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Title: Sir Walter Scott
Author: Buchan, John (1875-1940)
Illustrator: Landseer, Edwin Henry (1802-1873)
Date of first publication: 1932
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Coward-McCann, 1932
Date first posted: 24 June 2012
Date last updated: 24 June 2012
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #960

This ebook was produced by Al Haines






[Illustration: Cover]





[Frontispiece: Sir Walter Scott.  _From a sketch by Sir Edwin Landseer
in the National Portrait Gallery_]





SIR WALTER SCOTT



BY

JOHN BUCHAN



COWARD-McCANN, INC

NEW YORK




COPYRIGHT, 1932, BY

COWARD-McCANN, INC.



PRINTED IN U. S. A.




To

TWO FRIENDS

LOVERS OF SIR WALTER

STANLEY BALDWIN

AND

GEORGE MACAULAY TREVELYAN




{7}

PREFACE

The centenary of the death of Sir Walter Scott is my excuse for the
re-cutting of some of the lines of Lockhart's imperishable memorial,
and for an attempt at a valuation of the man and his work after the
lapse of a hundred years. It is a book which I was bound one day or
other to write, for I have had the fortune to be born and bred under
the shadow of that great tradition.

The following abbreviations have been used:--

  _A. Constable_       _Archibald Constable and His Literary
                       Correspondents_.  3 vols.  Edinburgh, 1873.

  _Ballantyne Humbug_  _The Ballantyne-Humbug Handled in a
                       Letter to Sir Adam Ferguson_.  Edinburgh, 1839.

  Cockburn, _Mem._     _Memorials of His Time_, by Henry, Lord
                       Cockburn. Edinburgh, 1856.

  _Dom. Manners_       _The Domestic Manners and Private Life of
                       Sir Walter Scott_, by James Hogg.  Glasgow, 1834.

  _Fam. Letters_       _Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott_.  2 vols.
                       Edinburgh, 1894.

  Gillies              _Recollections of Sir Walter Scott, Bart._, by
                       R. P. Gillies.  London, 1837.

  _Journal_            _The Journal of Sir Walter Scott_.  2 vols.
                       Edinburgh, 1891.

  Lang                 _The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart_,
                       by Andrew Lang.  2 vols.  London, 1897.

  Lockhart             _Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott,
                       Bart._, by John Gibson Lockhart.  7 vols.
                       Edinburgh, 1837-8.

  _Misc. Prose Works_  _The Miscellaneous Prose Works of Sir
                       Walter Scott, Bart_.  28 vols.  Edinburgh,
                       1843-6.

  _P. L. B._           _The Private Letter-Books of Sir Walter Scott_.
                       London, 1930.

{8}

  _Refutation_         _Refutation of the Misstatements and Calumnies
                       Contained in Mr Lockhart's Life of
                       Sir Walter Scott_.  Edinburgh, 1838.

  _Reply_              _A Reply to Mr Lockhart's Pamphlet_, by the
                       authors of the Refutation.  Edinburgh, 1839.

  _S. Q._              _The Sir Walter Scott Quarterly_.  Edinburgh,
                       1927-8.

  _Sederunt Book_      _The Sederunt Book of James Ballantyne and
                       Company's Trust_.  3 vols. in National
                       Library of Scotland.

  _Skene_              _Memories of Sir Walter Scott_, by James
                       Skene.  London, 1909.


I have given authority for most of my references, since Scott's own
writings and the books about him are bulky works, and the reader may be
glad of finger-posts.

J. B.

Elsfield Manor, Oxon.
  _December_ 1931




{9}

CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                                 PAGE

    I.  ANTECEDENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   11
   II.  BOYHOOD AND YOUTH.  1771-1792 . . . . . . . . .   24
  III.  EARLY MANHOOD.  1792-1799 . . . . . . . . . . .   44
   IV.  LASSWADE AND ASHESTIEL.  1799-1810  . . . . . .   59
    V.  FAREWELL TO POESY.  1810-1814 . . . . . . . . .   94
   VI.  THE EARLY NOVELS.  1814-1817  . . . . . . . . .  121
  VII.  THE BROKEN YEARS.  1817-1819  . . . . . . . . .  167
 VIII.  EDINBURGH AND ABBOTSFORD.  1820 . . . . . . . .  202
   IX.  HIGH NOON.  1821-1825 . . . . . . . . . . . . .  224
    X.  THE DARK DAYS.  1825-1826 . . . . . . . . . . .  277
   XI.  SERVITUDE.  1826-1831 . . . . . . . . . . . . .  300
  XII.  RELEASE.  1831-1832 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  330
 XIII.  THE WRITER  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  335
  XIV.  THE MAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  354
        INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  374




{11}

SIR WALTER SCOTT




CHAPTER I

ANTECEDENTS


I

In the autumn of the year 1771 an Edinburgh citizen, returning after
many years' absence, would have noted certain changes in his native
city.  If, on the morning after his arrival at the White Horse Inn in
the Canongate, he had ascended to the high places of the Castle hill,
and looked north and east, he would have missed one familiar landmark.
The Nor' Loch, his haunt on youthful holidays and the odorous grave of
city refuse, had been drained, and its bed was now grass and shingle.
Across the hollow which once had held its waters a huge mound of earth
had been thrown, giving access to the distant fields.  Farther east,
another crossing was in process of making, a bridge to carry a broad
highway.  Before he had left home the Canongate had burst its bonds
into New Street and St John Street, and he noted that the city had
spilled itself farther southward beyond the South Bridge of the Cowgate
into new streets and squares.  But now the moat of the Nor' Loch was
spanned, and on its farther shore building had begun according to the
plans of the ingenious Mr Craig.  He had heard much of these plans that
morning in Lucky Boyd's hostelry--of how a new Register House, with the
Adam brothers as architects, and paid for out of the forfeited Jacobite
estates, was designed to rise at the end of the new bridge.  And the
spectator, according as he was a lover of old things or an amateur of
novelties, would have sighed or approved.  The little city, strung from
the Castle to {12} Holyroodhouse along her rib of hill, where more
history had been made than in any place of like size save Athens, Rome
and Jerusalem--which, according to the weather and the observer's
standpoint, looked like a flag flung against the sky or a ship riding
by the shore--was enlarging her bounds and entering upon a new career.

Another sight of some significance was to be had in the same year at
the same season.  From every corner of the north droves of black cattle
were converging on Falkirk moor for the great autumn Tryst.  It was the
clearing-house of the Highlands, as Stagshawbank on the Tyne was the
clearing-house of Scotland.  The drover from Glen Affric, herding his
kyloes among the autumn bracken, could see from his bivouac a cloud of
dark smoke on the banks of the Carron river, and hear by day and night
the clang of hammers.  This was the Carron Ironworks, now eleven years
old, and a canal was being made from Grangemouth-on-Forth to carry
their products to the world.  There, within sight of the Highland Line,
a quarter of a century after a Jacobite army had campaigned on that
very ground, the coal and iron of the Scottish midlands were being used
in a promising industry.  Cannon were being made for many nations, and
the Carron pipes and sugar-boilers and fire-grates were soon to be
famous throughout the land.  The Highland drover, already perplexed by
the intrusion of Lowland sheep on his hills and the cutting of his
native woods by English companies, saw in the flame and smoke of the
ironworks a final proof that his ancient world was crumbling.

There was a third portent, the most pregnant of all, which our returned
exile, if he were a man of some education, had a chance of noting.  He
had heard with pleasure during his absence a rumour of good literature
coming from the north.  The London critics had spoken well of Mr David
Hume's works in history and philosophy, of Mr Robertson's excursions in
the former domain, of Mr Ferguson's treatise on civil society, and of
the poetry of Mr Beattie of Aberdeen, while visitors had reported the
surpassing eloquence of Mr Hugh Blair of the High {13} Kirk of St
Giles'.  Our traveller, when he had access to these famous men, found
that Edinburgh had indeed become a home of brilliant talk and genial
company--Edinburgh with her endless taverns where entertainment was
cheap, since the Forth at the door gave her oysters, and sound claret
was to be had at eighteen shillings a dozen.  Around the tavern board
or the dinner-table he found the illuminati good Scotsmen, speaking the
tongue he fondly remembered, and perpetuating the tales and humours of
his youth.  But their public performance surprised him, for it was a
sedulous aping of London.  They strove without much success to acquire
an English accent, and Mr Adam Smith was envied because Balliol had
trimmed the roughness of his Fife tongue.  They cultivated a thing
called rhetoric, which was supposed to be a canonical use of language
freed from local vulgarities, and in the shabby old college Mr Hugh
Blair lectured on that dismal science with much acceptance.  In their
writings they laboriously assisted each other to correct the solecisms
of the northern idiom, and a year or two later, when David Hume lay on
his death-bed, it was the jest of a caustic Lord of Session that the
philosopher confessed not his sins but his Scotticisms.

So our restored exile may have regarded the scene with mingled
feelings.  His countrymen beyond doubt had their heads at last above
water, but the land they were making for was not the kindly soil he had
known.



II

[Sidenote: Scotland in 1771]

Let us look a little closer at the Scotland of 1771.

The Union of Parliaments in 1707 had been a blessing beyond doubt, but
for a quarter of a century it had been a blessing well disguised.  The
land and the people were grievously poor, and north of Forth the
Highlands had to face the decadence of their ancient social and
economic structure, and in the space of a man's lifetime adjust
themselves to the change from a medival to a modern world.  The
failure of Jacobitism flung Scotland back {14} upon herself and forced
her to work out her own salvation.  But that bitter task did not
increase her love for her southern neighbour.  She was conscious of
being poverty-stricken and backward, a mere northern appanage which
England had once seen fit to conciliate, and, the Union accomplished,
could now neglect.  A friendly visitor like Pennant might find
something to patronize and praise, but the common traveller's tale was
only of a bleak land, vile weather, bad inns, bad roads, dirty farms
and shabby stone towns.  Even Lady Louisa Stuart, with Scots blood in
her veins, had little good to say of it; to cross the Border into
Cumberland was for her to return to civilization and decency.

Nor was Scotland's sense of inferiority likely to be soothed by the
attitude of her neighbours.  In truth she had given England small cause
to love her.  The seventeenth century, with its invasion of England by
a Scots army, the bartering of their king by that army for arrears of
pay, and the attempt to impose the Presbyterian discipline upon all
Britain, had left an ugly memory.  In the early eighteenth century
Scotland had been a storm-centre from which came most of the threats to
English peace.  Scotsmen in droves had journeyed south, and had won
fame and fortune in many callings--at the Bar, in medicine, in
commerce, in letters; but their very success increased the unpopularity
of their race.  There was no one to mediate between the two peoples.
The Scotsman Bute was the most hated of politicians, Wedderburn's
conscience was elastic even for a Georgian lawyer, while, in letters,
sleek creatures like Mallet and an ill-tempered genius like Smollett
only widened the breach.  Mansfield might have done something, but the
great Chief-Justice had lost every Caledonian trait, including most of
his accent.  Scotsmen were blamed alike for their rudeness and their
servility, their clannishness and their passion to get on in the world,
their pence-saving prudence and their high-flying politics.  The
dislike of Scotland, shown in the venom of Churchill and _The North
Briton_, the gibes of Dr Johnson, and the decorous belittlement of
Horace {15} Walpole, was a universal feeling in the south.  It was
returned in kind, and David Hume was for ever crying out against "the
factious barbarians of London."

In such a case, disliked abroad and deeply embarrassed at home,
Scotland was compelled to look for succour to her own efforts.  The
victories overseas won under Chatham's rule, and the recruitment of the
Highlands in the British army gave her an interest in the nascent
Empire, but in British politics she had no part to play.  Her domestic
affairs were for the most part beneath the concern of Westminster.  Of
resident Scotsmen the Fife laird, Oswald of Dunnikier, alone made any
considerable show in Parliament.  Her system of representation had no
popular basis, and was to the last degree fantastic and corrupt, and
the members elected under it were in the main dutiful servants of the
party in power.  The liberalism which has since been so marked a
characteristic of the nation flickered only in George Dempster, the
member for the Forfar burghs, who had the hardihood on one occasion to
act as teller with John Wilkes.  British politics had for the time
ceased to interest a people, whose mind was bent on more urgent matters.

[Sidenote: Kirk and State]

Nor was there any compensating vigour of life in that church, which had
once been the chief voice of Scotland.  Patronage had been restored in
1712, and the Erastian principle was firmly established.  The dominant
party, the Moderates, made religion a thing of social decency and
private virtues, and their sober, if shallow, creed was undoubtedly a
stabilizing factor in a difficult time.  But if the extravagance of the
earlier Kirk had gone, so too had its power and vision.  The
High-flyers, the other party, were equally void of inspiration, and
disputed chiefly on questions of church government.  For a spark of the
old fire we must look to the numerous sects, who sustained some of the
doctrinal vigour of Calvinism.  But sufficient remained of the bequest
from the seventeenth century to perpetuate in many quarters spiritual
pride and an intolerant formalism.  The ministers satirized by Burns in
his "Holy Fair" were representative types, but little overdrawn, of the
then church in {16} Scotland--a church from which most that was vital
in the national life was deeply estranged.

The two main pre-occupations of the country in and around the year 1771
were to make a better living and to cut a braver figure in the world.
In both she was beginning to succeed.  Glasgow in the west and Leith in
the east had become notable ports, and to the former came more than
half of the tobacco imported into Britain.  Coal and iron were being
mined on a large scale; linen and woollen manufactures were thriving;
Scottish agriculture had begun the long upward stride which was soon to
make it a model for the globe; new banks had come into being, and the
Bank of Scotland had multiplied its capital by six, while its shares
were quoted on the London Exchange at 100 per cent. premium.  As for
fame, Edinburgh had become a hot-bed of talent, the merit of which the
south was quick to acknowledge.  "I stand at the Cross of Edinburgh,"
said an admiring visitor, "and can in a few minutes take fifty men of
genius by the hand."  London might sneer at her, but the metropolis was
forced to buy the books of her scholars--Hume and Ferguson and
Robertson in history, Hume and Reid in philosophy, Adam Smith in
political economy, Blair and Lord Kames in sthetics.  These men were
no _migrs_ like Mansfield and Wedderburn, Smollett and Thomson, Allan
Ramsay the painter and Adam the architect, but her own domiciled sons
who owed nothing to alien patronage, and of them she was inordinately
proud.  She saw her wealth and repute increasing, and felt that at last
she could talk on equal terms with her critics.  Scotland had recovered
her confidence.

But in the process she was shutting the door upon her past.  There were
two strains in her history--the aristocratic and Cavalier; the
Covenanting and democratic; and both were so overlaid by novelties that
they were in danger of being choked and forgotten.  The first, having
suffered downfall with Jacobitism, survived only as a dim sentiment,
the inspiration of songs when the claret went round, a thing of
brocades and lace and {17} twilit windows.  The second had lost itself
in formalism or eccentricity, and its stubborn democratic tradition was
half forgotten.  There was a danger lest the land, setting out
confidently on new paths, might condemn as provincial and antiquated
what was the very core and essence of her being.  She was in the van of
the new enlightenment: was her progress to be that of the rocket which
shoots from earth into high places and then falls, or like the slow
growth of a tree, deep-rooted by ancient waters?

In 1771 Scotland stood at the parting of the ways.  That she chose
rightly was due to two children who were then alive on her soil.  One
was a boy of twelve, the son of a small farmer in Ayrshire, who was
picking up an education on a moorland croft.  The other was an infant
in an old house in the College Wynd in Edinburgh, who on the 15th of
August of that year had been born to a respectable middle-aged lawyer,
a certain Mr Walter Scott.



II

[Sidenote: The Border]

The Border, where Scotland touched the soil of her ancient adversary,
had always cherished in its extremest form the national idiom in mind
and manners.  It had been the cockpit where most of the lesser battles
of her independence had been fought; for generations it had been
emptied from vessel to vessel; its sons had been the keepers of the
gate and had spoken effectively therein with their enemies.  The result
was the survival of the fittest, a people conscious of a stalwart
ancestry and a long tradition of adventure and self-reliance.  In the
Middle Ages the king's law had had but a feeble hold upon all the
country from Berwick in the east to Dumfries in the west, and from the
Cheviots northward to the Moorfoots.  There the hand had to keep the
head, and the spear was not left to rust in the thatch.  The life bred
a hardy and vigilant race, good friends and pestilent foes, tenacious
of their honour and their scanty belongings.  "They delight in their
own," wrote Bartholomew the Englishman in the thirteenth century, {18}
"and they love not peace."  But the traveller chronicled other
qualities.  They were a mirthful and humorous folk, as "light of heart"
as they were "fierce on their enemies."  They were skilled musicians,
too, and, said Bishop Lesley in the sixteenth century, "lovers of
eloquence and poetry."

The Borderer differed in certain ways from the rest of his countrymen.
He lived in an enclave of his own, for, though on the main track of
marching armies, he was a little remote from the centres of national
life.  His eyes did not turn north to the capital, but south to the
English frontier, where danger lay, and around him to his urgent local
concerns.  He lived under a clan system, different from that of the
Highlands, but hardly less compelling.  This absorption in special
interests kept the Borderer, gentle and simple, from sharing largely in
those national movements which had their origin in the Scottish
midlands and the eastern littoral.  The wars of religion, for example,
affected him little.  The Border bred few noted Covenant enthusiasts,
as it sent few men to Montrose's standard.  It was damp tinder for the
fires of either reaction or revolution.

Yet the centuries of guerrilla fighting had produced something more
than hardihood and independence.  The Border was the home of harpers
and violers, and from it came some of the loveliest of northern airs,
and most of the greatest ballads in any literature.  It had always had
a tradition of a rude minstrelsy, for during the peace of the winter
season, at the Yule and Hogmanay revels, at the burgh fairs, at sheep
clippings and "kirns" and at the shieling doors in the long summer
twilights, wandering minstrels would sing of old days, of the fairies
in the greenwood and the kelpies in the loch, and of some deed of
prowess the rumour of which had drifted across the hills.  Out of this
tradition, perhaps some time in the sixteenth century, the great
ballads were made by singers whose names have been lost--maybe the dead
poets chronicled in Dunbar's "Lament of the Makars."  The innominate
balladists left behind them poetry which often reached the highest
levels {19} of art, and which at the same time woke an immediate
response in those for whom it was composed.  So the Borderer, however
scanty his learning, fell heir to a body of great literature, passed by
word of mouth from father to son--a literature bare as the grey bent of
his hills, rarely mirthful, telling mostly of tragic loves and tragic
hates, but inculcating, as fiercely as the Sagas, the noble austerities
of courage and duty.

[Sidenote: Rural Life]

At the beginning of the seventeenth century the old life of the Border
came to an end, since the Governments of both nations combined to
coerce its turbulence.  As with the Highlands after 1745, there
followed a decline of population, since the livelihood of many had
gone.  In Liddesdale the single clan of Elliot numbered some 1500 souls
in the sixteenth century, while in the eighteenth that figure
represented the total population of the valley.  Since the riding days
were over, and most of the hill land was poor and uncultivable, the
glens became sheep-walks, and one shepherd could serve a wide area.
Till the mid-eighteenth century the Border was as poor as the rest of
Scotland.  But it shared in the revival of Scottish agriculture, and by
the year 1771 there had been a vast deal of draining done in the valley
bottoms; stone dykes seamed the uplands; the more progressive lairds
were planting not only in their demesnes but far up the hillsides, so
that many slopes were feathered with young firs; a better system had
taken the place of the old shiftless Scots tillage; the prices were
good for both sheep and cattle, and rural life was everywhere thriving.
It was different with the little towns.  They had never been of great
importance except when they nestled beneath the shadow of an abbey or a
castle, but under many difficulties they had striven for centuries to
preserve their close burghal life.  Once they had been smuggling
centres, but after 1707 this activity ceased.  Their more enterprising
sons flocked into north England.  Jedburgh, which had had 6000 citizens
before the Union, had now scarcely 2000, and Adam Smith speaking
apparently of the burghs, {20} told a correspondent that "the Scotch on
the Borders were to this day in extreme poverty."

Of the nature of rural Border society at this time we have ample
evidence.  A village had its assorted craftsmen, which made it
independent of the towns, its wauk-mill and its corn-mill, its
schoolmaster and its minister.  The bonnet-laird farmed his own land;
on the great estates there were tenants cultivating large acreages, and
the lairds, since they were themselves prosperous, were as a rule good
masters.  The Border yeoman was a great lover of sport, an inheritance
from his active forbears, and came nearer to the English type of
hunting farmer than to the ordinary Scots tacksman.  In the upland
glens the shepherds made a community by themselves--a strong and
responsible race, men of the "lang stride and the clear eye,"
accustomed to take many risks in their calling, for the most part
literate and for the most part pious, but living close to tradition and
the elder world of faery.  The youth of Leyden and Hogg gives a picture
of their lives.  If superstition was always at their elbow, the spirit
of critical independence was also there.  They were under no blind
bondage either to creed or custom.  The householder would stop his
reading of the Bible at family prayers with the remark: "If it hadna
been the Lord's will, that verse had been better left out."  They lived
in a semi-patriarchal society, where the laird was king, but they dealt
with him as free men.  He was greater and richer than they, but of the
same blood, for a Scott or a Kerr, whose hirsel lay at the back of
beyond, could count far-away kin with Buccleuch or Lothian.  The clan
system still survived in a wholesome and universal pride of race.  Most
Borderers rightly held themselves to be gently born.

The greater Border houses were a late growth.  In the distant days of
Scottish history, when the political game was played by Comyns and
Bruces, Douglases and Stewarts, Lindsays and Hamiltons, there is little
mention of Kerr or Scott.  The Border chiefs till the Union of the
Crowns were only heads of turbulent septs who come into the national
story in the tail of some great {21} Warden of the Marches.  But at the
beginning of the seventeenth century these chiefs were ennobled, and
Buccleuch and Roxburgh and Lothian took their place as landed magnates.

By 1771 the Scotts of Buccleuch had become one of the most powerful
families in Britain.  Coming originally from upper Tweeddale and
Lanarkshire, we find them settled on Teviot and Ettrick at the end of
the thirteenth century.  They had the byname of the "rough clan," they
were formidable reivers and at times effective March Wardens, and they
maintained always a stubborn patriotism not too common among Scots
grandees.  The Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, who rescued Kinmont
Willie of the ballad from Carlisle castle, became Lord Scott of
Buccleuch in 1606, and his only son was the first earl.  The daughter
of the second earl, Anne, Countess of Buccleuch in her own right, and
the heiress of vast lands in Lothian and on the Border, married James,
Duke of Monmouth, and, after his execution, was permitted to retain his
English estates.  Henceforth the "rough clan" ranked among the major
nobility of the land.  They were as fortunate as the Hapsburgs in their
marriages, which brought them estates from the ducal houses of Argyll
and Montagu, and ultimately both the estates and titles of the dukedom
of Queensberry.

[Sidenote: The Family of Buccleuch]

From the family of Buccleuch there was an early offshoot, called first
of Sinton and then of Harden, whose tower still stands in a dark nook
of Borthwick water.  The Scotts of Harden were scarcely less noted in
the Border wars than the parent house, and they produced such figures
of ballad and folk story as Auld Wat of Harden, who in 1567 married
Mary Scott, the "Flower of Yarrow," and his son William, who espoused
the daughter of Sir Gideon Murray of Elibank, the "Muckle Mou'd Meg,"
of a tale which is probably apocryphal.  The third son of this William
of Harden became laird of Raeburn, and his wife was a MacDougal of
Makerstoun, of a family which has some claim to be the oldest in
Scotland.  This Walter Scott was a Whig and a Quaker, but his sons
walked in other paths, for his eldest fell in {22} a duel, and the
second, Walter, was known on Teviotside as Beardie, from the great
beard which he allowed to grow in token of his regret for the banished
Stuarts.  Beardie, after narrowly escaping the gallows on account of
his politics, married a kinswoman of the Campbells of Blythswood, and
in his old age had some repute for learning.  His second son took to
sheep-farming, and leased the farm of Sandy Knowe from the Scotts of
Harden, after staking all his fortune on the purchase of a hunter,
which he fortunately sold for double the price he gave.  He prospered,
and made a great name on the Border as a judge of stock.  His wife was
a Haliburton of Newmains, who brought to the family the right of burial
in Dryburgh Abbey.  The sheep-farmer's eldest son, Walter, forsook the
family pursuits and, first of his race, settled in a town and adopted a
learned profession, for he became a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh,
the highest stage in Scotland of the solicitor's calling.  His wife was
Anne Rutherford, the eldest daughter of the professor of medicine in
the University, and with her came into the blood two other ancient
strains.  For the Rutherfords had been longer settled on the Border
than the Scotts, and her mother was a Swinton of that ilk, one of the
most sounding names in early Scottish history, and a descendant of Ben
Jonson's friend, the poet Earl of Stirling.

[Sidenote: Scott's Ancestry]

So much for the details of pedigree.  The child born in August, 1771,
to Anne Rutherford and Walter Scott at the head of the College Wynd,
had a more varied ancestry than falls to the lot of most men.  No doubt
the ancestry of all of us is oddly mixed, but in his case the record
was known.  He was linked collaterally through the Buccleuchs with the
greater _noblesse_.  He had behind him the most historic of the Border
stocks in Scott and Murray and Rutherford and Swinton.  He had Celtic
blood from MacDougal and Campbell.  Of the many painted shields on the
ceiling of the hall at Abbotsford which enshrine his pedigree, only
three lack a verified heraldic cognizance.  Among his forbears were
saints and sinners, scholars and sportsmen and {23} men-at-arms, barons
and sheep-farmers, divines and doctors of medicine, Whigs and
Jacobites, Cavaliers and Quakers.  Above all he had that kindest
bequest of the good fairies at his cradle, a tradition, bone of his
bone, of ancient pastoral, of a free life lived among clear waters and
green hills as in the innocency of the world.




{24}

CHAPTER II

BOYHOOD AND YOUTH

(1771-1792)


I

[Sidenote: 1771]

[Sidenote: The Elder Scott]

The College Wynd was a mountain path from the ravine of the Cowgate to
the ridge where stood the sixteenth-century College.  It had been
called in old days the Wynd of the Blessed Virgin-in-the-Fields, and
the tall gabled house at the head of it was built on the site of the
very Kirk-o'-Field where Darnley had met his death in the unhallowed
February night of 1567.  The house stood in the corner of a small
court, the flats were reached by a foul common stair, and the narrow
windows looked out upon wynds where refuse rotted in heaps, and pigs
roamed as in a farmyard, and well-born children played barefoot in the
gutters.  Nowhere was there space or light, and the tenements, though
their fireplaces might bear historic scutcheons, were habitations of
filth and nursing grounds of disease.  Eight children had been born to
Mr Walter Scott, and six had died in infancy, so a little after the
young Walter's birth he moved his household to one of the pleasant
houses in the new George Square, near the Meadows, where the eye looked
out on trim gardens and the air blew sweet from the Pentlands and the
Firth.

A clear picture of the elder Scott has come down to us.  His portrait
shows him "uncommonly handsome," as his son boasted, but with an air of
puzzled gentleness and melancholy which scarcely accords with the
robust Border stock from which he sprang.  It is possible that there
was some delicacy of body which he transmitted to his family, for he
had not the longevity of his race, {25} dying at sixty-eight after two
years of broken health.  His industry and his love of dry legal details
qualified him well for his profession, and he began with high
prospects, for his father bought him a good partnership, he could count
on the patronage of a clan of litigious sheep-farmers and lairds, and
the Jacobite forfeitures had filled Edinburgh with legal business.  But
he was perhaps better suited to the upper than the lower branch of his
craft.  His son thought that he would have made a fine special pleader,
had the Scots Bar known such a thing, and he was deeply learned in
feudal tenures.  For the business side he had little aptitude.  He was
ingenuous and simple, accepting men at their own high valuation; he
refused to take advantage of their follies and necessities, and no
Dandie Dinmont with his consent ever went to law with a Jock o' Dawston
Cleugh; his quixotic zeal for his clients' welfare led to his being out
of pocket over the work he did for them; his scruples were always at
war with his interests.  Such a man may acquire a large practice, but
it will not be a lucrative one.  He could on occasion be a genial host,
but his usual habits were ascetic; in a toping age he drank little
wine, and, if someone at his board praised the richness of the soup, he
would dilute his own portion with water.  He had no hobbies, and his
notion of relaxation was sombre; he told his son, when presented with
his notes of the Scots Law class copied out and bound, that they would
provide pleasant reading for his leisure hours!  The main interest of
his life was theology, and in the seclusion of his study he was more
often engaged with Knox and Spottiswoode than with Stair and Erskine.
His religion was Calvinism, high and dry, not a dogma only but a stern
discipline of life.  The Sabbath days were filled with long diets of
worship, the Sabbath evenings with the reading of lengthy sermons and
the catechizing of a sleepy household.  On that day he would neither
speak nor think of secular affairs.

This pale gentleman in the black knee-breeches and snowy ruffles, with
his kind, anxious face and formal manners, was a strange father for
such a son.  In the {26} eyes of the one to "crucify the body," as the
phrase went, to "mortify the flesh," was the first duty of a Christian,
and life was a melancholy vale with no place for cordials; to the other
the living, breathing world around him seemed a gift of God ordained
for the enjoyment of His creatures.  Some tastes the two had in common.
The elder Scott had a profound clannishness, for he kept a record of
the remotest collaterals, and diligently attended their funerals as a
tribal rite.  He had odd moments of romance, as when he flung from his
window in George Square the cup out of which his wife had rashly given
tea to the traitor Murray of Broughton.  He had even a dim interest in
stage plays, and private theatricals were permitted in his dining-room.
But for the rest Calvinist and humanist had no common ground.  There
was also the secular conflict between age and youth, since the father
had little tolerance for the whimsies of young blood, and measured
success by standards which the son contemned.  For the elder was in all
things genteel, as Edinburgh understood the thing.  Conscious of good
blood in his veins, he was profoundly respectful to those who had it in
an ampler measure, and not above an innocent condescension to those who
lacked it.  The Calvinism of eighteenth-century Edinburgh carried with
it a worship of respectability.  It was respectable to be a busy
lawyer; it was not respectable to scribble verses, and tramp the roads,
and hobnob with all and sundry.  Between Walter and his father there
was affection, and for the elder's integrity and kindness the younger
had a deep regard.  But there was no intimacy, and for long only an
imperfect comprehension.

[Sidenote: Mrs Scott]

The mother, Anne Rutherford, was "short of stature" says Lockhart, "and
by no means comely."  Her plain features were those of her father, the
professor of medicine, whose portrait hangs on the walls of the
Edinburgh College of Physicians.  But it was a face of infinite
sagacity, shrewdness, friendliness and humour.  She had been bred in
the old school of deportment, and to her dying day sat upright in her
chair without touching {27} its back.  She was an anxious parent with
her uncertain brood, and a notable mistress of a household.  Unlike her
husband's, her tastes had a wide range, for her head was stored with
ballads and proverbs and tales.  She was one of those women who are
worthy of a long life, for she had the kind of mind which can profit
and make the world profit by the processes of time, and she made a
bridge between the generations.  She lived to the verge of eighty, and
saw Waterloo fought and Wellington enter Paris, and in her youth she
had talked with a man who remembered the battle of Dunbar and
Cromwell's entry into Edinburgh.  Scott owed much to her, for she was
able to recreate for him the immediate past--that period so dim to most
of us, and it was she who first introduced him to the enchanted world
of poetry.  His boyish ailments established a special intimacy between
them, and he was always her favourite child.  She had that homely
tenderness which the Scots call "innerliness," and when her son was the
laird of Abbotsford and one of the most famous of living men, he was
still to her "Wattie, my lamb."  Her life was happy, for she rejoiced
in his success, and she preserved her vigour of mind and body
unimpaired, so that at eighty she was telling stories to her
grandchildren at tea in her little house.  "She was a strict
economist," Scott wrote to Lady Louisa Stuart, "which she said enabled
her to be liberal; out of her little income of about 300 a year she
bestowed at least a third in well-chosen charities, and with the rest
lived like a gentlewoman, and even with hospitality more general than
seemed to suit her age; yet I could never prevail upon her to accept of
any assistance."[1]  A Baskerville Bible which she had given him he
treasured to the last year of his life and bequeathed as an heirloom to
his descendants; and when, after his death, his executors opened his
desk, they found, arranged so that he might see them when at work, the
boxes which had stood on her dressing-table, and the silver taper-stand
which he had bought for her with his first fees.

{28}

Walter Scott had always a great love for mementoes.  In the same desk
were six locks of fair hair, relics of his six brothers and sisters who
had died in infancy.  There seems to have been talent in all the
surviving children, mingled with something febrile and ill-balanced,
derived perhaps from their father.  All died in middle life, and only
one left descendants.  The eldest, Robert, was something of a tyrant to
the young Walter, but won his love through their common passion for
poetry.  He entered the Navy, fought under Rodney, quarrelled with his
superiors, joined the East India Company's service, and died of malaria
at forty-one.  John became a soldier, lost his health and died in
Edinburgh in his mother's house at forty-seven.  Thomas, two years
younger than Walter and his favourite brother, succeeded to his
father's law business, speculated and failed, and died in Canada as a
regimental paymaster in his fiftieth year.  Daniel the youngest, the
family scapegrace, was in his grave before he was thirty.  The one
daughter, Anne, a year Walter's junior, was a nervous, ailing girl, the
sport of every kind of accident, who died at the same age as Daniel,
having passed her life "in an ideal world which she had framed for
herself by the force of imagination."

[Sidenote: 1771-74]

The early childhood of Walter Scott was not spent in the family circle.
He was a robust infant, and having survived the perils of a first nurse
who was suffering from consumption, might have grown to a physical
stalwartness like that of his Border forbears.  But, at the age of
eighteen months he fell ill of a teething fever, and on the fourth day
it was discovered that he had lost the use of his right leg, through
some form of infantile paralysis.  Physicians and surgeons could do
nothing, and, on the advice of his grandfather, Dr Rutherford, it was
decided to try what country air could do and to send him to his other
grandfather at his farm of Sandy Knowe.  So it fell out that the first
memories of this city child were of country folk and the green spaces
of Tweeddale.

[Sidenote: Sandy Knowe]

The leg did not improve, but the Border winds dispelled the malaise of
Edinburgh, and gave him abounding {29} health and spirits.  The world
opened to him as a wide wind-blown country, with a prospect of twenty
miles past the triple peaks of Eildon to the line of Cheviot, the
homely fragrance and bustle of a moorland farm, the old keep of
Smailholm as a background, and a motley of figures out of an earlier
age.  His tenacious memory preserved those first impressions.  He
remembered his grandfather, though he died when the boy was three, a
magnificent old man, who apart from the lameness and the high peak of
the head, looked much as he looked himself in after life.  He
remembered being wrapped in the new-flayed skin of a sheep--a device
out of some hoar-ancient medical lore, and an old gentleman, who was
his grandfather's second cousin, Sir George MacDougal of Makerstoun,
"with a small cocked hat deeply laced, an embroidered scarlet
waistcoat, and a light-coloured coat, with milk-white locks tied in a
military fashion," kneeling on the parlour floor and dragging his watch
along the carpet to induce him to crawl.  He was sweet-tempered and
very talkative, so that the aged parish minister on his visits declared
that "one may as well speak in the mouth of a cannon as where that
child is."  The ewe-milkers carried him up to the crags above the
house, and he learned to know every sheep by head-mark.  Once he was
forgotten there during a thunderstorm and was found clapping his hands
at the lightning and crying "Bonny, bonny!"  His sworn henchman was
Sandy Ormistoun, the cow-baillie, on whose shoulder he peregrinated the
farm.  Neighbours dropped in, and the child's quick ears heard the news
of the American War and Jacobite tales from a man who had seen the
Carlisle executions.  On the winter evenings his grandmother sat beside
the fire at her spinning-wheel, and his grandfather opposite in his
elbow-chair, while he lay on the floor and heard his Aunt Janet read,
or his grandmother tell of the Border merry men and their wild ways out
of a memory in which they were a living tradition.  In his aunt's
reading the Bible was varied with one or two books from a pile on the
window-seat--an odd volume of Josephus, that portentous author whom few
Scottish {30} children in older days escaped, and Allan Ramsay's
_Tea-Table Miscellany_.  From the latter he learned by heart the ballad
of "Hardicanute," which he shouted about the house.

[Sidenote: 1774-75]

In his fourth year there came an interlude, for it was resolved, as a
remedy for his lameness, to exchange raw sheepskins for the waters of
Bath.  Miss Janet took charge of him and they went by sea to London,
where he saw the Tower and Westminster Abbey.  At Bath they were joined
by his uncle Captain Robert Scott, home on leave from India.  There
they stayed for the better part of a year; the baths did no good to his
lameness, but his general health was now excellent, and at a dame's
school he learned to read.  His chief recollection was of meeting John
Home, author of _Douglas_, now a very old man, and of seeing his first
play in the company of his uncle Robert.  "The play was _As You Like
It_, and the witchery of the whole scene is alive in my mind at this
moment," he wrote more than thirty years later.  "I made, I believe,
noise more than enough, and remember being so much scandalized by the
quarrel between Orlando and his brother in the first scene that I
screamed out 'An't they brothers?'"

[Sidenote: Return to Edinburgh]

From Bath, with a pronounced English accent, he returned for a few
weeks to his family in George Square, where, after four years among
indulgent elders, he was to learn the possibility of fraternal
bickering.  Of the boy at this stage we have a glimpse in a letter of a
kinswoman of his mother's, Mrs Cockburn, the author of the modern
version of "The Flowers of the Forest," who had been Alison Rutherford
of Fairnilee;--


    I last night supped at Mr Walter Scott's.  He has the most
    extraordinary genius of a boy I ever saw.  He was reading a poem to
    his mother when I went in.  I made him read on; it was the
    description of a shipwreck.  His passion rose with the storm.
    "There's the mast gone," says he.  "Crash it goes!  They will all
    perish!"  After his agitation he turns to me.  "That is too
    melancholy," says he.  "I had better read you something more
    amusing."  I proposed a little chat and asked his opinion of Milton
    and other books he was reading, which he gave me wonderfully.  One
    of his observations was, {31} "How strange it is that Adam, just
    new come into the world, should know everything--that must be the
    poet's fancy," says he.  But when he was told that he was created
    perfect by God, he instantly yielded.  When taken to bed last
    night, he told his aunt he liked that lady.  "What lady?" says she.
    "Why, Mrs Cockburn, for I think she is a virtuoso, like myself."
    "Dear Walter," says Aunt Jenny, "what is a virtuoso?" "Don't you
    know?  Why, it's one that wishes and will know everything."  Now,
    sir, you will think this a very silly story.  Pray, what age do you
    suppose that boy to be?  Name it now, before I tell you.  Why,
    twelve or fourteen.  No such thing; he is not quite six years old.
    He has a lame leg, for which he was a year at Bath, and has
    acquired the perfect English accent, which he has not lost since he
    came, and he reads like a Garrick.  You will allow this an uncommon
    exotic.


[Sidenote: 1775-78]

The solitary stage of his childhood was not yet closed, for presently
he went back to Sandy Knowe for the better part of two years.  There he
continued to listen to his grandmother's tales and Aunt Janet's
reading, but he was now able on his own account to adventure in
books.[2] He got his first pony, a tiny Shetland mare called Marion; he
was less with the ewe-milkers now, and more with the cow-baillie and
the shepherds; the world extended for him, and he became aware of the
lovely environs, the woods of Mertoun and the shining reaches of Tweed.
He was sent to Prestonpans for sea-bathing, and there discussed the war
in America with an ancient ensign, and prophesied with only too much
truth that trouble awaited Burgoyne.  The ensign's name was Dalgetty.
At Prestonpans, too, he met his father's friend George Constable, the
antiquary, who remembered the 'Forty-five and talked to him of
Shakespeare's characters, and who was to appear one day in the
character of Jonathan Oldbuck.

When he was between seven and eight he returned to George Square, and
Sandy Knowe became only a place for summer holidays.  The virtuoso had
now to go through a short space of disillusionment and discipline.
{32} "I felt the change," he wrote, "from being a single indulged brat,
to becoming a member of a large family, very severely; for under the
gentle government of my kind grandmother, who was meekness itself, and
of my aunt, who, although of a higher temper, was exceedingly attached
to me, I had acquired a degree of license which could not be permitted
in a large family.  I had sense enough, however, to bend my temper to
my new circumstances, but such was the agony that I had internally
experienced, that I have guarded against nothing more in the education
of my own family, than against their acquiring habits of self-willed
caprice and domination."  His formal education had scarcely begun, and
he had to start at the beginning in a private school in Bristo Port,
and, when this experiment failed, under a tutor, a young probationer
called Fraser, who taught him the Latin rudiments.

[Sidenote: 1778-79]

It was a hard transition stage for the "poetic child," but the wind was
tempered to him by his mother's sympathy.  With her he read Homer in
Pope's translation, and from her he acquired his undying passion for
Shakespeare.  He never forgot the rapture of reading the plays by the
fire in her dressing-room, until the sound of the family rising from
supper warned him that it was time to creep back to bed.  He was
inclined to be priggish, and objected to playing with the boys in the
Square on the ground of their ignorance, but this foible was soon
hammered out of him by hard-fisted brothers.  To the elder Walter Scott
he must have seemed only a loquacious child who was lamentably backward
in sound learning, but his mother and his mother's friends saw to it
that the discipline necessary to fit him for normal life did not
destroy his world of dreams.  These friends were notable women.  There
was Mrs Cockburn, whom I have quoted, and who carried a merry heart
through a long life of sorrows; there were his aunts, Janet (afterwards
Mrs Russel of Ashestiel) and Christian Rutherford; there was old Lady
Balcarres with her family of brilliant girls; above all there was Mrs
Anne Murray Keith, who on his behalf did for an elder Edinburgh what
his grandmother {33} had done for the old life of the Border.  She
spoke the courtly Holyrood Scots, and illumined for him a world which
had passed and which he was one day to refashion.

[Sidenote: 1779]

With his eighth year the first stage of childhood closed.  The nuts, in
Martial's phrase, had now to be left behind--

  Jam tristis nucibus puer relictis
  Clamoso revocatur a magiatro!

It had been a stage of supreme importance, for it saw the making of the
man Walter Scott.  As the sapling was then bent, so the tree was to
grow.  On a memory, which was wax to receive and granite to retain, had
been impressed affections and interests which were to dominate his
life.  A certain kind of landscape had captured his heart--the green
pastoral simplicity of Tweedside--and it remained his abiding passion.
Scott's love was never for the wilder scenes in the Border country,
such as Gameshope and Loch Skene; it was for the pastoral fringes, for
"Leaderhaughs and Yarrow," for the Tweeddale champaign, where the
moorland sank into meadows and gardens marched with the heather.  This
taste, born of those early years at Sandy Knowe, was the parent of
Abbotsford.  He won, too, an insight--the unconscious but penetrating
insight of a child--into a society which was fast disappearing, the
society from which the ballads had sprung.  A whole lost world had been
reborn in his brain, and the learning of after years was only to
supplement the far more potent imaginative construction of childhood.
The past had become a reality for him, since he had himself seen and
touched its flying wing.  Henceforth, in the words of de l'Isle Adam,
"il gardait au coeur les richesses striles d'un grand nombre de rois
oublis."



II

[Sidenote: The High School]

In October 1779, at the age of eight, he entered Mr Luke Fraser's
second class in the ancient High School of Edinburgh.  He was younger
than most of his {34} classmates and but ill grounded in his Latin
rudiments, and, since Mr Fraser was no more than a grammarian, he at
first made little progress.  But three years later, when he attained to
the class of the headmaster, Dr Adam,[3] his ambition awoke, and Latin
literature became for him a living interest.  He read in class Csar,
Livy and Sallust, Terence, Horace and Virgil, and Dr Adam pronounced
that, while many were better scholars in the language, Walter Scott had
few equals in probing to the author's meaning.  His verse translations
from the Roman poets were approved--translations somewhat in the manner
of Pope's _Homer_--and he began to write verses on his own account, in
which the chief influence seems to have been the Scottish Paraphrases.
He had also a private tutor during these years, a certain James
Mitchell, who ultimately became minister at Montrose, where Scott
visited him at a critical hour of his life.[4]  Mr Mitchell was a stiff
Calvinist and sabbatarian, and from arguments with him the boy imbibed
a good deal of divinity and church history.  "I, with a head on fire
for chivalry," he wrote, "was a Cavalier; my friend was a Roundhead; I
was a Tory and he was a Whig.  I hated Presbyterians, and admired
Montrose with his victorious Highlanders; he liked the Presbyterian
Ulysses, the dark and politic Argyle, so that we never wanted subjects
of dispute, but our disputes were always amicable."

[Sidenote: 1779-83]

The real education of these years was not in the High School, not even
in Dr Adam's class, but in the playground and the Edinburgh streets,
and in the boy's private adventures among books.  The story of his
escapades may be read in Lockhart.  He was desperately pugnacious, and,
since his lameness put him at a disadvantage, was permitted to fight
his battles, as he said, "_in banco_," both combatants being strapped
to a deal board.  He scrambled over the Salisbury Crags, and ascended
the "kittle nine stanes" on the Castle Rock.  In winter he {35} helped
to "man the Cowgate Port" in the snowball fights, and he was a leader
in the bickers with the street boys, where stones were the chief
missiles, and broken heads were the common fortune of war.  He was a
leader in other things, for he was the saga-man of his class, a spinner
of tales, a maker of phrases, a dreamer of dreams, who was often
carried away by his fancies.  Had Scott never put pen to paper, he
would still have told himself stories.  He was also busy with his own
private reading, in which occasionally he found a like-minded friend to
share during a holiday afternoon among the hills.  Presently he had
devoured Shakespeare, and any other plays that came his way; he fell in
love with, but soon tired of, Ossian; he read Tasso and Ariosto in
translations; Spenser he knew by heart, and, since his memory retained
whatever impressed his mind, could repeat an immense number of stanzas.
From his mother and his mother's friends he collected old ballads, and
out of penny chap-books laid the foundations of a library.  We have one
glimpse from a fellow-pupil of the dreaming boy:--"In walking he used
always to keep his eyes turned downward as if thinking, but with a
pleasing expression of countenance, as if enjoying his thoughts."

[Sidenote: 1783]

[Sidenote: Kelso]

Scott left the High School in the spring of 1783, and, since he was not
due to enter college before the autumn, he was sent for six months to
his Aunt Janet, who had now moved from Sandy Knowe to Kelso.  There he
was to spend many of his later holidays, and we may fairly regard the
Kelso period as a formative stage in his education.  The little house
stood in a large garden, which was decorated with mazes, labyrinth and
bowers according to the fashion of the period, and in front of which
rolled the "glittering and resolute streams of Tweed."  It was his
first real introduction to the spell of that noble river, for at Sandy
Knowe Tweed had been too far away for a child's feet.  He attended the
Kelso school, where his Latin improved, and he sat on the same bench as
the son of a local tradesman, a certain James Ballantyne, whose life
was to be curiously linked with his.  At Kelso he discovered Percy's
_Reliques_, which he first read under {36} a great plane-tree in the
garden, and thereafter recited to all who would listen.  There, too,
his sthetic sense received a new stimulus.

[Sidenote: 1783-86]


    To this period--he wrote--I can trace the awakening of that
    delightful feeling for the beauties of natural objects which has
    never since deserted me.  The neighbourhood of Kelso, the most
    beautiful, if not the most romantic village in Scotland, is
    eminently calculated to awaken these ideas.  It presents objects
    not only grand in themselves, but venerable from their
    associations....  The romantic feelings which I have described as
    predominating in my mind, naturally rested upon and associated
    themselves with these grand features of the landscape around me,
    and the historical incidents, or traditional legends connected with
    many of them, gave to mv admiration a sort of intense impression of
    reverence, which at times made my heart feel too big for its bosom.
    From this time the love of natural beauty, more especially when
    combined with ancient ruins, or remains of our fathers' piety or
    splendour, became with me an insatiable passion.


[Sidenote: College]

He was confirmed in that preference which he had half-consciously
acquired at Sandy Knowe--for a pastoral land interpenetrated with the
poetry of man's endeavour.  In his love of nature he was always the
humanist, never the metaphysician.

In the autumn of 1783 Scott laid aside the round black hat, the gaudy
waistcoat, and the brown corduroy breeches of the High School boy, and
matriculated at the town's college of Edinburgh.  It was the old
college, an ancient shabby place of small courts and dingy classrooms,
where world-famous professors lectured to lads of thirteen and
fourteen.  He attended the Latin or Humanity class, where he forgot
most of what he had learned at school, for that class seems to have
been what Lord Cockburn found it ten years later, "the constant scene
of unchecked idleness and disrespectful mirth."  He attended the first
Greek class under Dalzell, but, since he had to begin by learning the
alphabet, and discovered that all his fellow-students started at a
higher level, he tried to carry off his incompetence by announcing his
contempt for the language and comparing Homer unfavourably with
Ariosto.  Yet the gentle enthusiasm of {37} the professor might well
have won his respect, for he shared most of the boy's prejudices.
Dalzell used to maintain that Presbytery had killed classical
scholarship in Scotland, and Sydney Smith once heard him murmur to
himself: "If it had not been for that confounded Solemn League and
Covenant, we would have made as good longs and shorts as England."[5]
Scott was a pupil also in the logic class, and studied mathematics with
a private tutor.  Four years later, when he was a law student, he sat
under Lord Woodhouselee in history and Dugald Stewart in moral
philosophy; but Stewart was not to him, as he was to many of his
contemporaries, an inspiring revelation.  Likewise he took lessons in
drawing and painting, in which he did not conspicuously progress, and
in music, where he did not progress at all.  Like Burns, he had much
music in his soul, and little in his voice.

During these years his attendance at college was intermittent, for his
health was weak, since he had outgrown his strength.  In his
convalescence he was again at Kelso, this time at the villa which his
uncle, Captain Robert Scott, had acquired on Tweed a little below the
town.  Meantime the voracious reading went on.  If he neglected the
Latin classics he was dabbling in Buchanan and Matthew Paris and the
monkish chronicles, and if Greece was a sealed book to him he was
beginning to explore the literatures of Italy and France.

In May 1786 when he was not yet fifteen, he signed indentures for five
years as his father's apprentice.  The elder Scott had decided that his
son should follow the profession of the law, but had not yet determined
which branch it should be.  The church seems to have been considered,
but, though it offered good prospects, it was not pressed, for it was
clear that the boy had no vocation in that quarter.[6]  So the young
Walter found himself set to a desk for many hours every day, immured in
the dreariest of labours.  He was not an idle apprentice, for he had
always a remarkable capacity for solid, plodding toil.  "The drudgery
of the office," he confesses, "I disliked, and the confinement I
altogether detested; but {38} I loved my father, and I felt the natural
pride and pleasure of rendering myself useful to him.  I was ambitious
also; and among my companions in labour the only way to gratify
ambition was to labour hard and well."  The tasks had one alleviation.
The copying of legal documents was paid for at the rate of threepence
per folio, and by these means he could acquire pocket-money for books
and the theatre.  Once he wrote one hundred and twenty folio pages
(probably about ten thousand words) without a single interval for food
or rest.  This was an invaluable training for his later feats of
scribing, and it gave him a good running hand.  Till the end of his
life he continued to finish off a page with a flourish of the pen, and
at Abbotsford used to be heard to mutter, "There goes the old shop
again."  The work brought him closer to his father, who, if he did
little to mould his mind, taught him habits of care and application.
He won an insight into the eternal disparities of father and son, and
he learned to make allowances for the rigid, buttoned-up old gentleman
whom he had come to comprehend as well as to love.  The portrait of
Saunders Fairford in _Redgauntlet_ is a tribute, at once shrewd and
affectionate, to the taskmaster of the young apprentice.

[Sidenote: 1787]

When he was sixteen, he burst a blood-vessel in his bowels, and had to
lie for weeks on his back in a room with open windows, his only
resources chess, military history and the poets.  But after that he
seemed to outgrow his early delicacy.  He shot up into a tall,
broad-shouldered lad, very deep in the chest, and with arms like a
blacksmith's.  His lameness did not embitter him, as it embittered
Byron; there were heroes in his pantheon, like Boltfoot and John the
Lamiter, who had had the same handicap.  He could walk thirty miles in
a day, and ride as long as a horse could carry him.  A year or two
later he defended himself with his stick against three assailants for
an hour by the Tron clock, like Corporal Raddlebanes in _Old
Mortality_.  When he was come to full strength James Hogg considered
him the strongest man of his acquaintance, and Ettrick {39} Forest did
not breed weaklings.[7]  Among other feats he could with one hand lift
a smith's anvil by the horn.[8]  His spirit matched his body.  Said a
naval officer: "Though you may think him a poor lamiter, he's the first
to begin a row, and the last to end it."

[Sidenote: 1787-89]

[Sidenote: The Middle Teens]

The diversions of his middle teens were many.  In those days boys went
to college at twelve, and at fifteen they were guests at grown-up
dinner-parties.  A gentleman, however young, was expected to drink his
share of wine, and to carry it well, and till this skill was attained
there were apt to be disastrous experiments.  Edinburgh society was not
the best school of health, and Scott lived to censure the extravagances
of his youth; but it is very certain that he never repented of them.
In March, 1827, he wrote:


    There is a touch of the old spirit in me yet that bids me brave the
    tempest--the spirit that in spite of manifold infirmities made me a
    roaring boy in my youth, a desperate climber, a bold rider, a deep
    drinker, and a stout player at singlestick.[9]


There were debating societies, where young men talked the sun down.
There were celebrities to be gazed at with reverence and addressed with
circumspection--John Home, whom he had met in Bath, the blind poet
Blacklock, Robert Burns whom he saw as a schoolboy in Sibbald's
circulating library, and much later at the house of Adam
Ferguson--which meeting he has described in one of his best pieces of
prose.[10]  There was his circle of friends--chief among them John
Irving, the young Adam Ferguson, and William Clerk, son of that Sir
John Clerk of Eldin who forecast the tactics to which Rodney owed his
victories--with whom he roamed the hills on summer holidays.  And
sometimes romance fluttered the pages even of his legal folios.  In the
first autumn of his apprenticeship he visited Alexander Stewart of
Invernahyle, who had been out in both the 'Fifteen and the 'Forty-five,
and he had that vision of the champaign of the lower Tay which he
describes in {40} the introduction to _The Fair Maid of Perth_.
Another year he was sent north on business, to enforce execution
against some refractory Maclarens, tenants of Stewart of Appin.  With
an escort of a sergeant and six men from Stirling Castle, each with
loaded arms, the romantic lawyer's clerk most fittingly made his first
entry into the Trossachs.

[Sidenote: 1789-92]

[Sidenote: Youth in Edinburgh]

At seventeen his future was determined.  He was to follow the higher
branch of the legal calling, and he began his law classes at the
college.  The two elder brothers had chosen the Army and the Navy, and,
apart from his lameness, it was inevitable that he should pursue the
third of the normal callings of a gentleman.  The three years which
followed were a period of serious preparation.  Scott, who never
claimed a virtue which he did not abundantly possess, wrote: "Let me do
justice to the only years of my life in which I applied to learning
with stern, steady, and undeviating industry."  He and William Clerk
worked together, examining themselves daily in points of law, and every
morning in summer Scott would walk the two miles to the west end of
Princes Street to beat up his friend.  The two passed their final
trials on July 11th, 1792, and assumed the gown of the advocate.[11]
After the ceremony they mingled with the crowd in the Parliament Hall,
and Scott, mimicking the voice of a Highland girl at a hiring fair,
complained to his companion; "We've stood here an hour by the Tron,
hinny, and deil a ane has speired our price."  But a friendly solicitor
gave him his first guinea before the courts rose.

[Sidenote: 1792]

In the law classes Scott met his old school friends and many
others--Irving and Ferguson, George Cranstoun, Francis Jeffrey, George
Abercromby, Edmonstone of Newton, Murray of Ochtertyre, and Murray of
Simprin--a brilliant coterie, not a few of whom rose to the Scottish
Bench.  He had now left his boyhood behind him, for in those days men
matured early, and he {41} plunged heartily into the delights of a very
social city.  He learned to drink square, and, though he had a head
like a rock, he used to complain in later life that these bouts were
the source of some of his stomach troubles.  He indulged in herculean
walking trips, sometimes not returning home till the next morning, so
that his father was moved to complain that he was "born for nae better
than a gangrel scrape-gut."  He belonged to many clubs; the Literary
Society, where his antiquarian learning won him the name of Duns
Scotus; a body called The Club, which met in Carrubber's Close; a
Teviotdale Club, where he renewed acquaintance with his Kelso friend,
James Ballantyne: and finally in 1791, the famous Speculative Society,
the nursery of so much literary and legal talent.  He abandoned his
former carelessness in dress, and became a point-device young man, able
to talk to women without shyness.  Meantime on every holiday he was off
to his beloved Border, to Kelso, to Jedburgh, to the Northumbrian side
of the Cheviots, whence he wrote rollicking epistles to his friends.
We have a glimpse of him at home in George Square, where Jeffrey found
him in a small den in the basement surrounded by dingy books, cabinets
of curios, and rusty armour.  He was a good boon-companion and a
delightful comrade for the road, but he left on his friends also an
impression of whinstone good sense.  We find him at eighteen
intervening to reconcile a foolish boy with his family, and when
quarrels broke out over the wine he was the chief peacemaker.

Scott passed into manhood with a remarkable assortment of knowledge,
for from the age of five his mind had never been idle.  He was a sound
lawyer, especially well versed in feudal niceties.  Philosophy he had
never touched; nor theology, except what he had picked up from his
Calvinistic tutor.  In history he was widely and curiously read, and
his memory for detail enabled him to retain every fragment of
out-of-the-way learning which had colour and drama.  He had browsed
over the whole field of English literature, and was a mine of
Shakespearean lore.  He had enough French, German, {42} Spanish and
Italian to read the works in these languages which appealed to him;
French he spoke after a fashion, but, as one of the attendants of the
exiled Charles X said, it was the French of the good Sire de Joinville.
He was still in the acquisitive rather than the critical stage of
mental development, and his taste in poetry was for things like the
lisping iambics of Mickle's "Cumnor Hall."[12]

He was always of the opinion that a knowledge of Latin and Greek was
the basis of every sound education.  "Though some people," he once
wrote to his son Charles, "may have scrambled into distinction without
it, it is always with the greatest difficulty, like climbing over a
wall instead of giving your ticket at the door."  Greek, as we have
seen, he had none; the chief of the later Homerid scarcely knew
Homer's alphabet.  It was a lack, no doubt, for some acquaintance with
the Greek masterpieces, some tincture of the Greek spirit, might have
trimmed that prolixity which was to be his besetting sin.  But of Latin
he had a full measure.  He was, indeed, never a good "pure scholar," as
the phrase goes, and could not detect a false quantity; but few men of
his day, not professed scholars, had a wider acquaintance with Latin
literature.  He quotes constantly from Virgil and Horace, but that was
the fashion of the age; more notable is the minute knowledge which he
shows of Juvenal and Ovid, while he also can aptly cite Lucan,
Catullus, Plautus, Terence, Livy and Tacitus.[13]

[Sidenote: Apprenticeship to Letters]

It is the fashion to repeat that it was Scott's weak leg alone that
made him a writer, that otherwise he would have followed the profession
of arms; and he himself once told Southey, speaking of his eldest son's
wish to enter the army, "I have no call to combat a choice which would
have been my own had lameness permitted."  He might have been a
soldier, even a great soldier, but he would most certainly have been
also a writer; for the instinct to express his thoughts and moods in
words was in the fibre of his being.  In January, {43} 1826, in the
hour of disaster, he wrote to Lockhart, "I never knew the day that I
would have given up literature for ten times my present income."  All
his education was contributory to this purpose, for never had a
creative writer a more happy apprenticeship.  "What a life mine has
been!" he wrote in later years, "half-educated, almost wholly neglected
or left to myself, stuffing my head with most nonsensical trash."  Yet
it was the education most consonant with his genius, most exquisitely
fitted for the achievements of his life.  Thomas Moore tells of a
conversation he once had with him.  "I said how well calculated the way
in which Scott had been brought up was to make a writer of poetry and
romance, as it combined all that knowledge of rural life and rural
legend which is to be gained by living among the peasantry and joining
in their sport, with all the advantages which an aristocratic education
gives.  I said that the want of this manly training showed itself in my
poetry, which would, perhaps, have had a far more vigorous character if
it had not been for the sort of _boudoir_ education I had received."
Scott had the kind of childhood and youth which fits a man to follow
what Aristotle calls the "main march of the human affections."  He had
mingled ultimately with every class and condition of men; he had enough
education to broaden his outlook but not enough to dim it; he was
familiar alike with city and moorland, with the sown and the desert,
and he escaped the pedantry of both the class-room and the
drawing-room; above all he had the good fortune to stand at the
meeting-place of two worlds, and to have it in him to be their chief
interpreter.



[1] Lockhart, IV.  339.

[2] "I cannot at the moment tell how or when I learned to read, but it
was by fits and snatches, as one aunt or another in the old
rumble-tumble farmhouse could give me a lift, and I am sure it
increased my love and habit of reading more than the austerities of a
school could have done."  Scott to Lockhart, 3rd March 1826.

[3] "He was born to teach Latin, some Greek, and all virtue." Cockburn,
_Mem._, 5.

[4] See p. 53.

[5] Cockburn, _Mem._,  21.

[6] Lang, I.  406.

[7] _Dom. Manners_, 128.

[8] _Journal_, I.  114.

[9] _Journal_, I.  379.

[10] Lockhart, I.  136-8.

[11] Scott's thesis for admission, "Disputatio Juridica de Cadaveribus
Damnatorum, _Just. Dig._, lib. XLVIII. tit. xxiv.," is a very
creditable piece of legal Latin.  It was dedicated to Lord Braxfield.
See W. K. Dickson, "Sir Walter Scott and the Parliament House,"
_Juridical Review_, March 1930.

[12] Preface to _Kenilworth_.

[13] See Vernon Randall's "Scott and the Latin classics," in _S. Q._,
129-138.




{44}

CHAPTER III

EARLY MANHOOD

(1792-1799)

[Sidenote: 1792-95]

A Scots advocate in his first years at the Bar has commonly a
superfluity of leisure.  He walks the floor of the Parliament House
waiting to be hired, and shares in what used to be one of the most
friendly and jovial of societies.  That floor, looked down upon by the
grave periwigged judges of the past, has always been a breeding-ground
of good stories, and in this gentle art Walter Scott shone among his
contemporaries.  He was a famous mimic, especially of such farcical
judicial figures as Lord Eskgrove, with his low muttering voice and
projected chin, who would in sentencing a prisoner to death console him
thus: "Whatever your relig-ious persua-shon may be, there are plenty of
rever-end gentle-men who will be most happy for to show you the way to
yeternal life."  Scott was noted for taking the tales of other men and
sharpening their point--putting, as he said, "a cocked hat on their
heads and a cane into their hands."

[Sidenote: On Circuit]

But his legal career was not wholly occupied with the pleasantries of
the Outer House.  In 1795 he was appointed one of the curators of the
Advocates' Library, an office reserved for the more literary members of
the faculty.  A certain amount of work reached him from his father's
office, chiefly the endless legal _paperasserie_ known as
"informations," with which the administration of law was cumbered.  He
defended poor prisoners without a fee, and on circuit at Jedburgh had
as clients local poachers and sheepstealers.  One case took him for the
first time into Galloway, and gave him the landscape {45} for _Guy
Mannering_.  The minister of Girthon was accused of "toying with a
sweetie-wife" at a penny-wedding and of singing doubtful songs, and
Scott defended him before the General Assembly, drawing a nice
distinction between _ebrius_ and _ebriosus_, between being occasionally
drunk and being a habitual drunkard.  He lost his case, but his
argument greatly edified his brethren of the Covenant Close.

[Sidenote: 1792-99]

It was a life which enlarged his knowledge of the human comedy and took
him into odd by-paths.  If he won few guineas by it he was paid often
in a better coin, as in the case of a housebreaker at Jedburgh who
remunerated him with two pieces of advice--never to keep a watch-dog
out of doors but to tie up a noisy terrier within, and to trust not to
clever new locks but to the old heavy kind with the rude keys.  As he
once told Lord Meadowbank,

  Yelping terrier, rusty key,
  Was Walter Scott's best Jeddart fee.

Cockburn has a tale of a dinner given by an old drunken Selkirk
attorney to Scott, Cranstoun and Will Erskine, when Scott as a toper
nearly triumphed over the host.  "As they were mounting their horses to
ride home, the entertainer let the other two go without speaking to
them, but he embraced Scott, assuring him that he would rise high.
'And I'll tell ye what, Maister Walter--that lad Cranstoun may get to
the tap of the bar if he can; but tak' ma word for't--it's no' be by
drinking.'"[1]

He learned more from his practice than the humours of humanity, for
Scots law was one of the main educative influences in his life.  Its
complexity and exactness formed a valuable corrective to a riotous
imagination.  It was the one form of science which he ever cultivated.
Moreover, when he became a novelist, it was to give immense point and
gusto to his Scots conversations.  In an older Scotland the language of
the law, like the language of the Bible, interpenetrated the speech of
every class.  A smattering of it was considered {46} proof of gravity
and practical good sense.  Consequently it was often misused, and this
farcical side adds perpetual salt to his dialogues.  His years at the
Bar not only enabled him to draw characters like Pleydell and the elder
Fairford, but also to give to some of his minor figures their most
idiomatic humours--as witness the speech of Bailie Macwheeble, and mine
host Mackitchinson, and Andrew Fairservice, and Bartoline Saddletree.

For the rest, as he wrote of Alan Fairford, he "laughed and made others
laugh; drank claret at Bayle's, Fortune's and Walker's, and ate oysters
in the Covenant Close," while on his desk "the new novel most in repute
lay snugly intrenched beneath Stair's Institutes or an open volume of
Decisions," and his table was littered with every kind of document "but
briefs and banknotes."  He was fortunate in his friends, some of whom
we have already met.  Will Clerk, his boyhood ally, remained an
intimate, though he was a Whig in politics, and had no share in Scott's
literary and sporting interests.  As the years of his youth passed an
inner circle grew up for him in his immense acquaintanceship.  Chief of
that circle was William Erskine, the son of an Episcopalian clergyman
in Perthshire, who became to Scott both an exacting literary censor and
a second conscience.  Erskine was a small, frail man, no lover of
sport, awkward on horseback, a being of quick sensibilities and
delicate nerves--a strange contrast to his big-boned, bluff,
adventurous friend.  The two men were complementary: Erskine rested
upon Scott's sanity and vigour, and Scott looked to Erskine's finer
perceptions to correct his own ebullience in letters and life.  No two
friends were ever closer together, or more complete partakers of each
other's intimate thoughts.

Then there was Thomas Thomson, the son of an Ayrshire minister; he
became one of the most learned of Scottish antiquaries and was to Scott
at once a boon-companion and an esteemed fellow-worker in the quarries
of the past.  Of all his friends, perhaps, Thomson was the one whom
Scott most esteemed as a table companion.  "I pray you of all loves,"
so ran his usual invitation form, "to dine {47} with me to-morrow at
half-past five."  There was George Cranstoun, afterwards Lord
Corehouse, who belonged to a family which Lord Dudley told Mrs Dugald
Stewart--herself a member of it--was reputed to consist of "the
cleverest but the oddest people in the world."  Cranstoun was shy,
proud, notably able, an excellent critic and a storehouse of good
sense.  There was James Skene of Rubislaw, who was especially a brother
sportsman.  There were young women, too, in the circle, who played a
part in Scott's education--Erskine's sister, Mary Anne; Cranstoun's
sister, Jane Anne, who became Countess Purgstall; the young Lady
Harden, the wife of the head of his sept, who lent him German books and
corrected his Scotticisms, the "first woman of real fashion," he used
to say, "that took me up."

[Sidenote: The Revolution in France]

These were the years of the Revolution in France, but to Scott it was
no blissful dawn, as it appeared to the young Wordsworth, but a
carnival of disorder distasteful to the lawyer, and a menace to his
country hateful to the patriot.  He was always wholly insensitive to
the appeal of abstract ideas.  As we shall see, he developed a strong
interest in the technique of government and the practical workings of
society, and few novelists have had such a masculine grasp of its
economic framework.  But the political ideas which were beginning to
work like yeast in many of the younger minds in Scotland, problems like
the ultimate purpose of human society, and the relation between the
power of the state and the rights of the individual, left him cold.
His mind was in a high degree concrete and practical; he might take
arms against a proven abuse but not against a dubious theory, and his
devotion to the past made him abhor all that was speculative and
rootless.  He had none of his countrymen's love of metaphysics, which
was generally linked to the Calvinism of their training.  Scott had
early put behind him Calvinism and all that it implied, whether
exemplified in his father or his tutor.  He had escaped that fate which
befell so many Scottish children and which was to befall Stevenson, a
"Covenanting childhood."  Though he was the great-grandson of the {48}
minister of Yarrow, the traditional Scottish theology did not affect
him; he neither fell under its burden nor reacted against it; he simply
gave it the go-by.  The new seeds of thought sown by the French
Revolution found a prepared soil in minds accustomed to the toils of
religious speculation, minds which were compelled to work out for
themselves a reasoned philosophy of life.  Scott never felt the
compulsion.  In practice he regarded all men as his brothers, but he
would have nothing to do with whimsies about the Brotherhood of Man.
He was a Tory, not on the philosophical grounds of Burke and
Bolingbroke, but because as a poet he loved the old ways, and as a
practical man would conserve them, however logically indefensible, so
long as they seemed to serve their purpose.  So he joined heartily in
breaking the heads of Irish students who sang rebel songs in the
theatre, and, when the volunteering movement began, wrote to Kelso for
"a strong gelding such as would suit a stalwart dragoon," to purchase
which he was prepared to sell his collection of Scottish coins.

[Sidenote: 1797]

Scott's experience as a volunteer was of value, for it gave him a means
of working off his high spirits, and enabled one who was man of action
as well as man of letters to satisfy at a critical stage both demands
of his nature.  In 1794 his brother Thomas was enrolled as a grenadier
in an Edinburgh regiment, but Scott's own lameness prevented him
joining the infantry.  In 1797, however, he had his chance when a
cavalry corps, the Royal Edinburgh Volunteer Light Dragoons, was
embodied and he became its quartermaster.  Stevenson has told us that
his dream was always to be "the leader of a great horde of irregular
cavalry," and that on his sick bed he saw himself "turning in the
saddle to look back at my whole command (some five thousand strong)
following me at a hand gallop up the road out of the burning valley by
moonlight."  Such fancies were at the back of Scott's head as he
manoeuvred on Portobello sands, or took part in the policing of an
occasional meal riot.  Once in Paris the Tsar of Russia, observing his
uniform, asked in what battles he had been engaged, {49} and was told
"in some slight actions, such as the battle of the Cross Causeway and
the affair of Moredoun Mill."  He was an exemplary volunteer, playing
the game according to its extreme rigour, his heart making martial
music within him, and thereby preparing himself for the galloping speed
of his verses; and his humour and ardour were the inspiration of his
corps.  Lord Cockburn, the Whig, has a pleasant note on a performance
with which he did not wholly sympathize:--


    It was not a duty with him, or a necessity, or a pastime, but an
    absolute passion, indulgence in which gratified his feudal taste
    for war, and his jovial sociableness.  He drilled, and drank, and
    made songs, with a hearty conscientious earnestness which inspired
    or shamed everybody within the attraction.  I do not know if it is
    usual, but his troop used to practise, individually, with the sabre
    at a turnip, which was stuck on the top of a staff, to represent a
    Frenchman, in front of the line.  Every other trooper, when he set
    forward in his turn, was far less concerned about the success of
    his aim at the turnip, than about how he was to tumble.  But Walter
    pricked forward gallantly, saying to himself: "Cut them down, the
    villains, cut them down!" and made his blow, which from his
    lameness was often an awkward one, cordially, muttering curses all
    the while at the detested enemy.[2]


[Sidenote: Liddesdale]

He spent his holidays in exploring Scotland, not a common occupation in
those days of comfortless travelling.  He visited a dozen country
houses from Angus to Lennox--Glamis, Meigle, Craighall, Newton,
Tullibody, Cambusmore, Keir, Blairdrummond--which, being situated near
the half-moon of the Highland Line, gave him some knowledge of the
northern borderland.  But it was to his own Border that he devoted most
of his leisure.  He had already explored the main valleys of Tweed and
Teviot, and both sides of the central Cheviots, and now he began to
push farther into the wild hill country that bounded the Debatable
Land.  In the autumn of 1792, along with Robert Shortreed, the
Sheriff-substitute of Roxburghshire, he made his first incursion into
Liddesdale, and thereafter for seven successive years the raid was
annually repeated.  In {50} those days there were no roads for a
wheeled carriage in Liddesdale, and therefore no tolls, and on the
first journey the only expense which the travellers incurred was the
feed of corn for their horses at Riccarton Mill.  They slept in
cot-houses or farms or manses as their road led them, and enjoyed an
Homeric hospitality.  Scott, as a young advocate, at first inspired
some awe, till the herds and store-farmers discovered that "he was just
a chield like ourselves."  A chield he was, for he could drink and
jest, hunt and fish, walk and ride with any Dandie Dinmont.  "Drunk or
sober," Shortreed reported, "he was aye the gentleman."  Family worship
would suddenly be broken up by the arrival of a keg of smuggled brandy
from the Solway shore, whisky punch was drunk out of milk-pails, and
breakfast would consist of porter and devilled ducks.  Those days in
sun and rain on the Liddesdale bent and nights by the peat-fire were
filled with more than roystering.  Scott was getting deeper into the
ancient Border life and enlarging his knowledge of mankind and himself:
"makin' himsell a' the time," said his companion.  He was collecting
'gabions' too, like Border war horns and steel bonnets, and--more
important--the songs and tunes and tales of a vanishing world.

His literary education followed the fashionable groove.  Henry
Mackenzie, the author of _The Man of Feeling_, read a paper to the
Edinburgh Royal Society in April 1788 which started in the capital a
craze for German literature.  Scott in 1792 joined a class to study the
subject, and a few years later was stirred to enthusiasm by hearing Mrs
Barbauld read a translation of Brger's "Lenore."  Miss Jane Anne
Cranstoun, his friend's sister, and the young Lady Harden encouraged
his interest and corrected his German.  It was the peak moment of
Gothick extravagance, for in 1794 Mrs Radcliffe published her
_Mysteries of Udolpho_, and a certain odd, undersized youth of
twenty-one, Matthew Lewis by name, next year issued a tale, _Ambrosia
or The Monk_, which took the town by storm.  Scott fell deeply under
the glamour of this pasteboard romance.  {51} "I wish to Heaven," he
declared to a friend, "I could get a skull and two cross-bones."  In
October 1796 he published in a slim quarto his own verse translations
of "Lenore" and "Der Wilde Jger," which were perhaps not much worse
than the originals, and revealed some talent for fluent verse.  Three
months before a poet worth a thousand Brgers had died in Dumfries, but
Scott had forgotten all about Burns, of whom he had been thrilled to
get a casual glimpse as a boy.  He was passing through the inevitable
stage in a literary education, when the foreign seems marvellous
because it is strange, and the domestic humdrum because it is familiar.
He was soon to return by way of Liddesdale and the ballads to his own
kindly earth.

[Sidenote: Appearance]

Meanwhile, in addition to his advocate's work and ballad-hunting and
soldiering, he was living the life of an ordinary young man, and met
other women besides lettered ladies.  He had become a personable being,
and appeared thus to one female observer.  "His eyes were clear, open
and well set, with a changeful radiance, to which teeth of the most
perfect regularity and whiteness lent their assistance, while the noble
expanse and elevation of his brow gave to the whole aspect a dignity
far above the charm of mere features.  His smile was always delightful,
and I can easily fancy the peculiar intermixture of tenderness and
gravity, with playful innocent hilarity and humour in the expression,
as being well calculated to fix a fair lady's eye.  His figure,
excepting the blemish in one limb, must in those days have been
eminently handsome--tall, much above the usual stature, cast in the
very mould of a youthful Hercules; the head set on with singular grace,
the throat and chest after the truest model of the antique, the hands
delicately finished, the whole outline that of extraordinary vigour
without as yet a touch of clumsiness."[3]  The portrait is perhaps too
highly coloured; Scott himself always declared that he had the largest
pair of hands north of Tweed, and he was not for nothing a descendant
of Muckle Mou'd Meg.  His figure was what is called in Scotland
"buirdly"; {52} he had a noble peaked head thatched with light brown
hair, grey-blue eyes, a deep voice, and a pleasant Border burr.  The
lower part of his face, with its long upper lip and heavy jowl, gave
him a slightly lumpish air--till he smiled, when the whole countenance
became whimsical and kindly.  There was obvious power in him, but of
the ruder kind, and it needed a discerning eye to penetrate to the
poetry below the bluffness.  What was not in doubt was the
friendliness.  "I said to myself," Joanna Baillie wrote after her first
sight of him, "if I had been in a crowd and at a loss to do, I should
have fixed upon his face among a thousand, as the sure index of
benevolence and the shrewdness that would and could help me in any
strait."

[Sidenote: 1793-97]

[Sidenote: Williamina]

Such a young man could not escape the common fate.  Scott belonged to
the familiar northern type to which sex is not the sole mainspring of
being.  He preferred the society of men to that of women; he had no
disposition to casual amours; in this domain of life he had an almost
virginal fastidiousness.[4]  The love affairs of such a man are apt to
begin with a fairy tale and to conclude with a marriage of convenience.
Happily he did not miss the first, for he had a taste of the old Romeo
and Juliet romance, that ecstatic, child-like idealization of one woman
which belongs especially to a poetic youth.  Before he was quite out of
his teens he offered the shelter of his umbrella to a girl one wet
Sunday in Greyfriars churchyard, and had a glimpse of a face which was
to be a _profile de rve_ to him for many a day.  She was only fifteen,
the daughter of Sir John Stuart-Belsches of Fettercairn, and his wife,
Lady Jane, who was a daughter of the Earl of Leven and Melville.  She
was not only well-born but a considerable heiress, and her portrait
shows composed features, large blue eyes, dark brown ringlets and a
complexion of cream and roses.  The two had probably met before, for
their parents were acquaintances.  The elder Scott, in an excess of
conscientiousness, thought it his duty to inform Sir John of the young
people's growing friendship, but {53} no bar was put in its way, and
the Lady of the Green Mantle became a toast among Scott's friends.  He
tells us that he had three years of dreaming, and two of wakening; some
time during the year 1795 he declared himself, and by the end of that
year he began to doubt whether he had won the lady's hand.  The story
is like the baseless fabric of a dream, but it would appear that his
hopes revived again in 1796, and that, during a tour in the north in
April and May of that year, he visited Fettercairn and returned south
in better spirits.  But some time in the early autumn he got his
dismissal.  Miss Williamina, though Scott suspected her mother's
influence, had given her heart elsewhere, and in January 1797 she
married the banker, Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, who had been a
college friend of Scott and a fellow-volunteer.[5]

Scott had perhaps been a timid and hesitating lover, for he was shy of
women, and had marvellously idealized this woman.  Some of his friends
dreaded the consequences for one whom they knew to be full of banked
fires.  "I now shudder at the violence of his most irritable and
ungovernable mind."  But Scott was no sigher in the shades.  In
Lockhart's phrase he "digested" his agony.  His philosophy was that of
Quentin Durward: "Melancholy, even love-melancholy, is not so deeply
seated, at least in minds of a manly and elastic character, as the soft
enthusiasts who suffer under it are fond of believing.  It yields to
unexpected and striking impressions, to changes of plans ... and to the
busy hum of mankind."  Nevertheless the shaft went deep, and though the
sting passed away the memory remained till his dying day.  The first
lines he wrote with any of the freshness of reality owed their
inspiration to the lost lady, those beginning, "The violet is her
greenwood bower"; and in the last decade of his life he either composed
or copied other verses on the same topic.[6]  The wraith of Green
Mantle glimmers in Margaret of {54} Branksome in _The Lay of the Last
Minstrel_, in her namesake in _Redgauntlet_, in Matilda in _Rokeby_,
maybe, too, in Diana Vernon, when she stoops from her saddle on the
midnight moor with a kiss as light as the touch of a bird's wing.  He
had cut Williamina's name on the turf at the castle gate of St Andrews
as a young lover, and thirty-four years after sat on an adjacent
gravestone and wondered why the name "should still agitate my heart."
Three months later he met Lady Jane in Edinburgh; she was then well
over seventy, and her daughter had been dead for seventeen years.  The
meeting was like opening a sepulchre.

/* I fairly softened myself, like an old fool, with recalling stories,
till I was fit for nothing but shedding tears and repeating verses for
the whole night.  This is sad work.  The very grave gives up its dead,
and time rolls back thirty years to add to my perplexities.[7] */

The emotion must have been deep which could leave such traces.  He put
it behind him, as he put all things of whose futility he was convinced,
but it survived in the secret places of his soul.  It is wrong, I
think, to argue that Scott was never seriously in love with Williamina,
that it was a mere boyish fancy, and that what attracted him was her
birth and the long-descended world in which she moved.  These things no
doubt played a part in his idealization of the girl, but the enduring
power of the idealization lay in the fact that she came to represent
for him the first ardour of his youth and all youth's dear and
unsubstantial visions.  No one can read his letters at the time without
concluding that this was that rare thing, a deep and enduring love.
Rare, I mean, among the fleeting, volcanic passions of the poets, who
wear their hearts on their sleeves and protest to the world that the
pang of an hour is an eternal sorrow.  Scott's passion was a profounder
emotion than any which the lives of Burns or Shelley or Byron can show.
He never saw Williamina again, and he did not wish to; there was no
bitterness in his memory of her, but there was regret--regret {55}
perhaps less for a thing of flesh and blood than for the "glory and the
freshness of a dream."  Somewhere at the back of his mind the thought
of her dwelt, and on the eve of any great misfortune she came to him in
sleep.  It is a strange tale, but one which carries the key to most of
his life, for we shall not understand Scott unless we realize how much
he lived in a secret world of his own, an inner world of dream and
memory, from which he brought great treasures, but which now and then
to his undoing invaded the world of facts.

[Sidenote: Charlotte Carpenter]

His heart, he has told us, was soon "handsomely pieced" and this time
the wooer had his feet on solid earth.  In July 1797 he set out with
his brother John and Adam Ferguson on a visit to the English lakes, and
at the little Cumberland watering-place of Gilsland met a young lady in
her early twenties, with a slight graceful figure, a suspicion of a
foreign accent, a clear olive complexion, jet black hair, and large
brown eyes.  He was afterwards to draw her portrait in Julia Mannering.
She was witty, sprightly, and full of hard Latin good sense.  Her name
was Charlotte Margaret Carpenter; her father had been Jean Charpentier,
a refugee from Lyons and a Royalist; her guardian (some have without
reason suspected a closer relationship) was Lord Downshire: and her
only brother, thanks to the Downshire interest, was doing well in the
East India service.  Scott went to a ball in his Light Horse
regimentals, fell in love, promptly offered marriage, and was accepted
subject to Lord Downshire's consent, which arrived early in October.
The elder Scott, now paralysed and dying, made no objection, and on
Christmas Eve 1797, the young couple were married in St Mary's Church,
Carlisle.

Scott was in wild spirits during his engagement, and raved about the
lady to his friends, but it seems certain that his heart was not
greatly affected.  He liked the idea of marriage as a step in that
progress in life to which one side of him (his father's side) was
vowed.  He wanted a cheerful companion for the road, and he {56}
believed that he had found one.  Twelve years afterwards he wrote to
Lady Abercorn:


Mrs Scott's match and mine was of our own making, and proceeded from
the most sincere affection on both sides, which has rather increased
than diminished during twelve years' marriage.  But it was something
short of love in all its forms, which I suspect people only feel once
in all their lives; folk who have been nearly drowned in bathing rarely
venturing a second time out of their depth.[8]


[Sidenote: 1797-99]

The brisk Julia Mannering was not Diana Vernon, and never entered into
his secret world.  But she made him an admirable wife, and no quarrel
clouded their thirty years of matrimony.  She loved show--"I am glad
you don't give up the cavalry, as I love anything that is stylish";
gaiety--in Edinburgh they went to the play nearly every night, and
consistently entertained up to and beyond their means; money, perhaps,
for what it brought.  She had no interest in the things of the mind,
and doubted whether thoughtful people could ever be happy.  She was not
a good manager, in spite of her French blood.  But she was loyal,
wholly free from jealousy, courageous, and her son once wrote to her "I
admire above all things your laughing philosophy."  When the fierce
light of popularity blazed on him, she was not shrivelled, as Mrs Grant
of Laggan feared she might be.  She had no part in her husband's inner
world of dreams, but she helped him abundantly to enjoy the externals
of life.

The young people took up house in the New Town of Edinburgh, first in
rooms in George Street, then in South Castle Street, and finally in the
house, No 39 North Castle Street, which was to be their home till 1826.
Scott was making about 150 a year at the Bar, his wife had a few
hundreds, and he had an allowance from his father, so he was able in
1798 to take a country cottage at Lasswade on the Esk, half a dozen
miles from Edinburgh.  There he was close to his friends, the Clerks at
Pennycuik, the Fraser Tytlers at Woodhouselee, Henry Mackenzie at
Auchendinny, not to speak of {57} grandees like the Duke of Buccleuch
and Lord Melville, whose acquaintance his Light Horse service had
brought him.  The Lasswade cottage was a little place by the roadside,
with a view, a garden, and one big living-room.  It was to be for Scott
the Sabine farm where he first held serious converse with the Muses.

[Sidenote: 1799]

Will Erskine had been in London, where he had met Matt Lewis, who in
that day of small things passed for a literary arbiter.  Lewis was
projecting a miscellany, and, when Erskine showed him Scott's Brger
translations, welcomed him as a contributor.  Presently Lewis came to
Edinburgh and summoned Scott to dine with him at his hotel.  The young
advocate approached the presence with awe, and was kindly received, and
the upshot was that his translation of Goethe's _Gtz von
Berlichingen_, through Lewis's offices, was issued by a London
bookseller, one Bell, in February 1799--the first publication to which
Scott put his name.  It is a performance of much the same merit, or
lack of merit, as the earlier "Lenore."  But meantime the poet, with
Lewis's miscellany in mind, was busy on better tasks.  He wrote the
ballads of "Glenfinlas," "The Gray Brother," and "The Eve of St
John"--prentice work, full of dubious echoes and conventional artifice,
yet with, as a foundation, the stuff of folk legend from which he was
soon to draw richer ore.

[Sidenote: Sheriff of the Forest]

The year 1799 was eventful.  In the spring the Scotts went to London,
where, under the guidance of Lewis, they had their first taste of
literary society.  In April death mercifully delivered his father from
his afflictions.  In the winter he met again James Ballantyne, now
publishing a newspaper in Kelso, and gave him some of his verses to
print: the result so pleased him that he proposed to Ballantyne a small
volume of old Border ballads.  Then came the death of the
Sheriff-deputy of Selkirkshire, Andrew Plummer of Middlestead, and
through the Melville and Buccleuch influence Scott was appointed to
succeed him.

