Is it so now?  If not, what a commentary might be written on human fame!  How transitory are the judgments of men in regard to every one whom fashion stamps!  The verdict of critics is that only some half-dozen authors are now read with the interest and glow which their works called out a hundred years ago.  Even the novels of Sir Walter, although to be found in every library, kindle but little enthusiasm compared with that excited by the masterpieces of Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, and of the favorites of the passing day.  Why is this?  Will these later lights also cease to burn?  Will they too pass away?  Is this age so much advanced that what pleased our grandfathers and grandmothers has no charm for us, but is often “flat, stale, and unprofitable,”—­at least, decidedly uninteresting?

I am inclined to the opinion that only a very small part of any man’s writings is really immortal.  Take out the “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” and how much is left of Gray for other generations to admire?  And so of Goldsmith:  besides the “Vicar of Wakefield” and the “Deserted Village,” there is little in his writings that is likely to prove immortal.  Johnson wrote but little poetry that is now generally valued.  Certainly his dictionary, his greatest work, is not immortal, and is scarcely a standard.  Indeed, we have outgrown nearly everything which was prized so highly a century ago, not only in poetry and fiction, but in philosophy, theology, and science.  Perhaps that is least permanent which once was regarded as most certain.

If, then, the poetry and novels of Sir Walter Scott are not so much read or admired as they once were, we only say that he is no exception to the rule.  I have in mind but two authors in the whole range of English literature that are read and prized as much to-day as they were two hundred years ago.  And if this is true, what shall we say of rhetoricians like Macaulay, of critics like Carlyle, of theologians like Jonathan Edwards, of historians like Hume and Guizot, and of many other great men of whom it has been the fashion to say that their works are lasting as the language in which they were written?  Some few books will doubtless live, but, alas, how few!  Where now are the eight hundred thousand in the Alexandrian library, which Ptolemy collected with so great care,—­what, even, their titles?  Where are the writings of Varro, said to have been the most learned man of all antiquity?

I make these introductory remarks to show how shallow is the criticism passed upon a novelist or poet like Scott, in that he is not now so popular or so much read as he was in his own day.  It is the fate of most great writers,—­the Augustines, the Voltaires, the Bayles of the world.  It is enough to say that they were lauded and valued in their time, since this is about all we can say of most of the works supposed to be immortal.  But when we remember the enthusiasm with which the novels of Scott were at first received, the great sums of money which