Bauhaus

a German style of architecture begun by Walter Gropius in 1918

— Princeton's WordNet

Ivanhoe

A novel by Sir Walter Scott.

— Wiktionary

Walt

A diminutive of the male given name Walter.

— Wiktionary

Wat

A medieval English given name, short for Walter.

— Wiktionary

Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh English explorer and soldier

— Wiktionary

Waverley

A novel (and subsequent series) by Walter Scott

— Wiktionary

MacGregor, Robert MacGregor, Rob Roy

Scottish clan leader and outlaw who was the subject of a 1817 novel by Sir Walter Scott (1671-1734)

— Princeton's WordNet

MacGregor, Robert MacGregor, Rob Roy

Scottish clan leader and outlaw who was the subject of a 1817 novel by Sir Walter Scott (1671-1734)

— Princeton's WordNet

MacGregor, Robert MacGregor, Rob Roy

Scottish clan leader and outlaw who was the subject of a 1817 novel by Sir Walter Scott (1671-1734)

— Princeton's WordNet

Wally

A diminutive of the male given names Walter and Wallace.

— Wiktionary

over-ridden

excessively ridden (Example: "...there was blood on ... the sides of his over-ridden horse", Sir Walter Scott, The Black Dwarf)

— Wiktionary

Gwatkin

A patronymic Welsh and English surname; derived from Watkin a pet name for the given name Walter. Originally 'ap Gwatkyn' or 'ap Gwatkin', meaning 'son of Watkin'.

— Wiktionary

taghairm

An ancient divination method of the Highland Scots: The oracle of the hide in which a person was sewn into the hide of a freshly killed ox, and placed beside a waterfall. This would enable him to foresee the results of an impending battle. From Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake.

— Wiktionary

Ballantyne, John

brother of preceding, a confidant of Sir Walter's in the matter of the anonymity of the Waverley Novels; an inimitable story-teller and mimic, very much to the delight of Sir Walter (1774-1821).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Border Minstrel

Sir Walter Scott.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Great Magician

Sir Walter Scott.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Heymann Nephritis Antigenic Complex

A complex of antigenic proteins obtained from the brush border of kidney tubules. It contains two principal components LDL-RECEPTOR RELATED PROTEIN 2 and LDL-RECEPTOR RELATED PROTEIN-ASSOCIATED PROTEIN. The name of this complex is derived from researcher, Dr. Walter Heymann, who developed an experimental model of membranous glomerulonephritis (GLOMERULONEPHRITIS) by injecting this antigenic complex into rats to induce an autoimmune response.

— U.S. National Library of Medicine

Wizard of the North

name given to Sir Walter Scott, from the magic power displayed in his writings.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Unknown, The Great

name given to Sir Walter Scott from withholding his name in publishing the Waverley novels.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Rebecca the Jewess

a high-souled Hebrew maiden, who is the heroine in Sir Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe."

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Defauconpret

French littérateur; translator of the novels of Sir Walter Scott and Fenimore Cooper (1767-1843).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Gilbert, Sir Humphrey

navigator, born in Devonshire, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh; in 1583 established a settlement in Newfoundland.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Vernon, Di

the heroine in Sir Walter Scott's "Rob Roy," an enthusiastic royalist, distinguished for her beauty and talents.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Dryburgh

an abbey, now a ruin, founded by David I., on the Tweed, in Berwickshire, 3 m. SE. of Melrose; the burial-place of Sir Walter Scott.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Ball`antyne, James

a native of Kelso, became a printer in Edinburgh, printed all Sir Walter Scott's works; failed in business, a failure in which Scott was seriously implicated (1772-1833).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Abbotsford

the residence of Sir Walter Scott, on the Tweed, near Melrose, built by him on the site of a farm called Clarty Hole.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Redgauntlet

an enthusiastic Jacobite character in Sir Walter Scott's novel of the name, distinguished by a "horse-shoe vein on his brow, which would swell up black when he was in anger."

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Trossachs

a romantic pass in the Perthshire Highlands, 8 m. W. of Callander, stretching for about a mile between Lochs Katrine and Achray, is charmingly wooded; is celebrated by Sir Walter Scott in his "Lady of the Lake."

