21250	----	SIR WALTER SCOTT A Lecture at the Sorbonne, May 22, 1919, in the series of _Conférences Louis Liard_ BY WILLIAM PATON KER, LL.D. GLASGOW MACLEHOSE, JACKSON AND CO. PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY 1919 NOTE This Essay appeared in the _Anglo-French Review_, August, 1919, and I am obliged to the Editor and Publisher for leave to reprint it. W. P. K. Sir Walter Scott When I was asked to choose a subject for a lecture at the Sorbonne, there came into my mind somehow or other the incident of Scott's visit to Paris when he went to see _Ivanhoe_ at the Odéon, and was amused to think how the story had travelled and made its fortune:-- 'It was an opera, and, of course, the story sadly mangled and the dialogue in great part nonsense. Yet it was strange to hear anything like the words which (then in an agony of pain with spasms in my stomach) I dictated to William Laidlaw at Abbotsford, now recited in a foreign tongue, and for the amusement of a strange people. I little thought to have survived the completing of this novel.' It seemed to me that here I had a text for my sermon. The cruel circumstances of the composition of _Ivanhoe_ might be neglected. The interesting point was in the contrast between the original home of Scott's imagination and the widespread triumph of his works abroad--on the one hand, Edinburgh and Ashestiel, the traditions of the Scottish border and the Highlands, the humours of Edinburgh lawyers and Glasgow citizens, country lairds, farmers and ploughmen, the Presbyterian eloquence of the Covenanters and their descendants, the dialect hardly intelligible out of its own region, and not always clear even to natives of Scotland; on the other hand, the competition for Scott's novels in all the markets of Europe, as to which I take leave to quote the evidence of Stendhal:-- 'Lord Byron, auteur de quelques héroïdes sublimes, mais toujours les mêmes, et de beaucoup de tragédies mortellement ennuyeuses, n'est point du tout le chef des romantiques. 'S'il se trouvait un homme que les traducteurs à la toise se disputassent également à Madrid, à Stuttgard, à Paris et à Vienne, l'on pourrait avancer que cet homme a deviné les tendances morales de son époque.' If Stendhal proceeds to remark in a footnote that 'l'homme lui-même est peu digne d'enthousiasme,' it is pleasant to remember that Lord Byron wrote to M. Henri Beyle to correct his low opinion of the character of Scott. This is by the way, though not, I hope, an irrelevant remark. For Scott is best revealed in his friendships; and the mutual regard of Scott and Byron is as pleasant to think of as the friendship between Scott and Wordsworth. As to the truth of Stendhal's opinion about the vogue of Scott's novels and his place as chief of the romantics, there is no end to the list of witnesses who might be summoned. Perhaps it may be enough to remember how the young Balzac was carried away by the novels as they came fresh from the translator, almost immediately after their first appearance at home. One distinguishes easily enough, at home in Scotland, between the novels, or the passages in the novels, that are idiomatic, native, homegrown, intended for his own people, and the novels not so limited, the romances of English or foreign history--_Ivanhoe_, _Kenilworth_, _Quentin Durward_. But as a matter of fact these latter, though possibly easier to understand and better suited to the general public, were not invariably preferred. The novels were 'the Scotch novels.' Although Thackeray, when he praises Scott, takes most of his examples from the less characteristic, what we may call the English group, on the other hand, Hazlitt dwells most willingly on the Scotch novels, though he did not like Scotsmen, and shared some of the prejudice of Stendhal--'my friend Mr. Beyle,' as he calls him in one place--with regard to Scott himself. And Balzac has no invidious preferences: he recommends an English romance, _Kenilworth_, to his sister, and he also remembers David Deans, a person most intensely and peculiarly Scots. One may distinguish the Scotch novels, which only their author could have written, from novels like _Peveril of the Peak_ or _Anne of Geierstein_, which may be thought to resemble rather too closely the imitations of Scott, the ordinary historical novel as it was written by Scott's successors. But though the formula of the conventional historical novel may have been drawn from the less idiomatic group, it was not this that chiefly made Scott's reputation. His fame and influence were achieved through the whole mass of his immense and varied work; and the Scots dialect and humours, which make so large a part of his resources when he is putting out all his power, though they have their difficulties for readers outside of Scotland, were no real hindrances in the way of the Scotch novels: Dandie Dinmont and Bailie Nicol Jarvie, Cuddie Headrigg and Andrew Fairservice were not ignored or forgotten, even where _Ivanhoe_ or _The Talisman_ might have the preference as being more conformable to the general mind of novel readers. The paradox remains: that the most successful novelist of the whole world should have had his home and found his strength in a country with a language of its own, barely intelligible, frequently repulsive to its nearest neighbours, a language none the more likely to win favour when the manners or ideas of the country were taken into consideration as well. The critics who refuse to see much good in Scott, for the most part ignore the foundations of his work. Thus Stendhal, who acknowledges Scott's position as representative of his age, the one really great, universally popular, author of his day, does not recognise in Scott's imagination much more than trappings and tournaments, the furniture of the regular historical novel. He compares Scott's novels with _La Princesse de Clèves_, and asks which is more to be praised, the author who understands and reveals the human heart, or the descriptive historian who can fill pages with unessential details but is afraid of the passions. In which it seems to be assumed that Scott, when he gave his attention to the background and the appropriate dresses, was neglecting the dramatic truth of his characters and their expression. Scott, it may be observed, had, in his own reflexions on the art of novel-writing, taken notice of different kinds of policy in dealing with the historical setting. In his lives of the novelists, reviewing _The Old English Baron_, he describes the earlier type of historical novel in which little or nothing is done for antiquarian decoration or for local colour; while in his criticism of Mrs. Radcliffe he uses the very term--'melodrama'--and the very distinction--melodrama as opposed to tragedy--which is the touchstone of the novelist. Whatever his success might be, there can be no doubt as to his intentions. He meant his novels, with their richer background and their larger measure of detail, to sacrifice nothing of dramatic truth. _La Princesse de Clèves_, a professedly historical novel with little 'local colour', may be in essentials finer and more sincere than Scott. This is a question which I ask leave to pass over. But it is not Scott's intention to put off the reader with details and decoration as a substitute for truth of character and sentiment. Here most obviously, with all their differences, Balzac and Scott are agreed: expensive both of them in description, but neither of them inclined to let mere description (in Pope's phrase) take the place of sense--i.e. of the life which it is the business of the novelist to interpret. There is danger, no doubt, of overdoing it, but description in Balzac, however full and long, is never inanimate. He has explained his theory in a notice of Scott, or rather in a comparison of Scott and Fenimore Cooper (_Revue Parisienne_, 1840), where the emptiness of Cooper's novels is compared with the variety of Scott's, the solitude of the American lakes and forests with the crowd of life commanded by the author of _Waverley_. Allowing Cooper one great success in the character of Leather-stocking and some merit in a few other personages, Balzac finds beyond these nothing like Scott's multitude of characters; their place is taken by the beauties of nature. But description cannot make up for want of life in a story. Balzac shows clearly that he understood the danger of description, and how impossible, how unreasonable, it is to make scenery do instead of story and characters. He does not seem to think that Scott has failed in this respect, while in his remarks on Scott's humour he proves how far he is from the critics who found in Scott nothing but scenery and accoutrements and the rubbish of old chronicles. Scott's chivalry and romance are not what Balzac is thinking about. Balzac is considering Scott's imagination in general, his faculty in narrative and dialogue, wherever his scene may be, from whatever period the facts of his story may be drawn. Scott's superiority to his American rival comes out, says Balzac, chiefly in his secondary personages and in his talent for comedy. The American makes careful mechanical provision for laughter: Balzac takes this all to pieces, and leaves Scott unchallenged and inexhaustible. Scott's reputation has suffered a little through suspicion of his politics, and, strangely enough, of his religion. He has been made responsible for movements in Churches about which opinions naturally differ, but of which it is certain Scott never dreamed. Those who suspect and blame his work because it is reactionary, illiberal, and offensive to modern ideas of progress, are, of course, mainly such persons as believe in 'the march of intellect,' and think meanly of each successive stage as soon as it is left behind. The spokesman of this party is Mark Twain, who wrote a burlesque of the Holy Grail, and who in his _Life on the Mississippi_ makes Scott responsible for the vanities and superstitions of the Southern States of America:-- 'The South has not yet recovered from the debilitating influence of his books. Admiration of his fantastic heroes and their grotesque "chivalry" doings and romantic juvenilities still survives here, in an atmosphere in which is already perceptible the wholesome and practical nineteenth century smell of cotton-factories and locomotives.' It is useless to moralise on this, and the purport and significance of it may be left for private meditation to enucleate and enjoy. But it cannot be fully appreciated, unless one remembers that the author of this and other charges against chivalry is also the historian of the feud between the Shepherdsons and the Grangerfords, equal in tragedy to the themes of the _chansons de geste_: of _Raoul de Cambrai_ or _Garin le Loherain_. Mark Twain in the person of Huckleberry Finn is committed to the ideas of chivalry neither more nor less than Walter Scott in _Ivanhoe_ or _The Talisman_. I am told further--though this is perhaps unimportant--that Gothic ornament in America is not peculiarly the taste of the South, that even at Chicago there are imitations of Gothic towers and halls. Hazlitt, an unbeliever in most of Scott's political principles, is also the most fervent and expressive admirer of the novels, quite beyond the danger of modern progress, his judgment not corrupted at all by the incense of the cotton-factory or the charm of the locomotive. Hazlitt's praise of Scott is an immortal proof of Hazlitt's sincerity in criticism. Scott's friends were not Hazlitt's, and Scott and Hazlitt differed both in personal and public affairs as much as any men of their time. But Hazlitt has too much sense not to be taken with the Scotch novels, and too much honesty not to say so, and too much spirit not to put all his strength into praising, when once he begins. Hazlitt's critical theory of Scott's novels is curiously like his opinion about Scott's old friend, the poet Crabbe: whose name I cannot leave without a salute to the laborious and eloquent work of M. Huchon, his scholarly French interpreter. Hazlitt on Crabbe and Scott is a very interesting witness on account of the principles and presuppositions employed by him. In the last hundred years or so the problems of realism and naturalism have been canvassed almost too thoroughly between disputants who seem not always to know when they are wandering from the point or wearying their audience with verbiage and platitudes. But out of all the controversy there has emerged at least one plain probability--that there is no such thing as simple transference of external reality into artistic form. This is what Hazlitt seems to ignore very strangely in his judgment of Crabbe and Scott, and this is, I think, an interesting point in the history of criticism, especially when it is remembered that Hazlitt was a critic of painting, and himself a painter. He speaks almost as if realities passed direct into the verse of Crabbe; as if Scott's imagination in the novels were merely recollection and transcription of experience. Speaking of the difference between the genius of Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott, he says: 'It is the difference between _originality_ and the want of it, between writing and transcribing. Almost all the finest scenes and touches, the great master-strokes in Shakespeare, are such as must have belonged to the class of invention, where the secret lay between him and his own heart, and the power exerted is in adding to the given materials and working something out of them: in the author of _Waverley_, not all, but the principal and characteristic beauties are such as may and do belong to the class of compilation--that is, consist in bringing the materials together and leaving them to produce their own effect.... 'No one admires or delights in the Scotch Novels more than I do, but at the same time, when I hear it asserted that his mind is of the same class with Shakespeare, or that he imitates nature in the same way, I confess I cannot assent to it. No two things appear to me more different. Sir Walter is an imitator of nature and nothing more; but I think Shakespeare is infinitely more than this.... Sir Walter's mind is full of information, but the "_o'er informing power_" is not there. Shakespeare's spirit, like fire, shines through him; Sir Walter's, like a stream, reflects surrounding objects.' I may not at this time quote much more of Hazlitt's criticism, but the point of it would be misunderstood if it were construed as depreciation of Scott. What may be considered merely memory in contrast to Shakespeare's imagination is regarded by Hazlitt as a limitless source of visionary life when compared with the ideas of self-centred authors like Byron. This is what Hazlitt says in another essay of the same series:-- 'Scott "does not 'spin his brains' but something much better." He "has got hold of another clue--that of Nature and history--and long may he spin it, 'even to the crack of doom!'" Scott's success lies in not thinking of himself. "And then again the catch that blind Willie and his wife and the boy sing in the hollow of the heath--there is more mirth and heart's ease in it than in all Lord Byron's _Don Juan_ or Mr. Moore's _Lyrics_. And why? Because the author is thinking of beggars and a beggar's brat, and not of himself, while he writes it. He looks at Nature, sees it, hears it, feels it, and believes that it exists before it is printed, hotpressed, and labelled on the back _By the Author of 'Waverley.'_ He does not fancy, nor would he for one moment have it supposed, that his name and fame compose all that is worth a moment's consideration in the universe. This is the great secret of his writings--a perfect indifference to self."' Hazlitt appears to allow too little to the mind of the Author of _Waverley_--as though the author had nothing to do but let the contents of his mind arrange themselves on his pages. What this exactly may mean is doubtful. We are not disposed to accept the theory of the passive mind as a sufficient philosophical explanation of the Scotch novels. But Hazlitt is certainly right to make much of the store of reading and reminiscence they imply, and it is not erroneous or fallacious to think of all Scott's writings in verse or prose as peculiarly the fruits of his life and experience. His various modes of writing are suggested to him by the way, and he finds his art with no long practice when the proper time comes to use it. After all, is this not what was meant by Horace when he said that the subject rightly chosen will provide what is wanted in art and style? Cui lecta potenter erit res Nec facundia deseret hunc nec lucidus ordo. It was chosen by Corneille as a motto for _Cinna_; it would do as a summary of all the writings of Scott. The Waverley Novels may be reckoned among the works of fiction that have had their origin in chance, and have turned out something different from what the author intended. Reading the life of Scott, we seem to be following a pilgrimage where the traveller meets with different temptations and escapes various dangers, and takes up a number of duties, and is led to do a number of fine things which he had not thought of till the time came for attempting them. The poet and the novelist are revealed in the historian and the collector of antiquities. Scott before _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ looked like a young adventurer in the study of history and legend, who had it in him to do solid work on a large scale (like his edition of Dryden) if he chose to take it up. He is not a poet from the beginning like Wordsworth and Keats, devoted to that one service; he turns novelist late in life when the success of his poetry seems to be over. His early experiments in verse are queerly suggested and full of hazard. It needs a foreign language--German--to encourage him to rhyme. The fascination of Bürger's _Lenore_ is a reflection from English ballad poetry; the reflected image brought out what had been less remarkable in the original. The German devices of terror and wonder are a temptation to Scott; they hang about his path with their monotonous and mechanical jugglery, their horrors made all the more intolerable through the degraded verse of Lewis--a bad example which Scott instinctively refused to follow, though he most unaccountably praised Lewis's sense of rhythm. The close of the eighteenth century cannot be fully understood, nor the progress of poetry in the nineteenth, without some study of the plague of ghosts and skeletons which has left its mark on _The Ancient Mariner_, from which Goethe and Scott did not escape, which imposed on Shelley in his youth, to which Byron yielded his tribute of _The Vampire_. A tempting subject for expatiation, especially when one remembers--and who that has once read it can forget?--the most glorious passage in the _Memoirs_ of Alexandre Dumas describing his first conversation with the unknown gentleman who afterwards turned out to be Charles Nodier, in the theatre of the Porte Saint-Martin where the play was the _Vampire_: from which theatre Charles Nodier was expelled for hissing the _Vampire_, himself being part-author of the marvellous drama. I hope it is not impertinent in a stranger to express his unbounded gratitude for that delightful and most humorous dialogue, in which the history of the Elzevir Press (starting from _Le Pastissier françois_) and the tragedy of the rotifer are so adroitly interwoven with the theatrical scene of Fingal's Cave and its unusual visitors, the whole adventure ending in the happiest laughter over the expulsion of the dramatist. I may not have any right to say so, but I throw myself on the mercy of my hearers: I remember nothing in any chronicle so mercurial or jovial in its high spirits as this story of the first encounter and the beginning of friendship between Charles Nodier and Alexandre Dumas. The Vampire of Staffa may seem rather far from the range of Scott's imagination; but his contributions to Lewis's _Tales of Wonder_ show the risk that he ran, while the White Lady of Avenel in _The Monastery_ proves that even in his best years he was exposed to the hazards of conventional magic. Lockhart has given the history of _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, how the story developed and took shape. It is not so much an example of Scott's mode of writing poetry as an explanation of his whole literary life. _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ was his first original piece of any length and his first great popular success. And, as Lockhart has sufficiently shown, it was impossible for Scott to get to it except through the years of exploration and editing, the collection of the Border ballads, the study of the old metrical romance of _Sir Tristrem_. The story of the Goblin Page was at first reckoned enough simply for one of the additions to the Border Minstrelsy on the scale of a ballad. Scott had tried another sort of imitation in the stanzas composed in old English and in the metre of the original to supply the missing conclusion of _Sir Tristrem_. It was not within his scope to write an original romance in the old language, but Coleridge's _Christabel_ was recited to him, and gave him a modern rhythm fit for a long story. So the intended ballad became the _Lay_, taking in, with the legend of Gilpin Horner for a foundation, all the spirit of Scott's knowledge of his own country. Here I must pause to express my admiration for Lockhart's criticism of Scott, and particularly for his description of the way in which the _Lay_ came to be written. It is really wonderful, Lockhart's sensible, unpretentious, thorough interpretation of the half-unconscious processes by which Scott's reading and recollections were turned into his poems and novels. Of course, it is all founded on Scott's own notes and introductions. What happened with the _Lay_ is repeated a few years afterwards in _Waverley_. The _Lay_, a rhyming romance; _Waverley_ an historical novel; what, it may be asked, is so very remarkable about their origins? Was it not open to any one to write romances in verse or prose? Perhaps; but the singularity of Scott's first romances in verse and prose is that they do not begin as literary experiments, but as means of expressing their author's knowledge, memory and treasured sentiment. Hazlitt is right; Scott's experience is shaped into the Waverley Novels, though one can distinguish later between those stories that belong properly to Scott's life and those that are invented in repetition of a pattern. Scott's own alleged reason for giving up the writing of tales in verse was that Byron beat him. But there must have been something besides this: it is plain that the pattern of rhyming romance was growing stale. The _Lay_ needs no apology; _Marmion_ includes the great tragedy of Scotland in the Battle of Flodden:-- The stubborn spearmen still made good Their dark impenetrable wood, Each stepping where his comrade stood, The instant that he fell. No thought was there of dastard flight; Link'd in the serried phalanx tight, Groom fought like noble, squire like knight, As fearlessly and well; Till utter darkness closed her wing O'er their thin host and wounded king. And _The Lady of the Lake_ is all that the Highlands meant for Scott at that time. But _Rokeby_ has little substance, though it includes more than one of Scott's finest songs. _The Lord of the Isles_, though its battle is not too far below _Marmion_, and though its hero is Robert the Bruce, yet wants the original force of the earlier romances. When Scott changed his hand from verse to prose for story-telling and wrote _Waverley_, he not only gained in freedom and got room for a kind of dialogue that was impossible in rhyme, but he came back to the same sort of experience and the same strength of tradition as had given life to the _Lay_. The time of _Waverley_ was no more than sixty years since, when Scott began to write it and mislaid and forgot the opening chapters in 1805; he got his ideas of the Forty-five from an old Highland gentleman who had been out with the Highland clans, following the lead of Prince Charles Edward, the Young Chevalier. The clans in that adventure belonged to a world more ancient than that of _Ivanhoe_ or _The Talisman_; they also belonged so nearly to Scott's own time that he heard their story from one of themselves. He had spoken and listened to another gentleman who had known Rob Roy. _The Bride of Lammermoor_ came to him as the Icelandic family histories came to the historians of Gunnar or Kjartan Olafsson. He had known the story all his life, and he wrote it from tradition. The time of _The Heart of Midlothian_ is earlier than _Waverley_, but it is more of a modern novel than an historical romance, and even _Old Mortality_, which is earlier still, is modern also; Cuddie Headrigg is no more antique than Dandie Dinmont or the Ettrick Shepherd himself, and even his mother and her Covenanting friends are not far from the fashion of some enthusiasts of Scott's own time--e.g. Hogg's religious uncle who could not be brought to repeat his old ballads for thinking of 'covenants broken, burned and buried.' _Guy Mannering_ and _The Antiquary_ are both modern stories: it is not till _Ivanhoe_ that Scott definitely starts on the regular historical novel in the manner that was found so easy to imitate. If _Rob Roy_ is not the very best of them all--and on problems of that sort perhaps the right word may be the Irish phrase _Naboclish!_ ('don't trouble about that!') which Scott picked up when he was visiting Miss Edgeworth in Ireland--_Rob Roy_ shows well enough what Scott could do, in romance of adventure and in humorous dialogue. The plots of his novels are sometimes thought to be loose and ill-defined, and he tells us himself that he seldom knew where his story was carrying him. His young heroes are sometimes reckoned rather feeble and featureless. Francis Osbaldistone, like Edward Waverley and Henry Morton, drifts into trouble and has his destiny shaped for him by other people and accidents. But is this anything of a reproach to the author of the story? Then it must tell against some novelists who seem to work more conscientiously and carefully than Scott on the frame of their story--against George Meredith in Evan Harrington and Richard Feverel and Harry Richmond, all of whom are driven by circumstances and see their way no more clearly than Scott's young men. Is it not really the strength, not the weakness, of Scott's imagination that engages us in the perplexities of Waverley and Henry Morton even to the verge of tragedy--keeping out of tragedy because it is not his business, and would spoil his looser, larger, more varied web of a story? Francis Osbaldistone is less severely tried. His story sets him travelling, and may we not admire the skill of the author who uses the old device of a wandering hero with such good effect? The story is not a mere string of adventures--it is adventures with a bearing on the main issue, with complications that all tell in the end; chief among them, of course, the successive appearances of Mr. Campbell and the counsels of Diana Vernon. The scenes that bring out Scott's genius most completely--so they have always seemed to me--are those of Francis Osbaldistone's stay in Glasgow. Seldom has any novelist managed so easily so many different modes of interest. There is the place--in different lights--the streets, the river, the bridge, the Cathedral, the prison, seen through the suspense of the hero's mind, rendered in the talk of Bailie Nicol Jarvie and Andrew Fairservice; made alive, as the saying is, through successive anxieties and dangers; thrilling with romance, yet at the same time never beyond the range of ordinary common sense. Is it not a triumph, at the very lowest reckoning, of dexterous narrative to bring together in a vivid dramatic scene the humorous character of the Glasgow citizen and the equal and opposite humour of his cousin, the cateran, the Highland loon, Mr. Campbell disclosed as Rob Roy--with the Dougal creature helping him? Scott's comedy is like that of Cervantes in _Don Quixote_--humorous dialogue independent of any definite comic plot and mixed up with all sorts of other business. Might not Falstaff himself be taken into comparison too? Scott's humorous characters are nowhere and never characters in a comedy--and Falstaff, the greatest comic character in Shakespeare, is not great in comedy. Some of the rich idiomatic Scottish dialogue in the novels might be possibly disparaged (like Ben Jonson) as 'mere humours and observation.' Novelists of lower rank than Scott--Galt in _The Ayrshire Legatees_ and _Annals of the Parish_ and _The Entail_--have nearly rivalled Scott in reporting conversation. But the Bailie at any rate has his part to play in the story of _Rob Roy_--and so has Andrew Fairservice. Scott never did anything more ingenious than his contrast of those two characters--so much alike in language, and to some extent in cast of mind, with the same conceit and self-confidence, the same garrulous Westland security in their own judgment, both attentive to their own interests, yet clearly and absolutely distinct in spirit, the Bailie a match in courage for Rob Roy himself. Give me leave, before I end, to read one example of Scott's language: from the scene in _Guy Mannering_ where Dandie Dinmont explains his case to Mr. Pleydell the advocate. It is true to life: memory and imagination here indistinguishable:-- Dinmont, who had pushed after Mannering into the room, began with a scrape of his foot and a scratch of his head in unison. 'I am Dandie Dinmont, sir, of the Charlies-hope--the Liddesdale lad--ye'll mind me? It was for me you won yon grand plea.' 'What plea, you loggerhead?' said the lawyer; 'd'ye think I can remember all the fools that come to plague me?' 'Lord, sir, it was the grand plea about the grazing o' the Langtae-head,' said the farmer. 'Well, curse thee, never mind;--give me the memorial, and come to me on Monday at ten,' replied the learned counsel. 'But, sir, I haena got ony distinct memorial.' 'No memorial, man?' said Pleydell. 'Na, sir, nae memorial,' answered Dandie; 'for your honour said before, Mr. Pleydell, ye'll mind, that ye liked best to hear us hill-folk tell our ane tale by word o' mouth.' 'Beshrew my tongue that said so!' answered the counsellor; 'it will cost my ears a dinning.--Well, say in two words what you've got to say--you see the gentleman waits.' 'Ou, sir, if the gentleman likes he may play his ain spring first; it's a' ane to Dandie.' 'Now, you looby,' said the lawyer, 'cannot you conceive that your business can be nothing to Colonel Mannering, but that he may not choose to have these great ears of thine regaled with his matters?' 'Aweel, sir, just as you and he like, so ye see to my business,' said Dandie, not a whit disconcerted by the roughness of this reception. 'We're at the auld wark o' the marches again, Jock o' Dawston Cleugh and me. Ye see we march on the tap o' Touthoprigg after we pass the Pomoragrains; for the Pomoragrains, and Slackenspool, and Bloodylaws, they come in there, and they belang to the Peel; but after ye pass Pomoragrains at a muckle great saucer-headed cutlugged stane, that they ca' Charlie's Chuckie, there Dawston Cleugh and Charlies-hope they march. Now, I say, the march rins on the tap o' the hill where the wind and water shears; but Jock o' Dawston Cleugh again, he contravenes that, and says that it hauds down by the auld drove-road that gaes awa by the Knot o' the Gate ower to Keeldar-ward--and that makes an unco difference.' 'And what difference does it make, friend?' said Pleydell. 'How many sheep will it feed?' 'Ou, no mony,' said Dandie, scratching his head; 'it's lying high and exposed--it may feed a hog, or aiblins twa in a good year.' 'And for this grazing, which may be worth about five shillings a-year, you are willing to throw away a hundred pound or two?' 'Na, sir, it's no for the value of the grass,' replied Dinmont; 'it's for justice.' Do we at home in Scotland make too much of Scott's life and associations when we think of his poetry and his novels? Possibly few Scotsmen are impartial here. As Dr. Johnson said, they are not a fair people, and when they think of the Waverley Novels they perhaps do not always see quite clearly. Edinburgh and the Eildon Hills, Aberfoyle and Stirling, come between their minds and the printed page:-- A mist of memory broods and floats, The Border waters flow, The air is full of ballad notes Borne out of long ago. It might be prudent and more critical to take each book on its own merits in a dry light. But it is not easy to think of a great writer thus discreetly. Is Balzac often judged accurately and coldly, piece by piece, here a line and there a line? Are not the best judges those who think of his whole achievement altogether--the whole amazing world of his creation--_La Comédie Humaine_? By the same sort of rule Scott may be judged, and the whole of his work, his vast industry, and all that made the fabric of his life, be allowed to tell on the mind of the reader. I wish this discourse had been more worthy of its theme, and of this audience, and of this year of heroic memories and lofty hopes. But if, later in the summer, I should find my way back to Ettrick and Yarrow and the Eildon Hills, it will be a pleasure to remember there the honour you have done me in allowing me to speak in Paris, however unworthily, of the greatness of Sir Walter Scott. Glasgow: Printed at the University Press by Robert MacLehose and Co. Ltd. 
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18124	----	SIR WALTER SCOTT BY RICHARD H. HUTTON. London: MACMILLAN AND CO. 1878 PREFATORY NOTE. It will be observed that the greater part of this little book has been taken in one form or other from Lockhart's _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, in ten volumes. No introduction to Scott would be worth much in which that course was not followed. Indeed, excepting Sir Walter's own writings, there is hardly any other great source of information about him; and that is so full, that hardly anything needful to illustrate the subject of Scott's life remains untouched. As regards the only matters of controversy,--Scott's relations to the Ballantynes, I have taken care to check Mr. Lockhart's statements by reading those of the representatives of the Ballantyne brothers; but with this exception, Sir Walter's own works and Lockhart's life of him are the great authorities concerning his character and his story. Just ten years ago Mr. Gladstone, in expressing to the late Mr. Hope Scott the great delight which the perusal of Lockhart's life of Sir Walter had given him, wrote, "I may be wrong, but I am vaguely under the impression that it has never had a really wide circulation. If so, it is the saddest pity, and I should greatly like (without any censure on its present length) to see published an abbreviation of it." Mr. Gladstone did not then know that as long ago as 1848 Mr. Lockhart did himself prepare such an abbreviation, in which the original eighty-four chapters were compressed into eighteen,--though the abbreviation contained additions as well as compressions. But even this abridgment is itself a bulky volume of 800 pages, containing, I should think, considerably more than a third of the reading in the original ten volumes, and is not, therefore, very likely to be preferred to the completer work. In some respects I hope that this introduction may supply, better than that bulky abbreviation, what Mr. Gladstone probably meant to suggest,--some slight miniature taken from the great picture with care enough to tempt on those who look on it to the study of the fuller life, as well as of that image of Sir Walter which is impressed by his own hand upon his works. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. ANCESTRY, PARENTAGE, AND CHILDHOOD CHAPTER II. YOUTH--CHOICE OF A PROFESSION CHAPTER III. LOVE AND MARRIAGE CHAPTER IV. EARLIEST POETRY AND BORDER MINSTRELSY CHAPTER V. SCOTT'S MATURER POEMS CHAPTER VI. COMPANIONS AND FRIENDS CHAPTER VII. FIRST COUNTRY HOMES CHAPTER VIII. REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD, AND LIFE THERE CHAPTER IX. SCOTT'S PARTNERSHIPS WITH THE BALLANTYNES CHAPTER X. THE WAVERLEY NOVELS CHAPTER XI. SCOTT'S MORALITY AND RELIGION CHAPTER XII. DISTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS AT ABBOTSFORD CHAPTER XIII. SCOTT AND GEORGE IV CHAPTER XIV. SCOTT AS A POLITICIAN CHAPTER XV. SCOTT IN ADVERSITY CHAPTER XVI. THE LAST YEAR CHAPTER XVII. THE END OF THE STRUGGLE SIR WALTER SCOTT. CHAPTER I. ANCESTRY, PARENTAGE, AND CHILDHOOD. Sir Walter Scott was the first literary man of a great riding, sporting, and fighting clan. Indeed, his father--a Writer to the Signet, or Edinburgh solicitor--was the first of his race to adopt a town life and a sedentary profession. Sir Walter was the lineal descendant--six generations removed--of that Walter Scott commemorated in _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, who is known in Border history and legend as Auld Wat of Harden. Auld Wat's son William, captured by Sir Gideon Murray, of Elibank, during a raid of the Scotts on Sir Gideon's lands, was, as tradition says, given his choice between being hanged on Sir Gideon's private gallows, and marrying the ugliest of Sir Gideon's three ugly daughters, Meikle-mouthed Meg, reputed as carrying off the prize of ugliness among the women of four counties. Sir William was a handsome man. He took three days to consider the alternative proposed to him, but chose life with the large-mouthed lady in the end; and found her, according to the tradition which the poet, her descendant, has transmitted, an excellent wife, with a fine talent for pickling the beef which her husband stole from the herds of his foes. Meikle-mouthed Meg transmitted a distinct trace of her large mouth to all her descendants, and not least to him who was to use his "meikle" mouth to best advantage as the spokesman of his race. Rather more than half-way between Auld Wat of Harden's times--i. e., the middle of the sixteenth century--and those of Sir Walter Scott, poet and novelist, lived Sir Walter's great-grandfather, Walter Scott generally known in Teviotdale by the surname of Beardie, because he would never cut his beard after the banishment of the Stuarts, and who took arms in their cause and lost by his intrigues on their behalf almost all that he had, besides running the greatest risk of being hanged as a traitor. This was the ancestor of whom Sir Walter speaks in the introduction to the last canto of _Marmion_:-- "And thus my Christmas still I hold, Where my great grandsire came of old, With amber beard and flaxen hair, And reverend apostolic air,-- The feast and holy tide to share, And mix sobriety with wine, And honest mirth with thoughts divine; Small thought was his in after time E'er to be hitch'd into a rhyme, The simple sire could only boast That he was loyal to his cost; The banish'd race of kings revered, And lost his land--but kept his beard." Sir Walter inherited from Beardie that sentimental Stuart bias which his better judgment condemned, but which seemed to be rather part of his blood than of his mind. And most useful to him this sentiment undoubtedly was in helping him to restore the mould and fashion of the past. Beardie's second son was Sir Walter's grandfather, and to him he owed not only his first childish experience of the delights of country life, but also,--in his own estimation at least,--that risky, speculative, and sanguine spirit which had so much influence over his fortunes. The good man of Sandy-Knowe, wishing to breed sheep, and being destitute of capital, borrowed 30_l._ from a shepherd who was willing to invest that sum for him in sheep; and the two set off to purchase a flock near Wooler, in Northumberland; but when the shepherd had found what he thought would suit their purpose, he returned to find his master galloping about a fine hunter, on which he had spent the whole capital in hand. _This_ speculation, however, prospered. A few days later Robert Scott displayed the qualities of the hunter to such admirable effect with John Scott of Harden's hounds, that he sold the horse for double the money he had given, and, unlike his grandson, abandoned speculative purchases there and then. In the latter days of his clouded fortunes, after Ballantyne's and Constable's failure, Sir Walter was accustomed to point to the picture of his grandfather and say, "Blood will out: my building and planting was but his buying the hunter before he stocked his sheep-walk, over again." But Sir Walter added, says Mr. Lockhart, as he glanced at the likeness of his own staid and prudent father, "Yet it was a wonder, too, for I have a thread of the attorney in me," which was doubtless the case; nor was that thread the least of his inheritances, for from his father certainly Sir Walter derived that disposition towards conscientious, plodding industry, legalism of mind, methodical habits of work, and a generous, equitable interpretation of the scope of all his obligations to others, which, prized and cultivated by him as they were, turned a great genius, which, especially considering the hare-brained element in him, might easily have been frittered away or devoted to worthless ends, to such fruitful account, and stamped it with so grand an impress of personal magnanimity and fortitude. Sir Walter's father reminds one in not a few of the formal and rather martinetish traits which are related of him, of the father of Goethe, "a formal man, with strong ideas of strait-laced education, passionately orderly (he thought a good book nothing without a good binding), and never so much excited as by a necessary deviation from the 'pre-established harmony' of household rules." That description would apply almost wholly to the sketch of old Mr. Scott which the novelist has given us under the thin disguise of Alexander Fairford, Writer to the Signet, in _Redgauntlet_, a figure confessedly meant, in its chief features, to represent his father. To this Sir Walter adds, in one of his later journals, the trait that his father was a man of fine presence, who conducted all conventional arrangements with a certain grandeur and dignity of air, and "absolutely loved a funeral." "He seemed to preserve the list of a whole bead-roll of cousins merely for the pleasure of being at their funerals, which he was often asked to superintend, and I suspect had sometimes to pay for. He carried me with him as often as he could to these mortuary ceremonies; but feeling I was not, like him, either useful or ornamental, I escaped as often as I could." This strong dash of the conventional in Scott's father, this satisfaction in seeing people fairly to the door of life, and taking his final leave of them there, with something of a ceremonious flourish of observance, was, however, combined with a much nobler and deeper kind of orderliness. Sir Walter used to say that his father had lost no small part of a very flourishing business, by insisting that his clients should do their duty to their own people better than they were themselves at all inclined to do it. And of this generous strictness in sacrificing his own interests to his sympathy for others, the son had as much as the father. Sir Walter's mother, who was a Miss Rutherford, the daughter of a physician, had been better educated than most Scotchwomen of her day, in spite of having been sent "to be finished off" by "the honourable Mrs. Ogilvie," whose training was so effective, in one direction at least, that even in her eightieth year Mrs. Scott could not enjoy a comfortable rest in her chair, but "took as much care to avoid touching her chair with her back, as if she had still been under the stern eyes of Mrs. Ogilvie." None the less Mrs. Scott was a motherly, comfortable woman, with much tenderness of heart, and a well-stored, vivid memory. Sir Walter, writing of her, after his mother's death, to Lady Louisa Stewart, says, "She had a mind peculiarly well stored with much acquired information and natural talent, and as she was very old, and had an excellent memory, she could draw, without the least exaggeration or affectation, the most striking pictures of the past age. If I have been able to do anything in the way of painting the past times, it is very much from the studies with which she presented me. She connected a long period of time with the present generation, for she remembered, and had often spoken with, a person who perfectly recollected the battle of Dunbar and Oliver Cromwell's subsequent entry into Edinburgh." On the day before the stroke of paralysis which carried her off, she had told Mr. and Mrs. Scott of Harden, "with great accuracy, the real story of the Bride of Lammermuir, and pointed out wherein it differed from the novel. She had all the names of the parties, and pointed out (for she was a great genealogist) their connexion with existing families."[1] Sir Walter records many evidences of the tenderness of his mother's nature, and he returned warmly her affection for himself. His executors, in lifting up his desk, the evening after his burial, found "arranged in careful order a series of little objects, which had obviously been so placed there that his eye might rest on them every morning before he began his tasks. These were the old-fashioned boxes that had garnished his mother's toilette, when he, a sickly child, slept in her dressing-room,--the silver taper-stand, which the young advocate had bought for her with his first five-guinea fee,--a row of small packets inscribed with her hand, and containing the hair of those of her offspring that had died before her,--his father's snuff-box, and etui-case,--and more things of the like sort."[2] A story, characteristic of both Sir Walter's parents, is told by Mr. Lockhart which will serve better than anything I can remember to bring the father and mother of Scott vividly before the imagination. His father, like Mr. Alexander Fairford, in _Redgauntlet_, though himself a strong Hanoverian, inherited enough feeling for the Stuarts from his grandfather Beardie, and sympathized enough with those who were, as he neutrally expressed it, "out in '45," to ignore as much as possible any phrases offensive to the Jacobites. For instance, he always called Charles Edward not _the Pretender_ but _the Chevalier_,--and he did business for many Jacobites:-- "Mrs. Scott's curiosity was strongly excited one autumn by the regular appearance at a certain hour every evening of a sedan chair, to deposit a person carefully muffled up in a mantle, who was immediately ushered into her husband's private room, and commonly remained with him there until long after the usual bed-time of this orderly family. Mr. Scott answered her repeated inquiries with a vagueness that irritated the lady's feelings more and more; until at last she could bear the thing no longer; but one evening, just as she heard the bell ring as for the stranger's chair to carry him off, she made her appearance within the forbidden parlour with a salver in her hand, observing that she thought the gentlemen had sat so long they would be better of a dish of tea, and had ventured accordingly to bring some for their acceptance. The stranger, a person of distinguished appearance, and richly dressed, bowed to the lady and accepted a cup; but her husband knit his brows, and refused very coldly to partake the refreshment. A moment afterwards the visitor withdrew, and Mr. Scott, lifting up the window-sash, took the cup, which he had left empty on the table, and tossed it out upon the pavement. The lady exclaimed for her china, but was put to silence by her husband's saying, 'I can forgive your little curiosity, madam, but you must pay the penalty. I may admit into my house, on a piece of business, persons wholly unworthy to be treated as guests by my wife. Neither lip of me nor of mine comes after Mr. Murray of Broughton's.' "This was the unhappy man who, after attending Prince Charles Stuart as his secretary throughout the greater part of his expedition, condescended to redeem his own life and fortune by bearing evidence against the noblest of his late master's adherents, when-- "Pitied by gentle hearts, Kilmarnock died, The brave, Balmerino were on thy side."[3] "Broughton's saucer"--i. e. the saucer belonging to the cup thus sacrificed by Mr. Scott to his indignation against one who had redeemed his own life and fortune by turning king's evidence against one of Prince Charles Stuart's adherents,--was carefully preserved by his son, and hung up in his first study, or "den," under a little print of Prince Charlie. This anecdote brings before the mind very vividly the character of Sir Walter's parents. The eager curiosity of the active-minded woman, whom "the honourable Mrs. Ogilvie" had been able to keep upright in her chair for life, but not to cure of the desire to unravel the little mysteries of which she had a passing glimpse; the grave formality of the husband, fretting under his wife's personal attention to a dishonoured man, and making her pay the penalty by dashing to pieces the cup which the king's evidence had used,--again, the visitor himself, perfectly conscious no doubt that the Hanoverian lawyer held him in utter scorn for his faithlessness and cowardice, and reluctant, nevertheless, to reject the courtesy of the wife, though he could not get anything but cold legal advice from the husband:--all these are figures which must have acted on the youthful imagination of the poet with singular vivacity, and shaped themselves in a hundred changing turns of the historical kaleidoscope which was always before his mind's eye, as he mused upon that past which he was to restore for us with almost more than its original freshness of life. With such scenes touching even his own home, Scott must have been constantly taught to balance in his own mind, the more romantic, against the more sober and rational considerations, which had so recently divided house against house, even in the same family and clan. That the stern Calvinistic lawyer should have retained so much of his grandfather Beardie's respect for the adherents of the exiled house of Stuart, must in itself have struck the boy as even more remarkable than the passionate loyalty of the Stuarts' professed partisans, and have lent a new sanction to the romantic drift of his mother's old traditions, and one to which they must have been indebted for a great part of their fascination. Walter Scott, the ninth of twelve children, of whom the first six died in early childhood, was born in Edinburgh, on the 15th of August, 1771. Of the six later-born children, all but one were boys, and the one sister was a somewhat querulous invalid, whom he seems to have pitied almost more than he loved. At the age of eighteen months the boy had a teething-fever, ending in a life-long lameness; and this was the reason why the child was sent to reside with his grandfather--the speculative grandfather, who had doubled his capital by buying a racehorse instead of sheep--at Sandy-Knowe, near the ruined tower of Smailholm, celebrated afterwards in his ballad of _The Eve of St. John_, in the neighbourhood of some fine crags. To these crags the housemaid sent from Edinburgh to look after him, used to carry him up, with a design (which she confessed to the housekeeper)--due, of course, to incipient insanity--of murdering the child there, and burying him in the moss. Of course the maid was dismissed. After this the child used to be sent out, when the weather was fine, in the safer charge of the shepherd, who would often lay him beside the sheep. Long afterwards Scott told Mr. Skene, during an excursion with Turner, the great painter, who was drawing his illustration of Smailholm tower for one of Scott's works, that "the habit of lying on the turf there among the sheep and the lambs had given his mind a peculiar tenderness for these animals, which it had ever since retained." Being forgotten one day upon the knolls when a thunderstorm came on, his aunt ran out to bring him in, and found him shouting, "Bonny! bonny!" at every flash of lightning. One of the old servants at Sandy-Knowe spoke of the child long afterwards as "a sweet-tempered bairn, a darling with all about the house," and certainly the miniature taken of him in his seventh year confirms the impression thus given. It is sweet-tempered above everything, and only the long upper lip and large mouth, derived from his ancestress, Meg Murray, convey the promise of the power which was in him. Of course the high, almost conical forehead, which gained him in his later days from his comrades at the bar the name of "Old Peveril," in allusion to "the peak" which they saw towering high above the heads of other men as he approached, is not so much marked beneath the childish locks of this miniature as it was in later life; and the massive, and, in repose, certainly heavy face of his maturity, which conveyed the impression of the great bulk of his character, is still quite invisible under the sunny ripple of childish earnestness and gaiety. Scott's hair in childhood was light chestnut, which turned to nut brown in youth. His eyebrows were bushy, for we find mention made of them as a "pent-house." His eyes were always light blue. They had in them a capacity, on the one hand, for enthusiasm, sunny brightness, and even hare-brained humour, and on the other for expressing determined resolve and kindly irony, which gave great range of expression to the face. There are plenty of materials for judging what sort of a boy Scott was. In spite of his lameness, he early taught himself to clamber about with an agility that few children could have surpassed, and to sit his first pony--a little Shetland, not bigger than a large Newfoundland dog, which used to come into the house to be fed by him--even in gallops on very rough ground. He became very early a declaimer. Having learned the ballad of Hardy Knute, he shouted it forth with such pertinacious enthusiasm that the clergyman of his grandfather's parish complained that he "might as well speak in a cannon's mouth as where that child was." At six years of age Mrs. Cockburn described him as the most astounding genius of a boy, she 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.'" And after the call, he told his aunt he liked Mrs. Cockburn, for "she was a _virtuoso_ like himself." "Dear Walter," says Aunt Jenny, "what is a _virtuoso_?" "Don't ye know? Why, it's one who wishes and will know everything." This last scene took place in his father's house in Edinburgh; but Scott's life at Sandy-Knowe, including even the old minister, Dr. Duncan, who so bitterly complained of the boy's ballad-spouting, is painted for us, as everybody knows, in the picture of his infancy given in the introduction to the third canto of _Marmion_:-- "It was a barren scene and wild, Where naked cliffs were rudely piled: But ever and anon between Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green; And well the lonely infant knew Recesses where the wall-flower grew, And honeysuckle loved to crawl Up the low crag and ruin'd wall. I deem'd such nooks the sweetest shade The sun in all its round survey'd; And still I thought that shatter'd tower The mightiest work of human power; And marvell'd as the aged hind With some strange tale bewitch'd my mind, Of forayers, who, with headlong force, Down from that strength had spurr'd their horse, Their southern rapine to renew, Far in the distant Cheviots blue, And, home returning, fill'd the hall With revel, wassail-rout, and brawl. Methought that still with trump and clang The gateway's broken arches rang; Methought grim features, seam'd with scars, Glared through the window's rusty bars; And ever, by the winter hearth, Old tales I heard of woe or mirth, Of lovers' slights, of ladies' charms, Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms, Of patriot battles, won of old By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold; Of later fields of feud and fight, When, pouring from their Highland height, The Scottish clans, in headlong sway, Had swept the scarlet ranks away. While, stretch'd at length upon the floor, Again I fought each combat o'er, Pebbles and shells in order laid, The mimic ranks of war display'd; And onward still the Scottish lion bore, And still the scattered Southron fled before. Still, with vain fondness, could I trace Anew each kind familiar face That brighten'd at our evening fire! From the thatch'd mansion's grey-hair'd sire, Wise without learning, plain and good, And sprung of Scotland's gentler blood; Whose eye in age, quick, clear, and keen, Show'd what in youth its glance had been; Whose doom discording neighbours sought, Content with equity unbought; To him the venerable priest, Our frequent and familiar guest, Whose life and manners well could paint Alike the student and the saint; Alas! whose speech too oft I broke With gambol rude and timeless joke; For I was wayward, bold, and wild, A self-will'd imp, a grandame's child; But, half a plague and half a jest, Was still endured, beloved, caress'd." A picture this of a child of great spirit, though with that spirit was combined an active and subduing sweetness which could often conquer, as by a sudden spell, those whom the boy loved. Towards those, however, whom he did not love he could be vindictive. His relative, the laird of Raeburn, on one occasion wrung the neck of a pet starling, which the child had partly tamed. "I flew at his throat like a wild-cat," he said, in recalling the circumstance, fifty years later, in his journal on occasion of the old laird's death; "and was torn from him with no little difficulty." And, judging from this journal, I doubt whether he had ever really forgiven the laird of Raeburn. Towards those whom he loved but had offended, his manner was very different. "I seldom," said one of his tutors, Mr. Mitchell, "had occasion all the time I was in the family to find fault with him, even for trifles, and only once to threaten serious castigation, of which he was no sooner aware, than he suddenly sprang up, threw his arms about my neck and kissed me." And the quaint old gentleman adds this commentary:--"By such generous and noble conduct my displeasure was in a moment converted into esteem and admiration; my soul melted into tenderness, and I was ready to mingle my tears with his." This spontaneous and fascinating sweetness of his childhood was naturally overshadowed to some extent in later life by Scott's masculine and proud character, but it was always in him. And there was much of true character in the child behind this sweetness. He had wonderful self-command, and a peremptory kind of good sense, even in his infancy. While yet a child under six years of age, hearing one of the servants beginning to tell a ghost-story to another, and well knowing that if he listened, it would scare away his night's rest, he acted for himself with all the promptness of an elder person acting for him, and, in spite of the fascination of the subject, resolutely muffled his head in the bed-clothes and refused to hear the tale. His sagacity in judging of the character of others was shown, too, even as a school-boy; and once it led him to take an advantage which caused him many compunctions in after-life, whenever he recalled his skilful puerile tactics. On one occasion--I tell the story as he himself rehearsed it to Samuel Rogers, almost at the end of his life, after his attack of apoplexy, and just before leaving England for Italy in the hopeless quest of health--he had long desired to get above a schoolfellow in his class, who defied all his efforts, till Scott noticed that whenever a question was asked of his rival, the lad's fingers grasped a particular button on his waistcoat, while his mind went in search of the answer. Scott accordingly anticipated that if he could remove this button, the boy would be thrown out, and so it proved. The button was cut off, and the next time the lad was questioned, his fingers being unable to find the button, and his eyes going in perplexed search after his fingers, he stood confounded, and Scott mastered by strategy the place which he could not gain by mere industry. "Often in after-life," said Scott, in narrating the manoeuvre to Rogers, "has the sight of him smote me as I passed by him; and often have I resolved to make him some reparation, but it ended in good resolutions. Though I never renewed my acquaintance with him, I often saw him, for he filled some inferior office in one of the courts of law at Edinburgh. Poor fellow! I believe he is dead; he took early to drinking."[4] Scott's school reputation was one of irregular ability; he "glanced like a meteor from one end of the class to the other," and received more praise for his interpretation of the spirit of his authors than for his knowledge of their language. Out of school his fame stood higher. He extemporized innumerable stories to which his school-fellows delighted to listen; and, in spite of his lameness, he was always in the thick of the "bickers," or street fights with the boys of the town, and renowned for his boldness in climbing the "kittle nine stanes" which are "projected high in air from the precipitous black granite of the Castle-rock." At home he was much bullied by his elder brother Robert, a lively lad, not without some powers of verse-making, who went into the navy, then in an unlucky moment passed into the merchant service of the East India Company, and so lost the chance of distinguishing himself in the great naval campaigns of Nelson. Perhaps Scott would have been all the better for a sister a little closer to him than Anne--sickly and fanciful--appears ever to have been. The masculine side of life appears to predominate a little too much in his school and college days, and he had such vast energy, vitality, and pride, that his life at this time would have borne a little taming under the influence of a sister thoroughly congenial to him. In relation to his studies he was wilful, though not perhaps perverse. He steadily declined, for instance, to learn Greek, though he mastered Latin pretty fairly. After a time spent at the High School, Edinburgh, Scott was sent to a school at Kelso, where his master made a friend and companion of him, and so poured into him a certain amount of Latin scholarship which he would never otherwise have obtained. I need hardly add that as a boy Scott was, so far as a boy could be, a Tory--a worshipper of the past, and a great Conservative of any remnant of the past which reformers wished to get rid of. In the autobiographical fragment of 1808, he says, in relation to these school-days, "I, with my head on fire for chivalry, was a Cavalier; my friend was a Roundhead; I was a Tory, and he was a Whig; I hated Presbyterians, and admired Montrose with his victorious Highlanders; he liked the Presbyterian Ulysses, the deep and politic Argyle; so that we never wanted subjects of dispute, but our disputes were always amicable." And he adds candidly enough: "In all these tenets there was no real conviction on my part, arising out of acquaintance with the views or principles of either party.... I took up politics at that period, as King Charles II. did his religion, from an idea that the Cavalier creed was the more gentlemanlike persuasion of the two." And the uniformly amicable character of these controversies between the young people, itself shows how much more they were controversies of the imagination than of faith. I doubt whether Scott's _convictions_ on the issues of the Past were ever very much more decided than they were during his boyhood; though undoubtedly he learned to understand much more profoundly what was really held by the ablest men on both sides of these disputed issues. The result, however, was, I think, that while he entered better and better into both sides as life went on, he never adopted either with any earnestness of conviction, being content to admit, even to himself, that while his feelings leaned in one direction, his reason pointed decidedly in the other; and holding that it was hardly needful to identify himself positively with either. As regarded the present, however, feeling always carried the day. Scott was a Tory all his life. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vi. 172-3. The edition referred to is throughout the edition of 1839 in ten volumes.] [Footnote 2: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, x. 241.] [Footnote 3: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 243-4.] [Footnote 4: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 128.] CHAPTER II. YOUTH--CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. As Scott grew up, entered the classes of the college, and began his legal studies, first as apprentice to his father, and then in the law classes of the University, he became noticeable to all his friends for his gigantic memory,--the rich stores of romantic material with which it was loaded,--his giant feats of industry for any cherished purpose,--his delight in adventure and in all athletic enterprises,--his great enjoyment of youthful "rows," so long as they did not divide the knot of friends to which he belonged, and his skill in peacemaking amongst his own set. During his apprenticeship his only means of increasing his slender allowance with funds which he could devote to his favourite studies, was to earn money by copying, and he tells us himself that he remembered writing "120 folio pages with no interval either for food or rest," fourteen or fifteen hours' very hard work at the very least,--expressly for this purpose. In the second year of Scott's apprenticeship, at about the age of sixteen, he had an attack of hæmorrhage, no recurrence of which took place for some forty years, but which was then the beginning of the end. During this illness silence was absolutely imposed upon him,--two old ladies putting their fingers on their lips, whenever he offered to speak. It was at this time that the lad began his study of the scenic side of history, and especially of campaigns, which he illustrated for himself by the arrangement of shells, seeds, and pebbles, so as to represent encountering armies, in the manner referred to (and referred to apparently in anticipation of a later stage of his life than that he was then speaking of) in the passage from the introduction to the third canto of _Marmion_ which I have already given. He also managed so to arrange the looking-glasses in his room as to see the troops march out to exercise in the meadows, as he lay in bed. His reading was almost all in the direction of military exploit, or romance and mediæval legend and the later border songs of his own country. He learned Italian and read Ariosto. Later he learned Spanish and devoured Cervantes, whose "_novelas_," he said, "first inspired him with the ambition to excel in fiction;" and all that he read and admired he remembered. Scott used to illustrate the capricious affinity of his own memory for what suited it, and its complete rejection of what did not, by old Beattie of Meikledale's answer to a Scotch divine, who complimented him on the strength of his memory. "No, sir," said the old Borderer, "I have no command of my memory. It only retains what hits my fancy; and probably, sir, if you were to preach to me for two hours, I would not be able, when you finished, to remember a word you had been saying." Such a memory, when it belongs to a man of genius, is really a sieve of the most valuable kind. It sifts away what is foreign and alien to his genius, and assimilates what is suited to it. In his very last days, when he was visiting Italy for the first time, Scott delighted in Malta, for it recalled to him Vertot's _Knights of Malta_, and much, other mediæval story which he had pored over in his youth. But when his friends descanted to him at Pozzuoli on the Thermæ--commonly called the Temple of Serapis--among the ruins of which he stood, he only remarked that he would believe whatever he was told, "for many of his friends, and particularly Mr. Morritt, had frequently tried to drive classical antiquities, as they are called, into his head, but they had always found his skull too thick." Was it not perhaps some deep literary instinct, like that here indicated, which made him, as a lad, refuse so steadily to learn Greek, and try to prove to his indignant professor that Ariosto was superior to Homer? Scott afterwards deeply regretted this neglect of Greek; but I cannot help thinking that his regret was misplaced. Greek literature would have brought before his mind standards of poetry and art which could not but have both deeply impressed and greatly daunted an intellect of so much power; I say both impressed and daunted, because I believe that Scott himself would never have succeeded in studies of a classical kind, while he might--like Goethe perhaps--have been either misled, by admiration for that school, into attempting what was not adapted to his genius, or else disheartened in the work for which his character and ancestry really fitted him. It has been said that there is a real affinity between Scott and Homer. But the long and refluent music of Homer, once naturalized in his mind, would have discontented him with that quick, sharp, metrical tramp of his own moss-troopers, to which alone his genius as a poet was perfectly suited. It might be supposed that with these romantic tastes, Scott could scarcely have made much of a lawyer, though the inference would, I believe, be quite mistaken. His father, however, reproached him with being better fitted for a pedlar than a lawyer,--so persistently did he trudge over all the neighbouring counties in search of the beauties of nature and the historic associations of battle, siege, or legend. On one occasion when, with their last penny spent, Scott and one of his companions had returned to Edinburgh, living during their last day on drinks of milk offered by generous peasant-women, and the hips and haws on the hedges, he remarked to his father how much he had wished for George Primrose's power of playing on the flute in order to earn a meal by the way, old Mr. Scott, catching grumpily at the idea, replied, "I greatly doubt, sir, you were born for nae better then a gangrel scrape-gut,"--a speech which very probably suggested his son's conception of Darsie Latimer's adventures with the blind fiddler, "Wandering Willie," in _Redgauntlet_. And, it is true that these were the days of mental and moral fermentation, what was called in Germany the Sturm-und-Drang, the "fret-and-fury" period of Scott's life, so far as one so mellow and genial in temper ever passed through a period of fret and fury at all. In other words these were the days of rapid motion, of walks of thirty miles a day which the lame lad yet found no fatigue to him; of mad enterprises, scrapes and drinking-bouts, in one of which Scott was half persuaded by his friends that he actually sang a song for the only time in his life. But even in these days of youthful sociability, with companions of his own age, Scott was always himself, and his imperious will often asserted itself. Writing of this time, some thirty-five years or so later, he said, "When I was a boy, and on foot expeditions, as we had many, no creature could be so indifferent which way our course was directed, and I acquiesced in what any one proposed; but if I was once driven to make a choice, and felt piqued in honour to maintain my proposition, I have broken off from the whole party, rather than yield to any one." No doubt, too, in that day of what he himself described as "the silly smart fancies that ran in my brain like the bubbles in a glass of champagne, as brilliant to my thinking, as intoxicating, as evanescent," solitude was no real deprivation to him; and one can easily imagine him marching off on his solitary way after a dispute with his companions, reciting to himself old songs or ballads, with that "noticeable but altogether indescribable play of the upper lip," which Mr. Lockhart thinks suggested to one of Scott's most intimate friends, on his first acquaintance with him, the grotesque notion that he had been "a hautboy-player." This was the first impression formed of Scott by William Clerk, one of his earliest and life-long friends. It greatly amused Scott, who not only had never played on any instrument in his life, but could hardly make shift to join in the chorus of a popular song without marring its effect; but perhaps the impression suggested was not so very far astray after all. Looking to the poetic side of his character, the trumpet certainly would have been the instrument that would have best symbolized the spirit both of Scott's thought and of his verses. Mr. Lockhart himself, in summing up his impressions of Sir Walter, quotes as the most expressive of his lines:-- "Sound, sound the clarion! fill the fife! To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth a world without a name." And undoubtedly this gives us the key-note of Scott's personal life as well as of his poetic power. Above everything he was high-spirited, a man of noble, and, at the same time, of martial feelings. Sir Francis Doyle speaks very justly of Sir Walter as "among English singers the undoubted inheritor of that trumpet-note, which, under the breath of Homer, has made the wrath of Achilles immortal;" and I do not doubt that there was something in Scott's face, and especially in the expression of his mouth, to suggest this even to his early college companions. Unfortunately, however, even "one crowded hour of glorious life" may sometimes have a "sensual" inspiration, and in these days of youthful adventure, too many such hours seem to have owed their inspiration to the Scottish peasant's chief bane, the Highland whisky. In his eager search after the old ballads of the Border, Scott had many a blithe adventure, which ended only too often in a carouse. It was soon after this time that he first began those raids into Liddesdale, of which all the world has enjoyed the records in the sketches--embodied subsequently in _Guy Mannering_--of Dandie Dinmont, his pony Dumple, and the various Peppers and Mustards from whose breed there were afterwards introduced into Scott's own family, generations of terriers, always named, as Sir Walter expressed it, after "the cruet." I must quote the now classic record of those youthful escapades:-- "Eh me," said Mr. Shortreed, his companion in all these Liddesdale raids, "sic an endless fund of humour and drollery as he had then wi' him. Never ten yards but we were either laughing or roaring and singing. Wherever we stopped, how brawlie he suited himsel' to everybody! He aye did as the lave did; never made himsel' the great man or took ony airs in the company. I've seen him in a' moods in these jaunts, grave and gay, daft and serious, sober and drunk--(this, however, even in our wildest rambles, was but rare)--but drunk or sober he was aye the gentleman. He looked excessively heavy and stupid when he was _fou_, but he was never out o' gude humour." One of the stories of that time will illustrate better the wilder days of Scott's youth than any comment:-- "On reaching one evening," says Mr. Lockhart, "some Charlieshope or other (I forget the name) among those wildernesses, they found a kindly reception as usual: but to their agreeable surprise, after some days of hard living, a measured and orderly hospitality as respected liquor. Soon after supper, at which a bottle of elderberry wine alone had been produced, a young student of divinity who happened to be in the house was called upon to take the 'big ha' Bible,' in the good old fashion of Burns' Saturday Night: and some progress had been already made in the service, when the good man of the farm, whose 'tendency,' as Mr. Mitchell says, 'was soporific,' scandalized his wife and the dominie by starting suddenly from his knees, and rubbing his eyes, with a stentorian exclamation of 'By ----! here's the keg at last!' and in tumbled, as he spake the word, a couple of sturdy herdsmen, whom, on hearing, a day before, of the advocate's approaching visit, he had despatched to a certain smuggler's haunt at some considerable distance in quest of a supply of _run_ brandy from the Solway frith. The pious 'exercise' of the household was hopelessly interrupted. With a thousand apologies for his hitherto shabby entertainment, this jolly Elliot or Armstrong had the welcome _keg_ mounted on the table without a moment's delay, and gentle and simple, not forgetting the dominie, continued carousing about it until daylight streamed in upon the party. Sir Walter Scott seldom failed, when I saw him in company with his Liddesdale companions, to mimic with infinite humour the sudden outburst of his old host on hearing the clatter of horses' feet, which he knew to indicate the arrival of the keg, the consternation of the dame, and the rueful despair with which the young clergyman closed the book."[5] No wonder old Mr. Scott felt some doubt of his son's success at the bar, and thought him more fitted in many respects for a "gangrel scrape-gut."[6] In spite of all this love of excitement, Scott became a sound lawyer, and might have been a great lawyer, had not his pride of character, the impatience of his genius, and the stir of his imagination rendered him indisposed to wait and slave in the precise manner which the prepossessions of solicitors appoint. For Scott's passion for romantic literature was not at all the sort of thing which we ordinarily mean by boys' or girls' love of romance. No amount of drudgery or labour deterred Scott from any undertaking on the prosecution of which he was bent. He was quite the reverse, indeed, of what is usually meant by sentimental, either in his manners or his literary interests. As regards the history of his own country he was no mean antiquarian. Indeed he cared for the mustiest antiquarian researches--of the mediæval kind--so much, that in the depth of his troubles he speaks of a talk with a Scotch antiquary and herald as one of the things which soothed him most. "I do not know anything which relieves the mind so much from the sullens as trifling discussions about antiquarian _old womanries_. It is like knitting a stocking, diverting the mind without occupying it."[7] Thus his love of romantic literature was as far as possible from that of a mind which only feeds on romantic excitements; rather was it that of one who was so moulded by the transmitted and acquired love of feudal institutions with all their incidents, that he could not take any deep interest in any other fashion of human society. Now the Scotch law was full of vestiges and records of that period,--was indeed a great standing monument of it; and in numbers of his writings Scott shows with how deep an interest he had studied the Scotch law from this point of view. He remarks somewhere that it was natural for a Scotchman to feel a strong attachment to the principle of rank, if only on the ground that almost any Scotchman might, under the Scotch law, turn out to be heir-in-tail to some great Scotch title or estate by the death of intervening relations. And the law which sometimes caused such sudden transformations, had subsequently a true interest for him of course as a novel writer, to say nothing of his interest in it as an antiquarian and historian who loved to repeople the earth, not merely with the picturesque groups of the soldiers and courts of the past, but with the actors in all the various quaint and homely transactions and puzzlements which the feudal ages had brought forth. Hence though, as a matter of fact, Scott never made much figure as an advocate, he became a very respectable, and might unquestionably have become a very great, lawyer. When he started at the bar, however, he had not acquired the tact to impress an ordinary assembly. In one case which he conducted before the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland, when defending a parish minister threatened with deposition for drunkenness and unseemly behaviour, he certainly missed the proper tone,--first receiving a censure for the freedom of his manner in treating the allegations against his client, and then so far collapsing under the rebuke of the Moderator, as to lose the force and urgency necessary to produce an effect on his audience. But these were merely a boy's mishaps. He was certainly by no means a Heaven-born orator, and therefore could not expect to spring into exceptionally _early_ distinction, and the only true reason for his relative failure was that he was so full of literary power, and so proudly impatient of the fetters which prudence seemed to impose on his extra-professional proceedings, that he never gained the credit he deserved for the general common sense, the unwearied industry, and the keen appreciation of the ins and outs of legal method, which might have raised him to the highest reputation even as a judge. All readers of his novels know how Scott delights in the humours of the law. By way of illustration take the following passage, which is both short and amusing, in which Saunders Fairford--the old solicitor painted from Scott's father in _Redgauntlet_--descants on the law of the stirrup-cup. "It was decided in a case before the town bailies of Cupar Angus, when Luckie Simpson's cow had drunk up Luckie Jamieson's browst of ale, while it stood in the door to cool, that there was no damage to pay, because the crummie drank without sitting down; such being the circumstance constituting a Doch an Dorroch, which is a standing drink for which no reckoning is paid." I do not believe that any one of Scott's contemporaries had greater legal abilities than he, though, as it happened, they were never fairly tried. But he had both the pride and impatience of genius. It fretted him to feel that he was dependent on the good opinions of solicitors, and that they who were incapable of understanding his genius, thought the less instead of the better of him as an advocate, for every indication which he gave of that genius. Even on the day of his call to the bar he gave expression to a sort of humorous foretaste of this impatience, saying to William Clerk, who had been called with him, as he mimicked the air and tone of a Highland lass waiting at the Cross of Edinburgh to be hired for the harvest, "We've stood here an hour by the Tron, hinny, and deil a ane has speered our price." Scott continued to practise at the bar--nominally at least--for fourteen years, but the most which he ever seems to have made in any one year was short of 230_l._, and latterly his practice was much diminishing instead of increasing. His own impatience of solicitors' patronage was against him; his well-known dabblings in poetry were still more against him; and his general repute for wild and unprofessional adventurousness--which was much greater than he deserved--was probably most of all against him. Before he had been six years at the bar he joined the organization of the Edinburgh Volunteer Cavalry, took a very active part in the drill, and was made their Quartermaster. Then he visited London, and became largely known for his ballads, and his love of ballads. In his eighth year at the bar he accepted a small permanent appointment, with 300_l._ a year, as sheriff of Selkirkshire; and this occurring soon after his marriage to a lady of some means, no doubt diminished still further his professional zeal. For one third of the time during which Scott practised as an advocate he made no pretence of taking interest in that part of his work, though he was always deeply interested in the law itself. In 1806 he undertook gratuitously the duties of a Clerk of Session--a permanent officer of the Court at Edinburgh--and discharged them without remuneration for five years, from 1806 to 1811, in order to secure his ultimate succession to the office in the place of an invalid, who for that period received all the emoluments and did none of the work. Nevertheless Scott's legal abilities were so well known, that it was certainly at one time intended to offer him a Barony of the Exchequer, and it was his own doing, apparently, that it was not offered. The life of literature and the life of the Bar hardly ever suit, and in Scott's case they suited the less, that he felt himself likely to be a dictator in the one field, and only a postulant in the other. Literature was a far greater gainer by his choice, than Law could have been a loser. For his capacity for the law he shared with thousands of able men, his capacity for literature with few or none. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 5: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 269-71.] [Footnote 6: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 206.] [Footnote 7: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 221.] CHAPTER III. LOVE AND MARRIAGE. One Sunday, about two years before his call to the bar, Scott offered his umbrella to a young lady of much beauty who was coming out of the Greyfriars Church during a shower; the umbrella was graciously accepted; and it was not an unprecedented consequence that Scott fell in love with the borrower, who turned out to be Margaret, daughter of Sir John and Lady Jane Stuart Belches, of Invernay. For near six years after this, Scott indulged the hope of marrying this lady, and it does not seem doubtful that the lady herself was in part responsible for this impression. Scott's father, who thought his son's prospects very inferior to those of Miss Stuart Belches, felt it his duty to warn the baronet of his son's views, a warning which the old gentleman appears to have received with that grand unconcern characteristic of elderly persons in high position, as a hint intrinsically incredible, or at least unworthy of notice. But he took no alarm, and Scott's attentions to Margaret Stuart Belches continued till close on the eve of her marriage, in 1796, to William Forbes (afterwards Sir William Forbes), of Pitsligo, a banker, who proved to be one of Sir Walter's most generous and most delicate-minded friends, when his time of troubles came towards the end of both their lives. Whether Scott was in part mistaken as to the impression he had made on the young lady, or she was mistaken as to the impression he had made on herself, or whether other circumstances intervened to cause misunderstanding, or the grand indifference of Sir John gave way to active intervention when the question became a practical one, the world will now never know, but it does not seem very likely that a man of so much force as Scott, who certainly had at one time assured himself at least of the young lady's strong regard, should have been easily displaced even by a rival of ability and of most generous and amiable character. An entry in the diary which Scott kept in 1827, after Constable's and Ballantyne's failure, and his wife's death, seems to me to suggest that there may have been some misunderstanding between the young people, though I am not sure that the inference is justified. The passage completes the story of this passion--Scott's first and only deep passion--so far as it can ever be known to us; and as it is a very pathetic and characteristic entry, and the attachment to which it refers had a great influence on Scott's life, both in keeping him free from some of the most dangerous temptations of the young, during his youth, and in creating within him an interior world of dreams and recollections throughout his whole life, on which his imaginative nature was continually fed--I may as well give it. "He had taken," says Mr. Lockhart, "for that winter [1827], the house No. 6, Shandwick Place, which he occupied by the month during the remainder of his servitude as a clerk of session. Very near this house, he was told a few days after he took possession, dwelt the aged mother of his first love; and he expressed to his friend Mrs. Skene, a wish that she should carry him to renew an acquaintance which seems to have been interrupted from the period of his youthful romance. Mrs. Skene complied with his desire, and she tells me that a very painful scene ensued." His diary says,--"November 7th. Began to settle myself this morning after the hurry of mind and even of body which I have lately undergone. I went to make a visit and fairly softened myself, like an old fool, with recalling old 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. I don't care. I begin to grow case-hardened, and like a stag turning at bay, my naturally good temper grows fierce and dangerous. Yet what a romance to tell--and told I fear it will one day be. And then my three years of dreaming and my two years of wakening will be chronicled, doubtless. But the dead will feel no pain.--November 10th. At twelve o'clock I went again to poor Lady Jane to talk over old stories. I am not clear that it is a right or healthful indulgence to be ripping up old sores, but it seems to give her deep-rooted sorrow words, and that is a mental blood-letting. To me these things are now matter of calm and solemn recollection, never to be forgotten, yet scarce to be remembered with pain."[8] It was in 1797, after the break-up of his hopes in relation to this attachment, that Scott wrote the lines _To a Violet_, which Mr. F. T. Palgrave, in his thoughtful and striking introduction to Scott's poems, rightly characterizes as one of the most beautiful of those poems. It is, however, far from one characteristic of Scott, indeed, so different in style from the best of his other poems, that Mr. Browning might well have said of Scott, as he once affirmed of himself, that for the purpose of one particular poem, he "who blows through bronze," had "breathed through silver,"--had "curbed the liberal hand subservient proudly,"--and tamed his spirit to a key elsewhere unknown. "The violet in her greenwood bower, Where birchen boughs with hazels mingle, May boast itself the fairest flower In glen, or copse, or forest dingle. "Though fair her gems of azure hue, Beneath the dewdrop's weight reclining, I've seen an eye of lovelier blue, More sweet through watery lustre shining. "The summer sun that dew shall dry, Ere yet the day be past its morrow; Nor longer in my false love's eye Remain'd the tear of parting sorrow." These lines obviously betray a feeling of resentment, which may or may not have been justified; but they are perhaps the most delicate produced by his pen. The pride which was always so notable a feature in Scott, probably sustained him through the keen, inward pain which it is very certain from a great many of his own words that he must have suffered in this uprooting of his most passionate hopes. And it was in part probably the same pride which led him to form, within the year, a new tie--his engagement to Mademoiselle Charpentier, or Miss Carpenter as she was usually called,--the daughter of a French royalist of Lyons who had died early in the revolution. She had come after her father's death to England, chiefly, it seems, because in the Marquis of Downshire, who was an old friend of the family, her mother knew that she should find a protector for her children. Miss Carpenter was a lively beauty, probably of no great depth of character. The few letters given of hers in Mr. Lockhart's life of Scott, give the impression of an amiable, petted girl, of somewhat thin and _espiègle_ character, who was rather charmed at the depth and intensity of Scott's nature, and at the expectations which he seemed to form of what love should mean, than capable of realizing them. Evidently she had no inconsiderable pleasure in display; but she made on the whole a very good wife, only one to be protected by him from every care, and not one to share Scott's deeper anxieties, or to participate in his dreams. Yet Mrs. Scott was not devoid of spirit and self-control. For instance, when Mr. Jeffrey, having reviewed _Marmion_ in the _Edinburgh_ in that depreciating and omniscient tone which was then considered the evidence of critical acumen, dined with Scott on the very day on which the review had appeared, Mrs. Scott behaved to him through the whole evening with the greatest politeness, but fired this parting shot in her broken English, as he took his leave,--"Well, good night, Mr. Jeffrey,--dey tell me you have abused Scott in de _Review_, and I hope Mr. Constable has paid you very well for writing it." It is hinted that Mrs. Scott was, at the time of Scott's greatest fame, far more exhilarated by it than her husband with his strong sense and sure self-measurement ever was. Mr. Lockhart records that Mrs. Grant of Laggan once said of them, "Mr. Scott always seems to me like a glass, through which the rays of admiration pass without sensibly affecting it; but the bit of paper that lies beside it will presently be in a blaze, and no wonder." The bit of paper, however, never was in a blaze that I know of; and possibly Mrs. Grant's remark may have had a little feminine spite in it. At all events, it was not till the rays of misfortune, instead of admiration, fell upon Scott's life, that the delicate tissue paper shrivelled up; nor does it seem that, even then, it was the trouble, so much as a serious malady that had fixed on Lady Scott before Sir Walter's troubles began, which really scorched up her life. That she did not feel with the depth and intensity of her husband, or in the same key of feeling, is clear. After the failure, and during the preparations for abandoning the house in Edinburgh, Scott records in his diary:--"It is with a sense of pain that I leave behind a parcel of trumpery prints and little ornaments, once the pride of Lady Scott's heart, but which she saw consigned with indifference to the chance of an auction. Things that have had their day of importance with me, I cannot forget, though the merest trifles; but I am glad that she, with bad health, and enough to vex her, has not the same useless mode of associating recollections with this unpleasant business."[9] Poor Lady Scott! It was rather like a bird of paradise mating with an eagle. Yet the result was happy on the whole; for she had a thoroughly kindly nature, and a true heart. Within ten days before her death, Scott enters in his diary:--"Still welcoming me with a smile, and asserting she is better." She was not the ideal wife for Scott; but she loved him, sunned herself in his prosperity, and tried to bear his adversity cheerfully. In her last illness she would always reproach her husband and children for their melancholy faces, even when that melancholy was, as she well knew, due to the approaching shadow of her own death. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 8: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 183-4.] [Footnote 9: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 273.] CHAPTER IV. EARLIEST POETRY AND BORDER MINSTRELSY. Scott's first serious attempt in poetry was a version of Bürger's _Lenore_, a spectre-ballad of the violent kind, much in favour in Germany at a somewhat earlier period, but certainly not a specimen of the higher order of imaginative genius. However, it stirred Scott's youthful blood, and made him "wish to heaven he could get a skull and two cross-bones!" a modest desire, to be expressed with so much fervour, and one almost immediately gratified. Probably no one ever gave a more spirited version of Bürger's ballad than Scott has given; but the use to which Miss Cranstoun, a friend and confidante of his love for Miss Stuart Belches, strove to turn it, by getting it printed, blazoned, and richly bound, and presenting it to the young lady as a proof of her admirer's abilities, was perhaps hardly very sagacious. It is quite possible, at least, that Miss Stuart Belches may have regarded this vehement admirer of spectral wedding journeys and skeleton bridals, as unlikely to prepare for her that comfortable, trim, and decorous future which young ladies usually desire. At any rate, the bold stroke failed. The young lady admired the verses, but, as we have seen, declined the translator. Perhaps she regarded banking as safer, if less brilliant work than the most effective description of skeleton riders. Indeed, Scott at this time--to those who did not know what was in him, which no one, not even excepting himself, did--had no very sure prospects of comfort, to say nothing of wealth. It is curious, too, that his first adventure in literature was thus connected with his interest in the preternatural, for no man ever lived whose genius was sounder and healthier, and less disposed to dwell on the half-and-half lights of a dim and eerie world; yet ghostly subjects always interested him deeply, and he often touched them in his stories, more, I think, from the strong artistic contrast they afforded to his favourite conceptions of life, than from any other motive. There never was, I fancy, an organization less susceptible of this order of fears and superstitions than his own. When a friend jokingly urged him, within a few months of his death, not to leave Rome on a Friday, as it was a day of bad omen for a journey, he replied, laughing, "Superstition is very picturesque, and I make it, at times, stand me in great stead, but I never allow it to interfere with interest or convenience." Basil Hall reports Scott's having told him on the last evening of the year 1824, when they were talking over this subject, that "having once arrived at a country inn, he was told there was no bed for him. 'No place to lie down at all?' said he. 'No,' said the people of the house; 'none, except a room in which there is a corpse lying.' 'Well,' said he, 'did the person die of any contagious disorder?' 'Oh, no; not at all,' said they. 'Well, then,' continued he, 'let me have the other bed. So,' said Sir Walter, 'I laid me down, and never had a better night's sleep in my life.'" He was, indeed, a man of iron nerve, whose truest artistic enjoyment was in noting the forms of character seen in full daylight by the light of the most ordinary experience. Perhaps for that reason he can on occasion relate a preternatural incident, such as the appearance of old Alice at the fountain, at the very moment of her death, to the Master of Ravenswood, in _The Bride of Lammermoor_, with great effect. It was probably the vivacity with which he realized the violence which such incidents do to the terrestrial common sense of our ordinary nature, and at the same time the sedulous accuracy of detail with which he narrated them, rather than any, even the smallest, special susceptibility of his own brain to thrills of the preternatural kind, which gave him rather a unique pleasure in dealing with such preternatural elements. Sometimes, however, his ghosts are a little too muscular to produce their due effect as ghosts. In translating Bürger's ballad his great success lay in the vividness of the spectre's horsemanship. For instance,-- "Tramp! tramp! along the land they rode, Splash! splash! along the sea; The scourge is red, the spur drops blood, The flashing pebbles flee," is far better than any ghostly touch in it; so, too, every one will remember how spirited a rider is the white Lady of Avenel, in _The Monastery_, and how vigorously she takes fords,--as vigorously as the sheriff himself, who was very fond of fords. On the whole, Scott was too sunny and healthy-minded for a ghost-seer; and the skull and cross-bones with which he ornamented his "den" in his father's house, did not succeed in tempting him into the world of twilight and cobwebs wherein he made his first literary excursion. His _William and Helen_, the name he gave to his translation of Bürger's _Lenore_, made in 1795, was effective, after all, more for its rapid movement, than for the weirdness of its effects. If, however, it was the raw preternaturalism of such ballads as Bürger's which first led Scott to test his own powers, his genius soon turned to more appropriate and natural subjects. Ever since his earliest college days he had been collecting, in those excursions of his into Liddesdale and elsewhere, materials for a book on _The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_; and the publication of this work, in January, 1802 (in two volumes at first), was his first great literary success. The whole edition of eight hundred copies was sold within the year, while the skill and care which Scott had devoted to the historical illustration of the ballads, and the force and spirit of his own new ballads, written in imitation of the old, gained him at once a very high literary name. And the name was well deserved. The _Border Minstrelsy_ was more commensurate _in range_ with the genius of Scott, than even the romantic poems by which it was soon followed, and which were received with such universal and almost unparalleled delight. For Scott's _Border Minstrelsy_ gives more than a glimpse of all his many great powers--his historical industry and knowledge, his masculine humour, his delight in restoring the vision of the "old, simple, violent world" of rugged activity and excitement, as well as that power to kindle men's hearts, as by a trumpet-call, which was the chief secret of the charm of his own greatest poems. It is much easier to discern the great novelist of subsequent years in the _Border Minstrelsy_ than even in _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, _Marmion_, and _The Lady of the Lake_ taken together. From those romantic poems you would never guess that Scott entered more eagerly and heartily into the common incidents and common cares of every-day human life than into the most romantic fortunes; from them you would never know how completely he had mastered the leading features of quite different periods of our history; from them you would never infer that you had before you one of the best plodders, as well as one of the most enthusiastic dreamers, in British literature. But all this might have been gathered from the various introductions and notes to the _Border Minstrelsy_, which are full of skilful illustrations, of comments teeming with humour, and of historic weight. The general introduction gives us a general survey of the graphic pictures of Border quarrels, their simple violence and simple cunning. It enters, for instance, with grave humour into the strong distinction taken in the debatable land between a "freebooter" and a "thief," and the difficulty which the inland counties had in grasping it, and paints for us, with great vivacity, the various Border superstitions. Another commentary on a very amusing ballad, commemorating the manner in which a blind harper stole a horse and got paid for a mare he had not lost, gives an account of the curious tenure of land, called that of the "king's rentallers," or "kindly tenants;" and a third describes, in language as vivid as the historical romance of _Kenilworth_, written years after, the manner in which Queen Elizabeth received the news of a check to her policy, and vented her spleen on the King of Scotland. So much as to the breadth of the literary area which this first book of Scott's covered. As regards the poetic power which his own new ballads, in imitation of the old ones, evinced, I cannot say that those of the first issue of the _Border Minstrelsy_ indicated anything like the force which might have been expected from one who was so soon to be the author of _Marmion_, though many of Scott's warmest admirers, including Sir Francis Doyle, seem to place _Glenfinlas_ among his finest productions. But in the third volume of the _Border Minstrelsy_, which did not appear till 1803, is contained a ballad on the assassination of the Regent Murray, the story being told by his assassin, which seems to me a specimen of his very highest poetical powers. In _Cadyow Castle_ you have not only that rousing trumpet-note which you hear in _Marmion,_ but the pomp and glitter of a grand martial scene is painted with all Scott's peculiar terseness and vigour. The opening is singularly happy in preparing the reader for the description of a violent deed. The Earl of Arran, chief of the clan of Hamiltons, is chasing among the old oaks of Cadyow Castle,--oaks which belonged to the ancient Caledonian forest,--the fierce, wild bulls, milk-white, with black muzzles, which were not extirpated till shortly before Scott's own birth:-- "Through the huge oaks of Evandale, Whose limbs a thousand years have worn, What sullen roar comes down the gale, And drowns the hunter's pealing horn? "Mightiest of all the beasts of chase That roam in woody Caledon, Crashing the forest in his race, The mountain bull comes thundering on. "Fierce on the hunter's quiver'd band He rolls his eyes of swarthy glow, Spurns, with black hoof and horn, the sand, And tosses high his mane of snow. "Aim'd well, the chieftain's lance has flown; Struggling in blood the savage lies; His roar is sunk in hollow groan,-- Sound, merry huntsman! sound the pryse!" It is while the hunters are resting after this feat, that Bothwellhaugh dashes among them headlong, spurring his jaded steed with poniard instead of spur:-- "From gory selle and reeling steed, Sprang the fierce horseman with a bound, And reeking from the recent deed, He dash'd his carbine on the ground." And then Bothwellhaugh tells his tale of blood, describing the procession from which he had singled out his prey:-- "'Dark Morton, girt with many a spear, Murder's foul minion, led the van; And clash'd their broadswords in the rear The wild Macfarlanes' plaided clan. "'Glencairn and stout Parkhead were nigh, Obsequious at their Regent's rein, And haggard Lindsay's iron eye, That saw fair Mary weep in vain. "''Mid pennon'd spears, a steely grove, Proud Murray's plumage floated high; Scarce could his trampling charger move, So close the minions crowded nigh. "'From the raised vizor's shade, his eye, Dark rolling, glanced the ranks along, And his steel truncheon waved on high, Seem'd marshalling the iron throng. "'But yet his sadden'd brow confess'd A passing shade of doubt and awe; Some fiend was whispering in his breast, "Beware of injured Bothwellhaugh!" "'The death-shot parts,--the charger springs,-- Wild rises tumult's startling roar! And Murray's plumy helmet rings-- Rings on the ground to rise no more.'" This was the ballad which made so strong an impression on Thomas Campbell, the poet. Referring to some of the lines I have quoted, Campbell said,--"I have repeated them so often on the North Bridge that the whole fraternity of coachmen know me by tongue as I pass. To be sure, to a mind in sober, serious, street-walking humour, it must bear an appearance of lunacy when one stamps with the hurried pace and fervent shake of the head which strong, pithy poetry excites."[10] I suppose anecdotes of this kind have been oftener told of Scott than of any other English poet. Indeed, Sir Walter, who understood himself well, gives the explanation in one of his diaries:--"I am sensible," he says, "that if there be anything good about my poetry or prose either, it is a hurried frankness of composition, which pleases soldiers, sailors, and young people of bold and active dispositions."[11] He might have included old people too. I have heard of two old men--complete strangers--passing each other on a dark London night, when one of them happened to be repeating to himself, just as Campbell did to the hackney coachmen of the North Bridge of Edinburgh, the last lines of the account of Flodden Field in _Marmion_, "Charge, Chester, charge," when suddenly a reply came out of the darkness, "On, Stanley, on," whereupon they finished the death of Marmion between them, took off their hats to each other, and parted, laughing. Scott's is almost the only poetry in the English language that not only runs thus in the head of average men, but heats the head in which it runs by the mere force of its hurried frankness of style, to use Scott's own terms, or by that of its strong and pithy eloquence, as Campbell phrased it. And in _Cadyow Castle_ this style is at its culminating point. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 10: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 79.] [Footnote 11: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 370.] CHAPTER V. SCOTT'S MATURER POEMS. Scott's genius flowered late. _Cadyow Castle_, the first of his poems, I think, that has indisputable genius plainly stamped on its terse and fiery lines, was composed in 1802, when he was already thirty-one years of age. It was in the same year that he wrote the first canto of his first great romance in verse, _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, a poem which did not appear till 1805, when he was thirty-four. The first canto (not including the framework, of which the aged harper is the principal figure) was written in the lodgings to which he was confined for a fortnight in 1802, by a kick received from a horse on Portobello sands, during a charge of the Volunteer Cavalry in which Scott was cornet. The poem was originally intended to be included in the _Border Minstrelsy_, as one of the studies in the antique style, but soon outgrew the limits of such a study both in length and in the freedom of its manner. Both the poorest and the best parts of _The Lay_ were in a special manner due to Lady Dalkeith (afterwards Duchess of Buccleugh), who suggested it, and in whose honour the poem was written. It was she who requested Scott to write a poem on the legend of the goblin page, Gilpin Horner, and this Scott attempted,--and, so far as the goblin himself was concerned, conspicuously failed. He himself clearly saw that the story of this unmanageable imp was both confused and uninteresting, and that in fact he had to extricate himself from the original groundwork of the tale, as from a regular literary scrape, in the best way he could. In a letter to Miss Seward, Scott says,--"At length the story appeared so uncouth that I was fain to put it into the mouth of my old minstrel, lest the nature of it should be misunderstood, and I should be suspected of setting up a new school of poetry, instead of a feeble attempt to imitate the old. In the process of the romance, the page, intended to be a principal person in the work, contrived (from the baseness of his natural propensities, I suppose) to slink down stairs into the kitchen, and now he must e'en abide there."[12] And I venture to say that no reader of the poem ever has distinctly understood what the goblin page did or did not do, what it was that was "lost" throughout the poem and "found" at the conclusion, what was the object of his personating the young heir of the house of Scott, and whether or not that object was answered;--what use, if any, the magic book of Michael Scott was to the Lady of Branksome, or whether it was only harm to her; and I doubt moreover whether any one ever cared an iota what answer, or whether any answer, might be given to any of these questions. All this, as Scott himself clearly perceived, was left confused, and not simply vague. The goblin imp had been more certainly an imp of mischief to him than even to his boyish ancestor. But if Lady Dalkeith suggested the poorest part of the poem, she certainly inspired its best part. Scott says, as we have seen, that he brought in the aged harper to save himself from the imputation of "setting-up a new school of poetry" instead of humbly imitating an old school. But I think that the chivalrous wish to do honour to Lady Dalkeith, both as a personal friend and as the wife of his "chief,"--as he always called the head of the house of Scott,--had more to do with the introduction of the aged harper, than the wish to guard himself against the imputation of attempting a new poetic style. He clearly intended the Duchess of _The Lay_ to represent the Countess for whom he wrote it, and the aged harper, with his reverence and gratitude and self-distrust, was only the disguise in which he felt that he could best pour out his loyalty, and the romantic devotion with which both Lord and Lady Dalkeith, but especially the latter, had inspired him. It was certainly this beautiful framework which assured the immediate success and permanent charm of the poem; and the immediate success was for that day something marvellous. The magnificent quarto edition of 750 copies was soon exhausted, and an octavo edition of 1500 copies was sold out within the year. In the following year two editions, containing together 4250 copies, were disposed of, and before twenty-five years had elapsed, that is, before 1830, 44,000 copies of the poem had been bought by the public in this country, taking account of the legitimate trade alone. Scott gained in all by _The Lay_ 769_l._, an unprecedented sum in those times for an author to obtain from any poem. Little more than half a century before, Johnson received but fifteen guineas for his stately poem on _The Vanity of Human Wishes_, and but ten guineas for his _London_. I do not say that Scott's poem had not much more in it of true poetic fire, though Scott himself, I believe, preferred these poems of Johnson's to anything that he himself ever wrote. But the disproportion in the reward was certainly enormous, and yet what Scott gained by his _Lay_ was of course much less than he gained by any of his subsequent poems of equal, or anything like equal, length. Thus for _Marmion_ he received 1000 guineas long before the poem was published, and for _one half_ of the copyright of _The Lord of the Isles_ Constable paid Scott 1500 guineas. If we ask ourselves to what this vast popularity of Scott's poems, and especially of the earlier of them (for, as often happens, he was better remunerated for his later and much inferior poems than for his earlier and more brilliant productions) is due, I think the answer must be for the most part, the high romantic glow and extraordinary romantic simplicity of the poetical elements they contained. Take the old harper of _The Lay_, a figure which arrested the attention of Pitt during even that last most anxious year of his anxious life, the year of Ulm and Austerlitz. The lines in which Scott describes the old man's embarrassment when first urged to play, produced on Pitt, according to his own account, "an effect which I might have expected in painting, but could never have fancied capable of being given in poetry."[13] Every one knows the lines to which Pitt refers:-- "The humble boon was soon obtain'd; The aged minstrel audience gain'd. But, when he reach'd the room of state, Where she with all her ladies sate, Perchance he wish'd his boon denied; For, when to tune the harp he tried, His trembling hand had lost the ease Which marks security to please; And scenes long past, of joy and pain, Came wildering o'er his aged brain,-- He tried to tune his harp in vain! The pitying Duchess praised its chime, And gave him heart, and gave him time, Till every string's according glee Was blended into harmony. And then, he said, he would full fain He could recall an ancient strain He never thought to sing again. It was not framed for village churls, But for high dames and mighty earls; He'd play'd it to King Charles the Good, When he kept Court at Holyrood; And much he wish'd, yet fear'd, to try The long-forgotten melody. Amid the strings his fingers stray'd, And an uncertain warbling made, And oft he shook his hoary head. But when he caught the measure wild The old man raised his face, and smiled; And lighten'd up his faded eye, With all a poet's ecstasy! In varying cadence, soft or strong, He swept the sounding chords along; The present scene, the future lot, His toils, his wants, were all forgot; Cold diffidence and age's frost In the full tide of song were lost; Each blank in faithless memory void The poet's glowing thought supplied; And, while his harp responsive rung, 'Twas thus the latest minstrel sung. * * * * * Here paused the harp; and with its swell The master's fire and courage fell; Dejectedly and low he bow'd, And, gazing timid on the crowd, He seem'd to seek in every eye If they approved his minstrelsy; And, diffident of present praise, Somewhat he spoke of former days, And how old age, and wandering long, Had done his hand and harp some wrong." These lines hardly illustrate, I think, the particular form of Mr. Pitt's criticism, for a quick succession of fine shades of feeling of this kind could never have been delineated in a painting, or indeed in a series of paintings, at all, while they _are_ so given in the poem. But the praise itself, if not its exact form, is amply deserved. The singular depth of the romantic glow in this passage, and its equally singular simplicity,--a simplicity which makes it intelligible to every one,--are conspicuous to every reader. It is not what is called classical poetry, for there is no severe outline,--no sculptured completeness and repose,--no satisfying wholeness of effect to the eye of the mind,--no embodiment of a great action. The poet gives us a breath, a ripple of alternating fear and hope in the heart of an old man, and that is all. He catches an emotion that had its roots deep in the past, and that is striving onward towards something in the future;--he traces the wistfulness and self-distrust with which age seeks to recover the feelings of youth,--the delight with which it greets them when they come,--the hesitation and diffidence with which it recalls them as they pass away, and questions the triumph it has just won,--and he paints all this without subtlety, without complexity, but with a swiftness such as few poets ever surpassed. Generally, however, Scott prefers action itself for his subject, to any feeling, however active in its bent. The cases in which he makes a study of any mood of feeling, as he does of this harper's feeling, are comparatively rare. Deloraine's night-ride to Melrose is a good deal more in Scott's ordinary way, than this study of the old harper's wistful mood. But whatever his subject, his treatment of it is the same. His lines are always strongly drawn; his handling is always simple; and his subject always romantic. But though romantic, it is simple almost to bareness,--one of the great causes both of his popularity, and of that deficiency in his poetry of which so many of his admirers become conscious when they compare him with other and richer poets. Scott used to say that in poetry Byron "bet" him; and no doubt that in which chiefly as a poet he "bet" him, was in the variety, the richness, the lustre of his effects. A certain ruggedness and bareness was of the essence of Scott's idealism and romance. It was so in relation to scenery. He told Washington Irving that he loved the very nakedness of the Border country. "It has something," he said, "bold and stern and solitary about it. When I have been for some time in the rich scenery about Edinburgh, which is like ornamented garden-land, I begin to wish myself back again among my honest grey hills, and if I did not see the heather at least once a year, _I think I should die_."[14] Now, the bareness which Scott so loved in his native scenery, there is in all his romantic elements of feeling. It is while he is bold and stern, that he is at his highest ideal point. Directly he begins to attempt rich or pretty subjects, as in parts of _The Lady of the Lake_, and a good deal of _The Lord of the Isles_, and still more in _The Bridal of Triermain_, his charm disappears. It is in painting those moods and exploits, in relation to which Scott shares most completely the feelings of ordinary men, but experiences them with far greater strength and purity than ordinary men, that he triumphs as a poet. Mr. Lockhart tells us that some of Scott's senses were decidedly "blunt," and one seems to recognize this in the simplicity of his romantic effects. "It is a fact," he says, "which some philosophers may think worth setting down, that Scott's organization, as to more than one of the senses, was the reverse of exquisite. He had very little of what musicians call an ear; his smell was hardly more delicate. I have seen him stare about, quite unconscious of the cause, when his whole company betrayed their uneasiness at the approach of an overkept haunch of venison; and neither by the nose nor the palate could he distinguish corked wine from sound. He could never tell Madeira from sherry,--nay, an Oriental friend having sent him a butt of _sheeraz_, when he remembered the circumstance some time afterwards and called for a bottle to have Sir John Malcolm's opinion of its quality, it turned out that his butler, mistaking the label, had already served up half the bin as _sherry_. Port he considered as physic ... in truth he liked no wines except sparkling champagne and claret; but even as to the last he was no connoisseur, and sincerely preferred a tumbler of whisky-toddy to the most precious 'liquid-ruby' that ever flowed in the cup of a prince."[15] However, Scott's eye was very keen:--"_It was commonly him_," as his little son once said, "_that saw the hare sitting_." And his perception of colour was very delicate as well as his mere sight. As Mr. Ruskin has pointed out, his landscape painting is almost all done by the lucid use of colour. Nevertheless this bluntness of organization in relation to the less important senses, no doubt contributed something to the singleness and simplicity of the deeper and more vital of Scott's romantic impressions; at least there is good reason to suppose that delicate and complicated susceptibilities do at least diminish the chance of living a strong and concentrated life--do risk the frittering away of feeling on the mere backwaters of sensations, even if they do not directly tend towards artificial and indirect forms of character. Scott's romance is like his native scenery,--bold, bare and rugged, with a swift deep stream of strong pure feeling running through it. There is plenty of colour in his pictures, as there is on the Scotch hills when the heather is out. And so too there is plenty of intensity in his romantic situations; but it is the intensity of simple, natural, unsophisticated, hardy, and manly characters. But as for subtleties and fine shades of feeling in his poems, or anything like the manifold harmonies of the richer arts, they are not to be found, or, if such complicated shading is to be found--and it is perhaps attempted in some faint measure in _The Bridal of Triermain,_ the poem in which Scott tried to pass himself off for Erskine,--it is only at the expense of the higher qualities of his romantic poetry, that even in this small measure it is supplied. Again, there is no rich music in his verse. It is its rapid onset, its hurrying strength, which so fixes it in the mind. It was not till 1808, three years after the publication of _The Lay_, that _Marmion_, Scott's greatest poem, was published. But I may as well say what seems necessary of that and his other poems, while I am on the subject of his poetry. _Marmion_ has all the advantage over _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ that a coherent story told with force and fulness, and concerned with the same class of subjects as _The Lay_, must have over a confused and ill-managed legend, the only original purpose of which was to serve as the opportunity for a picture of Border life and strife. Scott's poems have sometimes been depreciated as mere _novelettes_ in verse, and I think that some of them may be more or less liable to this criticism. For instance, _The Lady of the Lake_, with the exception of two or three brilliant passages, has always seemed to me more of a versified _novelette_,--without the higher and broader characteristics of Scott's prose novels--than of a poem. I suppose what one expects from a poem as distinguished from a romance--even though the poem incorporates a story--is that it should not rest for its chief interest on the mere development of the story; but rather that the narrative should be quite subordinate to that insight into the deeper side of life and manners, in expressing which poetry has so great an advantage over prose. Of _The Lay_ and _Marmion_ this is true; less true of _The Lady of the Lake_, and still less of _Rokeby_, or _The Lord of the Isles_, and this is why _The Lay_ and _Marmion_ seem so much superior as poems to the others. They lean less on the interest of mere incident, more on that of romantic feeling and the great social and historic features of the day. _Marmion_ was composed in great part in the saddle, and the stir of a charge of cavalry seems to be at the very core of it. "For myself," said Scott, writing to a lady correspondent at a time when he was in active service as a volunteer, "I must own that to one who has, like myself, _la tête un peu exaltée_, the pomp and circumstance of war gives, for a time, a very poignant and pleasing sensation."[16] And you feel this all through _Marmion_ even more than in _The Lay_. Mr. Darwin would probably say that Auld Wat of Harden had about as much responsibility for _Marmion_ as Sir Walter himself. "You will expect," he wrote to the same lady, who was personally unknown to him at that time, "to see a person who had dedicated himself to literary pursuits, and you will find me a rattle-skulled, half-lawyer, half-sportsman, through whose head a regiment of horse has been exercising since he was five years old."[17] And what Scott himself felt in relation to the martial elements of his poetry, soldiers in the field felt with equal force. "In the course of the day when _The Lady of the Lake_ first reached Sir Adam Fergusson, he was posted with his company on a point of ground exposed to the enemy's artillery, somewhere no doubt on the lines of Torres Vedras. The men were ordered to lie prostrate on the ground; while they kept that attitude, the captain, kneeling at the head, read aloud the description of the battle in Canto VI., and the listening soldiers only interrupted him by a joyous huzza when the French shot struck the bank close above them."