kingship and of the poverty of millions of his subjects surging up within him.

It was another illustration of his personal charm, instinctive and unthought out, but singularly potent.

No one ever possessed a keener sense of proportion. The examples of this almost supreme gift in one so highly placed are too numberless to mention, and besides in order to make the point most effective it would be necessary to describe actions and analyse motives quite beyond the scope of these pages.

The King's retentive and well-ordered memory, not only of names and faces, for that has often been the subject of remark, but of the obscure ramifications of world-wide events, and not least his mastery of anecdote, made him one of the best conversationalists in Europe. It is also one of the main causes of his influential judgment upon political affairs. In his presence much of the ordinary kind of knowledge, mere information, was apt to drop into unimportance. The things he knew seemed majestic and significant, and common learning appeared a mere accomplishment. Lord Beaconsfield had noticed much the same quality in the talk of Queen Victoria.

No attempt has been made in these pages to give a dispassionate and detailed survey of the character of King Edward, and still less of his reign. Our loss is too recent, and our perspective too obscured. Like other mortals, our King had his failings, but what benefit has ever accrued to mankind by taking note of the failings of great men? And King Edward was beyond all question in the category of the great. Character, strong, firm and brave in quality, is the true test of greatness. These gifts were inherited by the King from both his parents, and his upbringing tended to enhance their virtue. To throw some light upon the value to Great Britain and her dominions over-sea of a monarchy thrice blessed in a Sovereign thus bred and trained, was the main intention of these pages. If the nation owes a debt of gratitude to Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort for having given us King Edward, in like manner, as years roll on, it will be seen that the King has given us in his son, to whom he was tenderly devoted and of whose virtue, modesty, and high abilities he was so justly proud, a successor not less worthy of admiration and respect.

Art. 2. THE PROSE OF WALTER SCOTT.

1. The Waverley Novels.

2. Memories of Sir Walter Scott.

By James Skene. Edited by Basil Thomson. London: Murray, 1909. 3. Sir Walter Scott's Friends. By Florence MacCunn. London: Blackwood, 1909.

WHEN Byron and Scott were approaching, one of them the end of his life, and the other of his prosperity, they exchanged in a monumental correspondence the princely compliments of literary diplomacy; and Byron, who, though he had then disclaimed the quarrel of 'English Bards' with 'Scotch Reviewers,' was engaged more deeply than ever in defending the Augustan manner of Pope against the fashions which he himself had helped Scott and others to introduce; Byron, than whom few men have been more independent of fashion and of flattery, affirmed that he found no one of whose superiority Sir Walter could reasonably be jealous, either among the living or, all things considered, among the dead. It is certain, from the principles and practice of Byron as a critic, that in this judgment he regarded form as well as substance, technical merit not less, perhaps even more, than abundance of imagination and invention; certain also, that it was upon the prose of the romances that he built his judgment, rather than upon the metrical merit, already questionable, of 'Marmion' and 'The Lady of the Lake.' And after the lapse of a century, when there is no more any question of living and dead, and the measure of Scott is to be taken solely by the standard of what is common to good work universally, the opinion of Byron may still stand as defensible. It is true that Scott's works show the mark of his rapidity, and that in average pieces of narrative he is not fastidious in expression or always correct. It has been said, and may perhaps be said with as much truth as is demanded from an epigram, that in average pieces of his prose' he has no style at all.' But it is also true that in the great moments to which those rapid sketches are subsidiary, in the pinnacles for which the scaffolding is somewhat hazardously piled up, he displays not only a touch of hand peculiar to himself, but also perfect command of Vol. 213.-No. 424.

D

sound construction, a sure hold upon those principles of speech-call them rules, practices, or what you will— which come from the deepest parts of humanity, and are common to all that succeed in this kind. A mind not sensible to the effects of Scott, when he intends effect, would have to seek satisfaction somewhere else than in literature as it has been practised by all Europe (to take the narrowest limit) from Homer to this day. And it is to be added that even the unpretentious freedom of his ordinary manner has a value in its place by way of relief and contrast.