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Bannatyne Club

a club founded by Sir Walter Scott to print rare works of Scottish interest, whether in history, poetry, or general literature, of which it printed 116, all deemed of value, a complete set having been sold for £235; dissolved in 1861.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Lennep, Jacob van

a Dutch dramatist and novelist, born at Amsterdam; bred to the bar and practised as a lawyer; was a devoted student of English literature, and executed translations from English poets; was called by his countrymen the Walter Scott of Holland (1802-1868).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Pitacottie, Robert Lindsay of

proprietor in the 16th century of the Fifeshire estate name of which he bore, was the author of "The Chronicles of Scotland," to which Sir Walter Scott owed so much; his work is quaint, graphic, and, on the whole, trustworthy.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Melrose

a small town in Roxburghshire, at the foot of the Eildons, on the S. bank of the Tweed, famed for its abbey, founded by David I. in 1136; it is celebrated by Sir Walter Scott in his "Lay of the Last Minstrel."

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Rice, James

novelist, born at Northampton, educated at Cambridge; designed for the law, but took to literature; owned and edited Once a Week; best known as the successful collaborateur of Walter Besant (q. v.) in such popular novels as "The Golden Butterfly," "Ready-Money Mortiboy," &c. (1844-1882).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Bürger, Gottfried August

a German lyric poet, author of the ballads "Lenore," which was translated by Sir Walter Scott, and "The Wild Huntsman," as well as songs; led a wild life in youth, and a very unhappy one in later years; died in poverty (1747-1794).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Gordon, Sir John Watson

a portrait-painter, born in Edinburgh; was a pupil of Raeburn's, and his successor as a painter of portraits; executed portraits of most of the eminent Scotchmen of his time, and among the number Sir Walter Scott, the Duke of Buccleuch, Lord Cockburn, Dr. Chalmers, and Professor Wilson (1788-1864).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Eildons, The

a "triple-crested eminence" near Melrose, 1385 ft., and overlooking Teviotdale to the S., associated with Sir Walter Scott and Thomas the Rhymer; they are of volcanic origin, and are said to have been cleft in three by the wizard Michael Scott, when he was out of employment.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Robert II.

king of Scotland from 1371 to 1390, son of Walter Stewart and Marjory, only daughter of Robert the Bruce; succeeded David II., and became the founder of the Stuart dynasty; was a peaceable man, but his nobles were turbulent, and provoked invasions on the part of England by their forays on the Borders (1316-1390).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Ivanhoe

the hero of Sir Walter Scott's novel of the name, the disinherited son of Cedric of Rotherwood, who falls in love with Rowena, a ward of his father, but by the exhibition of his prowess as a knight is at the intercession of King Richard, reconciled to his father, with the result that he marries Rowena.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Häring, Wilhelm

German novelist, born at Breslau; bred for law, but abandoned it for literature; wrote two romances, "Walladmor" and "Schloss Avalon," under the pseudonym of "Walter Scott," which imposed upon some; he afterwards assumed the name of Wilibald Alexis, a name by which he was long honourably known (1797-1871).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Berlichingen, Goetz von

surnamed "The Iron Hand," a brave but turbulent noble of Germany, of the 15th and 16th centuries, the story of whose life was dramatised by Goethe, "to save," as he said, "the memory of a brave man from darkness," and which was translated from the German by Sir Walter Scott.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Dryasdust

a name of Sir Walter Scott's invention, and employed by him to denote an imaginary character who supplied him with dry preliminary historical details, and since used to denote a writer who treats a historical subject with all due diligence and research, but without any appreciation of the human interest in it, still less the soul of it.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Virginia

one of the United States of America, a State somewhat larger than Scotland, between Maryland and North Carolina, so named by its founder Sir Walter Raleigh in honour of Queen Elizabeth; is divided from West Virginia by the Appalachians; it is well watered; the soil, which is fertile, yields the finest cotton and tobacco, and minerals, particularly coal and iron, are abundant; the largest city is Richmond, with flour-mills.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Baillie, Joanna

