bly. The separation of a portion of the tail, here contemplated, could hardly be accomplished without carrying off some portion of the gravitating matter."

possibly inquire whether there is any particular reason for remembering a man at the distance of precisely one hundred years from his first appearance in the It happens singularly enough that one world. Would not a more appropriate of the two comets which have alone as yet epoch be at the expiration of a similar pebeen fairly associated with meteoric sys- riod from the appearance of the Lay of tems was observed by Sir John Herschel, the Last Minstrel or of Waverley? And "with septuagenarian eyes," he men- that suggests the further question whether tions, — and that his remarks respecting the celebration, if postponed to the year its appearance bear in an interesting man- 1905 or 1914, would produce any vivid enner on the subject of the connection be- thusiasm. The doubt would have seemed tween comets and meteors. I refer to the profane a very few years ago; and yet we great comet of 1862, which has been shown may already, perhaps, find some reason by Schiaparelli to travel in the same path, for suspecting that the great Wizard" or very nearly so, as the August meteors. has lost some of his magic power, and that With Sir John Herschel's account of this the warmth of our first love is departed. comet I shall conclude this paper, already | How many of those ladies and gentlemen ⚫ drawn out to a greater length than I had who recently appeared in costume at the proposed. It will be noticed that the ob- Waverley Ball were able to draw upon the served appearances serve to connect sev- stores of their memory, and how many eral of the facts already referred to. Af- were forced to cram for the occasion? A ter noting the circumstances under which question, perhaps, not to be asked; but this comet came into view, Herschel re- certainly one not to be answered with too marks that "it passed us closely and much confidence by those who reflect upon swiftly, swelling into importance, and dy- the stock of information generally at the ing away with unusual rapidity. The phe- disposal of a well-educated English man nomena exhibited by its nucleus and head or woman. We have heard it said-in were on this account peculiarly interesting private, be it understood, for such utterand instructive, it being only on very rare ances do not so easily find their way into occasions that a comet can be closely in- print, and least of all do they intrude spected at the very crisis of its fate, so into the speeches of centenary orators that we can witness the actual effect of that Scott is dull. People whisper dark the sun's rays on it. In this instance, the hints of their hesitating allegiance to litpouring forth of the cometic matter from erary monarchs before the voice of rebelthe singularly bright and highly condensed lion swells into open expression. Yet even nucleus, took place in a single compact a muttered discontent sounds strange to stream, which, after attaining a short distance, equal to rather less than a diameter of the nucleus itself, was so suddenly broken up and dispersed as to give, on the first inspection, the impression of a double nucleus. The direction of this jet varied considerably from day to day, but always declined more or less from the exact direction from the sun," It seems far from improbable that what was here witnessed represented the actual generation now of August meteors, and that at some more or less distant epoch portions of the matter thus swept away from the comet of 1862 may take their part in producing a display of falling stars.

From The Cornhill Magazine. SOME WORDS ABOUT SIR WALTER SUTT. VARIOUS enthusiastic persons have recently been celebrating the centenary of Sir W. Scott's birth. Some people may

middle-aged persons, who, in their schoolboy days, could spout the Death of Marmion or the Description of Melrose Abbey, till wise elders checked their undue excitement, or who followed with breathless interest the heroics of Meg Merrilies, and felt for the gallant Locksley almost as warm an enthusiasm as for the immortal Shaw the Lifeguardsman. Perhaps even the fame of that hero is growing dim. We don't talk about the Battle of Waterloo so much as formerly, and should rather blush to quote the "Up, Guards, and at them," even if historical criticism had not ruined that with so many other fine phrases. And yet, to couple the name of Scott with dulness sounds profane, especially when one remembers the kind of literature which is bought with avidity at railway bookstalls, and, for some mysterious reason, supposed to be amusing. If Scott is to be called dull, what reputation is to be pronounced safe? Will our descendants yawn portentously over the Pickwick Papers, wonder how anybody could have