[18] It is not often that martial poetry has been put to such a test; but we can well understand with what rapture a Scotch force lying on the ground to shelter from the French fire, would enter into such passages as the following:-- "Their light-arm'd archers far and near Survey'd the tangled ground, Their centre ranks, with pike and spear, A twilight forest frown'd, Their barbèd horsemen, in the rear, The stern battalia crown'd. No cymbal clash'd, no clarion rang, Still were the pipe and drum; Save heavy tread, and armour's clang, The sullen march was dumb. There breathed no wind their crests to shake, Or wave their flags abroad; Scarce the frail aspen seem'd to quake, That shadow'd o'er their road. Their vanward scouts no tidings bring, Can rouse no lurking foe, Nor spy a trace of living thing Save when they stirr'd the roe; The host moves like a deep-sea wave, Where rise no rocks its power to brave, High-swelling, dark, and slow. The lake is pass'd, and now they gain A narrow and a broken plain, Before the Trosach's rugged jaws, And here the horse and spearmen pause, While, to explore the dangerous glen, Dive through the pass the archer-men. "At once there rose so wild a yell Within that dark and narrow dell, As all the fiends from heaven that fell Had peal'd the banner-cry of Hell! Forth from the pass, in tumult driven, Like chaff before the wind of heaven, The archery appear; For life! for life! their plight they ply, And shriek, and shout, and battle-cry, And plaids and bonnets waving high, And broadswords flashing to the sky, Are maddening in the rear. Onward they drive, in dreadful race, Pursuers and pursued; Before that tide of flight and chase, How shall it keep its rooted place, The spearmen's twilight wood? Down, down, cried Mar, 'your lances down Bear back both friend and foe!' Like reeds before the tempest's frown, That serried grove of lances brown At once lay levell'd low; And, closely shouldering side to side, The bristling ranks the onset bide,-- 'We'll quell the savage mountaineer, As their Tinchel cows the game! They came as fleet as forest deer, We'll drive them back as tame.'" But admirable in its stern and deep excitement as that is, the battle of Flodden in _Marmion_ passes it in vigour, and constitutes perhaps the most perfect description of war by one who was--almost--both poet and warrior, which the English language contains. And _Marmion_ registers the high-water mark of Scott's poetical power, not only in relation to the painting of war, but in relation to the painting of nature. Critics from the beginning onwards have complained of the six introductory epistles, as breaking the unity of the story. But I cannot see that the remark has weight. No poem is written for those who read it as they do a novel--merely to follow the interest of the story; or if any poem be written for such readers, it deserves to die. On such a principle--which treats a poem as a mere novel and nothing else,--you might object to Homer that he interrupts the battle so often to dwell on the origin of the heroes who are waging it; or to Byron that he deserts Childe Harold to meditate on the rapture of solitude. To my mind the ease and frankness of these confessions of the author's recollections give a picture of his life and character while writing _Marmion_, which adds greatly to its attraction as a poem. You have a picture at once not only of the scenery, but of the mind in which that scenery is mirrored, and are brought back frankly, at fit intervals, from the one to the other, in the mode best adapted to help you to appreciate the relation of the poet to the poem. At least if Milton's various interruptions of a much more ambitious theme, to muse upon his own qualifications or disqualifications for the task he had attempted, be not artistic mistakes--and I never heard of any one who thought them so--I cannot see any reason why Scott's periodic recurrence to his own personal history should be artistic mistakes either. If Scott's reverie was less lofty than Milton's, so also was his story. It seems to me as fitting to describe the relation between the poet and his theme in the one case as in the other. What can be more truly a part of _Marmion_, as a poem, though not as a story, than that introduction to the first canto in which Scott expresses his passionate sympathy with the high national feeling of the moment, in his tribute to Pitt and Fox, and then reproaches himself for attempting so great a subject and returns to what he calls his "rude legend," the very essence of which was, however, a passionate appeal to the spirit of national independence? What can be more germane to the poem than the delineation of the strength the poet had derived from musing in the bare and rugged solitudes of St. Mary's Lake, in the introduction to the second canto? Or than the striking autobiographical study of his own infancy which I have before extracted from the introduction to the third? It seems to me that _Marmion_ without these introductions would be like the hills which border Yarrow, without the stream and lake in which they are reflected. Never at all events in any later poem was Scott's touch as a mere painter so terse and strong. What a picture of a Scotch winter is given in these few lines:-- "The sheep before the pinching heaven To shelter'd dale and down are driven, Where yet some faded herbage pines, And yet a watery sunbeam shines: In meek despondency they eye The wither'd sward and wintry sky, And from beneath their summer hill Stray sadly by Glenkinnon's rill." Again, if Scott is ever Homeric (which I cannot think he often is), in spite of Sir Francis Doyle's able criticism,--(he is too short, too sharp, and too eagerly bent on his rugged way, for a poet who is always delighting to find loopholes, even in battle, from which to look out upon the great story of human nature), he is certainly nearest to it in such a passage as this:-- "The Isles-men carried at their backs The ancient Danish battle-axe. They raised a wild and wondering cry As with his guide rode Marmion by. Loud were their clamouring tongues, as when The clanging sea-fowl leave the fen, And, with their cries discordant mix'd, Grumbled and yell'd the pipes betwixt." In hardly any of Scott's poetry do we find much of what is called the _curiosa felicitas_ of expression,--the magic use of _words_, as distinguished from the mere general effect of vigour, purity, and concentration of purpose. But in _Marmion_ occasionally we do find such a use. Take this description, for instance, of the Scotch tents near Edinburgh:-- "A thousand did I say? I ween Thousands on thousands there were seen, That chequer'd all the heath between The streamlet and the town; In crossing ranks extending far, Forming a camp irregular; Oft giving way where still there stood Some relics of the old oak wood, That darkly huge did intervene, _And tamed the glaring white with green_; In these extended lines there lay A martial kingdom's vast array." The line I have italicized seems to me to have more of the poet's special magic of expression than is at all usual with Scott. The conception of the peaceful green oak wood _taming_ the glaring white of the tented field, is as fine in idea as it is in relation to the effect of the mere colour on the eye. Judge Scott's poetry by whatever test you will--whether it be a test of that which is peculiar to it, its glow of national feeling, its martial ardour, its swift and rugged simplicity, or whether it be a test of that which is common to it with most other poetry, its attraction for all romantic excitements, its special feeling for the pomp and circumstance of war, its love of light and colour--and tested either way, _Marmion_ will remain his finest poem. The battle of Flodden Field touches his highest point in its expression of stern patriotic feeling, in its passionate love of daring, and in the force and swiftness of its movement, no less than in the brilliancy of its romantic interests, the charm of its picturesque detail, and the glow of its scenic colouring. No poet ever equalled Scott in the description of wild and simple scenes and the expression of wild and simple feelings. But I have said enough now of his poetry, in which, good as it is, Scott's genius did not reach its highest point. The hurried tramp of his somewhat monotonous metre, is apt to weary the ears of men who do not find their sufficient happiness, as he did, in dreaming of the wild and daring enterprises of his loved Border-land. The very quality in his verse which makes it seize so powerfully on the imaginations of plain, bold, adventurous men, often makes it hammer fatiguingly against the brain of those who need the relief of a wider horizon and a richer world. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 12: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 217.] [Footnote 13: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 226.] [Footnote 14: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 248.] [Footnote 15: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 338.] [Footnote 16: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 137.] [Footnote 17: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 259.] [Footnote 18: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii. 327.] CHAPTER VI. COMPANIONS AND FRIENDS. I have anticipated in some degree, in speaking of Scott's later poetical works, what, in point of time at least, should follow some slight sketch of his chosen companions, and of his occupations in the first period of his married life. Scott's most intimate friend for some time after he went to college, probably the one who most stimulated his imagination in his youth, and certainly one of his most intimate friends to the very last, was William Clerk, who was called to the bar on the same day as Scott. He was the son of John Clerk of Eldin, the author of a book of some celebrity in its time on _Naval Tactics_. Even in the earliest days of this intimacy, the lads who had been Scott's fellow-apprentices in his father's office, saw with some jealousy his growing friendship with William Clerk, and remonstrated with Scott on the decline of his regard for them, but only succeeded in eliciting from him one of those outbursts of peremptory frankness which anything that he regarded as an attempt to encroach on his own interior liberty of choice always provoked. "I will never cut any man," he said, "unless I detect him in scoundrelism, but I know not what right any of you have to interfere with my choice of my company. As it is, I fairly own that though I like many of you very much, and have long done so, I think William Clerk well worth you all put together."[19] Scott never lost the friendship which began with this eager enthusiasm, but his chief intimacy with Clerk was during his younger days. In 1808 Scott describes Clerk as "a man of the most acute intellects and powerful apprehension, who, if he should ever shake loose the fetters of indolence by which he has been hitherto trammelled, cannot fail to be distinguished in the highest degree." Whether for the reason suggested, or for some other, Clerk never actually gained any other distinction so great as his friendship with Scott conferred upon him. Probably Scott had discerned the true secret of his friend's comparative obscurity. Even while preparing for the bar, when they had agreed to go on alternate mornings to each other's lodgings to read together, Scott found it necessary to modify the arrangement by always visiting his friend, whom he usually found in bed. It was William Clerk who sat for the picture of Darsie Latimer, the hero of _Redgauntlet_,--whence we should suppose him to have been a lively, generous, susceptible, contentious, and rather helter-skelter young man, much alive to the ludicrous in all situations, very eager to see life in all its phases, and somewhat vain of his power of adapting himself equally to all these phases. Scott tells a story of Clerk's being once baffled--almost for the first time--by a stranger in a stage coach, who would not, or could not, talk to him on any subject, until at last Clerk addressed to him this stately remonstrance, "I have talked to you, my friend, on all the ordinary subjects--literature, farming, merchandise, gaming, game-laws, horse-races, suits-at-law, politics, swindling, blasphemy, and philosophy,--is there any one subject that you will favour me by opening upon?" "Sir," replied the inscrutable stranger, "can you say anything clever about '_bend-leather_'?"[20] No doubt this superficial familiarity with a vast number of subjects was a great fascination to Scott, and a great stimulus to his own imagination. To the last he held the same opinion of his friend's latent powers. "To my thinking," he wrote in his diary in 1825, "I never met a man of greater powers, of more complete information on all desirable subjects." But in youth at least Clerk seems to have had what Sir Walter calls a characteristic Edinburgh complaint, the "itch for disputation," and though he softened this down in later life, he had always that slight contentiousness of bias which enthusiastic men do not often heartily like, and which may have prevented Scott from continuing to the full the close intimacy of those earlier years. Yet almost his last record of a really delightful evening, refers to a bachelor's dinner given by Mr. Clerk, who remained unmarried, as late as 1827, after all Sir Walter's worst troubles had come upon him. "In short," says the diary, "we really laughed, and real laughter is as rare as real tears. I must say, too, there was a _heart_, a kindly feeling prevailed over the party. Can London give such a dinner?"[21] It is clear, then, that Clerk's charm for his friend survived to the last, and that it was not the mere inexperience of boyhood, which made Scott esteem him so highly in his early days. If Clerk pricked, stimulated, and sometimes badgered Scott, another of his friends who became more and more intimate with him, as life went on, and who died before him, always soothed him, partly by his gentleness, partly by his almost feminine dependence. This was William Erskine, also a barrister, and son of an Episcopalian clergyman in Perthshire,--to whose influence it is probably due that Scott himself always read the English Church service in his own country house, and does not appear to have retained the Presbyterianism into which he was born. Erskine, who was afterwards raised to the Bench as Lord Kinnedder--a distinction which he did not survive for many months--was a good classic, a man of fine, or, as some of his companions thought, of almost superfine taste. The style apparently for which he had credit must have been a somewhat mimini-pimini style, if we may judge by Scott's attempt in _The Bridal of Triermain_, to write in a manner which he intended to be attributed to his friend. Erskine was left a widower in middle life, and Scott used to accuse him of philandering with pretty women,--- a mode of love-making which Scott certainly contrived to render into verse, in painting Arthur's love-making to Lucy in that poem. It seems that some absolutely false accusation brought against Lord Kinnedder, of an intrigue with a lady with whom he had been thus philandering, broke poor Erskine's heart, during his first year as a Judge. "The Counsellor (as Scott always called him) was," says Mr. Lockhart, "a little man of feeble make, who seemed unhappy when his pony got beyond a footpace, and had never, I should suppose, addicted himself to any out of door's sports whatever. He would, I fancy, as soon have thought of slaying his own mutton as of handling a fowling-piece; he used to shudder when he saw a party equipped for coursing, as if murder was in the wind; but the cool, meditative angler was in his eyes the abomination of abominations. His small elegant features, hectic cheek and soft hazel eyes, were the index of the quick, sensitive, gentle spirit within." "He would dismount to lead his horse down what his friend hardly perceived to be a descent at all; grew pale at a precipice; and, unlike the white lady of Avenel, would go a long way round for a bridge." He shrank from general society, and lived in closer intimacies, and his intimacy with Scott was of the closest. He was Scott's confidant in all literary matters, and his advice was oftener followed on questions of style and form, and of literary enterprise, than that of any other of Scott's friends. It is into Erskine's mouth that Scott puts the supposed exhortation to himself to choose more classical subjects for his poems:-- "'Approach those masters o'er whose tomb Immortal laurels ever bloom; Instructive of the feebler bard, Still from the grave their voice is heard; From them, and from the paths they show'd, Choose honour'd guide and practised road; Nor ramble on through brake and maze, With harpers rude of barbarous days." And it is to Erskine that Scott replies,-- "For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask The classic poet's well-conn'd task? Nay, Erskine, nay,--on the wild hill Let the wild heath-bell flourish still; Cherish the tulip, prune the vine, But freely let the woodbine twine, And leave untrimm'd the eglantine: Nay, my friend, nay,--since oft thy praise Hath given fresh vigour to my lays; Since oft thy judgment could refine My flatten'd thought or cumbrous line, Still kind, as is thy wont, attend, And in the minstrel spare the friend!" It was Erskine, too, as Scott expressly states in his introduction to the _Chronicles of the Canongate_, who reviewed with far too much partiality the _Tales of my Landlord_, in the _Quarterly Review_, for January, 1817,--a review unjustifiably included among Scott's own critical essays, on the very insufficient ground that the MS. reached Murray in Scott's own handwriting. There can, however, be no doubt at all that Scott copied out his friend's MS., in order to increase the mystification which he so much enjoyed as to the authorship of his variously named series of tales. Possibly enough, too, he may have drawn Erskine's attention to the evidence which justified his sketch of the Puritans in _Old Mortality_, evidence which he certainly intended at one time to embody in a reply of his own to the adverse criticism on that book. But though Erskine was Scott's _alter ego_ for literary purposes, it is certain that Erskine, with his fastidious, not to say finical, sense of honour, would never have lent his name to cover a puff written by Scott of his own works. A man who, in Scott's own words, died "a victim to a hellishly false story, or rather, I should say, to the sensibility of his own nature, which could not endure even the shadow of reproach,--like the ermine, which is said to pine if its fur is soiled," was not the man to father a puff, even by his dearest friend, on that friend's own creations. Erskine was indeed almost feminine in his love of Scott; but he was feminine with all the irritable and scrupulous delicacy of a man who could not derogate from his own ideal of right, even to serve a friend. Another friend of Scott's earlier days was John Leyden, Scott's most efficient coadjutor in the collection of the _Border Minstrelsy_,--that eccentric genius, marvellous linguist, and good-natured bear, who, bred a shepherd in one of the wildest valleys of Roxburghshire, had accumulated before the age of nineteen an amount of learning which confounded the Edinburgh Professors, and who, without any previous knowledge of medicine, prepared himself to pass an examination for the medical profession, at six months' notice of the offer of an assistant-surgeoncy in the East India Company. It was Leyden who once walked between forty and fifty miles and back, for the sole purpose of visiting an old person who possessed a copy of a border ballad that was wanting for the _Minstrelsy_. Scott was sitting at dinner one day with company, when he heard a sound at a distance, "like that of the whistling of a tempest through the torn rigging of a vessel which scuds before it. The sounds increased as they approached more near; and Leyden (to the great astonishment of such of the guests as did not know him) burst into the room chanting the desiderated ballad with the most enthusiastic gesture, and all the energy of what he used to call the _saw-tones_ of his voice."[22] Leyden's great antipathy was Ritson, an ill-conditioned antiquarian, of vegetarian principles, whom Scott alone of all the antiquarians of that day could manage to tame and tolerate. In Scott's absence one day, during his early married life at Lasswade, Mrs. Scott inadvertently offered Ritson a slice of beef, when that strange man burst out in such outrageous tones at what he chose to suppose an insult, that Leyden threatened to "thraw his neck" if he were not silent, a threat which frightened Ritson out of the cottage. On another occasion, simply in order to tease Ritson, Leyden complained that the meat was overdone, and sent to the kitchen for a plate of literally raw beef, and ate it up solely for the purpose of shocking his crazy rival in antiquarian research. Poor Leyden did not long survive his experience of the Indian climate. And with him died a passion for knowledge of a very high order, combined with no inconsiderable poetical gifts. It was in the study of such eccentric beings as Leyden that Scott doubtless acquired his taste for painting the humours of Scotch character. Another wild shepherd, and wilder genius among Scott's associates, not only in those earlier days, but to the end, was that famous Ettrick Shepherd, James Hogg, who was always quarrelling with his brother poet, as far as Scott permitted it, and making it up again when his better feelings returned. In a shepherd's dress, and with hands fresh from sheep-shearing, he came to dine for the first time with Scott in Castle Street, and finding Mrs. Scott lying on the sofa, immediately stretched himself at full length on another sofa; for, as he explained afterwards, "I thought I could not do better than to imitate the lady of the house." At dinner, as the wine passed, he advanced from "Mr. Scott," to "Shirra" (Sheriff), "Scott," "Walter," and finally "Wattie," till at supper he convulsed every one by addressing Mrs. Scott familiarly as "Charlotte."[23] Hogg wrote certain short poems, the beauty of which in their kind Sir Walter himself never approached; but he was a man almost without self-restraint or self-knowledge, though he had a great deal of self-importance, and hardly knew how much he owed to Scott's magnanimous and ever-forbearing kindness, or if he did, felt the weight of gratitude a burden on his heart. Very different was William Laidlaw, a farmer on the banks of the Yarrow, always Scott's friend, and afterwards his manager at Abbotsford, through whose hand he dictated many of his novels. Mr. Laidlaw was one of Scott's humbler friends,--a class of friends with whom he seems always to have felt more completely at his ease than any others--who gave at least as much as he received, one of those wise, loyal, and thoughtful men in a comparatively modest position of life, whom Scott delighted to trust, and never trusted without finding his trust justified. In addition to these Scotch friends, Scott had made, even before the publication of his _Border Minstrelsy_, not a few in London or its neighbourhood,--of whom the most important at this time was the grey-eyed, hatchet-faced, courteous George Ellis, as Leyden described him, the author of various works on ancient English poetry and romance, who combined with a shrewd, satirical vein, and a great knowledge of the world, political as well as literary, an exquisite taste in poetry, and a warm heart. Certainly Ellis's criticism on his poems was the truest and best that Scott ever received; and had he lived to read his novels,--only one of which was published before Ellis's death,--he might have given Scott more useful help than either Ballantyne or even Erskine. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 19: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 214.] [Footnote 20: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii. 344.] [Footnote 21: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 75.] [Footnote 22: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 56.] [Footnote 23: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 168-9.] CHAPTER VII. FIRST COUNTRY HOMES. So completely was Scott by nature an out-of-doors man that he cannot be adequately known either through his poems or through his friends, without also knowing his external surroundings and occupations. His first country home was the cottage at Lasswade, on the Esk, about six miles from Edinburgh, which he took in 1798, a few months after his marriage, and retained till 1804. It was a pretty little cottage, in the beautification of which Scott felt great pride, and where he exercised himself in the small beginnings of those tastes for altering and planting which grew so rapidly upon him, and at last enticed him into castle-building and tree-culture on a dangerous, not to say, ruinous scale. One of Scott's intimate friends, the master of Rokeby, by whose house and neighbourhood the poem of that name was suggested, Mr. Morritt, walked along the Esk in 1808 with Scott four years after he had left it, and was taken out of his way to see it. "I have been bringing you," he said, "where there is little enough to be seen, only that Scotch cottage, but though not worth looking at, I could not pass it. It was our first country house when newly married, and many a contrivance it had to make it comfortable. I made a dining-table for it with my own hands. Look at these two miserable willow-trees on either side the gate into the enclosure; they are tied together at the top to be an arch, and a cross made of two sticks over them is not yet decayed. To be sure it is not much of a lion to show a stranger; but I wanted to see it again myself, for I assure you that after I had constructed it, _mamma_ (Mrs. Scott) and I both of us thought it so fine, we turned out to see it by moonlight, and walked backwards from it to the cottage-door, in admiration of our own magnificence and its picturesque effect." It was here at Lasswade that he bought the phaeton, which was the first wheeled carriage that ever penetrated to Liddesdale, a feat which it accomplished in the first August of this century. When Scott left the cottage at Lasswade in 1804, it was to take up his country residence in Selkirkshire, of which he had now been made sheriff, in a beautiful little house belonging to his cousin, Major-General Sir James Russell, and known to all the readers of Scott's poetry as the Ashestiel of the _Marmion_ introductions. The Glenkinnon brook dashes in a deep ravine through the grounds to join the Tweed; behind the house rise the hills which divide the Tweed from the Yarrow; and an easy ride took Scott into the scenery of the Yarrow. The description of Ashestiel, and the brook which runs through it, in the introduction to the first canto of _Marmion_ is indeed one of the finest specimens of Scott's descriptive poetry:-- "November's sky is chill and drear, November's leaf is red and sear; Late, gazing down the steepy linn, That hems our little garden in, Low in its dark and narrow glen, You scarce the rivulet might ken, So thick the tangled greenwood grew, So feeble trill'd the streamlet through; Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen, Through bush and briar no longer green, An angry brook, it sweeps the glade, Brawls over rock and wild cascade, And, foaming brown with doubled speed, Hurries its waters to the Tweed." Selkirk was his nearest town, and that was seven miles from Ashestiel; and even his nearest neighbour was at Yair, a few miles off lower down the Tweed,--Yair of which he wrote in another of the introductions to _Marmion_:-- "From Yair, which hills so closely bind Scarce can the Tweed his passage find, Though much he fret, and chafe, and toil, Till all his eddying currents boil." At Ashestiel it was one of his greatest delights to look after his relative's woods, and to dream of planting and thinning woods of his own, a dream only too amply realized. It was here that a new kitchen-range was sunk for some time in the ford, which was so swollen by a storm in 1805 that the horse and cart that brought it were themselves with difficulty rescued from the waters. And it was here that Scott first entered on that active life of literary labour in close conjunction with an equally active life of rural sport, which gained him a well-justified reputation as the hardest worker and the heartiest player in the kingdom. At Lasswade Scott's work had been done at night; but serious headaches made him change his habit at Ashestiel, and rise steadily at five, lighting his own fire in winter. "Arrayed in his shooting-jacket, or whatever dress he meant to use till dinner-time, he was seated at his desk by six o'clock, all his papers arranged before him in the most accurate order, and his books of reference marshalled around him on the floor, while at least one favourite dog lay watching his eye, just beyond the line of circumvallation. Thus, by the time the family assembled for breakfast, between nine and ten, he had done enough, in his own language, 'to break the neck of the day's work.' After breakfast a couple of hours more were given to his solitary tasks, and by noon he was, as he used to say, his 'own man.' When the weather was bad, he would labour incessantly all the morning; but the general rule was to be out and on horseback by one o'clock at the latest; while, if any more distant excursion had been proposed overnight, he was ready to start on it by ten; his occasional rainy days of unintermitted study, forming, as he said, a fund in his favour, out of which he was entitled to draw for accommodation whenever the sun shone with special brightness." In his earlier days none of his horses liked to be fed except by their master. When Brown Adam was saddled, and the stable-door opened, the horse would trot round to the leaping-on stone of his own accord, to be mounted, and was quite intractable under any one but Scott. Scott's life might well be fairly divided--just as history is divided into reigns--by the succession of his horses and dogs. The reigns of Captain, Lieutenant, Brown Adam, Daisy, divide at least the period up to Waterloo; while the reigns of Sybil Grey, and the Covenanter, or Douce Davie, divide the period of Scott's declining years. During the brilliant period of the earlier novels we hear less of Scott's horses; but of his deerhounds there is an unbroken succession. Camp, Maida (the "Bevis" of _Woodstock_), and Nimrod, reigned successively between Sir Walter's marriage and his death. It was Camp on whose death he relinquished a dinner invitation previously accepted, on the ground that the death of "an old friend" rendered him unwilling to dine out; Maida to whom he erected a marble monument, and Nimrod of whom he spoke so affectingly as too good a dog for his diminished fortunes during his absence in Italy on the last hopeless journey. Scott's amusements at Ashestiel, besides riding, in which he was fearless to rashness, and coursing, which was the chief form of sporting in the neighbourhood, comprehended "burning the water," as salmon-spearing by torchlight was called, in the course of which he got many a ducking. Mr. Skene gives an amusing picture of their excursions together from Ashestiel among the hills, he himself followed by a lanky Savoyard, and Scott by a portly Scotch butler--both servants alike highly sensitive as to their personal dignity--on horses which neither of the attendants could sit well. "Scott's heavy lumbering buffetier had provided himself against the mountain storms with a huge cloak, which, when the cavalcade was at gallop, streamed at full stretch from his shoulders, and kept flapping in the other's face, who, having more than enough to do in preserving his own equilibrium, could not think of attempting at any time to control the pace of his steed, and had no relief but fuming and _pesting_ at the _sacré manteau_, in language happily unintelligible to its wearer. Now and then some ditch or turf-fence rendered it indispensable to adventure on a leap, and no farce could have been more amusing than the display of politeness which then occurred between these worthy equestrians, each courteously declining in favour of his friend the honour of the first experiment, the horses fretting impatient beneath them, and the dogs clamouring encouragement."[24] Such was Scott's order of life at Ashestiel, where he remained from 1804 to 1812. As to his literary work here, it was enormous. Besides finishing _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, writing _Marmion_, _The Lady of the Lake_, part of _The Bridal of Triermain_, and part of _Rokeby_, and writing reviews, he wrote a _Life of Dryden_, and edited his works anew with some care, in eighteen volumes, edited _Somers's Collection of Tracts_, in thirteen volumes, quarto, _Sir Ralph Sadler's Life, Letters, and State Papers_, in three volumes, quarto, _Miss Seward's Life and Poetical Works_, _The Secret History of the Court of James I_., in two volumes, _Strutt's Queenhoo Hall_, in four volumes, 12mo., and various other single volumes, and began his heavy work on the edition of Swift. This was the literary work of eight years, during which he had the duties of his Sheriffship, and, after he gave up his practice as a barrister, the duties of his Deputy Clerkship of Session to discharge regularly. The editing of Dryden alone would have seemed to most men of leisure a pretty full occupation for these eight years, and though I do not know that Scott edited with the anxious care with which that sort of work is often now prepared, that he went into all the arguments for a doubtful reading with the pains that Mr. Dyce spent on the various readings of Shakespeare, or that Mr. Spedding spent on a various reading of Bacon, yet Scott did his work in a steady, workmanlike manner, which satisfied the most fastidious critics of that day, and he was never, I believe, charged with hurrying or scamping it. His biographies of Swift and Dryden are plain solid pieces of work--not exactly the works of art which biographies have been made in our day--not comparable to Carlyle's studies of Cromwell or Frederick, or, in point of art, even to the life of John Sterling, but still sensible and interesting, sound in judgment, and animated in style. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 24: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 268-9.] CHAPTER VIII. REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD, AND LIFE THERE. In May, 1812, Scott having now at last obtained the salary of the Clerkship of Session, the work of which he had for more than five years discharged without pay, indulged himself in realizing his favourite dream of buying a "mountain farm" at Abbotsford,--five miles lower down the Tweed than his cottage at Ashestiel, which was now again claimed by the family of Russell,--and migrated thither with his household goods. The children long remembered the leave-taking as one of pure grief, for the villagers were much attached both to Scott and to his wife, who had made herself greatly beloved by her untiring goodness to the sick among her poor neighbours. But Scott himself describes the migration as a scene in which their neighbours found no small share of amusement. "Our flitting and removal from Ashestiel baffled all description; we had twenty-five cartloads of the veriest trash in nature, besides dogs, pigs, ponies, poultry, cows, calves, bare-headed wenches, and bare-breeched boys."[25] To another friend Scott wrote that the neighbours had "been 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 ponies, 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 gipsy groups of Callot upon their march."[26] The place thus bought for 4000_l._,--half of which, according to Scott's bad and sanguine habit, was borrowed from his brother, and half raised on the security of a poem at the moment of sale wholly unwritten, and not completed even when he removed to Abbotsford--"Rokeby"--became only too much of an idol for the rest of Scott's life. Mr. Lockhart admits that before the crash came he had invested 29,000_l._ in the purchase of land alone. But at this time only the kernel of the subsequent estate was bought, in the shape of a hundred acres or rather more, part of which ran along the shores of the Tweed--"a beautiful river flowing broad and bright over a bed of milk-white pebbles, unless here and there where it darkened into a deep pool, overhung as yet only by birches and alders." There was also a poor farm-house, a staring barn, and a pond so dirty that it had hitherto given the name of "Clarty Hole" to the place itself. Scott renamed the place from the adjoining ford which was just above the confluence of the Gala with the Tweed. He chose the name of Abbotsford because the land had formerly all belonged to the Abbots of Melrose,--the ruin of whose beautiful abbey was visible from many parts of the little property. On the other side of the river the old British barrier called "the Catrail" was full in view. As yet the place was not planted,--the only effort made in this direction by its former owner, Dr. Douglas, having been a long narrow stripe of firs, which Scott used to compare to a black hair-comb, and which gave the name of "The Doctor's Redding-Kame" to the stretch of woods of which it is still the central line. Such was the place which he made it the too great delight of the remainder of his life to increase and beautify, by spending on it a good deal more than he had earned, and that too in times when he should have earned a good deal more than he ought to have thought even for a moment of spending. The cottage grew to a mansion, and the mansion to a castle. The farm by the Tweed made him long for a farm by the Cauldshiel's loch, and the farm by the Cauldshiel's loch for Thomas the Rhymer's Glen; and as, at every step in the ladder, his means of buying were really increasing--though they were so cruelly discounted and forestalled by this growing land-hunger,--Scott never realized into what troubles he was carefully running himself. Of his life at Abbotsford at a later period when his building was greatly enlarged, and his children grown up, we have a brilliant picture from the pen of Mr. Lockhart. And though it does not belong to his first years at Abbotsford, I cannot do better than include it here as conveying probably better than anything I could elsewhere find, the charm of that ideal life which lured Scott on from one project to another in that scheme of castle-building, in relation to which he confused so dangerously the world of dreams with the harder world of wages, capital, interest, and rent. "I remember saying to William Allan one morning, as the whole party mustered before the porch after breakfast, 'A faithful sketch of what you at this moment see would be more interesting a hundred years hence than the grandest so-called historical picture that you will ever exhibit in Somerset House;' and my friend agreed with me so cordially that I often wondered afterwards he had not attempted to realize the suggestion. The subject ought, however, to have been treated conjointly by him (or Wilkie) and Edwin Landseer. "It was a clear, bright September morning, with a sharpness in the air that doubled the animating influence of the sunshine, and all was in readiness for a grand coursing match on Newark Hill. The only guest who had chalked out other sport for himself was the staunchest of anglers, Mr. Rose; but he too was there on his _shelty_, armed with his salmon-rod and landing-net, and attended by his humorous squire, Hinves, and Charlie Purdie, a brother of Tom, in those days the most celebrated fisherman of the district. This little group of Waltonians, bound for Lord Somerville's preserve, remained lounging about to witness the start of the main cavalcade. Sir Walter, mounted on Sybil, was marshalling the order of procession with a huge hunting-whip; and among a dozen frolicsome youths and maidens, who seemed disposed to laugh at all discipline, appeared, each on horseback, each as eager as the youngest sportsman in the troop, Sir Humphry Davy, Dr. Wollaston, and the patriarch of Scottish _belles lettres_, Henry Mackenzie. The Man of Feeling, however, was persuaded with some difficulty to resign his steed for the present to his faithful negro follower, and to join Lady Scott in the sociable, until we should reach the ground of our _battue_. Laidlaw, on a long-tailed, wiry Highlander, yclept Hoddin Grey, which carried him nimbly and stoutly, although his feet almost touched the ground as he sat, was the adjutant. But the most picturesque figure was the illustrious inventor of the safety-lamp. He had come for his favourite sport of angling, and had been practising it successfully with Rose, his travelling-companion, for two or three days preceding this, but he had not prepared for coursing fields, and had left Charlie Purdie's troop for Sir Walter's on a sudden thought; and his fisherman's costume--a brown hat with flexible brim, surrounded with line upon line, and innumerable fly-hooks, jack-boots worthy of a Dutch smuggler, and a fustian surtout dabbled with the blood of salmon,--made a fine contrast with the smart jackets, white cord breeches, and well-polished jockey-boots of the less distinguished cavaliers about him. Dr. Wollaston was in black, and, with his noble, serene dignity of countenance, might have passed for a sporting archbishop. Mr. Mackenzie, at this time in the seventy-sixth year of his age, with a white hat turned up with green, green spectacles, green jacket, and long brown leather gaiters buttoned upon his nether anatomy, wore a dog-whistle round his neck, and had all over the air of as resolute a devotee as the gay captain of Huntly Burn. Tom Purdie and his subalterns had preceded us by a few hours with all the greyhounds that could be collected at Abbotsford, Darnick, and Melrose; but the giant Maida had remained as his master's orderly, and now gambolled about Sibyl Grey, barking for mere joy, like a spaniel puppy. "The order of march had been all settled, and the sociable was just getting under weigh, when _the Lady Anne_ broke from the line, screaming with laughter, and exclaimed, 'Papa! papa! I know you could never think of going without your pet.' Scott looked round, and I rather think there was a blush as well as a smile upon his face, when he perceived a little black pig frisking about his pony, and evidently a self-elected addition to the party of the day. He tried to look stern, and cracked his whip at the creature, but was in a moment obliged to join in the general cheers. Poor piggy soon found a strap round his neck, and was dragged into the background. Scott, watching the retreat, repeated with mock pathos the first verse of an old pastoral song:-- "What will I do gin my hoggie die? My joy, my pride, my hoggie! My only beast, I had nae mae, And wow! but I was vogie!" The cheers were redoubled, and the squadron moved on. This pig had taken, nobody could tell how, a most sentimental attachment to Scott, and was constantly urging its pretension to be admitted a regular member of his _tail_, along with the greyhounds and terriers; but indeed I remember him suffering another summer under the same sort of pertinacity on the part of an affectionate hen. I leave the explanation for philosophers; but such were the facts. I have too much respect for the vulgarly calumniated donkey to name him in the same category of pets with the pig and the hen; but a year or two after this time, my wife used to drive a couple of these animals in a little garden chair, and whenever her father appeared at the door of our cottage, we were sure to see Hannah More and Lady Morgan (as Anne Scott had wickedly christened them) trotting from their pasture to lay their noses over the paling, and, as Washington Irving says of the old white-haired hedger with the Parisian snuff-box, 'to have a pleasant crack wi' the laird.'"[27] Carlyle, in his criticism on Scott--a criticism which will hardly, I think, stand the test of criticism in its turn, so greatly does he overdo the reaction against the first excessive appreciation of his genius--adds a contribution of his own to this charming idyll, in reference to the natural fascination which Scott seemed to exert over almost all dumb creatures. A little Blenheim cocker, "one of the smallest, beautifullest, and tiniest of lapdogs," with which Carlyle was well acquainted, and which was also one of the shyest of dogs, that would crouch towards his mistress and draw back "with angry timidity" if any one did but look at him admiringly, once met in the street "a tall, singular, busy-looking man," who halted by. The dog ran towards him and began "fawning, frisking, licking at his feet;" and every time he saw Sir Walter afterwards, in Edinburgh, he repeated his demonstration of delight. Thus discriminating was this fastidious Blenheim cocker even in the busy streets of Edinburgh. And Scott's attraction for dumb animals was only a lesser form of his attraction for all who were in any way dependent on him, especially his own servants and labourers. The story of his demeanour towards them is one of the most touching ever written. "Sir Walter speaks to every man as if they were blood-relations" was the common _formula_ in which this demeanour was described. Take this illustration. There was a little hunchbacked tailor, named William Goodfellow, living on his property (but who at Abbotsford was termed Robin Goodfellow). This tailor was employed to make the curtains for the new library, and had been very proud of his work, but fell ill soon afterwards, and Sir Walter was unremitting in his attention to him. "I can never forget," says Mr. Lockhart, "the evening on which the poor tailor died. When Scott entered the hovel, he found everything silent, and inferred from the looks of the good women in attendance that the patient had fallen asleep, and that they feared his sleep was the final one. He murmured some syllables of kind regret: at the sound of his voice the dying tailor unclosed his eyes, and eagerly and wistfully sat up, clasping his hands with an expression of rapturous gratefulness and devotion that, in the midst of deformity, disease, pain, and wretchedness, was at once beautiful and sublime. He cried with a loud voice, 'The Lord bless and reward you!' and expired with the effort."[28] Still more striking is the account of his relation with Tom Purdie, the wide-mouthed, under-sized, broad-shouldered, square-made, thin-flanked woodsman, so well known afterwards by all Scott's friends as he waited for his master in his green shooting-jacket, white hat, and drab trousers. Scott first made Tom Purdie's acquaintance in his capacity as judge, the man being brought before him for poaching, at the time that Scott was living at Ashestiel. Tom gave so touching an account of his circumstances--work scarce--wife and children in want--grouse abundant--and his account of himself was so fresh and even humorous, that Scott let him off the penalty, and made him his shepherd. He discharged these duties so faithfully that he came to be his master's forester and factotum, and indeed one of his best friends, though a little disposed to tyrannize over Scott in his own fashion. A visitor describes him as unpacking a box of new importations for his master "as if he had been sorting some toys for a restless child." But after Sir Walter had lost the bodily strength requisite for riding, and was too melancholy for ordinary conversation, Tom Purdie's shoulder was his great stay in wandering through his woods, for with him he felt that he might either speak or be silent at his pleasure. "What a blessing there is," Scott wrote in his diary at that time, "in a fellow like Tom, whom no familiarity can spoil, whom you may scold and praise and joke with, knowing the quality of the man is unalterable in his love and reverence to his master." After Scott's failure, Mr. Lockhart writes: "Before I leave this period, I must note how greatly I admired the manner in which all his dependents appeared to have met the reverse of his fortunes--a reverse which inferred very considerable alteration in the circumstances of every one of them. The butler, instead of being the easy chief of a large establishment, was now doing half the work of the house at probably half his former wages. Old Peter, who had been for five and twenty years a dignified coachman, was now ploughman in ordinary, only putting his horses to the carriage upon high and rare occasions; and so on with all the rest that remained of the ancient train. And all, to my view, seemed happier than they had ever done before."[29] The illustration of this true confidence between Scott and his servants and labourers might be extended to almost any length. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 25: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 6.] [Footnote 26: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 3.] [Footnote 27: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vi. 238--242.] [Footnote 28: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vii. 218.] [Footnote 29: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 170.] CHAPTER IX. SCOTT'S PARTNERSHIPS WITH THE BALLANTYNES. Before I make mention of Scott's greatest works, his novels, I must say a few words of his relation to the Ballantyne Brothers, who involved him, and were involved by him, in so many troubles, and with whose name the story of his broken fortunes is inextricably bound up. James Ballantyne, the elder brother, was a schoolfellow of Scott's at Kelso, and was the editor and manager of the _Kelso Mail_, an anti-democratic journal, which had a fair circulation. Ballantyne was something of an artist as regarded "type," and Scott got him therefore to print his _Minstrelsy of the Border_, the excellent workmanship of which attracted much attention in London. In 1802, on Scott's suggestion, Ballantyne moved to Edinburgh; and to help him to move, Scott, who was already meditating some investment of his little capital in business other than literary, lent him 500l. Between this and 1805, when Scott first became a partner of Ballantyne's in the printing business, he used every exertion to get legal and literary printing offered to James Ballantyne, and, according to Mr. Lockhart, the concern "grew and prospered." At Whitsuntide, 1805, when _The Lay_ had been published, but before Scott had the least idea of the prospects of gain which mere literature would open to him, he formally, though secretly, joined Ballantyne as a partner in the printing business. He explains his motives for this step, so far at least as he then recalled them, in a letter written after his misfortunes, in 1826. "It is easy," he said, "no doubt for any friend to blame me for entering into connexion with commercial matters at all. But I wish to know what I could have done better--excluded from the bar, and then from all profits for six years, by my colleague's prolonged life. Literature was not in those days what poor Constable has made it; and with my little capital I was too glad to make commercially the means of supporting my family. I got but 600_l._ for _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, and--it was a price that made men's hair stand on end--1000_l._ for _Marmion_. I have been far from suffering by James Ballantyne. I owe it to him to say, that his difficulties, as well as his advantages, are owing to me." This, though a true, was probably a very imperfect account of Scott's motives. He ceased practising at the bar, I do not doubt, in great degree from a kind of hurt pride at his ill-success, at a time when he felt during every month more and more confidence in his own powers. He believed, with some justice, that he understood some of the secrets of popularity in literature, but he had always, till towards the end of his life, the greatest horror of resting on literature alone as his main resource; and he was not a man, nor was Lady Scott a woman, to pinch and live narrowly. Were it only for his lavish generosity, that kind of life would have been intolerable to him. Hence, he reflected, that if he could but use his literary instinct to feed some commercial undertaking, managed by a man he could trust, he might gain a considerable percentage on his little capital, without so embarking in commerce as to oblige him either to give up his status as a sheriff, or his official duties as a clerk of session, or his literary undertakings. In his old schoolfellow, James Ballantyne, he believed he had found just such an agent as he wanted, the requisite link between literary genius like his own, and the world which reads and buys books; and he thought that, by feeling his way a little, he might secure, through this partnership, besides the then very bare rewards of authorship, at least a share in those more liberal rewards which commercial men managed to squeeze for themselves out of successful authors. And, further, he felt--and this was probably the greatest unconscious attraction for him in this scheme--that with James Ballantyne for his partner he should be the real leader and chief, and rather in the position of a patron and benefactor of his colleague, than of one in any degree dependent on the generosity or approval of others. "If I have a very strong passion in the world," he once wrote of himself--and the whole story of his life seems to confirm it--"it is pride."[30] In James Ballantyne he had a faithful, but almost humble friend, with whom he could deal much as he chose, and fear no wound to his pride. He had himself helped Ballantyne to a higher line of business than any hitherto aspired to by him. It was his own book which first got the Ballantyne press its public credit. And if he could but create a great commercial success upon this foundation, he felt that he should be fairly entitled to share in the gains, which not merely his loan of capital, but his foresight and courage had opened to Ballantyne. And it is quite possible that Scott might have succeeded--or at all events not seriously failed--if he had been content to stick to the printing firm of James Ballantyne and Co., and had not launched also into the bookselling and publishing firm of John Ballantyne and Co., or had never begun the wild and dangerous practice of forestalling his gains, and spending wealth which he had not earned. But when by way of feeding the printing press of James Ballantyne and Co., he started in 1809 the bookselling and publishing firm of John Ballantyne and Co., using as his agent a man as inferior in sterling worth to James, as James was inferior in general ability to himself, he carefully dug a mine under his own feet, of which we can only say, that nothing except his genius could have prevented it from exploding long before it did. The truth was evidently that James Ballantyne's respectful homage, and John's humorous appreciation, all but blinded Scott's eyes to the utter inadequacy of either of these men, especially the latter, to supply the deficiencies of his own character for conducting business of this kind with proper discretion. James Ballantyne, who was pompous and indolent, though thoroughly honest, and not without some intellectual insight, Scott used to call Aldiborontiphoscophornio. John, who was clever but frivolous, dissipated, and tricksy, he termed Rigdumfunnidos, or his "little Picaroon." It is clear from Mr. Lockhart's account of the latter that Scott not only did not respect, but despised him, though he cordially liked him, and that he passed over, in judging him, vices which in a brother or son of his own he would severely have rebuked. I believe myself that his liking for co-operation with both, was greatly founded on his feeling that they were simply creatures of his, to whom he could pretty well dictate what he wanted,--colleagues whose inferiority to himself unconsciously flattered his pride. He was evidently inclined to resent bitterly the patronage of publishers. He sent word to Blackwood once with great hauteur, after some suggestion from that house had been made to him which appeared to him to interfere with his independence as an author, that he was one of "the Black Hussars" of literature, who would not endure that sort of treatment. Constable, who was really very liberal, hurt his sensitive pride through the _Edinburgh Review_, of which Jeffrey was editor. Thus the Ballantynes' great deficiency--that neither of them had any independent capacity for the publishing business, which would in any way hamper his discretion--though this is just what commercial partners ought to have had, or they were not worth their salt,--was, I believe, precisely what induced this Black Hussar of literature, in spite of his otherwise considerable sagacity and knowledge of human nature, to select them for partners. And yet it is strange that he not only chose them, but chose the inferior and lighter-headed of the two for far the most important and difficult of the two businesses. In the printing concern there was at least this to be said, that of part of the business--the selection of type and the superintendence of the executive part,--James Ballantyne was a good judge. He was never apparently a good man of business, for he kept no strong hand over the expenditure and accounts, which is the core of success in every concern. But he understood types; and his customers were publishers, a wealthy and judicious class, who were not likely all to fail together. But to select a "Rigdumfunnidos,"--a dissipated comic-song singer and horse-fancier,--for the head of a publishing concern, was indeed a kind of insanity. It is told of John Ballantyne, that after the successful negotiation with Constable for _Rob Roy_, and while "hopping up and down in his glee," he exclaimed, "'Is Rob's gun here, Mr. Scott? Would you object to my trying the old barrel with a _few de joy_?' 'Nay, Mr. Puff,' said Scott, 'it would burst and blow you to the devil before your time.' 'Johnny, my man,' said Constable, 'what the mischief puts drawing at sight into _your_ head?' Scott laughed heartily at this innuendo; and then observing that the little man felt somewhat sore, called attention to the notes of a bird in the adjoining shrubbery. 'And by-the-bye,' said he, as they continued listening, ''tis a long time, Johnny, since we have had "The Cobbler of Kelso."' Mr. Puff forthwith jumped up on a mass of stone, and seating himself in the proper attitude of one working with an awl, began a favourite interlude, mimicking a certain son of Crispin, at whose stall Scott and he had often lingered when they were schoolboys, and a blackbird, the only companion of his cell, that used to sing to him while he talked and whistled to it all day long. With this performance Scott was always delighted. Nothing could be richer than the contrast of the bird's wild, sweet notes, some of which he imitated with wonderful skill, and the accompaniment of the cobbler's hoarse, cracked voice, uttering all manner of endearing epithets, which Johnny multiplied and varied in a style worthy of the old women in Rabelais at the birth of Pantagruel."[31] That passage gives precisely the kind of estimation in which John Ballantyne was held both by Scott and Constable. And yet it was to him that Scott entrusted the dangerous and difficult duty of setting up a new publishing house as a rival to the best publishers of the day. No doubt Scott really relied on his own judgment for working the publishing house. But except where his own books were concerned, no judgment could have been worse. In the first place he was always wanting to do literary jobs for a friend, and so advised the publishing of all sorts of unsaleable books, because his friends desired to write them. In the next place, he was a genuine historian, and one of the antiquarian kind himself; he was himself really interested in all sorts of historical and antiquarian issues,--and very mistakenly gave the public credit for wishing to know what he himself wished to know. I should add that Scott's good nature and kindness of heart not only led him to help on many books which he knew in himself could never answer, and some which, as he well knew, would be altogether worthless, but that it greatly biassed his own intellectual judgment. Nothing can be plainer than that he really held his intimate friend, Joanna Baillie, a very great dramatic poet, a much greater poet than himself, for instance; one fit to be even mentioned as following--at a distance--in the track of Shakespeare. He supposes Erskine to exhort him thus:-- "Or, if to touch such chord be thine, Restore the ancient tragic line, And emulate the notes that rung From the wild harp which silent hung By silver Avon's holy shore, Till twice a hundred years roll'd o'er,-- When she, the bold enchantress, came With fearless hand and heart on flame, From the pale willow snatch'd the treasure, And swept it with a kindred measure, Till Avon's swans, while rung the grove With Montfort's hate and Basil's love, Awakening at the inspired strain, Deem'd their own Shakespeare lived again." Avon's swans must have been Avon's geese, I think, if they had deemed anything of the kind. Joanna Baillie's dramas are "nice," and rather dull; now and then she can write a song with the ease and sweetness that suggest Shakespearian echoes. But Scott's judgment was obviously blinded by his just and warm regard for Joanna Baillie herself. Of course with such interfering causes to bring unsaleable books to the house--of course I do not mean that John Ballantyne and Co. published for Joanna Baillie, or that they would have lost by it if they had--the new firm published all sorts of books which did not sell at all; while John Ballantyne himself indulged in a great many expenses and dissipations, for which John Ballantyne and Co. had to pay. Nor was it very easy for a partner who himself drew bills on the future--even though he were the well-spring of all the paying business the company had--to be very severe on a fellow-partner who supplied his pecuniary needs in the same way. At all events, there is no question that all through 1813 and 1814 Scott was kept in constant suspense and fear of bankruptcy, by the ill-success of John Ballantyne and Co., and the utter want of straightforwardness in John Ballantyne himself as to the bills out, and which had to be provided against. It was the publication of _Waverley_, and the consequent opening up of the richest vein not only in Scott's own genius, but in his popularity with the public, which alone ended these alarms; and the many unsaleable works of John Ballantyne and Co. were then gradually disposed of to Constable and others, to their own great loss, as part of the conditions on which they received a share in the copyright of the wonderful novels which sold like wildfire. But though in this way the publishing business of John Ballantyne and Co. was saved, and its affairs pretty decently wound up, the printing firm remained saddled with some of their obligations; while Constable's business, on which Scott depended for the means with which he was buying his estate, building his castle, and settling money on his daughter-in-law, was seriously injured by the purchase of all this unsaleable stock. I do not think that any one who looks into the complicated controversy between the representatives of the Ballantynes and Mr. Lockhart, concerning these matters, can be content with Mr. Lockhart's--no doubt perfectly sincere--judgment on the case. It is obvious that amidst these intricate accounts, he fell into one or two serious blunders--blunders very unjust to James Ballantyne. And without pretending to have myself formed any minute judgment on the details, I think the following points clear:--(1.) That James Ballantyne was very severely judged by Mr. Lockhart, on grounds which were never alleged by Scott against him at all,--indeed on grounds on which he was expressly exempted from all blame by Sir Walter. (2.) That Sir Walter Scott was very severely judged by the representatives of the Ballantynes, on grounds on which James Ballantyne himself never brought any charge against him; on the contrary, he declared that he had no charge to bring. (3.) That both Scott and his partners invited ruin by freely spending gains which they only expected to earn, and that in this Scott certainly set an example which he could hardly expect feebler men not to follow. On the whole, I think the troubles with the Ballantyne brothers brought to light not only that eager gambling spirit in him, which his grandfather indulged with better success and more moderation when he bought the hunter with money destined for a flock of sheep, and then gave up gambling for ever, but a tendency still more dangerous, and in some respects involving an even greater moral defect,--I mean a tendency, chiefly due, I think, to a very deep-seated pride,--to prefer inferior men as working colleagues in business. And yet it is clear that if Scott were to dabble in publishing at all, he really needed the check of men of larger experience, and less literary turn of mind. The great majority of consumers of popular literature are not, and indeed will hardly ever be, literary men; and that is precisely why a publisher who is not, in the main, literary,--who looks on authors' MSS. for the most part with distrust and suspicion, much as a rich man looks at a begging-letter, or a sober and judicious fish at an angler's fly,--is so much less likely to run aground than such a man as Scott. The untried author should be regarded by a wise publisher as a natural enemy,--an enemy indeed of a class, rare specimens whereof will always be his best friends, and who, therefore, should not be needlessly affronted--but also as one of a class of whom nineteen out of every twenty will dangle before the publisher's eyes wiles and hopes and expectations of the most dangerous and illusory character,--which constitute indeed the very perils that it is his true function in life skilfully to evade. The Ballantynes were quite unfit for this function; first, they had not the experience requisite for it; next, they were altogether too much under Scott's influence. No wonder that the partnership came to no good, and left behind it the germs of calamity even more serious still. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 30: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 221.] [Footnote 31: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 218.] CHAPTER X. THE WAVERLEY NOVELS. In the summer of 1814, Scott took up again and completed--almost at a single heat,--a fragment of a Jacobite story, begun in 1805 and then laid aside. It was published anonymously, and its astonishing success turned back again the scales of Scott's fortunes, already inclining ominously towards a catastrophe. This story was _Waverley_. Mr. Carlyle has praised _Waverley_ above its fellows. "On the whole, contrasting _Waverley_, which was carefully written, with most of its followers which were written extempore, one may regret the extempore method." This is, however, a very unfortunate judgment. Not one of the whole series of novels appears to have been written more completely extempore than the great bulk of _Waverley_, including almost everything that made it either popular with the million or fascinating to the fastidious; and it is even likely that this is one of the causes of its excellence. "The last two volumes," says Scott, in a letter to Mr. Morritt, "were written in three weeks." And here is Mr. Lockhart's description of the effect which Scott's incessant toil during the composition, produced on a friend whose window happened to command the novelist's study:-- "Happening to pass through Edinburgh in June, 1814, I dined one day with the gentleman in question (now the Honourable William Menzies, one of the Supreme Judges at the Cape of Good Hope), whose residence was then in George Street, situated very near to, and at right angles with, North Castle Street. It was a party of very young persons, most of them, like Menzies and myself, destined for the Bar of Scotland, all gay and thoughtless, enjoying the first flush of manhood, with little remembrance of the yesterday, or care of the morrow. When my companion's worthy father and uncle, after seeing two or three bottles go round, left the juveniles to themselves, the weather being hot, we adjourned to a library which had one large window looking northwards. After carousing here for an hour or more, I observed that a shade had come over the aspect of my friend, who happened to be placed immediately opposite to myself, and said something that intimated a fear of his being unwell. 'No,' said he, 'I shall be well enough presently, if you will only let me sit where you are, and take my chair; for there is a confounded hand in sight of me here, which has often bothered me before, and now it won't let me fill my glass with a good will.' I rose to change places with him accordingly, and he pointed out to me this hand, which, like the writing on Belshazzar's wall, disturbed his hour of hilarity. 'Since we sat down,' he said, 'I have been watching it--it fascinates my eye--it never stops--page after page is finished, and thrown on that heap of MS., and still it goes on unwearied; and so it will be till candles are brought in, and God knows how long after that. It is the same every night--I can't stand a sight of it when I am not at my books.' 'Some stupid, dogged engrossing clerk, probably,' exclaimed myself, 'or some other giddy youth in our society.' 'No, boys,' said our host; 'I well know what hand it is--'tis Walter Scott's.'"[32] If that is not extempore writing, it is difficult to say what extempore writing is. But in truth, there is no evidence that any one of the novels was laboured, or even so much as carefully composed. Scott's method of composition was always the same; and, when writing an imaginative work, the rate of progress seems to have been pretty even, depending much more on the absence of disturbing engagements, than on any mental irregularity. The morning was always his brightest time; but morning or evening, in country or in town, well or ill, writing with his own pen or dictating to an amanuensis in the intervals of screaming-fits due to the torture of cramp in the stomach, Scott spun away at his imaginative web almost as evenly as a silkworm spins at its golden cocoon. Nor can I detect the slightest trace of any difference in quality between the stories, such as can be reasonably ascribed to comparative care or haste. There are differences, and even great differences, of course, ascribable to the less or greater suitability of the subject chosen to Scott's genius, but I can find no trace of the sort of cause to which Mr. Carlyle refers. Thus, few, I suppose, would hesitate to say that while _Old Mortality_ is very near, if not quite, the finest of Scott's works, _The Black Dwarf_ is not far from the other end of the scale. Yet the two were written in immediate succession (_The Black Dwarf_ being the first of the two), and were published together, as the first series of _Tales of my Landlord_, in 1816. Nor do I think that any competent critic would find any clear deterioration of quality in the novels of the later years,--excepting of course the two written after the stroke of paralysis. It is true, of course, that some of the subjects which most powerfully stirred his imagination were among his earlier themes, and that he could not effectually use the same subject twice, though he now and then tried it. But making allowance for this consideration, the imaginative power of the novels is as astonishingly _even_ as the rate of composition itself. For my own part, I greatly prefer _The Fortunes of Nigel_ (which was written in 1822) to _Waverley_ which was begun in 1805, and finished in 1814, and though very many better critics would probably decidedly disagree, I do not think that any of them would consider this preference grotesque or purely capricious. Indeed, though _Anne of Geierstein_,--the last composed before Scott's stroke,--would hardly seem to any careful judge the equal of _Waverley_, I do not much doubt that if it had appeared in place of _Waverley_, it would have excited very nearly as much interest and admiration; nor that had _Waverley_ appeared in 1829, in place of _Anne of Geierstein_, it would have failed to excite very much more. In these fourteen most effective years of Scott's literary life, during which he wrote twenty-three novels besides shorter tales, the best stories appear to have been on the whole the most rapidly written, probably because they took the strongest hold of the author's imagination. Till near the close of his career as an author, Scott never avowed his responsibility for any of these series of novels, and even took some pains to mystify the public as to the identity between the author of _Waverley_ and the author of _Tales of my Landlord_. The care with which the secret was kept is imputed by Mr. Lockhart in some degree to the habit of mystery which had grown upon Scott during his secret partnership with the Ballantynes; but in this he seems to be confounding two very different phases of Scott's character. No doubt he was, as a professional man, a little ashamed of his commercial speculation, and unwilling to betray it. But he was far from ashamed of his literary enterprise, though it seems that he was at first very anxious lest a comparative failure, or even a mere moderate success, in a less ambitious sphere than that of poetry, should endanger the great reputation he had gained as a poet. That was apparently the first reason for secrecy. But, over and above this, it is clear that the mystery stimulated Scott's imagination and saved him trouble as well. He was obviously more free under the veil--free from the liability of having to answer for the views of life or history suggested in his stories; but besides this, what was of more importance to him, the slight disguise stimulated his sense of humour, and gratified the whimsical, boyish pleasure which he always had in acting an imaginary character. He used to talk of himself as a sort of Abou Hassan--a private man one day, and acting the part of a monarch the next--with the kind of glee which indicated a real delight in the change of parts, and I have little doubt that he threw himself with the more gusto into characters very different from his own, in consequence of the pleasure it gave him to conceive his friends hopelessly misled by this display of traits, with which he supposed that they could not have credited him even in imagination. Thus besides relieving him of a host of compliments which he did not enjoy, and enabling him the better to evade an ill-bred curiosity, the disguise no doubt was the same sort of fillip to the fancy which a mask and domino or a fancy dress are to that of their wearers. Even in a disguise a man cannot cease to be himself; but he can get rid of his improperly "imputed" righteousness--often the greatest burden he has to bear--and of all the expectations formed on the strength, as Mr. Clough says,-- "Of having been what one has been, What one thinks one is, or thinks that others suppose one." To some men the freedom of this disguise is a real danger and temptation. It never could have been so to Scott, who was in the main one of the simplest as well as the boldest and proudest of men. And as most men perhaps would admit that a good deal of even the best part of their nature is rather suppressed than expressed by the name by which they are known in the world, Scott must have felt this in a far higher degree, and probably regarded the manifold characters under which he was known to society, as representing him in some respects more justly than any individual name could have done. His mind ranged hither and thither over a wide field--far beyond that of his actual experience,--and probably ranged over it all the more easily for not being absolutely tethered to a single class of associations by any public confession of his authorship. After all, when it became universally known that Scott was the only author of all these tales, it may be doubted whether the public thought as adequately of the imaginative efforts which had created them, as they did while they remained in some doubt whether there was a multiplicity of agencies at work, or only one. The uncertainty helped them to realize the many lives which were really led by the author of all these tales, more completely than any confession of the individual authorship could have done. The shrinking of activity in public curiosity and wonder which follows the final determination of such ambiguities, is very apt to result rather in a dwindling of the imaginative effort to enter into the genius which gave rise to them, than in an increase of respect for so manifold a creative power. When Scott wrote, such fertility as his in the production of novels was regarded with amazement approaching to absolute incredulity. Yet he was in this respect only the advanced-guard of a not inconsiderable class of men and women who have a special gift for pouring out story after story, containing a great variety of figures, while retaining a certain even level of merit. There is more than one novelist of the present day who has far surpassed Scott in the number of his tales, and one at least of very high repute, who has, I believe, produced more even within the same time. But though to our larger experience, Scott's achievement, in respect of mere fertility, is by no means the miracle which it once seemed, I do not think one of his successors can compare with him for a moment in the ease and truth with which he painted, not merely the life of his own time and country--seldom indeed that of precisely his own time--but that of days long past, and often too of scenes far distant. The most powerful of all his stories, _Old Mortality_, was the story of a period more than a century and a quarter before he wrote; and others,--which though inferior to this in force, are nevertheless, when compared with the so-called historical romances of any other English writer, what sunlight is to moonlight, if you can say as much for the latter as to admit even that comparison,--go back to the period of the Tudors, that is, two centuries and a half. _Quentin Durward_, which is all but amongst the best, runs back farther still, far into the previous century, while _Ivanhoe_ and _The Talisman_, though not among the greatest of Scott's works, carry us back more than five hundred years. The new class of extempore novel writers, though more considerable than, sixty years ago, any one could have expected ever to see it, is still limited, and on any high level of merit will probably always be limited, to the delineation of the times of which the narrator has personal experience. Scott seemed to have had something very like personal experience of a few centuries at least, judging by the ease and freshness with which he poured out his stories of these centuries, and though no one can pretend that even he could describe the period of the Tudors as Miss Austen described the country parsons and squires of George the Third's reign, or as Mr. Trollope describes the politicians and hunting-men of Queen Victoria's, it is nevertheless the evidence of a greater imagination to make us live so familiarly as Scott does amidst the political and religious controversies of two or three centuries' duration, to be the actual witnesses, as it were, of Margaret of Anjou's throes of vain ambition, and Mary Stuart's fascinating remorse, and Elizabeth's domineering and jealous balancings of noble against noble, of James the First's shrewd pedantries, and the Regent Murray's large forethought, of the politic craft of Argyle, the courtly ruthlessness of Claverhouse, and the high-bred clemency of Monmouth, than to reflect in countless modifications the freaks, figures, and fashions of our own time. The most striking feature of Scott's romances is that, for the most part, they are pivoted on public rather than mere private interests and passions. With but few exceptions--(_The Antiquary_, _St. Ronan's Well_, and _Guy Mannering_ are the most important)--Scott's novels give us an imaginative view, not of mere individuals, but of individuals as they are affected by the public strifes and social divisions of the age. And this it is which gives his books so large an interest for old and young, soldiers and statesmen, the world of society and the recluse, alike. You can hardly read any novel of Scott's and not become better aware what public life and political issues mean. And yet there is no artificiality, no elaborate attitudinizing before the antique mirrors of the past, like Bulwer's, no dressing out of clothes-horses like G. P. R. James. The boldness and freshness of the present are carried back into the past, and you see Papists and Puritans, Cavaliers and Roundheads, Jews, Jacobites, and freebooters, preachers, schoolmasters, mercenary soldiers, gipsies, and beggars, all living the sort of life which the reader feels that in their circumstances and under the same conditions of time and place and parentage, he might have lived too. Indeed, no man can read Scott without being more of a public man, whereas the ordinary novel tends to make its readers rather less of one than before. Next, though most of these stories are rightly called romances, no one can avoid observing that they give that side of life which is unromantic, quite as vigorously as the romantic side. This was not true of Scott's poems, which only expressed one-half of his nature, and were almost pure romances. But in the novels the business of life is even better portrayed than its sentiments. Mr. Bagehot, one of the ablest of Scott's critics, has pointed out this admirably in his essay on _The Waverley Novels_. "Many historical novelists," he says, "especially those who with care and pains have read up the detail, are often evidently in a strait how to pass from their history to their sentiment. The fancy of Sir Walter could not help connecting the two. If he had given us the English side of the race to Derby, _he would have described the Bank of England paying in sixpences, and also the loves of the cashier_." No one who knows the novels well can question this. Fergus MacIvor's ways and means, his careful arrangements for receiving subsidies in black mail, are as carefully recorded as his lavish highland hospitalities; and when he sends his silver cup to the Gaelic bard who chaunts his greatness, the faithful historian does not forget to let us know that the cup is his last, and that he is hard-pressed for the generosities of the future. So too the habitual thievishness of the highlanders is pressed upon us quite as vividly as their gallantry and superstitions. And so careful is Sir Walter to paint the petty pedantries of the Scotch traditional conservatism, that he will not spare even Charles Edward--of whom he draws so graceful a picture--the humiliation of submitting to old Bradwardine's "solemn act of homage," but makes him go through the absurd ceremony of placing his foot on a cushion to have its brogue unlatched by the dry old enthusiast of heraldic lore. Indeed it was because Scott so much enjoyed the contrast between the high sentiment of life and its dry and often absurd detail, that his imagination found so much freer a vent in the historical romance, than it ever found in the romantic poem. Yet he clearly needed the romantic excitement of picturesque scenes and historical interests, too. I do not think he would ever have gained any brilliant success in the narrower region of the domestic novel. He said himself, in expressing his admiration of Miss Austen, "The big bow-wow strain I can do myself, like any now going, but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me." Indeed he tried it to some extent in _St. Ronan's Well_, and so far as he tried it, I think he failed. Scott needed a certain largeness of type, a strongly-marked class-life, and, where it was possible, a free, out-of-doors life, for his delineations. _No_ one could paint beggars and gipsies, and wandering fiddlers, and mercenary soldiers, and peasants and farmers and lawyers, and magistrates, and preachers, and courtiers, and statesmen, and best of all perhaps queens and kings, with anything like his ability. But when it came to describing the small differences of manner, differences not due to external habits, so much as to internal sentiment or education, or mere domestic circumstance, he was beyond his proper field. In the sketch of the St. Ronan's Spa and the company at the _table-d'hôte_, he is of course somewhere near the mark,--he was too able a man to fall far short of success in anything he really gave to the world; but it is not interesting. Miss Austen would have made Lady Penelope Penfeather a hundred times as amusing. We turn to Meg Dods and Touchwood, and Cargill, and Captain Jekyl, and Sir Bingo Binks, and to Clara Mowbray,--i. e. to the lives really moulded by large and specific causes, for enjoyment, and leave the small gossip of the company at the Wells as, relatively at least, a failure. And it is well for all the world that it was so. The domestic novel, when really of the highest kind, is no doubt a perfect work of art, and an unfailing source of amusement; but it has nothing of the tonic influence, the large instructiveness, the stimulating intellectual air, of Scott's historic tales. Even when Scott is farthest from reality--as in _Ivanhoe_ or _The Monastery_--he makes you open your eyes to all sorts of historical conditions to which you would otherwise be blind. The domestic novel, even when its art is perfect, gives little but pleasure at the best; at the worst it is simply scandal idealized. Scott often confessed his contempt for his own heroes. He said of Edward Waverley, for instance, that he was "a sneaking piece of imbecility," and that "if he had married Flora, she would have set him up upon the chimney-piece as Count Borowlaski'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."[33] In another letter he says, "My rogue always, in despite of me, turns out my hero."[34] And it seems very likely that in most of the situations Scott describes so well, his own course would have been that of his wilder impulses, and not that of his reason. Assuredly he would never have stopped hesitating on the line between opposite courses as his Waverleys, his Mortons, his Osbaldistones do. Whenever he was really involved in a party strife, he flung prudence and impartiality to the winds, and went in like the hearty partisan which his strong impulses made of him. But granting this, I do not agree with his condemnation of all his own colourless heroes. However much they differed in nature from Scott himself, the even balance of their reason against their sympathies is certainly well conceived, is in itself natural, and is an admirable expedient for effecting that which was probably its real use to Scott,--the affording an opportunity for the delineation of all the pros and cons of the case, so that the characters on both sides of the struggle should be properly understood. Scott's imagination was clearly far wider--was far more permeated with the fixed air of sound judgment--than his practical impulses. He needed a machinery for displaying his insight into both sides of a public quarrel, and his colourless heroes gave him the instrument he needed. Both in Morton's case (in _Old Mortality_), and in Waverley's, the hesitation is certainly well described. Indeed in relation to the controversy between Covenanters and Royalists, while his political and martial prepossessions went with Claverhouse, his reason and educated moral feeling certainly were clearly identified with Morton. It is, however, obviously true that Scott's heroes are mostly created for the sake of the facility they give in delineating the other characters, and not the other characters for the sake of the heroes. They are the imaginative neutral ground, as it were, on which opposing influences are brought to play; and what Scott best loved to paint was those who, whether by nature, by inheritance, or by choice, had become unique and characteristic types of one-sided feeling, not those who were merely in process of growth, and had not ranged themselves at all. Mr. Carlyle, who, as I have said before, places Scott's romances far below their real level, maintains that these great types of his are drawn from the outside, and not made actually to live. "His Bailie Jarvies, Dinmonts, Dalgettys (for their name is legion), do look and talk like what they give themselves out for; they are, if not _created_ and made poetically alive, yet deceptively _enacted_ as a good player might do them. What more is wanted, then? For the reader lying on a sofa, nothing more; yet for another sort of reader much. It were a long chapter to unfold the difference in drawing a character between a Scott and a Shakespeare or Goethe. Yet it is a difference literally immense; they are of a different species; the value of the one is not to be counted in the coin of the other. We might say in a short word, which covers a long matter, that your Shakespeare fashions his characters from the heart outwards; your Scott fashions them from the skin inwards, never getting near the heart of them. The one set become living men and women; the other amount to little more than mechanical cases, deceptively painted automatons."[35] And then he goes on to contrast Fenella in _Peveril of the Peak_ with Goethe's Mignon. Mr. Carlyle could hardly have chosen a less fair comparison. If Goethe is to be judged by his women, let Scott be judged by his men. So judged, I think Scott will, as a painter of character--of course, I am not now speaking of him as a poet,--come out far above Goethe. Excepting the hero of his first drama (Götz of the iron hand), which by the way was so much in Scott's line that his first essay in poetry was to translate it--not very well--I doubt if Goethe was ever successful with his pictures of men. _Wilhelm Meister_ is, as Niebuhr truly said, "a ménagerie of tame animals." Doubtless Goethe's women--certainly his women of culture--are more truly and inwardly conceived and created than Scott's. Except Jeanie Deans and Madge Wildfire, and perhaps Lucy Ashton, Scott's women are apt to be uninteresting, either pink and white toys, or hardish women of the world. But then no one can compare the men of the two writers, and not see Scott's vast pre-eminence on that side. I think the deficiency of his pictures of women, odd as it seems to say so, should be greatly attributed to his natural chivalry. His conception of women of his own or a higher class was always too romantic. He hardly ventured, as it were, in his tenderness for them, to look deeply into their little weaknesses and intricacies of character. With women of an inferior class, he had not this feeling. Nothing can be more perfect than the manner in which he blends the dairy-woman and woman of business in Jeanie Deans, with the lover and the sister. But once make a woman beautiful, or in any way an object of homage to him, and Scott bowed so low before the image of her, that he could not go deep into her heart. He could no more have analysed such a woman, as Thackeray analyzed Lady Castlewood, or Amelia, or Becky, or as George Eliot analysed Rosamond Vincy, than he could have vivisected Camp or Maida. To some extent, therefore, Scott's pictures of women remain something in the style of the miniatures of the last age--bright and beautiful beings without any special character in them. He was dazzled by a fair heroine. He could not take them up into his imagination as real beings as he did men. But then how living are his men, whether coarse or noble! What a picture, for instance, is that in _A Legend of Montrose_ of the conceited, pragmatic, but prompt and dauntless soldier of fortune, rejecting Argyle's attempts to tamper with him, in the dungeon at Inverary, suddenly throwing himself on the disguised Duke so soon as he detects him by his voice, and wresting from him the means of his own liberation! Who could read that scene and say for a moment that Dalgetty is painted "from the skin inwards"? It was just Scott himself breathing his own life through the habits of a good specimen of the mercenary soldier--realizing where the spirit of hire would end, and the sense of honour would begin--and preferring, even in a dungeon, the audacious policy of a sudden attack to that of crafty negotiation. What a picture (and a very different one) again is that in _Redgauntlet_ of Peter Peebles, the mad litigant, with face emaciated by poverty and anxiety, and rendered wild by "an insane lightness about the eyes," dashing into the English magistrate's court for a warrant against his fugitive counsel. Or, to take a third instance, as different as possible from either, how powerfully conceived is the situation in _Old Mortality_, where Balfour of Burley, in his fanatic fury at the defeat of his plan for a new rebellion, pushes the oak-tree, which connects his wild retreat with the outer world, into the stream, and tries to slay Morton for opposing him. In such scenes and a hundred others--for these are mere random examples--Scott undoubtedly painted his masculine figures from as deep and inward a conception of the character of the situation as Goethe ever attained, even in drawing Mignon, or Klärchen, or Gretchen. The distinction has no real existence. Goethe's pictures of women were no doubt the intuitions of genius; and so are Scott's of men--and here and there of his women too. Professional women he can always paint with power. Meg Dods, the innkeeper, Meg Merrilies, the gipsy, Mause Headrigg, the Covenanter, Elspeth, the old fishwife in _The Antiquary_, and the old crones employed to nurse and watch, and lay out the corpse, in _The Bride of Lammermoor_, are all in their way impressive figures. And even in relation to women of a rank more fascinating to Scott, and whose inner character was perhaps on that account, less familiar to his imagination, grant him but a few hints from history, and he draws a picture which, for vividness and brilliancy, may almost compare with Shakespeare's own studies in English history. Had Shakespeare painted the scene in _The Abbot_, in which Mary Stuart commands one of her Mary's in waiting to tell her at what bridal she last danced, and Mary Fleming blurts out the reference to the marriage of Sebastian at Holyrood, would any one hesitate to regard it as a stroke of genius worthy of the great dramatist? This picture of the Queen's mind suddenly thrown off its balance, and betraying, in the agony of the moment, the fear and remorse which every association with Darnley conjured up, is painted "from the heart outwards," not "from the skin inwards," if ever there were such a painting in the world. Scott hardly ever failed in painting kings or peasants, queens or peasant-women. There was something in the well-marked type of both to catch his imagination, which can always hit off the grander features of royalty, and the homelier features of laborious humility. Is there any sketch traced in lines of more sweeping grandeur and more impressive force than the following of Mary Stuart's lucid interval of remorse--lucid compared with her ordinary mood, though it was of a remorse that was almost delirious--which breaks in upon her hour of fascinating condescension?-- "'Are they not a lovely couple, my Fleming? and is it not heart-rending to think that I must be their ruin?' "'Not so,' said Roland Græme, 'it is we, gracious sovereign, who will be your deliverers.' '_Ex oribus parvulorum!_' said the queen, looking upward; 'if it is by the mouth of these children that heaven calls me to resume the stately thoughts which become my birth and my rights, thou wilt grant them thy protection, and to me the power of rewarding their zeal.' Then turning to Fleming, she instantly added, 'Thou knowest, my friend, whether to make those who have served me happy, was not ever Mary's favourite pastime. When I have been rebuked by the stern preachers of the Calvinistic heresy--when I have seen the fierce countenances of my nobles averted from me, has it not been because I mixed in the harmless pleasures of the young and gay, and rather for the sake of their happiness than my own, have mingled in the masque, the song or the dance, with the youth of my household? Well, I repent not of it--though Knox termed it sin, and Morton degradation--I was happy because I saw happiness around me: and woe betide the wretched jealousy that can extract guilt out of the overflowings of an unguarded gaiety!--Fleming, if we are restored to our throne, shall we not have one blithesome day at a blithesome bridal, of which we must now name neither the bride nor the bridegroom? But that bridegroom shall have the barony of Blairgowrie, a fair gift even for a queen to give, and that bride's chaplet shall be twined with the fairest pearls that ever were found in the depths of Lochlomond; and thou thyself, Mary Fleming, the best dresser of tires that ever busked the tresses of a queen, and who would scorn to touch those of any woman of lower rank--thou thyself shalt for my love twine them into the bride's tresses.--Look, my Fleming, suppose then such clustered locks as these of our Catherine, they would not put shame upon thy skill.' So saying she passed her hand fondly over the head of her youthful favourite, while her more aged attendant replied despondently, 'Alas, madam, your thoughts stray far from home.' 'They do, my Fleming,' said the queen, 'but is it well or kind in you to call them back?--God knows they have kept the perch this night but too closely.--Come, I will recall the gay vision, were it but to punish them. Yes, at that blithesome bridal, Mary herself shall forget the weight of sorrows, and the toil of state, and herself once more lead a measure.--At whose wedding was it that we last danced, my Fleming? I think care has troubled my memory--yet something of it I should remember, canst thou not aid me? I know thou canst.' 'Alas, madam,' replied the lady. 'What,' said Mary, 'wilt thou not help us so far? this is a peevish adherence to thine own graver opinion which holds our talk as folly. But thou art court-bred and wilt well understand me when I say the queen _commands_ Lady Fleming to tell her when she led the last _branle_.' With a face deadly pale and a mien as if she were about to sink into the earth, the court-bred dame, no longer daring to refuse obedience, faltered out, 'Gracious lady--if my memory err not--it was at a masque in Holyrood--at the marriage of Sebastian.' The unhappy queen, who had hitherto listened with a melancholy smile, provoked by the reluctance with which the Lady Fleming brought out her story, at this ill-fated word interrupted her with a shriek so wild and loud that the vaulted apartment rang, and both Roland and Catherine sprung to their feet in the utmost terror and alarm. Meantime, Mary seemed, by the train of horrible ideas thus suddenly excited, surprised not only beyond self-command, but for the moment beyond the verge of reason. 'Traitress,' she said to the Lady Fleming, 'thou wouldst slay thy sovereign. Call my French guards--_à moi! à moi! mes Français_!--I am beset with traitors in mine own palace--they have murdered my husband--Rescue! Rescue! for the Queen of Scotland!' She started up from her chair--her features late so exquisitely lovely in their paleness, now inflamed with the fury of frenzy, and resembling those of a Bellona. 'We will take the field ourself,' she said; 'warn the city--warn Lothian and Fife--saddle our Spanish barb, and bid French Paris see our petronel be charged. Better to die at the head of our brave Scotsmen, like our grandfather at Flodden, than of a broken heart like our ill-starred father.' 'Be patient--be composed, dearest sovereign,' said Catherine; and then addressing Lady Fleming angrily, she added, 'How could you say aught that reminded her of her husband?' The word reached the ear of the unhappy princess who caught it up, speaking with great rapidity, 'Husband!--what husband? Not his most Christian Majesty--he is ill at ease--he cannot mount on horseback--not him of the Lennox--but it was the Duke of Orkney thou wouldst say?' 'For God's love, madam, be patient!' said the Lady Fleming. But the queen's excited imagination could by no entreaty be diverted from its course. 'Bid him come hither to our aid,' she said, 'and bring with him his lambs, as he calls them--Bowton, Hay of Talla, Black Ormiston and his kinsman Hob--Fie, how swart they are, and how they smell of sulphur! What! closeted with Morton? Nay, if the Douglas and the Hepburn hatch the complot together, the bird when it breaks the shell will scare Scotland, will it not, my Fleming?' 'She grows wilder and wilder,' said Fleming. 'We have too many hearers for these strange words.' 'Roland,' said Catherine, 'in the name of God begone!--you cannot aid us here--leave us to deal with her alone--away--away!" And equally fine is the scene in _Kenilworth_ in which Elizabeth undertakes the reconciliation of the haughty rivals, Sussex and Leicester, unaware that in the course of the audience she herself will have to bear a great strain on her self-command, both in her feelings as a queen and her feelings as a lover. Her grand rebukes to both, her ill-concealed preference for Leicester, her whispered ridicule of Sussex, the impulses of tenderness which she stifles, the flashes of resentment to which she gives way, the triumph of policy over private feeling, her imperious impatience when she is baffled, her jealousy as she grows suspicious of a personal rival, her gratified pride and vanity when the suspicion is exchanged for the clear evidence, as she supposes, of Leicester's love, and her peremptory conclusion of the audience, bring before the mind a series of pictures far more vivid and impressive than the greatest of historical painters could fix on canvas, even at the cost of the labour of years. Even more brilliant, though not so sustained and difficult an effort of genius, is the later scene in the same story, in which Elizabeth drags the unhappy Countess of Leicester from her concealment in one of the grottoes of Kenilworth Castle, and strides off with her, in a fit of vindictive humiliation and Amazonian fury, to confront her with her husband. But this last scene no doubt is more in Scott's way. He can always paint women in their more masculine moods. Where he frequently fails is in the attempt to indicate the finer shades of women's nature. In Amy Robsart herself, for example, he is by no means generally successful, though in an early scene her childish delight in the various orders and decorations of her husband is painted with much freshness and delicacy. But wherever, as in the case of queens, Scott can get a telling hint from actual history, he can always so use it as to make history itself seem dim to the equivalent for it which he gives us. And yet, as every one knows, Scott was excessively free in his manipulations of history for the purposes of romance. In _Kenilworth_ he represents Shakespeare's plays as already in the mouths of courtiers and statesmen, though he lays the scene in the eighteenth year of Elizabeth, when Shakespeare was hardly old enough to rob an orchard. In _Woodstock_, on the contrary, he insists, if you compare Sir Henry Lee's dates with the facts, that Shakespeare died twenty years at least before he actually died. The historical basis, again, of _Woodstock_ and of _Redgauntlet_ is thoroughly untrustworthy, and about all the minuter details of history,--unless so far as they were characteristic of the age,--I do not suppose that Scott in his romances ever troubled himself at all. And yet few historians--not even Scott himself when he exchanged romance for history--ever drew the great figures of history with so powerful a hand. In writing history and biography Scott has little or no advantage over very inferior men. His pictures of Swift, of Dryden, of Napoleon, are in no way very vivid. It is only where he is working from the pure imagination,--though imagination stirred by historic study,--that he paints a picture which follows us about, as if with living eyes, instead of creating for us a mere series of lines and colours. Indeed, whether Scott draws truly or falsely, he draws with such genius that his pictures of Richard and Saladin, of Louis XI. and Charles the Bold, of Margaret of Anjou and René of Provence, of Mary Stuart and Elizabeth Tudor, of Sussex and of Leicester, of James and Charles and Buckingham, of the two Dukes of Argyle--the Argyle of the time of the revolution, and the Argyle of George II., of Queen Caroline, of Claverhouse, and Monmouth, and of Rob Roy, will live in English literature beside Shakespeare's pictures--probably less faithful if more imaginative--of John and Richard and the later Henries, and all the great figures by whom they were surrounded. No historical portrait that we possess will take precedence--as a mere portrait--of Scott's brilliant study of James I. in _The Fortunes of Nigel_. Take this illustration for instance, where George Heriot the goldsmith (Jingling Geordie, as the king familiarly calls him) has just been speaking of Lord Huntinglen, as "a man of the old rough world that will drink and swear:"-- "'O Geordie!' exclaimed the king, 'these are auld-warld frailties, of whilk we dare not pronounce even ourselves absolutely free. But the warld grows worse from day to day, Geordie. The juveniles of this age may weel say with the poet,-- "�tas parentum pejor avis tulit Nos nequiores--" This Dalgarno does not drink so much; aye or swear so much, as his father, but he wenches, Geordie, and he breaks his word and oath baith. As to what ye say of the leddy and the ministers, we are all fallible creatures, Geordie, priests and kings as weel as others; and wha kens but what that may account for the difference between this Dalgarno and his father? The earl is the vera soul of honour, and cares nae mair for warld's gear than a noble hound for the quest of a foulmart; but as for his son, he was like to brazen us all out--ourselves, Steenie, Baby Charles, and our Council, till he heard of the tocher, and then by my kingly crown he lap like a cock at a grossart! These are discrepancies betwixt parent and son not to be accounted for naturally, according to Baptista Porta, Michael Scott _de secretis_, and others. Ah, Jingling Geordie, if your clouting the caldron, and jingling on pots, pans, and veshels of all manner of metal, hadna jingled a' your grammar out of your head, I could have touched on that matter to you at mair length.' ... Heriot inquired whether Lord Dalgarno had consented to do the Lady Hermione justice. 'Troth, man, I have small doubt that he will,' quoth the king, 'I gave him the schedule of her worldly substance, which you delivered to us in the council, and we allowed him half an hour to chew the cud upon that. It is rare reading for bringing him to reason. I left Baby Charles and Steenie laying his duty before him, and if he can resist doing what _they_ desire him, why I wish he would teach _me_ the gate of it. O Geordie, Jingling Geordie, it was grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing _on_ the turpitude of incontinence.' 'I am afraid,' said George Heriot, more hastily than prudently, 'I might have thought of the old proverb of Satan reproving sin.' 'Deil hae our saul, neighbour,' said the king, reddening, 'but ye are not blate! I gie ye licence to speak freely, and by our saul, ye do not let the privilege become lost, _non utendo_--it will suffer no negative prescription in your hands. Is it fit, think ye, that Baby Charles should let his thoughts be publicly seen? No, no, princes' thoughts are _arcana imperii: qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare_. Every liege subject is bound to speak the whole truth to the king, but there is nae reciprocity of obligation--and for Steenie having been whiles a dike-louper at a time, is it for you, who are his goldsmith, and to whom, I doubt, he awes an uncomatable sum, to cast that up to him?" Assuredly there is no undue favouring of Stuarts in such a picture as that. Scott's humour is, I think, of very different qualities in relation to different subjects. Certainly he was at times capable of considerable heaviness of hand,--of the Scotch "wut" which has been so irreverently treated by English critics. His rather elaborate jocular introductions, under the name of Jedediah Cleishbotham, are clearly laborious at times. And even his own letters to his daughter-in-law, which Mr. Lockhart seems to regard as models of tender playfulness and pleasantry, seem to me decidedly elephantine. Not unfrequently, too, his stereotyped jokes weary. Dalgetty bores you almost as much as he would do in real life,--which is a great fault in art. Bradwardine becomes a nuisance, and as for Sir Piercie Shafton, he is beyond endurance. Like some other Scotchmen of genius, Scott twanged away at any effective chord till it more than lost its expressiveness. But in dry humour, and in that higher humour which skilfully blends the ludicrous and the pathetic, so that it is hardly possible to separate between smiles and tears, Scott is a master. His canny innkeeper, who, having sent away all the peasemeal to the camp of the Covenanters, and all the oatmeal (with deep professions of duty) to the castle and its cavaliers, in compliance with the requisitions sent to him on each side, admits with a sigh to his daughter that "they maun gar wheat flour serve themsels for a blink,"--his firm of solicitors, Greenhorn and Grinderson, whose senior partner writes respectfully to clients in prosperity, and whose junior partner writes familiarly to those in adversity,--his arbitrary nabob who asks how the devil any one should be able to mix spices so well "as one who has been where they grow;"--his little ragamuffin who indignantly denies that he has broken his promise not to gamble away his sixpences at pitch-and-toss because he has gambled them away at "neevie-neevie-nick-nack,"--and similar figures abound in his tales,--are all creations which make one laugh inwardly as we read. But he has a much higher humour still, that inimitable power of shading off ignorance into knowledge and simplicity into wisdom, which makes his picture of Jeanie Deans, for instance, so humorous as well as so affecting. When Jeanie reunites her father to her husband by reminding the former how it would sometimes happen that "twa precious saints might pu' sundrywise like twa cows riving at the same hayband," she gives us an admirable instance of Scott's higher humour. Or take Jeanie Deans's letter to her father communicating to him the pardon of his daughter and her own interview with the Queen:-- "DEAREST AND TRULY HONOURED FATHER.--This comes with my duty to inform you, that it has pleased God to redeem that captivitie of my poor sister, in respect the Queen's blessed Majesty, for whom we are ever bound to pray, hath redeemed her soul from the slayer, granting the ransom of her, whilk is ane pardon or reprieve. And I spoke with the Queen face to face, and yet live; for she is not muckle differing from other grand leddies, saving that she has a stately presence, and een like a blue huntin' hawk's, whilk gaed throu' and throu' me like a Highland durk--And all this good was, alway under the Great Giver, to whom all are but instruments, wrought for us by the Duk of Argile, wha is ane native true-hearted Scotsman, and not pridefu', like other folk we ken of--and likewise skeely enow in bestial, whereof he has promised to gie me twa Devonshire kye, of which he is enamoured, although I do still haud by the real hawkit Airshire breed--and I have promised him a cheese; and I wad wuss ye, if Gowans, the brockit cow, has a quey, that she suld suck her fill of milk, as I am given to understand he has none of that breed, and is not scornfu' but will take a thing frae a puir body, that it may lighten their heart of the loading of debt that they awe him. Also his honour the Duke will accept ane of our Dunlop cheeses, and it sall be my faut if a better was ever yearned in Lowden."--[Here follow some observations respecting the breed of cattle, and the produce of the dairy, which it is our intention to forward to the Board of Agriculture.]--"Nevertheless, these are but matters of the after-harvest, in respect of the great good which Providence hath gifted us with--and, in especial, poor Effie's life. And oh, my dear father, since it hath pleased God to be merciful to her, let her not want your free pardon, whilk will make her meet to be ane vessel of grace, and also a comfort to your ain graie hairs. Dear Father, will ye let the Laird ken that we have had friends strangely raised up to us, and that the talent whilk he lent me will be thankfully repaid. I hae some of it to the fore; and the rest of it is not knotted up in ane purse or napkin, but in ane wee bit paper, as is the fashion heir, whilk I am assured is gude for the siller. And, dear father, through Mr. Butler's means I hae gude friendship with the Duke, for there had been kindness between their forbears in the auld troublesome time byepast. And Mrs. Glass has been kind like my very mother. She has a braw house here, and lives bien and warm, wi' twa servant lasses, and a man and a callant in the shop. And she is to send you doun a pound of her hie-dried, and some other tobaka, and we maun think of some propine for her, since her kindness hath been great. And the Duk is to send the pardon doun by an express messenger, in respect that I canna travel sae fast; and I am to come doun wi' twa of his Honour's servants--that is, John Archibald, a decent elderly gentleman, that says he has seen you lang syne, when ye were buying beasts in the west frae the Laird of Aughtermuggitie--but maybe ye winna mind him--ony way, he's a civil man--and Mrs. Dolly Dutton, that is to be dairy-maid at Inverara: and they bring me on as far as Glasgo', whilk will make it nae pinch to win hame, whilk I desire of all things. May the Giver of all good things keep ye in your outgauns and incomings, whereof devoutly prayeth your loving dauter, "JEAN DEANS." This contains an example of Scott's rather heavy jocularity as well as giving us a fine illustration of his highest and deepest and sunniest humour. Coming where it does, the joke inserted about the Board of Agriculture is rather like the gambol of a rhinoceros trying to imitate the curvettings of a thoroughbred horse. Some of the finest touches of his humour are no doubt much heightened by his perfect command of the genius as well as the dialect of a peasantry, in whom a true culture of mind and sometimes also of heart is found in the closest possible contact with the humblest pursuits and the quaintest enthusiasm for them. But Scott, with all his turn for irony--and Mr. Lockhart says that even on his death-bed he used towards his children the same sort of good-humoured irony to which he had always accustomed them in his life--certainly never gives us any example of that highest irony which is found so frequently in Shakespeare, which touches the paradoxes of the spiritual life of the children of earth, and which reached its highest point in Isaiah. Now and then in his latest diaries--the diaries written in his deep affliction--he comes near the edge of it. Once, for instance, he says, "What a strange scene if the surge of conversation could suddenly ebb like the tide, and show us the state of people's real minds! 'No eyes the rocks discover Which lurk beneath the deep.' Life could not be endured were it seen in reality." But this is not irony, only the sort of meditation which, in a mind inclined to thrust deep into the secrets of life's paradoxes, is apt to lead to irony. Scott, however, does not thrust deep in this direction. He met the cold steel which inflicts the deepest interior wounds, like a soldier, and never seems to have meditated on the higher paradoxes of life till reason reeled. The irony of Hamlet is far from Scott. His imagination was essentially one of distinct embodiment. He never even seemed so much as to contemplate that sundering of substance and form, that rending away of outward garments, that unclothing of the soul, in order that it might be more effectually clothed upon, which is at the heart of anything that may be called spiritual irony. The constant abiding of his mind within the well-defined forms of some one or other of the conditions of outward life and manners, among the scores of different spheres of human habit, was, no doubt, one of the secrets of his genius; but it was also its greatest limitation. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 32: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 171-3.] [Footnote 33: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 175-6.] [Footnote 34: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 46.] [Footnote 35: Carlyle's _Miscellaneous Essays_, iv. 174-5.] CHAPTER XI. MORALITY AND RELIGION. The very same causes which limited Scott's humour and irony to the commoner fields of experience, and prevented him from ever introducing into his stories characters of the highest type of moral thoughtfulness, gave to his own morality and religion, which were, I think, true to the core so far as they went, a shade of distinct conventionality. It is no doubt quite true, as he himself tells us, that he took more interest in his mercenaries and moss-troopers, outlaws, gipsies, and beggars, than he did in the fine ladies and gentlemen under a cloud whom he adopted as heroines and heroes. But that was the very sign of his conventionalism. Though he interested himself more in these irregular persons, he hardly ever ventured to paint their inner life so as to show how little there was to choose between the sins of those who are at war with society and the sins of those who bend to the yoke of society. He widened rather than narrowed the chasm between the outlaw and the respectable citizen, even while he did not disguise his own romantic interest in the former. He extenuated, no doubt, the sins of all brave and violent defiers of the law, as distinguished from the sins of crafty and cunning abusers of the law. But the leaning he had to the former was, as he was willing to admit, what he regarded as a "naughty" leaning. He did not attempt for a moment to balance accounts between them and society. He paid his tribute as a matter of course to the established morality, and only put in a word or two by way of attempt to diminish the severity of the sentence on the bold transgressor. And then, where what is called the "law of honour" comes in to traverse the law of religion, he had no scruple in setting aside the latter in favour of the customs of gentlemen, without any attempt to justify that course. Yet it is evident from various passages in his writings that he held Christian duty inconsistent with duelling, and that he held himself a sincere Christian. In spite of this, when he was fifty-six, and under no conceivable hurry or perturbation of feeling, but only concerned to defend his own conduct--which was indeed plainly right--as to a political disclosure which he had made in his life of Napoleon, he asked his old friend William Clerk to be his second, if the expected challenge from General Gourgaud should come, and declared his firm intention of accepting it. On the strength of official evidence he had exposed some conduct of General Gourgaud's at St. Helena, which appeared to be far from honourable, and he thought it his duty on that account to submit to be shot at by General Gourgaud, if General Gourgaud had wished it. In writing to William Clerk to ask him to be his second, he says, "Like a man who finds himself in a scrape, General Gourgaud may wish to fight himself out of it, and if the quarrel should be thrust on me, why, _I will not baulk him, Jackie_. He shall not dishonour the country through my sides, I can assure him." In other words, Scott acted just as he had made Waverley and others of his heroes act, on a code of honour which he knew to be false, and he must have felt in this case to be something worse. He thought himself at that time under the most stringent obligations both to his creditors and his children, to do all in his power to redeem himself and his estate from debt. Nay, more, he held that his life was a trust from his Creator, which he had no right to throw away merely because a man whom he had not really injured, was indulging a strong wish to injure him; but he could so little brook the imputation of physical cowardice, that he was moral coward enough to resolve to meet General Gourgaud, if General Gourgaud lusted after a shot at him. Nor is there any trace preserved of so much as a moral scruple in his own mind on the subject, and this though there are clear traces in his other writings as to what he thought Christian morality required. But the Border chivalry was so strong in Scott that, on subjects of this kind at least, his morality was the conventional morality of a day rapidly passing away. He showed the same conventional feeling in his severity towards one of his own brothers who had been guilty of cowardice. Daniel Scott was the black sheep of the family. He got into difficulties in business, formed a bad connexion with an artful woman, and was sent to try his fortunes in the West Indies. There he was employed in some service against a body of refractory negroes--we do not know its exact nature--and apparently showed the white feather. Mr. Lockhart says that "he returned to Scotland a dishonoured man; and though he found shelter and compassion from his mother, his brother would never see him again. Nay, when, soon after, his health, shattered by dissolute indulgence, ... gave way altogether, and he died, as yet a young man, the poet refused either to attend his funeral or to wear mourning for him, like the rest of his family."[36] Indeed he always spoke of him as his "relative," not as his brother. Here again Scott's severity was due to his brother's failure as a "man of honour," i. e. in courage. He was forbearing enough with vices of a different kind; made John Ballantyne's dissipation the object rather of his jokes than of his indignation; and not only mourned for him, but really grieved for him when he died. It is only fair to say, however, that for this conventional scorn of a weakness rather than a sin, Scott sorrowed sincerely later in life, and that in sketching the physical cowardice of Connochar in _The Fair Maid of Perth_, he deliberately made an attempt to atone for this hardness towards his brother by showing how frequently the foundation of cowardice may be laid in perfectly involuntary physical temperament, and pointing out with what noble elements of disposition it may be combined. But till reflection on many forms of human character had enlarged Scott's charity, and perhaps also the range of his speculative ethics, he remained a conventional moralist, and one, moreover, the type of whose conventional code was borrowed more from that of honour than from that of religious principle. There is one curious passage in his diary, written very near the end of his life, in which Scott even seems to declare that conventional standards of conduct are better, or at least safer, than religious standards of conduct. He says in his diary for the 15th April, 1828,--"Dined with Sir Robert Inglis, and met Sir Thomas Acland, my old and kind friend. I was happy to see him. He may be considered now as the head of the religious party in the House of Commons--a powerful body which Wilberforce long commanded. It is a difficult situation, for the adaptation of religious motives to earthly policy is apt--among the infinite delusions of the human heart--to be a snare."[37] His letters to his eldest son, the young cavalry officer, on his first start in life, are much admired by Mr. Lockhart, but to me they read a little hard, a little worldly, and extremely conventional. Conventionality was certainly to his mind almost a virtue. Of enthusiasm in religion Scott always spoke very severely; both in his novels and in his letters and private diary. In writing to Lord Montague, he speaks of such enthusiasm as was then prevalent at Oxford, and which makes, he says, "religion a motive and a pretext for particular lines of thinking in politics and in temporal affairs" [as if it could help doing that!] as "teaching a new way of going to the devil for God's sake," and this expressly, because when the young are infected with it, it disunites families, and sets "children in opposition to their parents."[38] He gives us, however, one reason for his dread of anything like enthusiasm, which is not conventional;--that it interferes with the submissive and tranquil mood which is the only true religious mood. Speaking in his diary of a weakness and fluttering at the heart, from which he had suffered, he says, "It is an awful sensation, and would have made an enthusiast of me, had I indulged my imagination on religious subjects. I have been always careful to place my mind in the most tranquil posture which it can assume, during my private exercises of devotion."[39] And in this avoidance of indulging the imagination on religious, or even spiritual subjects, Scott goes far beyond Shakespeare. I do not think there is a single study in all his romances of what may be fairly called a pre-eminently spiritual character as such, though Jeanie Deans approaches nearest to it. The same may be said of Shakespeare. But Shakespeare, though he has never drawn a pre-eminently spiritual character, often enough indulged his imagination while meditating on spiritual themes. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 36: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii. 198-9.] [Footnote 37: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 231.] [Footnote 38: Ibid., vii. 255-6.] [Footnote 39: Ibid., viii. 292.] CHAPTER XII. DISTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS AT ABBOTSFORD. Between 1814 and the end of 1825, Scott's literary labour was interrupted only by one serious illness, and hardly interrupted by that,--by a few journeys,--one to Paris after the battle of Waterloo, and several to London,--and by the worry of a constant stream of intrusive visitors. Of his journeys he has left some records; but I cannot say that I think Scott would ever have reached, as a mere observer and recorder, at all the high point which he reached directly his imagination went to work to create a story. That imagination was, indeed, far less subservient to his mere perceptions than to his constructive powers. _Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk_--the records of his Paris journey after Waterloo--for instance, are not at all above the mark of a good special correspondent. His imagination was less the imagination of insight, than the imagination of one whose mind was a great kaleidoscope of human life and fortunes. But far more interrupting than either illness or travel, was the lion-hunting of which Scott became the object, directly after the publication of the earlier novels. In great measure, no doubt, on account of the mystery as to his authorship, his fame became something oppressive. At one time as many as _sixteen_ parties of visitors applied to see Abbotsford in a single day. Strangers,--especially the American travellers of that day, who were much less reticent and more irrepressible than the American travellers of this,--would come to him without introductions, facetiously cry out "Prodigious!" in imitation of Dominie Sampson, whatever they were shown, inquire whether the new house was called Tullyveolan or Tillytudlem, cross-examine, with open note-books, as to Scott's age, and the age of his wife, and appear to be taken quite by surprise when they were bowed out without being asked to dine.[40] In those days of high postage Scott's bill for letters "seldom came under 150_l._ a year," and "as to coach parcels, they were a perfect ruination." On one occasion a mighty package came by post from the United States, for which Scott had to pay five pounds sterling. It contained a MS. play called _The Cherokee Lovers_, by a young lady of New York, who begged Scott to read and correct it, write a prologue and epilogue, get it put on the stage at Drury Lane, and negotiate with Constable or Murray for the copyright. In about a fortnight another packet not less formidable arrived, charged with a similar postage, which Scott, not grown cautious through experience, recklessly opened; out jumped a duplicate copy of _The Cherokee Lovers_, with a second letter from the authoress, stating that as the weather had been stormy, and she feared that something might have happened to her former MS., she had thought it prudent to send him a duplicate.