, cannot long endure; the seeds of rapid decay are within it; every time we gaze, the colours that enchanted us become more faint and dim. When curiosity is satiated, the feeling of novelty passed, the incidents known, and coming events are no longer in obscurity, then the illusion rapidly disappears, and the power of the enchanter with it altogether ceases. It is not so with the Poem; its power over our passions is at first far inferior to that of its rival, its characters less bold and prominent and full,- its

*Chamfort, Cuv. i. 302. See Diary, vol. vi. p. 386. "They have to read old books and consult antiquarian collections to get their knowledge. I write, because I have long since read such works, and possess, thanks to a strong memory, the information which they have to seek for," &c.