8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. "Ha! bind him on his back! Look!-as Prome'theūs in my picture here! Press down the poisoned links into his flesh! "So-let him writhe! How long Will he live thus? Quick, my good pencil, now! Ha! gray-haired, and so strong! How fearfully he stifles that short moan! "Pity thee! So I do! I pity the dumb victim at the altar But does the robed priest for his pity falter? A thousand lives were perishing in thine- "Hereafter! Ay-hereafter! A whip to keep a coward to his track! What gave Death ever from his kingdom back Come from the grave to-morrow with that story— "No, no, old man! we die Even as the flowers, and we shall breathe away For when that bloodshot quivering is o'er, A spirit that the smothering vault shall spurn, Consumed my brain to ashes as it shone, "Ay-though it bid me rifle My heart's last fount for its insatiate thirst Though every life-strung nerve be maddened first— 15. 16. 17. Though it should bid me stifle The yearning in my throat for my sweet child, "All-I would do it all Sooner than die, like a dull worm, to rot— O heavens!--but I appall Your heart, old man! forgive-ha! on your lives "Vain-vain-give o'er! His eye Glazes apace. He does not feel you now— But for one moment-one-till I eclipse Brokenly now-that was a difficult breath- He shudders-gasps-Jove help him!-so-he's dead." 18. How like a mounting devil in the heart Rules the unreined ambition! Let it once The heart to ashes, and with not a spring We look upon our splendor and forget The thirst of which we perish! Yet hath life Promising well; and love-touched drearndr some; 19. Friendship is but a slow-awaking dream, Burning to waste, or, if its light is found, And from Love's věry bosom, and from Gain, 20. Oh, if there were not better hopes than these- Falsehood hath broken will unite no mōre- And die of their own fullness-if beyond The grave there is no heaven in whose wide air Of whose bright habitants the lavish heart May spend itself—WHAT THRICE-MOCKED FOOLS ARE WE! N. P. WILLIS. TAKE it acter ke SECTION XXII. I. 119. CHARACTER OF SCOTT. all and all, it is not too much to say that the charSir Walter Scott is probably the most remarkable on record. There is no man of historical celebrity that we now recall, who combined, in so eminent a degree, the highest qualities of the moral, the intellectual, and the physical. He united in his own character what hitherto had been found incompatible. 2. Though a poët, and living in an ideal world, he was an exact, methodical man of business; though achieving with the most wonderful facility of genius, he was patient and laborious; a mousing antiquarian, yet with the most active interest in the present and whatever was going on around him; with a strong turn for a roving life and military adventure, he was yet chained to his desk more hours, at some periods of his life, than a monkish recluse; a man with a heart as capacious as his head; a Tōry, brimful of Jăcʼobitism,' yet full of sympathy and unaffected familiarity with all classes, even the humblèst; a successful author, without pedantry and without conceit; one, indeed, at the head of the republic of letters, and yet with a lower estimate of letters, as compared with other intellectual pursuits, than was ever hazarded before. 3. The first quality of his character, or, rather, that which forms the basis of it, as of all great characters, was his energy. We see it in his early youth, triumphing over the impediments of nature, and in spite of lameness, making him conspicuous in every sort of athletic exercise-clambering up dizzy precipices, wading through treacherous fōrds, and performing feats of pedestrianism that make one's joints ache to read of. As he advanced in life, we see the same force of purpose turned to higher objects. 4. We see the same powerful energies triumphing over disease at a later period, when nothing but a resolution to get the better of it enabled him to do so. "Be assured," he remarked to Mr. Gillies, "that if pain could have prevented my application to literary labor, not a page of Ivanhoe would have been written. Now if I had given way to mere feelings, and had ceased to work, it is a question whether the disorder might not have taken a deeper root, and become incurable." 5. Another quality, which, like the last, seems to have given tone to his character, was his social or benevolent feelings. His heart was an unfailing fountain, which not merely the distresses, but the joys of his fellow-creatures made to flow like water 6. Rarely indeed is this precious quality found united with the most exalted intellect. Whether it be that nature, chary of her gifts, does not care to shower too many of them on one head; or that the public admiration has led the man of intellect to set too high a value on himself, or at least his own pursuits, to take 'Jǎc' o bit ism, the principles of the adherents of James the Second, of England. an interest in the inferior concerns of others; or that the fear of compromising his dignity puts him "on points" with those who approach him; or whether, in truth, the very magnitude of his own reputation throws a freezing shadow over us little people in his neighborhood-whatever be the cause, it is too true that the highest powers of the mind are very often deficient in the only one which can make the rest of much worth in society -the power of pleasing. 7. Scott was not one of these little great. His was not one of those dark-lantern visages which concentrate all their light on their own path, and are black as midnight to all about them. He had a ready sympathy, a word of contagious kindness or cordial greeting for all. His manners, too, were of a kind to dispel the icy reserve and awe which his great name was calculated to inspire. 8. He relished a good joke, from whatever quarter it came, and was not over-dainty in his manner of testifying his satisfaction. "In the full tide of mirth, he did indeed laugh the heart's laugh," says Mr. Adolphus. "Give me an honest laugher," said Scott himself on another occasion, when a buckram man of fashion had been paying him a visit at Abbotsford. 9. His manners, free from affectation or artifice of any sort, exhibited the spontaneous movements of a kind disposition, subject to those rules of good breeding which Nature herself might have dictated. In this way he answered his own purpose admirably as a painter of character, by putting every man in good humor with himself, in the same manner as a cunning portrait-painter amuses his sitters with such store of fun and anecdote as may throw them off their guard, and call out the happiest expressions of their countenances. 10. The place where his benevolent impulses found their proper theater for expansion was his own home; surrounded by a happy family, and dispensing all the hospitalities of a great feudal proprietor. "There are many good things in life," he says, in one of his letters, "whatever satirists' and mis'anthropes may say to the contrary; but probably the best of all, next to a 'Sǎt' ir ist, one who writes com positions, generally poetical, that hold up vice or folly to severe disapproval; one who makes a keen or severe ex 2 posure of what in public or private morals deserves rebuke. "Mis' an thrōpe, a hater of man kind. |