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326 ment we begin to talk of him. Had he stopped at Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, and one or two others at the most, the modern critic might be inclined to some indulgence. We would have patience left to weigh Scott's objective values, and in some serenity of spirit piously and gratefully acknowledge the few flashes of real art which, in spite of everything, do shine in the mass of his whole production.

This serenity we must attain if we would apply to Walter Scott even the methods of historical criticism. Approaching him from this point of view (and, as I must warn again, in a spirit of justice and serenity) we perceive that first of all we must take account of the social function he so admirably fulfilled.

Walter Scott, to speak quite plainly, was a literary manufacturer. His task it was to supply a market with wares which were in a demand as great as it was legitimate. Are not the needs of the human imagination—needs of stimulation or of amusement—real needs? And is it not a healthy manifestation of such needs to demand spectacles of virtue, of courage, of prowess, of generosity—spectacles, moreover, which will not merely satisfy idle curiosity, but prove profitable as well by imparting information about historical events, customs, epochs? Walter Scott had a genius for supplying such a market. He began by writing poems which were a first answer to the demand. After a few years he discovered that this particular brand of goods was growing stale, whether because his own raw materials were depreciating, or because a strong competition was growing up in the novelties offered by the young Lord Byron. So he turned to prose, issuing a new trade-mark that had the lure of mystery—"by the author of the Waverley novels"—and he made a great success, a success that attended him to the end. Read the "Lives" written about Walter Scott and you will see that they deal with a captain of industry and not, save incidentally, with a literary man. His biographers expatiate admiringly on the sagacity of his speculations; on the application and endurance which enabled him to produce two or three novels a year; on the estate which he created from his enormous royalties—building a castle where he entertained with princely hospitality. Of his inner life, meantime, not a word. Nothing of his experiences with love, with religion, with philosophical problems. Less than nothing about the travail of spirit which we think of as the artist's characteristic domain. In Scott's biography the dramatic moment is al-