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diff --git a/18124.txt b/18124.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..058b53e --- /dev/null +++ b/18124.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5642 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sir Walter Scott, by Richard H. Hutton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Sir Walter Scott + (English Men of Letters Series) + +Author: Richard H. Hutton + +Release Date: April 5, 2006 [EBook #18124] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR WALTER SCOTT *** + + + + +Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Sankar Viswanathan, +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + SIR WALTER SCOTT + + + + BY + + RICHARD H. HUTTON. + + + + + London: + + MACMILLAN AND CO. + + 1878 + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE. + + +It will be observed that the greater part of this little book has been +taken in one form or other from Lockhart's _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, +in ten volumes. No introduction to Scott would be worth much in which +that course was not followed. Indeed, excepting Sir Walter's own +writings, there is hardly any other great source of information about +him; and that is so full, that hardly anything needful to illustrate +the subject of Scott's life remains untouched. As regards the only +matters of controversy,--Scott's relations to the Ballantynes, I have +taken care to check Mr. Lockhart's statements by reading those of the +representatives of the Ballantyne brothers; but with this exception, +Sir Walter's own works and Lockhart's life of him are the great +authorities concerning his character and his story. + +Just ten years ago Mr. Gladstone, in expressing to the late Mr. Hope +Scott the great delight which the perusal of Lockhart's life of Sir +Walter had given him, wrote, "I may be wrong, but I am vaguely under +the impression that it has never had a really wide circulation. If so, +it is the saddest pity, and I should greatly like (without any censure +on its present length) to see published an abbreviation of it." Mr. +Gladstone did not then know that as long ago as 1848 Mr. Lockhart did +himself prepare such an abbreviation, in which the original +eighty-four chapters were compressed into eighteen,--though the +abbreviation contained additions as well as compressions. But even +this abridgment is itself a bulky volume of 800 pages, containing, I +should think, considerably more than a third of the reading in the +original ten volumes, and is not, therefore, very likely to be +preferred to the completer work. In some respects I hope that this +introduction may supply, better than that bulky abbreviation, what Mr. +Gladstone probably meant to suggest,--some slight miniature taken from +the great picture with care enough to tempt on those who look on it to +the study of the fuller life, as well as of that image of Sir Walter +which is impressed by his own hand upon his works. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +CHAPTER I. + +ANCESTRY, PARENTAGE, AND CHILDHOOD + +CHAPTER II. + +YOUTH--CHOICE OF A PROFESSION + +CHAPTER III. + +LOVE AND MARRIAGE + +CHAPTER IV. + +EARLIEST POETRY AND BORDER MINSTRELSY + +CHAPTER V. + +SCOTT'S MATURER POEMS + +CHAPTER VI. + +COMPANIONS AND FRIENDS + +CHAPTER VII. + +FIRST COUNTRY HOMES + +CHAPTER VIII. + +REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD, AND LIFE THERE + +CHAPTER IX. + +SCOTT'S PARTNERSHIPS WITH THE BALLANTYNES + +CHAPTER X. + +THE WAVERLEY NOVELS + +CHAPTER XI. + +SCOTT'S MORALITY AND RELIGION + +CHAPTER XII. + +DISTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS AT ABBOTSFORD + +CHAPTER XIII. + +SCOTT AND GEORGE IV + +CHAPTER XIV. + +SCOTT AS A POLITICIAN + +CHAPTER XV. + +SCOTT IN ADVERSITY + +CHAPTER XVI. + +THE LAST YEAR + +CHAPTER XVII. + +THE END OF THE STRUGGLE + + + + +SIR WALTER SCOTT. + +CHAPTER I. + +ANCESTRY, PARENTAGE, AND CHILDHOOD. + + +Sir Walter Scott was the first literary man of a great riding, +sporting, and fighting clan. Indeed, his father--a Writer to the +Signet, or Edinburgh solicitor--was the first of his race to adopt a +town life and a sedentary profession. Sir Walter was the lineal +descendant--six generations removed--of that Walter Scott commemorated +in _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, who is known in Border history and +legend as Auld Wat of Harden. Auld Wat's son William, captured by Sir +Gideon Murray, of Elibank, during a raid of the Scotts on Sir Gideon's +lands, was, as tradition says, given his choice between being hanged +on Sir Gideon's private gallows, and marrying the ugliest of Sir +Gideon's three ugly daughters, Meikle-mouthed Meg, reputed as carrying +off the prize of ugliness among the women of four counties. Sir +William was a handsome man. He took three days to consider the +alternative proposed to him, but chose life with the large-mouthed +lady in the end; and found her, according to the tradition which the +poet, her descendant, has transmitted, an excellent wife, with a fine +talent for pickling the beef which her husband stole from the herds of +his foes. Meikle-mouthed Meg transmitted a distinct trace of her large +mouth to all her descendants, and not least to him who was to use his +"meikle" mouth to best advantage as the spokesman of his race. Rather +more than half-way between Auld Wat of Harden's times--i. e., the +middle of the sixteenth century--and those of Sir Walter Scott, poet +and novelist, lived Sir Walter's great-grandfather, Walter Scott +generally known in Teviotdale by the surname of Beardie, because he +would never cut his beard after the banishment of the Stuarts, and who +took arms in their cause and lost by his intrigues on their behalf +almost all that he had, besides running the greatest risk of being +hanged as a traitor. This was the ancestor of whom Sir Walter speaks +in the introduction to the last canto of _Marmion_:-- + + "And thus my Christmas still I hold, + Where my great grandsire came of old, + With amber beard and flaxen hair, + And reverend apostolic air,-- + The feast and holy tide to share, + And mix sobriety with wine, + And honest mirth with thoughts divine; + Small thought was his in after time + E'er to be hitch'd into a rhyme, + The simple sire could only boast + That he was loyal to his cost; + The banish'd race of kings revered, + And lost his land--but kept his beard." + +Sir Walter inherited from Beardie that sentimental Stuart bias which +his better judgment condemned, but which seemed to be rather part of +his blood than of his mind. And most useful to him this sentiment +undoubtedly was in helping him to restore the mould and fashion of +the past. Beardie's second son was Sir Walter's grandfather, and to +him he owed not only his first childish experience of the delights of +country life, but also,--in his own estimation at least,--that risky, +speculative, and sanguine spirit which had so much influence over his +fortunes. The good man of Sandy-Knowe, wishing to breed sheep, and +being destitute of capital, borrowed 30_l._ from a shepherd who was +willing to invest that sum for him in sheep; and the two set off to +purchase a flock near Wooler, in Northumberland; but when the shepherd +had found what he thought would suit their purpose, he returned to +find his master galloping about a fine hunter, on which he had spent +the whole capital in hand. _This_ speculation, however, prospered. A +few days later Robert Scott displayed the qualities of the hunter to +such admirable effect with John Scott of Harden's hounds, that he sold +the horse for double the money he had given, and, unlike his grandson, +abandoned speculative purchases there and then. In the latter days of +his clouded fortunes, after Ballantyne's and Constable's failure, Sir +Walter was accustomed to point to the picture of his grandfather and +say, "Blood will out: my building and planting was but his buying the +hunter before he stocked his sheep-walk, over again." But Sir Walter +added, says Mr. Lockhart, as he glanced at the likeness of his own +staid and prudent father, "Yet it was a wonder, too, for I have a +thread of the attorney in me," which was doubtless the case; nor was +that thread the least of his inheritances, for from his father +certainly Sir Walter derived that disposition towards conscientious, +plodding industry, legalism of mind, methodical habits of work, and a +generous, equitable interpretation of the scope of all his obligations +to others, which, prized and cultivated by him as they were, turned a +great genius, which, especially considering the hare-brained element +in him, might easily have been frittered away or devoted to worthless +ends, to such fruitful account, and stamped it with so grand an +impress of personal magnanimity and fortitude. Sir Walter's father +reminds one in not a few of the formal and rather martinetish traits +which are related of him, of the father of Goethe, "a formal man, with +strong ideas of strait-laced education, passionately orderly (he +thought a good book nothing without a good binding), and never so much +excited as by a necessary deviation from the 'pre-established harmony' +of household rules." That description would apply almost wholly to the +sketch of old Mr. Scott which the novelist has given us under the thin +disguise of Alexander Fairford, Writer to the Signet, in +_Redgauntlet_, a figure confessedly meant, in its chief features, to +represent his father. To this Sir Walter adds, in one of his later +journals, the trait that his father was a man of fine presence, who +conducted all conventional arrangements with a certain grandeur and +dignity of air, and "absolutely loved a funeral." "He seemed to +preserve the list of a whole bead-roll of cousins merely for the +pleasure of being at their funerals, which he was often asked to +superintend, and I suspect had sometimes to pay for. He carried me +with him as often as he could to these mortuary ceremonies; but +feeling I was not, like him, either useful or ornamental, I escaped as +often as I could." This strong dash of the conventional in Scott's +father, this satisfaction in seeing people fairly to the door of life, +and taking his final leave of them there, with something of a +ceremonious flourish of observance, was, however, combined with a +much nobler and deeper kind of orderliness. Sir Walter used to say +that his father had lost no small part of a very flourishing business, +by insisting that his clients should do their duty to their own people +better than they were themselves at all inclined to do it. And of this +generous strictness in sacrificing his own interests to his sympathy +for others, the son had as much as the father. + +Sir Walter's mother, who was a Miss Rutherford, the daughter of a +physician, had been better educated than most Scotchwomen of her day, +in spite of having been sent "to be finished off" by "the honourable +Mrs. Ogilvie," whose training was so effective, in one direction at +least, that even in her eightieth year Mrs. Scott could not enjoy a +comfortable rest in her chair, but "took as much care to avoid +touching her chair with her back, as if she had still been under the +stern eyes of Mrs. Ogilvie." None the less Mrs. Scott was a motherly, +comfortable woman, with much tenderness of heart, and a well-stored, +vivid memory. Sir Walter, writing of her, after his mother's death, to +Lady Louisa Stewart, says, "She had a mind peculiarly well stored with +much acquired information and natural talent, and as she was very old, +and had an excellent memory, she could draw, without the least +exaggeration or affectation, the most striking pictures of the past +age. If I have been able to do anything in the way of painting the +past times, it is very much from the studies with which she presented +me. She connected a long period of time with the present generation, +for she remembered, and had often spoken with, a person who perfectly +recollected the battle of Dunbar and Oliver Cromwell's subsequent +entry into Edinburgh." On the day before the stroke of paralysis which +carried her off, she had told Mr. and Mrs. Scott of Harden, "with +great accuracy, the real story of the Bride of Lammermuir, and pointed +out wherein it differed from the novel. She had all the names of the +parties, and pointed out (for she was a great genealogist) their +connexion with existing families."[1] Sir Walter records many +evidences of the tenderness of his mother's nature, and he returned +warmly her affection for himself. His executors, in lifting up his +desk, the evening after his burial, found "arranged in careful order a +series of little objects, which had obviously been so placed there +that his eye might rest on them every morning before he began his +tasks. These were the old-fashioned boxes that had garnished his +mother's toilette, when he, a sickly child, slept in her +dressing-room,--the silver taper-stand, which the young advocate had +bought for her with his first five-guinea fee,--a row of small packets +inscribed with her hand, and containing the hair of those of her +offspring that had died before her,--his father's snuff-box, and +etui-case,--and more things of the like sort."[2] A story, +characteristic of both Sir Walter's parents, is told by Mr. Lockhart +which will serve better than anything I can remember to bring the +father and mother of Scott vividly before the imagination. His father, +like Mr. Alexander Fairford, in _Redgauntlet_, though himself a strong +Hanoverian, inherited enough feeling for the Stuarts from his +grandfather Beardie, and sympathized enough with those who were, as he +neutrally expressed it, "out in '45," to ignore as much as possible +any phrases offensive to the Jacobites. For instance, he always called +Charles Edward not _the Pretender_ but _the Chevalier_,--and he did +business for many Jacobites:-- + +"Mrs. Scott's curiosity was strongly excited one autumn by the regular +appearance at a certain hour every evening of a sedan chair, to +deposit a person carefully muffled up in a mantle, who was immediately +ushered into her husband's private room, and commonly remained with +him there until long after the usual bed-time of this orderly family. +Mr. Scott answered her repeated inquiries with a vagueness that +irritated the lady's feelings more and more; until at last she could +bear the thing no longer; but one evening, just as she heard the bell +ring as for the stranger's chair to carry him off, she made her +appearance within the forbidden parlour with a salver in her hand, +observing that she thought the gentlemen had sat so long they would be +better of a dish of tea, and had ventured accordingly to bring some +for their acceptance. The stranger, a person of distinguished +appearance, and richly dressed, bowed to the lady and accepted a cup; +but her husband knit his brows, and refused very coldly to partake the +refreshment. A moment afterwards the visitor withdrew, and Mr. Scott, +lifting up the window-sash, took the cup, which he had left empty on +the table, and tossed it out upon the pavement. The lady exclaimed for +her china, but was put to silence by her husband's saying, 'I can +forgive your little curiosity, madam, but you must pay the penalty. I +may admit into my house, on a piece of business, persons wholly +unworthy to be treated as guests by my wife. Neither lip of me nor of +mine comes after Mr. Murray of Broughton's.' + +"This was the unhappy man who, after attending Prince Charles Stuart +as his secretary throughout the greater part of his expedition, +condescended to redeem his own life and fortune by bearing evidence +against the noblest of his late master's adherents, when-- + + "Pitied by gentle hearts, Kilmarnock died, + The brave, Balmerino were on thy side."[3] + +"Broughton's saucer"--i. e. the saucer belonging to the cup thus +sacrificed by Mr. Scott to his indignation against one who had +redeemed his own life and fortune by turning king's evidence against +one of Prince Charles Stuart's adherents,--was carefully preserved by +his son, and hung up in his first study, or "den," under a little +print of Prince Charlie. This anecdote brings before the mind very +vividly the character of Sir Walter's parents. The eager curiosity of +the active-minded woman, whom "the honourable Mrs. Ogilvie" had been +able to keep upright in her chair for life, but not to cure of the +desire to unravel the little mysteries of which she had a passing +glimpse; the grave formality of the husband, fretting under his wife's +personal attention to a dishonoured man, and making her pay the +penalty by dashing to pieces the cup which the king's evidence had +used,--again, the visitor himself, perfectly conscious no doubt that +the Hanoverian lawyer held him in utter scorn for his faithlessness +and cowardice, and reluctant, nevertheless, to reject the courtesy of +the wife, though he could not get anything but cold legal advice from +the husband:--all these are figures which must have acted on the +youthful imagination of the poet with singular vivacity, and shaped +themselves in a hundred changing turns of the historical kaleidoscope +which was always before his mind's eye, as he mused upon that past +which he was to restore for us with almost more than its original +freshness of life. With such scenes touching even his own home, Scott +must have been constantly taught to balance in his own mind, the more +romantic, against the more sober and rational considerations, which +had so recently divided house against house, even in the same family +and clan. That the stern Calvinistic lawyer should have retained so +much of his grandfather Beardie's respect for the adherents of the +exiled house of Stuart, must in itself have struck the boy as even +more remarkable than the passionate loyalty of the Stuarts' professed +partisans, and have lent a new sanction to the romantic drift of his +mother's old traditions, and one to which they must have been indebted +for a great part of their fascination. + +Walter Scott, the ninth of twelve children, of whom the first six died +in early childhood, was born in Edinburgh, on the 15th of August, +1771. Of the six later-born children, all but one were boys, and the +one sister was a somewhat querulous invalid, whom he seems to have +pitied almost more than he loved. At the age of eighteen months the +boy had a teething-fever, ending in a life-long lameness; and this was +the reason why the child was sent to reside with his grandfather--the +speculative grandfather, who had doubled his capital by buying a +racehorse instead of sheep--at Sandy-Knowe, near the ruined tower of +Smailholm, celebrated afterwards in his ballad of _The Eve of St. +John_, in the neighbourhood of some fine crags. To these crags the +housemaid sent from Edinburgh to look after him, used to carry him up, +with a design (which she confessed to the housekeeper)--due, of +course, to incipient insanity--of murdering the child there, and +burying him in the moss. Of course the maid was dismissed. After this +the child used to be sent out, when the weather was fine, in the safer +charge of the shepherd, who would often lay him beside the sheep. Long +afterwards Scott told Mr. Skene, during an excursion with Turner, the +great painter, who was drawing his illustration of Smailholm tower for +one of Scott's works, that "the habit of lying on the turf there among +the sheep and the lambs had given his mind a peculiar tenderness for +these animals, which it had ever since retained." Being forgotten one +day upon the knolls when a thunderstorm came on, his aunt ran out to +bring him in, and found him shouting, "Bonny! bonny!" at every flash +of lightning. One of the old servants at Sandy-Knowe spoke of the +child long afterwards as "a sweet-tempered bairn, a darling with all +about the house," and certainly the miniature taken of him in his +seventh year confirms the impression thus given. It is sweet-tempered +above everything, and only the long upper lip and large mouth, derived +from his ancestress, Meg Murray, convey the promise of the power which +was in him. Of course the high, almost conical forehead, which gained +him in his later days from his comrades at the bar the name of "Old +Peveril," in allusion to "the peak" which they saw towering high above +the heads of other men as he approached, is not so much marked beneath +the childish locks of this miniature as it was in later life; and the +massive, and, in repose, certainly heavy face of his maturity, which +conveyed the impression of the great bulk of his character, is still +quite invisible under the sunny ripple of childish earnestness and +gaiety. Scott's hair in childhood was light chestnut, which turned to +nut brown in youth. His eyebrows were bushy, for we find mention made +of them as a "pent-house." His eyes were always light blue. They had +in them a capacity, on the one hand, for enthusiasm, sunny brightness, +and even hare-brained humour, and on the other for expressing +determined resolve and kindly irony, which gave great range of +expression to the face. There are plenty of materials for judging what +sort of a boy Scott was. In spite of his lameness, he early taught +himself to clamber about with an agility that few children could have +surpassed, and to sit his first pony--a little Shetland, not bigger +than a large Newfoundland dog, which used to come into the house to be +fed by him--even in gallops on very rough ground. He became very early +a declaimer. Having learned the ballad of Hardy Knute, he shouted it +forth with such pertinacious enthusiasm that the clergyman of his +grandfather's parish complained that he "might as well speak in a +cannon's mouth as where that child was." At six years of age Mrs. +Cockburn described him as the most astounding genius of a boy, she +ever saw. "He was reading a poem to his mother when I went in. I made +him read on: it was the description of a shipwreck. His passion rose +with the storm. 'There's the mast gone,' says he; 'crash it goes; they +will all perish.' After his agitation he turns to me, 'That is too +melancholy,' says he; 'I had better read you something more amusing.'" +And after the call, he told his aunt he liked Mrs. Cockburn, for "she +was a _virtuoso_ like himself." "Dear Walter," says Aunt Jenny, "what +is a _virtuoso_?" "Don't ye know? Why, it's one who wishes and will +know everything." This last scene took place in his father's house in +Edinburgh; but Scott's life at Sandy-Knowe, including even the old +minister, Dr. Duncan, who so bitterly complained of the boy's +ballad-spouting, is painted for us, as everybody knows, in the picture +of his infancy given in the introduction to the third canto of +_Marmion_:-- + + "It was a barren scene and wild, + Where naked cliffs were rudely piled: + But ever and anon between + Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green; + And well the lonely infant knew + Recesses where the wall-flower grew, + And honeysuckle loved to crawl + Up the low crag and ruin'd wall. + I deem'd such nooks the sweetest shade + The sun in all its round survey'd; + And still I thought that shatter'd tower + The mightiest work of human power; + And marvell'd as the aged hind + With some strange tale bewitch'd my mind, + Of forayers, who, with headlong force, + Down from that strength had spurr'd their horse, + Their southern rapine to renew, + Far in the distant Cheviots blue, + And, home returning, fill'd the hall + With revel, wassail-rout, and brawl. + Methought that still with trump and clang + The gateway's broken arches rang; + Methought grim features, seam'd with scars, + Glared through the window's rusty bars; + And ever, by the winter hearth, + Old tales I heard of woe or mirth, + Of lovers' slights, of ladies' charms, + Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms, + Of patriot battles, won of old + By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold; + Of later fields of feud and fight, + When, pouring from their Highland height, + The Scottish clans, in headlong sway, + Had swept the scarlet ranks away. + While, stretch'd at length upon the floor, + Again I fought each combat o'er, + Pebbles and shells in order laid, + The mimic ranks of war display'd; + And onward still the Scottish lion bore, + And still the scattered Southron fled before. + Still, with vain fondness, could I trace + Anew each kind familiar face + That brighten'd at our evening fire! + From the thatch'd mansion's grey-hair'd sire, + Wise without learning, plain and good, + And sprung of Scotland's gentler blood; + Whose eye in age, quick, clear, and keen, + Show'd what in youth its glance had been; + Whose doom discording neighbours sought, + Content with equity unbought; + To him the venerable priest, + Our frequent and familiar guest, + Whose life and manners well could paint + Alike the student and the saint; + Alas! whose speech too oft I broke + With gambol rude and timeless joke; + For I was wayward, bold, and wild, + A self-will'd imp, a grandame's child; + But, half a plague and half a jest, + Was still endured, beloved, caress'd." + +A picture this of a child of great spirit, though with that spirit was +combined an active and subduing sweetness which could often conquer, +as by a sudden spell, those whom the boy loved. Towards those, +however, whom he did not love he could be vindictive. His relative, +the laird of Raeburn, on one occasion wrung the neck of a pet +starling, which the child had partly tamed. "I flew at his throat like +a wild-cat," he said, in recalling the circumstance, fifty years +later, in his journal on occasion of the old laird's death; "and was +torn from him with no little difficulty." And, judging from this +journal, I doubt whether he had ever really forgiven the laird of +Raeburn. Towards those whom he loved but had offended, his manner was +very different. "I seldom," said one of his tutors, Mr. Mitchell, "had +occasion all the time I was in the family to find fault with him, even +for trifles, and only once to threaten serious castigation, of which +he was no sooner aware, than he suddenly sprang up, threw his arms +about my neck and kissed me." And the quaint old gentleman adds this +commentary:--"By such generous and noble conduct my displeasure was in +a moment converted into esteem and admiration; my soul melted into +tenderness, and I was ready to mingle my tears with his." This +spontaneous and fascinating sweetness of his childhood was naturally +overshadowed to some extent in later life by Scott's masculine and +proud character, but it was always in him. And there was much of true +character in the child behind this sweetness. He had wonderful +self-command, and a peremptory kind of good sense, even in his +infancy. While yet a child under six years of age, hearing one of the +servants beginning to tell a ghost-story to another, and well knowing +that if he listened, it would scare away his night's rest, he acted +for himself with all the promptness of an elder person acting for him, +and, in spite of the fascination of the subject, resolutely muffled +his head in the bed-clothes and refused to hear the tale. His sagacity +in judging of the character of others was shown, too, even as a +school-boy; and once it led him to take an advantage which caused him +many compunctions in after-life, whenever he recalled his skilful +puerile tactics. On one occasion--I tell the story as he himself +rehearsed it to Samuel Rogers, almost at the end of his life, after +his attack of apoplexy, and just before leaving England for Italy in +the hopeless quest of health--he had long desired to get above a +schoolfellow in his class, who defied all his efforts, till Scott +noticed that whenever a question was asked of his rival, the lad's +fingers grasped a particular button on his waistcoat, while his mind +went in search of the answer. Scott accordingly anticipated that if he +could remove this button, the boy would be thrown out, and so it +proved. The button was cut off, and the next time the lad was +questioned, his fingers being unable to find the button, and his eyes +going in perplexed search after his fingers, he stood confounded, and +Scott mastered by strategy the place which he could not gain by mere +industry. "Often in after-life," said Scott, in narrating the +manoeuvre to Rogers, "has the sight of him smote me as I passed by +him; and often have I resolved to make him some reparation, but it +ended in good resolutions. Though I never renewed my acquaintance with +him, I often saw him, for he filled some inferior office in one of the +courts of law at Edinburgh. Poor fellow! I believe he is dead; he took +early to drinking."[4] + +Scott's school reputation was one of irregular ability; he "glanced like +a meteor from one end of the class to the other," and received more praise +for his interpretation of the spirit of his authors than for his knowledge +of their language. Out of school his fame stood higher. He extemporized +innumerable stories to which his school-fellows delighted to listen; and, +in spite of his lameness, he was always in the thick of the "bickers," or +street fights with the boys of the town, and renowned for his boldness in +climbing the "kittle nine stanes" which are "projected high in air from +the precipitous black granite of the Castle-rock." At home he was much +bullied by his elder brother Robert, a lively lad, not without some powers +of verse-making, who went into the navy, then in an unlucky moment passed +into the merchant service of the East India Company, and so lost the +chance of distinguishing himself in the great naval campaigns of Nelson. +Perhaps Scott would have been all the better for a sister a little closer +to him than Anne--sickly and fanciful--appears ever to have been. The +masculine side of life appears to predominate a little too much in his +school and college days, and he had such vast energy, vitality, and pride, +that his life at this time would have borne a little taming under the +influence of a sister thoroughly congenial to him. In relation to his +studies he was wilful, though not perhaps perverse. He steadily declined, +for instance, to learn Greek, though he mastered Latin pretty fairly. +After a time spent at the High School, Edinburgh, Scott was sent to a +school at Kelso, where his master made a friend and companion of him, and +so poured into him a certain amount of Latin scholarship which he would +never otherwise have obtained. I need hardly add that as a boy Scott was, +so far as a boy could be, a Tory--a worshipper of the past, and a great +Conservative of any remnant of the past which reformers wished to get rid +of. In the autobiographical fragment of 1808, he says, in relation to +these school-days, "I, with my head on fire for chivalry, was a Cavalier; +my friend was a Roundhead; I was a Tory, and he was a Whig; I hated +Presbyterians, and admired Montrose with his victorious Highlanders; he +liked the Presbyterian Ulysses, the deep and politic Argyle; so that we +never wanted subjects of dispute, but our disputes were always amicable." +And he adds candidly enough: "In all these tenets there was no real +conviction on my part, arising out of acquaintance with the views or +principles of either party.... I took up politics at that period, as King +Charles II. did his religion, from an idea that the Cavalier creed was the +more gentlemanlike persuasion of the two." And the uniformly amicable +character of these controversies between the young people, itself shows +how much more they were controversies of the imagination than of faith. I +doubt whether Scott's _convictions_ on the issues of the Past were ever +very much more decided than they were during his boyhood; though +undoubtedly he learned to understand much more profoundly what was really +held by the ablest men on both sides of these disputed issues. The +result, however, was, I think, that while he entered better and better +into both sides as life went on, he never adopted either with any +earnestness of conviction, being content to admit, even to himself, that +while his feelings leaned in one direction, his reason pointed decidedly +in the other; and holding that it was hardly needful to identify himself +positively with either. As regarded the present, however, feeling always +carried the day. Scott was a Tory all his life. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vi. 172-3. The edition +referred to is throughout the edition of 1839 in ten volumes.] + +[Footnote 2: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, x. 241.] + +[Footnote 3: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 243-4.] + +[Footnote 4: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 128.] + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +YOUTH--CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. + + +As Scott grew up, entered the classes of the college, and began his legal +studies, first as apprentice to his father, and then in the law classes of +the University, he became noticeable to all his friends for his gigantic +memory,--the rich stores of romantic material with which it was +loaded,--his giant feats of industry for any cherished purpose,--his +delight in adventure and in all athletic enterprises,--his great enjoyment +of youthful "rows," so long as they did not divide the knot of friends to +which he belonged, and his skill in peacemaking amongst his own set. +During his apprenticeship his only means of increasing his slender +allowance with funds which he could devote to his favourite studies, was +to earn money by copying, and he tells us himself that he remembered +writing "120 folio pages with no interval either for food or rest," +fourteen or fifteen hours' very hard work at the very least,--expressly +for this purpose. + +In the second year of Scott's apprenticeship, at about the age of +sixteen, he had an attack of haemorrhage, no recurrence of which took +place for some forty years, but which was then the beginning of the +end. During this illness silence was absolutely imposed upon him,--two +old ladies putting their fingers on their lips, whenever he offered +to speak. It was at this time that the lad began his study of the +scenic side of history, and especially of campaigns, which he +illustrated for himself by the arrangement of shells, seeds, and +pebbles, so as to represent encountering armies, in the manner +referred to (and referred to apparently in anticipation of a later +stage of his life than that he was then speaking of) in the passage +from the introduction to the third canto of _Marmion_ which I have +already given. He also managed so to arrange the looking-glasses in +his room as to see the troops march out to exercise in the meadows, as +he lay in bed. His reading was almost all in the direction of military +exploit, or romance and mediaeval legend and the later border songs of +his own country. He learned Italian and read Ariosto. Later he learned +Spanish and devoured Cervantes, whose "_novelas_," he said, "first +inspired him with the ambition to excel in fiction;" and all that he +read and admired he remembered. Scott used to illustrate the +capricious affinity of his own memory for what suited it, and its +complete rejection of what did not, by old Beattie of Meikledale's +answer to a Scotch divine, who complimented him on the strength of his +memory. "No, sir," said the old Borderer, "I have no command of my +memory. It only retains what hits my fancy; and probably, sir, if you +were to preach to me for two hours, I would not be able, when you +finished, to remember a word you had been saying." Such a memory, when +it belongs to a man of genius, is really a sieve of the most valuable +kind. It sifts away what is foreign and alien to his genius, and +assimilates what is suited to it. In his very last days, when he was +visiting Italy for the first time, Scott delighted in Malta, for it +recalled to him Vertot's _Knights of Malta_, and much, other mediaeval +story which he had pored over in his youth. But when his friends +descanted to him at Pozzuoli on the Thermae--commonly called the Temple +of Serapis--among the ruins of which he stood, he only remarked that +he would believe whatever he was told, "for many of his friends, and +particularly Mr. Morritt, had frequently tried to drive classical +antiquities, as they are called, into his head, but they had always +found his skull too thick." Was it not perhaps some deep literary +instinct, like that here indicated, which made him, as a lad, refuse +so steadily to learn Greek, and try to prove to his indignant +professor that Ariosto was superior to Homer? Scott afterwards deeply +regretted this neglect of Greek; but I cannot help thinking that his +regret was misplaced. Greek literature would have brought before his +mind standards of poetry and art which could not but have both deeply +impressed and greatly daunted an intellect of so much power; I say +both impressed and daunted, because I believe that Scott himself would +never have succeeded in studies of a classical kind, while he +might--like Goethe perhaps--have been either misled, by admiration for +that school, into attempting what was not adapted to his genius, or +else disheartened in the work for which his character and ancestry +really fitted him. It has been said that there is a real affinity +between Scott and Homer. But the long and refluent music of Homer, +once naturalized in his mind, would have discontented him with that +quick, sharp, metrical tramp of his own moss-troopers, to which alone +his genius as a poet was perfectly suited. + +It might be supposed that with these romantic tastes, Scott could +scarcely have made much of a lawyer, though the inference would, I +believe, be quite mistaken. His father, however, reproached him with +being better fitted for a pedlar than a lawyer,--so persistently did +he trudge over all the neighbouring counties in search of the beauties +of nature and the historic associations of battle, siege, or legend. +On one occasion when, with their last penny spent, Scott and one of +his companions had returned to Edinburgh, living during their last day +on drinks of milk offered by generous peasant-women, and the hips and +haws on the hedges, he remarked to his father how much he had wished +for George Primrose's power of playing on the flute in order to earn a +meal by the way, old Mr. Scott, catching grumpily at the idea, +replied, "I