was a thing unheard of. Sir Walter had, as Mr. Fitzpatrick shews, the imprudence to mix up Thomas Scott's pecuniary affairs, so inextricably with his own, that the unforeseen disaster of 1825 would doubtless have involved him in the unjust liability of discharging a ruinous amount of outstanding debts which Thomascott, through headlong improvidence, had contracted in the ardour and folly of youth.

By means of garbling, the critic makes great fun of a generous sentiment, and pleasing metaphor which Mr. Fitzpatrick introduces in his preface, viz., "Few entertain a higher respect for Scott's genius, or more fully appreciate the Shakspearean benefit which society has derived from its exercise, than myself. I do not aspire, with rough, unsparing hand, to tear down the laurels which shadow the grave of Scott. My purpose is mainly to collect some offshoots (which can well be spared), and having searched the churchyard for two uninscribed and forgotten graves, to set amidst their grass a simple wreath to indicate that genius sleeps below. Whilst there are cynics who may stigmatize this conduct as an unwarrantable intrusion, there are, no doubt, many friends to literature and justice who will regard it as a generous and a sacred task.”

The critic omits Mr. Fitzpatrick's respectful allusions to Sir Walter, and denounces him as seeking to place "a gibbet" on the great man's grave. We shall see whether Mr. Fitzpatrick's tone is friendly or malevolent towards Sir Walter Scott. "Sir Walter," he writes, "had the satisfaction of witnessing debts vanishing before him with every stroke of his magic pen. In 1828 he projected, and begun, the magnum opus, an illustrated reprint of the tales-which he calculated would sweep all remaining debts, like a whirlwind, before him. Writing to his son in the autumn of 1829, he says: The sale of the Novels is pro-di-gious. If it last but a few years, it will clear my feet of old incumbrances.' Similar remarks may abundantly be found. Assuming that Sir Walter was not the unassisted author of the Waverley Novels, who, so far from blaming him, can hesitate to applaud the course he pursued? Would Sir Walter's creditors have fared one half as well as they did, had indiscreet disclosures checked the public sale of the Magnum Opus."

"Those who live in glasshouses should not throw stones" is an old and trite saying. The critic, however, appears to be insensible to its truth. He vilifies Mr. Fitzpatrick for omitting, or as he says, "suppressing" passages in Scott's Life and Letters which would tend to support his (the critic's) side of the controversy. Of course Mr. Fitzpatrick's effort throughout was to condense as far as possible and he merely quoted sufficient to illustrate his statements. Scott's voluminous life and letters are before the world circulating more widely than, perhaps, any other book of modern date. Mr. Fitzpatrick tells us that to bring his hitherto unpublished materials within a reasonable compass, required much economical management. Is it not must unfair to expect that his little pamphlet should include those passages, and letters, which the champions on the other side chiefly rely on to sap the strength of Mr. Fitzpatrick's position? Many letters, he tells us, calculated to

support his own views, he kept back unwilling to swell his brochure. But hear what Mr. Fitzpatrick himself has to say in reply to this charge. In his second letter to me, the following occurs: "Some of those passages and letters which Mr. so harshly charges me with suppressing, I can sincerely aver, I never saw! For instance he roughly seizes on an incidental remark of mine, which declared that I could not remember any passage in Scott's writings which admitted having received from Thomas Scott even materials for the novels. Mr. asserts, what I had not been aware of, that Sir Walter in the last introduction to Peveril,' absolutely admits that his brother participated in its construction. Had I been acquainted with this important admission, I should not have failed to embody it. It is a remarkable circumstance, and an agreeable reflection, that one of the novels, in which, on internal circumstantial evidence, I traced Mr. and Mrs. Scott was this identical tale of Peveril of the Peak. This sophister is either the most short-sighted, or the most inconsistent person in existence. The very act of which he accuses Mr. Fitzpatrick, in a minor and most excusable degree, he performs himself in the most aggravated manner, and with the most unblushing coolness. !

Dr. Grattan dwells at some length on the reviewer's want of candour, and proceeds to cite the following among other examples of critical cunning, and unfairness.

