n indulging his passion for reading and
translating. During his apprenticeship he finished the _AEneid_.

The distance between our residences being so short, I gladly
encouraged his inclination to come over when he could claim a leisure
hour; and in consequence I saw him about five or six times a month on
my own leisure afternoons. He rarely came empty-handed; either he had
a book to read, or brought one to be exchanged. When the weather
permitted, we always sat in an arbor at the end of a spacious garden,
and--in Boswellian dialect--"we had a good talk." ...

XVIII

THE HEROISM OF SIR WALTER SCOTT

When Carlyle wrote and lectured on _Heroes and Hero Worship_, he would
have made no mistake in selecting one of his contemporary countrymen
as a fine example of the man of letters as hero. But it is one of the
characteristics of human nature to see the heroic in the remote in
time and place rather than in the near. Carlyle, had he closely
examined the life of his Scotch neighbor, would have been forced to
acknowledge that no knight battling with chivalric valor in the
fiction of Sir Walter ever displayed more nobility of soul than that
displayed by Walter Scott in his adversity. Critics may find flaws in
Scott's style, but as time reveals more fully the character of the man
they are unable to find fault with the man himself. Some years ago was
published Scott's journal. Parts of this had been published before,
but, owing to the nature of some of the information, much of this had
been suppressed until sixty years after the death of the writer. To
quote from this journal is, perhaps, the best method of giving a
first-hand impression of the real man. He is his own revealer. Scott
called the big book in which he from time to time records for several
years his thoughts his "Gurnal," because his daughter Sophia had once
spelled the word in that way. This book could be closed with a lock
and key. On the title-page was written:

As I walked by myself,
I talked to myself,
And thus myself said to me.
(Old Song.)

Scott's poems and novels brought him much revenue. This he spent in
purchasing land. He became a Scotch "laird" owning many acres, and a
most beautiful home, Abbotsford. But unfortunately he formed a bad
business partnership. When the firm through mismanagement and
speculation, in which Scott had no part, went down in ruin, Scott
found to his surprise that he owed a vast sum. I