SIR WALTER SCOTT

 BY

 RICHARD H. HUTTON. 

 London:

 MACMILLAN AND CO. 

 1878

PREFATORY NOTE. 

It will be observed that the greater part of this little book has beentaken in one form or other from Lockhart's _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, in ten volumes. No introduction to Scott would be worth much in whichthat course was not followed. Indeed, excepting Sir Walter's ownwritings, there is hardly any other great source of information abouthim; and that is so full, that hardly anything needful to illustratethe subject of Scott's life remains untouched. As regards the onlymatters of controversy, --Scott's relations to the Ballantynes, I havetaken care to check Mr. Lockhart's statements by reading those of therepresentatives of the Ballantyne brothers; but with this exception, Sir Walter's own works and Lockhart's life of him are the greatauthorities concerning his character and his story. 

Just ten years ago Mr. Gladstone, in expressing to the late Mr. HopeScott the great delight which the perusal of Lockhart's life of SirWalter had given him, wrote, "I may be wrong, but I am vaguely underthe impression that it has never had a really wide circulation. If so, it is the saddest pity, and I should greatly like (without any censureon its present length) to see published an abbreviation of it. " Mr. Gladstone did not then know that as long ago as 1848 Mr. Lockhart didhimself prepare such an abbreviation, in which the originaleighty-four chapters were compressed into eighteen, --though theabbreviation contained additions as well as compressions. But eventhis abridgment is itself a bulky volume of 800 pages, containing, Ishould think, considerably more than a third of the reading in theoriginal ten volumes, and is not, therefore, very likely to bepreferred to the completer work. In some respects I hope that thisintroduction may supply, better than that bulky abbreviation, what Mr. Gladstone probably meant to suggest, --some slight miniature taken fromthe great picture with care enough to tempt on those who look on it tothe study of the fuller life, as well as of that image of Sir Walterwhich is impressed by his own hand upon his works. 

CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. 

ANCESTRY, PARENTAGE, AND CHILDHOOD

CHAPTER II. 

YOUTH--CHOICE OF A PROFESSION

CHAPTER III. 

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

CHAPTER IV. 

EARLIEST POETRY AND BORDER MINSTRELSY

CHAPTER V. 

SCOTT'S MATURER POEMS

CHAPTER VI. 

COMPANIONS AND FRIENDS

CHAPTER VII. 

FIRST COUNTRY HOMES

CHAPTER VIII. 

REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD, AND LIFE THERE

CHAPTER IX. 

SCOTT'S PARTNERSHIPS WITH THE BALLANTYNES

CHAPTER X. 

THE WAVERLEY NOVELS

CHAPTER XI. 

SCOTT'S MORALITY AND RELIGION

CHAPTER XII. 

DISTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS AT ABBOTSFORD

CHAPTER XIII. 

SCOTT AND GEORGE IV

CHAPTER XIV. 

SCOTT AS A POLITICIAN

CHAPTER XV. 

SCOTT IN ADVERSITY

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE LAST YEAR

CHAPTER XVII. 

THE END OF THE STRUGGLE

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

CHAPTER I. 

ANCESTRY, PARENTAGE, AND CHILDHOOD. 

Sir Walter Scott was the first literary man of a great riding, sporting, and fighting clan. Indeed, his father--a Writer to theSignet, or Edinburgh solicitor--was the first of his race to adopt atown life and a sedentary profession. Sir Walter was the linealdescendant--six generations removed--of that Walter Scott commemoratedin _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, who is known in Border history andlegend as Auld Wat of Harden. Auld Wat's son William, captured by SirGideon Murray, of Elibank, during a raid of the Scotts on Sir Gideon'slands, was, as tradition says, given his choice between being hangedon Sir Gideon's private gallows, and marrying the ugliest of SirGideon's three ugly daughters, Meikle-mouthed Meg, reputed as carryingoff the prize of ugliness among the women of four counties. SirWilliam was a handsome man. He took three days to consider thealternative proposed to him, but chose life with the large-mouthedlady in the end; and found her, according to the tradition which thepoet, her descendant, has transmitted, an excellent wife, with a finetalent for pickling the beef which her husband stole from the herds ofhis foes. Meikle-mouthed Meg transmitted a distinct trace of her largemouth to all her descendants, and not least to him who was to use his"meikle" mouth to best advantage as the spokesman of his race. Rathermore than half-way between Auld Wat of Harden's times--i. E. , themiddle of the sixteenth century--and those of Sir Walter Scott, poetand novelist, lived Sir Walter's great-grandfather, Walter Scottgenerally known in Teviotdale by the surname of Beardie, because hewould never cut his beard after the banishment of the Stuarts, and whotook arms in their cause and lost by his intrigues on their behalfalmost all that he had, besides running the greatest risk of beinghanged as a traitor. This was the ancestor of whom Sir Walter speaksin the introduction to the last canto of _Marmion_:--

 "And thus my Christmas still I hold, Where my great grandsire came of old, With amber beard and flaxen hair, And reverend apostolic air, -- The feast and holy tide to share, And mix sobriety with wine, And honest mirth with thoughts divine; Small thought was his in after time E'er to be hitch'd into a rhyme, The simple sire could only boast That he was loyal to his cost; The banish'd race of kings revered, And lost his land--but kept his beard. "

Sir Walter inherited from Beardie that sentimental Stuart bias whichhis better judgment condemned, but which seemed to be rather part ofhis blood than of his mind. And most useful to him this sentimentundoubtedly was in helping him to restore the mould and fashion ofthe past. Beardie's second son was Sir Walter's grandfather, and tohim he owed not only his first childish experience of the delights ofcountry life, but also, --in his own estimation at least, --that risky, speculative, and sanguine spirit which had so much influence over hisfortunes. The good man of Sandy-Knowe, wishing to breed sheep, andbeing destitute of capital, borrowed 30_l. _ from a shepherd who waswilling to invest that sum for him in sheep; and the two set off topurchase a flock near Wooler, in Northumberland; but when the shepherdhad found what he thought would suit their purpose, he returned tofind his master galloping about a fine hunter, on which he had spentthe whole capital in hand. _This_ speculation, however, prospered. Afew days later Robert Scott displayed the qualities of the hunter tosuch admirable effect with John Scott of Harden's hounds, that he soldthe horse for double the money he had given, and, unlike his grandson, abandoned speculative purchases there and then. In the latter days ofhis clouded fortunes, after Ballantyne's and Constable's failure, SirWalter was accustomed to point to the picture of his grandfather andsay, "Blood will out: my building and planting was but his buying thehunter before he stocked his sheep-walk, over again. " But Sir Walteradded, says Mr. Lockhart, as he glanced at the likeness of his ownstaid and prudent father, "Yet it was a wonder, too, for I have athread of the attorney in me, " which was doubtless the case; nor wasthat thread the least of his inheritances, for from his fathercertainly Sir Walter derived that disposition towards conscientious, plodding industry, legalism of mind, methodical habits of work, and agenerous, equitable interpretation of the scope of all his obligationsto others, which, prized and cultivated by him as they were, turned agreat genius, which, especially considering the hare-brained elementin him, might easily have been frittered away or devoted to worthlessends, to such fruitful account, and stamped it with so grand animpress of personal magnanimity and fortitude. Sir Walter's fatherreminds one in not a few of the formal and rather martinetish traitswhich are related of him, of the father of Goethe, "a formal man, withstrong ideas of strait-laced education, passionately orderly (hethought a good book nothing without a good binding), and never so muchexcited as by a necessary deviation from the 'pre-established harmony'of household rules. " That description would apply almost wholly to thesketch of old Mr. Scott which the novelist has given us under the thindisguise of Alexander Fairford, Writer to the Signet, in_Redgauntlet_, a figure confessedly meant, in its chief features, torepresent his father. To this Sir Walter adds, in one of his laterjournals, the trait that his father was a man of fine presence, whoconducted all conventional arrangements with a certain grandeur anddignity of air, and "absolutely loved a funeral. " "He seemed topreserve the list of a whole bead-roll of cousins merely for thepleasure of being at their funerals, which he was often asked tosuperintend, and I suspect had sometimes to pay for. He carried mewith him as often as he could to these mortuary ceremonies; butfeeling I was not, like him, either useful or ornamental, I escaped asoften as I could. " This strong dash of the conventional in Scott'sfather, this satisfaction in seeing people fairly to the door of life, and taking his final leave of them there, with something of aceremonious flourish of observance, was, however, combined with amuch nobler and deeper kind of orderliness. Sir Walter used to saythat his father had lost no small part of a very flourishing business, by insisting that his clients should do their duty to their own peoplebetter than they were themselves at all inclined to do it. And of thisgenerous strictness in sacrificing his own interests to his sympathyfor others, the son had as much as the father. 

Sir Walter's mother, who was a Miss Rutherford, the daughter of aphysician, had been better educated than most Scotchwomen of her day, in spite of having been sent "to be finished off" by "the honourableMrs. Ogilvie, " whose training was so effective, in one direction atleast, that even in her eightieth year Mrs. Scott could not enjoy acomfortable rest in her chair, but "took as much care to avoidtouching her chair with her back, as if she had still been under thestern eyes of Mrs. Ogilvie. " None the less Mrs. Scott was a motherly, comfortable woman, with much tenderness of heart, and a well-stored, vivid memory. Sir Walter, writing of her, after his mother's death, toLady Louisa Stewart, says, "She had a mind peculiarly well stored withmuch acquired information and natural talent, and as she was very old, and had an excellent memory, she could draw, without the leastexaggeration or affectation, the most striking pictures of the pastage. If I have been able to do anything in the way of painting thepast times, it is very much from the studies with which she presentedme. She connected a long period of time with the present generation, for she remembered, and had often spoken with, a person who perfectlyrecollected the battle of Dunbar and Oliver Cromwell's subsequententry into Edinburgh. " On the day before the stroke of paralysis whichcarried her off, she had told Mr. And Mrs. Scott of Harden, "withgreat accuracy, the real story of the Bride of Lammermuir, and pointedout wherein it differed from the novel. She had all the names of theparties, and pointed out (for she was a great genealogist) theirconnexion with existing families. "[1] Sir Walter records manyevidences of the tenderness of his mother's nature, and he returnedwarmly her affection for himself. His executors, in lifting up hisdesk, the evening after his burial, found "arranged in careful order aseries of little objects, which had obviously been so placed therethat his eye might rest on them every morning before he began histasks. These were the old-fashioned boxes that had garnished hismother's toilette, when he, a sickly child, slept in herdressing-room, --the silver taper-stand, which the young advocate hadbought for her with his first five-guinea fee, --a row of small packetsinscribed with her hand, and containing the hair of those of heroffspring that had died before her, --his father's snuff-box, andetui-case, --and more things of the like sort. "[2] A story, characteristic of both Sir Walter's parents, is told by Mr. Lockhartwhich will serve better than anything I can remember to bring thefather and mother of Scott vividly before the imagination. His father, like Mr. Alexander Fairford, in _Redgauntlet_, though himself a strongHanoverian, inherited enough feeling for the Stuarts from hisgrandfather Beardie, and sympathized enough with those who were, as heneutrally expressed it, "out in '45, " to ignore as much as possibleany phrases offensive to the Jacobites. For instance, he always calledCharles Edward not _the Pretender_ but _the Chevalier_, --and he didbusiness for many Jacobites:--

"Mrs. Scott's curiosity was strongly excited one autumn by the regularappearance at a certain hour every evening of a sedan chair, todeposit a person carefully muffled up in a mantle, who was immediatelyushered into her husband's private room, and commonly remained withhim there until long after the usual bed-time of this orderly family. Mr. Scott answered her repeated inquiries with a vagueness thatirritated the lady's feelings more and more; until at last she couldbear the thing no longer; but one evening, just as she heard the bellring as for the stranger's chair to carry him off, she made herappearance within the forbidden parlour with a salver in her hand, observing that she thought the gentlemen had sat so long they would bebetter of a dish of tea, and had ventured accordingly to bring somefor their acceptance. The stranger, a person of distinguishedappearance, and richly dressed, bowed to the lady and accepted a cup;but her husband knit his brows, and refused very coldly to partake therefreshment. A moment afterwards the visitor withdrew, and Mr. Scott, lifting up the window-sash, took the cup, which he had left empty onthe table, and tossed it out upon the pavement. The lady exclaimed forher china, but was put to silence by her husband's saying, 'I canforgive your little curiosity, madam, but you must pay the penalty. Imay admit into my house, on a piece of business, persons whollyunworthy to be treated as guests by my wife. Neither lip of me nor ofmine comes after Mr. Murray of Broughton's. '

"This was the unhappy man who, after attending Prince Charles Stuartas his secretary throughout the greater part of his expedition, condescended to redeem his own life and fortune by bearing evidenceagainst the noblest of his late master's adherents, when--

 "Pitied by gentle hearts, Kilmarnock died, The brave, Balmerino were on thy side. "[3]

"Broughton's saucer"--i. E. The saucer belonging to the cup thussacrificed by Mr. Scott to his indignation against one who hadredeemed his own life and fortune by turning king's evidence againstone of Prince Charles Stuart's adherents, --was carefully preserved byhis son, and hung up in his first study, or "den, " under a littleprint of Prince Charlie. This anecdote brings before the mind veryvividly the character of Sir Walter's parents. The eager curiosity ofthe active-minded woman, whom "the honourable Mrs. Ogilvie" had beenable to keep upright in her chair for life, but not to cure of thedesire to unravel the little mysteries of which she had a passingglimpse; the grave formality of the husband, fretting under his wife'spersonal attention to a dishonoured man, and making her pay thepenalty by dashing to pieces the cup which the king's evidence hadused, --again, the visitor himself, perfectly conscious no doubt thatthe Hanoverian lawyer held him in utter scorn for his faithlessnessand cowardice, and reluctant, nevertheless, to reject the courtesy ofthe wife, though he could not get anything but cold legal advice fromthe husband:--all these are figures which must have acted on theyouthful imagination of the poet with singular vivacity, and shapedthemselves in a hundred changing turns of the historical kaleidoscopewhich was always before his mind's eye, as he mused upon that pastwhich he was to restore for us with almost more than its originalfreshness of life. With such scenes touching even his own home, Scottmust have been constantly taught to balance in his own mind, the moreromantic, against the more sober and rational considerations, whichhad so recently divided house against house, even in the same familyand clan. That the stern Calvinistic lawyer should have retained somuch of his grandfather Beardie's respect for the adherents of theexiled house of Stuart, must in itself have struck the boy as evenmore remarkable than the passionate loyalty of the Stuarts' professedpartisans, and have lent a new sanction to the romantic drift of hismother's old traditions, and one to which they must have been indebtedfor a great part of their fascination. 

Walter Scott, the ninth of twelve children, of whom the first six diedin early childhood, was born in Edinburgh, on the 15th of August, 1771. Of the six later-born children, all but one were boys, and theone sister was a somewhat querulous invalid, whom he seems to havepitied almost more than he loved. At the age of eighteen months theboy had a teething-fever, ending in a life-long lameness; and this wasthe reason why the child was sent to reside with his grandfather--thespeculative grandfather, who had doubled his capital by buying aracehorse instead of sheep--at Sandy-Knowe, near the ruined tower ofSmailholm, celebrated afterwards in his ballad of _The Eve of St. John_, in the neighbourhood of some fine crags. To these crags thehousemaid sent from Edinburgh to look after him, used to carry him up, with a design (which she confessed to the housekeeper)--due, ofcourse, to incipient insanity--of murdering the child there, andburying him in the moss. Of course the maid was dismissed. After thisthe child used to be sent out, when the weather was fine, in the safercharge of the shepherd, who would often lay him beside the sheep. Longafterwards Scott told Mr. Skene, during an excursion with Turner, thegreat painter, who was drawing his illustration of Smailholm tower forone of Scott's works, that "the habit of lying on the turf there amongthe sheep and the lambs had given his mind a peculiar tenderness forthese animals, which it had ever since retained. " Being forgotten oneday upon the knolls when a thunderstorm came on, his aunt ran out tobring him in, and found him shouting, "Bonny! bonny!" at every flashof lightning. One of the old servants at Sandy-Knowe spoke of thechild long afterwards as "a sweet-tempered bairn, a darling with allabout the house, " and certainly the miniature taken of him in hisseventh year confirms the impression thus given. It is sweet-temperedabove everything, and only the long upper lip and large mouth, derivedfrom his ancestress, Meg Murray, convey the promise of the power whichwas in him. Of course the high, almost conical forehead, which gainedhim in his later days from his comrades at the bar the name of "OldPeveril, " in allusion to "the peak" which they saw towering high abovethe heads of other men as he approached, is not so much marked beneaththe childish locks of this miniature as it was in later life; and themassive, and, in repose, certainly heavy face of his maturity, whichconveyed the impression of the great bulk of his character, is stillquite invisible under the sunny ripple of childish earnestness andgaiety. Scott's hair in childhood was light chestnut, which turned tonut brown in youth. His eyebrows were bushy, for we find mention madeof them as a "pent-house. " His eyes were always light blue. They hadin them a capacity, on the one hand, for enthusiasm, sunny brightness, and even hare-brained humour, and on the other for expressingdetermined resolve and kindly irony, which gave great range ofexpression to the face. There are plenty of materials for judging whatsort of a boy Scott was. In spite of his lameness, he early taughthimself to clamber about with an agility that few children could havesurpassed, and to sit his first pony--a little Shetland, not biggerthan a large Newfoundland dog, which used to come into the house to befed by him--even in gallops on very rough ground. He became very earlya declaimer. Having learned the ballad of Hardy Knute, he shouted itforth with such pertinacious enthusiasm that the clergyman of hisgrandfather's parish complained that he "might as well speak in acannon's mouth as where that child was. " At six years of age Mrs. Cockburn described him as the most astounding genius of a boy, sheever saw. "He was reading a poem to his mother when I went in. I madehim read on: it was the description of a shipwreck. His passion rosewith the storm. 'There's the mast gone, ' says he; 'crash it goes; theywill all perish. ' After his agitation he turns to me, 'That is toomelancholy, ' says he; 'I had better read you something more amusing. '"And after the call, he told his aunt he liked Mrs. Cockburn, for "shewas a _virtuoso_ like himself. " "Dear Walter, " says Aunt Jenny, "whatis a _virtuoso_?" "Don't ye know? Why, it's one who wishes and willknow everything. " This last scene took place in his father's house inEdinburgh; but Scott's life at Sandy-Knowe, including even the oldminister, Dr. Duncan, who so bitterly complained of the boy'sballad-spouting, is painted for us, as everybody knows, in the pictureof his infancy given in the introduction to the third canto of_Marmion_:--

 "It was a barren scene and wild, Where naked cliffs were rudely piled: But ever and anon between Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green; And well the lonely infant knew Recesses where the wall-flower grew, And honeysuckle loved to crawl Up the low crag and ruin'd wall. I deem'd such nooks the sweetest shade The sun in all its round survey'd; And still I thought that shatter'd tower The mightiest work of human power; And marvell'd as the aged hind With some strange tale bewitch'd my mind, Of forayers, who, with headlong force, Down from that strength had spurr'd their horse, Their southern rapine to renew, Far in the distant Cheviots blue, And, home returning, fill'd the hall With revel, wassail-rout, and brawl. Methought that still with trump and clang The gateway's broken arches rang; Methought grim features, seam'd with scars, Glared through the window's rusty bars; And ever, by the winter hearth, Old tales I heard of woe or mirth, Of lovers' slights, of ladies' charms, Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms, Of patriot battles, won of old By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold; Of later fields of feud and fight, When, pouring from their Highland height, The Scottish clans, in headlong sway, Had swept the scarlet ranks away. While, stretch'd at length upon the floor, Again I fought each combat o'er, Pebbles and shells in order laid, The mimic ranks of war display'd; And onward still the Scottish lion bore, And still the scattered Southron fled before. Still, with vain fondness, could I trace Anew each kind familiar face That brighten'd at our evening fire! From the thatch'd mansion's grey-hair'd sire, Wise without learning, plain and good, And sprung of Scotland's gentler blood; Whose eye in age, quick, clear, and keen, Show'd what in youth its glance had been; Whose doom discording neighbours sought, Content with equity unbought; To him the venerable priest, Our frequent and familiar guest, Whose life and manners well could paint Alike the student and the saint; Alas! whose speech too oft I broke With gambol rude and timeless joke; For I was wayward, bold, and wild, A self-will'd imp, a grandame's child; But, half a plague and half a jest, Was still endured, beloved, caress'd. "

A picture this of a child of great spirit, though with that spirit wascombined an active and subduing sweetness which could often conquer, as by a sudden spell, those whom the boy loved. Towards those, however, whom he did not love he could be vindictive. His relative, the laird of Raeburn, on one occasion wrung the neck of a petstarling, which the child had partly tamed. "I flew at his throat likea wild-cat, " he said, in recalling the circumstance, fifty yearslater, in his journal on occasion of the old laird's death; "and wastorn from him with no little difficulty. " And, judging from thisjournal, I doubt whether he had ever really forgiven the laird ofRaeburn. Towards those whom he loved but had offended, his manner wasvery different. "I seldom, " said one of his tutors, Mr. Mitchell, "hadoccasion all the time I was in the family to find fault with him, evenfor trifles, and only once to threaten serious castigation, of whichhe was no sooner aware, than he suddenly sprang up, threw his armsabout my neck and kissed me. " And the quaint old gentleman adds thiscommentary:--"By such generous and noble conduct my displeasure was ina moment converted into esteem and admiration; my soul melted intotenderness, and I was ready to mingle my tears with his. " Thisspontaneous and fascinating sweetness of his childhood was naturallyovershadowed to some extent in later life by Scott's masculine andproud character, but it was always in him. And there was much of truecharacter in the child behind this sweetness. He had wonderfulself-command, and a peremptory kind of good sense, even in hisinfancy. While yet a child under six years of age, hearing one of theservants beginning to tell a ghost-story to another, and well knowingthat if he listened, it would scare away his night's rest, he actedfor himself with all the promptness of an elder person acting for him, and, in spite of the fascination of the subject, resolutely muffledhis head in the bed-clothes and refused to hear the tale. His sagacityin judging of the character of others was shown, too, even as aschool-boy; and once it led him to take an advantage which caused himmany compunctions in after-life, whenever he recalled his skilfulpuerile tactics. On one occasion--I tell the story as he himselfrehearsed it to Samuel Rogers, almost at the end of his life, afterhis attack of apoplexy, and just before leaving England for Italy inthe hopeless quest of health--he had long desired to get above aschoolfellow in his class, who defied all his efforts, till Scottnoticed that whenever a question was asked of his rival, the lad'sfingers grasped a particular button on his waistcoat, while his mindwent in search of the answer. Scott accordingly anticipated that if hecould remove this button, the boy would be thrown out, and so itproved. The button was cut off, and the next time the lad wasquestioned, his fingers being unable to find the button, and his eyesgoing in perplexed search after his fingers, he stood confounded, andScott mastered by strategy the place which he could not gain by mereindustry. "Often in after-life, " said Scott, in narrating themanoeuvre to Rogers, "has the sight of him smote me as I passed byhim; and often have I resolved to make him some reparation, but itended in good resolutions. Though I never renewed my acquaintance withhim, I often saw him, for he filled some inferior office in one of thecourts of law at Edinburgh. Poor fellow! I believe he is dead; he tookearly to drinking. "[4]

Scott's school reputation was one of irregular ability; he "glanced likea meteor from one end of the class to the other, " and received more praisefor his interpretation of the spirit of his authors than for his knowledgeof their language. Out of school his fame stood higher. He extemporizedinnumerable stories to which his school-fellows delighted to listen; and, in spite of his lameness, he was always in the thick of the "bickers, " orstreet fights with the boys of the town, and renowned for his boldness inclimbing the "kittle nine stanes" which are "projected high in air fromthe precipitous black granite of the Castle-rock. " At home he was muchbullied by his elder brother Robert, a lively lad, not without some powersof verse-making, who went into the navy, then in an unlucky moment passedinto the merchant service of the East India Company, and so lost thechance of distinguishing himself in the great naval campaigns of Nelson. Perhaps Scott would have been all the better for a sister a little closerto him than Anne--sickly and fanciful--appears ever to have been. Themasculine side of life appears to predominate a little too much in hisschool and college days, and he had such vast energy, vitality, and pride, that his life at this time would have borne a little taming under theinfluence of a sister thoroughly congenial to him. In relation to hisstudies he was wilful, though not perhaps perverse. He steadily declined, for instance, to learn Greek, though he mastered Latin pretty fairly. After a time spent at the High School, Edinburgh, Scott was sent to aschool at Kelso, where his master made a friend and companion of him, andso poured into him a certain amount of Latin scholarship which he wouldnever otherwise have obtained. I need hardly add that as a boy Scott was, so far as a boy could be, a Tory--a worshipper of the past, and a greatConservative of any remnant of the past which reformers wished to get ridof. In the autobiographical fragment of 1808, he says, in relation tothese school-days, "I, with my head on fire for chivalry, was a Cavalier;my friend was a Roundhead; I was a Tory, and he was a Whig; I hatedPresbyterians, and admired Montrose with his victorious Highlanders; heliked the Presbyterian Ulysses, the deep and politic Argyle; so that wenever wanted subjects of dispute, but our disputes were always amicable. "And he adds candidly enough: "In all these tenets there was no realconviction on my part, arising out of acquaintance with the views orprinciples of either party.... I took up politics at that period, as KingCharles II. Did his religion, from an idea that the Cavalier creed was themore gentlemanlike persuasion of the two. " And the uniformly amicablecharacter of these controversies between the young people, itself showshow much more they were controversies of the imagination than of faith. Idoubt whether Scott's _convictions_ on the issues of the Past were eververy much more decided than they were during his boyhood; thoughundoubtedly he learned to understand much more profoundly what was reallyheld by the ablest men on both sides of these disputed issues. Theresult, however, was, I think, that while he entered better and betterinto both sides as life went on, he never adopted either with anyearnestness of conviction, being content to admit, even to himself, thatwhile his feelings leaned in one direction, his reason pointed decidedlyin the other; and holding that it was hardly needful to identify himselfpositively with either. As regarded the present, however, feeling alwayscarried the day. Scott was a Tory all his life. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vi. 172-3. The editionreferred to is throughout the edition of 1839 in ten volumes. ]

[Footnote 2: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, x. 241. ]

[Footnote 3: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 243-4. ]

[Footnote 4: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 128. ]

CHAPTER II. 

YOUTH--CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 

As Scott grew up, entered the classes of the college, and began his legalstudies, first as apprentice to his father, and then in the law classes ofthe University, he became noticeable to all his friends for his giganticmemory, --the rich stores of romantic material with which it wasloaded, --his giant feats of industry for any cherished purpose, --hisdelight in adventure and in all athletic enterprises, --his great enjoymentof youthful "rows, " so long as they did not divide the knot of friends towhich he belonged, and his skill in peacemaking amongst his own set. During his apprenticeship his only means of increasing his slenderallowance with funds which he could devote to his favourite studies, wasto earn money by copying, and he tells us himself that he rememberedwriting "120 folio pages with no interval either for food or rest, "fourteen or fifteen hours' very hard work at the very least, --expresslyfor this purpose. 

In the second year of Scott's apprenticeship, at about the age ofsixteen, he had an attack of hæmorrhage, no recurrence of which tookplace for some forty years, but which was then the beginning of theend. During this illness silence was absolutely imposed upon him, --twoold ladies putting their fingers on their lips, whenever he offeredto speak. It was at this time that the lad began his study of thescenic side of history, and especially of campaigns, which heillustrated for himself by the arrangement of shells, seeds, andpebbles, so as to represent encountering armies, in the mannerreferred to (and referred to apparently in anticipation of a laterstage of his life than that he was then speaking of) in the passagefrom the introduction to the third canto of _Marmion_ which I havealready given. He also managed so to arrange the looking-glasses inhis room as to see the troops march out to exercise in the meadows, ashe lay in bed. His reading was almost all in the direction of militaryexploit, or romance and mediæval legend and the later border songs ofhis own country. He learned Italian and read Ariosto. Later he learnedSpanish and devoured Cervantes, whose "_novelas_, " he said, "firstinspired him with the ambition to excel in fiction;" and all that heread and admired he remembered. Scott used to illustrate thecapricious affinity of his own memory for what suited it, and itscomplete rejection of what did not, by old Beattie of Meikledale'sanswer to a Scotch divine, who complimented him on the strength of hismemory. "No, sir, " said the old Borderer, "I have no command of mymemory. It only retains what hits my fancy; and probably, sir, if youwere to preach to me for two hours, I would not be able, when youfinished, to remember a word you had been saying. " Such a memory, whenit belongs to a man of genius, is really a sieve of the most valuablekind. It sifts away what is foreign and alien to his genius, andassimilates what is suited to it. In his very last days, when he wasvisiting Italy for the first time, Scott delighted in Malta, for itrecalled to him Vertot's _Knights of Malta_, and much, other mediævalstory which he had pored over in his youth. But when his friendsdescanted to him at Pozzuoli on the Thermæ--commonly called the Templeof Serapis--among the ruins of which he stood, he only remarked thathe would believe whatever he was told, "for many of his friends, andparticularly Mr. Morritt, had frequently tried to drive classicalantiquities, as they are called, into his head, but they had alwaysfound his skull too thick. " Was it not perhaps some deep literaryinstinct, like that here indicated, which made him, as a lad, refuseso steadily to learn Greek, and try to prove to his indignantprofessor that Ariosto was superior to Homer? Scott afterwards deeplyregretted this neglect of Greek; but I cannot help thinking that hisregret was misplaced. Greek literature would have brought before hismind standards of poetry and art which could not but have both deeplyimpressed and greatly daunted an intellect of so much power; I sayboth impressed and daunted, because I believe that Scott himself wouldnever have succeeded in studies of a classical kind, while hemight--like Goethe perhaps--have been either misled, by admiration forthat school, into attempting what was not adapted to his genius, orelse disheartened in the work for which his character and ancestryreally fitted him. It has been said that there is a real affinitybetween Scott and Homer. But the long and refluent music of Homer, once naturalized in his mind, would have discontented him with thatquick, sharp, metrical tramp of his own moss-troopers, to which alonehis genius as a poet was perfectly suited. 

