DAVID, a Scottish painter of unquestionable genius, was the fifth child of Robert Scott, a landscape-engraver, and was born in Edinburgh on the 10th or 12th of October 1806. A year after his birth, he was the only surviving child of the family, the rest having been cut off within a few days by a prevalent epidemic. From this blow, it is said, neither father nor mother ever recovered; and David Scott grew up under the shade of religious melancholy and gloom. If this constant fostering of the memories of the dead, so characteristic of certain classes of the Scottish people, did not create in young Scott that sad, brooding, imaginative disposition, which was so noticeable a part of his character, it at least had the effect of being highly advantageous to its development. David Scott grew up silent, earnest, and imperious. He never "whistled or sang" like other youths, but plodded eagerly at his Latin, in which he made but very slow progress, or amused his leisure hours in drawing rude designs of his own from "Paradise Lost," "Macbeth," or Scottish and Greek history. The same impulse continued to the end of his life; the same aim actuated all his artistic career. When he came to his full stature, he was tall and of a delicate build, with very fine features, and an uncommonly large dark-blue eye. He began his artistic career by assisting his father in his business of a landscape-engraver, but it was his business to become a painter. He accordingly began a painting of "Lot and his Daughters fleeing from the Cities of the Plain," designed on an enormously large scale, which was returned from the British Institution as too large. Heedless of this hint, he held on his course and painted pictures which would have required a hall for their exhibition, and which the public would neither admire nor buy. The "Hopes of Early Genius dispelled by Death" was exhibited in 1828; and his "Fingal and the Spirit of Lodi," "Adam and Eve," "The Death of Sappho," "Wallace defending Scotland," were painted during the next year. He sold his first picture "The Cloud" in 1831; and during the same year appeared his outline sketches of the "Monograms of Man." He likewise began this year his series of splendid designs for Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner," which were published after his return from Rome in 1837. The poet, on being shown these designs, expressed his satisfaction with them; adding, at the same time, that he had not thought it possible to illustrate such a piece. Such was Scott's progress up to the year 1832. His devotion to high art was quite enthusiastic; and it was utterly in vain that men tried to convince him of the entire unrewarding department of art to which he devoted his nights and days, his dreams and reveries. As Dr. Samuel Brown said of him, who knew him well and loved him ardently, "he was self-willed, yet sensitive; ambitious, but despising the arts of rising; impulsive and industrious; well-informed, but imaginative; studious, yet imperiously original." (Essays, two vols., 1858). In 1832, after painting "Nimrod," "Cain," "Sarpdon carried by Sleep and Death," "Pan," "Aurora," and the Sketch of "Burying the Dead," he set out for Italy, staying some time at the Louvre in Paris on his way southward. He passed through the towns of Geneva, Milan, Venice, Parma, Bologna, Florence, and Siena, on his journey to Rome, which city he reached on the 8th of December 1832. While on this Italian tour he painted immensely, and gained great facility in execution, without, however, essentially changing his style. The grand style had been born with him in Edinburgh, and so entirely original was his genius, that Rome and all Italy could not weed it out of him. He painted a very large picture of "Discord" while resident in Rome, which was much admired by the artists who came to visit this solitary Scotsman in his solitary studio. One of Scott's earliest undertakings on his return to Edinburgh in 1834, was to paint a "Descent from the Cross" for St Patrick's Chapel, Lothian Street, which proclaimed him, on its exhibition the following year, to be no longer the student but now the master in art. From this period he continued to paint with remarkable diligence and with remarkable ambition, a series of paintings as wonderful for their astonishing excellencies, as they were for their want of power to interest the general spectator. The artist, it was evident, despite his long practice and his untiring study, had not yet attained to the full and adequate expression of which his nature was capable. That the elements of a great painter were now visible in every line he drew and in every hue he painted, no adequate judge could for a moment doubt, but whether he ever could so nicely harmonize all his remarkable artistic gifts, and set them forth in the full and fair proportions of nature, was a question which time alone could solve. He had now attained to near the age of thirty, but his nature was of slow growth, and the few who knew him well had great confidence in his future, provided his health would keep good. His strength had never been robust, and his isolated, determined devotion to art, and to everything worthy of the name of art, had by no means increased his bodily vigour. He sent to the Exhibition in Edinburgh, in 1835, four pictures—"Sappho and Anacreon," "The Vintager," "A Fresco," and a "Sketch of the Head of Mary Magdalene;" and in 1836, "The Abbot of Mistrule," and "Judas betraying Christ." During the same year he had painted, for a prize, "Lady Macbeth leaving the Daggers by the Sleeping Grooms." His appearance in the Scottish Royal Academy was made in 1838 by "Orestes seized by the Furies," "Rachel weeping for her Children," "Puck fleecing before the Dawn," and "Ariel and Caliban," the last of which is characterized by the painter's brother, W. B. Scott, himself both an elegant poet and a fine painter, as "perhaps the most truly poetic production" of the artist. During the same year he painted his "Alchymist," a really noble picture. In the year 1839 he had etched several large plates of the "Last Judgment" of Michael Angelo, which he had made in Rome some years ago, and which were designed for publication. Publishers were slow, however, to undertake this project; and accordingly his Essay, which he intended to accompany these prints as letter-press, "On the peculiarities of Thought and Style," was accepted by Blackwood's Magazine in the month of February 1839. This was followed up by papers on the genius of Raphael, on Titian, and Venetian painting; on Leonardo da Vinci and Corregio, and on the Caracci, Caravaggio, and Monachism in March 1841. These remarkable pieces of critical literature abounded, says Dr S. Brown, with "knowledge, fancy, reasonableness, imagination, and poetic insight;" so that, in spite of their literary shortcomings, they will yet be read as long as men admire what is highest in art and what is truest in its historical embodiments. The proposition which lay at the basis of all these dissertations, and which never forsook the artist in life, was, that "the sole purpose of art is the sustaining of humanity in man." In 1840 he exhibited his painting of the "Agony of Discord, or the Household Gods destroyed," on which he had been long engaged; "Philocletes," "Cupid sharpening his Arrows," and the "Crucifixion;" in 1841, he produced "Queen Elizabeth in the Globe Theatre," "Queen Mary," "The Death of Jane Shore," "Ave Maria," and "A Parthian Archer." This year was an uncommonly fertile one with Scott, for he not only made the sketches of forty designs for the Pilgrim's Progress (afterwards published by Fullarton and Co.), and painted the "Duke of Gloucester taken into the Water Gate of Calais," "Silenus praising Wine," and "The Challenge;" but he likewise began the great painting of his life, "Vasco de Gama encountering the Spirit of the Cape." From this year till his death he worked on with untiring devotedness, following always his own conception, without in any case humouring the taste of the public. His stern will, amounting occasionally to wilfulness, toiled on in comparative poverty, apparently thoughtless of whether he painted what would please or not. His "Richard III," "The Four Great Masters, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Titian, and Correggio," and the "Belated Peasant," were exhibited in 1843. He produced during the following years—"Wallace the Defender of Scotland," "Sir Roger Kirkpatrick stabbing the Red Cunmin," "The Baron in Peace," and "May." The "Christian listening to the instructions of Piety, Charity, and Discretion," and the "Dead Rising at the Crucifixion," were two of his most remarkable productions. His pictures in 1846 were, "Peter the Hermit," "Dante and Beatrice," "The Fall of the Giants," "Rhea," and the "Ascension." Next year he exhibited on the walls of the academy in Edinburgh only one painting, "The Triumph of Love," a wonderful piece of colouring, considered his masterpiece in this respect. "Time surprising Love," "Children following Fortune," "Queen Mary of Scotland at the place of Execution," "Hope passing over the Sky of Adversity," and the "Baptism of Christ," were all finished in 1848. He was unsuccessful in his competition for the execution of frescoes for the new Houses of Parliament; but this did not much damp his courage. The lamp which had burned so long in comparative obscurity was now to send forth a full, fiery blaze of light before being extinguished for ever. He had just finished his great painting of "Vasco de Gama," on which he had been engaged for years, and the critics were speaking of it with quite unwonted enthusiasm; but it was too late, the painter was dying. He felt he had not yet succeeded in adequately giving expression to his nature; but in this painting, which is now in the Trinity House, Leith, he felt he had come nearer reconciling his own ideas with the public taste than he had ever done before. "If I could," he said a few days before his death, "but have time yet, I think I could meet the public in their own way more, and yet do what I think good. But it is over, and here I lie." He never rose again, but died on the 4th of March 1849.

David Scott was, without doubt, the greatest example on record, among Scottish artists, of a great painter nobly struggling up towards the light and freedom of clear articulate expression in art, whose fire was quenched ere his work was done. His whole life was a fight, and the struggle was not quite ended when his own end came. It was nearing its close, however, and a few years more of the kindly sunshine of success, might, by lessening his opinionativeness, have modified his views of nature, and given him a larger and more genial power of artistic expression. But such was not vouchsafed to him; and men must strive to read and to learn from this man's life, as they have likewise to do from many other mysterious problems, what of noble and great was in it, leaving what of meanness or littleness they may chance to find in it, to be trodden under foot of men. Some beautiful specimens of David Scott's poetry are given by his brother W. B. Scott, in his very able and kindly tribute to the memory of the artist. This Memoir was published in 1850.

Scott, John, Baron Eldon, Lord High Chancellor of England, was born 4th June 1751, in Love Lane, Newcastle. His ancestors were obscure, though respectable, and he had the merit of raising himself, by his talents, to the highest honours in the State.

His grandfather, William Scott, of Sandgate, a suburb of Newcastle, was a clerk to a "fitter"—a sort of water-carrier and broker of coals, engaged either as a merchant or on commission, in conveying coals from the pits in "keels" or barges, to the lower ports of the Tyne. His father, whose name also was William, began life as an apprentice to a "fitter," in which service he obtained the freedom of Newcastle, becoming a member of the guild of Hoastmen; later in life he became a principal in the business, adding to his income by keeping a public-house near the quay of Newcastle, to supply drink to his keelmen, on the modern truck system; he also engaged somewhat in speculations in shipping and the maritime insurance called bottomry. In these various occupations he attained a most respectable position as a merchant in Newcastle; he led a quiet and prudent life outside what is called "society;" and accumulated property worth nearly L20,000. He was twice married; his second wife, the mother of John Scott, was a daughter of Mr Atkinson, also a "fitter" in Newcastle—"a woman," says Lord Campbell (Life of Lord Eldon, p. 4), "who was a model of all the domestic virtues, and of such superior understanding, that to her is traced all the extraordinary talent which distinguished her two sons, William and John—Lord Stowell and Lord Eldon." Besides the two just named, there was a third and intermediate son, Henry, who followed his father's business of merchant and fitter in Newcastle. It may be mentioned, as a peculiar circumstance, that William and John were each of them one of twins, each having been born with a sister.

The boys were educated under the Rev. Hugh Moises, at the grammar school of their native town, where William and John, at least, exhibited excellent talents, and secured the affection of their master, without, however, giving promise of the splendid careers which they were destined to run. This Moises was a gentleman of good scholarship and varied accomplishments, and, if we are to credit Dr W. E. Surtees (Sketch of the Lives of Lords Stowell and Eldon, 1846), exercised a singular influence on the characters of his two distinguished pupils. He combined the opposite qualities of a smart, sparkling, after-dinner talker, and canting hypocrite—mixing in his conversation small jokes, and grave appeals to his conscience and God. William and John assumed each of them one of the elements of this composite character—the former becoming remarkable for the brilliancy of his conversation, and the latter for the frequency with which he would call God to witness the purity of his intentions. Be the origin of this canting habit in John what it may, it must be stated that when under Mr Moises' charge, he was not remarkable for his application to his studies, though his wonderful memory enabled him to make good progress in them; he frequently played truant, and got whipped for doing so; robbed orchards, and indulged in other questionable school-boy freaks, which might here be overlooked as symptoms merely of surplus energy and love of adventure, could it be added that he always came out of his scrapes with honour and a character for truthfulness. The boy is father to the man; and in Johnnie Scott telling fibs to evade the taws, may be seen the rudiments of the Lord High Chancellor falsifying history to escape the merited censure of mankind.

