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imaginary realm which was created by Scott. My own first peep of it I well remember, obtained by means of a review which I got hold of when at an age at which the nature and uses of quarterly criticism were for me as yet very dim. The delight with which I devoured the extracts in small print was only equalled by the disgust with which I floundered amongst the comments in a larger type, lamentable fits of insanity, as I thought them, befalling in some mysterious manner my matchless story-teller. It was not till several years afterwards that the book itself fell into my hands, and the well-remembered names of Isaac of York, Rebecca, and Rowena, told me that I had found an old friend in "Ivanhoe." I venture to mention this trivial personal incident in hopes that it may recall to many of you whom I have the honour to address, various green spots, diverse and yet similar, of auld lang syne connected with Scott and his writings. The effect which the first Waverley novel may produce on a fresh and imaginative mind, now when Scott has taught his craft to so many cunning hands, can give but a very faint idea of the success of "Waverley." "The small anonymous sort of a novel," as Scott called it in sending it to Mr Morris by the mail of the 9th July 1814, very speedily took the world by storm. Five years later, on the publication of the eighth of the series, a reviewer so discriminating and so little given to reckless praise announced that no such prodigy had been known since Shakespeare wrote his thirty-eight plays in the brief space of his early manhood. This opinion was recorded upon the appearance of "Kenilworth," "Nigel," "Durward," and various other favourites, scarce less successful than their predecessors. Detailed criticism would be out of place here, where we are met to agree that as Stratford did for Shakespeare, so Edinburgh must do for Scott. The long procession of ideal figures, headed by Waverley and the Baron of Bradwardine, and closed by Richard Middlemas and the French Begum, frowns stern and solemn, or gay and sportive, correctly or grotesque, of every age and sex, of many desires, periods, and modes of mind, which proceeded from the brain of Scott, have furnished a goodly quota of their number to the world's gallery, where the people of the poet's dream stand side by side with the personages of history, and where it often occurs to us, who are the transitory visitors to the show, to exclaim with the Spanish monk before the canvas of Titian:

"These are the real men,

speare alone excepted. To the history of this little corner of Northern Europe, this single Scotsman, bending his big brow over his desk, has given a wide and splendid celebrity, far beyond the reach, at least far beyond the attainment of the strong hands and stout hearts and busy brains of the whole perfervid race of other days at home and abroad.

His reading of our national story is probably the version which will long be accepted by the world. In one point, indeed, it was fiercely challenged. The sufferings and services of the Covenanters had made them popular idols, and some good men were startled at being shown that their idols had a comic side, and on being reminded that in respect and sympathy for freedom of thought the black Prelatist and the trueblue Presbyterian were in the relative condition of the pot and the kettle in the fable. But I question if any of the controversialists who entered the field against Scott ever recognised more fully than he did that the spirit which leads men to lay down lives for what they hold to be truth is the very breath of national life; if any Whig writer has ever painted a more touching picture of the bitter men of Bothwellhaugh than the novelist who delighted to wear the white cockade of the cavalier. In fact, the good corn of the history of the Kirk seems to owe quite as much to the winnowing it received from Scott as to the painful garnerings of honest Wodrow, in whose husbandry flail and fanner were unknown. If the world beyond the Tweed is likely for long to read Scottish history with the eyes of Scott, it is still more certain to adopt his estimate of the character of our people. Coleridge used to "Whenever I have occasion to speak of a Scotch rascal, I always lay the emphasis on Scotch." This principle Scott applied in a somewhat larger spirit. His Scotch characters, Highland and Lowland, tinted with all the delicate shades of local and social colour, gentle and simple, good and bad, are all emphatically Scotch. It is not for a Scotsman to say whether our great painter has or has not been

say:

"To all our virtues very kind,

To all our faults a little blind;"

but we certainly ought to be well content with the national portraiture, and do each what in us lies to perpetuate its nobler features. The work that Burns yearned after from the depths of his passionate heart, Scott has actually accomplished. From the story of our feuds and factions, from the dust and blood of the past, his genius and his patriotism have culled all that was pure and lovely and of good report, and have woven it into an immortal chaplet for the brow of Cale

And we the painted shadows on the wall." Who of us, indeed, do not feel Don Quixote and his squire, Hamlet and Falstaff, to be our fel-donia. He has fanned the fire of Scottish nalow-creatures quite as truly as Philip III. or the minister Lerma, or Devereux Cecil or Queen Bess herself? Scott has filled more places in the historical Valhalla than any other writer, Shake

tionality without detriment, nay, with positive advantage to that higher and nobler nationality which rallies around the flag whereon the white cross fits so compactly into the red. Wherever

the British flag flies it will find no better or truer defenders there than those Scotsmen who best know and love their Scott.

