; he had nothing of the martyr about him;
he slew no monsters and stirred no deep emotions. He did not believe in
anything, and did not even disbelieve in anything: he was content to
take the world as it came--the false and the true mixed
indistinguishably together. One Ram-dass, a Hindoo, 'who set up for
god-head lately,' being asked what he meant to do with the sins of
mankind, replied that 'he had fire enough in his belly to burn up all
the sins in the world.' Ram-dass had 'some spice of sense in him.' Now,
of fire of that kind we can detect few sparks in Scott. He was a
thoroughly healthy, sound, vigorous Scotchman, with an eye for the main
chance, but not much of an eye for the eternities. And that unfortunate
commercial element, which caused the misery of his life, was equally
mischievous to his work. He cared for no results of his working but such
as could be seen by the eye, and in one sense or other, 'handled,
looked at, and buttoned into the breeches' pocket.' He regarded
literature rather as a trade than an art; and literature, unless it is a
very poor affair, should have higher aims than that of 'harmlessly
amusing indolent, languid men.' Scott would not afford the time or the
trouble to go to the root of the matter, and is content to amuse us with
mere contrasts of costume, which will lose their interest when the
swallow-tail is as obsolete as the buff-coat. And then he fell into the
modern sin of extempore writing, and deluged the world with the first
hasty overflowings of his mind, instead of straining and refining it
till he could bestow the pure essence upon us. In short, his career is
summed up in the phrase that it was 'writing impromptu novels to buy
farms with'--a melancholy end, truly, for a man of rare genius. Nothing
is sadder than to hear of such a man 'writing himself out;' and it is
pitiable indeed that Scott should be the example of that fate which
rises most naturally to our minds. 'Something very perfect in its kind,'
says Carlyle, 'might have come from Scott, nor was it a low kind--nay,
who knows how high, with studious self-concentration, he might have
gone: what wealth nature implanted in him, which his circumstances, most
unkind while seeming to be kindest, had never impelled him to unfold?'

There is undoubtedly some truth in the severer criticisms to which some
more kindly sentences are a pleasant relief; but there is something too
which most persons will be apt to consider as rather h