idea of writing a romance; and he considers his own "bow-wow style" far inferior to the delicate and subtle delineation of character in "Pride and Prejudice" and "Mansfield Park." The If Scott knew the Highlands well, he knew the Border even better. All that wild country between the Esk and Tweed-unchanged since Flodden, and only traversed by bridle-paths-was as familiar to him as to his own mosstroopers. He knew the country with all its legends and traditions. old peel-towers, the ruined fortresses, the desecrated abbeys, the haunted glens, the perilous fords, the rude cairns that marked the site of a battle or a murder, were one and all associated in his mind with some story of the past, and might have furnished the materials for a hundred romances. From his boyhood he had explored Ettrick Forest and Liddesdale-often walking, lame as he was, thirty miles a day, listening to the "auld wives'" songs, and to family traditions and superstitions. At the age of fifteen he had filled five small notebooks with ballads taken down as they were sung to him in some farmhouse or bothy, and on one occasion provoking the sarcastic comment of his father, "I greatly doubt, sir, you were born for nae better than a gangrel scrape-gut." But it was not till his scheme for the "Border Minstrelsy" had taken definite shape that he began his famous "raids" into Liddesdale with Mr. Robert Shortreed, for the purpose of collecting ballads and "auld nicknackets." There were no inns in that wild country, and the two travellers were passed on from the farmstead to the manse, and from the manse to the shepherds' hut, receiving everywhere a warm and hospitable welcome from the various Elliots and Johnstons. The whole expense of their journey amounted to a feed of corn for their ponies. Scott soon won the hearts of these honest Borderers by his unaffected geniality and simplicity of manner. "He aye did as the lave did," writes Mr. Shortreed; "never made himsel' the great man, or took ony airs in the company;" and he adds significantly, "He was aye making himsel', though maybe he didna ken it till years later." Scott found many zealous assistants in the work of collecting the ballads and songs which had never been written but were handed down by oral tradition. Among these "makers of the Minstrelsy" described for us by Mrs. MacCunn were James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd; Joseph Ritson, "a waspish little critic and the self-appointed gadfly of all collectors and editors"; Richard Heber, "the gentle English virtuoso"; Robert Surtees, the Durham antiquary; Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, the original of Sir Mungo Malagrowther; and, more zealous than all, John Leyden, "a wild-looking, thin, Roxburghshire man," with a shrill voice, boisterous spirits, and matchless self-possession, who had come up to Edinburgh, poorer than even the majority of students, a prodigy of uncouthness and multifarious learning. Scott had become much attached to this eccentric genius, and paid an eloquent tribute to his memory in describing the islands which Leyden himself had described in the "Mermaid"— And Scarba's isle, whose tortured shore And lonely Colonsay; His brief and bright career is o'er, And mute his tuneful strains; Quenched is his lamp of varied lore, That loved the light of song to pour: A distant and a deadly shore Has Leyden's cold remains! The "Border Minstrelsy" had a great and immediate success when it was published in 1802-3, and the Introducticns, as well as the Notes and Illus trations, are among Scott's best work. Nothing is more remarkable than his intimate knowledge of Scottish history of every period, and his minute acquaintance with local customs, legends and traditions. Nothing, again, can be more graphic or picturesque than his account of the Border clans-Armstrongs and Elliots, Hepburns and Scotts, Homes and Kerrs-with their feuds and forays, their ruthless devastation and savage reprisals, who owned no master but the chief of their clan and knew no law but the length of their swords. It was only natural that ballads dealing with a wild and turbulent past should themselves be full of tragic and pathetic episodes, "Of old, far off, unhappy things, and battles long ago." But it is certain that the best ballad ever written loses its grace and charm from being read instead of being sung. It is like the libretto of an opera without the music. As James Hogg's mother, from whose lips Walter Scott was taking down a ballad, complained, "There never was ane o' my sangs prentit till ye prentit them yersel', and ye hae spoilt them a'thegither. They were made for singing and no' for reading, but ye hae broken the charm, and they'll never be sung mair." I read you for a bold dragoon, That lists the tuck of drum." Scott himself contributed some socalled ballads to the third volume of the "Minstrelsy," among them being "Glenfinlas"-Sir Francis Doyle's favorite-and "Cadyow Castle," one of the finest things he ever wrote. No one is likely to forget the description of the "mountain bull" or Bothwellhaugh's murder of the Regent Murray. But "Cadyow Castle" is a poem rather than a ballad, and as a specimen of Scott's genius in song-writing one would rather select the "Outlaw's Song" in "Rokeby" "With burnished brand and musketoon, So gallantly you come, A few stanzas farther on, in another song, comes the sequel "This morn is merry June, I trow, But she shall bloom in winter's snow He gave his bridle-reins a shake, It would be difficult to name two more exquisite lyrics in the English language than the songs of which the two stanzas quoted above are an idyll in themselves. an cess. Three years after the publication of the "Minstrelsy," in 1805, the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" appeared, and was immediate and triumphant sucThe novelty, the freshness, the vigor of the style, and the stirring incidents of this tale of Border life, took the reading world by storm. Scott had, in fact, unconsciously founded a new school of poetry. Men had grown weary of the solemnity of blank verse and of the monotonous formality of Pope's heroic couplets, and weary also of puzzling over the subtleties of meaning and the undercurrents of thought in Wordsworth and Coleridge. The style of the "Lay" was as clear and strong as the Tweed, and the language as simple and direct and as "easily to be understanded" as the Bible itself. It was not surprising, then, that those two noble songs of battle and adventure "Marmion" and the "Lady of the 18 Rokeby, Canto ili. stanzas xvii. and xxviii. Lake," which soon followed the "Lay" -were a triumphant success at the time, and are probably the two most popular poems ever written since the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey." They have been admired and quoted till they have become familiar and almost hackneyed, and have been read or recited by successive generations of schoolboys. There is no doubt that "Marmion" is the finer work of the two, as having the more interesting plot, and being marked by that rapid and vigorous style peculiar to Scott, who, says Sir Francis Doyle, "is the undoubted inheritor of that trumpet-note which, under the breath of Homer, has made the wrath of Achilles immortal." " But in spite of his martial ardor, his delight in sport and adventure, and his naturally joyous and sanguine temperament, Scott is often (as Mr. Ruskin says) "inherently and consistently sad. Of all the poetry that I know, none is so sorrowful as his." 18 Though he loved Nature in all her moods and as pects, and few poets have interpreted her with more insight and fidelity,—yet even in describing the most charming landscape-the view from Blackford Hill, a sunset on the Greta, or an autumn scene in Ettrick Forest the well-known view from the hill above Cauldshields LochWith listless look along the plain I see Tweed's silver current glide, And coldly mark the holy fane Of Melrose rise in ruined pride. 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 warped and broken board, How can it bear the painter's dye! The harp of strained and tuneless chord, How to the minstrel's skill 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.19 Scott's depression of feeling on this occasion was no doubt partly caused by his recent illness, but even more by that ill-omened partnership with the Ballantynes, which hung like a millstone about his neck and embittered his life. The day on which he brought James Ballantyne from Kelso to Edinburgh was, as Lockhart calls it, “the blackest in his calendar." Mr. Andrew Lang has probably said the last word on the subject, and it would be Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis flori- idle to attempt to apportion the blame bus angat. The very beauty of what he sees only accentuates the bitterness of what he feels; he is haunted by memories of the past, by the contrast between then and now; he has lost the illusions of youth; and his own experiences of life, in spite of all his success, have made him realize Virgil's lachrymæ rerum"the sense of tears in mortal things." Perhaps the most pathetic lines he ever wrote were in the autumn of 1817, when struggling against feelings of languor and depression, as he gazed on 17 Sir Francis Doyle, Lectures on Poetry, p. 81. 18 Ruskin's Modern Painters, vol. iii., Part iv., sect. 34. of their financial ruin between Scott, Constable, and the Ballantynes. Scott himself had inherited something of the speculative temperament of his grandfather, and most certainly he made a serious initial blunder, for he could not possibly have selected two worse men than the Ballantynes as his partners and confidants. They were half educated and his social inferiors. "John was mischievous and reckless; James too pliant and too adverse for Arithmetic." Constable himself-"the Napoleon of the Trade"-was in racing parlance "a plunger"; full of magnifi19 Lockhart, iv. 83. 