Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Essays on Great Writers
As generations roll on, the past drifts more and more from the field of our vision the England of Scott's day has become a classic the, the subjects of George III. Are strangers of foreign habits; tastes change, customs alter, books multiply, and with all the rest the Waverley Novels likewise show their antique dress and betray their mortality but the life of a great man never loses its interest. As a time recedes into remoteness, its books, saving the few on which time has no claim, become unreadable, but a man's life retains and tightens its hold upon us. It is hardly too much to say that Lockhart has done for Scott's fame almost as much as Scott himself. The greatest of Scotsmen in thirty novels and half a dozen volumes of poetry has sketched his own lineaments, but Lockhart has filled out that sketch with meces sary amplification, admiring and just. What would we not give for such a biography of Homer or Virgil, of Dante or Shakespeare But if we possessed one, dare we hope for a record of so much virtue and happiness, of so much honor and heroic duty?
Walter Scott is not only a novelist, not only a bountiful purveyor of enjoyment his life sheds a light as well as a lustre on England. Of right he ought to be seated on St. George's horse, and honored as Britain's patron saint, for he represents what Britain's best should be, he, the loyal man, the constant friend, joyous in youth, laborious in manhood, high-minded in the sad decadent years, think ing no evil, and faithful with the greatest faith, that in virtue for virtue's sake. Every English-speaking person should be familiar with that noble life.
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