William Scott, who was John's senior by nearly six years, was fortunate enough, on leaving school, to obtain a Durham scholarship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, to which he was eligible through the accident of having been born in the county of Durham. He accordingly proceeded to the University, where he distinguished himself so greatly that, in December 1764, in his eighteenth year, he obtained a fellowship at University College, of which he afterwards became a tutor, an office in which he acquired a high reputation for himself and college. This success determined the career of his youngest brother. When John had finished his education under Mr Moises, his father thought of apprenticing him to his own business, to which Henry had already devoted himself; and it was only through the interference of William, whose affection for him was as strong as his opinion of him was high, that it was ultimately resolved that he should continue the prosecution of his studies. Accordingly, on the 15th May 1766, he entered University College as a commoner, with the view of entering the Church, and obtaining a college living. In the year following he obtained a fellowship, and in the summer of 1771 won the prize for the English essay, the only university prize open for general competition in his time. It does not appear, however, that he distinguished himself at college any more than he had done at school by his application; indeed, in after-life he would speak of himself as having spent his time at the university very much in the pleasures of society, and—though that must have been an exaggeration—of the bottle. It is certain that the ambition with which he went to Oxford was one capable of being satisfied by a very moderate exercise of good abilities. It was not till after his marriage with Miss Elizabeth Surtees, through which he lost, of course, his fellowship, and with it the prospect of church preferment, that he first concentrated his whole energies, with unflagging zeal, on the congenial study of law—to which, throwing theology to the winds, he was now obliged to devote himself. This marriage, indeed, which was celebrated under the most inauspicious circumstances, may be regarded as the turning point in his career towards the great eminence to which he ultimately attained.

Miss Surtees was the eldest daughter of a large family. Her father was Mr Aubone Surtees, banker, Newcastle; her mother, a daughter of Mr John Stephenson, of Knaresdale Hall, Northumberland, a gentleman who had accumulated a large fortune as a merchant. John Scott first met her at Sedgefield Church, in the county of Durham; and, though it is not known how they became acquainted, it is certain that they speedily became bound to one another by a strong mutual affection, to the great disgust of the friends of the young lady, who was beautiful, and had several suitors among the young squirearchy of the north. To give her passion for Scott a chance of dying a natural death, she was sent to live with her uncle, Mr Henry Stephenson, with whose family she spent several months in London and at their seat in Berkshire; carefully, but it would appear not successfully, guarded from intercourse with her lover. Repression, however, in love, as in religion, is a bad policy; as for one case in which the proverb holds, "out of sight out of mind," there are ten in which it is true that "absence makes the heart grow fonder." Bessie Surtees returned to Newcastle in the spring or summer of 1772, and on the 18th November of the same year—the hour of night is lost to history—John Scott, with the aid of a ladder and an old friend, carried her off from her father's house in Sandhill. Over the border and away went the future Lord Chancellor and his lady, to Blackshields, in Scotland, where they were married with just money enough to pay their way back to their outraged parents. The fathers of both of the young people were set against their union; Mr Scott being, however, only opposed to its taking place at that time, as the connection in itself was one which he could not but covet for his son. If Mr Surtees could not compare young John Scott, who had not as yet chosen his profession, or developed a single lineament of his future greatness, with any one of the young squirearchy in love with his daughter, old Mr Scott could not fail to see that the marriage at that time was a blight on his son's prospects, depriving him of his fellowship and chance of church preferment. When, after a few days, the young pair returned to Newcastle, the Surtees' connection cut them. Mrs Henry Stephenson, indeed, with whom Mrs John had spent the preceding winter, wrote to Mrs Surtees that she could not think of introducing them to her daughter, her only child, whose pretty face and good fortune, which afterwards won her the status of Countess of Wexborough, made her an object of general attraction, and to whom the example of an elopement condoned could not safely be offered. Fortunately old Mr Scott, like a prudent man and affectionate father, set himself to make the best of a bad matter, and received them kindly, settling on his son L2000, to bear interest at 5 per cent. till he received the principal. Lord Campbell (Life of Lord Eldon, p. 28) tells a story which, however, he does not profess to believe to be true, to the effect that before this provision was made, a wealthy and childless grocer, taking "compassion on the destitute state of John," offered him half his business, and that the offer would have been accepted had not William interposed, begging his father to send John, wife and all, to Oxford, where he would do for them what he could. To Oxford it is certain they went, where John continued to hold his fellowship for what is called the year of grace given after marriage, and to add to his income by acting as a private tutor. After a time Mr Surtees was induced, through the intercession of his son William, to go through the form of reconciliation with his daughter, on whom he subsequently settled first one thousand pounds, and then another, thus making her provision equal to that enjoyed by young Scott from his father. On the death of his son Edward, Mr Surtees' parental love was quickened by his affliction, and the reconciliation between him and his daughter became total. As for John Scott, his year of grace, fortunately for him, closed without any college living falling vacant; with his fellowship he gave up the church, and turned to the study of law. In 1776 he was called to the bar, to which he ventured at first with the humble ambition of establishing himself as an advocate in his native town, a scheme which his early success led him to abandon, and he soon settled to the practice of his profession in London, and on the Northern Circuit. Thus, at last, was he started, as his relative W. E. Surtees, in the Sketch already referred to, remarks, on the high road to the chancellorship, having just escaped becoming a coal-fitter, a country parson, a provincial barrister, and, to credit Lord Campbell's story, a retailer of figs and raisins.

In the autumn of the year in which he was called to the bar his father died (6th November 1776), leaving him a legacy of L1000 over and above the L2000 previously settled on him; so that with his own and wife's money he had just enough to live on with a pinch—the condition best suited for developing a man's energies—he was above want, but not so far as ever to lose consciousness of its pressure. He was already an excellent lawyer, having devoted his whole powers since his marriage to qualify himself for his profession. We shall now see how he succeeded.

His success to begin was not very remarkable, to judge from the conflicting evidence on the point, for in his old days he loved to exaggerate the difficulties which he had in early life to surmount. But so far is clear from his brother's correspondence, that he succeeded very well on his first circuit, though not so well as to satisfy him of the safety of attempting a London career. On this point he received various opinions from his advisers,—Mr Heron, a solicitor in Newcastle, being one of the few who entertained no doubt of his success. It is certain that he went the length of taking a house in Newcastle, with the view of establishing himself there, and that he did this after his first circuit. He delayed, however, to leave London; and his prospects there suddenly improving, he assigned the Newcastle house to his brother Henry. Still, being careful to hold Newcastle open as a retreat should London fail him, we find him desiring Henry, in a curious letter quoted by Mr Surtees (p. 42 of the Sketch) to give out that the assignation of the house was conditional, and that he retained the right (which was not the fact) to resume the lease whenever he thought fit to remove his establishment to Newcastle,—this misrepresentation (white lie, as he calls it in the letter, a species of lie which be often found serviceable) being intended to prevent any other barrister attempting in the meantime to settle in Newcastle. The fib (it is not known whether the affectionate Henry told it) was unnecessary. In his second year at the bar his prospects began to brighten. His brother William, who by this time held the Camden professorship of ancient history, and enjoyed an extensive acquaintance with men of eminence in London—he was the friend, among others, of the great Dr Samuel Johnson—was in a position materially to advance his interests. Among his friends was the notorious Bowes of Gibside, to the patronage of whose house the rise of the Scott family was largely owing. Bowes having contested Newcastle and lost it, presented an election petition against the return of his opponent. Young Scott was retained as junior counsel, and though he lost the petition he did not fail to improve the opportunity which it afforded for displaying his talents. This employment, in the commencement of his second year at the bar, and the dropping in of occasional fees, must have raised his hopes; and with the encouragement to persevere in London which he received from Mr Heron of Newcastle, was probably the cause of his abandoning the scheme of becoming a provincial barrister. But whatever the causes were which inspired his hopes, it is certain they did not continue to sustain them. There followed a year or two of dull drudgery and few fees—and those directly traceable to friends—and he began to be much depressed. It is probable that in 1779 he thought it prudent to avoid the expense of going on his circuit. This disheartening state of matters, however, was not of long continuance, for in 1780 we find him suddenly “buttering his bread for life,” to use the words of a knowing agent who addressed him on the occasion, by his appearance in the case of Ackroyd v. Smithson, to which in his old age he used fondly to refer, but of which no more can be said here than that it became a leading case settling a rule of law; and that young Scott, having lost his point in the inferior court, insisted on arguing it, on appeal, against the opinion of his employers, and carried it before Lord Thurlow, whose very favourable consideration he won by the ability that he displayed in his argument. The same year Bowes again retained him in an election petition, and in the year following he greatly increased his reputation by his appearance in the Clitheroe election petition, in which he acted as leading counsel; the seniors having suddenly failed their client, and the junior in the case mistrusting himself, having declined to conduct it on his own responsibility. Scott only got his brief about six o’clock of the morning on which the case came on; but notwithstanding the want of preparation made an excellent appearance. From this time his success was certain. In two years he obtained a silk gown, and was so far cured of the modesty which had led him to aspire to the recordership of Newcastle and a retreat there, that he declined accepting the king’s counsellorship if precedence were given over him to his junior, Mr Erskine, though the latter was the son of a peer and a most accomplished orator. He was now on the high way to fortune. His health in the years of his depression had been but indifferent; he complained much of giddiness and swimming in the head; probably his mode of life was too retired. (Mrs Scott’s management was very frugal), and there was too little variety in his life of study. But now his constitution strengthened with the demands made upon it; his talents, and power of endurance, and ambition, all expanded together. He enjoyed a considerable practice in the northern part of his circuit, before parliamentary committees, and at the chancery bar, and was in sight of the honours and emoluments of the solicitor and attorney generalships. By 1787 his practice at the Equity bar had so far increased that he was obliged to give up the eastern half of his circuit (which embraced six counties), and attend it only at Lancaster.

