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lineation of all that in our nature is good and brave, and gentle and high-minded, and self-denying? Is there more truth in the oft-told tales of ancient story-ay-or of modern either? Is there a purer morality or nobler lesson taught in its dark pages of vice and crime, and bloodshed, than in the pure and lofty fictions of Scott? It is not on the score of truth, that history and works of imagination are to be set in contrast: as each has its use, so each has its own truth and moral value. What we term works of fiction, however useless or injurious in ordinary hands, are, in those of genius, works of high philosophy; they paint man as he truly is, with a truth above and beyond the individualities of local history; and I do not hesitate to assert, that there is a hundred times more truth, and a thousand times more solid instruction in the Heart of Mid Lothian, in the high resolve and virtuous resolution of untutored integrity, than in all those learned fables,

"Quicquid Grecia mendax audet in historia ;"

and yet forsooth, the one is to be termed fact, and the other fiction!

Let us be tender, gentlemen, how we condemn moral truth in the garb of fiction-its use has been consecrated by the holiest of authorities, and therefore, in lower measure, according to the powers of erring men, may it still be a sacred vehicle for the inculcation of high and virtuous lessons; and the author, who finds his powers best fitted thus to teach those lessons, in it will find also the highest application of the intellect that God has given him.

If fiction, then, rank according to the end at which it aims, the question at issue is how does it appear in the pages of Scott? In this he will stand comparison with any, I think, of his predecessors or contemporaries; with any moral or religious novelist whatsoever: I do not say in the moral lessons proposed, but in the moral influence produced,

for that is the test. Scott knew well, that to proclaim the lesson, was not the best way to teach it-he knew human nature too well for that—"ruimur in vetitum nefas”—he therefore softens the metal, before be stamps it; he makes the heart in love with virtue, before he says to the understanding "pursue it." "Tis true, he does not with the herd of inferior novelists, who take to themselves credit for the moral lesson they teach, always deck forth virtue in human rewards. Such is not the course of the world—therefore it is not truth. Such is not the lesson of providence, therefore it is not piety; for where is the thought of future recompense, if all be made up here? Human rewards should, therefore, in fiction as in life, be sometimes given, and sometimes withheld: sometimes to fix our thoughts on a present retributive providence-sometimes to carry them forward to a future

recompense.

But I do wrong to take this defence out of his own hands— "worldly rewards, says Sir W. Scott, are not the recompense which providence has deemed worthy of suffering merit; and it is a dangerous and fatal doctrine to teach young persons, that rectitude of conduct and of principle, is either naturally allied with, or adequately rewarded by the gratification of our passions, or attainment of our wishes. A glance at the great picture of life, will show, that the duties of self-denial, and the sacrifice of passion to principle, are seldom thus remunerated; and that the internal consciousness of their high-minded discharge of duty, produces on their own reflections a more adequate recompense in the form of that peace, which the world can neither give nor take away."

Among his favorite heroes of romance, none seemed to equal Rob Roy and Claverhouse. In his armory hung the freebooter's gun, and in his study a small full-length likeness: of Claverhouse too, there hung full in his sight-an original portrait-and one need but look upon its flowing hair,

and feminine but straight-lined features, with its cruel but. melancholy eye and compressed lips, to have read in it that unnatural union of ferocity and womanly gentleness, which Scott has so inimitably painted. Among the many stories which the portrait called forth, one rests on my memory as strikingly illustrative of his character. The son of a friend had joined his troop, but in the very first engagement, fear overcame his resolution, and he fled. Claverhouse represented it to him, not as a fault, but as a misfortune; evidencing solely, that nature had not fitted him for the soldier, and urged him to quit the service for some other equally honorable pursuit; this, through shame or spirit, the young man declined, and solicited a further trial. In granting it, Claverhouse said to him, with severity-" but remember you abide the consequences." A second engagement took place, and the youth was again in the act of retreating, when Claverhouse riding up to him, said—" Your father's son is too good a man to die the death of a menial,” drew his pistol, and shot him through the head. The head of the unfortunate Mary, severed from her body, there too hung, bearing date the day after her decapitation: this melancholy picture was highly prized by Sir W., as an undoubted original, and the gift of a Prussian prince.

