<^ sj O 


SIR WALTER SCOTT, 


JUM 16 1892 ) 


PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 

1892. 


SIR WALTER SCOTT, 


\y 


y 


PH I LAD EL PHI A : 

J. B. LrPPINCOTT COMPANY. 

1892. 


Copyright, 1892, by J. B. Lippincott Company. 


SIR WALTPJR scorr. 


Scott, !^IR Walter (created a baronet 1819), 
the greatest of Scottish men of letters, aud prol)- 
ably the best beloved author whoever lived, was 
born in the College Wynd of Edinburgh on August 
15, 1771. His father, Walter Scott, was a Writer 
to the Signet ; his mothei-'s maiden name was Anne 
Rutherford, daughter of Dr John Rutherford, pro- 
fessor of Medicine in the University of Edin))urgh. 
Scott thus sprung from the professional middle 
classes, but on both sides he came ' of gentle 
blood.' When he blazoned his quarterings on the 
roof of the entrance-hall of Abbotsford three 
shields of the sixteen had to be left blank, through 
a difficulty about the pedigree of the Rutherfords of 
Hunthill.' Nevertheless, he came of the best blood 
on the Border, Scotts, Swintons, an.d Rutherfords, 
His great-grandfather was the grandson of Auld 
Wat of Harden, who married the Flower of 
Yarrow in 1507, and whose son again married 
Muckle Mou'd Meg of Elibank. The facts of 
Scott's history are too universally known to^ be 
dwelt upon at length. A recent ingenious writer 
has tried to show that genius is a ' sport ' or acci- 
dental variety of the consumptive and nervous 
temperament.' It is certain that the first six chil- 
ihen of Scott's father and mother died between 
1759 and 1766. Locks of their hair, still glossy and 
golden, lay in Sir Walter's great desk, in his stu<ly 
at Abbotsford. Of the other six eliildren only two, 
Walter and Thomas, left issue ; the present de- 
scendants of Sir Walter Scott are the children 
of the Hon. Mrs Maxwell Scott, daughter of 
Mrs Hope-Scott, who again was the daughter of 


4 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Sir Walter's daughter Sophia, who married Mr 
Jolin Gibson Loekhart, The mother of Sir W^alter 
survived all her children except the poet and Mr 
Thomas Scott. Scott himself, though one of tlie 
strongest men of his time, with a larger biceps, the 
Ettrick Shepherd tells us, than any man of the 
Rough Clan, nearly died in infancy ' in consequence 
of his first nurse being ill of a consumption.' At 
eighteen months he M'as suddenly aflfected ^yith 
fever in teething, and lost the power of his right 
leg. In his third year he was sent to his grand- 
father's farm at Sandy knowe, where he was taught, 
not without difficulty, to read, and learned and 
shouted the ballad of Hardyknute. For about a 
year and a half he was at Bath, then returned to 
(George Square, in Edinburgh, where he astonished 
Mrs Cockburn (a Rutherford of Fairnilee, and 
author of The Floivcrs of the Forest ) by his infant 
genius. Still lame, he was taken to Prestonpans 
(aged eight), where he met a veteran named Dal- 
getty and Mr George Constable, from whom ( and 
from Idmself ) he drew Monkbarns, and heard of 
Faistaff. Thence he returned, ' a grandam's child,' 
to George Square, where he lived, always reading 
and repeating ballads and poetry. In 1779 he was 
sent to the High School of Edinburgh, where he 
suffered from the senseless Scottish system of giv- 
ing ' removes ' each year, and from the coteries 
formed in large classes. He amused the boys with 
tales ; he was ready to fight, ' strapped to a board,' 
as he was lame ; he made game of Burns's friend, 
the blackguard dominie, Nicol ; he fought in 
bickers with Greenbreeks ; he wrote some English 
verse ; he learned some Latin from Dr Adam, the 
rector or head-master. His schooling was inter- 
rupted by a visit to Kelso, where he had the mis- 
fortune to l)ecome intimate with the Ballantynes. 
In Edinburgh the blind and venerable Dr Blacklock 
instructed his poetical taste, and he had his one 
famous meeting witli Burns. He left the High 
School with a great knowledge of all that he had 
not been taught, but at Edinburgh University he 
did not improve his Latin, ,and, like St Augustine, 
he declined to learn Greek. His account of the 
studies of Waverley contains his regrets for wasted 
time, and his autobiography expresses his grief 
that he had turned awsiy from Greek, ' considering 
v.iiat that language is,' and who they \\'ere who 
employed it in their compositions.' Meantime his 
lameness was never cured, though he could walk 
tliirty or forty miles in tlio day. His sweetness of 


