,
Jennie Deans, or any other of his characterizations, than they have of
himself. And the reason is obvious. They know Dominie Sampson through
Scott; they know Scott only through Lockhart. Still, it is certain that
the nature of Scott, that essential nature which no biography can give,
underlies, animates, disposes, and permeates all the natures he has
delineated. It is this, which, in the last analysis, is found to be the
source of his universal popularity, and which, without analysis, is felt
as a continual charm by all his readers, whether they live in palaces or
cottages. His is a nature which is welcomed everywhere, because it is at
home everywhere. The mere power and variety of his imagination cannot
account for his influence; for the same power and variety might have
been directed by a discontented and misanthropic spirit, or have obeyed
the impulses of selfish and sensual passions, and thus conveyed a bitter
or impure view of human nature and human life. It is, then, the man
in the imagination, the cheerful, healthy, vigorous, sympathetic,
good-natured, and broad-natured Walter Scott himself, who, modestly
hidden, as he seems to be, behind the characters and scenes he
represents, really streams through them the peculiar quality of life
which makes their abiding charm. He has been accepted by humanity,
because he is so heartily humane,--humane, not merely as regards man in
the abstract, but as regards man in the concrete.

We have spoken of the number of his readers, and of his capacity to
interest all classes of people; but we suppose, that, in our day, when
everybody knows how to read without always knowing what to read, even
Scott has failed to reach a multitude of persons abundantly capable of
receiving pleasure from his writings, but who, in their ignorance of
him, are content to devour such frightful trash in the shape of novels
as they accidentally light upon in a leisure hour. One advantage of such
an edition of his works as that which has occasioned these remarks is,
that it tends to awaken attention anew to his merits, to spread his fame
among the generation of readers now growing up, and to place him in
the public view fairly abreast of unworthy but clamorous claimants for
public regard, as inferior to him in the power to impart pleasure as
they are inferior to him in literary excellence. That portion of the
public who read bad novels cannot be reached by criticism; but if they
could only be reached by