The war was
virtually
decided, but not yet ended.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v22 - Sac to Sha
Thus Lexington, although still a
small town, became what was then called "the literary and intel-
lectual centre west of the Alleghanies," and a point of great
attraction to people of means and of social wants and pretensions.
It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that it was a quiet
and sedate college town like those of New England. Many years
later, in 1814, a young Massachusetts Yankee, Amos Kendall,
who had drifted to Lexington in pursuit of profitable employ-
ment, and was then a private teacher in Henry Clay's family,
wrote in his diary: "I have, I think, learned the way to be pop-
ular in Kentucky, but do not as yet put it in practice. Drink
whisky and talk loud, with the fullest confidence, and you will
hardly fail of being called a clever fellow. " This was not the
only "way to be popular," but was certainly one of the ways.
When the Lexington of 1797, the year of Clay's arrival there, is
spoken of as a "literary and intellectual centre," the meaning is
that it was an outpost of civilization, still surrounded, and to a
great extent permeated, by the spirit of border life. The hunter
in his fringed buckskin suit, with long rifle and powder-horn, was
still a familiar figure on the streets of the town. The boisterous
hilarity of the bar-room, and the excitement of the card table,
accorded with the prevailing taste better than a lecture on ancient
history; and a racing-horse was to a large majority of Lexing-
tonians an object of far greater interest than a professor of
Greek. But compared with other Western towns of the time, Lex-
ington did possess an uncommon proportion of educated people;
and there were circles wherein the social life displayed, together
with the freedom of tone characteristic of a new country, a lib-
eral dash of culture.
This was the place where Henry Clay cast anchor in 1797.
The society he found there was congenial to him, and he was
## p. 12981 (#411) ##########################################
CARL SCHURZ
12981
congenial to it. A young man of uncommon brightness of intel-
lect, of fascinating address, without effort making the little he
knew pass for much more, of high spirits, warm sympathies, a
cheery nature, and sociable tastes,- he easily became a favorite
with the educated as a person of striking ability, and with the
many as a good companion, who, notwithstanding a certain dis-
tinguished air, enjoyed himself as they did. It was again as
a speaker that he first made his mark. Shortly after his arrival
at Lexington, before he had begun to practice law, he joined a
debating club, in several meetings of which he participated only
as a silent listener. One evening, when, after a long discussion,
the vote upon the question before the society was about to be
taken, he whispered to a friend, loud enough to be overheard,
that to him the debate did not seem to have exhausted the sub-
ject. Somebody remarked that Mr. Clay desired to speak, and
he was called upon. Finding himself unexpectedly confronting
the audience, he was struck with embarrassment; and as he
had done frequently in imaginary appeals in court, he began,
"Gentlemen of the jury! " A titter running through the audi-
ence increased his embarrassment, and the awkward words came
out once more. But then he gathered himself up; his nerves
became steady, and he poured out a flow of reasoning so lucid,
and at the same time so impassioned, that his hearers were
overcome with astonishment. Some of his friends who had been
present said, in later years, that they had never heard him make
a better speech. This was no doubt an exaggeration of the first
impression; but at any rate that speech stamped him at once as
a remarkable man in the community, and laid open before him
the road to success.
He had not come to Lexington with extravagant expecta-
tions. As an old man looking back upon those days, he said:
"I remember how comfortable I thought I should be if I could
make one hundred pounds a year, Virginia money, and with what
delight I received the first fifteen shillings fee. " He approached
with a certain awe the competition with what he called “a bar
uncommonly distinguished by eminent members. " But he did
not find it difficult to make his way among them. His practice
was, indeed, at first mostly in criminal cases; and many are the
stories told of the marvelous effects produced by his eloquence
upon the simple-minded Kentucky jurymen, and of the culprits
saved by him from a well-merited fate.
## p. 12982 (#412) ##########################################
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CARL SCHURZ
It was not long however that he remained confined to crimi-
nal cases. Soon he distinguished himself by the management of
civil suits also, especially suits growing out of the peculiar land
laws of Virginia and Kentucky. In this way he rapidly acquired
a lucrative practice and a prominent place at the bar of his
State. That with all his brilliant abilities he never worked his
way into the front rank of the great lawyers of the country
was due to his characteristic failing. He studied only for the
occasion, as far as his immediate need went. His studies were
never wide and profound. His time was too much occupied by
other things, not only by his political activity, which gradually
grew more and more exacting, but also by pleasure.
He was
fond of company, and in that period of his life not always care-
ful in selecting his comrades; a passion for cards grew upon
him, so much so indeed that he never completely succeeded in
overcoming it: and these tastes robbed him of the hours and of
the temper of mind without which the calm gathering of thought
required for the mastery of a science is not possible. Moreover,
it is not improbable that his remarkable gift of speaking, which
enabled him to make little tell for much and to outshine men
of vastly greater learning, deceived him as to the necessity for
laborious study. The value of this faculty he appreciated well.
He knew that oratory is an art, and in this art he trained
himself with judgment and perseverance. For many years, as a
young man, he made it a rule to read if possible every day in
some historical or scientific book, and then to repeat what he had
read in free, off-hand speech, "sometimes in a cornfield, at others
in the forest, and not unfrequently in a distant barn with the
horse and ox for auditors. " Thus he cultivated that facility and
affluence of phrase, that resonance of language, as well as that
freedom of gesture, which, aided by a voice of rare power and
musical beauty, gave his oratory, even to the days of declining
old age, so peculiar a charm.
Only a year and a half after his arrival at Lexington, in
April 1799, he had achieved a position sufficiently respected and
secure to ask for and to obtain the hand of Lucretia Hart, the
daughter of a man of high character and prominent standing in
the State. She was not a brilliant, but a very estimable woman,
and a most devoted wife to him. She became the mother of
eleven children. His prosperity increased rapidly; so that soon
he was able to purchase Ashland, an estate of some six hundred
## p. 12983 (#413) ##########################################
CARL SCHURZ
12983
acres near Lexington, which afterward became famous as Henry
Clay's home.
Together with the accumulation of worldly goods he laid up a
valuable stock of popularity. Indeed, few men ever possessed in
greater abundance and completeness those qualities which attract
popular regard and affection. A tall stature; not a handsome face,
but a pleasing, winning expression; a voice of which some of his
contemporaries say that it was the finest musical instrument they
ever heard; an eloquence always melodious, and in turn majestic,
fierce, playful, insinuating, irresistibly appealing to all the feel-
ings of human nature, aided by a gesticulation at the same time
natural, vivid, large, and powerful; a certain magnificent grand-
eur of bearing in public action, and an easy familiarity, a never-
failing natural courtesy in private, which even in his intercourse
with the lowliest had nothing of haughty condescension in it; a
noble generous heart, making him always ready to volunteer
his professional services to poor widows and orphans who needed.
aid, to slaves whom he thought entitled to their freedom, to
free negroes who were in danger of being illegally returned to
bondage, and to persons who were persecuted by the powerful
and lawless, in serving whom he sometimes endangered his own
safety; a cheery sympathetic nature withal, of exuberant vitality,
gay, spirited, always ready to enjoy, and always glad to see oth-.
ers enjoy themselves,- his very faults being those of what was
considered good-fellowship in his Kentuckian surroundings; a
superior person, appearing indeed immensely superior at times,
but making his neighbors feel that he was one of them,- such a
man was born to be popular. It has frequently been said that
later in life he cultivated his popularity by clever acting, and
that his universal courtesy became somewhat artificial.
then he acted his own character as it originally was.
It is an
important fact that his popularity at home, among his neighbors,
indeed in the whole State, constantly grew stronger as he grew
older; and that the people of Kentucky clung to him with un-
bounded affection.
If so,
## p. 12984 (#414) ##########################################
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CARL SCHURZ
CLAY THE STATESMAN
From the Life of Henry Clay. ' Copyright 1887, by Carl Schurz. Published
by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
BⓇ
UT however incomplete, that record showed how large a place
Henry Clay had filled in the public affairs of the republic
during almost half a century of its existence. His most
potent faculty has left the most imperfect monuments behind
it. He was without question the greatest parliamentary ora-
tor, and one of the greatest popular speakers, America has ever
had. Webster excelled him in breadth of knowledge, in keen-
ness of reasoning, in weight of argument, and in purity of diction.
But Clay possessed in a far higher degree the true oratorical
temperament, that force of nervous exaltation which makes the
orator feel himself, and appear to others, a superior being, and
almost irresistibly transfuses his thoughts, his passions, and his
will into the mind and heart of the listener. Webster would
instruct and convince and elevate, but Clay would overcome his
audience. There could scarcely be a more striking proof of his
power than the immediate effect we know his speeches to have
produced upon those who heard them, compared with the impres-
sion of heavy tameness we receive when merely reading the
printed reports.
In the elements, too, which make a man a leader, Clay was
greatly the superior of Webster, as well as of all other contem-
poraries excepting Andrew Jackson. He had not only in rare
development the faculty of winning the affectionate devotion of
men, but his personality imposed itself without an effort so forci-
bly upon others that they involuntarily looked to him for direc-
tion, waited for his decisive word before making up their minds,
and not seldom yielded their better judgment to his will-power.
While this made him a very strong leader, he was not a
safe guide. The rare brightness of his intellect, and his fertile
fancy, served indeed to make himself and others forget his lack
of accurate knowledge and studious thought; but these brilliant
qualities could not compensate for his deficiency in that prudence
and forecast which are required for the successful direction of
political forces. His impulses were vehement, and his mind not
well fitted for the patient analysis of complicated problems and of
difficult political situations. His imagination frequently ran away
-
## p. 12985 (#415) ##########################################
CARL SCHURZ
12985
with his understanding. His statesmanship had occasionally some-
thing of the oratorical character. Now and then he appeared to
consider it as important whether a conception or a measure would
sound well, as whether if put into practice it would work well.
He disliked advice which differed from his preconceived opin-
ions; and with his imperious temper and ardent combativeness he
was apt, as in the struggle about the United States Bank, to
put himself, and to hurry his party, into positions of great dis-
advantage. It is a remarkable fact that during his long career
in Congress he was in more or less pronounced opposition to all
administrations, even those of his own party; save that of Jeffer-
son, under which he served only one short session in the Senate,
and that of John Quincy Adams, of which he was a member.
During Madison's first term, Clay helped in defeating the re-
charter of the United States Bank recommended by Gallatin as
Secretary of the Treasury; and he became a firm supporter of
Madison's administration only when, as to the war against Great
Britain, it had yielded to his pressure. No fault can be found
with him for asserting in all important things the freedom of his
opinion; but a less impetuous statesman would have found it pos-
sible to avoid a conflict with Monroe, and to maintain harmonious
relations with General Taylor.