SIR WALTER SCOTT. ') 

temper did not suffer, as Byron's did from an in- 
firmity which after all was not so great as to prevent 
Byron from bowling for Harrow. But Scott had 
not, like Byron, to feel tliat, but for this one defect, 
he would liave been a perfect model of beauty. 
\A'ithred hair, an upper lipof unusual length, a brow 
like a tower, and rugged Border features, he had 
no temptation, as Byron had, to vanity. Yet a 
lady has left her evidence that ' young Walter 
Scott was a comely creature.' About 1785-86 he 
entered his father's 'office,' the weary 'office' 
which, like so)ne fabled monster, gapes for the 
boys of Edinburgh. Here, at least, lie learned to 
cover paper at such a pace as never man did, and 
in a hand which could put some seven hundred 
words on one side of a sheet of foolscap. He 
studied Scots law sedulouslj^ though his long fish- 
ing and antiquarian rambles made his excellent 
father (described in Redgauntlet) fear that he 
would never be better than ' a gangrel scrape- 
gut.' As a lawyer's clerk, superintending an 
eviction, he first entered the Highlands, where he 
already knew Invernahyle, of the '15 and the '45, 
and many another veteran, whose legends appear 
in his novels. In Edinburgh he won friendships 
wdiich only ended with life, and, in the heat of 
youth, according to his own account, he was at 
least sufficiently convivial. Of all his friends the 
world best knows William Clerk of Eldin, the 
original of Darsie Latimer in Redgauntlet. Even 
now,, it seems, the romance of his life had begun, 
and he loved the lady whom he loved till the end. 
' Xhis was the early and innocent affection to 
which we owe the tenderest pages, iiot only of Red- 
gauntlet, but of the Lag of the Last Minstrel and 
of Rokehg. In all of these works the heroine has 
certain distinctive features, drawn from one and 
the same haunting dream of liis manly adolescence. ' 
In the autumn of 1796 that dream had gone 
where dreams go, but it endured where dreams 
endure, in the heart. On October 12, 1796, one 
of his friends, who kne\y the story, wrote, ' ' ' Men 
have died and worms have eaten them, but not 
for love." I hope sincerely that may be veri- 
fied on this occasion.' Scott did not die, only 
his heart, as his Journal records, was broken foi- 
two years, then 'handsomely pieced,' 'but the 
crack will remain till my dying daj^ ' ( Journal, 
December 18, 1825). ^Humana perpessi sumus,' 
he adds, in his Journal., towards the end^ of his 
life. A short poem. The Violet, is almost the 


6 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

only direct allusion to this affair in his works. 
Not wholly unconnected with his hopes as a lover 
was his first publication, rhymed versions of ballads 
by Biirger (October 1796). The poems were 
admired, but 'proved a dead loss.' The spring of 
1797 was spent in yeomanry drill. In July Scott 
made a tour into Tweeddale, and met David 
Ritchie, the Black Dwarf. Thence he wandered 
to Gi Island, where he first saw^ Miss Charlotte 
Margaret Carjienter, a lady of French extraction, 
but of English education. They soon became 
engaged, and were married at Carlisle on Christ- 
mas Eve 1797. Though not a regular beauty, Mrs 
Scott had large dark eyes, and an engaging air, 
with plenty of gaiety and sense. Hogg describes 
her as ' a brunette with raven hair and large dark 
eyes, but, in mj'^ estimation, a perfect beauty.' 
The marriage, founded on sincere affection, was 
happy, though some of Scott's friends feared that 
the successes which left him unharmed might turn 
the head of Mrs Scott. 

Already (1792) Scott had made his first 
raid into Liddesdale, and every year till 1798 he 
repeated it, gathered legends, studied characters 
like Dandle Dinmont, and ' was making himself,' as 
Shortreed said. His country home w^as a cottage at 
Lasswade, agreeably described by Mr R. P. Gillies 
in his Recollections. Scott made M. G. Lewis's 
acquaintance, wrote for a collection of Lewis's 
Glcnfinlas and the ^t'g of St Johti, and translated 
Goethe's Goetz von Bei^ichingen. At the end of 
1799, after the death of his father, he was appointed 
sheriff" of Selkirkshire. In hunting for ballads i-he 
made the acquaintance of Hogg, of Leyden, and of 
his dear friend and occasional amanuensis, William 
Laidlaw. In 1800 he suggested to James Ballan- 
tyne that he should remove from Kelso to Edin- 
l)uroh. At the same time he announced tliat he 
would give Ballantyne the printing of The Border 
Minstrelsy. The first two volumes appeared in 
1802. In the autumn of that year, on Lady 
Dalkeith's suggestion, he began what he meant for 


a balhid. It became The Lay of the Last Minstrel, 
irhaps the best, of liis long poems. It was 


the lirst, |)erl 

printed by Ballantyne in Edinburgli." The founda- 
tions of Scott's triumph and discomfiture were laid. 
The Lay made him at once the most popular 
author of the generation, and his sliare in the 
Ballantyne printing business proved his ruin. From 
the moment that he entere<l as the secret but 
only moneyed partner into that business ho was 


SIR WALTER SCOTT. 7 

never free from linaucial couiplications. For these, 
and all the evil they wrought, it would be unjust 
to lay all the blame either on the Ballantynes, on 
Constable, or on Scott. Sir Walter was the last to 
shirk his own share of the responsibility. Perhaps 
an accountant can make sense of the controversy, in 
three pamphlets, between Mr Lockhart and the 
representatives of the Ballantynes (1888-39). To 
an ordinary reader it seems clear that Scott hoi)ed 
to make money by the business of printing, and 
that he also hail ' a kindness like an elder brother's 
love ' for the Ballantynes. It appears quite certain 
tliat John Ballantyne, when he entered the firm 
with no capital, complicated it by his ambition as 
a publisher, and by a sanguine temper which would 
not face nor state difficulties. On the other hand, 
Scott had a century of literary inventions, editions 
and the like, which were often started to l)enefit 
poor working men of letters, but which nearly 
always failed, except when lie himself was the 
editor. Thus the publishing business was over- 
whelmed with unsaleable 'stock.' Both Ballan- 
tynes were undeniably extravagant. John was 
recklessly so. Scott himself bought land, always 
at a price beyond its value, he bouglit curiosities, 
his hospitality was more than princely, his gene- 
rosity was unstinted ; he was the pro\'idence of 
poor' literary men, and the guardian genius of 
his neighbourhood. Yet he has l)een too severely 
blamed for profusion: Up to 18'2l his purchases of 
land had cost about £30,000, while his official income 
(as Clerk of Session and Sheriff) had been £1600 a 
year, 'and he had gained as an author £80,000.' 
Abbotsford is not ' a wide domain'— far from it — and 
the house was so far from being a palace that Mr 
Hope-Scott found it necessary to build a large 
additional wing thereto. The ruin came not so 
much from personal extravagance as through 
business conducted by London connections of Con- 
stable's house, in the wildest way, by ' bank ac- 
commodation ' and bills, eternally renewed. James 
Ballantyne's own time was much occupied in the 
correction of Scott's proof-sheets rather than in 
attention to the details of his commerce. The 
value of his criticisms has been overestimated ; 
his remarks on the proof-sheets of Redfjauntlet 
are inept, and it cannot be said that lie Avas a 
careful master-printer. Constable's own visionary 
character added to the complexities, and at last 
the crash came. Every one was in faiilt, every one 
w.as intoxicate<l by success. There is no more 


8 SIR WALTER SCXJTT. 

reason to doubt tlie upiightness of Jame.s Ballaii- 
tyne tlian of Sir Walter, -who finally paid his debts 
with his life. Admirers of Lockhart regret his tone 
towards the Ballantynes. To him it is clear they 
had ever been distasteful. He was as fastidious 
as Scott was almost over-tolerant, and the mere 

Eresence of the brothers must have been odious to 
im. But both had, with all their social defects 
and commercial demerits, a touching affection for 
Sir Walter. 

