But we who admire,
and take lifelong pleasure in, Sir Walter, "have great allies," — the
greatest of critical names; we need not fear to speak with the adver-
sary in the gate.
and take lifelong pleasure in, Sir Walter, "have great allies," — the
greatest of critical names; we need not fear to speak with the adver-
sary in the gate.
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12994 (#426) ##########################################
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## p. 12994 (#427) ##########################################
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## p. 12995 (#429) ##########################################
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phrase of a lady, a stranger, in an unpublished letter to Scott, "You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. 13001 (#435) ##########################################
SIR WALTER SCOTT
13001
he did not care, into a sentence which began anywhere and died out
anyhow. This was arrant carelessness. But it was usually accom-
panied by simplicity and spontaneity; if it does not charm us by
cadence, it never irritates us by self-consciousness and futile research.
Such are Scott's palpable defects: and he had of course the "old-
fashionedness" of his generation,—not a graceful or magnificent sort
of old fashion. For his heroes, and many of his heroines, he enter-
tained a complete contempt, - especially for Waverley. They are
only ordinary young people: brave, strong, not clever, honorable, a
good deal puzzled by the historical crises in which they find them-
selves. They are often neither Whig nor Tory, neither Covenanter
nor Cavalier, with any energy. The story moves on round them; the
characters come and go,- they are not the real interest. Rose Brad-
wardine is a good, affectionate, ignorant, confiding, pretty girl; per-
fectly true to nature, but no Rosalind nor Beatrice. Di Vernon, and
Catherine Seton, and Rebecca- especially Miss Vernon are among
the few heroines whom we can remember and adore. Then it must
be conceded that Scott does not deal in moral or social "problems. "
His characters, not unlike most of us, know what is the right thing
to do, and do it or leave it alone. Ivanhoe vastly preferred Rebecca
to Rowena. An author might give us chapters on his moral and
psychological difficulties, and they might be excellent chapters. But
Ivanhoe merely conquers his passion practically; and as to the secret
of his heart, only a word is dropped. Scott never lingers over inter-
minable tragedies of the emotions. Most of us can supply what is
lacking for ourselves in that respect.
-
It will be seen that Scott's novels have the obvious blemishes of
which many readers are most intolerant, and lack the qualities (“pas-
sion," and "subtlety," and "style") of which people literary do now
most delight to be talking. We can love Scott with Goethe, Dumas,
Thackeray, Mr. Ruskin,- or we can carp at him with Mr. George
Moore. It is a matter of taste, which is in great part a matter of
character, training, association, and education.
But we who admire,
and take lifelong pleasure in, Sir Walter, "have great allies," — the
greatest of critical names; we need not fear to speak with the adver-
sary in the gate. We admit the absence of some excellent qualities:
we admit the presence of diffuseness, and of what, to exclusive
readers of recent novels, is tediousness. Moreover, if like Huckle-
berry Finn
you have
no use for dead people," and hate history,
of course you cannot be pleased with any historical novels. Gentle
King Jamie, Queen Mary, Richard of the Lion Heart, Bonnie Prince
Charlie, Cavaliers and Covenanters, knights and archers, speak a
language which you cannot understand, about matters which do not
concern you, thrall as you are to your little day of ideas and vogue.
«
-
## p. 13002 (#436) ##########################################
13002
SIR WALTER SCOTT
But Sir Walter, "for a' that," has qualities which delighted all
Europe, and which still delight people who love the past, and love
humor, adventure, the spectacle of life. These people are not few;
for they must be the purchasers of the endless new editions, cheap
or dear, of the Waverley Novels. Sir Walter can tell a story, and he
can create men and women- not to mention horses and dogs- of
endless varieties, and in every rank. Moreover he can create places:
Tully Veolan and many others are, as Mr. Saintsbury says, “our own
our own to pass freely through until the end of time. "
Scott is old now: in his time, as poet and as romancer, he was
absolutely new. The poems did not proceed obviously, and by way
of manifest gradual evolution, from anything familiar to most men.
The old French rhymed romances, Barbour's 'Bruce,' the ancient
ballads, and 'Christabel,' all went to their begetting; but in them-
selves they were new. New also was the historical novel, based on
vast knowledge, and informed with such life as Shakespeare poured
into 'Henry IV. ' or 'Julius Cæsar. ' Scott created the genre: without
him there had been no ‘Esmond,' no 'Master of Ballantrae,' no ‹Mous-
quetaires. ' Alexandre Dumas, as historical novelist, is the greatest of
Scott's works.
There is here no space for detailed criticism of the novels. A
man might do worse than read Waverley,' the earliest, and then
'Redgauntlet,' the most autobiographical, in succession. Here is the
romance of the fallen dynasty, of the kings landless, whose tomb the
dying Scott visited in Rome. Had I to choose my private favorite,
it would be 'Old Mortality'; which might be followed (as 'Waverley'
by 'Redgauntlet") by the decline of the Cameronians in 'The Heart
of Mid-Lothian. ' For chivalry 'Ivanhoe' is pre-eminent; with 'Quentin
Durward' for adventure and construction. And after these a man
cannot go wrong; though Count Robert of Paris,' 'Peveril,' 'Castle
Dangerous, and (in Scott's opinion) 'Anne of Geierstein,' are sad-
dening, and "smack of the apoplexy. " The Pirate' and 'The Mon-
astery' are certainly not novels to begin with, nor is 'St. Ronan's
Well. '
Of his historical works, 'The Tales of a Grandfather' can never
be superseded; the 'Napoleon,' though readable, is superseded, and
was ungrateful taskwork. The essays are a great treasure of enjoy-
ment; the 'Swift' is an excellent and wise biography. The 'Journal'
is the picture of the man,- so much greater, better, kinder, and
more friendly than even the author. "Be a good man, my dear,"
was his last word to Lockhart: it is the unobtrusive moral of all that
he wrote and was.
A Lany
## p. 13003 (#437) ##########################################
SIR WALTER SCOTT
13003
CHEAPENING FISH; AND THE VILLAGE POST-OFFICE
From The Antiquary›
MR
R. OLDBUCK led the way to the sands. Upon the links or
downs close to them were seen four or five huts inhabited
by fishers; whose boats, drawn high upon the beach, lent
the odoriferous vapors of pitch melting under a burning sun,
to contend with those of the offals of fish and other nuisances
usually collected round Scottish cottages. Undisturbed by these
complicated steams of abomination, a middle-aged woman, with
a face which had defied a thousand storms, sat mending a net
at the door of one of the cottages. A handkerchief close bound
about her head, and a coat which had formerly been that of a
man, gave her a masculine air, which was increased by her
strength, uncommon stature, and harsh voice.
"What are ye
for the day, your Honor? " she said, or rather screamed, to Old-
buck: "caller haddocks and whitings, a bannock-fluke and a cock-
padle. "
"How much for the bannock-fluke and cock-padle? " demanded
the Antiquary.
"Four white shillings and saxpence," answered the Naiad.
"Four devils and six of their imps! " retorted the Antiquary:
"do you think I am mad, Maggie? "
"And div ye think," rejoined the virago, setting her arms
akimbo, "that my man and my sons are to gae to the sea in
weather like yestreen and the day-sic a sea as it's yet outby-
and get naething for their fish, and be misca'd into the bargain,
Monkbarns? It's no fish ye're buying-it's men's lives. "
"Well, Maggie, I'll bid you fair: I'll bid you a shilling for
the fluke and the cock-padle, or sixpence separately; and if all
your fish are as well paid, I think your man, as you call him,
and your sons, will make a good voyage. '
>>>
"Deil gin their boat were knockit against the Bell-Rock rather!
it wad be better, and the bonnier voyage o' the twa. A shilling
for thae twa bonnie fish! Od, that's ane indeed! "
"Well, well, you old beldam, carry your fish up to Monkbarns,
and see what my sister will give you for them. ”
"Na, na, Monkbarns, deil a fit,- I'll rather deal wi' yoursell;
for though you're near enough, yet Miss Grizel has an unco close
grip. I'll gie ye them" (in a softened tone) "for three-and-
saxpence.
>>
## p. 13004 (#438) ##########################################
SIR WALTER SCOTT
13004
"Eighteenpence, or nothing! "
Eighteenpence! ! ! " (in a loud tone of astonishment, which
declined into a sort of rueful whine, when the dealer turned as
if to walk away) - "Ye'll no be for the fish then? "-then louder,
as she saw him moving off - "I'll gie ye them-and-and-and
a half a dozen o' partans to make the sauce, for three shillings
and a dram. "
((
"Half a crown then, Maggie, and a dram. "
"Aweel, your Honor maun hae't your ain gate, nae doubt; but
a dram's worth siller now-the distilleries is no working. "
“And I hope they'll never work again in my time," said Old-
buck.
"Ay, ayit's easy for your Honor and the like o' you gentle-
folks to say sae, that hae stouth and routh, and fire and fending,
and meat and claith, and sit dry and canny by the fireside; but
an ye wanted fire and meat, and dry claes, and were deeing o'
cauld, and had a sair heart,—whilk is warst ava,—wi' just tip-
pence in your pouch, wadna ye be glad to buy a dram wi't, to be
eilding and claes, and a supper and heart's-ease into the bargain,
till the morn's morning? "
"It's even too true an apology, Maggie. Is your goodman off
to sea this morning after his exertions last night? ”
"In troth is he, Monkbarns; he was awa this morning by
four o'clock, when the sea was working like barm wi' yestreen's
wind, and our bit coble dancing in 't like a cork. "
«< Well, he's an industrious fellow. Carry the fish up to Monk-
barns. "
"That I will-or I'll send little Jenny: she'll rin faster; -
but I'll ca' on Miss Grizzy for the dram mysell, and say ye sent
me. "
A nondescript animal, which might have passed for a mer-
maid as it was paddling in a pool among the rocks, was sum-
moned ashore by the shrill screams of its dam; and having been
made decent, as her mother called it, which was performed
by adding a short red cloak to a petticoat, which was at first her
sole covering, and which reached scantily below her knee, the
child was dismissed with the fish in a basket, and a request on
the part of Monkbarns that they might be prepared for din-
ner. "It would have been long," said Oldbuck, with much self-
complacency, ere my womankind could have made such a rea-
sonable bargain with that old skinflint; though they sometimes
((
――――――
## p. 13005 (#439) ##########################################
SIR WALTER SCOTT
13005
wrangle with her for an hour together under my study window,
like three sea-gulls screaming and sputtering in a gale of wind.
But come: wend we on our way to Knockwinnock. "
Leaving Mr. Oldbuck and his friend to enjoy their hard bar-
gain of fish, we beg leave to transport the reader to the back
parlor of the postmaster's house at Fairport; where his wife, he
himself being absent, was employed in assorting for delivery the
letters which had come by the Edinburgh post. This is very
often in country towns the period of the day when gossips find
it particularly agreeable to call on the man or woman of letters;
in order, from the outside of the epistles, and if they are not
belied, occasionally from the inside also,-to amuse themselves
with gleaning information or forming conjectures about the cor-
respondence and affairs of their neighbors. Two females of this
description were, at the time we mention, assisting—or imped-
ing - Mrs. Mailsetter in her official duty.
"Eh, preserve us, sirs! " said the butcher's wife, "there's ten
eleven twall letters to Tennant & Co. Thae folk do mair
business than a' the rest o' the burgh. "
"Ay; but see, lass," answered the baker's lady, there's twa
o' them faulded unco square, and sealed at the tae side,—I doubt
there will be protested bills in them. "
"Is there ony letters come yet for Jenny Caxon? " inquired
the woman of joints and giblets: "the lieutenant's been awa
three weeks. "
"Just ane on Tuesday was a week," answered the dame of
letters.
"Was 't a ship letter? " asked the Fornerina.
"In troth was 't. "
――――――
―――――――――――
"It wad be frae the lieutenant then," replied the mistress of
the rolls, somewhat disappointed: "I never thought he wad hae
lookit ower his shouther after her. "
"Od, here's another," quoth Mrs. Mailsetter. "A ship letter-
postmark, Sunderland. " All rushed to seize it. "Na, na, led-
dies," said Mrs. Mailsetter, interfering: "I hae had eneugh o'
that wark,-ken ye that Mr. Mailsetter got an unco rebuke frae
the secretary at Edinburgh, for a complaint that was made about
the letter of Aily Bisset's that ye opened, Mrs. Shortcake ? »
"Me opened! " answered the spouse of the chief baker of
Fairport: "ye ken yoursell, madam, it just cam open o' free will
## p. 13006 (#440) ##########################################
13006
SIR WALTER SCOTT
in my hand.
wax. "
What could I help it? -folk suld seal wi' better
"Weel I wot that's true, too," said Mrs. Mailsetter, who kept
a shop of small wares; "and we have got some that I can hon-
estly recommend, if ye ken onybody wanting it. But the short
and the lang o't is, that we'll lose the place gin there's ony mair
complaints o' the kind. "
"Hout, lass, the provost will take care o' that. "
"Na, na, I'll neither trust to provost nor bailie," said the
postmistress; "but I wad aye be obliging and neighborly, and
I'm no again' your looking at the outside of a letter neither:
see, the seal has an anchor on 't,- he's done 't wi' ane o' his but-
tons, I'm thinking. "
―
"Show me! show me! " quoth the wives of the chief butcher
and the chief baker; and threw themselves on the supposed
love-letter, like the weird sisters in 'Macbeth' upon the pilot's
thumb, with curiosity as eager and scarcely less malignant. Mrs.
Heukbane was a tall woman: she held the precious epistle up
between her eyes and the window. Mrs. Shortcake, a little squat
personage, strained and stood on tiptoe to have her share of the
investigation.
"Ay, it's frae him, sure eneugh," said the butcher's lady: "I
can read Richard Taffril on the corner, and it's written, like John
Thomson's wallet, frae end to end. "
"Haud it lower down, madam," exclaimed Mrs. Shortcake,
in a tone above the prudential whisper which their occupation
required; "haud it lower down. Div ye think naebody can read
hand o' writ but yoursell? "
"Whist, whist, sirs, for God's sake! " said Mrs. Mailsetter:
"there's somebody in the shop; "-then aloud, "Look to the
customers, Baby! " Baby answered from without in a shrill tone,
"It's naebody but Jenny Caxon, ma'am, to see if there's ony
letters to her. "
"Tell her," said the faithful postmistress, winking to her com-
peers, "to come back the morn at ten o'clock, and I'll let her
ken,- we havena had time to sort the mail letters yet; she's aye
in sic a hurry, as if her letters were o' mair consequence than
the best merchant's o' the town. "
Poor Jenny, a girl of uncommon beauty and modesty, could
only draw her cloak about her to hide the sigh of disappointment,
## p. 13007 (#441) ##########################################
SIR WALTER SCOTT
13007
and return meekly home to endure for another night the sick-
ness of the heart occasioned by hope delayed.
"There's something about a needle and a pole," said Mrs.
Shortcake, to whom her taller rival in gossiping had at length
yielded a peep at the subject of their curiosity.
"Now, that's downright shamefu'," said Mrs. Heukbane: "to
scorn the poor silly gait of a lassie after he's keepit company.
wi' her sae lang, and had his will o' her, as I make nae doubt he
has. "
"It's but ower muckle to be doubted," echoed Mrs. Shortcake:
"to cast up to her that her father's a barber and has a pole at
his door, and that she's but a manty-maker hersell! Hout! fy
for shame! "
"Hout tout, leddies," cried Mrs. Mailsetter, "ye're clean
wrang: it's a line out o' ane o' his sailors' sangs that I have
heard him sing, about being true like the needle to the pole.
>>
"Weel, weel, I wish it may be sae," said the charitable Dame
Heukbane; "but it disna look weel for a lassie like her to keep
up a correspondence wi' ane o' the king's officers. "
"I'm no denying that," said Mrs. Mailsetter; "but it's a great
advantage to the revenue of the post-office, thae love-letters. See,
here's five or six letters to Sir Arthur Wardour maist o' them
sealed wi' wafers, and no wi' wax. There will be a downcome
there, believe me. "
"Ay; they will be business letters, and no frae ony o' his
grand friends, that seals wi' their coats-of-arms, as they ca'
them," said Mrs. Heukbane: "pride will hae a fa'; he hasna
settled his account wi' my gudeman, the deacon, for this twal-
month, he's but slink, I doubt. "
―
"Nor wi' huz for sax months," echoed Mrs Shortcake: "he's
but a brunt crust. >>
"There's a letter," interrupted the trusty postmistress, "from
his son the captain, I'm thinking,- the seal has the same things.
wi' the Knockwinnock carriage. He'll be coming hame to see
what he can save out o' the fire. "
The baronet thus dismissed, they took up the esquire. "Twa
letters for Monkbarns; - they're frae some o' his learned friends.
now: see sae close as they're written, down to the very seal,-
and a' to save sending a double letter; that's just like Monk-
barns himsell. When he gets a frank he fills it up exact to the
weight of an unce, that a carvy-seed would sink the scale; but
## p. 13008 (#442) ##########################################
13008
SIR WALTER SCOTT
he's ne'er a grain abune it. Weel I wot I wad be broken if I
were to gie sic weight to the folk that come to buy our pepper
and brimstone, and such-like sweetmeats. "
"He's a shabby body, the laird o' Monkbarns," said Mrs.
Heukbane; "he'll make as muckle about buying a forequarter o'
lamb in August as about a back sey o' beef. Let's taste another
drop of the sinning" (perhaps she meant cinnamon) "waters,
Mrs. Mailsetter, my dear. Ah, lasses! an ye had kend his brother
as I did: mony a time he wad slip in to see me wi' a brace o'
wild deukes in his pouch, when my first gudeman was awa at
the Falkirk tryst; weel, weel-we'se no speak o' that e'enow. "
"I winna say ony ill o' this Monkbarns," said Mrs. Shortcake:
"his brother ne'er brought me ony wild deukes, and this is a
douce honest man; we serve the family wi' bread, and he settles
wi' huz ilka week,-only he was in an unco kippage when we
sent him a book instead o' the nick-sticks, whilk, he said, were
the true ancient way o' counting between tradesmen and cus-
tomers; and sae they are, nae doubt. "
"But look here, lasses," interrupted Mailsetter, "here's a sight
for sair e'en! What wad ye gie to ken what's in the inside o'
this letter? This is new corn,- I haena seen the like o' this:
For William Lovel, Esquire, at Mrs. Hadoway's, High Street,
Fairport, by Edinburgh, N. B. This is just the second letter he
has had since he was here. "
-
"Lord's sake, let's see, lass! Lord's sake, let's see! - That's
him that the hale town kens naething about—and a weel-fa'ard
lad he is: let's see, let's see! " Thus ejaculated the two worthy
representatives of Mother Eve.
"Na, na, sirs," exclaimed Mrs. Mailsetter: "haud awa-bide
aff, I tell you; this is nane o' your fourpenny cuts that we might
make up the value to the post-office amang ourselves if ony
mischance befell it; the postage is five-and-twenty shillings — and
here's an order frae the Secretary to forward it to the young
gentleman by express, if he's no at hame. Na, na, sirs, bide aff:
this maunna be roughly guided. "
"But just let's look at the outside o't, woman. "
Nothing could be gathered from the outside, except remarks
on the various properties which philosophers ascribe to matter,
-length, breadth, depth, and weight. The packet was composed
of strong thick paper, imperviable by the curious eyes of the
gossips, though they stared as if they would burst from their
## p. 13009 (#443) ##########################################
SIR WALTER SCOTT
13009
sockets. The seal was a deep and well-cut impression of arms,
which defied all tampering.
"'Od, lass," said Mrs. Shortcake, weighing it in her hand, and
wishing doubtless that the too, too solid wax would melt and
dissolve itself, "I wad like to ken what's in the inside o' this;
for that Lovel dings a' that ever set foot on the plainstanes o'
Fairport,-naebody kens what to make o' him. "
"Weel, weel, leddies," said the postmistress, "we'se sit down
and crack about,- Baby, bring ben the tea-water; muckle obliged
to ye for your cookies, Mrs. Shortcake,- and we'll steek the
shop, and cry ben Baby, and take a hand at the cartes till the
gudeman comes hame; and then we'll try your braw veal sweet-
bread that ye were so kind as send me, Mrs. Heukbane. "
"But winna ye first send awa Mr. Lovel's letter? " said Mrs.
Heukbane.
"Troth I kenna wha to send wi't till the gudeman comes
hame, for auld Caxon tell'd me that Mr. Lovel stays a' the day
at Monkbarns; - he's in a high fever wi' pu'ing the laird and Sir
Arthur out o' sea. "
«< Silly auld doited carles! " said Mrs. Shortcake: "what gar'd
them gang to the douking in a night like yestreen? "
"I was gi'en to understand it was auld Edie that saved them,"
said Mrs. Heukbane,-"Edie Ochiltree, the Blue-Gown, ye ken;
and that he pu'd the hale three out of the auld fish-pound, for
Monkbarns had threepit on them ta gang in till 't to see the wark
o' the monks lang syne. "
"Hout, lass, nonsense! " answered the postmistress: "I'll tell
ye a' about it, as Caxon tell'd it to me. Ye see, Sir Arthur and
Miss Wardour, and Mr. Lovel, suld hae dined at Monkbarns-"
"But, Mrs. Mailsetter," again interrupted Mrs. Heukbane,
"will ye no be for sending awa this letter by express ?
n
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
## 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. 13001 (#435) ##########################################
SIR WALTER SCOTT
13001
he did not care, into a sentence which began anywhere and died out
anyhow. This was arrant carelessness. But it was usually accom-
panied by simplicity and spontaneity; if it does not charm us by
cadence, it never irritates us by self-consciousness and futile research.
Such are Scott's palpable defects: and he had of course the "old-
fashionedness" of his generation,—not a graceful or magnificent sort
of old fashion. For his heroes, and many of his heroines, he enter-
tained a complete contempt, - especially for Waverley. They are
only ordinary young people: brave, strong, not clever, honorable, a
good deal puzzled by the historical crises in which they find them-
selves. They are often neither Whig nor Tory, neither Covenanter
nor Cavalier, with any energy. The story moves on round them; the
characters come and go,- they are not the real interest. Rose Brad-
wardine is a good, affectionate, ignorant, confiding, pretty girl; per-
fectly true to nature, but no Rosalind nor Beatrice. Di Vernon, and
Catherine Seton, and Rebecca- especially Miss Vernon are among
the few heroines whom we can remember and adore. Then it must
be conceded that Scott does not deal in moral or social "problems. "
His characters, not unlike most of us, know what is the right thing
to do, and do it or leave it alone. Ivanhoe vastly preferred Rebecca
to Rowena. An author might give us chapters on his moral and
psychological difficulties, and they might be excellent chapters. But
Ivanhoe merely conquers his passion practically; and as to the secret
of his heart, only a word is dropped. Scott never lingers over inter-
minable tragedies of the emotions. Most of us can supply what is
lacking for ourselves in that respect.
-
It will be seen that Scott's novels have the obvious blemishes of
which many readers are most intolerant, and lack the qualities (“pas-
sion," and "subtlety," and "style") of which people literary do now
most delight to be talking. We can love Scott with Goethe, Dumas,
Thackeray, Mr. Ruskin,- or we can carp at him with Mr. George
Moore. It is a matter of taste, which is in great part a matter of
character, training, association, and education.
But we who admire,
and take lifelong pleasure in, Sir Walter, "have great allies," — the
greatest of critical names; we need not fear to speak with the adver-
sary in the gate. We admit the absence of some excellent qualities:
we admit the presence of diffuseness, and of what, to exclusive
readers of recent novels, is tediousness. Moreover, if like Huckle-
berry Finn
you have
no use for dead people," and hate history,
of course you cannot be pleased with any historical novels. Gentle
King Jamie, Queen Mary, Richard of the Lion Heart, Bonnie Prince
Charlie, Cavaliers and Covenanters, knights and archers, speak a
language which you cannot understand, about matters which do not
concern you, thrall as you are to your little day of ideas and vogue.
«
-
## p. 13002 (#436) ##########################################
13002
SIR WALTER SCOTT
But Sir Walter, "for a' that," has qualities which delighted all
Europe, and which still delight people who love the past, and love
humor, adventure, the spectacle of life. These people are not few;
for they must be the purchasers of the endless new editions, cheap
or dear, of the Waverley Novels. Sir Walter can tell a story, and he
can create men and women- not to mention horses and dogs- of
endless varieties, and in every rank. Moreover he can create places:
Tully Veolan and many others are, as Mr. Saintsbury says, “our own
our own to pass freely through until the end of time. "
Scott is old now: in his time, as poet and as romancer, he was
absolutely new. The poems did not proceed obviously, and by way
of manifest gradual evolution, from anything familiar to most men.
The old French rhymed romances, Barbour's 'Bruce,' the ancient
ballads, and 'Christabel,' all went to their begetting; but in them-
selves they were new. New also was the historical novel, based on
vast knowledge, and informed with such life as Shakespeare poured
into 'Henry IV. ' or 'Julius Cæsar. ' Scott created the genre: without
him there had been no ‘Esmond,' no 'Master of Ballantrae,' no ‹Mous-
quetaires. ' Alexandre Dumas, as historical novelist, is the greatest of
Scott's works.
There is here no space for detailed criticism of the novels. A
man might do worse than read Waverley,' the earliest, and then
'Redgauntlet,' the most autobiographical, in succession. Here is the
romance of the fallen dynasty, of the kings landless, whose tomb the
dying Scott visited in Rome. Had I to choose my private favorite,
it would be 'Old Mortality'; which might be followed (as 'Waverley'
by 'Redgauntlet") by the decline of the Cameronians in 'The Heart
of Mid-Lothian. ' For chivalry 'Ivanhoe' is pre-eminent; with 'Quentin
Durward' for adventure and construction. And after these a man
cannot go wrong; though Count Robert of Paris,' 'Peveril,' 'Castle
Dangerous, and (in Scott's opinion) 'Anne of Geierstein,' are sad-
dening, and "smack of the apoplexy. " The Pirate' and 'The Mon-
astery' are certainly not novels to begin with, nor is 'St. Ronan's
Well. '
Of his historical works, 'The Tales of a Grandfather' can never
be superseded; the 'Napoleon,' though readable, is superseded, and
was ungrateful taskwork. The essays are a great treasure of enjoy-
ment; the 'Swift' is an excellent and wise biography. The 'Journal'
is the picture of the man,- so much greater, better, kinder, and
more friendly than even the author. "Be a good man, my dear,"
was his last word to Lockhart: it is the unobtrusive moral of all that
he wrote and was.
A Lany
## p. 13003 (#437) ##########################################
SIR WALTER SCOTT
13003
CHEAPENING FISH; AND THE VILLAGE POST-OFFICE
From The Antiquary›
MR
R. OLDBUCK led the way to the sands. Upon the links or
downs close to them were seen four or five huts inhabited
by fishers; whose boats, drawn high upon the beach, lent
the odoriferous vapors of pitch melting under a burning sun,
to contend with those of the offals of fish and other nuisances
usually collected round Scottish cottages. Undisturbed by these
complicated steams of abomination, a middle-aged woman, with
a face which had defied a thousand storms, sat mending a net
at the door of one of the cottages. A handkerchief close bound
about her head, and a coat which had formerly been that of a
man, gave her a masculine air, which was increased by her
strength, uncommon stature, and harsh voice.
"What are ye
for the day, your Honor? " she said, or rather screamed, to Old-
buck: "caller haddocks and whitings, a bannock-fluke and a cock-
padle. "
"How much for the bannock-fluke and cock-padle? " demanded
the Antiquary.
"Four white shillings and saxpence," answered the Naiad.
"Four devils and six of their imps! " retorted the Antiquary:
"do you think I am mad, Maggie? "
"And div ye think," rejoined the virago, setting her arms
akimbo, "that my man and my sons are to gae to the sea in
weather like yestreen and the day-sic a sea as it's yet outby-
and get naething for their fish, and be misca'd into the bargain,
Monkbarns? It's no fish ye're buying-it's men's lives. "
"Well, Maggie, I'll bid you fair: I'll bid you a shilling for
the fluke and the cock-padle, or sixpence separately; and if all
your fish are as well paid, I think your man, as you call him,
and your sons, will make a good voyage. '
>>>
"Deil gin their boat were knockit against the Bell-Rock rather!
it wad be better, and the bonnier voyage o' the twa. A shilling
for thae twa bonnie fish! Od, that's ane indeed! "
"Well, well, you old beldam, carry your fish up to Monkbarns,
and see what my sister will give you for them. ”
"Na, na, Monkbarns, deil a fit,- I'll rather deal wi' yoursell;
for though you're near enough, yet Miss Grizel has an unco close
grip. I'll gie ye them" (in a softened tone) "for three-and-
saxpence.
>>
## p. 13004 (#438) ##########################################
SIR WALTER SCOTT
13004
"Eighteenpence, or nothing! "
Eighteenpence! ! ! " (in a loud tone of astonishment, which
declined into a sort of rueful whine, when the dealer turned as
if to walk away) - "Ye'll no be for the fish then? "-then louder,
as she saw him moving off - "I'll gie ye them-and-and-and
a half a dozen o' partans to make the sauce, for three shillings
and a dram. "
((
"Half a crown then, Maggie, and a dram. "
"Aweel, your Honor maun hae't your ain gate, nae doubt; but
a dram's worth siller now-the distilleries is no working. "
“And I hope they'll never work again in my time," said Old-
buck.
"Ay, ayit's easy for your Honor and the like o' you gentle-
folks to say sae, that hae stouth and routh, and fire and fending,
and meat and claith, and sit dry and canny by the fireside; but
an ye wanted fire and meat, and dry claes, and were deeing o'
cauld, and had a sair heart,—whilk is warst ava,—wi' just tip-
pence in your pouch, wadna ye be glad to buy a dram wi't, to be
eilding and claes, and a supper and heart's-ease into the bargain,
till the morn's morning? "
"It's even too true an apology, Maggie. Is your goodman off
to sea this morning after his exertions last night? ”
"In troth is he, Monkbarns; he was awa this morning by
four o'clock, when the sea was working like barm wi' yestreen's
wind, and our bit coble dancing in 't like a cork. "
«< Well, he's an industrious fellow. Carry the fish up to Monk-
barns. "
"That I will-or I'll send little Jenny: she'll rin faster; -
but I'll ca' on Miss Grizzy for the dram mysell, and say ye sent
me. "
A nondescript animal, which might have passed for a mer-
maid as it was paddling in a pool among the rocks, was sum-
moned ashore by the shrill screams of its dam; and having been
made decent, as her mother called it, which was performed
by adding a short red cloak to a petticoat, which was at first her
sole covering, and which reached scantily below her knee, the
child was dismissed with the fish in a basket, and a request on
the part of Monkbarns that they might be prepared for din-
ner. "It would have been long," said Oldbuck, with much self-
complacency, ere my womankind could have made such a rea-
sonable bargain with that old skinflint; though they sometimes
((
――――――
## p. 13005 (#439) ##########################################
SIR WALTER SCOTT
13005
wrangle with her for an hour together under my study window,
like three sea-gulls screaming and sputtering in a gale of wind.
But come: wend we on our way to Knockwinnock. "
Leaving Mr. Oldbuck and his friend to enjoy their hard bar-
gain of fish, we beg leave to transport the reader to the back
parlor of the postmaster's house at Fairport; where his wife, he
himself being absent, was employed in assorting for delivery the
letters which had come by the Edinburgh post. This is very
often in country towns the period of the day when gossips find
it particularly agreeable to call on the man or woman of letters;
in order, from the outside of the epistles, and if they are not
belied, occasionally from the inside also,-to amuse themselves
with gleaning information or forming conjectures about the cor-
respondence and affairs of their neighbors. Two females of this
description were, at the time we mention, assisting—or imped-
ing - Mrs. Mailsetter in her official duty.
"Eh, preserve us, sirs! " said the butcher's wife, "there's ten
eleven twall letters to Tennant & Co. Thae folk do mair
business than a' the rest o' the burgh. "
"Ay; but see, lass," answered the baker's lady, there's twa
o' them faulded unco square, and sealed at the tae side,—I doubt
there will be protested bills in them. "
"Is there ony letters come yet for Jenny Caxon? " inquired
the woman of joints and giblets: "the lieutenant's been awa
three weeks. "
"Just ane on Tuesday was a week," answered the dame of
letters.
"Was 't a ship letter? " asked the Fornerina.
"In troth was 't. "
――――――
―――――――――――
"It wad be frae the lieutenant then," replied the mistress of
the rolls, somewhat disappointed: "I never thought he wad hae
lookit ower his shouther after her. "
"Od, here's another," quoth Mrs. Mailsetter. "A ship letter-
postmark, Sunderland. " All rushed to seize it. "Na, na, led-
dies," said Mrs. Mailsetter, interfering: "I hae had eneugh o'
that wark,-ken ye that Mr. Mailsetter got an unco rebuke frae
the secretary at Edinburgh, for a complaint that was made about
the letter of Aily Bisset's that ye opened, Mrs. Shortcake ? »
"Me opened! " answered the spouse of the chief baker of
Fairport: "ye ken yoursell, madam, it just cam open o' free will
## p. 13006 (#440) ##########################################
13006
SIR WALTER SCOTT
in my hand.
wax. "
What could I help it? -folk suld seal wi' better
"Weel I wot that's true, too," said Mrs. Mailsetter, who kept
a shop of small wares; "and we have got some that I can hon-
estly recommend, if ye ken onybody wanting it. But the short
and the lang o't is, that we'll lose the place gin there's ony mair
complaints o' the kind. "
"Hout, lass, the provost will take care o' that. "
"Na, na, I'll neither trust to provost nor bailie," said the
postmistress; "but I wad aye be obliging and neighborly, and
I'm no again' your looking at the outside of a letter neither:
see, the seal has an anchor on 't,- he's done 't wi' ane o' his but-
tons, I'm thinking. "
―
"Show me! show me! " quoth the wives of the chief butcher
and the chief baker; and threw themselves on the supposed
love-letter, like the weird sisters in 'Macbeth' upon the pilot's
thumb, with curiosity as eager and scarcely less malignant. Mrs.
Heukbane was a tall woman: she held the precious epistle up
between her eyes and the window. Mrs. Shortcake, a little squat
personage, strained and stood on tiptoe to have her share of the
investigation.
"Ay, it's frae him, sure eneugh," said the butcher's lady: "I
can read Richard Taffril on the corner, and it's written, like John
Thomson's wallet, frae end to end. "
"Haud it lower down, madam," exclaimed Mrs. Shortcake,
in a tone above the prudential whisper which their occupation
required; "haud it lower down. Div ye think naebody can read
hand o' writ but yoursell? "
"Whist, whist, sirs, for God's sake! " said Mrs. Mailsetter:
"there's somebody in the shop; "-then aloud, "Look to the
customers, Baby! " Baby answered from without in a shrill tone,
"It's naebody but Jenny Caxon, ma'am, to see if there's ony
letters to her. "
"Tell her," said the faithful postmistress, winking to her com-
peers, "to come back the morn at ten o'clock, and I'll let her
ken,- we havena had time to sort the mail letters yet; she's aye
in sic a hurry, as if her letters were o' mair consequence than
the best merchant's o' the town. "
Poor Jenny, a girl of uncommon beauty and modesty, could
only draw her cloak about her to hide the sigh of disappointment,
## p. 13007 (#441) ##########################################
SIR WALTER SCOTT
13007
and return meekly home to endure for another night the sick-
ness of the heart occasioned by hope delayed.
"There's something about a needle and a pole," said Mrs.
Shortcake, to whom her taller rival in gossiping had at length
yielded a peep at the subject of their curiosity.
"Now, that's downright shamefu'," said Mrs. Heukbane: "to
scorn the poor silly gait of a lassie after he's keepit company.
wi' her sae lang, and had his will o' her, as I make nae doubt he
has. "
"It's but ower muckle to be doubted," echoed Mrs. Shortcake:
"to cast up to her that her father's a barber and has a pole at
his door, and that she's but a manty-maker hersell! Hout! fy
for shame! "
"Hout tout, leddies," cried Mrs. Mailsetter, "ye're clean
wrang: it's a line out o' ane o' his sailors' sangs that I have
heard him sing, about being true like the needle to the pole.
>>
"Weel, weel, I wish it may be sae," said the charitable Dame
Heukbane; "but it disna look weel for a lassie like her to keep
up a correspondence wi' ane o' the king's officers. "
"I'm no denying that," said Mrs. Mailsetter; "but it's a great
advantage to the revenue of the post-office, thae love-letters. See,
here's five or six letters to Sir Arthur Wardour maist o' them
sealed wi' wafers, and no wi' wax. There will be a downcome
there, believe me. "
"Ay; they will be business letters, and no frae ony o' his
grand friends, that seals wi' their coats-of-arms, as they ca'
them," said Mrs. Heukbane: "pride will hae a fa'; he hasna
settled his account wi' my gudeman, the deacon, for this twal-
month, he's but slink, I doubt. "
―
"Nor wi' huz for sax months," echoed Mrs Shortcake: "he's
but a brunt crust. >>
"There's a letter," interrupted the trusty postmistress, "from
his son the captain, I'm thinking,- the seal has the same things.
wi' the Knockwinnock carriage. He'll be coming hame to see
what he can save out o' the fire. "
The baronet thus dismissed, they took up the esquire. "Twa
letters for Monkbarns; - they're frae some o' his learned friends.
now: see sae close as they're written, down to the very seal,-
and a' to save sending a double letter; that's just like Monk-
barns himsell. When he gets a frank he fills it up exact to the
weight of an unce, that a carvy-seed would sink the scale; but
## p. 13008 (#442) ##########################################
13008
SIR WALTER SCOTT
he's ne'er a grain abune it. Weel I wot I wad be broken if I
were to gie sic weight to the folk that come to buy our pepper
and brimstone, and such-like sweetmeats. "
"He's a shabby body, the laird o' Monkbarns," said Mrs.
Heukbane; "he'll make as muckle about buying a forequarter o'
lamb in August as about a back sey o' beef. Let's taste another
drop of the sinning" (perhaps she meant cinnamon) "waters,
Mrs. Mailsetter, my dear. Ah, lasses! an ye had kend his brother
as I did: mony a time he wad slip in to see me wi' a brace o'
wild deukes in his pouch, when my first gudeman was awa at
the Falkirk tryst; weel, weel-we'se no speak o' that e'enow. "
"I winna say ony ill o' this Monkbarns," said Mrs. Shortcake:
"his brother ne'er brought me ony wild deukes, and this is a
douce honest man; we serve the family wi' bread, and he settles
wi' huz ilka week,-only he was in an unco kippage when we
sent him a book instead o' the nick-sticks, whilk, he said, were
the true ancient way o' counting between tradesmen and cus-
tomers; and sae they are, nae doubt. "
"But look here, lasses," interrupted Mailsetter, "here's a sight
for sair e'en! What wad ye gie to ken what's in the inside o'
this letter? This is new corn,- I haena seen the like o' this:
For William Lovel, Esquire, at Mrs. Hadoway's, High Street,
Fairport, by Edinburgh, N. B. This is just the second letter he
has had since he was here. "
-
"Lord's sake, let's see, lass! Lord's sake, let's see! - That's
him that the hale town kens naething about—and a weel-fa'ard
lad he is: let's see, let's see! " Thus ejaculated the two worthy
representatives of Mother Eve.
"Na, na, sirs," exclaimed Mrs. Mailsetter: "haud awa-bide
aff, I tell you; this is nane o' your fourpenny cuts that we might
make up the value to the post-office amang ourselves if ony
mischance befell it; the postage is five-and-twenty shillings — and
here's an order frae the Secretary to forward it to the young
gentleman by express, if he's no at hame. Na, na, sirs, bide aff:
this maunna be roughly guided. "
"But just let's look at the outside o't, woman. "
Nothing could be gathered from the outside, except remarks
on the various properties which philosophers ascribe to matter,
-length, breadth, depth, and weight. The packet was composed
of strong thick paper, imperviable by the curious eyes of the
gossips, though they stared as if they would burst from their
## p. 13009 (#443) ##########################################
SIR WALTER SCOTT
13009
sockets. The seal was a deep and well-cut impression of arms,
which defied all tampering.
"'Od, lass," said Mrs. Shortcake, weighing it in her hand, and
wishing doubtless that the too, too solid wax would melt and
dissolve itself, "I wad like to ken what's in the inside o' this;
for that Lovel dings a' that ever set foot on the plainstanes o'
Fairport,-naebody kens what to make o' him. "
"Weel, weel, leddies," said the postmistress, "we'se sit down
and crack about,- Baby, bring ben the tea-water; muckle obliged
to ye for your cookies, Mrs. Shortcake,- and we'll steek the
shop, and cry ben Baby, and take a hand at the cartes till the
gudeman comes hame; and then we'll try your braw veal sweet-
bread that ye were so kind as send me, Mrs. Heukbane. "
"But winna ye first send awa Mr. Lovel's letter? " said Mrs.
Heukbane.
"Troth I kenna wha to send wi't till the gudeman comes
hame, for auld Caxon tell'd me that Mr. Lovel stays a' the day
at Monkbarns; - he's in a high fever wi' pu'ing the laird and Sir
Arthur out o' sea. "
«< Silly auld doited carles! " said Mrs. Shortcake: "what gar'd
them gang to the douking in a night like yestreen? "
"I was gi'en to understand it was auld Edie that saved them,"
said Mrs. Heukbane,-"Edie Ochiltree, the Blue-Gown, ye ken;
and that he pu'd the hale three out of the auld fish-pound, for
Monkbarns had threepit on them ta gang in till 't to see the wark
o' the monks lang syne. "
"Hout, lass, nonsense! " answered the postmistress: "I'll tell
ye a' about it, as Caxon tell'd it to me. Ye see, Sir Arthur and
Miss Wardour, and Mr. Lovel, suld hae dined at Monkbarns-"
"But, Mrs. Mailsetter," again interrupted Mrs. Heukbane,
"will ye no be for sending awa this letter by express ?
