inwards"? It was just Scott himself
breathing his own life through the habits of a good specimen of the
mercenary soldier--realizing where the spirit of hire would end, and
the sense of honour would begin--and preferring, even in a dungeon,
the audacious policy of a sudden attack to that of crafty negotiation.
What a picture (and a very different one) again is that in
_Redgauntlet_ of Peter Peebles, the mad litigant, with face emaciated
by poverty and anxiety, and rendered wild by "an insane lightness
about the eyes," dashing into the English magistrate's court for a
warrant against his fugitive counsel. Or, to take a third instance, as
different as possible from either, how powerfully conceived is the
situation in _Old Mortality_, where Balfour of Burley, in his fanatic
fury at the defeat of his plan for a new rebellion, pushes the
oak-tree, which connects his wild retreat with the outer world, into
the stream, and tries to slay Morton for opposing him. In such scenes
and a hundred others--for these are mere random examples--Scott
undoubtedly painted his masculine figures from as deep and inward a
conception of the character of the situation as Goethe ever attained,
even in drawing Mignon, or Klaerchen, or Gretchen. The distinction has
no real existence. Goethe's pictures of women were no doubt the
intuitions of genius; and so are Scott's of men--and here and there of
his women too. Professional women he can always paint with power. Meg
Dods, the innkeeper, Meg Merrilies, the gipsy, Mause Headrigg, the
Covenanter, Elspeth, the old fishwife in _The Antiquary_, and the old
crones employed to nurse and watch, and lay out the corpse, in _The
Bride of Lammermoor_, are all in their way impressive figures.

And even in relation to women of a rank more fascinating to Scott, and
whose inner character was perhaps on that account, less familiar to
his imagination, grant him but a few hints from history, and he draws
a picture which, for vividness and brilliancy, may almost compare with
Shakespeare's own studies in English history. Had Shakespeare painted
the scene in _The Abbot_, in which Mary Stuart commands one of her
Mary's in waiting to tell her at what bridal she last danced, and Mary
Fleming blurts out the reference to the marriage of Sebastian at
Holyrood, would any one hesitate to regard it as a stroke of genius
worthy of the great dramatist? This picture of the Queen's mind
suddenly thrown off its balance, and betraying