he adapted their tone to suit the particular temperament of whatever correspondent he happened to be addressing. Those to his son Walter may be described as resembling Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son minus the immorality. There is no trace in them of any high or ennobling principle. "Don't do rash and foolish things; take care of yourself; be sure to get on in the world," is the gospel they proclaim. But if Scott's character lacked somewhat of the loftier virtues, it was full of those endearing qualities which men of higher aspirations have, alas! too often been without. He was totally free from any taint of vanity, envy, or malice. Like his great contemporary Goethe, he liked much better to praise the good than to condemn the evil. No critic was ever more lenient in his judgments; indeed he carried literary tolerance so far that praise from him became almost a brevet of mediocrity. In his relations with his family and his dependants he acquitted himself in a manner deserving of the highest praise. Never was there a better master than he, never a more loving and devoted parent.

To do full justice to Scott's writings would require large space; it is so various in kind and so large in quantity. He cannot be ranked amongst our greatest poets, nevertheless his stirring lays have great merit of their kind. The tendency nowadays is to underrate them as much as they were overrated at the time of their appearance. Their generous, healthy, open-air tone, their ringing vivacity, their rush and vigour, have very rarely been successfully imitated. Scott's miscellaneous prose works, if not brilliant, furnish extraordinary proofs of the soundness of his judgment and the width of his knowledge. His "Lives of the Novelists" are models of sensible and manly criticism; and the lives and notes added to his editions of Dryden (1808) and of Swift (1814) show an extraordinary knowledge of the byways of English literary history, and evince a capacity for patient research with which one would scarcely be prepared to credit a man of Scott's rapid-working habits. Of the great Waverley series the worst that criticism can say was said long ago by Carlyle. All culti

Criticisms of Scott's Novels.

339 vated readers of Scott are, we suppose, prepared to admit that his psychological insight was not very deep; that his style lacks force and concentration; that his representations of the life of the past in such novels as "Ivanhoe" and "Kenilworth" are often "stagey" and unreal; that in his novels no new view of life, no fresh inspiring idea, was given to mankind. But Scott had in almost unequalled abundance qualities possessed by few writers, but without which a great novelist is impossible-breadth and healthiness of mind. In tolerance and catholicity of feeling he resembled Shakespeare. Bating a slight infusion of Tory and cavalier prejudice, which appears to some extent in two or three of his novels, his representations are scrupulously just. As he always felt himself at his ease, and could talk unceasingly to any companion he happened to meet with, however lowly his rank, so he could portray the feelings and talk of all classes of men with equal accuracy and sympathy. Contemporary verdicts on his novels have been a good deal reversed by subsequent criticism. Few, for example, would now consider. "Ivanhoe" his best novel, as was pretty generally the opinion at the time of its publication (1819). Undoubtedly his best novels are those dealing with the subjects which he knew and loved best-Scottish life and Scottish scenery. In his historical novels dealing with foreign countries and remote times, the colours are sometimes coarsely laid on, and the whole treatment strikes one as artificial and wanting in vraisemblance. But when his foot touches his native heath, Scott is always himself again-always clear, vivid, and accurately pictorial. Carlyle's estimate of Scott (which, just as in some ways it is, does not give anything like full praise to the great qualities of his novels) has so powerfully influenced succeeding criticisms on them, that it may be well to quote, as weighing heavily in the opposite scale, the estimate formed of them by his illustrious contemporary, Goethe, whose opinion Carlyle himself would have been the first to pronounce to be of the greatest value. "I have just begun 'Rob Roy," said Goethe on one occasion to Eckermann, "and

will read his best novels in succession. All is great-material, import, characters, execution; and then what infinite diligence in the preparatory studies! what truth of detail in the execution!" Again, speaking of the "Fair Maid of Perth," certainly not one of the best of Scott's novels, he said, “You find everywhere in Walter Scott a remarkable security and thoroughness in his delineation, which proceed from his comprehensive knowledge of the real world, obtained by lifelong studies and observations and a daily discussion of the most important relations. Then come his great talent and his comprehensive nature. You remember the English critic who compares the poets to the voices of male singers, of which some can command only a few fine tones, while others have the whole compass, from the highest to the lowest, completely in their power. Walter Scott is one of this last sort. In the Fair Maid of Perth' you will not find a single weak passage to make you feel as if his knowledge and talent were insufficient. He is equal to his subject in every direction in which it takes him; the king, the royal brother, the prince, the head of the clergy, the nobles, the magistracy, the citizens and mechanics, the Highlanders, are all drawn with the same sure hand and hit off with equal truth." Such utterances of the first poet and critic of modern times deserve to be deeply pondered.

With the exception of Scott, few prose writers who flourished in the early part of the eighteenth century were possessed of so striking and commanding a genius as belonged to some of their poetical contemporaries. But there were many prose writers of gifts considerably superior to the average—so many, indeed, that our limits compel us to adopt a pretty severe principle of selection, and to exclude not a few who won literary laurels not yet altogether effaced by the lapse of time. The leading prose writers of this period fall easily into well-marked groups, and it will be convenient thus to consider them instead of adopting strict chronological order. Historians may come first. Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832) is now remembered more for his contemporary

Sir James Mackintosh.

341

reputation as a talker and for the frequent allusions to him in memoirs of celebrities of his time, than for what he actually accomplished. His life was one of much promise. but of little performance. He himself relates that a French lady once said to him, "What have you done that people should think you so superior?" In reply, he says, "I was obliged as usual to refer to my projects." Mackintosh was born in Inverness-shire, and educated at King's College, Aberdeen, and at Edinburgh, where he studied medicine. Coming to London in 1788, he attracted great attention by his "Vindiciæ Gallicæ," a pungent and vigorous reply to Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution," which brought him at once into notice in literary society, and had the honour of being praised by Fox in Parliament. Abandoning medicine for the study of law, he was called to the bar; and his fine speech in defence of Peltier in 1803 brought him a great deal of practice and the prospect of earning a large income by his forensic ability. However, in the words of Lord Dalling, "three months had not elapsed when, with the plaudits of the public and the praise of Erskine still ringing in his ear, he accepted the Recordership of Bombay from Mr. Addington, and retired with satisfaction to the well-paid and knighted indolence of India. His objects in doing so were, he said, of two kinds to make a fortune and to write a work. The whole man is before us when we discover how far either of these objects was attained by him. He did not make a fortune; he did not write a work." After a residence of seven years in India, he returned to England and entered Parliament, where, although he distinguished himself in carrying on the Criminal Code reform begun by Romilly, his reputation scarcely answered to the high hopes of him formed by his friends. He also wrote a good deal, contributing miscellaneous articles to the Edinburgh Review; an interesting and able, if occasionally inaccurate, "Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy" to the "Encyclopædia Britannica;" and a short "History of England," carried down to the Refor. mation, and a "Life of Sir Thomas More" to "Lardner's

Encyclopædia." His magnum opus was meant to be a history of England, for which he collected copious and valuable materials, but only a fragment on the "Causes of the Revolution of 1688" was ever completed. Mackintosh did not possess a creative mind, but he was unwearied in the acquisition of knowledge, and if he had had more tenacity of purpose might have left a permanent mark on literary history. His style is elegant and carefully wrought, but somewhat languid and wanting in pith and power. His conversational powers by all accounts must have been extraordinary. "Till subdued by age and illness," said Sydney Smith, who knew well all the celebrated talkers of the day, "his conversation was more brilliant and instructive than that of any human being I ever had the good fortune to be acquainted with."

Henry Hallam (1777-1859) was an historian of powers, perhaps, not originally superior to those of Mackintosh, but put to infinitely better account. He was educated at Oxford, and studied for the bar, but never depended on his profession. for a livelihood, as, in addition to possessing a private fortune of a considerable amount, he was the lucky holder of a Government sinecure. His works are on subjects requiring such research and labour that they scarcely could have been written by any one less happily circumstanced. A staunch Whig, he began his literary career by writing articles in the early volumes of the Edinburgh Review, of which one on Dryden, apropos of Scott's edition, is the most notable. In 1818 he took his place as the first historian of his time by the publication of his "View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages," a work rather pompous and Latinised in style, but showing extremely wide knowledge and great judicial acumen. His second great work, the "Constitutional History of England," appeared in 1827. The labours of Dr. Stubbs have superseded Hallam's "Constitutional History" in its early portions; but for the rest it is still the standard authority, not likely to be soon superseded. Its carefulness. and accuracy, its impartial summing up of facts and candid estimate of men and opinions, can scarcely be too highly com