We have anticipated the financial tragedy of 
Scott's life, or rather we have sketclied its history 
from the moment when it began. Scott's pros- 
perity never had a sound commercial basis. He 
was never really free from anxiety about money. 
How his sagacity and uprightness endured these 
bonds is a psychological mystery. In 1804 Scott, 
as sheriff of Selkirkshire, removed from Lasswade 
to Ashestiel, a small house beautifully situated on 
a wooded ' brae ' above the Tweed, about four miles 
from the influx of the Ettrick. Had he been 
able to purchase Ashestiel, Abbotsford might never 
have risen from the swamps of ' Clarty Hole. ' 
Early in 1805 the Lay was published, and met a 
deserved success. Scott now busied himself with 
articles in the Edinhurgh Review, with liis edition 
of Dryden, and with the commencement of Waver- 
Icy. The eai-ly chapters did not please a friend, 
probably Erskine, and it was not completed till 
1813-14. In 1806 Scott was appointed Clerk of 
Session, and withdrew from the bar. He dis- 
charged the duties for some years without the 
emoluments, which went to his predecessor in the 
office. In 1806 Manulon was begun. The plot is 
partly based on perfectly fictitious documents, 
foisted on Scott by Mr Surtees of Mainsforth, He 
never discovered the fraud. Marmion appeared 
early in 1808. A review, a most quibbling and 
unfair review, of it was Avritten by Jeffrey for the 
Edinhurgh. This attack, and the whiggery of the 
Edinburgh, caused Scott to break oft" his connection 
with that serial, and to busy himself in starting 
the (Junrferlif. Jeffrey did not injure Marniion, 
and its popularity outdid even that of the Lay. 
Scott, who feared to take another ' scourging cro]> ' 
of verse oft" the soil, now occupied himself with 
editing Dryden, Swift, and other classics. He 
([uarrelled with Constal)le (the publisher of the 
Edi/ihiirgh), or rather with his partner, Mr Huntei-, 
and in January 1809 he tells Southey that ' Ballan- 
tyne's brother' (.lohii) Ms setting up here as a 


SIR WALTER SCOTT. 9 

bookseller, chietly for publishing.' Ballantyne 
was to be in alliance with Mr Murray, but this 
arrangement did not last, and the publishing busi- 
ness only added to financial complications. In 
1810 the Lady of the Lake was finished, and over- 
crowned even Scott's former triumphs. A Highland 
poem had long been in his mind, alternating with 
the scheme of a Highland lomance in prose. Scott 
now visited the western isles, and schemed out 
The Nameless Glen, afterwards called The Lord of 
the Isles. He also reconsidered Waverlei/, but 
seems to have made no progress with it. In 18II 
he received at last the salary of his clerkship, and 
came into a legacy of £5000. Now, too, he bought 
his first farm, and began to turn the cottage on it 
into a mansion. The yeai- 1811 saw him busy with 
Eokehy, which proved a comparative failure. 
Childe Harold had appeared ; popularity had 
selected Lord Byron for its new idol. For a 
wonder, Scott did not rate Childe Harold much 
above its merits, but he entered into a friendly 
correspondence with Byron. He had never been 
much galled by English Bards and Scotch Revieicers. 
In 1813 (after liokeby and the Bridal of Trlermain ) 
he declined the laureateship in favour of Southey. 
In 1814 he finished his Life of Sir if t, and published 
Waverley, writing the last two volumes in three 
weeks. Waverley took the world by storm, and 
Scott, who did not acknowledge the authorship, 
might well suppose he had found the purse of 
Fortunatus. The cold reception of T/tc Lord of the 
Isles did not discourage him, and in January 1815, 
by way of a holiday, he began Guy Mannering, 
'the work of six weeks at Christmas time.' It 
was published hy Messrs Longman, but, with 
rare exceptions. Constable, with whom Scott had 
been reconciled, published tlie rest of his Waverley 
cycle. From this point space does not serve to re- 
tell the oft-told tale of Scott's amazing fertility. 
In 1817 a violent illness shoNved him tliat even his 
strengtii was mortal, but no malady clouds lioh 
Roy or The Heart of Midlothian. In 1819 a return 
of his complaint endangered his life, and in 
paroxysms of agony he dictated The Bride of 
Lammermoor, which, when printed, he read as the 
work of a stranger. He did not remember a line 
of it. His health was in part re-established ; he 
opened a new vein of gold in Ivanhoe, but failed to 
please his readers witli The Monastery. 

rnt is iia weol bol.hit 
Well l.nl. it a-aiii. 