a poetess, born at Bothwell, child of the Presbyterian manse there; joined a brother in London, stayed afterwards with a sister at Hampstead; produced a series of dramas entitled "Plays of the Passions," besides many others, both comedies and tragedies, one of which, the "Family Legend," was acted in the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, under the auspices of Sir Walter Scott; she does not stand high either as a dramatist or a writer (1762-1851).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Fordun, John of

a Scottish chronicler; lived in the 14th century; was a canon of Aberdeen Cathedral, and wrote a chronicle of Scottish history, bringing the story up to 1153; materials for further volumes, which he left, were utilised by Walter Bower, an abbot of Inchcolm, in the Forth, who extended the account to 1437, but often tampered with Fordun's narrative; the work is the chief authority in Scottish history up to the time it treats of.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Griselda

or Griseldis, a famous heroine of mediæval tradition; figures in Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Chaucer, and in later dramatists of England, Germany, and Spain; the beautiful daughter of a Piedmontese peasant, she was loved and married by the Marquis Walter of Saluzzo; his jealous affection subjected her to several cruel tests of love, which she bore with "wyfly pacience," and in the end "love was aye between them twa."

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Constable, Archibald

Edinburgh publisher, born in Carnbee, Fife; started as a bookseller near the Cross in Edinburgh; published the Scots Magazine, the Edinburgh Review, and the "Encyclopædia Britannica," and from 1802 to 1826 the works of Sir Walter Scott, when the bankruptcy connected with the publication of these so affected him that it ruined his health, though he lived after the crash came to start the "Miscellany" which bears his name (1774-1827).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Laidlaw, William

Sir Walter Scott's factor at Abbotsford, born in Selkirkshire; having failed in farming, entered Scott's service in 1817 and remained his trusted and faithful friend, advising him in his schemes of improvement and acting latterly as his amanuensis till his death in 1832; thereafter he was factor in Ross-shire, where he died; he had some poetic gift of his own, and contributed to the third volume of the "Minstrelsy" (1780-1845).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Ferrier, Susan Edmonston

a Scottish novelist, aunt of the preceding, born in Edinburgh, where her life was chiefly spent, her father being Clerk in the Court of Session, and a colleague of Sir Walter Scott; her novels, "Marriage," "The Inheritance," and "Destiny," &c., are rich in humour and faithful in their pictures of Scottish life and character; Scott held her in high esteem, and kept up a warm friendship with her till his death (1782-1854).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Goetz von Berlichingen

a German knight of the 16th century; was involved in turbulent movements, and lost his right hand at the siege of Landshut, which he replaced by one of his own invention made of steel; spent his life in feuds, and left an autobiography which interested Goethe, who dramatised his story, "to save," as he said, "the memory of a brave man from darkness," a drama that had the honour of being translated by Sir Walter Scott.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Raeburn, Sir Henry

portrait-painter, born at Stockbridge, Edinburgh; was educated at George Heriot's Hospital; apprenticed to a goldsmith in the city, and gave early promise of his abilities as an artist; went to Italy; was introduced to Reynolds by the way, and after two years' absence settled in Edinburgh, and became famous as one of the greatest painters of the day; the portraits he painted included likenesses of all the distinguished Scotsmen of the period, at the head of them Sir Walter Scott; was knighted by George IV. a short time before his death (1756-1823).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Lockhart, John Gibson

man of letters, born in Cambusnethan; bred for the Scottish bar and practised at it; contributed to Blackwood, wrote in collaboration with John Wilson "Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk"; married Sophia Scott, Sir Walter's daughter, in 1820, lived a good deal near Abbotsford, wrote some four novels and "Spanish Ballads," became editor of the Quarterly in 1825, and began in 1837 his "Life of Scott," a great work, and his greatest; died at Abbotsford, health broken and in much sorrow; his "Life" has been interestingly written by Andrew Lang (1794-1854).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Chantrey, Sir Francis

an English sculptor, born in Derbyshire; was apprenticed to a carver and gilder in Sheffield; displayed a talent for drawing and modelling; received a commission to execute a marble bust for the parish, church, which was so successful as to procure him further and further commissions; executed four colossal busts of admirals for Greenwich Hospital; being expert at portraiture, his busts were likenesses; executed busts of many of the most illustrious men of the time, among them of Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, and Wellington, as well as of royal heads; made a large fortune, and left it for the encouragement of art (1781-1841).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Hogg, James

