"The Wizard of the North".

The book "Sir Walter Scott: His Life and Personality," by Hesketh Pearson is the seventeenth of Pearson's brisk, readable biographies all published within twenty-five years. Scott's career and personality are still interesting and it is upon the career and personality that Pearson concentrates. For a few years Scott was the overwhelmingly most popular poet and for rather more he was the no less overwhelmingly most popular novelist. But one of his many virtues as a man was that far from losing his head, he rather underestimated his importance.