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diff --git a/29624.txt b/29624.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f566c73 --- /dev/null +++ b/29624.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4988 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sir Walter Scott, by George Saintsbury + +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 + Famous Scots Series + +Author: George Saintsbury + +Release Date: August 6, 2009 [EBook #29624] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR WALTER SCOTT *** + + + + +Produced by Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +SIR +WALTER +SCOTT + + + + +FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES + + +_The following Volumes are now ready_-- + +THOMAS CARLYLE. By Hector C. Macpherson. +ALLAN RAMSAY. By Oliphant Smeaton. +HUGH MILLER. By W. Keith Leask. +JOHN KNOX. By A. Taylor Innes. +ROBERT BURNS. By Gabriel Setoun. +THE BALLADISTS. By John Geddie. +RICHARD CAMERON. By Professor Herkless. +SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON. By Eve Blantyre Simpson. +THOMAS CHALMERS. By Professor W. Garden Blaikie. +JAMES BOSWELL. By W. Keith Leask. +TOBIAS SMOLLETT. By Oliphant Smeaton. +FLETCHER OF SALTOUN. By G. W. T. Omond. +THE BLACKWOOD GROUP. By Sir George Douglas. +NORMAN MACLEOD. By John Wellwood. +SIR WALTER SCOTT. By Professor Saintsbury. + + + + +[Illustration: + +SIR WALTER +SCOTT + +BY +GEORGE +SAINTSBURY + +FAMOUS +SCOTS +SERIES + +PUBLISHED BY +OLIPHANT ANDERSON +& FERRIER. EDINBURGH +AND LONDON + +] + + * * * * * + +The designs and ornaments of this volume are by Mr. Joseph +Brown, and the printing from the press of Morrison & Gibb +Limited, Edinburgh. + +_June 1897._ + + * * * * * + + + + +PREFACE + + +To the very probable remark that 'Another little book about Scott is not +wanted,' I can at least reply that apparently it is, inasmuch as the +publishers proposed this volume to me, not I to them. And I believe +that, as a matter of fact, no 'little book about Scott' has appeared +since the _Journal_ was completed, since the new and important +instalment of _Letters_ appeared (in both cases with invaluable +editorial apparatus by Mr. David Douglas), and especially since Mr. +Lang's _Lockhart_ was published. It is true that no one of these, nor +any other book that is likely to appear, has altered, or is likely to +alter, much in a sane estimate of Sir Walter. His own matchless +character and the genius of his first biographer combined to set before +the world early an idea, of which it is safe to say that nothing that +should lower it need be feared, and hardly anything to heighten it can +be reasonably hoped. But as fresh items of illustrative detail are made +public, there can be no harm in endeavouring to incorporate something of +what they give us in fresh abstracts and _apercus_ from time to time. +And for the continued and, as far as space permits, detailed criticism +of the work, it may be pleaded that criticism of Scott has for many +years been chiefly general, while in criticism, even more than in other +things, generalities are deceptive. + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE +CHAPTER I + +LIFE TILL MARRIAGE 9 + + +CHAPTER II + +EARLY LITERARY WORK 20 + + +CHAPTER III + +THE VERSE ROMANCES 38 + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE NOVELS, FROM _WAVERLEY_ TO _REDGAUNTLET_ 69 + + +CHAPTER V + +THE DOWNFALL OF BALLANTYNE & COMPANY 104 + + +CHAPTER VI + +LAST WORKS AND DAYS 118 + + +CHAPTER VII + +CONCLUSION 139 + + + + +SIR WALTER SCOTT + + + + +CHAPTER I + +LIFE TILL MARRIAGE + + +Scott's own 'autobiographic fragment,' printed in Lockhart's first +volume, has made other accounts of his youth mostly superfluous, even to +a day which persists in knowing better about everything and everybody +than it or they knew about themselves. No one ever recorded his +genealogy more minutely, with greater pride, or with a more saving sense +of humour than Sir Walter. He was connected, though remotely, with +gentle families on both sides. That is to say, his great-grandfather was +son of the Laird of Raeburn, who was grandson of Walter Scott of Harden +and the 'Flower of Yarrow.' The great-grandson, 'Beardie,' acquired that +cognomen by letting his beard grow like General Dalziel, though for the +exile of James II., instead of the death of Charles I.--'whilk was the +waur reason,' as Sir Walter himself might have said. + +Beardie's second son, being more thoroughly sickened of the sea in his +first voyage than Robinson Crusoe, took to farming and Whiggery, and +married the daughter of Haliburton of Newmains--there was also Macdougal +and Campbell blood on the spindle side of the older generations of the +family. Their eldest son Walter, father of Sir Walter, was born in 1729, +and, being bred to the law, became the original, according to undisputed +tradition, of the 'Saunders Fairford' of _Redgauntlet_, the most +autobiographical as well as not the least charming of the novels. He +married Anne Rutherford, who, through her mother, brought the blood of +the Swintons of Swinton to enrich the joint strain; and from her father, +a member of a family distinguished in the annals of the University of +Edinburgh, may have transmitted some of the love for books which was not +the most prominent feature of the other ingredients. + +Walter himself was the third 'permanent child' (to adopt an agreeable +phrase of Mr. Traill's about another person) of a family of twelve, only +five of whom survived infancy. His three brothers, John, Thomas, and +Daniel, and his sister Anne, all figure in the records; but little is +heard of John and not much of Anne. Thomas, the second, either had, or +was thought by his indulgent brother to have, literary talents, and was +at one time put up to father the novels; while Daniel (whose misconduct +in money matters, and still more in showing the white feather, brought +on him the only display of anything that can be called rancour recorded +in Sir Walter's history) concerns us even less. The date of the +novelist's birth was 15th August 1771, the place, 'the top of the +College Wynd,' a locality now whelmed in the actual Chambers Street face +of the present Old University buildings, and near that of Kirk of Field. +Escaping the real or supposed dangers of a consumptive wet-nurse, he was +at first healthy enough; but teething or something else developed the +famous lameness, which at first seemed to threaten loss of all use of +the right leg. The child was sent to the house of his grandfather, the +Whig farmer of Sandyknowe, where he abode for some years under the +shadow of Smailholm Tower, reading a little, listening to Border legends +a great deal, and making one long journey to London and Bath. This first +blessed period of 'making himself'[1] lasted till his eighth year, and +ended with a course of sea-bathing at Prestonpans, where he met the +original in name and perhaps in nature of Captain Dalgetty, and the +original in character of the Antiquary. Then he returned (_circ._ 1779) +to his father's house, now in George Square, to his numerous, if +impermanent, family of brothers and sisters, and to the High School. The +most memorable incident of this part of his career is the famous episode +of 'Greenbreeks.'[2] + +His health, as he grew up, becoming again weak, the boy was sent once +more Borderwards--this time to Kelso, where he lived with an aunt, went +to the town school, and made the acquaintance there, whether for good or +ill, who shall say? of the Ballantynes. And he had to return to Kelso +for the same cause, at least once during his experiences at College, +where he did not take the full usual number of courses, and acquired no +name as a scholar. But he always read. + +As it had not been decided whether he was to adopt the superior or the +inferior branch of the law, he was apprenticed to his father at the age +of fifteen, as a useful preparation for either career. He naturally +enough did not love 'engrossing,' but he did not cross his father's soul +by refusing it, and though returns of illness occurred now and then, his +constitution appeared to be gradually strengthening itself, partly, as +he thought, owing to the habit of very long walks, in which he took +great delight. He tried various accomplishments; but he could neither +draw, nor make music, nor (at this time) write. Still he always +read--irregularly, uncritically, but enormously, so that to this day Sir +Walter's real learning is under-estimated. And he formed a very +noteworthy circle of friends--William Clerk, 'Darsie Latimer,' the chief +of them all. It must have been just after he entered his father's office +that he met Burns, during that poet's famous visit to Edinburgh in +1786-87. + +Considerably less is known of his late youth and early manhood than +either of his childhood or of his later life. His letters--those +invaluable and unparalleled sources of biographical information--do not +begin till 1792, the year of his majority, when (on July 11) he was +called to the Bar. But it is a universal tradition that, in these years +of apprenticeship, in more senses than one, he, partly in gratifying his +own love of wandering, and partly in serving his father's business by +errands to clients, etc., did more than lay the foundation of that +unrivalled knowledge of Scotland, and of all classes in it, which plays +so important a part in his literary work. I say 'of all classes in it,' +and this point is of the greatest weight. Scott has been accused (for +the most part foolishly) of paying an exaggerated respect to rank. If +this had been true, it would at least not have been due to late or +imperfect acquaintance with persons of rank. Democratic as the Scotland +of this century has sometimes been called, it is not uncommon to find a +considerable respect for aristocracy in the greatest Scotch Radicals; +and Scott was notoriously not a Radical. But his familiarity with all +ranks from an early age is undoubted, and only very shallow or +prejudiced observers will doubt the beneficial effect which this had on +his study of humanity.[6] The uneasy caricature which mars Dickens's +picture of the upper, and even the upper middle, classes is as much +absent from his work as the complete want of familiarity with the lower +which appears, for instance, in Bulwer. It is certain that before he had +written anything, he was on familiar terms with many persons, both men +and women, of the highest rank--the most noteworthy among his feminine +correspondents being Lady Louisa Stuart (sister of the Marquis of Bute +and grand-daughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu) and Lady Abercorn. With +the former the correspondence is always on the footing of mere though +close friendship, literary and other; in part at least of that with Lady +Abercorn, I cannot help suspecting the presence, especially on the +lady's side, of that feeling, + + 'Too warm for friendship and too pure for love,' + +which undoubtedly sometimes does exist between men and women who cannot, +and perhaps who would not if they could, turn love into marriage. + +However this may be, it is, let it be repeated, certain that Scott, in +the six years from his fifteenth, when he is said to have first visited +the Highlands and seen Rob Roy's country, to his majority, and yet again +in the five or six between his call to the Bar and his marriage, visited +many, if not all, parts of Scotland; knew high and low, rich and poor, +with the amiable interest of his temperament and the keen observation of +his genius; took part in business and amusement and conviviality (he +accuses himself later of having been not quite free from the prevalent +peccadillo of rather deep drinking); and still and always _read_. He +joined the 'Speculative Society' in January 1791, and, besides taking +part in the debates on general subjects, read papers on Feudalism, +Ossian, and Northern Mythology, in what were to be his more special +lines. + +His young lawyer friends called him 'Colonel Grogg,' a _sobriquet_ not +difficult to interpret on one of the hints just given, and 'Duns +Scotus,' which concerns the other; while yet a third characteristic, +which can surprise nobody, is indicated in the famous introduction of +him to a boisterous party of midshipmen of the Marryat type by James +Clerk, the brother of Darsie Latimer, who kept a yacht, and was fond of +the sea: 'You may take Mr. Scott for a poor _lamiter_, gentlemen, but he +is the first to begin a row and the last to end it.' + +It appears that it was from a time somewhat before the call that the +beginning of Scott's famous, his unfortunate, and (it has been the +fashion, rightly or wrongly, to add) his only love affair dates. Some +persons have taken the trouble to piece together and eke out the +references to 'Green Mantle,' otherwise Miss Stuart of Belches, later +Lady Forbes. It is better to respect Scott's own reticence on a subject +of which very little is really known, and of which he, like most +gentlemen, preferred to say little or nothing. The affection appears to +have been mutual; but the lady was probably not very eager to incur +family displeasure by making a match decidedly below her in rank, and, +at that time, distinctly imprudent in point of fortune. But the +courtship, such as it was, appears to have been long, and the effects of +the loss indelible. Scott speaks of his heart as 'handsomely +pieced'--'pieced,' it may be observed, not 'healed.' A healed wound +sometimes does not show; a pieced garment or article of furniture +reminds us of the piecing till the day when it goes to fire or dustbin. +But it has been supposed, with some reason, that those heroines of +Scott's who show most touch of personal sympathy--Catherine Seyton, Die +Vernon, Lilias Redgauntlet--bear features, physical or mental or both, +of this Astarte, this + + 'Lost woman of his youth, yet unpossessed.' + +And no one can read the _Diary_ without perceiving the strange +bitter-sweet, at the moment of his greatest calamity, of the fact that +Sir William Forbes, who rendered him invaluable service at his greatest +need, was his successful rival thirty years before, and the widower of +'Green Mantle.' + +This affair came to an end in October 1796; and it may astonish some +wise people, accustomed to regard Scott as a rather humdrum and prosaic +person, who escaped the scandals so often associated with the memory of +men of letters from sheer want of temptation, to hear that one of his +most intimate friends of his own age at the time 'shuddered at the +violence of his most irritable and ungovernable mind.' There is no +reason to doubt the fidelity of this description. And those who know +something of human nature will be disposed to assign the disappearance +of the irritableness and ungovernableness precisely to this incident, +and to the working of a strong mind, confronted by fate with the +question whether it was to be the victim or the master of its own +passions, fighting out the battle once for all, and thenceforward +keeping its house armed against them, it may be with some loss, but +certainly with much gain. + +It has been said that he states (with a touch of irony, no doubt) that +his heart was 'handsomely pieced'; and it is not against the theory +hinted in the foregoing paragraph, but, on the contrary, in favour of +it, that the piecing did not take long. In exactly a year Scott became +engaged to Miss Charlotte Margaret Carpenter or Charpentier,[4] and they +were married on Christmas Eve, 1797, at St. Mary's, Carlisle. They had +met at Gilsland Spa in the previous July, and the courtship had not +taken very long. The lady was of French extraction, had an only brother +in the service of the East India Company, and, being an orphan, was the +ward of the Marquis of Downshire,--circumstances on which gossips like +Hogg made impertinent remarks. It is fair, however, to 'the Shepherd' to +say that he speaks enthusiastically both of Mrs. Scott's appearance +('one of the most beautiful and handsome creatures I ever saw in my +life'; 'a perfect beauty') and of her character ('she is cradled in my +remembrance, and ever shall be, as a sweet, kind, and affectionate +creature').[5] She was very dark, small, with hair which the Shepherd +calls black, Lockhart dark brown; her features not regular, but her +complexion, figure, and so forth 'unusually attractive.' Not very much +is said about her in any of the authentic accounts, and traditional +tittle-tattle may be neglected. She does not seem to have been extremely +wise, and was entirely unliterary; but neither of these defects is a +_causa redhibitionis_ in marriage; and she was certainly a faithful and +affectionate wife. At any rate, Scott made no complaints, if he had any +to make, and nearly the most touching passage in the _Diary_ is that +written after her death. + +The minor incidents, not literary, of his life, between his call to the +Bar and his marriage, require a little notice, for they had a very great +influence on the character of his future work. His success at the Bar +was moderate, but his fees increased steadily if slowly. He defended +(unsuccessfully) a Galloway minister who was accused among other counts +of 'toying with a sweetie-wife,' and it is interesting to find in his +defence some casuistry about _ebrius_ and _ebriosus_, which reminds one +of the Baron of Bradwardine. He took part victoriously in a series of +battles with sticks, between Loyalist advocates and writers and Irish +Jacobin medical students, in the pit of the Edinburgh theatre during +April 1794. In June 1795 he became a curator of the Advocates' Library, +and a year later engaged (of course on the loyal side) in another great +political 'row,' this time in the streets. + +Above all, in the spring and summer between the loss of his love and his +marriage, he engaged eagerly in volunteering, becoming quartermaster, +paymaster, secretary, and captain in the Edinburgh Light Horse--an +occupation which has left at least as much impression on his work as +Gibbon's equally famous connection with the Hampshire Militia on his. +His friendships continued and multiplied; and he began with the sisters +of some of his friends, especially Miss Cranstoun (his chief confidante +in the 'Green Mantle' business) and Miss Erskine, the first, or the +first known to us, of those interesting correspondences with ladies +which show him perhaps at his very best. For in them he plays neither +jack-pudding, nor coxcomb, nor sentimentalist, nor any of the +involuntary counterparts which men in such cases are too apt to play; +and they form not the least of his titles to the great name of +gentleman. + +But by far the most important contribution of these six or seven years +to his 'making' was the further acquaintance with the scenery, and +customs, and traditions, and dialects, and local history of his own +country, which his greater independence, enlarged circle of friends, and +somewhat increased means enabled him to acquire. It is quite true that +to a man with his gifts any microcosm will do for a macrocosm in +miniature. I have heard in conversation (I forget whether it is in any +of the books) that he picked up the word 'whomled' (= 'bucketed +over'--'turned like a tub'), which adds so much to the description of +the nautical misfortune of Claud Halcro and Triptolemus in _The Pirate_, +by overhearing it from a scold in the Grassmarket. But still the +enlarged experience could not but be of the utmost value. It was during +these years that he saw Glamis Castle in its unspoiled state, during +these that, in connection with the case of the unfortunate but rather +happily named devotee of Bacchus and Venus, M'Naught, he explored +Galloway, and obtained the decorations and scenery, if not the story, of +_Guy Mannering_. He also repeated his visits to the English side of the +Border, not merely on the occasion during which he met Miss Carpenter, +but earlier, in a second excursion to Northumberland. + +But, above all, these were the years of his famous 'raids' into +Liddesdale, then one of the most inaccessible districts of Scotland, +under the guidance of Mr. Shortreed of Jedburgh--raids which completed +the information for _Guy Mannering_, which gave him much of the material +for the _Minstrelsy_, and the history of which has, I think, delighted +every one of his readers and biographers, except one or two who have +been scandalised at the exquisite story of the Arrival of the Keg.[3] Of +these let us not speak, but, regarding them with a tender pity not +unmixed with wonder, pass to the beginnings of his actual literary life +and to the history of his early married years. The literature a little +preceded the life; but the life certainly determined the growth of the +literature. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] His friend Shortreed's well-known expression for the results of the +later Liddesdale 'raids.' + +[2] See General Preface to the Novels, or Lockhart, i. 136. + +[3] He attributes to Lady Balcarres the credit of being his earliest +patroness, and of giving him, when a mere shy boy, the run of her +drawing-room and of her box at the theatre. + +[4] He himself, in his entries of his children's births, always gives +the order of the names as Margaret Charlotte. + +[5] The Boar of the Forest seems, not unnaturally, to have had a rather +less warm 'cradle' in Lady Scott's feelings. She thought he took +liberties; and though he meant no harm, he certainly did. + +[6] Lockhart, i. 270. I quote, as is usual, the second or ten-volume +edition. But, for reading, some may prefer the first, in which the +number of the volumes coincides with their real division, which has the +memories of the death of Sophia Scott and others connected with its +course, and to which the second made fewer positive additions than may +be thought.--[It has been pointed out to me in reference to the word +'whomle' on the opposite page that Fergusson has 'whumble' in 'The +Rising of the Session.' But if Scott had quoted, would he have altered +the spelling? The Grassmarket story, moreover, exactly corresponds to +his words, 'as a gudewife would whomle a bowie.'] + + + + +CHAPTER II + +EARLY LITERARY WORK + + +It is pretty universally known, and must have been perceived even from +the foregoing summary, that Scott was by no means a very precocious +writer. He takes rank, indeed, neither with those who, according to a +famous phrase, 'break out threescore thousand strong' in youth; nor with +those who begin original composition betimes, and by degrees arrive at +excellence; nor yet with those who do not display any aptitude for +letters till late in life. His class--a fourth, which, at least as +regards the greater names of literature, is perhaps the smallest of +all--comprises those who may almost be said to drift into literary work +and literary fame, whose first production is not merely tentative and +unoriginal, but, so to speak, accidental, who do not discover their real +faculty for literary work till after a pretty long course of casual +literary play. + +Part of this was no doubt due to the fact--vouched for sufficiently, and +sufficiently probable, though not, so far as I know, resting on any +distinct and firsthand documentary evidence--that Walter Scott the elder +had, even more than his _eidolon_ the elder Fairford, that horror of +literary employment on the part of his son which was for generations a +tradition among persons of business, and which is perhaps not quite +extinct yet. For this opposition, as is well known, rather stimulates +than checks, even in dutiful offspring, the noble rage. It was due +partly, perhaps, to a metaphysical cause--the fact that until Scott was +well past his twentieth year, the wind of the spirit was not yet +blowing, that the new poetical and literary day had not yet dawned; and +partly to a more commonplace reason or set of reasons. About 1790 +literary work was extremely badly paid;[11] and, even if it had been paid +better, Scott had no particular need of money. Till his marriage he +lived at home, spent his holidays with friends, or on tours where the +expenses were little or nothing, and obtained sufficient pocket-money, +first by copying while he was still apprenticed to his father, then by +his fees when he was called. He could, as he showed later, spend money +royally when he had it or thought he had it; but he was a man of no +extravagant tastes of the ordinary kind, and Edinburgh was not in his +days at all an extravagant place of living. Even when he married, he was +by no means badly off. His wife, though not exactly an heiress, had +means which had been estimated at five hundred a year, and which seem +never to have fallen below two hundred; Scott's fees averaged about +another two hundred; he evidently had an allowance from his father (who +had been very well off, and was still not poor), and before very long +the Sheriffship of Selkirkshire added three hundred more, though he +seems to have made this an excuse for giving up practice, which he had +never much liked. His father's death in 1799 put him in possession of +some property; legacies from relations added more. Before the +publication of the _Lay_ (when he was barely three-and-thirty), Lockhart +estimates his income, leaving fees and literary work out of the +question, at nearly if not quite a thousand a year; and a thousand a +year at the beginning of the century went as far as fifteen hundred, if +not two thousand, at its close. + +Thus, with no necessity to live by his pen, with no immediate or +extraordinary temptation to use it for gain, and as yet, it would seem, +with no overmastering inducement from his genius to do so, while he at +no time of his life felt any stimulus from vanity, it is not surprising +that it was long before Scott began to write in earnest. A few childish +verse translations and exercises of his neither encourage nor forbid any +particular expectations of literature from him; they are neither better +nor worse than those of hundreds, probably thousands, of boys every +year. His first published performance, now of extreme rarity, and not, +of course, produced with any literary object, was his Latin call-thesis +on the rather curious subject (which has been, not improbably, supposed +to be connected with his German studies and the terror-literature of the +last decade of the century) of the disposal of the dead bodies of +legally executed persons. His first English work was directly the result +of the said German studies, to which, like many of his contemporaries, +he had been attracted by fashion. It consisted of nothing more than the +well-known translations of Buerger's _Lenore_ and _Wild Huntsman_, which +were issued in a little quarto volume by Manners & Miller of Edinburgh, +in October 1796--a date which has the special interest of suggesting +that Scott sought some refuge in literature from the agony of his +rejection by Miss Stuart. + +These well-known translations, or rather imitations, the first published +under the title of _William and Helen_, which it retains, the other as +_The Chase_, which was subsequently altered to the better and more +literal rendering, show unmistakably the result of the study of ballads, +both in the printed forms and as orally delivered. Some crudities of +rhyme and expression are said to have been corrected at the instance of +one of Scott's (at this time rather numerous) Egerias, the beautiful +wife of his kinsman, Scott of Harden, a young lady partly of German +extraction, but of the best English breeding. Slight books of the kind, +even translations, made a great deal more mark sometimes in those days +than they would in these; but there were a great many translations of +_Lenore_ about, and except by Scott's friends, little notice was taken +of the volume. There were some excuses for the neglect, the best perhaps +being that English criticism at the time was at nearly as low an ebb as +English poetry. A really acute critic could hardly have mistaken the +difference between Scott's verse and the fustian or tinsel of the Della +Cruscans, the frigid rhetoric of Darwin, or the drivel of Hayley. Only +Southey had as yet written ballad verses with equal vigour and facility; +and, I think, he had not yet published any of them. It is Scott who +tells us that he borrowed + + 'Tramp, tramp, along the land they rode, + Splash, splash, along the sea,' + +from Taylor of Norwich; but Taylor himself had the good taste to see how +much it was improved by the completion-- + + 'The scourge is red, the spur drops blood, + _The fashing pebbles flee_'-- + +which last line, indeed, Coleridge himself hardly bettered in the not +yet written _Ancient Mariner_, the _ne plus ultra_ of the style. It must +be mainly a question of individual taste whether the sixes and eights of +the _Lenore_ version or the continued eights of the _Huntsman_ please +most. But any one who knows what the present state of British poetry was +in October 1796 will be more than indifferently well satisfied with +either. + +It was never Scott's way to be cast down at the failure or the neglect +of any of his work; nor does he seem to have been ever actuated by the +more masculine but perhaps equally childish determination to 'do it +again' and 'shame the fools.' It seems quite on the cards that he might +have calmly acquiesced in want of notoriety, and have continued a mere +literary lawyer, with a pretty turn or verse and a great amount of +reading, if his most intimate friend, William Erskine, had not met +'Monk' Lewis in London, and found him anxious for contributions to his +_Tales of Wonder_. Lewis was a coxcomb, a fribble, and the least bit in +the world of a snob: his _Monk_ is not very clean fustian, and most of +his other work rubbish. But he was, though not according to knowledge, a +sincere Romantic; he had no petty jealousy in matters literary; and, +above all, he had, as Scott recognised, but as has not been always +recognised since, a really remarkable and then novel command of flowing +but fairly strict lyrical measures, the very things needed to thaw the +frost of the eighteenth-century couplet. Erskine offered, and Lewis +gladly accepted, contributions from Scott, and though _Tales of Wonder_ +were much delayed, and did not appear till 1801, the project directly +caused the production of Scott's first original work in ballad, +_Glenfinlas_ and _The Eve of St. John_, as well as the less important +pieces of the _Fire King_, _Frederick and Alice_, etc. + +In _Glenfinlas_ and _The Eve_ the real Scott first shows, and the better +of the two is the second. It is not merely that, though Scott had a +great liking for and much proficiency in 'eights,' that metre is never +so effective for ballad purposes as eights and sixes; nor that, as +Lockhart admits, _Glenfinlas_ exhibits a Germanisation which is at the +same time an adulteration; nor even that, well as Scott knew the +Perthshire Highlands, they could not appeal to him with the same subtle +intimacy of touch as that possessed by the ruined tower where, as a +half-paralysed infant, he had been herded with the lambs. But all these +causes together, and others, join to produce a freer effect in _The +Eve_. The eighteenth century is farther off; the genuine mediaeval +inspiration is nearer. And it is especially noticeable that, as in most +of the early performances of the great poetical periods, an alteration +of metrical etiquette (as we may call it) plays a great part. Scott had +not yet heard that recitation of _Christabel_ which had so great an +effect on his work, and through it on the work of others. But he had +mastered for himself, and by study of the originals, the secret of the +_Christabel_ metre, that is to say, the wide licence of equivalence in +trisyllabic and dissyllabic feet,[10] of metre catalectic or not, as need +was, of anacrusis and the rest. As is natural to a novice, he rather +exaggerates his liberties, especially in the cases where the internal +rhyme seduces him. It is necessary not merely to slur, but to gabble, in +order to get some of these into proper rhythm, while in other places the +mistake is made of using so many anapaests that the metre becomes, not +as it should be, iambic, with anapaests for variation, but anapaestic +without even a single iamb. But these are 'sma' sums, sma' sums,' as +saith his own Bailie Jarvie, and on the whole the required effect of +vigour and variety, of narrative giving place to terror and terror to +narrative is capitally achieved. Above all, in neither piece, in the +less no more than in the more successful, do we find anything of what +the poet has so well characterised in one of his early reviews as the +'spurious style of tawdry and affected simplicity which trickles through +the legendary ditties' of the eighteenth century. 'The hunt is up' in +earnest; and we are chasing the tall deer in the open hills, not +coursing rabbits with toy terriers on a bowling-green. + +The writing of these pieces had, however, been preceded by the +publication of Scott's second volume, the translation of _Goetz von +Berlichingen_, for which Lewis had arranged with a London bookseller, so +that this time the author was not defrauded of his hire. He received +twenty-five guineas, and was to have as much more for a second edition, +which the short date of copyright forestalled. The book appeared in +February 1799, and received more attention than the ballads, though, as +Lockhart saw, it was in fact belated, the brief English interest in +German _Sturm und Drang_ having ceased directly, though indirectly it +gave Byron much of his hold on the public a dozen years later. At about +the same time Scott executed, but did not publish, an original, or +partly original, dramatic work of the same kind, _The House of Aspen_, +which he contributed thirty years later to _The Keepsake_. Few good +words have ever been said for this, and perhaps not many persons have +ever cared much for the _Goetz_, either in the original or in the +translation. Goethe did not, in drama at least, understand adventurous +matter, and Scott had no grasp of dramatic form.