Had he not--if we may use the word without offence--been cramming all his life, and practising the art of story-telling every day he lived? Probably the most striking incidents of his books are in reality mere modifications of anecdotes which he had rehearsed a hundred times before, just disguised enough to fit into his story. Who can read, for example, the inimitable legend of the blind piper in 'Redgauntlet' without seeing that it bears all the marks of long elaboration as clearly as one of those discourses of Whitfield, which, by constant repetition, became marvels of dramatic art? He was an impromptu composer, in the sense that when his anecdotes once reached paper, they flowed rapidly, and were little corrected; but the correction must have been substantially done in many cases long before they appeared in the state of 'copy.' Let us, however, pursue the indictment a little further. Scott did not believe in anything in particular. Yet once more, did Shakespeare? There is surely a poetry of doubt as well as a poetry of conviction, or what shall we say to 'Hamlet'? Appearing in such an age as the end of the last and the beginning of this century, Scott could but share the intellectual atmosphere in which he was born, and at that day, whatever we may think of this, few people had any strong faith to boast of. Why should not a poet stand aside from the chaos of conflicting opinions, so far as he was able to extricate himself from the unutterable confusion around them, and show us what was beautiful in the world as he saw it, without striving to combine the office of prophet with his more congenial occupation? Carlyle did not mean to urge so feeble a criticism as that Scott had no very uncompromising belief in the Thirty-nine Articles; for that is a weakness which he would share with his critic and with his critic's idol, Goethe. The meaning is partly given by another phrase. 'While Shakespeare works from the heart outwards, Scott,' says Carlyle, 'works from the skin inwards, never getting near the heart of men.' The books are addressed entirely to the everyday mind. They have nothing to do with emotions or principles, beyond those of the ordinary country gentleman; and, we may add, of the country gentleman with his digestion in good order, and his hereditary gout still in the distant future. The more inspiring thoughts, the deeper passions, are seldom roused. If in his width of sympathy, and his vivid perception of character within certain limits, he reminds us of Shakespeare, we can find no analogy in his writings to the passion of 'Romeo and Juliet,' or to the intellectual agony of 'Hamlet.' The charge is not really that Scott lacks faith, but that he never appeals, one way or the other, to the faculties which make faith a vital necessity to some natures, or lead to a desperate revolt against established faiths in others. If Byron and Scott could have been combined; if the energetic