far on the other.

In his case it has unfortunately become a critical fashion to set him
side by side with the greatest master of narrative fiction the world has
ever seen. In the interests of a true artist, whom this abuse of praise
will greatly injure if it be persisted in, it will be well to
endeavour soberly and quietly to measure the man, and to arrive at some
approximate estimate of his stature.

It may be assumed that the least conscientious and instructed of our
professional guides has read something of the history of Sir Walter
Scott, and is, if dimly, aware of the effect he produced in the realm of
literature in his lifetime. Sir Walter (who is surpassed or equalled
by six writers of our own day, in the judgment of those astounding
gentlemen who periodically tell us what we ought to think) was the
founder of three great schools. He founded the school of romantic
mediaeval poetry; he founded the school of antiquarian romance; and he
founded the school of Scottish-character romance. He did odds and
ends of literary work, such as the compilation and annotation of 'The
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' and the notes to the poems and the
Waverley Series. These were sparks from his great stithy, but a man
of industry and talent might have shown them proudly as a lifetime's
labour. The great men in literature are the epoch makers, and Sir Walter
is the only man in the literary history of the world who was an epoch
maker in more than one direction. It is the fashion to-day to decry him
as a poet. There are critics who, setting a high value on the verse
of Wordsworth or of Browning, for example, cannot concede the name of
poetry to any modern work which is not subtle and profound, metaphysical
or analytical. But as a mere narrative poet few men whose judgment is of
value will deny Scott the next place to Homer. As a poet he created
an epoch. It filled no great space in point of time, but we owe to Sir
Walter's impetus 'he Giaour,' 'he Corsair,' the 'Bride of Abydos.' In
his second character of antiquarian romancist, he awoke the elder Dumas,
and such a host of imitators, big and little, as no writer ever had at
his heels before or since. When he turned to Scottish character he made
Galt, and Robert Louis Stevenson, and Dr. George Macdonald, and all the
modern gentlemen who, gleaning modestly in the vast field he found, and
broke, and sowed, and reaped, are now his rivals.

Do the writers who claim to guide our opin