and made everything come intuitively and almost mechanically." Captain Basil Hall was at first much exercised by the phenomena, but as he himself kept a very copious journal, and discovered that in one of his visits to Abbotsford he had written in one day about as much as Scott considered a fair day's task, he considered that his wonder was misapplied. "No such great matter after all," concluded the gallant captain; "it is mere industry and a little invention, and that we all know costs Scott nothing.' In fact, amongst his intimate friends the marvellous facility and fecundity of the man ceased to excite any surprise. Even the faithful and affectionate Laidlaw, his amanuensis in times of sickness, used to forget himself and everything else in the interest of the tale he was writing down. If the dictation flagged, he would say, "Come, sir, get on; get on;" and would receive the characteristic reply, "Hout! Willie, you forget I have to invent the story!" It is natural at first sight to regret all this headlong

Amidst moral and intellectual benefits, I must not forget the important contributions of Scott to the material prosperity of his native land. The dead poet whom we celebrate is as distinctly an employer of labour as any of those captains of industry whose looms whirl by the Tweed, or whose furnaces flame along the Clyde. Here, there, everywhere, pilgrims are flocking to the shrines which he has built for himself and his country; and trades and occupations of all kinds flourish by the brain which lies in Dryburgh, as they formerly flourished by the brain of St Thomas. Mrs Dodds of the Cleikum, Neal Blane of the Howff, and others, his pleasant publicans, are only a few of those whom Scott has established in a roaring business. When land is to be sold in any district of the Scott countries, his scenes and his characters therewith connected, and even his passing allusions, are carefully chronicled amongst other attrac-haste, and to wish that four or five of the novels tions in the advertisement, and duly inventoried had been compressed into a perfect work of amongst the title-deeds of the estate. It would art, into a "gem of purest ray serene," altobe hard to say how many years' purchase Scott gether worthy of the mind whence it came. has added to the value of Branksome, or of the No doubt the rule of Goldsmith's connoisseur Eildon pastures. But there is no doubt that is generally a sound one, that the picture would the touch of his pen does in many places form have been better had the painter taken more an important element of that unearned incre- pains; and if we can conceive such a thing as a ment of value-that, I believe, is the scientific pedagogue seated with a row of possible Walter term-which Mr Stuart Mill and friends propose Scotts before him, it would be highly proper shortly to transfer from the lords of the soil to that he should impress the maxim on their the Lords of the Treasury. Some of Scott's young minds. But as the genius of Scott was truest admirers have been disposed to regret in so many points exceptional, it is possible that there is no single piece of his that gives that it may have worked under special laws of any adequate idea of his greatness. The pangs its own, and that something of the charm of his of parturition were indeed unknown to that works may belong to their rapid and spontaneous most prolific of brains. The mighty machinery flow, like the rush of a river or melody from the of his mind worked with the least possible throats of birds friction. "Waverley" is generally esteemed the most carefully-finished of his tales, yet we know, on his own authority, the two last volumes were written between the 4th of June and the 1st of July. The noble lord who, in a party attack on the most illustrious of his countrymen, told the House of Commons that one of the Clerks of Session wrote more books than any other person had leisure to read, would probably have accomplished an unusual feat if he had read in one day the forty pages octavo which Scott sometimes wrote in the same period of time. We find that the two sermons which Scott wrote for a clerical friend were promised over-night and placed in his hand next morning. The absence of apparent effort in the exercise of even his highest powers struck all strangers who had an opportunity of observing his talents. Two acute and by no means superstitious observers solved the mystery by ascribing to him something of supernatural power. "There was," says Hazlitt," a degree of capacity in that huge double forehead which superseded all effort

"That carol their secret pleasures to the spring."

The influence of Scott upon literature, both at home and abroad, was immense. Whatever he did, whatever attire he chose to assume, at once became the fashion. The apparent ease of his verse, the fatal facility of the octosyllabic measure, procured him a large poetical following, in which there were, no doubt, many figures strange to see, like the alderman, in whose person Holywood saw

"Royal Albyn's tartans as a belt

Gird the gross sirloin of a city Celt." But his school can likewise boast of several disciples of rare genius. His presence may be felt in some of the earlier tales of Byron; from his shrine comes some of the fire that burns in "Ury" and the "Armada," and the "Roman Lays" of Macaulay, and in the "Cavalier Ballads" of our own still lamented Aytoun. Of the historical romance in prose he may be called the father; and never had literary sire a more goodly offering to the second generation—

"By many names men call them,

In many lands they dwell."

In France, Hugo de Vigny, the elder Dumas; in Spain, Fernan Caballero; in Italy, Manzoni and D'Azeglio; in Germany, Zschokke and Alexis; in America, Cooper; at home, Gratton, Leigh Hunt, and Thackeray, are only a few of the writers well known to fame, who have essayed to bend the bow of Scott. Of living English writers I will not speak. Many names will at once occur to you all, and I am sure that the most famous of the band would be the foremost in rendering homage to their great master. If the words that Scott wrote to Mr Cadell in 1830 were somewhat overcharged then, they are more near the truth in 1871. "The fact is," he wrote, "I have taught a hundred gentlemen to write nearly, if not altogether, as well as my

self." In truth, Scott's art, using the word in the larger sense, was like that of Falstaff, who was witty himself and the cause of wit in other men. Even in the fields less peculiarly his own than fiction, his influence was very great. His writings stimulated historical research in a hundred directions; and he was the founder of the Bannatyne Club, parent model of many similar societies prolific of goodly quartos. In his romances the delighted reader had found himself brought face to face with personages whom he had before seen only as in a glass darkly. Historians began to take a leaf out of the great novelist's book, to use a style more dramatic and pictorial, to develop individual character, and bestow unwonted pains on accessories of time and place. Is it too much to say that we probably owe to the example of Scott some of the most graceful digressions of Hallam; something of the splendid scene-painting of Macaulay; something of the electric light flashed over many famous men and into many dark places from the pen of Carlyle? Is it unreasonable to suppose that his great genius has exercised an influence, not the less real because untraced, unseen, unsuspected, like the influence of the Gulf Stream diffusing itself through our western sounds and sea-coasts in softer verdure and richer foliage? Of all the legacies which Scott has bequeathed to mankind, I believe none are more precious than his own character and life. Happy in many things, unhappy in a few, he was singularly happy in a biographer. Amongst our chosen book companions, amongst the friends that can never alter nor forsake, Lockhart's "Life of Scott" deserves to hold a place of chief honour and ready access. I doubt whether the world has ever been told so much about any one man by any single biographer-whether the life of a great man has ever fallen into the hands of a writer with equal opportunity of knowing the whole truth, and equal faculty for telling; and whether the whole "Biographie Universelle " can furnish a single other name that would show so fair if the whole life which belonged to it

were unrolled like that of Scott, year by year, almost day by day, before the gaze of his fellowmen. The admiration with which Scott was regarded during the larger portion of his life was great, but the love and affection which he inspired during his whole life was still greater. Warmly and widely loved before he was famous, he in later days attracted the regard of various remarkable persons to whom his fame was an unknown quantity. In Paris, in 1815, amongst all the celebrities of Europe, he seemed especially to fascinate Buscher and Platoff the Cossack, the latter of whom, cantering down the Rue de la Paix, would jump off his horse to kiss him. It is highly improbable that either the Prussian field-marshal or the Hetman of the Cossacks of the Don knew much about either "Marmion" or "Waverley," or that they were influenced by anything deeper than the frank kindly aspect of the stalwart ex-volunteer, with "that beautiful smile of heart and feeling, geniality, courage, and tenderness," which Haydn assures us "neither painter nor sculptor has ever touched." How variegated with all the hues of character is the best of his friends! Jeffrey, Rogers, Moore, Byron, Crabbe, Hazlitt, Wordsworth, Southey, Haydn, George IV., are only a sample of those who, differing from one another on many things, agreed to love and honour Scott. The reverence in which he was held from their first acquaintance by Lockhart is of itself no small proof of his titles to be revered and honoured. With the intellectual life of his time, Scott's relations were as genial as those which bound him to its social life. His career had no incident to the "Quarrels of Authors." His high, frequently too high, appreciation of the writings of his contemporaries was one of the most noticeable of his many pleasant traits of character. Washington Irving, after passing a few days at Abbotsford in 1817, was convinced that his host was the author of the Waverley Novels, because they were the only important works of the day he had never quoted. How characteristic is Scott's reminiscence of Burns, and his pride in having, as a boy, helped the poet to the authorship of some lines by Langhorne, and having received a grateful look from him in return. From this, which was probably his first meeting with any distinguished man of letters, to that which was probably one of the last, at Naples, when being under the delusion that his debts were all paid, he offered pecuniary aid to Mr William Gall, the record of his relations with his brethren of the pen is a record of brotherly kindness, encouragement, furtherance, earnest sympathy in success or in disappointment, of gifts of money when he had it, of hours of time when time was to him in a special manner money.

