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SCO selfish, cold-hearted, "surrounded by the handsome favourites whom she never trusted, and the grave old statesmen whom she never discarded"—King James, the poor, proud, pedantic possessor of the united crowns, with his worthless favourite Buckingham, and his prudent, thrifty jeweller, George Heriot, "Jingling Geordie"—Louis XI. of France, the crowned Mephistopheles of his day, shrewd, sagacious, witty, intensely selfish, jealous, suspicious, crafty, utterly regardless of truth or honour, oaths or promises; vindictive, cruel, a profound dissembler, fond of low company, low pleasures, and obscure debauchery, the victim of the most debasing and puerile superstition, contrasted with his great rival, Charles the Bold, intrepid as a paladin of romance, generous, liberal, and familiar to his dependents, but ambitious, proud, arrogant, violent, and headstrong almost to the pitch of madness—all these and many more are drawn with a vigour and sharpness of outline which may stand comparison with any in the whole range of fiction or history for force and discrimination; their "dress, look, gestures, manner, and the outward accompaniments of scenery," being all made important accessories to heighten the effect of the picture: while the masses among whom these important personages move—the Jacobites and Hanoverians—the Roundheads and Blue bonnets—the brave and dissolute Cavaliers, and the stern, gloomy, resolute Covenanters—the English outlaws and the Scottish freebooters—the gipsies and courtiers—the Lowlanders, Highlanders, and Shetlanders—stand out with equal vividness on the canvas, and are distinguished from each other with equal clearness. On the other hand, the created characters of Scott, which owe their existence to his own powerful imagination acting on his vast stores of accumulated knowledge, are drawn with at least equal vigour and distinctness, and seem equally familiar to his readers—the highest triumph of genius to give to the fictitious the reality of the true. His delineations of Scottish rustic and homely characters, especially those of Dandie Dinmont the Liddesdale farmer, Edie Ochiltree the Blue Gown, and above all Jeanie Deans, with her heroic affection, strong sense and shrewdness, and lofty purpose, are superior to anything in the whole range of fiction, and must be regarded as the highest triumph of the great novelist's genius.

While Scott was thus pouring out with marvellous fertility the creations of his teeming brain, and delighting millions with his exquisite delineations of character and incident, worldly prosperity was apparently flowing upon him, till his cup of happiness was running over. He had made large purchases of land on Tweedside, for the most part at exorbitant prices; he had planted and drained a bare, bleak moor, and converted it into a fertile, beautiful tract, covered with pastures, corn, and trees, and adorned by that "romance in stone and lime," as Abbotsford has been termed, which alone cost him £20,000. In this baronial residence he received innumerable visitors—princes, peers, poets, and philosophers, men of all ranks and professions and countries. Here he dispensed generous, nay, profuse hospitality, and showed himself the friend and sympathizing counsellor of his dependents, who almost worshipped him, not so much for his genius, as on account of his kind, thoughtful, generous consideration for their welfare. "If ever the principle of kindliness was incarnated in a mere man," says one who knew Scott well, "it was in him. In the social relations of life, where men are most effectually tried, no spot can be detected in him. He was a patient, dutiful, reverent son; a generous, compassionate, tender husband; an honest, careful, and most affectionate father. Never was a more virtuous or a happier fireside than his. The influence of his mighty genius shadowed it imperceptibly; his own good sense, and his angelic sweetness of heart and temper regulated and softened a strict but paternal discipline. No man was a firmer or more indefatigable friend. I know not that he ever lost one." The flattering attentions of the noblest of the land never made him forget the friends of his youth, or interrupt his familiarity with the poor and lowly. Nor did the honours showered upon him in profusion, and his more than European fame, ever disturb the equilibrium of his mind.

In 1820 Scott was made a baronet—an honour which was unsolicited, and was conferred upon him in a very gratifying manner. Two years later he was a prominent actor in what has been called "the open-air daylight masquerade" of the reception of George IV. in Edinburgh; and his excellent business talents and wonderful powers of management were conspicuously shown in the arrangements, which were dictated and superintended by him, even to the minutest details. His family had now grown up around him. His eldest daughter, Sophia, was married in 1820 to Mr. J. G. Lockhart, afterwards the well-known editor of the Quarterly Review; and in 1825 his eldest son Walter, much to Scott's satisfaction, married a young heiress, Miss Jobson of Lochore. He had now reached the highest point of his hitherto singularly prosperous and happy career. And surrounded by troops of friends, honoured by the favour of his sovereign, beloved by all around him, it seemed that he might have said, "My mountain standeth sure, I shall never be moved." But the muffled drum was near; his prosperity, stable as it seemed, was based on the sand. His commercial partnership with the Ballantynes had involved him with Constable, an enterprising but rash and speculative bookseller. His ambition to found a family, a distinct branch of the great border clan to which he belonged—the single weakness of his character—led him to take the imprudent step of accepting large bill-payments from Constable for several works of fiction as yet unwritten, that he might extend his equally imprudent purchases of land. These bills were still current, and liable to come back upon him. His expenditure, too, had been a good way beyond what prudence dictated, and he had been culpably negligent about accounts and bargainings. The commercial crisis of 1825 precipitated the catastrophe. Constable, inextricably entangled with some London booksellers even more rash and speculative than himself, involved James Ballantyne & Co. in his ruin. The obligations of the latter were ultimately ascertained to amount to £117,000, of which only £46,000 were the proper liabilities of the company. The case seemed to others desperate, but not so to Scott himself. He would listen to no offers of composition with his creditors; he asked no discharge from them, determined that they should be paid to the last farthing. His only demand was for time. He pledged himself to devote the whole labour of his subsequent life to the payment of his debts, and he fulfilled the pledge, though the effort cost him his life. When his misfortunes overtook him he was engaged in writing the novel of "Woodstock," alternately with the "Life of Napoleon Bonaparte." These tasks he continued with unabated diligence in the midst of all his distresses, not even intermitting them on the day on which the tidings of his ruin reached him. Though he had now begun to feel the first approach of the infirmities of age, he toiled on with such dogged resolution and assiduity that in the course of a fortnight he wrote a volume of "Woodstock." This novel was published in April, 1826, and the first edition of it was sold in sheets for £8228. Removing to Abbotsford at the close of the winter session, he continued there his habits of unremitting application, and wrote daily as much MS. as made about twenty-four printed pages of his "Life of Napoleon." The death of Lady Scott, on the 16th of May, painfully affected him, and added largely to his sorrows, but did not interrupt his conscientious toiling for his creditors. Lonely, aged, deprived of his family (as he himself said), all but his youngest daughter; an impoverished, embarrassed man, deprived of the sharer of his thoughts and counsels; this glorious old man kept firmly to his desk until his daily "tale of bricks" was completed. A visit in the autumn to London and Paris for the purpose of consulting documents necessary for his work, interrupted his toil for a little, and the change of scene, together with the marked attentions which he everywhere received, served somewhat to rally his spirits. His "Life of Napoleon" was completed in the summer of 1827, and the first and second editions, in nine volumes, brought the creditors £18,000—an amount unexampled in the history of literature. Early in the ensuing winter appeared the first series of "The Chronicles of the Canongate," and was followed before the close of the year by the first series of his delightful "Tales of a Grandfather," which was welcomed with cordial applause. By these unparalleled efforts he realized for his creditors between January, 1826, and January, 1828, the surprising sum of nearly £40,000. In 1828 appeared "The Fair Maid of Perth," and the second series of the "Tales of a Grandfather;" and 1829 produced "Anne of Geierstein," the first volume of a History of Scotland for Lardner's Cyclopædia, and the third series of the "Tales of a Grandfather." Early in 1829 he issued the prospectus of what he called his magnum opus, the publication of an annotated edition of his novels in five-shilling volumes, which almost at the outset met with a sale of thirty-five thousand, a result as unexpected as it was gratifying to the toiling and sorrow-stricken author. In