10 sin WALTER SCOTT. 

he said. Novels pouied from his pen, society 
flocked to Abbotsford, he seemed to Miss Edge- 
worth 'the idlest man alive.' Yet he never neg- 
lected his official duties ; he toiled like a \A'oodsman 
in his plantations, and he entertained all comers. 
As he said of Byron, ' his foot was ever in the 
arena, his shield hung always in the lists.' He 
managed the king's reception in Edinburgh, he 
heard cases at Selkirk, he took part in raising 
volunteer corps, he conducted an enormous and 
distracting correspondence, he cared for the poor 
with a wis:* beneficence, he had a great share in 
starting the Edinl)uigh Academy, he presided at 
the councils of the new gas company, he began the 
Life of Bonaparte, and still the novels flowed on. 
In 1825 he commenced his Journal, and for all that 
followed the immortal pages of that sad and splen- 
did record must be consulted. Woodstock was in 
hand Avhen the commercial crash came. Scott bore 
it like a stoic. From that hour all the energy not 
needed for public duties went into literature. He 
sometimes toiled for fourteen hours a day, led on 
by the hope of paying every penny of his debts. 
His labour cleared them, though not in his lifetime. 
Before his wearied eyes and Avorn brain the mirage 
of his complete success used to float at intervals, 
and who could grudge him these dreams through 
the ivory gate ! It is needless to repeat the tale of 
his last djiys, his desolation when his publisher, Mr 
Cadell, disapproved of Count Robert of Paris, the 
insults heaped on bim by the Jedburgh radical mob, 
his last voyage, his continued Avork at The Siege of 
Malta, his' return home, his death. Fcav oiit of all 
who have read Lockhart or the Journal can have 
studied these chapters Avith tearless eyes. It is 
said that on the last morning of his life conscious- 
ness returned. He asked his nurse to help him to 
the Avindow ; he gave one last look on TAveed and 
said, 'To-night I shall knoAv all.' That night he 
AA'as ' Heaven's latest, not least Avelcome guest,' 
September 21, 1832. 

In a brief record of bis life it is impossible duly 
to estimate Scott, as an author or as a man. The 
greatness of his heart, the loyal afl'ection and kiu(l- 
ness of his nature, are at least as remarkable as his 
astonishing genius. There is only one voice as 
to his goodness. He was the most generous, the 
most friendly, the most honourable of men. In no 
relation of life did he fall short of the highest excel- 
lence. The magnetism (as Ave may call it for 
Avant of a better Avord ) of liis personality endeared 


SIR WALTER SCOTT, 11 

him not only to mankind, hut to the lower animals. 
Dogs, cats, and horses took to him at once. He 
was even persecuted by the affection of grotesque 
friends, pigs and chickens. He is one of the few 
who retain, after death, this power of making us 
love those ' whom we have not seen. ' Nor was he 
less sagacious, in all affairs but his own, than he 
was sympathetic. As a man of letters he was more 
than generous, far from being en vious, he could hardly 
even be critical, and he admired contemporaries in 
whom the judgment of posterity has seen little to 
approve. In his lifetime the Whigs, as Whigs, did 
not love him. He was a Tory. W^ith a sympathy 
for the poor, which showed itself not only in his 
works, l)ut in all his deeds, and in all his daily life, 
he believed in subordination. All history showed 
him that equality had never existed, except in the 
lowest savagery ; and he could not believe in a 
sudden reversal of experience. His tastes as a poet 
also attached him to the antique world. His ideal 
was, perhaps, a feudalism in Mdiich every order 
and every man should be constant to duty. 
Al)sentee landlords he condemned as much as 
callous capitalists. He had seen the French 
Revolution, he had witnessed various abortive 
' risings ' in the west country, and his later years 
were saddened bj^ apprehension of a Jacquerie. He 
hated the mol) as much as he loved the people, his 
own people, the kindly Scots. He was a sturdy 
Scotchman ; Ijut, says Lockhart, ' I believe that 
had any anti-English faction, ci\'il or religious, 
sprung up in his own time in Scotland, he would 
have done more than any other living man could 
have hoped to do to put it down." 

As a writer it is a truism to say that, since 
Shakespeare, whom he resembled in many ways, 
there has never been a genius so human and so 
creative, so rich in humour, sympathy, poetry, so 
fertile in the production of new and real characters, 
as the genius of Sir Walter Scott. To think of the 
Waverley novels is to think of a world of friends, 
like the crowd whose faces rise on us at the name 
of Shakespeare. To say this is to say enough, 1)ut 
it must be added that scenes as well as peoi)le, 
events as well as characters, are sunnnoned up by 
his magic wand. There is only one Shakespeare, 
however, and he possessed, what Scott lacked, 
every splendour and every glory of style. Of both 
men' it might be said that ' they never blotted a 
line ; ' but the metal flowed from the fuiiiace of 
Shakespeare's brain into many a mould of form, all 


