373 



SCOTT, WALTER. 



SCRIBONIUS LARGUS DESIGNATIANUS. 



374 



was indebted to Constable's creditors, as a partner of Ballantyne and 

 Co., for nearly 72,00(W. ; and that the total amount of the debts of 

 Ballantyne and Co. was about 110,OOOA, for the whole of which Sir 

 Walter was liable as a partner. About half of the 72,OOOJ. due to 

 Constable and Co. being included in the debts of Ballantyne and Co., 

 Scott's actual liabilities were somewhere about 147.000J. The pre- 

 sumptuous rashness with which, in order to indulge himself in the 

 theatrical pleasure of enacting the part of one of the favourite heroes 

 of Ins imagination, he incurred this immense load of debt, cannot be 

 palliated. From 1823, if not from an earlier period, novels were 

 contracted for and paid in bills, before even the subjects or names of 

 the future publications were fixed. This was not a mere speculation 

 upon popularity : it was a wanton setting of health, mental and cor- 

 poreal, and of life itself, upon the hazard. But to the honour of 

 Scott, ho did not flinch from the terrible responsibility he had so pre- 

 sumptuously incurred. "Gentlemen," he said to the creditors, 

 " Time and I against any two. Let me take this good ally into my 

 company, and I believe I shall be able to pay you every farthing." 

 He surrendered the whole of his property; executed a trust-deed 

 in favour of certain gentlemen, who were to receive the funds realised 

 by his labours, and pay off his debts with interest by instalments ; 

 sold his house and furniture, and retired to lodgings, and resumed his 

 literary labours with dogged resolution. " It is very hard," he said, 

 in his deep thoughtful voice, to a friend who expressed his sympathy, 

 " thus to lose all the labours of a lifetime, and be made a poor man at 

 last, when I ought to have been otherwise. But if God grant me life 

 :md strength for a few yeara longer, I have no doubt that I shall 

 redeem it all." 



Scott's works, published during the six years which elapsed between 

 his bankruptcy and his death, which occurred on the 21st of September 

 1832, possess a painful interest. They want the energy and buoyancy 

 of his earlier writings ; they bear the impress of the lassitude of a 

 spirit engaged in a hopeless task. Some of them, like the ' History of 

 Napoleon,' are works which lay out of his line ; some of them, like the 

 'Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft,' are of a class to which 

 humbler pens alone ought to be tasked; some of them, like the 

 gossipping notes to his collected works, are concessions to the imperti- 

 nent curiosity of the public, to which it is painful to see a great man 

 stooping. Neither Walter Scott, nor any other really great author, 

 ought to be his .own Boswell. Making allowance for every drawback 

 however, the old fire glows in his ashes. Nor was his self-immolation 

 altogether in vain. There can be little doubt that the disease which 

 proved fatal to him was superinduced by excess of mental toil, but the 

 purpose for which he sacrificed, himself was attained. His debts, 

 materially diminished before his death, have since been entirely 

 liquidated by the profits of the collected editions of his works. The 

 certainty of this event, the consciousness that he had not shrunk from 

 the responsibilities he had incurred, the feeling that he had deserved 

 and retained the love and respect which waited upon him in more 

 prosperous days, was his consolation in the dark hours of his closing 

 life. The political party to which he was devoted was overthrown, 

 and the institutions he venerated were in his opinion about to be 

 swept away; his wealth had melted from his grasp, toil was the lot 

 and prospect of his old age, the friends of his youth were dying out 

 one by one ; but the consciousness of honourable and manly endurance, 

 and the devoted love of his children, smoothed his passage to the 

 grave. He sought, but too late, health in a foreign climate. The 

 worn-out frame craved to be at home and at rest. He murmured, 

 " Now he knew he was at Abbotsford," when his friend Mr. Laidlaw 

 welcomed him on his return, and for a few days enjoyed the mansion 

 he had reared with so much love and pride. His strong frame struggled 

 hard with the disease, but exhausted nature gave way at last, and he 

 expired after fourteen days of total insensibility, on the 21st of 

 September 1832. 



It is even yet perhaps too early to attempt a dispassionate estimate 

 of Scott and his writings. Making allowance for increased facilities of 

 communication, and more generally diffused education, the fervour of 

 popular enthusiasm with which his works were received was not greater 

 than was experienced by the publications of Richardson. Time alone 

 can decide how much of his writings will survive, and what place they 

 will permanently occupy in the estimation of the literary world. Of 

 this however there can be no doubt, that in Scott a strong and healtny 

 intellect was engrafted on a powerful will ; that he had a natural and 

 easy play of humour, with no inconsiderable portion of poetical 

 imagination, and a large share of that power of apprehending and 

 portraying character which is the great charm of Fielding. Great part 

 of his life he indulged in a dream-world of his own ; but when rudely 

 awakened by adversity, he submitted to the consequences with heroic 

 submission. He was a great and a good man. 



AN" alter Scott was the fourth of ten children, of whom only Thomas, 

 a younger brother, left any descendants. His own four children all 

 survived him, but all have since passed away ; and with the death of 

 his grandson, Walter Scott Lockhart, ended his vain hope of building 

 up a family name. The house and estate of Abbotsford have become 

 the property of J. R. Hope, Esq., who married Scott's granddaughter, 

 Charlotte Harriet Jane Lockhart, the daughter of Mr. J. G. Lockhart 

 [LOCKHART, J. G.] and Scott's eldest daughter Sophia. 



(Lockhart, Life of Scott ; Notes and Prefaces ly Sir Walter to the 



edition of his Collected Works; Publications ly the Trustees of the 

 Messrs. Ballantyne ; MS. Communications.) 



