er seen the supposed originals, in
others, I have recognised them as respectable, though usually inferior,
representatives of Scott's conceptions. But in any case _these_ are all
real, all possessions, all part of the geographical and architectural
furniture of the mind. They are like the wood in the 'Dream of Fair
Women': one knows the flowers, one knows the leaves, one knows the
battlements and the windows, the platters and the wine-cups, the
cabinets and the arras. They are, like all the great places of
literature, like Arden and Elsinore, like the court before Agamemnon's
palace, and that where the damsel said to Sir Launcelot, 'Fair knight,
thou art unhappy,' our own--our own to 'pass freely through until the
end of time.'

It must not be forgotten in this record of his work that Scott wrote
'Bonnie Dundee' in the very middle of his disaster, and that he had not
emerged from the first shock of that disaster, when the astonishingly
clever _Letters of Malachi Malagrowther_ appeared. Of the reasonableness
of their main purpose--a strenuous opposition to the purpose of doing
away, in Scotland as in England, with notes of a less denomination than
five pounds--I cannot pretend to judge. It is possible that suppressed
rage at his own misfortunes found vent, and, for him, very healthy vent,
while it did harm to no one, in a somewhat too aggressive patriotism, of
a kind more particularist than was usual with him. But the fire and
force of the writing are so great, the alternations from seriousness to
humour, from denunciation to ridicule, so excellently managed, that
there are few better specimens of this particular kind of pamphlet. As
for 'Bonnie Dundee,' there are hardly two opinions about that. As a
whole, it may not be quite equal to 'Lochinvar,' to which it forms such
an excellent pendant, and which it so nearly resembles in rhythm. But
the best of it is equal as poetry, and perhaps superior as meaning. And
it admirably completes in verse the tribute long before paid by _Old
Mortality_ in prose, to the 'last and best of Scots,' as Dryden called
him in the noble epitaph,[46] which not improbably inspired Scott
himself to do what he could to remove the vulgar aspersions on the fame
of the hero of Killiecrankie.

Moreover, according to his wont, Scott had barely finished, indeed he
had not finished, the _Napoleon_ before he had arranged for new work of
two different kinds; and he was soon, without a break, actually enga