[9] + +It has been said that there was considerable delay in the publication of +the _Tales of Wonder_; and some have discussed what direct influence +this delay had on Scott's further and further advance into the waters of +literature. It is certain that he at one time thought of publishing his +contributions independently, and that he did actually print a few copies +of them privately; and it is extremely probable that his little +experiments in publication, mere _hors-d'oeuvre_ as they were, had +whetted his appetite. Even the accident of his friend Ballantyne's +having taken to publishing a newspaper, and having room at his press for +what I believe printers profanely call 'job-work,' may not have been +without influence. What is certain is that the project of editing a few +Border ballads--a selection of his collection which might make 'a neat +little volume of four or five shillings'--was formed roughly in the late +autumn of 1799, and had taken very definite shape by April 1800. Heber, +the great bibliophile and brother of the Bishop, introduced Scott to +that curious person Leyden, whose gifts, both original and erudite, are +undoubted, although perhaps his exile and early death have not hurt +their fame. And it so happened that Leyden was both an amateur of old +ballads and (for the two things went together then, though they are +sternly kept apart now) a skilful fabricator of new. The impetuous +Borderer pooh-poohed a 'thin thing' such as a four or five shilling +book, and Scott, nothing loath, extended his project. Most of his spare +time during 1800 and 1801 was spent on it; and besides corresponding +with the man who 'fished this murex up,' Bishop Percy, he entered into +literary relations with Joseph Ritson. Even Ritson's waspish character +seems to have been softened by Scott's courtesy, and perhaps even more +by the joint facts that he had as yet attained no literary reputation, +and neither at this nor at any other time gave himself literary airs. He +also made the acquaintance of George Ellis, who became a warm and +intimate friend. These were the three men of the day who, since Warton's +death, knew most of early English poetry, and though Percy was too old +to help, the others were not. + +The scheme grew and grew, especially by the inclusion in it of the +publication not merely of ballads, but of the romance of _Sir Tristrem_ +(of the authorship of which by someone else than Thomas the Rhymer, +Scott never would be convinced), till the neat four or five shilling +volume was quite out of the question. When at last the two volumes of +the first (Kelso) edition appeared in 1802, not merely was _Sir +Tristrem_ omitted, but much else which, still without 'the knight who +fought for England,' subsequently appeared in a third. The earliest form +of the _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_ is a very pretty book; it +deservedly established the fame of Ballantyne as a printer, and as it +was not printed in the huge numbers which have reduced the money value +of Sir Walter's later books, it is rather surprising that it is not more +sought after than it is at present. My copy--I do not know whether by +exception or not--wears the rather unusual livery of pink boards instead +of the common blue, grey, or drab. The paper and type are excellent; the +printing (with a few slips in the Latin quotations such as _concedunt_ +for _comedunt_) is very accurate, and the frontispiece, a view of +Hermitage Castle in the rain, has the interest of presenting what is +said to have been a very faithful view of the actual state of Lord +Soulis' stronghold and the place of the martyrdom of Ramsay, attained by +the curious stages of (1) a drawing by Scott, who could not draw at all; +(2) a rifacimento by Clerk, who had never seen the place; and (3) an +engraving by an artist who was equally innocent of local knowledge. + +The book, however, which brought in the modest profit of rather less +than eighty pounds, would have been of equal moment under whatever guise +it had pleased to assume. The shock of Percy's _Reliques_ was renewed, +and in a far more favourable atmosphere, before a far better prepared +audience. The public indeed had not yet been 'ground-baited' up to the +consummation of thousands of copies of poetry as they were later by +Scott himself and Byron; but an edition of eight hundred copies went off +in the course of the year, and a second, with the additional volume, was +at once called for. It contained, indeed, not much original verse, +though 'Glenfinlas' and 'The Eve,' with Leyden's 'Cout of Keeldar,' +'Lord Soulis,' etc., appeared in it after a fashion which Percy had set +and Evans had continued. But the ballads, familiar as they have become +since, not merely in the _Minstrelsy_ itself, but in a hundred fresh +collections, selections, and what not, could never be mistaken by +anyone fitted to appreciate them. 'The Outlaw Murray,' with its +rub-a-dub of _e_ rhymes throughout, opens the book very cunningly, with +something not of the best, but good enough to excite expectation,--an +expectation surely not to be disappointed by the immortal agony (dashed +with one stroke of magnificent wrath) of 'Helen of Kirkconnell,' the +bustle, frolic, and battle-joy of the Border pieces proper, the solemn +notes of 'The Lyke-Wake Dirge,' the eeriness of 'Clerk Saunders' and +'The Wife of Usher's Well.' + +Even Percy had not been lucky enough to hit upon anything so +characteristic of the _average_ ballad style at its best as the opening +stanza of 'Fause Foodrage'-- + + 'King Easter courted her for her lands, + King Wester for her fee, + King Honour for her comely face + And for her fair bodie'; + +and Percy would no doubt have been tempted to 'polish' such more than +average touches as Margaret's 'turning,' without waking, in the arms of +her lover as he receives his deathblow, or as the incomparable stanza in +'The Wife of Usher's Well' which tells how-- + + 'By the gates of Paradise + That birk grew fair enough.' + +Those who study literature in what they are pleased to call a scientific +manner have, as was to be expected, found fault (mildly or not, +according to their degree of sense and taste) with Scott, for the manner +in which he edited these ballads. It may be admitted that the practice +of mixing imitations with originals is a questionable one; and that in +some other cases, Scott, though he was far from the illegitimate and +tasteless fashion of alteration, of which in their different ways Allan +Ramsay and Percy himself had set the example, was not always up to the +highest lights on this subject of editorial faithfulness. It must, for +instance, seem odd to the least pedantic nowadays that he should have +thought proper to print Dryden's _Virgil_ with Dr. Somebody's pedantic +improvements instead of Dryden's own text. But the case of the ballads +is very different. Here, it must be remembered, there is no authentic +original at all. Even in the rare cases, where very early printed or MS. +copies exist, we not only do not know that these are the originals, we +have every reasonable reason for being pretty certain that they are not. +In the case of ballads taken down from repetition, we know as a matter +of certainty that, according to the ordinary laws of human nature, the +reciter has altered the text which he or she heard, that that text was +in its day and way altered by someone else, and so on almost _ad +infinitum_. 'Mrs. Brown's version,' therefore, or Mr. Smith's, or Mr. +Anybody's, has absolutely no claims to sacrosanctity. It is well, no +doubt, that all such versions should be collected by someone (as in this +case by Professor Child) who has the means, the time, and the patience. +But for the purposes of reading, for the purposes of poetic enjoyment, +such a collection is nearly valueless. We must have it for reference, of +course; nobody grudges the guineas he has spent for the best part of the +last twenty years on Professor Child's stately, if rather cumbrous, +volumes. But who can _read_ a dozen versions, say, of 'The Queen's +Marie' with any pleasure? What is exquisite in one is watered, messed, +spoiled by the others. + +Therefore I shall maintain that though the most excellent way of all +might have been to record his alterations, and the original, in an +appendix-dustbin of _apparatus criticus_, Scott was right, and trebly +right, in such dealing as that with the first stanza of 'Fause +Foodrage,' which I have quoted and praised. That stanza, as it stands +above, does not occur in any of the extant quasi-originals. 'Mrs. +Brown's MS.,' from which, as Professor Child says, with almost silent +reproach, Scott took his text, 'with some forty small changes,' reads-- + + 'King Easter has courted her for her gowd, + King Wester for her fee, + King Honour for her lands sae braid, + And for her fair bodie.' + +Now this is clearly wrong. Either 'gowd' or 'lands' is a mere repetition +of 'fee,' and if not,[8] the reading does not point any ethical +antithesis between Kings Easter and Wester and their more chivalrous +rival. As it happens, there are two other versions, shorter and less +dramatic, but one of them distinctly giving, the other implying, the +sense of Scott's alteration. Therefore I say that Scott was fully +justified in adjusting the one text that he did print, especially as he +did it in his own right way, and not in the wrong one of Percy and +Mickle. There is here no Bentleian impertinence, no gratuitous meddling +with the at least possibly genuine text of a known and definite author. +The editor simply picks out of the mud, and wipes clean, something +precious, which has been defaced by bad usage, and has become +masterless. + +The third volume of the _Minstrelsy_ was pretty speedily got ready, with +more matter; and _Sir Tristrem_ (which is in a way a fourth) was not +very long in following. This last part contained a _tour de force_ in +the shape of a completion of the missing part by Scott himself, a +completion which, of course, shocks philologists, but which was +certainly never written for them, and possesses its own value for +others. + +Not the least part of the interest of the _Minstrelsy_ itself was the +editor's appearance as a prose-writer. Percy had started, and others +down to Ritson had continued, the practice of interspersing verse +collections with dissertations in prose; and while the first volume of +the _Minstrelsy_ contained a long general introduction of more than a +hundred pages, and most of the ballads had separate prefaces of more or +less length, the preface to 'Young Tamlane' turned itself into a +disquisition on fairy lore, which, being printed in small type, is +probably not much shorter than the general introduction. In these pieces +(the Fairy essay is said to be based on information partly furnished by +Leyden) all the well-known characteristics of Scott's prose style +appear--its occasional incorrectness, from the strictly scholastic point +of view, as well as its far more than counterbalancing merits of vivid +presentation, of arrangement, not orderly in appearance but curiously +effective in result, of multifarious facts and reading, of the bold +pictorial vigour of its narrative, of its pleasant humour, and its +incessant variety. + +Nor was this the only opportunity for exercising himself in the medium +which, even more than verse, was to be his, that the earliest years of +the century afforded to Scott. The _Edinburgh Review_, as everybody +knows, was started in 1802. Although its politics were not Scott's, +they were for some years much less violently put forward and exclusively +enforced than was the case later; indeed, the Whig Review started with +much the same ostensible policy as the Whig Deliverer a century before, +the policy, at least in declared intention, of using both parties as far +as might be for the public good. The attempt, if made _bona fide_, was +not more successful in one case than in the other; but it at least +permitted Tories to enlist under the blue-and-yellow banner. The +standard-bearer, Jeffrey, moreover, was a very old, an intimate, and a +never-quite-to-be-divorced friend of Scott's. At a later period, Scott's +contributions to periodicals attained an excellence which has been +obscured by the fame of the poems and novels together, even more +unjustly than the poems have been obscured by the novels alone. His +reviews at this time on Southey's _Amadis_, on Godwin's _Chaucer_, on +Ellis's _Specimens_, etc., are a little crude and amateurish, especially +in the direction (well known, to those who have ever had to do with +editing, as a besetting sin of novices) of substituting a mere account +of the book, with a few expressions of like and dislike, for a grasped +and reasoned criticism of it. But this is far less peculiar to them than +those who have not read the early numbers of the great reviews may +suppose. The fact is that Jeffrey himself, Sydney Smith, Scott, and +others were only feeling for the principles and practice of reviewing, +as they themselves later, and the brilliant second generation of Carlyle +and Macaulay, De Quincey and Lockhart, were to carry it out. Perhaps the +very best specimens of Scott's powers in this direction are the prefaces +which he contributed much later and gratuitously to John Ballantyne's +_Novelists' Library_--things which hardly yield to Johnson's _Lives_ as +examples of the combined arts of criticism and biography. At the time +of which we speak he was 'making himself' in this direction as in +others. I hope that Jeffrey and not he was responsible for a fling at +Mary Woollstonecraft in the Godwin article, which would have been +ungenerous in any case, and which in this was unpardonable. But there is +nothing else to object to, and the _Amadis_ review in particular is a +very interesting one. + +We must now look back a little, so as to give a brief sketch of Scott's +domestic life, from his marriage until the publication of _The Lay of +the Last Minstrel_, which, with that of _Waverley_ and the crash of +1825-26, supplies the three turning-points of his career. After a very +brief sojourn in lodgings (where the landlady was shocked at Mrs. +Scott's habit of sitting constantly in her drawing-room), the young +couple took up their abode in South Castle Street. Hence, not very long +afterwards, they moved to the house--the famous No. 39--in the northern +division of the same street, which continued to be her home for the rest +of her Edinburgh life, and Scott's so long as he could afford a house in +Edinburgh. Their first child was born on the 14th of October 1798, but +did not live many hours. As was (and for the matter of that is) much +more customary with Edinburgh residents, even of moderate means, than it +has been for at least a century with Londoners, Scott, while his own +income was still very modest, took a cottage at Lasswade in the +neighbourhood. Here he lived during the summer for years; and in March +1799 he and his wife went to London, for the first time in his case +since he had been almost a baby. His father died during this visit, +after a painful breakdown, which is said to have suggested the touching +particulars of the deathbed of Chrystal Croftangry's benefactor (not +'the elder Croftangry,' as is said in a letter quoted by Lockhart), and +was repeated to some extent in Scott's own case. + +His appointment to the Sheriff[depute]ship of Selkirkshire was made in +December 1799, and gave, for light work, three hundred a year. It need +not have interfered with even an active practice at the Bar had such +fallen to him, and at first did not impose on him even a partial +residence. The Lord-Lieutenant, however, Lord Napier of Ettrick, +insisted on this, and though Scott rather resented a strictness which +seems not to have been universal, he had to comply. He did not, however, +do so at once, and during the last year of the century and its two +successors, Lasswade and Castle Street were Scott's habitats, with +various radiations; while in the spring of 1803 he and Mrs. Scott +repeated their visit to London and extended it to Oxford. It is not +surprising to read his confession in sad days, a quarter of a century +later, of the 'ecstatic feeling' with which he first saw this, the place +in all the island which was his spiritual home. The same year saw the +alarm of invasion which followed the resumption of hostilities after the +armistice of Amiens; and Scott's attention to his quartermastership, +which he still held, seems to have given Lord Napier the idea that he +was devoting himself, not only _tam Marti quam Mercurio_, but to Mars +rather at Mercury's expense.[7] Scott, however, was never fond of being +dictated to, and he and his wife were still at Lasswade when the +Wordsworths visited them in the autumn, though Scott accompanied them to +his sheriffdom on their way back to Westmoreland. He had not yet wholly +given up practice, and though its rewards were not munificent, they +reached about this time, it would seem, their maximum sum of L218, +which, in the days of his fairy-money, he must often have earned by a +single morning's work. + +Lord Napier, by no means improperly (for it was a legal requirement, +though often evaded, that four months' residence per annum should be +observed), persisted; and Scott, after a pleasing but impracticable +dream of taking up his summer residence in the Tower of Harden itself, +which was offered to him, took a lease of Ashestiel, a pleasant country +house,--'a decent farmhouse,' he calls it, in his usual way,--the owner +of which was his relation, and absent in India. The place was not far +from Selkirk, on the banks of the Tweed and in the centre of the +Buccleuch country. He seems to have settled there by the end of July +1804. The family, after leaving it for the late autumn session in +Edinburgh, returned at Christmas, by which time _The Lay of the Last +Minstrel_, though not actually published, was printed and ready. It was +issued in the first week of the new year 1805, being, except +Wordsworth's and Coleridge's, the first book published, which was +distinctly and originally characteristic of the new poetry of the +nineteenth century. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[7] Not many years before, Johnson had denied that it was possible for a +working man of letters to earn even _six_ guineas a sheet (the +_Edinburgh_ began at ten and proceeded to a minimum of sixteen), +'_communibus sheetibus_,' as he put it jocularly to Boswell. Southey, in +the year of Scott's marriage, seems to have thought about ten shillings +(certainly not more) 'not amiss' for a morning's work in reviewing. + +[8] For an interesting passage showing how slow contemporary ears were +to admit this, see Southey's excellent defence of his own practice to +Wynn (_Letters_, i. 69). + +[9] His attempts at the kind may best be despatched in a note here. +Their want of merit contrasts strangely with the admirable quality of +the 'Old Play' fragments scattered about the novels. _Halidon Hill_ +(1822), in the subject of which Scott had an ancestral interest from his +Swinton blood, reminds one much more of Joanna Baillie than of its +author. _Macduff's Cross_ (1823), a very brief thing, is still more like +Joanna, was dedicated to her, and appeared in a miscellany which she +edited for a charitable purpose. _The Doom of Devorgoil_, written for +Terry in the first 'cramp' attack of 1817, but not published till 1830, +has a fine supernatural subject, but hardly any other merit. +_Auchindrane_, the last, is by far the best. + +[10] It is quite possible that Mrs. Brown's illiterate authority, or one +of his predecessors in title, took 'fee' in the _third_ sense of +'cattle.' + +[11] He wrote for his corps the 'War Song of the Edinburgh Light +Dragoons,' which appeared in the _Scots Magazine_ for 1802, but was +written earlier. It is good, but not so good as it would have been a few +years later. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE VERSE ROMANCES + + +Although Scott was hard upon his thirty-fifth year when the _Lay_ +appeared, and although he had already a considerable literary reputation +in Edinburgh, and some in London, the amount of his original +publications was then but small. Indeed, on the austere principles of +those who deny 'originality' to such things as reviews, or as the essays +in the _Minstrelsy_, it must be limited to a mere handful, though of +very pleasant delights, the half-dozen of ballads made up by +'Glenfinlas,' 'The Eve of St. John,' the rather inferior 'Fire King,' +the beautiful 'Cadzow Castle' (not yet mentioned, but containing some of +its author's most charming _topic_ lines), the fragment of 'The Grey +Brother,' and a few minor pieces. + +With the _Lay_ he took an entirely different position. The mere bulk of +the poem was considerable; and, putting for the instant entirely out of +question its peculiarities of subject, metre, and general treatment, it +was a daring innovation in point of class. The eighteenth century had, +even under its own laws and conditions, distinctly eschewed long +narrative poems, the unreadable epics of Glover, for instance, belonging +to that class of exception which really does prove the rule. Pope's +_Rape_ had been burlesque, and his _Dunciad_, satire; hardly the ghost +of a narrative had appeared in Thomson and Young; Shenstone, Collins, +Gray, had nothing _de longue haleine_; the entire poetical works of +Goldsmith probably do not exceed in length a canto of the Lay; Cowper +had never attempted narrative; Crabbe was resting on the early laurels +of his brief _Village_, etc., and had not begun his tales. _Thalaba_, +indeed, had been published, and no doubt was not without effect on Scott +himself; but it was not popular, and the author was still under the sway +of the craze against rhyme. To all intents and purposes the poet was +addressing the public, in a work combining the attractions of fiction +with the attractions of verse at considerable length, for the first time +since Dryden had done so in his _Fables_, a hundred and five years +before. And though the mastery of the method might be less, the stories +were original, they were continuous, and they displayed an entirely new +gust and seasoning both of subject and of style. + +There can be no doubt at all, for those who put metre in its proper +place, that a very large, perhaps the much larger, part of the appeal of +the _Lay_ was metrical. The public was sick of the couplet--had indeed +been sickened twice over, if the abortive revolt of Gray and Collins be +counted. It did not take, and was quite right in not taking, to the +rhymeless, shortened Pindaric of Sayers and Southey, as to anything but +an eccentric 'sport' of poetry. What Scott had to offer was practically +new, or at least novel. It is universally known--and Scott, who was only +too careless of his own claims, and the very last of men to steal or +conceal those of others, made no secret of it--that the suggestion of +the _Lay_ in metre came from a private recitation or reading of +Coleridge's _Christabel_, written in the year of Scott's marriage, but +not published till twenty years later, and more than ten after the +appearance of the _Lay_. Coleridge seems to have regarded Scott's +priority with an irritability less suitable to his philosophic than to +his poetical character.[16] But he had, in the first place, only himself, +if anybody, to blame; in the second, Scott more than made the loan his +own property by the variations executed on its motive; and in the third, +Coleridge's original right was far less than he seems to have honestly +thought, and than most people have guilelessly assumed since. + +For the iambic dimeter, freely altered by the licences of equivalence, +anacrusis, and catalexis, though not recently practised in English when +_Christabel_ and the _Lay_ set the example, is an inevitable result of +the clash between accented, alliterative, asyllabic rhythm and +quantitative, exactly syllabic metre, which accompanied the +transformation of Anglo-Saxon into English. We have distinct approaches +to it in the thirteenth century _Genesis_; it attains considerable +development in Spenser's _The Oak and the Brere_; anybody can see that +the latter part of Milton's _Comus_ was written under the breath of its +spirit. But it had not hitherto been applied on any great scale, and the +delusions under which the eighteenth century laboured as to the syllabic +restrictions of English poetry had made it almost impossible that it +should be. At the same time, that century, by its lighter practice on +the one hand in the octosyllable, on the other in the four-footed +anapaestic, was making the way easier for those who dared a little: and +Coleridge first, then Scott, did the rest. + +We have seen that in some of his early ballad work Scott had a little +overdone the licence of equivalence, but this had probably been one of +the formal points on which, as we know, the advice of Lewis, no poet but +a remarkably good metrist, had been of use to him. And he acquitted +himself now in a manner which, if it never quite attains the weird charm +of _Christabel_ itself at its best, is more varied, better sustained, +and, above all, better suited to the story-telling which was, of course, +Scott's supremest gift. It is very curious to compare Coleridge's +remarks on Scott's verse with those of Wordsworth, in reference to the +_White Doe of Rylstone_. Neither in _Christabel_, nor in the _White +Doe_, is there a real _story_ really told. Coleridge, but for his fatal +weaknesses, undoubtedly could have told such a story; it is pretty +certain that Wordsworth could not. But Scott could tell a story as few +other men who have ever drawn breath on the earth could tell it. He had +been distinguished in the conversational branch of the art from his +youth up, and though it was to be long before he could write a story in +prose, he showed now, at the first attempt, how he could write one in +verse. + +Construction, of course, was not his forte; it never was. The plot of +the _Lay_, if not exactly non-existent, is of the simplest and loosest +description; the whole being in effect a series of episodes strung +together by the loves of Margaret and Cranstoun and the misdeeds of the +Goblin Page. Even the Book supplies no real or necessary _nexus_. But +the romance proper has never required elaborate construction, and has +very rarely, if ever, received it. A succession of engaging or exciting +episodes, each plausibly joined to each, contents its easy wants; and +such a succession is liberally provided here. So, too, it does not +require strict character-drawing--a gift with which Scott was indeed +amply provided, but which he did not exhibit, and had no call to +exhibit, here. If the personages will play their parts, that is enough. +And they all play them very well here, though the hero and heroine do +certainly exhibit something of that curious nullity which has been +objected to the heroes nearly always, the heroines too frequently, of +the later prose novels. + +But even those critics who, as too many critics are wont to do, forgot +and forget that 'the prettiest girl in the world' not only cannot give, +but ought not to be asked to give, more than she has, must have been, +and must be, very unreasonable if they find fault with the subject and +stuff of the _Lay_. Jeffrey's remark about 'the present age not +enduring' the Border and mosstrooping details was contradicted by the +fact, and was, as a matter of taste, one of those strange blunders which +diversified his often admirably acute critical utterances. When he +feared their effects on '_English_ readers,' he showed himself, as was +not common with him, actually ignorant of one of the simplest general +principles of the poetic appeal, that is to say, the element of +_strangeness_. But we must not criticise criticism here, and must only +add that another great appeal, that of variety, is amply given, as well +as that of unfamiliarity. The graceful and touching, if a little +conventional, overture of the Minstrel introduces with the truest art +the vigorous sketch of Branksome Tower. The spirits of flood and fell +are allowed to impress and not allowed to bore us; for the quickest of +changes is made to Deloraine's ride--a kind of thing in which Scott +never failed, even in his latest and saddest days. The splendid Melrose +opening of the Second Canto supports itself through the discovery of the +Book, and finds due contrast in the description (or no-description) of +the lovers' meeting; the fight and the Goblin Page's misbehaviour and +punishment (to all, at least, but those, surely few now, who are +troubled by the Jeffreyan sense of 'dignity'), the decoying and capture +of young Buccleuch, and the warning of the clans are certainly no +ungenerous provision for the Third; nor the clan anecdotes (especially +the capital episode of the Beattisons), the parley, the quarrel of +Howard and Dacre, and the challenge, for the Fourth. There is perhaps +less in the Fifth, for Scott seems to have been afraid of another fight +in detail; but the description of the night before, and the famous +couplet-- + + 'I'd give the lands of Deloraine + Dark Musgrave were alive again'-- + +would save it if there were nothing else, as there is much. And if the +actual conclusion has no great interest (Scott was never good at +conclusions, as we shall find Lady Louisa Stuart telling him frankly +later), the Sixth Canto is full, and more than full, of brilliant +things--the feast, the Goblin's tricks, his carrying-off, the +pilgrimage, and, above all, the songs, especially 'Rosabelle' and the +version of the 'Dies Irae.' + +The mention of these last may fairly introduce a few words on the formal +and metrical characteristics of the poem, remarks which perhaps some +readers resent, but which must nevertheless be made, inasmuch as they +are to my mind by far the most important part of poetical criticism. +Scott evidently arranged his scheme of metre with extreme care here, +though it is possible that after this severe exercise he let it take +care of itself to some extent later. His introduction is in the strict +octosyllable, with only such licences of slur or elision-- + + 'The pi | _tying Duch_ | ess praised its chime,' + '_He had played_ | it to King Charles the Good'-- + +as the greatest precisians might have allowed themselves. But the First +Canto breaks at once into the full licence, not merely of +equivalence,--that is to say, of substituting an anapaest or a trochee +for an iamb,--but of shifting the base and rhythm of any particular +verse, or of set batches of verses, between the three ground-feet, and, +further, of occasionally introducing sixes, as in the ballad metre, and +even fours-- + + 'Bards long | shall tell + How Lord Wal | ter fell,' + +instead of the usual eights. + +In similar fashion he varies the rhymes, passing as the subject or the +accompaniment of the word-music may require, from the couplet to the +quatrain, and from the quatrain to the irregularly rhymed 'Pindaric'; +always, however, taking care that, except in the set lyric, the quatrain +shall not fall too much into definite stanza, but be interlaced in sense +or sound sufficiently to carry on the narrative. The result, to some +tastes, is a medium quite unsurpassed for the particular purpose. The +only objection to it at all capable of being maintained, that I can +think of, is that the total effect is rather lyrical than epic. And so +much of this must be perhaps allowed as comes to granting that Scott's +verse-romance is rather a long and cunningly sustained and varied ballad +than an epic proper. + +The _Lay_, though not received with quite that eager appetite for poetry +which Scott was 'born to introduce,' and of which he lived long enough +to see the glutting, had a large and immediate sale. The author, not yet +aware what a gold mine his copyrights were, parted with this after the +first edition, and received in all rather less than L770, a sum trifling +in comparison with his after gains; but probably the largest that had as +yet been received by any English poet for a single volume not published +by subscription. It is curious that, at the estimated rate of three for +one in comparing the value of money at the end of the seventeenth and +the beginning of the nineteenth century, the sum almost exactly equals +that paid by Tonson for Dryden's _Fables_, the last book, before the +_Lay_ itself, which had united popularity, merit, and bulk in English +verse. But Dryden was the acknowledged head of English literature at the +time, and Scott was a mere beginner. He was probably even better pleased +with the quality of the praise than with the quantity of the pudding. +For though professional criticism, then in no very vigorous state, said +some silly things, it was generally favourable; and a saying of Pitt +(most indifferent, as a rule, of all Prime Ministers to English +literature) is memorable not merely as summing up the general +impression, but as defining what that impression was in a fashion quite +invaluable to the student of literary history. The Pilot that Weathered +the Storm, it seems, said of the description of the Minstrel's +hesitation before playing, 'This is a sort of thing I might have +expected in painting, but could never have fancied capable of being +given by poetry.' To the present generation and the last, the reverse +expression would probably seem more natural. We say, of Mr. Watts or of +Sir Edward Burne-Jones, that they have put, in 'Love and Death' or in +'Love among the Ruins,' what we might have expected from poetry, but +could hardly have thought possible in painting. But a hundred years of +studious convention and generality, of deliberate avoidance of the +poignant, and the vivid, and the detailed, and the coloured in poetry +had made Pitt's confession as natural as another hundred years of +contrary practice from Coleridge to Rossetti have made ours. + +The publication of the _Lay_ immediately preceded, and perhaps its +success had no small share in deciding, the most momentous and +unfortunate step of Scott's life, his entry into partnership with James +Ballantyne. The discussion of the whole of this business will best be +postponed till the date of its catastrophe is reached, but a few words +may be said on the probable reasons for it. Much, no doubt, was the +result of that combination of incalculable things which foolish persons +of one kind call mere chance, of which foolish persons of another kind +deny the existence, and which wise men term, from different but not +irreconcilable points of view, Providence, or Luck, or Fate. But a +little can be cleared up. Scott had evidently made up his mind that he +should not succeed at the Bar, and had also persuaded himself that the +very success of the _Lay_ had made failure certain. The ill success of +his brother Thomas, with the writer's business inherited from their +father, perhaps inconvenienced and no doubt frightened him. In fact, +though his harsher judges are wrong in attributing to him any undue +haste to be rich, he certainly does seem to have been under a dread of +being poor; a dread no doubt not wholly intelligible and partly morbid +in a young man still under thirty-five, with brilliant literary and some +legal prospects, who had, independently of fees, literary or legal, a +secured income of about a thousand a year. He probably thought, and was +right in thinking, that the book trade was going to 'look up' to a +degree previously unknown; he seems throughout to have been under one of +those inexplicable attractions towards the Ballantynes which now and +then exist, as Hobbes says, 'in the greater towards the meaner, but not +contrary'; and perhaps there was another cause which has not been +usually allowed for enough. Good Christian and good-natured man as he +was, Scott was exceedingly proud; and though joining himself with +persons of dubious social position in mercantile operations seems an odd +way of pride, it had its temptations. I do not doubt but that from the +first Scott intended, more or less vaguely and dimly, to extend the +printing business into a publishing one, and so to free himself from any +necessity of going cap-in-hand to publishers. + +However, for good or for ill,--I think it was mainly for ill,--for this +reason or for that, the partnership was formed, at first indirectly by +way of loan, then directly by further advance on security of a share in +the business, and finally so that Scott became, though he did not +appear, the leading partner. And the very first letter that we have of +his about business shows the fatal flaw which he, the soul of honour, +seems never to have detected till too late, if even then. The scheme for +an edition of Dryden was already afloat, and the first editor proposed +was a certain Mr. Foster, who 'howled about the expense of printing.' 