[41] Of course, when fame reached such a point as this, it became both a worry and a serious waste of money, and what was far more valuable than money, of time, privacy, and tranquillity of mind. And though no man ever bore such worries with the equanimity of Scott, no man ever received less pleasure from the adulation of unknown and often vulgar and ignorant admirers. His real amusements were his trees and his friends. "Planting and pruning trees," he said, "I could work at from morning to night. There is a sort of self-congratulation, a little tickling self-flattery, in the idea that while you are pleasing and amusing yourself, you are seriously contributing to the future welfare of the country, and that your very acorn may send its future ribs of oak to future victories like Trafalgar,"[42]--for the day of iron ships was not yet. And again, at a later stage of his planting:--"You can have no idea of the exquisite delight of a planter,--he is like a painter laying on his colours,--at every moment he sees his effects coming out. There is no art or occupation comparable to this; it is full of past, present, and future enjoyment. I look back to the time when there was not a tree here, only bare heath; I look round and see thousands of trees growing up, all of which, I may say almost each of which, have received my personal attention. I remember, five years ago, looking forward with the most delighted expectation to this very hour, and as each year has passed, the expectation has gone on increasing. I do the same now. I anticipate what this plantation and that one will presently be, if only taken care of, and there is not a spot of which I do not watch the progress. Unlike building, or even painting, or indeed any other kind of pursuit, this has no end, and is never interrupted; but goes on from day to day, and from year to year, with a perpetually augmenting interest. Farming I hate. What have I to do with fattening and killing beasts, or raising corn, only to cut it down, and to wrangle with farmers about prices, and to be constantly at the mercy of the seasons? There can be no such disappointments or annoyances in planting trees."[43] Scott indeed regarded planting as a mode of so moulding the form and colour of the outward world, that nature herself became indebted to him for finer outlines, richer masses of colour, and deeper shadows, as well as for more fertile and sheltered soils. And he was as skilful in producing the last result, as he was in the artistic effects of his planting. In the essay on the planting of waste lands, he mentions a story,--drawn from his own experience,--of a planter, who having scooped out the lowest part of his land for enclosures, and "planted the wood round them in masses enlarged or contracted as the natural lying of the ground seemed to dictate," met, six years after these changes, his former tenant on the ground, and said to him, "I suppose, Mr. R----, you will say I have ruined your farm by laying half of it into woodland?" "I should have expected it, sir," answered Mr. R----, "if you had told me beforehand what you were going to do; but I am now of a very different opinion; and as I am looking for land at present, if you are inclined to take for the remaining sixty acres the same rent which I formerly gave for a hundred and twenty, I will give you an offer to that amount. I consider the benefit of the enclosing, and the complete shelter afforded to the fields, as an advantage which fairly counterbalances the loss of one-half of the land."[44] And Scott was not only thoughtful in his own planting, but induced his neighbours to become so too. So great was their regard for him, that many of them planted their estates as much with reference to the effect which their plantations would have on the view from Abbotsford, as with reference to the effect they would have on the view from their own grounds. Many was the consultation which he and his neighbours, Scott of Gala, for instance, and Mr. Henderson of Eildon Hall, had together on the effect which would be produced on the view from their respective houses, of the planting going on upon the lands of each. The reciprocity of feeling was such that the various proprietors acted more like brothers in this matter, than like the jealous and exclusive creatures which landowners, as such, so often are. Next to his interest in the management and growth of his own little estate was Scott's interest in the management and growth of the Duke of Buccleuch's. To the Duke he looked up as the head of his clan, with something almost more than a feudal attachment, greatly enhanced of course by the personal friendship which he had formed for him in early life as the Earl of Dalkeith. This mixture of feudal and personal feeling towards the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch continued during their lives. Scott was away on a yachting tour to the Shetlands and Orkneys in July and August, 1814, and it was during this absence that the Duchess of Buccleuch died. Scott, who was in no anxiety about her, employed himself in writing an amusing descriptive epistle to the Duke in rough verse, chronicling his voyage, and containing expressions of the profoundest reverence for the goodness and charity of the Duchess, a letter which did not reach its destination till after the Duchess's death. Scott himself heard of her death by chance when they landed for a few hours on the coast of Ireland; he was quite overpowered by the news, and went to bed only to drop into short nightmare sleeps, and to wake with the dim memory of some heavy weight at his heart. The Duke himself died five years later, leaving a son only thirteen years of age (the present Duke), over whose interests, both as regarded his education and his estates, Scott watched as jealously as if they had been those of his own son. Many were the anxious letters he wrote to Lord Montague as to his "young chief's" affairs, as he called them, and great his pride in watching the promise of his youth. Nothing can be clearer than that to Scott the feudal principle was something far beyond a name; that he had at least as much pride in his devotion to his chief, as he had in founding a house which he believed would increase the influence--both territorial and personal--of the clan of Scotts. The unaffected reverence which he felt for the Duke, though mingled with warm personal affection, showed that Scott's feudal feeling had something real and substantial in it, which did not vanish even when it came into close contact with strong personal feelings. This reverence is curiously marked in his letters. He speaks of "the distinction of rank" being ignored by both sides, as of something quite exceptional, but it was never really ignored by him, for though he continued to write to the Duke as an intimate friend, it was with a mingling of awe, very different indeed from that which he ever adopted to Ellis or Erskine. It is necessary to remember this, not only in estimating the strength of the feeling which made him so anxious to become himself the founder of a house within a house,--of a new branch of the clan of Scotts,--but in estimating the loyalty which Scott always displayed to one of the least respectable of English sovereigns, George IV.,--a matter of which I must now say a few words, not only because it led to Scott's receiving the baronetcy, but because it forms to my mind the most grotesque of all the threads in the lot of this strong and proud man. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 40: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 387.] [Footnote 41: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 382.] [Footnote 42: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii. 288.] [Footnote 43: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vii. 287-8.] [Footnote 44: Scott's _Miscellaneous Prose Works_, xxi. 22-3.] CHAPTER XIII. SCOTT AND GEORGE IV. The first relations of Scott with the Court were, oddly enough, formed with the Princess, not with the Prince of Wales. In 1806 Scott dined with the Princess of Wales at Blackheath, and spoke of his invitation as a great honour. He wrote a tribute to her father, the Duke of Brunswick, in the introduction to one of the cantos of _Marmion_, and received from the Princess a silver vase in acknowledgment of this passage in the poem. Scott's relations with the Prince Regent seem to have begun in an offer to Scott of the Laureateship in the summer of 1813, an offer which Scott would have found it very difficult to accept, so strongly did his pride revolt at the idea of having to commemorate in verse, as an official duty, all conspicuous incidents affecting the throne. But he was at the time of the offer in the thick of his first difficulties on account of Messrs. John Ballantyne and Co., and it was only the Duke of Buccleuch's guarantee of 4000_l._--a guarantee subsequently cancelled by Scott's paying the sum for which it was a security--that enabled him at this time to decline what, after Southey had accepted it, he compared in a letter to Southey to the herring for which the poor Scotch clergyman gave thanks in a grace wherein he described it as "even this, the very least of Providence's mercies." In March, 1815, Scott being then in London, the Prince Regent asked him to dinner, addressed him uniformly as Walter, and struck up a friendship with him which seems to have lasted their lives, and which certainly did much more honour to George than to Sir Walter Scott. It is impossible not to think rather better of George IV. for thus valuing, and doing his best in every way to show his value for, Scott. It is equally impossible not to think rather worse of Scott for thus valuing, and in every way doing his best to express his value for, this very worthless, though by no means incapable king. The consequences were soon seen in the indignation with which Scott began to speak of the Princess of Wales's sins. In 1806, in the squib he wrote on Lord Melville's acquittal, when impeached for corruption by the Liberal Government, he had written thus of the Princess Caroline:-- "Our King, too--our Princess,--I dare not say more, sir,-- May Providence watch them with mercy and might! While there's one Scottish hand that can wag a claymore, sir, They shall ne'er want a friend to stand up for their right. Be damn'd he that dare not-- For my part I'll spare not To beauty afflicted a tribute to give; Fill it up steadily, Drink it off readily, Here's to the Princess, and long may she live." But whoever "stood up" for the Princess's right, certainly Scott did not do so after his intimacy with the Prince Regent began. He mentioned her only with severity, and in one letter at least, written to his brother, with something much coarser than severity;[45] but the king's similar vices did not at all alienate him from what at least had all the appearance of a deep personal devotion to his sovereign. The first baronet whom George IV. made on succeeding to the throne, after his long Regency, was Scott, who not only accepted the honour gratefully, but dwelt with extreme pride on the fact that it was offered to him by the king himself, and was in no way due to the prompting of any minister's advice. He wrote to Joanna Baillie on hearing of the Regent's intention--for the offer was made by the Regent at the end of 1818, though it was not actually conferred till after George's accession, namely, on the 30th March, 1820,--"The Duke of Buccleuch and Scott of Harden, who, as the heads of my clan and the sources of my gentry, are good judges of what I ought to do, have both given me their earnest opinion to accept of an honour directly derived from the source of honour, and neither begged nor bought, as is the usual fashion. Several of my ancestors bore the title in the seventeenth century, and, were it of consequence, I have no reason to be ashamed of the decent and respectable persons who connect me with that period when they carried into the field, like Madoc, "The Crescent at whose gleam the Cambrian oft, Cursing his perilous tenure, wound his horn," so that, as a gentleman, I may stand on as good a footing as other new creations."[46] Why the honour was any greater for coming from such a king as George, than it would have been if it had been suggested by Lord Sidmouth, or even Lord Liverpool,--or half as great as if Mr. Canning had proposed it, it is not easy to conceive. George was a fair judge of literary merit, but not one to be compared for a moment with that great orator and wit; and as to his being the fountain of honour, there was so much dishonour of which the king was certainly the fountain too, that I do not think it was very easy for two fountains both springing from such a person to have flowed quite unmingled. George justly prided himself on Sir Walter Scott's having been the first creation of his reign, and I think the event showed that the poet was the fountain of much more honour for the king, than the king was for the poet. When George came to Edinburgh in 1822, it was Sir Walter who acted virtually as the master of the ceremonies, and to whom it was chiefly due that the visit was so successful. It was then that George clad his substantial person for the first time in the Highland costume--to wit, in the Steuart Tartans--and was so much annoyed to find himself outvied by a wealthy alderman, Sir William Curtis, who had gone and done likewise, and, in his equally grand Steuart Tartans, seemed a kind of parody of the king. The day on which the king arrived, Tuesday, 14th of August, 1822, was also the day on which Scott's most intimate friend, William Erskine, then Lord Kinnedder, died. Yet Scott went on board the royal yacht, was most graciously received by George, had his health drunk by the king in a bottle of Highland whiskey, and with a proper show of devoted loyalty entreated to be allowed to retain the glass out of which his Majesty had just drunk his health. The request was graciously acceded to, but let it be pleaded on Scott's behalf, that on reaching home and finding there his friend Crabbe the poet, he sat down on the royal gift, and crushed it to atoms. One would hope that he was really thinking more even of Crabbe, and much more of Erskine, than of the royal favour for which he had appeared, and doubtless had really believed himself, so grateful. Sir Walter retained his regard for the king, such as it was, to the last, and even persuaded himself that George's death would be a great political calamity for the nation. And really I cannot help thinking that Scott believed more in the king, than he did in his friend George Canning. Assuredly, greatly as he admired Canning, he condemned him more and more as Canning grew more liberal, and sometimes speaks of his veerings in that direction with positive asperity. George, on the other hand, who believed more in number one than in any other number, however large, became much more conservative after he became Regent than he was before, and as he grew more conservative Scott grew more conservative likewise, till he came to think this particular king almost a pillar of the Constitution. I suppose we ought to explain this little bit of fetish-worship in Scott much as we should the quaint practical adhesion to duelling which he gave as an old man, who had had all his life much more to do with the pen than the sword--that is, as an evidence of the tendency of an improved type to recur to that of the old wild stock on which it had been grafted. But certainly no feudal devotion of his ancestors to their chief was ever less justified by moral qualities than Scott's loyal devotion to the fountain of honour as embodied in "our fat friend." The whole relation to George was a grotesque thread in Scott's life; and I cannot quite forgive him for the utterly conventional severity with which he threw over his first patron, the Queen, for sins which were certainly not grosser, if they were not much less gross, than those of his second patron, the husband who had set her the example which she faithfully, though at a distance, followed. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 45: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vi. 229-30.] [Footnote 46: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vi. 13, 14.] CHAPTER XIV. SCOTT AS A POLITICIAN. Scott usually professed great ignorance of politics, and did what he could to hold aloof from a world in which his feelings were very easily heated, while his knowledge was apt to be very imperfect. But now and again, and notably towards the close of his life, he got himself mixed up in politics, and I need hardly say that it was always on the Tory, and generally on the red-hot Tory, side. His first hasty intervention in politics was the song I have just referred to on Lord Melville's acquittal, during the short Whig administration of 1806. In fact Scott's comparative abstinence from politics was due, I believe, chiefly to the fact that during almost the whole of his literary life, Tories and not Whigs were in power. No sooner was any reform proposed, any abuse threatened, than Scott's eager Conservative spirit flashed up. Proposals were made in 1806 for changes--and, as it was thought, reforms--in the Scotch Courts of Law, and Scott immediately saw something like national calamity in the prospect. The mild proposals in question were discussed at a meeting of the Faculty of Advocates, when Scott made a speech longer than he had ever before delivered, and animated by a "flow and energy of eloquence" for which those who were accustomed to hear his debating speeches were quite unprepared. He walked home between two of the reformers, Mr. Jeffrey and another, when his companions began to compliment him on his eloquence, and to speak playfully of its subject. But Scott was in no mood for playfulness. "No, no," he exclaimed, "'tis no laughing matter; little by little, whatever your wishes may be, you will destroy and undermine, until nothing of what makes Scotland Scotland shall remain!" "And so saying," adds Mr. Lockhart, "he turned round to conceal his agitation, but not until Mr. Jeffrey saw tears gushing down his cheek,--resting his head, until he recovered himself, on the wall of the Mound."[47] It was the same strong feeling for old Scotch institutions which broke out so quaintly in the midst of his own worst troubles in 1826, on behalf of the Scotch banking-system, when he so eloquently defended, in the letters of _Malachi Malagrowther_, what would now be called Home-Rule for Scotland, and indeed really defeated the attempt of his friends the Tories, who were the innovators this time, to encroach on those sacred institutions--the Scotch one-pound note, and the private-note circulation of the Scotch banks. But when I speak of Scott as a Home-Ruler, I should add that had not Scotland been for generations governed to a great extent, and, as he thought successfully, by Home-Rule, he was far too good a Conservative to have apologized for it at all. The basis of his Conservatism was always the danger of undermining a system which had answered so well. In the concluding passages of the letters to which I have just referred, he contrasts "Theory, a scroll in her hand, full of deep and mysterious combinations of figures, the least failure in any one of which may alter the result entirely," with "a practical system successful for upwards of a century." His vehement and unquailing opposition to Reform in almost the very last year of his life, when he had already suffered more than one stroke of paralysis, was grounded on precisely the same argument. At Jedburgh, on the 21st March, 1831, he appeared in the midst of an angry population (who hooted and jeered at him till he turned round fiercely upon them with the defiance, "I regard your gabble no more than the geese on the green,") to urge the very same protest. "We in this district," he said, "are proud, and with reason, that the first chain-bridge was the work of a Scotchman. It still hangs where he erected it a pretty long time ago. The French heard of our invention, and determined to introduce it, but with great improvements and embellishments. A friend of my own saw the thing tried. It was on the Seine at Marly. The French chain-bridge looked lighter and airier than the prototype. Every Englishman present was disposed to confess that we had been beaten at our own trade. But by-and-by the gates were opened, and the multitude were to pass over. It began to swing rather formidably beneath the pressure of the good company; and by the time the architect, who led the procession in great pomp and glory, reached the middle, the whole gave way, and he--worthy, patriotic artist--was the first that got a ducking. They had forgot the middle bolt,--or rather this ingenious person had conceived that to be a clumsy-looking feature, which might safely be dispensed with, while he put some invisible gimcrack of his own to supply its place."[48] It is strange that Sir Walter did not see that this kind of criticism, so far as it applied at all to such an experiment as the Reform Bill, was even more in point as a rebuke to the rashness of the Scotch reformer who hung the first successful chain-bridge, than to the rashness of the French reformer of reform who devised an unsuccessful variation on it. The audacity of the first experiment was much the greater, though the competence of the person who made it was the greater also. And as a matter of fact, the political structure against the supposed insecurity of which Sir Walter was protesting, with all the courage of that dauntless though dying nature, was made by one who understood his work at least as well as the Scotch architect. The tramp of the many multitudes who have passed over it has never yet made it to "swing dangerously," and Lord Russell in the fulness of his age was but yesterday rejoicing in what he had achieved, and even in what those have achieved who have altered his work in the same spirit in which he designed it. But though Sir Walter persuaded himself that his Conservatism was all founded in legitimate distrust of reckless change, there is evidence, I think, that at times at least it was due to elements less noble. The least creditable incident in the story of his political life--which Mr. Lockhart, with his usual candour, did not conceal--was the bitterness with which he resented a most natural and reasonable Parliamentary opposition to an appointment which he had secured for his favourite brother, Tom. In 1810 Scott appointed his brother Tom, who had failed as a Writer to the Signet, to a place vacant under himself as Clerk of Session. He had not given him the best place vacant, because he thought it his duty to appoint an official who had grown grey in the service, but he gave Tom Scott this man's place, which was worth about 250_l._ a year. In the meantime Tom Scott's affairs did not render it convenient for him to be come-at-able, and he absented himself, while they were being settled, in the Isle of Man. Further, the Commission on the Scotch system of judicature almost immediately reported that his office was one of supererogation, and ought to be abolished; but, to soften the blow, they proposed to allow him a pension of 130_l._ per annum. This proposal was discussed with some natural jealousy in the House of Lords. Lord Lauderdale thought that when Tom Scott was appointed, it must have been pretty evident that the Commission would propose to abolish his office, and that the appointment therefore should not have been made. "Mr. Thomas Scott," he said, "would have 130_l._ for life as an indemnity for an office the duties of which he never had performed, while those clerks who had laboured for twenty years had no adequate remuneration." Lord Holland supported this very reasonable and moderate view of the case; but of course the Ministry carried their way, and Tom Scott got his unearned pension. Nevertheless, Scott was furious with Lord Holland. Writing soon after to the happy recipient of this little pension, he says, "Lord Holland has been in Edinburgh, and we met accidentally at a public party. He made up to me, but I remembered his part in your affair, and _cut_ him with as little remorse as an old pen." Mr. Lockhart says, on Lord Jeffrey's authority, that the scene was a very painful one. Lord Jeffrey himself declared that it was the only rudeness of which he ever saw Scott guilty in the course of a life-long familiarity. And it is pleasant to know that he renewed his cordiality with Lord Holland in later years, though there is no evidence that he ever admitted that he had been in the wrong. But the incident shows how very doubtful Sir Walter ought to have felt as to the purity of his Conservatism. It is quite certain that the proposal to abolish Tom Scott's office without compensation was not a reckless experiment of a fundamental kind. It was a mere attempt at diminishing the heavy burdens laid on the people for the advantage of a small portion of the middle class, and yet Scott resented it with as much display of selfish passion--considering his genuine nobility of breeding--as that with which the rude working men of Jedburgh afterwards resented his gallant protest against the Reform Bill, and, later again, saluted the dauntless old man with the dastardly cry of "Burk Sir Walter!" Judged truly, I think Sir Walter's conduct in cutting Lord Holland "with as little remorse as an old pen," for simply doing his duty in the House of Lords, was quite as ignoble in him as the bullying and insolence of the democratic party in 1831, when the dying lion made his last dash at what he regarded as the foes of the Constitution. Doubtless he held that the mob, or, as we more decorously say, the residuum, were in some sense the enemies of true freedom. "I cannot read in history," he writes once to Mr. Laidlaw, "of any free State which has been brought to slavery till the rascal and uninstructed populace had had their short hour of anarchical government, which naturally leads to the stern repose of military despotism." But he does not seem ever to have perceived that educated men identify themselves with "the rascal and uninstructed populace," whenever they indulge on behalf of the selfish interests of their own class, passions such as he had indulged in fighting for his brother's pension. It is not the want of instruction, it is the rascaldom, i. e. the violent _esprit de corps_ of a selfish class, which "naturally leads" to violent remedies. Such rascaldom exists in all classes, and not least in the class of the cultivated and refined. Generous and magnanimous as Scott was, he was evidently by no means free from the germs of it. One more illustration of Scott's political Conservatism, and I may leave his political life, which was not indeed his strong side, though, as with all sides of Scott's nature, it had an energy and spirit all his own. On the subject of Catholic Emancipation he took a peculiar view. As he justly said, he hated bigotry, and would have left the Catholics quite alone, but for the great claims of their creed to interfere with political life. And even so, when the penal laws were once abolished, he would have abolished also the representative disabilities, as quite useless, as well as very irritating when the iron system of effective repression had ceased. But he disapproved of the abolition of the political parts of the penal laws. He thought they would have stamped out Roman Catholicism; and whether that were just or unjust, he thought it would have been a great national service. "As for Catholic Emancipation," he wrote to Southey in 1807, "I am not, God knows, a bigot in religious matters, nor a friend to persecution; but if a particular set of religionists are _ipso facto_ connected with foreign politics, and placed under the spiritual direction of a class of priests, whose unrivalled dexterity and activity are increased by the rules which detach them from the rest of the world--I humbly think that we may be excused from entrusting to them those places in the State where the influence of such a clergy, who act under the direction of a passive tool of our worst foe, is likely to be attended with the most fatal consequences. If a gentleman chooses to walk about with a couple of pounds of gunpowder in his pocket, if I give him the shelter of my roof, I may at least be permitted to exclude him from the seat next to the fire."[49] And in relation to the year 1825, when Scott visited Ireland, Mr. Lockhart writes, "He on all occasions expressed manfully his belief that the best thing for Ireland would have been never to relax the strictly _political_ enactments of the penal laws, however harsh these might appear. Had they been kept in vigour for another half-century, it was his conviction that Popery would have been all but extinguished in Ireland. But he thought that after admitting Romanists to the elective franchise, it was a vain notion that they could be permanently or advantageously deterred from using that franchise in favour of those of their own persuasion." In his diary in 1829 he puts the same view still more strongly:--"I cannot get myself to feel at all anxious about the Catholic question. I cannot see the use of fighting about the platter, when you have let them snatch the meat off it. I hold Popery to be such a mean and degrading superstition, that I am not sure I could have found myself liberal enough for voting the repeal of the penal laws as they existed before 1780. They must and would, in course of time, have smothered Popery; and I confess that I should have seen the old lady of Babylon's mouth stopped with pleasure. But now that you have taken the plaster off her mouth, and given her free respiration, I cannot see the sense of keeping up the irritation about the claim to sit in Parliament. Unopposed, the Catholic superstition may sink into dust, with all its absurd ritual and solemnities. Still it is an awful risk. The world is in fact as silly as ever, and a good competence of nonsense will always find believers."[50] That is the view of a strong and rather unscrupulous politician--a moss-trooper in politics--which Scott certainly was. He was thinking evidently very little of justice, almost entirely of the most effective means of keeping the Kingdom, the Kingdom which he loved. Had he understood--what none of the politicians of that day understood--the strength of the Church of Rome as the only consistent exponent of the principle of Authority in religion, I believe his opposition to Catholic emancipation would have been as bitter as his opposition to Parliamentary reform. But he took for granted that while only "silly" persons believed in Rome, and only "infidels" rejected an authoritative creed altogether, it was quite easy by the exercise of common sense, to find the true compromise between reason and religious humility. Had Scott lived through the religious controversies of our own days, it seems not unlikely that with his vivid imagination, his warm Conservatism, and his rather inadequate critical powers, he might himself have become a Roman Catholic. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 47: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 328.] [Footnote 48: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, x. 47.] [Footnote 49: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii. 34.] [Footnote 50: Ibid., ix. 305.] CHAPTER XV. SCOTT IN ADVERSITY. With the year 1825 came a financial crisis, and Constable began to tremble for his solvency. From the date of his baronetcy Sir Walter had launched out into a considerable increase of expenditure. He got plans on a rather large scale in 1821 for the increase of Abbotsford, which were all carried out. To meet his expenses in this and other ways he received Constable's bills for "four unnamed works of fiction," of which he had not written a line, but which came to exist in time, and were called _Peveril of the Peak_, _Quentin Durward_, _St. Ronan's Well_, and _Redgauntlet_. Again, in the very year before the crash, 1825, he married his eldest son, the heir to the title, to a young lady who was herself an heiress, Miss Jobson of Lochore, when Abbotsford and its estates were settled, with the reserve of 10,000_l._, which Sir Walter took power to charge on the property for purposes of business. Immediately afterwards he purchased a captaincy in the King's Hussars for his son, which cost him 3500_l._ Nor were the obligations he incurred on his own account, or that of his family, the only ones by which he was burdened. He was always incurring expenses, often heavy expenses, for other people. Thus, when Mr. Terry, the actor, became joint lessee and manager of the Adelphi Theatre, London, Scott became his surety for 1250_l._, while James Ballantyne became his surety for 500_l._ more, and both these sums had to be paid by Sir Walter after Terry's failure in 1828. Such obligations as these, however, would have been nothing when compared with Sir Walter's means, had all his bills on Constable been duly honoured, and had not the printing firm of Ballantyne and Co. been so deeply involved with Constable's house that it necessarily became insolvent when he stopped. Taken altogether, I believe that Sir Walter earned during his own lifetime at least 140,000_l._ by his literary work alone, probably more; while even on his land and building combined he did not apparently spend more than half that sum. Then he had a certain income, about 1000_l._ a year, from his own and Lady Scott's private property, as well as 1300_l._ a year as Clerk of Session, and 300_l._ more as Sheriff of Selkirk. Thus even his loss of the price of several novels by Constable's failure would not seriously have compromised Scott's position, but for his share in the printing-house which fell with Constable, and the obligations of which amounted to 117,000_l._ As Scott had always forestalled his income,--spending the purchase-money of his poems and novels before they were written,--such a failure as this, at the age of fifty-five, when all the freshness of his youth was gone out of him, when he saw his son's prospects blighted as well as his own, and knew perfectly that James Ballantyne, unassisted by him, could never hope to pay any fraction of the debt worth mentioning, would have been paralysing, had he not been a man of iron nerve, and of a pride and courage hardly ever equalled. Domestic calamity, too, was not far off. For two years he had been watching the failure of his wife's health with increasing anxiety, and as calamities seldom come single, her illness took a most serious form at the very time when the blow fell, and she died within four months of the failure. Nay, Scott was himself unwell at the critical moment, and was taking sedatives which discomposed his brain. Twelve days before the final failure,--which was announced to him on the 17th January, 1826,--he enters in his diary, "Much alarmed. I had walked till twelve with Skene and Russell, and then sat down to my work. To my horror and surprise I could neither write nor spell, but put down one word for another, and wrote nonsense. I was much overpowered at the same time and could not conceive the reason. I fell asleep, however, in my chair, and slept for two hours. On my waking my head was clearer, and I began to recollect that last night I had taken the anodyne left for the purpose by Clarkson, and being disturbed in the course of the night, I had not slept it off." In fact the hyoscyamus had, combined with his anxieties, given him a slight attack of what is now called _aphasia_, that brain disease the most striking symptom of which is that one word is mistaken for another. And this was Scott's preparation for his failure, and the bold resolve which followed it, to work for his creditors as he had worked for himself, and to pay off, if possible, the whole 117,000_l._ by his own literary exertions. There is nothing in its way in the whole of English biography more impressive than the stoical extracts from Scott's diary which note the descent of this blow. Here is the anticipation of the previous day: "Edinburgh, January 16th.--Came through cold roads to as cold news. Hurst and Robinson have suffered a bill to come back upon Constable, which, I suppose, infers the ruin of both houses. We shall soon see. Dined with the Skenes." And here is the record itself: "January 17th.--James Ballantyne this morning, good honest fellow, with a visage as black as the crook. He hopes no salvation; has, indeed, taken measures to stop. It is hard, after having fought such a battle. I have apologized for not attending the Royal Society Club, who have a _gaudeamus_ on this day, and seemed to count much on my being the præses. My old acquaintance Miss Elizabeth Clerk, sister of Willie, died suddenly. I cannot choose but wish it had been Sir W. S., and yet the feeling is unmanly. I have Anne, my wife, and Charles to look after. I felt rather sneaking as I came home from the Parliament-house--felt as if I were liable _monstrari digito_ in no very pleasant way. But this must be borne _cum coeteris_; and, thank God, however uncomfortable, I do not feel despondent."[51] On the following day, the 18th January, the day after the blow, he records a bad night, a wish that the next two days were over, but that "the worst _is_ over," and on the same day he set about making notes for the _magnum opus_, as he called it--the complete edition of all the novels, with a new introduction and notes. On the 19th January, two days after the failure, he calmly resumed the composition of _Woodstock_--the novel on which he was then engaged--and completed, he says, "about twenty printed pages of it;" to which he adds that he had "a painful scene after dinner and another after supper, endeavouring to convince these poor creatures" [his wife and daughter] "that they must not look for miracles, but consider the misfortune as certain, and only to be lessened by patience and labour." On the 21st January, after a number of business details, he quotes from Job, "Naked we entered the world and naked we leave it; blessed be the name of the Lord." On the 22nd he says, "I feel neither dishonoured nor broken down by the bad, now truly bad, news I have received. I have walked my last in the domains I have planted--sat the last time 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 _Boney_" [his life of Napoleon] "may both go to the paper-maker, and I may take to smoking cigars and drinking grog, or turn devotee and intoxicate the brain another way."[52] He adds that when he sets to work doggedly, he is exactly the same man he ever was, "neither low-spirited nor _distrait_," nay, that adversity is to him "a tonic and bracer." The heaviest blow was, I think, the blow to his pride. Very early he begins to note painfully the different way in which different friends greet him, to remark that some smile as if to say, "think nothing about it, my lad, it is quite out of our thoughts;" that others adopt an affected gravity, "such as one sees and despises at a funeral," and the best-bred "just shook hands and went on." He writes to Mr. Morritt with a proud indifference, clearly to some extent simulated:--"My womenkind will be the greater sufferers, yet even they look cheerily forward; and, for myself, the blowing off of my hat on a stormy day has given me more uneasiness."[53] To Lady Davy he writes truly enough:--"I beg my humblest compliments to Sir Humphrey, and tell him, Ill Luck, that direful chemist, never put into his crucible a more indissoluble piece of stuff than your affectionate cousin and sincere well-wisher, Walter Scott."[54] When his _Letters of Malachi Malagrowther_ came out he writes:--"I am glad of this bruilzie, as far as I am concerned; people will not dare talk of me as an object of pity--no more 'poor-manning.' Who asks how many punds Scots the old champion had in his pocket when 'He set a bugle to his mouth, And blew so loud and shrill, The trees in greenwood shook thereat, Sae loud rang every hill.' This sounds conceited enough, yet is not far from truth."[55] His dread of pity is just the same when his wife dies:--"Will it be better," he writes, "when left to my own feelings, I see the whole world pipe and dance around me? I think it will. Their sympathy intrudes on my present affliction." Again, on returning for the first time from Edinburgh to Abbotsford after Lady Scott's funeral:--"I again took possession of the family bedroom and my widowed couch. This was a sore trial, but it was necessary not to blink such a resolution. Indeed I do not like to have it thought that there is any way in which I can be beaten." And again:--"I have a secret pride--I fancy it will be so most truly termed--which impels me to mix with my distresses strange snatches of mirth, 'which have no mirth in them.'"[56] But though pride was part of Scott's strength, pride alone never enabled any man to struggle so vigorously and so unremittingly as he did to meet the obligations he had incurred. When he was in Ireland in the previous year, a poor woman who had offered to sell him gooseberries, but whose offer had not been accepted, remarked, on seeing his daughter give some pence to a beggar, that they might as well give her an alms too, as she was "an old struggler." Sir Walter was struck with the expression, and said that it deserved to become classical, as a name for those who take arms against a sea of troubles, instead of yielding to the waves. It was certainly a name the full meaning of which he himself deserved. His house in Edinburgh was sold, and he had to go into a certain Mrs. Brown's lodgings, when he was discharging his duties as Clerk of Session. His wife was dead. His estate was conveyed to trustees for the benefit of his creditors till such time as he should pay off Ballantyne and Co's. debt, which of course in his lifetime he never did. Yet between January, 1826, and January, 1828, he earned for his creditors very nearly 40,000_l._ _Woodstock_ sold for 8228_l._, "a matchless sale," as Sir Walter remarked, "for less than three months' work." The first two editions of _The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte_, on which Mr. Lockhart says that Scott had spent the unremitting labour of about two years--labour involving a far greater strain on eyes and brain than his imaginative work ever caused him--sold for 18,000_l._ Had Sir Walter's health lasted, he would have redeemed his obligations on behalf of Ballantyne and Co. within eight or nine years at most from the time of his failure. But what is more remarkable still, is that after his health failed he struggled on with little more than half a brain, but a whole will, to work while it was yet day, though the evening was dropping fast. _Count Robert of Paris_ and _Castle Dangerous_ were really the compositions of a paralytic patient. It was in September, 1830, that the first of these tales was begun. As early as the 15th February of that year he had had his first true paralytic seizure. He had been discharging his duties as clerk of session as usual, and received in the afternoon a visit from a lady friend of his, Miss Young, who was submitting to him some manuscript memoirs of her father, when the stroke came. It was but slight. He struggled against it with his usual iron power of will, and actually managed to stagger out of the room where the lady was sitting with him, into the drawing-room where his daughter was, but there he fell his full length on the floor. He was cupped, and fully recovered his speech during the course of the day, but Mr. Lockhart thinks that never, after this attack, did his style recover its full lucidity and terseness. A cloudiness in words and a cloudiness of arrangement began to be visible. In the course of the year he retired from his duties of clerk of session, and his publishers hoped that, by engaging him on the new and complete edition of his works, they might detach him from the attempt at imaginative creation for which he was now so much less fit. But Sir Walter's will survived his judgment. When, in the previous year, Ballantyne had been disabled from attending to business by his wife's illness (which ended in her death), Scott had written in his diary, "It is his (Ballantyne's) nature to indulge apprehensions of the worst which incapacitate him for labour. I cannot help regarding this amiable weakness of the mind with something too nearly allied to contempt," and assuredly he was guilty of no such weakness himself. Not only did he row much harder against the stream of fortune than he had ever rowed with it, but, what required still more resolution, he fought on against the growing conviction that his imagination would not kindle, as it used to do, to its old heat. When he dictated to Laidlaw,--for at this time he could hardly write himself for rheumatism in the hand,--he would frequently pause and look round him, like a man "mocked with shadows." Then he bestirred himself with a great effort, rallied his force, and the style again flowed clear and bright, but not for long. The clouds would gather again, and the mental blank recur. This soon became visible to his publishers, who wrote discouragingly of the new novel--to Scott's own great distress and irritation. The oddest feature in the matter was that his letters to them were full of the old terseness, and force, and caustic turns. On business he was as clear and keen as in his best days. It was only at his highest task, the task of creative work, that his cunning began to fail him. Here, for instance, are a few sentences written to Cadell, his publisher, touching this very point--the discouragement which James Ballantyne had been pouring on the new novel. Ballantyne, he says, finds fault with the subject, when what he really should have found fault with was the failing power of the author:--"James is, with many other kindly critics, perhaps in the predicament of an honest drunkard, when crop-sick the next morning, who does not ascribe the malady to the wine he has drunk, but to having tasted some particular dish at dinner which disagreed with his stomach.... I have lost, it is plain, the power of interesting the country, and ought, injustice to all parties, to retire while I have some credit. But this is an important step, and I will not be obstinate about it if it be necessary.... Frankly, I cannot think of flinging aside the half-finished volume, as if it were a corked bottle of wine.... I may, perhaps, take a trip to the Continent for a year or two, if I find Othello's occupation gone, or rather Othello's _reputation_."[57] And again, in a very able letter written on the 12th of December, 1830, to Cadell, he takes a view of the situation with as much calmness and imperturbability as if he were an outside spectator. "There were many circumstances in the matter which you and J. B. (James Ballantyne) could not be aware of, and which, if you were aware of, might have influenced your judgment, which had, and yet have, a most powerful effect upon mine. The deaths of both my father and mother have been preceded by a paralytic shock. My father survived it for nearly two years--a melancholy respite, and not to be desired. I was alarmed with Miss Young's morning visit, when, as you know, I lost my speech. The medical people said it was from the stomach, which might be, but while there is a doubt upon a point so alarming, you will not wonder that the subject, or to use Hare's _lingo_, the _shot_, should be a little anxious." He relates how he had followed all the strict medical _régime_ prescribed to him with scrupulous regularity, and then begun his work again with as much attention as he could. "And having taken pains with my story, I find it is not relished, nor indeed tolerated, by those who have no interest in condemning it, but a strong interest in putting even a face" (? force) "upon their consciences. Was not this, in the circumstances, a damper to an invalid already afraid that the sharp edge might be taken off his intellect, though he was not himself sensible of that?" In fact, no more masterly discussion of the question whether his mind were failing or not, and what he ought to do in the interval of doubt, can be conceived, than these letters give us. At this time the debt of Ballantyne and Co. had been reduced by repeated dividends--all the fruits of Scott's literary work--more than one half. On the 17th of December, 1830, the liabilities stood at 54,000_l._, having been reduced 63,000_l._ within five years. And Sir Walter, encouraged by this great result of his labour, resumed the suspended novel. But with the beginning of 1831 came new alarms. On January 5th Sir Walter enters in his diary,--"Very indifferent, with more awkward feelings than I can well bear up against. My voice sunk and my head strangely confused." Still he struggled on. On the 31st January he went alone to Edinburgh to sign his will, and stayed at his bookseller's (Cadell's) house in Athol Crescent. A great snow-storm set in which kept him in Edinburgh and in Mr. Cadell's house till the 9th February. One day while the snow was still falling heavily, Ballantyne reminded him that a motto was wanting for one of the chapters of _Count Robert of Paris_. He went to the window, looked out for a moment, and then wrote,-- "The storm increases; 'tis no sunny shower, Foster'd in the moist breast of March or April, Or such as parchèd summer cools his lips with. Heaven's windows are flung wide; the inmost deeps Call, in hoarse greeting, one upon another; On comes the flood, in all its foaming horrors, And where's the dike shall stop it? _The Deluge: a Poem._" Clearly this failing imagination of Sir Walter's was still a great deal more vivid than that of most men, with brains as sound as it ever pleased Providence to make them. But his troubles were not yet even numbered. The "storm increased," and it was, as he said, "no sunny shower." His lame leg became so painful that he had to get a mechanical apparatus to relieve him of some of the burden of supporting it. Then, on the 21st March, he was hissed at Jedburgh, as I have before said, for his vehement opposition to Reform. In April he had another stroke of paralysis which he now himself recognized as one. Still he struggled on at his novel. Under the date of May 6, 7, 8, he makes this entry in his diary:--"Here is a precious job. I have a formal remonstrance from those critical people, Ballantyne and Cadell, against the last volume of _Count Robert_, which is within a sheet of being finished. I suspect their opinion will be found to coincide with that of the public; at least it is not very different from my own. The blow is a stunning one, I suppose, for I scarcely feel it. It is singular, but it comes with as little surprise as if I had a remedy ready; yet God knows I am at sea in the dark, and the vessel leaky, I think, into the bargain. I cannot conceive that I have tied a knot with my tongue which my teeth cannot untie. We shall see. I have suffered terribly, that is the truth, rather in body than mind, and I often wish I could lie down and sleep without waking. But I will fight it out if I can."[58] The medical men with one accord tried to make him give up his novel-writing. But he smiled and put them by. He took up _Count Robert of Paris_ again, and tried to recast it. On the 18th May he insisted on attending the election for Roxburghshire, to be held at Jedburgh, and in spite of the unmannerly reception he had met with in March, no dissuasion would keep him at home. He was saluted in the town with groans and blasphemies, and Sir Walter had to escape from Jedburgh by a back way to avoid personal violence. The cries of "Burk Sir Walter," with which he was saluted on this occasion, haunted him throughout his illness and on his dying bed. At the Selkirk election it was Sir Walter's duty as Sheriff to preside, and his family therefore made no attempt to dissuade him from his attendance. There he was so well known and loved, that in spite of his Tory views, he was not insulted, and the only man who made any attempt to hustle the Tory electors, was seized by Sir Walter with his own hand, as he got out of his carriage, and committed to prison without resistance till the election day was over. A seton which had been ordered for his head, gave him some relief, and of course the first result was that he turned immediately to his novel-writing again, and began _Castle Dangerous_ in July, 1831,--the last July but one which he was to see at all. He even made a little journey in company with Mr. Lockhart, in order to see the scene of the story he wished to tell, and on his return set to work with all his old vigour to finish his tale, and put the concluding touches to _Count Robert of Paris_. But his temper was no longer what it had been. He quarrelled with Ballantyne, partly for his depreciatory criticism of _Count Robert of Paris_, partly for his growing tendency to a mystic and strait-laced sort of dissent and his increasing Liberalism. Even Mr. Laidlaw and Scott's children had much to bear. But he struggled on even to the end, and did not consent to try the experiment of a voyage and visit to Italy till his immediate work was done. Well might Lord Chief Baron Shepherd apply to Scott Cicero's description of some contemporary of his own, who "had borne adversity wisely, who had not been broken by fortune, and who, amidst the buffets of fate, had maintained his dignity." There was in Sir Walter, I think, at least as much of the Stoic as the Christian. But Stoic or Christian, he was a hero of the old, indomitable type. Even the last fragments of his imaginative power were all turned to account by that unconquerable will, amidst the discouragement of friends, and the still more disheartening doubts of his own mind. Like the headland stemming a rough sea, he was gradually worn away, but never crushed. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 51: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 197.] [Footnote 52: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 203-4.] [Footnote 53: Ibid., viii. 235.] [Footnote 54: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 238.] [Footnote 55: viii. 277.] [Footnote 56: viii. 347, 371, 381.] [Footnote 57: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, x. 11, 12.] [Footnote 58: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, x. 65-6.] CHAPTER XVI. THE LAST YEAR. In the month of September, 1831, the disease of the brain which had long been in existence must have made a considerable step in advance. For the first time the illusion seemed to possess Sir Walter that he had paid off all the debt for which he was liable, and that he was once more free to give as his generosity prompted. Scott sent Mr. Lockhart 50_l._ to save his grandchildren some slight inconvenience, and told another of his correspondents that he had "put his decayed fortune into as good a condition as he could desire." It was well, therefore, that he had at last consented to try the effect of travel on his health,--not that he could hope to arrest by it such a disease as his, but that it diverted him from the most painful of all efforts, that of trying anew the spell which had at last failed him, and perceiving in the disappointed eyes of his old admirers that the magic of his imagination was a thing of the past. The last day of real enjoyment at Abbotsford--for when Sir Walter returned to it to die, it was but to catch once more the outlines of its walls, the rustle of its woods, and the gleam of its waters, through senses already darkened to all less familiar and less fascinating visions--was the 22nd September, 1831. On the 21st, Wordsworth had come to bid his old friend adieu, and on the 22nd--the last day at home--they spent the morning together in a visit to Newark. It was a day to deepen alike in Scott and in Wordsworth whatever of sympathy either of them had with the very different genius of the other, and that it had this result in Wordsworth's case, we know from the very beautiful poem,--"Yarrow Revisited,"--and the sonnet which the occasion also produced. And even Scott, who was so little of a Wordsworthian, who enjoyed Johnson's stately but formal verse, and Crabbe's vivid Dutch painting, more than he enjoyed the poetry of the transcendental school, must have recurred that day with more than usual emotion to his favourite Wordsworthian poem. Soon after his wife's death, he had remarked in his diary how finely "the effect of grief upon persons who like myself are highly susceptible of humour" had been "touched by Wordsworth in the character of the merry village teacher, Matthew, whom Jeffrey profanely calls a half-crazy, sentimental person."[59] And long before this time, during the brightest period of his life, Scott had made the old Antiquary of his novel quote the same poem of Wordsworth's, in a passage where the period of life at which he had now arrived is anticipated with singular pathos and force. "It is at such moments as these," says Mr. Oldbuck, "that we feel the changes of time. The same objects are before us--those inanimate things which we have gazed on in wayward infancy and impetuous youth, in anxious and scheming manhood--they are permanent and the same; but when we look upon them in cold, unfeeling old age, can we, changed in our temper, our pursuits, our feelings,--changed in our form, our limbs, and our strength,--can we be ourselves called the same? or do we not rather look back with a sort of wonder upon our former selves as beings separate and distinct from what we now are? The philosopher who appealed from Philip inflamed with wine to Philip in his hours of sobriety, did not claim a judge so different as if he had appealed from Philip in his youth to Philip in his old age. I cannot but be touched with the feeling so beautifully expressed in a poem which I have heard repeated:-- 'My eyes are dim with childish tears, My heart is idly stirr'd, For the same sound is in my ears Which in those days I heard. Thus fares it still in our decay, And yet the wiser mind Mourns less for what age takes away Than what it leaves behind.'"[60] Sir Walter's memory, which, in spite of the slight failure of brain and the mild illusions to which, on the subject of his own prospects, he was now liable, had as yet been little impaired--indeed, he could still quote whole pages from all his favourite authors--must have recurred to those favourite Wordsworthian lines of his with singular force, as, with Wordsworth for his companion, he gazed on the refuge of the last Minstrel of his imagination for the last time, and felt in himself how much of joy in the sight, age had taken away, and how much, too, of the habit of expecting it, it had unfortunately left behind. Whether Sir Walter recalled this poem of Wordsworth's on this occasion or not--and if he recalled it, his delight in giving pleasure would assuredly have led him to let Wordsworth know that he recalled it--the mood it paints was unquestionably that in which his last day at Abbotsford was passed. In the evening, referring to the journey which was to begin the next day, he remarked that Fielding and Smollett had been driven abroad by declining health, and that they had never returned; while Wordsworth--willing perhaps to bring out a brighter feature in the present picture--regretted that the last days of those two great novelists had not been surrounded by due marks of respect. With Sir Walter, as he well knew, it was different. The Liberal Government that he had so bitterly opposed were pressing on him signs of the honour in which he was held, and a ship of his Majesty's navy had been placed at his disposal to take him to the Mediterranean. And Wordsworth himself added his own more durable token of reverence. As long as English poetry lives, Englishmen will know something of that last day of the last Minstrel at Newark:-- "Grave thoughts ruled wide on that sweet day, Their dignity installing In gentle bosoms, while sere leaves Were on the bough or falling; But breezes play'd, and sunshine gleam'd The forest to embolden, Redden'd the fiery hues, and shot Transparence through the golden. "For busy thoughts the stream flow'd on In foamy agitation; And slept in many a crystal pool For quiet contemplation: No public and no private care The free-born mind enthralling, We made a day of happy hours, Our happy days recalling. * * * * * "And if, as Yarrow through the woods And down the meadow ranging, Did meet us with unalter'd face, Though we were changed and changing; If _then_ some natural shadow spread Our inward prospect over, The soul's deep valley was not slow Its brightness to recover. "Eternal blessings on the Muse And her divine employment, The blameless Muse who trains her sons For hope and calm enjoyment; Albeit sickness lingering yet Has o'er their pillow brooded, And care waylays their steps--a sprite Not easily eluded. * * * * * "Nor deem that localized Romance Plays false with our affections; Unsanctifies our tears--made sport For fanciful dejections: Ah, no! the visions of the past Sustain the heart in feeling Life as she is--our changeful Life With friends and kindred dealing. "Bear witness ye, whose thoughts that day In Yarrow's groves were centred, Who through the silent portal arch Of mouldering Newark enter'd; And clomb the winding stair that once Too timidly was mounted By the last Minstrel--not the last!-- Ere he his tale recounted." Thus did the meditative poetry, the day of which was not yet, do honour to itself in doing homage to the Minstrel of romantic energy and martial enterprise, who, with the school of poetry he loved, was passing away. On the 23rd September Scott left Abbotsford, spending five days on his journey to London; nor would he allow any of the old objects of interest to be passed without getting out of the carriage to see them. He did not leave London for Portsmouth till the 23rd October, but spent the intervening time in London, where he took medical advice, and with his old shrewdness wheeled his chair into a dark corner during the physicians' absence from the room to consult, that he might read their faces clearly on their return without their being able to read his. They recognized traces of brain disease, but Sir Walter was relieved by their comparatively favourable opinion, for he admitted that he had feared insanity, and therefore had "feared _them_." On the 29th October he sailed for Malta, and on the 20th November Sir Walter insisted on being landed on a small volcanic island which had appeared four months previously, and which disappeared again in a few days, and on clambering about its crumbling lava, in spite of sinking at nearly every step almost up to his knees, in order that he might send a description of it to his old friend Mr. Skene. On the 22nd November he reached Malta, where he looked eagerly at the antiquities of the place, for he still hoped to write a novel--and, indeed, actually wrote one at Naples, which was never published, called _The Siege of Malta_--on the subject of the Knights of Malta, who had interested him so much in his youth. From Malta Scott went to Naples, which he reached on the 17th December, and where he found much pleasure in the society of Sir William Gell, an invalid like himself, but not one who, like himself, struggled against the admission of his infirmities, and refused to be carried when his own legs would not safely carry him. Sir William Gell's dog delighted the old man; he would pat it and call it "Poor boy!" and confide to Sir William how he had at home "two very fine favourite dogs, so large that I am always afraid they look too large and too feudal for my diminished income." In all his letters home he gave some injunction to Mr. Laidlaw about the poor people and the dogs. On the 22nd of March, 1832, Goethe died, an event which made a great impression on Scott, who had intended to visit Weimar on his way back, on purpose to see Goethe, and this much increased his eager desire to return home. Accordingly on the 16th of April, the last day on which he made any entry in his diary, he quitted Naples for Rome, where he stayed long enough only to let his daughter see something of the place, and hurried off homewards on the 21st of May. In Venice he was still strong enough to insist on scrambling down into the dungeons adjoining the Bridge of Sighs; and at Frankfort he entered a bookseller's shop, when the man brought out a lithograph of Abbotsford, and Scott remarking, "I know that already, sir," left the shop unrecognized, more than ever craving for home. At Nimeguen, on the 9th of June, while in a steamboat on the Rhine, he had his most serious attack of apoplexy, but would not discontinue his journey, was lifted into an English steamboat at Rotterdam on the 11th of June, and arrived in London on the 13th. There he recognized his children, and appeared to expect immediate death, as he gave them repeatedly his most solemn blessing, but for the most part he lay at the St. James's Hotel, in Jermyn Street, without any power to converse. There it was that Allan Cunningham, on walking home one night, found a group of working men at the corner of the street, who stopped him and asked, "as if there was but one death-bed in London, 'Do you know, sir, if this is the street where he is lying?'" According to the usual irony of destiny, it was while the working men were doing him this hearty and unconscious homage, that Sir Walter, whenever disturbed by the noises of the street, imagined himself at the polling-booth of Jedburgh, where the people had cried out, "Burk Sir Walter." And it was while lying here,--only now and then uttering a few words,--that Mr. Lockhart says of him, "He expressed his will as determinedly as ever, and expressed it with the same apt and good-natured irony that he was wont to use." Sir Walter's great and urgent desire was to return to Abbotsford, and at last his physicians yielded. On the 7th July he was lifted into his carriage, followed by his trembling and weeping daughters, and so taken to a steamboat, where the captain gave up his private cabin--a cabin on deck--for his use. He remained unconscious of any change till after his arrival in Edinburgh, when, on the 11th July, he was placed again in his carriage, and remained in it quite unconscious during the first two stages of the journey to Tweedside. But as the carriage entered the valley of the Gala, he began to look about him. Presently he murmured a name or two, "Gala water, surely,--Buckholm,--Torwoodlee." When the outline of the Eildon hills came in view, Scott's excitement was great, and when his eye caught the towers of Abbotsford, he sprang up with a cry of delight, and while the towers remained in sight it took his physician, his son-in-law, and his servant, to keep him in the carriage. Mr. Laidlaw was waiting for him, and he met him with a cry, "Ha! Willie Laidlaw! O, man, how often I have thought of you!" His dogs came round his chair and began to fawn on him and lick his hands, while Sir Walter smiled or sobbed over them. The next morning he was wheeled about his garden, and on the following morning was out in this way for a couple of hours; within a day or two he fancied that he could write again, but on taking the pen into his hand, his fingers could not clasp it, and he sank back with tears rolling down his cheek. Later, when Laidlaw said in his hearing that Sir Walter had had a little repose, he replied, "No, Willie; no repose for Sir Walter but in the grave." As the tears rushed from his eyes, his old pride revived. "Friends," he said, "don't let me expose myself--get me to bed,--that is the only place." After this Sir Walter never left his room. Occasionally he dropped off into delirium, and the old painful memory,--that cry of "Burk Sir Walter,"--might be again heard on his lips. He lingered, however, till the 21st September,--more than two months from the day of his reaching home, and a year from the day of Wordsworth's arrival at Abbotsford before his departure for the Mediterranean, with only one clear interval of consciousness, on Monday, the 17th September. On that day Mr. Lockhart was called to Sir Walter's bedside with the news that he had awakened in a state of composure and consciousness, and wished to see him. "'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.' He paused, and I said, 'Shall I send for Sophia and Anne?' 'No,' said he, 'don't disturb them. Poor souls! I know they were up all night. God bless you all!'" With this he sank into a very tranquil sleep, and, indeed, he scarcely afterwards gave any sign of consciousness except for an instant on the arrival of his sons. And so four days afterwards, on the day of the autumnal equinox in 1832, at half-past one in the afternoon, on a glorious autumn day, with every window wide open, and the ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles distinctly audible in his room, he passed away, and "his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes." He died a month after completing his sixty-first year. Nearly seven years earlier, on the 7th December, 1825, he had in his diary taken a survey of his own health in relation to the age reached by his father and other members of his family, and had stated as the result of his considerations, "Square the odds and good night, Sir Walter, about sixty. I care not if I leave my name unstained and my family property settled. _Sat est vixisse._" Thus he lived just a year--but a year of gradual death--beyond his own calculation. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 59: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 63.] [Footnote 60: _The Antiquary_, chap. x.] CHAPTER XVII. THE END OF THE STRUGGLE. Sir Walter certainly left his "name unstained," unless the serious mistakes natural to a sanguine temperament such as his, are to be counted as stains upon his name; and if they are, where among the sons of men would you find many unstained names as noble as his with such a stain upon it? He was not only sensitively honourable in motive, but, when he found what evil his sanguine temper had worked, he used his gigantic powers to repair it, as Samson used his great strength to repair the mischief he had inadvertently done to Israel. But with all his exertions he had not, when death came upon him, cleared off much more than half his obligations. There was still 54,000_l._ to pay. But of this, 22,000_l._ was secured in an insurance on his life, and there were besides a thousand pounds or two in the hands of the trustees, which had not been applied to the extinction of the debt. Mr. Cadell, his publisher, accordingly advanced the remaining 30,000_l._ on the security of Sir Walter's copyrights, and on the 21st February, 1833, the general creditors were paid in full, and Mr. Cadell remained the only creditor of the estate. In February, 1847, Sir Walter's son, the second baronet, died childless; and in May, 1847, Mr. Cadell gave a discharge in full of all claims, including the bond for 10,000_l._ executed by Sir Walter during the struggles of Constable and Co. to prevent a failure, on the transfer to him of all the copyrights of Sir Walter, including "the results of some literary exertions of the sole surviving executor," which I conjecture to mean the copyright of the admirable biography of Sir Walter Scott in ten volumes, to which I have made such a host of references--probably the most perfect specimen of a biography rich in great materials, which our language contains. And thus, nearly fifteen years after Sir Walter's death, the debt which, within six years, he had more than half discharged, was at last, through the value of the copyrights he had left behind him, finally extinguished, and the small estate of Abbotsford left cleared. Sir Walter's effort to found a new house was even less successful than the effort to endow it. His eldest son died childless. In 1839 he went to Madras, as Lieutenant-Colonel of the 15th Hussars, and subsequently commanded that regiment. He was as much beloved by the officers of his regiment as his father had been by his own friends, and was in every sense an accomplished soldier, and one whose greatest anxiety it was to promote the welfare of the privates as well as of the officers of his regiment. He took great pains in founding a library for the soldiers of his corps, and his only legacy out of his own family was one of 100_l._ to this library. The cause of his death was his having exposed himself rashly to the sun in a tiger-hunt, in August, 1846; he never recovered from the fever which was the immediate consequence. Ordered home for his health, he died near the Cape of Good Hope, on the 8th of February, 1847. His brother Charles died before him. He was rising rapidly in the diplomatic service, and was taken to Persia by Sir John MacNeill, on a diplomatic mission, as attaché and private secretary. But the climate struck him down, and he died at Teheran, almost immediately on his arrival, on the 28th October, 1841. Both the sisters had died previously. Anne Scott, the younger of the two, whose health had suffered greatly during the prolonged anxiety of her father's illness, died on the Midsummer-day of the year following her father's death; and Sophia, Mrs. Lockhart, died on the 17th May, 1837. Sir Walter's eldest grandchild, John Hugh Lockhart, for whom the _Tales of a Grandfather_ were written, died before his grandfather; indeed Sir Walter heard of the child's death at Naples. The second son, Walter Scott Lockhart Scott, a lieutenant in the army, died at Versailles, on the 10th January, 1853. Charlotte Harriet Jane Lockhart, who was married in 1847 to James Robert Hope-Scott, and succeeded to the Abbotsford estate, died at Edinburgh, on the 26th October, 1858, leaving three children, of whom only one survives. Walter Michael and Margaret Anne Hope-Scott both died in infancy. The only direct descendant, therefore, of Sir Walter Scott, is now Mary Monica Hope-Scott who was born on the 2nd October, 1852, the grandchild of Mrs. Lockhart, and the great-grandchild of the founder of Abbotsford. There is something of irony in such a result of the Herculean labours of Scott to found and endow a new branch of the clan of Scott. When fifteen years after his death the estate was at length freed from debt, all his own children and the eldest of his grandchildren were dead; and now forty-six years have elapsed, and there only remains one girl of his descendants to borrow his name and live in the halls of which he was so proud. And yet this, and this only, was wanting to give something of the grandeur of tragedy to the end of Scott's great enterprise. He valued his works little compared with the house and lands which they were to be the means of gaining for his descendants; yet every end for which he struggled so gallantly is all but lost, while his works have gained more of added lustre from the losing battle which he fought so long, than they could ever have gained from his success. What there was in him of true grandeur could never have been seen, had the fifth act of his life been less tragic than it was. Generous, large-hearted, and magnanimous as Scott was, there was something in the days of his prosperity that fell short of what men need for their highest ideal of a strong man. Unbroken success, unrivalled popularity, imaginative effort flowing almost as steadily as the current of a stream,--these are characteristics, which, even when enhanced as they were in his case, by the power to defy physical pain, and to live in his imaginative world when his body was writhing in torture, fail to touch the heroic point. And there was nothing in Scott, while he remained prosperous, to relieve adequately the glare of triumphant prosperity. His religious and moral feeling, though strong and sound, was purely regulative, and not always even regulative, where his inward principle was not reflected in the opinions of the society in which he lived. The finer spiritual element in Scott was relatively deficient, and so the strength of the natural man was almost too equal, complete, and glaring. Something that should "tame the glaring white" of that broad sunshine, was needed; and in the years of reverse, when one gift after another was taken away, till at length what he called even his "magic wand" was broken, and the old man struggled on to the last, without bitterness, without defiance, without murmuring, but not without such sudden flashes of subduing sweetness as melted away the anger of the teacher of his childhood,--that something seemed to be supplied. Till calamity came, Scott appeared to be a nearly complete natural man, and no more. Then first was perceived in him something above nature, something which could endure though every end in life for which he had fought so boldly should be defeated,--something which could endure and more than endure, which could shoot a soft transparence of its own through his years of darkness and decay. That there was nothing very elevated in Scott's personal or moral, or political or literary ends,--that he never for a moment thought of himself as one who was bound to leave the earth better than he found it,--that he never seems to have so much as contemplated a social or political reform for which he ought to contend,--that he lived to some extent like a child blowing soap-bubbles, the brightest and most gorgeous of which--the Abbotsford bubble--vanished before his eyes, is not a take-off from the charm of his career, but adds to it the very speciality of its fascination. For it was his entire unconsciousness of moral or spiritual efforts, the simple straightforward way in which he laboured for ends of the most ordinary kind, which made it clear how much greater the man was than his ends, how great was the mind and character which prosperity failed to display, but which became visible at once so soon as the storm came down and the night fell. Few men who battle avowedly for the right, battle for it with the calm fortitude, the cheerful equanimity, with which Scott battled to fulfil his engagements and to save his family from ruin. He stood high amongst those-- "Who ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads," among those who have been able to display-- "One equal temper of heroic hearts Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." And it was because the man was so much greater than the ends for which he strove, that there is a sort of grandeur in the tragic fate which denied them to him, and yet exhibited to all the world the infinite superiority of the striver himself to the toy he was thus passionately craving. THE END. 
16715	----	[Transcriber's note: All footnotes have been gathered at the end of the text.] SIR WALTER SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE BY MARGARET BALL, PH.D. New York THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 1907 Copyright, 1907 BY THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS Printed from type November, 1907 PRESS OF THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY LANCASTER, PA. PREFACE The lack of any adequate discussion of Scott's critical work is a sufficient reason for the undertaking of this study, the subject of which was suggested to me more than three years ago by Professor Trent of Columbia University. We still use critical essays and monumental editions prepared by the author of the Waverley novels, but the criticism has been so overshadowed by the romances that its importance is scarcely recognized. It is valuable in itself, as well as in the opportunity it offers of considering the relation of the critical to the creative mood, an especially interesting problem when it is presented concretely in the work of a great writer. No complete bibliography of Scott's writings has been published, and perhaps none is possible in the case of an author who wrote so much anonymously. The present attempt includes some at least of the books and articles commonly left unnoticed, which are chiefly of a critical or scholarly character. I am glad to record my gratitude to Professor William Allan Neilson, now of Harvard University, and to Professors A.H. Thorndike, W.W. Lawrence, G.P. Krapp, and J.E. Spingarn, of Columbia, for suggestions in connection with various parts of the work. From the beginning Professor Trent has helped me constantly by his advice as well as by the inspiration of his scholarship, and my debt to him is one which can be understood only by the many students who have known his kindness. MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE, June, 1907. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. Introduction: An Outline of Scott's Literary Career 1 CHAPTER II. Scott's Qualifications as Critic 9 CHAPTER III. Scott's Work as Student and Editor in the Field of Literary History 1. The Mediaeval Period (a) Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border 17 (b) Studies in the Romances 32 (c) Other Studies in Mediaeval Literature 40 2. The Drama 46 3. The Seventeenth Century: Dryden 59 4. The Eighteenth Century (a) Swift 65 (b) The Somers Tracts 70 (c) The Lives of the Novelists, and Comments on other Eighteenth Century Writers 72 CHAPTER IV. Scott's Criticism of His Contemporaries 81 CHAPTER V. Scott as a Critic of His Own Work 108 CHAPTER VI. Scott's Position as Critic 134 APPENDICES I. Bibliography of Scott, Annotated 147 II. List of Books Quoted 174 Index 179 A DATED LIST OF SCOTT'S BOOKS, ASIDE FROM THE POEMS AND NOVELS, AND OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS WHICH HE EDITED (PERIODICAL CRITICISM NOT INCLUDED). 1802-3 Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (edited). 1804 Sir Tristrem (edited). 1806 Original Memoirs written during the Great Civil War; the Life of Sir H. Slingsby, and Memoirs of Capt. Hodgson (edited). 1808 Memoirs of Capt. Carleton (edited). 1808 The Works of John Dryden (edited). 1808 Memoirs of Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth, and Fragmenta Regalia (edited). 1808 Queenhoo Hall, a Romance; and Ancient Times, a Drama (edited). 1809 The State Papers and Letters of Sir Ralph Sadler (edited). 1809-15 The Somers Tracts (edited). 1811 Memoirs of the Court of Charles II, by Count Grammont (edited). 1811 Secret History of the Court of James the First (edited). 1813 Memoirs of the Reign of King Charles I, by Sir Philip Warwick (edited). 1814 The Works of Jonathan Swift (edited). 1814-17 The Border Antiquities of England and Scotland. 1816 Paul's Letters. 1818 Essay on Chivalry. 1819 Essay on the Drama. 1819-26 Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of Scotland. 1820 Trivial Poems and Triolets by Patrick Carey (edited). 1821 Northern Memoirs, calculated for the Meridian of Scotland; and the Contemplative and Practical Angler (edited). 1821-24 The Novelists' Library (edited). 1822 Chronological Notes of Scottish Affairs from 1680 till 1701 (edited). 1822 Military Memoirs of the Great Civil War (edited). 1824 Essay on Romance. 1826 Letters of Malachi Malagrowther on the Currency. 1827 The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte. 1828 Tales of a Grandfather, first series. 1828 Religious Discourses, by a Layman. 1828 Proceedings in the Court-martial held upon John, Master of Sinclair, etc. (edited). 1829 Memorials of George Bannatyne (edited). 1829 Tales of a Grandfather, second series. 1829-32 The "Opus Magnum" (Novels, Tales, and Romances, with Introductions and Notes by the Author). 1830 Tales of a Grandfather, third series. 1830 Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft. 1830 History of Scotland. 1831 Tales of a Grandfather, fourth series. 1831 Trial of Duncan Terig, etc. (edited). * * * * * 1890 The Journal of Sir Walter Scott. 1894 Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott. CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Importance of a study of Scott's critical and scholarly work--Connection between his creative work and his criticism--Chronological view of his literary career. Scott's critical work has become inconspicuous because of his predominant fame as an imaginative writer; but what it loses on this account it perhaps gains in the special interest attaching to criticism formulated by a great creative artist. One phase of his work is emphasized and explained by the other, and we cannot afford to ignore his criticism if we attempt fairly to comprehend his genius as a poet and novelist. The fact that he is the subject of one of the noblest biographies in our language only increases our obligation to become acquainted with his own presentation of his artistic principles. But though criticism by so great and voluminous a writer is valuable mainly because of the important relation it bears to his other work, and because of the authority it derives from this relation, Scott's scholarly and critical writings are individual enough in quality and large enough in extent to demand consideration on their own merits. Yet this part of his achievement has received very little attention from biographers and critics. Lockhart's book is indeed full of materials, and contains also some suggestive comment on the facts presented; but as the passing of time has made an estimation of Scott's power more safe, students have lost interest in his work as a critic, and recent writers have devoted little attention to this aspect of the great man of letters.[1] The present study is an attempt to show the scope and quality of Scott's critical writings, and of such works, not exclusively or mainly critical, as exhibit the range of his scholarship. For it is impossible to treat his criticism without discussing his scholarship; since, lightly as he carried it, this was of consequence in itself and in its influence on all that he did. The materials for analysis are abundant; and by rearrangement and special study they may be made to contribute both to the history of criticism and to our comprehension of the power of a great writer. In considering him from this point of view we are bound to remember the connection between the different parts of his vocation. In him, more than in most men of letters, the critic resembled the creative writer, and though the critical temperament seems to show itself but rarely in his romances, we find that the characteristic absence of precise and conscious art is itself in harmony with his critical creed. The relation between the different parts of Scott's literary work is exemplified by the subjects he treated, for as a critic he touched many portions of the field, which in his capacity of poet and novelist he occupied in a different way. He was a historical critic no less than a historical romancer. A larger proportion of his criticism concerns itself with the eighteenth century, perhaps, than of his fiction,[2] and he often wrote reviews of contemporary literature, but on the whole the literature with which he dealt critically was representative of those periods of time which he chose to portray in novel and poem. This evidently implies great breadth of scope. Yet Scott's vivid sense of the past had its bounds, as Professor Masson pointed out.[3] It was the "Gothic" past that he venerated. The field of his studies, chronologically considered, included the period between his own time and the crusades; and geographically, was in general confined to England and Scotland, with comparatively rare excursions abroad. When, in his novels, he carried his Scottish or English heroes out of Britain into foreign countries, he was apt to bestow upon them not only a special endowment of British feeling, but also a portion of that interest in their native literature which marked the taste of their creator. We find that the personages in his books are often distinguished by that love of stirring poetry, particularly of popular and national poetry, which was a dominant trait in Scott's whole literary career. With Scotland and with popular poetry any discussion of Sir Walter properly begins. The love of Scottish minstrelsy first awakened his literary sense, and the stimulus supplied by ballads and romances never lost its force. We may say that the little volumes of ballad chap-books which he collected and bound up before he was a dozen years old suggested the future editor, as the long poem on the Conquest of Grenada, which he is said to have written and burned when he was fifteen, foreshadowed the poet and romancer. Yet Scott's career as an author began rather late. He published a few translations when he was twenty-five years old, but his first notable work, the _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, did not appear until 1802-3, when he was over thirty. This book, the outgrowth of his early interest in ballads and his own attempts at versifying, exhibited both his editorial and his creative powers. It led up to the publication of two important volumes which contained material originally intended to form part of the _Minstrelsy_, but which outgrew that work. These were the edition of the old metrical romance _Sir Tristrem_, which showed Scott as a scholar, and the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, the first of Scott's own metrical romances. So far his literary achievement was all of one kind, or of two or three kinds closely related. In this first period of his literary life, perhaps even more than later, his editorial impulse, his scholarly activity, was closely connected with the inspiration for original writing. The _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ was the climax of this series of enterprises. With the publication of the _Minstrelsy_, Scott of course became known as a literary antiquary. He was naturally called upon for help when the _Edinburgh Review_ was started a few weeks afterwards, especially as Jeffrey, who soon became the editor, had long been his friend. The articles that he wrote during 1803 and 1804 were of a sort that most evidently connected itself with the work he had been doing: reviews, for example, of Southey's _Amadis de Gaul_, and of Ellis's _Early English Poetry_. During 1805-6 the range of his reviewing became wider and he included some modern books, especially two or three which offered opportunity for good fun-making. About 1806, however, his aversion to the political principles which dominated the _Edinburgh Review_ became so strong that he refused to continue as a contributor, and only once, years later, did he again write an article for that periodical. In the same year, 1806, Scott supplied with editorial apparatus and issued anonymously _Original Memoirs Written during the Great Civil War_, the first of what proved to be a long list of publications having historical interest, sometimes reprints, sometimes original editions from old manuscripts, to which he contributed a greater or less amount of material in the shape of introductions and notes. These were undertaken in a few cases for money, in others simply because they struck him as interesting and useful labors. It is easy to trace the relation of this to his other work, particularly to the novels. He once wrote to a friend, "The editing a new edition of _Somers's Tracts_ some years ago made me wonderfully well acquainted with the little traits which marked parties and characters in the seventeenth century, and the embodying them is really an amusing task."[4] Among the works which he edited in this way the number of historical memoirs is noticeable. After the volume that has been mentioned as the first, he prepared another book of _Memoirs of the Great Civil War_; and we find in the list a _Secret History of the Court of James I._, _Memoirs of the Reign of King Charles I._, Count Grammont's _Memoirs of the Court of Charles II._, _A History of Queen Elizabeth's Favourites_, etc. Such books as these, besides furnishing material for his novels, led Scott to acquire a mass of information that enabled him to perform with great facility and with admirable results whatever editorial work he might choose to undertake. These labors Scott always considered as trifles to be dispatched in the odd moments of his time, but the great edition of _Dryden's Complete Works_, which he began to prepare soon after the _Minstrelsy_ appeared, was more important. This, next to the _Minstrelsy_, was probably the most notable of all Scott's editorial enterprises. It was published in eighteen volumes in 1808, the year in which _Marmion_ also appeared. When the poet was reproached by one of his friends for not working more steadily at his vocation, he replied, "The public, with many other properties of spoiled children, has all their eagerness after novelty, and were I to dedicate my time entirely to poetry they would soon tire of me. I must therefore, I fear, continue to edit a little."[5] His interest in scholarly pursuits appears even in his first attempt at writing prose fiction, since Joseph Strutt's unfinished romance, _Queenhoo Hall_, for which Scott wrote a conclusion, is of consequence only on account of the antiquarian learning which it exhibits. Having become seriously alarmed over the political influence of the _Edinburgh Review_, Scott was active in forwarding plans for starting a strong rival periodical in London, and 1809 saw the establishment of the _Quarterly Review_. By that time he had done a considerable amount of work in practically every kind except the novel, and he was recognized as a most efficient assistant and adviser in any such enterprise as the promoters of the _Quarterly_ were undertaking. Moreover, his own writings were prominent among the books which supplied material for the reviewer. He worked hard for the first volume. But after that year he wrote little for the _Quarterly_ until 1818, and again little until after Lockhart became editor in 1825. From that time until 1831 he was an occasional contributor. 1814 was the year of _Waverley_. Before that the poems had been appearing in rapid succession, and Scott had been busy with the _Works of Swift_, which came out also in 1814. The thirteen volumes of the edition of _Somers' Tracts_, already mentioned, and several smaller books, bore further witness to his editorial energy. The last of the long poems was published in 1815, about the same time with _Guy Mannering_, the second novel, and after that the novels continued to appear with that rapidity which constitutes one of the chief facts of Scott's literary career. For a few years after this period he did comparatively little in the way of editorial work, but his odd moments were occupied in writing about history, travels, and antiquities.[6] In 1820 Scott wrote the _Lives of the Novelists_, which appeared the next year in Ballantyne's _Novelists' Library_. By this time he had begun, with _Ivanhoe_, to strike out from the Scottish field in which all his first novels had been placed. The martial pomp prominent in this novel reflects the eager interest with which he was at that time following his son's opening career in the army; just as _Marmion_, written by the young quartermaster of the Edinburgh Light Horse, also expresses the military ardor which was so natural to Scott, and which reminds us of his remark that in those days a regiment of dragoons was tramping through his head day and night. Probably we might trace many a reason for his literary preoccupations at special times besides those that he has himself commented upon. In the case of the critical work, however, the matter was usually determined for him by circumstances of a much less intimate sort, such as the appeal of an editor or the appearance of a book which excited his special interest. When Scott was obliged to make as much money as possible he wrote novels and histories rather than criticism. His _Life of Napoleon Buonaparte_, which appeared in nine volumes in 1827, enabled him to make the first large payment on the debts that had fallen upon him in the financial crash of the preceding year, and the _Tales of a Grandfather_ were among the most successful of his later books. His critical biographies and many of his other essays were brought together for the first time in 1827, and issued under the title of _Miscellaneous Prose Works_. The world of books was making his life weary with its importunate demands in those years when he was writing to pay his debts, and it is pleasant to see that some of his later reviews discussed matters that were not less dear to his heart because they were not literary. The articles on fishing, on ornamental gardening, on planting waste lands, remind us of the observation he once made, that his oaks would outlast his laurels. By this time the "Author of Waverley" was no longer the "unknown." His business complications compelled him to give his name to the novels, and with the loss of a certain kind of privacy he gained the freedom of which later he made such fortunate use in annotating his own works. From the beginning of 1828 until the end of his life in 1832, Scott was engaged, in the intervals of other occupations, in writing these introductions and notes for his novels, for an edition which he always called the _Opus Magnum_. This was a pleasant task, charmingly done. Indeed we may call it the last of those great editorial labors by which Scott's fame might live unsupported by anything else. First came the _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, then the editions of Dryden and Swift. Next we may count the _Lives of the Novelists_, even in the fragmentary state in which the failure of the _Novelists' Library_ left them; and finally the _Opus Magnum_. When, in addition, we remember the mass of his critical work written for periodicals, and the number of minor volumes he edited, it becomes evident that a study of Scott which disregards this part of his work can present only a one-sided view of his achievement. And the qualities of his abundant criticism, especially its large fresh sanity, seem to make it worthy of closer analysis than it usually receives, not only because it helps to reveal Scott's genius, but also on account of the historical and ethical importance which always attaches to the ideals, literary and other, of a noble man and a great writer. CHAPTER II SCOTT'S QUALIFICATIONS AS CRITIC Wide reading Scott's first qualification--Scott the antiquary--Character of his interest in history--His imagination--His knowledge of practical affairs--Common-sense in criticism--Cheerfulness, good-humor, and optimism--General aspect of Scott's critical work. Wide and appreciative reading was Scott's first qualification for critical work. A memory that retained an incredible amount of what he read was the second. One of the severest censures he ever expressed was in regard to Godwin, who, he thought, undertook to do scholarly work without adequate equipment. "We would advise him," Scott said in his review of Godwin's _Life of Chaucer_, "in future to read before he writes, and not merely while he is writing." Scott himself had accumulated a store of literary materials, and he used them according to the dictates of a temperament which had vivid interests on many sides. We may distinguish three points of view which were habitual to Scott, and which determined the direction of his creative work, as well as the tone of his criticism. These were--as all the world knows--the historical, the romantic, the practical. He was, as he often chose to call himself, an antiquary; he felt the appeal of all that was old and curious. But he was much more than that. The typical antiquary has his mind so thoroughly devoted to the past that the present seems remote to him. The sheer intellectual capacity of such a man as Scott might be enough to save him from such a limitation, for he could give to the past as much attention as an ordinary man could muster, and still have interest for contemporary affairs; but his capacity was not all that saved Scott. He viewed the past always as filled with living men, whose chief occupation was to think and feel rather than to provide towers and armor for the delectation of future antiquaries.[7] A sympathetic student of his work has said, "There is ... throughout the poetry of this author, even when he leads us to the remotest wildernesses and the most desolate monuments of antiquity, a constant reference to the feelings of man in his social condition."[8] The past, to the author of _Kenilworth_, was only the far end of the present, and he believed that the most useful result of the study of history is a comprehension of the real quality of one's own period and a wisdom in the conduct of present day affairs.[9] The favorite pursuits of Scott's youth indicate that his characteristic taste showed itself early; indeed it is said that he retained his boyish traits more completely than most people do. We can trace much of his love of the past to the family traditions which made the adventurous life of his ancestors vividly real to him. The annals of the Scotts were his earliest study, and he developed such an affection for his freebooting grandsires that in his manhood he confessed to an unconquerable liking for the robbers and captains of banditti of his romances, characters who could not be prevented from usurping the place of the heroes. "I was always a willing listener to tales of broil and battle and hubbub of every kind," he wrote in later life, "and now I look back upon it, I think what a godsend I must have been while a boy to the old Trojans of 1745, nay 1715, who used to frequent my father's house, and who knew as little as I did for what market I was laying up the raw materials of their oft-told tales."[10] What attracted him in his boyhood, and what continued to attract him, was the picturesque incident, the color of the past, the mere look of its varied activity. The philosophy of history was gradually revealed to him, however, and his generalizing faculty found congenial employment in tracing out the relation of men to movements, of national impulses to world history. But however much he might exercise his analytical powers, history was never abstract to him, nor did it require an effort for him to conjure up scenes of the past. An acquaintance with the stores of early literature served to give him the spirit of remote times as well as to feed his literary tastes. On this side he had an ample equipment for critical work, conditioned, of course, by the other qualities of his mind, which determined how the equipment should be used. That Scott was not a dull digger in heaps of ancient lore was owing to his imaginative power,--the second of the qualities which we have distinguished as dominating his literary temperament. "I can see as many castles in the clouds as any man," he testified.[11] A recent writer has said that Scott had more than any other man that ever lived a sense of the romantic, and adds that his was that true romance which "lies not upon the outside of life, but absolutely in the centre of it."[12] The situations and the very objects that he described have the power of stirring the romantic spirit in his readers because he was alive to the glamour surrounding anything which has for generations been connected with human thoughts and emotions. The subjectivity which was so prominent an element in the romanticism of Shelley, Keats, and Byron, does not appear in Scott's work. Nor was his sense of the mystery of things so subtle as that of Coleridge. But Scott, rather than Coleridge, was the interpreter to his age of the romantic spirit, for the ordinary person likes his wonders so tangible that he may know definitely the point at which they impinge upon his consciousness. In Scott's work the point of contact is made clear: the author brings his atmosphere not from another world but from the past, and with all its strangeness it has no unearthly quality. In general the romance of his nature is rather taken for granted than insisted on, for there are the poems and the novels to bear witness to that side of his temperament; and the surprising thing is that such an author was a business man, a large landowner, an industrious lawyer.[13] Scott's imaginative sense, which clothed in fine fancies any incident or scene presented, however nakedly, to his view, accounts in part for his notorious tendency to overrate the work of other writers, especially those who wrote stories in any form. This explanation was hinted at by Sir Walter himself, and formulated by Lockhart; it seems a fairly reasonable way of accounting for a trait that at first appears to indicate only a foolish excess of good-nature. This rich and active imagination, which Scott brought to bear on everything he read, perhaps explains also his habit of paying little attention to carefully worked out details, and of laying almost exclusive emphasis upon main outlines. When he was writing his _Life of Napoleon_, he said in his _Journal_: "Better a superficial book which brings well and strikingly together the known and acknowledged facts, than a dull boring narrative, pausing to see further into a mill-stone at every moment than the nature of the mill-stone admits."[14] Probably his high gift of imagination made him a little impatient with the remoter reaches of the analytic faculties. Any sustained exercise of the pure reason was outside his province, reasonable as he was in everyday affairs. He preferred to consider facts, and to theorize only so far as was necessary to establish comfortable relations between the facts,--never to the extent of trying to look into the center of a mill-stone. It was not unusual for him to make very acute observations in the spheres of ethics, economics, and psychology, and to use them in explaining any situation which might seem to require their assistance; but these remarks were brief and incidental, and bore a very definite relation to the concrete ideas they were meant to illustrate. Scott was a business man as well as an antiquary and a poet. Mr. Palgrave thought Lockhart went too far in creating the impression that Scott could detach his mind from the world of imagination and apply its full force to practical affairs.[15] Yet the oversight of lands and accounts and of all ordinary matters was so congenial to him, and his practical activities were on the whole conducted with so much spirit and capability, that after emphasizing his preoccupation with the poetic aspects of the life of his ancestors, we must turn immediately about and lay stress upon his keen judgment in everyday affairs. To a school-boy poet he once wrote: "I would ... caution you against an enthusiasm which, while it argues an excellent disposition and a feeling heart, requires to be watched and restrained, though not repressed. It is apt, if too much indulged, to engender a fastidious contempt for the ordinary business of the world, and gradually to render us unfit for the exercise of the useful and domestic virtues which depend greatly upon our not exalting our feelings above the temper of well-ordered and well-educated society."[16] He phrased the same matter differently when he said: "'I'd rather be a kitten and cry, Mew!' than write the best poetry in the world on condition of laying aside common-sense in the ordinary transactions and business of the world."[17] "He thought," said Lockhart, "that to spend some fair portion of every day in any matter-of-fact occupation is good for the higher faculties themselves in the upshot."[18] Whether or not we consider this the ideal theory of life for a poet, we find it reasonable to suppose that a critic will be the better critic if he preserve some balance between matter-of-fact occupation and the exercise of his higher faculties. Sir Walter's maxim applies well to himself at least, and an analysis of his powers as a critic derives some light from it. The thing that is waiting to be said is of course that his criticism is distinguished by common-sense. Whether common-sense should really predominate in criticism might perhaps be debated; the quality indicates, indeed, not only the excellence but also the limitations of his method. For example, Scott was rather too much given to accepting popular favor as the test of merit in literary work, and though the clamorously eager reception of his own books was never able to raise his self-esteem to a very high pitch, it seems to have been the only thing that induced him to respect his powers in anything like an appreciative way.[19] His instinct and his judgment agreed in urging him to avoid being a man of "mere theory,"[20] and he sought always to test opinions by practical standards. More or less connected with his good sense are other qualities which also had their effect upon his critical work,--his cheerfulness, his sweet temper and human sympathy, his modesty, his humor, his independence of spirit, and his enthusiastic delight in literature. That his cheerfulness was a matter of temperament we cannot doubt, but it was also founded on principle. He had remarkable power of self-control.[21] His opinion that it is a man's duty to live a happy life appears rather quaintly in the sermonizing with which he felt called upon to temper the admiration expressed in his articles on _Childe Harold_, and it is implicit in many of his biographical studies. His own amiability of course influenced all his work. Satire he considered objectionable, "a woman's fault,"[22] as he once called it; though he did not feel himself "altogether disqualified for it by nature."[23] "I have refrained, as much as human frailty will permit, from all satirical composition,"[24] he said. For satire he seems to have substituted that kind of "serious banter, a style hovering between affected gravity and satirical slyness," which has been pointed out as characteristic of him.[25] Washington Irving noticed a similar tone in all his familiar conversations about local traditions and superstitions.[26] He was really optimistic, except on some political questions. In his _Lives of the Novelists_ he shows that he thought manners and morals had improved in the previous hundred years; and none of his reviews exhibits the feeling so common among men of letters in all ages, that their own times are intellectually degenerate. It is true that he looked back to the days of Blair, Hume, Adam Smith, Robertson, and Ferguson, as the "golden days of Edinburgh,"[27] but those golden days were no farther away than his own boyhood, and he had felt the exhilaration of the stimulating society which he praised. One of his contemporaries spoke of Scott's own works as throwing "a literary splendour over his native city";[28] and George Ticknor said of him, "He is indeed the lord of the ascendant now in Edinburgh, and well deserves to be, for I look upon him to be quite as remarkable in intercourse and conversation, as he is in any of his writings, even in his novels."[29] But he could hardly be expected to perceive the luster surrounding his own personality, and this one instance of regret for former days counts little against the abundant evidence that he thought the world was improving. Yet of all his contemporaries he was probably the one who looked back at the past with the greatest interest. The impression made by the author of _Waverley_ upon the mind of a young enthusiast of his own time is too delightful to pass over without quotation. "He has no eccentric sympathies or antipathies"; wrote J.L. Adolphus, "no maudlin philanthropy or impertinent cynicism; no nondescript hobby-horse; and with all his matchless energy and originality of mind, he is content to admire popular books, and enjoy popular pleasures; to cherish those opinions which experience has sanctioned; to reverence those institutions which antiquity has hallowed; and to enjoy, admire, cherish, and reverence all these with the same plainness, simplicity, and sincerity as our ancestors did of old."[30] By temperament, then, Scott was enthusiastic over the past and cheerful in regard to his own day; he was imaginative, practical, genial; and these traits must be taken into account in judging his critical writings. These and other qualities may be deduced from the most superficial study of his creative work. The mere bulk of that work bears witness to two things: first that Scott was primarily a creative writer; again, that he was of those who write much rather than minutely. It is obvious that to attack details would be easy. And since he was only secondarily a critic, it is natural that his critical opinions should not have been erected into any system. But while they are essentially desultory, they are the ideas of a man whose information and enthusiasm extended through a wide range of studies; and they are rendered impressive by the abundance, variety, and energy, which mark them as characteristic of Scott. CHAPTER III SCOTT'S WORK AS STUDENT AND EDITOR IN THE FIELD OF LITERARY HISTORY THE MEDIAEVAL PERIOD _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_ Scott's early interest in ballads--Casual origin of the _Minstrelsy_--Importance of the book in Scott's career--Plan of the book--Mediaeval scholarship of Scott's time--His theory as to the origin of ballads and their deterioration--His attitude toward the work of previous editors--His method of forming texts--Kinds of changes he made--His qualifications for emending old poetry--Modern imitations of the ballad included in the _Minstrelsy_--Remarks on the ballad style--Impossibility of a scientific treatment of folk-poetry in Scott's time--Real importance of the _Minstrelsy_. We think of the _Border Minstrelsy_ as the first work which resulted from the preparation of Scott's whole youth, between the days when he insisted on shouting the lines of _Hardyknute_ into the ears of the irate clergyman making a parish call, and the time when he and his equally ardent friends gathered their ballads from the lips of old women among the hills. But we have seen that the inspiration for his first attempts at writing poetry came only indirectly from the ballads of his own country. We learn from the introduction to the third part of the _Minstrelsy_ that some of the young men of Scott's circle in Edinburgh were stimulated by what the novelist, Henry Mackenzie, told them of the beauties of German literature, to form a class for the study of that language. This was when Scott was twenty-one, but it was still four years before he found himself writing those translations which mark the sufficiently modest beginning of his literary career. His enthusiasm for German literature was not at first tempered by any critical discrimination, if we may judge from the opinions of one or two of his friends who labored to point out to him the extravagance and false sentiment which he was too ready to admire along with the real genius of some of his models.[31] Apparently their efforts were useful, for in a review written in 1806 we find Scott, in a remark on Bürger, referring to "the taste for outrageous sensibility, which disgraces most German poetry."[32] His special interest in the Germans was an early mood which seems not to have returned. After the process of translation had discovered to him his verse-making faculty, he naturally passed on to the writing of original poems, and circumstances of a half accidental sort determined that the Scottish ballads which he had always loved should absorb his attention for the next two or three years. The publication of a book of ballads was first suggested by Scott as an opportunity for his friend Ballantyne to exhibit his skill as a printer and so increase his business. "I have been for years collecting old Border ballads," Scott remarked, "and I think I could with little trouble put together such a selection from them as might make a neat little volume to sell for four or five shillings."[33] From this casual proposition resulted _The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, published in three volumes in 1802-3 and often revised and reissued during the editor's lifetime. This book and the prefaces to his own novels are likely to be thought of first when Scott is spoken of as a critic. The connection between the _Minstrelsy_ and the novels has often been pointed out, ever since the day of the contemporary who, on reading the ballads with their introductions, exclaimed that in that book were the elements of a hundred historical romances.[34] The interest of the earlier work is undoubtedly multiplied by the associations in the light of which we read it--associations connected with the editor's whole experience as an author, from the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ to _Castle Dangerous_. Important as the _Minstrelsy_ is from the point of view of literary criticism, the material of its introductions is chiefly historical. The introduction in the original edition gives an account of life on the Border in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with the outlines of many of the events that stimulated ballad-making, and an analysis of the temper of the Marchmen among whom this kind of poetry flourished; then by special introductions and notes to the poems an attempt is made to explain both the incidents on which they seem to have been founded, and parallel cases that appear in tradition or record. Some enthusiastic comment is included, of the kind that was so natural to Scott, on the effect of ballad poetry upon a spirited and warlike people. The writer continues: "But it is not the Editor's present intention to enter upon a history of Border poetry; a subject of great difficulty, and which the extent of his information does not as yet permit him to engage in." It was, in fact, nearly thirty years later[35] that Scott wrote the _Remarks on Popular Poetry_ which since that date have formed an introduction to the book, as well as the essay, _On Imitations of the Ancient Ballad_, which at present precedes the third part. The more purely literary side of the editor's duty--leaving out of account the modern poems written by Scott and others--was exhibited chiefly in the construction of texts, a matter of which I shall speak later, after considering his views of the origin and character of folk-poetry in general. But first we may recall the fact that Scott was following a fairly well established vogue in giving scholarly attention to ancient popular poetry. A revival of interest in the study of mediaeval literature had been stimulated in England by the publication of Percy's _Reliques_ in 1765 and Warton's _History of English Poetry_ in 1774. In 1800 there were enough well-known antiquaries to keep Scott from being in any sense lonely. Among them Joseph Ritson[36] was the most learned, but he was crotchety in the extreme; and while his notions as to research were in advance of his time, his controversial style resembled that of the seventeenth century. George Ellis,[37] on the other hand, was distinguished by an eighteenth-century urbanity, and his combination of learning and good taste fitted him to influence a broader public than that of specialists. At the same time he was a delightful and stimulating friend to other scholars. Southey was becoming known as an authority on the history and literature of the Spanish peninsula. A review in the _Quarterly_ a dozen years later mentions these three,--Ellis, Scott, and Southey,--as "good men and true" to serve as guides in the remote realms of literature.[38] Ellis's friend, John Hookham Frere, had great abilities but was an incurable dillettante. Scott particularly admired a Middle-English version of _The Battle of Brunanburgh_ which Frere wrote in his school-boy days, and considered him an authoritative critic of mediaeval English poetry. Robert Surtees[39] and Francis Douce[40] were antiquaries of some importance, and both, like all the others named, were friends of Scott. Mr. Herford calls this period a day of "Specimens" and extracts: "Mediaeval romance was studied in Ellis's _Specimens_," he says, "the Elizabethan drama in Lamb's, literary history at large in D'Israeli's gently garrulous compilations of its 'quarrels,' 'amenities,' 'calamities,' and 'curiosities.'"[41] But the scholarship of the time on the whole is worthy of respect. In the case of ballads and romances notable work had been done before Scott entered the field,[42] and he and his contemporaries were carrying out the promise of the half century before them--continuing the work that Percy and Warton had begun. Among the problems connected with ballad study, that which arises first is naturally the question of origins. Scott made no attempt to formulate a theory different in any main element from that which was held by his predecessors. He agreed with Percy that ballads were composed and sung by minstrels, and based his discussion on the materials brought forward by Percy and Ritson for use in their great controversy.[43] Ritson himself never doubted that ballads were composed and sung by individual authors, though he might refuse to call them minstrels. The idea of communal authorship, which Jacob Grimm was to suggest only half a dozen years after the first edition of the _Minstrelsy_, would doubtless have been rejected by Scott, even if he had considered it. But we have no evidence that he did so. Probably he did not, as he never felt the need of a new theory.[44] Scott's opinion in regard to the transmission of ballads followed naturally from his theory of their origin. His aristocratic instincts perhaps helped to determine his belief that ballads were composed by gifted minstrels, and that they had deteriorated in the process of being handed down by recitation. He called tradition "a sort of perverted alchymy which converts gold into lead." "All that is abstractedly poetical," he said, "all that is above the comprehension of the merest peasant, is apt to escape in frequent repetition; and the _lacunae_ thus created are filled up either by lines from other ditties or from the mother wit of the reciter or singer. The injury, in either case, is obvious and irreparable."[45] From this point of view Scott considered that the ballads were only getting their rights when a skilful hand gave them such a retouching as should enable them to appear in something of what he called their original vigor.[46] We may learn what qualities he considered necessary for an editor in this field, from the latter part of his _Remarks on Popular Poetry_, in which he discusses previous attempts to collect English and Scottish ballads. Of Percy he speaks in the highest terms, here and elsewhere. We have seen that he felt a strong sympathy with Percy's desire to dress up the ballads and make them as attractive to the public as their intrinsic charms render them to their friends. He did not of course realize the extent to which the Bishop reworked his materials, as the publication of the folio manuscript has since revealed it, and Ritson's captious remarks on the subject were naturally discounted on the score of their ill-temper. But it is not to be doubted that Ritson had an appreciable effect on Scott's attitude, by stirring him up to some comprehension of the things that might be said in favor even of dull accuracy. Ritson's collections are cited in their place, with a tribute to the extreme fidelity of their editor. It is a pity that this accurate scholar could not have had a sufficient amount of literary taste, to say nothing of good manners, to inspire others with a fuller trust in his method. Scott expresses impatience with him for seeming to prefer the less effective text in many instances, "as if a poem was not more likely to be deteriorated than improved by passing through the mouths of many reciters."[47] He admitted, however, that it was not in his own period necessary to rework the ballads as much as Bishop Percy had done, since the _Reliques_ had already created an audience for popular poetry. His purpose evidently was to steer a middle course between such graceful but sophisticated versions as were given in the _Reliques_, and the exact transcript of everything to be gathered from tradition, whether interesting or not, that was attempted by Ritson. In his later revisions he gave way more than at first to his natural impulse in favor of the added graces which he could supply.[48] It is easy to see how his own contributions of word and phrase might slip in, since his avowed method was to collate the different texts secured from manuscripts or recitation or both, and so to give what to his mind was the worthiest version. Believing that the ballads had been composed by men not unlike himself, he assumed, in the manner well known to classical text-critics, that his familiarity with the conditions of the ancient social order gave him some license for changing here and there a word or a line. In determining which stanzas or lines to choose, when choice was possible, he was guided by his antiquarian knowledge and by the general principle of selecting the most poetic rendering among those at his command. This was his way of showing his respect for the minstrel bards of whom he was fond of considering himself a successor. So far it is perfectly easy to take his point of view. But it is more difficult to reconcile his practice with his professions. We find this declaration in the forefront of the book: "No liberties have been taken either with the recited or written copies of these ballads, farther than that, where they disagreed, which is by no means unusual, the editor, in justice to the author, has uniformly preserved what seemed to him the best or most poetical rendering of the passage.... Some arrangement was also occasionally necessary to recover the rhyme, which was often, by the ignorance of the reciters, transposed or thrown into the middle of the line. With these freedoms, which were essentially necessary to remove obvious corruptions and fit the ballads for the press, the editor presents them to the public, under the complete assurance that they carry with them the most indisputable marks of their authenticity."[49] In the face of this fair announcement we are surprised, to say the least, at the number of lines and stanzas which scholars have discovered to be of Scott's own composition.[50] Occasionally his notes give some slight indication of his method of treatment, as for instance this, on _The Dowie Dens of Yarrow_: "The editor found it easy to collect a variety of copies; but very difficult indeed to select from them such a collated edition as might in any degree suit the taste of 'these more light and giddy-paced times.'" Notes on some others of the ballads say that "a few conjectural emendations have been found necessary," but no one of these remarks would seem really ingenuous in a modern scholar when we consider how far the "conjectural emendations" extended. Moreover, changes were often made without the slightest clue in introduction or note.[51] The case was complicated for Scott by the poetical tastes of his assistants. Leyden[52] was apparently quite capable of taking down a ballad from recitation in such a way as to produce a more finished poem than one would expect a traditional ballad to be. And Hogg,[53] who supplied several ballads from the recitations of his mother and other old people, was probably still less strict. "Sure no man," he is quoted as having said, "will think an old song the worse of being somewhat harmonious."[54] Yet it is easy to see that Scott's friends might have acted differently if his own practice had favored absolute fidelity to the texts. A remark in Scott's review of Evans's _Old Ballads_ seems a pretty definite arraignment of his own procedure. "It may be asked by the severer antiquary of the present day, why an editor, thinking it necessary to introduce such alterations in order to bring forth a new, beautiful, and interesting sense from a meagre or corrupted original, did not in good faith to his readers acquaint them with the liberties he had taken and make them judge whether in so doing he transgressed his limits. We answer that unquestionably such would be the express duty of a modern editor, but such were not the rules of the service when Dr. Percy first opened the campaign."[55] One wonders whether the "rules of the service" did not in Scott's opinion occasionally permit a little wilful mystification. The case of _Kinmont Willie_ tempts one to such an explanation. Besides the capital instance of his anonymity as regards the novels, Scott several times seemed to amuse himself in perplexing the public. There was the case of the _Bridal of Triermain_, which he tried by means of various careful devices to pass off as the work of a friend. But perhaps the best example appears in connection with _The Fortunes of Nigel_. He first designed the material of that book for a series of "private letters" purporting to have been written in the reign of James I., but when he had finally complied with the advice of his friends and used it for a novel, he said to Lockhart, "You were all quite right: if the letters had passed for genuine, they would have found favour only with a few musty antiquaries."