at the appearance of the pale, attenuated, half-dead, yet still lovely female whom the Queen upheld by main strength with one hand, while with the other she waived aside the ladies and nobles who pressed towards her, under the idea that she was taken suddenly ill.

"Where is my Lord of Leicester!' she said, in a tone that thrilled with astonishment all the courtiers who stood around; 'stand forth, my Lord of Leicester !'

"If, in the midst of the most serene day of summer, when all is light and laughing around, a thunderbolt were to fall from the clear blue vault of heaven, and rend the earth at the very feet of some careless traveller, he could not gaze upon the smouldering chasm which so unexpectedly yawned before him with half the astonishment and fear which Leicester felt at the sight that so suddenly presented itself. He had that instant been receiving, with a political affectation of disavowing and misunderstanding their meaning, the half-uttered, half-intimated congratulations of the courtiers upon the favor of the Queen; carried, apparently, to its highest pitch during the interview of that morning, from which most of them seemed to augur that he might soon arise from their equal in rank to become their master. And now, while the subdued yet proud smile with which he disclaimed those inferences was yet curling his cheek, the Queen shot into the circle, her passions excited to the uttermost, and supporting with one hand, and apparently without an effort, the pale and sinking form of his almost expiring wife, and pointing with the finger of the other to her half-dead features, demanded in a voice that sounded to the ears of the astounded statesman like the last dread trumpet-call that is to summon body and spirit to the judgment-seat, 'Knowest thou this woman?'"

From the publication of the Lay of the Last Minstrel in 1805, for twenty years Scott's prosperity was unbroken. Few literary men have had such continued fame and fortune. Early in his literary career he formed a business partnership, kept a secret, with two friends of his, James and John Ballantyne, the printers of his books. This firm was closely allied in interest with that of Constable, the publisher.

In the full tide of success, when he might have been supposed secure from pecuniary trouble, almost without warning, the firms of his publisher and printer failed. From

424

the fact of his secret partnership, entered into so long before with Ballantyne, Scott found himself liable for the debts of the firm. At fifty-four years old he was overwhelmed with a debt of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds for the printing-firm, besides thirty thousand pounds of private debts. His private debt had been incurred in the fitting of his home, the estate of Abbotsford. Although generally simple in his tastes, Scott had one pet extravagance. To create and beautify a home was the dream of his life. He had begun by buying some land on which he intended to build a tasteful house; but by degrees more lands had been added, till the little estate grew into baronial acres, and the modest mansion became a castle. It was an ideally beautiful place; as Miss Edgeworth said when she went from her home in Ireland to visit the author of Waverley, "Everything about you is exactly what one ought to have wit enough to dream.'

When failure came, Scott accepted the position at once with characteristic courage, declared that he could and would pay all debts, and saying, "Time and I against any two," went at once to work. enough to come to his aid. The young Duke of Buccleugh There were offered to assume alone the whole debt, but Scott refused men noble all such offers. For answer, new novels began to appear at rapid intervals. In five years he had paid nearly half the debt, with interest. rights on his books cleared Abbotsford, and it was preAfter his death the value of the copyserved to his family.

But such work as this was too much even for such capacity for work as his. During his literary career he was author of many books other than the poems and novels which make his fame. He had edited the works of Dean Swift, with a biography, in nineteen volumes; he had written a voluminous Life of Napoleon; he was the author of a History of Scotland; he had furnished articles for cyclopædias, magazines, and current literature: all these, with historical and biographical sketches, had come from this fertile pen. His was a life of almost unparalleled industry;

and it is not strange that, while still in the vigor of age, the cord should snap by its strain, that the pitcher should be broken at the fountain. In the midst of his work he had a paralytic stroke, the natural result of such mental efforts. After he was taken ill he would do prodigies of work, and often dictate from his bed while in pain and in mental weariness. In 1830 he had a stroke of paralysis. Even after this he finished his two last novels, Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous. In the autumn of 1831 he went to Italy in the vain hope of restoration, but returned to Abbotsford in the summer of 1832 to spend his last days in his beloved home. He called one day for his pen; but the hand that had been so untiring could not hold it, it dropped from his grasp. The tears rolled down his cheeks as he bade farewell in that last effort to the work which was his life, and from that time he failed rapidly; and Sept. 17, 1832, at the age of sixty-one, he died.

His death and the close of his work seem to me to form a fit point at which to close the story of English literature. About the time that he passed off the stage there were entering upon it some of the men now foremost in the literature of to-day, the living authors upon whom Time. has not yet passed its verdict. With the death of Scott, therefore, I leave the history of the literature of the past. The history of the literature of our living writers belongs. to the future.

INDEX.

ABBOTSFORD, home of Sir Walter | Ballads, Early English, 50; Robin