down to vulgar
idols; and the worldly sentiments which this idolatry involves are seen
in almost every fashionable novel which has appeared for a hundred
years. In no country is this melancholy social slavery more usual than
in England, with all its political freedom, although there are noble
exceptions. The only great flaw in Scott's character was this homage to
rank and wealth.

On the other hand, rank and wealth also paid homage to him as a man of
genius; both Scotland and England received him into the most select
circles, not only of their literary and political, but of their
fashionable, life.

In 1811 Scott published "The Lord of the Isles," and in 1813, "Rokeby,"
neither of which was remarkable for either literary or commercial
success, although both were well received. In 1814 he edited a
nineteen-volume edition of Dean Swift's works, with a Life, and in the
same year began--almost by accident--the real work of his own career, in
"Waverley."

If public opinion is far different to-day from what it was in Scott's
time in reference to his poetry, we observe the same change in regard to
the source of his widest fame, his novels,--but not to so marked a
degree, for it was in fiction that Scott's great gifts had their full
fruition. Many a fine intellect still delights in his novels, though
cultivated readers and critics differ as to their comparative merits. No
two persons will unite in their opinions as to the three of those
productions which they like most or least. It is so with all famous
novels. Then, too, what man of seventy will agree with a man of thirty
as to the comparative merits of Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope,
George Eliot, Eugene Sue, Victor Hugo, Balzac, George Sand? How few read
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," compared with the multitudes who read that most
powerful and popular book forty years ago? How changing, if not
transient, is the fame of the novelist as well as of the poet! With
reference to him even the same generation changes its tastes. What
filled us with delight as young men or women of twenty, is at fifty
spurned with contempt or thrown aside with indifference. No books ever
filled my mind and soul with the delight I had when, at twelve years of
age, I read "The Children of the Abbey" and "Thaddeus of Warsaw," What
man of eighty can forget the enthusiasm with which he read "Old
Mortality" or "Ivanhoe" when he was in college?

Perhaps one test of a great book is the pleasure derived fro