been amused by the humours of Dick Swiv- and the outlines of what once charmed the eller, and even find fault with Mrs. Gamp? world be traced only by Dryasdust and Greater revolutions have taken place in the historians of literature? It is a painthe popular taste. One literary dynasty ful task to examine such questions imsucceeds ano her with strange rapidity; partially. This probing a great reputaand the number of writers who enjoy tion and doubting whether we can come what we are pleased to call immortality is to anything solid at the bottom, is specialsingularly small. How many English au- ly painful in regard to Scott. For he has, thors between Shakspeare and Scott are at least, this merit, that he is one of those still alive, in the sense of being familiar, rare natures for whom we feel not merely not merely to students, but to the ordina- admiration but affection. We cherish the ry bulk of conventionally "educated per- fame of Byron or Pope or Swift, in spite sous?" Not long ago an author took for of, not on account of, their personal charhis motto a passage from one of Pope's acters; if we satisfied ourselves that their most famous poems, which was known by literary reputations were founded on the heart to all our grandfathers. Amongst sand, we might partly console ourselves a large circle of highly intelligent readers with the thought that we were only descarcely one could trace it to its origin. priving bad men of a title to genius. But A few fragments of Pope have fixed them- for Scott most men feel in even stronger selves in our stock of generally-known measure that kind of warm fraternal requotations, and he is far less dead than gard which Macaulay and Thackeray exmost of our great reputations; but in pressed for the amiable, but, perhaps, spite of his vivacity and his brilliance, the rather cold-blooded, Addison. The manbulk of his writings has retired from our liness and the sweetness of the man's nature tables to our bookshelves. How many predispose us to return the most favourpeople can now read Clarissa Harlowe able verdict in our power. And we may add which so many great authorities have pro- that Scott is one of the last great English nounced to be the masterpiece of Eng-writers whose influence extended beyond lish fiction? Would any large minority his island, and gave a stimulus to the deof first-class men be ready to stand an ex-velopment of European thought. We canamination in Tom Jones or Tristram Shan- not afford to surrender our faith in one to dy? But our scepticism is, perhaps, lead- whom, whatever his permanent merits, ing us upon dangerous ground. It is we must trace so much that is characterenough to say that, if the charge of dul-istic of the mind of the nineteenth centuness merely means that the same change ry. Whilst, finally, if we have any Scotch is passing over Scott which has already blood in our veins, we must be more or dimmed the glory of Fielding and Rich- less than men to turn a deaf ear to the ardson and Pope, and almost every emi-promptings of patriotism. When Shaknent writer in the language, it may be ad-speare's fame decays everywhere else, the mitted without offence. It means merely inhabitants of Stratford-on-Avon, if it still that he has lost the gloss of novelty which alone induces those people to read whose reading is habitually conducted at a gallop. Nobody can kill an hour in an express train who has been dead for twentyfive years. The question, however, must be Let us, however, take courage, and, with asked whether the decay of interest in such impartiality as we may possess, enScott does not mean something more than deavour to sift the wheat from the chaff this. The lapse of time must, in all cases, And, by way of following a safe guide, corrode some of the alloy with which the let us dwell for a little on the judgment pure metal of all, even of the very first pronounced upon Scott by one whose writers, is inevitably mixed. That Scott name should never be mentioned without adulterated his writings with inferior ma-profound respect, and who has a special terials, and in some cases beat out his gold claim to be heard in this case. Mr. Caruncommonly thin, cannot be denied. But lyle is both a man of genuis and a Scotchwhen time has done its worst, will there man. His own writings show in every be some permanent residue to delight a line that he comes of the same strong distant posterity, or will his whole work Protestant race from which Scott received gradually crumble into fragments? Will his best qualities. "The Scotch national some of his best performances stand out character," says Mr. Carlyle himself, "origlike a cathedral amongst ruined hovels, or inates in many circumstances. First of will they all sink into the dust together, 'all, the Saxon stuff there was to work on;

exist, should still revere their tutelary saint; and the old town of Edinburgh should tremble in its foundations when a sacrilegious hand is laid upon the glory of Scott.