Much has been written and said about Scott's desire to found a family upon the estate which his industry had acquired. It has been urged

public duty found him no niggard of his time and toil. His writings show that while his own opinions were firmly held, he was ever mindful of how much may always be said on the other side. Tories may well be proud that the most illustrious author of his day was a Tory. Not a few Radicals I believe there are who will think more kindly of Toryism for his sake, just as I am sure that any repugnance to the Radical faith must have been much softened by any one who had enjoyed the benignant converse of another great man lately taken from us--George Grote.*

that being the Ariosto of the North, the Cer-slave to party allegiance, and that in the midst vantes of his native land, it was pitiable that he of his own anxieties and disasters the call of should have cared to be Scott of Abbotsford—a | kind of distinction frequently achieved and enjoyed by his Andrew Fairservices and Nicol Jarvies. This view of the case seems to leave out of sight the important fact that the Scott was as strong within him as the Ariosto or Cervantes, and that if he had been devoid of one of the strongest tendencies of the race from which he was sprung, he would not have been the Walter Scott we have met here to celebrate. In the higher part of his character he was a poet, in the everyday concerns of life he was a shrewd practical man of the world. Hence, having acquired wealth by an unusual path, he invested that wealth very much as any one of his friends might have done who had acquired it by the practice of law or the weaving of wool. In his case land had a peculiar attraction, for he had loved the country from his cradle, and by its possession he was enabled to realise, or to try to realise, the half-feudal, half-patriarchal life of his day-dreams. The existence of a certain number of families, with more or less of permanence in the possession of the soil, and enjoying more or less of social importance, was, according to his political theories, essential to the welfare of an ancient kingdom. There was nothing inconsistent or unworthy that a man holding this theory should desire that amongst those families his descendants should be found. The popular and prevailing theory is, of course, of an opposite kind. But for some cause or other, which it is not for me to explain, when the holders of this theory buy land, it seems to lose its grasp of their vigorous and enterprising minds. They, too, build and plant on a scale altogether feudal; and their walls and windows blaze with heraldry, just as if romantic poetry and old-fashioned Toryism had been their profession and their creed.

Even of Scott's politics, so characteristic of the man, I will venture to say a word. They were the opinions naturally growing up with the man who had been unable to feel any enthusiasm for French liberalism in 1789, and had rejoiced in the fall of the French Napoleon in 1815 before a European coalition mainly formed and set in motion by the Tory ministry of England. Such as they were, the views of the young advocate defending a housebreaker at Jedburgh were those of the favourite at Carlton House, which is more than could be said for some of the few folks he met there. On the whole, I believe few of us will be disposed to regret that he did not go over to the winning side in 1831-a year of rapid change and sudden conversion. He had chosen his party, and adhered to it strictly; but there was nothing in his tenets nor in his attitude that was ignoble, or narrow, or incongruous. His once famous "Malagrowther's Letters" show that he was no

Those who are most disposed to discover evidence of weakness in this or that portion of Scott's conduct, will admit such weaknesses only brought into nobler prominence the indomitable fortitude with which he confronted the misfortunes of his later years. One weakness he unquestionably had-that of reluctance to look disagreeable facts in the face. But for this his financial disasters would probably never have overtaken him. He could, however, as few men could, set his face as a flint against the inevitable in declining years and health, and take up arms against a sea of troubles with all the energy of youth. There is nothing more tragic in the story of literature than his memorable struggle -from the entry in his diary of 24th January 1826-"I will dig in the mine of my imagination to find diamonds, or what may sell for such, to make good my engagements"--to the closing scene, when six years of such incessant digging had done their work on the noble intellect, and when the rocks of Panlippe and the companion lake beyond could elicit no other words from the weary pilgrim but

"It's up the craggy mountain
And down the mossy glen,
We canna gang a milking
For Charlie and his men."

