transparence of its own through his
years of darkness and decay. That there was nothing very elevated in
Scott's personal or moral, or political or literary ends,--that he
never for a moment thought of himself as one who was bound to leave
the earth better than he found it,--that he never seems to have so
much as contemplated a social or political reform for which he ought
to contend,--that he lived to some extent like a child blowing
soap-bubbles, the brightest and most gorgeous of which--the Abbotsford
bubble--vanished before his eyes, is not a take-off from the charm of
his career, but adds to it the very speciality of its fascination. For
it was his entire unconsciousness of moral or spiritual efforts, the
simple straightforward way in which he laboured for ends of the most
ordinary kind, which made it clear how much greater the man was than
his ends, how great was the mind and character which prosperity failed
to display, but which became visible at once so soon as the storm came
down and the night fell. Few men who battle avowedly for the right,
battle for it with the calm fortitude, the cheerful equanimity, with
which Scott battled to fulfil his engagements and to save his family
from ruin. He stood high amongst those--

"Who ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,"

among those who have been able to display--

"One equal temper of heroic hearts
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will,
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

And it was because the man was so much greater than the ends for which
he strove, that there is a sort of grandeur in the tragic fate which
denied them to him, and yet exhibited to all the world the infinite
superiority of the striver himself to the toy he was thus passionately
craving.

THE END.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sir Walter Scott, by Richard H. Hutton

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