splendeurs et misères-the former so hospitably shared, the latter so heroically borne-forms a romance as thrilling as any of his fictions, and one necessary to our perfect comprehension of his labours. Great as had been the vogue of his poems, it was far exceeded by that of his novels, and when Scott died his was doubtless the strongest naturalistic influence then being exercised in Europe. All the romances of Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo sprang

I have just swim then card with whit

Mant has honoured the As I am not the Author of Waverly

now in any way connected

with these very successful novels Lave sure Must Mand will be

Ни

awars

Мил

that will every

et is

дим

19 лидия

deson to oblege ce found of tjurs posible test I can have the honour of acceptery the flattery insorplein which the propers & alse that I hear als not are my power to grant regest which she prefors vorymuch as nothing would gave a nore them to do whatever unght be ague=" -fundy foundas quinly

и

реши

able to ce

am with

with guest regard Yours Miwok feath fully Wallifect

Facsimile Letter from Scott to Mrs. Slade denying the authorship of "Waverley"

directly from him; he had inspired Fouqué in Germany, Manzoni in Italy,' and Fernan Caballero in Spain. Wherever historical fiction of a picturesque and chivalrous order was produced, it bore the stamp of Walter Scott upon its margin. Nor with the decline of the imitations is it found that the original ceases to retain its hold on the interest of the English race.

BLOODHOUNDS.

The pursuit of Border marauders was followed by the injured party and his friends with bloodhounds and bugle-horn, and was called the hot-trod. He was entitled, if his dog could trace the scent, to follow the invaders into the opposite kingdom; a privilege

which often occasioned bloodshed. In addition to what has been said of the bloodhound, I may add, that the breed was kept up by the Buccleuch family on their Border estates till within the eighteenth century. A person was alive in the memory of man, who remembered a bloodhound being kept at Eldinhope, in Ettricke Forest, for whose maintenance the tenant had an allowance of meal. At the time the sheep were always watched at night. Upon one occasion, when the duty had fallen on the narrator, then a lad, he became exhausted with fatigue, and fell asleep upon a bank near sunrising. Suddenly he was awakened by the tread of horses, and saw five men, well mounted and armed, ride briskly over the edge of the hill. They stopped and looked at the flock; but the day was too far broken to admit the chance of their carrying any of them off. One of them, in spite, leaped from his horse, and, coming to the shepherd, seized him by the belt he wore round his waist; and, setting his foot upon his body, pulled it till it broke, and carried it away with him. They rode off at the gallop; and, the shepherd giving the alarm, the bloodhound was turned loose, and the people in the neighbourhood alarmed. The marauders, however, escaped, notwithstanding a sharp pursuit. This circumstance serves to show how very long the license of the Borderers continued in some degree to manifest itself.

HUMANITY OF BRITISH SOLDIERS.

Even the unexampled gallantry of the British army in the campaign of 1810-11, although they never fought but to conquer, will do them less honour in history than their humanity, attentive to soften to the utmost of their power the horrors which war, in its mildest aspect, must always inflict upon the defenceless inhabitants of the country in which it is waged, and which, on this occasion, were tenfold augmented by the barbarous cruelties of the French. Soup-kitchens were established by subscription among the officers, wherever the troops were quartered for any length of time. The commissaries contributed the heads, feet, &c., of the cattle slaughtered for the soldiery: rice, vegetables, and bread, where it could be had, were purchased by the officers. Fifty or sixty starving peasants were daily fed at one of these regimental establishments, and carried home the relics to their famished households. The emaciated wretches, who could not crawl from weakness, were speedily employed in pruning their vines. While pursuing Massena, the soldiers evinced the same spirit of humanity, and in many instances, when reduced themselves to short allowance, from having outmarched their supplies, they shared their pittance with the starving inhabitants, who had ventured back to view the ruins of their habitations, burnt by the retreating enemy, and to bury the bodies of their relations whom they had butchered. Is it possible to know such facts without feeling a sort of confidence, that those who so well deserve victory are most likely to attain it?—It is not the least of Lord Wellington's military merits, that the slightest disposition towards marauding meets immediate punishment. Independently of all moral obligation, the army which is most orderly in a friendly country, has always proved most formidable to an armed enemy.

Walter Scott, so long a European force, has now, foiled by the victory of the school of Balzac, retired once more to the home he came from, but on British soil there is as yet no sign of any diminution of his honour or popularity. Continental criticism is bewildered at our unshaken loyalty to a writer whose art can be easily demonstrated to be obsolete in many of its characteristics. But English readers confess the perennial attractiveness of a writer whose "tone" is the most perfect in our national literature, who has left not a phrase which is morbid or petulant or base, who is the very type of that generous freedom of spirit which we are pleased to identify with the character of an English gentleman. Into the persistent admiration of Sir Walter Scott there enters something of the militant imperialism of

our race.

