ve of a certain _Diary_ which is our main
authority, and, indeed, makes other authorities merely illustrative for
a great part of the few and evil last years of Sir Walter's life. It was
begun before the calamities, and just after the return from Ireland,
being pleasantly christened 'Gurnal,' after a slight early phonetic
indulgence of his daughter Sophia's. It was suggested--and Lockhart
seems to think that it was effective--as a relief from the labour of
_Napoleon_, which went slightly against the grain, even before it became
bond-work. It may have been a doubtful prescription, for 'the cud[28] of
sweet and bitter fancy' is dangerous food. But it has certainly done
_us_ good. When Mr. Douglas obtained leave to publish it as a whole,
there were, I believe, wiseacres who dreaded the effect of the
publication, thinking that the passages which Lockhart himself had left
out might in some way diminish and belittle our respect for Scott. They
had no need to trouble themselves. It was already, as published in part
in the Life, one of the most pathetically interesting things in
biographical literature. This quality was increased by the complete
publication, while it also became a new proof that 'good blood cannot
lie,' that the hero is a hero even in utterances kept secret from the
very valet. If, as has happened before and might conceivably happen
again, some cataclysm destroyed all Scott's other work, we should still
have in this not merely an admirable monument of literature, but the
picture of a character not inhumanly flawless, yet almost superhumanly
noble; of the good man struggling against adversity, not, indeed, with a
sham pretence of stoicism, but with that real fortitude of which
stoicism is too often merely a caricature and a simulation. It is
impossible not to recur to the _Marmion_ passage already quoted as one
reads the account of the successive misfortunes, the successive
expedients resorted to, the absolute determination never to cry
craven.[33]

It is from the _Diary_ that we learn his own complete knowledge of the
fact urged above, that it would have been better for him if his
creditors had been in appearance less kind. 'If they drag me into
court,' he says,[31] 'instead of going into this scheme of arrangement,
they would do themselves a great injury, and _perhaps eventually do the
good, though it would give me great pain_.' The _Diary_, illustrated as
it is by the excellent selections from Skene's _Remini