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PREFACE.

HE purpose of the following work requires very little explanation. It was

thought by its publishers-a view in

which the author thoroughly coincided-that a popular life of Sir Walter Scott was a desideratum. There are indeed various lives of Sir Walter already. Lockhart's has long been the standard. one, and continues to be justly regarded as a very able work, and as a mine of information on the subject. But it is too large, and, besides the personalities which abound in it and rather lessen its value, it contains a mass of correspondence and minute details which seem somewhat irrelevant and uninteresting now, Scott's letters being the dullest of all his productions. There are many smaller lives; but they are in general meagre outlines.

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The author has sought to produce something between the large work of Lockhart and the slighter biographies. He has not catered for gossip, and his book will be found to contain little, although there are not a few new facts sprinkled throughout. It aims rather at being an accurate summary of the leading events in Scott's life, and a candid, full, and genial criticism on his principal works. How far its aim has been successfully gained, the public must decide.

The book, whatever be its defects, may be thought a 'word in season,' as connected in time with that centenary celebration which is at hand, and which may be regarded not merely as a tribute to Scott's memory, but as at once an acknowledgment and outcome of that large and loving spirit which is abroad in the age, and which has been partly the result of the extensive diffusion of Sir Walter's writings.

Shakspeare says:

'The evil that men do lives after them; the good

Is oft interred with their bones.'

It has been otherwise with Scott.

Whatever

was small and narrow in his history and opinions is forgotten. His real nature, which was as broad and catholic as the sun, remains with us, and is still powerfully affecting the world. Sitting the

other day under the shadow of his Edinburgh monument, with the glory of a rich September afternoon bathing the city which Scott loved so well, we thought that we had too long regarded him as a mirror of national manners and peculiarities, and that his true mission had been misunderstood. That was of a cosmopolitan and Christian character. And even as that splendid monument is now pointing to the most magnificent of landscapes, overhung by the most golden and benignant of skies, united together into one grand whole, his genius seemed to predict in its all-sided character a nobler harmony, a more thorough reconciliation of the jarring elements in society and human nature, than we can at present conceive of, and leads us-undisturbed by the sad events of the time to anticipate, though faintly and far off, that of which this beautiful day seems a prophecy and a pledge:

'The bridal of the earth and sky.'

DUNDEE, September 1870.

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