]2 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

magical and immortal in tlieii" beauty. Scott 
'never learned grammar,' as he said, and his style 
is that of an improviser. Its recklessness, and 
occasional flatness, he knew as well as any of his 
critics. But again and again, in published Avork, 
as in unpublished letters, he owns himself to be 
incapable of correcting, and impatient of the labour 
of the file. In proofs he corrected freely, but 
seldom to improve the style. It is often lax, and 
even commonplace ; it rarely approaches distinc- 
tion. It is at its best, absolutely perfect indeed, in 
his Scotch dialogue. Nor was he more careful of 
his plots. In the introduction to the Fortunes of 
Nigel he shows us exactly how he worked, incapa- 
ble of laying down the lines of a plot, and sticking 
to them, following always where fancy led him, 
after Dugald Dalgetty, or Bailie Nicol Jarvie. 
Delay, painstaking, would not have made him a 
more finished writer, and would have deprived us 
of many a Waverley novel. Every man must do 
his work as he may : speed was Scott's way. The 
only real drawback to his unapproached excellence, 
then, is this congenital habit of haste, this quick- 
ness of spirit, which, as Lady Louisa Stuart said, 
made him weary of his characters long before his 
readers were weary. Yet his genius triumphs in 
his own despite, and what he wrote for the amuse- 
ment of a generation is fashioned for immortality, 
living with the fiery and generous life of his own 
heroic heart. Scott's poetry suffers more from his 
' hasty glance and random rhyme ' than his prose, 
because from poetry more exquisite finish is 
expected. That finish is only to be found in his 
lyrics, the freshest, most musical, most natural 
and spirited of English verses. In his metrical 
romances he has spirit, speed, ringing cadences, 
all the magic of romance, all the grace of chivalry. 
Since Homer no man has written so much in 
Homer's mood, so largely, so bravely, with such 
delight in battle. But ' the grand style ' is absent, 
save in the more inspired passages. Scott's lays are 
lighted with the Border sun, now veiled in mists, 
now broken with clouds : we are not here in the 
wide and luminous ether of Homer and «>f Hellas. 

Wild as cloud, as stream, as gale, 
Flow forth, flow unrestrained, my tale ! 

he exclaims, in lines addressed to Krskine, conscious 
of his fault, but impenitent. His fame must sutler 
in some degree from his own wilfulness, or, rather, 
from the incurable defect of a genius which was 


SIR WALTER SCOTT. 18 

rich, Init not rare ; abundant, but seldom fine. It 
may sutfice for one man to have come nearer than 
any other mortal to Shakespeare in his fiction, and 
nearer than any other mortal to Homer in his 
verse. His influence on literature was immense. 
The Romantic movement in France owed nearly as 
much to him as to Shakespeare. Alexander Dumas 
is his literary foster-child, and his only true suc- 
cessor. To him also is due the beginning of a 
better appreciation of all ancient popular antiqui- 
ties, and a more human understanding of history. 

The best source for information about Scott's life is, 
necessarily, Lockhart's biography. The best edition is 
the second, in ten volumes (1839). The Journal, in its 
complete form, may be procured either in one volume or 
in two volumes (1890). The B<iUaat(inc Humbug and 
the Refutation may be studied, by people who must study 
them, in various editions of 1838-39. There is much 
interesting matter in Mr R. P. GiUies' Recollections of 
Sir Walter Scott ( 1837 ), and some amusing anecdotes in 
Hogg's Domct^tic Manners and Private Life of Sir Walter 
Scott (1834), though the Shepherd is a garrulous and 
graceless witness. Mr Carruthers' Abboisford Notanda 
contains a few facts worth noting, and so does the 
Catalogue of the Centenary Exhibition. The Catalogue 
of the Abbotsford Library is a valuable index to his 
studies, and there are letters of some importance in 
Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents 
(1873). In 1872 Mr Hope-Scott published a reprint of 
Lockhart's condensed version of the Life, with a prefatory 
letter to Mr Gladstone. An interesting parallel between 
Homer and Scott is in Jebb's Lntroduction to Homer 
(1887). 

Scott's works, especially the novels, have been trans- 
lated into almost every civihsed tongue, and he has had 
imitators in all languages. There are several French 
translations, of varying merit. In German the best are 
those associated with the names of Hermann (new ed. 
1876) and Tschischwitz ( 1870 ) ; the Life by Elze (18G4) is 
notable. See also the articles in this work on Abbotsford, 
Dryburgh, Ballantyne, Laidlaw, Lockhart, Hope-Scott, 
Ballad, and Novels. 


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