a Scottish poet, born in Ettrick; had little or no schooling; was bred a shepherd; took to rhyming; fell in with Sir Walter Scott, whom he assisted with his "Border Minstrelsy"; rented a farm, and first came into notice by the publication of his poem, the "Queen's Wake"; he wrote in prose as well as poetry, with humour as well as no little graphic power; "was," says Carlyle, "a little red-skinned stiff sack of a body, with two little blue or grey eyes that sparkled, if not with thought, yet with animation; was a real product of nature" (1782-1835).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Steel, Sir John

sculptor, born at Aberdeen; studied at Edinburgh and Rome; made his mark in 1832 by a model of a statue, "Alexander and Bucephalus," and soon took rank with the foremost and busiest sculptors of his day; his works are mostly to be found in Edinburgh, and include the equestrian statue of Wellington, statues of Sir Walter Scott (in the Scott Monument), Professor Wilson, Dr. Chalmers, Allan Ramsay, etc.; the splendid figure of Queen Victoria over the Royal Institution gained him the appointment (1844) of sculptor to Her Majesty in Scotland, and on the unveiling of his fine equestrian statue of Prince Albert in 1876 he was created a knight (1804-1891).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Forbes, James David

physicist, born at Edinburgh, the grandson of Sir William, and the son of the first lady-love of Sir Walter Scott, and very like her; was called to the bar in 1830; physical science, however, was his ruling passion, and in 1833 he became professor of Natural Philosophy in Edinburgh University, from which he was called in 1859 to the Principalship of the United College, St. Andrews, in which he succeeded Sir David Brewster, whom he had defeated in obtaining the Edinburgh chair; he made some valuable contributions to natural science, including discoveries in the polarisation of heat and in regard to the motion of glaciers, to investigate which he travelled in Norway and in the Alps (1809-1868).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Cunningham, Allan

poet and man of letters, born in the parish of Keir, Dumfriesshire; bred to the mason craft, but devoted his leisure hours to study and the composition of Scottish ballads, which, when published, gained him the notice of Sir Walter Scott; in 1810 he went to London, where he wrote for periodicals, and obtained employment as assistant to Chantrey the sculptor, in which post he found leisure to cultivate his literary proclivities, collating and editing tales and songs, editing Burns with a Life, and writing the Lives of famous artists, and died in London; "a pliant, Naturmensch," Carlyle found him to be, "with no principles or creed that he could see, but excellent old habits of character" (1784-1842).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Alice and Bob

The archetypal individuals used as examples in discussions of cryptographic protocols. Originally, theorists would say something like: “A communicates with someone who claims to be B, So to be sure, A tests that B knows a secret number K. So A sends to B a random number X. B then forms Y by encrypting X under key K and sends Y back to A” Because this sort of thing is quite hard to follow, theorists stopped using the unadorned letters A and B to represent the main players and started calling them Alice and Bob. So now we say “Alice communicates with someone claiming to be Bob, and to be sure, Alice tests that Bob knows a secret number K. Alice sends to Bob a random number X. Bob then forms Y by encrypting X under key K and sends Y back to Alice”. A whole mythology rapidly grew up around the metasyntactic names; see http://www.conceptlabs./definition/alicebob.

In Bruce Schneier's definitive introductory text Applied Cryptography (2nd ed., 1996, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-11709-9) he introduced a table of dramatis personae headed by Alice and Bob. Others include Carol (a participant in three- and four-party protocols), Dave (a participant in four-party protocols), Eve (an eavesdropper), Mallory (a malicious active attacker), Trent (a trusted arbitrator), Walter (a warden), Peggy (a prover) and Victor (a verifier). These names for roles are either already standard or, given the wide popularity of the book, may be expected to quickly become so.

