ting
history and biography Scott has little or no advantage over very
inferior men. His pictures of Swift, of Dryden, of Napoleon, are in no
way very vivid. It is only where he is working from the pure
imagination,--though imagination stirred by historic study,--that he
paints a picture which follows us about, as if with living eyes,
instead of creating for us a mere series of lines and colours. Indeed,
whether Scott draws truly or falsely, he draws with such genius that
his pictures of Richard and Saladin, of Louis XI. and Charles the
Bold, of Margaret of Anjou and Rene of Provence, of Mary Stuart and
Elizabeth Tudor, of Sussex and of Leicester, of James and Charles and
Buckingham, of the two Dukes of Argyle--the Argyle of the time of the
revolution, and the Argyle of George II., of Queen Caroline, of
Claverhouse, and Monmouth, and of Rob Roy, will live in English
literature beside Shakespeare's pictures--probably less faithful if
more imaginative--of John and Richard and the later Henries, and all
the great figures by whom they were surrounded. No historical portrait
that we possess will take precedence--as a mere portrait--of Scott's
brilliant study of James I. in _The Fortunes of Nigel_. Take this
illustration for instance, where George Heriot the goldsmith (Jingling
Geordie, as the king familiarly calls him) has just been speaking of
Lord Huntinglen, as "a man of the old rough world that will drink and
swear:"--

"'O Geordie!' exclaimed the king, 'these are auld-warld
frailties, of whilk we dare not pronounce even ourselves
absolutely free. But the warld grows worse from day to day,
Geordie. The juveniles of this age may weel say with the
poet,--

"AEtas parentum pejor avis tulit
Nos nequiores--"

This Dalgarno does not drink so much; aye or swear so much,
as his father, but he wenches, Geordie, and he breaks his
word and oath baith. As to what ye say of the leddy and the
ministers, we are all fallible creatures, Geordie, priests
and kings as weel as others; and wha kens but what that may
account for the difference between this Dalgarno and his
father? The earl is the vera soul of honour, and cares nae
mair for warld's gear than a noble hound for the quest of a
foulmart; but as for his son, he was like to brazen us all
out--ourselves, Steenie, Baby Charles, and our Council, till
he heard of the tocher, and then