[56] This suggests comparison with the conduct of his friend Robert Surtees, who palmed off upon him three whole ballads of his own and got them inserted in the _Minstrelsy_ as ancient, with a plausible tale concerning the circumstances of their recovery. Surtees, one is interested to observe, never dared tell Scott the truth, and Scott always accepted the ballads as genuine--a lack of discernment rather compromising in an editor, though one may perhaps excuse him on the ground of his confidence in his brother antiquary.[57] In one direction Scott seems to have been more conscientious than we might be inclined to suppose after seeing the discrepancy between the standard of exactness that his own statements lead us to expect and the results that actually appear. I believe that he intended to preserve the manuscript texts just as he received them, and that he would have wished to have them given to the public when the public was prepared to want them. To support this theory we have first the fact that most of his own emendations have been traced by means of the manuscripts which he used.[58] It is significant that in speaking of a poet who had altered a manuscript to suit a revised reading he grew indignant over that fault far more than over the mere change in the published version. _The Raid of the Reidswire_, he said, "first appeared in Allan Ramsay's _Evergreen_, but some liberties have been taken by him in transcribing it; and, what is altogether unpardonable, the manuscript, which is itself rather inaccurate, has been interpolated to favour his readings; of which there remain obvious marks."[59] Scott said also that the time had come for the publication of Percy's folio manuscript; though we must believe that he would not have wished to see the manuscript published until the ballads had become familiar to the world in what he considered a beautified form. The changes Scott made were usually in style rather than in substance. Often he merely substituted an archaic word for a modern one; but often whole lines and longer passages offered temptations which the poet in him could not resist, and he "improved" lavishly. For example, we have his note on _Earl Richard_--"The best verses are here selected from both copies, and some trivial alterations have been adopted from tradition,"--with the comment by Mr. Henderson--"The emendations of Scott are so many, and the majority relate so entirely to style, that no mere tradition could have supplied them."[60] His versions are in general characterized by a smoothness and precision of meter which to the student of ballads is very suspicious. But he seems occasionally to have altered or supplied incidents as well as phrases. The historical event which furnished the purpose for the expedition of Sir Patrick Spens seems to have been introduced into the ballad by Scott, and Mr. Henderson thinks that "when the deeds of his ancestors were concerned it was impossible for him to resist the temptation to employ some of his own minstrel art on their behalf."[61] Certainly Scott's qualifications for evolving true poetry out of the crude fragments that sometimes served as a basis formed a very unusual combination when they were united with his knowledge of early history and literature. He had such confidence in his own powers in this direction that he at one time intended to write a series of imitations of Scottish poets of different periods, from Thomas the Rhymer down, and thus to exhibit changes in language as well as variations in literary style.[62] He evidently thought that the ballads as they appeared in the _Minstrelsy_ were truer to their originals than were the copies he was able to procure from recitation. Lockhart gives him precisely the kind of praise he would have desired, in saying, "From among a hundred corruptions he seized with instinctive tact the primitive diction and imagery."[63] It is evident that Scott's public did not wish him to be more careful than he was in discriminating between new and old matter. One of his moments of strict veracity seems even to have occasioned some annoyance to the writer of the _Edinburgh_ article, who apparently preferred to believe in the antiquity of _The Flowers of the Forest_ rather than to learn that "the most positive evidence" proved its modern origin. The editor's introduction to the poem seems perfectly clear; he names his authority and quotes two verses which are ancient;[64] but the reviewer says with a perverse irritability: "Mr. Scott would have done well to tell us how much he deems ancient, and to give us the 'positive evidence' that convinced him _the whole_ was not so."[65] This review was, however, for the most part favorable. The fact that Scott included modern imitations of the ballad in his book is another indication that his attitude was like that of his predecessors.[66] Doubtless these helped the _Minstrelsy_ to sell, but a more modern taste would choose to put them in a place by themselves, not in a collection of old ballads. An essay on _Imitations of the Ancient Ballad_ was written, as were the _Remarks on Popular Poetry_, for the 1833 edition. It is chiefly interesting for its autobiographical matter, though it also contains criticisms of Burns and other writers of ballad poetry--"a species of literary labour which the author has himself pursued with some success."[67] Scott's statement that the ballad style was very popular at the time he began to write, and that he followed the prevailing fashion, was one of many examples of his modesty, taken in connection with the remark in another part of the essay to the effect that this style "had much to recommend it, especially as it presented considerable facilities to those who wished at as little exertion or trouble as possible to attain for themselves a certain degree of literary reputation." To complete the comparison, however, we need an observation found in one of Scott's reviews, on the spurious ballad poetry, full of false sentiment, sometimes written in the eighteenth century. "It is the very last refuge of those who can do nothing better in the shape of verse; and a man of genius should disdain to invade the province of these dawdling rhymers."[68] Scott's criticism of ballad style probably suffered from his interest in modern imitations of ballads. Perhaps also the real quality of ancient popular poetry was a little obscured for him by his belief that it was written by professional or semi-professional poets. If he wrote _Kinmont Willie_, he succeeded in catching the right tone better than anyone since him has been able to do, but even in this poem there are turns of phrase that remind one of the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ rather than of the true folk-song.[69] After his first attempts at versifying he received from William Taylor, of Norwich, who had made an earlier translation of Bürger's _Lenore_, a letter of hearty praise intermingled with very sensible remarks about the tendency in some parts of Scott's _Chase_ toward too great elaboration.[70] Scott's answer was as follows: "I do not ... think quite so severely of the Darwinian style, as to deem it utterly inconsistent with the ballad, which, at least to judge from the examples left us by antiquity, admits in some cases of a considerable degree of decoration. Still, however, I do most sincerely agree with you, that this may be very easily overdone, and I am far from asserting that this may not be in some degree my own case; but there is scarcely so nice a line to distinguish, as that which divides true simplicity from flatness and _Sternholdianism_ (if I may be allowed to coin the word), and therefore it is not surprising, that in endeavouring to avoid the latter, so young and inexperienced a rhymer as myself should sometimes have deviated also from the former."[71] This was Scott's earliest stage as a man of letters, and he evidently learned more about ballads later. But there appears in much of his criticism on the subject a limitation which may be assigned partly to his time, and partly, no doubt, to the fact that he was a poet and could not forget all the sophistications of his art. The true nature of ballad poetry could hardly be understood until scholars had investigated the structure of primitive society in a way that Scott's contemporaries were not at all prepared to do. Even Scott, with all his intelligent interest in bygone institutions and modes of expression, could hardly have foreseen the anthropological researches which the problem of literary origins has since demanded. We do not find, then, that Scott's work on ballads was marked by any special originality in point of view or method. _The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_ was a notable book because it did better what other men had tried to do, and especially because of the charm and effectiveness of its historical comment. It was more trustworthy than Percy's collection and more graceful than Ritson's; it was richer than other books of the kind in what people cared to have when they wanted ballads, and yet was not, for its time, over-sophisticated. Scott's conclusions cannot now be accepted without question, but the illustrations with which he sets them forth and the wide reading and sincere love of folk-poetry which evidently lie behind them produce a pleasant effect of ripe and reasonable judgment. The admirable qualities of the book were at once recognized by competent critics, and it will always be studied with enthusiasm by scholars as well as by the uncritical lover of ballads. _Studies in the Romances_ Scott's theory as to the connection between ballads and romances--His early fondness for romances--His acquaintance with Romance languages--His work on the _Sir Tristrem_--Value of his edition--Special quality of Scott's interest in the Middle Ages--General theories expressed in the body of his work on romances--His type of scholarship. Ballads and romances are so closely related that Scott's early and lasting interest in the one form naturally grew out of his interest in the other. He held the theory that "the romantic ballads of later times are for the most part abridgments of the ancient metrical romances, narrated in a smoother stanza and more modern language."[72] It is not surprising, then, that a considerable body of his critical work has to do with the subject of mediaeval romance. Throughout his boyhood Scott read all the fairy tales, eastern stories, and romances of knight-errantry that fell in his way. When he was about thirteen, he and a young friend used to spend hours reading together such authors as Spenser, Ariosto, and Boiardo.[73] He remembered the poems so well that weeks or months afterwards he could repeat whole pages that had particularly impressed him. Somewhat later the two boys improvised similar stories to recite to each other, Scott being the one who proposed the plan and the more successful in carrying it out. With this same friend he studied Italian and began to read the Italian poets in the original. In his autobiography he says:[74] "I had previously renewed and extended my knowledge of the French language, from the same principle of romantic research. Tressan's romances, the Bibliothèque Bleue, and Bibliothèque de Romans, were already familiar to me, and I now acquired similar intimacy with the works of Dante, Boiardo, Pulci, and other eminent Italian authors." Writing some years later he remarked: "I was once the most enormous devourer of the Italian romantic poetry, which indeed is the only poetry of their country which I ever had much patience for; for after all that has been said of Petrarch and his school, I am always tempted to exclaim like honest Christopher Sly, 'Marvellous good matter, would it were done.' But with Charlemagne and his paladins I could dwell forever."[75] Scott learned languages easily, and he read Spanish with about as much facility as Italian. Don Quixote seems often to be the guide with whom he chooses to traverse the fields of romance.[76] In Scott's boyhood one of his teachers noticed that he could follow and enjoy the meaning of what he read in Latin better than many of his school-fellows who knew more about the language, and it was the same all through his life--he got what he wanted from foreign literatures with very little trouble. Scott constantly refers to the work of Percy, Warton, Tressan,[77] Ritson, and Ellis, in the study of ancient romances, but in editing _Sir Tristrem_ he made one part of the field his own, and became the authority whom he felt obliged to quote in the Essay on Romance. Thomas the Rhymer of Erceldoune was at first an object of interest to Scott because of the ballad of _True Thomas_ and the traditions concerning him that floated about the countryside. The "Rhymer's Glen" was afterwards a cherished possession of Scott's own on the Abbotsford estate. In the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, of which Scott was in 1795 appointed a curator, was an important manuscript that contained among other metrical romances one professing to be a copy of that written by Thomas of Erceldoune on Sir Tristrem. From a careful piecing together of evidence furnished by this poem and by Robert of Brunne, with the assistance of certain legal documents which supplied dates, Scott built up about the old poet a theory that he elaborated in his edition of _Sir Tristrem_, published in 1804, and that continued to interest him vividly as long as he lived. It reappears in many of his critical writings[78] and also in the novels. In the _Bride of Lammermoor_ Ravenswood goes to his death in compliance with the prophecy of Thomas quoted by the superstitious Caleb Balderstone. And in _Castle Dangerous_ Bertram, who is unconvincing perhaps because he is endowed with the literary and antiquarian tastes of a Walter Scott himself, is actuated by an irrepressible desire to discover works of the Rhymer. Scott's edition of _Sir Tristrem_ gives--besides the text, introduction, and notes--a short conclusion written by himself in imitation of the original poet's style. Much of his theory has fallen. He considered this _Sir Tristrem_ to be the first of the written versions of that story, a supposition that was not long tenable. The poem is now known to be based upon a French original, and many scholars think the name Erceldoune was arbitrarily inserted by the English translator; though Mr. McNeill, the latest editor, thinks there is a "reasonable probability" in favor of Scott's opinion that the author was the historic Thomas, who flourished in the thirteenth century. It is important, however, that Scott's scholarship in the matter passed muster at that time with such men as Ellis, who wrote the review in the _Edinburgh_, in which he said, "Upon the whole we are much disposed to adopt the general inferences drawn by Mr. Scott from his authorities, and have great pleasure in bearing testimony to the very uncommon diligence which he has evinced in collecting curious materials, and to the taste and sagacity with which he has employed them.... With regard to the notes, they contain an almost infinite variety of curious information, which had been hitherto unknown or unnoticed."[79] John Hookham Frere said, as quoted in a letter by Ellis, "I consider _Sir Tristrem_ as by far the most interesting work that has as yet been published on the subject of our earliest poets."[80] Scott's opinions were in 1824 thought to be of sufficient importance, either from their own merits or on account of his later fame, to call forth a dissertation appended to the edition of Warton's _History of English Poetry_ published in that year. The first edition of the text swarms with errors, according to Kölbing,[81] a recent editor of the romance, and later editions are still very inaccurate.[82] It could hardly be expected that a man with Scott's habits of mind would edit a text accurately. But no one of that period was competent to construct a text that would seem satisfactory now. The study of English philology was not sufficiently developed in that direction, nor did scholars appreciate either the difficulties or the requirements of text-criticism. It is not to be wondered at that Scott failed, in this instance as well as afterwards in the case of the text of Dryden, to give a version that would stand the minute scrutiny of later scholarship. His sympathies were rather with the scholar who opens the store of old poetry to the public, than with him who uses his erudition simply for the benefit of erudite people. The diction of the Middle Ages was interesting to him only as it reflected the customs and emotions of its period. He used the romances as authorities on ancient manners. The _Chronicles_ of Froissart, because they give "a knowledge of mankind,"[83] were almost as much a hobby with him as Thomas the Rhymer, and in this case also he endows characters in his novels with his own fondness for the ancient writer.[84] The fruit of Scott's acquaintance with Froissart appears prominently in his essay on _Chivalry_ and in various introductions to ballads in the _Minstrelsy_, as well as in the novels of chivalry. Scott at one time proposed to publish an edition of Malory, but abandoned the project on learning that Southey had the same thing in mind.[85] The first periodical review Scott ever published was on the subject of the _Amadis de Gaul_, as translated by Southey and by Rose. The article is long and very carefully constructed, and expresses many ideas on the subject of the mediaeval romance in general that reappear again and again, particularly in the essay on _Romance_ written in 1823 for the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. Among these general ideas that found frequent expression in his critical writings, one which in the light of his creative work becomes particularly interesting to us is his judgment on the distinctions between metrical and prose romances. He always preferred the poems, though he was so interested in the prose stories that he talked about them with much enthusiasm, and it sometimes seems as if he liked best the kind he happened to be analyzing at the moment. Other matters that necessarily presented themselves when he was treating the subject of romance were the problem of the sources of narrative material, especially the perplexed question concerning the development of the Arthurian cycle, and the problem, already discussed in connection with ballads, concerning the character of minstrels. The minstrels reappear throughout Scott's studies in mediaeval literature, and were perhaps more interesting to him than any other part of the subject. Though, as we have seen, he formulated a compromise between the opposing opinions of Percy and Ritson, no one who reads the description of the Last Minstrel can doubt what was the picture that he preferred to carry in his mind. His ideas on the subject of the origin and diffusion of narrative material were those of the sensible man trying to look at the matter in a reasonable way. Here again he adopted an attitude of compromise, in that he admitted the partial truth of various theories which he considered erroneous only in so far as any one of them was stretched beyond its proper compass. "Romance," he said, "was like a compound metal, derived from various mines, and in the different specimens of which one metal or other was alternately predominant."[86] On the subject of the Arthurian cycle, the origin of which has never ceased to be matter for debate, he held essentially the opinions that the highest French authority has adopted that Celtic traditions were the foundation, and that the metrical romances preceded those in prose.[87] The important offices of French poets in giving form to the story he underestimated. When he said, "It is now completely proved, that the earliest and best French romances were composed for the meridian of the English court,"[88] he fell into the error that has not always been avoided by scholars who have since written on the subject, of feeling certitude about a proposition in which there is no certainty. Scott's work on romances, though it does not always rise above commonplaceness, escapes the perfunctory quality of hack writing by virtue of his keen interest in the subject. He continued to like this prosaic kind of literary task even while he was writing novels with the most wonderful facility. We may judge not only by the fact that he continued to write reviews at intervals throughout his life, but by an explicit reference in his _Journal_: "I toiled manfully at the review till two o'clock, commencing at seven. I fear it will be uninteresting, but I like the muddling work of antiquities, and besides wish to record my sentiments with regard to the Gothic question."[89] It is evident that Scott did not himself find the "muddling work of antiquities" dull, because he realized, emotionally as well as intellectually, the life of past times. This led him to form broader views than the ordinary student constructs out of his knowledge of special facts. An admirable illustration of this characteristic occurs in the essay on Romance, at the point where Scott is discussing the social position of the minstrels, in the light of what Percy and Ritson had said on the subject. He goes on: "In fact, neither of these excellent antiquaries has cast a general or philosophic glance on the necessary condition of a set of men, who were by profession the instruments of the pleasure of others during a period of society such as was presented in the Middle Ages." There follows a detailed and very interesting account of what the writer's own "philosophic glance" leads him to believe. The method is useful but dangerous; in the same essay occurs an amusing example of what philosophy may do when it is given free rein. Within two pages appear these conflicting statements: "The Metrical Romances, though in some instances sent to the press, were not very fit to be published in this form. The dull amplifications, which passed well enough in the course of a half-heard recitation, became intolerable when subjected to the eye." "The Metrical Romances in some instances indeed ran to great length, but were much exceeded in that particular by the folios which were written on the same or similar topics by their prose successors. Probably the latter judiciously reflected that a book which addresses itself only to the eyes may be laid aside when it becomes tiresome to the reader; whereas it may not always have been so easy to stop the minstrel in the full career of his metrical declamation." Flaws like this may be picked in the details of Scott's method, just as we may sometimes find fault with the lapses in his mediaeval scholarship. We do him no injustice when we say that aside from certain aspects of his work on the ballads and _Sir Tristrem_, his achievement was that of a popularizer of learning. But if he lacked some of the authority of erudition, he escaped also the induration of pedantry. In writing of remote and dimly known periods, critics are perhaps most apt to show their defects of temper, and Scott often commented on the acerbity of spirit which such studies seem to induce. "Antiquaries," he said, "are apt to be both positive and polemical upon the very points which are least susceptible of proof, and which are least valuable if the truth could be ascertained; and which therefore we would gladly have seen handled with more diffidence and better temper in proportion to their uncertainty."[90] Of Ritson he says many times in one form or another that his "severe accuracy was connected with an unhappy eagerness and irritability of temper." Scott rode his own hobbies with an expansive cheerfulness that did not at all hinder them from being essentially serious. _Other Studies in Mediaeval Literature_ Scott's attitude on the Ossianic controversy--His slight acquaintance with other northern literatures--Anglo-Saxon scholarship of the time--Character of his familiarity with Middle-English poetry--His opinions in regard to Chaucer--General importance of Scott's work on mediaeval literature. Part of Scott's critical work on mediaeval literature falls outside the limits of the two divisions we have been considering--those of ballad and romance. He knew comparatively little about the early poetry of the northern nations, but at some points his knowledge of Scottish literature made the transition fairly easy to the literature of other Teutonic peoples. But he was especially bound to be interested in the Gaelic, for a Scotsman of his day could hardly avoid forming an opinion in regard to the Ossianic controversy then raging with what Scott thought must be its final violence. He did not understand the Gaelic language,[91] but he had a vivid interest in the Highlanders. The picturesque quality of their customs made it natural enough for him to use them in his novels, and by the "sheer force of genius," says Mr. Palgrave, who considers this Scott's greatest achievement, "he united the sympathies of two hostile races."[92] As early as 1792 Scott had written for the Speculative Society an essay on the authenticity of Ossian's poems, and one of his articles for the _Edinburgh Review_ in 1805 was on the same subject, occasioned by a couple of important documents which supported opposite sides, and which, he said, set the question finally at issue. This article represents Scott the critic in a typical attitude. The material was almost altogether furnished in the works which he was surveying.[93] His task was to distinguish the essential points of the problem, to state them plainly, and to weigh the evidence on each side. In this he shows notable clearness of thought, and also, throughout the rather long treatment of a complicated subject, great lucidity in arrangement and statement. He was led by this study to change the opinion which he had held in common with most of his countrymen, and to adopt the belief that the poems were essentially creations of Macpherson, with only the names and some parts of the story adopted from the Gaelic.[94] Other references to Ossian occur in Scott's writings, and it is evident in this case, as in many others, that an investigation of the matter in his early career, whether from original or from secondary sources, gave him material for allusion and comment throughout his life. For, as we have constant occasion to remark in studying Scott, with a very definite grasp of concrete fact he combined a vigorous generalizing power, and all the parts of his knowledge were actively related. He seems to have made little preparation for some of his most interesting reviews, but to have utilized in them the store gathered in his mind for other purposes. Of the northern Teutonic languages Scott had slight knowledge, though he was always interested in the northern literatures. In a review of the _Poems of William Herbert_, of which the part most interesting to the reviewer consisted of translations from the Icelandic, Scott says: "We do not pretend any great knowledge of Norse; but we have so far traced the 'Runic rhyme' as to be sensible how much more easy it is to give a just translation of that poetry into English than into Latin." In the same review we find him saying, after a slight discussion of the style of Scaldic poetry, "The other translations are generally less interesting than those from the Icelandic. There is, however, one poem from the Danish, which I transcribe as an instance how very clearly the ancient popular ballad of that country corresponds with our own." So we see him drawing from all sources fuel for his favorite fire--the study of ballads. Very characteristically also Scott suggests that the author should extend his researches to the popular poetry of Scandinavia, "which we cannot help thinking is the real source of many of the tales of our minstrels."[95] It seems probable that Scott's acquaintance with northern literatures came partly through his ill-fated amanuensis, Henry Weber.[96] His acknowledgement in the introduction to _Sir Tristrem_ would indicate this, taken together with other references by Scott to Weber's attainments. Scott could hardly be called a student of Anglo-Saxon, though he was perhaps able to read the language. His remarks on the subject may, however, mean simply that he was familiar with early Middle English.[97] In his essay on Romance he referred to Sharon Turner's account of the story of Beowulf, but called the poem Caedmon, and made no correction when he added the later footnote in regard to Conybeare's fuller and more interesting analysis published in 1826.[98] The researches of these men indicate the state of Anglo-Saxon scholarship in England. Sharon Turner's very inaccurate description of _Beowulf_ was published in 1805. Danish scholars made the first translations of the poem, but no one could give a really scholarly text or translation until the year after Scott died, when the first edition by J.M. Kemble appeared. There were students of the language, however, who were doing good work in feeling their way toward a comprehension of its special qualities. One of these was George Ellis. In his _Specimens_ he published examples of Anglo-Saxon and Middle-English poetry, and his information was helpful in enlarging Scott's outlook. Scott's own knowledge of Anglo-Saxon literature did not amount to enough to be of importance by itself, but it served perhaps to fortify the basis of his generalizations about all early poetry. A review of the _Life and Works of Chatterton_ gave Scott an opportunity to discuss the characteristics of Middle-English poetry, but his general thesis, that the Rowley poems exhibit graces and refinements which are in marked contrast to the tenuity of idea and tautology of expression found in genuine works of the period, is supported by an argument which seems to be based on a characterization of the romances rather than on a close acquaintance with other Middle-English poetry. We notice a similar quality in what Scott says elsewhere concerning Frere's translation into Chaucerian English of the _Battle of Brunanburgh_: "This appears to us an exquisite imitation of the antiquated English poetry, not depending on an accumulation of hard words like the language of Rowley, which in everything else is refined and harmonious poetry, nor upon an agglomeration of consonants in the orthography, the resource of later and more contemptible forgers, but upon the style itself, upon its alternate strength and weakness, now nervous and concise, now diffuse and eked out by the feeble aid of expletives."[99] Of Middle-English poets other than Chaucer and the author or translator of _Sir Tristrem_, Laurence Minot was the one to whom Scott alluded most frequently, doubtless because in Ritson's edition of Minot that poet had become more accessible than most of his contemporaries. Whatever detailed work Scott did on the poetry of this period was chiefly in connection with _Sir Tristrem_, which has naturally been considered in relation with his other studies in romances. Scott's familiarity with Chaucer appears in his numerous quotations from that poet, but usually the passages are cited to illustrate mediaeval manners rather than for any specifically literary purpose. Yet there are Chaucer enthusiasts among the characters of _Woodstock_ and _Peveril of the Peak_.[100] Chaucer's fame was well enough established so that Scott seems on the whole to have taken his merit for granted, and not to have said much about it except in casual references.[101] Among general readers he must have been comparatively little known, however, notwithstanding the respect paid him by scholars. In 1805 we find Scott writing to Ellis that his scheme for editing a collection of the British Poets had fallen through, for, he said, "My plan was greatly too liberal to stand the least chance of being adopted by the trade at large, as I wished them to begin with Chaucer. The fact is, I never expected they would agree to it."[102] Scott's review of Godwin's _Life of Chaucer_, one of the best known of his periodical essays, is altogether concerned with the manner in which Godwin did his work, and so exhibits Scott's ideas on the subject of biography and his methods of reviewing rather than his attitude towards Chaucer's poetry. His most definite remarks concerning Chaucer are to be found in his comments upon Dryden's _Fables_, as for example: "The Knight's Tale, whether we consider Chaucer's original poem, or the spirited and animated version of Dryden, is one of the best pieces of composition in our language";[103] "Of all Chaucer's multifarious powers, none is more wonderful than the humour with which he touched upon natural frailty, and the truth with which he describes the inward feelings of the human heart."[104] Yet he once called _Troilus and Criseyde_ "a somewhat dull poem."[105] _The Cock and the Fox_, on the other hand, he speaks of as "a poem which, in grave ironical narrative, liveliness of illustration, and happiness of humorous description, yields to none that ever was written."[106] In estimating the importance of Scott's studies on any one period we have to think of them as part of a greater whole. The wide range of his investigations would evidently make it impossible to expect a complete treatment of all the subjects he might choose to discuss, and we have found, in fact, that his criticism of mediaeval literature led to systematic results in no other lines than those of the ballad and the romance. But these were large and important matters. Moreover, to all that he wrote in connection with the Middle Ages there attaches a special interest; for with that work he made his real start in literature; and it reflected the peculiarly delightful vein in his own nature which was constant from youth to age, and which gave to his poems and novels some of their most brilliant qualities.[107] THE DRAMA Scott's fondness for the drama and his acquaintance with actors--His ideas about plot structure--His own dramatic experiments--His opinion of the theaters of his day--His knowledge of English dramatic literature--Familiarity with Elizabethan plays shown in his novels--His Essay on the Drama--Ancient drama--French drama--Dramatic unities--German drama--Elizabethan drama--Shakspere--Ben Jonson--Dryden and other Restoration dramatists--Morality of theater-going--Character of Scott's interest in the drama. Like most of his characteristics, Scott's taste for the theater was exhibited in his childhood. We find him reverting, in a review written in 1826,[108] to his rapturous emotions on the occasion of seeing his first play; and in the private theatricals which he and his brothers and sister performed in the family dining-room he was always the manager. In 1810 he was active in helping to bring out in Edinburgh the _Family Legend_ of his friend Joanna Baillie.[109] One of the actors on that occasion was Daniel Terry,[110] who became an intimate friend of Scott's. For Terry Scott wrote _The Doom of Devorgoil_, but the piece was not found suitable for presentation. Several of the novels were more successfully dramatized by the same friend, so that we find the "Author" humorously complaining in the "Introductory Epistle" to _The Fortunes of Nigel_, "I believe my muse would be _Terry_fied into treading the stage even if I should write a sermon." Among Scott's friends were several other actors, particularly Mrs. Siddons and her brother John Kemble, and the comedian Charles Mathews. In Scott's review of _Kelly's Reminiscences and the Life of Kemble_ we find recorded many of the discriminations he was fond of making in regard to the talents of particular actors. In his childhood Scott felt well qualified to take the part of Richard III., for he considered that his limp "would do well enough to represent the hump."[111] After a similar fashion we find him commenting on the improbabilities of the tragedy of _Douglas_: "But the spectator should, and indeed must, make considerable allowances if he expects to receive pleasure from the drama. He must get his mind, according to Tony Lumpkin's phrase, into 'a concatenation accordingly,'[112] since he cannot reasonably expect that scenes of deep and complicated interest shall be placed before him, in close succession, without some force being put upon ordinary probability; and the question is not, how far you have sacrificed your judgment in order to accommodate the fiction, but rather, what is the degree of delight you have received in return."[113] Scott disclaimed any special knowledge of stage-craft. "I know as little about the division of a drama as the spinster about the division of a battle, to use Iago's simile,"[114] he once wrote to a friend. Yet as a critic he had of course some general ideas about the making of plays, without having worked out any subtle theories on the subject. In criticising a play by Allan Cunningham, who had asked for his judgment on it, he remarked first that the plot was ill-combined. "If the mind can be kept upon one unbroken course of interest, the effect even in perusal is more gratifying. I have always considered this as the great secret in dramatic poetry, and conceive it one of the most difficult exercises of the invention possible, to conduct a story through five acts, developing it gradually in every scene, so as to keep up the attention, yet never till the very conclusion permitting the nature of the catastrophe to become visible,--and all the while to accompany this by the necessary delineation of character and beauty of language."[115] And again he said to the same person, "I hope you will make another dramatic attempt; and in that case I would strongly recommend that you should previously make a model or skeleton of your incidents, dividing them regularly into scenes and acts, so as to insure the dependence of one circumstance upon another, and the simplicity and union of your whole story."[116] Here we find Scott giving advice which by his own admission he was not himself able to follow in the composition of fiction. "I never could lay down a plan, or having laid it down I never could adhere to it," he wrote in his journal[117]. And the "Author" in the introductory epistle to _Nigel_ remarks, "It may pass for one good reason for not writing a play, that I cannot form a plot." The few experiments that he made he did not seem to regard seriously at any time, though he was rather favorably impressed on rereading the _Doom of Devorgoil_ after it had lain unused for several years.[118] Of _Halidon Hill_ he said, "It is designed to illustrate military antiquities and the manners of chivalry. The drama (if it can be called one) is in no particular either designed or calculated for the stage."[119] He seems to have been "often urged" to write plays, if one may trust Captain Clutterbuck's authority, and the effectiveness of the many poetical mottoes improvised by the Author of Waverley for the chapters of his novels, and subscribed "Old Play,"[120] was naturally used as an argument.[121] Scott's own judgment in the matter was expressed thus: "Nothing so easy when you are full of an author, as to write a few lines in his taste and style; the difficulty is to keep it up. Besides, the greatest success would be but a spiritless imitation, or, at best, what the Italians call a _centone_ [_sic_] from Shakspeare."[122] When Elliston became manager of Drury Lane in 1819 he applied to Scott for plays, but without effect.[123] Scott seems never to have felt any concern over the fact that the dramatized versions of his novels were often very poor, but Hazlitt wished that he would "not leave it to others to mar what he has sketched so admirably as a ground-work," for he saw no good reason why the author of Waverley could not write "a first-rate tragedy as well, as so many first-rate novels."[124] Scott felt that to write for the stage in his day was a thankless and almost degrading occupation. "Avowedly I will never write for the stage; if I do, 'call me horse.'" he said in a letter to Terry.[125] Again in a letter to Southey: "I do not think the character of the audience in London is such that one could have the least pleasure in pleasing them.... On the whole, I would far rather write verses for mine honest friend Punch and his audience";[126] and to a would-be tragedian he said: "In the present day there is only one reason which seems to me adequate for the encountering the plague of trying to please a set of conceited performers and a very motley audience,--I mean the want of money."[127] This degraded condition of the London stage Scott thought to be a consequence of limiting the number of theaters. We can hardly suppose, however, that he was pessimistic in regard to the written drama of his day, when he could say of Byron, "There is one who, to judge from the dramatic sketch he has given us in Manfred, must be considered as a match for Aeschylus, even in his sublimest moods of horror";[128] or when he could place Joanna Baillie in the same class with Shakspere[129]. Scott probably did much reading in the drama in his early life. We know that by 1804 he had "long since" annotated his copy of Beaumont and Fletcher sufficiently so that he wished to offer it to Gifford, who, Scott erroneously understood, was about to edit their dramas.[130] The edition of Dryden, published in 1808, shows familiarity with Elizabethan as well as Restoration dramatists. He seems to have had first-hand knowledge of such men as Ford, Webster, Marston, Brome, Shirley, Chapman, and Dekker, whom he mentions as being "little known to the general readers of the present day, even by name."[131] But 1808 was the very year in which appeared Lamb's _Specimens of English Dramatic Poets_ and Coleridge's first course of lectures on Shakspere. The old dramatists were beginning to come to their own, through the sympathetic appreciation of the Romantic critics. Scott never refers, however, to the work of Lamb, Coleridge, or Hazlitt[132] in this field and we conclude that his researches in dramatic literature were the recreation of a man who realized that his business lay in another direction. But in preparing the _Dryden_, he doubtless read more widely in Restoration drama than he would otherwise have done. Throughout his life he continued to read plays at intervals, as we know from occasional references in the _Journal_; but after the _Dryden_ appeared we can point to no time in his career when such reading was his especial occupation. His familiarity with Elizabethan drama he showed even more emphatically than by serious critical writings on the subject, in his fragments from mythical "Old Plays,"[133] in his frequent references to single plays, and in the substance of some of the novels, particularly _The Fortunes of Nigel_ and _Woodstock_, which make use of settings, situations, and characterizations suggested by the drama.[134] Mr. Lang says of _The Fortunes of Nigel_, "The scenes in Alsatia are a distinct gain to literature, a pearl rescued from the unread mass of Shadwell."[135] His serious critical writings on the subject comprise little else than his _Essay on the Drama_, which appeared in the supplement to the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, published in 1819, and the discussions given in connection with Dryden's plays.[136] Although the Essay was written ten years later than the _Dryden_, we have no reason to think that Scott changed his views or added greatly to his knowledge in the interval, and using these two sources we may discuss his account of the drama in general without regard to the particular date at which his opinions were expressed. His exposition in the _Essay on the Drama_ rested on the basis furnished by a historical study of the stage. He did not, of course, pretend to have formed his own conclusions on all points, and we find him quoting from various authorities, sometimes naming them and sometimes only indicating, perhaps, that he was "abridging from the best antiquaries." This, however, was chiefly in connection with the ancient drama. As I have already remarked, we do not find him referring to recent studies on the English drama. And though Scott had forgotten all his Greek we observe that he is bold enough to disagree with "the ingenious Schlegel" in regard to the comparative value of the Greek New Comedy. In his treatment of the ancient drama the main point for note is the success with which he gives a broad and connected view of the subject. His account of the drama in France needs correction in certain respects,[137] but it seems to indicate some first-hand knowledge and very definite opinions. He quotes Molière frequently throughout his writings, and always speaks of him with admiration; but with no other French dramatist does he seem to have been familiar to such a degree. Judging French tragic poets too much from the Shaksperian point of view, he was not prepared to do them justice.[138] On the dramatic unities, of which he remarked, "Aristotle says so little and his commentators and followers talk so much," Scott wrote, here and elsewhere, with decision and vivacity. The unities of time and place he calls "fopperies," though time and place, he admits, are not to be lightly changed.[139] He connects the whole discussion with the study of theatrical conditions, and never bows down to authority as such. He says, "Surely it is of less consequence merely to ascertain what was the practice of the ancients, than to consider how far such practice is founded upon truth, good taste, and general effect"; and again, "Aristotle would probably have formulated different rules if he had written in our time." And though he adopted and applied to the drama the Horatian dictum that the end of poetry is to instruct and delight, it was not because Horace and a long line of critics had said it, but because he thought it was true. Doubtless his phrase would have been different if he had not taken what was lying nearest, but his habit was never carefully to avoid the common phrase. His general opinion of French drama was decidedly unfavorable, and he thought it was doubtful whether their plays would ever be any nearer to nature. "That nation," he observes calmly, "is so unfortunate as to have no poetical language." His remarks on German drama are general in character, though we know that in his early days he was much interested in translating contemporary German plays. His version of Goethe's _Goetz von Berlichingen_ was the most important of these translations. A letter of Scott's contains the following reference to this play:[140] "The publication of Goetz was a great era ... in German literature, and served completely to free them from the French follies of unities and decencies of the scene, and gave an impulse to their dramas which was unique of its kind. Since that, they have been often stark mad but never, I think, stupid. They either divert you by taking the most brilliant leaps through the hoop, or else by tumbling into the custard, as the newspapers averred the Champion did at the Lord Mayor's dinner." When he is on English ground we can best trace Scott's individual opinions, yet even here he reflects some of the limitations of the less enlightened scholarship of his time, especially in connection with early Elizabethan writers. He passes from _Ferrex and Porrex_[141] and _Gammer Gurton's Needle_ directly to Shakspere, and quite omits Marlowe and the other immediate predecessors. He was not ignorant of their existence, for against a statement of Dryden's that Shakspere was the first to use blank verse we find in Scott's edition the note,--"This is a mistake. Marlowe and several other dramatic authors used blank verse before the days of Shakespeare";[142] and one of his youthful notebooks contains this comment on _Faustus_: "A very remarkable thing. Grand subject--end grand."[143] In 1831 Scott intended to write an article for the _Quarterly Review_ on Peele, Greene, and Webster, and in asking Alexander Dyce to have Webster's works sent to him he said, "Marlowe and others I have,--and some acquaintance with the subject, though not much."[144] Webster he considered "one of the best of our ancient dramatists." The proposed article was never written, because of Scott's final illness. In spite of his statement that "the English stage might be considered equally without rule and without model when Shakspeare arose," Scott did not seem inclined to leave the great man altogether unaccounted for, as some critics have preferred to do, for he says, "The effect of the genius of an individual upon the taste of a nation is mighty; but that genius in its turn is formed according to the opinions prevalent at the period when it comes into existence." These opinions, however, Scott assigns very vaguely to the influence of "a nameless crowd of obscure writers," and thinks it fortunate that Shakspere was unacquainted with classical rules. The critic had evidently made no attempt to define the influence of particular writers upon Shakspere. His criticism is at some points purely conventional, as for instance when he calls the poet "that powerful magician, whose art could fascinate us even by means of deformity itself "; but on the whole Scott seems to write about Shakspere in a very reasonable and discriminating way. He has a good deal to say of Ben Jonson, in other places as well as in this Essay on the Drama.[145] He was evidently well acquainted with that poet, and admired him without liking him. Somewhere he calls him "the dry and dogged Jonson,"[146] and again he speaks of his genius in very high terms. The contrast between Shakspere and Jonson moved him even to epigram:[147] "In reading Shakespeare we often meet passages so congenial to our nature and feelings that, beautiful as they are, we can hardly help wondering they did not occur to ourselves; in studying Jonson, we have often to marvel how his conceptions could have occurred to any human being." It was characteristic of Scott to note the fact that Shakspere wrote rapidly, Jonson slowly, for he was fond of getting support for his theory that rapid writing is the better. As early as 1804 Scott referred to _The Changeling_ as "an old play which contains some passages horribly striking,"[148] and in so doing voiced, as Mr. Swinburne says, "the first word of modern tribute to the tragic genius of Thomas Middleton."[149] Scott also praised Massinger highly, especially for his strength in characterization, and once called him "the most gentleman-like of all the old English dramatists."[150] He discussed Beaumont and Fletcher sympathetically, for he knew them well and frequently quoted from them. He named Shirley, Ford, Webster, and Dekker in a group, and spoke of the singular profusion of talents devoted in this period to the writing of plays, an observation which is made more explicitly later in the _Journal_, when he has just been reading an old play which, he says, "worthless in the extreme, is, like many of the plays in the beginning of the seventeenth century, written to a good tune. The dramatic poets of that time seem to have possessed as joint-stock a highly poetical and abstract tone of language, so that the worst of them often remind you of the very best."[151] This circumstance he accounts for by a reference to the audiences, and this in turn he seems to ascribe partly to the great number of theaters then open in London. He dwells so much on the evils of limiting the number of play-houses to two or three, that we may fairly consider it one of his hobbies, and it is possible that he had some slight influence toward increasing that public opposition to the theatrical monopoly which finally, in 1843, resulted in the nullification of the patents. Scott's discussion of Restoration drama is admirably vigorous and clear. He probably simplified the matter too much at some points, indeed, as for example in over-estimating the influence exerted upon the stage by Charles II. and his French tastes, and in tracing the origin of the French drama to romances. But in general his facts are right and his deductions fair. Mr. Saintsbury has accused him of depreciating Dryden's plays, especially the comedies, out of disgust at their indecency; yet in judging the period as a whole he seems to discriminate sufficiently between indelicacy and dulness. "The talents of Otway," he says, "in his scenes of passionate affection rival, at least, and sometimes excel those of Shakspeare." Again: "The comedies of Congreve contain probably more wit than was ever before embodied upon the stage; each word was a jest, and yet so characteristic that the repartee of the servant is distinguished from that of the master; the jest of the cox-comb from that of the humorist or fine gentleman of the piece." Lesser writers of the time are also sympathetically characterized,--Shadwell, for instance, whom he thought to be commonly underestimated.[152] The heroic play Scott discussed vivaciously in more than one connection, for, as we should expect, his sense of humor found its absurdities tempting.[153] On the rant in the _Conquest of Granada_ he remarked, "Dryden's apology for these extravagances seems to be that Almanzor is in a passion. But although talking nonsense is a common effect of passion, it seems hardly one of those consequences adapted to show forth the character of a hero in theatrical representation."[154] Scott's opinion of the form of these plays appears in the following comment: "We doubt if, with his utmost efforts, [Molière] could have been absolutely dull, without the assistance of a pastoral subject and heroic measure."[155] Concerning the indecency of the literature of the period Scott wrote emphatically. He was much troubled by the problem of whether to publish Dryden's works without any cutting, and came near taking Ellis's advice to omit some portions, but he finally adhered to his original determination: "In making an edition of a man of genius's works for libraries and collections ... I must give my author as I find him, and will not tear out the page, even to get rid of the blot, little as I like it."[156] The question of the morality of theater-going was one Scott felt obliged to discuss when he was writing upon the drama. He found its vindication, characteristically, in a universal human trait,--the impulse toward mimicry and impersonation,--and in the good results that may be supposed to attend it. In naming these he lays what seems like undue stress on the teaching of history by the drama, in language that might quite as well be applied to historical novels. His argument on the literary side also is stated in a somewhat too sweeping way:--"Had there been no drama, Shakespeare would, in all likelihood, have been but the author of _Venus and Adonis_ and of a few sonnets forgotten among the numerous works of the Elizabethan age, and Otway had been only the compiler of fantastic odes."[157] A final plea, in favor of the stage as a democratic agency--though this of course is not Scott's phrasing--seems slightly unusual for him, although not essentially out of character. "The entertainment," he says, "which is the subject of general enjoyment, is of a nature which tends to soften, if not to level, the distinction of ranks."[158] In another mood he admitted the greater likelihood that immoral plays would injure the public character than that moral plays would elevate it.[159] It is sufficiently apparent to any student of Scott's work that he was personally very fond of the drama. Many of the literary references and allusions which appear in great abundance throughout his writings are from plays, and show, as we have seen, a wide acquaintance with English dramatic writers, from Shakspere to such comparatively little-known playwrights as Suckling and Cowley. In the _Letters of Malachi Malagrowther on the Currency_, for example, Scott's unusual range of reading reveals itself even in connection with a subject remote from his ordinary field, and here as elsewhere he shows himself prone to quote from the drama.[160] But Scott was interested in plays for what he found in them of characters and manners, of witty and sententious speech, of situations and incidents, and only secondarily in the technical aspects of the drama. Reading his novels we could guess that he would care more for the concrete elements of a play than for the orderly march of events through the various stages of a formally proper construction. In this respect he differs from Coleridge; but indeed the two men may be contrasted at almost every point. In summing up this part of Scott's criticism we must remember also that it was chiefly incidental. Perhaps whatever qualities it exhibits are on this account particularly characteristic: at any rate his opinions on the drama were the reaction of an unusually capable mind upon a department of literature in which his reading was all the more fruitful because it followed the lines of a natural inclination. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY _Dryden_ Scott's preparations for his edition of Dryden--Wide Scope of the work--Scott's estimation of Dryden--Grounds for putting Dryden above Chaucer and Spenser--Admirable style of the biography--Comments by Scott on other seventeenth century writers. The edition of _Dryden's Complete Works_ deserves further notice, especially since only eight of the eighteen volumes are occupied with the plays, and these have less commentary than other parts of the works. In 1805 Scott wrote to his friend George Ellis, "My critical notes will not be very numerous but I hope to illustrate the political poems, as _Absalom and Achitophel_, the _Hind and Panther_, etc., with some curious annotations. I have already made a complete search among some hundred pamphlets of that pamphlet-writing age, and with considerable success, as I have found several which throw light on my author."[161] He added that another edition of Dryden was proposed, and Ellis wrote in answer, "With regard to your competitors, I feel perfectly at my ease, because I am convinced that though you should generously furnish them with all the materials, they would not know how to use them; _non cuivis hominum contingit_ to write critical notes that anyone will read."[162] When Scott's Dryden was reëdited and reissued in 1882-93 by Professor Saintsbury, the new editor said: "It certainly deserves the credit of being one of the best-edited books on a great scale in English, save in one particular,--the revision of the text."[163] The elaborate historical notes are left untouched, as being "in general thoroughly trustworthy,"[164] though the editor considers them somewhat excessive, especially as sometimes containing illustrative material from perfectly worthless contemporaries. On the other hand, the "explanation of word and phrase is a little defective."[165] The most notable quality of the _Life of Dryden_ which composes the first of the eighteen volumes is its breadth of scope. Scott's aim may best be given in his own words in the Advertisement: "The general critical view of Dryden's works being sketched by Johnson with unequalled felicity, and the incidents of his life accurately discussed and ascertained by Malone, something seemed to remain for him who should consider these literary productions in their succession, as actuated by, and operating upon, the taste of an age where they had so predominant influence; and who might, at the same time, connect the life of Dryden with the history of his publications, without losing sight of the fate and character of the individual."[166] Errors of judgment appear in places; sometimes they are due to the imperfect scholarship of the time; sometimes they arise from prejudices of Scott's own. In the very first chapter we find him condemning Lyly and all writers of "conceited" language--particularly of course the Metaphysicals--with a thoroughness that a truly catholic critic ought probably to avoid. Scott had a constitutional dislike for a labored style, and at the same time a fondness for the direct and straightforward way of looking at things. So, though he was open to the emotional appeal of a poem like _Christabel_, he took no pleasure in the devious processes by which the cold intellect has sometimes tried to give fresh interest to familiar words and ideas. They quite prevented him from seeing the passion in the work of Donne, for example, and he considered all metaphysical poets, in so far as they showed the traits of their class, to be without poetical feeling. Scott placed Dryden after Shakspere and Milton as third in the list of English writers. I think he would even have been willing to say that Dryden was the third as a poet. For greatly as he admired Chaucer, Scott did not feel Chaucer's full power, and indeed it was only beginning to be possible to read Chaucer with any appreciation of his metrical excellence. Spenser, of whom he once wrote: "No author, perhaps, ever possessed and combined in so brilliant a degree the requisite qualities of a poet,"[167] was more of a favorite with Scott than Chaucer. But at another time he spoke of Drayton as possessing perhaps equal powers of poetry,[168] and he seems to have felt that Spenser becomes tedious through the continued use of his difficult stanza and even more because of the "languor of a continued allegory."[169] In comparing his judgments on Spenser and Dryden we may conclude that the critic found more in the later poet of that solid intellectual basis which he emphasizes in characterizing him. "This power of ratiocination," says Scott, "of investigating, discovering, and appreciating that which is really excellent, if accompanied with the necessary command of fanciful illustration and elegant expression, is the most interesting quality which can be possessed by a poet."[170] Again he lays emphasis on Dryden's versatility,--greater, he says, than that of Shakspere and Milton. In _Old Mortality_ Dryden is referred to as "the great High-priest of all the Nine." Scott would have called this another point of his superiority over Spenser, if he had made the comparison. Yet he saw Dryden's deficiencies. "It was a consequence of his mental acuteness that his dramatic personages often philosophized and reasoned when they ought only to have felt,"[171] Scott remarks and he frequently deplores Dryden's failure "in expressing the milder and more tender passions."[172] Of Dryden's great gift of style, Scott speaks in the highest terms. "With this power," he says, "Dryden's poetry was gifted in a degree surpassing in modulated harmony that of all who had preceded him and inferior to none that has since written English verse [_sic_]. He first showed"--and here we see Scott's eighteenth-century affinities--"that the English language was capable of uniting smoothness and strength."[173] Such criticism as Scott gives on specific parts of Dryden's work is clear-cut, fair for the most part, and has the sanity and reasonableness which are the most noticeable qualities of his criticism in general. It would be easier to find illustrations of shrewdness than of subtlety among his notes, but his discriminations are often effective and satisfying. His discussion, for example, of prologues and epilogues considered in relation to the theatrical conditions which determined their character is admirable.[174] A note on "the cant of supposing that the _Iliad_ contained an obvious and intentional moral"[175] is also full of sense and vigor, but these qualities are so thoroughly diffused through the work that there is no need of particularizing. His praise of _Alexander's Feast_ may be referred to, however, as showing his characteristic delight in objective poetry.[176] As a lyric poet, he says, Dryden "must be allowed to have no equal."[177] The peculiarly congenial qualities of the subject may have had something to do with the fact that the style in which the _Life of Dryden_ is written is noticeably better than that of Scott's ordinary work. It is marked with a care and accuracy that were not, unfortunately, habitual to him. Perhaps it was an advantage that when he wrote the book he had not yet become altogether familiar with his own facility; certainly the substance and the manner of treatment unite in making this the most important of his critical biographies. Various references indicate that Scott was acquainted in at least a general way with English writers throughout the whole of Dryden's century. He speaks of the poems of Phineas Fletcher as containing "many passages fully equal to Spenser"[178]; he says that Cowley "is now ... undeservedly forgotten"[179]; he calls _Hudibras_ "the most witty poem that ever was written,"[180] but says, "the perpetual scintillation of Butler's wit is too dazzling to be delightful"[181]; he talks of Waller and quotes from him[182]; he refers to the charming quality of Isaac Walton's work;[183] and he adopts Samuel Pepys as a familiar acquaintance.[184] These references occur mostly in the _Dryden_ or in the novels, and we may conclude that the work for the _Dryden_ gathered up and strengthened all Scott's acquaintance with the literature of the seventeenth century, from Shakspere and Milton down to writers of altogether minor importance; and gave him material for many of the allusions that appear in his later work. It is probably true that there are more quotations from Dryden in Scott's books than from any other one author,[185] though lines from Shakspere occurred more often in his conversation and familiar letters. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY _Swift_ The preparation of _Swift's Complete Works_--Comparison of the _Dryden_ and the _Swift_--The bibliographical problem presented by Swift's works--Inaccuracies in the biography--Scott's success in portraying a perplexing temperament--Judicious quality of his literary criticism. As soon as the _Dryden_ was completed Scott was offered twice as much money as he had received for that work, for a similar edition of Swift.[186] He readily undertook the task, and in the midst of many other editorial engagements set to work upon it. The preparation of the book extended over the six years during which Scott ran the greater part of his poetical career. On its appearance one of his friends expressed the feeling which every student of Scott must have had in regard to the large editorial labors that he undertook, in saying, "I am delighted and surprised; for how a person of your turn could wade through, and so accurately analyze what you have done (namely, all the dull things calculated to illustrate your author), seems almost impossible, and a prodigy in the history of the human mind."[187] The work was first published in 1814. Ten years later it was revised and reissued; and Scott's _Swift_ has, like his _Dryden_, been the standard edition of that author ever since. In each case Scott had to deal with an important and varied body of literature in the two fields of poetry and prose, though the proportions were different; and in each case he had occasion for illustrative historical annotations of the kind that he wrote with unrivalled facility. He was master of the political intrigues of Queen Anne's reign no less completely than of the circumstances which gave rise to _Absalom and Achitophel_, and the fact that his notes are less voluminous in the _Swift_ is probably to be accounted for by the comparative absence of quaintness in the literary and social fashions of the eighteenth century. The peculiar conditions under which Swift's writings had appeared, and his remarkable indifference to literary fame, gave the editor opportunity to look for material which had not before been included in his works. The diligent search of Scott and his various correspondents enabled him to add about thirty poems, between sixty and seventy letters from Swift, and about sixteen other small pieces. The most noteworthy item among these additions was the correspondence between Swift and Miss Vanhomrigh, of which only a very small part had previously been made public.[188] Scott's notes seem to indicate that most of the necessary searching through newspapers and obscure pamphlets for forgotten work of Swift was performed by "obliging correspondents," and that the editor himself had only to pass judgment on what was brought to his attention. This impression may arise largely from his cordiality in expressing indebtedness to his helpers, but it is certain that his position as a popular poet gave Scott the assistance of many people who would not have been enlisted in the work by an ordinary editor. But Scott had the difficult task of deciding whether the unauthenticated pieces were to be assigned to Swift. The bibliography of Swift is still so uncertain that it is impossible to say how many of the small pamphlets in verse and prose added in this edition are really his work.[189] Scott had good reason for his additions in most cases, though sometimes, as he was aware, the Dean had merely revised the work of other people. The editor was occasionally over-credulous in attributing pieces to Swift, but he was perhaps oftener too generous in giving room to things which he knew had very little claim to be considered Swift's work. When he was in doubt he chose to err on the safe side, according to the principles set forth in the following note on the _Letter from Dr. Tripe to Nestor Ironside_: "The piece contains a satirical description of Steele's person, and should the editor be mistaken in conjecturing that Swift contributed to compose it, may nevertheless, at this distance of time, merit preservation as a literary curiosity."[190] The ample space afforded by the nineteen volumes of the book gives room to Arbuthnot's _History of John Bull_--because it was "usually published in Swift's works,"--to the verses addressed to the Dean and those written in memory of him, as well as to the prose and verse miscellanies of Pope and Swift, and the miscellanies and _jeux d'esprit_ of Swift and Sheridan. Swift's correspondence fills the last four and a half volumes. The biography, which occupies the first volume, is admirable in tone, but the facts Scott gives are less to be relied upon than the inferences and conclusions he derives from them. He corresponded with persons who were in a position to know about Swift from his friends and acquaintances, and probably he trusted too much to these "original sources." We find, as perhaps the most noteworthy instance, that the marriage to Stella is stated as an ascertained fact, on authority that is not now considered convincing. Later biographers of Swift,--Sir Henry Craik, Leslie Stephen, Mr. Churton Collins,--have borne witness to the human interest of Scott's biography, and its preeminence, in spite of inaccuracies, among all the Lives of Swift that have been written. But Mr. Churton Collins thinks Scott did not present a really clear view of Swift's mysterious character, and Craik says he took only the conventional attitude towards Swift's politics, misanthropy, and religion. The charge indicates Scott's weakness, and perhaps also much of his strength, as a biographer and critic, for he had no prejudice against the conventional as such, and was never anxious to exhibit special "insight" of any kind. Yet I think his portrayal of Swift has seemed to most readers a clear presentation of a real and comprehensible character.[191] Scott's remark when he undertook the work, that Swift was of his early favorites,[192] seems surprising when one remembers how his genial nature recoiled from misanthropy and cynicism; but his treatment of the Dean was so sympathetic that Jeffrey thought him decidedly too lenient, and was moved to express righteous indignation in the pages of the _Edinburgh Review_.[193] The rebuke was unnecessary, for Scott did not omit to record Swift's failings and to express wholesomely vigorous opinions concerning them, though he felt that they ought to be looked upon as evidences of disease rather than of guilt. He felt also, with perhaps some excess of charity but surely not such as could be in the least harmful, that "if the Dean's principles were misanthropical, his practice was benevolent. Few have written so much with so little view either to fame or to profit, or to aught but benefit to the public."[194] Jeffrey's condemnation of Scott's point of view was mingled with just praise. He said of the biography: "It is quite fair and moderate in politics; and perhaps rather too indulgent and tender towards individuals of all descriptions,--more full, at least, of kindness and veneration for genius and social virtue, than of indignation at baseness and profligacy. Altogether it is not much like the production of a mere man of letters, or a fastidious speculator in sentiment and morality; but exhibits throughout, and in a very pleasing form, the good sense and large toleration of a man of the world." The very practical motives that inspired most of Swift's pamphlets would naturally attract Scott. Probably it was the remembrance of the _Drapier's Letters_ that suggested to him a similar form of protest against proposed changes in the Scottish currency; certainly the _Letters of Malachi Malagrowther_ had an effect comparable to that of Swift's more consummately ingenious appeal. Another quality in Swift's work that would naturally arouse Scott's admiration was the remarkable directness and lucidity of the style. Scott appreciated the originality force of Swift, even when it was used in the service of satire. Sometimes, he says, "the intensity of his satire gives to his poetry a character of emphatic violence which borders upon grandeur."[195] The editor's discussion of _Gulliver's Travels_ an acute and illuminating little essay, contains one comment that gives an amusing revelation of his point of view. He says in regard to the fourth part of the story: "It is some consolation to remark that the fiction on which this libel on human nature rests is in every respect gross and improbable, and, far from being entitled to the praise due to the management of the first two parts, is inferior in plan even to the third."[196] This is a sound verdict, even if it does contain an extra-literary element. Scott surpassed most of his contemporaries, except the younger Romantic writers, in his ability to eliminate irrelevant considerations in estimating any literary work; and if occasionally his strong moral feeling appears in his criticism, it serves to remind us how much less often this happens than a knowledge of his temperament would lead us to expect. In spite of the qualities in his subject that might naturally bias Scott's judgment, his criticism throughout this edition of Swift seems on the whole very judicious. It defines the literary importance and brings out plainly the power of a man whose work presents unusual perplexities to the critic. _The Somers Tracts_ Character of the collection and of Scott's work on it--Occasional carelessness--Purpose of the notes--Scott's attitude towards these studies. While Scott was working on his _Dryden_ and before he began the _Swift_ he undertook to edit the great collection which had been published fifty years before as _Somers' Tracts_. His task was to arrange, revise, and annotate pamphlets which represented every reign from Elizabeth to George I. He grouped them chronologically by reigns, and separated them further into sections under the headings,--Ecclesiastical, Historical, Civil, Military, Miscellaneous; he also added eighty-one pamphlets, all written before the time of James II. The largest number of additions in any one section was historical and had reference to Stafford. Among the miscellaneous tracts that he incorporated were Derrick's _Image of Ireland_ from a copy in the Advocates' Library, and Gosson's _School of Abuse_. Scott's statement in the Advertisement as to why he did not omit any of the original collection shows his unpedantic attitude toward the kind of studies which he was encouraging by the republication of this series. He says: "When the variety of literary pursuits, and the fluctuation of fashionable study is considered, it may seem rash to pass a hasty sentence of exclusion, even upon the dullest and most despised of the essays which this ample collection offers to the public. There may be among the learned, even now, individuals to whom the rabbinical lore of Hugh Broughton presents more charms than the verses of Homer; and a future day may arise when tracts on chronology will bear as high a value among antiquaries as 'Greene's Groats' Worth of Wit,' or 'George Peele's Jests,' the present respectable objects of research and reverence." In editing this collection Scott made little attempt to decide disputed problems of authorship when the explanation did not lie upon the surface. Indeed the following note regarding the tract called _A New Test of the Church of England's Loyalty_ shows that he sometimes neglected very obvious sources of information, for the piece is given in one of Defoe's own collections of his works: "This defence of whiggish loyalty," says Scott, "seems to have been written by the celebrated Daniel De Foe, a conjecture which is strengthened by the frequent reference to his poem of the True-born Englishman."[197] He was not often so careless, but the rapidity and range of his work during these years undoubtedly gave occasion for more than one lapse of accuracy, while at the same time it perhaps increased the effectiveness of his comment. His notes and introductions vary in length according to the requirements of the case, for he aimed to provide such material as would prevent the necessity of reference to other works. Matters that were obscure he explained, and he wrote little comment on those that were generally understood. When he left himself so free a hand he could indulge his personal tastes somewhat also, and we are not surprised to find an especial abundance of notes on an account of the Gowrie Conspiracy which presented a perplexing problem in Scottish history. The connection of _Somers' Tracts_ with other things that Scott did has already been remarked upon.[198] That he found some sort of stimulation in all his scholarly employments is sufficiently evident to anyone who studies his work as a whole, and this fact might well serve as a motive for such study. Yet it is only fair to remember that Scott was not a novelist during these years when he was performing his most laborious editorial tasks. We are accustomed to think of the brilliant use he was afterwards to make of the knowledge he was gaining, but the motives which influenced him were those of the man whose interest in literature and history makes scholarly work seem the most natural way of earning money. "These are studies, indeed, proverbially dull," he once wrote, speaking of Horace Walpole's antiquarian researches, "but it is only when they are pursued by those whose fancies nothing can enliven."[199] _The Lives of the Novelists, and Comments on Other Eighteenth Century Writers_ The _Novelists' Library_--Writers discussed--Value of the _Lives_--General tone of competence in these essays--Scott's catholic taste--Points of special interest in the discussion--Relations of the novel and the drama--Supernatural machinery in novels--Mistakes in the criticism of Defoe--Realism--Motive in the novel--Aim of the prefaces--Scott's familiarity with eighteenth century literature. It has already been said that a large part of Scott's critical work concerned itself with the eighteenth century. Of his greater editorial labors two may be considered as belonging to that period, for Ballantyne's _Novelists' Library_, though an enterprise which was commercially a failure and which consequently remained incomplete, may from the point of view of Scott's contributions fitly be compared with the _Dryden_ and the _Swift_. Such parts as were published appeared in 1821. The bulk of the volumes and the small type in which they were printed were considered to be the cause of their failure, and it was not until the critical biographies were extracted and published separately, by Galignani the Parisian bookseller, in 1825, that they seem to have attracted notice. Scott wrote these _Lives of the Novelists_ at a time when his hands were full of literary projects, altogether for John Ballantyne's benefit. The author afterwards spoke of them as "rather flimsily written,"[200] but we may surmise that to the fact that they were not the result of special study is due something of their ripeness of reflection and breadth of generalization. "They contain a large assemblage of manly and sagacious remarks on human life and manners,"[201] wrote the _Quarterly_ reviewer. The writers considered were all British, with the exception of LeSage. The choice, or at least the arrangement, seems more or less haphazard. Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett naturally began the group, and Sterne followed after an interval. Johnson and Goldsmith were treated briefly, for the prefaces were to be proportioned to the amount of work by each author included in the text. Horace Walpole, Clara Reeve, and Mrs. Radcliffe represented the Gothic romance. Charles Johnstone, Robert Bage, and Richard Cumberland were among the inferior writers included. Henry Mackenzie, who was still living and was a personal friend of Scott, completes the list so far as it went before the series was terminated by the publisher's death. When Scott's _Miscellaneous Prose Works_ were collected he added the lives of Charlotte Smith and Defoe, but in each of these cases the biographical portion was by another hand, the criticism being his own.[202] The study of the novel as a _genre_ was naturally undeveloped at that time. Dunlop's _History of Prose Fiction_ had appeared in 1814, evidently a much more ambitious attempt than Scott's; but Scott could treat the British novelists with comparative freedom from the trammels of any established precedent. Of course his position as one who had struck out a wonderful new path in the writing of novels gave to his reflections on other novelists a very special interest. The _Lives of the Novelists_ are not to be neglected even now, and this is the more to be insisted on because the criticism of novels has been practiced with increasing zeal since Scott himself has become a classic and since his successors have made this field of literature more varied and popular, if not greater, than the first masters made it. A recent writer on eighteenth century literature says: "By far the best criticism of the eighteenth century novelists will be found in the prefatory notices contributed by Scott to Ballantyne's _Novelists' Library_."[203] But the same writer adds: "Sir Walter Scott, indeed, considered _Fathom_ superior to _Jonathan Wild_, an opinion which must always remain one of the mysteries of criticism."[204] This comment indicates that there was no lack of assuredness in Scott's treatment, and we do indeed find a very pleasant tone of competence which, though liable to error as in the exaggerated praise bestowed upon Smollett, gives much of their effectiveness to the criticisms. The quality appears elsewhere in Scott's critical work, but it is perhaps especially noticeable here. For example, we find this dictum: "There is no book in existence, in which so much of the human character, under all its various shades and phases, is described in so few words, as in the _Diable Boiteux_."[205] The illustration is perhaps a trifle extreme, for Scott is not often really dogmatic. From this point of view as from others we naturally make the comparison with Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_, and we find that without being so sententious, so admirably compact in style, Scott is also not so dictatorial. We cannot accuse Scott of liking any one kind of novel to the exclusion of others. He ranks _Clarissa Harlowe_ very high;[206] he says _Tom Jones_ is "truth and human nature itself."[207] _The Vicar of Wakefield_ he calls "one of the most delicious morsels of fictitious composition on which the human mind was ever employed." "We return to it again and again," he says, "and bless the memory of an author who contrives so well to reconcile us to human nature."[208] He praises _Tristram Shandy_, calling Uncle Toby and his faithful Squire, "the most delightful characters in the work, or perhaps in any other."[209] The quiet fictions of Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen, the exciting tales of Mrs. Radcliffe, the sentiment of Sterne, even the satires of Bage,--all pleased him in one way or another. Scott's autobiography contains the following comment on his boyish tastes in the matter of novels: "The whole Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy tribe I abhorred, and it required the art of Burney, or the feeling of Mackenzie, to fix my attention upon a domestic tale. But all that was adventurous and romantic I devoured without much discrimination."[210] In later life he learned to exercise his judgment in regard to stories of adventure not less than those of the "domestic" sort, and perhaps the liking for quiet tales grew upon him; at any rate his taste seems remarkably catholic. The most interesting portions of the _Lives of the Novelists_ are those which show us, by the frequent recurrence of the same subjects, what parts of the theory of novel-writing had particularly engaged Scott's attention. For example we find him discussing, most fully in the _Life of Fielding_, the reasons why a successful novelist is likely not to be a successful playwright. The way in which he looks at the matter suggests that he was thinking quite as much of the probability of failure in his own case should he begin to write plays, as of the subject of the memoir; for Fielding wrote his plays before his novels, but the argument assumes a man who writes good novels first and bad plays afterwards. One of his statements seems rather curious and hard to explain,--"Though a good acting play may be made by selecting a plot and characters from a novel, yet scarce any effort of genius could render a play into a narrative romance." Perhaps he expected the "Terryfied" versions of _Guy Mannering_ and _Rob Roy_ to hold the stage longer than fate has permitted them to do. From another point of view also he was interested in the connection of the novel and the drama. He felt that the direction of the drama in the modern period had been largely determined by the influence of successful novels; and he probably overestimated the effect of the "romances of Calprenède and Scudéri" on heroic tragedy.[211] A subject which recurs even oftener than that of the distinction between drama and novel is the question of supernatural machinery in novels. Horace Walpole is commended for giving us ghosts without furnishing explanations. Indeed the _Castle of Otranto_ is highly praised;[212] but so also is Mrs. Radcliffe's work, except on the one point of the attempt to rationalize mysteries. The kind of romance which she "introduced"[213] is compared with the melodrama, and its particular mode of appeal is analyzed in very interesting fashion. In the _Life of Clara Reeve_ the proper treatment of ghosts is discussed at length, for that author had contended that ghosts should be very mild and of "sober demeanour." Scott justifies her practice, but not her theory, on the following grounds: "What are the limits to be placed to the reader's credulity, when those of common-sense and ordinary nature are at once exceeded? The question admits only one answer, namely, that the author himself, being in fact the magician, shall evoke no spirits whom he is not capable of endowing with manners and language corresponding to their supernatural character." Scott writes with much enthusiasm about Defoe's famous little ghost-story, _The Apparition of Mrs. Veal_, praising Defoe's wonderful skill in making the unreal seem credible. In connection with this tale Scott developed a very interesting anecdote to explain the fact that Drelincourt's _Defence against the Fear of Death_ is recommended by the apparition. "Drelincourt's book," he says, "being neglected, lay a dead stock on the hands of the publisher. In this emergency he applied to De Foe to assist him (by dint of such means as were then, as well as now, pretty well understood in the literary world) in rescuing the unfortunate book from the literary death to which general neglect seemed about to consign it." Scott goes on to assert that the story was simply a consummately clever advertising device. He may have found the germ of his hypothesis in a bookseller's tradition, but he states it as an assured fact, and doubtless believed it firmly because it seemed so beautifully reasonable. His explanation became the basis of later statements on the subject, and now obliges everyone who discusses Defoe to supply a contradiction; for the truth is that Drelincourt's book was so highly popular as to have gone through several editions before the ghost of Mrs. Veal mentioned it. Moreover, if Scott's little tale was fictitious, Defoe's, on the other hand, was really a reporter's version of an experience actually related by the person to whom he assigns it, and his skill in achieving verisimilitude was perhaps in this case less wonderful than his critics have generally supposed.[214] On the subject of realism, Scott was not in general very rigid. In his _Life of Richardson_ he says: "It is unfair to tax an author too severely upon improbabilities, without conceding which his story could have no existence; and we have the less title to do so, because, in the history of real life, that which is actually true bears often very little resemblance to that which is probable."[215] But this is perhaps only a plea for one kind of realism. He also refers to the question of historical "keening," and concludes that it is possible to have so much accuracy that the public will refuse to be interested, as _Lear_ would hardly be popular on the stage if the hero were represented in the bearskin and paint which a Briton of his time doubtless wore.[216] The motive of the novel is a subject which naturally engages the attention of the novelist-critic. Romantic fiction, he thinks may have sufficient justification if it acts as an opiate for tired spirits. A significant antithesis between his point of view in this matter and the more common attitude taken by critics in his time is illustrated by two reviews of Mrs. Shelley's _Frankenstein_, to which we may refer, though the book was later than those included in the _Novelists' Library_. Scott wrote in _Blackwood's_: "We ... congratulate our readers upon a novel which excites new reflections and untried sources of emotion."[217] The _Quarterly_ reviewer took the opposite and more conservative attitude and expressed himself thus: "Our taste and our judgment alike revolt at this kind of writing, and the greater the ability with which it may be executed the worse it is--it inculcates no lesson of conduct, manners, or morality; it cannot mend, and will not even amuse its readers, unless their taste has been deplorably vitiated--it fatigues the feelings without interesting the understanding; it gratuitously harasses the heart, and wantonly adds to the store, already too great, of painful sensations."[218] In general Scott minimizes the effect of any moral that may be expressed in the novel, but occasionally he seems inconsistent, when he is talking of sentiments that are peculiarly distasteful to him.[219] But his thesis is that "the direct and obvious moral to be deduced from a fictitious narrative is of much less consequence to the public than the mode in which the story is treated in the course of its details."[220] In the _Life of Fielding_ he says of novels: "The best which can be hoped is that they may sometimes instruct the youthful mind by real pictures of life, and sometimes awaken their better feelings and sympathies by strains of generous sentiment, and tales of fictitious woe. Beyond this point they are a mere elegance, a luxury contrived for the amusement of polished life." He conceived that his prefaces might be useful to warn readers against any ill effects that might otherwise result from the reading of the accompanying texts; and our comments on the _Lives of the Novelists_ may fitly close with a quotation which shows the writer's attitude toward the novels and his own criticisms upon them. The passage is taken from the _Life of Bage_. "We did not think it proper to reject the works of so eminent an author from this collection, merely on account of speculative errors.[221] We have done our best to place a mark on these; and as we are far from being of opinion that the youngest and most thoughtless derive their serious opinions from productions of this nature, we leave them for our reader's amusement, trusting that he will remember that a good jest is no argument; that the novelist, like the master of a puppet-show, has his drama under his absolute authority, and shapes the events to favour his own opinions; and that whether the Devil flies away with Punch, or Punch strangles the Devil, forms no real argument as to the comparative power of either one or other, but only indicates the special pleasure of the master of the motion." Scott was deeply in sympathy with the literature of the century within which he was born. To the evidence of his _Swift_ and of the _Lives of the Novelists_ it may be added that he contemplated making a complete edition of Pope, and that he professed to like _London_ and _The Vanity of Human Wishes_ the best of all poems. James Ballantyne said, rather ambiguously, "I think I never saw his countenance more indicative of high admiration than while reciting aloud from those productions."[222] In one of his letters Scott spoke of the "beautiful and feeling verses by Dr. Johnson to the memory of his humble friend Levett, ... which with me, though a tolerably ardent Scotchman, atone for a thousand of his prejudices."[223] Not only did he admire the great biography, but he called Boswell "such a biographer as no man but [Johnson] ever had, or ever deserved to have."[224] But he once said that many of the _Ramblers_ were "little better than a sort of pageant, where trite and obvious maxims are made to swagger in lofty and mystic language, and get some credit only because they are not understood."[225] Among other eighteenth century writers, Addison is distinguished by high praise in a few casual references,[226] but Scott once admitted that he did not like Addison so much as he felt to be proper.[227] A collection of Prior's poems Scott calls "an English classic of the first order."[228] He speaks of Parnell as "an admirable man and elegant poet,"[229] and mentions "the ponderous, persevering, and laborious dullness of Sir Richard Blackmore."[230] But these observations are of little importance except as they indicate that Scott had read the authors of the eighteenth century and acquiesced in the conventional judgments upon them. It is seldom in his brief and casual comments that Scott is particularly interesting as a critic, except when he is speaking of living writers, for he lacked the gift of conciseness. When he has a large canvas he is at his best, and this he has in the principal works described in this chapter:--_The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, the _Works of Dryden_, the _Works of Swift_, and the _Lives of the Novelists_. CHAPTER IV SCOTT'S CRITICISM OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES Scott's freedom from literary jealousy--His disapproval of the typical reviewer's attitude--Jeffrey, Gifford, and Lockhart--His own practice in regard to reviewing--His informal critical remarks--Opportunity for favorable judgments afforded by the number of important writers in his period. Poets--Burns--Coleridge--Relation of _Christabel_ to Scott's work--Scott's dislike for extreme Romanticism--Wordsworth--Southey--Scott's review of _Kehama_--Byron--Scott's opinion of Byron's character--Campbell--Moore--Allan Cunningham--Hogg--Crabbe--Joanna Baillie--Matthew Lewis--Scott's judgment on his early taste for poetry--Absence of comment on the work of Lamb, Landor, Hunt, Hazlitt, and DeQuincey. Novelists--Jane Austen--Maria Edgeworth--Cooper--Personal relations between Scott and Cooper--Scott's verdict on Americans in general--Washington Irving--Goethe--Fouqué--Scott's interest in men of action. To study Scott's relations with contemporary writers is a very pleasant task because nothing shows better the greatness of his heart. His admirable freedom from literary jealousy was an innate virtue which he deliberately increased by cultivation, taking care, also, never to subject himself to the conditions which he thought accounted for the faults of Pope, who had "neither the business nor the idleness of life to divide his mind from his Parnassian pursuits."[231] "Those who have not his genius may be so far compensated by avoiding his foibles," Scott said; and some years later he wrote,--"When I first saw that a literary profession was to be my fate, I endeavoured by all efforts of stoicism to divest myself of that irritable degree of sensibility--or, to speak plainly, of vanity--which makes the poetical race miserable and ridiculous."[232] The record of his life clearly shows that his kindness towards other men of letters was not limited to words. One who received his good offices has written,--"The sternest words I ever heard him utter were concerning a certain poet: 'That man,' he said, 'has had much in his power, but he never befriended rising genius yet.'"[233] We may safely say that Scott enjoyed liking the work of other men. "I am most delighted with praise from those who convince me of their good taste by admiring the genius of my contemporaries,"[234] he once wrote to Southey. It is commonly supposed that Scott's amiability led him into absurd excesses of praise for the works of his fellow-craftsmen, and indeed he did say some very surprising things. But when all his references to any one man are brought together, they will be found, with a few exceptions, pretty fairly to characterize the writer. His _obiter dicta_ must be read in the light of one another, and in the light, also, of his known principles. Temperamentally modest about his own work, he was also habitually optimistic, and the combination gave him an utterly different quality from that of the typical _Edinburgh_ or _Quarterly_ critics. His disapproval of their point of view he expressed more than once.[235] It seemed to him futile and ungentlemanly for the anonymous reviewer to seek primarily for faults, or "to wound any person's feelings ... unless where conceit or false doctrine strongly calls for reprobation."[236] "Where praise can be conscientiously mingled in a larger proportion than blame," he said, "there is always some amusement in throwing together our ideas upon the works of our fellow-labourers." He thought, indeed, that vituperative and satiric criticism was defeating its own end, in the case of the _Edinburgh Review_ since it was overworked to the point of monotony. Such criticism he considered futile as well on this account as because he thought it likely to have an injurious effect on the work of really gifted writers. An admirer of both Jeffrey and Scott, who once heard a conversation between the two men, has recorded a distinction which is exactly what we should expect.[237] He says: "Jeffrey, for the most part, entertained us, when books were under discussion, with the detection of faults, blunders, absurdities, or plagiarisms: Scott took up the matter where he left it, recalled some compensating beauty or excellence for which no credit had been allowed, and by the recitation, perhaps, of one fine stanza, set the poor victim on his legs again." On Jeffrey Scott's verdict was, "There is something in his mode of reasoning that leads me greatly to doubt whether, notwithstanding the vivacity of his imagination, he really has any _feeling_ of poetical genius, or whether he has worn it all off by perpetually sharpening his wit on the grindstone of criticism."[238] His comment on Gifford's reviews was to the effect that people were more moved to dislike the critic for his savagery than the guilty victim whom he flagellated.[239] In the early days of _Blackwood's Magazine_ Scott often tried to repress Lockhart's "wicked wit,"[240] and when Lockhart became editor of the _Quarterly_ his father-in-law did not always approve of his work. "Don't like his article on Sheridan's life,"[241] says the _Journal_. "There is no breadth in it, no general views, the whole flung away in smart but party criticism. Now, no man can take more general and liberal views of literature than J.G.L."[242] With these opinions, Scott was not likely often to undertake the reviewing of books that did not, in one way or another interest him or move his admiration; and he would lay as much stress as possible on their good points. Gifford told him that "fun and feeling" were his forte.[243] In his early days he was probably somewhat influenced by Jeffrey's method, and his articles on Todd's _Spenser_ and Godwin's _Life of Chaucer_ indicate that he could occasionally adopt something of the tone of the _Edinburgh Review_. Years afterwards he refused to write an article that Lockhart wanted for the _Quarterly_, saying, "I cannot write anything about the author unless I know it can hurt no one alive"[244] but for the first volume of the _Quarterly_ he reviewed Sir John Carr's _Caledonian Sketches_ in a way that Sharon Turner seriously objected to, because it made Sir John seem ridiculous.[245] Some of Scott's critics would perhaps apply one of the strictures to himself: "Although Sir John quotes Horace, he has yet to learn that a wise man should not admire too easily; for he frequently falls into a state of wonderment at what appears to us neither very new nor very extraordinary."[246] But if admiration seems to characterize too great a proportion of Scott's critical work, it is because he usually preferred to ignore such books as demanded the sarcastic treatment which he reprehended, but which he felt perfectly capable of applying when he wished. Speaking of a fulsome biography he once said, "I can no more sympathize with a mere eulogist than I can with a ranting hero upon the stage; and it unfortunately happens that some of our disrespect is apt, rather unjustly, to be transferred to the subject of the panegyric in the one case, and to poor Cato in the other."[247] Besides Scott's formal reviews, we find cited as evidence of his extreme amiability his letters, his journal, and the remarks he made to friends in moments of enthusiasm. These do indeed contain some sweeping statements, but in almost every case one can see some reason, other than the desire to be obliging, why he made them. He was not double-faced. One of the nearest approaches to it seems to have been in the case of Miss Seward's poetry, for which he wrote such an introduction as hardly prepares the reader for the remark he made to Miss Baillie, that most of it was "absolutely execrable." His comment in the edition of the poems--the publication of which Miss Seward really forced upon him as a dying request--is sedulously kind, and in _Waverley_ he quotes from her a couple of lines which he calls "beautiful." But the essay is most carefully guarded, and throughout it the editor implies that the woman was more admirable than the poetry. Personally, indeed, he seems to have liked and admired her.[248] The catalogue of Scott's contemporaries is so full of important names that his genius for the enjoyment of other men's work had a wide opportunity to display itself without becoming absurd. An argument early used to prove that Scott was the author of _Waverley_ was the frequency of quotation in the novels from all living poets except Scott himself, and he felt constrained to throw in a reference or two to his own poetry in order to weaken the force of the evidence.[249] The reader is irresistibly reminded of the following description, given by Lockhart in a letter to his wife, of a morning walk taken by Wordsworth and Scott in company: "The Unknown was continually quoting Wordsworth's Poetry and Wordsworth ditto, but the great Laker never uttered one syllable by which it might have been intimated to a stranger that your Papa had ever written a line either of verse or prose since he was born."[250] Scott's opinions in regard to his fellow craftsmen may best be given largely in his own words--words which cannot fail to be interesting, however little evidence they show of any attempt to make them quotable. In considering Scott's estimation of his contemporaries it is chronologically proper to mention Burns first. As a boy of fifteen Scott met Burns, an event which filled him with the suitable amount of awe. He was most favorably impressed with the poet's appearance and with everything in his manner. The boy thought, however, that "Burns' acquaintance with English poetry was rather limited, and also, that having twenty times the abilities of Allan Ramsay and of Ferguson, he talked of them with too much humility as his models."[251] Scott's admiration of Burns was always expressed in the highest and, if one may say so, the most affectionate terms. He refused to let himself be named "in the same day" with Burns.[252] "Long life to thy fame and peace to thy soul, Rob Burns!" he exclaimed, in his _Journal_; "when I want to express a sentiment which I feel strongly, I find the phrase in Shakespeare--or thee."[253] On another day he compared Burns with Shakspere as excelling all other poets in "the power of exciting the most varied and discordant emotions with such rapid transitions."[254] Again, "The Jolly Beggars, for humorous description and nice discrimination of character, is inferior to no poem of the same length in the whole range of English poetry."[255] Scott wished that Burns might have carried out his plan of dramatic composition, and regretted, from that point of view, the excessive labor at songs which in the nature of things could not all be masterpieces.[256] Of writers who were more precisely contemporaries of Scott, the Lake Poets and Byron are the most important. The precedence ought to be given to Coleridge because of the suggestion Scott caught from a chance recitation of _Christabel_ for the meter he made so popular in the _Lay_.[257] Fragments from _Christabel_ are quoted or alluded to so often in the novels[258] and throughout Scott's work that we should conclude it had made a greater impression upon him than any other single poem written in his own time, if Lockhart had not spoken of Wordsworth's sonnet on Neidpath Castle as one which Scott was perhaps fondest of quoting.[259] _Christabel_ is not the only one of Coleridge's poems which Scott used for allusion or reference, but it was the favorite. "He is naturally a grand poet," Scott once wrote to a friend. "His verses on Love, I think, are among the most beautiful in the English language. Let me know if you have seen them, as I have a copy of them as they stood in their original form, which was afterwards altered for the worse."[260] The _Ancient Mariner_ also made a decided impression on him, if we judge from the fact that he quoted from it several times.[261] Scott evidently felt that Coleridge was a most tantalizing poet, and once intimated that future generations would in regard to him feel something like Milton's desire "to call up him who left half told the story of Cambuscan bold."[262] "No man has all the resources of poetry in such profusion, but he cannot manage them so as to bring out anything of his own on a large scale at all worthy of his genius.... His fancy and diction would have long ago placed him above all his contemporaries, had they been under the direction of a sound judgment and a steady will."[263] Such, in effect, was the opinion that Scott always expressed concerning Coleridge, and it is practically that of posterity. In _The Monastery_ Coleridge is called "the most imaginative of our modern bards." In another connection, after speaking of the "exquisite powers of poetry he has suffered to remain uncultivated," Scott adds, "Let us be thankful for what we have received, however. The unfashioned ore, drawn from so rich a mine, is worth all to which art can add its highest decorations, when drawn from less abundant sources."[264] These remarks are worth quoting, not only because of their wisdom, but also because Scott had small personal acquaintance with Coleridge and was rather repelled than attracted by what he knew of the character of the author of _Christabel_. His praises cannot in this case be called the tribute of friendship, and his own remarkable power of self-control might have made him a stern judge of Coleridge's shortcomings. One of his most interesting comments on Coleridge is contained in a discussion of Byron's _Darkness_, a poem which to his mind recalled "the wild, unbridled, and fiery imagination of Coleridge."[265] _Darkness_ is characterized as a mass of images and ideas, unarranged, and the critic goes on to warn the author against indulging in this sort of poetry. He says: "The feeling of reverence which we entertain for that which is difficult of comprehension, gives way to weariness whenever we begin to suspect that it cannot be distinctly comprehended by anyone.... The strength of poetical conception and beauty of diction bestowed upon such prolusions [_sic_], is as much thrown away as the colors of a painter, could he take a cloud of mist or a wreath of smoke for his canvas." It is disappointing that we have no comment from Scott upon Shelley's poetry, but we can imagine what is would have been.[266] Scott's position as the great popularizer of the Romantic movement in poetry makes particularly interesting his very evident though not often expressed repugnance to the more extreme development of that movement. Wordsworth's peculiar theory of poetry seemed to Scott superfluous and unnecessary, though he was never, so far as we can judge, especially irritated by it.[267] Of Wordsworth and Southey he wrote to Miss Seward: "Were it not for the unfortunate idea of forming a new school of poetry, these men are calculated to give it a new impulse; but I think they sometimes lose their energy in trying to find not a better but a different path from what has been travelled by their predecessors."[268] Scott paid tribute in the introduction to _The Antiquary_ to as much of Wordsworth's poetical creed as he could acquiesce in when he said, "The lower orders are less restrained by the habit of suppressing their feelings, and ... I agree with my friend Wordsworth that they seldom fail to express them in the strongest and most powerful language." In a letter to Southey Scott calls Wordsworth "a great master of the passions,"[269] and in his _Journal_ he said: His imagination "is naturally exquisite, and highly cultivated by constant exercise."[270] At another time he compared Wordsworth and Southey as scholars and commented on the "freshness, vivacity, and spring" of Wordsworth's mind.[271] The personal relations between Scott and Wordsworth were, as Wordsworth's tribute in _Yarrow Revisited_ would indicate, those of affectionate intimacy. And if Scott took exception to Wordsworth's choice of subjects and manner, Wordsworth used the same freedom in disagreeing with Scott's poetical ideals. "Thank you," he wrote in 1808, "for _Marmion_, which I have read with lively pleasure. I think your end has been attained. That it is not in every respect the end which I should wish you to purpose to yourself, you will be well aware, from what you know of my notions of composition, both as to matter and manner."[272] When, in 1821, Chantrey was about to exhibit together his busts of the two poets, Scott wrote: "I am happy my effigy is to go with that of Wordsworth, for (differing from him in very many points of taste) I do not know a man more to be venerated for uprightness of heart and loftiness of genius. Why he will sometimes choose to crawl upon all fours, when God has given him so noble a countenance to lift to heaven, I am as little able to account for as for his quarrelling (as you tell me) with the wrinkles which time and meditation have stamped his brow withal."[273] These remarks upon Wordsworth and Coleridge touch merely the fringe of the subject, and indeed we do not find that Scott exercised any such sublimated ingenuity in appreciating these men as has often been considered essential. We can see that he admired certain parts of their work intensely, but we look in vain for any real analysis of their quality. But as he never had occasion to write essays upon their poetry, it is perhaps hardly fair to expect anything more than the general remarks that we actually do find, and as far as they go they are satisfactory. Like most of his distinguished contemporaries, Scott held the work of Southey in surprisingly high estimation.[274] Southey, more than anyone else except Wordsworth, and more than Wordsworth in some ways, was the "real poet" of the period, devoting his whole heart to literature and his whole time to literary pursuits. Scott commented on the fact, saying, "Southey's ideas are all poetical," and, "In this respect, as well as in many others, he is a most striking and interesting character."[275] Nevertheless Scott found it easy to criticise Southey's poems adversely, as we may see from his correspondence. Writing to Miss Seward he pointed out flaws in the story and the characterization of _Madoc_,[276] yet after repeated readings he saw enough to convince him that _Madoc_ would in the future "assume his real place at the feet of Milton."[277] _Thalaba_ was one of the poems he liked to have read aloud on Sunday evenings.[278] A review of _The Curse of Kehama_, in which he seemed to express the opinion that this surpassed the poet's previous work, illustrates his professed creed as to criticism. He wrote to Ellis concerning his article: "What I could I did, which was to throw as much weight as possible upon the beautiful passages, of which there are many, and to slur over the absurdities, of which there are not a few.... This said _Kehama_ affords cruel openings for the quizzers, and I suppose will get it roundly in the _Edinburgh Review_. I could have made a very different hand of it, indeed, had the order of the day been _pour déchirer_."[279] If Scott had to make an effort in writing the review, he made it with abundant energy. Some absurdities are indeed mentioned, but various particular passages are characterized in the most enthusiastic way, with such phrases as "horribly sublime," "impressive and affecting," "reminds us of the Satan of Milton, yet stands the comparison," "all the gloomy power of Dante." It may be noted that Scott used Milton's name rather freely in comparisons, and that for Dante his admiration was altogether unimpassioned,[280] but the review, after all, is on the whole very laudatory.[281] In it Scott awards to Southey the palm for a surpassing share of imagination, which he elsewhere gave to Coleridge. Possibly Scott was the less inclined to be severe over the absurdities of _Kehama_ because Southey agreed with his own theory as to the evil of fastidious corrections.[282] At any rate he seems to have been quite sincere in saying to Southey, in connection with the poet-laureateship which, according to Scott's suggestion, was offered to him in 1813, "I am not such an ass as not to know that you are my better in poetry, though I have had, probably but for a time, the tide of popularity in my favour."[283] Much as Scott admired Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, he considered Byron the great poetical genius of the period. He once spoke of Byron as the only poet of transcendent talents that England had had since Dryden.[284] At another time his comment was: "He wrote from impulse, never from effort; and therefore I have always reckoned Burns and Byron the most genuine poetical geniuses of my time, and half a century before me. We have ... many men of high poetical talent, but none, I think, of that ever-gushing and perennial fountain of natural water."[285] The likenesses between Byron's poetical manner and Scott's own must have made it easy for the elder poet to recognize the power of the younger, since Scott was innocent of all repining or envy over the fact which he so freely acknowledged in later years, that Byron "beat" him out of the field.[286] From the time of the appearance of the first two cantos of _Childe Harold_ he acknowledged the author's "extraordinary power,"[287] and even before that he had tried to soften Jeffrey's harsh treatment of _Hours of Idleness_.[288] In 1814 he was ready to say, "Byron hits the mark where I don't even pretend to fledge my arrow."[289] It was Byron, rather than Scott, who realized the debt of the new popular favorite to the old; and their personal relations were of the pleasantest, though they were never intimate as Scott was with Southey and Wordsworth. As poets, Scott and Byron seem to have understood each other thoroughly.[290] None of the other great poets of the period did justice to Scott, nor did he succeed so well in defining the power of any of the others. His first review of _Childe Harold_ is the most important of all his articles on the poetry of his time; and his remarks written at the death of Lord Byron, though brief, are not less full of good judgment. Originality, spontaneity, and the ability and inclination to write rapidly were traits Scott admired most in Byron, and in the vigor and beauty of the poems he found the fine flower of all these qualities. "We cannot but repeat our conviction," he says, "that poetry, being, in its higher classes, an art which has for its elements sublimity and unaffected beauty, is more liable than any other to suffer from the labour of polishing.... It must be remembered that we speak of the higher tones of composition; there are others of a subordinate character where extreme art and labour are not bestowed in vain. But we cannot consider over-anxious correction as likely to be employed with advantage upon poems like those of Lord Byron, which have for their object to rouse the imagination and awaken the passions."[291] Byron's temperament was far from being of a sort that Scott could admire, though he was very susceptible to his personal charm: "Byron's countenance is a thing to dream of," he once said;[292] but he felt that popular estimation did Byron injustice. His articles on this poet contain some of his most characteristic moral reflections. Something of Byron's gloominess Scott attributes to the sensitive poetic organization which he felt that Byron had in an extreme degree; but more to the perverted habit of looking within rather than around upon the realities of life, in which Providence intended men to find their happiness. The philosophy is not novel or brilliant; it is only very sincere and very just; and it supplies to Scott's criticism of Byron that element of moral reflection which we feel was necessary to the occasion.[293] But though Scott never failed to express disapproval of Byron's attitude toward life, he kept his criticism on this point essentially distinct from his judgment on the poetry. In a way it was impossible to separate the two subjects, and the public demanded some discussion of the man when his poetry was reviewed. But Scott's verdict on the importance of the poems as such was unaffected by his disapproval of the author's point of view. He praised _Don Juan_ no less heartily than _Childe Harold_. His criticism of _Don Juan_ is, however, to be gathered only from short and incidental remarks, as he never reviewed the poem. A satire written by R.P. Gillies is commemorated thus in Scott's _Journal_: "This poem goes to the tune of _Don Juan_, but it is the champagne after it has stood two days with the cork drawn."[294] He called Byron "as various in composition as Shakspeare himself"; and added, "this will be admitted by all who are acquainted with his _Don Juan_.... Neither _Childe Harold_, nor any of the most beautiful of Byron's earlier tales, contain more exquisite morsels of poetry than are to be found scattered through the cantos of _Don Juan_."[295] The defence of _Cain_ which Scott wrote in accepting the dedication of that poem to himself is well known.[296] He calls it a "very grand and tremendous drama," and continues, "Byron has certainly matched Milton on his own ground. Some part of the language is bold, and may shock one class of readers, whose tone will be adopted by others out of affectation or envy. But then they must condemn the _Paradise Lost_, if they have a mind to be consistent." Scott's comments on Byron are closely paralleled by those of Goethe, who considered that Byron had the greatest talent of any man of his century.[297] The opinions of continental critics in general were similar. Among English critics Matthew Arnold aroused many protests when he ranked Byron as one of the two greatest English poets of the nineteenth century, but his views seem perfectly rational now; and though he remarked upon the extravagance of Scott's phrases his own verdict was not very unlike that we have been considering. Scott's enthusiasm about the literature of his own time seems natural enough when we consider that the list of his notable contemporaries is far from exhausted after Burns, the Lake Poets, and Byron have been named. Campbell was a poet of whose powers he thought very highly, but who, he believed had given only a sample of the great things he might do if he would cease to "fear the shadow of his own reputation." Before he wrote about Byron Scott had given in his review of _Gertrude of Wyoming_ an exposition of his opinion as to the dangers of extreme care in revision. "The truth is," he says, "that an author cannot work upon a beautiful poem beyond a certain point without doing it real and irreparable injury in more respects than one."[298] He felt that Campbell had worked, in many cases, beyond the "certain point." For the "impetuous lyric sally," like the _Mariners of England_ and the _Battle of the Baltic_, Scott rightly thought that Campbell excelled all his contemporaries. Moore was another lyrist whose poetry Scott greatly admired. In Moore's case, as in Southey's, the contemporary estimate was higher than can now be maintained, but Moore is to-day underrated. From what Scott says about him we conclude that the man's personality and his way of singing added much to the exquisiteness of his songs. "He seems almost to think in music," Scott said, "the notes and words are so happily suited to each other";[299] and, "it would be a delightful addition to life if T.M. had a cottage within two miles of one."[300] Allan Cunningham was a young protege of Scott whose songs, "Its hame and it's hame," and "A wet sheet and a flowing sea," seemed to him "among the best going."[301] Another poet who received Scott's good offices was Hogg, whose relations with the greater man are described so vividly and at some points so amusingly by Lockhart. Scott called him a "wonderful creature for his opportunities."[302] For the poet Crabbe, Scott, like Byron and Wordsworth,[303] had a steady and high admiration. In the Sunday evening readings that Lockhart describes as being so pleasant a feature of the life of the family in Edinburgh, Crabbe was perhaps the chief standing resource after Shakspere.[304] His work was particularly recommended to the young people of the family,[305] and when the venerable poet visited the Scotts in 1822, he was received as a man whom they always looked upon as nobly gifted. Scott once wrote of him: "I think if he had cultivated the sublime and the pathetic instead of the satirical cast of poetry, he must have stood very high (as indeed he does at any rate) on the list of British poets. His _Sir Eustace Grey_ and _The Hall of Justice_ indicate prodigious talent."[306] Scott did not like Crabbe's choice of subjects,[307] but he appreciated the "force and vigour" of a poet whom students of our own day are once more beginning to admire, after a period during which he was practically ignored. Scott's very high estimation of Joanna Baillie has already been mentioned.[308] In this case as in many others he was proud and happy in the personal friendship of the writer whose works he admired. He once wrote to Miss Edgeworth: "I have always felt the value of having access to persons of talent and genius to be the best part of a literary man's prerogative."[309] Almost the earliest of the writers for whose friendship Scott felt grateful was Matthew Lewis, famed as the author of _The Monk_. Lewis was also something of a poet, and was really helpful to Scott in giving him advice on literary subjects. Though Scott perceived that Lewis's talents "would not stand much creaming"[310] he continued to regard him as one who had had high imagination and a "finer ear for rhythm than Byron's." Scott felt that his own taste in respect to poetry became more rigorous as he grew older. In 1823 in a letter to Miss Baillie he commented on Mrs. Hemans as "somewhat too poetical for my taste--too many flowers, I mean, and too little fruit--but that may be the cynical criticism of an elderly gentleman; for it is certain that when I was young I read verses of every kind with infinitely more indulgence, because with more pleasure than I can now do--the more shame for me now to refuse the complaisance which I have had so often to solicit."[311] Similarly he speaks in the preface to _Kenilworth_ of having once been delighted with the poems of Mickle and Langhorne: "There is a period in youth when the mere power of numbers has a more strong effect on ear and imagination than in after-life." With these comments we may put Lockhart's sagacious remark: "His propensity to think too well of other men's works sprung, of course, mainly from his modesty and good nature; but the brilliancy of his imagination greatly sustained the delusion. It unconsciously gave precision to the trembling outline, and life and warmth to the vapid colours before him."[312] This and his kindness would account for the latter half of the observation made by his publisher: "I like well Scott's ain bairns--but heaven preserve me from those of his fathering."[313] I have found no reference to Landor, a poet whom Southey and Wordsworth read with eagerness, but Mr. Forster makes this statement in his _Biography of Landor_: "Among Landor's papers I found a list, prepared by himself, of resemblances to passages of his own writing to be found in Scott's _Tales of the Crusaders_. There were several from _Gebir_.... The poem had made a great impression on Scott, who read it at Southey's suggestion."[314] Forster also notes the fact that Southey, in a letter to Scott written in 1812, spoke very highly of Landor's _Count Julian_.[315] I am similarly unable to cite any comment by Scott on the writings of Lamb. Was it because Scott's genius clung to Scotland and Lamb's to London, that the two seemed so little to notice each other? It does seem odd that Scott never refers to the delightful _Specimens of English Dramatic Poets_. At one time Lamb wrote to Sir Walter asking a contribution toward a fund that was being raised to help William Godwin out of pecuniary troubles, and Scott replied, through the artist Haydon, with a cheque for ten pounds and a pleasant message to Mr. Lamb, "whom I should be happy to see in Scotland, though I have not forgotten his metropolitan preference of houses to rocks, and citizens to wild rustics and highland men."