pages of history, but all the hills and vales of his beloved Scotland are filled with living characters,—­lords and ladies, soldiers, pirates, gypsies, preachers, schoolmasters, clansmen, bailiffs, dependents,—­all Scotland is here before our eyes, in the reality of life itself.  It is astonishing, with his large numbers of characters, that Scott never repeats himself.  Naturally he is most at home in Scotland, and with humble people.  Scott’s own romantic interest in feudalism caused him to make his lords altogether too lordly; his aristocratic maidens are usually bloodless, conventional, exasperating creatures, who talk like books and pose like figures in an old tapestry.  But when he describes characters like Jeanie Deans, in The Heart of Midlothian, and the old clansman, Evan Dhu, in Waverley, we know the very soul of Scotch womanhood and manhood.

Perhaps one thing more should be said, or rather repeated, of Scott’s enduring work.  He is always sane, wholesome, manly, inspiring.  We know the essential nobility of human life better, and we are better men and women ourselves, because of what he has written.

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON (1788-1824)

There are two distinct sides to Byron and his poetry, one good, the other bad; and those who write about him generally describe one side or the other in superlatives.  Thus one critic speaks of his “splendid and imperishable excellence of sincerity and strength”; another of his “gaudy charlatanry, blare of brass, and big bow-wowishness.”  As both critics are fundamentally right, we shall not here attempt to reconcile their differences, which arise from viewing one side of the man’s nature and poetry to the exclusion of the other.  Before his exile from England, in 1816, the general impression made by Byron is that of a man who leads an irregular life, poses as a romantic hero, makes himself out much worse than he really is, and takes delight in shocking not only the conventions but the ideals of English society.  His poetry of this first period is generally, though not always, shallow and insincere in thought, and declamatory or bombastic in expression.  After his exile, and his meeting with Shelley in Italy, we note a gradual improvement, due partly to Shelley’s influence and partly to his own mature thought and experience.  We have the impression now of a disillusioned man who recognizes his true character, and who, though cynical and pessimistic, is at least honest in his unhappy outlook on society.  His poetry of this period is generally less shallow and rhetorical, and though he still parades his feelings in public, he often surprises us by being manly and sincere.  Thus in the third canto of Childe Harold, written just after his exile, he says: 

    In my youth’s summer I did sing of one,
    The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind;