were paid for them, and the honors he received from them, he may well claim a renown and a popularity such as no other literary man ever enjoyed.  His eyes beheld the glory of a great name; his ears rang with the plaudits of idolaters; he had the consciousness of doing good work, universally acknowledged and gratefully remembered.  Scarcely any other novelist ever created so much healthy pleasure combined with so much sound instruction.  And, further, he left behind him a reproachless name, having fewer personal defects than any literary man of his time, being everywhere beloved, esteemed, and almost worshipped; whom distant travellers came to see,—­sure of kind and gracious treatment; a hero in their eyes to the last, with no drawbacks such as marred the fame of Byron or of Burns.  That so great a genius as Scott is fading in the minds of this generation may be not without comfort to those honest and hard-working men in every walk of human life who can say:  We too were useful in our day, and had our share of honors and rewards,—­all perhaps that we deserved, or even more.  What if we are forgotten, as most men are destined to be?  To live in the mouths of men is not the greatest thing or the best.  “Act well your part, there all the honor lies,” for life after all is a drama or a stage.  The supremest happiness is not in being praised; it is in the consciousness of doing right and being possessed with the power of goodness.

When, however, a man has been seated on such a lofty pinnacle as was Sir Walter Scott, we wish to know something of his personal traits, and the steps by which he advanced to fame.  Was he overrated, as most famous men have been?  What is the niche he will probably occupy in the temple of literary fame?  What are the characteristics of his productions?  What gave him his prodigious and extraordinary popularity?  Was he a born genius, like Byron and Burns, or was he merely a most industrious worker, aided by fortunate circumstances and the caprices of fashion?  What were the intellectual forces of his day, and how did he come to be counted among them?

All these points it is difficult to answer satisfactorily, but some light may be shed upon them.  The bulky volumes of Lockhart’s Biography constitute a mine of information about Scott, but are now heavy reading, without much vivacity,—­affording a strong contrast to Boswell’s Life of Johnson, which concealed nothing that we would like to know.  A son-in-law is not likely to be a dispassionate biographer, especially when family pride and interests restrain him.  On the other hand, it is not wise for a biographer to be too candid, and belittle his hero by the enumeration of foibles not consistent with the general tenor of the man’s life.  Lockhart’s knowledge of his subject and his literary skill have given us much; and, with Scott’s own letters and the critical notice of his contemporaries, both the man and his works may be fairly estimated.