[316] Hazlitt and Hunt were two other writers whose literary work Scott ignored.[317] This, as well as his neglect of Lamb's and DeQuincey's essays, may be due largely to the fact that he seldom read newspapers and magazines, and these writers were journalists and contributors to periodicals. Voracious reader as Scott was, he had to economize time somewhere, and the hours saved from papers could be given to books. We do find one or two references to these men as political writers. Scott hoped Lockhart would learn, as editor of the _Quarterly_, to despise petty adversaries, for "to take notice of such men as Hazlitt and Hunt in the _Quarterly_ would be to introduce them into a world which is scarce conscious of their existence."[318] Among novelists, those of Scott's contemporaries to whom he gave the highest praise were women. This is, however to be expected, and it is natural to find Jane Austen receiving the highest praise of all; since Scott was emphatically not of the tribe of critics who are able to appreciate only one kind of novel or poem. Her novels seemed to grow upon him and he read them often. It was in connection with her "exquisite touch" that he was moved to reflect, in the words so often quoted from his _Journal_, "The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going."[319] Among the expressions of admiration which occur in his review of _Emma_,[320] Scott records a characteristic bit of protest in regard to the tendency of Miss Austen and other novelists to make prudence the guiding motive of all their favorite young women characters, especially in matters of the heart. He did not like this pushing out of Cupid to make way for so moderate a virtue as prudence; he thought that it is often good for young people to fall in love without regard to worldly considerations. Scott rated Miss Edgeworth nearly as high as Miss Austen, and hers is the added honor of having inspired the author of _Waverley_ with a desire to emulate her power.[321] With these two novelists he associated Miss Ferrier, as well as the somewhat earlier writer, Fanny Burney.[322] Aside from these women and Henry Mackenzie, perhaps the highest praise that Scott bestowed on any contemporary novelist was given to Cooper. Here, as in the case of Byron, Scott seemed to ignore the other writer's indebtedness to himself. He speaks, in the general preface to the Waverley Novels, of "that striking field in which Mr. Cooper has achieved so many triumphs"; and at another time calls him "the justly celebrated American novelist." In his _Journal_ he comments on _The Red Rover_[323] and _The Prairie_;[324] _The Pilot_ he recommends warmly in a letter to Miss Edgeworth.[325] The personal relations between "the Scotch and American lions," as Scott called himself and Cooper, when they met in Parisian society in 1826,[326] had some interesting consequences. Cooper suggested to Scott that he try to secure for himself part of the profits arising from the publication of his works in America, by entering them as the property of some citizen.[327] They finally concluded to substitute for this plan one suggested by Scott, which involved the writing by the Author of Waverley, of a letter addressed to Cooper, to be transmitted by him to some American publisher who would undertake the publication of an authorized edition of which half the profits should go to the author. Future works were to be sent over to this publisher in advance of their appearance in England. The letter was really an appeal to the justice of the American people, and contained an allusion to the publication of Irving's works in England according to a plan very similar to that proposed by Scott. But the scheme failed here in America, and apparently the letter was not made public until Cooper, irritated by the appearance in Lockhart's _Life of Scott_ of Sir Walter's comments on his personal manner,[328] explained the affair (except the reason for dropping the plan), and published the correspondence in the _Knickerbocker Magazine_ for April, 1838.[329] Later in the same year Cooper wrote a severe review of the biography of Scott, attacking his character in a way that seems absurdly exaggerated.[330] Yet Charles Sumner seems to have thought that Cooper made his points, and Mr. Lounsbury is inclined to agree with him.[331] One of the milder strictures in Cooper's review was as follows "As he was ambitious of, so was he careful to preserve, his personal popularity, of which we have a striking proof in the studied kindnesses that for years were laid before this country in deeds and words, as compared with his real acts and sentiments toward America and Americans which are now revealed in his letters." A passage which doubtless roused Cooper's ire may be quoted. Of the Americans Scott said, in a letter to Miss Edgeworth, "They are a people possessed of very considerable energy, quickened and brought into eager action by an honourable love of their country and pride in their institutions; but they are as yet rude in their ideas of social intercourse, and totally ignorant, speaking generally, of all the art of good breeding, which consists chiefly in a postponement of one's own petty wishes or comforts to those of others. By rude questions and observations, an absolute disrespect to other people's feelings, and a ready indulgence of their own, they make one feverish in their company, though perhaps you may be ashamed to confess the reason. But this will wear off and is already wearing away. Men, when they have once got benches, will soon fall into the use of cushions. They are advancing in the lists of our literature, and they will not be long deficient in the _petite morale_, especially as they have, like ourselves, the rage for travelling."[332] Scott liked George Ticknor,[333] and he called Washington Irving "one of the best and pleasantest acquaintances I have made this many a day."[334] In later life he congratulated himself on having from the first foreseen Irving's success.[335] When we remember also that Scott quotes from Poor Richard,[336] refers to Cotton Mather's _Magnalia_,[337] and speaks of "the American Brown" as one whose novels might be reprinted in England,[338] we ought probably to conclude that his acquaintance with our literature was as comprehensive as could have been expected. Among continental writers belonging to his period, Goethe was very properly the one for whom Scott had the strongest admiration. But we find comparatively few references to his reading the great German after the early period of translation. Throughout Lockhart's _Life of Scott_ it is evident that the biographer had a more thorough acquaintance with Goethe than had Scott, and it seems probable that the younger man influenced the elder in his judgment on _Faust_ and on Goethe's character. In the Introduction to _Quentin Durward_ we find an interesting comment on Goethe's success in creating a really wicked Mephistopheles, who escapes the noble dignity that Milton and Byron gave to their pictures of Satan. Goethe and Scott exchanged letters once in 1827,[339] and it was a personal grief to Sir Walter that the German poet's death prevented a visit Scott proposed to make him in 1832. In _Anne of Geierstein_ Goethe is called "an author born to arouse the slumbering fame of his country";[340] and in the _Journal_ Scott characterizes him as "the Ariosto at once and almost the Voltaire of Germany."[341] The suggestion for the character of Fenella in _Peveril of the Peak_ was taken from Goethe, as we learn by Scott's acknowledgment in the Introduction. Another German from whom Scott borrowed a suggestion--this time for the unlucky "White Lady of Avenel"--was the Baron de la Motte Fouqué. Scott was evidently interested in his work, though he thought Fouqué sometimes used such a profusion of historical and antiquarian lore that readers would find it difficult to follow the narrative.[342] Sir Walter asked his son to tell the Baroness de la Motte Fouqué that he had been much interested in her writings and those of the Baron, and added, "It will be civil, for folks like to know that they are known and respected beyond the limits of their own country."[343] In the literary circles of Paris Scott more than once experienced the pleasure of finding himself "known and respected" by foreigners,[344] and he had intimate relations with men of letters in London. On one of his visits there he saw Byron almost every morning for some time, at the house of Murray the publisher. In Edinburgh society Scott was naturally a prominent figure, being noted for his fund of anecdote and his superior gifts in presiding at dinners. But however much his kindly personal feeling is reflected in his comments on the literary work of his friends, he was too well-balanced to assume anything of the patronizing tone that such success as his might have made natural to another sort of man. His fellow-poets thought him a delightful person whom they liked so much that they could almost forgive the preposterous success of his facile and unimportant poetry. His full-blooded enjoyment of life and literature tempered without obscuring his critical instinct, and though he was "willing to be pleased by those who were desirous to give pleasure",[345] he noted the weak points of men to whose power he gladly paid tribute. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and Byron, whom he classed as the great English poets of his time, may, with the exception of Southey, be given the places he assigned to them. In regard to Byron, Scott expressed a critical estimate that the public is only now getting ready to accept after a long period of depreciating Byron's genius. The men whose work Scott judged fairly and sympathetically represent widely different types. With some of them he was connected by the new impulse that they were imparting to English poetry, but he was so close to the transition period that he could look backward to his predecessors with no sense of strangeness. He was never inclined to quarrel with the "erroneous system" of a poem which he really liked. His comments on Byron's _Darkness_ suggest that if he had read more than he did of Shelley and others among his younger contemporaries he might have found much to reprehend, but he held that "we must not limit poetical merit to the class of composition which exactly suits one's own particular taste."[346] Among novelists even less than among poets can we trace a "school" to which he paid special allegiance. He read and enjoyed all sorts of good stories, growing in this respect more catholic in his tastes, though perhaps more severe in his standards, as he grew older. In speaking of Scott's relations with his contemporaries, we must especially remember his ardent interest in those realities of life which he considered greater than the greatest books. In one of his reviews he laid stress on the merit of writing on contemporary events,[347] and he seemed to think there was too little of such celebration. There are many evidences of his great admiration for those of his contemporaries who were men of action, but it is sufficient to remember that the only man in whose presence Scott felt abashed was the Duke of Wellington, for he counted that famous commander the greatest man of his time. CHAPTER V SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF HIS OWN WORK Lack of dogmatism about his own work--Harmony between his talents and his tastes--His conviction of the value of spontaneity and abundance--Merits of a rapid meter--Greater care necessary in verse writing a reason why he turned to prose--His attitude in regard to revision--Modesty about his own work--His opinion of the popular judgment--Importance of novelty--Rivalry with Byron--Scott's attempts to keep ahead of his imitators--Devices to secure novelty--His resolution to write history--Historical motives of his novels--His comments on the use of historical material--His verdict in regard to his descriptive abilities and methods--Lack of emphasis on the ethical aspect of his work--His judgment on the position of the novel in literature. "Scott is invariably his own best critic," says Mr. Andrew Lang.[348] Of this Scott was not himself in the least convinced, and when we recall how, to please his printer, James Ballantyne, he tacked on a last scene to _Rokeby_, resuscitated the dead Athelstane in _Ivanhoe_, and eliminated the main motive of _St. Ronan's Well_, we wish he had been more uniformly inclined to trust his own critical judgment. He never scheduled the qualities of his own genius. A man who could sincerely say what he did about literary immortality would not be apt to develop any dogma in regard to his artistic achievement. "Let me please my own generation," he said, "and let those that come after us judge of their taste and my performances as they please; the anticipation of their neglect or censure will affect me very little."[349] His opinions about his own work are to be deduced largely from casual remarks scattered through his letters and journals. His introductions to his novels, in the _Opus Magnum_, are valuable sources, however, and the "Epistle" preceding _The Fortunes of Nigel_ is a mine of material, though, unlike the later introductions, it was written "according to the trick," when he was still preserving his anonymity. We have an article which he wrote for the _Quarterly_ on two of his own books, the review of _Tales of My Landlord_.[350] His criticism of the work of other people is also very helpful in this connection, since from it we may learn what qualities he wished to find in poetry and in the novel, as well as in history, biography, and criticism, the fields in which he did much, though less famous work. The student of his criticism is struck at once by the fact that the qualities which Scott particularly admired in literature were those for which he was himself preëminent. Yet he cannot be accused, as Poe may be, of constructing a theory that those types of art were greatest which he found himself most skilful in exemplifying. Scott's nature was of that most efficient kind that enables a man to do such things as he likes to see done. We cannot argue that he was incapable of attending to minute niceties and on this account chose to emphasize the large qualities of literature. For notwithstanding that lack of delicacy which characterized his physical senses and which we might therefore conclude would affect his literary discernment, we have among his small poems some that show his power, occasionally at least, to satisfy the most fastidious critic of detail. Evidently he could write in more than one style, and though the style he used most is undoubtedly that which was most natural to him, it was also that which he thought, on other grounds than the character of his own talents, best worth while. Yet he had so little vanity in regard to his own work that he could hardly understand his success, though it depended on those very qualities which, in other authors, excited his utmost admiration. One of his fundamental opinions about literary work was that to write much and with abundant spontaneity is better than to polish minutely. Over and over again we find this idea expressed, most noticeably in connection with the poet Campbell, whom Scott could scarcely forgive for making so little use of his poetical gifts. He applauded the much-criticised fertility of Byron, whose genius was in that respect akin to his own. "I never knew name or fame burn brighter by over-chary keeping of it,"[351] Scott said. The greatest writers he observed, have been the most voluminous. His position was one that could be fortified by inductive reasoning, contrasting in this respect with theories which seem plausible only until they are tested by actual facts, as, for example, Poe's idea that long poems lose effectiveness by their length. But perhaps Scott did not sufficiently take into account the circular nature of his argument; for since the world has refused to consider the men very great who "never spoke out," the truth is not so much that a great man ought to write copiously as that if a man does not write copiously he will not be counted great. Scott seemed to think it was mere wilfulness that prevented a man of such gifts as Campbell's from writing abundantly. The corresponding disadvantages of rapid composition were of course evident to him. From the first appearance of the _Lay_ to the end of his career he lamented his inability to plan a story in an orderly manner and follow out the scheme; he admitted also that "the misfortune of writing fast is that one cannot at the same time write concisely."[352] Of _Marmion_ he told Southey, "I had not time to write the poem shorter."[353] His grief on these points seems qualified, however, by a conviction that he could not write with deliberation and method and still produce the effect of vivacious spontaneity. He thought Fielding was almost the only novelist who had thoroughly succeeded in combining these various admirable qualities,[354] and he said in this connection, "To demand equal correctness and felicity in those who may follow in the track of that illustrious novelist, would be to fetter too much the power of giving pleasure, by surrounding it with penal rules; since of this sort of light literature it may be especially said--_tout genre est permis, hors le genre ennuyeux_."[355] "To confess to you the truth," says the "Author" in the Introductory Epistle to _Nigel_, "the works and passages in which I have succeeded, have uniformly been written with the greatest rapidity; and when I have seen some of these placed in opposition with others, and commended as more highly finished, I could appeal to pen and standish, that the parts in which I have come feebly off were by much the more laboured." He attempted to write _Rokeby_ with great care, but threw the first version into the fire because he concluded that he had "corrected the spirit out of it, as a lively pupil is sometimes flogged into a dunce by a severe schoolmaster."[356] He was better satisfied with the result when he resumed his pen in his "old Cossack manner."[357] Similarly he writes of John Home's tragedy, _Douglas_, that the finest scene was, "we learn with pleasure but without surprise," unchanged from the first draft;[358] and elsewhere he speaks of the greater chance for popularity of the "bold, decisive, but light-touched strain of poetry or narrative in literary composition," over the "more highly-wrought performance."[359] A good exposition of Scott's real opinion in regard to his own style is to be found in his review of _Tales of My Landlord_. Some parts of the article were probably inserted by his friend William Erskine, but the section I quote bears unmistakable evidence that it was written by the author himself, for it expresses that combined reprobation and approval of his style which is amusingly characteristic of him. He says: "Our author has told us that it was his object to present a series of scenes and characters connected with Scotland in its past and present state, and we must own that his stories are so slightly constructed as to remind us of the showman's thread with which he draws up his pictures and presents them successively to the eye of the spectator.... Against this slovenly indifference we have already remonstrated, and we again enter our protest.... We are the more earnest in this matter, because it seems that the author errs chiefly from carelessness. There may be something of system in it, however, for we have remarked, that with an attention which amounts even to affectation, he has avoided the common language of narrative and thrown his story, as much as possible, into a dramatic shape. In many cases this has added greatly to the effect, by keeping both the actors and action continually before the reader and placing him, in some measure, in the situation of an audience at a theater, who are compelled to gather the meaning of the scene from what the dramatis personae say to each other, and not from any explanation addressed immediately to themselves. But though the author gain this advantage, and thereby compel the reader to think of the personages of the novel and not of the writer, yet the practice, especially pushed to the extent we have noticed, is a principal cause of the flimsiness and incoherent texture of which his greatest admirers are compelled to complain."[360] Lockhart points out that the fruit of Scott's study of Dryden may have been to fortify his opinion as to what the greatness of literature really consists in, and applies to Scott himself some of the phrases used in the characterization of the earlier poet. "'Rapidity of conception, a readiness of expressing every idea, without losing anything by the way'; 'perpetual animation and elasticity of thought'; and language 'never laboured, never loitering, never (in Dryden's own phrase) cursedly confined,'" are set over against "pointed and nicely turned lines, sedulous study, and long and repeated correction and revision," and are pronounced the superior virtues.[361] The concluding paragraph of Scott's review of a poem on the Battle of Talavera exemplifies his use of this doctrine. "We have shunned, in the present instance," he says, "the unpleasant task of pointing out and dwelling upon individual inaccuracies. There are several hasty expressions, flat lines, and deficient rhymes, which prove to us little more than that the composition was a hurried one. These, in a poem of a different description, we should have thought it our duty to point out to the notice of the author. But after all it is the spirit of a poet that we consider as demanding our chief attention; and upon its ardour or rapidity must finally hinge our applause or condemnation."[362] Scott's opinions about meters reflect the same taste. He persuaded himself, when he was writing _The Lady of the Lake_, that the eight-syllable line is "more congenial to the English language--more favourable to narrative poetry at least--than that which has been commonly termed heroic verse,"[363] and he proceeded to show that the first half-dozen lines of Pope's _Iliad_ were each "bolstered out" with a superfluous adjective. "The case is different in descriptive poetry," he added, "because there epithets, if they are happily selected, are rather to be sought after than avoided.... But if in narrative you are frequently compelled to tag your substantives with adjectives, it must frequently happen that you are forced upon those that are merely commonplaces." He mentions other beauties of his favorite verse,--the opportunities for variation by double rhyme and by occasionally dropping a syllable, and the correspondence between the length of line and our natural intervals between punctuation,--but gives as his final excuse for using it his "better knack at this 'false gallop' of verse." The argument is ingenious enough, but his analysis of heroic verse has only a limited application, and his last reason probably was, as he was candid enough to admit, the most weighty. George Ellis replied to his defence thus: "I don't think, after all the eloquence with which you plead for your favourite metre, that you really like it from any other motive than that _sainte paresse_--that delightful indolence--which induces one to delight in those things which we can do with the least fatigue."[364] This seems hardly a fair return for the poet's appeal to Ellis in one of the epistles of _Marmion_:[365] "Come listen! bold in thy applause, The bard shall scorn pedantic laws." Another introduction in the same poem is given up to a justification of the author's "unconfined" style, on the score of his love for the wild songs of his own country and the freedom of his early training.[366] Scott practically never rewrote his prose, and the result gave Hazlitt opportunity to say:[367] "We should think the writer could not possibly read the manuscript after he has once written it, or overlook the press."[368] His habit of carrying two trains of thought on together was also responsible for slips in diction and syntax. An amanuensis working for him noticed this peculiarity, and Scott said in his _Journal_: "There must be two currents of ideas going on in my mind at the same time.... I always laugh when I hear people say, Do one thing at once. I have done a dozen things at once all my life."[369] But the making of poetry required more attention. "Verse I write twice, and sometimes three times over,"[370] he said, and one is moved to wonder whether the distaste for writing poetry, that he professed about 1822, arose largely from a growing aversion to what he probably considered extreme care in composition.[371] A series of three comments on his own poetry may be given to illustrate his widely varying moods in regard to it. They are all taken from letters written not far from the time when _Marmion_ was published. "As for poetry, it is very little labour to me; indeed 'twere pity of my life should I spend much time on the light and loose sort of poetry which alone I can pretend to write."[372] "I believe no man now alive writes more rapidly than I do (no great recommendation), but I never think of making verses till I have a sufficient stock of poetical ideas to supply them."[373] "If I ever write another poem, I am determined to make every single couplet of it as perfect as my uttermost care and attention can possibly effect."[374] In spite of this momentary resolution to take more pains with his next poem, he was unable to do so when the time came; or if, as in the case of _Rokeby_ he did make the attempt, the results seemed to him unsatisfactory. Yet verse required much more careful finishing than prose, even when it was written by Scott, and this fact has been too little emphasized in discussions of his transition from verse to prose romances. Scott's temperamental aversion to revising what he had once written was evidently sanctioned by his literary creed. Near the end of his life he recalled how he had submitted one of his earliest poems to the criticism of several acquaintances, with the consequence that after he had adopted their suggestions, hardly a line remained unaltered, and yet the changes failed to satisfy the critics.[375] He said: "This unexpected result, after about a fortnight's anxiety, led me to adopt a rule from which I have seldom departed during more than thirty years of literary life. When a friend whose judgment I respect has decided and upon good advisement told me that a manuscript was worth nothing, or at least possessed no redeeming qualities sufficient to atone for its defects, I have generally cast it aside; but I am little in the custom of paying attention to minute criticisms or of offering such to any friend who may do me the honour to consult me. I am convinced that, in general, in removing even errors of a trivial or venial kind, the character of originality is lost, which, upon the whole, may be that which is most valuable in the production." This position appears doubly significant when we remember that it was assumed by a man who had only the slightest possible amount of paternal jealousy in regard to his writings.[376] Scott did not always adhere to this resolution, for he did accept criticism and make alterations, more in compliance with the wishes of James Ballantyne, his friend and printer, than to meet the desires of anyone else. He considered that Ballantyne represented the ordinary popular taste, and he was ready to make some sacrifice of his own judgment in order to satisfy his public. He sent the conclusion of _Rokeby_ to Ballantyne with this note: "Dear James,--I send you this out of deference to opinions so strongly expressed, but still retaining my own, that it spoils one effect without producing another." When one of his books was adversely criticised by the public he received the judgment with open mind, and often analyzed it with much acuteness. The introduction to _The Monastery_ is a good example of frank, though not servile, submission to the decree of public opinion. That he was deeply impressed with his blunder in managing the White Lady of Avenel may be surmised from the fact that in several later discussions of the effect of supernatural apparitions in novels, he emphasized the necessity of keeping them sufficiently infrequent to preserve an atmosphere of mystery. Of _The Monastery_ he said: "I agree with the public in thinking the work not very interesting; but it was written with as much care as the others--that is, with no care at all."[377] But sometimes he felt inclined to rebel against a popular verdict, as when Norna, in _The Pirate_, was said to be a mere copy of Meg Merrilies.[378] In his later days he grew more and more unsure of himself, as he felt compelled to work at his topmost speed. His _Journal_ for 1829 has the following record in regard to a review he was writing: "I began to warm in my gear, and am about to awake the whole controversy of Goth and Celt. I wish I may not make some careless blunders."[379] The criticisms of "J.B." became more frequent and more irritating to him as he felt a growing inability to achieve precision in details.[380] When Lockhart pointed out some lapses in his style, he wrote in his _Journal_, "Well! I will try to remember all this, but after all I write grammar as I speak, to make my meaning known, and a solecism in point of composition, like a Scotch word in speaking, is indifferent to me."[381] Until he felt his powers failing, he was for the most part at once good-natured and independent in his manner of receiving criticism. Whether or not he agreed with the opinion expressed, he usually thought that what he had once written might best stand, though he might be influenced in later work by the advice that had been given.[382] "I am sensible that if there be anything good about my poetry or prose either," Scott wrote, in a passage that has often been quoted, "it is a hurried frankness of composition which pleases soldiers, sailors and young people of bold and active disposition."[383] I have tried to show that this quality was one which he not only enjoyed, in his own work and in that of other writers, but that as a critic he very seriously approved of it. Yet in spite of his belief that the greatest literature is not the result of slow and painful labor, it was probably the ease with which he wrote which led him to undervalue his own work. However we may account for it, he found difficulty in regarding himself as a great author.[384] When this modesty of his came into conflict with the other opinion that he had always been inclined to hold--that the popularity of books is a test of their merit--the result is amusing. He was impelled at times to utter contemptuous words about the foolishness of the public, and of course he could not help being moved also in the other direction--to believe there was more in his writings than he had realized. In one mood he said, "I thank God I can write ill enough for the present taste";[385] and "I have very little respect for that dear _publicum_ whom I am doomed to amuse, like Goody Trash in _Bartholomew Fair_, with rattles and gingerbread; and I should deal very uncandidly with those who may read my confessions were I to say I knew a public worth caring for, or capable of distinguishing the nicer beauties of composition. They weigh good and evil qualities by the pound. Get a good name and you may write trash. Get a bad one and you may write like Homer, without pleasing a single reader."[386] Looking back from the end of his career to the time when _The Lady of the Lake_ was in the height of its success, he wrote: "It must not be supposed that I was either so ungrateful or so superabundantly candid as to despise or scorn the value of those whose voice had elevated me so much higher than my own opinion told me I deserved. I felt, on the contrary, the more grateful to the public as receiving that from partiality which I could not have claimed from merit; and I endeavoured to deserve the partiality by continuing such exertions as I was capable of for their amusement."[387] The perfect respectability of these remarks tempts the reader to set over against them this earlier observation by the same writer in the guise of Chrystal Croftangry, "One thing I have learned in life--never to speak sense when nonsense will answer the purpose as well."[388] Whatever Scott might think of the worth of public admiration, he frankly attempted to write what would be popular. He had none of the feeling which has characterized many very interesting men of letters, that the desire for self-expression is the one motive of the author; his personal literary impulse, on the contrary, was always guided by the thought of the audience whom he was addressing. "No one shall find me rowing against the stream," says the "Author" in the Introductory Epistle to _Nigel_. "I care not who knows it--I write for general amusement; and though I will never aim at popularity by what I think unworthy means, I will not, on the other hand, be pertinacious in the defence of my own errors against the voice of the public." Of his last "apoplectic books," he wrote, "I am ashamed, for the first time in my life, of the two novels, but since the pensive public have taken them, there is no more to be said but to eat my pudding and to hold my tongue."[389] Early in his career he seems to have felt that he could make a good deal of money by writing, if he should wish.[390] Towards the end he said, "I know that no literary speculation ever succeeded with me but where my own works were concerned; and that, on the other hand, these have rarely failed."[391] The popularity of his own books was so great that they required a special category. He seemed to be incapable of ascribing their success to extraordinary excellence, and he settled down to the opinion that it was simply their novelty that the public cared for. The enthusiastic welcome given him by the Irish when he visited Dublin caused him to say in one of his letters, "Were it not from the chilling recollection that novelty is easily substituted for merit, I should think, like the booby in Steele's play,[392] that I had been kept back, and that there was something more about me than I had ever been led to suspect."[393] He assumed that he had studied popular taste enough to have some knowledge of its shiftings, so that he might "set every sail towards the breeze."[394] "I may be mistaken," he once wrote, "but I do think the tale of Elspat M'Tavish in my bettermost manner, but J.B. roars for chivalry. He does not quite understand that everything may be overdone in this world, or sufficiently estimate the necessity of novelty. The Highlanders have been off the field now for some time."[395] His comment on _Ivanhoe_ was still more emphatic. "Novelty is what this giddy-paced time demands imperiously, and I certainly studies as much as I could to get out of the old beaten track, leaving those who like to keep the road, which I have rutted pretty well."[396] Believing from the beginning of his career that novelty was the chief merit of his work, he was prepared to live up to his principles. So it was that when he was "beaten" by Byron in metrical romances, he dropped with hardly a regret, so far as we can judge, the kind of writing in which he had attained such remarkable popularity, and turned to another kind. "Since one line has failed, we must just stick to something else," he remarked, calmly.[397] This was when the small sales of _The Lord of the Isles_ as compared with the earlier poems warned Scott and his publisher in a very tangible way that the field had been captured by Byron. At this time _Waverley_ was in the market and _Guy Mannering_ was in process of composition. Though it was to his poetry that he chose to give his name, Scott had little reason to feel forlorn, as the sale of the novels from the very beginning was a pretty effective consolation for any possible hurt to his vanity. He could have owned them as his at any moment, had he chosen to do so. He did not read criticisms of his books, but was satisfied, as one of his friends observed, "to accept the intense avidity with which his novels are read, the enormous and continued sale of his works, as a sufficient commendation of them."[398] In the case of Byron, as always when the public approved the works of one of his brother authors, he considered the popular judgment right. Scott did not altogether stop writing poetry, however, as is sometimes supposed. _The Field of Waterloo_ and _Harold the Dauntless_ were both written after this time; and the mottoes and lyrics in the novels compose a delightful body of verse. The fact seems to be that he lost zest for writing long poems, partly because of the favor with which Byron's poems were received, and his own consequent feeling of inferiority in poetic composition; partly because of his discovery of the greater ease with which he could write prose, and the greater scope it gave him. The more ambitious attempts among the poems which he wrote after 1814 are comparative failures. But the poetry in his nature prevented him from entirely giving over the composition of verse, and he found real delight in the occasional writing of short pieces that required no continued effort. They were usually made to be used in the novels, for after the publication of _Guy Mannering_ novel-writing became specifically Scott's occupation.[399] The price of his success in any direction was that he was unable to keep his field to himself. Having set a fashion, he was more than once annoyed by the crowd who wrote in his style and made him feel the necessity of striking out a new line.[400] It was comparatively easy for the vigorous man who wrote _Waverley_, but in the end, when through his losses he was more than ever obliged to hit the popular taste, to feel that he must find a new style seemed a hard fate. Yet he meant to be beforehand in the race. This is the record in his _Journal_: "Hard pressed as I am by these imitators, who must put the thing out of fashion at last, I consider, like a fox at his last shifts, whether there be a way to dodge them--some new device to throw them off, and have a mile or two of free ground while I have legs and wind left to use it. There is one way to give novelty: to depend for success on the interest of a well-contrived story. But woe's me! that requires thought, consideration--the writing out a regular plan or plot--above all, the adhering to one--which I never can do, for the ideas rise as I write, and bear such a disproportioned extent to that which each occupied at the first concoction, that (cocksnowns!) I shall never be able to take the trouble; and yet to make the world stare, and gain a new march ahead of them all! Well, something we still will do."[401] By an easy extension of his principle, he came to believe that novelty would always succeed for a time. The opinion is expressed often in his reviews, and in his journal and letters is applied to his own work. So it was that when any one of his books seemed partially to fail with the public, his immediate impulse was to look for something new to be done.[402] One of his schemes was a work on popular superstitions, projected when _Quentin Durward_ seemed to be falling flat; but the success of the novel made the immediate execution of the plan unnecessary.[403] It was largely his desire to secure variety that encouraged him to undertake historical writing. He had also a theory about how history should be written, and so he felt that the novelty would consist in something more than the fact that the Author of Waverley had taken a new line. He wished, as Thackeray did later when he proposed to write a history of the Age of Queen Anne, to use in an avowedly serious book the material with which he had stored his imagination; and he believed he could present it with a vivacity that was not characteristic of professional historians. The success of the first series of _Tales of a Grandfather_ served to confirm the opinion he had expressed about them,--"I care not who knows it, I think well of them. Nay, I will hash history with anybody, be he who he will."[404] Scott had a very just sense of the value of his great stores of information. He did say that he would give one half his knowledge if so he might put the other half upon a well-built foundation,[405] but as years went on he learned to use with ease the accumulations of knowledge which in his youth had proved often unwieldy; and more than once he congratulated himself that he beat his imitators by possessing historical and antiquarian lore which they could only acquire by "reading up."[406] Though he testified that in the beginning of his first novel he described his own education, he could hardly apply to himself what is there said of Waverley, that, "While he was thus permitted to read only for the gratification of his amusement, he foresaw not that he was losing forever the opportunity of acquiring habits of firm and assiduous application, of gaining the art of controlling, directing, and concentrating the powers of his mind for earnest investigation."[407] It was otherwise with Scott himself. The result of the wide and desultory reading of his youth, acting upon a remarkably strong memory, was to put him into the position, as he says, of "an ignorant gamester, who kept a good hand until he knew how to play it."[408] So it was that he said of those who followed his lead in writing historical novels, "They may do their fooling with better grace; but I, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, do it more natural."[409] His knowledge of history and antiquities was that part of his intellectual equipment in which he seemed to take most pride. He had the highest opinion of the value of historical study for ripening men's judgment of current affairs,[410] and indeed there were few relations of life in which an acquaintance with history did not seem to him indispensable. But he felt that historical writing had not been adapted "to the demands of the increased circles among which literature does already find its way."[411] Accordingly he resolved to use in the service of history that "knack ... for selecting the striking and interesting points out of dull details," which he felt was his endowment.[412] The original introduction to the _Tales of the Crusaders_ has the following burlesque announcement of his intention, in the words of the Eidolon Chairman: "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 the _Life of Napoleon_, by the _Author of Waverley_." He wished to controvert "the vulgar opinion that the flattest and dullest mode of detailing events must uniformly be that which approaches nearest to the truth."[413] There is no doubt that his histories are readable, yet we feel that Southey was right in his comment on the _Life of Napoleon_,--"It was not possible that Sir Walter could keep up as a historian the character which he had obtained as a novelist; and in the first announcement of this 'Life' he had, not very wisely, promised something as stimulating as his novels. Alas! he forgot that there could be no stimulus of curiosity in it."[414] A recent critic has said, "Scott lost half his power of vitalizing the past when he sat down formally to record it--when he turned from his marvellous recreation of James I. to give a laboured but very ordinary portrait of Napoleon."[415] His partial failure in this instance may have been due to an unfortunate choice of subject. Only a few years before he wrote the book Scott had been thinking of Napoleon as a "tyrannical monster,"[416] a "singular emanation of the Evil Principle,"[417] "the arch-enemy of mankind,"[418]--phrases which, in spite of their vividness, hardly seem to promise a life-like portrayal of the man.[419] In one notable respect, Scott's conception of how history should be written was very modern: he would depict the life of the people, not simply the actions of kings and statesmen. His historical novels, said Carlyle, "taught all men this truth, which looks like a truism, and yet was as good as unknown to writers of history and others, till so taught: that the bygone ages of the world were actually filled by living men, not by protocols, state-papers, controversies, and abstractions of men."[420] One who has the academic notion that a novel, to be great, must be written with no ulterior purpose, is almost startled to observe how definitely Scott considered it the function of his novels to portray ancient manners. Speaking of old romances as a source which we may use for studying about our ancestors, he said: "From the romance, we learn what they were; from the history, what they did: and were we to be deprived of one of these two kinds of information, it might well be made a question, which is most useful or interesting."[421] He wished to make his own romances serve much the same purpose as those written in the midst of the customs which they unconsciously reflected. Of _Waverley_ he said, "It may really boast to be a tolerably faithful portrait of Scottish manners."[422] He interrupts the story of _The Pirate_ to describe the charm of the leaden heart, and offers this excuse: "As this simple and original remedy is peculiar to the isles of Thule, it were unpardonable not to preserve it at length, in a narrative connected with Scottish antiquities."[423] His comment on _Ivanhoe_ was as follows: "I am convinced that however I myself may fail in the ensuing attempt, yet, with more labour in collecting, or more skill in using, the materials within his reach, illustrated as they have been by the labours of Dr. Henry, of the late Mr. Strutt, and above all, of Mr. Sharon Turner, an abler hand would have been successful."[424] Scott's early reading was only the basis for the research that he undertook afterwards.[425] Much of this later study was accomplished when he was engaged upon such books as _Somers' Tracts_, _Dryden's_ and _Swift's Works_, and the other historical publications that make the bibliography of Scott so surprising to the ordinary reader; but some of his investigations were undertaken specifically for the novels. The _Literary Correspondence_ of his publisher, Archibald Constable, contains many evidences of Scott's efforts, assisted often by Constable, to get antiquarian and topographical details correct in the novels. In 1821 Constable suggested that Sir Walter write a story of the time of James I. of England, and was told, "If you can suggest anything about the period I will be happy to hear from you; you are always happy in your hints."[426] Some years earlier the author and the publisher had a correspondence concerning a series of letters on the history of Scotland which the former was planning to write, and which he wished to publish anonymously for the following reason: "I have not the least doubt that I will make a popular book, for I trust it will be both interesting and useful; but I never intended to engage in any proper historical labour, for which I have neither time, talent, nor inclination.... In truth it would take ten years of any man's life to write such a History of Scotland as he should put his name to."[427] He called his _Napoleon_ "the most severe and laborious undertaking which choice or accident ever placed on my shoulders."[428] More than once Scott expresses the opinion that though novels may be useful to arouse curiosity about history, and to impart some knowledge to people who will not do any serious thinking, they may, on the other hand, work harm by satisfying with their superficial information those who would otherwise read history.[429] It seems as if he designed the _Life of Napoleon_ and the _History of Scotland_ for a new reading class that the novels had been creating, and as if he wished to make the step of transition not too long. We can almost fancy them as a series of graded books arranged to lead the people of Great Britain up to a sufficient height of historical information. The _Tales of a Grandfather_ were intended for the beginners who had never been infected by the common heresy concerning the dulness of history, and who were blessed with sufficiently active imagination to make the sugar-coating of fiction superfluous.[430] But great as was the interest that Scott took in the historical aspect of his work, his artistic sense guided his use of materials, and he was well aware of the danger of over-working the mine. The principles on which he chose periods and events to represent are illustrated in many of the introductions. Of _The Fortunes of Nigel_ he said: "The reign of James I., in which George Heriot flourished, gave unbounded scope to invention in the fable, while at the same time it afforded greater variety and discrimination of character than could, with historical consistency, have been introduced if the scene had been laid a century earlier."[431] His first published attempt at fiction-writing was a conclusion to the novel, _Queenhoo-Hall_,[432] of which his opinion was that it would never be popular because antiquarian knowledge was displayed in it too liberally. "The author," he says, "forgot ... that extensive neutral ground, the large proportion, that is, of manners and sentiments which are common to us and to our ancestors, having been handed down unaltered from them to us, or which, arising out of the principles of our common nature, must have existed in either state of society."[433] Scott's practice in regard to the language of his historical novels was based on much the same theory. He intended to admit "no word or turn of phraseology betraying an origin directly modern,"[434] but to avoid obsolete words for the most part; and he never attempted to follow with fidelity the style of the exact age of which he was writing. The translation of Froissart by Lord Berners seemed to him a sufficiently good model to serve for the whole mediaeval period.[435] In his review of _Tales of My Landlord_ he says of the proem to his book: "It is written in the quaint style of that prefixed by Gay to his _Pastorals_, being, as Johnson terms it, 'such imitation as he could obtain of obsolete language, and by consequence, in a style that was never written or spoken in any age or place.'" His _Journal_ contains observations on several historical novels which were of little consequence, as, for example, on one by a Mr. Bell,--"He goes not the way to write it; he is too general, and not sufficiently minute";[436] and on _The Spae-Wife_, by Galt,--"He has made his story difficult to understand, by adopting a region of history little known."[437] On the other hand he remarked, when someone had suggested a number of historical subjects to him,--"People will not consider that a thing may already be so well told in history, that romance ought not in prudence to meddle with it";[438] and at another time he spoke of "the usual habit of antiquarians," to "neglect what is useful for things that are merely curious."[439] Aside from the familiar knowledge of ancient manners which he thought enabled him to give his tales the necessary touch of novelty, and from the "hurried frankness," or spontaneity of style which endowed them with vitality, Scott believed that his talents included a special knack at description. He felt, however, that a sense of the picturesque in action was a different thing from a similar perception in regard to scenery, and that though the first was natural to him, he was obliged to use effort to develop the second.[440] Some study of drawing in his youth helped him to comprehend the demands of perspective, and he endeavored to carry out the principle of describing a scene in the way in which it would naturally strike the spectator, neither overloading with confused detail nor over-emphasizing what should be subordinate.[441] That his plan was consciously adopted may be seen from his discussion of Byron's skill in description and from his comments on the descriptive passages of the mediaeval romances.[442] At the same time he understood the advantages of the realistic method. On one occasion he stated as his creed, "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 descriptions, and exhibit apparently an imagination as boundless as the range of nature in the scenes he recorded; whereas, whoever trusted to imagination would soon 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."[443] Wordsworth disapproved of Scott's method in description. He is quoted as having said: "Nature does not permit an inventory to be made of her charms! He should have left his pencil and note-book at home [and] fixed his eye as he walked with a reverent attention on all that surrounded him."[444] Somewhat like a rejoinder sounds another remark of Scott's, in phrases that Wordsworth would have detested. Scott said cheerfully, "As to the actual study of nature, if you mean the landscape gardening of poetry ... I can get on quite as well from recollection, while sitting in the Parliament house, as if wandering through wood and wold."[445] At another time he said, "If a man will paint from nature, he will be likely to amuse those who are daily looking at it."[446] Though Scott prided himself somewhat on his descriptive powers he realized that he could not do his best work on minute canvases. We have already seen how he contrasted himself with Jane Austen. "The exquisite touch," he said, "which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me."[447] Of Scott's opinion in regard to the ethical effect of novels, I have already spoken.[448] The fact that he refused to use the conventional plea of a desire to improve public morals, and that he understood how little a reader is really influenced by the exalted sentiments of heroes of fiction, gave Carlyle a fit of righteous indignation;[449] but it is futile to say that Scott "had no message to deliver to the world." He might have retorted, in the words which he once used about Homer,--"Doubtless an admirable moral may be often extracted from his poem; because it contains an accurate picture of human nature, which can never be truly presented without conveying a lesson of instruction. But it may shrewdly be suspected that the moral was as little intended by the author as it would have been the object of an historian, whose work is equally pregnant with morality, though a detail of facts be only intended."[450] It was a comfort to Scott at the end of his life to reflect that the tendency of all he had written was morally good,[451] and we can well believe that he was pleased by the enthusiastic tribute of his young critic, J.L. Adolphus, who said of his books: "There is not an unhandsome action or degrading sentiment recorded of any person who is recommended to the full esteem of the reader."[452] That Scott considered poetical power very important for a writer of novels, he made evident in his _Lives of the Novelists_. Mr. Herford has said, but surely without good reason, that Scott wholly lacked the sense of mystery, and that in this respect Mrs. Radcliffe was more modern than he.[453] Yet it was Scott who censured Mrs. Radcliffe for explaining her mysteries. He had a vein of superstition in his nature, too, about which he might have said, using the words given to a character in one of his stories,--"It soothes my imagination, without influencing my reason or conduct."[454] A liking for the wonderful and terrible, which he felt from his earliest childhood, was one manifestation of a poetical temperament which is so apparent that there is no need of reciting the evidence. The poetical qualities in the Waverley novels gave Adolphus one of his favorite arguments in the attempt to prove that Scott was the author. Yet Scott seemed to feel that his position as a writer of popular fiction, however much the novel is capable of being the vehicle of imagination and poetical power, was not a really high one. James Ballantyne persuaded him to omit from one of his introductions a passage that seemed to belittle the occupation of his life,[455] but in the introduction to _The Abbot_ he wrote: "Though it were worse than affectation to deny that my vanity was satisfied at my success in the department in which chance had in some measure enlisted me, I was nevertheless far from thinking that the novelist or romance-writer stands high in the ranks of literature." The ideal which he set for himself is indicated in the following passage of his article on _Tales of My Landlord_: "If ... the features of an age gone by can be recalled in a spirit of delineation at once faithful and striking ... the composition is in every point of view dignified and improved; and the author, leaving the light and frivolous associates with whom a careless observer would be disposed to ally him, takes his seat on the bench of the historians of his time and country." He once expressed the opinion that the historical romance approaches, in some measure, when it is nobly executed, to the epic in poetry.[456] When a medal of Scott, engraved from the bust by Chantrey, was struck off, he suggested the motto which was used: "Bardorum citharas patrio qui reddidit Istro," and said, "because I am far more vain of having been able to fix some share of public attention upon the ancient poetry and manners of my country, than of any original efforts which I have been able to make in literature."[457] The following commendation, which he wrote for a book of portraits accompanied by essays, might be made to apply to his novels: "It is impossible for me to conceive a work which ought to be more interesting to the present age than that which exhibits before our eyes our 'fathers as they lived'"[458] He felt strongly the value and importance of past manners, faiths and ideals for the present, and from this point of view took satisfaction in the social and ethical teaching of his novels. On the whole, Scott's opinions about his own work fitted well with his general literary principles, except that his modesty inclined him to discount his own performance while he overestimated that of others. With this qualification we may remember that he always spoke sensibly about his work, without affectation, and with abundant geniality. We are reminded of the comment on Molière quoted by Scott from a French writer,--"He had the good fortune to escape the most dangerous fault of an author writing upon his own compositions, and to exhibit wit, where some people would only have shown vanity and self-conceit."[459] CHAPTER VI SCOTT'S POSITION AS CRITIC Comparison of Scott with Jeffrey and with the Romantic critics--His criticism largely appreciative--Romantic in special cases and Augustan in attitude--Comparison with Coleridge--Scott's respect for the verdict of the public--His opinion that elucidation is the function of criticism--Use of historical illustration--Hesitation about analysing poetry--Political criticism--Verdict of his contemporaries on his criticism--Influence as a critic--Literary prophecies--Character of his critical work as a whole--His attitude towards it--Lack of system--Broad fields he covered--His greatness a reason for the importance of his criticism. Important as Scott's poetry was in the English Romantic revival, as a critic he can hardly be counted among the Romanticists. His attitude, nevertheless, differed radically from that of the school represented by Jeffrey and Gifford. We have already seen that he disliked their manner of reviewing, and that he was conscious of complete disagreement with Jeffrey in regard to poetic ideals. Of Jeffrey Mr. Gates has said: "[He] rarely _appreciates_ a piece of literature.... He is always for or against his author; he is always making points."[460] That Scott was influenced in his early critical work by the tone of the _Edinburgh Review_ is undeniable, but temperamentally he was inclined to give any writer a fair chance to stir his emotions; and he did not adopt the magisterial mood that dictated the famous remark, "This will never do." Scott's style lacked the adroitness and pungency which helped Jeffrey successfully to take the attitude of the censor, and which made his satire triumphant among his contemporaries. Scott declined, moreover, to cultivate skill in a method which he considered unfair. Compared with Jeffrey's his criticism wanted incisiveness, but it wears better. The period was transitional, and Jeffrey did not go so far as Scott in breaking away from the dictation of his predecessors. But his attitude was on the whole more modern than the reader would infer from the following sentence in one of his earliest reviews: "Poetry has this much at least in common with religion, that its standards were fixed long ago by certain inspired writers, whose authority it is no longer lawful to call in question."[461] He considered himself rather an interpreter of public opinion than a judge defining ancient legislation, but he used the opinion of himself and like-minded men as an unimpeachable test of what the greater public ought to believe in regard to literature. We may remember that the enthusiasm over the Elizabethan dramatists which seems a special property of Lamb and Hazlitt, and which Scott shared, was characteristic also of Jeffrey himself. It was Jeffrey's dogmatism and his repugnance to certain fundamental ideas which were to become dominant in the poetry of the nineteenth century that lead us to consider him one of the last representatives of the eighteenth century critical tradition. Scott praised the Augustan writers as warmly as Jeffrey did, but he was more hospitable to the newer literary impulse. "Perhaps the most damaging accusation that can be made against Jeffrey as a critic," says Mr. Gates, "is inability to read and interpret the age in which he lived."[462] Scott's criticism was largely appreciative, but appreciative on a somewhat different plane from that of the contemporary critics whom we are accustomed to place in a more modern school: Hazlitt, Hunt, Lamb, and Coleridge. His judgments were less delicate and subtle than the judgments of these men were apt to be, and more "reasonable" in the eighteenth-century sense; they were marked, however, by a regard for the imagination that would have seemed most unreasonable to many men of the eighteenth century. Scott had not a fixed theory of literature which could dominate his mind when he approached any work. He was open-minded, and in spite of his extreme fondness for the poetry of Dr. Johnson he was apt to be on the Romantic side in any specific critical utterance. We have seen also that he resembled the Romanticists in his power to disengage his verdicts on literature from ethical considerations. On the other hand he seems always to have deferred to the standard authorities of the classical criticism of his time when his own knowledge was not sufficient to guide him. In discussing Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse he wrote: "It must be remembered that the rules of criticism, now so well known as to be even trite and hackneyed, were then almost new to the literary world."[463] Perhaps the main reason why one would not class Scott's critical work with that of the Romanticists is that he had no desire to proclaim a new era in creative literature or in criticism. Like the Romanticists he was ready to substitute "for the absolute method of judging by reference to an external standard of 'taste,' a method at once imaginative and historical";[464] yet he talked less about imagination than about good sense. The comparison with Boileau suggests itself, for Scott admired that critic in the conventional fashion, calling him "a supereminent authority,"[465] and Boileau also had said much about "reason and good sense." But Scott had an appreciation of the _furor poeticus_ that made "good sense" quite a different thing to him from what it was to Boileau. He did not say, moreover, that the poet should be supremely characterized by good sense, but that the critic, recognizing the facts about human emotion, should make use of that quality. The subjective process by which experience is transmuted into literature engaged Scott's attention very little: in this respect also he stands apart from the newer school of critics. The metaphysical description of imagination or fancy interested him less than the piece of literature in which these qualities were exhibited. His own mental activities were more easily set in motion than analysed, and the introspective or philosophical attitude of mind was unnatural to him. Because of his adoption of the historical method of studying literature, and the similarity of many of his judgments to those which were in general characteristic of the Romantic school, we may say that Scott's criticism looks forward; but it shows the influence of the earlier period in its acceptance of traditional judgments based on external standards which disregarded the nature of the creative process. From Coleridge Scott is separated in the most definite way. Coleridge began at the foundation, building up a set of principles such as the new impulse in literature seemed to demand. Scott preferred the concrete, and was stimulated by the particular book to express opinions that would never have come to his mind as the result of pursuing a train of unembodied ideas. Coleridge's judgments, moreover, would be unaffected by public estimation, for he sought to found them on the spiritual and philosophic consciousness that exists apart from the crowd.[466] Scott, on the other hand, was ready to use popular judgment as an important test of his opinions. Coleridge himself pointed out another interesting contrast. He wrote: "Dear Sir Walter Scott and myself were exact, but harmonious opposites in this;--that every old ruin, hill, river, or tree, called up in his mind a host of historical or biographical associations, ... whereas, for myself, notwithstanding Dr. Johnson, I believe I should walk over the plain of Marathon without taking more interest in it than in any other plain of similar features."[467] We might perhaps say that Coleridge's affection was given to ideas, Scott's, to objects; hence Coleridge was a critic of literary principles and theories, Scott a critic of individual books and writers. It follows that Scott was on the whole an impressionistic critic. A study of his personality is essential to a consideration of his critical work, for he was not so much a systematic student of literature, guided by fixed principles, as a man of a certain temperament who read particular things and made particular remarks about them as he felt inclined. The inconsistencies and contradictions which would naturally result from such a procedure are occasionally noticeable, but they are fewer than would occur in the work of a less well-balanced man than himself. His ideas about criticism were influenced by his feeling that the judgment of the public would after all take its own course, and that it was in the long run the best criterion. He used his opinion that an author, even in his own lifetime, commonly receives fair treatment from the public, as an argument against establishing in England any literary body having the power of pensioning literary men.[468] On this subject he said, "There is ... really no occasion for encouraging by a society the competition of authors. The land is before them, and if they really have merit they seldom fail to conquer their share of public applause and private profit.... I cannot, in my knowledge of letters, recollect more than two men whose merit is undeniable while, I am afraid, their circumstances are narrow. I mean Coleridge and Maturin." Scott's whole attitude toward criticism shows that he felt its supreme function to be elucidation. It should also, he believed, warn the world against books that were foolish, or pernicious, intellectually or morally; but unless there were good reason for issuing such warnings the bad books should be ignored and the good treated sympathetically, not without such discrimination as should distinguish between the better and the worse in them, but with emphasis on the better. His literary creed, though not formulated into a system, was conscious and fairly definite; but it consisted of general principles which never resolved themselves into intricate subtleties requiring great space for their development. Scott could not think in that way, and he felt convinced that such thinking was useless and worse than useless. A magazine-writer of his own period who said of him,--"The author of _Waverley_, we apprehend, has neither the patience nor the disposition requisite for writing philosophically upon any subject,"[469] was mistaken, for much of Scott's criticism, without making any pretensions, is really philosophical. But any fine-drawn analysis seemed to him to serve the vanity of the critic rather than the need of the public; and he despised that arrogance in the critic which leads him to assume to direct literary taste. Historical illustration was that kind of editorial work which he found most congenial, and which harmonized best with his critical principles; for when he could bring definite facts to the service of elucidation he felt that he was doing something worth while. Among all the introductions and annotations that we have from his hand, including those of the _Dryden_ and the _Swift_, this kind of explanation greatly predominates over the more strictly literary comment; in his reviews, also, it is evident that he seized every opportunity for turning from literary to historical discussion. He was in the habit of "embroidering the subject, whatever it might be, with lively anecdotic illustration,"[470] as one of his biographers says. We are not to conclude that in writing on specifically literary subjects he felt ill at ease. He felt, on the contrary, that the objection lay in the too great ease with which the critic might become dictatorial. He was fond enough of details when they were concrete and vital. The facts of literary history were in this category to him, as distinguished from the notions of literary theory; and we find that his critical principles are apt to appear incidentally among remarks on what seemed to him the more tangible and important facts of literary and social history. The books he chose to review were chiefly those which gave him a chance to use his historical information and imagination. His ideas were concrete, as those of a great novelist must inevitably be. Indeed the dividing line between creative work and criticism seems often to be obliterated in Scott's literary discussions, since he was inclined to amplify and illustrate instead of dissecting the book under consideration. As a critic he was distinguished by the qualities which appear in his novels, and which may be described in Hazlitt's words, as "the most amazing retentiveness of memory, and vividness of conception of what would happen, be seen, and felt by everybody in given circumstances."[471] Scott felt that there was especial danger of futile theorizing in the criticism of poetry. In writing about _Alexander's Feast_ he discussed for a moment the possibility of detecting points at which the author had paused in his work, but almost immediately he stopped himself with the characteristic remark--"There may be something fanciful ... in this reasoning, which I therefore abandon to the reader's mercy; only begging him to observe, that we have no mode of estimating the exertions of a quality so capricious as a poetic imagination."[472] Early in his career he gave this rather over-amiable explanation of the fact that he had never undertaken to review poetry: "I am sensible there is a greater difference of tastes in that department than in any other, and that there is much excellent poetry which I am not nowadays able to read without falling asleep, and which would nevertheless have given me great pleasure at an earlier period of my life. Now I think there is something hard in blaming the poor cook for the fault of our own palate or deficiency of appetite."[473] We have seen that he did review poetry afterwards, but that he was inclined to do it with the least possible emphasis on the specifically aesthetic elements. On the subject of novel-writing he developed a somewhat fuller critical theory, but here also his discussions concerned themselves rather with the kind of ideas set forth than with the manner of presentation. It does indeed seem as if Scott's feelings were more easily aroused to the point of formulating "laws" in the field of political criticism than in that which appears to us his more legitimate sphere. He has his fling, to be sure, at Madame de Staël, because she "lived and died in the belief that revolutions were to be effected, and countries governed, by a proper succession of clever pamphlets."[474] But in proposing the establishment of the _Quarterly Review_ he made no secret of the fact that his motives were political. The literary aspect of the periodical was thought of as a subordinate, though a necessary and not unimportant phase of the undertaking. The _Letters of Malachi Malagrowther_ contain some very definite maxims on the subject of political economy, and just as decided are the remarks made in the last of _Paul's Letters_, as well as in the _Life of Napoleon_ and elsewhere, as to how Louis XVIII. ought to set about the task of calming his distracted kingdom of France. But however emphatic Scott may be in the comments on government which appear throughout his writings, he was as strongly averse in this matter as in literary affairs to any separation of philosophy from fact: his maxims are always derived from experience. The following statement of opinion is typical: "In legislating for an ancient people, the question is not, what is the best possible system of law, but what is the best they can bear. Their habitudes and prejudices must always be respected; and, whenever it is practicable, those prejudices, instead of being destroyed, ought to be taken as the basis of the new regulations."[475] It was Scott's political creed that roused the ire of such men as Hazlitt and Hunt, though they may also have been exasperated at the unprecedented success of poetry which seemed so facile and so superficial to them as Scott's. Leigh Hunt calls him "a poet of a purely conventional order," "a bitter and not very large-minded politician," "a critic more agreeable than subtle."[476] But Scott's politics may be looked at in another way. "In his patriotism," says Mr. Courthope, "his passionate love of the past, and his reverence for established authority, literary or political, Scott is the best representative among English men of letters of Conservatism in its most generous form."[477] Though it seems to have been a common opinion among the literary men of his own time that Scott's criticism was superficial, his knowledge of mediaeval literature was, as we have seen, recognized and respected. Favorable comments by his contemporaries on other parts of his critical work are not difficult to find. For example, Gifford wrote to Murray in regard to the article on _Lady Suffolk's Correspondence_: "Scott's paper is a clever, sensible thing--the work of a man who knows what he is about."[478] Isaac D'Israeli made the following observation on another of Scott's papers: "The article on Pepys, after so many have been written, is the only one which, in the most charming manner possible, shows the real value of these works, which I can assure you many good scholars have no idea of."[479] A more recent verdict may be set beside those just quoted, and it is in perfect agreement with them. "His critical faculty," says Professor Saintsbury, "if not extraordinarily subtle, was always as sound and shrewd as it was good-natured."[480] Scott's influence as a critic was not very great, but his creative work exerted a strong influence on criticism as well as on the whole intellectual life of his age. His own novels demanded of the critic that kind of appreciation of the large qualities and negligence of the small which he had insisted on considering the function of criticism; and they became a fact in literature which determined to some degree the attitude taken toward ephemeral ideas. Newman notes the popularity of Scott's novels as one of the influences which prepared the ground for the Tractarian movement, for Scott enriched the visions of men by his pictures of the past, gave them noble ideas, and created a desire for a greater richness of spiritual life.[481] Much of his criticism also was inspired by the wish to construct an adequate picture of the past; so far it worked in the same direction with the novels. Its most important offices aside from this were perhaps to present large and kindly views of literature and literary characters, especially through biographical essays; and to ameliorate somewhat the prevailing asperity of periodical criticism. A man of Scott's temperament was little likely to set himself up for a prophet, and probably no literary prophecies of his were in the least influential. Though he sometimes boasted that he understood the varying currents of popular taste, his experience in the publishing business taught him the fallibility of his impressions when the work of writers other than himself was concerned. He once wrote,--"The friends who know me best, and to whose judgment I am myself in the constant habit of trusting, reckon me a very capricious and uncertain judge of poetry; and I have had repeated occasion to observe that I have often failed in anticipating the reception of poetry from the public."[482] But it is beyond the strength of flesh and blood to resist saying things about the future sometimes, and Scott occasionally yielded to the temptation, helped, no doubt, by his amiability. Southey's _Madoc_, however, has not yet assumed that place at the feet of Milton which, as we have seen, he ventured to predict for it. Yet, if we may trust the memory of one of his friends, Scott foresaw the literary success of two of his greatest contemporaries. R.P. Gillies said in his _Recollections_: "I remember well how correct Scott's impressions were of such beginners in the literary world as had not then acquired any fixed character. Of Lord Byron he had from the first a favourable impression.... Of Wordsworth he always spoke favourably, insisting that he was a true poet, but predicting that it would be long ere his works obtained the praise which they merited from the public."[483] Scott explicitly prided himself on two of his prophecies: that Washington Irving would make a name for himself, and that Sir Arthur Wellesley would become known as an extraordinary man. Though Scott's critical work is comparatively little known, and though it presents no solidly organized front by which the public may be impressed, the opinions of so notable a writer have always had a certain weight. Mr. Churton Collins thinks Scott's judgment on Dunbar has led modern editors to indulge in very exaggerated statements concerning the merit of that poet.[484] A heavier charge has been laid at Scott's door on the score of his edition of the _Memoirs of Captain Carleton_. He concluded on very insufficient evidence, says Colonel Parnell, that these memoirs were genuinely historical, published them as such, and by the weight of his opinion falsified "the whole stream of nineteenth-century history bearing on the reign of Queen Anne."[485] Stanhope, Macaulay, and other historians were ready to accept Scott's judgment without further investigation, it seems; and if the accusation be true we may conclude that his influence as a critic has reached farther than might at first sight appear. Yet we may be content to follow his lead in general, except in those bits of enthusiasm over his friends which bear witness to a generously optimistic nature rather than to a rigid critical attitude such as we should hardly demand in any case from a man of letters commenting on his contemporaries and friends. George Ticknor was greatly impressed by the "right-mindedness" of the young Sophia Scott,[486] and we may fairly adopt the word to describe the father whom she so much resembled. There was in him, as Carlyle said, "such a sunny current of true humour and humanity, a free joyful sympathy with so many things; what of fire he had all lying so beautifully latent, as radical latent heat, as fruitful internal warmth of life;--a most robust, healthy man!"[487] Writers upon Scott have made much, perhaps too much, of his feeling that his position as a landed gentleman was more enviable than his prominence as a writer. The point would be of greater consequence if it performed so important a function in explaining his work as has commonly been assigned to it. We are told that he wrote much and hastily because he wanted money to establish and support an estate; but the truth is that if he wrote at all he had to write in this way. He justly believed that he could do his best work so. Yet it was a natural result of his facility that he should look upon the literature he produced as of comparatively little moment. Some of his remarks about his critical work, however, show that he really regarded creative writing as the business of his life, and that in contrast with it he considered his criticism a relief from more arduous labor. After the publication of _Marmion_ he wrote: "I have done with poetry for some time--it is a scourging crop, and ought not to be hastily repeated. Editing, therefore, may be considered as a green crop of turnips or peas, extremely useful for those whose circumstances do not admit of giving their farm a summer fallow."[488] After years of novel-writing he said of writing a review, "No one that has not laboured as I have done on imaginary topics can judge of the comfort afforded by walking on all-fours, and being grave and dull."[489] From what Scott said about Dryden as a critic we may conclude that the unsystematic character of his own scholarly work may have been a matter of principle as well as inclination. "Dryden," he wrote, "forebore, from prudence, indolence, or a regard for the freedom of Parnassus, to erect himself into a legislator."[490] The words remind us of comments made upon Scott's own work, as for example by Professor Masson, who spoke of "the shrewdness and sagacity of some of his critical prefaces to his novels, where he discusses principles of literature without seeming to call them such."[491] Scott was quick to notice "cant and slang"[492] in the professional language of men in all arts; and he valued most highly the remarks of those whose intelligence had not been overlaid by a conventional pedantry. Knowing that criticism was not the main business of his life, we are inclined to be surprised at the broad fields which he seemed to have no hesitation in entering upon. His remarkable memory doubtless had something to do with this, but he lived in a period when generalization was more possible and more permissible than it is in this era of special monographs. The large tendencies and characteristics that he traced in his essay on Romance, for instance, are undoubtedly to be qualified at numberless points, but writing when he did, Scott was comparatively untroubled by these limitations. Moreover, he had the gift of seeing things broadly, so that in essentials his survey remains true. But the amount of his work is almost as astonishing as its scope and variety. He could accomplish so much only by disregarding details of form; and that he did so we know from our study of his principles of composition, confirmed by the evidence of the passages from him that have here been quoted. It is clear, also, that he was not limited by that "horror of the obvious," which, as Mr. Saintsbury says, "bad taste at all times has taken for a virtue."[493] Beyond this we have to fall back for explanation on the unusual qualities of his mind. An observing friend said of him that, "With a degree of patience and quietude which are seldom combined with much energy, he could get through an incredible extent of literary labour."[494] Every quality which made Scott a great man contributes to the interest and importance of his criticism. Such a body of criticism, formulated by a large creative genius, would be of special consequence if it served merely as the basis for a study of his other work, a commentary on the principles which underlay his whole literary achievement. But it would be strange if a man of Scott's intellectual personality could write criticism which was not important in itself, and we can only account for the general neglect of this part of his work by considering how large a place his poems and novels give him in the history of our literature. If he deserves a still larger place, we may remember with satisfaction that as a man he was great enough to support honorably any distinction won by his mind. APPENDIX I. BIBLIOGRAPHY The bibliography of Scott's writings is given in three parts, as follows: 1. Books which Scott wrote or edited, or to which he was an important contributor. The list is chronological. 2. Contributions to periodicals. 3. Books which contain letters written by Scott. These titles are arranged approximately in the order of their importance from the point of view of a study of Scott. 1. _Books which Scott wrote or edited, or to which he was an important contributor_. (In the following list the first editions of the poems and novels are noted without bibliographical details. In the case of other works the main facts in regard to publication are given; and an attempt is made to indicate the nature of the books named, unless they have been discussed in the text.) 1796 The Chase and William and Helen. (Translated from Bürger.) 1799 Goetz of Berlichingen. (Translated from Goethe.) Apology for Tales of Terror. Twelve copies were privately printed, to exhibit the work of the Ballantyne press at Kelso. The title was occasioned by the delay in the publication of Matthew Lewis's Tales of Terror, and the little book contains poems which Scott had contributed to that work. (The contents are named in the Catalogue of the Centenary Exhibition.) 1800 The Eve of St. John, a Border ballad. 1802-3 Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border; consisting of historical and romantic ballads, collected in the southern counties of Scotland; with a few of modern date founded upon local tradition. 3 vols. Vols. I and 2, Kelso, 1802; vol. 3, Edinburgh, 1803. Second edition, 1803. The book was republished frequently before 1830, when it was included in the collected edition of Scott's poems. It has also been reprinted independently since then several times. The latest and most complete edition is that published in 1902, edited by T.F. Henderson. Other books in which part of Scott's ballad material was used in such a way as to give his name a place on the title-page are named below: Kinmont Willie: a Border ballad, with an historical introduction, by Sir Walter Scott. (Carlisle Tracts No. 6) Carlisle, 1841. A Ballad Book by C.K. Sharpe. MDCCCXXIII. Reprinted with notes and ballads from the unpublished manuscripts of C.K. Sharpe and Sir Walter Scott ... edited by ... D. Laing. Edinburgh, 1880. 1804 Sir Tristrem: a metrical romance of the thirteenth century, by Thomas of Ercildoune, called the Rhymer. Edited from the Auchinleck manuscript by Walter Scott. Edinburgh. Only 12 copies of Sir Tristrem were printed in the form in which Scott had intended to publish it, without the expurgation which his friends insisted upon. (_Letters to R. Polwhele_, etc., p. 18; _Lockhart_, I. 361). The following book contains a part of the same material: A Penni worth of Witte, Florice and Blancheflour, and other pieces of ancient English poetry, selected from the Auchinleck manuscript. (With an account of the Auchinleck manuscript by Sir Walter Scott) Edinburgh, 1857. Printed for the Abbotsford Club. 1805 The Lay of the Last Minstrel. 1806 Original Memoirs written during the great civil war; being the life of Sir H. Slingsby, and memoirs of Capt. Hodgson. With notes, etc. Edinburgh. [Edited by Scott anonymously.] Ballads and Lyrical Pieces. [Poems which had already appeared in various collections.] 1808 Marmion. Memoirs of Captain Carleton, ... including anecdotes of the war in Spain under the Earl of Peterborough, ... written by himself. Edinburgh. (8vo, but 25 copies were printed on large paper.) [Edited by Scott anonymously.] Scott was probably mistaken in considering this to be a genuine autobiography. (See Col. Parnell's argument in _The English Historical Review_, vi:97.) It has been attributed to Defoe, and Col. Parnell attributes it to Swift, but the question of its authorship is still unsolved. The book was first published in 1728, but Scott used the edition of 1743, which he was so inaccurate as to take for the original edition; and as at that date Defoe had long been dead and Swift had lost his mind, the possibility of attributing it to either of them naturally would not occur to him. Scott wrote scarcely any notes, but his short introduction contains some interesting general reflections which are quoted by Lockhart. The Works of John Dryden, now first collected; illustrated with notes, historical, critical and explanatory, and a life of the author, by Walter Scott, Esq. 18 vols. London. Second edition, 18 vols., Edinburgh, 1821. Another edition, revised and corrected by George Saintsbury, Edinburgh, 1882-1893. The Life of John Dryden (4to, only 50 copies printed). Memoirs of John Dryden, Paris, 1826. Memoirs of Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth, written by himself, and Fragmenta Regalia, being a history of Queen Elizabeth's favourites, by Sir Robert Naunton. With explanatory annotations. Edinburgh. [Edited by Scott anonymously.] Scott contributed no introductions, but his notes are copious, especially with regard to the history of the Border. This is one of the books of which Scott is reported to have said to his publisher, Mr. Constable, "Did I not do Hodgson, Carey, Carleton, etc., to serve you; and did I ever ask or receive any remuneration?" (_Ballantyne's Refutation_, etc., p. 76.) Queenhoo-Hall, a romance; and Ancient Times, a drama. By the late Joseph Strutt, author of Rural Sports and Pastimes of the People of England. [Edited by Scott, who wrote a conclusion for Queenhoo-Hall. This conclusion is given in an appendix to the introduction of Waverley.] Edinburgh. 1809 The State Papers and Letters of Sir Ralph Sadler ... edited by Arthur Clifford ... to which is added a memoir of the life of Sir Ralph Sadler, with historical notes, by Walter Scott, Esq. 2 vols. Edinburgh. (Also the same work in 3 vols., with same date.) The biography is included in all the editions of Scott's Prose Works. The Life of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury, written by himself. With a prefatory memoir. Edinburgh; printed by James Ballantyne & Co. for John Ballantyne & Co. and John Murray. (A reprint of Walpole's edition, with the prefatory memoir added.) It is a question whether Scott edited this book, but it has been ascribed to him, and is given under his name without hesitation in the British Museum catalogue. The prefatory memoir is short and largely made up of quotations, but it sounds as if Scott might have written it. The book is one to which he often refers. Mr. Sidney Lee, in his edition of the Autobiography, says merely, "Walpole's edition was reprinted in 1770, 1809, and in 1826." Reprinted in the Universal Library: Biography, vol. I, London, 1853. 1809-15 A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts on the most interesting and entertaining subjects: but chiefly such as relate to the history and constitution of these kingdoms. Selected from an infinite number in print and manuscript, in the Royal, Cotton, Sion, and other public, as well as private, libraries; particularly that of the late Lord Somers. The second edition, revised, augmented, and arranged by Walter Scott, Esq. 13 vols. London. There are some additions. Scott says in the Advertisement: "The Memoirs of the Wars in the Low Countries by the gallant Williams, and the very singular account of Ireland by Derrick, are the most curious of those now published for the first time.... The introductory remarks and notes have been added by the present Editor, at the expense of some time and labour. It is needless to observe, that both have been expended upon a humble and unambitious, though not, it is hoped, an useless task. The object of the introductions was to present such a short and summary view of the circumstances under which the Historical and Controversial Tracts were respectively written, as to prevent the necessity of referring to other works. Such therefore, as refer to events of universal notoriety are but slightly and generally mentioned; such as concern less remarkable points of history are more fully explained. The Notes are in general illustrative of obscure passages, or brief notices of authorities, whether corroborative or contradictory of the text." The following book contains a part of the same material: The Image of Irelande with a Discoverie of Woodkarne. By John Derricke, 1581. With Notes by Sir Walter Scott. Edited by John Small. Edinburgh, 1883. (See _Somers' Tracts_, Vol. I.) 1810 English Minstrelsy. Being a selection of fugitive poetry from the best English authors, with some original pieces hitherto unpublished. 2 vols. Edinburgh. The Centenary Catalogue says that Scott and his friend William Erskine edited this book together. In the Advertisement the publishers (John Ballantyne & Co.) say: "To one eminent individual, whose name they do not venture to particularize, they are indebted for most valuable assistance in selection, arrangement, and contribution; and to that individual they take this opportunity to present the humble tribute of their thanks, for a series of kindnesses, of which that now acknowledged is among the least." There is no critical apparatus. The book contains original poems by Scott, Southey, Rogers, Joanna Baillie, and others not so well known. The Lady of the Lake. Memoirs of the Duke of Sully. Translated from the French [by Charlotte Lennox] ... a new edition ... corrected, with additional notes, some letters of Henry the Great, and a brief historical introduction embellished with portraits. 5 vols. London. Another edition, 4 vols. London 1858, has these words on the title-page: "A new edition, revised and corrected; with additional notes, and an historical introduction, attributed to Sir Walter Scott." I have found no external evidence that Scott was the editor. The introduction sounds as if Scott wrote it, but that so much work could have been done by him without occasioning any record seems unlikely. There is a historical introduction of 35 pp., and copious notes. The book is one with which Scott was familiar. See Memoirs of Robert Carey, pp. 34 and 41. The Poetical Works of Anna Seward, with extracts from her literary correspondence. Edited by Walter Scott, Esq. 3 vols. Edinburgh. The biographical preface is given in the Miscellaneous Prose Works. The notes are by Miss Seward. Ancient British Drama, in three volumes. London. (Printed for William Miller, by James Ballantyne & Co., Edinburgh.) I find no evidence that Scott was the editor of this book, but it is sometimes ascribed to him in library catalogues. It contains merely a two-page introduction and brief notes, and a collection of plays. (See above, p. 52, note.) 1811 The Modern British Drama, in five volumes. London. (Printed for William Miller, by James Ballantyne & Co., Edinburgh.) Vols. I and II, Tragedies, with introduction in vol. I. Vols. III and IV, Comedies, with introduction in vol. III. Vol. V, Operas and Farces, with introduction. These volumes apparently belong to the same collection as the Ancient British Drama, noted above, and the external evidence for Scott's authorship is the same. But the introductions are fuller, and they sound very much like Scott. (See above, p. 52, note.) The Vision of Don Roderick. Memoirs of the Court of Charles II, by Count Grammont. With numerous additions and illustrations. London. [Edited by Scott.] Reprinted in 1846, 1853, 1864. This last edition, in the Bohn Library, has about 100 pp. of historical notes. Secret History of the Court of James the First. With notes and introductory remarks. 2 vols. Edinburgh. [Edited by Scott anonymously.] The book contains 1. Osborne's Traditional Memoirs; 2. Sir Anthony Welldon's Court and Character of King James; 3. Aulicus Coquinariae; 4. Sir Edward Peyton's Divine Catastrophe of the House of Stuarts. 1813 Rokeby. Memoirs of the Reign of King Charles I., by Sir Philip Warwick. Edinburgh. [Edited by Scott anonymously.] The Bridal of Triermain. 1814 Illustrations of Northern Antiquities from the earlier Teutonic and Scandinavian romances, by Robert Jamieson ... with an abstract of the Eyrbyggja-Saga; being the early annals of that district of Iceland lying around the promontory called Sudefells, by Walter Scott. Edinburgh. See also Northern Antiquities by P.H. Mallet, London, 1847; and the edition in Bohn's Library, 1890. Lockhart says: "Any one who examines the share of the work which goes under Weber's name will see that Scott had a considerable hand in that also. The rhymed versions from the _Nibelungen Lied_ came, I can have no doubt, from his pen." (_Lockhart_, II, 320.) The Works of Jonathan Swift, containing additional letters, tracts, and poems, not hitherto published; with notes and a life of the author, by Walter Scott. 19 vols. Edinburgh. Second edition, revised, Edinburgh, 1824. Memoirs of Jonathan Swift, Paris, 1826. The Letting of Humour's Blood in the Head Vaine, etc. By Samuel Rowlands. Edinburgh. [Edited by Scott. His name is not given, but the Advertisement is dated at Abbotsford.] This is an exact reproduction of the 1611 edition, except for the addition of a few pages containing the Advertisement and the notes. Another edition was printed in 1815. Waverley. 1814-17 The Border Antiquities of England and Scotland; comprising specimens of architecture and sculpture, and other vestiges of former ages, accompanied by descriptions. Together with illustrations of remarkable incidents in Border history and tradition, and original poetry. By Walter Scott, Esq. 2 vols. 4to. London. Another edition, in 2 vols. folio, London, 1889. Lockhart says the introduction to this work was written in 1817, but this is a mistake, for it is in the first volume, which was published in 1814. 1815 The Lord of the Isles. Guy Mannering. The Field of Waterloo. The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies, by Robert Kirk. The attribution of this to Scott rests on a letter by George Ticknor, in Allibone's Dictionary (vol. II, p. 1967) in which he says: "Kirk's Secret Commonwealth, a curious tract, of about a hundred quarto pages, on Fairy Superstitions and second sight, originally published in 1691, and of which, in 1815, Mr. Scott had caused a hundred copies to be privately printed by the Ballantynes, with additions, a circumstance, I think, not noted by Lockhart." Mr. Lang thinks the book was never printed until 1815. (See his edition, London, 1893). This 1815 edition of 100 copies was made, he says, from a manuscript copy preserved in the Advocates' Library, for Longman & Co. He quotes one of Scott's references to the book, but does not intimate that Scott was the editor. Memorie of the Somervilles; being a history of the baronial house of Somerville, by James, eleventh Lord Somerville. 2 vols. Edinburgh. [Edited by Scott anonymously.] The additions by the editor consist of a short preface and abundant notes. 1816 Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk. Edinburgh. These letters were anonymous, but Scott was always recognized as the author of them. They are contained in the Miscellaneous Prose Works. The Antiquary. Tales of my Landlord. First series: The Black Dwarf. Old Mortality. 1817 Harold the Dauntless. Rob Roy. 1818 Tales of my Landlord. Second series: The Heart of Midlothian. Burt's Letters from the North of Scotland ... the fifth edition, with a large appendix, containing various important historical documents, hitherto unpublished; with an introduction and notes, by the editor, R. Jamieson ... and the history of Donald the Hammerer, from an authentic account of the family of Invernahyle (by Scott: see a note accompanying the text). 2 vols. London. Scott's contribution is short. See also Appendix IV, which is taken "from a manuscript in the possession of the Gartmore Family, communicated by Walter Scott Esq." Scott's name had become so valuable that the publishers tried to put it on the title-page of this book, to his great indignation. (See _Constable_, III, III, 119-20.) 1818-24 The Encyclopædia Britannica: Supplement. [For this work Scott wrote the following essays:] Chivalry, published in 1818; The Drama, published in 1819; Romance, published in 1824. (These are given in the Miscellaneous Prose Works.) 1819 Tales of my Landlord. Third series: The Bride of Lammermoor. A Legend of Montrose. The Visionary, by Somnambulus. (A political satire in three letters, republished from the Edinburgh Weekly Journal.) Edinburgh. Description of the Regalia of Scotland. Edinburgh. This has been reprinted many times. It was included also in Provincial Antiquities. Ivanhoe. 1819-26 The Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of Scotland, with descriptive illustrations by Sir Walter Scott, Bart. [First published in ten parts between 1819 and 1826.] 2 vols. London, 1826. 4to. 1820 The Monastery. The Abbot. Memorials of the Haliburtons. Edinburgh. [Edited by Scott anonymously.] 30 copies were printed in 1820, and 30 more in 1824. Reprinted, London, 1877, for the Royal Historical Society, in Genealogical Memoirs of the Family of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., of Abbotsford, by the Rev. Charles Rogers, LL.D. Trivial Poems and Triolets. Written in obedience to Mrs. Tomkin's commands. By Patrick Carey. London. [Edited by Scott. His name is not given, but the introduction is dated at Abbotsford.] A thin 4to, with a short introduction and a few notes. A part of the material had been used in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1810. 1821 Northern Memoirs, calculated for the meridian of Scotland. To which is added the contemplative and practical angler. Writ in the year 1658. By Richard Franck. A new edition, with preface and notes. Edinburgh. [Edited by Scott.] Kenilworth. The Pirate. 1821-4 The Novelists' Library. Edited, with prefatory memoirs, by Sir Walter Scott. 10 vols. London. Also Lives of the Novelists, 2 vols., Paris, 1825. A recent edition is that published, with an introduction by Austin Dobson, by the Oxford University Press (No. 94 in The World's Classics). When these Lives were issued among the Miscellaneous Prose Works some of the biographical prefaces were put with them, and also biographical notices, reprinted from the Edinburgh Weekly Journal, of Charles Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, John Lord Somerville, King George III, Lord Byron, and The Duke of York. I give below the names of certain books in which Scott's biographies were utilized, but the list is probably far from complete: An Account of the death and funeral procession of Frederick Duke of York, etc. To which is subjoined Sir Walter Scott's Character of His Royal Highness. By John Sykes. Newcastle, 1827. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman. By Laurence Sterne, A.M., with a life of the author, by Sir Walter Scott. Paris, 1832. (Baudry's Foreign Library.) Beauties of Sterne, with some account of his writings by Sir Walter Scott. Amsterdam, 1836. Select Works of Smollett. Memoir by Sir W. Scott. Philadelphia, 1849. The Novels and Miscellaneous Works of Daniel De Foe. With a biographical memoir of the author, literary prefaces to the various pieces, illustrative notes, etc., including all contained in the edition attributed to the late Sir Walter Scott, with considerable additions. 20 vols., London, 1840. The Novels and Miscellaneous Works of Daniel de Foe. With prefaces and notes, including those attributed to Sir Walter Scott. 6 vols., London, 1854-6. (Bonn's British Classics.) The Rambler, by Samuel Johnson LL.D., with a sketch of the author's life by Sir Walter Scott. 2 vols., London, 187? 1822 Chronological Notes of Scottish Affairs, from 1680 till 1701; being chiefly taken from the diary of Lord Fountainhall. Edinburgh. [Edited by Scott.] See Historical Notices of Scotish Affairs, selected from the manuscripts of Sir John Lauder of Fountainhall, bart. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1848, printed for the Bannatyne club. Here Scott's edition is referred to, and his introduction is reprinted. The book was re-edited because Scott did not use the original manuscript, but an interpolated transcript, and he had no means for accurately determining the original text. Halidon Hill, a dramatic sketch. Macduff's Cross (in Joanna Baillie's Poetical Miscellanies). Military Memoirs of the Great Civil War. Being the military memoirs of John Gwynne; and an account of the Earl of Glencairn's expedition, as general of His Majesty's forces, in the highlands of Scotland, in the years 1653 and 1654, by a person who was eye and ear witness to every transaction.... Edinburgh. [Edited by Scott. His name is not given, but the introduction is dated at Abbotsford.] There are some notes, and a short historical introduction. Sketch of the Life and Character of the late Lord Kinneder. [Edited by Scott. A postscript says: "This notice was chiefly drawn up by the late Mr. Hay Donaldson."] Edinburgh. Only a few copies were printed, for private distribution. The Fortunes of Nigel. 1823 Peveril of the Peak. Quentin Durward. St. Ronan's Well. 1824 Lays of the Lindsays, being poems by the ladies of the House of Balcarras. Edinburgh. [Edited by Scott, and designed as a contribution to the Bannatyne Club, but suppressed after being printed.] Redgauntlet. 1825 Auld Robin Gray; a ballad. By the Rt. Honourable Lady Anne Barnard, born Lady Anne Lindsay, of Balcarras. [Edited by Scott for the Bannatyne Club.] Tales of the Crusaders: The Betrothed. The Talisman. 1826 Letters of Malachi Malagrowther on the Currency. (To the editor of the Edinburgh Weekly Journal.) 3 parts. Edinburgh. Woodstock. 1826? Shakspeare [edited by Scott and Lockhart?], volumes II, III, and IV, without title page and date. Printed by James Ballantyne & Co. Scott and Lockhart began in 1823 or 1824 to prepare an edition of Shakspere. In Jan., 1825, Constable wrote to a London bookseller: "It gives me great pleasure to tell you that the first sheet of Sir Walter Scott's Shakspeare is now in type ... This I expect will be a first-rate property." (_Constable's Correspondence_, II, 344.) At the time of Constable's bankruptcy in 1826 there was a disagreement in regard to the ownership of the property. Scott wrote to Lockhart, May 30, 1826, "What do you about Shakspeare? Constable's creditors seem desirous to carry it on. Certainly their bankruptcy breaks the contract. For me _c'est égal_: I have nothing to do with the emoluments, and I can with very little difficulty discharge my part of the matter, which is the Prolegomena, and Life and Times." (Lang's _Lockhart_, I, 409.) In 1827 the question of carrying on the work was still undecided, and it was also mentioned in a letter in 1830. (Lang's _Lockhart_ II, 13 and 59). The project was ultimately abandoned, and the fate of that part of the work which was actually in print is unknown. In the Barton Collection in the Boston Public Library is preserved what is perhaps a unique copy of three volumes of the set of ten that Scott and Lockhart undertook to prepare. But as the books are bound up without title-pages, and as the commentary contains nothing that would determine its authorship, the attribution is probable rather than certain. These volumes include twelve of the comedies. On the fly-leaf of one of them is a note written by Mr. Rodd, a London bookseller. He says: "I purchased these three volumes from a sale at Edinburgh. They were entered in the catalogue as 'Shakespeare's Works, edited by Sir Walter Scott and Lockhart, vols. ii, in, iv, all published, _unique_'." It was not positively known that such a work had been planned until the publication of Constable's _Correspondence_ in 1874. At that time Justin Winsor wrote a letter to the _Boston Advertiser_ (March 21, 1874) in which he said: "The account of the Barton collection, which was printed fifteen years ago, contained the earliest public mention, I believe, of the supposition that Scott ever engaged in such a work, which this life of Constable now renders certain. These later corroborative statements give a peculiar interest to the volumes which are now in this library and which are perhaps the only ones of the edition now in existence." The introductions to the plays are each only a page or two long, and are mainly, like the notes, compilations. The book corresponds fairly well with the description given in _Constable_. (See Vol. III, pp. 183, 193, 237-8, 241, 242, 244, 246, 305, 321, 442. See also Lang's _Lockhart_, I, 308-9, 395-6, and Lang's Introduction to _Peveril of the Peak_.) 1827 The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, Emperor of the French. With a preliminary view of the French Revolution. By the author of Waverley. 9 vols. Edinburgh. Chronicles of the Canongate. First series: The Highland Widow. The Two Drovers. The Surgeon's Daughter Memoirs of the Marchioness de la Rochejaquelin. Translated from the French. Edinburgh. (Constable's Miscellany, Vol. V. Introduction and notes by Scott.) The Miscellaneous Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott. 6 vols. Edinburgh, 1827, and Boston, 1829. 9 vols. Paris, 1827-34. 30 vols. London, 1834-46. (Containing many of the reviews contributed by Scott to periodicals.) Same, first 28 vols. (Omitting the Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft.) Edinburgh, 1842-6, 1851, and 1861. 7 vols. Paris, 1837-8. 8 vols. Paris, 1840? 3 vols. Edinburgh, 1841-2, 1846, and 1854. 1827-55 The Bannatyne Miscellany; containing original papers and tracts relating to the history and literature of Scotland. (Edited by Sir Walter Scott, D. Laing, and T. Thomson.) 3 vols. 1828 Tales of a Grandfather. First series. 3 vols. Edinburgh. Religious Discourses. By a layman. London. Two sermons written by Sir Walter for George Huntly Gordon, then a Probationer. Afterwards published by Gordon, with the author's permission, to raise money. Chronicles of the Canongate. Second series: The Fair Maid of Perth. Proceedings in the Court-martial held upon John, Master of Sinclair, captain-lieutenant in Preston's regiment, for the murder of Ensign Schaw of the same regiment, and Captain Schaw, of the Royals, 17 October, 1708; with correspondence respecting that transaction. Edinburgh. Edited by Sir Walter Scott and presented by him to the Roxburghe club. Some of the same material seems to have been used in the book named below: Memoirs of the Insurrection in 1715, by John, Master of Sinclair. With notes by Sir Walter Scott. Edinburgh, 1858, printed for the Abbotsford Club. 1829 Papers relative to the Regalia of Scotland. Edinburgh. Edited by Sir Walter Scott and presented to the members of the Bannatyne Club by William Bell, Esq. Memorials of George Bannatyne, 1545-1608. Edited by Sir Walter Scott for the Bannatyne Club. Edinburgh. Scott wrote the memoir of George Bannatyne which occupies the first 25 pages of the book. This memoir is also to be found in the publications of the Hunterian Club, part 8, published in 1886. Anne of Geierstein. Tales of a Grandfather. Second series. 1829-32 Novels, Tales, and Romances, with introductions and notes by the author. (The "Opus Magnum.") The same material is used in the following books: Introductions and notes and illustrations to the novels, tales, and romances of the author of Waverley. 3 vols., Edinburgh, 1833. Autobiography of Sir Walter Scott. Philadelphia, 1831. Anderson, in his bibliography of Scott, gives this as a supposititious work, but with the exception of the title it is genuine, for it is simply the piecing together of Scott's introductions to his novels. 1830 Tales of a Grandfather. Third series. The Doom of Devorgoil, and Auchindrane or The Ayrshire Tragedy. Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, addressed to J.G. Lockhart, Esq. London. (The Family Library.) Other editions: New York, 1845; London, 1868 and 1876, (illustrated by Cruikshank); London 1884, with an introduction by Henry Morley. Included in the 30 vol. edition of the Miscellaneous Prose works, but not in the 28 vol. edition. Poems, with prefaces by the author. 11 vols. Introductory Remarks on Popular Poetry (prefixed to Minstrelsy, Vol. I) and Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad (prefixed to Minstrelsy, Vol. III). These essays were printed in 1830 and attached to the edition of the poems then on sale. They were first regularly included in the edition of 1833. The History of Scotland. (Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopedia.) 2 vols. London. [Not in the Miscellaneous Prose Works.] 1831 Tales of a Grandfather. Fourth series. History of France. The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., including a Journal of his Tour to the Hebrides, by James Boswell, Esq. New edition with numerous anecdotes and notes by The Right Hon. John Wilson Croker, M.P.... 10 vols. London. [Scott wrote and signed the notes for the Tour to the Hebrides.] Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald, for the murder of Arthur Davis, Sergeant in General Guise's regiment of foot. June, A.D. 1754. Edinburgh. "To the members of the Bannatyne Club, this copy of a trial, involving a curious point of evidence, is presented, by Walter Scott." There is an introduction of 11 pages, giving the story of the crime, and bringing together instances from literature and history of the evidence of ghosts being cited in trials. That is the "curious point of evidence" referred to. The proceedings of the court are then reprinted without annotation. 1832 Tales of my Landlord. Fourth series: Count Robert of Paris. Castle Dangerous. 1848 Two Bannatyne Garlands from Abbotsford. This little book was prepared for members of the Bannatyne club by the secretary, D. Laing. It contains two ballads--of which one is ancient and one a modern imitation written by Robert Surtees--annotated by Scott. 1889 Reliquiae Trottosienses, or Catalogue of the Gabions of the late Jonathan Oldbuck. (Partially published in _Harper's Magazine_ for April, 1889: Vol. lxxviii, pp. 778-788. This fragment describing the main apartments at Abbotsford is the only part of the Reliquiae Trottosienses that has been printed. There is a short introduction by Mary Monica Maxwell Scott.) The same material was included in the following book: Abbotsford, the personal relics and antiquarian treasures of Sir Walter Scott, described by the Hon. Mary Monica Maxwell Scott. London, 1893. 1890 The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, from the original manuscript at Abbotsford. (Edited by David Douglas.) 2 vols. Edinburgh. Second edition, 1891. Large extracts from this Journal had previously been published in Lockhart's Life of Scott. 2. _Contributions to Periodicals_. (a) Reviews (Most of these essays are reprinted in the 28 and 30 volume editions of Scott's Miscellaneous Prose Works. Articles not included in that collection are marked by a note indicating the evidence on which they are attributed to Scott.) 1803 Amadis de Gaul, translated by Southey and by Rose. (_Edinburgh Review_, October. Vol. III.) Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry. (_Edinburgh_, October. Vol. III. Not in M.P.W. See Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 335.) 1804 Godwin's Life of Chaucer. (_Edinburgh_, January. Vol. III.) Ellis's Specimens of the Early English Poets. (_Edinburgh_, April. Vol. IV.) The Life and Works of Chatterton. (_Edinburgh_, April. Vol. IV.) 1805 Johnes's Translation of Froissart. (_Edinburgh_, January. Vol. V.) Colonel Thornton's Sporting Tour. (_Edinburgh_, January. Vol. V.) Fleetwood, a novel by William Godwin. (_Edinburgh_, April. Vol. VI.) The New Practice of Cookery. (_Edinburgh_, July. Vol. VI.) The Ossianic Poems. (_Edinburgh_, July. Vol. VI. Not in M.P.W. See Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 409.) Todd's Edition of Spenser. (_Edinburgh_, October. Vol. VII.) 1806 Ellis's Specimens of English Romance, and Ritson's Ancient English Metrical Romances. (_Edinburgh_, January. Vol. VII.) The Miseries of Human Life. [By Rev. James Beresford.] (_Edinburgh_, October. Vol. IX.) Miscellaneous Poetry by the Hon. William Herbert. (_Edinburgh_, October. Vol. IX.) 1809 Reliques of Burns, collected by R.H. Cromek. (_Quarterly Review_, February. Vol. I.) Southey's Translation of The Cid. (_Quarterly_, February. Vol. I.) Sir John Carr's Caledonian Sketches. (_Quarterly_, February. Vol. I.) Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming and other poems. (_Quarterly_, May. Vol. I.) John de Lancaster, a novel by Richard Cumberland. (_Quarterly_, May. Vol. I.) The Battles of Talavera, a poem [by John Wilson Croker]. (_Quarterly_, November. Vol. II.) 1810 The Fatal Revenge or The Family of Montorio, a romance [by C.R. Maturin]. (_Quarterly_, May. Vol. III.) Collections of Ballads and Songs by R.H. Evans and John Aiken. (_Quarterly_, May. Vol. III.) 1811 Southey's Curse of Kehama. (_Quarterly_, February. Vol. V.) 1815 Emma and other novels by Jane Austen. (_Quarterly_, October. Vol. XIV. Not in M.P.W. See Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 3.) 1816 The Culloden Papers. (_Quarterly_, January. Vol. XIV.) Childe Harold, Canto III, and other poems by Lord Byron. (_Quarterly_, October. Vol. XVI.) 1817 Tales of My Landlord. [Probably written with the help of William Erskine. See Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 81. See also the Introduction to Waverley, written in 1830.] (_Quarterly_, January. Vol. XVI.) 1818 Douglas on Military Bridges. (_Quarterly_, May. Vol. XVIII. Not in M.P.W. See Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 173.) Kirkton's History of the Church of Scotland, edited by C.K. Sharpe. (_Quarterly_, May. Vol. XVIII.) Letters from Horace Walpole to George Montague. (_Quarterly_, April. Vol. XIX. Not in M.P.W. See Memoir of John Murray, Vol. II, p. 12.) Childe Harold, Canto IV. (_Quarterly_, April. Vol. XIX.) Women or Pour et Contre, a tale [by C.R. Maturin]. (_Edinburgh_, June. Vol. XXX.) Frankenstein, a novel [by Mrs. Shelley]. (_Blackwood_, March. Vol. II.) Remarks on General Gourgaud's Narrative. (_Blackwood_, November. Vol. IV. Not in M.P.W. See Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 238.) 1824 The Correspondence of Lady Suffolk. (_Quarterly_, January. Vol. XXX.) 1826 Pepys' Diary. (_Quarterly_, March. Vol. XXXIII.) Boaden's Life of Kemble, and Kelly's Reminiscences. (_Quarterly_, June. Vol. XXXIV.) The Omen [by John Galt]. (_Blackwood_, July. Vol. XX.) 1827 Mackenzie's Life and Works of John Home. (_Quarterly_, June. Vol. XXXVI.) The Forester's Guide, by Robert Monteath. On Planting Waste Lands. (_Quarterly_, October. Vol. XXXVI.) On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition, and particularly on the Works of Hoffman. (_Foreign Quarterly Review_, July. Vol. I.) See also Contes Fantastiques de E.T.A. Hoffmann, traduits de l'Allemand par M. Loève-Veimars, et précédés d'une notice historique sur Hoffmann par Walter Scott. Paris, 1830. 16 vols. 1828 The Planter's Guide, by Sir Henry Steuart. On Landscape Gardening. (_Quarterly_, March. Vol. XXXVII.) Sir Humphrey Davy's Salmonia or Days of Fly-fishing. (_Quarterly_, October. Vol. XXXVIII.) Molière. (_Foreign Quarterly Review_, February. Vol. II.) 1829 Hajji Baba in England; and The Kuzzilbash, a tale of Khorasan. (_Quarterly_, January. Vol. XXXIX.) Ritson's Annals of the Caledonians, Picts, and Scots, etc. (_Quarterly_, July. Vol. XLI.) Tytler's History of Scotland. (_Quarterly_, November. Vol. XLI.) Revolutions of Naples in 1647 and 1648. (_Foreign Quarterly Review_, August. Vol. IV. Not in M.P.W. See Journal, Vol. I, p. 145, and Vol. II, p. 278.) 1830 Southey's Life of John Bunyan. (_Quarterly_, October. Vol. XLIII.) 1831 Pitcairn's Ancient Criminal Trials. (_Quarterly_, February. Vol. XLIV.) (b) Contributions to the Edinburgh Annual Register (The dates given are those on the volumes. In most cases the book was issued about a year and a half after the nominal date. Most of Scott's contributions are unsigned. Those which were afterwards included in the collected edition of his poems are in this list marked "Poems"; in other cases (unless the article is signed) a note is made of the reason for attributing it to Scott). 1808 Vol. I, part 2. The Bard's Incantation. Poems. To a Lady, with Flowers from a Roman Wall. Poems. The Violet. Poems. Hunting Song. Poems. The Resolve. Poems. View of the changes proposed and adopted in the administration of justice in Scotland. (See _Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 154.) Living Poets of Great Britain. (From internal evidence I think this article may have been written by Scott, and am sure that he dictated many of the opinions it expresses, if he is not responsible for the whole.) 1809 Vol. II, part 2. The Vision of Don Roderick. (Reprinted from the first edition.) Poems. Epitaph designed for a Monument to be erected in Lichfield Cathedral to the Rev. Thomas Seward. Poems. Cursory remarks upon the French order of battle, particularly in the campaigns of Buonaparte. (See _Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 161.) Periodical Criticism. (From internal evidence I am sure that this was written by Scott. The style is decidedly more interesting than that of the article on the poets, in the volume for the preceding year.) The Inferno of Altisidora. (This immediately follows the article on Periodical Criticism, and is a burlesque sketch on the same subject. It serves to introduce the following imitations, respectively, of Crabbe, Moore, and Scott himself.) The Poacher. "Oh say not, my love, with that mortified air." The Vision of Triermain. 1810 Vol. III, part 2. Account of the poems of Patrick Carey, a poet of the seventeenth century. (Afterwards prefixed to the volume of Carey's poems published in 1820. See _Lockhart_, Vol. II, pp. 245-8.) 1811 Vol. IV, part 2. Biographical memoir of John Leyden, M.D. (In the Miscellaneous Prose Works.) 1812 Vol. V, part 2. Extracts from a journal kept during a coasting voyage through the Scottish Islands. (Published in complete form in _Lockhart_, Vol. II.) 1813 Vol. VI. The Dance of Death. Poems. Romance of Dunois, from the French. Poems. Song for the anniversary meeting of the Pitt Club of Scotland. Poems. Song on the lifting of the banner of the House of Buccleuch, at a great football match on Carterhaugh. Poems. 1814 Vol. VII. Historical Review of the Year. (See _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 76.) 1815 Vol. VIII. Historical Review of the Year. (See _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 124.) The Search after Happiness, or the Quest of Sultaun Solimaun. (Reprinted from the _Sale-Room_. See _Lockhart_, Vol. III, pp. 89-90.) 1816 Vol. IX. The Noble Moringer. Translated from the German. Poems. (See also the introduction to _The Betrothed_.) 1817 Vol. X. Farewell Address, spoken by Mr. Kemble to the Edinburgh Theatre, on the 29th March, 1817. (Reprinted from the _Sale-Room_. ) Poems. 1824 Vol. XVII. To Mons. Alexandre. (c) Contributions to other periodicals Scott contributed frequently to _The Edinburgh Weekly Journal_, edited and published by James Ballantyne. Some of the articles are reprinted in the Miscellaneous Prose Works. Lockhart reprints in the Life Scott's account of the coronation of George IV., and his Reply to General Gourgaud. Scott also contributed to _The Sale-Room_, a weekly paper edited and published by John Ballantyne from January 4 to July 12, 1817 (28 numbers). (See _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 89.) To _The Keepsake_, an annual, Scott contributed in 1828 The Tapestried Chamber, My Aunt Margaret's Mirror, and The Laird's Jock, and in 1830 The House of Aspen. In _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_, Vol. I, appeared three articles entitled "Notices concerning the Scottish Gypsies," for which Scott furnished a large part of the material. (Numbers for April, May, and September, 1817.) Lockhart says that Scott dictated to Thomas Pringle "a collection of anecdotes concerning Scottish gypsies, which attracted a good deal of notice." The first article refers to "Mr. Walter Scott, a gentleman to whose distinguished assistance and advice we have been on the present occasion very peculiarly indebted, and who has not only furnished us with many interesting particulars himself, but has also obligingly directed us to other sources of curious information." Scott quotes from the first of the three articles in his review of _Tales of My Landlord_, and he afterwards used the same anecdotes in the introduction to _Guy Mannering_. 3. _Books which contain letters written by Scott_. (As there is no complete collection of Scott's letters it has been thought wise to name the various sources, so far as the letters have appeared at all in print, from which such a collection might be made. The list includes only those books or articles in which letters were published for the first time; yet it is probably far from exhaustive. Notes are given in regard to the number or kind of the letters from Scott to be found in some of the less-known books.) Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott, by J.G. Lockhart. Edinburgh, 7 vols. 1837-8. 10 vols. 1839. Abridged edition 1848. The edition referred to throughout this study is that published by Macmillan and Company in 5 volumes, 1900. Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott [edited by D. Douglas]. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1894. Letters and Recollections of Sir Walter Scott, by Mrs. Hughes (of Uffington), edited by Horace G. Hutchinson. London, 1904. (First published in _The Century_, xliv: 424 and 566; July and August, 1903.) The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart, by Andrew Lang, from Abbotsford and Milton Lockhart mss. and other original sources. 2 vols. London, 1897. These volumes contain many letters from Scott to Lockhart. Memoir and Correspondence of the late John Murray, with an account of the origin and progress of the House, 1768-1843, by Samuel Smiles. 2 vols. London, 1891. This book contains many letters from Scott to Murray, who published some of Scott's works and was the proprietor of the _Quarterly Review_. Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents. A Memorial by his son Thomas Constable. 3 vols. Edinburgh, 1873. The third volume is wholly taken up with an account of Scott's relations with Constable, his publisher, and many letters are given. See also Vol. II, pages 347 and 474. [The Ballantyne and Lockhart Pamphlets.] I. Refutation of the Misstatements and Calumnies contained in Mr. Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott, bart., respecting the Messrs. Ballantyne, by the trustees and son of the late Mr. James Ballantyne. (1835.) II. The Ballantyne Humbug Handled by the author of the Life of Sir Walter Scott. (1839.) III. Reply to Mr. Lockhart's Pamphlet, entitled "The Ballantyne-Humbug Handled," etc. (1839.) The two last pamphlets contain numerous letters of Scott's. For a history of Scott's publishing operations these pamphlets should be studied in connection with the Memoirs of Lockhart, Murray, and Constable. Annals of a Publishing House; William Blackwood and his sons, their magazine and friends. By Mrs. Oliphant. 