— The New Hacker's Dictionary

Stuart Dynasty

a dynasty of Scotch and finally English kings as well, commenced with Robert II., who was the son of Marjory, Robert the Bruce's daughter, who married Walter, the Lord High Steward of Scotland, hence the name, his successors being Robert III., James I., James II., James III., James IV., and James V., Mary Queen of Scots, and James VI. in Scotland, and ended with James II. of England, who was expelled from the throne for an obstinacy of temper which characterised all the members of his house, "an unfortunate dynasty," too, being appointed at length to rule at a time and over a people that thought kings were born for the country and not the country for kings, a dictum which they stubbornly refused to concede, thinking that the nation existed for them instead of them for the nation. The line became extinct by the death of Cardinal York in 1807, who survived his brother Charles Edward 19 years.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

William II.

king of England, surnamed Rufus or Ruddy, born in Normandy, third son of William I.; succeeded his father in 1087; had to face a rebellion, headed by Bishop Odo, in favour of his eldest brother, Robert, Duke of Normandy, which he suppressed by favour of the mass of the people, to whom he made promises which he did not keep, for he proved a stern and exacting ruler; his energy was great, but was frequently spasmodic; he added Normandy to his dominion by compact with Robert, who went on Crusade, compelled Malcolm of Scotland to do homage for his kingdom, conducted several campaigns against the Welsh, and had a long-continued wrangle with Archbishop Anselm, virtually in defence of the royal prerogative against the claims of the Church, for a humorous account of the meaning of which see Carlyle's "Past and Present," Book iv. chap. i.; he was accidentally shot while hunting in the New Forest by Walter Tirel, and buried in Winchester Cathedral, but without any religious service; in his reign the Crusades began, and Westminster Hall was built (1066-1100).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Crusades, The

military expeditions, organised from the 11th century to the 13th, under the banner of the Cross for the recovery of the Holy Land from the hands of the Saracens, to the number of eight. The First (1096-1099), preached by Peter the Hermit, and sanctioned by the Council of Clermont (1095), consisted of two divisions: one, broken into two hordes, under Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless respectively, arrived decimated in Syria, and was cut to pieces at Nicæa by the sultan; while the other, better equipped and more efficiently organised, laid siege to and captured in succession Nicæa, Antioch, and Jerusalem, where Godfrey of Bouillon was proclaimed king. The Second (1147-1149), preached by St. Bernard, consisting of two armies under Conrad III. of Germany and Louis VII. of France, laid siege in a shattered state to Damascus, and was compelled to raise the siege and return a mere remnant to Europe. The Third (1189-1193), preached by William, archbishop of Tyre, and provoked by Saladin's capture of Jerusalem, of which one division was headed by Barbarossa, who, after taking Iconium, was drowned while bathing in the Orontes, and the other, headed by Philippe Augustus and Richard Coeur de Lion, who jointly captured Acre and made peace with Saladin. The Fourth (1202-1204), under sanction of Pope Innocent III., and undertaken by Baldwin, count of Flanders, having got the length of Venice, was preparing to start for Asia, when it was called aside to Constantinople to restore the emperor to his throne, when, upon his death immediately afterwards, the Crusaders elected Baldwin in his place, pillaged the city, and left, having added it to the domain of the Pope. The Fifth (1217-1221), on the part of John of Brienne, king of Jerusalem, and Andrew II., king of Hungary, who made a raid upon Egypt against the Saracens there, but without any result. The Sixth (1228-1229), under conduct of Frederick II. of Germany, as heir through John of Brienne to the throne of Jerusalem, who made a treaty with the sultan of Egypt, whereby the holy city, with the exception of the Mosque of Omar, was made over to him as king of Jerusalem. The Seventh (1248-1254), conducted by St. Louis in the fulfilment of a vow, in which Louis was defeated and taken prisoner, and only recovered his liberty by payment of a heavy ransom. The Eighth (1270), also undertaken by St. Louis, who lay dying at Tunis as the towns of Palestine fell one after another into the hands of the Saracens. The Crusades terminated with the fall of Ptolemaïs in 1291.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Knox, John