CHAPTER II

THE AGE OF BYRON

1815-1840

IT is noticeable that the early manifestations of the reforming spirit in
English literature had been accompanied by nothing revolutionary in
morals or conduct. It is true that, at the very outset, Wordsworth, Southey,
and Coleridge had been in-

clined to a "pantisocratic"
sympathy with the principles
of the French Revolution, and
had leaned to the radical side
in politics. But the spirit of
revolt was very mildly awak-
ened in them, and when the
Reign of Terror came, their
aspirations after democratic
freedom were nipped in the
bud. Early in the century
Wordsworth had become,
what he remained, a Church
and State Tory of the extreme
type; Southey, who in 1794
had, "shocking to say, wavered
between deism and atheism,"
promptly developed a horror
for every species of liberal
speculation, and contributed.
with gusto to the Quarterly
Review. Temperament and
circumstance combined to
make Scott a conservative in
After a Portrait in the possession of A. C. Benson, Esq.
politics and manners. Meanwhile, it was in the hands of these peaceful
men that the literary revolution was proceeding, and we look back from 1815
with a sense of the extraordinary modesty and wholesome law-abiding
morality of the generation which introduced romanticism in this country.

107

No section of English literature is, we will not say more innocent merely, but more void of the appearance of offence than that which was produced by the romantic reformers of our poetry. The audacity of Wordsworth and Coleridge was purely artistic; it was bounded by the determination to destroy certain conventions of style, and to introduce new elements and new aspects into the treatment of poetry. But these novelties included nothing that could unsettle, or even excite, the conscience of the least mature of readers. Both these great writers spoke much of passion, and insisted on its resumption by an art which had permitted it to escape too long. But by passion Wordsworth understood no unruly turbulence of the senses, no revolt against conventional manners, no disturbance of social custom. He conceived the term, and illustrated his conception in his poetry, as intense emotion concentrated upon some object of physical or pathetic beauty -such as a mountain, a child, a flower and led directly by it into the channel of imaginative expression. He saw that there were aspects of beauty which might lead to danger, but from these he and Scott, and even Coleridge, resolutely turned away their eyes.

Mrs. Byron

To all the principal writers of this first generation, not merely vice, but coarseness and licence were abhorrent, as they had been to no earlier race of Englishmen. The rudeness of the eighteenth century gave way to a cold refinement, exquisitely crystal in its highest expressions, a little empty and inhuman in its lower ones. What the Continental nations unite to call our "hypocrisy," our determination not to face the ugly side of nature at all, to deny the very existence of the unseemly instincts, now came to the front. In contrast to the European riot, England held her garments high out of the mire, with a somewhat mincing air of excessive virtue. The image was created of Britannia, with her long teeth, prudishly averting her elderly eyes from the cancan of the nations. So far as this refinement was genuine it was a good thing-the spotless purity of Wordsworth and Scott is matter for national pride-but so far as it was indeed hypocritical, so far as it was an exhibition of empty spiritual arrogance, it was hateful. In any case, the cord was drawn so tight that it was bound to snap, and to the generation of intensely proper, conservative poets and novelists there succeeded a race

of bards who rejoiced to be thought profligates, socialists, and atheists. Our literature was to become "revolutionary" at last.

In the sixth Lord BYRON the pent-up animal spirits of the new era found the first channel for their violence, and England positively revelled in the poetry of crime and chaos. The representative of a race of lawless and turbulent men, proud as Lucifer, beautiful as Apollo, sinister as Loki, Byron appeared on the scenes arrayed in every quality which could dazzle the youthful and alarm the mature. His lovely curly head moved all the women to adore him; his melancholy attitudes were mysteriously connected with stories of his appalling wicked

ness; his rank and ostentation of life, his wild exotic tastes, his defiance of restraint, the pathos of his physical infirmity, his histrionic gifts as of one, half mountebank, half archangel, all these combined to give his figure, his whole legend, matchless fascination. Nor, though now so much of the gold is turned to tinsel, though now the lights are out upon the stage where Byron strutted, can we cease to be fascinated. Even those who most strenuously deny him imagination, style, the durable parts of literature, cannot pretend to be unmoved by the unparalleled romance of his career. Goethe declared that a man so pre-eminent for character had never existed in literature before, and would probably never appear again. This should give us the note for a comparative estimate of Byron: in quality of style he is most unequal, and is never, perhaps, absolutely first-rate; but as an example of the literary temperament at its boiling-point, history records no more brilliant

name.

Byron was in haste to be famous, and wrote before he had learned his art. His intention was to resist the incursion of the romantic movement, and at the age of twenty-one he produced a satire, the aim of which, so far as it was not merely splenetic, was the dethronement of Wordsworth and Coleridge in favour of Dryden and Pope. In taste and conviction he was reactionary to the very last; but when he came to write, the verse poured forth like lava, and took romantic forms in spite of him. His character was formed during the two wild years of exile (June 1809 till July 1811), when, a prey to a frenzied restlessness, he scoured the Mediterranean, rescued Turkish