We have said that Mr. Lockhart has performed an arduous and a melancholy task with adequate ability, and in a becoming spirit. We shall make as few exceptions as we can, and those in the mildest spirit.

We think that some forced introductions of political commonplace might have been spared. Why not leave to us all, from the radical to the conservative, the common ground of Scott's beloved memory? Equally we prized him living and mourn him dead. Allan Cunningham records a touching anecdote of several working men late at night gathered anxiously in the street in London in which Scott lodged before his final return to Abbotsford, "as if there was but one death-bed in London!" Ten to one but these humble devotees advocated the Reform Bill, and held the general politics of their class. Why, when they brood over this biographywhy should their sympathy and grief be ungraciously turned back upon themselves by diatribes on the wickedness of their tenets, and the frenzy of their aspirations? A whig gave to Scott one of the earliest, and by far the most valuable, of his official sources of income; a whig offered to Scott the last succour his reverse might need. Why mingle with acknowledgments of the benefit, gratuitous and intolerant denunciation of the benefactors?

We think without entering into the controversial question of the merits of the Ballantynes, that, perhaps unconsciously to himself, an unjust and harsh judgment of these brothers who shared the perils, though they reaped not the honours of Scott, undeniably colours Mr. Lockhart's statements, and is not borne out even by the ex-parte facts he adduces. And this judgment seems the more severe, since, however, "as men of affairs," they may have injured Scott, Mr. Lockhart confesses that "they loved and revered him, and would have shed their heart's blood in his service.'* But more than all, we lament and deprecate the disparaging and ungenerous parallels insinuated at times between the excellencies of Scott, and what Mr. Lockhart is pleased to call

* See the published controversy between the Ballyntynes and Mr. Lockhart, arising from these passages in the Memoirs.-AM. ED.

"the malignity of Byron." Scott needed no rivals to be sacrificed on his tomb; and if the genius that has delighted a world and adorned a nation, has some right to claim the indulgence and implore the peace which are given in the grave to the errors of meaner men, Byron has at least an equal right with Scott in the heirlooms he has left to posterity, and a far greater right than Scott in those extenuations of circumstance and position which God and man take into account when they balance our merits against our misdeeds. Scott, carefully and sedulously trained into decorous habits, religious principles, and prudent consideration of worldly seemings-from his cradle to his manhood: Byron, fatherless, and almost worse than motherless, thrown, while yet a boy, into the world, without a guide but the light of untutored intellect, clouded by uncorrected passions: Scott, confined into worldly rules and sober ceremonials, by the exercise of a stern profession: Byron, without an aim or an object, "halting, rudderless, in the wide sea of wax:" Scott, with an easy income, propor tioned to his middling station, gradually widening as his wants expanded: Byron, in youth the pauper peer, galled by all the embarrassments with which a haughty spirit can be stung, and which a generous heart could not fail to create: Scott-united by prudent and wellassorted ties to a faithful and affectionate partner, who jarred not against whatever were the inequalities of his character: Byron-shipwrecked in hearth and home by the very union which, under happier stars, might have corrected his infirmities, and given solidity to his wild and inconsistent virtues: Scott-undertaking his great enterprizes, from the midst of tranquil and happy scenes; in the sober discretion of ripened years: Byron-rushing into the stormiest field of letters, in the very heat of boyish passions; and acquiring too soon a character, which made at once his anguish and his glory :-Scott -if subject to occasional and severe illness, still of the most robust constitution, and the most hardy nerves: Byron-the prey to maladies, which evinced from his youth a general derangement of some of the most important organs of the human frame-not occasional, but