the great Scottish Reformer, born at Giffordgate, Haddington, in 1505; studied at Glasgow University; took priest's orders; officiated as a priest, and did tutoring from 1530 to 1540; came under the influence of George Wishart, and avowed the Reformed faith; took refuge from persecution in St. Andrews Castle in 1547; was there summoned to lead on the movement; on the surrender of the castle was taken prisoner, and made a slave in a French galley for 19 months; liberated in 1549 at the intercession of Edward VI., came and assisted the Protestant cause in England; was offered preferments in the Church, but declined them; fled in 1553 to France, from the persecution of Bloody Mary; ministered at Frankfort and Geneva to the English refugees; returned to Scotland in 1555, but having married, went back next year to Geneva; was in absence, in 1557, condemned to be burned; published in 1558 his "First Blast against the Monstrous Regiment of Women"; returned to Scotland for good in 1559, and became minister in Edinburgh; saw in 1560 the jurisdiction of the Pope abolished in Scotland; had successive interviews with Queen Mary after her arrival at Leith in 1561; was tried for high-treason before the Privy Council, but acquitted in 1563; began his "History of the Reformation in Scotland" in 1566; preached in 1567 at James VI.'s coronation in Stirling; was in 1571 struck by apoplexy; died in Edinburgh on the 24th November 1572, aged 67, the Regent Morton pronouncing an éloge at his grave, "There lies one who never feared the face of man." Knox is pronounced by Carlyle to have been the one Scotchman to whom, "of all others, his country and the world owe a debt"; "In the history of Scotland," he says, "I can find properly but one epoch; we may say it contains nothing of world interest at all but this Reformation by Knox.... It is as yet a country without a soul ... the people now begin to live ... Scottish literature and thought, Scottish industry, James Watt, David Hume, Walter Scott (little as he dreamt of debt in that quarter), and Robert Burns, I find Knox and the Reformation acting on the heart's core of every one of these persons and phenomena; I find that without the Reformation they would not have been; or," he adds, "the Puritanism of England and of New England either"; and he sums up his message thus: "Let men know that they are men, created by God, responsible to God; who work in any meanest moment of time what will last through eternity. This great message," he adds, "Knox delivered with a man's voice and strength, and found a people to believe him."

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von

a great poet and wise man, the greatest, it is alleged, the world has seen since Shakespeare left it, and who, being born in Frankfort-on-the-Main 10 years before Robert Burns, died in the small duchy of Weimar the same year as Sir Walter Scott; was the son of an imperial chancellor, a formal man and his pedagogue in boyhood, and of Elizabeth Textor, daughter of the chief magistrate of the city, a woman of bright intelligence, who was only eighteen at the time of his birth. Spiritually and bodily he was the most perfectly formed, symetrically proportioned, justly balanced, and completely cultivated man perhaps that ever lived, whose priceless value to the world lies in this, that in his philosophy and life there is found the union in one of what to smaller people appears entirely and absolutely antagonistic, of utmost scientific scepticism and highest spiritual faith and worth. "He was filled full with the scepticism, bitterness, hollowness, and thousandfold contradictions of his time, till his heart was like to break; yet he subdued all this, rose victorious over this, and manifoldly, by word and act, showed others that came after how to do the like." Carlyle, who is never done recalling his worth, confesses an indebtedness to him—which he found it beyond his power to express: "It was he," he writes to Emerson, "that first proclaimed to me (convincingly, for I saw it done): 'behold, even in this scandalous Sceptico-Epicurean generation, when all is gone but hunger and cant, it is still possible that Man be Man.'" "He was," says he, "king of himself and his world;... his faculties and feelings were not fettered or prostrated under the iron sway of Passion, but led and guided in kindly union under the mild sway of Reason; as the fierce primeval elements of chaos were stilled at the coming of Light, and bound together, under its soft vesture, into a glorious and beneficent Creation." His life lies latent in his successive works, above all in "Goetz," in "Werter," in "Faust," and in "Meister"; but as these have not been duly read it has not yet been duly written, though an attempt is being made to do so in the said connection. Of the last of the four works named, Carlyle, who has done more than any one else yet to bring Goethe near us, once said, "There are some ten pages of that book that, if ambition had been my object, I would rather have written than all the literature of my time." "One counsel," says Carlyle, "he has to give, the secret of his whole poetic alchemy, 'Think of living! Thy life is no idle dream, but a solemn reality. It is thy own, it is all thou hast to front eternity with.'" "Never thought on thinking," he has said, Nie ans Denken gedacht. "What a thrift," exclaims Carlyle, "of faculty here!" Some think he had one weakness: he lived for culture, believed in culture, irrespective of the fact and the need of individual regeneration. And Emerson, who afterwards in his "Representative Men" did Goethe full justice, in introducing him as, if not a world-wise man, at all events as a world-related, once complained that "he showed us the actual rather than the ideal." To which Carlyle answered, "That is true; but it is not the whole truth. The actual well seen is the ideal. The actual, what really is and exists; the past, the present, and the future do all lie there" (1749-1832).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Scott, Sir Walter

