His pictures of Swift, of Dryden, of Napoleon, are in no way very vivid.

It is only where he is working from the pure imagination,--though imagination stirred by historic study,--that he paints a picture which follows us about, as if with living eyes, instead of creating for us a mere series of lines and colours.

Indeed, whether Scott draws truly or falsely, he draws with such genius that his pictures of Richard and Saladin, of Louis XI.

and Charles the Bold, of Margaret of Anjou and Rene of Provence, of Mary Stuart and Elizabeth Tudor, of Sussex and of Leicester, of James and Charles and Buckingham, of the two Dukes of Argyle--the Argyle of the time of the revolution, and the Argyle of George II., of Queen Caroline, of Claverhouse, and Monmouth, and of Rob Roy, will live in English literature beside Shakespeare's pictures--probably less faithful if more imaginative--of John and Richard and the later Henries, and all the great figures by whom they were surrounded.

No historical portrait that we possess will take precedence--as a mere portrait--of Scott's brilliant study of James I.in _The Fortunes of Nigel_.