greatly doubt, sir, you were born for nae better then a +gangrel scrape-gut,"--a speech which very probably suggested his son's +conception of Darsie Latimer's adventures with the blind fiddler, +"Wandering Willie," in _Redgauntlet_. And, it is true that these were +the days of mental and moral fermentation, what was called in Germany +the Sturm-und-Drang, the "fret-and-fury" period of Scott's life, so +far as one so mellow and genial in temper ever passed through a period +of fret and fury at all. In other words these were the days of rapid +motion, of walks of thirty miles a day which the lame lad yet found no +fatigue to him; of mad enterprises, scrapes and drinking-bouts, in one +of which Scott was half persuaded by his friends that he actually sang +a song for the only time in his life. But even in these days of +youthful sociability, with companions of his own age, Scott was always +himself, and his imperious will often asserted itself. Writing of this +time, some thirty-five years or so later, he said, "When I was a boy, +and on foot expeditions, as we had many, no creature could be so +indifferent which way our course was directed, and I acquiesced in +what any one proposed; but if I was once driven to make a choice, and +felt piqued in honour to maintain my proposition, I have broken off +from the whole party, rather than yield to any one." No doubt, too, in +that day of what he himself described as "the silly smart fancies that +ran in my brain like the bubbles in a glass of champagne, as brilliant +to my thinking, as intoxicating, as evanescent," solitude was no real +deprivation to him; and one can easily imagine him marching off on his +solitary way after a dispute with his companions, reciting to himself +old songs or ballads, with that "noticeable but altogether +indescribable play of the upper lip," which Mr. Lockhart thinks +suggested to one of Scott's most intimate friends, on his first +acquaintance with him, the grotesque notion that he had been "a +hautboy-player." This was the first impression formed of Scott by +William Clerk, one of his earliest and life-long friends. It greatly +amused Scott, who not only had never played on any instrument in his +life, but could hardly make shift to join in the chorus of a popular +song without marring its effect; but perhaps the impression suggested +was not so very far astray after all. Looking to the poetic side of +his character, the trumpet certainly would have been the instrument +that would have best symbolized the spirit both of Scott's thought and +of his verses. Mr. Lockhart himself, in summing up his impressions of +Sir Walter, quotes as the most expressive of his lines:-- + + "Sound, sound the clarion! fill the fife! + To all the sensual world proclaim, + One crowded hour of glorious life + Is worth a world without a name." + +And undoubtedly this gives us the key-note of Scott's personal life as +well as of his poetic power. Above everything he was high-spirited, a +man of noble, and, at the same time, of martial feelings. Sir Francis +Doyle speaks very justly of Sir Walter as "among English singers the +undoubted inheritor of that trumpet-note, which, under the breath of +Homer, has made the wrath of Achilles immortal;" and I do not doubt +that there was something in Scott's face, and especially in the +expression of his mouth, to suggest this even to his early college +companions. Unfortunately, however, even "one crowded hour of glorious +life" may sometimes have a "sensual" inspiration, and in these days of +youthful adventure, too many such hours seem to have owed their +inspiration to the Scottish peasant's chief bane, the Highland whisky. +In his eager search after the old ballads of the Border, Scott had +many a blithe adventure, which ended only too often in a carouse. It +was soon after this time that he first began those raids into +Liddesdale, of which all the world has enjoyed the records in the +sketches--embodied subsequently in _Guy Mannering_--of Dandie Dinmont, +his pony Dumple, and the various Peppers and Mustards from whose breed +there were afterwards introduced into Scott's own family, generations +of terriers, always named, as Sir Walter expressed it, after "the +cruet." I must quote the now classic record of those youthful +escapades:-- + + "Eh me," said Mr. Shortreed, his companion in all these + Liddesdale raids, "sic an endless fund of humour and + drollery as he had then wi' him. Never ten yards but we were + either laughing or roaring and singing. Wherever we stopped, + how brawlie he suited himsel' to everybody! He aye did as + the lave did; never made himsel' the great man or took ony + airs in the company. I've seen him in a' moods in these + jaunts, grave and gay, daft and serious, sober and + drunk--(this, however, even in our wildest rambles, was but + rare)--but drunk or sober he was aye the gentleman. He + looked excessively heavy and stupid when he was _fou_, but + he was never out o' gude humour." + +One of the stories of that time will illustrate better the wilder days +of Scott's youth than any comment:-- + + "On reaching one evening," says Mr. Lockhart, "some + Charlieshope or other (I forget the name) among those + wildernesses, they found a kindly reception as usual: but to + their agreeable surprise, after some days of hard living, a + measured and orderly hospitality as respected liquor. Soon + after supper, at which a bottle of elderberry wine alone had + been produced, a young student of divinity who happened to + be in the house was called upon to take the 'big ha' Bible,' + in the good old fashion of Burns' Saturday Night: and some + progress had been already made in the service, when the good + man of the farm, whose 'tendency,' as Mr. Mitchell says, + 'was soporific,' scandalized his wife and the dominie by + starting suddenly from his knees, and rubbing his eyes, with + a stentorian exclamation of 'By ----! here's the keg at + last!' and in tumbled, as he spake the word, a couple of + sturdy herdsmen, whom, on hearing, a day before, of the + advocate's approaching visit, he had despatched to a certain + smuggler's haunt at some considerable distance in quest of a + supply of _run_ brandy from the Solway frith. The pious + 'exercise' of the household was hopelessly interrupted. With + a thousand apologies for his hitherto shabby entertainment, + this jolly Elliot or Armstrong had the welcome _keg_ mounted + on the table without a moment's delay, and gentle and + simple, not forgetting the dominie, continued carousing + about it until daylight streamed in upon the party. Sir + Walter Scott seldom failed, when I saw him in company with + his Liddesdale companions, to mimic with infinite humour the + sudden outburst of his old host on hearing the clatter of + horses' feet, which he knew to indicate the arrival of the + keg, the consternation of the dame, and the rueful despair + with which the young clergyman closed the book."[5] + +No wonder old Mr. Scott felt some doubt of his son's success at the +bar, and thought him more fitted in many respects for a "gangrel +scrape-gut."[6] + +In spite of all this love of excitement, Scott became a sound lawyer, +and might have been a great lawyer, had not his pride of character, +the impatience of his genius, and the stir of his imagination rendered +him indisposed to wait and slave in the precise manner which the +prepossessions of solicitors appoint. + +For Scott's passion for romantic literature was not at all the sort of +thing which we ordinarily mean by boys' or girls' love of romance. No +amount of drudgery or labour deterred Scott from any undertaking on +the prosecution of which he was bent. He was quite the reverse, +indeed, of what is usually meant by sentimental, either in his manners +or his literary interests. As regards the history of his own country +he was no mean antiquarian. Indeed he cared for the mustiest +antiquarian researches--of the mediaeval kind--so much, that in the +depth of his troubles he speaks of a talk with a Scotch antiquary and +herald as one of the things which soothed him most. "I do not know +anything which relieves the mind so much from the sullens as trifling +discussions about antiquarian _old womanries_. It is like knitting a +stocking, diverting the mind without occupying it."[7] Thus his love +of romantic literature was as far as possible from that of a mind +which only feeds on romantic excitements; rather was it that of one +who was so moulded by the transmitted and acquired love of feudal +institutions with all their incidents, that he could not take any deep +interest in any other fashion of human society. Now the Scotch law +was full of vestiges and records of that period,--was indeed a great +standing monument of it; and in numbers of his writings Scott shows +with how deep an interest he had studied the Scotch law from this +point of view. He remarks somewhere that it was natural for a +Scotchman to feel a strong attachment to the principle of rank, if +only on the ground that almost any Scotchman might, under the Scotch +law, turn out to be heir-in-tail to some great Scotch title or estate +by the death of intervening relations. And the law which sometimes +caused such sudden transformations, had subsequently a true interest +for him of course as a novel writer, to say nothing of his interest in +it as an antiquarian and historian who loved to repeople the earth, +not merely with the picturesque groups of the soldiers and courts of +the past, but with the actors in all the various quaint and homely +transactions and puzzlements which the feudal ages had brought forth. +Hence though, as a matter of fact, Scott never made much figure as an +advocate, he became a very respectable, and might unquestionably have +become a very great, lawyer. When he started at the bar, however, he +had not acquired the tact to impress an ordinary assembly. In one case +which he conducted before the General Assembly of the Kirk of +Scotland, when defending a parish minister threatened with deposition +for drunkenness and unseemly behaviour, he certainly missed the proper +tone,--first receiving a censure for the freedom of his manner in +treating the allegations against his client, and then so far +collapsing under the rebuke of the Moderator, as to lose the force and +urgency necessary to produce an effect on his audience. But these were +merely a boy's mishaps. He was certainly by no means a Heaven-born +orator, and therefore could not expect to spring into exceptionally +_early_ distinction, and the only true reason for his relative failure +was that he was so full of literary power, and so proudly impatient of +the fetters which prudence seemed to impose on his extra-professional +proceedings, that he never gained the credit he deserved for the +general common sense, the unwearied industry, and the keen +appreciation of the ins and outs of legal method, which might have +raised him to the highest reputation even as a judge. + +All readers of his novels know how Scott delights in the humours of +the law. By way of illustration take the following passage, which is +both short and amusing, in which Saunders Fairford--the old solicitor +painted from Scott's father in _Redgauntlet_--descants on the law of +the stirrup-cup. "It was decided in a case before the town bailies of +Cupar Angus, when Luckie Simpson's cow had drunk up Luckie Jamieson's +browst of ale, while it stood in the door to cool, that there was no +damage to pay, because the crummie drank without sitting down; such +being the circumstance constituting a Doch an Dorroch, which is a +standing drink for which no reckoning is paid." I do not believe that +any one of Scott's contemporaries had greater legal abilities than he, +though, as it happened, they were never fairly tried. But he had both +the pride and impatience of genius. It fretted him to feel that he was +dependent on the good opinions of solicitors, and that they who were +incapable of understanding his genius, thought the less instead of the +better of him as an advocate, for every indication which he gave of +that genius. Even on the day of his call to the bar he gave expression +to a sort of humorous foretaste of this impatience, saying to William +Clerk, who had been called with him, as he mimicked the air and tone +of a Highland lass waiting at the Cross of Edinburgh to be hired for +the harvest, "We've stood here an hour by the Tron, hinny, and deil a +ane has speered our price." Scott continued to practise at the +bar--nominally at least--for fourteen years, but the most which he +ever seems to have made in any one year was short of 230_l._, and +latterly his practice was much diminishing instead of increasing. His +own impatience of solicitors' patronage was against him; his +well-known dabblings in poetry were still more against him; and his +general repute for wild and unprofessional adventurousness--which was +much greater than he deserved--was probably most of all against him. +Before he had been six years at the bar he joined the organization of +the Edinburgh Volunteer Cavalry, took a very active part in the drill, +and was made their Quartermaster. Then he visited London, and became +largely known for his ballads, and his love of ballads. In his eighth +year at the bar he accepted a small permanent appointment, with +300_l._ a year, as sheriff of Selkirkshire; and this occurring soon +after his marriage to a lady of some means, no doubt diminished still +further his professional zeal. For one third of the time during which +Scott practised as an advocate he made no pretence of taking interest +in that part of his work, though he was always deeply interested in +the law itself. In 1806 he undertook gratuitously the duties of a +Clerk of Session--a permanent officer of the Court at Edinburgh--and +discharged them without remuneration for five years, from 1806 to +1811, in order to secure his ultimate succession to the office in the +place of an invalid, who for that period received all the emoluments +and did none of the work. Nevertheless Scott's legal abilities were so +well known, that it was certainly at one time intended to offer him a +Barony of the Exchequer, and it was his own doing, apparently, that it +was not offered. The life of literature and the life of the Bar hardly +ever suit, and in Scott's case they suited the less, that he felt +himself likely to be a dictator in the one field, and only a postulant +in the other. Literature was a far greater gainer by his choice, than +Law could have been a loser. For his capacity for the law he shared +with thousands of able men, his capacity for literature with few or +none. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 5: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 269-71.] + +[Footnote 6: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 206.] + +[Footnote 7: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 221.] + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +LOVE AND MARRIAGE. + + +One Sunday, about two years before his call to the bar, Scott offered +his umbrella to a young lady of much beauty who was coming out of the +Greyfriars Church during a shower; the umbrella was graciously +accepted; and it was not an unprecedented consequence that Scott fell +in love with the borrower, who turned out to be Margaret, daughter of +Sir John and Lady Jane Stuart Belches, of Invernay. For near six years +after this, Scott indulged the hope of marrying this lady, and it does +not seem doubtful that the lady herself was in part responsible for +this impression. Scott's father, who thought his son's prospects very +inferior to those of Miss Stuart Belches, felt it his duty to warn the +baronet of his son's views, a warning which the old gentleman appears +to have received with that grand unconcern characteristic of elderly +persons in high position, as a hint intrinsically incredible, or at +least unworthy of notice. But he took no alarm, and Scott's attentions +to Margaret Stuart Belches continued till close on the eve of her +marriage, in 1796, to William Forbes (afterwards Sir William Forbes), +of Pitsligo, a banker, who proved to be one of Sir Walter's most +generous and most delicate-minded friends, when his time of troubles +came towards the end of both their lives. Whether Scott was in part +mistaken as to the impression he had made on the young lady, or she +was mistaken as to the impression he had made on herself, or whether +other circumstances intervened to cause misunderstanding, or the grand +indifference of Sir John gave way to active intervention when the +question became a practical one, the world will now never know, but it +does not seem very likely that a man of so much force as Scott, who +certainly had at one time assured himself at least of the young lady's +strong regard, should have been easily displaced even by a rival of +ability and of most generous and amiable character. An entry in the +diary which Scott kept in 1827, after Constable's and Ballantyne's +failure, and his wife's death, seems to me to suggest that there may +have been some misunderstanding between the young people, though I am +not sure that the inference is justified. The passage completes the +story of this passion--Scott's first and only deep passion--so far as +it can ever be known to us; and as it is a very pathetic and +characteristic entry, and the attachment to which it refers had a +great influence on Scott's life, both in keeping him free from some of +the most dangerous temptations of the young, during his youth, and in +creating within him an interior world of dreams and recollections +throughout his whole life, on which his imaginative nature was +continually fed--I may as well give it. "He had taken," says Mr. +Lockhart, "for that winter [1827], the house No. 6, Shandwick Place, +which he occupied by the month during the remainder of his servitude +as a clerk of session. Very near this house, he was told a few days +after he took possession, dwelt the aged mother of his first love; and +he expressed to his friend Mrs. Skene, a wish that she should carry +him to renew an acquaintance which seems to have been interrupted from +the period of his youthful romance. Mrs. Skene complied with his +desire, and she tells me that a very painful scene ensued." His diary +says,--"November 7th. Began to settle myself this morning after the +hurry of mind and even of body which I have lately undergone. I went +to make a visit and fairly softened myself, like an old fool, with +recalling old stories till I was fit for nothing but shedding tears +and repeating verses for the whole night. This is sad work. The very +grave gives up its dead, and time rolls back thirty years to add to my +perplexities. I don't care. I begin to grow case-hardened, and like a +stag turning at bay, my naturally good temper grows fierce and +dangerous. Yet what a romance to tell--and told I fear it will one day +be. And then my three years of dreaming and my two years of wakening +will be chronicled, doubtless. But the dead will feel no +pain.--November 10th. At twelve o'clock I went again to poor Lady Jane +to talk over old stories. I am not clear that it is a right or +healthful indulgence to be ripping up old sores, but it seems to give +her deep-rooted sorrow words, and that is a mental blood-letting. To +me these things are now matter of calm and solemn recollection, never +to be forgotten, yet scarce to be remembered with pain."[8] It was in +1797, after the break-up of his hopes in relation to this attachment, +that Scott wrote the lines _To a Violet_, which Mr. F. T. Palgrave, in +his thoughtful and striking introduction to Scott's poems, rightly +characterizes as one of the most beautiful of those poems. It is, +however, far from one characteristic of Scott, indeed, so different +in style from the best of his other poems, that Mr. Browning might +well have said of Scott, as he once affirmed of himself, that for the +purpose of one particular poem, he "who blows through bronze," had +"breathed through silver,"--had "curbed the liberal hand subservient +proudly,"--and tamed his spirit to a key elsewhere unknown. + + "The violet in her greenwood bower, + Where birchen boughs with hazels mingle, + May boast itself the fairest flower + In glen, or copse, or forest dingle. + + "Though fair her gems of azure hue, + Beneath the dewdrop's weight reclining, + I've seen an eye of lovelier blue, + More sweet through watery lustre shining. + + "The summer sun that dew shall dry, + Ere yet the day be past its morrow; + Nor longer in my false love's eye + Remain'd the tear of parting sorrow." + +These lines obviously betray a feeling of resentment, which may or may +not have been justified; but they are perhaps the most delicate +produced by his pen. The pride which was always so notable a feature +in Scott, probably sustained him through the keen, inward pain which +it is very certain from a great many of his own words that he must +have suffered in this uprooting of his most passionate hopes. And it +was in part probably the same pride which led him to form, within the +year, a new tie--his engagement to Mademoiselle Charpentier, or Miss +Carpenter as she was usually called,--the daughter of a French +royalist of Lyons who had died early in the revolution. She had come +after her father's death to England, chiefly, it seems, because in the +Marquis of Downshire, who was an old friend of the family, her mother +knew that she should find a protector for her children. Miss Carpenter +was a lively beauty, probably of no great depth of character. The few +letters given of hers in Mr. Lockhart's life of Scott, give the +impression of an amiable, petted girl, of somewhat thin and _espiegle_ +character, who was rather charmed at the depth and intensity of +Scott's nature, and at the expectations which he seemed to form of +what love should mean, than capable of realizing them. Evidently she +had no inconsiderable pleasure in display; but she made on the whole a +very good wife, only one to be protected by him from every care, and +not one to share Scott's deeper anxieties, or to participate in his +dreams. Yet Mrs. Scott was not devoid of spirit and self-control. For +instance, when Mr. Jeffrey, having reviewed _Marmion_ in the +_Edinburgh_ in that depreciating and omniscient tone which was then +considered the evidence of critical acumen, dined with Scott on the +very day on which the review had appeared, Mrs. Scott behaved to him +through the whole evening with the greatest politeness, but fired this +parting shot in her broken English, as he took his leave,--"Well, good +night, Mr. Jeffrey,--dey tell me you have abused Scott in de _Review_, +and I hope Mr. Constable has paid you very well for writing it." It is +hinted that Mrs. Scott was, at the time of Scott's greatest fame, far +more exhilarated by it than her husband with his strong sense and sure +self-measurement ever was. Mr. Lockhart records that Mrs. Grant of +Laggan once said of them, "Mr. Scott always seems to me like a glass, +through which the rays of admiration pass without sensibly affecting +it; but the bit of paper that lies beside it will presently be in a +blaze, and no wonder." The bit of paper, however, never was in a blaze +that I know of; and possibly Mrs. Grant's remark may have had a +little feminine spite in it. At all events, it was not till the rays +of misfortune, instead of admiration, fell upon Scott's life, that the +delicate tissue paper shrivelled up; nor does it seem that, even then, +it was the trouble, so much as a serious malady that had fixed on Lady +Scott before Sir Walter's troubles began, which really scorched up her +life. That she did not feel with the depth and intensity of her +husband, or in the same key of feeling, is clear. After the failure, +and during the preparations for abandoning the house in Edinburgh, +Scott records in his diary:--"It is with a sense of pain that I leave +behind a parcel of trumpery prints and little ornaments, once the +pride of Lady Scott's heart, but which she saw consigned with +indifference to the chance of an auction. Things that have had their +day of importance with me, I cannot forget, though the merest trifles; +but I am glad that she, with bad health, and enough to vex her, has +not the same useless mode of associating recollections with this +unpleasant business."[9] + +Poor Lady Scott! It was rather like a bird of paradise mating with an +eagle. Yet the result was happy on the whole; for she had a thoroughly +kindly nature, and a true heart. Within ten days before her death, +Scott enters in his diary:--"Still welcoming me with a smile, and +asserting she is better." She was not the ideal wife for Scott; but +she loved him, sunned herself in his prosperity, and tried to bear his +adversity cheerfully. In her last illness she would always reproach +her husband and children for their melancholy faces, even when that +melancholy was, as she well knew, due to the approaching shadow of her +own death. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 8: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 183-4.] + +[Footnote 9: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 273.] + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +EARLIEST POETRY AND BORDER MINSTRELSY. + + +Scott's first serious attempt in poetry was a version of Buerger's +_Lenore_, a spectre-ballad of the violent kind, much in favour in +Germany at a somewhat earlier period, but certainly not a specimen of +the higher order of imaginative genius. However, it stirred Scott's +youthful blood, and made him "wish to heaven he could get a skull and +two cross-bones!" a modest desire, to be expressed with so much +fervour, and one almost immediately gratified. Probably no one ever +gave a more spirited version of Buerger's ballad than Scott has given; +but the use to which Miss Cranstoun, a friend and confidante of his +love for Miss Stuart Belches, strove to turn it, by getting it +printed, blazoned, and richly bound, and presenting it to the young +lady as a proof of her admirer's abilities, was perhaps hardly very +sagacious. It is quite possible, at least, that Miss Stuart Belches +may have regarded this vehement admirer of spectral wedding journeys +and skeleton bridals, as unlikely to prepare for her that comfortable, +trim, and decorous future which young ladies usually desire. At any +rate, the bold stroke failed. The young lady admired the verses, but, +as we have seen, declined the translator. Perhaps she regarded banking +as safer, if less brilliant work than the most effective description +of skeleton riders. Indeed, Scott at this time--to those who did not +know what was in him, which no one, not even excepting himself, +did--had no very sure prospects of comfort, to say nothing of wealth. +It is curious, too, that his first adventure in literature was thus +connected with his interest in the preternatural, for no man ever +lived whose genius was sounder and healthier, and less disposed to +dwell on the half-and-half lights of a dim and eerie world; yet +ghostly subjects always interested him deeply, and he often touched +them in his stories, more, I think, from the strong artistic contrast +they afforded to his favourite conceptions of life, than from any +other motive. There never was, I fancy, an organization less +susceptible of this order of fears and superstitions than his own. +When a friend jokingly urged him, within a few months of his death, +not to leave Rome on a Friday, as it was a day of bad omen for a +journey, he replied, laughing, "Superstition is very picturesque, and +I make it, at times, stand me in great stead, but I never allow it to +interfere with interest or convenience." Basil Hall reports Scott's +having told him on the last evening of the year 1824, when they were +talking over this subject, that "having once arrived at a country inn, +he was told there was no bed for him. 'No place to lie down at all?' +said he. 'No,' said the people of the house; 'none, except a room in +which there is a corpse lying.' 'Well,' said he, 'did the person die +of any contagious disorder?' 'Oh, no; not at all,' said they. 'Well, +then,' continued he, 'let me have the other bed. So,' said Sir Walter, +'I laid me down, and never had a better night's sleep in my life.'" He +was, indeed, a man of iron nerve, whose truest artistic enjoyment was +in noting the forms of character seen in full daylight by the light of +the most ordinary experience. Perhaps for that reason he can on +occasion relate a preternatural incident, such as the appearance of +old Alice at the fountain, at the very moment of her death, to the +Master of Ravenswood, in _The Bride of Lammermoor_, with great effect. +It was probably the vivacity with which he realized the violence which +such incidents do to the terrestrial common sense of our ordinary +nature, and at the same time the sedulous accuracy of detail with +which he narrated them, rather than any, even the smallest, special +susceptibility of his own brain to thrills of the preternatural kind, +which gave him rather a unique pleasure in dealing with such +preternatural elements. Sometimes, however, his ghosts are a little +too muscular to produce their due effect as ghosts. In translating +Buerger's ballad his great success lay in the vividness of the +spectre's horsemanship. For instance,-- + + "Tramp! tramp! along the land they rode, + Splash! splash! along the sea; + The scourge is red, the spur drops blood, + The flashing pebbles flee," + +is far better than any ghostly touch in it; so, too, every one will +remember how spirited a rider is the white Lady of Avenel, in _The +Monastery_, and how vigorously she takes fords,--as vigorously as the +sheriff himself, who was very fond of fords. On the whole, Scott was +too sunny and healthy-minded for a ghost-seer; and the skull and +cross-bones with which he ornamented his "den" in his father's house, +did not succeed in tempting him into the world of twilight and cobwebs +wherein he made his first literary excursion. His _William and Helen_, +the name he gave to his translation of Buerger's _Lenore_, made in +1795, was effective, after all, more for its rapid movement, than for +the weirdness of its effects. + +If, however, it was the raw preternaturalism of such ballads as +Buerger's which first led Scott to test his own powers, his genius soon +turned to more appropriate and natural subjects. Ever since his +earliest college days he had been collecting, in those excursions of +his into Liddesdale and elsewhere, materials for a book on _The +Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_; and the publication of this work, +in January, 1802 (in two volumes at first), was his first great +literary success. The whole edition of eight hundred copies was sold +within the year, while the skill and care which Scott had devoted to +the historical illustration of the ballads, and the force and spirit +of his own new ballads, written in imitation of the old, gained him at +once a very high literary name. And the name was well deserved. The +_Border Minstrelsy_ was more commensurate _in range_ with the genius +of Scott, than even the romantic poems by which it was soon followed, +and which were received with such universal and almost unparalleled +delight. For Scott's _Border Minstrelsy_ gives more than a glimpse of +all his many great powers--his historical industry and knowledge, his +masculine humour, his delight in restoring the vision of the "old, +simple, violent world" of rugged activity and excitement, as well as +that power to kindle men's hearts, as by a trumpet-call, which was the +chief secret of the charm of his own greatest poems. It is much easier +to discern the great novelist of subsequent years in the _Border +Minstrelsy_ than even in _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, _Marmion_, +and _The Lady of the Lake_ taken together. From those romantic poems +you would never guess that Scott entered more eagerly and heartily +into the common incidents and common cares of every-day human life +than into the most romantic fortunes; from them you would never know +how completely he had mastered the leading features of quite +different periods of our history; from them you would never infer that +you had before you one of the best plodders, as well as one of the +most enthusiastic dreamers, in British literature. But all this might +have been gathered from the various introductions and notes to the +_Border Minstrelsy_, which are full of skilful illustrations, of +comments teeming with humour, and of historic weight. The general +introduction gives us a general survey of the graphic pictures of +Border quarrels, their simple violence and simple cunning. It enters, +for instance, with grave humour into the strong distinction taken in +the debatable land between a "freebooter" and a "thief," and the +difficulty which the inland counties had in grasping it, and paints +for us, with great vivacity, the various Border superstitions. Another +commentary on a very amusing ballad, commemorating the manner in which +a blind harper stole a horse and got paid for a mare he had not lost, +gives an account of the curious tenure of land, called that of the +"king's rentallers," or "kindly tenants;" and a third describes, in +language as vivid as the historical romance of _Kenilworth_, written +years after, the manner in which Queen Elizabeth received the news of +a check to her policy, and vented her spleen on the King of Scotland. + +So much as to the breadth of the literary area which this first book +of Scott's covered. As regards the poetic power which his own new +ballads, in imitation of the old ones, evinced, I cannot say that +those of the first issue of the _Border Minstrelsy_ indicated anything +like the force which might have been expected from one who was so soon +to be the author of _Marmion_, though many of Scott's warmest +admirers, including Sir Francis Doyle, seem to place _Glenfinlas_ +among his finest productions. But in the third volume of the _Border +Minstrelsy_, which did not appear till 1803, is contained a ballad on +the assassination of the Regent Murray, the story being told by his +assassin, which seems to me a specimen of his very highest poetical +powers. In _Cadyow Castle_ you have not only that rousing trumpet-note +which you hear in _Marmion,_ but the pomp and glitter of a grand +martial scene is painted with all Scott's peculiar terseness and +vigour. The opening is singularly happy in preparing the reader for +the description of a violent deed. The Earl of Arran, chief of the +clan of Hamiltons, is chasing among the old oaks of Cadyow +Castle,--oaks which belonged to the ancient Caledonian forest,--the +fierce, wild bulls, milk-white, with black muzzles, which were not +extirpated till shortly before Scott's own birth:-- + + "Through the huge oaks of Evandale, + Whose limbs a thousand years have worn, + What sullen roar comes down the gale, + And drowns the hunter's pealing horn? + + "Mightiest of all the beasts of chase + That roam in woody Caledon, + Crashing the forest in his race, + The mountain bull comes thundering on. + + "Fierce on the hunter's quiver'd band + He rolls his eyes of swarthy glow, + Spurns, with black hoof and horn, the sand, + And tosses high his mane of snow. + + "Aim'd well, the chieftain's lance has flown; + Struggling in blood the savage lies; + His roar is sunk in hollow groan,-- + Sound, merry huntsman! sound the pryse!" + +It is while the hunters are resting after this feat, that +Bothwellhaugh dashes among them headlong, spurring his jaded steed +with poniard instead of spur:-- + + "From gory selle and reeling steed, + Sprang the fierce horseman with a bound, + And reeking from the recent deed, + He dash'd his carbine on the ground." + +And then Bothwellhaugh tells his tale of blood, describing the +procession from which he had singled out his prey:-- + + "'Dark Morton, girt with many a spear, + Murder's foul minion, led the van; + And clash'd their broadswords in the rear + The wild Macfarlanes' plaided clan. + + "'Glencairn and stout Parkhead were nigh, + Obsequious at their Regent's rein, + And haggard Lindsay's iron eye, + That saw fair Mary weep in vain. + + "''Mid pennon'd spears, a steely grove, + Proud Murray's plumage floated high; + Scarce could his trampling charger move, + So close the minions crowded nigh. + + "'From the raised vizor's shade, his eye, + Dark rolling, glanced the ranks along, + And his steel truncheon waved on high, + Seem'd marshalling the iron throng. + + "'But yet his sadden'd brow confess'd + A passing shade of doubt and awe; + Some fiend was whispering in his breast, + "Beware of injured Bothwellhaugh!" + + "'The death-shot parts,--the charger springs,-- + Wild rises tumult's startling roar! + And Murray's plumy helmet rings-- + Rings on the ground to rise no more.'" + +This was the ballad which made so strong an impression on Thomas Campbell, +the poet. Referring to some of the lines I have quoted, Campbell +said,--"I have repeated them so often on the North Bridge that the whole +fraternity of coachmen know me by tongue as I pass. To be sure, to a mind +in sober, serious, street-walking humour, it must bear an appearance of +lunacy when one stamps with the hurried pace and fervent shake of the head +which strong, pithy poetry excites."[10] I suppose anecdotes of this kind +have been oftener told of Scott than of any other English poet. Indeed, +Sir Walter, who understood himself well, gives the explanation in one of +his diaries:--"I am sensible," he says, "that if there be anything good +about my poetry or prose either, it is a hurried frankness of composition, +which pleases soldiers, sailors, and young people of bold and active +dispositions."[11] He might have included old people too. I have heard of +two old men--complete strangers--passing each other on a dark London +night, when one of them happened to be repeating to himself, just as +Campbell did to the hackney coachmen of the North Bridge of Edinburgh, the +last lines of the account of Flodden Field in _Marmion_, "Charge, Chester, +charge," when suddenly a reply came out of the darkness, "On, Stanley, +on," whereupon they finished the death of Marmion between them, took off +their hats to each other, and parted, laughing. Scott's is almost the only +poetry in the English language that not only runs thus in the head of +average men, but heats the head in which it runs by the mere force of its +hurried frankness of style, to use Scott's own terms, or by that of its +strong and pithy eloquence, as Campbell phrased it. And in _Cadyow Castle_ +this style is at its culminating point. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 10: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 79.] + +[Footnote 11: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 370.] + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +SCOTT'S MATURER POEMS. + + +Scott's genius flowered late. _Cadyow Castle_, the first of his poems, +I think, that has indisputable genius plainly stamped on its terse and +fiery lines, was composed in 1802, when he was already thirty-one +years of age. It was in the same year that he wrote the first canto of +his first great romance in verse, _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, a +poem which did not appear till 1805, when he was thirty-four. The +first canto (not including the framework, of which the aged harper is +the principal figure) was written in the lodgings to which he was +confined for a fortnight in 1802, by a kick received from a horse on +Portobello sands, during a charge of the Volunteer Cavalry in which +Scott was cornet. The poem was originally intended to be included in +the _Border Minstrelsy_, as one of the studies in the antique style, +but soon outgrew the limits of such a study both in length and in the +freedom of its manner. Both the poorest and the best parts of _The +Lay_ were in a special manner due to Lady Dalkeith (afterwards Duchess +of Buccleugh), who suggested it, and in whose honour the poem was +written. It was she who requested Scott to write a poem on the legend +of the goblin page, Gilpin Horner, and this Scott attempted,--and, so +far as the goblin himself was concerned, conspicuously failed. He +himself clearly saw that the story of this unmanageable imp was both +confused and uninteresting, and that in fact he had to extricate +himself from the original groundwork of the tale, as from a regular +literary scrape, in the best way he could. In a letter to Miss Seward, +Scott says,--"At length the story appeared so uncouth that I was fain +to put it into the mouth of my old minstrel, lest the nature of it +should be misunderstood, and I should be suspected of setting up a new +school of poetry, instead of a feeble attempt to imitate the old. In +the process of the romance, the page, intended to be a principal +person in the work, contrived (from the baseness of his natural +propensities, I suppose) to slink down stairs into the kitchen, and +now he must e'en abide there."[12] And I venture to say that no reader +of the poem ever has distinctly understood what the goblin page did or +did not do, what it was that was "lost" throughout the poem and +"found" at the conclusion, what was the object of his personating the +young heir of the house of Scott, and whether or not that object was +answered;--what use, if any, the magic book of Michael Scott was to +the Lady of Branksome, or whether it was only harm to her; and I doubt +moreover whether any one ever cared an iota what answer, or whether +any answer, might be given to any of these questions. All this, as +Scott himself clearly perceived, was left confused, and not simply +vague. The goblin imp had been more certainly an imp of mischief to +him than even to his boyish ancestor. But if Lady Dalkeith suggested +the poorest part of the poem, she certainly inspired its best part. +Scott says, as we have seen, that he brought in the aged harper to +save himself from the imputation of "setting-up a new school of +poetry" instead of humbly imitating an old school. But I think that +the chivalrous wish to do honour to Lady Dalkeith, both as a personal +friend and as the wife of his "chief,"--as he always called the head +of the house of Scott,--had more to do with the introduction of the +aged harper, than the wish to guard himself against the imputation of +attempting a new poetic style. He clearly intended the Duchess of _The +Lay_ to represent the Countess for whom he wrote it, and the aged +harper, with his reverence and gratitude and self-distrust, was only +the disguise in which he felt that he could best pour out his loyalty, +and the romantic devotion with which both Lord and Lady Dalkeith, but +especially the latter, had inspired him. It was certainly this +beautiful framework which assured the immediate success and permanent +charm of the poem; and the immediate success was for that day +something marvellous. The magnificent quarto edition of 750 copies was +soon exhausted, and an octavo edition of 1500 copies was sold out +within the year. In the following year two editions, containing +together 4250 copies, were disposed of, and before twenty-five years +had elapsed, that is, before 1830, 44,000 copies of the poem had been +bought by the public in this country, taking account of the legitimate +trade alone. Scott gained in all by _The Lay_ 769_l._, an +unprecedented sum in those times for an author to obtain from any +poem. Little more than half a century before, Johnson received but +fifteen guineas for his stately poem on _The Vanity of Human Wishes_, +and but ten guineas for his _London_. I do not say that Scott's poem +had not much more in it of true poetic fire, though Scott himself, I +believe, preferred these poems of Johnson's to anything that he +himself ever wrote. But the disproportion in the reward was certainly +enormous, and yet what Scott gained by his _Lay_ was of course much +less than he gained by any of his subsequent poems of equal, or +anything like equal, length. Thus for _Marmion_ he received 1000 +guineas long before the poem was published, and for _one half_ of the +copyright of _The Lord of the Isles_ Constable paid Scott 1500 +guineas. If we ask ourselves to what this vast popularity of Scott's +poems, and especially of the earlier of them (for, as often happens, +he was better remunerated for his later and much inferior poems than +for his earlier and more brilliant productions) is due, I think the +answer must be for the most part, the high romantic glow and +extraordinary romantic simplicity of the poetical elements they +contained. Take the old harper of _The Lay_, a figure which arrested +the attention of Pitt during even that last most anxious year of his +anxious life, the year of Ulm and Austerlitz. The lines in which Scott +describes the old man's embarrassment when first urged to play, +produced on Pitt, according to his own account, "an effect which I +might have expected in painting, but could never have fancied capable +of being given in poetry."[13] + +Every one knows the lines to which Pitt refers:-- + + "The humble boon was soon obtain'd; + The aged minstrel audience gain'd. + But, when he reach'd the room of state, + Where she with all her ladies sate, + Perchance he wish'd his boon denied; + For, when to tune the harp he tried, + His trembling hand had lost the ease + Which marks security to please; + And scenes long past, of joy and pain, + Came wildering o'er his aged brain,-- + He tried to tune his harp in vain! + The pitying Duchess praised its chime, + And gave him heart, and gave him time, + Till every string's according glee + Was blended into harmony. + And then, he said, he would full fain + He could recall an ancient strain + He never thought to sing again. + It was not framed for village churls, + But for high dames and mighty earls; + He'd play'd it to King Charles the Good, + When he kept Court at Holyrood; + And much he wish'd, yet fear'd, to try + The long-forgotten melody. + Amid the strings his fingers stray'd, + And an uncertain warbling made, + And oft he shook his hoary head. + But when he caught the measure wild + The old man raised his face, and smiled; + And lighten'd up his faded eye, + With all a poet's ecstasy! + In varying cadence, soft or strong, + He swept the sounding chords along; + The present scene, the future lot, + His toils, his wants, were all forgot; + Cold diffidence and age's frost + In the full tide of song were lost; + Each blank in faithless memory void + The poet's glowing thought supplied; + And, while his harp responsive rung, + 'Twas thus the latest minstrel sung. + + * * * * * + + Here paused the harp; and with its swell + The master's fire and courage fell; + Dejectedly and low he bow'd, + And, gazing timid on the crowd, + He seem'd to seek in every eye + If they approved his minstrelsy; + And, diffident of present praise, + Somewhat he spoke of former days, + And how old age, and wandering long, + Had done his hand and harp some wrong." + +These lines hardly illustrate, I think, the particular form of Mr. +Pitt's criticism, for a quick succession of fine shades of feeling of +this kind could never have been delineated in a painting, or indeed in +a series of paintings, at all, while they _are_ so given in the poem. +But the praise itself, if not its exact form, is amply deserved. The +singular depth of the romantic glow in this passage, and its equally +singular simplicity,--a simplicity which makes it intelligible to +every one,--are conspicuous to every reader. It is not what is called +classical poetry, for there is no severe outline,--no sculptured +completeness and repose,--no satisfying wholeness of effect to the eye +of the mind,--no embodiment of a great action. The poet gives us a +breath, a ripple of alternating fear and hope in the heart of an old +man, and that is all. He catches an emotion that had its roots deep in +the past, and that is striving onward towards something in the +future;--he traces the wistfulness and self-distrust with which age +seeks to recover the feelings of youth,--the delight with which it +greets them when they come,--the hesitation and diffidence with which +it recalls them as they pass away, and questions the triumph it has +just won,--and he paints all this without subtlety, without +complexity, but with a swiftness such as few poets ever surpassed. +Generally, however, Scott prefers action itself for his subject, to +any feeling, however active in its bent. The cases in which he makes a +study of any mood of feeling, as he does of this harper's feeling, are +comparatively rare. Deloraine's night-ride to Melrose is a good deal +more in Scott's ordinary way, than this study of the old harper's +wistful mood. But whatever his subject, his treatment of it is the +same. His lines are always strongly drawn; his handling is always +simple; and his subject always romantic. But though romantic, it is +simple almost to bareness,--one of the great causes both of his +popularity, and of that deficiency in his poetry of which so many of +his admirers become conscious when they compare him with other and +richer poets. Scott used to say that in poetry Byron "bet" him; and no +doubt that in which chiefly as a poet he "bet" him, was in the +variety, the richness, the lustre of his effects. A certain ruggedness +and bareness was of the essence of Scott's idealism and romance. It +was so in relation to scenery. He told Washington Irving that he loved +the very nakedness of the Border country. "It has something," he said, +"bold and stern and solitary about it. When I have been for some time +in the rich scenery about Edinburgh, which is like ornamented +garden-land, I begin to wish myself back again among my honest grey +hills, and if I did not see the heather at least once a year, _I think +I should die_."[14] Now, the bareness which Scott so loved in his +native scenery, there is in all his romantic elements of feeling. It +is while he is bold and stern, that he is at his highest ideal point. +Directly he begins to attempt rich or pretty subjects, as in parts of +_The Lady of the Lake_, and a good deal of _The Lord of the Isles_, +and still more in _The Bridal of Triermain_, his charm disappears. It +is in painting those moods and exploits, in relation to which Scott +shares most completely the feelings of ordinary men, but experiences +them with far greater strength and purity than ordinary men, that he +triumphs as a poet. Mr. Lockhart tells us that some of Scott's senses +were decidedly "blunt," and one seems to recognize this in the +simplicity of his romantic effects. "It is a fact," he says, +"which some philosophers may think worth setting down, that Scott's +organization, as to more than one of the senses, was the reverse of +exquisite. He had very little of what musicians call an ear; his smell +was hardly more delicate. I have seen him stare about, quite +unconscious of the cause, when his whole company betrayed their +uneasiness at the approach of an overkept haunch of venison; and +neither by the nose nor the palate could he distinguish corked wine +from sound. He could never tell Madeira from sherry,--nay, an Oriental +friend having sent him a butt of _sheeraz_, when he remembered the +circumstance some time afterwards and called for a bottle to have Sir +John Malcolm's opinion of its quality, it turned out that his butler, +mistaking the label, had already served up half the bin as _sherry_. +Port he considered as physic ... in truth he liked no wines except +sparkling champagne and claret; but even as to the last he was no +connoisseur, and sincerely preferred a tumbler of whisky-toddy to the +most precious 'liquid-ruby' that ever flowed in the cup of a +prince."[15] + +However, Scott's eye was very keen:--"_It was commonly him_," as his +little son once said, "_that saw the hare sitting_." And his +perception of colour was very delicate as well as his mere sight. As +Mr. Ruskin has pointed out, his landscape painting is almost all done +by the lucid use of colour. Nevertheless this bluntness of +organization in relation to the less important senses, no doubt +contributed something to the singleness and simplicity of the deeper +and more vital of Scott's romantic impressions; at least there is good +reason to suppose that delicate and complicated susceptibilities do at +least diminish the chance of living a strong and concentrated +life--do risk the frittering away of feeling on the mere backwaters of +sensations, even if they do not directly tend towards artificial and +indirect forms of character. Scott's romance is like his native +scenery,--bold, bare and rugged, with a swift deep stream of strong +pure feeling running through it. There is plenty of colour in his +pictures, as there is on the Scotch hills when the heather is out. And +so too there is plenty of intensity in his romantic situations; but it +is the intensity of simple, natural, unsophisticated, hardy, and manly +characters. But as for subtleties and fine shades of feeling in his +poems, or anything like the manifold harmonies of the richer arts, +they are not to be found, or, if such complicated shading is to be +found--and it is perhaps attempted in some faint measure in _The +Bridal of Triermain,_ the poem in which Scott tried to pass himself +off for Erskine,--it is only at the expense of the higher qualities of +his romantic poetry, that even in this small measure it is supplied. +Again, there is no rich music in his verse. It is its rapid onset, its +hurrying strength, which so fixes it in the mind. + +It was not till 1808, three years after the publication of _The Lay_, that +_Marmion_, Scott's greatest poem, was published. But I may as well say what +seems necessary of that and his other poems, while I am on the subject of +his poetry. _Marmion_ has all the advantage over _The Lay of the Last +Minstrel_ that a coherent story told with force and fulness, and concerned +with the same class of subjects as _The Lay_, must have over a confused and +ill-managed legend, the only original purpose of which was to serve as the +opportunity for a picture of Border life and strife. Scott's poems have +sometimes been depreciated as mere _novelettes_ in verse, and I think that +some of them may be more or less liable to this criticism. For instance, +_The Lady of the Lake_, with the exception of two or three brilliant +passages, has always seemed to me more of a versified _novelette_,--without +the higher and broader characteristics of Scott's prose novels--than of a +poem. I suppose what one expects from a poem as distinguished from a +romance--even though the poem incorporates a story--is that it should not +rest for its chief interest on the mere development of the story; but +rather that the narrative should be quite subordinate to that insight into +the deeper side of life and manners, in expressing which poetry has so +great an advantage over prose. Of _The Lay_ and _Marmion_ this is true; +less true of _The Lady of the Lake_, and still less of _Rokeby_, or _The +Lord of the Isles_, and this is why _The Lay_ and _Marmion_ seem so much +superior as poems to the others. They lean less on the interest of mere +incident, more on that of romantic feeling and the great social and +historic features of the day. _Marmion_ was composed in great part in the +saddle, and the stir of a charge of cavalry seems to be at the very core of +it. "For myself," said Scott, writing to a lady correspondent at a time +when he was in active service as a volunteer, "I must own that to one who +has, like myself, _la tete un peu exaltee_, the pomp and circumstance of +war gives, for a time, a very poignant and pleasing sensation."[16] And you +feel this all through _Marmion_ even more than in _The Lay_. Mr. Darwin +would probably say that Auld Wat of Harden had about as much responsibility +for _Marmion_ as Sir Walter himself. "You will expect," he wrote to the +same lady, who was personally unknown to him at that time, "to see a +person who had dedicated himself to literary pursuits, and you will find me +a rattle-skulled, half-lawyer, half-sportsman, through whose head a +regiment of horse has been exercising since he was five years old."[17] And +what Scott himself felt in relation to the martial elements of his poetry, +soldiers in the field felt with equal force. "In the course of the day when +_The Lady of the Lake_ first reached Sir Adam Fergusson, he was posted with +his company on a point of ground exposed to the enemy's artillery, +somewhere no doubt on the lines of Torres Vedras. The men were ordered to +lie prostrate on the ground; while they kept that attitude, the captain, +kneeling at the head, read aloud the description of the battle in Canto +VI., and the listening soldiers only interrupted him by a joyous huzza when +the French shot struck the bank close above them."[18] It is not often that +martial poetry has been put to such a test; but we can well understand with +what rapture a Scotch force lying on the ground to shelter from the French +fire, would enter into such passages as the following:-- + + "Their light-arm'd archers far and near + Survey'd the tangled ground, + Their centre ranks, with pike and spear, + A twilight forest frown'd, + Their barbed horsemen, in the rear, + The stern battalia crown'd. + No cymbal clash'd, no clarion rang, + Still were the pipe and drum; + Save heavy tread, and armour's clang, + The sullen march was dumb. + There breathed no wind their crests to shake, + Or wave their flags abroad; + Scarce the frail aspen seem'd to quake, + That shadow'd o'er their road. + Their vanward scouts no tidings bring, + Can rouse no lurking foe, + Nor spy a trace of living thing + Save when they stirr'd the roe; + The host moves like a deep-sea wave, + Where rise no rocks its power to brave, + High-swelling, dark, and slow. + The lake is pass'd, and now they gain + A narrow and a broken plain, + Before the Trosach's rugged jaws, + And here the horse and spearmen pause, + While, to explore the dangerous glen, + Dive through the pass the archer-men. + + "At once there rose so wild a yell + Within that dark and narrow dell, + As all the fiends from heaven that fell + Had peal'd the banner-cry of Hell! + Forth from the pass, in tumult driven, + Like chaff before the wind of heaven, + The archery appear; + For life! for life! their plight they ply, + And shriek, and shout, and battle-cry, + And plaids and bonnets waving high, + And broadswords flashing to the sky, + Are maddening in the rear. + Onward they drive, in dreadful race, + Pursuers and pursued; + Before that tide of flight and chase, + How shall it keep its rooted place, + The spearmen's twilight wood? + Down, down, cried Mar, 'your lances down + Bear back both friend and foe!' + Like reeds before the tempest's frown, + That serried grove of lances brown + At once lay levell'd low; + And, closely shouldering side to side, + The bristling ranks the onset bide,-- + 'We'll quell the savage mountaineer, + As their Tinchel cows the game! + They came as fleet as forest deer, + We'll drive them back as tame.'" + +But admirable in its stern and deep excitement as that is, the battle +of Flodden in _Marmion_ passes it in vigour, and constitutes perhaps +the most perfect description of war by one who was--almost--both poet +and warrior, which the English language contains. + +And _Marmion_ registers the high-water mark of Scott's poetical power, +not only in relation to the painting of war, but in relation to the +painting of nature. Critics from the beginning onwards have complained +of the six introductory epistles, as breaking the unity of the story. +But I cannot see that the remark has weight. No poem is written for +those who read it as they do a novel--merely to follow the interest of +the story; or if any poem be written for such readers, it deserves to +die. On such a principle--which treats a poem as a mere novel and +nothing else,--you might object to Homer that he interrupts the battle +so often to dwell on the origin of the heroes who are waging it; or to +Byron that he deserts Childe Harold to meditate on the rapture of +solitude. To my mind the ease and frankness of these confessions of +the author's recollections give a picture of his life and character +while writing _Marmion_, which adds greatly to its attraction as a +poem. You have a picture at once not only of the scenery, but of the +mind in which that scenery is mirrored, and are brought back frankly, +at fit intervals, from the one to the other, in the mode best adapted +to help you to appreciate the relation of the poet to the poem. At +least if Milton's various interruptions of a much more ambitious +theme, to muse upon his own qualifications or disqualifications for +the task he had attempted, be not artistic mistakes--and I never heard +of any one who thought them so--I cannot see any reason why Scott's +periodic recurrence to his own personal history should be artistic +mistakes either. If Scott's reverie was less lofty than Milton's, so +also was his story. It seems to me as fitting to describe the relation +between the poet and his theme in the one case as in the other. What +can be more truly a part of _Marmion_, as a poem, though not as a +story, than that introduction to the first canto in which Scott +expresses his passionate sympathy with the high national feeling of +the moment, in his tribute to Pitt and Fox, and then reproaches +himself for attempting so great a subject and returns to what he calls +his "rude legend," the very essence of which was, however, a +passionate appeal to the spirit of national independence? What can be +more germane to the poem than the delineation of the strength the poet +had derived from musing in the bare and rugged solitudes of St. Mary's +Lake, in the introduction to the second canto? Or than the striking +autobiographical study of his own infancy which I have before +extracted from the introduction to the third? It seems to me that +_Marmion_ without these introductions would be like the hills which +border Yarrow, without the stream and lake in which they are +reflected. + +Never at all events in any later poem was Scott's touch as a mere +painter so terse and strong. What a picture of a Scotch winter is +given in these few lines:-- + + "The sheep before the pinching heaven + To shelter'd dale and down are driven, + Where yet some faded herbage pines, + And yet a watery sunbeam shines: + In meek despondency they eye + The wither'd sward and wintry sky, + And from beneath their summer hill + Stray sadly by Glenkinnon's rill." + +Again, if Scott is ever Homeric (which I cannot think he often is), +in spite of Sir Francis Doyle's able criticism,--(he is too short, too +sharp, and too eagerly bent on his rugged way, for a poet who is +always delighting to find loopholes, even in battle, from which to +look out upon the great story of human nature), he is certainly +nearest to it in such a passage as this:-- + + "The Isles-men carried at their backs + The ancient Danish battle-axe. + They raised a wild and wondering cry + As with his guide rode Marmion by. + Loud were their clamouring tongues, as when + The clanging sea-fowl leave the fen, + And, with their cries discordant mix'd, + Grumbled and yell'd the pipes betwixt." + +In hardly any of Scott's poetry do we find much of what is called the +_curiosa felicitas_ of expression,--the magic use of _words_, as +distinguished from the mere general effect of vigour, purity, and +concentration of purpose. But in _Marmion_ occasionally we do find +such a use. Take this description, for instance, of the Scotch tents +near Edinburgh:-- + + "A thousand did I say? I ween + Thousands on thousands there were seen, + That chequer'd all the heath between + The streamlet and the town; + In crossing ranks extending far, + Forming a camp irregular; + Oft giving way where still there stood + Some relics of the old oak wood, + That darkly huge did intervene, + _And tamed the glaring white with green_; + In these extended lines there lay + A martial kingdom's vast array." + +The line I have italicized seems to me to have more of the poet's +special magic of expression than is at all usual with Scott. The +conception of the peaceful green oak wood _taming_ the glaring white +of the tented field, is as fine in idea as it is in relation to the +effect of the mere colour on the eye. Judge Scott's poetry by whatever +test you will--whether it be a test of that which is peculiar to it, +its glow of national feeling, its martial ardour, its swift and rugged +simplicity, or whether it be a test of that which is common to it with +most other poetry, its attraction for all romantic excitements, its +special feeling for the pomp and circumstance of war, its love of +light and colour--and tested either way, _Marmion_ will remain his +finest poem. The battle of Flodden Field touches his highest point in +its expression of stern patriotic feeling, in its passionate love of +daring, and in the force and swiftness of its movement, no less than +in the brilliancy of its romantic interests, the charm of its +picturesque detail, and the glow of its scenic colouring. No poet ever +equalled Scott in the description of wild and simple scenes and the +expression of wild and simple feelings. But I have said enough now of +his poetry, in which, good as it is, Scott's genius did not reach its +highest point. The hurried tramp of his somewhat monotonous metre, is +apt to weary the ears of men who do not find their sufficient +happiness, as he did, in dreaming of the wild and daring enterprises +of his loved Border-land. The very quality in his verse which makes it +seize so powerfully on the imaginations of plain, bold, adventurous +men, often makes it hammer fatiguingly against the brain of those who +need the relief of a wider horizon and a richer world. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 12: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 217.] + +[Footnote 13: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 226.] + +[Footnote 14: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 248.] + +[Footnote 15: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 338.] + +[Footnote 16: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 137.] + +[Footnote 17: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 259.] + +[Footnote 18: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii. 327.] + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +COMPANIONS AND FRIENDS. + + +I have anticipated in some degree, in speaking of Scott's later +poetical works, what, in point of time at least, should follow some +slight sketch of his chosen companions, and of his occupations in the +first period of his married life. Scott's most intimate friend for +some time after he went to college, probably the one who most +stimulated his imagination in his youth, and certainly one of his most +intimate friends to the very last, was William Clerk, who was called +to the bar on the same day as Scott. He was the son of John Clerk of +Eldin, the author of a book of some celebrity in its time on _Naval +Tactics_. Even in the earliest days of this intimacy, the lads who had +been Scott's fellow-apprentices in his father's office, saw with some +jealousy his growing friendship with William Clerk, and remonstrated +with Scott on the decline of his regard for them, but only succeeded +in eliciting from him one of those outbursts of peremptory frankness +which anything that he regarded as an attempt to encroach on his own +interior liberty of choice always provoked. "I will never cut any +man," he said, "unless I detect him in scoundrelism, but I know not +what right any of you have to interfere with my choice of my company. +As it is, I fairly own that though I like many of you very much, and +have long done so, I think William Clerk well worth you all put +together."[19] Scott never lost the friendship which began with this +eager enthusiasm, but his chief intimacy with Clerk was during his +younger days. + +In 1808 Scott describes Clerk as "a man of the most acute intellects and +powerful apprehension, who, if he should ever shake loose the fetters of +indolence by which he has been hitherto trammelled, cannot fail to be +distinguished in the highest degree." Whether for the reason suggested, or +for some other, Clerk never actually gained any other distinction so great +as his friendship with Scott conferred upon him. Probably Scott had +discerned the true secret of his friend's comparative obscurity. Even +while preparing for the bar, when they had agreed to go on alternate +mornings to each other's lodgings to read together, Scott found it +necessary to modify the arrangement by always visiting his friend, whom he +usually found in bed. It was William Clerk who sat for the picture of +Darsie Latimer, the hero of _Redgauntlet_,--whence we should suppose him +to have been a lively, generous, susceptible, contentious, and rather +helter-skelter young man, much alive to the ludicrous in all situations, +very eager to see life in all its phases, and somewhat vain of his power +of adapting himself equally to all these phases. Scott tells a story of +Clerk's being once baffled--almost for the first time--by a stranger in a +stage coach, who would not, or could not, talk to him on any subject, +until at last Clerk addressed to him this stately remonstrance, "I have +talked to you, my friend, on all the ordinary subjects--literature, +farming, merchandise, gaming, game-laws, horse-races, suits-at-law, +politics, swindling, blasphemy, and philosophy,--is there any one subject +that you will favour me by opening upon?" "Sir," replied the inscrutable +stranger, "can you say anything clever about '_bend-leather_'?"[20] No +doubt this superficial familiarity with a vast number of subjects was a +great fascination to Scott, and a great stimulus to his own imagination. +To the last he held the same opinion of his friend's latent powers. "To my +thinking," he wrote in his diary in 1825, "I never met a man of greater +powers, of more complete information on all desirable subjects." But in +youth at least Clerk seems to have had what Sir Walter calls a +characteristic Edinburgh complaint, the "itch for disputation," and though +he softened this down in later life, he had always that slight +contentiousness of bias which enthusiastic men do not often heartily like, +and which may have prevented Scott from continuing to the full the close +intimacy of those earlier years. Yet almost his last record of a really +delightful evening, refers to a bachelor's dinner given by Mr. Clerk, who +remained unmarried, as late as 1827, after all Sir Walter's worst troubles +had come upon him. "In short," says the diary, "we really laughed, and +real laughter is as rare as real tears. I must say, too, there was a +_heart_, a kindly feeling prevailed over the party. Can London give such a +dinner?"[21] It is clear, then, that Clerk's charm for his friend survived +to the last, and that it was not the mere inexperience of boyhood, which +made Scott esteem him so highly in his early days. + +If Clerk pricked, stimulated, and sometimes badgered Scott, another of +his friends who became more and more intimate with him, as life went +on, and who died before him, always soothed him, partly by his +gentleness, partly by his almost feminine dependence. This was William +Erskine, also a barrister, and son of an Episcopalian clergyman in +Perthshire,--to whose influence it is probably due that Scott himself +always read the English Church service in his own country house, and +does not appear to have retained the Presbyterianism into which he was +born. Erskine, who was afterwards raised to the Bench as Lord +Kinnedder--a distinction which he did not survive for many months--was +a good classic, a man of fine, or, as some of his companions thought, +of almost superfine taste. The style apparently for which he had +credit must have been a somewhat mimini-pimini style, if we may judge +by Scott's attempt in _The Bridal of Triermain_, to write in a manner +which he intended to be attributed to his friend. Erskine was left a +widower in middle life, and Scott used to accuse him of philandering +with pretty women,--- a mode of love-making which Scott certainly +contrived to render into verse, in painting Arthur's love-making to +Lucy in that poem. It seems that some absolutely false accusation +brought against Lord Kinnedder, of an intrigue with a lady with whom +he had been thus philandering, broke poor Erskine's heart, during his +first year as a Judge. "The Counsellor (as Scott always called him) +was," says Mr. Lockhart, "a little man of feeble make, who seemed +unhappy when his pony got beyond a footpace, and had never, I should +suppose, addicted himself to any out of door's sports whatever. He +would, I fancy, as soon have thought of slaying his own mutton as of +handling a fowling-piece; he used to shudder when he saw a party +equipped for coursing, as if murder was in the wind; but the cool, +meditative angler was in his eyes the abomination of abominations. His +small elegant features, hectic cheek and soft hazel eyes, were the +index of the quick, sensitive, gentle spirit within." "He would +dismount to lead his horse down what his friend hardly perceived to be +a descent at all; grew pale at a precipice; and, unlike the white lady +of Avenel, would go a long way round for a bridge." He shrank from +general society, and lived in closer intimacies, and his intimacy with +Scott was of the closest. He was Scott's confidant in all literary +matters, and his advice was oftener followed on questions of style and +form, and of literary enterprise, than that of any other of Scott's +friends. It is into Erskine's mouth that Scott puts the supposed +exhortation to himself to choose more classical subjects for his +poems:-- + + "'Approach those masters o'er whose tomb + Immortal laurels ever bloom; + Instructive of the feebler bard, + Still from the grave their voice is heard; + From them, and from the paths they show'd, + Choose honour'd guide and practised road; + Nor ramble on through brake and maze, + With harpers rude of barbarous days." + +And it is to Erskine that Scott replies,-- + + "For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask + The classic poet's well-conn'd task? + Nay, Erskine, nay,--on the wild hill + Let the wild heath-bell flourish still; + Cherish the tulip, prune the vine, + But freely let the woodbine twine, + And leave untrimm'd the eglantine: + Nay, my friend, nay,--since oft thy praise + Hath given fresh vigour to my lays; + Since oft thy judgment could refine + My flatten'd thought or cumbrous line, + Still kind, as is thy wont, attend, + And in the minstrel spare the friend!" + +It was Erskine, too, as Scott expressly states in his introduction to +the _Chronicles of the Canongate_, who reviewed with far too much +partiality the _Tales of my Landlord_, in the _Quarterly Review_, for +January, 1817,--a review unjustifiably included among Scott's own +critical essays, on the very insufficient ground that the MS. reached +Murray in Scott's own handwriting. There can, however, be no doubt at +all that Scott copied out his friend's MS., in order to increase the +mystification which he so much enjoyed as to the authorship of his +variously named series of tales. Possibly enough, too, he may have +drawn Erskine's attention to the evidence which justified his sketch +of the Puritans in _Old Mortality_, evidence which he certainly +intended at one time to embody in a reply of his own to the adverse +criticism on that book. But though Erskine was Scott's _alter ego_ for +literary purposes, it is certain that Erskine, with his fastidious, +not to say finical, sense of honour, would never have lent his name to +cover a puff written by Scott of his own works. A man who, in Scott's +own words, died "a victim to a hellishly false story, or rather, I +should say, to the sensibility of his own nature, which could not +endure even the shadow of reproach,--like the ermine, which is said to +pine if its fur is soiled," was not the man to father a puff, even by +his dearest friend, on that friend's own creations. Erskine was indeed +almost feminine in his love of Scott; but he was feminine with all the +irritable and scrupulous delicacy of a man who could not derogate from +his own ideal of right, even to serve a friend. + +Another friend of Scott's earlier days was John Leyden, Scott's most +efficient coadjutor in the collection of the _Border Minstrelsy_,--that +eccentric genius, marvellous linguist, and good-natured bear, who, bred a +shepherd in one of the wildest valleys of Roxburghshire, had accumulated +before the age of nineteen an amount of learning which confounded the +Edinburgh Professors, and who, without any previous knowledge of medicine, +prepared himself to pass an examination for the medical profession, at six +months' notice of the offer of an assistant-surgeoncy in the East India +Company. It was Leyden who once walked between forty and fifty miles and +back, for the sole purpose of visiting an old person who possessed a copy +of a border ballad that was wanting for the _Minstrelsy_. Scott was sitting +at dinner one day with company, when he heard a sound at a distance, "like +that of the whistling of a tempest through the torn rigging of a vessel +which scuds before it. The sounds increased as they approached more near; +and Leyden (to the great astonishment of such of the guests as did not know +him) burst into the room chanting the desiderated ballad with the most +enthusiastic gesture, and all the energy of what he used to call the +_saw-tones_ of his voice."