ole of the scene strikes me as equally and delightfully
characteristic; I may add, hardly more so of Scott than of his
printer; for Ballantyne, with all his profound worship of his friend
and benefactor, was in truth, even more than he, an undoubting
acquiescer in "the decision of the public, or rather of the
booksellers;" and among the many absurdities into which his reverence
for the popedom of Paternoster Row led him, I never could but consider
with special astonishment, the facility with which he seemed to have
adopted the notion that the Byron of 1814 was really entitled to
supplant Scott as a popular poet. Appreciating, as a man of his
talents could hardly fail to do, the splendidly original glow and
depth of Childe Harold, he always appeared to me quite blind to the
fact, that in The Giaour, in The Bride of Abydos, in Parisina, and
indeed in all his early serious narratives, Byron owed at least half
his success to clever, though perhaps unconscious imitation of Scott,
and no trivial share of the rest to the lavish use of materials which
Scott never employed, only because his genius was, from the beginning
to the end of his career, under the guidance of high and chivalrous
feelings of moral rectitude. All this Lord Byron himself seems to have
felt most completely--as witness the whole sequence of {p.024} his
letters and diaries;[9] and I think I see many symptoms that both the
decision of the million, and its index, "the decision of the
booksellers," tend the same way at present; but my business is to
record, as far as my means may permit, the growth and structure of one
great mind, and the effect which it produced upon the actual witnesses
of its manifestations, not to obtrude the conjectures of a partial
individual as to what rank posterity may assign it amongst or above
contemporary rivals.

[Footnote 9: _E. G._ "If they want to depose Scott, I
only wish they would not set me up as a competitor. I
like the man--and admire his works to what Mr. Braham
calls _Entusymusy_. All such stuff can only vex him, and
do me no good."--Byron (1813), vol. ii. p. 259.

"Scott is certainly the most wonderful writer of the
day. His novels are a new literature in themselves, and
his poetry as good as any--if not better (only on an
erroneous system), and only ceased to be popular,
because t