but next, and beyond all else except that," though never so clear-starched, blandin the Presbyterian gospel of John Knox. smiling, and beneficent, he absolutely It seems a good national character, and, would have no trade with. Their very on some sides, not so good. Let Scott sugar-cake was unavailing. He said with thank John Knox, for he owed him much, emphasis, as clearly as barking could say little as he dreamed of debt in that quar-it, Acrid-quack, avaunt!'" But once, ter! No Scotchman of his time was more when "a tall, irregular, busy-looking man entirely Scotch than Walter Scott: the came halting by," that wise, nervous little good and the not so good, which all Scotch-dog ran towards him, and began "fawnmen inherit, ran through every fibre of ing, frisking, licking at the feet" of Sir him." Nothing more true; and yet the words would be even more strikingly appropriate if for Walter Scott we substitute Thomas Carlyle. Even Sartor Resartus loses preceptibly unless it is read with a broad Scotch accent. And to this source of sympathy we might add others. Who in this generation could rival Scott's talent for the picturesque, unless it be Mr. Carlyle? Who has done so much to apply the lesson which Scott, as he says, first taught usthat the bygone ages of the world were actually filled by living men, not by protocols, state-papers, controversies, and abstractions of men?" If Scott would in old days-we still quote his critic have harried cattle in Tynedale or cracked crowns in Redswire, would not Mr. Carlyle have thundered from the pulpit of John Knox his own gospel, only in slightly altered phraseology that shams should not live but die, and that men should do what work lies nearest to their hands, as in the presence of the eternities and the infinite silences?

That last parallel reminds us that if there are points of similarity, there are contrasts both wide and deep. The rugged old apostle had probably a very low opinion of moss-troopers, and Mr. Carlyle has a message to deliver to his fellow-creatures which is not quite according to Scott. And thus we see throughout his interesting essay a kind of struggle between two opposite tendencies a genuine liking for the man, tempered by a sense that Scott dealt rather too much in those same shams to pass muster with a stern moral censor. Nobody can touch Scott's character more finely. There is a perfect little anecdote told in charming Carlylese which every reader must remember: how there was a "little Blenheim cocker" of singular sensibility and sagacity; how the said cocker would at times fall into musings like those of a Wertherean poet, and lived in perpetual fear of strangers, regarding them all as potentially dog-stealers; how the dog was, nevertheless, endowed with "most amazing moral tact," and specially hated the genus quack, and, above all, that of avril-quack. These," says Mr. Carlyle,

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Walter Scott. No reader of reviews could have done better, says Mr. Carlyle; and indeed, that canine testimonial was worth having. We prefer that little anecedote, told with a humour which reminds us oddly of Lamb, even to Lockhart's account of the pig which had a romantic affection for the author of Waverley. Its relater at least perceived and loved that unaffected benevolence, which invested even Scott's bodily presence with a kind of natural aroma, perceptible, as it would appear, to very far-away cousins. But Mr. Carlyle is on his guard, and though his sympathy flows kindly enough, it is rather harshly intercepted by his sterner mood. He cannot, indeed, but warm to Scott at the end. After touching or the sad scene of Scott's closing years, at once ennobled and embittered by that last desperate struggle to clear off the burden of debt, he concludes with genuine feeling. It can be said of Scott, when he departed he took a man's life along with him. No sounder piece of British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of time. Alas, his fine Scotch face, with its shaggy honesty, sagacity and goodness, when we saw it latterly on the Edinburgh streets, was all worn with care, the joy all fled from it, ploughed deep with labour and sorrow. We shall never forget it we shall never see it again. Adieu Sir Walter, pride of all Scotchmen; take our proud and sad farewell."

