Let us turn from the book-clubs, the libraries, and the swarming cheap editions of our own days, and hark back for about seventy-seven years.  The great Sheriff was then in the flush of his glorious manhood, and it is amazing to discover the national interest that was felt in his works as they came rapidly out.  When “Rokeby” appeared, only one copy reached Cambridge, and the happy student who secured that was followed by an eager crowd demanding that the poem should be read aloud to them.  When “Marmion” was sent out to the Peninsula, parties of officers were made up nightly in the lines of Torres Vedras to hear and revel in the new marvel.  Sir Adam Fergusson and his company of men were sheltered in a hollow at the battle of Talavera.  Sir Adam read the battle-scene from “Marmion” aloud to pass away the time; and the reclining men cheered lustily, though at intervals the screech of the French shells sounded overhead.  It may be said that the publication of a new work by Dickens was a national event only a quarter of a century ago.  True; but somehow even Dickens was not regarded with that grave critical interest which private citizens of the previous generation bestowed on Scott.  The incomparable Sir Walter at that time was dwelling far away amid the swamps and grim hills and shaggy thickets of Ashestiel.  Town-life was not for him, and he grudged the hours spent in musty law-courts.  Before dawn he went joyously to his work, and long before the household was astir he had made good progress.  At noon he was free to lead the life of a country farmer and sportsman; the ponies were saddled, the greyhounds uncoupled, and a merry company set off across the hills.  The talk was refined and gladsome, and visitors came back refreshed and improved to the cottage.  And now comes the strange part of the story—­this healthy retired sporting farmer was in correspondence with the greatest and cleverest men in the British Isles, and the most masterly criticisms of literature were exchanged with a lavish freedom which seems impossible to us in the days of the post-card and the hurried gasping telegram.  In our day there is absolutely no time for that leisurely conscientious study which was usual in the time when men bought their books and paid heavily for them.  Even Mr. Ruskin, in his retirement on the shores of Coniston, cannot carry on that graceful and ineffably instructive correspondence which was so easy to Southey, Coleridge, and the others of that fine company who dwelt in the Lake District.  Marvellous it is to observe the splendid quality of the literary criticisms which were sent to the great ones by men who had no intention of writing or selling a line.  In studying the memoirs of the century we find that, long before the education movement began, there were scores of men and women who had no need to make literature a profession, but who were nevertheless skilled and cultured as the writers who worked for bread.  Who now talks of Mr. Morritt of Rokeby?  Yet Morritt carried