THE SCOTT CENTENARY. 347 



enkindling power of his genius has revealed to younger generations realities 

 more marvelous than all the wonders of romance ; and lighted the way to 

 Bubstantial triumphs grander than the brightest dreams of Faerie Minstrelsy. 



THE LAMPS OF FICTION. 



(An Address delivered by Prof. Goldwin Smith, at the Toronto Celehration of the 

 Scott Centenary, 1871. J 



Ruskin has lighted seven lamps of Architecture, to guide the steps of the 

 architect in the worthy practice of his art. It seems time that some lamps 

 should be lighted to guide the steps of the writer of Fiction. Think what the 

 influence of novelists now is, and how some of them use it. Think of the multi- 

 tudes who read nothing but novels ; and then look into the novels which they 

 read. I have seen a young man's whole library consisting of thirty or forty of 

 those paper-bound volumes, which are the bad tobacco of the mind. In England 

 I looked over three railway book-stalls in one day. There was hardly a novel 

 by an author of any repute on one of them. They were heaps of nameless 

 garbage, commended by tasteless, flaunting woodcuts, the promise of which was 

 no doubt well kept within. Fed upon such food daily, what will the mind of a 

 nation be ? I say that there is no flame at which we can light the Lamp of 

 Fiction purer or brighter than the genius of him in honour to whose memory 

 we are assembled here to-day. Scott does not moralize. Heaven be praised 

 that he does not. He does not set a moral object before him, nor lay down 

 moral rules. But his heart, brave, pure and true, is a law to itself ; and by 

 studying what he does we may find the law for all who follow his calling. If 

 seven lamps have been lighted for architecture, Scott will liglit as many for 

 fiction. 



The Lamp of Reality. — The novelist must ground his work in a faithful 

 study of human nature. There was a popular writer of romances, who, it was 

 said, used to go round to the fashionable watering places to pick up characters. 

 That was better than nothing. There is another popular writer who, it seems, 

 makes voluminous indices of men and things, and draws on them for his 

 material. This also is better than nothing. For some writers, and writers dear 

 to the circulating libraries too, might, for all that appears in their works, lie ia 

 bed all day and write by night under the excitement of green tea. Creative 

 art, I suppose, they call this, and it is creative art with a vengeance. Not so 

 Scott. The human nature which he paints, he had seen in all its phases, gentle 

 and simple; in burgher and shepherd, Highlander, Lowlander, Borderer and 

 Islesman ; he had come into close contact with it ; he had opened it to himself 

 by the talisman of his joyous and winning presence ; he had studied it 

 thoroughly with a clear eye and an all-embracing heart. And when his scenes 

 are laid in the past, he has honestly studied the history. The history of his 

 novels is, perhaps, not critically accurate, not up to the mark of our present 

 knowledge, but in the main it is sound and true. Sounder and more true than 

 that of many professed historians, and even than that of his own historical 