So at twenty-eight we may regard him as being settled in life.  From
his Bar earnings, his wife's allowance, his {58} father's estate, and
his sheriffship, he had now nearly 1000 a year--which in the Scotland
of that age may be regarded as the equivalent of 3000 to-day.[9]  He
was happily married, with the beginnings of a family, and possessed a
large circle of attached friends.  He had found in literature an
engrossing hobby, though he had no intention of making it his chief
calling.  That must remain the law, but, having made little success of
advocacy, he was now a little weary of its drudgery, and looked rather
to legal appointments.  "My profession and I," he wrote, "came to stand
nearly upon the footing which honest Slender consoled himself on having
established with Mistress Anne Page: 'There was not great love between
us at the beginning, and it pleased heaven to decrease it on further
acquaintance.'"[10]  He held his father's view that the making of books
was not enough to fill the life of an active man; that, as he put it,
literature was a good staff but a bad crutch.  The drums and trumpets
of life still sounded for him, and he had one ear always at their
service, though the other might be rapt by the flutes of his secret
world.  His ambitions at this stage can be summed up in the letter of
his friend Charles Kerr of Abbotrule.


    With your strong sense and hourly ripening knowledge, that you must
    rise to the top of the tree in the Parliament House in due season I
    hold as certain as that Murray died Lord Mansfield.  But don't let
    many an Ovid, or rather many a Burns (which is hotter) be lost in
    you.  I rather think men of business have produced as good poetry
    in their by-hours as the professed regulars; and I don't see any
    sufficient reason why a Lord President Scott should not be a famous
    poet (in the vacation time), when we have seen a President
    Montesquieu step so nobly beyond the trammels in the _Esprit dea
    Loix_.[11]




[1] _Mem._, 456.

[2] _Mem._, 195-6.

[3] Lockhart, I.  162.

[4] Lockhart, I.  161-2.

[5] Lord Sands in _Sir Walter Scott's Cong_ (3rd edition, 1931) has
collected many details of the affair, and corrected some of Lockhart's
mistakes.

[6] Lockhart, I.  244: but see Adam Scott's _Sir Walter Scott's First
Love_, 157.

[7] _Journal_, II.  62.

[8] _Fam. Letters_, I.  167

[9] Jeffrey at the same age, after nine anxious years at the Bar, was
only earning 240.

[10] Introd. to _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, 1830.

[11] Lockhart, I.  315.




{59}

CHAPTER IV

LASSWADE AND ASHESTIEL

(1799-1810)


I

[Sidenote: 1799-1803]

Scott had now "taken sasine" of the Border, for he was the local
justiciar of a shire which held the upper waters of its most famous
rivers--the beautiful stretch of Tweed where it breaks from the hills,
the vale of Yarrow with its dens and lochs and wan shallows amid
grey-green bent, the long trench of Ettrick running into the heart of
lonely moorlands.  Here lay his principal occupation, and he had now an
excuse for constant visits.  But for five years his homes were still
Lasswade and Edinburgh, and he continued his precarious practice at the
Bar, varied with his duties as quartermaster of the Light Horse.  He
had the friends of his youth about him, his young wife made a gracious
hostess, and the Lothian cottage was the rendezvous of a distinguished
coterie.  His work as a collecter of ballads brought him into touch not
only with Scottish contemporaries like Skene and John Leyden and James
Hogg, but with the great English bibliophile, Richard Heber, who came
to Edinburgh in the winter of 1800; with Thomas Campbell the poet; with
George Ellis, diplomat, connoisseur, contributor to the _Anti-Jacobin_
and compiler of _Specimens of Ancient English Poetry_; with the crabbed
antiquary, Joseph Ritson, Bishop Percy's acidulous critic, who visited
Lasswade; with Wordsworth and his sister, who stayed with him on their
Scottish tour in 1803.  He went to London in the spring of that year,
where he met Mackintosh and Samuel Rogers, and studied the manuscripts
in the Duke of Roxburgh's {60} library; and visited Oxford, where he
breakfasted in Brasenose with Reginald Heber and suggested to the
latter the best lines in his Newdigate poem.  He paid many visits to
Scottish country-houses, like Harden and Bowhill, Bothwell and Hamilton
Palace, where he made friends with Harriet, Lady Dalkeith, the daughter
of Tommy Townshend; with Frances, the young Lady Douglas, a sister of
Lord Dalkeith and the stepdaughter of Charles Townshend; and above all,
with Lord Bute's daughter, Lady Louisa Stuart, who was to be to the end
one of his closest allies.  Scott had always in Lady Louisa's phrase
"an old-fashioned partiality for a gentlewoman," which was something
more than what Hogg described as his "only foible ... a too strong
leaning to the old aristocracy of the country."  During these years,
too, he was trying his prentice hand at letters--contributions to the
newly founded _Edinburgh Review_, an edition of the metrical romance of
_Sir Tristram_ which he believed to be the work of Thomas the Rhymer,
and above all that collecting and editing of folk ballads which took
shape in the _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_.

It is uncommon for a great creative writer to develop out of an
antiquary and an editor.  But it was Scott's happy fate to find at the
outset of his career precisely the task which was needed for the
nurture of his genius.  His memory was full of bad models, Augustan
jingles, faked Gothick _diablerie_ and rococo sentiment, and from them
he was delivered by the _Minstrelsy_ and restored to the ancient
simplicities of earth.  He came late to the business, for he was now
twenty-eight.  Wordsworth, a year his senior, and Coleridge a year his
junior, had already published their epoch-making _Lyrical Ballads_.  At
twenty-eight Byron and Shelley had written most of their best verse,
and long before that age Keats had completed his immortal bequest,
while Scott had nothing to show but a few indifferent lyrics and
"Germanised brats" of artificial ballads.  The impulse which led to the
_Minstrelsy_ was historical and patriotic rather than poetic.  He
wished to save the relics of a fast-vanishing {61} world, and with them
to preserve an authentic part of his country's tradition.  In his own
words:


By such efforts, feeble as they are, I may contribute something to the
history of my native country; the peculiar features of whose manners
and character are daily melting and dissolving into those of her sister
and ally.  And, trivial as may appear such an offering to the Manes of
a kingdom, once proud and independent, I hang it upon her altar with a
mixture of feelings which I shall not attempt to describe.[1]


In his wanderings about the Border Scott had for years been collecting
ballads, before it occurred to him that James Ballantyne at Kelso, with
his neat fount of type, might make a little volume out of them.  His
office as Sheriff brought him close to the heart of the most storied
part of the countryside, and his collection grew apace.  Much depended
upon local assistants and he was fortunate in finding several of the
best.  The ballads were not in books, and rarely even in broadsheets;
they lingered in corners of memory among the country folk, with odd
corruptions and misunderstandings, and could only be elicited by tact
and patience.

[Sidenote: John Leyden]

The first of his colleagues was John Leyden, one of those prodigies of
learning and zeal in learning which have often appeared among the
Scottish peasantry.  A shepherd's son from the Roxburghshire hills, he
had no regular schooling, but, "hydroptic with a sacred thirst," he
fought his way to Edinburgh University, and at the age of nineteen,
says Lockhart, confounded the professors by his portentous attainments
in most departments of knowledge.  Big-boned, garrulous, violent, with
great bodily strength and unflagging ardour, poetic, sentimental and
proud as Lucifer, he was a curious blend of the polymath and the Border
reiver.  "His first appearance," Scott wrote, "was somewhat appalling
to persons of low animal spirits."[2]  He was proficient in many
tongues, but declined to learn genteel English, on the ground, as he
said, that it would spoil his Scots.  Richard Heber found him in
Archibald Constable's little bookshop in the High Street, and
introduced him to {62} Scott, to whom he became an invaluable
lieutenant.  Leyden was a scholar, which Scott was not, and his austere
conscience about texts had a salutary influence upon his colleague.
Moreover he saw the project on ampler lines and would have none of
Ballantyne's one-volume idea.  "Dash it, does Mr Scott mean another
thin thing like _Goetz of Berlichingen_?  I have more than that in my
head myself; we shall turn out three or four such volumes at least."
He found instructive parallels in other literatures, he delved among
the broadsheets, and he tramped the Border on the quest for versions.

[Sidenote: James Hogg]

In 1803 Leyden went out as an assistant-surgeon to India, "a distant
and a deadly shore" from which he was not to return.  But in the
meantime Scott had discovered other helpers.  Penetrating into Yarrow
from the inn at Clovenfords, he had found lodging at the farm of
Blackhouse on the Douglas burn.  The farmer was a young man called
William Laidlaw, who entered eagerly into Scott's quest, and called in
to help him a certain James Hogg, once a shepherd of his father's, but
now herding at Ettrick House.  This Hogg came of interesting stock, for
there had been witches on the paternal side, and his maternal
grandfather, Will o' Phawhope, was the last man on the Border who had
spoken with the fairies.  It was a promising source for balladry, and
the ballads were duly forthcoming--some verses of "The Outlaw Murray,"
and the whole of the sixty-five stanzas of "Auld Maitland," taken down
from his mother's recitation.  In the summer of 1802 Laidlaw guided
Scott by the Loch o' the Lowes over the hills to Ettrick, and the
latter had his first meeting with Hogg.  "Jamie the Poeter" was sent
for to join the visitors at Ramsaycleuch, and Scott beheld a young man
of his own age, burly, brawny, blue-eyed and red-headed, who was in no
way abashed by the presence of the Sheriff.  They had an evening of
conviviality and anecdotage, and the next day Scott and Laidlaw visited
Hogg's mother.  She proved to be a formidable old woman, who criticized
with vigour and point the first volume of the _Minstrelsy_ which had
just appeared.  "There was never ane o' my {63} sangs prentit till ye
prentit them yoursel', and ye have spoilt them awthegither.  They were
made for singin' and no' for readin', but ye have broken the charm now,
an' they'll never be sung mair."  But she was clear as to the
_provenance_ of her songs, notably "Auld Maitland," about which Scott
and Leyden had been suspicious.  "My brother and me learned it and many
mae frae auld Andrew Moor, and he learned it frae auld Baby Mettlin,
who was housekeeper to the first laird o' Tushielaw.  She was said to
have been anither than a gude ane...."[3]

So came together two men who were destined to many years of
acquaintanceship and--intermittently--of friendship.  Hogg on one side
was the essential peasant, with all a peasant's hard shrewdness and
suspicion, but without the good-breeding which is common in that class
on the Border.  He was as uncouth a figure as Leyden, but lacked
Leyden's innate gentility.  He took more for granted than most men, and
as a rule managed to carry it off.  Unlike Burns he was almost wholly
uneducated, and his self-tuition never gave him any real mental
discipline.  He was clever enough to see that he must adopt character
parts and play with a heavy "make up," and the result was the Shepherd
of the _Noctes Ambrosian_ and the "Boar of the Forest."  He was
without delicate perceptions or the finer kind of pride; yet he was a
warm-hearted, engaging being, with a magnificent zest for life.  By
presuming much he attained to a good deal.  As has been well said, "the
stony social wall against which Burns so often and so bloodily battered
his proud head simply did not exist for his brother of Ettrick; and
what the one preached defiantly in song and speech the other innocently
practised."[4]  Of his talent there is no question.  If, in Scott's
words a "vile sixpenny planet" presided at his birth, so also did the
dancing star under which Beatrice was born.  He was, as he himself
claimed, the poet of {64} Fairyland, a remote diaphanous fairyland
where few can dispute his title; he had gifts of popular song and
produced the best in that line since Burns; he had the true ballad
sense, and could recapture the spirit of the Middle Ages with its
shivering jollity and scoffing credulity.  For the purpose of the
_Minstrelsy_ no man could have been better fitted.

[Sidenote: 1802-3]

The first two volumes, printed by James Ballantyne at Kelso, and
bearing the London imprint of Cadell and Davies, were published in
1802.  The second edition and the third volume, which appeared a year
later, were issued by Longman, Hurst and Co.  It met with an immediate
success, and was reprinted several times during the following decade.
The introduction and notes, which a contemporary reviewer declared to
hold material for a hundred romances, reveal how deeply Scott had read
himself into the literature and life of the Border.  The preliminary
essay, though much of it would now be regarded as unhistorical, gives a
brilliant panorama of Border history and a sympathetic study of the
origins of the ballad.  This editorial work was an admirable training
for the poet, and still more for the prose writer.

[Sidenote: The _Minstrelsy_]

The _Minstrelsy_ is a milestone both in Scott's life and in the story
of Scottish letters.  Motherwell, who looked upon it with a critical
eye, estimated that it gave to the world not less than forty-three
pieces never before accessible--among them that marvel of the
half-world of dreams, "The Wife of Usher's Well" and some of the best
riding ballads like "Johnny Armstrong's Goodnight" and "Jamie Telfer."
Without Scott these things might have survived, but only in shapeless
fragments.  Moreover, he has given us versions of many others, prepared
by one who was himself a poet, and these versions remain to-day the
standard text.  Scott was modest about the performance.  "I have
contrived," he wrote to a friend, "to turn a very slender portion of
literary talent to account by a poetical record of the antiquities of
the Border."  That was his purpose rather than a scholarly edition of
different texts, and he {65} therefore not unnaturally included in the
volumes modern imitations, based on authentic legends, by himself and
Leyden.

His handling of his material has been often criticized.  With Leyden's
eye on him, he was more careful with his texts than Bishop Percy had
been, and his work passed the scrutiny of the austere Ritson.  But he
had neither the scholar's conscience nor the scholar's apparatus of a
modern editor like Professor Child of Harvard.  The question of ballad
origins is one of the most intricate of literary problems, and it is
easy to be over-dogmatic.  The wandering violers of genius, who, as I
believe, sometime in the sixteenth century made the greatest of the
ballads, left no manuscripts, and the folk memory plays odd tricks, now
adapting lines to secure a local point, now boldly amending that of
which the first meaning has been lost.  Scott was reasonably
conscientious, but his primary aim was to achieve a standard text--a
literary not a scientific purpose; and he avowedly made up a text out
of a variety of copies.  Such has been the method of popular editors
since literature began.  But it seems clear that he never attempted to
palm off a piece of his own manufacture as an old ballad, and that,
with rare exceptions, he confined his emendations to making sense out
of nonsense.  Now and then, as in "Jamie Telfer" where he had no text
to work from, he interpolated a good deal, very much to the ballad's
advantage, and in "Kinmont Willie," where he had only a few
half-forgotten lines, he produced what is substantially a work of his
own.  For the rest he was a skilful, and, up to his lights, a faithful
editor of authentic ancient material.[5]

The task played a major part in the direction of his genius.  Constant
familiarity with the noble bareness of the ballads did much to purify
his taste, and to {66} weaken--unfortunately it did not wholly
destroy--the dominance of the bad models of his youth.  It was an
education in directness, in economy of speech at moments of high drama,
in the simplicities of great passion.  Wordsworth writes the story of
Helen of Kirkconnell, and achieves this masterpiece of the falsetto:--

  Proud Gordon, maddened by the thoughts
  That through his brain were travelling,
  Rushed forth, and at the heart of Bruce
  He launched a deadly javelin!
  Fair Ellen saw it as it came,
  And, starting up to meet the same,
  Did with her body cover
  The youth, her chosen lover.

The ballad in the _Minstrelsy_ runs:

  I wish I were where Helen lies!
  Night and day on me she cries;
  And I am weary of the skies,
  For her sake that died for me.

The penultimate line is Scott's own; not much trace here of Brger or
Matt Lewis.  Take again, this verse from "Sir Patrick Spens"--

  They hadna sail'd a league, a league,
    A league but barely three,
  When the lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud,
    And gurly grew the sea.

The last couplet is almost certainly Scott's.  And there is no doubt at
all about his authorship of these stanzas from "Kinmont Willie."

  He has ta'en the table wi' his hand,
  He garr'd the red wine spring on hie--
  "Now Christ's curse on my head," he said,
  "But avenged on Lord Scrope I'll be!

  "O is my basnet a widow's curch?
    Or my lance a wand of the willow tree?
  Or my arm a lady's lily hand
    That an English lord should lightly me?"

The versifier has become a poet.


{67}

II

[Sidenote: 1804]

The lord-lieutenant of Selkirkshire was a finicking old gentleman who
had once been a lord of the Bedchamber, and was very particular about
the fashion of his neck-cloths.  To his orderly soul it seemed wrong
that the Sheriff should have no dwelling in the Forest, where he was
bound by statute to reside for part of the year, but should live in the
environs of Edinburgh and behave more like a cavalry officer than a
Crown official.  He conveyed his views to Scott, and, after protest,
Scott submitted.  In the spring of 1804 he was looking for a house on
the Border.  Harden was suggested, but Borthwick water was a bad centre
for county business, and he finally decided to take a lease of
Ashestiel, the property of a cousin on his mother's side, who was then
in India.  It was a busy and eventful year for Scott.  He had to pack
off his scapegrace brother Daniel to the West Indies, and, as a
trustee, wind up his uncle Robert Scott's estate.  Rosebank near Kelso
was left to him, which he sold profitably, and with his share of the
residue he found himself richer by some 6000.  In the late summer he
left Lasswade (the Gandercleugh of the novels) and moved to
Ashestiel--a fortunate young man, said the world, with an income of
well over 1000, a son of three years and daughters of five and one,
perfect bodily health, a comfortable little niche at the Bar, and a
rising literary reputation.

The house, half-farm, half-manor, and very ancient in parts, stood on a
steep bank which a strip of meadow-land separated from Tweed.  There
was a little farm attached, with fields of old pasture; the garden was
a beautiful old-world place with green terraces and tall holly hedges.
It was reasonably convenient for Edinburgh and the county town; but it
was also a sanctuary, for Tweed beneath it was unbridged and the only
road was by a difficult ford, while it fulfilled the traditional
desideratum of a Scots dwelling, being seven miles from kirk and
market.  The place was in the most haunted part of the Border.  There
the Tweed valley is as yet {68} a mountain glen, for the river has some
miles to go before it breaks from the hills at Yair into the champaign
of the lower strath.  Behind it to the south lies a dark field of
heathery mountains, still clad at that period on the lower slopes with
the wildwood of the old Ettrick Forest.  An easy pass leads to Yarrow,
with Ettrick beyond it and Esk and Ewes, while to the north lie Gala
water and the vale of Leader.  Minchmoor, across which Montrose fled
after Philiphaugh, hangs like a cloud in the west; the road upstream
passes the tower of Elibank, the home of Scott's ancestress Muckle
Mou'd Meg, and leads by the little Peeblesshire burghs to the pastoral
loveliness of Manor and Holms, the haunts of Merlin Sylvestris, and the
wild moorland where Tweed has its springs.  There were pleasant or
curious neighbours at hand--the Pringles at Yair, the Laidlaws ("Laird
Nippy") at the Peel, the Plummers at Sunderland Hall with its excellent
library, and, across the Yarrow bounds, the Buccleuchs at Bowhill,
Willie Laidlaw at Blackhouse, and Scott's new friend Mungo Park at the
cottage of Foulshiels.  Legend and ballad were linked to every field
and burn, and the landscape most exquisitely conformed to its human
associations, for that corner of Tweedside seems to me especially in
tune with Border romance.  It is at once wild and habitable, the
savagery of nature is tempered by a quality of gracious pastoral, and
Tweed, with its pools and runs and gleaming shallows, has not lost its
mountain magic.

But Scott could not buy Ashestiel, and he would not be content for long
with a hired dwelling.  He wanted a home of his own, which he could
beautify at his pleasure and leave to his son.  He began to cast about
for a permanent habitation, and his eyes fell on the little estate of
Broadmeadows, just across the hills at the point where Yarrow leaves
its bare upper valley for the wooded gorge overhung by Newark's
"birchen bower."  The place would be presently in the market, and the
proceeds of the sale of Rosebank might be used to purchase it.  It is
hard not to regret that this project failed.  Broadmeadows stood on a
narrow shelf above {69} the stream, and no ambition could have made of
it anything but a modest country house; moreover Scott would not have
been able to spend money on buying land, for he would have been
surrounded, not by bonnet lairds very ready to sell, but by the
inviolable domain of Buccleuch.  Perhaps it was not really the kind of
thing of which he dreamed: his taste was always more for the broader
champaign country which he had learned to love at Sandy Knowe and
Kelso.  At any rate, as we shall see, his uncle Robert's legacy was
used for a very different purpose.

[Sidenote: 1805]

In his new home Scott found a refuge where he could turn from the
common interests of his bustling life to the serious cultivation of the
Muses.  Which of the Nine was to be his chosen deity was not yet clear.
But from his work on the ballads one thing remained over with which he
proposed to try his fortune.  He moved into Ashestiel in the early
autumn, and about the same time sent to the printers a poem of his own,
which had proved to be too long for inclusion in the _Minstrelsy_.  He
and his family spent New Year's Day, 1805, on Tweedside, journeying
thither in a snowstorm, preceded by "a detachment of brandy and
mince-pies" in case they were beleaguered by the weather.  In the
following week the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ was given to the world.

[Sidenote: Publication of the _Lay_]

It had been long simmering in his brain.  Some years before young Lady
Dalkeith at Bowhill had asked him to write a ballad on the subject of a
mysterious goblin, called Gilpin Homer, whose doings were a legend on
the Border.  At Lasswade in 1802 he began his attempt to carry out the
command, and, having a year or two before heard Sir John Stoddart
recite Coleridge's unpublished "Christabel" and being haunted by its
rhythm,[6] he adopted in the opening stanzas the same manner.  Erskine,
to whom he read them, did not care for them, but they stuck in his
memory and presently he changed his opinion and encouraged his friend
to continue.  That autumn Scott finished the first canto, while he was
laid {70} up in Musselburgh lodgings owing to a kick from a trooper's
horse.  Next year he had several cantos to read to George Ellis under
an oak in Windsor Forest, and in the autumn the Wordsworths heard four
of the six during their visit to Lasswade "partly read and partly
recited in an enthusiastic style of chant," and were delighted by "the
novelty of the manner, the clear picturesque descriptions, and the easy
flowing energy of much of the verse."  Scott had soon abandoned the
"Christabel" music, and adopted the rapid octosyllables which were to
be the staple of his narrative verse.

His purpose was consciously that of the Minstrel.  In the first place
he had written the poem at the command of the wife of one who would one
day be the head of his clan, and this duty was never forgotten;
compliments and allusions to the family of Buccleuch star the poem, and
the felicitous use of the old harper is a piece of pure feudal loyalty.
It is dedicated to Lord Dalkeith, and the beautiful close is at once a
tribute to a great lady, and the confession of a dream then filling his
mind (he was considering the purchase of Broadmeadows) of a lettered
life to be spent in the sacred places of chivalry.

            ... But still
  When summer smiled on sweet Bowhill,
  And July's eve, with balmy breath,
  Wav'd the bluebells on Newark heath;
  When throstles sung in Hareheadshaw,
  And corn was green on Carterhaugh,
  And flourish'd broad Blackandro's oak,
  The aged Harper's soul awoke.
  Then would he sing achievements high,
  And circumstance of chivalry,
  Till the rapt traveller would stay,
  Forgetful of the closing day;
  And noble youths, the strain to hear,
  Forsook the hunting of the deer;
  And Yarrow, as he roll'd along,
  Bore burden to the Minstrel's song.


Again, faithful to the creed which he expressed in his review of
Southey's translation of "Amadis of Gaul," he held that a metrical
romance should be episodic, a {71} rhapsody--linked together more
tightly indeed than the old rhapsodies, since it was meant to be read
and not heard, but loose enough to permit the inclusion of wide
variations of matter and manner.  He also claimed the minstrel's
historical licence.  The events of the _Lay_ must have taken place
about 1560--not seventy years, but several centuries, after Michael
Scott's death; not in the age of faith, when people made their prayer
to St Mary of the Cross, but in the first stress of the Reformation,
when the Church was toppling and three years earlier St Mary's chapel
had been burned.

[Sidenote: Character of the _Lay_]

The _Lay_, Scott told Wordsworth, "has the merit of being written with
heart and good will, and for no other reason than to discharge my mind
of the ideas which from infancy have rushed upon it."  That is its
primary charm--it is the first and freshest of Scott's poems, the one
most directly sprung from the memories of his youth.  That is why, too,
it is so hard to criticize for one who has had a similar upbringing and
has inherited the same loyalties.  Consideration of Scott as a poet
must be reserved for a later chapter.  Here we are rather concerned
with the _Lay_ as an event in its author's career.  He was modestly
convinced that it would have some success, since it was the ballad
manner enlarged and adapted to a modern audience, and the ballad manner
had already its vogue: he thought that its horseman's verse and
atmosphere of high romance might be new things to a public a little
weary of the decorous strains of the Augustans.  It appeared at a
fortunate time, for Cowper was the only popular poet, and he was not
romantic: Wordsworth and Coleridge were not even names to the ordinary
reader: Burns was inaccessible to most, and the Popian style had
suffered a sad decline.  Upon a world weary of the old measures Scott
burst with a new melody, and to those once captured by the false
glamour of Mrs Radcliffe and Matt Lewis, and already sated, he brought
authentic magic and enduring romance.  The blemishes of the _Lay_ are
there for a child to note.  The main plot is faulty and much of the
workmanship is hasty and imperfect.  There are relapses {72} into sham
Gothick, and Augustan banality, and insipid sweetness.  But it is full
of noble things, fuller perhaps than any other of Scott's poems--the
version of "Dies Ir," the ballad of "Rosabelle," the ride of William
of Deloraine, the muster of the moss-troopers; there are moments of
grim ballad simplicity which he rarely achieved again: and out of
resounding place names and family names he gets the true Homeric speed
and mystery.

With the _Lay_ Scott became famous, no longer a connoisseur esteemed by
the elect, but the most popular poet of the day.  Fox and Pitt alike
praised it, the latter making the shrewd comment that some of the
effects were what he expected in painting, but had not thought capable
of being given by poetry.  Edition followed edition at handsome prices
to an extent unparalleled in the record of British poetry.  The critics
were kind, and Jeffrey in the _Edinburgh Review_ was notably civil,
though he did not satisfy Scott's friends like Ellis and John Hookham
Frere.  He complained, oddly enough, that the poem lacked incident, and
he also considered the style parochial.  "Mr Scott," he wrote (and it
is one of the inspired follies in the history of criticism), "must
either sacrifice his Border prejudices, or offend his readers in other
parts of the Empire."  Scott had 169, 6s. in royalties from the first
edition, and, when a second was called for, sold the copyright to
Longmans for 500, receiving also 100 to buy a horse.



III

[Sidenote: 1802]

About the beginning of the century there was a stirring among the dry
bones of the book-trade throughout the land.  It was part of a
universal movement which had been going on for the last decade, owing
to a wider diffusion of ideas and a consequent impulse toward
self-education; Napoleon in his youth, observing it as he observed all
things, had toyed with the notion of becoming a bookseller.  In 1805
Edinburgh, already the centre of a vigorous idiomatic culture, was also
becoming {73} celebrated for its activity in printing and publishing.
People were reading more, buying more books, cultivating a taste for
magazines--a natural result of the tension of spirit produced by a
great war.

This revival, so far as Scotland was concerned, was largely due to a
good-looking, full-faced lad, Archibald Constable by name, who
seventeen years before, at the age of fourteen, had come from the East
Neuk of Fife to be an apprentice in Peter Hill's bookshop in the High
Street.  He saw the decrepit state of Edinburgh bookselling, and set
himself to reform it.  At twenty he married the daughter of a
prosperous printer and used her dowry to start business next year on
his own account.  He was inspired by a passionate love of books and all
things connected with them, and he had that rare combination, the
connoisseurship of the bibliophile and a sound literary judgment.
Above all he was an excellent man of business, with an acute perception
of the popular taste and its likely developments, and with the courage
to back his fancy.  Presently the youth grew into a handsome, portly
being with an impressive manner, popular for his generosity and
good-fellowship, and generally respected for his business talents and
patent success.  His foible was less pride, for he had that diplomatic
skill which demands at least a pretence of modesty, than overweening
ambition.  He was resolved to create a famous business and to be the
Mcenas of his age; to build up a landed family, too, for he had the
traditional Scots passion for acres, and the estate of Balniel in his
native shire was to be its foundation.

[Sidenote: 1805]

He had the wit to see that the new readers he wished to cultivate were
mostly liberal in politics, so his firm acquired a Whig atmosphere.
There was a young English clergyman in Edinburgh, Mr Sydney Smith, who
had a plan for an enlightened journal of opinion.  In 1802 Constable
took up the scheme, greatly enlarged it, and started the _Edinburgh
Review_ with the parson as editor.  Sydney Smith was soon succeeded by
Francis Jeffrey, the most brilliant of the young illuminates of the
Scots Bar, and the review sprang at once into a wide {74} popularity,
with the editor and Brougham and Homer as its chief contributors.
Scott was also included, for the _Edinburgh's_ politics at the start
were not extreme.  The review, in the publisher's eyes, was less an
enterprise embarked upon for its own sake than an advertisement on a
grand scale for the house of Constable.  He was now, in the year 1805,
by far the most commanding figure in the Scottish book world, and
already a name of repute among London publishers.  He had been
associated with Longmans in the publication of the _Lay_, and had his
eye on the Border Sheriff, three years his senior, who, like himself,
seemed both to know what the public wanted and to be a pioneer in new
paths.

[Sidenote: James Ballantyne]

Scott was not as yet bound to any publisher, but he had his favourite
printer, James Ballantyne, the friend of his Kelso schooldays.
Ballantyne had none of Constable's magnificence.  He was short, stout,
bearded and pompous, a great _bon vivant_, a merry companion, a
preposterous, endearing creature, with one eyebrow drooping and the
other cocked to heaven.  He was faithful, affectionate, and
scrupulously honest, and so far he had been as unsuccessful as other
good-natured men.  In Kelso he was doing nothing in his attorney's
practice, and not very much as the editor of the local paper.  But as a
printer he had genuine gifts, and, as we have seen, the _Minstrelsy_
had been entrusted to him.  Scott did more for his friend.  He had
always a peculiar tenderness for an old crony; it seemed to him that
Ballantyne's talents as a printer demanded a wider sphere, so he
encouraged him to migrate to Edinburgh.  In the capital he might get a
good deal of miscellaneous work--perhaps the printing of some new
journal, or a Scottish Annual Register, and he might also have a share
in the production of law process-papers.  Ballantyne jumped at the
idea, borrowed some hundreds from Scott for the move, and by the end of
1802 was established with his two presses in a dingy little shop at
Abbeyhill in the precincts of Holyroodhouse, where the third volume of
the _Minstrelsy_ was printed.

At first things went well.  Scott procured orders for {75} the new
venture, including the printing of the _Lay_, and Ballantyne
transferred himself to more commodious premises in the Canongate.  But
with the enlargement of his business came the need for further capital,
for neither of the pair seems to have understood that more money must
be risked before bigger profits could be won.  The success of the _Lay_
embarrassed the printer and he applied to Scott for another loan.  The
request came at a moment when Scott had suddenly marched into literary
fame, and saw before him a career very different from that of an
advocate in small practice.  He had come to sit very loose to that
calling, and was beginning to envisage the future in a new light.
Ashestiel was increasing his love for the life of a country gentleman,
he had an assured income of something over 1000 a year, and the
prospect of soon obtaining a well-paid post as one of the Clerks of the
Supreme Court.  This would give him the necessary crutch, and
literature would add a welcome staff.[7]  But why should he confine
literature to the work of his own pen?  He had in his mind poems which
he meant to write, histories too, and a vast amount of editing.  But
might he not also have a share in the commercial side, for he had
always an eager interest in affairs, and loved the atmosphere of them
as much as Dr Johnson when he became Mr Thrale's executor.  He had
enough of his father in him to respect those engaged in the practical
work of the world.  James Ballantyne's business seemed to offer the
chance of a lifetime.  Here was one who understood printing and had
already made a name for his work; he himself would feed the press with
his own productions and those of his friends: the liabilities seemed
trifling, the profits a certainty.  So he gave up all thought of the
purchase of Broadmeadows, and in the early months of 1805 used his
uncle Robert's legacy to buy a third share in Ballantyne's firm.  The
arrangement was kept profoundly confidential, only Erskine being in the
secret.

On this matter much arrant nonsense has been written.  It has been
condemned as somehow discreditable and {76} dishonest, incompatible
with Scott's position as a judge and a prospective Court official.  A
barrister, it has been urged, should not be a partner in a secret
commercial enterprise.  I can see no warrant for the view.  Before the
modern development of joint-stock companies one of the commonest ways
of investing spare capital was by lending money to some enterprise and
receiving in lieu of interest a certain share in the profits.  It was
no more the custom to blazon such investments abroad than it is the
custom to-day for a man to broadcast his share holdings.  There was
nothing to be ashamed of in investing money in the printing trade.
Books were the fashion, fine printing was becoming the hobby of all
cultivated men, and what hobby more suitable for a man of Scott's
tastes and position than this association with an old friend in a craft
to which his interest was deeply pledged?  Had Scott remained a lawyer
and nothing else, I cannot see how his association with the Ballantyne
business could be criticized.

[Sidenote: The Ballantyne Partnership]

Criticism arises because he was a writer, and because he and his
partner were the men they were.  The step he took in 1805 was not
dishonourable, but it was rash and ill-advised.  Scott himself had a
sound instinct for business, when he had the time to give his mind to
it; but he could not, owing to the conditions of his life, pay much
attention to the printing house of the Canongate.  The mere fact that
the matter was kept secret excluded it from the atmosphere of common
sense.  It became a part of that inner world of his to which he was
prone to retire, a magical device for earning easy money, and his usual
robust intelligence was never brought into play.  Nor was Ballantyne
the man to supplement his partner's defects.  He was enthusiastic,
excitable, a muddler in finance, incapable of presenting at any time an
accurate statement of his assets and liabilities.  Neither he nor
Scott, as I have said, realized that the more a business extends the
more capital it needs, since incomings have a way of lagging behind
outgoings.  He had no capital, except two printing presses cumbered
with debts, and as his orders increased he must have recourse to his
{77} partner, and to the banks.  Uncle Robert's legacy was bound to be
only the first of the contributions from Ashestiel.

The venture was peculiarly dangerous for a man of letters.  Scott
wanted grist for the Ballantyne mill, and therefore he was fertile in
proposals to publishers for tasks to be undertaken by him and executed
in the Canongate.  This was to involve him in much laborious hack-work,
which was scarcely worthy of his genius.  Moreover--and this is the one
point on which a moral criticism is perhaps justified--it obscured his
judgment of commercial values, and, though he did not realize it, put
more than one publisher in a false position.  If Scott recommended a
book, and Ballantyne printed it, Scott had no liability and he had a
share of the printing profits, but the publishers were unable, through
their ignorance of the partnership, to discount the bias in his
judgment.  Lockhart has written on this point with fairness and
reason:--


It is an old saying, that wherever there is a secret there must be
something wrong; and dearly did he pay the penalty for the mystery in
which he had chosen to involve this transaction.  It was his rule, from
the beginning, that whatever he wrote or edited must be printed at that
press; and had he catered for it only as author and sole editor, all
had been well; but had the booksellers known his direct pecuniary
interest in keeping up and extending the operation of these types, they
would have taken into account his lively imagination and sanguine
temperament, as well as his taste and judgment, and considered, far
more deliberately than they often did, his multifarious recommendations
of new literary schemes, coupled though these were with some dim
undertaking that, if the Ballantyne press were employed, his own
literary skill would be at his friend's disposal for the general
superintendence of the undertaking.  On the other hand, Scott's
suggestions were, in many cases, perhaps in the majority of them,
conveyed through Ballantyne, whose habitual deference to his opinion
induced him to advocate them with enthusiastic zeal; and the printer,
who had thus pledged his personal authority for the merits of the
proposed scheme, must have felt himself committed to the booksellers,
and could hardly refuse with decency to take a certain share of the
pecuniary risk, by allowing the time and method of his own payment to
be {78} regulated according to the employer's convenience.  Hence, by
degrees, was woven a web of entanglement from which neither Ballantyne
nor his adviser had any means of escape....[8]


[Sidenote: 1806-14]

For the next nine years Scott led the life of a miscellaneous writer at
its busiest.  He must feed the Canongate mill which was to bring him
fortune, and he must find scope for his eager interest in books and the
life of the past and a use for the store of varied knowledge which he
had been accumulating since boyhood.  Many of his tasks must be dreary
collar-work, but that did not deter one who in his father's office had
learned to toil at uncongenial labours; most must be obscure and
anonymous, but that rather pleased him.  Some of the best had preferred
anonymity--Swift, for example, whose works he thought of editing, and
who had scarcely acknowledged one of his books, and his old friend
Henry Mackenzie.  He had no special desire for literary fame, and he
had no delusions about his own talents.  A Border laird was his ideal
rather than a distinguished man of letters, but a Border laird must
have an agreeable hobby to fill his time and money to support his
dignity.

His mind turned first to those editions of the English classics which
no gentleman's library could be without.  Literature was not yet an
article of popular consumption--he himself was to assist in making it
that--and the booksellers' chief hope lay in the cabinets of lettered
squires and the stately libraries of the great, which must have a quota
of books to furnish the spaces between the family portraits.  These
books must be edited, and the name of the author of the _Lay_ would
well become a title-page.  Poetry, as he told Ellis a year or two
later, was a scourging crop which should not be overdone, but editing
was to be likened to a "good crop of turnips and peas, extremely useful
for those whose circumstances do not admit of their giving their farm a
summer fallow."

[Sidenote: 1808]

[Sidenote: Edition of Dryden]

His first scheme, suggested to Constable, which mercifully came to
nothing, was for a complete edition of the British poets, ancient and
modern, in at least a hundred tomes.  There was also a proposal to
Longmans for a {79} _corpus_ of the English chroniclers.  Finally Mr
Miller of Albemarle Street commissioned an edition of Dryden in
eighteen volumes at fifty guineas a volume.  Scott plunged with zest
into the task, read widely, visited the English libraries, employed a
staff of amanuenses and copyists.  He would have nothing to do with an
expurgated text, which was Ellis's suggestion.  "I will not castrate
John Dryden.  I would as soon castrate my own father, as I believe
Jupiter did of yore....  It is not passages of ludicrous indelicacy
that corrupt the manners of the people--it is the sonnets which a
prurient genius ... sings _virginibus puerisque_--it is the sentimental
slang, half lewd, half methodistic, that debauches the
understanding."[9]  The subject was after his own heart, for he had an
instinctive comprehension of the seventeenth century, and Dryden with
his robust intelligence and magnificent ardour was the kind of poet he
was well able to understand.  Dryden was not a poet's poet, any more
than his editor; as Wordsworth complained, "his is not a poetical
genius."  The edition was published in April 1808, and was well
received, Hallam reviewing it sympathetically in the _Edinburgh_.
Indeed it is an excellent piece of work, which Mr Saintsbury has called
one of the best edited books in the language.  Scott proved himself an
accurate, laborious and sagacious commentator, and his life of Dryden
is at once good biography and good criticism.  There is an excellent
passage on the respective values of the rapier and the bludgeon in
satire, some acute comments on Dryden's religious beliefs, and on his
character--"his indelicacy was like the forced impudence of a bashful
man"; Dryden's prose is judiciously praised and his intellectual limits
(with which the editor sympathized) shrewdly defined:--


He is often contented to leave the path of argument which must have
conducted him to the fountain of truth, and to resort with indolence or
indifference to the leaky cisterns which had been hewn out by former
critics.[10]


Never is the editor's style more spirited than when discussing Dryden's
literary earnings.

{80}

[Sidenote: 1809-14]

The next main venture in editing, the _Swift_ which took six years to
complete, was less fortunate.  The price indeed was nearly
doubled--1500 from Constable; but, though the Dean of St Patrick's was
one of Scott's favourite authors, he did not start, as in the case of
Dryden, with a sound knowledge of the times, and he had not the
interest in the intrigues of Whig and Tory that he had in Commonwealth
and Restoration and Revolution.  Moreover, to understand the
intricacies of Swift's character required a sharper psychological
insight than Scott possessed, and to assess the virtues of his style a
more fastidious ear for prose rhythms.  Yet the preliminary memoir is
well worth reading, for it is full of strong good sense, and sheds much
light on Scott's own philosophy of life and letters.  In particular
there is a passage on the art of fiction, which is one of the few
occasions when Scott theorizes on the literary form in which he was to
win his chief successes.[11]  I quote two other extracts which
illuminate Scott's own code.  Take this on inverted snobbery:--


The whim of publicly sending the prime minister into the House of
Commons to call out the first secretary of state, only to let him know
that he would not dine with him if he dined late; the insisting that a
duke should make him the first visit merely because he was a
duke--these, and other capricious exertions of despotic authority over
the usual customs of society, are unworthy of Swift's good sense and
penetration.  In a free country, the barriers of etiquette between the
ranks of society are but frail and low, the regular gate is open, and
the tax of admittance a trifle; and he who, out of mere wantonness,
overleaps the fence, may be justly supposed not to have attained a
philosophical indifference to the circumstance of being born in the
excluded district.[12]


And this, which may be taken as the editor's own rule of life:--


From the life of Swift, therefore, may be derived the important lesson,
that, as no misfortunes should induce genius to despair, no rank or
fame, however elevated, should encourage its possessor to
presumption.[13]

{81}

[Sidenote: 1809-10]

[Sidenote: Miscellaneous Editions]

On the upper shelves of old libraries we may still find handsome
quartos and octavos, the fruits of the Ballantyne press, which contain
Scott's other editorial labours, for the _Dryden_ and the _Swift_ were
only the larger fish in a great shoal.  There was Sir Ralph Sadleir's
_State Papers_ in three volumes, and Somers's _Tracts_ in thirteen, the
_Memoirs_ of Sir Henry Slingsby and of Captain Hodgson, of Captain
Carleton and of Robert Gary, Earl of Monmouth, besides lesser
antiquarian _curiosa_.  These things delighted Scott as an historian,
and they provided work for James Ballantyne, but they did not pay the
publishers.  There was even a vast edition of the British novelists,
projected by young Mr Murray, which fortunately had to be postponed.
It was all a colossal labour, undertaken partly from enthusiasm, partly
for gain, and largely out of kindness, for it gave Scott a chance of
doing a good turn to less fortunate writers than himself.  "I like
well," Constable once complained, "Scott's ain bairns, but Heaven
preserve me from those of his following!"  "It was enough to tear me to
pieces," Scott once told Lockhart, "but there was a wonderful
exhilaration about it all; my blood was kept at fever-pitch--I felt as
if I could have grappled with anything and everything; then, there was
hardly one of my schemes that did not afford me the means of serving
some poor devil of a brother author.  There were always huge piles of
material to be arranged, sifted, or indexed--volumes of extracts to be
transcribed--journeys to be made hither and thither, for ascertaining
the little facts and dates--in short, I could commonly keep half a
dozen of the ragged regiment of Parnassus in tolerable ease."  Like
coal-wagons linked to an engine, Lockhart suggested.  Scott
laughed--"Yes, but there was a cursed lot of dung carts too."[14]


[Sidenote: 1808]

Nor were books all.  There was a steady flow of contributions to the
_Edinburgh_ on topics as diverse as Spenser and cookery books, Ossian
and Colonel Thornton's Sporting Tour.  Presently Scott began to find
this {82} connexion trying to his temper.  Jeffrey, the editor,
reviewed his work in a strain of high condescension, not free from
acidity, and the politics of the review seemed to be becoming not
Whiggish merely, but Jacobin.  The number which contained the criticism
of Marmion contained a paper on current politics which made the shrewd
Mr Murray calculate that the alliance could not last, since "Walter
Scott has feelings both as a gentleman and a Tory which these people
have wounded."  An article on the Spanish situation, which we should
describe to-day as "defeatist," was the last straw, and Scott withdrew
his subscription.[15]  In October 1808 Mr Murray arrived at Ashestiel
with a proposal for a rival to the _Edinburgh_, a Tory review to be
called the _Quarterly_, with behind it the old staff of the
_Anti-Jacobin_, men like Canning and Hookham Frere, and with Heber,
Ellis and Southey as contributors.  Scott was offered and refused the
editorship, which went to William Gifford, but he gladly promised his
support, and thereby began a long connexion with the new review, under
both Gifford and Lockhart.  Some of his best essays appeared in its
pages, for Scott, like other men of letters, had to have some outlet
for episodic work, _causeries_ which were often the expansion of his
table talk.  He was always a kindly and courteous critic, and held
himself aloof from the bludgeoning treatment of the "Cockney school"
and the new Jacobinical poets, for he had in literature a true spirit
of freemasonry.

[Sidenote: Political Partisanship]

But the alliance with the _Quarterly_ was to bring him unhappily into
the rancours of the political world.  Scott escaped the maleficent
extension of these rancours into literature, and never fell into the
"facetious and rejoicing ignorance" of the swashbucklers on both sides.
For, let it be remembered that the one was as bad as the other, and
that the venom of the _Quarterly_ towards Keats was paralleled by the
savagery of the _Edinburgh_ towards Wordsworth and Coleridge.  The
brisk {83} complacency of Jeffrey, which made Wordsworth's toe itch for
his hinder parts,[16] was bound sooner or later to revolt a man of
Scott's fundamental reverence and deep historic sense.  But in his
alliance with the _Edinburgh's_ opponents he did more than profess a
different philosophy of life; he aligned himself definitely as a
political partisan and acquired a party colour, which was, not
altogether happily, to affect his career.  Political views he had
always had, but hitherto they had been confined to two simple
loyalties--an affection for Britain, which made him a furious opponent
of all that crippled her arms in the greatest war that she had ever
fought, and a still deeper and more abiding affection for Scotland.  To
the illuminati of the _Edinburgh_, as to the illuminati in every age,
such simple emotions were scarcely intelligible--they might be
condescendingly approved, but could never be shared.  Lockhart has a
tale of Scott walking back with Jeffrey from a discussion on some
proposed Scottish legal change, when the latter tried to treat the
matter as a joke.  "No, no," Scott cried, "'tis no laughing matter.
Little by little, whatever your wishes may be, you will destroy and
undermine, until nothing of what makes Scotland shall remain."  And he
turned away to hide his tears.[17]

But now he had gone further, and had enlisted under the Tory flag, and,
being a born fighter, was certain to lay lustily about him.  A party
affiliation is doubtless a good thing for the ordinary citizen, but it
is less good for one who, not being a politician, acquires from his
temperament the politician's restless combativeness.  It would have
been well for his future peace if he had taken Lord Dalkeith's
advice:--"Talk not, think not, of Politics.  Go to the hills and
converse with the Spirit of the Fell, or any spirit but the Spirit of
Party, which is the fellest fiend that ever disturbed harmony and
social pleasure."[18]


Throughout all his editorial and journalistic labours the "regiment of
horse" was still exercising in his {84} head.  He was still in his
dreams leading his troops by moonlight out of the burning valley.  He
wanted money to help his brother Thomas, and Constable offered a
thousand guineas for a poem before he had seen a line of it.  The new
work, unlike the _Lay_, had not its origin in the Border lore of his
youth, for it was a concocted tale of chivalry, with an elaborate plot,
culminating in the great national tragedy of Flodden.  Its inspiration
was the martial fervour which ran in Scott's veins, the ardent
patriotism with which the spectacle of the great events on the
Continent filled his mind.  He put into it also the friendships which
had come to fill his life, and the introductory epistles to the cantos
are a happy diary of his Border wanderings and the sights and sounds of
Ashestiel.  He enjoyed every moment of the writing of it, and to the
end of his life he used to recall happily places associated with its
composition.  The speed of the verse is due to the fact that passages
like the description of Flodden were conceived while with his regiment
on Portobello sands, or galloping among the hills between Tweed and
Yarrow.  He made no parade of a high poetic purpose.  As it approached
its close he wrote to Lady Louisa Stuart:--"Marmion is at this instant
gasping upon Flodden Field, and there I have been obliged to leave him
for these few days in the death pangs.  I hope I shall find time enough
this morning to knock him on the head with two or three thumping
stanzas."

[Sidenote: _Marmion_]

A poem, thus conceived in delight, was bound to please.  _Marmion_ was
published in February 1808 and proceeded to race through editions.  The
critics were divided.  Wordsworth thought that Scott had achieved his
end, but added: "That it is not the end which I should wish you to
propose to yourself, you will be well aware, from what you know of my
notions of composition, both as to manner and matter."  Jeffrey in the
_Edinburgh_, curiously enough, chose to regard it as insufficiently
Scottish in spirit, and having "throughout neglected Scottish feelings
and Scottish character."  The rest of the review was a solemn warning
that the romance {85} of chivalry was a bogus fashion which could not
last.  "Fine ladies and gentlemen now talk of donjons, keeps, tabards,
scutcheons, caps of maintenance, portcullises, wimples, and I know not
what beside; just as they did in the days of Dr Darwin's popularity of
gnomes, sylphs, oxygen, gossamer, polygynia, and polyandria.  That
fashion, however, passed rapidly away, and Mr Scott should take care
that a different sort of pedantry does not produce the same effects."

Jeffrey was attacking the genus without considering closely the
particular example, for it is hard to find pedantry in _Marmion_.
Halting lines, rhetoric which misses its mark, machinery that
creaks--of these there is plenty.  The plot is roughly that of
_Ivanhoe_, a common-place of romance.  But the virtue lies not in it,
but in the speed of the journeys, the fire of the battle scenes, the
many faithful and beautiful pictures of nature, the noble and
disciplined eloquence of the lines on Nelson and Fox and Pitt.  It was
the tonic which the nation needed in a dark time to strengthen its
heart, and if the critics were lukewarm the common reader was enchanted.

[Sidenote: 1810]

Next year Scott visited the Highlands, for he had long had it in mind
to produce a northern pendant to the _Lay_ and _Marmion_.  More
scrupulous than most poets, he rode the course from the mouth of Loch
Vennachar to Stirling Castle to make certain that his hero could do it
in three hours.  At Buchanan he recited bits of his new poem to Lady
Douglas and Lady Louisa Stuart, and in May 1810 it was given to the
world under a title reminiscent of Arthurian legend, _The Lady of the
Lake_.  No one of Scott's poems was more eagerly awaited or more
ardently received.  It made the Trossachs a classic country, to which
the curious flocked in post-chaises.  It brought the Highlands, of
which Scott knew next to nothing, inside the comprehension of the
Lowlands and of England.  So great was its verisimilitude that Border
farmers argued hotly about the details of the stag-hunt, and so
enthralling its interest that Adam Ferguson, serving under Wellington
in the Peninsula with the {86} "Black Cuffs," obtained extra rations
because of his reading of the poem aloud, and on one occasion read the
battle scene to keep his company steady while under fire.  Such
tributes are not paid to a pedantic muse.

[Sidenote: 1810]

The book marks the height of Scott's popularity as a poet, for 20,000
copies were sold in a few months.  For once the critics were unanimous
in their verdict, and Jeffrey in the _Edinburgh_ was as cordial as
Ellis in the _Quarterly_.  The success was so extraordinary, Scott
himself wrote, "as to induce me for a moment to conclude that I had at
last fixed a nail in the proverbially inconstant wheel of Fortune."
Re-read to-day, the poem has not lost its freshness.  There are perhaps
too many Gothick echoes, to which a Celtic subject always made Scott
prone, and there is much slipshod verse.  But it begins magically;
everywhere there are lovely glimpses of scene and weather; the
stag-hunt, the dispatch of the fiery cross, the battle, the final
"recognition" have still power to thrill hearts that have not forgotten
their youth; and the intercalated lyrics, like Blanche's song, and the
"Coronach," and "Soldier, rest, thy warfare o'er," foreshadowed what
the novels were to reveal, a Shakespearean gift of producing little
snatches of music which fit into their place with an exquisite and
effortless aptness.



IV

[Sidenote: 1804-12]

The Ashestiel years are the pleasantest to contemplate in Scott's life.
If they were not the time of greatest achievement, and if they were not
altogether unbroken by anxieties, they had the wide horizons and the
fresh colours which come only once in a man's career.

[Sidenote: Clerk of Session]

He was fortunate to begin with to find a permanent post which relieved
him of anxiety about the future.  Mr George Home of Wedderburn had been
a Clerk of Session for more than thirty years and was very willing to
retire, on condition that he was allowed to retain his emoluments
during his life.  Scott was nominated his successor, and his
appointment was ratified by the Whig {87} government which came into
office on Pitt's death.  So after the spring recess in 1806 he took up
his duties, sitting below the judges for from four to six hours daily
during nearly six months of the year.  His fellow Clerks were intimate
friends, and the work kept him in close touch with the Bar and Bench,
and gave him a wonderful viewpoint from which to study that large
section of humanity which goes to law.  It was--or would be, when Mr
Home was gathered to his fathers--an ideal crutch for a man of letters.

His office not only provided a ritual for his days, but bound him to
the life of the capital, and prevented him rusticating on the Border.
He continued his volunteer service, and, while in Cumberland in the
autumn of 1805, was summoned north by a mistaken rumour that a French
invasion was imminent, and rode a hundred miles in twenty-four hours to
join the muster at Dalkeith.  He paid various visits to London, staying
either with his friends the Doumergues in Piccadilly or with Morritt in
Portland Place.  In London he was now something of a figure, met most
of the great people in literature and politics, was presented at the
little Court at Blackheath to Caroline, Princess of Wales, whom he
found embarrassingly flirtatious, and even dined at Holland House.  He
made many trips up and down Scotland, including a visit to the Western
Isles in 1810, where he projected a poem which took shape later as _The
Lord of the Isles_, and acquired a new store of Highland legends.
Once, after the publication of _The Lady of the Lake_, he dreamed of a
bolder journey, of "taking a peep at Lord Wellington and his merry men
in Portugal"; for his imagination had been fired by the adventure of a
civilian friend, who had been mixed up with the retreat to Torres
Vedras, had stumbled on a Scottish regiment, and had served with it as
a volunteer sharpshooter at Busaco.  For such an experience Scott would
have given a year's income.  But he had to content himself with writing
patriotic prose and militant verse, and with drinking Lord Wellington's
health at the dinners of the Friday Club.

{88}

For more than six months of the year he was at Ashestiel and to
Ashestiel came many friends.  It was not a large house, but any roof
that sheltered Scott was elastic in its hospitality.  Thither came his
Edinburgh legal colleagues, intimates like Skene and Erskine and
Morritt, publishers like young Mr Murray, fellow bookmen like Southey
and Heber, and a great clan of country neighbours.  No man was more
popular than Scott in the Forest with gentle and simple alike, and
Laird Nippy next door at the Peel, an austere and parsimonious
Presbyterian, became a regular attendant of a Sunday at the Sheriff's
readings from the English prayer-book.  Scott carried his guests far
and wide over the Border--to Melrose and Dryburgh, to course hares on
the steep green hills above St Mary's Loch, and to the clippings and
kirns of Yarrow and Ettrick.  As a host he had every virtue, and there
is ample evidence that at his own table he was a famous story-teller,
full of drollery and wild fun.  His recitations of poetry, too, were
memorable, but, though his head was full of books, his talk was not
often of literature.  "He always maintained the same estimate of it,"
says Morritt, "as subordinate and auxiliary to the purposes of life,
and rather talked of men and events than of books and criticism."  Even
Hogg, who liked the sound of his own voice and was a severe judge of
after-dinner tales, admits that he never heard him tell the same story
twice.

Scott was now a man in early middle life, strong in body, unshaken in
health, keeping down his inclination to heaviness by hard exercise,
with an overflowing zest for both work and play.  At Lasswade he had
been in the habit of writing and reading late into the night, but, with
his new accumulation of work, he realized that he must revise his ways,
since the midnight oil gave him headaches.  So at Ashestiel he rose at
five, lit his own fire, if a fire were needed, and was at his desk in
breeches and shooting jacket by six o'clock.  There, with a dog at his
feet, he worked till between nine and ten, when he breakfasted with his
family.  By then he had, in his {89} own phrase, "broken the neck of
the day's work," and after another couple of hours he was free.  He was
usually in the saddle by one o'clock.  On a wet day he would work
longer, so as to provide a reserve which he could draw upon when an
expedition was planned which meant starting after breakfast.  He
answered every letter the day it arrived, and he kept his papers and
books in perfect order, so that no time was wasted.  On Sunday he read
prayers in the parlour to his household and such neighbours as cared to
attend; the horses were never taken out on that day, but, if fine, he
and the family would picnic out of doors, and, if it rained, he would
tell them Bible stories.

[Sidenote: Children]

There were now four children, Sophia, born in 1799, Walter (whom the
family called "Gilnockie"), born in 1801, Anne, born in the beginning
of 1803, and Charles, who was born the day before the Christmas of
1805.  Scott was a great lover of the plain human child, such as were
his own, for the young Scotts had none of the precocious brilliance of
Marjorie Fleming.[19]  As soon as they could move about they became his
companions, and were allowed to run in and out of his study as they
pleased.  He disliked the idea of boarding-schools, so the girls had a
governess, while the boys went to the High School in Edinburgh, and at
Ashestiel were tutored by their father, who yawned prodigiously over
the Latin grammar.  He taught them old songs and tales, played with
them, rode and walked with them, and let them sit up to supper as a
reward of virtue--that close companionship which is the greatest
formative force in childhood.  Above all he taught them his own
cheerful stoicism.


There was one thing, however, on which he fixed his heart hardly less
than the ancient Persians of the Cyropdia; like them, next to love of
truth, he held love of horsemanship for the prime point of education.
As soon as his eldest girl could sit a pony, she was made the regular
attendant of his mountain rides; and they all, as they attained
sufficient strength, had the like advancement.  He taught them to think
nothing of {90} tumbles, and habituated them to his own reckless
delight in perilous fords and flooded streams; and they all imbibed in
great perfection his passion for horses--as well.  I may venture to
add, as his deep reverence for the more important article of that
Persian training.  "Without courage," he said, "there cannot be truth,
and without truth there can be no other virtue."[20]


In that household there was little talk of modern books and none at all
of the father's work.  Apart from the fact that he did not regard his
own poetry as of supreme merit, Scott had the good sense to see that an
atmosphere of domestic admiration is bad for both admired and admirer.
James Ballantyne once asked Sophia what she thought of _The Lady of the
Lake_, and her answer was, "Oh, I have not read it.  Papa says there's
nothing so bad for young people as reading bad poetry."  Young Walter
was dubbed the Lady of the Lake at the High School, and, not having
heard of the work, assumed that he had been called a girl, and engaged
in violent fisticuffs.  But the supreme instance of that indifference
to their father's poetic fame which the father so notably shared is
Lockhart's tale of how the same boy was once cross-examined by one of
Scott's colleagues in the Court as to why people made so much fuss
about his father.  The child pondered for a little and then answered
gravely: "It's commonly _him_ that sees the hare sitting."

Next to the children in the family circle came the dogs, the first of
the retinue which attended Scott all his days.  There were a couple of
greyhounds, Douglas and Percy, who leaped in and out of the open study
window, and were noted performers on the hill.  Especially there was
Camp, the bull-terrier, to whom Scott always spoke as he would to a
man, a wise old fellow as compared to the lighthearted grews.  Camp
began to fail in 1808, and could no longer accompany his master's pony,
but waited on the hearth-rug to greet his homecoming.  The old dog died
in Edinburgh in the beginning of the following year and was buried in
the little garden {91} behind the house in Castle Street, while the
whole family stood in tears round the grave.

[Sidenote: Servants]

At Ashestiel, too, Scott laid the foundation of the clan of serving-men
who played so large a part in his life.  One day in the Selkirk
sheriff-court a poacher called Tom Purdie came up for trial, and
escaped on some formality.  Scott liked his looks, and took him into
his employ as shepherd, and presently Tom became the "laird's man,"
factotum, guardian and affectionate tyrant--a familiar Scots
relationship.  He was the most faithful of henchmen, and his manner was
a kind of genial ferocity.  Years later, when Tom was fifty-seven,
Scott drew what seems to be his portrait in _Redgauntlet_: "His brow
was not much furrowed, and his jet-black hair was only grizzled, not
whitened, by the advance of age....  Though rather undersized, he had
very broad shoulders, was square made, thin-flanked, and apparently
combined in his frame muscular strength and activity....  A hard and
harsh countenance, eyes far sunk under projecting eyebrows which were
grizzled like his hair, a wide mouth furnished from ear to ear with a
range of unimpaired teeth of uncommon whiteness, and of a size and
breadth which might have become the jaws of an ogre."  Then there was
Tom Purdie's brother-in-law, Peter Mathieson, the coachman, who was a
safer charioteer in the rough fords of Tweed than his master.  Nor must
the portly butler be omitted, John Macbeth, who regarded with disfavour
those guests who kept Scott up into the small hours over rummers of
toddy.

There was a little farm at Ashestiel on which Scott tried his amateur's
hand at sheep.  When he first took the place, as he wrote to Ellis,
"long sheep and short sheep, and tups, and gimmers, and hogs, and
dinmonts made a perfect sheepfold of my understanding."  To begin with
he had a notion of getting James Hogg to superintend the business,
which would have led to disaster, for Hogg, though he wrote a book on
the diseases of sheep, was a muddler in practice.  Mrs Scott had a
chicken-run, which was devastated by a formidable local breed of
wild-cat.  His own main interest was {92} forestry, and at Ashestiel,
though the land was only leased, he began those experiments in planting
which were later to clothe the Abbotsford braes.  Scott was never
intended for a farmer, for, as he told Joanna Baillie, it gave him no
pleasure to see his turnips better than his neighbour's, and he
preferred his shearers to be happy rather than efficient.  All his
employees were sportsmen--"my hind shall kill a salmon, and my
plough-boy find a hare sitting with any man in the Forest"--and he
would not have had it otherwise.

Sport, indeed, was, apart from letters, the serious business of
Ashestiel.  Scott liked to be ten hours a day in the open air,
shooting, fishing, coursing and riding, a "rattle-skulled half-lawyer,
half-sportsman," as he called himself.  In fishing he was no great
performer in the orthodox parts, but he loved to "burn the water" of an
autumn night, when the salmon were "turning up their sides like swine."
On such occasions he was as much in the river as out of it, and indeed
he seems to have had an extraordinary talent for falling into fords and
pools and bogs and emerging unharmed.  He was constantly wet, and
rarely troubled to change, thereby sowing the seeds of his later
rheumatism.  He was noted for the boldness of his riding in a
countryside of bold riders.  It was a common prophecy that some day he
would be brought home with his feet foremost.  He rode horses which no
one else could mount, and he was also an assiduous horse-master, loving
the ritual of their management.  "Mr Scott, that's the maddest deil o'
a beast," Hogg cried on one occasion.  "Can ye no' gar him tak' a wee
mair time?  He's just out o' ae lair intil another wi' ye."[21]

In those happy days, quartering the Border hills, mixing freely with
all classes, sitting as judge in the little sheriff-court,[22] or in
his seat below the Edinburgh Bench watching that panorama of the law
which is a reflex of the panorama of life, Scott was amassing stores
{93} of knowledge which needed for their outlet something greater than
romantic lays.  The novelist was in the making.  What was taken in by
the eye was ruminated upon in the long sessions of thought which fall
to those who tramp the moors or watch by the riverside.  The creative
imagination was beginning its work.  "While Tom marks out a dyke or a
drain as I directed him, my fancy may be running its ain riggs in
another world."



[1] _Minstrelsy_, Introd.  cxxxi.

[2] _Edinburgh Annual Register_, 1811.

[3] There are two versions of the meeting in Ettrick--Hogg's in _Dom.
Manners_, and Laidlaw'a in the "Abbotsford Notanda" appended to E.
Chambers' _Life of Scott_ (1871)

[4] Carswell, _Sir Walter: A Four-part Study in Biography_, 175--the
most acute study of Hogg which I have seen.

[5] The subject has been exhaustively discussed by Mr T. F. Henderson
in his edition of the _Minstrelsy_ (1892) and by Child in his great
collection of ballads (1882-1898).  The case against Scott's
conscientiousness will be found in Colonel Elliot's _Further Essays on
Border Ballads_ (1910), which is answered--to my mind conclusively--by
Andrew Lang's _Sir W. Scott and the Border Minstrelsy_ (1910).

[6] See E. H. Coleridge's edition of _Christabel_ (1907), 44-45, where
the subject is fully discussed.

[7] Introd. to _Lay_, 1830.

[8] II.  42

[9] Lockhart, II.  77.

[10] _Misc. Prose Works_, I.  407.

[11] _Misc. Prose Works_ II.  437-440.

[12] _Ibid._, II.  119.

[13] _Ibid._, II.  2.

[14] Lockhart, II.  173-4.

[15] Scott and Lockhart believed the article to have been written by
Brougham; but the author was Jeffrey himself.  Cockburn, _Life of
Jeffrey_, I.  191.

[16] _P.L.B._, 65

[17] Lockhart.  II.  110.

[18] _Fam. Letters_, I.  33.

[19] See Dr John Brown's _Hor Subseciv_, 3rd Series 199, etc.

[20] Lockhart, II.  191.

[21] _Dom. Manners_, 65-6.

[22] Scott made an excellent Sheriff, and his decisions may be studied
in Chisholm's _Sir Walter Scott as a Judge_ (1918).




{94}

CHAPTER V

FAREWELL TO POESY

(1810-1814)


I

[Sidenote: 1810]

In the envoy to _The Lady of the Lake_, when the Minstrel bids farewell
to his harp, there are these lines:--

  Much have I owed thy strains on life's long way,
    Through secret woes the world has never known,
  When on the weary night dawn'd wearier day
    And bitterer was the grief devour'd alone.
  That I o'erlive such woes, Enchantress! is thine own.

The reference is, of course, to his old love affair with Williamina
Stuart, but there may be other things included, for Scott had many
thorns in his bed of life.  One was his kindred.  For as he advanced in
the world his brothers declined.

[Sidenote: Thomas and Daniel Scott]

Thomas, who had inherited the family business and had been his
brother's chief client, so mismanaged his affairs that he became
insolvent.  He had been appointed the Edinburgh "doer" for the Abercorn
estate, and Scott, since he had been one of his guarantors, was
compelled to take a hand in clearing up the mess, for which settlement,
as we have seen, Constable's advance on _Marmion_ fell in opportunely.
Thomas, pending an arrangement with his creditors, was compelled to
withdraw to the sanctuary of the Isle of Man, where Scott tried to
persuade him to cultivate letters and to become one of the
_Quarterly's_ contributors.  Thomas, however, preferred to dabble in
soldiering, took a hand in raising the new Manx Fusiliers, and
ultimately became paymaster of the 70th Regiment.  Presently his
brotherly {95} kindness involved Scott in an unpleasant affair.  When
Thomas's finances grew embarrassed, a subordinate post in the Court
became vacant to which Scott had the right of presentation.  He
promoted a veteran official, but gave his brother the smaller office
thus vacated, worth about 250 a year.  The duties were the merest
routine, and could be performed, as they had often been in the past, by
deputy, so Thomas in the Isle of Man could still be the nominal holder
and draw the salary.  But, when the appointment was made, a Commission
of Judicature was at work, pruning some of the dead wood from the tree
of Scots law, and it was certain that Thomas's little sinecure would be
one of the first to disappear.  Sure enough the Commission recommended
it for abolition, and assessed the compensation to the holder at 130
per annum.  This was a loss to the refugee Thomas, which Scott did his
best to make up to him, but worse was to follow.  The bill, embodying
the Commission's findings, came before the House of Lords in 1810, and
two Whig peers, Lord Lauderdale and Lord Holland, attacked the proposed
compensation as a flagrant Tory job, arguing that Thomas had been
appointed when the end of the office was foreseen, and that the Isle of
Man was not the best place for performing the work of an Edinburgh
Court official.  The bill duly passed, but Scott was furious at the
insult.  The thing had been a job, no doubt, but such jobs were
sanctioned by long custom, and he believed that, in refusing to appoint
his brother to the better paid post, he had behaved with quixotic
scrupulousness.  Lauderdale was a crazy Jacobin, but Holland should
have known better, and he markedly cut the latter nobleman at a dinner
of the Friday Club.

The case of his youngest brother was a far deeper vexation.  Daniel
Scott, having taken to evil courses, was shipped off to the West
Indies.  But Jamaica proved no cure, he went downhill in mind and body,
and during a negro rebellion on the plantation where he was employed he
did not show the family courage.  He returned home with this stigma on
his name, was taken into his mother's {96} house, and soon died.  Scott
would not see him; he called him his "relative," not his brother; he
declined to go to his funeral or wear mourning for him.  In those
high-flying days he could forgive most faults, but not cowardice, and
he felt that by the unhappy Dan the family scutcheon had been indelibly
stained.  It was almost the only case where Scott's abundant charity
failed him.  The years were to bring him to a humaner mind, and in _The
Fair Maid of Perth_ he attempted in his account of Conachar the
justification of a temporary coward, an expiation, he told Lockhart, to
the _manes_ of poor Dan.  "I have now learned to have more tolerance
and compassion than I had in those days."

[Sidenote: 1809]

But the sore which never ceased to gall the steed was the long-drawn
bickering with his publishers, and all that it involved.  We have seen
his quarrel with Constable over the _Edinburgh_, but there was more
than politics in the disagreement.  Constable was well enough in his
way--he was a shrewd man with some pretensions to manners, but he had a
partner whom Scott could not abide.  This was one Alexander Gibson
Hunter, an Angus laird who had a good head for figures and a rough
tongue, and who seemed to Scott to reduce every question to a matter of
pounds and pence.  Hunter was undoubtedly impetuous and plain-spoken,
and had the insensitiveness of a gross eater and drinker; but his
letters reveal him as a man of education and judgment, and something
very far from the mere parsimonious tradesman.[1] When Scott showed a
tendency to dally with John Murray, Hunter demanded, not unnaturally,
that he should first finish his _Swift_, for which Constable had paid
so monstrous a price.[2]  The consequence was a complete estrangement.
The oak, in Constable's phrase, considered that it could now support
itself.  Scott was determined to cut the comb of a firm which had
wounded his feelings and talked to him like a huckster.  He was not
content to be his own printer, but with the assistance {97} of John
Murray and his London friends he would be his own publisher.

[Sidenote: John Ballantyne]

Now James Ballantyne had a younger brother, John by name, who had begun
life in his father's shop, had spent some time in business in London,
had returned to the Kelso counter where he had not prospered, and was
now chief clerk in the Canongate printing-house.  John was a small
vivacious creature, as lean as his brother was plump, with the large
melting eyes and the nervous hilarity of the consumptive.  He was a wag
and a mimic, could sing an excellent song--the "Cobbler of Kelso" was
his masterpiece--loved all forms of sport, and had a taste for raffish
dandyism.  He had not much education, but he was full of ideas, usually
bad ones; and a smattering of banking knowledge which he had picked up,
made him pose as the complete financier.  It would be hard to imagine a
more dangerous business ally, but Scott, in his fit of pique, resolved
to set up the two brothers in a publishing business that should rival
Constable's.  In July 1809 the firm of John Ballantyne and Co.,
publishers, opened in Hanover Street.  Scott contributed one half of
the capital and advanced the money for the fourth, which was John's
portion.

The venture is hard to defend on any ground of common sense.  It was
undertaken in a not very justifiable fit of temper.  Constable had not
behaved ill; indeed to the end of his life his behaviour to Scott was
consistently generous and loyal.  He was not responsible for the views
of his _Edinburgh_ contributors, and, even if he had been, the offence
was amply avenged by the setting up of the new _Quarterly_.  No doubt
his partner was tactless, but Hunter's bad temper had some
justification, and his warning to Scott against making his name too
cheap was timely and wise.  The truth is that Scott had no real
affection for Constable, though he respected his abilities.  The
"Emperor" was not the kind of man who appealed to him.  He did not
regard him as an equal in birth and education, moving on the same plane
as Erskine and Clerk and Morritt.  Nor could he patronize {98} him as
he patronized James the plump and John the lean, for whom he had the
pet names of "Aldiborontiphoscophornio" and "Rigdumfunnidos."  He could
work comfortably with only two types of man--his indubitable equals and
those upon whom he could condescend.  Constable he did not regard as an
equal, and Constable would not allow himself to be patronized.  Scott
loved "characters," and the Ballantynes were such, which Constable
emphatically was not; he was the ambitious, four-square, normal,
middle-class merchant, whose value in his calmer moments Scott
willingly recognized.  But now he was not calm.  "Convince my
understanding," he once wrote, "and I am perfectly docile; stir my
passions by coldness or affronts and the devil would not drive me from
my purpose."  He believed that he had had coldness from Constable and
affronts from Hunter.

On the business side the enterprise was a wild folly.  The printing
concern had been more or less limited in its liability.  James
Ballantyne might be compelled now and then to await the booksellers'
convenience in the settlement of an account, but the printing-house
worked for orders and knew within reasonable limits its commitments.
But this safeguard disappeared once it became also a publishing house.
It had now to undertake liabilities to authors, to paper-makers and
binders, and to its own printing-house, and it had to meet them from
the public sale of its productions.  No more firm orders for the
presses from the publishers, for it was its own publisher.  In the case
of unsuccessful books it would be left with a load of stock.  A
consistently successful list would involve the frequent raising of
fresh capital, since the profits, being belated in their realization,
would not suffice; an unsuccessful list would load it with debt.  Scott
embarked in it the greater part of his recent literary earnings, but as
the firm extended its operations, however successful these might be,
more capital would be needed.  If it had many failures there would be
liabilities and no profits to meet them, and that meant recourse to
Scott himself, and to the crazy system {99} of bills and counter bills
then in vogue among the Scottish banks.

[Sidenote: 1810]

But, as a matter of plain fact the firm could not succeed, because no
one of the partners understood the craft of publishing.  James
Ballantyne was first and last a printer; he had a printer's taste in
types and some literary judgment, but no under standing of finance;
John was a will-o'-the-wisp, light-headed and irresponsible, whose
chief talent lay in the dubious game of obtaining credit.  Neither had
any notion of the rudiments of sound trading.  Scott could not oversee
the details, but he believed that he had an instinct for what the
public wanted--true enough, but he needed Constable's good sense to
make that instinct marketable.  He was apt to assume that because his
own writings interested the multitude, all that interested himself
would also infallibly attract other people.  Moreover he had his ragged
regiment of Parnassus to provide for.  So he planted upon the new
firm's history of the Culdees which no one could read, and an edition
of Beaumont and Fletcher by an impecunious and distraught German, of
whom Constable had very properly fought shy.

[Sidenote: The publishing firm]

The new firm started with a good connexion among the London
booksellers, and especially with John Murray.  It published _The Lady
of the Lake_, a profitable venture.  But before the end of 1810 the
business was becoming embarrassed, and the two yearly volumes of the
new _Edinburgh Annual Register_ were beyond the capacity of the public
to absorb.  John Ballantyne was an adept at the vicious practice by
which two firms, whose _personnel_ and assets were the same, could
obtain credit by backing each other's bills.  But there were limits to
this device, and Scott's life was constantly harassed by demands for a
few hundreds here and a few hundreds there to tide over an awkward
moment.  He found himself becoming the milch-cow of a firm from which
he could never obtain a balance-sheet or a plain statement of profit
and loss.  But his affection for the partners prevented his irritation
resulting in any practical reform.  John's melting eye {100} and
James's snuffy optimism always induced him to postpone the day of
account-taking.

[Sidenote: 1810-11]

Yet he was profoundly uneasy, and the dread of what might be the true
state of the Hanover Street ledgers came between him and his comfort.
The legal side of his work too, promised difficulties, for he foresaw
and disliked certain imminent judicial innovations.  By November 1810
the exhilaration caused by the success of _The Lady of the Lake_ had
died away and he was seriously contemplating a complete change of life.
He toyed with the notion of becoming a high Indian official.  To his
brother Thomas he wrote: "I have no objection to tell you in confidence
that, were Dundas (Lord Melville) to go out as Governor-General to
India and were he willing to take me with him in a good situation, I
would not hesitate to pitch the Court of Session and the booksellers to
the Devil, and try my fortune in another climate."  He was not yet
forty, still young enough to pull up his roots, and he may have dreamed
of a taste of that life of action for which he had always hankered, and
the possibility of returning in a few years with a fortune which would
enable him to live as he desired for the rest of his days.

But in the summer of the following year Lord Melville died, and the
Indian project had, perforce, to be forgotten.  Scott was a careful
business man, as the keeping of his own private accounts shows, but he
had a curious shrinking from cross-examining his partners, partly
perhaps because he had provided nearly all the capital and regarded
them as his dependents and retainers.  Towards retainers he could not
behave otherwise than royally.  And yet he was virtually the sole
partner and the sole capitalist in both the printing and the publishing
businesses; James and John were men of straw, and disaster would fall
wholly on his shoulders.  Strange that such a man with such a sword
hanging over him did not attempt to envisage the truth.  The firm paid
away in dividends every penny it earned and was consequently without
adequate capital and without reserves.  Profits, often delusive
profits, were drawn out and spent {101} as soon as they accrued.  "The
large sums received," James Ballantyne confessed, "never formed an
addition to stock.  In fact they were all expended by the partners,
who, being then young and sanguine men, not unwillingly adopted my
brother John's sanguine results."

[Sidenote: 1811]

Meantime Scott must earn money and do more than toil at his edition of
_Swift_.  In 1811 he published _The Vision of Don Roderick_, an
exercise in the Spenserian stanza, the profits of which went to the
relief of the sufferers from Massna's campaign in Portugal.  He had
another poem in his head on an English subject, which he believed would
please.  Already in 1810 he had written a few prose chapters in a new
vein--an attempt at a novel, but James Ballantyne had received them
tepidly and they had been laid aside.  But during the course of the
year 1811 he began to see more light in his future.  A superannuation
scheme had been introduced into the Scottish Courts, which meant that
the emoluments of his Clerkship of Session would soon be his own, and
that from the first day of 1812 he would have an official salary of
1300 a year.  All his own fortune and past earnings were in the
Ballantyne firm, but with his sheriffdom and his wife's income he could
now count on a certain 2000 a year--a very substantial revenue in
those days for a country gentleman.  Moreover, even if there were no
printing or publishing profits, he could reckon on making at least a
thousand a year by his pen.  The skies cleared for him, his spirits
rose, and he could turn his mind to what had long been a darling
scheme.  The lease of Ashestiel was nearly up; he would purchase a
small lairdship and build himself a house.

[Sidenote: Scott leaves Ashestiel]

His thoughts turned to the wider part of the Tweed valley, the opening
of that champaign country which had always been his dream.  On the road
between Melrose and Selkirk, overlooking Tweed a little above where it
receives the Gala, was the site of the last clan battle in Border
history, that fought in 1526 between the Kers and the Scotts.  The
spot, too, was in the heart of the world of fairy legend.  There was a
little farm there of about a hundred acres, called Cartley Hole, {102}
belonging to Dr Douglas, the minister of Galashiels.  The buildings
were poor, and the land consisted of a bit of marshy haugh, some rough
hill pastures, and a solitary plantation of ragged firs.  It looked out
upon low moorish uplands and was without obvious picturesqueness,
except for the noble streams of Tweed at its door.  But it was a place
which could be "made," and Scott had always in him much of the pioneer.
He paid an astonishing price for it, no less than 4000, and to meet
the purchase he borrowed 2000 from his elder brother John, and 2000
from the Ballantyne firm on the security of a poem of which he had not
yet written a line.  This last was a fateful step.  For the first time
he put Pegasus between the shafts, and counted upon literature to meet
the normal expenses of his life.

[Sidenote: 1812]

His ambition was modest.  He wanted no more than a country cottage to
comply with his obligations as Sheriff, where he could spend the
vacations, potter about with a little forestry, and entertain an
occasional friend; a second Ashestiel, but his very own.  He wrote to
Joanna Baillie: "My present intention is to have only two spare
bedrooms, with dressing-rooms, each of which will have at a pinch a
couch bed; but I cannot relinquish my Border principle of accommodating
all the cousins and _duniwastles_, who will rather sleep on chairs, and
on the floor, and in the hay-loft, than be absent when folks are
gathered together; and truly I think Ashestiel was very like the tent
of Paribanou, in the Arabian Nights, that suited alike all numbers of
company equally; ten people fill it at any time, and I remember its
lodging thirty-two without any complaint."[3]

[Sidenote: Beginning of Abbotsford]

An architect was engaged, masons were set to work, and in London
Scott's friend Daniel Terry, the actor, busied himself in buying "auld
knicknackets" for the new cottage.  It was to be called Abbotsford,
since there was a ford in Tweed below it, and the land had once
belonged to Melrose Abbey.  One day in the end of May 1812, Scott left
Ashestiel, with many a long look behind him, and took up his quarters
in what had been the {103} farmhouse of Cartley Hole amid the din and
dust of the new building.  A letter to Lady Alvanley describes the
"flitting":


The neighbours have been much delighted with the procession of my
furniture, in which old swords, bows, targets and lances made a very
conspicuous show.  A family of turkeys was accommodated within the
helmet of some _preux chevalier_ of ancient Border fame; and the very
cows, for aught I know, were bearing banners and muskets.  I assure
your ladyship that this caravan, attended by a dozen of ragged rosy
peasant children, carrying fishing-rods and spears, and leading poneys,
greyhounds and spaniels, would, as it crossed the Tweed, have furnished
no bad subject for the pencil, and really reminded me of one of the
gypsy groups of Callot upon their march.[4]



II

The new home, thus light-heartedly entered, was not at first to be a
domain of peace.  The summer of 1812 was a busy season.  Scott spent
every week-end and all the vacations at Abbotsford, where he was out
most of the day superintending his new plantations of oaks and Spanish
chestnuts, and stringing verses which he wrote down when he got to his
desk.  That desk stood in a corner of the single living-room of the old
farm, which had to serve for drawing-room, dining-room, school-room and
study.  "As for the house and the poem, there are twelve masons
hammering at the one, and one poor noddle at the other."  The poem was
_Rokeby_, which he had begun at Ashestiel, a romance of Cavalier and
Roundhead which, being laid in an English scene, would, he hoped,
attract a wider public than the Scots pieces.  He devoted especial care
to its composition, for his financial future seemed to depend upon its
success.  He had written to his friend Morritt, the squire of Rokeby,
for books and information.  "Pray help me in this--by truth, or
fiction, or tradition--I care not which, if it be picturesque."  He
destroyed his draft of the first canto, because he felt that he had
corrected all the spirit out of it.  In the autumn he and his wife
visited {104} Teesdale to revive his memories, and he took immense
pains with the local details.  He made notes of the flowers in the
Brignall quarries, and, when Morritt protested against such
scrupulosity, made the remarkable answer:--


That in nature herself no two scenes were exactly alike, and that
whoever copied truly what was before his eyes, would possess the same
variety in his description, and exhibit apparently an imagination as
boundless as the range of nature in the scenes he recorded; whereas,
whoever trusted to imagination, would find his own mind circumscribed
and contracted to a few favourite images, and the repetition of these
would sooner or later produce that very monotony and barrenness which
had always haunted descriptive poetry in the hands of any but the
patient worshippers of truth.  Besides which, local names and
peculiarities make a fictitious story look so much better in the
face.[5]


These novel solicitudes show how much Scott felt to be at stake in the
new poem.

But the success, sthetic and commercial, of _Rokeby_, which was
published in the last days of 1812, was not "answerable to the honesty
and simplicity of the design."  The story limped; the elaborate
landscape did not delight and convince as the less studied Border and
Highland scenes had delighted; the poet seemed to have left his [Greek:
_physxoos aia_] behind him.  Morritt thought it the best of the poems,
but the world did not endorse his view.  Scott himself called it a
"pseudo-romance of pseudo-chivalry," and we need not cavil at the
description.  Yet it had many fine things, some of them new and
unexpected.  Its lyrics "Brignall Banks" and "Allen-a-dale" and "A
weary lot is thine, fair maid," were the best he had yet written, and
to the discerning it was clear that a man who could create a character
like Bertram--whom Swinburne pronounced "a figure alive to the very
finger tips"--had all the novelist's gifts.  Lockhart has said with
justice that the substance of _Rokeby_ would have made a great prose
romance.  But as a poem it was a comparative failure.  There were
profits indeed, and the Ballantyne {105} firm was recouped for its
advance, but the profits were not on the old scale.  Others had stolen
the seed and were growing the flower, and the public ear was getting a
little dulled to his octosyllables.  During the composition of _Rokeby_
Scott had amused himself by scribbling another poem, _The Bridal of
Triermain_, which was published anonymously in March 1813, as a piece
of mystification.  He wanted it to be attributed to Erskine, but only
George Ellis in the _Quarterly_ was deceived, and presently it was
issued under Scott's name.  It is a curious production, a blend of Tom
Moore and himself in his minor vein, but it contains eight of his most
haunting lines:--

  Bewcastle now must keep the hold,
    Speir-Adam's steeds must bide in stall,
  Of Hartley-burn the bowmen bold
    Must only shoot from battled wall;

  And Liddesdale may buckle spur,
    And Teviot now may belt the brand,
  Taras and Ewes keep nightly stir,
    And Eskdale foray Cumberland.


[Sidenote: 1813]

The year 1813 therefore opened in disappointment, and the shadows
darkened as the summer advanced.  It was plain to Scott that his vogue
as a poet was declining.  Moore in the _Twopenny Post-Bag_ had made fun
of _Rokeby_, and suggested that Scott was working his way south through
the various gentlemen's seats, preparing a metrical guide to the best
houses.  If people could talk thus, his verse must have lost its
glamour.  Moreover, a new star had appeared in the firmament.  Byron in
1812 published the first two cantos of _Childe Harold_, which took the
town by storm.  Three years before, at Buchanan, Scott had read
_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, and the phrase "Apollo's venal
son" had rankled.  "It is funny enough," he wrote to Southey, "to see a
whelp of a young Lord Byron abusing me, of whose circumstances he knows
nothing, for endeavouring to scratch out a living with my pen.  God
help the bear if, having little else to eat, he must not even suck his
{106} own paws.  I can assure the noble imp of fame that it is not my
fault that I was not born to a park and 5000 a year."  But _Childe
Harold_ profoundly impressed one who never allowed a private grievance
to warp his literary judgment.  He wrote to Joanna Baillie urging her
to read it, though he disliked its misanthropy and questioned its
morals.  Presently John Murray reported a conversation with the author,
who had quoted and endorsed some friendly remarks of the Prince Regent
on Scott, and the latter took the occasion to open a correspondence
with his former assailant.  He praised the new poem, and explained the
circumstances under which _Marmion_ had been published and on which
Byron had based his charge of venality.  Scott heeded ordinary
criticism not at all, but he did not like to be misunderstood by those
whom he admired.  Byron replied in the friendliest spirit, and
recapitulated all the pleasant things which the Prince Regent had said.
It was the beginning of a correspondence which did equal credit to
both.  But the mere fact that he now numbered Byron among his friends
sharpened the realization that here was a rival against whom he could
not stand.  How could a middle-aged Scottish lawyer compete with the
romantically-minded against a young and handsome lordling, who had
about him the glamour of a wild life and a broken heart?  How could the
homely glens of his own land vie with the glittering cities of the
South and the magic of the ancient East?  Scott beheld a large part of
his occupation gone.