Scott was now at that stage of professional progress when lawyers, in order to obtain the highest honours, must become political; and to politics, accordingly, he betook himself. Shortly after taking the silk gown, he entered Parliament for Lord Weymouth’s close borough of Wooler, which Lord Thurlow obtained for him without solicitation. In Parliament he played his cards with great discretion, giving a general and independent support to Pitt. His first parliamentary speeches were directed against Fox’s India bill. They were unsuccessful. In one he aimed at being brilliant, and becoming merely laboured and pedantic, was covered with ridicule by Sheridan, from whom he received a lesson which he did not fail to improve. Thereafter, abandoning the affectation of eloquence, he contented himself with good sense; and with being remarkable, in spite of the clumsiness and poverty of his style, for the subtlety of his reasonings and the soundness of his law. In 1788 Pitt found it convenient to confer on him the honour of knighthood and the office of solicitor-general; and in the end of this year, as solicitor-general, he attracted attention by his speeches in support of Pitt’s resolutions on the state of the king (George III., who then laboured under a mental malady), and the delegation of his authority. It is said that he drew the regency bill, introduced in 1789,—a bill which was as much calculated to fix on him the hatred of the prince (afterwards George IV.) as to secure him the gratitude of the then king, who recovered before the bill passed into law. In 1793 he advanced to the office of attorney-general, in which it fell to him to conduct the memorable prosecutions for high treason against British sympathisers with French republicanism; among others, against the celebrated Horne Tooke. These prosecutions, in most cases, were no doubt instigated by Sir John Scott, and have been generally condemned as an attempt to pervert the criminal law. They were the most important proceedings, as he himself has said, in which he ever was professionally engaged; but it would be altogether out of place, in this brief memoir, to attempt to give any account of them. He has left on record, in his “Anecdote Book,” a defence of his conduct in regard to them. A full account of the principal trials, and of the various legislative measures for repressing the expressions of popular opinion, for which he was more or less responsible, will be found in Mr Twiss’s admirable book, The Public and Private Life of the Lord-Chancellor Eldon, and in the more masterly and impartial pages of his life, as written by the Lord Chancellor Campbell. In 1799, the office of Chief-Justice of the Court of Common Pleas falling vacant, Sir John Scott’s claim to it was not overlooked; and after seventeen years’ service in the Lower House, he entered the House of Peers as Baron Eldon. In February 1801, the ministry of Pitt, to whom Lord Eldon owed his promotion so far, was succeeded by that of Addington, and as part of the new arrangement, the Chief-Justice ascended the woolsack, having, indeed, been one of those who suggested the reconstruction of the cabinet, excluding his old patron, Pitt. The chancellorship was given to him nominally because of his great anti-Catholic zeal. From the peace of Amiens, 1801, till 1804, Lord Eldon appears to have interfered little in politics. In the latter year we find him intriguing to turn out Addington, and restore Pitt to the office of prime minister. George III. was again afflicted with his malady, and the Chancellor used his right of approaching the royal person to conduct a correspondence between him and Pitt, in the course of which delicate work he actually took occasion to recast Pitt’s letters, to suit them to the moods of the king. The upshot of the intrigue was, says a writer in the Law Review, xi. p. 264, that Mr Pitt shoved Mr Addington out of his place, which he himself took, and retained his coadjutor in the business as chancellor, “his ally, within the besieged garrison, who opened the gate to him under the cloud of night, while the rest slept.” There is but one word by which to denominate his conduct on this occasion—treachery. But the worst of it is, that he has put on record in his autobiography—"The Anecdote Book," already mentioned—an account of his part in the intrigue, which is inconsistent with the truth. (Vide Campbell's Life of Eldon, p. 166, et seq.) The whole transaction is most discreditable to his memory. It is painful, yet amusing, to find him justifying himself to others, by constantly repeating that he was the king's chancellor, and not Addington's—a distinction not known to the constitution—and for which, at any rate, there was but a mere shadow of a foundation in the history of his appointment. It is certain that neither Addington, nor any other minister, would have consented to the appointment of a chancellor who was not to owe him fealty. Lord Eldon was now chancellor under Pitt; but Pitt's new administration was but of short duration. On the 2d February 1806, he sank, under the anxieties of office, and his ministry was succeeded by a coalition, under Lord Granville. The death of Fox, who was the new foreign secretary and leader of the House of Commons, soon however broke up the Granville administration; and in the spring of 1807, Lord Eldon once more, under Lord Liverpool, returned to the woolsack, which, from that time, he continued to occupy for about twenty years, swaying the cabinet, and in all but the name the prime minister of England. It was not till 1827, when the premiership, vacant through the paralysis of Lord Liverpool, fell to Mr Canning, the chief advocate of Roman Catholic emancipation, that Lord Eldon, in the sixty-seventh year of his age, resigned the chancellorship for ever. When, after the two short administrations of Canning and Goderich, it fell to the Duke of Wellington to construct a cabinet, Lord Eldon expected that he would have been included, if not as chancellor, at least in some important office; but he was overlooked, at which he was much chagrined. Notwithstanding that, during his long tenure of office, he was constantly protesting before his God and on his conscience,—the element of the composite character of Moses which fell to his lot became more remarkable in him the older he grew—that he did not covet power, but longed for the retirement of his seat, at Encombe, and the society of his dear "Bessy," we find him again so late as 1835, within three years of his death, in hopes of office under Peel. The desire of it only left him to be replaced by disgust with those friends whom he conceived to have deserted him. He ceased to speak in Parliament in July 1834, but even then, as we know, he had not fully realised the fact that he had survived his influence.

In 1821 Lord Eldon was made an earl by George IV., whom he managed to conciliate, and to turn into an enemy of the Whigs, partly, no doubt, by espousing his cause against his wife (whose advocate he had been in the days of George III., when he used to fête her, and dine, and get drunk with her, at Blackheath), and partly through his well-earned reputation for zeal against the Roman Catholics. No sooner was the prince, whose enmity he had justly incurred, made regent, than Eldon hastened to transfer to him the affection which he had so long nourished for his father. The wife of the son, whom George III. hated, was an injured innocent; but with what Mr Surtees calls his "convenient versatility," the wife of the prospective George IV. immediately became a "d——d——." In the same year, his brother William, who, since 1798, had filled the office of judge of the High Court of Admiralty—the highest dignity of the courts at Doctors' Commons—was raised to the peerage under the title of Lord Stowell.

It is impossible, in a memoir of the brevity to which the present is restricted, to give any more than the merest outline of a life so prolonged, and remarkable for so much activity as Lord Eldon's. It must suffice to state just one or two of the leading facts about his family, and then to give a brief review of his character and career. His dear "Bessy," his love for whom is almost the only beautiful feature in his life, died before him, 28th June 1831. By nature she was a simple character, and by habits acquired during the early portion of Lord Eldon's career, almost a recluse. She was dearly loved by her husband and surviving son, both of whom—the one in his will, the other on his deathbed—desired to be buried close to her. Two sons of their love reached maturity; John, grandfather of the present earl, who died in 1803, at the age of thirty-one; and William Henry John, who died in 1832, at the age of thirty-seven. Lord Eldon himself survived almost all his immediate relations. His brother William died in 1836. He himself died, in London, in his eighty-seventh year, 3d January 1838, leaving behind him two daughters, Lady Frances Bankes, and Lady Elizabeth Repton, and his grandson, all of whom were round his deathbed. During the last years of his life he had sunk a good deal from public notice. "But," says his biographer, Lord Campbell, "his death created a considerable sensation."

When his remains lay in state in Hamilton Place large numbers of all classes went to see the solemn scene; and when the funeral procession, attended by the carriages of the Princes of the blood, many of the peerage, and all the dignitaries of the law, blackened the way, dense crowds stood uncovered, respectfully gazing at it as it passed." He was buried in a vault which he had constructed in the burying-ground of the chapel of Kingston, in Dorsetshire, by the side of his beloved "Bessie." The fortune which he left behind him exceeded in amount half a million of money, mostly invested in the funds; for, like his brother William, though he bought some land, he preferred "the elegant simplicity of the three per cents" to every other security.

The facts already narrated speak volumes as to the talents of Lord Eldon, his powers of managing men, and great political sagacity. He was no legislator,—his one aim in politics was to keep in office, and maintain things as he found them; and almost the only laws he ever helped to pass were laws for popular coercion. For nearly forty years he fought against every improvement in law, as in the constitution; calling God to witness, on the smallest proposal of reform, that he foresaw from it the downfall of his country. Without any political principles, properly so called, and without interest in or knowledge of foreign affairs, he maintained himself and party in power for an unprecedented period by his great tact, and in virtue of his two great political properties—of zeal against every species of reform, and zeal against the Roman Catholics. And yet, though it is most likely that he was a good Christian, and though certainly he frequently appealed to the Supreme Being, excepting when he resided in the country, he never attended public worship. "Although Dr. Johnson," says Campbell, "when dying, had sent him a message to request that he would attend public worship every Sunday, he never was present at public worship in London from the one year's end to the other." And when near his death, and he was talking complacently to Dr. Philpotts, Bishop of Exeter, of his past life, and the bishop desired to draw his attention to the merits of the Redeemer, he resented the attempt to disparage his own as a reflection on his public character! Yet this was the man who, through a long life, was the defender of the Church, and its champion against every other class of religiousists! To pass from his political to his judicial character, is to shift to ground on which his greatness is universally acknowledged. His judgments, which have received as much praise for their accuracy as abuse for their clumsiness and uncouthness, fill a small library. But though intimately acquainted with every nook and cranny of the English law, he never carried his studies into foreign fields, from which to enrich our legal literature; and it must be added, that against the excel- lence of his judgments, in too many cases, must be set off the hardships, worse than injustice, that arose from his protracted delays in pronouncing them. A consummate judge and the narrowest of politicians, he was Doubt on the bench and Promptness itself in the political arena. For literature, as for art, he had no feeling. What intervals he enjoyed from the cares of office, he filled up with newspapers and the gossip of old cronies. Nor were his intimate associ- ates men of refinement and taste; they were rather good- fellows, who quietly enjoyed a good bottle and joke; he uni- formly avoided encounters of wit with his equals. He was all his life a hard drinker, and yet cannot be considered as having been intemperate, for his drink neither hurt his health, disturbed his understanding, nor interfered with the discharge of his duties. He is said to have been parasi- monious, and certainly he was quicker to receive than to re- ciprocate hospitalities; but it is known that he was capable of doing generous and liberal actions; and his mean estab- lishment and mode of life are explained on reference to the retired habits of his wife, and her dislike of company. At the same time it must be mentioned, as looking towards the view that he was miserly, that he never quite forgave his grandson for succeeding to his brother William's lands, without a tincture of them having been given to himself. To conclude, his manners were very winning and courtly, a merit in him not the less that they often bound to him friends whom he merely made such that he might use them. In the circle of his immediate relatives he is said to have always been irresistible, nor can it be doubted that he was a far more loveable person to meet with in society than in history. A charming manner in a man of distin- guished position, like charity, covers a multitude of sins from the sight of those who have to do with him; but in the distance of time the secondary qualities of a man's na- ture become indistinguishable, and he falls to be judged of by the broad lineaments of his character and his leading actions. And it is hard for us now, looking back on his life of intrigue and remembering his "convenient versatility" and meannesses, to detect any trace of affection in our ad- miration for the great Lord-Chancellor. "He is one," says Miss Martineau, "that aftertimes will not venerate; but fortunately for the fame of the larger number of the great ones of the earth, there is a vast neutral ground be- tween veneration and contempt."

As the most appropriate conclusion to this short memoir we append the following account of his person from the pen of Lord Campbell:— "In his person, Lord Eldon was about the middle size, his figure light and athletic, his fea- tures regular and handsome, his eye bright and full, his smile remarkably benevolent, and his whole appearance prepossessing. The advance of years rather increased than detracted from these personal advantages." As he sat on the judgment-seat, the deep thought betrayed in his furrowed brow,—the large eyebrows, overhanging eyes that seemed to regard more what was taking place within than around him,—his calmness, that would have assumed a character of sternness but for its perfect placidity,—his dignity, re- pose, and venerable age, tended at once to win confidence and to inspire respect" (Townsend). "He had a voice both sweet and deep-toned, and its effect was not injured by his Northumbrian burr, which, though strong, was en- tirely free from harshness or vulgarity." (J. F. M'L.)

