hought is inaccurate. As if it would not be a fit cause for tears to
discover that one of our national idols was a fitting subject for
laughter!

_SIR WALTER SCOTT_

The question has begun to be asked about Scott which is asked about
every great man: whether he is still read or still read as he ought to
be read. I have been glad to see in some statistics of popular
literature that the Waverley Novels are still among the books most
frequently bought at railway stations, and scarcely surpassed even by
'Pickwick,' or 'David Copperfield.' A writer, it is said, is entitled to
be called a classic when his books have been read for a century after
his death. The number of books which fairly satisfies that condition is
remarkably small. There are certain books, of course, which we are all
bound to read if we make any claim to be decently educated. A modern
Englishman cannot afford to confess that he has not read Shakespeare or
Milton; if he talks about philosophy, he must have dipped at least into
Bacon and Hobbes and Locke; if he is a literary critic, he must know
something of Spenser and Donne and Dryden and the early dramatists; but
how many books are there of the seventeenth century which are still read
for pleasure by other than specialists? To speak within bounds, I fancy
that it would be exceedingly difficult to make out a list of one hundred
English books which after publication for a century are still really
familiar to the average reader. Something like ninety-nine of those have
in any case lost the charm of novelty, and are read, if read at all,
from some vague impression that the reader is doing a duty. It takes a
very powerful voice and a very clear utterance to make a man audible to
the fourth generation. If something of the mildew of time is stealing
over the Waverley Novels, we must regard that as all but inevitable.
Scott will have succeeded beyond any but the very greatest, perhaps even
as much as the very greatest, if, in the twentieth century, now so
unpleasantly near, he has a band of faithful followers, who still read
because they like to read and not because they are told to read.
Admitting that he must more or less undergo the universal fate, that the
glory must be dimmed even though it be not quenched, we may still ask
whether he will not retain as much vitality as the conditions of
humanity permit: Will our posterity understand at least why he was once
a luminary of the first magnitude, or wond