3rd edition, 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1897. About half a dozen letters not elsewhere published are given in this book. Letters from and to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq., edited by Alexander Allardyce, with a memoir by Rev. W.K.R. Bedford. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1888. Lockhart wrote to Sharpe in 1834: "He had preserved so many letters of yours.... that I must suppose the correspondence was considered by himself as one not of the common sort." (Vol. II, p. 479.) Both men were authors and antiquaries, and their letters as given in this book illustrate their favorite studies. Lady Louisa Stuart. Selections from her manuscripts, edited by Hon. James Home. London, 1899. (One section of the book is entitled "Unpublished Letters of Sir Walter Scott and Lady Louisa Stuart.") Abbotsford Notanda, by Robert Carruthers. Subjoined to the Life of Sir Walter Scott by Robert Chambers, edited by W. Chambers. London, 1871. Letters from Scott to Hogg and Laidlaw are included. Memorials of Coleorton, being letters from Coleridge, Wordsworth and his Sister, Southey, and Sir Walter Scott, to Sir George and Lady Beaumont of Coleorton, Leicestershire, 1803 to 1834. Edited, with introduction and notes, by William Knight. 2 vols. Boston, 1887. The second volume contains three letters by Scott. The Letters of Sir Walter Scott and Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe to Robert Chambers, 1821-45. With original memoranda of Sir Walter Scott, etc. [Edited by C.E.S. Chambers.] Edinburgh, 1904. Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott, by John Gibson. Edinburgh, 1871. Besides nine letters from Scott this book gives in full a memorial written by him in regard to the claim of Constable's trustee on _Woodstock_ and _Napoleon_. Traditions and Recollections, Domestic, Clerical, and Literary; in which are included letters of Charles II, Cromwell, Fairfax, Edgecumbe, Macaulay, Wolcot, Opie, Whitaker, Gibbon, Buller, Courtenay, Moore, Downman, Drewe, Seward, Darwin, Cowper, Hayley, Hardinge, Sir Walter Scott, and other distinguished characters. By the Rev. R. Polwhele. 2 vols. London, 1826. Vol. II. contains five letters from Scott. Letters of Sir Walter Scott, addressed to the Rev. R. Polwhele; D. Gilbert, Esq.; Francis Douce, Esq.; etc. London, 1832. Twenty-eight letters from Scott are given, of which at least one had previously been published. A Memoir of the Life and Writings of the late William Taylor of Norwich, ... containing his correspondence of many years with the late Robert Southey, Esq., and original letters from Sir Walter Scott, and other eminent literary men. Compiled and edited by J.W. Robberds, F.G.S., of Norwich. 2 vols. London, 1843. Vol. I. contains two letters from Scott, of which the second has decided critical interest. See pp. 94-100. Vol. II. has one letter from Scott. See p. 533. Memoirs of Sir William Knighton, Bart. G.C.H. ... including his correspondence with many distinguished personages. By Lady Knighton. Philadelphia, 1838. Fourteen letters from Scott are given. Letters between James Ellis, Esq., and Walter Scott, Esq. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1850. The letters from Scott are two in number. Haydon's Correspondence and Table-talk, with a Memoir by his son, Frederick Wordsworth Haydon. 2 vols., London, 1876. The first volume contains a few letters by Scott. The Life and Letters of Washington Irving, by his nephew, Pierre M. Irving. 4 vols., New York, 1865. Vol. I, p. 240, contains a letter to Brevoort; pp. 439-40, 442-4 and 450-1 contain three letters to Irving. Memorials of James Hogg, by M.G. Garden. London, 1903. Four letters by Scott are included. Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, including sketches and anecdotes of the most distinguished literary characters from 1794 to 1849, by R.P. Gillies. 3 vols. London, 1851. Vol. II, pp. 77-83, contains three letters from Scott; Vol. III, pp. 143-4, contains one. Sir Walter Scott. The story of his life, by R. Shelton Mackenzie. Boston, 1871. See p. 471 for a letter not published elsewhere. Byron's Letters and Journals. Rowland E. Prothero, ed. 6 vols., London, 1898-1901. See Vol. VI, p. 55 for a letter of Scott's not published elsewhere. Catalogue of the Exhibition held at Edinburgh in July and August, 1871, on occasion of the commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Sir Walter Scott. Edinburgh, 1872. This catalogue contains notices of the autograph letters which were exhibited, and prints a few of the letters. A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors.... By S. Austin Allibone. 3 vols. Philadelphia, 1870. Two letters from Scott to Ticknor are given in the article on Scott. Fragments of Voyages and Travel, by Basil Hall. Third series. Chapter I. contains a letter written by Scott in the original manuscript of _The Antiquary_, explaining why the author particularly liked that novel. Letters, hitherto unpublished, written by members of Sir Walter Scott's family to their old governess. Edited, with an introduction and notes, by the Warden of Wadham College, Oxford. London, 1905. See pp. 13-15 for a letter from Scott, and pp. 37-38 for a note of instructions in regard to his daughter Sophia's history lessons. Correspondence between J. Fenimore Cooper and Sir Walter Scott. _The Knickerbocker Magazine_, xi: 380; April, 1838. The letter from Scott to Cooper quoted above, p. 102, is here given. Fiction, Fair and Foul. By John Ruskin. _Nineteenth Century_, viii: 195; August, 1880. A footnote on pp. 196-7 contains fragments of five letters from Scott to the builder of Abbotsford. Wordsworth's Poetical Works. Edited by William Knight. II vols. Edinburgh, 1882. See the index. Vol. XI, p. 196 has a letter from Scott which I think had not previously been published. Vol. X, p. 105, gives one which Lockhart quotes "very imperfectly," according to Prof. Knight. Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain ... with biographical and historical memoirs of their lives and actions, by Edmund Lodge. London, 1835. Vol. I contains, in the appendix to the preface, a letter from Scott to the publisher, dated 25th March 1828. (See _Lockhart_, V, 350.) The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, edited by Augustus J.C. Hare. 2 vols. Boston, 1895. This contains a few letters of Scott's, but only one which is not published elsewhere. A Short Account of successful exertions in behalf of the fatherless and widows after the war in 1814; containing letters from Mr. Wilberforce, Sir Walter Scott, Marshal Blücher, etc. By Rudolf Ackermann. Oxford, 1871. There is only one letter by Scott. The Courser's Manual, etc., by T. Goodlake. 1828. This book contains one letter by Scott, dated 16th October, 1828, about an old Scottish poem entitled "The Last Words of Bonny Heck." (See _Lockhart_, V. 219, for what is doubtless the same letter.) The Chimney-sweeper's Friend and Climbing-boy's Album. Arranged by James Montgomery. London, 1824. The Preface contains part of a letter from Scott, in which he describes the construction of the chimneys at Abbotsford. (See _Lockhart_, IV. 158-9.) APPENDIX II. 1. _Bibliographies of Scott_ Allibone, S.A. Dictionary of British and American Authors and Literature. 3 vols. Phil., 1870. Anderson, J.P. Bibliography of Scott, in the Life of Scott by C.D. Yonge (Great Writers Series). London, 1888. Lockhart's Life of Scott; the Centenary Catalogue (see above, p. 171); the British Museum Catalogue; the Dictionary of National Biography. 2. _A partial list of the books used in the preparation of this Study_, aside from those given in the bibliography of Scott's works. (See particularly the list of books which contain letters written by Scott: Appendix I. 3.) Adolphus, J.L. Letters to Richard Heber, Esq., containing critical remarks on the series of novels beginning with "Waverley," and an attempt to ascertain their author. Second edition. London, 1822. Aitken, G.A., ed. Romances and Narratives by Daniel Defoe. 16 vols. London, 1895. Arnold, Matthew. Byron. In Essays in Criticism. Second series. London, 1889. Carlyle, Thomas. Sir Walter Scott. In Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. 4 vols. London, 1857. Chambers, E.K. The Mediaeval Stage. 2 vols. Oxford, 1903. Chesterton, G.K. Varied Types. New York, 1903. Child, Francis J. English and Scottish Popular Ballads. 5 vols. Boston, 1882-96. English and Scottish Popular Ballads, edited from the collection of Francis James Child by Helen Child Sargent and George Lyman Kittredge. Boston, 1904. Clemens, S.L. (Mark Twain). Life on the Mississippi. Boston, 1883. Cockburn, Henry. Memorials of His Time. Edinburgh, 1874. Coleridge, S.T. Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 2 vols. London, 1835. Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by E.H. Coleridge. 2 vols. Boston, 1895. Collins, J. Churton. Ephemera Critica. London, 1901. Courthope, W.J. A History of English Poetry. 4 vols. New York, 1895-1903. The Liberal Movement in English Literature. London, 1885. Cunningham, Allan. Life of Scott. Boston, 1832. Dowden, Edward. Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 2 vols. London, 1886. Fitzgerald, Percy. New History of the English Stage, from the Restoration to the liberty of the theatres, in connection with the patent houses. 2 vols. London, 1882. Forster, John. Walter Savage Landor, a biography. 2 vols. London, 1869. Freeman, E.A. The History of the Norman Conquest of England. 5 vols. New York, 1873. Gates, L.E. Three Studies in Literature. New York, 1899. Gillies, R.P. Recollections of Sir Walter Scott. (Republished in book form from _Fraser's Magazine_, Sept., Nov., Dec. 1835, and Jan., 1836.) Hazlitt, William. Collected Works, edited by A.R. Waller and Arnold Glover. 12 vols. London, 1902-4. (Spirit of the Age, Vol. IV; Plain Speaker, Vol. VII; Dramatic Essays, Vol. VIII.) Herford, C.H. The Age of Wordsworth. (Handbooks of English Literature.) London, 1905. Hogg, James, ed. Jacobite Relics of Scotland, being the songs, airs, and legends of the adherents of the House of Stuart. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1819-21. Domestic Manners and Private Life of Sir Walter Scott. Glasgow, 1834. Hudson, W.H. Sir Walter Scott, London, 1901. Hunt, J.H. Leigh. Autobiography; with reminiscences of friends and contemporaries. 2 vols. New York, 1850. Feast of the Poets. London, 1814. Lord Byron and some of his contemporaries. Second edition. 2 vols. London, 1828. Hutton, R.H. Sir Walter Scott. (English Men of Letters.) New York, 1878. Irving, Washington. Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey. (First volume of the "Crayon Miscellany.") London, 1835. Lang, Andrew. Sir Walter Scott (Literary Lives). New York, 1906. Border edition of the Waverley Novels, 48 vols. London, 1892-1894. Laing, Malcolm, ed. Poems of Ossian, containing the poetical works of James MacPherson in prose and verse. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1805. Legaré, H.S. Writings.... Edited by his sister. Charleston, S.C., 1846. Lounsbury, T.R. James Fenimore Cooper. (American Men of Letters.) Boston, 1882. Maigron, Louis. Le Roman Historique à l'�poque Romantique: essai sur l'influence de Walter Scott. Paris, 1898. Masson, David. British Novelists and Their Styles. Cambridge, Eng., 1859. Matthews, Brander. The Historical Novel, etc. New York, 1901. Meteyard, Eliza. A Group of Englishmen (1795-1815), being records of the younger Wedgwoods and their friends. London, 1871. Millar, J.H. The Mid-Eighteenth Century. (Periods of European Literature.) New York, 1902. Moore, Thomas. Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with notices of his life. 2 vols. London, 1830. Myers, F.W.H. Wordsworth. (English Men of Letters.) New York, 1881. Newman, J.H. Apologia Pro Vita Sua. London, 1892. Nichol, John. Byron. (English Men of Letters.) New York, 1880. Palgrave, F.T. Biographical and Critical Memoir of Sir Walter Scott. (In Poetical Works of Scott. London, 1866, Macmillan and Company.) Paris, Gaston. La Littérature Française au Moyen Age. Paris, 1890. Percy, W. Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, consisting of old heroic ballads, songs, and other pieces of our earlier poets (chiefly of the lyric kind) together with some few of later date. 3 vols. London, 1765. Pierce, E.L. Memoirs and Letters of Charles Sumner. 2 vols. Boston, 1877. Ruskin, John. Modern Painters. New edition, 5 vols. London, 1897. Saintsbury, George. Life of Scott. (Famous Scots Series.) New York. [1897.] A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe.... 3 vols. New York, 1900-1904. Scott, Temple, ed. The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. (Bohn's Standard Library.) London, 1898-1905. Southey, Robert. Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, edited by John Wood Warter. 4 vols. London, 1856. Stephen, Leslie. English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century. (Ford Lectures, 1903.) London, 1904. Swift. (English Men of Letters.) New York, 1882. Taine, H.A. Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise. 4 vols. Paris, 1863-64. Ticknor, George. Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor. Sixth edition. 2 vols. Boston, 1877. White, A.D. Autobiography. 3 vols. New York, 1905. Wylie, L.J. Studies in the Evolution of English Criticism. Boston, 1894. 3. _Periodicals and articles referred to, aside from the articles written by Scott._ _The Bibliographer_: Notes for a Bibliography of Swift, by Stanley Lane-Poole. Vol. VI, pp. 160-71. _The Edinburgh Review_: Review of The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. I, pp. 395-406; Review of Sir Tristrem, Vol. IV, pp. 427-43; Review of Scott's edition of Swift, Vol. XXVII, pp. 1-58; Border Ballads, Vol. CCIII, pp. 306-26. _The English Historical Review_: Dean Swift and The Memoirs of Captain Carleton, by Col. the Hon. Arthur Parnell, R.E. Vol. VI, pp. 97-151. _Fraser's Magazine_: Review of Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, Vol. II, pp. 507-519. _The Knickerbocker Magazine_: Review by J. Fenimore Cooper of Lockhart's Life of Scott, Vol. XII, pp. 349 ff. _Macmillan's Magazine_: The Historical Novel: Scott and Dumas, by Prof. Saintsbury, Vol. LXX, pp. 321-330. _The Nineteenth Century_: Defoe's "Apparition of Mrs. Veal," by G.A. Aitken, Vol. XXXVII, pp. 95 ff. _The Quarterly Review_: Review of Dunlop's History of Fiction, Vol. XIII, pp. 384-408; Review of Frankenstein, Vol. XVIII, pp. 37-385; Review of The Lives of the Novelists, Vol. XXXIV, pp. 349-378. INDEX. _Abbot, The_, 88, 132, 155 _Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey_, 15, 176 _Abbotsford, described by the Hon. Mary Monica Maxwell Scott_, 161 _Abbotsford Notanda_, 169 _Absalom and Achitophel_, 60, 63-4, 66 _Account of the Death of Frederick, Duke of York, An_, 156 Addison, Joseph, 80 Adolphus, J.L., see _Letters to Heber_ Aeschylus, 50 _Age of Wordsworth, The_, 10, 20, 125, 131, 136, 175 _Aiken's Collection of Songs_, Scott's review of, 26, 163 Aitken, G.A., 77, 174, 178 _Alastor_, 89 _Alexander's Feast_, 63, 139 Allibone, S.A., 56, 153, 172, 174 _Amadis de Gaul_, Scott's review of, 4, 37, 128, 129, 162 _Ancient British Drama_, 52, 151-2 _Ancient Criminal Trials_, Scott's review of, 46, 143, 165 _Ancient English Metrical Romances_, Scott's review of, 125, 162 _Ancient Mariner, The_, 87-8 _Ancient Times_, 149 Anderson, J.P., see _Bibliography of Scott_ _Annals of a Publishing House_, 169 _Annals of the Caledonians_, etc., Scott's review of, 164 _Anne of Geierstein_, 51, 65, 104, 127, 160 _Antiquary, The_, 3, 50, 51, 89, 154, 172 _Apologia_, Newman's, 142, 176 _Apology for Tales of Terror_, 147 _Apparition of Mrs. Veal, The_, 76-7, 178 Arbuthnot, John, 68 Ariosto, 33, 105 Aristotle, 53, 54 Arnold, Matthew, 95-6, 174 _Auchindrane, or The Ayrshire Tragedy_, 160 _Auchinleck Manuscript, The_, 34, 148 _Auld Robin Gray_, 157 Austen, Jane, 75, 100, 130 _Autobiography of Scott_, 160 Bage, Robert, 73, 75, 79 Baillie, Joanna, 46, 85, 97, 98, 114, 118, 151, 156 _Ballad Book, The_, 28, 148 _Ballads and Lyrical Pieces_, 148 _Ballantyne and Lockhart Pamphlets, The_, 149, 169 _Bannatyne, Memoir of_, 44, 160 _Bannatyne Miscellany, The_, 159 Barnard, Lady Anne, 157 _Bartholomew Fair_, 118 _Battle of Brunanburgh, The_, 20, 43 _Battles of Talavera_, Scott's review of, 106, 112-13, 163 Beaumont and Fletcher, 42, 50, 51, 52, 56 _Beggar's Bush, The_, 50 _Beggar's Opera, The_, 50 _Beowulf_, 42 Berners, John, Lord, 128 _Betrothed, The_, 157, 167 _Bibliographer, The_, 67, 177 _Bibliography of Scott_, Anderson's, 174 _Bibliothèque Bleue_, 33 _Bibliothèque de Romans_, 33 _Black Dwarf, The_, 3, 87, 109, 154 Blackmore, Sir Richard, 80 _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_, 78, 83, 100, 164, 167, 169 Blair, Hugh, 15 _Boaden's Life of Kemble_, Scott's review of, 46, 47, 58, 164 Boiardo, 33 Boileau, 136 _Border Antiquities_, 153 Boswell, James, 80, 161 _Brennoralt_, 51 _Bridal of Triermain, The_, 27, 152 _Bride of Lammermoor, The_, 3, 34, 155 _British Novelists and Their Styles_, 3, 145, 176 Brome, Richard, 50 Broughton, Hugh, 71 Brown, Charles Brockden, 104 Buchan, Peter, 27 Bunyan, Scott's review of Southey's Life of, 111, 165 Bürger, Gottfried, 18, 31, 147 Burney, Fanny, 100 Burns, Robert, 22, 30, 86, 93, 96 _Burt's Letters from the North of Scotland_, 154 Butler, Samuel, 64 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 11, 50, 86, 88-9, 91, 92-6, 97, 98, 99, 101, 104, 105, 106, 110, 121, 129, 143, 163, 171, 176 _Cadyow Castle_, 30 _Cain_, 95 _Caledonian Sketches_, Scott's review of, 84, 163 Calprenède, 53, 76 Campbell, Thomas, 96, 100, 118, 163 Carey, Patrick, 155 _Carey, Robert, Memoirs of_, 149, 151 _Carleton, Captain, Memoirs of_, 68, 144, 148, 178 Carlyle, Thomas, 125, 131, 144, 174 Carr, Sir John, 84, 163 Cartwright, William, 50 _Castle Dangerous_, 18, 34, 161 _Castle of Otranto, The_, 76 _Catalogue of the Centenary Exhibition_, 147, 151, 171, 174 Chambers, E.K., 21, 174 Chambers, Robert, 50, 169, 170 _Changeling, The_, 56 Chapman, George, 50 _Chase, The_, 31, 147 Chatterton, Scott's review of the Life and Works of, 43, 162 Chaucer, 43, 44-5, 62, 162 Chesterton, G.K., 11, 174 _Childe Harold_, 14, 88, 93, 94, 95, 129, 163 Child, Francis J., 24, 28, 31, 174 _Chimney-Sweeper's Friend_, 173 _Chivalry_, Essay on, 36, 46, 154 _Christabel_, 62, 86-7, 88 Christie, W.D., 60 _Chronicles of the Canongate_, 2, 3, 80, 119, 129, 159 _Chronological Notes of Scottish Affairs_, 156 _Chrononhotonthologos_, 50 _Cid, The_, Scott's review of, 92, 163 _Clarissa Harlowe_, 74 Clemens, Samuel L., 142, 174 Clifford, Arthur, 149 _Cock and the Fox, The_, 45 Cockburn, Henry, 15, 175 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 11, 22, 51, 86-9, 90-91, 92, 106, 135, 137, 138, 169, 175 Collins, Churton, 68, 143-4, 175 Colvin, Sidney, 100 Congreve, William, 57, 60 _Conquest of Granada, The_, 57 _Constable, Archibald, Literary Correspondence of_, 12, 33, 48, 52, 98, 104, 121, 126, 127, 154, 158, 168, 169 Conybeare, John J., 42 Cooper, J. Fenimore, 14, 101-3, 172, 178 _Correspondence of Lady Suffolk_, Scott's review of, 142, 164 _Count Julian_, 99 _Count Robert of Paris_, 161 _Courser's Manual, The_, 173 Courthope, W.J., 21, 141, 175 Cowley, Abraham, 59, 64 Cowper, William, 64 Crabbe, George, 97, 166 Craik, Sir Henry, 68 _Critic, The_, 50 Croker, J.W., 161, 163 _Cromek's Reliques of Burns_, Scott's review of, 22, 86, 163 _Culloden Papers_, Scott's review of, 45, 163 Cumberland, Richard, 73, 163 Cunningham, Allan, 47-8, 81-2, 96, 175 _Curse of Kehama, The_, Scott's review of, 91, 92, 163 Dante, 33, 92 _Darkness_, 88-9 Davy, Sir Humphrey, see _Salmonia_ _Dean Swift and the Memoirs of Captain Carleton_, 68, 144, 148, 178 Defoe, Daniel, 71, 73, 76-7, 148-9, 156, 178 Dekker, Thomas, 50, 56 _Demonology and Witchcraft, Letters on_, 45, 104, 138, 160, 178 DeQuincey, Thomas, 99 Derrick, John, 71, 150 _Description of the Regalia of Scotland_, 155 _Diable Boiteux, Le_, 74 _Dictionary of British and American Authors_, 56, 153, 172, 174 D'Israeli, Isaac, 20, 142 _Domestic Manners and Private Life of Sir Walter Scott_, 114, 175 _Don Juan_, 95 Donne, John, 62 _Don Quixote_, 33 _Doom of Devorgoil, The_, 46-7, 48, 160 Douce, Francis, 20 _Douglas_, 47, 51, 111 Douglas, David, 161, 168 _Douglas on Military Bridges_, Scott's review of, 163 Dowden, Prof. Edward, 91, 175 _Drama_, Essay on, 50, 52-9, 136, 154 _Drapier's Letters, The_, 69 Drayton, Michael, 62 Drelincourt's _Defence_, etc., 76-7 Dryden, John, 44, 59-65, 93, 112, 145 _Dryden's Works_, edited by Scott, 2, 5, 7, 36, 44-5, 50, 51, 52-8, 59-65, 66, 70, 73, 80, 126, 131, 136, 139, 145, 149 Dunbar, William, 44, 143-4 Dunlop, J.C., 73, 178 Dyce, Alexander, 55 Eberty, Felix, 2 Edgeworth, Maria, 75, 76, 97, 100, 101, 103, 173 _Edinburgh Annual Register, The_, 6, 26, 85, 91, 118, 141, 155, 165-7 _Edinburgh Review_, 4, 5, 18, 25, 26, 29, 31, 35, 36, 38, 40, 43, 44, 46, 61, 69, 82, 84, 91, 125, 128, 129, 134, 135, 162, 164, 178 _Edinburgh Weekly Journal, The_, 155, 156, 157, 167 Elliott, Hon. Fitzwilliam, 25 Ellis, George, 4, 20, 34, 35, 43, 44, 58, 60, 91, 113, 162 Ellis, James, Letters of Scott to, 171 _Emma_, Scott's review of, 100, 163 _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 37, 46, 52, 154 _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, 24, 28, 31, 174 _English Historical Review, The_, 68, 144, 148, 178 _English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century_, 97, 177 _English Minstrelsy_, 151 _Ephemera Critica_, 143-4, 175 _Evans's Old Ballads_, Scott's review of, 26, 163 _Eve of St. John, The_, 30, 147 _Evergreen, The_, 28 _Eyrbyggja Saga, The_, 42, 152 _Fables_, Dryden's, 44-5, 64 _Fair Maid of Perth, The_, 159 _Fair Maid of the Inn, The_, 50 _Family Legend, The_, 46 _Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott_, 5, 13, 14, 33, 37, 40, 47, 50, 62, 80, 84, 85, 87, 89, 96, 97, 103, 104, 108, 110, 114, 115, 116, 118, 120, 138, 143, 168 _Fatal Revenge, The_, Scott's review of, 163 _Faust_, 104 _Faustus_, 55 _Ferdinand, Count Fathom_, 74 Fergusson, Robert, 86 _Ferrex and Porrex_, 54 Ferrier, Susan, 100 Fielding, Henry, 73, 74, 75-6, 78-9, 110 _Field of Waterloo, The_, 121, 153 Fitzgerald, Percy, 49, 175 _Fleetwood_, Scott's review of, 162 Fletcher, John, 42, 50, 51, 52, 56 Fletcher, Phineas, 64 Ford, John, 50, 56 _Foreign Quarterly Review_, 57, 58, 105, 132, 133, 164 _Forester's Guide, The_, Scott's review of, 164 Forster, John, 85, 91, 98-9, 175 _Fortunes of Nigel, The_, 27, 47, 48, 49, 51, 77, 108, 110, 111, 118, 119, 128, 131, 157 Fouqué, Baron de la Motte, 105 _Fragmenta Regalia_, 55, 149 _Fragments of Voyages and Travel_, 172 France, Anatole, 127 Franck, Richard, 155 _Frankenstein_, 78, 89, 164, 178 _Fraser's Magazine_, 85, 106, 130, 138, 143, 146, 175, 178 Freeman, Edward, 126, 127, 175 Frere, John Hookham, 20, 35 Froissart, 36, 128, 162 Galt, John, 129, 164 _Gammer Gurton's Needle_, 54 Gates, Prof. L.E., 134, 135, 175 Gay, John, 128 _Gebir_, 98 _Gertrude of Wyoming_, Scott's review of, 82, 96, 163 Gibson, John, 170 Gifford, William, 50, 52, 83, 84, 134, 141 Gilfillan, George, 1 Gillies, R.P., 14, 85, 95, 106, 130, 143, 146, 171, 175 _Glenfinlas_, 30 Godwin, William, 9, 44, 99 _Godwin's Life of Chaucer_, Scott's review of, 9, 44, 84, 124, 162 Goethe, 54, 95, 104-5, 125, 147 _Goetz von Berlichingen_, 54, 147 Goldsmith, Oliver, 73, 75 Gosson, Stephen, 71 _Gourgaud's Narrative, Remarks on_, 164 Grammont, Count, 5, 152 _Gray Brother, The_, 30 Greene, Robert, 55, 71 Grimm, Jacob, 21 _Groat's-worth of Wit_, 71 _Group of Englishmen, A_, 87, 176 _Gulliver's Travels_, 70 _Guy Mannering_, 3, 6, 46, 50, 76, 117, 120, 121, 153, 167 _Gwynne, John, Military Memoirs of_, 157 _Hajji Baba in England_, Scott's review of, 164 _Halidon Hill_, 48, 156 _Hall of Justice, The_, 97 _Harold the Dauntless_, 121, 154 _Harper's Magazine_, 161 Hawkesworth, John, 65 Haydon, B.R., 99, 171 Hazlitt, William, 49, 51, 85, 99, 114, 135, 139, 141, 175 _Heart of Midlothian, The_, 3, 46, 154 _Heber, Richard, Letters to_, 10, 15-16, 49, 65, 85, 88, 97, 114, 129, 131, 132, 174 Hemans, Mrs. Felicia, 98 Henderson's edition of _The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, 22, 23, 24-5, 26, 28, 29, 148 Henry, Robert, 126 Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury, 150 Herbert, William, Scott's review of the Poems of, 18, 31, 41, 162 Herford, C.H., see _Age of Wordsworth_ _Highland Widow, The_, 120, 159 _Hind and the Panther, The_, 60 _History of Criticism_, Saintsbury's, 146, 177 _History of English Poetry_, Courthope's, 21, 175 _History of English Poetry_, Warton's, 19, 21, 34, 35 _History of John Bull_, 68 _History of Prose Fiction_, Dunlop's, 73, 178 _History of Queen Elizabeth's Favourites_, 5, 149 _History of Scotland_, Scott's, 127, 160 _History of Scotland_, Tytler's, Scott's review of, 45, 124, 164 _History of the Church of Scotland_, Defoe's, 77 _History of the Church of Scotland_, Sharpe's Kirkton's, Scott's review of, 163 _History of the Norman Conquest of England_, 126, 127, 175 _History of the Years 1814 and 1815_, 6, 166 _Hodgson, Captain, Memoirs of_, 148, 149 Hoffman, Scott's review of the Works of, 89, 105, 132, 164 Hogg, James, 26, 96, 114, 169, 171, 175 Home, Scott's review of the Life of, 15, 80, 82, 106, 164 Homer, 63, 71, 118, 131 Horace, 54, 84 _Hours of Idleness_, 93 _House of Aspen, The_, 167 _Hudibras_, 64 Hudson, W.H., 2, 175 Hughes, Mrs., 54, 168 Hume, David, 15 Hunt, Leigh, 99, 100, 135, 141, 176 Hutton, R.H., 1, 176 Hutchinson, H.G., 54, 168 _Iliad, The_, 63, 131 _Illustrations of Northern Antiquities_, 152 _Image of Ireland, The_, 71, 150 _Imitations of the Ancient Ballad_, Essay on, 19, 30, 41, 42, 88, 115, 160 _Indian Emperor, The_, 53 _Introductions, etc., to the Novels, Tales, and Romances, of the Author of Waverley_, 160 Irving, Washington, 15, 97, 101, 103-4, 117, 143, 171, 176 _Ivanhoe_, 6, 87, 108, 120, 126, 127, 128, 142, 155 _Jacobite Relics_, 26, 175 Jamieson, Robert, 42, 152, 154 Jeffrey, Francis, 4, 69, 83, 84, 93, 134-5 _Jests of George Peele_, 71 _Jonathan Wild_, 74 _John de Lancaster_, Scott's review of, 163 _Johnes's Froissart_, Scott's review of, 36, 162 Johnson, Samuel, 60, 61, 64, 68, 73, 74, 79-80, 102, 128, 135, 137, 161 Johnstone, Charles, 73 _Jolly Beggars, The_, 86 Jonson, Ben, 50, 51, 56, 118 _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_, 161 _Journal, Scott's_, 12, 38, 51, 56, 84, 100, 117, 122, 129, 161, 164 (see the footnotes for the many references not here indexed) _Judicial Reform_, Essay on, 141, 165 Keats, John, 11, 100 _Keepsake, The_, 167 _Kelly's Reminiscences_, Scott's review of, 46, 47, 58, 164 Kemble, Scott's review of the Life of, 46, 47, 58, 164 Kemble, J.M., 43 _Kenilworth_, 10, 51, 98, 155 _Kinmont Willie_, 24, 26, 31, 148 Kirk, Robert, 45, 153 _Kirkton's History, etc._, Scott's review of, 163 _Knickerbocker's History of New York_, 103 _Knickerbocker Magazine, The_, 102, 172, 178 Knight, Prof. William, see _Memorials of Coleorton_, and _Wordsworth_ _Knight's Tale, The_, 44 _Knighton, Sir William, Memoirs of_, 12, 171 Kölbing, E., 35, 36 _Kuzzilbash, The_, Scott's review of, 164 _Lady of the Lake, The_, 46, 97, 113, 118, 119, 151 _Lady Suffolk's Correspondence_, Scott's review of, 142, 164 _Laird's Jock, The_, 167 Laing, Malcolm, 40, 176 Lamb, Charles, 20, 51, 99, 100, 135 _Landor_, Forster's _Life of_, 85, 91, 98-9, 175 _Landscape Gardening_, see _Planter's Guide_ Lane-Poole, Stanley, 67, 177 Lang, Andrew, _Border Edition of the Waverley Novels_, 51, 89, 108, 158, 176 _Life of Lockhart_, 52, 84, 99, 100, 158, 168 _Life of Scott_, 87, 100, 126, 127, 176 _Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies_, 153 Langhorne, John, 98 _Lay of the Last Minstrel, The_, 4, 18, 31, 87, 110, 148 _Lays of the Lindsays_, 157 Lee, Sidney, 150 Lee, William, 77 Legaré, H.S., 94, 176 _Legend of Montrose, A_, 51, 155 Lennox, Charlotte, 151 _Lenore_, 31, 147 Le Sage, 73, 74 _Letter from Dr. Tripe to Nestor Ironside_, 67 _Letters of Malachi Malagrowther on the Currency_, 59, 69, 116, 140, 157 _Letters of Sir Walter Scott_, 168-173, see also _Familiar Letters_, Hutchinson, Polwhele, and Stuart, Lady Louisa _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_, 45, 104, 160, 178 _Letters to Richard Heber, etc._, 10, 15-16, 49, 65, 85, 88, 97, 114, 129, 131, 132, 174 _Letting of Humour's Blood in the Head Vaine, The_, 153 _Levett, Robert, Verses on the Death of_, 80 Lewis, Matthew, 30, 97-8, 147 Leyden, John, 25, 30, 166 _Liberal Movement in English Literature, The_, 141, 175 _Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, The_, 7, 12, 78, 102, 124-5, 127, 140, 158, 170 _Life on the Mississippi_, 142, 174 _Life of Sir Walter Scott, The_, see Cunningham, Gilfillan, Hudson, Hutton, Lang, Lockhart, Mackenzie, and Saintsbury _Littérature Française au Moyen Age, La_, 38, 177 _Little French Lawyer, The_, 50 _Lives of the Novelists_, 6, 7, 15, 72-9, 128, 131, 156, 178 _Lives of the Poets_, 74 _Living Poets of Great Britain_, Article on, 118, 165 _Livre de Mon Ami, Le_, 127, 175 Lockhart, John Gibson, 6, 22, 25, 27, 29, 52, 83, 84, 85, 98, 99, 112, 117, 158, 160, 168, 169 _Lockhart's Life of Scott_, 1, 11, 12, 13, 96, 98, 101, 102-3, 112, 148, 149, 152, 153, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 172, 173, 174, 178 (see the footnotes for the many references not here indexed) Lodge, Edmund, 132, 172 _London_, 79 _Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries_, 99-100, 176 _Lord of the Isles, The_, 120, 153 Lounsbury, Prof. T.R., 14, 102, 176 _Love_, 87 Lyly, John, 61 Macaulay, T.B., 144 _Macduff's Cross_, 156 Mackenzie, Colin, 30 Mackenzie, Henry, 17, 73, 75, 100, see also Home, John Mackenzie, R. Shelton, 1, 52, 123, 139, 171 _Macmillan's Magazine_, 51, 142, 178 McNeill, G.P., 35 Macpherson, James, 40, 41, 176 _Madoc_, 91 _Magnalia_, 104 Maigron, Louis, 105, 176 _Malachi Malagrowther, Letters of_, 59, 69, 116, 140, 157 Malone, Edmund, 60, 61 Malory, 37 _Manfred_, 50, 51 Mark Twain, 142, 174 Marlowe, Christopher, 55 _Marmion_, 5, 6, 31, 90, 93, 97, 110, 113, 115, 145, 148 Marston, John, 50 _Masque of Owls, The_, 51 Massinger, Philip, 56 Masson, David, 3, 145, 176 Mather, Cotton, 104 Matthews, Prof. Brander, 76, 176 Maturin, C.R., 138, 163, 164 _Mediaeval Stage, The_, 21, 174 _Memoirs of a Literary Veteran_, 14, 171 _Memoirs of Captain Carleton_, 68, 144, 148-9, 178 _Memoirs of Captain Hodgson_, 148, 149 _Memoirs of Robert Carey_, 149, 151 _Memoirs of the Court of Charles II._, 5, 152 _Memoirs of the Insurrection in 1715_, 159 _Memoirs of the Duke of Sully_, 151 _Memoirs of the Marchioness de la Rochejaquelin_, 159 _Memoirs of the Reign of King Charles I._, 5, 152 _Memorials of Coleorton_, 169 _Memorials of George Bannatyne_, 44, 160 _Memorials of His Time_, Cockburn's, 15, 175 _Memorials of James Hogg_, 171 _Memorials of the Haliburtons_, 155 _Memorie of the Somervilles_, 154 _Merry Devil of Edmonton, The_, 50 Meteyard, Eliza, 87, 176 _Mezeray's History of France_, 80 Mickle, W.J., 98 Middleton, Thomas, 50, 56 _Mid-Eighteenth Century, The_, 74, 176 Millar, J.H., 74, 176 _Military Bridges_, Scott's review of, 163 _Military Memoirs of the Great Civil War_, 5, 157 Milton, 40, 62, 65, 88, 91, 92, 95, 104, 143 Minot, Laurence, 43 _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, 3, 4, 7, 17-32, 33, 36, 45, 80, 147-8, 160, 178 _Mirror for Magistrates, The_, 55 _Miscellaneous Prose Works_, Scott's, 7, 26, 73, 149, 151, 154, 156, 159, 160, 162, 163, 164, 166, 167 _Miseries of Human Life_, Scott's review of, 162 _Modern British Drama, The_, 52, 152 _Modern Painters_, 10, 129, 177 Molière, 53, 57, 58, 133, 164 _Monastery, The_, 88, 105, 116, 155 _Monk, The_, 98 Moore, Thomas, 96, 97, 166, 176 _Murray, John, Memoir and Correspondence of_, 83, 84, 93, 105, 141, 142, 163, 168, 169 _My Aunt Margaret's Mirror_, 131, 167 Myers, F.W.H., 130, 176 _Mysterious Mother, The_, 50 _Napoleon_, Scott's _Life of_, 7, 12, 78, 102, 124-5, 127, 140, 158, 170 Nash, Thomas, 59 Naunton, Sir Robert, 149 _Neidpath Castle_, Wordsworth's sonnet on, 87 _New History of the English Stage_, 49, 175 Newman, J.H., 142, 176 _New Practice of Cookery, The_, Scott's review of, 162 _New Test of the Church of England's Loyalty, A_, 71 Nichol, John, 95, 176 Nichols, John, 65 _Nineteenth Century, The_, 77, 172, 178 _Norman Conquest of England, The_, 126, 127, 175 _Northern Antiquities_, 42, 152 _Northern Memoirs_, 155 _Notices concerning the Scottish Gypsies_, 167 _Novelists' Library, The_, 6, 7, 72-79, 156 _Ode on Scottish Music_, 30 _Oedipe_, 53 _Old Mortality_, 36, 62, 77, 89, 109, 128, 154 Oliphant, Mrs., 169 _Omen, The_, Scott's review of, 164 _Opus Magnum, The_, 7, 108, 160 _Original Memoirs Written during the Great Civil War_, 4, 148 Ossian, 40-41, 162, 176 Otway, Thomas, 50, 57, 58 _Paradise Lost_, 95 _Palamon and Arcite_, 64 Palgrave, Francis, 13, 40, 177 _Papers relative to the Regalia of Scotland_, 160 Paris, Gaston, 38, 177 Parnell, Col., the Hon. Arthur, 68, 144, 148, 178 Parnell, Thomas, 80 _Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk_, 6, 88, 125, 140, 154 Peele, George, 55 _Penni Worth of Wit, A_, 148 Pepys, Samuel, 65, 142, 164 Percy, Thomas, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 28, 32, 34, 37, 38, 177 _Periodical Criticism_, Article on, 165 Petrarch, 33 _Peveril of the Peak_, 44, 105, 157 Pierce, E.L., 177 _Pilot, The_, 101 _Pioneers, The_, 14 _Pinner of Wakefield, The_, 59 _Pirate, The_, 3, 117, 125-6, 155 _Pitcairn's Ancient Criminal Trials_, Scott's review of, 46, 143, 165 _Planter's Guide, The_, Scott's review of, 164 _Planting Waste Lands_, Scott's review of, 164 _Plays on the Passions_, 50 Poe, Edgar Allan, 109, 110 _Poems, with Prefaces by the Author_, 160 Polwhele, R., Letters of Scott to, 132, 148, 170 _Poor Richard's Almanac_, 104 Pope, Alexander, 79, 81, 93, 97, 106, 113 _Popular Poetry, Remarks on_, 19, 22, 30, 34, 160 _Portraits of Illustrious Personages_, 132, 172 _Prairie, The_, 101 Prior, Matthew, 80 _Proceedings in the Court-martial, etc._, 159 _Provincial Antiquities_, 6, 56, 59, 155 Pulci, 33 _Quarterly Review_, 2, 5-6, 20, 22, 26, 45, 46, 55, 73, 77, 78, 82, 83, 84, 94, 96, 99, 100, 109, 112, 113, 114, 124, 129, 140, 143, 163, 164, 165, 168, 178 _Queenhoo Hall_, 5, 128, 149 _Quentin Durward_, 88, 104, 122, 127, 157 Radcliffe, Mrs. Anne, 73, 75, 76, 131 _Rambler, The_, 80, 156 Ramsay, Allan, 28, 86 _Recollections of Sir Walter Scott_, R.P. Gillies', 106, 130, 143, 146, 175 _Redgauntlet_, 3, 89, 157 _Red Rover, The_, 101 Reeve, Clara, 73, 76, 78 _Religio Laici_, 64 _Religious Discourses by a Layman_, 159 _Reliquiae Trottosienses_, 161 _Reliques of Burns_, Scott's review of, 22, 86, 163 _Remarks on Gen. Gourgaud's Narrative_, 164 _Remarks on Popular Poetry_, 19, 22, 30, 34, 160 _Remarks on the Death of Lord Byron_, 93, 95 _Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott_, John Gibson's, 170 _Revolutions of Naples_, Article on, 164 Richardson, Samuel, 73, 74-5, 77, 78 Ritson, Joseph, 19, 20, 21, 23, 32, 34, 37, 38, 39, 45, 162, 164 Robert of Brunne, 34 Robertson, William, 15 Robinson, Crabbe, 87 _Rob Roy_, 3, 76, 154 Rogers, Samuel, 151 _Rokeby_, 108, 111, 115, 116, 152 _Romance_, Essay on, 34, 37, 38-9, 42, 46, 146, 154 _Roman Historique à l'�poque Romantique, Le_, 105, 176 Roscommon, Earl of, 136 Rose, W.S., 37, 92, 162 Rowlands, Samuel, 153 Rowley, 43, 50 Ruskin, John, 10, 129, 172, 177 Sackville, Thomas, 54-5 _Sadler, Sir Ralph, State Papers and Letters of_, 149 _Saint Ronan's Well_, 51, 64, 88, 100, 108, 157 Saintsbury, Prof. George, 2, 51, 53, 57, 60, 61, 63, 142, 146, 177, 178 _Sale-Room, The_, 166, 167 _Salmonia_, Scott's review of, 164 Schlegel, 53 _School of Abuse, The_, 71 Scott, Temple, 67, 177 Scudéri, 53, 76 _Secret Commonwealth, The_, 45, 153 _Secret History of One Year, The_, 71 _Secret History of the Court of James I._, 5, 55, 152 Severn, Joseph, 100 Seward, Anne, 30, 85, 89, 91, 151 Shadwell, Thomas, 51, 57 Shakspere, 49, 50, 51, 52, 55-6, 57, 58, 59, 62, 65, 86, 95, 97, 157-8 Sharpe, C.K., 27, 28, 30, 31, 66, 81, 97, 114, 118, 148, 163, 169 Shelley, Mrs. Mary, 78, 163 Shelley, P.B., 11, 89, 91, 106, 175 Sheridan, Thomas, 65 Shirley, James, 50, 56 _Short Account of Successful Exertions, etc._, 173 _Sibbald's Chronicle_, Scott's review of, 46, 162 _Sir Eustace Grey_, 97 _Sir John Oldcastle_, 59 _Sir Tristrem_, 4, 34-6, 39, 42, 43, 56, 148, 178 _Sketch Book, The_, 104 _Sketch of Lord Kinneder_, 157 _Slingsby, Sir H., Life of_, 148 Smith, Adam, 15 Smith, Charlotte, 73 Smollett, Tobias, 73, 74, 156 _Somers Tracts, The_, 4, 6, 60, 63, 70-72, 126, 150 Somerville, Lord, 154 Southerne, Thomas, 50 Southey, Robert, 4, 20, 37, 46, 49, 82, 87, 89, 90, 91-2, 93, 96, 98, 99, 106, 110, 111, 118, 124, 143, 151, 162, 163, 165, 169, 170, 177 _Spae-Wife, The_, 129 _Specimens of Early English Romances_, Scott's review of, 125, 162 _Specimens of English Dramatic Poets_, 20, 51, 99 _Specimens of the Early English Poets_, Scott's review of, 43, 44, 162 Spenser, 33, 62, 64 Staël, Mme. de, 140 Stanhope, Philip, Earl, 144 Steele, Sir Richard, 67, 120 Stephen, Sir Leslie, 65, 68, 97, 177 Sterne, Laurence, 73, 75, 103, 156 _Story of Rimini, The_, 99 Strutt, Joseph, 5, 126, 149 _Stuart, Lady Louisa, Letters of_, 10, 83, 127, 128, 169 _Studies in the Evolution of English Criticism_, 137, 177 Suckling, Sir John, 51, 59 _Sumner, Charles, Memoirs and Letters of_, 102, 177 _Supernatural in Fictitious Composition, The_, 164 _Surgeon's Daughter, The_, 159 Surtees, Robert, 20, 27, 30, 161 Swift, Deane, 65 Swift, Jonathan, 65-70, 103, 148-9, 177 _Swift's Works_, edited by Scott, 6, 7, 65-70, 73, 79, 126, 139, 153, 178 Taine, H.A., 125, 177 _Tales of a Grandfather_, 7, 123, 127, 141, 159, 160 _Tales of My Landlord_, 77, 109, 111-12, 128, 132, 154, 155, 161, 163, 167 _Tales of the Crusaders_, 98, 124, 157 _Talisman, The_, 157 _Tapestried Chamber, The_, 85, 167 Taylor, William, 31, 170 _Tender Husband, The_, 120 Terry, Daniel, 46, 49 Thackeray, W.M., 80, 123 _Thalaba_, 91, 135 Thomas the Rhymer, 29, 30, 34-6, 148 Thorkelin, 42 _Thornton's Sporting Tour_, Scott's review of, 162 _Three Studies in Literature_, 134, 135, 175 Ticknor, George, 15, 56, 103, 144, 153, 177 Tieck, 10 Tierry, 127 _Todd's Spenser_, Scott's review of, 61, 62, 84 _Tom Jones_, 75 _Traditions and Recollections, etc._, 170 Tressan, 33, 34 _Trial of Duncan Terig, The_, 161, _Tristram Shandy_, 75, 156 _Trivial Poems and Triolets_, 155 _Troilus and Criseyde_, 45 _True-born Englishman, The_, 71 _Trustworthiness of Border Ballads, The_, 25, 178 Turner, Sharon, 42, 126 _Two Bannatyne Garlands_, 161 _Two Drovers, The_, 159 _Tytler's History of Scotland_, Scott's review of, 45, 124, 164 _Varied Types_, 11, 174 _Vanity of Human Wishes, The_, 79 _Venis and Adonis_, 58 _Vicar of Wakefield, The_, 75 _Virgin Queen, The_, 51 _Visionary, The_, 155 _Vision of Don Roderick, The_, 152, 165 Voltaire, 78, 105 Waldron, Francis, 51 _Wallenstein_, 51, 88 Waller, Edmund, 64 Walpole, Horace, 71, 72, 73, 76, 150, 163 Walpole, Robert, 71 Walton, Isaac, 64-5 _War Song of the Royal Edinburgh Light Dragoons_, 30 Warton, Joseph, 60 Warton, Thomas, 19, 21, 34, 35 Warter, J.W., 124, 177 Warwick, Sir Philip, 152 _Waverley_, 3, 6, 36, 85, 100, 120, 122, 123, 125, 149, 153, 163 Weber, Henry, 42, 52, 152 Webster, John, 50, 55, 56 White, Hon. Andrew, D., 127, 177 _William and Helen_, 147 Wilson, John, 50, 83 _Women_, Scott's review of, 164 _Women Pleased_, 50 _Woodstock_, 44, 51, 141, 157, 170 Wordsworth, William, 85, 87, 89-91, 92, 93, 97, 98, 106, 130, 143, 169, 172, 176 Wylie, L.J., 137, 177 _Yarrow Revisited_, 90 [Footnote 1: Mr. Hutton's _Life of Scott_, in the English Men of Letters series, contains no chapter nor any extended passage on Scott's critical and scholarly work, though there is a chapter on "Scott's Morality and Religion," and one on "Scott as a Politician." This, like the other short biographies of Scott, is professedly a compilation, so far as its facts are concerned, from Lockhart's book. The Lives of Scott by Gilfillan and by Mackenzie, published about the time of the Scott centenary in 1871, are longer than Hutton's, but contain no more extended references to the critical writings. Mackenzie's book out of nearly five hundred pages gives only one to a discussion of the edition of Dryden, and half a page to an account of the establishment of the _Quarterly Review_. Gilfillan characterizes the critical work in almost as short a space, but with a good deal of judgment. The German biography of Scott contemporary with these, by Dr. Felix Eberty, is concerned with the man rather than his works. Of later Lives of Scott, Prof. Saintsbury's gives, in proportion to its length, more space than any other to Scott's critical work, but the book has only a hundred and fifty-five pages in all. Another recent biographer, Mr. W.H. Hudson, says of Scott's editorial and critical work, "these exertions, though they call for passing record, occupy a minor place in his story"; and he gives them only "passing record." Mr. Andrew Lang's still more recent and briefer _Sir Walter Scott_ devotes only a few lines here and there to comment on Scott as a critic, and contains hardly even a reference to the little-known volumes that he edited.] [Footnote 2: Ten of Scott's twenty-seven novels (counting the first series of _Chronicles of the Canongate_ as one) have scenes laid in the eighteenth century. They are as follows, arranged approximately in the order of their periods: _The Bride of Lammermoor_, _The Pirate_, _The Black Dwarf_, _Rob Roy_, _The Heart of Midlothian_, _Waverley_, _Guy Mannering_, _Redgauntlet_, _Chronicles of the Canongate (First series)_, _The Antiquary_. The long poems all found their setting in earlier periods.] [Footnote 3: _British Novelists and their Styles_, pp. 167-8.] [Footnote 4: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. II, p. 9.] [Footnote 5: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 194.] [Footnote 6: See particularly _Paul's Letters; Provincial Antiquities_; and the Histories of the years 1814 and 1815, each a respectable volume, written for the _Edinburgh Annual Register_.] [Footnote 7: Ruskin's remark that "The excellence of Scott's work is precisely in proportion to the degree in which it is sketched from present nature," should not necessarily lead on to the condemnation which follows: "He does not see how anything is to be got out of the past but confusion, old iron on drawing-room chairs, and serious inconvenience to Dr. Heavysterne." (_Modern Painters_, Part IV, ch. 16, § 32.)] [Footnote 8: _Letters to Richard Heber_, etc. (by J.L. Adolphus), pp. 136-137.] [Footnote 9: Mr. Herford distinguishes two lines of romantic sentiment--"the one pursuing the image of the past as a refuge from reality, the other as a portion of it: the mediaevalism of Tieck and the mediaevalism of Scott." _The Age of Wordsworth_, Introduction, p. xxiv, note.] [Footnote 10: _Letters of Lady Louisa Stuart_, p. 249.] [Footnote 11: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 333; _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 81. The edition of Lockhart's _Life of Scott_ to which reference is made throughout this study is that in five volumes, published by Macmillan & Co. in the "Library of English Classics."] [Footnote 12: Chesterton, _Varied Types_, pp. 161-2.] [Footnote 13: The fact that Scott was a Clerk of the Court of Sessions is remembered less frequently than the fact that he had business complications. But this employment of his, which could be undertaken only by a lawyer, occupied a large proportion of his time during twenty-four years. He once wrote, "I cannot work well after I have had four or five hours of the court, for though the business is trifling, yet it requires constant attention, which is at length exhausting." (_Constable's Correspondence_, Vol. III, p. 195.) Again he wrote, "I saw it reported that Joseph Hume said I composed novels at the clerk's table; but Joseph Hume said what neither was nor could be correct, as any one who either knew what belonged to composing novels, or acting as clerk to a court of justice, would easily have discovered." (_Memoirs of Sir William Knighton_, p. 252.)] [Footnote 14: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 60; _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, p. 390.] [Footnote 15: See the Memoir prefixed to the Globe Edition of Scott's poems.] [Footnote 16: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 217.] [Footnote 17: _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 447.] [Footnote 18: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 122.] [Footnote 19: Cooper measured his own success by the same test. At the conclusion of the Letter to the Publisher with which _The Pioneers_ originally opened he said he should look to his publisher for "the only true account of the reception of his book." (Lounsbury's _Life of Cooper_, pp. 43-4.)] [Footnote 20: _Napoleon_, Vol. I, ch. 2.] [Footnote 21: "He fixed his attention on his employments without the slightest consideration for his own feelings of whatever kind, either in regard to state of health or domestic sorrows." (_Memoirs of a Literary Veteran_, by R.P. Gillies, Vol. III, p. 141.)] [Footnote 22: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. II, p. 365.] [Footnote 23: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 112.] [Footnote 24: _Journal_, Vol. 1, p. 303; _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 68.] [Footnote 25: _Letters to Heber_, p. 69.] [Footnote 26: Irving's _Abbotsford_.] [Footnote 27: _Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor_, Vol. I, p. 282. See also Scott's review of the _Life of Home_; and _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 304.] [Footnote 28: _Cockburn's Memorials_, p. 181.] [Footnote 29: _Ticknor_, Vol. I, p. 280.] [Footnote 30: _Letters to Heber_, p. 63; _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 496.] [Footnote 31: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 177.] [Footnote 32: Review of _Poems of William Herbert_, _Edinburgh Review_, October, 1806.] [Footnote 33: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, pp. 275-6.] [Footnote 34: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 333.] [Footnote 35: In 1830.] [Footnote 36: Ritson's principal works were as follows: _Select Collection of English Songs_ (1783); _Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry from Authentic Manuscripts and Old Printed Copies_ (1791); _Ancient Songs from the Time of Henry III. to the Revolution_ (1792); _Scottish Songs with the Genuine Music_ (1794); _Poems by Laurence Minot_ (1795); _Robin Hood Poems_ (1795); _Ancient English Metrical Romances_ (1802).] [Footnote 37: Ellis published his _Specimens of the Early English Poets_ in 1790, and it was reissued with the addition of the Introduction in 1801 and 1803. He edited also Way's translations of the Fabliaux (1796), and _Specimens of Early English Romances in Metre_ (1805).] [Footnote 38: Review of Dunlop's _History of Fiction_, July, 1815.] [Footnote 39: The _Magnum Opus_ of Robert Surtees was his _History of Durham_, published 1816-1840.] [Footnote 40: Douce published _Illustrations of Shakespeare_ in 1807. Later he edited _Arnold's Chronicle; Judicium, a Pageant_; and a metrical _Life of St. Robert_. The two latter, which appeared in 1822 and 1824, were done for the Roxburghe Club. In 1824 he also wrote some notes for Warton's _History of English Poetry_.] [Footnote 41: _Age of Wordsworth_, p. 39.] [Footnote 42: A number of volumes containing old ballads together with modern imitations had been published both before and after the appearance of Percy's _Reliques_, but Ritson's collections were the first, except Percy's, to treat the material in a scholarly way.] [Footnote 43: The discussion centered upon the social and literary position of minstrels. The first edition of the _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_, published in 1765, contained an essay on the History of Minstrelsy, and one on the Origin of the Metrical Romances, which, taken together, says Mr. Courthope, "may be said to furnish the first generalized theory of the nature of mediaeval poetry." (_History of English Poetry_, Vol. I, p. 426.) Percy considered the minstrels as the authors of the compositions which they sang to the harp, and as holding a dignified social position similar to that of the Anglo-Saxon scôp or the old Norse scald. This theory was vigorously attacked by Joseph Ritson in the preface of his _Select Collection of English Songs_ in 1783, and again in his _Ancient English Metrical Romances_ in 1802, and in his essay On the Ancient English Minstrels in Ancient Songs and Ballads (1792). Ritson contended that minstrels were musical performers of a low class, or even acrobats, and that they were not literary composers. Scott used his knowledge of ballads and romances and the customs depicted in them to reinforce his own decision that the truth lay somewhere between the two extremes. He pointed out that the word may have covered a wide variety of professional entertainers. A modern comment (by E.K. Chambers, in _The Mediaeval Stage_, Vol. I, p. 66) seems like an echo of Scott: "This general antithesis between the higher and lower minstrelsy may now, perhaps, be regarded as established. It was the neglect of it, surely, that led to that curious and barren logomachy between Percy and Ritson, in which neither of the disputants can be said to have had hold of more than a bare half of the truth."] [Footnote 44: Scott's theory as to the authorship of ballads is even now held by Mr. Courthope. At the end of his chapter on Minstrelsy, in _The History of English Poetry_, he thus sums up the matter: "All the evidence cited in this chapter shows that, so far from the ballad being a spontaneous product of popular imagination, it was a type of poem adapted by the professors of the declining art of minstrelsy, from the romances once in favour with the educated classes. Everything in the ballad--matter, form, composition--is the work of the minstrel; all that the people do is to remember and repeat what the minstrel has put together." This statement represents a position which is actively assailed by the adherents of the communal origin theory. Another critical idea which originated in Germany, and in which Scott had no interest, though he knew something about it, was the Wolffian hypothesis in regard to the Homeric poems. He once heard Coleridge expound the subject, but failed to join in the discussion. (_Journal_, Vol. II, p. 164; _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 193.) He said the theory could never be held by any _poet_. See a note by Lockhart on the essay on _Popular Poetry_. Henderson's edition of _Minstrelsy_, Vol. I, p. 3.] [Footnote 45: Review of Cromek's _Reliques of Burns_. _Quarterly Review_, February, 1809.] [Footnote 46: "No one but Burns ever succeeded in patching up old Scottish songs with any good effect," Scott wrote in his _Journal_ (Vol. II, p. 25). And in his review of Cromek's _Reliques of Burns_ he said on the same subject of Scottish songs: "Few, whether serious or humorous, past through his hands without receiving some of those magic touches which, without greatly altering the song, restored its original spirit, or gave it more than it had ever possessed." (_Quarterly_, February, 1809.)] [Footnote 47: _Remarks on Popular Poetry_, Henderson's edition of _Minstrelsy_, Vol. I, p. 46.] [Footnote 48: Henderson's edition of _Minstrelsy_, Vol. I, p. xix.] [Footnote 49: Henderson's edition of _Minstrelsy_, Vol. I, pp. 167-8.] [Footnote 50: The matter may be traced in Child's collection of ballads, or more easily in the latest edition of the _Minstrelsy_, edited by T.F. Henderson and published in four volumes in 1902. Mr. Henderson's views of ballad origins are quite in accord with Scott's own, but he notes the points at which Scott failed to follow any originals. There seems to be some reason to believe, however, though Mr. Henderson does not say so, that Scott wrote _Kinmont Willie_ without any originals at all, except the very similar situations in three or four other ballads. See the introduction by Professor Kittredge to the abridged edition of Child's ballads, edited by himself and Helen Child Sargent. It is unnecessary to give here any detailed account of Scott's procedure, as the matter has been thoroughly worked out by students of ballads. A few examples may be given as illustrations, however. In _The Dowie Dens of Yarrow_ (Henderson's edition, Vol. III, p. 173) 28 lines out of the 68 are noted by Mr. Henderson as either changed or added by Scott. Scott writes (beginning of fifth stanza), "As he gaed up the Tennies bank" for "As he gaed up yon high, high hill," and we find from a note of Lockhart's that _The Tennies_ is the name of a farm belonging to the Duke of Buccleuch. In the sixth stanza Scott changes the lines, "O ir ye come to drink the wine As we hae done before, O?" to "O come ye here to part your land, The bonnie forest thorough?" In the seventeenth stanza he changes, "A better rose will never spring Than him I've lost on Yarrow?" to "A fairer rose did never bloom Than now lies cropp'd on Yarrow." In _Jellon Grame_ (Vol. III, p. 203), Mr. Henderson notes changes in 15 different lines, and points out 2 whole stanzas, out of the 21, that are interpolated. In the _Gay Goss-hawk_ (Vol. III, p. 187) 6 stanzas out of 39 are noted as probably wholly or mainly by Scott, and 30 stanzas were changed by him. Sometimes his alterations occurred in every line of a stanza. It is probable that Scott changed _Jamie Telfer_ enough to make the Scotts take the place of prominence that had been held by the Elliotts in the original form of the story. See _The Trustworthiness of Border Ballads as Exemplified by 'Jamie Telfer i' the Fair Dodhead' and other Ballads_; by Lieut.-Col. the Hon. Fitzwilliam Elliott. Reviewed in _Edinburgh Review_, No. 418, p. 306 (October, 1906).] [Footnote 51: See the examples given in the preceding note. Most of the changes there spoken of were made without annotation.] [Footnote 52: This extraordinary young man was poet and scholar on his own account by 1800, though he was four years younger than Scott. His erudition in many fields was remarkable, and he was as enthusiastic as Scott himself about Scotch poetry, and was the chief assistant in gathering ballads for the _Minstrelsy_. He also collected the material for the essay on Fairies in the second volume, which was especially praised by the reviewer in the _Edinburgh Review_ (January, 1803). Leyden's chief fame was derived from his wonderfully varied activities in India, from 1803 to his early death in 1811. Any reader of Lockhart's _Life of Scott_ or of Scott's delightful little memoir, published first in the _Edinburgh Annual Register_ for 1811, and included in the _Miscellaneous Prose Works_, must feel that the uncouth young genius is a familiar acquaintance.] [Footnote 53: The Ettrick Shepherd, who, after reading the first two volumes of the _Minstrelsy_, sought an acquaintance with Scott, and offered assistance which was gladly made use of in the preparation of the third volume. Scott in his turn provided much of the material for Hogg's _Jacobite Relics_, published in 1819. The following note on one of the songs in that work adds to the reader's doubts concerning the accuracy of Scott's texts: "I have not altered a word from the manuscript, which is in the handwriting of an amanuensis of Mr. Scott's, the most incorrect transcriber, perhaps, that ever tried the business." (_Jacobite Relics_, Vol. I, p. 282. Note on song lxiii.)] [Footnote 54: Henderson's edition of the _Minstrelsy_, Vol. I, p. 284.] [Footnote 55: _Quarterly_, May, 1810.] [Footnote 56: _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 514.] [Footnote 57: Still more striking evidence that Scott lacked an infallible sense of the difference between genuine and spurious ballad material is afforded by his comments on Peter Buchan's collection, which is now considered particularly untrustworthy. He thought that with two or three exceptions the pieces in the book were genuine, and said: "I scarce know anything so easily discovered as the piecing and patching of an old ballad; the darns in a silk stocking are not more manifest." (_Correspondence of C.K. Sharpe_, Vol. II, p. 424.)] [Footnote 58: Scott's manuscript collections of ballads dropped partially out of sight after his death, and it was only about 1890 that their magnitude and importance became known. Professor Child and later editors have found them of very great service. (On Child's use of the Abbotsford materials, see the Advertisement to Part VIII of his collection, contained in Volume IV.) In 1880 appeared a reprint of the _Ballad Book_ of C.K. Sharpe, "with notes and ballads from the unpublished manuscripts of C.K. Sharpe and Sir Walter Scott," but the contributions from Scott's papers did not amount to much. Scott's materials were at the service of his friend for use in the original edition of the _Ballad Book_, published in 1823. See _Sharpe's Correspondence_, Vol. II, pp. 264, 271 and 325, for letters from Scott on this subject.] [Footnote 59: Note on _The Raid of the Reidswire_, in the _Minstrelsy_.] [Footnote 60: Henderson's edition of the _Minstrelsy_, Vol. III, p. 232.] [Footnote 61: Henderson's edition of the _Minstrelsy_, Vol. II, p. 57.] [Footnote 62: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 360.] [Footnote 63: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 332.] [Footnote 64: First edition of the _Minstrelsy_, Vol. II, pp. 156-7.] [Footnote 65: _Edinburgh Review_, January, 1803.] [Footnote 66: The _Minstrelsy_ is arranged in three parts: I., Historical Ballads; II., Romantic Ballads; III., Imitations of the Ballad. The first part is preceded by the Introductory Remarks on Popular Poetry, and by the historical introduction. The second part is preceded by the essay on The Fairies of Popular Superstition; and the third by the essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad. The poems by Scott given in this third part are as follows: _Thomas the Rhymer_ (parts 2 and 3), _Glenfinlas_, _The Eve of St. John_, _Cadyow Castle_, _The Gray Brother_, _War Song of the Royal Edinburgh Light Dragoons_. Besides these there are three poems by John Leyden (and he has also an _Ode on Scottish Music_ preceding the Romantic ballads), two by C.K. Sharpe, three by John Marriott, who was tutor to the children of the Duke of Buccleuch, and one each by Matthew Lewis, Anna Seward, Dr. Jamieson, Colin Mackenzie, J.B.S. Morritt, and an unnamed author. In the other parts of the book there are a few imitations, notably the three by Surtees--_Lord Ewine_, the _Death of Featherstonhaugh_, and _Barthram's Dirge_, which Scott supposed were old; and one or two like the _Flowers of the Forest_, which he noted as largely modern, or which he had found, after arranging his material, to be wholly modern. Nearly forty old ballads were published in the _Minstrelsy_ for the first time.] [Footnote 67: _Remarks on Popular Poetry_, conclusion.] [Footnote 68: Review of the Poems of William Herbert. _Edinburgh Review_, October, 1806.] [Footnote 69: Stanzas 10-12, and 31, are noted by Child as particularly suspicious. "Basnet," which occurs in stanza 10, is not a very common word in ballads. It is used in _The Lay_, Canto I., stanza 25, and in _Marmion_, Canto VI, st. 21.] [Footnote 70: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 221.] [Footnote 71: _Memoir of William Taylor_, Vol. I, pp. 98-99, and see _Sharpe's Correspondence_, Vol. I, pp. 146-7, for a letter to Sharpe on a similar point.] [Footnote 72: _Minstrelsy_, Introduction to _Lord Thomas and Fair Annie_.] [Footnote 73: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 101.] [Footnote 74: _Ibid._, Vol. I, pp. 35-6.] [Footnote 75: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 244. See also _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 408.] [Footnote 76: Sometime before 1821 (probably a good while before, but the date cannot be fixed), Scott began a translation of _Don Quixote_, and afterwards gave the work over to Lockhart, who completed it. See _Constable's Correspondence_, Vol. III, p. 161.] [Footnote 77: Louis-Elizabeth de la Vergne, Comte de Tressan, was born in 1705 and died in 1783. In early life he was sent to Rome on diplomatic business, and it is said that in the Vatican library he acquired his taste for the literature of chivalry. His chief works were _Amadis de Gaules_ (1779); _Roland furieux_ (translated from the Italian, 1780); _Corps d'extraits romans de chevalerie_ (1782). His translations were partly adaptations, and were far from being rendered with precision.] [Footnote 78: See particularly his article on Ellis's and Ritson's _Metrical Romances_ (_Edinburgh Review_, January, 1806), the essay on _Romance_, and _Remarks on Popular Poetry_ in the _Minstrelsy_.] [Footnote 79: _Edinburgh Review_, July, 1804. Ellis and Scott had had much correspondence on _Sir Tristrem_, and it was Ellis's queries that first led Scott into the detailed investigation which resulted in the separate publication of the work. He had intended to print it in the _Minstrelsy_ (_Lockhart_, Vol. I. p. 289). The letters are given in _Lockhart_, Vol. I.] [Footnote 80: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 381.] [Footnote 81: _Die nordische und die englische Version der Tristan-sage_--II. _Sir Tristrem_. Heilbronn, 1882. Mr. George P. McNeill's edition of _Sir Tristrem_ was printed for the Scottish Text Society, Edinburgh, 1886.] [Footnote 82: Kölbing thinks Scott probably hired a transcriber who knew nothing of Middle English--a usual method of procedure in the beginning of the nineteenth century. In later editions more errors were introduced by the carelessness of printers, until, after 1830, when the book was included in the complete editions of Scott's poems, the text was collated with the manuscript. But it was still far from correct. Kölbing enumerates about a hundred and thirty mistakes (see his Introduction, p. xvii). Of these I took twenty-one at random, and found that eight of them did not occur in the 1806 edition--in other words, the person who collated the text nearly thirty years after Scott or his hired transcriber had done it was far from infallible. A few illustrations may be given of mistakes that occur in both the 1806 and the 1833 editions: l. 117, _send_ is given for _sent_; l. 846, _telle_ for _tel_; l. 863, _How_ for _Hou_; l. 912, _mak_ for _make_; l. 1212, _leuedi_ for _leuedy_; l. 1580, _wende sche weren_ for _whende sche were_; l. 1334. _have_ for _han_; l. 1514, _as_ for _als_.] [Footnote 83: Review of Johnes's Translation of Froissart, _Edinburgh Review_, January, 1805.] [Footnote 84: Waverley, and Claverhouse in _Old Mortality_.] [Footnote 85: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, pp. 480 and 482. _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 147.] [Footnote 86: _Essay on Romance_.] [Footnote 87: See Gaston Paris, _La Littérature Française au Moyen Age_, 1ère partie, ch. IV.] [Footnote 88: Review of _Metrical Romances_, _Edinburgh Review_, January, 1806.] [Footnote 89: _Journal_, Vol. II, pp. 258-259.] [Footnote 90: _Essay on Romance_.] [Footnote 91: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 46.] [Footnote 92: Memoir in the Globe edition of Scott's poems.] [Footnote 93: Scott adopted the conclusions of Malcolm Laing, who edited Macpherson's poems and adduced parallel passages from "a mass of poetry, enough to serve any six gentle readers for their lifetime," as the reviewer says. The most of these parallels were found in "Homer, Virgil, and their two translators; Milton, Thomson, Young, Gray, Mason, Home, and the English Bible." Although he was convinced by the argument, Scott saw that the editor was in some cases misled by his own ingenuity.] [Footnote 94: Later, however (in the essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad, 1830), he said: "In their spirit and diction they nearly resemble fragments of poetry extant in Gaelic." By this time he was probably reverting to the earlier opinion which had made the more vivid impression.] [Footnote 95: For the _Northern Antiquities_, edited by Robert Jamieson and published in 1814, Scott wrote an abstract of the _Eyrbyggja Saga_, using, as one would conclude from his introductory words, the Latin version made by Thorkelin, who published the saga in 1787. The purpose of the publication required the historical and antiquarian rather than the literary point of view, and accordingly we find Scott's notes occupied with historical comment.] [Footnote 96: In 1804 Weber came to Edinburgh in a deplorable condition of poverty, and was employed and assisted in literary work by Scott during the following nine years. In 1813 he was seized with insanity, and challenged Scott, across the study table, to an immediate duel with pistols. Scott supported Weber during the remaining five years of his life in an insane hospital. He was much liked by the Scott family. Scott rated his learning very highly, and gave him valuable assistance in various literary projects. Weber's chief publications were: _Metrical Romances of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Sixteenth Centuries_, with Introduction, Notes and Glossary (1810); _Dramatic Works of John Ford_, with Introduction and Explanatory Notes (1811); _Works of Beaumont and Fletcher_, with Introduction and Explanatory Notes (1812): to this Scott's notes were the most valuable contribution; _Illustrations of Northern Antiquities_ (1814), with Jamieson and Scott.] [Footnote 97: See his essay on _Imitations of the Ancient Ballad_.] [Footnote 98: _Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, translated by the Vicar of Batheaston_. Conybeare had died two years before the publication of the book.] [Footnote 99: Review of Ellis's _Specimens_, _Edinburgh Review_, April, 1804.] [Footnote 100: Bletson and Richard Ganlesse.] [Footnote 101: But see the dictum quoted by Scott in a somewhat over-emphatic way from Ellis's _Specimens of the Early English Poets_, to the effect that Chaucer's "peculiar ornaments of style, consisting in an affectation of splendour, and especially of latinity," were perhaps his special contribution to the improvement of English poetry. (_Edinburgh Review_, April, 1804.) Scott said of Dunbar, "This darling of the Scottish muses has been justly raised to a level with Chaucer by every judge of poetry to whom his obsolete language has not rendered him unintelligible." (_Memoir of Bannatyne_, p. 14.) After naming the various qualities in which Dunbar was Chaucer's rival, he pronounces the Scottish poet inferior in the use of pathos. The relative position here assigned to the two poets seems to be rather an exaltation of Dunbar than a degradation of Chaucer.] [Footnote 102: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 408.] [Footnote 103: _Dryden_, Vol. XI, p. 245.] [Footnote 104: _Dryden_, Vol. XI, p. 396.] [Footnote 105: _Ibid._, Vol. VI, p. 243.] [Footnote 106: _Ibid._, Vol. XI, p. 338.] [Footnote 107: The discussion of popular superstitions given in the introduction to the _Minstrelsy_ and in the Essay on Fairies, which is prefixed to the ballad of _Young Tamlane_, suggests comparison with the _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_ which Scott wrote in the year before he died. He collected a remarkable library in regard to superstition, and thought at various times of making a book on the subject, but the project was pushed aside for other matters until 1831. The _Letters_ which he wrote then are full of pleasant anecdote and judicious comment, and though they lack the vigor of his earlier work they have remained fairly popular. An edition of Kirk's _Secret Commonwealth of Elves and Fairies_, published in 1815, has been attributed to Scott. (See below, the Bibliography of books edited by Scott.) Reviews of his which have not been mentioned in this chapter, but which naturally connect themselves with the subjects here discussed, are the following: _The Culloden Papers_--an account of the Highland clans, largely narrative (_Quarterly_, January, 1816); Ritson's _Annals of the Caledonians, Picts and Scots_--an article of more than forty pages, discussing the early history of Scotland and the historians who have written upon it (_Quarterly_, July, 1829); Tytler's _History of Scotland_--an article similar to that on Ritson's book (_Quarterly_, November, 1829); Pitcairn's _Ancient Criminal Trials_--a long article, which begins with an extended digression on booksellers and collectors and on the Roxburghe and Bannatyne clubs (_Quarterly_, February, 1831); Sibbald's _Chronicle of Scottish Poetry_--merely a series of notes on special points (_Edinburgh Review_, October, 1803); Southey's _Chronicle of the Cid_ (_Quarterly_, February, 1809). For the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ Scott wrote an essay on Chivalry, as well as the one on Romance to which reference has been made.] [Footnote 108: Review of _Kelly's Reminiscences and the Life of Kemble_, _Quarterly Review_, June, 1826.] [Footnote 109: _Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 97.] [Footnote 110: Terry had been educated as an architect, and his knowledge and taste were of assistance to Scott in connection with the building and furnishing of Abbotsford. After 1812 he played chiefly in London. In 1816 his version of _Guy Mannering_, the first of his adaptations from Scott, was presented. Before this he had taken the part of Roderick Dhu in two dramatic versions of _The Lady of the Lake_. In 1819 he was the first David Deans in his adaptation of _The Heart of Midlothian_. Six years later he became manager of the Adelphi theater, in association with F.H. Yates. At this time Scott became Terry's security for £1280, a sum which he was afterward obliged to pay with the addition of £500 for which the credit of James Ballantyne was pledged. When financial embarrassment caused Terry to retire from the management his mental and physical powers gave way, and he died of paralysis in 1829. Terry admired Scott so much that he learned to imitate his facial expression, his speech and his handwriting.] [Footnote 111: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 94.] [Footnote 112: The phrase, which was a favorite one of Scott's, is spoken not by Tony Lumpkin, but by one of his tavern companions. Scott's use of it is an indication of the way in which he was familiar with the drama. Very likely he never reread the play after his youth, but his strong memory doubtless retained a pretty definite impression of it.] [Footnote 113: _Review of the Life and Works of John Home_, _Quarterly_, June, 1827.] [Footnote 114: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. II, p. 143.] [Footnote 115: _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 427. It may be noted that this criticism does not show much dramatic insight.] [Footnote 116: _Lockhart_, Vol. III, pp. 445-6.] [Footnote 117: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 117; _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, p. 447.] [Footnote 118: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 94; _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, p. 419.] [Footnote 119: Advertisement to _Halidon Hill_. When the publisher Cadell closed a bargain with Scott in five minutes for _Halidon Hill_, giving him £1000, he wrote as follows to his partner: "My views were these: here is a commencement of a series of dramatic writings--let us begin by buying them out." (_Constable's Correspondence_, Vol. III, p. 217.)] [Footnote 120: "That well-written, but very didactic 'Old Play'," as Adolphus calls it. (_Letters to Heber_, p. 55.)] [Footnote 121: Introductory epistle to _Nigel_.] [Footnote 122: _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 414.] [Footnote 123: Fitzgerald's _New History of the English Stage_, Vol. II, p. 404.] [Footnote 124: _Dramatic Essays_, Hazlitt's _Works_, Vol. VIII, p. 422.] [Footnote 125: _Lockhart_, Vol. III. p. 176.] [Footnote 126: _Ibid._, Vol. III. p. 265.] [Footnote 127: _Ibid._, Vol. III. p. 332.] [Footnote 128: _Essay on the Drama_.] [Footnote 129: In 1808 he wrote to a friend: "We have Miss Baillie here at present, who is certainly the best dramatic writer whom Britain has produced since the days of Shakspeare and Massinger." (_Fam. Let._, Vol. I. p. 99.) But Wilson also put Joanna Baillie next to Shakspere, and quite seriously. The article in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, on Joanna Baillie says that when the first volume of _Plays on the Passions_ was published anonymously in 1798, Walter Scott was at first suspected of being the author. But as Scott had done nothing to give him a literary reputation in 1798, the assertion is incredible. It seems to be based on the following very inexact statement in _Chambers's Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen._ (Vol. V, Art. _Joanna Baillie_.) "Rich though the period was in poetry, this work made a great impression, and a new edition of it was soon required. The writer was sought for among the most gifted personages of the day, and the illustrious Scott, with others then equally appreciated, was suspected as the author."] [Footnote 130: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 380.] [Footnote 131: _Life of Dryden_, ch. I. In _Guy Mannering_ and _The Antiquary_, the first two novels in which Scott habitually used mottoes to head his chapters, most of the selections are from plays. Eighteen plays of Shakspere are represented by twenty-nine quotations. Other mottoes are from _The Merry Devil of Edmonton_, from Jonson, from Fletcher (_The Little French Lawyer_, _Women Pleased_, _The Fair Maid of the Inn_, _The Beggar's Bush_), from Brome, Dekker, Middleton and Rowley, Cartwright, Otway, Southerne, _The Beggar's Opera_, Walpole's _Mysterious Mother_, _The Critic_, _Chrononhotonthologos_, Joanna Baillie. For the latter part of _The Antiquary_ many of the mottoes were composed by Scott himself. _Kenilworth_ presents a similar list, with some variations: Jonson's _Masque of Owls_ was used, more than one play by Beaumont and Fletcher, Waldron's _Virgin Queen_, _Wallenstein_, and _Douglas_. In _St. Ronan's Well_ there is a larger proportion of non-dramatic mottoes, as in most of the later novels, but we find represented nine of Shakspere's plays and one of Beaumont and Fletcher's. _The Legend of Montrose_ (chapter XIV) has a motto from Suckling's _Brennoralt_. In _Anne of Geierstein_ ten of Shakspere's plays were drawn upon, and _Manfred_ was twice used. Scott made his chapters much longer in these later novels, and used fewer mottoes, but the evidence of the selections would seem to indicate that he had lost something of his early familiarity with dramatic literature.] [Footnote 132: Hazlitt's _Characters of Shakespeare's Plays_ appeared in 1817; his _Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Queen Elizabeth_ in 1821.] [Footnote 133: Scott first began to fabricate occasional mottoes for his chapters during the composition of _The Antiquary_ in 1816.] [Footnote 134: Saintsbury in _Macmillan's Magazine_, lxx: 323. Scott's style in many sages is strongly colored by the influence of Shakspere.] [Footnote 135: Introduction by Lang to _The Fortunes of Nigel_.] [Footnote 136: It is possible that among the various jobs of editing undertaken by Scott with a view to keeping the Ballantyne types busy, were certain collections of dramas. _Ancient British Drama_, in three volumes, and _Modern British Drama_, in five volumes, published in 1810 and 1811, are sometimes attributed to Scott in library catalogues, but on what authority it seems impossible to discover. There is almost no commentary in the _Ancient British Drama_, but the _Modern British Drama_ contains three brief introductions which I believe were written by Scott. They show a striking likeness to some parts of the _Essay on the Drama_ written several years later, and it is not probable that Scott took his criticism ready-made from another author. In the preface to the _Ancient British Drama_ we find this statement: "The present publication is intended to form, with _The British Drama_ and _Shakspeare_, a complete and uniform collection in ten volumes of the best English plays." The Shakspeare here referred to is doubtless that of which Constable the publisher afterwards spoke in his correspondence with Scott as "Ballantyne's Shakespeare," and Scott had no hand in the editorship. (_Constable's Correspondence_, Vol. III, p. 244.) It is true, however, as R.S. Mackenzie says in his _Life of Scott_, that Scott "had not only meditated, but partly executed an edition of Shakespeare." The work was suggested by Constable in 1822, was begun in 1823 or 1824, and three volumes of the proposed ten were printed by the time of Constable's financial crash in the beginning of 1826. The project was sometime afterwards abandoned, and the printed sheets, which apparently were not bound up, disappeared from view. The first volume was to be a life of Shakspere by Scott, and this was probably not begun at all. Of the commentary in the other volumes, Scott was to have the oversight but Lockhart was to do most of the work. It was not designed that the critical apparatus should to any great degree represent original ideas furnished by Lockhart or Scott, but the book was to be "a sensible Shakespeare, in which the useful and readable notes should be condensed and separated from the trash." (See the discussion of the matter in letters between Scott and his publisher given in the third volume of _Constables Correspondence_. See also Lang's _Life of Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 409, and Vol. II, p. 13, and Mackenzie's _Life of Scott_, pp. 475-6.) The Boston Public Library contains three volumes which are thought to be a unique copy of so much of the Scott-Lockhart Shakspere as was printed. (See below, the Bibliography of books edited by Scott.) Scott's notes on Beaumont and Fletcher, which he had wished in 1804 to offer to Gifford, were actually used by Weber in his _Beaumont and Fletcher_, published about 1810, an edition which was characterized by Scott as "too carelessly done to be reputable." (_Lockhart_, Vol. IV, p. 472.)] [Footnote 137: He seems to have connected heroic plays too closely with "the romances of Calprenède and Scudéri." See his introduction to _The Indian Emperor_, Dryden, Vol. II, pp. 317-20; also Vol. I, p. 56, and Vol. VI, p. 125. On his opinion in regard to the relation between novels and plays see below, pp. 75-6.] [Footnote 138: See his comment on Corneille's _Oedipe_, _Dryden_, Vol. VI, p. 125 and Mr. Saintsbury's note.] [Footnote 139: _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 446.] [Footnote 140: Hutchinson's _Letters of Scott_, p. 224.] [Footnote 141: That Scott admired Sackville greatly is evident from more than one comment. Of _Ferrex and Porrex_ he says, "In Sackville's part of the play, which comprehends the two last acts, there is some poetry worthy of the author of the sublime Induction to the Mirror of Magistrates." (_Dryden_, Vol. II, p. 135.) Elsewhere Scott calls Sackville "a beautiful poet." (_Fragmenta Regalia_, p. 277. _Secret History of the Court of James I._, Vol. I, p. 278, note.)] [Footnote 142: _Dryden_, Vol. II, p. 136.] [Footnote 143: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 229. See also Vol. III, p. 223.] [Footnote 144: _Ibid._, Vol. V, p. 322.] [Footnote 145: See, for example, _Hawthornden_, in _Provincial Antiquities_.] [Footnote 146: _Dryden_, Vol. XV, p. 337.] [Footnote 147: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 10.] [Footnote 148: Note on _Sir Tristrem_, Fytte II., stanza 56.] [Footnote 149: See Middleton's Plays in the Mermaid edition: Introduction, Vol. I, pp. viii-ix.] [Footnote 150: Ticknor, in Allibone's _Dictionary_, Vol. II, p. 1968.] [Footnote 151: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 234; _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 23.] [Footnote 152: See Scott's article on Molière, _Foreign Quarterly Review_, February, 1828.] [Footnote 153: _Essay on Drama_; _Dryden_, Vol. I, p. 101 ff., Vol. II, pp. 317-20, Vol. IV, p. 4.] [Footnote 154: _Dryden_, Vol. IV, p. 4.] [Footnote 155: Article on Molière, _Foreign Quarterly Review_, February, 1828.] [Footnote 156: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 431.] [Footnote 157: Review of _Kelly's Reminiscences and the Life of Kemble_, _Quarterly Review_, June, 1826.] [Footnote 158: _Ibid._] [Footnote 159: _Dryden_, Vol. VI, p. 128.] [Footnote 160: _In Provincial Antiquities_ (Borthwick Castle). Scott cites parallels from _Sir John Oldcastle, The Pinner of Wakefield_, and one of Nash's pamphlets, for a curious incident in Scottish history.] [Footnote 161: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 431. This search among seventeenth century pamphlets may have suggested to Scott the need of a new edition of _Somers' Tracts_. Apparently he arranged with the publishers in 1807 to undertake this task, but the first volume did not appear till 1809. (_Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 10, and see below, pp. 89-90, for an account of Scott's edition of the _Tracts_.) Some of his materials for the _Dryden_ were taken from this collection, but more from the Luttrell collection, to which he refers in the Advertisement.] [Footnote 162: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 433. Scott's _Dryden_ appeared in 1808, and with some slight changes in 1821; as reëdited by Mr. Saintsbury it was published in 1882-1893. It was the first complete and uniform edition of Dryden's works, and it remains the only one. The dramatic works had appeared in folio in 1701. They were edited by Congreve in 1717, and Scott used Congreve's text. The non-dramatic poems were also published in 1701 in folio. They appeared in more convenient forms in 1741, 1743, and 1760, but of these editions only the last was reasonably complete. In 1800 the Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works were edited by Malone, who added a Life of Dryden which has furnished a large part of the material used by biographers since his time. This biography was badly written, but with Johnson's brilliant essay it was the only Life of Dryden before Scott's that was worth considering. An edition of Dryden's poems, with notes by Joseph Warton and others, appeared in 1811, but seems to have been prepared before Scott's edition was published. The text of this is very incorrect. Since then the non-dramatic poems have been published several times. Mr. Christie said in his preface to the Globe edition: "Sir Walter Scott's is the last important edition of Dryden, as it is indeed still the only general collection of his works; and it is to be regretted that that distinguished man did not give as much pains to the purification of Dryden's text as he did to his excellent biography and to the notes which enrich the edition."] [Footnote 163: Editor's Preface.] [Footnote 164: _Dryden_, Vol. IX, p. 226.] [Footnote 165: _Ibid._, Vol. IX, p. 2.] [Footnote 166: In this connection Scott's review of Todd's edition of Spenser is interesting. He takes exception to the lack of an appearance of continuity in the biography, caused by the long quotations included in the body of the narrative; and censures the editor for not having used the history of Italian poetry in elucidating Spenser's work. (_Edinburgh Review_, October, 1805.)] [Footnote 167: Review of Todd's _Spenser_.] [Footnote 168: _Dryden_, Vol. I, p. 6.] [Footnote 169: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 229; and _Dryden_, Vol. I, p. 6.] [Footnote 170: _Dryden_, Vol. I, pp. 402-3.] [Footnote 171: _Dryden_, Vol. I, p. 403.] [Footnote 172: _Ibid._, p. 404. Mr. Saintsbury thinks that Scott's prefatory introductions to the plays are often "both meagre and depreciatory"; also that Scott's judgment on Dryden's letters is rather harsh, for him, and that after he had begun to write novels he would not have been so impatient of remarks on "turkeys, marrow-puddings, and bacon."] [Footnote 173: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 405.] [Footnote 174: _Ibid._, Vol. X, p. 307 ff.] [Footnote 175: _Ibid._, Vol. XIV, pp. 136 and 146.] [Footnote 176: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 405.] [Footnote 177: In order to give a more specific view of Scott's methods, two or three of the introductions to well-known poems may be briefly analysed. The introduction to _Absalom and Achitophel_ occupies 111/2 pages, of which about 21/2 are given to quotation from a tract which Scott thought furnished the argument to Dryden, and which was unnoticed by any former commentator. Scott's remarks follow this outline: Position of the poem in literature, and history of its composition; origin of the particular allegory as applied to modern politics; a parallel use of the allegory (with a quotation from _Somers' Tracts_ in illustrations); aptness of the allegory; merits of the satire--treatment of Monmouth and other main characters; changes in the second edition to mitigate the satire; characterization of the poem as having few flights of imagination but much correctness of taste as well as fire and spirit; other objections by Johnson refuted; success of the poem; history of the first publication and of the replies and congratulatory poems; editions, and Latin versions. The notes on this poem are historical and very full, but the introduction contains as much literary as historical comment. _Religio Laici_ is prefaced by 8 pages of introduction, in which are discussed the motive of the writing, the argument, the title, the purpose of the poem, and its reputation. Dryden's style in didactic poetry is compared with Cowper's, to the disadvantage of the later poet. The introduction to _The Hind and the Panther_ is 20 pages long, and discusses the history of the period as well as the argument of the poem, its style, the subject of fables in general, and the effects the poem produced. The notes on this poem are copious. As he discussed the _Fables_ in the _Life of Dryden_, Scott gave them no general introduction, and for each poem he wrote only a slight preface, telling something of the source and pointing out special beauties. His notes vary greatly in abundance. Those on _Palamon and Arcite_, _e.g._, are brief, explaining terms of chivalry and heraldry, but not giving literary or linguistic comment.] [Footnote 178: _Dryden_, Vol. XIII, p. 324.] [Footnote 179: _Ibid._, Vol. XII, p. 20.] [Footnote 180: _Ibid._, Vol. X, p. 213.] [Footnote 181: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 411.] [Footnote 182: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 98. See also _St. Ronan's Well_, Vol. I, p. 105, and various mottoes in the novels. The edition of the novels used for reference is that published in Edinburgh (1867) in 48 volumes.] [Footnote 183: _Dryden_, Vol. X, p. 26.] [Footnote 184: For example see _Anne of Geierstein_, Vol. II, p. 307.] [Footnote 185: _Letters to Heber_, p. 292.] [Footnote 186: The price offered for the _Swift_ was £1500. This must have been a rather rash speculation on the publisher's part, as there had been several editions of Swift's works published. The first appeared in twelve volumes in 1755, edited by Hawkesworth. Deane Swift, Hawkesworth, and others, added thirteen more volumes in the course of the next twenty-five years, and when the whole was completed it was reissued in three different sizes. In 1785 an edition in seventeen volumes was published, edited by Thomas Sheridan. In 1801 the edition by Nichols was published, and it reappeared in 1804 and in 1808. Hawkesworth and Thomas Sheridan supplied biographies which Leslie Stephen characterized by saying that Hawkesworth's gave no new material and that Sheridan's was "pompous and dull." (Preface to Leslie Stephen's _Life of Swift_.)] [Footnote 187: _Correspondence of C.K. Sharpe_, Vol. II, p. 178.] [Footnote 188: This correspondence consisted of 28 letters from Swift, and 16 "Vanessa."] [Footnote 189: A comparison of the index with the bibliography in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ and with Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole's _Notes for a Bibliography of Swift_ (_Bibliographer_, vi: 160-71) shows that Scott was usually right in his judgment on the main articles. But since Mr. Lane-Poole ends his list thus: "And numerous short poems, trifles, characters and short pieces," it is evident that one cannot carry the investigation far without undertaking to make a complete bibliography of Swift. Mr. Temple Scott says, in the Advertisement of his edition of Swift's Prose Works, begun in 1897, that since Sir Walter's edition of 1824 "there has been no serious attempt to grapple with the difficulties which then prevented and which still beset the attainment of a trustworthy and substantially complete text."] [Footnote 190: _Swift_, Vol. IV, p. 280. Two more of Scott's comments may be given, further to illustrate his method. "This piece [William Crowe's Address to her Majesty, _Swift_, Vol. XII, p. 265] and those which follow, were first extracted by the learned Dr. Barrett, of Trinity College, Dublin, from the Lanesborough and other manuscripts. I have retained them from internal evidence, as I have discarded some articles upon the same score." "The following poems [poems given as "ascribed to Swift," Vol. X, p. 434] are extracted from the manuscript of Lord Lanesborough, called the Whimsical Medley. They are here inserted in deference to the opinion of a most obliging correspondent, who thinks they are juvenile attempts of Swift. I own I cannot discover much internal evidence in support of the supposition."] [Footnote 191: Colonel Parnell, writing in the _English Historical Review_ on "Dean Swift and the Memoirs of Captain Carleton," has spoken of the biography as "this most partial, verbose, and inaccurate account of the dean's life and writings." He says also that in editing _Carleton's Memoirs_ Scott adopted, without investigation and in the face of evidence, Johnson's opinion that the memoirs were genuine; that Scott was mistaken about the date of the first edition and misquoted the title page; and that his "glowing account" of Lord Peterborough, in the introduction, was amplified (without acknowledgment) from a panegyric by Dr. Birch in "Houbraken's Heads." (_English Historical Review_, January, 1891; vi: 97. For a further reference to the article see below, p. 144.)] [Footnote 192: _Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 20.] [Footnote 193: September, 1816.] [Footnote 194: _Swift_ Vol. XVII, p. 4, note.] [Footnote 195: _Life of Swift_, conclusion.] [Footnote 196: _Swift_, Vol. XI, p. 12.] [Footnote 197: Vol. IX, p. 569. The tract had already been correctly assigned. A similar note on another tract indicates more careful research on the part of the editor. The paper is _A Secret History of One Year_, which had commonly been attributed to Robert Walpole. Scott says: "This tract in not to found in Mr. Coxe's list of Sir Robert Walpole's publications, nor in that given by his son, the Earl of Oxford, in the Royal and Noble Authors.... It does not seem at all probable that Walpole should at this crisis have thought it proper to advocate these principles." (Vol. XIII, p. 873.) The piece is now attributed to Defoe.] [Footnote 198: See above, p. 4.] [Footnote 199: _Horace Walpole_, in _Lives of the Novelists_.] [Footnote 200: _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 512.] [Footnote 201: _Quarterly_, September, 1826.] [Footnote 202: See his explanation, in the articles themselves.] [Footnote 203: _The Mid-Eighteenth Century_, by J.H. Millar, p. 143, note.] [Footnote 204: _Ibid._, p. 159. Scott compares Fielding and Smollett at some length in the _Life of Smollett_.] [Footnote 205: _Life of Le Sage_.] [Footnote 206: _Life of Richardson_.] [Footnote 207: _Life of Fielding_.] [Footnote 208: _Life of Goldsmith_. As we might expect, Scott speaks rather too favorably of Goldsmith's hack work in history and science.] [Footnote 209: _Life of Sterne_.] [Footnote 210: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 35.] [Footnote 211: See above, p. 53, note.] [Footnote 212: See also the Introductory epistle to _Ivanhoe_; and the Review of _Walpole's Letters_. "In attaining his contemporary triumph," says Mr. Brander Matthews, "Scott owed more to Horace Walpole than to Maria Edgeworth." _The Historical Novel_, p. 10.] [Footnote 213: Scott uses the word.] [Footnote 214: Mr. G.A. Aitken has given convincing evidence that the story was not invented by Defoe. Mr. Aitken also shows the falsity of Scott's statement that Drelincourt's book was in need of advertising, as William Lee, in his _Life of Defoe_, had previously done. (See _The Nineteenth Century_, xxxvii: 95. January, 1895; and also Aitken's edition of Defoe's _Romances and Narratives_, Vol. XV, Introduction.) A passage from Defoe's _History of the Church of Scotland_ is quoted in the review of _Tales of My Landlord_, by Scott, who says that it probably suggested one of the scenes in _Old Mortality_. Scott there speaks of Defoe's "liveliness of imagination," and says he "excelled all others in dramatizing a story, and presenting it as if in actual speech and action before the reader." (_Quarterly Review_, January, 1817.)] [Footnote 215: See also _The Fortunes of Nigel_, Vol. II, pp. 88-9.] [Footnote 216: _Life of Clara Reeve_.] [Footnote 217: Blackwood, March, 1818.] [Footnote 218: _Quarterly_, May, 1818.] [Footnote 219: See a reference to Voltaire and other French authors; _Napoleon_, Vol. I, ch. 2.] [Footnote 220: _Life of Richardson_.] [Footnote 221: We gather from Scott's article that he considered the following to be the chief "speculative errors" of Bage: he was an infidel; he misrepresented different classes of society, thinking the high tyrannical and the low virtuous and generous; his system of ethics was founded on philosophy instead of religion; he was inclined to minimize the importance of purity in women; he considered tax-gatherers extortioners, and soldiers, licensed murderers.] [Footnote 222: _Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 132.] [Footnote 223: Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 192. In his _George the Third_, Thackeray said: "Do you remember the verses--the sacred verses--which Johnson wrote on the death of his humble friend Levett?" (Biographical edition of Thackeray, Vol. VII, p. 671.)] [Footnote 224: _Life of Johnson_.] [Footnote 225: Introduction to _Chronicles of the Canongate_.] [Footnote 226: _Dryden_, Vol. XI, p. 81, note; Review of the _Life and Works of John Home_, _Quarterly_, June, 1827.] [Footnote 227: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. II, p. 44.] [Footnote 228: _Swift_, Vol. XVI, p. 275, note. On one of the last sad days before Sir Walter left Scotland for his Italian journey he quoted in full Prior's poem on Mezeray's History of France. (_Lockhart_, Vol. V, pp. 339-40.)] [Footnote 229: _Swift_, Vol. III, p. 36.] [Footnote 230: _Ibid._, Vol. XIII, p. 24.] [Footnote 231: _Correspondence of C.K. Sharpe_, Vol. II, p. 194.] [Footnote 232: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 67; _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, p. 401.] [Footnote 233: Allan Cunningham's _Life of Scott_, p. 96.] [Footnote 234: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 483.] [Footnote 235: See the satirical paragraph in his review of _Gertrude of Wyoming_, on the habits of reviewers in general. "We are perfectly aware," he says, "that, according to the modern canons of criticism, the Reviewer is expected to show his immense superiority to the author reviewed, and at the same time to relieve the tediousness of narration, by turning the epic, dramatic, moral story before him into quaint and lively burlesque." (_Quarterly_, May, 1809.) In his review of the _Life and Works of John Home_ he speaks of "the hackneyed rules of criticism, which, having crushed a hundred poets, will never, it may be prophesied, create, or assist in creating, a single one." (_Quarterly_, June, 1827.)] [Footnote 236: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 363.] [Footnote 237: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 501. For a further comparison of Scott and Jeffrey as critics see below, pp. 134-5.] [Footnote 238: _Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 204.] [Footnote 239: _Ibid._, Vol. V, p. 97.] [Footnote 240: _Journal_, Vol. II, p. 262] [Footnote 241: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 173] [Footnote 242: In general Scott admired Lockhart. "I have known the most able men of my time," he once wrote, "and I never met any one who had such ready command of his own mind, and possessed in a greater degree the power of making his talents available upon the shortest notice, and upon any subject." (_Life of Murray_, Vol. II, p. 222.) But in Lockhart's earlier days Scott said, "I am sometimes angry with him for an exuberant love of fun in his light writings, which he has caught, I think, from Wilson, a man of greater genius than himself perhaps, but who disputes with low adversaries, which I think a terrible error, and indulges in a sort of humour which exceeds the bounds of playing at ladies and gentlemen, a game to which I have been partial all my life." (_Letters of Lady Louisa Stuart_, p. 225.)] [Footnote 243: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. II, p. 400.] [Footnote 244: Lang's _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 406.] [Footnote 245: _Life of Murray_, Vol. I, pp. 146-7.] [Footnote 246: _Quarterly_, February, 1809.] [Footnote 247: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 327.] [Footnote 248: Scott wrote a poetical epitaph for the burial place of Miss Seward and her father. See _Edinburgh Annual Register_, Vol. II, pt. 2. In the introduction to _The Tapestried Chamber_, Scott said, "It was told to me many years ago by the late Miss Anna Seward, who, among other accomplishments that rendered her an amusing inmate in a country house, had that of recounting narratives of this sort with very considerable effect; much greater, indeed, than anyone would be apt to guess from the style of her written performances." It must be remembered that Miss Seward was one of the first persons of any literary note, outside of Edinburgh, to show an interest in Scott's work, and he committed himself to admiration of her poetry when he was still in a rather uncritical stage. In regard to his later feeling about her see _Recollections_, by R.P. Gillies, _Fraser's_, xiii: 692, January, 1836.] [Footnote 249: J.L. Adolphus, in an interesting passage in his _Letters to Heber on the Authorship of Waverley_, noted many of the references to contemporary poets. See pp. 53-4. See also Hazlitt's _Spirit of the Age_, art. _Sir Walter Scott_] [Footnote 250: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. II, p. 341. See also a similar anecdote in Forster's _Life of Landor_, Vol. II, p. 244.] [Footnote 251: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, pp. 116-17.] [Footnote 252: _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 132.] [Footnote 253: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 321.] [Footnote 254: Review of _Cromek's Reliques of Burns_, _Quarterly_, February, 1809.] [Footnote 255: _Ibid._] [Footnote 256: _Ibid._] [Footnote 257: Crabbe Robinson, in his diary (quoted by Knight in his edition of Wordsworth, Vol. X, p. 189), says that Coleridge and his friends "consider Scott as having stolen the verse" of _Christabel_. On this point see also a letter by Coleridge, given in Meteyard's _Group of Englishmen_, pp. 327-8. In 1807 Coleridge wrote to Southey: "I did not over-hugely admire the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' but saw no likeness whatever to the 'Christabel,' much less any improper resemblance." (_Letters of Coleridge_, ed. by E.H. Coleridge, Vol. II, p. 523.) Yet Mr. Lang seems to think that in this matter Scott "showed something of the deficient sense of _meum_ and _tuum_ which marked his freebooting ancestors." (_Sir Walter Scott_, p. 36.) Apparently Scott never dreamed that the matter could be looked at in this way. In Lockhart's _Scott_ (Vol. II, pp. 77-8) we find described an occasion on which the two men once met in London, when they were asked, with other poets who were present, to recite from their unpublished writings. Coleridge complied with the request, but Scott said he had nothing of his own and would repeat some stanzas he had seen in a newspaper. The poem was criticised adversely in spite of Scott's protests, till Coleridge lost patience and exclaimed, "Let Mr. Scott alone; I wrote the poem." Coleridge's lines: "The Knight's bones are dust And his good sword rust, His soul is with the saints, I trust," are probably much better known as they appear in _Ivanhoe_, incorrectly quoted, than in their proper form. Scott also added a note on Coleridge in this connection. (_Ivanhoe_, Chapter VIII.)] [Footnote 258: But apparently not in any earlier than _The Black Dwarf_, which was written in 1816, the year in which the poem was published. It was about 1803 that Scott heard _Christabel_ recited. See _Familiar Letters_, Vol. II, p. 221.] [Footnote 259: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 356.] [Footnote 260: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 315.] [Footnote 261: See _Letters to Heber_, p. 293; _On Imitations of the Ancient Ballad_; _Lockhart_, Vol. III, pp. 56 and 264; _Quentin Durward_, Vol. II, p. 394.] [Footnote 262: Note in _The Abbot_.] [Footnote 263: _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 223.] [Footnote 264: Note in _St. Ronan's Well_. See also the comment on _Wallenstein_ in _Paul's Letters_, Letter XV.] [Footnote 265: Review of _Childe Harold_, _Canto III_, _Quarterly_, October, 1816.] [Footnote 266: In 1818 Scott wrote a review of _Frankenstein_ in which it appears that he thought Shelley was the author. Shelley had sent the book with a note in which he said that it was the work of a friend and he had merely seen it through the press; and Scott took this for the conventional evasion so often resorted to by authors. (See Mr. Lang's note in his Introduction to the Waverley Novels, p. lxxxvi.) Scott praises the substance and style of the book, and advises the author to cultivate his poetical powers, in words which make it evident that he did not know Shelley as a poet, though _Alastor_ had appeared in 1816. Scott also praises _Frankenstein_ in his article on Hoffmann. In reading Scott's novels I have noted two reminiscences of the line, "One word is too often profaned." They are to be found in _Old Mortality_, Vol. II, p. 93, and in _Redgauntlet_, Vol. I, p. 224.] [Footnote 267: _Journal_, Vol. II, p. 179.] [Footnote 268: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 40.] [Footnote 269: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 97.] [Footnote 270: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 333] [Footnote 271: _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 190.] [Footnote 272: I quote from the letter as given in Knight's _Wordsworth_, Vol. II, p. 105. Prof. Knight says that Lockhart quotes the letter less exactly (Vol. I, p. 489.)] [Footnote 273: _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 428.] [Footnote 274: Even Byron admired Southey. He once wrote, "His prose is perfect. Of his poetry there are various opinions: there is, perhaps, too much of it for the present generation; posterity will probably select. He has _passages_ equal to anything." (Byron's _Letters and Journals_, ed. Prothero, Vol. II, p. 331.) Shelley also had a high opinion of Southey's work. (Dowden's _Life of Shelley_, Vol. I, p. 158, and pp. 471-2.) Landor liked _Madoc_ and _Thalaba_ so much that, when he found Southey hesitating to write more poems of a similar kind because they did not pay, he offered to bear the expense of the publication. Southey refused the assistance, but was stimulated by the kindness and considered Landor's encouragement responsible for his later work in poetry. (Forster's _Life of Landor_, Vol. I, pp. 209-214.)] [Footnote 275: _Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 307.] [Footnote 276: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 415.] [Footnote 277: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 477; see also _Edinburgh Annual Register_ for 1809, part 2, p. 588.] [Footnote 278: _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 197.] [Footnote 279: _Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 127.] [Footnote 280: In his youth Scott read Dante with other Italian authors, but he did not become well acquainted with him, and later even expressed dislike for his work. (See _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 408.) In 1825 he wrote to W.S. Rose, "I will subscribe for Dante with all pleasure, on condition you do not insist on my reading him." (_Fam. Let._, Vol. II, p. 356.)] [Footnote 281: It may be interesting to have Southey's comment on the same article. (See _Southey's Letters_, Vol. II, p. 307.) He says, "Bedford has seen the review which Scott has written of it, and which, from his account, though a very friendly one, is, like that of the 'Cid,' very superficial. He sees nothing but the naked story; the moral feeling which pervades it has escaped him. I do not know whether Bedford will be able to get a paragraph interpolated touching upon this, and showing that there is some difference between a work of high imagination and a story of mere amusement." Either Bedford was mistaken in saying that Scott had ignored the moral aspect of the poem, or else he succeeded in getting a passage interpolated, for the review is sufficiently definite on that point.] [Footnote 282: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 481.] [Footnote 283: _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 296.] [Footnote 284: _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 413.] [Footnote 285: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 112; _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, p. 429.] [Footnote 286: _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 391.] [Footnote 287: _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 211.] [Footnote 288: Introduction to _Marmion_; _Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 82.] [Footnote 289: _Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 508.] [Footnote 290: Byron did not altogether approve of Scott's poetry, but he felt its effectiveness. In his "Reply to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine," Byron wrote: "What have we got instead [of following Pope]? A deluge of flimsy and unintelligible romances, imitated from Scott and myself, who have both made the best of our bad materials and erroneous system."] [Footnote 291: Review of _Childe Harold_, _Canto III_, _Quarterly_, October, 1816.] [Footnote 292: _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 182.] [Footnote 293: It should be remembered also that Scott's first review of _Childe Harold_ appeared at a time when all England was condemning Byron for his treatment of Lady Byron, and that the article was thought by many to be altogether too lenient. Byron wrote to Murray expressing his pleasure in the review before he knew who was responsible for it, and some years later he wrote to Scott as follows: "To have been recorded by you in such a manner would have been a proud memorial at any time, but at such a time ... was something still higher to my self-esteem.... Had it been a common criticism, however eloquent or panegyrical, I should have felt pleased, undoubtedly, and grateful, but not to the extent which the extraordinary good-heartedness of the whole proceeding must induce in any mind capable of such sensations." (_Byron's Letters and Journals_, Vol. VI, p. 2.) See _Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 510, for quotations from Byron showing his admiration for Scott. An interesting contrast between the characters of the two poets is drawn by H.S. Legaré. (See his _Collected Writings_, Vol. II, p. 258.)] [Footnote 294: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 221] [Footnote 295: _Remarks on the Death of Lord Byron_.] [Footnote 296: _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 525] [Footnote 297: See Nichol's _Byron_ (English Men of Letters), p. 205; and Arnold's essay on Byron.] [Footnote 298: _Quarterly Review_, May, 1809.] [Footnote 299: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 341.] [Footnote 300: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 9.] [Footnote 301: _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 70.] [Footnote 302: _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 306.] [Footnote 303: Byron said, "Crabbe's the man, but he has got a coarse and impracticable subject." (Moore's _Life and Letters of Byron_, Vol. IV, pp. 63-4.) Leslie Stephen remarks that Crabbe "was admired by Byron in his rather wayward mood of Pope-worship, as the last representative of the legitimate school." (_English Literature and Society in the 18th Century_, p. 207.)] [Footnote 304: _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 197.] [Footnote 305: The reader will at once recall the ingenuous remark of Sophia Scott when she was asked, shortly after its appearance, how she liked _The Lady of the Lake_. She said, "Oh, I have not read it; Papa says there's nothing so bad for young people as reading bad poetry." (_Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 130. See also the _Life of Irving_, Vol. I, p. 444.)] [Footnote 306: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. II, p. 94.] [Footnote 307: _Correspondence of C.K. Sharpe_, Vol. I, p. 353.] [Footnote 308: See _Marmion_, introduction to Canto III, and other passages noted by Adolphus in the _Letters to Heber_, p. 295. See also _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 198, and the passage in _Lockhart_ (Vol. II, p. 132), in which James Ballantyne reports Scott as saying to him, "If you wish to speak of a real poet, Joanna Baillie is now the highest genius of our country."] [Footnote 309: _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 306.] [Footnote 310: _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 359; also Vol. I, p. 255; and _Constable's Correspondence_, Vol. III, p. 300.] [Footnote 311: _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, p. 117.] [Footnote 312: _Ibid._, Vol. V, p. 448.] [Footnote 313: _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 14.] [Footnote 314: _Forster_, Vol. I, p. 84, note.] [Footnote 315: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 95.] [Footnote 316: _Haydon's Correspondence_, Vol. I, p. 356.] [Footnote 317: Hunt says Scott was interested in reading _The Story of Rimini_. See Hunt's _Autobiography_, Vol. I, p. 260.] [Footnote 318: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 22. Scott wrote as follows to Lockhart after the appearance of _Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries_: "Hunt has behaved like a hyena to Byron, whom he has dug up to girn and howl over him in the same breath." Mr. Lang makes this comment: "Leigh Hunt ... had gone out of his way to insult Sir Walter and to make the most baseless insinuations against him. Scott probably never mentioned Leigh Hunt's name publicly in his life, and he refers to the insults neither in his correspondence nor in his _Journal_." (Lang's _Life of Lockhart_, Vol. II, pp. 22 and 24.) Hunt evidently thought that Scott was partly responsible for the articles in _Blackwood_ on the Cockney School. He says, "Unfortunately some of the knaves were not destitute of talent: the younger were tools of older ones who kept out of sight." (Hunt's _Lord Byron_, etc., Vol. I, p. 423.) In his _Autobiography_, Hunt says, "Sir Walter Scott confessed to Mr. Severn at Rome that the truth respecting Keats had prevailed." (Vol. II, p. 44.) Mr. Lang points out that though Colvin said of Scott (in his _Life of Keats_) "that he was in some measure privy to the Cockney School outrages seems certain," he afterwards recanted the statement. (In his edition of _Keats's Letters_, p. 60, note. See Lang's _Lockhart_, Vol. I, pp. 196-8.) Scott invited Lamb to Abbotsford when Lamb was looked upon as a leader of the Cockney School. (Lang's _Scott_, p. 52.)] [Footnote 319: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 155; _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, p. 476, and Vol. V, p. 380.] [Footnote 320: _Quarterly_, October, 1815.] [Footnote 321: Postscript to _Waverley_, and General Introduction.] [Footnote 322: For references to the group of women novelists who were so successful in depicting manners, see the _Life of Charlotte Smith_; the Postscript to _Waverley_; the Introduction to _St. Ronan's Well_; _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 164.] [Footnote 323: _Journal_, Vol. II, p. III.] [Footnote 324: _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 116.] [Footnote 325: _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, 164.] [Footnote 326: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 299; _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 65.] [Footnote 327: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 295; _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 62.] [Footnote 328: The reference as given by Lockhart is as follows: "This man, who has shown so much genius, has a good deal of the manners, or want of manners, peculiar to his countrymen." (_Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 62.) Cooper observes in regard to this point: "The manners of most Europeans strike us as exaggerated, while we appear cold to them. Sir Walter Scott was certainly so obliging as to say many flattering things to me, which I, as certainly, did not repay in kind. As Johnson said of his interview with George the Third, it was not for me to bandy compliments with my sovereign. At that time the diary was a sealed book to the world, and I did not know the importance he attached to such civilities." It is a pity that the transcriber of the passage in the _Journal_ changed "manner," which was the word Scott wrote, to the more objectionable "manners." (_Journal_, Vol. I, p. 295.)] [Footnote 329: Scott's letter was substantially as follows: "I have considered in all its bearings the matter which your kindness has suggested. Upon many former occasions I have been urged by my friends in America to turn to some advantage the sale of my writings in your country, and render that of pecuniary avail as an individual which I feel as the highest compliment as an author. I declined all these proposals, because the sale of this country produced me as much profit as I desired, and more--far more--than I deserved. But my late heavy losses have made my situation somewhat different, and have rendered it a point of necessity and even duty to neglect no means of making the sale of my works effectual to the extrication of my affairs, which can be honorably and honestly resorted to. If therefore Mr. Carey, or any other publishing gentleman of credit and character, should think it worth while to accept such an offer, I am willing to convey to him the exclusive right of publishing the _Life of Napoleon_, and my future works in America, making it always a condition, which indeed will be dictated by the publisher's own interest, that this monopoly shall not be used for the purpose of raising the price of the work to my American readers, but only for that of supplying the public at the usual terms.... "At any rate, if what I propose should not be found of force to prevent piracy, I cannot but think from the generosity and justice of American feeling, that a considerable preference would be given in the market to the editions emanating directly from the publisher selected by the author, and in the sale of which the author had some interest. "If the scheme shall altogether fail, it at least infers no loss, and therefore is, I think, worth the experiment. It is a fair and open appeal to the liberality, perhaps in some sort to the justice, of a great people; and I think I ought not in the circumstances to decline venturing upon it. I have done so manfully and openly, though not perhaps without some painful feelings, which however are more than compensated by the interest you have taken in this unimportant matter, of which I will not soon lose the recollection." (_Knickerbocker Magazine_, Vol. XI, p. 380 ff., April, 1838.)] [Footnote 330: _Knickerbocker_, Vol. XII, p. 349 ff., October, 1838.] [Footnote 331: In a letter written in January, 1839, Sumner said, speaking of Cooper's article, "I think a proper castigation is applied to the vulgar minds of Scott and Lockhart." (See _Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner_, by Edward L. Pierce, Vol. II, p. 38; and Lounsbury's _Cooper_, p. 160.)] [Footnote 332: _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, pp. 163-4.] [Footnote 333: _Ibid._, Vol. III, p. 262.] [Footnote 334: _Ibid._, Vol. III, p. 131, note; _Fam. Let._, Vol. I, p. 440. "Walter Scott was the first transatlantic author to bear witness to the merit of Knickerbocker," wrote P.M. Irving in his _Life of Washington Irving_. Henry Brevoort presented Scott with a copy of the second edition in 1813, and received this reply: "I beg you to accept my best thanks for the uncommon degree of entertainment which I have received from the most excellently jocose history of New York. I am sensible that as a stranger to American parties and politics I must lose much of the concealed satire of the piece, but I must own that looking at the simple and obvious meaning only, I have never read anything so closely resembling the style of Dean Swift, as the annals of Diedrich Knickerbocker.... I think too there are passages which indicate that the author possesses powers of a different kind, and has some touches which remind me much of Sterne." (_Life of Irving_, Vol. I, p. 240.) When, in 1819, Irving needed money, he wrote to Scott for advice about publishing the _Sketch Book_ in England. "Scott was the only literary man," he says, "to whom I felt that I could talk about myself and my petty concerns with the confidence and freedom that I would to an old friend--nor was I deceived. From the first moment that I mentioned my work to him in a letter, he took a decided and effective interest in it, and has been to me an invaluable friend." (Vol. I, p. 456.) At this time Scott asked Irving to accept the editorship of a political newspaper in Edinburgh, an offer which Irving of course refused. (_Fam. Let._, Vol. II, p. 60; _Life of Irving_, Vol. I, pp. 441-2, and Vol. III, pp. 272-3.) Scott called the _Sketch Book_ "positively beautiful." He was by some people supposed to be the author. In this connection it was said of him that his "very numerous disguises," and his "well-known fondness for literary masquerading, seem to have gained him the advantage of being suspected as the author of every distinguished work that is published." (Letter by Lady Lyttleton, in _Life of Irving_, Vol. II, p. 21.)] [Footnote 335: _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 131; _Life of Irving_, Vol. I, p. 240.] [Footnote 336: _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, p. 161.] [Footnote 337: _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_, Letter II.] [Footnote 338: _Constable's Correspondence_, Vol. III, p. 199.] [Footnote 339: _Lockhart_, Vol. V, pp. 100-104.] [Footnote 340: Vol. I, p. 371.] [Footnote 341: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 359; _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 100. See also _Journal_, Vol. II, pp. 483-4.] [Footnote 342: Review of Hoffmann's novels, _Foreign Quarterly Review_, July, 1827.] [Footnote 343: _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, p. 19.] [Footnote 344: M. Maigron says, speaking of the vogue of Scott in France: "On peut affirmer mème que, de 1820 à 1830, aucun nom français ne fut en France aussi connu et aussi glorieux." (_Le Roman Historique à l'�poque Romantique_, p. 99. See also pp. 100-133.)] [Footnote 345: The phrase is quoted from Scott's article on the _Life and Works of John Home_, in which it is applied to Home's critical work. The same idea occurs frequently in Scott's books, as indicating one of the finest graces of life. It was one which Sir Walter was foremost in practicing in all his social relations.] [Footnote 346: He was talking about Pope. See the _Recollections_, by R.P. Gillies, _Fraser's_, xii: 253 (Sept., 1835).] [Footnote 347: Review of _The Battles of Talavera_, _Quarterly_, November, 1809.] [Footnote 348: Editor's Introduction to _Montrose_, Border edition of the Waverley Novels.] [Footnote 349: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 125.] [Footnote 350: _Quarterly_, January, 1817. Scott evidently wrote this article chiefly for the purpose of defending the historical accuracy of _Old Mortality_. He also wished to show that _The Black Dwarf_ was founded on fact; and he devoted some space, as will appear in the passage quoted below (pp. 111-112), to a discussion of the artistic aspects of these and the earlier Waverly novels.] [Footnote 351: _Journal_, Vol. II, p. 269.] [Footnote 352: _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 276.] [Footnote 353: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 96.] [Footnote 354: Introductory epistle to _Nigel_; _Fam. Let._, Vol. I, p. 28.] [Footnote 355: Introduction to the _Monastery_.] [Footnote 356: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 258.] [Footnote 357: _Rokeby_, Canto VI, stanza 26; _Waverley_, Vol. II, pp. 399-400; _Journal_, Vol. 1, p. 117; _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, pp. 447-8.] [Footnote 358: Review of the _Life and Works of John Home_, _Quarterly_, June, 1827.] [Footnote 359: Review of Southery's _Life of Bunyan_, _Quarterly_, October, 1830.] [Footnote 360: _Quarterly_, January, 1817.] [Footnote 361: _Lockhart_, Vol. II, pp. 7-8.] [Footnote 362: _Quarterly_, November, 1809.] [Footnote 363: _Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 128.] [Footnote 364: _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 129.] [Footnote 365: Epistle prefixed to Canto V.] [Footnote 366: Epistle prefixed to Canto III.] [Footnote 367: Hazlitt's _Spirit of the Age_, art. _Sir Walter Scott_; see _Letters to Heber_, p. 75 ff.] [Footnote 368: It is hard to say just how much he accomplished by the proof-reading, which, to judge by his Journal, he habitually performed. He wrote to Kirkpatrick Sharpe in 1809, after seeing a new number of the _Quarterly_: "I am a little disconcerted with the appearance of one or two of my own articles, which I have had no opportunity to revise in proof." (_Sharpe's Correspondence_, Vol. I, p. 370.) Lockhart gives an interesting sample of a sheet of Scott's poetry tentatively revised by Ballantyne and reworked by the author. (_Lockhart_, Vol. III, pp. 32-5.) It is certain that Ballantyne made many suggestions, some of which Scott accepted and some of which he summarily rejected. In Hogg's _Domestic Manners of Scott_ we find the following account of what the printer said when Hogg reported that Sir Walter was to correct some proofs for him: "He correct them for you! Lord help you and him both! I assure you if he had nobody to correct after him, there would be a bonny song through the country. He is the most careless and incorrect writer that ever was born, for a voluminous and popular writer, and as for sending a proof sheet to him, we may as well keep it in the office. He never heeds it.... He will never look at either your proofs or his own, unless it be for a few minutes amusement" (pp. 242-3). When he wrote to Miss Baillie that he had read the proofs of a play of hers which was being published in Edinburgh, he added, "but this will not ensure their being altogether correct, for in despite of great practice, Ballantyne insists I have a bad eye." (_Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 173.)] [Footnote 369: _Journal_, Vol. II, p. 79; also 234 and 239; _Lockhart_, Vol. V, pp. 116 and 240.] [Footnote 370: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 117; _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, p. 448.] [Footnote 371: _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, pp. 2 and 391.] [Footnote 372: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 72.] [Footnote 373: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 101.] [Footnote 374: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 113.] [Footnote 375: Essay on _Imitations of the Ancient Ballad_.] [Footnote 376: A friend of Scott's once wrote to him, "You are the only author I ever yet knew to whom one might speak plain about the faults found with his works." (_Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 282.) He took great pains, contrary to his usual custom, in revising and correcting the _Malachi Malagrowther_ papers, but these were argumentative and in an altogether different class from his poems and novels; and besides he felt a special responsibility in writing upon a public matter "far more important than anything referring to [his] fame or fortune alone." (_Lockhart_, Vol. IV, p. 460.)] [Footnote 377: _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 379.] [Footnote 378: Introduction to the _Pirate_.] [Footnote 379: _Journal_, Vol. II, p. 250.] [Footnote 380: This was, of course, an effect of overwork and disease. Irving quotes Scott as saying: "It is all nonsense to tell a man that his mind is not affected, when his body is in this state." (_Irving's Life_, Vol. II, p. 459.)] [Footnote 381: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 181.] [Footnote 382: See _Lockhart_, Vol. II, pp. 265-6.] [Footnote 383: _Journal_, Vol. I, pp. 212-13; _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 13.] [Footnote 384: See _Familiar Letters_, Vol. II, p. 309; _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 216; Vol. IV, pp. 128 and 498; Vol. V, pp. 128, 412, 448.] [Footnote 385: _Correspondence of C.K. Sharpe_, Vol. I, p. 352.] [Footnote 386: _Journal_, Vol. II, p. 276. In the _Edinburgh Annual Register_ for 1808 (published 1810) is an article on the _Living Poets of Great Britain_, which if not written by Scott was evidently influenced by him. Speaking of Southey, Campbell and Scott, the writer says: "Were we set to classify their respective admirers we should be apt to say that those who feel poetry most enthusiastically prefer Southey; those who try it by the most severe rules admire Campbell; while the general mass of readers prefer to either the Border Poet. In this arrangement we should do Mr. Scott no injustice, because we assign to him in the number of suffrages what we deny him in their value." He once wrote to Miss Baillie, "No one can both eat his cake and have his cake, and I have enjoyed too extensive popularity in this generation to be entitled to draw long-dated bills upon the applause of the next." (_Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 173.) But in the Introductory Epistle to _Nigel_ he said, "It has often happened that those who have been best received in their own time have also continued to be acceptable to posterity. I do not think so ill of the present generation as to suppose that its present favour necessarily infers future condemnation."] [Footnote 387: Introduction to the _Lady of the Lake_; _Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 130.] [Footnote 388: Introduction to _Chronicles of the Canongate_.] [Footnote 389: _Journal_, Vol. II, p 473.] [Footnote 390: _Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 355.] [Footnote 391: _Ibid._, Vol. V, p. 164.] [Footnote 392: See speech of Humphry Gubbin, in _The Tender Husband_, Act I, Sc. 2.] [Footnote 393: _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, p 297; see also _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 55.] [Footnote 394: _Lockhart_, Vol. II, pp. 104 and 124.] [Footnote 395: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 222; _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 18.] [Footnote 396: _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 350.] [Footnote 397: _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 508.] [Footnote 398: _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, p. 229.] [Footnote 399: When Constable was proposing to publish the poetry of the novels separately, Scott wrote to him that it was beyond his own power to distinguish what was original from what was borrowed, and suggested the following Advertisement for the book: "We believe by far the greater part of the poetry interspersed through these novels to be original compositions by the author. At the same time the reader will find passages which are quoted from other authors, and may probably debit more of these than our more limited reading has enabled us to ascertain. Indeed, it is our opinion that some of the following poetry is neither entirely original nor altogether borrowed, but consists in some instances of passages from other authors, which the author has not hesitated to alter considerably, either to supply defects of his own memory, or to adapt the quotation more explicitly and aptly to the matter in hand." (_Constable's Correspondence_, Vol. III, pp. 222-3.)] [Footnote 400: "I have taught nearly a hundred gentlemen to fence very nearly, if not altogether, as well as myself," he said. (_Journal_, Vol. I, p. 167. See also pp. 273-5.)] [Footnote 401: _Journal_, Vol. I, pp. 275-6; _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 45.] [Footnote 402: _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, pp. 322 and 492; Vol. V, p. 186.] [Footnote 403: _Ibid._, Vol. IV, p. 110.] [Footnote 404: _Journal_, Vol. II, p. 106, and _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 162.] [Footnote 405: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, pp. 33-4.] [Footnote 406: _Ibid._, Vol. III, p. 259.] [Footnote 407: _Waverley_, Vol. I, pp. 112-3. See also Mackenzie's _Life of Scott_, p. 364.] [Footnote 408: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 29.] [Footnote 409: _Journal_, Vol. I, pp. 274-5; _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 44. See also his review of Godwin's _Life of Chaucer_.] [Footnote 410: _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, p. 103.] [Footnote 411: _Ibid._, Vol. IV, p. 260.] [Footnote 412: _Journal_, Vol. II, p. 96.] [Footnote 413: Review of Tytler's _History of Scotland_, _Quarterly_, November, 1829.] [Footnote 414: _Southey's Letters_, Vol. IV, p. 62.] [Footnote 415: Herford's _Age of Wordsworth_, pp. 39-40.] [Footnote 416: _Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 60.] [Footnote 417: _Paul's Letters_, Letter XVI.] [Footnote 418: _Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 320.] [Footnote 419: On Goethe's favorable opinion of the _Napoleon_, see a letter given in the appendix to Scott's _Journal_ (Vol. II, pp. 485-6 and note).] [Footnote 420: Carlyle's _Essay on Scott_. See also Taine's _History of English Literature_, Introduction, I.] [Footnote 421: Review of _Metrical Romances_, _Edinburgh Review_, January, 1806.] [Footnote 422: _Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 333.] [Footnote 423: _The Pirate_, Vol. II, p. 138.] [Footnote 424: Introductory Epistle to _Ivanhoe_. Freeman, in his _Norman Conquest_, vigorously attacks _Ivanhoe_ for its unwarranted picture of the relations between Saxons and Normans in the thirteenth century. (Vol. V, pp. 551-561.)] [Footnote 425: Mr. Lang points out that he made many written notes of his reading, as we should hardly expect a man of his unrivalled memory to do. (_Life of Scott_, p. 27.)] [Footnote 426: _Constable's Correspondence_, Vol. III, p. 161.] [Footnote 427: _Constable's Correspondence_, Vol. III, pp. 93-4.] [Footnote 428: _Letters of Lady Louisa Stuart_, p. 247.] [Footnote 429: Mr. Lang's theory that Scott was responsible for a decline in serious reading cannot be either proved or refuted completely, but more than one man has given personal testimony concerning the stimulating effect of the Waverley novels. Thierry's _Norman Conquest_ was directly inspired by _Ivanhoe_, and with _Ivanhoe_ is condemned by Freeman for its mistaken views. Mr. Andrew D. White says in his _Autobiography_ that _Quentin Durward_ and _Anne of Geierstein_ led him to see the first that he had ever clearly discerned of the great principles that "lie hidden beneath the surface of events"--"the secret of the centralization of power in Europe, and of the triumph of monarchy over feudalism." (Vol. I, pp. 15-16.)] [Footnote 430: Scott had theories as to what children's books ought to be. They should stir the imagination, he said, instead of simply imparting knowledge as certain scientific books attempted to do. (_Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 27.) But he seriously objected to any attempt to write down to the understanding of children. Of the _Tales of a Grandfather_ he said: "I will make, if possible, a book that a child shall understand, yet a man will feel some temptation to peruse, should he chance to take it up." (_Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 112. See also _ib._, Vol. I, p. 19.) Anatole France has expressed ideas about children's books which are practically the same as those of Scott. (See _Le Livre de Mon Ami_, 3me partie: "A Madame D * * *.")] [Footnote 431: Introduction to _The Fortunes of Nigel_.] [Footnote 432: See the Introduction to _Waverley_.] [Footnote 433: Introductory Epistle to _Ivanhoe_.] [Footnote 434: _Ibid._ In _Old Mortality_, Claverhouse was made to use the phrase "sentimental speeches," but when Lady Louisa Stuart pointed out to Scott that the word "sentimental" was modern, he struck it out of the second edition.] [Footnote 435: Introductory Epistle to _Ivanhoe_. For other references to the use of a moderately antique diction see the essays on Walpole and Clara Reeve in _Lives of the Novelists_, and the review of Southey's _Amadis de Gaul_, _Edinburgh Review_, October, 1803.] [Footnote 436: _Journal_, Vol. II, p. 226.] [Footnote 437: _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 319.] [Footnote 438: _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 216.] [Footnote 439: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 323.] [Footnote 440: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 40.] [Footnote 441: Introduction to _Chronicles of the Canongate_. See also _Letters to Heber_, pp. 128-32, and 154; and Ruskin's analysis of Scott's descriptions: _Modern Painters_, Part IV, ch. 16, § 23 ff.] [Footnote 442: See particularly his reviews of _Childe Harold_, _Canto III_, _Quarterly_, October, 1816; and of Southey's translation of the _Amadis de Gaul_, _Edinburgh Review_, October, 1803.] [Footnote 443: _Lockhart_, Vol. II, pp. 232-3.] [Footnote 444: Quoted in _Wordsworth_ (English Men of Letters) by F.W.H. Myers, p. 143.] [Footnote 445: _Recollections of Scott_, by R.P. Gillies. _Fraser's_, xii: 254.] [Footnote 446: _Lockhart_, Vol. III, p. 62.] [Footnote 447: _Journal_, Vol. I, p. 155, and Vol. II, p. 37; _Lockhart_, Vol. IV, p. 476, and Vol. V, p. 380.] [Footnote 448: In the discussion of _Lives of the Novelists_.] [Footnote 449: See his _Essay on Scott_.] [Footnote 450: _Dryden_, Vol. XIV, p. 136.] [Footnote 451: _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 415, and Introductory Epistle to _Nigel_.] [Footnote 452: _Letters to Heber_, p. 44.] [Footnote 453: _Op. cit._, p. 120.] [Footnote 454: _My Aunt Margaret's Mirror_.] [Footnote 455: _Journal_, Vol. II, p. 8.] [Footnote 456: Review of Hoffmann's Novels, _Foreign Quarterly Review_, July, 1827.] [Footnote 457: _Letters to R. Polwhele_, etc., p. 102.] [Footnote 458: Lodge's _Illustrious Personages_, Preface.] [Footnote 459: Article on Molière, _Foreign Quarterly Review_, February, 1828.] [Footnote 460: _Three Studies in Literature_, p. 12.] [Footnote 461: _Edinburgh Review_, No. 1, October, 1802: review of _Thalaba_.] [Footnote 462: _Three Studies in Literature_, p. 38.] [Footnote 463: _Dryden_, Vol. XI, p. 26.] [Footnote 464: Herford, _op. cit._, pp. 51-2.] [Footnote 465: _Essay on the Drama_.] [Footnote 466: Wylie, _Studies in Criticism_, pp. 107-8.] [Footnote 467: _Table Talk_, August 4, 1833. _Works_, Vol. VI, p. 472.] [Footnote 468: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. II, p. 402.] [Footnote 469: Article on Scott's _Demonology and Witchcraft_, _Fraser's_, December, 1830.] [Footnote 470: Mackenzie's _Life of Scott_, p. 118.] [Footnote 471: _The Plain Speaker_, Hazlitt's _Works_, Vol. VII, p. 345.] [Footnote 472: _Dryden_, Vol. I, p. 342. See above, pp. 136-7.] [Footnote 473: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 84.] [Footnote 474: _Life of Bage_, in _Novelists' Library_.] [Footnote 475: _Essay on Judicial Reform_, _Edinburgh Annual Register_, Vol. I, pt. 2, p. 352. Everyone knows that Scott was a decided Tory, and it is commonly supposed that he was an extremely prejudiced partisan. But he closes a political passage in _Woodstock_ with these words: "We hasten to quit political reflections, the rather that ours, we believe, will please neither Whig nor Tory." (End of Chapter 11.) From the definitions of Whig and Tory given in the _Tales of a Grandfather_, no one could guess his politics. (Chapter 53.)] [Footnote 476: Leigh Hunt's _Autobiography_, Vol. I, p. 263. See also pp. 258-260, and the notes on his _Feast of the Poets_.] [Footnote 477: Courthope's _Liberal Movement_, p. 122.] [Footnote 478: _Life of Murray_, Vol. II, p. 159.] [Footnote 479: _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 232] [Footnote 480: _Macmillan's Magazine_, lxx: 326.] [Footnote 481: Newman's _Apologia_, pp. 96-97. Mark Twain thinks the influence of the novels was pernicious. He says: "A curious exemplification of the power of a single book for good or harm is shown in the effects wrought by Don Quixote and those wrought by Ivanhoe. The first swept the world's admiration for the mediaeval chivalry-silliness out of existence; and the other restored it.... Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war." (_Life on the Mississippi_, ch. xlvi.)] [Footnote 482: _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, pp. 216-17. See also his remarks upon booksellers in his review of Pitcairn's _Ancient Criminal Trials_, _Quarterly_, February, 1831.] [Footnote 483: _Fraser's_, xiii: 693.] [Footnote 484: Essay on Dunbar in _Ephemera Critica_.] [Footnote 485: _English Historical Review_, vi: 97.] [Footnote 486: _Life, Letters and Journals of George Ticknor_, Vol. I, p. 283.] [Footnote 487: Carlyle's _Essay on Scott_.] [Footnote 488: _Lockhart_, Vol. II, p. 9.] [Footnote 489: _Journal_, Vol. II, p. 259; _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 248.] [Footnote 490: _Dryden_, Vol. I, conclusion.] [Footnote 491: _British Novelists and their Styles_, p. 204.] [Footnote 492: _Journal_, Vol. II, p. 173; _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 99.] [Footnote 493: _History of Criticism_, Vol. I, p. 156.] [Footnote 494: _Recollections of Scott_ by R.P. Gillies, _Fraser's_, xii: 688.] 