[Sidenote: The Ballantyne Difficulties]

Yet he had never had greater need to earn money, for in 1813 the
affairs of the Ballantyne firm were moving straight to disaster.  That
year saw the last throes of the struggle with Napoleon, as well as a
fantastic war with the United States.  In Britain prices soared, the
people were starving and mutinous, bankruptcies filled the Gazette, and
even firms of ancient stability were tottering.  In such yeasty waters
the Ballantyne cockle-shell could not hope to live.  Morritt and others
had backed its bills, but credit was now at an end.  Wherever Scott
went, at Abbotsford, at Drumlanrig, at Rokeby, he was pursued by the
wailful choir of the brethren.  {107} At last his even temper cracked,
and in May he forced himself to a resolution which he should have taken
long before.  The publishing business, which was the more speculative
one, must be wound up.  But how was this to be done without that
bankruptcy which Edinburgh gossip had long anticipated?  Bankruptcy
could not be thought of, for it would reveal the Sheriff of the Forest,
the Clerk of Court, and the world-famous poet as the chief partner in a
wild-cat concern, and would involve the forced sale of valuable
copyrights.  The sole hope lay in some brother publisher who would take
the reconstruction in hand, and that publisher could only be Constable.
The obnoxious Hunter was now dead, and Constable had got as partners a
well-mannered Writer to the Signet, Mr Cathcart, and Cathcart's
brother-in-law, a discreet young man named Robert Cadell.  Scott
swallowed his pride, and approached the friend with whom four years
before he had quarrelled.

Constable was willing to help--on his own terms.  The first question
was how to surmount the immediate trouble.  He would not take over the
disastrous _Annual Register_, which had been losing a steady thousand a
year, but he would buy a quarter share in the _Rokeby_ copyright, and
some of the Ballantyne stock, thereby helping the firm to the extent of
2000.  He promised also to make a careful examination of the whole
position.  His report came in August and it was not cheerful.  The two
concerns, taken together, might be just solvent, assets and liabilities
balancing at about 15,000, but in an immediate winding up the assets
would be difficult to realize.[6]  Four thousand pounds must be got at
once, and he himself was not in a position to provide the sum.  Scott
must either raise the money or part with his share in the copyrights.
After an anxious week help was forthcoming from the young Duke of
Buccleuch, who guaranteed Scott's overdraft for 4000.  Then in October
came the victories of Leipzig and Vittoria, business revived in
Britain, credit became easier, and the Ballantyne firm was saved.  The
publishing business was kept {108} alive only till its stock could be
realized, and John Ballantyne migrated to the more suitable activities
of an auctioneer.  Scott at one moment decided to cut his connexion
with the printing business also (which would have involved its winding
up), but was prevented by his care for James Ballantyne's interests and
his disinclination to lose the considerable sum he had already invested
in it.

The misfortune was that, though distracted by worries, he did not fully
realize the gravity of the crisis through which he had passed.  That at
the worst moment he should have continued to lend money to impecunious
friends may be set down to his credit, but he was also commissioning
Terry in London to buy him old armour, and he had begun to negotiate
for the ground which ran back behind Abbotsford to Cauldshiels loch.
Land hunger had laid its spell on him.  The British victories on the
Continent had sent his spirits soaring, and once again the future
seemed rosy.  He was quit for the moment of the Ballantyne incubus, and
would find a way to live at Abbotsford like a gentleman.  There were
many shots in the locker--principally a new poem of the Highlands which
he had begun, to be called _The Lord of the Isles_.  Surely the great
Bruce would make as strong an appeal to the world as any Greek bandit
or turbaned Mussulman.

Yet at the back of his head he knew that his vogue had gone.  He had
caught a favouring breeze of popular favour, but the wind now blew from
another quarter.  In August, while the Ballantyne difficulty was at its
worst, he had received a letter from the Lord Chamberlain, offering him
the Poet Laureateship in succession to Pye.  He was disinclined to
accept it for a variety of reasons, the chief of which, perhaps, was
that he did not wish to incur the charge, which Tom Moore had already
made, of being a kind of poetic usher to the great world.  The Duke of
Buccleuch, when consulted, took the same view.  The post was slightly
ridiculous.  "The poet laureate would stick to you and your productions
like a piece of court-plaster.  Your muse has hitherto been
independent--don't put her in harness.  {109} We know how lightly she
trots along when left to her natural paces, but do not try driving."
The offer was declined, on the ground of his unsuitability for the
work, and for the better reason that he already held two official
posts.  Through Croker and others he pushed the claims of Southey, to
whom a small regular income would be a godsend, and Southey was duly
appointed.[7] Meantime, while the masons hammered on the new Abbotsford
roof, Scott busied himself with _The Lord of the Isles_, but in his
heart he had already bidden farewell to poesy as the staple of his life.



III

[Sidenote: Scott's Poetry]

We shall err if we take Scott's poetic self-depreciation too literally.
As a poet he always stood in his own light, and that humorous,
deprecating figure has ever since come between the light and the
critics.  In some degree it was a mannerism, springing from the modesty
which was his prime characteristic; he disliked flattery and was shy
even of praise, and he averted both by an aggressive humility.  In so
far as it was serious, it was based upon two deeply held convictions.
The first was that poetry, indeed literature in any form, was not the
highest of human callings.  His true heroes belonged to a different
sphere, the sphere of action.  This was no snobbish contempt of letters
as beneath the dignity of coat-armour; it was the man not the gentleman
who spoke: it was a protest against the exaggerated repute of the
spinner of words in contrast with those whose homelier virtues "spun
the great wheel of earth about."  He was more interested in life than
in art, in character than in intellect.  He confessed that he never
felt abashed or awed except in the presence of one man--the Duke of
Wellington.  "The immortality of poetry," he wrote to Miss Seward in
1808, "is not so firm a point of my creed as the immortality of the
soul."[8]  The second was that his own verse simply did not attain what
he regarded {110} as the loftiest poetic excellence.  Shakespeare was
his supreme love, and at the end of his life he declared that he was
not worthy to tie Shakespeare's brogues.  With Byron he considered
himself on an equality, since they ran for the same stakes; but he held
himself inferior to many contemporaries in what moved him most--the
poetry of simple passion, and the poetry of reflection.  Burns and
himself, he thought, should not be "named in the same day."  He
profoundly admired Wordsworth; he wrote in all sincerity to Southey--"I
am not such an ass as not to know that you are my better in poetry":
his own favourite pieces in all literature were Johnson's "London" and
"The Vanity of Human Wishes";[9] his love for the grave meditative vein
even led him to the surprising judgment that in 1810 Joanna Baillie was
"the highest genius of our country."[10]

These preferences must be kept in mind in judging Scott's tales in
verse.  He was producing something in which he delighted, which he
believed to be of use to his country, but which he did not himself
regard as the highest kind of poetry.  He would have agreed with Lord
Dudley when he wrote: "I have all along harboured in my mind certain
heretical doubts and misgivings as to Walter Scott's style of writing,
and am apt to suspect that, as my late lord of Rochester (speaking of
no less a person than Cowley) did somewhat profanely remark, 'it is not
of God, and therefore cannot stand.'"[11]  He was a minstrel on the
ancient pattern, and it was his business to capture popular favour and
give the world what it wanted.  If popular favour turned from him, he
must stand back or try something new.  To such a prosaic wooer the
Muses do not give their secret hearts.

It is a platitude, taking all his work into account, to say that Scott
was a far greater poet than his poetry reveals.  But his specific
achievement was remarkable enough.  He invented a new form, from which
the novelty has long ago departed; and this very familiarity {111} with
him has bred in many quarters a friendly contempt.  He is a writer,
says a foreign critic, "whom all grown-up people have read, and no
grown-up people read."[12]  But if we come to him with fresh minds, we
shall not underrate his quality.  He essayed a new type of poetic
narrative, a kind of miniature epic.  He discovered a measure which was
apt for both rapid movement and detailed description.  In a very simple
rhythm he introduced variations which prevent monotony and permit of
vigorous emphasis, and yet in no way break the flow.  He adapted the
old ballad form so as to fit it for a long and often complex narrative.
Scott's octosyllables embrace, if carefully studied, surprising
varieties of manner, and they are far more artful than they appear; he
has told us that he often wrote his verses two or three times over.
They can gallop and they can jig, they can move placidly in some piece
of argument, and now and then they can sing themselves into a lyrical
exaltation.

[Sidenote: Defects]

The dangers and defects of such a medium are obvious, and, now that the
novelty has worn off, it is these defects which the critic chiefly
sees.  We have all fallen under his spell in childhood, but age is apt
to react against what ravishes youth.  Too often the lines run with an
unpleasing facility, so that he resembles the early Roman satirist, of
whom Horace said that he could write six hundred lines "stans pede in
uno."  Too often the fluency is monotonous and dulls the ear.  Too
often he seems to gird his loins and leap unashamedly into a pit of
Gothick extravagance.  Too often he falls into a polite jargon, and
calls tartan the "bosom's chequered shroud," and revels in falsetto
Augustan epithets, and writes bathos in the Shenstone style:--

  Then first alarmed, his sire and train
  Tried every art, but tried in vain.
  The soul, too soft its ills to bear,
  Had left our mortal hemisphere,
  And sought in better world the meed
  To blameless life by Heaven decreed.

{112} Sometimes he can be at his worst and best in consecutive lines--

  Till gallant Cessford's heart-blood dear
  Reeked on dark Elliot's Border spear.


The pieces are first of all to be judged as poetic narrations, which is
their strict artistic type--that is to say, on the credibility and
interest of the characters, the skill of the telling, and the emotion
of the high dramatic moments.  Judged in this sphere, they show a
progressive advance.  The _Lay_ and _Marmion_ are faulty in
construction, though the latter rises to a fine tragic conclusion.
_The Lady of the Lake_ is pure airy romance, getting its effects as
swiftly and surely as a fairy tale, and possessing a background which
straightway captures the fancy.  In it the dispatch of the fiery cross,
the combat between Fitz James and Roderick Dhu, and the closing scene
in Stirling Castle are models of story-telling, as lucid as any prose
and yet with the exaltation of poetry.  That piece, also, contains an
example of argument in verse, where, without the waste of one word and
without dropping from the poetic level, an economic situation is
admirably expounded--Roderick's account in Canto V of the origin of
Highland reiving.  _Rokeby_ is an attempt on a bigger scale, with an
excellent but too intricate plot, which checks the speed.  It is, as I
have said, the precursor of the prose novels.  But it contains
character-drawing of a subtler kind than the others, and in Bertram a
Byronic figure far more convincing than any of Byron's own.  But I am
inclined to think that it is in the poem which was published after his
farewell to poetry, _The Lord of the Isles_, that Scott reveals his
highest narrative powers.  The verse is fresher and simpler, with more
play and sinew in it, and the scene in Canto II when the Abbot, like
another Balaam, tries to curse and is forced to bless, touches the
austere magnificence of the Sagas.  Bannockburn, too, seems to me
Scott's best battle-piece, with the death of Argentine and the
beautiful "falling close."

[Sidenote: Narrative Skill]

This narrative skill, this power of presenting human {113} action,
especially heroic action, so as at once to convince and delight, is a
poetic merit of a high order.  In English poetry, save for Chaucer, and
Burns in "Tam o' Shanter," Scott has in this respect no serious rival.
He has other strictly poetic qualities.  For one thing he invented a
new kind of description, a light, glittering summary of relevant
features which rarely impedes the flow of the tale.  Take the picture
of St Mary's loch in the introduction to Canto II of _Marmion_, or that
of Loch Katrine in Canto I of _The Lady of the Lake_.  The secret of
success lies in the effortless choice of significant and memorable
details; he fails when, as in _Rokeby_, he peeps and botanizes.  Again,
no poet has ever produced so easily the impression of sustained
movement, and, at moments, of headlong speed.  A journey, a ride
against time, a muster, all are set to swift music.  Take the _Lay_--

  Already on dark Ruberslaw
  The Douglas holds his weapon-schaw:
  The lances, waving in his train,
  Clothe the dun heath like autumn grain;
  And on the Liddle's northern strand,
  To bar retreat to Cumberland,
  Lord Maxwell ranks his merrymen good
  Beneath the eagle and the rood.

Take a dozen passages in _Marmion_--Marmion's reply to James beginning

  But Nottingham has archers good
  And Yorkshire men are stern of mood;

or Clare's charge to De Wilton, or the quarrel with Angus at Tantallon,
or the whole tale of Flodden.  Take the superb opening of _The Lady of
the Lake_, and the breathless excitement of the scene when the whistle
of Roderick calls up the Highland ambush.  One secret of the speed is
the use of proper names--the thunderous, cumulative topography, which
gives at one and the same time an impression of a spacious background,
and of a hurrying to and fro within it.  The place-names mark the
course like the posts in a stadium.

This is one of the matters in which Scott is akin to {114} Homer.
Another is the sudden drop into a humorous simplicity which Jeffrey
disliked, and thought "offensive to every reader of delicacy."  It is
part of Scott's gift, which we shall find everywhere in the novels, of
linking his heroics with mother earth.  Let me cite as examples William
of Deloraine's

  Letter nor line know I never a one
  Wer't my neck-verse at Hairibee--

or Wat Tinlin's:

  They crossed the Liddle at curfew hour
  And burned my little lonely tower;
  The fiend receive their souls therefor!
  It had not been burned this year or more--

or the comments of the Borderers on Marmion's train: or old Angus's

  Thanks to Saint Bothan, son of mine,
  Save Gawain, ne'er could pen a line--

or the sports in the castle-hall of Stirling.  Such homeliness is of
the essence of true romance, but it was alien to the bloodless thing
which before Scott had passed for romantic.[13]

[Sidenote: The Lyrics]

The magic, inseparable from poetry, is not to be found in any curious
verbal felicities, or in the occasional excursions into _diablerie_.
In the long poems Scott is consistently unhappy in his use of the
supernatural.  It dwells rather in the total effect of the gleaming
landscapes and the brightly coloured pageants, and, most of all, in his
power of rounding off an episode or a description with a ringing note,
which sets the blood running.  He can do this in narration, and he can
do it in argument and reflection.  The best instance of the latter,
perhaps, is outside the main poems, in the verses in his usual metre
which Waverley wrote on receiving the news of his captain's commission.
A piece of respectable but {115} uninspired description, an exercise on
the grand piano, ends with a clarion note--

  So on the idle dreams of youth
  Breaks the loud trumpet-call of truth,
  Bids each fair vision pass away,
  Like landscape on the lake that lay,
  As fair, as flitting, and as frail
  As that which fled the autumn gale--
  For ever dead to fancy's eye
  Be each gay form that glided by,
  While dreams of love and lady's charms
  Give place to honour and to arms.


Another and a rarer magic reveals itself now and then in the long
poems--in the interspersed lyrics; and it is in such pieces, especially
in those scattered through the novels, that Scott attains his real
poetic stature.  He has been called with justice the greatest of our
lyric poets between Burns and Shelley,[14] greater than Coleridge or
Wordsworth because more truly a singer.  His inspiration here came from
the vernacular songs and ballads, and was the chief boon which his work
on the _Minstrelsy_ gave him.  It put tunes in his head far subtler
than the conventional things which he officially admired; and these
tunes remained, singing themselves to him at work and play, so that,
when in the novels he needed a snatch of verse, they rushed upon him
unbidden, and flowed from his pen as easily as dialogue.  Hence his
lyrical genius shows a steady growth so long as his powers endured.  By
their very nature the octosyllables of the narrative poems could not be
muted to the silences of great poetry, those "ditties of no tone" which
are piped only to the spirit; but in his greater lyrics Scott
penetrated to the final mystery of the poet.

He is in the first place a master of the pure lyric, the song for
music.  It takes many forms, but has always two characteristics: it may
be different in style from the surrounding narrative, but it is exactly
appropriate to its mood; and it carries its own music with it--there
{116} is no need to set it formally to a tune.  Its emotion is usually
the emotion of external things, the hunt, the combat, the battle, the
bridal, as much fitting subjects for lyric as the subtler passions.  It
may be a marching song, like "Blue Bonnets over the Border" in the
_Minstrelsy_, or "Donald Caird," or "Allen-a-dale" or "Bonnie Dundee";
or a lullaby like "Soldier, rest, thy warfare o'er"; or a lover's
farewell like "The heath this night must be my bed," and "A weary lot
is thine, fair maid"; or a fairy tale, like "Alice Brand," and the
strange snatch about the "stag of ten" in _The Lady of the Lake_; or
the eternal love-plaint like "Brignall Banks."  Such pieces are
different in kind from the rest of his poetry.  His lyric talent here
has no redundancies or false notes; he achieves his effect, often a
subtle and delicate effect, with extreme precision.

But there is a second type of lyric or lyrical ballad, mostly to be
found in the novels, which mounts still higher, which at its best,
indeed, is beyond analysis, producing that sense of something
inexplicable and overwhelming which is the token of genius.  Its
subjects are the mysteries of life, not its gallant bustle, and the
supreme mystery of death.  It deals with enchantments and the things
which "tease us out of thought," with the pale light of another world,
with the crooked shadows from the outer darkness which steal over the
brightness of youth and love.  The ballad of Elspeth of the
Craigburnfoot in _The Antiquary_ is such a piece--it is romance seen
through dying eyes.  The "Coronach" in _The Lady of the Lake_ is
another, a lament which has the poignant sorrow of a wandering wind.
Sometimes the atmosphere of them is translunary, not of this earth.
Sometimes they are sober reflections upon the transience of mortal
things, and the minstrel becomes the prophet.  They are Scott's final
credentials as a poet, even as a great poet, for they have the
_desiderium_ of great poetry.  Such is the snatch in _Guy Mannering_,
which has Shakespeare's high oracular spell--

  Twist ye, twine ye! even so,
  Mingle shades of joy and woe.

{117}

Such is Lucy Ashton's song in _The Bride of Lammermoor_--

  Look not thou on beauty's charming,
  Sit thou still when kings are arming,
  Taste not when the wine-cup glistens,
  Speak not when the people listens.
  Stop thine ear against the singer
  From the red gold keep thy finger,--
  Vacant heart, and hand and eye,
  Easy live and quiet die.

Such is that haunting fragment in _The Pirate_, beginning

  And you shall deal the funeral dole;
    Ay, deal it, mother mine,
  To weary body and to heavy soul,
    The white bread and the wine.

And, greater still, there is "Proud Maisie," Madge Wildfire's dying
song.  These things are sung mostly by the distraught; they appear in
the narrative to enhance a mood; not like the solid carpentry of the
larger poems, but like some sudden breath of inspiration from an inner
shrine.  They are Scott's way of linking the prosaic earth with the
things that were never on sea or land, the ultimate matter of
poetry.[15]



IV

Very early in his literary career Scott's mind had turned to the
writing of romances in prose.  He began one on Thomas the Rhymer and
another on the Civil War.  In 1805, when he was settled at Ashestiel
and busy on his _Dryden_, he projected a tale of the Highlands in the
'Forty-five to be called "Waverley: 'Tis Fifty Years Since."  Seven
chapters were completed, and shown to Erskine, who pronounced them
dull.  The success of _The Lady of the Lake_ turned his thoughts again
to the Highlands and Prince Charlie, which Surtees had long been
pressing on him as a fitting subject.  A few more chapters were written
and the whole was submitted to {118} James Ballantyne, who shook his
head at their prosiness, though he counselled perseverance.  Scott was
discouraged and put the thing aside.  He had already in 1807 finished
Joseph Strutt's romance of _Queen-Hoo Hall_ for Mr Murray, and neither
the fragment nor its continuation had been successful.  But the plan
had always been at the back of his head, though it was overlaid by more
urgent duties.  The manuscript of the Jacobite novel had been mislaid
in the "flitting" from Ashestiel, and did not lie in a corner of his
desk to spur his memory.  But in 1813, in the autumn when the salmon
run well in Tweed, a guest at Abbotsford proposed to go fishing.  Scott
ascended to the garret to find his tackle, and in a corner of an old
escritoire he came upon the lost chapters.  It was a moment when he had
escaped from his worst financial anxieties, but to live at Abbotsford
as he desired to live he must earn money by his pen, and he had already
the clear conviction that his meridian as a poet was past.  He carried
the manuscript downstairs to see what could be made of it, and thereby
entered into his true kingdom.[16]

[Sidenote: Qualifications as a novelist]

For his poems had never been more than the skimming of a mighty
cauldron.  They had been tales told under the shackles of metre and
rhyme, a form inadequate to the immense volume of his resources.
"Whole buried towns support the dancer's heel."  To do justice to the
wealth of memories and knowledge which he had been storing up all his
life, he needed an ampler method and a more generous convention.  Few
men have ever approached the task of fiction more superbly endowed than
this lawyer-squire of forty-three.  He was widely read in several
literatures, and so deeply learned in many histories that he could look
upon a past age almost with the eye of a contemporary.  His life had
brought him into touch with most aspects of men's work; he knew
something of law, something of business, something of politics,
something of agriculture; {119} he had mixed with many societies, from
the brethren of the Covenant Close to the politicians of Whitehall,
from the lairds of the Forest to the lords and ladies of St James's.
Every man he met he treated like a kinsman, and there was no cranny of
human experience which did not attract his lively interest.  Moreover
he knew most of them from the inside, for by virtue of his ready
sympathy and quick imagination he could penetrate their secrets.  He
valued his dignity so highly, he used to say, that he never stood upon
it.  He could understand the dark places of the human spirit, but
especially he understood its normal sphere and the ordinary conduct of
life.  It could not be said of him, as it was said of Timon of Athens,
that he never knew the middle of humanity but only the extremities.  He
had that kindly affection for the commonplace which belongs to a large
enjoying temperament--the mood of Rupert Brooke when he wrote that he
could "watch a dirty, middle-aged tradesman in a railway carriage for
hours, and love every dirty, greasy, sulky wrinkle in his weak chin and
every button on his spotted, unclean waistcoat."  The very
characteristics which cramped him as a poet were shining assets for the
novelist, since he did not dramatize himself and see the world in terms
of his own moods, but looked out upon it shrewdly, calmly and
steadfastly.  He was no raw boy, compelled to spin imaginative stuff
out of his inner consciousness, but mature in mind and character, one
who had himself struggled and suffered, and rubbed against the sharp
corners of life.  Yet, in his devouring relish for the human pageant,
he had still the ardour of a boy.

Above all he knew his native land, the prose and the poetry of it, as
no Scotsman had ever known it before.  He thrilled to its ancient
heroics, and every nook was peopled for him with familiar ghosts.  He
understood the tragedy of its stark poverty, and the comedy of its
new-won prosperity.  It was all a book in which he had read deep; the
cities with their provosts and bailies, the lawyers of the Parliament
House and the High Street closes, the doctors in the colleges, the
brisk merchants {120} who were building a new Scotland, the porters and
caddies and the riff-raff in the gutter; the burgh towns--was he not
the presiding judge of one?--with their snuffy burgesses and poaching
vagabonds; the countryside in all its ways--lairds and tacksmen,
ale-wives and tinkers, ministers and dominies, the bandsters and
shearers in harvest-time, the drovers on the green roads, the shepherds
in the far shielings.  He had the impulse and the material which go to
the making of great epics; it remained to be seen whether he had the
shaping power.



[1] See his letters in _A. Constable_, I.

[2] Under the contract the book should have been ready for publication
by Christmas 1810; it was not published till 1814.

[3] Lockhart, II.  361.

[4] Lockhart, III.  3.

[5] Lockhart, III.  15.

[6] _A. Constable_, III.  27-29.

[7] He invested the salary in a life policy for 3000.  See his letter
to Scott, _P.L.B._, 79.

[8] _Fam. Letters_, I.  126.

[9] The last lines Scott sent to the press were a quotation from the
latter.

[10] Lockhart, II.  307.

[11] _Letters to "Ivy" from the First Earl of Dudley_, 200.

[12] Georg Brandes, _Main Currents in Nineteenth-Century Literature_
(Eng. Trans.), IV.  102.

[13] A good example of this Homeric gift is the description in _The
Pirate_ of the Udaller going down to fish, with his guests following.
"They followed his stately steps to the shore _as the herd of deer
follows the leading stag_, with all manner of respectful observances."

[14] O. Elton, _A Survey of Eng. Literature_, 1780-1830, I.  310.

[15] It is possible that Scott wrote other verses which he never
claimed.  A good case can be made out for his authorship of "The
Highland Exile's Boat Song."  See _The Lone Shieling_ (1925).

[16] The story of the finding of the MS. is told by Scott in a letter
to Morritt (Lockhart, III. 126) and in his General Introduction to the
novels.  There seems to me to be no reason to regard it as part of the
later mystification.




{121}

CHAPTER VI

THE EARLY NOVELS

(1814-1817)


I

[Sidenote: 1814]

When Scott returned to Edinburgh in January, 1814, after the Christmas
vacation, he had completed most of the first volume of the new novel,
and John Ballantyne copied the manuscript for the press.  The
Ballantynes printed it, and Constable undertook the publication on the
basis of an equal division of profits between himself and the author.
It was announced to appear in March, but its completion was delayed by
papers that Scott undertook to write for the supplement to the
_Encyclopdia Britannica_, the copyright of which Constable had
recently acquired.  On the 4th of June he began the second volume, and
the book was finished by the end of that month, while he was spending
six hours in Court for five days of the week.  Lockhart has given us a
glimpse of the strenuous toil of those June twilights.  He had been
dining with some young advocates in a house in George Street, which
commanded a back view of Scott's house in North Castle Street.


When my companion's worthy father and uncle, after seeing two or three
bottles go round, left the juveniles to themselves, the weather being
hot, we adjourned to a library which had one large window looking
northward.  After conversing here for an hour or more, I observed that
a shade had come over the aspect of my friend, who happened to be
placed immediately opposite to myself, and said something that
intimated a fear of his being unwell.  "No," said he, "I shall be well
enough presently, if you will only let me sit where you are, and take
my chair; for there is a confounded hand in sight of me here, which has
often bothered me before, and now it won't let me {122} fill my glass
with a good will."  I rose to change places with him accordingly, and
he pointed out to me this hand which, like the writing on Belshazzar's
wall, distracted his hour of hilarity.  "Since we sat down," he said,
"I have been watching it--it fascinates my eye--it never stops--page
after page is finished and thrown on that heap of MS., and still it
goes on unwearied--and so it will be till candles are brought in, and
God knows how long after that.  It is the same every night--I can't
stand the sight of it when I am not at my books."--"Some stupid,
dogged, engrossing clerk, probably," exclaimed myself or some other
giddy youth in our society.  "No, boys," said our host, "I well know
what hand it is--'tis Walter Scott's."[1]


[Sidenote: Reasons for anonymity]

_Waverley; or 'Tis Sixty Years Since_ appeared on July 7th in three
shabby little volumes, the price one guinea.  No author's name stood on
the title-page, and so began the tangled tale of Scott's anonymity.
His reasons for it were given explicitly in two letters written that
month to Morritt.  "I am something in the condition of Joseph Surface,
who was embarrassed by getting himself too good a reputation; for many
things may please people well enough anonymously, which, if they have
me in the title-page, would just give me that sort of ill name which
precedes hanging--and that would be in many respects inconvenient if I
thought of again trying a _grande opus_."  And a fortnight later: "I
shall _not_ own Waverley; my chief reason is that it would prevent me
of the pleasure of writing again....  In truth, I am not sure it would
be considered quite decorous of me, as a Clerk of Session, to write
novels.  Judges being monks, Clerks are a sort of lay brethren, from
whom some solemnity of walk and conduct may be expected.[2]  So,
whatever I may do of this kind, I shall whistle it down the wind to
pray a fortune....  I do not see how my silence can be considered as
imposing on the public....  In point of emolument, everybody knows that
I sacrifice much money by withholding my name; and {123} what should I
gain by it that any human being has a right to consider as an unfair
advantage?  In fact, only the freedom of writing trifles with less
personal responsibility, and perhaps more frequently than I otherwise
might do."

These are solid and intelligible grounds.  The novel was not the form
of literature in the best repute, and a Clerk of Court, who had hopes
of the Bench, and whose name had so far only been associated with the
responsible rles of poet, critic and antiquary, might well seek an
incognito when he appeared in the character of popular entertainer.
Moreover, the warning of Constable's former partner, Hunter, against
cheapening his name had sunk deep into Scott's mind.  He had already a
large mass of published work to his credit, and his circumstances made
it necessary that he should steadily add to it; it would be fatal if he
stood before the world as a bookseller's hack.  With his shrewd eye for
economic facts, he realized that a market might be glutted by an
author's name, though the demand for that author's work might be
unsated.  We see this motive in some doggerel lines to John
Ballantyne:--

  No, John, I will not own the book--
      I won't, you picaroon.
  When next I try St Grubby's brook,
  The "A. of Wa--" shall bait the hook--
      And flat-fish bite as soon
  As if before them they had got
  The worn out wriggler Walter Scott.

He did not want the name of a worn-out wriggler.  It was not that he
feared a new venture, and desired to test the flood before he committed
himself to it; Scott was never afraid of experiment, and had always
refused to bind himself to one line; but he was wisely anxious not to
mortgage his future.  Nor did he doubt the merits of his new work; he
was as certain of them as against dubious friends, as Bunyan in a
similar case had been about the _Pilgrim's Progress_.

There was another motive, a love of the game of mystification for its
own sake.  It amused him {124} enormously to see sapient critics
hallooing on a false scent, and he was quite ready to encourage their
vagaries.[3]  At first the secret was confined to Erskine, Morritt and
the Ballantynes, but as the novels increased some twenty people shared
the knowledge of the authorship.  Scott stood resolutely to his denial,
and thereby involved himself in a good deal of tortuous prevarication,
and some downright falsehoods, justified only on the legal plea that he
was not bound to incriminate himself.[4] Presently the world came to
regard it as Scott's amiable fad, and it may fairly be said that no
student of contemporary literature was for one moment misled.  The mass
of corroborative evidence was too great, and his best critic, J. L.
Adolphus, quotes appositely from _Twelfth Night_--

  An apple cleft in two is not more twin
  Than these two creatures.[5]


[Sidenote: Holiday in the North]

While Edinburgh was beginning to hum with gossip about the new novel,
Scott disappeared from its streets on what was perhaps the happiest
holiday of his life.  He was in high spirits; his new venture promised
to be a success, he was relieved for the present of financial cares,
and his beloved Abbotsford was growing under his hand; he was setting
out on a voyage of exploration to parts of his native land which had
hitherto been only names to him; he had congenial company, including
Erskine, and he had the holiday feeling which follows a long spell of
strenuous work.  He sailed on July 29th from Leith in the Lighthouse
yacht, under the guidance of Mr Stevenson, the Surveyor of the Lights,
who was Robert Louis Stevenson's grandfather.  There is no better proof
of Scott's inveterate passion for the pen than that, after long weeks
of scribing, he should have kept in five little paper books a full
journal of his trip.  As a "tour to the Highlands" it is a curious
contrast to the books of Johnson and Boswell--the stately introspective
{125} record of the Londoner who carried his vehement idiosyncrasies
intact through a barbarous and unfamiliar land, the not less
introspective gossip of the Londoner's henchman; for it is the work of
a keen observer who was more interested in things than in his reactions
to them, and who brought to his observation a great store of sympathy
and knowledge.  And yet no journal could be more self-revealing.  In
Lockhart's words, "we have before us, according to the scene and
occasion, the poet, the antiquary, the magistrate, the planter and the
agriculturist; but everywhere the warm yet sagacious
philanthropist--everywhere the courtesy, based on the unselfishness, of
the thoroughbred gentleman."

At first he was in familiar scenes.  He visited the ruined abbey of
Arbroath, which awoke memories of Williamina Stuart, in whose company
he had first seen it.  He had his one and only bout of sea-sickness,
though the rest of the company suffered much.  In the Orkneys and
Shetlands he studied the antiquities and the habits of the people, and
had the felicity to meet a genuine witch, who, like olus, sold
favourable winds to sailors; he explored the wild coast around Cape
Wrath; in the outer Hebrides he followed the track of Prince Charlie's
wanderings; in Skye he saw Macleod's fairy flag, heard Macrimmon's
Lament played by a Macrimmon, and was solemnized by the majesty of Loch
Coruisk; he made a difficult landing on the reef which was afterwards
to carry the lighthouse of Skerryvore, and, amid the tombs of Iona,
reflected that the last Scottish king said to have been buried there
owed all his fame to Shakespeare.  "A few weeks' labour of an obscure
player has done more for the memory of Macbeth than all the gifts,
wealth and monuments of this cemetery of princes have been able to
secure to the rest of its inhabitants."

The voyage gave him the landscape he needed for the forthcoming _Lord
of the Isles_, and the knowledge of island life which afterwards bore
fruit in _The Pirate_.  It gave him more--an insight into certain
aspects of Highland and island economy, and the problems of a {126}
fast-moving world.  No trait is more notable in Scott than his constant
interest in economic and social questions, how human beings made a
livelihood, how social change was to be combined with social
persistence.  In Orkney he observed the crofting system with a
sagacious eye; large farms were, he decided, the only economic
solution, but he could not face the dispossession of the small folk.
"Were I an Orcadian laird I feel I should shuffle on with the old
useless creatures against my better judgment."  In the Reay country he
noted the growth of the big sheep farms, which were opening up a new
source of profit for Highland landowners.  But they meant the eviction
of hundreds of families who had been there for generations and had
provided stalwart soldiers for the British Army.  Europe was not yet at
peace; was the economic to be preferred to the human factor?  "Wealth
is no doubt strength in a country, while all is quiet and governed by
law, but on any altercation or internal commotion it ceases to be
strength, and is only a means of tempting the strong to plunder the
possessors."

He crossed to Ulster, and at Portrush had news which clouded the
remainder of his journey--the death of Harriet, Duchess of Buccleuch,
to whom he was attached by every bond of clan loyalty and personal
affection.  He left the yacht at Greenock and made his first steamer
journey to Glasgow, where he wrote to the Duke.  But the Duke had
anticipated him, and had already written a letter to tell him how the
kind and gracious lady had made her farewell to the world.  In his
sorrow the bereaved husband desired to draw his friends closer around
him.  "I shall love them more and more because I know that they loved
her."  There are few things in the long literature of consolation to
surpass the tenderness and fortitude of this interchange of letters.

Scott reached Edinburgh to find that Constable had sold three thousand
copies of _Waverley_, and was eager to treat for a third edition.[6]
The novelist was fairly {127} embarked on his career, and we may pause
to consider the auspices under which he entered upon it.



II

[Sidenote: Origins of the Novel]

This is not the place to trace at length the progress of English
fiction from its lowly beginnings to the high estate to which it was
brought by the eighteenth-century masters.  Scott entered upon a field
already largely cultivated, though under divergent principles of
husbandry.  First for these principles.  Defoe's had been the method of
minute, conscientious realism.  His technique was that of the detached
reporter, giving fictitious events the air of a plain statement of
fact, the art, as Sir Walter Raleigh has put it, of "grave,
imperturbable lying."  With Richardson we have the same elaborate
pretence at factual accuracy; his device of a narrative in letters had
the same purpose as Defoe's minute particulars, to give the imaginative
stuff the illusion of a chronicle of fact.  With both the personality
of the writer is withdrawn.  In Fielding we find a radical change.  He
had the boldness to present fiction as fiction, and to propound a
doctrine of the writer's part which since his day has been generally
accepted.  Verisimilitude is to be attained by the inherent logic of
the characters and their doings; the illusion he seeks is not that of
history but of art.  The author is no longer the impersonal chronicler;
he is the spectator who assumes omniscience, and therefore he is
entitled to comment and philosophize as he pleases.  In the fantastic
impressionism of Sterne the freedom of the author was further enlarged.
He could now cut capers on his own account, and, in revealing his
characters, reveal every cranny of himself.

Fielding's achievement freed the hands of his successors.
Simultaneously with the development of the methods of husbandry had
come an enlargement of the arable land.  Richardson had invented the
novel of sensibility, which was the early form of the novel of
personality--the record of events of which the chief interest lay in
the reactions of the human soul.  Smollett {128} brought in the rough
background of the streets and the taverns, and the coarse sea-salt of
life; he was the first to exult in the grosser oddities of human
nature.  With Fielding, too, the domain of the novel was indefinitely
extended; the new elasticity of his method made its sphere co-extensive
with all aspects of society.  When Scott began to write, the novel of
manners was firmly established, embracing the drawing-rooms of
Richardson and Miss Burney, the bar-parlours and streets and highroads
of Smollett and Fielding, and the impish world of Sterne.  Its aim, in
Coleridge's phrase, was no longer to copy but to imitate reality, and
to interpret it.

But the great era of production seemed to have closed with the
publication of _Humphry Clinker_ in the year of Scott's birth.  Jane
Austen was indeed carrying one branch of the novel of manners to its
final perfection and had published three of her masterpieces before
1814, but they had not caught the public taste.  That taste was avid
for fiction, and it was being fed on coarse fare.  The Minerva Press
was sending out a stream of foolish romances, which wallowed in
sentimentality or horror, partly translated from the French, partly
imitations of Matt Lewis and Mrs Radcliffe.  The consequence was that
the novel had acquired an ill repute among serious readers.  But the
underworld in which it lived was populous; of a forgotten work in six
volumes, _Vicissitudes_, two thousand copies at thirty-six shillings
were sold on the day of publication.  Such a vogue pointed to a demand
for something which the ordinary novel of manners did not meet.  Miss
Edgeworth's Irish tales had shown that there were untilled patches
within the confines of the British islands from which good harvests
could be reaped; the success of Miss Jane Porter's unhistorical
melodramas revealed a popular craving for the pageantry of past
history; and the crudities of the Minerva Press proved that the
fairy-tale, even in its most vulgar form, had not lost its ancient
glamour.  The time was ripe for a further extension of the domain of
the novel, the artistic value of which in one sphere the eighteenth
century had signally proved; inside the {129} splendid mechanism which
had been devised must be drawn the discredited romance.

An acute eighteenth-century critic thus summed up the effect of Pope
and his school: "What we have gotten by this revolution, you will say,
is a great deal of good sense.  What we have lost is a world of fine
fabling."[7]  But all through the century the fabling had gone on, in
nursery rhymes and children's tales, in broadsheets and chap-books and
ballads, in the bombast of the popular presses.  The public appetite
for the stranger and more coloured aspects of life, the subjects which
we call "romantic," had never ceased, but it had been satisfied with
indifferent fare, so that, when Scott began to write, romance had got
an evil name, being associated with the feebly fantastic.  The
thoughtful fought shy of its crude manifestations, so that Dr Johnson,
in spite of his taste for the old romancers, could nevertheless in his
Dictionary mark the word "chivalrous" as obsolete.  There was a
sceptical spirit of counter-romance among the cultivated: we find it in
_Northanger Abbey_, we have traces of it in Peacock's _Maid Marian_.
What was needed was a writer who could unite both strains, for in the
medival world the two had been inseparable, the mystery and the fact,
credulity and incredulity, the love of the marvellous and the descent
into jovial common sense; who could make credible beauty and terror in
their strangest forms by showing them as the natural outcome of the
clash of human character; who could satisfy a secular popular craving
with fare in which the most delicate palate could also delight.

[Sidenote: The Historical Romance]

In particular, the historical romance clamoured to be rescued from the
dingy _coulisses_ of the Minerva Press.  It had a long ancestry and a
continuing vogue, but, except in a piece of brilliant mimicry like
Defoe's _Memoirs of a Cavalier_, it too had only a nodding acquaintance
with the serious art of letters.  As Sir Walter Raleigh has written,
"the historical novelists who preceded Scott chose a century as they
might have chosen a partner for a dance, gaily and confidently, without
qualification or {130} equipment beyond a few outworn verbal
archaisms."  Hitherto all the great novels had been studies of
contemporary life; the historical tale was a lifeless thing, smothered
in tinsel conventions, something beneath the dignity of literature.
Yet the exclusion of the past gravely narrowed the area of fiction, and
if the novel was to take all the world for its province it could not
confine the world to the mutable present.

An historical novel is simply a novel which attempts to reconstruct the
life, and recapture the atmosphere, of an age other than that of the
writer.  The age may be distant a couple of generations or a thousand
years; the novel may find its drama in swift external incident, or in
some conflict of the spirit; it may be picaresque or domestic, a story
of manners, or of action, or of the heart; its technique may be any one
of the twenty different ways in which tribal lays and other things are
constructed.  The point of difference is that in every case the writer
has to construct for himself, imaginatively, not only the drama, but an
atmosphere and modes of life and thought with which he cannot be
personally familiar.  So, it may be said, has the novelist of
contemporary life, whenever he strays outside the narrow orbit of his
experience.  But there is a difference.  The man who deals with
contemporary life has the key nearer to his hand.  He is concerned with
things which are roughly within his world of experience; the details
may be strange, but access to them is simple.  The historical novelist
has to think himself into an alien world before he can expound its
humanity.

Such a type is capable of the highest flights.  In the hands of a
master it permits that isolation of essentials from accidentals, and
that critical detachment which is of the essence of the novelist's art,
and which is hard to attain when he is clogged with a "turbid mixture
of contemporaneousness."  But it is perhaps the most difficult, and
requires the most scrupulous gift of selection; it is so apt to be
overloaded with accurate but irrelevant bric--brac.  Also it needs an
austere conscience.  It is easy to play tricks, and to startle with
false colour and {131} meretricious invention.  The reader cannot check
the result by his own experience; he is in the novelist's hands, and a
point of honour is involved; consciously to pervert the past is a more
heinous sin than to pervert the present, for the crime is harder to
detect.  Above all it demands a strong independent imagination.  It is
fatally simple to project the mind of one's own age back into the past
and produce what is no more than a fancy-dress party.  Past modes of
thought are harder to realize than past ways of living.  But the
difficulties of the form have been an incentive to bold minds.  Since
Scott released the past for fiction, it is notable how many of the
masterpieces have belonged to that school.  _War and Peace_ is an
historical novel; _Vanity Fair_, likewise, for Thackeray wrote a
generation or two after Waterloo: most of Victor Hugo's and some of the
best work of Flaubert and Anatole France.


[Sidenote: Scott's material]

Scott in _Waverley_ chose wisely to treat of history which was just
outside his own recollection, but within that of many people with whom
he had talked.  He was a child of two when Dr Johnson visited
Edinburgh, and since that year Scotland had moved into a new world.
But fragments of the old world remained, and he had a pious desire to
fix on canvas the fading colours before they vanished for ever.  He put
into his first novel a large part of the harvest of his youthful
wanderings.  The period--sixty years back--lived for him like a
personal reminiscence, so vividly had he been impressed by what he had
seen and heard and read.  His prodigious memory[8] enabled him to
escape the toil of the ordinary chronicler; no need for him to hunt in
books for the correct details, since they were all clear in his head.
He wove into the tale traits of many real places and people.  The house
of Tully-Veolan was drawn from Grandtully in Perthshire and Traquair in
Tweeddale.  Davie Gellatley may have had his original in Daft Jock
Gray, once a {132} famous figure on the Border, and Fergus MacIvor may
have been partly studied from his friend, Alexander Macdonell of
Glengarry.  The Baron of Bradwardine has hints of Stewart of
Invernahyle, whom Scott visited in his youth; of Erskine's neighbour,
the old laird of Gask; and--in his love of the classics and
uncompromising loyalty--of the last Lord Pitsligo.[9]  But all the
portraits are composite, for Scott was no "barren rascal" to stick
slavishly to one model.

[Sidenote: Edward Waverley]

The theme of the novel is the contrast of two civilizations--the impact
upon the mind of an average educated Englishman of the alien world of
the Scots Lowlands and the lingering medivalism of the Highlands.  To
get the contrast in the highest relief he selects a tense historical
moment, and the tragedy of a lost cause.  With the evolution of the
narrative inside the main theme he has obviously taken pains, for the
actual plot of _Waverley_, as Stevenson noted, is better wrought than
that of any of the other novels.  The hero under the influence of love
and chivalry drifts unconsciously away from the loyalties of his race
and the service to which he belongs, and finds himself launched upon an
equivocal line of conduct which only just stops short of disaster.  The
lost cause must issue in tragedy, but for the others the end must be
peace, and in order to compass this happy conclusion the fate of the
Baron of Bradwardine and his estate is most skilfully managed--with
complete fidelity, be it noted, to the intricate Scots law of entail.
Nor, when the prefaces and introductions are omitted--excellent things
in themselves but with no part in the artistry of the tale--does the
narrative ever drag.  The action begins properly with Chapter VII, and
I cannot feel that it ever loses its grip; the pace at first is slow
and leisurely, but soon we feel the rush of the true epic spirit.

In order to set the different modes of life in strong contrast it was
necessary to present in detail the character of the hero, for, if one
antithesis is Highland and Lowland, {133} the other is normal good
sense set against impracticable chivalry and poetry.  "The hero," Scott
wrote to Morritt, "is a sneaking piece of imbecility; and if he had
married Flora, she would have set him up upon the chimney-piece, as the
Polish Dwarf's wife used to do with him.  I am a bad hand at depicting
a hero properly so called, and have an unfortunate propensity for the
dubious characters of Borderers, buccaneers, Highland robbers and all
others of a Robin Hood description."  One may take leave to differ.
Edward Waverley is the most carefully studied of Scott's younger
heroes; he is indeed an elaborate portrait of one side of Scott
himself.  Too little attention has been paid to the curious merit of
the first six chapters, which Erskine and James Ballantyne found prosy.
In reality they are a careful, and often subtle, study of high-spirited
and imaginative youth, in which the author drew straight from his own
memories.  Edward Waverley has Scott's strong good sense combined with
his poetic susceptibility; above all he has Scott's habit of being
abstracted into a secret world.  "Had he been asked to choose between
any punishment short of ignominy and the necessity of giving a cold and
composed account of the ideal world in which he lived the better part
of his days, I think he would not have hesitated to prefer the former
infliction."  The sentence is self-revealing.  So, too, with the solid
element of prose in Edward.  When Flora is for ever beyond his reach,
he turns his affections contentedly to Rose.  Scott himself had done
the same.

The fullness with which the hero is realized and expounded provides the
reader with a basis of judgment, a standpoint from which to view the
whimsicalities and the heroics of the other characters.  Such a norm is
needed, for the portraits are mainly of the abnormal.  The book is a
comedy of manners, interwoven with a tragedy, and the manners are those
of people who are mostly "characters"--survivals, grotesques,
eccentrics, persons with some inherited or induced strain of
extravagance.  Such figures as Cosmo Comyn Bradwardine, {134} Davie
Gellatley, Duncan MacWheeble, Balmawhapple, the Gifted Gilfillan,
Callum Beg, Donald Bean Lean, Jock Jinker, are real enough in the sense
that they have the vigour of life, but they are comedy figures, who
live a little apart from the main road of humanity.  They all have
certain traits developed in an excessive degree, and out of the clash
of these with normal existence comes humour.  No novel of Scott's is
more richly humorous, or even, in the narrow sense, wittier.  Some have
found the Baron's pedantry and MacWheeble's legalism dull, but the more
they are studied the more subtly relevant their discourse must appear.
The delicacies can perhaps be fully appreciated only by a reader with
some knowledge of Scots law, for the humour is often professional.
MacWheeble's talk, as Davie Gellatley said, is like "a charge of
horning," and the manoeuvres by which Inch-grabbit is ousted from the
lairdship of Tully-Veolan are highly technical.[10  But the great
comedy scenes can be understood by all--the supper at Luckie Macleary's
tavern, the halt at Cairnvreckan, the escape of Waverley from Gilfillan
(one of the best in literature) and a dozen other unforgettable
glimpses.  When the pedlar whistles his dog and with the butt-end of a
musket lays out the westland Whig in the midst of his soliloquies on
cattle and Covenants, the comic spirit comes happily to her own.

As a background to this riot of fun and eccentricity there are the
normal people like Waverley and Major Melville, and the full and
sagacious pictures of social and economic conditions.  Eccentricity,
Walter Bagehot has written, "becomes a topic of literary art only when
its identity with the ordinary principles of human nature is exhibited
in the midst of, or as it were by means of, the superficial unlikeness.
Such a skill, however, requires an easy, careless familiarity with
normal human life and common human conduct....  It is this consistent
acquaintance with regular life which makes the irregular characters of
Scott so happy a contrast to the uneasy {135} distortion of less
sagacious novelists."[11]  As for the other normal element, the
love-story, it is admittedly a half-hearted and tenuous thing, with no
passion in it--an exchange of high sentiment with Flora and a
comfortable down-sitting with Rose, though there is much that is
graceful in the latter's courtship.  Scott had James Ballantyne's "love
of wedding cake," and liked to shepherd his lovers to church.  But such
climaxes are usually outside the real tale; that tale, in _Waverley_,
was concluded on its tragic side at Haribee, and on its comic side with
the entranced MacWheeble, when he hears of Rose's fortune, preparing to
make a "sma' minute to prevent parties frae resiling."

[Sidenote: The clash of loyalties]

The tragedy is the clash of ancient loyalties in the persons of Flora
and Fergus MacIvor with an unsympathetic world.  Scott, as is his
custom, shows a profound comprehension of the merits of the different
points of view, however fiercely they may conflict in action, for there
was much in him of the philosophic historian.  The two MacIvors are
drawn on the grand scale, with something of the high heels and brocade
which were thought fitting for tragic actors; they live only
intermittently, for now and then they seem to fade into disembodied
qualities of heart and mind.  But what never ceases to live is the
Highland world, as seen in the irruption of its denizens upon the
Lowland towns and battlefields.  Scott exulted in such a contrast, and
the pageant of Prince Charlie at Holyrood is made the more real by the
attendant pictures of chiefs and caterans in the unfamiliar streets.
If it be complained that the Highlanders are drawn from the outside,
the answer is that such is the plan of the book.  It is not the inner
life of the Celt that Scott is concerned with, but his external habits
and manners, as they appeared when fate brought him into the glare of
national history.

And at the end they rise to that supreme reality which is concerned
only with the fundamentals of human life--the reality of the doomed
Hector and the blinded Samson and the dying Lear--the ultimate truth of
{136} tragedy.  The closing scenes at Carlisle have not often been
equalled for moving simplicity--the trial, when Evan Dhu Maccombich
first pleads with, and then defies, the court, or the last farewell
when Fergus passes under the castle archway.  With the supernatural in
its crude form, like the Bodach Glas, Scott is never happy, but in
great moments such as these he can trouble the mind as with a whisper
from another world.  But characteristically he does not leave us on the
heights, for he must always conclude with his feet in the valley; like
Samuel Butler he preferred the Holy Family to be painted with clothes
drying in the background; the last word is with Waverley's servant, the
pragmatic Lowlander, Alick Polwarth, who is chiefly interested in the
disposition of the bodies.  "They're no there....  The heads are ower
the Scotch yate, as they ca' it.  It's a great pity of Evan Dhu, who
was a very weel-meaning, good-natured man to be a Hielandman; and
indeed so was the Laird of Glennaquoich too, for that matter, when he
wasna in one of his tirrivies."  This anti-climax is cunning art, for
it prepares the mind for the mellow comfort of the close and the homely
pedantries of Macwheeble.

[Sidenote: The Highlanders]

In _Waverley_ Scott's capacity for prose begins to reveal itself.
Hitherto his style had been a workmanlike thing on the whole, but
without any shining qualities and with many blemishes.  The blemishes
are still there.  He has now and then the vice of grandiloquence, as
when he calls an eagle "the superb monarch of the feathered tribes"; of
pedantic stiffness--"Having thus touched upon the leading principle of
Flora's character, I may dismiss the rest more slightly"--or when
Fergus orates, "You do not know the severity of a Government harassed
by just apprehensions and a consciousness of their own illegality and
insecurity"; of a sensibility which seems almost to parody itself:--


"Incomparable Flora!" said Edward, taking her hand.  "How much do I
need such a monitor!"

"A better one by far," said Flora, gently withdrawing her hand, "Mr
Waverley will always find in his own bosom, when he will give its small
still voice leisure to be heard."


{137} There is a good deal of loose and ungrammatical writing and much
that is dead and savourless.  But the staple is sound, the sounder
because it does not obtrude itself.  It is easy, urbane, perspicacious,
and, in the words of Adolphus, "imparts knowledge in the frank,
unassuming and courteous manner of a friend communicating with a
friend."  Above all it is notably free from the restless
self-consciousness of most contemporary Scottish writers, who were in
terror of falling into northern solecisms.  But its supreme merit is in
the dialogues.  We see in the talk of the Prince the beginning of that
happy discovery of a conventional style of speech for great people at
once simple and dignified, a new thing in fiction.  The vernacular of
the Lowland characters is perfectly rendered, but so is the broken
speech of the Highland rank-and-file.  For here was another new thing
in fiction; the poor man at a great moment was allowed to become a
poet, to use in his simplicity a far subtler and more beautiful rhythm
than could be found in the swelling periods of his betters.  Take Evan
Maccombich at Carlisle.  First the plea:--


If the Saxon gentlemen are laughing because a poor man, such as me,
thinks my life, or the life of six of my degree, is worth that of Vich
Ian Vohr, it's like enough they may be very right; but if they laugh
because they think I would not keep my word, and come back to redeem
him, I can tell them they ken neither the heart of a Hielander, nor the
honour of a gentleman.


And then the defiance:--


Grace me no grace.  Since you are to shed Vich Ian Vohr's blood, the
only favour I would accept from you is to bid them loose my hands and
gie me my claymore, and bide you just a minute sitting where ye are!


Small wonder that the world first rubbed its eyes in astonishment, and
then clamoured for more of this novelty, which was also truth.  When
Goethe in his old age re-read _Waverley_, he was constrained to place
it "alongside the best things that have ever been written in the world."

{138}

[Sidenote: 1815]

During the autumn of 1814 Scott finished _The Lord of the Isles_ at a
pace which surpassed any of his earlier feats in the making of verse.
He corrected the proofs before setting out for Abbotsford on Christmas
Day.  The poem was published on January 18th of the following year; the
reviewers praised it but with many reserves; the public bought fewer
copies of it than even of _Rokeby_, and far fewer than of Byron's
contemporary romances.  The general impression, as James Ballantyne
confessed, was one of disappointment.  Byron, Scott told him, "hits the
mark where I don't even pretend to fledge my arrow."  He accepted the
popular decision with cheerful resignation and turned to his new novel.

[Sidenote: _Guy Mannering_]

This had been begun late in the previous November, and two volumes had
been completed in something less than two months.  A Galloway
exciseman, Joseph Train, for whom the Ballantynes had published a
volume of poems, told him a story of an astrologer who had predicted
the future of a child born in a house which he was visiting, a story
which Scott had heard from other sources in his youth.  That was in the
first week of November, and Scott must have begun at once to make a
novel out of it.  The book was finished in six weeks, when the author
professed to be taking a holiday to "refresh the machine," and was
published under the title of _Guy Mannering_ on February 24, 1815.
Train's story, an indifferent Durham ballad, and the celebrated Dormont
case, decided in the Court of Session two years before, supplied the
groundwork.  The Galloway scene was remembered from Scott's early
circuit tours, and the Liddesdale landscape was never out of his mind.
For the chief characters he drew from many sources.  In Colonel
Mannering there are hints of himself, and in Julia something of his
wife.  The piety of commentators has found prototypes for Tod Gabbie in
Tod Willie, who hunted the hills above Loch Skene, and for Tib Mumps in
Margaret Teasdale of Gilsland.  Traits of Dandie Dinmont may have been
borrowed from James Davidson of Hyndlee--at any rate the famous
terriers came from the Hyndlee kennel.  Dominie Sampson seems to have
{139} been drawn from George Thomson, the son of the parish minister of
Melrose, with features added from one Sanson of Leadhills.  Pleydell
was admittedly based on Adam Holland for demeanour and learning, while
the "high-jinks" side of him was suggested by Andrew Crosbie, one of
the heroes of the old Crochallan Fencibles.  But in Scott's case the
search for authentic models is idle.  He picked a trait here and a
feature there, and blended them as he pleased.

The book is both a novel of character and a comedy of contemporary
manners.  The theme is one of the oldest in literature, that stuff of a
thousand folk-tales, the "missing heir."  Scott's first intention was
to make it a psychological study, with the astrological prediction the
central fact--the story of a man conscious of a predestined fate and
bracing himself to meet it; but he wisely decided that such a subject
was not for him.  It required, he said modestly, "not only more talent
than the author could be conscious of possessing, but also involved
doctrines and discussions of a nature too serious for his purpose and
for the character of the narration."[12]  He could not cumber himself
with psychology when he had a host of vivid mortals in his mind waiting
to dance at his bidding.  Written as it was in six weeks, after a
laborious year, it is notably more careless than Waverley, which had
been simmering in his head for a decade.  The hero is stockish to the
last degree, the most wooden thing he ever glued together.  Many of the
minor episodes, such as the Indian incidents, are crudely conceived and
casually told.  The love-making is never more than perfunctory, and
Julia Mannering, though she lives in a sense, is largely a borrowing
from the conventional fiction of the day: her letters are in the worst
tradition, and her vivacity leaves the reader unmoved.  Scott was not
often happy in his younger gentlewomen.  There is much coy and cumbrous
writing of this sort:--"We omit here various execrations with which
these honest gentlemen garnished their discourse, retaining only such
of their expletives as are least {140} offensive"; and Bertram's
reflections in the jail in Chapter XLVIII are in the worst vein of
prose-poetry.  There are pieces of clumsy artifice, as when Pleydell in
Chapter XLIX is made to praise the good looks of the Dutch in order to
drag in the hero by the heels.  Lastly there is a fault of which the
beginnings were to be seen in Bradwardine and MacWheeble and which was
to grow upon Scott--the trick of exaggerating and repeating a single
odd trait of a character.  Dominie Sampson's "Prodigious!!" tends to
become the mechanical squeaking of a doll.

But these are small things.  Lovers of Scott will always dispute which
is his best novel, but all will put _Guy Mannering_ among the first
three.  He wrote of a land which he knew intimately and of people whom
he understood and loved, and he devised an appropriate tale for their
revelation.  In sheer narrative skill the book is among the best.  It
begins with tremendous events happening in a tense atmosphere of
excitement and mystery; the interest is never allowed to flag, but
rises to a climax still more tense and exciting.  And yet there is no
hint of melodrama.  The wild doings follow naturally from the
characters of the protagonists.

Save for the hero and the heroine, Scott never for an instant loses his
grasp upon his people.  Colonel Mannering, the pivot of the tale, is a
careful and credible portrait, drawn even more closely than Edward
Waverley from the writer himself, and revealing the stiff, imperious
element in Scott which underlay his habitual good-nature.  Admirable,
too, is Godfrey Bertram, the slack-lipped, degenerating laird, whose
weakness is cunningly accentuated by his proud genealogy.  The lesser
figures, such as Macmorlan, Mrs MacCandlish and Jock Jabos, are
perfectly etched in; Scott reveals the same power of describing the
confused popular mind, in his account of the gossip of Kippletringan,
as he was later to show in "Wandering Willie's Tale"; and it would be
hard to find a more masterly picture of manners than the funeral
ceremonies of Mrs Margaret Bertram.  The villains, Gilbert Glossin and
Dirk Hatteraick, are what villains {141} should be, formidable but
conceivable, not weary in ill-doing, and Glossin's terrors in Chapter
XXXIII are as subtly depicted as they are dramatically right.

[Sidenote: Dandie Dinmont]

There are two centres of gravity in the book, two oases of peace in a
disturbed country, which bring back the tale to normality, and rest and
balance the reader's mind.  One is Pleydell, and the other is Dandie
Dinmont.  Pleydell is a lawyer after Scott's heart, a lover at once of
mirth and law, human nature and humane letters.  "A lawyer," he
declares, "without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working
mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these he may venture to call
himself an architect."  He is the pick of the city as Dinmont is the
pick of the countryside.  As for Dandie he remains one of the most
complete, four-square, three-dimensioned and vital figures in
literature.  We know him better than we know our daily companions.
Wherever he appears he humanizes the scene, for he is triumphant
humanity.  As has been well said, he is "wise like a wise dog, with a
limit to his intelligence but none to his fidelity."[13]  Like a
fairy-tale hero we believe him immortal and unconquerable; when he
appears we feel a sense of security; we are no longer anxious about
young Bertram in the jail at Portanferry when we hear Dandie's step on
the stair.  The scenes at Charlieshope, skilfully led up to by the
adventure on Bewcastle Waste, belong to an ancient happy world of
pastoral, and wherever Dandie goes he takes with him that charmed
atmosphere of essential sagacity, kindness and courage.  He is like a
hill-wind that cleanses and vitalizes the world, and, like all the
major heroes in literature, he is kin both to poetry and to reality.

Such a tale as _Guy Mannering_ depends for its drama upon the
Aristotelian "reversal of fortune" and "recognition."  Therefore it
must include an element of tragedy, something which troubles and
solemnizes the mind.  This is given by Meg Merrilies, the greatest
figure that Scott has drawn from the back-world and the underworld of
Scotland.  Half-crazy, wild as a hawk, savage yet {142} with nobility
in her savagery, when she appears the eery light of romance falls on
the scene.  Wherever we meet her--like some wise-woman of the Sagas by
the ruins of Derncleugh laying her curse upon the house of Ellangowan,
or speaking riddles in Tib Mumps's hostelry, or in the wonderful scene
with Dominie Sampson at the Kaim of Derncleugh, or in the sea-cave when
Dirk Hatteraick's bullet finds her breast--she is the fate that
presides over the action, an embodied destiny working her secret
purpose, a reminder in the midst of comedy of the mystery of life.  Her
speech is that of a great tragic heroine, descending now to an
idiomatic homeliness, now rising to the heights of poetry, but always
rhythmical and compelling and exquisitely faithful.


Do you see that blackit and broken end of a sheeling?  There my kettle
boiled for forty years--there I bore twelve buirdly sons and daughters.
Where are they now?--Where are the leaves that were on that auld
ash-tree at Martinmas?--the west wind has made it bare, and I'm
stripped too.  Do you see that saugh tree?  It's but a blackened rotten
stump now--I've sat under it mony a bonnie summer afternoon, when it
hung its gay garlands ower the poppling water.  I've sat there and ...
I've held you on my knee, Henry Bertram, and sung ye sangs of the auld
barons and their bloody wars.----  It will ne'er be green again, and
Meg Merrilies will never sing sangs mair, be they blithe or sad.  But
ye'll no forget her, and ye'll gar big up the auld wa's for her sake?
And let somebody live there that's ower gude to fear them of another
world.  For if ever the dead came back among the living, I'll be seen
in this glen mony a night after these crazed banes are in the mould.


With a sure instinct, though Meg is the instrument of the "reversal of
fortune," Scott does not make her the chief agent in the accompanying
"recognition," since the latter belongs to comedy and the former to
tragedy.  It is the bleaching-girl's song about the woods of Warroch
Head which awakens the hero's memory of the place, and the preposterous
Dominie who recalls to him his true name.

The epithet "delightful" was used by contemporary writers of the book,
and the delightfulness of _Guy Mannering_ is the quality by which it
lives.  It does not {143} take us into the sounding arena of great
deeds, or plumb--save at odd moments--the deeper wells of life.  It is
concerned with plain country people in a remote corner of Scotland, and
the malefactors are humble folk--a swindling local attorney and a
homicidal smuggler.  Nor is there any serious love-interest.  But
nevertheless it is true romance, for it both stirs and calms, both
excites and satisfies; it is what Bagehot calls a "union of life with
measure, of spirit with reasonableness."  The strange and the romantic
are made to flower from the normal, and thereby their effect is
heightened, while the normal is portrayed with a sober geniality which
makes it in itself romantic.  In no other of his novels is there quite
the same happy spirit, the same delight in plain human goodness, the
same conviction of the cheerfulness of the race of men.  Nor do we find
in any other novel quite the same gusto of creation--a marvel when we
remember the circumstances of its production.  The explanation, I
think, is twofold.  _Waverley_ had been long on the stocks, and it was
a reshaping of an historic scene with which Scott's studies from
boyhood had been closely concerned.  But in _Guy Mannering_ he was
entering upon a new field and using material which he had never before
attempted.  To find that it grew so readily under his hand gave him
that highest of pleasures, the discovery of a new kind of creative
power.  Again, more than any other of the novels, it explored the inner
life of his own Borderland.  He was drawing upon the happy days when he
had scoured Liddesdale for ballads, he was describing the land and the
people most intimately linked with his lost youth.  Was it to be
wondered at that something of that young freshness of spirit should
have returned to inspire his mature experience?



III

[Sidenote: Visit to London]

The year 1815, having opened laboriously, was to be relieved by
holidaying.  When the courts rose in March Scott set off by sea for
London, accompanied by his wife and his elder daughter Sophia, who was
now a child {144} of fifteen.  The parents stayed with the Doumerges in
Piccadilly, and Sophia was deposited with Joanna Baillie in her little
house at Hampstead.  Scott was in the best of spirits, for _Guy
Mannering_ was a success beyond his dreams, and the terms he had got
for it included a certain lightening of the dead stock of the
Ballantynes' publishing business; another novel--he had many themes in
his head--and that weariful concern would be a thing of the past.
Moreover it was a great moment in the national history.  The Corsican
had been vanquished and was now safe in the island prison of Elba, a
Bourbon sat again on the throne of France, and a twenty-years' load of
anxiety had been lifted from honest hearts.

He found London in holiday mood, and, if his welcome had been cordial
six years before, now it was roses everywhere.  His poems had revealed
Scotland to the south and brought northward troops of visitors, and
there was a universal curiosity to see the magician himself.  Moreover,
there were the two new novels, which lay on every table, novels which
opened up a richer wonderland.  Scott's, beyond doubt, was the general
verdict, but a glamour of mystery hung about them, and mystery is
always attractive.  "Make up your mind," Joanna Baillie wrote to him,
"to be stared at only a little less than the Czar of Muscovy and old
Blcher."

[Sidenote: The Prince Regent]

He met all the literary and political celebrities whom he had known
before, and made a new friend in Sir Humphry Davy.  But the two men
chiefly associated with this visit were the Prince Regent and Byron.
The Prince had long admired Scott's poetry and had commended his
behaviour over the Laureateship, so his friend Adam, afterwards Chief
Commissioner of the new jury court in Scotland, was ordered to invite
him to a little dinner at Carlton House.  Croker was of the party, and
Lord Melville, the Duke of York, Lord Huntly, Lord Fife, and that
formidable nobleman, Lord Hertford, who was to figure variously in
literature as Lord Steyne and Lord Monmouth.  It was a merry occasion;
{145} the Prince and Scott, both noted raconteurs, capped each other's
tales; and at midnight the host, looking towards his guest, asked for a
bumper to the author of _Waverley_.  Scott, an adept at this game,
promised to convey the compliment to the real Simon Pure, and the
Prince countered with the health of the author of _Marmion_.  The
Prince called him by his Christian name from their first introduction,
gave another little dinner for him, at which he sang his favourite
songs, and sent him a gold snuff-box set in brilliants with a medallion
of the royal head on the lid.  Scott was naturally pleased; he had an
old-fashioned reverence for royalty, and it was much for one of his
prepossessions to be treated as an intimate by the heir-apparent.  As
his later correspondence shows, he had no illusions about George the
Fourth, and condemned as strongly as any radical the grossness and
folly of much of his career; but it was given him to see that odd being
at his best, to come under the spell of manners which could be most
gracious and winning, and to get a glimpse of the genuine talents of
one who was far more than the half-witted debauchee of the
caricaturists.  Scott had a singular gift of eliciting what was
worthiest in a man, and the Prince Regent's relations with him are
among the few creditable things in a dubious record.

It was the same with Byron.  Scott met him first at John Murray's
house, and the stately compliments of the previous letters were
replaced by a friendly intimacy not without affection.  The truth is
that it was an attraction of opposites; each was slightly mystified by
the other, which is no bad basis for friendship.  They agreed in
contemning the man who was a writer and nothing else, but their
aspirations towards the completer life took different roads.  Byron was
impressed by Scott's gusto and security and broad humanity; Scott by
Byron's exotic beauty and the glamour of one who lived romance.  He
told a friend afterwards that no portrait did him justice.  "The lustre
is there, but it is not lighted up.  Byron's countenance is a thing to
dream of."[14] {146} He found that they agreed uncommonly well on most
topics except religion and politics, and he decided that on these Byron
had no very fixed opinions.  He told him that he would probably end by
joining the Roman church, and Byron seemed to assent.  Byron's
radicalism he could not take seriously: it seemed to him to be partly
due to a love of paradox, and partly to disgust with certain Ministers.
The two met nearly every day during the London visit, and like the
heroes of Homer they exchanged gifts.  These were in the best romantic
fashion--Scott's to Byron a gold-mounted dagger which had belonged to
Elfi Bey, and Byron's a sepulchral vase of silver from the Long Walls
of Athens containing the bones of ancient Greeks.  Their last meeting
was in the early autumn when Scott was on his way home from France.  On
this occasion he found Byron cold towards his tales of Waterloo
heroism, though he was to use them in the second part of _Childe
Harold_.  They were not fated to meet again, but in all the difficult
later years Scott remained Byron's champion, and Byron cherished one of
his few esteems for a man whose humanity had sweetened his bitterness
and warmed a corner of his bleak house of life.  Seven years later he
wrote that he owed to Scott "far more than the usual obligation for the
courtesies of literature and common friendship....  You disclaim
'jealousies.'  But I would ask, as Boswell did of Johnson, 'of whom
could you be jealous?'  Of none of the living certainly, and (taking
all and all into consideration) of which of the dead?"[15]

The Scotts returned to Edinburgh in May, after the Hundred Days had
begun and the gaze of the world was fixed upon Napoleon's last
desperate bid for power.  For a little men held their breath, till
Waterloo let them draw it again.  Then followed a riot of patriotic
exultation, for was it not Wellington who had shaken down the spoiler?
An Edinburgh surgeon, Sir Charles Bell, had gone out to assist the
medical staff after the battle, and a letter of his set Scott on fire.
He had longed to visit the Peninsula during the campaign; he {147}
could at any rate now visit Flanders and see the foot-prints of war,
and hear the British bugles sounded beside the walls of Paris.  He
collected two young country neighbours, Scott of Gala and Pringle of
Whytbank, and an advocate friend, and on the 30th of August took ship
from Harwich.  But first he provided for the expenses of the trip by
arranging for regular letters to be printed by Ballantyne and published
jointly by Constable, Murray and Longman, letters which would first be
passed round among his family and friends.

[Sidenote: Flanders and Paris]

_Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk_ deserves to be read, for it is is a
revealing piece of autobiography.  It contains no fine writing, for the
scenes which Scott visited and the company in which he moved seemed to
him to be too august for sentiment and to demand a faithful and sober
chronicle.  It is journalism, no doubt, but journalism at its best.  He
describes the little ancient cities of Flanders; the field of Waterloo,
and the battle which he did not perfectly understand, since, like most
of his British contemporaries, he does scant justice to Blcher.  Then
comes Paris, where his demi-god Wellington received him kindly, and he
hob-nobbed with monarchs and field-marshals, and attended a review of
the Russian troops on a Ukraine charger, and was kissed in public on
both cheeks by Platoff the Cossack Hetman.  Never had a man of letters
had such an experience, and Scott felt that at last he was being given
a taste of the life of action.  But more remarkable than the vivid
narrative of travel is the moderation and good sense of the book,
qualities which appear also in his poem _The Field of Waterloo_,
produced, like _Don Roderick_, in aid of war charities.  Napoleon for
twenty years had ridden Scott's imagination.  When Abbotsford was
beginning he used to entertain French prisoners from Selkirk in its
little dining-room and eagerly cross-examine them about the looks and
sayings and doings of their Emperor.[16]  He recognized his surpassing
greatness, and concerning him there is none of the conventional railing
of his contemporaries, only the romancer's regret that he did not {148}
choose to die with his Guard on his last battle-field.  Nor is there
any bitterness against the French people; on the contrary, though
Blcher had made much of him, there is a stern criticism of Prussian
brutality.  But even here he is reasonable; he realizes how many scores
Prussia and all Europe had to pay off; he understands, though he does
not approve, the feeling of Lord Dudley when he wrote: "I own I have a
pleasure in seeing this confounded people, that have tormented all
mankind ever since I can remember anything, and made us pay ten per
cent. upon our incomes, to say nothing of other taxes, plundered and
insulted by a parcel of square-faced barbarians from the Wolga."
Staunch royalist, too, though he was, he saw the weakness of the
restored Bourbons, and forecast the reaction which would bring them
down.

He came home by way of London, where young Gala was enthralled by
Byron's pale beauty, and by Sheffield, where a workman in a cutler's
shop offered his master a week's free work for Scott's autograph.  He
had presents in his portmanteau for everybody at Abbotsford, family,
servants and the estate workers.  He returned to find his friend Skene
of Rubislaw there, and the little drawing-room equipped with new
chintzes, which he was blind enough not to notice.  The house was
growing piece-meal round the core of the old farm with the irregularity
of the British Constitution, the young plantations were coming on, and
the young Walter, now fourteen years of age, had killed his first
blackcock.  But his old charger Daisy, a white thoroughbred, had taken
a sudden aversion to her master and would not suffer him to mount her;
Scott took it for a sign that he had reached middle age and must
henceforth content himself with a homely cob.  That autumn he acquired
what he had long been in treaty for, the lands of Kaeside which ran
south to the wild sheet of water called Cauldshiels loch, the legendary
home of a water-bull.  The original hundred and thirty acres of his
estate were now nearer a thousand.


{149}

IV

[Sidenote: 1816]

Scott had found on his return another guest at Abbotsford besides the
laird of Rubislaw--James Ballantyne with a load of bills, confused
accounts, apologies and supplications.  The new novel which was to
clear his feet must not be delayed, so, while _Paul's Letters_ was in
the press, and Terry was preparing a dramatic version of _Guy
Mannering_ for the London stage, _The Antiquary_ was begun and finished
within four months.  It was published by Constable early in May 1816,
about the time of the death of the author's eldest brother, John, whose
modest bequests did something to relieve the embarrassment of the
remaining brother, Thomas.

[Sidenote: _The Antiquary_]

_The Antiquary_, though James Ballantyne shook his head over it, was at
once successful, and, according to Lockhart, it was Scott's favourite
among his works.  "It wants the romance of _Waverley_ and the adventure
of _Guy Mannering_," Scott wrote to Terry, "and yet there is some
salvation about it, for if a man will paint from nature, he will be
likely to amuse those who are daily looking at it."  It was a novel of
contemporary life, a story of familiar characters, a picture of his own
early associations, and in some degree a portrait of himself.  He had
his prototype for Edie Ochiltree in a famous bedesman, Andrew Gemmels,
who had fought at Fontenoy and in Scott's youth had been a notable
figure on the Border, dying in 1793 at the age of 106.  Jonathan
Oldbuck is drawn from the antiquary George Constable, who had first
awakened his boyish interest in the past, and there are elements in
him, perhaps, of John Ramsay of Ochtertyre.

The plot is elaborate, artificial, and unimportant, once again of the
"missing heir" school; Lovel, the young hero, is colourless, and it is
hard to be interested in his love affair with Isabella Wardour.  The
construction is careless--the sun is made to set in the east and there
are two Tuesdays in one week; and the writing in its uninspired moments
is apt to be pompous and Grandisonian.  Just before the great scene
when {150} the Wardours and Edie are cut off by the sea, there are
leaden descriptions of scenery and weather, and Isabella on one
occasion addresses her lover thus: "I am much embarrassed, Mr Lovel, by
your--I would not willingly use a strong word--romantic and hopeless
pertinacity.  It is for yourself I plead, that you would consider the
calls your country has on your talents, that you will not waste, in an
idle and fanciful indulgence of an ill-placed predilection, time,
which, well redeemed by active exertion, should lay the foundation of
future distinction."  "It is enough, Miss Wardour," Lovel replies, and
it is certainly enough.

Having said this much, I decline to allow the devil's advocate a
further word.  There is little violent action in the book, but the
interest never for one moment flags.  It is primarily a comedy of
Scottish country life, and the main characters, though carefully and
truthfully drawn, are all given their "humours"--fantastic traits
several degrees above reality--Oldbuck's pedantry, his sister's
notableness, Sir Arthur's pride of race, Hector MacIntyre's inflammable
conceit.  The comedy key is perfectly maintained; the only villain is
Dousterswivel, who is no more than a pantomime rogue.  To match the
gentry we have peasants in the same vein--Jenny Rintherout, Mrs
Heukbane and Mrs Mailsetter, Caxon the barber, Davie the post-boy--all
faithful transcripts, but inspired with the comic spirit.  Let me
instance three episodes which seem to me comedy triumphant--Grizel
Oldbuck's story of Rob Tull, the scene in which Mrs Mailsetter and her
cronies gossip in the post-office, and that in which Oldbuck, at the
alarm of invasion, girds on his old sword.

The dramatic contrast to this staple of homely humours and oddities is
to be found partly in the dark stateliness of the Glenallans (which
skirts, but does not stumble into, melodrama), and the two or three
humble figures who are invested with an heroic or tragic grandeur.  Of
the latter Edie Ochiltree stands first, the most Shakespearean figure,
it has been well said, outside Shakespeare.  He is drawn with minute
realism--his beggar's gaiety, {151} his vagabond's philosophy, his
tincture of radicalism, his resourcefulness like that of Odysseus.  But
at high moments he is allowed to attain a homespun magnificence, and to
speak words which, though wholly in character, are yet parts of the
world's poetry.  Take the scene of the storm:--

"Good man," said Sir Arthur, "can you think of nothing--of no help.----
I'll make you rich--I'll give you a farm--I'll----"

"Our riches will soon be equal," said the beggar, looking out upon the
strife of the waters--"they are sae already; for I hae nae land, and
you would give your fair bounds and barony for a square yard of rock
that would be dry for twal hours."


Or take his classic profession of patriotism:--


"_Me_ no muckle to fight for!  Isna there the country to fight for, and
the burnsides that I gang daundering beside, and the hearths o' the
gudewives that gie me my bit bread, and the bits o' weans that come
toddling to play wi' me when I come about a landward toun?--Deil!" he
continued, grasping his pikestaff with great emphasis, "an' I had as
gude pith as I hae gude will and a gude cause, I should gie some o'
them a day's kemping."


Next there is Saunders Mucklebackit, the fisherman, who, at his son's
death, masters his grief till the coffin has left the house, and then
breaks down in a passion of tearless sobbing, but next day is found
mending the "auld black bitch of a boat" which had drowned his boy.
He, too, is made through strong emotion to rise to an epic dignity.


"What would you have me do," he asks, "unless I wanted to see four
children starve because ane is drooned?  It's weel wi' you gentles,
that can sit in the house wi' handkerchers to your een when ye lose a
friend; but the likes o' us maun to our wark again if our hearts were
beating as hard as my hammer....  Yet what needs ane to be angry at
her, that has neither soul nor sense?--though I am no that muckle
better mysell.  She's but a rickle o' auld rotten deals nailed
thegither, and warped wi' the wind and the sea--and I am a dour carle
battered by winds and foul weather at sea and land till I am maist as
senseless as hersell.  She maun be mended though again' the morning
tide--that's a thing o' necessity."


{152}

Saunders Mucklebackit is the east-coast fisherman with Norse blood in
him, and he has something of the austere dignity of the Sagas.  But his
mother, Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot, is like some witch-wife out of
the Elder Edda.  She sits by her fireside, oblivious of the deaths of
her kin, with her crazy mind on unhappy things that befell long ago in
a world of pride and pageantry far distant from a fisherman's hovel.
In her madness she recites the best ballad Scott ever wrote, the ballad
of the Red Harlaw, and she expounds it in the old manner of high
romance.


Ye maun ken, hinnie, that this Roland Cheyne, for as poor and auld as I
sit in the chimmey-neuk, was my forbear, and an awfu' man he was that
day in the fight, but specially after the Earl had fa'en: for he blamed
himsell for the counsel he gave, to fight before Mar came up wi' Mearns
and Aberdeen and Angus.


And when death comes to this great tragic figure, a survival from
another world, Scott, after his fashion, artfully slackens the tension
and brings the tale back to the homely fisher life.


"Your honour," said Allison Breck, who was next in age to the deceased,
"suld send doun something to us for keeping up our hearts at the
lyke-wake, for a' Saunder's gin, puir man, was drucken out at the
burial o' Steenie, and we'll no get mony to sit dry-lipped with the
corpse."


The book is richer perhaps than any of the others in cunning detail,
for Scott wrote of a world which he knew intimately--Monkbarn's
antiquities, Sir Arthur's genealogical whimsies, the life of the burghs
and the farm-towns and the fishing-huts, the back-world of the peasant
mind.  And it is inspired throughout by the spirit of a large and
sympathetic understanding.  The stiff lairds become human in the
presence of sorrow.  The Tory Sir Arthur is less tenderly dealt with
than the Whig Oldbuck.  Caxon the barber speaks his mind on "the
democraws, as they ca' them, that are again' the king and the law, and
hair-powder and dressing o' gentleman's wigs--a wheen blackguards," but
Edie the blue-gown {153} and Saunders Mucklebackit the fisherman,
sturdy democrats both, are the true heroes of the tale.



V

From the heights of creation Scott had to descend to the dismal
business of his trading ventures.  It is a subject on which it is
impossible at this time of day to get at the exact truth.  The papers
dealing with the downfall of 1826 are extant, and may be studied in the
National Library of Scotland, but the relations between Scott and the
Ballantynes must remain largely in the realm of guesswork.  The books
were never properly balanced, the existing financial statements are
obscure, and the student has nothing to go upon but _ex parte_ and
often contradictory declarations.  Many since that date have tried to
shed light on the darkness, but all have failed.  Three years before
his death Lockhart wrote, "The details of Scott's commercial
perplexities remain in great measure inexplicable," and, if one so near
the events themselves was puzzled, a later commentator dare not be
dogmatic.

The settlement of the two businesses arrived at through Constable's
help in the autumn of 1813 was not final.  The publishing firm of John
Ballantyne and Company, though no longer operating, was not fully wound
up; it had still many bills out against it, and in October 1814 Scott's
own sheriff-substitute, Charles Erskine, who had made it an advance,
was asking for the repayment of his money.  The natural way to clear
its debts was to dispose of its mountainous dead stock, but Constable
had already done all he intended in that matter.  The result was that
_Guy Mannering_ went to Murray and Longman, who took over stock to the
value of 500.  But a large quantity remained, and meantime Scott had
to pay the interest on the renewals of the bills.  Constable published
_The Antiquary_ but took over no stock, and began to show himself
disinclined to put his printing in the Ballantynes' way, through
exasperation with John's tortuous methods.  John was now very {154
comfortable in his business as auctioneer, drove tandem about Edinburgh
in a blue coat and white cords, was a great figure at local
race-meetings, and gave gay, Frenchified little dinners in his villa at
Trinity, which he called 'Harmony Hall.'  He acted as Scott's agent,
and a worse could not have been found, for he was tricky and
disingenuous, and had no great desire to wind up the publishing
concern, since its entanglements kept him closely in touch with Scott,
the chief source of pride in his life.  That business had never been
solvent from the start, and its floating liabilities, which came wholly
upon Scott, continued until its final liquidation in 1817, when the
balance of indebtedness was still estimated at 10,000--a debt which at
that date was transferred to the printing firm.

[Sidenote: James and John]

As for the printing business it is not easy to decide whether it, too,
at this point, was not bankrupt.  It need not have been, for, as we
have seen, its commitments were necessarily limited.  In the later high
tide of Scott's productiveness it undoubtedly attained a certain degree
of prosperity, owing to the large amount of safe printing orders which
it received, but I am inclined to think that, at any time between its
beginning in 1805 and the year 1816, an honest balance-sheet would have
revealed it as insolvent.  Scott does not appear to have drawn much
from it, scarcely the interest on his invested capital, but James
Ballantyne seems to have habitually anticipated what he believed to be
the realizable profits, and this led to constant recourse to
accommodation paper.  When the publishing house was started the two
concerns lent each other money, or rather backed each other's bills,
and so the finances were further complicated.  In August 1813 the
printing firm was clearly losing money, for we find Scott writing to
John Ballantyne: "I cannot observe hitherto that the printing-office is
paying off, but rather adding to its embarrassments--and it cannot be
thought that I have either means or inclination to support a losing
concern at the rate of 200 a month."  In October 1814 James Ballantyne
writes: "I trust the printing will cease to {155} be the burden which
hitherto it has been."  The actual trading therefore seems to have been
conducted at a loss, and the annual deficit was allowed to accumulate,
since no member of the firm had any exact notion of the firm's
position.  Scott had to intervene repeatedly and pay out of his own
pocket some of the more pressing demands, but these payments never
cleared his feet.  Moreover, through John's cleverness, the practice of
double bills was largely used, under which, say, Ballantyne drew a bill
on Constable which was accepted, and Constable drew a bill for the same
amount, which was accepted by Ballantyne, and was held as cover in case
the first bill should not be met.  When a bill was discharged the
covering bill was cancelled, but when a bill was renewed the cover was
continued, and, in the event of a crisis, the debtor might find himself
liable for the same sum twice over.  In 1814 James Ballantyne had
experienced the result of this practice, having to pay twice over a
private bill for wine.[17]

The position in 1816, therefore, was that the publishing business was
suspended, but still burdened with bills and dead stock, while the
printing business was carrying on, possibly at a profit in its actual
trading, but at a heavy loss if its past liabilities were taken into
reckoning.  John Ballantyne was leading the life of a virtuoso and man
of fashion, acting as Scott's literary agent, for which he was well
paid, and doing his best to embroil him with Constable.  James, besides
looking after the printing, was Scott's amanuensis, private critic, and
proof corrector, also for a handsome consideration.  Both the brothers
were expensive people and lived well; John was a provincial Lucullus,
and at a later date we find James spending 100 on wine in three
months.[18]

{156}

In October 1815 James thought of taking to himself a wife.  The lady
was a Miss Hogarth, whose brother, knowing the earlier embarrassments
of the firm, was not prepared to accept James as a suitor for his
sister's hand unless his position was made secure and he was freed from
indefinite liabilities.  Accordingly Scott agreed to become sole
partner in the firm of James Ballantyne and Company, retaining James as
his salaried servant at 400 a year.  The debts of the publishing
business were taken over by the printing-house, though a certain number
of the accommodation bills due by it were left afloat in John's name.
James remained personally indebted to Scott in the sum of 3000, and
the future printing profits which in view of the new novels might be
considerable, were to be applied, after a fair remuneration to Scott
for his advances, to the clearing off the old Ballantyne debts.  The
lady's brother assented, and early in 1816 James was married.