Scott, Michael, or according to some Sir Michael, was a renowned wizard, once known and feared all over Europe, is supposed to have been one of the Scotts of Balwearie, in Fifeshire, where he is said to have been born in the early part of the thirteenth century, during the reign of Alexander II. After pursuing his studies at home with great success, he went to Paris, and some add to Oxford, where he spent some years in quiet study and meditation. Leaving France he proceeded to the court of Frederic the Second of Germany, a prince distinguished for his literary acquirements and for his munificent pa- tronage of literary men. He was strongly addicted to the studies of judicial astrology, alchemy, physiognomy, chemistry, and chiromancy; and seems to have made great progress in those abstruse inquiries during his stay in Ger- many. Scott is reported to have proceeded to England on the death of his imperial patron in 1250, where he was received with great favour by King Edward I. This por- tion of the narrative does not hang well together, for Edward I. did not ascend the throne till 1272. From England he is said to have proceeded to Scotland, where he remained during the rest of his life. He is reported to have been one of the ambassadors sent to bring the Maid of Norway to Scotland on the death of Alexander III., in 1290; but this seems very doubtful. Sir Robert Sibbald, in his History of Fife and Kinross, cites from an old inden- ture of 1294 to show that "Sir Michael Scott of Balwearie" was then still living; and further, he ascribes to the same individual a share in the embassy to Norway for the cession of the Orkades in the fifth year of Robert I., that is, in 1310. The ordinary account assigns his death to 1291, and it is just probable he may have been confounded with another person of the same name. The writer of his life in Knight's English Cyclopaedia conjectures that the Sir Michael Scott who was engaged in the embassy to Norway in 1310 was a son of the great wizard's. Dempster, who wrote in the beginning of the seventeenth century, did not know, moreover, that the magician was the same person with Sir Michael Scott of Balwearie; but tells us the name Scotus was not that of the astrologer's family, but of his nation (Dempsteri Historia Ecclesiastica Gent. Scot. 1627). Tradition, likewise, varies concerning the place of his sepulture. Some contend for Ulme or Holme Cultram, in Cumberland, while the Scottish tra- dition, which is likely to be the correct one, assigns it to Melrose. It is this tradition which is followed, by Sir Walter Scott in his Lay of the Last Minstrel, where, in the opening of the wizard's grave, the withdrawing from his cold hand of his "Book of Might" forms so striking an episode in the progress of the ballad. All accounts agree in making his books of magic be buried with him wher- ever he was interred. Satchells (Hist. of the Name of Scott), according to Sir Walter Scott, pretends that in 1629, chancing to be at Burgh under Bowness, in Cumber- land, he was shown by a person named Lancelot Scott an extract from the works of Michael Scott, containing the following story:—

"He said the book which he gave me Was of Sir Michael Scott's historic; Which history was never yet read through, Nor never will for fear he do it so. He carried me along the castle then, And showed his written book hanging on an iron pin. His writing pen did seem to me to be Of hardened metal, like steel or acornise; The volume of it did seem so large to me As the Books of Martyrs and Turks historic. Then in the church he let me see A stone where Mr Michael Scott did lie."

Michael Scott, who, from all accounts of him, was a very learned man, seems to have paid the penalty attached to letters during that dark age. He made too much of those conjectural sciences of alchemy, astrology, and chiromancy, but otherwise he unquestionably a great scholar. He is alluded to by Dante, Boccacio, and other early Italian writers, as a great magician, and is severely taken to task by Mirandola in his book against astrology. To this day he is remembered in remote parts of the south of Scotland as a wonderful magician, to whom the whole realms of hell lay open, and who divided his power only with the prince of darkness. The fantastic stories told of his wonderful projects would fill a volume. Sir Walter Scott records of him, in a note to his Lay, that "in the south of Scotland any work of great labour and antiquity is ascribed either to the agency of Auld Michael, or Sir William Wallace, or of the devil." The works ascribed to Michael Scott are the following:—Aristotelis Opera Omnia, cum notis, 2 vols., Ven., 1496; Avicennae de Animalibus ex Arabico in Latinum Transluit, no date; according to Mackenzie (see his Lives of Eminent Scottish Writers); Physiognomia et de Hominis Procreatione, Paris, 1508; Questio curiosa de natura Solis et Luna, Strasburg, 1622; Mensa Philosophica, Leipzig, 1603. This last work has been translated into English under the title of the "Philosopher's Banquet," by W. B., 1633.

Scott, Thomas, an eminent divine of the Church of England, was born on the 16th of February 1747. His father was a grazier in Lincolnshire, in humble circumstances, with thirteen children, of whom Thomas was the tenth. The father was ambitious that one of his sons should belong to a learned profession, and with this view sent the subject of this memoir, when about fifteen years of age, to be apprentice to an apothecary and surgeon at Alford. In this situation he conducted himself so improperly, that after a short time he was dismissed by his master, and sent home in disgrace. His father, mortified and vexed by the conduct of his son, treated him with great harshness, and employed him only in the lowest and most laborious drudgery about the farm. For nine years after his return home in disgrace, he was exposed to great hardships, associated with persons in the lowest stations of society, and often joined in their riotous and abandoned pursuits. Conceiving himself used with unjust severity by his father, his temper was soured, and he became exceedingly irritable and discontented. His employment of tending the sheep left him often in solitude. At these seasons his mind was filled with bitter reflections on the past, and gloomy anticipations of the future; and although his education had been very superficial, yet he had acquired so much as awakened in him an insatiable longing after the pleasures and distinctions of literature; and everything conspired to disgust him with his present employment. When about twenty-five years of age, to the astonishment of every one, he declared his resolution of entering the church. This scheme was strongly opposed by his father, treated as chimerical by his friends, and ridiculed by his neighbours. At length, however, his unconquerable fortitude and patient perseverance overcame every obstacle, and he was admitted to priest's orders in the year 1773, and shortly thereafter was appointed curate of Weston Underwood, with a salary of £50 a year. While here, he applied with indefatigable zeal and industry to the study of sacred and profane literature. His sentiments at first were decidedly Socinian; but a candid and diligent study of the Scriptures gradually opened his eyes to the fallacy and the dangers of the doctrines which he had espoused; and being in the neighbourhood of the old sea-captain, John Newton, the friend of Cowper, who was strongly evangelical and Calvinistic in his views, his acquaintance with that eminent individual may have contributed to this change in his religious sentiments. In the year 1779 he published a small autobiography, entitled the Force of Truth, in which he gave a candid statement of the change in his opinions, and the steps by which he was gradually led to adopt the orthodox and evangelical creed. This publication made a great sensation at the time, and has gone through many editions since. In 1780 he succeeded John Newton at Olney, and in 1785 he accepted the situation of lecturer at the Lock Hospital, with a salary of £80 a year. This, with small sums for occasional lectureships, furnished but a scanty allowance for the support of an increasing family; and when, a few years afterwards, a proposal was made to him by a London book-seller to write a Commentary on the Bible, to be published in numbers, the offer of a guinea a week as remuneration for his writings decided him to engage in the undertaking. This valuable work was well received by the public, and under proper management ought to have been a very profitable speculation; but, owing to the bankruptcy of the bookseller, Scott not only received no remuneration for his labour, but lost all his little savings, and was involved in considerable debt. The first edition, of two thousand copies, commenced in 1802, and was finished in 1809; a second of two thousand copies, in 1807-11; the third of three thousand copies, in six volumes 4to, 1812-14. The fourth was stereotyped, and sold to a great extent. He published a volume of Essays in 1793-94. He also published, in two volumes 8vo, Remarks on the Bishop of Lincoln's Refutation of Calvinism; and Sermons on various subjects, from time to time. His Theological Works were collected and edited by his son, the Rev. John Scott, and published in ten volumes 8vo, in 1823.

In 1803 he left London for the rectory of Aston, Sandford, where he died on the 16th of April 1821. He was a man of eminent piety, somewhat eager and impetuous, but of great sincerity, and sterling honesty of character; of a vigorous intellect, indefatigably diligent in his studies, and a useful and practical preacher.

Scott, Sir Walter, was born at Edinburgh on the 15th of August 1771. "My birth," says he, "was neither distinguished nor sordid. According to the prejudices of my country, it was esteemed gentle, as I was connected, though remotely, with ancient families, both by my father's and mother's side." His paternal great-grandfather was a cadet of the border family of Harden, which has been ennobled within the last few years, and sprung in the fourteenth century from the great house of Buccleuch; his grandfather became a farmer in Roxburghshire, and married a lady who was a relation of his own; and his father, Walter Scott, was a writer to the signet in the Scottish capital. The poet's mother, Anne Rutherford, who was likewise of honourable descent, was the daughter of one of the medical professors in the University of Edinburgh.

Neither Scott's poetical turn nor his extraordinary powers of memory seem to have been inherited from either of his parents. His early years displayed as little precocity of talent as did the steady development of his mind in riper days; and the eventful tenor of his childhood and youth, although their impressions can now be traced vividly in his works, must have seemed, but for these, as little calculated as possible to awaken in his mind a love of the imaginative or romantic.

Delicacy of constitution, accompanied by a lameness which proved permanent, exhibited itself before he had completed his second year, and caused soon afterwards his removal to the country. There, at his grandfather's farmhouse of Sandyknowe, situated beneath the crags of a ruined baronial tower, and overlooking a tract of many miles studded with spots famous in border-history, the poet passed his childhood till about his eighth year, with scarcely any interruption but that of a year spent at Bath. From this early period there are related some interesting anecdotes of his sympathy with the grandeur and beauty of nature. The tenacity of his infantine recollections gave promise of what was afterwards so remarkable a faculty in his mind; and the ballads and legends, which were recited to him amidst the scenes in which their events were laid, co-operated in after-days with family and national pride to decide the bent of the border-minstrel's fancy.

His health being partially confirmed, he was recalled home; and from the end of 1779 until 1783 his education was conducted in the High School of Edinburgh, with the assistance of a tutor resident in his father's house. In the years immediately preceding this change, he had shown decided activity of intellect, and strong symptoms of its division towards literary pursuits; but now, introduced with imperfect preparation into a large and thoroughly trained class, and thrown, for the first time in his life, among a crowd of boisterous boys, his childish zeal for learning seems to have been quenched by ambition of another kind. His memory, it is true, was still remarkable, and procured for him from his master the title of historian of the class; while he produced some school-verses, both translated and original, which were at least creditable for a boy of twelve. Even his intellectual powers, however, were less active in the proper business of the school than in enticing his companions from their tasks by merry jests and little stories; and his place as a scholar scarcely ever rose above mediocrity. But his reputation stood high in the play-ground; where, possessed of unconquerable courage, and painfully eager to defeat the scorn which his physical defects excited, he is described as performing hazardous feats of agility, and as gaining pugilistic trophies over comrades who, that they might have no unfair advantage over the lame boy, fought like him, lashed face to face on a plank. At home, his tutor, a zealous Prebyterian, initiated him, chiefly by means of conversation, in the facts of Scottish history, political as well as ecclesiastical, though without being able to shake those opinions which the boy had already taken up as an inheritance descending from his Jacobite ancestors; and he pursued with eagerness, at every interval which could be stolen from the watchfulness of his elders, a course of reading utterly miscellaneous and undigested, and embracing much that to most minds would have been either useless or positively injurious. "I left the High School," says he, "with a great quantity of general information, ill arranged, indeed, and collected without system, yet deeply impressed upon my mind, readily assorted by my power of connexion and memory, and gilded, if I may be permitted to say so, by a vivid and active imagination."