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constant-interfering with the most ordinary comforts of life, and making the body itself the tormentor of the mind: the career of Scott, all serenity and gladness— without foes-without obstacles-without envy-without calumny: Byron-ere the beard was well dark upon his chin-persecuted-maligned-shunned-and exiled. His private sorrows, usually sacred to the meanest, but which unhappily the melodious cries of his own deep anguish gave some right to the crowd to canvass, made the matter of a thousand public and most malignant accusations! Can we institute a parallel between their situations and temptations? if not, all parallel between their errors is uncharitable and unfair. What the world might have rendered Scott, had the world stung and galled, and tortured him as it did Byron, one instance may suffice to shadow forth. The noblest sage in the life of Sir Walter is his vigorous exertion to discharge the debts he had so unhappily incurred: and here, the generosity and concessions of his creditors awoke to its fullest magnanimity his own generous and upright spirit. But once when half threatened on this point, with that "harshness of measure," on all points dealt out to Byron, his own generosity at once recedes. "So I told Gibson; (he writes in his own Journal,) I had my mind made up as far back as the 24th of January, not to suffer myself to be harder pressed than the law would press me: if they take the sword of the law, I must lay hold of the shield. If they are determined to consider me as an irretrievable bankrupt, they have no title to object to my settling upon the usual terms which the statute requires. I had like to have been too hasty in this matter. I must have a clear understanding that I am to be benefited or indulged some way, if I bring in two such funds as these works in progress, worth certainly from 10,000 to 15,000l."* Such language is not unreasonable, but had this hard measure been dealt out to Scott, and had he, (as he declares) settled on the usual terms the statute requires, what would have become of that noble example, which, when met by more

generous conduct, he has set to the world? We say this not in disparagement to Scott, but in vindication of the memory, equally sacred, of a genius of yet higher flight, if of less wide a range, whom the house of darkness and of death has not yet sheltered from the insult of the Pharisees, and the calumny of the Scribes.

In the pages of this biography, making all allowance for the natural and becoming partiality of the writer, Scott's character stands out bright and lucid with the qualities of a high, loyal, gentle, and generous nature. Blemishes he may have had undoubtedly, but they are as few perhaps as ever spotted the escutcheon of mortal fame. His temper seems to have been irritable and hasty, his resentments peculiarly strong; but his dispositions were fine, and his passions ordinarily under firm control. Perhaps from the manly habit of suppressing all emotion, perhaps from a tendency to look to the brightest side of things, and that abstraction from real life which a love of the ideal engenders, it may be doubtful, whether, at least in later life, his feelings and sympathies had the depth and acuteness that characterize those of literary men in general. In his Journal, it certainly strikes us as singular to perceive how in the very crisis of that calamity which is the greatest human nature can undergo-the severance of the bond with the partner of his whole life;-it strikes us as singular, that at this very time, he could so thoroughly master his mind as to give his wonted attention both to literature and society. Ex. gr.

"Sir Adam and the colonel dined here, so I spent the evening as pleasantly as I well could, considering I am so soon to go like a stranger to the town of which I have been so long a citizen, and leave my wife lingering without prospect of recovery under the charge of two poor girls." But we must beware how we attempt lightly to judge the mysteries of such a mind. Even, perhaps, in the confessional of its own thoughts it refused to pour forth the emotions that it had learned to regard as infirmities. Every one will remember that true and beautiful passage in the "Simple Story," where the proud and injured husband reads in the newspaper the death of the wife

who had wronged him; and though he uttered no sound, though it was but for some minutes that he laid down the paper and suspended the perusal of its contents,— "Yet who shall say but that at the time he leaned his head upon his hand, and rose to walk away the sense of what he felt, he might not feel as much as Lady Elmwood did in her last moments." This combination of feeling with fortitude-this forcible contraction of emotion into the narrowest space of time-which we recognise as truthful in the fiction, has a yet more impressive truth in the mournful records of real life.

In this habit of self-control and this desire to cling to the golden mean, we recognise much of the secret of Scott's worldly prosperity. Such a tendency kept him from the wanton provocation of enmities, even where generous impulses might have urged him to them. Though his political prejudices were so strong, this tendency withheld him for the most part from the public arena in which political interests are advanced. With that Scottish prudence which characterized him, he never hesitated to accept and to court substantial profits from the very men whose politics he disapproved. As we have before said, his most valuable appointment was the gift of the whigs. A very considerate and deep-feeling politician would scarcely have accepted a favour not necessary to his wants, but purely an object of ambition, from men whose doctrines he held to be inimical to the interests of his country. On the question of the Reform Bill, of which his apprehensions for the safety of his country were extremely strong, some slight to his counsels on the part of gentlemen more moderate in their opposition, "gave him (he discreetly declares) a right to decline future interference."

True, "he would make his opinion public at every place where he should be called upon or expected to interfere, but he would not thrust himself forward again." "He kept this vow," says Mr. Lockhart "in all its -parts." As a high-spirited man who has taken umbrage against his colleagues, the vow was natural-as a sober calculator it was prudent. But it was not a vow that would have been made by a man of very deep