For myself I can never take down, for instruction or amusement, a volume of Scott's writings, published in or after 1826, without thinking of the circumstances in which they were composed, and remembering that they, like the water from the well of Bethlehem, which David refused to drink, represent the heart's blood of a brave man's life. May the day never come in Scotland when we shall forget that noble and beautiful life, with its triumphs and its joys, and its sorrows, and its lessons!

Such are the thoughts, inadequate as I confess them to be, which the career of Scott has suggested to my mind. You have met to-night to do him a rare and exceptional honour; yet the century which closes with the hundredth anniversary of his birth has been a century full of

* Grote died June 18, 1871.

and a host of writers, philosophers, and inventors inscribed their names in the book of fame. Of all these statesmen, soldiers, and their kings, two only have been thought worthy of our national recognition, both poets, both Scots

great capacities, great achievements, and colos-mentary fame; Wellington lived and conquered; sal and unparalleled events. Within the lifetime of Scott, died Clive and Hastings, the founders of our Indian empire; Chatham expired in the senate, and Nelson on the quarterdeck; Fox, Burke, the younger Pitt, Canning, and many more, died in the fulness of parlia-men-Burns and Scott.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

[1772-1834.]

BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY.*

[SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, the youngest of a numerous family, was born at Ottery St Mary, in Devonshire, on the 21st October 1772. He received his early education at Christ's Hospital, where Charles Lamb was one of his schoolfellows. His early love of poetry was nursed and inspired by a perusal of the sonnets of W. L. Bowles. When nineteen years of age, on obtaining his presentation from Christ's Hospital, he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, gaining in classics a gold medal for a Greek ode. About 1794 his acquaintance began with Southey; Coleridge and Southey were afterwards married on the same day to two sisters, and settled at Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire, where they also met Wordsworth. An account of their manner of life there, by Hazlitt, will be found on page 104. Some of Coleridge's finest poems were written there, such as the "Ancient Mariner," the "Ode on the Departing Year," and the first part of "Christabel." Coleridge visited Germany through the liberality of the Messrs Wedgwood, the Staffordshire potters, and on returning in 1800 went to reside with Southey at Keswick; Wordsworth then staying at Grasmere. In 1804 he visited Malta. In the latter part of his life he resided with his friend and medical adviser, Mr Gillman, at Highgate, delighting a large circle by his splendid conversational powers. Here he died on the 20th of July 1834, in the sixty-second year of his age. The plan of the periodical publication, the Friend, occurred to Coleridge while staying at Keswick, the first number of which appeared on the 8th of June 1809, and the last on the 15th of March 1810. His chief works, besides his poems, mere fragments of the possibilities that were in him, were "Biographia Literaria," "Lay Sermons," "Aids to Reflection," etc.]

Let me say in

certainly in the summer season, and certainly in
the year 1807, that I first saw this illustrious
man, the largest and most spacious intellect, the
subtlest and the most comprehensive, in my
judgment, that has yet existed amongst men.
My knowledge of him as a man of most original
genius began about the year 1799. A little be-
fore that time Mr Wordsworth had published
the first edition (in a single volume) of the
"Lyrical Ballads," at the end or the beginning
of which was placed Mr Coleridge's poem of
the "Ancient Mariner," as the contribution of
an anonymous friend. It would be directing
the reader's attention too much to myself, if I
were to linger upon this, the greatest event in
the unfolding of my own mind.
one word, that, at a period when neither the one
nor the other writer was valued by the public-
both having a long warfare to accomplish of con-
tumely and ridicule before they could rise into
their present estimation-I found in these poems
"the ray of a new morning," and an absolute
revelation of untrodden worlds, teeming with
power and beauty, as yet unsuspected amongst
men. I may here mention that, precisely at the
same time, Professor Wilson, about the same
age as myself, received the same startling and
profound impressions from the same volume.
With feelings of reverential interest, so early
and so deep, pointing towards two contempor-
aries, it may be supposed that I inquired eagerly
after their names. But these inquiries were self-
baffled, the same deep feelings which prompted
my curiosity causing me to recoil from all casual
opportunities of pushing the inquiry, as too
generally lying amongst those who gave no sign
of participating in my feelings; and, extravagant
as it may seem, I revolted with as much hatred
from coupling my question with any occasion of
insult to the persons whom it respected, as a

It was, I think, in the month of August, but primitive Christian from throwing frankincense

upon the altars of Cæsar, or a lover from giving

• Reprinted from his notice of the poet contributed up the name of his beloved to the coarse licence to Tail's Magazine in 1834. of a Bacchanalian party. It is laughable to

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