On the other hand, he never sought to organize or strengthen
his following by the arts of the patronage-monger. The thought
that a political party should be held together by the public
plunder, or that the party leader should be something like a
paymaster of a body of henchmen at the public expense, or that
a party contest should be a mere scramble for spoils, was entirely
foreign to his mind, and far below the level of his patriotic aspi-
rations.
It has been said that Clay was surrounded by a crowd of job-
bers and speculators eager to turn his internal-improvement and
tariff policies to their private advantage. No doubt those poli-
cies attracted such persons to him. But there is no reason for
suspecting that he was ever in the slightest degree pecuniarily
interested in any scheme which might have been advanced by his
political position or influence.
In no sense was he a money-
maker in politics. His integrity as a public man remained with-
out blemish throughout his long career. He preserved an equally
intact name in the conduct of his private affairs. In money mat-
ters he was always a man of honor, maintaining the principles
## p. 12986 (#416) ##########################################
12986
CARL SCHURZ
and the pride of a gentleman. The financial embarrassments
which troubled his declining days were caused, not by reckless
extravagance nor by questionable speculations, but by the ex-
penses inseparable from high public station and great renown,
and by engagements undertaken for others, especially his sons.
He was a kind husband and an indulgent father. There is ample
evidence of his warm solicitude as to the welfare of his children,
of his constant readiness to assist them with his counsel, and of
his self-sacrificing liberality in providing for their needs and in
aiding them in their troubles.
The desire of so distinguished a political leader to be Presi-
dent was natural and legitimate. Even had he cherished it less
ardently, his followers would have more than once pushed him
forward. But no one can study Clay's career without feeling that
he would have been a happier and a greater man if he had never
coveted the glittering prize. When such an ambition becomes
chronic, it will be but too apt to unsettle the character and
darken the existence of those afflicted with it, by confusing their
appreciation of all else. As Cæsar said that the kind of death
most to be desired was "a sudden one," so the American states-
man may think himself fortunate to whom a nomination for the
Presidency comes, if at all, without a long agony of hope and
fear. During a period of thirty years-from the time when he
first aspired to be Monroe's successor until 1848-Clay unceas
ingly hunted the shadow whose capture would probably have
added nothing either to his usefulness or his fame, but the pur-
suit of which made his public life singularly restless and unsat-
isfactory to himself. Nor did he escape from the suspicion of
having occasionally modified the expression of his opinions accord-
ing to supposed exigencies of availability. The peculiar tone of
his speech against the Abolitionists before the campaign of 1840,
his various letters on the annexation of Texas in 1844, and some
equivocations on other subjects during the same period, illus-
trated the weakening influence of the Presidential candidate upon
the man; and even his oft-quoted word that he would rather
be right than be President" was spoken at a time when he was
more desirous of being President than sure of being right.
But on the whole, save his early change of position on the
subject of the United States Bank, Clay's public career appears
remarkably consistent in its main feature. It was ruled by the
idea that, as the binding together of the States in the Union and
## p. 12987 (#417) ##########################################
CARL SCHURZ
12987
the formation of a constitutional government had been accom-
plished by the compromising of diverse interests, this Union and
this constitutional government had to be maintained in the same
way; and that every good citizen should consider it his duty,
whenever circumstances required it, to sacrifice something, not
only of his material advantages, but even of his sentiments and
convictions, for the peace and welfare of the common Republic.
Whatever Clay's weaknesses of character and errors in states-
manship may have been, almost everything he said or did was
illumined by a grand conception of the destinies of his country,
a glowing national spirit, a lofty patriotism. Whether he thun-
dered against British tyranny on the seas, or urged the recog-
nition of the South-American sister republics, or attacked the
high-handed conduct of the military chieftain in the Florida war,
or advocated protection and internal improvements, or assailed
the one-man power and spoils politics in the person of Andrew
Jackson, or entreated for compromise and conciliation regarding
the tariff or slavery; whether what he advocated was wise or
unwise, right or wrong, there was always ringing through his
words a fervid plea for his country, a zealous appeal in behalf of
the honor and the future greatness and glory of the republic, or
an anxious warning lest the Union, and with it the greatness and
glory of the American people, be put in jeopardy. It was a just
judgment which he pronounced upon himself when he wrote: “If
any one desires to know the leading and paramount object of my
public life, the preservation of this Union will furnish him the
key. "
――
TWO POPULAR LEADERS
From the Life of Henry Clay. ' Copyright 1887, by Carl Schurz. Published
by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
A
NDREW JACKSON, when he became President, was a man of
sixty-two. A life of much exposure, hardship, and excite-
ment, and also ill-health, had made him appear older than
he was.
His great military achievement lay fifteen years back in
the past, and made him the "old hero. " He was very ignorant.
In his youth he had mastered scarcely the rudiments of educa-
tion; and he did not possess that acquisitive intellectuality which
impels men, with or without preparation, to search for knowl-
edge and to store it up. While he had keen intuitions, he never
## p. 12988 (#418) ##########################################
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CARL SCHURZ
thoroughly understood the merits of any question of politics or
economics. But his was in the highest degree the instinct of a
superior will, the genius of command. If he had been on board
a vessel in extreme danger, he would have thundered out his
orders without knowing anything of seamanship, and been indig-
nantly surprised if captain and crew had not obeyed him. At
a fire, his voice would have made bystanders as well as firemen
promptly do his will. In war, he was of course made a general;
and without any knowledge of military science he, went out to
meet the enemy, made raw militia fight like veterans, and won
the most brilliant victory in the War of 1812. He was not only
brave himself: his mere presence infused bravery into others.
To his military heroship he owed that popularity which lifted
him into the Presidential chair; and he carried the spirit of the
warrior into the business of the government. His party was to
him his army; those who opposed him, the enemy. He knew not
how to argue, but how to command; not how to deliberate, but
how to act. He had that impulsive energy which always creates
dramatic conflicts, and the power of passion he put into them
made all his conflicts look tremendous. When he had been
defeated in 1825 by the influence of Clay, he made it appear as
if he were battling against all the powers of corruption, which
were threatening the life of the republic. We shall see him
fight Nicholas Biddle, of the United States Bank, as if he had to
defend the American people against the combined money power
of the world seeking to enslave them. In rising up against nul-
lification, and in threatening France with war to make her pay
a debt, we shall see him saving the Union from deadly peril,
and humiliating to the dust the insolence of the Old World.
Thus he appeared like an invincible Hercules, constantly meeting
terrible monsters dangerous to the American people, and slaying
them all with his mighty club.
This fierce energy was his nature. It had a wonderful fas-
cination for the popular fancy, which is fond of strong and bold
acts. He became the idol of a large portion of the people to
a degree never known before or since. Their belief was that
with him defeat was impossible; that all the legions of darkness
could not prevail against him; and that whatever arbitrary pow-
ers he might assume, and whatever way he might use them, it
would always be for the good of the country,- a belief which he
sincerely shared. His ignorance of the science of statesmanship,
## p. 12989 (#419) ##########################################
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12989
and the rough manner in which he crossed its rules, seemed to
endear him all the more to the great mass of his followers. In-
numerable anecdotes about his homely and robust sayings and
doings were going from mouth to mouth, and with delight the
common man felt that this potent ruler was "one of us. "
This popularity gave him an immense authority over the poli-
ticians of his party. He was a warm friend and a tremendous
foe. By a faithful friend he would stand to the last extremity.
But one who seriously differed from him on any matter that
was near his heart was in great danger of becoming an object of
his wrath. The ordinary patriot is apt to regard the enemies of
his country as his personal enemies. But Andrew Jackson was
always inclined, with entire sincerity, to regard his personal oppo-
nents as the enemies of his country. He honestly believed them
capable of any baseness, and it was his solemn conviction that
such nuisances must be abated by any power available for that
purpose. The statesmen of his party frequently differed from
him on matters of public importance; but they knew that they
had to choose between submission and his disfavor. His friends
would sometimes exercise much influence upon him in starting
his mind in a certain direction; but when once started, that mind
was beyond their control.
He
His personal integrity was above the reach of corruption
always meant to do right; indeed, he was always firmly con-
vinced of being right. His idea of right was not seldom ob-
scured by ignorance and prejudice, and in following it he would
sometimes do the most unjust or dangerous things. But his
friends, and the statesmen of his party, knowing that when he
had made up his mind, especially on a matter that had become
a subject of conflict between him and his "enemies," it was
absolutely useless to reason with him, accustomed themselves to
obeying orders, unless they were prepared to go to the rear or
into opposition. It was therefore not a mere invention of the
enemy, but sober truth, that when Jackson's administration was
attacked, sometimes the only answer left to its defenders, as well
as the all-sufficient one with the Democratic masses, was simply
a "Hurrah for Jackson! "
Henry Clay was, although in retirement, the recognized chief
of the National Republicans. He was then fifty-two years old,
and in the full maturity of his powers. He had never been an
arduous student; but his uncommonly vivacious and receptive
## p. 12990 (#420) ##########################################
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CARL SCHURZ
mind had learned much in the practical school of affairs. He
possessed that magnificent confidence in himself which extorts
confidence from others. He had a full measure of the temper
necessary for leadership, the spirit of initiative, but not always
the discretion that should accompany it. His leadership was not
of that mean order which merely contrives to organize a personal
following: it was the leadership of a statesman devoting himself
to the great interests of his country. Whenever he appeared in
a deliberative assembly, or in councils of his party, he would
as a matter of course take in his hands what important busi-
ness was pending, and determine the policy to be followed. His
friends, and some even among his opponents, were so accustomed
to yield to him that nothing seemed to them concluded without
the mark of his assent; and they involuntarily looked to him for
the decisive word as to what was to be done. Thus he grew
into a habit of dictation, which occasionally displayed itself in
a manner of peremptory command, and intolerance of adverse
opinion, apt to provoke resentment.
It was his eloquence that had first made him famous, and
that throughout his career mainly sustained his leadership. His
speeches were not masterpieces of literary art, nor exhaustive
dissertations. They do not offer to the student any profound
theories of government or expositions of economic science. They
will not be quoted as authorities on disputed points. Neither
were they strings of witty epigrams. They were the impassioned
reasoning of a statesman intensely devoted to his country and to
the cause he thought right. There was no appearance of artifice
in them. They made every listener feel that the man who uttered
them was tremendously in earnest, and that the thoughts he ex-
pressed had not only passed through his brain but also through his
heart. They were the speeches of a great debater; and as may
be said of those of Charles James Fox, cold print could never
do them justice. To be fully appreciated they had to be heard
on the theatre of action, in the hushed Senate chamber, or before
the eagerly upturned faces of assembled multitudes. To feel the
full charm of his lucid explanations, and his winning persuasive-
ness, or the thrill which was flashed through the nerves of his
hearers by the magnificent sunbursts of his enthusiasm, or the
fierce thunder-storms of his anger and scorn, one had to hear that
musical voice cajoling, flattering, inspiring, overawing, terrifying
in turn,-
a voice to the cadences of which it was a physical
## p. 12991 (#421) ##########################################
CARL SCHURZ
12991
delight to listen; one had to see that face, not handsome but
glowing with the fire of inspiration, that lofty mien, that com-
manding stature constantly growing under his words, and the
grand sweep of his gesture, majestic in its dignity, and full of
grace and strength,- the whole man a superior being while he
spoke.
