VII. _The Lamp of Chivalry_.--Of this briefly. Let the writer of fiction give us humanity in all its phases, the comic as well as the tragic, the ridiculous as well as the sublime; but let him not lower the standard of character or the aim of life. Shakespeare does not. We delight in his Falstaffs and his clowns as well as in his Hamlets and Othellos, but he never familiarizes us with what is base and mean. The noble and chivalrous always holds its place as the aim of true humanity in his ideal world. Perhaps Dickens is not entirely free from blame in this respect; perhaps Pickwickianism has in some degree familiarized the generation of Englishmen who have been fed upon it with what is not chivalrous, to say the least, in conduct, as it unquestionably has with slang in conversation. But Scott, like Shakespeare, wherever the thread of his fiction may lead him, always keeps before himself and us the highest ideal which he knew, the ideal of a gentleman. If anyone says these are narrow bounds wherein to confine fiction I answer there has been room enough within them for the highest tragedy, the deepest pathos, the broadest humour, the widest range of character, the most moving incident, that the world has ever enjoyed. There has been room within them for all the kings of pure and healthy fiction--for Homer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Moliere, Scott. "Farewell Sir Walter," says Carlyle at the end of his essay, "farewell Sir Walter, pride of all Scotchmen. Scotland has said farewell to her mortal son. But all humanity welcomes him as Scotland's noblest gift to her and crowns him as on this day one of the heirs of immortality." AN ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE OXFORD SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND ART AT THE DISTRIBUTION OF PRIZES LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,