the great romancer, born in Edinburgh, through both father and mother of Scottish Border blood; his father, a lawyer, a man "who passed from the cradle to the grave without making an enemy or losing a friend," his mother a little kindly woman, full of most vivid memories, awakening an interest in him to which he owed much; was a healthy child, but from teething and other causes lost the use of his right limb when 18 months old, which determined, to a marked extent, the course of his life; spent many of the months of his childhood in the country, where he acquired that affection for all natural objects which never left him, and a kindliness of soul which all the lower animals that approached him were quick to recognise; he was from the first home-bred, and to realise the like around his own person was his fondest dream, and if he failed, as it chanced he did, his vexation was due not to the material loss it involved, but to the blight it shed on his home life and the disaster on his domestic relationships; his school training yielded results of the smallest account to his general education, and a writer of books himself, he owed less to book-knowledge than his own shrewd observation; he proceeded from the school (the High School, it was) at 15 to his father's office and classes at the University, and at both he continued to develop his own bent more than the study of law or learning; at his sixteenth year the bursting of a blood-vessel prostrated him in bed and enforced a period of perfect stillness, but during this time he was able to prosecute sundry quiet studies, and laid up in his memory great stores of knowledge, for his mind was of that healthy quality which assimilated all that was congenial to it and let all that did not concern it slip idly through, achieving thereby his greatest victory, that of becoming an altogether whole man. Professionally he was a lawyer, and a good lawyer, but the duties of his profession were not his chief interest, and though he received at length a sheriffship worth £300 a year, and a clerkship to the court worth £1500, he early turned his mind to seek promotion elsewhere, and chose a literary career. His first literary efforts were translations in verse from the German, but his first great literary success was the publication, in 1802, of "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," and in this he first gave evidence both of the native force and bent of his genius; it gave the keynote of all that subsequently proceeded from his pen. This was followed the same year by "Cadzow Castle," a poem instinct with military ardour, and this by "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" in 1805; the first poem which gained him popular favour, by "Marmion" in 1808, and by "The Lord of the Isles" in 1814. Much as the rise of Scott's fame was owing to his poetical works, it is on the ground of his prose writings, as the freest and fullest exhibition of his genius, that it is now mainly founded. The period of his productivity in this line extended over 18 years in all, commencing with the year 1814. This was the year of the publication of "Waverley," which was followed by that of "Guy Mannering," "The Antiquary," "Rob Roy," "Old Mortality," and "The Heart of Midlothian" in the year 1819, when he was smitten down by an illness, the effects of which was seen in his after-work. "The Bride of Lammermoor," "Ivanhoe," "The Monastery," "The Abbot," "Kenilworth," and "The Pirate" belong to the years that succeeded that illness, and all more or less witness to its sorrowful effects, of which last "The Abbot" and "The Monastery" are reckoned the best, as still illustrating the "essential powers" of Scott, to which may be added "Redgauntlet" and "The Fortunes of Nigel," characterised by Ruskin as "quite noble ones," together with "Quentin Durward" and "Woodstock," as "both of high value." Sir Walter's own life was, in its inner essence, an even-flowing one, for there were in it no crises such as to require a reversal of the poles of it, and a spiritual new birth, with crucifixion of the old nature, and hence it is easily divisible, as it has been divided throughout, into the three natural periods of growth, activity, and death. His active life, which ranges from 1796 to 1826, lay in picturing things and traditions of things as in youth, a 25 years' period of continuous crescent expansiveness, he had learned to view them, and his slow death was the result, not of mere weariness in working, but of the adverse circumstances that thwarted and finally wrecked the one unworthy ambition that had fatally taken possession of his heart. Of Scott Ruskin says, "What good Scott had in him to do, I find no words full enough to express...

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia