In all there are thirty-two of these books. No other English novelist has written so many that continue popular. Dumas is said to have written or attached his name to twelve hundred; but only three or four are considered very well worth reading to-day. Victor Hugo wrote one great novel, Les Miserables, but his next greatest, The Toilers of the Sea, is far below the first one. Balzac and Dickens alone have lists to compare with Scott’s. Scott’s novels are romantic and interesting. They are on the whole excellent history,--indeed their history is as good as that of Shakspere. Scott was a noble, generous, lovable man, and his books are as pure and great as he is. There is no fine character-drawing, no sentimental studies of women, no philosophy, no moralizing. But we see a splendid and varied company of gentlemen and ladies of historic Britain, dressed in all the picturesqueness, of their age, and passing through a series of scenes as romantic and exciting as gentlemen and ladies could ever participate in. There is nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be wary of in Scott, and there is nothing that suggests vulgarity. No one can help loving, admiring, and respecting the man, or enjoying his novels. Scott’s own life is almost as romantic in a way as his novels. His father was a lawyer, and he entered that profession, but did little more than hold a number of salaried positions. His first book was a volume of old ballads which he had collected and partly rewritten. Then came the wonderfully successful poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, and after that Marmion and The Lady of the Lake. He was only less popular as a narrative poet than Byron. But he became entangled in business investments with the brothers Ballentyne, old school friends of his, and saved himself and them from bankruptcy only by the lucky venture of Waverley, which immediately carried him to world-wide and lasting fame, and put him in the way of earning a million dollars by his writings. “Novelist, critic, historian, poet, the favorite of his age, read over the whole of Europe,” says Taine, “he was compared and almost equalled to Shakspere, had more popularity than Voltaire, made dressmakers and duchesses weep, and earned about £200,000.” It was his ambition to found a sort of feudal family, and on land which he purchased at Abbotsford he built a castle in imitation of the ancient knights, “with a tall tower at either end ... sundry zig-zag gables ... a myriad of indentations and parapets and machiolated eaves; most fantistic waterspouts; labelled windows, not a few of them painted glass ... stones carved with innumerable heraldries.” Here he kept open house. But in 1825 his publisher, Constable, failed, carrying down the printing firm of James Ballantyne & Co., and Scott, because of his partnership interest, found himself liable for debts amounting to over half a million dollars. He immediately set about paying these off by his pen.