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And now it is time to turn to the failings which, in Mr. Carlyle's opinion, mar this pride of all Scotchmen, and make his permanent reputation doubtful. The faults upon which he dwells are, of course, those which are more or less acknowledged by all sound critics. Scott, says Mr. Carlyle, had no great gospel to deliver; he had nothing of the martyr about him; he slew no monsters and stirred no deep emotions. He did not believe in anything, and he did not even disbelieve in anything: he was content to take the world as it came the false and the true mixed indistinguishably together. One Ram-dass, a Hindoo, "who set up for god-head lately," being asked what he meant to do with the sins

ature. Scott, it seems, wrote for money; he coined his brains into cash to buy farms. Well, and did not Shakspeare do pretty much the same? As Mr. Carlyle himself puts it, "beyond drawing audiences to the Globe Theatre, Shakespeare contemplated no result in those plays of his." Shakspeare, as Pope puts it,

Whom you and every playhouse bill Style the divine, the matchless, what you will, For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight, immortal in his own despite.

And

grew

be disgraceful; and Byron, as we know, To write for money was once held to taunted Scott, because his publishers

combined

of mankind, replied that "he had fire enough in his belly to burn up all the sins in the world." Ram-dass had some "spice of sense in him." Now, of fire of that kind we can detect few sparks in Scott. He was a thoroughly healthy, sound, vigorous Scotchman, with an eye for the main chance, but not much of an eye for the eternities. And that unfortunate commercial element, which caused the misery of his life, was equally mischievous to his work. He cared for no results of his working but such as could be seen by the eye, and, in one sense or other, "handled, looked at, and buttoned into the breeches'pocket." He regarded literature rather as a trade than an art; and literature, unless it is a very poor affair, should have higher aims than that of " harmlessly To yield their muse just half-a-crown a line; amusing indolent, languid men." Scott would not afford the time or the trouble to whilst Scott seems half to admit that his go to the root of the matter, and is content conduct required justification, and urges to amuse us with mere contrasts of cos-that he sacrificed to literature very fair tume, which will lose their interest when chances in his original profession. Many the swallow-tail is as obsolete as the buff people might, perhaps, be disposed to take coat. And then he fell into the modern a bolder line of defence. Cut out of Engsin of extempore writing, and deluged the lish fiction all that which has owed its world with the first hasty overflowings of birth more or less to a desire of earning his mind, instead of straining and refining money honourably, and the residue would it till he could bestow the pure essence be painfully small. The truth, indeed, upon us. In short, his career is summed seems to be simple. No good work is up in the phrase that it was "writing im- done when the one impelling motive is the promptu novels to buy farms with -a desire of making a little money; but melancholy end, truly, for a man of rare some of the best work that has ever been genius. Nothing is sadder than to hear done, has been ind.rectly due to the imof such a man" writing himself out; and pecuniosity of the labourers. When a it is pitiable, indeed, that Scott should be man is empty he makes a very poor job the example of that fate which rises most of it, in straining colourless trash from his naturally to our minds. Something very hardbound brains; but when his mind is perfect in its kind," says Mr. Carlyle, full to bursting he may still require the "might have come from Scott, nor was it spur of a moderate craving for cash to a low kind nay, who knows how high, induce him to take the decisive plunge. with studious self-concentration, he might Scott illustrates both cases. The melanhave gone what wealth nature implanted choly drudgery of his later years in him, which his circumstances, most un- forced from him in spite of nature; but kind while seeming to be kindest, had nobody ever wrote more spontaneously never impelled him to unfold?" than Scott when he was composing his There is undoubtedly some truth in the early poems and novels. If the precedent severer criticisms to which some more of Shakspeare is good for anything, it is kindly sentences are a pleasant relief; and good for this. Shakspeare, it may be, had there is something too which most persons a more moderate ambition; but there will be apt to consider as rather harsher seems to be no reason why the desire of a than necessary. Is not the moral preacher good house at Stratford should be intrinintruding a little too much on the prov-sically nobler than the desire of a fine esince of the literary critic? In fact we tate at Abbotsford. But then, it is urged, fancy that, in the midst of these energetic Scott allowed himself to write with preremarks, Mr. Carlyle is conscious of cer- posterous haste. And Shakspeare, who tain half-expressed doubts. The name of never blotted a line? What is the great Shakspeare occurs several times in the difference between them? Mr. Carlyle course of his remarks, and suggests to us feels that here too Scott has at least a that we can hardly condemn Scott whilst very good precedent to allege; but he enacquitting the greatest name in our liter-deavours to establish a distinction. It was

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99

was

right, he says, for Shakspeare to write | skims off the cream of his varied stores of rapidly, "being ready to do it. And popular tradition and antiquarian learning herein truly lies the secret of the matter; with strange facility; but he had tramped such swiftness of writing, after due energy through many a long day's march, and of preparation, is doubtless the right pored over innumerable ballads and formethod; the hot furnace having long gotten writers before he had anything to worked and simmered, let the pure gold skim. Had he not if we may use the flow out at one gush." Could there be a word without offence-been cramming all better description of Scott in his earlier his life, and practising the art of storyyears? He published his first poem of telling every day he lived? Probably the any pretensions at thirty-four, an age which most striking incidents of his books are Shelley and Keats never reached, and in reality mere modifications of anecdotes which Byron only passed by two years. which he had rehearsed a hundred times Waverley came out when he was forty- before, just disguised enough to fit into his three-most of our modern novelists have story. Who can read, for example, the written themselves out long before they wondrous legend of the blind piper in arrive at that respectable period of life. Redgauntlet without seeing that it bears From a child he had been accumulating all the marks of long elaboration as clearly the knowledge and the thoughts that at as one of those discourses of Whitfield, last found expression in his work. He had which, by constant repetition, became been a teller of stories before he was well marvels of dramatic art? He was an imin breeches; and had worked hard till promptu composer, in the sense that when middle life in accumulating vast stores of his anecdotes once reached paper, they picturesque imagery. The delightful notes flowed rapidly, and were little corrected; to all his books give us some impression but the correction must have been subof the fulness of mind which poured forth stantially done in many cases long before a boundless torrent of anecdote to the they appeared in the state of "copy." guests at Abbotsford. We only repine at Let us, however, pursue the indictment the prodigality of the harvest when we a little further. Scott did not believe in forget the long process of culture by which anything in particular. Yet once more, it was produced. And, more than this, did Shakspeare? There is surely a poetry when we look at the peculiar characteris- of doubt as well as a poetry of conviction, tics of Scott's style that easy flow of or what shall we say to Hamlet? Appearnarrative never heightening into epigram, ing in such an age as the end of the last but always full of a charm of freshness and the beginning of this century, Scott and fancy most difficult to analyze - we could but share the intellectual atmosphere may well doubt whether much labour in which he was born, and at that day, would have improved or injured him. No whatever we may think of this. few people ever depended more on the per- had any strong faith to boast of. Why fectly spontaneous flow of his narratives. should not a poet stand aside from the Mr. Carlyle quotes Schiller against him, chaos of conflicting opinions, so far as he amongst other and greater names. We was able to extricate himself from the need not attempt to compare the two unutterable confusion around them, and men; but do not Schiller's tragedies smell show us what was beautiful in the world rather painfully of the lamp? Does not as he saw it, without striving to combine the professor of æsthetics pierce a little the office of prophet with his more contoo distinctly through the exterior of the genial occupation? Some such answer poet? And, for one example, are not might be worked out; but we begin to Schiller's excellent but remarkably plati- feel a certain hesitation as to the soundtudinous peasants in William Tell iniser-ness of our argument. Mr. Carlyle did ably colourless alongside of Scott's rough not mean to urge so feeble a criticism as border dalesmen, racy of speech, and that Scott had no very uncompromising redolent of their native soil in every word belief in the Thirty-nine Articles; for that and gesture? To every man his method is a weakness which he would share with according to his talent. Scott is the many undeniably good writers. The most perfectly delightful of story-tellers, criticism points to a different and more and it is the very essence of story-telling unfortunate deficiency. While Shaksthat it should not follow prescribed canons peare works from the heart outwards, of criticism, but be as natural as the talk Scott," says Mr. Carlyle, "works from the by firesides, and, it is to be feared, over skin inwards, never getting near the heart many gallons of whiskey-toddy, of which of men." The books are addressed enit is, in fact, the refined essence. Scott tirely to the every-day mind. They have

man