when they are started, will talk for any length of time about the memory of their kind-hearted, unselfish master,-for I find this is the universal feeling; and Sir Walter's large-hearted charity to the labouring poor about Darnick is the great feature in his character; and it, independent of his works, causes his memory to be cherished round Abbotsford.'

During all the close of 1818, and the beginning of 1819, he continued to be assaulted by cramp, and was reduced to a skeleton. His hair became white as snow, his cheek faded, and the last days of the Last Minstrel seemed to have come. He laboured on, however, dictating to William Laidlaw and John Ballantyne (his dictation often interrupted by shouts of agony) The Bride of Lammermoor, The Legend of Montrose, and the most of Ivanhoe. The first two of these appeared in June 1819, and were read with intenser interest that they were thought the last creations of his mind. One day Scott thought himself dying, summoned his family around him, bade them a pathetic and Christian farewell, expressing confidence in his Redeemer, turned then his face to the wall, but fell into a deep sleep, and from that hour began slowly to recover. His disease, which had resisted opiates, heated salt, etc., at last yielded to small doses,

L

composed chiefly of calomel. It is doubtful, however, if he ever became so strong as he had been. He was forty-six when first assailed by the malady, but, ere three years had elapsed, his constitution was at least a decade older. And, while yet the die of his life span doubtful, his aged mother expired on the 24th of December.

CHAPTER XIII.

CULMINATION OF FAME AND FORTUNE-
'IVANHOE' AND BARONETCY.

ON the same month that his mother died, and his own life hung trembling in the balance, Ivanhoe appeared. Never in the literary world had there been, perhaps, such a tumult of applause, particularly in England.

'Men met each other with erected look,
The steps were higher that they took;

Friends to congratulate their friends made haste,
And long estranged foes saluted as they passed.'

It seemed an event of national triumph when Ivanhoe rode with his vizor down into the lists, Rebecca by his side, and the Black Knight hovering on the skirts of the scene. As Dr. Johnson says of Gray's Odes, Criticism was lost in wonder.' But it was not, as Johnson would imply in reference to Gray, a wonder blended with doubt

and a spice of scorn, but wonder mixed with unbounded delight, the very feeling of the Queen of Sheba: The half had not been told us. We were prepared for much, but never for aught like this.' We shall inquire as to the justice of these sentiments in a little; at present we record the unquestionable fact. The two tales which preceded it had been welcomed warmly too. There is a fine romantic spirit hovering over the Legend of Montrose. It has a smell of heather, wears a coronet of mist, and a deep autumnal charm breathes in every page. Byron says of it, indeed justly, 'He don't make enough of Montrose.' That hero is dwindled beside three other characters, all admirable and all eccentric,-Sir Dugald Dalgetty, a mixture in equal proportions of trooper, pedant, and picaroon; Ranald MacEagh, the greyhaired Son of the Mist, with his inimitable dying speech to his grandson; and Allan MacAulay, parcel hero, parcel homicide, parcel maniac, and parcel poet. Annot Lyle, whose song comes over his dark soul like a 'sunbeam on a sullen sea,' is a sweet creation. And no episode in all Scott's novels surpasses in stirring adventure, blended with humour, Dalgetty's tour to Inveraray.

Coleridge says that there is an exaggeration in the third series of the Tales of my Landlord and

in Ivanhoe not to be found in any other of Scott's stories. Perhaps the cause of this lay partly in his disease, and partly in the enormous quantity of laudanum he was compelled, contrary to his taste and habits, to swallow to relieve it. Caleb Balderstone, in some of his exhibitions, is precisely such an extravaganza as you might expect from a brain under a twofold morbific influence. Yet what must have been the strength of the mind which could in such an unfavourable state retain so much of its balance? Scott, it will be remembered, when he recovered, had no recollection of having written these novels. Perhaps a morbid mood was the appropriate chiaroscuro through which to show us the dark tragedy of Lucy Ashton,—a tragedy which may be compared to those stern adumbrations of Fate contained in the Grecian plays, and the pathos of which is so heart-rending. There is no point of interest in all literature superior to that in which, as Ravenswood bursts on the assembled marriage party, Lucy exclaims, 'He is come, he is come;' and out of Shakspeare there are no dialogues superior to those of the two old witch women at the bridal and at the burial of the hapless victim.

Ivanhoe is certainly less natural, less probable, less life-like than his first novels. And so are The