The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-02-25
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SIR WALTER SCOTT
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BY ]. M. CAMERON.

T HERE is this trouble that affects all open-minded critics and biographers
 of Scott; that the closer they get
 to him and his works, the more do they lose all sense of his shortcomings. Such is the charming picturesqueness of his production and such the generous, whole
 souled nature of the man that their af- fections are captured. Nor does this af
 lection apply to ordinary students alone,
 but to men of the greatest and most diverse minds, such as Goethe. Ruskin,
 Gladstone. Stanley, Hugo and that vast
 number, larger than anywhere else, in
 this country.
 The man surely had a mighty heart in him, and while possessed of an over
 towering love of country, he exhibited such liberality and such a rare concep-
 ton of the duty of man to man az the
 world has not surpassed. Such friendly soul One of our brightest contemporary writers has called him the invisible play
 mate of the mind. The evidence of all this is in the consciousness of millions
 of people in every land.
 About twenty years ago a considerable number of matured men who had distin-
 gulshed themselves in all branches of human endeavor throughout the whole country wrote a course of articles in one of our leading magazines on Formative Influences" Every one, if memory serves alright, testified to the powerful and per manent effect the writings of Scott had left on them. Yet his fame. sometimes fa.+ J1a s5a under partial eclipse, caused mainly by the splenetic attack of his own contem- porary and fellow countryman. Carlyle The stimulating power and moral force of this extraordinary intellect are such that number of harpers and echoers of him even in this, one of his numerous idio- syneracies. which are sometimes prepos- terous and sometimes inspired, have al-
 ways been to the front But Scott Is like the lofty Ben Lomond, with its mighty
 base and It's foundations in the neither
 world The mists and the clouds bedm
 its form betimes, but the mountain Is still there.
 Scott's defects, however, are neither few nor small. He wrote too much, and his prolixity, lack of art. as well as the abrupt ending of all his romances are patent enough. An irnpetuous exuberance. like the spates on his native chevots, pos sessed him. His prose style is careless, but is original and projects from the sur 1 tace In such a Voluminous writer poetry romances, essays, plays. chroni- cles, biographies, there Is necessarily a large amount of extraneous matter but he has large surplus of It. more than any other author approaching his powers. In the vital and eliminating ranges of his creative work however, where the ages roll before him with all their deeds, he is at once concentrated, animated and strong. There in the deep heart and mind of man he expresses the general in the particular with convincing power. and the whole length of his genius shines In extent and variety of character dellneated 1 from freebooters and mosstroopers to nobles and kings he is the greatest | creative writer in our language after 1 Shakespeare, and while he does not sound the awful depths of that miracle, he is as broad in his sweep and sometimes as powerful in his stroke, with this advan- tage that his creations speak not only in 1 the very language of their class but the very vernacular of the period In which they live
 The surpassing drama list has omitted to draw for us one character of tremendous moment; the religious enthusiast and re- | former. Scott has given us several in lines of sublime power. Shakespeare is the universal for all time Scott in his i | himself. What a gallery of human oddI- | ties and unconscious humorsts he has | brought forth! Peter Peebes. the eternal | litigant; the diverting Glasgow "Alder- man." Baiie Nicol Jarvie "Prodigiousi" ! amongst his ponderous folios: the unidue | free lance Dougald Dalgetty, the soldier 1 of fortune adhering to men with one pas | sion and one cause at heart; the partially | informed blatherskite Saddetree med 10 % all tragedies; Wandering Willie; Meg Dods These and scores of others, from those with vicious and second sight to the low-roofed self-seeker and the intensely | spiritual, are drawn with a sure broad sympathetic touch and stand forth in striking contrast to the main characters of the story. Yet they are universal char acters, Every observer meets their pro- totypes if he has eyes to see
 Tn many of his truly great creations Scott has rearoused the mind and con science of countless millions and pre- scented ensamples of womanhood and manhood endowed with such virtue, steadfastness and high-souled intelligence that they will remain noble examples for all time. All history is but the lives and thoughts of a few great men, and when a creative writer like this Wizard of the North elevates the moral and intellectual plane he performs an immense service to mankind by making such lives and such thoughts live. Books are not abso lutely dead things" to use Mltons exact phrase. Indeed, no. They can recreate, while almost everything else that comes from the hand of man lies crumbling In the dust. Some one has said that the greatest production of Scott Is Hugo, but who can measure the number of men and women that he and his compeers in the world of letters have produced? The influence of such is on the solid ground of nature, down to the depths where soul and matter meet.
 In his epics Scott is the successor of Homer himself There under his spur Time glows on its axle.'
 | With blazing crests and banners spread, And trumpet clang and clamor dread, The wide plain thunders to their tread
 As far as Striking Rock..n
 The vividness and native force of his perception of battle are beyond all praise. The gleam of arms, the clashing of swords the fire of valor and the very soul of war are in his descriptions. They are ! living. Here are one hundred thousand | knights and steels reeling in conflict like | two contending hurricanes striving to roll the waves, and here also clans of mountaineers with barred breasts and bat tie in their faces rushing to the onset red wet shod" amidst seas of steel. Scott amidst such confusion brings out all the salient features of strife, not only with passion, but with unerring penetration