1832, including Goethe, Cuvier, Crabbe, and Mackintosh, he was the most
distinguished; and all Scotland and all the civilized world mourned his
loss.

HIS FAME.--At Edinburgh a colossal monument has been erected to his
memory, within which sits his marble figure. Numerous other memorial
columns are found in other cities, but all Scotland is his true monument,
every province and town of which he has touched with his magic pen.
Indeed, Scotland may be said to owe to him a new existence. In the words
of Lord Meadowbank,--who presided at the Theatrical Fund dinner in 1827,
and who there made the first public announcement of the authorship of the
Waverley novels,--Scott was "the mighty magician who rolled back the
current of time, and conjured up before our living senses the men and
manners of days which have long since passed away ... It is he who has
conferred a new reputation on our national character, and bestowed on
Scotland an imperishable name."

Besides his poetry and novels, he wrote very much of a miscellaneous
character for the reviews, and edited the works of the poets with valuable
introductions and congenial biographies. Most of his fictions are
historical in plot and personages; and those which deal with Scottish
subjects are enriched by those types of character, those descriptions of
manners--national and local--and those peculiarities of language, which
give them additional and more useful historical value. It has been justly
said that, by his masterly handling of historical subjects, he has taught
the later historians how to write, how to give vivid and pictorial effects
to what was before a detail of chronology or a dry schedule of philosophy.
His critical powers may be doubted: he was too kind and genial for a
critic; and in reading contemporary authors seems to have endued their
inferior works with something of his own fancy.

The _Life of Scott_, by his son-in-law, J. G. Lockhart, is one of the most
complete and interesting biographies in the language. In it the student
will find a list of all his works, with the dates of their production; and
will wonder that an author who was so rapid and so prolific could write so
much that was of the highest excellence. If not the greatest genius of his
age, he was its greatest literary benefactor; and it is for this reason
that we have given so much space to the record of his life and works.

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY: BYRON AND MOORE.