It might be supposed that with these romantic tastes, Scott couldscarcely have made much of a lawyer, though the inference would, Ibelieve, be quite mistaken. His father, however, reproached him withbeing better fitted for a pedlar than a lawyer, --so persistently didhe trudge over all the neighbouring counties in search of the beautiesof nature and the historic associations of battle, siege, or legend. On one occasion when, with their last penny spent, Scott and one ofhis companions had returned to Edinburgh, living during their last dayon drinks of milk offered by generous peasant-women, and the hips andhaws on the hedges, he remarked to his father how much he had wishedfor George Primrose's power of playing on the flute in order to earn ameal by the way, old Mr. Scott, catching grumpily at the idea, replied, "I greatly doubt, sir, you were born for nae better then agangrel scrape-gut, "--a speech which very probably suggested his son'sconception of Darsie Latimer's adventures with the blind fiddler, "Wandering Willie, " in _Redgauntlet_. And, it is true that these werethe days of mental and moral fermentation, what was called in Germanythe Sturm-und-Drang, the "fret-and-fury" period of Scott's life, sofar as one so mellow and genial in temper ever passed through a periodof fret and fury at all. In other words these were the days of rapidmotion, of walks of thirty miles a day which the lame lad yet found nofatigue to him; of mad enterprises, scrapes and drinking-bouts, in oneof which Scott was half persuaded by his friends that he actually sanga song for the only time in his life. But even in these days ofyouthful sociability, with companions of his own age, Scott was alwayshimself, and his imperious will often asserted itself. Writing of thistime, some thirty-five years or so later, he said, "When I was a boy, and on foot expeditions, as we had many, no creature could be soindifferent which way our course was directed, and I acquiesced inwhat any one proposed; but if I was once driven to make a choice, andfelt piqued in honour to maintain my proposition, I have broken offfrom the whole party, rather than yield to any one. " No doubt, too, inthat day of what he himself described as "the silly smart fancies thatran in my brain like the bubbles in a glass of champagne, as brilliantto my thinking, as intoxicating, as evanescent, " solitude was no realdeprivation to him; and one can easily imagine him marching off on hissolitary way after a dispute with his companions, reciting to himselfold songs or ballads, with that "noticeable but altogetherindescribable play of the upper lip, " which Mr. Lockhart thinkssuggested to one of Scott's most intimate friends, on his firstacquaintance with him, the grotesque notion that he had been "ahautboy-player. " This was the first impression formed of Scott byWilliam Clerk, one of his earliest and life-long friends. It greatlyamused Scott, who not only had never played on any instrument in hislife, but could hardly make shift to join in the chorus of a popularsong without marring its effect; but perhaps the impression suggestedwas not so very far astray after all. Looking to the poetic side ofhis character, the trumpet certainly would have been the instrumentthat would have best symbolized the spirit both of Scott's thought andof his verses. Mr. Lockhart himself, in summing up his impressions ofSir Walter, quotes as the most expressive of his lines:--

 "Sound, sound the clarion! fill the fife! To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth a world without a name. "

And undoubtedly this gives us the key-note of Scott's personal life aswell as of his poetic power. Above everything he was high-spirited, aman of noble, and, at the same time, of martial feelings. Sir FrancisDoyle speaks very justly of Sir Walter as "among English singers theundoubted inheritor of that trumpet-note, which, under the breath ofHomer, has made the wrath of Achilles immortal;" and I do not doubtthat there was something in Scott's face, and especially in theexpression of his mouth, to suggest this even to his early collegecompanions. Unfortunately, however, even "one crowded hour of gloriouslife" may sometimes have a "sensual" inspiration, and in these days ofyouthful adventure, too many such hours seem to have owed theirinspiration to the Scottish peasant's chief bane, the Highland whisky. In his eager search after the old ballads of the Border, Scott hadmany a blithe adventure, which ended only too often in a carouse. Itwas soon after this time that he first began those raids intoLiddesdale, of which all the world has enjoyed the records in thesketches--embodied subsequently in _Guy Mannering_--of Dandie Dinmont, his pony Dumple, and the various Peppers and Mustards from whose breedthere were afterwards introduced into Scott's own family, generationsof terriers, always named, as Sir Walter expressed it, after "thecruet. " I must quote the now classic record of those youthfulescapades:--

 "Eh me, " said Mr. Shortreed, his companion in all these Liddesdale raids, "sic an endless fund of humour and drollery as he had then wi' him. Never ten yards but we were either laughing or roaring and singing. Wherever we stopped, how brawlie he suited himsel' to everybody! He aye did as the lave did; never made himsel' the great man or took ony airs in the company. I've seen him in a' moods in these jaunts, grave and gay, daft and serious, sober and drunk--(this, however, even in our wildest rambles, was but rare)--but drunk or sober he was aye the gentleman. He looked excessively heavy and stupid when he was _fou_, but he was never out o' gude humour. "

One of the stories of that time will illustrate better the wilder daysof Scott's youth than any comment:--

 "On reaching one evening, " says Mr. Lockhart, "some Charlieshope or other (I forget the name) among those wildernesses, they found a kindly reception as usual: but to their agreeable surprise, after some days of hard living, a measured and orderly hospitality as respected liquor. Soon after supper, at which a bottle of elderberry wine alone had been produced, a young student of divinity who happened to be in the house was called upon to take the 'big ha' Bible, ' in the good old fashion of Burns' Saturday Night: and some progress had been already made in the service, when the good man of the farm, whose 'tendency, ' as Mr. Mitchell says, 'was soporific, ' scandalized his wife and the dominie by starting suddenly from his knees, and rubbing his eyes, with a stentorian exclamation of 'By ----! here's the keg at last!' and in tumbled, as he spake the word, a couple of sturdy herdsmen, whom, on hearing, a day before, of the advocate's approaching visit, he had despatched to a certain smuggler's haunt at some considerable distance in quest of a supply of _run_ brandy from the Solway frith. The pious 'exercise' of the household was hopelessly interrupted. With a thousand apologies for his hitherto shabby entertainment, this jolly Elliot or Armstrong had the welcome _keg_ mounted on the table without a moment's delay, and gentle and simple, not forgetting the dominie, continued carousing about it until daylight streamed in upon the party. Sir Walter Scott seldom failed, when I saw him in company with his Liddesdale companions, to mimic with infinite humour the sudden outburst of his old host on hearing the clatter of horses' feet, which he knew to indicate the arrival of the keg, the consternation of the dame, and the rueful despair with which the young clergyman closed the book. "[5]

No wonder old Mr. Scott felt some doubt of his son's success at thebar, and thought him more fitted in many respects for a "gangrelscrape-gut. "[6]

In spite of all this love of excitement, Scott became a sound lawyer, and might have been a great lawyer, had not his pride of character, the impatience of his genius, and the stir of his imagination renderedhim indisposed to wait and slave in the precise manner which theprepossessions of solicitors appoint. 

For Scott's passion for romantic literature was not at all the sort ofthing which we ordinarily mean by boys' or girls' love of romance. Noamount of drudgery or labour deterred Scott from any undertaking onthe prosecution of which he was bent. He was quite the reverse, indeed, of what is usually meant by sentimental, either in his mannersor his literary interests. As regards the history of his own countryhe was no mean antiquarian. Indeed he cared for the mustiestantiquarian researches--of the mediæval kind--so much, that in thedepth of his troubles he speaks of a talk with a Scotch antiquary andherald as one of the things which soothed him most. "I do not knowanything which relieves the mind so much from the sullens as triflingdiscussions about antiquarian _old womanries_. It is like knitting astocking, diverting the mind without occupying it. "[7] Thus his loveof romantic literature was as far as possible from that of a mindwhich only feeds on romantic excitements; rather was it that of onewho was so moulded by the transmitted and acquired love of feudalinstitutions with all their incidents, that he could not take any deepinterest in any other fashion of human society. Now the Scotch lawwas full of vestiges and records of that period, --was indeed a greatstanding monument of it; and in numbers of his writings Scott showswith how deep an interest he had studied the Scotch law from thispoint of view. He remarks somewhere that it was natural for aScotchman to feel a strong attachment to the principle of rank, ifonly on the ground that almost any Scotchman might, under the Scotchlaw, turn out to be heir-in-tail to some great Scotch title or estateby the death of intervening relations. And the law which sometimescaused such sudden transformations, had subsequently a true interestfor him of course as a novel writer, to say nothing of his interest init as an antiquarian and historian who loved to repeople the earth, not merely with the picturesque groups of the soldiers and courts ofthe past, but with the actors in all the various quaint and homelytransactions and puzzlements which the feudal ages had brought forth. Hence though, as a matter of fact, Scott never made much figure as anadvocate, he became a very respectable, and might unquestionably havebecome a very great, lawyer. When he started at the bar, however, hehad not acquired the tact to impress an ordinary assembly. In one casewhich he conducted before the General Assembly of the Kirk ofScotland, when defending a parish minister threatened with depositionfor drunkenness and unseemly behaviour, he certainly missed the propertone, --first receiving a censure for the freedom of his manner intreating the allegations against his client, and then so farcollapsing under the rebuke of the Moderator, as to lose the force andurgency necessary to produce an effect on his audience. But these weremerely a boy's mishaps. He was certainly by no means a Heaven-bornorator, and therefore could not expect to spring into exceptionally_early_ distinction, and the only true reason for his relative failurewas that he was so full of literary power, and so proudly impatient ofthe fetters which prudence seemed to impose on his extra-professionalproceedings, that he never gained the credit he deserved for thegeneral common sense, the unwearied industry, and the keenappreciation of the ins and outs of legal method, which might haveraised him to the highest reputation even as a judge. 

All readers of his novels know how Scott delights in the humours ofthe law. By way of illustration take the following passage, which isboth short and amusing, in which Saunders Fairford--the old solicitorpainted from Scott's father in _Redgauntlet_--descants on the law ofthe stirrup-cup. "It was decided in a case before the town bailies ofCupar Angus, when Luckie Simpson's cow had drunk up Luckie Jamieson'sbrowst of ale, while it stood in the door to cool, that there was nodamage to pay, because the crummie drank without sitting down; suchbeing the circumstance constituting a Doch an Dorroch, which is astanding drink for which no reckoning is paid. " I do not believe thatany one of Scott's contemporaries had greater legal abilities than he, though, as it happened, they were never fairly tried. But he had boththe pride and impatience of genius. It fretted him to feel that he wasdependent on the good opinions of solicitors, and that they who wereincapable of understanding his genius, thought the less instead of thebetter of him as an advocate, for every indication which he gave ofthat genius. Even on the day of his call to the bar he gave expressionto a sort of humorous foretaste of this impatience, saying to WilliamClerk, who had been called with him, as he mimicked the air and toneof a Highland lass waiting at the Cross of Edinburgh to be hired forthe harvest, "We've stood here an hour by the Tron, hinny, and deil aane has speered our price. " Scott continued to practise at thebar--nominally at least--for fourteen years, but the most which heever seems to have made in any one year was short of 230_l. _, andlatterly his practice was much diminishing instead of increasing. Hisown impatience of solicitors' patronage was against him; hiswell-known dabblings in poetry were still more against him; and hisgeneral repute for wild and unprofessional adventurousness--which wasmuch greater than he deserved--was probably most of all against him. Before he had been six years at the bar he joined the organization ofthe Edinburgh Volunteer Cavalry, took a very active part in the drill, and was made their Quartermaster. Then he visited London, and becamelargely known for his ballads, and his love of ballads. In his eighthyear at the bar he accepted a small permanent appointment, with300_l. _ a year, as sheriff of Selkirkshire; and this occurring soonafter his marriage to a lady of some means, no doubt diminished stillfurther his professional zeal. For one third of the time during whichScott practised as an advocate he made no pretence of taking interestin that part of his work, though he was always deeply interested inthe law itself. In 1806 he undertook gratuitously the duties of aClerk of Session--a permanent officer of the Court at Edinburgh--anddischarged them without remuneration for five years, from 1806 to1811, in order to secure his ultimate succession to the office in theplace of an invalid, who for that period received all the emolumentsand did none of the work. Nevertheless Scott's legal abilities were sowell known, that it was certainly at one time intended to offer him aBarony of the Exchequer, and it was his own doing, apparently, that itwas not offered. The life of literature and the life of the Bar hardlyever suit, and in Scott's case they suited the less, that he felthimself likely to be a dictator in the one field, and only a postulantin the other. Literature was a far greater gainer by his choice, thanLaw could have been a loser. For his capacity for the law he sharedwith thousands of able men, his capacity for literature with few ornone. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 269-71. ]

[Footnote 6: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 206. ]

[Footnote 7: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 221. ]

CHAPTER III. 

LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 

One Sunday, about two years before his call to the bar, Scott offeredhis umbrella to a young lady of much beauty who was coming out of theGreyfriars Church during a shower; the umbrella was graciouslyaccepted; and it was not an unprecedented consequence that Scott fellin love with the borrower, who turned out to be Margaret, daughter ofSir John and Lady Jane Stuart Belches, of Invernay. For near six yearsafter this, Scott indulged the hope of marrying this lady, and it doesnot seem doubtful that the lady herself was in part responsible forthis impression. Scott's father, who thought his son's prospects veryinferior to those of Miss Stuart Belches, felt it his duty to warn thebaronet of his son's views, a warning which the old gentleman appearsto have received with that grand unconcern characteristic of elderlypersons in high position, as a hint intrinsically incredible, or atleast unworthy of notice. But he took no alarm, and Scott's attentionsto Margaret Stuart Belches continued till close on the eve of hermarriage, in 1796, to William Forbes (afterwards Sir William Forbes), of Pitsligo, a banker, who proved to be one of Sir Walter's mostgenerous and most delicate-minded friends, when his time of troublescame towards the end of both their lives. Whether Scott was in partmistaken as to the impression he had made on the young lady, or shewas mistaken as to the impression he had made on herself, or whetherother circumstances intervened to cause misunderstanding, or the grandindifference of Sir John gave way to active intervention when thequestion became a practical one, the world will now never know, but itdoes not seem very likely that a man of so much force as Scott, whocertainly had at one time assured himself at least of the young lady'sstrong regard, should have been easily displaced even by a rival ofability and of most generous and amiable character. An entry in thediary which Scott kept in 1827, after Constable's and Ballantyne'sfailure, and his wife's death, seems to me to suggest that there mayhave been some misunderstanding between the young people, though I amnot sure that the inference is justified. The passage completes thestory of this passion--Scott's first and only deep passion--so far asit can ever be known to us; and as it is a very pathetic andcharacteristic entry, and the attachment to which it refers had agreat influence on Scott's life, both in keeping him free from some ofthe most dangerous temptations of the young, during his youth, and increating within him an interior world of dreams and recollectionsthroughout his whole life, on which his imaginative nature wascontinually fed--I may as well give it. "He had taken, " says Mr. Lockhart, "for that winter [1827], the house No. 6, Shandwick Place, which he occupied by the month during the remainder of his servitudeas a clerk of session. Very near this house, he was told a few daysafter he took possession, dwelt the aged mother of his first love; andhe expressed to his friend Mrs. Skene, a wish that she should carryhim to renew an acquaintance which seems to have been interrupted fromthe period of his youthful romance. Mrs. Skene complied with hisdesire, and she tells me that a very painful scene ensued. " His diarysays, --"November 7th. Began to settle myself this morning after thehurry of mind and even of body which I have lately undergone. I wentto make a visit and fairly softened myself, like an old fool, withrecalling old stories till I was fit for nothing but shedding tearsand repeating verses for the whole night. This is sad work. The verygrave gives up its dead, and time rolls back thirty years to add to myperplexities. I don't care. I begin to grow case-hardened, and like astag turning at bay, my naturally good temper grows fierce anddangerous. Yet what a romance to tell--and told I fear it will one daybe. And then my three years of dreaming and my two years of wakeningwill be chronicled, doubtless. But the dead will feel nopain. --November 10th. At twelve o'clock I went again to poor Lady Janeto talk over old stories. I am not clear that it is a right orhealthful indulgence to be ripping up old sores, but it seems to giveher deep-rooted sorrow words, and that is a mental blood-letting. Tome these things are now matter of calm and solemn recollection, neverto be forgotten, yet scarce to be remembered with pain. "[8] It was in1797, after the break-up of his hopes in relation to this attachment, that Scott wrote the lines _To a Violet_, which Mr. F. T. Palgrave, inhis thoughtful and striking introduction to Scott's poems, rightlycharacterizes as one of the most beautiful of those poems. It is, however, far from one characteristic of Scott, indeed, so differentin style from the best of his other poems, that Mr. Browning mightwell have said of Scott, as he once affirmed of himself, that for thepurpose of one particular poem, he "who blows through bronze, " had"breathed through silver, "--had "curbed the liberal hand subservientproudly, "--and tamed his spirit to a key elsewhere unknown. 

 "The violet in her greenwood bower, Where birchen boughs with hazels mingle, May boast itself the fairest flower In glen, or copse, or forest dingle. 

 "Though fair her gems of azure hue, Beneath the dewdrop's weight reclining, I've seen an eye of lovelier blue, More sweet through watery lustre shining. 

 "The summer sun that dew shall dry, Ere yet the day be past its morrow; Nor longer in my false love's eye Remain'd the tear of parting sorrow. "

These lines obviously betray a feeling of resentment, which may or maynot have been justified; but they are perhaps the most delicateproduced by his pen. The pride which was always so notable a featurein Scott, probably sustained him through the keen, inward pain whichit is very certain from a great many of his own words that he musthave suffered in this uprooting of his most passionate hopes. And itwas in part probably the same pride which led him to form, within theyear, a new tie--his engagement to Mademoiselle Charpentier, or MissCarpenter as she was usually called, --the daughter of a Frenchroyalist of Lyons who had died early in the revolution. She had comeafter her father's death to England, chiefly, it seems, because in theMarquis of Downshire, who was an old friend of the family, her motherknew that she should find a protector for her children. Miss Carpenterwas a lively beauty, probably of no great depth of character. The fewletters given of hers in Mr. Lockhart's life of Scott, give theimpression of an amiable, petted girl, of somewhat thin and _espiègle_character, who was rather charmed at the depth and intensity ofScott's nature, and at the expectations which he seemed to form ofwhat love should mean, than capable of realizing them. Evidently shehad no inconsiderable pleasure in display; but she made on the whole avery good wife, only one to be protected by him from every care, andnot one to share Scott's deeper anxieties, or to participate in hisdreams. Yet Mrs. Scott was not devoid of spirit and self-control. Forinstance, when Mr. Jeffrey, having reviewed _Marmion_ in the_Edinburgh_ in that depreciating and omniscient tone which was thenconsidered the evidence of critical acumen, dined with Scott on thevery day on which the review had appeared, Mrs. Scott behaved to himthrough the whole evening with the greatest politeness, but fired thisparting shot in her broken English, as he took his leave, --"Well, goodnight, Mr. Jeffrey, --dey tell me you have abused Scott in de _Review_, and I hope Mr. Constable has paid you very well for writing it. " It ishinted that Mrs. Scott was, at the time of Scott's greatest fame, farmore exhilarated by it than her husband with his strong sense and sureself-measurement ever was. Mr. Lockhart records that Mrs. Grant ofLaggan once said of them, "Mr. Scott always seems to me like a glass, through which the rays of admiration pass without sensibly affectingit; but the bit of paper that lies beside it will presently be in ablaze, and no wonder. " The bit of paper, however, never was in a blazethat I know of; and possibly Mrs. Grant's remark may have had alittle feminine spite in it. At all events, it was not till the raysof misfortune, instead of admiration, fell upon Scott's life, that thedelicate tissue paper shrivelled up; nor does it seem that, even then, it was the trouble, so much as a serious malady that had fixed on LadyScott before Sir Walter's troubles began, which really scorched up herlife. That she did not feel with the depth and intensity of herhusband, or in the same key of feeling, is clear. After the failure, and during the preparations for abandoning the house in Edinburgh, Scott records in his diary:--"It is with a sense of pain that I leavebehind a parcel of trumpery prints and little ornaments, once thepride of Lady Scott's heart, but which she saw consigned withindifference to the chance of an auction. Things that have had theirday of importance with me, I cannot forget, though the merest trifles;but I am glad that she, with bad health, and enough to vex her, hasnot the same useless mode of associating recollections with thisunpleasant business. "[9]

Poor Lady Scott! It was rather like a bird of paradise mating with aneagle. Yet the result was happy on the whole; for she had a thoroughlykindly nature, and a true heart. Within ten days before her death, Scott enters in his diary:--"Still welcoming me with a smile, andasserting she is better. " She was not the ideal wife for Scott; butshe loved him, sunned herself in his prosperity, and tried to bear hisadversity cheerfully. In her last illness she would always reproachher husband and children for their melancholy faces, even when thatmelancholy was, as she well knew, due to the approaching shadow of herown death. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 8: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 183-4. ]

[Footnote 9: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 273. ]

CHAPTER IV. 

EARLIEST POETRY AND BORDER MINSTRELSY. 

Scott's first serious attempt in poetry was a version of Bürger's_Lenore_, a spectre-ballad of the violent kind, much in favour inGermany at a somewhat earlier period, but certainly not a specimen ofthe higher order of imaginative genius. However, it stirred Scott'syouthful blood, and made him "wish to heaven he could get a skull andtwo cross-bones!" a modest desire, to be expressed with so muchfervour, and one almost immediately gratified. Probably no one evergave a more spirited version of Bürger's ballad than Scott has given;but the use to which Miss Cranstoun, a friend and confidante of hislove for Miss Stuart Belches, strove to turn it, by getting itprinted, blazoned, and richly bound, and presenting it to the younglady as a proof of her admirer's abilities, was perhaps hardly verysagacious. It is quite possible, at least, that Miss Stuart Belchesmay have regarded this vehement admirer of spectral wedding journeysand skeleton bridals, as unlikely to prepare for her that comfortable, trim, and decorous future which young ladies usually desire. At anyrate, the bold stroke failed. The young lady admired the verses, but, as we have seen, declined the translator. Perhaps she regarded bankingas safer, if less brilliant work than the most effective descriptionof skeleton riders. Indeed, Scott at this time--to those who did notknow what was in him, which no one, not even excepting himself, did--had no very sure prospects of comfort, to say nothing of wealth. It is curious, too, that his first adventure in literature was thusconnected with his interest in the preternatural, for no man everlived whose genius was sounder and healthier, and less disposed todwell on the half-and-half lights of a dim and eerie world; yetghostly subjects always interested him deeply, and he often touchedthem in his stories, more, I think, from the strong artistic contrastthey afforded to his favourite conceptions of life, than from anyother motive. There never was, I fancy, an organization lesssusceptible of this order of fears and superstitions than his own. When a friend jokingly urged him, within a few months of his death, not to leave Rome on a Friday, as it was a day of bad omen for ajourney, he replied, laughing, "Superstition is very picturesque, andI make it, at times, stand me in great stead, but I never allow it tointerfere with interest or convenience. " Basil Hall reports Scott'shaving told him on the last evening of the year 1824, when they weretalking over this subject, that "having once arrived at a country inn, he was told there was no bed for him. 'No place to lie down at all?'said he. 'No, ' said the people of the house; 'none, except a room inwhich there is a corpse lying. ' 'Well, ' said he, 'did the person dieof any contagious disorder?' 'Oh, no; not at all, ' said they. 'Well, then, ' continued he, 'let me have the other bed. So, ' said Sir Walter, 'I laid me down, and never had a better night's sleep in my life. '" Hewas, indeed, a man of iron nerve, whose truest artistic enjoyment wasin noting the forms of character seen in full daylight by the light ofthe most ordinary experience. Perhaps for that reason he can onoccasion relate a preternatural incident, such as the appearance ofold Alice at the fountain, at the very moment of her death, to theMaster of Ravenswood, in _The Bride of Lammermoor_, with great effect. It was probably the vivacity with which he realized the violence whichsuch incidents do to the terrestrial common sense of our ordinarynature, and at the same time the sedulous accuracy of detail withwhich he narrated them, rather than any, even the smallest, specialsusceptibility of his own brain to thrills of the preternatural kind, which gave him rather a unique pleasure in dealing with suchpreternatural elements. Sometimes, however, his ghosts are a littletoo muscular to produce their due effect as ghosts. In translatingBürger's ballad his great success lay in the vividness of thespectre's horsemanship. For instance, --

 "Tramp! tramp! along the land they rode, Splash! splash! along the sea; The scourge is red, the spur drops blood, The flashing pebbles flee, "

is far better than any ghostly touch in it; so, too, every one willremember how spirited a rider is the white Lady of Avenel, in _TheMonastery_, and how vigorously she takes fords, --as vigorously as thesheriff himself, who was very fond of fords. On the whole, Scott wastoo sunny and healthy-minded for a ghost-seer; and the skull andcross-bones with which he ornamented his "den" in his father's house, did not succeed in tempting him into the world of twilight and cobwebswherein he made his first literary excursion. His _William and Helen_, the name he gave to his translation of Bürger's _Lenore_, made in1795, was effective, after all, more for its rapid movement, than forthe weirdness of its effects. 

If, however, it was the raw preternaturalism of such ballads asBürger's which first led Scott to test his own powers, his genius soonturned to more appropriate and natural subjects. Ever since hisearliest college days he had been collecting, in those excursions ofhis into Liddesdale and elsewhere, materials for a book on _TheMinstrelsy of the Scottish Border_; and the publication of this work, in January, 1802 (in two volumes at first), was his first greatliterary success. The whole edition of eight hundred copies was soldwithin the year, while the skill and care which Scott had devoted tothe historical illustration of the ballads, and the force and spiritof his own new ballads, written in imitation of the old, gained him atonce a very high literary name. And the name was well deserved. The_Border Minstrelsy_ was more commensurate _in range_ with the geniusof Scott, than even the romantic poems by which it was soon followed, and which were received with such universal and almost unparalleleddelight. For Scott's _Border Minstrelsy_ gives more than a glimpse ofall his many great powers--his historical industry and knowledge, hismasculine humour, his delight in restoring the vision of the "old, simple, violent world" of rugged activity and excitement, as well asthat power to kindle men's hearts, as by a trumpet-call, which was thechief secret of the charm of his own greatest poems. It is much easierto discern the great novelist of subsequent years in the _BorderMinstrelsy_ than even in _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, _Marmion_, and _The Lady of the Lake_ taken together. From those romantic poemsyou would never guess that Scott entered more eagerly and heartilyinto the common incidents and common cares of every-day human lifethan into the most romantic fortunes; from them you would never knowhow completely he had mastered the leading features of quitedifferent periods of our history; from them you would never infer thatyou had before you one of the best plodders, as well as one of themost enthusiastic dreamers, in British literature. But all this mighthave been gathered from the various introductions and notes to the_Border Minstrelsy_, which are full of skilful illustrations, ofcomments teeming with humour, and of historic weight. The generalintroduction gives us a general survey of the graphic pictures ofBorder quarrels, their simple violence and simple cunning. It enters, for instance, with grave humour into the strong distinction taken inthe debatable land between a "freebooter" and a "thief, " and thedifficulty which the inland counties had in grasping it, and paintsfor us, with great vivacity, the various Border superstitions. Anothercommentary on a very amusing ballad, commemorating the manner in whicha blind harper stole a horse and got paid for a mare he had not lost, gives an account of the curious tenure of land, called that of the"king's rentallers, " or "kindly tenants;" and a third describes, inlanguage as vivid as the historical romance of _Kenilworth_, writtenyears after, the manner in which Queen Elizabeth received the news ofa check to her policy, and vented her spleen on the King of Scotland. 

So much as to the breadth of the literary area which this first bookof Scott's covered. As regards the poetic power which his own newballads, in imitation of the old ones, evinced, I cannot say thatthose of the first issue of the _Border Minstrelsy_ indicated anythinglike the force which might have been expected from one who was so soonto be the author of _Marmion_, though many of Scott's warmestadmirers, including Sir Francis Doyle, seem to place _Glenfinlas_among his finest productions. But in the third volume of the _BorderMinstrelsy_, which did not appear till 1803, is contained a ballad onthe assassination of the Regent Murray, the story being told by hisassassin, which seems to me a specimen of his very highest poeticalpowers. In _Cadyow Castle_ you have not only that rousing trumpet-notewhich you hear in _Marmion, _ but the pomp and glitter of a grandmartial scene is painted with all Scott's peculiar terseness andvigour. The opening is singularly happy in preparing the reader forthe description of a violent deed. The Earl of Arran, chief of theclan of Hamiltons, is chasing among the old oaks of CadyowCastle, --oaks which belonged to the ancient Caledonian forest, --thefierce, wild bulls, milk-white, with black muzzles, which were notextirpated till shortly before Scott's own birth:--

 "Through the huge oaks of Evandale, Whose limbs a thousand years have worn, What sullen roar comes down the gale, And drowns the hunter's pealing horn?

 "Mightiest of all the beasts of chase That roam in woody Caledon, Crashing the forest in his race, The mountain bull comes thundering on. 

 "Fierce on the hunter's quiver'd band He rolls his eyes of swarthy glow, Spurns, with black hoof and horn, the sand, And tosses high his mane of snow. 

 "Aim'd well, the chieftain's lance has flown; Struggling in blood the savage lies; His roar is sunk in hollow groan, -- Sound, merry huntsman! sound the pryse!"

It is while the hunters are resting after this feat, thatBothwellhaugh dashes among them headlong, spurring his jaded steedwith poniard instead of spur:--

 "From gory selle and reeling steed, Sprang the fierce horseman with a bound, And reeking from the recent deed, He dash'd his carbine on the ground. "

And then Bothwellhaugh tells his tale of blood, describing theprocession from which he had singled out his prey:--

 "'Dark Morton, girt with many a spear, Murder's foul minion, led the van; And clash'd their broadswords in the rear The wild Macfarlanes' plaided clan. 

 "'Glencairn and stout Parkhead were nigh, Obsequious at their Regent's rein, And haggard Lindsay's iron eye, That saw fair Mary weep in vain. 

 "''Mid pennon'd spears, a steely grove, Proud Murray's plumage floated high; Scarce could his trampling charger move, So close the minions crowded nigh. 

 "'From the raised vizor's shade, his eye, Dark rolling, glanced the ranks along, And his steel truncheon waved on high, Seem'd marshalling the iron throng. 

 "'But yet his sadden'd brow confess'd A passing shade of doubt and awe; Some fiend was whispering in his breast, "Beware of injured Bothwellhaugh!"

 "'The death-shot parts, --the charger springs, -- Wild rises tumult's startling roar! And Murray's plumy helmet rings-- Rings on the ground to rise no more. '"

This was the ballad which made so strong an impression on Thomas Campbell, the poet. Referring to some of the lines I have quoted, Campbellsaid, --"I have repeated them so often on the North Bridge that the wholefraternity of coachmen know me by tongue as I pass. To be sure, to a mindin sober, serious, street-walking humour, it must bear an appearance oflunacy when one stamps with the hurried pace and fervent shake of the headwhich strong, pithy poetry excites. "[10] I suppose anecdotes of this kindhave been oftener told of Scott than of any other English poet. Indeed, Sir Walter, who understood himself well, gives the explanation in one ofhis diaries:--"I am sensible, " he says, "that if there be anything goodabout my poetry or prose either, it is a hurried frankness of composition, which pleases soldiers, sailors, and young people of bold and activedispositions. "[11] He might have included old people too. I have heard oftwo old men--complete strangers--passing each other on a dark Londonnight, when one of them happened to be repeating to himself, just asCampbell did to the hackney coachmen of the North Bridge of Edinburgh, thelast lines of the account of Flodden Field in _Marmion_, "Charge, Chester, charge, " when suddenly a reply came out of the darkness, "On, Stanley, on, " whereupon they finished the death of Marmion between them, took offtheir hats to each other, and parted, laughing. Scott's is almost the onlypoetry in the English language that not only runs thus in the head ofaverage men, but heats the head in which it runs by the mere force of itshurried frankness of style, to use Scott's own terms, or by that of itsstrong and pithy eloquence, as Campbell phrased it. And in _Cadyow Castle_this style is at its culminating point. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 79. ]

[Footnote 11: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 370. ]

CHAPTER V. 