Scott's storehouse of character, though essentially Scottish, was yet so varied from history, observation, and wide experience, and above all, from that inward philosophy, which enabled him to draw from universal nature-that his pictures suit every where some few were drawn from living individuals: those to which he has confessed, are the Antiquary, Edie Ochiltree, Jeannie Deans, Dominie Sampson, and Old Mortality; to which I would add, in the opinion of the neighborhood, the Clerk of the Parish, and Capt. Dalgetty. Speaking to him, one day, of the foreign countries where he had laid his scene, I ventured to suggest to him my own, upon the high ground of that moral influence writers of his

talent might exert, and which, consequently, they might be said to be bound to exert, in healing the wounds of a narrow and hostile policy between great and kindred nations; that it was a victory attainable, since Miss Edgeworth had done it for Ireland, and he himself for Scotland. He listened to the appeal respectfully, and gave it such answer as justified me, I thought, in afterwards bringing it before him by letter. Whether, had life been spared, he would have done it, is doubtful; but of our country, and the few he had known from it, he spoke with kindness-and of one, at least, with a warmth of expression which indicated the recognition on his part, of a kindred character-need I add the name of Washington Irving?

If we enumerate the works of Sir W. Scott, we must rank him as the poet, novelist, biographer, and historian; but if we analyze his powers wherever displayed, we will call him novelist, in its highest, purest, and noblest sense; the moral novelist-the greatest of our own or any other age. Hundreds could have written his Napoleon, and thousands his biographies-who but he could have written Ivanhoe? Whence comes his inimitable power in fiction, is too ample a question to be here discussed. Thus much, however, may be said, that it arises mainly from his boundless sympathy with humanity at large. Hence comes that undoubting confidence in the simple feelings and language of our nature. He goes forth into the wide world of joy or sorrow, and brings the scene, and him who feels it, home to the heart, with the same child-like simplicity, whether it be king or beggar-the high-born and gentle maiden, or her lowly true-hearted attendant. Nature to him was every thing, its trappings nothing. This is the basis of his power. His conceptions are those of the heart. His felicitous execution, again, is from the same source-simplicity-child-like simplicity. His language is that of the eye, not of reflection-there is nothing abstract, nothing undefined in his pictures-all is

imaged, colored, moving—and not only so, but the succession of images in his narratives, is in the same order as that of events in the scene-they rise, move, and pass, as they do to a spectator's eyes. He tells a story, in short, just as an excited child would tell it-if his language answered to his conceptions. As an illustration of this principle, we may take the picture-like delineation of the siege of Front de Bouf's castle, in Ivanhoe, as reported by Rebecca to that wounded champion, where Ivanhoe is in the place of the reader, and Rebecca in that of the author; all whose narratives will be found conducted, though less obviously, upon this most graphic principle, of simply transferring the leading lines from the eye to the imagination-even as the plate or the stone, transfers the picture to the paper destined to receive it. In this criticism, Scott's poems and novels fall into the same class; for his poems are but imperfect romances, borne up by rythmical melody, as many of his romances want but melody to make them noble heroic poems. To accumulate and arrange facts, was to Scott a heartless and barren task-to sit in the critic's chair was foreign to his very nature-but to range the boundless fields of moral existence, and gather thence the sweet flower, and the medicinal herb, and the choice. fruit, as samples of what was in it most good and fair, and what he missed abroad, to cull from the garden of his own unsophisticated heart-this was his delight; here was he the genius unapproached and unapproachable, and for him is reserved in future times, a niche in the temple of fame, second only to Shakspeare, as the moral painter of man.

Such was Sir Walter Scott; and I esteem it a happy lot to have seen and known him, more especially at a period the most interesting of his interesting life; when, having lost neither greatnessn or brightness, he was yet struggling, like a setting sun, under the clouds of unmerited misfortune, but with as brave and unbroken a spirit as he ever depicted on his pages of romance. Of the causes which led to that deso

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