[Sidenote: Constable]

The centre figure in Scott's affairs is henceforth Constable.  The
latter had saved the Ballantynes from bankruptcy and had many claims
upon Scott's gratitude, and, though I cannot believe that there could
ever have been any warm friendship between the two, yet the relations
might have been of the pleasantest but for John, who was always trying
to frighten Constable into taking more dead stock by threatening that a
new novel--or even a new edition of an old novel--would be carried
elsewhere.  On more than one occasion Scott lost his temper with his
agent, but John was incorrigible.  There is no prouder man than your
rising Scots merchant with a lairdship in prospect, and it went against
the grain with Constable to do business with the raffish John, whom he
could not regard as his social equal.  Hence there was no free and
frank discussion with Scott himself, which might have led to the
latter's affairs being taken in hand by a man of real business acumen.
Constable beyond doubt was treated at this time with scant
consideration, and he was not in a position to protest.  For _Waverley_
had opened his eyes to Scott's capacities, and it wrung his soul to
think of {157} losing this wonder-worker to a rival publisher.  So he
was compelled to submit to John's exactions, and to be very complaisant
over the Ballantyne bills.  He was a self-made man, and had not amassed
any great capital reserves.  What he had was a host of friends and
ample credit; the banks would discount his bills to any reasonable
extent; but he had already strained this credit by his multitudinous
undertakings.  In self-justification he talked grandly about the new
novels--the huge sums he had paid for them and the huge sums they
earned; the world, even the banking world, believed him, and the credit
of publisher and author rose so high that only very cool heads could
have escaped a certain _folie des grandeurs_.

Such a head neither possessed.  Constable was shrewd, but he was also
adventurous and optimistic.  Scott's spirits, sunk low by reverses in a
business which he did not properly comprehend, would soar at the first
hint of better times.  He had inherited some 12,000, and his wife had
a few hundreds a year; he had an official income of 1600; he had
received at least 10,000 for his poems, and he had made by his first
two novels probably double that sum.  By 1816 he had spent on land
between 9000 and 10,000, and a good many thousands on buildings and
furniture.  Cadell estimated his total losses in the Ballantyne firms
as 20,000, and if we take as large a figure as 15,000 as representing
the loss accrued up to that date, his balance-sheet in 1816 was not too
unwholesome.  Much of the capital had indeed gone for good, but some
was represented by solid assets like land, books and copyrights.  Had
Scott then cut himself loose from business, and continued his
expenditure on the comparatively modest scale of the past, he would
have been a wealthy man, even though he had only written a novel once
every three years.  Even as it was, the taking over of the printing
firm seemed to be a wise step, for now he could learn for himself the
exact position of the business, and could limit any future commitments.

It was to prove on the contrary a long stride towards {158} his
undoing.  He never made any serious inquisition into the affairs of the
printing house, and James Ballantyne was as easy-going as a salaried
servant as he had been when a partner.  Moreover, Scott had got a
business which he could treat as his banker.  When he wanted money for
the purchase of land or anything else he used the name of the company
by obtaining bills on Constable and granting acceptances in return.
Constable, eager to retain his good will, made no demur.  These bills
were, of course, met or reduced from time to time by his large literary
earnings, but he got into the habit of invariably forestalling such
receipts.  His expenditure in one year would be greater than his
income, but there was the certainty of that year's deficit being paid
for by the next year's earnings.  Yet at any one moment he was always
in arrears, and if a sudden crisis came and a balance had to be struck
it might be heavily on the wrong side.  In such a crisis Constable
could not help him, for Constable too would be caught, his adventurous
business methods being much the same.  In this perpetual forestalling,
through the medium of a company which obscured in his eyes its real
improvidence, seems to me to lie the main secret of Scott's disasters.

[Sidenote: _The Black Dwarf_]

Meanwhile John Ballantyne was busy.  _The Antiquary_ had not cleared
Scott's feet, but its author had an idea in his head which would.  He
had a scheme for a series of "Tales of my Landlord," collected and
reported by one Jedediah Cleishbotham, schoolmaster of the parish of
Gandercleuch.  Constable would not take any back stock, so they should
go elsewhere, but, in order to save Constable's face, the title-page
would not bear the words "By the Author of _Waverley_."  John
approached Murray, and Murray's Edinburgh agent, Blackwood, an
antiquarian bookseller in the Old Town, who readily accepted Scott's
terms and agreed also to take over 500 of back stock.  John, indeed,
made rather a mess of the bargaining, for he almost sold the copyright
outright.  Blackwood, a plain-spoken man, was allowed to criticize the
plot of one of the tales, _The Black Dwarf_, {159} and Scott, who would
accept rebuke cheerfully from his equals, but from James Ballantyne
alone of his inferiors, replied: "God damn his soul!  Tell him and his
coadjutor that I belong to the Black Hussars of Literature, who neither
give nor receive criticism.  I'll be cursed if this is not the most
impudent proposal that ever was made."  The quarrel was patched up, the
first two tales were completed during the spring and summer of 1816,
together with Scott's narrative of the year 1814 for the _Edinburgh
Annual Register_, and on the first day of December appeared in four
volumes _The Black Dwarf_ and _Old Mortality_.



VI

The _Black Dwarf_ was an admitted failure, admitted by Scott himself,
who felt his impetus slacken and huddled it to a close in a single
volume.  The Dwarf, Elshie, is a piece of Gothick extravagance, Matt
Lewis crossed with Byron, and his speech a language which was never yet
on sea or land.  Cleishbotham in his introduction is at his clumsiest.
Hobbie Elliot, the young Borderer, is a good portrait of the Dinmont
school; Westburnflat and Mareschal will pass muster; but, well or ill
drawn, the characters have no scope to exhibit themselves within the
narrow melodrama of the plot.  The Scots dialogue is always a delight,
and sets in high relief the Dwarf's ponderous soliloquies.  This could
scarcely be bettered as an example of the warm, compassionate,
whimsical Border speech.


Wi' the young leddie's leave, I wad fain take doun Elshie's skeps o'
bees, and set them in Grace's bit flower yard at the Heughfoot--they
shall ne'er be smeekit by ony o' huz.  And the puir goat, she would be
negleckit about a great toun like this; and she could feed bonnily on
our lily lee by the burn side, an' the hounds wad ken her in a day's
time and never fash her, and Grace wad milk her ilka morning wi' her
ain hand, for Elshie's sake; for though he was thrawn and cankered in
his converse, he likeit dumb creatures weel.


{160} There are one or two good scenes, like the gathering of the
Jacobite gentlemen at Ellieslaw, and there are many lame and impotent
ones.  Scott had met the original of the Dwarf in Manor valley when he
visited Adam Ferguson at Kailyards and walked with Skene over the hills
from Megget, and felt bound to make a tale of him, but the inspiration
lagged behind the duty.  It is an instance of his occasional blunders
in leaning too much upon fact.

[Sidenote: _Old Mortality_]

The failure was amply atoned for by _Old Mortality_.  Lockhart thought
it "the _Marmion_ of the novels," and its only rival for the first
place, it seems to me, is _The Heart of Midlothian_.  In it Scott
attempted the historical romance in its most difficult form, a
reconstruction of a period of history far outside living experience but
furiously alive in popular memory.  The Covenanters had become to the
majority of the people of Scotland a race of demigods and saints, and
their story had been written, even by sophisticated Edinburgh lawyers,
in a vein of hagiography.  This perplexed epoch Scott set forth through
the eyes of a sober, reasonable, if platitudinous hero, with the same
detached fairness with which he had described the French nation in
_Paul's Letters_.  He does not blink the ugly side of Covenanter or
Cavalier, nor is he blind to their rival nobilities.  His is the
moderate, central mind, like that of Montrose or Robert Leighton; he
has the true historical sense, which was needed also for true dramatic
effect, since it alone could present the moving contrasts.  His history
was violently attacked at the time by the biographer of Knox, the
"learned and unreadable McCrie," and Scott replied in a review of his
own novel in the _Quarterly_, in which the literary criticism was
provided by Erskine.  The historian of to-day cannot be in doubt as to
the side to which truth leaned in the controversy.  Scott for the first
time brought a legend into the searching light of day, and set in
honest perspective what had been hitherto seen through a magnifying and
distorting mist.  If I may speak as one whose studies have lain much in
that period, I {161} think that he does ample justice to the best in
the Covenant and does not exaggerate the worst; if he errs at all in
fairness it is in his portrait of Claverhouse.  Scott had read himself
deeply into the literature of the time, and from books and the
conversation of his old tutor he had mastered at least the forms of
Calvinistic divinity.

The story has a fitting prologue, the beautiful tale of that real Old
Mortality whose chisel clinked on the martyrs' headstones up and down
Scotland.  Of the greater novels it is one of the best constructed and
its movement is the most swift and even.  There is none of the
delightfulness of _Guy Mannering_ or the romantic sunset charm of
_Waverley_; it is on the whole a grim tale, moving among ungenial folk
on the highroad of national destiny, and rarely does it pause to rest
and sport in the shade.  It is indeed a very stern and conscientious
piece of realism.  There is little of Scott's customary
trait-portraiture; only Lady Margaret Bellenden, with her stories of
his "sacred Majesty's disjune," has her "humours"; the rest of the
people are firmly drawn in the round.  There is no weak scene, except
the love-making between hero and heroine.  There are no weak characters
except Edith Bellenden and Henry Morton, though the latter is perhaps
flat rather than weak, since his mental processes are most adequately
portrayed.  And the book rises to scenes of tragic intensity which
Scott never excelled, and contains figures of the most masterful
vitality.  Curiously objective figures they are, for we feel that none
of them strongly excites the author's sympathy; in no other novel do
his characters live a life so independent of their creator.

It opens with a brilliant comedy scene in Niel Blane's tavern after the
Wapinschaw, when the host and his daughter discuss the economics of
innkeeping in troubled times.  Then there enters the Archbishop's
murderer, the red-headed man who "skellied fearfully with one eye," and
when he and Morton go out into the night romance takes the road with
them.  Henceforth the {162} moderate is linked with the fanatic and
drawn unwillingly into a wild drama, always protesting, always holding
fast to his own reasonable faith, and thereby providing a touchstone
for the reader by which he can judge the aberrations of the rest.
Morton is one such _punctum indifferens_, an oasis of common sense, and
Niel Blane, with his canny indifference to all heroics, is another.


Let Bauldy drive the pease and bear meal to the camp at Drumclog--he's
a Whig, and was the auld gudewife's pleughman--the mashlum bannocks
will suit their muirland stamacks weel.  He maun say it's the last unce
o' meal in the house, or, if he scruples to tell a lie (an it's no
likely he will when it's for the gude o' the house) he may wait till
Duncan Glen, the auld drucken trooper, drives up the aitmeal to
Tillietudlem, wi' my dutifu' services to my Leddy and the Major, and I
haena as muckle left as will mak my parritch.


[Sidenote: The Covenanters]

With such a reminder of the prosaic world in the background, Scott
sweeps us into strange, grim, but always credible drama--the tortured
meditations of Burley, the battle-scene of Drumclog, Morton's deadly
peril in the moorland cottage, Bothwell Brig, Morton's return and his
"recognition," and the great final encounter with Burley in the cave.
At the proper moment the narrative rises to the appropriate intensity
in some culminating incident, such as the death of Sergeant Bothwell at
Drumclog, or Morton's escape from Burley by his leap across the chasm,
and such incidents are told with an economy and a speed which Scott
never surpassed.  Take the scene in the cottage when the swords are out
for Morton's death--


"Hist!" he said, "I hear a distant noise."

"It is the rushing of the brook over the pebbles," said one.

"It is the sough of the wind among the bracken," said another.

"It is the galloping of horse," said Morton to himself....  "God grant
they may come as my deliverers!"


This fierce activity is supported by characters none of whom fall below
the dignity of great drama.  Of the {163} royalists, Claverhouse,
Bothwell, Cornet Grahame, Lord Evandale, and old Major Bellenden are
all in different ways adequately realized and vigorously presented.
But it is with the Covenanters that Scott reaches the height of his
power.  Balfour of Burley is the eternal fanatic, inspired by a wild
logic of his own, tortured and terrible but never base.  The
ministers--Poundtext the trimmer, the madman Habakkuk Mucklewrath,
common clay like Gabriel Kettledrummle, pure perverted spirit like
Macbriar--are excellently done; their wildest extravagances are not
caricature, as anyone will admit who remembers _Naphthali_ and Shields
and Patrick Walker.  Macbriar's sermon in Chapter XVIII is both superb
prose and historically true.  It is hard to see how Scott can be
accused of maligning the Covenanters when in Macbriar's defiance of the
Privy Council he has shown to what heights of courage they could
attain, and in his picture of Bessie Maclure has revealed tenderly and
subtly the beauty of holiness in the most humble.  He has divined the
essence of what Lockhart calls their "stern and solemn enthusiasm" far
more truly than their conventional apologists.

The relief from the stress is found in the marvellous chorus of plain
folk which accompanies the action and brings the mind back to the
variety and comedy of the ordinary world.  They are always there at the
right moment to humanize the tale.  Niel Blane and his daughter provide
the contrast for the advent of Burley; Gudyill the butler and Guse
Gibbie leaven the cavalier heroics, and Jenny Dennison's homely good
sense is a corrective to Edith Bellenden's conventional nobility.
Above all Mause Headrig, torn between piety and maternal cares, is the
element needed to relax the tension of the grim hill-folk, and her son
Cuddie is a foil both to the hill-folk and to his mother.  Scott shows
the greatness of his art in the skill with which he blends the tragic
and the comic, and portrays religious ecstasy and madness always
against the prosaic background of life.  He never raises the tale to a
false key, and when Morton returns and meets old Ailie Wilson, his
uncle's {164} housekeeper, the emotion of recognition is preceded by an
account of the death of the miser, true to type to the last.  "And sae
he fell out o' ae dwaum into anither, and ne'er spoke a word mair,
unless it were something we couldna mak out, about a dipped candle
being gude eneugh to see to dee wi'."

The Scots speech is beyond praise, so exquisitely apt it is, so full of
pregnant simplicities and vivid idioms and subtle humours.  It is
cunningly varied, too, to suit the characters, for the waiting-maid
does not talk like the housekeeper or the ploughman like the butler.  A
forgotten Scotland lives again when Cuddie declares of Kettledrummle,
"He routed like a cow in a fremd loaning," and Alison Wilson says of
the Duke, "That was him that lost his head at London--folk said it
wasna a very gude ane, but it was aye a sair loss to him, puir
gentleman."  The height is reached in the discourses of Cuddie and his
mother.  Mause has all the Scriptures in her head and makes noble use
of them--farcical often, but never wholly farcical, and sometimes
rising to a confused magnificence, while the Laodicean Cuddie is always
at hand to pull her down to earth.  Take the scene with Cuddie before
he confronts the Privy Council--


At that moment his shoulder was seized by old Mause, who had contrived
to thrust herself forward into the lobby of the apartment.

"O ninny, ninny!" said she to Cuddie, hanging upon his neck, "glad and
proud and sorry and humbled am I, a' in ane and the same instant, to
see my bairn ganging to testify for the truth gloriously with his mouth
in council, as he did with his weapon in the field."

"Whisht, whisht, mither!" cried Cuddie impatiently.  "Odds, ye daft
wife, is this a time to speak o' thae things?  I tell ye I'll testify
naething either ae gate or anither.  I hae spoken to Mr Poundtext, and
I'll tak the Declaration, or whate'er they ca' it, and we're a' to win
free off if we do that--he's gotten life for himsell and a' his folk,
and that's a minister for my siller; I like nane o' your sermons that
end in a psalm at the Grassmarket."

"O, Cuddie, man, laith wad I be they suld hurt ye," said old Mause,
divided grievously between the safety of her son's {165} soul and that
of his body, "but mind, my bonny bairn, ye hae battled for the faith,
and dinna let the dread o' losing creature comforts withdraw ye frae
the gude fight."

"Hout, tout, mither," replied Cuddie, "I hae fought e'en ower muckle
already, and, to speak plain, I'm wearied o' the trade.  I hae
swaggered wi' a' thae arms, and muskets and pistols, buff-coats and
bandoliers lang eneugh, and I like the plough-paidle a hantle better.
I ken naething suld gar a man fight (that's to say, when he's no angry)
by and out-taken the dread o' being hanged or killed if he turns back."

"But, my dear Cuddie," continued the persevering Mause, "your bridal
garment!  Oh, hinny, dinna sully the marriage garment."

"Awa, awa, mither," replied Cuddie, "dinna ye see the folk waiting for
me----  Never fear me----  I ken how to turn this far better than ye
do--for ye're bleezing awa about marriage, and the job is how we are to
win by hanging."


There is little fault to be found with the prose of the narrative.
Morton's conscientious troubles are told simply and lucidly, the
landscape is vividly described, and in general there is an absence of
the turgidity to which Scott was prone.  The explanation seems to be
that throughout the book the inspiration never flags; he escapes
_longueurs_ because he is caught up by a wholly impersonal purpose; his
imagination is so absorbed by the task of historical re-creation that
he has no time to turn back upon himself.  Indeed, in the famous
outburst of Claverhouse, he reaches the high-water mark of his English
style.


But in truth, Mr Morton, why should we care so much for death, light
upon us or around us whenever it may?  Men die daily--not a bell tolls
the hour but it is the death-note of someone or other; and why hesitate
to shorten the span of others, or take over-anxious care to prolong our
own?  It is all a lottery--when the hour of midnight came you were to
die--it has struck, you are alive and safe, and the lot has fallen on
those fellows who were to murder you.  It is not the expiring pang that
is worth thinking of in an event that must happen one day, and may
befall us on any given moment--it is the memory which the soldier
leaves behind him, like the long train of light which follows the
sunken sun--that is all which is worth caring for, which distinguishes
the death of the brave or the ignoble.  When I think of death, Mr
Morton, as a thing worth thinking of, it is in the hope of pressing one
{166} day some well-fought and hard-won field of battle, and dying with
the shout of victory in my ear--_that_ would be worth dying for, and
more, it would be worth having lived for!


It would be easy to be critical of some of the details of this passage,
but it has the movement and elevation of great prose.



[1] III 128-9.

[2] Lord Hailes, when he contributed to Henry Mackenzie's _Mirror_,
insisted on anonymity, because "his situation in life, in a narrow
country, and in one not remarkable for liberality of sentiment, makes
it improper that his name or description should be seen in a periodical
publication."

[3] His brother Thomas was suspected as the author of _Waverley_, and
we find Scott writing to him in Canada, urging him to take advantage of
the rumour and produce a novel of his own.  Lockhart, III.  301.

[4] See _P.L.B._, 108, etc.

[5] _Letters to Richard Heber_, 47.

[6] There is a vivid account of Edinburgh's reception of _Waverley_, in
Cockburn _Mem._, 280-1.

[7] Hurd, _Letters on Chivalry and Romance_ (1762).

[8] Hogg (_Dom. Manners_, 67-8) tells how he once went fishing at night
with Scott and Skene.  He was asked to sing the ballad of
"Gilmanscleuch" which he had once sung to Scott, but stuck at the ninth
verse, whereupon Scott repeated the whole eighty-eight stanzas without
a mistake.

[9] This subject he has fully treated in W. S. Crockett's _The Scott
Originals_ (1912).

[10] There is an interesting study of the Scots law in _Waverley_ in
the _Scottish Law Review_, Oct.-Dec., 1930.

[11] _Literary Studies_, II.  100.

[12] Introduction to _Guy Mannering_.

[13] Stephen Gwynn, _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, 227.

[14] Lockhart, IV.  147.

[15] _P.L.B._, 189: Byron, _Letters and Journal_ (Ed. Prothero), VI.  4.

[16] See Sir Charles Oman in _Blackwood's Magazine_, Jan. 1929.

[17] _A. Constable_, III.  44-46.  The material for the relations
between Scott and the Ballantynea will be found in Lockhart, in the
Ballantynes' _Refutation_ (1838), in Lockhart's reply _The Ballantyne
Humbug Handled_ (1839), and in the Ballantynes' _Reply_ (1839).  It is
not an edifying controversy, and Lockhart at first undoubtedly
overstated his case, but he seems to me on the whole to prove his main
points.  There is a judicious examination of the dispute in Lang, II.
126-172.

[18] As early as 1807 he was astonishing the London publishers by the
white hermitage supplied at a luncheon which he gave to celebrate the
enlargement of his printing works.  _Memoirs of John Murray_, I.  86.




{167}

CHAPTER VII

THE BROKEN YEARS

(1817-1819)


I

[Sidenote: 1816-17]

The lawyer in Scott was fast disappearing into the background, and the
forecast of Kerr of Abbotrule that a Lord President Scott might write
poetry in the vacations as a Lord President Montesquieu had written
philosophy was now outside the realm of the practicable.  But in the
winter of 1816-17 he had a sudden hankering after a legal office more
dignified than his seat at the Clerks' table.  Like Jeffrey he craved
for what Jeffrey called the "dignified ease of a Baron of Exchequer."
He was now the most famous living Scotsman, he was a sound enough
lawyer to warrant a seat on the Bench, and his political friends were
in power.  "There is a difference in the rank," he wrote to the Duke of
Buccleuch, "and also in the leisure of a Baron's situation; and a man
may, without condemnation, endeavour at any period of life to obtain as
much honour and ease as he may handsomely come by."  But the Duke had
certain differences at the moment with the Government, and he was
ailing; when a year later he was in a position to press Scott's claims,
Scott withdrew on the characteristic ground that he had a friend who
had a better title to any vacant judgeship.

The desire for greater ease was based on something more than ambition.
For the first time Scott began to feel his strength flagging.  He was
now to enter on that testing period of middle life when a man has to
make terms with his body.  For three broken years he had to struggle
against serious ill-health, and when he {168} emerged from the contest
he had dropped permanently to a lower plane of physical well-being.

[Sidenote: 1817]

Since his youth he had borne too hardly on "his brother the ass."  He
had played his part in the high-jinks of the Covenant Close and in
those Edinburgh dinner-parties where "drinking square" was a
gentleman's duty.  Ever since then he had kept his powers of mind and
body at full stretch.  One half of his life was sedentary, with its
long hours in court or at his desk: the other was crowded with violent
physical exertion.  It is an old mistake to believe that the two forms
of toil counteract the mischiefs of each other.  Scott, with his heavy
frame and immense breadth of shoulder, needed much fresh air and
exercise to keep him in health, and for six months in the year he did
not get it.  He was compelled to live in extremes.  His only safety lay
in a careful rgime like his father's, but he was not the man to submit
to such a discipline unless compelled.  He had a hearty appetite for
food, and he indulged it.  His breakfast was like Dandie Dinmont's; and
this not only at Abbotsford, when he had a day on the hills before him,
but in Edinburgh where he must sit cramped for hours in a stuffy court.
He ate moderately in the evening, but Edinburgh dinners began early and
finished late, and carried a full complement of wine and whisky-punch.
He was careless in other ways.  The amount of sleep he took was
insufficient for such a life, for he would go to bed at midnight and
rise at six, and spend an hour or so before he got up planning his
day's work.  In the country he was often soaked to the skin and would
remain for half a day in his wet clothes.  His one concession to what
we should call hygiene was his morning's cold sponging of throat, chest
and shoulders.

[Sidenote: First illness]

Before the end of 1816 he had had attacks of intestinal pain, which he
had combated by drinking hot water.  Suddenly, on March 5, 1817, the
long-suffering body rebelled.  He was giving a dinner-party in Castle
Street, when he was seized with violent cramp in the stomach, which
sent him to bed "roaring like a bull-calf."  "All {169} sorts of
remedies were applied," he wrote to Morritt, "as in the case of Gil
Blas' pretended colic, but such was the pain of the real disorder that
it outdeviled the doctor hollow.  Even heated salt, which was applied
in such a state that it burned my shirt to rags, I hardly felt when
clapped to my stomach.  At length the symptoms became inflammatory, and
dangerously so, the seat being the diaphragm.  They only gave way to
very profuse bleeding and blistering, which, under higher assistance,
saved my life.  My recovery was slow and tedious from the state of
exhaustion.  I could neither stir for weakness and giddiness, nor read
for dazzling in my eyes, nor listen for a whizzing sound in my ears,
nor even think for lack of the power of arranging my ideas.  So I had a
comfortless time of it for about a week."[1]

He had a comfortless time for more than three years.  The malady was
due to gall-stones, and his doctors, who left him "neither skin nor
blood," did not touch the root of the mischief.  Their one useful act
was to put him on a diet, reduce his breakfast to porridge, and limit
strictly his allowance of wine.  He protested against the tyranny, but
he obeyed, and this dieting, with frequent hot baths, and opium for the
bouts of pain, became his rule of life.  He rose from his bed to go
back to his duties, scaring his friends by his drawn face and wan
colour.[2]  Many believed that he had got his death-blow, including
James Ballantyne, who was nearly felled by James Hogg for giving voice
to his fears.  All the summer and autumn he struggled against languor,
and found every exertion a burden, so that a cry of weariness was
forced at last from one who had never {170} before complained.  Viewing
the familiar scene from the hill above Cauldshiels loch, part of his
latest purchase, he found its beauties dimmed to his sick eyes.

  The quiet lake, the balmy air,
    The hill, the stream, the tower, the tree--
  Are they still such as once they were,
    Or is the dreary change in me?

  Alas, the warp'd and broken board,
    How can it bear the painter's dye!
  The harp of strain'd and tuneless chord,
    How to the minstrel's stroke reply!

  To aching eyes each landscape lowers,
    To feverish pulse each gale blows chill;
  And Araby's or Eden's bowers
    Were barren as this moorland hill.


It was his only word of complaint.  To his friends he made light of his
troubles, and he tightened instead of slackening his habits of toil.
The reaction of a man to the ebbing of bodily strength in middle age is
a certain proof of character, and Scott revealed that tough stoicism
which can laugh even when the mouth is wry with pain.  He must labour
if he would keep the place he had won, and he forced himself to it
though every sense and nerve rebelled.  In one thing he was fortunate:
he found a perfect helper.  His friend of seventeen years, William
Laidlaw, formerly the tenant of Blackhouse, had been unlucky in his
sheep-farming, so Scott proposed that he should occupy the house of
Kaeside and act as the Abbotsford factor.  Innocent, sentimental and
Whiggishly inclined, Laidlaw had little in common with Scott except his
love of the Border, but the affection between the two was deep and
abiding.  He had a slender literary talent and so was able in
emergencies to do the work of secretary.  But in his presence, even
more than in his usefulness, lay his comfort to his master.  To listen
to his perpetual "What for no?"[3] was for Scott to be convinced that
the homely simplicities were not gone from the world.

{171}

The agony of that first bout in March had scarcely abated before Scott
was at work on an indifferent play, ultimately known as _The Doom of
Devorgoil_.  In May he contracted with Constable for a new novel, _Rob
Roy_--the title was suggested by the publisher--and on the green at
Abbotsford, though he had had an attack of pain the day before, he
talked in the highest spirits of the hit he would make with "a Glasgow
weaver whom he would ravel up with Rob," and extemporized some of their
conversations.  It was a bleak summer, and by the 8th of June there was
not an ash tree in leaf, so Scott was the less tempted to leave his
desk.  He finished the novel in the middle of December, most of it
having been hard collar-work done in the intervals of pain and
lassitude.  One day James Ballantyne found him sitting with a blank
sheet before him.  "Ay, ay, Jemmy," said Scott, "'tis easy for you to
bid me get on, but how the deuce can I make Rob Roy's wife speak with
such a curmurring in my guts?"[4]

[Sidenote: Purchase of land]

Meantime at Abbotsford he had enlarged his bounds by the purchase for
10,000 of the estate of Toftfield, which made him master of all the
haunts of Thomas the Rhymer.  The house he re-christened Huntly Burn,
and he settled there his old friend Adam Ferguson, now retired from the
army.  Abbotsford--the first plan of it--was approaching completion, a
queer jumble of masonry new and old.  Even in his sickness Scott was
filling the house with curious mementoes of the past--painted glass
representing the Scottish kings copied from a ceiling in Stirling
Castle, the old fountain from the Cross of Edinburgh, plaster models of
the Melrose Abbey gargoyles--and buying freely books, armour, pictures
and "gabions."  He was full of plans for turning the steading of one of
his farms into a model hamlet of labourers, to be called Abbotstown.
Guests were plentiful, among them Washington Irving, who has left a
delightful account of his visit,[5] and Wilkie the {172} artist, and
that tragic lady, Byron's forsaken wife.  Scott found that autumn that
he must give up shooting, since he could not keep pace with the dogs,
but in the intervals of his cramps he could potter about his lands for
six hours at a time.  Whenever the pain lifted and the giddiness
produced by narcotics passed off, his spirits revived, and when God
sent a cheerful hour he did not refrain.  Take this letter to Jeffrey,
written in the same month as the melancholy lines quoted above:


Can you not borrow from your briefs and criticisms a couple of days to
look about you here?  I dare not ask Mrs Jeffrey till next year, when
my hand will be out of the mortar-tub; and at present my only spare bed
was, till of late, but accessible by the feudal accommodation of a
drawbridge made of two deals; and still requires the clue of Ariadne.
Still, however, there it is, and there is an obliging stage-coach
called the Blucher, which sets down my guests within a mile of my
mansion (at Melrose bridge-end) three times a week, and restores them
to their families in like manner after five hours' travelling.  I am
like one of Miss Edgeworth's heroines, master of all things in
miniature--a little hill and a little glen, and a little horse-pond of
a loch, and a little river, I was going to call it--the Tweed, but I
remember the minister was mobbed by his parishioners for terming it, in
his statistical report, an inconsiderable stream.  So pray do come and
see me.[6]



II

[Sidenote: 1818]

_Rob Roy_ was published by Constable in the beginning of 1818, the
first edition, which was exhausted in a fortnight, reaching the large
figure of 10,000 copies.  In the previous November an agreement had
been signed for a new series of "Tales of my Landlord."  Owing to the
dexterity of John Ballantyne and Constable's fear of the books going to
Blackwood, whose new magazine was now bearding his own _Edinburgh
Review_, the terms were very high, including the taking over of the
remaining unsaleable stock in Hanover Street.[7]  With the advance he
received Scott was able {173} to cancel his bond of 4000 to the Duke
of Buccleuch.  He had now discharged all his debts to personal friends,
but at the cost of mortgaging far ahead his creative powers.

[Sidenote: The Scottish regalia]

In February he was cheered by the fulfilment of an old hope.  He had
raised with the Prince Regent the question of disinterring the ancient
regalia of Scotland from the lumber of the Crown Room in Edinburgh
Castle; a commission of inquiry had been appointed, and on 4th February
the question was settled which had long disquieted the country, whether
the regalia, which by the Act of Union were never to be removed from
Scottish soil, had not in fact been sent to London.  The great dusty
chest was opened, and therein were found, in perfect order, the Crown
and the Sceptre fashioned in the reign of James V, and the noble Sword
of State presented to James IV by Pope Julian II, as well as the silver
mace of the Treasurer of Scotland.[8]  To Scott the ceremony was of a
sacramental gravity, and his feeling was shared by his daughter Sophia,
who all but fainted when the chest was opened.  One of the
commissioners proposed to put the Crown on the head of one of the young
ladies present, but was deterred by Scott's passionate cry of "By God,
No!"  That day Edinburgh learned that its genteel antiquarianism was a
very different thing from Scott's burning reverence for the past.  So
far did he carry it that he was willing to domesticate as family
chaplain an uncle of Laidlaw, an aged Cameronian minister, merely
because Richard Cameron had been chaplain to one of his own
ancestors--a project which fortunately failed.  He wrote to
Laidlaw--"If, as the King of Prussia said to Rousseau, 'a little
persecution is necessary to make his home entirely to his mind,' he
shall have it; and, what persecutors seldom promise, I will stop
whenever he is tired of it.  I have a pair of thumbikins also much at
his service, if he requires their assistance to glorify {174} God and
the Covenant.  Seriously I like enthusiasm of every kind so well,
especially when united with worth of character, that I shall be
delighted with this old gentleman."[9]

Meantime he was busy on the new "Tales of my Landlord."  At first he
had intended to include two stories in the new series, but the first,
_The Heart of Midlothian_, so grew under his hand that it was published
alone in June in four volumes.  It was received both in England and
Scotland with a universal approbation not accorded to any of the other
novels, for it pleased both the critical and the uncritical.  "I am in
a house," Lady Louisa Stuart wrote from Sheffield Place, "where
everybody is tearing it out of each other's hands, and talking of
nothing else.  So much for its success--the more flattering because it
overcomes a prejudice.  People were beginning to say the author would
wear himself out; it was going on too long in the same key, and no
striking notes could possibly be produced.  On the contrary, I think
the interest is stronger here than in any of the former ones (always
excepting my first love, _Waverley_), and one may congratulate you upon
having effected what many have tried to do and nobody yet succeeded
in--making a perfectly good character the most interesting."[10]  This,
from his best critic, was good news for one who sorely needed
heartening.

[Sidenote: Lockhart]

In the summer of that year at an Edinburgh dinner-party Scott met a
young man, who entertained him with an account of a recent visit to
Goethe at Weimar, and was promptly bidden to Abbotsford.  The young man
was one John Gibson Lockhart, a briefless advocate who dabbled in
literature.  Scott invited him to do some work on the _Edinburgh Annual
Register_, and during the rest of the summer session had many talks
with him.  Lockhart was then approaching his twenty-fourth birthday, an
uncommonly handsome youth, with a pale, clean-cut face, a shapely head,
and wonderful dark eyes.  His manner, like his appearance, had a touch
of the hidalgo in it; his slight deafness made him self-contained,
{175} though his shyness disappeared in congenial society; he had a
biting wit, did not gladly suffer fools, and was apt to have the air of
being superior to his company.  His father was a Lanarkshire minister
and his mother a minister's daughter; it must not be forgotten that
Lockhart had in his blood that Calvinistic tincture which does not make
for humility.  He had other strains, for paternally he counted kin with
the high race of the Lockharts of the Lee, one of whom had ridden with
Douglas in the pilgrimage of the Heart of Bruce.  He had been educated
at Glasgow University, and had then proceeded to Balliol with a Snell
exhibition.  At Oxford he had done well, had become a good classical
scholar, and had read widely in foreign literatures; had a fellowship
been possible for a Scots Presbyterian, he might have remained there
happily for the rest of his days.  As it was, he returned to Glasgow,
which he found uncongenial, and in 1816 was called to the Scottish Bar.

In Edinburgh he fell into the company of John Wilson, who had been a
gentleman-commoner at Magdalen, and the two, having no practice, were
engaged by William Blackwood to write in his new magazine.  Blackwood,
an astute, rough-grained man, decided that the elegant acerbity of the
_Edinburgh Review_ must be fought with stronger and coarser acids, and
the first years of "ma Maaga," as he called his journal, were notorious
for its offences against literary decency.  The magazine was high Tory
in politics, orthodox in religion, and intolerant of all things that
did not conform to its strait canons.  The Lake School and the Cockney
School of poets were attacked--not by Lockhart--with blustering
malevolence.  In the "Chaldee Manuscript," a clumsy Biblical parody in
which Lockhart had a considerable share, it presented contemporary
figures in a mood of ferocious banter.  Lockhart was never the typical
_Blackwood_ man; that part was better filled by John Wilson and by Hogg
in his cups; but something frustrate and irritable in his soul made him
consent to its extravagances.  He was always a little at odds with his
environment and his generation.

{176}

At first sight there would seem to have been nothing in common between
the superfine Oxford scholar, with a sneer on his handsome lips, and
one who looked upon all men as his brothers.  Scott, who disliked
_Blackwood_ and had no special love for its proprietor, cannot have
been predisposed in favour of the young man who on that May evening
took wine with him at Mr Home Drummond's table.  But his reading of his
fellows was rarely mistaken.  Lockhart lived up to the badge of his
family, the "heart within the fetterlock," and hid the depth and
fineness of his humanity under a hard protective sheath.  Scott's
insight penetrated to the man beneath, and he detected a spirit too
rare for rowdy Edinburgh journalism, while Lockhart's chilly soul was
warmed by the sympathy of the one man who ever commanded his full
reverence.  Scott thought that he saw in this well-equipped stripling a
successor to whom he might hand on the torch of his own loyalties, and
in those weary days he was thinking much of his latter end.  The result
was the beginning of one of the sincerest friendships in the history of
letters, through which the older man was to elicit what was best in the
younger, and the younger was to give to the world an immortal picture
of his master.[11]

[Sidenote: The baronetcy]

The intimacy thus begun ripened fast.  That autumn Lockhart, returning
with John Wilson from the English lakes, paid his first visit to
Abbotsford, and was given a glimpse of its feudal retinue and its
feudal hospitality.  It was a melancholy autumn for Scott, for the Duke
of Buccleuch was dying, and his letter to Lord Montagu shows the depth
of his anxiety.[12]  The offer of a baronetcy in November was only
accepted when he got the news that his wife's brother, Charles
Carpenter, had bequeathed the residue of his fortune to his sister's
family.  The cost of Abbotsford and his enlarged estate and his desire
to equip his eldest son for the cavalry made him {177} agree to sell
all his copyrights to Constable for the sum of 12,000; in 1826 the
price had not been fully paid.

[Sidenote: 1819]

With the opening of 1819 the shadows again descended.  The baronetcy
had pleased him more than he cared to admit.  He was glad that his
ancient Border name should be given a handle which it had often had in
history; he anticipated the obvious quotation from _Henry IV_, "I like
not such grinning honour as Sir Walter hath," and he hoped to go to
London in the Easter vacation to receive the accolade.  But now the
spasms of cramp returned with increased violence and the remedies used
to relieve them brought on jaundice.  His attacks of pain would last
sometimes for ten hours, to be followed by deadly sickness.  "I have
been ill--very--very ill," he told the Duke of Buccleuch, and to
Southey he wrote:--


If I had not the strength of a team of horses I could never have fought
through it, and through the heavy fire of medicinal artillery, scarce
less exhausting--for bleeding, blistering, calomel and ipecacuanha have
gone on without intermission--while, during the agony of the spasms,
laudanum became necessary in the most liberal doses, though
inconsistent with the general treatment.  I did not lose my senses,
because I resolved to keep them, but I thought once or twice they would
have gone overboard, top and top-gallants.  I should be a great fool,
and a most ungrateful wretch to complain of such afflictions as these.
My life has been, in all its private and public relations, as fortunate
perhaps as was ever lived, up to this period; and whether pain or
misfortune may lie behind the dark curtain of futurity, I am already a
sufficient debtor to the bounty of Providence to be resigned to it.
Fear is an evil that has never mixed with my nature, nor has even
unwonted good fortune rendered my love of life tenacious.[13]


In May the Duke of Buccleuch died, and at that time Scott must have
believed that he would not long survive his friend.  Between the bouts
of pain he was so weak that the shortest letter fatigued him.  "When I
crawl out on Sybil Grey," he wrote, "I am the very image of Death on
the pale horse, lanthorn-jawed, decayed in flesh, stooping as if I
meant to eat the poney's ears, {178} and unable to go above a
foot-pace."  When Lockhart went to Abbotsford at the end of the spring
vacation he found a shrunken figure, with a yellow face and snow-white
hair; but he found, too, fire in Scott's eye and a most resolute will
to live.  "He sat at table while we dined, but partook only of some
rice pudding; and after the cloth was drawn, while sipping his toast
and water, pushed round the bottles in his old style, and talked with
easy cheerfulness of the stout battle he had fought and which he now
seemed to consider as won."  That night Scott was in agony, but next
morning he took his visitor for a trot up Yarrow vale and did some
political canvassing among the farmers.  When he returned to Edinburgh
he found that for weeks at a time he could not take his seat at the
Clerks' table.  He had attacks which seemed to his friends to presage
death, and Lord Buchan, the master-bore of his generation, tried to
comfort him by a promise that he himself would take charge of the
funeral ceremonies at Dryburgh.  One night in June it appeared that the
end had come.  Lockhart has told the tale on his wife's evidence.


He then called his children about his bed, and took leave of them with
solemn tenderness.  After giving them one by one such advice as suited
their years and characters, he added: "For myself, my dears, I am
unconscious of ever having done any man an injury, or omitting any fair
opportunity of doing any man a benefit.  I well know that no human life
can appear otherwise than weak and filthy in the eyes of God, but I
rely on the merits and intercession of our Redeemer."  He then laid his
hands on their heads and said, "God bless you!  Live so that you may
all hope to meet each other in a better place hereafter.  And now leave
me that I may turn my face to the wall."[14]


But it was not the end, it was rather the crisis of the malady, for he
fell into a sleep, and from that night his slow convalescence began.

Yet those months of weakness and pain were also months of intense
literary activity.  All spring he was busy on _The Bride of
Lammermoor_, dictating it either to {179} the swift and alert James
Ballantyne or to the innocent Will Laidlaw, who was apt to interrupt
with "Gude keep us a'!" and "Eh, sirs!  Eh, sirs!"  Scott refused to
pause during his spasms of pain.  "Nay, Willie," he told Laidlaw, "only
see that the doors are fast.  I would fain keep all the cry as well as
all the wool to ourselves; but as to giving over work, that can only be
done when I am in woollen."  He did the same with _The Legend of
Montrose_, and the two were published by Constable in June in the third
series of "Tales of my Landlord"--four volumes full of misprints, since
the author was too ill to correct the proofs.  The tales would have
been received with indulgence by those who knew the circumstances of
their composition, but to his friends' amazement no indulgence was
required, for the old afflatus was there in ample measure.  James
Ballantyne tells how, when the printed volumes of _The Bride of
Lammermoor_ were put into his hand, Scott read them anxiously, for "he
did not recollect one single incident, character or conversation."  He
had dictated the book in a half-conscious world of suffering upon which
memory had closed the door.

[Sidenote: Recovery]

There were other proofs of his miraculous vitality.  After he left
Edinburgh that summer he had begun a novel, _Ivanhoe_, which broke
wholly new ground, for, fearing lest his public might grow weary of
Scottish life, he marched horse and foot into England and occupied one
of the classic lists of English romance.  Moreover, he was engaged in
all kinds of miscellaneous duties--political articles for James
Ballantyne's _Edinburgh Weekly Journal_, fitting out his son Walter for
his cornetcy in the 18th Hussars, entertaining at Abbotsford the prince
who was afterwards to be King of the Belgians, recruiting--to keep the
peace which he believed to be threatened by the new Radicals--a corps
of Buccleuch Foresters, and pushing the interests of the youth among
his own villagers, by whom he was known as the "Duke of Darnick."  He
was also casting a proprietary eye over Nicol Milne's estate of
Faldonside, and contemplating its purchase for 30,000; he believed
that he could put {180} 10,000 down, and pay off the rest in a few
years by his literary earnings.  From this rash project he was not
deterred by what had happened to his friend, Sir John Riddell of
Riddell, who had become bankrupt from spending too much on farming.
"Here they have been," he moralizes, "for a thousand years; and now all
the inheritance is to pass away, merely because one good worthy
gentleman could not be content to enjoy his horses, his hounds, and his
bottle of claret, like thirty or forty predecessors, but must needs
turn scientific agriculturist, take almost all his fair estate into his
own hand, superintend for himself perhaps a hundred ploughs, and try
every new nostrum that has been tabled by the quackish improvers of the
time.  And what makes the thing ten times more wonderful is that he
kept his day-book and ledger and all the rest of it as accurately as if
he had been a cheesemonger in the Grassmarket."  Scott himself kept
minute accounts, and he too was spending capital which he hoped to
realize out of future profits, but he did not see that Sir John
Riddell's course was paralleled by his own.

With 1819 the broken years came to an end.  By Christmas his health was
virtually restored, though he had lost for good one-half of his
physical strength.  Now at the age of forty-eight he was an elderly
man.  It had been a year of bereavement as well as of bodily pain, for
in the bitter December weather he lost in a single week his mother, his
uncle Dr Rutherford, and his aunt Christian Rutherford, one of the best
loved of his relatives.  Spiritually he emerged from the valley of the
shadow a stronger and riper man, for he had looked calmly in the face
of death.  His eyes were graver, as of one who had been keeping watch
over man's mortality.  His cheerful creed, that the good were the
happy, and, in the main, the successful, had been better adjusted to
reality.  The fate of Rebecca in _Ivanhoe_ is a proof of this new
philosophy.  "A character of a highly virtuous and lofty stamp," he
wrote in this connexion, "is degraded rather than exalted by an attempt
to reward virtue with temporal prosperity.  {181} Such is not the
recompense that Providence has deemed worthy of suffering merit....  A
glance on the great picture of life will show that the virtue of
self-denial, and the sacrifice of passion to principle, are seldom thus
remunerated; and that the internal consciousness of their high-minded
discharge of duty produces on their own reflections a more adequate
recompense, in the form of that peace which the world cannot give or
take away."[15]



III

[Sidenote: 1818]

The five novels conceived and written during the broken years,
represent the peak of Scott's creative power.  They were the work of
something less than thirty months, a fecundity for which in literary
history there is scarcely a parallel.  They were produced during, and
in the intervals of, deadly sickness; but, with one exception, the
shadow of pain does not fall on them, for they present the normal world
of his imagination in all its sunlit spaciousness.

[Sidenote: _Rob Roy_]

In _Rob Roy_ especially there is no hint of the shadows, for the
quality of delightfulness which was conspicuous in _Guy Mannering_ has
made it for many good judges--Lord Rosebery was one and Stevenson
another--the favourite among the novels.  In Rob Roy himself, Scott had
a figure which had long filled his imagination--a Highlander with
Lowland affiliations, who continued the old banditry of the Highland
Line almost into modern days.  The Northumbrian scene he knew from his
many journeys across the Cheviots; he had been often in Glasgow on
circuit, and had an affection for its people not commonly felt by
"pridefu' Edinburgh folk."  In 1817 with Adam Ferguson he had explored
the Lennox and the Macgregor country, renewing his impressions of a
quarter of a century before when, as a lawyer's apprentice, he had set
forth to do legal execution upon the Maclarens.  He had recollections
of his father to help him in his portrait of the elder Osbaldistone,
and in the adorable {182} Diana Vernon there are fleeting memories of
his first love.

In construction the novel is one of his worst.  The plot is in essence
picaresque, the main interest being movement in space, but the purpose
of such movement is casually conceived.  The preliminaries are out of
all decent proportion, and many a reader has stuck fast in them and
never crossed the Border.  The hero is only a name, Edward Waverley
many degrees further removed from reality.  The whole business of the
missing bills and Rashleigh's villainy is obscure, and there are other
signs of carelessness; some of the journeys, for example, take an
unconscionable time, and Scott seems never to have made up his mind at
what season of the year the events befell.  The book is for the first
third a somewhat languid chronicle of manners, and for the rest a
headlong adventure.  Yet the lengthy introduction has merits of its
own.  There is a careful study of the elder Osbaldistone, who, "as a
man of business, looked upon the labours of poets with contempt; and,
as a religious man and of the dissenting persuasion, considered all
such pursuits as equally trivial and profane."  The romance of commerce
is sympathetically presented, through the mouths both of Owen and of
the Bailie.  Indeed Scott never wrote brisker and better economics than
in his account in Chapter XXVI of the basis of Glasgow's prosperity and
of the condition of the neighbouring Highlands.[16]  Nor did he often
write sounder political history.  Take the Bailie on the Union:--


Whisht, sir!--whisht!  It's ill-scraped tongues like yours that makes
mischief between neighbourhoods and nations.  There's naething sae gude
on this side o' time but it might have been better, and that may be
said o' the Union.  Nane were keener against it than the Glasgow folk,
wi' their rabblings and their risings, and their mobs, as they ca' them
nowadays.  But it's an ill wind that blaws naebody gude--let ilka ane
roose the ford as they find it.--I say, let Glasgow flourish!  {183}
whilk is judiciously and elegantly putten round the town's arms by way
of byword.  Now, since St Mungo catched herrings in the Clyde, what was
ever like to gar us flourish like the sugar and tobacco trade?  Will
anybody tell me that, and grumble at a treaty that opened us a road
west-awa' yonder?


In his picture, too, of Osbaldistone Hall Scott showed for the first
time his power of presenting a scene and a mode of life outside his own
experience and tradition.

[Sidenote: The Aberfoyle Inn]

The drama begins slackly, but our expectations are early roused, when
the deep voice of the "Scotch sort of a gentleman," the drover
Campbell, is heard in the Darlington inn.  These preparatory hints are
cunningly scattered throughout the Northumbrian chapters, as when Diana
from the hill-top shows Frank the far-off speck of whitish rock and
tells him how in two hours his horse will carry him into Scotland.
Very good is the scene with Mr Justice Inglewood, and Jobson the
attorney is one of Scott's best legal comic figures, but the tale only
finds its true key when Frank, with Andrew Fairservice as his Sancho
Panza, rides off in the darkness for the north.  Thereafter we are in
the grip of epic narrative.  The midnight scene in the Glasgow prison,
the journey to Aberfoyle, the night in the clachan alehouse, the fight
on the lake shore, the Bailie's encounter with Helen Macgregor, Rob
Roy's escape from Ewan of Brigglands at the ford, the meeting with
Diana on the darkening heath--all are conceived in the highest vein of
romantic invention.  "Drama," Stevenson has told us, "is the poetry of
conduct, romance the poetry of circumstance," and in the scene at the
Aberfoyle inn the two are most artfully joined.  Out of the night come
the travellers from a prosaic world; around them are the shadowy
mountains where death lurks, and by the inn fire are men of a wild
world; at the threat of danger the prosaic is transformed into the
heroic, and with a red-hot plough coulter snatched from the hearth the
Bailie makes the Stuart's plaid "smell like a singit sheep's head."
Every detail of that wonderful scene, which Scott never bettered, is at
the same high {184} pitch--not least when the half-drunken
Garschattachin airs his Jacobitism--


The banes of a loyal and a gallant Grahame hae lang rattled in their
coffin for vengeance on thae Dukes of Guile and Lords for Lorn.  There
ne'er was treason in Scotland but a Cawmil was at the bottom o't; and
now that the wrang side's uppermost, wha but the Cawmils for keeping
doun the right?  But this warld winna last lang, and it will be time to
sharp the maiden for shearing o' craigs and thrapples.  I hope to see
the auld rusty lass linking at a bluidy harst again.


Into the parochial affairs of merchants and blackmailers comes the high
baronial note of an elder Scotland.

Of the characters it may be said fairly that none are weak except the
young hero.  Rob Roy is a brilliant study of two different worlds
marred in the joining; his wife, though she verges on melodrama, is not
without a tragic verisimilitude; and every Highlander that crosses the
stage is vigorously presented.  But three figures by common consent
stand out as among Scott's masterpieces.  In Diana Vernon he produced
his one wholly satisfactory portrait of a young gentlewoman.  Not only
is the reader vividly conscious of her charm of person and manner and
her fineness of spirit, but he is aware of a notable intelligence; for
she is the ancestress of another Diana, her of the Crossways.  Her
speech, indeed, sometimes belies her, for she can talk like a governess
from Miss Pinkerton's academy.  "We are still allies," she can say,
"bound, like other confederate powers, by circumstances of mutual
interest, but I am afraid, as will happen in other cases, the treaty of
alliance has survived the amicable disposition in which it had its
origin."  Worse still, she can address Rashleigh thus: "Dismiss from
your company the false archimage, Dissimulation, and it will better
ensure your free access to our classical consultations."  But these are
only specks on the sun.  At other times her talk can be gay, vivacious
and gallant, and she has a wild subtlety of her own.  Whatever she says
or does, we are her devout henchmen, believing fiercely in her beauty,
her goodness and her brains.  We learn from her the kind of woman {185}
that Scott most admired, for no other of his own class is so lovingly
drawn.  He had little liking for foolish sylphs.

[Sidenote: Andrew Fairservice]

Andrew Fairservice is one of the great serving-men in literature, and
he is one of Scott's foremost creations, for, just as Falstaff seems to
have got out of Shakespeare's hand and attained an independent life of
his own, so Andrew is now and then too much for his creator.  He is a
real but a low type of Scot, cunning, avaricious, indifferently loyal,
venturesome in his own interest but a craven in the face of bodily
peril, an incorrigible liar and braggart, and never more impudent than
when his bluff is called.  But vitality has nothing to do with ethics,
and Andrew lives for us as vividly as Falstaff or Sairey Gamp.  Scott
has a half-ashamed liking for the rogue, but no admiration, and he
delights to exhibit him in the ugliest light.  But Andrew refuses to be
degraded as successfully as Falstaff when he is renounced by Prince
Hal; whenever he appears he takes the centre of the stage, and obscures
the Bailie and Rob Roy himself.

Scott put into him all the baser traits of his countrymen, but he added
their quick interest in life, their speculative boldness, their
sentiment, their vivid consciousness of the past.  Andrew comments
freely and fearlessly on any topic, and he is always shrewd and
humorous.  He is a lamp to light the reader through the undergrowth of
Scots prejudices and idiosyncrasies.  He reveals for Frank's benefit
the trade of the Scots packman; the life of the Scots burghs "yoked on
end to end like ropes of ingans"; the downfall of local government with
the loss of the Scots Parliament--"If ae kail-wife pou'd aff her
neighbour's mutch, they wad hae the twasome o' them into the Parliament
House o' Lunnon"; his contempt for episcopacy--"clouts o' cauld
parritch ... mair like a penny wedding than a sermon"; his smattering
of law--"bonny writer words ... a' that Andrew got for a lang law plea,
and four ankers o' as gude brandy as was e'er coupit ower craig;" the
tale of the cleansing of Glasgow's {186} cathedral at the Reformation
from the "rags o' the muckle hure that sitteth on seven hills, as if
ane wasna braid eneugh for her auld hinder end;" his taste in
letters--"He aince telled me (puir blinded creature) that the Psalms of
David were excellent poetry! as if the holy Psalmist thought o'
rattling rhymes in a blether like his ain silly clinkum-clankum things
that he ca's verse.  Gude help him! twa lines o' Davie Lindsay wad ding
a' he ever clerkit!"  He never opens his disgraceful mouth but there
flows from it a beautiful rhythmical Scots.  Take this:--


I have been flitting every term these four-and-twenty years; but when
the time comes, there's aye something to saw that I would like to see
sawn--or something to maw that I would like to see mawn--or something
to ripe that I would like to see ripen--and sae I e'en daiker on wi'
the family frae year's end to year's end....  But if your honour wad
wush me to ony place where I wad hear pure doctrine, and hae a free
cow's grass, and a cot, and a yard, and mair than ten punds of annual
fee, and where there's nae leddy about the town to count the apples,
I'se hold mysell muckle indebted t' ye.


[Sidenote: Bailie Nicol Jarvie]

Bailie Nicol Jarvie was regarded by Scott from the first as one of the
twin pillars of the tale.  He is the foil to Frank Osbaldistone--the
shrewd middle-aged man of business set against the young dreamer; the
foil to Rob--the pragmatic and progressive Lowlander against the
champion of a lost world: the foil to Andrew Fairservice, since his
idiomatic pawkiness is based on courage and lit by generosity.  His
Whiggism is always coloured by honest sentiment, his carefulness by a
large kindliness, and he has his own homespun poetry.  Alone of all the
characters he is perfectly at ease in the world and perfectly sure of
his road.  He is a conscientious man and must always be moralizing;
when he compounds a bowl of brandy-punch he tells the company that he
had the receipt from one Captain Coffinkey--"a decent man when I kent
him, only he used to swear awfully.  But he's dead, and gaen to his
account, and I trust he's accepted--I trust he's accepted."  He has his
ambitions, and dreams not only of the provostship, but of letting his
{187} lights burn before the Duke of Argyll--"for wherefore should they
be hidden under a bushel?"  He is for the plain man and his rights,
since his father the deacon had carried his sword to Bothwell Brig, but
he has also a deep respect for gentle blood.  Into his counting-house
came wafts from a different world, and he sighs as he shuts the door on
them.


It's a queer thing o' me, gentlemen, that am a man of peace mysell, and
a peacefu' man's son, for the deacon my father quarrelled wi' nane out
o' the town-council--it's a queer thing, I say, but I think the Hieland
blude o' me warms at thae daft tales, and whiles I like better to hear
them than a word o' profit, gude forgie me!----  But they are
vanities--sinfu' vanities--and, moreover, again the statute law--again
the statute and gospel law.


There is steel in him as well as fire, for he can not only fight at a
pinch, but, with his honest knees knocking together, can outface Rob
Roy's terrible wife.  In a word he is the triumphant bourgeois, the
type which endures when aristocracies and proletariats crumble, but the
Scots type of that potent class.  His portrait is painted with a
thousand subtle touches and every word he utters adds something to our
understanding.  I sometimes fear that the knowledge of the older Scots
world, which is needed to make the Bailie wholly comprehensible, is
fast passing away; but, when I re-read him I seem to find behind the
idioms something universal, which lifts him out of any narrow orbit of
space and time, and sets him with the creatures of Moliere and
Shakespeare.


_The Heart of Midlothian_ had for its basis the tradition of a remoter
Edinburgh than that of the 'Forty-five, the jealous burgher life whose
smouldering resentment at the Union of 1707 was fanned to a flame by
the misdeeds of Captain Porteous.  Scott welcomed the chance of
recounting a vivid episode in the history of his own romantic city, and
for the plot itself he had a true tale to work on--that of Helen Walker
of Irongray, the "puirest o' a' puir bodies," who, like Jeanie Deans,
{188} walked to London to save her sister's life.  Around these centres
he gathered a motley crowd of burgesses, tacksmen, bonnet-lairds,
smugglers and ne'er-do-wells; he carried his tale to the Court of
London and into the dens of the underworld; and he made the network of
that underworld cover both Scotland and England, for he knew that crime
and misery overleap national boundaries.  In no other novel is his
canvas so large, or the figures so many and so varied.

Critics as diverse as Lady Louisa Stuart, Walter Savage Landor and
Edward Fitzgerald have given it first place among his works; and,
though in Scott's case the scale of precedence is hard to fix, I think
the judgment is right, for every merit which the others possess is
shown here in a high degree.  The first five-sixths of the book are
almost perfect narrative.  The start, after his fashion, is a little
laboured, while he is sketching in the historical background; but when
the action once begins there is no slackening, and the public and
private dramas are deftly interwoven.  The last chapters have been
generally condemned as weak and careless, a picking up of loose ends
and tying them into a clumsy knot; and indeed there is no defence to be
made for the death of Sir George Staunton at the hands of his own son.
There was a story there of the Greek tragedy type, but it demanded a
different kind of telling; as it stands, the reader is not awed by
dramatic justice but staggered by inconsequent melodrama.  Yet, apart
from this blemish, I feel that the conception of the Roseneath chapters
is right.  Scott was always social historian as well as novelist, and
he wanted to show Scottish life passing into a mellower phase in which
old unhappy things were forgotten.  Artistically, too, the instinct was
sound.  The figures, who have danced so wildly at the bidding of fate,
should find reward in a gentle, bright, leisurely old age.  Even so
Tolstoy rounded off his _War and Peace_.

The other novels, even the best of them, resemble a flat and sometimes
dull country, where the road occasionally climbs to the heights, but in
_The Heart of Midlothian_ {189} the path is all on a tableland, in
tonic air and with wonderful prospects.  One great scene follows close
on another, but there is no overstraining of the tension, for the comic
and the tragic, the solemn and the fantastic, are most artfully
mingled.  Interpolated in the horrors of the Porteous Mob is the gossip
of the Saddletrees and Mrs Howden, Peter Plumdamas and Miss Grizel
Damahoy; David Deans and his rigid decencies are set off by the pagan
death of old Dumbiedykes and the capers of his son; the suspense of
Effie's trial is relieved by the legal absurdities of Bartoline
Saddletree; Madge Wildfire with her songs flits among the midnight
shadows of Muschat's Cairn; Jeanie's journey begins with the comedy of
Dumbiedykes, passes through the terrors of Gunnerby Hill, and ends, as
romance should, in the courts of princes.  There is no fault to be
found with this brilliant panorama; but since each episode depends with
perfect logic and naturalness upon the characters of the protagonists,
so that it seems to happen inevitably and to owe nothing to invention,
it is the characters that constitute the glory of the book.

[Sidenote: Jeanie Deans]

Of these Jeanie Deans is the chief.  She dominates the book because she
alone is perfectly secure; she has a philosophy of life which
withstands the fieriest trials, and which makes the most foursquare of
the others--her father, Reuben Butler, the Duke--seem by contrast like
saplings to an oak.  She is such a figure as is not found elsewhere to
my knowledge in literature; the puritan in whom there is neither
sourness nor fanaticism, whose sane, rational instincts are wholly
impregnable, whose severity is for herself alone and not for others.
Scott gives her a homely person and few feminine graces, but he makes
her adorable from her invincible goodness.  She is no milk-and-water
heroine, no type of passive, suffering virtue, for her courage is that
of a man-at-arms, and is blown by the storms to a stronger flame.  "'I
fearna for his life--I ken how strong-hearted he is--I ken it,' laying
her hand on her bosom, 'by my ain heart at this minute.'"  She is a
{190} careful, practical soul, and her letters to her father and to
Butler during her journey mention a cure for the muir-ill which she has
heard of, and are full of housewifely details and shrewd observations
about the strange land she is exploring.  She is quick-witted and
sternly logical; she confounds the English rector by her theology, and
gives the Duke sage advice as to how to deal with the Queen, and can
even argue her father out of his pedantries.  She has an intense pride,
the deeper because it is free from vanity:--"I can only say, that not
for all the land that lies between the twa ends of the rainbow wad I be
the woman that should wed your son."  She has an eye, too, for the
whimsicalities of life, as when she contemplates the retreating figure
of her suitor, Dumbiedykes, borne off by Highland Rory.--"He's a gude
creature, and a kind--it's a pity he has sae willyard a powny."

This most human and companionable of women is involved in a crisis from
which there seems no outlet but tragedy.  Scott never wrote anything
more profound psychologically than the scene between Jeanie and her
father, when he learns that on her word depends Erne's life, and that
between the two sisters in prison.  Jeanie stands firm--she could not
do otherwise--but she directs the same unyielding courage to the task
of rescue.  Like Jacob she wrestles with the dark angel and compels him
to bless her.  The climax is triumph, when she wins her sister's life
from the Queen; and at that great moment she, whose speech has hitherto
had the homeliness of a country girl, rises, like Edie Ochiltree, to a
grave eloquence:--


Alas! it is not when we sleep soft and wake merrily ourselves, that we
think of other people's sufferings.  Our hearts are waxed light within
us then, and we are for righting our ain wrongs and fighting our ain
battles.  But when the hour of trouble comes to the mind or to the
body--and seldom may it visit your leddyship--and when the hour of
death comes that comes to high and low--lang and late may it be
yours----  Oh, my leddy, then it isna what we hae dune for oursells,
but what we hae dune for ithers, that we think on maist pleasantly.
And the thought that ye hae intervened to spare the puir thing's {191}
life will be sweeter in that hour, come when it may, than if a word of
your mouth could hang the haill Porteous mob at the tail of ae tow.


[Sidenote: David Deans]

Of the other characters no one is feebly drawn except Effie's Byronic
lover.  Effie herself is true woman, the passionate spoiled beauty,
with the good breeding which in any class may accompany bodily
loveliness.  Dumbiedykes, Reuben Butler, the Edinburgh burgesses, the
inimitable Captain of Knockdunder are all carefully studied, even in
their extravagances, as are the macabre figures from the underworld
like Daddy Ratcliffe and Meg Murdockson; while in Madge Wildfire Scott
shows that sure hand in portraying madness which belongs only to the
eminently sane.  But, after Jeanie, the dominant figure is her father.
David Deans is the Covenanter who has lived into peaceable times which
have a little mellowed his austerity.  He cherishes the memory of his
stormy past, and has still something of the wild poetry of the
hill-folk.  "It has been with me as with the worthy John Semple, called
Carspharn John, upon a like trial--I have been this night on the banks
of Ulai, plucking an apple here and there."  But if he has the leaven
of high devotion he carries also a gross weight of spiritual pride.
"How muckle better I hae thought mysell than them that lay saft, fed
sweet, and drank deep, when I was in the moss-haggs and moors wi'
precious Donald Cameron, and worthy Mr Blackadder, called Guess-again!"
"I wish every man and woman in this land had kept the true testimony,
and the middle and straight path, as it were on the ridge of the hill,
where wind and water shear, avoiding right-hand snares and extremes and
left-hand way-slidings, as weel as Johnny Dodds of Farthing's Acre, and
ae man mair that shall be nameless."  To such a man his daughter's
shame is a cataclysm, and his agony of spirit is subtly and tenderly
portrayed.  He is weaker than Jeanie because there is vanity in his
pride; he throws back upon her the responsibility for decision; but he
is strong enough not to plead with her for what he desires but his
principles condemn.  "I wunna fret the tender {192} conscience of one
bairn--no, not to save the life of the other."  The depth of the old
man's suffering is beautifully shown by his greeting to Jeanie on her
return:--


Jeanie--my ain Jeanie--my best--my maist dutiful bairn--the Lord of
Israel be thy father, for I am hardly worthy of thee!  Thou hast
redeemed our captivity--brought back the honour of our house.  Bless
thee, my bairn, with mercies promised and purchased!"


[Sidenote: 1819]

The _Legend of Montrose_ is based upon one episode in the most
miraculous of Scottish epics, the murder after the battle of Tippermuir
of the young Lord Kilpont by James Stewart of Ardvoirlich.  Wisely
Scott did not attempt a full portrait of Montrose, for, if he had, he
must have failed.  For one thing that great figure was still little
realized by the world; for another Scott's genius did not lie in the
understanding of the searching and introspective intellect and the
character in whom pure reason becomes a flame fiercer than any romantic
devotion.  Nor could he have coped with the doubts and subtleties of
Argyll.  He chose an episode in which he could give rein to his fancy,
and bring upon the stage as the central figure a Scottish mercenary
drawn from his readings in Turner and Monro.  Sir James Turner indeed
provided him with the very words of the mercenary's creed.  "I had
swallowed without chewing in Germanie a very dangerous maxime, which
military men there too much follow: which was, that so we serve our
master honestlie, it is no matter what master we serve."[17]

The book is like much of Dumas, swift, competent, careless narrative.
It lives by virtue of a single character, the immortal Rittmaster.
Dugald Dalgetty, compounded of Fluellen and Bobadil and Lesmahagow, and
crossed with the divinity student of Marischal College, is one of those
creations which, as Scott confessed, sat on the feather of his pen and
led it away from its purpose.[18]  He has his own way with the tale,
and, when he is on the {193} stage, the Sons of the Mist and Annot Lyle
and Montrose himself sink into the background.  He is a delight
whenever he speaks, whether he is laying down the maxims of conduct for
a soldier, or planning the fortification of the sconce of Drumsnab, or
discussing sermons with Argyll's chaplain, or ridiculing the methods of
Highland warfare.  He will fight for any cause, confident that he has
"fought knee-deep in blood many a day for one that was ten degrees
worse than the worst of them all."  The scenes in the dungeon of
Inveraray when Dugald's sober sense is contrasted with the heroics of
Ronald, and when later he discomfits Argyll, are among the happiest
that Scott ever conceived.  We rejoice to know that Dugald lived to a
good age, "very deaf, and very full of interminable stories about the
immortal Gustavus Adolphus, the Lion of the North," and our hearts go
with him, as with Falstaff, to Arthur's bosom or wheresome'er he be.


[Sidenote: _The Bride of Lammermoor_]

In _The Bride of Lammermoor_ we have the one novel written during the
broken years which is overcast by their shadow.  It was not the work of
the ordinary Scott, but of a "fey" man, living in a remote world of
pain; as we have seen, he had no recollection of its composition, and
pronounced it, after his first anxious reading, to be "monstrous, gross
and grotesque."  It was the product of a drugged and abnormal
condition, even as Coleridge composed "Kubla Khan" in an opiate dream,
from which he was roused by an inopportune "person from Porlock."

Yet there are no loose ends in the book.  In one way it is the most
perfectly constructed of all the novels, for the sense of marching
fatality is unbroken by any awkwardness of invention or languor of
narration.  It is a ballad subject, based on the legendary devilries of
Lady Stair, with the apparatus and something of the simplicity of a
great ballad.  The key of painful expectation is perfectly maintained,
and the dark wings of fate obscure the sun.  The story begins with a
funeral, passes to the warning of the blind Alice, and so to the {194}
staging of tragedy; it continues in storms, and the brief comedy
interlude only deepens the surrounding darkness; and it rises to a
crescendo of guile and cruelty and folly, ending for the lovers in
madness and death.  Snatches of verse are introduced which haunt the
mind and attune it to a dark mood of foreboding--Lucy Ashton's song at
the beginning on the vanity of human wishes, and Thomas the Rhymer's
prophecy:--

  When the last laird of Ravenswood to Ravenswood shall ride
  And woo a dead maiden to be his bride,
  He shall stable his steed in the Kelpie's flow,
  And his name shall be lost for evermoe!

The landscape is artfully managed, and becomes, like Egdon Heath in Mr
Hardy's _The Return of the Native_, almost a protagonist in the tale.
The eastern end of the Lammermoors, where they break down to the sea,
is to most people a green, open and friendly land where salt and
heather mingle, but Scott makes it secret, dark and ominous.  He never
wrote better descriptive prose than in his picture of Wolf's Crag in
Chapter VII.

The story is swift and brief, a succession of masterly scenes, each of
which makes a notable contribution to the drama's development.
Bucklaw's short commons at Wolf's Crag are contrasted with the Lord
Keeper's visit and Caleb's raid on the village, when for one moment we
enter the sunshine of comedy.  Scott's aim is clear--to set off the
snugness of the homely burgher life against the poverty and pride of
decayed nobility.  The scene at the cooper's cottage is more than a
Dutch picture, it is an acute piece of social philosophy.  Then for a
little we are beguiled into cheerfulness, but the dusk gathers with the
talk of the witch-wives sitting by the dead Alice, and we pass to
deeper and still deeper gloom--Lucy signing the marriage contract and
shrieking at the arrival of her rejected lover, her madness and death,
Ravenswood riding at dawn to his doom across the wet sands, the old
serving-man picking up the sable feather that is all that is left of
his master, and placing it in his bosom.

{195}

[Sidenote: Ravenswood]

There is no fault to be found with the plot, but for a theme so
tremendous the characters must be commensurate.  On the whole it may be
claimed that they do not fall below the true tragic stature.
Ravenswood is no Byronic imitation.  He is a fully realized type of the
aristocrat upon whom the ends of the earth have fallen, impotent in his
pride, unpractical in his nobility.  He is the only one of Scott's
heroes who never ceases to dominate the story: in the words of
Adolphus, he is "the ultimate and paramount object of every
passion--whether admiration, hatred, love, hope or fear--which vary and
animate the successive scenes."  Lady Ashton is a female of the same
breed, whose pride has been hammered into a hard mercantile
ambition--Lady Macbeth _ bon march_.  Bucklaw, the honest loutish
country laird, is an admirable foil to the Master's dark good-breeding,
as is the led-captain Craigengelt to Bucklaw's essential decency.  Lucy
Ashton is a passive creature, a green-sick girl unfit to strive with
destiny, but her weakness does not make her unreal, and there is
poignancy in her sad submissiveness.


"Dinna shut the cabinet yet," said Henry, "for I must have some of your
silver wire to fasten the balls to my hawk's jesses.  And yet the new
falcon's not worth them neither....  She just wets her singles in the
blood of the partridge, and then breaks away and lets her fly; and what
good can the poor bird do after that, you know, except pine and die in
the first heather cow or whin-bush she can crawl into?"

"Right, Henry--right, very right," said Lucy mournfully, holding the
boy fast by the hand after she had given him the wire he wanted; "but
there are more riflers in the world than your falcon, and more wounded
birds that seek but to die in quiet, that can find neither brake nor
whin-bush to hide their heads in."


The great figures are firmly drawn, but--except for Bucklaw--on general
lines; the lesser folk are more closely realized and more cunningly
differentiated.  Take such a one as the minister Bide-the-Bent, and the
villagers, and the old crones; Caleb Balderston's "humours" are perhaps
a trifle overdone, but he is real enough; and in Mortsheugh, the
grave-digger, Scott {196} has drawn a character at once true to history
and to human nature.  Mortsheugh has been at Bothwell Brig as a
henchman of the Ravenswoods, but he has no sentiment of loyalty.  He
regards himself as half a minister, "now that I'm a bedral in an
inhabited parish," but his solemn profession gives him no dignity.
Under the shadow of tragedy he will have his prosaic grumble.  From a
tale conceived in the highest mood of romance Scott seems to set
himself to strip off all that is conventionally romantic.  The old
women are consumed with hatred of rank and youth and beauty, and
Mortsheugh has no pity for the decline of a family which had forgotten
his class.


"If Lord Ravenswood protected his people, my friend, while he had the
means of doing so, I think they might spare his memory," replied the
Master.

"Ye are welcome to your ain opinion, sir," said the sexton; "but you
winna persuade me that he did his duty, either to himsell or to huz
puir dependent creatures, in guiding us the gate he has done.  He might
have gi'en us liferent tacks of our bits o' houses and yards--and me,
that's an auld man, living in yon miserable cabin that is fitter for
the dead than the quick, and killed wi' rheumatise, and John Smith in
my dainty bit mailing, and his window glazen, and a' because Ravenswood
guided his gear like a' fule!"


The book, Scott's single unrelieved tragedy, stands apart from the
rest.  It has none of his mellow philosophy or his confidence in the
ultimate justice of things.  The shades of the prison-house are around
it.  There are passages in it strained and overdrawn, something bitter
and violent, as if the delirium of sickness had broken the seal upon
old passionate memories.  Hence, for all its magnificence, it is
outside the succession of the greatest tragedies, for it wounds without
healing, and perturbs without consoling.  Its tragedy is a ballad
tragedy, cruel and inexplicable, for the ballads have no philosophy.
The doom which overtakes Lucy and the Master is a blind doom, not due
to any fault of their own, unless it be the girl's passivity;
Ravenswood is proud, but it is not his pride that works his undoing.
{197} The fates are permitted to snap illogical shears.  The bar
between the lovers is "an ancient house destroyed, an affectionate
father murdered;" but such a bar is no more than the family feud of
Montague and Capulet; it is no gulf the overpassing of which need wake
a sleepless Nemesis.  It is not with the Greeks that we can compare
him, but with the Shakespeare who wrote _Romeo and Juliet_.  The book
lacks the clean noble lines of classic tragedy; rather it is of the
fantastic Gothick pattern, with sometimes a tinge of the savagery of
the lesser Elizabethans.  In his sickness things came to Scott out of
primordial deeps.

[Sidenote: The half-world]

But it has the quality of such defects in its mastery over that
half-world, which is neither of nature nor outside nature, but is
beyond our understanding.  Nowhere else does Scott show such a power of
awaking suspense and disquieting the mind with murmurings from another
sphere.  Take the scene where the old women talk in the churchyard:--


"He's a frank man, and a free-handed man, the Master ... and a comely
personage--broad in the shoulders and narrow around the lungies--he wad
make a bonny corpse--I wad like to hae the streeking and winding o'
him."

"It is written on his brow, Annie Winnie, that hand of woman, or of man
either, will never straught him--dead deal will never be laid on his
back; make you your market of that, for I hae it frae a sure hand."

"Will it be his lot to die on the battle-ground, then, Ailsie Gourlay?
Will he die by the sword or the ball, as his forbears hae dune before
him, mony ane o' them?"

"Ask nae mair questions about it--he'll no be graced sae far," replied
the sage.

"I ken ye are wiser than ither folk, Ailsie Gourlay--but wha tell'd ye
this?"

"Fashna your thumb about that, Annie Winnie," answered the sibyl; "I
hae it frae a hand sure enough."

"But ye said ye never saw the foul thief," reiterated her inquisitive
companion.

"I hae it frae as sure a hand," said Ailsie, "and frae them that spaed
his fortune before the sark gaed ower his head."

"Hark!  I hear his horse's feet riding off," said the other; "they
dinna sound as if good luck was wi' them."

{198}

"Make haste, sirs," cried the paralytic hag from the cottage, "and let
us do what is needfu', and say what is fitting; for, if the dead corpse
binna straughted, it will girn and thraw, and that will fear the best
o' us."


Observe the art of the phrase "frae a sure hand"; observe the
cumulative impression of the broken dialogue with its ghoulish details;
observe, above all, the tremendous effect of the sound of the horse's
feet breaking in.  It is a scene which for unearthly tension is not far
behind the knocking at the door in _Macbeth_.


[Sidenote: _Ivanhoe_]

In _Ivanhoe_ Scott opened a new lode in the mine of his fancy, a vein
of poorer but most marketable ore.  He had read widely in the medival
chroniclers, and had in his head a mass of more or less accurate
antiquarian knowledge, of arms, heraldry, monastic institutions, and
the dress and habits of the Middle Ages.  He chose the reign of Richard
I as his period, and tumbled into it a collection of other things which
had caught his fancy.  To the forests of the English midlands he would
fit the appropriate romance, and do for them what he had already done
for the Highlands and the Border of his own land.  He got the sounding
name of Ivanhoe from an old Buckinghamshire rhyme, and Front-de-Boeuf
from the Auchinleck MSS., and he had Chaucer and Froissart and the
ballads and a wealth of legendary lore to draw upon.  He was writing
fiction, not history, so his conscience was elastic.  Freeman[19] and
others have pointed out the historical errors of the book.  The customs
of three centuries have been confused; Robin Hood, if he ever lived,
belonged to a century later; Cedric and Athelstane are impossible
figures for that time, and Edward the Confessor left no descendants;
Ulrica is some hundreds of years out of date and her gods were never
known to any Saxon pantheon.  But such things matter little in romance,
which is a revolt against the despotism of facts.

The real blemish is that this romance is concerned only with externals.
Scott was not depicting a life in {199} whose soul he shared, as he
could share in the ancient world of the Border ballads, or
imaginatively construct for himself the confusion of the Scottish
seventeenth century.  Medival England was to him primarily a costume
play.  He was not like William Morris who, through some kink or fold of
Time, became himself of the Middle Ages, acquiring their languor, their
uniformity, even their endless prolixity.  Nor could Scott, like
Stendhal, think himself consciously into the medival mind.  The scene
he shapes is wholly literary, a mosaic of details put together by a
learned craftsman, not the subtler creation of the spirit.  We never
find ourselves, as in the greater novels, "lone sitting by the shores
of old romance," but in a bright, bustling world, very modern except
for the odd clothes and the quaint turns of speech.  There is nothing
of the peculiar medival charm and aroma.  It is a tale of forests, but
only of their green highways; we are not disquieted by any strange
rustlings in the thicket.

What Scott has given us is a pageant so far-flung and glittering that,
in spite of its artificiality, it captivates the fancy.  There are no
fewer than one hundred and fifty-three clearly individualized
characters at some time or another on the stage.  With generous
profusion he piles excitement upon excitement, weaving, like his
favourite Ariosto, many different narratives into one pattern, and
managing it all with such skill that there are no gaps in the web.  It
is a success--though on a far greater scale--of the same type as
Byron's metrical romances.  Improbabilities, impossibilities,
coincidences are accepted because the reader's mind is beguiled out of
scepticism.  The scene is so novel, the figures so vivid that we bow to
the convention and forbear to doubt.

The artificiality being admitted, the plot is excellently managed.
With two such figures as Ivanhoe and Richard at large, and with the
woods full of Locksley's merry men, he can put his characters into the
direst straits and leave us assured that at the blast of a bugle they
will be rescued.  One stirring episode follows {200} another:--the
feast in Cedric's hall; the fanfaronade of the Ashby tournament, with
its sonorous heraldry; the revels of the Black Knight and Friar Tuck in
the hermit's cell; the siege of Torquilstone with its many episodes:
the death of Front-de-Boeuf; Rebecca's trial before the court of the
Templars; Richard's disclosure of himself to Locksley; Ivanhoe's last
contest with Bois-Guilbert; the arrest of Albert de Malvoisin;
Rebecca's farewell to Rowena.  The speed and spirit of the narrative
stifle criticism, and on two occasions only is the reader inclined to
question.  One is when Athelstane is surprisingly raised from the dead,
a portent introduced to satisfy James Ballantyne.  The other is
Bois-Guilbert's end, "a victim to the violence of his own contending
passions." The fact that something of the kind had once happened in the
Edinburgh law-courts does not make this climax artistically more
convincing.

[Sidenote: A romance for youth]

The characters, within their artificial sphere, are carefully drawn.
Gurth and Wamba do not live like Andrew Fairservice and Caleb
Balderstone, or Cedric like the Baron of Bradwardine, or Ulrica like
Meg Merrilies.  There is none of the familiar humour--save in the
mention of a Norman called Jacques Fitzdotterel of whom we would gladly
have heard more--for Wamba's jests are for the most part clowning out
of the old playbooks.  But all the figures are real when they are in
action, for the action is most concretely imagined, and all are held
true to their conventional types--Isaac of York, Richard, Prince John,
Ivanhoe, Locksley, Cedric, even the ponderous Athelstane.  Moreover,
Scott hit upon the right kind of speech for his people, always
colourful and dignified, not too archaic to be difficult or too modern
to break the illusion.  But only two of his characters seem to me to
have an independent life outside their parts in the tale.  One is Friar
Tuck, who has the jolly freedom of the woods in him.  The other is
Rebecca, in whom, as in Di Vernon, Scott revived his old dream of
romantic maidenhood.  He pairs off his hero according to his custom
with the more marriageable heroine, but he leaves Ivanhoe, as he had
been left {201} himself, with long memories of Green Mantle.
Thackeray's skit, _Rebecca and Rowena_, is amply justified.

It is hard for us to-day to recapture the atmosphere in which _Ivanhoe_
won its resounding success.  To us the "halidoms" and "gramercys" are
so much idle "tushery," but then they were fresh and captivating.  The
world of the book has become too familiar to us from many repetitions.
If we would understand what Scott's age thought of it, we must cast
back our memories to boyhood and recall how avidly we followed the
fortunes of the Disinherited Knight and how anxiously we listened for
Locksley's horn.  That was the mood in which Dumas read it, and became
in that hour an historical novelist--"Oh! then, little by little the
clouds that had veiled my sight began to lift, and I saw open before me
ampler horizons."  It is secure in the immortality which follows upon
the love of recurrent generations of youth.  But it is work on a lower
plane than the great novels that preceded it, for only once in it does
Scott seem to me to rise to the rarer and truer romance, and set the
bells of Elfland ringing.  That is when, at Ashby, Locksley shoots at
the butts, and craves permission "to plant such a mark as is used in
the North Country."



[1] Lockhart: IV.  58.

[2] Here is a picture of Scott during the summer of that year: "He was
worn almost to a skeleton, sat slanting on his horse, as if unable to
hold himself upright; his dress was threadbare and disordered; and his
countenance, instead of its usual healthy colour, was of an
olive-brown--I might almost say, black tinge....  'The physicians tell
me,' said he, 'that mere pain cannot kill; but I am very sure that no
man would, for other three months, encounter the same pain that I have
suffered, and live.  However, I have resolved to take thankfully
whatever drugs they prescribe, and follow their advice as long as I
can.  Set a stout heart to a stey brae, is a grand rule in this
world.'"  Gillies, 237-8.

[3] Scott borrowed the phrase for Meg Dods in _St Ronan's Well_.

[4] A countra laird had taen the batts,
    Or some curmurring in his guts.
              BURNS, _Death and Doctor Hornbook_

[5] Lockhart, IV.  88-95.

[6] Cockburn, _Life of Lord Jeffrey_, I.  418.

[7] According to Cockburn, Constable lost two-thirds of the 5270 which
he paid for the stock.  But see Cadell's letter in _A. Constable_, III.
98.

[8] Scott wrote a memorandum, describing the chequered history of the
Regalia.  _Misc. Prose Works_, VII.  298-367.  At one time he
contemplated a novel on the subject.  _A. Constable_, III.  108.

[9] Lockhart, IV.  131.

[10] Fam. Letters, II.  19.

[11] Lockhart was not loved by his fellow-writers, except by Carlyle,
and Miss Martineau, who never knew him, has poured vitriol on him in
her _Biographical Sketches_.  The real man has been adequately
portrayed by Andrew Lang in his _Life of Lockhart_ (1897).

[12] Lockhart, IV.  206-8.

[13] Lockhart, IV.  239.

[14] IV.  278.

[15] Gen. Introduction to _Ivanhoe_.

[16] This should have revealed the authorship of the novel to the
observant.  For Scott took it straight from a manuscript of Graham of
Gartmore, which he sent to Jamieson, who printed it in his edition of
_Burt's Letters from the North_, giving the name of the sender.

[17] Turner's _Memoirs_ (1829), 14.

[18] Introd. to _The Fortunes of Nigel_.

[19] _Norman Conquest_, V.  note W.




{202}

CHAPTER VIII

EDINBURGH AND ABBOTSFORD

(1820)

I

At the opening of the year 1820 Scott had recovered much of his bodily
vigour.  _Ivanhoe_, just published, promised to be the most popular of
all his works, and the success of this extra-territorial adventure
opened to his pen the whole realm of recorded history.  In February his
elder daughter Sophia became engaged to Lockhart, and her marriage took
place in Edinburgh on the evening of 29th April.  In March Scott
visited London, when he sat to Sir Thomas Lawrence for his portrait,
commissioned by the King for the great gallery at Windsor, and to
Chantrey for the famous bust.  His baronetcy was gazetted on 30th March
and he returned home full of grandiose plans for enlarging and
beautifying Abbotsford.  In May he was offered a doctor's degree by
both Oxford and Cambridge.  Meantime, in March, _The Monastery_, which
he had begun before _Ivanhoe_ was finished, had been published by
Longman and Constable,[1] and had been coldly received; but Scott
during the summer was busy with its successor _The Abbot_, which
pleased him better and which duly appeared in September.  In it he drew
a picture of Mary of Scots, and he had promised Constable a companion
picture of Elizabeth in his next novel, for which Constable suggested
the title of "Kenilworth."  The relations between publisher and author
were for the moment harmonious, for now that Scott had embarked upon
the broad seas of historical fiction the former's bibliographical
learning became of {203} the utmost service; suggestions were freely
offered and gratefully received, and Constable in his high moods used
to strut about the room and claim that he was all but the author of the
novels.  Things were prosperous with the new baronet.  Young Walter was
doing well in his regiment, Charles was preparing for Oxford, Sophia
was happily married; he had plans for a more spacious Abbotsford which
filled him with delight, for this kind of creation fascinated him as
much as any other; he had no pressing financial troubles, and he saw
years ahead of substantial earnings from the new lode of which
_Ivanhoe_ had been the first sample.  Above all he had got his health
back and could enjoy life again.

Scott, like Dr Johnson and unlike most men of letters, does not live
for us only in his books.  We think of him as we think of famous men of
action--as a living and breathing human being and not a dim shade from
a library.  Fortunately we have ample material for his life, apart from
its reflection in his writings.  A hundred contemporaries besides
Lockhart have recorded their impressions, and from such evidence we can
make a picture of his full and varied days.