[22] Leyden's great antipathy was Ritson, an +ill-conditioned antiquarian, of vegetarian principles, whom Scott alone of +all the antiquarians of that day could manage to tame and tolerate. In +Scott's absence one day, during his early married life at Lasswade, Mrs. +Scott inadvertently offered Ritson a slice of beef, when that strange man +burst out in such outrageous tones at what he chose to suppose an insult, +that Leyden threatened to "thraw his neck" if he were not silent, a threat +which frightened Ritson out of the cottage. On another occasion, simply in +order to tease Ritson, Leyden complained that the meat was overdone, and +sent to the kitchen for a plate of literally raw beef, and ate it up solely +for the purpose of shocking his crazy rival in antiquarian research. Poor +Leyden did not long survive his experience of the Indian climate. And with +him died a passion for knowledge of a very high order, combined with no +inconsiderable poetical gifts. It was in the study of such eccentric beings +as Leyden that Scott doubtless acquired his taste for painting the humours +of Scotch character. + +Another wild shepherd, and wilder genius among Scott's associates, not +only in those earlier days, but to the end, was that famous Ettrick +Shepherd, James Hogg, who was always quarrelling with his brother +poet, as far as Scott permitted it, and making it up again when his +better feelings returned. In a shepherd's dress, and with hands fresh +from sheep-shearing, he came to dine for the first time with Scott in +Castle Street, and finding Mrs. Scott lying on the sofa, immediately +stretched himself at full length on another sofa; for, as he explained +afterwards, "I thought I could not do better than to imitate the lady +of the house." At dinner, as the wine passed, he advanced from "Mr. +Scott," to "Shirra" (Sheriff), "Scott," "Walter," and finally +"Wattie," till at supper he convulsed every one by addressing Mrs. +Scott familiarly as "Charlotte."[23] Hogg wrote certain short poems, +the beauty of which in their kind Sir Walter himself never approached; +but he was a man almost without self-restraint or self-knowledge, +though he had a great deal of self-importance, and hardly knew how +much he owed to Scott's magnanimous and ever-forbearing kindness, or +if he did, felt the weight of gratitude a burden on his heart. Very +different was William Laidlaw, a farmer on the banks of the Yarrow, +always Scott's friend, and afterwards his manager at Abbotsford, +through whose hand he dictated many of his novels. Mr. Laidlaw was +one of Scott's humbler friends,--a class of friends with whom he seems +always to have felt more completely at his ease than any others--who +gave at least as much as he received, one of those wise, loyal, and +thoughtful men in a comparatively modest position of life, whom Scott +delighted to trust, and never trusted without finding his trust +justified. In addition to these Scotch friends, Scott had made, even +before the publication of his _Border Minstrelsy_, not a few in London +or its neighbourhood,--of whom the most important at this time was the +grey-eyed, hatchet-faced, courteous George Ellis, as Leyden described +him, the author of various works on ancient English poetry and +romance, who combined with a shrewd, satirical vein, and a great +knowledge of the world, political as well as literary, an exquisite +taste in poetry, and a warm heart. Certainly Ellis's criticism on his +poems was the truest and best that Scott ever received; and had he +lived to read his novels,--only one of which was published before +Ellis's death,--he might have given Scott more useful help than either +Ballantyne or even Erskine. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 19: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 214.] + +[Footnote 20: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii. 344.] + +[Footnote 21: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 75.] + +[Footnote 22: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 56.] + +[Footnote 23: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 168-9.] + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +FIRST COUNTRY HOMES. + + +So completely was Scott by nature an out-of-doors man that he cannot +be adequately known either through his poems or through his friends, +without also knowing his external surroundings and occupations. His +first country home was the cottage at Lasswade, on the Esk, about six +miles from Edinburgh, which he took in 1798, a few months after his +marriage, and retained till 1804. It was a pretty little cottage, in +the beautification of which Scott felt great pride, and where he +exercised himself in the small beginnings of those tastes for altering +and planting which grew so rapidly upon him, and at last enticed him +into castle-building and tree-culture on a dangerous, not to say, +ruinous scale. One of Scott's intimate friends, the master of Rokeby, +by whose house and neighbourhood the poem of that name was suggested, +Mr. Morritt, walked along the Esk in 1808 with Scott four years after +he had left it, and was taken out of his way to see it. "I have been +bringing you," he said, "where there is little enough to be seen, only +that Scotch cottage, but though not worth looking at, I could not pass +it. It was our first country house when newly married, and many a +contrivance it had to make it comfortable. I made a dining-table for +it with my own hands. Look at these two miserable willow-trees on +either side the gate into the enclosure; they are tied together at the +top to be an arch, and a cross made of two sticks over them is not yet +decayed. To be sure it is not much of a lion to show a stranger; but I +wanted to see it again myself, for I assure you that after I had +constructed it, _mamma_ (Mrs. Scott) and I both of us thought it so +fine, we turned out to see it by moonlight, and walked backwards from +it to the cottage-door, in admiration of our own magnificence and its +picturesque effect." It was here at Lasswade that he bought the +phaeton, which was the first wheeled carriage that ever penetrated to +Liddesdale, a feat which it accomplished in the first August of this +century. + +When Scott left the cottage at Lasswade in 1804, it was to take up his +country residence in Selkirkshire, of which he had now been made +sheriff, in a beautiful little house belonging to his cousin, +Major-General Sir James Russell, and known to all the readers of +Scott's poetry as the Ashestiel of the _Marmion_ introductions. The +Glenkinnon brook dashes in a deep ravine through the grounds to join +the Tweed; behind the house rise the hills which divide the Tweed from +the Yarrow; and an easy ride took Scott into the scenery of the +Yarrow. The description of Ashestiel, and the brook which runs through +it, in the introduction to the first canto of _Marmion_ is indeed one +of the finest specimens of Scott's descriptive poetry:-- + + "November's sky is chill and drear, + November's leaf is red and sear; + Late, gazing down the steepy linn, + That hems our little garden in, + Low in its dark and narrow glen, + You scarce the rivulet might ken, + So thick the tangled greenwood grew, + So feeble trill'd the streamlet through; + Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen, + Through bush and briar no longer green, + An angry brook, it sweeps the glade, + Brawls over rock and wild cascade, + And, foaming brown with doubled speed, + Hurries its waters to the Tweed." + +Selkirk was his nearest town, and that was seven miles from Ashestiel; +and even his nearest neighbour was at Yair, a few miles off lower down +the Tweed,--Yair of which he wrote in another of the introductions to +_Marmion_:-- + + "From Yair, which hills so closely bind + Scarce can the Tweed his passage find, + Though much he fret, and chafe, and toil, + Till all his eddying currents boil." + +At Ashestiel it was one of his greatest delights to look after his +relative's woods, and to dream of planting and thinning woods of his +own, a dream only too amply realized. It was here that a new +kitchen-range was sunk for some time in the ford, which was so swollen +by a storm in 1805 that the horse and cart that brought it were +themselves with difficulty rescued from the waters. And it was here +that Scott first entered on that active life of literary labour in +close conjunction with an equally active life of rural sport, which +gained him a well-justified reputation as the hardest worker and the +heartiest player in the kingdom. At Lasswade Scott's work had been +done at night; but serious headaches made him change his habit at +Ashestiel, and rise steadily at five, lighting his own fire in winter. +"Arrayed in his shooting-jacket, or whatever dress he meant to use +till dinner-time, he was seated at his desk by six o'clock, all his +papers arranged before him in the most accurate order, and his books +of reference marshalled around him on the floor, while at least one +favourite dog lay watching his eye, just beyond the line of +circumvallation. Thus, by the time the family assembled for breakfast, +between nine and ten, he had done enough, in his own language, 'to +break the neck of the day's work.' After breakfast a couple of hours +more were given to his solitary tasks, and by noon he was, as he used +to say, his 'own man.' When the weather was bad, he would labour +incessantly all the morning; but the general rule was to be out and on +horseback by one o'clock at the latest; while, if any more distant +excursion had been proposed overnight, he was ready to start on it by +ten; his occasional rainy days of unintermitted study, forming, as he +said, a fund in his favour, out of which he was entitled to draw for +accommodation whenever the sun shone with special brightness." In his +earlier days none of his horses liked to be fed except by their +master. When Brown Adam was saddled, and the stable-door opened, the +horse would trot round to the leaping-on stone of his own accord, to +be mounted, and was quite intractable under any one but Scott. Scott's +life might well be fairly divided--just as history is divided into +reigns--by the succession of his horses and dogs. The reigns of +Captain, Lieutenant, Brown Adam, Daisy, divide at least the period up +to Waterloo; while the reigns of Sybil Grey, and the Covenanter, or +Douce Davie, divide the period of Scott's declining years. During the +brilliant period of the earlier novels we hear less of Scott's horses; +but of his deerhounds there is an unbroken succession. Camp, Maida +(the "Bevis" of _Woodstock_), and Nimrod, reigned successively between +Sir Walter's marriage and his death. It was Camp on whose death he +relinquished a dinner invitation previously accepted, on the ground +that the death of "an old friend" rendered him unwilling to dine out; +Maida to whom he erected a marble monument, and Nimrod of whom he +spoke so affectingly as too good a dog for his diminished fortunes +during his absence in Italy on the last hopeless journey. + +Scott's amusements at Ashestiel, besides riding, in which he was +fearless to rashness, and coursing, which was the chief form of +sporting in the neighbourhood, comprehended "burning the water," as +salmon-spearing by torchlight was called, in the course of which he +got many a ducking. Mr. Skene gives an amusing picture of their +excursions together from Ashestiel among the hills, he himself +followed by a lanky Savoyard, and Scott by a portly Scotch +butler--both servants alike highly sensitive as to their personal +dignity--on horses which neither of the attendants could sit well. +"Scott's heavy lumbering buffetier had provided himself against the +mountain storms with a huge cloak, which, when the cavalcade was at +gallop, streamed at full stretch from his shoulders, and kept flapping +in the other's face, who, having more than enough to do in preserving +his own equilibrium, could not think of attempting at any time to +control the pace of his steed, and had no relief but fuming and +_pesting_ at the _sacre manteau_, in language happily unintelligible +to its wearer. Now and then some ditch or turf-fence rendered it +indispensable to adventure on a leap, and no farce could have been +more amusing than the display of politeness which then occurred +between these worthy equestrians, each courteously declining in favour +of his friend the honour of the first experiment, the horses fretting +impatient beneath them, and the dogs clamouring encouragement."[24] +Such was Scott's order of life at Ashestiel, where he remained from +1804 to 1812. As to his literary work here, it was enormous. + +Besides finishing _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, writing _Marmion_, +_The Lady of the Lake_, part of _The Bridal of Triermain_, and part of +_Rokeby_, and writing reviews, he wrote a _Life of Dryden_, and edited +his works anew with some care, in eighteen volumes, edited _Somers's +Collection of Tracts_, in thirteen volumes, quarto, _Sir Ralph +Sadler's Life, Letters, and State Papers_, in three volumes, quarto, +_Miss Seward's Life and Poetical Works_, _The Secret History of the +Court of James I_., in two volumes, _Strutt's Queenhoo Hall_, in four +volumes, 12mo., and various other single volumes, and began his heavy +work on the edition of Swift. This was the literary work of eight +years, during which he had the duties of his Sheriffship, and, after +he gave up his practice as a barrister, the duties of his Deputy +Clerkship of Session to discharge regularly. The editing of Dryden +alone would have seemed to most men of leisure a pretty full +occupation for these eight years, and though I do not know that Scott +edited with the anxious care with which that sort of work is often now +prepared, that he went into all the arguments for a doubtful reading +with the pains that Mr. Dyce spent on the various readings of +Shakespeare, or that Mr. Spedding spent on a various reading of Bacon, +yet Scott did his work in a steady, workmanlike manner, which +satisfied the most fastidious critics of that day, and he was never, I +believe, charged with hurrying or scamping it. His biographies of +Swift and Dryden are plain solid pieces of work--not exactly the works +of art which biographies have been made in our day--not comparable to +Carlyle's studies of Cromwell or Frederick, or, in point of art, even +to the life of John Sterling, but still sensible and interesting, +sound in judgment, and animated in style. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 24: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 268-9.] + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD, AND LIFE THERE. + + +In May, 1812, Scott having now at last obtained the salary of the +Clerkship of Session, the work of which he had for more than five +years discharged without pay, indulged himself in realizing his +favourite dream of buying a "mountain farm" at Abbotsford,--five miles +lower down the Tweed than his cottage at Ashestiel, which was now +again claimed by the family of Russell,--and migrated thither with his +household goods. The children long remembered the leave-taking as one +of pure grief, for the villagers were much attached both to Scott and +to his wife, who had made herself greatly beloved by her untiring +goodness to the sick among her poor neighbours. But Scott himself +describes the migration as a scene in which their neighbours found no +small share of amusement. "Our flitting and removal from Ashestiel +baffled all description; we had twenty-five cartloads of the veriest +trash in nature, besides dogs, pigs, ponies, poultry, cows, calves, +bare-headed wenches, and bare-breeched boys."[25] + +To another friend Scott wrote that the neighbours had "been much +delighted with the procession of my furniture, in which old swords, +bows, targets, and lances, made a very conspicuous show. A family of +turkeys was accommodated within the helmet of some _preux chevalier_ +of ancient border fame; and the very cows, for aught I know, were +bearing banners and muskets. I assure your ladyship that this caravan +attended by a dozen of ragged rosy peasant children, carrying +fishing-rods and spears, and leading ponies, greyhounds, and spaniels, +would, as it crossed the Tweed, have furnished no bad subject for the +pencil, and really reminded me of one of the gipsy groups of Callot +upon their march."[26] + +The place thus bought for 4000_l._,--half of which, according to Scott's +bad and sanguine habit, was borrowed from his brother, and half raised on +the security of a poem at the moment of sale wholly unwritten, and not +completed even when he removed to Abbotsford--"Rokeby"--became only too +much of an idol for the rest of Scott's life. Mr. Lockhart admits that +before the crash came he had invested 29,000_l._ in the purchase of land +alone. But at this time only the kernel of the subsequent estate was +bought, in the shape of a hundred acres or rather more, part of which ran +along the shores of the Tweed--"a beautiful river flowing broad and bright +over a bed of milk-white pebbles, unless here and there where it darkened +into a deep pool, overhung as yet only by birches and alders." There was +also a poor farm-house, a staring barn, and a pond so dirty that it had +hitherto given the name of "Clarty Hole" to the place itself. Scott +renamed the place from the adjoining ford which was just above the +confluence of the Gala with the Tweed. He chose the name of Abbotsford +because the land had formerly all belonged to the Abbots of Melrose,--the +ruin of whose beautiful abbey was visible from many parts of the little +property. On the other side of the river the old British barrier called +"the Catrail" was full in view. As yet the place was not planted,--the +only effort made in this direction by its former owner, Dr. Douglas, +having been a long narrow stripe of firs, which Scott used to compare to a +black hair-comb, and which gave the name of "The Doctor's Redding-Kame" to +the stretch of woods of which it is still the central line. Such was the +place which he made it the too great delight of the remainder of his life +to increase and beautify, by spending on it a good deal more than he had +earned, and that too in times when he should have earned a good deal more +than he ought to have thought even for a moment of spending. The cottage +grew to a mansion, and the mansion to a castle. The farm by the Tweed made +him long for a farm by the Cauldshiel's loch, and the farm by the +Cauldshiel's loch for Thomas the Rhymer's Glen; and as, at every step in +the ladder, his means of buying were really increasing--though they were +so cruelly discounted and forestalled by this growing land-hunger,--Scott +never realized into what troubles he was carefully running himself. + +Of his life at Abbotsford at a later period when his building was +greatly enlarged, and his children grown up, we have a brilliant +picture from the pen of Mr. Lockhart. And though it does not belong to +his first years at Abbotsford, I cannot do better than include it here +as conveying probably better than anything I could elsewhere find, the +charm of that ideal life which lured Scott on from one project to +another in that scheme of castle-building, in relation to which he +confused so dangerously the world of dreams with the harder world of +wages, capital, interest, and rent. + + "I remember saying to William Allan one morning, as the + whole party mustered before the porch after breakfast, 'A + faithful sketch of what you at this moment see would be more + interesting a hundred years hence than the grandest + so-called historical picture that you will ever exhibit in + Somerset House;' and my friend agreed with me so cordially + that I often wondered afterwards he had not attempted to + realize the suggestion. The subject ought, however, to have + been treated conjointly by him (or Wilkie) and Edwin + Landseer. + + "It was a clear, bright September morning, with a sharpness + in the air that doubled the animating influence of the + sunshine, and all was in readiness for a grand coursing + match on Newark Hill. The only guest who had chalked out + other sport for himself was the staunchest of anglers, Mr. + Rose; but he too was there on his _shelty_, armed with his + salmon-rod and landing-net, and attended by his humorous + squire, Hinves, and Charlie Purdie, a brother of Tom, in + those days the most celebrated fisherman of the district. + This little group of Waltonians, bound for Lord Somerville's + preserve, remained lounging about to witness the start of + the main cavalcade. Sir Walter, mounted on Sybil, was + marshalling the order of procession with a huge + hunting-whip; and among a dozen frolicsome youths and + maidens, who seemed disposed to laugh at all discipline, + appeared, each on horseback, each as eager as the youngest + sportsman in the troop, Sir Humphry Davy, Dr. Wollaston, and + the patriarch of Scottish _belles lettres_, Henry Mackenzie. + The Man of Feeling, however, was persuaded with some + difficulty to resign his steed for the present to his + faithful negro follower, and to join Lady Scott in the + sociable, until we should reach the ground of our _battue_. + Laidlaw, on a long-tailed, wiry Highlander, yclept Hoddin + Grey, which carried him nimbly and stoutly, although his + feet almost touched the ground as he sat, was the adjutant. + But the most picturesque figure was the illustrious inventor + of the safety-lamp. He had come for his favourite sport of + angling, and had been practising it successfully with Rose, + his travelling-companion, for two or three days preceding + this, but he had not prepared for coursing fields, and had + left Charlie Purdie's troop for Sir Walter's on a sudden + thought; and his fisherman's costume--a brown hat with + flexible brim, surrounded with line upon line, and + innumerable fly-hooks, jack-boots worthy of a Dutch + smuggler, and a fustian surtout dabbled with the blood of + salmon,--made a fine contrast with the smart jackets, white + cord breeches, and well-polished jockey-boots of the less + distinguished cavaliers about him. Dr. Wollaston was in + black, and, with his noble, serene dignity of countenance, + might have passed for a sporting archbishop. Mr. Mackenzie, + at this time in the seventy-sixth year of his age, with a + white hat turned up with green, green spectacles, green + jacket, and long brown leather gaiters buttoned upon his + nether anatomy, wore a dog-whistle round his neck, and had + all over the air of as resolute a devotee as the gay captain + of Huntly Burn. Tom Purdie and his subalterns had preceded + us by a few hours with all the greyhounds that could be + collected at Abbotsford, Darnick, and Melrose; but the giant + Maida had remained as his master's orderly, and now + gambolled about Sibyl Grey, barking for mere joy, like a + spaniel puppy. + + "The order of march had been all settled, and the sociable + was just getting under weigh, when _the Lady Anne_ broke + from the line, screaming with laughter, and exclaimed, + 'Papa! papa! I know you could never think of going without + your pet.' Scott looked round, and I rather think there was + a blush as well as a smile upon his face, when he perceived + a little black pig frisking about his pony, and evidently a + self-elected addition to the party of the day. He tried to + look stern, and cracked his whip at the creature, but was in + a moment obliged to join in the general cheers. Poor piggy + soon found a strap round his neck, and was dragged into the + background. Scott, watching the retreat, repeated with mock + pathos the first verse of an old pastoral song:-- + + "What will I do gin my hoggie die? + My joy, my pride, my hoggie! + My only beast, I had nae mae, + And wow! but I was vogie!" + + The cheers were redoubled, and the squadron moved on. This + pig had taken, nobody could tell how, a most sentimental + attachment to Scott, and was constantly urging its + pretension to be admitted a regular member of his _tail_, + along with the greyhounds and terriers; but indeed I + remember him suffering another summer under the same sort of + pertinacity on the part of an affectionate hen. I leave the + explanation for philosophers; but such were the facts. I + have too much respect for the vulgarly calumniated donkey to + name him in the same category of pets with the pig and the + hen; but a year or two after this time, my wife used to + drive a couple of these animals in a little garden chair, + and whenever her father appeared at the door of our cottage, + we were sure to see Hannah More and Lady Morgan (as Anne + Scott had wickedly christened them) trotting from their + pasture to lay their noses over the paling, and, as + Washington Irving says of the old white-haired hedger with + the Parisian snuff-box, 'to have a pleasant crack wi' the + laird.'"[27] + +Carlyle, in his criticism on Scott--a criticism which will hardly, I +think, stand the test of criticism in its turn, so greatly does he +overdo the reaction against the first excessive appreciation of his +genius--adds a contribution of his own to this charming idyll, in +reference to the natural fascination which Scott seemed to exert over +almost all dumb creatures. A little Blenheim cocker, "one of the +smallest, beautifullest, and tiniest of lapdogs," with which Carlyle +was well acquainted, and which was also one of the shyest of dogs, +that would crouch towards his mistress and draw back "with angry +timidity" if any one did but look at him admiringly, once met in the +street "a tall, singular, busy-looking man," who halted by. The dog +ran towards him and began "fawning, frisking, licking at his feet;" +and every time he saw Sir Walter afterwards, in Edinburgh, he +repeated his demonstration of delight. Thus discriminating was this +fastidious Blenheim cocker even in the busy streets of Edinburgh. + +And Scott's attraction for dumb animals was only a lesser form of his +attraction for all who were in any way dependent on him, especially +his own servants and labourers. The story of his demeanour towards +them is one of the most touching ever written. "Sir Walter speaks to +every man as if they were blood-relations" was the common _formula_ in +which this demeanour was described. Take this illustration. There was +a little hunchbacked tailor, named William Goodfellow, living on his +property (but who at Abbotsford was termed Robin Goodfellow). This +tailor was employed to make the curtains for the new library, and had +been very proud of his work, but fell ill soon afterwards, and Sir +Walter was unremitting in his attention to him. "I can never forget," +says Mr. Lockhart, "the evening on which the poor tailor died. When +Scott entered the hovel, he found everything silent, and inferred from +the looks of the good women in attendance that the patient had fallen +asleep, and that they feared his sleep was the final one. He murmured +some syllables of kind regret: at the sound of his voice the dying +tailor unclosed his eyes, and eagerly and wistfully sat up, clasping +his hands with an expression of rapturous gratefulness and devotion +that, in the midst of deformity, disease, pain, and wretchedness, was +at once beautiful and sublime. He cried with a loud voice, 'The Lord +bless and reward you!' and expired with the effort."[28] Still more +striking is the account of his relation with Tom Purdie, the +wide-mouthed, under-sized, broad-shouldered, square-made, +thin-flanked woodsman, so well known afterwards by all Scott's friends +as he waited for his master in his green shooting-jacket, white hat, +and drab trousers. Scott first made Tom Purdie's acquaintance in his +capacity as judge, the man being brought before him for poaching, at +the time that Scott was living at Ashestiel. Tom gave so touching an +account of his circumstances--work scarce--wife and children in +want--grouse abundant--and his account of himself was so fresh and +even humorous, that Scott let him off the penalty, and made him his +shepherd. He discharged these duties so faithfully that he came to be +his master's forester and factotum, and indeed one of his best +friends, though a little disposed to tyrannize over Scott in his own +fashion. A visitor describes him as unpacking a box of new +importations for his master "as if he had been sorting some toys for a +restless child." But after Sir Walter had lost the bodily strength +requisite for riding, and was too melancholy for ordinary +conversation, Tom Purdie's shoulder was his great stay in wandering +through his woods, for with him he felt that he might either speak or +be silent at his pleasure. "What a blessing there is," Scott wrote in +his diary at that time, "in a fellow like Tom, whom no familiarity can +spoil, whom you may scold and praise and joke with, knowing the +quality of the man is unalterable in his love and reverence to his +master." After Scott's failure, Mr. Lockhart writes: "Before I leave +this period, I must note how greatly I admired the manner in which all +his dependents appeared to have met the reverse of his fortunes--a +reverse which inferred very considerable alteration in the +circumstances of every one of them. The butler, instead of being the +easy chief of a large establishment, was now doing half the work of +the house at probably half his former wages. Old Peter, who had been +for five and twenty years a dignified coachman, was now ploughman in +ordinary, only putting his horses to the carriage upon high and rare +occasions; and so on with all the rest that remained of the ancient +train. And all, to my view, seemed happier than they had ever done +before."[29] The illustration of this true confidence between Scott +and his servants and labourers might be extended to almost any length. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 25: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 6.] + +[Footnote 26: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 3.] + +[Footnote 27: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vi. 238--242.] + +[Footnote 28: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vii. 218.] + +[Footnote 29: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 170.] + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +SCOTT'S PARTNERSHIPS WITH THE BALLANTYNES. + + +Before I make mention of Scott's greatest works, his novels, I must +say a few words of his relation to the Ballantyne Brothers, who +involved him, and were involved by him, in so many troubles, and with +whose name the story of his broken fortunes is inextricably bound up. +James Ballantyne, the elder brother, was a schoolfellow of Scott's at +Kelso, and was the editor and manager of the _Kelso Mail_, an +anti-democratic journal, which had a fair circulation. Ballantyne was +something of an artist as regarded "type," and Scott got him therefore +to print his _Minstrelsy of the Border_, the excellent workmanship of +which attracted much attention in London. In 1802, on Scott's +suggestion, Ballantyne moved to Edinburgh; and to help him to move, +Scott, who was already meditating some investment of his little +capital in business other than literary, lent him 500l. Between this +and 1805, when Scott first became a partner of Ballantyne's in the +printing business, he used every exertion to get legal and literary +printing offered to James Ballantyne, and, according to Mr. Lockhart, +the concern "grew and prospered." At Whitsuntide, 1805, when _The Lay_ +had been published, but before Scott had the least idea of the +prospects of gain which mere literature would open to him, he +formally, though secretly, joined Ballantyne as a partner in the +printing business. He explains his motives for this step, so far at +least as he then recalled them, in a letter written after his +misfortunes, in 1826. "It is easy," he said, "no doubt for any friend +to blame me for entering into connexion with commercial matters at +all. But I wish to know what I could have done better--excluded from +the bar, and then from all profits for six years, by my colleague's +prolonged life. Literature was not in those days what poor Constable +has made it; and with my little capital I was too glad to make +commercially the means of supporting my family. I got but 600_l._ for +_The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, and--it was a price that made men's +hair stand on end--1000_l._ for _Marmion_. I have been far from +suffering by James Ballantyne. I owe it to him to say, that his +difficulties, as well as his advantages, are owing to me." + +This, though a true, was probably a very imperfect account of Scott's +motives. He ceased practising at the bar, I do not doubt, in great +degree from a kind of hurt pride at his ill-success, at a time when he +felt during every month more and more confidence in his own powers. He +believed, with some justice, that he understood some of the secrets of +popularity in literature, but he had always, till towards the end of +his life, the greatest horror of resting on literature alone as his +main resource; and he was not a man, nor was Lady Scott a woman, to +pinch and live narrowly. Were it only for his lavish generosity, that +kind of life would have been intolerable to him. Hence, he reflected, +that if he could but use his literary instinct to feed some commercial +undertaking, managed by a man he could trust, he might gain a +considerable percentage on his little capital, without so embarking in +commerce as to oblige him either to give up his status as a sheriff, +or his official duties as a clerk of session, or his literary +undertakings. In his old schoolfellow, James Ballantyne, he believed +he had found just such an agent as he wanted, the requisite link +between literary genius like his own, and the world which reads and +buys books; and he thought that, by feeling his way a little, he might +secure, through this partnership, besides the then very bare rewards +of authorship, at least a share in those more liberal rewards which +commercial men managed to squeeze for themselves out of successful +authors. And, further, he felt--and this was probably the greatest +unconscious attraction for him in this scheme--that with James +Ballantyne for his partner he should be the real leader and chief, and +rather in the position of a patron and benefactor of his colleague, +than of one in any degree dependent on the generosity or approval of +others. "If I have a very strong passion in the world," he once wrote +of himself--and the whole story of his life seems to confirm it--"it +is pride."[30] In James Ballantyne he had a faithful, but almost humble +friend, with whom he could deal much as he chose, and fear no wound to +his pride. He had himself helped Ballantyne to a higher line of +business than any hitherto aspired to by him. It was his own book +which first got the Ballantyne press its public credit. And if he +could but create a great commercial success upon this foundation, he +felt that he should be fairly entitled to share in the gains, which +not merely his loan of capital, but his foresight and courage had +opened to Ballantyne. + +And it is quite possible that Scott might have succeeded--or at all +events not seriously failed--if he had been content to stick to the +printing firm of James Ballantyne and Co., and had not launched also +into the bookselling and publishing firm of John Ballantyne and Co., +or had never begun the wild and dangerous practice of forestalling his +gains, and spending wealth which he had not earned. But when by way of +feeding the printing press of James Ballantyne and Co., he started in +1809 the bookselling and publishing firm of John Ballantyne and Co., +using as his agent a man as inferior in sterling worth to James, as +James was inferior in general ability to himself, he carefully dug a +mine under his own feet, of which we can only say, that nothing except +his genius could have prevented it from exploding long before it did. +The truth was evidently that James Ballantyne's respectful homage, and +John's humorous appreciation, all but blinded Scott's eyes to the +utter inadequacy of either of these men, especially the latter, to +supply the deficiencies of his own character for conducting business +of this kind with proper discretion. James Ballantyne, who was pompous +and indolent, though thoroughly honest, and not without some +intellectual insight, Scott used to call Aldiborontiphoscophornio. +John, who was clever but frivolous, dissipated, and tricksy, he termed +Rigdumfunnidos, or his "little Picaroon." It is clear from Mr. +Lockhart's account of the latter that Scott not only did not respect, +but despised him, though he cordially liked him, and that he passed +over, in judging him, vices which in a brother or son of his own he +would severely have rebuked. I believe myself that his liking for +co-operation with both, was greatly founded on his feeling that they +were simply creatures of his, to whom he could pretty well dictate +what he wanted,--colleagues whose inferiority to himself unconsciously +flattered his pride. He was evidently inclined to resent bitterly the +patronage of publishers. He sent word to Blackwood once with great +hauteur, after some suggestion from that house had been made to him +which appeared to him to interfere with his independence as an author, +that he was one of "the Black Hussars" of literature, who would not +endure that sort of treatment. Constable, who was really very liberal, +hurt his sensitive pride through the _Edinburgh Review_, of which +Jeffrey was editor. Thus the Ballantynes' great deficiency--that +neither of them had any independent capacity for the publishing +business, which would in any way hamper his discretion--though this is +just what commercial partners ought to have had, or they were not +worth their salt,--was, I believe, precisely what induced this Black +Hussar of literature, in spite of his otherwise considerable sagacity +and knowledge of human nature, to select them for partners. + +And yet it is strange that he not only chose them, but chose the +inferior and lighter-headed of the two for far the most important and +difficult of the two businesses. In the printing concern there was at +least this to be said, that of part of the business--the selection of +type and the superintendence of the executive part,--James Ballantyne +was a good judge. He was never apparently a good man of business, for +he kept no strong hand over the expenditure and accounts, which is the +core of success in every concern. But he understood types; and his +customers were publishers, a wealthy and judicious class, who were not +likely all to fail together. But to select a "Rigdumfunnidos,"--a +dissipated comic-song singer and horse-fancier,--for the head of a +publishing concern, was indeed a kind of insanity. It is told of John +Ballantyne, that after the successful negotiation with Constable for +_Rob Roy_, and while "hopping up and down in his glee," he exclaimed, +"'Is Rob's gun here, Mr. Scott? Would you object to my trying the old +barrel with a _few de joy_?' 