'Na, sir, it's no for the value of the grass,' replied Dinmont; 'it's for justice.'
Do we at home in Scotland make too much of Scott's life and associations when we think of his poetry and his novels? Possibly few Scotsmen are impartial here. As Dr. Johnson said, they are not a fair people, and when they think of the Waverley Novels they perhaps do not always see quite clearly. Edinburgh and the Eildon Hills, Aberfoyle and Stirling, come between their minds and the printed page:—
A mist of memory broods and floats,
The Border waters flow,
The air is full of ballad notes
Borne out of long ago.
It might be prudent and more critical to take each book on its own merits in a dry light. But it is not easy to think of a great writer thus discreetly. Is Balzac often judged accurately and coldly, piece by piece, here a line and there a line? Are not the best judges those who think of his whole achievement altogether—the whole amazing world of his creation—La Comédie Humaine? By the same sort of rule Scott may be judged, and the whole of his work, his vast industry, and all that made the fabric of his life, be allowed to tell on the mind of the reader.
I wish this discourse had been more worthy of its theme, and of this audience, and of this year of heroic memories and lofty hopes. But if, later in the summer, I should find my way back to Ettrick and Yarrow and the Eildon Hills, it will be a pleasure to remember there the honour you have done me in allowing me to speak in Paris, however unworthily, of the greatness of Sir Walter Scott.
Glasgow: Printed at the University Press by Robert MacLehose and Co. Ltd.