SCOTT'S MATURER POEMS. 

Scott's genius flowered late. _Cadyow Castle_, the first of his poems, I think, that has indisputable genius plainly stamped on its terse andfiery lines, was composed in 1802, when he was already thirty-oneyears of age. It was in the same year that he wrote the first canto ofhis first great romance in verse, _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, apoem which did not appear till 1805, when he was thirty-four. Thefirst canto (not including the framework, of which the aged harper isthe principal figure) was written in the lodgings to which he wasconfined for a fortnight in 1802, by a kick received from a horse onPortobello sands, during a charge of the Volunteer Cavalry in whichScott was cornet. The poem was originally intended to be included inthe _Border Minstrelsy_, as one of the studies in the antique style, but soon outgrew the limits of such a study both in length and in thefreedom of its manner. Both the poorest and the best parts of _TheLay_ were in a special manner due to Lady Dalkeith (afterwards Duchessof Buccleugh), who suggested it, and in whose honour the poem waswritten. It was she who requested Scott to write a poem on the legendof the goblin page, Gilpin Horner, and this Scott attempted, --and, sofar as the goblin himself was concerned, conspicuously failed. Hehimself clearly saw that the story of this unmanageable imp was bothconfused and uninteresting, and that in fact he had to extricatehimself from the original groundwork of the tale, as from a regularliterary scrape, in the best way he could. In a letter to Miss Seward, Scott says, --"At length the story appeared so uncouth that I was fainto put it into the mouth of my old minstrel, lest the nature of itshould be misunderstood, and I should be suspected of setting up a newschool of poetry, instead of a feeble attempt to imitate the old. Inthe process of the romance, the page, intended to be a principalperson in the work, contrived (from the baseness of his naturalpropensities, I suppose) to slink down stairs into the kitchen, andnow he must e'en abide there. "[12] And I venture to say that no readerof the poem ever has distinctly understood what the goblin page did ordid not do, what it was that was "lost" throughout the poem and"found" at the conclusion, what was the object of his personating theyoung heir of the house of Scott, and whether or not that object wasanswered;--what use, if any, the magic book of Michael Scott was tothe Lady of Branksome, or whether it was only harm to her; and I doubtmoreover whether any one ever cared an iota what answer, or whetherany answer, might be given to any of these questions. All this, asScott himself clearly perceived, was left confused, and not simplyvague. The goblin imp had been more certainly an imp of mischief tohim than even to his boyish ancestor. But if Lady Dalkeith suggestedthe poorest part of the poem, she certainly inspired its best part. Scott says, as we have seen, that he brought in the aged harper tosave himself from the imputation of "setting-up a new school ofpoetry" instead of humbly imitating an old school. But I think thatthe chivalrous wish to do honour to Lady Dalkeith, both as a personalfriend and as the wife of his "chief, "--as he always called the headof the house of Scott, --had more to do with the introduction of theaged harper, than the wish to guard himself against the imputation ofattempting a new poetic style. He clearly intended the Duchess of _TheLay_ to represent the Countess for whom he wrote it, and the agedharper, with his reverence and gratitude and self-distrust, was onlythe disguise in which he felt that he could best pour out his loyalty, and the romantic devotion with which both Lord and Lady Dalkeith, butespecially the latter, had inspired him. It was certainly thisbeautiful framework which assured the immediate success and permanentcharm of the poem; and the immediate success was for that daysomething marvellous. The magnificent quarto edition of 750 copies wassoon exhausted, and an octavo edition of 1500 copies was sold outwithin the year. In the following year two editions, containingtogether 4250 copies, were disposed of, and before twenty-five yearshad elapsed, that is, before 1830, 44, 000 copies of the poem had beenbought by the public in this country, taking account of the legitimatetrade alone. Scott gained in all by _The Lay_ 769_l. _, anunprecedented sum in those times for an author to obtain from anypoem. Little more than half a century before, Johnson received butfifteen guineas for his stately poem on _The Vanity of Human Wishes_, and but ten guineas for his _London_. I do not say that Scott's poemhad not much more in it of true poetic fire, though Scott himself, Ibelieve, preferred these poems of Johnson's to anything that hehimself ever wrote. But the disproportion in the reward was certainlyenormous, and yet what Scott gained by his _Lay_ was of course muchless than he gained by any of his subsequent poems of equal, oranything like equal, length. Thus for _Marmion_ he received 1000guineas long before the poem was published, and for _one half_ of thecopyright of _The Lord of the Isles_ Constable paid Scott 1500guineas. If we ask ourselves to what this vast popularity of Scott'spoems, and especially of the earlier of them (for, as often happens, he was better remunerated for his later and much inferior poems thanfor his earlier and more brilliant productions) is due, I think theanswer must be for the most part, the high romantic glow andextraordinary romantic simplicity of the poetical elements theycontained. Take the old harper of _The Lay_, a figure which arrestedthe attention of Pitt during even that last most anxious year of hisanxious life, the year of Ulm and Austerlitz. The lines in which Scottdescribes the old man's embarrassment when first urged to play, produced on Pitt, according to his own account, "an effect which Imight have expected in painting, but could never have fancied capableof being given in poetry. "[13]

Every one knows the lines to which Pitt refers:--

 "The humble boon was soon obtain'd; The aged minstrel audience gain'd. But, when he reach'd the room of state, Where she with all her ladies sate, Perchance he wish'd his boon denied; For, when to tune the harp he tried, His trembling hand had lost the ease Which marks security to please; And scenes long past, of joy and pain, Came wildering o'er his aged brain, -- He tried to tune his harp in vain! The pitying Duchess praised its chime, And gave him heart, and gave him time, Till every string's according glee Was blended into harmony. And then, he said, he would full fain He could recall an ancient strain He never thought to sing again. It was not framed for village churls, But for high dames and mighty earls; He'd play'd it to King Charles the Good, When he kept Court at Holyrood; And much he wish'd, yet fear'd, to try The long-forgotten melody. Amid the strings his fingers stray'd, And an uncertain warbling made, And oft he shook his hoary head. But when he caught the measure wild The old man raised his face, and smiled; And lighten'd up his faded eye, With all a poet's ecstasy! In varying cadence, soft or strong, He swept the sounding chords along; The present scene, the future lot, His toils, his wants, were all forgot; Cold diffidence and age's frost In the full tide of song were lost; Each blank in faithless memory void The poet's glowing thought supplied; And, while his harp responsive rung, 'Twas thus the latest minstrel sung. 

 * * * * *

 Here paused the harp; and with its swell The master's fire and courage fell; Dejectedly and low he bow'd, And, gazing timid on the crowd, He seem'd to seek in every eye If they approved his minstrelsy; And, diffident of present praise, Somewhat he spoke of former days, And how old age, and wandering long, Had done his hand and harp some wrong. "

These lines hardly illustrate, I think, the particular form of Mr. Pitt's criticism, for a quick succession of fine shades of feeling ofthis kind could never have been delineated in a painting, or indeed ina series of paintings, at all, while they _are_ so given in the poem. But the praise itself, if not its exact form, is amply deserved. Thesingular depth of the romantic glow in this passage, and its equallysingular simplicity, --a simplicity which makes it intelligible toevery one, --are conspicuous to every reader. It is not what is calledclassical poetry, for there is no severe outline, --no sculpturedcompleteness and repose, --no satisfying wholeness of effect to the eyeof the mind, --no embodiment of a great action. The poet gives us abreath, a ripple of alternating fear and hope in the heart of an oldman, and that is all. He catches an emotion that had its roots deep inthe past, and that is striving onward towards something in thefuture;--he traces the wistfulness and self-distrust with which ageseeks to recover the feelings of youth, --the delight with which itgreets them when they come, --the hesitation and diffidence with whichit recalls them as they pass away, and questions the triumph it hasjust won, --and he paints all this without subtlety, withoutcomplexity, but with a swiftness such as few poets ever surpassed. Generally, however, Scott prefers action itself for his subject, toany feeling, however active in its bent. The cases in which he makes astudy of any mood of feeling, as he does of this harper's feeling, arecomparatively rare. Deloraine's night-ride to Melrose is a good dealmore in Scott's ordinary way, than this study of the old harper'swistful mood. But whatever his subject, his treatment of it is thesame. His lines are always strongly drawn; his handling is alwayssimple; and his subject always romantic. But though romantic, it issimple almost to bareness, --one of the great causes both of hispopularity, and of that deficiency in his poetry of which so many ofhis admirers become conscious when they compare him with other andricher poets. Scott used to say that in poetry Byron "bet" him; and nodoubt that in which chiefly as a poet he "bet" him, was in thevariety, the richness, the lustre of his effects. A certain ruggednessand bareness was of the essence of Scott's idealism and romance. Itwas so in relation to scenery. He told Washington Irving that he lovedthe very nakedness of the Border country. "It has something, " he said, "bold and stern and solitary about it. When I have been for some timein the rich scenery about Edinburgh, which is like ornamentedgarden-land, I begin to wish myself back again among my honest greyhills, and if I did not see the heather at least once a year, _I thinkI should die_. "[14] Now, the bareness which Scott so loved in hisnative scenery, there is in all his romantic elements of feeling. Itis while he is bold and stern, that he is at his highest ideal point. Directly he begins to attempt rich or pretty subjects, as in parts of_The Lady of the Lake_, and a good deal of _The Lord of the Isles_, and still more in _The Bridal of Triermain_, his charm disappears. Itis in painting those moods and exploits, in relation to which Scottshares most completely the feelings of ordinary men, but experiencesthem with far greater strength and purity than ordinary men, that hetriumphs as a poet. Mr. Lockhart tells us that some of Scott's senseswere decidedly "blunt, " and one seems to recognize this in thesimplicity of his romantic effects. "It is a fact, " he says, "which some philosophers may think worth setting down, that Scott'sorganization, as to more than one of the senses, was the reverse ofexquisite. He had very little of what musicians call an ear; his smellwas hardly more delicate. I have seen him stare about, quiteunconscious of the cause, when his whole company betrayed theiruneasiness at the approach of an overkept haunch of venison; andneither by the nose nor the palate could he distinguish corked winefrom sound. He could never tell Madeira from sherry, --nay, an Orientalfriend having sent him a butt of _sheeraz_, when he remembered thecircumstance some time afterwards and called for a bottle to have SirJohn Malcolm's opinion of its quality, it turned out that his butler, mistaking the label, had already served up half the bin as _sherry_. Port he considered as physic ... In truth he liked no wines exceptsparkling champagne and claret; but even as to the last he was noconnoisseur, and sincerely preferred a tumbler of whisky-toddy to themost precious 'liquid-ruby' that ever flowed in the cup of aprince. "[15]

However, Scott's eye was very keen:--"_It was commonly him_, " as hislittle son once said, "_that saw the hare sitting_. " And hisperception of colour was very delicate as well as his mere sight. AsMr. Ruskin has pointed out, his landscape painting is almost all doneby the lucid use of colour. Nevertheless this bluntness oforganization in relation to the less important senses, no doubtcontributed something to the singleness and simplicity of the deeperand more vital of Scott's romantic impressions; at least there is goodreason to suppose that delicate and complicated susceptibilities do atleast diminish the chance of living a strong and concentratedlife--do risk the frittering away of feeling on the mere backwaters ofsensations, even if they do not directly tend towards artificial andindirect forms of character. Scott's romance is like his nativescenery, --bold, bare and rugged, with a swift deep stream of strongpure feeling running through it. There is plenty of colour in hispictures, as there is on the Scotch hills when the heather is out. Andso too there is plenty of intensity in his romantic situations; but itis the intensity of simple, natural, unsophisticated, hardy, and manlycharacters. But as for subtleties and fine shades of feeling in hispoems, or anything like the manifold harmonies of the richer arts, they are not to be found, or, if such complicated shading is to befound--and it is perhaps attempted in some faint measure in _TheBridal of Triermain, _ the poem in which Scott tried to pass himselfoff for Erskine, --it is only at the expense of the higher qualities ofhis romantic poetry, that even in this small measure it is supplied. Again, there is no rich music in his verse. It is its rapid onset, itshurrying strength, which so fixes it in the mind. 

It was not till 1808, three years after the publication of _The Lay_, that_Marmion_, Scott's greatest poem, was published. But I may as well say whatseems necessary of that and his other poems, while I am on the subject ofhis poetry. _Marmion_ has all the advantage over _The Lay of the LastMinstrel_ that a coherent story told with force and fulness, and concernedwith the same class of subjects as _The Lay_, must have over a confused andill-managed legend, the only original purpose of which was to serve as theopportunity for a picture of Border life and strife. Scott's poems havesometimes been depreciated as mere _novelettes_ in verse, and I think thatsome of them may be more or less liable to this criticism. For instance, _The Lady of the Lake_, with the exception of two or three brilliantpassages, has always seemed to me more of a versified _novelette_, --withoutthe higher and broader characteristics of Scott's prose novels--than of apoem. I suppose what one expects from a poem as distinguished from aromance--even though the poem incorporates a story--is that it should notrest for its chief interest on the mere development of the story; butrather that the narrative should be quite subordinate to that insight intothe deeper side of life and manners, in expressing which poetry has sogreat an advantage over prose. Of _The Lay_ and _Marmion_ this is true;less true of _The Lady of the Lake_, and still less of _Rokeby_, or _TheLord of the Isles_, and this is why _The Lay_ and _Marmion_ seem so muchsuperior as poems to the others. They lean less on the interest of mereincident, more on that of romantic feeling and the great social andhistoric features of the day. _Marmion_ was composed in great part in thesaddle, and the stir of a charge of cavalry seems to be at the very core ofit. "For myself, " said Scott, writing to a lady correspondent at a timewhen he was in active service as a volunteer, "I must own that to one whohas, like myself, _la tête un peu exaltée_, the pomp and circumstance ofwar gives, for a time, a very poignant and pleasing sensation. "[16] And youfeel this all through _Marmion_ even more than in _The Lay_. Mr. Darwinwould probably say that Auld Wat of Harden had about as much responsibilityfor _Marmion_ as Sir Walter himself. "You will expect, " he wrote to thesame lady, who was personally unknown to him at that time, "to see aperson who had dedicated himself to literary pursuits, and you will find mea rattle-skulled, half-lawyer, half-sportsman, through whose head aregiment of horse has been exercising since he was five years old. "[17] Andwhat Scott himself felt in relation to the martial elements of his poetry, soldiers in the field felt with equal force. "In the course of the day when_The Lady of the Lake_ first reached Sir Adam Fergusson, he was posted withhis company on a point of ground exposed to the enemy's artillery, somewhere no doubt on the lines of Torres Vedras. The men were ordered tolie prostrate on the ground; while they kept that attitude, the captain, kneeling at the head, read aloud the description of the battle in CantoVI. , and the listening soldiers only interrupted him by a joyous huzza whenthe French shot struck the bank close above them. "[18] It is not often thatmartial poetry has been put to such a test; but we can well understand withwhat rapture a Scotch force lying on the ground to shelter from the Frenchfire, would enter into such passages as the following:--

 "Their light-arm'd archers far and near Survey'd the tangled ground, Their centre ranks, with pike and spear, A twilight forest frown'd, Their barbèd horsemen, in the rear, The stern battalia crown'd. No cymbal clash'd, no clarion rang, Still were the pipe and drum; Save heavy tread, and armour's clang, The sullen march was dumb. There breathed no wind their crests to shake, Or wave their flags abroad; Scarce the frail aspen seem'd to quake, That shadow'd o'er their road. Their vanward scouts no tidings bring, Can rouse no lurking foe, Nor spy a trace of living thing Save when they stirr'd the roe; The host moves like a deep-sea wave, Where rise no rocks its power to brave, High-swelling, dark, and slow. The lake is pass'd, and now they gain A narrow and a broken plain, Before the Trosach's rugged jaws, And here the horse and spearmen pause, While, to explore the dangerous glen, Dive through the pass the archer-men. 

 "At once there rose so wild a yell Within that dark and narrow dell, As all the fiends from heaven that fell Had peal'd the banner-cry of Hell! Forth from the pass, in tumult driven, Like chaff before the wind of heaven, The archery appear; For life! for life! their plight they ply, And shriek, and shout, and battle-cry, And plaids and bonnets waving high, And broadswords flashing to the sky, Are maddening in the rear. Onward they drive, in dreadful race, Pursuers and pursued; Before that tide of flight and chase, How shall it keep its rooted place, The spearmen's twilight wood? Down, down, cried Mar, 'your lances down Bear back both friend and foe!' Like reeds before the tempest's frown, That serried grove of lances brown At once lay levell'd low; And, closely shouldering side to side, The bristling ranks the onset bide, -- 'We'll quell the savage mountaineer, As their Tinchel cows the game! They came as fleet as forest deer, We'll drive them back as tame. '"

But admirable in its stern and deep excitement as that is, the battleof Flodden in _Marmion_ passes it in vigour, and constitutes perhapsthe most perfect description of war by one who was--almost--both poetand warrior, which the English language contains. 

And _Marmion_ registers the high-water mark of Scott's poetical power, not only in relation to the painting of war, but in relation to thepainting of nature. Critics from the beginning onwards have complainedof the six introductory epistles, as breaking the unity of the story. But I cannot see that the remark has weight. No poem is written forthose who read it as they do a novel--merely to follow the interest ofthe story; or if any poem be written for such readers, it deserves todie. On such a principle--which treats a poem as a mere novel andnothing else, --you might object to Homer that he interrupts the battleso often to dwell on the origin of the heroes who are waging it; or toByron that he deserts Childe Harold to meditate on the rapture ofsolitude. To my mind the ease and frankness of these confessions ofthe author's recollections give a picture of his life and characterwhile writing _Marmion_, which adds greatly to its attraction as apoem. You have a picture at once not only of the scenery, but of themind in which that scenery is mirrored, and are brought back frankly, at fit intervals, from the one to the other, in the mode best adaptedto help you to appreciate the relation of the poet to the poem. Atleast if Milton's various interruptions of a much more ambitioustheme, to muse upon his own qualifications or disqualifications forthe task he had attempted, be not artistic mistakes--and I never heardof any one who thought them so--I cannot see any reason why Scott'speriodic recurrence to his own personal history should be artisticmistakes either. If Scott's reverie was less lofty than Milton's, soalso was his story. It seems to me as fitting to describe the relationbetween the poet and his theme in the one case as in the other. Whatcan be more truly a part of _Marmion_, as a poem, though not as astory, than that introduction to the first canto in which Scottexpresses his passionate sympathy with the high national feeling ofthe moment, in his tribute to Pitt and Fox, and then reproacheshimself for attempting so great a subject and returns to what he callshis "rude legend, " the very essence of which was, however, apassionate appeal to the spirit of national independence? What can bemore germane to the poem than the delineation of the strength the poethad derived from musing in the bare and rugged solitudes of St. Mary'sLake, in the introduction to the second canto? Or than the strikingautobiographical study of his own infancy which I have beforeextracted from the introduction to the third? It seems to me that_Marmion_ without these introductions would be like the hills whichborder Yarrow, without the stream and lake in which they arereflected. 

Never at all events in any later poem was Scott's touch as a merepainter so terse and strong. What a picture of a Scotch winter isgiven in these few lines:--

 "The sheep before the pinching heaven To shelter'd dale and down are driven, Where yet some faded herbage pines, And yet a watery sunbeam shines: In meek despondency they eye The wither'd sward and wintry sky, And from beneath their summer hill Stray sadly by Glenkinnon's rill. "

Again, if Scott is ever Homeric (which I cannot think he often is), in spite of Sir Francis Doyle's able criticism, --(he is too short, toosharp, and too eagerly bent on his rugged way, for a poet who isalways delighting to find loopholes, even in battle, from which tolook out upon the great story of human nature), he is certainlynearest to it in such a passage as this:--

 "The Isles-men carried at their backs The ancient Danish battle-axe. They raised a wild and wondering cry As with his guide rode Marmion by. Loud were their clamouring tongues, as when The clanging sea-fowl leave the fen, And, with their cries discordant mix'd, Grumbled and yell'd the pipes betwixt. "

In hardly any of Scott's poetry do we find much of what is called the_curiosa felicitas_ of expression, --the magic use of _words_, asdistinguished from the mere general effect of vigour, purity, andconcentration of purpose. But in _Marmion_ occasionally we do findsuch a use. Take this description, for instance, of the Scotch tentsnear Edinburgh:--

 "A thousand did I say? I ween Thousands on thousands there were seen, That chequer'd all the heath between The streamlet and the town; In crossing ranks extending far, Forming a camp irregular; Oft giving way where still there stood Some relics of the old oak wood, That darkly huge did intervene, _And tamed the glaring white with green_; In these extended lines there lay A martial kingdom's vast array. "

The line I have italicized seems to me to have more of the poet'sspecial magic of expression than is at all usual with Scott. Theconception of the peaceful green oak wood _taming_ the glaring whiteof the tented field, is as fine in idea as it is in relation to theeffect of the mere colour on the eye. Judge Scott's poetry by whatevertest you will--whether it be a test of that which is peculiar to it, its glow of national feeling, its martial ardour, its swift and ruggedsimplicity, or whether it be a test of that which is common to it withmost other poetry, its attraction for all romantic excitements, itsspecial feeling for the pomp and circumstance of war, its love oflight and colour--and tested either way, _Marmion_ will remain hisfinest poem. The battle of Flodden Field touches his highest point inits expression of stern patriotic feeling, in its passionate love ofdaring, and in the force and swiftness of its movement, no less thanin the brilliancy of its romantic interests, the charm of itspicturesque detail, and the glow of its scenic colouring. No poet everequalled Scott in the description of wild and simple scenes and theexpression of wild and simple feelings. But I have said enough now ofhis poetry, in which, good as it is, Scott's genius did not reach itshighest point. The hurried tramp of his somewhat monotonous metre, isapt to weary the ears of men who do not find their sufficienthappiness, as he did, in dreaming of the wild and daring enterprisesof his loved Border-land. The very quality in his verse which makes itseize so powerfully on the imaginations of plain, bold, adventurousmen, often makes it hammer fatiguingly against the brain of those whoneed the relief of a wider horizon and a richer world. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 12: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 217. ]

[Footnote 13: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 226. ]

[Footnote 14: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 248. ]

[Footnote 15: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 338. ]

[Footnote 16: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 137. ]

[Footnote 17: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 259. ]

[Footnote 18: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii. 327. ]

CHAPTER VI. 

COMPANIONS AND FRIENDS. 

I have anticipated in some degree, in speaking of Scott's laterpoetical works, what, in point of time at least, should follow someslight sketch of his chosen companions, and of his occupations in thefirst period of his married life. Scott's most intimate friend forsome time after he went to college, probably the one who moststimulated his imagination in his youth, and certainly one of his mostintimate friends to the very last, was William Clerk, who was calledto the bar on the same day as Scott. He was the son of John Clerk ofEldin, the author of a book of some celebrity in its time on _NavalTactics_. Even in the earliest days of this intimacy, the lads who hadbeen Scott's fellow-apprentices in his father's office, saw with somejealousy his growing friendship with William Clerk, and remonstratedwith Scott on the decline of his regard for them, but only succeededin eliciting from him one of those outbursts of peremptory franknesswhich anything that he regarded as an attempt to encroach on his owninterior liberty of choice always provoked. "I will never cut anyman, " he said, "unless I detect him in scoundrelism, but I know notwhat right any of you have to interfere with my choice of my company. As it is, I fairly own that though I like many of you very much, andhave long done so, I think William Clerk well worth you all puttogether. "[19] Scott never lost the friendship which began with thiseager enthusiasm, but his chief intimacy with Clerk was during hisyounger days. 

In 1808 Scott describes Clerk as "a man of the most acute intellects andpowerful apprehension, who, if he should ever shake loose the fetters ofindolence by which he has been hitherto trammelled, cannot fail to bedistinguished in the highest degree. " Whether for the reason suggested, orfor some other, Clerk never actually gained any other distinction so greatas his friendship with Scott conferred upon him. Probably Scott haddiscerned the true secret of his friend's comparative obscurity. Evenwhile preparing for the bar, when they had agreed to go on alternatemornings to each other's lodgings to read together, Scott found itnecessary to modify the arrangement by always visiting his friend, whom heusually found in bed. It was William Clerk who sat for the picture ofDarsie Latimer, the hero of _Redgauntlet_, --whence we should suppose himto have been a lively, generous, susceptible, contentious, and ratherhelter-skelter young man, much alive to the ludicrous in all situations, very eager to see life in all its phases, and somewhat vain of his powerof adapting himself equally to all these phases. Scott tells a story ofClerk's being once baffled--almost for the first time--by a stranger in astage coach, who would not, or could not, talk to him on any subject, until at last Clerk addressed to him this stately remonstrance, "I havetalked to you, my friend, on all the ordinary subjects--literature, farming, merchandise, gaming, game-laws, horse-races, suits-at-law, politics, swindling, blasphemy, and philosophy, --is there any one subjectthat you will favour me by opening upon?" "Sir, " replied the inscrutablestranger, "can you say anything clever about '_bend-leather_'?"[20] Nodoubt this superficial familiarity with a vast number of subjects was agreat fascination to Scott, and a great stimulus to his own imagination. To the last he held the same opinion of his friend's latent powers. "To mythinking, " he wrote in his diary in 1825, "I never met a man of greaterpowers, of more complete information on all desirable subjects. " But inyouth at least Clerk seems to have had what Sir Walter calls acharacteristic Edinburgh complaint, the "itch for disputation, " and thoughhe softened this down in later life, he had always that slightcontentiousness of bias which enthusiastic men do not often heartily like, and which may have prevented Scott from continuing to the full the closeintimacy of those earlier years. Yet almost his last record of a reallydelightful evening, refers to a bachelor's dinner given by Mr. Clerk, whoremained unmarried, as late as 1827, after all Sir Walter's worst troubleshad come upon him. "In short, " says the diary, "we really laughed, andreal laughter is as rare as real tears. I must say, too, there was a_heart_, a kindly feeling prevailed over the party. Can London give such adinner?"[21] It is clear, then, that Clerk's charm for his friend survivedto the last, and that it was not the mere inexperience of boyhood, whichmade Scott esteem him so highly in his early days. 

If Clerk pricked, stimulated, and sometimes badgered Scott, another ofhis friends who became more and more intimate with him, as life wenton, and who died before him, always soothed him, partly by hisgentleness, partly by his almost feminine dependence. This was WilliamErskine, also a barrister, and son of an Episcopalian clergyman inPerthshire, --to whose influence it is probably due that Scott himselfalways read the English Church service in his own country house, anddoes not appear to have retained the Presbyterianism into which he wasborn. Erskine, who was afterwards raised to the Bench as LordKinnedder--a distinction which he did not survive for many months--wasa good classic, a man of fine, or, as some of his companions thought, of almost superfine taste. The style apparently for which he hadcredit must have been a somewhat mimini-pimini style, if we may judgeby Scott's attempt in _The Bridal of Triermain_, to write in a mannerwhich he intended to be attributed to his friend. Erskine was left awidower in middle life, and Scott used to accuse him of philanderingwith pretty women, --- a mode of love-making which Scott certainlycontrived to render into verse, in painting Arthur's love-making toLucy in that poem. It seems that some absolutely false accusationbrought against Lord Kinnedder, of an intrigue with a lady with whomhe had been thus philandering, broke poor Erskine's heart, during hisfirst year as a Judge. "The Counsellor (as Scott always called him)was, " says Mr. Lockhart, "a little man of feeble make, who seemedunhappy when his pony got beyond a footpace, and had never, I shouldsuppose, addicted himself to any out of door's sports whatever. Hewould, I fancy, as soon have thought of slaying his own mutton as ofhandling a fowling-piece; he used to shudder when he saw a partyequipped for coursing, as if murder was in the wind; but the cool, meditative angler was in his eyes the abomination of abominations. Hissmall elegant features, hectic cheek and soft hazel eyes, were theindex of the quick, sensitive, gentle spirit within. " "He woulddismount to lead his horse down what his friend hardly perceived to bea descent at all; grew pale at a precipice; and, unlike the white ladyof Avenel, would go a long way round for a bridge. " He shrank fromgeneral society, and lived in closer intimacies, and his intimacy withScott was of the closest. He was Scott's confidant in all literarymatters, and his advice was oftener followed on questions of style andform, and of literary enterprise, than that of any other of Scott'sfriends. It is into Erskine's mouth that Scott puts the supposedexhortation to himself to choose more classical subjects for hispoems:--

 "'Approach those masters o'er whose tomb Immortal laurels ever bloom; Instructive of the feebler bard, Still from the grave their voice is heard; From them, and from the paths they show'd, Choose honour'd guide and practised road; Nor ramble on through brake and maze, With harpers rude of barbarous days. "

And it is to Erskine that Scott replies, --

 "For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask The classic poet's well-conn'd task? Nay, Erskine, nay, --on the wild hill Let the wild heath-bell flourish still; Cherish the tulip, prune the vine, But freely let the woodbine twine, And leave untrimm'd the eglantine: Nay, my friend, nay, --since oft thy praise Hath given fresh vigour to my lays; Since oft thy judgment could refine My flatten'd thought or cumbrous line, Still kind, as is thy wont, attend, And in the minstrel spare the friend!"

It was Erskine, too, as Scott expressly states in his introduction tothe _Chronicles of the Canongate_, who reviewed with far too muchpartiality the _Tales of my Landlord_, in the _Quarterly Review_, forJanuary, 1817, --a review unjustifiably included among Scott's owncritical essays, on the very insufficient ground that the MS. ReachedMurray in Scott's own handwriting. There can, however, be no doubt atall that Scott copied out his friend's MS. , in order to increase themystification which he so much enjoyed as to the authorship of hisvariously named series of tales. Possibly enough, too, he may havedrawn Erskine's attention to the evidence which justified his sketchof the Puritans in _Old Mortality_, evidence which he certainlyintended at one time to embody in a reply of his own to the adversecriticism on that book. But though Erskine was Scott's _alter ego_ forliterary purposes, it is certain that Erskine, with his fastidious, not to say finical, sense of honour, would never have lent his name tocover a puff written by Scott of his own works. A man who, in Scott'sown words, died "a victim to a hellishly false story, or rather, Ishould say, to the sensibility of his own nature, which could notendure even the shadow of reproach, --like the ermine, which is said topine if its fur is soiled, " was not the man to father a puff, even byhis dearest friend, on that friend's own creations. Erskine was indeedalmost feminine in his love of Scott; but he was feminine with all theirritable and scrupulous delicacy of a man who could not derogate fromhis own ideal of right, even to serve a friend. 