'Nay, Mr. Puff,' said Scott, 'it would +burst and blow you to the devil before your time.' 'Johnny, my man,' +said Constable, 'what the mischief puts drawing at sight into _your_ +head?' Scott laughed heartily at this innuendo; and then observing +that the little man felt somewhat sore, called attention to the notes +of a bird in the adjoining shrubbery. 'And by-the-bye,' said he, as +they continued listening, ''tis a long time, Johnny, since we have had +"The Cobbler of Kelso."' Mr. Puff forthwith jumped up on a mass of +stone, and seating himself in the proper attitude of one working with +an awl, began a favourite interlude, mimicking a certain son of +Crispin, at whose stall Scott and he had often lingered when they were +schoolboys, and a blackbird, the only companion of his cell, that used +to sing to him while he talked and whistled to it all day long. With +this performance Scott was always delighted. Nothing could be richer +than the contrast of the bird's wild, sweet notes, some of which he +imitated with wonderful skill, and the accompaniment of the cobbler's +hoarse, cracked voice, uttering all manner of endearing epithets, +which Johnny multiplied and varied in a style worthy of the old women +in Rabelais at the birth of Pantagruel."[31] That passage gives +precisely the kind of estimation in which John Ballantyne was held +both by Scott and Constable. And yet it was to him that Scott +entrusted the dangerous and difficult duty of setting up a new +publishing house as a rival to the best publishers of the day. No +doubt Scott really relied on his own judgment for working the +publishing house. But except where his own books were concerned, no +judgment could have been worse. In the first place he was always +wanting to do literary jobs for a friend, and so advised the +publishing of all sorts of unsaleable books, because his friends +desired to write them. In the next place, he was a genuine historian, +and one of the antiquarian kind himself; he was himself really +interested in all sorts of historical and antiquarian issues,--and +very mistakenly gave the public credit for wishing to know what he +himself wished to know. I should add that Scott's good nature and +kindness of heart not only led him to help on many books which he knew +in himself could never answer, and some which, as he well knew, would +be altogether worthless, but that it greatly biassed his own +intellectual judgment. Nothing can be plainer than that he really held +his intimate friend, Joanna Baillie, a very great dramatic poet, a +much greater poet than himself, for instance; one fit to be even +mentioned as following--at a distance--in the track of Shakespeare. He +supposes Erskine to exhort him thus:-- + + "Or, if to touch such chord be thine, + Restore the ancient tragic line, + And emulate the notes that rung + From the wild harp which silent hung + By silver Avon's holy shore, + Till twice a hundred years roll'd o'er,-- + When she, the bold enchantress, came + With fearless hand and heart on flame, + From the pale willow snatch'd the treasure, + And swept it with a kindred measure, + Till Avon's swans, while rung the grove + With Montfort's hate and Basil's love, + Awakening at the inspired strain, + Deem'd their own Shakespeare lived again." + +Avon's swans must have been Avon's geese, I think, if they had deemed +anything of the kind. Joanna Baillie's dramas are "nice," and rather +dull; now and then she can write a song with the ease and sweetness +that suggest Shakespearian echoes. But Scott's judgment was obviously +blinded by his just and warm regard for Joanna Baillie herself. + +Of course with such interfering causes to bring unsaleable books to +the house--of course I do not mean that John Ballantyne and Co. +published for Joanna Baillie, or that they would have lost by it if +they had--the new firm published all sorts of books which did not sell +at all; while John Ballantyne himself indulged in a great many +expenses and dissipations, for which John Ballantyne and Co. had to +pay. Nor was it very easy for a partner who himself drew bills on the +future--even though he were the well-spring of all the paying business +the company had--to be very severe on a fellow-partner who supplied +his pecuniary needs in the same way. At all events, there is no +question that all through 1813 and 1814 Scott was kept in constant +suspense and fear of bankruptcy, by the ill-success of John Ballantyne +and Co., and the utter want of straightforwardness in John Ballantyne +himself as to the bills out, and which had to be provided against. It +was the publication of _Waverley_, and the consequent opening up of +the richest vein not only in Scott's own genius, but in his popularity +with the public, which alone ended these alarms; and the many +unsaleable works of John Ballantyne and Co. were then gradually +disposed of to Constable and others, to their own great loss, as part +of the conditions on which they received a share in the copyright of +the wonderful novels which sold like wildfire. But though in this way +the publishing business of John Ballantyne and Co. was saved, and its +affairs pretty decently wound up, the printing firm remained saddled +with some of their obligations; while Constable's business, on which +Scott depended for the means with which he was buying his estate, +building his castle, and settling money on his daughter-in-law, was +seriously injured by the purchase of all this unsaleable stock. + +I do not think that any one who looks into the complicated controversy +between the representatives of the Ballantynes and Mr. Lockhart, +concerning these matters, can be content with Mr. Lockhart's--no doubt +perfectly sincere--judgment on the case. It is obvious that amidst +these intricate accounts, he fell into one or two serious +blunders--blunders very unjust to James Ballantyne. And without +pretending to have myself formed any minute judgment on the details, I +think the following points clear:--(1.) That James Ballantyne was very +severely judged by Mr. Lockhart, on grounds which were never alleged +by Scott against him at all,--indeed on grounds on which he was +expressly exempted from all blame by Sir Walter. (2.) That Sir Walter +Scott was very severely judged by the representatives of the +Ballantynes, on grounds on which James Ballantyne himself never +brought any charge against him; on the contrary, he declared that he +had no charge to bring. (3.) That both Scott and his partners invited +ruin by freely spending gains which they only expected to earn, and +that in this Scott certainly set an example which he could hardly +expect feebler men not to follow. On the whole, I think the troubles +with the Ballantyne brothers brought to light not only that eager +gambling spirit in him, which his grandfather indulged with better +success and more moderation when he bought the hunter with money +destined for a flock of sheep, and then gave up gambling for ever, but +a tendency still more dangerous, and in some respects involving an +even greater moral defect,--I mean a tendency, chiefly due, I think, +to a very deep-seated pride,--to prefer inferior men as working +colleagues in business. And yet it is clear that if Scott were to +dabble in publishing at all, he really needed the check of men of +larger experience, and less literary turn of mind. The great majority +of consumers of popular literature are not, and indeed will hardly +ever be, literary men; and that is precisely why a publisher who is +not, in the main, literary,--who looks on authors' MSS. for the most +part with distrust and suspicion, much as a rich man looks at a +begging-letter, or a sober and judicious fish at an angler's fly,--is +so much less likely to run aground than such a man as Scott. The +untried author should be regarded by a wise publisher as a natural +enemy,--an enemy indeed of a class, rare specimens whereof will always +be his best friends, and who, therefore, should not be needlessly +affronted--but also as one of a class of whom nineteen out of every +twenty will dangle before the publisher's eyes wiles and hopes and +expectations of the most dangerous and illusory character,--which +constitute indeed the very perils that it is his true function in life +skilfully to evade. The Ballantynes were quite unfit for this +function; first, they had not the experience requisite for it; next, +they were altogether too much under Scott's influence. No wonder that +the partnership came to no good, and left behind it the germs of +calamity even more serious still. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 30: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 221.] + +[Footnote 31: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 218.] + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +THE WAVERLEY NOVELS. + + +In the summer of 1814, Scott took up again and completed--almost at a +single heat,--a fragment of a Jacobite story, begun in 1805 and then +laid aside. It was published anonymously, and its astonishing success +turned back again the scales of Scott's fortunes, already inclining +ominously towards a catastrophe. This story was _Waverley_. Mr. +Carlyle has praised _Waverley_ above its fellows. "On the whole, +contrasting _Waverley_, which was carefully written, with most of its +followers which were written extempore, one may regret the extempore +method." This is, however, a very unfortunate judgment. Not one of the +whole series of novels appears to have been written more completely +extempore than the great bulk of _Waverley_, including almost +everything that made it either popular with the million or fascinating +to the fastidious; and it is even likely that this is one of the +causes of its excellence. + +"The last two volumes," says Scott, in a letter to Mr. Morritt, "were +written in three weeks." And here is Mr. Lockhart's description of the +effect which Scott's incessant toil during the composition, produced +on a friend whose window happened to command the novelist's study:-- + + "Happening to pass through Edinburgh in June, 1814, I dined + one day with the gentleman in question (now the Honourable + William Menzies, one of the Supreme Judges at the Cape of + Good Hope), whose residence was then in George Street, + situated very near to, and at right angles with, North + Castle Street. It was a party of very young persons, most of + them, like Menzies and myself, destined for the Bar of + Scotland, all gay and thoughtless, enjoying the first flush + of manhood, with little remembrance of the yesterday, or + care of the morrow. When my companion's worthy father and + uncle, after seeing two or three bottles go round, left the + juveniles to themselves, the weather being hot, we adjourned + to a library which had one large window looking northwards. + After carousing here for an hour or more, I observed that a + shade had come over the aspect of my friend, who happened to + be placed immediately opposite to myself, and said something + that intimated a fear of his being unwell. 'No,' said he, 'I + shall be well enough presently, if you will only let me sit + where you are, and take my chair; for there is a confounded + hand in sight of me here, which has often bothered me + before, and now it won't let me fill my glass with a good + will.' I rose to change places with him accordingly, and he + pointed out to me this hand, which, like the writing on + Belshazzar's wall, disturbed his hour of hilarity. 'Since we + sat down,' he said, 'I have been watching it--it fascinates + my eye--it never stops--page after page is finished, and + thrown on that heap of MS., and still it goes on unwearied; + and so it will be till candles are brought in, and God knows + how long after that. It is the same every night--I can't + stand a sight of it when I am not at my books.' 'Some + stupid, dogged engrossing clerk, probably,' exclaimed + myself, 'or some other giddy youth in our society.' 'No, + boys,' said our host; 'I well know what hand it is--'tis + Walter Scott's.'"[32] + +If that is not extempore writing, it is difficult to say what +extempore writing is. But in truth, there is no evidence that any one +of the novels was laboured, or even so much as carefully composed. +Scott's method of composition was always the same; and, when writing +an imaginative work, the rate of progress seems to have been pretty +even, depending much more on the absence of disturbing engagements, +than on any mental irregularity. The morning was always his brightest +time; but morning or evening, in country or in town, well or ill, +writing with his own pen or dictating to an amanuensis in the +intervals of screaming-fits due to the torture of cramp in the +stomach, Scott spun away at his imaginative web almost as evenly as a +silkworm spins at its golden cocoon. Nor can I detect the slightest +trace of any difference in quality between the stories, such as can be +reasonably ascribed to comparative care or haste. There are +differences, and even great differences, of course, ascribable to the +less or greater suitability of the subject chosen to Scott's genius, +but I can find no trace of the sort of cause to which Mr. Carlyle +refers. Thus, few, I suppose, would hesitate to say that while _Old +Mortality_ is very near, if not quite, the finest of Scott's works, +_The Black Dwarf_ is not far from the other end of the scale. Yet the +two were written in immediate succession (_The Black Dwarf_ being the +first of the two), and were published together, as the first series of +_Tales of my Landlord_, in 1816. Nor do I think that any competent +critic would find any clear deterioration of quality in the novels of +the later years,--excepting of course the two written after the stroke +of paralysis. It is true, of course, that some of the subjects which +most powerfully stirred his imagination were among his earlier themes, +and that he could not effectually use the same subject twice, though +he now and then tried it. But making allowance for this +consideration, the imaginative power of the novels is as astonishingly +_even_ as the rate of composition itself. For my own part, I greatly +prefer _The Fortunes of Nigel_ (which was written in 1822) to +_Waverley_ which was begun in 1805, and finished in 1814, and though +very many better critics would probably decidedly disagree, I do not +think that any of them would consider this preference grotesque or +purely capricious. Indeed, though _Anne of Geierstein_,--the last +composed before Scott's stroke,--would hardly seem to any careful +judge the equal of _Waverley_, I do not much doubt that if it had +appeared in place of _Waverley_, it would have excited very nearly as +much interest and admiration; nor that had _Waverley_ appeared in +1829, in place of _Anne of Geierstein_, it would have failed to excite +very much more. In these fourteen most effective years of Scott's +literary life, during which he wrote twenty-three novels besides +shorter tales, the best stories appear to have been on the whole the +most rapidly written, probably because they took the strongest hold of +the author's imagination. + +Till near the close of his career as an author, Scott never avowed his +responsibility for any of these series of novels, and even took some +pains to mystify the public as to the identity between the author of +_Waverley_ and the author of _Tales of my Landlord_. The care with +which the secret was kept is imputed by Mr. Lockhart in some degree to +the habit of mystery which had grown upon Scott during his secret +partnership with the Ballantynes; but in this he seems to be +confounding two very different phases of Scott's character. No doubt +he was, as a professional man, a little ashamed of his commercial +speculation, and unwilling to betray it. But he was far from ashamed +of his literary enterprise, though it seems that he was at first very +anxious lest a comparative failure, or even a mere moderate success, +in a less ambitious sphere than that of poetry, should endanger the +great reputation he had gained as a poet. That was apparently the +first reason for secrecy. But, over and above this, it is clear that +the mystery stimulated Scott's imagination and saved him trouble as +well. He was obviously more free under the veil--free from the +liability of having to answer for the views of life or history +suggested in his stories; but besides this, what was of more +importance to him, the slight disguise stimulated his sense of humour, +and gratified the whimsical, boyish pleasure which he always had in +acting an imaginary character. He used to talk of himself as a sort of +Abou Hassan--a private man one day, and acting the part of a monarch +the next--with the kind of glee which indicated a real delight in the +change of parts, and I have little doubt that he threw himself with +the more gusto into characters very different from his own, in +consequence of the pleasure it gave him to conceive his friends +hopelessly misled by this display of traits, with which he supposed +that they could not have credited him even in imagination. Thus +besides relieving him of a host of compliments which he did not enjoy, +and enabling him the better to evade an ill-bred curiosity, the +disguise no doubt was the same sort of fillip to the fancy which a +mask and domino or a fancy dress are to that of their wearers. Even in +a disguise a man cannot cease to be himself; but he can get rid of his +improperly "imputed" righteousness--often the greatest burden he has +to bear--and of all the expectations formed on the strength, as Mr. +Clough says,-- + + "Of having been what one has been, + What one thinks one is, or thinks that others suppose one." + +To some men the freedom of this disguise is a real danger and +temptation. It never could have been so to Scott, who was in the main +one of the simplest as well as the boldest and proudest of men. And as +most men perhaps would admit that a good deal of even the best part of +their nature is rather suppressed than expressed by the name by which +they are known in the world, Scott must have felt this in a far higher +degree, and probably regarded the manifold characters under which he +was known to society, as representing him in some respects more justly +than any individual name could have done. His mind ranged hither and +thither over a wide field--far beyond that of his actual +experience,--and probably ranged over it all the more easily for not +being absolutely tethered to a single class of associations by any +public confession of his authorship. After all, when it became +universally known that Scott was the only author of all these tales, +it may be doubted whether the public thought as adequately of the +imaginative efforts which had created them, as they did while they +remained in some doubt whether there was a multiplicity of agencies at +work, or only one. The uncertainty helped them to realize the many +lives which were really led by the author of all these tales, more +completely than any confession of the individual authorship could have +done. The shrinking of activity in public curiosity and wonder which +follows the final determination of such ambiguities, is very apt to +result rather in a dwindling of the imaginative effort to enter into +the genius which gave rise to them, than in an increase of respect for +so manifold a creative power. + +When Scott wrote, such fertility as his in the production of novels +was regarded with amazement approaching to absolute incredulity. Yet +he was in this respect only the advanced-guard of a not +inconsiderable class of men and women who have a special gift for +pouring out story after story, containing a great variety of figures, +while retaining a certain even level of merit. There is more than one +novelist of the present day who has far surpassed Scott in the number +of his tales, and one at least of very high repute, who has, I +believe, produced more even within the same time. But though to our +larger experience, Scott's achievement, in respect of mere fertility, +is by no means the miracle which it once seemed, I do not think one of +his successors can compare with him for a moment in the ease and truth +with which he painted, not merely the life of his own time and +country--seldom indeed that of precisely his own time--but that of +days long past, and often too of scenes far distant. The most powerful +of all his stories, _Old Mortality_, was the story of a period more +than a century and a quarter before he wrote; and others,--which +though inferior to this in force, are nevertheless, when compared with +the so-called historical romances of any other English writer, what +sunlight is to moonlight, if you can say as much for the latter as to +admit even that comparison,--go back to the period of the Tudors, that +is, two centuries and a half. _Quentin Durward_, which is all but +amongst the best, runs back farther still, far into the previous +century, while _Ivanhoe_ and _The Talisman_, though not among the +greatest of Scott's works, carry us back more than five hundred years. +The new class of extempore novel writers, though more considerable +than, sixty years ago, any one could have expected ever to see it, is +still limited, and on any high level of merit will probably always be +limited, to the delineation of the times of which the narrator has +personal experience. Scott seemed to have had something very like +personal experience of a few centuries at least, judging by the ease +and freshness with which he poured out his stories of these centuries, +and though no one can pretend that even he could describe the period +of the Tudors as Miss Austen described the country parsons and squires +of George the Third's reign, or as Mr. Trollope describes the +politicians and hunting-men of Queen Victoria's, it is nevertheless +the evidence of a greater imagination to make us live so familiarly as +Scott does amidst the political and religious controversies of two or +three centuries' duration, to be the actual witnesses, as it were, of +Margaret of Anjou's throes of vain ambition, and Mary Stuart's +fascinating remorse, and Elizabeth's domineering and jealous +balancings of noble against noble, of James the First's shrewd +pedantries, and the Regent Murray's large forethought, of the politic +craft of Argyle, the courtly ruthlessness of Claverhouse, and the +high-bred clemency of Monmouth, than to reflect in countless +modifications the freaks, figures, and fashions of our own time. + +The most striking feature of Scott's romances is that, for the most part, +they are pivoted on public rather than mere private interests and +passions. With but few exceptions--(_The Antiquary_, _St. Ronan's Well_, +and _Guy Mannering_ are the most important)--Scott's novels give us an +imaginative view, not of mere individuals, but of individuals as they are +affected by the public strifes and social divisions of the age. And this +it is which gives his books so large an interest for old and young, +soldiers and statesmen, the world of society and the recluse, alike. You +can hardly read any novel of Scott's and not become better aware what +public life and political issues mean. And yet there is no artificiality, +no elaborate attitudinizing before the antique mirrors of the past, like +Bulwer's, no dressing out of clothes-horses like G. P. R. James. The +boldness and freshness of the present are carried back into the past, and +you see Papists and Puritans, Cavaliers and Roundheads, Jews, Jacobites, +and freebooters, preachers, schoolmasters, mercenary soldiers, gipsies, +and beggars, all living the sort of life which the reader feels that in +their circumstances and under the same conditions of time and place and +parentage, he might have lived too. Indeed, no man can read Scott without +being more of a public man, whereas the ordinary novel tends to make its +readers rather less of one than before. + +Next, though most of these stories are rightly called romances, no one +can avoid observing that they give that side of life which is +unromantic, quite as vigorously as the romantic side. This was not +true of Scott's poems, which only expressed one-half of his nature, +and were almost pure romances. But in the novels the business of life +is even better portrayed than its sentiments. Mr. Bagehot, one of the +ablest of Scott's critics, has pointed out this admirably in his essay +on _The Waverley Novels_. "Many historical novelists," he says, +"especially those who with care and pains have read up the detail, are +often evidently in a strait how to pass from their history to their +sentiment. The fancy of Sir Walter could not help connecting the two. +If he had given us the English side of the race to Derby, _he would +have described the Bank of England paying in sixpences, and also the +loves of the cashier_." No one who knows the novels well can question +this. Fergus MacIvor's ways and means, his careful arrangements for +receiving subsidies in black mail, are as carefully recorded as his +lavish highland hospitalities; and when he sends his silver cup to the +Gaelic bard who chaunts his greatness, the faithful historian does not +forget to let us know that the cup is his last, and that he is +hard-pressed for the generosities of the future. So too the habitual +thievishness of the highlanders is pressed upon us quite as vividly as +their gallantry and superstitions. And so careful is Sir Walter to +paint the petty pedantries of the Scotch traditional conservatism, +that he will not spare even Charles Edward--of whom he draws so +graceful a picture--the humiliation of submitting to old Bradwardine's +"solemn act of homage," but makes him go through the absurd ceremony +of placing his foot on a cushion to have its brogue unlatched by the +dry old enthusiast of heraldic lore. Indeed it was because Scott so +much enjoyed the contrast between the high sentiment of life and its +dry and often absurd detail, that his imagination found so much freer +a vent in the historical romance, than it ever found in the romantic +poem. Yet he clearly needed the romantic excitement of picturesque +scenes and historical interests, too. I do not think he would ever +have gained any brilliant success in the narrower region of the +domestic novel. He said himself, in expressing his admiration of Miss +Austen, "The big bow-wow strain I can do myself, like any now going, +but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and +characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the +sentiment, is denied to me." Indeed he tried it to some extent in _St. +Ronan's Well_, and so far as he tried it, I think he failed. Scott +needed a certain largeness of type, a strongly-marked class-life, and, +where it was possible, a free, out-of-doors life, for his +delineations. _No_ one could paint beggars and gipsies, and wandering +fiddlers, and mercenary soldiers, and peasants and farmers and +lawyers, and magistrates, and preachers, and courtiers, and statesmen, +and best of all perhaps queens and kings, with anything like his +ability. But when it came to describing the small differences of +manner, differences not due to external habits, so much as to internal +sentiment or education, or mere domestic circumstance, he was beyond +his proper field. In the sketch of the St. Ronan's Spa and the company +at the _table-d'hote_, he is of course somewhere near the mark,--he +was too able a man to fall far short of success in anything he really +gave to the world; but it is not interesting. Miss Austen would have +made Lady Penelope Penfeather a hundred times as amusing. We turn to +Meg Dods and Touchwood, and Cargill, and Captain Jekyl, and Sir Bingo +Binks, and to Clara Mowbray,--i. e. to the lives really moulded by +large and specific causes, for enjoyment, and leave the small gossip +of the company at the Wells as, relatively at least, a failure. And it +is well for all the world that it was so. The domestic novel, when +really of the highest kind, is no doubt a perfect work of art, and an +unfailing source of amusement; but it has nothing of the tonic +influence, the large instructiveness, the stimulating intellectual +air, of Scott's historic tales. Even when Scott is farthest from +reality--as in _Ivanhoe_ or _The Monastery_--he makes you open your +eyes to all sorts of historical conditions to which you would +otherwise be blind. The domestic novel, even when its art is perfect, +gives little but pleasure at the best; at the worst it is simply +scandal idealized. + +Scott often confessed his contempt for his own heroes. He said of +Edward Waverley, for instance, that he was "a sneaking piece of +imbecility," and that "if he had married Flora, she would have set him +up upon the chimney-piece as Count Borowlaski's wife used to do with +him. I am a bad hand at depicting a hero, properly so called, and +have an unfortunate propensity for the dubious characters of +borderers, buccaneers, highland robbers, and all others of a +Robin-Hood description."[33] In another letter he says, "My rogue +always, in despite of me, turns out my hero."[34] And it seems very +likely that in most of the situations Scott describes so well, his own +course would have been that of his wilder impulses, and not that of +his reason. Assuredly he would never have stopped hesitating on the +line between opposite courses as his Waverleys, his Mortons, his +Osbaldistones do. Whenever he was really involved in a party strife, +he flung prudence and impartiality to the winds, and went in like the +hearty partisan which his strong impulses made of him. But granting +this, I do not agree with his condemnation of all his own colourless +heroes. However much they differed in nature from Scott himself, the +even balance of their reason against their sympathies is certainly +well conceived, is in itself natural, and is an admirable expedient +for effecting that which was probably its real use to Scott,--the +affording an opportunity for the delineation of all the pros and cons +of the case, so that the characters on both sides of the struggle +should be properly understood. Scott's imagination was clearly far +wider--was far more permeated with the fixed air of sound +judgment--than his practical impulses. He needed a machinery for +displaying his insight into both sides of a public quarrel, and his +colourless heroes gave him the instrument he needed. Both in Morton's +case (in _Old Mortality_), and in Waverley's, the hesitation is +certainly well described. Indeed in relation to the controversy +between Covenanters and Royalists, while his political and martial +prepossessions went with Claverhouse, his reason and educated moral +feeling certainly were clearly identified with Morton. + +It is, however, obviously true that Scott's heroes are mostly created +for the sake of the facility they give in delineating the other +characters, and not the other characters for the sake of the heroes. +They are the imaginative neutral ground, as it were, on which opposing +influences are brought to play; and what Scott best loved to paint was +those who, whether by nature, by inheritance, or by choice, had become +unique and characteristic types of one-sided feeling, not those who +were merely in process of growth, and had not ranged themselves at +all. Mr. Carlyle, who, as I have said before, places Scott's romances +far below their real level, maintains that these great types of his +are drawn from the outside, and not made actually to live. "His Bailie +Jarvies, Dinmonts, Dalgettys (for their name is legion), do look and +talk like what they give themselves out for; they are, if not +_created_ and made poetically alive, yet deceptively _enacted_ as a +good player might do them. What more is wanted, then? For the reader +lying on a sofa, nothing more; yet for another sort of reader much. It +were a long chapter to unfold the difference in drawing a character +between a Scott and a Shakespeare or Goethe. Yet it is a difference +literally immense; they are of a different species; the value of the +one is not to be counted in the coin of the other. We might say in a +short word, which covers a long matter, that your Shakespeare fashions +his characters from the heart outwards; your Scott fashions them from +the skin inwards, never getting near the heart of them. The one set +become living men and women; the other amount to little more than +mechanical cases, deceptively painted automatons."[35] And then he +goes on to contrast Fenella in _Peveril of the Peak_ with Goethe's +Mignon. Mr. Carlyle could hardly have chosen a less fair comparison. +If Goethe is to be judged by his women, let Scott be judged by his +men. So judged, I think Scott will, as a painter of character--of +course, I am not now speaking of him as a poet,--come out far above +Goethe. Excepting the hero of his first drama (Goetz of the iron hand), +which by the way was so much in Scott's line that his first essay in +poetry was to translate it--not very well--I doubt if Goethe was ever +successful with his pictures of men. _Wilhelm Meister_ is, as Niebuhr +truly said, "a menagerie of tame animals." Doubtless Goethe's +women--certainly his women of culture--are more truly and inwardly +conceived and created than Scott's. Except Jeanie Deans and Madge +Wildfire, and perhaps Lucy Ashton, Scott's women are apt to be +uninteresting, either pink and white toys, or hardish women of the +world. But then no one can compare the men of the two writers, and not +see Scott's vast pre-eminence on that side. + +I think the deficiency of his pictures of women, odd as it seems to +say so, should be greatly attributed to his natural chivalry. His +conception of women of his own or a higher class was always too +romantic. He hardly ventured, as it were, in his tenderness for them, +to look deeply into their little weaknesses and intricacies of +character. With women of an inferior class, he had not this feeling. +Nothing can be more perfect than the manner in which he blends the +dairy-woman and woman of business in Jeanie Deans, with the lover and +the sister. But once make a woman beautiful, or in any way an object +of homage to him, and Scott bowed so low before the image of her, +that he could not go deep into her heart. He could no more have +analysed such a woman, as Thackeray analyzed Lady Castlewood, or +Amelia, or Becky, or as George Eliot analysed Rosamond Vincy, than he +could have vivisected Camp or Maida. To some extent, therefore, +Scott's pictures of women remain something in the style of the +miniatures of the last age--bright and beautiful beings without any +special character in them. He was dazzled by a fair heroine. He could +not take them up into his imagination as real beings as he did men. +But then how living are his men, whether coarse or noble! What a +picture, for instance, is that in _A Legend of Montrose_ of the +conceited, pragmatic, but prompt and dauntless soldier of fortune, +rejecting Argyle's attempts to tamper with him, in the dungeon at +Inverary, suddenly throwing himself on the disguised Duke so soon as +he detects him by his voice, and wresting from him the means of his +own liberation! Who could read that scene and say for a moment that +Dalgetty is painted "from the skin inwards"? It was just Scott himself +breathing his own life through the habits of a good specimen of the +mercenary soldier--realizing where the spirit of hire would end, and +the sense of honour would begin--and preferring, even in a dungeon, +the audacious policy of a sudden attack to that of crafty negotiation. +What a picture (and a very different one) again is that in +_Redgauntlet_ of Peter Peebles, the mad litigant, with face emaciated +by poverty and anxiety, and rendered wild by "an insane lightness +about the eyes," dashing into the English magistrate's court for a +warrant against his fugitive counsel. Or, to take a third instance, as +different as possible from either, how powerfully conceived is the +situation in _Old Mortality_, where Balfour of Burley, in his fanatic +fury at the defeat of his plan for a new rebellion, pushes the +oak-tree, which connects his wild retreat with the outer world, into +the stream, and tries to slay Morton for opposing him. In such scenes +and a hundred others--for these are mere random examples--Scott +undoubtedly painted his masculine figures from as deep and inward a +conception of the character of the situation as Goethe ever attained, +even in drawing Mignon, or Klaerchen, or Gretchen. The distinction has +no real existence. Goethe's pictures of women were no doubt the +intuitions of genius; and so are Scott's of men--and here and there of +his women too. Professional women he can always paint with power. Meg +Dods, the innkeeper, Meg Merrilies, the gipsy, Mause Headrigg, the +Covenanter, Elspeth, the old fishwife in _The Antiquary_, and the old +crones employed to nurse and watch, and lay out the corpse, in _The +Bride of Lammermoor_, are all in their way impressive figures. + +And even in relation to women of a rank more fascinating to Scott, and +whose inner character was perhaps on that account, less familiar to +his imagination, grant him but a few hints from history, and he draws +a picture which, for vividness and brilliancy, may almost compare with +Shakespeare's own studies in English history. Had Shakespeare painted +the scene in _The Abbot_, in which Mary Stuart commands one of her +Mary's in waiting to tell her at what bridal she last danced, and Mary +Fleming blurts out the reference to the marriage of Sebastian at +Holyrood, would any one hesitate to regard it as a stroke of genius +worthy of the great dramatist? This picture of the Queen's mind +suddenly thrown off its balance, and betraying, in the agony of the +moment, the fear and remorse which every association with Darnley +conjured up, is painted "from the heart outwards," not "from the skin +inwards," if ever there were such a painting in the world. Scott +hardly ever failed in painting kings or peasants, queens or +peasant-women. There was something in the well-marked type of both to +catch his imagination, which can always hit off the grander features +of royalty, and the homelier features of laborious humility. Is there +any sketch traced in lines of more sweeping grandeur and more +impressive force than the following of Mary Stuart's lucid interval of +remorse--lucid compared with her ordinary mood, though it was of a +remorse that was almost delirious--which breaks in upon her hour of +fascinating condescension?