344 THE SCOTT CENTENARY. 



Oft have I listen'd and stood still 

 As it came softened up the hUl, 

 And deem'd it the lament of men 

 Who languish'd for their native glen ; 

 And thought how sad would be the sound 

 On Susquehannah's swampy ground, 

 Kentucky's wood-encumbered brake, 

 Or wild Ontario's boundless lake, 

 When heart-sick exiles in the strain 

 Reeall'd fair Scotland's hills again." 



And here now, by the shores of wild Ontario's boundless lake, in no swampy 

 jungle or cumbered brake, but amid all the appliances of modern civilization, 

 a century after that poet's birth, we recall fair Scotland's old historic landscape 

 in association with the poet's name who in the young hey-day of pride and hope 

 ■exclaimed in the familiar lines of his Minstrel : — 



" Breathes there the man with soul so dead. 

 Who never to himself hath said : 

 This is my own, my native land ?" 



And in whom, more than a quarter of a century thereafter, returning from 

 bootless wanderings, shattered alike in mind and body: the poet-soul of the Last 

 of the Minstrels flashed up into momentary fire at the gleam of his native 

 mountains and the music of his native stream. 



As a poet, Scott occupied no mean place amid the galaxy of genius which 

 marked his era with an intellectual wealth, surpassed only by that of the 

 the Elizabethan age. As a novelist he remains unrivalled by all who have 

 basked in the light of his genius, as by those whose woiks delighted elder 

 generations with their, gifted but impure romance. Yet looking to all that 

 there was in Scott of masculine vigour, sagacious wisdom, shrewd practical 

 sense, and genuine intellectual power, I cannot think he was true to the great 

 gifts entrusted to him. He never "took unto the height the measure of himself," 

 that, like Milton, he might create that which posterity would not willingly let 

 die. Apollo's heavenly steed had been given to him, harnessed and bridled to 

 his will, that he might soar to all the loftiest heights at his poetic behest. 

 Apollo's lightnings had been entrusted to him in an age when millions of the 

 €mbruted and down-trodden nations were longing and watching for the dawn. 

 He dealt with the divine gift as though it were the merest merchandise of the 

 trading mart ; the paltry pelf of the exchequer ; a means for accumulating acres, 

 building storehouses and barns ; and creating the poor mockery of a modern 

 antique : that melancholy anachronism of genius, the Barony of Abbotsford. 

 No one saw the folly of all this more keenly than himself, or laughed at it in 

 more genial and hearty fashion, as in his Baron of Bradwardine and Laird of 

 Monkbarns. How was it that that shrewd, sagacious, thoroughly practical 

 intellect succumbed to such folly ? There are points in the inner life of the 

 minstrel-novelist which have yet to be cleared up, ere he wholly cease to be for 

 us still the Great Unknown. The secret of Scott's life has been purposely 

 obscured. The laboured efforts of his biographer to shift on Ballantyne and 

 others the blame of his bankruptcy and financial ruin have been seen through. 

 But other points await the truthful handling of the impartial biographer 