Another friend of Scott's earlier days was John Leyden, Scott's mostefficient coadjutor in the collection of the _Border Minstrelsy_, --thateccentric genius, marvellous linguist, and good-natured bear, who, bred ashepherd in one of the wildest valleys of Roxburghshire, had accumulatedbefore the age of nineteen an amount of learning which confounded theEdinburgh Professors, and who, without any previous knowledge of medicine, prepared himself to pass an examination for the medical profession, at sixmonths' notice of the offer of an assistant-surgeoncy in the East IndiaCompany. It was Leyden who once walked between forty and fifty miles andback, for the sole purpose of visiting an old person who possessed a copyof a border ballad that was wanting for the _Minstrelsy_. Scott was sittingat dinner one day with company, when he heard a sound at a distance, "likethat of the whistling of a tempest through the torn rigging of a vesselwhich scuds before it. The sounds increased as they approached more near;and Leyden (to the great astonishment of such of the guests as did not knowhim) burst into the room chanting the desiderated ballad with the mostenthusiastic gesture, and all the energy of what he used to call the_saw-tones_ of his voice. "[22] Leyden's great antipathy was Ritson, anill-conditioned antiquarian, of vegetarian principles, whom Scott alone ofall the antiquarians of that day could manage to tame and tolerate. InScott's absence one day, during his early married life at Lasswade, Mrs. Scott inadvertently offered Ritson a slice of beef, when that strange manburst out in such outrageous tones at what he chose to suppose an insult, that Leyden threatened to "thraw his neck" if he were not silent, a threatwhich frightened Ritson out of the cottage. On another occasion, simply inorder to tease Ritson, Leyden complained that the meat was overdone, andsent to the kitchen for a plate of literally raw beef, and ate it up solelyfor the purpose of shocking his crazy rival in antiquarian research. PoorLeyden did not long survive his experience of the Indian climate. And withhim died a passion for knowledge of a very high order, combined with noinconsiderable poetical gifts. It was in the study of such eccentric beingsas Leyden that Scott doubtless acquired his taste for painting the humoursof Scotch character. 

Another wild shepherd, and wilder genius among Scott's associates, notonly in those earlier days, but to the end, was that famous EttrickShepherd, James Hogg, who was always quarrelling with his brotherpoet, as far as Scott permitted it, and making it up again when hisbetter feelings returned. In a shepherd's dress, and with hands freshfrom sheep-shearing, he came to dine for the first time with Scott inCastle Street, and finding Mrs. Scott lying on the sofa, immediatelystretched himself at full length on another sofa; for, as he explainedafterwards, "I thought I could not do better than to imitate the ladyof the house. " At dinner, as the wine passed, he advanced from "Mr. Scott, " to "Shirra" (Sheriff), "Scott, " "Walter, " and finally"Wattie, " till at supper he convulsed every one by addressing Mrs. Scott familiarly as "Charlotte. "[23] Hogg wrote certain short poems, the beauty of which in their kind Sir Walter himself never approached;but he was a man almost without self-restraint or self-knowledge, though he had a great deal of self-importance, and hardly knew howmuch he owed to Scott's magnanimous and ever-forbearing kindness, orif he did, felt the weight of gratitude a burden on his heart. Verydifferent was William Laidlaw, a farmer on the banks of the Yarrow, always Scott's friend, and afterwards his manager at Abbotsford, through whose hand he dictated many of his novels. Mr. Laidlaw wasone of Scott's humbler friends, --a class of friends with whom he seemsalways to have felt more completely at his ease than any others--whogave at least as much as he received, one of those wise, loyal, andthoughtful men in a comparatively modest position of life, whom Scottdelighted to trust, and never trusted without finding his trustjustified. In addition to these Scotch friends, Scott had made, evenbefore the publication of his _Border Minstrelsy_, not a few in Londonor its neighbourhood, --of whom the most important at this time was thegrey-eyed, hatchet-faced, courteous George Ellis, as Leyden describedhim, the author of various works on ancient English poetry andromance, who combined with a shrewd, satirical vein, and a greatknowledge of the world, political as well as literary, an exquisitetaste in poetry, and a warm heart. Certainly Ellis's criticism on hispoems was the truest and best that Scott ever received; and had helived to read his novels, --only one of which was published beforeEllis's death, --he might have given Scott more useful help than eitherBallantyne or even Erskine. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 19: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 214. ]

[Footnote 20: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii. 344. ]

[Footnote 21: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 75. ]

[Footnote 22: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 56. ]

[Footnote 23: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 168-9. ]

CHAPTER VII. 

FIRST COUNTRY HOMES. 

So completely was Scott by nature an out-of-doors man that he cannotbe adequately known either through his poems or through his friends, without also knowing his external surroundings and occupations. Hisfirst country home was the cottage at Lasswade, on the Esk, about sixmiles from Edinburgh, which he took in 1798, a few months after hismarriage, and retained till 1804. It was a pretty little cottage, inthe beautification of which Scott felt great pride, and where heexercised himself in the small beginnings of those tastes for alteringand planting which grew so rapidly upon him, and at last enticed himinto castle-building and tree-culture on a dangerous, not to say, ruinous scale. One of Scott's intimate friends, the master of Rokeby, by whose house and neighbourhood the poem of that name was suggested, Mr. Morritt, walked along the Esk in 1808 with Scott four years afterhe had left it, and was taken out of his way to see it. "I have beenbringing you, " he said, "where there is little enough to be seen, onlythat Scotch cottage, but though not worth looking at, I could not passit. It was our first country house when newly married, and many acontrivance it had to make it comfortable. I made a dining-table forit with my own hands. Look at these two miserable willow-trees oneither side the gate into the enclosure; they are tied together at thetop to be an arch, and a cross made of two sticks over them is not yetdecayed. To be sure it is not much of a lion to show a stranger; but Iwanted to see it again myself, for I assure you that after I hadconstructed it, _mamma_ (Mrs. Scott) and I both of us thought it sofine, we turned out to see it by moonlight, and walked backwards fromit to the cottage-door, in admiration of our own magnificence and itspicturesque effect. " It was here at Lasswade that he bought thephaeton, which was the first wheeled carriage that ever penetrated toLiddesdale, a feat which it accomplished in the first August of thiscentury. 

When Scott left the cottage at Lasswade in 1804, it was to take up hiscountry residence in Selkirkshire, of which he had now been madesheriff, in a beautiful little house belonging to his cousin, Major-General Sir James Russell, and known to all the readers ofScott's poetry as the Ashestiel of the _Marmion_ introductions. TheGlenkinnon brook dashes in a deep ravine through the grounds to jointhe Tweed; behind the house rise the hills which divide the Tweed fromthe Yarrow; and an easy ride took Scott into the scenery of theYarrow. The description of Ashestiel, and the brook which runs throughit, in the introduction to the first canto of _Marmion_ is indeed oneof the finest specimens of Scott's descriptive poetry:--

 "November's sky is chill and drear, November's leaf is red and sear; Late, gazing down the steepy linn, That hems our little garden in, Low in its dark and narrow glen, You scarce the rivulet might ken, So thick the tangled greenwood grew, So feeble trill'd the streamlet through; Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen, Through bush and briar no longer green, An angry brook, it sweeps the glade, Brawls over rock and wild cascade, And, foaming brown with doubled speed, Hurries its waters to the Tweed. "

Selkirk was his nearest town, and that was seven miles from Ashestiel;and even his nearest neighbour was at Yair, a few miles off lower downthe Tweed, --Yair of which he wrote in another of the introductions to_Marmion_:--

 "From Yair, which hills so closely bind Scarce can the Tweed his passage find, Though much he fret, and chafe, and toil, Till all his eddying currents boil. "

At Ashestiel it was one of his greatest delights to look after hisrelative's woods, and to dream of planting and thinning woods of hisown, a dream only too amply realized. It was here that a newkitchen-range was sunk for some time in the ford, which was so swollenby a storm in 1805 that the horse and cart that brought it werethemselves with difficulty rescued from the waters. And it was herethat Scott first entered on that active life of literary labour inclose conjunction with an equally active life of rural sport, whichgained him a well-justified reputation as the hardest worker and theheartiest player in the kingdom. At Lasswade Scott's work had beendone at night; but serious headaches made him change his habit atAshestiel, and rise steadily at five, lighting his own fire in winter. "Arrayed in his shooting-jacket, or whatever dress he meant to usetill dinner-time, he was seated at his desk by six o'clock, all hispapers arranged before him in the most accurate order, and his booksof reference marshalled around him on the floor, while at least onefavourite dog lay watching his eye, just beyond the line ofcircumvallation. Thus, by the time the family assembled for breakfast, between nine and ten, he had done enough, in his own language, 'tobreak the neck of the day's work. ' After breakfast a couple of hoursmore were given to his solitary tasks, and by noon he was, as he usedto say, his 'own man. ' When the weather was bad, he would labourincessantly all the morning; but the general rule was to be out and onhorseback by one o'clock at the latest; while, if any more distantexcursion had been proposed overnight, he was ready to start on it byten; his occasional rainy days of unintermitted study, forming, as hesaid, a fund in his favour, out of which he was entitled to draw foraccommodation whenever the sun shone with special brightness. " In hisearlier days none of his horses liked to be fed except by theirmaster. When Brown Adam was saddled, and the stable-door opened, thehorse would trot round to the leaping-on stone of his own accord, tobe mounted, and was quite intractable under any one but Scott. Scott'slife might well be fairly divided--just as history is divided intoreigns--by the succession of his horses and dogs. The reigns ofCaptain, Lieutenant, Brown Adam, Daisy, divide at least the period upto Waterloo; while the reigns of Sybil Grey, and the Covenanter, orDouce Davie, divide the period of Scott's declining years. During thebrilliant period of the earlier novels we hear less of Scott's horses;but of his deerhounds there is an unbroken succession. Camp, Maida(the "Bevis" of _Woodstock_), and Nimrod, reigned successively betweenSir Walter's marriage and his death. It was Camp on whose death herelinquished a dinner invitation previously accepted, on the groundthat the death of "an old friend" rendered him unwilling to dine out;Maida to whom he erected a marble monument, and Nimrod of whom hespoke so affectingly as too good a dog for his diminished fortunesduring his absence in Italy on the last hopeless journey. 

Scott's amusements at Ashestiel, besides riding, in which he wasfearless to rashness, and coursing, which was the chief form ofsporting in the neighbourhood, comprehended "burning the water, " assalmon-spearing by torchlight was called, in the course of which hegot many a ducking. Mr. Skene gives an amusing picture of theirexcursions together from Ashestiel among the hills, he himselffollowed by a lanky Savoyard, and Scott by a portly Scotchbutler--both servants alike highly sensitive as to their personaldignity--on horses which neither of the attendants could sit well. "Scott's heavy lumbering buffetier had provided himself against themountain storms with a huge cloak, which, when the cavalcade was atgallop, streamed at full stretch from his shoulders, and kept flappingin the other's face, who, having more than enough to do in preservinghis own equilibrium, could not think of attempting at any time tocontrol the pace of his steed, and had no relief but fuming and_pesting_ at the _sacré manteau_, in language happily unintelligibleto its wearer. Now and then some ditch or turf-fence rendered itindispensable to adventure on a leap, and no farce could have beenmore amusing than the display of politeness which then occurredbetween these worthy equestrians, each courteously declining in favourof his friend the honour of the first experiment, the horses frettingimpatient beneath them, and the dogs clamouring encouragement. "[24]Such was Scott's order of life at Ashestiel, where he remained from1804 to 1812. As to his literary work here, it was enormous. 

Besides finishing _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, writing _Marmion_, _The Lady of the Lake_, part of _The Bridal of Triermain_, and part of_Rokeby_, and writing reviews, he wrote a _Life of Dryden_, and editedhis works anew with some care, in eighteen volumes, edited _Somers'sCollection of Tracts_, in thirteen volumes, quarto, _Sir RalphSadler's Life, Letters, and State Papers_, in three volumes, quarto, _Miss Seward's Life and Poetical Works_, _The Secret History of theCourt of James I_. , in two volumes, _Strutt's Queenhoo Hall_, in fourvolumes, 12mo. , and various other single volumes, and began his heavywork on the edition of Swift. This was the literary work of eightyears, during which he had the duties of his Sheriffship, and, afterhe gave up his practice as a barrister, the duties of his DeputyClerkship of Session to discharge regularly. The editing of Drydenalone would have seemed to most men of leisure a pretty fulloccupation for these eight years, and though I do not know that Scottedited with the anxious care with which that sort of work is often nowprepared, that he went into all the arguments for a doubtful readingwith the pains that Mr. Dyce spent on the various readings ofShakespeare, or that Mr. Spedding spent on a various reading of Bacon, yet Scott did his work in a steady, workmanlike manner, whichsatisfied the most fastidious critics of that day, and he was never, Ibelieve, charged with hurrying or scamping it. His biographies ofSwift and Dryden are plain solid pieces of work--not exactly the worksof art which biographies have been made in our day--not comparable toCarlyle's studies of Cromwell or Frederick, or, in point of art, evento the life of John Sterling, but still sensible and interesting, sound in judgment, and animated in style. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 24: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 268-9. ]

CHAPTER VIII. 

REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD, AND LIFE THERE. 

In May, 1812, Scott having now at last obtained the salary of theClerkship of Session, the work of which he had for more than fiveyears discharged without pay, indulged himself in realizing hisfavourite dream of buying a "mountain farm" at Abbotsford, --five mileslower down the Tweed than his cottage at Ashestiel, which was nowagain claimed by the family of Russell, --and migrated thither with hishousehold goods. The children long remembered the leave-taking as oneof pure grief, for the villagers were much attached both to Scott andto his wife, who had made herself greatly beloved by her untiringgoodness to the sick among her poor neighbours. But Scott himselfdescribes the migration as a scene in which their neighbours found nosmall share of amusement. "Our flitting and removal from Ashestielbaffled all description; we had twenty-five cartloads of the veriesttrash in nature, besides dogs, pigs, ponies, poultry, cows, calves, bare-headed wenches, and bare-breeched boys. "[25]

To another friend Scott wrote that the neighbours had "been muchdelighted with the procession of my furniture, in which old swords, bows, targets, and lances, made a very conspicuous show. A family ofturkeys was accommodated within the helmet of some _preux chevalier_of ancient border fame; and the very cows, for aught I know, werebearing banners and muskets. I assure your ladyship that this caravanattended by a dozen of ragged rosy peasant children, carryingfishing-rods and spears, and leading ponies, greyhounds, and spaniels, would, as it crossed the Tweed, have furnished no bad subject for thepencil, and really reminded me of one of the gipsy groups of Callotupon their march. "[26]

The place thus bought for 4000_l. _, --half of which, according to Scott'sbad and sanguine habit, was borrowed from his brother, and half raised onthe security of a poem at the moment of sale wholly unwritten, and notcompleted even when he removed to Abbotsford--"Rokeby"--became only toomuch of an idol for the rest of Scott's life. Mr. Lockhart admits thatbefore the crash came he had invested 29, 000_l. _ in the purchase of landalone. But at this time only the kernel of the subsequent estate wasbought, in the shape of a hundred acres or rather more, part of which ranalong the shores of the Tweed--"a beautiful river flowing broad and brightover a bed of milk-white pebbles, unless here and there where it darkenedinto a deep pool, overhung as yet only by birches and alders. " There wasalso a poor farm-house, a staring barn, and a pond so dirty that it hadhitherto given the name of "Clarty Hole" to the place itself. Scottrenamed the place from the adjoining ford which was just above theconfluence of the Gala with the Tweed. He chose the name of Abbotsfordbecause the land had formerly all belonged to the Abbots of Melrose, --theruin of whose beautiful abbey was visible from many parts of the littleproperty. On the other side of the river the old British barrier called"the Catrail" was full in view. As yet the place was not planted, --theonly effort made in this direction by its former owner, Dr. Douglas, having been a long narrow stripe of firs, which Scott used to compare to ablack hair-comb, and which gave the name of "The Doctor's Redding-Kame" tothe stretch of woods of which it is still the central line. Such was theplace which he made it the too great delight of the remainder of his lifeto increase and beautify, by spending on it a good deal more than he hadearned, and that too in times when he should have earned a good deal morethan he ought to have thought even for a moment of spending. The cottagegrew to a mansion, and the mansion to a castle. The farm by the Tweed madehim long for a farm by the Cauldshiel's loch, and the farm by theCauldshiel's loch for Thomas the Rhymer's Glen; and as, at every step inthe ladder, his means of buying were really increasing--though they wereso cruelly discounted and forestalled by this growing land-hunger, --Scottnever realized into what troubles he was carefully running himself. 

Of his life at Abbotsford at a later period when his building wasgreatly enlarged, and his children grown up, we have a brilliantpicture from the pen of Mr. Lockhart. And though it does not belong tohis first years at Abbotsford, I cannot do better than include it hereas conveying probably better than anything I could elsewhere find, thecharm of that ideal life which lured Scott on from one project toanother in that scheme of castle-building, in relation to which heconfused so dangerously the world of dreams with the harder world ofwages, capital, interest, and rent. 

 "I remember saying to William Allan one morning, as the whole party mustered before the porch after breakfast, 'A faithful sketch of what you at this moment see would be more interesting a hundred years hence than the grandest so-called historical picture that you will ever exhibit in Somerset House;' and my friend agreed with me so cordially that I often wondered afterwards he had not attempted to realize the suggestion. The subject ought, however, to have been treated conjointly by him (or Wilkie) and Edwin Landseer. 

 "It was a clear, bright September morning, with a sharpness in the air that doubled the animating influence of the sunshine, and all was in readiness for a grand coursing match on Newark Hill. The only guest who had chalked out other sport for himself was the staunchest of anglers, Mr. Rose; but he too was there on his _shelty_, armed with his salmon-rod and landing-net, and attended by his humorous squire, Hinves, and Charlie Purdie, a brother of Tom, in those days the most celebrated fisherman of the district. This little group of Waltonians, bound for Lord Somerville's preserve, remained lounging about to witness the start of the main cavalcade. Sir Walter, mounted on Sybil, was marshalling the order of procession with a huge hunting-whip; and among a dozen frolicsome youths and maidens, who seemed disposed to laugh at all discipline, appeared, each on horseback, each as eager as the youngest sportsman in the troop, Sir Humphry Davy, Dr. Wollaston, and the patriarch of Scottish _belles lettres_, Henry Mackenzie. The Man of Feeling, however, was persuaded with some difficulty to resign his steed for the present to his faithful negro follower, and to join Lady Scott in the sociable, until we should reach the ground of our _battue_. Laidlaw, on a long-tailed, wiry Highlander, yclept Hoddin Grey, which carried him nimbly and stoutly, although his feet almost touched the ground as he sat, was the adjutant. But the most picturesque figure was the illustrious inventor of the safety-lamp. He had come for his favourite sport of angling, and had been practising it successfully with Rose, his travelling-companion, for two or three days preceding this, but he had not prepared for coursing fields, and had left Charlie Purdie's troop for Sir Walter's on a sudden thought; and his fisherman's costume--a brown hat with flexible brim, surrounded with line upon line, and innumerable fly-hooks, jack-boots worthy of a Dutch smuggler, and a fustian surtout dabbled with the blood of salmon, --made a fine contrast with the smart jackets, white cord breeches, and well-polished jockey-boots of the less distinguished cavaliers about him. Dr. Wollaston was in black, and, with his noble, serene dignity of countenance, might have passed for a sporting archbishop. Mr. Mackenzie, at this time in the seventy-sixth year of his age, with a white hat turned up with green, green spectacles, green jacket, and long brown leather gaiters buttoned upon his nether anatomy, wore a dog-whistle round his neck, and had all over the air of as resolute a devotee as the gay captain of Huntly Burn. Tom Purdie and his subalterns had preceded us by a few hours with all the greyhounds that could be collected at Abbotsford, Darnick, and Melrose; but the giant Maida had remained as his master's orderly, and now gambolled about Sibyl Grey, barking for mere joy, like a spaniel puppy. 

 "The order of march had been all settled, and the sociable was just getting under weigh, when _the Lady Anne_ broke from the line, screaming with laughter, and exclaimed, 'Papa! papa! I know you could never think of going without your pet. ' Scott looked round, and I rather think there was a blush as well as a smile upon his face, when he perceived a little black pig frisking about his pony, and evidently a self-elected addition to the party of the day. He tried to look stern, and cracked his whip at the creature, but was in a moment obliged to join in the general cheers. Poor piggy soon found a strap round his neck, and was dragged into the background. Scott, watching the retreat, repeated with mock pathos the first verse of an old pastoral song:--

 "What will I do gin my hoggie die? My joy, my pride, my hoggie! My only beast, I had nae mae, And wow! but I was vogie!"

 The cheers were redoubled, and the squadron moved on. This pig had taken, nobody could tell how, a most sentimental attachment to Scott, and was constantly urging its pretension to be admitted a regular member of his _tail_, along with the greyhounds and terriers; but indeed I remember him suffering another summer under the same sort of pertinacity on the part of an affectionate hen. I leave the explanation for philosophers; but such were the facts. I have too much respect for the vulgarly calumniated donkey to name him in the same category of pets with the pig and the hen; but a year or two after this time, my wife used to drive a couple of these animals in a little garden chair, and whenever her father appeared at the door of our cottage, we were sure to see Hannah More and Lady Morgan (as Anne Scott had wickedly christened them) trotting from their pasture to lay their noses over the paling, and, as Washington Irving says of the old white-haired hedger with the Parisian snuff-box, 'to have a pleasant crack wi' the laird. '"[27]

Carlyle, in his criticism on Scott--a criticism which will hardly, Ithink, stand the test of criticism in its turn, so greatly does heoverdo the reaction against the first excessive appreciation of hisgenius--adds a contribution of his own to this charming idyll, inreference to the natural fascination which Scott seemed to exert overalmost all dumb creatures. A little Blenheim cocker, "one of thesmallest, beautifullest, and tiniest of lapdogs, " with which Carlylewas well acquainted, and which was also one of the shyest of dogs, that would crouch towards his mistress and draw back "with angrytimidity" if any one did but look at him admiringly, once met in thestreet "a tall, singular, busy-looking man, " who halted by. The dogran towards him and began "fawning, frisking, licking at his feet;"and every time he saw Sir Walter afterwards, in Edinburgh, herepeated his demonstration of delight. Thus discriminating was thisfastidious Blenheim cocker even in the busy streets of Edinburgh. 

And Scott's attraction for dumb animals was only a lesser form of hisattraction for all who were in any way dependent on him, especiallyhis own servants and labourers. The story of his demeanour towardsthem is one of the most touching ever written. "Sir Walter speaks toevery man as if they were blood-relations" was the common _formula_ inwhich this demeanour was described. Take this illustration. There wasa little hunchbacked tailor, named William Goodfellow, living on hisproperty (but who at Abbotsford was termed Robin Goodfellow). Thistailor was employed to make the curtains for the new library, and hadbeen very proud of his work, but fell ill soon afterwards, and SirWalter was unremitting in his attention to him. "I can never forget, "says Mr. Lockhart, "the evening on which the poor tailor died. WhenScott entered the hovel, he found everything silent, and inferred fromthe looks of the good women in attendance that the patient had fallenasleep, and that they feared his sleep was the final one. He murmuredsome syllables of kind regret: at the sound of his voice the dyingtailor unclosed his eyes, and eagerly and wistfully sat up, claspinghis hands with an expression of rapturous gratefulness and devotionthat, in the midst of deformity, disease, pain, and wretchedness, wasat once beautiful and sublime. He cried with a loud voice, 'The Lordbless and reward you!' and expired with the effort. "[28] Still morestriking is the account of his relation with Tom Purdie, thewide-mouthed, under-sized, broad-shouldered, square-made, thin-flanked woodsman, so well known afterwards by all Scott's friendsas he waited for his master in his green shooting-jacket, white hat, and drab trousers. Scott first made Tom Purdie's acquaintance in hiscapacity as judge, the man being brought before him for poaching, atthe time that Scott was living at Ashestiel. Tom gave so touching anaccount of his circumstances--work scarce--wife and children inwant--grouse abundant--and his account of himself was so fresh andeven humorous, that Scott let him off the penalty, and made him hisshepherd. He discharged these duties so faithfully that he came to behis master's forester and factotum, and indeed one of his bestfriends, though a little disposed to tyrannize over Scott in his ownfashion. A visitor describes him as unpacking a box of newimportations for his master "as if he had been sorting some toys for arestless child. " But after Sir Walter had lost the bodily strengthrequisite for riding, and was too melancholy for ordinaryconversation, Tom Purdie's shoulder was his great stay in wanderingthrough his woods, for with him he felt that he might either speak orbe silent at his pleasure. "What a blessing there is, " Scott wrote inhis diary at that time, "in a fellow like Tom, whom no familiarity canspoil, whom you may scold and praise and joke with, knowing thequality of the man is unalterable in his love and reverence to hismaster. " After Scott's failure, Mr. Lockhart writes: "Before I leavethis period, I must note how greatly I admired the manner in which allhis dependents appeared to have met the reverse of his fortunes--areverse which inferred very considerable alteration in thecircumstances of every one of them. The butler, instead of being theeasy chief of a large establishment, was now doing half the work ofthe house at probably half his former wages. Old Peter, who had beenfor five and twenty years a dignified coachman, was now ploughman inordinary, only putting his horses to the carriage upon high and rareoccasions; and so on with all the rest that remained of the ancienttrain. And all, to my view, seemed happier than they had ever donebefore. "[29] The illustration of this true confidence between Scottand his servants and labourers might be extended to almost any length. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 25: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 6. ]

[Footnote 26: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 3. ]

[Footnote 27: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vi. 238--242. ]

[Footnote 28: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vii. 218. ]

[Footnote 29: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 170. ]

CHAPTER IX. 

SCOTT'S PARTNERSHIPS WITH THE BALLANTYNES. 

Before I make mention of Scott's greatest works, his novels, I mustsay a few words of his relation to the Ballantyne Brothers, whoinvolved him, and were involved by him, in so many troubles, and withwhose name the story of his broken fortunes is inextricably bound up. James Ballantyne, the elder brother, was a schoolfellow of Scott's atKelso, and was the editor and manager of the _Kelso Mail_, ananti-democratic journal, which had a fair circulation. Ballantyne wassomething of an artist as regarded "type, " and Scott got him thereforeto print his _Minstrelsy of the Border_, the excellent workmanship ofwhich attracted much attention in London. In 1802, on Scott'ssuggestion, Ballantyne moved to Edinburgh; and to help him to move, Scott, who was already meditating some investment of his littlecapital in business other than literary, lent him 500l. Between thisand 1805, when Scott first became a partner of Ballantyne's in theprinting business, he used every exertion to get legal and literaryprinting offered to James Ballantyne, and, according to Mr. Lockhart, the concern "grew and prospered. " At Whitsuntide, 1805, when _The Lay_had been published, but before Scott had the least idea of theprospects of gain which mere literature would open to him, heformally, though secretly, joined Ballantyne as a partner in theprinting business. He explains his motives for this step, so far atleast as he then recalled them, in a letter written after hismisfortunes, in 1826. "It is easy, " he said, "no doubt for any friendto blame me for entering into connexion with commercial matters atall. But I wish to know what I could have done better--excluded fromthe bar, and then from all profits for six years, by my colleague'sprolonged life. Literature was not in those days what poor Constablehas made it; and with my little capital I was too glad to makecommercially the means of supporting my family. I got but 600_l. _ for_The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, and--it was a price that made men'shair stand on end--1000_l. _ for _Marmion_. I have been far fromsuffering by James Ballantyne. I owe it to him to say, that hisdifficulties, as well as his advantages, are owing to me. "

This, though a true, was probably a very imperfect account of Scott'smotives. He ceased practising at the bar, I do not doubt, in greatdegree from a kind of hurt pride at his ill-success, at a time when hefelt during every month more and more confidence in his own powers. Hebelieved, with some justice, that he understood some of the secrets ofpopularity in literature, but he had always, till towards the end ofhis life, the greatest horror of resting on literature alone as hismain resource; and he was not a man, nor was Lady Scott a woman, topinch and live narrowly. Were it only for his lavish generosity, thatkind of life would have been intolerable to him. Hence, he reflected, that if he could but use his literary instinct to feed some commercialundertaking, managed by a man he could trust, he might gain aconsiderable percentage on his little capital, without so embarking incommerce as to oblige him either to give up his status as a sheriff, or his official duties as a clerk of session, or his literaryundertakings. In his old schoolfellow, James Ballantyne, he believedhe had found just such an agent as he wanted, the requisite linkbetween literary genius like his own, and the world which reads andbuys books; and he thought that, by feeling his way a little, he mightsecure, through this partnership, besides the then very bare rewardsof authorship, at least a share in those more liberal rewards whichcommercial men managed to squeeze for themselves out of successfulauthors. And, further, he felt--and this was probably the greatestunconscious attraction for him in this scheme--that with JamesBallantyne for his partner he should be the real leader and chief, andrather in the position of a patron and benefactor of his colleague, than of one in any degree dependent on the generosity or approval ofothers. "If I have a very strong passion in the world, " he once wroteof himself--and the whole story of his life seems to confirm it--"itis pride. "[30] In James Ballantyne he had a faithful, but almost humblefriend, with whom he could deal much as he chose, and fear no wound tohis pride. He had himself helped Ballantyne to a higher line ofbusiness than any hitherto aspired to by him. It was his own bookwhich first got the Ballantyne press its public credit. And if hecould but create a great commercial success upon this foundation, hefelt that he should be fairly entitled to share in the gains, whichnot merely his loan of capital, but his foresight and courage hadopened to Ballantyne. 

And it is quite possible that Scott might have succeeded--or at allevents not seriously failed--if he had been content to stick to theprinting firm of James Ballantyne and Co. , and had not launched alsointo the bookselling and publishing firm of John Ballantyne and Co. , or had never begun the wild and dangerous practice of forestalling hisgains, and spending wealth which he had not earned. But when by way offeeding the printing press of James Ballantyne and Co. , he started in1809 the bookselling and publishing firm of John Ballantyne and Co. , using as his agent a man as inferior in sterling worth to James, asJames was inferior in general ability to himself, he carefully dug amine under his own feet, of which we can only say, that nothing excepthis genius could have prevented it from exploding long before it did. The truth was evidently that James Ballantyne's respectful homage, andJohn's humorous appreciation, all but blinded Scott's eyes to theutter inadequacy of either of these men, especially the latter, tosupply the deficiencies of his own character for conducting businessof this kind with proper discretion. James Ballantyne, who was pompousand indolent, though thoroughly honest, and not without someintellectual insight, Scott used to call Aldiborontiphoscophornio. John, who was clever but frivolous, dissipated, and tricksy, he termedRigdumfunnidos, or his "little Picaroon. " It is clear from Mr. Lockhart's account of the latter that Scott not only did not respect, but despised him, though he cordially liked him, and that he passedover, in judging him, vices which in a brother or son of his own hewould severely have rebuked. I believe myself that his liking forco-operation with both, was greatly founded on his feeling that theywere simply creatures of his, to whom he could pretty well dictatewhat he wanted, --colleagues whose inferiority to himself unconsciouslyflattered his pride. He was evidently inclined to resent bitterly thepatronage of publishers. He sent word to Blackwood once with greathauteur, after some suggestion from that house had been made to himwhich appeared to him to interfere with his independence as an author, that he was one of "the Black Hussars" of literature, who would notendure that sort of treatment. Constable, who was really very liberal, hurt his sensitive pride through the _Edinburgh Review_, of whichJeffrey was editor. Thus the Ballantynes' great deficiency--thatneither of them had any independent capacity for the publishingbusiness, which would in any way hamper his discretion--though this isjust what commercial partners ought to have had, or they were notworth their salt, --was, I believe, precisely what induced this BlackHussar of literature, in spite of his otherwise considerable sagacityand knowledge of human nature, to select them for partners. 

And yet it is strange that he not only chose them, but chose theinferior and lighter-headed of the two for far the most important anddifficult of the two businesses. In the printing concern there was atleast this to be said, that of part of the business--the selection oftype and the superintendence of the executive part, --James Ballantynewas a good judge. He was never apparently a good man of business, forhe kept no strong hand over the expenditure and accounts, which is thecore of success in every concern. But he understood types; and hiscustomers were publishers, a wealthy and judicious class, who were notlikely all to fail together. But to select a "Rigdumfunnidos, "--adissipated comic-song singer and horse-fancier, --for the head of apublishing concern, was indeed a kind of insanity. It is told of JohnBallantyne, that after the successful negotiation with Constable for_Rob Roy_, and while "hopping up and down in his glee, " he exclaimed, "'Is Rob's gun here, Mr. Scott? Would you object to my trying the oldbarrel with a _few de joy_?' 'Nay, Mr. Puff, ' said Scott, 'it wouldburst and blow you to the devil before your time. ' 'Johnny, my man, 'said Constable, 'what the mischief puts drawing at sight into _your_head?' Scott laughed heartily at this innuendo; and then observingthat the little man felt somewhat sore, called attention to the notesof a bird in the adjoining shrubbery. 'And by-the-bye, ' said he, asthey continued listening, ''tis a long time, Johnny, since we have had"The Cobbler of Kelso. "' Mr. Puff forthwith jumped up on a mass ofstone, and seating himself in the proper attitude of one working withan awl, began a favourite interlude, mimicking a certain son ofCrispin, at whose stall Scott and he had often lingered when they wereschoolboys, and a blackbird, the only companion of his cell, that usedto sing to him while he talked and whistled to it all day long. Withthis performance Scott was always delighted. Nothing could be richerthan the contrast of the bird's wild, sweet notes, some of which heimitated with wonderful skill, and the accompaniment of the cobbler'shoarse, cracked voice, uttering all manner of endearing epithets, which Johnny multiplied and varied in a style worthy of the old womenin Rabelais at the birth of Pantagruel. "[31] That passage givesprecisely the kind of estimation in which John Ballantyne was heldboth by Scott and Constable. And yet it was to him that Scottentrusted the dangerous and difficult duty of setting up a newpublishing house as a rival to the best publishers of the day. Nodoubt Scott really relied on his own judgment for working thepublishing house. But except where his own books were concerned, nojudgment could have been worse. In the first place he was alwayswanting to do literary jobs for a friend, and so advised thepublishing of all sorts of unsaleable books, because his friendsdesired to write them. In the next place, he was a genuine historian, and one of the antiquarian kind himself; he was himself reallyinterested in all sorts of historical and antiquarian issues, --andvery mistakenly gave the public credit for wishing to know what hehimself wished to know. I should add that Scott's good nature andkindness of heart not only led him to help on many books which he knewin himself could never answer, and some which, as he well knew, wouldbe altogether worthless, but that it greatly biassed his ownintellectual judgment. Nothing can be plainer than that he really heldhis intimate friend, Joanna Baillie, a very great dramatic poet, amuch greater poet than himself, for instance; one fit to be evenmentioned as following--at a distance--in the track of Shakespeare. Hesupposes Erskine to exhort him thus:--

 "Or, if to touch such chord be thine, Restore the ancient tragic line, And emulate the notes that rung From the wild harp which silent hung By silver Avon's holy shore, Till twice a hundred years roll'd o'er, -- When she, the bold enchantress, came With fearless hand and heart on flame, From the pale willow snatch'd the treasure, And swept it with a kindred measure, Till Avon's swans, while rung the grove With Montfort's hate and Basil's love, Awakening at the inspired strain, Deem'd their own Shakespeare lived again. "

Avon's swans must have been Avon's geese, I think, if they had deemedanything of the kind. Joanna Baillie's dramas are "nice, " and ratherdull; now and then she can write a song with the ease and sweetnessthat suggest Shakespearian echoes. But Scott's judgment was obviouslyblinded by his just and warm regard for Joanna Baillie herself. 

Of course with such interfering causes to bring unsaleable books tothe house--of course I do not mean that John Ballantyne and Co. Published for Joanna Baillie, or that they would have lost by it ifthey had--the new firm published all sorts of books which did not sellat all; while John Ballantyne himself indulged in a great manyexpenses and dissipations, for which John Ballantyne and Co. Had topay. Nor was it very easy for a partner who himself drew bills on thefuture--even though he were the well-spring of all the paying businessthe company had--to be very severe on a fellow-partner who suppliedhis pecuniary needs in the same way. At all events, there is noquestion that all through 1813 and 1814 Scott was kept in constantsuspense and fear of bankruptcy, by the ill-success of John Ballantyneand Co. , and the utter want of straightforwardness in John Ballantynehimself as to the bills out, and which had to be provided against. Itwas the publication of _Waverley_, and the consequent opening up ofthe richest vein not only in Scott's own genius, but in his popularitywith the public, which alone ended these alarms; and the manyunsaleable works of John Ballantyne and Co. Were then graduallydisposed of to Constable and others, to their own great loss, as partof the conditions on which they received a share in the copyright ofthe wonderful novels which sold like wildfire. But though in this waythe publishing business of John Ballantyne and Co. Was saved, and itsaffairs pretty decently wound up, the printing firm remained saddledwith some of their obligations; while Constable's business, on whichScott depended for the means with which he was buying his estate, building his castle, and settling money on his daughter-in-law, wasseriously injured by the purchase of all this unsaleable stock. 

I do not think that any one who looks into the complicated controversybetween the representatives of the Ballantynes and Mr. Lockhart, concerning these matters, can be content with Mr. Lockhart's--no doubtperfectly sincere--judgment on the case. It is obvious that amidstthese intricate accounts, he fell into one or two seriousblunders--blunders very unjust to James Ballantyne. And withoutpretending to have myself formed any minute judgment on the details, Ithink the following points clear:--(1. ) That James Ballantyne was veryseverely judged by Mr. Lockhart, on grounds which were never allegedby Scott against him at all, --indeed on grounds on which he wasexpressly exempted from all blame by Sir Walter. (2. ) That Sir WalterScott was very severely judged by the representatives of theBallantynes, on grounds on which James Ballantyne himself neverbrought any charge against him; on the contrary, he declared that hehad no charge to bring. (3. ) That both Scott and his partners invitedruin by freely spending gains which they only expected to earn, andthat in this Scott certainly set an example which he could hardlyexpect feebler men not to follow. On the whole, I think the troubleswith the Ballantyne brothers brought to light not only that eagergambling spirit in him, which his grandfather indulged with bettersuccess and more moderation when he bought the hunter with moneydestined for a flock of sheep, and then gave up gambling for ever, buta tendency still more dangerous, and in some respects involving aneven greater moral defect, --I mean a tendency, chiefly due, I think, to a very deep-seated pride, --to prefer inferior men as workingcolleagues in business. And yet it is clear that if Scott were todabble in publishing at all, he really needed the check of men oflarger experience, and less literary turn of mind. The great majorityof consumers of popular literature are not, and indeed will hardlyever be, literary men; and that is precisely why a publisher who isnot, in the main, literary, --who looks on authors' MSS. For the mostpart with distrust and suspicion, much as a rich man looks at abegging-letter, or a sober and judicious fish at an angler's fly, --isso much less likely to run aground than such a man as Scott. Theuntried author should be regarded by a wise publisher as a naturalenemy, --an enemy indeed of a class, rare specimens whereof will alwaysbe his best friends, and who, therefore, should not be needlesslyaffronted--but also as one of a class of whom nineteen out of everytwenty will dangle before the publisher's eyes wiles and hopes andexpectations of the most dangerous and illusory character, --whichconstitute indeed the very perils that it is his true function in lifeskilfully to evade. The Ballantynes were quite unfit for thisfunction; first, they had not the experience requisite for it; next, they were altogether too much under Scott's influence. No wonder thatthe partnership came to no good, and left behind it the germs ofcalamity even more serious still. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 30: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 221. ]

[Footnote 31: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 218. ]

CHAPTER X. 

THE WAVERLEY NOVELS. 

In the summer of 1814, Scott took up again and completed--almost at asingle heat, --a fragment of a Jacobite story, begun in 1805 and thenlaid aside. It was published anonymously, and its astonishing successturned back again the scales of Scott's fortunes, already incliningominously towards a catastrophe. This story was _Waverley_. Mr. Carlyle has praised _Waverley_ above its fellows. "On the whole, contrasting _Waverley_, which was carefully written, with most of itsfollowers which were written extempore, one may regret the extemporemethod. " This is, however, a very unfortunate judgment. Not one of thewhole series of novels appears to have been written more completelyextempore than the great bulk of _Waverley_, including almosteverything that made it either popular with the million or fascinatingto the fastidious; and it is even likely that this is one of thecauses of its excellence. 

"The last two volumes, " says Scott, in a letter to Mr. Morritt, "werewritten in three weeks. " And here is Mr. Lockhart's description of theeffect which Scott's incessant toil during the composition, producedon a friend whose window happened to command the novelist's study:--

 "Happening to pass through Edinburgh in June, 1814, I dined one day with the gentleman in question (now the Honourable William Menzies, one of the Supreme Judges at the Cape of Good Hope), whose residence was then in George Street, situated very near to, and at right angles with, North Castle Street. It was a party of very young persons, most of them, like Menzies and myself, destined for the Bar of Scotland, all gay and thoughtless, enjoying the first flush of manhood, with little remembrance of the yesterday, or care of the morrow. When my companion's worthy father and uncle, after seeing two or three bottles go round, left the juveniles to themselves, the weather being hot, we adjourned to a library which had one large window looking northwards. After carousing here for an hour or more, I observed that a shade had come over the aspect of my friend, who happened to be placed immediately opposite to myself, and said something that intimated a fear of his being unwell. 'No, ' said he, 'I shall be well enough presently, if you will only let me sit where you are, and take my chair; for there is a confounded hand in sight of me here, which has often bothered me before, and now it won't let me fill my glass with a good will. ' I rose to change places with him accordingly, and he pointed out to me this hand, which, like the writing on Belshazzar's wall, disturbed his hour of hilarity. 'Since we sat down, ' he said, 'I have been watching it--it fascinates my eye--it never stops--page after page is finished, and thrown on that heap of MS. , and still it goes on unwearied; and so it will be till candles are brought in, and God knows how long after that. It is the same every night--I can't stand a sight of it when I am not at my books. ' 'Some stupid, dogged engrossing clerk, probably, ' exclaimed myself, 'or some other giddy youth in our society. ' 'No, boys, ' said our host; 'I well know what hand it is--'tis Walter Scott's. '"[32]

If that is not extempore writing, it is difficult to say whatextempore writing is. But in truth, there is no evidence that any oneof the novels was laboured, or even so much as carefully composed. Scott's method of composition was always the same; and, when writingan imaginative work, the rate of progress seems to have been prettyeven, depending much more on the absence of disturbing engagements, than on any mental irregularity. The morning was always his brightesttime; but morning or evening, in country or in town, well or ill, writing with his own pen or dictating to an amanuensis in theintervals of screaming-fits due to the torture of cramp in thestomach, Scott spun away at his imaginative web almost as evenly as asilkworm spins at its golden cocoon. Nor can I detect the slightesttrace of any difference in quality between the stories, such as can bereasonably ascribed to comparative care or haste. There aredifferences, and even great differences, of course, ascribable to theless or greater suitability of the subject chosen to Scott's genius, but I can find no trace of the sort of cause to which Mr. Carlylerefers. Thus, few, I suppose, would hesitate to say that while _OldMortality_ is very near, if not quite, the finest of Scott's works, _The Black Dwarf_ is not far from the other end of the scale. Yet thetwo were written in immediate succession (_The Black Dwarf_ being thefirst of the two), and were published together, as the first series of_Tales of my Landlord_, in 1816. Nor do I think that any competentcritic would find any clear deterioration of quality in the novels ofthe later years, --excepting of course the two written after the strokeof paralysis. It is true, of course, that some of the subjects whichmost powerfully stirred his imagination were among his earlier themes, and that he could not effectually use the same subject twice, thoughhe now and then tried it. But making allowance for thisconsideration, the imaginative power of the novels is as astonishingly_even_ as the rate of composition itself. For my own part, I greatlyprefer _The Fortunes of Nigel_ (which was written in 1822) to_Waverley_ which was begun in 1805, and finished in 1814, and thoughvery many better critics would probably decidedly disagree, I do notthink that any of them would consider this preference grotesque orpurely capricious. Indeed, though _Anne of Geierstein_, --the lastcomposed before Scott's stroke, --would hardly seem to any carefuljudge the equal of _Waverley_, I do not much doubt that if it hadappeared in place of _Waverley_, it would have excited very nearly asmuch interest and admiration; nor that had _Waverley_ appeared in1829, in place of _Anne of Geierstein_, it would have failed to excitevery much more. In these fourteen most effective years of Scott'sliterary life, during which he wrote twenty-three novels besidesshorter tales, the best stories appear to have been on the whole themost rapidly written, probably because they took the strongest hold ofthe author's imagination. 

Till near the close of his career as an author, Scott never avowed hisresponsibility for any of these series of novels, and even took somepains to mystify the public as to the identity between the author of_Waverley_ and the author of _Tales of my Landlord_. The care withwhich the secret was kept is imputed by Mr. Lockhart in some degree tothe habit of mystery which had grown upon Scott during his secretpartnership with the Ballantynes; but in this he seems to beconfounding two very different phases of Scott's character. No doubthe was, as a professional man, a little ashamed of his commercialspeculation, and unwilling to betray it. But he was far from ashamedof his literary enterprise, though it seems that he was at first veryanxious lest a comparative failure, or even a mere moderate success, in a less ambitious sphere than that of poetry, should endanger thegreat reputation he had gained as a poet. That was apparently thefirst reason for secrecy. But, over and above this, it is clear thatthe mystery stimulated Scott's imagination and saved him trouble aswell. He was obviously more free under the veil--free from theliability of having to answer for the views of life or historysuggested in his stories; but besides this, what was of moreimportance to him, the slight disguise stimulated his sense of humour, and gratified the whimsical, boyish pleasure which he always had inacting an imaginary character. He used to talk of himself as a sort ofAbou Hassan--a private man one day, and acting the part of a monarchthe next--with the kind of glee which indicated a real delight in thechange of parts, and I have little doubt that he threw himself withthe more gusto into characters very different from his own, inconsequence of the pleasure it gave him to conceive his friendshopelessly misled by this display of traits, with which he supposedthat they could not have credited him even in imagination. Thusbesides relieving him of a host of compliments which he did not enjoy, and enabling him the better to evade an ill-bred curiosity, thedisguise no doubt was the same sort of fillip to the fancy which amask and domino or a fancy dress are to that of their wearers. Even ina disguise a man cannot cease to be himself; but he can get rid of hisimproperly "imputed" righteousness--often the greatest burden he hasto bear--and of all the expectations formed on the strength, as Mr. Clough says, --

 "Of having been what one has been, What one thinks one is, or thinks that others suppose one. "

To some men the freedom of this disguise is a real danger andtemptation. It never could have been so to Scott, who was in the mainone of the simplest as well as the boldest and proudest of men. And asmost men perhaps would admit that a good deal of even the best part oftheir nature is rather suppressed than expressed by the name by whichthey are known in the world, Scott must have felt this in a far higherdegree, and probably regarded the manifold characters under which hewas known to society, as representing him in some respects more justlythan any individual name could have done. His mind ranged hither andthither over a wide field--far beyond that of his actualexperience, --and probably ranged over it all the more easily for notbeing absolutely tethered to a single class of associations by anypublic confession of his authorship. After all, when it becameuniversally known that Scott was the only author of all these tales, it may be doubted whether the public thought as adequately of theimaginative efforts which had created them, as they did while theyremained in some doubt whether there was a multiplicity of agencies atwork, or only one. The uncertainty helped them to realize the manylives which were really led by the author of all these tales, morecompletely than any confession of the individual authorship could havedone. The shrinking of activity in public curiosity and wonder whichfollows the final determination of such ambiguities, is very apt toresult rather in a dwindling of the imaginative effort to enter intothe genius which gave rise to them, than in an increase of respect forso manifold a creative power. 

When Scott wrote, such fertility as his in the production of novelswas regarded with amazement approaching to absolute incredulity. Yethe was in this respect only the advanced-guard of a notinconsiderable class of men and women who have a special gift forpouring out story after story, containing a great variety of figures, while retaining a certain even level of merit. There is more than onenovelist of the present day who has far surpassed Scott in the numberof his tales, and one at least of very high repute, who has, Ibelieve, produced more even within the same time. But though to ourlarger experience, Scott's achievement, in respect of mere fertility, is by no means the miracle which it once seemed, I do not think one ofhis successors can compare with him for a moment in the ease and truthwith which he painted, not merely the life of his own time andcountry--seldom indeed that of precisely his own time--but that ofdays long past, and often too of scenes far distant. The most powerfulof all his stories, _Old Mortality_, was the story of a period morethan a century and a quarter before he wrote; and others, --whichthough inferior to this in force, are nevertheless, when compared withthe so-called historical romances of any other English writer, whatsunlight is to moonlight, if you can say as much for the latter as toadmit even that comparison, --go back to the period of the Tudors, thatis, two centuries and a half. _Quentin Durward_, which is all butamongst the best, runs back farther still, far into the previouscentury, while _Ivanhoe_ and _The Talisman_, though not among thegreatest of Scott's works, carry us back more than five hundred years. The new class of extempore novel writers, though more considerablethan, sixty years ago, any one could have expected ever to see it, isstill limited, and on any high level of merit will probably always belimited, to the delineation of the times of which the narrator haspersonal experience. Scott seemed to have had something very likepersonal experience of a few centuries at least, judging by the easeand freshness with which he poured out his stories of these centuries, and though no one can pretend that even he could describe the periodof the Tudors as Miss Austen described the country parsons and squiresof George the Third's reign, or as Mr. Trollope describes thepoliticians and hunting-men of Queen Victoria's, it is neverthelessthe evidence of a greater imagination to make us live so familiarly asScott does amidst the political and religious controversies of two orthree centuries' duration, to be the actual witnesses, as it were, ofMargaret of Anjou's throes of vain ambition, and Mary Stuart'sfascinating remorse, and Elizabeth's domineering and jealousbalancings of noble against noble, of James the First's shrewdpedantries, and the Regent Murray's large forethought, of the politiccraft of Argyle, the courtly ruthlessness of Claverhouse, and thehigh-bred clemency of Monmouth, than to reflect in countlessmodifications the freaks, figures, and fashions of our own time. 

The most striking feature of Scott's romances is that, for the most part, they are pivoted on public rather than mere private interests andpassions. With but few exceptions--(_The Antiquary_, _St. Ronan's Well_, and _Guy Mannering_ are the most important)--Scott's novels give us animaginative view, not of mere individuals, but of individuals as they areaffected by the public strifes and social divisions of the age. And thisit is which gives his books so large an interest for old and young, soldiers and statesmen, the world of society and the recluse, alike. Youcan hardly read any novel of Scott's and not become better aware whatpublic life and political issues mean. And yet there is no artificiality, no elaborate attitudinizing before the antique mirrors of the past, likeBulwer's, no dressing out of clothes-horses like G. P. R. James. Theboldness and freshness of the present are carried back into the past, andyou see Papists and Puritans, Cavaliers and Roundheads, Jews, Jacobites, and freebooters, preachers, schoolmasters, mercenary soldiers, gipsies, and beggars, all living the sort of life which the reader feels that intheir circumstances and under the same conditions of time and place andparentage, he might have lived too. Indeed, no man can read Scott withoutbeing more of a public man, whereas the ordinary novel tends to make itsreaders rather less of one than before. 

Next, though most of these stories are rightly called romances, no onecan avoid observing that they give that side of life which isunromantic, quite as vigorously as the romantic side. This was nottrue of Scott's poems, which only expressed one-half of his nature, and were almost pure romances. But in the novels the business of lifeis even better portrayed than its sentiments. Mr. Bagehot, one of theablest of Scott's critics, has pointed out this admirably in his essayon _The Waverley Novels_. "Many historical novelists, " he says, "especially those who with care and pains have read up the detail, areoften evidently in a strait how to pass from their history to theirsentiment. The fancy of Sir Walter could not help connecting the two. If he had given us the English side of the race to Derby, _he wouldhave described the Bank of England paying in sixpences, and also theloves of the cashier_. " No one who knows the novels well can questionthis. Fergus MacIvor's ways and means, his careful arrangements forreceiving subsidies in black mail, are as carefully recorded as hislavish highland hospitalities; and when he sends his silver cup to theGaelic bard who chaunts his greatness, the faithful historian does notforget to let us know that the cup is his last, and that he ishard-pressed for the generosities of the future. So too the habitualthievishness of the highlanders is pressed upon us quite as vividly astheir gallantry and superstitions. And so careful is Sir Walter topaint the petty pedantries of the Scotch traditional conservatism, that he will not spare even Charles Edward--of whom he draws sograceful a picture--the humiliation of submitting to old Bradwardine's"solemn act of homage, " but makes him go through the absurd ceremonyof placing his foot on a cushion to have its brogue unlatched by thedry old enthusiast of heraldic lore. Indeed it was because Scott somuch enjoyed the contrast between the high sentiment of life and itsdry and often absurd detail, that his imagination found so much freera vent in the historical romance, than it ever found in the romanticpoem. Yet he clearly needed the romantic excitement of picturesquescenes and historical interests, too. I do not think he would everhave gained any brilliant success in the narrower region of thedomestic novel. He said himself, in expressing his admiration of MissAusten, "The big bow-wow strain I can do myself, like any now going, but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things andcharacters interesting, from the truth of the description and thesentiment, is denied to me. " Indeed he tried it to some extent in _St. Ronan's Well_, and so far as he tried it, I think he failed. Scottneeded a certain largeness of type, a strongly-marked class-life, and, where it was possible, a free, out-of-doors life, for hisdelineations. _No_ one could paint beggars and gipsies, and wanderingfiddlers, and mercenary soldiers, and peasants and farmers andlawyers, and magistrates, and preachers, and courtiers, and statesmen, and best of all perhaps queens and kings, with anything like hisability. But when it came to describing the small differences ofmanner, differences not due to external habits, so much as to internalsentiment or education, or mere domestic circumstance, he was beyondhis proper field. In the sketch of the St. Ronan's Spa and the companyat the _table-d'hôte_, he is of course somewhere near the mark, --hewas too able a man to fall far short of success in anything he reallygave to the world; but it is not interesting. Miss Austen would havemade Lady Penelope Penfeather a hundred times as amusing. We turn toMeg Dods and Touchwood, and Cargill, and Captain Jekyl, and Sir BingoBinks, and to Clara Mowbray, --i. E. To the lives really moulded bylarge and specific causes, for enjoyment, and leave the small gossipof the company at the Wells as, relatively at least, a failure. And itis well for all the world that it was so. The domestic novel, whenreally of the highest kind, is no doubt a perfect work of art, and anunfailing source of amusement; but it has nothing of the tonicinfluence, the large instructiveness, the stimulating intellectualair, of Scott's historic tales. Even when Scott is farthest fromreality--as in _Ivanhoe_ or _The Monastery_--he makes you open youreyes to all sorts of historical conditions to which you wouldotherwise be blind. The domestic novel, even when its art is perfect, gives little but pleasure at the best; at the worst it is simplyscandal idealized. 

Scott often confessed his contempt for his own heroes. He said ofEdward Waverley, for instance, that he was "a sneaking piece ofimbecility, " and that "if he had married Flora, she would have set himup upon the chimney-piece as Count Borowlaski's wife used to do withhim. I am a bad hand at depicting a hero, properly so called, andhave an unfortunate propensity for the dubious characters ofborderers, buccaneers, highland robbers, and all others of aRobin-Hood description. "[33] In another letter he says, "My roguealways, in despite of me, turns out my hero. "[34] And it seems verylikely that in most of the situations Scott describes so well, his owncourse would have been that of his wilder impulses, and not that ofhis reason. Assuredly he would never have stopped hesitating on theline between opposite courses as his Waverleys, his Mortons, hisOsbaldistones do. Whenever he was really involved in a party strife, he flung prudence and impartiality to the winds, and went in like thehearty partisan which his strong impulses made of him. But grantingthis, I do not agree with his condemnation of all his own colourlessheroes. However much they differed in nature from Scott himself, theeven balance of their reason against their sympathies is certainlywell conceived, is in itself natural, and is an admirable expedientfor effecting that which was probably its real use to Scott, --theaffording an opportunity for the delineation of all the pros and consof the case, so that the characters on both sides of the struggleshould be properly understood. Scott's imagination was clearly farwider--was far more permeated with the fixed air of soundjudgment--than his practical impulses. He needed a machinery fordisplaying his insight into both sides of a public quarrel, and hiscolourless heroes gave him the instrument he needed. Both in Morton'scase (in _Old Mortality_), and in Waverley's, the hesitation iscertainly well described. Indeed in relation to the controversybetween Covenanters and Royalists, while his political and martialprepossessions went with Claverhouse, his reason and educated moralfeeling certainly were clearly identified with Morton. 

It is, however, obviously true that Scott's heroes are mostly createdfor the sake of the facility they give in delineating the othercharacters, and not the other characters for the sake of the heroes. They are the imaginative neutral ground, as it were, on which opposinginfluences are brought to play; and what Scott best loved to paint wasthose who, whether by nature, by inheritance, or by choice, had becomeunique and characteristic types of one-sided feeling, not those whowere merely in process of growth, and had not ranged themselves atall. Mr. Carlyle, who, as I have said before, places Scott's romancesfar below their real level, maintains that these great types of hisare drawn from the outside, and not made actually to live. "His BailieJarvies, Dinmonts, Dalgettys (for their name is legion), do look andtalk like what they give themselves out for; they are, if not_created_ and made poetically alive, yet deceptively _enacted_ as agood player might do them. What more is wanted, then? For the readerlying on a sofa, nothing more; yet for another sort of reader much. Itwere a long chapter to unfold the difference in drawing a characterbetween a Scott and a Shakespeare or Goethe. Yet it is a differenceliterally immense; they are of a different species; the value of theone is not to be counted in the coin of the other. We might say in ashort word, which covers a long matter, that your Shakespeare fashionshis characters from the heart outwards; your Scott fashions them fromthe skin inwards, never getting near the heart of them. The one setbecome living men and women; the other amount to little more thanmechanical cases, deceptively painted automatons. "[35] And then hegoes on to contrast Fenella in _Peveril of the Peak_ with Goethe'sMignon. Mr. Carlyle could hardly have chosen a less fair comparison. If Goethe is to be judged by his women, let Scott be judged by hismen. So judged, I think Scott will, as a painter of character--ofcourse, I am not now speaking of him as a poet, --come out far aboveGoethe. Excepting the hero of his first drama (Götz of the iron hand), which by the way was so much in Scott's line that his first essay inpoetry was to translate it--not very well--I doubt if Goethe was eversuccessful with his pictures of men. _Wilhelm Meister_ is, as Niebuhrtruly said, "a ménagerie of tame animals. " Doubtless Goethe'swomen--certainly his women of culture--are more truly and inwardlyconceived and created than Scott's. Except Jeanie Deans and MadgeWildfire, and perhaps Lucy Ashton, Scott's women are apt to beuninteresting, either pink and white toys, or hardish women of theworld. But then no one can compare the men of the two writers, and notsee Scott's vast pre-eminence on that side. 

I think the deficiency of his pictures of women, odd as it seems tosay so, should be greatly attributed to his natural chivalry. Hisconception of women of his own or a higher class was always tooromantic. He hardly ventured, as it were, in his tenderness for them, to look deeply into their little weaknesses and intricacies ofcharacter. With women of an inferior class, he had not this feeling. Nothing can be more perfect than the manner in which he blends thedairy-woman and woman of business in Jeanie Deans, with the lover andthe sister. But once make a woman beautiful, or in any way an objectof homage to him, and Scott bowed so low before the image of her, that he could not go deep into her heart. He could no more haveanalysed such a woman, as Thackeray analyzed Lady Castlewood, orAmelia, or Becky, or as George Eliot analysed Rosamond Vincy, than hecould have vivisected Camp or Maida. To some extent, therefore, Scott's pictures of women remain something in the style of theminiatures of the last age--bright and beautiful beings without anyspecial character in them. He was dazzled by a fair heroine. He couldnot take them up into his imagination as real beings as he did men. But then how living are his men, whether coarse or noble! What apicture, for instance, is that in _A Legend of Montrose_ of theconceited, pragmatic, but prompt and dauntless soldier of fortune, rejecting Argyle's attempts to tamper with him, in the dungeon atInverary, suddenly throwing himself on the disguised Duke so soon ashe detects him by his voice, and wresting from him the means of hisown liberation! Who could read that scene and say for a moment thatDalgetty is painted "from the skin inwards"? It was just Scott himselfbreathing his own life through the habits of a good specimen of themercenary soldier--realizing where the spirit of hire would end, andthe sense of honour would begin--and preferring, even in a dungeon, the audacious policy of a sudden attack to that of crafty negotiation. What a picture (and a very different one) again is that in_Redgauntlet_ of Peter Peebles, the mad litigant, with face emaciatedby poverty and anxiety, and rendered wild by "an insane lightnessabout the eyes, " dashing into the English magistrate's court for awarrant against his fugitive counsel. Or, to take a third instance, asdifferent as possible from either, how powerfully conceived is thesituation in _Old Mortality_, where Balfour of Burley, in his fanaticfury at the defeat of his plan for a new rebellion, pushes theoak-tree, which connects his wild retreat with the outer world, intothe stream, and tries to slay Morton for opposing him. In such scenesand a hundred others--for these are mere random examples--Scottundoubtedly painted his masculine figures from as deep and inward aconception of the character of the situation as Goethe ever attained, even in drawing Mignon, or Klärchen, or Gretchen. The distinction hasno real existence. Goethe's pictures of women were no doubt theintuitions of genius; and so are Scott's of men--and here and there ofhis women too. Professional women he can always paint with power. MegDods, the innkeeper, Meg Merrilies, the gipsy, Mause Headrigg, theCovenanter, Elspeth, the old fishwife in _The Antiquary_, and the oldcrones employed to nurse and watch, and lay out the corpse, in _TheBride of Lammermoor_, are all in their way impressive figures. 

And even in relation to women of a rank more fascinating to Scott, andwhose inner character was perhaps on that account, less familiar tohis imagination, grant him but a few hints from history, and he drawsa picture which, for vividness and brilliancy, may almost compare withShakespeare's own studies in English history. Had Shakespeare paintedthe scene in _The Abbot_, in which Mary Stuart commands one of herMary's in waiting to tell her at what bridal she last danced, and MaryFleming blurts out the reference to the marriage of Sebastian atHolyrood, would any one hesitate to regard it as a stroke of geniusworthy of the great dramatist? This picture of the Queen's mindsuddenly thrown off its balance, and betraying, in the agony of themoment, the fear and remorse which every association with Darnleyconjured up, is painted "from the heart outwards, " not "from the skininwards, " if ever there were such a painting in the world. Scotthardly ever failed in painting kings or peasants, queens orpeasant-women. There was something in the well-marked type of both tocatch his imagination, which can always hit off the grander featuresof royalty, and the homelier features of laborious humility. Is thereany sketch traced in lines of more sweeping grandeur and moreimpressive force than the following of Mary Stuart's lucid interval ofremorse--lucid compared with her ordinary mood, though it was of aremorse that was almost delirious--which breaks in upon her hour offascinating condescension?--

 "'Are they not a lovely couple, my Fleming? and is it not heart-rending to think that I must be their ruin?'

 "'Not so, ' said Roland Græme, 'it is we, gracious sovereign, who will be your deliverers. ' '_Ex oribus parvulorum!_' said the queen, looking upward; 'if it is by the mouth of these children that heaven calls me to resume the stately thoughts which become my birth and my rights, thou wilt grant them thy protection, and to me the power of rewarding their zeal. ' Then turning to Fleming, she instantly added, 'Thou knowest, my friend, whether to make those who have served me happy, was not ever Mary's favourite pastime. When I have been rebuked by the stern preachers of the Calvinistic heresy--when I have seen the fierce countenances of my nobles averted from me, has it not been because I mixed in the harmless pleasures of the young and gay, and rather for the sake of their happiness than my own, have mingled in the masque, the song or the dance, with the youth of my household? Well, I repent not of it--though Knox termed it sin, and Morton degradation--I was happy because I saw happiness around me: and woe betide the wretched jealousy that can extract guilt out of the overflowings of an unguarded gaiety!--Fleming, if we are restored to our throne, shall we not have one blithesome day at a blithesome bridal, of which we must now name neither the bride nor the bridegroom? But that bridegroom shall have the barony of Blairgowrie, a fair gift even for a queen to give, and that bride's chaplet shall be twined with the fairest pearls that ever were found in the depths of Lochlomond; and thou thyself, Mary Fleming, the best dresser of tires that ever busked the tresses of a queen, and who would scorn to touch those of any woman of lower rank--thou thyself shalt for my love twine them into the bride's tresses. --Look, my Fleming, suppose then such clustered locks as these of our Catherine, they would not put shame upon thy skill. ' So saying she passed her hand fondly over the head of her youthful favourite, while her more aged attendant replied despondently, 'Alas, madam, your thoughts stray far from home. ' 'They do, my Fleming, ' said the queen, 'but is it well or kind in you to call them back?--God knows they have kept the perch this night but too closely. --Come, I will recall the gay vision, were it but to punish them. Yes, at that blithesome bridal, Mary herself shall forget the weight of sorrows, and the toil of state, and herself once more lead a measure. --At whose wedding was it that we last danced, my Fleming? I think care has troubled my memory--yet something of it I should remember, canst thou not aid me? I know thou canst. ' 'Alas, madam, ' replied the lady. 'What, ' said Mary, 'wilt thou not help us so far? this is a peevish adherence to thine own graver opinion which holds our talk as folly. But thou art court-bred and wilt well understand me when I say the queen _commands_ Lady Fleming to tell her when she led the last _branle_. ' With a face deadly pale and a mien as if she were about to sink into the earth, the court-bred dame, no longer daring to refuse obedience, faltered out, 'Gracious lady--if my memory err not--it was at a masque in Holyrood--at the marriage of Sebastian. ' The unhappy queen, who had hitherto listened with a melancholy smile, provoked by the reluctance with which the Lady Fleming brought out her story, at this ill-fated word interrupted her with a shriek so wild and loud that the vaulted apartment rang, and both Roland and Catherine sprung to their feet in the utmost terror and alarm. Meantime, Mary seemed, by the train of horrible ideas thus suddenly excited, surprised not only beyond self-command, but for the moment beyond the verge of reason. 'Traitress, ' she said to the Lady Fleming, 'thou wouldst slay thy sovereign. Call my French guards--_à moi! à moi! mes Français_!--I am beset with traitors in mine own palace--they have murdered my husband--Rescue! Rescue! for the Queen of Scotland!' She started up from her chair--her features late so exquisitely lovely in their paleness, now inflamed with the fury of frenzy, and resembling those of a Bellona. 'We will take the field ourself, ' she said; 'warn the city--warn Lothian and Fife--saddle our Spanish barb, and bid French Paris see our petronel be charged. Better to die at the head of our brave Scotsmen, like our grandfather at Flodden, than of a broken heart like our ill-starred father. ' 'Be patient--be composed, dearest sovereign, ' said Catherine; and then addressing Lady Fleming angrily, she added, 'How could you say aught that reminded her of her husband?' The word reached the ear of the unhappy princess who caught it up, speaking with great rapidity, 'Husband!--what husband? Not his most Christian Majesty--he is ill at ease--he cannot mount on horseback--not him of the Lennox--but it was the Duke of Orkney thou wouldst say?' 'For God's love, madam, be patient!' said the Lady Fleming. But the queen's excited imagination could by no entreaty be diverted from its course. 'Bid him come hither to our aid, ' she said, 'and bring with him his lambs, as he calls them--Bowton, Hay of Talla, Black Ormiston and his kinsman Hob--Fie, how swart they are, and how they smell of sulphur! What! closeted with Morton? Nay, if the Douglas and the Hepburn hatch the complot together, the bird when it breaks the shell will scare Scotland, will it not, my Fleming?' 'She grows wilder and wilder, ' said Fleming. 'We have too many hearers for these strange words. ' 'Roland, ' said Catherine, 'in the name of God begone!--you cannot aid us here--leave us to deal with her alone--away--away!"

And equally fine is the scene in _Kenilworth_ in which Elizabethundertakes the reconciliation of the haughty rivals, Sussex andLeicester, unaware that in the course of the audience she herself willhave to bear a great strain on her self-command, both in her feelingsas a queen and her feelings as a lover. Her grand rebukes to both, herill-concealed preference for Leicester, her whispered ridicule ofSussex, the impulses of tenderness which she stifles, the flashes ofresentment to which she gives way, the triumph of policy over privatefeeling, her imperious impatience when she is baffled, her jealousy asshe grows suspicious of a personal rival, her gratified pride andvanity when the suspicion is exchanged for the clear evidence, as shesupposes, of Leicester's love, and her peremptory conclusion of theaudience, bring before the mind a series of pictures far more vividand impressive than the greatest of historical painters could fix oncanvas, even at the cost of the labour of years. Even more brilliant, though not so sustained and difficult an effort of genius, is thelater scene in the same story, in which Elizabeth drags the unhappyCountess of Leicester from her concealment in one of the grottoes ofKenilworth Castle, and strides off with her, in a fit of vindictivehumiliation and Amazonian fury, to confront her with her husband. Butthis last scene no doubt is more in Scott's way. He can always paintwomen in their more masculine moods. Where he frequently fails is inthe attempt to indicate the finer shades of women's nature. In AmyRobsart herself, for example, he is by no means generally successful, though in an early scene her childish delight in the various ordersand decorations of her husband is painted with much freshness anddelicacy. But wherever, as in the case of queens, Scott can get atelling hint from actual history, he can always so use it as to makehistory itself seem dim to the equivalent for it which he gives us. 

And yet, as every one knows, Scott was excessively free in hismanipulations of history for the purposes of romance. In _Kenilworth_he represents Shakespeare's plays as already in the mouths ofcourtiers and statesmen, though he lays the scene in the eighteenthyear of Elizabeth, when Shakespeare was hardly old enough to rob anorchard. In _Woodstock_, on the contrary, he insists, if you compareSir Henry Lee's dates with the facts, that Shakespeare died twentyyears at least before he actually died. The historical basis, again, of _Woodstock_ and of _Redgauntlet_ is thoroughly untrustworthy, andabout all the minuter details of history, --unless so far as they werecharacteristic of the age, --I do not suppose that Scott in hisromances ever troubled himself at all. And yet few historians--noteven Scott himself when he exchanged romance for history--ever drewthe great figures of history with so powerful a hand. In writinghistory and biography Scott has little or no advantage over veryinferior men. His pictures of Swift, of Dryden, of Napoleon, are in noway very vivid. It is only where he is working from the pureimagination, --though imagination stirred by historic study, --that hepaints a picture which follows us about, as if with living eyes, instead of creating for us a mere series of lines and colours. Indeed, whether Scott draws truly or falsely, he draws with such genius thathis pictures of Richard and Saladin, of Louis XI. And Charles theBold, of Margaret of Anjou and René of Provence, of Mary Stuart andElizabeth Tudor, of Sussex and of Leicester, of James and Charles andBuckingham, of the two Dukes of Argyle--the Argyle of the time of therevolution, and the Argyle of George II. , of Queen Caroline, ofClaverhouse, and Monmouth, and of Rob Roy, will live in Englishliterature beside Shakespeare's pictures--probably less faithful ifmore imaginative--of John and Richard and the later Henries, and allthe great figures by whom they were surrounded. No historical portraitthat we possess will take precedence--as a mere portrait--of Scott'sbrilliant study of James I. In _The Fortunes of Nigel_. Take thisillustration for instance, where George Heriot the goldsmith (JinglingGeordie, as the king familiarly calls him) has just been speaking ofLord Huntinglen, as "a man of the old rough world that will drink andswear:"--

 "'O Geordie!' exclaimed the king, 'these are auld-warld frailties, of whilk we dare not pronounce even ourselves absolutely free. But the warld grows worse from day to day, Geordie. The juveniles of this age may weel say with the poet, --

 "Ætas parentum pejor avis tulit Nos nequiores--"

 This Dalgarno does not drink so much; aye or swear so much, as his father, but he wenches, Geordie, and he breaks his word and oath baith. As to what ye say of the leddy and the ministers, we are all fallible creatures, Geordie, priests and kings as weel as others; and wha kens but what that may account for the difference between this Dalgarno and his father? The earl is the vera soul of honour, and cares nae mair for warld's gear than a noble hound for the quest of a foulmart; but as for his son, he was like to brazen us all out--ourselves, Steenie, Baby Charles, and our Council, till he heard of the tocher, and then by my kingly crown he lap like a cock at a grossart! These are discrepancies betwixt parent and son not to be accounted for naturally, according to Baptista Porta, Michael Scott _de secretis_, and others. Ah, Jingling Geordie, if your clouting the caldron, and jingling on pots, pans, and veshels of all manner of metal, hadna jingled a' your grammar out of your head, I could have touched on that matter to you at mair length. ' ... Heriot inquired whether Lord Dalgarno had consented to do the Lady Hermione justice. 'Troth, man, I have small doubt that he will, ' quoth the king, 'I gave him the schedule of her worldly substance, which you delivered to us in the council, and we allowed him half an hour to chew the cud upon that. It is rare reading for bringing him to reason. I left Baby Charles and Steenie laying his duty before him, and if he can resist doing what _they_ desire him, why I wish he would teach _me_ the gate of it. O Geordie, Jingling Geordie, it was grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing _on_ the turpitude of incontinence. ' 'I am afraid, ' said George Heriot, more hastily than prudently, 'I might have thought of the old proverb of Satan reproving sin. ' 'Deil hae our saul, neighbour, ' said the king, reddening, 'but ye are not blate! I gie ye licence to speak freely, and by our saul, ye do not let the privilege become lost, _non utendo_--it will suffer no negative prescription in your hands. Is it fit, think ye, that Baby Charles should let his thoughts be publicly seen? No, no, princes' thoughts are _arcana imperii: qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare_. Every liege subject is bound to speak the whole truth to the king, but there is nae reciprocity of obligation--and for Steenie having been whiles a dike-louper at a time, is it for you, who are his goldsmith, and to whom, I doubt, he awes an uncomatable sum, to cast that up to him?"

Assuredly there is no undue favouring of Stuarts in such a picture asthat. 

Scott's humour is, I think, of very different qualities in relation todifferent subjects. Certainly he was at times capable of considerableheaviness of hand, --of the Scotch "wut" which has been so irreverentlytreated by English critics. His rather elaborate jocularintroductions, under the name of Jedediah Cleishbotham, are clearlylaborious at times. And even his own letters to his daughter-in-law, which Mr. Lockhart seems to regard as models of tender playfulness andpleasantry, seem to me decidedly elephantine. Not unfrequently, too, his stereotyped jokes weary. Dalgetty bores you almost as much as hewould do in real life, --which is a great fault in art. Bradwardinebecomes a nuisance, and as for Sir Piercie Shafton, he is beyondendurance. Like some other Scotchmen of genius, Scott twanged away atany effective chord till it more than lost its expressiveness. But indry humour, and in that higher humour which skilfully blends theludicrous and the pathetic, so that it is hardly possible to separatebetween smiles and tears, Scott is a master. His canny innkeeper, who, having sent away all the peasemeal to the camp of the Covenanters, andall the oatmeal (with deep professions of duty) to the castle and itscavaliers, in compliance with the requisitions sent to him on eachside, admits with a sigh to his daughter that "they maun gar wheatflour serve themsels for a blink, "--his firm of solicitors, Greenhornand Grinderson, whose senior partner writes respectfully to clients inprosperity, and whose junior partner writes familiarly to those inadversity, --his arbitrary nabob who asks how the devil any one shouldbe able to mix spices so well "as one who has been where theygrow;"--his little ragamuffin who indignantly denies that he hasbroken his promise not to gamble away his sixpences at pitch-and-tossbecause he has gambled them away at "neevie-neevie-nick-nack, "--andsimilar figures abound in his tales, --are all creations which make onelaugh inwardly as we read. But he has a much higher humour still, thatinimitable power of shading off ignorance into knowledge andsimplicity into wisdom, which makes his picture of Jeanie Deans, forinstance, so humorous as well as so affecting. When Jeanie reunitesher father to her husband by reminding the former how it wouldsometimes happen that "twa precious saints might pu' sundrywise liketwa cows riving at the same hayband, " she gives us an admirableinstance of Scott's higher humour. Or take Jeanie Deans's letter toher father communicating to him the pardon of his daughter and her owninterview with the Queen:--

 "DEAREST AND TRULY HONOURED FATHER. --This comes with my duty to inform you, that it has pleased God to redeem that captivitie of my poor sister, in respect the Queen's blessed Majesty, for whom we are ever bound to pray, hath redeemed her soul from the slayer, granting the ransom of her, whilk is ane pardon or reprieve. And I spoke with the Queen face to face, and yet live; for she is not muckle differing from other grand leddies, saving that she has a stately presence, and een like a blue huntin' hawk's, whilk gaed throu' and throu' me like a Highland durk--And all this good was, alway under the Great Giver, to whom all are but instruments, wrought for us by the Duk of Argile, wha is ane native true-hearted Scotsman, and not pridefu', like other folk we ken of--and likewise skeely enow in bestial, whereof he has promised to gie me twa Devonshire kye, of which he is enamoured, although I do still haud by the real hawkit Airshire breed--and I have promised him a cheese; and I wad wuss ye, if Gowans, the brockit cow, has a quey, that she suld suck her fill of milk, as I am given to understand he has none of that breed, and is not scornfu' but will take a thing frae a puir body, that it may lighten their heart of the loading of debt that they awe him. Also his honour the Duke will accept ane of our Dunlop cheeses, and it sall be my faut if a better was ever yearned in Lowden. "--[Here follow some observations respecting the breed of cattle, and the produce of the dairy, which it is our intention to forward to the Board of Agriculture. ]--"Nevertheless, these are but matters of the after-harvest, in respect of the great good which Providence hath gifted us with--and, in especial, poor Effie's life. And oh, my dear father, since it hath pleased God to be merciful to her, let her not want your free pardon, whilk will make her meet to be ane vessel of grace, and also a comfort to your ain graie hairs. Dear Father, will ye let the Laird ken that we have had friends strangely raised up to us, and that the talent whilk he lent me will be thankfully repaid. I hae some of it to the fore; and the rest of it is not knotted up in ane purse or napkin, but in ane wee bit paper, as is the fashion heir, whilk I am assured is gude for the siller. And, dear father, through Mr. Butler's means I hae gude friendship with the Duke, for there had been kindness between their forbears in the auld troublesome time byepast. And Mrs. Glass has been kind like my very mother. She has a braw house here, and lives bien and warm, wi' twa servant lasses, and a man and a callant in the shop. And she is to send you doun a pound of her hie-dried, and some other tobaka, and we maun think of some propine for her, since her kindness hath been great. And the Duk is to send the pardon doun by an express messenger, in respect that I canna travel sae fast; and I am to come doun wi' twa of his Honour's servants--that is, John Archibald, a decent elderly gentleman, that says he has seen you lang syne, when ye were buying beasts in the west frae the Laird of Aughtermuggitie--but maybe ye winna mind him--ony way, he's a civil man--and Mrs. Dolly Dutton, that is to be dairy-maid at Inverara: and they bring me on as far as Glasgo', whilk will make it nae pinch to win hame, whilk I desire of all things. May the Giver of all good things keep ye in your outgauns and incomings, whereof devoutly prayeth your loving dauter, "JEAN DEANS. "

This contains an example of Scott's rather heavy jocularity as well asgiving us a fine illustration of his highest and deepest and sunniesthumour. Coming where it does, the joke inserted about the Board ofAgriculture is rather like the gambol of a rhinoceros trying toimitate the curvettings of a thoroughbred horse. 

Some of the finest touches of his humour are no doubt much heightenedby his perfect command of the genius as well as the dialect of apeasantry, in whom a true culture of mind and sometimes also of heartis found in the closest possible contact with the humblest pursuitsand the quaintest enthusiasm for them. But Scott, with all his turnfor irony--and Mr. Lockhart says that even on his death-bed he usedtowards his children the same sort of good-humoured irony to which hehad always accustomed them in his life--certainly never gives us anyexample of that highest irony which is found so frequently inShakespeare, which touches the paradoxes of the spiritual life of thechildren of earth, and which reached its highest point in Isaiah. Nowand then in his latest diaries--the diaries written in his deepaffliction--he comes near the edge of it. Once, for instance, he says, "What a strange scene if the surge of conversation could suddenly ebblike the tide, and show us the state of people's real minds!

 'No eyes the rocks discover Which lurk beneath the deep. '

Life could not be endured were it seen in reality. " But this is notirony, only the sort of meditation which, in a mind inclined to thrustdeep into the secrets of life's paradoxes, is apt to lead to irony. Scott, however, does not thrust deep in this direction. He met thecold steel which inflicts the deepest interior wounds, like a soldier, and never seems to have meditated on the higher paradoxes of life tillreason reeled. The irony of Hamlet is far from Scott. His imaginationwas essentially one of distinct embodiment. He never even seemed somuch as to contemplate that sundering of substance and form, thatrending away of outward garments, that unclothing of the soul, inorder that it might be more effectually clothed upon, which is at theheart of anything that may be called spiritual irony. The constantabiding of his mind within the well-defined forms of some one or otherof the conditions of outward life and manners, among the scores ofdifferent spheres of human habit, was, no doubt, one of the secrets ofhis genius; but it was also its greatest limitation. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 32: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 171-3. ]

[Footnote 33: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 175-6. ]

[Footnote 34: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 46. ]

[Footnote 35: Carlyle's _Miscellaneous Essays_, iv. 174-5. ]

CHAPTER XI. 

MORALITY AND RELIGION. 

The very same causes which limited Scott's humour and irony to thecommoner fields of experience, and prevented him from ever introducinginto his stories characters of the highest type of moralthoughtfulness, gave to his own morality and religion, which were, Ithink, true to the core so far as they went, a shade of distinctconventionality. It is no doubt quite true, as he himself tells us, that he took more interest in his mercenaries and moss-troopers, outlaws, gipsies, and beggars, than he did in the fine ladies andgentlemen under a cloud whom he adopted as heroines and heroes. Butthat was the very sign of his conventionalism. Though he interestedhimself more in these irregular persons, he hardly ever ventured topaint their inner life so as to show how little there was to choosebetween the sins of those who are at war with society and the sins ofthose who bend to the yoke of society. He widened rather than narrowedthe chasm between the outlaw and the respectable citizen, even whilehe did not disguise his own romantic interest in the former. Heextenuated, no doubt, the sins of all brave and violent defiers of thelaw, as distinguished from the sins of crafty and cunning abusers ofthe law. But the leaning he had to the former was, as he was willingto admit, what he regarded as a "naughty" leaning. He did not attemptfor a moment to balance accounts between them and society. He paid histribute as a matter of course to the established morality, and onlyput in a word or two by way of attempt to diminish the severity of thesentence on the bold transgressor. And then, where what is called the"law of honour" comes in to traverse the law of religion, he had noscruple in setting aside the latter in favour of the customs ofgentlemen, without any attempt to justify that course. Yet it isevident from various passages in his writings that he held Christianduty inconsistent with duelling, and that he held himself a sincereChristian. In spite of this, when he was fifty-six, and under noconceivable hurry or perturbation of feeling, but only concerned todefend his own conduct--which was indeed plainly right--as to apolitical disclosure which he had made in his life of Napoleon, heasked his old friend William Clerk to be his second, if the expectedchallenge from General Gourgaud should come, and declared his firmintention of accepting it. On the strength of official evidence he hadexposed some conduct of General Gourgaud's at St. Helena, whichappeared to be far from honourable, and he thought it his duty on thataccount to submit to be shot at by General Gourgaud, if GeneralGourgaud had wished it. In writing to William Clerk to ask him to behis second, he says, "Like a man who finds himself in a scrape, General Gourgaud may wish to fight himself out of it, and if thequarrel should be thrust on me, why, _I will not baulk him, Jackie_. He shall not dishonour the country through my sides, I can assurehim. " In other words, Scott acted just as he had made Waverley andothers of his heroes act, on a code of honour which he knew to befalse, and he must have felt in this case to be something worse. Hethought himself at that time under the most stringent obligations bothto his creditors and his children, to do all in his power to redeemhimself and his estate from debt. Nay, more, he held that his life wasa trust from his Creator, which he had no right to throw away merelybecause a man whom he had not really injured, was indulging a strongwish to injure him; but he could so little brook the imputation ofphysical cowardice, that he was moral coward enough to resolve to meetGeneral Gourgaud, if General Gourgaud lusted after a shot at him. Noris there any trace preserved of so much as a moral scruple in his ownmind on the subject, and this though there are clear traces in hisother writings as to what he thought Christian morality required. Butthe Border chivalry was so strong in Scott that, on subjects of thiskind at least, his morality was the conventional morality of a dayrapidly passing away. 

He showed the same conventional feeling in his severity towards one ofhis own brothers who had been guilty of cowardice. Daniel Scott wasthe black sheep of the family. He got into difficulties in business, formed a bad connexion with an artful woman, and was sent to try hisfortunes in the West Indies. There he was employed in some serviceagainst a body of refractory negroes--we do not know its exactnature--and apparently showed the white feather. Mr. Lockhart saysthat "he returned to Scotland a dishonoured man; and though he foundshelter and compassion from his mother, his brother would never seehim again. Nay, when, soon after, his health, shattered by dissoluteindulgence, ... Gave way altogether, and he died, as yet a young man, the poet refused either to attend his funeral or to wear mourning forhim, like the rest of his family. "[36] Indeed he always spoke of himas his "relative, " not as his brother. Here again Scott's severity wasdue to his brother's failure as a "man of honour, " i. E. In courage. He was forbearing enough with vices of a different kind; made JohnBallantyne's dissipation the object rather of his jokes than of hisindignation; and not only mourned for him, but really grieved for himwhen he died. It is only fair to say, however, that for thisconventional scorn of a weakness rather than a sin, Scott sorrowedsincerely later in life, and that in sketching the physical cowardiceof Connochar in _The Fair Maid of Perth_, he deliberately made anattempt to atone for this hardness towards his brother by showing howfrequently the foundation of cowardice may be laid in perfectlyinvoluntary physical temperament, and pointing out with what nobleelements of disposition it may be combined. But till reflection onmany forms of human character had enlarged Scott's charity, andperhaps also the range of his speculative ethics, he remained aconventional moralist, and one, moreover, the type of whoseconventional code was borrowed more from that of honour than from thatof religious principle. There is one curious passage in his diary, written very near the end of his life, in which Scott even seems todeclare that conventional standards of conduct are better, or at leastsafer, than religious standards of conduct. He says in his diary forthe 15th April, 1828, --"Dined with Sir Robert Inglis, and met SirThomas Acland, my old and kind friend. I was happy to see him. He maybe considered now as the head of the religious party in the House ofCommons--a powerful body which Wilberforce long commanded. It is adifficult situation, for the adaptation of religious motives toearthly policy is apt--among the infinite delusions of the humanheart--to be a snare. "[37] His letters to his eldest son, the youngcavalry officer, on his first start in life, are much admired by Mr. Lockhart, but to me they read a little hard, a little worldly, andextremely conventional. Conventionality was certainly to his mindalmost a virtue. 

Of enthusiasm in religion Scott always spoke very severely; both in hisnovels and in his letters and private diary. In writing to Lord Montague, he speaks of such enthusiasm as was then prevalent at Oxford, and whichmakes, he says, "religion a motive and a pretext for particular lines ofthinking in politics and in temporal affairs" [as if it could help doingthat!] as "teaching a new way of going to the devil for God's sake, " andthis expressly, because when the young are infected with it, it disunitesfamilies, and sets "children in opposition to their parents. "[38] He givesus, however, one reason for his dread of anything like enthusiasm, whichis not conventional;--that it interferes with the submissive and tranquilmood which is the only true religious mood. Speaking in his diary of aweakness and fluttering at the heart, from which he had suffered, he says, "It is an awful sensation, and would have made an enthusiast of me, had Iindulged my imagination on religious subjects. I have been always carefulto place my mind in the most tranquil posture which it can assume, duringmy private exercises of devotion. "[39] And in this avoidance of indulgingthe imagination on religious, or even spiritual subjects, Scott goes farbeyond Shakespeare. I do not think there is a single study in all hisromances of what may be fairly called a pre-eminently spiritual characteras such, though Jeanie Deans approaches nearest to it. The same may besaid of Shakespeare. But Shakespeare, though he has never drawn apre-eminently spiritual character, often enough indulged his imaginationwhile meditating on spiritual themes. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 36: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii. 198-9. ]

[Footnote 37: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 231. ]

[Footnote 38: Ibid. , vii. 255-6. ]

[Footnote 39: Ibid. , viii. 292. ]

CHAPTER XII. 

DISTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS AT ABBOTSFORD. 

Between 1814 and the end of 1825, Scott's literary labour wasinterrupted only by one serious illness, and hardly interrupted bythat, --by a few journeys, --one to Paris after the battle of Waterloo, and several to London, --and by the worry of a constant stream ofintrusive visitors. Of his journeys he has left some records; but Icannot say that I think Scott would ever have reached, as a mereobserver and recorder, at all the high point which he reached directlyhis imagination went to work to create a story. That imagination was, indeed, far less subservient to his mere perceptions than to hisconstructive powers. _Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk_--the records ofhis Paris journey after Waterloo--for instance, are not at all abovethe mark of a good special correspondent. His imagination was less theimagination of insight, than the imagination of one whose mind was agreat kaleidoscope of human life and fortunes. But far moreinterrupting than either illness or travel, was the lion-hunting ofwhich Scott became the object, directly after the publication of theearlier novels. In great measure, no doubt, on account of the mysteryas to his authorship, his fame became something oppressive. At onetime as many as _sixteen_ parties of visitors applied to seeAbbotsford in a single day. Strangers, --especially the Americantravellers of that day, who were much less reticent and moreirrepressible than the American travellers of this, --would come to himwithout introductions, facetiously cry out "Prodigious!" in imitationof Dominie Sampson, whatever they were shown, inquire whether the newhouse was called Tullyveolan or Tillytudlem, cross-examine, with opennote-books, as to Scott's age, and the age of his wife, and appear tobe taken quite by surprise when they were bowed out without beingasked to dine. [40] In those days of high postage Scott's bill forletters "seldom came under 150_l. _ a year, " and "as to coach parcels, they were a perfect ruination. " On one occasion a mighty package cameby post from the United States, for which Scott had to pay five poundssterling. It contained a MS. Play called _The Cherokee Lovers_, by ayoung lady of New York, who begged Scott to read and correct it, writea prologue and epilogue, get it put on the stage at Drury Lane, andnegotiate with Constable or Murray for the copyright. In about afortnight another packet not less formidable arrived, charged with asimilar postage, which Scott, not grown cautious through experience, recklessly opened; out jumped a duplicate copy of _The CherokeeLovers_, with a second letter from the authoress, stating that as theweather had been stormy, and she feared that something might havehappened to her former MS. , she had thought it prudent to send him aduplicate. [41] Of course, when fame reached such a point as this, itbecame both a worry and a serious waste of money, and what was farmore valuable than money, of time, privacy, and tranquillity of mind. And though no man ever bore such worries with the equanimity of Scott, no man ever received less pleasure from the adulation of unknown andoften vulgar and ignorant admirers. His real amusements were his treesand his friends. "Planting and pruning trees, " he said, "I could workat from morning to night. There is a sort of self-congratulation, alittle tickling self-flattery, in the idea that while you are pleasingand amusing yourself, you are seriously contributing to the futurewelfare of the country, and that your very acorn may send its futureribs of oak to future victories like Trafalgar, "[42]--for the day ofiron ships was not yet. And again, at a later stage of hisplanting:--"You can have no idea of the exquisite delight of aplanter, --he is like a painter laying on his colours, --at every momenthe sees his effects coming out. There is no art or occupationcomparable to this; it is full of past, present, and future enjoyment. I look back to the time when there was not a tree here, only bareheath; I look round and see thousands of trees growing up, all ofwhich, I may say almost each of which, have received my personalattention. I remember, five years ago, looking forward with the mostdelighted expectation to this very hour, and as each year has passed, the expectation has gone on increasing. I do the same now. Ianticipate what this plantation and that one will presently be, ifonly taken care of, and there is not a spot of which I do not watchthe progress. Unlike building, or even painting, or indeed any otherkind of pursuit, this has no end, and is never interrupted; but goeson from day to day, and from year to year, with a perpetuallyaugmenting interest. Farming I hate. What have I to do with fatteningand killing beasts, or raising corn, only to cut it down, and towrangle with farmers about prices, and to be constantly at the mercyof the seasons? There can be no such disappointments or annoyances inplanting trees. "[43] Scott indeed regarded planting as a mode of somoulding the form and colour of the outward world, that nature herselfbecame indebted to him for finer outlines, richer masses of colour, and deeper shadows, as well as for more fertile and sheltered soils. And he was as skilful in producing the last result, as he was in theartistic effects of his planting. In the essay on the planting ofwaste lands, he mentions a story, --drawn from his own experience, --ofa planter, who having scooped out the lowest part of his land forenclosures, and "planted the wood round them in masses enlarged orcontracted as the natural lying of the ground seemed to dictate, " met, six years after these changes, his former tenant on the ground, andsaid to him, "I suppose, Mr. R----, you will say I have ruined yourfarm by laying half of it into woodland?" "I should have expected it, sir, " answered Mr. R----, "if you had told me beforehand what you weregoing to do; but I am now of a very different opinion; and as I amlooking for land at present, if you are inclined to take for theremaining sixty acres the same rent which I formerly gave for ahundred and twenty, I will give you an offer to that amount. Iconsider the benefit of the enclosing, and the complete shelterafforded to the fields, as an advantage which fairly counterbalancesthe loss of one-half of the land. "[44]

And Scott was not only thoughtful in his own planting, but induced hisneighbours to become so too. So great was their regard for him, thatmany of them planted their estates as much with reference to theeffect which their plantations would have on the view from Abbotsford, as with reference to the effect they would have on the view fromtheir own grounds. Many was the consultation which he and hisneighbours, Scott of Gala, for instance, and Mr. Henderson of EildonHall, had together on the effect which would be produced on the viewfrom their respective houses, of the planting going on upon the landsof each. The reciprocity of feeling was such that the variousproprietors acted more like brothers in this matter, than like thejealous and exclusive creatures which landowners, as such, so oftenare. 

Next to his interest in the management and growth of his own littleestate was Scott's interest in the management and growth of the Dukeof Buccleuch's. To the Duke he looked up as the head of his clan, withsomething almost more than a feudal attachment, greatly enhanced ofcourse by the personal friendship which he had formed for him in earlylife as the Earl of Dalkeith. This mixture of feudal and personalfeeling towards the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch continued duringtheir lives. Scott was away on a yachting tour to the Shetlands andOrkneys in July and August, 1814, and it was during this absence thatthe Duchess of Buccleuch died. Scott, who was in no anxiety about her, employed himself in writing an amusing descriptive epistle to the Dukein rough verse, chronicling his voyage, and containing expressions ofthe profoundest reverence for the goodness and charity of the Duchess, a letter which did not reach its destination till after the Duchess'sdeath. Scott himself heard of her death by chance when they landed fora few hours on the coast of Ireland; he was quite overpowered by thenews, and went to bed only to drop into short nightmare sleeps, and towake with the dim memory of some heavy weight at his heart. The Dukehimself died five years later, leaving a son only thirteen years ofage (the present Duke), over whose interests, both as regarded hiseducation and his estates, Scott watched as jealously as if they hadbeen those of his own son. Many were the anxious letters he wrote toLord Montague as to his "young chief's" affairs, as he called them, and great his pride in watching the promise of his youth. Nothing canbe clearer than that to Scott the feudal principle was something farbeyond a name; that he had at least as much pride in his devotion tohis chief, as he had in founding a house which he believed wouldincrease the influence--both territorial and personal--of the clan ofScotts. The unaffected reverence which he felt for the Duke, thoughmingled with warm personal affection, showed that Scott's feudalfeeling had something real and substantial in it, which did not vanisheven when it came into close contact with strong personal feelings. This reverence is curiously marked in his letters. He speaks of "thedistinction of rank" being ignored by both sides, as of somethingquite exceptional, but it was never really ignored by him, for thoughhe continued to write to the Duke as an intimate friend, it was with amingling of awe, very different indeed from that which he ever adoptedto Ellis or Erskine. It is necessary to remember this, not only inestimating the strength of the feeling which made him so anxious tobecome himself the founder of a house within a house, --of a new branchof the clan of Scotts, --but in estimating the loyalty which Scottalways displayed to one of the least respectable of Englishsovereigns, George IV. , --a matter of which I must now say a few words, not only because it led to Scott's receiving the baronetcy, butbecause it forms to my mind the most grotesque of all the threads inthe lot of this strong and proud man. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 40: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 387. ]

[Footnote 41: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 382. ]

[Footnote 42: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii. 288. ]

[Footnote 43: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vii. 287-8. ]

[Footnote 44: Scott's _Miscellaneous Prose Works_, xxi. 22-3. ]

CHAPTER XIII. 

SCOTT AND GEORGE IV. 

The first relations of Scott with the Court were, oddly enough, formedwith the Princess, not with the Prince of Wales. In 1806 Scott dinedwith the Princess of Wales at Blackheath, and spoke of his invitationas a great honour. He wrote a tribute to her father, the Duke ofBrunswick, in the introduction to one of the cantos of _Marmion_, andreceived from the Princess a silver vase in acknowledgment of thispassage in the poem. Scott's relations with the Prince Regent seem tohave begun in an offer to Scott of the Laureateship in the summer of1813, an offer which Scott would have found it very difficult toaccept, so strongly did his pride revolt at the idea of having tocommemorate in verse, as an official duty, all conspicuous incidentsaffecting the throne. But he was at the time of the offer in the thickof his first difficulties on account of Messrs. John Ballantyne andCo. , and it was only the Duke of Buccleuch's guarantee of 4000_l. _--aguarantee subsequently cancelled by Scott's paying the sum for whichit was a security--that enabled him at this time to decline what, after Southey had accepted it, he compared in a letter to Southey tothe herring for which the poor Scotch clergyman gave thanks in a gracewherein he described it as "even this, the very least of Providence'smercies. " In March, 1815, Scott being then in London, the PrinceRegent asked him to dinner, addressed him uniformly as Walter, andstruck up a friendship with him which seems to have lasted theirlives, and which certainly did much more honour to George than to SirWalter Scott. It is impossible not to think rather better of GeorgeIV. For thus valuing, and doing his best in every way to show hisvalue for, Scott. It is equally impossible not to think rather worseof Scott for thus valuing, and in every way doing his best to expresshis value for, this very worthless, though by no means incapable king. The consequences were soon seen in the indignation with which Scottbegan to speak of the Princess of Wales's sins. In 1806, in the squibhe wrote on Lord Melville's acquittal, when impeached for corruptionby the Liberal Government, he had written thus of the PrincessCaroline:--

 "Our King, too--our Princess, --I dare not say more, sir, -- May Providence watch them with mercy and might! While there's one Scottish hand that can wag a claymore, sir, They shall ne'er want a friend to stand up for their right. Be damn'd he that dare not-- For my part I'll spare not To beauty afflicted a tribute to give; Fill it up steadily, Drink it off readily, Here's to the Princess, and long may she live. "

But whoever "stood up" for the Princess's right, certainly Scott didnot do so after his intimacy with the Prince Regent began. Hementioned her only with severity, and in one letter at least, writtento his brother, with something much coarser than severity;[45] but theking's similar vices did not at all alienate him from what at leasthad all the appearance of a deep personal devotion to his sovereign. The first baronet whom George IV. Made on succeeding to the throne, after his long Regency, was Scott, who not only accepted the honourgratefully, but dwelt with extreme pride on the fact that it wasoffered to him by the king himself, and was in no way due to theprompting of any minister's advice. He wrote to Joanna Baillie onhearing of the Regent's intention--for the offer was made by theRegent at the end of 1818, though it was not actually conferred tillafter George's accession, namely, on the 30th March, 1820, --"The Dukeof Buccleuch and Scott of Harden, who, as the heads of my clan and thesources of my gentry, are good judges of what I ought to do, have bothgiven me their earnest opinion to accept of an honour directly derivedfrom the source of honour, and neither begged nor bought, as is theusual fashion. Several of my ancestors bore the title in theseventeenth century, and, were it of consequence, I have no reason tobe ashamed of the decent and respectable persons who connect me withthat period when they carried into the field, like Madoc, "The Crescent at whose gleam the Cambrian oft, Cursing his perilous tenure, wound his horn, "

so that, as a gentleman, I may stand on as good a footing as other newcreations. "[46] Why the honour was any greater for coming from such aking as George, than it would have been if it had been suggested byLord Sidmouth, or even Lord Liverpool, --or half as great as if Mr. Canning had proposed it, it is not easy to conceive. George was a fairjudge of literary merit, but not one to be compared for a moment withthat great orator and wit; and as to his being the fountain of honour, there was so much dishonour of which the king was certainly thefountain too, that I do not think it was very easy for two fountainsboth springing from such a person to have flowed quite unmingled. George justly prided himself on Sir Walter Scott's having been thefirst creation of his reign, and I think the event showed that thepoet was the fountain of much more honour for the king, than the kingwas for the poet. 

When George came to Edinburgh in 1822, it was Sir Walter who actedvirtually as the master of the ceremonies, and to whom it was chieflydue that the visit was so successful. It was then that George clad hissubstantial person for the first time in the Highland costume--to wit, in the Steuart Tartans--and was so much annoyed to find himselfoutvied by a wealthy alderman, Sir William Curtis, who had gone anddone likewise, and, in his equally grand Steuart Tartans, seemed akind of parody of the king. The day on which the king arrived, Tuesday, 14th of August, 1822, was also the day on which Scott's mostintimate friend, William Erskine, then Lord Kinnedder, died. Yet Scottwent on board the royal yacht, was most graciously received by George, had his health drunk by the king in a bottle of Highland whiskey, andwith a proper show of devoted loyalty entreated to be allowed toretain the glass out of which his Majesty had just drunk his health. The request was graciously acceded to, but let it be pleaded onScott's behalf, that on reaching home and finding there his friendCrabbe the poet, he sat down on the royal gift, and crushed it toatoms. One would hope that he was really thinking more even of Crabbe, and much more of Erskine, than of the royal favour for which he hadappeared, and doubtless had really believed himself, so grateful. SirWalter retained his regard for the king, such as it was, to the last, and even persuaded himself that George's death would be a greatpolitical calamity for the nation. And really I cannot help thinkingthat Scott believed more in the king, than he did in his friend GeorgeCanning. Assuredly, greatly as he admired Canning, he condemned himmore and more as Canning grew more liberal, and sometimes speaks ofhis veerings in that direction with positive asperity. George, on theother hand, who believed more in number one than in any other number, however large, became much more conservative after he became Regentthan he was before, and as he grew more conservative Scott grew moreconservative likewise, till he came to think this particular kingalmost a pillar of the Constitution. I suppose we ought to explainthis little bit of fetish-worship in Scott much as we should thequaint practical adhesion to duelling which he gave as an old man, whohad had all his life much more to do with the pen than the sword--thatis, as an evidence of the tendency of an improved type to recur tothat of the old wild stock on which it had been grafted. But certainlyno feudal devotion of his ancestors to their chief was ever lessjustified by moral qualities than Scott's loyal devotion to thefountain of honour as embodied in "our fat friend. " The whole relationto George was a grotesque thread in Scott's life; and I cannot quiteforgive him for the utterly conventional severity with which he threwover his first patron, the Queen, for sins which were certainly notgrosser, if they were not much less gross, than those of his secondpatron, the husband who had set her the example which she faithfully, though at a distance, followed. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 45: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vi. 229-30. ]

[Footnote 46: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vi. 13, 14. ]

CHAPTER XIV. 

SCOTT AS A POLITICIAN. 

Scott usually professed great ignorance of politics, and did what hecould to hold aloof from a world in which his feelings were veryeasily heated, while his knowledge was apt to be very imperfect. Butnow and again, and notably towards the close of his life, he gothimself mixed up in politics, and I need hardly say that it was alwayson the Tory, and generally on the red-hot Tory, side. His first hastyintervention in politics was the song I have just referred to on LordMelville's acquittal, during the short Whig administration of 1806. Infact Scott's comparative abstinence from politics was due, I believe, chiefly to the fact that during almost the whole of his literary life, Tories and not Whigs were in power. No sooner was any reform proposed, any abuse threatened, than Scott's eager Conservative spirit flashedup. Proposals were made in 1806 for changes--and, as it was thought, reforms--in the Scotch Courts of Law, and Scott immediately sawsomething like national calamity in the prospect. The mild proposalsin question were discussed at a meeting of the Faculty of Advocates, when Scott made a speech longer than he had ever before delivered, andanimated by a "flow and energy of eloquence" for which those who wereaccustomed to hear his debating speeches were quite unprepared. Hewalked home between two of the reformers, Mr. Jeffrey and another, when his companions began to compliment him on his eloquence, and tospeak playfully of its subject. But Scott was in no mood forplayfulness. "No, no, " he exclaimed, "'tis no laughing matter; littleby little, whatever your wishes may be, you will destroy andundermine, until nothing of what makes Scotland Scotland shallremain!" "And so saying, " adds Mr. Lockhart, "he turned round toconceal his agitation, but not until Mr. Jeffrey saw tears gushingdown his cheek, --resting his head, until he recovered himself, on thewall of the Mound. "[47] It was the same strong feeling for old Scotchinstitutions which broke out so quaintly in the midst of his own worsttroubles in 1826, on behalf of the Scotch banking-system, when he soeloquently defended, in the letters of _Malachi Malagrowther_, whatwould now be called Home-Rule for Scotland, and indeed really defeatedthe attempt of his friends the Tories, who were the innovators thistime, to encroach on those sacred institutions--the Scotch one-poundnote, and the private-note circulation of the Scotch banks. But when Ispeak of Scott as a Home-Ruler, I should add that had not Scotlandbeen for generations governed to a great extent, and, as he thoughtsuccessfully, by Home-Rule, he was far too good a Conservative to haveapologized for it at all. The basis of his Conservatism was always thedanger of undermining a system which had answered so well. In theconcluding passages of the letters to which I have just referred, hecontrasts "Theory, a scroll in her hand, full of deep and mysteriouscombinations of figures, the least failure in any one of which mayalter the result entirely, " with "a practical system successful forupwards of a century. " His vehement and unquailing opposition toReform in almost the very last year of his life, when he had alreadysuffered more than one stroke of paralysis, was grounded on preciselythe same argument. At Jedburgh, on the 21st March, 1831, he appearedin the midst of an angry population (who hooted and jeered at him tillhe turned round fiercely upon them with the defiance, "I regard yourgabble no more than the geese on the green, ") to urge the very sameprotest. "We in this district, " he said, "are proud, and with reason, that the first chain-bridge was the work of a Scotchman. It stillhangs where he erected it a pretty long time ago. The French heard ofour invention, and determined to introduce it, but with greatimprovements and embellishments. A friend of my own saw the thingtried. It was on the Seine at Marly. The French chain-bridge lookedlighter and airier than the prototype. Every Englishman present wasdisposed to confess that we had been beaten at our own trade. Butby-and-by the gates were opened, and the multitude were to pass over. It began to swing rather formidably beneath the pressure of the goodcompany; and by the time the architect, who led the procession ingreat pomp and glory, reached the middle, the whole gave way, andhe--worthy, patriotic artist--was the first that got a ducking. Theyhad forgot the middle bolt, --or rather this ingenious person hadconceived that to be a clumsy-looking feature, which might safely bedispensed with, while he put some invisible gimcrack of his own tosupply its place. "[48] It is strange that Sir Walter did not see thatthis kind of criticism, so far as it applied at all to such anexperiment as the Reform Bill, was even more in point as a rebuke tothe rashness of the Scotch reformer who hung the first successfulchain-bridge, than to the rashness of the French reformer of reformwho devised an unsuccessful variation on it. The audacity of the firstexperiment was much the greater, though the competence of the personwho made it was the greater also. And as a matter of fact, thepolitical structure against the supposed insecurity of which SirWalter was protesting, with all the courage of that dauntless thoughdying nature, was made by one who understood his work at least as wellas the Scotch architect. The tramp of the many multitudes who havepassed over it has never yet made it to "swing dangerously, " and LordRussell in the fulness of his age was but yesterday rejoicing in whathe had achieved, and even in what those have achieved who have alteredhis work in the same spirit in which he designed it. 

But though Sir Walter persuaded himself that his Conservatism was allfounded in legitimate distrust of reckless change, there is evidence, I think, that at times at least it was due to elements less noble. Theleast creditable incident in the story of his political life--whichMr. Lockhart, with his usual candour, did not conceal--was thebitterness with which he resented a most natural and reasonableParliamentary opposition to an appointment which he had secured forhis favourite brother, Tom. In 1810 Scott appointed his brother Tom, who had failed as a Writer to the Signet, to a place vacant underhimself as Clerk of Session. He had not given him the best placevacant, because he thought it his duty to appoint an official who hadgrown grey in the service, but he gave Tom Scott this man's place, which was worth about 250_l. _ a year. In the meantime Tom Scott'saffairs did not render it convenient for him to be come-at-able, andhe absented himself, while they were being settled, in the Isle ofMan. Further, the Commission on the Scotch system of judicature almostimmediately reported that his office was one of supererogation, andought to be abolished; but, to soften the blow, they proposed to allowhim a pension of 130_l. _ per annum. This proposal was discussed withsome natural jealousy in the House of Lords. Lord Lauderdale thoughtthat when Tom Scott was appointed, it must have been pretty evidentthat the Commission would propose to abolish his office, and that theappointment therefore should not have been made. "Mr. Thomas Scott, "he said, "would have 130_l. _ for life as an indemnity for an officethe duties of which he never had performed, while those clerks who hadlaboured for twenty years had no adequate remuneration. " Lord Hollandsupported this very reasonable and moderate view of the case; but ofcourse the Ministry carried their way, and Tom Scott got his unearnedpension. Nevertheless, Scott was furious with Lord Holland. Writingsoon after to the happy recipient of this little pension, he says, "Lord Holland has been in Edinburgh, and we met accidentally at apublic party. He made up to me, but I remembered his part in youraffair, and _cut_ him with as little remorse as an old pen. " Mr. Lockhart says, on Lord Jeffrey's authority, that the scene was a verypainful one. Lord Jeffrey himself declared that it was the onlyrudeness of which he ever saw Scott guilty in the course of alife-long familiarity. And it is pleasant to know that he renewed hiscordiality with Lord Holland in later years, though there is noevidence that he ever admitted that he had been in the wrong. But theincident shows how very doubtful Sir Walter ought to have felt as tothe purity of his Conservatism. It is quite certain that the proposalto abolish Tom Scott's office without compensation was not a recklessexperiment of a fundamental kind. It was a mere attempt at diminishingthe heavy burdens laid on the people for the advantage of a smallportion of the middle class, and yet Scott resented it with as muchdisplay of selfish passion--considering his genuine nobility ofbreeding--as that with which the rude working men of Jedburghafterwards resented his gallant protest against the Reform Bill, and, later again, saluted the dauntless old man with the dastardly cry of"Burk Sir Walter!" Judged truly, I think Sir Walter's conduct incutting Lord Holland "with as little remorse as an old pen, " forsimply doing his duty in the House of Lords, was quite as ignoble inhim as the bullying and insolence of the democratic party in 1831, when the dying lion made his last dash at what he regarded as the foesof the Constitution. Doubtless he held that the mob, or, as we moredecorously say, the residuum, were in some sense the enemies of truefreedom. "I cannot read in history, " he writes once to Mr. Laidlaw, "of any free State which has been brought to slavery till the rascaland uninstructed populace had had their short hour of anarchicalgovernment, which naturally leads to the stern repose of militarydespotism. " But he does not seem ever to have perceived that educatedmen identify themselves with "the rascal and uninstructed populace, "whenever they indulge on behalf of the selfish interests of their ownclass, passions such as he had indulged in fighting for his brother'spension. It is not the want of instruction, it is the rascaldom, i. E. The violent _esprit de corps_ of a selfish class, which "naturallyleads" to violent remedies. Such rascaldom exists in all classes, andnot least in the class of the cultivated and refined. Generous andmagnanimous as Scott was, he was evidently by no means free from thegerms of it. 

One more illustration of Scott's political Conservatism, and I mayleave his political life, which was not indeed his strong side, though, as with all sides of Scott's nature, it had an energy andspirit all his own. On the subject of Catholic Emancipation he took apeculiar view. As he justly said, he hated bigotry, and would haveleft the Catholics quite alone, but for the great claims of theircreed to interfere with political life. And even so, when the penallaws were once abolished, he would have abolished also therepresentative disabilities, as quite useless, as well as veryirritating when the iron system of effective repression had ceased. But he disapproved of the abolition of the political parts of thepenal laws. He thought they would have stamped out Roman Catholicism;and whether that were just or unjust, he thought it would have been agreat national service. "As for Catholic Emancipation, " he wrote toSouthey in 1807, "I am not, God knows, a bigot in religious matters, nor a friend to persecution; but if a particular set of religionistsare _ipso facto_ connected with foreign politics, and placed under thespiritual direction of a class of priests, whose unrivalled dexterityand activity are increased by the rules which detach them from therest of the world--I humbly think that we may be excused fromentrusting to them those places in the State where the influence ofsuch a clergy, who act under the direction of a passive tool of ourworst foe, is likely to be attended with the most fatal consequences. If a gentleman chooses to walk about with a couple of pounds ofgunpowder in his pocket, if I give him the shelter of my roof, I mayat least be permitted to exclude him from the seat next to thefire. "[49] And in relation to the year 1825, when Scott visitedIreland, Mr. Lockhart writes, "He on all occasions expressed manfullyhis belief that the best thing for Ireland would have been never torelax the strictly _political_ enactments of the penal laws, howeverharsh these might appear. Had they been kept in vigour for anotherhalf-century, it was his conviction that Popery would have been allbut extinguished in Ireland. But he thought that after admittingRomanists to the elective franchise, it was a vain notion that theycould be permanently or advantageously deterred from using thatfranchise in favour of those of their own persuasion. "

In his diary in 1829 he puts the same view still more strongly:--"Icannot get myself to feel at all anxious about the Catholic question. I cannot see the use of fighting about the platter, when you have letthem snatch the meat off it. I hold Popery to be such a mean anddegrading superstition, that I am not sure I could have found myselfliberal enough for voting the repeal of the penal laws as they existedbefore 1780. They must and would, in course of time, have smotheredPopery; and I confess that I should have seen the old lady ofBabylon's mouth stopped with pleasure. But now that you have taken theplaster off her mouth, and given her free respiration, I cannot seethe sense of keeping up the irritation about the claim to sit inParliament. Unopposed, the Catholic superstition may sink into dust, with all its absurd ritual and solemnities. Still it is an awful risk. The world is in fact as silly as ever, and a good competence ofnonsense will always find believers. "[50] That is the view of astrong and rather unscrupulous politician--a moss-trooper inpolitics--which Scott certainly was. He was thinking evidently verylittle of justice, almost entirely of the most effective means ofkeeping the Kingdom, the Kingdom which he loved. Had heunderstood--what none of the politicians of that day understood--thestrength of the Church of Rome as the only consistent exponent of theprinciple of Authority in religion, I believe his opposition toCatholic emancipation would have been as bitter as his opposition toParliamentary reform. But he took for granted that while only "silly"persons believed in Rome, and only "infidels" rejected anauthoritative creed altogether, it was quite easy by the exercise ofcommon sense, to find the true compromise between reason and religioushumility. Had Scott lived through the religious controversies of ourown days, it seems not unlikely that with his vivid imagination, hiswarm Conservatism, and his rather inadequate critical powers, he mighthimself have become a Roman Catholic. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 47: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 328. ]

[Footnote 48: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, x. 47. ]

[Footnote 49: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii. 34. ]

[Footnote 50: Ibid. , ix. 305. ]

CHAPTER XV. 

SCOTT IN ADVERSITY. 

With the year 1825 came a financial crisis, and Constable began totremble for his solvency. From the date of his baronetcy Sir Walterhad launched out into a considerable increase of expenditure. He gotplans on a rather large scale in 1821 for the increase of Abbotsford, which were all carried out. To meet his expenses in this and otherways he received Constable's bills for "four unnamed works offiction, " of which he had not written a line, but which came to existin time, and were called _Peveril of the Peak_, _Quentin Durward_, _St. Ronan's Well_, and _Redgauntlet_. Again, in the very year beforethe crash, 1825, he married his eldest son, the heir to the title, toa young lady who was herself an heiress, Miss Jobson of Lochore, whenAbbotsford and its estates were settled, with the reserve of10, 000_l. _, which Sir Walter took power to charge on the property forpurposes of business. Immediately afterwards he purchased a captaincyin the King's Hussars for his son, which cost him 3500_l. _ Nor werethe obligations he incurred on his own account, or that of his family, the only ones by which he was burdened. He was always incurringexpenses, often heavy expenses, for other people. Thus, when Mr. Terry, the actor, became joint lessee and manager of the AdelphiTheatre, London, Scott became his surety for 1250_l. _, while JamesBallantyne became his surety for 500_l. _ more, and both these sums hadto be paid by Sir Walter after Terry's failure in 1828. Suchobligations as these, however, would have been nothing when comparedwith Sir Walter's means, had all his bills on Constable been dulyhonoured, and had not the printing firm of Ballantyne and Co. Been sodeeply involved with Constable's house that it necessarily becameinsolvent when he stopped. Taken altogether, I believe that Sir Walterearned during his own lifetime at least 140, 000_l. _ by his literarywork alone, probably more; while even on his land and buildingcombined he did not apparently spend more than half that sum. Then hehad a certain income, about 1000_l. _ a year, from his own and LadyScott's private property, as well as 1300_l. _ a year as Clerk ofSession, and 300_l. _ more as Sheriff of Selkirk. Thus even his loss ofthe price of several novels by Constable's failure would not seriouslyhave compromised Scott's position, but for his share in theprinting-house which fell with Constable, and the obligations of whichamounted to 117, 000_l. _

As Scott had always forestalled his income, --spending thepurchase-money of his poems and novels before they were written, --sucha failure as this, at the age of fifty-five, when all the freshness ofhis youth was gone out of him, when he saw his son's prospectsblighted as well as his own, and knew perfectly that James Ballantyne, unassisted by him, could never hope to pay any fraction of the debtworth mentioning, would have been paralysing, had he not been a man ofiron nerve, and of a pride and courage hardly ever equalled. Domesticcalamity, too, was not far off. For two years he had been watching thefailure of his wife's health with increasing anxiety, and ascalamities seldom come single, her illness took a most serious form atthe very time when the blow fell, and she died within four months ofthe failure. Nay, Scott was himself unwell at the critical moment, andwas taking sedatives which discomposed his brain. Twelve days beforethe final failure, --which was announced to him on the 17th January, 1826, --he enters in his diary, "Much alarmed. I had walked till twelvewith Skene and Russell, and then sat down to my work. To my horror andsurprise I could neither write nor spell, but put down one word foranother, and wrote nonsense. I was much overpowered at the same timeand could not conceive the reason. I fell asleep, however, in mychair, and slept for two hours. On my waking my head was clearer, andI began to recollect that last night I had taken the anodyne left forthe purpose by Clarkson, and being disturbed in the course of thenight, I had not slept it off. " In fact the hyoscyamus had, combinedwith his anxieties, given him a slight attack of what is now called_aphasia_, that brain disease the most striking symptom of which isthat one word is mistaken for another. And this was Scott'spreparation for his failure, and the bold resolve which followed it, to work for his creditors as he had worked for himself, and to payoff, if possible, the whole 117, 000_l. _ by his own literary exertions. 

There is nothing in its way in the whole of English biography moreimpressive than the stoical extracts from Scott's diary which note thedescent of this blow. Here is the anticipation of the previous day:"Edinburgh, January 16th. --Came through cold roads to as cold news. Hurstand Robinson have suffered a bill to come back upon Constable, which, Isuppose, infers the ruin of both houses. We shall soon see. Dined withthe Skenes. " And here is the record itself: "January 17th. --JamesBallantyne this morning, good honest fellow, with a visage as black as thecrook. He hopes no salvation; has, indeed, taken measures to stop. It ishard, after having fought such a battle. I have apologized for notattending the Royal Society Club, who have a _gaudeamus_ on this day, andseemed to count much on my being the præses. My old acquaintance MissElizabeth Clerk, sister of Willie, died suddenly. I cannot choose but wishit had been Sir W. S. , and yet the feeling is unmanly. I have Anne, mywife, and Charles to look after. I felt rather sneaking as I came homefrom the Parliament-house--felt as if I were liable _monstrari digito_ inno very pleasant way. But this must be borne _cum coeteris_; and, thankGod, however uncomfortable, I do not feel despondent. "[51] On thefollowing day, the 18th January, the day after the blow, he records a badnight, a wish that the next two days were over, but that "the worst _is_over, " and on the same day he set about making notes for the _magnumopus_, as he called it--the complete edition of all the novels, with a newintroduction and notes. On the 19th January, two days after the failure, he calmly resumed the composition of _Woodstock_--the novel on which hewas then engaged--and completed, he says, "about twenty printed pages ofit;" to which he adds that he had "a painful scene after dinner andanother after supper, endeavouring to convince these poor creatures" [hiswife and daughter] "that they must not look for miracles, but consider themisfortune as certain, and only to be lessened by patience and labour. " Onthe 21st January, after a number of business details, he quotes from Job, "Naked we entered the world and naked we leave it; blessed be the name ofthe Lord. " On the 22nd he says, "I feel neither dishonoured nor brokendown by the bad, now truly bad, news I have received. I have walked mylast in the domains I have planted--sat the last time in the halls I havebuilt. But death would have taken them from me, if misfortune had sparedthem. My poor people whom I loved so well! There is just another die toturn up against me in this run of ill-luck, i. E. If I should break mymagic wand in the fall from this elephant, and lose my popularity with myfortune. Then _Woodstock_ and _Boney_" [his life of Napoleon] "may both goto the paper-maker, and I may take to smoking cigars and drinking grog, orturn devotee and intoxicate the brain another way. "[52] He adds that whenhe sets to work doggedly, he is exactly the same man he ever was, "neitherlow-spirited nor _distrait_, " nay, that adversity is to him "a tonic andbracer. "

The heaviest blow was, I think, the blow to his pride. Very early hebegins to note painfully the different way in which different friendsgreet him, to remark that some smile as if to say, "think nothingabout it, my lad, it is quite out of our thoughts;" that others adoptan affected gravity, "such as one sees and despises at a funeral, " andthe best-bred "just shook hands and went on. " He writes to Mr. Morrittwith a proud indifference, clearly to some extent simulated:--"Mywomenkind will be the greater sufferers, yet even they look cheerilyforward; and, for myself, the blowing off of my hat on a stormy dayhas given me more uneasiness. "[53] To Lady Davy he writes trulyenough:--"I beg my humblest compliments to Sir Humphrey, and tell him, Ill Luck, that direful chemist, never put into his crucible a moreindissoluble piece of stuff than your affectionate cousin and sincerewell-wisher, Walter Scott. "[54] When his _Letters of MalachiMalagrowther_ came out he writes:--"I am glad of this bruilzie, as faras I am concerned; people will not dare talk of me as an object ofpity--no more 'poor-manning. ' Who asks how many punds Scots the oldchampion had in his pocket when

 'He set a bugle to his mouth, And blew so loud and shrill, The trees in greenwood shook thereat, Sae loud rang every hill. '

This sounds conceited enough, yet is not far from truth. "[55] His dreadof pity is just the same when his wife dies:--"Will it be better, " hewrites, "when left to my own feelings, I see the whole world pipe anddance around me? I think it will. Their sympathy intrudes on mypresent affliction. " Again, on returning for the first time fromEdinburgh to Abbotsford after Lady Scott's funeral:--"I again tookpossession of the family bedroom and my widowed couch. This was a soretrial, but it was necessary not to blink such a resolution. Indeed Ido not like to have it thought that there is any way in which I can bebeaten. " And again:--"I have a secret pride--I fancy it will be somost truly termed--which impels me to mix with my distresses strangesnatches of mirth, 'which have no mirth in them. '"[56]

But though pride was part of Scott's strength, pride alone neverenabled any man to struggle so vigorously and so unremittingly as hedid to meet the obligations he had incurred. When he was in Ireland inthe previous year, a poor woman who had offered to sell himgooseberries, but whose offer had not been accepted, remarked, onseeing his daughter give some pence to a beggar, that they might aswell give her an alms too, as she was "an old struggler. " Sir Walterwas struck with the expression, and said that it deserved to becomeclassical, as a name for those who take arms against a sea oftroubles, instead of yielding to the waves. It was certainly a namethe full meaning of which he himself deserved. His house in Edinburghwas sold, and he had to go into a certain Mrs. Brown's lodgings, whenhe was discharging his duties as Clerk of Session. His wife was dead. His estate was conveyed to trustees for the benefit of his creditorstill such time as he should pay off Ballantyne and Co's. Debt, whichof course in his lifetime he never did. Yet between January, 1826, andJanuary, 1828, he earned for his creditors very nearly 40, 000_l. __Woodstock_ sold for 8228_l. _, "a matchless sale, " as Sir Walterremarked, "for less than three months' work. " The first two editionsof _The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte_, on which Mr. Lockhart says thatScott had spent the unremitting labour of about two years--labourinvolving a far greater strain on eyes and brain than his imaginativework ever caused him--sold for 18, 000_l. _ Had Sir Walter's healthlasted, he would have redeemed his obligations on behalf of Ballantyneand Co. Within eight or nine years at most from the time of hisfailure. But what is more remarkable still, is that after his healthfailed he struggled on with little more than half a brain, but awhole will, to work while it was yet day, though the evening wasdropping fast. _Count Robert of Paris_ and _Castle Dangerous_ werereally the compositions of a paralytic patient. 

It was in September, 1830, that the first of these tales was begun. Asearly as the 15th February of that year he had had his first trueparalytic seizure. He had been discharging his duties as clerk ofsession as usual, and received in the afternoon a visit from a ladyfriend of his, Miss Young, who was submitting to him some manuscriptmemoirs of her father, when the stroke came. It was but slight. Hestruggled against it with his usual iron power of will, and actuallymanaged to stagger out of the room where the lady was sitting withhim, into the drawing-room where his daughter was, but there he fellhis full length on the floor. He was cupped, and fully recovered hisspeech during the course of the day, but Mr. Lockhart thinks thatnever, after this attack, did his style recover its full lucidity andterseness. A cloudiness in words and a cloudiness of arrangement beganto be visible. In the course of the year he retired from his duties ofclerk of session, and his publishers hoped that, by engaging him onthe new and complete edition of his works, they might detach him fromthe attempt at imaginative creation for which he was now so much lessfit. But Sir Walter's will survived his judgment. When, in theprevious year, Ballantyne had been disabled from attending to businessby his wife's illness (which ended in her death), Scott had written inhis diary, "It is his (Ballantyne's) nature to indulge apprehensionsof the worst which incapacitate him for labour. I cannot helpregarding this amiable weakness of the mind with something too nearlyallied to contempt, " and assuredly he was guilty of no such weaknesshimself. Not only did he row much harder against the stream of fortunethan he had ever rowed with it, but, what required still moreresolution, he fought on against the growing conviction that hisimagination would not kindle, as it used to do, to its old heat. 

When he dictated to Laidlaw, --for at this time he could hardly writehimself for rheumatism in the hand, --he would frequently pause andlook round him, like a man "mocked with shadows. " Then he bestirredhimself with a great effort, rallied his force, and the style againflowed clear and bright, but not for long. The clouds would gatheragain, and the mental blank recur. This soon became visible to hispublishers, who wrote discouragingly of the new novel--to Scott's owngreat distress and irritation. The oddest feature in the matter wasthat his letters to them were full of the old terseness, and force, and caustic turns. On business he was as clear and keen as in his bestdays. It was only at his highest task, the task of creative work, thathis cunning began to fail him. Here, for instance, are a few sentenceswritten to Cadell, his publisher, touching this very point--thediscouragement which James Ballantyne had been pouring on the newnovel. Ballantyne, he says, finds fault with the subject, when what hereally should have found fault with was the failing power of theauthor:--"James is, with many other kindly critics, perhaps in thepredicament of an honest drunkard, when crop-sick the next morning, who does not ascribe the malady to the wine he has drunk, but tohaving tasted some particular dish at dinner which disagreed with hisstomach.... I have lost, it is plain, the power of interesting thecountry, and ought, injustice to all parties, to retire while I havesome credit. But this is an important step, and I will not beobstinate about it if it be necessary.... Frankly, I cannot think offlinging aside the half-finished volume, as if it were a corked bottleof wine.... I may, perhaps, take a trip to the Continent for a year ortwo, if I find Othello's occupation gone, or rather Othello's_reputation_. "[57] And again, in a very able letter written on the12th of December, 1830, to Cadell, he takes a view of the situationwith as much calmness and imperturbability as if he were an outsidespectator. "There were many circumstances in the matter which you andJ. B. (James Ballantyne) could not be aware of, and which, if you wereaware of, might have influenced your judgment, which had, and yethave, a most powerful effect upon mine. The deaths of both my fatherand mother have been preceded by a paralytic shock. My father survivedit for nearly two years--a melancholy respite, and not to be desired. I was alarmed with Miss Young's morning visit, when, as you know, Ilost my speech. The medical people said it was from the stomach, whichmight be, but while there is a doubt upon a point so alarming, youwill not wonder that the subject, or to use Hare's _lingo_, the_shot_, should be a little anxious. " He relates how he had followedall the strict medical _régime_ prescribed to him with scrupulousregularity, and then begun his work again with as much attention as hecould. "And having taken pains with my story, I find it is notrelished, nor indeed tolerated, by those who have no interest incondemning it, but a strong interest in putting even a face" (? force)"upon their consciences. Was not this, in the circumstances, a damperto an invalid already afraid that the sharp edge might be taken offhis intellect, though he was not himself sensible of that?" In fact, no more masterly discussion of the question whether his mind werefailing or not, and what he ought to do in the interval of doubt, canbe conceived, than these letters give us. At this time the debt ofBallantyne and Co. Had been reduced by repeated dividends--all thefruits of Scott's literary work--more than one half. On the 17th ofDecember, 1830, the liabilities stood at 54, 000_l. _, having beenreduced 63, 000_l. _ within five years. And Sir Walter, encouraged bythis great result of his labour, resumed the suspended novel. 

But with the beginning of 1831 came new alarms. On January 5th SirWalter enters in his diary, --"Very indifferent, with more awkwardfeelings than I can well bear up against. My voice sunk and my headstrangely confused. " Still he struggled on. On the 31st January hewent alone to Edinburgh to sign his will, and stayed at hisbookseller's (Cadell's) house in Athol Crescent. A great snow-stormset in which kept him in Edinburgh and in Mr. Cadell's house till the9th February. One day while the snow was still falling heavily, Ballantyne reminded him that a motto was wanting for one of thechapters of _Count Robert of Paris_. He went to the window, looked outfor a moment, and then wrote, --

 "The storm increases; 'tis no sunny shower, Foster'd in the moist breast of March or April, Or such as parchèd summer cools his lips with. Heaven's windows are flung wide; the inmost deeps Call, in hoarse greeting, one upon another; On comes the flood, in all its foaming horrors, And where's the dike shall stop it?

 _The Deluge: a Poem. _"

Clearly this failing imagination of Sir Walter's was still a greatdeal more vivid than that of most men, with brains as sound as it everpleased Providence to make them. But his troubles were not yet evennumbered. The "storm increased, " and it was, as he said, "no sunnyshower. " His lame leg became so painful that he had to get amechanical apparatus to relieve him of some of the burden ofsupporting it. Then, on the 21st March, he was hissed at Jedburgh, asI have before said, for his vehement opposition to Reform. In April hehad another stroke of paralysis which he now himself recognized asone. Still he struggled on at his novel. Under the date of May 6, 7, 8, he makes this entry in his diary:--"Here is a precious job. I havea formal remonstrance from those critical people, Ballantyne andCadell, against the last volume of _Count Robert_, which is within asheet of being finished. I suspect their opinion will be found tocoincide with that of the public; at least it is not very differentfrom my own. The blow is a stunning one, I suppose, for I scarcelyfeel it. It is singular, but it comes with as little surprise as if Ihad a remedy ready; yet God knows I am at sea in the dark, and thevessel leaky, I think, into the bargain. I cannot conceive that I havetied a knot with my tongue which my teeth cannot untie. We shall see. I have suffered terribly, that is the truth, rather in body than mind, and I often wish I could lie down and sleep without waking. But I willfight it out if I can. "[58] The medical men with one accord tried tomake him give up his novel-writing. But he smiled and put them by. Hetook up _Count Robert of Paris_ again, and tried to recast it. On the18th May he insisted on attending the election for Roxburghshire, tobe held at Jedburgh, and in spite of the unmannerly reception he hadmet with in March, no dissuasion would keep him at home. He wassaluted in the town with groans and blasphemies, and Sir Walter had toescape from Jedburgh by a back way to avoid personal violence. Thecries of "Burk Sir Walter, " with which he was saluted on thisoccasion, haunted him throughout his illness and on his dying bed. Atthe Selkirk election it was Sir Walter's duty as Sheriff to preside, and his family therefore made no attempt to dissuade him from hisattendance. There he was so well known and loved, that in spite of hisTory views, he was not insulted, and the only man who made any attemptto hustle the Tory electors, was seized by Sir Walter with his ownhand, as he got out of his carriage, and committed to prison withoutresistance till the election day was over. 

A seton which had been ordered for his head, gave him some relief, andof course the first result was that he turned immediately to hisnovel-writing again, and began _Castle Dangerous_ in July, 1831, --thelast July but one which he was to see at all. He even made a littlejourney in company with Mr. Lockhart, in order to see the scene of thestory he wished to tell, and on his return set to work with all hisold vigour to finish his tale, and put the concluding touches to_Count Robert of Paris_. But his temper was no longer what it hadbeen. He quarrelled with Ballantyne, partly for his depreciatorycriticism of _Count Robert of Paris_, partly for his growing tendencyto a mystic and strait-laced sort of dissent and his increasingLiberalism. Even Mr. Laidlaw and Scott's children had much to bear. But he struggled on even to the end, and did not consent to try theexperiment of a voyage and visit to Italy till his immediate work wasdone. Well might Lord Chief Baron Shepherd apply to Scott Cicero'sdescription of some contemporary of his own, who "had borne adversitywisely, who had not been broken by fortune, and who, amidst thebuffets of fate, had maintained his dignity. " There was in Sir Walter, I think, at least as much of the Stoic as the Christian. But Stoic orChristian, he was a hero of the old, indomitable type. Even the lastfragments of his imaginative power were all turned to account by thatunconquerable will, amidst the discouragement of friends, and thestill more disheartening doubts of his own mind. Like the headlandstemming a rough sea, he was gradually worn away, but never crushed. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 51: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 197. ]

[Footnote 52: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 203-4. ]

[Footnote 53: Ibid. , viii. 235. ]

[Footnote 54: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 238. ]

[Footnote 55: viii. 277. ]

[Footnote 56: viii. 347, 371, 381. ]

[Footnote 57: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, x. 11, 12. ]

[Footnote 58: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, x. 65-6. ]

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE LAST YEAR. 

In the month of September, 1831, the disease of the brain which hadlong been in existence must have made a considerable step in advance. For the first time the illusion seemed to possess Sir Walter that hehad paid off all the debt for which he was liable, and that he wasonce more free to give as his generosity prompted. Scott sent Mr. Lockhart 50_l. _ to save his grandchildren some slight inconvenience, and told another of his correspondents that he had "put his decayedfortune into as good a condition as he could desire. " It was well, therefore, that he had at last consented to try the effect of travelon his health, --not that he could hope to arrest by it such a diseaseas his, but that it diverted him from the most painful of all efforts, that of trying anew the spell which had at last failed him, andperceiving in the disappointed eyes of his old admirers that the magicof his imagination was a thing of the past. The last day of realenjoyment at Abbotsford--for when Sir Walter returned to it to die, itwas but to catch once more the outlines of its walls, the rustle ofits woods, and the gleam of its waters, through senses alreadydarkened to all less familiar and less fascinating visions--was the22nd September, 1831. On the 21st, Wordsworth had come to bid his oldfriend adieu, and on the 22nd--the last day at home--they spent themorning together in a visit to Newark. It was a day to deepen alike inScott and in Wordsworth whatever of sympathy either of them had withthe very different genius of the other, and that it had this result inWordsworth's case, we know from the very beautiful poem, --"YarrowRevisited, "--and the sonnet which the occasion also produced. And evenScott, who was so little of a Wordsworthian, who enjoyed Johnson'sstately but formal verse, and Crabbe's vivid Dutch painting, more thanhe enjoyed the poetry of the transcendental school, must have recurredthat day with more than usual emotion to his favourite Wordsworthianpoem. Soon after his wife's death, he had remarked in his diary howfinely "the effect of grief upon persons who like myself are highlysusceptible of humour" had been "touched by Wordsworth in thecharacter of the merry village teacher, Matthew, whom Jeffreyprofanely calls a half-crazy, sentimental person. "[59] And long beforethis time, during the brightest period of his life, Scott had made theold Antiquary of his novel quote the same poem of Wordsworth's, in apassage where the period of life at which he had now arrived isanticipated with singular pathos and force. "It is at such moments asthese, " says Mr. Oldbuck, "that we feel the changes of time. The sameobjects are before us--those inanimate things which we have gazed onin wayward infancy and impetuous youth, in anxious and schemingmanhood--they are permanent and the same; but when we look upon themin cold, unfeeling old age, can we, changed in our temper, ourpursuits, our feelings, --changed in our form, our limbs, and ourstrength, --can we be ourselves called the same? or do we not ratherlook back with a sort of wonder upon our former selves as beingsseparate and distinct from what we now are? The philosopher whoappealed from Philip inflamed with wine to Philip in his hours ofsobriety, did not claim a judge so different as if he had appealedfrom Philip in his youth to Philip in his old age. I cannot but betouched with the feeling so beautifully expressed in a poem which Ihave heard repeated:--

 'My eyes are dim with childish tears, My heart is idly stirr'd, For the same sound is in my ears Which in those days I heard. Thus fares it still in our decay, And yet the wiser mind Mourns less for what age takes away Than what it leaves behind. '"[60]

Sir Walter's memory, which, in spite of the slight failure of brainand the mild illusions to which, on the subject of his own prospects, he was now liable, had as yet been little impaired--indeed, he couldstill quote whole pages from all his favourite authors--must haverecurred to those favourite Wordsworthian lines of his with singularforce, as, with Wordsworth for his companion, he gazed on the refugeof the last Minstrel of his imagination for the last time, and felt inhimself how much of joy in the sight, age had taken away, and howmuch, too, of the habit of expecting it, it had unfortunately leftbehind. Whether Sir Walter recalled this poem of Wordsworth's on thisoccasion or not--and if he recalled it, his delight in giving pleasurewould assuredly have led him to let Wordsworth know that he recalledit--the mood it paints was unquestionably that in which his last dayat Abbotsford was passed. In the evening, referring to the journeywhich was to begin the next day, he remarked that Fielding andSmollett had been driven abroad by declining health, and that they hadnever returned; while Wordsworth--willing perhaps to bring out abrighter feature in the present picture--regretted that the last daysof those two great novelists had not been surrounded by due marks ofrespect. With Sir Walter, as he well knew, it was different. TheLiberal Government that he had so bitterly opposed were pressing onhim signs of the honour in which he was held, and a ship of hisMajesty's navy had been placed at his disposal to take him to theMediterranean. And Wordsworth himself added his own more durable tokenof reverence. As long as English poetry lives, Englishmen will knowsomething of that last day of the last Minstrel at Newark:--

 "Grave thoughts ruled wide on that sweet day, Their dignity installing In gentle bosoms, while sere leaves Were on the bough or falling; But breezes play'd, and sunshine gleam'd The forest to embolden, Redden'd the fiery hues, and shot Transparence through the golden. 

 "For busy thoughts the stream flow'd on In foamy agitation; And slept in many a crystal pool For quiet contemplation: No public and no private care The free-born mind enthralling, We made a day of happy hours, Our happy days recalling. 

 * * * * *

 "And if, as Yarrow through the woods And down the meadow ranging, Did meet us with unalter'd face, Though we were changed and changing; If _then_ some natural shadow spread Our inward prospect over, The soul's deep valley was not slow Its brightness to recover. 

 "Eternal blessings on the Muse And her divine employment, The blameless Muse who trains her sons For hope and calm enjoyment; Albeit sickness lingering yet Has o'er their pillow brooded, And care waylays their steps--a sprite Not easily eluded. 

 * * * * *

 "Nor deem that localized Romance Plays false with our affections; Unsanctifies our tears--made sport For fanciful dejections: Ah, no! the visions of the past Sustain the heart in feeling Life as she is--our changeful Life With friends and kindred dealing. 

 "Bear witness ye, whose thoughts that day In Yarrow's groves were centred, Who through the silent portal arch Of mouldering Newark enter'd; And clomb the winding stair that once Too timidly was mounted By the last Minstrel--not the last!-- Ere he his tale recounted. "

Thus did the meditative poetry, the day of which was not yet, dohonour to itself in doing homage to the Minstrel of romantic energyand martial enterprise, who, with the school of poetry he loved, waspassing away. 

On the 23rd September Scott left Abbotsford, spending five days on hisjourney to London; nor would he allow any of the old objects ofinterest to be passed without getting out of the carriage to seethem. He did not leave London for Portsmouth till the 23rd October, but spent the intervening time in London, where he took medicaladvice, and with his old shrewdness wheeled his chair into a darkcorner during the physicians' absence from the room to consult, thathe might read their faces clearly on their return without their beingable to read his. They recognized traces of brain disease, but SirWalter was relieved by their comparatively favourable opinion, for headmitted that he had feared insanity, and therefore had "feared_them_. " On the 29th October he sailed for Malta, and on the 20thNovember Sir Walter insisted on being landed on a small volcanicisland which had appeared four months previously, and whichdisappeared again in a few days, and on clambering about its crumblinglava, in spite of sinking at nearly every step almost up to his knees, in order that he might send a description of it to his old friend Mr. Skene. On the 22nd November he reached Malta, where he looked eagerlyat the antiquities of the place, for he still hoped to write anovel--and, indeed, actually wrote one at Naples, which was neverpublished, called _The Siege of Malta_--on the subject of the Knightsof Malta, who had interested him so much in his youth. From MaltaScott went to Naples, which he reached on the 17th December, and wherehe found much pleasure in the society of Sir William Gell, an invalidlike himself, but not one who, like himself, struggled against theadmission of his infirmities, and refused to be carried when his ownlegs would not safely carry him. Sir William Gell's dog delighted theold man; he would pat it and call it "Poor boy!" and confide to SirWilliam how he had at home "two very fine favourite dogs, so largethat I am always afraid they look too large and too feudal for mydiminished income. " In all his letters home he gave some injunction toMr. Laidlaw about the poor people and the dogs. 

On the 22nd of March, 1832, Goethe died, an event which made a greatimpression on Scott, who had intended to visit Weimar on his way back, on purpose to see Goethe, and this much increased his eager desire toreturn home. Accordingly on the 16th of April, the last day on whichhe made any entry in his diary, he quitted Naples for Rome, where hestayed long enough only to let his daughter see something of theplace, and hurried off homewards on the 21st of May. In Venice he wasstill strong enough to insist on scrambling down into the dungeonsadjoining the Bridge of Sighs; and at Frankfort he entered abookseller's shop, when the man brought out a lithograph ofAbbotsford, and Scott remarking, "I know that already, sir, " left theshop unrecognized, more than ever craving for home. At Nimeguen, onthe 9th of June, while in a steamboat on the Rhine, he had his mostserious attack of apoplexy, but would not discontinue his journey, waslifted into an English steamboat at Rotterdam on the 11th of June, andarrived in London on the 13th. There he recognized his children, andappeared to expect immediate death, as he gave them repeatedly hismost solemn blessing, but for the most part he lay at the St. James'sHotel, in Jermyn Street, without any power to converse. There it wasthat Allan Cunningham, on walking home one night, found a group ofworking men at the corner of the street, who stopped him and asked, "as if there was but one death-bed in London, 'Do you know, sir, ifthis is the street where he is lying?'" According to the usual ironyof destiny, it was while the working men were doing him this heartyand unconscious homage, that Sir Walter, whenever disturbed by thenoises of the street, imagined himself at the polling-booth ofJedburgh, where the people had cried out, "Burk Sir Walter. " And itwas while lying here, --only now and then uttering a few words, --thatMr. Lockhart says of him, "He expressed his will as determinedly asever, and expressed it with the same apt and good-natured irony thathe was wont to use. "

Sir Walter's great and urgent desire was to return to Abbotsford, and atlast his physicians yielded. On the 7th July he was lifted into hiscarriage, followed by his trembling and weeping daughters, and so taken toa steamboat, where the captain gave up his private cabin--a cabin ondeck--for his use. He remained unconscious of any change till after hisarrival in Edinburgh, when, on the 11th July, he was placed again in hiscarriage, and remained in it quite unconscious during the first two stagesof the journey to Tweedside. But as the carriage entered the valley of theGala, he began to look about him. Presently he murmured a name or two, "Gala water, surely, --Buckholm, --Torwoodlee. " When the outline of theEildon hills came in view, Scott's excitement was great, and when his eyecaught the towers of Abbotsford, he sprang up with a cry of delight, andwhile the towers remained in sight it took his physician, his son-in-law, and his servant, to keep him in the carriage. Mr. Laidlaw was waiting forhim, and he met him with a cry, "Ha! Willie Laidlaw! O, man, how often Ihave thought of you!" His dogs came round his chair and began to fawn onhim and lick his hands, while Sir Walter smiled or sobbed over them. Thenext morning he was wheeled about his garden, and on the following morningwas out in this way for a couple of hours; within a day or two he fanciedthat he could write again, but on taking the pen into his hand, hisfingers could not clasp it, and he sank back with tears rolling down hischeek. Later, when Laidlaw said in his hearing that Sir Walter had had alittle repose, he replied, "No, Willie; no repose for Sir Walter but inthe grave. " As the tears rushed from his eyes, his old pride revived. "Friends, " he said, "don't let me expose myself--get me to bed, --that isthe only place. "

After this Sir Walter never left his room. Occasionally he dropped offinto delirium, and the old painful memory, --that cry of "Burk SirWalter, "--might be again heard on his lips. He lingered, however, tillthe 21st September, --more than two months from the day of his reachinghome, and a year from the day of Wordsworth's arrival at Abbotsfordbefore his departure for the Mediterranean, with only one clearinterval of consciousness, on Monday, the 17th September. On that dayMr. Lockhart was called to Sir Walter's bedside with the news that hehad awakened in a state of composure and consciousness, and wished tosee him. "'Lockhart, ' he said, 'I may have but a minute to speak toyou. My dear, be a good man, --be virtuous, --be religious, --be a goodman. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to liehere. ' He paused, and I said, 'Shall I send for Sophia and Anne?''No, ' said he, 'don't disturb them. Poor souls! I know they were upall night. God bless you all!'" With this he sank into a very tranquilsleep, and, indeed, he scarcely afterwards gave any sign ofconsciousness except for an instant on the arrival of his sons. And sofour days afterwards, on the day of the autumnal equinox in 1832, athalf-past one in the afternoon, on a glorious autumn day, with everywindow wide open, and the ripple of the Tweed over its pebblesdistinctly audible in his room, he passed away, and "his eldest sonkissed and closed his eyes. " He died a month after completing hissixty-first year. Nearly seven years earlier, on the 7th December, 1825, he had in his diary taken a survey of his own health in relationto the age reached by his father and other members of his family, andhad stated as the result of his considerations, "Square the odds andgood night, Sir Walter, about sixty. I care not if I leave my nameunstained and my family property settled. _Sat est vixisse. _" Thus helived just a year--but a year of gradual death--beyond his owncalculation. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 59: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 63. ]

[Footnote 60: _The Antiquary_, chap. X. ]

CHAPTER XVII. 

THE END OF THE STRUGGLE. 

Sir Walter certainly left his "name unstained, " unless the seriousmistakes natural to a sanguine temperament such as his, are to becounted as stains upon his name; and if they are, where among the sonsof men would you find many unstained names as noble as his with such astain upon it? He was not only sensitively honourable in motive, but, when he found what evil his sanguine temper had worked, he used hisgigantic powers to repair it, as Samson used his great strength torepair the mischief he had inadvertently done to Israel. But with allhis exertions he had not, when death came upon him, cleared off muchmore than half his obligations. There was still 54, 000_l. _ to pay. Butof this, 22, 000_l. _ was secured in an insurance on his life, and therewere besides a thousand pounds or two in the hands of the trustees, which had not been applied to the extinction of the debt. Mr. Cadell, his publisher, accordingly advanced the remaining 30, 000_l. _ on thesecurity of Sir Walter's copyrights, and on the 21st February, 1833, the general creditors were paid in full, and Mr. Cadell remained theonly creditor of the estate. In February, 1847, Sir Walter's son, thesecond baronet, died childless; and in May, 1847, Mr. Cadell gave adischarge in full of all claims, including the bond for 10, 000_l. _executed by Sir Walter during the struggles of Constable and Co. Toprevent a failure, on the transfer to him of all the copyrights of SirWalter, including "the results of some literary exertions of the solesurviving executor, " which I conjecture to mean the copyright of theadmirable biography of Sir Walter Scott in ten volumes, to which Ihave made such a host of references--probably the most perfectspecimen of a biography rich in great materials, which our languagecontains. And thus, nearly fifteen years after Sir Walter's death, thedebt which, within six years, he had more than half discharged, was atlast, through the value of the copyrights he had left behind him, finally extinguished, and the small estate of Abbotsford left cleared. 

Sir Walter's effort to found a new house was even less successful thanthe effort to endow it. His eldest son died childless. In 1839 he wentto Madras, as Lieutenant-Colonel of the 15th Hussars, and subsequentlycommanded that regiment. He was as much beloved by the officers of hisregiment as his father had been by his own friends, and was in everysense an accomplished soldier, and one whose greatest anxiety it wasto promote the welfare of the privates as well as of the officers ofhis regiment. He took great pains in founding a library for thesoldiers of his corps, and his only legacy out of his own family wasone of 100_l. _ to this library. The cause of his death was his havingexposed himself rashly to the sun in a tiger-hunt, in August, 1846; henever recovered from the fever which was the immediate consequence. Ordered home for his health, he died near the Cape of Good Hope, onthe 8th of February, 1847. His brother Charles died before him. He wasrising rapidly in the diplomatic service, and was taken to Persia bySir John MacNeill, on a diplomatic mission, as attaché and privatesecretary. But the climate struck him down, and he died at Teheran, almost immediately on his arrival, on the 28th October, 1841. Both thesisters had died previously. Anne Scott, the younger of the two, whosehealth had suffered greatly during the prolonged anxiety of herfather's illness, died on the Midsummer-day of the year following herfather's death; and Sophia, Mrs. Lockhart, died on the 17th May, 1837. Sir Walter's eldest grandchild, John Hugh Lockhart, for whom the_Tales of a Grandfather_ were written, died before his grandfather;indeed Sir Walter heard of the child's death at Naples. The secondson, Walter Scott Lockhart Scott, a lieutenant in the army, died atVersailles, on the 10th January, 1853. Charlotte Harriet JaneLockhart, who was married in 1847 to James Robert Hope-Scott, andsucceeded to the Abbotsford estate, died at Edinburgh, on the 26thOctober, 1858, leaving three children, of whom only one survives. Walter Michael and Margaret Anne Hope-Scott both died in infancy. Theonly direct descendant, therefore, of Sir Walter Scott, is now MaryMonica Hope-Scott who was born on the 2nd October, 1852, thegrandchild of Mrs. Lockhart, and the great-grandchild of the founderof Abbotsford. 

There is something of irony in such a result of the Herculean laboursof Scott to found and endow a new branch of the clan of Scott. Whenfifteen years after his death the estate was at length freed fromdebt, all his own children and the eldest of his grandchildren weredead; and now forty-six years have elapsed, and there only remains onegirl of his descendants to borrow his name and live in the halls ofwhich he was so proud. And yet this, and this only, was wanting togive something of the grandeur of tragedy to the end of Scott's greatenterprise. He valued his works little compared with the house andlands which they were to be the means of gaining for his descendants;yet every end for which he struggled so gallantly is all but lost, while his works have gained more of added lustre from the losingbattle which he fought so long, than they could ever have gained fromhis success. 

What there was in him of true grandeur could never have been seen, hadthe fifth act of his life been less tragic than it was. Generous, large-hearted, and magnanimous as Scott was, there was something inthe days of his prosperity that fell short of what men need for theirhighest ideal of a strong man. Unbroken success, unrivalledpopularity, imaginative effort flowing almost as steadily as thecurrent of a stream, --these are characteristics, which, even whenenhanced as they were in his case, by the power to defy physical pain, and to live in his imaginative world when his body was writhing intorture, fail to touch the heroic point. And there was nothing inScott, while he remained prosperous, to relieve adequately the glareof triumphant prosperity. His religious and moral feeling, thoughstrong and sound, was purely regulative, and not always evenregulative, where his inward principle was not reflected in theopinions of the society in which he lived. The finer spiritual elementin Scott was relatively deficient, and so the strength of the naturalman was almost too equal, complete, and glaring. Something that should"tame the glaring white" of that broad sunshine, was needed; and inthe years of reverse, when one gift after another was taken away, tillat length what he called even his "magic wand" was broken, and the oldman struggled on to the last, without bitterness, without defiance, without murmuring, but not without such sudden flashes of subduingsweetness as melted away the anger of the teacher of hischildhood, --that something seemed to be supplied. Till calamity came, Scott appeared to be a nearly complete natural man, and no more. Thenfirst was perceived in him something above nature, something whichcould endure though every end in life for which he had fought soboldly should be defeated, --something which could endure and more thanendure, which could shoot a soft transparence of its own through hisyears of darkness and decay. That there was nothing very elevated inScott's personal or moral, or political or literary ends, --that henever for a moment thought of himself as one who was bound to leavethe earth better than he found it, --that he never seems to have somuch as contemplated a social or political reform for which he oughtto contend, --that he lived to some extent like a child blowingsoap-bubbles, the brightest and most gorgeous of which--the Abbotsfordbubble--vanished before his eyes, is not a take-off from the charm ofhis career, but adds to it the very speciality of its fascination. Forit was his entire unconsciousness of moral or spiritual efforts, thesimple straightforward way in which he laboured for ends of the mostordinary kind, which made it clear how much greater the man was thanhis ends, how great was the mind and character which prosperity failedto display, but which became visible at once so soon as the storm camedown and the night fell. Few men who battle avowedly for the right, battle for it with the calm fortitude, the cheerful equanimity, withwhich Scott battled to fulfil his engagements and to save his familyfrom ruin. He stood high amongst those--

 "Who ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads, "

among those who have been able to display--

 "One equal temper of heroic hearts Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. "

And it was because the man was so much greater than the ends for whichhe strove, that there is a sort of grandeur in the tragic fate whichdenied them to him, and yet exhibited to all the world the infinitesuperiority of the striver himself to the toy he was thus passionatelycraving. 

THE END.