-- + + "'Are they not a lovely couple, my Fleming? and is it not + heart-rending to think that I must be their ruin?' + + "'Not so,' said Roland Graeme, 'it is we, gracious sovereign, + who will be your deliverers.' '_Ex oribus parvulorum!_' said + the queen, looking upward; 'if it is by the mouth of these + children that heaven calls me to resume the stately thoughts + which become my birth and my rights, thou wilt grant them + thy protection, and to me the power of rewarding their + zeal.' Then turning to Fleming, she instantly added, 'Thou + knowest, my friend, whether to make those who have served me + happy, was not ever Mary's favourite pastime. When I have + been rebuked by the stern preachers of the Calvinistic + heresy--when I have seen the fierce countenances of my + nobles averted from me, has it not been because I mixed in + the harmless pleasures of the young and gay, and rather for + the sake of their happiness than my own, have mingled in the + masque, the song or the dance, with the youth of my + household? Well, I repent not of it--though Knox termed it + sin, and Morton degradation--I was happy because I saw + happiness around me: and woe betide the wretched jealousy + that can extract guilt out of the overflowings of an + unguarded gaiety!--Fleming, if we are restored to our + throne, shall we not have one blithesome day at a blithesome + bridal, of which we must now name neither the bride nor the + bridegroom? But that bridegroom shall have the barony of + Blairgowrie, a fair gift even for a queen to give, and that + bride's chaplet shall be twined with the fairest pearls that + ever were found in the depths of Lochlomond; and thou + thyself, Mary Fleming, the best dresser of tires that ever + busked the tresses of a queen, and who would scorn to touch + those of any woman of lower rank--thou thyself shalt for my + love twine them into the bride's tresses.--Look, my Fleming, + suppose then such clustered locks as these of our Catherine, + they would not put shame upon thy skill.' So saying she + passed her hand fondly over the head of her youthful + favourite, while her more aged attendant replied + despondently, 'Alas, madam, your thoughts stray far from + home.' 'They do, my Fleming,' said the queen, 'but is it + well or kind in you to call them back?--God knows they have + kept the perch this night but too closely.--Come, I will + recall the gay vision, were it but to punish them. Yes, at + that blithesome bridal, Mary herself shall forget the weight + of sorrows, and the toil of state, and herself once more + lead a measure.--At whose wedding was it that we last + danced, my Fleming? I think care has troubled my memory--yet + something of it I should remember, canst thou not aid me? I + know thou canst.' 'Alas, madam,' replied the lady. 'What,' + said Mary, 'wilt thou not help us so far? this is a peevish + adherence to thine own graver opinion which holds our talk + as folly. But thou art court-bred and wilt well understand + me when I say the queen _commands_ Lady Fleming to tell her + when she led the last _branle_.' With a face deadly pale and + a mien as if she were about to sink into the earth, the + court-bred dame, no longer daring to refuse obedience, + faltered out, 'Gracious lady--if my memory err not--it was + at a masque in Holyrood--at the marriage of Sebastian.' The + unhappy queen, who had hitherto listened with a melancholy + smile, provoked by the reluctance with which the Lady + Fleming brought out her story, at this ill-fated word + interrupted her with a shriek so wild and loud that the + vaulted apartment rang, and both Roland and Catherine sprung + to their feet in the utmost terror and alarm. Meantime, Mary + seemed, by the train of horrible ideas thus suddenly + excited, surprised not only beyond self-command, but for the + moment beyond the verge of reason. 'Traitress,' she said to + the Lady Fleming, 'thou wouldst slay thy sovereign. Call my + French guards--_a moi! a moi! mes Francais_!--I am beset + with traitors in mine own palace--they have murdered my + husband--Rescue! Rescue! for the Queen of Scotland!' She + started up from her chair--her features late so exquisitely + lovely in their paleness, now inflamed with the fury of + frenzy, and resembling those of a Bellona. 'We will take the + field ourself,' she said; 'warn the city--warn Lothian and + Fife--saddle our Spanish barb, and bid French Paris see our + petronel be charged. Better to die at the head of our brave + Scotsmen, like our grandfather at Flodden, than of a broken + heart like our ill-starred father.' 'Be patient--be + composed, dearest sovereign,' said Catherine; and then + addressing Lady Fleming angrily, she added, 'How could you + say aught that reminded her of her husband?' The word + reached the ear of the unhappy princess who caught it up, + speaking with great rapidity, 'Husband!--what husband? Not + his most Christian Majesty--he is ill at ease--he cannot + mount on horseback--not him of the Lennox--but it was the + Duke of Orkney thou wouldst say?' 'For God's love, madam, be + patient!' said the Lady Fleming. But the queen's excited + imagination could by no entreaty be diverted from its + course. 'Bid him come hither to our aid,' she said, 'and + bring with him his lambs, as he calls them--Bowton, Hay of + Talla, Black Ormiston and his kinsman Hob--Fie, how swart + they are, and how they smell of sulphur! What! closeted with + Morton? Nay, if the Douglas and the Hepburn hatch the + complot together, the bird when it breaks the shell will + scare Scotland, will it not, my Fleming?' 'She grows wilder + and wilder,' said Fleming. 'We have too many hearers for + these strange words.' 'Roland,' said Catherine, 'in the name + of God begone!--you cannot aid us here--leave us to deal + with her alone--away--away!" + +And equally fine is the scene in _Kenilworth_ in which Elizabeth +undertakes the reconciliation of the haughty rivals, Sussex and +Leicester, unaware that in the course of the audience she herself will +have to bear a great strain on her self-command, both in her feelings +as a queen and her feelings as a lover. Her grand rebukes to both, her +ill-concealed preference for Leicester, her whispered ridicule of +Sussex, the impulses of tenderness which she stifles, the flashes of +resentment to which she gives way, the triumph of policy over private +feeling, her imperious impatience when she is baffled, her jealousy as +she grows suspicious of a personal rival, her gratified pride and +vanity when the suspicion is exchanged for the clear evidence, as she +supposes, of Leicester's love, and her peremptory conclusion of the +audience, bring before the mind a series of pictures far more vivid +and impressive than the greatest of historical painters could fix on +canvas, even at the cost of the labour of years. Even more brilliant, +though not so sustained and difficult an effort of genius, is the +later scene in the same story, in which Elizabeth drags the unhappy +Countess of Leicester from her concealment in one of the grottoes of +Kenilworth Castle, and strides off with her, in a fit of vindictive +humiliation and Amazonian fury, to confront her with her husband. But +this last scene no doubt is more in Scott's way. He can always paint +women in their more masculine moods. Where he frequently fails is in +the attempt to indicate the finer shades of women's nature. In Amy +Robsart herself, for example, he is by no means generally successful, +though in an early scene her childish delight in the various orders +and decorations of her husband is painted with much freshness and +delicacy. But wherever, as in the case of queens, Scott can get a +telling hint from actual history, he can always so use it as to make +history itself seem dim to the equivalent for it which he gives us. + +And yet, as every one knows, Scott was excessively free in his +manipulations of history for the purposes of romance. In _Kenilworth_ +he represents Shakespeare's plays as already in the mouths of +courtiers and statesmen, though he lays the scene in the eighteenth +year of Elizabeth, when Shakespeare was hardly old enough to rob an +orchard. In _Woodstock_, on the contrary, he insists, if you compare +Sir Henry Lee's dates with the facts, that Shakespeare died twenty +years at least before he actually died. The historical basis, again, +of _Woodstock_ and of _Redgauntlet_ is thoroughly untrustworthy, and +about all the minuter details of history,--unless so far as they were +characteristic of the age,--I do not suppose that Scott in his +romances ever troubled himself at all. And yet few historians--not +even Scott himself when he exchanged romance for history--ever drew +the great figures of history with so powerful a hand. In writing +history and biography Scott has little or no advantage over very +inferior men. 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_. Take this +illustration for instance, where George Heriot the goldsmith (Jingling +Geordie, as the king familiarly calls him) has just been speaking of +Lord Huntinglen, as "a man of the old rough world that will drink and +swear:"-- + + "'O Geordie!' exclaimed the king, 'these are auld-warld + frailties, of whilk we dare not pronounce even ourselves + absolutely free. But the warld grows worse from day to day, + Geordie. The juveniles of this age may weel say with the + poet,-- + + "AEtas parentum pejor avis tulit + Nos nequiores--" + + This Dalgarno does not drink so much; aye or swear so much, + as his father, but he wenches, Geordie, and he breaks his + word and oath baith. As to what ye say of the leddy and the + ministers, we are all fallible creatures, Geordie, priests + and kings as weel as others; and wha kens but what that may + account for the difference between this Dalgarno and his + father? The earl is the vera soul of honour, and cares nae + mair for warld's gear than a noble hound for the quest of a + foulmart; but as for his son, he was like to brazen us all + out--ourselves, Steenie, Baby Charles, and our Council, till + he heard of the tocher, and then by my kingly crown he lap + like a cock at a grossart! These are discrepancies betwixt + parent and son not to be accounted for naturally, according + to Baptista Porta, Michael Scott _de secretis_, and others. + Ah, Jingling Geordie, if your clouting the caldron, and + jingling on pots, pans, and veshels of all manner of metal, + hadna jingled a' your grammar out of your head, I could have + touched on that matter to you at mair length.' ... Heriot + inquired whether Lord Dalgarno had consented to do the Lady + Hermione justice. 'Troth, man, I have small doubt that he + will,' quoth the king, 'I gave him the schedule of her + worldly substance, which you delivered to us in the council, + and we allowed him half an hour to chew the cud upon that. + It is rare reading for bringing him to reason. I left Baby + Charles and Steenie laying his duty before him, and if he + can resist doing what _they_ desire him, why I wish he would + teach _me_ the gate of it. O Geordie, Jingling Geordie, it + was grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the guilt of + dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing _on_ the turpitude of + incontinence.' 'I am afraid,' said George Heriot, more + hastily than prudently, 'I might have thought of the old + proverb of Satan reproving sin.' 'Deil hae our saul, + neighbour,' said the king, reddening, 'but ye are not blate! + I gie ye licence to speak freely, and by our saul, ye do not + let the privilege become lost, _non utendo_--it will suffer + no negative prescription in your hands. Is it fit, think ye, + that Baby Charles should let his thoughts be publicly seen? + No, no, princes' thoughts are _arcana imperii: qui nescit + dissimulare, nescit regnare_. Every liege subject is bound + to speak the whole truth to the king, but there is nae + reciprocity of obligation--and for Steenie having been + whiles a dike-louper at a time, is it for you, who are his + goldsmith, and to whom, I doubt, he awes an uncomatable sum, + to cast that up to him?" + +Assuredly there is no undue favouring of Stuarts in such a picture as +that. + +Scott's humour is, I think, of very different qualities in relation to +different subjects. Certainly he was at times capable of considerable +heaviness of hand,--of the Scotch "wut" which has been so irreverently +treated by English critics. His rather elaborate jocular +introductions, under the name of Jedediah Cleishbotham, are clearly +laborious at times. And even his own letters to his daughter-in-law, +which Mr. Lockhart seems to regard as models of tender playfulness and +pleasantry, seem to me decidedly elephantine. Not unfrequently, too, +his stereotyped jokes weary. Dalgetty bores you almost as much as he +would do in real life,--which is a great fault in art. Bradwardine +becomes a nuisance, and as for Sir Piercie Shafton, he is beyond +endurance. Like some other Scotchmen of genius, Scott twanged away at +any effective chord till it more than lost its expressiveness. But in +dry humour, and in that higher humour which skilfully blends the +ludicrous and the pathetic, so that it is hardly possible to separate +between smiles and tears, Scott is a master. His canny innkeeper, who, +having sent away all the peasemeal to the camp of the Covenanters, and +all the oatmeal (with deep professions of duty) to the castle and its +cavaliers, in compliance with the requisitions sent to him on each +side, admits with a sigh to his daughter that "they maun gar wheat +flour serve themsels for a blink,"--his firm of solicitors, Greenhorn +and Grinderson, whose senior partner writes respectfully to clients in +prosperity, and whose junior partner writes familiarly to those in +adversity,--his arbitrary nabob who asks how the devil any one should +be able to mix spices so well "as one who has been where they +grow;"--his little ragamuffin who indignantly denies that he has +broken his promise not to gamble away his sixpences at pitch-and-toss +because he has gambled them away at "neevie-neevie-nick-nack,"--and +similar figures abound in his tales,--are all creations which make one +laugh inwardly as we read. But he has a much higher humour still, that +inimitable power of shading off ignorance into knowledge and +simplicity into wisdom, which makes his picture of Jeanie Deans, for +instance, so humorous as well as so affecting. When Jeanie reunites +her father to her husband by reminding the former how it would +sometimes happen that "twa precious saints might pu' sundrywise like +twa cows riving at the same hayband," she gives us an admirable +instance of Scott's higher humour. Or take Jeanie Deans's letter to +her father communicating to him the pardon of his daughter and her own +interview with the Queen:-- + + "DEAREST AND TRULY HONOURED FATHER.--This comes + with my duty to inform you, that it has pleased God to + redeem that captivitie of my poor sister, in respect the + Queen's blessed Majesty, for whom we are ever bound to pray, + hath redeemed her soul from the slayer, granting the ransom + of her, whilk is ane pardon or reprieve. And I spoke with + the Queen face to face, and yet live; for she is not muckle + differing from other grand leddies, saving that she has a + stately presence, and een like a blue huntin' hawk's, whilk + gaed throu' and throu' me like a Highland durk--And all this + good was, alway under the Great Giver, to whom all are but + instruments, wrought for us by the Duk of Argile, wha is ane + native true-hearted Scotsman, and not pridefu', like other + folk we ken of--and likewise skeely enow in bestial, whereof + he has promised to gie me twa Devonshire kye, of which he is + enamoured, although I do still haud by the real hawkit + Airshire breed--and I have promised him a cheese; and I wad + wuss ye, if Gowans, the brockit cow, has a quey, that she + suld suck her fill of milk, as I am given to understand he + has none of that breed, and is not scornfu' but will take a + thing frae a puir body, that it may lighten their heart of + the loading of debt that they awe him. Also his honour the + Duke will accept ane of our Dunlop cheeses, and it sall be + my faut if a better was ever yearned in Lowden."--[Here + follow some observations respecting the breed of cattle, and + the produce of the dairy, which it is our intention to + forward to the Board of Agriculture.]--"Nevertheless, these + are but matters of the after-harvest, in respect of the + great good which Providence hath gifted us with--and, in + especial, poor Effie's life. And oh, my dear father, since + it hath pleased God to be merciful to her, let her not want + your free pardon, whilk will make her meet to be ane vessel + of grace, and also a comfort to your ain graie hairs. Dear + Father, will ye let the Laird ken that we have had friends + strangely raised up to us, and that the talent whilk he lent + me will be thankfully repaid. I hae some of it to the fore; + and the rest of it is not knotted up in ane purse or napkin, + but in ane wee bit paper, as is the fashion heir, whilk I am + assured is gude for the siller. And, dear father, through + Mr. Butler's means I hae gude friendship with the Duke, for + there had been kindness between their forbears in the auld + troublesome time byepast. And Mrs. Glass has been kind like + my very mother. She has a braw house here, and lives bien + and warm, wi' twa servant lasses, and a man and a callant in + the shop. And she is to send you doun a pound of her + hie-dried, and some other tobaka, and we maun think of some + propine for her, since her kindness hath been great. And the + Duk is to send the pardon doun by an express messenger, in + respect that I canna travel sae fast; and I am to come doun + wi' twa of his Honour's servants--that is, John Archibald, a + decent elderly gentleman, that says he has seen you lang + syne, when ye were buying beasts in the west frae the Laird + of Aughtermuggitie--but maybe ye winna mind him--ony way, + he's a civil man--and Mrs. Dolly Dutton, that is to be + dairy-maid at Inverara: and they bring me on as far as + Glasgo', whilk will make it nae pinch to win hame, whilk I + desire of all things. May the Giver of all good things keep + ye in your outgauns and incomings, whereof devoutly prayeth + your loving dauter, + + "JEAN DEANS." + +This contains an example of Scott's rather heavy jocularity as well as +giving us a fine illustration of his highest and deepest and sunniest +humour. Coming where it does, the joke inserted about the Board of +Agriculture is rather like the gambol of a rhinoceros trying to +imitate the curvettings of a thoroughbred horse. + +Some of the finest touches of his humour are no doubt much heightened +by his perfect command of the genius as well as the dialect of a +peasantry, in whom a true culture of mind and sometimes also of heart +is found in the closest possible contact with the humblest pursuits +and the quaintest enthusiasm for them. But Scott, with all his turn +for irony--and Mr. Lockhart says that even on his death-bed he used +towards his children the same sort of good-humoured irony to which he +had always accustomed them in his life--certainly never gives us any +example of that highest irony which is found so frequently in +Shakespeare, which touches the paradoxes of the spiritual life of the +children of earth, and which reached its highest point in Isaiah. Now +and then in his latest diaries--the diaries written in his deep +affliction--he comes near the edge of it. Once, for instance, he says, +"What a strange scene if the surge of conversation could suddenly ebb +like the tide, and show us the state of people's real minds! + + 'No eyes the rocks discover + Which lurk beneath the deep.' + +Life could not be endured were it seen in reality." But this is not +irony, only the sort of meditation which, in a mind inclined to thrust +deep into the secrets of life's paradoxes, is apt to lead to irony. +Scott, however, does not thrust deep in this direction. He met the +cold steel which inflicts the deepest interior wounds, like a soldier, +and never seems to have meditated on the higher paradoxes of life till +reason reeled. The irony of Hamlet is far from Scott. His imagination +was essentially one of distinct embodiment. He never even seemed so +much as to contemplate that sundering of substance and form, that +rending away of outward garments, that unclothing of the soul, in +order that it might be more effectually clothed upon, which is at the +heart of anything that may be called spiritual irony. The constant +abiding of his mind within the well-defined forms of some one or other +of the conditions of outward life and manners, among the scores of +different spheres of human habit, was, no doubt, one of the secrets of +his genius; but it was also its greatest limitation. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 32: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 171-3.] + +[Footnote 33: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 175-6.] + +[Footnote 34: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 46.] + +[Footnote 35: Carlyle's _Miscellaneous Essays_, iv. 174-5.] + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +MORALITY AND RELIGION. + + +The very same causes which limited Scott's humour and irony to the +commoner fields of experience, and prevented him from ever introducing +into his stories characters of the highest type of moral +thoughtfulness, gave to his own morality and religion, which were, I +think, true to the core so far as they went, a shade of distinct +conventionality. It is no doubt quite true, as he himself tells us, +that he took more interest in his mercenaries and moss-troopers, +outlaws, gipsies, and beggars, than he did in the fine ladies and +gentlemen under a cloud whom he adopted as heroines and heroes. But +that was the very sign of his conventionalism. Though he interested +himself more in these irregular persons, he hardly ever ventured to +paint their inner life so as to show how little there was to choose +between the sins of those who are at war with society and the sins of +those who bend to the yoke of society. He widened rather than narrowed +the chasm between the outlaw and the respectable citizen, even while +he did not disguise his own romantic interest in the former. He +extenuated, no doubt, the sins of all brave and violent defiers of the +law, as distinguished from the sins of crafty and cunning abusers of +the law. But the leaning he had to the former was, as he was willing +to admit, what he regarded as a "naughty" leaning. He did not attempt +for a moment to balance accounts between them and society. He paid his +tribute as a matter of course to the established morality, and only +put in a word or two by way of attempt to diminish the severity of the +sentence on the bold transgressor. And then, where what is called the +"law of honour" comes in to traverse the law of religion, he had no +scruple in setting aside the latter in favour of the customs of +gentlemen, without any attempt to justify that course. Yet it is +evident from various passages in his writings that he held Christian +duty inconsistent with duelling, and that he held himself a sincere +Christian. In spite of this, when he was fifty-six, and under no +conceivable hurry or perturbation of feeling, but only concerned to +defend his own conduct--which was indeed plainly right--as to a +political disclosure which he had made in his life of Napoleon, he +asked his old friend William Clerk to be his second, if the expected +challenge from General Gourgaud should come, and declared his firm +intention of accepting it. On the strength of official evidence he had +exposed some conduct of General Gourgaud's at St. Helena, which +appeared to be far from honourable, and he thought it his duty on that +account to submit to be shot at by General Gourgaud, if General +Gourgaud had wished it. In writing to William Clerk to ask him to be +his second, he says, "Like a man who finds himself in a scrape, +General Gourgaud may wish to fight himself out of it, and if the +quarrel should be thrust on me, why, _I will not baulk him, Jackie_. +He shall not dishonour the country through my sides, I can assure +him." In other words, Scott acted just as he had made Waverley and +others of his heroes act, on a code of honour which he knew to be +false, and he must have felt in this case to be something worse. He +thought himself at that time under the most stringent obligations both +to his creditors and his children, to do all in his power to redeem +himself and his estate from debt. Nay, more, he held that his life was +a trust from his Creator, which he had no right to throw away merely +because a man whom he had not really injured, was indulging a strong +wish to injure him; but he could so little brook the imputation of +physical cowardice, that he was moral coward enough to resolve to meet +General Gourgaud, if General Gourgaud lusted after a shot at him. Nor +is there any trace preserved of so much as a moral scruple in his own +mind on the subject, and this though there are clear traces in his +other writings as to what he thought Christian morality required. But +the Border chivalry was so strong in Scott that, on subjects of this +kind at least, his morality was the conventional morality of a day +rapidly passing away. + +He showed the same conventional feeling in his severity towards one of +his own brothers who had been guilty of cowardice. Daniel Scott was +the black sheep of the family. He got into difficulties in business, +formed a bad connexion with an artful woman, and was sent to try his +fortunes in the West Indies. There he was employed in some service +against a body of refractory negroes--we do not know its exact +nature--and apparently showed the white feather. Mr. Lockhart says +that "he returned to Scotland a dishonoured man; and though he found +shelter and compassion from his mother, his brother would never see +him again. Nay, when, soon after, his health, shattered by dissolute +indulgence, ... gave way altogether, and he died, as yet a young man, +the poet refused either to attend his funeral or to wear mourning for +him, like the rest of his family."[36] Indeed he always spoke of him +as his "relative," not as his brother. Here again Scott's severity was +due to his brother's failure as a "man of honour," i. e. in courage. +He was forbearing enough with vices of a different kind; made John +Ballantyne's dissipation the object rather of his jokes than of his +indignation; and not only mourned for him, but really grieved for him +when he died. It is only fair to say, however, that for this +conventional scorn of a weakness rather than a sin, Scott sorrowed +sincerely later in life, and that in sketching the physical cowardice +of Connochar in _The Fair Maid of Perth_, he deliberately made an +attempt to atone for this hardness towards his brother by showing how +frequently the foundation of cowardice may be laid in perfectly +involuntary physical temperament, and pointing out with what noble +elements of disposition it may be combined. But till reflection on +many forms of human character had enlarged Scott's charity, and +perhaps also the range of his speculative ethics, he remained a +conventional moralist, and one, moreover, the type of whose +conventional code was borrowed more from that of honour than from that +of religious principle. There is one curious passage in his diary, +written very near the end of his life, in which Scott even seems to +declare that conventional standards of conduct are better, or at least +safer, than religious standards of conduct. He says in his diary for +the 15th April, 1828,--"Dined with Sir Robert Inglis, and met Sir +Thomas Acland, my old and kind friend. I was happy to see him. He may +be considered now as the head of the religious party in the House of +Commons--a powerful body which Wilberforce long commanded. It is a +difficult situation, for the adaptation of religious motives to +earthly policy is apt--among the infinite delusions of the human +heart--to be a snare."[37] His letters to his eldest son, the young +cavalry officer, on his first start in life, are much admired by Mr. +Lockhart, but to me they read a little hard, a little worldly, and +extremely conventional. Conventionality was certainly to his mind +almost a virtue. + +Of enthusiasm in religion Scott always spoke very severely; both in his +novels and in his letters and private diary. In writing to Lord Montague, +he speaks of such enthusiasm as was then prevalent at Oxford, and which +makes, he says, "religion a motive and a pretext for particular lines of +thinking in politics and in temporal affairs" [as if it could help doing +that!] as "teaching a new way of going to the devil for God's sake," and +this expressly, because when the young are infected with it, it disunites +families, and sets "children in opposition to their parents."[38] He gives +us, however, one reason for his dread of anything like enthusiasm, which +is not conventional;--that it interferes with the submissive and tranquil +mood which is the only true religious mood. Speaking in his diary of a +weakness and fluttering at the heart, from which he had suffered, he says, +"It is an awful sensation, and would have made an enthusiast of me, had I +indulged my imagination on religious subjects. I have been always careful +to place my mind in the most tranquil posture which it can assume, during +my private exercises of devotion."[39] And in this avoidance of indulging +the imagination on religious, or even spiritual subjects, Scott goes far +beyond Shakespeare. I do not think there is a single study in all his +romances of what may be fairly called a pre-eminently spiritual character +as such, though Jeanie Deans approaches nearest to it. The same may be +said of Shakespeare. But Shakespeare, though he has never drawn a +pre-eminently spiritual character, often enough indulged his imagination +while meditating on spiritual themes. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 36: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii. 198-9.] + +[Footnote 37: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 231.] + +[Footnote 38: Ibid., vii. 255-6.] + +[Footnote 39: Ibid., viii. 292.] + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +DISTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS AT ABBOTSFORD. + + +Between 1814 and the end of 1825, Scott's literary labour was +interrupted only by one serious illness, and hardly interrupted by +that,--by a few journeys,--one to Paris after the battle of Waterloo, +and several to London,--and by the worry of a constant stream of +intrusive visitors. Of his journeys he has left some records; but I +cannot say that I think Scott would ever have reached, as a mere +observer and recorder, at all the high point which he reached directly +his imagination went to work to create a story. That imagination was, +indeed, far less subservient to his mere perceptions than to his +constructive powers. _Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk_--the records of +his Paris journey after Waterloo--for instance, are not at all above +the mark of a good special correspondent. His imagination was less the +imagination of insight, than the imagination of one whose mind was a +great kaleidoscope of human life and fortunes. But far more +interrupting than either illness or travel, was the lion-hunting of +which Scott became the object, directly after the publication of the +earlier novels. In great measure, no doubt, on account of the mystery +as to his authorship, his fame became something oppressive. At one +time as many as _sixteen_ parties of visitors applied to see +Abbotsford in a single day. Strangers,--especially the American +travellers of that day, who were much less reticent and more +irrepressible than the American travellers of this,--would come to him +without introductions, facetiously cry out "Prodigious!" in imitation +of Dominie Sampson, whatever they were shown, inquire whether the new +house was called Tullyveolan or Tillytudlem, cross-examine, with open +note-books, as to Scott's age, and the age of his wife, and appear to +be taken quite by surprise when they were bowed out without being +asked to dine.[40] In those days of high postage Scott's bill for +letters "seldom came under 150_l._ a year," and "as to coach parcels, +they were a perfect ruination." On one occasion a mighty package came +by post from the United States, for which Scott had to pay five pounds +sterling. It contained a MS. play called _The Cherokee Lovers_, by a +young lady of New York, who begged Scott to read and correct it, write +a prologue and epilogue, get it put on the stage at Drury Lane, and +negotiate with Constable or Murray for the copyright. In about a +fortnight another packet not less formidable arrived, charged with a +similar postage, which Scott, not grown cautious through experience, +recklessly opened; out jumped a duplicate copy of _The Cherokee +Lovers_, with a second letter from the authoress, stating that as the +weather had been stormy, and she feared that something might have +happened to her former MS., she had thought it prudent to send him a +duplicate.[41] Of course, when fame reached such a point as this, it +became both a worry and a serious waste of money, and what was far +more valuable than money, of time, privacy, and tranquillity of mind. +And though no man ever bore such worries with the equanimity of Scott, +no man ever received less pleasure from the adulation of unknown and +often vulgar and ignorant admirers. His real amusements were his trees +and his friends. "Planting and pruning trees," he said, "I could work +at from morning to night. There is a sort of self-congratulation, a +little tickling self-flattery, in the idea that while you are pleasing +and amusing yourself, you are seriously contributing to the future +welfare of the country, and that your very acorn may send its future +ribs of oak to future victories like Trafalgar,"[42]--for the day of +iron ships was not yet. And again, at a later stage of his +planting:--"You can have no idea of the exquisite delight of a +planter,--he is like a painter laying on his colours,--at every moment +he sees his effects coming out. There is no art or occupation +comparable to this; it is full of past, present, and future enjoyment. +I look back to the time when there was not a tree here, only bare +heath; I look round and see thousands of trees growing up, all of +which, I may say almost each of which, have received my personal +attention. I remember, five years ago, looking forward with the most +delighted expectation to this very hour, and as each year has passed, +the expectation has gone on increasing. I do the same now. I +anticipate what this plantation and that one will presently be, if +only taken care of, and there is not a spot of which I do not watch +the progress. Unlike building, or even painting, or indeed any other +kind of pursuit, this has no end, and is never interrupted; but goes +on from day to day, and from year to year, with a perpetually +augmenting interest. Farming I hate. What have I to do with fattening +and killing beasts, or raising corn, only to cut it down, and to +wrangle with farmers about prices, and to be constantly at the mercy +of the seasons? There can be no such disappointments or annoyances in +planting trees."[43] Scott indeed regarded planting as a mode of so +moulding the form and colour of the outward world, that nature herself +became indebted to him for finer outlines, richer masses of colour, +and deeper shadows, as well as for more fertile and sheltered soils. +And he was as skilful in producing the last result, as he was in the +artistic effects of his planting. In the essay on the planting of +waste lands, he mentions a story,--drawn from his own experience,--of +a planter, who having scooped out the lowest part of his land for +enclosures, and "planted the wood round them in masses enlarged or +contracted as the natural lying of the ground seemed to dictate," met, +six years after these changes, his former tenant on the ground, and +said to him, "I suppose, Mr. R----, you will say I have ruined your +farm by laying half of it into woodland?" "I should have expected it, +sir," answered Mr. R----, "if you had told me beforehand what you were +going to do; but I am now of a very different opinion; and as I am +looking for land at present, if you are inclined to take for the +remaining sixty acres the same rent which I formerly gave for a +hundred and twenty, I will give you an offer to that amount. I +consider the benefit of the enclosing, and the complete shelter +afforded to the fields, as an advantage which fairly counterbalances +the loss of one-half of the land."