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Rokeby. The battle scene in Marmion has been called the most Homeric passage in modern literature, and his description of "The Battle of Beal an Duine," in The Lady of the Lake is an exquisite piece of narration from the gleam of the spears in the thicket to the death of Roderick Dhu at its close. In the deepest sense Scott is one with the spirit of his time in his grasp of fact, in that looking steadily at the object, which Wordsworth had fought for in poetry, and which Carlyle has advocated in his philosophy. He is allied, too, to that broad sympathy for man which lay closest to the heart of the age's literary expression. Wordsworth's part is to inspire an interest in the lives of men and women about us; Scott's, to enlarge the bounds of our sympathy beyond the present and to people the silent centuries. Shelley's inspiration is hope for the future; Scott's is reverence for the past.

Scott wrote twenty-three novels in fourteen years. He wrote them during the faithful discharge of the duties of his profession, among the presAs a novelist. sure of business anxieties, and in spite of all, found time for the exercise of a most charming and open-hearted hospitality to all who sought his friendship. He may be said to have created the historical novel. Fielding and others had excelled in the portrayal of daily life and manners, and, as we have already seen, there were writers who had attempted in fiction the romantic and the marvelous, but only Shakespeare himself had so reanimated historical characters with the spirit of life and action that they seem to be once more in living presence among us.

Scott stands alone in that branch of literary work. Others have made, it may be, one great success in the novel of history; such as Thackeray in Henry Esmond, George Eliot in Romola, and Robert Louis Stevenson in The Master of Ballantrae; but Scott has brought alike the times of the Crusaders and of the Stuarts before us; he has peopled the land of Palestine and the hills of Scotland, the forests of England and the borders of the Rhine, for our edification and delight. Paladin and peasant, earl and yeoman, kings and their jesters, bluff men-at-arms and gentle bower maidens, all spring into life again at the touch of the "Great Enchanter." How bare would be our mental pictures of Queen Elizabeth were we deprived of the scenes in Kenilworth in which she stands before us alive forever in her wrath, as Leicester's injured queen, or yielding to those more womanly touches of feeling as she listens to the sympathy of her women or of her "Cousin Hunsdon." The wonderful charm which the unfortunate Queen of Scots had for all who approached her would be harder to realize were it not that, as we read The Abbot, we too succumb for a while to its power, and feel that, with Roland Graeme, we could die for her, right or wrong. There is no doubt that Scott is often historically inaccurate. He takes liberties, as did his great master Shakespeare, with place and with facts; but he has the power to humanize for us the people about whom he writes; he puts a spirit and a soul into the dry facts of history, and gives them by his imagination the very breath of life. History alone hardly helps us to realize the burning

zeal felt by the Crusaders for the recovery of the Holy Sepulcher, or the general detestation of the Jew in England, as elsewhere on the Continent. We must go to The Talisman and Ivanhoe to learn what it was to journey with Kenneth and Saladin over the desert; to feast as did the Black Knight with Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest, and to feel our hearts thrill with the outlaws as we do homage to Richard of the Lion Heart. But it is not only in the field of history that the "magic wand" has power. In the novel of simple daily life, in a time nearer to Scott's own day, he is perhaps even happier in his vivid pictures. Nowhere has he more touchingly portrayed the life of Scotland's people than in The Heart of Midlothian, that story so dear to Scottish men and women. Here Scott touches both extremes; the Queen and the Duke of Argyle, and the lowly peasant maiden, strong in her cause and in her truth ; and what a picture is their meeting!

When we review, therefore, the enormous range and the high average excellence of Scott's work in fiction, and remember the ease and rapidity with which it was produced, we feel that he exhibits a creative force rare even among the great geniuses of the literature.

Scott's sense of humor was keen, and his own enjoyment of it cannot be doubted. Many scenes in Redgauntlet, The Antiquary, or Old Mortality, are full of genuine fun; and the character of Caleb Balderstone, in The Bride of Lammermoor, is unsurpassed of its kind.

Scott works in the primary colors. He is not in

Summary.

tense, he does not question deeply, or analyze motives. He does not excel in that morbid anattomy of emotion which has become the fashion with many novelists of this present age of so-called superior culture and advanced ideas. He thinks that life is good, and that there is wholesome enjoyment to be gained from action. He admires honor and courtesy and bravery among men, and beauty and gentleness and modesty among women. The greatness and the goodness of Scott must ever appeal to us, the charm and glow of his verse delight us. The Waverley Novels are the splendid witness of the breadth, sympathy, and purity of one of the great creative intellects of our literature, worthy, indeed, of a place among the immortals, side by side with Chaucer and nearest to the feet of Shakespeare himself.

STUDY LIST

SIR WALTER SCOTT

[The reader of Scott requires neither lists of recommended works nor helps to study; any right-minded person does not need encouragement, he will simply go on and enjoy. It is almost equally unnecessary to obtrude any list for school purposes; the chief difficulty being the great wealth from which to select. A few poems are, however, given as among the most appropriate; the novels will probably be relegated, at any rate, to outside reading.]

1. The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, The Lady of the Lake.

2. SHORTER POEMS. Cadyow Castle," given with notes in Hales' Longer English Poems. The songs may be picked out from the poems and taken as a separate study, or see The Lyrics

and Ballads of Sir Walter Scott, edited by Andrew Lang. [The editor's Introduction is most spirited and delightful.] 3. BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM. Lockhart's Life of Scott, 3 vols., and Scott's Journal, are the best authorities; the short lives of Scott are unsatisfactory. Carlyle's Essay on Scott may be read as much for the light it throws on Carlyle's limitations as for its view of Scott, which in places is open to serious criticism. See also Oliphant's Literary History of England, and Shairp's Aspects of Poetry, pp. 133, 194.

acter.

THOMAS DE QUINCEY.-1785-1859

Thomas De Quincey impresses us as some being from another planet, who never entirely domesticated himself on our earth. We picture him Appearance and char- as an alien creature, gliding timorously and obscurely among the mass of ordinary men, remote himself from their lives and ambitions, yet observing them with the curiosity of a stranger and retiring to meditate upon the meaning of their acts and ways. Even his appearance had something eccentric and elfish. He is described by those who knew him as frail, withered, and diminutive (he was scarcely more than five feet high), his garments often strangely assorted, his face lined with innumerable wrinkles, gathered" thickly around the curiously expressive and subtle lips.' But the forehead was lofty, the eyes deep-set and gentle; for this fragile little body was the house of an acute and

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*For descriptions of De Quincey, see the account of "Papaverius" in The Book Hunter, by J. H. Burton; Personal Recol lections of De Quincey, by J. R. Findlay, and Masson's De Quincey in English Men of Letters Series.

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