looked for a sharp reply. "No," he said; "by heaven, I'll not touch him

"Dulness is sacred in a sound divine.'"

Of the Edinburgh literati he made the famous remark at Dr. Blair's table, that they were "like the wife's daughter in the west, they spin the thread of their criticism so fine, that it is fit for neither warp nor waft." His Edinburgh wit often had a bitter turn to it, as he suppressed his rising indignation. To a lady who remonstrated with him about his drinking he answered: "Madam, they would not thank me for my company if I did not drink with them. I must give them a slice of my constitution."

During the years at Ellisland and Dumfries Burns's principal poetical work consisted of songs, chiefly for Thomson, an Edinburgh collector, or for Johnson's Musical Museum. Some of the pieces were old songs rearranged for music; most were original compositions. Burns seems to have been incapable now of sustained effort, but many of his best songs date from these later days such songs as: Highland Mary, Bonnie Doon, Auld Lang Syne, Coming thro' the Rye, O my Luve's like a Red, Red Rose, and that stirring battle-slogan, Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled, composed while galloping across the wild Galloway moors in a tempest.

In his songs rests Burns's chief fame. The world, now that a century has passed, is quite willing that he should "bear the gree;" in his kind he stands supreme. And these songs, singing themselves in the man's heart, since they were scattered all through his life, give us the truest account of his nature. "He put more of himself into all he wrote," says Allan Cunningham, “than

songs,

any other poet, ancient or modern; to which may be added the important corollary, amply proved in the that he was a man of noble character a loving, a humorous, a patriotic, a kindly man. The very fact that nearly all his biographers have zealously taken sides -for or against him- testifies to the infectious fire of his personality, even after his death. The world has much forgiveness ready for the man who can write with the mingled humor and pathos of Burns's Address to the Deil:

"An' now, auld Cloots, I ken ye 're thinkin',

A certain Bardie's rantin', drinkin',

Some luckless hour will send him linkin'
To your black pit ;

But, faith! he'll turn a corner jinkin',
An cheat you yet.""

Turbulent, chaotic, driven by his genius and reined in by his poverty, his life never wholly worked itself out"a life of fragments," Carlyle has called it. Step aside he often did, to pluck the bright flowers by the way; but if he seems to have lacked a central guiding principle in life, let it be remembered that it was no easy thing for a man with his nature and in his circumstances to be sure of a fixed principle, that his very genius gave him no precedent on which to act. If he reached no clear moral manhood, let it be remembered that he started bravely on a new journey, while his countrymen remained at home. Decades ahead of his time, he must needs march alone, not attended, as was Tennyson, by the trumpets of his generation; yet he reached a summit and looked into the nineteenth century, the promised land which he might not enter. His own words are his fairest epitaph:

"The poor inhabitant below

Was quick to learn, and wise to know,
And keenly felt the friendly glow,
And softer flame,

But thoughtless follies laid him low,
And stain'd his name!"

WALTER SCOTT

"THE great magician," "the wizard of the North” -the two names so frequently given to Scott-call to mind immediately his power of conjuring with the song and story of the past. No picture of him is complete, however, until he is shown as the great-hearted laird of Abbotsford. Among his contemporaries he was frequently surpassed in poetry; he clearly excelled only in his novels. But as a man of a big, warm heart he had no rival, scarcely a second. He always contrived to find the best side of friend or enemy; he knew how to forget injuries; his heart and his purse went together to the poor; his dependents, his family, his friends, even strangers who always found the hospitable doors of Abbotsford open to them-returned him affection as if it were his unquestionable right. Even many creditors, in the hour of his trial, joined the ranks of his loving admirers. So great, indeed, was the power of love in the man that generations of Scotchmen have looked to him with undoubting, filial affection; and to that great family have long since been added thousands and tens of thousands wherever English is spoken or read.

No man fills up quite so completely as Scott the whole period of Romanticism. Besides his work as a lawyer, he attained excellence and renown as an antiquarian, a poet, an essayist, a historian, and a novelist. In studying his life it will be found convenient, though his humor may often demand digressive anecdote, to divide it into three periods; that of his youth, education,