be complete, placed in his hand an ordinary volume instead of one of these libri rariores. He said he had overestimated his memory, he could not recollect that volume.' Scott grants to him to have been the prince of booksellers; his views sharp, liberal, and powerful; too sanguine and speculative, but who knew more of the business of a bookseller, in planning and executing popular works, than any man of his time. He was generous, and far from bad-hearted; in person good-looking ('The Crafty,' he said on another occasion, 'is a grand-looking chield, but not equal to Jupiter Carlyle'), but very corpulent latterly; a large feeder and deep drinker, till his health became weak. I have no great reason to regret him, yet I do. If he deceived others, he deceived also himself.' Constable was only fifty-four, but looked ten years older. He died the occupant of an obscure closet called by courtesy a shop, in poverty and wretchedness; and most of his great schemes had perished before him. Yet he must be remembered as long as the Edinburgh Review and the Waverley Novels.

In August died a greater man, who had also been closely connected with Scott, George Canning. We remember no eminent person of this century whose reputation is now so much a tradition as Canning's. Byron said of him: 'Canning

is a genius, almost a universal one,-a wit, a statesman, and a poet.' But his speeches are forgotten,-all save a few bold strokes, such as, 'I called a new world into existence' (by acknowledging the South American States); his wit lingers in such scraps of sarcasm, of questionable taste and unquestionable bad feeling, as 'the revered and ruptured Ogden' (a worthy patriot, who had contracted a rupture while confined for a political offence); his poetry never deserved the name, and is now nowhere, unless in obsolete books of extracts, where you may find still his Knifegrinder, and his ballad of The German Student, who exclaims,

man.

'Here doomed to starve on water gru

El, never shall I see the U

Niversity of Gottingen!'

Yet he was a most brilliant and a most useful His power over the Commons and country was immense; his oratory at once refined and brilliant. As Scott says of him: 'No man possessed a gayer and more playful wit in society; no one, since Pitt's time, had more commanding sarcasm in debate in the House of Commons. He was the terror of that species of orators called the "Yelpers." His lash fetched away both skin and bone, and would have penetrated the hide of a

rhinoceros.' As a statesman, he was given somewhat to intrigue, but had large views and progressive tendencies, although the Tories accused him, as they have since accused Gladstone and D'Israeli, of breaking down their ranks; and certainly, as Falstaff has it, 'he led his rogues where they were well peppered.' As a man, although irritable, haughty, and not willing to work amicably with inferior statesmen, he was frank, if not always open, and often yielded, as in his defence of Queen Caroline, to generous impulses. When appointed Premier, he said the office was his by inheritance, and as he could not from constitution hold it more than two years, it would descend to Peel. But he did not enjoy it for even that brief space. He was hunted to death by the organs of the extreme party he had left, which openly shouted out,' We are killing him ;' and was mourned by Scott the more tenderly that he strongly disapproved of his latter policy. It is singular to find in Scott's Journal, immediately after a feeling notice of Canning's death, the following sentence: 'My nerves have for these two or three last days been susceptible of acute excitement from the slightest causes. The beauty of the evening, the sighing of the summer breeze, bring the tears into my eyes, not un

pleasantly.' This was nature's untimely signal that he must at no distant day follow his great statesman friend.

Before the close of the year he had two dangerous rencontres, the one with a vapouring Frenchman, General Gourgaud, who had taken offence at some statements in Napoleon's Life, and wished personal satisfaction, and another with Abud the Jew, who threatened him, on account of a debt, with incarceration; but, as Bunyan would say, 'the Lord being merciful to him, he escaped both their hands.'

CHAPTER XXIL

STRUGGLES OF THE PROSTRATE.

HE vigorous rally made by Napoleon had on the whole failed. Even had

the work been as good in the historical style as Waverley was in fiction, we doubt if, at that stage of the business, it could have redeemed him. Its success would have probably led to a second effort, and, had that triumphed, the victory would have been bought by the author's life. More probably it would have been a failure, and Scott might have had to return to novel-writing over the ruins of his historical reputation. As it was, he was compelled to do this to some extent; and most of his after efforts in novel - writing appear like the convulsive struggles of his own Dirk Hatteraick after he was mastered and bound, strong but ineffectual.