His perusal of histories, voyages, and travels, fairy tales, romances, and English poetry, was continued with increasing avidity during a long visit which, in his twelfth year, he paid to his father's sister at the village of Kelso, where, lying beneath a noble plane-tree in an antique garden, and beholding around him one of the most beautiful landscapes in Scotland, the young student read for the first time, with entranced enthusiasm, Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry. This work, besides the delight which was imparted by the poems it contained, influenced his mind by giving new dignity, in his eyes, to his favourite Scottish ballads, which he had already begun to collect from recitation, and to copy in little volumes, several of which are still preserved at Abbotsford. "To this period, also," he tells us, "I can trace distinctly the awaking of that delightful feeling for the beauties of natural objects, which has never since deserted me. The romantic feelings which I have described as predominating in my mind, naturally rested upon and associated themselves with the grand features of the landscape around me; and the historical incidents or traditional legends connected with many of them gave to my admiration a sort of intense impression of reverence, which at times made my heart feel too big for its bosom. From this time the love of natural beauty, more especially when combined with ancient ruins, or remains of our fathers' piety or splendour, became with me an insatiable passion, which, if circumstances had permitted, I would willingly have gratified by travelling over half the globe."

In November 1783, Scott became a student in the university of Edinburgh, in which, however, he seems to have attended no classes but those of Greek, Latin, and logic, during one session, with those of ethics and universal history at a later period, while preparing for the bar. At college the scholastic part of his education proceeded even more unpromisingly than it had previously done. For science, mental, physical, or mathematical, he displayed no inclination; and Scott, Sir Walter.

in the acquisition of languages, for which he possessed considerable aptitude, he was but partially industrious or successful. Of Greek, as his son-in-law and biographer admits, he had in later life forgotten the very alphabet. He had indeed entered on the study with disadvantages similar to those which had formerly impeded his progress in Latin; he had, as he informs us, petulantly resolved on despising a study in which he found himself inferior to his competitors; and Professor Dalziel, irritated not only by his carelessness, but by an essay in which he maintained that Ariosto was a better poet than Homer, solemnly pronounced of him, "that dunce he was, and dunce would remain." His knowledge of Latin does not appear to have ever extended farther than enabling him to catch loosely the meaning of his author; although we are informed that for some writers in that tongue, especially Lucan, Claudian, and Buchanan, he had in after life a decided predilection. About the time now under review, he also acquired French, Italian, and Spanish, all of which he afterwards read with sufficient ease; and the German language was learned a few years later, but never critically understood.

It was some time between his twelfth and his sixteenth year that his stores of romantic and poetical reading received a vast increase, during a severe illness which long confined him to bed; and one of his schoolfellows has given an interesting account of excursions in the neighbourhood of the city, during this period, when the two youths read poems and romances of knight-errantry, and exercised their invention in composing and relating to each other interminable tales modelled on their favourite books. The vocation of the romance-writer and poet of chivalry was thus already fixed. His health likewise became permanently robust. The sickly boy grew up into a muscular and handsome youth; and the lameness in one leg, which was the sole remnant of his early complaints, was through life no obstacle to his habits of active bodily exertion, or to his love for out-of-door sports and exercise.

The next step in his life did not seem directed towards the goal to which all his favourite studies pointed. His father, a formal though high-spirited and high-principled man, whose manners are accurately described in his son's novel of Redgauntlet, designed him for the legal profession; and, although he always looked wishfully forward to his son's embracing the highest department of it, considered it advisable, according to a practice not uncommon in Scotland, that he should be prepared for the bar by an education as an attorney. Accordingly, in May 1786, Scott, then nearly fifteen years old, was articled for five years as an apprentice to his father, in whose chambers he thenceforth continued, for the greater part of every day, to discharge the humble duties of a clerk, until, about the year 1790, he had, with his father's approbation, finally resolved on coming to the bar. Of the amount of the young poet's professional industry during those years of servitude we possess conflicting representations; but many circumstances in his habits, many peculiarities in the knowledge he exhibits incidentally in his works, and perhaps even much of his resolute literary industry, may be safely referred to the period of his apprenticeship, and show satisfactorily that at all events he was not systematically negligent of his duties. Historical and imaginative reading, however, continued to be prosecuted with undiminished ardour; summer excursions into the Highlands introduced him to the scenes, and to more than one of the characters, which afterwards figured in his most successful works; while in the law-classes of the university, as well as in the juvenile debating societies, he formed, or renewed from his school-days, acquaintance with several who became in manhood his cherished friends and his literary advisers. In 1791 the Speculative Society made him acquainted with Mr Jeffrey and those other young men whose subsequent celebrity has been to a small extent reflected on the arena of their early training.

Scott's attempts in poetry had now become more ambitious; for, it is said, about the completion of his fifteenth year, he had composed a poem in four books on the Conquest of Granada, which, however, he almost immediately burned, and no trace of it has been preserved. During some years after this time, we hear of no other literary compositions than essays for the debating societies.

In July 1792, being almost twenty-one years of age, he was called to the bar. Immediately after his first circuit, he commenced that series of "raids," as he playfully called them, or excursions into the secluded border-districts, which in a few years enabled him to amass the materials for his first considerable work. His walks on the boards of the Parliament House, the Westminster Hall of Scotland, if they gained him for a time few professional fees, speedily procured him renown among his fellow-lawyers as a storyteller of high excellence; his father's connections, and his own friendships opened for him a ready admission into the best society of the city, in which his cheerful temper and his rich store of anecdotes made him universally popular; and his German studies produced, in 1796, his earliest poetical efforts that were published, namely, the translations of Burger's ballads, Lenora and the Wild Huntsman. The same year witnessed the disappointment of a long and fondly-cherished hope, by the marriage of a young lady, whose image, notwithstanding, clung to his memory through life, and inspired some of the tenderest strains of his poetry.

In the summer of 1797, however, on a visit to the watering-place of Gilsland, in Cumberland, he became acquainted with Charlotte Margaret Carpenter, a young lady of French birth and parentage, whose mother, the widow of a royalist of Lyons, had escaped to England, and there died, leaving her children to the guardianship of their father's friend the Marquis of Downshire. A mutual attachment ensued; and, after the removal of prudential doubts, which had arisen among the connections on both sides, Scott and Miss Carpenter were married at Carlisle in December of the same year.

The German ballads, which, though they met with very little sale, had been justly praised by a few competent critics, served as the translator's introduction to the then celebrated Matthew Gregory Lewis, who enlisted him as a contributor to his poetical Tales of Wonder; and one cannot now but smile to hear of the elation with which the author of Waverley at that time contemplated the patronising kindness extended to him by the author of The Monk. Early in 1788 was published Scott's translation of Goethe's Goetz von Berlichingen, which, through Lewis's assistance, was sold to a London bookseller for twenty-five guineas; but, though favourably criticised, it was received by the public as coldly as the preceding volume. In the summer of 1799, the poet wrote those ballads which he has himself called his "first serious attempts in verse;" the Glenfinlas, the Eve of St John, and the Grey Brother.

After Scott's marriage, several of his summers were spent in a pretty cottage at Lasswade near Edinburgh, where he formed, besides other acquaintances, those of the noble houses of Melville and Buccleuch. The influence of these powerful friends willingly exerted for one whose society was agreeable, whose birth connected him, though very remotely, with the latter of those titled families, and who in politics was decidedly and actively devoted to the ruling party, procured for him, in the end of the year 1799, his appointment as sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire, an office which imposed very little duty, while it gave him a permanent salary of £300 per annum. His father's death had recently bestowed on him a small patrimony; his wife had an income which was considerable enough to aid him greatly; his practice as a lawyer yielded, though not much, yet more than barristers of his standing can usually boast of; and, altogether, his situation in life, if not eminent, was at least strikingly favourable when compared with that which has fallen to the lot of most literary men. Scott, however, now twenty-eight years of age, had done nothing to found a reputation for him as a man of letters; and there appeared as yet to be but little probability that he should attach himself to literature as a profession, or consider it as anything more than a relaxation for those leisure hours which were left unoccupied by business and the enjoyments of polite society.

In 1800 and 1801 those hours were employed in the preparation of the Border Minstrelsy, the fruit of his childish recollections, and of his youthful rambles and studies. The first two volumes appeared in the beginning of the next year, and the edition, consisting of eight hundred copies, was sold off before its close. This work, however, the earliest of which can be said to have given him any general fame, yielded him about eighty pounds of clear profit; being very far less than he must have expended in the investigations out of which it sprang. In 1803 it was completed by the publication of the third volume. Besides the value which the Minstrelsy possesses in itself, in the noble antique ballads, so industriously, tastefully, and yet conscientiously edited, in the curious and spiritedly-used information which overflows through all the prose annotations, and in those few original poems which gave the earliest warning of that genius which as yet had lurked unseen, the work has now a separate value and interest, as forming the most curious of all illustrations for the history of its editor's mind and of his subsequent works. "One of the critics of that day," remarks Mr Lockhart, "said that the book contained 'the elements of a hundred historical romances;' and this critic was a prophetic one. No person who has not gone through its volumes for the express purpose of comparing their contents with his great original works, can have formed a conception of the endless variety of incidents and images, now expanded and embazoned by his mature art, of which the first hints may be found either in the text of those primitive ballads, or in the notes which the happy rambles of his youth had gathered together for their illustration."

But before the publication of the Border Minstrelsy, the poet had begun to attempt a higher flight. "In the third volume," says he, writing to his friend George Ellis in 1803, "I intend to publish a long poem of my own. It will be a kind of romance of border chivalry, in a light-horseman sort of stanza." This border romance was the Lay of the Last Minstrel, which, however, soon extended in plan and dimensions, and, originating as a ballad on a goblin story, became at length a long and varied poem. The first draught of it, in its present shape, was written in the autumn of 1802, and the whole history of its progress has been delightfully told by the author himself, and is well illustrated by his biographer.

In 1803, during a visit to London, Scott, already familiarly acquainted with Ellis, Heber, and other literary men, and now possessing high reputation himself in virtue of the Minstrelsy, was introduced to several of the first men of the time; and thenceforth, bland as he was in manner, and kind in heart, indefatigable and successful in his study of human character, and always willing to receive with cordiality the strangers whom his waxing fame brought about him, it is not surprising to find, that not to know personally Walter Scott, argued one's self unknown. The toleration and kindness of his character are illustrated by the fact, that firm as his own political opinions were, and violently as excitement sometimes led him to express them, not only did he always continue on friendly terms with the chief men of the opposite party in Edinburgh, but several of them were his intimate friends and associates; and he even was for some years an occasional contributor to the Edinburgh Review.

In 1804 was published his edition of the ancient poem During that year and the preceding, the Lay was freely communicated to all the author's friends, Wordsworth and Jeffrey among the rest; and after undergoing various changes, and receiving enthusiastic approval in several quarters from which commendation was wont to issue but sparingly, it was at length published, in the first week of 1805. The poet, now thirty-three years of age, took his place at once as a classic in English literature. Its circulation immediately became immense, and has since exceeded that of any other English poem.

But exactly at this culminating point of the poet's life, we must turn aside from the narrative of his literary triumphs, to notice a step of another kind, which proved the most important he ever took. In one of those interesting communications of 1830, which throw so much light on his personal history, he has told us, that from the moment when it became certain that literature was to form the principal employment of his days, he determined that it should at least not constitute a necessary source of his income. Few literary men, perhaps, have not nourished a wish of this sort; but very few indeed have possessed, like Scott, the means of converting the desire into an effectual resolution. In 1805, as his biographer tells us, he was, "independently of practice at the bar and of literary profits, in possession of a fixed revenue of nearly, if not quite, L.1000 a year." To most men of letters this income would have appeared affluence; but Scott has frankly avowed, that he did not think it such. The truth is, that his mind was already filled with the feeling which speedily became its master-passion, namely, the ambition, not of founding a new family (for that was too mean an aim for his pride of birth to stoop to), but of adding to his own ancestral pretensions that claim to respect which ancient pedigree does not always possess when it stands alone, but which belongs to it by beyond challenge when it is united with territorial possessions. The fame of a great poet, now within his reach, if not already grasped, seemed to him a little thing, compared with the dignity of a well-descended and wealthy Scottish landholder; and, while neither he nor his friends could yet have foreseen the immensity of those resources which his genius was afterwards to place at his disposal for the attainment of his favourite wish, two plans occurred and were executed, which promised to conduct him far at least towards the goal.