44367	----	Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. LEARN ONE THING EVERY DAY SEPTEMBER 15 1916 SERIAL NO. 115 THE MENTOR WALTER SCOTT By HAMILTON W. MABIE Author and Editor DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE VOLUME 4 NUMBER 15 FIFTEEN CENTS A COPY The Wizard of the North [Illustration] The causes of Sir Walter Scott's ascendancy are to be found in the goodness of his heart, the integrity of his conduct, the romantic and picturesque accessories and atmosphere of his life, the fertile brilliancy of his literary execution, the charm that he exercises, both as man and artist, over the imagination, the serene, tranquilizing spirit of his works, and, above all, the buoyancy, the happy freedom of his genius. [Illustration] He was not simply an intellectual power, he was also a human and gentle comforter. He wielded an immense mental force, but he always wielded it for good, and always with tenderness. It is impossible to conceive of his ever having done a wrong act, or of any contact with his influence that would not inspire the wish to be virtuous and noble. The scope of his sympathy was as broad as are the weakness and need of the human race. He understood the hardship in the moral condition of mankind and he wished and tried to relieve it. [Illustration] His writings are full of sweetness and cheer, and they contain nothing that is morbid--nothing that tends toward surrender or misery. He did not sequester himself in mental pride, but simply and sturdily, through years of conscientious toil, he employed the faculties of a strong, tender, gracious genius for the good of his fellow-creatures. The world loves him because he is worthy to be loved, and because he has lightened the burden of its care and augmented the sum of its happiness. From "Over the Border" by William Winter [Illustration: FLORA MACIVOR--"WAVERLEY" COURTESY, THE PAGE COMPANY FROM A DRAWING BY R. W. MACBETH] Waverley ONE "Waverley" is a story of the rebellion of the chevalier Prince Charles Edward, in Scotland, in 1745. Edward Waverley, the central figure of the tale, was a captain of dragoons in the English army. He obtained a leave of absence from his regiment and went to Scotland for a rest, staying at the home of Baron Bradwardine. During his stay a band of Highlanders drove off the Baron's cattle, and Waverley offered his assistance in recovering them. Fergus MacIvor was the chief of the band which stole the cattle. Waverley met his sister, Flora, and fell in love with her, but she discouraged him. Later Waverley was wounded by a stag; and the rebellion having started in the meanwhile, one of the Highlanders, assuming Waverley to be a sympathizer, used his name and seal to start a mutiny in Waverley's troop. For this reason Waverley was dismissed from his regiment for desertion and treason. Indignant at this unjust treatment, Waverley joined the rebellion, first, however, returning home in an attempt to justify himself. On this trip he was arrested for treason, but was rescued by the Highlanders when on his way to the dungeon of Stirling Castle. Waverley served in the war, and when the rebellion was crushed he escaped, and later made his way to London. There his name was cleared from the false charges, and a pardon obtained for both himself and Baron Bradwardine. Flora's brother was executed, and she herself retired to a convent at Paris. Waverley married Rose, the beautiful daughter of Baron Bradwardine. One of the most charming scenes in the story took place shortly after Waverley met Flora at the home of her brother. Flora had promised to sing a Gaelic song for him in one of her favorite haunts. One of the attendants guided him to a beautiful waterfall in the neighborhood, and there he saw Flora. "Here, like one of those lovely forms which decorate the landscapes of Poussin, Waverley found Flora gazing on the waterfall. Two paces farther back stood Cathleen, holding a small Scottish harp, the use of which had been taught to Flora by Rory Dall, one of the last harpers of the western Highlands. The sun, now stooping in the west, gave a rich and varied tinge to all the objects which surrounded Waverley, and seemed to add more than human brilliancy to the full, expressive darkness of Flora's eye, exalted the richness and purity of her complexion, and enhanced the dignity and grace of her beautiful form. Edward thought he had never, even in his wildest dreams, imagined a figure of such exquisite and interesting loveliness. The wild beauty of the retreat, bursting upon him as if by magic, augmented the mingled feelings of delight and awe with which he approached her, like a fair enchantress of Boiardo or Ariosto, by whose nod the scenery around seemed to have been created--an Eden in the wilderness. "Flora, like every beautiful woman, was conscious of her own power, and pleased with its effects, which she could easily discern from the respectful yet confused address of the young soldier. But as she possessed excellent sense, she gave the romance of the scene and other accidental circumstance full weight in appreciating the feelings with which Waverley seemed obviously to be impressed; and unacquainted with the fanciful and susceptible peculiarities of his character, considered his homage as the passing tribute which a woman of even inferior charms might have expected in such a situation. She therefore quietly led the way to a spot at such a distance from the cascade that its sound should rather accompany than interrupt that of her voice and instrument, and sitting down upon a mossy fragment of rock, she took the harp from Cathleen." "Waverley" was the first of the world-famous series of romances to which it gives the title. It was published anonymously in 1814. Although the authorship of the series was generally accredited to Scott, it was never formally acknowledged until business conditions necessitated it in 1826. [Illustration: MEG MERRILIES DIRECTS BERTRAM TO THE CAVE--"GUY MANNERING" COURTESY, THE PAGE COMPANY FROM AN ETCHING BY C. O. MURRAY] Guy Mannering TWO Guy Mannering, a young Englishman traveling through Scotland, stopped one night at the home of the Laird of Ellangowan. When the Laird learned that the young man had studied astrology, he begged him to cast the horoscope of his son, who had been born that night. What was Mannering's dismay to find that two catastrophes overhung the lad, one at his fifth, and the other at his twenty-first year! He told the father, however, that he might be warned; and later went his way. The fortunes of the Laird of Ellangowan, Godfrey Bertram, waned rapidly. In addition to this, his son, Harry, at the age of five, was kidnapped. It was impossible to learn whether the child was alive or dead. The boy's mother died from the shock; and some years later the Laird himself followed her, leaving his daughter Lucy penniless. In the meanwhile, Guy Mannering had become Colonel Mannering. He had married and had a daughter, Julia. She had fallen in love with a young officer, named Vanbeest Brown, who had served in India under Colonel Mannering. The colonel objected to him as a suitor, because of the obscurity of his birth. When things were at their worst for Lucy Bertram, Colonel Mannering returned to England. Accidentally hearing of the straits to which she had been reduced, he at once invited her and her guardian to make their home with him and his daughter Julia. Captain Brown followed the Mannerings to England; and finally he proved to be the long lost Harry Bertram, brother of Lucy. He had been abducted with the help of Meg Merrilies, a gypsy, and some smugglers, at the instigation of a man named Glossin, once agent for the Laird of Ellangowan, who had hoped to get possession of the Laird's property. He finally succeeded in this; but, after his crime was discovered, he died a violent death in prison. Bertram had been kidnapped and taken to Holland, where the name of Vanbeest Brown had been given him. Meg Merrilies is regarded as one of the great characters of fiction. "The fairy bride of Sir Gawaine, while under the influence of the spell of her wicked stepmother, was more decrepit, probably, and what is commonly called more ugly, than Meg Merrilies; but I doubt if she possessed that wild sublimity which an excited imagination communicated to features marked and expressive in their own peculiar character, and to the gestures of a form which, her sex considered, might be termed gigantic. Accordingly, the Knights of the Round Table did not recoil with more terror from the apparition of the loathly lady placed between 'an oak and a green holly,' than Lucy Bertram and Julia Mannering did from the appearance of this Galwegian sibyl upon the common of Ellangowan. "'For God's sake,' said Julia, pulling her purse, 'give that dreadful woman something, and bid her go away,' "'I cannot,' said Bertram: 'I must not offend her.' "'What keeps you here?' said Meg, exalting the harsh and rough tones of her hollow voice. 'Why do you not follow? Must your hour call you twice? Do you remember your oath?--were it at kirk or market, wedding or burial,'--and she held high her skinny forefinger in a menacing attitude.... "Almost stupefied with surprise and fear, the young ladies watched with anxious looks the course of Bertram, his companion, and their extraordinary guide. Her tall figure moved across the wintry heath with steps so swift, so long, and so steady, that she appeared rather to glide than to walk. Bertram and Dinmont, both tall men, apparently scarce equaled her in height, owing to her longer dress and high headgear. She proceeded straight across the common, without turning aside to the winding path by which passengers avoided the inequalities and little rills that traversed it in different directions. Thus the diminishing figures often disappeared from the eye as they dived into such broken ground, and again ascended to sight when they were past the hollow. There was something frightful and unearthly, as it were, in the rapid and undeviating course which she pursued, undeterred by any of the impediments which usually incline a traveler from the direct path. Her way was as straight, and nearly as swift, as that of a bird through the air. At length they reached those thickets of natural wood which extended from the skirts of the common towards the glades and brook of Derneleugh, and were there lost to the view." "Guy Mannering" was published in 1815, the second of the Waverley novels to appear. It is said to have been the result of six weeks' work. There are less than forty characters in the book, and the plot is not very complicated. [Illustration: EFFIE DEANS AND GEORDIE--"HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN" COURTESY, THE PAGE COMPANY FROM THE PAINTING BY SIR J. E. MILLAIS] Heart of Midlothian THREE In "Heart of Midlothian" Scott set himself to draw his own people at their best. The real heroine of the book is Jeanie Deans, whose character was drawn from that of Helen Walker, the daughter of a farmer in Scotland. With a few variations Jeanie's story was hers. Effie Deans, the sister of Jeanie, was doomed to death for child murder. Jeanie might have saved her on the witness stand by lying; but this she could not do even to save her sister. However, she showed the depth of her love by going on foot all the way to London and getting a pardon from the king. Effie was released; but even before Jeanie reached home, she eloped with her betrayer, George Staunton, who married her and took her to London with him. There they lived as Lord and Lady Staunton, for George succeeded to the title of his father. Jeanie married a Presbyterian minister, and by a combination of circumstances, learned that Effie's son had never really been killed, but had been given to the care of Meg Murdockson, whose daughter Madge had also been betrayed by Staunton, or Geordie Robertson, as he was known in Scotland. When Sir George Staunton learned this, he was anxious to discover the whereabouts of his son. He traced him to a certain band of vagabonds, of which Black Donald was the chief. Staunton attempted to arrest the leader, but in the affray was shot by a young lad called the Whistler. This lad later proved to be his long lost son. Effie, who was now Lady Staunton, overcome with grief, attempted to drown her sorrows in the gayeties of the fashionable world. But this was in vain. She could not forget her grief, and finally she retired to a convent in France, where she remained until her death. Jeanie and her husband were given a good parish by the Duke of Argyle, and through Effie's influence the children of her sister were helped greatly. "Heart of Midlothian" was first published anonymously in 1818. It takes its name from the Tolbooth, or old jail of Edinburgh, where Scott imagined Effie to have been in prison. This book has fewer characters than any other of Scott's novels. It has also a smaller variety of incidents, and less description of scenery. One of the most touching scenes in all fiction is that in which Jeanie visits her sister in the prison under the eyes of the jailor, Ratcliffe. "Ratcliffe marshalled her the way to the apartment where Effie was confined. "Shame, fear, and grief, had contended for mastery in the poor prisoner's bosom during the whole morning, while she had looked forward to this meeting; but when the door opened, all gave way to a confused and strange feeling that had a tinge of joy in it, as, throwing herself on her sister's neck, she ejaculated: 'My dear Jeanie!--my dear Jeanie! It's lang since I hae seen ye.' Jeanie returned the embrace with an earnestness that partook almost of rapture, but it was only a flitting emotion, like a sunbeam unexpectedly penetrating betwixt the clouds of a tempest, and obscured almost as soon as visible. The sisters walked together to the side of the pallet bed, and sat down side by side, took hold of each other's hands, and looked each other in the face, but without speaking a word. In this posture they remained for a minute, while the gleam of joy gradually faded from their features, and gave way to the most intense expression, first of melancholy, and then of agony, till, throwing themselves again into each other's arms, they, to use the language of Scripture, lifted up their voices and wept bitterly. "Even the hard-hearted turnkey, who had spent his life in scenes calculated to stifle both conscience and feeling, could not witness this scene without a touch of human sympathy. It was shown in a trifling action, but which had more delicacy in it than seemed to belong to Ratcliffe's character and station. The unglazed window of the miserable chamber was open and the beams of a bright sun fell right upon the bed where the sufferers were seated. With a gentleness that had something of reverence in it, Ratcliffe partly closed the shutter, and seemed thus to throw a veil over a scene so sorrowful." [Illustration: THE BLACK KNIGHT AT THE HERMITAGE--"IVANHOE" COURTESY, THE PAGE COMPANY FROM A DRAWING BY AD. LALAUZE] Ivanhoe FOUR Sir Wilfred, Knight of Ivanhoe, a young Saxon knight, brave and handsome, was disinherited by his father because he loved Rowena, a Saxon heiress and a ward of his father. He therefore went on a crusade to Palestine with Richard the Lion Hearted. Returning, under the name of Desdichado (The Disinherited) he entered the lists of the Ashby Tournament: and, having won the victory, he was crowned by the Lady Rowena. At this tournament there was one knight in particular who aided Ivanhoe. This was the Black Knight, and his feats of valor set all the spectators to wondering who he might be. He was in reality Richard the Lion Hearted, the Crusader, King of England. Just at this time King Richard's younger brother, John, was conspiring to take the throne of England from him. One of his fellow conspirators was Maurice de Bracy, who was in love with Rowena. He captured her as she was returning from the tournament, and imprisoned her in the Tower of Torquilstone. Ivanhoe, who was wounded in the tournament, was cared for by Isaac of York and his daughter, Rebecca. She fell in love with him, but realized that she could never marry him; and knowing that Ivanhoe loved Rowena, she offered to give any sum of money for her release. This was not effected, however, until Torquilstone had been besieged by Locksley, who was really Robin Hood, and his men, led by the Black Knight. The Black Knight had come upon this band in his wanderings through Sherwood Forest. He ran across the little chapel of the Hermit, one of Locksley's men, in the the following manner: "The entrance to this ancient place of devotion was under a very low round arch, ornamented by several courses that zigzag moulding, resembling shark's teeth, which appears so often in the more ancient Saxon architecture. A belfry rose above the porch on four small pillars, within which hung the green and weatherbeaten bell, the feeble sounds of which had been some time before heard by the Black Knight. "The whole peaceful and quiet scene lay glimmering in twilight before the eyes of the traveler, giving him good assurance of lodging for the night; since it was a special duty of those hermits who dwelt in the woods to exercise hospitality towards benighted or bewildered passengers. "Accordingly, the knight took no time to consider minutely the particulars which we have detailed, but thanking Saint Julian (the patron of travelers), who had sent him good harborage, he leaped from his horse and assailed the door of the hermitage with the butt of his lance, in order to arouse attention and gain admittance." The Hermit who lived there and who gave the Black Knight food and lodging, was Friar Tuck. Finally Rowena was rescued and married Ivanhoe. Rebecca was carried away by the Templar Bois-Guilbert, who was madly and vainly in love with her, to the Preceptory of Templestowe, and convicted of sorcery. She was condemned to be burned alive, but was allowed a trial by combat. Ivanhoe was her champion, and in the contest with the Templar he was the victor. Rebecca was then pronounced guiltless and freed. "Ivanhoe" is one of Scott's most famous novels. It was written and published in 1819. The manuscript is now at Abbotsford. [Illustration: VARNEY, LEICESTER AND AMY ROBSART--"KENILWORTH" COURTESY, THE PAGE COMPANY FROM A DRAWING BY AD. LALAUZE.] Kenilworth FIVE The central figure in "Kenilworth" is that of Queen Elizabeth of England, but the real heroine is Amy Robsart. She was the daughter of Sir Hugh Robsart. The Earl of Leicester, infatuated by her charms, married her secretly. He then established her at Cumnor Place, a lonely manor house. There she lived alone with one or two attendants. But she bore her solitude with pleasure as long as she was sure that Leicester loved her. However, Leicester and the Earl of Surrey were rivals for the favor of Queen Elizabeth. In fact, each hoped that he might wed her; and, therefore, Leicester did not want his marriage to Amy made public. Edmund Tressilian, who had been engaged to Amy, discovered her hiding place, and, not knowing that she was married, tried in vain to induce her to return home. Then he appealed to the queen; and when a disclosure of the truth seemed inevitable, Richard Varney, Leicester's closest friend, affirmed that Amy was his wife. Varney was then ordered to appear with her at the approaching revels at Kenilworth Castle, which belonged to the Earl of Leicester. Leicester and Varney went to Amy and endeavored to persuade her to pose for a short time as Varney's wife. "'How, my Lord of Leicester,' said the lady, disengaging herself from his embraces, 'is it to your wife you give the dishonourable counsel to acknowledge herself the bride of another--and of all men, the bride of that Varney?' "'Madam, I speak it in earnest--Varney is my true and faithful servant, trusted in my deepest secrets. I had better lose my right hand than his service at this moment. You have no cause to scorn him as you do.' "'I could assign one, my Lord,' replied the Countess; 'and I see he shakes even under that assured look of his. But he that is necessary as your right hand to your safety, is free from any accusation of mine. May he be true to you; and that he may be true, trust him not too much or too far. But it is enough to say, that I will not go with him unless by violence, nor would I acknowledge him as my husband, were all--' "'It is a temporary deception, madam,' said Leicester, irritated by her opposition, 'necessary for both our safeties, endangered by you through female caprice, or the premature desire to seize on a rank to which I gave you title only under condition that our marriage, for a time, should continue secret. If my proposal disgust you, it is yourself has brought it on both of us. There is no other remedy--you must do what your own impatient folly hath rendered necessary--I command you.' "'I cannot put your commands, my Lord,' said Amy, 'in balance with those of honor and conscience. I will _not_, in this instance, obey you. You may achieve your own dishonor, to which these crooked policies naturally tend, but I will do naught that can blemish mine. How could you again, my Lord, acknowledge me as a pure and chaste matron, worthy to share your fortunes, when, holding that high character, I had strolled the country the acknowledged wife of such a profligate fellow as your servant Varney?'" Later Varney attempted to drug her; and in fear of her life she escaped and made her way to Kenilworth. She could not get to her husband, however; and she was discovered and misjudged by Tressilian. Queen Elizabeth found her half fainting in a grotto, but Varney kept her from learning the truth by persuading the queen that Amy was insane. He also made Leicester believe that she was false and really loved Tressilian, a thing which was not true. For this reason Leicester gave him his signet ring and authority to act for him. Amy was hurriedly taken back to Cumnor Place. In the meanwhile Leicester, who really loved Amy, and soon discovered the injustice of his suspicions, confessed everything to Queen Elizabeth. The queen, feeling herself insulted, treated him with scorn and contempt; but she immediately dispatched Tressilian and Sir Walter Raleigh to bring Amy back to Kenilworth. They arrived just too late. Amy, decoyed from her room, stepped on a trap-door prepared by Varney, and plunged to her death. After her tragic taking off, Tressilian fell into profound melancholy and died soon after, "young in years, but old in grief." "Kenilworth" appeared in 1819. It was the second of Scott's great romances drawn from English history, and is regarded as one of the most delightful of English historical romances. [Illustration: LUCY AND THE MASTER--"THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR" COURTESY, THE PAGE COMPANY FROM THE PAINTING BY SIR J. E. MILLAIS] The Bride of Lammermoor SIX Edgar, Master of Ravenswood, was the son of Allan, Lord Ravenswood. His father had fought in the Revolution of 1688, and his side had been vanquished. For this his title had been abolished and his estate taken from him. He had fought hard for his rights in the courts, but in vain, and at length he died breathing curses on Sir William Ashton, who became owner of the estates. Edgar, the son, penniless and proud, had vowed vengeance on the family of Sir William Ashton. However, in spite of this, he fell in love with Lucy, Sir William's daughter. They became engaged secretly. "Ravenswood found Lucy seated alone by the ruin.... "'I like this spot,' said Lucy at length, as if she had found the silence embarrassing: 'the bubbling murmur of the clear fountain, the waving of the trees, the profusion of grass and wild-flowers, that rise among the ruins, make it like a scene in romance. I think, too, I have heard it is a spot connected with the legendary lore which I love so well.' "'It has been thought,' answered Ravenswood, 'a fatal spot to my family; and I have some reason to term it so, for it was here I first saw Miss Ashton--and it is here I must take my leave of her for ever.' "'To take leave of us, Master!' she exclaimed; 'what can have happened to hurry you away?--I know Alice hates--I mean dislikes, my father--and I hardly understood her humor to-day, it was so mysterious. But I am certain my father is sincerely grateful for the high service you rendered us. Let us hope that having won your friendship hardly, we shall not lose it lightly.' "'Lose it, Miss Ashton?' said the Master of Ravenswood. 'No--wherever my fortune calls me--whatever she inflicts upon me--it is your friend--your sincere friend, who acts or suffers. But there is a fate on me, and I must go, or I shall add the ruin of others to my own.' "'Yet do not go from us. Master,' said Lucy; and she laid her hand, in all simplicity and kindness, upon the skirt of his cloak, as if to detain him. 'You shall not part from us. My father is powerful, he has friends that are more so than himself--do not go till you see what his gratitude will do for you. Believe me, he is already laboring in your behalf with the Council.' "'It may be so,' said the Master proudly; 'yet it is not to your father, Miss Ashton, but to my own exertions, that I ought to owe success in the career on which I am about to enter. My preparations are already made--a sword and a cloak, and a bold heart and a determined hand.' "Lucy covered her face with her hands, and the tears, in spite of her, forced their way between her fingers. 'Forgive me,' said Ravenswood, taking her right hand, which, after slight resistance, she yielded to him, still continuing to shade her face with the left. 'I am too rude--too rough--too intractable to deal with any being so soft and gentle as you are. Forget that so stern a vision has crossed your path of life--and let me pursue mine, sure that I can meet no worse misfortune after the moment it divides me from your side.' "Lucy wept on, but her tears were less bitter. Each attempt which the Master made to explain his purpose of departure only proved a new evidence of his desire to stay; until, at length, instead of bidding her farewell, he gave his faith to her for ever, and received her troth in return. The whole passed so suddenly, and arose so much out of the immediate impulse of the moment, that ere the Master of Ravenswood could reflect upon the consequences of the step which he had taken, their lips, as well as their hands, had pledged the sincerity of their affection." But Lucy's mother, the ambitious Lady Ashton, endeavored to force her daughter to marry another. Lady Ashton was proud and vindictive, and she hated the Ravenswood family with such intensity that she did not scruple at any means to deceive Lucy into believing her love unfaithful. Lucy, on the other hand, was gentle and timid. Her mother called her, in derision, the "Lammermoor Shepherdess," to show that she considered Lucy plebeian in her tastes. In the struggle, Lucy went mad. Ravenswood, thinking himself rejected, came to an untimely end. "The Bride of Lammermoor" is in that group of the Waverley novels called "Tales of My Landlord." The plot was suggested by an incident in the family of the Earls of Stair. The scene is laid on the east coast of Scotland, in the year 1700. Though somber and depressing, "The Bride of Lammermoor" was very popular. The plot was used by Donizetti, the Italian composer, for his opera Lucia di Lammermoor. WALTER SCOTT By HAMILTON W. MABIE _Author and Editor_ _MENTOR GRAVURES_ LUCY AND THE MASTER "_The Bride of Lammermoor_" THE BLACK KNIGHT AT THE HERMITAGE "_Ivanhoe_" VARNEY, LEICESTER AND AMY ROBSART "_Kenilworth_" FLORA MacIVOR "_Waverley_" MEG MERRILIES DIRECTS BERTRAM TO THE CAVE "_Guy Mannering_" EFFIE DEANS AND GEORDIE "_Heart of Midlothian_" Entered as second-class matter March 10, 1913, at the postoffice at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1916, by The Mentor Association, Inc. [Illustration: Bust of Sir Walter Scott By Sir Francis Chantrey] THE MENTOR · DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE SEPTEMBER 15, 1916 A noted English critic said that he never sat down to write about Sir Walter Scott without a sense of elation and happiness; and he might have added without a sense of satisfaction. For the author of the Waverley Novels was a clean, wholesome, loyal human soul. The out-of-door vigor of the Highlands found in him not only a chronicler but an incarnation. At the end, when his strength was failing, his brain becoming darkened, the battle apparently going against him, his struggle against disaster became a moral victory and his character took on heroic proportions. At a time when so much writing is impaired by egotism, and mental and moral disease give prose and verse the odor of the hospitals, Scott brings a tonic atmosphere with him. He was a fortunate man; he was born in a country which he understood, at a time when the men, women, and events he wrote about were in the past but not too far in the past; and he was well born in the best sense. He came at the right time, in the right place, and of the right ancestry. In a word, he was in harmony with the conditions of his life, and he was spared the antagonism which often bends and sometimes breaks a promising talent and distorts a wholesome nature. Like Goethe he had a methodical father, of orderly habit, and a mother of generous heart, a vivid memory and the gift of pictorial talk. He said of her that if he had been able to paint past times it was largely because of "the studies with which she presented me." She had talked with a man who remembered the battle of Dunbar; and the day before her last illness she told, with great accuracy of detail, the real story of the Bride of Lammermoor, and indicated the points in which it differed from her son's famous novel. To his father Scott owed his steadiness of aim and his indomitable industry; to his mother he owed his vivid energy of mind, his tireless curiosity. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF SCOTT By Sir Henry Raeburn] To Scotland his debt was even greater. Born in Edinburgh in 1771, four years before the beginning of the American Revolution, an illness in his second year sent him to reside with his grandfather in a country of crags and in the neighborhood of a ruined tower. In fine weather the shepherd took him to the places where the sheep were grazing and laid him on the ground among them. He was forgotten one day, and a thunderstorm broke on him. When he was found he was calling out, "bonny! bonny!" at each flash of lightning. His illness made him lame for life, but he was a boy of sweet temper and a winning disposition. Lameness did not daunt him; he learned to climb with great agility and to keep his saddle with the best of them. At the age of six he was reciting ballads with zest and fire, and he showed very early the spirit which made him a story-teller and a man of dauntless courage. The Boyhood of Scott At school he was noted as a daring climber, a pertinacious fighter, an irregular student, and a teller of fascinating tales. In the High School he was "more distinguished in the yards than in the class." In 1783 he entered the Humanity and Greek classes in the University of Edinburgh, but his education was directed by his genius rather than by the school and college curriculum. He began on his grandfather's farm, Sandy-Knowe, in a landscape that runs to the Cheviot Hills and the slopes of Lammermoor, where he lay, a "puir lame laddie," on the turf among the sheep. Out of a volume of Ramsay's "Tea Table Miscellany" he was taught "Hardy Knute," long before he could read the ballad. "It was the first poem I ever learned," he wrote years afterwards, "the last I shall ever forget." His grandmother knew all the wild and romantic stories of the Border and the eager boy listened with his heart and imagination. He had only to look across the countryside to see many of the places where these moving events had happened: the peaks of Peebleshire, the crags of Hume, the landmarks of Ettrick and Yarrow; the Brethren Stanes were among the objects that "painted the earliest images on the eye of the last and greatest of the Border Minstrels." When he was thirteen years old he came upon one of those books that open the world of imagination to boys and girls of genius. He was visiting his aunt in Kelso, which he describes as the most beautiful if not the most romantic village in Scotland. The house stood in a garden in which there was a great platanus tree (plane tree), and under its branches, one summer afternoon, he opened "Percy's Reliques," which had appeared nineteen years before, and the magic of the old, stirring ballads which Bishop Percy had piously brought together, laid a spell upon him which was never broken. "The summer day sped onward so fast," he wrote long afterwards, "that notwithstanding the sharp appetite of thirteen, I forgot the hour of dinner, was sought for with anxiety, and was still found entranced in my intellectual banquet." As soon as he could "scrape five shillings together" he bought the volumes and read no other books so often or with such enthusiasm. [Illustration: ABBOTSFORD, SCOTLAND The home of Walter Scott] This vital education for the work he was to do was not interrupted by his studies at the University. Hosts of Americans have climbed Arthur's Seat and picked bluebells and looked down on one of the most picturesque cities in Europe. Scott climbed this famous hill and Salisbury Crags or Blackford Hill on Saturdays and in vacation, carrying a bundle of books from a circulating library; and, overlooking one of the most enchanting landscapes in Scotland, read Spenser, Ariosto and other masters of romance. He learned to read Italian and Spanish so as to get direct access to "Don Quixote" and the "Decameron"; and Froissart he came to know almost by heart. Edinburgh and the Highlands Edinburgh was an illustrated edition of a great deal of Scotch history, and Scott left no part of the old town unvisited. He spent so much time exploring the country within reach that his father protested that he was becoming a strolling peddler. "Show me an old castle or a battlefield," he wrote, "and I was at home at once, filled it with its combatants in their proper costume, and overwhelmed my hearers by the enthusiasm of my description." So he came to know not only the spirit but the "form and presence" of feudalism and the ideals and code of manners of chivalry. [Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT From the painting by J. P. Knight] [Illustration: ABBOTSFORD A near view] His education went a step farther when he saw the Highlands for the first time in 1787. The traditions of 1715 and 1745, when the Highland chiefs had engaged in brave but futile attempts to restore the exiled Stuarts to the throne which those ill-starred Kings had forfeited by their inability to understand the English people, were still fresh on the Border. Men who had taken part in the rising of 1745 were still living, and Scott was fortunate enough to be the guest of one of them. He was to write the stories of wild Scotland as no historian had or could write them, and on this memorable visit he was to hear the tales of stirring and romantic deeds from one who had played a part in them, and he was to see with the eyes of youth the landscape on which they had been enacted. It was a happy hour in which the boy who was to write "Waverley" and "Rob Roy" heard from a veteran the stories of battle, of dashing foray, of daring deeds and hairbreadth escapes. "To know men who had known Rob Roy, to hear the story of the two risings which had shaken Scotland like an earthquake, to be a guest in remote and lonely castles, to be guided through wild defiles and over vast mountain ranges by kilted clansmen whose speech was only Gaelic and whose claymores were still at the service of their chiefs--this was the real education of the writer who was to be the scribe of his country, the truest of her historians." This first-hand education in romantic history was supplemented by the eager reading of military exploits, of medieval romance and legend, of the songs of the Border, of Ariosto and Cervantes. The author of "Don Quixote," he said later, "first inspired him with the ambition to excel in fiction." He was also fortunate in the possession of a memory which held tenaciously everything that contributed to his future work and let unrelated things slip through its meshes. [Illustration: THE LIBRARY, ABBOTSFORD] He studied law and practised at the bar in a desultory way for fourteen years. He was appointed "Sheriff of the Court" of Ettrick, a position to which a comfortable salary was attached, and for five years he acted, without salary, as a Clerk of Sessions in the court in Edinburgh. He was recognized as an able man, and he was interested in the historical aspects of Scotch law, in its "quips and quiddities," and his knowledge of its processes was shown in his novels; but he was an impatient and uninterested practitioner, and long before he formally gave up the profession he was writing poetry. While poetry and law have often been on good terms they have never been happy partners. [Illustration: THE STUDY, ABBOTSFORD This room is lined with Scott's favorite books and works of reference. The bedroom that he used opens directly into the study.] [Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT From the painting by C. R. Leslie, R. A.] Marriage During this period Scott's affections were deeply engaged, and but for the interference of parents he would probably have married a young woman of singularly beautiful nature. His love had a very deep influence on his character, and it remained to the end the great passion of his life. In 1797 he married the daughter of a French royalist who, after her brother's death, came to England. She was described as a "lively beauty," of no great depth of nature, but she had humor and high spirits and she was true-hearted. He protected her from care, and their life together was a happy one. She was not a mate for her husband, but she basked in the sunshine of his prosperity, and she was brave in adversity. [Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT AND HIS FRIENDS AT ABBOTSFORD From the painting by Thomas Faed. Those in the picture, reading from left to right, are, sitting: Sir Walter Scott; Henry Mackenzie, the Scottish novelist; George Crabbe, the English poet; John Gibson Lockhart, the son-in-law of Scott, and his biographer; William Wordsworth, the English Poet Laureate from 1843 to 1850; Francis, Lord Jeffrey, the Scottish critic, essayist, and jurist; Adam Ferguson, the Scottish philosopher and historian; John Moore, the Scottish physician and writer; Thomas Campbell, the writer, and Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow from 1826 to 1829; Archibald Constable, Scott's publisher from 1805 to 1826; standing: John Wilson, who wrote under the pseudonym of Christopher North; John Allen, the British political and historical writer; Sir David Wilkie, the Scottish painter.] Entrance Into Literature Scott made the transition from law to literature gradually. He published a translation of Burger's "Lenore" in 1795. While he was at the University he began to collect the materials which made up the three volumes of "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," a collection of ballads old and new in which the "old, simple, violent world" lived again in song and story. The making of these books was congenial work, and carried still further Scott's education in the spirit and temper of the Scotland of clans and feuds, of reckless border warfare, dashing foray, fierce revenge and superstition. The various introductions and notes which accompanied the ballads show Scott's painstaking care for fact and detail; he combined in rare degree the romantic spirit, the antiquarian's zeal for the small details of history, and the methodical habits of the literary drudge. In 1805, in his thirty-fourth year, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" appeared and secured a popular success of unprecedented proportions. The picturesque or pictorial quality of the poem and its unqualified romanticisms gave it a very broad appeal. It was popular in the good sense of the word. Mountains and wild landscapes generally, which had been shunned for generations, were coming into fashion, so to speak. They have been "in fashion" ever since, and today their appeal to city folk, to tired people, to men and women of imagination and active temperament, is irresistible. To Dr. Johnson Scotland was a wild and dreary waste, to Scott it was a wonderland; and a wonderland it has remained ever since. In the confusion of an age when every sort of opinion gets into print the "call of the wild" has a trumpet tone. "I am sensible," wrote Scott, "that if there be anything good about my poetry or prose either, it is a hurried frankness of composition which pleases soldiers, sailors, and young people of bold and active dispositions." [Illustration: THE LADY OF THE LAKE From the group by J. Adams Acton] [Illustration: EFFIE DEANS AND HER SISTER, JEANIE, IN PRISON This picture, illustrating Jeanie Deans' visit to her accused sister, as related in "Heart of Midlothian," is from the painting by R. Herdman] Three years later the strongest and most stirring of the poems, "Marmion," appeared. It is a poem of scenery as well as of action, its descriptions are both exact and living; it tells a story with clear and compelling vigor, and it shows at their best two of Scott's really great qualities: simplicity and energy. It lacked the delicate shading of the verbal music which gave some later English poetry a magical charm; but it had a fine strength of outline, a noble ruggedness. He said later that he loved the sternness and bold nakedness of the Border landscape, and that if he did not see the heather at least once a year he believed he would die. "The Lady of the Lake," "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," "The Lord of the Isles," were less effective, but the fresh vitality of the Highlands was in them all. The Crash of His Fortunes The Waverley Novels have so long stood in the forefront of Scott's literary achievements that it is difficult to put them out of view and remember that in 1814, when Scott was forty-four years old, he was known to the world as a poet who had laid a spell on the imagination of his generation. He had "broken the record" so far as monetary returns for poetry were concerned. Milton received about one hundred dollars for "Paradise Lost" and Dr. Johnson was paid about seventy-five dollars for "The Vanity of Human Wishes," while "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" brought Scott nearly four thousand dollars; for "Marmion" he received five thousand dollars in advance of publication, and for one-half the copyright of "The Lord of the Isles" he was paid over seven thousand five hundred dollars. He was unaware of the enormous earning powers which he was later to develop; he had given up his profession, and he longed for an income which would support his family on the scale which his tastes and natural generosity dictated. To secure financial independence he brought James Ballantyne, a former school-mate and editor of a local newspaper, to Edinburgh and lent him money enough to start a printing business. This was in 1802; three years later he became a silent partner with Ballantyne and his brother. In 1809 he took a still more venturesome step and started the publishing house of John Ballantyne & Company. The two brothers were men of small ability, and entirely without knowledge of the business on which they embarked; they knew something about printing but nothing about publishing. Scott was equally ignorant of business methods; he was a man of generous nature and lavish tastes, and between the recklessness of his partners, for which he was largely responsible, and his lavish use of money, he was soon in financial difficulties and a crash would have come early if the phenomenal popularity of the novels had not postponed the evil day. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF SCOTT By Sir Thomas Lawrence] In 1812 he bought the farm at Abbotsford, to the ownership of which he had long looked forward. The country was lovely, the four acres grew into a great estate, the farm cottage became a stately mansion, as all traveled Americans know, and the owner lived like a Scotch laird but without a laird's steady income. He entertained lavishly and lived in feudal state, happy in his friends, his tenants, his horses and dogs. But the land alone cost more than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars! [Illustration: A GLIMPSE OF ABBOTSFORD] In 1805 Scott was the most popular poet in Great Britain. He had opened a fresh field, he had command of the magic of romance which always has and always will, in spite of temporary changes of taste, cast a spell over the imagination of men; his style was simple and his method plain; all classes of readers could understand him. During the next ten years he published six or seven long poems of varying merit. When the last of these, "The Lord of the Isles," appeared in 1815, the popular interest had diminished in volume and intensity, and the poet was in serious financial difficulties as the result of his lavish scale of living and the mismanagement of his business enterprises. The Waverley Novels At the moment when ruin faced him he found himself suddenly in the possession of a great income from an unexpected source. In 1805 he had written, almost at a sitting, an instalment of a story of the uprising of 1745 in a futile attempt to restore the exiled Stuart, Charles Edward, to the throne. In 1814 he completed the story and published it anonymously under the title of "Waverley." The novel was written in what the oarsmen call a "spurt"; not because the novelist was writing carelessly at breakneck speed for immediate income, but because he was a tremendous worker and more concerned with the general movement and human interest of the story in hand than with the details of its workmanship. To immense energy of mind and body Scott united patience and methodical habits of work, as he added to a romantic imagination keen interest in the business of life and in the smallest detail of practical affairs. His appetite for facts was as marked as his capacity for sentiment. Scott had breadth and vigor rather than delicacy of imagination; that is one reason why he is out of fashion at a time when men want to know not only what people do but why and how they do it. He saw men and events in the rough; he was interested in striking historical incidents and events, in strongly-marked characters, in actions rather than in moods. In a word, Scott was a writer who took the world as he found it, and described it as he saw it, without any strong desire to reform it. He was a Tory in politics, a strong adherent of an ordered society; a good, sound man not haunted by misgiving and questioning about the general order of things. Scott's novels were literally poured out during fifteen wonderful years; and even then the broken man could still apply the whip to his exhausted and crippled brain. The popular success of the novels was unprecedented in the history of literature. It is estimated that Scott earned with his pen not less than three-quarters of a million dollars. The earlier stories were the best: "The Antiquary," "Old Mortality," "Rob Roy," "Heart of Midlothian," "Guy Mannering." These were followed by the series of semi-historical novels with their brilliant historical portraits: "Ivanhoe," the most popular though by no means the best of Scott's stories, "The Monastery," "The Abbot," "Kenilworth," "Quentin Durward," "The Bride of Lammermoor," "The Talisman." [Illustration: THE EMPTY CHAIR, ABBOTSFORD From the painting by Sir W. Allan, R. A., in the Royal Collection] The defects of these novels and those which came later have been clearly pointed out since the analytical novel and the novel of purpose have come into vogue. Scott did not command the constructive skill of even the second-rate novelist of today; he was often an awkward builder and clumsy in putting his materials together in a coherent whole; his style is often loose and diffuse; he dealt largely with the outside of the spectacle of living; his women have no magic of loveliness, no mystery of temperament, though they sometimes stand out with great distinctness; his heroes are rarely heroic, they are often commonplace. Scott was the chronicler of feudalism, the primitive social order of the clan, of an aristocratic society. He was as little interested in Democracy as was Shakespeare; and largely for the same reason: his age was not anti-democratic, it had not reached the democratic stage. Bagehot, the famous English critic, put his limitations under two heads: he gives us the stir of the world but not its soul, and he leaves the abstract intellect unreported. His vital interest in the moving spectacle of life has given us an almost unrivalled report of that world, and of a great group of men and women whose careers, as Scott reports them, have the reality of fact and the dramatic interest of fiction. Jeanie Deans, Madge Wildfire, Diana Vernon, Meg Merrilies, Wandering Willie, Andrew Fairservice, and a crowd of their companions, are more alive today, after a century has passed, than most of the people whose names are in the telephone directories. Scott was a man of the kind men love to remember. His faults of nature are as obvious as his faults of art; but his splendid vitality makes them trivial. He was large hearted, frank, generous, honorable; he made life seem more noble by the richness of his nature and his splendid courage. His career was as romantic in achievement and vicissitude as his most striking novel. In 1826, when he was fifty-five years old, the two business houses in which he was a partner failed, with obligations amounting to nearly six hundred thousand dollars. Scott had recently spent large sums on the enlargement of Abbotsford, in settling his sons in life, and for other people; and he held the bills of Constable for four novels to be written in the future; the novels were written, but the bills were not honored. Four months after the failure Lady Scott died, and Scott's health was breaking. Two days after the failure he resumed work on "Woodstock," and set himself to pay the debt of half a million dollars. In two years he earned for his creditors nearly two hundred thousand dollars, the major part of which came from the sales of "Woodstock" and "The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte." If his brain had not given out he would have discharged the entire indebtedness in a few years. Working with a disabled brain but with heroic resolution, he wrote "Count Robert of Paris" and "Castle Dangerous." In five years more than three hundred thousand dollars had been paid; meantime he had had a stroke of paralysis. After a second stroke, when "Count Robert" was practically finished, the publishers objected to the work in the last volume. "The blow is a stunning one," wrote the broken man. "God knows I am at sea in the dark, and the vessel leaky.... I often wish I could lie down and sleep without waking. But I will fight it out if I can." And he fought it out; he died on July 12, 1832, and on February 21, 1833, the creditors were paid in full. Never was a heroic fight more nobly won. On his death-bed Scott called his son-in-law Lockhart, who was to tell the story of his life in one of the great biographies, to his bedside. "I have but a minute to speak to you," he said. "My dear, be a good man.... Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here." [Illustration: THE GRAVE OF SCOTT At Dryburgh Abbey, Scotland] SUPPLEMENTARY READING LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT (In "Everyman's Library") _By J. G. Lockhart_ SIR WALTER SCOTT _By R. H. Hutton_ SIR WALTER SCOTT _By William Winter_ Chapter in "Gray Days and Gold" DICTIONARY OF THE CHARACTERS IN THE WAVERLEY NOVELS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT _By M. F. A. Husband_ SIR WALTER SCOTT STUDIED IN EIGHT NOVELS _By A. S. G. Channing_ THE SCOTT COUNTRY _By W. S. Crockett_ *** Information concerning the above books may be had on application to the Editor of The Mentor. THE OPEN LETTER [Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT From the painting by Sir Henry Raeburn] What sort of a person was he; what did he look like--this Scottish bard, novelist, historian, essayist, and landed baronet? "There he goes," said Dr. Maginn, a contemporary of Scott's, "sauntering about his grounds, with his Lowland bonnet in his hand, dressed in his old green shooting-jacket, telling stories of every stone and bush, and tree and stream in sight--tales of battles and raids--or ghosts and fairies, as the case may be, of the days of yore." "Sauntering" is hardly the word with which to describe Scott's gait. "Limping" would be better, for he was lame from boyhood, and he supported himself in walking with a staff so heavy that it looked like a cudgel. Washington Irving visited Abbotsford in 1816, and described Scott as "limping up the gravel walk, aiding himself by a stout walking-stick, but moving rapidly and with vigor." * * * * * His lameness, was no serious handicap to Sir Walter. He was a man of extraordinary strength, six feet tall, and of a large and powerful frame, with great breadth across the chest. The muscles of his arms were like iron. He was an exceptional and powerful wielder of an ax, and could bring down a tree with the best of the younger men. He was a master of the horse, and a bold rider. He climbed the hills till he wearied all but his faithful dogs, and he was proficient in sport and hunting. The latter, however, he did not like. "I was never at ease," he said, "when I had knocked down my bird and, going to pick him up, he cast back his dying eye with a look of reproach. I am not ashamed to say that no practice ever reconciled me fully to the cruelty of the affair." * * * * * The conversation of Scott was frank, hearty, picturesque, and dramatic. He had a great sense of humor, and a rare gift for story telling. He was an accomplished mimic, and he lighted up his narratives and anecdotes with appropriate dialect and graphic description. And, as a near friend once observed, "The chief charm of his conversation, he being a man of such eminence, was its perfect simplicity and the entire absence of vanity and love of display." * * * * * He was a good listener, too--but he did not enjoy listening to classic music. He allowed that he "had a reasonable good ear for a jig," but confessed that "sonatas gave him the spleen." But he would rouse up at the sound of "The Blue Bells of Scotland" or "Bonnie Dundee," and his eye would flash an enthusiastic response to any song or verse that celebrated the romance, chivalry, and heroism of his native land. * * * * * Sir Walter was a strange combination of simplicity and strength. His personal appearance was strikingly odd. Once seen, he could never be forgotten. "Although forty-eight years have passed since I met him," wrote an acquaintance, "his personality is as present to me now as it was then in the flesh. His light blue waggish eye, sheltered, almost screened, by overhanging straw-colored bushy brows, his scanty, sandy-colored hair, the length of his upper lip, his towering forehead, his abrupt movements, and the mingled humor, urbanity and benevolence of his smile." His usual costume consisted of a green cutaway coat, with short skirts and brass buttons; drab trousers, vest and gaiters; a single seal and watch-key attached to a watered black ribbon dangling from his fob; a loose, soft linen collar; a black silk neckerchief; and a low-crowned, deep-brimmed hat. [Illustration: W. D. Moffat, EDITOR] THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION ESTABLISHED FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF A POPULAR INTEREST IN ART, LITERATURE, SCIENCE, HISTORY, NATURE, AND TRAVEL CONTRIBUTORS--PROF. JOHN C. VAN DYKE, HAMILTON W. MABIE, PROF. ALBERT BUSHNELL HART, REAR ADMIRAL ROBERT E. PEARY, WILLIAM T. HORNADAY, DWIGHT L. ELMENDORF, HENRY T. FINCK, WILLIAM WINTER, ESTHER SINGLETON, PROF. G. W. BOTSFORD, IDA M. 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42289	----	[Illustration: Cover] [Frontispiece: The Gateway, Abbotsford] [Illustration: Title page] Beautiful Britain Abbotsford London Adam & Charles Black Soho Square W 1912 CONTENTS CHAPTER I. From Cartleyhole to Abbotsford II. The Creation of Abbotsford III. Scott at Abbotsford IV. The Wizard's Farewell to Abbotsford V. The Later Abbotsford LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. The Gateway, Abbotsford . . . . . . _Frontispiece_ 2. The Eildon Hills and River Tweed 3. The Cross, Melrose 4. Sir Walter Scott's Desk and 'Elbow Chair' in the Study, Abbotsford 5. Jedburgh Abbey 6. Sir Walter's Sundial, Abbotsford 7. Darnick Tower 8. The Dining-Room, Abbotsford 9. The Garden, Abbotsford 10. The Entrance-Hall, Abbotsford 11. Dryburgh Abbey 12. Abbotsford from the River Tweed CHAPTER I FROM CARTLEYHOLE TO ABBOTSFORD Thousands of persons from all parts of the world visit Abbotsford annually. There is no diminution in the pilgrimage to this chief shrine of the Border Country, nor is there likely to be. Scott's name, and that of Abbotsford, are secure enough in the affections of men everywhere. It is scarcely necessary to recall that Scott on both sides of his house was connected with the Border Country--the 'bold bad Border' of a day happily long dead. He would have been a reiver himself, more than likely, and one of its nameless bards to boot, had he lived before the Border felt the subdued spirit of modern times. A descendant of Wat of Harden, linked to the best blood of the Border, and with every phase of his life redolent of the Border feeling, history has had no difficulty in claiming Sir Walter Scott as the most representative Border man the world has seen. He was not born in the Border Country, but practically all his life was spent there. He came to the Border a sickly, delicate child, between his third and fourth year, and for threescore years and one he seldom left it for any lengthened interval. Edinburgh was the arena of much of his professional career. But he was happiest, even amid the most crushing sorrows of his life, when within earshot of the Tweed. There was not a blither or sunnier boyhood than Scott's at Rosebank, where even then he was 'making' himself, and dreaming of the days that were to be. At Ashestiel, the birthplace of the most popular poetry of the century before Byron blazed upon the literary horizon, his life was singularly untrammelled. Ashestiel, from being off the beaten track perhaps, seems to have lost favour somewhat with the Scott student. At any rate, it is not the shrine it should be, although in several respects it is more interesting to lovers of Scott than even Abbotsford itself. As for Abbotsford, may we not say that it is at once the proudest, and the most stimulating, and the saddest memorial ever associated with a man of letters? All these places, comprising the three periods of Scott's life--Rosebank, Ashestiel, Abbotsford--lie as close to the Tweed as can be--none of them more than a few hundred paces from it at the outside. And when the great Borderer's task was accomplished, where more fitly could he have rested than with the river of his love and of his dreams singing ceaseless requiem around his last low bed? It will be interesting to have a glimpse of Tweedside just as Scott appeared upon the scene. Since his day the valley in many of its aspects has not been without change. Even the remote uplands, long untouched by outside influences, have not escaped the modern spirit. The river must needs remain _in statu quo_, but the contrast between Sir Walter's Tweedside and ours is considerable. A century of commerce and agriculture has wrought marvels on the once bare and featureless and uncultivated banks of the Tweed. And none would have rejoiced at its present picturesque and prosperous condition more than Scott himself. Of the valley as it was a hundred years since, some early travellers give their impressions. There is the following from a Londoner's point of view, for instance--a somewhat sombre picture, true enough, however, of _the upper reaches_ at the time: 'About four in the afternoon we were obliged to proceed on our journey to Moffat, a market town, where we were informed we should meet with good lodging, which made us ride on the more briskly, but notwithstanding all our speed, we had such terrible stony ways and tedious miles, that when we thought we had been near the place, we met a Scotchman, who told us we were not got half way; this put us almost into the spleen, for we could see nothing about us but barren mountains on the right and the River Tweed on the left, which, running thro' the stones and rocks with a terrible noise, seemed to us like the croaking of a Raven, or the tone of a Screitch Owle to a dying man, so we were forced to ride on by guesse, knowing not a step of the way.' At Scott's day the Tweed valley, in what are now its most luxuriant reaches, exhibited a markedly naked and treeless character. From Abbotsford to Norham Castle the scenery was of the openest. Here and there 'ancestral oaks' still clumped themselves about the great houses, with perhaps some further attempt at decorating the landscape. But that was rare enough. Landlords had not learned the art, not to speak of the wisdom, of tree-planting. It is only within the past hundred years that planting has become frequent, and the modern beauty of Tweedside emerged into being. It is said that Scott was one of the first to popularize the planting spirit. His operations at Abbotsford certainly induced the neighbouring proprietors to follow suit. Scott of Gala, and the lairds of Ravenswood, Drygrange, Cowdenknowes, Gladswood, Bemersyde, Mertoun, Eildon Hall, and Floors, all took their lead, more or less, from Abbotsford. Arboriculture was Scott's most passionate hobby. At least two long articles were penned by him on the subject, and he practised the art with extraordinary diligence and foresight. Of botany he knew little, but of trees everything. As we shall see, not the least important part of Abbotsford's creation was planning and perfecting that wondrous wealth of woodland--a very network about the place, on whose full growth his eyes, alas! were not destined to feast. 'Somebody,' he said, 'will look at them, however, though I question that they will have the same pleasure in gazing on the full-grown oaks that I have had in nursing the saplings.' Another impression of Tweedside comes to us from the pages of Lockhart. We are dealing now with _the site of Abbotsford_ as it was about the year 1811. Scott was tenant of Ashestiel. Here he had spent eight of the pleasantest years of his life. But his lease was out, and the laird himself--Scott's cousin, General Russell--was returning from India. In casting about for a new abode, Scott seems at first to have thought of Broadmeadows, on the Yarrow, then in the market, a compact little domain which would have suited him well. Lockhart's one regret was that Scott did not purchase Broadmeadows. Here, surrounded by large landed proprietors, instead of a few bonnet-lairds, he would certainly have escaped the Abbotsford 'yerd-hunger,' and changed, possibly, the whole of his career. But the Broadmeadows Scott might have been very different from _our Sir Walter_. Of Newark, also, close by, the scene of the 'Lay,' he had some fancy, and would fain have fitted it up as a residence. The ancestral home of Harden itself was proposed to him, and indeed offered, and he would have removed thither but for its inconvenience for shrieval duties. After all, however, there was uppermost in Scott's mind the wish to have a house and land of his own--to be 'laird of the cairn and the scaur,' as in the case of Broadmeadows, or 'a Tweedside laird' at best, and later on, perhaps, to 'play the grand old feudal lord again.' Lockhart assures us that Scott was really aiming at higher game. His ambition was to found a new Border family, and to become head of a new branch of the Scotts, already so dominant. He realized his ambition before he died. [Illustration: THE EILDON HILLS AND RIVER TWEED. Here Scott loved to linger. "I can stand on the Eildon Hill," he said, "and point out forty-three places in war and verse."] About to quit Ashestiel, therefore, his attention was directed to a small farm-holding not far distant, on the south bank of the Tweed, some two miles from Galashiels, and about three from Melrose. Scott knew the spot well. It had 'long been one of peculiar interest for him,' from the fact of the near neighbourhood of a Border battlefield, first pointed out to him by his father. By name Newarthaugh, it was also known as Cartleyhole, or Cartlawhole, and Cartlihole, according to the Melrose Session Records, in which parish it was situated. The place was tenanted for a time by Taits and Dicksons. Then it seems to have passed into the family of Walter Turnbull, school-master of Melrose, who disposed of it, in the year 1797, to Dr. Robert Douglas, the enterprising and philanthropic minister of Galashiels. Why Dr. Douglas purchased this property nobody has been able to understand. It lay outside his parish, and was never regarded as a desirable or dignified possession. A shrewd man of business, however, he may, like Scott, have judged it capable of results, speculating accordingly. He had never lived at Cartleyhole. The place was laid out in parks, and the house, of which, curiously, Scott speaks in a recently recovered letter as 'new and substantial,' was in occupation. The surroundings were certainly in a deplorably neglected condition. The sole attempt at embellishment had been limited to a strip of firs so long and so narrow that Scott likened it to a black hair-comb. 'The farm,' according to Lockhart, 'consisted of a rich meadow or haugh along the banks of the river, and about a hundred acres of undulated ground behind, all in a neglected state, undrained, wretchedly enclosed, much of it covered with nothing better than the native heath. The farmhouse itself was small and poor, with a common kailyard on one flank and a staring barn on the other; while in front appeared a filthy pond covered with ducks and duckweed, from which the whole tenement had derived the unharmonious designation of Clarty Hole.' Melrose Abbey, the most graceful and picturesque ruin in Scotland, already so celebrated in his verse, was visible from many points in the neighbourhood. Dryburgh was not far distant. Yonder Eildon's triple height, sacred to so much of the supernatural in Border lore, reared his grey crown to the skies. There, the Tweed, 'a beautiful river even here,' flowed in front, broad and bright over a bed of milk-white pebbles. Selkirk, his Sheriff's headquarters, was within easy reach. He was interested in the Catrail, or Picts' Work Ditch, on the opposite hillside, so often alluded to in his letters to Ellis; and on his own ground were fields, and mounds, and standing-stones, whose placenames recalled the struggle of 1526. A Roman road running down from the Eildons to a ford on the Tweed, long used by the Abbots, the erstwhile lords of the locality, furnished a new designation for the acres of hungry haugh-land--'as poor and bare as Sir John Falstaff's regiment'--upon which was destined to be reared the most venerated, and probably the most visited shrine in the kingdom. On May 12, 1811, we find Scott writing to James Ballantyne: 'I have resolved to purchase a piece of ground sufficient for a cottage and a few fields. There are two pieces, either of which would suit me, but both would make a very desirable property indeed, and could be had for between £7,000 and £8,000--or either separate for about half the sum. I have serious thoughts of one or both, and must have recourse to my pen to make the matter easy.' By the end of June one of the pieces passed into his hands for the sum mentioned--£4,000, half of which, according to Scott's bad and sanguine habit, he borrowed from his brother John, raising the remainder on the security of 'Rokeby,' as yet unwritten. The letter to Dr. Douglas acknowledging his receipt for the last instalment of the purchase-money has been preserved: 'I received the discharged bill safe, which puts an end to our relation of debtor and creditor: 'Now the gowd's thine, And the land's mine. I am glad you have been satisfied with my manner of transacting business, and have equal reason at least to thank you for your kindly accommodation as to time and manner of payment. In short, I hope our temporary connection forms a happy contradiction to the proverb, "I lent my money to my friend; I lost my money and my friend."' A figure of note in his day, Dr. Douglas was born at the manse of Kenmore, in 1747, and in his twenty-third year was presented to the parish of Galashiels, where he laboured till his death in 1820. He has been styled the Father of Galashiels. Galashiels, when Abbotsford came into being, was a mere thatched hamlet. Then it could boast of not more than a dozen slated houses. To-day there is a population of over 13,000. CHAPTER II THE CREATION OF ABBOTSFORD The first purchase of land was close on a hundred and ten acres, half of which were to be planted, and the remainder kept in pasture and tillage. An ornamental cottage with a pillared porch--a print of which is still preserved--after the style of an English vicarage, was agreed upon, and it was here that Scott passed the first years of his Abbotsford life. He had many correspondents during this period. Daniel Terry, an architect turned actor, was probably his chief adviser as to Abbotsford and its furnishings, no end of letters passing between them. Morritt of Rokeby was much in his confidence, and Joanna Baillie, 'our immortal Joanna,' whose 'Family Legend,' had been produced at Edinburgh the previous year under Scott's auspices. The plans for his house were at first of the simplest. He thus describes them to Miss Baillie: 'My dreams about my cottage go on. My present intention is to have only two spare bedrooms, with dressing-rooms, each of which on a pinch will have 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 hayloft, than be absent when folks are gathered together.' [Illustration: Abbotsford from the River Tweed] To Morritt we find him writing: 'I have fixed only two points respecting my intended cottage--one is that it shall be in my garden, or rather kailyard; the other, that the little drawing-room shall open into a little conservatory, in which conservatory there shall be a fountain. These are articles of taste which I have long since determined upon; but I hope before a stone of my paradise is begun we shall meet and collogue upon it'; but soon after, as an excuse for beginning 'Rokeby,' his fourth verse romance, he says: 'I want to build my cottage a little better than my limited finances will permit out of my ordinary income.' Later on he tells Lord Byron that 'he is labouring to contradict an old proverb, and make a silk purse out of a sow's ear--namely, to convert a bare haugh and brae into a comfortable farm'; and to Sarah Smith, a London tragic actress, he writes: 'Everybody, after abusing me for buying the ugliest place on Tweedside, begins now to come over to my side. I think it will be pretty six or seven years hence, whoever may come to see and enjoy, for the sweep of the river is a very fine one of almost a mile in length, and the ground is very unequal, and therefore well adapted for showing off trees.' Scott, as was said, took a profound interest in tree-planting. Had he not been able to add by purchase the neighbouring hills to his original lands, it was said that he would have requested permission of the owners to plant the grounds, for the mere pleasure of the occupation, and to beautify the landscape. 'I saunter about,' he said to Lady Abercorn, 'from nine in the morning till five at night with a plaid about my shoulders and an immense bloodhound at my heels, and stick in sprigs which are to become trees when I shall have no eyes to look at them!' He had a painter's as well as a poet's eye for scenery: 'You can have no idea of the exquisite delight of a planter,' he said; 'he is like a painter laying on his colours--at every moment he sees his effects coming out. There is no art or occupation comparable to this; it is full of past, present, and future enjoyment. I look back to the time when there was not a tree here, only bare heath; I look round and see thousands of trees growing up, all of which--I may say almost each of which--have received my personal attention. I remember five years ago looking forward, with the most delighted expectation, to this very hour, and as each year has passed the expectation has gone on increasing. I do the same now; I anticipate what this plantation and that one will presently be, if only taken care of, and there is not a spot of which I do not watch the progress. Unlike building, or even painting, or indeed any other kind of pursuit, this has no end, and is never interrupted, but goes on from day to day and from year to year with a perpetually augmenting interest. Farming I hate; what have I to do with fattening and killing beasts, or raising corn only to cut it down, and to wrangle with farmers about prices, and to be constantly at the mercy of the seasons? There can be no such disappointments or annoyances in planting trees.' [Illustration: THE CROSS, MELROSE. Believed to be the oldest "Mercat Cross" on the border.] Scott left Ashestiel at Whitsunday, 1812--a rather comical 'flitting,' according to his own account of it. 'The neighbours,' he writes to Lady Alvanley, '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 ponies, 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.' The year 1812 was one of his busiest. Five days every week until the middle of July he did Court duty at Edinburgh. Saturday evening saw him at Abbotsford. On Monday he superintended the licking into shape of his new domicile, and at night he was coaching it to the city. During the Court recess he pegged away at 'Rokeby' and other work under circumstances that must have been trying enough. 'As for the house and the poem,' he writes to Morritt, 'there are twelve masons hammering at the one and one poor noddle at the other.' He did not then know the luxury of a private 'den' as at Castle Street. A window corner, curtained off in the one habitable room which served for dining-room, drawing-room, and school-room, constituted his earliest Abbotsford study. There, amid the hammer's incessant fall, and the hum of many voices, and constant interruptions, he plodded on, and got through a fair amount. The letters to Terry commence in September, 1812, and show that some little progress had been made: 'We have got up a good garden-wall, complete stables in the haugh, and the old farm-yard enclosed with a wall, with some little picturesque additions in front. The new plantations have thriven amazingly well, the acorns are coming up fast, and Tom Purdie is the happiest and most consequential person in the world.' To Joanna Baillie he sends this characteristic note, in the beginning of 1813: 'No sooner had I corrected the last sheet of 'Rokeby' than I escaped to this Patmos as blithe as bird on tree, and have been ever since most decidedly idle--that is to say with busy idleness. I have been banking, and securing, and dyking against the river, and planting willows, and aspens, and weeping birches. I have now laid the foundations of a famous background of copse, with pendent trees in front; and I have only to beg a few years to see how my colours will come out of the canvas. Alas! who can promise that? But somebody will take my place--and enjoy them, whether I do or no'; and in March he adds: 'What I shall finally make of this villa work I don't know, but in the meantime it is very entertaining'; and again: 'This little place comes on as fast as can be reasonably hoped.' To Lady Louisa Stuart he writes: 'We are realizing the nursery tale of the man and his wife who lived in a vinegar bottle, for our only sitting-room is just 12 feet square, and my Eve alleges that I am too big for our paradise.' In October, 1813, Terry is told that 'these are no times for building,' but in the following spring, pressing the Morritts to visit him, he says: 'I am arranging this cottage a little more conveniently, to put off the plague and expense of building another year, and I assure you I expect to spare you and Mrs. Morritt a chamber in the wall, with a dressing-room and everything handsome about you. You will not stipulate, of course, for many square feet.' In a letter to Terry, dated November 10, 1814--the year of 'Waverley'--further progress is reported: 'I wish you saw Abbotsford, which begins this season to look the whimsical, gay, odd cabin that we had chalked out. I have been obliged to relinquish Stark's (the Edinburgh architect, who died before the building was well begun) plan, which was greatly too expensive. So I have made the old farm-house my _corps de logis_ with some outlying places for kitchen, laundry, and two spare bedrooms, which run along the east wall of the farm-court, not without some picturesque effect. A perforated cross, the spoils of the old kirk of Galashiels, decorates an advanced door, and looks very well.' Not much was done during the next two years, but in November, 1816, a new set of improvements was under consideration. Abbotsford was rapidly losing its cottage character. The 'romance' period was begun. A notable addition--connecting the farm-house with the line of buildings on the right--was then agreed upon, on which Scott communicates with Terry: 'Bullock[1] will show you the plan, which I think is very ingenious, and Blore has drawn me a very handsome elevation, both to the road and to the river. This addition will give me a handsome boudoir opening into the little drawing-room, and on the other side to a handsome dining-parlour of 27 feet by 18, with three windows to the north and one to the south, the last to be Gothic and filled with stained glass. Besides these commodities there is a small conservatory, and a study for myself, which we design to fit up with ornaments from Melrose Abbey.' In the same letter he says: 'I expect to get some decorations from the old Tolbooth of Edinburgh, particularly the copestones of the doorway, and a niche or two. Better get a niche _from_ the Tolbooth than a niche _in_ it to which such building operations are apt to bring the projectors.' [1] George Bullock and Edward Blore, London architects and furnishers. Atkinson was the artist who arranged the interior of Abbotsford. By July, 1817, the foundation of the existing house, which extends from the hall westwards to the original courtyard, had been laid, and Scott found a new source of constant occupation in watching the proceedings of his masons. In consequence of a blunder or two during his absence, 'I perceive the necessity,' he said, 'of remaining at the helm.' To Joanna Baillie he writes in September: 'I get on with my labours here; my house is about to be roofed in, and a comical concern it is.' There is some correspondence in October between Scott and Terry relative to the tower, a leading feature of the building. Scott mentions that (Sir) David Wilkie, who had just been his guest, 'admires the whole as a composition, and that is high authority.' 'I agree with you that the tower will look rather rich for the rest of the building, yet you may be assured that, with diagonal chimneys and notched gables, it will have a very fine effect, and is in Scotch architecture by no means incompatible.' In the beginning of 1818, he again writes to Terry: 'I am now anxious to complete Abbotsford. I have reason to be proud of the finishing of my castle, for even of the tower, for which I trembled, not a stone has been shaken by the late terrific gale which blew a roof clean off in the neighbourhood.' Lockhart, who saw Abbotsford for the first time in 1818, confesses that the building presented a somewhat 'fantastic appearance,' the new and old by no means harmonizing. He was there again in 1819, and in February, 1820, he married Scott's daughter. In the same year Scott writes to his wife from London, whither he had gone to receive his baronetcy: 'I have got a delightful plan for the addition at Abbotsford which, I think, will make it quite complete, and furnish me with a handsome library, and you with a drawing-room and better bedroom. It will cost me a little hard work to meet the expense, but I have been a good while idle.' The plans for these new buildings, including the wall and gateway of the courtyard and the graceful stone screen which divides it from the garden, were made by Blore, although the screen--with its carvings taken from details of stone-work at Melrose Abbey--was originally devised by Sir Walter himself. During the winter of 1821 the new operations were commenced. By the spring of 1822 they were in full swing. 'It is worth while to come,' he writes to Lord Montagu, 'were it but to see what a romance of a house I am making'; and to Terry later on: 'The new castle is now roofing, and looks superb--in fact, a little too good for the estate; but we must work the harder to make the land suitable.' That same summer the place was besieged by visitors from the South, who, after witnessing the King's reception at Edinburgh, hastened out to see Abbotsford. In October, 1822, he writes to his son Walter: 'My new house is quite finished as to masonry, and we are now getting on the roof just in time to face the bad weather.' In November, 1822, and January, 1823, there are long letters to Terry: 'The house is completely roofed. I never saw anything handsomer than the grouping of towers, chimneys, etc., when seen at a proper distance.' With Terry all sorts of subjects were discussed--bells, and a projected gas installation, along with a constant enumeration of curios and relics, on which he is urged to spare no expense. 'About July,' Scott writes at the beginning of 1824, 'Abbotsford will, I think, be finished, when I shall, like the old Duke of Queensberry who built Drumlanrig, fold up the accounts in a sealed parcel, with a label bidding "the deil pike out the een" of any of my successors that shall open it.' By Christmas, it was completed, and with the New Year's festivities a large and gay party celebrated the 'house-warming,' of which Basil Hall's sprightly 'Journal,' incorporated in the 'Life,' supplies a singularly agreeable account. But there is no room to quote. It was a doubly joyous occasion, marking not only the realization of Scott's long-cherished scheme as to his 'castle,' but the engagement of his eldest son, with whom, as he must have felt at the time, were the fortunes of the future Abbotsford. Of the year entered so auspiciously, none dreamt what the end was to be. [Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT'S DESK AND "ELBOW CHAIR," IN THE STUDY, ABBOTSFORD. At the desk most of the novels were written. Certainly no other article of furniture has been so intimately associated with Scott.] In the creation of Abbotsford not only was the cottage of 1812 transformed to the castle of 1824, but the estate itself was continually enlarging. Possession of land was a crowning passion with Scott. He was always driving bargains, as he declared--on the wrong side of his purse, however--with the needy, greedy cock-lairds of the locality. 'It rounds off the property so handsomely,' he says in one of his letters. Once, on his friend Ferguson remarking that he had paid what appeared to be one of his usual fabulous prices for a particular stretch, Scott answered quite good-humouredly, 'Well, well, it is only to me the scribbling of another volume more of nonsense.' The first purchase was, as we have seen, the hundred odd acres of Clarty Hole. In 1813 he made his second purchase, which consisted of the hilly tract stretching from the Roman road near Turn-Again towards Cauldshiels Loch, then a desolate and naked mountain mere. To have this at one end of his property as a contrast to the Tweed at the other 'was a prospect for which hardly any sacrifice would have appeared too much.' It cost him about £4,000. In 1815, Kaeside--Laidlaw's home--on the heights between Abbotsford and Melrose, passed into his hands for another £4,000, and more than doubled the domain. The house has changed considerably since Laidlaw's halcyon days. By 1816 the estate had grown to about 1,000 acres. In 1816 and 1817 he paid £16,000 for the two Toftfields, altering the name of the new and unfinished mansion to Huntlyburn, from a supposed but absolutely erroneous association with the 'Huntlee Bankis'[2] of the Thomas the Rhymer romance. In 1820, Burnfoot, afterwards Chiefswood, and Harleyburn fell to his hands for £2,300, and there were many minor purchases of which Lockhart takes no notice. Scott was very anxious to acquire the estate of Faldonside,[3] adjoining Abbotsford to the west, and actually offered £30,000 for it, but without success. He was similarly unsuccessful with Darnick Tower, which lay into his lands on the east, and which he was extremely desirous of including in Abbotsford. Scott's suggestion rather spurred the owner, John Heiton, to restore the ancient peel-house as a retreat for his own declining days, and it is still in excellent preservation--one of the best-preserved peels on the Border--and a veritable museum, crammed from floor to ceiling with curios, relics, and mementos both of the past and present. [2] The 'Huntlee Bankis' lie between Melrose and Newtown, on the eastern slope of the Eildons, on the left side of the highway as it bends round to the west, going towards, and within about two miles of, Melrose. The spot is indicated by the famous Eildon Tree Stone. [3] The place belonged in 1566 to Andrew Ker, one of the murderers of Rizzio. In 1574 Ker married the widow of John Knox, the Reformer. Nicol Milne was proprietor in Scott's day. [Illustration: JEDBURGH ABBEY. This grand ruin is of red sandstone, and except that it is roofless is in excellent preservation.] But even 'yerd-hunger' must be satisfied, and in Scott's case there was nothing for it save to steel the flesh against further desire. In November, 1825, there is the following entry in his diary: 'Abbotsford is all I can make it, so I resolve on no more building and no purchases of land till times are quite safe.' But times were never safe again. Abbotsford was all but within sound of the 'muffled drum.' Very soon--December 18, 1825--Scott was to write these words: 'Sad hearts at Darnick and in the cottages of Abbotsford. I have half resolved never to see the place again. How could I tread my hall with such a diminished crest! How live a poor, indebted man where I was once the wealthy, the honoured!' And again on January 26, 1826: 'I have walked my last on the domains I have planted, sat the last time in the halls I have built'--reflections happily unrealized, though, as a matter of fact, Scott was then the laird of Abbotsford in name only, and nothing more. The building and furnishing of Abbotsford are estimated to have cost over £25,000. The contract for the 1824 edifice was in the capable hands of the Smiths of Darnick, with whom Scott was on the most cordial terms. John Smith (the sculptor of the Wallace statue at Bemersyde) was a singularly able craftsman, and his staff of workmen, with Adam Paterson for foreman, were known all over the Border. For the interior decorations--painting, papering, etc., and even for some of the carvings and casts--Scott generally gave employment to local labour. Much of the costlier furniture was shipped from London, but the great bulk of the work was carried through by tradesmen in the district, selected by Scott himself, and in whom he placed implicit confidence. The estate, all told, must have cost at least £60,000. It extended to 1,500 acres, and the annual rental in Scott's day was only about £350. Such was the creation of Scott's Abbotsford, a real 'romance in stone and lime,' to use the Frenchman's hackneyed phrase. Never had Sir Walter deeper delight than when its walls were rising skywards, and the dream of his youth taking steady shape by the silvery side of the Tweed. 'I have seen much, but nothing like my ain house,' he cried--a broken, dying man returned to Abbotsford, only to be borne forth again. Nor has history been slow to add its Amen. CHAPTER III SCOTT AT ABBOTSFORD Of the Abbotsford life in the seven or eight brilliant seasons preceding the disaster of 1826 Lockhart's exquisite word-pictures are far the finest things in the Biography. Scott's dream was now fairly realized. He was not only a lord of acres, but a kind of mediæval chieftain as well. His cottage was transformed to a superb mansion, like some creation of the 'Arabian Nights,' and the whole estate, acquired at a cost far exceeding its real value, had grown to one of the trimmest and snuggest on Tweedside. A comparative failure at the Bar, Scott succeeded well otherwise in his professional career. His income from the Court Clerkship and Sheriffdom totalled £1,600, and from other sources he had an additional £400 a year. As the most prosperous book-producer of the period, he was netting an annual profit of no less than £10,000. His family was grown up, and his home life, notwithstanding some harsh things said about Lady Scott, was of the happiest. Unliterary, and Frenchified to a degree, Charlotte Carpenter was not the ideal helpmeet, perhaps, for a man of Scott's calibre and temperament. But that they lived comfortably together, that she made him an excellent wife, and that Scott was much attached to her, must be taken for granted, else Lockhart and the others are equivocating. There is at least one glimpse into Scott's heart which cannot savour of hypocrisy--the occasion of her death. Some of the most touching passages in the Diary belong to that event. As lover, husband, father, there is no question of the acuteness with which he felt her loss who had been his 'thirty years' companion.' Within less than six months the two biggest blows of his life fell upon Scott. Ruined, then widowed, his cup of grief was drained to the utmost. But before the fatal '26 Scott's life was an eminently ideal one. Abbotsford was all he could make it. He had reached the loftiest rung of the ladder. Long had he been the celebrity of the hour, not in Britain only, but throughout Europe itself. Probably no British author of his time was more widely known, and none, it is certain, was surrounded with so many of the material comforts. It was truly a summer fulness for Scott at Abbotsford ere the autumn winds or the biting breath of winter had begun to chill his cheek. [Illustration: SIR WALTER'S SUNDIAL, ABBOTSFORD. The dial stone in the flower garden, inscribed with the motto "For the Night Cometh," is an object of suggestive interest.] A glance at the Abbotsford life will bring us nearer Scott as a man--and as the most lovable of men. Treading, as one does to-day, in his very footsteps, we shall want to know how he lived there, and in what manner the pleasant days were spent. Scott's habits at Abbotsford, as at Ashestiel, were delightfully simple. In the country he was a rustic of the rustics. Formality vanished to a considerable extent when he changed his townhouse for the bracing atmosphere of the Tweed. But always methodical in his literary operations, he never allowed the freer life of Abbotsford to interfere with whatever tasks he had on hand. He did not sit late into the night. As a rule, the Abbotsford day ended for Scott by ten o'clock. He rose at five, lit his own fire in the season, shaving and dressing with precision. Attired generally in his green shooting-jacket, he was at his desk by six, and hard at work till nine. About half-past nine, when the family met for breakfast, he would enter the room 'rubbing his hands for glee,' for by that time he had done enough, as he said, 'to break the neck of the day's work.' After breakfast, he allowed his guests to fill in the next couple of hours or so for themselves--fishing, shooting, driving, or riding, with a retinue of keepers and grooms at command. Meantime he was busy with his correspondence, or a chapter for Ballantyne to be dispatched by the 'Blucher,' the Edinburgh and Melrose coach, by which he himself frequently travelled to and from Abbotsford. At noon he was 'his own man,' and among his visitors, or felling trees with the workmen on the estate, laying wagers, and competing with the best of them. When the weather was wet and stormy he kept to his study for several hours during the day, that he might have a reserve fund to draw from on good days. To his visitors he appeared more the man of leisure than the indefatigable author conferring pleasure on thousands. Only a careful husbanding of the moments could have enabled him to give the greater part of afternoon and evening to his guests. 'I know,' said Cadell, the publisher, once to him, 'that you contrive to get a few hours in your own room, and that may do for the mere pen-work, but when is it that you think?' 'Oh,' said Scott, 'I lie simmering over things for an hour or so before I get up, and there's the time I am dressing to overhaul my half-sleeping, half-waking _projet de chapitre_, and when I get the paper before me it commonly runs off pretty easily. Besides, I often take a dose in the plantations, and while Tom marks out a dyke or a drain as I have directed, one's fancy may be running its ain riggs in some other world.' His maxim was never to be doing nothing, and in making the most of the opportunities, he served both himself and his friends. Lockhart's reminiscences of the Abbotsford life, so delightfully vivid, convey better than anything else something of the ideal charm of Scott and his circle. But to Lockhart all may go on their own account, since lack of space forbids more than a mere quotation. [Illustration: DARNICK TOWER. One of the best preserved Peels on the border. Open to the public and well worth a visit.] The Abbotsford Hunt, one of the enjoyable annual outings--a coursing match on an extensive scale--affords material for Lockhart's best vein, especially the Hunt dinner, which for many of the neighbouring yeomen and farmers was _the_ event of the year. 'The company were seldom under thirty in number, and sometimes they exceeded forty. The feast was such as suited the occasion--a baron of beef, roasted, at the foot of the table, a salted round at the head, while tureens of hare-soup, hotchpotch, and cockieleekie extended down the centre, and such light articles as geese, turkeys, an entire sucking-pig, a singed sheep's head, and the unfailing haggis were set forth by way of side-dishes. Black-cock and moor-fowl, snipe, black and 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. The wine decanters made a few rounds of the table, but the hints for hot punch and toddy soon became clamorous. Two or three bowls were introduced and placed under the supervision of experienced manufacturers--one of these being usually the Ettrick Shepherd--and then the business of the evening commenced in good earnest. The faces shone and glowed like those at Camacho's wedding; the chairman told his richest stories of old rural life, Lowland or Highland; Ferguson and humbler heroes fought their Peninsular battles o'er again; the stalwart Dandie Dinmonts lugged out their last winter's snow-storm, the parish scandal, perhaps, or the dexterous bargain of the Northumberland tryst. Every man was knocked down for the song that he sung best, or took most pleasure in singing. Shortreed gave "Dick o' the Cow," or "Now Liddesdale has ridden a raid"; his son Thomas shone without a rival in the "Douglas Tragedy" and the "Twa Corbies"; a weather-beaten, stiff-bearded veteran, "Captain" Ormiston, had the primitive pastoral of "Cowdenknowes" in sweet perfection. Hogg produced the "Women Folk," or "The Kye comes Hame," and, in spite of many grinding notes, contrived to make everybody delighted, whether with the fun or the pathos of his ballad. The Melrose doctor sang in spirited style some of Moore's masterpieces. A couple of retired sailors joined in "Bold Admiral Duncan," and the gallant croupier crowned the last bowl with "Ale, good ale, thou art my darling." And so it proceeded until some worthy, who had fifteen or twenty miles to ride, began to insinuate that his wife and bairns would be getting sorely anxious about the fords, and the Dumpies and Hoddins were at last heard neighing at the gate, and it was voted that the hour had come for _doch an dorrach_, the stirrup-cup, a bumper all round of the unmitigated mountain dew. How they all contrived to get home in safety 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 good-wife, 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, 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."' Nor was the good old custom of the Kirn omitted at Abbotsford. Every autumn, before proceeding to Edinburgh, Scott gave a 'Harvest Home,' to which all the tenantry and their friends--as many as the barn could hold--were invited. Sir Walter and his family were present during the first part of the evening, to dispense the good things and say a few words of farewell. Old and young danced from sunset to sunrise, to the skirling of John o' Skye's pipes, or the strains of some 'Wandering Willie's' fiddle, the laird having his private joke for every old wife or 'gausie carle,' his arch compliment for the ear of every bonnie lass, and his hand and his blessing for the head of every little Eppie Daidle from Abbotstown or Broomielees. Hogmanay, and the immemorial customs of the New Year, as celebrated in Scotland--now fast dying out--obtained full respect at Abbotsford. Scott said it was uncanny, and would certainly have felt it very uncomfortable not to welcome the New Year in the midst of his family and a few cronies in the orthodox fashion. But nothing gave him such delight as the visit which he received as laird from all the children on his estate on the last morning of the year, when, as he was fond of quoting: 'The cottage bairns sing blythe and gay At the ha' door for hogmanay.' The words and form of the drama exist in various versions in every part of the Border Country, almost every parish possessing its own rendering. The _dramatis personæ_, three or four in number, sometimes even five, arrayed in fantastic fashion, proceeded from house to house, generally contenting themselves with the kitchen for an arena, where the performance was carried through in presence of the entire household. 'Galations' (not 'Goloshin') is the title of the play. Some account of it will be found in Chambers' 'Popular Rhymes of Scotland,' and in Maidment's scarce pamphlet on the subject (1835). From what has been said, it is not difficult to imagine the ideal relationship existing between Scott and his dependents at Abbotsford. They were surely the happiest retainers and domestics in the world. How considerate he was in the matter of dwellings, for instance! He realized that he owed them a distinct duty in diffusing as much comfort and security into their lives as possible. They were not mere goods and chattels, but beings of flesh and blood, with human sympathies like himself. And he treated them as such. Amid the severities of winter, some of his Edinburgh notes to Laidlaw are perfect little gems of their kind: 'This dreadful weather will probably stop Mercer (the weekly carrier). It makes me shiver in the midst of superfluous comforts to think of the distress of others. I wish you to distribute £10 amongst our poorer neighbours so as may best aid them. I mean not only the actually indigent, but those who are, in our phrase, _ill off_. I am sure Dr. Scott (of Darnlee) will assist you with his advice in this labour of love. I think part of the wood-money, too, should be given among the Abbotstown folks if the storm keeps them off work, as is like.' And again: 'If you can devise any means by which hands can be beneficially employed at Abbotsford, I could turn £50 or £100 extra into service. If it made the poor and industrious people a little easier, I should have more pleasure in it than any money I ever spent in my life.' 'I think of my rooks amongst this snowstorm, also of the birds, and not a little of the poor. For benefit of the former, I hope Peggy throws out the crumbs, and a cornsheaf or two for the game, if placed where poachers could not come at them. For the poor people I wish you to distribute £5 or so among the neighbouring poor who may be in distress, and see that our own folks are tolerably well off.' 'Do not let the poor bodies want for a £5, or even a £10, more or less'-- 'We'll get a blessing wi' the lave, And never miss 't.' Socially, the bond between Scott and his servants was a characteristic object-lesson. 'He speaks to us,' said one, 'as if we were blood relations.' Like Swift, he maintained that an affectionate and faithful servant should always be considered in the character of a humble friend. Even the household domestics 'stayed on' year after year. Some of them grew grey in his service. One or two died. He had always several pensioners beside him. Abbotsford was like a little happy world of its own--the most emphatic exception to the cynic's rule. Scott was 'a hero and a gentleman' to those who knew him most intimately in the common and disillusionizing routine of domestic life. In reading Lockhart, one feels that, aristocrat as Scott was, familiar with the nobility and literary lions of the time, he was most at home, and happiest, perhaps, in the fellowship of commoner men, such as Laidlaw, and Purdie, and John Usher, and James Hogg, who were knit to him as soul to soul. Of some of these he declared that they had become almost an integral part of his existence. We know how life was inexpressibly changed for Scott minus Tom Purdie, and to dispense with Laidlaw, when that had become absolutely necessary, was as the iron entering his soul. The most perfect pen-portraits in Lockhart are those of Purdie (the Cristal Nixon of 'Redgauntlet'), that faithful factotum and friend for whom he mourned as a brother; and 'dear Willie' Laidlaw, betwixt whom and Scott the most charming of all master and servant correspondence passed; and 'auld Pepe'--Peter Mathieson, his coachman, a wondrously devoted soul, content to set himself in the plough-stilts, and do the most menial duties, rather than quit Abbotsford at its darkest. John Swanston, too, Purdie's successor, and Dalgleish, the butler, occupy exalted niches in the temple of humble and honest worth and sweet sacrificing service for a dear master's sake who was much more than master to them all. Purdie's grave, close to Melrose Abbey, with a modest stone erected by Sir Walter Scott, is probably the most visited of the 'graves of the common people' almost anywhere. It is eighty-three years since, apparently in the fullest enjoyment of health and vigour, he bowed his head one evening on the table, and dropped asleep--for ever. Laidlaw lies at Contin amid the Highland solitudes. But few from Tweedside have beheld the green turf beneath which his loyal heart has been long resting, or read the simple inscription on the white marble that marks a spot so sacred to all lovers of Abbotsford and Sir Walter. 'Here lie the remains of William Laidlaw, Born at Blackhouse in Yarrow, November, 1780. Died at Contin, May 18, 1845.' No account of the Abbotsford life can fail to take notice of the extraordinary number of visitors, who, even at that early date, flocked to the shrine of Sir Walter. The year 1825, as has been said, must be regarded as the high-water mark in the splendours of Abbotsford. From the dawn of 'Waverley,' but particularly the period immediately preceding the crash, Abbotsford was the most sought-after house in the kingdom. It was seldom without its quota of guests. 'Like a cried fair,' Scott described it on one occasion. 'A hotel widout de pay,' was Lady Scott's more matter-of-fact comparison. What a profoundly interesting and curious record a register of visitors to Abbotsford would have been! [Illustration: THE DINING-ROOM, ABBOTSFORD. "His own great parlour" is not open to the public. It was the first room of any pretension that Scott built at Abbotsford.] Scott's first really distinguished visitor from the other side of the Atlantic was Washington Irving. He was there in August, 1817, whilst the building operations were in progress. Following Irving, came Lady Byron for one day only. Though Scott met Byron in London, and they frequently corresponded, Lord Byron was never at Abbotsford. In that same year Sir David Wilkie visited Scott to paint his picture, the 'Abbotsford Family.' Sir Humphry Davy was another visitor. One of the most welcome of all was Miss Edgeworth, who stayed for a fortnight in 1823. Tom Moore came in 1825, and in 1829 Mrs. Hemans, visiting the Hamiltons at Chiefswood, was daily at Abbotsford. Susan Ferrier, author of 'Marriage' and 'Inheritance,' visited Scott twice. Wordsworth, greatest name of all, was the last. He arrived on September 21, 1831, and two days later Scott, a broken invalid, left for the Continent. To the list of Scott's intimate friends, based on the Biography, Thomas Faed's picture, 'Scott and his Literary Friends,'[1] offers a good index. The piece is purely imaginary, for the persons represented were never all at Abbotsford at the same time, two of them, indeed--Crabbe and Campbell--never having seen it. Scott is represented as reading the manuscript of a new novel; on his right, Henry Mackenzie, his oldest literary friend, occupies the place of honour. Hogg, the intentest figure in the group, sits at Scott's feet to the left. Kit North's leonine head and shoulders lean across the back of a chair. Next come Crabbe and Lockhart--at the centre of the table--together with Wordsworth and Francis (afterwards Lord) Jeffrey. Sir Adam Ferguson, a bosom cronie, cross-legged, his military boots recalling Peninsular days and the reading of the 'Lady of the Lake' to his comrades in the lines of Torres Vedras, immediately faces Scott. Behind him, Moore and Campbell sit opposite each other. At the end of the table are the printers Constable and Ballantyne, and at their back, standing, the painters Allan and Wilkie. Thomas Thomson, Deputy Clerk Register, is on the extreme left, and Sir Humphry Davy is examining a sword-hilt. A second and smaller copy of Faed's picture (in the Woodlands Park collection, Bradford) substitutes Lord Byron and Washington Irving for Constable and Ballantyne. Allan, Davy, and Thomson are also omitted. The artist might well have introduced Scott's lady literary friends, Joanna Baillie and Maria Edgeworth, and it is a pity that Laidlaw has been left out. [1] In the possession of Captain Dennistoun of Golfhill. The picture has been frequently on exhibition, and frequently engraved. Whilst, however, Abbotsford was a kind of ever open door to an unparalleled variety of guests, there was another and a much larger company constantly invading its precincts--the great army of the uninvited. Such interruptions were a constant source of worry to Scott. Some came furnished with letters of introduction from friends for whose sake Scott received them cordially, and treated them kindly. Others had no introduction at all, but, pencil and note-book in hand, took the most impertinent liberties with the place and its occupants. On returning to Abbotsford upon one occasion, Lockhart recalls how Scott and he found Mrs. Scott and her daughters doing penance under the merciless curiosity of a couple of tourists, who had been with her for some hours. It turned out after all that there were no letters of introduction to be produced, as she had supposed, and Scott, signifying that his hour for dinner approached, added that, as he gathered they meant to walk to Melrose, he could not trespass further on their time. The two lion-hunters seemed quite unprepared for this abrupt escape. But there was about Scott, in perfection, when he chose to exert it, the power of civil repulsion. He bowed the overwhelmed originals to the door, and on re-entering the parlour, found Mrs. Scott complaining very indignantly that they had gone so far as to pull out their note-book and beg an exact account, not only of his age, but of her own. Scott, already half relenting, laughed heartily at this misery, afterwards saying, 'Hang the Yahoos, Charlotte, but we should have bid them stay dinner.' 'Devil a bit,' quoth Captain Ferguson, who had come over from Huntlyburn, 'they were quite in a mistake, I could see. The one asked Madame whether she deigned to call her new house Tully Veolan or Tillietudlem, and the other, when Maida happened to lay his head against the window, exclaimed, "_Pro-di-gi-ous!_"' 'Well, well, Skipper,' was the reply, 'for a' that, the loons would hae been nane the waur o' their kail.' [Illustration: THE GARDEN, ABBOTSFORD. The Courtyard was (in Mr. Hope Scott's time) planted as a flower garden, with clipped yews at the corners of the ornamental grass-plots, and beds all ablaze with summer Bowers.] Much has been written of Scott and his dogs--not the least important part of the establishment. All true poets, from Homer downwards, have loved dogs. Scott was seldom without a 'tail' at his heels. His special favourites, Camp and Maida (the Bevis of 'Woodstock'), are as well-known as himself. Both were frequently painted by Raeburn and others. When Camp died at Castle Street, Scott excused himself from a dinner-party on account of 'the death of a dear old friend'--a fine compliment to the canine tribe--a finer index to the heart of the man. Scott looked upon his dogs as companions, 'not as the brute, but the mute creation.' He loved them for their marvellously human traits, and we know how they reciprocated his affection. He was always caring for them. 'Be very careful of the dogs,' was his last request to Laidlaw on the eve of setting out for Italy. And when, close on a year afterwards, he returned so deadly stricken, it was his dogs fondling about him which for the most part resuscitated the sense of 'home, sweet home.' CHAPTER IV THE WIZARD'S FAREWELL TO ABBOTSFORD On March 5, 1817, at Castle Street, in the midst of a merry dinner-party, Scott was seized with a sudden illness--the first since his childhood. The illness lasted a week, and was more serious than had been anticipated. It was, indeed, the first of a series of such paroxysms, which for years visited him periodically, and from which he never absolutely recovered. Lockhart parted on one occasion with 'dark prognostications' that it was for the last time. Scott, too, despaired of himself. Calling his children about his bed, he said: 'For myself, my dears, I am unconscious of ever having done any man an injury, or omitted 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.' 'God bless you!' he again said to each of them, laying his hand on their heads. 'Live so that you may all hope to meet each other in a better place hereafter.' Presently he fell into a profound slumber, and on awaking, the crisis was seen to be over. A gradual re-establishment of health followed. Of the 'Bride of Lammermoor,' and 'Ivanhoe,' written under the most adverse circumstances, whilst he still suffered acutely, one is surprised to find both romances in the very front rank of his creations. He was under opiates, more or less, when the 'Bride' was on the stocks, dictating nearly the whole of it to Laidlaw and John Ballantyne. It is a most curious fact psychologically, for of its characters, scenes, humour, and all that connected him with the authorship of the story, he recollected nothing. A more extraordinary incident literature has not known.[1] But work which cut him short in the end was the saving of his life in this instance. The mind was a constant conquest over the weaker physical framework. 'It is my conviction,' he declared to Gillies, 'that by a little more hearty application you might forget, and lose altogether, the irritable sensations of an invalid, and I don't, in this instance, preach what I have not endeavoured to practise. Be assured that if pain could have prevented my application to literary labour, not a page of "Ivanhoe" would have been written; for, from beginning to end of that production, which has been a good deal praised, I was never free from suffering. It might have borne a motto somewhat analogous to the inscription which Frederick the Great's predecessor used to affix to his attempts at portrait-painting when he had the gout: "Fredericus I., _in tormentis pinxit_." Now, if I had given way to mere feelings and ceased to work, it is a question whether the disorder might not have taken deeper root, and become incurable. The best way is, if possible, to triumph over disease by setting it at defiance, somewhat on the same principle as one avoids being stung by boldly grasping a nettle.' [1] Dickens had a somewhat similar experience, though not, of course, to the like extent. [Illustration: THE ENTRANCE HALL, ABBOTSFORD. A spacious apartment, 40 feet by 20 feet, panelled to the height of 7 feet with dark oak from Dunfermline Abbey.] By 1820 he was enjoying tolerably good health, with no cramp recurrences for a time. But in 1823, when busy with 'Peveril,' an arresting hand laid itself upon Scott in the shape of a slight stroke of apoplexy. As a matter of fact, and as Lockhart suspected, this was only one of several such shocks which he had been carefully concealing. '"Peveril" will, I fear, smell of the apoplexy,' he afterwards admitted. Hence, no doubt, 'Peveril's' dulness. He rallied, notwithstanding, and up to Christmas, 1825, his health was excellent. But from 1826--the year of his crowning sorrows--the record of Scott's life reads like a long martyrdom. Rheumatism, hallucinations, strange memory lapses, began to steal from Scott all the little joy that was left. On February 5, 1830, the blow fell which, like Damocles' sword, had been hanging over him for years. It fell with unmistakable meaning. It was his first real paralytic seizure--long dreaded, long expected. On his return from the Parliament House, in his usual health, he found an old friend waiting to consult him about a memoir of her father which he had promised to revise for the press. Whilst examining the MS. the stroke came, a slight contortion passing over his features. In a minute or two he rose, staggered to the drawing-room, where were Miss Anne Scott and Miss Lockhart, but fell to the floor speechless and insensible. A surgeon quickly at hand cupped him, after the old-fashioned treatment for such complaints. By night, speech had returned, and in a day or two he had resumed his Court duties. But he was never the same again. People in general did not remark any difference. Doctors and patient, however, knew well enough that it was the beginning of the end. Both his parents had succumbed to paralysis, and 'considering the terrible violence and agitation and exertion,' says Lockhart, 'to which he had been subjected during the four preceding years, the only wonder is that this blow was deferred so long; there can be none that it was soon followed by others.' Still he plodded on. Even with half a brain he should not 'lag superfluous on the stage.' And heedless of innumerable warnings, he was at his desk day after day, writing and dictating by turns. He now resigned his Clerkship, on an £800 a year allowance, surrendered his Edinburgh house, and settled permanently at Abbotsford, lonely and desolate, an old man before his time, but indomitable to the core. There he commenced 'Count Robert of Paris,' the penultimate of his published tales. But the mighty machinery of his mind moved not as of yore. Like Samson, his strength had departed. He was now as other men. By November he suffered from a second stroke, and wrote in his Diary for January: 'Very indifferent, with more awkward feelings than I can well bear up against. My voice sunk, and my head strangely confused.' But a worse shock was coming. Cadell pronounced the 'Count' a complete failure. Yet he struggled to recast it. To crown all, he went to the 'hustings'--a hardened anti-Reform Billite. At Jedburgh, as Lockhart tells, the crowd saluted him with blasphemous shouts of 'Burke Sir Walter!'[2]--the unkindest cut of all, which haunted him to the end. By July he had begun 'Castle Dangerous,' and in the middle of the month, accompanied by Lockhart, he started for Lanarkshire to refresh his memory for the setting of his new story. They ascended the Tweed by Yair, Ashestiel, Elibank, Innerleithen, Peebles, Biggar, places all dear to his heart and celebrated in his writings. Crowds turned out to welcome him. Everywhere he was received with acclamation and the deepest respect. At Douglas the travellers inspected the old Castle, the ruin of St. Bride's, with the monuments and tombs of the 'most heroic and powerful family in Scottish annals.' At Milton-Lockhart, the seat of Lockhart's brother, Scott met his old friend Borthwickbrae. Both were paralytics. Each saw his own case mirrored in the other. They had a joyous--too joyous a meeting, with startling results to the older invalid. On returning to Cleghorn, another shock laid him low, and he was despaired of. When the news reached Scott, he was bent on getting home at once. 'No, William,' he said to his host, urging him to remain, 'this is a sad warning; I must home to work while it is called to-day, for the night cometh when no man can work. I put that text many years ago on my dial-stone, but it often preached in vain.' [2] The Burke and Hare murders were recent. Returned, he finished 'Count Robert' and 'Castle Dangerous.' Both novels were really the fruit of a paralytic brain. The 'Magnum Opus,'[3] too, proposed by Cadell (a huge success), engaged much of his attention. But Sir Walter's work was done. At length, doctors' treatment doing him little good, from his constant determination to be at his desk, it was decided, not without difficulty, that Scott should spend the winter of 1831 in Italy, where his son Charles was attached to the British Legation at Naples. On September 22 all was in readiness. A round of touching adieus, one or two gatherings of old friends, the final instructions to Laidlaw, and Scott quitted Abbotsford practically for ever. He returned, to be sure, but more a dead man than a living one. Of his journey to London (meeting many friends) there is no need to write, nor of the Italian tour--Malta, Naples, Rome, Florence, Venice--for which, no matter the brilliance of their associations, he exhibited but a mere passive interest. His heart was in the homeland. [3] A reissue of the Poetry, with biographical prefaces, and a uniform reprint of the Novels, each introduced by an account of the hints on which it had been founded, and illustrated throughout by historical and antiquarian annotations. By June 13, London was again reached, and in the St. James's Hotel, Jermyn Street (now demolished), he lay for three weeks in a state of supreme stupor. Allan Cunningham tells of the extraordinary interest and sympathy which Scott's illness evoked. Walking home late one night, he found a number of working men standing at the corner of Jermyn Street, one of whom asked him, as if there had been only one deathbed in London: 'Do you know, sir, if this is the street where he is lying?' 'Abbotsford!' was his cry in the more lucid intervals that came to him. On July 7 he was carried on board the _James Watt_ steamer, accompanied by Lockhart, Cadell, a medical man--Dr. Thomas Watson--and his two daughters. The Forth was reached on the 9th, and the next two days--the last in his 'own romantic town'--were passed, as all the voyage had been, in a condition of absolute unconsciousness. On the 11th, at a very early hour of the morning, Scott was lifted into his carriage for the final journey homewards. During the first part of the drive he remained torpid, until the veil lifted somewhat at Gala Water. Strange that, after oblivion so profound and prolonged, he should open his eyes and regain a measure of consciousness just here, amid landscapes the most familiar to him in the world. Some good angel must have touched him then. A mere coincidence! Perhaps! But there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. 'Gala Water, surely--Buckholm--Torwoodlee,' he murmured. When he saw the Eildons-- 'Three crests against the saffron sky, Beyond the purple plain, The kind remembered melody Of Tweed once more again'-- he became greatly excited, and in crossing Melrose Bridge, his 'nearest Rialto,' as he called it, he could hardly be kept in the carriage. Abbotsford, a mile ahead, was soon reached. Laidlaw--a big lump in his throat, we may be sure--was waiting at the door, and assisted to carry his dying master and friend to the dining-room, where his bed had been prepared. He sat bewildered for a moment or two, then, resting his eyes on Laidlaw, as if trying to recollect, said immediately, 'Ha, Willie Laidlaw! O man, how often have I thought of _you_!' By this time his dogs were around his chair, fawning on him, and licking his hands. Then, indeed, he knew where he was. Between sobs and tears he tried to speak to them, and to stroke them as of yore. But the body, no less than the brain, was exhausted, and gentle sleep closed his eyelids, like a tired child, once more in his own Abbotsford. He lingered for some weeks, alternating between cloud and sunshine--mostly cloud. One day the longing for his desk seized him, and he was wheeled studywards, but the palsied fingers refused their office, and he sank back, assured at last that the sceptre had departed. Lockhart and Laidlaw were now his constant attendants. Both read to him from the New Testament. 'There is but one Book,' Scott said, and it 'comforted' him to listen to its soothing and hope-inspiring utterances. Then the cloud became denser. At last delirium and delusion prostrated him, and he grew daily feebler. Now he thought himself administering justice as the Selkirkshire 'Shirra'; anon he was giving Tom Purdie orders anent trees. Sometimes, his fancy was in Jedburgh, and the words, 'Burke Sir Walter,' escaped him in a dolorous tone. Then he would repeat snatches from Isaiah, or the Book of Job, or some grand rugged verse torn off from the Scottish Psalms, or a strain sublimer still from the Romish Litany: 'Dies irae, dies ilia, Solvet saeclum in favilla.' 'As I was dressing on the morning of September 17,' says Lockhart, 'Nicolson came into my room and told me that his master had awoke in a state of composure and consciousness, and wished to see me immediately. I found him entirely himself, though in the last extreme of feebleness. His eye was clear and calm--every trace of the wild fire of delirium extinguished. "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." He paused, and I said: "Shall I send for Sophia and Anne?" "No," said he, "don't disturb them. Poor souls! I know they were up all night. God bless you all." With this he sunk into a very tranquil sleep, and, indeed, he scarcely afterwards gave any sign of consciousness, except for an instant on the arrival of his sons. About half-past one p.m., on September 21, Sir Walter Scott breathed his last, in the presence of all his children. It was a beautiful day--so warm that every window was wide open, and so perfectly still that the sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around the bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes.' [Illustration: DRYBURGH ABBEY. Which, if it cannot boast the architectural glories of Melrose, far surpasses it for queenly situation.] He died a month after completing his sixty-first year. On December 7, 1825, almost seven years earlier, we find him taking a survey of his own health in relation to the ages reached by his parents and other members of the family, and then setting down in his Diary the result of his calculations, 'Square the odds, and good-night, Sir Walter, about sixty. I care not, if I leave my name unstained and my family property settled. _Sat est vixisse_.' His prophecy was fulfilled. He lived just a year--but a year of gradual death--beyond his anticipations. His wish, too, was fulfilled; for he died practically free of debt. The sale of his works, the insurance of his life, and a sum advanced by Cadell, completely cleared his engagements. The copyrights purchased by Cadell were afterwards sold to Messrs. Adam and Charles Black, who therefore hold the exact text of the works. On September 26--a Wednesday--Sir Walter was buried. Services at Abbotsford, after the simple fashion of the Scottish Kirk, were conducted by the Revs. Principal Baird, of Edinburgh University, Dr. Dickson, of St. Cuthbert's, and the minister of Melrose. The courtyard and all the precincts of Abbotsford were crowded with uncovered spectators as the procession (over a mile in length) was arranged. And as it advanced through Darnick and Melrose, and the villages on the route, the whole population appeared at their doors in like manner, almost all in black. From Darnick Tower a broad crape banner waved in the wind, and the Abbey bell at Melrose rang a muffled peel. Thence there is a somewhat steep ascent to Gladswood and Bemersyde. On the crest of the road overlooking the 'beautiful bend' the hearse came to a curious halt, at the very spot where Scott was accustomed to rein up his horses. It was no 'accident,' as Lockhart imagines. For one of the horses was Sir Walter's own, and must have borne him many a time hither. Peter Mathieson, Laidlaw, and others of Scott's servants carried the plain black coffin to the grave within St. Mary's aisle, at Dryburgh, where it was lowered by his two sons, his son-in-law, and six of his cousins. And thus the remains of Sir Walter Scott--our Scottish Shakespeare--were laid by the side of his wife in the sepulchre of his fathers. CHAPTER V THE LATER ABBOTSFORD Sir Walter's Abbotsford, as we saw, was completed in 1824. For the next thirty years there was practically no alteration on the place. At Scott's death the second Sir Walter came into possession. He does not appear to have lived at Abbotsford after 1832, and indeed for many years previous his time had been spent almost entirely with his regiment, the 15th Hussars, of which, at his father's death, he was Major. He died childless, as his brother did also, and Abbotsford passed to Walter Scott Lockhart, son of Scott's elder daughter, who had married J. G. Lockhart. On his death, in 1853, his only sister Charlotte, married to James Robert Hope, Q.C., came into possession, and she and her husband assumed the name of Scott. Abbotsford had been sadly neglected since Scott's death in 1832, and everything needed restoration. But Mr. Hope Scott did wonders. Between the years 1855 and 1857 he built a new west wing to the house, consisting of a Chapel, hall, drawing-room, boudoir, and a suite of bedrooms. The old kitchen was turned into a linen-room, and a long range of new kitchen offices facing the Tweed was erected, which materially raised the elevation of Scott's edifice, and improved the appearance of the whole pile as seen from the river. An ingenious tourist access was also arranged, with other internal alterations. Outside, the grounds and gardens were completely overhauled, the overgrown plantations thinned, and the old favourite walks cleaned and kept as Scott himself would have wished. In the lifetime of the Great Magician the ground on which he fixed his abode was nearly on a level with the highway running along the south front, and wayfarers could survey the whole domain by looking over the hedge. A high embankment was now thrown up on the road-front of Abbotsford, the road itself shifted several yards back, the avenue lengthened, a lodge built, and the new mound covered with a choice variety of timber, which has now grown into one of the most pleasing features of the Abbotsford approach. The courtyard was at the same time planted as a flower-garden, with clipped yews at the corners of the ornamental grass-plots, and beds all ablaze with summer flowers. The terraces, on the north, so rich and velvety, date from this period. Most visitors to Abbotsford have the impression that Sir Walter was responsible for every part of the present edifice, whereas it is at least a third larger from that of Scott's day. On the death of Mr. Hope Scott (his wife having pre-deceased him), their only living child, the sole surviving descendant of Sir Walter, Mary Monica Hope Scott, came into possession. In 1874 she married the Hon. Joseph Constable-Maxwell, third son of the eleventh Baron Herries of Terregles. Thus direct descendants of the maker of Abbotsford still reign there in the person of his great-granddaughter and her children. There are two methods of reaching Abbotsford--by rail to Galashiels, thence to Abbotsford Ferry Station on the Selkirk line, alighting at which and crossing the Tweed, a delightful tree-shaded walk of about a mile brings us to the house. But the more popular method is to make the journey from Melrose, three miles distant. The way lies between delicious green fields and bits of woodland--a pleasant country road, exposed somewhat, despite smiling hedgerows on either side. The road teems with reminiscences of the Romancist. Out from the grey town, with its orchards and picturesque gardens, the Waverley Hydropathic is passed on the right. In the grounds a handsome seated statue of Scott may be noticed. Further on, to the left, tree-ensconced, lie Chiefswood and Huntlyburn on the Abbotsford estate. Then comes Darnick, with its fine peel, now open to the public, and well worth a visit. At the fork of the roads (that to the right leading by Melrose Bridge to Gattonside and Galashiels) we turn leftwards, and are soon at the visitors' entrance (a modest wicket-gate) to the great Scottish Mecca. But nothing is to be seen yet. Mr. Hope Scott's plantations and 'ingenious tourist arrangement' screen the pile with wonderful completeness. And it is only when within a few paces of the building, at a turn in the lane leading from the highway, that all at once one emerges upon it. The public waiting-room is in the basement, whence parties of ten or twelve are conducted through the house. In point of picturesqueness, Abbotsford is, of course, best seen from the Tweed--the north bank--or the hillside. But we are then looking, let us remember, at the _back_ of the edifice. Nearly all the photographs present this view for the sake of the river. At first not unfrequently there is a sense of disappointment, especially if one's ideas have been founded on Turner's somewhat fanciful sketches. As this is not a guide-book, we shall not give here a minute catalogue of the treasures to be seen at Abbotsford, referring the reader instead to Mrs. Maxwell-Scott's excellent catalogue of the 'Armour and Antiquities.' But we are sure that none who visit the place will come away unsatisfied, or will fail to be moved by the personal relics of the Great Wizard, such as his chair, his clothes and writing-desk, which bring before us the man himself, for whose memory Abbotsford is but a shrine. [Illustration: Plan of Abbotsford and grounds] BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD 