A signal instance of both qualities may be found in the scene which lays the corner-stone of Guy Mannering' -the denunciation of the landowner and magistrate, Bertram of Ellangowan, by the gipsy witch, Meg Merrilies. The little band to which she belongs, after having been protected and encouraged for many generations in a precarious settlement upon Bertram's estate, have now been expelled, in a capricious fit of reform, by the summary process of pulling down their miserable tenements. The author of this improvement, little content with his severity, absents himself on the day of execution; but as he rides home, he meets the emigrant families in painful procession upon the confines of his property. To the sufferers his act naturally appears tyrannous, a provocation of the higher powers of providential justice; nor is it beyond common reckoning to divine that, in a country and among a population not very orderly, the defiance of such enemies may lead to disaster. Of such feelings and prognostications, raised to the tone of prophecy by the ambiguous pretensions of a witch-wife, Meg Merrilies makes herself the voice. The sequel of the story turns, as will be remembered, upon the fulfilment of her prophecy, to which, in the natural course of things, she contributes a great and, in the end, a dominant influence. The conception of her character is the key to the whole design; and here, in the scene of the prophecy, is the leading note upon which the whole depends.

The chapter (viii) containing it will throughout repay study; but for our present purpose we may begin with the two paragraphs which immediately precede the denunciation itself. The first gives the psychology of the situation, describing, without affectation of subtlety,

the uncomfortable feelings of the magistrate, who has just undergone, from the passing caravan, the novel experience of resentment and hatred.

...

'His sensations were bitter enough. The race, it is true, which he had thus summarily dismissed from their ancient place of refuge, was idle and vicious; but had he endeavoured to render them otherwise? They were not more irregular characters now than they had been while they were admitted to consider themselves as a sort of subordinate dependents of his family. . . . Some means of reformation ought at least to have been tried before sending seven families at once upon the wide world, and depriving them of a degree of countenance which withheld them at least from atrocious guilt. There was also a natural yearning of heart on parting with so many known and familiar faces; and to this feeling Godfrey Bertram was peculiarly accessible, from the limited qualities of his mind, which sought its principal amusements among the petty objects around him. As he was about to turn his horse's head to pursue his journey, Meg Merrilies, who had lagged behind the troop, unexpectedly presented herself.'

Manifestly we have here no research of style, 'no style at all' in the sense which the word 'style' has for the critic or the conscious artist. In vocabulary, phrasing, the cast and turn of sentences, there is as little character and stamp as the individuality of authorship may well admit. If anything is to be praised it is a certain plain gravity, proceeding partly from this very absence of pose. And there are negligences which are almost faults. To render them otherwise .; depriving them of a degree of countenance...; from the limited qualities of his mind...; to turn his horse's head to pursue his journey...; these and other phrases might be improved, and would not have satisfied a punctilious composer. But, on the other hand, there is no hitch, nothing to stumble at, and we are put without strain in full possession of the meaning.

worse.

The next paragraph is much more important and characteristic, and, as a composition, is both better and It contains what for Scott, in such a situation as this, was essentially significant-the stage-directions, so to speak, for setting the group and scene in preparation for the coming effect. Stage-directions we may well call them, for it is actually to the theatre that the author

has gone, as he often did, for inspiration; and later, at the crowning moment of the scene, he refers us to the source from which he has drawn: 'Margaret of Anjou' (he says), bestowing on her triumphant foes her keenedged malediction, could not have turned from them with a gesture more proudly contemptuous.' From the mind of Scott Shakespeare was never far; and with Henry the Sixth,' especially the final scenes, the figure of Meg Merrilies is more than once associated. The particular passage, to which he directs us, we will presently quote, for it is even more pertinent than his words imply. But for the moment we note only, as a fact, his theatrical prepossession, and now present in this light what we are justified in calling his stage-directions: 'She was standing upon one of those high precipitous banks which, as we before noticed, overhung the road; so that she was placed considerably higher than Ellangowan, even though he was on horseback; and her tall figure, relieved against the clear blue sky, seemed almost of supernatural stature. We have noticed that there was in her general attire, or rather in her mode of adjusting it, somewhat of a foreign costume, artfully adopted perhaps for the purpose of adding to the effect of her spells and predictions, or perhaps from some traditional notions respecting the dress of her ancestors. On this occasion she had a large piece of red cotton cloth rolled about her head in the form of a turban, from beneath which her dark eyes flashed with uncommon lustre. Her long and tangled black hair fell in elf-locks from the folds of this singular head-gear. Her attitude was that of a sibyl in frenzy, and she stretched out in her right hand a sapling bough, which seemed just pulled.'

Considering this from a practical point of view, as a catalogue of points which the reader is to focus as a preparation of the eye for the delivery of the tirade that follows, we may pronounce it beyond improvement. Nothing is neglected or slurred; posture and colours, properties and accessories, suggestions, duly vague, of history or literature, all is prescribed; the least lively imagination must be ready to work on such terms; and the tableau could be set, one almost fancies that it could be painted, by an amateur. But for style-the conscious stylist might say again that there is none. The whole method

* See the motto to chapter liv.