A seton which had been ordered for his head, gave him some relief, and of course the first result was that he turned immediately to his novel-writing again, and began Castle Dangerous in July, 1831,—­the last July but one which he was to see at all.  He even made a little journey in company with Mr. Lockhart, in order to see the scene of the story he wished to tell, and on his return set to work with all his old vigour to finish his tale, and put the concluding touches to Count Robert of Paris.  But his temper was no longer what it had been.  He quarrelled with Ballantyne, partly for his depreciatory criticism of Count Robert of Paris, partly for his growing tendency to a mystic and strait-laced sort of dissent and his increasing Liberalism.  Even Mr. Laidlaw and Scott’s children had much to bear.  But he struggled on even to the end, and did not consent to try the experiment of a voyage and visit to Italy till his immediate work was done.  Well might Lord Chief Baron Shepherd apply to Scott Cicero’s description of some contemporary of his own, who “had borne adversity wisely, who had not been broken by fortune, and who, amidst the buffets of fate, had maintained his dignity.”  There was in Sir Walter, I think, at least as much of the Stoic as the Christian.  But Stoic or Christian, he was a hero of the old, indomitable type.  Even the last fragments of his imaginative power were all turned to account by that unconquerable will, amidst the discouragement of friends, and the still more disheartening doubts of his own mind.  Like the headland stemming a rough sea, he was gradually worn away, but never crushed.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 51:  Lockhart’s Life of Scott, viii. 197.]

[Footnote 52:  Lockhart’s Life of Scott, viii. 203-4.]

[Footnote 53:  Ibid., viii. 235.]

[Footnote 54:  Lockhart’s Life of Scott, viii. 238.]

[Footnote 55:  viii. 277.]

[Footnote 56:  viii. 347, 371, 381.]

[Footnote 57:  Lockhart’s Life of Scott, x. 11, 12.]

[Footnote 58:  Lockhart’s Life of Scott, x. 65-6.]

CHAPTER XVI.

THE LAST YEAR.

In the month of September, 1831, the disease of the brain which had long been in existence must have made a considerable step in advance.  For the first time the illusion seemed to possess Sir Walter that he had paid off all the debt for which he was liable, and that he was once more free to give as his generosity prompted.  Scott sent Mr. Lockhart 50_l._ to save his grandchildren some slight inconvenience, and told another of his correspondents that he had “put his decayed fortune into as good a condition as he could desire.”  It was well, therefore, that he had at last consented to try the effect of travel on his health,—­not that he could hope to arrest by it such a disease as his, but that