considering how clearly this has been shown, it is somewhat surprising
to hear so clever a critic as Mr. Cunningham pronounce _The Life of
Napoleon_ as "one of the noblest monuments of Scott's genius." We pass
from these considerations to the excellence of the purpose to which
the proceeds (12,000_l._) of this work were applied--namely, to the
payment of 6_s._ 8_d._ in the pound, as the first dividend of the
debts of the author.

In parting with the _Napoleon_, we might notice the conflicting
opinions of the French critics on its merits; but, as that task would
occupy too much space we content ourselves with the following passage
from a journal published a few days subsequent to the melancholy
intelligence of the death of Sir Walter Scott being received in Paris.
The criticism is in every sense plain-spoken:--

"If Sir Walter Scott's politics did not square with the natural state
of things--if upon this subject he still remained the victim of early
prejudices, and, perhaps, of the predilections of a poetical mind, yet
he was fortunate enough to promote, by his writings, the real
improvement of the people. France has reason to reproach him severely
for the unaccountable statements in his "Paul's Letters to his
Kinsfolk," and in the "History of Bonaparte." But those errors were
imputable to carelessness much more than to malice. A prose writer, a
poet, a novelist--he yielded, during his long and laborious career, to
the impulse of a fancy, rich, copious, and entirely independent of
present circumstances, aloof from the agitations of the day,
delighting in the memory of the past, and drawing from the surviving
relics of ancient times the traditionary tale, to revive and embellish
it. He was one of those geniuses in romance who may be said to have
been impartial and disinterested, for he gave a picture of ordinary