happier days.  The publishing and printing firms with which he had been connected fell in the commercial crisis of 1826, and S. found himself at 55, and with failing health, involved in liabilities amounting to L130,000.  Never was adversity more manfully and gallantly met.  Notwithstanding the crushing magnitude of the disaster and the concurrent sorrow of his wife’s illness, which soon issued in her death, he deliberately set himself to the herculean task of working off his debts, asking only that time might be given him.  The secret of his authorship was now, of course, revealed, and his efforts were crowned with a marvellous measure of success. Woodstock, his first publication after the crash, appeared in the same year and brought L8000; by 1828 he had earned L40,000.  In 1827 The Two Drovers, The Highland Widow, and The Surgeon’s Daughter, forming the first series of Chronicles of the Canongate, appeared together with The Life of Napoleon in 9 vols., and the first series of Tales of a Grandfather; in 1828 The Fair Maid of Perth and the second series of Tales of a Grandfather, Anne of Geierstein, a third series of the Tales, and the commencement of a complete ed. of the novels in 1829; a fourth and last series of Tales, History of Scotland, and other work in 1830.  Then at last the overworked brain gave way, and during this year he had more than one paralytic seizure.  He was sent abroad for change and rest, and a Government frigate was placed at his disposal.  But all was in vain; he never recovered, and though in temporary rallies he produced two more novels, Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous, both in 1831, which only showed that the spell was broken, he gradually sank, and d. at Abbotsford on September 21, 1832.

The work which S. accomplished, whether looked at as regards its mass or its quality, is alike marvellous.  In mere amount his output in each of the four departments of poetry, prose fiction, history and biography, and miscellaneous literature is sufficient to fill an ordinary literary life.  Indeed the quantity of his acknowledged work in other departments was held to be the strongest argument against the possibility of his being the author of the novels.  The achievement of such a result demanded a power of steady, methodical, and rapid work almost unparalleled in the history of literature.  When we turn to its quality we are struck by the range of subject and the variableness of the treatment.  In general there is the same fulness of mind directed by strong practical sense and judgment, but the style is often heavy, loose, and even slipshod, and in most of his works there are “patches” in which he falls far below his best.  His poetry, though as a whole belonging to the second class, is full of broad and bold effects, picturesqueness, and an irresistible rush and freshness.  As a lyrist, however, he stands much higher, and in such gems as