of the lady who began a biography of her deceased husband with the
words--"D--- was a dirty man," but the books certainly would be
more readable, and the subjects more lovable too, if we had greater
light and shade in the picture.

But I am sure that the more one knew of Scott the more one would
have admired him. He lived in a drinking age, and in a drinking
country, and I have not a doubt that he took an allowance of
toddy occasionally of an evening which would have laid his feeble
successors under the table. His last years, at least, poor fellow,
were abstemious enough, when he sipped his barley-water, while
the others passed the decanter. But what a high-souled chivalrous
gentleman he was, with how fine a sense of honour, translating
itself not into empty phrases, but into years of labour and denial!
You remember how he became sleeping partner in a printing house,
and so involved himself in its failure. There was a legal, but very
little moral, claim against him, and no one could have blamed him
had he cleared the account by a bankruptcy, which would have enabled
him to become a rich man again within a few years. Yet he took the
whole burden upon himself and bore it for the rest of his life,
spending his work, his time, and his health in the one long effort
to save his honour from the shadow of a stain. It was nearly
a hundred thousand pounds, I think, which he passed on to the
creditors--a great record, a hundred thousand pounds, with his
life thrown in.

And what a power of work he had! It was superhuman. Only the man who
has tried to write fiction himself knows what it means when it is
recorded that Scott produced two of his long novels in one single
year. I remember reading in some book of reminiscences--on second