[44] + +And Scott was not only thoughtful in his own planting, but induced his +neighbours to become so too. So great was their regard for him, that +many of them planted their estates as much with reference to the +effect which their plantations would have on the view from Abbotsford, +as with reference to the effect they would have on the view from +their own grounds. Many was the consultation which he and his +neighbours, Scott of Gala, for instance, and Mr. Henderson of Eildon +Hall, had together on the effect which would be produced on the view +from their respective houses, of the planting going on upon the lands +of each. The reciprocity of feeling was such that the various +proprietors acted more like brothers in this matter, than like the +jealous and exclusive creatures which landowners, as such, so often +are. + +Next to his interest in the management and growth of his own little +estate was Scott's interest in the management and growth of the Duke +of Buccleuch's. To the Duke he looked up as the head of his clan, with +something almost more than a feudal attachment, greatly enhanced of +course by the personal friendship which he had formed for him in early +life as the Earl of Dalkeith. This mixture of feudal and personal +feeling towards the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch continued during +their lives. Scott was away on a yachting tour to the Shetlands and +Orkneys in July and August, 1814, and it was during this absence that +the Duchess of Buccleuch died. Scott, who was in no anxiety about her, +employed himself in writing an amusing descriptive epistle to the Duke +in rough verse, chronicling his voyage, and containing expressions of +the profoundest reverence for the goodness and charity of the Duchess, +a letter which did not reach its destination till after the Duchess's +death. Scott himself heard of her death by chance when they landed for +a few hours on the coast of Ireland; he was quite overpowered by the +news, and went to bed only to drop into short nightmare sleeps, and to +wake with the dim memory of some heavy weight at his heart. The Duke +himself died five years later, leaving a son only thirteen years of +age (the present Duke), over whose interests, both as regarded his +education and his estates, Scott watched as jealously as if they had +been those of his own son. Many were the anxious letters he wrote to +Lord Montague as to his "young chief's" affairs, as he called them, +and great his pride in watching the promise of his youth. Nothing can +be clearer than that to Scott the feudal principle was something far +beyond a name; that he had at least as much pride in his devotion to +his chief, as he had in founding a house which he believed would +increase the influence--both territorial and personal--of the clan of +Scotts. The unaffected reverence which he felt for the Duke, though +mingled with warm personal affection, showed that Scott's feudal +feeling had something real and substantial in it, which did not vanish +even when it came into close contact with strong personal feelings. +This reverence is curiously marked in his letters. He speaks of "the +distinction of rank" being ignored by both sides, as of something +quite exceptional, but it was never really ignored by him, for though +he continued to write to the Duke as an intimate friend, it was with a +mingling of awe, very different indeed from that which he ever adopted +to Ellis or Erskine. It is necessary to remember this, not only in +estimating the strength of the feeling which made him so anxious to +become himself the founder of a house within a house,--of a new branch +of the clan of Scotts,--but in estimating the loyalty which Scott +always displayed to one of the least respectable of English +sovereigns, George IV.,--a matter of which I must now say a few words, +not only because it led to Scott's receiving the baronetcy, but +because it forms to my mind the most grotesque of all the threads in +the lot of this strong and proud man. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 40: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 387.] + +[Footnote 41: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 382.] + +[Footnote 42: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii. 288.] + +[Footnote 43: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vii. 287-8.] + +[Footnote 44: Scott's _Miscellaneous Prose Works_, xxi. 22-3.] + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +SCOTT AND GEORGE IV. + + +The first relations of Scott with the Court were, oddly enough, formed +with the Princess, not with the Prince of Wales. In 1806 Scott dined +with the Princess of Wales at Blackheath, and spoke of his invitation +as a great honour. He wrote a tribute to her father, the Duke of +Brunswick, in the introduction to one of the cantos of _Marmion_, and +received from the Princess a silver vase in acknowledgment of this +passage in the poem. Scott's relations with the Prince Regent seem to +have begun in an offer to Scott of the Laureateship in the summer of +1813, an offer which Scott would have found it very difficult to +accept, so strongly did his pride revolt at the idea of having to +commemorate in verse, as an official duty, all conspicuous incidents +affecting the throne. But he was at the time of the offer in the thick +of his first difficulties on account of Messrs. John Ballantyne and +Co., and it was only the Duke of Buccleuch's guarantee of 4000_l._--a +guarantee subsequently cancelled by Scott's paying the sum for which +it was a security--that enabled him at this time to decline what, +after Southey had accepted it, he compared in a letter to Southey to +the herring for which the poor Scotch clergyman gave thanks in a grace +wherein he described it as "even this, the very least of Providence's +mercies." In March, 1815, Scott being then in London, the Prince +Regent asked him to dinner, addressed him uniformly as Walter, and +struck up a friendship with him which seems to have lasted their +lives, and which certainly did much more honour to George than to Sir +Walter Scott. It is impossible not to think rather better of George +IV. for thus valuing, and doing his best in every way to show his +value for, Scott. It is equally impossible not to think rather worse +of Scott for thus valuing, and in every way doing his best to express +his value for, this very worthless, though by no means incapable king. +The consequences were soon seen in the indignation with which Scott +began to speak of the Princess of Wales's sins. In 1806, in the squib +he wrote on Lord Melville's acquittal, when impeached for corruption +by the Liberal Government, he had written thus of the Princess +Caroline:-- + + "Our King, too--our Princess,--I dare not say more, sir,-- + May Providence watch them with mercy and might! + While there's one Scottish hand that can wag a claymore, sir, + They shall ne'er want a friend to stand up for their right. + Be damn'd he that dare not-- + For my part I'll spare not + To beauty afflicted a tribute to give; + Fill it up steadily, + Drink it off readily, + Here's to the Princess, and long may she live." + +But whoever "stood up" for the Princess's right, certainly Scott did +not do so after his intimacy with the Prince Regent began. He +mentioned her only with severity, and in one letter at least, written +to his brother, with something much coarser than severity;[45] but the +king's similar vices did not at all alienate him from what at least +had all the appearance of a deep personal devotion to his sovereign. +The first baronet whom George IV. made on succeeding to the throne, +after his long Regency, was Scott, who not only accepted the honour +gratefully, but dwelt with extreme pride on the fact that it was +offered to him by the king himself, and was in no way due to the +prompting of any minister's advice. He wrote to Joanna Baillie on +hearing of the Regent's intention--for the offer was made by the +Regent at the end of 1818, though it was not actually conferred till +after George's accession, namely, on the 30th March, 1820,--"The Duke +of Buccleuch and Scott of Harden, who, as the heads of my clan and the +sources of my gentry, are good judges of what I ought to do, have both +given me their earnest opinion to accept of an honour directly derived +from the source of honour, and neither begged nor bought, as is the +usual fashion. Several of my ancestors bore the title in the +seventeenth century, and, were it of consequence, I have no reason to +be ashamed of the decent and respectable persons who connect me with +that period when they carried into the field, like Madoc, + + "The Crescent at whose gleam the Cambrian oft, + Cursing his perilous tenure, wound his horn," + +so that, as a gentleman, I may stand on as good a footing as other new +creations."[46] Why the honour was any greater for coming from such a +king as George, than it would have been if it had been suggested by +Lord Sidmouth, or even Lord Liverpool,--or half as great as if Mr. +Canning had proposed it, it is not easy to conceive. George was a fair +judge of literary merit, but not one to be compared for a moment with +that great orator and wit; and as to his being the fountain of honour, +there was so much dishonour of which the king was certainly the +fountain too, that I do not think it was very easy for two fountains +both springing from such a person to have flowed quite unmingled. +George justly prided himself on Sir Walter Scott's having been the +first creation of his reign, and I think the event showed that the +poet was the fountain of much more honour for the king, than the king +was for the poet. + +When George came to Edinburgh in 1822, it was Sir Walter who acted +virtually as the master of the ceremonies, and to whom it was chiefly +due that the visit was so successful. It was then that George clad his +substantial person for the first time in the Highland costume--to wit, +in the Steuart Tartans--and was so much annoyed to find himself +outvied by a wealthy alderman, Sir William Curtis, who had gone and +done likewise, and, in his equally grand Steuart Tartans, seemed a +kind of parody of the king. The day on which the king arrived, +Tuesday, 14th of August, 1822, was also the day on which Scott's most +intimate friend, William Erskine, then Lord Kinnedder, died. Yet Scott +went on board the royal yacht, was most graciously received by George, +had his health drunk by the king in a bottle of Highland whiskey, and +with a proper show of devoted loyalty entreated to be allowed to +retain the glass out of which his Majesty had just drunk his health. +The request was graciously acceded to, but let it be pleaded on +Scott's behalf, that on reaching home and finding there his friend +Crabbe the poet, he sat down on the royal gift, and crushed it to +atoms. One would hope that he was really thinking more even of Crabbe, +and much more of Erskine, than of the royal favour for which he had +appeared, and doubtless had really believed himself, so grateful. Sir +Walter retained his regard for the king, such as it was, to the last, +and even persuaded himself that George's death would be a great +political calamity for the nation. And really I cannot help thinking +that Scott believed more in the king, than he did in his friend George +Canning. Assuredly, greatly as he admired Canning, he condemned him +more and more as Canning grew more liberal, and sometimes speaks of +his veerings in that direction with positive asperity. George, on the +other hand, who believed more in number one than in any other number, +however large, became much more conservative after he became Regent +than he was before, and as he grew more conservative Scott grew more +conservative likewise, till he came to think this particular king +almost a pillar of the Constitution. I suppose we ought to explain +this little bit of fetish-worship in Scott much as we should the +quaint practical adhesion to duelling which he gave as an old man, who +had had all his life much more to do with the pen than the sword--that +is, as an evidence of the tendency of an improved type to recur to +that of the old wild stock on which it had been grafted. But certainly +no feudal devotion of his ancestors to their chief was ever less +justified by moral qualities than Scott's loyal devotion to the +fountain of honour as embodied in "our fat friend." The whole relation +to George was a grotesque thread in Scott's life; and I cannot quite +forgive him for the utterly conventional severity with which he threw +over his first patron, the Queen, for sins which were certainly not +grosser, if they were not much less gross, than those of his second +patron, the husband who had set her the example which she faithfully, +though at a distance, followed. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 45: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vi. 229-30.] + +[Footnote 46: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vi. 13, 14.] + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +SCOTT AS A POLITICIAN. + + +Scott usually professed great ignorance of politics, and did what he +could to hold aloof from a world in which his feelings were very +easily heated, while his knowledge was apt to be very imperfect. But +now and again, and notably towards the close of his life, he got +himself mixed up in politics, and I need hardly say that it was always +on the Tory, and generally on the red-hot Tory, side. His first hasty +intervention in politics was the song I have just referred to on Lord +Melville's acquittal, during the short Whig administration of 1806. In +fact Scott's comparative abstinence from politics was due, I believe, +chiefly to the fact that during almost the whole of his literary life, +Tories and not Whigs were in power. No sooner was any reform proposed, +any abuse threatened, than Scott's eager Conservative spirit flashed +up. Proposals were made in 1806 for changes--and, as it was thought, +reforms--in the Scotch Courts of Law, and Scott immediately saw +something like national calamity in the prospect. The mild proposals +in question were discussed at a meeting of the Faculty of Advocates, +when Scott made a speech longer than he had ever before delivered, and +animated by a "flow and energy of eloquence" for which those who were +accustomed to hear his debating speeches were quite unprepared. He +walked home between two of the reformers, Mr. Jeffrey and another, +when his companions began to compliment him on his eloquence, and to +speak playfully of its subject. But Scott was in no mood for +playfulness. "No, no," he exclaimed, "'tis no laughing matter; little +by little, whatever your wishes may be, you will destroy and +undermine, until nothing of what makes Scotland Scotland shall +remain!" "And so saying," adds Mr. Lockhart, "he turned round to +conceal his agitation, but not until Mr. Jeffrey saw tears gushing +down his cheek,--resting his head, until he recovered himself, on the +wall of the Mound."[47] It was the same strong feeling for old Scotch +institutions which broke out so quaintly in the midst of his own worst +troubles in 1826, on behalf of the Scotch banking-system, when he so +eloquently defended, in the letters of _Malachi Malagrowther_, what +would now be called Home-Rule for Scotland, and indeed really defeated +the attempt of his friends the Tories, who were the innovators this +time, to encroach on those sacred institutions--the Scotch one-pound +note, and the private-note circulation of the Scotch banks. But when I +speak of Scott as a Home-Ruler, I should add that had not Scotland +been for generations governed to a great extent, and, as he thought +successfully, by Home-Rule, he was far too good a Conservative to have +apologized for it at all. The basis of his Conservatism was always the +danger of undermining a system which had answered so well. In the +concluding passages of the letters to which I have just referred, he +contrasts "Theory, a scroll in her hand, full of deep and mysterious +combinations of figures, the least failure in any one of which may +alter the result entirely," with "a practical system successful for +upwards of a century." His vehement and unquailing opposition to +Reform in almost the very last year of his life, when he had already +suffered more than one stroke of paralysis, was grounded on precisely +the same argument. At Jedburgh, on the 21st March, 1831, he appeared +in the midst of an angry population (who hooted and jeered at him till +he turned round fiercely upon them with the defiance, "I regard your +gabble no more than the geese on the green,") to urge the very same +protest. "We in this district," he said, "are proud, and with reason, +that the first chain-bridge was the work of a Scotchman. It still +hangs where he erected it a pretty long time ago. The French heard of +our invention, and determined to introduce it, but with great +improvements and embellishments. A friend of my own saw the thing +tried. It was on the Seine at Marly. The French chain-bridge looked +lighter and airier than the prototype. Every Englishman present was +disposed to confess that we had been beaten at our own trade. But +by-and-by the gates were opened, and the multitude were to pass over. +It began to swing rather formidably beneath the pressure of the good +company; and by the time the architect, who led the procession in +great pomp and glory, reached the middle, the whole gave way, and +he--worthy, patriotic artist--was the first that got a ducking. They +had forgot the middle bolt,--or rather this ingenious person had +conceived that to be a clumsy-looking feature, which might safely be +dispensed with, while he put some invisible gimcrack of his own to +supply its place."[48] It is strange that Sir Walter did not see that +this kind of criticism, so far as it applied at all to such an +experiment as the Reform Bill, was even more in point as a rebuke to +the rashness of the Scotch reformer who hung the first successful +chain-bridge, than to the rashness of the French reformer of reform +who devised an unsuccessful variation on it. The audacity of the first +experiment was much the greater, though the competence of the person +who made it was the greater also. And as a matter of fact, the +political structure against the supposed insecurity of which Sir +Walter was protesting, with all the courage of that dauntless though +dying nature, was made by one who understood his work at least as well +as the Scotch architect. The tramp of the many multitudes who have +passed over it has never yet made it to "swing dangerously," and Lord +Russell in the fulness of his age was but yesterday rejoicing in what +he had achieved, and even in what those have achieved who have altered +his work in the same spirit in which he designed it. + +But though Sir Walter persuaded himself that his Conservatism was all +founded in legitimate distrust of reckless change, there is evidence, +I think, that at times at least it was due to elements less noble. The +least creditable incident in the story of his political life--which +Mr. Lockhart, with his usual candour, did not conceal--was the +bitterness with which he resented a most natural and reasonable +Parliamentary opposition to an appointment which he had secured for +his favourite brother, Tom. In 1810 Scott appointed his brother Tom, +who had failed as a Writer to the Signet, to a place vacant under +himself as Clerk of Session. He had not given him the best place +vacant, because he thought it his duty to appoint an official who had +grown grey in the service, but he gave Tom Scott this man's place, +which was worth about 250_l._ a year. In the meantime Tom Scott's +affairs did not render it convenient for him to be come-at-able, and +he absented himself, while they were being settled, in the Isle of +Man. Further, the Commission on the Scotch system of judicature almost +immediately reported that his office was one of supererogation, and +ought to be abolished; but, to soften the blow, they proposed to allow +him a pension of 130_l._ per annum. This proposal was discussed with +some natural jealousy in the House of Lords. Lord Lauderdale thought +that when Tom Scott was appointed, it must have been pretty evident +that the Commission would propose to abolish his office, and that the +appointment therefore should not have been made. "Mr. Thomas Scott," +he said, "would have 130_l._ for life as an indemnity for an office +the duties of which he never had performed, while those clerks who had +laboured for twenty years had no adequate remuneration." Lord Holland +supported this very reasonable and moderate view of the case; but of +course the Ministry carried their way, and Tom Scott got his unearned +pension. Nevertheless, Scott was furious with Lord Holland. Writing +soon after to the happy recipient of this little pension, he says, +"Lord Holland has been in Edinburgh, and we met accidentally at a +public party. He made up to me, but I remembered his part in your +affair, and _cut_ him with as little remorse as an old pen." Mr. +Lockhart says, on Lord Jeffrey's authority, that the scene was a very +painful one. Lord Jeffrey himself declared that it was the only +rudeness of which he ever saw Scott guilty in the course of a +life-long familiarity. And it is pleasant to know that he renewed his +cordiality with Lord Holland in later years, though there is no +evidence that he ever admitted that he had been in the wrong. But the +incident shows how very doubtful Sir Walter ought to have felt as to +the purity of his Conservatism. It is quite certain that the proposal +to abolish Tom Scott's office without compensation was not a reckless +experiment of a fundamental kind. It was a mere attempt at diminishing +the heavy burdens laid on the people for the advantage of a small +portion of the middle class, and yet Scott resented it with as much +display of selfish passion--considering his genuine nobility of +breeding--as that with which the rude working men of Jedburgh +afterwards resented his gallant protest against the Reform Bill, and, +later again, saluted the dauntless old man with the dastardly cry of +"Burk Sir Walter!" Judged truly, I think Sir Walter's conduct in +cutting Lord Holland "with as little remorse as an old pen," for +simply doing his duty in the House of Lords, was quite as ignoble in +him as the bullying and insolence of the democratic party in 1831, +when the dying lion made his last dash at what he regarded as the foes +of the Constitution. Doubtless he held that the mob, or, as we more +decorously say, the residuum, were in some sense the enemies of true +freedom. "I cannot read in history," he writes once to Mr. Laidlaw, +"of any free State which has been brought to slavery till the rascal +and uninstructed populace had had their short hour of anarchical +government, which naturally leads to the stern repose of military +despotism." But he does not seem ever to have perceived that educated +men identify themselves with "the rascal and uninstructed populace," +whenever they indulge on behalf of the selfish interests of their own +class, passions such as he had indulged in fighting for his brother's +pension. It is not the want of instruction, it is the rascaldom, i. e. +the violent _esprit de corps_ of a selfish class, which "naturally +leads" to violent remedies. Such rascaldom exists in all classes, and +not least in the class of the cultivated and refined. Generous and +magnanimous as Scott was, he was evidently by no means free from the +germs of it. + +One more illustration of Scott's political Conservatism, and I may +leave his political life, which was not indeed his strong side, +though, as with all sides of Scott's nature, it had an energy and +spirit all his own. On the subject of Catholic Emancipation he took a +peculiar view. As he justly said, he hated bigotry, and would have +left the Catholics quite alone, but for the great claims of their +creed to interfere with political life. And even so, when the penal +laws were once abolished, he would have abolished also the +representative disabilities, as quite useless, as well as very +irritating when the iron system of effective repression had ceased. +But he disapproved of the abolition of the political parts of the +penal laws. He thought they would have stamped out Roman Catholicism; +and whether that were just or unjust, he thought it would have been a +great national service. "As for Catholic Emancipation," he wrote to +Southey in 1807, "I am not, God knows, a bigot in religious matters, +nor a friend to persecution; but if a particular set of religionists +are _ipso facto_ connected with foreign politics, and placed under the +spiritual direction of a class of priests, whose unrivalled dexterity +and activity are increased by the rules which detach them from the +rest of the world--I humbly think that we may be excused from +entrusting to them those places in the State where the influence of +such a clergy, who act under the direction of a passive tool of our +worst foe, is likely to be attended with the most fatal consequences. +If a gentleman chooses to walk about with a couple of pounds of +gunpowder in his pocket, if I give him the shelter of my roof, I may +at least be permitted to exclude him from the seat next to the +fire."[49] And in relation to the year 1825, when Scott visited +Ireland, Mr. Lockhart writes, "He on all occasions expressed manfully +his belief that the best thing for Ireland would have been never to +relax the strictly _political_ enactments of the penal laws, however +harsh these might appear. Had they been kept in vigour for another +half-century, it was his conviction that Popery would have been all +but extinguished in Ireland. But he thought that after admitting +Romanists to the elective franchise, it was a vain notion that they +could be permanently or advantageously deterred from using that +franchise in favour of those of their own persuasion." + +In his diary in 1829 he puts the same view still more strongly:--"I +cannot get myself to feel at all anxious about the Catholic question. +I cannot see the use of fighting about the platter, when you have let +them snatch the meat off it. I hold Popery to be such a mean and +degrading superstition, that I am not sure I could have found myself +liberal enough for voting the repeal of the penal laws as they existed +before 1780. They must and would, in course of time, have smothered +Popery; and I confess that I should have seen the old lady of +Babylon's mouth stopped with pleasure. But now that you have taken the +plaster off her mouth, and given her free respiration, I cannot see +the sense of keeping up the irritation about the claim to sit in +Parliament. Unopposed, the Catholic superstition may sink into dust, +with all its absurd ritual and solemnities. Still it is an awful risk. +The world is in fact as silly as ever, and a good competence of +nonsense will always find believers."[50] That is the view of a +strong and rather unscrupulous politician--a moss-trooper in +politics--which Scott certainly was. He was thinking evidently very +little of justice, almost entirely of the most effective means of +keeping the Kingdom, the Kingdom which he loved. Had he +understood--what none of the politicians of that day understood--the +strength of the Church of Rome as the only consistent exponent of the +principle of Authority in religion, I believe his opposition to +Catholic emancipation would have been as bitter as his opposition to +Parliamentary reform. But he took for granted that while only "silly" +persons believed in Rome, and only "infidels" rejected an +authoritative creed altogether, it was quite easy by the exercise of +common sense, to find the true compromise between reason and religious +humility. Had Scott lived through the religious controversies of our +own days, it seems not unlikely that with his vivid imagination, his +warm Conservatism, and his rather inadequate critical powers, he might +himself have become a Roman Catholic. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 47: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 328.] + +[Footnote 48: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, x. 47.] + +[Footnote 49: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii. 34.] + +[Footnote 50: Ibid., ix. 305.] + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +SCOTT IN ADVERSITY. + + +With the year 1825 came a financial crisis, and Constable began to +tremble for his solvency. From the date of his baronetcy Sir Walter +had launched out into a considerable increase of expenditure. He got +plans on a rather large scale in 1821 for the increase of Abbotsford, +which were all carried out. To meet his expenses in this and other +ways he received Constable's bills for "four unnamed works of +fiction," of which he had not written a line, but which came to exist +in time, and were called _Peveril of the Peak_, _Quentin Durward_, +_St. Ronan's Well_, and _Redgauntlet_. Again, in the very year before +the crash, 1825, he married his eldest son, the heir to the title, to +a young lady who was herself an heiress, Miss Jobson of Lochore, when +Abbotsford and its estates were settled, with the reserve of +10,000_l._, which Sir Walter took power to charge on the property for +purposes of business. Immediately afterwards he purchased a captaincy +in the King's Hussars for his son, which cost him 3500_l._ Nor were +the obligations he incurred on his own account, or that of his family, +the only ones by which he was burdened. He was always incurring +expenses, often heavy expenses, for other people. Thus, when Mr. +Terry, the actor, became joint lessee and manager of the Adelphi +Theatre, London, Scott became his surety for 1250_l._, while James +Ballantyne became his surety for 500_l._ more, and both these sums had +to be paid by Sir Walter after Terry's failure in 1828. Such +obligations as these, however, would have been nothing when compared +with Sir Walter's means, had all his bills on Constable been duly +honoured, and had not the printing firm of Ballantyne and Co. been so +deeply involved with Constable's house that it necessarily became +insolvent when he stopped. Taken altogether, I believe that Sir Walter +earned during his own lifetime at least 140,000_l._ by his literary +work alone, probably more; while even on his land and building +combined he did not apparently spend more than half that sum. Then he +had a certain income, about 1000_l._ a year, from his own and Lady +Scott's private property, as well as 1300_l._ a year as Clerk of +Session, and 300_l._ more as Sheriff of Selkirk. Thus even his loss of +the price of several novels by Constable's failure would not seriously +have compromised Scott's position, but for his share in the +printing-house which fell with Constable, and the obligations of which +amounted to 117,000_l._ + +As Scott had always forestalled his income,--spending the +purchase-money of his poems and novels before they were written,--such +a failure as this, at the age of fifty-five, when all the freshness of +his youth was gone out of him, when he saw his son's prospects +blighted as well as his own, and knew perfectly that James Ballantyne, +unassisted by him, could never hope to pay any fraction of the debt +worth mentioning, would have been paralysing, had he not been a man of +iron nerve, and of a pride and courage hardly ever equalled. Domestic +calamity, too, was not far off. For two years he had been watching the +failure of his wife's health with increasing anxiety, and as +calamities seldom come single, her illness took a most serious form at +the very time when the blow fell, and she died within four months of +the failure. Nay, Scott was himself unwell at the critical moment, and +was taking sedatives which discomposed his brain. Twelve days before +the final failure,--which was announced to him on the 17th January, +1826,--he enters in his diary, "Much alarmed. I had walked till twelve +with Skene and Russell, and then sat down to my work. To my horror and +surprise I could neither write nor spell, but put down one word for +another, and wrote nonsense. I was much overpowered at the same time +and could not conceive the reason. I fell asleep, however, in my +chair, and slept for two hours. On my waking my head was clearer, and +I began to recollect that last night I had taken the anodyne left for +the purpose by Clarkson, and being disturbed in the course of the +night, I had not slept it off." In fact the hyoscyamus had, combined +with his anxieties, given him a slight attack of what is now called +_aphasia_, that brain disease the most striking symptom of which is +that one word is mistaken for another. And this was Scott's +preparation for his failure, and the bold resolve which followed it, +to work for his creditors as he had worked for himself, and to pay +off, if possible, the whole 117,000_l._ by his own literary exertions. + +There is nothing in its way in the whole of English biography more +impressive than the stoical extracts from Scott's diary which note the +descent of this blow. Here is the anticipation of the previous day: +"Edinburgh, January 16th.--Came through cold roads to as cold news. Hurst +and Robinson have suffered a bill to come back upon Constable, which, I +suppose, infers the ruin of both houses. We shall soon see. Dined with +the Skenes." And here is the record itself: "January 17th.--James +Ballantyne this morning, good honest fellow, with a visage as black as the +crook. He hopes no salvation; has, indeed, taken measures to stop. It is +hard, after having fought such a battle. I have apologized for not +attending the Royal Society Club, who have a _gaudeamus_ on this day, and +seemed to count much on my being the praeses. My old acquaintance Miss +Elizabeth Clerk, sister of Willie, died suddenly. I cannot choose but wish +it had been Sir W. S., and yet the feeling is unmanly. I have Anne, my +wife, and Charles to look after. I felt rather sneaking as I came home +from the Parliament-house--felt as if I were liable _monstrari digito_ in +no very pleasant way. But this must be borne _cum coeteris_; and, thank +God, however uncomfortable, I do not feel despondent."[51] On the +following day, the 18th January, the day after the blow, he records a bad +night, a wish that the next two days were over, but that "the worst _is_ +over," and on the same day he set about making notes for the _magnum +opus_, as he called it--the complete edition of all the novels, with a new +introduction and notes. On the 19th January, two days after the failure, +he calmly resumed the composition of _Woodstock_--the novel on which he +was then engaged--and completed, he says, "about twenty printed pages of +it;" to which he adds that he had "a painful scene after dinner and +another after supper, endeavouring to convince these poor creatures" [his +wife and daughter] "that they must not look for miracles, but consider the +misfortune as certain, and only to be lessened by patience and labour." On +the 21st January, after a number of business details, he quotes from Job, +"Naked we entered the world and naked we leave it; blessed be the name of +the Lord." On the 22nd he says, "I feel neither dishonoured nor broken +down by the bad, now truly bad, news I have received. I have walked my +last in the domains I have planted--sat the last time in the halls I have +built. But death would have taken them from me, if misfortune had spared +them. My poor people whom I loved so well! There is just another die to +turn up against me in this run of ill-luck, i. e. if I should break my +magic wand in the fall from this elephant, and lose my popularity with my +fortune. Then _Woodstock_ and _Boney_" [his life of Napoleon] "may both go +to the paper-maker, and I may take to smoking cigars and drinking grog, or +turn devotee and intoxicate the brain another way."[52] He adds that when +he sets to work doggedly, he is exactly the same man he ever was, "neither +low-spirited nor _distrait_," nay, that adversity is to him "a tonic and +bracer." + +The heaviest blow was, I think, the blow to his pride. Very early he +begins to note painfully the different way in which different friends +greet him, to remark that some smile as if to say, "think nothing +about it, my lad, it is quite out of our thoughts;" that others adopt +an affected gravity, "such as one sees and despises at a funeral," and +the best-bred "just shook hands and went on." He writes to Mr. Morritt +with a proud indifference, clearly to some extent simulated:--"My +womenkind will be the greater sufferers, yet even they look cheerily +forward; and, for myself, the blowing off of my hat on a stormy day +has given me more uneasiness."[53] To Lady Davy he writes truly +enough:--"I beg my humblest compliments to Sir Humphrey, and tell him, +Ill Luck, that direful chemist, never put into his crucible a more +indissoluble piece of stuff than your affectionate cousin and sincere +well-wisher, Walter Scott."[54] When his _Letters of Malachi +Malagrowther_ came out he writes:--"I am glad of this bruilzie, as far +as I am concerned; people will not dare talk of me as an object of +pity--no more 'poor-manning.' Who asks how many punds Scots the old +champion had in his pocket when + + 'He set a bugle to his mouth, + And blew so loud and shrill, + The trees in greenwood shook thereat, + Sae loud rang every hill.' + +This sounds conceited enough, yet is not far from truth."[55] His dread +of pity is just the same when his wife dies:--"Will it be better," he +writes, "when left to my own feelings, I see the whole world pipe and +dance around me? I think it will. Their sympathy intrudes on my +present affliction." Again, on returning for the first time from +Edinburgh to Abbotsford after Lady Scott's funeral:--"I again took +possession of the family bedroom and my widowed couch. This was a sore +trial, but it was necessary not to blink such a resolution. Indeed I +do not like to have it thought that there is any way in which I can be +beaten." And again:--"I have a secret pride--I fancy it will be so +most truly termed--which impels me to mix with my distresses strange +snatches of mirth, 'which have no mirth in them.'"[56] + +But though pride was part of Scott's strength, pride alone never +enabled any man to struggle so vigorously and so unremittingly as he +did to meet the obligations he had incurred. When he was in Ireland in +the previous year, a poor woman who had offered to sell him +gooseberries, but whose offer had not been accepted, remarked, on +seeing his daughter give some pence to a beggar, that they might as +well give her an alms too, as she was "an old struggler." Sir Walter +was struck with the expression, and said that it deserved to become +classical, as a name for those who take arms against a sea of +troubles, instead of yielding to the waves. It was certainly a name +the full meaning of which he himself deserved. His house in Edinburgh +was sold, and he had to go into a certain Mrs. Brown's lodgings, when +he was discharging his duties as Clerk of Session. His wife was dead. +His estate was conveyed to trustees for the benefit of his creditors +till such time as he should pay off Ballantyne and Co's. debt, which +of course in his lifetime he never did. Yet between January, 1826, and +January, 1828, he earned for his creditors very nearly 40,000_l._ +_Woodstock_ sold for 8228_l._, "a matchless sale," as Sir Walter +remarked, "for less than three months' work." The first two editions +of _The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte_, on which Mr. Lockhart says that +Scott had spent the unremitting labour of about two years--labour +involving a far greater strain on eyes and brain than his imaginative +work ever caused him--sold for 18,000_l._ Had Sir Walter's health +lasted, he would have redeemed his obligations on behalf of Ballantyne +and Co. within eight or nine years at most from the time of his +failure. But what is more remarkable still, is that after his health +failed he struggled on with little more than half a brain, but a +whole will, to work while it was yet day, though the evening was +dropping fast. _Count Robert of Paris_ and _Castle Dangerous_ were +really the compositions of a paralytic patient. + +It was in September, 1830, that the first of these tales was begun. As +early as the 15th February of that year he had had his first true +paralytic seizure. He had been discharging his duties as clerk of +session as usual, and received in the afternoon a visit from a lady +friend of his, Miss Young, who was submitting to him some manuscript +memoirs of her father, when the stroke came. It was but slight. He +struggled against it with his usual iron power of will, and actually +managed to stagger out of the room where the lady was sitting with +him, into the drawing-room where his daughter was, but there he fell +his full length on the floor. He was cupped, and fully recovered his +speech during the course of the day, but Mr. Lockhart thinks that +never, after this attack, did his style recover its full lucidity and +terseness. A cloudiness in words and a cloudiness of arrangement began +to be visible. In the course of the year he retired from his duties of +clerk of session, and his publishers hoped that, by engaging him on +the new and complete edition of his works, they might detach him from +the attempt at imaginative creation for which he was now so much less +fit. But Sir Walter's will survived his judgment. When, in the +previous year, Ballantyne had been disabled from attending to business +by his wife's illness (which ended in her death), Scott had written in +his diary, "It is his (Ballantyne's) nature to indulge apprehensions +of the worst which incapacitate him for labour. I cannot help +regarding this amiable weakness of the mind with something too nearly +allied to contempt," and assuredly he was guilty of no such weakness +himself. Not only did he row much harder against the stream of fortune +than he had ever rowed with it, but, what required still more +resolution, he fought on against the growing conviction that his +imagination would not kindle, as it used to do, to its old heat. + +When he dictated to Laidlaw,--for at this time he could hardly write +himself for rheumatism in the hand,--he would frequently pause and +look round him, like a man "mocked with shadows." Then he bestirred +himself with a great effort, rallied his force, and the style again +flowed clear and bright, but not for long. The clouds would gather +again, and the mental blank recur. This soon became visible to his +publishers, who wrote discouragingly of the new novel--to Scott's own +great distress and irritation. The oddest feature in the matter was +that his letters to them were full of the old terseness, and force, +and caustic turns. On business he was as clear and keen as in his best +days. It was only at his highest task, the task of creative work, that +his cunning began to fail him. Here, for instance, are a few sentences +written to Cadell, his publisher, touching this very point--the +discouragement which James Ballantyne had been pouring on the new +novel. Ballantyne, he says, finds fault with the subject, when what he +really should have found fault with was the failing power of the +author:--"James is, with many other kindly critics, perhaps in the +predicament of an honest drunkard, when crop-sick the next morning, +who does not ascribe the malady to the wine he has drunk, but to +having tasted some particular dish at dinner which disagreed with his +stomach.... I have lost, it is plain, the power of interesting the +country, and ought, injustice to all parties, to retire while I have +some credit. But this is an important step, and I will not be +obstinate about it if it be necessary.... Frankly, I cannot think of +flinging aside the half-finished volume, as if it were a corked bottle +of wine.... I may, perhaps, take a trip to the Continent for a year or +two, if I find Othello's occupation gone, or rather Othello's +_reputation_."[57] And again, in a very able letter written on the +12th of December, 1830, to Cadell, he takes a view of the situation +with as much calmness and imperturbability as if he were an outside +spectator. "There were many circumstances in the matter which you and +J. B. (James Ballantyne) could not be aware of, and which, if you were +aware of, might have influenced your judgment, which had, and yet +have, a most powerful effect upon mine. The deaths of both my father +and mother have been preceded by a paralytic shock. My father survived +it for nearly two years--a melancholy respite, and not to be desired. +I was alarmed with Miss Young's morning visit, when, as you know, I +lost my speech. The medical people said it was from the stomach, which +might be, but while there is a doubt upon a point so alarming, you +will not wonder that the subject, or to use Hare's _lingo_, the +_shot_, should be a little anxious." He relates how he had followed +all the strict medical _regime_ prescribed to him with scrupulous +regularity, and then begun his work again with as much attention as he +could. "And having taken pains with my story, I find it is not +relished, nor indeed tolerated, by those who have no interest in +condemning it, but a strong interest in putting even a face" (? force) +"upon their consciences. Was not this, in the circumstances, a damper +to an invalid already afraid that the sharp edge might be taken off +his intellect, though he was not himself sensible of that?" In fact, +no more masterly discussion of the question whether his mind were +failing or not, and what he ought to do in the interval of doubt, can +be conceived, than these letters give us. At this time the debt of +Ballantyne and Co. had been reduced by repeated dividends--all the +fruits of Scott's literary work--more than one half. On the 17th of +December, 1830, the liabilities stood at 54,000_l._, having been +reduced 63,000_l._ within five years. And Sir Walter, encouraged by +this great result of his labour, resumed the suspended novel. + +But with the beginning of 1831 came new alarms. On January 5th Sir +Walter enters in his diary,--"Very indifferent, with more awkward +feelings than I can well bear up against. My voice sunk and my head +strangely confused." Still he struggled on. On the 31st January he +went alone to Edinburgh to sign his will, and stayed at his +bookseller's (Cadell's) house in Athol Crescent. A great snow-storm +set in which kept him in Edinburgh and in Mr. Cadell's house till the +9th February. One day while the snow was still falling heavily, +Ballantyne reminded him that a motto was wanting for one of the +chapters of _Count Robert of Paris_. He went to the window, looked out +for a moment, and then wrote,-- + + "The storm increases; 'tis no sunny shower, + Foster'd in the moist breast of March or April, + Or such as parched summer cools his lips with. + Heaven's windows are flung wide; the inmost deeps + Call, in hoarse greeting, one upon another; + On comes the flood, in all its foaming horrors, + And where's the dike shall stop it? + + _The Deluge: a Poem._" + +Clearly this failing imagination of Sir Walter's was still a great +deal more vivid than that of most men, with brains as sound as it ever +pleased Providence to make them. But his troubles were not yet even +numbered. The "storm increased," and it was, as he said, "no sunny +shower." His lame leg became so painful that he had to get a +mechanical apparatus to relieve him of some of the burden of +supporting it. Then, on the 21st March, he was hissed at Jedburgh, as +I have before said, for his vehement opposition to Reform. In April he +had another stroke of paralysis which he now himself recognized as +one. Still he struggled on at his novel. Under the date of May 6, 7, +8, he makes this entry in his diary:--"Here is a precious job. I have +a formal remonstrance from those critical people, Ballantyne and +Cadell, against the last volume of _Count Robert_, which is within a +sheet of being finished. I suspect their opinion will be found to +coincide with that of the public; at least it is not very different +from my own. The blow is a stunning one, I suppose, for I scarcely +feel it. It is singular, but it comes with as little surprise as if I +had a remedy ready; yet God knows I am at sea in the dark, and the +vessel leaky, I think, into the bargain. I cannot conceive that I have +tied a knot with my tongue which my teeth cannot untie. We shall see. +I have suffered terribly, that is the truth, rather in body than mind, +and I often wish I could lie down and sleep without waking. But I will +fight it out if I can."[58] The medical men with one accord tried to +make him give up his novel-writing. But he smiled and put them by. He +took up _Count Robert of Paris_ again, and tried to recast it. On the +18th May he insisted on attending the election for Roxburghshire, to +be held at Jedburgh, and in spite of the unmannerly reception he had +met with in March, no dissuasion would keep him at home. He was +saluted in the town with groans and blasphemies, and Sir Walter had to +escape from Jedburgh by a back way to avoid personal violence. The +cries of "Burk Sir Walter," with which he was saluted on this +occasion, haunted him throughout his illness and on his dying bed. At +the Selkirk election it was Sir Walter's duty as Sheriff to preside, +and his family therefore made no attempt to dissuade him from his +attendance. There he was so well known and loved, that in spite of his +Tory views, he was not insulted, and the only man who made any attempt +to hustle the Tory electors, was seized by Sir Walter with his own +hand, as he got out of his carriage, and committed to prison without +resistance till the election day was over. + +A seton which had been ordered for his head, gave him some relief, and +of course the first result was that he turned immediately to his +novel-writing again, and began _Castle Dangerous_ in July, 1831,--the +last July but one which he was to see at all. He even made a little +journey in company with Mr. Lockhart, in order to see the scene of the +story he wished to tell, and on his return set to work with all his +old vigour to finish his tale, and put the concluding touches to +_Count Robert of Paris_. But his temper was no longer what it had +been. He quarrelled with Ballantyne, partly for his depreciatory +criticism of _Count Robert of Paris_, partly for his growing tendency +to a mystic and strait-laced sort of dissent and his increasing +Liberalism. Even Mr. Laidlaw and Scott's children had much to bear. +But he struggled on even to the end, and did not consent to try the +experiment of a voyage and visit to Italy till his immediate work was +done. Well might Lord Chief Baron Shepherd apply to Scott Cicero's +description of some contemporary of his own, who "had borne adversity +wisely, who had not been broken by fortune, and who, amidst the +buffets of fate, had maintained his dignity." There was in Sir Walter, +I think, at least as much of the Stoic as the Christian. But Stoic or +Christian, he was a hero of the old, indomitable type. Even the last +fragments of his imaginative power were all turned to account by that +unconquerable will, amidst the discouragement of friends, and the +still more disheartening doubts of his own mind. Like the headland +stemming a rough sea, he was gradually worn away, but never crushed. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 51: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 197.] + +[Footnote 52: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 203-4.] + +[Footnote 53: Ibid., viii. 235.] + +[Footnote 54: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 238.] + +[Footnote 55: viii. 277.] + +[Footnote 56: viii. 347, 371, 381.] + +[Footnote 57: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, x. 11, 12.] + +[Footnote 58: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, x. 65-6.] + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +THE LAST YEAR. + + +In the month of September, 1831, the disease of the brain which had +long been in existence must have made a considerable step in advance. +For the first time the illusion seemed to possess Sir Walter that he +had paid off all the debt for which he was liable, and that he was +once more free to give as his generosity prompted. Scott sent Mr. +Lockhart 50_l._ to save his grandchildren some slight inconvenience, +and told another of his correspondents that he had "put his decayed +fortune into as good a condition as he could desire." It was well, +therefore, that he had at last consented to try the effect of travel +on his health,--not that he could hope to arrest by it such a disease +as his, but that it diverted him from the most painful of all efforts, +that of trying anew the spell which had at last failed him, and +perceiving in the disappointed eyes of his old admirers that the magic +of his imagination was a thing of the past. The last day of real +enjoyment at Abbotsford--for when Sir Walter returned to it to die, it +was but to catch once more the outlines of its walls, the rustle of +its woods, and the gleam of its waters, through senses already +darkened to all less familiar and less fascinating visions--was the +22nd September, 1831. On the 21st, Wordsworth had come to bid his old +friend adieu, and on the 22nd--the last day at home--they spent the +morning together in a visit to Newark. It was a day to deepen alike in +Scott and in Wordsworth whatever of sympathy either of them had with +the very different genius of the other, and that it had this result in +Wordsworth's case, we know from the very beautiful poem,--"Yarrow +Revisited,"--and the sonnet which the occasion also produced. And even +Scott, who was so little of a Wordsworthian, who enjoyed Johnson's +stately but formal verse, and Crabbe's vivid Dutch painting, more than +he enjoyed the poetry of the transcendental school, must have recurred +that day with more than usual emotion to his favourite Wordsworthian +poem. Soon after his wife's death, he had remarked in his diary how +finely "the effect of grief upon persons who like myself are highly +susceptible of humour" had been "touched by Wordsworth in the +character of the merry village teacher, Matthew, whom Jeffrey +profanely calls a half-crazy, sentimental person."[59] And long before +this time, during the brightest period of his life, Scott had made the +old Antiquary of his novel quote the same poem of Wordsworth's, in a +passage where the period of life at which he had now arrived is +anticipated with singular pathos and force. "It is at such moments as +these," says Mr. Oldbuck, "that we feel the changes of time. The same +objects are before us--those inanimate things which we have gazed on +in wayward infancy and impetuous youth, in anxious and scheming +manhood--they are permanent and the same; but when we look upon them +in cold, unfeeling old age, can we, changed in our temper, our +pursuits, our feelings,--changed in our form, our limbs, and our +strength,--can we be ourselves called the same? or do we not rather +look back with a sort of wonder upon our former selves as beings +separate and distinct from what we now are? The philosopher who +appealed from Philip inflamed with wine to Philip in his hours of +sobriety, did not claim a judge so different as if he had appealed +from Philip in his youth to Philip in his old age. I cannot but be +touched with the feeling so beautifully expressed in a poem which I +have heard repeated:-- + + 'My eyes are dim with childish tears, + My heart is idly stirr'd, + For the same sound is in my ears + Which in those days I heard. + Thus fares it still in our decay, + And yet the wiser mind + Mourns less for what age takes away + Than what it leaves behind.'"[60] + +Sir Walter's memory, which, in spite of the slight failure of brain +and the mild illusions to which, on the subject of his own prospects, +he was now liable, had as yet been little impaired--indeed, he could +still quote whole pages from all his favourite authors--must have +recurred to those favourite Wordsworthian lines of his with singular +force, as, with Wordsworth for his companion, he gazed on the refuge +of the last Minstrel of his imagination for the last time, and felt in +himself how much of joy in the sight, age had taken away, and how +much, too, of the habit of expecting it, it had unfortunately left +behind. Whether Sir Walter recalled this poem of Wordsworth's on this +occasion or not--and if he recalled it, his delight in giving pleasure +would assuredly have led him to let Wordsworth know that he recalled +it--the mood it paints was unquestionably that in which his last day +at Abbotsford was passed. In the evening, referring to the journey +which was to begin the next day, he remarked that Fielding and +Smollett had been driven abroad by declining health, and that they had +never returned; while Wordsworth--willing perhaps to bring out a +brighter feature in the present picture--regretted that the last days +of those two great novelists had not been surrounded by due marks of +respect. With Sir Walter, as he well knew, it was different. The +Liberal Government that he had so bitterly opposed were pressing on +him signs of the honour in which he was held, and a ship of his +Majesty's navy had been placed at his disposal to take him to the +Mediterranean. And Wordsworth himself added his own more durable token +of reverence. As long as English poetry lives, Englishmen will know +something of that last day of the last Minstrel at Newark:-- + + "Grave thoughts ruled wide on that sweet day, + Their dignity installing + In gentle bosoms, while sere leaves + Were on the bough or falling; + But breezes play'd, and sunshine gleam'd + The forest to embolden, + Redden'd the fiery hues, and shot + Transparence through the golden. + + "For busy thoughts the stream flow'd on + In foamy agitation; + And slept in many a crystal pool + For quiet contemplation: + No public and no private care + The free-born mind enthralling, + We made a day of happy hours, + Our happy days recalling. + + * * * * * + + "And if, as Yarrow through the woods + And down the meadow ranging, + Did meet us with unalter'd face, + Though we were changed and changing; + If _then_ some natural shadow spread + Our inward prospect over, + The soul's deep valley was not slow + Its brightness to recover. + + "Eternal blessings on the Muse + And her divine employment, + The blameless Muse who trains her sons + For hope and calm enjoyment; + Albeit sickness lingering yet + Has o'er their pillow brooded, + And care waylays their steps--a sprite + Not easily eluded. + + * * * * * + + "Nor deem that localized Romance + Plays false with our affections; + Unsanctifies our tears--made sport + For fanciful dejections: + Ah, no! the visions of the past + Sustain the heart in feeling + Life as she is--our changeful Life + With friends and kindred dealing. + + "Bear witness ye, whose thoughts that day + In Yarrow's groves were centred, + Who through the silent portal arch + Of mouldering Newark enter'd; + And clomb the winding stair that once + Too timidly was mounted + By the last Minstrel--not the last!-- + Ere he his tale recounted." + +Thus did the meditative poetry, the day of which was not yet, do +honour to itself in doing homage to the Minstrel of romantic energy +and martial enterprise, who, with the school of poetry he loved, was +passing away. + +On the 23rd September Scott left Abbotsford, spending five days on his +journey to London; nor would he allow any of the old objects of +interest to be passed without getting out of the carriage to see +them. He did not leave London for Portsmouth till the 23rd October, +but spent the intervening time in London, where he took medical +advice, and with his old shrewdness wheeled his chair into a dark +corner during the physicians' absence from the room to consult, that +he might read their faces clearly on their return without their being +able to read his. They recognized traces of brain disease, but Sir +Walter was relieved by their comparatively favourable opinion, for he +admitted that he had feared insanity, and therefore had "feared +_them_." On the 29th October he sailed for Malta, and on the 20th +November Sir Walter insisted on being landed on a small volcanic +island which had appeared four months previously, and which +disappeared again in a few days, and on clambering about its crumbling +lava, in spite of sinking at nearly every step almost up to his knees, +in order that he might send a description of it to his old friend Mr. +Skene. On the 22nd November he reached Malta, where he looked eagerly +at the antiquities of the place, for he still hoped to write a +novel--and, indeed, actually wrote one at Naples, which was never +published, called _The Siege of Malta_--on the subject of the Knights +of Malta, who had interested him so much in his youth. From Malta +Scott went to Naples, which he reached on the 17th December, and where +he found much pleasure in the society of Sir William Gell, an invalid +like himself, but not one who, like himself, struggled against the +admission of his infirmities, and refused to be carried when his own +legs would not safely carry him. Sir William Gell's dog delighted the +old man; he would pat it and call it "Poor boy!" and confide to Sir +William how he had at home "two very fine favourite dogs, so large +that I am always afraid they look too large and too feudal for my +diminished income." In all his letters home he gave some injunction to +Mr. Laidlaw about the poor people and the dogs. + +On the 22nd of March, 1832, Goethe died, an event which made a great +impression on Scott, who had intended to visit Weimar on his way back, +on purpose to see Goethe, and this much increased his eager desire to +return home. Accordingly on the 16th of April, the last day on which +he made any entry in his diary, he quitted Naples for Rome, where he +stayed long enough only to let his daughter see something of the +place, and hurried off homewards on the 21st of May. In Venice he was +still strong enough to insist on scrambling down into the dungeons +adjoining the Bridge of Sighs; and at Frankfort he entered a +bookseller's shop, when the man brought out a lithograph of +Abbotsford, and Scott remarking, "I know that already, sir," left the +shop unrecognized, more than ever craving for home. At Nimeguen, on +the 9th of June, while in a steamboat on the Rhine, he had his most +serious attack of apoplexy, but would not discontinue his journey, was +lifted into an English steamboat at Rotterdam on the 11th of June, and +arrived in London on the 13th. There he recognized his children, and +appeared to expect immediate death, as he gave them repeatedly his +most solemn blessing, but for the most part he lay at the St. James's +Hotel, in Jermyn Street, without any power to converse. There it was +that Allan Cunningham, on walking home one night, found a group of +working men at the corner of the street, who stopped him and asked, +"as if there was but one death-bed in London, 'Do you know, sir, if +this is the street where he is lying?'" According to the usual irony +of destiny, it was while the working men were doing him this hearty +and unconscious homage, that Sir Walter, whenever disturbed by the +noises of the street, imagined himself at the polling-booth of +Jedburgh, where the people had cried out, "Burk Sir Walter." And it +was while lying here,--only now and then uttering a few words,--that +Mr. Lockhart says of him, "He expressed his will as determinedly as +ever, and expressed it with the same apt and good-natured irony that +he was wont to use." + +Sir Walter's great and urgent desire was to return to Abbotsford, and at +last his physicians yielded. On the 7th July he was lifted into his +carriage, followed by his trembling and weeping daughters, and so taken to +a steamboat, where the captain gave up his private cabin--a cabin on +deck--for his use. He remained unconscious of any change till after his +arrival in Edinburgh, when, on the 11th July, he was placed again in his +carriage, and remained in it quite unconscious during the first two stages +of the journey to Tweedside. But as the carriage entered the valley of the +Gala, he began to look about him. Presently he murmured a name or two, +"Gala water, surely,--Buckholm,--Torwoodlee." When the outline of the +Eildon hills came in view, Scott's excitement was great, and when his eye +caught the towers of Abbotsford, he sprang up with a cry of delight, and +while the towers remained in sight it took his physician, his son-in-law, +and his servant, to keep him in the carriage. Mr. Laidlaw was waiting for +him, and he met him with a cry, "Ha! Willie Laidlaw! O, man, how often I +have thought of you!" His dogs came round his chair and began to fawn on +him and lick his hands, while Sir Walter smiled or sobbed over them. The +next morning he was wheeled about his garden, and on the following morning +was out in this way for a couple of hours; within a day or two he fancied +that he could write again, but on taking the pen into his hand, his +fingers could not clasp it, and he sank back with tears rolling down his +cheek. Later, when Laidlaw said in his hearing that Sir Walter had had a +little repose, he replied, "No, Willie; no repose for Sir Walter but in +the grave." As the tears rushed from his eyes, his old pride revived. +"Friends," he said, "don't let me expose myself--get me to bed,--that is +the only place." + +After this Sir Walter never left his room. Occasionally he dropped off +into delirium, and the old painful memory,--that cry of "Burk Sir +Walter,"--might be again heard on his lips. He lingered, however, till +the 21st September,--more than two months from the day of his reaching +home, and a year from the day of Wordsworth's arrival at Abbotsford +before his departure for the Mediterranean, with only one clear +interval of consciousness, on Monday, the 17th September. On that day +Mr. Lockhart was called to Sir Walter's bedside with the news that he +had awakened in a state of composure and consciousness, and wished to +see him. "'Lockhart,' he said, 'I may have but a minute to speak to +you. My dear, be a good man,--be virtuous,--be religious,--be a good +man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie +here.' He paused, and I said, 'Shall I send for Sophia and Anne?' +'No,' said he, 'don't disturb them. Poor souls! I know they were up +all night. God bless you all!'" With this he sank into a very tranquil +sleep, and, indeed, he scarcely afterwards gave any sign of +consciousness except for an instant on the arrival of his sons. And so +four days afterwards, on the day of the autumnal equinox in 1832, at +half-past one in the afternoon, on a glorious autumn day, with every +window wide open, and the ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles +distinctly audible in his room, he passed away, and "his eldest son +kissed and closed his eyes." He died a month after completing his +sixty-first year. Nearly seven years earlier, on the 7th December, +1825, he had in his diary taken a survey of his own health in relation +to the age reached by his father and other members of his family, and +had stated as the result of his considerations, "Square the odds and +good night, Sir Walter, about sixty. I care not if I leave my name +unstained and my family property settled. _Sat est vixisse._" Thus he +lived just a year--but a year of gradual death--beyond his own +calculation. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 59: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 63.] + +[Footnote 60: _The Antiquary_, chap. x.] + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +THE END OF THE STRUGGLE. + + +Sir Walter certainly left his "name unstained," unless the serious +mistakes natural to a sanguine temperament such as his, are to be +counted as stains upon his name; and if they are, where among the sons +of men would you find many unstained names as noble as his with such a +stain upon it? He was not only sensitively honourable in motive, but, +when he found what evil his sanguine temper had worked, he used his +gigantic powers to repair it, as Samson used his great strength to +repair the mischief he had inadvertently done to Israel. But with all +his exertions he had not, when death came upon him, cleared off much +more than half his obligations. There was still 54,000_l._ to pay. But +of this, 22,000_l._ was secured in an insurance on his life, and there +were besides a thousand pounds or two in the hands of the trustees, +which had not been applied to the extinction of the debt. Mr. Cadell, +his publisher, accordingly advanced the remaining 30,000_l._ on the +security of Sir Walter's copyrights, and on the 21st February, 1833, +the general creditors were paid in full, and Mr. Cadell remained the +only creditor of the estate. In February, 1847, Sir Walter's son, the +second baronet, died childless; and in May, 1847, Mr. Cadell gave a +discharge in full of all claims, including the bond for 10,000_l._ +executed by Sir Walter during the struggles of Constable and Co. to +prevent a failure, on the transfer to him of all the copyrights of Sir +Walter, including "the results of some literary exertions of the sole +surviving executor," which I conjecture to mean the copyright of the +admirable biography of Sir Walter Scott in ten volumes, to which I +have made such a host of references--probably the most perfect +specimen of a biography rich in great materials, which our language +contains. And thus, nearly fifteen years after Sir Walter's death, the +debt which, within six years, he had more than half discharged, was at +last, through the value of the copyrights he had left behind him, +finally extinguished, and the small estate of Abbotsford left cleared. + +Sir Walter's effort to found a new house was even less successful than +the effort to endow it. His eldest son died childless. In 1839 he went +to Madras, as Lieutenant-Colonel of the 15th Hussars, and subsequently +commanded that regiment. He was as much beloved by the officers of his +regiment as his father had been by his own friends, and was in every +sense an accomplished soldier, and one whose greatest anxiety it was +to promote the welfare of the privates as well as of the officers of +his regiment. He took great pains in founding a library for the +soldiers of his corps, and his only legacy out of his own family was +one of 100_l._ to this library. The cause of his death was his having +exposed himself rashly to the sun in a tiger-hunt, in August, 1846; he +never recovered from the fever which was the immediate consequence. +Ordered home for his health, he died near the Cape of Good Hope, on +the 8th of February, 1847. His brother Charles died before him. He was +rising rapidly in the diplomatic service, and was taken to Persia by +Sir John MacNeill, on a diplomatic mission, as attache and private +secretary. But the climate struck him down, and he died at Teheran, +almost immediately on his arrival, on the 28th October, 1841. Both the +sisters had died previously. Anne Scott, the younger of the two, whose +health had suffered greatly during the prolonged anxiety of her +father's illness, died on the Midsummer-day of the year following her +father's death; and Sophia, Mrs. Lockhart, died on the 17th May, 1837. +Sir Walter's eldest grandchild, John Hugh Lockhart, for whom the +_Tales of a Grandfather_ were written, died before his grandfather; +indeed Sir Walter heard of the child's death at Naples. The second +son, Walter Scott Lockhart Scott, a lieutenant in the army, died at +Versailles, on the 10th January, 1853. Charlotte Harriet Jane +Lockhart, who was married in 1847 to James Robert Hope-Scott, and +succeeded to the Abbotsford estate, died at Edinburgh, on the 26th +October, 1858, leaving three children, of whom only one survives. +Walter Michael and Margaret Anne Hope-Scott both died in infancy. The +only direct descendant, therefore, of Sir Walter Scott, is now Mary +Monica Hope-Scott who was born on the 2nd October, 1852, the +grandchild of Mrs. Lockhart, and the great-grandchild of the founder +of Abbotsford. + +There is something of irony in such a result of the Herculean labours +of Scott to found and endow a new branch of the clan of Scott. When +fifteen years after his death the estate was at length freed from +debt, all his own children and the eldest of his grandchildren were +dead; and now forty-six years have elapsed, and there only remains one +girl of his descendants to borrow his name and live in the halls of +which he was so proud. And yet this, and this only, was wanting to +give something of the grandeur of tragedy to the end of Scott's great +enterprise. He valued his works little compared with the house and +lands which they were to be the means of gaining for his descendants; +yet every end for which he struggled so gallantly is all but lost, +while his works have gained more of added lustre from the losing +battle which he fought so long, than they could ever have gained from +his success. + +What there was in him of true grandeur could never have been seen, had +the fifth act of his life been less tragic than it was. Generous, +large-hearted, and magnanimous as Scott was, there was something in +the days of his prosperity that fell short of what men need for their +highest ideal of a strong man. Unbroken success, unrivalled +popularity, imaginative effort flowing almost as steadily as the +current of a stream,--these are characteristics, which, even when +enhanced as they were in his case, by the power to defy physical pain, +and to live in his imaginative world when his body was writhing in +torture, fail to touch the heroic point. And there was nothing in +Scott, while he remained prosperous, to relieve adequately the glare +of triumphant prosperity. His religious and moral feeling, though +strong and sound, was purely regulative, and not always even +regulative, where his inward principle was not reflected in the +opinions of the society in which he lived. The finer spiritual element +in Scott was relatively deficient, and so the strength of the natural +man was almost too equal, complete, and glaring. Something that should +"tame the glaring white" of that broad sunshine, was needed; and in +the years of reverse, when one gift after another was taken away, till +at length what he called even his "magic wand" was broken, and the old +man struggled on to the last, without bitterness, without defiance, +without murmuring, but not without such sudden flashes of subduing +sweetness as melted away the anger of the teacher of his +childhood,--that something seemed to be supplied. Till calamity came, +Scott appeared to be a nearly complete natural man, and no more. Then +first was perceived in him something above nature, something which +could endure though every end in life for which he had fought so +boldly should be defeated,--something which could endure and more than +endure, which could shoot a soft transparence of its own through his +years of darkness and decay. That there was nothing very elevated in +Scott's personal or moral, or political or literary ends,--that he +never for a moment thought of himself as one who was bound to leave +the earth better than he found it,--that he never seems to have so +much as contemplated a social or political reform for which he ought +to contend,--that he lived to some extent like a child blowing +soap-bubbles, the brightest and most gorgeous of which--the Abbotsford +bubble--vanished before his eyes, is not a take-off from the charm of +his career, but adds to it the very speciality of its fascination. For +it was his entire unconsciousness of moral or spiritual efforts, the +simple straightforward way in which he laboured for ends of the most +ordinary kind, which made it clear how much greater the man was than +his ends, how great was the mind and character which prosperity failed +to display, but which became visible at once so soon as the storm came +down and the night fell. Few men who battle avowedly for the right, +battle for it with the calm fortitude, the cheerful equanimity, with +which Scott battled to fulfil his engagements and to save his family +from ruin. He stood high amongst those-- + + "Who ever with a frolic welcome took + The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed + Free hearts, free foreheads," + +among those who have been able to display-- + + "One equal temper of heroic hearts + Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, + To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." + +And it was because the man was so much greater than the ends for which +he strove, that there is a sort of grandeur in the tragic fate which +denied them to him, and yet exhibited to all the world the infinite +superiority of the striver himself to the toy he was thus passionately +craving. + + +THE END. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sir Walter Scott, by Richard H. 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