ation with a manlier or more lovable nature. Scott, indeed,
setting up as the landed proprietor at Abbotsford, and solacing himself
with painted plaster of Paris instead of carved oak, does not strike us,
any more than he does Carlyle, as a very noble phenomenon. But luckily
for us, we have also the Scott who must have been the most charming of
all conceivable companions; the Scott who was idolised even by a
judicious pig; the Scott, who, unlike the irritable race of literary
magnates in general, never lost a friend, and whose presence diffused an
equable glow of kindly feeling to the farthest limits of the social
system which gravitated round him. He was not precisely brilliant;
nobody, so far as we know, who wrote so many sentences has left so few
that have fixed themselves upon us as established commonplaces; beyond
that unlucky phrase about 'my name being MacGregor and my foot being on
my native heath'--which is not a very admirable sentiment--I do not at
present remember a single gem of this kind. Landor, I think, said that
in the whole of Scott's poetry there was only one good line, that,
namely, in the poem about Helvellyn referring to the dog of the lost
man--

When the wind waved his garments, how oft didst thou start!

Scott is not one of the coruscating geniuses, throwing out epigrams at
every turn, and sparkling with good things. But the poetry, which was
first admired to excess and then rejected with undue contempt, is now
beginning to find its due level. It is not poetry of the first order. It
is not the poetry of deep meditation or of rapt enthusiasm. Much that
was once admired has now become rather offensive than otherwise. And yet
it has a charm, which becomes more sensible the more familiar we grow
with it, the charm of unaffected and spontaneous love of nature; and not
only is it perfectly in harmony with the nature which Scott loved so
well, but it is still the best interpreter of the sound healthy love of
wild scenery. Wordsworth, no doubt, goes deeper; and Byron is more
vigorous; and Shelley more ethereal. But it is, and will remain, a good
thing to have a breath from the Cheviots brought straight into London
streets, as Scott alone can do it. When Washington Irving visited
Scott, they had an amicable dispute as to the scenery: Irving, as became
an American, complaining of the absence of forests; Scott declaring his
love for 'his honest grey hills,' and saying that if he did not see the
heathe