The first of these was the obtaining of one of the principal clerkships in the Scottish Court of Session, offices of high respectability, executed at a moderate cost of time and trouble, and remunerated at that time by an income of about L.800 a year, which was afterwards increased to L.1300. This object was attained early in 1806, through his ministerial influence, aided by the consideration paid to his talents; although, owing to a private arrangement with his predecessor, he did not receive any part of the emoluments till six years later.

The second plan was of a different sort, being in fact a commercial speculation. James Ballantyne, a schoolfellow of Scott, a man possessing a good education, and considerable literary talent of a practical kind, having become the editor and printer of a newspaper in Kelso, had been employed to print the Minstrelsy, and acquired great reputation by the elegance with which that work was produced. Soon afterwards, in pursuance of Scott's advice, he removed to Edinburgh, where, under the patronage of the poet and his friends, and assisted by his own character and skill, his printing business accumulated to an extent which his capital, even with pecuniary aid from Scott, proved inadequate to sustain. An application for a new loan was met by a refusal, accompanied, however, by a proposal, that Scott should make a large advance, on condition of being admitted as a partner in the firm, to the amount of a third share.

Accordingly, in May 1805, Walter Scott became regularly a partner of the printing-house of James Ballantyne and Company, though the fact remained for the public, and for all his friends but one, a profound secret. "The forming of this commercial connexion was," says his son-in-law, "one of the most important steps in Scott's life. He continued bound by it during twenty years, and its influence on his literary exertions and his worldly fortunes was productive of much good and not a little evil. Its effects were in truth so mixed and balanced during the vicissitudes of a long and vigorous career, that I at this moment doubt whether it ought, on the whole, to be considered with more of satisfaction or of regret."

From this time we are to view Scott as incessantly engaged in that memorable course of literary industry whose toils advancing years served only to augment, and from which neither the duties of his two professional offices of clerk of session and sheriff, nor the increasing claims made on him by society, were ever able to divert him. He now stood deservedly high in the favour of the booksellers, not merely as a poet and man of genius, but as one possessed of an extraordinary mass of information, and of such habits as qualified him eminently for turning his knowledge to account. He was therefore soon embarked in undertakings, not indeed altogether inglorious, but involving an amount of drudgery to which, perhaps, no man of equal original genius has ever condescended. The earliest of these was his edition of Dryden, which, entered upon in 1805, was completed and published in 1808.

But the list of works in which his poetical genius shone forth continued rapidly to increase amidst his multiplicity of other avocations. From the summer of 1804 till that of 1812, the spring and autumnal vacations of the court were spent by him and his family at Ashiestiel, a small mansion romantically overhanging the Tweed some miles above Melrose, and rented from one of the poet's kinsmen. In this beautiful retreat, at intervals during twelve months, was chiefly composed the magnificent poem of Marmion, which was published in the beginning of 1808. At the same place, likewise, in 1805, were composed the opening chapters of a novel which, on the disapproval of one of the author's critical friends, was thrown aside and not resumed for years.

Scott's commercial engagements must now again be adverted to. In the year 1808 he took a part, perhaps as suggester, certainly as a zealous promoter, of a scheme which terminated in the establishment of the Quarterly Review in London, as a political and literary counterpoise to the Edinburgh Review, the advocate of Whig opinions. But the poet had other than political grounds for embarking in this opposition. He had seriously quarrelled with the firm of Constable and Company, the publishers of the Edinburgh Review, and of several of his own earlier works; and his wish to check the enterprising head of that house in his attempts to obtain a monopoly of Scottish literature, is openly avowed, in Scott's correspondence at the time, as one of his principal motives for framing another scheme. His plan, as far as it was explained either to the public or to his own friends, amounted only to this: That a new publishing house should be set up in Edinburgh, under the management of John Ballantyne, a younger brother of James; and that this firm, with the acknowledged patronage of Scott and his friends, should engage in a series of extensive literary undertakings, including, amongst others, the annual publication of a historical and literary Register, conducted on Tory principles. But, unfortunately both for Scott's peace of mind, and ultimately also for his worldly fortune, there was here, as in his previously-formed connection with the same family, an undivulged secret. The profits of the printing-house had been large; Scott's territorial ambition had been Scott, Sir Walter growing faster than his prospect of being able to feed it; and these causes, inextricably mixed up with pique towards Constable, and kindness for his Kelso protégé, led him into an entanglement which at length ruined both himself and his associates. By the contract of the publishing house of John Ballantyne and Company, executed in May 1808, Scott became a secret partner to the extent of one third. The unhappy issue of this affair will force itself on our notice at a later stage.

In the mean time we see him prosecuting for some time his career of poetical success. The Lady of the Lake, published in 1810, was followed by the Vision of Don Roderick in 1811; by Rokeby in 1812; and by the Bridal of Triermain, which came out anonymously in 1813. His poems may be said to have closed in 1815 with the Lord of the Isles and the Field of Waterloo; since Harold the Dauntless, in 1817, appeared without the writer's name, and the dramatic poems of 1822 and 1830 are quite unworthy of him. In the midst of these poetical employments he made his second and last great appearance as an editor and commentator of English classics, by publishing in 1814 his edition of Swift.

But from 1815 till 1825, Scott's name ceased almost entirely to be before the public as an avowed author; and for those who chose to believe that he was not the writer of the Waverley Novels it must have been a question not a little puzzling, if it ever occurred to them, how this man, who wrote with such ease, and seemed to take such pleasure in writing, was now occupying his hours of leisure. A few articles in the Quarterly Review, such works as Paul's Letters, and annotations in occasional editions of ancient tracts, accounted but poorly for his time during ten years.

About 1813 and 1814 his popularity as a poet was sensibly on the decline, partly from causes inherent in his later poems themselves, and partly from extraneous causes, among which a prominent place belongs to the appearance of Byron. No man was more quicksighted than Scott in perceiving the ebb of popular favour; and no man better prepared to meet the reverse with firmness. He put in serious execution a threat which he had playfully uttered to one of his own family even before the publication of the Lady of the Lake. "If I fail now," said he, "I will write prose for life." And in writing prose his genius discovered, on its first attempt, a field in which it earned triumphs even more splendid than its early ones in the domain of poetry.

The chapters of fiction begun at Ashstiel in 1805, which had already been resumed and again thrown aside, were once more taken up, and the work was finished with miraculous rapidity; the second and third volumes having been written during the afternoons of three summer weeks in 1814. The novel appeared in July of that year, under the title of Waverley, and its success from the first was unequivocal and unparalleled. Although we cannot here give a catalogue of Scott's works, yet in truth such a list of the novels and romances does in itself present the most surprising proof, both of his patient industry, and of the singularly equable command which he had at all times over his mental resources. In the midst of occupations which would have taken away all leisure from other men, the press poured forth volume after volume, in a succession so rapid as to deprive of some part of its absurdity one of the absurd suppositions of the day, namely, that more persons than one were concerned in the novels. Guy Mannering, the second of the series, in 1815, was followed in 1816 by the Antiquary and the First Series of the Tales of My Landlord; Rob Roy appeared in 1817; the Second Series of the Tales in 1818; and in 1819 the Third Series and Ivanhoe. Two romances a-year now seemed to be expected as the due of the public. The year 1820 gave them the Monastery and the Abbé; 1821, Kenilworth and the Pirate; the Fortunes of Nigel, coming out alone in 1822, was followed in 1823 by no fewer than three works of fiction, Perivale of the Peak, Quentin Durward, and St Roman's Well; and the comparatively scanty number of novels in 1824 and 1825, which produced respectively only Redgauntlet and the Tales of the Crusaders, is accounted for by the fact that the author was engaged in preparing a large historical work.

It is impossible even to touch on the many interesting details which Scott's personal history presents during these brilliant years; but it is indispensable to say, that his dream of territorial acquisition was realized with a splendour which, a few years before, he himself could not have hoped for. The first step was taken in 1811, by the purchase of a small farm of a hundred acres on the banks of the Tweed, which received the name of Abbotsford, and in a few years grew, by new purchases, into a large estate. The modest dwelling first planned on this little manor, with its two spare bed-rooms and its plain appurtenances, expanded itself in like manner with its master's waxing means of expenditure, till it had become that baronial castle which we now reverentially visit as the minstrel's home. The hospitality of the poet increased with his seeming prosperity; his mornings were dedicated to composition, and his evenings to society; and from the date of his baronetcy in 1820 to the final catastrophe in 1826, no mansion in Europe, of poet or of nobleman, could boast such a succession of guests illustrious for rank or talent, as those who sat at Sir Walter Scott's board, and departed proud of having been so honoured. His family meanwhile grew up around him; his eldest son and daughter married; most of his early friends continued to stand by his side; and few that saw the poet in 1825, a hale and seemingly happy man of fifty-four, could have guessed that there remained for him only a few more years (years of mortification and of sorrow), before he should sink into the grave, struck down by internal calamity, not by the gentle hand of time.

And yet not only was this the issue, but, even in the hour of his greatest seeming prosperity, Scott had again and again been secretly struggling against some of the most alarming anxieties. On details as to his unfortunate commercial engagements we cannot here enter. It is enough to say, that the printing company of which he was a partner, which seems to have had considerable liabilities even before the establishment of the publishing house, was now inextricably entangled with the concerns of the latter, many of whose largest speculations had been completely unsuccessful; that, besides this, both firms were involved to an enormous extent with the house of Constable; and that large sums, which had been drawn by Sir Walter as copyright-money for the novels, had been paid in bills which were still current, and threatening to come back on him.

In the beginning of 1826, Constable's house stopped payment; and the failure of the firm of Ballantyne, for a very large sum, followed instantly and of course. Probably even the utter ruin which this catastrophe brought upon Scott, was not more painful to him than the exposure which it necessarily involved, of those secret connections, the existence of which even his most confidential friends could till now have at most only suspected. But if he had been imprudent, he was both courageous and honourable; and in no period of his life does he appear to such advantage, as when he stood, as now, beggared, humbled, and covered with a load of debt from which no human exertions seemed able to relieve him. He came forward without a day's delay, and refused to be dealt with as an ordinary bankrupt, or to avail himself of those steps which would have set him free from the claims of his creditors, on surrendering his property to them. He insisted that these claims should, so far as regarded him, be still allowed to subsist; and he pledged himself that the labour of his future life should be unremittingly devoted to the discharge of them. He did Scott, Sir Walter, more than fulfil his noble promise; for the gigantic toil to which, during years after this, he submitted, was the immediate cause that shortened his life. His self-sacrifice, however, effected astonishingly much towards the purpose which it was designed to serve. Between January 1826 and January 1828, he had realized for the creditors the surprising sum of nearly £40,000; and soon after his death the principal of the whole Ballantyne debt was paid up by his executors.