II

[Sidenote: Edinburgh in 1820]

Edinburgh in 1820 had grown into a modern city, but had not yet lost
the amenities of the country burgh.  Up on its back-bone of hill the
Old Town was fast changing, but much still remained from the Middle
Ages.  Those "black banditti" the City Guard, with their red coats and
Lochaber axes, had disappeared three years before and had been replaced
by ordinary police; water was being brought in pipes from the
neighbouring hills, and the water-caddies, bent double under their
barrels, were no longer seen; there was a perpetual tinkering going on
around Parliament Close, and the Krames, the toy-sellers' booths
planted like wasps' nests on the north side of St Giles', were no more
the delight of childhood; but the narrow wynds and the tall houses
remained, and the old Canongate gardens, {204} and the elms which lined
the ridge above what was once the Nor' Loch.  The Edinburgh of that day
was a leafy place, for all Leith Walk and the Calton slopes and
Lauriston were set with trees.  In the New Town classic squares still
abutted on meadows.  Lord Moray's lands, north of Charlotte Square,
were ancient pasture dropping down to the thickets along the Water of
Leith.  The citizen on his evening walk could look north to the Firth
and the Highland hills over meadows as rustic as Tweeddale.  "How can I
forget," Lord Cockburn cries, "the glory of that scene on a still night
in which, with Rutherfurd and Richardson and Jeffrey, I have stood in
Queen Street, or the opening at the north-west corner of Charlotte
Square, and listened to the ceaseless rural corn-craiks, nestling
happily in the dewy grass!"[2]  And the west wind still brought from
the Pentlands the scent of moorburn in March and of heather in August.

Castle Street, where Scott lived, ran across the ridge of the New Town,
with the Firth on the north to show silver in the dawn, and to the
south the great Castle rock to catch the last fires of evening.
Scott's library lay behind the dining-room, a small, high, square
apartment which looked out upon the bleaching-green.  It was always in
perfect order--the volumes in the cases well cared for, with a wooden
slip marking the place of a book which had been borrowed; the great
table at which he wrote covered with papers neatly docketed; a massive
antique inkstand; on the open space of wall above the fireplace a
portrait of Claverhouse flanked by Highland targes and claymores.
There Scott did his "day's darg" before breakfast or during the
evenings he spent at home.  The big deerhound Maida, given him by
Glengarry, kept him company on the hearth-rug, and when he was absent
on leave the cat, Hinse of Hinsfeldt, descended from the top of the
library ladder and mounted guard on a footstool.  Scott used to talk to
the animals while he worked, and would leave off every now and then to
pat Maida's head.  Yet he wrote at high speed and with a profound
concentration.  When {205} the work was tedious or inspiration flagged
he forced himself to complete it before rising.  "There is only one
rule in such cases, not to let the ink dry in your pen till the task is
done.  'Gutta cavat lapidem non vi sed saepe cadendo,' says the school
copy-book, and on this principle a scribbler sometimes becomes
agreeably surprised at the extent of tiresome and rugged road that he
has got over."  He never planned out his task beforehand with any
elaboration, so sometimes he came to a dead halt.  "One page--or, I
should say, one line--suggests another, and on coming to a stand-still,
as it occasionally happens--for we are all liable to ebbs and flows--I
very coolly lay it aside and take to something else, till, with the
next change of the moon, there begins a new tide of thought."  Except
in emergencies he considered three hours of literary labour sufficient
for a day, but in Edinburgh he liked to be uninterrupted, so he
preferred the early morning when others were asleep.[3]

[Sidenote: An Edinburgh day]

His dress in town was sober black as became a court official; his gown
was ancient and shabby, and his lame foot had made a huge hole in the
skirt.  When breakfast was over a coach arrived to take him to the
Court, and there he sat all day in a dim litigious light, dozing a
little, dreaming much, till he was roused by Lord Balmuto's fierce
grunt of "Where are your cautioners?" The actual court work was for the
most part mechanical, though it involved the reading of many papers
overnight, a task which Scott conscientiously performed.  He had always
a great gift of absenting his mind.  At Abbotsford, while he was
watching his foresters at work, his fancy would be busy with the novel
he had in hand; so in court, while an advocate was droning along, he
would be happy with his own dream.  Sometimes, when his imagination had
mounted its high horse, he would forget his environment altogether, and
once, when on his way to an evening party, he wandered to the outskirts
of the city and came to his senses at the bottom of a wet gravel-pit.
The routine occupation he had {206} found was perfect for his purpose,
for it gave him long hours of silent meditation.

After court he sought fresh air and exercise, walking in fine weather,
or driving in an open carriage with a friend or member of his family.
His favourite rounds were the Blackford Hills; or to Ravelston and home
by Corstorphine; or to the shore at Portobello, where his coachman was
instructed to drive along the edge of the tide.  Or he would explore
the Old Town, and expound to a companion the tale of every crooked
gable in the Cowgate or the Canongate.  Then with a sharpened appetite
he returned to his five o'clock dinner, for he had not eaten since
nine.  Scott was a heavy eater of plain food.  When he dined at home he
liked homely dishes, and from Abbotsford there came every week by the
Melrose carrier a great hamper of butter, cheese, eggs, fowls,
vegetables and cream, and, in their season, game and salmon.  His
palate was not delicate, and he had little sense of taste or smell: he
never knew when venison was high, or wine was corked, and he could not
tell sherry from madeira.  Claret was his ordinary drink, and he
regarded a pint of claret as each man's share when the cloth was drawn;
he liked champagne, which had come into fashion since the war; port he
thought an unpleasant kind of physic; he was fond of small drams of
whisky in a quaigh, and on the whole preferred whisky-toddy to any
wine.  He had smoked a good deal in his Ashestiel days, had given it
up, but had resumed it under the influence of Lockhart and young
Walter, and used to have a couple of cigars before going to bed.

He went often to the theatre, sometimes in summer he drove abroad after
dinner, and during the winter he frequently dined out.  The Edinburgh
dinner-party at that time might be as late as six, and was apt to be a
formidable business.  On state occasions Scott would array himself in
white silk stockings, a scarlet silk waistcoat, and the dress coat of
the Forest Club.  There was a great deal of toast-drinking and giving
of sentiments, and a generous consumption of wine.  Later in {207} the
evening the supper-tables would appear, and the guests sit down to
roast fowls and Welsh rarebits and broiled bones and huge bowls of
punch.  Scott was a noted figure at these Edinburgh parties, but he was
at his best in his own house, where every Sunday night he entertained a
few people.  Thither came Skene and Erskine and Clerk and all the
familiars.  Sunday was the night for entertainment even in the
strictest circles--did not Sir Henry Moncrieff give on that day his
famous supper-parties in Queen Street?--but music was not permitted, so
after the Sunday dinners there was no harp-playing or singing of Scots
songs, but instead he used to read aloud to the company.  Shakespeare
and the Elizabethans, Wordsworth, Southey, Crabbe and Byron were his
favourites, and in passages of deep emotion he would become like one
inspired.  The critical Lockhart confessed that Scott read aloud "high
poetry with far greater simplicity, depth, and effect than any other
man I have ever heard."

[Sidenote: Conversation]

Good conversation was one of the things for which Edinburgh was famous,
but its excellences were of a special kind.  The talkers were the
lawyers and the professors, and the talk was largely made up of
brilliant disquisitions by individuals and ingenious arguments between
celebrated gladiators, while the rest of the company sat still and
admired.[4]  This was not Scott's native air, and for long he was
considered as a little slow and commonplace.  He spoke broadly, using
many Scots words, and he was not greatly interested in the niceties of
dialectic.  Moreover, the good talkers were the young Whigs, and
Scott's Toryism made him apathetic towards speculations on the
advancement of science and the march of reason.  But by 1820 he had won
a great repute for a kind of conversation peculiarly his own--a
combination of rugged sagacity and humour which humanized and
brightened the atmosphere.  Into the play of academic and forensic wit
he brought a kindlier {208} fellowship.  His Edinburgh table-talk was
not that of Abbotsford, where he would let himself go in riotous mirth,
but it had always a country flavour.  He refused to be drawn into
disputes, and he would check any controversy in which tempers were
rising with some comic phrase or whimsical tale.  In the presence of
that wise, rugged, brooding face--as massive and as masculine as Tom
Cribb's--petty cleverness fell to a discount.  "The strongest, purest
and least observed of all lights," Lockhart has written, "is daylight;
and his talk was commonplace, just as sunshine is, which gilds the most
indifferent objects and adds brilliancy to the brightest....  I can
never forget the pregnant expression of one of the ablest of that
school and party (the Whigs)--Lord Cockburn--who when some glib youth
chanced to echo in his hearing the consolatory tenet of local
mediocrity, answered quietly--'I have the misfortune to think
differently from you--in my humble opinion Walter Scott's sense is a
still more wonderful thing than his genius.'"[5]  Cockburn indeed
placed Scott as a talker on the same plane as Jeffrey himself.
"Scarcely ever in his moods was he more striking or delightful than in
society; when the halting limb, the bur in the throat, the heavy
cheeks, the high Goldsmith-forehead, the unkempt locks, and general
plainness of appearance, with the Scotch accent and stories and
sayings, all graced by gaiety, simplicity and kindness, made a
combination most worthy of being enjoyed."[6]

[Sidenote: Edinburgh society]

He mixed with every element in the capital except the divines, for he
rarely went to church.[7]  His sympathies were with Pleydell's
"suffering and Episcopal Church of Scotland"; he had a pew in St
George's church in York Place; and it was the English prayer-book that
he read to his family; though his son Charles was baptized by Thomson
of Duddingston, and he himself had become in 1806 an elder of that
parish and had sat as such in presbytery, synod and General
Assembly.[8] {209} Edinburgh had never seen a more varied and confident
social life or so many celebrities on her pavements.  Haydon, the
painter, has described the winter scene.  "Princes Street in a clear
sunset, with the Castle and the Pentland Hills in radiant glory, and
the crowd illumined by the setting sun....  First you would see limping
Sir Walter, with Lord Meadowbank; then tripped Jeffrey, keen, restless
and fidgety; you then met Wilson or Lockhart, or Allan, or Thomson, or
Raeburn, as if all had agreed to make their appearance at once."  It
was a pleasant place for the well-to-do, the successful and the
physically strong; less pleasant for a dyspeptic youth like Thomas
Carlyle, who was then living in Bristo Street and struggling to
maintain himself by tutorships.  Carlyle gives us the other side of the
medal.  When he trod the pavements in summer "hot as Nebuchadnezzar's
furnace," and met Scott, he cared nothing for what he was afterwards to
call that "fine Scotch face, with its shaggy honesty, sagacity and
goodness;" he saw in him only the "literary restaurateur of Europe."
Below the comely surface there were new forces working of which even
the illuminate Whigs knew little; but the surface was all cheerfulness,
good fellowship and a modest pride.

The Napoleonic Wars, having closed the Continent to travel, had sent
many scions of great English houses to Edinburgh to study at the
university, and this had introduced an agreeable cosmopolitanism, which
in 1820 had not wholly disappeared.  But the scene was still
idiomatically Scottish.  Figures still survived from an older world,
notably some of the famous race of Scots gentlewomen--"strong handed,
warm hearted and high spirited; the fire of their temper not always
latent; merry even in solitude; very resolute; indifferent about the
modes and habits of the modern world; and adhering to their own ways,
so as to stand out, like primitive rocks, above ordinary society."[9]
Many of the great academic figures had gone, but Dugald Stewart and
John Playfair were alive; there was a national school {210} of science
and philosophy as well as of letters, and there were scholarly country
gentlemen, like Clerk of Eldin and Sir William Forbes, to make a bridge
between learning and society.  Edinburgh was a true capital, a
clearing-house, for the world's culture and a jealous repository of
Scottish tradition.

Above all there were the Bar and the Bench to emphasize her
individuality.  Never had the profession of the law flowered into so
engaging a variety of character and attainment.  There was Lord Newton,
whose purple visage looks down at us from Raeburn's canvas, whose legal
lore was as deep as his potations, and whose one fear was that, as the
times degenerated, he should be left the only claret-drinker on the
face of the earth; there was William Adam, the Chief Commissioner of
the new jury court, whose judgments according to Lord Glenlee were like
an act of Parliament, with all the appearance of precision and all the
reality of confusion; at the Bar there was still John Clerk, the
brother of Scott's friend, a prodigiously successful advocate, lame,
dishevelled, always in a fury of excitement, the joy of clients and the
terror of judges.  And one fantastic figure had only just left the
scene, Adam Rolland the consulting counsel, who walked abroad in
mulberry velvets and satins "like one of the creatures come to life
again in a collection of dried butterflies," and whose waxen cheeks
were rouged like a doll's.

[Sidenote: The younger Whigs]

Scotland was only now emerging from the dark ages.  Up till 1799 the
colliers and salters had been slaves; there was no popular voice in the
Government and neither a free press nor free speech; every institution,
municipal, political and judicial, stood in need of drastic reform.
But the long war, the terror of Napoleon, and the hegemony of Henry
Dundas had officially stilled the voice of criticism, and in the
reaction against foreign extravagance change was identified with
revolution.  It needed courage to profess liberal opinions, since they
shut the avenues to success.  So the younger Whigs were driven to form
a coterie, which suffered a little from the defect of coteries in
cultivating spiritual pride.  {211} The vast bulk of educated opinion
was against them, but they included most of the ablest living
Scotsmen--Jeffrey and his fellow reviewers, Henry Cockburn, Playfair,
Scott's friends George Cranstoun and Thomas Thomson, almost every one,
except Scott, who carried weight with the larger public.  They made a
pleasant warm-hearted group, deeply attached to each other as
companions in adversity, and the incomparable charm and gentleness of
Henry Erskine in the previous generation had left them with a tradition
of good manners and social urbanity.  With their straiter opponents
they had no dealings, but they mixed generally in society, and Scott
filled the part which Erskine had once played and acted as a _trait
d'union_.  For Jeffrey especially, in spite of many feuds, he had a
sincere affection.  He loved the spirit in the small body, the ardour
and candour of the bright dark eyes, and he would have agreed with
Carlyle's estimate--"not deep enough, pious or reverent enough, to have
been great in literature, but a man intrinsically of veracity."[10]
Six years later he wrote in his journal: "I do not know why it is that,
when I am with a party of my Opposition friends, the day is often
merrier than when with our own set.  Is it because they are cleverer?
Jeffrey and Harry Cockburn are, to be sure, very extraordinary men, but
it is not owing to that entirely.  I believe both parties meet with the
feeling of something like novelty.  We have not worn out our jests in
daily contact."[11]  There could be friendship with political
opponents, but not habitual intercourse.

True intimacy for Scott demanded his own way of political thinking, or
no politics at all.  Like many men with a vast acquaintanceship his
innermost circle was small.  When he escaped from the Parliament House
and descended the Mound, it was generally in the company of Will
Erskine, the frail figure with the hectic cheek and the soft brown
eyes, or of Will Clerk, with his shabby clothes and shrewd glances from
under his pent-house brows.  Closer still, perhaps, was James {212}
Skene, the Aberdeenshire laird, who had been his frequent guest since
the first days at Ashestiel and who shared all his tastes in sport and
letters.  Two others of the inner circle were at first sight less
obviously kindred souls.  George Cranstoun, with his deathly pallor and
finicking manners and minute legal pedantry, was endeared by long
association, and Scott was one of the few who could penetrate to the
man behind the exquisite formalist.  There was a still stranger ally in
Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, connoisseur, antiquary, reactionary and
wit, who walked the streets in a fantastic wig, and in a thin soprano
voice poured scorn on a vulgar world and on all in it that was not
long-descended.  But Sharpe was a sound scholar in his way and had a
heart beneath his corsets, and in Scott's presence the acid dandy
became genial and human.

It was an age of dining clubs, where men could talk their own talk and
pass the bottle with no need to join the ladies.  Scott loved such
entertainments, and it was he who in 1803 first started the Friday
Club.  That sodality was broadly based, for it included as many Whigs
as Tories; Playfair, Sydney Smith, Francis Horner and Kennedy of Dunure
were members as well as Scott and Erskine and Henry Mackenzie, and
Jeffrey and his friends found it for forty years the pleasantest thing
in Edinburgh.  There was another club which met from Friday till
Tuesday at Blairadam, the country house of Chief Commissioner Adam,
whom Lockhart thought the only man who rivalled Scott "in uniform
graciousness of _bonhomie_ and gentleness of humour."  This was a
smaller fraternity, nine in number, which included a Fife laird or two,
Thomas Thomson, his brother the minister of Duddingston, Adam Ferguson
and Will Clerk.  The Saturdays and Mondays were spent in visits to
famous spots in Fife and Kinross and ramblings over Benarty and the
Cleish hills--the landscape of _The Abbot_--and the Sundays in
church-going and talk.  Till his last illness Scott never missed a
meeting.

[Sidenote: Booksellers]

There were the booksellers, too, as part of his circle, {213} the men
upon whom his fortunes were grounded.  Scott would often step from the
Parliament House to Constable's office in the High Street, where daily
the great publisher arrived in his sober barouche and pair.  But he
went there on business only, for he was never quite at ease with the
"Emperor," and too many of the _Edinburgh Review_ set haunted the
place.  More often he would turn down the Canongate and thread Coull's
Close to the old building called Paul's Work under the shadow of the
Calton Hill, where James Ballantyne reigned among his machines.
Whatever James's imperfections in finance, he was an excellent manager
of a printing shop, and he had a staff as eager and competent as
himself.  In 1822, besides much other work, he issued 145,000 volumes
from Scott's pen alone, no small achievement in those days of the old
hand-presses.  Sometimes Scott would be a guest at James's house in St
John Street near-by, where on the eve of a new novel there would be a
mighty feast--none of John's French kickshaws, but turtle and venison
and solid beef and mutton, and ample allowance of strong ale, iced
punch and madeira.  At such banquets James would sing his best songs,
and with a voice sacramentally hushed would give the toast of "The
Great Unknown."  Later in the evening, when the toddy bowl had
appeared, the host would produce the proof-sheets of the new novel and
roll out some dramatic scene in his rich bass, while every muscle of
his face twitched in sympathy.

Sometimes on his way home Scott would be taken by Lockhart to William
Blackwood's fine new shop in Princes Street.  There was always a
certain constraint in these visits, for he was a little shy of the
noisy "Maga" group, and he was not attracted by Blackwood's blunt
manner and the steady grey eyes under the shaggy brows.  Yet, had he
been in Blackwood's hands rather than in Constable's, his fate might
well have been different, for the former was the canniest mind in the
book-trade, one who would never venture where he could not comfortably
retreat.  But if Scott did not altogether take to Lockhart's friends,
Lockhart {214} violently disapproved of one of Scott's.  The son-in-law
had no taste for raffish Bohemianism, and he winced when the great man
was hailed in the street by a fantastic little figure in the loudest
sporting garb, driving a bright blue curricle.  He disliked
accompanying Scott to John Ballantyne's auction-room in Hanover Street
where that sprightly being sold bibelots with melting eloquence.  Still
less did he approve of John's exotic dinners at Harmony Hall, where the
wandering planets of the stage and the opera congregated.  Lockhart
liked neither of the Ballantynes, he could not understand Scott's taste
for them, and he does imperfect justice to their merits.  For James was
a true pioneer in fine printing and a skilful manager in his actual
craft, while John was stuffed with whimsical romance.  He bought
Montrose's sword from Graham of Gartmore and piously presented it to
Scott, and his buttons, which less piously he wore on his own
shooting-jacket.  He must have had gifts of drollery amounting almost
to genius.  One has only to read the tributes of Hogg and Wilson to
realize that to many of his contemporaries the ultimate wells of fun
seemed to be sealed at John's death.[12]

On Saturdays and on the happy days which closed the legal sessions
Scott did not dress in his usual black, but under his gown wore a green
jacket and corduroys.  Peter Mathieson was waiting with the carriage in
the Parliament Close, and before dinner the Sheriff was in his
sheriffdom.



III

Scott was not now the man he had been; in his own phrase he had reached
"the other side of the hill."  He moved more stiffly, and he had
twinges of rheumatism from the constant wettings of the old days.
Though he could still ride long distances on Sybil Grey and walk five
or six miles at a stretch, he had no longer that abounding zest for
action which at Ashestiel had made him daily scour the hills.  He had
become more of a {215} home-keeper, and he told Lord Montagu, as proof
of advancing age, that he had taken a liking to cats, which he had
aforetime detested, and a fancy for gardening, an art which he had
hitherto despised.  He liked to potter about among his tenants, and to
supervise his new buildings, and to arrange and catalogue his
collections.  But this growing sedentary habit did not impair the gusto
of his mind.  He had still the ardour and the wide horizons of youth.
"The years which have gone by," he wrote to Southey as late as 1824,
"have found me ... tossing my ball and driving my hoop, a grey-headed
schoolboy."

[Sidenote: An Abbotsford morning]

The main routine of his life was as fixed at Abbotsford as at Ashestiel
and in Edinburgh.  The pillar of it was the late breakfast between nine
and ten.  Before that he had completed the whole or the greater part of
his day's work; after it he could see to his property and entertain his
friends.  His custom was to let his immediate task simmer in his mind
for an hour before he rose, which meant that he could work quickly when
he sat down to his desk.  He wrote, as I have said, with intense
concentration, and was not in the least put out by the interruption of
dogs or human beings.  Indeed his even temper could be ruffled by two
things only--the meddling with his pen or the maltreatment of a book.
The labours of those morning hours were not only in creative
literature.  He had a large post-bag and made a point of answering
every letter without delay.  Many of the communications he received
were merely vexatious--the manuscript novels and poems of budding
authors who sought his patronage, and requests for introductions and
prefaces and pecuniary help.  But some were welcome grist to the mill.
Antiquaries sent him curious pieces of lore; a Tweeddale shepherd wrote
to him about fairies; readers up and down the land contributed
anecdotes of odd incidents and characters, or ghost stories, or
fragments of Jacobite tradition.[13]  And there might be epistles from
old friends, Skene or Morritt, or Mrs Hughes of Uffington, or Lady
Louisa {216} Stuart, letters which were joyfully reserved for reading
aloud to the family.

The breakfast-room, like the library, was encumbered with dogs--Maida
the deerhound; Hamlet the black greyhound; Finette, Lady Scott's
spaniel; Ourisque, a Highland terrier from Kintail; a motley of dandies
named after the cruet-stand--Pepper, Mustard, Ketchup and so forth; as
well as the cat Hinse of Hinsfeldt.  Scott's morning garb was the
famous green shooting-coat, grey corduroy breeches, stockings and heavy
shoes.  He was in the habit of making a leisurely meal, while he
discussed the post and the plans for the day.  He ate porridge and
cream from a cogie with a silver-mounted horn spoon; then he would do
good work on salmon, fresh or kippered, and on a home-cured ham, a pie,
or a cold sheep's head, and he would finish with oatcakes or slices of
brown bread spread thick with butter.  It was his chief meal of the
day, and he had earned it, for he had three or four hours of hard
labour behind him.

[Sidenote: The Abbotsford hunt]

The family was not often alone, for Abbotsford received as many guests
as any nobleman's house in the land.  Many came on pilgrimage to see
the great man in his home, and Scott in his modesty felt that their
entertainment was part of the return which he owed to a public which
had treated him so handsomely.  There would be an occasional foreign
prince or English grandee, taking Abbotsford as one of their houses of
call, an intermediate stage between Alnwick and Dalkeith.  There would
be brother writers welcomed in the freemasonry of the craft; Edinburgh
lawyers, notably the other Clerks of Court; and school friends and
faraway kinsfolk.  Generally there was a Tweeddale or Teviotdale laird,
as often as not with wife and family, who at first mixed shyly with the
London fashionables and the Edinburgh wits.  But the geniality of the
host dissolved all awkwardness.  Abbotsford, even in its earlier
stages, was a comfortable dwelling, and Scott, with unhappy memories of
other houses, took care that there should be ample writing materials
not only upon the library tables but {217} in every bedroom.  His wife
used to accuse him of overwalking, overtalking and overfeeding his
guests, and no doubt some who were more used to Mayfair than to the
hills may have found their days too strenuous.  But the talk was what
they came for, and Scott dispensed it generously; it was the talk,
varied cunningly to suit every taste, which, in Lockhart's phrase, made
them all "equally happy with him, with themselves, and with each other."

Expeditions were the order of the day.  The anglers in the party, such
as Sir Humphry Davy, would set off under Charlie Purdie's guidance for
Lord Somerville's reach of the Tweed.  The others, mounted on shelties,
would thread the green rides of the young plantations, ascend the
Eildons, and drop down on Melrose and Dryburgh, or, turning westward,
explore Ettrick and Yarrow.  Sometimes there would be a coursing of
hares on the uplands between Tweed and Yarrow, when the unwary
floundered in well-heads and peat-haggs.  The ladies used to drive in a
sociable and join the rest in a picnic luncheon at some famous spot
like the birchen bower of Newark.  Now and then a day was given up to
the river, when the party would feast by the waterside on fresh-caught
salmon, boiled in their _broo_, and at night there would be a "burning
of the water," when Scott, though he could no longer wield a spear,
took the helm of a boat or held a torch.  When he walked in the
neighbourhood of Abbotsford he was generally bare-headed, but on an
expedition the old white hat would appear, exchanged in rough weather
for a sealskin cap.  One unfailing companion was a massive stick,
called Major Weir after the warlock, because of its necromantic powers
of disappearance.

There were certain high days and holy days observed at Abbotsford--the
football match on the Carter Haugh, the "kirn" or harvest-home, when
the neighbourhood danced to John of Skye's bagpipes, and above all the
Abbotsford Hunt.  This last was held usually on 28th October, the young
Walter's birthday.  It meant a day's coursing on the moors around
Cauldshiels loch, or on {218} the Gala hills, and all the yeomen and
gentry of the countryside attended.  There followed a great dinner at
Abbotsford, with Scott in the chair, and victuals fit for hungry
men:--"a baron of beef, roasted, at the foot of the table, a salted
round at the head, while tureens of hare soup, hotchpotch, and
cockeyleekie extended down the centre, and such light articles as
geese, turkeys, entire sucking pigs, a singed sheep's head, and the
unfailing haggis, were set forth by way of side dishes.  Blackcock and
moorfowl, bushels of snipe, black puddings, white puddings, and
pyramids of pancakes formed the second course.  Ale was the favourite
beverage during dinner, but there was plenty of port and sherry for
those whose stomachs they suited.  The quaighs of Glenlivet were filled
brimful, and tossed off as if they held water."  Thereafter toddy was
made in huge bowls, the Ettrick Shepherd being the chief compounder,
and the stories and the songs began and lasted till the stirrup-cup far
on in the small hours.  "How they all contrived to get home in safety,"
says Lockhart, "Heaven only knows--but I never heard of any serious
accident except upon one occasion, when James Hogg made a bet at
starting that he would leap over his wall-eyed pony as she stood, and
broke his nose in this experiment of 'o'ervaulting ambition.'"  One
comely goodwife, far off among the hills, amused Sir Walter by telling
him, the next time he passed her homestead after one of these jolly
doings, what her husband's first words were when he alighted at his own
door--"Ailie, my woman, I'm ready for my bed--and oh, lass (he
gallantly added) I wish I could sleep for a towmont, for there's only
ae thing in this warld worth living for, and that's the Abbotsford
hunt!"[14]

[Sidenote: Scott's talk]

The dining-room was still a tiny place and John of Skye had to pipe on
the green outside.  Scott was generally in high spirits at dinner,
though he ate little; he had no fixed seat at table, but would drop
into any place vacant.  The company did not sit long when the cloth was
drawn, but joined the ladies in the library {219} or the drawing-room,
where about ten o'clock a light supper was served.  Sometimes they
danced reels, and on most evenings there was music, when Adam Ferguson
would sing "Johnnie Cope" and Anne or Sophia "Kenmure's on and awa'."
Scott's talk at Abbotsford was, by general agreement, better than his
Edinburgh performances, for he was in better health and could let his
fancy "run its ain rigg."  Stories, reminiscences, happy sayings were
varied with discourses on books, when, as he quoted some favourite
passage, his voice would swell and his face light up.  Here are two
pictures of him in this mood.  First Lockhart:--


In the course of conversation he happened to quote a few lines from one
of the old Border ballads, and, looking round, I was quite astonished
with the changes which seemed to have passed over every feature in his
countenance.  His eyes seemed no longer to glance quick and grey from
beneath his impending brows, but were fixed in their expanded eyelids
with a sober, solemn lustre.  His mouth (the muscles about which are at
all times wonderfully expressive), instead of its usual language of
mirth or benevolence or shrewdness, was filled with a sad and peculiar
earnestness.  The whole face was tinged with a glow which showed its
lines in new energy and transparence, and the thin hair parting
backward displayed in tenfold majesty his Shakespearian pile of
forehead.[15]


Five years later we have Adolphus:--


The hair upon his forehead was quite grey, but his face, which was
healthy and sanguine, and the hair about it, which had still a strong
reddish tinge, contrasted rather than harmonized with the sleek,
silvery locks above, a contrast which might seem rather suited to a
jovial and humorous than to a pathetic expression.  But the features
were equally capable of both.  The form and hue of the eyes (for the
benefit of minute physiognomists it should be noted that the pupils
contained some small specks of brown) were wonderfully calculated for
showing great varieties of emotion.  Their mournful aspect was
extremely earnest and affecting; and, when he told some dismal and
mysterious story, they had a doubtful, melancholy, exploring look,
which appealed irresistibly to the hearer's imagination.  Occasionally,
when he spoke of something very audacious and eccentric, they would
dilate {220} and light up with a tragi-comic, harebrained expression,
quite peculiar to himself; one might see in it a whole chapter of
Coeur-de-Lion and the Clerk of Copmanhurst.  Never, perhaps, did a man
go through all the gradations of laughter with such complete enjoyment,
or a countenanace so radiant.  The first dawn of a humorous thought
would show itself sometimes, as he sat silent, by an involuntary
lengthening of the upper lip, followed by a shy sidelong glance at his
neighbours, indescribably whimsical, and seeming to ask from their
looks whether the spark of drollery should be suppressed or allowed to
blaze out.  In the full tide of mirth he did indeed "laugh the heart's
laugh," like Walpole, but it was not boisterous and overpowering, nor
did it check the course of his words; he could go on telling or
descanting while his lungs did "crow like chanticleer," his syllables,
in the struggle, growing more emphatic, his accent more strongly
Scotch, and his voice plaintive with excess of merriment.[16]


Apart from his writing and his entertaining Scott had many duties to
fill his time.  He sat regularly in the Selkirk sheriff-court, and had
to have a legal section in the Abbotsford library.  He had his farms in
his own hand, but he cared more for his trees than for a good field of
oats; he was always at work in his nurseries and plantations, planting
and thinning, waiting for the day when a hoodie crow should build in an
oak which he himself had sown.  He went much about among his country
neighbours, attended the dinners of the Forest Club, and was now and
then a guest at a burgh feast in Selkirk, or at a banquet of the
Galashiels weavers, when John of Skye piped to them and he himself sang
"Tarry 'Oo."

Scott was by far the most popular figure on the Border.  "All who knew
him intimately loved him," said James Hogg, who spoke for the hill
glens, "nay, many of them almost worshipped him....  He was the only
one I ever knew whom no man, either poor or rich, held at
ill-will."[17]  And he has a story of his wife which beautifully
illustrates the spell which Scott laid on simple hearts.  Once when he
had been dining with the Hoggs at Mount Benger, he took up a little
daughter, kissed her, and, laying his hand on her head, said, {221}
"God Almighty bless you, my dear child."  Hogg found his wife in tears
and asked what ailed her.  "Oh," she cried, "I thought if he had just
done the same to them all, I do not know what in the world I would not
have given."

The servants, indoors and outdoors, were like members of one family,
and if Scott knew one thing better than another it was the heart of the
old-fashioned servingman.  He made their affairs his own, gave presents
to their families, and, if one were overtaken by the wayside after a
kirn, would himself wheel him to some shelter where he could sleep off
his potations.  Peter Mathieson, the coachman, was a Presbyterian of
the old rock, and Scott's favourite after-dinner walk was to the
bowling green, where he could hear Peter's evening psalmody.
Dalgleish, the butler, was another stalwart; and there was Robert Hogg,
too, the head shepherd, who did not greatly admire his famous brother
of Ettrick, and John of Skye, who was a hedger and ditcher when he was
not piping, and the footman, John Nicholson, whose education Scott
supervised, and a long string of foresters.  But the true "laird's man"
was Tom Purdie.  Tom treated Scott and his fame as his own property.
He was annoyed when Adam Ferguson was knighted, for he said, "it will
take some of the shine out of us;" when Scott once observed that it was
going to be a fine spring for the trees, Tom added that it would be "a
grand season for our buiks too."  He used complete freedom with his
master, and had often to be cajoled or argued into agreement with a
plan.  He was factotum out of doors and Scott's "Sunday poney" when he
was fatigued: indoors he was librarian, and his horny hands treated the
precious volumes with delicacy and reverence.  Every Sunday evening he
appeared after dinner to drink long life to the laird and the lady.

The brute creatures shared in the same intimacy.  Scott had an
extraordinary attraction for every kind of dog, as his Abbotsford
following showed.  Carlyle has a story of a small cocker spaniel in
Edinburgh, which had a nose for insincerity in human beings and was
{222} never wrong.  Whenever it saw Scott in the street the proud
little fellow would frisk round him and fawn at his feet.[18]  And
there were other animals than dogs.  There was a hen that would not be
separated from him, and Sophia's donkeys, when they saw him, trotted to
the paling "to have a crack with the laird," and a little black pig
tried to attach itself to his retinue.[19]

There was nothing slack-lipped in Scott's geniality.  He exacted a full
day's work from his servants and willingly received it.  His
friendliness encouraged confidence but not presumption, for every man
knew that there was lightning slumbering behind the kindly grey eyes.
His hospitality had its limits and he could show the door very fast to
impertinent intruders; there was about him, says Lockhart "in
perfection, when he chose to exert it, the power of civil rejection."
What he possessed was a quick conscience towards his fellows,
especially towards the poor, and his letters show how assiduously he
reflected on the problems of poverty.  He discussed with Morritt the
English poor law system, rejoiced that Scotland was less infested with
ale-houses, and proposed a tax on manufacturers based on the number of
hands they employed, the proceeds of which should go to the maintenance
of the "manufacturing poor."  He believed in giving employment, not
charity, and in the winter of 1816 made tasks for thirty labourers at
Abbotsford on piece-work.  He criticized acutely the Edinburgh system
of employment on public works, where the wages paid were below the
normal rate.  Charity, he held, should be reserved for emergencies, and
then no man gave more freely.  In the snow-storm and floods of the
spring of 1820, he sent money to Will Laidlaw.  "Do not let the poor
bodies want for a 5, and even a 10, more or less."[20]  He had the
sound feudal notion that property was a trust, involving more duties
than rights.  The country children might go nutting in his beloved
woods, though they destroyed his hazels.  Firewood {223} he would not
give away, but he sold it cheaply, 1820 and put the proceeds into a
fund to provide free doctoring for the cottagers.  Nothing could induce
him to close a customary track though it came very near his lawn, and
he would never permit a trespass warning to be set up.  "Round the
house," he told Basil Hall, "there is a set of walks set apart and kept
private for the ladies--but over all the rest of my land any one may
run as he likes.  I please myself with the reflection that many people
of taste may be indulging their fancies in these grounds, and I often
recollect how much of Burns's inspiration was probably due to his
having near him the woods of Ballochmyle to ramble through at his will
when he was a ragged callant."[21]

Maria Edgeworth made a wise comment on the Abbotsford rgime.  "Dean
Swift said he had written his books in order that people might learn to
treat him like a great lord.  Sir Walter Scott writes his that he may
be able to treat his people as a great lord ought to do."[22]  There
lay the kernel of Scott's purpose, the heart of his dream.  He realized
his romance far less in the pepper-box turrets of Abbotsford and the
plaster copies of the Melrose gargoyles than in his re-creation of a
fragment of what seemed to him an older and happier world.  He was
living in his ancestral countryside as a little king, with all the
felicities and some of the burdens of kingship.  It rejoiced him to be
the tap-root from which a modest covert drew the sap.  He had restored,
though only in a corner, the liberal and kindly customs of more
spacious days, mellowed, indeed, and civilized, but preserving intact
their freedom and manliness and courtesy.  If the dream was baseless it
was assuredly not ignoble.



[1] The bibliographical details of the novels have been carefully set
out in Mr Greville Worthington's _Bibliography_ (1930).

[2] _Mem._, 403.

[3] Gillies, 161, 161, 216.

[4] Benjamin Franklin in his Autobiography, speaking of what, he calls
the "disputative turn," writes: "Persons of good sense, I have
observed, rarely fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and men
of all sorts that have been bred at Edinborough."

[5] IV.  155-6.

[6] _Mem._, 267-8.

[7] Gillies, 193; _Dom. Manners_, 125.

[8] _S.Q._, 32.

[9] Cockburn, _Mem._, 58.

[10] _Reminiscences_, II.  64.

[11] _Journal_, I.  320.

[12] _Noctes Ambrosian_, III.  93-95.

[13] _P.L.B._, 319-347.

[14] V.  17.

[15] _Peter's Letters_, II.  302.

[16] Lockhart, V.  298-9.

[17] _Dom. Manners_, 112-4.

[18] _Critical and Miscellaneous Essays_, IV.  70.

[19] The same thing happened to Lord Gardenstone, one of the judges in
the Douglas ease.  _Letters of Sir W. Scott and C. K. Sharpe to R.
Chambers_, 35.

[20] Lockhart, IV.  73, 85, 348.

[21] Lockhart, V.  399.

[22] _Ibid_, VI.  61.




{224}

CHAPTER IX

HIGH NOON

(1820-1825)

_The Abbot_, published in the early autumn of 1820, retrieved much of
the popularity which _The Monastery_ had lost.  It marked the beginning
of a quinquennium which may be regarded as the high noon-tide of
Scott's life.  His greatest work was behind him, but he had now trained
himself to the craft of the historical novelist, who can take any
period of history and in some measure shape it for his readers.  He had
become a figure of national importance, not only a kind of
consul-general for the republic of letters, but a man whose advice and
help were sought on the most diverse public affairs.  He was completing
Abbotsford in the grand manner, and paying for it by overdrafts on his
future labours, and, while it was growing into a Gothick fantasy, he
was entertaining there a large part of the rank and intelligence of
Britain.  It was for Scott a time of ceaseless industry and of much
varied enjoyment, enjoyment not only of the exercise of creative power
but of its material rewards.  His body had recovered a moderate vigour,
and freedom from pain released his old sunshine of spirit.  I do not
think that there is a parallel in the whole history of letters to the
position which Scott filled among his countrymen in the years between
1820 and 1825.

[Sidenote: 1821]

In Edinburgh he had become even more than Jeffrey the leader of
cultivated society.  Pitt dinners, meetings of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh of which he was now President, the feasts of a certain
Highland Club (where he seems to have worn the tartan and had John of
Skye {225} in his tail) filled his evenings.  In the beginning of 1821
after the publication of _Kenilworth_, he went to London on Court of
Session business, arranged for his eldest son's transfer from the 18th
to the 15th Hussars, and had much to do with the establishment of the
Royal Society of Literature.  On the 16th of June, when Scott was busy
on _The Pirate_, John Ballantyne died.  He had amused himself in his
last year by turning some old houses at Kelso into a fishing lodge
which he called Walton Hall, and in starting a Novelists' Library,
unpleasing books in double columns for which Scott wrote a number of
lives.  He died with the proof-sheets beside his pillow, full to the
last of new schemes, and, unaware of the hopeless insolvency of his
affairs, he bequeathed 2000 for the fitting up of the new library at
Abbotsford.  When Scott stood beside his grave in the Canongate
churchyard, the cloudy sky suddenly cleared; he turned to Lockhart and
whispered: "I feel as if there would be less sunshine for me from this
day forth."  It was a fitting epithet for Rigdumfunnidos.  He had
gravely embarrassed the life of his friend, but he had brightened it
with his jollity and affection.

[Sidenote: The coronation]

In July Scott went to London for the coronation of George IV.  He
proposed to take James Hogg with him as a special reporter for the
Scottish public, but Hogg refused to absent himself from St Boswell's
Fair.  Scott wrote a vivid account of the ceremony in the Abbey for
James Ballantyne's paper, since an historic pageant was meat and drink
to him, and he had a tribute paid to his fame which gave him the
sincerest pleasure.


Missing his carriage, he had to return home on foot from Westminster
after the banquet--that is to say, between two and three o'clock in the
morning--when he and a young gentleman, his companion, found themselves
locked in the crowd, somewhere near Whitehall, and the bustle and
tumult were such that his friend was afraid some accident might happen
to the lame limb.  A space for the dignitaries was kept clear at that
point by the Scots Greys.  Sir Walter addressed a Serjeant of this
celebrated regiment, begging to be allowed to pass by him into the open
ground in the middle of the street.  The man answered shortly that his
orders were strict--that {226} the thing was impossible.  While he was
endeavouring to persuade the Serjeant to relent, some new wave of
turbulence approached from behind, and his young companion exclaimed in
a loud voice, "Take care, Sir Walter Scott, take care!"  The stalwart
dragoon, on hearing the name, said, "What!  Sir Walter Scott?  He shall
get through anyhow!"  He then addressed the soldiers near him.  "Make
room, men, for Sir Walter Scott, our illustrious countryman!"  The men
answered "Sir Walter Scott!  God bless him!"--and he was in a moment
within the guarded line of safety.[1]


That autumn was a pleasant season.  Scott brought back from London the
plans for the completion of Abbotsford.  The jasmine-covered porch of
the old cottage had to go at last, and the main part of the present
dwelling was begun--the new library and drawing-room, the courtyard and
the lattice screen of stone between the house and the gardens.
Sophia's first child had been born in the early spring, John Hugh, the
"Hugh Little John" of the _Tales of a Grandfather_, and in the autumn
the Lockharts took up their country quarters at the little cottage of
Chiefswood, beside the burn which flows from the Rhymer's Glen.  There
Scott could escape from his visitors, and, while Lockhart was
correcting the proofs of his _Valerius_, he would be busy on _The
Pirate_ in an upstairs dressing-room, from which he would descend to
labour in the tiny garden and train on the walls the creepers he had
brought from Abbotsford.  He was amusing himself with a _pastiche_ in
the shape of imaginary letters of the seventeenth century,[2] an
enterprise out of which grew _The Fortunes of Nigel_, and before he
returned to Edinburgh for the session he had contracted to sell to
Constable the copyright of his last four novels for 5000.  That meant
that by these works, which had taken little more than a year to write,
he had already earned 15,000.  As he watched the masons beginning on
the Abbotsford extension, and the whole place, as he said, "like a
cried fair," he may have reflected with satisfaction that the money
would easily be forthcoming for the bills.

{227}

[Sidenote: 1820-21]

The three novels of the sixteenth century group themselves naturally
together, for their inspiration is of a different kind from that of the
earlier masterpieces.  They are based in the main on book-work, on
Scott's wide miscellaneous reading.  He is less concerned with the
human drama than with the pageantry of the times and with the
intricacies of court politics of which he had an instinctive
understanding.  With none of his characters do we feel that his
affections are very seriously engaged, nor, as in _Old Mortality_, is
the public conflict one in which he has a strong emotional interest.
Consequently the merit of the books is to be found mainly in their
craft, their conscious handiwork.  At their best they are sound pieces
of historical reconstruction; at their worst they fall into
melodramatic artifice, and what Professor Elton has called "a kind of
Elizabethan comic bluster and hard animal spirits."  As novels judged
from the higher standpoint they are notably inferior to his best, for
they rarely go deeper than the externals of life.  He is on unfamiliar
ground, dealing with things of which he has not secure possession,
since they have not become part of his blood and brain.

[Sidenote: _The Monastery_]

Yet in the weakest of the three, _The Monastery_, he is in his own
countryside, describing a landscape which he could see from Abbotsford
and people whose descendants were his neighbours.  His purpose was to
show the crumbling of the old Church at the Reformation and the
downfall of a great religious house; he had also a notion of bringing
in the heart of Bruce, which was buried at Melrose, but forgot his
intention and had to make it the heart of the last abbot.  But the
subject was not fortunately chosen.  In the first place there was no
dramatic cataclysm in the Lowlands, since the old Church was dead long
before it fell.  The true drama came later when the people discovered
the burdens of the new religion.  The early Reformation in Scotland was
too easy a business for tragedy.  In the second place Scott had little
understanding of Catholicism.  This man, for whom when he was dying
John Henry Newman besought the prayers of the faithful, cherished {228}
a blunt Protestantism, to which he was never weary of testifying.  He
can describe vividly the secular aspects of Melrose, its routine, its
polity and its humours, but, since he had no insight into its secret
things, the mystic brotherhood of an ordered community set in the heart
of darkness, he cannot move us by his tale of its fall.  Boniface,
Eustace, and even Edward Glendinning are only embodied humours and
virtues.  Scott understood perfectly the surface logic of the quarrel
between the Church and the Reformers, and can state it with scrupulous
fairness, but his heart was with neither side, and the preacher, Henry
Warden, is as much a lay figure as the monks.

The story begins with a happy preface.  Captain Clutterbuck, the Scots
Fusilier, is for once entertaining, the portrait of the landlord of the
George is excellent, and so is the introduction of the Benedictine--"a
virtuoso, a clean virtuoso--a sad-coloured stand of claithes, and a wig
like the curled back of a mug-ewe."  But the tale belies the promise of
the beginning.  The plot is limping and confused, and the whole
business of the lost Bible is clumsily conceived, as is that of Sir
Piercie Shafton and the bodkin.  The Euphuist, indeed, I do not find as
tedious as most critics have found him, and a vast deal of curious
learning has gone to the making of his absurdities, but nevertheless he
has no business in the tale.  For the White Lady of Avenel there can be
no defence.  She is neither credible nor awesome, her orations in
indifferent verse are tedious, and repeatedly she carries the tale into
the realm, not of fantasy, but of farce.  Scott perversely turns a
romance of deeds into a kind of parody of _Comus_.  The conclusion,
when Halbert Glendinning finds fortune and Julian Avenel gets his
deserts, is hurried and unconvincing.

Yet there are many things in the book which it is hard to forget, for
if Scott failed grievously in his main purpose he could not avoid
incidental felicities.  Nothing could be better than the spectacle of
Moray's army as seen by Halbert and the pedlar advancing on the Glasgow
road.  The household in the tower of Glendinning is {229} vividly
presented, and any peasant that shows his or her face is a foursquare
being whose talk is a delight.  Tibb and old Martin, the Miller and his
daughter, have a vitality foreign to the churchmen and the gentlefolk;
Dame Glendinning is the homely Scots matron, whose good sense rarely
fails her; the Border pricker, Christie of the Clint-hill, is true both
to nature and to history, and Halbert is the eternal boy, more real in
his youth than in his successful maturity.


I hate the monks, with their drawling nasal tones like so many frogs,
and their long black petticoats like so many women, and their
reverences, and their lordships, and their lazy vassals that do nothing
but paddle in the mire with plough and harrow from Yule to Michaelmas.
I will call none lord but him who wears a sword to make his title good;
and I will call none man but he that bears himself manlike and
masterful.


In that confession we have the spirit that was the efficient cause of
the Reformation.

[Sidenote: _The Abbot_]

_The Abbot_, the sequel to _The Monastery_, begins dolefully with
lengthy speeches, an intolerable boy, and a religious maniac.  It is
not till the eleventh chapter that Catherine Seyton's sudden laughter
wakes the reader to attention.  Thereafter the story marches strongly
with scarcely a halt, and with but one incongruity--the impossible
figure of Catherine's brother.  Scott had that romantic devotion to
Mary of Scots which few of his countrymen can escape, but he was wise
enough not to make her his heroine or to base his plot on a main
incident in her life, like Darnley's murder.  She enters from the
wings, as an accessory in the love story of Catherine and Roland
Graeme.  The book is full of brilliant pictures: the election of the
last Melrose abbot and the irruption upon the solemnities of the Abbot
of Unreason--a scene not without its tragic irony; the pageant of
Marian Edinburgh and Roland's visit to the mansion of the Seytons; the
weary days at Lochleven, and the escape, the only defect in the plot is
that it has no adequate conclusion, for the Queen has become so much
the dominant figure that it is to her fortunes {230} rather than to
those of Roland that the reader's interest is pledged.  Langside, which
is not one of Scott's best battle pieces, is clearly not the end; that
lay years ahead in the intrigues and dolours of an English prison.  But
it may fairly be said that the book fulfils the most exacting standards
of historical romance.  It is perhaps a little too full of antiquarian
pedantries, which sometimes check the flow of narration; but it atones
for them by many acute glimpses into the contemporary mind.  Take the
scene between the Reforming Lords and the Queen in Chapter XXII, when
Ruthven sets out a bitter indictment of Mary, and old Lindesay
subscribes to it with a generous hesitation.  "Lady," he said, "thou
art a noble creature, even though thou hast abused God's choicest
gifts.  I pay that devotion to thy manliness of spirit, which I would
not have paid to the power thou hast undeservedly wielded--I kneel to
Mary Stuart, not to the Queen."  And later he tells Ruthven, "I would I
had as deep cause to be this lady's friend as I have to be her
enemy--thou shouldst see if I spared life and limb in her quarrel."

Of the main characters the women excel the men.  Roland is drawn on
conventional lines, Moray and Morton are only sketches, and the
rough-handed Lords of the Congregation make too brief appearances.
Some of the lesser figures, like the quack doctor Luke Lundin and the
anabaptist Jasper Dryfesdale, have a fantastic life of their own, and
the English falconer Adam Woodcock is one of Scott's incomparable
serving-men.  Adam, indeed, is something more, for he is the embodiment
of English good sense and good nature in contrast to the dark
enthusiasms of the North.  His robust philosophy makes a cool oasis in
a feverish world, and it is he who puts most eloquently the pathos of
the Queen's downfall:--


They may say what they will, many a true heart will be sad for Mary
Stewart, e'en if all be true men say of her; for look you, Master
Roland, she was the loveliest creature to look upon that ever I saw
with eye, and no lady in the land liked better the fair flight of a
falcon.  I was at the great match on Roslin Moor betwixt Bothwell--he
was a black sight to her that {231} Bothwell--and the Baron of Roslin,
who could judge a hawk's flight as well as any man in Scotland.  A butt
of Rhenish and a ring of gold was the wager, and it was flown as fairly
for as ever was red gold and bright wine.  And to see her there on her
white palfrey, that flew as if it scorned to touch more than the
heather blossom; and to hear her voice, as clear and sweet as the
mavis's whistle, mix among our jolly whooping and whistling; and to
mark all the nobles dashing round her--happiest he who got a word or a
look--tearing through moss and hagg, and venturing neck and limb to
gain the praise of a bold rider, and the blink of the bonny Queen's
bright eye!--She will see little hawking where she lies now.  Ay, ay,
pomp and pleasure pass away as speedily as the wap of a falcon's wing!


[Sidenote: Mary of Scots]

Among the women Mary is the chief, though Lady Lochleven is not far
behind.  Catherine Seyton is of the school of Di Vernon but more
hoydenish and artificial, while Magdalen Graeme is not the most
successful of Scott's sibyls, a Romish Mause Headrigg without Mause's
humour.  Mary is the best of Scott's pictures of famous women in
history, for we are made to realize her compelling power--not only her
beauty of person and grace of manner, but her brain and her flawless
courage.  We are assured that nothing in heaven or earth could make her
afraid, and this assurance is increased by her sudden storm of nerves
when she cries for Bothwell.


Bid him come hither to our aid, and bring with them his Lambs as he
calls them--Bowton, Hay of Talla, Black Ormiston, and his kinsman Hob.
Fie! how swart they are, and how they smell of sulphur!  What!
Closeted with Morton?  Nay, if the Douglas and the Hepburn hatch the
complot together, the bird, when it breaks the shell, will scare
Scotland.


She is a queen in dignity and fortitude, and something more than a
queen in brains.  It is this last which is Scott's real triumph.  In
the wit of her talk, in her subtle baiting of Lady Lochleven, he has
portrayed a brilliant allure of both mind and body.

[Sidenote: _Kenilworth_]

The third novel, _Kenilworth_ seems to me to be Scott's masterpiece in
sheer craftmanship as distinct from inspiration.  He wrote it at
Constable's request, wisely, however, declining the publisher's
suggestion to make the Armada the central incident, for he realized the
{232} necessity of the historical romancer keeping off the main roads.
To the making of it he brought an immense stock of miscellaneous lore,
acquired from ballads, chapbooks, chronicles, and especially from the
Elizabethan plays.  His learning was more voluminous than exact, and he
took bold liberties with history.  He makes Dudley's marriage to Amy a
secret one, whereas it had been publicly celebrated in the reign of
Edward VI; he postdates her death by many years so that he may compass
a meeting between her and Elizabeth at Kenilworth; he traduces,
contrary to the evidence, both Varney and Tony Foster.  There are many
minor inaccuracies; Kenilworth, for example, did not belong to
Leicester in Amy's lifetime, and Shakespeare is made a familiar name at
Court at a time when he was a small boy in Stratford.  Such
anachronisms matter nothing, and Scott handles his material with
freedom and skill.  The plot is one of his most intricate, but there
are no gaps in it.  He rarely wrote narrative which was better knit.

The book opens in the high romantic vein in the Black Bear at Cumnor
with one of the best tavern scenes in the novels.  The central interest
depends upon two factors--the mystery of two houses, the crumbling
manor of Cumnor which had caught Scott's boyish imagination in Mickle's
verses, and the baronial magnificence of Kenilworth; and the character
of Elizabeth the Queen.  It is at Cumnor and Kenilworth that his touch
is surest, for these places clamoured for the appropriate romance.  To
people them he has borrowed a motley of figures from history and the
contemporary drama and local tradition--Leicester and Sussex and Walter
Raleigh: Giles Gosling, Goldthread the mercer, Miles Lambourne the
drunken mercenary, Wayland Smith and Flibbertigibbet.  Among the
episodes two seem to me to reach a high level of drama.  One is the
interview at Greenwich between Sussex and Leicester in the Queen's
presence, when the reader holds his breath at the oscillations of
fortune; the other is the famous meeting of Elizabeth, Amy Robsart and
Leicester {233} in the garden at Kenilworth, where for a moment the
truth trembles on the brink of revelation.  In the sheer craftsmanship
of suspense Scott never bettered these scenes.

The character-drawing is ingenious, and sometimes subtle.  Elizabeth is
exhibited as as royal as Mary, though she lacks something of Mary's
glamour.  Leicester is not the historical Dudley, but his weakness is
convincingly portrayed, and Sussex is admirable.  Amy is the tragic
ballad heroine, who is vivid because of the vividness of her sorrows.
Most of the minor figures are good, especially Lambourne the
adventurer.  The two chief villains seem to have strayed from the cast
of one of the darker Elizabethan plays.  Varney is Scott's version of
Iago, the Italianate bravo whose wickedness is without bounds; but
since Scott was never happy with pure evil, I prefer Tony
Fire-the-Faggot, who is given some principles in his infamy.

It is a glittering piece of pageantry, wholly successful within its
purpose, and if that purpose falls short of Scott's highest, the bow of
Apollo cannot always be kept at stretch.  He never set out his
antiquarian bric--brac more skilfully, or revelled more joyously in
the externals of life.  But if his understanding was fully engaged in
the business, his heart was a little aloof.  There is nothing in
_Kenilworth_ from Scott's inmost world except perhaps such a comment as
this upon Tressilian's moods, in which we may find an echo of his own
experience:--


Nothing is perhaps more dangerous to the future happiness of men of
deep thought and retired habits than the entertaining of a long, early
and unfortunate attachment.  It frequently sinks so deep into the mind
that it becomes their dream by night and their vision by day--mixes
itself in every source of interest and enjoyment, and when blighted and
withered, it seems as if the springs of the heart were dried up along
with it.  The aching of the heart, this languishing after a shadow
which has lost all the gaiety of its colouring, this dwelling on the
remembrance of a dream from which we have been long roughly awakened,
is the weakness of a generous heart.



{234}

II

_The Pirate_ appeared before the close of 1821, and throughout the
winter Scott was busy, apart from the editing of antiquarian reprints,
on _The Fortunes of Nigel_.  He had another matter in hand which gave
him acute annoyance and which set him publicly in the posture which he
liked least, that of apology and apparent timidity.  The political
partisanship of 1808, against which the Duke of Buccleuch warned him,
had mellowed with the success of British arms, and after Waterloo had
almost disappeared.  In Edinburgh he lived on friendly terms with the
older Whigs and with many of the younger ones.  But the trial of Queen
Caroline in 1820 stirred up some of the ancient antagonisms, and the
distress and unrest in the land seriously alarmed Scott about the
future of law and order.  He had the fantastic idea that the miners of
Northumberland might somehow join hands with the Glasgow weavers, and
the Buccleuch legion, at whose recruitment he laboured, was designed to
bar the road.  Now he suddenly found himself involved in a shoddy
newspaper scandal.

[Sidenote: The _Beacon_]

Scott had never any relish for journalistic savageries.  He had
protested vigorously against the excesses of _Blackwood_,[3] and had
striven to wean Lockhart from his association with them.  "Revere
yourself," he told his son-in-law, "and think you were born to do your
country better service than in this species of warfare."[4]  Lockhart
had taken the good advice, the more so as he had been shocked by the
duel in February 1821 arising out of certain attacks on himself in the
_London Magazine_, in which the editor had been killed by his friend
Christie.  Scott pressed upon Lockhart the necessity of breaking from
the "mother of mischief,"[5] and Lockhart was never again involved in
the _Blackwood_ quarrels.  But the foundation of the _Scotsman_ had
restarted the newspaper war in Edinburgh, and in January 1821 a paper
called the _Beacon_ was launched, a group of Edinburgh {235} Tories,
including the Lord Advocate, guaranteed the capital, and Scott was
persuaded against his better judgment to join in the bond for a small
sum.  The paper ran for less than eight months and was distinguished
for what Lord Cockburn calls "political cannibalism"; it was wretchedly
and amateurishly edited, and when the outcry against it became
formidable the guarantors cancelled their bond and the _Beacon_ died.

But in its short life it did an infinity of mischief.  Cockburn thought
that Scott was deeply to blame: "the happiness of the city was
disturbed, persons he had long professed and truly felt friendship for
were vilified, and all this he could have prevented by a word or a
look."  Apart from the mistake of the initial guarantee, Scott was
innocent, for he detested the paper and would not look at it, but he
was as much aggrieved by the manner of its ending as by its conduct.
To Erskine he wrote that he was "terribly malcontent."  "I was dragged
into the bond against all remonstrances I could make, and now they have
allowed me no vote with regard to standing or flying....  Our friends
went into the thing like fools and have come out very like cowards.  I
was never so sick of a transaction in my life."  He was sad and sulky,
he wrote to Constable, because he thought that "the seniors might have
been mediators, not fugitives," and he added that he expected daily to
hear that someone had been killed.[6]  There was an excellent chance of
this, for the lawyer Gibson (later Sir James Gibson-Craig of Riccarton)
proposed to challenge Scott, enlisted Lord Lauderdale as his second,
and only withdrew on being assured that Scott had no personal share in
the libels.  Tragedy came a few months later, when some verses in the
_Sentinel_, the _Beacon's_ Glasgow successor, led to the death in a
duel of Scott's friend, Sir Alexander Boswell, at the hands of James
Stuart of Dunearn.

[Sidenote: 1822]

In January 1822 Will Erskine went at last to the Bench as Lord
Kinnedder, an appointment for which {236} his friends had long schemed
and pled.  The late spring of that year was another landmark in Scott's
financial history, for James Ballantyne was readmitted as a partner in
the printing business.  In 1816, as we have seen, he had been made a
salaried official, and Scott had taken the firm wholly on his
shoulders.  It was burdened with a personal debt of James to the extent
of 3000, and a mass of floating bills, the debris of the publishing
business, which were partly in John Ballantyne's name, and which
amounted to about 10,000.  During the five years between 1816 and 1821
the printing shop, owing to Scott's novels, had been making reasonable
profits--about 2000 a year.  When at Whitsuntide, 1821, the
partnership was reconstituted, Scott laid down, in what was called a
"missive letter," the terms of the new arrangement.  He made himself
personally liable for all bills then current, apart from James
Ballantyne's special debt, which was still in the neighbourhood of
3000; the profits in future were to be equally divided between the
partners, but it was agreed that each should limit his annual drawings
to 500, the balance going to discharge debt or increase stock.[7]

[Sidenote: Scott's financial methods]

Now at this date the floating bills against the firm amounted to nearly
27,000.[8]  How had the increase come about, when the actual printing
business was running at a profit?  Partly from the interest on and the
renewal of the old bills, partly no doubt from James's slipshod
financial methods, but mainly because Scott had used the firm as the
medium of raising advances for his personal expenditure.  During these
years, apart from capital sums received for copyrights, he had been
making from his novels an income of at least 10,000.  But none of this
was used to reduce the printing house's gross liabilities; on the
contrary these liabilities were steadily increased by his drafts on the
firm to meet the cost of his princely hospitality, his purchases of
land, and his Abbotsford building.  Scott considered that most of his
outlay was in the nature of a sound investment, that, since Abbotsford
must one day be finished, {237} that outlay would cease, and that in a
year or two by his pen he could clear his feet.  He seems to have
believed that, if necessary he could live on his professional and
private income[9] and utilize his literary earnings for the rapid
extinction of debt.  It is a mistake to assume, I think, that he was in
the dark about his financial position.  The "missive letter" to James
Ballantyne shows that he could be a careful man of business, and he
kept a precise record of all the bills he drew.  He was deliberately
overspending, because he was assured that he had the power, when he
chose, to put his affairs on an equilibrium.  In the year 1821 he had,
according to Lockhart, already spent 29,000 on the purchase of
land,[10] he had an assured income of at least 2500, and he had earned
80,000 by his pen since 1811.  On the other side there were the
Ballantyne liabilities of 27,000, and overdrafts on Constable to an
amount which cannot be ascertained.

He was living at a time when the machinery of credit was still in
process of creation, and few, even among the bankers, had any clear
conception of its true basis.  There was great scarcity of coin, and
there was an inadequate supply of cash even in the form of banknotes;
value "floated ethereally in bills and promissory notes from man to
man, calling at the banks for transmutation when and so long as that
could be effected."  Scottish banking had been built up largely on the
basis of cash-credits, under which overdrafts were guaranteed by a
man's friends, and in Scotland credit had become more of a communal
business than elsewhere.  Scott accepted the system as he found it and
did not trouble to ask awkward questions.  He drew bills on the
Ballantyne firm which Constable backed; he drew bills on Constable for
work not yet done; and always there were the counter-bills, whereby
accommodation granted to one party was set off by a like accommodation
granted to the other.  The consequence was that the true meaning {238}
of each transaction was obscured.  When cash was received the
temptation was to apply it for some purpose for which cash was
obligatory, like the masons' accounts at Abbotsford, instead of paying
off bills which could be easily renewed.  So long as a man was able to
work and in good repute there need be no hitch, but ill-health, death,
or the disaster of a colleague might bring down the whole edifice in
ruins.  If Constable failed, the Ballantyne firm would follow, and with
it Scott; if Scott fell sick or died, the Ballantyne house would go,
and Constable, though he had heavily insured Scott's life, might not
survive the loss of an author on whose work he had staked so heavily.
All the fraternity had executed heavy mortgages on the future; they
could pay the mortgage interest, and, if the fates were kind, might
eventually redeem them, but any sudden calamity would send the fabric
crashing.

In Scott's defence it should be said that he believed that in his land,
houses, and personal possessions he had assets which would meet all his
liabilities, while his brother-in-law's legacy had made provision for
his family.  Also he trusted implicitly in the soundness of Constable's
firm.  He sold him the copyrights of his novels in batches, and did not
receive the full payment, which should have warned him that the great
publisher had no greater command of ready money than himself.  Various
circumstances had combined to embarrass Constable.  The retirement of
one partner and the death of another had withdrawn from the business
considerable capital sums, and the provident Mr Cadell had many hours
of acute alarm.  Constable's reach was apt to exceed his grasp, and he
suffered the fate of all pioneers in having often to wait too long for
his harvest.  His pride would not allow him to reduce the printing
orders of the _Edinburgh Review_ and the _Encyclopdia Britannica_,
even when the trade was glutted, with the result that he was often left
with unsaleable remainders.[11]  During the years 1821 and 1822 he had
to spend most of his time for his health's sake in the south of
England, and his {239} letters to Cadell show the trouble that he had
with the booksellers over dead stock.[12]

[Sidenote: Constable's optimism]

But he was like a drunken man, who can avoid a fall only so long as he
keeps running.  Scott was his main support, and it is probable that he
consistently overpaid him, for there was always the dread of a rival
Murray or Longman in the field.[3]  Moreover, both he and Cadell
encouraged Scott to a more rapid output, not only of novels but of
poetry and miscellaneous work.  They gave him 1000 for _Halidon Hill_,
which was the task of two rainy mornings.  Any loss on the swings would
be made up by the profits on some new roundabout.  "I would as soon
stop a winning horse," wrote Cadell, "as a successful author with the
public in his favour."[4] With such encouragement it was not unnatural
for Scott to take a roseate view of the future.  The Ballantyne debt
was supported by Constable, and Constable, though his bills were
long-dated, seemed to be going from strength to strength.  His letters
from the south--and it was in the south of course that the main market
lay--had been full of confident forecasts; they had repeatedly declared
that an unsatiated public demanded more and still more from the
_Waverley_ fields.  Scott felt his creative power as strong as ever; he
could therefore complete Abbotsford with an easy conscience--perhaps
even buy Faldonside--and then straighten out his affairs; there was
enough money in prospect for everything.

So it was with a new feeling of security that he turned to the heavy
duties of the summer.  _The Fortunes of Nigel_ appeared in the end of
May and was well received.  Constable predicted that it would be the
most popular of all, and Sydney Smith, who had become very critical of
the novels, admitted that it would sustain the reputation of the author
and not "impair the very noble and honourable estate which he has in
his brains."  The {240} smack which carried the London orders reached
the Thames on a Sunday, the cargo was cleared at once, and by half-past
ten on Monday morning 7000 copies were in the booksellers' hands.

That summer Scott was busy on _Peveril of the Peak_, but July and
August were useless for work, since George IV had announced his
intention of visiting Edinburgh, the first reigning monarch to set foot
on Scottish soil since Charles I, and the only prince of the house of
Hanover since the ill-omened Cumberland.  Had Scott lived in another
age he might have been a great figure in statecraft, guiding a monarch
through difficult places by his own tact, sagacity and insight into
human nature.  He had that talent for affairs which is compounded of
organizing power and the rare gift of managing men.  The visit seemed
to him to be an occasion of high public import.  The last hope of
Jacobitism had died with the Cardinal of York, but there was no popular
sentiment for the reigning family north of the Border.  If that could
be created, if the old monarchical feeling of Scotland could be stirred
and her pride gratified by a sense of possession in her sovereign, much
might be done for the cause of both Scottish nationalism and Scottish
unity.  To be sure, it was something of a gamble.  The trial of the
Queen had predisposed the rank and file of the people against George,
the notorious irregularities of his life had alienated the serious
classes, and politics, as we have seen, were at the moment full of
bitterness.  To make certain of a national welcome, the rivalries of
grandees would have to be harmonized, and the conflict of endless local
interests smoothed away.  If the visit was in any sense a fiasco, it
would be nothing short of a public calamity.

[Sidenote: Visit of George IV]

The heavy end of the business fell upon Scott, since he was the only
man competent to arrange a national pageant.  All through July he
laboured at the details of the reception, setting the proper parts for
Highland chiefs and Lowland lairds and Edinburgh bailies--a heavy task,
for Lord Kinnedder was dying, killed by a baseless slander which broke
a too sensitive heart.  {241} Every moment that Scott could spare he
spent at his bedside, but on the very day of the King's coming Erskine
died.  In the midst of the festivities Scott attended his funeral at
Queensferry, more dejected, Lockhart tells us, than he had ever known
him before, and he had to play his part in the ensuing pageant with a
burdened mind.  "If ever a pure spirit," he wrote, "quitted this vale
of tears, it was William Erskine's.  I must turn to and see what can be
done about getting some pension for his daughters."

The royal visit was an abounding success.  Scott had little admiration
for the King, but he knew his abilities and his gift of surface
_bonhomie_, and he was determined that the cause of monarchy should not
suffer in its representative.  Nor did it, for George rose gallantly to
his part.  This stout gentleman of sixty did his best to fill the rle
of the Prince Charming who three-quarters of a century before had
danced in Holyroodhouse, and he had the wisdom to lean heavily on
Scott's knowledge and good sense.  The royal yacht, escorted by
warships, arrived at Leith on August 14th in a downpour of rain, and
Scott was received on board with enthusiasm.  "Sir Walter Scott!" the
King cried, "The man in Scotland I most wish to see!" and he pledged
him in a bumper of whisky.  Scott begged the glass as a memento and
deposited it in his pocket.  When he returned to Castle Street he found
that Crabbe the poet had arrived unexpectedly; in the exuberance of his
greeting he flung himself into a chair beside him, there was an ominous
crackle, and fragments of the precious keepsake were dug out of the
pocket in his skirts.  Crabbe's presence at the festivities, like that
of a sober parson at a war dance of Indian braves, was one of the major
comic elements in the scene; another was the Rabelaisian parody by a
Glasgow weaver of Scott's song of welcome, "Carle, now the King's
come," which was popular among the irreverent.

But the intricate programme passed off without a hitch.  Half Scotland
flowed into Edinburgh to watch the royal entry, when Scott, splendid in
Campbell trews, {242} was driven in a coach and four by Peter
Mathieson, not less splendid in a cocked hat and a flaxen wig.  Scott
attended daily at the royal table at Dalkeith in his capacity as master
of ceremonies.  There were levees at Holyroodhouse, and a state
procession to the Castle when Scott stood in the crowd with Sir Robert
Peel; there were lengthy and splendid dinners; there was a command
performance at the theatre, and a solemn service in St Giles's church.
The King wore a kilt of Royal Stuart tartan, the laird of Garth being
responsible for his toilet, but the most conspicuous figure in his
entourage was not Glengarry or Macleod, but a London alderman, Sir
William Curtis, who made a bigger, fatter and gaudier Highlandman than
his Majesty.  Not till the 29th of August did George embark for the
south, after knighting Adam Ferguson and Raeburn the artist.  It was to
Scott that Sir Robert Peel wrote on the eve of the departure by the
King's command, making him the channel to convey to the Highland chiefs
the royal approbation and thanks.

So ended one of the most arduous chapters in Scott's life.  The King's
visit had amply fulfilled the purpose for which it had been planned and
the monarchy had won a new popularity in Scotland.  Scott had obtained
a promise that that historic piece of ordnance, Mons Meg, would be sent
back to Edinburgh Castle, and--what was still nearer his heart--that
the peerages forfeited during the Jacobite rebellions should be
restored.  The visit completed the work which he himself had begun and
brought the Highlands into a closer relation with Scottish life.  It
did more, for in the eyes of the outside world it gave certain Highland
habits a national character which they have ever since retained.  The
kilt, the former garb of servants, was assumed to be the Scottish
national dress, since it had been worn by the King.  It was a golden
age for the haberdashers.  A bogus Celticism became the rage, and
Scottish Lowland houses, whose ancestors would as readily have worn
woad as the dress of their secular foes, were provided by imaginative
tradesmen with family tartans.

{243}

[Sidenote: First threat of apoplexy]

The autumn of 1822 was spent quietly at Abbotsford, where the new
buildings were now being roofed, and Scott was very busy corresponding
with Terry about furniture.  He had bought his land at high prices--it
was a common saying in the countryside that a man "would wish for no
ampler fortune than just the length and breadth of himself in land
within half a mile of the Shirra's house"--but he showed wisdom in
other matters, and had much of the ironwork and woodwork done by local
craftsmen whose merits he had discovered.  The plot of _Quentin
Durward_ had entered his head; it cheered him, for he was finding
_Peveril_ heavy going.  Indeed, the loss of Erskine and the herculean
labours of July and August had drained his vitality both of mind and
body.  In November in a letter to Terry we have the first hint of a
graver malady than his now chronic rheumatism.  "I have not been
well--a whoreson thickness of blood, and a depression of spirits
arising from the loss of friends ... have annoyed me much; and Peveril
will, I fear, smell of the apoplexy."


The two novels of the preceding twelvemonth, _The Pirate_ and _The
Fortunes of Nigel_, have a connexion deeper than the chronological, for
they show Scott as an artificer at his worst and his best.  The first
is a fine conception marred in the execution.  His visit to the Orkneys
and Shetlands in 1814 had left with him an abiding impression not only
of a unique landscape but of a life widely different from that of the
Scottish mainland.  He found customs of a primordial simplicity, and a
folk-lore in which still endured beliefs drawn from the heroic world of
the Sagas.  The sight of an American cruiser off the Hebrides had
suggested to him how this remote Thule might be linked by sea with the
greater world.  In Bessie Millie at Stromness he had found a practising
sibyl, and heard from her the true tale of John Gow the pirate who in
the early eighteenth century had menaced the isles.  What fitter
subject for romance?  He would show the impact upon the frugal island
life of adventurers from tropic seas, blood-stained, lustful, {244}
babbling of gold and gems.  He would reveal that in the islands which
was akin to this foreign colour, the wild Norse fatalism and hardihood.
Above all he would show the spell which the exotic world could cast
over beauty and youth.  And as his setting he would have the
wind-scourged ocean, the bare pastoral hills, and the shadowy northern
sky.  Stevenson has rightly interpreted Scott's purpose and the nature
of his inspiration.  "The figure of Cleveland--cast up by the sea on
the resounding foreland of Dunrossness--moving, with the blood on his
hands and the Spanish words on his tongue, among the simple
islanders--singing the serenade under the windows of his Shetland
mistress--is conceived in the very highest manner of romantic
invention.  The words of his song, 'Through groves of palm,' sung in
such a scene and by such a lover, clinch, as in a nutshell, the
emphatic contrast upon which the tale is built."[15]

[Sidenote: _The Pirate_]

Conceived; but, alas, not realized.  The figures which should have
pointed the contrast and fulfilled the inspiration are as shadowy as a
Shetland sky.  Cleveland is no more than a buckram pirate--never one
half so alive as his friend Jack Bunce--and his ultimate repentance
leaves the reader not even incredulous, but only cold.  According to
Lockhart, he pleased the public because of his novelty, as did the
Udaller's daughters, but later generations have not endorsed the
verdict.  Minna and Brenda are not less dim, and Minna's talk is
strange and wonderful, being drawn half from a _Young Ladies'
Companion_ and half from a lexicon of northern antiquities.  The whole
of the exotic element is conceived in a bad theatrical vein; there is
melodrama even in the alliterative names, Mordaunt Mertoun and Clement
Cleveland, and the plot is a tangle of crude coincidences.  As for
Norna of the Fitful Head she is Scott's supreme failure in the _genre_
which had produced Meg Merrilies.  As Sydney Smith noted, he was
acquiring a habit of introducing a spae-wife and a pedant into all his
tales; in _The Pirate_ we can accept the pedant, Triptolemus Yellowley,
but the spae-wife is beyond us.  Norna's {245} prose is as preposterous
as her poetry, and her poetry is as turgid as the runes of the White
Lady of Avenel.  It is interesting to note how bad Scott's occasional
verse becomes when his inspiration flags.  Only twice in the book does
it succeed in moving us; once when Cleveland sings the "Groves of Palm"
serenade, and there the charm lies in the contrast of sentiment and
scene rather than in any poetic merit; a second time when Mertoun is
gravely wounded and Claud Halcro appears singing the wonderful lyric,
"And ye shall deal the funeral dole."  On these occasions, and on these
alone, the romance of Scott's dream is given a local habitation.

He failed in his central purpose, since he could not bring out the full
drama of the clash between the exotic and the insular because of his
strained and ragged treatment of the former.  But with the latter he
amply succeeded.  In none of the novels does he handle landscape with
greater mastery.  He reproduces for us the magic of the low benty
hills, the tormented coasts, and the infinite chafing seas.  The island
life is described with gusto and humour, and in the sharpest detail.
The plot, or what stands for a plot, soon fades from the reader's
memory, but certain scenes remain in vivid recollection--the storm when
Cleveland is washed ashore and the islanders scramble for the wreckage;
the feasting at Magnus Troil's home; the whale hunt; the visit of
Magnus to Norna's dwelling; the trivialities of the Kirkwall burghers.
In all of these it is the homely characters that dominate the scene,
and it is by the delineation of such characters that the book must
stand.

Chief is the Udaller, Magnus Troil.  He is the patriarchal landowner,
but different in kind from anything in the preceding gallery of chiefs
and lairds.  He shows Scott's firm grasp of social conditions, for he
is not only a vividly realized human being but the lawful product of
his environment.  He is an Homeric figure, like the son of Teuthras in
the sixth book of the Iliad, who "built his dwelling by the roadside
and entertained every wayfarer."  Not less real are his neighbours.  It
{246} was a happy thought to make old Haagen a survival of Montrose's
last tragic expedition, who remembered nothing but its discomfort, and
dashed Minna's sentiment by expounding the superior wisdom of running
away.


"And Montrose--what became of Montrose, and how looked he?"

"Like a lion with the hunters before him," answered the old gentleman;
"but I looked not twice his way, for my own lay right over the hills."

"And so you left him?" said Minna in a tone of the deepest contempt.

"It was no fault of mine, Mistress Minna," answered the old man,
somewhat out of countenance.  "But I was there with no choice of my
own; and, besides, what good could I have done?--all the rest were
running like sheep, and why should I have stayed?"

"You might have died with him," said Minna.

"And lived with him to all eternity in immortal verse!" added Claud
Halcro.

"I thank ye, Mistress Minna," replied the plain-dealing Zetlander, "and
I thank you, my old friend Claud; but I would rather drink both your
healths in this good bicker of ale, like a living man as I am, than you
should be making songs in my honour for having died forty or fifty
years agone."


There Scott attains perfectly the contrast at which he aimed.

The "humours" of Triptolemus Yellowley, like those of Claud Halcro, are
perhaps too much elaborated; but Triptolemus has a real comedy value,
and his sister Baby's hard sense is at once a foil to his pedantry and
the touchstone of the normal by which to test the aberrations of
sensibility.  Excellent, too, is the jagger, Bryce Snailsfoot, with his
"green-glazen eyes," the unlovely combination of avarice and piety
which Scott could handle so well.


"Grace to ye to wear the garment," said the joyous pedlar, "and to me
to guide the siller; and protect us from earthly vanities and earthly
covetousness; and send you the white linen raiment, whilk is mair to be
desired than the muslins and cambrics and lawns and silks of this
world; and send me the talents which avail more than much fine Spanish
gold, or Dutch dollars either."

{247}

"A marvel it is to think," the Ranzelman tells the old housekeeper,
"how few real judicious men are left in this land....  I ken few of
consequence hereabouts--excepting always myself, and maybe you,
Swertha--but what may, in some sense or other, be called fules."  The
prosaic aspect of life was rarely depicted with more shrewdness and
truth, and _The Pirate_ would have been a masterpiece had the romantic
side of the balance been as well weighted.  It is the poetry which
fails, not the prose.

_Nigel_, on the contrary, succeeds largely because of its
craftsmanship.  Scott's reach is not too ambitious and his grasp never
weakens.  Its popularity was immediate, and Constable saw people
reading it in the London streets.  The critical Sydney Smith had no
fault to find except that the plot was "execrable."[16]  Scott's
purpose was to provide a companion piece to _The Heart of Midlothian_,
and make George Heriot a masculine Jeanie Deans, a hero "who laid no
claim to high birth, romantic sensibility, or any of the usual
accomplishments of those who strut through the pages of this sort of
composition."  Just as the loveliest part of a country is where the
mountains break down into the lowlands, so he considered the most
interesting age that in which barbarism was passing into civilization,
and on this principle he chose his period.  In the introductory epistle
he sets out frankly his view of the novelist's craft.  He was anxious
to give the public what it wanted.  "No man shall find me rowing
against the stream.  I care not who knows it--I write for general
amusement."  He would not waste too much time on architecture.  "I
should be chin-deep in the grave, man, before I had done with my task,
and, in the meanwhile, all the quirks and quiddities which I might have
devised for my readers' amusement would lie rotting in my gizzard."  He
claims the authority of Smollett and Le Sage, who had been "satisfied
if they amused the reader upon the road, though the conclusion only
arrived because the {248} tale must have an end--just as the traveller
alights at the inn because it is evening."  He defends, too, his
rapidity of production.  "A man should strike while the iron is hot,
and hoist sail while the wind is fair.  If a successful author keeps
not the stage, another instantly takes his ground."  A mercantile
creed, maybe, but it was in all likelihood the creed of Shakespeare.

_Nigel_ is brilliant book-work, a reconstruction based on wide and
minute research; but it differs from the other book-work novels in
having various Scottish characters drawn from a rich first-hand
experience.  George Heriot is the Edinburgh burgher whom Scott had
known, Richie Moniplies the familiar serving-man, and King James a
compost of quiddities drawn from country lairds and Parliament House
lawyers.  The plot is negligible, the whole episode of the lost royal
warrant and the wrongs of the Lady Hermione is most clumsily conceived,
and the marriage bells at the end ring perfunctorily.  But the crude
machinery does not interfere with the ripple and glitter of the
narrative, which Dumas never bettered.  The impression given of the
colour and pageantry of life is as vivid as the middle chapters of
_Monte Cristo_.  The scene in Ramsay's shop, and the pictures of the
brisk, bustling city are masterpieces of historical reconstruction,
which nowhere smell of the lamp.  Not less good are the Court chapters,
for Scott was always at home in such an environment, and his eyes were
not so dazzled by the tapestry on the walls as to miss the cobwebs in
the corner.  Alsatia, the enclave of blackguards in the midst of
burgherdom, is brilliantly depicted, and the murder is an eery
business.  There are no scenes, perhaps, which rise to high drama, but
that is because we cannot take Nigel and his troubles quite seriously,
but there are many admirable comedy interludes.  What, for example,
could be better than the episode in the Greenwich inn and the talk of
Kilderkin and Linklater, and the scene where Richie is hidden behind
the arras and the King cries in the words of the old Scots children's
game, "Todlowrie, come out o' your den?"

{249}

[Sidenote: King James]

The story lives by its colour and speed, and by the vigour of its
characters.  Some of these are poor enough, for Nigel and Dalgarno are
only embodied moralities.  But most of the lesser figures are
competently drawn--Huntinglen, Trapbois the miser and his daughter, the
Alsatian bullies, the prentice lads, and the sinister Dame Suddlechop.
On a higher plane stand George Heriot, one of the most solidly realized
merchants in fiction, and Sir Mungo Malagrowther, the old, peevish,
dilapidated courtier.  There must have been many Sir Mungos in
Whitehall in those days.  Higher still stands Richie Moniplies, whose
humours and idioms are of the raciest, and whose career, from the days
when he slept out in St Cuthbert's kirkyard to his attainment of wealth
and rank, escapes being farcical because the man himself is so wholly
credible.  He is at once insolent and kindly, sycophantic and
independent, sordid and chivalrous, greedy and unselfish--"though I was
bred at a flesher's stall, I have not through my life had a constant
intimacy with collops"--a perfect instance of one type of Scots
adventurer.

But the masterpiece is the King, a masterpiece both of imaginative
presentation and of historical truth.  Scott makes James ridiculous and
also somehow impressive.  His vanity has quality behind it, and he has
little gusts of tenderness and moods of melting sentiment.  There is
dignity even in his panics, and his buffoonery has a substratum of hard
good sense--"O Geordie, Jingling Geordie, it was grand to hear Baby
Charles laying down the guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing
on the turpitude of incontinence."  He is endeared to us because of his
acute perception of the whimsies of life, and the oddities of other
people, though he may be a little blind to his own.  The portrait is
one of the subtlest and most carefully studied which Scott has given
us, and from first to last James is consistent with himself.  His
speech is a delight, for it has the idiom of one who is both Scot and
scholar.  It never sinks below a high pitch of shrewd vivacity from the
moment in the palace ante-room where we first hear his {250} broad
accents--"Admit him instanter, Maxwell.  Have ye hairboured sae lang at
the Court, and not learned that gold and silver are ever welcome?"  His
Scottish memories remind the reader of the homely world of the north
from which he came, and thereby point the ironic contrast of the man
and his office.  "And John Anderson was Provost that year.  The carle
grat for joy; and the Bailies and Councillors danced bareheaded in our
presence like five-year-auld colts."  Much of the success of his talk
depends upon the sentences of Latinized jargon followed by pithy Scots
translations.  Appropriately the two main comedy figures are conjoined
at the close.


He took the drawn sword, and with averted eyes, for it was a sight he
loved not to look on, endeavoured to lay it on Richie's shoulder, but
nearly stuck it into his eye.  Richie, starting back, attempted to
rise, but was held down by Lowestoffe, while, Sir Mungo guiding the
royal weapon, the honour-bestowing blow was given and received:
"_Surge, carnifex_.  Rise up, Sir Richard Moniplies of Castle
Collop!----  And, my lords and lieges, let us all to our dinner, for
the cock-a-leekie is cooling."



III

[Sidenote: 1823]

In January 1823 _Peveril of the Peak_ was published, a lengthy novel of
which Lockhart thought the plot "clumsy and perplexed," and which
Sydney Smith considered a "good novel, but not good enough for such a
writer," though he added that Scott's worst was better than other
people's best.  Meanwhile, with the help of a copy of Commines, a
French gazeteer, a map of Touraine, and his recollections of his visit
to France in 1815, he was making in _Quentin Durward_ his first attempt
at a romance of which the scene was laid outside Britain.

[Sidenote: Edinburgh life]

Though he was not a politician, he had largely inherited Henry Dundas's
mantle as the "manager" of Scotland.  In the first place he was the
acknowledged leader in all literary and intellectual matters.  David
Hume had once held the position and Adam Smith had {251} succeeded him.
Henry Mackenzie had followed, but the "Man of Feeling" was now nearing
his seventieth year, and Scott inherited the primacy.  In the Edinburgh
of that day social pre-eminence followed upon such leadership.  He was
the man to whom all well-accredited strangers brought introductions,
the premier host and the public orator of Scotland.  In the club life
of the day, of which the fashion was spreading, he was a conspicuous
figure.  In 1818 he had been elected a member of The Club, Dr Johnson's
famous foundation,[17] and he was Professor of Ancient History to the
Royal Academy, the post created for Goldsmith.  In Scotland he had the
Friday Club, the Blairadam Club, the Highland Club, and, for decorous
high-jinks, the Gowks, which met on All Fools' Day when every member
contributed his best wine, and of which old Henry Mackenzie was the
poet-laureate.  In 1823 the "Author of _Waverley_" was chosen to fill a
vacancy in the Roxburghe Club, and Scott was permitted to represent the
Unknown.  At the same time he was establishing in Edinburgh a Scottish
counterpart of that classic fraternity--the Bannatyne Club, which was
the first of several societies which have done excellent work in
reprinting the older documents in Scottish history and literature.  He
was assiduous in his duties as president of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh, and appeared in the forefront of every charitable enterprise.