:

At page 508 of the University this passage occurs:-" Sir W. Scott, says Mr. Fitzpatrick, loved his accomplished sister-in-law warmly a true friendship existed between them. They regularly corresponded. What proof has Mr. Fitzpatrick given of the exist ence of this regular correspondence? Absolutely none !!" I have referred to Mr. Fitzpatrick's work. The statements quoted above as his, are not his, but occur in the evidence furnished by the doctor of the regiment. On looking a little closer what do I find? Shame hide your diminished head." It absolutely appears, in the very identical page of evidence from which the critic picked the above passage, that the doctor was himself "an eye witness" of the uninterrupted correspondence existing between the Scott's. Moreover we find that "he has even seen large packages interchanging which may have contained mannscript, and that the novels almost damp from the press regularly arrived."

The ill natured scribe proceeds, with an hypocritical affectation of forbearance, as follows:-"But the most disagreeable portion of our task remains to be discharged." He then vilifies Mr. Fitz patrick de novo, for not giving proof of the existence of a correspond. ence between Sir Walter and his sister-in-law before complaining, in common with the lady's relatives, that it should have been omitted by Mr. Lockhart. Mr. Fitzpatrick remarked that in none of Sir Wal ter's published letters to his brother in Canada, does there appear the slightest allusion to any of those splendid works, which at that period formed the theme of universal praise and wonder. This is hardly natural. Mr. Fitzpatrick remarked that the letters to Thomas, as published by Lockhart, did not seem to be given in their fullness or entirety; and that several contain stars, or asterisks. The so

phist declares that only one solitary letter contains asterisks, and with affected indignation appeals to the "feelings of every gentleman and man of honour"!!! Shame hide your diminished head again. I have turned to my edition of Lockhart in one volume. At page 161 there is a letter to Thomas Scott, in which paragraphs are avowedly omitted by Mr. Lockhart. At page 189 there is a plentiful sprinkling of asterisks in a letter to Thomas: and at page 190 another similarly sprinkled. At page 247, Mr. Lockhart merely gives what he calls "a scrap" of a letter to Thomas. At page 302 is the celebrated letter, telling Thomas to send him a MS. novel with Canadian sketchwork in it. It concludes abruptly, and has no date or signature. At page 331 we find another letter perforated with stars. There isno letter to Thomas after 1820. By the by what has become of Sir Walter's correspondence with Thomas about "Peveril of the Peak"?

Dr. Grattan once more returns to his charge of suppression against Mr. Fitzpatrick's critic. It appears that this writer, at the beginning of his analysis, professed to quote Sir Walter's letter to his brother in 1814; and by means of overlooking an important context, endeavoured to make it tell against Mr. Fitzpatrick's argument. Of this we have no personal knowledge; but it would appear that the ample details in which the request is couched to send a MS. novel for "cobbling" (see page, ante 485) are omitted, as also the honorable proposal to Thomas Scot to diminish his debts by mental exertion. The ambiguous conclusion of the letter is given; but the last significant line "my compliments to the hero who is afraid of Jeffrey's scalping knife," is suppressed. Dr. Grattan follows up his advantage.

"We must require Mr. Fitzpatrick to admit," proceeds our sophister, "that Thomas Scott was overwhelmed with the drudgery of a paymastership of a regiment." Short sighted critic! It appears both from Colonel Kelsall's and Lieut. Mahon's evidence that while the earlier Waverley Novels were in course of publication, a deputy dis.. charged the duties of that office.

But the critic's inferences are as correct, as his facts are solid. Waverley, it seems, is of too masculine a tone and scope for even a lady to have participated in it. The little Dublin critic will be surprised to hear that the great Edinburgh reviewer, Sydney Smith (as appears from "letter 109" to Jeffrey), was inclined to attribute" Waverley" altogether to a female pen.

Comment would ruin the following! "If Mr. Fitzpatrick had selected Lord Kennedder, if he had selected William Laidlaw, or John Ballantyne, or the Ettrick Shepherd, there might have been some plausibility, some prima facie evidence in support of his views. In the case of Mr. and Mrs. T. Scott there is absolutely none !"

The sophist's drift, throughout his 26 columns of hostility, is to endeavour by means of garbling and distortion, to convey the im

pression that a more insignificant and contemptible attempt at an argument could not exist than Mr. Fitzpatrick's. But if so, why has he toiled with such unrelenting animus and perseverance to deaden its strength?

