if they lead the student to his poetry and to the masterly criticisms of which that poetry has been the theme. It claims patience and a mind free from low desires and petty cares. "There are writings," says Landor, "which must lie long upon the straw before they mellow to the taste, and there are summer fruits that cannot abide the keeping." Wordsworth's poetry takes some time, perhaps, to "mellow to the taste," but if it be true that in our best and purest moments we turn to it most eagerly, then must it be true also that the fruit it yields is of no common growth.

[Wordsworth's power was acknowledged in his lifetime by the greatest critics of the period; notably by Coleridge, in his "Biographia Literaria;" by Professor Wilson, who said that his genius had exercised "a greater influence on the spirit of poetry in Britain than was ever before exercised by any individual mind" (see

66

Essays Critical and Imaginative," vol. i., Blackwood); by De Quincey, who has written much about Wordsworth, in his "Autobiographic Sketches," that will attract and amuse the reader (De Quincey's statements must not be accepted without reserve, but there are vivid touches and curious reminiscences in his essays not to be found elsewhere); by Hazlitt, who considered many of the lyrical ballads and sonnets of "inconceivable beauty," and declared that they "open a finer and deeper vein of thought and feeling than any poet in modern times has done or attempted."

A life of Wordsworth, by his nephew, the present Bishop of Lincoln, appeared in 1851. It contains much valuable matter, and will always be consulted by students; but it is not and never was intended to be a full and final biography of the poet. Wordsworth was of opinion that the sanctities of domestic life ought not to be exposed to the public, and would probably, had he lived in our day, have held the opinion more strongly still. Mr. F. W. H. Myers has written a short biography of Wordsworth in the series of "English Men of Letters ;" and the reader, as he pursues his study

of the poet, should read Professor Shairp's "Studies in Poetry," the "Essays" of Mr. R. H. Hutton and of the late George Brimley, and the brief essay by the Dean of St. Paul's, in "The English Poets," edited by Professor Ward (Macmillan and Co.). "Poems

of Wordsworth," chosen and edited by Matthew Arnold (Macmillan and Co.), is a volume to be commended above all others, as an introduction to the study of the poet.]

CHAPTER XIV.

POETS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Sir Walter Scott, 1771-1832.

(Continued).

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

WALTER SCOTT'S name is a household word with Englishmen as well as Scotchmen. No author belonging to the first half of this century has won so much love and admiration. Wherever English is spoken Scott is a cherished writer, and the delight he affords is shared by the young and the old; by men of the highest genius, and by men who turn to his pages for an hour's happy forgetfulness of the cares of life. This “beloved writer," says George Eliot, "has made a chief part in the happiness of many young lives." "Walter Scott," says Goethe, "is a great genius; he has not his equal. He gives me much to think of, and I discover in him a wholly new art with laws of its own." Dean Stanley, addressing the students of St. Andrew's in 1875, spoke of "the far-seeing

toleration, the profound reverence, the critical insight into the various shades of religious thought and feeling, the moderation which turns to scorn 'the falsehood of extremes,' the lofty sense of Christian honour, purity, and justice that breathe through every volume of the 'Waverley Novels;'" and the present Dean of Westminster has said, that of all the great names of literature none was so dear to his predecessor as that of Scott. "To Sir W. Scott,” it has been said of Dr. Pusey," he remained faithful to the last, and knew him as Fox and Grenville knew Homer, and as Lamb knew Shakespeare." S. T. Coleridge's verdict in favour of Scott's novels is equally strong, for he said that when ill they were the only books he could read. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the most original of American novelists, is said almost to have worshipped Sir Walter's romances, and was accustomed to read them aloud in his family; and Robertson of Brighton, alluding to more recent fictions, says, "From those of Scott you rise with a vigorous, healthy tone of feeling; from the others with that sense of exhaustion and weakness which comes from feeling stirred up to end in nothing."

Similar judgments might readily be quoted, but these will serve as an illustration of the high esteem in which Scott has been ever held by the wise and good. No one but a poet could have written the splendid novels which Scott poured forth so rapidly. Later novelists appeal to feelings untouched by the great magician, who acknowledged that the delicate

workmanship of his contemporary, Jane Austen, was beyond the reach of his pen ; but where, save in the Waverley series, will you find so much variety of action and life, such skilful management of plot, such wealth of knowledge and resources, such an out-of-door freshness, such accurate descriptions of nature, such breadth of charity, such humour combined with purity, and pathos so free from sentimentality? I must not dwell, however, on this subject, tempting though it be. I hope that Scott's tales are known to all my readers and loved as they deserve to be; but it is as a poet, using his proper instrument, metre, that the author of the Waverleys asks now for our attention.

With the exception of Boswell's life of Dr. Johnson, there is perhaps no biography that admits us more completely into the presence of its hero than Lockhart's life of Scott. It contains passages of merely temporary interest, and others that it would. have been wiser to omit, but in spite of slight flaws such as these, the book acts upon the reader with the fascination which Sir Walter himself exercised upon all who came within his circle. If not already acquainted with the beautiful narrative, read it on the earliest opportunity, and by way of alluring you to a task which is sure to prove a pleasure, take up in the first instance Mr. Hutton's admirable monograph of Scott in the series of "English Men of Letters," or Mr. Palgrave's shorter narrative in the Globe edition of Scott's poetry.

"An eminently good and noble-hearted man,"