91 20 20 Life of Lockhart, by Andrew Lang, ii. 252. cent and visionary schemes, but utterly unpractical as a man of business. "He hated accounts," we are told, "and systematically declined to examine or sign a balance-sheet." Had not Scott's pride been wounded by a perfectly just criticism passed by Blackwood on the "Black Dwarf," which is admitted to be one of the failures among the Waverleys, how different the future might have shaped itself! Had he kept clear of these knightserrant of the book trade-had he been in the hands of a Blackwood or a Murray, born to success-what a different end of the great Magician, the Improvisatore in an entranced and wondering age! Then had he built his towers and planted his scaurs in peace; then had his charmed doors stood open for the comfort and solace of all pilgrims; then had the world applauded all his gentle ambitious, and sworn by its right hand that never was nobler issue of a poet's labors than that poetic earth and those beloved woods on Tweedside." In 1814, when the Ballantyne firm was in extremis, Scott chanced to light upon what proved to be a veritable gold-mine. This was the romance of "Waverley"-the first part of which had been written some years previously and then laid aside in deference to the fastidious criticism of William Erskine. The novel was now completed-literally currente calamo. It was published anonymously, and for the moment hung fire. Then came a universal chorus of delight and admiration such as has never been accorded, we believe, to any work in literature before or since. The critics and the reading public were in accord for once; edition followed edition, and London rivalled Edinburgh in the demand for copies. The volumes flew from hand "A literary History of England (1790-1825), by Mrs. Oliphant. Scott's income when he became full Clerk of Session was over 2500 pounds a year, and from first to last he made at least 140,000 pounds by his pen. LIVING AGE. VOL. XLVII. 2454 to hand, and were read and re-read by all classes of society. And as one brilliant romance followed another in rapid succession, each differing from its predecessor, yet each in its way a masterpiece,-so human, so true to life, with such warm and generous pictures, such breadth of coloring, such insight into character, and such fresh and unstudied dialogue,-public interest and enthusiasm were centred on the personality of "the Great Unknown"— "the Wizard of the North." In these days, when novels are published by thousands and "Fiction" occupies so large a space in our free libraries, we can hardly realize the effect of the Waverleys on a reading public whose knowledge of romance was confined to Smollett, Fielding, and Richardson, or the fashionable trash dear to the Lydia Languishes of the day. But some of us who have passed middle age may perhaps have something of the feeling with which "George Eliot" recalls her childish delight in "Waverley," and her gratitude to the author: His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu, of quaint Bradwardine, and Vich Ian Vohr, Making the little world their childhood knew. Large with a land of mountain, lake, and scaur, And larger yet with wonder, love, belief Toward Walter Scott, who living far pup fies all the laws of grammar." Theu, According to Mr. Hutton, Scott's Of all Scott's critics, the most depreciative was his countryman Thomas Carlyle, who, while admitting that "Scott was the best type of Scotsman," and put new life into the dry bones of 22 Taine ("History of English Literature," iv. 304) quotes a sentence in the first page of "Ivanhoe," and says of it, "C'est impossible d'ecrire plus lourdement."' 24 Sir Walter Scott, by W. H. Hutton, p. 107. history, has many counts in his indictment against him as a novelist. First, he complains that Scott "wrote impromptu novels, to pay fame with." The crime of being a poor man, and being forced to write for money, is unfortunately shared by most writers of eminence from Shakespeare, who (as Pope tells us), For gain, not glory, winged his roving flight, down to the late Lord Tennyson, who, if report is to be credited, was a remarkably keen hand at a bargain. than Then Carlyle declares that Scott's heroes and heroines were mere "mechanical cases, deceptively painted automatons," and that his novels "were not profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for edification, for building up or elevating in any shape." Surely a more preposterous statement was never put Is Jeanie on paper by a great writer. Deans-to take an obvious instancenothing better than a "mechanical automaton"? Are there no lessons "profitable for edification" to be found in the "Heart of Mid-Lothian"? Did Shakespeare himself ever paint a more dramatic and touching scene Jeanie's interview with Queen Caroline, or her heroic refusal to save her sister's life by a venial falsehood? And again, who but a consummate artist, like Scott, could have enlisted our sympathies, not in behalf of the beautiful Effie, but of the humble milkmaid, Jeanie, who is (as Lady Louisa Stuart writes) "without youth, beauty, genius, warm passions, or any other novel-perfection." 25 We will venture to say that men have learned more from that example of modesty, piety, heroism, and both filial and sisterly affection, than from all "Sartor Resartus" and a hundred “Latter-day Pamphlets." And, to our thinking, Scott in his own life set a higher example and exercised a wider influence for good than Carlyle. 25 Lockhart, iv. 177. |