'I +still,' says Scott to Ballantyne, 'stick to my answer that _I know +nothing of the matter_, but that, settle it how he and you will, _it +must be printed by you or be no concern of mine. This gives you an +advantage in driving the bargain._' Perhaps; but how about the advantage +to Mr. Foster of being advised by Ballantyne's partner to employ +Ballantyne, while he was innocent of the knowledge of the identity of +partner and adviser, and was even told that Scott 'knew nothing of the +matter'? + +Even before the quarrel which soon occurred with Constable established +the Ballantynes--nominally the other brother John--as publishers, Scott +had begun, and was constantly pressing upon the different publishing +houses with which he was connected, a variety of literary schemes of the +most ambitious and costly character. All these books were to be printed +by Ballantyne, and many of them edited by himself; while, when the +direct publishing business was added, there was no longer any check on +this dangerous proceeding. It is most curious how Scott, the shrewdest +and sanest of men in the vast majority of affairs, seems to have lost +his head wherever books or lands were concerned. Himself both an +antiquary and an antiquarian,[15] as well as a lover of literature, he +seems to have taken it for granted that the same combination of tastes +existed in the public to an extent which would pay all expenses, however +lavishly incurred. To us, nowadays, who know how cold a face publishers +turn on what we call really interesting schemes, and how often these +schemes, even when fostered, miscarry or barely pay expenses,--who are +aware that even the editors of literary societies, where expenses are +assured beforehand, have to work for love or for merely nominal fees, +simply because the public will not buy the books,--it is not so +wonderful that some of Scott's schemes never got into being at all, and +that others were dead losses, as that any 'got home.' His _Dryden_, an +altogether admirable book, on which he lavished labour, and great part +of which appealed to a still dominant prestige, may just have carried +the editor's certainly not excessive fee of forty guineas a volume, or +about L750 for the whole. But when one reads of twice that sum paid for +the _Swift_, of L1300 for the thirteen quartos of the _Somers Papers_, +and so forth, the feeling is not that the sums paid were at all too much +for the work done, but that the publishers must have been very lucky men +if they ever saw their money again. The two first of these schemes +certainly, the third perhaps, deserved success; and still more so did a +great scheme for the publication of the entire _British Poets_, to be +edited by Scott and Campbell, which indeed fell through in itself, but +resulted indirectly in Campbell's excellent _Specimens_ and Chalmers's +invaluable if not very comely _Poets_. Even another project, a _Corpus +Historicorum_, would have been magnificent, though it could hardly have +been bookselling war. But the _Somers Tracts_ themselves, the _Memoirs_ +and papers of Sadler, Slingsby, Carleton, Cary, etc., were of the class +of book which requires subvention of some kind to prevent it from being +a dead loss; and when the preventive check of the unwillingness of +publishers was removed by the fatal establishment of '_John_ Ballantyne +& Co.,' things became worse still. There are few better instances of the +eternal irony of fate than that the author of the admirable description +of the bookseller's horror at Mr. Pembroke's Sermons[14] should have +permitted, should have positively caused, the publishing at what was in +effect his own risk, or rather his own certainty of loss, not merely of +Weber's ambitious _Beaumont and Fletcher_, but of collections of _Tixall +Poetry_, _Histories of the Culdees_, Wilson's _History of James the +First_, and the rest. + +As the beginning of 1805 saw the first birth of his real books, so the +end of it saw that of the last of his children according to the flesh. +His firstborn, as has been said, did not live. But Walter (born November +1799), Sophia (born October 1801), Anne (born February 1803), and +Charles (born December 1805) survived infancy; and it is quite probable +that these regular increases to his family, by suggesting that he might +have a large one, stimulated Scott's desire to enlarge his income. As a +matter of fact, however, the quartette of two boys and two girls was not +exceeded. The domestic life at Castle Street and Ashestiel, from the +publication of the _Lay_ to that of _Marmion_ in 1808,--indeed to that +of _The Lady of the Lake_ in May 1810,--ran smoothly enough; and there +can be little doubt that these five years were the happiest, and in +reality the most prosperous, of Scott's life. He had at once attained +great fame, and was increasing it by each successive poem; his immense +intellectual activity found vent besides in almost innumerable projects, +some of which were in a way successful, and some of which, if they did +himself no very great good pecuniarily, did good to more or less +deserving friends and _proteges_. His health had, as yet, shown no signs +whatever of breaking down; he was physically in perfect condition for, +and at Ashestiel he had every opportunity of indulging in, the field +sports in which his soul delighted at least as much as in reading and +writing; he had pleasant intervals of wandering; and, to crown it all, +he was, during this period, established in reversionary prospect, if not +yet in actual possession, of an income which should have put even his +anxieties at rest, and which certainly might have made him dissociate +himself from the dangerous and doubtful commercial enterprises in which +he had engaged. This reversion was that of a Clerkship of Session, one +of an honourable, well-paid, and by no means laborious group of offices +which seems to have been accepted as a comely and comfortable set of +shelves for advocates of ability, position, and influence, who, for this +reason or that, were not making absolutely first-rate mark at the Bar. +The post to which Scott was appointed was in the possession of a certain +Mr. Hope, and as no retiring pension was attached to these places, it +was customary to hold them on the rather uncomfortable terms of doing +the work till the former holder died, without getting any money. But +before many years a pension scheme was put in operation; Mr. Hope took +his share of it, and Scott entered upon thirteen hundred a year in +addition to his Sheriffship and to his private property, without taking +any account at all of literary gains. The appointment had not actually +been completed, though the patent had been signed, when the Fox and +Grenville Government came in, and it so happened that the document had +been so made out as to have enabled Scott, if he chose, to draw the +whole salary and leave his predecessor in the cold. But this was soon +set right. + +In the visit to London which he paid (apparently for the purpose of +getting the error corrected), he made the acquaintance of the unlucky +Princess of Wales, who was at this time rather a favourite with the +Tories. And when he came back to Scotland, the trial of Lord Melville +gave him an opportunity of distinguishing himself by a natural and very +pardonable partisanship, which made his Whig friends rather sore. +Politics in Edinburgh ran very high during this short break in the long +Tory domination, and from it dates a story, to some minds, perhaps, one +of the most interesting of all those about Scott, and connected +indelibly with the scene of its occurrence. It tells how, as he was +coming down the Mound with Jeffrey and another Whig, after a discussion +in the Faculty of Advocates on some proposals of innovation, Jeffrey +tried to laugh the difference off, and how Scott, usually stoical +enough, save in point of humour, broke out with actual tears in his +eyes, 'No, no! it is 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!' He would probably have found no +great reason at the other end of the century to account himself a false +prophet; and he might have thought his prophecies in fair way of +fulfilment not in Scotland only. + +During 1806 and 1807 the main occupations of Scott's leisure (if he can +ever be said to have had such a thing) were the _Dryden_ and _Marmion_. +The latter of these appeared in February and the former in April 1808, a +perhaps unique example of an original work, and one of criticism and +compilation, both of unusual bulk and excellence, appearing, with so +short an interval, from the same pen. + +As for _Marmion_, it is surely by far the greatest, taking all +constituents of poetical greatness together, of Scott's poems. It was +not helped at the time, and probably never has been helped, by the +author's plan of prefixing to each canto introductions of very +considerable length, each addressed to one or other of his chief +literary friends, and having little or nothing at all to do with the +subject of the tale. Contemporaries complained that the main poem was +thereby intolerably interrupted; posterity, I believe, has taken the +line of ignoring the introductions altogether. This is a very great +pity, for not only do they contain some of Scott's best and oftenest +quoted lines, but each is a really charming piece of occasional verse, +and something more, in itself. The beautiful description of Tweedside in +late autumn, the dirge on Nelson, Pitt, and Fox (which last, of course, +infuriated Jeffrey), and, above all, the splendid passage on the _Morte +d'Arthur_ (which Scott had at this time thought of editing, but gave up +to Southey) adorn the epistle to Rose; the picture of Ettrick Forest in +that to Marriott is one of the best sustained things the poet ever did; +the personal interest of the Erskine piece is of the highest, though it +has fewer 'purple' passages, and it is well-matched with that to Skene; +while the fifth to Ellis and the sixth and last to Heber nobly complete +the batch. Only, though the things in this case _are_ both rich and +rare, + + 'We wonder what the devil they do there'; + +and Lockhart unearthed, what Scott seems to have forgotten, the fact +that they were originally intended to appear by themselves. It is a pity +they did not; for, excellent as they are, they are quite out of place as +interludes to a story, the serried range of which not only does not +require but positively rejects them. + +For here, while Scott had lost little, if anything, of the formal graces +of the _Lay_, he had improved immensely in grip and force. Clare may be +a bread-and-butter heroine, and Wilton a milk-and-water lover, but the +designs of Marmion against both give a real story-interest, which is +quite absent from the _Lay_. The figure of Constance is really tragic, +not melodramatic merely, and makes one regret that Scott, in his prose +novels, did not repeat and vary her. All the accessories, both in +incident and figure, are good, and it is almost superfluous to praise +the last canto. It extorted admiration from the partisan rancour and the +literary prudishness of Jeffrey; it made the disturbed dowagers of the +_Critical Review_, who thought, with Rymer, that 'a hero ought to be +virtuous,' mingle applause with their fie-fies; it has been the delight +of every reader, not a milksop, or a faddist, or a poetical +man-of-one-idea, ever since. The last canto of _Marmion_ and the last +few 'Aventiuren' of the _Nibelungen Lied_ are perhaps the only things in +all poetry where a set continuous battle (not a series of duels as in +Homer) is related with unerring success; and the steady _crescendo_ of +the whole, considering its length and intensity, is really miraculous. +Nay, even without this astonishing finale, the poem that contained the +opening sketch of Norham, the voyage from Whitby to Holy Island, the +final speech of Constance, and the famous passage of her knell, the +Host's Tale, the pictures of Crichton and the Blackford Hill view, the +'air and fire' of the 'Lochinvar' song, the phantom summons from the +Cross of Edinburgh, and the parting of Douglas and Marmion, could spare +half of these and still remain one of the best of its kind, while every +passage so spared would be enough to distinguish any poem in which it +occurred. + +The considerable change in the metre of _Marmion_ as compared with the +_Lay_ is worth noticing. Here, as there, the 'introductions' are, for +the most part, if not throughout, in continuous octosyllabic couplets. +But, in the text, the couplet plays also a much larger part than it +does in the _Lay_, and where it is dropped the substitute is not usually +the light and extremely varied medley of the earlier poem, so much as a +sort of irregular (and sometimes almost regular) stanza arrangement, +sets of (usually three) octosyllables being interspersed with sixes, +rhyming independently. The batches of monorhymed octosyllables sometimes +extend to even four in number, with remarkably good effect, as, for +instance, in the infernal proclamation from the Cross. Altogether the +metrical scheme is of a graver cast than that of the _Lay_, and suits +the more serious and tragical colour of the story. + +It has been mentioned above in passing that Jeffrey reviewed _Marmion_ +on the whole unfavourably. The story of this review is well known: how +the editor-reviewer (with the best intentions doubtless) sent the proof +with a kind of apology to Scott on the morning of a dinner-party in +Castle Street; how Scott showed at least outward indifference, and Mrs. +Scott a not unamiable petulance; and how, though the affair caused no +open breach of private friendship, it doubtless gave help to the +increasing Whiggery of the _Review_ and its pusillanimous policy in +regard to the Spanish War in severing Scott's connection with it, and +determining him to promote, heart and soul, the opposition venture of +the _Quarterly_. Of this latter it was naturally enough proposed by +Canning that Scott should be editor; but, as naturally, he does not seem +to have even considered the proposal. He would have hated living in +London; no salary that could have been offered him could have done more +than equal, if so much, the stipends of his Sheriffship and the coming +Clerkship, which he would have had to give up; and the work would have +interfered much more seriously than his actual vocations with his +literary avocations. Besides, it is quite certain that he would not have +made a good editor. In the first place, he was fitted neither by +education nor by temperament for the troublesome and 'meticulous' +business of knocking contributions into shape. And, in the second, he +would most assuredly have fallen into the most fatal of all editorial +errors--that of inserting articles, not because they were actually good +or likely to be popular, but because the subjects were interesting, or +the writers agreeable, to himself. But he backed the venture manfully +with advice, by recruiting for it, and afterwards by contributing to it. + +It so happened, too, that about the same time he had dissensions with +the publisher as well as with the editor of the _Edinburgh_. Constable, +though he had not entered into the intimate relations with Scott and the +Ballantynes that were afterwards so fatal, had made the spirited bid of +a thousand pounds for _Marmion_, and the much more spirited and (it is +to be feared) much less profitable one of fifteen hundred for the +_Swift_. He had, however, recently taken into partnership a certain Mr. +Hunter of Blackness. This Hunter must have had some merits--he had at +any rate sufficient wit to throw the blame of the fact that sojourn in +Scotland did not always agree with Englishmen on their disgusting habit +of 'eating too much _and not drinking enough_.' But he was a laird of +some family, and he seems to have thought that he might bring into +business the slightly hectoring ways which were then tolerated in +Scotland from persons of quality to persons of none or less. He was a +very bitter Whig, and, therefore, ill disposed towards Scott. And, +lastly, he had, or thought he had, a grievance against his distinguished +'hand' in respect of the _Swift_, to wit, that the editor of that +well-paid compilation did not devote himself to it by any means +exclusively enough. Now Scott, though the most good-natured of men and +only too easy to lead, was absolutely impossible to drive; and his blood +was as ready as the 'bluid of M'Foy' itself to be set on fire at the +notion of a cock-laird from Fife not merely treating a Scott with +discourtesy, but imputing doubtful conduct to him. He offered to throw +up the _Swift_, and though this was not accepted, broke for a time all +other connection with Constable--an unfortunate breach, as it helped to +bring about the establishment of the Ballantyne publishing business, and +so unquestionably began Scott's own ruin. It is remarkable that a +similar impatience of interference afterwards broke Scott's just-begun +connection with Blackwood, which, could it have lasted, would probably +have saved him. For that sagacious person would certainly never have +plunged, or, if he could have helped it, let anyone else plunge, into +Charybdis. + +Between the publication of _Marmion_ and that of _The Lady of the Lake_ +Scott was very busy in bookmaking and bookselling projects. It was +characteristic of the mixture of bad luck and bad management which hung +on the Ballantynes from the first that even their _Edinburgh Annual +Register_, published as it was in the most stirring times, and written +by Scott, by Southey, and others of the very best hands, was a failure. +He made some visits to London, and (for the scenery of the new poem) to +the Trossachs and Loch Lomond; and had other matters of concern, the +chief of which were the death of his famous bull-terrier Camp, and two +troublesome affairs connected with his brothers. One of these, the +youngest, Daniel, after misconduct of various kinds, had, as mentioned +above, shown the white feather during a negro insurrection in Jamaica, +and so disgusted his brother that when he came home to die, Scott would +neither see him, nor, when he died, go to his funeral. The other +concerned his brother Thomas, who, after his failure as a writer, had +gone from prudential motives to the Isle of Man, where he for a time was +an officer in the local Fencibles. But before leaving Edinburgh, and +while he was still a practising lawyer, his brother had appointed him to +a small post in his own gift as Clerk. Not only was there nothing +discreditable in this according to the idea of any time,--for Thomas +Scott's education and profession qualified him fully for the +office,--but there were circumstances which, at that time, showed rather +heroic and uncommon virtue. For the actual vacancy had occurred in a +higher and more valuable post, also in Scott's gift, and he, instead of +appointing his brother to this, promoted a deserving subordinate +veteran, and gave the lower and less valuable place to Thomas. The +latter's circumstances, however, obliged him to perform his duties by +deputy, and a Commission then sitting ultimately abolished the office +altogether, with a retiring allowance of about half the salary. Certain +Whig peers took this up as a job, and Lord Lauderdale, supported by Lord +Holland, made in the House of Lords very offensive charges against Scott +personally for having appointed his brother to a place which he knew +would be abolished,[13] and against Thomas for claiming compensation in +respect of duties which he had never performed. The Bill was, however, +carried; but Scott was indignant at the loss threatened to his brother +and the imputation made on himself, and 'cut' Lord Holland at a +semi-public dinner not long afterwards. For this he was and has since +been severely blamed, and his behaviour was perhaps a little +'perfervid.' But everybody knows, or should know, that there are few +things more trying to humanity than to be accused of improper conduct +when a man is hugging himself on having behaved with unusual and +saint-like propriety. + +_The Lady of the Lake_ appeared in May 1810, being published by +Ballantyne and Miller, and at once attained enormous popularity. Twenty +thousand copies were sold within the year, two thousand of which were +costly quartos; and while there can be no doubt that this was the +highest point of Scott's poetical vogue, there is, I believe, not much +doubt that the poem has always continued to be a greater favourite with +the general than any other of his. It actually, more than any other, +created the _furore_ for Scottish scenery and touring, which has never +ceased since; it supplied in the descriptions of that scenery, in the +fight between Roderick and Fitz-James, and in other things, his most +popular passages; and it has remained probably the type of his poetry to +the main body of readers. + +Yet there are some who like it less than any other of the major +divisions of that poetry, and this is by no means necessarily due either +to a desire to be eccentric or to the subtler but almost equally +illegitimate operation of the want of novelty--of the fact that its best +effects are but repetitions of those of _Marmion_ and the _Lay_. For, +fine as it is, it seems to me to display the drawbacks of Scott's scheme +and method more than any of the longer poems. Douglas, Ellen, Malcolm, +are null; Roderick and the king have a touch of theatricality which I +look for in vain elsewhere in Scott; there is nothing fantastic in the +piece like the Goblin Page, and nothing tragical like Constance. There +is something teasing in what has been profanely called the 'guide-book' +character--the cicerone-like fidelity which contrasts so strongly with +the skilfully subordinated description in the two earlier and even in +the later poems. Moreover, though Ellis ought not to have called the +octosyllable 'the Hudibrastic measure' (which is only a very special +variety of it), he was certainly right in objecting to its great +predominance in unmixed form here. + +The critics, however, sang the praises of the poem lustily. Even +Jeffrey--perhaps because it was purely Scottish (he had thought +_Marmion_ not Scottish enough), perhaps because its greater +conventionality appealed to him, perhaps because he wished to make +atonement--was extremely complimentary. And certainly no one need be at +a loss for things to commend positively, whatever may be his comparative +estimate. The fine Spenserian openings (which Byron copied almost +slavishly in the form of the stanza he took for _Harold_), the famous +beginning of the stag, the description of the pass (till Fitz-James +begins to soliloquise), some of the songs (especially the masterly +'Coronach'), the passage of the Fiery Cross, the apparition of the clan +(not perhaps so great as some have thought it, but still great), the +struggle, the guard-room (which shocked Jeffrey dreadfully)--these are +only some of the best things. But I own that I turn from the best of +them to the last stand of the spearmen at Flodden, and the unburying of +the Book in the _Lay_. + +It may, perhaps, not be undesirable to anticipate somewhat, in order to +complete the sketch of the verse romances in this chapter; for not very +long after the publication of the _Lady of the Lake_, Scott resumed the +writing of _Waverley_, which effected an entire change in the direction +of his literature; and it was not a twelvemonth later that he planned +the establishment at Abbotsford, which was thenceforward the +headquarters of his life. + +The first poem to follow was one which lay out of the series in subject, +scheme, and dress, and which perhaps should rather be counted with his +minor and miscellaneous pieces--_The Vision of Don Roderick_. It was +written with rapidity, even for him, and with a special purpose; the +profits being promised beforehand to the Committee of the Portuguese +Relief Fund, formed to assist the sufferers from Massena's devastations. +It consists of rather less than a hundred Spenserian stanzas, the story +of Roderick merely ushering in a magical revelation, to that too-amorous +monarch, of the fortunes of the Peninsular War and its heroes up to the +date of writing. The _Edinburgh Review_, which hated the war, was very +angry because Scott did not celebrate Sir John Moore (whether as a good +Whig or a bad general it did not explain); but even Jeffrey was not +entirely unfavourable, and the piece was otherwise well received. The +description of the subterranean hall beneath the Cathedral of Toledo is +as good as we should expect, and the verses on Saragossa and on the +forces of the three kingdoms are very fine. But the whole was something +of a _torso_, and it is improbable that Scott could ever have used the +Spenserian stanza to good effect for continuous narrative. Even in its +individual shape, that great form requires the artistic patience as well +as the natural gift of men like its inventor, or like Thomson, Shelley, +and Tennyson, in other times and of other schools, to get the full +effect out of it; while to connect it satisfactorily with its kind and +adjust it to narrative is harder still. + +The true succession, however, after this parenthesis, was taken up by +_Rokeby_, which was dated on the very last day of 1812. Its reception +was not exceedingly enthusiastic; for Byron, borrowing most of his +technique and general scheme from Scott, and joining with these greater +apparent passion and a more novel and unfamiliar local colour, had +appeared on the scene as a 'second lion.' The public, a 'great-sized +monster of ingratitudes,' had got accustomed to Scott, if not weary of +him. The title[12] was not very happy; and perhaps some harm was really +done by one of the best of Moore's many good jokes in the _Twopenny +Postbag_, where he represented Scott as coming from Edinburgh to London + + 'To do all the gentlemen's seats by the way' + +in romances of half a dozen cantos. + +The poem, however, is a very delightful one, and to some tastes at least +very far above the _Lady of the Lake_. Scott, indeed, clung to the +uninterrupted octosyllable more than ever; but that verse, if a poet +knows how to manage it, is by no means so unsuited for story-telling as +Ellis thought; and Scott had here more story to tell than in any of his +preceding pieces, except _Marmion_. The only character, indeed, in which +one takes much interest is Bertram Risingham; but he is a really +excellent person, the cream of Scott's ruffians, whether in prose or +verse; appearing well, conducting himself better, and ending best of +all. Nor is Oswald, the contrasted villain, by any means to be despised; +while the passages--on which the romance, in contradistinction to the +classical epic, stands or falls--are equal to all but the very best in +_Marmion_ or the _Lay_. Bertram's account of the first and happier +events at Marston Moor, as well as of his feelings as to his +comradeship with Mortham; the singularly beautiful opening of the +second canto-- + + 'Far in the chambers of the west'; + +with the description of Upper Teesdale; Bertram's clamber on the cliff, +with its reminiscences of the 'Kittle Nine Steps,'--these lead on to +many other things as good, ending with that altogether admirable bit of +workmanship, Bertram's revenge on Oswald and his own death. Matilda is +one of the best of Scott's verse-heroines, except Constance--that is to +say, the best of his good girls--and she has the interest of being +avowedly modelled on 'Green Mantle.' Nor in any of the poems do the +lyrics give more satisfactory setting-off to the main text. Indeed, it +may be questioned whether any contains such a garland as--to mention +only the best--is formed by + + 'O, Brignall banks are wild and fair'; + +the exquisite + + 'A weary lot is thine, fair maid,' + +adapted from older matter with a skill worthy of Burns himself; the +capital bravura of Allen-a-Dale; and that noble Cavalier lyric-- + + 'When the dawn on the mountain was misty and grey.' + +_The Bridal of Triermain_ was published in 1813, not long after +_Rokeby_, and, like that poem, drew its scenery from the North of +England; but in circumstances, scale, and other ways it forms a pair +with _Harold the Dauntless_, and they had best be noticed together. + +_The Lord of the Isles_, the last of the great quintet, appeared in +December 1814. Scott had obtained part of the scenery for it in an +earlier visit to the Hebrides, and the rest in his yachting voyage (see +below) with the Commissioners of Northern Lights, which also gave the +_decor_ for _The Pirate_. The poem was not more popular than _Rokeby_ in +England, and it was even less so in Scotland, chiefly for the reason, +only to be mentioned with all but silent amazement, that it was 'not +bitter enough against England.' Its faults are, of course, obvious +enough. Central story there is simply none; the inconvenience that +arises to the hero from his being addressed by two young ladies cannot +awake any very sympathetic tear, nor does either Edith of Lorn or Isabel +Bruce awaken any violent desire to offer to relieve him of one of them. +The versification, however, is less uniform than that of _Rokeby_ or +_The Lady of the Lake_, and there are excellent passages--the best +being, no doubt, the Abbot's extorted blessing on the Bruce; the great +picture of Loch Coruisk, which, let people say what they will, is +marvellously faithful; part of the voyage (though one certainly could +spare some of the 'merrilys'); the landing in Carrick; the rescue of the +supposed page; and, finally, Bannockburn, which even Jeffrey admired, +though its want of 'animosity' shocked him. + +The two last of the great poems--there was indeed a third, _The Field of +Waterloo_, written hastily for a subscription, and not worthy either of +Scott or of the subject--have not by any means the least interest, +either intrinsic or that of curiosity. Indeed, as a matter of liking, +not quite disjoined from criticism, I should put them very high indeed. +Both were issued anonymously, and with indications intended to mislead +readers into the idea that they were by Erskine; the intention being, it +would seem, partly to ascertain how far the author's mere name counted +in his popularity, partly also to 'fly kites' as to the veering of the +public taste in reference to the verse romance in general. By the time +of the publication of _Harold the Dauntless_ in 1817, Scott could hardly +have had any intention of deserting the new way--his own exclusive +right--in which he was already walking firmly. But the _Bridal of +Triermain_ appeared very shortly after _Rokeby_, and was, no doubt, +seriously intended as a test. + +In both pieces the author fell back upon his earlier scheme of metre, +the _Christabel_ blend of iambic with anapaestic passages, instead of the +nearly pure iambs of his middle poems. The _Bridal_, partly to encourage +the Erskine notion, it would seem, is hampered by an intermixed +outline-story, told in the introductions, of the wooing and winning of a +certain Lucy by a certain Arthur, both of whom may be very heartily +wished away. But the actual poem is more thoroughly a Romance of +Adventure than even the _Lay_, has much more central interest than that +poem, and is adorned by passages of hardly less beauty than the best of +the earlier piece. It is astonishing how anyone of the slightest +penetration could have entertained the slightest doubt about the +authorship of + + 'Come hither, come hither, Henry my page, + Whom I saved from the sack of Hermitage'; + +still more of that of the well-known opening of the Third Canto, one of +the triumphs of that 'science of names' in which Scott was such a +proficient-- + + 'Bewcastle now must keep the Hold, + Speir-Adam's steeds must bide in stall, + Of Hartley-burn the bowmen bold + Must only shoot from battled wall; + And Liddesdale may buckle spur, + And Teviot now may belt the brand, + Tarras and Ewes keep nightly stir, + And Eskdale foray Cumberland!' + +But these are only the most unmistakable, not the best. The opening +specification of the Bride; the admirable 'Lyulph's Tale,' with the +first appearance of the castle, and the stanza (suggested no doubt by a +famous picture) of the damsels dragging Arthur's war-gear; the +courtship, and Guendolen's wiles to retain Arthur, and the parting; the +picture of the King's court; the tournament; all these are good enough. +But I am not sure that the description of Sir Roland's tantalised vigil +in the Vale of St. John, with the moonlit valley (itself a worthy +pendant even to the Melrose), and the sudden and successful revelation +of the magic hold when the knight flings his battle-axe, does not even +surpass the Tale. Nor do I think that the actual adventures of this +Childe Roland in the dark towers are inferior. The trials and +temptations are of stock material, but all the best matter is stock, and +this is handled with a rush and dash which more than saves it. I hope +the tiger was only a magic tiger, and went home comfortably with the +damsels of Zaharak. It seems unfair that he should be actually killed. +But this is the only thing that disquiets me; and it is impossible to +praise too much De Vaux's ingenious compromise between tasteless +asceticism and dangerous indulgence in the matter of 'Asia's willing +maids.' + +_Harold the Dauntless_ is much slighter, as indeed might be expected, +considering that it was finished in a hurry, long after the author had +given up poetry as a main occupation. But the half burlesque Spenserians +of the overture are very good; the contrasted songs, 'Dweller of the +Cairn' and 'A Danish Maid for Me,' are happy. Harold's interview with +the Chapter is a famous bit of bravura; and all concerning the Castle of +the Seven Shields, from the ballad introducing it, through the +description of its actual appearance (in which, by the way, Scott shows +almost a better grasp of the serious Spenserian stanza than anywhere +else) to the final battle of Odin and Harold, is of the very best +Romantic quality. Perhaps, indeed, it is because (as the _Critical +Review_, the Abdiel of 'classical' orthodoxy among the reviews of the +time, scornfully said), 'both poems are romantic enough to satisfy all +the parlour-boarders of all the ladies' schools in England,' that they +are so pleasant. It is something, in one's grey and critical age, to +feel genuine sympathy with the parlour-boarder. + +The chapter has already stretched to nearly the utmost proportions +compatible with the scale of this little book, and we must not indulge +in very many critical remarks on the general character of the +compositions discussed in it. But I have never carried out the plan +(which I think indispensable) of reading over again whatever work, +however well known, one has to write about, with more satisfaction. The +main defects lie on the surface. Despite great felicities of a certain +kind, these poems have no claim to formal perfection, and occasionally +sin by very great carelessness, if not by something worse. The poet +frankly shows himself as one whose appeal is not that of 'jewels five +words long,' set and arranged in phrases of that magical and unending +beauty which the very greatest poets of the world command. His effect, +even in description, is rather of mass than of detail. He does not +attempt analysis in character, and only skirts passion. Although +prodigal enough of incident, he is very careless of connected plot. But +his great and abiding glory is that he revived the art, lost for +centuries in England, of telling an interesting story in verse, of +riveting the attention through thousands of lines of poetry neither +didactic nor argumentative. And of his separate passages, his patches of +description and incident, when the worst has been said of them, it will +remain true that, in their own way and for their own purpose, they +cannot be surpassed. The already noticed comparison of any of Scott's +best verse-tales with _Christabel_, which they formally imitated to some +extent, and with the _White Doe of Rylstone_, which followed them, will +no doubt show that Coleridge and Wordsworth had access to mansions in +the house of poetry where Scott is never seen. But in some respects even +their best passages are not superior to his; and as tales, as romances, +his are altogether superior to theirs. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[12] It is fair to him to say that he made no public complaints, and +that when some gutter-scribbler in 1810 made charges of plagiarism from +him against Scott, he furnished Southey with the means of clearing him +from all share in the matter (_Lockhart_, iii. 293; Southey's _Life and +Correspondence_, iii. 291). But there is a suspicion of fretfulness even +in the Preface to _Christabel_; and the references to Scott's poetry +(not to himself) in the _Table Talk_, etc., are almost uniformly +disparaging. It is true that these last are not strictly evidence. + +[13] The objection taken to this word by precisians seems to ignore a +useful distinction. The _antiquary_ is a collector; the _antiquarian_ a +student or writer. The same person may be both; but he may not. + +[14] _Waverley_, chap. vi. It owes a little to Smollett's Introduction +to _Humphry Clinker_, but as usual improves the loan greatly. + +[15] Inasmuch as he himself was secretary to the Commission which did +away with it. + +[16] Taken from the name of his friend Morritt's place on the Greta. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE NOVELS, FROM _WAVERLEY_ TO _REDGAUNTLET_ + + +In the opening introduction to the collected edition of the novels, +Scott has given a very full account of the genesis of _Waverley_. These +introductions, written before the final inroad had been made on his +powers by the united strength of physical and moral misfortune, animated +at once by the last glow of those powers, and by the indefinable charm +of a fond retrospection, displaying every faculty in autumn luxuriance, +are so delightful that they sometimes seem to be the very cream and +essence of his literary work in prose. Indeed, I have always wondered +why they have not been published separately as a History of the Waverley +Novels by their author. Yet the public, I believe, with what I fear must +be called its usual lack of judgment in some such matters, seems never +to have read them very widely. An exception, however, may possibly have +been made in the case of this first one, opening as it has long done +every new issue of the whole set of novels. At anyrate, in one way or +another, it is probably known, at least to those who take an interest in +Scott, that he had begun _Waverley_ and thrown it aside some ten years +before its actual appearance, at a time when he was yet a novice in +literature. He had also attempted one or two other things,--a completion +of Strutt's _Queenhoo Hall_, the beginning of a tale about Thomas the +Rhymer, etc., which are now appended to the introduction itself,--and he +had once, in 1810, resumed _Waverley_, and again thrown it aside. At +last, when his supremacy as a popular poet was threatened by Byron, and +when, perhaps, he himself was a little wearying of the verse tale, he +discovered the fragment while searching for fishing-tackle in the old +desk where he had put it, and after a time resolved to make a new and +anonymous attempt on public favour. + +By the time--1814--when the book actually appeared, considerable +changes, both for good and for bad, had occurred in Scott's +circumstances; and the total of his literary work, independently of the +poems mentioned in the last chapter, had been a good deal increased. +Ashestiel had been exchanged for Abbotsford; the new house was being +planned and carried out so as to become, if not exactly a palace, +something much more than the cottage which had been first talked of; and +the owner's passion for buying, at extravagant prices, every +neighbouring patch of mostly thankless soil that he could get hold of +was growing by indulgence. He himself, in 1811 and the following years, +was extremely happy and extremely busy, planting trees, planning rooms, +working away at _Rokeby_ and _Triermain_ in the general sitting-room of +the makeshift house, with hammering all about him (now, the hammer and +the pen are perhaps of all manual implements the most deadly and +irreconcilable foes!), corresponding with all sorts and conditions of +men; furnishing introductions and contributions (in some cases never yet +collected) to all sorts and conditions of books, and struggling, as best +he saw his way, though the way was unfortunately not the right one, with +the ever-increasing difficulties of Ballantyne & Company. I forget +whether there is any evidence that Dickens consciously took his humorous +incarnation of the duties of a 'Co.' from Scott's own experience. But +Scott as certainly had to provide the money, the sense, the good-humour, +and the rest of the working capital as Mark Tapley himself. The merely +pecuniary part of these matters may be left to the next chapter; it is +sufficient to say that, aggravated by misjudgment in the selection and +carrying out of the literary part, it brought the firm in 1814 +exceedingly near the complete smash which actually happened ten years +later. One is tempted to wish that the crash had come, for it was only +averted by the alliance with Constable which was the cause of the final +downfall. Also, it would have come at a time when Scott was physically +better able to bear it; it could hardly in any degree have interfered +with the appearance of _Waverley_ and its followers; and it would have +had at least a chance of awakening their author to a sense of the double +mistake of engaging his credit in directly commercial concerns, and of +sinking his money in land and building. However, things were to be as +they were, and not otherwise. + +How anxious Constable must have been to recover Scott (Hunter, the stone +of stumbling, was now removed by death) is evident from the mere list of +the titles of the books which he took over in whole or part from the +Ballantynes. Even his Napoleonic audacity quailed before the _Edinburgh +Annual Register_, with its handsome annual loss of a thousand a year, at +Brewster's _Persian Astronomy_, in 4to and 8vo, and at _General Views of +the County of Dumfries_. But he saddled himself with a good deal of the +'stock' (which in this case most certainly had not its old sense of +'assets'), and in May 1813, Scott seems to have thought that if John +Ballantyne would curb his taste for long-dated bills, things might go +well. Unluckily, John did not choose to do so, and Scott, despite the +warning, was equally unable to curb his own for peat-bogs, marl-pits, +the Cauldshiels Loch, and splendid lots of ancient armour. By July there +was again trouble, and in August things were so bad that they were only +cleared by Scott's obtaining from the Duke of Buccleuch a guarantee for +L4000. It was in consenting to this that the Duke expressed his approval +of Scott's determination to refuse the Laureateship, which had been +offered to him, and which, in consequence of his refusal and at his +suggestion, was conferred upon Southey. Even the guarantee, though it +did save the firm, saved it with great difficulty. + +In the following winter Scott had an adventure with his eccentric German +amanuensis, Henry Weber, who had for some time been going mad, and who +proposed a duel with pistols (which he produced) to his employer in the +study at Castle Street. _Swift_ appeared at last in the summer, and it +was in June 1814 that the first of a series of wonderful _tours de +force_ was achieved by the completion, in about three weeks, of the last +half of _Waverley_. One of the most striking things in Lockhart is the +story of the idle apprentice who became industrious by seeing Scott's +hand traversing the paper hour after hour at his study window. The novel +actually appeared on July 7, and, being anonymous, made no immediate +'move,' as booksellers say, before Scott set off a fortnight later for +his long-planned tour with the Commissioners of Northern Lights--the +Scottish Trinity House--in their yacht, round the northern half of the +island and to Orkney and Shetland. To abstract his own admirable account +of the tour[27] would be a task grateful neither to writer nor to +reader, the latter of whom, if he does not know it already, had better +lose no time in making its acquaintance. On the return in September, +Scott was met by two pieces of bad and good tidings respectively--the +death of the Duchess of Buccleuch, and the distinct, though not as yet +'furious,' success of his novel. + +There is no doubt that the early fragments in tale-telling which have +been noticed above do not display any particular skill in the art; nor +is there much need to quarrel with those who declare that the opening of +_Waverley_[26] itself ranks little, if at all, above them. I always read +it myself; but I believe most people plunge almost at once into the +Tullyveolan visit. By doing so, however, they miss not merely the +critical pleasure of comparing a man's work (as can rarely be done) +during his period of groping for the way, with his actual stumble into +it for the first time, but also such justification as there is for the +hero's figure. Nobody ever judged the unlucky captain of Gardiner's +better than his creator, who at the time frankly called him 'a sneaking +piece of imbecility,' and avowed, with as much probability as right, +that 'if he had married Flora, she would have set him up on the +chimney-piece, as Count Borowlaski's[25] wife used to do.' But his +weaknesses have at least an excuse from his education and antecedents, +which does not appear if these antecedents are neglected. + +Still, the story-interest only begins when Waverley rides into the +bear-warded avenue; it certainly never ceases till the golden image of +the same totem is replaced in the Baron of Bradwardine's hand. And it is +very particularly to be observed that this interest is of a kind +absolutely novel in combination and idiosyncrasy. The elements of +literary interest are nowhere new, except in what is, for aught we know, +accidentally the earliest literature _to us_. They are all to be found +in Homer, in the Book of Job, in the _Agamemnon_, in the _Lancelot_, in +the _Poem of the Cid_. But from time to time, in the hands of the men of +greater genius, they are shaken up afresh, they receive new adjustments, +and a touch of something personal which transforms them. This new +adjustment and touch produced in Scott's case what we call the +Historical Novel.[24] It is quite a mistake to think that he was limited +to this. _Guy Mannering_ and _The Antiquary_ among the earlier novels, +_St. Ronan's Well_ and the exquisite introductory sketch to the +_Chronicles of the Canongate_ among the later, would disprove that. But +the historical novel was the new kind that he was 'born to introduce,' +after many failures in many generations. It is difficult to say whether +it was accident or property which made his success in it co-existent +with his success in depicting national character, scenery, and manners. +Attempts at this, not always unsuccessful attempts, had indeed been made +before. It had been tried frequently, though usually in the sense of +caricature, on the stage; it had been done quite recently in the novel +by Miss Edgeworth (whom Scott at least professed to regard as his +governess here), and much earlier in this very department of Scotch +matters by Smollett. But it had never been done with really commanding +ability on the great scale. + +In _Waverley_ Scott supplied these two aspects, the historical-romantic +and the national-characteristic, with a felicity perhaps all the more +unerring in that it seems to have been only partly conscious. The +subject of 'the Forty-five' was now fully out of taboo, and yet retained +an interest more than antiquarian. The author had the amplest stores of +knowledge, and that sympathy which is so invaluable to the artist when +he keeps it within the limits of art. He seems to have possessed by +instinct (for there was nobody to teach him) the paramount secret of the +historical novelist, the secret of making his central and prominent +characters fictitious, and the real ones mostly subsidiary. On the other +hand, the knowledge of his native country, which he had been +accumulating for almost the whole of his nearly four-and-forty years of +life, was joined in him with that universal knowledge of humanity which +only men of the greatest genius have. I am, indeed, aware that both +these positions have been attacked. I was much pleased, some time after +I had begun to write this little book, to find in a review of the +present year of grace these words: 'Scott only knew a small portion of +human nature, and he was unable to portray the physiognomy of the past.' +I feared at first that this might be only one of the numerous flings of +our young barbarians, a pleasant, or pleasantly intended, flirt of the +heels of the New Humour. But the context showed that the writer was in +deadly earnest. I shall not attempt here to explain to him, in a popular +or any other style, that he is, perhaps, not quite right. Life itself is +not long enough--'little books' are decidedly too short--for a +demonstration that the Pacific Ocean is not really a small portion of +the terrestrial water-space, or that Alexander was able to overrun +foreign countries. We may find a little room in the Conclusion to say +something more about Scott's range and his faculty. Here it will be +enough to wear our friend's rue with a slight difference, and to say +that _Waverley_ and its successors showed in their author knowledge, +complete in all but certain small parts, of human nature, and an almost +unlimited faculty of portraying the physiognomy of the past. + +It was scarcely to be expected that a book which was anonymous, and of +which only a very few persons knew the real authorship, while even those +who guessed it at all early were not so very many, should attain +immediate popularity. Lockhart says that the slowness of the success was +exaggerated, but his own figures prove that it was somewhat leisurely. +Five editions, one (the second) of two thousand, the others of one +thousand each, supplied the demand of the first six months, and a +thousand copies more that of the next eighteen months--a difference from +the almost instantaneous myriads of the poems, quite sufficient to show +very eloquently how low the prose novel then stood in popular favour. It +is the greatest triumph of Scott, from this low point of view, that his +repeated blows heated the public as they did, till at the fourth +publication, within but a year or two, Constable actually dared to start +with ten thousand copies at once, and they were all absorbed in no time. + +Scott had always been a rapid worker, but it was only now, under the +combined stimulus of the new-found gift, the desire for more land and a +statelier Abbotsford, and the pressure of the affairs of Ballantyne & +Co., that he began to work at the portentous rate which, though I do +not believe that it at all injured the quality of his production, pretty +certainly endangered his health. During 1814 he had written nearly all +his _Life of Swift_, nearly all _Waverley_, the _Lord of the Isles_, and +an abundance of 'small wares,' essays, introductions, and what not. The +major part of _Guy Mannering_--perhaps the very best of the novels, for +merit of construction and interest of detail--seems to have been written +in less than a month, at the extreme end of this year and the beginning +of 1815. The whole appears to have been done in six weeks, to 'shake +himself free of _Waverley_'--probably the most gigantic exhibition of +the 'hair of the dog' recorded in literature. + +The _donnee_ of this novel was furnished by a Dumfries surveyor of +taxes, Mr. Train, the scenery by that early visit to Galloway, in the +interest of the reverend toyer with sweetie-wives, which has been +recorded. Other indebtedness, such as that of Hatteraick to the +historical or legendary free-trader, Yawkins, and the like, has been +traced. But the charm of the whole lies in none of these things, nor in +all together, but in Scott's own fashion of working them up. Nothing at +first could seem to be a greater contrast with _Waverley_ than this +tale. No big wars, no political hazards; but a double and tenfold +portion of human nature and local colour. This last element had in the +earlier book been almost entirely supplied by Tullyveolan and its +master; for Fergus and the Highland scenes, good as they are, are not +much more than a furbishing up of the poem-matter of this kind, +especially in the _Lady of the Lake_. But here the supply of character +was liberal and the variety of scenery extraordinary. We cannot judge +the innovation fully now, but let anyone turn to the theatrical +properties of Godwin and Holcroft, of Mrs. Radcliffe and 'Monk' Lewis, +and he will begin to have a better idea of what _Guy Mannering_ must +have been to its first readers. As usual, the personages who head the +_dramatis personae_ are not the best. Bertram, though less of a +nincompoop than Waverley, is not very much; Lucy is a less lively _ange +de candeur_ than Rose, and nothing else; and Julia's genteel-comedy +missishness does not do much more than pair off with Flora's +tragedy-queen air. 'Mannering, Guy, a Colonel returned from the Indies,' +is, perhaps, also too fair a description of the player of the +title-part.[23] But we trouble ourselves very little about these persons. +As for characters, the author opens fire on us almost at the very first +with Dominie Sampson and Meg Merrilees, and the hardly less excellent +figure of Bertram's well-meaning booby of a father; gives us barely time +to make their acquaintance before we meet Dandie Dinmont; brings up +almost superfluous reinforcements with Mr. Pleydell, and throughout +throws in Hatteraick and Glossin, Jock Jabos and his mistress, and Sir +Robert Haslewood, the company at Kippletringan, and at the funeral, and +elsewhere, in the most reckless spirit of literary lavishness. Nor is he +less prodigal of incident and scene. The opening passage of Mannering's +night-ride could not have been bettered if the painter had taken +infinitely more pains. Bertram's walk and the skirmish with the prowlers +are simply first-rate; the Edinburgh scenes have always excited +admiration as the very best of their kind; and the various passages +which lead to the working out of justice on Glossin and Hatteraick are +not merely told with a gusto, but arranged with a craftsmanship, of +which the latter is unfortunately less often present than the former in +the author's later work. There is hardly any book of Scott's on which it +is more tempting to dwell than this. Although the demand had not yet +reached anything like its height, two thousand copies were sold in +forty-eight hours, and five thousand in three months. + +In March 1815 Scott went to London, and met two persons of distinction, +the Regent and Lord Byron. There seems to be a little doubt whether +George did or did not adapt the joke of the hanging judge, about +'checkmating this time,' to the authorship of the _Waverley_ novels; but +there is no doubt that he was very civil. With Byron Scott was at once +on very good terms, for Scott was not the man to bear any grudge for the +early fling in _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_; and Byron, whatever +his faults, 'had more of lion' in him than to be jealous of such a +rival. The difference of their characters was such as to prevent them +from being in the strict sense friends; and Scott's comparison of Byron, +after the separation, to a peacock parted from the hen and lifting up +his voice to tell the world about it, has a rather terribly far-reaching +justice, both of moral and literary criticism, on that noble bard's +whole life and conversation. But there were no little jealousies between +them, and apparently some real liking. + +This visit to London was extended to Brussels and Paris, with the result +in verse of the already mentioned and not particularly happy _Field of +Waterloo_, in prose of the interesting _Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk_, +an account of the tour. Both were published (the poem almost +immediately, _Paul_ not till the new year) after Scott's return to +Abbotsford at the end of September; and he set to work during the later +autumn on his third novel, _The Antiquary_. The book appeared in May +1816, at about the time of the death of Major John Scott, the last but +one of the poet's surviving brothers. It was not at first so popular as +_Guy Mannering_, which, however, it very rapidly caught up even in that +respect: nor is this bad start surprising. To good judges nowadays the +book appeals as strongly at least as any other of its author's--in fact, +Monkbarns and the Mucklebackits, the rescue of Sir Arthur and Isabel, +the scenes in the ruins of St. Ruth's, and especially Edie Ochiltree, +were never surpassed by him. But the story was a daring innovation, or +return, among the novels of its own day. It boldly rejected most of the +ordinary sources of romance interest. It had very little plot; its +humorous characters, though touched with the rarest art, were not +caricatured; and (for which it certainly cannot be praised) that +greatest fault of Scott's,--perhaps his only great fault as a +novelist,--the 'huddling up' of the end, appears in it for the first, +though unluckily by no means for the last, time. But it would have been +a very sad thing for the public taste if it had definitely refused _The +Antiquary_. A book which contains within the compass of the opening +chapters such masterpieces as the journey to the Hawes, the description +of the Antiquary's study, and the storm and rescue, must have had a +generation of idiots for an audience if it had not been successful. +Moreover, it had, as Scott's unwearied biographer has already noted, a +new and special source of interest in the admirable fragmentary mottoes, +invented to save the greater labour of discovery, which adorn its +chapter-headings.[22] Lockhart himself thought that Scott never quite +equalled these first three novels. I cannot agree with him there; but +what is certain is that he in them discovered, with extraordinary +felicity, skill in three different kinds of novel--the historical, the +romantic-adventurous, and that of ordinary or almost wholly ordinary +life; and that even he never exactly added a fourth kind to his +inventions, though he varied them wonderfully within themselves. The +romance partly historical, the romance mainly or wholly fictitious, and +the novel of manners; these were his three classes, and hardly any +others. + +It is not entirely explained what were the reasons which determined +Scott to make his next venture, the _Tales of my Landlord_, under a +fresh pseudonym, and also to publish it not with Constable, but with +Murray and Blackwood. Lockhart's blame of John Ballantyne may not be +unfair; but it is rather less supported by documentary evidence than +most of his strictures on the Ballantynes. And the thing is perhaps to +be sufficiently accounted for by Scott's double dislike, both as an +independent person and a man of business, of giving a monopoly of his +work to one publisher, and by his constant fancy for trying experiments +on the public--a fancy itself not wholly, though partially, +comprehensible. As a matter of fact, _Old Mortality_ and the _Black +Dwarf_ were offered to and pretty eagerly accepted by Murray and +Blackwood, on the terms of half profits and the inevitable batch of 'old +stock.' The story of the unlucky quarrel with Blackwood in consequence +of some critical remarks of his on the end of the _Black +Dwarf_,--remarks certainly not inexcusable,--and of Scott's famous +letter in reply, will doubtless receive further elucidation in the +forthcoming chronicle of the House of 'Ebony'; but it is told with fair +detail, in the second edition of Lockhart, from the actual archives. + +Scott doubled his work during the summer and autumn by undertaking the +historical department, relinquished by Southey, of the _Edinburgh Annual +Register_, yet the two _Tales_ were ready in November, and appeared on +the 1st of December 1816. Murray wrote effusively to Scott (who, it must +be remembered, was not even to his publishers the known author), and +received a very amusing reply, from which one sentence may be quoted as +an example of those which have brought upon Sir Walter the reproach of +falsehood, or at least disingenuousness, from Goodman Dull. 'I assure +you,' he writes, 'I have never read a volume of them till they were +printed,' a delightful selection of words, for it looks decisive, and +means absolutely nothing. Nobody but a magician, and no ordinary +magician, could read a _volume_ (which in the usual parlance means a +printed volume) before it was printed. To back his disclaimer, Scott +offered to review himself in the _Quarterly_, which he did. I certainly +do not approve of authors being their own reviewers; though when (as +sometimes happens) they have any brains, they probably know the faults +and merits of their books better than anyone else, and can at anyrate +state, with a precision which is too rare in the ordinary critic, what +the book is meant to be and tries to do. But this case was clearly one +out of the common way, and rather part of an elaborate practical joke +than anything else. + +Dulness, however, had in many ways found stumbling-blocks in the first +foster-children of the excellent Jedediah. The very pious and learned, +if not exactly humorous or shrewd, Dr. M'Crie, fell foul of the picture +of the Covenanters given in _Old Mortality_. No one who knows the +documents is likely to agree with him now, and from hardly any point of +view but his could the greatness of the book be denied. Although Scott's +humour is by no means absent from it, that quality does not perhaps find +quite such an opportunity, even in Mause and Cuddie, as in the Baron, +and the Dominie, and the inhabitants of Monkbarns. But as a historical +novel, it is a far greater one than _Waverley_. Drumclog, the siege of +Tillietudlem, above all, the matchless scene where Morton is just saved +from murder by his own party, surpass anything in the earlier book. But +greater than any of these single things is one of the first and the +greatest of Scott's splendid gallery of romantic-historic portraits, the +stately figure of Claverhouse. All the features which he himself was to +sum up in that undying sentence of Wandering Willie's Tale later are +here put in detail and justified. + +As for the companion to this masterly book, I have always thought the +earlier part of the _Black Dwarf_ as happy as all but the best of +Scott's work. But the character of the _Dwarf_ himself was not one that +he could manage. The nullity of Earnscliff and Isabel is complete. +Isabel's father is a stagy villain, or rather rascal (for Victor Hugo's +antithesis between _scelerat_ and _maroufle_ comes in here), and even +Scott has never hustled off a conclusion with such complete +_insouciance_ as to anything like completeness. Willie of Westburnflat +here, like Christie of the Clinthill later, is one of our old friends of +the poems back again, and welcome back again. But he and Hobbie can +hardly save a book which Scott seems to have thrown in with its +admirable companion, not as a makeweight, but rather as a foil. + +Between the first and the second sets of _Tales_, the 'Author of +_Waverley_,' true to his odd design of throwing the public off the +scent, reappeared, and the result was _Rob Roy_. Perhaps because it was +written under the first attacks of that 'cramp of the stomach' which, +though obscurely connected with his later and more fatal ailments, no +doubt ushered them in something more than an accidental manner, Scott +did not at first much like _Rob_. But he was reconciled later; and +hardly anybody else (except those exceedingly unhappy persons who cannot +taste him at all) can ever have had any doubt about it. That the end is +even more than usually huddled, that the beginning may perhaps have +dawdled a little over commercial details (I do not think so myself, but +Lady Louisa Stuart did), and that the distribution of time, which +lingers over weeks and months before and after it devotes almost the +major part of the book to the events of forty-eight hours, is irregular, +even in the eyes of those who are not serfs to the unities, cannot be +denied. But almost from the introduction of Frank to Diana, certainly +from his setting off in the grey of the morning with Andrew Fairservice, +to the point at least where the heroine stoops from her pony in a manner +equally obliging and graceful, there is no dropped stitch, no false +note. Nor in any book are there so many of Scott's own characters, and +others not quite so much his own. Helen Macgregor, perhaps, does not +'thrill our blood and overpower our reason,' as she did Lady Louisa's, +simply because we were born some hundred years later than that acute and +accomplished granddaughter of Lady Mary; and Rashleigh pretty +frequently, Rob himself now and then, may also savour to us a little of +the boards and the sawdust. But, as a rule, Rob does not; and for nobody +else, not even for the fortunate Frank,--who has nothing to do but to +walk through his part creditably, and does it,--need any allowance be +made. The Bailie is, with Shallow, his brother justice (upon whom he +justly looks down, but to whom he is, I think, kind) in Arthur's bosom; +Andrew Fairservice and the Dougal creature, Justice Inglewood and Sir +Hildebrand, are there too. As for Die Vernon, she is the one of Scott's +heroines with whom one _has to_ fall in love, just as, according to a +beautiful story, a thoughtless and reluctant world _had to_ believe the +Athanasian Creed. It is painful to say that persons on whom it is +impossible to retort the charge, have sometimes insinuated a touch of +vulgarity in Di. For these one can but pray; and, after all, they are +usually of her sex, which in such judgments of itself counts not. All +men, who are men and gentlemen, must delight in her. And here, as +always, to all but the very last, even in the twilight of _Anne of +Geierstein_, the succession of scenes hurries the reader along without +breath or time to stop and criticise, with nothing to do, if he is a +reasonable person, but to read and enjoy and admire. + +Lockhart has taken the opportunity of this point of time (1817-1818), +which may be said to mark the zenith of Scott's prosperity, if not of +his fame, to halt and to give a sort of survey of his father-in-law's +private life at Castle Street and at Abbotsford. It forms one of the +pleasantest portions of his book, containing nothing more tragic than +the advent of the famous American tragedy of _The Cherokee Lovers_, +which its careful author sent, that Scott might approve and publish it, +in duplicate, so that the unfortunate recipient had to pay five pounds +twice over for the postage of the rubbish. Of course things were not +entirely as they seemed. The cramps with which, as mentioned, Scott had +been already seized, during the progress of _Rob Roy_, were, though +probably not caused, yet all too much helped and hastened, by the +ferocious manner in which he worked his brains. For it must be doubted +whether social intercourse, or even bodily exercise in company with +others, is really the best refreshment after very severe mental labour. +Both distract and amuse; but they do not refresh, relax, relieve, like a +bath of pure solitude. + +Divers events of importance happened to Scott, in the later course of +the year 1818[21] (besides a much worse recurrence of his disorder), +after the _Heart of Midlothian_ (the second series of the _Tales_) had +been published in June, and the _Bride of Lammermoor_ (the third series) +had been begun. The Duke of Buccleuch, his chief, his (as he would +himself have cheerfully allowed) patron, his helper in time of need, and +his most intimate friend, died. So did his brother-in-law, Charles +Carpenter, this latter death adding considerably, though to an extent +exaggerated at first and only reversionary, to the prospects of Scott's +children. He gave up an idea, which he had for some time held, of +obtaining a judgeship of the Scotch Exchequer; but he received his +baronetcy in April 1820. Abbotsford went on gradually and expensively +completing itself; the correspondence which tells us so much and is such +delightful reading continued, as if the writer had nothing else to write +and nothing else to do. But for us the chief matters of interest are the +two novels mentioned, and that admirable supplement to the second of +them, the _Legend of Montrose_. + +There can be little doubt, I think, that in at least passages, and those +very large ones, of the _Heart of Midlothian_, Scott went as high as he +ever had done, or ever did thereafter. I have never agreed with Lady +Louisa Stuart that 'Mr. Saddletree is not amusing,' nor that there is +too much Scots law for English readers. It must be remembered that until +Scott opened people's eyes, there were some very singular conventions +and prejudices, even in celestial minds, about novels. Technical details +were voted tedious and out of place--as, Heaven knows! M. Zola and +others have shown us since, that they may very easily be made. +Professional matters, the lower middle classes, etc., were thought +'low,' as Goldsmith's audience had had it, 'vulgar,' as Madame de Stael +said of Miss Austen. That the farrago of the novelist's book is +absolutely universal and indiscriminate, provided only that he knows +what to do with it, had not dawned on the general mind. On the other +hand, Lady Louisa was right in objecting to the finale,--it has been +admitted that Scott was never good at a conclusion,--and personally I +have always thought George Staunton uninteresting throughout. But how +much does this leave! The description of the lynching of Porteous and +the matchless interview with Queen Caroline are only the very best of +such a series of good things that, except just at the end, it may be +said to be uninterrupted. Jeanie it is unnecessary to praise; the same +Lady Louisa's admiration of the wonderful art which could attract so +much interest to a plain, good, not clever, almost middle-aged woman +sums up all. But almost everyone plays up to Jeanie in perfection--her +father and, to no small extent, her sister, her husband and Dumbiedykes, +Madge Wildfire (a most difficult and most successful character) and her +old fiend of a mother, the Duke and the tobacco-shop keeper. Abundant as +are the good things afterwards, I do not know that Scott ever showed his +actual original genius, his faculty of creation and combination, to such +an extent and in such proportion again. + +He certainly did not, so far as my taste goes, in _The Bride of +Lammermoor_, a book which, putting the mere fragment of the _Black +Dwarf_ aside, seems to me his first approach to failure in prose. +Lockhart, whose general critical opinions deserve the profoundest +respect, thought differently--thought it, indeed, 'the most pure and +perfect of all the tragedies that Scott ever penned.' Perhaps there is +something in this of the same ingenuity which Scott himself showed in +his disclaimer to Murray quoted above, for tragedy _per se_ was +certainly not Scott's forte to the same extent as were comedy and +history. But I know that there are many who agree with Lockhart. On the +other hand, I should say that while we do not know enough of the House +of Ravenswood to feel much sympathy with its fortunes as a house, the +'conditions,' in the old sense, of its last representative are not such +as to attract us much to him personally. He is already far too much of +that hero of opera which he was destined to become, a sulky, stagy +creature, in theatrical poses and a black-plumed hat, who cannot even +play the easy and perennially attractive part of _desdichado_ so as to +keep our compassion. Lucy is a simpleton so utter and complete that it +is difficult even to be sorry for her, especially as Ravenswood would +have made a detestable husband. The mother is meant to be and is a +repulsive virago, and the father a time-serving and almost vulgar +intriguer. Moreover--and all this is not in the least surprising, since +he was in agonies during most of the composition, and nearly died before +its close[20]--the author has, contrary to his wont, provided very few +subsidiary characters to support or carry off the principals. Caleb +Balderstone has been perhaps unduly objected to by the very persons who +praise the whole book; but he is certainly somewhat of what the French +call a _charge_. Bucklaw, though agreeable, is very slight; Craigengelt +a mere 'super'; the Marquis shadowy. Even such fine things as the hags +at the laying-out, and the visit of Lucy and her father to Wolf's Crag, +and such amusing ones as Balderstone's _fabliau_-like expedients to +raise the wind in the matter of food, hardly save the situation; and +though the tragedy of the end is complete, it leaves me, I own, rather +cold.[19] One is sorry for Lucy, but it was really her own fault--a +Scottish maiden is not usually unaware of the possibilities and +advantages of 'kilting her coats of green satin' and flying from the lad +she does not love to the lad she does. The total disappearance of Edgar +is the best thing that could happen to him, and the only really +satisfactory point is Bucklaw's very gentlemanlike sentence of arrest on +all impertinent questioners. + +But if the companion of the first set of _Tales_ was a dead-weight +rather than a make-weight, the make-weight of the third would have +atoned for anything. Sometimes I think, allowing for scale and +conditions, that Scott never did anything much better than _A Legend of +Montrose_. First, it is pervaded by the magnificent figure of Dugald +Dalgetty. Secondly, the story, though with something of the usual huddle +at the end, is interesting throughout, with the minor figures capitally +sketched in. Menteith, though merely outlined, is a good fellow, a +gentleman, and not a stick; Allan escapes the merely melodramatic; +'Gillespie Grumach' is masterly in his brief appearances; and Montrose +himself seems to me to be brought in with a skill which has too often +escaped notice. For it would mar the story to deal with the tragedy of +his end, and his earlier history is a little awkward to manage. +Moreover, that faculty of hurrying on the successive _tableaux_ which is +so conspicuous in most of Scott's work, and so conspicuously absent in +the _Bride_ (where there are long passages with no action at all) is +eminently present here. The meeting with Dalgetty; the night at +Darnlinvarach, from the bravado of the candlesticks to Menteith's tale; +the gathering and council of the clans; the journey of Dalgetty, with +its central point in the Inverary dungeon; the escape; and the battle of +Inverlochy,--these form an exemplary specimen of the kind of interest +which Scott's best novels possess as nothing of the kind had before +possessed it, and as few things out of Dumas have possessed it since. +Nor can the most fervent admirer of Chicot and of Porthos--I know none +more fervent than myself--say in cool blood that their creator could +have created Dalgetty, who is at once an admirable human being, a +wonderful national type of the more eccentric kind, and the embodiment +of an astonishing amount of judiciously adjusted erudition. + +Many incidents of interest and some of importance occurred in Scott's +private life between the date of 1818 and that of 1820, besides those +mentioned already. One of these was the acquisition by Constable of the +whole of his back-copyrights for the very large sum of twelve thousand +pounds, a contract supplemented twice later in 1821 and 1823 by fresh +purchases of rights as they accrued for nominal sums of eleven thousand +pounds in addition. Unfortunately, this transaction, like almost all his +later ones, was more fictitious than real. And though it was lucky that +the publisher never discharged the full debt, so that when his +bankruptcy occurred something was saved out of the wreck which would +otherwise have been pure loss, the proceeding is characteristic of the +mischievously unreal system of money transactions which brought Scott to +ruin. Except for small things like review articles, etc., and for his +official salaries, he hardly ever touched real money for the fifteen +most prosperous years of his life, between 1810 and 1825. Promises to +receive were interchanged with promises to pay in such a bewildering +fashion that unless he had kept a chartered accountant of rather +unusual skill and industry perpetually at work, it must have been +utterly impossible for him to know at any given time what he had, what +he owed, what was due to him, and what his actual income and expenditure +were. The commonly accepted estimate is that during the most flourishing +time, 1820-1825, he made about fifteen thousand a year, and on paper he +probably did. Nor can he ever have spent, in the proper sense of the +term, anything like that sum, for the Castle Street house cannot have +cost, even with lavish hospitality, much to keep up, and the Abbotsford +establishment, though liberal, was never ostentatious. But when large +lump sums are constantly expended in purchases of land, building, +furnishing, and the like; when every penny of income except official +salaries goes through a complicated process of abatement in the way of +discounts for six and twelve months' bills, fines for renewal, payments +to banks for advances and the like--the 'clean' sums available at any +given moment bear quite fantastic and untrustworthy relations to their +nominal representatives. It may be strongly suspected, from the admitted +decrease of a very valuable practice under Walter Scott _pere_, and from +its practical disappearance under Thomas, that the genius of the Scott +family did not precisely lie in the management of money. + +The marriage of Sophia Scott to Lockhart, and the purchase of a +commission for her eldest brother Walter in the 18th Hussars, made gaps +in Scott's family circle, and also, beyond all doubt, in his finances. +The first was altogether happy for him. It did not, for at anyrate some +years, absolutely sever him from the dearest of his children, a lady +who, to judge from her portraits, must have been of singular charm, and +who seems to have been the only one of the four with much of his mental +characteristics; it provided him with an agreeable companion, a loyal +friend, and an incomparable biographer. Of Sir Walter Scott the second +and last, not much personal idea is obtainable. The few anecdotes handed +down, and his father's letters to him (we have no replies), suggest a +good sort of person, slightly 'chuckle-headed' and perfervid in the +wrong places, with next to no intellectual gifts, and perhaps more his +mother's son than his father's. He had some difficulties in his first +regiment, which seems to have been a wild one, and not in the best form; +he married an heiress of the unpoetical name of Jobson, to whom and of +whom his father writes with a pretty old-fashioned affection and +courtesy, which perhaps gave Thackeray some traits for Colonel Newcome. +Of the younger brother Charles, an Oxford man, who went into the Foreign +Office, even less is recorded than of Walter. Anne Scott, the third of +the family, and the faithful attendant of her father in his last evil +days, died in her sister's house shortly after Sir Walter, and Mrs. +Lockhart herself followed before the _Life_ was finished. Scott can +hardly be said to have bequeathed good luck to any of these his +descendants. + +It was at the end of 1819, after Walter the younger left home, and +before Sophia's marriage, that the next in order of the _Waverley +Novels_ (now again such by title, and not _Tales of my Landlord_) +appeared. This was _Ivanhoe_, which was published in a rather costlier +shape than its forerunners, and yet sold to the extent of twelve +thousand copies in its three-volume form. Lockhart, perhaps with one of +the few but graceful escapes of national predilection (it ought not to +be called prejudice) to be noticed in him, pronounces this a greater +work of art, but a less in genius than its purely Scottish predecessors. +As there is nothing specially English in _Ivanhoe_, but only an attempt +to delineate Normans and Saxons before the final blend was formed, an +Englishman may, perhaps, claim at least impartiality if he accepts the +positive part of Lockhart's judgment and demurs to the negative. +Although the worst of Scott's cramps were past, he was still in anything +but good health when he composed the novel, most of which was dictated, +not written; and his avocations and bodily troubles together may have +had something to do with those certainly pretty flagrant anachronisms +which have brought on _Ivanhoe_ the wrath of Dryasdust. But Dryasdust is +_adeo negligibile ut negligibilius nihil esse possit_, and the book is a +great one from beginning to end. The mere historians who quarrel with it +have probably never read the romances which justify it, even from the +point of view of literary 'document.' The picturesque opening; the +Shakespearean character of Wamba; the splendid Passage of Arms; the more +splendid siege of Torquilstone; the gathering up of a dozen popular +stories of the 'King-and-the-Tanner' kind into the episodes of the Black +Knight and the Friar; the admirable, if a little conventional, sketch of +Bois-Guilbert, the pendant in prose to Marmion; the more admirable +contrast of Rebecca and Rowena; and the final Judgment of God, which for +once vindicates Scott from the charge of never being able to wind up a +novel,--with such subsidiary sketches as Gurth, Prior Aymer, Isaac, +Front-de-Boeuf (Urfried, I fear, will not quite do, except in the +final interview with her tempter-victim), Athelstane, and others--give +such a plethora of creative and descriptive wealth as nobody but Scott +has ever put together in prose. Even the nominal hero, it is to be +observed, escapes the curse of most of Scott's young men (the young men +to several of whom Thackeray would have liked to be mother-in-law), and +if he is not worthy of Rebecca, he does not get her. As for Richard, no +doubt, he is not the Richard of history, but what does that matter? He +is a most admirable re-creation, softened and refined, of the Richard of +a romance which, be it remembered, is itself in all probability as old +as the thirteenth century. + +After speaking frankly of the _Bride of Lammermoor_ and of some others +of Scott's works, it may perhaps be permissible to rate the successor to +_Ivanhoe_ rather higher than it was rated at the time, or than it has +generally been rated since. _The Monastery_ was at its appearance (March +1820) regarded as a failure; and quite recently a sincere admirer of +Scott confided to a fellow in that worship the opinion that 'a good deal +of it really is rot, you know.' I venture to differ. Undoubtedly it does +not rank with the very best, or even next to them. In returning to +Scottish ground, Scott may have strengthened himself on one side, but +from the distance of the times and the obscure and comparatively +uninteresting period which he selected (just after the strange and rapid +panorama of the five Jameses and before the advent of Queen Mary), he +lost as much as he gained. An intention, afterwards abandoned, to make +yet a fresh start, and try a new double on the public by appearing +neither as 'Author of _Waverley_' nor as Jedediah Cleishbotham, may have +hampered him a little, though it gave a pleasant introduction. The +supernatural part, though much better, as it seems to me, than is +generally admitted, is no doubt not entirely satisfactory, being +uncertainly handled, and subject to the warning of _Nec deus intersit_. +There is some return of that superabundance of interval and inaction +which has been noted in the _Bride_. And, above all, there appears here +a fault which had not been noticeable before, but which was to increase +upon Scott,--the fault of introducing a character as if he were to be of +great pith and moment, and then letting his interest, as the vernacular +says, 'tail off.' The trouble taken about Halbert by personages natural +and supernatural promises the case of some extraordinary figure, and he +is but very ordinary. Still, at the works of how many novelists except +Scott should we grumble, if we had the admirable descriptions of +Glendearg, the scenes in the Abbey, the night-ride of poor Father +Philip, the escape from the Castle of Avenel, the passage of the +interview of Halbert with Murray and Morton? Even the episode of Sir +Piercie Shafton, though it is most indisputably true that Scott has not +by any means truly represented Euphuism, is good and amusing in itself; +while there are those who boldly like the White Lady personally. She is +more futile than a sprite beseems; but she is distinctly 'nice.' + +At any rate, nobody could (or indeed did) deny that the author, six +months later, made up for any shortcoming in _The Abbot_, where, except +the end (eminently of the huddled order), everything is as it should be. +The heroine is, except Die Vernon, Scott's masterpiece in that kind, +while all the Queen Mary scenes are unsurpassed in him, and rarely +equalled out of him. Nor was there any falling off in _Kenilworth_ (Jan. +1821), where he again shifted his scene to England. He has not indeed +interested us very much personally in Amy Robsart, but as a hapless +heroine she is altogether the superior of Lucy Ashton. The book is, +among his, the 'novel without a hero,' and, considering his defects in +that direction, this was hardly a drawback. It cannot be indeed said to +have any one minor character which is a success of the first class. But +the whole is interesting throughout. The journeys of Tressilian to +Devonshire and of Amy and Wayland to Kenilworth have the curious +attraction which Scott, a great traveller, and a lover of it, knew how +to give to journeys, and the pageantry and Court scenes, at Greenwich +and elsewhere, command admiration. Indeed, _Kenilworth_ equals any of +the novels in sustained variety of interest, and, unlike too many of +them, it comes to a real end. + +It was in 1821 that a book now necessarily much forgotten and even rare +(it is comparatively seldom that one sees it in catalogues), Adolphus's +_Letters on the Author of Waverley_, at once showed the interest taken +in the identity of the 'Great Unknown,' and fixed it as being that of +the author of the _Lay_, with a great deal of ingenuity and with a most +industrious abundance of arguments, bad and good. After such a proof of +public interest, neither Scott nor Constable could be much blamed for +working what has been opprobriously called the 'novel manufactory' at +the highest pressure; and _The Pirate_, _The Fortunes of Nigel_, +_Peveril of the Peak_, _Quentin Durward_, _St. Ronan's Well_, and +_Redgauntlet_ were written and published in the closest succession. +These books, almost all of wonderful individual excellence (_Peveril_, I +think, is the only exception), and of still more wonderful variety, were +succeeded, before the crash of 1825-26, by the _Tales of the Crusaders_, +admirable in part, if not wholly. When we think that all these were, +with some other work, accomplished in less than five years, it scarcely +seems presumption in the author to have executed, or rashness in the +bookseller to have suggested, a contract for four of them in a batch--a +batch unnamed, unplanned, not even yet in embryo, but simply existing +_in potentia_ in the brain of Walter Scott himself. + +In surveying together this batch, written when the first novelty of the +novels was long over, and before there was any decadence, one obtains, +as well perhaps as from any other division of his works, an idea of +their author's miraculous power. Many novelists since have written as +much or more in the same time. But their books for the most part, even +when well above the average, popular, and deservedly popular too, leave +next to no trace on the mind. You do not want to read them again; you +remember, even with a strong memory, nothing special about their plots; +above all, their characters take little or no hold on the mind in the +sense of becoming part of its intellectual circle and range. + +How different is it with these six or eight novels, 'written with as +much care as the others, that is to say, with none at all,' as the +author wickedly remarked! _The Pirate_ (December 1821) leads off, its +scenery rendered with the faithfulness of recent memory, and yet +adjusted and toned by the seven years' interval since Scott yachted +round Orkney and Shetland. Here are the admirable characters of Brenda +(slight yet thoroughly pleasing), and her father, the not too +melodramatic ones of Minna, Cleveland, and Norna, the triumph of Claud +Halcro (to whom few do justice), and again, the excellent keeping of +story and scenery to character and incident. _The Fortunes of Nigel_ +(May 1822) originated in a proposed series of 'Letters of the +Seventeenth Century,' in which others were to take part, and perhaps +marks a certain decline, though only in senses to be distinctly defined +and limited. Nothing that Scott ever did is better than the portrait of +King James, which, in the absence of one from the hand of His Majesty's +actual subject for some dozen years, Mr. William Shakespeare of New +Place, Stratford, is probably the most perfect thing of the kind that +ever could have been or can be done. And the picture of Whitefriars, +though it is borrowed to a great extent, and rather anticipated in point +of time, from Shadwell's _Squire of Alsatia_, sixty or seventy years +after date, is of the finest, whilst Sir Mungo Malagrowther[18] all but +deserves the same description. But this most cantankerous knight is not +touched off with the completeness of Dalgetty, or even of Claud Halcro. +Lord Glenvarloch adds, to the insipidity which is the bane of Scott's +good heroes, some rather disagreeable traits which none of them had +hitherto shown. Dalgarno in the same way falls short of his best bad +heroes. Dame Suddlechop suggests, for the first time _un_favourably, a +Shakespearean ancestress, Mistress Quickly, and the story halts and +fails to carry the reader rapidly over the stony path. Even Richie +Moniplies, even Gentle Geordie, good as both are, fall short of their +predecessors. Ten years earlier _The Fortunes of Nigel_ would have been +a miracle, and one might have said, 'If a man begins like this, what +will he do later?' Now, thankless and often uncritical as is the chatter +about 'writing out,' we can hardly compare _Nigel_ with _Guy Mannering_, +or _Rob Roy_, or even _The Abbot_, and not be conscious of something +that (to use a favourite quotation of Scott's own), 'doth appropinque an +end,' though an end as yet afar off. The 'bottom of the sack,' as the +French say, is a long way from us; but it is within measurable distance. + +Even a friendly critic must admit that this distance seemed to be +alarmingly shortened by _Peveril of the Peak_ (January 1823), which +among the full-sized novels seems to me quite his least good book, worse +even than 'dotages,' as they are sometimes thought, like _Anne of +Geierstein_ and _Count Robert_. No one has defended the story, which, +languid as it is, is made worse by the long gaps between the passages +that ought to be interesting, and by a (for Scott) quite abnormal and +portentous absence of really characteristic characters. Lockhart pleads +for some of these, but I fear the plea can hardly be admitted. I imagine +that those who read Scott pretty regularly are always sorely tempted to +skip _Peveril_ altogether, and that when they do read it, they find the +chariot wheels drive with a heaviness of which elsewhere they are +entirely unconscious. + +But in the same year (1823), _Quentin Durward_ not only made up for +_Peveril_, but showed Scott's powers to be at least as great as when he +wrote _The Abbot_, if not as great as ever. He has taken some liberties +with history, but no more than he was perfectly entitled to take; he has +paid the historic muse with ample interest for anything she lent him, by +the magnificent sketch of Louis and the fine one of Charles; he has +given a more than passable hero in Quentin, and a very agreeable if not +ravishing heroine in Isabelle. Above all, he has victoriously shown his +old faculty of conducting the story with such a series of enthralling, +even if sometimes episodic passages, that nobody but a pedant of +'construction' would care to inquire too narrowly whether they actually +make a whole. Quentin's meeting with the King and his rescue from +Tristan by the archers; the interviews between Louis and Crevecoeur, +and Louis and the Astrologer; the journey (another of Scott's admirable +journeys); the sack of Schonwaldt, and the feast of the Boar of +Ardennes; Louis in the lion's den at Peronne,--these are things that are +simply of the first order. Nor need the conclusion, which has shocked +some, shock any who do not hold, with critics of the Rymer school, that +'the hero ought always to be successful.' For as Quentin wins Isabelle +at last, what more success need we want? and why should not Le Balafre, +that loyal Leslie, be the instrument of his nephew's good fortune? + +The recovery was perfectly well maintained in _St. Ronan's Well_ (still +1823) and _Redgauntlet_ (1824), the last novels of full length before +the downfall. They were also, be it noticed, the first planned (while +_Quentin_ itself was completed) after some early symptoms of apoplectic +seizure, which might, even if they had not been helped by one of the +severest turns of fortune that any man ever experienced, have punished +Scott's daring contempt of ordinary laws in the working of his +brains.[17] The harm done to _St. Ronan's Well_ by the author's +submission to James Ballantyne's Philistine prudery in protesting +against the original story (in which Clara did not discover the cheat +put on her till a later period than the ceremony) is generally +acknowledged. As it is, not merely is the whole thing made a much ado +about nothing,--for no law and no Church in Christendom would have +hesitated to declare the nullity of a marriage which had never been +consummated, and which was celebrated while one of the parties took the +other for some one else,--but Clara's shattered reason, Tyrrel's +despair, and Etherington's certainty that he has the cards in his hand, +are all incredible and unaccountable--mere mid-winter madness. +Nevertheless, this, Scott's only attempt at actual contemporary fiction, +has extraordinary interest and great merit as such, while Meg Dods would +save half a dozen novels, and the society at the Well is hardly +inferior. + +And then came _Redgauntlet_. A great lover of Scott once nearly invoked +the assistance of Captain M'Turk to settle matters with a friend of his +who would not pronounce _Redgauntlet_ the best of all the novels, and +would only go so far as to admit that it contains some, and many, of the +best things. The best as a novel it cannot be called, because the action +is desultory in the extreme. There are wide gaps even in the chain of +story interest that does exist, and the conclusion, admirable in itself, +has even for Scott a too audacious disconnection with any but the very +faintest concern of the nominally first personages. But even putting +'Wandering Willie's Tale' aside, and taking for granted the merits of +that incomparable piece (of which, it may yet be gently hinted, it was +not so very long ago still a singularity and mark of daring to perceive +the absolute supremacy), the good things in this fascinating book defy +exaggeration. The unique autobiographic interest--so fresh and keen and +personal, and yet so free from the odious intrusion of actual +personality--of the earlier epistolary presentment of Saunders and Alan +Fairford, of Darsie and Green Mantle; Peter Peebles, peer of Scott's +best; Alan's journey and Darsie's own wanderings; the scenes at the +Provost's dinner-table and in Tam Turnpenny's den; that unique figure, +the skipper of the _Jumping Jenny_; the extraordinarily effective +presentment of Prince Charles, already in his decadence, if not yet in +his dotage; the profusion of smaller sketches and vignettes everywhere +grouped round the mighty central triumph of the adventures of Piper +Steenie,--who but Scott has done such things? He never put so much again +in a single book. There is something in it which it is hardly fanciful +to take as a 'note of finishing,' as the last piece of the work, that, +gigantic as it was, was not exactly collar work, not sheer hewing of +wood and drawing of water for the taskmasters. And it was fitting that +the book, so varied, so fresh, so gracious and kindly, so magnificent in +part, with a magnificence dominating Scott's usual range, should begin +with the beginnings of his own career, and should end with the practical +finish, not merely of the good days, but of the days that dawned with +any faint promise of goodness, in the career of the last hope of the +Jacobite cause. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[17] _Lockhart_, iv. chaps. xxviii.-xxxiii. + +[18] The name, which, as many people now know since Aldershot Camp was +established, is a real one, had been already used with the double +meaning by Charlotte Smith, a now much-forgotten novelist, whom Scott +admired. + +[19] The once celebrated 'Polish dwarf.' + +[20] I may be permitted to refer--as to a _piece justificatif_ which +there is no room here to give or even abstract in full--to a set of +three essays on this subject in my _Essays in English Literature_. +Second Series. London, 1895. + +[21] This part, however, has a curious adventitious interest, owing to +the idea--fairly vouched for--that Scott intended to delineate in the +Colonel some points of his own character. His pride, his generosity, and +his patronage of the Dominie, are not unrecognisable, certainly. And a +man's idea of himself is often, even while strange to others, perfectly +true to his real nature. + +[22] All who do not skip such things must have enjoyed these scraps, +sometimes labelled particularly, sometimes merely dubbed 'Old Play'; and +they are well worth reading together, as they appear in the editions of +the _Poems_. At the same time, they have been, in some cases, too +hastily attributed to Sir Walter himself. For instance, that in _The +Legend of Montrose_, ch. xiv., assigned to _The Tragedy of Brennoralt_ +(not '_v_alt,' as misprinted), is really from Sir John Suckling's +sententious play (act iv. sc. 1), though loosely quoted. + +[23] In the earlier months had taken place that famous rediscovery of +the Regalia of Scotland in Edinburgh Castle, which was one of the +central moments of Scott's life, and in which, as afterwards in the +restoring of Mons Meg, he took a great, if not the chief, part. His +influence with George IV. as Prince and King had much to do with both, +and in the earlier he took the very deepest interest. The effect on +himself (and on his daughter Sophia) of the actual finding of the Crown +jewels is a companion incident to that previously noticed (p. 52) as +occurring on the Mound. Those who cannot sympathise with either can +hardly hope to understand either Scott or his work. + +[24] From March to May 1819 he had a series of attacks of the cramp, so +violent that he once took solemn leave of his children in expectation of +decease, that the eccentric Earl of Buchan forced a way into his +bedchamber to 'relieve his mind as to the arrangements of his funeral,' +and that he entirely forgot the whole of the _Bride_ itself. This, too, +was the time of his charge to Lockhart (_Familiar Letters_, ii. 38), as +to his successor in Tory letters and politics-- + + 'Take thou the vanguard of the three, + And bury me by the bracken-bush + That grows upon yon lily lee.' + + + +[25] It has always struck me that the other form of the legend +itself--that in which the 'open window' suggests that the bridegroom's +wounds were due to his rival--has far greater capabilities. + +[26] Said to embody certain mental peculiarities of that ingenious +draughtsman, but rather unamiable person, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. + +[27] He had said in a letter to Terry, as early as November 20, 1822, +that he feared _Peveril_ 'would smell of the apoplexy.' But he made no +definite complaint to any one of a particular seizure, and the date, +number, and duration of the attacks are unknown. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE DOWNFALL OF BALLANTYNE & COMPANY + + +_Redgauntlet_, it has been said, was the last novel on the full scale +before the downfall of Scott's prosperity. But before this he had begun +_The Life of Napoleon_ and _Woodstock_, and, in June 1825, had published +the _Tales of the Crusaders_, which contain some work almost, if not +quite, equal to his best, and which obtained at first a greater +popularity than their immediate predecessors. It was, and generally is, +held that _The Betrothed_, the earlier of the two, was saved by _The +Talisman_; and there can be no doubt that this latter is the better. +Contrary to the wont of novelists, Scott was at least as happy with +Richard here as he had been in _Ivanhoe_, and though he owed a good deal +in both to the presentation of his hero in the very interesting romance +published by his old secretary Weber,--one of the best of all the +English verse romances and the first English poem to show a really +English patriotism,--he owed nothing but suggestion. The duel at the +Diamond in the Desert is admittedly one of the happiest things of the +kind by a master in that kind, and if the adventures in the chapel of +Engedi are both a little farcical and a little 'apropos of nothing in +particular,' the story nowhere else halts or fails till it reaches its +real 'curtain' with the second _Accipe hoc!_ If it had been longer, it +might not have been so strong, but as it is, it is nearly perfect. + +But there is also more good in _The Betrothed_ than it is usual to +allow. The beginning, the siege of the Garde Doloureuse, and the ghostly +adventure of Eveline at the Saxon manor are excellent; while, even +later, Scott has entangled the evidence against Damian and the heroine +with not a little of the skill which he had shown in compromising +Waverley. Had not James Ballantyne dashed the author's spirits with some +of his cavillings, the whole might have been as much of a piece as _The +Talisman_ is. Indeed, it must be confessed that, though Lockhart is +generous enough on this point to the man to whom he has been accused of +being unjust, we have very little evidence of any improvement in Scott's +work due to James, while we know that he did harm not once only. But, as +it stands, the book no doubt exhibits the usual faults, that languishing +of the middle action, for instance, which injures _The Bride of +Lammermoor_ and _The Monastery_, together with the much more common +huddling and improbability of the conclusion. But we know that this last +was put on hurriedly, against the grain, and after the author, disgusted +by the grumblings of others, had relinquished his work; so that we +cannot greatly wonder. + +It is impossible here to depict in detail Scott's domestic life during +the years which passed since we last noticed it, and which represent the +most flourishing time of his worldly circumstances. The estate of +Abbotsford gradually grew, always at fancy prices, till the catastrophe +itself finally prevented an expenditure of L40,000 in a lump on more +land. The house grew likewise to its hundred and fifty feet of front, +its slightly confused but not disagreeable external muddle of styles, +and reproductions, and incorporated fragments, and its internal blend of +museum and seignorial hall. It was practically completed and splendidly +'house-warmed' to celebrate the marriage (3rd February 1825) of the +heir, on whom both house and estate were settled, with no very fortunate +result. Between it and Castle Street the family oscillated as usual, +when summer and winter, term and vacation, called them. At Abbotsford +open house was always kept to a Noah's ark-full of visitors, invited and +uninvited, high and low, and Castle Street saw more modest but equally +cordial and constant hospitalities, in which the Lockharts were pretty +frequent participators; while their country home at Chiefswood was a +sort of escaping place for Sir Walter when visitors made Abbotsford +unbearable. The 'Abbotsford Hunt' yearly rejoiced the neighbours; and +though, as his health grew weaker, Scott's athletic and sporting +exercises were necessarily and with insidious encroachment curtailed, he +still did all he could in this way. In 1822 there was the great visit of +George IV. to Scotland, wherein Sir Walter took a part which was only +short, if short at all, of principal; and of this Lockhart has left one +of his liveliest and most pleasantly subacid accounts. Visits to England +were not unfrequent; and at last, in the summer of 1825, Scott made a +journey, which was a kind of triumphal progress, to Ireland, with his +daughter Anne and Lockhart as companions. The party returned by way of +the Lakes, and the triumph was, as it were, formally wound up at +Windermere in a regatta, with Wilson for admiral of the lake and Canning +for joint-occupant of the triumphal boat. 'It was roses, roses all the +way,' till in the autumn of the year the rue began, according to its +custom, to take their place. + +The immediate cause of the disaster was Scott's secret partnership in +the house of Ballantyne & Co., which, dragged down by the greater +concerns of Constable & Co. in Edinburgh and Hurst, Robinson, & Co. in +London, failed for the nominal amount of L117,000 at the end of January +1826.[34] Their assets were, in the first place, claims on the two other +firms, which realised a mere trifle; and, in the second place, the +property, the genius, the life, and the honour of Sir Walter Scott. + +When one has to deal briefly with very complicated and much-debated +matters, there is nothing more important than to confine the dealing to +as few points as possible. We may, I think, limit the number here to +two,--the nature and amount of the indebtedness itself, and the manner +in which it was met. The former, except so far as the total figures on +the debtor side are concerned, is the question most in dispute. That the +printing business of Ballantyne & Co. (the publishing business had lost +heavily, but it had long ceased to be a drain), in the ordinary literal +sense owed L117,000--that is to say, that it had lost that sum in +business, or that the partners had overdrawn to that amount--nobody +contends. Lockhart's account, based on presumably accurate information, +not merely from his father-in-law's papers, but from Cadell, Constable's +partner, is that the losses were due partly to the absolutely +unbusinesslike conduct of the concern, and the neglect for many years to +come to a clear understanding what its profits were and what they were +not; partly to the ruinous system of eternally interchanged and renewed +bills, so that, for instance, sums which Constable nominally paid years +before were not actually liquidated at the time of the smash; but most +of all to a proceeding which seems to pass the bounds of recklessness on +one side, and to enter pretty deeply into those of fraud on the other. +This is the celebrated affair of the counter-bills, things, according to +Lockhart, representing no consideration or value received of any kind, +but executed as a sort of collateral security to Constable when he +discounted any of John Ballantyne's innumerable acceptances, and +intended for use only if the real and original bills were not met. +Still, according to Lockhart, this system was continued long after there +was any special need for it, and a mass of counter-bills, for which the +Ballantynes had never had the slightest value, and the amount of which +they had either discharged or stood accountable for already on other +documents, was in whole or part flung upon the market by Constable in +the months of struggle which preceded his fall, and ranked against +Ballantyne & Co., that is to say, Scott, when that fall came. + +This account, when published in the first edition of Lockhart's _Life_, +provoked strong protests from the representatives of the Ballantynes, +and a rather acrimonious pamphlet war followed, in which Lockhart is +accused by some not merely of acrimony, but of a supercilious and +contemptuous fashion of dealing with his opponents. He made, however, no +important retractations later, and it is fair to say that not one of his +allegations has ever been disproved by documentary evidence, as +certainly ought to have been possible while all the documents were at +hand. Nor did the _Memoirs_ of Constable, published many years later, +supply what was and is missing; nor does Mr. Lang, with all his pains, +seem to have found anything decisive. The assertions opposed to +Lockhart's are that the 'counter-bill' story is not true, and that the +distresses of Ballantyne & Co., and the dangerous extent to which they +were involved in complicated bill transactions with Constable, were at +least partly due to reckless drawings by the senior partner for his land +purchases and other private expenses. Between the two it is impossible +to decide with absolute certainty.[32] All that can be said is this. +First, considering that the whole original capital of the firm was +Scott's, that he had repeatedly saved it from ruin by his own exertions +and credit, and that a very large part of the legitimate grist that came +to its mill was supplied by his introduction of work to be printed, he +was certainly entitled to the lion's share of any profit that was +actually earned. Secondly, the neglect to balance accounts, and the +reckless fashion of interweaving acceptance with drawing and drawing +with acceptance, had, as we know, been repeatedly protested against by +him. Thirdly, his private expenditure, very moderate at Castle Street, +and not recklessly lavish even at Abbotsford, must have been amply +covered by his official and private income _plus_ no great proportion of +the always large and latterly immense supplies which for nearly twenty +years he derived from his pen. It is impossible to see that, except by +his carelessness in neglecting to ascertain from time to time the exact +liabilities of the firm, he had added to the original fault of joining +it, or had in any other way deserved the blow that fell upon him. No +one can believe, certainly no one has ever proved, that his earnings, +and his salaries, and the value of his property, if capitalised, would +not have covered, and far more than covered, the cost of Abbotsford, +land and house, the settlements on his children, and the household +expenses of the whole fifteen years and more since he became a +housekeeper there. While, as for the printing business itself, it +admittedly ought to have made a handsome profit from first to last, and +certainly did make a handsome profit as soon as it fell under reasonably +business-like management afterwards. + +There remains the said 'original fault' of engaging in the business at +all, and that, I think, can never be denied. The very introduction of +joint-stock companies, to which, in part, Scott owed his ruin, has made +a confusion between professional and commercial occupations which did +not then exist; but even now I think it would hardly be considered +decent for a public servant, discharging judicial functions, to carry on +actual business in a private trading concern. Moreover, the secrecy +which Scott observed--to such an extent that his family and his most +intimate friends did not know the facts--could come from nothing but a +sense of something amiss, and certainly led to the commission of not a +little that was so. Scott had to conceal the actual and very material +truth when he applied to the Duke of Buccleuch for the guarantee that +saved him a dozen years earlier. He had to conceal it from the various +persons who employed Ballantyne & Co., and were induced to do so by him. +He had to conceal it when he executed those settlements on his son's +marriage, which certainly would have been affected had it been known +that the whole of his fortune was subject to an unlimited liability. The +mystery of his unconsciousness of all this may be left pretty much +where Lockhart, with full acknowledgment, left it. I have said that his +action seems to have originated partly in a blind and causeless fear of +poverty, which, as blind and causeless fear so often does, made him run +into the very danger he tried to avoid, partly in an incomprehensible +partiality for the Ballantynes.[30] We have no evidence, in any degree +trustworthy, that during the entire term of his connection with the firm +he derived any positive profit from it at all commensurate with his +actual sinkings of money and his sacrifices and exertions of various +kinds. The whole thing is, once more, a mystery, and the best comment is +perhaps the simple one that the means which a man takes to ruin or +seriously damage himself generally do seem a mystery to others, and +probably are so to himself. Nor is there anything more unusual in the +colossal irony of the situation, when we find Scott, just before his own +ruin, and in the act of giving his friend Terry the actor a guarantee +(which, as it happened, he had to pay), writing[36] words of the most +excellent sense on the rashness of engaging in commercial undertakings +without sufficient capital, the madness of dealing in bills, and his own +resolve to have nothing to do with any business carried on 'by discounts +and renewals.' The irony, let it be repeated, is colossal; yet we meet +it, we commit it, every day. + +It is painful to read that during the months of uncertainty which +preceded the actual crash, Scott threw the helve after the hatchet by +charging himself personally, first, with an advance, or, at least, bond +for L5000, and then for another of double that amount,[29] to help two +firms, Constable and Hurst & Robinson, whose combined indebtedness was +over half a million. But the fact of his doing so was sufficient +indication of the spirit in which he would meet the crash of Ballantyne +& Co. itself. The whole of the _Diary_ (_v. infra_) of the period is one +long illustration (without the slightest pretentiousness or +self-consciousness) of the famous line of perhaps his own greatest +poetical passage-- + + 'No thought was there of dastard flight.' + +He had made up his mind, before it was certainly imminent, that +bankruptcy was not to be accepted; evasion of any more thorough kind, if +it occurred, he dismissed at once as not even to be thought of. Yet it +is perhaps to be regretted that the mode in which the disaster was +actually met, heroic as it was, was substituted for that of which he had +at first thought--the simple throwing up of every scrap of his property, +including all but a bare subsistence out of his official incomes, which +could not have been touched without difficulty. Had he done, or been +able to do this, had he shaken off the vampire in stone and lime and +hungry soil which had so long sucked his blood, had he sold the library, +and the 'Gabions of Jonathan Oldbuck,'[35] and the Japanese papers, and +the Byron vase, and the armour, had he mortgaged his incomes by help of +insurance, sold his copyrights outright, and, in short, realised +everything, it does not seem absolutely certain that he might not have +paid off his creditors in full, or, at least, left but a small balance +to be discharged by less superhuman and fatal exertions than those +actually made. The time was not a good time for selling, no doubt; but, +on the other hand, the interest in Abbotsford and its master was still +at its height, and the enthusiasm, which actually inspired one anonymous +offer of thirty thousand pounds on loan in a lump, would probably have +made good bargains for him on sales. He would then have been a free, or +nearly a free man, with his own exertions untrammelled, or nearly so; +and, serious as were the warnings that his health had given or received, +the actual history of the next six or seven years seems to show that, +had the machine been driven with less unsparing ferocity, and at a more +moderate rate, it might have lasted for years, and even restored its +master to competence, if not to wealth. + +Unfortunately, if nothing else--family affection and perhaps also family +pride did still, it may be feared, supply something else--the unlucky +settlement of Abbotsford stood in the way. Legally, it is true or at +least probable, this settlement might have been upset; but the trustees +of Mrs. Walter Scott would probably also have felt bound to resist this, +and leave to unsettle could only have been obtained on the humiliating +and even slightly disgraceful plea that the granter, being practically +insolvent at the time, was acting beyond his rights. It seems to have +been proposed by the Bank of Scotland, during the negotiations for the +arrangement which followed, that this should be done; and the reasons +which dictated Scott's refusal would have equally, no doubt, prevented +him from doing it in the other case. + +Accordingly, it was resolved, as he declined to go into bankruptcy, that +his whole property should, under a procedure half legal, half amicable, +be vested in trustees for the benefit of his creditors; nothing except +the Castle Street house and some minor chattels being actually sold. He, +on the other hand, undertook to devote to the liquidation of the balance +of his debts all the proceeds of his future work, except a bare +maintenance for himself and (on a reduced scale) for Abbotsford. How +'this fatal venture of mistaken chivalry' (to borrow a most applicable +phrase of Kingsley's about another matter) was carried out we shall see, +but how grossly unfair it was to Scott himself must appear at once. In +return for his sacrifices he had no real legal protection; any creditor +could, as a Jew named Abud actually did, threaten at any time to force +bankruptcy unless he were paid at once and in full. Instead of retaining +(as he would have done had the whole of his property been actually +surrendered, and had he allowed the debts which came with the law to go +with it) complete control of his future earnings and exertions, and +making, as he might have made, restitution by instalments as a free +gift, he was in such a plight that any creditor was entitled to regard +him as a kind of thrall, paying debt by service as a matter of course, +and deserving neither rest, nor gratitude, nor commendation. One really +sometimes feels inclined to regret that Abud or somebody else was not +more relentless--to pray for a Sir Giles Overreach or a Shylock among +the creditors. For such a one, by his apparently malevolent but really +beneficent grasping, would have in effect liberated the bondsman, who, +as it was, was compelled to toil at a hopeless task to his dying day, +and to hasten that dying day by the attempt. + +Mention has been made above of a certain _Diary_ which is our main +authority, and, indeed, makes other authorities merely illustrative for +a great part of the few and evil last years of Sir Walter's life. It was +begun before the calamities, and just after the return from Ireland, +being pleasantly christened 'Gurnal,' after a slight early phonetic +indulgence of his daughter Sophia's. It was suggested--and Lockhart +seems to think that it was effective--as a relief from the labour of +_Napoleon_, which went slightly against the grain, even before it became +bond-work. It may have been a doubtful prescription, for 'the cud[28] of +sweet and bitter fancy' is dangerous food. But it has certainly done +_us_ good. When Mr. Douglas obtained leave to publish it as a whole, +there were, I believe, wiseacres who dreaded the effect of the +publication, thinking that the passages which Lockhart himself had left +out might in some way diminish and belittle our respect for Scott. They +had no need to trouble themselves. It was already, as published in part +in the Life, one of the most pathetically interesting things in +biographical literature. This quality was increased by the complete +publication, while it also became a new proof that 'good blood cannot +lie,' that the hero is a hero even in utterances kept secret from the +very valet. If, as has happened before and might conceivably happen +again, some cataclysm destroyed all Scott's other work, we should still +have in this not merely an admirable monument of literature, but the +picture of a character not inhumanly flawless, yet almost superhumanly +noble; of the good man struggling against adversity, not, indeed, with a +sham pretence of stoicism, but with that real fortitude of which +stoicism is too often merely a caricature and a simulation. It is +impossible not to recur to the _Marmion_ passage already quoted as one +reads the account of the successive misfortunes, the successive +expedients resorted to, the absolute determination never to cry +craven.[33] + +It is from the _Diary_ that we learn his own complete knowledge of the +fact urged above, that it would have been better for him if his +creditors had been in appearance less kind. 'If they drag me into +court,' he says,[31] 'instead of going into this scheme of arrangement, +they would do themselves a great injury, and _perhaps eventually do the +good, though it would give me great pain_.' The _Diary_, illustrated as +it is by the excellent selections from Skene's _Reminiscences_ and other +scattered or unpublished matter which Mr. Douglas has appended, exhibits +the whole history of this period with a precision that could not +otherwise have been hoped for, especially as pecuniary misfortunes were +soon, according to the fashion of this world, to be complicated by +others. For some two years before the catastrophe Lady Scott had been in +weak health; and though the misfortune itself does not seem to have +affected her much after the first shock, she grew rapidly worse in the +spring of 1826, and, her asthma changing into dropsy, died at Abbotsford +during Scott's absence in Edinburgh, when his work began in May. His +successive references to her illness, and the final and justly-famous +passage on her death, are excellent examples of the spirit which +pervades this part of the _Diary_. This spirit is never unmanly, but +displays throughout, and occasionally, as we see, to his own +consciousness, that strange yet not uncommon phenomenon which is well +expressed in a French phrase, _il y a quelque chose de casse_, and which +frequently comes upon men after or during the greater misfortunes of +life. Neither in his references to this, nor in those to another +threatened, though as yet deferred blow, expected from the +ever-declining health of the Lockharts' eldest child, the 'Hugh +Littlejohn' of the _Tales of a Grandfather_, is there any tone of +whining on the one hand, or any mark of insensibility on the other. But +there is throughout something like a confession, stoutly avoided in +words, but hinted in tone and current of quotation and sentiment, that +the strength, though not the courage, is hardly equal to the day. The +_Diary_, both here and elsewhere, is full of good things, pleasant wit +still, shrewd criticism of life, quaint citation of wise old Scots saws +and good modern instances, happy judgment of men and books,--above all, +that ever-present touch of literature, without mere bookishness, which +is as delightful to those who can taste it as any of Scott's gifts. And +perhaps, too, we may trace, even behind this, a secret sense that, as +his own Habakkuk Mucklewrath has it in the dying curse on Claverhouse, +the wish of his heart had indeed been granted to his loss, and that the +hope of his own pride had gone too near to destroy him. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[28] Some say L130,000, but this seems to include the L10,000 mortgage +on Abbotsford. This, however, was a private affair of Scott's own, not a +transaction of the firm. + +[29] I have consulted high authority on the legal side of this +counter-bill story, and have been informed (with the expected caution +that, the facts being so doubtful, the law is hard to give) that under +Scots law these counter-bills, if they existed, would probably be +allowed to rank, supposing that twenty shillings in the pound had not +been paid on the first set, and to an extent sufficient to make up that +sum. But Lockhart's allegation clearly is that they were so used as to +charge Scott's estate to the extent of _forty_ shillings in the pound. + +[30] John Ballantyne had died in 1821, before the mischief was punished, +but after it was done. + +[31] _Lockhart_, vii. 370, 371. + +[32] I am not certain whether the second advance, which was secured by +mortgage on Abbotsford, included the first or not. Probably it did. + +[33] A pet name for his 'curios.' + +[34] Our now-accepted texts, of course, read 'food'; but no one who +remembers the pleasant use which Sir Walter himself has made of the +other reading in the Introduction to _Quentin Durward_ will readily give +it up. + +[35] As Scott, like Swift and Shakespeare, like Thackeray and Fielding, +never hesitated at a touch of grim humour even though it might border on +grotesque, he himself would probably not have missed the coincidence +of-- + + 'Though _bill_men ply the ghastly blow,' + +which suggests itself only too tragi-comically. + +[36] _Journal_, Feb. 3, 1826, p. 103, ed. Douglas; _Lockhart_, viii. +216, 217. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +LAST WORKS AND DAYS + + +It has been mentioned that when Scott returned from Ireland, and before +his misfortunes came upon him, he had already engaged in two works of +magnitude, a new novel, _Woodstock_, and a _Life of Napoleon_, planned +upon a very large scale, for which Constable made great preparations, +and from which he expected enormous profits. After the catastrophe it +became a question whether Constable's estate could claim the fulfilment +of these contracts, or whether the profits of them could be devoted +wholly to the liquidation of Scott's, or rather Ballantyne & Co.'s, own +debts. The completion of _Woodstock_ was naturally delayed until this +point was settled. But from the very moment when Sir Walter had resolved +to devote himself to the heroic but apparently hopeless task of paying +off his nominal liabilities in full, he arranged a system of work upon +these two books, and especially upon the _Napoleon_, which exceeded in +dogged determination anything that even he had hitherto done. The novel +was, of course, to him comparative child's play: he had written novels +before in six weeks or thereabouts all told, though his impaired vigour, +the depression of his spirits, and the sense of labouring for the mere +purpose of pouring the results into a sieve, made things harder now. But +the _Napoleon_, though he had made some preparation for this kind of +writing by his elaborate and multifarious editorial work, especially by +that on Dryden and Swift, was to a great extent new; and it required, +what was always irksome to him, elaborate reading up of books and +documents for the special purpose. No man has ever utilised the results +of previous reading for his own pleasure better than Scott, and few men, +not mere professed book-grubbers, have ever had vaster stores of it. But +he frequently confesses--a confession which in many ways makes his +plight in these years still more to be pitied--an ingrained dislike to +task-work of any kind; and there is no more laborious task-work than +getting up and piecing together the materials for history. + +The book, one, at a rough guess, of at least a million words, was +completed from end to end in less than eighteen months, during which he +also wrote _Woodstock_, _Malachi Malagrowther_ (_vide infra_), with +several reviews and minor things, besides serving his usual number of +days at the Clerk's table, devoting necessarily much time to the not +more painful than troublesome business of his pecuniary affairs, his +removal from Castle Street, etc., and taking one journey of some length +in the summer of 1826 to London and Paris for materials. The feat was +accomplished by a rigid system of 'so much per day'--by dint of which, +no doubt, an amount of work, surprising to the inexperienced, can be +turned out with no necessarily disastrous consequences. But Scott, +disgusted with society, and avoiding it from motives of economy as well +as of want of heart, disturbed hardly at all by strangers at Abbotsford, +and not at all in the lodgings and furnished houses which he took while +in Edinburgh, let 'his own thought drive him like a goad' to work in the +interest of his task-masters, and perhaps, also, for the sake of +drowning care, pushed the system to the most extravagant lengths. We +know that he sometimes worked from six in the morning to six at even, +with breakfast and luncheon brought into his study and consumed there; +and though his court duties made this fortunately impossible for a part +of the year, at least during a part of the week, they were not a +complete preservative. In the eighteen months he cleared for his +bloodsuckers nearly twenty thousand pounds, eight thousand for +_Woodstock_ and eleven or twelve for _Napoleon_. The trifling profits of +_Malachi_ and the reviews seem to have been permitted to go into his own +pocket. He was naturally proud of the exploit, but it may be feared that +it made the end certain. + +Of the merits of the _Napoleon_ (the second edition of which, by the +way, carried its profits to eighteen thousand pounds) it is perhaps not +necessary to say very much. I should imagine that few living persons +have read it word for word through, and I confess very frankly that I +have not done so myself, though I think I have read enough to qualify me +for judging it. It is only unworthy of its author in the sense that one +feels it to have been not in the least the work that he was born to do. +It is nearly as good, save for the technical inferiority of Scott's +prose style, as the historical work of Southey, and very much better +than the historical work of Campbell and Moore. The information is +sufficient, the narrative clear, and the author can at need rise to very +fair eloquence, or at least rhetoric. But it is too long to be read, as +one reads Southey's _Nelson_, for its merits as biography, and not +technically authoritative enough to be an exhaustive work of reference +from the military, diplomatic, and political side. Above all, one cannot +read a page without remembering that there were living then in England +at least a dozen men who could have done it better,--Grote, Thirlwall, +Mitford, Arnold, Hallam, Milman, Lingard, Palgrave, Turner, Roscoe, +Carlyle, Macaulay, to mention only the most prominent, and mention them +at random, were all alive and of man's estate,--and probably scores who +could have done it nearly or quite as well; while there was not one +single man living, in England or in the world, who was capable of doing +the work which Scott, if not as capable as ever, was still capable of +doing like no one before and scarcely any one after him. + +Take, for instance, _Woodstock_ itself. In a very quaint, +characteristic, agreeable, and, as criticism, worthless passage of _Wild +Wales_, Borrow has stigmatised it as 'trash.' I only wish we had more +such trash outside the forty-eight volumes of the _Waverley Novels_, or +were likely to have more. The book, of course, has certain obvious +critical faults--which are not in the least what made Borrow object to +it. Although Scott, and apparently Ballantyne, liked the catastrophe, it +has always seemed to me one of his worst examples of 'huddling up.' For +it is historically and dramatically impossible that Cromwell should +change his mind, or that Pearson and Robbins should wish to thwart +severity which, considering the death of Humgudgeon, had a good deal +more excuse than Oliver often thought necessary. Nor may the usual, and +perhaps a little more than the usual, shortcomings in construction be +denied. But as of old, and even more than on some occasions of old, the +excellences of character, description, dialogue, and incident are so +great as to atone over and over again for defects of the expected kind. +If Everard has something of that unlucky quality which the author +recognised in Malcolm Graeme when he said, 'I ducked him in the lake to +give him something to do; but wet or dry I could make nothing of him,' +Alice is quite of the better class of his heroines; and from her we +ascend to personages in whose case there is very little need of apology +and proviso. Sir Henry Lee, Wildrake, Cromwell himself, Charles, may not +satisfy others, but I am quite content with them; and the famous scene +where Wildrake is a witness to Oliver's half-confession seems to me one +of its author's greatest serious efforts. Trusty Tomkins, perhaps, might +have been a little better; he comes somewhat under the ban of some +unfavourable remarks which Reginald Heber makes in his diary on this +class of Scott's figures, though the good bishop seems to me to have +been rather too severe. But the pictures of Woodstock Palace and Park +have that indescribable and vivid charm which Scott, without using any +of the 'realist' minuteness or 'impressionist' contortions of later +days, has the faculty of communicating to such things. For myself, I can +say--and I am sure I may speak for hundreds--that Tullyveolan, +Ellangowan, the Bewcastle moor where Bertram rescued Dandie, +Clerihugh's, Monkbarns (I do not see Knockwinnock so clearly), the home +of the Osbaldistones, and the district from Aberfoyle to Loch Ard, the +moors round Drumclog, Torquilstone, and, not to make the list tedious, a +hundred other places, including Woodstock itself, are as real as if I +had walked over every inch of the ground and sat in every room of the +houses. In some cases I have never seen the supposed originals, in +others, I have recognised them as respectable, though usually inferior, +representatives of Scott's conceptions. But in any case _these_ are all +real, all possessions, all part of the geographical and architectural +furniture of the mind. They are like the wood in the 'Dream of Fair +Women': one knows the flowers, one knows the leaves, one knows the +battlements and the windows, the platters and the wine-cups, the +cabinets and the arras. They are, like all the great places of +literature, like Arden and Elsinore, like the court before Agamemnon's +palace, and that where the damsel said to Sir Launcelot, 'Fair knight, +thou art unhappy,' our own--our own to 'pass freely through until the +end of time.' + +It must not be forgotten in this record of his work that Scott wrote +'Bonnie Dundee' in the very middle of his disaster, and that he had not +emerged from the first shock of that disaster, when the astonishingly +clever _Letters of Malachi Malagrowther_ appeared. Of the reasonableness +of their main purpose--a strenuous opposition to the purpose of doing +away, in Scotland as in England, with notes of a less denomination than +five pounds--I cannot pretend to judge. It is possible that suppressed +rage at his own misfortunes found vent, and, for him, very healthy vent, +while it did harm to no one, in a somewhat too aggressive patriotism, of +a kind more particularist than was usual with him. But the fire and +force of the writing are so great, the alternations from seriousness to +humour, from denunciation to ridicule, so excellently managed, that +there are few better specimens of this particular kind of pamphlet. As +for 'Bonnie Dundee,' there are hardly two opinions about that. As a +whole, it may not be quite equal to 'Lochinvar,' to which it forms such +an excellent pendant, and which it so nearly resembles in rhythm. But +the best of it is equal as poetry, and perhaps superior as meaning. And +it admirably completes in verse the tribute long before paid by _Old +Mortality_ in prose, to the 'last and best of Scots,' as Dryden called +him in the noble epitaph,[46] which not improbably inspired Scott +himself to do what he could to remove the vulgar aspersions on the fame +of the hero of Killiecrankie. + +Moreover, according to his wont, Scott had barely finished, indeed he +had not finished, the _Napoleon_ before he had arranged for new work of +two different kinds; and he was soon, without a break, actually engaged +upon both tasks, one of them among the happiest things he ever +undertook, and the other containing, at least, one piece of his most +interesting work. These were the _Tales of a Grandfather_ and the +_Chronicles of the Canongate_. Both supplied him with his tasks, his +daily allowance of 'leaves,'[38] for great part of 1827, and both were +finished and the _Chronicles_ actually published, before the end of +it.[39] + +For the actual stories comprising these _Chronicles_ I have never cared +much. The chief in point of size, the _Surgeon's Daughter_, deals with +Indian scenes, of which Scott had no direct knowledge, and in connection +with which there was no interesting literature to inspire him. It +appears to me almost totally uninteresting, more so than _Castle +Dangerous_ itself. _The Two Drovers_ and _The Highland Widow_ have more +merit; but they are little more than anecdotes.[40] On the other hand, +the 'Introduction' to these _Chronicles_, with the history of their +supposed compiler, Mr. Chrystal Croftangry, is a thing which I should be +disposed to put on a level with his very greatest work. Much is +admittedly personal reminiscence of himself and his friends, handled not +with the clumsy and tactless directness of reporting, which has ruined +so many novels, but in the great transforming way of Fielding and +Thackeray. Chrystal's early thoughtless life, the sketch of his ancestry +(said to represent the Scotts of Raeburn), the agony of Mr. Somerville, +suggested partly by the last illness of Scott's father, the sketches of +Janet M'Evoy and Mrs. Bethune Baliol (Mrs. Murray Keith of Ravelston), +the visit to the lost home,--all these things are treated not merely +with consummate literary effect, but with a sort of _sourdine_ +accompaniment of heart-throbs which only the dullest ear can miss. Nor, +as we see from the _Diary_, were the author's recent misfortunes, and +his sojourn in a moral counterpart of the Deserted Garden of his friend +Campbell, the only disposing causes of this. He had in several ways +revived the memory of his early love, Lady Forbes, long since dead. Her +husband had been among the most active of his business friends in +arranging the compromise with creditors, and was shortly (though Scott +did not know it) to discharge privately the claim of the recalcitrant +Jew bill-broker Abud, who threatened Sir Walter's personal liberty. Her +mother, Lady Jane Stuart, had renewed acquaintance with him, and very +soon after the actual publication sent him some MS. memorials of the +days that were long enough ago--memorials causing one of those paroxysms +of memory which are the best of all things for a fairly hale and happy +man, but dangerous for one whom time and ill-luck have shaken.[41] He +had, while the _Chronicles_ were actually a-writing, revisited St. +Andrews, and, while his companions were climbing St. Rule's Tower, had +sat on a tombstone and thought how he carved her name in Runic letters +thirty-four years before. In short, all the elements, sentimental and +circumstantial, of the moment of literary projection were present, and +the Introduction was no vulgar piece of 'chemic gold.' + +The delightful and universally known _Tales of a Grandfather_ present no +such contrasts of literary merit, and were connected with no such +powerful but exhausting emotions of the mind. They originated in actual +stories told to 'Hugh Littlejohn,' they were encouraged by the fact that +there was no popular and readable compendium of Scottish history, they +came as easily from his pen as the _Napoleon_ had run with difficulty, +and are as far removed from hack-work as that vast and, to his +creditors, profitable compilation must be pronounced to be on the whole +near to it. The book, of course, is not in the modern sense strictly +critical, though it must be remembered that the authorities for at least +the earlier history of Scotland are so exceedingly few and meagre, that +criticism of the saner kind has very little to fasten upon. But in this +book eminently, in the somewhat later compilation for _Lardner's +Cyclopaedia_ to a rather less degree, this absence of technical criticism +is more than made up by Scott's knowledge of humanity, by the divining +power, so to say, which his combined affection for the subject and +general literary skill gave him, and by that singularly shrewd and +pervading common sense which in him was so miraculously united with the +poetical and romantic gift. I was pleased, but not at all surprised, +when, some year or so ago, I asked a professed historian, and one of the +best living authorities on the particular subject, what he thought of +the general historic effect of Scott's work, to find him answer without +the slightest hesitation that it was about the soundest thing, putting +mere details aside, that exists on the matter. It may be observed, in +passing, that the later compilation referred to was a marked example of +the way in which Scott could at this time 'coin money.' He was offered a +thousand pounds for one of the Lardner volumes; and as his sketch +swelled beyond the limit, he received fifteen hundred. The entire work, +much of which was simple paraphrase of the _Tales_, occupied him, it +would seem, about six working weeks, or not quite so much. Can it be +wondered that both before and after the crash this power of coining +money should have put him slightly out of focus with pecuniary matters +generally? Mediaeval and other theorisers on usury have been laughed at +for their arguments as to the 'unnatural' nature of usurious gain, and +its consequent evil. One need not be superstitious more than reason, to +scent a certain unnaturalness in the gift of turning paper into gold in +this other way also. Every _peau de chagrin_ has a faculty of revenging +itself on the possessor. + +For the time, however, matters went with Scott as swimmingly as they +could with a man who, by his own act, was, as he said, 'eating with +spoons and reading books that were not his own,' and yet earning by +means absolutely within his control, and at his pleasure to exercise or +not, some twenty thousand a year. _The Fair Maid of Perth_, a title +which has prevailed over what was its first, _St. Valentine's Eve_, and +has entirely obscured the fact that it was issued as a second series of +the _Chronicles of the Canongate_, provided money for a new scheme. This +scheme, outlined by Constable himself, and now carried out by Cadell and +accepted by Scott's trustees, was for buying in the outstanding +copyrights belonging to the bankrupt firm, and issuing the entire series +of novels, with new introductions and notes by Scott himself, with +attractive illustrations and in a cheap and handy form. Scott himself +usually designates the plan as the _Magnum Opus_, or more shortly (and +perhaps not without remembrance of more convivial days) 'the _Magnum_'. +_The Fair Maid_ itself was very well received, and seems to have kept +its popularity as well as any of the later books. Indeed, the figures of +the Smith, of Oliver Proudfute (the last of Scott's humorous-pathetic +characters), of the luckless Rothsay, and of Ramornie (who very +powerfully affected a generation steeped in Byronism), are all quite up +to the author's 'best seconds.' The opening and the close are quite +excellent, especially the fight on the North Inch and 'Another for +Hector!' and the middle part is full of attractive bits of the old kind. +But Conachar-Eachin is rather a thing of shreds and patches, and the +entire episode of Father Clement and the heresy business is dragged in +with singularly little initial excuse, valid connection, or final +result. + +We have unluckily no diary for the last half of 1828, after Scott +returned from a long stay with the Lockharts in London, and we thus hear +little of the beginnings of the next novel, _Anne of Geierstein_. When +the _Journal_ begins again, complaints are heard from Ballantyne. +Alterations (which Scott always loathed, and which certainly are +detestable things) became or were thought necessary, and when the poor +_Maid of the Mist_ at length appeared in May 1829, she was dismissed by +her begetter very unkindly, as 'not a good girl like the other +Annes'--his daughter and her cousin, _fille de Thomas_, who were living +with him. The book was not at all ill received, but Lockhart is +apologetic about it, and it has been the habit of criticism since to +share the opinions of 'Aldiborontiphoscophormio.'[45] I cannot agree with +this, and should put _Anne of Geierstein_--as a mere romance and not +counting the personal touches which exalt _Redgauntlet_ and the +Introduction to the _Chronicles_--on a level with anything, and above +most things, later than _The Pirate_. Its chief real fault is not so +much bad construction--it is actually more, not less, well knit than +_The Fair Maid of Perth_,--as the too great predominance of merely +episodic and unnecessary things and persons, like the _Vehmgericht_ and +King's Rene's court. Its merits are manifold. The opening storm and +Arthur's rescue by Anne, as well as the quarrel with Rudolf, are +excellent; the journey (though too much delayed by the said Rudolf's +tattlings), with the sojourn at Grafslust and the adventures at La +Ferette, ranks with Scott's many admirable journeys, and high among +them; Queen Margaret is nobly presented (I wish Shakespeare, Lancastrian +that he was, had had the chance of versifying the scene where she flings +the feather and the rose to the winds, as a pendant to 'I called thee +then vain shadow of my fortune'); and not only Philipson's rattling peal +of thunder to wake Charles the Bold from his stupor, but the Duke's +final scenes, come well up to the occasion. Earlier, Scott would not +have made Rene quite such a mere old fool, and could have taken the +slight touch of pasteboard and sawdust out of the Black Priest of St. +Paul's. But these are small matters, and the whole merits of the book +are not small. Even Arthur and Anne are above, not below, the usual hero +and heroine. + +The gap in the _Journal_ for the last half of 1828 is matched by another +and more serious one for nearly a twelvemonth, from July 1829 to May +1830, a period during which Sir Walter's health went from bad to worse, +and in which he lost his Abbotsford factotum, Tom Purdie. But the first +six months of 1829, and perhaps a little more, are among its pleasantest +parts. The shock of the failure and of his wife's death were, as far as +might be, over; he had resumed the habit of seeing a fair amount of +society; his work, though still busily pursued, was less killing than +during the composition of the _Napoleon_; and his affairs were looking +almost rosily. A first distribution, of thirty-two thousand pounds at +once, had been made among the creditors. Cadell's scheme of the +_Magnum_--wisely acquiesced in by the trustees, and facilitated by a +bold purchase at auction of Constable's copyrights for some eight +thousand pounds, and later, of those of the poems from Longmans for +about the same or a little less--was turning out a great success. They +had counted on a sale of eight thousand copies; they had to begin with +twelve thousand, and increase it to twenty, while the number ultimately +averaged thirty-five thousand. The work of annotation and introduction +was not hard, and was decidedly interesting. + +Unluckily, irreparable mischief had already been done, and when the +_Diary_ begins again, we soon see signs of it. The actual beginning of +the end had occurred before the resumption, on February 15, 1830, when +Sir Walter had, in the presence of his daughter and of Miss Violet +Lockhart, experienced an attack of an apoplectic-paralytic character, +from which he only recovered by much blood-letting and starvation. There +can be little doubt that this helped to determine him to do what he had +for some time meditated, and resign his place at the Clerk's table: nor +perhaps could he have well done otherwise. But the results were partly +unfortunate. The work had been very trifling, and had saved him from +continual drudgery indoors at home, while it incidentally provided him +with society and change of scene. He was now to live at Abbotsford,--for +neither his means nor his health invited an Edinburgh residence when it +was not necessary,--with surroundings only too likely to encourage +'thick-coming fancies,' out of reach of immediate skilled medical +attendance, and with very dangerous temptations to carry on the use of +his brain, which was now becoming almost deadly. Yet he would never give +in. The pleasant and not exhausting task of arranging the _Magnum_ +(which was now bringing in from eight to ten thousand a year for the +discharge of his debts) was supplemented by other things, especially +_Count Robert of Paris_, and a book on Demonology for Murray's _Family +Library_. + +This last occupied him about the time of his seizure, and after the +_Diary_ was resumed, it was published in the summer of 1830. Scott was +himself by this time conscious of a sort of aphasia of the pen (the +direct result of the now declared affection of his brain), which +prevented him from saying exactly what he wished in a connected manner; +and the results of this are in part evident in the book. But it must +always remain a blot, quite unforgivable and nearly inexplicable, on +the memory of Wilson, that 'Christopher North' permitted himself to +comment on some lapses in logic and style in a way which would have been +rather that side of good manners and reasonable criticism in the case of +a mere beginner in letters. It is true that he and Scott were at no time +very intimate friends, and that there were even some vague antipathies +between them. But Wilson had been deeply obliged to Scott in the matter +of his professorship;[44] he at least ought to have been nearly as well +aware as we are of the condition of his benefactor's health; and even if +he had known nothing of this, the rest of Sir Walter's circumstances +were known to all the world, and should surely have secured silence. But +it seems that Wilson was for the moment in a pet with Lockhart, to whom +the _Letters on Demonology_ were addressed, and so he showed, as he +seldom, but sometimes did, the 'black drop,' which in his case, though +not in Lockhart's, marred at times a generally healthy and noble nature. +As a matter of fact, it needs either distinct malevolence or silly +hypercriticism to find any serious fault with the _Demonology_. If not a +masterpiece of scientific treatment in reference to a subject which +hardly admits of any such thing, it is an exceedingly pleasant and +amusing and a by no means uninstructive medley of learning, traditional +anecdote, reminiscence, and what not, on a matter which, as we know, had +interested the writer from very early days, and which he regarded from +his usual and invaluable combined standpoint of shrewd sense and +poetical appreciation. + +The decay, now not to be arrested, though its progress was +comparatively slow, was more evident in the last two works of fiction +which Scott completed, _Count Robert of Paris_ and _Castle Dangerous_. +Against the first ending of the former (we do not possess it, so we +cannot criticise their criticism) Ballantyne and Cadell formally +protested, and Scott rewrote a great deal of it by dictation to Laidlaw. +The loss of command both of character and of story-interest is indeed +very noticeable. But the opening incident at the Golden Gate, the +interview of the Varangian with the Imperial family, the intrusion of +Count Robert, and, above all, his battle with the tiger and liberation +from the dungeon of the Blachernal, with some other things, show that +astonishing power of handling single incidents which was Scott's +inseparable gift, and which seems to have accompanied him throughout to +the very eve of his death. The much briefer _Castle Dangerous_ (which is +connected with an affecting visit of Scott and Lockhart to the tombs of +the Douglases) is too slight to give room for very much shortcoming. Its +chief artistic fault is the happy ending--for though a romancer is in no +respect bound to follow his text exactly, and happy endings are quite +good things, yet it is rather too much to turn upside down the historic +catastrophe of the Good Lord James's fashion of warfare. Otherwise the +book is more noticeable for a deficiency of spirit, life, and light--for +the evidence of shadow and stagnation falling over the once restless and +brilliant scene--than for anything positively bad. + +These two books were mainly dictated, the paralytic affection having +injured the author's power of handwriting,[43] to William Laidlaw between +the summer of 1830 and the early autumn of 1831, increasing weakness, +and the demands of the _Magnum_, preventing more speed. The last pages +of _Castle Dangerous_ contain Scott's farewell, and the announcement to +the public of that voyage to Italy which had actually begun when the +novels appeared in the month of November. + +The period between the fatal seizure and the voyage to the Mediterranean +has not much diary concerning it, but has been related with inimitable +judgment and sympathy by Lockhart. It was, even putting failing health +and obscured mental powers aside, not free from 'browner shades'; for +the Reform agitation naturally grieved Sir Walter deeply, while on two +occasions he was the object of popular insult and on one of popular +violence. Both were at Jedburgh; but the blame is put upon intrusive +weavers from Hawick. The first, a meeting of Roxburghshire freeholders, +saw nothing worse than unmannerly interruption of a speech made +partially unintelligible by the speaker's failing articulation. He felt +it bitterly, and when hissing was repeated as he bowed farewell, is said +to have replied, low, but now quite distinctly, '_Moriturus vos +saluto!_' On the second, the election after the throwing out of the +first Bill, he was stoned, spat upon, and greeted with cries of 'Burke +Sir Walter.'[42] Natural indignation has often been expressed at this +behaviour towards the best neighbour and the greatest man in +Scotland--behaviour which, as we know, haunted him on his deathbed; but +it is to be presumed that the persons who thus proclaimed their cause +knew the line of conduct most worthy of it. + +It does not appear with absolute certainty who first suggested the +Italian journey. It could not have been expected to produce any radical +cure; but it seems to have been hoped that change of scene would prevent +the patient from indulging in that attempt to write from which at +Abbotsford it was impossible to keep him, though it was simply slow, and +not so very slow, suicide. The wishes of his family were most kindly and +generously met by the Government of the day, among whose members he had +many personal friends, though political opponents; and the frigate +_Barham_, a cut-down seventy-four, which had the credit of being one of +the smartest vessels in the navy, was assigned to take him to Malta. He +had, before he left Abbotsford itself, an affecting interview with +Wordsworth, which occasioned _Yarrow Revisited_ and the beautiful +sonnet, 'A trouble, not of clouds or weeping rain,' and had no doubt +part in the initiation of the last really great thing that Wordsworth +ever wrote--the _Effusion_ on the deaths of Hogg, Coleridge, Crabbe, +Lamb, and Scott himself, in 1835. Some stay was made with the Lockharts +in London, and a little at Portsmouth, waiting for a wind; but the final +departure took place on October 29, 1831. + +Scott was abroad for the best part of a year, the time being chiefly +made out in visits of some length to Malta, Naples, and Rome. We have a +good deal of diary for this period, and it, even more than the +subsidiary documents and Lockhart's summary of no doubt much that is +unpublished, betrays the state of the case. Every now and then--indeed, +for long passages--there is nothing very different from the matter to +which, since the first warning in 1818, we have been accustomed. Scott +is, if not the infinitely various but never mutable Scott of the earlier +years, still constant in fun and kindness, in quaint erudition and +hearty friendship, though he is all this in a slightly deadened and +sicklied degree. But there are strange breaks-down and unfamiliar +touches, now of almost querulous self-concern (the thing most foreign to +his earlier nature), as where he complains that his companions, his son +and daughter, 'are neither desirous to follow his amusements nor anxious +that he should adopt theirs'; now of still more foreign callousness, as +where he dismisses the news of the death of Hugh Littlejohn, whose +illnesses earlier had been almost his chief anxiety, and records in the +same entry that he 'went to the opera.' The passage in the Introduction +to the _Chronicles_, written not so very long before, traces with an +almost horrible exactness the changes which were now taking place in +himself. Moreover, he would resume the pen; and, first in Malta, then at +Naples, began and went far to complete two new novels, _The Siege of +Malta_ and _Il Bizarro_, which, I suppose, are still at Abbotsford, with +Lockhart's solemn curse on the person who shall publish them. He had now +(it does not seem clear on what grounds, or by what stages) confirmed +himself in the belief that he had paid off all his debts, instead of +nearly half of them.[37] And he founded divers schemes on the profits of +these works, added to the (as he thought) liberated returns of the +_Magnum_; and even revived his notions of buying Faldonside with its +thousand acres, and 'holding all Tweed-bank, from Ettrick-foot to Calla +weel.' Feted, too, as he was, and in this condition of mind, it seems to +have been difficult for his companions to make him observe the absolute +temperance in food and drink which was as necessary to the staving off +of the end as abstinence from brain-work; and it must be regarded as a +signal proof of the extraordinary strength of his constitution that it +resisted as long as it did. + +At last, and of course suddenly, came the final warning of all: the +occurrence, without notice, of an almost agonising home-sickness. The +party travelled by land, as speedily as they could, to the Channel, a +last attack of apoplectic paralysis taking place at Nimeguen; and after +crossing it and reaching London, Sir Walter was taken by sea to the +Forth, and thence home. The actual end was delayed but very little +longer, and it has been told by Lockhart in one of those capital +passages of English literature on which it is folly to attempt to +improve or even to comment, and which, a hundred times quoted, can never +be stale. Sir Walter Scott died at Abbotsford on September 21, 1832, and +was buried four days later at Dryburgh, a post-mortem examination having +disclosed considerable softening of the brain. + +There remained unpaid at his death about fifty-five thousand pounds of +the Ballantyne debts, besides private encumbrances on Abbotsford, etc., +including the ten thousand which Constable had extracted, he knowing, +from Scott unknowing, the extent of the ruin, in the hours just before +it. The falling in of assurances cleared off two-fifths of this balance, +and Cadell discharged the rest on the security of the _Magnum_, which +was equal, though not much more than equal, to the burden in the +longrun. Thus, if Scott's exertions during the last seven years of his +life had benefited his own pocket, his ambition--whether wise or +foolish, persons more confident in their judgment of human wishes than +the present writer must decide--would have been amply fulfilled, and his +son, supposing the money to have been invested with ordinary care and +luck, would have been left a baronet and squire, with at least six or +seven thousand a year. As it was, he did not succeed to much more than +the title, a costly house, and a not very profitable estate, burdened, +though not heavily, with mortgages. This burden was reduced by the good +sense of the managers of the English memorial subscription to Scott, who +devoted the six or seven thousand pounds, remaining after some +embezzlement, to clearing off the encumbrances as far as possible. The +chief result of many Scottish tributes of the same kind was the +well-known Scott Monument on the edge of Princes Street Gardens, which +has the great good luck to be one of the very few not unsatisfactory +things of the kind in the British Islands. By mishap rather than +neglect, no monument in Westminster Abbey was erected for the greater +part of the century; but one has been at last set up in May of the +present year. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[37] This is a translation, of course; but if anyone will compare +Pitcairn's Latin and Dryden's English, he will see where the poetry +comes in. + +[38] He wrote on sheets of a large quarto size, in a very small and +close hand, so that his usual 'task' of six 'leaves' meant about thirty +pages of print, though not very small or close print. + +[39] It was early in this year, on February 23, at a Theatrical Fund +dinner, that he made public avowal of the authorship of _Waverley_. + +[40] Cadell did not like any of them much, and objected still more to +others intended to follow them. Sir Walter, therefore, kept these back, +and gave them later to Heath's _Keepsake_. They now appear with their +intended companions: the slightest, _The Tapestried Chamber_, is perhaps +the best. + +[41] Compare _Diary_, 1827, Nov. 7 ('I fairly softened myself like an +old fool with recalling old stories, till I was fit for nothing but +shedding tears and repeating verses the whole night'), with the famous +couplet in 'Rose Aylmer'-- + + 'A night of memories and of sighs + I consecrate to thee.' + +[42] Scott's name for _James_ Ballantyne, as 'Rigdumfunnidos' was for +John. + +[43] See his own unqualified and almost too gushing acknowledgment of +this ten years before, in the _Familiar Letters_, ii. 84-85, _note_. + +[44] It had also caused great and very painful trouble in his lame leg, +which from this time onwards had to be mechanically treated. + +[45] The Burke and Hare murders were recent. + +[46] The success of the _Magnum_ had allowed a second large dividend to +be paid, and the creditors had been generous enough to restore Scott's +forks, spoons, and books to him. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +CONCLUSION + + +It is natural--indeed the feeling is not merely easy of excuse, but +entitled to respect--that 'the pity of it,' the sombre close of so +brilliant a career as Scott's, should attract somewhat disproportionate +attention. Thus readers of his life are drawn more especially either to +sorrow for his calamities, or to admiration of this stoutest of all +hearts set to nearly the stiffest of all hills, or to casuistical debate +on the 'dram of eale' that brought about his own share in causing his +misfortunes. Undoubtedly, none of these things ought to escape our +attention. But, in the strict court of literary and critical audit, they +must not have more than their share. As a matter of fact, Scott's work +was almost finished--nothing distinctly novel in kind and first-rate in +quality, except the _Tales of a Grandfather_ and the Introduction to the +_Chronicles_, remained to be added to it--when that fatal bill of +Constable's was suffered by Hurst & Robinson to be returned. And the +trials which followed, though they showed the strength, the nobleness, +the rare balance and solidity of his character, did not create these +virtues, which had been formed and established by habit long before. +_Respice finem_ is not here a wise, at least a sufficient, maxim: we +must look along the whole line to discern satisfactorily and thoroughly +what manner of man this was in life and in letters. + +What manner of man he was physically is pretty well-known from his +originally numerous and almost innumerably reproduced and varied +portraits; not extremely tall, but of a goodly height, somewhat +shortened by his lameness and massive make, the head being distinguished +by a peculiar domed, or coned, cranium. This made 'Lord Peter' Robertson +give him the nickname of 'Peveril of the Peak,' which he himself after a +little adopted, and which, shortened to 'Peveril,' was commonly used by +his family. His expression, according to the intelligence of those who +saw him and the mood in which he found himself, has been variously +described as 'heavy,' 'homely,' and in more complimentary terms. But the +more appreciative describers recognise the curiously combined humour, +shrewdness, and kindliness which animated features naturally irregular +and quite devoid of what his own generation would have called 'chiselled +elegance.' He himself asserts--and it seems to be the fact--that from +the time of the disappearance of his childish maladies to the attack of +cramp, or gallstones, or whatever the evil was which came on in 1818, +and from which he never really recovered, his health was singularly +robust; and he appears as quite a young man to have put it to +considerable, though not excessive, tests. + +His conversation, like his countenance, has been variously +characterised, and it is probable that the complexion of both depended, +even more than it does with most men, on his company. He is acknowledged +never to have 'talked for victory,' an evil and barbarous practice, +which the Edinburgh wits seem to have caught from their great enemy and +guest, Dr. Johnson; to have (like all good men) simply abominated +talking about his own works, or indeed bookishly at all, full as his +conversation was of literature; and, though a great tale-teller, to have +been no monopoliser of the conversation in any way. He admits having +been in youth and early middle age not disinclined to solitude,--and he +does not appear to have at any time liked miscellaneous society much, +though he prided himself, and very justly, on having, from all but his +earliest youth, frequented many kinds of it, including the best. The +perfect ease of his correspondence with all sorts and conditions of men +and women may have owed something to this; but, no doubt, it owed as +much to the happy peculiarities and composition of his nature and +temperament. + +The only fault or faults of which he has been accused with any +plausibility are those which attend or proceed from a somewhat too high +estimate of rank and of riches;--that is to say, a too great eagerness +to obtain these things, and at the same time a too great deference for +those who possessed them. From avarice, in any of the ordinary senses of +the word, he was, indeed, entirely free. His generosity, if not +absolutely and foolishly indiscriminate, was extraordinary, and as +unostentatious as it was lavish. He certainly had no delight in hoarding +money, and his personal tastes, except in so far as books, 'curios,' and +so forth were concerned, were of the simplest possible. Yet, as we have +seen, he was never quite content with an income which, after very early +years, was always competent, and when he launched into commercial +ventures, already, in prospect at least, considerable; while in the one +article of spending money on house and lands he was admittedly +excessive. So, too, he seems to have been really indifferent about his +title, except as an adjunct to these possessions, and as something +transmissible to, and serving to distinguish, the family he longed to +found. Yet no instance of the slightest servility on his part to +rank--much less to riches--has been produced. His address, no doubt, +both in writing and conversation, was more ceremonious than would now be +customary. But it must be remembered that this was then a point of good +manners, and that 'your Lordship' and 'my noble friend,' even between +persons intimate with each other and on the common footing of gentlemen, +were then phrases as proper and usual in private as they still are in +public life.[51] Attempts have been made to excuse his attitude, on the +plea that it was inherited from his father (_vide_ the scene between +Saunders Fairford and Herries), that it was national, that it was this, +that, and the other. For my own part, I have never read or heard of any +instance of it which seemed to me to exceed the due application to +etiquette of the rule of distributive justice, to give every man his +own. Scott, I think, would have accepted the principle, though not the +application, of the sentence of Timoleon de Cosse, Duke of Brissac--'God +has made thee a gentleman, and the king has made thee a duke.' And he +honoured God and the king by behaving accordingly. + +Of his infinite merits as a host and a guest, as a friend and as a +relation, there is a superabundance of evidence. It does not appear that +he ever lost an old friend; and though, like most men who have more +talent for friendship than for acquaintance, he did not latterly make +many new ones, the relations existing between himself and Lockhart are +sufficient proof of his faculty of playing the most difficult of all +parts, that of elder friend to younger. I have said above that, though +in no sense touchy, he was a very dangerous person to take a liberty +with; he adopted to the full the morality of his time about duelling, +though he disapproved of it;[49] he was in all respects a man of the +world, yet without guile. + +It is, moreover, quite certain that Scott, though never talking much +about religion (as, indeed, he never talked much about any of the deeper +feelings of the heart), was a man very sincerely religious. He was not a +metaphysician in any way, and therefore had no special inclination +towards that face or summit of metaphysics which is called theology. And +it is pretty clear that he had towards disputed points of doctrine, +ceremony, and discipline, a not sharply or decidedly formulated +attitude. But there is no doubt whatever that he was a thoroughly and +sincerely orthodox Christian, and there are some slight escapes of +confession unawares in his private writings, which show in what thorough +conformity with his death his life had been. Few men have ever so well +observed the one-half of the apostle's doctrine as to pure religion; and +if he did not keep himself (in the matter of the secret partnership and +others) altogether unspotted from the world, the sufferings of his last +seven years may surely be taken as a more than sufficient purification. +More blameless morally, I think, few men have been; fewer still better +equipped with the positive virtues. And, above all, we must recognise in +Scott (if we have any power of such recognition) what has been already +called a certain nobleness, a certain natural inclination towards all +things high, and great, and pure, and of good report, which is rarer +still than negative blamelessness or even than positive virtue. + +To speak of Scott's politics is a little difficult and perhaps a little +dangerous; yet they played so large a part in his life and work that the +subject can hardly be omitted, especially as it comes just between those +aspects of him which we have already discussed, and those to which we +are coming. It has sometimes been disputed whether his Toryism was much +more than mere sentiment; and of course there were not wanting in his +own day fellows of the baser sort who endeavoured to represent it as +mere self-interest. But no impartial person nowadays, I suppose, doubts, +however meanly he may think of Scott's political creed, that that creed +was part, not of his interests, not even of his mere crotchets and +crazes, literary and other, but of his inmost heart and soul. That +reverence for the past, that distaste for the vulgar, that sense of +continuity, of mystery, of something beyond interest and calculation, +which the worst foes of Toryism would, I suppose, allow to be its nobler +parts, were the blood of Scott's veins, the breath of his nostrils, the +marrow of his bones. My friend Mr. Lang thinks that Scott's Toryism is +dead, that no successor has arisen on its ruins, that it was, in fact, +almost a private structure, of which he was the architect, a tree fated +to fall with its planter. Perhaps; but perhaps also + + 'The Little Tower with no such ease + Is won'; + +and there are enough still to keep watch and ward of it. + +But we have of course here to look even more to his mental character +than to his moral, to do with him rather as a man of genius than as a +'man of good,' though it is impossible to overlook, and difficult to +overestimate, his singular eminence as both combined. Of his actual +literary accomplishment, something like a detailed view has been given +in this little book, and of some of its separate departments estimates +have been attempted.[48] But we may, or rather must, gather all these up +here. Nor can we proceed better than by the old way of inquiry--first, +What were the peculiar characteristics of his thought? and, secondly, +What distinguished his expression of this thought? + +As to the first point, it has been pretty generally admitted--though the +admissions have in some cases been carried almost too far--that we are +not to look for certain things in Scott. We are not to look for any +elaborately or at least scholastically minute faculty or practice of +analysis or of argument. But to proceed from this to a general denial of +'philosophy' to him--that is to say, to allow him a merely superficial +knowledge of human nature--is an utter mistake. I have quoted elsewhere, +but the book from which the quotation is made is so rare that I may well +quote here again, some remarkable words on this subject from M. Milsand, +Mr. Browning's friend, and the recipient of the Dedication of the +reprint of _Sordello_.[50] It is certain that this praise might be +supported with a large anthology of passages in the novels and even the +poems--passages indicating an anthropological science as intimate as it +is unpretentiously expressed. To some good folk in our days, who think +that nothing can be profound which is naturally and simply spoken, and +who demand that a human philosopher shall speak gibberish and wear his +boots on his brows, the fact may be strange, but it is a fact. And it +may be added that even if chapter and verse could not thus be produced, +a sufficient proof, the most sufficient possible, could be otherwise +provided. Scott, by the confession of all competent judges, save a very +few, has created almost more men and women, undoubtedly real and +lifelike, than any other prose novelist. Now you cannot create a man or +a woman without knowing whereof a man and a woman are made, though the +converse proposition is unfortunately by no means so universally +predicable. He was content, as a rule, to put this great science of his +into practice rather than to expound it in theory, to demonstrate it +rather than to lecture on it, but that is all. + +In the second place, we are not to look to him for any great intensity +of delineation of passion, especially in the sense to which that word is +more commonly confined. He has nowhere left us (as some other men of +letters have) any hint that he abstained from doing this because the +passion would have been so tremendous that it was on the whole best for +mankind that they should not be exposed to it. The qualities of humour +and of taste which were always present with Scott would have prevented +this. But I should doubt whether he felt any temptation to unbosom +himself, or any need to do so. The slight hints given at the time of the +combined action of his misfortunes and the agitation arising from his +renewed communications with Lady Jane Stuart, are almost all the +indications that we have on the subject, and they are too slight to +found any theory upon. It is evident that this was not his vein, or +that, if the vein was there, he did not choose to work it. + +To pass from negations to positives, the region in which Scott's power +of conception and expression did lie, and which he ruled with wondrous +range and rarely equalled power, was a strangely united kingdom of +common-sense fact and fanciful or traditional romance. No writer who has +had such a sense of the past, of tradition, of romantic literature, has +had such a grasp of the actual working motives and conduct of mankind; +none who has had the latter has even come near to his command of the +former. We may take Spenser and Fielding as the princes of these +separate principalities in English literature, and though each had gifts +that Scott had not,--though Scott had gifts possessed by neither,--yet +if we could conceive Spenser and Fielding blended, the blend would, I +think, come nearer to Scott's idiosyncrasy than anything else that can +be imagined. He had advanced (or rather returned) from that one-sided +eighteenth-century conception of nature which was content to know +_human_ nature pretty thoroughly up to a certain point, and to dismiss +'prospects,' in Johnson's scornful language to Thrale, as one just like +the other. But he had retained the eighteenth-century grasp of man +himself, while recovering the path to the Idle Lake and the Cave of +Despair, to the many-treed wood through which Una and her knight +journeyed, and the Rich Strand where all the treasures of antiquity lay. +We may think--apparently some of us do think--that we have improved on +him in the recovery, and even in the retaining grasp. The fact of the +improvement on him will take a great deal of proving, I am inclined to +think; of the fact of his achievement there is no doubt. + +If I must select Scott's special literary characteristic, next to that +really magical faculty of placing scenes and peopling them with +characters in the memory of his readers which I have noticed before, I +should certainly fix on his humour. It is a good old scholastic +doctrine, that the greatest merit of anything is to be excellent in the +special excellence of its kind. And in that quality which so gloriously +differentiates English literature from all others, Scott is never +wanting, and is almost always pre-eminent. If his patriotism, intense as +it is, is never grotesque or offensive, as patriotism too often is to +readers who do not share it; if his pathos never touches the maudlin; if +his romantic sentiment is always saved by the sense of solid fact,--and +we may assert these things without hesitation or qualification,--it is +due to his humour. For this humour, never merely local, never bases its +appeal on small private sympathies and understandings and pass-words +which leave the world at large cold, or mystified, or even disgusted. +Nor is it perhaps uncritical to set down that pre-eminently happy use, +without abuse, of dialect, which has attracted the admiration of almost +all good judges, to this same humour, warning him alike against the +undisciplined profusion and the injudicious selection which have not +been and are not unknown in some followers of his. And, further, his +universal quality is free from some accompanying drawbacks which must be +acknowledged in the humour of some of the other very great humorists. It +is not coarse--a defect which has made prigs at all times, and +especially at this time, affect horror at Aristophanes; it is not grim, +like that of Swift; it is free from any very strong evidences of its +owner having lived at a particular date, such as may be detected by the +Devil's Advocate even in Fielding, even in Thackeray. No tricks or +grimaces, no mere elaboration, no lingering to bespeak applause; but a +moment of life and nature subjected to the humour-stamp and left +recorded and transformed for ever--there is Scott. + +That the necessary counterpart and companion of this breadth of humour +should be depth of feeling can be no surprise to those who accept the +only sound distinction between humour and wit. Scott himself never wore +his heart on his sleeve; but to those who looked a little farther than +the sleeve its beatings were sufficiently evident. The Scott who made +that memorable exclamation on the Mound, and ejaculated 'No, by----!' at +the discovery of the Regalia,[47] who wrote Jeanie's speech to Queen +Caroline and Habakkuk Mucklewrath's to Claverhouse, had no need ever to +affect emotion, because it was always present, though repressed when it +had no business to exhibit itself. And his romantic imagination was as +sincere as his pathos or his indignation. He never lost the clue to 'the +shores of old romance'; and, at least, great part of the secret which +made him such a magician to his readers was that the spell was on +himself--that the regions of fancy were as open, as familiar as Princes +Street or the Parliament Square to this solid practical Clerk of +Session, who avowed that no food could to his taste equal Scotch broth, +and in everything but the one fatal delusion was as sound a man of +business as ever partook of that nourishing concoction. + +In his execution both in prose and verse, but especially, or at least +more obviously, in the latter there are certain peculiarities, in the +nature (at least partly) of defect, which strike every critical eye at +once. At no time, and in no case, was Scott of the order of the careful, +anxious miniaturists of work, who repaint every stroke a hundred times, +adjust every detail of composition over and over again, and can never +have done with rehandling and perfecting. Nor did he belong to that very +rare class whose work seems to be, at any rate after a slight +apprenticeship, faultless from the first, to whom inelegancies of style, +incorrect rhymes, licences of metre--not deliberate and intended to +produce the effect they achieve, but the effect of carelessness or of +momentary inability to do what is wanted--are by nature or education +impossible. His nature did not give him this endowment, and his +education was of the very last sort to procure it for him. He himself, +not out of pique or conceit, things utterly alien from his nature, still +less out of laziness, but, I believe, as a genuine, and, what is more, a +correct self-criticism, has left in his private writings repeated +expressions of his belief that revision and correction in his case not +only did not improve the work, but were in most cases likely to do it +positive harm, that the spoon was made or the horn spoiled (to adapt his +country proverb) at the first draft, and once for all. I think that this +was a correct judgment, and I do not see that it implies any inferiority +on his part. It is not as if he ever aimed at the methods of the +precisians and failed, as if it was his desire to be a 'correct' writer, +a careful observer of proportion and construction, a producer of artful +felicities in metre, rhythm, rhyme, phrase. We may yield to no one in +the delight of tracing the exact correspondence of strophe and +antistrophe in a Greek chorus, the subtle vowel-music of a Latin hymn or +a passage of Rossetti's. But I cannot see why, because we rejoice in +these things, we should demand them of all poetry, or why, because we +rejoice in the faultless construction of Fielding or the exquisite +finish of Jane Austen as novelists, we should despise the looser +handling and more sweeping touch of Scott in prose fiction. It is +extremely probable that, as Mr. Balfour suggested the other day in +unveiling the Westminster Abbey monument, this breadth of touch obtained +him his popularity abroad, nor need it impair his fame at home. + +Unquestionably, though he had many minor gifts and graces, including +that of incomparable lyric snatch, from the drums and fifes of +'Lochinvar' and 'Bonnie Dundee' to the elfin music of 'Proud Maisie,' +his faculty of weaving a story in prose or in verse, with varied +decorations of dialogue and description and character, rather than on a +cunning canvas of plot, was Scott's main forte. If it is in verse--and +admirable as it is here, I think we must allow it to be--less +pre-eminent than in prose, it is, first, because minor formal defects +are more felt in verse than in prose; secondly, because the scope of the +medium is less; and thirdly, because the medium itself was in reality +not what he wanted. The verse romance of Scott is a great achievement +and a delightful possession: it has had extraordinary influence on +English literature, from the work of Byron, which it directly produced, +and which pretty certainly would never have been produced without it, to +that of Mr. William Morris, which may not impossibly have been its last +echo--transformed and refreshed, but still an echo--for some time to +come. But there was a little of the falsetto in it, and the interludes, +of which the introductions to _Marmion_ and to the _Bridal_ are the most +considerable, show that it gave no outlets, or outlets only awkward, for +much of what he wanted to say. He defines his own general literary +object admirably in a letter to Morritt. 'I have tried to induce the +public to relax some of the rules of criticism, and to be amused with +that medley of tragic and comic with which life presents us, not only in +the same course of action, but in the same character.' The detailed +remarks which have been given in earlier chapters make it unnecessary to +bring out the application of this to all his work, both verse and prose. +And it need but be pointed out in passing how much more satisfactorily +the form of prose fiction lent itself, than the form of verse romance, +to the expression of a creed which, as it had been that of Shakespeare, +so it was the creed of Scott. + +But a few words must be added in reference to the complaint which is +often openly made, and which, I understand, is still more often secretly +entertained, or taken for proved, by the younger generation--to wit, the +complaint that Scott is 'commonplace' and 'conventional,' not merely in +thought, but in expression. As to the thought, that is best met by the +reply churlish, if not even by the reproof valiant. Scott's thought is +never commonplace, and never merely conventional: it can only seem so to +those who have given their own judgments in bondage to a conventional +and temporary cant of unconventionality. In respect of expression, the +complaint will admit of some argument which may best take the form of +example. It is perfectly true that Scott's expression is not +'quintessenced'--that it has to a hasty eye an air of lacking what is +called distinction; and, especially, that it has no very definite savour +of any particular time. At present, as at other periods during the +recorded story of literature, there is a marked preference for all these +things which it is not; and so Scott is, with certain persons, in +disfavour accordingly. But it so happens that the study of this now +long record of literature is itself sufficient to convince anyone how +treacherous the tests thus suggested are. There never, for instance, was +an English writer fuller of all the marks which these, our younger +critics, desiderate in Scott, and admire in some authors of our own day, +than John Lyly, the author of _Euphues_, of a large handful of very +charming and interesting court dramas, and of some delightful lyrics. +Those who have to teach literature impress the importance, and try to +impress the interest, of Lyly on students and readers, and they do +right. For he was a man not merely of talent, but (with respect to my +friend Mr. Courthope, who thinks differently), I think, of genius. He +had a poetical fancy, a keen and biting wit, a fairly exact proficiency +in the scholarship of his time. He eschewed the obvious, the commonplace +in thought, and still more in style, as passionately as any man ever has +eschewed it, and, having not merely will and delicacy, but power, he not +only achieved an immense temporary popularity, but even influenced the +English language permanently. Yet--and those who thus praise him know +it--he, the apostle of ornate prose, the model of a whole generation of +the greatest wits that England has seen, the master of Shakespeare in +more things than one, including romantic comedy, the originator of the +English analytic novel, the 'raiser' (as I think they call it) 'of his +native language to a higher power,' is dead. We shall never get anybody +outside the necessarily small number of those who have cultivated the +historic as well as the aesthetic sense in literature, to read him except +as a curiosity or a task, because he not merely cultivated art, but +neglected nature for it; because he fooled the time to the top of its +bent, and let the time fool him in return; because, instead of making +the common as though it were not common, he aimed and strained at the +uncommon _in_ and _per se_. + +Scott did just the contrary. He never tried to be unlike somebody else; +if he hit, as he did hit, upon great new styles of +literature,--absolutely new in the case of the historical novel, revived +after long trance in the case of the verse tale,--it was from no desire +to innovate, but because his genius called him. Though in ordinary ways +he was very much a man of his time, he did not contort himself in any +fashion by way of expressing a (then) modern spirit, a Georgian +idiosyncrasy, or anything of that sort; he was content with the language +of the best writers and the thoughts of the best men. He was no amateur +of the topsy-turvy, and had not the very slightest desire to show how a +literary head could grow beneath the shoulders. He was satisfied that +his genius should flow naturally. And the consequence is that it was +never checked, that it flows still for us with all its spontaneous +charm, and that it will flow _in omne volubilis aevum_. Among many +instances of the strength which accompanied this absence of strain one +already alluded to may be mentioned again. Scott is one of the most +literary of all writers. He was saturated with reading; nothing could +happen but it brought some felicitous quotation, some quaint parallel to +his mind from the great wits, or the small, of old. Yet no writer is +less _bookish_ than he; none insults his readers less with any parade, +with any apparent consciousness of erudition; and he wears his learning +so lightly that pedants have even accused him of lacking it because he +lacks pedantry. His stream, to resume the simile, carries in solution +more reading as well as more wit, more knowledge of life and nature, +more gifts of almost all kinds than would suffice for twenty men of +letters, yet the very power of its solvent force, as well as the vigour +of its current, makes these things comparatively invisible. + +In dealing with an author so voluminous and so various in his kinds and +subjects of composition, it is a hard matter to say what has to be said +within prescribed limits such as these, just as it is still harder to +select from so copious a store of biographical information details which +may be sufficient, and not more than sufficient, to give a firm and +distinct picture of his life. Yet it may perhaps be questioned whether +very elaborate handling is necessary for Scott. No man probably, +certainly no man of letters, is more of a piece than he. As he has been +subjected to an almost unparalleled trial in the revelation of his +private thoughts, so his literary powers and performances extend over a +range which is unusual, if not absolutely singular, in men of letters of +the first rank. Yet he is the same throughout, in romance as in review, +in novel as in note-writing. Except his dramatic work, a department for +which he seems to have been almost totally unfitted (despite the +felicity of his 'Old Play' fragments), nothing of his can be neglected +by those who wish to enjoy him to the full. Yet though there is no +monotony, there is a uniformity which is all the more delightfully +brought out by the minor variations of subject and kind. The last as the +first word about Scott should perhaps be, 'Read him. And, as far as may +be, read all of him.' + +When, in comparatively early days of his acquaintance with Lockhart, +Scott, thinking himself near death in the paroxysms of his cramps, +bequeathed to his future son-in-law, in the words of the ballad, 'the +vanguard of the three,' the duty of burying him and continuing his work, +if possible, he had himself limited the heritage to the defence of +ancient faith and loyalty--a great one enough. But his is, in fact, a +greater. From generation to generation, whosoever determines, in so far +as fate and the gods allow, to hold these things fast, and, moreover, to +love all good literature, to temper erudition with common sense, to let +humour wait always upon fancy, and duty upon romance; whosoever at least +tries to be true to the past, to show a bold front to the present, and +to let the future be as it may; whosoever 'spurns the vulgar' while +endeavouring to be just to individuals, and faces 'the Secret' with +neither bravado nor cringing,--he may take, if not the vanguard, yet a +place according to his worth and merit, in the legion which this great +captain led. Of the frequent parallels or contrasts drawn between him +and Shakespeare it is not the least noteworthy that he is, of all men of +letters, that one of whom we have the most intimate and the fullest +revelation, while of Shakespeare we have the least. There need be very +little doubt that if we knew everything about Shakespeare, he would +come, as a man of mould might, scathless from the test. But we do know +everything, or almost everything, about Scott, and he comes out nearly +as well as anyone but a faultless monster could. For all the works of +the Lord in literature, as in other things, let us give thanks--for +Blake and for Beddoes as well as for Shelley and for Swift. But let +everyone who by himself, or by his fathers, claims origin between +Tol-Pedn-Penwith and Dunnet Head give thanks, with more energy and more +confidence than in any other case save one, for the fact that his is the +race and his the language of Sir Walter Scott. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[47] So, in a still earlier generation, Johnson, after calling his +step-daughter 'my dearest love,' and writing in the simplest way, will +end, and quite properly, with, 'Madam, your obedient, humble servant.' + +[48] He made, as is well known, preparations to 'meet' General Gourgaud, +who was wroth about the _Napoleon_, but who never actually challenged +him. + +[49] Most injustice has perforce been done to his miscellaneous verse +lying outside the great poems, and not all of it included in the novels. +It would be impossible to dwell on all the good things, from _Helvellyn_ +and _The Norman Horseshoe_ onward; and useless to select a few. Some of +his best things are among them: few are without force, and fire, and +unstudied melody. The song-scraps, like the mottoes, in his novels are +often really marvellous snatches of improvisation. + +[50] Il y a plus de philosophie dans ses ecrits ... que dans bon nombre +de _romans philosophiques_. + +[51] When some tactless person tried to play tricks with the Crown. + + + + +INDEX + + +SCOTT, SIR WALTER: + Ancestry and parentage, 9, 10; + birth, 10; + infancy, 11; + school and college days, _ibid._; + apprenticeship, _ibid._; + friends and early occupations, 12, 13; + call to the Bar, 12, 14; + first love, 14-16; + engagement and marriage, 16; + briefs, fights, and volunteering, 17; + journeys to Galloway and elsewhere, 18, 19; + slowness of literary production and its causes, 20, 21; + call-thesis and translations of Buerger, 22; + reception of these last and their merit, 23; + contributes to _Tales of Wonder_, 24; + remarks on _Glenfinlas_ and _The Eve of St. John_, 25, 26; + _Goetz von Berlichingen_ and _The House of Aspen_, 26; + dramatic work generally, 27, _note_; + friendship with Leyden, Ritson, and Ellis, 28; + _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, 28-33; + contributes to the _Edinburgh Review_, 33-35; + his domestic life for the first seven years after his marriage, 35-37; + _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, 38-46; + partnership with Ballantyne, 46-50; + children and pecuniary affairs, 50, 51; + Clerkship of Session, 51; + politics during Fox and Grenville administration, 52; + anecdote of, on Mound, _ibid._; + _Marmion_, 52-55; + coolness with _Edinburgh_ and starting of _Quarterly Review_, 55, 56; + quarrel with Constable, 56, 57; + affair of Thomas Scott's appointment, 58, 59; + _The Lady of the Lake_, 59, 60; + _The Vision of Don Roderick_, 61; + _Rokeby_, 61-63; + _The Lord of the Isles_, 63, 64; + _The Bridal of Triermain_, 64-66; + _Harold the Dauntless_, 66, 67; + remarks on the verse romances generally, 67, 68; + _Waverley_, its origin, character, and reception, 69-76; + settlement at Abbotsford, 70, 71; + danger of Ballantyne & Co., and closer alliance with Constable, 71, 72; + yachting tour, 72; + _Guy Mannering_, 77-79; + introduced in London to the Regent and to Byron, 79; + journey to Brussels, _Field of Waterloo_, and _Paul's Letters_, 79; + _The Antiquary_, 80; + original mottoes, 81 and _note_; + _Old Mortality_ and _Black Dwarf_, 81-84; + quarrel with Blackwood, 82; + _Rob Roy_, 84, 85; + domestic affairs, 85-87; + _Heart of Midlothian_, 87, 88; + _Bride of Lammermoor_ and _Legend of Montrose_, 88-91; + attacked by cramp, 84, 86, 89, _note_; + domestic affairs, 91-93; + _Ivanhoe_, 93, 96; + _The Monastery_, 95, 96; + _The Abbot_ and _Kenilworth_, 96, 97; + _The Pirate_, 97, 98; + _The Fortunes of Nigel_, 99; + _Peveril of the Peak_, 100; + _Quentin Durward_, 100, 101; + _St. Ronan's Well_, 101, 102; + _Redgauntlet_, 102, 103; + _Tales of the Crusaders_, 104, 105; + domestic affairs, to tour in Ireland, 105, 106; + commercial crisis and fall of Constable and Ballantyne, 106, 107; + discussion of the facts, 107-114; + the _Journal_, 114-117; + death of Lady Scott, 116; + _Life of Napoleon_, 118-121; + _Woodstock_, 121-123; + _Letters of Malachi Malagrowther_, 123; + 'Bonnie Dundee,' _ibid._; + _Chronicles of the Canongate_, 124-126; + _Tales of a Grandfather_, 126, 127; + _The Fair Maid of Perth_ and the '_Magnum Opus_,' 128; + _Anne of Geierstein_, 129; + declining health, 130; + success of the '_Magnum_,' _ibid._; + stroke of paralysis and resignation of Clerkship, 131; + _Letters on Demonology_ and Christopher North's criticism, 131, 132; + _Count Robert of Paris_ and _Castle Dangerous_, 133; + political annoyances and insults at Jedburgh, 134; + last visit of Wordsworth and departure for Italy, 135; + sojourn on the Mediterranean, 136; + return and death, 137; + settlement of debts, _ibid._; + monuments to Scott, 138; + general view of Scott desirable, 139; + his physique and conversation, 140; + his alleged subserviency to rank, 141, 142; + his moral and religious character, 142, 143; + his politics, 144; + characteristics of his thought, 145-147; + his combination of the practical and the romantic, 147; + his humour, 148; + his feeling, 149; + his style, 150; + his power of story, 151; + not 'commonplace,' 151, 154; + comparison with Lyly, 153; + final remarks, 155, 156. + + + + +OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON THE "FAMOUS SCOTS" SERIES. + + +Of THOMAS CARLYLE, by H. C. MACPHERSON, the _British Weekly_ says:-- + + "We congratulate the publishers on the in every way attractive + appearance of the first volume of their new series. The + typography is everything that could be wished, and the binding + is most tasteful.... We heartily congratulate author and + publishers on the happy commencement of this admirable + enterprise." + +The _Literary World_ says:-- + + "One of the very best little books on Carlyle yet written, far + outweighing in value some more pretentious works with which we + are familiar." + +The _Scotsman_ says:-- + + "As an estimate of the Carlylean philosophy, and of Carlyle's + place in literature and his influence in the domains of morals, + politics, and social ethics, the volume reveals not only care + and fairness, but insight and a large capacity for original + thought and judgment." + +The _Glasgow Daily Record_ says:-- + + "Is distinctly creditable to the publishers, and worthy of a + national series such as they have projected." + +The _Educational News_ says:-- + + "The book is written in an able, masterly, and painstaking + manner." + + +Of ALLAN RAMSAY, by OLIPHANT SMEATON, the _Scotsman_ says:-- + + "It is not a patchwork picture, but one in which the writer, + taking genuine interest in his subject, and bestowing + conscientious pains on his task, has his materials well in hand, + and has used them to produce a portrait that is both lifelike + and well balanced." + +The _People's Friend_ says:-- + + "Presents a very interesting sketch of the life of the poet, as + well as a well-balanced estimate and review of his works." + +The _Edinburgh Dispatch_ says:-- + + "The author has shown scholarship and much enthusiasm in his + task." + +The _Daily Record_ says:-- + + "The kindly, vain, and pompous little wig-maker lives for us in + Mr. Smeaton's pages." + +The _Glasgow Herald_ says:-- + + "A careful and intelligent study." + + +Of HUGH MILLER, by W. KEITH LEASK, the _Expository Times_ says:-- + + "It is a right good book and a right true biography.... There is + a very fine sense of Hugh Miller's greatness as a man and a + Scotsman; there is also a fine choice of language in making it + ours." + +The _Bookseller_ says:-- + + "Mr. Leask gives the reader a clear impression of the + simplicity, and yet the greatness, of his hero, and the broad + result of his life's work is very plainly and carefully set + forth. A short appreciation of his scientific labours, from the + competent pen of Sir Archibald Geikie, and a useful bibliography + of his works, complete a volume which is well worth reading for + its own sake, and which forms a worthy installment in an + admirable series." + +The _Daily News_ says:-- + + "Leaves on us a very vivid impression." + + +Of JOHN KNOX, by A. TAYLOR INNES, Mr. Hay Fleming, in the _Bookman_ +says:-- + + "A masterly delineation of those stirring times in Scotland, and + of that famous Scot who helped so much to shape them." + +The _Freeman_ says:-- + + "It is a concise, well written, and admirable narrative of the + great Reformer's life, and in its estimate of his character and + work it is calm, dispassionate, and well balanced.... It is a + welcome addition to our Knox literature." + +The _Speaker_ says:-- + + "There is vision in this book, as well as knowledge." + +The _Sunday School Chronicle_ says:-- + + "Everybody who is acquainted with Mr. Taylor Innes's exquisite + lecture on Samuel Rutherford will feel instinctively that he is + just the man to do justice to the great Reformer, who is more to + Scotland 'than any million of unblameable Scotsmen who need no + forgiveness.' His literary skill, his thorough acquaintance with + Scottish ecclesiastical life, his religious insight, his + chastened enthusiasm, have enabled the author to produce an + excellent piece of work.... It is a noble and inspiring theme, + and Mr. Taylor Innes has handled it to perfection." + + +Of ROBERT BURNS, by GABRIEL SETOUN, the _New Age_ says:-- + + "It is the best thing on Burns we have yet had, almost as good + as Carlyle's Essay and the pamphlet published by Dr. Nichol of + Glasgow." + +The _Methodist Times_ says:-- + + "We are inclined to regard it as the very best that has yet been + produced. There is a proper perspective, and Mr. Setoun does + neither praise nor blame too copiously.... A difficult bit of + work has been well done, and with fine literary and ethical + discrimination." + +_Youth_ says:-- + + "It is written with knowledge, judgment, and skill.... The + author's estimate of the moral character of Burns is temperate + and discriminating; he sees and states his evil qualities, and + beside these he places his good ones in their fulness, depth, + and splendour. The exposition of the special features marking + the genius of the poet is able and penetrating." + + +Of THE BALLADISTS, by JOHN GEDDIE, the _Birmingham Daily Gazette_ +says:-- + + "As a popular sketch of an intensely popular theme, Mr. Geddie's + contribution to the 'Famous Scots Series' is most excellent." + +The _Publishers' Circular_ says:-- + + "It may be predicted that lovers of romantic literature will + re-peruse the old ballads with a quickened zest after reading + Mr. Geddie's book. We have not had a more welcome little volume + for many a day." + +The _New Age_ says:-- + + "One of the most delightful and eloquent appreciations of the + ballad literature of Scotland that has ever seen the light." + +The _Spectator_ says:-- + + "The author has certainly made a contribution of remarkable + value to the literary history of Scotland. We do not know of a + book in which the subject has been treated with deeper sympathy + or out of a fuller knowledge." + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sir Walter Scott, by George Saintsbury + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR WALTER SCOTT *** + +***** This file should be named 29624.txt or 29624.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/6/2/29624/ + +Produced by Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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