Public business, too, engrossed much of his time, and the development
of new inventions which appealed to his practical mind.  He became
chairman of a company to manufacture oil gas and introduced the
contrivance at Abbotsford, where it turned out to be far more expensive
than candles, and had a bad effect on his health.  "Any foreign student
of statistics who should have happened to peruse the files of an
Edinburgh newspaper for the period to which I allude, would, I think,
have concluded that there were at least two {252} Sir Walter Scotts in
the place--one the miraculously fertile author whose works occupied
two-thirds of its literary advertisements and critical columns--another
some retired magistrate or senator of easy fortune and indefatigable
philanthropy, who devoted the rather oppressive leisure of an honoured
old age to the promotion of patriotic ameliorations, the watchful
guardianship of charities, and the ardent patronage of educational
institutions."[19]

In April he had news of the death in Canada of his brother Thomas, the
last of the old family circle.  Miss Edgeworth came to Scotland that
summer and spent a fortnight at Abbotsford--"a very nice lioness,"
Scott wrote to Terry, "full of fun and spirits, a little slight figure,
very active in her motions, very good-humoured, and full of
enthusiasm."  Meantime, in June, _Quentin Durward_ had appeared, and at
first had been coldly received, till the rapturous appreciation of
Paris made the home public reconsider its verdict.  Hitherto Scott had
had little vogue on the Continent, except in Germany, but now his
reputation spread like wild-fire, and began to threaten the
pre-eminence of Byron.  Constable, who had been growing nervous about
the future of that popularity in which he had invested so heavily, was
more than comforted, and Scott was encouraged to gamble a little with
his reputation.  One summer morning, while he rode with Lockhart and
Laidlaw on the Eildons, he spoke of laying the scene of his next tale
in Germany.  Laidlaw dissented; "No, no, sir--take my word for it, you
are always best, like Helen MacGregor, when your foot is on your native
heath; and I have often thought that if you were to write a novel, and
lay the scene here in the very year you were writing it, you would
exceed yourself."  Scott liked the notion; he had not since _The
Antiquary_ written of contemporary Scotland, and he had a grim story in
his mind which he had come across in the course of his duties as
Sheriff; there was the comedy, too, of a land advancing in wealth and
modishness at which he might try his hand.  So during {253} the autumn
and early winter, while he was entertaining Adolphus and inspecting
with Lockhart the young plantations of the Clydesdale lairds, and
supervising the decoration of the new Abbotsford, he was hard at work
upon _St Ronan's Well_.

The book was a bold experiment.  The high manner of romance was laid
aside and Scott made himself the chronicler of the small beer of a
provincial watering-place and a gentle satirist of the follies of
fashion.  Yet the scene was laid in his own countryside, and he had as
a background the idiosyncrasies of his own people.  The English public
was a little perplexed, but Scottish readers recognized the pungent
truth of the atmosphere of a Tweedside burgh and of many of the
portraits.  Unhappily the drama upon which the vitality of the book
depended, the tragedy of Clara Mowbray, was fatally weakened by the
prudishness of James Ballantyne, who protested that, while a mock
marriage might be permitted, the seduction of a well-born girl would be
resented.[19]  Scott had received from Laidlaw the inspiration of the
tale, and he now accepted docilely Ballantyne's remonstrance, and
altered the crucial passage.  James was a valued proof-reader and a
sound counsellor on minor matters, but we may well regret that in this
case Scott did not treat his advice as he was to treat it three years
later.


I had a letter from Jem Ballantyne--plague on him!--full of
remonstrances, deep and solemn, upon the carelessness of 'Bonaparte.'
The rogue is right, too.  But as to correcting my style to the 'Jemmy
jemmy linkum feedle' tune of what is called fine writing, I'll be
damned if I do.[20]


[Sidenote: _Peveril of the Peak_]

_Peveril_ in truth "smells of the apoplexy."  It was written while
Scott was much cumbered with the arrangements for the visit of George
IV, saddened by Erskine's death, and depressed by the premonition of a
new disease.  He chose a period of history in which he was not
perfectly at home, and had to lean upon {254} hastily-read documents.
He was very conscious of the book's imperfections, and in the
preparatory letter thought it right to apologize for other defects
besides anachronisms.  The opening is laboured and the narrative drags,
the ravelled skein of the plot is never properly wound up, and the
ending is huddled; the fatigue of its composition is reflected in the
style, which sinks often to abysses of verbiage.[21]  He handicapped
himself unduly in making the action stretch over a period of twenty
years, thereby condemning himself to _longueurs_.  There is no
craftsmanship in the story as a whole, and the good things are like
comfortable inns scattered at long intervals through an unfeatured
country.

The book is nearly half done before the action quickens with young
Peveril's journey from the Isle of Man to London.  Once on the road we
are for a little in the old atmosphere of romance.  The scene at the
inn where Edward Christian and Chiffinch first appear, the storming of
Martindale, Sir Geoffrey's farewell to his son--"God bless thee, my
boy, and keep thee true to Church and King, whatever wind brings foul
weather"--the attack on Moultrassie Hall, are episodes well conceived
and vigorously told.  So are many of the London scenes, such as the
discussion between Buckingham and Jerningham, and especially the
former's interview with Christian.  But the pictures of the Court lack
the verisimilitude of those in _Nigel_, and Scott never succeeds in
reproducing the hideousness of the Popish Plot and of those responsible
for it.  All the later chapters are heavy, uninspired labour against
the collar.  The characters have the same patchiness.  Lady Derby, till
the moment when she confronts Charles at Whitehall, is only a sounding
name.  Sir Geoffrey and Bridgenorth are creditable pieces of book-work,
conventional portraits of Cavalier and Puritan, but the King is the
least successful of Scott's royal personages.  He is happier when he
gets into humble life, for Mrs Deborah and Lance and the jailers have a
vitality denied to their betters.  There {255} are some skilful essays
in historical reconstruction--in Buckingham, Christian, Chiffinch and
Colonel Blood--and the dwarf, Sir Geoffrey Hudson, is done with humour
and insight.  Fenella, upon whom the plot hinges, is the most glaring
failure.  Scott avowedly borrowed her from Mignon in _Wilhelm Meister_
and marred her grievously in the borrowing, for she is grotesque but
not impressive.[22]

The tale lacks verve and speed as it lacks glamour, for throughout the
imaginative impulse flags.  Yet there are many passages on statecraft
and the condition of the country which show Scott's masculine
understanding at its best.  Take one of Dumas' masterpieces; compared
with its light and colour _Peveril_ is like a muddy lagoon contrasted
with a mountain stream; but there is never in Dumas that background of
broad and sane intelligence, that lively interest in how life was
conducted in past ages, that insight into the social environment, which
redeem Scott's failures.  The latter's characters may stumble dully
through their parts, but their platform is a real world, while Dumas'
figures dazzle and delight, but they move on a wooden stage amid
painted scenery.  Byron, said Goethe, is "great only as a creative
poet; as soon as he reflects, he is a child."  It is Scott's reflective
power which atones sometimes, as in _Peveril_, for his defects in
creation.

He was in the habit of consoling himself for a failure by an immediate
attempt at something new.  "If it isna well bobbit, we'll bob it again"
was a phrase often on his lips.  There is no more remarkable proof of
Scott's mental resilience than that, after the dreary toil of
_Peveril_, he could produce a thing so vital and glancing as _Quentin
Durward_.  The fifteenth century, when chivalry and the feudal system
were beginning to break down, had always been with him a favourite
epoch.  He did not know very much about France, but he had an intuitive
sense of its atmosphere and _dcor_, as witness the passage in the
introduction about the terrace of the {256} Chteau of Sully, and
France accepted the book as true to the spirit of her history.  Not to
the letter, perhaps, for there are many anachronisms, in addition to
those which he acknowledged.  Louis refers to Nostradamus, who was not
born till twenty years after his death, and he has an amazing metaphor
drawn from fly-fishing for salmon, a sport of which fifteenth-century
France never dreamed.

[Sidenote: _Quentin Durward_]

Pedantic criticism would be absurd, for the book is a fairy tale, with
all the merits of those airy legends which the folk-mind of Europe
invented to give colour to drab lives.  Crvecoeur is right when he
tells Quentin that he has had "a happy journey through Fairy-land--all
full of heroic adventure, and high hope, and wild minstrel-like
delusion, like the garden of Morgaine la Fe."  Quentin, from the Glen
of the Midges, is the eternal younger son who goes out to seek his
fortune, as Louis is the treacherous step-mother.  There are plenty of
ogres and giants on the road--the Boar of the Ardennes, Tristan
L'Hermite and Trois-Eschelles and Petit-Andr; there are good
companions like Le Balafr and Dunois; the Bohemians are the malicious
elves and Galeotti the warlock; the Lady Isabelle is the conventional
fairy-tale princess; when Quentin, during the sack of Lige, leaves his
pursuit of de la Marck to save Gertrude, he is behaving exactly as the
fairy-tale hero behaves when he gives his cake to the old woman by the
wayside; and Crvecoeur's final comment is in the right tradition:
"Fortune has declared herself on his side too plainly for me to
struggle further with her humoursome ladyship--but it is strange, from
lord to horse-boy, how wonderfully these Scots stick by each other."
Nor is there wanting the douche of cold sense, to which the fairy tale
is partial:--


"My lord of Crvecoeur," said Quentin, "my family----"

"Nay, it was not utterly of family that I spoke," said the Count, "but
of rank, fortune, high station, and so forth, which place a distance
between various classes of persons.  As for birth, all men are
descended from Adam and Eve."

"My Lord Count," repeated Quentin, "my ancestors, the Durwards of
Glen-houlakin----"

{257}

"Nay," said the Count, "if you claim a farther descent for them than
from Adam, I have done!  Good even to you."


_Quentin Durward_ is Scott's main achievement in the vein in which
Dumas excelled, and is therefore sure of its market with youth.  It is
a better performance, I think, than _Ivanhoe_, for it swings to its
triumphant close without a single hitch or extravagance.  The opening
is provocative, and once inside the man-traps and snares of
Plessis-les-Tours the expectation is keyed high.  Nor is the
expectation disappointed, for one masterly scene follows another--the
reception of the Burgundian envoy, Quentin's vigil in the castle
gallery, the frustrated ambuscade by the Maes, the death of the Bishop,
Quentin's outfacing of de la Marck, Louis at Peronne, the midnight
interview between the necromancer and the King, the assault on Lige,
the whole chain of breathless vicissitudes till the Wild Boar's grisly
head dangles from Le Balafr's gauntlet.  It is all Dumas at his
highest, but Dumas with an undercurrent of sound historical reflection.
Quentin himself is the best of Scott's young heroes, because he is
content to make him only young, chivalrous and heroic, and over-weights
him with no moralities.  With the Archers of the Guard he was of course
on his own ground, and Le Balafr is own brother to Dugald Dalgetty and
Corporal Raddlebanes and all the clan of stout men-at-arms.  As for the
others, they live by their deeds and at the worst are real enough for a
fairy-tale.  The dominant figure is the King, who like a great spider
spins webs which entangle half a continent.  We need not ask if Scott
has given us the true Louis XI; modern research has found more light
and less shadow in that strange career; but at any rate he has given us
a being in whom we must needs believe, one who must rank with King
James in _Nigel_ as the most careful and subtle of his portraits of the
great.  We accept Louis' treachery and superstition as we accept his
iron courage, and so masterful is his vitality that we forget his
crooked morals in admiration of his power.



{258}

IV

[Sidenote: 1824]

The year 1824 produced only one novel, _Redgauntlet_, which was
published in June and indifferently received; Scott had taken to heart
the warning against "over-cropping."  He was at work on a new edition
of his _Swift_ and on two tales of the Crusades, a subject which he had
long had in mind.  For the rest he was very busy with household
concerns.  His plantations were sufficiently advanced to need thinning
and he and Tom Purdie made the woods ring.  Tom had no liking for the
American axe with which his master had been presented by an admirer,
and which he declared was only fit to pare cheese.  In the autumn the
Abbotsford fabric was at last completed, and all that summer Scott's
mind was buried in upholstery.  Terry in London was his chief
correspondent, and from him came cabinets, tapestries, furniture,
pictures, and cheap lots of caricatures to paper the lavatories.
Gifts, too, flowed to the new house from all over the land, every kind
of "gabion," including a chair made from the beams of the house at
Robroyston where Wallace was betrayed, a hundred volumes of the
classics from the faithful Constable, and a set of Montfaucon in
scarlet morocco from the King.  One last addition had a melancholy
interest--a "louping-on stone" on which was carved the recumbent figure
of the dog Maida, whose long life ended in October, and which bore an
inscription by Scott in doubtful Latinity.

[Sidenote: 1824-25]

That autumn his second son Charles was entered at Brasenose, having
given up the nomination to the East India service offered by Lord
Bathurst, and Scott, with this educational venture in mind, delivered
himself of his views on the training of youth at the opening of the new
Edinburgh Academy.  They were eminently wise.  He pled for a
comprehensive view of the subject which would aim at a true discipline
of the mind.  He urged the study of Greek, about which he had once been
contemptuous.  It was not information that should be sought, but
education, the production not of smatterers but of scholars.  "The
observation of Dr Johnson was {259} well known, that in learning
Scotland resembled a besieged city, where every man had a mouthful, but
no man a bellyful.  It might be said in answer to this, that it was
better education should be divided into mouthfuls than served up at the
banquet of some favoured individual, while the great mass were left to
starve.  But, sturdy Scotsman as he was, he was not more attached to
Scotland than to truth."

[Sidenote: The Abbotsford house-warming]

Christmas saw a great house-warming at Abbotsford, to which came a clan
of friends and relatives, including his brother Thomas's widow and
daughters.  Basil Hall, the sailor and explorer, who was the son of a
Berwickshire laird, was a guest, and has described the elaborate
festivities.  The party roamed the hills when the weather was fine, and
at night, under the blaze of oil gas, the host read aloud from
"Christabel" and the ballads, or told them stories, and Adam Ferguson
sang his songs, and the New Year was ushered in with bumpers.  Then
came a spate in Tweed and stormy skies, which promised ill for the
great ball on the 9th of January, the first and last ball which Scott
saw in Abbotsford.  But the weather cleared and the whole countryside
flocked to the carnival; there were enough poor folk outside the door,
said Dalgleish the butler, to fill a decent-sized parish kirk.  The
occasion was more than a house-warming.  Adam Ferguson had a niece, a
Miss Jobson of Lochore in Fife, a young woman with a pretty fortune and
a pleasing appearance.  Her father was dead and she was in the care of
a somewhat difficult mother.  Sir Adam desired to make a match between
her and the young Walter, and Scott was not unwilling, for he liked the
girl, and her dowry of 60,000 would be a useful buttress to the family
which he had founded.  The Jobsons were at Gattonside during the summer
of 1824, and the wooing progressed happily.  At Christmas the affair
was settled, and at the Abbotsford ball Miss Jobson was the guest of
honour, though the engagement was not formally announced.

It was the last unclouded Christmas and Hogmanay in Scott's life, and
to his guests he seemed to be in his {260} sunniest mood.  The miracle
of miracles had happened, and success so far from spoiling him had made
him only more modest and considerate.  "He has been for many years,"
Basil Hall wrote, "the object of most acute and vigilant observation,
and as far as my own opportunities have gone, I must agree with the
general report--namely, that on no occasion has he ever betrayed the
smallest symptom of vanity or affectation, or insinuated a thought
bordering on presumption, or even a consciousness of his own
superiority in any respect whatsoever.  Some of his oldest and most
intimate friends assert that he has even of late years become more
simple and kindly than ever; that this attention to those about him,
and absence of all apparent concern about himself go on, if possible,
increasing with his fame and fortune.  Surely if Sir Walter Scott be
not a happy man, which he seems truly to be, he deserves to be so." ...
The trumpets still rang out bravely, but the hour for the muffled drums
was drawing near.


The completion of Abbotsford, his romance in stone and lime, marked the
end also of Scott's great era of creation.  In his last two books he
had returned to his native soil, and had not only shown the special
qualities of the early novels but had given promise of new and
unexpected powers, a promise which he was not fated to fulfil.  No
student of Scott can pass hastily over _St Ronan's Well_ and
_Redgauntlet_.

[Sidenote: _St Ronan's Well_]

Had _St Ronan's Well_ been the solitary book of a writer otherwise
unknown how should we have regarded it?  It is necessary to ask this
question, for its whole temper and purpose are different from Scott's
previous work.  To Lady Louisa Stuart it seemed that he was trying to
be as unlike himself as possible.  His own criticism was that the story
was contorted and unnatural, but we can agree with that verdict only so
far as Clara's tragedy is concerned.  The main feature of the book is
its deliberate rejection of the romantic.  He turned of purpose to a
petty by-road as a change from his old glittering highway, turned a
little nervously, for Miss {261} Edgeworth and Miss Austen had preceded
him.  It was a world of which he professed no special knowledge.  "His
habit of mind," he wrote, "had not led him much, of late years at
least, into its general and bustling scenes, nor had he mingled often
in the society which enables the observer to 'shoot folly as it flies.'
The consequence, perhaps, was that the characters wanted that force and
precision which can only be given by a writer who is familiarly
acquainted with his subject."  But this modesty is out of place.  The
romancer has become a realist, and the fribbles and bucks of the Well
are drawn with a cruel fidelity.  The key is kept low, and no glamour
is allowed to veil the ugliness.  Mowbray, for example, is painted
without one touch of the romantic colour which Scott commonly permits
himself in the case of the long-descended.  Into this comedy of
somewhat sordid manners enters tragedy, real tragedy, which is all the
grimmer because it is played out against a background of "lions and
lionesses with their several jackals, blue surtouts and bluer
stockings, fiddlers and dancers, painters and amateurs."  There is no
longer any craving for wedding-cake and marriage bells, and goodness
goes tragically unrewarded.  We have left the world where the fates are
the mechanical allies of virtue.  Had we been compelled to judge the
writer on this book alone, would we not have said that he was revealed
as one with a notable gift of observation and satire, one who had no
illusions about the frailty of mankind, a convinced anti-romantic?  And
we might have added that this writer, apart from one blemish, showed a
gift of ruthless tragic presentation not paralleled among his
contemporaries.

The keynote of the book is the irony of life, not its promise and
splendour.  Its obvious fault is that Scott weaves too intricate a web.
Lord Etherington's intrigues, for example, and the dependence of his
inheritance on marriage with a Mowbray are invented rather than
imagined.  Throughout there is too much minor theatrical business, like
Etherington's theft of the letter from the post-office, and the sudden
appearance of Hannah Irwin.  It was as if Scott, having raided the
country of the {262} circulating-library novelists, felt bound to
borrow some of their devices.  These, however, are minor blemishes; the
overmastering blunder is that which he made on James Ballantyne's
demand, the explanation of Clara's warped and feverish mind.  A mere
trick like a mock-marriage could not have wrought such havoc, and it
needed, too, a deeper wrong to justify Tyrrell's feelings towards his
half-brother.  As it stands, the reader is perplexed by the spectacle
of unmotived passions.

Admitting such defects, the action is developed in a series of
incidents adroitly conceived and most spiritedly recounted.  The
opening is admirable, where the homely decencies of the Cleikum Inn are
made the foil to the absurdities of the Well.  Scott never wrote
dialogue which revealed more accurately the characters engaged, or was
more germane to the development of the tale.  Instances are Touchwood's
encounter with the unwilling Jekyll, and Lady Penelope's visit to the
cottage where Hannah Irwin is lying.


"Have ye had no pennyworth for your charity?" she said in spiteful
scorn.  "Ye buy the very life o' us wi' your shillings and sixpences,
your groats and your boddles--ye hae gar'd the puir wretch speak till
she swarfs, and now ye stand as if ye never saw a woman in a dwam
before.  Let me till her wi' the dram--mony words mickle drought, ye
ken.----  Stand out o' my gate, my leddy, if sae be ye are a leddy;
there is little use of the like of you when there is death in the pot."


The great tragic scenes at the close--Mowbray's interview with his
sister, Touchwood's visit to Shaws Castle, the flight and death of
Clara--are done with a grim economy.  Irony reaches its height when the
gardener produces the weapon which came near to doing murder.

"Master--St Ronans--Master--I have fund--I have fund----"

"Have you found my sister?" exclaimed the brother with breathless
anxiety.

The old man did not answer till he came up and then, with his usual
slowness of delivery, he replied to his master's repeated inquiries.
"Na, I haena found Miss Clara, but I hae found something ye wad be wae
to lose--your braw hunting knife."


{263}

The protagonists are drawn on general lines but with a sure hand.
Tyrrell, Clara and Etherington are real within their limits, and
Mowbray is a faithful portrait of the loutish squireen.  Touchwood,
too, lives, with his fussy wisdom and kindly vanity.  The frequenters
of the Well are mainly conventional comedy figures--Lady Penelope,
Winterblossom, Sir Bingo Binks, Chatterly, MacTurk.  Exceptions are the
sullen beauty, Lady Binks, who is one of the rare successes among
Scott's gentlewomen, the excellent Mrs Blower, and--with something of
farce added--Dr Quackleben.  But it is with the Scots characters that
Scott has the surest touch--the lawyers Meiklewham and Bindloose, the
minister Josiah Cargill, and such lesser people as Trotting Nelly.
Above all, in Meg Dods he has drawn one of the best hostesses in
literature.  Of her fierce vitality there is no question; from the
moment when we first hear her voice uplifted against the sins of her
maids she is victoriously alive, a being so foursquare that the others
seem wisp-like by contrast.  She testifies against the foolish Vanity
Fair of the Well, but she has her own honest vanities, which are
ennobled by her warm heart and her complete mastery of life.  "My gude
name!--if onybody touched my gude name, I would neither fash counsel
nor commissary--I wad be doun amang them like a jer-falcon among
wild-geese."  Meg talks perhaps the best Scots in the novels, with that
rhythmical lilt which is the chief beauty of the vernacular speech.
Take this of the Well--


Down cam the hail tribe of wild geese, and settled by the Well, to dine
there out on the bare grund, like a wheen tinklers, and they had sangs
and tunes and healths, nae doubt, in praise of the fountain, as they
ca'd the Well, and of Lady Penelope Penfeather; and, lastly, they
behoved a' to take a solemn bumper of the Spring, which, as I'm tauld,
made unco havoc amang them or they wan hame....  And sae the jig was
begun after her leddyship's pipe, and mony a mad measure has been
danced sin' syne; for down cam masons and murgeon makers, and preachers
and player folk, and Episcopalians and Methodists, and fools and
fiddlers, and Papists and pie-bakers, and doctors and dragsters, forby
the shopfolk that sell trash {264} and trumpery at three prices--and so
up got the bonny new Well, and down fell the honest auld town of Saint
Ronan's, where blithe decent folk had been heartsome eneugh for mony a
day before ony o' them were born, or ony sic vapouring fancies kittled
in their cracked brains.


Or this of the "ancient brethren of the angle":--


They were up in the morning--had their parritch wi' maybe a thimbleful
of brandy, and then awa up into the hills, eat their bit cauld meat on
the heather, and came hame at e'en wi' the creel full of caller trouts,
and had them to their dinner, and their quiet cogue of ale, and their
drap punch, and were set singing their catches and glees, as they ca'd
them, till ten o'clock, and then to bed, wi' God bless ye--and what for
no?


_Redgauntlet_ stands to Scott's greatest novels much as _Antony and
Cleopatra_ stands to Shakespeare's four major tragedies.  It is not
quite one of them, but it contains things as marvellous as the best.
In it he returned to his store of actual memories, and, according to
Lockhart, it embodies more of his personal experience than all the
other novels put together.  He drew Saunders Fairford from his father,
Darsie Latimer from Will Clerk, and Alan partly from himself: and he
called upon his boyish recollections for the slow ebbing of the
Jacobite wave whose high-water mark he had described in _Waverley_.  In
the portraits of the Quaker family he paid pious tribute to the Quaker
strain in his own ancestry.  His landscape is very much that of _Guy
Mannering_, the ribbon of Solway which separated Scotland from England,
Solway with its perilous racing tides, its wild shore-folk, and the
smuggler craft that stole in in the darkness.  In the book we have the
sense of being always on a borderland--not only between two different
races, but between comfort and savagery and between an old era and a
new.  A common criticism is that the use of letters impedes the
narrative, and no doubt there is now and then a felt hiatus, when the
reader's mind has to switch back awkwardly to a different sphere.  This
constitutes the main artistic defect; the story is too much of a
mosaic, a series of fragments of which the pattern is not immediately
{265} recognized.  But the pattern is there, and the slow leisurely
narrative of the early letters is a skilful preparation for the
tumultuous speed of the later chapters.  Throughout there is a sense,
not of impending catastrophe as in _The Bride of Lammermoor_, but of
the iron compulsion of fate.  Redgauntlet himself lays down the book's
philosophy.  "The privilege of free action belongs to no mortal--we are
tied down by the fetters of duty--our mortal path is limited by the
regulations of honour--our most indifferent actions are but meshes of
the web of destiny by which we are all surrounded."

The story has not a single irrelevant episode, and the plot itself is
carefully framed to show in high relief the perversity as well as the
tragic nobility of Jacobitism, that last relic of the Middle Ages.
Against a background of misty seas and hidden glens the narrative
logically unfolds itself.  When Darsie meets the unknown horseman at
the salmon-spearing our expectation is kindled and our imagination
enchained.  Back in Edinburgh comedy is rampant in the lawsuit of Peter
Peebles, while high drama is a-foot on Solway sands, and presently the
comic and tragic chains are interlinked.  Scott never wrote a better
comedy scene than Alan's _dbut_ in the Parliament House, or his dinner
in Dumfries with Provost Crosbie and Pate-in-Peril, or his visit on
Saturday at e'en to the house of Mr Thomas Trumbull, or the interview
of the Quaker with Peter Peebles; or a scene more tremulous with
romance than when Wandering Willie sings to Darsie in his prison.  In
all the novels there is no episode more pathetic than that of Nanty
Ewart, or more charged with significant drama than the last great scene
on the beach.  It is high tragedy, when Redgauntlet watches the fall of
the Cause which has been entwined with his decaying house, but the
drama does not end there.  It ends, as all great drama must end, in
peace: in an anti-climax more moving than any climax, when a
stranger--a Hanoverian and a Campbell--speaks over the dead Jacobitism
a noble and chivalrous farewell, the epitaph of common sense.

{266}

The character-drawing, though limited in range, is at as high a level
of sustained excellence as in any of the novels except _Old Mortality_.
The protagonists, Alan and Darsie, Redgauntlet and Green Mantle, bow
now and then to false conventions, but they are well drawn in the main.
The elder Fairford could not be bettered, with his tenderness and his
fussiness, his legal acumen, and the dry humour exemplified in his tale
of Luckie Simpson's cow, which drank up a browst of ale, but, since it
drank it standing, was legally emptying a stirrup-cup, and so escaped
liability.  The Quaker, Joshua Geddes, is a subtle study in a rare type
of courage; Crosbie and Summertrees, the rascally Trumbull, Nanty
Ewart, are strong, three-dimensioned figures, Cristal Nixon is an
adequate villain, and Wandering Willie is a happy incomer from the
ancient vagabond Scotland.  As for Peter Peebles he is the best of
Scott's half-wits, a massive figure of realistic farce, not without
hints of tragedy.


It's very true that it is grandeur upon earth to hear ane's name
thundered out along the long-arched roof of the Outer House--'Poor
Peter Peebles against Plainstanes, _et per contra_'; a' the best
lawyers in the house fleeing like eagles to the prey ... to see the
reporters mending their pens to take down the debate--the Lords
themselves pooin' in their chairs, like folk sitting down to a gude
dinner, and crying on the clerks for parts and pendicles of the
process, who, puir bodies, can do little mair than cry on their
closet-keepers to help them.  To see a' this ... and to ken that
naething will be said or dune amang a' thae grand folk for maybe the
feck of three hours, saving what concerns you and your business---- Oh,
man, nae wonder that ye judge this to be earthly glory!  And yet,
neighbour, as I was saying, there be unco drawbacks.  I whiles think of
my bit house, where dinner and supper and breakfast used to come
without the crying for, just as if the fairies had brought it--and the
gude bed at e'en--and the needfu' penny in the pouch.  And then to see
a' ane's worldly substance capering in the air in a pair of
weigh-bauks, now up, now down, as the breath of judge and counsel
inclines it for pursuer or defender!  Truth, man, there are times I rue
having ever begun this plea work--though, maybe, when ye consider the
renown and credit I have by it, ye will hardly believe what I am saying.


{267}

The final scene of the book must rank among Scott's highest
achievements, for it is the very soul of romance, and yet it has an
epic dignity, for it is the end of a loyalty which had deeply moved
men's hearts.  One other episode is universally admitted as a
masterpiece, the interpolated story told by the blind violer.  It is a
piece which deserves careful study, for the proof-sheets show that
Scott took exceptional pains with it, and it is a revelation of what he
could do when he bent his mind critically upon his work.  It is told in
Scots, but the dialect is never exaggerated, and it is rather English
with a faint Scots colouring and many pithy Scots phrases.  The
language is extraordinarily apt and every detail is exactly
appropriate.  "Glen, nor dargle, nor mountain, nor cave could hide the
puir hill-folk when Redgauntlet was out with bugle and bloodhound after
them, as if they had been sae mony deer."--"Aye, as Sir Robert girned
wi' pain, the jackanapes girned too, like a sheep's head between a pair
of tangs--an ill-faur'd, fearsome couple they were."--"Are ye come
light-handed, ye son of a toom whistle?"--"A tune my gudesire learned
from a warlock."--"It's ill-speaking between a fou man and a
fasting."--"There was a deep morning fog on grass and gravestone around
him and his horse was feeding quietly beside the minister's twa
cows."--And there is the famous description of the company around the
tavern-board in Hell:--


There was the fierce Middleton and the dissolute Rothes, and the crafty
Lauderdale; and Dalzell, with his bald head and a beard to his girdle;
and Earlshall with Cameron's blude on his hand; and wild Bonshaw that
tied blessed Mr Cargill's limbs till the blude sprang; and Dumbarton
Douglas, the twice-turned traitor baith to country and King.  There was
the Bluidy Advocate MacKenzie, who, for his worldly wit and wisdom, had
been to the rest as a god.  And there was Claverhouse, as beautiful as
when he lived, with his long, dark curled locks streaming down over his
laced buff coat, and his left hand always on his right spule-blade to
hide the wound that the silver bullet had made.  He sat apart from them
all, and looked at them with a melancholy, haughty countenance; while
the rest hallooed and sang, and laughed till the room {268} rang.  But
their smiles were fearfully contorted from time to time, and their
laughter passed into such wild sounds as made my gudesire's very nails
go blue, and chilled the marrow in his banes.


[Sidenote: Wandering Willie's Tale]

"Wandering Willie's Tale" is one of the greatest of the world's short
stories by whatever test it be tried.  Its verbal style is without a
flaw, its structure is perfect, and it produces that intense impression
of reality imaginatively transmuted which is the triumph of literary
art.  One point is worth noting, for it shows Scott's unfailing insight
into human nature.  The narrator, in telling of Steenie's interview
with the old Sir Robert, allows time for the latter to write a receipt
before death took him.  "He (Steenie) ventured back into the parlour
... He forgot baith siller and receipt, and down stairs he banged." But
when Steenie meets Sir Robert's heir he tells a different story.  "Nae
sooner had I set down the siller, and just as his honour, Sir Robert
that's gane, drew it till him to count it, and write me a receipt, he
was ta'en wi' the pains that removed him."  Now the supernatural
explanation depends on the receipt being got from a dead man in the
wood of Pitmurkie and signed that very night, which is consistent with
the second story, whereas the first leaves room for the receipt being
merely lost.  Scott knew so profoundly the average man and his
incapacity for exact evidence--compare the gossip in the ale-house of
Kippletringan in _Guy Mannering_--that he makes Wandering Willie in
telling the tale give two different versions of the crucial
incident--one which is compatible with a prosaic explanation, and a
second in flat contradiction and full of excited detail, which
transports the whole affair into the realm of the occult.  It is an
astonishing achievement--to write a tale of _diablerie_ which is
overwhelming in its effect, and at the same time incidentally and most
artfully to provide its refutation.



{269}

V

[Sidenote: 1825]

[Sidenote: Walter's marriage]

On the 3rd of February, 1825, the young Walter was married in
Edinburgh.  Scott settled Abbotsford upon him that Border acres might
match the Jobson money-bags, and for 3500 purchased for him a
captain's commission in the Hussars.  He was a most tender and
indulgent father-in-law, as his letters to the bride show, and the
marriage was all that he could desire.  But it had been an expensive
affair, and for the moment he felt, as he said, like his "namesake in
the Crusades, Walter the Penniless."  He had begun a tale of these same
Crusades which was not going well, for the great effort of
_Redgauntlet_ seems to have impoverished his imagination.  All that
arid spring, when, because of the drought, he found it difficult to let
his grass parks, his mind was much exercised by ways and means.  "I
must look for some months," he wrote, "to be put to every corner of my
saddle."  His friend Terry asked his help in his proposed lease of a
London theatre, and Scott guaranteed him to the extent of 1250.  But
he wrote him a sagacious letter, warning him against the danger of
embarking on an enterprise without a backing of cash.  He pointed out
that, however much the venture might succeed, receipts would lag behind
expenditure.  "The best business is ruined when it becomes pinched for
money and gets into the circle of discounting bills, and buying
necessary articles at high prices and of inferior quality for the sake
of long credit....  Besides the immense expense of renewals, that mode
of raising money is always liable to some sudden check which throws you
on your back at once."  He therefore urged him to get some monied man
behind him with a substantial interest in the speculation.[23]

This advice must have been prompted by reflections on his own position.
He realized that the floating debt of the Ballantyne firm was mounting
rapidly, largely owing to his own drawings.  He was not happy about
{270} the whole business of accommodation bills, and in _St Ronan's
Well_ had expressed his doubts.


"There is maybe an accommodation bill discounted now and then, Mr
Touchwood; but men must have accommodation, or the world would stand
still--accommodation is the grease that makes the wheels go."

"Ay, makes them go down hill to the devil," answered Touchwood, "I left
you bothered about one Air bank, but the whole country is an Air bank
now, I think--and who is to pay the piper?"


Constable, too, had his moments of disquiet.  In August 1823 he pointed
out to Scott that the accommodation he had granted to the Ballantyne
firm was as high as 20,000 and asked that it should be reduced to a
more prudent figure, such as 8000.  Scott agreed, but it would appear
that any reduction effected was only temporary.[24]  There had also
been a proposal to get an accountant to examine the whole state of
affairs between the two firms, but to this Scott seems to have
objected.[25] In the spring of 1825, when Scott reflected on his
situation, he must have been aware that it had its perils.  The
Ballantyne debt was now in the neighbourhood of 40,000 and he himself
had also drawn direct on Constable for large advances.  Abbotsford, to
be sure, was completed, and his expensive heir was finally settled in
life, but there were heavy arrears to be paid off before he could clear
his feet.  In 1814 he had been in a position of far less difficulty and
had taken vigorous action; why in 1825 did he let matters drift--nay,
was even toying with the idea of purchasing Faldonside for a sum not
far short of the Ballantyne debt?[26]  The answer seems to be that he
felt that in two respects his status was very different from that of
eleven years before.  In the first place, he had won an immense public
and could earn at will immense sums.  _The Betrothed_ might be
labouring heavily, but he had other craft to launch.  In the second
place he had behind him the monied backer whom he had advised Terry to
find, a man of infinite {271} resources who was deeply pledged to his
interests.  That man was Constable.

[Sidenote: Constable's Miscellany]

And Constable's behaviour was calculated to allay Scott's fears.  The
great publisher had returned from the south, not in better health but
apparently in the best of spirits.  For some time he had been fertile
in his proposals to Scott--a book on popular superstitions, a
collection of the English poets, an edition of Shakespeare--editorial
schemes to fill up the novelist's leisure and prevent too frequent
romances from glutting the market.  But now he had ampler visions.  He
realized that the spread of the popular taste for reading must be
accompanied by publications at a popular price.  At Abbotsford in May
he startled Scott and James Ballantyne by declaring in his impressive
way that printing and bookselling were only in their infancy, and he
had a mass of figures to prove his case.  He proposed a new Miscellany,
a volume every month, not in boards but in cloth, to be sold at some
price like half a crown or three shillings.  "If I live for
half-a-dozen years," he said, "I'll make it as impossible that there
should not be a good library in every decent house in Britain as that
the shepherd's ingle-neuk should want the saut-poke!  Ay, and what's
that?  Why should the ingle-neuk itself want a shelf for the novels?
... I have hitherto been thinking only of the wax lights, but before
I'm a twelve-month older I shall have my hand on the tallow."  Scott
exclaimed that he was "the grand Napoleon of the realms of print."  "If
you outlive me," said Constable, "I bespeak that line for my tombstone."

It was a bold conception, and a sound, as Scott had the wit to see.  He
gladly consented to help this Buonaparte to fight his Marengo.  The
novels should take their place in the new Miscellany, but there must be
other provender than fiction.  Scott fired at the idea; to turn his
hand to popular history had long been in his mind, and he agreed that
he would undertake a life of Napoleon.[27] So when _The Betrothed_ was
published in the following {272} month there was an announcement in the
introduction which prepared the world for the great venture.  That
introduction was a pleasant little account of a board meeting of the
author of _Waverley_ and some of his principal characters, done in the
style of a company report.  It concluded thus:--


"The world and you, gentlemen, may think what you please," said the
Chairman, elevating his voice, "but I intend to write the most
wonderful book which the world ever read--a book in which every
incident shall be incredible, yet strictly true--a work recalling
recollections with which the ears of this generation once tingled, and
which shall be read by our children with an admiration approaching to
incredulity.  Such shall be a Life of Napoleon Buonaparte by the Author
of Waverley."


Scott flung himself joyfully into the study of the man who had
enchained his imagination and dominated the world of his youth.  He was
not forgetful of the dangers of writing contemporary history, where, as
Raleigh said, if a man follow truth too closely it may haply strike out
his teeth, but his purpose was only a sketch on broad lines, to fill
four of the duodecimo volumes of the proposed Miscellany.  He wrote to
his friends for letters and information and to foreign capitals for
literature, and presently his little library in Castle Street became
like an antiquarian book store.  One item was no less than a hundred
folio volumes of the _Moniteur_.  This was work which did not require
that he should wait for inspiration, and in which his tireless industry
could have full play.  The preliminary sketch of the French Revolution
grew fast, and soon it became clear to Constable that it had outrun the
scale which he had planned.  It must be issued as a substantive work,
and the Miscellany must wait.

[Sidenote: _The Talisman_]

Meantime the "Tales of the Crusaders" had been published, _The
Betrothed_ and _The Talisman_.  Of the first Scott in the writing
thought so ill--James Ballantyne heartily assenting--that he wanted to
burn it.  As it was, he turned to the second, and only completed _The
Betrothed_ because his advisers thought that _The {273} Talisman_ would
carry it off.  It is an indubitable failure, and the reason is plain.
The theme--the intricate cross-currents in love made inevitable by the
Crusades--might have made a good novel, but the interest would have
lain chiefly in its psychology.  Scott's strength did not lie in
reading the mind of the remote past but in chronicling its deeds; so he
condemned himself to a task outside his interest and beyond his powers.
The moral vicissitudes of Eveline and Damian are perfunctorily studied,
and there is no swift tale of adventure to atone for their flatness.
There was a stirring romance somewhere in the doings of Vidal, but he
does not tell it.  The siege of the Garde Doloureux, the uncanniness of
the Red Finger, and the carrying-off of Eveline do not move us, for the
writer's heart is not in them.  The best scene is where the old
Constable tests Damian's honour in the dungeon, but that is spoiled by
a hasty and most impotent conclusion.  Damian is too much the chronic
invalid to be a satisfactory lover, and the villains are too shadowy to
convince.  Only the Fleming, Wilkin Flammock, has the semblance of
life, for he is the type of homespun hero with whom Scott never failed.

It is otherwise with _The Talisman_.  That novel is all book-work, for
Scott knew nothing of the East, and not very much of the inner soul of
the Crusades.  But his imagination fired at the thought of honest
English and Scots warriors in the unfamiliar desert, and especially at
the tradition of high chivalry attached to the figures of Richard and
Saladin.  There is much in the tale that is theatrical.  The landscape,
for example, is so much pasteboard scenery, the secret chapel at
Engaddi smacks of the _Mysteries of Udolpho_, the two dwarfs are no
better than Fenella, and the hermit Theodorick is a Gothick
monstrosity.  But he had devised an excellent plot, a romantic love
affair with a background of high politics, and in the latter he showed
his old power of giving public matters the interest of tense drama.
There is nothing subtle in the delineation of Richard or Saladin or Sir
Kenneth of Scotland or the jealous crusading chiefs, but each portrait
is adequate for this kind of {274} tale.  The best figure is De Vaux,
for Tom of the Gills, that "commodity of old iron and Cumberland
flint," was a Borderer, and with him Scott was on his native soil.  The
book opens brilliantly with the fight beside the desert well, and a
dozen scenes stick in the memory--the strife about the banner on St
George's Mount.  Kenneth's vigil and temptation, above all the attempt
on Richard's life by the Assassin of Lebanon, which is a masterpiece of
taut, economical narrative.  The story "goes twangingly" to its close,
and the full-throated speech of the characters is in the right manner.
Sir Kenneth defies Richard:--"Now, by the Cross, on which I place my
hopes, her name shall be the last word in my mouth, her image the last
thought in my mind.  Try thy boasted strength on this bare brow, and
see if thou canst prevent my purpose."  Richard's speech to the
wavering princes is eloquence of the true heroic brand.  The brave stir
of the book and its sustained note of ringing gallantry make it more
than a mere skilfully constructed pageant, and give it something of the
reality of poetry.

[Sidenote: Work on _Napoleon_]

_Napoleon_ being firmly on the stocks, Scott permitted himself a
holiday.  In July, accompanied by Lockhart and his daughter Anne, he
crossed to Ireland to see his elder son, who was stationed at Dublin.
There he was entertained by all the celebrities, saw all the sights,
and had the pleasure of visiting Maria Edgeworth at her home.  He
returned by Holyhead, called on the ladies of Llangollen, at Windermere
met Canning (who had promised to visit Abbotsford that year but found
that he could not find time to cross the Border) and was entertained to
a regatta on the lake, saw Wordsworth at Mount Rydal, and spent two
days at Lowther Castle.  He reached home in the beginning of September,
refreshed by his two months of idleness, and encouraged by the warm
popular reception which he had met with everywhere on his travels.

That autumn at Abbotsford he sat tight at his desk.  _Napoleon_ proved
to be a herculean labour, for the materials were voluminous, and Scott
could not enjoy, {275} as he had enjoyed in the case of the novels, the
task of swift and easy creation.  He was as much a slave of the pen now
as he had been when he copied legal documents in his father's office.
Lockhart has described him thus caught in the toils:--


He read and noted and indexed with the pertinacity of some pale
compiler in the British Museum; but rose from such employment, not
radiant and buoyant, as after he had been feasting himself among the
teeming harvests of Fancy, but with an aching brow, and eyes in which
the dimness of years had begun to plant some specks before they were
subjected again to that straining over small print and difficult
manuscript which had, no doubt, been familiar to them in the early time
when (in Shortreed's phrase) "he was making himself." ... It now often
made me sorry to catch a glimpse of him, stooping and poring with his
spectacles amidst piles of authorities, a little note-book ready in his
left hand, that had always used to be at liberty for patting Maida.[28]


One or two visitors relieved the monotony of his work--Tom Moore, whose
warbling amused him, and who in turn was deeply impressed by Scott's
happy relations with his neighbours, and that formidable lady, who had
been Harriet Mellon the actress, was now the widow of Mr Coutts the
banker, and was about to become Duchess of St Albans.  Mrs Coutts was a
sort of Mrs Blower _in excelsis_, a kind-hearted preposterous woman,
and Scott exerted himself to see that her feelings were not hurt by his
more fastidious guests.

It was a somewhat shadowed autumn.  Scott felt the burden of his new
historical venture, and he confessed to Moore that he found his
imagination in his novels beginning to flag.  The pleasant Abbotsford
circle was about to break up, for the Lockharts were leaving Scotland.
Lockhart, after having failed to become Sheriff of Sutherland, had
accepted Murray's offer to be editor of the _Quarterly_ and adviser in
connexion with a projected newspaper, on behalf of which young Mr
Disraeli made a visit to Scott that autumn.[29]  One reason for his
acceptance was the health of Hugh Little John, who, it seemed, could
not survive another northern {276} winter.  It was a heavy blow to
Scott.  He agreed that Lockhart should go to London, though he was not
altogether happy about his future there, fearing that he might "drop
into the gown and slipper garb of life."  But he hated change, he hated
to think that now there would be a cold hearth at Chiefswood, and that
he would no longer see daily the frail little grandson who was the joy
and anxiety of his life.

Many "auld sangs" seemed to be coming to an end, and that year was the
last for Scott of the Abbotsford Hunt.  He tried to jump the
prehistoric trench called the Catrail, but Sibyl Grey came down with
him and spoiled for good his nerve for horsemanship.  Twenty-one years
before he had ridden with Mungo Park, who was on the eve of setting out
on the African journey from which he never returned.  Park's horse
stumbled, and when Scott observed that it was a bad omen he got the
answer: "Freits[30] follow them that fear them."  As he returned to
Edinburgh that autumn, a little burdened and saddened, he may have
remembered that day on the Yarrow hills, and reflected that there were
some omens which could not be averted by courage.



[1] Lockhart, V.  98.

[2] One copy of this was printed and is now in the National Library of
Scotland.

[3] See the undated letter of C. K. Sharpe in _A. Constable_, II.  348.

[4] Lang, I.  243.

[5] _Fam. Letters_, II.  114.

[6] _A. Constable_, III.  162: Cockburn, _Mem._, 381-3.

[7] _Ballantyne Humbug_, 66-69.

[8] _Refutation_, 28.

[9] See letter to Constable in _A. Constable_, III.  282.

[10] In 1826 Gibson-Craig estimated that Scott had spent altogether on
his estate 76,000.  See article "Scott" in the _D.N.B_.

[11] Skene, 146.

[12] See _A. Constable_, III, _passim_.

[13] The terms for _Kenilworth_ were adopted for all the later novels.
Constable printed 12,000 copies, for which he put up 1600 and the
Ballantynes 400 each, the profits being divided proportionately.
Scott received 4500 for the edition and retained the copyright.  The
published price was 1, 10s. and the trade bought at 1.

[14] _A. Constable_, III.  239.

[15] _Memories and Portraits_, 270.

[16] _A. Constable_, III.  218.

[17] Not in 1823, as Lockhart seems to have thought.  Scott attended
one dinner in 1820, and three in 1821--his only appearances.  _Annals
of The Club_ (1914.)

[18] Lockhart, V.  264.

[19] In the same way Dickens, at Lytton's instance, gave a stock ending
to _Great Expectations_.

[20] _The Ballantyne Press and its Founders_ (1909), 78.

[21] For example, in Chapter XXXIII he describes a fat man as an
"ominous specimen of pinguitude."

[22] Goethe's comment was: "To go on making over again and expanding
the once finished thing, as for example Walter Scott has done with my
Mignon, whom, along with her other attributes, he makes into a
deaf-mute--that kind of alteration I cannot praise."

[23] Lockhart, VI.  20-26.

[24] _A. Constable_, III.  275-288.

[25] Ibid., 472-4.

[26] _Fam. Letters_, II.  260, 347.

[27] Lockhart (VI.  32) says that the proposal came from Scott, but
there is evidence that the conception was Constable's.  See _A.
Constable_, III.  310-12.

[28] V.  88-9.

[29] _Life of Disraeli_, I.  62-71: Lang, I.  chap. xii.

[30] Omens.




{277}

CHAPTER X

THE DARK DAYS

(1825-1826)

On his return to Edinburgh in November 1825 Scott began to keep a
journal.  He had often regretted his negligence in this respect, as he
felt his memory growing weaker, and the sight of some volumes of
Byron's notes suggested that it was not too late to begin a
memorandum-book "by throwing aside all pretence to regularity and
order, and marking down events just as they occurred to recollection."
After a fortnight's trial he found that the thing worked well, for it
gave him, when he grew sick of a task, a change of work which quieted
his conscience.  "Never a being, from my infancy up, hated task-work as
I hate it....  Propose to me to do one thing, and it is inconceivable
the desire I have to do something else....  Now, if I expend such
concentric movements on this journal, it will be turning this wretched
propensity to some account."  Clearly he intended that no contemporary
eye should see it, but he must have contemplated its ultimate
publication, for he was a stout believer in keeping records.  There may
have been another reason for the experiment.  In Erskine he had lost
his closest friend, and a journal would be an alternative to such a
confidant, enabling him to clarify his thoughts and relieve his moods
in times which promised a heavy crop of perplexities.

It is fortunate that we possess such a document for the most difficult
years of Scott's life.  Its biographical worth is inestimable, and not
less high is its quality as literature.  For one thing it is one of the
most complete expressions of a human soul that we possess, as complete
{278} as Swift's _Journal to Stella_, but without its
self-consciousness.  There is no reticence and no posturing, because he
is speaking to his own soul; he gives us that very thing in which
Hazlitt declared him lacking, "what the heart whispers to itself in
secret."  The greatest figure he ever drew is in the _Journal_, and it
is the man Walter Scott.  His style, too, is purged of all dross.  It
is English of no school and of no period, a speech as universal as that
of St John's Gospel.  "Whatever else of Scott's may lose its colour
with time," Professor Elton has written, "the _Journal_ cannot do so,
with its accurate, unexaggerated language of pain."  Here are qualities
which are found only at long intervals in the romances; a tenderness
which keeps watch over man's mortality and neither quails nor
complains, a strange wistfulness, as if a strong and self-contained
soul had at last found utterance.



I

[Sidenote: Hurst and Robinson]

In November, before he left Abbotsford, life had been growing anxious.
With his keen interest in public affairs he could not be blind to the
perilous state of the money-market.  Earlier in the year there had been
an orgy of speculation, and the new-formed companies, many of them
bubble, showed a subscribed capital of some two hundred million pounds.
The tide had turned before midsummer, when prices began to fall, and
the amount of gold in the Bank of England was reduced by export to a
third of what it had been in January.  The stock-jobbing mania had
extended to the book trade, and eminent publishers had been gambling in
South American mining shares, and railways, and gas companies, while
Constable's London correspondents, Hurst and Robinson, were said to
have ventured one hundred thousand pounds in hops.  Early in October
Constable went to London, and found that firm in a troublesome temper.
They had opposed the inclusion of the Waverley novels in the new
Miscellany on the ground that they had still large quantities of the
existing editions--indeed {279} they had been very critical of the
whole scheme.  Moreover, they had been drawing on him for accommodation
to an alarming degree.  London was nervous and unsettled.  The bankers
were restricting credit, and there were rumours of many firms on the
edge of bankruptcy.  Constable realized that at all costs Hurst and
Robinson must be supported, and he was a little comforted by the fact
that the actual sale of books was better than ever.  Both he and his
partner Cadell were convinced that their very existence depended on the
London house,[1] and every scrap of credit he could raise was put at
their disposal.  He returned to Scotland early in November, worn out
with his labours and anxieties, and collapsed into bed.

Meantime Lockhart, who was in London over the business of the
_Quarterly_, heard disquieting tales, some of them connected with Hurst
and Robinson, which he transmitted to Scott.  These tales meant more to
Scott than to his son-in-law, for he knew how deeply Constable was
committed to the London firm, and how deeply he himself was committed
to Constable.  Lockhart was back in Chiefswood at the end of October,
and there he had a letter from a London lawyer which mentioned a report
that Constable's bankers had closed his account--"thrown up his book"
as the phrase ran.  After dinner he rode over to Abbotsford to give the
news to Scott, who received it with equanimity.  But next morning Scott
turned up to breakfast at Chiefswood, and explained that he had been so
perturbed by the story that he had driven by night to Polton to see
Constable, and had got from him an unqualified denial.  This incident
first opened Lockhart's eyes to the fact that Constable's downfall
might involve his father-in-law in heavier losses than the non-payment
of some sums due on the novels.  Later Lockhart had further news to
give him, gossip about the precarious condition of Hurst and Robinson
and their speculation in hops, which he reported in all innocence, not
realizing its gravity in Scott's eyes.  On 18th November Scott looked
in on Cadell on his way to {280} the Court, and mentioned what he had
heard.  He seems, also, to have expressed surprise at Constable's
dallying at Polton when things in London were so critical.  Cadell
tried to reassure him, and wrote at once to Constable, whose gout was
not improved by the letter.  That evening Cadell called in Castle
Street with emphatic denials from Constable, and verified his suspicion
that the informant was Lockhart.[2]

Four days later Scott's fears were again aroused.  "Here is a matter
for a May morning, but much fitter for a November one"--this is the
first hint which the _Journal_ gives of the approaching disaster.  He
comforted himself by reflecting that he had "enough to pay forty
shillings in the pound, taking matters at their very worst,"[3]--an
optimism which may be explained by his ignorance of the ultimate
cross-ranking of the accommodation bills.  He had a meeting that day
with Constable, who arrived "lame as a duck upon his legs, but his
heart and courage as firm as a rock."  Constable had been leading a
harassed life and had had little sleep for days, for the embarrassments
of Hurst and Robinson were now beyond question.  But he was clear that
they must be supported, and Scott agreed to join him in borrowing 5000
for the purpose.  The latter was solemnized rather than alarmed, and
resolved then and there to begin a course of rigid economies--no more
building, no more purchase of land, books, or "gabions" for the
present, and the clearing off of encumbrances with the proceeds of the
year's labour.  On 5th December he said good-bye to the Lockharts, and
turned straightway to his description of "that worshipful triumvirate,
Danton, Robespierre and Marat."  His health was fairly good, apart from
heart palpitations and fits of lassitude, {281} and, all things
considered, his spirits were equable.  He found that he could still
enjoy a walk home from the Court in wild weather.  "No man that ever
stepped on heather has less dread than I of catch-cold; and I seem to
regain in buffeting with the wind a little of the high spirits with
which, in younger days, I used to enjoy a Tam-o'-Shanter ride through
darkness, wind and rain."  A little ominously he counts his mercies:--


I have much to comfort me in the present aspect of my family.  My
eldest son, independent in fortune, united to an affectionate wife--and
of good hopes in his profession; my second, with a good deal of talent,
and in the way, I think, of cultivating it to good purpose; Anne, an
honest, downright good Scots lass, in whom I could only wish to correct
a spirit of satire; and Lockhart is Lockhart, to whom I can most
willingly confide the happiness of the daughter who chose him....  My
dear wife, the partner of my cares and successes, is, I fear, frail in
health--though I trust and pray she may see me out.  Indeed, if this
troublesome complaint goes on, it bodes no long existence....
Good-night Sir Walter about sixty.  I care not, if I leave my name
unstained and my family properly settled.  _Sat est vixisse_.[4]


[Sidenote: The rumours thicken]

As the year drew to its close the tidings from the south grew worse.
In mid-December a great private bank stopped payment, and for a week
panic reigned in the city of London.  On 14th December Scott notes that
he intended to borrow 10,000 on the security of Abbotsford, which his
son's marriage settlement entitled him to do.  At the worst he thought
that he would be left with a clear fortune of nearly 50,000....  On
the 18th he heard from James Ballantyne that Hurst and Robinson were
down and that the end had come, and at last he realized his true
position.  His first thoughts were for those who had made their home
under his shadow:--"This news will make sad hearts at Darnick and in
the cottages of Abbotsford"; for his dogs--"poor things, I must get
them kind masters;" for Willie Laidlaw and Tom Purdie and James
Ballantyne.  His children would not suffer, since they were provided
for.  His wife, sick and suffering, was a little impatient with his
fortitude, {282} and blamed him for his past improvidence, but Anne was
stoical.  For himself "the feast of fancy" was over.  "I can no longer
have the delight of waking in the morning with bright ideas in my mind,
hasten to commit them to paper, and count them monthly as the means of
planting such groves and purchasing such wastes." ... But the alarm was
premature.  In the evening came Cadell to say that Hurst and Robinson
still stood, and next morning Ballantyne and Constable confirmed the
glad tidings.  "I love the virtues of rough and round men," Scott
wrote--a surprising tribute to the politic Mr Cadell.  He flung himself
with a redoubled energy on Napoleon, and scribbled "Bonnie Dundee" one
evening before dinner.  "Can't say what made me take a frisk so
uncommon of late years as to write verses of free-will.  I suppose the
same impulse which makes birds sing when the storm seems blown over."

[Sidenote: 1825-26]

But the sky was not clear, and that Christmas at Abbotsford was a
shadowed as well as a lonely one.  Scott had only Anne and his ailing
wife for company in the big new house.  He executed the mortgage for
10,000 and fretted because Constable remained obstinately at Polton,
though the news from London was grave, and Hurst and Robinson were
clearly still in danger.  His own health was bad, for the day after
Christmas he had an attack of kidney trouble, and closed the year on a
diet of calomel.  A visit of the Skenes did something to cheer him, and
he forced himself to get on with his novel _Woodstock_, in which his
interest had flagged.  "I must take my own way, and write myself into
good humour with my task.  It is only when I dally with what I am
about, look back and aside, instead of keeping my eyes straight
forward, that I feel these cold sinkings of the heart."  He had such a
sinking on 14th January, when he had a mysterious letter from Constable
saying that he had gone post to London, where Scott believed him to
have been for a fortnight.  "It strikes me to be that sort of letter
which I have seen men write when they are desirous that their {283}
disagreeable intelligence should be rather apprehended than avowed."

[Sidenote: 1826]

On the 16th he returned to Edinburgh in a black frost.  "Came through
cold roads to as cold news," says the _Journal_.  The news was that
Hurst and Robinson had dishonoured a bill of Constable's, thereby
making bankruptcy certain.  It would appear that Scott at first did not
grasp its full meaning.  He dined with Skene, said nothing about the
news, and seemed to be in good spirits.  But next morning James
Ballantyne made the situation clear to him, and when Skene arrived very
early he was greeted with, "My friend, give me a shake of your
hand--mine is that of a beggar."[5]



II

[Sidenote: Disaster]

The details of the disaster will always be obscure, but the chief facts
are plain.  The sudden crack had come which split the whole complex
fabric of credit.  The banks had lent money in the fat years without
any strict investigation, but they were in a privileged position, since
they ranked before other creditors, and the crazy system of
counter-bills doubled their security for each advance.  There had been
the same traffic in bills and counter-bills between Constable and Hurst
and Robinson as between the former and James Ballantyne.  When the
London firm got into difficulties they discounted every scrap of
Constable's paper, and he did the same with the Ballantyne bills.  When
Hurst and Robinson found themselves unable to meet their liabilities,
their creditors had recourse to Constable, and Constable to Ballantyne,
and so their fall brought down the whole connexion.  The floating debt
of the Ballantyne firm had increased to some 46,000--largely through
accommodation to Scott, though part was no doubt due to James
Ballantyne's own considerable drawings,[6] and to the fact that the
accounts were carelessly kept and the books never balanced.  Much of
this sum was doubled {284} by the granting to Constable of
counter-bills.  Constable owed Scott a large amount for recently
purchased copyrights, and Scott in turn owed Constable for advances
made on account of future literary work.  The consequence was that the
Ballantyne liability--which was Scott's--amounted to about 130,000,
most of it due on bills held by the banks, though a few were in the
hands of private traders and speculators.  There was, of course, a
large counter-claim on Constable--four years later it was estimated at
64,000[7]--but not much of this could be reckoned among the assets.
Hurst and Robinson paid 1s. 3d. in the pound on their debts of
300,000; Constable 2s. 9d. on his total of 256,000; Ballantyne in the
end paid every penny.

In that doleful January, Constable, gouty, dropsical and half-crazed
with anxiety, made a desperate fight of it.  He tried to get Lockhart
to go with him to the Bank of England to raise anything up to 200,000
on his copyrights; he would have had Scott borrow 20,000 in Edinburgh
and send it to him forthwith; his devices were many, and all of a
bottomless futility.  Thomas Constable was of opinion that his father
might have been saved if these proposals had been listened to,[8] but
it is hard to see how; any fresh loan would have gone into the pit
which had already received the proceeds of the Abbotsford mortgage.  It
was these wild shifts, together with the futile Abbotsford borrowing,
which broke Scott's trust in Constable.  The gallant old gambler did
not give up hope till the last.  As late as 18th January he wrote to
Cadell in a strain of high confidence.[9]

But for Scott the time for illusion was gone.  He saw that, whatever
Hurst and Robinson and Constable might ultimately pay, the Ballantyne
firm was down and he himself insolvent.  He was advised to make a trust
of his property, and he was determined with his own hand to pay off
every penny of debt.  He turned straightway to work, and in that dark
week he wrote a chapter of _Woodstock_ every day.  At the moment he had
no hope of saving Abbotsford or anything else from the wreck.  {285}
"Naked we entered the world," he wrote in the _Journal_, "and naked we
leave it--blessed be the name of the Lord!"  But the very magnitude of
the disaster tightened his courage.  Six days after he knew the worst
he wrote:--


I feel neither dishonoured nor broken....  I have walked my last on the
domains I have planted--sate my last in the halls I have built.  But
death would have taken them from me if misfortune had spared them.  My
poor people whom I loved so well!  There is just another die to turn up
against, me in this run of ill-luck; _i.e._ if I should break my magic
wand in the fall from this elephant, and lose my popularity with my
fortune.  Then _Woodstock_ and _Bony_ may both go to the paper-maker,
and I may take to smoking cigars and drinking grog, or turn devotee,
and intoxicate the brains another way.  In prospect of absolute ruin, I
wonder if they would let me leave the Court of Session.  I would like,
methinks, to go abroad,

  "And lay my bones far from the Tweed."

But I find my eyes moistening, and that will not do.  I will not yield
without a fight for it.  It is odd, when I set myself to write
_doggedly_, as Dr Johnson would say, I am exactly the same man that I
ever was, neither low-spirited nor distrait.  In prosperous times I
have sometimes felt my fancy and power of language flag, but adversity
is to me at least a tonic and bracer; the fountain is awakened from its
inward recesses, as if the spirit of affliction had troubled it in his
passage.[10]


[Sidenote: His friends]

He slept badly these days, for he was little out of doors.  On 24th
January he went back to the Court for the first time since the tragedy,
feeling "like the man with the large nose," that everybody was talking
about him.  Offers of help flowed in from the most diverse quarters.
Old friends like Sir William Forbes proffered aid, and one unknown
admirer was prepared to put up 30,000; his servants desired to forgo
their wages, and an old music-master tendered his savings; his
daughter-in-law wanted to sell out her holding in the funds;[11] the
universal feeling was that which Lord Dudley expressed to Morritt:
"Good God, let every man to whom he has given months of delight give
him {286} a sixpence, and he will rise to-morrow morning richer than
Rothschild."  There was even a proposal that the Government should do
something.  To all this spontaneous friendliness Scott had one answer.
He was annoyed when the newspapers suggested a subscription, "calling
upon men and gods to assist a popular author who, having choused the
public of many thousands, had not the sense to keep wealth when he had
it."  He would have no charity, nor would he take the easy road of
bankruptcy.  The Ballantyne firm might have obtained a speedy
discharge; the creditors would have had a right to the life-rent and to
the reversionary interest of Abbotsford, but the future printing
profits and Scott's future literary earnings would have been his own.
Such would have been the natural course for a business man to follow,
but Scott viewed it differently, for he saw a principle involved.  No
man should lose by him if it lay in his power to prevent it; otherwise
in a court of honour he would deserve to lose his spurs.  "No, if they
permit me, I will be their vassal for life, and dig in the mine of my
imagination to find diamonds (or what they sell for such) to make good
my engagements, not to enrich myself.  And this from no reluctance to
allow myself to be called the Insolvent, which I probably am, but
because I will not put out of the power of my creditors the resources,
mental or literary, which yet remain to me."[12]

He soon recovered a measure of serenity.  On 26th January he could
write to Laidlaw: "For myself, I feel like the Eildon hills--quite
firm, though a little cloudy.  I do not dislike the path that lies
before me.  I have seen all that society can show, and enjoyed all that
wealth can give me, and I am satisfied much is vanity, if not vexation
of spirit."[13]  More, he felt that old lift of the heart with which he
had always faced a crisis.  "It is not nature," he wrote to Miss
Edgeworth, "to look upon what can't be helped with any anxious or
bitter remembrances....  The fact is I belong to that set of
philosophers who ought to be called Nymmites {287} after their good
founder Corporal Nym, and the fundamental maxim of whose school is
'Things must be as they may.'"[14]  He was resolute in his magnanimity
and would blame no one but himself for his disaster.  For James
Ballantyne he had only compassion.  "I owe it to him to say that his
difficulties, as well as his advantages are owing to me."  He had a
grievance against Constable, but he would not let Lockhart hint at it.
"While I live," he wrote, "I shall regret the downfall of Constable's
house, for never did there exist so intelligent and so liberal an
establishment.  They went too far when money was plenty, that is
certain; yet if every author in Britain had taxed himself half a year's
income, he should have kept up the house which first broke in upon the
monopoly of the London trade, and made letters what they now are."[15]

Nevertheless the breach with Constable could not be healed.  Scott
could forgive him his old extravagant optimism, but not his ultimate
supineness, and the futile Abbotsford mortgage rankled.  He watched
tenderly over the Ballantyne interests; James became manager of the
printing business under the Trust, and was soon enabled to repurchase
it for himself, while Scott insisted that he should do all his
printing.  The Ballantynes had been his retainers; his galleon had
towed their little cockboat into prosperous seas; he had given them a
merry life, and but for him they would have been nothing but insolvent
country tradesmen; on that score he had no reproaches.  But Constable
was different.  For Constable he had had admiration but no real
affection, and, however rash his own conduct had been, Constable's had
exceeded it.  "He paid well and promptly," he told Skene, "but, devil
take him, it was all spectral together.  He sowed my field with one
hand, and as liberally scattered the tares with the other."[16] Cadell
broke with his partner, and Scott unhesitatingly followed Cadell.
There was a painful interview in Castle Street, when Constable arrived,
"puffing in like a {288} steamboat," and found Scott's manner
unwontedly chilly.  Of all his ventures he had now only the Miscellany
left, and the success of this depended upon Scott's help.  He pretended
to be jocose, but his heartiness faltered, and he saw clearly that the
end had come.  With a final effort he tried to thaw the ice.  "Come,
come, Sir Walter," he said, "matters may come round, and I trust that
you and I may yet crack a cheerful bottle of port together at
Abbotsford."  But Scott was adamant.  "Mr Constable," he replied,
"whether we ever meet again in these conditions must depend upon
circumstances which yet remain to be cleared up."[17]

They rarely met again--certainly never on the old footing, though they
exchanged letters of a reasonable friendliness.  Here I find it
difficult to acquit Scott of a defect in generosity.  Constable was a
suffering, indeed a dying, man, for next year he was in his grave.  He
had fallen from a giddy height, and now, cumbered with debt and
disease, was struggling to climb a step or two out of the pit.  He
faced misfortune as gallantly as Scott himself, and with heavier
handicaps.  He had been lavish to a fault, had showered upon Scott
gifts and kindnesses, and had laboured to provide him with material for
the novels.  He was perhaps the greatest publisher in the history of
English letters.  But the tribute which Scott readily paid to the
bookseller he would not pay to the man.  There had always been
something about Constable's complacency, his bustling competence, which
antagonized him, and he had never placed him, as he had placed the
Ballantynes, in the circle of his friends.  So he let the broken man
hobble down the Castle Street stairs without a word of kindness.


[Sidenote: Scott's decision]

"My own right hand shall pay my debt."  Scott's decision was based on a
clear-eyed survey of the past.  He knew that he had been grievously to
blame, for he had been perfectly aware of the slippery ground he had
been treading.  The sudden "check" had come of which he had warned
Terry, and had thrown him on {289} his back; the fates had not granted
him the time on which he had reckoned to clear his feet.  He had
suffered from Constable's rashness and James Ballantyne's slovenliness,
but his main undoer had been himself.  He had gambled with his eyes
open and had lost; it remained for him with his eyes open to make
restitution.  So at the age of fifty-five, already weary and in broken
health, he took upon himself a mountain of debt, and thereby condemned
himself to servitude for such years as remained to him.  It was a
simple and faithful following out of his creed, not quixotic or
fantastic, but a plain fidelity to his high standard of honour.  He had
no sympathy, as he said, with the virtues "that escaped in salt rheum,
sal-volatile, and a white pocket-handkerchief." He could not believe
that rules of morality which held in the case of the ordinary man,
should be slackened for the artist.  Like his own James IV at Flodden,
he "saw the wreck his rashness wrought," and offered his all in
atonement.

Let it not be imagined that the decision was easy.  For such a man
there could be no rougher ford to ride.  He had a proud spirit which
loved to give and found it hard to take; he had that fundamental trait
of the aristocrat that he was of the spending type, always ready to
hazard himself and his substance.  Now he had to submit to charity and
pity and patronage.  He, who had been the first citizen of Scotland,
was in the same position as a bankrupt tradesman in the Luckenbooths.
But this downfall in worldly prestige was the least part of his burden.
The highroad of life, which had been so crowded and coloured, was
exchanged for an alley which ran drab and monotonous to the grave.
Danger, excitement, action were the breath of his being, but now there
was for him only unfeatured drudgery.  Courage of the moss-trooping
sort he had in plenty, but this required a sterner fortitude.

There have been critics of the course he took.  Thomas Carlyle, for
example, has a curious passage.--"It was a hard trial.  He met it
proudly, bravely--like a brave, proud man of the world.  Perhaps there
had been a {290} prouder way still: to have owned honestly that he was
unsuccessful, then, all bankrupt, broken, in the world's goods and
repute; and to have turned elsewhere for some refuge.  Refuge did lie
elsewhere; but it was not Scott's course, or fashion of mind, to seek
it there.  To say, Hitherto I have been all in the wrong, and this my
fame and pride, now broken, was an empty delusion and spell of accursed
witchcraft!  It was difficult to flesh and blood!  He said, I will
retrieve myself, and make my point good yet, or die for it."[18]  It is
not easy to see what the critic would be at.  The pomps of the world
Scott did most whole-heartedly renounce in word and deed; they had
never sat very near his heart.  He had no wish to restore the
resplendent Abbotsford of 1825, and asked only a shelter and a home.
What he desired was to retrieve his honour.  Carlyle's passage is
merely loose rhetoric.  If it means anything, it advocates some kind of
theatrical renunciation and retirement, which would have meant that his
creditors would not have been paid, and that innocent people would have
suffered from the results of his folly.  Such a course would have been
picturesque from the standpoint of the sentimentalist, but it would
have been the shirking of a plain duty, and repugnant to Scott's manly
good sense.  He had made a blunder and it was his business to atone for
it.  Had he robed himself in his literary mantle and retired to a
shieling among the hills to meditate on the transience of human glory,
there would have been no atonement.

[Sidenote: The secret world]

Scott was aware of the path he had been walking and its dangers, and
therefore faced catastrophe with something of the calm of the man who
has counted the risks.  He had played with fairy gold, but had not
thereby lost touch with reality.  His fault was that of the gambler,
but he was ready to face the consequences.  The secret world to which
he had so often had recourse had not filmed his eyes, but it had helped
perhaps to dull his conscience.  As Clarendon wrote of the Marquis of
Newcastle, "the articles of action were no sooner over, than he retired
to his delightfull Company, Musick."  Scott's error cannot {291} be
excused on the ground of the artistic temperament which is at sea among
facts; he understood the situation at least as well as Constable and
far better than James Ballantyne.  Nevertheless there is something in
Lockhart's plea that this gambling element in him, this aversion to
setting his affairs in order, was an inevitable corollary of his
genius, and, as a matter of sober history, was largely responsible for
his achievements.


Had not that adversity been preceded by the perpetual spur of pecuniary
demands, he, who began life with such quick appetites for all its
ordinary enjoyments, would never have devoted himself to the rearing of
that gigantic monument of genius, labour and power, which his works now
constitute.  The imagination, which has bequeathed so much to delight
and humanize mankind, would have developed few of its miraculous
resources except in the embellishment of his own personal existence.
The enchanted spring might have sunk into earth with the rod which bade
it gush, and left us no living waters.  We cannot understand, but we
may nevertheless respect even the strangest caprices of the marvellous
combination of faculties to which our debt is so weighty.  We should
try to picture to ourselves what the actual intellectual life must have
been of the author of such a series of romances.  We should ask
ourselves whether, filling and discharging so soberly and gracefully as
he did the common functions of social man, it was not, nevertheless,
impossible but that he must have passed most of his life in other
worlds than ours; and we ought hardly to think it a grievous
circumstance that their bright visitors should have left a dazzle
sometimes on the eyes which he so gently reopened on our prosaic
realities.  He had, on the whole, a command over the powers of his
mind--I mean that he could control and divert his thoughts and
reflections with a readiness, firmness and easy security of
sway--beyond what I find it possible to trace in any other artist's
recorded character and history; but he could not habitually fling them
into the region of dreams throughout a long series of years, and yet be
expected to find a corresponding satisfaction in bending them to the
less agreeable considerations which the circumstances of any human
being's practical lot in this world must present in abundance.  The
training to which he accustomed himself could not leave him as he was
when he began.  He must pay the penalty, as well as reap the glory, of
this lifelong abstraction of reverie, this self-abandonment of
Fairyland.[19]



{292}

III

A meeting of his creditors was held on 20th January, and his old friend
Sir William Forbes was made chairman.  Scott's lawyer, Mr John Gibson,
put forward a scheme for a Trust deed, announcing that it was his
client's "earnest desire to use every exertion in his power on behalf
of his creditors, and by a diligent employment of his talents and the
adoption of a strictly economical mode of life to secure as speedily as
possible full payment to all concerned."  The liabilities were stated
at the time as 104,081 and the estate available for realization as
48,494.  Among Scott's assets were included his Edinburgh house, his
library and furniture, and the value of the life-rent of
Abbotsford.[20]  The proposal was unanimously accepted.  Scott's
spirits rose.  He refused the suggestion of certain legal friends that
an effort should be made to secure for him a seat on the Bench, on the
ground that he had other duties to think of.  "I am convinced," he
wrote in the _Journal_, "that in three years I could do more than in
the last ten, but for the mine being, I fear, exhausted.  Give me my
popularity--an awful postulate!--and all my present difficulties shall
be a joke in five years; and it is not lost yet, at least."

For three weeks there was a hitch.  The Bank of Scotland, the second
principal creditor, not only laid claim to the unfinished _Woodstock_
and _Napoleon_ on behalf of Constable's estate, but--what was more
serious--insisted that the trustees should take proceedings to reduce
the settlement of Abbotsford.[21]  To this Scott would in no wise
assent, for he considered that his offer to work for his creditors more
than compensated for the withdrawal from them of Abbotsford.[22]  In
the end the Bank of Scotland withdrew its opposition; Scott was given
the house and lands of Abbotsford rent-free, {293} and allowed to
retain his official incomes as Sheriff and Clerk of Court; a Trust deed
was duly signed, with as trustees Mr Gibson, Mr James Jollie and Mr
Alexander Monypenny.  The deed is in the usual form, except for the
absence of a discharge clause, since Scott asked for no discharge;
instead it provided that after the payment of all the debts and
expenses the Trustees should reconvey to him the residue of the estate.
Their first step was to insure his life, so they bought Constable's
policy, continued the two held by the Ballantyne firm, and took out a
new one.  After that they had to devote themselves to the conduct of
the printing business, for it was a year before they got rid of it.[23]

[Sidenote: _Malachi Malagrowther_]

The banks had on the whole behaved handsomely, and Scott felt that he
owed them some return.  The recent financial crisis had convinced the
Government that the whole banking system needed a drastic revision, so
it was proposed to limit the Bank of England to the issue of notes of a
value of 5 and upwards, and to take away altogether from the private
banks the privilege of a note circulation.  This latter proposal would
be a serious matter for Scotland, where coin was still very scarce, and
a disaster for the Scottish banks.  On the economic question there was
much to be said for the Scottish view, for, though the banking system
was gravely in need of reform, the weak point was not the note-issue,
which had hitherto worked well.[24]  The real motive of the Government
was to introduce uniformity in the currency of the three kingdoms, and
this roused the sleepless nationalism of the North.  The national
rather than the economic significance of the proposed change was what
moved Scott, and his _Letters of Malachi Malagrowther_, published in
James Ballantyne's _Edinburgh Weekly Journal_ and issued as a pamphlet
by Blackwood, were devoted as much to the patriotic plea of the need
for preserving Scotland's individuality as to the practical utility of
the note-issue.  "If you unscotch us," he told Croker, "you will find
us damned mischievous Englishmen."  The pamphlet, modelled to some
extent on {294} Swift's _Drapier's Letters_, is written with immense
gusto and not only is one of the most "literary" pieces of economic
writing before Bagehot, but reveals a clear understanding of the
commercial world.  It created a great stir, and led to the withdrawal
of the scheme so far as the Scottish banks were concerned.  Scott was
acutely aware of the irony of the situation.  "Whimsical enough that
when I was trying to animate Scotland against the currency bill, John
Gibson brought me the Deed of Trust, assigning my whole estate, to be
subscribed by me; so that I am turning patriot, and taking charge of
the affairs of the country, on the very day I was proclaiming myself
incapable of managing my own."[25]

_Malachi_ made trouble with Scott's political allies.  Lord Melville,
who was in charge of Scottish affairs, was furious; Canning attacked
him in the House of Commons; Croker was set up by the Government to
reply to the pamphlet, which he did with little effect.  The Whigs were
no better pleased, for they distrusted Scott's nationalism and objected
to their pet topic of economics being handled so light-heartedly.
"Poets," Cockburn wrote primly, "may be excused for being bad political
economists.  If a nice question of monetary or commercial policy could
be settled by jokes, Malachi would be a better economist than Adam
Smith.  His lamentation over the loss of Scotch sinecures was very
injudicious, and did neither him nor such of these things as remained
any good.  He was mentioned in Parliament by his own friends with less
respect than one would ever wish to be shown him."[26]  But for the
criticism of friends or opponents Scott cared nothing.  "I have, in my
odd _sans souciance_ character, a good handful of meal from the grist
of the Jolly Miller."  The knowledge that he could still make men
listen to him and influence the course of affairs did much to restore
his self-respect; the bankrupt had not killed the citizen.  "On the
whole," he wrote, "I am glad of this brulzie, as far as I am concerned;
people will not dare talk of me as an {295} object of pity--no more
'poor manning.'  Who asks how many punds Scots the old champion has in
his pocket when

  He set a bugle to his mouth,
    And blew sae loud and shrill,
  The trees in greenwood shook thereat,
    Sae loud rang ilka hill."[27]



IV

[Sidenote: Return to Abbotsford]

On 15th March Scott left Castle Street, which had been his Edinburgh
home for twenty-eight years, with the words of Macrimmon's lament on
his lips, "_Cha til mi tulidh_--I return no more."  At Abbotsford he
found a changed establishment.  Willie Laidlaw was no more at Kaeside;
Tom Purdie was no longer farm-bailiff since there was nothing to farm,
and had become personal attendant; one old labourer, Willie Straiten,
had taken to his bed at the news of his master's misfortunes, and had
never risen again.  But there was a tumult of dogs to welcome him, and,
as he made his familiar rounds amid the March snow-showers, he hugged
to his heart the thought that his home was still his own.  He had won
peace of mind, whatever the burden of the future, for he knew the
worst.  There was even a pleasure in economizing--in keeping to his
official salary and paying out of it to his wife her modest
housekeeping allowance, and in looking for butter for his bread to an
occasional magazine article.  There was comfort, too, in the solitude
after the bustle in which he had lived, for he felt less able for
company.  For long he had been constantly tired and had got into the
habit of drowsing in Court; he had been sleepless of nights, too, had
been tormented by rheumatism and indigestion, and had lately been
suffering from an alarming fluttering of the heart.  He could resume
his old unflagging habits of work, but he had little margin left for
other things, so he courted solitude.


The love of solitude was with me a passion of early youth; when in my
teens I used to fly from company to indulge in {296} visions and airy
castles of my own, the disposal of ideal wealth and the exercise of
imaginary power.  The feeling prevailed even till I was eighteen, when
love and ambition awakening with other passions threw me more into
society, from which I have, however, at times withdrawn myself, and
have been always glad to do so.  I have risen from the feast
satisfied....  This is a feeling without the least tinge of misanthropy
which I always consider as a kind of blasphemy of a shocking
description.  If God bears with the very worst of us we may surely
endure each other.  If thrown into society I always have, and always
will endeavour to bring pleasure with me, at least to show willingness
to please.  But for all this I had rather live alone, and I wish my
appointment, so convenient otherwise, did not require my going to
Edinburgh.  But this must be, and in my little lodging I will be lonely
enough.[28]


His routine of life was much what it had always been.  By seven he was
at his desk, and, having finished _Woodstock_, he forthwith began the
_Chronicles of the Canongate_.  In the afternoon he walked with Tom
Purdie and the wolf-hound puppy which Glengarry had given him in
Maida's place, "chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy."  It was
mainly bitter, for to the downfall of his worldly fortunes there was
added a gnawing anxiety about those he loved best.  The news from
London was bad, and the Lockharts' boy was visibly losing strength.
The frail bright child had twined himself round Scott's heart more than
any of his own more robust offspring, and, since he could no longer
visit him at Chiefswood, he tortured himself with memories.  "The poor
dear love had so often a slow fever that, when it pressed its little
lips to mine, I always foreboded to my own heart what all I fear are
now aware of."  In April Laidlaw lost an infant, and Scott watched its
funeral with a quickened sense of man's mortality.  The _Journal_
contains reflections new to one who had hitherto bustled gallantly
through the world.


I saw the poor child's funeral from a distance.  Ah, that distance!
What a magician for conjuring up scenes of joy and sorrow, smoothing
all asperities, reconciling all incongruities, veiling all
abnormalities, softening every coarseness, {297} doubling every effect
by the influence of the imagination.  A Scottish wedding should be seen
at a distance; the gay band of the dancers just distinguished amid the
elderly group of the spectators, the glass held high, and the distant
cheers as it is swallowed should be only a sketch, not a finished Dutch
picture, when it becomes brutal and boorish.  Scotch psalmody, too,
should be heard at a distance.  The grunt and the snuffle and the whine
and the scream should be all blended in the deep and distant sound
which, rising and falling like the Eolian harp, may have some title to
be called the praise of our Maker.  Even so the distant funeral, the
few mourners on horseback with their plaids wrapped around them--the
father heading the procession as they enter the river, and pointing out
the ford by which his darling is to be carried on the last long
road--not one of the subordinate figures in discord with the general
tone of the incident--seeming just accessories and no more--this is
affecting.[29]


[Sidenote: Lady Scott's death]

But presently came death unsoftened by distance.  His wife had joined
him at Abbotsford, with Anne a pale ghost from long nursing.  She was
suffering from asthma and dropsy, and the Edinburgh doctors gave little
hope.  Scott left Abbotsford on 11th May to resume his Court work, and
she was too ill to say good-bye.  He took up his quarters in shabby,
bug-infested lodgings in North St David Street, observing with
Touchstone, "When I was at home I was in a better place."  Four days
later he had news that his wife was dead.  It was his first great
intimate bereavement, and for the moment it had a shattering effect on
a spirit worn down with toils and cares.  He could not sleep, and his
children found him weeping.  If his wife had been a stranger to his
innermost world she had shared most loyally in his normal life, had
been his counsellor and the repository of all his plans, had watched
solicitously over his health, and had been a brave, mirthful and kindly
companion.  He had come during the years to feel for her that close
affection which springs from long comradeship.  All his happiest
memories were linked with her presence, and her very foibles were
endeared in the recollection.  Small wonder that he felt himself naked
and stripped, for here he had lost more than {298} fortune.  He tells
his _Journal_ that his heart must break.


I have seen her.  The figure I beheld is, and is not, my Charlotte--my
thirty years' companion.  There is the same symmetry of form, though
those limbs were rigid which were once so gracefully elastic--but that
yellow masque, with pinched features, which seems to mock life rather
than emulate it, can it be the face that was once so full of lively
expression?  I will not look on it again....  If I write long in this
way, I shall write down my resolution, which I should rather write up,
if I could.  I wonder how I shall do with the larger portion of
thoughts which were hers for thirty years.  I expect they will be hers
yet for a long time at least....

Another day, and a bright one to the external world, again opens on us,
the air soft, and the flowers smiling, and the leaves glittering.  They
cannot refresh her to whom mild weather was a natural enjoyment.
Cerements of lead and of wood already hold her; cold earth must have
her soon.  But it is not my Charlotte, it is not the bride of my youth,
the mother of my children, that will be laid away among the ruins of
Dryburgh, which we have so often visited in gaiety and pastime.  No,
no.  She is sentient and conscious of my emotions somewhere--somehow;
where, we cannot tell; how, we cannot tell; yet would I not at this
moment renounce the mysterious yet certain hope that I shall see her in
a better world for all that this world can give me....

I have been to her room: there was no voice in it, no stirring; the
pressure of the coffin was visible on the bed, but it had been removed
elsewhere; all was neat as she loved it, but all was calm--calm as
death.  I remembered the last sight of her; she raised herself in bed
and tried to turn her eyes after me, and said, with a sort of smile,
"You all have such melancholy faces."  They were the last words I ever
heard her utter, and I hurried away, for she did not seem quite
conscious of what she said.  When I returned, immediately before
departure, she was in a deep sleep.  It is deeper now.  This was but
seven days since.

They are arranging the chamber of death; that which was long the
apartment of connubial happiness, and of whose arrangements (better
than in richer houses) she was so proud.  They are treading fast and
thick.  For weeks you could have heard a footfall.  Oh, my God![30]


[Sidenote: The "stalk of carle-hemp"]

These are the secular laments for the dead, but they were confided only
to the _Journal_.  Scott exerted himself {299} to comfort his sons, who
had arrived from Ireland and Oxford, and to tend the drooping Anne, and
for the rest he turned to his work.  His wife's death had made his
material losses shrink to their proper proportions, and he could face
the world again, to use his own metaphor, like the Bass Rock, and not
like the waves that broke on it.  The "stalk of carle-hemp" was firm in
him, and he choked down all unavailing regrets.  "The melancholy hours
of yesterday must not return.  To encourage that dreamy state of
incapacity is to resign all authority over the mind, and I have been
wont to say--'My mind to me a kingdom is.'  I am rightful monarch; and,
God to aid, I will not be dethroned by any rebellious passion that may
rear its standard against me."[31]

But it was to be a lonely kingdom.



[1] _A. Constable_, III.  387.


[2] Some doubts have been cast on Scott's midnight visit to Polton
(Carswell, _op. cit._, 126 _n._) on the ground that Thomas Constable
could find no account of it in his father's papers (_A. Constable_,
III.  378).  But Lockhart's story (VI.  106) is too circumstantial to
be disbelieved.  It would appear that Scott twice took Lockhart's
rumours to Constable--once from Abbotsford on the affair of the bank
account some time before November 12th when he left for Edinburgh, and
in Edinburgh on November 18th on the affairs of Hurst and Robinson.
Constable was not likely to keep any record of the Polton interview.

[3] _Journal_, I.  9.  Lockhart (VI.  130) has "twenty shillings,"
which misrepresents Scott's mood.

[4] _Journal_, I.  39.

[5] Lockhart, VI.  213-14; Skene, 135-6.

[6] _Ballantyne Humbug_, 112, etc.

[7] _Sederunt Book_.

[8] _A. Constable_, III.  430.

[9] _Ibid._, III.  416.

[10] _Journal_, I.  89.

