sense and
poetical appreciation.

The decay, now not to be arrested, though its progress was
comparatively slow, was more evident in the last two works of fiction
which Scott completed, _Count Robert of Paris_ and _Castle Dangerous_.
Against the first ending of the former (we do not possess it, so we
cannot criticise their criticism) Ballantyne and Cadell formally
protested, and Scott rewrote a great deal of it by dictation to Laidlaw.
The loss of command both of character and of story-interest is indeed
very noticeable. But the opening incident at the Golden Gate, the
interview of the Varangian with the Imperial family, the intrusion of
Count Robert, and, above all, his battle with the tiger and liberation
from the dungeon of the Blachernal, with some other things, show that
astonishing power of handling single incidents which was Scott's
inseparable gift, and which seems to have accompanied him throughout to
the very eve of his death. The much briefer _Castle Dangerous_ (which is
connected with an affecting visit of Scott and Lockhart to the tombs of
the Douglases) is too slight to give room for very much shortcoming. Its
chief artistic fault is the happy ending--for though a romancer is in no
respect bound to follow his text exactly, and happy endings are quite
good things, yet it is rather too much to turn upside down the historic
catastrophe of the Good Lord James's fashion of warfare. Otherwise the
book is more noticeable for a deficiency of spirit, life, and light--for
the evidence of shadow and stagnation falling over the once restless and
brilliant scene--than for anything positively bad.

These two books were mainly dictated, the paralytic affection having
injured the author's power of handwriting,[43] to William Laidlaw between
the summer of 1830 and the early autumn of 1831, increasing weakness,
and the demands of the _Magnum_, preventing more speed. The last pages
of _Castle Dangerous_ contain Scott's farewell, and the announcement to
the public of that voyage to Italy which had actually begun when the
novels appeared in the month of November.

The period between the fatal seizure and the voyage to the Mediterranean
has not much diary concerning it, but has been related with inimitable
judgment and sympathy by Lockhart. It was, even putting failing health
and obscured mental powers aside, not free from 'browner shades'; for
the Reform agitation naturally grieved Sir Walter deeply, while on two
occasions