to meet this tremendous liability. All his goods and property were seized and auctioned. His books, furniture, antiquarian collections, Abbotsford and its rentals in advance-everything went overboard, by the hammer. The poet was reduced to penury and despair; Lady Scott died in the midst of the calamities; and a thick darkness reigned around the poet and his family, and all his big ambitions and castles in the air, and showed again the truth of Burns' lines— The best laid schemes o' mice and men, gang aft aglee; And leave us nought but grief and pain, for promised joy! But the fifth and crowning act of this great man's life is yet to come. The Australian poet, Lindsay Gordon, says Life is mostly froth and bubble; Two things stand like stone: Scott had shown boundless kindness in others' trouble; and he now showed as boundless courage in his own. With an iron Scottish will, with a sense of honour almost unknown in business, and with a resolution unparalled in literary history, he set to work again, and buckled on his harness, determined to do justice to his creditors, and to clear his name of every defalcation. The shock occurred in his 57th year. After burying his wife and quitting Abbotsford, he took a lone room in Edinburgh, and wrote there day and night, hurrying forth new novels, till in two years he had paid back his creditors £40,000. And then his health began to fail from overwork, and he had to rest. But his creditors were so pleased with his efforts on their behalf that they restored to him the bulk of his old stock of books and swords and furniture, which are now again preserved in Abbotsford. He returned to his tasks; but, as he had feared, the reading public soon perceived that his magic want was broken in the general smash. The clearness of his mind, the incision and brightness of his delineations, were gone; his works diminished in power. Sir Walter was himself no more. The King, whom he had befriended, sent a warship with him for a cruise in the Mediterranean, and he recovered slightly; but his nerves were all unstrung; and he returned to Abbotsford to die, in 1832, at the age of 61. Call it not vain: they do not err, Who say, that when the Poet dies, And Scott was mourned indeed; not in Scotland only; for so far, even then, had his fame travelled, that he was mourned by the whole round world. But of all men poets die least! There is somehow a principle of life and immortality in poetry that makes it outlive all the other works of man; I have already instanced Homer, David, Job. Scott was perhaps the greatest novelist that ever lived, but was scarcely even in the first class among poets. And yet, it is even now beginning to appear, that his poetry will survive his prose, and that his eternal fame, his earthly immortality, will hinge upon his poetry alone! Sir Walter Scott is our most pictorial bard; he treats of objects of the eye, the dress, the look, the gait, the colour. He handles words as a painter handles colours, and all his writings stand out bold and crisp and clear as the turrets of a Gothic cathedral in a moonlight frosty night. Scott talks things, concrete, tangible, and visible; he is the best guide book to Scotland. Unlike Burns and Moore, Scott is not a lyric, so much as an epic poet; though his epics fall under the class of rhymed romantic tales. He is the Scottish Homer of the border frays.' He is a healthy, out-of-doors poet, and deals with the scenes and actions, not with the minds, of men; having none of the self-introspection and contemplative philosophy of Byron or Shelley or Wordsworth. Like Moore, Scott is a national poet, and appeared, like him, just in the nick of time for preserving the decaying relics of his nation's past. Had there been no Revolution to rouse these two men into song, it is safe to say that those sweet "Irish Melodies" of Moore and those heroic Scottish deeds and legends would have vanished and been lost for ever. Byron and Shelley said, "Whatever is, is wrong." Scott, like Pope, practically, said, "Whatever is, is right." He looked upon the world and all that it contained, and found it beautiful and good. nd good. Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth preached philosophy for universal man; Scott, like Moore, made his own life healthy, open, active, bright, and left that, as his best philosophy and lesson to mankind. For Scott's own life is his most glorious, golden poem-a romantic poem illustrated in heroic action to the end. This Series will contain: BURNS. BYRON MOORE SCOTT. SHELLEY. And Others. PERCY B. SHELLEY. DELIVERED AS A LECTURE BY W. CLARKE ROBINSON, B.Sc., M.A., PH.D., University Extension Lecturer; Sometime Lecturer in the University of Durham, and President of the Shelley Society, Newcastle-on-Tyne. RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO MRS. W. J, PIRRIE, LADY MAYORESS OF BELFAST, 1896, 1897. HELLEY was one of the most remarkable men -one of the vastest, boldest, and sublimest minds that ever lived. He was so far above and before his age, and out of human reach, that he has as yet few friends and small appreciation. We are all so engrossed with the immediate Present, that we pay but little heed to the greater things and more important facts of the Future. The small and near obscure the great and far-" a little speck in front of the eye will shut out the sun and the stars of the sky." You say, "It is unsafe to speculate, and the Future can't be known.' True; but yet we do know many important future things: We know that all men shall die; we know that summer will come; we know that Truth is mighty, and must prevail; we know the coal-fields of little England will in time become exhausted; and it is also known, both from revelation and science, that the Sun himself will at length burn out, and die, and disappear! Thus we know many great indisputable future facts; but we seldom think of them, being so engrossed with the things around us. Sold by OLLEY & CO., 8 Royal Avenue, Belfast. Now, Shelley's difference from other men consisted largely in this, that he lived in and for the Future, and was absolutely out of sympathy with the Present and the Past. He laid none of Pope's opportunism or flattering unction to his soul, that "whatever is, is right"; but seeing so much amiss in this passing "vale of tears," where " man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards," Shelley virtually said "whatever is, is wrong.' He "let the dead Past bury its dead," and preached that Not enjoyment and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way, But to act, that each to-morrow Find us further than to-day. And like young Tennyson, Shelley too Dipt into the Future far as human eye could see; Saw the Vision of the world and all the wonder that would beSaw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue [dew Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle flags were In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world; [furl'd There the common sense of most shall hold each fitful realm in And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law. [awe, Tennyson prophesied many things, which have been fulfilled; and his Vision here of ship-balloons and skytraffic, and navies fighting in the air, and his "Federation of the World," with "The Concert of Europe," does not now seem so very impossible. And who would say that his further Vision of folded flags and silent wardrums, with universal law, and international peace and general common sense," when the nations shall study war no more, may not yet also turn to fact? But Tennyson is more practical, goes more into the means; Shelley, an idealist, occupies himself solely with the ultimate results and attainments, leaving the means to suggest themselves. Tennyson lives on the earth, and builds his stairway up to the skies; Shelley lives in the skies, and lets down his ladder rarely to the earth! Indeed, Shelley is so lofty and prophetic that few minds can mount with him, or live in his ætherial home. But anyone who can borrow his wings, or find scales |