It is difficult to give a sufficiently convincing picture of his happy, beneficient, affectionate life, spent in beautiful surroundings, in friendliness and family joys, and yet at the same time do justice to Scott's incessant toil. He worked unstintedly, and he loved his work. He was so popular and famous, it seemed all he had to do was to sit down and write a novel and the world would ring with its fame. But Scott was at work generally before six o'clock in the morning. He was a man of remarkable industry as well as of unusual gifts. Yet, those who knew him, noticed first and valued most his kindness and simplicity. There are two books in which we can find details of the character and the life of Scott. These are _The Life of Sir Walter Scott_, written by his son-in-law, J. G. Lockhart, and Scott's _Journal_, written by himself, and meant only for his own reading. He was a man of great reasonableness and common sense. Lord Cockburn, a distinguished lawyer, who was a friend, said that in his opinion Walter Scott's sense was a still more wonderful thing than his genius. He did not care to talk much about his writing, but rather of what he had done or seen. There was so little made of Scott's writing in his home, either by himself or anyone else, that his children did not know much about it. Someone asked Sophia, his eldest daughter, how she liked one of his books. Her answer was that she had not read it. Walter, the eldest boy, came {33} home from school one day, plainly showing signs of having been in a fight, and said that the other boys had called him a "lassie". One of the boys had said something about _The Lady of the Lake_, and he was unaware that there was a book of that name written by his father. These incidents are related to show how simple and natural were Scott's ideas of himself and his work. He was a rapid, even at times a careless, writer, but he was incontestably a great writer. He was, however, greater as a man. No one can read his life without being charmed by Scott's love for his dogs. Cats, too, were favourites in the family circle. All the domestic creatures were as fond of Scott as he was of them. You will find in Lockhart's _Life_, chapter nine, a description by Washington Irving, the American author, of a visit to Abbotsford, and of Scott and his dogs. It is, perhaps, as vivid a picture as has ever been drawn of Scott.