SCOTUS, DUNS. [DDKS SCOTUS.] 



SCOTUS, JOHANNES. [EniGENA.l 



*SCRIBE, AUGUSTIN-EUGENE, one of the moat fertile and 

 successful of the modern French dramatic writers, was born hi Paris, 

 on December 24, 1791, the son of a merchant, who on his death left 

 him a considerable fortune. His first studies were directed to the law, 

 but his dramatic talent was indicated so early that his guardian, the 

 advocate Bonnet, recommended him to abandon the bar for the stage. 

 His first drama was produced in conjunction with his schoolfellow 

 Germain Delavigne. It was entitled ' The Dervise,' and was performed 

 in 1811 with great applause. His course has been uninterrupted ever 

 since, and the number of his productions almost innumerable. He 

 has not only supplied the French stage, but through translation*, 

 adaptations, and suggestions, the stages of the greater part of Europe, 

 and especially that of England. 



Scribe's productions are of a peculiar character. He is by no means 

 a dramatic poet; though he possesses facility of invention it is shown 

 more in the clever development of his plots than in the imagining of 

 the higher and nobler description of character. Where he has 

 attempted this he has failed. His distinguishing merits are a remark- 

 able ingenuity and inexhaustible variety in the construction of his 

 plots, a lightness and ease in their development, the conversational 

 fluency and point of his dialogue, and a correct conception and 

 vigorous delineation of character in what may be called the outside 

 circles of civilised or rather, Parisian life. In his opera?, for 

 many of which he has produced librettos, he has well adapted his 

 language to the music, but, as we have said of his other writings, he 

 does not reach probably he does not aim at the poetical. His 

 success has been not less than his industry, and he is said to have 

 received immense sums for many of his pieces, and to have realised 

 considerable wealth. It would not be easy to enumerate all his 

 pieces, as many of them, vaudevilles especially, were originally issued 

 under assumed names ; but among those by which he will be known 

 to English readers we may mention ' Le Comte Ory,' ' Le plus beau 

 Jour de la Vie,' ' La Muette de Portici,' ' Fra Diavolo,' ' Robert le 

 Diable,' 'Les Diamants de la Couronne,' 'Bertrand et Raton/ 'La 

 Verre d'Eau,' all of which, as well as numerous others, have been 

 reproduced at English theatres. A selection from his works was 

 published in 1845 in seven volumes; and a romance of his has been 

 translated and published in England, called ' The Victim of the 

 Jesuits.' 



SCRIBO'NIUS LARGUS DESIGNATIA'NUS, an ancient Latin 

 physician, who lived at Rome in the reigns of Tiberius and Claudius, 

 the latter of whom he accompanied in his campaign in Britain. He 

 is the author of a work in Latin, ' De Compositionibus Medicamentc- 

 rum ; ' but little is known of the events of his life, and even the 

 language in which he wrote has been disputed. As the Latin of this 

 work is somewhat barbarous, and as Galen, who never mentions any 

 Latin writer, quotes the author, it was thought that it had been 

 written originally in Greek, and translated afterwards into Latin. 

 Physicians however have in general cared little for purity of language, 

 and it may easily have happened that in the Silver age of Latin 

 literature a practitioner may have written in a barbarous style. 

 Besides, the diction itself seems to prove that the work was originally 

 composed in Latin (Bernhold, 'Prsefat. ad ed. Scribon. Larg.,' p. 17); 

 and again, there is no author whom Galen has copied worse than he 

 has Scribonius, probably because he did not understand Latin 

 sufficiently well. (Cagnati, 'Observ. Var.,' 8vo, Romse, 1587, lib. iii., 

 c. 14, p. 222.) Although, says Sprengel ('Hist, de la Me"d.'), in one 

 place, Scribonius will not admit of any separation between the different 

 branches of his art, at least he does not prove that he himself was 

 ever able to unite the theory of medicine to the practice. He spared 

 no pains in collecting together all the preparations mentioned in 

 different authors (cap. 1, p. 35, ed. Beruhold), without paying the 

 least attention to the difference of the diseases for which they were 

 prescribed. He copied Nicander almost literally, and adopted from 

 other authors a number of superstitious remedies. He believed, for 

 example, that he had found a certain preservative against the bite of 

 serpents in the plant which he called o^vTp'i<j)v\\ov (Allehira), and 

 which ought to be gathered with the left hand before sunrise (cap. 

 42, p. 91). He also recommended many preparations against sighing; 

 which shows how much he was attached to empiricism (cap. 19, p. 51). 

 Amongst other antidotes he much esteemed the ' Hiera ' of Antouius 

 Pacchius (cap. 23), and a composition of Zopyrus of Gordium, which, 

 according to the custom of the times, that physician prepared every 

 year with much ceremony. The work of Scribonius is chiefly valuable 

 for the information it contains relating to the Materia Medica of the 

 ancients. It was first published by J. Ruellius, at the end of his 

 edition of Celsus, fol., Paris, 1529. This edition was printed in 

 October 1528, which therefore gives it a few months' priority over 

 that published at Basel, 8vo, 1 529, ap. And. Cratandrum, which is 

 sometimes said to be the editio princeps. The best edition, according 

 to Choulant (' Handb. der Biicherkunde fur die Aeltere Med.,' Svo, 

 Leipzig, 1828), ia that by Rhodius, 4to, Patav., 1655; the last (which 

 is less complete than the preceding) is Bernhold's Svo, Argent, 1780. 

 A future editor may profit by three dissertations by C. G. Kunn, 4to, 