[11] _P.L.B._, 353.

[12] _Journal_, I.  94.

[13] _Ibid._, I.  97_n_.

[14] _Mod. Language Review_, XXIII.  No. 3.

[15] Lockhart, VI.  217-18.

[16] Skene, 143.

[17] Skene, 145.

[18] _Critical and Miscellaneous Essays_, IV.  84.

[19] VI.  120-1.


[20] _Sederunt Book_.

[21] The best legal opinion seems to have been that such an action
would have failed.

[22] _Journal_, I.  123-4; Lockhart, VI.  224.

[23] _Sederunt Book_.

[24] Kerr, _Hist. of Banking in Scotland_, 177, etc.

[25] _Journal_, I.  133.

[26] _Mem._, 433-4.

[27] _Journal_, I.  141.

[28] _Journal_, I.  163-4.

[29] I.  172-3.

[30] _Journal_, I.  193-5.

[31] _Journal_, II.  201-2.




{300}

CHAPTER XI

SERVITUDE

(1826-1831)


I

[Sidenote: _Woodstock_]

All of _Woodstock_ was written in a time of anxiety, and much of it
after the blow had fallen, in Scott's first desperate effort to begin
the work of restitution.  Yet the book bears no mark of this sad
preoccupation.  A certain tenderness in the picture of the old cavalier
squire whose world has been upturned, some traits of the dutiful
daughter, may reflect his own case, and the opening words of the last
chapter seem to be a cry wrung from the heart--"Years rush by us like
the wind.  We see not whence the eddy comes, nor whitherward it is
tending, and we seem ourselves to witness their flight without a sense
that we are changed; and yet Time is beguiling man of his strength, as
the winds rob the woods of their foliage."  But for the rest the book
is amazingly light-hearted, and the narrative, hammered out with a
perplexed mind, is notably compact.  _Woodstock_ ranks high among the
novels for the architecture of its plot; we know that Scott several
times came to a standstill in writing it, and saw no solution for the
puzzle he had invented, but the brownies who worked at the back of his
head were kind to him.  A great successor paid him the compliment of
borrowing most of his machinery, for James III in _Esmond_ is Charles,
and Beatrix is Alice Lee, and Lockwood is Joceline, and Frank
Castlewood is Albert Lee, and Colonel Esmond is Markham Everard.
Nassau Senior's criticism, that Scott errs in making his chief figures
personages of the first historical importance, is not really relevant,
for Cromwell and Charles II are {301} introduced in incidents outside
the main march of their familiar history.  Scott was fortunate too in
the setting of his tale.  There is something in the wide woodlands and
the soft muffled hills of the Oxford country which appeals strongly to
the Borderer, as the present writer can bear witness, and he has caught
its secret magic.  Also in the background he had what he loved, a
great, old, ruinous house.  _Woodstock_ is almost the best written of
the novels, and--apart from the circumstances of its composition, which
make it an astonishing achievement--it has the charm of a wise and
mellow philosophy.  If it is not to be ranked with the greatest, that
is only because it rarely touches the deeper springs of life.

The book is a swift succession of dramatic episodes.  It opens
brilliantly, with Trusty Tompkins' discourse from the pulpit of
Woodstock church--no man could make a better sermon than Scott in any
vein.  The scenes when Cromwell at Windsor looks on the Vandyke
portrait of the dead king, when Everard and Charles face each other
with drawn blades, when Cromwell's heavy foot is heard on the stair of
Everard's lodging, when Wildrake's sword breaks on the Lord Protector's
hidden armour, when Tompkins dies at the hands of Joceline, when Albert
Lee outfaces Cromwell with the text "Had Zimri peace who slew his
master?"--all are in a high key of romantic drama.  In the comedy vein
I need only cite the rabbling of the Parliament commissioners by the
Woodstock ghost, and the fight between the tipsy Wildrake and the
parson Rochecliffe.  And behind them, as always with Scott, is a
background of sagely conceived history.  The figures are no puppets
drawn from fancy but true products of their times, historically as well
as dramatically significant.  To take one instance--nothing could be
better than the sketch of the elements which made up Cromwell's
following; Desborough the middle-class adventurer; Bletson the
superstitious agnostic--"The devils, we are assured, believe and
tremble; but on earth there are many who, in worse plight than even the
natural children of perdition, tremble without {302} believing, and
fear even while they blaspheme"; Harrison, who looked forward to
commanding a reserve of pikes at Armageddon; and, among the commonalty,
Pearson the ex-pirate, Corporal Humgudgeon, and the merciful Zerubbabel
Robins.  How acute, too, is the exposition of the politics of the
moderates, like Everard, who accepted Cromwell as the only alternative
to anarchy.

There is no slackness of drawing in the characters.  Sir Henry Lee is a
familiar figure, but not the less vivid on that account, Alice Lee is
fantastic only to such as disbelieve in the courage of the pure in
heart, and Markham Everard is saved from priggishness by his occasional
fits of bad temper and his loyalty to Wildrake.  Trusty Tompkins is a
subtle portrait of a type of rogue common enough at the time, and in
Holdenough Scott has drawn the honest, pragmatic English Presbyterian
with truth and kindliness.  Charles is one of his royal successes,
infinitely to be preferred to the stock figure of _Peveril_.  As for
Cromwell, if he is not altogether the real man, he is nearer historical
truth than any picture of him before Carlyle's.  Scott recognized the
strange elements in his nature, his mysticism, his power of
self-deception; and in his communings with Pearson and his final
magnanimity, showed that he understood also the greatness of that
lonely spirit.  But to my mind the best of the characters is Roger
Wildrake, "gentleman, of Squattlesea Mere, in the moist county of
Lincoln."  He is the rakehelly cavalier of all time, bibulous,
blasphemous, heroic, and endearing.  Wherever he turns his bleared eye
the narrative marches and the dialogue briskens.  Take this as a
specimen, when he is striving to shape his mouth to the Puritan
speech:--


"Are there any more news from Worcester fight?" asked Everard, in a
tone so serious that it imposed on his companion, who replied in his
genuine character--

"Worse! d--n me, worse an hundred times than reported--totally broken.
Noll hath certainly sold himself to the devil, and his lease will have
an end one day---that is all our present comfort."

"What! and would this be your answer to the first red-coat {303} who
asked the question?" said Everard.  "Methinks you would find a speedy
passport to the next _corps de garde_."

"Nay, nay," answered Wildrake, "I thought you asked me in your own
person.  Lack-a-day! a great mercy--a glorifying mercy--a crowning
mercy--a vouchsafing---an uplifting--I profess the malignants are
scattered from Dan to Beersheba--smitten, hip and thigh, even until the
going down of the sun."

"Heard you aught of Colonel Thornhaugh's wounds?"

"He is dead," answered Wildrake; "that's one comfort--the roundheaded
rascal!  Nay hold! it was but a trip of the tongue--I meant the sweet
godly youth."

"And hear you aught of the young man, King of Scotland, as they call
him?" said Everard.

"Nothing, but that he is hunted like a partridge on the mountains.  May
God deliver him and confound his enemies!  Zoons, Mark Everard, I can
fool it no longer."



II

[Sidenote: In Edinburgh lodgings]

The summer in Mrs Brown's lodging-house was a comfortless business,
though his old butler Dalgleish insisted on attending him and looking
after his needs.  These were modest enough--a ploughman's dinner of
broth and boiled beef, relieved by little luxuries like a bit of
Gruyre cheese, which he would buy for himself on his way home.  June
and July were very hot, and outside the gutters stank and drunken
chairmen quarrelled.  Scott slept badly, and was haunted by dreams of
his dead wife; but neither the discomfort of his environment nor his
bodily frailty was allowed to interfere with his work.  In former days
his evenings had been given up to his family and friends or to light
reading in an armchair, but now he seemed to grudge every minute not
spent at his desk.  Imaginative writing, which had once been done "at
large leisure in noble mornings," was now the weary task of the small
hours.  His only exercise was his daily walk to the Parliament House,
and his return through Princes Street Gardens, for which he had a
private key, and the only break which he permitted himself in his task
seems to have been occasional meetings with old friends and acts of
charity.  Yet the toil was not the martyrdom it sounds.  {304} He loved
the act of composition, and in the midst of his labours wrote copiously
in his _Journal_; and he had the satisfaction of seeing his pile of
work mounting steadily and of knowing that every page meant a lessening
of his burden.

In the middle of July he went gladly to Abbotsford, a little surprised
at the eagerness with which he faced again that house of sad memories.
"Nature has given me a kind of buoyancy, I know not what to call it,
that mingled even with my deepest afflictions and most gloomy hours.  I
have a secret pride--I fancy it will be so most truly termed, which
impels me to mix with my distresses strange fragments of mirth, which
have no mirth in them."  A visit from Walter and Jane cheered him, and
the whole family made a pilgrimage to Drumlanrig.  He found healthy
exercise in thinning his plantations, though the work soon tired him.
"One sure thing is, that all wise men will soon contrive to lay aside
inclination when performance grows toilsome.  I have hobbled over many
a rough heugh in my day--no wonder if I must sing at last--

  Thus says the auld man to the aik tree
  Sair failed, hinny, since I kenn'd thee."

And he could still get entertainment from the foppery of the world.
Sir John Sinclair, who ranked with Lord Buchan as the most preposterous
of living Scotsmen--Scott's name for him was the "Cavaliero Jackasso"
wrote to him proposing to arrange a marriage with the widowed Duchess
of Roxburgh, though Lady Scott was scarcely four months in her grave.[1]

[Sidenote: London and Paris]

In the late autumn he found it necessary to go to London and Paris, in
the interests of his _Napoleon_, so, when he had assured himself that
he was in no danger of arrest from his English creditors, he set out
with Anne on October 12th.  They visited the Morritts at Rokeby, and
Scott was delighted with the unchangingness of old {305} England; "one
race of red-nosed innkeepers are gone, and their widows, eldest sons
and head-waiters exercise hospitality in their room with the same
bustle and importance."  In London he saw many of his friends, gave
sittings to painters and sculptors, pulled various political strings on
behalf of Lockhart and Charles, and--a proof of the diversity of his
interests--breakfasted one day with George IV at the royal cottage in
Windsor Park, and supped next night on oysters and broiled bones with
Terry above the Adelphi theatre.

On October 26th he set out for France.  Calais stirred unavailing
regrets:--"Lost, as all know, by the bloody papist bitch (one must be
vernacular when on French ground) Queen Mary, of red-hot memory.  I
would rather she had burned a score more of bishops."  His fame had not
declined in Paris.  The fish-wives from the Halles presented him with a
bouquet like a maypole; at the Odon he saw the opera based on
_Ivanhoe_, and found it strange to hear the words, which he had
dictated to Laidlaw in the agony of his cramp, recited in a foreign
tongue; at the Tuileries Charles X, as he passed into chapel, stopped
to say "a few civil words," a civility which Scott was to repay when
that monarch was again in exile in Holyrood.[2]  He had talks with
Marshal Macdonald, and Marmont, and Fitz-James, the great-grandson of
James II.  But Paris was too full of ghosts.  At the British Embassy he
remembered Castlereagh and departed glories.  "I have seen in these
rooms the Emperor Alexander, Platoff, Schwarzenberg, old Blcher,
Fouch, and many a marechal whose truncheon had guided armies--all now
at peace, without subjects, without dominion, and where their past
life, perhaps, seems but the recollection of a feverish dream."

He was back in London on November 10th, and Anne and he spent a busy
fortnight.  He arranged for Charles's nomination to the Foreign Office,
saw much of Samuel Rogers, Theodore Hook and Allan Cunningham, met for
the first time Fanny Burney, had long conversations with the Duke of
Wellington anent his _Napoleon_, and {306} was entertained by Croker
and Peel at ministerial banquets.  On his way north he breakfasted with
Charles at Brasenose and found to his grief that the beauties of Oxford
had lost their charm for him, and that he thought more about luncheon
and the excellent ale of University College.  "Remembering the ecstatic
feelings with which I visited Oxford more than twenty-five years since,
I was surprised at the comparative indifference with which I revisited
the same scenes.  Reginald Heber, then composing his Prize Poem, and
imping his wings for a long flight of honourable distinction, is now
dead in a foreign land--Hodgson and other able men all entombed.  The
towers and halls remain, but the voices which fill them are of modern
days.  Besides, the eye becomes satiated with sights, as the full soul
loathes the honeycomb."

Edinburgh was reached on November 27th.  He had secured better lodgings
in a house in Walker Street, and he sat himself down to a winter of
unremitting toil.  The weather was bleak, and he found his fingers
cramped with chilblains, he suffered grievously from rheumatism and
bile, and camomile poultices alternated with pen and ink.  He had no
one to look after him but old Dalgleish, and he remembered sadly how he
had once enjoyed little illnesses when his wife was there to nurse him.
The note of mortality in the _Journal_ becomes more clamant.  "There is
some new subject of complaint every moment; your sicknesses come
thicker and thicker; your comforting or sympathizing friends fewer and
fewer; for why should they sorrow for the course of nature? ... The
best is, the long halt will arrive at last and cure all."[3]  He
realized the shortness of the time permitted him and the steady ebbing
of his strength.


O Lord, what are we--lords of nature?  Why, a tile drops from a
housetop, which an elephant would not feel more than the fall of a
sheet of pasteboard, and there lies his lordship.  Or something of
inconceivably minute origin, the pressure of a bone, or the
inflammation of a particle of the brain takes place, and the emblem of
the Deity destroys himself or someone {307} else.  We hold our health
and our reason on terms slighter than one would desire were it in their
choice to hold an Irish cabin.[4]


During the Christmas holiday at Abbotsford he struggled with pain and
overwork, and December closed with sombre thoughts.


It must be allowed that the regular recurrence of annual festivals
among the same individuals has, as life advances, something in it that
is melancholy.  We meet on such occasions like the survivors of some
perilous expedition, wounded and weakened ourselves, and looking
through the diminished ranks of those who remain, while we think of
those who are no more.  Or they are like the feasts of the Caribs, in
which they held that the pale and speechless phantoms of the deceased
appeared and mingled with the living.[5]


[Sidenote: 1827]

[Sidenote: The Theatrical Fund dinner]

The year 1827 brought improved health and spirits.  For one thing he
began to sleep better, and he got a chamois-leather knee-cap which
eased his rheumatism.[6]  He resumed dining out in moderation, and on
February 23rd took the chair at the celebrated Theatrical Fund dinner,
where he first publicly admitted the authorship of the Waverley Novels.
This had long been an open secret, and the formation of the Trust,
which revealed all his dealings with Constable, had finally established
it.  But, since this was his first public dinner since his disaster,
Lord Meadowbank, who was to propose his health, wished to make a
definite announcement.  Scott agreed, only bidding him not say much
about so old a story.  Meadowbank's speech was received with wild
applause, and Scott replied gracefully, admitting the charge, and
adding "The wand is now broken and the book buried."  The affair made a
great sensation, but Scott seems to have considered it of little
importance.[7]

Meantime he was toiling prodigiously at _Napoleon_ and the first
_Chronicles of the Canongate_ for his creditors, and at magazine
articles to earn a little pocket-money for {308} himself.  He was now
living on his small private income and his official salaries.  He had
got James Hogg's nephew Robert as an amanuensis, and on a day when he
was free from Court would dictate from six in the morning till six in
the evening, breakfast and luncheon being served to him as he worked.
Politics had begun to interest him again, for in January Lord Liverpool
had resigned, and in April Canning, after breaking with Peel and
Wellington, became Prime Minister.  Scott's sympathies were on the
whole with Canning, though he differed reluctantly from his idol the
Duke.

At long last he finished _Napoleon_, and the book was published in nine
volumes in the middle of June.  He had begun it two years before, but
it was virtually the work of twelve months, and it contained as much
matter as any five of the novels put together.  Its first two editions
produced no less than 18,000 for his creditors.  It was well received
by the public, and for the most part neglected by the critics--which
was what he had foreseen, since it was not condemnatory enough to
satisfy the Tories or rhapsodical enough for the Whigs, and the pedants
of history looked askance at this romancer who had raided their
preserves.  For critics and pedants Scott cared not at all.  "I see you
have got a critic in the _Athenum_" he once wrote to Lockhart, "Pray
don't take the least notice of so trumpery a fellow.  There is a custom
among the South American Indians to choose their chief by the length of
time during which he is able to sustain a temporary interment in an
owl's nest.  Literary respect and eminence is won by similar powers of
endurance."  As for the pedants he classed them with schoolmasters, of
whom he wrote that "no schoolmaster whatsoever has existed without his
having some private reserve of extreme absurdity."[8]

_Napoleon_ being off the stocks, he promptly began _The Tales of a
Grandfather_, the history of Scotland as told to Hugh Littlejohn.  This
was to be his own book and not the creditors', for he considered it a
_parergon_ outside his contract, and the Trust good-naturedly {309}
agreed.  Sophia and her children were at Portobello for the summer, and
when vacation came he found to his delight that the sick boy was strong
enough to ride with him in the Abbotsford grounds.  Scott had acquired
a horse known as Douce Davie on which he ambled about the countryside,
a sedate beast whose one foible was that, when drinking from a burn, he
was apt to lie down in the water.  That autumn was enlivened by a visit
of Adolphus, and by an excursion to Durham to meet the Duke of
Wellington.  He felt more vigour in his bones, for two events occurred
to jog him out of his servitude.

[Sidenote: Gourgaud and Abud]

The first was the rumour of a cartel on its way from General Gourgaud,
who had taken offence at some plain speaking in _Napoleon_.  Scott rose
joyfully to the occasion--to the scandal of some of his more lady-like
biographers; the scribe had had too long the upper hand and here was
something for the rough-rider.


It is clear to me that what is least forgiven in a man of any mark or
likelihood is want of that article blackguardly called pluck.  All the
fine qualities of genius cannot make amends for it.  We are told the
genius of poets especially is irreconcilable with this species of
grenadier accomplishment.  If so, _quel chien de gnie_!


He selected Will Clerk as his second, and saw that Napoleon's pistols,
which he possessed, were in order.  But the challenge never arrived.
Scott sent to the press a careful statement of the case, Gourgaud made
a furious rejoinder, and the matter dropped.

Upon the risk of a bullet followed the risk of imprisonment for debt.
Two of the Ballantyne bills, amounting to 1760, had come into the
hands of a Jew broker called Abud--let the unhallowed name be
remembered!--who refused to accept the arrangement of the Trust and
proceeded to take out "letters of horning" against the debtor.  Scott
had two courses open to him; he could let himself be sequestrated,
thereby preventing Abud from obtaining any preference, or he could seek
refuge in a debtor's sanctuary from Abud's diligence.  To protect his
other creditors, he decided upon the latter, {310} and made
preparations for taking up his quarters in the precincts of
Holyroodhouse.  There was some reason to believe that Abud had acquired
the bills in the course of an usurious transaction, and the Trustees
moved for a bill of suspension in the Court of Session.  They lost
their case, but in the meantime the matter was settled by Sir William
Forbes paying the claim, and ranking for the amount as an ordinary
creditor--a fact which was only known after Sir William's death.[9]  So
Scott had not to pack his traps and move down the Canongate, and the
young Walter, who arrived in haste from Ireland breathing slaughter
against all Hebrews, had no occasion for his valour.

Gourgaud and Abud between them did Scott a world of good in rousing him
from the mechanical stupor in which he wrought.  He was in danger of
becoming a mere writing automaton.  The first series of the _Chronicles
of the Canongate_ appeared in the early winter and was not well
received.  In the second series, immediately begun, Scott proposed to
include more short stories, but both Cadell and Ballantyne objected and
he embarked instead on _The Fair Maid of Perth_.  Meanwhile the _Tales
of a Grandfather_ were running smoothly from his pen.  "This morning
was damp, dripping and unpleasant; so I even made a work of necessity,
and set to the _Tales_ like a dragon.  I murdered Maclellan of Bomby at
the Thrieve Castle; stabbed the Black Douglas in the town of Stirling;
astonished King James before Roxburgh; and stifled the Earl of Mar in
his bath in the Canongate."  In Edinburgh that winter he leased the
house of Jane's mother, No. 6 Shandwick Place, and the Abbotsford
footman, John Nicholson, replaced Dalgleish as his attendant.  In
December the _Tales_ appeared and were more warmly received than any of
the novels since _Ivanhoe_.

This eased his private finances, and he had also the comforting thought
that he was doing well by his creditors.  The Constable trustees
proposed to put on the market the copyrights of the novels owned by
that estate.  Now it was essential that the copyrights should {311} be
in the hands of Scott's own Trust in view of future annotated editions.
At the auction they were bought by Cadell for 8500, a joint purchase
on behalf of Scott and himself.  Two days before the Trust had paid its
first dividend--six shillings in the pound.  In two years Scott had won
for it 40,000, which meant that he who had made about 10,000 a year
when he wrought for himself, had been earning at the rate of 20,000 a
year for his creditors.  He began to see light far ahead in the fog,
and his Christmas reflections in the _Journal_ have a sober contentment.


If I die in the harness, which is very likely, I shall die with honour;
if I achieve my task I shall have the thanks of all concerned ... and
the approbation of my own conscience ... I am now perfectly well in
constitution, and though I am still in troubled waters, yet I am rowing
with the tide, and less than the continuation of my exertions of 1827
may, with God's blessing, carry me successfully through 1828, when we
may gain a more open sea, if not exactly a safe port....  For all these
great blessings it becomes me well to be thankful to God, who in His
good time and good pleasure sends me good as well as evil.[10]



III

[Sidenote: _Napoleon_]

If _Napoleon_ is judged in relation to the circumstances of its
composition it must appear as one of Scott's most remarkable
achievements.  It was task-work, no doubt, but a prodigious feat of
task-work.  Most of it was written in haste, with a mind overwrought
and a heart distracted by cares.  The materials were not available for
a full and accurate chronicle, even had Scott had the capacity and the
desire to use them.  It is avowedly history for the ordinary reader and
not for the scholar, and in such work the qualities necessary are a
just perspective of view, a well-proportioned narrative, and vigour and
colour in the telling.  The first the book possesses in a high degree,
for it might have been written after the lapse of centuries instead of
almost under the shadow of the terror which for twenty years overhung
Europe.  Scott {312} is dispassionate about Napoleon; he thinks him a
bad man but a very great one, and he labours to do justice to that
greatness.  His comments are always dignified, judicious and detached.
"The term of hostility," he wrote, "is ended when the battle has been
won and the foe exists no longer."  The architecture, too, of the book
is good, amazingly good considering the manner of its production.  The
events of the life are in due proportion, and the expository matter is
skilfully interwoven.  It was this sanity of outlook and clarity of
exposition which attracted Goethe.  "What could now be more delightful
to me," he wrote in his _Kunst und Alterthum_, "than leisurely and
calmly to sit down and listen to the discourses of such a man, while
clearly, truly, and with all the skill of a great artist he recalls to
me the incidents on which through life I have meditated."

The weakness lies in the third of the qualities I have cited.  No one,
I think, can read the nine volumes in the "Miscellaneous Works" without
a good deal of admiration and a good deal of boredom.  The inspiration
flags, as it might not have flagged had Scott kept to his first
intention to write something on the scale of Southey's _Nelson_; the
colours grow dim, the story limps, the end is reached many times before
the last page.  Scott, had the chance been given him, might have
written a great piece of biographical history on some topic which
warmly engaged his affections; but Napoleon was not a potent enough
inspiration to keep his interest at stretch over so long a period.  For
such a task there was required the emotion of either worship or hate.
What this lack meant can be seen if we turn to Hazlitt's _Life_, with
which Scott's is properly compared.  Both are productions of men of
genius; both are on a vast scale; neither is the work of a careful
scholar.  In point of manners and equipoise Scott's is incomparably the
better.  Hazlitt is the perfervid Radical who is rapt into an ecstasy
of adoration at Napoleon's name and is grossly unjust to his opponents.
He can write such a sentence as this of Sir John Moore's death:--"He
was buried on the ramparts and 'left alone with his glory'--such as it
{313} was!"  But he has a creed which he holds with a passionate
conviction, and a man to exemplify it who commands all his loyalties.
Hence, with all its ill-breeding, false rhetoric and absurdity, it has
a vitality denied to Scott's mellower task-work.

[Sidenote: _Tales of a Grandfather_]

Very different is the case with _The Tales of a Grandfather_.  Here
Scott is writing about what he knew and liked best, the long pageant of
Scottish history.  Since he is writing for his darling grandson he
curbs his prejudices, and he admits a little, a very little instruction
to balance the heroics.  "When you find anything a little too hard for
you to understand at this moment," he tells Hugh Little John in the
preface, "you must consider that you will be better able to make out
the sense a year or two afterwards; or perhaps you may make a great
exertion and get at its meaning, just as you might contrive to reach
something placed upon a high shelf by standing on your tiptoes."  The
book is never written down to children, but it is all within the
comprehension of a child's mind, for the narrative is easy and natural
with the sound of a living voice behind it, and every paragraph has
something to catch the youthful fancy.  When Scott wrote, the history
of Scotland had not been attempted on scientific lines, and he often
accepts traditions which later research has exposed.  Nevertheless he
gives us truth, the truth of spirit, and a noble impartiality.  Hugh
Littlejohn, like many a child since, was properly excited by it all,
and set out to dirk his young brother with a pair of scissors.  But he
could not away with the instructive matter.  His views were
communicated through Mrs Hughes of Uffington: "He very much dislikes
the chapter on Civilization, and it is his desire that you will never
say anything more about it, for he dislikes it extremely."

In _St Ronan's Well_ Scott seemed to be on the verge of acquiring a new
manner and entering fields hitherto regarded as foreign to his genius.
In the third work published during 1827 we are tantalized by the same
hint of unsuspected gifts, flowering too late in the autumn of his days
to come to fruit.  The first series of _The {314} Chronicles of the
Canongate_, a collection of three short stories, is chiefly notable for
the figure of the narrator.  "The Highland Widow" is a picture of the
disruption of the old Highland life after the 'Forty-five, and, if
Elspeth MacTavish is perhaps too reminiscent of Helen MacGregor, there
is tragedy in her stubborn savagery and the son Hamish is drawn with
sober faithfulness.  In "The Two Drovers" we have a glimpse into the
perverse but logical Highland ethics and an unforgettable picture of
the old world of the drove-roads.  There is no trace of falsetto in
Robin Oig, and his tragic fate is made as inevitable as the return of
the seasons.  In these stories Scott brought to the study of the
Highland character a new psychological insight.  "The Surgeon's
Daughter" contains an admirable portrait of a country doctor, based on
his old friend Dr Ebenezer Clarkson of Selkirk.  The charm of the piece
lies in the contrast between the homely world of Middlemas and the
mysterious East, and, though Scott's knowledge of India was wholly at
second hand, he succeeds in creating a sense of the exotic, and in the
scene where Hyder Ali reveals himself he achieves a stirring _coup de
thtre_.  But we have the feeling throughout that he does not take his
puppets quite seriously; they are Croftangry's creations, and with
Croftangry he is mainly concerned.

It is the narrator of the tale, and the narrator's friends, that give
the book its virtue.  Scott is writing from his own shadowed
retrospect.  Croftangry is himself, and Mrs Bethune Baliol has much of
his own mother and of his childhood's friend, Mrs Anne Murray Keith.
Here there is none of the trait-portraiture, the rejoicing comedy
"humours" of the earlier novels.  The figures of Croftangry's world are
seen in a cold autumnal light which has lost the riotous colours of
summer.  All of them--Croftangry, Mrs Bethune Baliol, Christie Steele,
Fairscribe, Janet MacEvoy--are done with a sure touch and with a
delicate and humorous wistfulness.  Croftangry himself is a convincing
figure of regret and disillusioned philosophy, and Scott never wrote
anything more moving than the scenes where the returning exile {315}
finds his old friend the lawyer a helpless paralytic, and where his
mother's housekeeper shivers his palace of dreams.  Here there is a new
philosophy, a "Winter's Tale" philosophy, and a new technique.  He
paints in finer strokes and in quieter tints, but with an economy and a
certainty which recall some of the best work of Tourgeniev.  The ebbing
of the currents of life seems to have left him with clearer eyes.



IV

[Sidenote: 1828]

The year 1828 was for Scott a period of better health, renewed vitality
and a moderate cheerfulness.  He was busy now with _The Fair Maid of
Perth_ which was published in April, with its successor _Anne of
Geierstein_, with more _Tales of a Grandfather_ for which the public
appetite was insatiable, and with his prefaces and notes for what he
called his _Opus Magnum_, the complete reprint of the novels which
Cadell's purchase of the copyrights had made possible.  There were also
various magazine articles, and two sermons of irreproachable orthodoxy
issued by Colburn, the fashionable London bookseller.[11]  The tale of
these last is curious.  He had a friend, Huntly Gordon, the son of a
half-pay officer in Brussels, who had entered the ministry, found that
his deafness prevented his getting a charge, and had been doing
hack-work for the Ballantynes.  Gordon was chronically impecunious,
and, in order to clear a debt, sought and obtained Scott's permission
to publish two sermons which the latter had written for him when he was
taking orders.  In estimating Scott's labours we must not forget the
demands which his unfailing charity made on his time and his purse.
More than half his correspondence was devoted to helping lame dogs, and
in his worst days he managed to scrape together a pound or two for some
of the ragged regiment of Parnassus.  Most of his protgs, like
Gillies, were impossible people, {316} doomed to fail in everything
they undertook, but Scott never lost patience nor wearied in his
well-doing.

This year his work went smoothly on the whole.  His manuscript was as
neat as ever, but his handwriting had become villainously cramped; he
found that it took him longer to read than to write a page, and even
James Ballantyne deciphered it with difficulty.  The flood of fancy,
too, was liable to sudden ebbs, and there was nothing to be done but to
wait till it returned.  When he had begun a novel he had never known
how it would end, but now he would come to a dead stop in the middle of
a chapter.  An extra glass of wine at dinner and a night's sleep often
brought back his inspiration.  "I had thought on the subject for
several days with something like the despair which seized the fair
princess, commanded by her ugly stepmother to assort a whole garret
full of tangled silk-threads of every kind and colour, when in comes
Prince Percinet with a wand, whisks it over the miscellaneous mass, and
lo! all the threads are as nicely arranged as in a seamstress's
housewife."[12]  His preoccupation with wholesome external interests is
shown by the fact that from the beginning of July till the end of the
year there is no entry in the _Journal_.  Cockburn visited him at
Abbotsford in September, and found his talk as good as ever.  "His
simplicity and naturalness after all his fame are absolutely
incredible."  In his evening dress he was "like any other comfortably
ill-dressed gentleman," but in the morning "with his large coarse
jacket, great stick and leather cap, he was Dandy Dinmont or Dick
Hattrick--a smuggler or poacher."[13]

That year, in the spring vacation, he made his last journey to London
as a comparatively hale man.  It was the saddest event of the year, for
he found poor {317} Hugh Little John sadly changed from the boy who had
ridden with him the summer before in the Abbotsford woods.  On his way
south he visited Stratford-on-Avon, admired the view from Edgehill, and
was pleased to find that the rich land in the vale of Aylesbury brought
a lower rent than that which he got for some of his acres at Huntly
Burn.  He found Walter with his regiment at Hampton Court and Charles
at the Foreign Office; and was delighted with the Lockharts' new house
in Sussex Place with its enchanting outlook over the Regent's Park; he
dined in the company of Coleridge, who delivered a harangue on the
Samothracian mysteries and then attacked the unity of Homer--"Zounds!
I was never so bethumped with words"; he got a road bill rectified
which threatened the amenities of Abbotsford; he dined and slept at
Holland House, and dined with the Duchess of Kent, where he was
presented to the little Princess Victoria, whom he thought plain but
pleasing, and whose name he hoped would be changed before she came to
the throne.  Besides Johnnie Lockhart's health he had Terry's affairs
to distress him, for that cheerful being had become a bankrupt.  "It is
written," he wrote in his _Journal_, "that nothing shall flourish under
my shadow--the Ballantynes, Terry, Nelson, Weber, all came to distress.
Nature has written on my brow: 'Your shade shall be broad, but there
shall be no protection derived from it to aught you favour.'"[14]  It
is almost the only doleful entry of the year.


[Sidenote: _The Fair Maid of Perth_]

_The Fair Maid of Perth_ shows no weakening of power; indeed it must
rank high among the novels which are based on book-work rather than on
personal experience and a still living tradition.  The scene was
Scottish, and even on what Mrs Bethune Baliol called the "wildernesses
in Scottish history" the writer's imagination worked with ease and
certainty.  Though he wisely did not try to make his characters speak
dialect, the idiomatic northern flavour is never absent.  Partly the
book is the {318} familiar medival picture--a court, a tournament, the
smug urban life of comedy, the quarrels of citizens and nobles, a
too-gallant prince, a lovely burgher maiden.  But Scott had so clear an
insight into the old burghal life and such a wealth of knowledge about
it that he repeoples the streets of Perth with folk who are anything
but stage creations.  Moreover Perth was near the Highland Line, and no
book that I know of shows so vividly the contrast, as well as the ties,
between the compact municipal life and the savage outlands.  There is
no "tushery" in the tale; he describes medival Perth as he would have
described eighteenth century Peebles.

Catherine Glover till the later chapters is too conscientiously noble,
and her pacifism becomes a burden, but her instructor, Father Clement,
the Lollard, is drawn with historical insight.  The villains like
Ramorny and Bonthron and Henbane Dwining and the moss-troopers like
Devil's Dick are satisfying rascals, and all the court figures--the
foolish amiable king, Rothsay, Albany, Douglas, March--are careful
studies.  So are the citizens, Simon Glover, and Hal o' the Wynd, and
the luckless Oliver Proudfute.  But the character on whom Scott
lavished most pains, his tribute to the _manes_ of his own unhappy
brother, is Conachar the young Highland chief, who "has drunk the milk
of the white doe," and, for all his spirit, fails in the commoner kinds
of courage.  In his later work Scott, as we have seen, had come to a
deeper understanding of the Highland temperament, and Conachar is his
best portrait of a character frustrate and divided.  The book abounds
in memorable scenes, such as the trial by combat, the clan battle on
the North Inch, and the murder of Rothsay, scenes which in mere
narrative skill rank with the best in the earlier novels.  But there is
one episode which is proof of the new technique to which Scott was
feeling his way, that ironic subtlety which he had already shown in his
picture of Croftangry--the scene where Dwining the apothecary is forced
to cure the child of the man whose death he had compassed.

{319}

[Sidenote: 1829]

The year 1829 opened a little ominously with a return to the _Journal_.
_Anne of Geierstein_, which was finished by the end of April, was a
tough job, which he came to loathe before its completion.  "I muzzled
on," he wrote, "I can call it little better.  The materials are
excellent, but the power of using them is failing."  He took to falling
asleep over his work, and turned gladly for a change to the notes and
prefaces of the _Opus Magnum_.  He was happier over his next task, a
two-volume survey of Scottish history for Lardner's Cyclopdia, for
which he received 1500.  His chief comfort was the huge success which
promised to attend the _Opus_.  Eight volumes were issued before the
end of the year, and the monthly sales reached 35,000.  Over this he
had a brief difference of opinion with Cadell, who was not inclined to
let James Ballantyne have all the printing.  James wrote a plaintive
letter to Scott reminding him of his promise when the catastrophe
came--"We are three mariners escaping from a common shipwreck, and as
the plank is broad enough for all, I cannot think it right to push any
off from it."  Scott was as good as his word, and the printing went to
the Canongate house.[15]

[Sidenote: Charities]

He continued to mingle a good deal in the social life of Edinburgh.
The Blairadam Club saw him at all its meetings, and in March he
attended the ceremony when "the auld murderess Mons Meg" was replaced
in the Castle battery--a kind of Celtic saturnalia, presided over by
Cluny Macpherson, and followed in the evening by a dinner of the
Highland Club.  Politics occupied some of his thoughts, for he was a
strong supporter of Catholic emancipation, and did his best to curb
Lockhart and Southey, thereby earning unwonted praise from Sir James
Mackintosh and the Whigs.  He gave, as usual, most of his time to lame
dogs, for he was never content with the easy way of casual doles.  Here
is a typical entry in the _Journal_:--


A poor young woman came here this morning, well dressed and well
behaved, with a strong northern accent.  She talked {320} incoherently
a long story of a brother and a lover both dead.  I would have kept her
here till I wrote to her friends, particularly to Mr Sutherland (an
Aberdeen bookseller), to inform them where she is, but my daughter and
her maidens were frightened, as indeed there might be room for it, and
so I sent her in one of Davidson's chaises to the Castle at Jedburgh,
and wrote to Mr Shortreed to see she is humanely treated.  I have
written also to her brother.[16]


That seems to me to be charity of the early Christian pattern--or of Dr
Johnson's.  But this practiser of Christianity was not happy among its
official exponents.  He records a meeting with Edward Irving, where he
was deeply impressed with the dark beauty of the face marred by the
terrible squint of the eyes, but rebelled against the unction of the
talk.  Scott did not like those who were at ease in Zion.

As the year went on his health steadily worsened.  Apart from his
chronic ailments like rheumatism, indigestion and palpitation, he was
subject to fits of giddiness, for which he was cupped, and to long
spells of painful lethargy.  Though he did not know it, these were the
precursors of apoplexy.  Also, though he had moments of exhilaration
when Cadell brought him the figures of the sales of the _Opus_, and had
even dreams of buying Faldonside after all, he found melancholy
creeping over him.  The friends of his youth and middle life were fast
slipping away--Shortreed, who had been his companion in his first
incursion into Liddesdale; Terry who had been his ally in the equipment
of Abbotsford; Lady Jane, the mother of Williamina; Sir William Forbes,
Williamina's husband and his own most loyal friend.  Neighbours and
political allies, like Sir Alexander Don and the first Lord Melville,
were gone, and Canning had finished his brief, bright day; Constable
would puff no more along the High Street, and Lord Buchan had been
gathered to those ancestors who were the pride of his life.  Some of
the living, too, were changed.  James Ballantyne was no longer the
jolly companion he had been, for he had lost his wife, retired {321} to
the country, and taken to Whiggism and piety.  But the heaviest blow
was the death of Tom Purdie, which befell in October.  "There is a
heart cold," Scott wrote to Laidlaw, "that loved me well."  One by one
the supports were falling from his house of life.

[Sidenote: _Anne of Geierstein_]

_Anne of Geierstein_, his only book of the year, is the last of the
novels written under anything like normal conditions.  It was the work,
he tells us, of his scanty leisure in Edinburgh, not of quiet mornings
in the country, and, no library being at hand, the history was taken
from memory.  This story of the epoch of Quentin Durward from the
Burgundian side has never, I think, had its merits fully recognized; it
has been too much used for the instruction of youth to have been
considered seriously as a piece of literature.  It is not one of the
great novels, but it is a vigorous and competent one.  The first thing
to be said about it is that the history, like all Scott's history, is
excellent.  The long discussion between Oxford and Charles of Burgundy
gives us the substantial truth about the high politics of the age, and
Scott rarely wrote better battle-pieces than the descriptions of
Granson and Murten.  The troubadour court, too, of old Ren of Provence
is a piece of sound historical reconstruction.  The second thing to be
noted is that, deprived of books of reference, he went back, as old men
will, to the influences of his youth.  _Anne of Geierstein_ is drawn
from deep wells of memory.  One half of it is high-coloured
melodrama--Arthur and Anne facing each other across the Alpine chasm,
the dungeons and the secret passages of Breisach, the black priest of
St Paul, Anne's necromantic ancestry, John Mengs's inn, the descending
bed, and the whole business of the Vehmic tribunal.  This was the
machinery of the Gothick romance, which had fascinated Scott in his
early days, and now he returned to it with a hand practised in more
delicate crafts.  Also, as Lockhart notes, he recaptured from
recollection the standpoint of youth.  Arthur and Anne are among the
most natural of his lovers, Annette and Sigismund and the Swiss lads
among his best portraits of young men and women.  There is no sadness
in the {322} book; its spirit is happy, for Scott was living over in it
again his own happy springtide.



V

[Sidenote: 1830]

On the 15th of February 1830, the four years of incessant toil exacted
their price.  Scott returned from the Court early in the afternoon,
staggered into the drawing-room, and fell fainting at Anne's feet.  For
ten minutes he lost the power of speech, but in the evening, after
being bled and cupped, he recovered possession of his faculties.  In a
day or two he was about again as if nothing had happened, though his
friends noticed an odd nervous twist of the mouth and an occasional
stammer.  He submitted to a most drastic rgime, scarcely touched wine
or spirits, and gave up his evening cigar.  The doctors tactfully told
him that it was "from the stomach," but he knew the symptoms of a
malady which had carried off his father and elder brother, and was
aware that he had shaken hands with death.  "It looks woundy like palsy
or apoplexy," he wrote.  "Well, be it what it will, I can stand it."

One of the medical prescriptions he refused to accept--to slacken his
habits of work.  This he would not do, for madness lay the way of
idleness.  So in 1830 his pen covered as many sheets as in 1829.  He
was busy at a series of letters on demonology and witchcraft for
Murray's Family Library (an enterprise the profits of which, being
outside the Trust, went to his own pocket), at further _Tales of a
Grandfather_, dealing with French history, at notes for the _Opus_, and
at a new novel on a Byzantine subject, not to speak of magazine
articles.  The _Demonology_ is in no way to be despised, for, though
the style and arrangement are sometimes confused, it is a delightful
compendium of eerie tales drawn from his capacious memory, and he
analyses the evidence with all his lawyer's shrewdness.  But over the
others has fallen the shadow of dissolution.  He was suffering now not
only from disease but from decay.

[Sidenote: Resigns Clerkship of Court]

That year was his last as a Clerk of Court, for it was {323} convenient
both to the Government and to himself that he should resign.  He was
given a retiring allowance of 800, thereby losing 500 of income, but
he refused (the Trust assenting) to permit the authorities to make up
the loss by a pension.  George IV died in June, but before his death he
had tried to do honour to the retirement from official life of his old
friend.  Scott was nominated chairman of a commission to examine and
edit the manuscript collections of the Cardinal of York, a scheme which
unfortunately came to nothing, and he was offered and refused a privy
councillorship.  "When one is poor," he wrote, "one ought to avoid
taking rank."

By the late autumn he was free to live all the year at Abbotsford, and
was beginning to comfort himself with the thought that by 1832 his feet
would be clear.  In October the Trust paid a second dividend of three
shillings in the pound, and, on the motion of Gibson-Craig, requested
Scott to accept the library and the plenishing of Abbotsford, "as the
best means the creditors have of expressing their very high sense of
his most honourable conduct, and in grateful acknowledgment for the
unparalleled and most successful exertions he has made, and continues
to make for them."[17]

This was a pleasant god-speed for his retirement.  But his recovered
home was to give him neither health nor peace.  He had virtually
completed the task he had set himself, but there was not to be that
quiet evening, that

    old age, serene and bright
  And lovely as a Lapland night,

which his strenuous life deserved.  The Lockharts, who were at
Chiefwood that summer, saw with pain the {324} ebbing of his bodily
strength.  In the autumn there were more visitors than ever, and the
labour of entertaining them taxed his powers to the uttermost.  John
Nicholson was now his butler, and endeavoured also to take Tom Purdie's
place, but beyond an occasional amble on Douce Davie and a slow walk in
the grounds Scott was little out of doors.  In November he had another
slight apoplectic seizure, and found his lameness of thigh, knee and
ankle sorely increased.  To make matters worse he was obsessed with a
morbid passion for work, and could not be persuaded to leave his desk.
Lockhart and Cadell tried to induce him to be content with light tasks,
such as the notes for his _Opus_ and a catalogue of his library, but he
stuck grimly to his Byzantine tale, _Count Robert of Paris_, which was
going as ill as possible.  He had chosen an arid subject and he could
not give the dry bones life.  Ballantyne criticized the early chapters
harshly and Cadell did not conceal his disappointment.[18]  Scott was
plunged in gloom, but mercifully Willie Laidlaw, who was again his
secretary, liked the tale, and his simple-minded "Keep us a'!" did
something to console the weary man.

There was another painful business.  The news from London to Scott's
sick ears seemed to be of red ruin and the break-up of society.  The
Duke of Wellington ceased to be Prime Minister in November, and was
succeeded by Lord Grey with a ministry pledged to reform.  There was
unrest everywhere in the land, and to his horror he found many of his
old friends inclining to the new policy.  The time had come when he
felt that he must stand in the gate.  He began a pamphlet on the
_Malachi_ lines, which was to be a trumpet-call to awaken the nation's
conscience.  Cadell and James Ballantyne posted down to Abbotsford in
dismay, for they realized that political excitement might kill Scott,
and that the kind of pamphlet he proposed would gravely damage his
repute.  An author is often in love with his least deserving work, and
though the Whig Laidlaw seems to have been impressed with the eloquence
{325} of the new _Malachi_, Cadell and Ballantyne criticized it so
trenchantly that Scott in high dudgeon flung it into the fire.  But he
did not change his purpose.  He was determined, while life was left to
him, to fight against what old Henry Mackenzie had called "epidemic
insanity."  To Lady Louisa Stuart he wrote:--


Your acquaintance with Shakespeare is intimate, and you remember why,
and where, it is said

  "He words me, girl, he words me."

Our modern men of the day have done this to the country.  They have
devised a new phraseology to convert good into evil and evil into good,
and the ass's ears of John Bull are gulled with it as if words alone
made crime or virtue.  Have they a mind to excuse the tyranny of
Buonaparte?  Why, the Lord love you, he only squeezed into his
government a grain too much of civilization.  The fault of Robespierre
was too active liberalism; a noble error.  Thus the most blood-thirsty
anarchy is glossed over by opening an account in a new name.  The
varnish might be easily scraped off all this trumpery.


[Sidenote: The reform election]

But he had not the strength for the task.  _Count Robert_, the later
chapters of which satisfied his critics no better than the earlier, was
laid aside for the moment, and he began a novel about Douglas castle
and the War of Independence.  In April 1831 Parliament was dissolved,
and the sole issue at the election was parliamentary reform.  The
result could not be in doubt; Scott decided that the old constitution
had fallen, "thrown away like a child's toy"; but he was resolved to
strike a last blow for it.  He electioneered up and down the Border,
and on the 21st of March addressed a meeting at Jedburgh where he told
the weavers that Lord Grey and his colleagues were like a parcel of
schoolboys taking to pieces a watch which they could not put together
again.  He was howled down, and left the place with the words
"Moriturus vos saluto."

The use of the participle was just, for on Saturday, April 16th, he had
a severe paralytic stroke.  He bore it, as Dr Johnson bore the same
affliction, with humility, fortitude and thankfulness.  Within a
fortnight he was {326} back at work struggling with _Count Robert_ and
notes for the _Opus_.  He would not take Cadell's advice to keep out of
politics.  "They are not worth your while," wrote that wise man; "the
river is in flood at present, and no one man, not even the King
himself, can stop it.  Many will incite you, many will hurry you on,
but the kicklers and clappers of hands will not consider that the
gallant actor may hurt himself, and probably may come in for a kick
from some cart nag with not a drop of breeding in his carcase."[19]
The prophecy fell true, for the kick from the cart nag came on election
day at Jedburgh.  A band of weavers from Hawick paraded the streets,
Scott's carriage was stoned, and he was smuggled out of the place
pursued by cries of "Burke Sir Walter." "Much obliged to the brave lads
of Jeddart," he wrote in his _Journal_.  "_Troja fuit._"

The world had become grievously out of joint for him.  _Count Robert_
pleased nobody, so its publication was delayed, and he turned to
_Castle Dangerous_ without zest or hope.  Yet work was his only tie to
life, and this was clear to Cadell and Lockhart, so that they dared not
dissuade him.  Cadell has been blamed for flogging the weary steed, but
his intention seems to have been of the kindliest, and he was even
prepared, in order to comfort Scott, to publish a _Malachi_ outpouring
when the election was over.  He was a pawky, timid being, a follower in
other men's tracks, who succeeded where Constable the pioneer had
failed, but the fact that he ultimately made a large fortune out of
Scott's works is not to his discredit.  It is no crime to be a
successful tradesman.  As Cadell entered more into Scott's affairs,
James Ballantyne disappeared.  He had become valetudinarian and devout,
and an ardent reformer.  In April he had written to Scott, a week after
his stroke, advising him to become a total abstainer--a tactless
prescription for a man who had for long been living on prison fare.[20]
He came to Abbotsford in July on a last visit, and left on the Sunday
morning without saying good-bye, on the ground that he needed stronger
spiritual {327} nourishment than the reading of the church service.
The two ancient friends were not destined to meet again.

[Sidenote: Douglasdale]

That summer Scott made his last expedition in his native land.  For the
purposes of _Castle Dangerous_ he wished to visit Douglasdale, so he
and Lockhart set out on July 18th.  He had long realized that his days
were numbered, and on this journey his son-in-law reached the sad
conclusion that the powers of memory and brain were already weakening.
It was a heavy lowering day when they visited St Bride's kirk and the
ruins of the castle, and as they drove away over the Lesmahagow moors
Scott repeated verses from the old poets, particularly from Dunbar's
"Lament of the Makars."  Then he turned to "Otterburn," and broke down
in tears when he came to the verse

  My wound is deep--I fain would sleep--
    Take thou the vanguard of the three,
  And hide me beneath the bracken bush,
    That grows on yonder lily lea.

At Milton Lockhart that evening he seemed to recover something of his
spirits, but next morning he heard that his friend, Mr Elliot Lockhart
of Borthwickbrae, whom he had met at dinner, had had a stroke and was
believed to be dying.  He insisted on leaving at once.  "I must home to
work while it is called day; for the night cometh when no man can work."

Of the two novels of the year, Scott's last publications, the critic
can have little to say.  They must be judged not by the canons of art,
but as desperate deeds, the final blows struck by a failing man in the
cause of honour.  _Count Robert_ is history rather than fiction, a
compilation from Gibbon and the _Alexiad_, and as prolix as Anna
Comnena herself.  The court of Byzantium in the eleventh century was
not a subject with which Scott had any natural affinities, and he was
too languid to reproduce the drama of the clash of West and East in the
first Crusade.  There are moments of vigour, like the fight with the
tiger in the dungeon, but everywhere {328} lassitude weights his pen.
In _Castle Dangerous_ he had matter which in earlier days might have
been wrought into a great novel, and he walked familiar ground.  But
the craftmanship is weak, though the style is good; the account of the
friction between De Valence and De Walton is too lengthily done and is
not strictly relevant to the plot; the adventures jar from their
suddenness, and the final combat in St Bride's kirk does not stir us as
it should.  He was too fatigued to rise to the mood of that furious
Palm Sunday in Douglasdale.  The oppression of his spirits is curiously
reflected in the weather of the tale, for all the events take place
under grey skies, in creeping mists and driving rain.


[Sidenote: Wordsworth's farewell]

Scott had yielded to his doctors' entreaties and consented to spend the
coming winter out of England, and Lord Grey's Government had
magnanimously put a frigate at his disposal.  Moreover, young Walter
was given leave from his regiment in order to accompany him.  The last
autumn at Abbotsford had its cheerful hours.  Adolphus came on a visit,
and Burns's soldier son, and Turner the artist, who had to be prevented
from endowing all his Scots figures with the kilt.  There were
pilgrimages to Ettrick and Bemersyde, and dinners under the trees at
Chiefswood.  Scott mounted Douce Davie again, and looked on at the
coursing at Cauldshiels loch, admiring the horsemanship of his elder
son.  He had convinced himself that his debts had been paid, and all
conspired to foster the delusion; he was looking forward to his
travels, too, though he could not forget that Fielding and Smollett had
been driven abroad by ill-health and had never returned.  The true
farewell was appropriately spoken by the other great living king of
letters.  Wordsworth came to Abbotsford with his daughter, and on the
last day of his stay the two poets visited Newark.  They forded Tweed
on their return when the hills were purple in an eerie gloaming.
Wordsworth, himself sick and blind, saw in the mysterious light the
presage of death, and his heart stirred for the {329} old friend whom
he widely differed from and deeply loved.  That night he wrote this
sonnet:--

  A trouble, not of clouds, or weeping rain,
  Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light
  Engendered, hangs o'er Eildon's triple height;
  Spirits of power assembled there complain
  For kindred power departing from their sight;
  While Tweed, best pleased in chanting a blithe strain,
  Saddens his voice again, and yet again.
  Lift up your hearts, ye mourners! for the might
  Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes:
  Blessings and prayers in nobler retinue
  Than sceptred King or laurelled Conqueror knows
  Follow this wondrous potentate.  Be true,
  Ye winds of ocean, and the Midland sea
  Wafting your charge to soft Parthenope!



[1] _Journal_, I.  254-5.  _P.L.B._, 130.  There were other proposals
of the kind, such as that in July 1830 when a young man announced that
his sister was in love with Scott.  _Journal_, II.  348.

[2] Lockhart, VII.  224-7.

[3] _Journal_, I.  325.

[4] _Journal_, I.  316.

[5] _Ibid._, I.  329-30.

[6] Scott was a most careless patient, for he was always getting caught
in the rain and returning home dripping, as he said, "like a
water-kelpy."

[7] Lockhart, VII.  15-20.  _P.L.B._, 114.

[8] Lang, II.  23, 31.

[9] _Sederunt Book_; Lockhart, VII.  83-87; _Journal_, II.  57, etc.

[10] _Journal_, II.  94, 98-99.

[11] _Religious Discourses by a Layman_.  The preface is signed "W.S."
and dated from Abbotsford.  Gordon got 250 for the book.

[12] _Journal_, II.  31

[13] _Mem._, 454-5.  Haydon in his Autobiography has a similar
testimony to Scott's simplicity of manner.  "Scott enters a room and
sits at table with the coolness and self-possession of conscious fame;
Wordsworth with a mortified elevation of head, as if fearful he was not
estimated as he desired.  Scott is always cool and very amusing;
Wordsworth often egotistical and overwhelming.  Scott seems to appear
less than he really is, while Wordsworth struggles to be thought at the
moment greater than he is suspected to be.  I think that Scott's
success would have made Wordsworth insufferable, while Wordsworth's
failure would not have rendered Scott a whit less delightful."

[14] _Journal_, II.  160.

[15] _P.L.B._, 362-5.

[16] II.  278.

[17] _Sederunt Book_.  This was the last dividend paid in Scott's
lifetime.  At a meeting of the Trustees on 29th October 1832, it was
reported that the funds raised since the commencement of the Trust
amounted to 51,127, and that funds in hand or in sight, including
insurances, amounted to 34,178.  These latter moneys, with 20,000 to
be provided by the Scott family, would enable every creditor to be paid
a further 9s. in the  (18s. in all).  This was accepted by the
creditors as a final settlement, the value of the Abbotsford library,
etc., gifted to Scott, being taken as equal to the remaining 2s.
Cadell ultimately settled with the Scott family and paid off the
mortgage on Abbotsford on the basis of the assignment to him of the
remaining rights in Scott's works and of the profits of Lockhart's
_Life_.

[18] See the letters in _P.L.B._, 365-9.

[19] _P.L.B._, 373.

[20] _Ibid._, 370.




{330}

CHAPTER XII

RELEASE

(1831-1832)

"I am perhaps setting," Scott wrote in the _Journal_ in September.
"Like a day that has been admired as a fine one, the light of it sets
down amid mists and storms.  I neither regret nor fear the approach of
death if it is coming.  I would compound for a little pain instead of
this heartless muddiness of mind....  I have no fear on pecuniary
matters.  The ruin which I fear involves that of my King and
country."[1]  This was the mood in which he set out on his travels.
But the change of scene revived his spirits.  In London, though he
could not dine out, he met many of his old friends, and though the air
was full of tales of mob violence, he seems to have got an easier mind
about politics.  After all, the Duke of Wellington was still alive, and
Ministers, Whigs though they were, had been uncommonly kind to
himself.[2]  The doctors had examined him and found traces of incipient
disease of the brain, but they were confident that, if he would only
give up work, the malady could be averted.

[Sidenote: Malta and Naples]

The journey started ill, for the _Barham_ could not sail for a week,
and the party had to kick their heels in a Portsmouth hotel.  They
sailed eventually on October 29th, but on November 2nd they were still
beating {331} off Land's End, a very sea-sick company.  When they had
crossed the Bay of Biscay the weather improved, and Scott was much on
deck, hobbling about with his creaking leg, and talking briskly to the
ship's officers.  As they passed Cape St Vincent and Trafalgar and
Gibraltar the traveller's interest was stirred, and the mild airs
improved his health; his _Journal_ is full of jottings of what he saw;
and when on November 22nd he entered Malta harbour he felt some vigour
returning to both body and mind.  He stayed three weeks in the island,
living at a hotel though various private houses were offered to him,
and was well enough to attend a ball given in his honour.  The place
gave him an idea for a new novel to be called _The Siege of Malta_, and
a short story _Il Bizarro_, at which he worked for the next few months;
both are still extant in manuscript, but it may be hoped that no
literary resurrectionist will ever be guilty of the crime of giving
them to the world.

At Naples, which was reached on December 17th, the party stayed for
four months.  Scott was not very ill and not very unhappy, but both his
senses and his mind were a little blunted.  He attended the Court in
the uniform of a Scottish archer, and conversed with the king in his
awkward French, and dined with the nonagenarian Archbishop of Tarentum.
He saw all the sights, but he was no classic, and Pollio's villa and
Paestum meant little to him, while at Pompeii he could only ingeminate
"The city of the Dead."  On January 16th 1832 news came of his
grandson's death, but Scott, who had sorrowed so deeply in anticipating
it, merely notes in his _Journal_: "Poor Johnny Lockhart!  The boy is
gone whom we have made so much of.  I could not have borne it better
than I now do, and might have borne it much worse." ... That evening he
went to the opera.

It would appear that the decay of his brain had now begun in solemn
earnest, and he moved in an interior world of his own.  Sometimes the
weight of his debts hung over him like a cloud; but more often he
believed them paid off, and wrote cheerfully to Lockhart about {332}
the approaching purchase of Faldonside.  He finished his Malta story
and had great schemes of future literary work, including a poem in the
style of _The Lady of the Lake_ to be a postscript to the novels.  The
subject was to be a tale of chivalry connected with Rhodes, and for the
purpose he meant to visit Sir Frederick Adam in the Ionian Islands and
get him to accompany him to Greece.  But the plan was only a sudden
fancy, for his deepest desire was to go home.  He saw the landscape of
Italy in terms of his own land, and when he visited Avernus, which is
not unlike a Highland loch, he was heard to murmur

  Up the craggy mountain
    And down the mossy glen,
  We daurna gang a-milking
    For Charlie and his men.


[Sidenote: 1832]

At Naples in March Scott had word of Goethe's death.  He had intended
to visit him at Weimar on his return journey, and the tidings seemed to
be his own summons.  "He at least died at home," he cried; "let us to
Abbotsford," and the phrase commonest on his lips was Politian's "Grata
quies patri."  Moreover, Sir Frederick Adam had been recalled from the
Ionian Islands, so the Greek plan dropped.  A travelling carriage was
bought, and in the middle of April the party turned their faces
northward.  Walter had had to rejoin his regiment, and Charles now took
his place.

[Sidenote: Return home]

Three weeks were passed in Rome, but Scott, who in earlier years would
have found the days spent there all too short, was sunk in
listlessness.  His thoughts, so far as they were more than vacant
dreams, were all on Scotland.  He was not ill or peevish--"As I am now
good for nothing else," he said, "I think it as well to be good
humoured"--he was simply at the end of life and pleasure.  The only
sights which woke a response were the Cardinal of York's villa with its
Stuart portraits and St Peter's with the Stuart tombs.  On May 11th
Rome was left behind, and the glimpse of the pines and the late snows
on the Apennines pleased him, for they {333} recalled Scotland.  After
that all was blank.  Venice, Tirol, Munich, Heidelberg said nothing to
him; there was a flicker of interest when they embarked on the Rhine,
which he had recently described in _Anne of Geierstein_, but it died
when they landed at Cologne....  Then on June 9th near Nimeguen the
body followed the mind, and he had a fourth paralytic seizure.  On the
11th he was lifted from his carriage into the boat at Rotterdam, and
two days later was put to bed in a Jermyn Street hotel.


The rest of the _via dolorosa_ is soon traced.  More fortunate than
Leyden, he was to die at home.  He lay for some three weeks in London,
sunk for the most part in a painless coma, but able to recognize his
children.  The faithful Cadell arrived from Edinburgh, and the
Lockharts and Anne watched beside his bed, while every newspaper
chronicled the progress of his malady, and the royal family made daily
inquiries.  Outside in Jermyn Street Allan Cunningham found a group of
working men, who asked him, "Do you know, sir, if this is the street
where he is lying?"  There were many besides Newman to pray for the
Minstrel.  In his waking moments he longed for home, and on July 7th he
was carried on board ship, while a great crowd lined the pavements.
Two days later he reached Newhaven, and on the 11th he began the
journey to Tweeddale.  As the carriage descended the glen of Gala water
he woke to consciousness and murmured familiar names, and when it
rounded the hill at Ladhope and the Eildons came into view he exclaimed
in delight.  Tweed being in spate he had to go round by Melrose bridge,
and could scarcely be kept in the carriage.  At Abbotsford Laidlaw and
his dogs were waiting.  "Ha!  Willie Laidlaw!" he cried.  "O man, how
often have I thought of you!"

For a few days there was a break in the clouds and a brief clearness
revisited his mind.  He was wheeled by Lockhart and Laidlaw out of
doors among the roses, and up and down the hall and the library.  "I
have seen much," he repeated often, "but nothing like my {334} ain
house."  He would sit peacefully at the library window looking on
Tweed, or in a shady corner of the grounds, while Lockhart read aloud
to him from Crabbe and the Gospel of St John.  One day he revived so
far that he desired to be set in his chair at his desk and given his
pen.  But the pen dropped from his hand, and he fell back weeping among
his pillows.  "No repose for Sir Walter but in the grave."

That was all but the last gleam of light.  He retired into a melancholy
half-consciousness while his great bodily strength slowly
ebbed--talking to the dead Tom Purdie, repeating the Jedburgh mob's cry
of "Burke Sir Walter," or in a happier mood reciting the _Stabat
Mater_, and texts of Scripture, and verses of the Scottish psalms.  On
the morning of Monday, September 17th, Lockhart was called to his
bedside and found him conscious again, but in the last extremity of
weakness.  "Lockhart," he said, "I may have but a minute to speak to
you.  My dear, be a good man--be virtuous--be religious--be a good man.
Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here."
Walter and Charles were summoned, and in the presence of all his family
Scott died in the early afternoon of September 21st.  His eldest son
kissed his eyes and closed them, while through the open window in the
bright autumn weather came the gentle murmur of Tweed.


He was buried, by right of his Haliburton blood, in the ruined abbey of
Dryburgh.  The day was sombre and cloudy with a high wind, and the
whole countryside in the same dark livery followed the coffin to the
grave.  A century later another great Borderer was brought from
Bemersyde to lie near him.  For Walter Scott and Douglas Haig the line
of Homer, which Lockhart quotes, is the fittest epitaph--

  There lay he, mighty and mightily fallen, having
        done with his chivalry.[3]



[1] II.  412-13.

[2] A tribute should be paid to the generosity of Lord Grey's
Government towards so stout an opponent.  Apart from lending a frigate,
they were prepared to help Scott when it was rumoured that he was short
of means on his way home, they gave Anne a pension, and when it was
necessary to pass a short Act to appoint a new Sheriff, since he was
too ill to resign, Jeffrey conducted the matter with such good feeling
that Peel and Croker crossed the House to thank him.

[3] [Greek: _keito megas megalsti lelasmnos ipposynn_.]  Iliad,
XVI.  776.




{335}

CHAPTER XIII

THE WRITER[1]

The appeal of Scott to his own age was immediate and universal, and his
influence on his contemporaries and successors was as great as Byron's
and more enduring.  The literature of every civilized country bears
witness to it.  In France Alfred de Vigny, Mrime, Dumas, Balzac and
Victor Hugo drew from him their first inspiration; in Germany and Italy
he was the patron of a new school of romance, Manzoni was his disciple,
and the reading of _Quentin Durward_ made Ranke an historian; he was
the earliest master of the Russian Dostoevsky; in Spain he had a host
of imitators, and he was the acknowledged source of the eager
romanticism out of which Catalan nationalism sprang; in Scandinavia,
Tegner and Almquist and Runeberg were his followers, and so different a
writer as Strindberg confessed that before he approached an historical
subject he steeped himself in Scott.  He has been translated into every
tongue, and no English writer save Shakespeare is so continuously
reprinted in so many lands.[2]

This wide popular acceptance as a classic has had a paralysing effect
on the critical study of Scott.  He has been too much taken for
granted, as if he were a statue in a public place.  He has had
detractors such as Borrow and idolaters such as Ruskin, but he has been
praised and blamed in a spirit of rhetoric rather than of science.  The
really penetrating criticism of Scott could be collected in a slim
volume--his own and that of Lockhart, Lady {336} Louisa Stuart,
Adolphus, Nassau Senior, Bagehot, and in our own day A. W. Verrall and
Professor Elton.  For the rest we have had to content ourselves with
appreciations by writers who were too much in love with the man to look
judicially upon his work, and with essays in belittlement by adherents
of some minor coterie.  Yet he is worth the attention of the
well-equipped critic, for at his best he stands the test of the most
searching examination and the austerest standards.

I offer in this chapter modestly and tentatively my own conclusions.
In the study of a practitioner of an art so rapidly developing as that
of fiction, it is idle to attempt to devise a calculus of merit or to
fix his exact rank in a hierarchy.  There is one glory of the sun and
another glory of the moon.  The novel is the world as seen through the
temperament of the novelist, and his success depends upon the depth of
his insight and the richness of his temperament, the twin powers of
perception and interpretation.  In assessing his value the points which
concern us are his competence as a student of life; the nature of the
technique by which he presents his conclusions; and in the last resort
his power of transforming and sublimating his world, that "stellar and
undiminishable something" which was Emerson's definition of greatness.



I

[Sidenote: Prose style]

Let us begin with the lesser matters, and take first his prose style,
which has found many critics.  The complaint on this score needs to be
exactly stated.  Obviously we cannot expect to find in him anything
esoteric in the use of words, any delicate exercises in verbal
dry-point, any of what Professor Elton has called "those false
associations of painful, choice and fastidious language that have
gathered for half a century round the word _art_."[3]  To Scott, as to
Balzac and Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, writing was a natural process; not,
as to Tourgeniev and Flaubert, a ritual.  There is a revealing
confession {337} in the _Journal_.  "I am sensible that, if there be
anything good about my poetry or my prose either, it is a hurried
frankness of composition, which pleases soldiers, sailors, and young
people of bold and active dispositions."[4]  Had Scott indulged in any
_finesse_ of language he would have been guilty of a grave fault of
craftsmanship, and the result would have been as preposterous as the
insertion of point-lace in a buff coat.  In the mere verbal dandyism of
style the world will never seriously interest itself, for it does not
understand how the manner of saying something can have merit
independent of the thing said.  The _mot juste_, it holds rightly, is
futile unless it be the right word for the right thing.  To the
monotonous exquisiteness of Flaubert it prefers the irregular movement
and the more varied rhythms of less self-conscious writers, because it
believes that the latter is the better art.

The real charge is a more serious affair.  It is that Scott, from
carelessness and ineptitude in the use of words, spoiled the artistic
effect of his narrative; that his tools were so blunt that they often
failed to do their work; that his extreme facility kept him always on
the edge, and sometimes led him over the edge, of banality: and that he
attains his great moments by a kind of happy accident in defiance of
his style.  The charge has been made by Stevenson, an admirer and
follower, and it has been made in uncompromising terms.  "His
characters ... will be wading forward with an ungrammatical and
undramatic rigmarole of words....  He could ... often fob us off with
languid, inarticulate twaddle....  He conjured up the romantic with
delight, but he had hardly patience to describe it....  He was a great
day-dreamer ... but hardly a great artist; hardly, in the manful sense,
an artist at all."[5]

There is some truth in this solemn bill of attainder.  Scott was a
master but not a schoolmaster of language, and sometimes grammar and
syntax go by the board.  Like Shakespeare he wrote fast, and like
Shakespeare he could write abominably.  He could produce fustian {338}
and jargon and "polite English" and false rhetoric.  His sentences can
trip up each other's heels, and he can weaken his effects by an idle
superabundance of words.  In previous chapters I have given many
instances of these blemishes.  The truth is that any man, whose
business it is to portray life in action and who is caught up in the
white heat of his task, is certain at times to take the first phrase
that comes into his head, and jar the ear and the taste of a fastidious
reader.

On the other hand it seems to me that the staple of his writing, even
when he is least inspired, is sound and workmanlike.  He is a master of
easy, swift, lucid narrative, and he invented a mode of speech for the
figures of past ages which is at once romantic and natural.  His style
is far more varied than appears at first sight, and, just as in his
lyrics he could pass from the trumpets of war to the pipes of faery, so
in his prose he can sometimes attain a haunting simplicity and grace,
as in the narrative of Chrystal Croftangry and in a hundred passages in
the _Journal_.  But the true defence looks not to the levels but to the
heights.  As Dryden said of Shakespeare, he is always great when some
great occasion is presented to him.  When the drama quickens and the
stage darkens he attains to a style as perfect and unforgettable as
Shakespeare's, and it is most cunningly compounded.  It is never
"precious," but it is often beyond price.  On such occasions he gives
us harmonies as subtle and moving as can be found in the whole range of
English prose, where every cadence, every epithet, every object
mentioned plays its due part in the total impression.  I need only cite
the speech of Meg Merrilies to the laird of Ellangowan, Claverhouse's
speech to Morton, Habakkuk Mucklewrath's denunciation of Claverhouse,
the last chapters of _The Bride of Lammermoor_, "Wandering Willie's
Tale," and the closing scene of _Redgauntlet_.  Such passages are worth
the patient, imaginative analysis which we give to the choruses of
schylus.[6]

{339}

On one point there is no dispute, the complete rightness of the speech
of his Scots characters.  Scott used the dialect of the Lothians with a
slight Border admixture--that is to say, metropolitan Scots, the
classic language of Scottish gentlefolk and peasants.  Twice he
permitted himself an experiment in the Aberdeen version--with Francie
Macraw in _The Antiquary_ and with Davie Dingwall in _The Bride of
Lammermoor_.  He varied the vernacular to suit his characters.
Sometimes it is standard English with a delicate northern colouring;
sometimes it broadens into robust idioms, though it is never permitted
to become an unintelligible clot of dialect.  At great moments, as with
Meg Merrilies and Jeanie Deans and Steenie Steenson, it has the high
simplicity of the universal.  One point is worth noting.  He understood
the undercurrent of rhythm in the vernacular, and half his felicities
come from this submerged music, these repetitive dactyls and trochees
and anapaests, which have both the hammer-strokes of prose and the lilt
of poetry.[7]



II

[Sidenote: Structure]

From verbal style we pass to structure.  It is important to remember
the conditions under which the novels were produced.  Scott wrote them,
as Shakespeare wrote his plays, in the intervals of a busy life, and
the amount of time available for the actual work of scribing was
strictly limited.  But the theme was always in his head; he has told us
that he was never consciously inventing and never not inventing; as he
sat in court, or walked the Edinburgh streets, or rode about the
Forest, he was {340} perpetually slipping over the frontier of his
secret world; he would have agreed with Bagehot, who wrote "There is no
time for quiet reflection like the intervals of the hunt."  The hour
before rising, too, he usually gave up to a forecast of the morning's
work.  Apart from details, he did not compose at his desk.  The stories
built themselves up half-unconsciously in his mind, while his fancy ran
free.  Hence his structure was not an artificial thing beaten out by
laborious cogitation, but an organic development proceeding slowly and
naturally like the growth of a tree.  In none of the greater novels are
we offended by any jerking of the wires.

This structure is sometimes defective, chiefly because Scott was in too
great a hurry to get on with the story.  Stevenson has noted an
instance in the "recognition" scene in _Guy Mannering_ when Harry
Bertram lands at Ellangowan and hears the tune on the flageolet.  There
Scott has omitted to prepare the reader's mind for certain details, and
he does it in haste with a sentence clumsily interpolated.  Sometimes
he brings an episode to a huddled conclusion, and now and then there is
a grave lack of proportion.  The novel, when he wrote, was still in
process of changing from the rambling, inconsequent, picaresque
tradition.  But it may be said on the other hand that the main drama is
nearly always well shaped, though that drama is not always coterminous
with the whole story.  The novels, it seems to me, do in a large
measure achieve an artistic unity.  Scott's purpose is always to
present the manifold of experience winnowed and sifted and free of
inessentials.  He was not content, as many of the great Russians have
been content, to produce a huge mass of the data of fiction, on which
the shaping spirit of imagination only works at intervals.  Can it be
denied that much of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky has a scientific rather than
an artistic interest?  There are moving "plays within the play," but
the whole is formless because it is not wrought to the human scale.  It
is no justification to say that it is life; a novelist does not
transcribe, he creates life; life is not art till it is moulded and
clarified, it is only {341} art's raw material.  Unity of impression is
essential for the whole and not merely for episodes.  If the scale is
too grandiose and the complexities too many, the result may be a
contribution to knowledge, but it cannot make that single, undivided
and intense impression which is the aim of the artist.  Mere mass and
intricacy are valueless unless transfused and transformed by the
creative mind; otherwise an interminable Alexandrian epic would
transcend the _Iliad_, and a sprawling medival romaunt would be ranked
above Chaucer.

[Sidenote: Scott's padding]

A common charge against the structure of the novels is their
_longueurs_ and excessive padding, and up to a point the charge is
just.  Scott did not write with a narrow thesis, and therefore he is
loath to discard what interests him, even if its relevance is not very
clear.  His affection was so pledged to his characters and their doings
that he is apt to linger with them in side-walks.  But the complaint
may easily be overdone.  Do Scott's irrelevancies ever reach the
heights of tediousness which we find in some of the greatest of his
successors--in _War and Peace_, for example, with its roods of amateur
military discussion and its acres of turgid pamphleteering?  May not
his _longueurs_, too, have an artistic value?  In his review of Jane
Austen he wrote:--


Let any one cut out from the _Iliad_ or from Shakespeare's plays
everything ... which is absolutely devoid of importance or interest in
itself; and he will find that what is left will have lost more than
half its charm.  We are convinced that some writers have diminished the
effect of their works by being scrupulous to admit nothing into them
which had not some absolute, intrinsic, and independent merit.  They
have acted like those who strip off the leaves of a fruit-tree, as
being of themselves good for nothing, with the view of securing more
nourishment to the fruit, which in fact cannot attain its full maturity
and flower without them.[8]


The metaphor is perhaps not exact, but there is justice in the point.
Scott's padding, antiquarian and otherwise, provides relief, a rest for
the mind, in the midst of exciting action.

Something of the same kind may be said in defence of {342} his stockish
heroes and heroines, who should properly be considered as part of the
structure of the tale, rather than studies in character.  They are
passive people for the most part, creatures of the average world, not
majestic men and women of destiny.  But they are not unreal, for the
earth is full of them; they are the more natural for being
undistinguished.  They seem to me to play on the whole a vital artistic
part, for there is such a thing as too stimulating fare.  They form a
solid background, a kind of Greek chorus repeating all the accepted
platitudes, and keeping the drama, which might otherwise become
fantastic, within reach of our prosaic life.

[Sidenote: The meaning of romance]

The point is worth dwelling on, for it is bound up with the meaning of
romance.  It is one of Scott's characteristics that, though
sympathizing in every fibre with the coloured side of life, with man's
exaltations and agonies, he feels bound to let common sense put in its
word now and then, to let the voice be heard of the normal pedestrian
world.  In a great painting, as has often been pointed out, there is
always some prosaic object which provides a point of rest for the eye,
and without which the whole value of the picture would be altered.
This duty is performed in literature by the ordinary man, by Kent in
_Lear_, by Horatio in _Hamlet_, by Banquo in _Macbeth_; they are, so to
speak, the "eye" of the storm which rages about them, and serve to
measure the departure of the others from virtue, sanity, moderation, or
merely normal conduct.  Each is like the centre of a great wheel, which
has little movement in itself but controls the furious revolutions of
the circumference.  This _punctum indifferens_ is the peaceful
anchorage of good sense from which we are able to watch with a balanced
mind the storm outside.  No great art is without it.  Scott never loses
his head, and the artistic value is as undeniable as the moral value.
The fantastic, the supernatural and the quixotic are heightened in
their effect by being shown against this quiet background; moreover,
they are made credible by being thus linked to our ordinary world.
Behind all {343} the extravagance we feel the Scots lawyer considering
his case; we hear a voice like Dr Johnson's reminding us that somewhere
order reigns.  If we compare Scott with Victor Hugo we shall understand
the difference made by the lack of this quality.  For the great
Frenchman there is no slackening of the rein, no lowering of the
top-note, till the steed faints from exhaustion and the strident voice
ceases to impress our dulled ears.

A consequence of this gift of central steadfastness is Scott's skill in
anti-climax, which, like the "falling close" in a lyric, does not
weaken but increases the effect.  Like the Gifted Gilfillan in
_Waverley_ he can pass easily and naturally from the New Jerusalem of
the Saints to the price of beasts at Mauchline Fair.  In previous
chapters I have given instances of this breaking in upon romance of a
voice from the common world, which does not weaken the heroic, but
brings it home.  Without some such salt of the pedestrian, romance
becomes only a fairy-tale, and tragedy a high-heeled strutting.  The
kernel of romance is contrast, beauty and valour flowering in unlikely
places, the heavenly rubbing shoulders with the earthly.  The true
romantic is never the posturing Byronic hero.  All romance, all
tragedy, must be within hailing distance of our humdrum lives, and
anti-climax is a necessary adjunct to climax.  We find it in the
Ballads--this startling note of common sense, the sense of the
commonalty, linking fact and dream.  We find it in Shakespeare, who can
make Cleopatra pass from banter with a peasant to the loftiest of human
soliloquies.--"Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there? ... Those that
do die of it do seldom or never recover....  I wish you joy o' the
worm."  And then:--

  Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have
  Immortal longings in me.

We find it in Scott, whose broad sane vision saw that tragedy and
comedy are sisters, and that, like Antaeus, neither can live without
the touch of her mother, the earth.



{344}

III

[Sidenote: His characters]

The staple of the novelist's task is the understanding and presentation
of human character.  How does Scott fare when judged by this test?

Badly, says Carlyle.  "Your Shakespeare fashions his characters from
the heart outwards; your Scott fashions them from the skin inwards,
never getting near the heart of them."  Bagehot after his fashion puts
the charge precisely, when he finds Scott weak in his treatment of two
of the deepest human interests, love and religion.

It is important to recognize frankly Scott's limitations.  "Everything
worth while," said Nietzsche, "is accomplished _notwithstanding_"; we
cannot rightly measure a man's powers till we know what he cannot do.
Scott's world was a very large and rich one, larger and richer perhaps
than that of any other novelist, but it had its boundaries.  We may put
his heroes and heroines aside, for they are not characters in the true
sense of the word; as we have seen, they are rather part of the staging
and the scenery; their fault is that, except in a few cases like
Croftangry, the drama is not seen through their eyes, and they are far
inferior in insight and power to the imaginary narrator.  For the rest,
Scott's world was one in which things worked out normally by some law
of averages, where goodness was on the whole rewarded and evil
punished, a friendly universe not commonly at war with human
aspirations.  It was a world not grievously perturbed by thought, and
there was little room in it for figures of profound intellectual or
moral subtlety.  The struggles of the twilight of the soul did not
interest him.  He could not draw the Hamlet type as Shakespeare and
Tourgeniev could draw it, though in Conachar in the _Fair Maid of
Perth_ he comes near it.  Nor could he have given us, even if he had
wished to, any penetrating studies in the religious consciousness.  The
saint in the narrower sense, a figure like Dostoevsky's Alyosha or
Prince Myshkin, was outside his experience and his comprehension.  Nor
{345} was he capable of penetrating, like Proust, into the submarine
jungle of the half-conscious.

Again, he is no great exponent of the female mind and temperament--in
his own class, that is to say, for the criticism is certainly not true
of his peasants.  For women he had an old-fashioned reverence and
regarded them very much as a toast to be drunk after king and
constitution.  With the _nuances_ of feminine character he was little
concerned, and towards high passion between gentlefolk he showed always
a certain timidity and repugnance.  He was incapable of delving in the
psychology of sex, since he felt it ill-bred to pry into matters which
a gentleman does not talk about in public; an intimate study of the
matter would have been impossible for him without a dereliction of
standards.  Even had he tried he would most certainly have failed, for
he recognized that his "big bow-wow strain" was an impossible
medium.[9]  We may well agree with Bagehot's pontifical sentences.
"The same blunt sagacity of imagination, which fitted him to excel in
the rough description of obvious life, rather unfitted him for
delineating the less substantial essence of the female character.  The
nice _minuti_ of society, by means of which female novelists have been
so successful in delineating their own sex, were rather too much for
his robust and powerful mind."  Woman--cultivated, gently-born
woman--remained for him a toast.

What do these admissions amount to?  That his knowledge and imaginative
understanding of life had its limits--which is true of every writer
that ever lived, even of Shakespeare; that with certain rare types of
character, in which Shakespeare excelled, he must have failed; that he
regarded gentlewomen with too respectful an eye.  Not, assuredly, that
the interest of the novels depends only on costume, and that the
characters are drawn from the skin inwards, and have no souls.  Within
the wide range of his understanding Scott drew character with a
firmness, a subtlety, a propriety, which are not easy to match.  He has
given us a gallery of living {346} three-dimensioned figures, who are
as completely realized in their minds as they are vividly depicted in
their bodies.  Carlyle chose a bad test for his denigratory comparison,
for Scott's method is pre-eminently the method of Shakespeare.  Neither
peeps and botanizes and flourishes the scalpel; they make their
characters reveal themselves by their speech and deeds in the rough
contacts of life.

The two are alike in another point--their attitude towards sex.  They
are not obsessed by it; no more than the other great writers of the
world do they pretend that the relations of man and woman are the only
things of first-class importance, and that the only real tragedy is a
disastrous love affair.  The solitary love tragedy in the _Iliad_ is
the story of Anteia and Bellerophon, and it occupies six lines out of
fifteen thousand.  They would have agreed with Dr Johnson that "poetry
is not often worse employed than in dignifying the amorous fury of a
raving girl."  Few of Shakespeare's greatest plays deal with love in
the ordinary sense, and the reason given by Johnson was that "love has
no great influence on the sum of life."  Scott might have qualified
this dictum, but he would have urged that love was only one among the
major influences, and that to pretend otherwise was to make a hothouse
of a spacious garden.

The charge against Scott's character-drawing made by hasty critics may
be due to his avoidance of two habits, which have given certain
novelists a specious appearance of profundity.  One is the trick of
dissecting a character before the reader's eyes and filling pages with
laboured analysis.  No doubt a certain amount of analysis is required
from the writer, but Scott held it his main business to make men and
women reveal themselves by speech and action, to play the showman as
little as possible, to present a finished product and not to print the
jottings of his laboratory.  In this he was undoubtedly right if we
regard the central purpose of the novel.  Much remarkable work has been
produced on a different theory, but it seems to me to lie apart from
the main {347} high road.  The danger before the analyst who is not
content to expound his people through action is that he is apt, like
Proust and in a lesser degree Henry James, to carry his analysis too
far--to reduce his characters to elements too minute for the business
of life, and leave them mere nebul of whirling atoms.  Proust has
given us a marvellous world, like some green twilight at the bottom of
the ocean, but its dramas cannot move us like the doings of the upper
globe, for they lack the larger influences of life.  The atoms are too
disintegrated to combine.  It is fantastic science rather than art.

[Sidenote: The pathological]

The other trick which he shuns is the spurious drama which is achieved
by a frequent recourse to the pathological.  Scott is honourably averse
to getting effects by the use of mere ugliness and abnormality.  He was
perfectly aware of the half-world of the soul and glances at it now and
then to indicate its presence, but he held that there were better
things to do than to wallow in its bogs.  The truth is that the
pathological is too easy.  Take the case of religious mania, which he
sketches in a figure like Ephraim MacBriar.  James Hogg has treated the
same topic with power and subtlety in his _Private Memoirs and
Confessions of a Justified Sinner_, but Scott has given us no such
detailed study, since he did not consider that such perversions were of
much significance in life.

It is the same with other forms of ugliness.  He loves freaks and
oddities but he has a clean palate and avoids the rancid.  He
reverences humanity too deeply to emphasize the side which humanity
shares with the animal creation.  He has no curiosity about sexual
aberrations--

          the simple vice of brutes
  That own no lust because they have no law.

His interest, like Shakespeare's, is in the "innocence of love"; but he
had not, like Shakespeare, been down into the dark abysses, and he has
no trace of that repulsion towards the mere fact of sex which we find
in _Lear_, and _Timon_, and _Hamlet_, and _Measure for Measure_.  {348}
It is not prudishness, as Balzac thought, but moral sanity and a due
sense of proportion.[10]  There is a wonderful little scene in _The
Antiquary_, when Mrs Mailsetter and her gossips meet, and Mrs Heukbane
recalls the gallantries of her youth:--


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
n' that e'enow.


In that scene you have the essence of all the sordid amours of the
small Scots village, and Scott just notes their existence, and then
goes his way to better things.  He was not inclined to make the
kitchen-midden the family altar.

As compared with many of his successors, Scott develops his characters
in a limited space.  He has no such elaborate studies in personality,
where the whole is built up cell by cell like a honeycomb, as
Flaubert's Emma Bovary, or Tolstoy's Prince Andrew Bolkonsky and Levin,
Anna Karenina and Natasha.  He works with loins girt inside a narrower
field.  But he led the way in showing his figures in relation to their
environment.  No novelist has ever painted in more convincingly a
social and historical background, for he anticipated Stendhal and
Balzac in regarding each character as largely the product of certain
material conditions.  His Dinmonts and Nicol Jarvies and David Deanses
and Croftangrys have as logical a relation to the world from which they
spring as that marvellous company of Balzac's--Goriot, and Poiret, and
Grandet, and Rubempr, Philippe Brideau and cousin Bette.  He has not
the gift of tracing every strand in the social web, which makes Balzac
in some ways the greatest of novelists, but he has the same close
consciousness of the interlocking of human lives.  It is this constant
sense of background which enables him to draw to perfection the
ordinary man--people like Tolstoy's Vronsky, who in line and tint have
a strict {349} fidelity to life.  Compared to these figures most of the
characters in Thackeray and Dickens seem bookish.  The background, too,
which he draws, is as large as life itself, for it is limited to no one
social grade, no enclave of space or time; almost alone among English
novelists he is at his ease both in the city and in the wilds.



IV

[Sidenote: His vision of life]

The novel at its greatest is subject to the tests by which all
imaginative creation is ultimately tried.  It must present life in the
round, in the deeps, and on the heights.  It must possess that "stellar
and undiminishable something" which can

          tease us out of thought,
  As doth eternity.

