THE JOURNAL OF SIR WALTER SCOTT

THIS is such a book as the world has not often seen. No doubt the most impressive portions of it are not new, for Mr. Lockhart quoted freely from it in the most delightful of all biographies. But to have it without the omissions then made, and to have it in a single whole, is as different from having it as a mere factor in a fascinating biography, as to have the whole web of a skilful weaver is different from having a great composite structure into which parts of that web have been skilfully incorporated. These two impressive volumes contain one of the most effective pictures of a really strong man, painted as only that man himself could have painted it, which the English language contains. It is true tragedy without the idealising background generally given to tragedy, the story of a great intellectual and moral struggle ending in defeat, but in defeat in which there is absolutely no personal failure, no conscious yielding of a single inch of ground, no concession to weakness, no self-deception, no shrinking from the truth, no despondency, and no ostentation of pretended indifference. Everywhere you see the same large, clear insight, the same large, genial nature, the same indomitable resolution, the same sober suffering, the same calm fortitude, the same frank

determination to face the worst and to do the best. It is rarely, indeed, that so sunny a nature as Scott's is seen in such dark eclipse without a great deal more bitterness or collapse than Scott ever betrays. And yet, though the heart of religion is in Scott, you cannot say that his Journal shows what can be called a spiritual nature. He feels keenly the duty of submission to God's will in his misfortunes, but he does not dwell on it, he submits in the darkness, as it were, but without at all realising that to implant the disposition to subdue his heart to the right frame of feeling was perhaps the very object of the sufferings with which he copes so manfully. The whole force of his large nature is thrown at once into the struggle to do what is honourable and right, and the effort to feel rightly is almost lost sight of in the effort to brace all his nature to high action. How little of the conscious spiritual life there is in him, I see when the sense of worldly honour bursts out so strongly in his resolve to fight a duel about his Life of Napoleon rather than submit to the disgrace, as he held it, of not standing to his colours on behalf of his country. No man who had thought first and most of his spiritual life would have done that; but Scott had the highest kind of natural goodness rather than of the supernatural, and that is precisely what makes the vivid light which this Journal throws on his inner life so profoundly interesting. You see the grandeur of the man's whole make and character, the large sympathy with all suffering, the magnanimity, the habit of endurance, the slight scorn for his own sensitiveness, and yet the frank and hearty desire not to suffer, to have an end of his sufferings, which bespeaks the true man of the world, though a high-minded and

noble man of the world. It is the semi-Christian stoicism in Scott which makes the inner life of this Journal so fascinating, and at times so grand a spectacle. Fortunately, for the reader, the Journal opens a day or two-though only a day or two-before the anxieties as to the coming crash of his fortunes begin. The first entry is the 20th of November 1825, the first note of the approaching storm appears on the 22nd, and on the 25th Sir Walter records his firm resolve to economise, but within a few days the whole pressure of the approaching catastrophe is felt, and on January 16, 1826, the crash came. The illness and death of his wife followed in the same spring, and then for three or four years Scott went labouring on in the interest of his creditors, using his great imagination as long as it would work through his enfeebled physical organisation, to restore what he owed, to retrieve the spendthrift prodigality of his earlier years, and to reconcile himself to himself, so far as he could do so after his large, clear sense had fairly recognised how deeply his rather harebrained passion for land and position had involved him in responsibilities for other men whose speculative tendencies he could not control, and who were quite unfit to control their own.

Let us take first what the Journal shows in abundance, the large, sunny good sense that was the background of Sir Walter Scott's great imagination. What could be happier than this criticism on the sanguineness of the Whig mind?

November 25: Read Jeffrey's neat and wellintended address to the mechanics upon their combinations. Will it do good? Umph! It takes only the hand of a Liliputian to light a fire, but would require

The

the diuretic powers of Gulliver to extinguish it. Whigs will live and die in the heresy that the world is ruled by little pamphlets and speeches, and that if you can sufficiently demonstrate that a line of conduct is most consistent with men's interest, you have therefore and thereby demonstrated that they will at length, after a few speeches on the subject, adopt it of course. In this case we would have (no) need of laws or churches, for I am sure there is no difficulty in proving that moral, regular, and steady habits conduce to men's best interest, and that vice is not sin merely, but folly. But of these men each has passions and prejudices, the gratification of which he prefers, not only to the general weal, but to that of himself as an individual. Under the action of these wayward impulses a man drinks to-day though he is sure of starving to-morrow. He murders to-morrow though he is sure to be hanged on Wednesday. And people are so slow to believe that which makes against their own predominant passions, that mechanics will combine to raise the price for one week, though they destroy the manufacture for ever.

That is almost as nearly true of our too sanguine reformers to-day as it was sixty years since. Then, as to his genial stoicism, take this little entry a few days later, when his daughter and Lockhart are leaving Scotland for London, Lockhart being about to take up the editing of the Quarterly Review::

December 5-This morning Lockhart and Sophia left us early and without leave-taking; when I rose at eight o'clock they were gone. This was very right. I hate red eyes and blowing of noses. Agere et pati Romanum est. Of all schools commend me to the Stoics. We cannot indeed overcome our affections, nor ought we if we could, but we may repress them within

due bounds, and avoid coaxing them to make fools of those who should be their masters. I have lost some of the comforts to which I chiefly looked for enjoyment. Well, I must make the more of such as remain-God bless them. And so "I will unto my holy work again," which at present is the description of that heilige Kleeblatt, that worshipful triumvirate, Danton, Robespierre, and Marat.

Again, take this living sketch (written in the middle of his own anxieties) of Henry Mackenzie, the author of The Man of Feeling :

December 6— -A rare thing this literature, or love of fame or notoriety which accompanies it. Here is Mr. Henry) Mackenzie) on the very brink of human dissolution, as actively anxious about it as if the curtain must not soon be closed on that and everything else. He calls me his literary confessor; and I am sure I am glad to return the kindnesses which he showed me long since in George Square. No man is less known from his writings. We would suppose a retired, modest, somewhat affected man, with a white handkerchief and a sigh ready for every sentiment. No such thing: H. M. is as alert as a contracting tailor's needle in every sort of business—a politician and a sportsman-shoots and fishes in a sort even to this day-and is the life of the company with anecdote and fun. Sometimes, his daughter tells me, he is in low spirits at home, but really I never see anything of it in society.

I give these passages to show the wise and sagacious background of the mind by which the long four years' struggle of imaginative power, with accumulating physical and moral troubles, was maintained. Now let me illustrate the temper of the same mind under the first heavy shock of