Survivors of his time, who heard him at his best, tell us of
the effects produced by his great appeals in the House of Rep-
resentatives or the Senate, the galleries trembling with excite-
ment, and even the members unable to contain themselves; or
in popular assemblies, the multitudes breathlessly listening, and
then breaking out in unearthly shouts of enthusiasm and delight,
weeping and laughing, and rushing up to him with overwhelming
demonstrations of admiring and affectionate rapture.
Clay's oratory sometimes fairly paralyzed his opponents. A
story is told that Tom Marshall, himself a speaker of uncommon
power, was once selected to answer Clay at a mass meeting; but
that he was observed, while Clay was proceeding, slowly to make
his way back through the listening crowd, apparently anxious to
escape. Some of his friends tried to hold him, saying, "Why,
Mr. Marshall, where are you going? You must reply to Mr.
Clay. You can easily answer all he has said. " "Of course I can
answer every point," said Marshall; "but you must excuse me,
gentlemen,- I cannot go up there and do it just now, after his
speech. "
-
There was a manly, fearless frankness in the avowal of his
opinions, and a knightly spirit in his defense of them, as well as
in his attacks on his opponents. He was indeed, on the political
field, the preux chevalier, marshaling his hosts, sounding his bugle
blasts, and plunging first into the fight; and with proud admira-
tion his followers called him "the gallant Harry of the West. "
No less brilliant and attractive was he in his social intercourse
with men; thoroughly human in his whole being; full of high
spirits; fond of enjoying life and of seeing others happy; gener-
ous and hearty in his sympathies; always courteous, sometimes
studiously and elaborately so, perhaps beyond what the occasion
seemed to call for, but never wounding the most sensitive by any
demonstrative condescension, because there was a truly kind heart
behind his courtesy; possessing a natural charm of conversation
and manner so captivating that neither scholar nor backwoods-
man could withstand its fascination; making friends wherever he
## p. 12992 (#422) ##########################################
CARL SCHURZ
12992
appeared, and holding them-and surely to no public man did
friends ever cling with more affectionate attachment. It was not
a mere political, it was a sentimental devotion,- a devotion aban-
doning even that criticism which is the duty of friendship, and
forgetting or excusing all his weaknesses and faults, intellectual
and moral,- more than was good for him.
Behind him he had also the powerful support of the industrial
interests of the country, which saw in him their champion; while
the perfect integrity of his character forbade the suspicion that
this championship was serving his private gain.
Such were the leaders of the two parties as they then stood
before the country,- individualities so pronounced and conspicu-
ous, commanders so faithfully sustained by their followers, that
while they were facing each other, the contests of parties ap-
peared almost like a protracted political duel between two men.
It was a struggle of singular dramatic interest.
THE FIRST AMERICAN
From Abraham Lincoln: an Essay. Copyright 1891, by Carl Schurz and
Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
THE
HE hour of triumph called out the characteristic impulses of
his nature. The opposition within the Union party had
stung him to the quick. Now he had his opponents before
him, baffled and humiliated. Not a moment did he lose to
stretch out the hand of friendship to all. "Now that the election
is over," he said in response to a serenade, "may not all, having
a common interest, reunite in a common effort to save our com-
mon country? For my own part, I have striven, and will strive,
to place no obstacle in the way. So long as I have been here I
have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom. While
I am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a re-election,
it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be
pained or disappointed by the result. May I ask those who were
with me to join with me in the same spirit toward those who
were against me? " This was Abraham Lincoln's character as
tested in the furnace of prosperity.
The war was virtually decided, but not yet ended. Sherman
was irresistibly carrying the Union flag through the South.
Grant had his iron hand upon the ramparts of Richmond. The
## p. 12993 (#423) ##########################################
CARL SCHURZ
12993
days of the Confederacy were evidently numbered. Only the last
blow remained to be struck. Then Lincoln's second inauguration
came, and with it his second inaugural address. Lincoln's famous.
"Gettysburg speech" has been much and justly admired. But
far greater, as well as far more characteristic, was that inaugural
in which he poured out the whole devotion and tenderness of his
great soul.
It had all the solemnity of a father's last admonition
and blessing to his children before he lay down to die. These
were its closing words:-
"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty
scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it
continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondman's two hun-
dred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every
drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn
with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must
be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous alto-
gether. ' With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness
in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish
the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him
who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan;
to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace
among ourselves and with all nations. »
This was like a sacred poem. No American President had
ever spoken words like these to the American people. America
never had a President who found such words in the depth of his
heart.
To the younger generation, Abraham Lincoln has already be-
come a half-mythical figure, which, in the haze of historic distance,
grows to more and more heroic proportions, but also loses in dis-
tinctness of outline and feature. This is indeed the common lot
of popular heroes; but the Lincoln legend will be more than
ordinarily apt to become fanciful, as his individuality, assembling
seemingly incongruous qualities and forces in a character at the
same time grand and most lovable, was so unique, and his career
so abounding in startling contrasts. As the state of society in
which Abraham Lincoln grew up passes away, the world will
read with increasing wonder of the man who, not only of the
humblest origin, but remaining the simplest and most unpretend-
ing of citizens, was raised to a position of power unprecedented in
our history; who was the gentlest and most peace-loving of mor-
tals, unable to see any creature suffer without a pang in his own
XXII-813
## p. 12994 (#424) ##########################################
12994
CARL SCHURZ
breast, and suddenly found himself called to conduct the greatest
and bloodiest of our wars; who wielded the power of government
when stern resolution and relentless force were the order of the
day, and then won and ruled the popular mind and heart by the
tender sympathies of his nature; who was a cautious conserv
ative by temperament and mental habit, and led the most sudden
and sweeping social revolution of our time; who, preserving his
homely speech and rustic manner even in the most conspicuous
position of that period, drew upon himself the scoffs of polite
society, and then thrilled the soul of mankind with utterances of
wonderful beauty and grandeur; who, in his heart the best friend
of the defeated South, was murdered because a crazy fanatic
took him for its most cruel enemy; who, while in power, was
beyond measure lampooned and maligned by sectional passion
and an excited party spirit, and around whose bier friend and
foe gathered to praise him- which they have since never ceased
to do-as one of the
greatest of Americans and the best of
men.
## p. 12994 (#425) ##########################################
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## p. 12994 (#427) ##########################################
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12995
--
FTEN as it has been my fortune to write about Sir Walter
Scott, I never sit down to do so without a sense of hap-
piness and elation. It is as if one were meeting a dear
friend, or at the least were to talk with other friends about him.
This emotion is so strong, no doubt, because the name and memory
and magic of Sir Walter are entwined with one's earliest recollections
of poetry, and nature, and the rivers and hills of home. Yet the
phrase of a lady, a stranger, in an unpublished letter to Scott, "You
are such a friendly author," contains a truth not limited to Scott's
fellow-countrymen and fellow-Borderers. To read him, to read all
of him almost, to know his works familiarly, is to have a friend, and
as it were, an invisible playmate of the mind. Goethe confessed this
spell; it affected even Carlyle; all Europe knew its charm; Alex-
andre Dumas, the Scott of France, not only felt it but can himself
inspire it, the spell of a great, frank, wise, humorous, and loving
nature, accompanied by a rich and sympathetic imagination, and
equipped with opulence of knowledge. In modern England, few men
have had wider influence than two who in many respects are all un-
like Scott, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Ruskin; yet their writings are full
of admiration for "the Magician who dwelleth in the castle on the
Border. " To-day, some very "modern" people of letters, in no way
remarkable either for knowledge, fancy, or humor, affect to speak of
Scott with disdain. The latest criticism which I chanced to read
talked of his "romances of chivalry," as if they had no connection
with actual "life. " He wrote only about three prose "romances of
chivalry. " It is life itself that throbs in a score, perhaps a hun-
dred, of his characters. Davie Deans, Jeanie Deans, Bessie Mac-
lure, Nantie Ewart, Wandering Willie, Andrew Fairservice, Louis XI. ,
James VI. , Ratcliffe, Madge Wildfire, the Dugald Creature, Callum
Beg, Diana Vernon, Dugald Dalgetty, the fishers of The Antiquary,'
Baillie Nicol Jarvie, Claverhouse, Meg Dods,— these are but a few
of Scott's immortally living characters. From kings to gillies, they
all display life as it has been, and is, and will be lived. Remoteness
and strangeness of time and place and society can never alter nature,
-
SIR WALTER SCOTT
(1771-1832)
BY ANDREW LANG
## p. 12996 (#430) ##########################################
12996
SIR WALTER SCOTT
nor hide from minds not prejudiced and dwarfed by restricted facul-
ties and slovenly sham education, the creative greatness of Scott.
His life has been told by the first biographer in British literature
save Boswell. It has been my lot to read most of the manuscript
materials used by Scott's son-in-law and biographer, Lockhart; and
the perusal only increases one's esteem for his work. Lockhart's tact
in selection was infallible. But his book is a long book; and parts of
it which interest a Scot do not strongly appeal to the interest of an
Englishman or an American not of Scottish descent. Nevertheless
Lockhart's 'Biography' is in itself a delightful, if not indispensable,
accompaniment of Sir Walter's works. No biographer had ever less
to conceal a study of the letters and other unpublished documents
makes this certain. The one blot on Sir Walter's scutcheon his
dabbling in trade -was matter of public knowledge during his own
lifetime. Occasional defects of temper, such as beset the noblest
natures, Lockhart did not hide; for which he was foolishly blamed.
Speaking from the most intimate knowledge now attainable, one may
confidently say that Lockhart's Scott is the real man, "as known to
his Maker. "
There is no room here for even a sketch of a life already familiar
in outline. Persons so unfortunate as «< not to have time" to read
Lockhart, will find all that is necessary in Mr. R. H. Hutton's sketch
(English Men of Letters' series), or in Mr. Saintsbury's 'Sir Walter
Scott (Famous Scots' series). The poet and novelist was descended
from the Border house of Harden: on the spindle side he had the
blood of Campbells, Macdonalls, Haliburtons, and Rutherfords in his
veins. All of these are families of extreme antiquity,- the Macdon-
alls having been almost regal in Galloway and Argyle. Scott's father
(born 1729) was a Writer to the Signet, the Saunders Fairford of
'Redgauntlet. '
The poet and novelist was born on August 15th, 1771, and died in
1832. The details of his infancy, his lameness, his genius in child-
hood, his studious and adventurous boyhood, his incomplete education.
(like St. Augustine he would not learn Greek), his adoption of the
profession of advocate, may be found in every 'Life. ' "The first to
begin a row and the last to end it," Scott knew intimately all ranks
of society before he had published a line. Duchesses, gipsies, thieves,
Highlanders, Lowlanders, students, judges, attorneys' clerks, actors,
gamekeepers, farmers, tramps, - he was at home with all of them,
while he had read everything in literature that most people do not
know. It was his fortune to be a poet while England yet had two
kings: George III. de facto, Charles III. and Henry IX. de jure. Hope-
less as the Jacobite cause now was, the sentiment lingered; and Scott
knew intimately the man who sent the Fiery Cross through Appin in
## p. 12997 (#431) ##########################################
SIR WALTER SCOTT
12997
1745,- Invernahyle. A portrait of Prince Charles was one of his ear-
liest purchases. He had seen Burns, who wrote the last 'Birthday
Ode' for a royal Stuart. Yet his youth was contemporary with the
French Revolution, which only made him more of a Tory. His
infancy dwelt with sad excitement on our disasters in the Ameri-
can War of Independence. Thus he lived in the Medea's-caldron of
history, with a head and heart full of the knowledge and love of the
past,-in poetry, ballad, legend, charter, custom. From all this rich
experience of men and women, of the European "Twilight of the
Gods," of clashing societies and politics, of war and literature, came
the peculiar and original ply of his genius.
This was ripened probably by a love affair which ended when he
was twenty-five (1796); ended as far as hope was concerned, other-
wise it closed only with his earthly life, if then. If aught of man's
personality persists after death, then what has so deeply colored and
become one with the self as a love like Scott's, never dies. You
find its traces in his novels, and poems, and Journal: it even peeps
out in his review of Miss Austen's novels. From living tradition –
on the authority of a lady who, having seen her once, loved her to
her own death in extreme age- we are able to say that Scott's lost
love was "an angel rather than a woman. ”
―
To please her he began to aim at success in letters, starting
with a translation of Bürger's romantic ballad, 'Lenore. ' But it was
in vain. Scott bore his loss like a man. The result was not ele-
giac poetry, but, as Mr. Saintsbury justly remarks, the conquest of
"the violence of Scott's most irritable and ungovernable mind," so
described by an early and intimate friend.
To understand Scott, all this must be kept in memory. People
complain of his want of "passion. " Of passion in its purest and
strongest phase no man had known more. But if his passion was
potent, more potent was his character. He does not deal in embraces,
and such descriptions of physical charms and raptures as fill the lines
of Burns and Carew, and Paulus Silentiarius. "I may not, must not
sing of love," says his minstrel; but whoever has read 'Rob Roy,'
and lost his heart to Diana Vernon, ought to understand. "The rest,
they may live and learn. " Scott, in Carlyle's phrase, "consumed his
own smoke"; which Carlyle never did.
Next year (1797) Scott married the lady-Miss Carpenter or Char-
pentier to whom he was the fondest and most faithful of husbands.
Hogg calls her "a perfect beauty"; small, dark, and piquante, and " a
sweet, kind, affectionate creature. " Mrs. Scott had humor and high
spirits, as one or two of her letters show; she made no kind of liter-
ary pretensions; and a certain fretfulness in her latest years may be
attributed to the effects of a lingering and fatal illness. Scott and
she were very happy together.
## p. 12998 (#432) ##########################################
12998
SIR WALTER SCOTT
The details of his professional career at the bar may be omitted.
He was an unsuccessful pleader, but got the remunerative office of
"sheriff of the forest" of Ettrick. He roamed in Galloway, Liddes-
dale, and the Highlands; he met "Monk" Lewis, and began some
ballads for a collection of his. Already, in The Eve of St. John,'
we see the qualities of Scott- and the defects. In 1802 appeared his
'Border Minstrelsy,' printed at Kelm by his school friend, James
Ballantyne. This was the beginning of a fatal connection. Scott be-
came secretly a printer and publisher. Though he owns, and justly,
to "a thread of the attorney » his nature, he had neither the leis-
ure nor the balance for a man of business. He became entangled
in the system of fictitious credit; he never shook off its meshes; and
when a commercial crash came in 1825-26, he was financially ruined.
The poet in him had been acquiring treasures of things old, books
and curios; he had built for these Abbotsford, an expensive villa on
a bad site, but near Tweed; he had purchased land, at exorbitant
rates, mainly for antiquarian and poetical reasons of association, partly
from the old Scottish territorial sentiment; he had kept open house,
and given money with royal munificence; a portion of his gains was
fairy gold, mere paper. So Sir Walter was ruined; and he killed
himself, and broke his brain, in the effort to pay his creditors. He
succeeded, but did not live to see his success. That, in the briefest
form, and omitting his politics (which were chivalrous), is the story
of a long life, strenuous almost beyond literary example, and happy
as men may look for happiness. Of his sons and daughters only one
left offspring,-Sophia, wife of John Gibson Lockhart. Of their child-
ren, again, only one, the wife of Mr. Hope, later Hope-Scott, left
issue,― Mr. Maxwell Scott, from whom descend a flourishing family.
Of Scott's poems it must be said that he is, first of all and above
all, a teller of tales in rhyme. Since Spenser, perhaps, no one had
been able to interest the world in a rhymed romaunt. Byron, fol-
lowing Scott, outdid him for the hour in popularity; our own age has
seen Tennyson's Idylls and Mr. William Morris. Thus rare is success
in the ancient art of romance in verse. The genre is scarcely com-
patible (except in Homer's hands) with deep reflection, or with highly
finished language. At Alexandria, in the third century before our
era, poets and critics were already disputing as to whether long
narrative poems were any longer possible; and on the whole they
preferred, like Lord Tennyson, brief ❝idylls" on epic themes.
Sir Walter, of course, chose not epic but romance; he follows the
mediæval romanticists in verse, adding popular ballad qualities after
the example, in method and versification, of Coleridge's Christabel. '
The result was a new form; often imitated, but never successfully.
How welcome it was to an age wearied with the convention of the
Popeian heroic couplet, in incompetent hands, need not be said. In
-
## p. 12999 (#433) ##########################################
SIR WALTER SCOTT
12999
our age Scott's narrative verse mainly appeals (as he said himself
that he appealed) to young people. Older lovers of poetry want
subtler style and deeper thought.
"Though wild as cloud, as stream, as gale,
Flow forth, flow unrestrained, my Tale,»
said the poet. He judged himself, on the negative side, with perfect
accuracy. Nobody knew his own defects better. "Our father says
that nothing is so bad for young people as reading bad poetry," says
his daughter; and he did not wish his children to read his 'Lays'
and 'Ladys. ' Yet he knew by an amiable inconsistency that his
appeal was to young people.
In responding to that appeal, the present writer is, and hopes to
remain, young. The nine-and-twenty knights of fame who stabled
their steeds in Branxholme Hall charm him as much as they did
when his years were six. The Ride of William of Deloraine remains
the best of riding ballads. The Goblin Page abideth terrible and
grotesque. And it is so with the rest. We cannot force our tastes
on others. If any man's blood is not stirred by the last stand of the
spears of Scotland at Flodden, when
«The stubborn spearmen still made good
Their dark impenetrable wood,
Each stepping where his comrade stood
The instant that he fell,»
in that man's blood there can be very little iron. It is not that one
would always be reading poetry of war. But war too has its poetry,
and here it is chanted as never before nor since. Scott's "scenery »
now wearies many readers; but in the early century it was novel;
and was usually seen at the speed of The Chase, or of the hurrying
of the Fiery Cross, in the 'Lady of the Lake. ' How often, looking
at the ruined shells of feudal castles of the west,- Ardtornish, Dun-
staffnage, and the others, - one has thought of his verse on these
fortresses,-
"Each on its own dark cape reclined,
And listening to its own wild wind. "
The task of reviving Celtic romance was left to a Lowland Scot,
with very little of Celtic blood in his veins. In 'Rokeby' my own
taste prefers the lyrics, as "Oh, Brignall banks are wild and fair,”
and "A weary lot is thine, fair maid," and "When the dawn on the
mountain was misty and gray. " The Lord of the Isles' is compara-
tively confused and feeble.
## p. 13000 (#434) ##########################################
SIR WALTER SCOTT
13000
Apart from—and I think, above - Scott's success in rhymed nar-
rative, his lyrics hold their place. I heard lately of a very "modern"
lady, who, for a collection of exquisite lyrics, could find nothing in
Scott worth gathering and binding. This it is to be cultivated be-
yond one's intellect! Mr. Palgrave, in 'The Golden Treasury,' and
Mr. Swinburne, have not been of the fair critic's opinion. I have
myself edited a collection of all Scott's lyrics. They vary much in
merit: but for the essence of all romance, and pitiful contrast of youth
and pride and death, 'Proud Maisie' is noted; for fire, speed, and
loyalty, 'A Health to King Charles,' 'Bonnie Dundee,' 'Young Loch-
invar,' Flora MacIvor's Clan Roll-Call; for restrained melancholy,
'The Sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill'; for all qualities of the old ballad,
"The Red Harlaw. ' The great objections to Scott's narrative poems
are, in a hurried age, their length and their diffuseness. In his lyr-
ics he has all his good qualities without the defects. Among defects
one would not include want of meditativeness, of the "subjective,"
of the magically selected word, because these great merits are not
included in his aim. About himself, his passions and emotions (the
material of most lyrics and elegiacs), he was not going to speak.
Of Scott's novels it is nearly as impossible to write here, in space
so brief, as of Shakespeare's plays. Let us take first their defects,
to which the author himself pleads guilty. The shortest way to an
understanding of Scott's self-criticism is the reading of his Introduc-
tions to The Abbot' and 'Nigel. ' He admits his deficiency in plot
and construction,- things of charpentage, within the reach of ordinary
talent, but often oddly disregarded by genius; witness Shakespeare
and Molière. Scott's conclusions, he owns, are "huddled up"; he
probably borrowed the word from his friend, Lady Louisa Stuart.
"Yet I have not been fool enough to neglect ordinary precautions. I
have repeatedly laid down my work to scale, dividing it into volumes.
and chapters, and endeavored to construct a story which I meant
should evolve itself gradually and strikingly, maintain suspense, and
stimulate curiosity, and which finally should terminate in a striking
catastrophe. " But he could not do it. He met Dugald Dalgetty, or
Baillie Jarvie, who led him away from his purpose. If he resisted
temptation, he "wrote painfully to himself, and under a consciousness
of flagging which made him flag still more. . . In short, sir, on
such occasions I think I am bewitched. " So he followed his genius,
which was not architectonic. He contented himself with writing
"with sense and spirit a few unlabored and loosely put together
scenes, but which had sufficient interest in them to amuse. "
As for his style, he tells Lockhart that he "never learned gram-
mar. " His manner is often not only incorrect, but trailingly diffuse;
he was apt to pack a crowd of details and explanations, about which
## p.
small town, became what was then called "the literary and intel-
lectual centre west of the Alleghanies," and a point of great
attraction to people of means and of social wants and pretensions.
It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that it was a quiet
and sedate college town like those of New England. Many years
later, in 1814, a young Massachusetts Yankee, Amos Kendall,
who had drifted to Lexington in pursuit of profitable employ-
ment, and was then a private teacher in Henry Clay's family,
wrote in his diary: "I have, I think, learned the way to be pop-
ular in Kentucky, but do not as yet put it in practice. Drink
whisky and talk loud, with the fullest confidence, and you will
hardly fail of being called a clever fellow. " This was not the
only "way to be popular," but was certainly one of the ways.
When the Lexington of 1797, the year of Clay's arrival there, is
spoken of as a "literary and intellectual centre," the meaning is
that it was an outpost of civilization, still surrounded, and to a
great extent permeated, by the spirit of border life. The hunter
in his fringed buckskin suit, with long rifle and powder-horn, was
still a familiar figure on the streets of the town. The boisterous
hilarity of the bar-room, and the excitement of the card table,
accorded with the prevailing taste better than a lecture on ancient
history; and a racing-horse was to a large majority of Lexing-
tonians an object of far greater interest than a professor of
Greek. But compared with other Western towns of the time, Lex-
ington did possess an uncommon proportion of educated people;
and there were circles wherein the social life displayed, together
with the freedom of tone characteristic of a new country, a lib-
eral dash of culture.
This was the place where Henry Clay cast anchor in 1797.
The society he found there was congenial to him, and he was
## p. 12981 (#411) ##########################################
CARL SCHURZ
12981
congenial to it. A young man of uncommon brightness of intel-
lect, of fascinating address, without effort making the little he
knew pass for much more, of high spirits, warm sympathies, a
cheery nature, and sociable tastes,- he easily became a favorite
with the educated as a person of striking ability, and with the
many as a good companion, who, notwithstanding a certain dis-
tinguished air, enjoyed himself as they did. It was again as
a speaker that he first made his mark. Shortly after his arrival
at Lexington, before he had begun to practice law, he joined a
debating club, in several meetings of which he participated only
as a silent listener. One evening, when, after a long discussion,
the vote upon the question before the society was about to be
taken, he whispered to a friend, loud enough to be overheard,
that to him the debate did not seem to have exhausted the sub-
ject. Somebody remarked that Mr. Clay desired to speak, and
he was called upon. Finding himself unexpectedly confronting
the audience, he was struck with embarrassment; and as he
had done frequently in imaginary appeals in court, he began,
"Gentlemen of the jury! " A titter running through the audi-
ence increased his embarrassment, and the awkward words came
out once more. But then he gathered himself up; his nerves
became steady, and he poured out a flow of reasoning so lucid,
and at the same time so impassioned, that his hearers were
overcome with astonishment. Some of his friends who had been
present said, in later years, that they had never heard him make
a better speech. This was no doubt an exaggeration of the first
impression; but at any rate that speech stamped him at once as
a remarkable man in the community, and laid open before him
the road to success.
He had not come to Lexington with extravagant expecta-
tions. As an old man looking back upon those days, he said:
"I remember how comfortable I thought I should be if I could
make one hundred pounds a year, Virginia money, and with what
delight I received the first fifteen shillings fee. " He approached
with a certain awe the competition with what he called “a bar
uncommonly distinguished by eminent members. " But he did
not find it difficult to make his way among them. His practice
was, indeed, at first mostly in criminal cases; and many are the
stories told of the marvelous effects produced by his eloquence
upon the simple-minded Kentucky jurymen, and of the culprits
saved by him from a well-merited fate.
## p. 12982 (#412) ##########################################
12982
CARL SCHURZ
It was not long however that he remained confined to crimi-
nal cases. Soon he distinguished himself by the management of
civil suits also, especially suits growing out of the peculiar land
laws of Virginia and Kentucky. In this way he rapidly acquired
a lucrative practice and a prominent place at the bar of his
State. That with all his brilliant abilities he never worked his
way into the front rank of the great lawyers of the country
was due to his characteristic failing. He studied only for the
occasion, as far as his immediate need went. His studies were
never wide and profound. His time was too much occupied by
other things, not only by his political activity, which gradually
grew more and more exacting, but also by pleasure.
He was
fond of company, and in that period of his life not always care-
ful in selecting his comrades; a passion for cards grew upon
him, so much so indeed that he never completely succeeded in
overcoming it: and these tastes robbed him of the hours and of
the temper of mind without which the calm gathering of thought
required for the mastery of a science is not possible. Moreover,
it is not improbable that his remarkable gift of speaking, which
enabled him to make little tell for much and to outshine men
of vastly greater learning, deceived him as to the necessity for
laborious study. The value of this faculty he appreciated well.
He knew that oratory is an art, and in this art he trained
himself with judgment and perseverance. For many years, as a
young man, he made it a rule to read if possible every day in
some historical or scientific book, and then to repeat what he had
read in free, off-hand speech, "sometimes in a cornfield, at others
in the forest, and not unfrequently in a distant barn with the
horse and ox for auditors. " Thus he cultivated that facility and
affluence of phrase, that resonance of language, as well as that
freedom of gesture, which, aided by a voice of rare power and
musical beauty, gave his oratory, even to the days of declining
old age, so peculiar a charm.
Only a year and a half after his arrival at Lexington, in
April 1799, he had achieved a position sufficiently respected and
secure to ask for and to obtain the hand of Lucretia Hart, the
daughter of a man of high character and prominent standing in
the State. She was not a brilliant, but a very estimable woman,
and a most devoted wife to him. She became the mother of
eleven children. His prosperity increased rapidly; so that soon
he was able to purchase Ashland, an estate of some six hundred
## p. 12983 (#413) ##########################################
CARL SCHURZ
12983
acres near Lexington, which afterward became famous as Henry
Clay's home.
Together with the accumulation of worldly goods he laid up a
valuable stock of popularity. Indeed, few men ever possessed in
greater abundance and completeness those qualities which attract
popular regard and affection. A tall stature; not a handsome face,
but a pleasing, winning expression; a voice of which some of his
contemporaries say that it was the finest musical instrument they
ever heard; an eloquence always melodious, and in turn majestic,
fierce, playful, insinuating, irresistibly appealing to all the feel-
ings of human nature, aided by a gesticulation at the same time
natural, vivid, large, and powerful; a certain magnificent grand-
eur of bearing in public action, and an easy familiarity, a never-
failing natural courtesy in private, which even in his intercourse
with the lowliest had nothing of haughty condescension in it; a
noble generous heart, making him always ready to volunteer
his professional services to poor widows and orphans who needed.
aid, to slaves whom he thought entitled to their freedom, to
free negroes who were in danger of being illegally returned to
bondage, and to persons who were persecuted by the powerful
and lawless, in serving whom he sometimes endangered his own
safety; a cheery sympathetic nature withal, of exuberant vitality,
gay, spirited, always ready to enjoy, and always glad to see oth-.
ers enjoy themselves,- his very faults being those of what was
considered good-fellowship in his Kentuckian surroundings; a
superior person, appearing indeed immensely superior at times,
but making his neighbors feel that he was one of them,- such a
man was born to be popular. It has frequently been said that
later in life he cultivated his popularity by clever acting, and
that his universal courtesy became somewhat artificial.
then he acted his own character as it originally was.
It is an
important fact that his popularity at home, among his neighbors,
indeed in the whole State, constantly grew stronger as he grew
older; and that the people of Kentucky clung to him with un-
bounded affection.
If so,
## p. 12984 (#414) ##########################################
12984
CARL SCHURZ
CLAY THE STATESMAN
From the Life of Henry Clay. ' Copyright 1887, by Carl Schurz. Published
by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
BⓇ
UT however incomplete, that record showed how large a place
Henry Clay had filled in the public affairs of the republic
during almost half a century of its existence. His most
potent faculty has left the most imperfect monuments behind
it. He was without question the greatest parliamentary ora-
tor, and one of the greatest popular speakers, America has ever
had. Webster excelled him in breadth of knowledge, in keen-
ness of reasoning, in weight of argument, and in purity of diction.
But Clay possessed in a far higher degree the true oratorical
temperament, that force of nervous exaltation which makes the
orator feel himself, and appear to others, a superior being, and
almost irresistibly transfuses his thoughts, his passions, and his
will into the mind and heart of the listener. Webster would
instruct and convince and elevate, but Clay would overcome his
audience. There could scarcely be a more striking proof of his
power than the immediate effect we know his speeches to have
produced upon those who heard them, compared with the impres-
sion of heavy tameness we receive when merely reading the
printed reports.
In the elements, too, which make a man a leader, Clay was
greatly the superior of Webster, as well as of all other contem-
poraries excepting Andrew Jackson. He had not only in rare
development the faculty of winning the affectionate devotion of
men, but his personality imposed itself without an effort so forci-
bly upon others that they involuntarily looked to him for direc-
tion, waited for his decisive word before making up their minds,
and not seldom yielded their better judgment to his will-power.
While this made him a very strong leader, he was not a
safe guide. The rare brightness of his intellect, and his fertile
fancy, served indeed to make himself and others forget his lack
of accurate knowledge and studious thought; but these brilliant
qualities could not compensate for his deficiency in that prudence
and forecast which are required for the successful direction of
political forces. His impulses were vehement, and his mind not
well fitted for the patient analysis of complicated problems and of
difficult political situations. His imagination frequently ran away
-
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with his understanding. His statesmanship had occasionally some-
thing of the oratorical character. Now and then he appeared to
consider it as important whether a conception or a measure would
sound well, as whether if put into practice it would work well.
He disliked advice which differed from his preconceived opin-
ions; and with his imperious temper and ardent combativeness he
was apt, as in the struggle about the United States Bank, to
put himself, and to hurry his party, into positions of great dis-
advantage. It is a remarkable fact that during his long career
in Congress he was in more or less pronounced opposition to all
administrations, even those of his own party; save that of Jeffer-
son, under which he served only one short session in the Senate,
and that of John Quincy Adams, of which he was a member.
During Madison's first term, Clay helped in defeating the re-
charter of the United States Bank recommended by Gallatin as
Secretary of the Treasury; and he became a firm supporter of
Madison's administration only when, as to the war against Great
Britain, it had yielded to his pressure. No fault can be found
with him for asserting in all important things the freedom of his
opinion; but a less impetuous statesman would have found it pos-
sible to avoid a conflict with Monroe, and to maintain harmonious
relations with General Taylor.
On the other hand, he never sought to organize or strengthen
his following by the arts of the patronage-monger. The thought
that a political party should be held together by the public
plunder, or that the party leader should be something like a
paymaster of a body of henchmen at the public expense, or that
a party contest should be a mere scramble for spoils, was entirely
foreign to his mind, and far below the level of his patriotic aspi-
rations.
It has been said that Clay was surrounded by a crowd of job-
bers and speculators eager to turn his internal-improvement and
tariff policies to their private advantage. No doubt those poli-
cies attracted such persons to him. But there is no reason for
suspecting that he was ever in the slightest degree pecuniarily
interested in any scheme which might have been advanced by his
political position or influence.
In no sense was he a money-
maker in politics. His integrity as a public man remained with-
out blemish throughout his long career. He preserved an equally
intact name in the conduct of his private affairs. In money mat-
ters he was always a man of honor, maintaining the principles
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CARL SCHURZ
and the pride of a gentleman. The financial embarrassments
which troubled his declining days were caused, not by reckless
extravagance nor by questionable speculations, but by the ex-
penses inseparable from high public station and great renown,
and by engagements undertaken for others, especially his sons.
He was a kind husband and an indulgent father. There is ample
evidence of his warm solicitude as to the welfare of his children,
of his constant readiness to assist them with his counsel, and of
his self-sacrificing liberality in providing for their needs and in
aiding them in their troubles.
The desire of so distinguished a political leader to be Presi-
dent was natural and legitimate. Even had he cherished it less
ardently, his followers would have more than once pushed him
forward. But no one can study Clay's career without feeling that
he would have been a happier and a greater man if he had never
coveted the glittering prize. When such an ambition becomes
chronic, it will be but too apt to unsettle the character and
darken the existence of those afflicted with it, by confusing their
appreciation of all else. As Cæsar said that the kind of death
most to be desired was "a sudden one," so the American states-
man may think himself fortunate to whom a nomination for the
Presidency comes, if at all, without a long agony of hope and
fear. During a period of thirty years-from the time when he
first aspired to be Monroe's successor until 1848-Clay unceas
ingly hunted the shadow whose capture would probably have
added nothing either to his usefulness or his fame, but the pur-
suit of which made his public life singularly restless and unsat-
isfactory to himself. Nor did he escape from the suspicion of
having occasionally modified the expression of his opinions accord-
ing to supposed exigencies of availability. The peculiar tone of
his speech against the Abolitionists before the campaign of 1840,
his various letters on the annexation of Texas in 1844, and some
equivocations on other subjects during the same period, illus-
trated the weakening influence of the Presidential candidate upon
the man; and even his oft-quoted word that he would rather
be right than be President" was spoken at a time when he was
more desirous of being President than sure of being right.
But on the whole, save his early change of position on the
subject of the United States Bank, Clay's public career appears
remarkably consistent in its main feature. It was ruled by the
idea that, as the binding together of the States in the Union and
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the formation of a constitutional government had been accom-
plished by the compromising of diverse interests, this Union and
this constitutional government had to be maintained in the same
way; and that every good citizen should consider it his duty,
whenever circumstances required it, to sacrifice something, not
only of his material advantages, but even of his sentiments and
convictions, for the peace and welfare of the common Republic.
Whatever Clay's weaknesses of character and errors in states-
manship may have been, almost everything he said or did was
illumined by a grand conception of the destinies of his country,
a glowing national spirit, a lofty patriotism. Whether he thun-
dered against British tyranny on the seas, or urged the recog-
nition of the South-American sister republics, or attacked the
high-handed conduct of the military chieftain in the Florida war,
or advocated protection and internal improvements, or assailed
the one-man power and spoils politics in the person of Andrew
Jackson, or entreated for compromise and conciliation regarding
the tariff or slavery; whether what he advocated was wise or
unwise, right or wrong, there was always ringing through his
words a fervid plea for his country, a zealous appeal in behalf of
the honor and the future greatness and glory of the republic, or
an anxious warning lest the Union, and with it the greatness and
glory of the American people, be put in jeopardy. It was a just
judgment which he pronounced upon himself when he wrote: “If
any one desires to know the leading and paramount object of my
public life, the preservation of this Union will furnish him the
key. "
――
TWO POPULAR LEADERS
From the Life of Henry Clay. ' Copyright 1887, by Carl Schurz. Published
by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
A
NDREW JACKSON, when he became President, was a man of
sixty-two. A life of much exposure, hardship, and excite-
ment, and also ill-health, had made him appear older than
he was.
His great military achievement lay fifteen years back in
the past, and made him the "old hero. " He was very ignorant.
In his youth he had mastered scarcely the rudiments of educa-
tion; and he did not possess that acquisitive intellectuality which
impels men, with or without preparation, to search for knowl-
edge and to store it up. While he had keen intuitions, he never
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CARL SCHURZ
thoroughly understood the merits of any question of politics or
economics. But his was in the highest degree the instinct of a
superior will, the genius of command. If he had been on board
a vessel in extreme danger, he would have thundered out his
orders without knowing anything of seamanship, and been indig-
nantly surprised if captain and crew had not obeyed him. At
a fire, his voice would have made bystanders as well as firemen
promptly do his will. In war, he was of course made a general;
and without any knowledge of military science he, went out to
meet the enemy, made raw militia fight like veterans, and won
the most brilliant victory in the War of 1812. He was not only
brave himself: his mere presence infused bravery into others.
To his military heroship he owed that popularity which lifted
him into the Presidential chair; and he carried the spirit of the
warrior into the business of the government. His party was to
him his army; those who opposed him, the enemy. He knew not
how to argue, but how to command; not how to deliberate, but
how to act. He had that impulsive energy which always creates
dramatic conflicts, and the power of passion he put into them
made all his conflicts look tremendous. When he had been
defeated in 1825 by the influence of Clay, he made it appear as
if he were battling against all the powers of corruption, which
were threatening the life of the republic. We shall see him
fight Nicholas Biddle, of the United States Bank, as if he had to
defend the American people against the combined money power
of the world seeking to enslave them. In rising up against nul-
lification, and in threatening France with war to make her pay
a debt, we shall see him saving the Union from deadly peril,
and humiliating to the dust the insolence of the Old World.
Thus he appeared like an invincible Hercules, constantly meeting
terrible monsters dangerous to the American people, and slaying
them all with his mighty club.
This fierce energy was his nature. It had a wonderful fas-
cination for the popular fancy, which is fond of strong and bold
acts. He became the idol of a large portion of the people to
a degree never known before or since. Their belief was that
with him defeat was impossible; that all the legions of darkness
could not prevail against him; and that whatever arbitrary pow-
ers he might assume, and whatever way he might use them, it
would always be for the good of the country,- a belief which he
sincerely shared. His ignorance of the science of statesmanship,
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and the rough manner in which he crossed its rules, seemed to
endear him all the more to the great mass of his followers. In-
numerable anecdotes about his homely and robust sayings and
doings were going from mouth to mouth, and with delight the
common man felt that this potent ruler was "one of us. "
This popularity gave him an immense authority over the poli-
ticians of his party. He was a warm friend and a tremendous
foe. By a faithful friend he would stand to the last extremity.
But one who seriously differed from him on any matter that
was near his heart was in great danger of becoming an object of
his wrath. The ordinary patriot is apt to regard the enemies of
his country as his personal enemies. But Andrew Jackson was
always inclined, with entire sincerity, to regard his personal oppo-
nents as the enemies of his country. He honestly believed them
capable of any baseness, and it was his solemn conviction that
such nuisances must be abated by any power available for that
purpose. The statesmen of his party frequently differed from
him on matters of public importance; but they knew that they
had to choose between submission and his disfavor. His friends
would sometimes exercise much influence upon him in starting
his mind in a certain direction; but when once started, that mind
was beyond their control.
He
His personal integrity was above the reach of corruption
always meant to do right; indeed, he was always firmly con-
vinced of being right. His idea of right was not seldom ob-
scured by ignorance and prejudice, and in following it he would
sometimes do the most unjust or dangerous things. But his
friends, and the statesmen of his party, knowing that when he
had made up his mind, especially on a matter that had become
a subject of conflict between him and his "enemies," it was
absolutely useless to reason with him, accustomed themselves to
obeying orders, unless they were prepared to go to the rear or
into opposition. It was therefore not a mere invention of the
enemy, but sober truth, that when Jackson's administration was
attacked, sometimes the only answer left to its defenders, as well
as the all-sufficient one with the Democratic masses, was simply
a "Hurrah for Jackson! "
Henry Clay was, although in retirement, the recognized chief
of the National Republicans. He was then fifty-two years old,
and in the full maturity of his powers. He had never been an
arduous student; but his uncommonly vivacious and receptive
## p. 12990 (#420) ##########################################
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CARL SCHURZ
mind had learned much in the practical school of affairs. He
possessed that magnificent confidence in himself which extorts
confidence from others. He had a full measure of the temper
necessary for leadership, the spirit of initiative, but not always
the discretion that should accompany it. His leadership was not
of that mean order which merely contrives to organize a personal
following: it was the leadership of a statesman devoting himself
to the great interests of his country. Whenever he appeared in
a deliberative assembly, or in councils of his party, he would
as a matter of course take in his hands what important busi-
ness was pending, and determine the policy to be followed. His
friends, and some even among his opponents, were so accustomed
to yield to him that nothing seemed to them concluded without
the mark of his assent; and they involuntarily looked to him for
the decisive word as to what was to be done. Thus he grew
into a habit of dictation, which occasionally displayed itself in
a manner of peremptory command, and intolerance of adverse
opinion, apt to provoke resentment.
It was his eloquence that had first made him famous, and
that throughout his career mainly sustained his leadership. His
speeches were not masterpieces of literary art, nor exhaustive
dissertations. They do not offer to the student any profound
theories of government or expositions of economic science. They
will not be quoted as authorities on disputed points. Neither
were they strings of witty epigrams. They were the impassioned
reasoning of a statesman intensely devoted to his country and to
the cause he thought right. There was no appearance of artifice
in them. They made every listener feel that the man who uttered
them was tremendously in earnest, and that the thoughts he ex-
pressed had not only passed through his brain but also through his
heart. They were the speeches of a great debater; and as may
be said of those of Charles James Fox, cold print could never
do them justice. To be fully appreciated they had to be heard
on the theatre of action, in the hushed Senate chamber, or before
the eagerly upturned faces of assembled multitudes. To feel the
full charm of his lucid explanations, and his winning persuasive-
ness, or the thrill which was flashed through the nerves of his
hearers by the magnificent sunbursts of his enthusiasm, or the
fierce thunder-storms of his anger and scorn, one had to hear that
musical voice cajoling, flattering, inspiring, overawing, terrifying
in turn,-
a voice to the cadences of which it was a physical
## p. 12991 (#421) ##########################################
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12991
delight to listen; one had to see that face, not handsome but
glowing with the fire of inspiration, that lofty mien, that com-
manding stature constantly growing under his words, and the
grand sweep of his gesture, majestic in its dignity, and full of
grace and strength,- the whole man a superior being while he
spoke.
Survivors of his time, who heard him at his best, tell us of
the effects produced by his great appeals in the House of Rep-
resentatives or the Senate, the galleries trembling with excite-
ment, and even the members unable to contain themselves; or
in popular assemblies, the multitudes breathlessly listening, and
then breaking out in unearthly shouts of enthusiasm and delight,
weeping and laughing, and rushing up to him with overwhelming
demonstrations of admiring and affectionate rapture.
Clay's oratory sometimes fairly paralyzed his opponents. A
story is told that Tom Marshall, himself a speaker of uncommon
power, was once selected to answer Clay at a mass meeting; but
that he was observed, while Clay was proceeding, slowly to make
his way back through the listening crowd, apparently anxious to
escape. Some of his friends tried to hold him, saying, "Why,
Mr. Marshall, where are you going? You must reply to Mr.
Clay. You can easily answer all he has said. " "Of course I can
answer every point," said Marshall; "but you must excuse me,
gentlemen,- I cannot go up there and do it just now, after his
speech. "
-
There was a manly, fearless frankness in the avowal of his
opinions, and a knightly spirit in his defense of them, as well as
in his attacks on his opponents. He was indeed, on the political
field, the preux chevalier, marshaling his hosts, sounding his bugle
blasts, and plunging first into the fight; and with proud admira-
tion his followers called him "the gallant Harry of the West. "
No less brilliant and attractive was he in his social intercourse
with men; thoroughly human in his whole being; full of high
spirits; fond of enjoying life and of seeing others happy; gener-
ous and hearty in his sympathies; always courteous, sometimes
studiously and elaborately so, perhaps beyond what the occasion
seemed to call for, but never wounding the most sensitive by any
demonstrative condescension, because there was a truly kind heart
behind his courtesy; possessing a natural charm of conversation
and manner so captivating that neither scholar nor backwoods-
man could withstand its fascination; making friends wherever he
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12992
appeared, and holding them-and surely to no public man did
friends ever cling with more affectionate attachment. It was not
a mere political, it was a sentimental devotion,- a devotion aban-
doning even that criticism which is the duty of friendship, and
forgetting or excusing all his weaknesses and faults, intellectual
and moral,- more than was good for him.
Behind him he had also the powerful support of the industrial
interests of the country, which saw in him their champion; while
the perfect integrity of his character forbade the suspicion that
this championship was serving his private gain.
Such were the leaders of the two parties as they then stood
before the country,- individualities so pronounced and conspicu-
ous, commanders so faithfully sustained by their followers, that
while they were facing each other, the contests of parties ap-
peared almost like a protracted political duel between two men.
It was a struggle of singular dramatic interest.
THE FIRST AMERICAN
From Abraham Lincoln: an Essay. Copyright 1891, by Carl Schurz and
Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
THE
HE hour of triumph called out the characteristic impulses of
his nature. The opposition within the Union party had
stung him to the quick. Now he had his opponents before
him, baffled and humiliated. Not a moment did he lose to
stretch out the hand of friendship to all. "Now that the election
is over," he said in response to a serenade, "may not all, having
a common interest, reunite in a common effort to save our com-
mon country? For my own part, I have striven, and will strive,
to place no obstacle in the way. So long as I have been here I
have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom. While
I am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a re-election,
it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be
pained or disappointed by the result. May I ask those who were
with me to join with me in the same spirit toward those who
were against me? " This was Abraham Lincoln's character as
tested in the furnace of prosperity.
The war was virtually decided, but not yet ended. Sherman
was irresistibly carrying the Union flag through the South.
Grant had his iron hand upon the ramparts of Richmond. The
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CARL SCHURZ
12993
days of the Confederacy were evidently numbered. Only the last
blow remained to be struck. Then Lincoln's second inauguration
came, and with it his second inaugural address. Lincoln's famous.
"Gettysburg speech" has been much and justly admired. But
far greater, as well as far more characteristic, was that inaugural
in which he poured out the whole devotion and tenderness of his
great soul.
It had all the solemnity of a father's last admonition
and blessing to his children before he lay down to die. These
were its closing words:-
"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty
scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it
continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondman's two hun-
dred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every
drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn
with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must
be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous alto-
gether. ' With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness
in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish
the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him
who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan;
to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace
among ourselves and with all nations. »
This was like a sacred poem. No American President had
ever spoken words like these to the American people. America
never had a President who found such words in the depth of his
heart.
To the younger generation, Abraham Lincoln has already be-
come a half-mythical figure, which, in the haze of historic distance,
grows to more and more heroic proportions, but also loses in dis-
tinctness of outline and feature. This is indeed the common lot
of popular heroes; but the Lincoln legend will be more than
ordinarily apt to become fanciful, as his individuality, assembling
seemingly incongruous qualities and forces in a character at the
same time grand and most lovable, was so unique, and his career
so abounding in startling contrasts. As the state of society in
which Abraham Lincoln grew up passes away, the world will
read with increasing wonder of the man who, not only of the
humblest origin, but remaining the simplest and most unpretend-
ing of citizens, was raised to a position of power unprecedented in
our history; who was the gentlest and most peace-loving of mor-
tals, unable to see any creature suffer without a pang in his own
XXII-813
## p. 12994 (#424) ##########################################
12994
CARL SCHURZ
breast, and suddenly found himself called to conduct the greatest
and bloodiest of our wars; who wielded the power of government
when stern resolution and relentless force were the order of the
day, and then won and ruled the popular mind and heart by the
tender sympathies of his nature; who was a cautious conserv
ative by temperament and mental habit, and led the most sudden
and sweeping social revolution of our time; who, preserving his
homely speech and rustic manner even in the most conspicuous
position of that period, drew upon himself the scoffs of polite
society, and then thrilled the soul of mankind with utterances of
wonderful beauty and grandeur; who, in his heart the best friend
of the defeated South, was murdered because a crazy fanatic
took him for its most cruel enemy; who, while in power, was
beyond measure lampooned and maligned by sectional passion
and an excited party spirit, and around whose bier friend and
foe gathered to praise him- which they have since never ceased
to do-as one of the
greatest of Americans and the best of
men.
## p. 12994 (#425) ##########################################
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SIR WALTER SCOTT.
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--
FTEN as it has been my fortune to write about Sir Walter
Scott, I never sit down to do so without a sense of hap-
piness and elation. It is as if one were meeting a dear
friend, or at the least were to talk with other friends about him.
This emotion is so strong, no doubt, because the name and memory
and magic of Sir Walter are entwined with one's earliest recollections
of poetry, and nature, and the rivers and hills of home. Yet the
phrase of a lady, a stranger, in an unpublished letter to Scott, "You
are such a friendly author," contains a truth not limited to Scott's
fellow-countrymen and fellow-Borderers. To read him, to read all
of him almost, to know his works familiarly, is to have a friend, and
as it were, an invisible playmate of the mind. Goethe confessed this
spell; it affected even Carlyle; all Europe knew its charm; Alex-
andre Dumas, the Scott of France, not only felt it but can himself
inspire it, the spell of a great, frank, wise, humorous, and loving
nature, accompanied by a rich and sympathetic imagination, and
equipped with opulence of knowledge. In modern England, few men
have had wider influence than two who in many respects are all un-
like Scott, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Ruskin; yet their writings are full
of admiration for "the Magician who dwelleth in the castle on the
Border. " To-day, some very "modern" people of letters, in no way
remarkable either for knowledge, fancy, or humor, affect to speak of
Scott with disdain. The latest criticism which I chanced to read
talked of his "romances of chivalry," as if they had no connection
with actual "life. " He wrote only about three prose "romances of
chivalry. " It is life itself that throbs in a score, perhaps a hun-
dred, of his characters. Davie Deans, Jeanie Deans, Bessie Mac-
lure, Nantie Ewart, Wandering Willie, Andrew Fairservice, Louis XI. ,
James VI. , Ratcliffe, Madge Wildfire, the Dugald Creature, Callum
Beg, Diana Vernon, Dugald Dalgetty, the fishers of The Antiquary,'
Baillie Nicol Jarvie, Claverhouse, Meg Dods,— these are but a few
of Scott's immortally living characters. From kings to gillies, they
all display life as it has been, and is, and will be lived. Remoteness
and strangeness of time and place and society can never alter nature,
-
SIR WALTER SCOTT
(1771-1832)
BY ANDREW LANG
## p. 12996 (#430) ##########################################
12996
SIR WALTER SCOTT
nor hide from minds not prejudiced and dwarfed by restricted facul-
ties and slovenly sham education, the creative greatness of Scott.
His life has been told by the first biographer in British literature
save Boswell. It has been my lot to read most of the manuscript
materials used by Scott's son-in-law and biographer, Lockhart; and
the perusal only increases one's esteem for his work. Lockhart's tact
in selection was infallible. But his book is a long book; and parts of
it which interest a Scot do not strongly appeal to the interest of an
Englishman or an American not of Scottish descent. Nevertheless
Lockhart's 'Biography' is in itself a delightful, if not indispensable,
accompaniment of Sir Walter's works. No biographer had ever less
to conceal a study of the letters and other unpublished documents
makes this certain. The one blot on Sir Walter's scutcheon his
dabbling in trade -was matter of public knowledge during his own
lifetime. Occasional defects of temper, such as beset the noblest
natures, Lockhart did not hide; for which he was foolishly blamed.
Speaking from the most intimate knowledge now attainable, one may
confidently say that Lockhart's Scott is the real man, "as known to
his Maker. "
There is no room here for even a sketch of a life already familiar
in outline. Persons so unfortunate as «< not to have time" to read
Lockhart, will find all that is necessary in Mr. R. H. Hutton's sketch
(English Men of Letters' series), or in Mr. Saintsbury's 'Sir Walter
Scott (Famous Scots' series). The poet and novelist was descended
from the Border house of Harden: on the spindle side he had the
blood of Campbells, Macdonalls, Haliburtons, and Rutherfords in his
veins. All of these are families of extreme antiquity,- the Macdon-
alls having been almost regal in Galloway and Argyle. Scott's father
(born 1729) was a Writer to the Signet, the Saunders Fairford of
'Redgauntlet. '
The poet and novelist was born on August 15th, 1771, and died in
1832. The details of his infancy, his lameness, his genius in child-
hood, his studious and adventurous boyhood, his incomplete education.
(like St. Augustine he would not learn Greek), his adoption of the
profession of advocate, may be found in every 'Life. ' "The first to
begin a row and the last to end it," Scott knew intimately all ranks
of society before he had published a line. Duchesses, gipsies, thieves,
Highlanders, Lowlanders, students, judges, attorneys' clerks, actors,
gamekeepers, farmers, tramps, - he was at home with all of them,
while he had read everything in literature that most people do not
know. It was his fortune to be a poet while England yet had two
kings: George III. de facto, Charles III. and Henry IX. de jure. Hope-
less as the Jacobite cause now was, the sentiment lingered; and Scott
knew intimately the man who sent the Fiery Cross through Appin in
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SIR WALTER SCOTT
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1745,- Invernahyle. A portrait of Prince Charles was one of his ear-
liest purchases. He had seen Burns, who wrote the last 'Birthday
Ode' for a royal Stuart. Yet his youth was contemporary with the
French Revolution, which only made him more of a Tory. His
infancy dwelt with sad excitement on our disasters in the Ameri-
can War of Independence. Thus he lived in the Medea's-caldron of
history, with a head and heart full of the knowledge and love of the
past,-in poetry, ballad, legend, charter, custom. From all this rich
experience of men and women, of the European "Twilight of the
Gods," of clashing societies and politics, of war and literature, came
the peculiar and original ply of his genius.
This was ripened probably by a love affair which ended when he
was twenty-five (1796); ended as far as hope was concerned, other-
wise it closed only with his earthly life, if then. If aught of man's
personality persists after death, then what has so deeply colored and
become one with the self as a love like Scott's, never dies. You
find its traces in his novels, and poems, and Journal: it even peeps
out in his review of Miss Austen's novels. From living tradition –
on the authority of a lady who, having seen her once, loved her to
her own death in extreme age- we are able to say that Scott's lost
love was "an angel rather than a woman. ”
―
To please her he began to aim at success in letters, starting
with a translation of Bürger's romantic ballad, 'Lenore. ' But it was
in vain. Scott bore his loss like a man. The result was not ele-
giac poetry, but, as Mr. Saintsbury justly remarks, the conquest of
"the violence of Scott's most irritable and ungovernable mind," so
described by an early and intimate friend.
To understand Scott, all this must be kept in memory. People
complain of his want of "passion. " Of passion in its purest and
strongest phase no man had known more. But if his passion was
potent, more potent was his character. He does not deal in embraces,
and such descriptions of physical charms and raptures as fill the lines
of Burns and Carew, and Paulus Silentiarius. "I may not, must not
sing of love," says his minstrel; but whoever has read 'Rob Roy,'
and lost his heart to Diana Vernon, ought to understand. "The rest,
they may live and learn. " Scott, in Carlyle's phrase, "consumed his
own smoke"; which Carlyle never did.
Next year (1797) Scott married the lady-Miss Carpenter or Char-
pentier to whom he was the fondest and most faithful of husbands.
Hogg calls her "a perfect beauty"; small, dark, and piquante, and " a
sweet, kind, affectionate creature. " Mrs. Scott had humor and high
spirits, as one or two of her letters show; she made no kind of liter-
ary pretensions; and a certain fretfulness in her latest years may be
attributed to the effects of a lingering and fatal illness. Scott and
she were very happy together.
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SIR WALTER SCOTT
The details of his professional career at the bar may be omitted.
He was an unsuccessful pleader, but got the remunerative office of
"sheriff of the forest" of Ettrick. He roamed in Galloway, Liddes-
dale, and the Highlands; he met "Monk" Lewis, and began some
ballads for a collection of his. Already, in The Eve of St. John,'
we see the qualities of Scott- and the defects. In 1802 appeared his
'Border Minstrelsy,' printed at Kelm by his school friend, James
Ballantyne. This was the beginning of a fatal connection. Scott be-
came secretly a printer and publisher. Though he owns, and justly,
to "a thread of the attorney » his nature, he had neither the leis-
ure nor the balance for a man of business. He became entangled
in the system of fictitious credit; he never shook off its meshes; and
when a commercial crash came in 1825-26, he was financially ruined.
The poet in him had been acquiring treasures of things old, books
and curios; he had built for these Abbotsford, an expensive villa on
a bad site, but near Tweed; he had purchased land, at exorbitant
rates, mainly for antiquarian and poetical reasons of association, partly
from the old Scottish territorial sentiment; he had kept open house,
and given money with royal munificence; a portion of his gains was
fairy gold, mere paper. So Sir Walter was ruined; and he killed
himself, and broke his brain, in the effort to pay his creditors. He
succeeded, but did not live to see his success. That, in the briefest
form, and omitting his politics (which were chivalrous), is the story
of a long life, strenuous almost beyond literary example, and happy
as men may look for happiness. Of his sons and daughters only one
left offspring,-Sophia, wife of John Gibson Lockhart. Of their child-
ren, again, only one, the wife of Mr. Hope, later Hope-Scott, left
issue,― Mr. Maxwell Scott, from whom descend a flourishing family.
Of Scott's poems it must be said that he is, first of all and above
all, a teller of tales in rhyme. Since Spenser, perhaps, no one had
been able to interest the world in a rhymed romaunt. Byron, fol-
lowing Scott, outdid him for the hour in popularity; our own age has
seen Tennyson's Idylls and Mr. William Morris. Thus rare is success
in the ancient art of romance in verse. The genre is scarcely com-
patible (except in Homer's hands) with deep reflection, or with highly
finished language. At Alexandria, in the third century before our
era, poets and critics were already disputing as to whether long
narrative poems were any longer possible; and on the whole they
preferred, like Lord Tennyson, brief ❝idylls" on epic themes.
Sir Walter, of course, chose not epic but romance; he follows the
mediæval romanticists in verse, adding popular ballad qualities after
the example, in method and versification, of Coleridge's Christabel. '
The result was a new form; often imitated, but never successfully.
How welcome it was to an age wearied with the convention of the
Popeian heroic couplet, in incompetent hands, need not be said. In
-
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our age Scott's narrative verse mainly appeals (as he said himself
that he appealed) to young people. Older lovers of poetry want
subtler style and deeper thought.
"Though wild as cloud, as stream, as gale,
Flow forth, flow unrestrained, my Tale,»
said the poet. He judged himself, on the negative side, with perfect
accuracy. Nobody knew his own defects better. "Our father says
that nothing is so bad for young people as reading bad poetry," says
his daughter; and he did not wish his children to read his 'Lays'
and 'Ladys. ' Yet he knew by an amiable inconsistency that his
appeal was to young people.
In responding to that appeal, the present writer is, and hopes to
remain, young. The nine-and-twenty knights of fame who stabled
their steeds in Branxholme Hall charm him as much as they did
when his years were six. The Ride of William of Deloraine remains
the best of riding ballads. The Goblin Page abideth terrible and
grotesque. And it is so with the rest. We cannot force our tastes
on others. If any man's blood is not stirred by the last stand of the
spears of Scotland at Flodden, when
«The stubborn spearmen still made good
Their dark impenetrable wood,
Each stepping where his comrade stood
The instant that he fell,»
in that man's blood there can be very little iron. It is not that one
would always be reading poetry of war. But war too has its poetry,
and here it is chanted as never before nor since. Scott's "scenery »
now wearies many readers; but in the early century it was novel;
and was usually seen at the speed of The Chase, or of the hurrying
of the Fiery Cross, in the 'Lady of the Lake. ' How often, looking
at the ruined shells of feudal castles of the west,- Ardtornish, Dun-
staffnage, and the others, - one has thought of his verse on these
fortresses,-
"Each on its own dark cape reclined,
And listening to its own wild wind. "
The task of reviving Celtic romance was left to a Lowland Scot,
with very little of Celtic blood in his veins. In 'Rokeby' my own
taste prefers the lyrics, as "Oh, Brignall banks are wild and fair,”
and "A weary lot is thine, fair maid," and "When the dawn on the
mountain was misty and gray. " The Lord of the Isles' is compara-
tively confused and feeble.
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Apart from—and I think, above - Scott's success in rhymed nar-
rative, his lyrics hold their place. I heard lately of a very "modern"
lady, who, for a collection of exquisite lyrics, could find nothing in
Scott worth gathering and binding. This it is to be cultivated be-
yond one's intellect! Mr. Palgrave, in 'The Golden Treasury,' and
Mr. Swinburne, have not been of the fair critic's opinion. I have
myself edited a collection of all Scott's lyrics. They vary much in
merit: but for the essence of all romance, and pitiful contrast of youth
and pride and death, 'Proud Maisie' is noted; for fire, speed, and
loyalty, 'A Health to King Charles,' 'Bonnie Dundee,' 'Young Loch-
invar,' Flora MacIvor's Clan Roll-Call; for restrained melancholy,
'The Sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill'; for all qualities of the old ballad,
"The Red Harlaw. ' The great objections to Scott's narrative poems
are, in a hurried age, their length and their diffuseness. In his lyr-
ics he has all his good qualities without the defects. Among defects
one would not include want of meditativeness, of the "subjective,"
of the magically selected word, because these great merits are not
included in his aim. About himself, his passions and emotions (the
material of most lyrics and elegiacs), he was not going to speak.
Of Scott's novels it is nearly as impossible to write here, in space
so brief, as of Shakespeare's plays. Let us take first their defects,
to which the author himself pleads guilty. The shortest way to an
understanding of Scott's self-criticism is the reading of his Introduc-
tions to The Abbot' and 'Nigel. ' He admits his deficiency in plot
and construction,- things of charpentage, within the reach of ordinary
talent, but often oddly disregarded by genius; witness Shakespeare
and Molière. Scott's conclusions, he owns, are "huddled up"; he
probably borrowed the word from his friend, Lady Louisa Stuart.
"Yet I have not been fool enough to neglect ordinary precautions. I
have repeatedly laid down my work to scale, dividing it into volumes.
and chapters, and endeavored to construct a story which I meant
should evolve itself gradually and strikingly, maintain suspense, and
stimulate curiosity, and which finally should terminate in a striking
catastrophe. " But he could not do it. He met Dugald Dalgetty, or
Baillie Jarvie, who led him away from his purpose. If he resisted
temptation, he "wrote painfully to himself, and under a consciousness
of flagging which made him flag still more. . . In short, sir, on
such occasions I think I am bewitched. " So he followed his genius,
which was not architectonic. He contented himself with writing
"with sense and spirit a few unlabored and loosely put together
scenes, but which had sufficient interest in them to amuse. "
As for his style, he tells Lockhart that he "never learned gram-
mar. " His manner is often not only incorrect, but trailingly diffuse;
he was apt to pack a crowd of details and explanations, about which
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