Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/255

Rh his happier efforts. It was there that congenial poets took his cold hand in theirs, and bade him God-speed, with tears threatening in their eyes. It was there, also, still more than at the household hearth, that his friends des- cried the heart of unflaming fire which glowed within the distant quietude of his manners. It was there, alas! it may almost literally he said, that he died,"

That mournful closing event occurred on the 5th of March, 1849. As yet only at the period when life is strongest, and hope, if not at the brightest, is yet the most firmly established it was then that he passed away, worn out and weary, and longing to be at rest. He thus added one name more to that long list of the sons of promise who have been snatched from the world, when the world could least spare their presence, and when their loss was to be most regretted. But in the case of David Scott, how, indeed, could it be otherwise with such a restless, fervid, sensitive spirit, inclosed within such a delicate frame and sickly constitution? But he had held out bravely to the last; and even during his final illness, his love of art predominated in conceptions that needed full health to embody, and sketches that were left unfinished. At the most, he was only in his forty-third year at the period of his decease.

SCOTT, .—From the nature of the authorship of the present day, as well as its exuberant abundance, the desire of literary fame has undergone a striking change. Formerly, to write a book was equivalent to achieving the conquest of a kingdom; and no one ventured upon the feat except upon the principle of do or die, Aut Cæsar aut nihil. The general diffusion of intelligence and equalization of talent, have produced a change in this respect that constitutes the chief intellectual distinction of the present age. Able writers are now produced by the hundred, and that too, not for a century, but a single year; while their productions appear, not in ponderous tomes, but in reviews, magazines, and newspapers, the readers of which, however delighted they may be with the perusal, never trouble themselves with the anonymous source from which their gratification has proceeded. In this fashion, authors of first-rate excellence appear and pass away with no other designations than some unmeaning letter of the alphabet, and are only known, even at their brightest, as alpha or omega. From such a fate, so common to thousands amongst us, Michael Scott escaped by a mere hair's-breadth.

This talented writer was born at Glasgow, on the 30th October, 1789. He was educated first at the high school, and afterwards at the university of that great emporium of Scottish merchandise and manufacture. As he was destined for business, and obliged to betake himself to it at an early period, his stay at college was a brief one; for, in October, 1 806, when he had only reached the age of seventeen, he sailed for Jamaica, and was there employed in the management of several estates till 1810, when he joined a mercantile house in Kingston, Jamaica. As he was much employed in the active business of this establishment, his avocations led him often to the adjacent islands and the Spanish main; and it was in that rich tropical climate, and in his peregrinations by land and water, that he acquired his knowledge of West India scenery and character, as well as of sea-life, which he afterwards so richly and powerfully delineated. Mr. Scott returned home in 1817, and was married in the following year, after which he went back to Jamaica; but after remaining there till 1822, he finally bade adieu to the West Indies, and became permanently a settler in his native Scotland. He does not appear to have been