It must have a high seriousness and a profound vision of life.  If this
is wanting in Scott, then he must be excluded from the inner circle of
greatness and relegated to the populous borderland of mere skilful
entertainers.  Wordsworth found the lack in his poetry.  "As a poet
Scott cannot live, for he has never in verse written anything addressed
to the immortal part of man."  Others have found it in the novels.  "We
have mind, manners, animation," says Bagehot, "but it is the stir of
this world.  We miss the consecrating power."  Carlyle is no less
emphatic.  "They do not found themselves on deep interests, but on
comparatively trivial ones; not on the perennial, perhaps not even on
the lasting;" and he shakes the disapproving head of a fellow Scot, who
would fain revere but can only admire:--"Not profitable for doctrine,
for reproof, for edification, for building up and elevating in any
shape!  The sick heart will find no healing here, the darkly struggling
heart no guidance; the Heroic that is in all men no divine awakening
voice."

Much of Carlyle's criticism is clearly beside the point.  He hankered
after something which we have no right to ask from an imaginative
creator, something for which {350} we must go to the professed
philosophers and to certain poets--a definite, formulated creed of
life.  He was a very serious man, a Reformer born out of season, come
of a serious stock and belonging to a perplexed generation.  Dr
Chalmers said of him after a conversation, "That young man prefers
seriousness to truth."  He wanted a message, a formula, but it is not
easy to pin the greatest imaginative writers down to one moral, or even
to a code of morals.  What is the teaching of Homer?  What is the
lesson of Shakespeare?  It would wrong their magnificence to force them
into the bonds of any creed.

But Carlyle has still to be reckoned with.  We are entitled to demand
from the greatest not only a picture of the superficies of life, but an
interpretation, something profitable for doctrine and edification.
Bagehot's phrase is the best.  There must be a "consecrating power."

It is because I find this in Scott in the highest degree--higher than
in any other English novelist, higher than in Balzac, as high as in
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky at their best--that I feel assured of his
immortality.  He has the largeness and rightness of the immortals.  He
makes our world more solemn by his sure instinct for the tragic, which
is the failure of something not ignoble, through inherent weakness or
through a change of circumstances to which it cannot adapt itself.
Previous chapters contain many instances of such figures revealed in
some great moment of drama.  They are mirrors in which we can discern
the futility of our dearest hopes.  Always in his bustling world Scott
is aware of the shadow of mortality.  It is a gay world, but at the
last it is a solemn world, and few can so cunningly darken the stage
and make the figures seem no longer men and women, but puppets moving
under the hand of the Eternal.

[Sidenote: The classic reconciliation]

In such passages we can read Scott's purpose, which lay deep in his
consciousness, to inculcate "reverence and godly fear."  He has a very
clear philosophy, of which the basis is the eternity and the wisdom of
the divine ordering of things.  His aim is that of Greek tragedy, to
secure a valiant acquiescence in the course of {351} fate and in the
dispensations of human life.  To him Zeus always governs; Prometheus
may be a fine fellow, but Zeus is still king of gods and men.  He
believed that in the world as it was created there was a soul of
goodness, and that, in spite of evil, the "inward frame of things" was
wiser than its critics.  Throughout history there have been rebels
against this doctrine.  The passionate worship of the Virgin in the
Middle Ages was a symptom of the revolt against the austerities of the
Father and the Son.  "Mary concentrated in herself the whole rebellion
of man against fate; the whole protest against divine law; the whole
contempt for human law as its outcome; the whole unutterable fury of
human nature beating itself against the walls of its prison-house."[11]
Scott's purpose is the classic reconciliation.  Like Meredith's Lucifer
in starlight, he is always aware of the "army of unalterable law."  To
him peace and fortitude are to be found in a manly and reverent
submission.  _In la sua volontade  nostra pace_.

But his reconciling power lies not only in submission to law but in his
joyous recognition of its soul of goodness.  If he makes the world more
solemn he also makes it more sunlit.  That is the moral consequence of
comedy, and of comedy in the widest sense Scott is an especial master.
He has Shakespeare's gift of charging our life with new and happier
values.  His people do not, like Tourgeniev's, fight a losing battle;
they are triumphant, they must be triumphant, for there is that in them
which is in tune with the inner nature of things.  The novels enlarge
our vision, light up dark corners, break down foolish barriers, and
make life brighter and more spacious.  If they do not preach any single
maxim they, in Shelley's words, "repeal large codes of fraud and woe."
They restore faith in humanity by revealing its forgotten graces and
depths.

We have noted, in considering the novels as they appeared, the many
cases where Scott in high tragic moments performs the task which
Aristotle attributed to tragedy, of purifying the emotions by pity and
fear.  {352} Such moments dignify life for us and link it with the
universal, they widen our terrestrial horizons and reveal the infinite
heavens above us.  This gift alone would rank him with the great
creative forces in literature.  But I find in him another and a rarer
gift, in which tragedy and comedy seem to blend, and to which heart and
brain subtly contribute--the power of looking at life with such clear
and compassionate eyes that he can find in its ironies both mirth and
pity.  The result is not an intensifying but a calming of the emotions,
for the discords are resolved in an ultimate harmony.  Swinburne writes
somewhere of finding "in love of loving-kindness, light," and in that
word loving-kindness we have Scott's secret.  It is the quality which
we meet when, in Homer, the Elders of Troy see Helen on the battlements
and because of her beauty forgive her all the woes she has brought upon
them: when Odysseus comes upon his father digging alone in the vineyard
in shabby gaiters, with his old hands protected by gauntlets against
the thorns: when Don Quixote finds that there are no birds in last
year's nest.  We feel the pity of things, but also, strangely, their
mercy.

[Sidenote: His "consecrating power"]

Scott was wholly free from sensibility, the crying fault of his age.
He could write its jargon in his careless moods, but when he came to
serious business there is a noble austerity in his reading of
character.  But there is also the insight of the healer and the
reconciler.  He has the Greek quality of _sophrosyne_, which means
literally the possession of "saving thoughts."  He can penetrate to the
greatness of the humble, the divine spark in the clod.  No other writer
has done quite the same thing for the poor.  Many have expounded their
pathos and their humours, and some few have made them lovable and
significant, but Scott alone has lifted them to the sublime.  Through
their mouths he proclaims his evangel.  It is not the kings and
captains who most eloquently preach love of country, but Edie Ochiltree
the beggar, who has no belongings but a blue gown and a wallet.  It is
not a queen or a great lady who lays down the profoundest laws of
conduct, but Jeanie Deans, the {353} peasant girl.  It is Bessie
Maclure, a lone widow among the hills, who in the Covenant strife has
the vision of peace through a wider charity.

Scott has what Stevenson found in Dostoevsky, a "lovely goodness."  He
lacks the flaming intensity of the Russian; his even balance of soul
saves him from the spiritual melodrama to which the latter often
descends.  But like him he loves mankind without reservation, is
incapable of hate, and finds nothing created altogether common or
unclean.  This Border laird, so happy in his worldly avocations that
some would discard him as superficial, stands at the end securely among
the prophets, for he gathers all things, however lowly and crooked and
broken, within the love of God.



[1] In this chapter I have used some sentences from an essay previously
published.

[2] See Maigron, _Le Roman Historique  l'poque Romantique; Essai sur
l'influence de Walter Scott_, Mielke Homann, _Der deutsche Roman_;
Montoliu, _Manual d'Histria critica de la Litteratura catalana
moderna_ (Barcelona, 1922).

[3] _Survey of English Literature_, 1780-1830, I.  347.

[4] I.  212-13.

[5] _Memories and Portraits_, 273-4.

[6] The first has been analysed by Dr Verrall (_Collected Literary
Essays_ 247, etc.), the second by Prof. Elton (op. cit., 353-4) and the
third by Prof. Saintsbury (_History of English Prose Rhythm_, 296).

[7] This applies not only to the more emotional passages but to plain
narrative.  Take this speech of Cuddie Headrigg's, an illustration
which I owe to Prof. Harrower of Aberdeen:

  A feckless loon o' a Straven weaver,
  that had left his loom and his bein house
  to sit skirling on a cauld hill-side,
  had catched twa dragoon naigs,
  and he could gar them neither hup nor wind,
  sae he took a gowd noble for them baith.--
  I suld hae tried him wi' half the siller,
  but it's an unco ill place to get change in.

[8] _Misc. Prose Works_, XVIII.  229.

[9] _Journal_, I.  155.

[10] In contrast to his eighteenth-century predecessors and to certain
moderns, he is always decorous in his language, but that is largely a
matter of the current fashion, a question not of morals but of manners.

[11] Henry Adams, _Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres_, 276.




{354}

CHAPTER XIV

THE MAN

A writer lives by his books, and in our judgment of his art the man
himself does not concern us.  But since humanity is interested in
itself, and will always look for the person behind the achievement, we
are bound to speculate on the character of the author, and, if other
evidence be wanting, to seek to deduce that character from his work.
The blind Homer will be sought behind his epics, and the man
Shakespeare behind the plays.  Had we known nothing of Dr Johnson
except his publications a great figure would be absent from our
pantheon, and without Keats's letters we should have gone far astray in
our verdict on the poet.  With Scott the case is different.  Out of the
immense and varied mass of his work a picture of the worker emerges
which is substantially the truth.  Even without Lockhart and the
_Journal_ we should have had a full and true conception of Walter
Scott.  The man and his achievements were of a piece, and there was no
schism between fact and dream.

It is not difficult to make a picture of one whose nature is all crude
lights and shadows and sharp angles, for a character with anything of
the fantastic or perverse in it lends itself to easy representation.
But it is hard to draw on a little canvas the man whose nature is large
and central and human, without cranks or oddities.  The very simplicity
and wholesomeness of such souls defy an easy summary, for they are as
spacious in their effect and as generous in their essence as daylight
or summer.  In these days of emotional insecurity we are apt to confuse
the normal with the mediocre, and to assume that largeness is also
shallowness.  We are a {355} little afraid of the high road and find
more attraction in the crooked by-ways.  Such a mood is not conducive
to a fair judgment of Scott, or even to an understanding of him at all.
For he is the normal man raised to the highest power, eschewing both
fantastic vices and freakish virtues.

He stood at the heart of life, and his interests embraced everything
that interested his fellows.  That is the keystone of his character and
mind--they were central and universal.  He was impatient of nothing
that God had made; and he did not merely tolerate, for he was eager to
understand.  His interest was as acute in the way a merchant managed
his counting-house and a banker his credits as in the _provenance_ of a
ballad or some romantic genealogy.  No lover of the past had ever his
feet more firmly planted in the present.  He was pre-eminently a social
being, recognizing his duty to others and the close interconnexion of
humanity.  The problem of his character is, therefore, the way in which
imaginative genius and practical sagacity ran in harness, how the
spiritual detachment of the dreamer was combined with this lively sense
of community.



I

[Sidenote: A Freemason of letters]

The first question we ask is how he regarded the craft which gave him
his fame and his livelihood.  Of one thing there can be no doubt--he
loved it and gave to it his deepest interest and the best powers of his
mind.  The instinct to express himself in words was at the root of his
being; he must always be writing, and if there was no more urgent task
there was the _Journal_, and letters to friends, or scraps of verse in
which he could give rein to his fancies.  He felt himself a member of a
great fraternity and cherished a masonic loyalty towards his
colleagues.  But he had no heroics about it and claimed for it no
privileges.  The rewards it brought were so utterly incommensurate with
the pains that his attitude was always a little apologetic, as of one
to whom the gods had given too generous gifts.

{356}

[Sidenote: His view of his craft]

This point of view needs further analysis, for it was different in kind
from Byron's aristocratic condescension.  There were baser elements in
it, no doubt, for in the Edinburgh of his day the business of letters,
at least of the lighter letters, was not too well regarded.  Scott
would not have been his father's son if he had not felt an unwilling
respect for the professions which carried with them social
predominance, like politics, the services, and the law.  But the true
source lay deeper.  In the first place he did not rank his own
achievements very high.  He would have been ready to give Shakespeare a
place far above any prince or potentate, but he did not consider
himself to be in the same world as Shakespeare.  He thought quite
seriously that many of his contemporaries wrote better than he did;
consequently he was as wholly free from literary jealousies as any man
that ever lived.  For Wordsworth and Coleridge and Jane Austen, who
could do things outside his powers, he had a sincere reverence.  He was
eager to discern every scintilla of merit among his contemporaries, and
to praise it generously.  Apart from his own ragged regiment of
Parnassus he was the friend and encourager of every man and woman who
used the pen.  He could appreciate writers who were at opposite poles
from himself; he went out of his way to praise Mrs Shelley's
_Frankenstein_ because he thought that Shelley had written it; he took
no part in the attack on the "Cockney School," though Leigh Hunt gave
him ample provocation; and he tried to induce Charles Lamb to visit him
at Abbotsford.  Such a spirit of catholic appreciation was possible
only for a man who had no vanity.  He had none of that peasant vice of
jealous irritation into which at times Carlyle sank.

There was a graver element in his view of his craft.  He was free from
the social vulgarity which made even so wise a woman as Lady Louisa
Stuart write of Maria Edgeworth that she "was as good a gentlewoman as
any of us had she not drowned her gentility in her inkpot."  But he had
something of Byron's dislike of the "mere writer."  He considered that
the man who retired from {357} the bustle of the world to spin his
fancies was something of a deserter from the combatant ranks of
humanity.  He had so many fighting strains in his ancestry that he
hungered always for action, for a completer life than could be lived
only in the mind.  Dr Johnson once angrily withdrew Mansfield from the
category of "mere lawyers," and Scott had the same impatience of
professional limitations.  It was this instinct which was responsible
for his commercial and political ventures and--largely--for the _folie
des grandeurs_ of Abbotsford, but it also gave him his insight into the
heart and the prepossessions of the ordinary man.  He never lost
himself in the stuffy parlours of self-conscious art.

In the main it was a sound instinct, for it was based on his conviction
of the overriding importance of character.  The plain fellow who
shouldered a musket for his country seemed to him to have a moral
dignity to which the belauded artist had no claim.  His deepest respect
was for the homespun virtues.  He told his daughter that he thanked God
that "nothing really worth having or caring about in this world is
uncommon."  "I fear," he once chid Lockhart, "you are too apt to
measure things by some reference to literature--to disbelieve that
anybody can be worth much care who has no knowledge of that sort of
thing or taste for it.  God help us!  What a poor world this would be
if that was the true doctrine!  I have read books enough, and observed
and conversed with enough of eminent and splendidly cultivated minds,
too, in my time; but I assure you, I have heard higher sentiments from
the lips of poor uneducated men and women, when exerting the spirit of
severe yet gentle heroism under difficulties and afflictions, or
speaking their simple thoughts as to circumstances in the lot of
friends and neighbours, than I ever yet met with out of the pages of
the Bible."[1]  When he was warmly greeted by Wellington he could not
believe, that it was due to his literary fame--"What would the Duke of
Wellington think of a few bits of novels?"  Great deeds performed in a
great spirit {358} seemed to him the only source of honour.  In
Lockhart's words, "To have done things worthy to be written was in his
eye a dignity to which no man made any approach who had only written
things worthy to be read."[2]  This ethical bias may have been
overweighted, but it was the faith which moved him to the heroism of
his last years.  Let it be remembered that it was shared also by Keats,
who in a famous letter dismissed the view that "works of genius were
the finest things in the world," and set far above them the "probity
and disinterestedness" of one of his friends.[3]

Such a man, with such a creed, will run two risks.  His world of fancy
and thought, since he refuses to parade it, may become a secret domain
which, owing to its very seclusion from outer realities, may insensibly
colour his whole attitude to life.  Again, his robust insistence upon
the value of common standards may induce a vein of worldliness, a false
approbation of things as they are.  The first peril is abundantly
manifested in Scott's career.  During the dark days of 1826 he gave a
list of his consolations to Lady Louisa Stuart, and one of the chief
was his "quiet thoughts."  From these thoughts came the immortal part
of his work, but also his disasters.  "I have worn a wishing-cap, the
power of which has been to divert present griefs by a turn of the wand
of imagination, and gild over the future prospect by prospects more
fair than can ever be realized."[4]  If the task chimed in with his
wishes, no man could be more painstaking and sagacious in practical
affairs, but if not, he would take refuge in his waking dreams, and
become a visionary and a gambler.  Of this there were graver
consequences than indolence in directing his own affairs.  His secret
world made him a little insensitive to the anomalies of the real one.
It killed in him, except at rare moments, the soul of the reformer.  It
was a domain where the soul turned in upon itself, and dreams did not
result in action.  Being mainly concerned with the past it was a static
thing, and bred {359} few ideals for the future.  The dweller in it
could not be one of those

      who rest not; who think long
  Till they discern as from a hill
    At the sun's hour of morning song,
  Known of souls only, and those souls free,
  The sacred spaces of the sea.

More; the man who issued from it had his eyes dazzled, and the glamour
of his dreams was apt to gild ugly realities.

Scott's worldliness, which is Carlyle's main charge against him, needs
to be exactly stated.  At its best, it was an acute appreciation of the
conventions by which life is conducted; at its worst, it was an
overvaluing of these conventions.  It gave him the grasp of the
mechanism of society which the novels reveal, but it shut out from his
ken one side of the spiritual world and one type of human soul.  It
made him tolerant of public abuses which he would have rooted up had
they shown themselves in his private life.  But he had no abiding
relish for the grosser material rewards and pomps of success; he might
like the notion of them, but he was soon satiated by a little of the
substance.  Abbotsford was rather an aerial dream than a terrestrial
pleasure house; it was endeared to him partly because it was a thing of
his own creation, but largely because of the human relationships that
grew up around it.

And there was nothing in it of what we call snobbery.[5]  Scott was too
great a gentleman ever to feel insecure, and insecurity is the mark of
the snob.  He liked to live among long-descended and cultivated people,
because they talked his own language, but since he took no liberties he
permitted none.  His relations with the chiefs of his own sept, the
Buccleuchs, are a model of well-bred friendship.  He had a romantic
veneration for the great Border house and a warm affection for its
successive heads, but when it came to shutting out the Selkirk people
from the grounds of Bowhill he could {360} speak his mind, so that Duke
Charles wrote to him, "I have reason to thank God for many things, but
especially for having given me friends who will tell me the truth."  He
bore himself in any company with an easy modesty, and a breeding which
Lord Dudley contrasted most favourably with Byron's.  In his parties at
Abbotsford he singled out for special kindness the humbler guests.
Could any man with a trace of the snob in his composition have
tolerated for a moment the _gaucheries_ of James Hogg?  His chivalry
was manifested not only in his manner to high-born ladies but in his
treatment of every woman he met, from the preposterous Mrs Coutts to
his cotters' wives.  Twice in his life he was guilty of a defect in
generosity, once towards his brother and once towards Constable; but I
can find no instance where he failed in that respect towards anyone
humbler than himself.



II

[Sidenote: Politics]

Scott was pre-eminently a social being, living his life in close
contact with his fellows, and he could not hold himself aloof from the
problems of society.  The French Revolution left no one in Britain
unaffected: one class of mind it stimulated to speculative ardour and
bold schemes of change: another, not less honest, it drove into a stiff
conservatism.  In the eyes of the latter the first duty was to preserve
the historic fabric now threatened, even at the cost of perpetuating
blemishes.  To mend your roof in a gale might mean the destruction of
the whole house.  Scott was not interested in the political game for
its own sake.


In general I care very little about the matter, and from year's end to
year's end have scarce a thought connected with them, except to laugh
at the fools who think to make themselves great men out of little by
swaggering in the rear of a party.  But either actually important
events, or such as seemed so by their close neighbourhood to me, have
always hurried me off my feet, and made me, as I have sometimes
afterwards regretted, more forward and more violent than those who had
a regular jog-trot way of busying themselves in public matters.[6]
{361} That is to say, he had the occasional intemperance of the
suddenly aroused layman; he had a natural bias against all change, and
he hated wholeheartedly what he regarded as the central doctrine of the
French Revolution, what Coleridge called that "science of
cosmopolitanism without country, of philanthropy without
neighbourliness or consanguinity, in short, of all the impostures of
that philosophy ... which would sacrifice each to the shadowy idol of
all."

Unfortunately this view was more than a revolt against those unstable
progressives who were for ever itching to tinker at the social machine.
It was more than Falkland's philosophical conservatism--"When it is not
necessary to change, it is necessary not to change;" or Burke's classic
warning--"The old building stands well enough, though part Gothic, part
Grecian, and part Chinese, until an attempt is made to square it into
uniformity.  Then, indeed, it may come down upon our heads altogether
in much uniformity of ruin."  Scott opposed change even when the old
building stood very ill.  The notorious instance is the matter of
Scottish reforms.  Scotland in his day was, as Cockburn put it, no
better than a village at a great man's gate, the electoral system was
rotten to the core, and the best elements in the land were
unrepresented in public life.  There were only 2600 voters on the
county rolls and 1300 town councillors elected the burgh members.  Of
this farcical situation Scott was fully aware; yet he called men scamps
for desiring a juster system.  The judicial edifice was no more
satisfactory than the political, but he resisted every attempt to
better it.  In both cases the reason was the same; he feared that if
reform once began it would pull down the good with the bad, and destroy
that Scotland which he knew and loved.  Hazlitt's famous rhodomontade
on the subject of his politics is ludicrously unjust, with its
declamation against one who "stooped to the unworthy arts of adulation
and abetted the views of the great with the pettifogging feelings of
the meanest dependant on office ... who repaid the public liberality by
striking a {362} secret and envenomed blow at every one who was not the
ready tool of power;"[7] but impartial observers might well have been
perplexed by this relic-worship, so inconsistent with Scott's practical
good sense.

[Sidenote: The Whigs]

To his prepossession against change, a feeling born of fear and love,
must be added two other causes which determined his political views.
As we have seen, his mind was wholly unspeculative.  He had no theory
of the state, no philosophy of society, and the _pruritus disputandi_
of Edinburgh dinner-parties had sickened him of the whole subject.
Like Lady Louisa Stuart, he hated "marches of ages and all that vile
slang."[8]  His mind was eminently concrete, he had no interest in what
was valuable in the Whig speculative activity, and he was acutely
sensitive to what was bad.  For in the Whiggism of the time there was
much that was shallow and foppish.  Scott had Burke's conviction that
life could not be conducted by abstract reasoning.


The Whigs will live and die in the heresy that the world is ruled by
little pamphlets and speeches, and that if you can sufficiently
demonstrate that a line of conduct is most consistent with men's
interest, you have therefore and thereby demonstrated that they will at
length, after a few speeches on the subject, adopt it of course.[9]


He was not disposed to set much value on new theories of society and
morals, for he put all theory in the second class of importance.  If he
was told that such and such a thing was in accordance with the spirit
of the age, he replied that the spirit of the age might be a lying
spirit with no claim to infallibility.  The rejoicing dialectic of his
Whig contemporaries left him cold and suspicious.  He admitted their
enthusiasm and honesty, but the truth they proclaimed he thought at the
best a half-truth.  The deeper verities of the imagination and instinct
seemed to him to be eternally beyond their dapper logic.  "This will
never do," Jeffrey had written of Wordsworth, and the sentence was a
flashlight to reveal the whole arid world of Whiggism.  If Scott was a
little {363} blind to the merits of the new school, he saw with acid
clearness its limitations.

A second reason predisposed him against them.  Their practice seemed to
him to limp far behind their professions.  They contented themselves
with cultivating at high tension emotions towards humanity at large,
but they had little themselves of the human touch.  Scott knew the
commonalty of Scotland better than any man of his day, and he was an
assiduous practical philanthropist; he resented--as many have resented
since his time--the claims of a little coterie of intellectuals to
speak for a people of whom they knew nothing.  Their creed was noble,
their performance trivial.  They were like Obadiah's bull in _Tristram
Shandy_, "who, though he never certainly did produce a calf,
nevertheless went about his business with so much gravity, that he
commanded the respect of the whole parish."  He felt about them as Lady
Louisa Stuart felt about the Welsh hierarchy.  She found one bishop who
"was liberal, proposed to equalize the sees, argued against the wealth
and power of the Church, and, being enraged against not getting the
highest preferment himself, never dreamed of troubling his head about
his paltry diocese.  The illiberal prejudiced bishops come and
reside."[10]

Yet, apart from certain Scottish questions, it would be an error to
regard Scott as a Tory of the Eldon type.  Like Burns in his great
days, he was a Pittite, rather an anti-revolutionary than an
anti-reformer.  In the last months of his life he told a friend that he
was no enemy to reform--"if the machine does not work well, it must be
mended--but it should be by the best workmen you have."[11]  This last
phrase gives the key to his faith.  He believed in persons rather than
in policies.  "Away," he would have exclaimed with Canning, "with the
cant of 'measures not men,' the idle supposition that it is the
harness, and not the horses, that draws the chariot along!"  He had
deep in him the instinct to find a leader and cleave to him, and he
found what he sought {364} in Wellington.  Wellington might have led
him very far on the path of radical progress, but in the newer men, the
Greys and Russells, and in the talkative lawyers like Brougham, he did
not find the quality he could trust.

In many ways he misread the signs of the times, as in his belief in the
rising of the north-country colliers and weavers which led him to
organize the Buccleuch legion, and in the tragic fears of his last
illness.  What had happened in France haunted him like a spectre.  When
Sir John Sinclair told Adam Smith that the country would be ruined, the
dying economist replied, "My dear young man, there is a good deal of
ruin in a country."  But if Scott is to be blamed for sometimes losing
faith in the soundness of heart of the nation, it may well be argued
that he was alive to a peril to which too many of his contemporaries
were blind.  Looking back to-day, it is clear that Britain in the two
decades after Waterloo was treading a far more perilous path than she
had trod in the war with Napoleon.  Liverpool, Eldon and the rest
blundered many times, but those stiff and prosaic gentlemen had in them
something of the heroic, and they brought the country out of the jaws
of destruction, for other and showier people to win the credit.  Scott
saw the fires smouldering beneath the crust, though he may have
underestimated the crust's strength, and he was impatient, rightly
impatient, with the sciolists and dreamers who believed that they
walked on impregnable rock.  He was not prepared to see his country
ruined to make a belletristic holiday.  "Fallait-il laisser prir
l'Angleterre pour plaire aux potes?"

[Sidenote: His sense of community]

The Whig creed was potent in its day, and it had many beneficent
consequences, but, since it was concerned chiefly with the form of
things, with mechanism, it has long since ceased to be a living force
among us.  So far as it attempted to provide an organic philosophy of
politics, it signally failed.  Let us turn to the positive substance of
Scott's faith, which was a deeper thing than his antipathy to Whig
merits and Whig defects.  Its first element was nationalism.  He
believed firmly in the virtue of local patriotism and the idiomatic
life of {365} the smaller social unit.  Whenever Scotland was concerned
he was prepared to break with his party, with his leaders, and with the
whole nobility, gentry and intellectuality of Britain.  "The Tories and
Whigs may go be damned together, as names that have disturbed old
Scotland, and torn asunder the most kindly feelings since the days they
were invented."[12]  This was no mere petulant parochialism, but a deep
conviction that on the strength and individuality of the part depended
the value of the whole.  The second element was a sense of community,
of society as an organic thing where every man's life was linked with
that of his fellows.  For this reason he disliked the intense
preoccupation of a man with his own soul, which he thought had been the
weakness of Scottish Calvinism, and which the imported evangelicalism
from England was reviving north of the Tweed.  For this reason, too, he
detested the selfishness of the new industrialism.

This latter was the public question on which he felt most passionately.
"God's justice is requiting, and will yet further requite, those who
have blown up this country into a state of unsubstantial opulence, at
the expense of the health and morals of the lower classes."[13]  He
agreed with Southey's terrible comparison of the submerged classes to
the dogs of Constantinople, "a nuisance to the community while they
live, and dying miserably at last."  But he was fair on the matter, and
did not attempt to set up a golden past against a dingy present.  Take
the discussion between Christie Steele and Croftangry--


"An older family, perhaps, and probably more remembered and regretted
than later possessors?" ...

"Mair regretted--mair missed?  I liked ane of the auld family very
weel, but I winna say that for them a'.  How should they be mair missed
than the Treddleses?  The cotton mill was such a thing for the country!
The mair bairns a cotter body had the better; they would make their own
keep frae the time they were five years auld, and a widow wi' three or
four bairns was a wealthy woman in the time of the Treddleses."

{366}

"But the health of those poor children, my good friend--their education
and religious instruction----"

"For health," said Christie, looking gloomily at me, "ye maun ken
little o' the world, sir, if ye dinna ken that the health of the poor
man's body, as weel as his youth and his strength, are all at the
command of the rich man's purse.  There never was a trade so unhealthy
yet but men would fight to get wark at it for twa pennies a day above
the common wage.  But the bairns were reasonably cared for in the way
of air and exercise, and a very responsible youth heard them their
Carritch, and gied them lessons in Readiemadeasy.[14]  Now, what did
they ever get before?  Maybe on a winter day they would be called out
to beat the wood for cock or siclike; and then the starving weans would
maybe get a bite of broken bread, and maybe no, just as the butler was
in humour."[15]


It is Scott's own voice speaking; he had no illusions about the eternal
problem of the poor.

A friend of mine, a famous professor of economics, once proposed to
write a book on the political economy of Scott, for he held that he had
a stronger grasp of the subject than most of its professional
exponents.  It was the fashion in his day for the pundits of both
parties to sneer at his romancer's economics, but the whirligig of time
has avenged him.  We have learned in recent years that so-called
economic laws are in the main deductions from contemporary data and
have no universal validity, and we have been compelled to look upon
facts with shrewder eyes than the classic theorists.  Just as Whig
views of the mechanism of the state have now only an historic interest,
so the economic dogmatism of the early nineteenth century is a speech
strange to our ears.  But Scott remains singularly up to date, for he
had imagination, and was very close to the imperishable things in life.
_Malachi Malagrowther_ will well repay study, for, apart from its sane
and honourable nationalism, it is full of acute economic thinking.  He
argues for the localization of the issue of credit, which involved the
slight inflation that the circumstances of Scotland required, very much
in the language of to-day.  He feared the craze for uniformity, because
he realized that it {367} would bring to Scotland the disasters of the
unreformed English poor law, and he made merry with the extreme
_laissez-faire_ dogma merely by stating it.


Leave your kelp-rocks to the undisturbed possession of seals and
mermaids, if there be any--you will buy _barilla_ cheaper in South
America.  Send your Highland fishers to America and Botany Bay, where
they will find plenty of food, and let them leave their present sterile
residence in the utter and undisturbed solitude for which Nature
designed it.  Do not think you do any hardship in obeying the universal
law of nature, which leads wants and supplies to draw to their just and
proper level, and equalize each other; which attracts gold to those
spots, and those only, where it can be profitably employed, and induces
man to transport himself from the realms of famine to those happier
regions, where labour is light and subsistence plentiful.[16]


[Sidenote: Sympathy with poverty]

The same realism is seen in his attitude to the poor.  He had no belief
in the wizardry of abstract political rights; his view was
Coleridge's--"It is a mockery of our fellow creatures' wrongs to call
them equal in rights, when by the bitter compulsion of their wants we
make them inferior to us in all that can soften the heart and dignify
the understanding;" so he set himself within his own orbit to make a
better commonwealth.  He introduced at Abbotsford a system of health
insurance, and being always mindful of the moral issue, he refused the
easy path of charity, and in bad times arranged for relief work at full
wages.  He was a foe to tippling houses, and defended the Scottish
reluctance to grant licences as compared with England.  He proposed a
scheme of unemployment insurance in factories, the premiums to be paid
wholly by the owners, on the ground that it would retard unhealthy
industrial expansion and compel manufacturers to rely less on casual
labour.[17]  These are scarcely the notions of a crusted Eldonite.

It may be admitted that Scott's sympathies with labour and his
knowledge of its problems were circumscribed.  To the pathetic early
struggles of trade-unionism he was {368} always hostile, for he scented
conspiracy, and he was horrified to discover symptoms of it in
Galashiels.  He was above all things a countryman, who knew and
honoured the peasant; of the proletariat in the towns, and

       the fierce confederate storm
  Of sorrow barricadoed evermore
  Within the walls of cities,

he had Wordsworth's ignorance and restless fear.  But for the poor man
whom he understood, who was knit to him by a common domicile and
ancestry, he had sympathy and understanding in the amplest measure.  He
proposed to show Washington Irving "some of our excellent plain Scotch
people--not fine gentlemen and ladies, for such you can meet
everywhere, and they are everywhere the same."  They were the stock
which he most honoured, for they were the most idiomatic and enduring
thing in the nation.  It was this love of plain folk which made Crabbe
his favourite reading.  They are the true heroes and heroines of his
novels, and they were his best friends in life.  He respected them far
too much to sentimentalize over them; indeed he had their own contempt
for sensibility.  When a perfervid young lady swooned on being
presented to him and then kissed Henry Mackenzie's hand, Scott's
comment was that of a Border peasant: "Did you ever hear the like of
that English lass, to faint at the sight of a crippled clerk of
session, and kiss the dry withered hand of an old tax-gatherer----!"
He had the same tenderness, the same tough fescennine humour, the same
rugged sense of decency.  He never entered the "huts where poor men
lie" with the condescension of a district visitor, for you cannot
patronize that which is yourself.  Of all great writers, perhaps, he
was the one who lived closest to the poor.  He was nearer to them than
Shakespeare, who saw only their comedy and their vices; far nearer than
Shelley, to whom the poor were the "polluting multitude," though he
might pity and defend them; nearer even than Wordsworth, who did not
know how to unbend.  Of Wordsworth a country neighbour {369} said that
he "was not a man as folks could crack with nor not a man as could
crack wi' folks," whereas of Scott the report was that he talked to
everyone as if he were a blood-relation.

As an old man Wordsworth confessed that, while he had never had any
respect for the Whigs, he had always had a great deal of the Chartist
in him.  Of Scott it may be said that he had much of that practical
socialism which Toryism has never lacked.  He envisaged life in terms
rather of duties than of rights; he hated the rootless and the
mechanical; he believed in property but only as something held on a
solemn trust; his social conscience was too quick to accept the
calculating inhumanity of the economists.  To him, as to Newman, it
seemed that a worthy society must have both order and warmth.  If he
had ever sought a formula for his creed it might well have been
Bagehot's famous phrase, "Toryism is enjoyment".



III

[Sidenote: His rule of life]

Scott had not the metaphysical turn of his countrymen, and he had no
instinct to preach, but the whole of his life and work was based on a
reasoned philosophy of conduct.  Its corner-stones were humility and
discipline.  The life of man was difficult, but not desperate, and to
live it worthily you must forget yourself and love others.  The
failures were the egotists who were wrapped up in self, the
doctrinaires who were in chains to a dogma, the Pharisees who despised
their brethren.  In him the "common sense" of the eighteenth century
was coloured and lit by Christian charity.  Happiness could only be
attained by the unselfregarding.  He preaches this faith through the
mouth of Jeanie Deans--indeed it is the basis of all his ethical
portraiture, it crops up everywhere in his letters and _Journal_, and
in his review of Canto III of _Childe Harold_ in the _Quarterly_ he
expounds it to Byron and labours to reconcile him with the world.  This
paper should not be forgotten, for in it Scott professes explicitly his
moral code.  Its axiom is that {370} there is no royal road to heart's
ease, but that there is a path for the humble pilgrim.  The precepts
for such are--


to narrow our wishes and desires within the scope of our present powers
of attainment; to consider our misfortunes as our inevitable share in
the patrimony of Adam; to bridle those irritable feelings which,
ungoverned, are sure to become governors; to shun that intensity of
galling and self-wounding reflection which our poet has described in
his own burning language; to stoop, in short, to the realities of life,
repent if we have offended, and pardon if we have been trespassed
against; to look on the world less as our foe than as a doubtful and
capricious friend whose applause we ought as far as possible to
deserve, but neither to court nor to condemn.


To this philosophy he added a stalwart trust in the Christian
doctrines, a trust which was simple, unqualified and unquestioning.
His was not a soul to be troubled by doubts or to be kindled to
mystical fervour, though he was ready to admit the reality of the
latter.  There is a passage in the _Journal_ where he defends the work
of Methodism as "carrying religion into classes in society where it
would scarce be found to penetrate, did it rely merely upon proof of
its doctrines, upon calm reasoning, and upon rational argument."[18]
But such excitements were not for him; for his mind to seek them would
have been like drug-taking, a renunciation of self-discipline.  In the
Scotland of his day this teaching was much in season.  The old fires of
Calvinism had burned too murkily, the light of the _Aufklrung_ had
been too thin and cold, but in Scott was a spirit which could both
illumine and comfort his world.  He gave it a code of ethics robuster
because more rational, and he pointed the road to a humaner faith.



IV

[Sidenote: A man of the centre]

The strong wine of genius too often cracks and flaws the containing
vessel.  The mind revolts against the body, the subconscious against
the conscious, and there {371} is an expense of spirit in a waste of
fears and frustrations.  But just as there was no strife or sedition in
Scott's intellectual powers, so there were no fissures in his
character.  Carlyle spoke truth when he said that a sounder piece of
British manhood was not put together in that eighteenth century of
Time.  He was a man of the centre, like his own Johnny Dodds of
Farthing's Acre.  There was a clearing-house in his soul where all
impulses were ordered and adjusted, and this repose gave him happiness.
That was the secret of his geniality, for throughout his crowded life
he was at peace with himself, and had the gift of communicating his
peace to the world.  This balance did not chill, as it does with many,
the emotional side of his nature, but it gave it depth and stability;
instead of sentiment he had pity and tenderness, and his perfect
courage was never marred by bravado.  The words which Sir Walter
Raleigh has used of Shakespeare apply most fully to him; he was a "man
cast in the antique mould of humanity, equable, alert and gay."

Such a one makes a light and a warmth around him.  Scott had no
enemies, except a prejudiced few who had never met him.  No class, no
type escaped his glamour.  To Byron, who did not praise readily, he
seemed "as nearly a thorough good man as a man can be."[19]  He was the
centre round which for thirty years there clustered a whole community
of most diverse men and women, and when the sun set the constellation
was scattered.  James Ballantyne died four months after his friend,
James Hogg followed him after three troubled years, and those who
survived him longer were to the last under his spell.  To Lady Louisa
Stuart, to Lockhart, to Morritt and Cranstoun, even to Jeffrey and
Cockburn he remained the major influence in their lives.  Skene, who
wandered about the world for thirty years more, was found by his
daughter just before his death sitting by the fire with a strange
radiance in his face.  "Scott has been here," he cried, "dear Scott!
He told me that he had come from a great distance to pay me a visit,
{372} and he has been sitting here with me talking of all our old happy
days together.  He said it was long since we had met, but he is not in
the least changed; his face was just as cheerful and pleasant as it
used to be."[20]

[Sidenote: Liberator and reconciler]

Skene's dying vision is a parable of Scott's bequest to the world.  He
has left us not only the products of his fancy but almost his bodily
presence, a personality which to his lovers is as real as if in the
flesh he still moved among us.  Alone of the great imaginative creators
he draws us to an affectionate intimacy.  It is the man rather than the
writer that still haunts his own Border, like an emanation from its
changeless hills and waters, so that on some forgotten drove-road in
Ettrick one almost looks to see in an autumn gloaming his ruddy face
and silvery hair, and to hear the kindly burr of his speech.  It has
been given to him to conquer the world, and yet remain the tutelary
genius of his native glens.

He seems to me the greatest, because the most representative, of
Scotsmen, since in his mind and character he sums up more fully than
any other the idiomatic qualities of his countrymen and translates them
into a universal tongue.  John Knox gave his land the Reformation, an
inestimable but a perilous gift, which led to high spiritual
exaltations, but also to much blood and tears.  By itself it was a
forcing-house to produce monstrous growths, and it required to be
freshened by the sun and winds of the common world.  Burns, with a
Greek freedom in his soul, gave Scotland her own French Revolution,
burned up much folly with the fires of poetry, and reconciled in a
common humanity ancient warring elements in the national life.  Scott
completed what the eighteenth-century philosophers had begun and gave
her her own Renaissance.  He is, with Burns, her great liberator and
reconciler.  He saved his land from the narrow rootless gentility and
the barren utilitarianism of the illuminates; he gave her confidence by
reopening to her the past; and he blended into one living tradition
many things which the shallow had despised and the dull had forgotten.
Gently he led her {373} back to nature and the old simplicities.  His
mission was that of Hosea the prophet:--"Behold, I will allure her, and
bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.  And I
will give her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door
of hope; and she shall sing there as in the days of her youth."



[1] Lockhart, VI.  60-1.

[2] III.  376.

[3] Colvin, _Letters of John Keats_, 54.

[4] _Journal_, I.  66.

[5] George Borrow's excited diatribe (_The Romany Rye_.  App. VII.) is
a melancholy example of the error into which prejudice may lead an
honest man.

[6] _Journal_, I.  126.

[7] _The Spirit of the Age_.

[8] _Letters to Miss Louisa Clinton_, 60.

[9] _Journal_, I.  16.

[10] _Letters to Miss Louisa Clinton_, 2nd Series, 113.

[11] Lockhart, VII.  372.

[12] _Journal_, I.  87.

[13] _Ibid._, I.  313.

[14] Reading made easy.

[15] _Chronicles of the Canongate_, 1st ser., Chap. IV.

[16] _Misc. Prose Works_, XXI.  382.

[17] Lockhart, IV.  73, 85-6.  See p. 222 _supra_.

[18] I.  102

[19] _Letters and Journals_, V.  221.

[20] _Blackwood's Magazine_, June 1896.




{374}

INDEX


_Abbot, The_, 202, 212, 224, 229-231

Abbotsford, 92; first purchase of land, 102; entry into, 103; 118,
124, 147, 148, 149; extension of estate, 171; 172, 176; life at,
215, 223; new plans for, 226; cost of, 237; 251, 253;
completed, 258: house-warming, 259; 269, 281, 284, 288, 290, 292, 295,
304, 307, 309, 317, 323, 326, 328, 356, 357, 360, 367

Abbotsford Hunt, the, 217, 218, 276

Abercorn, Anne, Marchioness of, 56

Abud, 309, 310

Adam, the brothers, 11, 16; Dr Alexander, 34; Sir Frederick,
332; Chief Commissioner William, 144, 210, 212

Adolphus, J. L., 124, 137, 195, 219, 253, 309, 336

Advocates' Library, the, 44

_Alexiad, The_, 327

Almquist, 335

Alvanley, Lady, 103

_Amadis of Gaul_, 70

_Anne of Geierstein_, 315, 319, 321-322, 333

_Anti-Jacobin, The_, 59, 82

_Antiquary, The_, 116, 149-153, 158, 252, 348

_Antony and Cleopatra_, 264

Arbroath, 125

Argyll, Archibald, first Marquis of, 34, 193

Ariosto, 35, 36, 119

Aristotle, 43, 141, 351

Ashestiel, 67, 68, 69, 75; life at, 86-93; departure from, 101, 102;
118, 214

Austen, Jane, 128, 129, 261, 341, 356



Bagehot, Walter, 134, 143, 336, 340, 345, 349, 350, 369

Baillie, Joanna, 52, 102, 106, 110, 144

Balcarres, Lady, 32

Ballads:
  "Auld Maitland," 62, 63
  "Glenfinlas," 57
  "Hardicanute," 66
  "Jamie Telfer," 64, 65
  "Johnny Armstrong's Goodnight," 64
  "Kinmont Willie," 21, 65, 66
  "Otterburn," 327
  "Rosabelle," 72
  "Sir Patrick Spens," 66
  "The Eve of St John," 57
  "The Gray Brother," 57
  "The Outlaw Murray," 62
  "The Red Harlaw," 116, 152
  "The Wife of Usher's Well," 64

Ballantyne, James, first meeting with, 35; 41, 57; prints _Minstrelsy_,
61, 64; set up by Scott as printer, 74-77; 90, 97, 98, 99, 101, 108;
marriage of, 156; partnership dissolved, 156; 169, 171, 179, 200,
213, 225; readmitted partner, 236; position in 1822, 236-238; 253,
262, 271, 281, 283; bankruptcy, 284, 287; 289, 291, 293; 310, 319,
320, 371

Ballantyne, John, becomes publisher, 97; character of, 99, 214;
auctioneer, 108; 121, 123, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 172; death
of, 225, 236

Balmuto, Lord, 205

Balniel, 73

Balzac, 335, 336, 348

Banks, practice of, in 1822, 237; Bank of England, 278, 284, 293;
Bank of Scotland, 292

Bannockburn, 112

Barbauld, Mrs, 50

Bartholomew the Englishman, 12

_Beacon_, the, 234, 235

Bell, Sir Charles, 146

Bemersyde, 328, 334

_Betrothed, The_, 270, 271, 272, 273

Bewcastle Waste, 141

_Black Dwarf, The_, 159, 160

Blackhouse, 62, 68, 170

Blackwood, William, 158, 172, 175, 176, 213, 293

_Blackwood's Magazine_, 175, 176, 234

Blair, Hugh, 12, 13, 16

Blairadam, 212; _see also_ under Clubs

Blairdrummond, 49

Blcher, Marshal, 147, 148, 305

Border, the, history and character of, 17-23, 64; effect of landscape on
Scott, 29, 33, 36, 41, 49, 50; 68, 372

Borrow, George, 335, 359 _n._

Borthwick water, 21, 67

Boswell, Sir Alexander, 235; James, 124, 146

Bothwell Brig, 187, 196; Castle, 60

Bowhill, 60, 68, 69, 359

Brasenose College, 60, 258, 306

_Bridal of Triermain, The_, 105

_Bride of Lammermoor, The_, 117, 179, 193-198, 265, 338

Broadmeadows, 68, 69, 75

Brooke, Rupert, 119

Brougham, Henry, Lord, 74, 82 _n._, 364

Buccleuch, family of, 20-21, 22; Charles, fourth Duke of, 60, 70,
83, 126, 137, 138, 173, 167, 177, 234, 260; Harriet, Duchess of,
60, 69, 126; Legion, 178, 234

Buchan, David, eleventh Earl of, 178, 304, 320

Buchanan, 85, 105

Bunyan, John, 123

Brger, 50, 51, 66

Burke, Edmund, 48, 361, 362

Burney, Fanny, 128, 305

Burns, Robert, 15, 17, 39, 51, 54, 63, 64, 71, 110, 113, 115, 223,
363, 372

Butler, Samuel, 136

Byron, Lord, 38, 54, 60, 105; first correspondence with Scott, 106;
110, 112, 138; meeting with Scott, 144, 145, 146; 148, 159,
199, 207, 252, 255, 277, 335, 343, 356, 360, 369, 371; Lady, 172



Cadell, Robert, 107, 157, 238, 239, 279, 280, 282, 287, 310, 311, 319,
320, 323 _n._, 324, 325, 326, 333

Calvinism, 15, 25, 26, 34, 41, 47, 161, 175, 365, 370

Cambusmore, 49

Campbell, of Blythswood, family of, 22; Thomas, 59

Canning, George, 82, 274, 294, 308, 320, 363

Carlisle, 29, 136, 137

Carlyle, Thomas, 176 _n._, 209, 211, 221, 289, 290, 344, 346, 349, 350,
356, 371

Carpenter, Charles, 176; Charlotte _see_ Scott, Lady

Caroline, Queen, 87, 234, 240

Carter Haugh, 217

Cartley Hole, 101, 103

_Castle Dangerous_, 326, 327, 328

Cathcart, Robert, 107

Cauldshiels loch, 108, 149, 170, 217, 328

Chalmers, Dr, 350

Chantrey the sculptor, 202

Characters in the Novels:
  Duke of Argyll, 189, 190
  Marquis of Argyll, 192, 193
  Lady Ashton, 195
  Lucy Ashton, 117, 194, 195, 196
  Athelstane, 198, 200
  Julian Avenel, 228
  Le Balafr, 256, 257
  Caleb Balderstone, 194, 195, 200
  Balfour of Burley, 161, 162, 163
  Balmawhapple, 134
  Donald Bean Lean, 134
  Edith Bellenden, 161, 163
  Lady Margaret Bellenden, 161
  Major Bellenden, 163
  Mrs Bethune Baliol, 314, 317
  Harry Bertram, 139, 140, 142, 340
  Godfrey Bertram, 140
  Bide-the-Bent, 195
  Bindloose, 263
  Sir Bingo Binks, 263
  Lady Binks, 263
  Niel Blane, 161, 162, 163
  Bletson, 301
  Colonel Blood, 255
  Mrs Blower, 263, 275
  Bois-Guilbert, 200
  Father Boniface, 228
  Bonthron, 315
  Sergeant Bothwell, 162, 163
  Ailison Breck, 152
  Cosmo Comyn Bradwardine, 132, 133, 200
  Rose Bradwardine, 133, 135
  Bridgenorth, 254
  Duke of Buckingham, 254, 255
  Bucklaw, 194, 195
  Jack Bunce, 244
  Reuben Butler, 189, 190, 191
  Callum Beg, 134
  Josiah Cargill, 263
  Queen Caroline, 190
  Caxon, 150, 152
  Cedric, 198, 200
  Prince Charles Edward, 135
  Charles II., 254, 300, 301, 302
  Charles of Burgundy, 321
  Chiffinch, 254, 255
  Edward Christian, 254, 255
  Christie of the Clint-hill, 229
  Claverhouse, 161, 163, 165, 338
  Jebediah Cleishbotham, 168, 159
  Cleveland, 254, 255
  Captain Clutterbuck, 228
  Captain Coffinkey, 186
  Conachar, 96, 318, 344
  Crvecoeur, 256
  Chrystal Croftangry, 314, 318, 338, 344, 348, 365
  Cromwell, 300, 301, 302
  Provost Crosbie, 265, 266
  Dugald Dalgetty, 192, 193, 257
  Grizel Damahoy, 189
  Damian, 273
  David Deans, 49, 190, 191, 339, 348
  Effie Deans, 190, 191
  Jeanie Deans, 187, 189, 190, 191, 192, 247, 352, 369
  Jenny Dennison, 163
  Lady Derby, 254
  Desborough, 30
  Davie Dingwall, 339
  Dandie Dinmont, 25, 50, 138, 141, 168, 348
  Johnny Dodds of Farthing's Acre, 191, 371
  Meg Dods, 170 _n._, 203, 204
  Dousterswivel, 150
  Jasper Dryfesdale, 230
  Dumbiedykes, 189, 190, 191
  Quentin Durward, 256, 257
  Henbane Dwining, 318
  Queen Elizabeth, 232, 233
  Hobbie Elliot, 159
  Elshie, 159, 160
  Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot, 152
  Lord Etherington, 261, 263
  Lord Evandale, 163
  Markham Everard, 300, 301, 302
  Ewan of Brigglands, 183
  Nanty Ewart, 265, 266
  Alan Fairford, 46, 264, 265, 266
  Saunders Fairford, 38, 46, 264, 266
  Fairscribe, 314
  Andrew Fairservice, 46, 183, 185, 186, 200
  Fenella, 255, 273
  Wilkin Flammock, 273
  Flibbertigibbet, 232
  Anthony Foster, 232, 233
  Tod Gabbie, 138
  Galeotti, 256
  Garschattachin, 184
  Joshua Geddes, 266
  Davie Gellatley, 131, 134
  Guse Gibbie, 163
  Gilfillan, 134, 343
  Lord Glenallan, 150
  Dame Glendinning, 229
  Edward Glendinning, 228
  Halbert Glendinning, 228, 229
  Gilbert Glossin, 140, 141
  Catherine Glover, 318
  Simon Glover, 318
  Giles Gosling, 232
  Ailsie Gourlay, 197
  Magdalene Graeme, 231
  Roland Graeme, 229, 230
  Cornet Grahame, 163
  Green Mantle, 54, 266
  Gudyill, 163
  Gurth, 200
  Haagen, 246
  Hal o' the Wynd, 318
  Claud Halcro, 245, 246
  Harrison, 302
  Dirk Hatteraick, 140, 142
  Cuthbert Headrigg, 163, 164, 339 _n._
  Mause Headrigg, 163, 164, 231
  George Heriot, 247, 248, 249
  Mrs Heukbane, 150, 348
  Holdenough, 302
  Mrs Howden, 189
  Sir Geoffrey Hudson, 255
  Corporal Humgudgeon, 302
  Inch-grabbit, 134
  Justice Inglewood, 183
  Hannah Irwin, 261, 262
  Isaac of York, 200
  Ivanhoe, 198, 199, 200
  Jock Jabos, 140
  James I., 248, 249, 250, 257
  Bailie Nicol Jarvie, 182, 183, 185, 186, 187, 348
  Jock Jinker, 134
  Jobson, 183
  Joceline, 300, 301
  Jock o' Dawston Cleugh, 25
  Sir Kenneth of Scotland, 273, 274
  Gabriel Kettledrummle, 163
  Captain of Knockdunder, 191
  Miles Lambourne, 322, 323
  Lance, 254
  Darsie Latimer, 264, 265, 266
  Albert Lee, 300, 301
  Alice Lee, 300, 302
  Sir Henry Lee, 300, 302
  Lord Leicester, 232, 233
  Lord Lindesay, 230
  Lady Lochleven, 231
  Louis XI., 256, 257
  Locksley, 199, 200, 201
  Lovel, 149, 150
  Luke Lundin, 230
  Annot Lyle, 193
  Ephraim Macbriar, 136, 347
  Mrs MacCandlish, 140
  Evan Dhu Maccombich, 136, 137
  Janet MacEvoy, 314
  Helen Macgregor, 183, 184
  Hector MacIntyre, 150
  Fergus MacIvor, 131, 135, 136
  Flora MacIvor, 133, 135, 136
  Mackitchinson, 46
  Bessie Maclure, 163, 353
  Elspeth MacTavish, 314
  Duncan MacWheeble, 46, 134, 135, 136
  Mrs Mailsetter, 150, 348
  Sir Mungo Malagrowther, 248, 250
  Albert de Malvoisin, 200
  Colonel Mannering, 138, 140
  Julia Mannering, 55, 56, 139
  William de la Marck, 256, 257
  Mareschal, 159
  Queen Mary of Scots, 202, 229, 230, 231, 233
  Meiklewham, 262
  Major Melville, 134
  Meg Merrilies, 141, 142
  Mordaunt Mertoun, 244
  Richie Moniplies, 248, 249, 250
  Mortsheugh, 195, 196
  Mowbray, 261, 262, 263
  Clara Mowbray, 253, 260, 262, 263
  Saunders Mucklebackit, 151, 152, 153
  Habakkuk Mucklewrath, 163, 338
  Tib Mumps, 138, 142
  Meg Murdockson, 191
  Nigel Olifant, 248, 249
  Crystal Nixon, 266
  Norna of the Fitful Head, 244
  Edie Ochiltree, 149, 150, 152, 190, 352
  Robin Oig, 314
  Grizel Oldbuck, 150
  Jonathan Oldbuck, 31, 149, 150, 152
  Osbaldistone (the elder), 181, 182
  Frank Osbaldistone, 182, 183, 186
  Rashleigh Osbaldistone, 182, 184
  Pate-in-Peril, 265, 266
  Peter Peebles, 265, 266
  Lady Penelope Penfeather, 262, 263
  Petit-Andr, 256
  Sir Geoffrey Peveril, 254
  Pleydell, 46, 139, 140, 141, 208
  Peter Plumdamas, 189
  Alick Polwarth, 136
  Poundtext, 163
  Dr Quackleben, 263
  Corporal Raddlebanes, 38, 257
  Sir Walter Raleigh, 232
  Ramorny, 318
  Daddy Ratcliffe, 191
  Edgar Ravenswood, 194, 195, 196, 197
  Rebecca, 180, 200
  Redgauntlet, 265, 266
  Richard I., 198, 199, 200, 272, 274
  Jenny Rintherout, 150
  Rob Roy, 171, 183, 184, 185, 187
  Zerubbabel Robins, 302
  Amy Robsart, 232
  Rochecliffe, 301
  Rowena, 200
  Lord Ruthven, 230
  Bartoline Saddletree, 46, 189
  Saladin, 273
  Dominie Sampson, 138, 140, 142
  Catherine Seyton, 229, 231
  Sir Piercie Shafton, 228
  Bryce Snailsfoot, 246
  Sir George Staunton, 188
  Christie Steele, 314, 365
  Steenie Steenson, 268, 339
  Trusty Tompkins, 301, 302
  Touchwood, 262, 263, 270
  Trapbois, 249
  Tressilian, 233
  Tristan l'Hermite, 256
  Brenda Troil, 244
  Magnus Troil, 245, 246
  Minna Troil, 244, 246
  Trois-Eschelles, 256
  Trotting Nelly, 263
  Thomas Trumbull, 265, 266
  Friar Tuck, 200
  Rob Tull, 150
  Tyrrell, 262, 263
  Ulrica, 198
  de Valence, 325
  Richard Varney, 232, 233
  de Vaux, 274
  Diana Vernon, 54, 56, 182, 183, 184, 200, 203
  Vidal, 273
  de Walton, 328
  Wamba, 200
  Wandering Willie, 265, 266, 268
  Henry Warden, 228
  Sir Arthur Wardour, 150, 151, 152
  Isabella Wardour, 149, 150
  Edward Waverley, 114, 133, 134, 136, 182
  Wayland Smith, 232
  Westburnflat, 159
  White Lady of Avenel, 228, 245
  Madge Wildfire, 117, 191
  Sir Roger Wildrake, 301, 302
  Alison Wilson, 163, 164
  Annie Winnie, 197
  Adam Woodcock, 230
  Baby Yellowley, 246
  Triptolemus Yellowley, 244, 246

Charles X. of France, 42, 305

Charles Edward, Prince, 117, 125, 135

Chaucer, 113, 198, 341

Chiefswood, 226, 276, 279, 296, 323, 328

Child, Professor, 65

_Childe Harold_, 105, 106, 146, 369

_Christabel_, 69, 70, 259

_Chronicles of the Canongate_, 296, 307, 310, 313-315

Clarendon, Lord, 290

Claverhouse, John Graham of, 161, 165, 204, 338

Clerk, Sir John, of Eldin, 39, 210; John, 210; William, 39, 40, 46,
97, 207, 211, 212, 264, 309

Clubs:
  Bannatyne, 251
  Blairadam, 212, 251, 319
  Forest, 206, 220
  Friday, 87, 95, 202
  Highland, 224, 251, 319
  Roxburghe, 251
  Speculative Society, 41
  Teviotdale, 41
  The Club (Edinburgh), 41
  The Club (London), 251
  The Gowks, 251
  The Literary Society, 41

Cockburn, Henry, Lord, 34 _n._, 36, 45, 49, 204, 208, 211, 235, 294,
361, 371

Cockburn, Mrs (Alison Rutherford), 30, 32

Coleridge, S. T., 69, 71, 82, 115, 128, 193, 317, 356, 361, 367

Commines, Philippe de, 250

Constable, Archibald, 61; starts as bookseller, 73; founds _Edinburgh
Review_, 73-74; 78, 80, 81; publishes _Marmion_, 84; quarrel with
Scott, 94, 96, 98, 99; reconciliation, 107-108; 121, 123, 126, 147,
149, 153, 155; business methods, 156-158; 172, 179, 202, 203, 213,
226, 231, 235, 237, 238, 239, 247, 252, 258, 270; his scheme for a
Miscellany, 271, 272; 278, 279, 280, 282; bankruptcy, 283, 284,
287, 289; 292, 293, 320, 326; George, 31, 149; Thomas, 280 _n._, 284

Corehouse, Lord, _see_ Cranstoun, George

Cranstoun, George (Lord Corehouse), 40, 45, 47, 211, 212, 371; Jane
Anne (Countess Purgstall), 47, 50

Corstorphine, 206

_Count Robert of Paris_, 324, 325, 326, 327

Coutts, Mrs (Harriet Mellon, Duchess St Albans), 275, 360

Covenanters, the, 16, 134, 160, 161, 163, 174, 191, 353

Cowper, William, 71

Crabbe, George, 207, 241, 334, 368

Craighall, 49

Croker, J. W., 109, 144, 293, 294, 306, 330 _n._

Cromwell, Oliver, 27, 301, 302

Crosbie, Andrew, 139

Cumnor Hall, 42

Cunningham, Allan, 305, 333

Curtis, Sir William, 242



Dalgleish, William, 221, 259, 303, 306, 310

Dalkeith, Lady, _see_ Buccleuch, Harriet, Duchess of; Lord, _see_
Buccleuch, Charles, Duke of

Dalzell, Professor Andrew, 37

Darnick, 179, 281

Davy, Sir Humphry, 144, 217

Defoe, Daniel, 127, 129

_Demonology and Witchcraft, Letters on_, 322

Dempster, George, 15

Dickens, Charles, 253 _n._, 349

Disraeli, Benjamin, 275

Dogs, 90, 204, 221-222:
  Camp, 90
  Douglas, 90
  Finette, 216
  Hamlet, 216
  Maida, 204, 216, 258
  Ourisque, 216
  Pepper, Mustard, etc., 216
  Percy, 90

_Don Quixote_, 352

Don, Sir Alexander, 320

_Doom of Devorgoil, The_, 171

Dostoevsky, 335, 336, 340, 344, 350, 353

Douglas, Dr, 102; Frances, Lady, 60, 85; Castle, 325

Douglasdale, 327-328

Doumergue, family of, 87, 144

Downshire, Arthur, second Marquis of, 55

_Drapier's Letters_, 294

Drumclog, 162

Drumlanrig, 106, 304

Dryburgh Abbey, 22, 88, 178, 217, 334

Dryden, John, 338; Scott's edition of, 79, 80, 81

Dudley, John William, first Earl of, 110, 148, 285, 360

Dumas, Alexandre, 201, 255, 335

Dunbar, William, 18, 327

Dundas, Henry, _see_ Melville, first Lord



Economics, Scott's views on, 222, 294, 366, 367

Edgeworth, Maria, 128, 223, 252, 261, 274, 286, 356

Edinburgh Academy, the, 258

_Edinburgh Annual Register, The_, 99, 107, 159, 174

Edinburgh, in 1771, 11-13, 16; in 1787, 39, 41; in 1820, 203-204;
society, 207-210

_Edinburgh Review, The_, 60, 72, 73, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 96, 97,
125, 213, 238

Edinburgh Royal Society, _see_ Royal Society of Edinburgh.

_Edinburgh Weekly Journal_, 179, 293

_Encyclopdia Britannica_, 121, 238

Eildons, the, 217, 286, 323

Eldon, Lord, 363

Ellis, George, 59, 70, 72, 78, 82, 86, 91

Elton, Professor, quoted, 227, 228, 336

Emerson, R. W., 336

_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, 105

Erskine, Charles, 153; Honble Henry, 211; Mary Anne, 47; William
(Lord Kinnedder), 45, 46, 56, 57, 69, 75, 88, 97, 124, 132, 133, 160,
207, 211, 212, 235; goes to Bench, 235; death, 240, 241, 243

Eskgrove, Lord, 44

_Esmond_, 300

Ettrick House, 62

Ettrick, river, 21, 59, 62, 63, 68, 88, 328, 372



_Fair Maid of Perth, The_, 40, 96, 310, 315, 317, 318

Faldonside, 179, 239, 270, 320, 332

Falkland, Lord, 361

Ferguson (Fergusson), Dr Adam, 12, 16; Sir Adam, 39, 40, 54, 85, 86,
160, 171, 181, 212, 219, 259

Fettercairn, 52, 53

Fielding, Henry, 127, 128, 328

_Field of Waterloo, The_, 147

Fitzgerald, Edward, 188

Flaubert, 131, 336, 337, 348

Fleming, Marjorie, 89

Flodden, 84, 113

Forbes, Sir William, of Pitsligo, 53, 285, 292, 310, 320

_Fortunes of Nigel, The_, 226, 234, 239, 243, 247-250

Foulshiels, 69

Fox, Charles James, 72, 85

France, Anatole, 131

_Frankenstein_, 356

Franklin, Benjamin, quoted, 207 _n._

Fraser, Luke, 33

Freeman, Professor, 198

French Revolution, the, 47, 48, 361, 372

Frere, John Hookham, 72, 82

Froissart, 198



Galashiels, 102, 368

Gala Water, 68, 101, 333

Gattonside, 259

George IV., King, 106; entertains Scott, 144, 145; 173, 202;
coronation of, 225; visit to Scotland, 240-242; 253, 258, 305, 323

Gibson-Craig, Sir James, of Riccarton, 235, 237 _n._, 323

Gibson, John, 292, 293, 294

Gifford, William, 82

Gillies, R. P., 169 _n._, 315

Gilpin Horner, 69

Gilsland, 54

Glamis, 49

Glasgow, 16, 126, 171, 175, 181, 182, 183, 185

Goethe, 57, 137, 174, 255 _n._, 312, 332

Gordon, Huntly, 315

_Gtz von Berlichingen_, 57, 62

Gourgaud, General, 308, 310

Gow, John, 243

Graham of Gartmore, 182 _n._, 214

Grandtully, 131

Grant, Mrs, of Laggan, 56

Greek, Scott and, 36, 42, 258

Grey, Charles, second Earl, 324, 325, 328, 330 _n._

_Guy Mannering_, 45, 116, 138-143, 149, 153, 161, 264, 340



Haig, Douglas, Earl, 334

Hailes, Lord, 122 _n._

Haliburton, family of, 22, 334

_Halidon Hill_, 239

Hallam, Henry, 79

Hall, Captain Basil, 223, 260

Hamilton Palace, 60

_Hamlet_, 342, 347

Harden, 60, 67; Mrs Scott of, 47, 50, _see also_ Scott of Harden

Hardy, Thomas, 194

Hawick, 326

Haydon, Benjamin, 209, 316 _n._

Hazlitt, William, 308, 312, 361

_Heart of Midlothian, The_, 160, 174, 187-193, 247

Heber, Reginald, 60, 306; Richard 59, 61, 82, 88

_Henry IV._, 177

Hertford, Francis, second Marquis of, 144

High School of Edinburgh, 33, 34, 35, 36, 89, 90

_Highland Widow, The_, 314

Highlands, the, 12, 18, 19, 85, 117; condition of, in 1814, 125-126;
described in _Waverley_, 132-137; in _Rob Roy_, 181, 183; studies of
Highland character, 314, 318

Hill, Peter, 73

Hinse of Hinsfeldt, 204, 206

Hogg, James, 20, 38, 59, 62-64, 88, 91, 92, 169, 175, 214, 218, 220,
221, 225, 247, 260, 271, 308; Robert (the elder), 221; Robert
(the younger), 308

Holland, Lord, 95

Holyroodhouse, 12, 74, 242, 310

Home, George, of Wedderburn, 86, 87; John, 30, 39

Homer, 32, 34, 42, 114, 245, 334, 341, 346, 350, 352, 354

Hook, Theodore, 305

Horner, Francis, 74, 212

Horses:
  Daisy, 148
  Douce Davie, 309, 324, 328
  Marion, 31
  Sybil Grey, 177, 216, 276

Hughes, Mrs, of Uffington, 215, 313

Hugo, Victor, 131, 335, 343

Hume, David, 12, 13, 15, 16, 250

_Humphry Clinker_, 128

Hunter, Alexander Gibson, 96, 97, 98, 107

Hunt, Leigh, 356

Huntly Burn, 171, 317

Hurst and Robinson, firm of, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284



_Il Bizarro_, 331

Irving, Edward, 320; John, 39, 40; Washington, 171, 368

_Ivanhoe_, 85, 179, 180-198, 201, 202, 203, 257, 305, 310



Jacobite Tradition, the, 13, 16, 29, 39, 117, 173, 215, 240, 242, 264,
265, 332

James, Henry, 347

Jedburgh, 19, 41, 44, 45, 325, 326, 334

Jeffrey, Francis, Lord, 40, 41, 58, 72, 73, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 114,
167, 172, 204, 208, 209, 211, 212, 224, 330 _n._, 363, 371

Jobson, Jane, _see_ Scott, Mrs Walter

John of Skye, 217, 218, 220, 221, 224

Johnson, Dr, 14, 75, 110, 124, 149, 131, 146, 203, 251, 258, 285, 320,
325, 343, 346, 354, 357

Jollie, James, 293

_Journal to Stella, The_, 278



Kaeside, 148, 170

Kames, Lord, 16

Keats, John, 60, 82, 354, 358

Keir, 49

Keith, Mrs Anne Murray, 32, 314

Kelso, 35, 36, 37, 41, 48, 61, 67, 69, 97, 225

_Kenilworth_, 225, 231-233, 239 _n._

Kennedy of Dunure, 212

Kent, Duchess of, 317

Kerr, Charles, of Abbotrule, 58, 167

Kilpont, Lord, 192

Kinnedder, Lord, _see_ Erskine, William

Knox, John, 25, 372

_Kubla Khan_, 193

_Kunst und Alterthum_, 312



_Lady of the Lake, The_, 85, 87, 90, 94, 99, 100, 112, 113, 116, 117,
332

Laidlaw, William, 62, 68, 170, 173, 179, 222, 252, 253, 281, 286, 295,
296, 321, 324, 333

Lamb, Charles, 356

_Lament of the Makars_, 18, 327

Landor, Walter Savage, 188

Lang, Andrew, 65 _n._, 176 _n._

Lasswade, 56, 57, 59, 67, 69, 70, 88

Latin, Scott's knowledge of, 34, 36, 40 _n._, 42

Lauderdale, James, eighth Earl of, 94, 235

Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 202

_Lay of the Last Minstrel, The_, 54, 69-72, 75, 78, 84, 85, 112, 113,
114

Le Sage, 247

Leader water, 33, 68

_Lear_, 342, 347

_Legend of Montrose, The_, 179, 192-193

Leighton, Robert, 160

_Lenore_, 51, 57

Lesley, Bishop, 18

Lewis, Matthew, 50, 57, 66, 71, 128, 159

Leyden, John, 20, 59, 61, 62, 63, 65, 333

Liddesdale, 19, 49-50, 51, 138, 141, 320

Liverpool, Lord, 308

Loch Coruisk, 125

Loch Katrine, 113

Loch Skene, 33, 138

Loch Vennachar, 85

Lochore, 259

Lockhart, John Gibson, first meeting with Scott, 174; character of,
174-176; 176, 178; marriage, 202; 206, 209, 213, 214, 225, 226,
234, 252, 253, 274, 275, 276, 279, 280, 284, 287, 288, 296, 305, 308,
317, 319, 323, 324, 326, 327, 333, 334, 335, 357, 371.  Quoted: 77,
81, 83, 90, 104, 121-122, 135, 155 _n._, 160, 207, 208, 217, 218,
219, 222, 241, 244, 250, 271 _n._, 274, 291, 321, 358

John Hugh (Hugh Littlejohn), 226, 275, 276, 296, 309, 313, 317, 331;
Mrs, _see_ Scott, Sophia

_London_, 110

_London Magazine, The_, 234

Longmans, firm of, 64, 72, 74, 78, 147, 153, 239

_Lord of the Isles, The_, 87, 108, 109, 112, 125, 138

_Lyrical Ballads_, 60

Lyrics and Songs:
  "A Weary Lot is Thine, Fair Maid," 104, 116
  "Alice Brand," 116
  "Allen-a-Dale," 104
  "Blue Bonnets over the Border," 116
  "Bonnie Dundee," 116, 282
  "Brignal Banks," 104, 116
  "Claud Halcro's Song," 117, 245
  "Coronach," 86, 116
  "_Dies Ir_," 72
  "Donald Caird," 116
  "Lucy Ashton's Song," 117
  "Proud Maisie," 117
  "Soldier rest, thy Warfare o'er," 86
  "The Heath this Night must be my Bed," 116
  "The Highland Exile's Boat Song," 117 _n._
  "Through Groves of Palm," 244, 245



_Macbeth_, 198

Macbeth, John, 91

Macdonell, Alexander, of Glengarry, 132, 204, 242, 296

MacDougal of Makerstoun, family of, 21, 22; Sir George, 29

Mackenzie, Henry, 50, 78, 122 _n._, 212, 251, 325, 368

Mackintosh, Sir James, 59, 319

Macpherson, Cluny, 319

"Macrimmon's Lament," 125, 295

Magdalen College, 175

_Maid Marian_, 129

_Malachi Malagrowther, Letters of_, 293, 294, 366

Malta, 331

Mansfield, William, first Earl of, 14, 16, 357

Manzoni, 335

_Marmion_, 82, 84, 85, 94, 112, 145

Mathieson, Peter, 91, 214, 221, 242

Meadowbank, Lord, 45, 209, 307

_Measure for Measure_, 347

Meigle, 49

Melrose, 88, 101, 102, 139, 171, 217, 223, 227, 228, 229, 250, 333

Melville, first Viscount (Henry Dundas), 57, 100, 210, 320; second
Viscount, 144, 294

_Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner_, 347

Meredith, George, 351

Mrime, Prosper, 335

Methodism, Scott on, 370

Mickle, W. J., 42, 232

Millie, Bessie, 243

Milne, Nicol, 179

Milton Lockhart, 327

Minerva Press, the, 128, 129

_Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, The_, 60, 62, 64, 66, 69, 74,
115, 116

_Miscellany_, Constable's, 271, 272, 278, 288

Mitchell, James, 34

Molire, 187

_Monastery, The_, 202, 227-229

Moncrieff, Sir Henry, 207

Mons Meg, 242, 319

Montagu, Lord, 176, 215

_Monte Cristo_, 248

Montrose, James, first Marquis of, 18, 34, 68, 160, 192, 193, 214,
246; town, 34

Monypenny, Alexander, 293

Moore, Thomas, 43, 105, 108, 275

Moray, Lord, 204

Morris, William, 199

Morritt, J. B. S., of Rokeby, 87, 88, 97, 103, 104, 106, 118 _n._, 122,
124, 133, 169, 215, 222, 285, 371

Motherwell, William, 64

Mount Benger, 220

Muckle Mou'd Meg, 21, 51, 68

Murray, Sir Gideon, of Elibank, 21; John, of Broughton, 26; John
(publisher), 81, 82, 88, 96, 97, 99, 106, 145, 147, 153, 155 _n._,
158, 239

_Mysteries of Udolpho, The_, 50, 273



_Naphthali_, 163

Naples, 331-332

Napoleon, 72, 106, 146, 147, 210, 309, 312, 364; Scott's _Life of_,
271, 272, 274, 275, 292, 304, 305, 307, 308, 309, 311-313

Newman, John Henry, 227, 333, 369

Newton, Lord, 210

Nicholson, John, 221, 310, 324

Nietzsche, 344

_Noctes Ambrosian_, 63

_Northanger Abbey_, 129

Novel, the, in Britain before Scott, 127-130

Novels, the Waverley, _see_ under separate titles



_Old Mortality_, 38, 159, 160-166, 227, 266

Orkney Islands, 125, 126, 243

Ormistoun, Sandy, 29

Ossian, 35, 81

Oswald, James, of Dunnikier, 15

Oxford, 60, 301, 306



Paris, 27, 147, 304, 305

Paris, Matthew, 37

Park, Mungo, 68, 276

_Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk_, 147-149, 160

Peacock, T. L., 129

Peel, Sir Robert, 242, 306, 330 _n._

Pennant, Thomas, 14

Percy, Bishop, 35, 65

_Peveril of the Peak_, 240, 243, 250, 253-255

Philiphaugh, 68

_Pilgrim's Progress, The_, 123

_Pirate, The_, 117, 125, 225, 234, 243-247

Pitsligo, Lord, 132

Pitt, William, 72, 85, 87

Platoff, 147

Playfair, John, 209, 211, 212

Plummer, Andrew, of Middlestead, 57

Politian, 332

Politics, Scott and, 47-48, 82-83, 207, 211, 360-369

Polton, 279, 280, 282

Pompeii, 331

Pope, Alexander, 34, 71, 129

Porteous, Captain, 187

Porter, Jane, 128

Pringle of Whytbank, 147

Proust, Marcel, 345, 347

Purdie, Charlie, 217; Tom, 91, 221, 250, 258, 295, 296, 321, 324, 334



_Quarterly Review, The_, 82, 86, 97, 105, 160, 169, 175, 179

_Queen-Hoo Hall_, 118

_Quentin Durward_, 243, 250, 252, 255-257, 335



Radcliffe, Mrs, 50, 71, 128

Raeburn, Sir Henry, 209, 210

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 232, 272; Professor, 127, 129, 371

Ramsay, Allan, 30; John, of Ochtertyre, 149

Ranke, Leopold von, 335

Ravelston, 206

_Rebecca and Rowena_, 201

_Redgauntlet_, 38, 54, 91, 258, 260, 264-268, 269, 338

Regalia of Scotland, the, 173

_Return of the Native, The_, 194

Rhodes, 332

Richardson, Samuel, 127, 128

Riddell, Sir John, of Riddell, 180

Ritson, Joseph, 59, 65

Robertson, Principal, 12, 16

_Rob Roy_, 172, 181-187

Rogers, Samuel, 59, 305

_Rokeby_, 54, 103, 104, 105, 112, 138

Rolland, Adam, 139, 210

_Romeo and Juliet_, 197

Rosebank, 37, 67, 68

Rosebery, Lord, 181

Roxburgh, Duke of, 59; Duchess of, 304

Royal Academy, the, 251

Royal Society of Edinburgh, 50, 225, 251

Royal Society of Literature, 225

Runeberg, 335

Ruskin, John, 335

Rutherford, Alison, _see_ Cookburn, Mrs; Anne, _see_ Scott, Mrs
Walter (the elder); Christian, 32, 180; Janet (Mrs Russel of
Ashestiel), 32; Professor, 22, 28, 180



Sadleir, Sir Ralph, 81

St Giles, church of, 13, 242

St Mary's loch, 113

_St Ronan's Well_, 253, 260-264, 270, 313

Saintsbury, Professor George, 79, 338 _n._

Sandy Knowe, 22, 28, 29, 31, 33, 35, 36, 69, 71

Scott, Anne (the elder), 28; Anne (the younger), 89, 274, 282, 297,
299, 304, 305, 322, 333; Charles, 42, 89, 203, 258, 305, 317, 332,
334; Daniel, 28, 67, 95, 96; Janet, 29, 30, 31, 35; John, 28,
54, 102, 149; Robert, 28; Captain Robert, 30, 37, 67, 75, 77;
Sophia (Mrs Lockhart), 89, 90, 143, 144, 202, 222, 226, 309;
Thomas, 28, 84, 94, 95, 100, 124 _n._, 149, 252; Walter (the
elder), 17, 24-26, 32, 37, 38, 52, 55, 57, 181, 264; Walter (the
younger), 89, 90, 148, 179, 203, 206, 217, 225, 269, 304, 316, 317,
328, 332, 334; Mrs Walter (Anne Rutherford), 22, 26-27, 180; Mrs
Walter (Jane Jobson), 259, 269, 285, 304

Scott family, of Buccleuch, _see_ Buccleuch, family of; of Gala, 147,
148; of Harden, 21, 22

Scott, Lady (Charlotte Carpenter), 55, 56, 91, 217, 281, 295, 297-299

Scott, Sir Walter, genealogy, 21-23; birth, 17-24; his father and
mother, 25, 27; brothers and sisters, 28; childhood at Sandy
Knowe and in Edinburgh, 29-33; at High School, 33-36; at College,
36-40; called to the Bar, 40; nature of education, 41-43; early
days at Bar, 44-50; publication of _Lenore_, 51; appearance, 51-52,
219; love affair with Williamina Stuart, 52-55; married to
Charlotte Carpenter, 55-56; first literary work, 57; _Minstrelsy of
the Scottish Border_, 60-66; publication of _Lay of the Last Minstrel_,
69; partnership in printing business with James Ballantyne,
74-77; miscellaneous literary work, 78-82; publication of _Marmion_,
84; _The Lady of the Lake_, 85; life at Ashestiel, 87-93; becomes
Clerk of Session, 86; quarrel with Constable, 96; meditates
going to India, 100; beginning of Abbotsford, 101-103;
publication of _Rokeby_, 104; Ballantyne publishing business wound
up, 107-108; refuses the Poet Laureateship, 109; Scott as poet,
109-117; genesis of Waverley Novels, 117-120; publication of
_Waverley_, 122; trip to the Highlands and Islands, 124-127; _Guy
Mannering_ published, 138; visit to London, 144; meeting with
Byron, 145-146; visit to Flanders and Paris, 147-148; publication
of _The Antiquary_, 149; James Ballantyne no longer partner,
156; publication of _Old Mortality_, 159; break-down in health,
168-180; purchase of Toftfield, 171; _Rob Roy_ published, 172; the
Scottish Regalia, 173; first meeting with Lockhart, 174-176;
created baronet, 177; publication of _Heart of Midlothian_, 174; of
_Bride of Lammermoor_ and _Legend of Montrose_, 179; of _Ivanhoe_,
202; life in Edinburgh, 203-214; life at Abbotsford, 214-223;
publication of _The Monastery_ and _The Abbot_, 224; visit to London
for Coronation, 225; publication of _Kenilworth_, 225; publication
of _The Pirate_, 234; the _Beacon_ affair, 234-235; James
Ballantyne readmitted partner, 236; visit of George IV., 240-243;
position in Scottish life, 241-242; Abbotsford completed, 258;
marriage of young Walter, 269; inception of Constable's _Miscellany_,
271; _Life of Napoleon_ begun, 272; visit to Ireland, 274;
departure of the Lockharts for London, 275; financial crisis in
London, 279; failure of Hurst and Robinson, 283; its effect on
Scott, 284-288; formation of Trust, 292; publication of _Malachi
Malagrowther_, 293; death of Lady Scott, 297-299; publication of
_Woodstock_, 300; visits to London and Paris, 304-306; Theatrical
Fund Dinner, 307; publication of _Life of Napoleon_, 308; rumour
of challenge from General Gourgaud, 309; risk of prison for
debt, 309-310; the _Opus Magnum_, 315; visit to London, 317;
his health declines, 320; first paralytic stroke, 322; resigns
Clerkship of Court, 323; offered Privy Councillorship, 323; political
activity, 324-325; second paralytic stroke, 325-326; journey to
Douglasdale, 327; last meeting with Wordsworth, 328; voyage
in the "Bayham," 330-331; Malta, 331; Naples and Rome,
332; return to Abbotsford, 333; death, 334; Scott's position in
letters, 335-353; his style, 336-339; structure of novels,
339-343; his character-drawing, 344-349; his greatness, 349-353;
Scott's character, 354-373; his attitude to literature, 355-358;
worldliness, 359-360; political opinions, 360-369; moral and
religious principles, 369-370; summary, 370-373

Selkirk, 45, 91, 101, 147, 220, 314

Senior, Nassau, 300, 336

_Sentinel, The_, 235

Seward, Anna, 109

Shakespeare, William, 30, 116, 150, 185, 187, 232, 248, 264, 325, 335,
337, 338, 339, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 350, 351, 354, 368, 371

Sharpe, Charles Kirkpatrick, 212

Shelley, P. B., 54, 60, 115, 351, 368; Mrs, 356

Shenstone, William, 110

Shetland Islands, 125, 243, 244

Shortreed, Robert, 49, 50, 319

_Siege of Malta, The_, 331

Sinclair, Sir John, 304, 364

_Sir Tristram_, 60

Skene, James, of Rubislaw, 88, 131 _n._, 148, 149, 160, 207, 212, 215,
282, 283, 287, 371, 312

Slingsby, Sir Henry, 81

Smith, Adam, 13, 116, 119, 250, 294, 364; Sydney, 73, 212, 239, 244,
247, 250

Smollett, Tobias, 247, 328

Somerville, Lord, 217

Southey, Robert, 42, 70, 88, 105, 109, 110, 207, 215, 319, 365

_Specimens of Ancient English Poetry_, 59

Spenser, Edmund, 35, 81

Stair, Lady, 193

Stendhal, 199, 348

Sterne, Laurence, 127, 128

Stevenson, R. L., 47, 48, 124, 132, 181,
183, 184, 337, 340, 353

Stewart of Appin, 340; Alexander, of Invernahyle, 39, 137; Dugald, 37,
209; James, of Ardvoirlich, 192

Stoddart, Sir John, 69

Straiten, Willie, 295

Strindberg, 335

Stuart, James, of Dunearn, 235; Lady Louisa, 14, 60, 84, 85, 174, 188,
216, 260, 325, 336, 356, 358, 362, 363, 371

Stuart-Belsches, Lady Jane, 52, 54, 320; Sir John, 52; Williamina,
52, 55, 94, 125, 320

Strutt, Joseph, 118

Sunderland Hall, 68

_Surgeon's Daughter, The_, 314

Surtees, Richard, 117

Swift, Jonathan, 78, 223, 278, 294; Scott's edition of, 80, 81, 96, 258

Swinburne, A. C., 104, 352



_Tales of a Grandfather_, 226, 308, 310, 313, 315, 322

_Talisman, The_, 272, 273, 274

"Tam o' Shanter," 113

_Tea Table Miscellany, The_, 30

Teesdale, 104

Tegnr, 335

Terry, Daniel, 102, 149, 243, 252, 258, 269, 270, 288, 305, 317, 320

Teviot, river, 21, 22

Thackeray, W. M., 131, 201, 349

Theatrical Fund Dinner, the, 307

Thomas the Rhymer, 60, 117, 171, 194

Thomson, Rev. John, of Duddingston, 208, 212; Thomas, 46, 211, 212

_Timon of Athens_, 347

Tippermuir, 192

Toftfield, 171

Tolstoy, 188, 336, 340, 348, 350

Toryism, Scott's, 363-369, _see also_ under Politics

Tourgeniev, 315, 336, 344

Train, Joseph, 138

Traquair, 131

_Tristram Shandy_, 383

Tullybody, 49

Turner, Sir James, 192

Tushielaw, 63

Tweed, river, 31, 35, 49, 59, 67-68, 84, 91, 102, 172, 217, 285,
328, 333, 334

_Twelfth Night_, 124

"Two Drovers, The," 314

_Twopenny Post-bag, The_, 105



University College, 306



_Valerius_, 226

_Vanity Fair_, 131

_Vanity of Human Wishes, The_, 110

Verrall, A. W., 336, 338 _n._

Victoria, Princess, 317

Vigny, Alfred de, 335

_Vision of Don Roderick, The_, 101, 147



Walker, Helen of Irongray, 187; Patrick, 163

Walpole, Horace, 15

"Wandering Willie's Tale," 267-268, 338

_War and Peace_, 131, 188, 341

Waterloo, 131, 147, 234, 364

_Waverley_, 122, 123, 124 _n._, 126, 131, 137, 143, 149, 156, 161, 343

Weir, Major, 217

Wellington, Duke of, 27, 85, 87, 105, 147, 305, 308, 309, 324, 330,
357, 364

Whigs, the, 207-208, 210, 211, 212, 362, 363, 364

_Wilhelm Meister_, 255

Wilkes, John, 15

Wilkie, Sir David, 171

Will o' Phawhope, 62

Wilson, John (Christopher North), 175, 176, 209, 214

Woodhouselee, Lord, 37

_Woodstock_, 282, 284, 285, 292, 296, 300-303

Wordsworth, William, 47, 59, 60, 66, 71, 79, 82, 83, 84, 110, 115,
207, 274, 316 _n._, 328, 329, 356, 362, 368, 369



Yair, 68

Yarrow, river, 33, 59, 62, 68, 70, 84, 88, 178, 217, 276

York, Cardinal of, 240, 323, 332






[End of Sir Walter Scott, by John Buchan]