46

After denouncing Mr. Fitzpatrick's inquiry in most unmeasured, and unjustifiable terms as tending to disparage Sir Walter Scott's intellectual power, the reader is surprised to find this jealous, and self constituted protector of the great man's fame, sudddenly conclude his assault on Mr. Fitzpatrick, with some flippant and wholly irrelevant criticisms on Sir Walter Scott. The cynic Coleridge's depreciating remark, that the Waverley novels always failed to give him a new idea, is quoted with approbation. It is proverbial that Sir Walter was never so much at home, both in prose and poetry, as when Demonology or supernatural agencies formed his theme. From the goblin shapes of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," to the elfin dwarf of "Alice Brand," from the ghostly horrors of the Monastery," to the "terrors of Woodstock,"-in all depictions based on the supernatural, Sir Walter stands alone and unrivalled for their startling yet fascinating effect. The reading world are therefore surprised and indignant to hear, what is quite new to them, that "Sir Walter failed miserably when he aimed to depict the ideal world"-that "his goblin page is a mere abortion, his White Lady of Avenal, the shadow of a shade." And again, " compare these with the Puck, the Ariel, and the Oberon of Shakespeare,and the inferiority of Scott is at once apparent !" But there is another sneer reserved for Sir Walter. "Of the creative imagination of Shakespeare and Milton he had little of the idealizing imagination of Shelley or Woodsworth, still less"! Here again, I have occasion to remark how pitifully shortsighted is this sapient (?) critic not to observe, that in admitting Sir Walter wanted "creative imagination," he turns the sneer aimed at Scott against his own laboured attempt to disprove Mr. Fitzpatrick's case, namely, that materials of plot and design, and outlines of character were furnished to Sir Walter, by persons, in every way qualified for the purpose, and that beneath his magic touch, and Shakespearean breadth of judgment, they expanded into strength, and exquisite beauty of colouring. Had Mr. Fitzpatrick's brochure been disfigured with any of this critic's flippant strictures on the intellectual power of a man, "the latchet of whose shoe he is unworthy to loose," it would indeed have deserved a castigation, but as Mr. Fitzpatrick's tone bas been uniformly respectful and kindly whenever Sir Walter, or his works are adverted to, he far from merits the hash epithets or reproaches in which his critic indulges. In fact, Mr. Fitzpatrick has occasionally gone out of his way, to strew panegyrics on Scott's tomb, and bestow a generous interpretation upon acts hitherto misconstrued.

At the close of one of the most hostile, and prolix reviews in the annals of criticism, the writer once more turns the laugh against himself by admitting Sir Walter probably did receive materials from the very parties whom Mr. Fitzpatrick points to. The critic's elaborate yarn has been therefore worse than a waste of words morally. Whether it has been a waste of words in a pecuniary

sense is another question. An advertisement has recently appeared from the proprietors of the University Magazine, announcing their design to treat fluent contributors with liberality. Indeed some such inducement would seem to have led our critic to spin out his lucubration to the utmost limit. Matters utterly irrelevant are freely introduced. Two memoirs for instance, of Bacon and Cicero containing old facts, but not badly written, are embodied in the text. Their personal adventures, and achievements, and the progressive, political, and literary careers of both are sketched with a fluent pen. After such irrelevancies as these, and in the face of the sundry glaring tricks and dodges, which we have exposed, the following concluding hit on the part of the critic sounds amusing. "If we were to expose," he writes, "all the misstatements and gratuitous suppositions into which Mr. Fitzpatrick has been betrayed, we should swell this article beyond all reasonable bounds"!

This extraordinary lucubration has not even the merit of originality The very first three lines of his criticism may be found word for word in Notes and Queries of April, 1856. Not only the sense, but the language of other points may be seen in the Athenaeum of January 5th, 1856 ; and Blackwood and the Leader have likewise been laid under contribution.

Having given both Mr. Fitzpatrick and Dr. Grattan a full and a fair hearing, in justice to the sincerity of the former's labour, and as a courteous recognition of the good-natured task of the latter, we may be permitted to observe in conclusion, that the violent hostility referred to, might well have been left unnoticed, inasmuch as the best attestation to the importance of a theory is when abuse, and laboured attempts to controvert its points, are lavished upon it. Sportsmen never waste powder and shot, except when the game is more than worth the ammunition.

Since writing the foregoing, we have observed a manifesto in the Times bearing on this question; and a reply from Mr. Fitzpatrick. As the controversy possesses a good deal of interest for literary persons, we print it in an Appendix.