We have now briefly to describe the efforts by which this result was accomplished. After spending at Abbotsford, in 1826, a solitary summer, very unlike its former scenes of splendour, Scott, returning to town for his winter duties, and compelled to leave behind him his dying wife (who survived but till the spring), took up his residence in lodgings, and there continued that system of incessant and redoubled labour which he had already maintained for months, and maintained afterwards till it killed him. Woodstock, published in 1826, had been written during the crisis of his distresses; and the next fruit of his toil was the Life of Napoleon, which, commenced before the catastrophe, appeared in 1827, and was followed by the First Series of Chronicles of the Canongate; while to these again succeeded, in the end of the same year, the First Series of the Tales of a Grandfather. The year 1828 produced the Second Series of both of these works; 1829 gave Anne of Geierstein, the first volume of a History of Scotland for Landor's Cyclopaedia, and the Third Series of the Tales of a Grandfather. The same year also witnessed the commencement of that annotated publication of the collected novels, which, together with the similar edition of the poetical works, was so powerful an instrument in effecting Scott's purpose of pecuniary disentanglement. In 1830 came two Dramas, the Letters on Demonology, the Fourth Series of the Tales of a Grandfather, and the second volume of the History of Scotland. If we are disappointed when we compare most of these works with the productions of younger and happier days, our criticism will be disarmed by a recollection of the honourable end which the later works promoted; and as to the last productions of the mighty master, the volumes of 1831, containing Count Robert and Castle Dangerous, no one who is acquainted with the melancholy circumstances under which these were composed and published, will be capable of any feeling but that of compassionate respect.

The dejection which it was impossible for Scott not to feel in commencing his self-imposed task, was materially lightened, and his health invigorated, by an excursion to London and Paris in the course of 1826, for the purpose of collecting materials for the Life of Napoleon. In 1829 alarming symptoms appeared, and were followed by a paralytic attack in February 1830, after which the tokens of the disease were always more or less perceptible to his family; but the severity of his tasks continued unremitting, although in that year he retired from his clerkship, and took up his permanent residence at Abbotsford. The mind was now but too evidently shaken, as well as the body; and the diary which he kept contains, about and after this time, melancholy misgivings of his own upon this subject. In April 1831 he had the most severe shock of his disease that had yet attacked him; and having been at length persuaded to abandon literary exertion, he left Abbotsford in September of that year, on his way to the Continent, no country of which he had ever yet visited, except some parts of France and Flanders. This new tour was undertaken with the faint hope that abstinence from mental labour might for a time avert the impending blow. A ship of war, furnished for the purpose by the Admiralty, conveyed Sir Walter, first to Malta, and then to Naples; and the accounts which we have, both of the voyage and of his residence in Italy, abound with circumstances of melancholy interest. After the beginning of May 1832, his mind was completely overthrown; his nervous impatience forced his companions to hurry him homeward from Rome through the Tyrol to Frankfort; in June they arrived in London, whence Sir Walter was conveyed by sea to Edinburgh; and, having reached Abbotsford on the 11th of July, he there continued to exist, with few intervals of consciousness, till the afternoon of the 21st of September, when he expired, having just completed the sixty-first year of his age. On the 26th he was buried in the beautiful ruins of Dryburgh Abbey.

In the article Romance, observations have been made on Scott's prose works of fiction. It remains here to add a very few words on the character of his poetry. It would be rash for any who have lived only in the same age with a great poet, and still more rash for those whose earliest conceptions of poetical celebrity and poetical beauty are inseparably associated with his name and his writings, to pronounce peremptorily on the rank which may probably be assigned to him by posterity, among the classics of his native language. But without venturing on such ground as this, there are points of comparison with himself and others, which may warrantably be applied to the illustration of his genius.

In regard to the spirit which animates the poetry of Scott, he stands entirely alone in his age; separated indeed so far from the tendencies of the time, that his universal popularity seems at the first glance to have in it something unaccountable. The passionate intenseness and moody self-inquisition of Byron, the calm thoughtfulness and universal sympathies of Wordsworth, and the wildness of Coleridge's lyrical dreams, are in their several kinds allied to those impulses which have widest sway in these generations of our race; while other poets, Campbell with his gentle pathos, Crabbe with his melancholy anatomy of life, and Moore with his overflow of voluptuous imagery, appeal to emotions which are not so much distinctive of particular periods in the history of mankind, as common to the mind in all its ages. But the world which Scott reproduced in the midst of us, the world of feudalism and chivalry, the transition-stage in the annals of Christian Europe, is one with which the men of modern times have very little communion or fellow-feeling; and the boldness with which he chose his themes was even exceeded by that of the tone in which he ventured to treat them; neither jesting with his own fancies, like Pulci or Ariosto, nor, like Tasso, overlaying the essential substance of the chivalrous life with a garniture of poetry and of delicate feeling which left the genuine light of elder times but few openings to glimmer through; but grappling with his materials in the believing and lofty devotion of an historical poet, and painting for us a picture in which the fierce and fiery spirit of martial adventure inspires the leading groups, and gives the outlines of the piece, while interesting local superstitions and the ascetic religion of Catholicism, the absorbing love of country and the anomalous devotedness of feudalism, form singly or united, the colouring which is spread over different portions of the composition.

For, in essentials, this character of historical truth does belong to the poetry of Scott; not indeed that his view of the old world is one which could have presented itself to those who lived nearer to the times he depicts; but that it is almost as near to truth as consists with the united requirements made by the purposes of his art and the temper of his age, and probably nearer to the truth than any similar attempt which has been made in modern times. Doubtless there are many instances in which he does not preserve this fidelity to the claims of his subject; but it is surprisingly preserved in his best works, and the inferiority of the others is in no small degree owing to their deficiency in it. Indeed he goes even farther than this; for he not only presents to us the scenes of old, but he invests them in a dress substantially the same as that in which they would have been clothed by poets contemporary, or nearly succeeding them, if these, for their metrical romances or their ballads of love and war, had possessed equal appliances, in a formed language, and in extended views as to the principles of the poetical art.

The Lay of the Last Minstrel is really a long border-ballad; and, inspired by the poet's early recollections and studies, and nourished not only by those copious sources of illustration of which the Border Minstrelsy furnishes abundant specimens, but by affectionate familiarity with the landscapes of his story, this work possesses, both in spirit and in details, at once a fervour and a unity superior to any of his others. Very little indeed, either of incident or character, would require to be withdrawn from it, as foreign to its essence. Marmion is pitched in another key, but is still antique, and, though less rich in characteristic details of the olden time, and rather less free from modern admixtures, is pervaded almost throughout by the chivalrous spirit, while that spirit blazes forth at several points with a splendour which the poet elsewhere never equalled. The poem is a metrical romance of history; the full development of a species of composition in which Barbour had but faintly traced the design. The Lady of the Lake cannot be so readily referred to any one class of our old national poems; in which, indeed, that moving panorama of gorgeous landscapes, amidst which the personages exist, is, as a prominent feature, quite unknown. But this very feature, and the placidly romantic air which breathes through most of the adventures, at once determine its type as a kind of pastoral romance (instanced more frequently in foreign literature than in our own), and diffuse over the work a singular charm, which hides from us much vagueness, both in the characters and in the historical details of manners and ideas. Rokeby, the next in the list, is confessedly the weakest of its author's larger poems, as it is also that in which he has removed himself farthest from his ordinary models. Defective alike in unity of spirit and in historical fidelity, it would, but for some poetical gems which sparkle through, deserve no higher name than that of a novel in verse. In the Lord of the Isles we behold a return to the poet's higher sources of inspiration; for we have here another metrical chronicle, a second Marmion, every way inferior to the first.

It is abundantly evident that the task which Scott has thus performed, of creating anew the scenes and characters of a fierce and chaotic stage of society, allowed him ample room for arousing some of the strongest emotions which poetry can awaken. Sometimes, indeed, he errs by applying himself to the excitement of feelings which, though strictly within his limits, are not broadly enough impressed on the minds of most men to find any lively sympathy. Such are the feelings of superstitious awe and delight in supernatural invention, feelings which are chiefly addressed in his two anonymous poems, and to whose prevalence these works, equal in some points to anything in verse he ever wrote, mainly owe their want of general interest and popularity. But he far oftener throws himself on those principles which are universally sympathized with and appreciated, not indeed arousing all of them with equal skill, but compounding, out of the use he makes of all, a representation which is at once sufficiently true and widely attractive. That which was really the master-feeling of the times he delineates, the love of warlike adventure, is the path in which he has been by far most successful. In tenderness or passion he does not stand by any means first among the poets of our day; and even in those exhibitions of chivalrous generosity and lofty feeling which are so closely consonant to his stories and their actors, he is, although often delightfully felicitous, yet by no means without his equals; but there is no poet of our times, and very few in any age or country, who have portrayed with such admirable force and fire the soldier's thirst for battle, and the headlong fury of the field of slaughter. Throughout all his works there occur bursts of this sort, which would of themselves have placed him high among poets of the class, even though he had never written his noblest passages of warfare, the knightly combat of Fitzjames and Roderick, or the magnificent battle-piece which closes Marmion. His clear and cheerful, yet delicately sketched and poetically elevated descriptions of natural scenery, less strong in their outlines than some poetry of a similar kind, and less vivid in their colouring and chiaroscuro than others, but always pleasing and original, and often far more, may probably be said to be, after their warlike temper, the most distinctive feature of his poems.

If the moral tone of Scott's poetry is not high, it must be at least admitted that it is uniformly inoffensive; and if most passages excite us less violently than those of some other poets, there is none whose works leave on the mind a more pleasing expression of content and hopefulness. Perhaps, in his views of human society, the only thing which can at all jar on the feelings of any, is that tendency to aristocratic hauteur, which, not indeed shrinking from contact with the lower orders, and willingly recognising and esteeming many of their virtues, yet considers them strictly as the dependents of higher men, and is silent on every other relation they can be supposed to hold. This feeling, so palpable both in his poetry and in his romances, is, it must be remarked, quite in keeping as a feature of the times he describes in the former class of writings; and even as an element in modern poetry, there doubtless are, after all, many who will esteem the sentiment a just one.

In skill of execution, as respects both ease of expression and melody of versification, there is in the poems an exceedingly observable progress, not at all corresponding to their respective degrees of real merit. Both in diction and in music there is a very wide distinction between the first few stanzas of the Lay and the most finished passages in Rokeby or the Lord of the Isles. Not less noticeable are the variations in point of poetical ornament, a thing very different from genuine poetical force or beauty. In the Lay, the most poetically conceived of all the works, there are wonderfully few passages of the kind that furnish showy quotations, though those of this class that do occur are of a very high order. Marmion, except in the Introduction, scarcely contains more; the Lady of the Lake possesses such far more abundantly; while Rokeby overflows with couplets poetically sententious; and the Lord of the Isles again returns towards the earlier manner.

There is one point of view in which the poems offer a very interesting subject of consideration, not for their own sake, but in their relation to those more celebrated and certainly higher works which succeeded them. They may be regarded as in some sense preparations, or, in the artist's phrase, studies, for the novels and romances. The field of speculation which is thus presented may furnish some intelligent inquirer with extremely apt materials for illustrating the poet's genius; but the mine is too wealthy to be here so much as opened. It may be remarked, however, that while the latter poems in their spirit approach far nearer to the prose romance than the earlier ones, thus in some degree indicating the operations which were going on in the author's mind, yet it is from the earlier that the romances have derived by far the most plentiful hints and materials. In the slightly sketched personages of the poems we may frequently discover elements which were expanded into the finished characters of the prose works, and this not only in the dignified and poetical, but even in the comic, as one instance of which may be cited the Friar John of Norham as the first outline of Robin Hood's Tuck. In incident, the borrowings from the poems are less direct and palpable; and the most obvious are the obligations which, both in this and the other particular, the Monastery owes to the Lay, and Ivanhoe to Marion. The Lady of the Lake, also, both in its scenery and its draughts of Highland character, may be considered as the preface to Waverley.

(w. s.—o.)

Scott, William, Baron Stowell, was born 17th October 1745, at Heworth, in the county of Durham, whether his mother, being with child, had, a few days before, removed; deeming it prudent, as the Scotch rebels were advancing from Prestonpans, to be confined there rather than in Newcastle. William was the eldest son of Mr William Scott, coal-fitter and merchant, Newcastle, and brother of Lord Eldon; and a short notice of his family circumstances and early education will be found in the preceding memoir of his distinguished brother.

When he was in his sixteenth year, a scholarship for the diocese of Durham became vacant at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and his father, aware of his great talents, resolved that he should avail himself of his accidental birth in the county of Durham to become a candidate for it. He accordingly proceeded to Oxford, and there, on the 24th February 1761, after an examination, which he passed with great distinction, he won the vacant scholarship. His youthful reputation, both in his native town and at Oxford, having suggested that he should choose the bar for his profession, he next, on the 24th June 1762, when between sixteen and seventeen years old, was entered as a student at the Middle Temple. On the 20th November 1764 he took his bachelor's degree, and on the 13th of the following month was elected a probationary fellow of University College, for his eligibility to which he was again indebted to the accident of having been born in the county of Durham. He was, soon after, also elected by the same society a college tutor; and having now, from his fellowship and tutorship together, a liberal income, from which he could even manage to save somewhat, he hesitated to carry out his original plan of going to the bar, fearing to relinquish the certainty which he possessed for the chances of that precarious profession. In 1767 he took the degree of master of arts, and in May 1772 proceeded to B.C.L. In 1774 he was elected by the members of convocation, after a contest, to the Camden chair of ancient history, from which, about four years afterwards, he delivered a course of lectures, which attracted crowded audiences, and brought him into high and wide reputation. These lectures, which are believed yet to exist in manuscript, he could never be induced to publish, probably because he thought they had received greater praise than they deserved, and was unwilling, by exposing them to closer criticism, to risk the fame they had brought him.

In 1776, his father having died and left him his executor, he resolved on following the profession of an advocate at Doctors' Commons, bitterly regretting that his father's reserve as to his means had delayed him so long from entering on an active career. In the same year he retired from his office of college tutor, still, however, retaining his professorship, and continuing to reside mostly in the university, till after he had taken his degree of D.C.L., which he did in 1779. He was called to the bar on the 11th February 1780, having three months previously (in the thirty-fifth year of his age) been admitted at Doctors' Commons into the Faculty of Advocates. By this time he enjoyed an extensive and intimate acquaintance with many eminent men in the metropolis. It has been mentioned, in the memoir of his brother John, that he took after that phase of Moises, his old master, in which he excelled in lively and brilliant conversation; his wit improved with his learning and knowledge of the world; and what with his "clubable qualities," and the patronage of his friend, Dr Johnson, to whom he had been introduced, in University College, by their common friend Chambers (afterwards Sir Robert), he already possessed, when he removed to London, a locus standi in its most intellectual society. So early, indeed, as 1778 he had been elected, through Johnson's influence, a member of the famous Literary Club.

In 1781 Mr William Scott married Anna Maria, the eldest daughter and coheir of Mr Bagmall of Early Court, Berkshire, a gentleman of moderate pretension. To some the lady's purse appeared more attractive than her person, but there is no reason for thinking that the marriage proved an unhappy one. At any rate, his experience of the fair sex was such as might have justified him in an easy marriage of convenience. In early life he had loved a Miss Jane Reay, daughter of a townsman of his own, who is said to have reciprocated his affection; but her father, ambitious of a higher alliance for his daughter, objected to their union, and the facile young lady (how unlike the gentle "Beasy" of his brother John) married a man of good estate and family. There is reason to think that William and Jane, in their old age, and when both their married lives were over, retained the old feeling for one another! Mr Surtees says, "She, as well as her early admirer, lived to a very advanced age; and he, when an octogenarian peer, requested, through a common friend, permission to send her an engraving of himself, which had just been published. The request was gracefully acceded to, and the engraving sent. Was not this the romance of real life?" It may be added, such are the fates that regulate marriages! After losing Jane, William Scott went, like a man of sense, and fell in love elsewhere, but with equal bad fortune. He failed with the "fair," says Mr W. E. Surtees (the Sketch, p. 29), probably because there was too little of "the devil" in his composition. Be that as it may, he had certainly gone through an experience to teach him to consult his head rather than his heart in his next adventure.

In the spring of 1781 Dr Scott's year of silence expired, and he entered on the practice of his profession, with every guarantee of success. For practice in the ecclesiastical courts he was fitted by his long residence in the university, and familiarity with the rights, interests, difficulties, and dangers of the Church; while, as the son of a merchant and shipowner, educated in a large seaport-town, he brought a knowledge of shipping to aid him in practising in the Courts of Admiralty such as few advocates have ever attained to. His talents and great learning at once brought him a large practice. So early as the spring of 1782 we find him writing that he is "exceedingly oppressed with business." This success soon led to his promotion. In 1783 he was appointed to the office of registrar of the Court of Faculties. In 1788 the Bishop of London appointed him judge of the Consistory Court; and the Archbishop of Canterbury, his vicar-general or official principal. In the same year he was knighted, appointed advocate-general, and admitted a privy councillor. In 1798 he attained the highest dignity in connection with his courts, being appointed judge of the High Court of Admiralty. So early as 1790 Sir William Scott had attempted to enter Parliament for his university, but failed. In 1794 he was elected member for the nomination borough of Downton, but was unseated on petition. He afterwards entered Parliament for the same borough in 1790. He was again returned for the same borough in 1796, and on the retirement of Francis Page, Esq., in 1801, from the representation of Oxford, was gratified by being elected member for his university; and this seat he continued to hold till 1821, when, on the occasion of the coronation of George IV., he entered the House of Peers as Baron Stowell of Stowell Park. He retained his place on the bench till 1828. As a politician, Lord Stowell, like his brother, was an uncompromising Conservative, but, excepting that he appeared to vote in support of his party, he took little or no part in politics in either house. During the earlier years of his parliamentary life—if such it may be called—he never spoke at all; nor was he instrumental in carrying any measures into law, excepting one or two affecting the Established Church, of which he was on all occasions a staunch supporter, regarding himself as representative of the clergy, in his double character of judge of the ecclesiastical courts and member for Oxford.

Lord Stowell was twice married. By his first wife he had four children, of whom two, a son and daughter, died in infancy. His eldest daughter, who survived him, was twice married, first to Colonel T. Townsend, a gentleman of Warwickshire, and next to Viscount Sidmouth. His son, William, destroyed his constitution by intemperate habits, and died at the age of forty, about two months before his father. Lord Stowell's first wife died on the 4th September 1809, and on the 10th of April 1813 he was married to Louisa Katherine, Marchioness Dowager of Sligo (widow of the first Marquis and daughter of Earl Howe), with whom he got acquainted, singularly enough, through the circumstance of his having presided, in the preceding December, at the admiralty sessions at the Old Bailey, on the trial of her son, Lord Sligo, for inveigling some seamen from one of the king's ships to serve on board his yacht. This marriage was a very unhappy one, for the lady at least, a circumstance which was foreseen by Lord Eldon, who refused to countenance it by being present at the ceremony. The lady was liberal and generous; Stowell was narrow and parsimonious. Her ladyship, having been for many years of her life the nurse of a sick husband, was weaned from society. Lord Stowell was never so happy as when out shining in society. He went feasting and drinking, and left his poor wife miserable at home. To her the marriage was a revelation of meanness under the courtly and polished manner of the man who had won her hand; to him the quiet lady with her liberality was an unpardonable spendthrift and bore. In 1817 she proposed a trip to Paris, being anxious to exhibit that metropolis to a favourite niece. He had no objection. She went thither, and at the same time he himself started for a tour in Switzerland. She took suddenly ill, and died in Amsterdam. He finished his tour, leaving Switzerland a fortnight after he heard of her death.

On the 28th January 1836, Lord Stowell died, in the 91st year of his age. He was unquestionably one of the ablest and most accomplished lawyers that ever sat on a judgment-seat. "There is no one," says W. E. Surtees (The Sketch, p. 145), "so ambitious of eccentricity as to deny his judgments excellence of the highest order. The statesman in the admiralty, the moral philosopher in the consistory court, will find his own more appropriate instruction; while the scholar who may turn to the reports of Lord Stowell's decisions in either court, will admire the infallible felicity of the language on which his judicial thoughts are winged, and acknowledge that his character has been formed on the purest models of ancient and modern elegance." And Lord Brougham, in his notice of Lord Stowell in the Historical Sketches of Statesmen of the time of George III., has paid this tribute to his memory:—"His vast superiority was apparent, when, as from an eminence, he was called to survey the whole field of dispute, and to marshal the variegated facts, disentangle the intricate mazes, and array the conflicting reasons which were calculated to distract and suspend men's judgments. . . . If ever the praise of being luminous could be bestowed upon human composition, it was upon his." Some of his judgments, it has further been said, may be called almost revelations of the law, being expositions of large and intricate questions which had never before been thoroughly investigated, but which he completely cleared up and set at rest. It lies in the observations already made that he surpassed Lord Eldon in literary talent. His style was as remarkable for polish and crystal clearness as that of his brother for its clumsiness and obscurity.

But though a great lawyer, he was not a great man. He was a great eater, and, says Mr. Surtees, "the feats which he performed with the knife and fork were eclipsed by those which he would afterwards display with the bottle." His habits were slovenly and unclean. "The hand that could pen the neatest of periods was itself often dirty and unwashed; and the mouth which could utter eloquence so graceful, or such playful wit, fed voraciously, and selected the most greasy food." Then, again, he was an unquestionable miser. He kept a very mean establishment. Point as he was of his wine, he would drink less at his own than at other tables. "He could drink any green quantity," as was wittily observed by his brother, Lord Eldon, but was abstemious where he had to pay. The most painful fact that remains to be recorded respecting him is, that when his only son William had formed an attachment that was unexceptionable; he, though it may be said, he rolled in riches, would not make him a sufficient allowance to enable him to marry. It has been stated already, that this son died from the effects of intemperate habits; it must now be added, that but for this disappointment the young man might have lived. In despair he plunged into excesses. His father just survived him, and his great wealth was gathered up by collaterals. Perhaps his fondness of poking about London visiting cheap shows, was connected more with his avarice than with his curiosity. Whatever show could be visited for a shilling or less, he visited. After his elevation to the peerage, he was actually seen coming out of a penny show in London—cheap excitement! Like Lord Eldon, though a great friend of the church, he never attended public worship; what had been said of his brother might have been said of him, that he was more properly a buttress of the church than a pillar, for he was never seen inside it. At the same time there is no reason to doubt that he was a good Christian; probably, like many other university men, he had a surfeit of chapels when at college, and shuddered at the thought of again entering one. With all his failings, and notwithstanding his aversion which increased with his years, Lord Stowell must be regarded as having been, after a peculiar sort, a kindly, amiable man. As Lord Eldon is quite a loveable person when he goes into retirement with his "Bessie," so does Lord Stowell force our regards when we consider him as a brother and son. The union of the Scott family was the secret of their rise in life, and the most favourable light under which they can now be regarded is that of their family affections.

(J.F.M.)