22656	----	at http://www.eBookForge.net RED CAP TALES [Illustration: Red Cap among the Wizard's Treasures.] RED CAP TALES STOLEN FROM THE TREASURE CHEST OF THE WIZARD OF THE NORTH WHICH THEFT IS HUMBLY ACKNOWLEDGED BY S. R. CROCKETT =New York= THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 1904 COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1904. =Norwood Press= J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. THE WHY! FOUR CHILDREN WOULD NOT READ SCOTT SO I told them these stories--and others--to lure them to the printed book, much as carrots are dangled before the nose of the reluctant donkey. They are four average intelligent children enough, but they hold severely modern views upon storybooks. _Waverley_, in especial, they could not away with. They found themselves stuck upon the very threshold. Now, since the first telling of these Red Cap Tales, the Scott shelf in the library has been taken by storm and escalade. It is permanently gap-toothed all along the line. Also there are nightly skirmishes, even to the laying on of hands, as to who shall sleep with _Waverley_ under his pillow. It struck me that there must be many oldsters in the world who, for the sake of their own youth, would like the various Sweethearts who now inhabit their nurseries, to read Sir Walter with the same breathless eagerness as they used to do--how many years agone? It is chiefly for their sakes that I have added several interludes, telling how Sweetheart, Hugh John, Sir Toady Lion, and Maid Margaret received my petty larcenies from the full chest of the Wizard. At any rate, Red Cap succeeded in one case--why should he not in another? I claim no merit in the telling of the tales, save that, like medicines well sugar-coated, the patients mistook them for candies and--asked for more. The books are open. Any one can tell Scott's stories over again in his own way. This is mine. S. R. CROCKETT. CONTENTS CERTAIN SMALL PHARAOHS THAT KNEW NOT JOSEPH 1 RED CAP TALES FROM "WAVERLEY" THE FIRST TALE: I. GOOD-BYE TO WAVERLEY-HONOUR 11 II. THE ENCHANTED CASTLE 16 III. THE BARON AND THE BEAR 21 _THE FIRST INTERLUDE OF ACTION_ 28 THE SECOND TALE: I. THE CATTLE-LIFTING 31 II. THE ROBBER'S CAVE 35 _THE SECOND INTERLUDE_ 41 THE THIRD TALE: I. THE CHIEF OF THE MAC-IVORS AND THE CHIEF'S SISTER 46 II. MISFORTUNES NEVER COME SINGLE 55 _THE THIRD INTERLUDE--BEING MAINLY A FEW WORDS UPON HEROES_ 62 THE FOURTH TALE: HERE AND THERE AMONG THE HEATHER 64 _INTERLUDE OF STICKING-PLASTER_ 78 THE FIFTH TALE: THE WHITE COCKADE 81 THE SIXTH TALE: BLACK LOOKS AND BRIGHT SWORDS 94 _INTERLUDE OF BREVITY_ 104 THE LAST TALE: THE BARON'S SURPRISE 105 RED CAP TALES FROM "GUY MANNERING" _WHERE WE TOLD THE SECOND TALE_ 123 THE FIRST TALE: I. WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY 124 _INTERLUDE OF INTERROGATION_ 140 THE SECOND TALE: I. HAPPY DOMINIE SAMPSON 143 II. DANDIE DINMONT 150 III. IN THE LION'S MOUTH 158 _INTERLUDE OF LOCALITY_ 162 THE THIRD TALE: THE RETURN OF DIRK HATTERAICK 166 THE FOURTH TALE: THE FIGHT IN THE CAVE 185 _INTERLUDE OF CONSULTATION_ 204 RED CAP TALES FROM "ROB ROY" THE FIRST TALE: FRANK THE HIGHWAYMAN 211 _INTERLUDE OF DISCUSSION_ 236 THE SECOND TALE: I. IN THE TOILS OF RASHLEIGH 241 II. ROB ROY AT LAST 254 III. THE BAILIE FIGHTS WITH FIRE 267 IV. THE DROWNING OF THE SPY 276 _INTERLUDE OF EXPOSTULATION_ 284 THE THIRD TALE: I. IN THE HANDS OF THE PHILISTINES 288 II. THE ESCAPE 294 III. THE DEATH OF RASHLEIGH 307 RED CAP TALES FROM "THE ANTIQUARY" THE FIRST TALE: I. THE MYSTERIOUS MR. LOVEL 326 II. THE NIGHT OF STORM 337 _INTERLUDE OF WARNING_ 352 THE SECOND TALE: I. LOVEL FIGHTS A DUEL 354 II. THE SEEKERS OF TREASURE 370 III. MISTICOT'S GRAVE 377 _A QUITE SUPERFLUOUS INTERLUDE_ 389 THE THIRD TALE: I. THE EARL'S SECRET 396 II. THE MOTHER'S VENGEANCE 400 III. THE HEIR OF GLENALLAN 408 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS BY SIMON HARMON VEDDER 1 Red Cap among the Wizard's treasures _Frontispiece_ WAVERLEY _Facing page_ 2 In an instant his red cap was off and he was bowing and saluting . . . with . . . extravagant gestures 20 3 So fierce was the attack . . . made on Edward, that the young man was compelled to draw his pistol 66 4 Rose Bradwardine . . . watched him with a sigh on her lip and colour on her cheek 84 5 "Vich Ian Vohr," it said in a dreadful voice, "beware of to-morrow" 102 GUY MANNERING 6 "Ride your ways, Laird of Ellangowan," she cried 136 7 He would stand there transfixed . . . till a serving-maid pulled his skirts to tell him dinner was waiting 150 8 He saw his late companion . . . engaged in deadly combat with a couple of rascals 154 9 Hazlewood snatched the gun from the servant and haughtily ordered Brown to stand back and not to alarm the lady 170 ROB ROY 10 He took the lantern . . . and holding it up, proceeded to examine the stern, set countenance of Frank's guide 256 11 The fight between Frank and Rashleigh 266 12 "Stand!" she cried, . . . "and tell me what you seek in Macgregor's country" 278 13 The girl's face, perhaps not altogether unintentionally, touched that of Frank Osbaldistone 300 THE ANTIQUARY 14 "Turn back! Turn back!" he cried 344 15 Dousterswivel flung himself on his knees 375 16 He lighted his beacon accordingly 410 RED CAP TALES CERTAIN SMALL PHARAOHS THAT KNEW NOT JOSEPH IT was all Sweetheart's fault, and this is how it came about. She and I were at Dryburgh Abbey, sitting quietly on a rustic seat, and looking toward the aisle in which slept the Great Dead. The long expected had happened, and we had made pilgrimage to our Mecca. Yet, in spite of the still beauty of the June day, I could see that a shadow lay upon our Sweetheart's brow. "Oh, I know he was great," she burst out at last, "and what you read me out of the _Life_ was nice. I like hearing about Sir Walter--but--" I knew what was coming. "But what?" I said, looking severely at the ground, so that I might be able to harden my heart against the pathos of Sweetheart's expression. "But--I can't read the novels--indeed I can't. I have tried _Waverley_ at least twenty times. And as for _Rob Roy_--" Even the multiplication table failed here, and at this, variously a-sprawl on the turf beneath, the smaller fry giggled. "Course," said Hugh John, who was engaged in eating grass like an ox, "we know it is true about _Rob Roy_. She read us one whole volume, and there wasn't no Rob Roy, nor any fighting in it. So we pelted her with fir-cones to make her stop and read over _Treasure Island_ to us instead!" "Yes, though we had heard it twenty times already," commented Sir Toady Lion, trying his hardest to pinch his brother's legs on the sly. "Books wifout pictures is silly!" said a certain Maid Margaret, a companion new to the honourable company, who was weaving daisy-chains, her legs crossed beneath her, Turk fashion. In literature she had got as far as words of one syllable, and had a poor opinion even of them. "_I_ had read all Scott's novels long before I was your age," I said reprovingly. The children received this announcement with the cautious silence with which every rising generation listens to the experiences of its elders when retailed by way of odious comparison. "Um-m!" said Sir Toady, the licensed in speech; "_we_ know all that. Oh, yes; and you didn't like fruit, and you liked medicine in a big spoon, and eating porridge and--" "Oh, we know--we know!" cried all the others in chorus. Whereupon I informed them what would have happened to us thirty years ago if we had ventured to address our parents in such fashion. But Sweetheart, with the gravity of her age upon her, endeavoured to raise the discussion to its proper level. "Scott writes such a lot before you get at the story," she objected, knitting her brows; "why couldn't he just have begun right away?" "With Squire Trelawney and Dr. Livesey drawing at their pipes in the oak-pannelled dining room, and Black Dog outside the door, and Pew coming tapping along the road with his stick!" cried Hugh John, turning off a sketchy synopsis of his favourite situations in fiction. "Now that's what I call a proper book!" said Sir Toady, hastily rolling himself out of the way of being kicked. (For with these unusual children, the smooth ordinary upper surfaces of life covered a constant succession of private wars and rumours of wars, which went on under the table at meals, in the schoolroom, and even, it is whispered, in church.) As for blithe Maid Margaret, she said nothing, for she was engaged in testing the capacities of a green slope of turf for turning somersaults upon. "In Sir Walter Scott's time," I resumed gravely, "novels were not written for little girls--" "Then why did you give us Miss Edgeworth to read?" said Sweetheart, quickly. But I went on without noticing the interruption, "Now, if you like, I will tell you some of Sir Walter's stories over again, and then I will mark in your own little edition the chapters you can read for yourselves." The last clause quieted the joyous shout which the promise of a story--any sort of a story--had called forth. An uncertain look crept over their faces, as if they scented afar off that abomination of desolation--"lessons in holiday time." "_Must_ we read the chapters?" said Hugh John, unhopefully. "Tell us the stories, anyway, and leave it to our honour!" suggested Sir Toady Lion, with a twinkle in his eye. "Is it a story--oh, don't begin wifout me!" Maid Margaret called from behind the trees, her sturdy five-year-old legs carrying her to the scene of action so fast that her hat fell off on the grass and she had to turn back for it. "Well, I will tell you, if I can, the story of 'Waverley,'" I said. "Was he called after the pens?" said Toady Lion the irreverent, but under his breath. He was, however, promptly kicked into silence by his peers--seriously this time, for he who interferes with the telling of a story is a "Whelk,"--which, for the moment, is the family word for whatever is base, mean, unprofitable, and unworthy of being associated with. But first I told them about the writing of _Waverley_, and the hand at the Edinburgh back window which wrote and wrote. Only that, but the story as told by Lockhart had affected my imagination as a boy. "Did you ever hear of the Unwearied Hand?" I asked them. "It sounds a nice title," said Sir Toady; "had he only one?" "It was in the early summer weather of 1814," I began, "after a dinner in a house in George Street, that a young man, sitting at the wine with his companions, looked out of the window, and, turning pale, asked his next neighbour to change seats with him. "'There it is--at it again!' he said, with a thump of his fist on thetable that made the decanters jump, and clattered the glasses; 'it has haunted me every night these three weeks. Just when I am lifting my glass I look through the window, and there it is at it--writing--writing--always writing!' "So the young men, pressing about, looked eagerly, and lo! seen through the back window of a house in a street built at right angles, they saw the shape of a man's hand writing swiftly, steadily, on large quarto pages. As soon as one was finished, it was added to a pile which grew and grew, rising, as it were, visibly before their eyes. "'It goes on like that all the time, even after the candles are lit,' said the young man, 'and it makes me ashamed. I get no peace for it when I am not at my books. Why cannot the man do his work without making others uncomfortable?' "Perhaps some of the company may have thought it was not a man at all, but some prisoned fairy tied to an endless task--Wizard Michael's familiar spirit, or Lord Soulis's imp Red Cap doing his master's bidding with a goose-quill. "But it was something much more wonderful than any of these. It was the hand of Walter Scott finishing _Waverley_, at the rate of a volume every ten days!" "Why did he work so hard?" demanded Hugh John, whom the appearance of fifty hands diligently writing would not have annoyed--no, not if they had all worked like sewing-machines. "Because," I answered, "the man who wrote _Waverley_ was beginning to have more need of money. He had bought land. He was involved in other people's misfortunes. Besides, for a long time, he had been a great poet, and now of late there had arisen a greater." "I know," cried Sweetheart, "Lord Byron--but _I_ don't think he was." "Anyway Fitzjames and Roderick Dhu is ripping!" announced Hugh John, and, rising to his feet, he whistled shrill in imitation of the outlaw. It was the time to take the affairs of children at the fulness of the tide. "I think," I ventured, "that you would like the story of _Waverley_ if I were to tell it now. I know you will like _Rob Roy_. Which shall it be first?" Then there were counter-cries of "Waverley" and "Rob Roy"--all the fury of a contested election. But Sweetheart, waiting till the brawlers were somewhat breathed, indicated the final sense of the meeting by saying quietly, "_Tell us the one the hand was writing!_" RED CAP TALES TOLD FROM WAVERLEY THE FIRST TALE FROM "WAVERLEY"[1] I. GOOD-BYE TO WAVERLEY-HONOUR ON a certain Sunday evening, toward the middle of the eighteenth century, a young man stood practising the guards of the broadsword in the library of an old English manor-house. The young man was Captain Edward Waverley, recently assigned to the command of a company in Gardiner's regiment of dragoons, and his uncle was coming in to say a few words to him before he set out to join the colours. Being a soldier and a hero, Edward Waverley was naturally tall and handsome, but, owing to the manner of his education, his uncle, an high Jacobite of the old school, held that he was "somewhat too bookish" for a proper man. He must therefore see a little of the world, asserted old Sir Everard. His Aunt Rachel had another reason for wishing him to leave Waverley-Honour. She had actually observed her Edward look too often across at the Squire's pew in church! Now Aunt Rachel held it no wrong to look at Squire Stubbs's pew if only that pew had been empty. But it was (oh, wickedness!) just when it contained the dear old-fashioned sprigged gown and the fresh pretty face of Miss Cecilia Stubbs, that Aunt Rachel's nephew looked most often in that direction. In addition to which the old lady was sure she had observed "that little Celie Stubbs" glance over at her handsome Edward in a way that--well, when _she_ was young! And here the old lady bridled and tossed her head, and the words which her lips formed themselves to utter (though she was too ladylike to speak them) were obviously "The Minx!" Hence it was clear to the most simple and unprejudiced that a greater distance had better be put between the Waverley loft and the Squire's pew--and that as soon as possible. Edward's uncle, Sir Everard, had wished him to travel abroad in company with his tutor, a staunch Jacobite clergyman by the name of Mr. Pembroke. But to this Edward's father, who was a member of the government, unexpectedly refused his sanction. Now Sir Everard despised his younger brother as a turncoat (and indeed something little better than a spy), but he could not gainsay a father's authority, even though he himself had brought the boy up to be his heir. "I am willing that you should be a soldier," he said to Edward; "your ancestors have always been of that profession. Be brave like them, but not rash. Remember you are the last of the Waverleys and the hope of the house. Keep no company with gamblers, with rakes, or with Whigs. Do your duty to God, to the Church of England, and--" He was going to say "to the King," when he remembered that by his father's wish Edward was going to fight the battles of King George. So the old Jacobite finished off rather lamely by repeating, "to the Church of England and all constituted authorities!" Then the old man, not trusting himself to say more, broke off abruptly and went down to the stables to choose the horses which were to carry Edward to the north. Finally, he delivered into the hands of his nephew an important letter addressed as follows:-- "To Cosmo Comyne Bradwardine, Esquire of Bradwardine, at his principal mansion of Tully-Veolan in Perthshire, North Britain,--_These._--" For that was the dignified way in which men of rank directed their letters in those days. The leave-taking of Mr. Pembroke, Edward's tutor, was even longer and more solemn. And had Edward attended in the least to his moralisings, he might have felt somewhat depressed. In conclusion, the good clergyman presented him with several pounds of foolscap, closely written over in a neat hand. "These," he said, handling the sheets reverently, "are purposely written small that they may be convenient to keep by you in your saddle-bags. They are my works--my unpublished works. They will teach you the real fundamental principles of the Church, principles concerning which, while you have been my pupil, I have been under obligation never to speak to you. But now as you read them, I doubt not but that the light will come upon you! At all events, I have cleared my conscience." Edward, in the quiet of his chamber, glanced at the heading of the first: _A Dissent from Dissenters or the Comprehension Confuted_. He felt the weight and thickness of the manuscript, and promptly confuted their author by consigning the package to that particular corner of his travelling trunk where he was least likely to come across it again. On the other hand, his Aunt Rachel warned him with many head-shakings against the forwardness of the ladies whom he would meet with in Scotland (where she had never been). Then, more practically, she put into his hand a purse of broad gold pieces, and set on his finger a noble diamond ring. As for Miss Celie Stubbs, she came to the Waverley church on the last day before his departure, arrayed in all her best and newest clothes, mighty fine with hoops, patches, and silks everywhere. But Master Edward, who had his uniform on for the first time, his gold-laced hat beside him on the cushion, his broadsword by his side, and his spurs on his heels, hardly once looked at the Squire's pew. At which neglect little Celie pouted somewhat at the time, but since within six months she was married to Jones, the steward's son at Waverley-Honour, with whom she lived happy ever after, we may take it that her heart could not have been very deeply touched by Edward's inconstancy. * * * * * [As a suitable first taste of the original I now read to my audience from a pocket _Waverley_, Chapter the Sixth, "The Adieus of Waverley." It was listened to on the whole with more interest than I had hoped for. It was an encouraging beginning. But Sir Toady, always irrepressible, called out a little impatiently: "That's enough about him. Now tell us what he _did!_" And this is how I endeavoured to obey.] II. THE ENCHANTED CASTLE Edward Waverley found his regiment quartered at Dundee in Scotland, but, the time being winter and the people of the neighbourhood not very fond of the "red soldiers," he did not enjoy the soldiering life so much as he had expected. So, as soon as the summer was fairly come, he asked permission to visit the Castle of Bradwardine, in order to pay his respects to his uncle's friend. It was noon of the second day after setting out when Edward Waverley arrived at the village of Tully-Veolan to which he was bound. Never before had he seen such a place. For, at his uncle's house of Waverley-Honour, the houses of villagers, all white and neat, stood about a village green, or lurked ancient and ivy-grown under the shade of great old park trees. But the turf-roofed hovels of Tully-Veolan, with their low doors supported on either side by all too intimate piles of peat and rubbish, appeared to the young Englishman hardly fit for human beings to live in. Indeed, from the hordes of wretched curs which barked after the heels of his horse, Edward might have supposed them meant to serve as kennels--save, that is, for the ragged urchins who sprawled in the mud of the road and the old women who, distaff in hand, dashed out to rescue them from being trampled upon by Edward's charger. Passing gardens as full of nettles as of pot-herbs, and entering between a couple of gate-posts, each crowned by the image of a rampant bear, the young soldier at last saw before him, at the end of an avenue, the steep roofs and crow-stepped gable ends of Bradwardine, half dwelling-house, half castle. Here Waverley dismounted, and, giving his horse to the soldier-servant who had accompanied him, he entered a court in which no sound was to be heard save the plashing of a fountain. He saw the door of a tall old mansion before him. Going up he raised the knocker, and instantly the echoes resounded through the empty house. But no one came to answer. The castle appeared uninhabited, the court a desert. Edward glanced about him, half expecting to be hailed by some ogre or giant, as adventurers used to be in the fairy tales he had read in childhood. But instead he only saw all sorts of bears, big and little, climbing (as it seemed) on the roof, over the windows, and out upon the ends of the gables--while over the door at which he had been vainly knocking he read in antique lettering the motto, "BEWAR THE BAR." But all these bruins were of stone, and each one of them kept as still and silent as did everything else about this strange mansion--except, that is, the fountain, which, behind him in the court, kept up its noisy splashing. Feeling, somehow, vaguely uncomfortable, Edward Waverley crossed the court into a garden, green and pleasant, but to the full as solitary as the castle court. Here again he found more bears, all sitting up in rows on their haunches, on parapets and along terraces, as if engaged in looking at the view. He wandered up and down, searching for some one to whom to speak, and had almost made up his mind that he had found a real enchanted Castle of Silence, when in the distance he saw a figure approaching up one of the green walks. There was something uncouth and strange about the way the newcomer kept waving his hands over his head--then, for no apparent reason, flapping them across his breast like a groom on a frosty day, hopping all the time first on one foot and then on the other. Tiring of this way of getting over the ground, he would advance by standing leaps, keeping both feet together. The only thing he seemed quite incapable of doing was to use his feet, one after the other, as ordinary people do when they are walking. Indeed, this strange guardian of the enchanted castle of Bradwardine looked like a gnome or fairy dwarf. For he was clad in an old-fashioned dress of grey, slashed with scarlet. On his legs were scarlet stockings and on his head a scarlet cap, which in its turn was surmounted by a turkey's feather. He came along dancing and singing in jerks and snatches, till, suddenly looking up from the ground, he saw Edward. In an instant his red cap was off, and he was bowing and saluting, and again saluting and bowing, with, if possible, still more extravagant gestures than before. Edward asked this curious creature if the Baron Bradwardine were at home, and what was his astonishment to be instantly answered in rhyme: "The Knight's to the mountain His bugle to wind; The Lady's to greenwood Her garland to bind. The bower of Burd Ellen Has moss on the floor, That the step of Lord William, Be silent and sure." This was impressive enough, surely; but, after all, it did not tell young Captain what he wanted to know. So he continued to question the strange wight, and finally, after eliciting many unintelligible sounds, was able to make out the single word "butler." [Illustration: "HE came along dancing and singing in jerks and snatches, till, suddenly looking up from the ground, he saw Edward. In an instant his red cap was off, and he was bowing and saluting, and again saluting and bowing, with, if possible, still more extravagant gestures than before."] Pouncing upon this, Edward commanded the Unknown to lead him instantly to the butler. Nothing loath, the fool danced and capered on in front, and, at a turning of the path, they found an old man, who seemed by his dress to be half butler, half gardener, digging diligently among the flower beds. Upon seeing Captain Waverley, he let drop his spade, undid his green apron, frowning all the time at Edward's guide for bringing his master's guest upon him without warning, to find him digging up the earth like a common labourer. But the Bradwardine butler had an explanation ready. His Honour was with the folk, getting down the Black Hag (so he confided to Edward). The two gardener lads had been ordered to attend his Honour. So in order to amuse himself, he, the majordomo of Bradwardine, had been amusing himself with dressing Miss Rose's flower beds. It was but seldom that he found time for such like, though personally he was very fond of garden work. "He cannot get it wrought in more than two days a week, at no rate whatever!" put in the scarecrow in the red cap and the turkey feather. "Go instantly and find his Honour at the Black Hag," cried the majordomo of Bradwardine, wrathful at this interference, "and tell him that there is a gentleman come from England waiting him at the Hall." "Can this poor fellow deliver a letter?" Edward asked doubtfully. "With all fidelity, sir," said the butler, "that is, to any one whom he respects. After all, he is more knave than fool. We call the innocent Davie Dolittle, though his proper name is Davie Gellatley. But the truth is, that since my young mistress, Miss Rose Bradwardine, took a fancy to dress him up in fine clothes, the creature cannot be got to do a single hand's turn of work. But here comes Miss Rose herself. Glad will she be to welcome one of the name of Waverley to her father's house!" III. THE BARON AND THE BEAR Rose Bradwardine was still quite young. Scarce did the tale of her years number seventeen, but already she was noted over all the countryside as a pretty girl, with a skin like snow, and hair that glistened like pale gold when the light fell upon it. Living so far from society, she was naturally not a little shy. But as soon as her first feeling of bashfulness was over, Rose spoke freely and brightly. Edward and she, however, had but little time to be alone together. For it was not long before the Baron of Bradwardine appeared, striding toward them as if he had possessed himself of the giant's seven-league boots. Bradwardine was a tall, thin, soldierly man, who in his time had seen much of the world, and who under a hard and even stern exterior, hid a heart naturally warm. He was much given to the singing of French songs and to making long and learned Latin quotations. And indeed he quoted Latin, even with the tears standing in his eyes, as he first shook Edward by the hand and then embraced him in the foreign fashion on both cheeks--all to express the immense pleasure it was to receive in his house of Tully-Veolan "a worthy scion of the old stock of Waverley-Honour." While Miss Rose ran off to make some changes in her dress, the Baron conducted Edward into a hall hung about with pikes and armour. Four or five servants, in old-fashioned livery, received them with honour, the majordomo at their head. The butler-gardener was not to be caught napping a second time. Bradwardine took Captain Waverley at once into an old dining room all panelled with black oak, round the walls of which hung pictures of former chiefs of the line of Tully-Veolan. Somewhere out-of-doors a bell was ringing to announce the arrival of other guests, and Edward observed with some interest that the table was laid for six people. In such a desolate country it seemed difficult to imagine where they would arrive from. Upon this point Edward soon received enlightenment. First, there was the Laird of Balmawhapple,--"a discreet young gentleman," said the Baron, "much given to field sports." Next came the Laird of Killancureit, who cultivated his own fields and cared for his own cattle--thereby (quoth the Baron) showing the commonness of his origin. Added to these were a "non-juring" Episcopal minister--that is, one who had refused to take the oaths of allegiance to King George's government, and, last of all, the "Baron-Bailie" or land-steward of Bradwardine, one Mr. Macwheeble. This last, to show his consciousness of his inferior position, seated himself as far as possible from the table, and as often as he wanted to eat, he bent himself nearly double over his plate, in the shape of a clasp-knife about to shut. When dinner was over, Rose and the clergyman discreetly retired, when, with a sign to the butler, the Baron of Bradwardine produced out of a locked case a golden cup called the Blessed Bear of Bradwardine, in which first the host and then all the company pledged the health of the young English stranger. After a while, the Baron and Edward set out to see their guests a certain distance on their way, going with them down the avenue to the village "change-house" or inn, where Balmawhapple and Killancureit had stabled their horses. Edward, being weary, would much rather have found himself in bed, but this desertion of good company the Baron would noways allow. So under the low cobwebbed roof of Lucky Macleary's kitchen the four gentlemen sat down to "taste the sweets of the night." But it was not long before the wine began to do its work in their heads. Each one of them, Edward excepted, talked or sang without paying any attention to his fellows. From wine they fell to politics, when Balmawhapple proposed a toast which was meant to put an affront upon the uniform Edward wore, and the King in whose army he served. "To the little gentleman in black velvet," cried the young Laird, "he who did such service in 1702, and may the white horse break his neck over a mound of his making!" The "little gentleman in black velvet" was the mole over whose hillock King William's horse is said to have stumbled, while the "white horse" represented the house of Hanover. Though of a Jacobite family, Edward could not help taking offence at the obvious insult, but the Baron was before him. The quarrel was not his, he assured him. The guest's quarrel was the host's--so long as he remained under his roof. "Here," quoth the Baron, "I am _in loco parentis_ to you, Captain Waverley. I am bound to see you scatheless. And as for you, Mr. Falconer of Balmawhapple, I warn you to let me see no more aberrations from the paths of good manners." "And I tell you, Mr. Cosmo Comyne Bradwardine of Bradwardine and Tully-Veolan," retorted the other, in huge disdain, "that I will make a muir cock of the man that refuses my toast, whether he be a crop-eared English Whig wi' a black ribband at his lug, or ane wha deserts his friends to claw favour wi' the rats of Hanover!" In an instant rapiers were out, and the Baron and Balmawhapple hard at it. The younger man was stout and active, but he was no match for the Baron at the sword-play. And the encounter would not have lasted long, had not the landlady, Lucky Macleary, hearing the well-known clash of swords, come running in on them, crying that surely the gentlemen would not bring dishonour on an honest widow-woman's house, when there was all the lee land in the country to do their fighting upon. So saying, she stopped the combat very effectually by flinging her plaid over the weapons of the adversaries. * * * * * Next morning Edward awoke late, and in no happy frame of mind. It was an age of duels, and with his first waking thoughts there came the memory of the insult which had been passed upon him by the Laird of Balmawhapple. His position as an officer and a Waverley left him no alternative but to send that sportsman a challenge. Upon descending, he found Rose Bradwardine presiding at the breakfast table. She was alone, but Edward felt in no mood for conversation, and sat gloomy, silent, and ill-content with himself and with circumstances. Suddenly he saw the Baron and Balmawhapple pass the window arm in arm, and the next moment the butler summoned him to speak with his master in another apartment. There he found Balmawhapple, no little sulky and altogether silent, with the Baron by his side. The latter in his capacity of mediator made Edward a full and complete apology for the events of the past evening--an apology which the young man gladly accepted along with the hand of the offender--somewhat stiffly given, it is true, owing to the necessity of carrying his right arm in a sling--the result (as Balmawhapple afterwards assured Miss Rose) of a fall from his horse. It was not till the morning of the second day that Edward learned the whole history of this reconciliation, which had at first been so welcome to him. It was Daft Davie Gellatley, who, by the roguish singing of a ballad, first roused his suspicions that something underlay Balmawhapple's professions of regret for his conduct. "The young man will brawl at the evening board _Heard ye so merry the little birds sing?_ But the old man will draw at the dawning the sword, _And the throstle-cock's head is under his wing._" Edward could see by the sly looks of the Fool that he meant something personal by this, so he plied the butler with questions, and discovered that the Baron had actually fought Balmawhapple on the morning after the insult, and wounded him in the sword-arm! Here, then, was the secret of the young Laird's unexpected submission and apology. As Davie Gellatley put it, Balmawhapple had been "sent hame wi' his boots full o' bluid!" THE FIRST INTERLUDE OF ACTION The tale-telling had at this point to be broken off. Clouds began to spin themselves from Eildon top. Dinner also was in prospect, and, most of all, having heard so much of the tale, the four listeners desired to begin to "play Waverley." Sweetheart made a stately, if skirted, Bradwardine. Besides, she was in _Cæsar_, and had store of Latin quotations--mostly, it is true, from the examples in the grammar, such as "_Illa incedit regina!_" Certainly she walked like a queen. Or, as it might be expressed, more fittingly with the character of the Baron in the original: "Stately stepped she east the wa', And stately stepped she west." Hugh John considered the hero's part in any story only his due. His only fault with that of Waverley was that so far he had done so little. He specially resented the terrible combat "in the dawning" between the Baron and the overbold Balmawhapple (played by Maid Margaret). Sir Toady Lion as low comedian ("camelion" he called it) performed numerous antics as Daft Davie Gellatley. He had dressed the part to perfection by putting his striped jersey on outside his coat, and sticking in his cricket cap such feathers as he could find. "Lie down, Hugh John," he cried, in the middle of his dancing and singing round and round the combatants; "why, you are asleep in bed!" This, according to the authorities, being obvious, the baffled hero had to succumb, with the muttered reflection that "Jim Hawkins wouldn't have had to stay asleep, when there was a fight like that going on!" Still, however, Hugh John could not restrain the natural rights of criticism. He continually raised his head from his pillow of dried branches to watch Sweetheart and Maid Margaret. "You fight just like girls," he cried indignantly; "keep your left hand behind you, Bradwardine--or Balmawhapple will hack it off! I say--girls _are_ silly things. You two are afraid of hurting each other. Now me and Toady Lion--" And he gave details of a late fraternal combat much in the manner of Froissart. It is to be noted that thus far both Sweetheart and Maid Margaret disdained the female parts, the latter even going the length of saying that she preferred Celie Stubbs, the Squire's daughter at Waverley-Honour, to Rose Bradwardine. On being asked for an explanation of this heresy, she said, "Well, at any rate, Celie Stubbs got a new hat to come to church in!" * * * * * And though I read the "Repentance and a Reconciliation" chapter, which makes number Twelve of _Waverley_, to the combatants, I was conscious that I must hasten on to scenes more exciting if I meant to retain the attention of my small but exacting audience. Furthermore, it was beginning to rain. So, hurriedly breaking off the tale, we drove back to Melrose across the green holms of St. Boswells. It was after the hour of tea, and the crowd of visitors had ebbed away from the precincts of the Abbey before the tale was resumed. A flat "throuch" stone sustained the narrator, while the four disposed themselves on the sunny grass, in the various attitudes of severe inattention which youth assumes when listening to a story. Sweetheart pored into the depths of a buttercup. Hugh John scratched the freestone of a half-buried tomb with a nail till told to stop. Sir Toady Lion, having a "pinch-bug" coralled in his palms, sat regarding it cautiously between his thumbs. Only Maid Margaret, her dimpled chin on her knuckles, sat looking upward in rapt attention. For her there was no joy like that of a story. Only, she was too young to mind letting the tale-teller know it. That made the difference. Above our heads the beautiful ruin mounted, now all red gold in the lights, and purple in the shadows, while round and round, and through and through, from highest tower to lowest arch, the swifts shrieked and swooped. THE SECOND TALE FROM "WAVERLEY" I. THE CATTLE-LIFTING NEXT morning (I continued, looking up for inspiration to the pinnacles of Melrose, cut against the clear sky of evening, as sharply as when "John Morow, master mason," looked upon his finished work and found it very good)--next morning, as Captain Edward Waverley was setting out for his morning walk, he found the castle of Bradwardine by no means the enchanted palace of silence he had first discovered. Milkmaids, bare-legged and wild-haired, ran about distractedly with pails and three-legged stools in their hands, crying, "Lord, guide us!" and "Eh, sirs!" Bailie Macwheeble, mounted on his dumpy, round-barrelled pony, rode hither and thither with half the ragged rascals of the neighbourhood clattering after him. The Baron paced the terrace, every moment glancing angrily up at the Highland hills from under his bushy grey eyebrows. From the byre-lasses and the Bailie, Edward could obtain no satisfactory explanation of the disturbance. He judged it wiser not to seek it from the angry Baron. Within-doors, however, he found Rose, who, though troubled and anxious, replied to his questions readily enough. "There has been a 'creach,' that is, a raid of cattle-stealers from out of the Highland hills," she told him, hardly able to keep back her tears--not, she explained, because of the lost cattle, but because she feared that the anger of her father might end in the slaying of some of the Caterans, and in a blood-feud which would last as long as they or any of their family lived. "And all because my father is too proud to pay blackmail to Vich Ian Vohr!" she added. "Is the gentleman with that curious name," said Edward, "a local robber or a thief-taker?" "Oh, no," Rose laughed outright at his southern ignorance, "he is a great Highland chief and a very handsome man. Ah, if only my father would be friends with Fergus Mac-Ivor, then Tully-Veolan would once again be a safe and happy home. He and my father quarrelled at a county meeting about who should take the first place. In his heat he told my father that he was under his banner and paid him tribute. But it was Bailie Macwheeble who had paid the money without my father's knowledge. And since then he and Vich Ian Vohr have not been friends." "But what is blackmail?" Edward asked in astonishment. For he thought that such things had been done away with long ago. All this was just like reading an old black-letter book in his uncle's library. "It is money," Rose explained, "which, if you live near the Highland border, you must pay to the nearest powerful chief--such as Vich Ian Vohr. And then, if your cattle are driven away, all you have to do is just to send him word and he will have them sent back, or others as good in their places. Oh, you do not know how dreadful to be at feud with a man like Fergus Mac-Ivor. I was only a girl of ten when my father and his servants had a skirmish with a party of them, near our home-farm--so near, indeed, that some of the windows of the house were broken by the bullets, and three of the Highland raiders were killed. I remember seeing them brought in and laid on the floor in the hall, each wrapped in his plaid. And next morning their wives and daughters came, clapping their hands and crying the _coronach_ and shrieking--and they carried away the dead bodies, with the pipes playing before them. Oh, I could not sleep for weeks afterward, without starting up, thinking that I heard again these terrible cries." All this seemed like a dream to Waverley--to hear this young gentle girl of seventeen talk familiarly of dark and bloody deeds, such as even he, a grown man and a soldier, had only imagined--yet which she had seen with her own eyes! By dinner-time the Baron's mood had grown somewhat less stormy. He seemed for the moment to forget his wounded honour, and was even offering, as soon as the quarrel was made up, to provide Edward with introductions to many powerful northern chiefs, when the door opened, and a Highlander in full costume was shown in by the butler. "Welcome, Evan Dhu Maccombich!" said the Baron, without rising, and speaking in the manner of a prince receiving an embassy; "what news from Fergus Mac-Ivor Vich Ian Vohr?" The ambassador delivered a courteous greeting from the Highland chief. "Fergus Mac-Ivor (he said) was sorry for the cloud that hung between him and his ancient friend. He hoped that the Baron would be sorry too--and that he should say so. More than this he did not ask." This the Baron readily did, drinking to the health of the chief of the Mac-Ivors, while Evan Maccombich in turn drank prosperity to the house of Bradwardine. II. THE ROBBER'S CAVE Then these high matters being finished, the Highlander retired with Bailie Macwheeble, doubtless to arrange with him concerning the arrears of blackmail. But of that the Baron was supposed to know nothing. This done, the Highlander began to ask all about the party which had driven off the cattle, their appearance, whence they had come, and in what place they had last been seen. Edward was much interested by the man's shrewd questions and the quickness with which he arrived at his conclusions. While on his part Evan Dhu was so flattered by the evident interest of the young Englishman, that he invited him to "take a walk with him into the mountains in search of the cattle," promising him that if the matter turned out as he expected, he would take Edward to such a place as he had never seen before and might never have a chance of seeing again. Waverley accepted with eager joy, and though Rose Bradwardine turned pale at the idea, the Baron, who loved boldness in the young, encouraged the adventure. He gave Edward a young gamekeeper to carry his pack and to be his attendant, so that he might make the journey with fitting dignity. Through a great pass, full of rugged rocks and seamed with roaring torrents--indeed, the very pass of Bally-Brough in which the reivers had last been spied--across weary and dangerous morasses, where Edward had perforce to spring from tuft to tussock of coarse grass, Evan Dhu led our hero into the depths of the wild Highland country,--where no Saxon foot trod or dared to tread without the leave of Vich Ian Vohr, as the chief's foster-brother took occasion to inform Edward more than once. By this time night was coming on, and Edward's attendant was sent off with one of Evan Dhu's men, that they might find a place to sleep in, while Evan himself pushed forward to warn the supposed cattle-stealer, one Donald Bean Lean, of the party's near approach. For, as Evan Dhu said, the Cateran might very naturally be startled by the sudden appearance of a _sidier roy_--or red soldier--in the very place of his most secret retreat. Edward was thus left alone with the single remaining Highlander, from whom, however, he could obtain no further information as to his journey's end--save that, as the Sassenach was somewhat tired, Donald Bean might possibly send the _currach_ for him. Edward wished much to know whether the _currach_ was a horse, a cart, or a chaise. But in spite of all his efforts, he could get no more out of the man with the Lochaber axe than the words repeated over and over again, "_Aich aye, ta currach! Aich aye, ta currach!_" However, after stumbling on a little farther, they came out on the shores of a loch, and the guide, pointing through the darkness in the direction of a little spark of light far away across the water, said, "Yon's ta cove!" Almost at the same moment the dash of oars was heard, and a shrill whistle came to their ears out of the darkness. This the Highlander answered, and a boat appeared in which Edward was soon seated, and on his way to the robber's cave. The light, which at first had been no bigger than a rush-light, grew rapidly larger, glowing red (as it seemed) upon the very bosom of the lake. Cliffs began to rise above their heads, hiding the moon. And, as the boat rapidly advanced, Edward could make out a great fire kindled on the shore, into which dark mysterious figures were busily flinging pine branches. The fire had been built on a narrow ledge at the opening of a great black cavern, into which an inlet of the loch seemed to advance. The men rowed straight for this black entrance. Then, letting the boat run on with shipped oars, the fire was soon passed and left behind, and the cavern entered through a great rocky arch. At the foot of some natural steps the boat stopped. The beacon brands which had served to guide them were thrown hissing into the water, and Edward found himself lifted out of the boat by brawny arms and carried almost bodily into the depths of the cavern. Presently, however, he was allowed to walk, though still guided on either side, when suddenly at a turn of the rock passage, the cave opened out, and Edward found the famous Cateran, Donald Bean Lean, and his whole establishment plain before his eyes. The cavern was lit with pine torches, and about a charcoal fire five or six Highlanders were seated, while in the dusk behind several others slumbered, wrapped in their plaids. In a large recess to one side were seen the carcasses of both sheep and cattle, hung by the heels as in a butcher's shop, some of them all too evidently the spoils of the Baron of Bradwardine's flocks and herds. The master of this strange dwelling came forward to welcome Edward, while Evan Dhu stood by his side to make the necessary introductions. Edward had expected to meet with a huge savage warrior in the captain of such banditti, but to his surprise he found Donald Bean Lean to be a little man, pale and insignificant in appearance, and not even Highland in dress. For at one time Donald had served in the French army. So now, instead of receiving Edward in his national costume, he had put on an old blue-and-red foreign uniform, in which he made so strange a figure that, though it was donned in his honour, his visitor had hard work to keep from laughing. Nor was the freebooter's conversation more in accord with his surroundings. He talked much of Edward's family and connections, and especially of his uncle's Jacobite politics--on which last account, he seemed inclined to welcome the young man with more cordiality than, as a soldier of King George, Edward felt to be his due. The scene which followed was, however, better fitted to the time and place. At a half-savage feast Edward had the opportunity of tasting steaks fresh cut from some of the Baron's cattle, broiled on the coals before his eyes, and washed down with draughts of Highland whiskey. Yet in spite of the warmth of his welcome, there was something very secret and unpleasant about the shifty cunning glance of this little robber-chief, who seemed to know so much about the royal garrisons, and even about the men of Edward's own troop whom he had brought with him from Waverley-Honour. When at last they were left alone together, Evan Dhu having lain down in his plaid, the little captain of cattle-lifters asked Captain Waverley in a very significant manner, "if he had nothing particular to say to him." Edward, a little startled at the tone in which the question was put, answered that he had no other reason for coming to the cave but a desire to see so strange a dwelling-place. For a moment Donald Bean Lean looked him full in the face, as if waiting for something more, and then, with a nod full of meaning, he muttered: "You might as well have confided in me. I am as worthy of trust as either the Baron of Bradwardine or Vich Ian Vohr! But you are equally welcome to my house!" His heather bed, the flickering of the fire, the smoking torches, and the movement of the wild outlaws going and coming about the cave, soon, however, diverted Waverley's thoughts from the mysterious words of his host. His eyelids drew together, nor did he reopen them till the morning sun, reflected from the lake, was filling all the cave with a glimmering twilight. THE SECOND INTERLUDE As soon as this part of the tale was finished, the audience showed much greater eagerness to enter immediately upon the acting of Donald Bean Lean's cattle-raid, and its consequences, than it had previously displayed as to the doings of Edward Waverley. As Hugh John admitted, this was "something like!" The Abbey precincts were instantly filled with the mingled sounds characteristic of all well-conducted forays, and it was well indeed that the place was wholly deserted. For the lowings of the driven cattle, the shouts of the triumphant Highlanders, the deep rage of the Baron, stalking to and fro wrapped in his cloak on the Castle terrace, might well have astonished the crowd which in these summer days comes from the four corners of the world "to view fair Melrose aright." It was not till the edge had worn off their first enthusiasm, that it became possible to collect them again in order to read "The Hold of a Highland Robber," which makes Chapter Seventeenth of _Waverley_ itself. And the reading so fired the enthusiasm of Sweetheart that she asked for the book to take to bed with her. The boys were more practical, though equally enthusiastic. "Wait till we get home," cried Hugh John, cracking his fingers and thumbs. "I know a proper place for Donald Bean Lean's cave." "And I," said Sir Toady Lion, "will light a fire by the pond and toss the embers into the water. It will be jolly to hear 'em hiss, I tell you!" "But what," asked Maid Margaret, "shall we do for the cattle and sheep that were hanging by the heels, when Edward went into Donald Bean Lean's cave?" "Why, we will hang _you_ up by the heels and cut slices off you!" said Sir Toady, with frowning truculence. Whereat the little girl, a little solemnised, began to edge away from the dangerous neighbourhood of such a pair of young cannibals. Sweetheart reproached her brothers for inventing calumnies against their countrymen. "Even the Highlanders were never so wicked," she objected; "they did not eat one another." "Well, anyway," retorted Sir Toady Lion, unabashed, "Sawney Bean did. Perhaps he was a cousin of Donald's, though in the history it says that he came from East Lothian." "Yes," cried Hugh John, "and in an old book written in Latin it says (father read it to us) that one of his little girls was too young to be executed with the rest on the sands of Leith. So the King sent her to be brought up by kind people, where she was brought up without knowing anything of her father, the cannibal, and her mother, the cannibaless--" "Oh," cried Sweetheart, who knew what was coming, putting up her hands over her ears, "please don't tell that dreadful story all over again." "Father read it out of a book--so there!" cried Sir Toady, implacably, "go on, Hugh John!" "And so when this girl was about as big as Sweetheart, and, of course, could not remember her grandfather's nice cave or the larder where the arms and legs were hung up to dry in the smoke--" "Oh, you horrid boy!" cried Sweetheart, not, however, removing herself out of ear-shot--because, after all, it was nice to shiver just a little. "Oh, yes, and I have seen the cave," cried Sir Toady, "it is on the shore near Ballantrae--a horrid place. Go on, Hugh John, tell about Sawney Bean's grandchild!" "Well, she grew up and up, playing with dolls just like other girls, till she was old enough to be sent out to service. And after she had been a while about the house to which she went, it was noticed that some of the babies in the neighbourhood began to go a-missing, and they found--" "I think she was a nursemaid!" interrupted Sir Toady, dispassionately. "That must have been it. The little wretches cried--_so she ate them!_" "Oh," cried Sweetheart, stopping her ears with her fingers, "don't tell us what they found--I believe you made it all up, anyway." "No, I didn't," cried Hugh John, shouting in her ear as if to a very deaf person, "it was father who read it to us, out of a big book with fat black letters. So it must be true!" Sir Toady was trying to drag away his sister's arms that she might have the benefit of details, when I appeared in the distance. Whereupon Hugh John, who felt his time growing limited, concluded thus, "And when they were taking the girl away to hang her, the minister asked her why she had killed the babies, and she answered him, 'If people only knew how good babies were--especially little girls--_there would not be one left between Forth and Solway!_'" Then quite unexpectedly Maid Margaret began to sob bitterly. "They _shan't_ hang me up and eat me," she cried, running as hard as she could and flinging herself into my arms; "Hugh John and Sir Toady say they will, as soon as we get home." Happily I had a light cane of a good vintage in my hand, and it did not take long to convince the pair of young scamps of the inconvenience of frightening their little sister. Sweetheart looked on approvingly as two forlorn young men were walked off to a supper, healthfully composed of plain bread and butter, and washed down by some nice cool water from the pump. "I told you!" she said, "you wouldn't believe me." All the same she was tender-hearted enough to convey a platter of broken meats secretly up to their "condemned cell," as I knew from finding the empty plate under their washstand in the morning. And as Maid Margaret was being carried off to be bathed and comforted, a Voice, passing their door, threatened additional pains and penalties to little boys who frightened their sisters. "It was all in a book," said Hugh John, defending himself from under the bedclothes, "father read it to us!" "We did it for her good," suggested Sir Toady. "If I hear another word out of you--" broke in the Voice; and then added, "go to sleep this instant!" The incident of the cave had long been forgotten and forgiven, before I could continue the story of Waverley in the cave of Donald Bean Lean. We sat once more "in oor ain hoose at hame," or rather outside it, near a certain pleasant chalet in a wood, from which place you can see a brown and turbulent river running downward to the sea. THE THIRD TALE FROM "WAVERLEY" I. THE CHIEF OF THE MAC-IVORS AND THE CHIEF'S SISTER WHEN Edward awoke next morning, he could not for a moment remember where he was. The cave was deserted. Only the grey ashes of the fire, a few gnawed bones, and an empty keg remained to prove that he was still on the scene of last night's feast. He went out into the sunlight. In a little natural harbour the boat was lying snugly moored. Farther out, on a rocky spit, was the mark of last night's beacon-fire. Here Waverley had to turn back. Cliffs shut him in on every side, and Edward was at a loss what to do, till he discovered, climbing perilously out in the rock above the cave mouth, some slight steps or ledges. These he mounted with difficulty, and, passing over the shoulder of the cliff, found himself presently on the shores of a loch about four miles long, surrounded on every side by wild heathery mountains. In the distance he could see a man fishing and a companion watching him. By the Lochaber axe which the latter carried Edward recognised the fisher as Evan Dhu. On a stretch of sand under a birch tree, a girl was laying out a breakfast of milk, eggs, barley bread, fresh butter, and honeycomb. She was singing blithely, yet she must have had to travel far that morning to collect such dainties in so desolate a region. This proved to be Alice, the daughter of Donald Bean Lean, and it is nothing to her discredit that she had made herself as pretty as she could, that she might attend upon the handsome young Englishman. All communication, however, had to be by smiles and signs, for Alice spoke no English. Nevertheless she set out her dainties with right good-will, and then seated herself on a stone a little distance away to watch for an opportunity of serving the young soldier. Presently Evan Dhu came up with his catch, a fine salmon-trout, and soon slices of the fish were broiling on the wood embers. After breakfast, Alice gathered what was left into a wicker basket, and, flinging her plaid about her, presented her cheek to Edward for "the stranger's kiss." Evan Dhu made haste to secure a similar privilege, but Alice sprang lightly up the bank out of his reach, and with an arch wave of her hand to Edward she disappeared. Then Evan Dhu led Edward back to the boat. The three men embarked, and after emerging from the mouth of the cavern, a clumsy sail was hoisted, and they bore away up the lake--Evan Dhu all the time loud in the praises of Alice Bean Lean. Edward said that it was a pity that such a maiden should be the daughter of a common thief. But this Evan hotly denied. According to Evan, Donald Bean Lean, though indeed no reputable character, was far from being a thief. A thief was one who stole a cow from a poor cotter, but he who lifted a drove from a Sassenach laird was "a gentleman drover." "But he would be hanged, all the same, if he were caught!" objected Edward. "I do not see the difference." "To be sure, he would _die for the law_, as many a pretty man has done before him," cried Evan. "And a better death than to die, lying on damp straw in yonder cave like a mangy tyke!" "And what," Edward suggested, "would become of pretty Alice then?" "Alice is both canny and fendy," said the bold Evan Dhu, with a cock of his bonnet, "and I ken nocht to hinder me to marry her mysel'!" Edward laughed and applauded the Highlander's spirit, but asked also as to the fate of the Baron of Bradwardine's cattle. "By this time," said Evan, "I warrant they are safe in the pass of Bally-Brough and on their road back to Tully-Veolan. And that is more than a regiment of King George's red soldiers could have brought about!" Evan Dhu had indeed some reason to be proud. Reassured as to this, Edward accompanied his guide with more confidence toward the castle of Vich Ian Vohr. The "five miles Scots" seemed to stretch themselves out indefinitely, but at last the figure of a hunter, equipped with gun, dogs, and a single attendant, was seen far across the heath. "_Shogh_," said the man with the Lochaber axe, "tat's the Chief!" Evan Dhu, who had boasted of his master's great retinue, denied it fiercely. "The Chief," he said, "would not come out with never a soul with him but Callum Beg, to meet with an English gentleman." But in spite of this prophecy, the Chief of Clan Ivor it was. Fergus Mac-Ivor, whom his people called Vich Ian Vohr, was a young man of much grace and dignity, educated in France, and of a strong, secret, and turbulent character, which by policy he hid for the most part under an appearance of courtesy and kindness. He had long been mustering his clan in secret, in order once more to take a leading part in another attempt to dethrone King George, and to set on the throne of Britain either the Chevalier St. George or his son Prince Charles. When Waverley and the Chief approached the castle--a stern and rugged pile, surrounded by walls, they found a large body of armed Highlanders drawn up before the gate. "These," said Vich Ian Vohr, carelessly, "are a part of the clan whom I ordered out, to see that they were in a fit state to defend the country in such troublous times. Would Captain Waverley care to see them go through part of their exercise?" Thereupon the men, after showing their dexterity at drill, and their fine target-shooting, divided into two parties, and went through the incidents of a battle--the charge, the combat, the flight, and the headlong pursuit--all to the sound of the great warpipes. Edward asked why, with so large a force, the Chief did not at once put down such robber bands as that of Donald Bean Lean. "Because," said the Chief, bitterly, "if I did, I should at once be summoned to Stirling Castle to deliver up the few broadswords the government has left us. I should gain little by that. But there is dinner," he added, as if anxious to change the subject, "let me show you the inside of my rude mansion." The long and crowded dinner-table to which Edward sat down, told of the Chief's immense hospitality. After the meal, healths were drunk, and the bard of the clan recited a wild and thrilling poem in Gaelic--of which, of course, Edward could not understand so much as one word, though it excited the clansmen so that they sprang up in ecstasy, many of them waving their arms about in sympathy with the warlike verses. The Chief, exactly in the ancient manner, presented a silver cup full of wine to the minstrel. He was to drink the one and keep the other for himself. After a few more toasts, Vich Ian Vohr offered to take Waverley up to be presented to his sister. They found Flora Mac-Ivor in her parlour, a plain and bare chamber with a wide prospect from the windows. She had her brother's dark curling hair, dark eyes, and lofty expression, but her expression seemed sweeter, though not, perhaps, softer. She was, however, even more fiercely Jacobite than her brother, and her devotion to "the King over the Water" (as they called King James) was far more unselfish than that of Vich Ian Vohr. Flora Mac-Ivor had been educated in a French convent, yet now she gave herself heart and soul to the good of her wild Highland clan and to the service of him whom she looked on as the true King. She was gracious to Edward, and at the request of Fergus, told him the meaning of the war-song he had been listening to in the hall. She was, her brother said, famed for her translations from Gaelic into English, but for the present she could not be persuaded to recite any of these to Edward. He had better fortune, however, when, finding Flora Mac-Ivor in a wild spot by a waterfall, she sang him, to the accompaniment of a harp, a song of great chiefs and their deeds which fired the soul of the young man. He could not help admiring--he almost began to love her from that moment. After this reception, Edward continued very willingly at Glennaquoich--both because of his growing admiration for Flora, and because his curiosity increased every day as to this wild race, and the life so different from all that he had hitherto known. Nothing occurred for three weeks to disturb his pleasant dreams, save the chance discovery, made when he was writing a letter to the Baron, that he had somehow lost his seal with the arms of Waverley, which he wore attached to his watch. Flora was inclined to blame Donald Bean Lean for the theft, but the Chief scouted the idea. It was impossible, he said, when Edward was his guest, and, besides (he added slyly), Donald would never have taken the seal and left the watch. Whereupon Edward borrowed Vich Ian Vohr's seal, and, having despatched his letter, thought no more of the matter. Soon afterwards, whilst Waverley still remained at Glennaquoich, there was a great hunting of the stag, to which Fergus went with three hundred of his clan to meet some of the greatest Highland chiefs, his neighbours. He took Edward with him, and the numbers present amounted almost to those of a formidable army. While the clansmen drove in the deer, the chiefs sat on the heather in little groups and talked in low tones. During the _drive_, the main body of the deer, in their desperation, charged right upon the place where the chief sportsmen were waiting in ambush. The word was given for every one to fling himself down on his face. Edward, not understanding the language, remained erect, and his life was only saved by the quickness of Vich Ian Vohr, who seized him and flung him down, holding him there by main force till the whole herd had rushed over them. When Edward tried to rise, he found that he had severely sprained his ankle. However, among those present at the _drive_, there was found an old man, half-surgeon, half-conjurer, who applied hot fomentations, muttering all the time of the operation such gibberish as _Gaspar-Melchior-Balthazar-max-prax-fax!_ Thus it happened that, to his great disappointment, Edward was unable to accompany the clansmen and their chiefs any farther. So Vich Ian Vohr had Edward placed in a litter, woven of birch and hazel, and walked beside this rude couch to the house of an old man, a smaller chieftain, who, with only a few old vassals, lived a retired life at a place called Tomanrait. Here he left Edward to recruit, promising to come back in a few days, in the hope that by that time Edward would be able to ride a Highland pony in order to return to Glennaquoich. On the sixth morning Fergus returned, and Edward gladly mounted to accompany him. As they approached the castle, he saw, with pleasure, Flora coming to meet them. II. MISFORTUNES NEVER COME SINGLE The Chief's beautiful sister appeared very glad to see Edward, and, as her brother spoke a few hasty words to her in Gaelic, she suddenly clasped her hands, and, looking up to heaven, appeared to ask a blessing upon some enterprise. She then gave Edward some letters that had arrived for him during his absence. It was perhaps as well that Edward took these to his room to open, considering the amount of varied ill news that he found in them. The first was from his father, who had just been dismissed from his position as King's minister, owing (as he put it) to the ingratitude of the great--but really, as was proved afterwards, on account of some political plots which he had formed against his chief, the prime minister of the day. Then his generous uncle, Sir Everard, wrote that all differences were over between his brother and himself. He had espoused his quarrel, and he directed Edward at once to send in the resignation of his commission to the War Office without any preliminaries, forbidding him longer to serve a government which had treated his father so badly. But the letter which touched Edward most deeply was one from his commanding officer at Dundee, which declared curtly that if he did not report himself at the headquarters of the regiment within three days after the date of writing, he would be obliged to take steps in the matter which would be exceedingly disagreeable to Captain Waverley. Edward at once sat down and wrote to Colonel Gardiner that, as he had thus chosen to efface the remembrance of past civilities, there was nothing left to him but to resign his commission, which he did formally, and ended his letter by requesting his commanding officer to forward this resignation to the proper quarter. No little perplexed as to the meaning of all this, Edward was on his way to consult Fergus Mac-Ivor on the subject, when the latter advanced with an open newspaper in his hand. "Do your letters," he asked, "confirm this unpleasant news?" And he held out the _Caledonian Mercury_, in which not only did he find his father's disgrace chronicled, but on turning to the _Gazette_ he found the words, "Edward Waverley, Captain in the --th regiment of dragoons, superseded for absence without leave." The name of his successor, one Captain Butler, followed immediately. On looking at the date of Colonel Gardiner's missive as compared with that of the _Gazette_, it was evident that his commanding officer had carried out his threat to the letter. Yet it was not at all like him to have done so. It was still more out of keeping with the constant kindness that he had shown to Edward. It was the young man's first idea, in accordance with the customs of the time, to send Colonel Gardiner a challenge. But, upon Fergus Mac-Ivor's advice, Edward ultimately contented himself with adding a postscript to his first letter, marking the time at which he had received the first summons, and regretting that the hastiness of his commander's action had prevented his anticipating it by sending in his resignation. "That, if anything," said Fergus, "will make this Calvinistic colonel blush for his injustice." But it was not long before some part at least of the mystery was made plain. Fergus took advantage of Edward's natural anger at his unworthy treatment, to reveal to him that a great rising was about to take place in the Highlands in favour of King James, and to urge him to cast in his lot with the clans. Flora, on the contrary, urged him to be careful and cautious, lest he should involve others to whom he owed everything, in a common danger with himself. Edward, whose fancy (if not whose heart) had gradually been turning more and more toward the beautiful and patriotic Flora, appeared less interested in rebellion than in obtaining her brother's good-will and bespeaking his influence with his sister. "Out upon you," cried Fergus, with pretended ill-humour, "can you think of nothing but ladies at such a time? Besides, why come to me in such a matter? Flora is up the glen. Go and ask herself. And Cupid go with you! But do not forget that my lovely sister, like her loving brother, is apt to have a pretty strong will of her own!" Edward's heart beat as he went up the rocky hillside to find Flora. She received and listened to him with kindness, but steadily refused to grant him the least encouragement. All her thoughts, her hopes, her life itself, were set on the success of this one bold stroke for a crown. Till the rightful King was on his throne, she could not think of anything else. Love and marriage were not for such as Flora Mac-Ivor. Edward, in spite of the manifest good-will of the chief, had to be content with such cold comfort as he could extract from Flora's promise that she would remember him in her prayers! Next morning Edward was awakened to the familiar sound of Daft Davie Gellatley's voice singing below his window. For a moment he thought himself back at Tully-Veolan. Davie was declaring loudly that "_My heart's in the Highland, my heart is not here._" Then, immediately changing to a less sentimental strain, he added with a contemptuous accent: "_There's nocht in the Highlands but syboes and leeks,_ _And lang-leggit callants gaun wanting the breeks;_ _Wanting the breeks, and without hose or shoon,_ _But we'll a' win the breeks when King Jamie comes hame._" Edward, eager to know what had brought the Bradwardine "innocent" so far from home, dressed hastily and went down. Davie, without stopping his dancing for a moment, came whirling past, and, as he went, thrust a letter into Waverley's hand. It proved to be from Rose Bradwardine, and among other things it contained the news that the Baron had gone away to the north with a body of horsemen, while the red soldiers had been at Tully-Veolan searching for her father and also asking after Edward himself. Indeed they had carried off his servant prisoner, together with everything he had left at Tully-Veolan. Rose also warned him against the danger of returning thither, and at the same time sent her compliments to Fergus and Flora. The last words in the letter were, "_Is she not as handsome and accomplished as I described her to be?_" Edward was exceedingly perplexed. Knowing his innocence of all treason, he could not imagine why he should be accused of it. He consulted Fergus, who told him he would to a certainty be hanged or imprisoned if he went south. Nevertheless, Edward persisted in "running his hazard." The Chief, though wishful to keep him, did not absolutely say him nay. Flora, instead of coming down to bid him good-bye, sent only excuses. So altogether it was in no happy frame of mind that Edward rode away to the south upon the Chief's horse, Brown Dermid, and with Callum Beg for an attendant in the guise of a Lowland groom. Callum warned his master against saying anything when they got to the first little Lowland town, either on the subject of the Highlands, or about his master, Vich Ian Vohr. "The people there are bitter Whigs, teil burst them!" he said fiercely. As they rode on they saw many people about the street, chiefly old women in tartan hoods and red cloaks, who seemed to cast up their hands in horror at the sight of Waverley's horse. Edward asked the reason. "Oh," said Callum Beg, "it's either the muckle Sunday hersel', or the little government Sunday that they caa the Fast!" It proved to be the latter, and the innkeeper, a severe sly-looking man, received them with scanty welcome. Indeed, he only admitted them because he remembered that it was in his power to fine them for the crime of travelling on a Fast Day by an addition to the length of his reckoning next morning. But as soon as Edward announced his wish for a horse and guide to Perth, the hypocritical landlord made ready to go with him in person. Callum Beg, excited by the golden guinea which Waverley gave him, offered to show his gratitude by waiting a little distance along the road, and "kittlin' the landlord's quarters wi' her skene-occle"--or, in other words, setting a dagger in his back. Apparently Vich Ian Vohr's page thought no more of such a deed than an ordinary English boy would have thought of stealing an apple out of an orchard. THE THIRD INTERLUDE--BEING MAINLY A FEW WORDS UPON HEROES Among the listeners there was somewhat less inclination than before to act this part of the story. For one thing, the boys were righteously indignant at the idea of any true hero being in love--unless, indeed, he could carry off his bride from the deck of a pirate vessel, cutlass in hand, and noble words of daring on his lips. As for the girls, well--they knew that the bushes were dripping wet, and that if they set their feet upon their native heath, they would certainly be made to change their stockings as soon as they went home. This was a severe discourager of romance. There was nothing to prevent any one of them from asking questions, however. _That_ was a business in which they excelled. "But why did the Highland people want to rebel, anyway?" demanded Hugh John. "If I could have hunted like that, and raided, and carried off cattle, and had a castle with pipes playing and hundreds of clansmen to drill, I shouldn't have been such a soft as to rebel and get them all taken away from me!" "It was because they were loyal to their rightful King," said Sweetheart, who is a Cavalier and a Jacobite--in the intervals of admiring Cromwell, and crying because they shot down the poor Covenanters. "_I_ think," said Sir Toady, who had been sitting very thoughtful, "that they just liked to fight, and King George would not let them. So they wanted a king who would not mind. Same as us, you know. If we are caught fighting in school, we get whipped, but father lets us fight outside as much as we want to. Besides, what did old Vich Ian Vohr want with all these silly Highlanders, eating up everything in his castle, if there were never any battles that they could fight for him?" This was certainly a very strong and practical view, and so much impressed the others that they sat a long while quiet, turning it over in their minds. "Well, at any rate," said Sweetheart, dropping her head with a sigh to go on with her seam, "I know that Flora Mac-Ivor was truly patriotic. See how she refused to listen to Waverley, all because she wanted to give her life for the cause." "Humph," said Hugh John, disrespectfully turning up his nose, "that's all girls think about--loving, an' marrying, an' playing on harps--" "I don't play on harps," sighed Sweetheart, "but I do wish I had a banjo!" "I wish I had a targe and a broadsword, and the Chief's horse, Brown Dermid, to ride on," said Hugh John, putting on his "biggety" look. "And a nice figure you would cut," sneered Sir Toady Lion, provokingly; "Highlanders don't fight on horseback! You ought to know that!" Whereupon the first engagement of the campaign was immediately fought out on the carpet. And it was not till after the intervention of the Superior Power had restored quiet that the next tale from _Waverley_ could be proceeded with. THE FOURTH TALE FROM "WAVERLEY" HERE AND THERE AMONG THE HEATHER NOT long after Callum Beg had been left behind, and indeed almost as soon as the innkeeper and Edward were fairly on their way, the former suddenly announced that his horse had fallen lame and that they must turn aside to a neighbouring smithy to have the matter attended to. "And as it is the Fast Day, and the smith a religious man, it may cost your Honour as muckle as sixpence a shoe!" suggested the wily innkeeper, watching Edward's face as he spoke. For this announcement Edward cared nothing. He would gladly have paid a shilling a nail to be allowed to push forward on his journey with all speed. Accordingly to the smithy of Cairnvreckan they went. The village was in an uproar. The smith, a fierce-looking man, was busy hammering "dogs' heads" for musket-locks, while among the surrounding crowd the names of great Highland chiefs--Clanronald, Glengarry, Lochiel, and that of Vich Ian Vohr himself, were being bandied from mouth to mouth. Edward soon found himself surrounded by an excited mob, in the midst of which the smith's wife, a wild witchlike woman, was dancing, every now and then casting her child up in the air as high as her arms would reach, singing all the while, and trying to anger the crowd, and especially to infuriate her husband, by the Jacobite songs which she chanted. At last the smith could stand this provocation no longer. He snatched a red-hot bar of iron from the forge, and rushed at his wife, crying out that he would "thrust it down her throat." Then, finding himself held back by the crowd from executing vengeance on the woman, all his anger turned upon Edward, whom he took to be a Jacobite emissary. For the news which had caused all this stir was that Prince Charles had landed and that the whole Highlands was rallying to his banner. So fierce and determined was the attack which the angry smith of Cairnvreckan made on Edward that the young man was compelled to draw his pistol in self-defence. And as the crowd threatened him and the smith continued furiously to attack with the red-hot iron, almost unconsciously his finger pressed the trigger. The shot went off, and immediately the smith fell to the ground. Then Edward, borne down by the mob, was for some time in great danger of his life. He was saved at last by the interference of the minister of the parish, a kind and gentle old man, who caused Edward's captors to treat him more tenderly. So that instead of executing vengeance upon the spot as they had proposed, they brought him before the nearest magistrate, who was, indeed, an old military officer, and, in addition, the Laird of the village of Cairnvreckan, one Major Melville by name. [Illustration: "SO fierce and determined was the attack which the angry smith of Cairnvreckan made on Edward that the young man was compelled to draw his pistol in self-defence."] The latter proved to be a stern soldier, so severe in manner that he often became unintentionally unjust. Major Melville found that though the blacksmith's wound proved to be a mere scratch, and though he had to own that the provocation given was a sufficient excuse for Edward's hasty action, yet he must detain the young man prisoner upon the warrant issued against Edward Waverley, which had been sent out by the Supreme Court of Scotland. Edward, who at once owned to his name, was astonished beyond words to find that not only was he charged with being in the company of actual rebels, such as the Baron of Bradwardine and Vich Ian Vohr, but also with trying to induce his troop of horse to revolt by means of private letters addressed to one of them, Sergeant Houghton, in their barracks at Dundee. Captain Waverley was asserted to have effected this through the medium of a pedlar named Will Ruthven, or Wily Will--whose very name Edward had never heard up to that moment. As the magistrate's examination proceeded, Waverley was astonished to find that, instead of clearing himself, everything he said, every article he carried about his person, was set down by Major Melville as an additional proof of his complicity with treason. Among these figured Flora's verses, his own presence at the great hunting match among the mountains, his father's and Sir Everard's letters, even the huge manuscripts written by his tutor (of which he had never read six pages)--all were brought forward as so many evidences of his guilt. Finally, the magistrate informed Edward that he would be compelled to detain him a prisoner in his house of Cairnvreckan. But that if he would furnish such information as it was doubtless in his power to give concerning the forces and plans of Vich Ian Vohr and the other Highland chiefs, he might, after a brief detention, be allowed to go free. Edward fiercely exclaimed that he would die rather than turn informer against those who had been his friends and hosts. Whereupon, having refused all hospitality, he was conducted to a small room, there to be guarded till there was a chance of sending him under escort to the Castle of Stirling. Here he was visited by Mr. Morton, the minister who had saved him from the clutches of the mob, and so sympathetically and kindly did he speak, that Edward told him his whole story from the moment when he had first left Waverley-Honour. And though the minister's favourable report did not alter the opinion Major Melville had formed of Edward's treason, it softened his feelings toward the young man so much that he invited him to dinner, and afterwards did his best to procure him favourable treatment from the Westland Whig captain, Mr. Gifted Gilfillan, who commanded the party which was to convoy him to Stirling Castle. The escort which was to take Edward southward was not so strong as it might have been. Part of Captain Gifted Gilfillan's command had stayed behind to hear a favourite preacher upon the occasion of the afternoon Fast Day service at Cairnvreckan. Others straggled for purposes of their own, while as they went along, their leader lectured Edward upon the fewness of those that should be saved. Heaven, he informed Edward, would be peopled exclusively by the members of his own denomination. Captain Gifted was still engaged in condemning all and sundry belonging to the Churches of England and Scotland, when a stray pedlar joined his party and asked of "his Honour" the favour of his protection as far as Stirling, urging as a reason the uncertainty of the times and the value of the property he carried in his pack. The pedlar, by agreeing with all that was said, and desiring further information upon spiritual matters, soon took the attention of Captain Gifted Gilfillan from his prisoner. He declared that he had even visited, near Mauchline, the very farm of the Whig leader. He congratulated him upon the fine breed of cattle he possessed. Then he went on to speak of the many evil, popish, and unchristian things he had seen in his travels as a pedlar over the benighted countries of Europe. Whereupon Gifted Gilfillan became so pleased with his companion and so enraptured with his subject, that he allowed his party to string itself out along the route without an attempt at discipline, or even the power of supporting each other in case of attack. The leaders were ascending a little hill covered with whin bushes and crowned with low brushwood, when, after looking about him quickly to note some landmarks, the pedlar put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. He explained that he was whistling on a favourite dog, named Bawty, which he had lost. The Covenanter reproved him severely for thinking of a useless dog in the midst of such precious and improving conversation as they were holding together. But in spite of his protests the pedlar persisted in his whistling, and presently, out of a copse close to the path, six or eight stout Highlanders sprang upon them brandishing their claymores. "The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon!" shouted Gifted Gilfillan, nothing daunted. And he was proceeding to lay about him stoutly, when the pedlar, snatching a musket, felled him to the ground with the butt. The scattered Whig party hurried up to support their leader. In the scuffle, Edward's horse was shot, and he himself somewhat bruised in falling. Whereupon some of the Highlanders took him by the arms, and half-supported, half-carried him away from the highroad, leaving the unconscious Gifted still stretched on the ground. The Westlanders, thus deprived of a leader, did not even attempt a pursuit, but contented themselves with sending a few dropping shots after the Highlanders, which, of course, did nobody any harm. They carried Edward fully two miles, and it was not till they reached the deep covert of a distant glen that they stopped with their burden. Edward spoke to them repeatedly, but the only answer he got was that they "had no English." Even the mention of the name of Vich Ian Vohr, which he had hitherto regarded as a talisman, produced no response. Moreover, Edward could see from the tartans of his captors that they were not of the Clan Ivor. Nor did the hut, into which they presently conveyed our hero, reveal any more. Edward was placed in a large bed, planked all round, and after his bruises were attended to by an old woman, the sliding panel was shut upon him. A kind of fever set his ideas wandering, and sometimes he fancied that he heard the voice of Flora Mac-Ivor speaking in the hut without. He tried to push back the panel, but the inmates had secured it on the outside with a large nail. Waverley remained some time in these narrow quarters, ministered to by the old woman and at intervals hearing the same gentle girlish voice speaking outside, without, however, ever being able to see its owner. At last, after several days, two of the Highlanders who had first captured him returned, and by signs informed him that he must get ready to follow them immediately. At this news Edward, thoroughly tired of his confinement, rejoiced, and, upon rising, found himself sufficiently well to travel. He was seated in the smoky cottage quietly waiting the signal for departure, when he felt a touch on his arm, and, turning, he found himself face to face with Alice, the daughter of Donald Bean Lean. With a quick movement she showed him the edges of a bundle of papers which she as swiftly concealed. She then laid her finger on her lips, and glided away to assist old Janet, his nurse, in packing his saddle-bags. With the tail of his eye, however, Edward saw the girl fold the papers among his linen without being observed by the others. This being done, she took no further notice of him whatever, except that just at the last, as she was leaving the cottage, she turned round and gave him a smile and nod of farewell. The tall Highlander who was to lead the party now made Edward understand that there was considerable danger on the way. He must follow without noise, and do exactly as he was bidden. A steel pistol and a broadsword were given him for use in case of attack. The party had not been long upon its night journeying, moving silently along through the woods and copses in Indian file, before Edward found that there was good reason for this precaution. At no great distance he heard the cry of an English sentinel, "All's well!" Again and again the cry was taken up by other sentries till the sound was lost in the distance. The enemy was very near, but the trained senses of the Highlanders in their own rugged country were more than a match for the discipline of the regulars. A little farther on they passed a large building, with lights still twinkling in the windows. Presently the tall Highlander stood up and sniffed. Then motioning Waverley to do as he did, he began to crawl on all fours toward a low and ruinous sheep-fold. With some difficulty Edward obeyed, and with so much care was the stalk conducted, that presently, looking over a stone wall, he could see an outpost of five or six soldiers lying round their camp-fire, while in front a sentinel paced backward and forward, regarding the heavens and whistling _Nancy Dawson_ as placidly as if he were a hundred miles from any wild rebel Highlandmen. At that moment the moon, which up to this time had been hidden behind clouds, shone out clear and bright. So Edward and his Highland guide had perforce to remain where they were, stuck up against the dike, not daring to continue their journey in the full glare of light, while the Highlander muttered curses on "MacFarlane's lanthorn," as he called the moon. At last the Highlander, motioning Edward to stay where he was, began with infinite pains to worm his way backward on all fours, taking advantage of every bit of cover, lying stock-still behind a boulder while the sentry was looking in his direction, and again crawling swiftly to a more distant bush as often as he turned his back or marched the other way. Presently Edward lost sight of the Highlander, but before long he came out again at an altogether different part of the thicket, in full view of the sentinel, at whom he immediately fired a shot--the bullet wounding the soldier on the arm, stopping once and for all the whistling of _Nancy Dawson_. Then all the soldiers, awakened by the shot and their comrade's cry, advanced alertly toward the spot where the tall man had been seen. He had, however, retired, but continued to give them occasionally such a view of his figure in the open moonlight, as to lead them yet farther from the path. Meanwhile, taking advantage of their leader's ruse, Waverley and his attendants made good speed over the heather till they got behind a rising ground, from which, however, they could still hear the shouts of the pursuers, and the more distant roll of the royal drums beating to arms. They had not gone far before they came upon an encampment in a hollow. Here several Highlanders, with a horse or two, lay concealed. They had not arrived very long before the tall Highlander, who had led the soldiers such a dance, made his appearance quite out of breath, but laughing gayly at the ease with which he had tricked his pursuers. Edward was now mounted on a stout pony, and the whole party set forward at a good round pace, accompanied by the Highlanders as an escort. They continued without molestation all the night, till, in the morning light, they saw a tall old castle on the opposite bank of the river, upon the battlements of which they could see the plaid and targe of a Highland sentry, and over which floated the white banner of the exiled Stuarts. They passed through a small town, and presently were admitted into the courtyard of the ancient fortress, where Edward was courteously received by a chief in full dress and wearing a white cockade. He showed Waverley directly to a half-ruinous apartment where, however, there was a small camp bed. Here he was about to leave him, after asking him what refreshment he would take, when Edward, who had had enough of mysteries, requested that he might be told where he was. "You are in the castle of Doune, in the district of Menteith," said the governor of the castle, "and you are in no danger whatever. I command here for his Royal Highness Prince Charles." At last it seemed to Waverley as if he had reached a place of rest and safety. But it was not to be. On the very next day he was put in charge of a detachment of irregular horsemen who were making their way eastward to join the forces of the Prince. The leader of this band was no other than the Laird of Balmawhapple, who, backing words by deeds, had mustered his grooms and huntsmen in the cause of the Stuarts. Edward attempted to speak civilly to him, but found himself brutally repulsed. Captain Falconer of Balmawhapple had noways forgotten the shrewd pinch in the sword-arm which he had received from the Baron of Bradwardine in Waverley's quarrel. At first Edward had better luck with his Lieutenant, a certain horse-coper or dealer. This man had sold Balmawhapple the chargers upon which to mount his motley array, and seeing no chance of getting his money except by "going out" himself, he had accepted the post of Lieutenant in the Chevalier's army. So far good. But just at the moment when it seemed that our hero was about to get some information of a useful sort, Balmawhapple rode up, and demanded of his Lieutenant if he had not heard his orders that no one should speak to the prisoner. After that they marched in silence, till, as the little company of adventurers was passing Stirling Castle, Balmawhapple must needs sound his trumpet and display his white banner. This bravado, considerably to that gentleman's discomfiture, was answered at once by a burst of smoke from the Castle, and the next moment a cannon-ball knocked up the earth a few feet from the Captain's charger, and covered Balmawhapple himself with dirt and stones. An immediate retreat of the command took place without having been specially ordered. As they approached Edinburgh, they could see that white wreaths of smoke circled the Castle. The cannonade rolled continuously. Balmawhapple, however, warned by what had happened at Stirling, gave the Castle a wide berth, and finally, without having entered the city, he delivered up his prisoner at the door of the ancient palace of Holyrood. And so, for the time being, Edward's adventures in the wild Highlands were ended. INTERLUDE OF STICKING-PLASTER This time the children were frankly delighted. "It's just like _Kidnapped_, father," cried Hugh John, more truly than he dreamed of, "there's the Flight through the Heather, you remember, and the tall man is Allan Breck, heading off the soldiers after the Red Fox was shot. There was a sentinel that whistled, too--Allan heard him when he was fishing, and learned the tune--oh, and a lot of things the same!" "I like the part best where Alice Bean gives him the papers," said Sweetheart; "perhaps she was in love with him, too." "Pshaw!" cried Toady Lion; "much good that did him. He never even got them looked at. But it was a pity that he did not get a chance at a King George soldier with that lovely sword and steel pistol. The Highlanders had all the luck." "I would have banged it off anyway," declared Hugh John; "fancy carrying a pistol like that all the way, scouting and going Indian file, and never getting a shot at anybody!" "What I want to know," said Sweetheart, dreamily, "is why they all thought Edward a traitor. I believe the papers that Alice Bean Lean put in his bag would reveal the secret, if Waverley only had time to read them." "Him," said Sir Toady, naturally suspicious of all girls' heroes, "why, he's always falling down and getting put to bed. Then somebody has to nurse him. Why doesn't he go out and fight, like Fergus Mac-Ivor? Then perhaps Flora would have him; though what he wanted her for--a girl--I don't know. She could only play harps and--make poetry." So with this bitter scorn for the liberal arts, they all rushed off to enact the whole story, the tale-teller consenting, as occasion required, to take the parts of the wounded smith, the stern judge, or the Cameronian Captain. Hugh John hectored insufferably as Waverley. Sir Toady scouted and stalked as the tall Highlander, whom he refused to regard as anybody but Allan Breck. Sweetheart moved gently about as Alice Bean--preparing breakfast was quite in her line--while Maid Margaret, wildly excited, ran hither and thither as a sort of impartial chorus, warning all and sundry of the movements of the enemy. I saw her last, seated on a knoll and calling out "Bang" at the pitch of her voice. She was, she explained, nothing less imposing than the castle of Edinburgh itself, cannonading the ranks of the Pretender. While far away, upon wooden chargers, Balmawhapple's cavalry curvetted on the slopes of Arthur's Seat and cracked vain pistols at the frowning fortress. There was, in fact, all through the afternoon, a great deal of imagination loose in our neighbourhood. And even far into the gloaming sounds of battle, boastful recriminations, the clash of swords, the trample and rally of the heavy charge, even the cries of the genuinely wounded, came fitfully from this corner and that of the wide shrubberies. And when all was over, as they sat reunited, Black Hanoverian and White Cockade, victor and vanquished, in the kindly truce of the supper-table, Hugh John delivered his verdict. "That's the best tale you have told us yet. Every man of us needed to have sticking-plaster put on when we came in--even Sweetheart!" Than which, of course, nothing _could_ have been more satisfactory. THE FIFTH TALE FROM "WAVERLEY" THE WHITE COCKADE IT was Fergus Mac-Ivor himself who welcomed Edward within the palace of Holyrood, where the adventurous Prince now kept his court. Hardly would he allow Edward even to ask news of Flora, before carrying him off into the presence-chamber to be presented. Edward was deeply moved by the Chevalier's grace and dignity, as well as moved by the reception he received. The Prince praised the deeds of his ancestors, and called upon him to emulate them. He also showed him a proclamation in which his name was mentioned along with those of the other rebels as guilty of high treason. Edward's heart was melted. This princely kindness, so different from the treatment which he had received at the hands of the English government, the direct appeal of the handsome and gallant young Chevalier, perhaps also the thought of pleasing Flora in the only way open to him, all overwhelmed the young man, so that, with a sudden burst of resolve, he knelt down and devoted his life and his sword to the cause of King James. The Prince raised and embraced Waverley, and in a few words confided to him that the English general, having declined battle and gone north to Aberdeen, had brought his forces back to Dunbar by sea. Here it was the Prince's instant intention to attack him. Before taking leave he presented Edward with the splendid silver-hilted sword which he wore, itself an heirloom of the Stuarts. Then he gave him over into the hands of Fergus Mac-Ivor, who forthwith proceeded to make Waverley into a true son of Ivor by arraying him in the tartan of the clan, with plaid floating over his shoulder and buckler glancing upon his arm. Soon after came the Baron of Bradwardine, anxious about the honour of his young friend Edward. He said that he desired to know the truth as to the manner in which Captain Waverley had lost his commission in Colonel Gardiner's dragoons,--so that, if he should hear his honour called in question, he might be able to defend it,--which, no doubt, he would have performed as stoutly and loyally as he had previously done upon the sulky person of the Laird of Balmawhapple. The morrow was to be a day of battle. But it was quite in keeping with the gay character of the adventurer-prince, that the evening should be spent in a hall in the ancient palace of Holyrood. Here Edward, in his new full dress as a Highlander and a son of Ivor, shone as the handsomest and the boldest of all. And this, too, in spite of the marked coldness with which Flora treated him. But to make amends, Rose Bradwardine, close by her friend's side, watched him with a sigh on her lip, and colour on her cheek--yet with a sort of pride, too, that she should have been the first to discover what a gallant and soldierly youth he was. Jacobite or Hanoverian, she cared not. At Tully-Veolan or at a court ball, she was equally proud of Edward Waverley. Next morning our hero was awakened by the screaming of the warpipes outside his bedroom, and Callum Beg, his attendant, informed him that he would have to hurry if he wished to come up with Fergus and the Clan Ivor, who had marched out with the Prince when the morning was yet grey. Thus spurred, Edward proved himself no laggard. On they went, threading their way through the ranks of the Highland army, now getting mixed up with Balmawhapple's horsemen, who, careless of discipline, went spurring through the throng amid the curses of the Highlanders. For the first time Edward saw with astonishment that more than half the clansmen were poorly armed, many with only a scythe on a pole or a sword without a scabbard, while some for a weapon had nothing better than their dirks, or even a stake pulled out of the hedge. Then it was that Edward, who hitherto had only seen the finest and best armed men whom Fergus could place in the field, began to harbour doubts as to whether this unmilitary array could defeat a British army, and win the crown of three kingdoms for the young Prince with whom he had rashly cast in his lot. [Illustration: "ROSE BRADWARDINE, close by her friend's side, watched him with a sigh on her lip, and colour on her cheek--yet with a sort of pride, too, that she should have been the first to discover what a gallant and soldierly youth he was."] But his dismal and foreboding thoughts were quickly changed to pride when whole Clan Ivor received him with a unanimous shout and the braying of their many warpipes. "Why," said one of a neighbouring clan, "you greet the young Sassenach as if he were the Chief himself!" "If he be not Bran, he is Bran's brother!" replied Evan Dhu, who was now very grand under the name of Ensign Maccombich. "Oh, then," replied the other, "that will doubtless be the young English duinhé-wassel who is to be married to the Lady Flora?" "That may be or that may not be," retorted Evan, grimly; "it is no matter of yours or mine, Gregor." The march continued--first by the shore toward Musselburgh and then along the top of a little hill which looked out seaward. While marching thus, news came that Bradwardine's horse had had a skirmish with the enemy, and had sent in some prisoners. Almost at the same moment from a sort of stone shed (called a sheep smearing-house) Edward heard a voice which, as if in agony, tried to repeat snatches of the Lord's Prayer. He stopped. It seemed as if he knew that voice. He entered, and found in the corner a wounded man lying very near to death. It was no other than Houghton, the sergeant of his own troop, to whom he had written to send him the books. At first he did not recognise Edward in his Highland dress. But as soon as he was assured that it really was his master who stood beside him, he moaned out, "Oh, why did you leave us, Squire?" Then in broken accents he told how a certain pedlar called Ruffin had shown them letters from Edward, advising them to rise in mutiny. "Ruffin!" said Edward, "I know nothing of any such man. You have been vilely imposed upon, Houghton." "Indeed," said the dying man, "I often thought so since. And we did not believe till he showed us your very seal. So Tims was shot, and I was reduced to the ranks." Not long after uttering these words, poor Houghton breathed his last, praying his young master to be kind to his old father and mother at Waverley-Honour, and not to fight with these wild petticoat men against old England. The words cut Edward to the heart, but there was no time for sentiment or regret. The army of the Prince was fast approaching the foe. The English regiments came marching out to meet them along the open shore, while the Highlanders took their station on the higher ground to the south. But a morass separated the combatants, and though several skirmishes took place on the flanks, the main fighting had to be put off till another day. That night both sides slept on their arms, Fergus and Waverley joining their plaids to make a couch, on which they lay, with Callum Beg watching at their heads. Before three, they were summoned to the presence of the Prince. They found him giving his final directions to the chiefs. A guide had been found who would guide the army across the morass. They would then turn the enemy's flank, and after that the Highland yell and the Highland claymore must do the rest. The mist of the morning was still rolling thick through the hollow between the armies when Clan Ivor got the word to charge. Prestonpans was no midnight surprise. The English army, regularly ranked, stood ready, waiting. But their cavalry, suddenly giving way, proved themselves quite unable to withstand the furious onslaught of the Highlanders. Edward charged with the others, and was soon in the thickest of the fray. It happened that while fighting on the battle line, he was able to save the life of a distinguished English officer, who, with the hilt of his broken sword yet in his hand, stood by the artillery from which the gunners had run away, disdaining flight and waiting for death. The victory of the Highlanders was complete. Edward even saw his old commander, Colonel Gardiner, struck down, yet was powerless to save him. But long after, the reproach in the eyes of the dying soldier haunted him. Yet it expressed more sorrow than anger--sorrow to see him in such a place and in such a dress. But this was soon forgotten when the prisoner he had taken, and whom the policy of the Prince committed to his care and custody, declared himself as none other than Colonel Talbot, his uncle's dearest and most intimate friend. He informed Waverley that on his return from abroad he had found both Sir Everard and his brother in custody on account of Edward's reported treason. He had, therefore, immediately started for Scotland to endeavour to bring back the truant. He had seen Colonel Gardiner, and had found him, after having made a less hasty inquiry into the mutiny of Edward's troop, much softened toward the young man. All would have come right, concluded Colonel Talbot, had it not been for our hero's joining openly with the rebels in their mad venture. Edward was smitten to the heart when he heard of his uncle's sufferings, believing that they were on his account. But he was somewhat comforted when Colonel Talbot told him that through his influence Sir Everard had been allowed out under heavy bail, and that Mr. Richard Waverley was with him at Waverley-Honour. Yet more torn with remorse was Edward when, having once more arrived in Edinburgh, he found at last the leather valise which contained the packet of letters Alice Bean Lean had placed among his linen. From these he learned that Colonel Gardiner had thrice written to him, once indeed sending the letter by one of the men of Edward's own troop, who had been instructed by the pedlar to go back and tell the Colonel that his officer had received them in person. Instead of being delivered to Waverley, the letters had been given to a certain Mr. William Ruffin, or Riven, or Ruthven, whom Waverley saw at once could be none other than Donald Bean Lean himself. Then all at once remembering the business of the robber cave, he understood the loss of his seal, and poor Houghton's dying reproach that he should not have left the lads of his troop so long by themselves. Edward now saw clearly how in a moment of weakness he had made a great and fatal mistake by joining with the Jacobites. But his sense of honour was such that in spite of all Colonel Talbot could say, he would not go back on his word. His own hastiness, the clever wiles of Fergus Mac-Ivor, Flora's beauty, and most of all the rascality of Donald Bean Lean had indeed brought his neck, as old Major Melville had prophesied, within the compass of the hangman's rope. The best Edward could now do was to send a young soldier of his troop, who had been taken at Prestonpans, to his uncle and his father with letters explaining all the circumstances. By Colonel Talbot's advice and help this messenger was sent aboard one of the English vessels cruising in the Firth, well furnished with passes which would carry him in safety all the way to Waverley-Honour. Still the days went by, and nothing was done. Still the Prince halted in Edinburgh waiting for reinforcements which never came. He was always hopeful that more clans would declare for him or that other forces would be raised in the Lowlands or in England. And meanwhile, chiefly because in the city there was nothing for them to do, plans and plots were being formed. Quarrellings and jealousies became the order of the day among the troops of the White Cockade. One morning Fergus Mac-Ivor came in to Edward's lodgings, furious with anger because the Prince had refused him two requests,--one, to make good his right to be an Earl, and the other, to give his consent to his marriage with Rose Bradwardine. Fergus must wait for the first, the Prince had told him, because that would offend a chief of his own name and of greater power, who was still hesitating whether or not to declare for King James. As for Rose Bradwardine, neither must he think of her. Her affections were already engaged. The Prince knew this privately, and, indeed, had promised already to favour the match upon which her heart was set. As for Edward himself, he began about this time to think less and less of the cruelty of Flora Mac-Ivor. He could not have the moon, that was clear--and he was not a child to go on crying for it. It was evident, also, that Rose Bradwardine liked him, and her marked favour, and her desire to be with him, had their effect upon a heart still sore from Flora's repeated and haughty rejections. One of the last things Edward was able to do in Edinburgh, was to obtain from the Prince the release of Colonel Talbot, whom he saw safely on his way to London from the port of Leith. After that it was with actual relief that Edward found the period of waiting in Edinburgh at last at an end, and the Prince's army to the number of six thousand men marching southward into England. All was now to be hazarded on the success of a bold push for London. The Highlanders easily escaped a superior army encamped on the borders. They attacked and took Carlisle on their way, and at first it seemed as if they had a clear path to the capital before them. Fergus, who marched with his clan in the van of the Prince's army, never questioned their success for a moment. But Edward's clearer eye and greater knowledge of the odds made no such mistake. He saw that few joined them, and those men of no great weight, while all the time the forces of King George were daily increasing. Difficulties of every kind arose about them the farther they marched from their native land. Added to which there were quarrels and dissensions among the Prince's followers, those between his Irish officers and such Highland chiefs as Fergus being especially bitter. Even to Edward, Fergus became fierce and sullen, quite unlike his former gay and confident self. It was about Flora that the quarrel, long smouldering, finally broke into flame. As they passed this and that country-seat, Fergus would always ask if the house were as large as Waverley-Honour, and whether the estate or the deer park were of equal size. Edward had usually to reply that they were not nearly so great. Whereupon Fergus would remark that in that case Flora would be a happy woman. "But," said Waverley, who tired of the implied obligation, "you forget Miss Flora has refused me, not once, but many times. I am therefore reluctantly compelled to resign all claims upon her hand." At this, Fergus thought fit to take offence, saying that having once made application for Flora's hand, Waverley had no right to withdraw from his offer without the consent of her guardian. Edward replied that so far as he was concerned, the matter was at an end. He would never press himself upon any lady who had repeatedly refused him. Whereupon, Fergus turned away furiously, and the quarrel was made. Edward betook himself to the camp of his old friend, the Baron, and, as he remembered the instruction he had received in the dragoons, he became easily a leader and a great favourite among the Lowland cavalry which followed the old soldier Bradwardine. But he had left seeds of bitter anger behind him in the camp of the proud clan he had quitted. Some of the Lowland officers warned him of his danger, and Evan Dhu, the Chief's foster-brother--who, ever since the visit to the cave had taken a liking to Edward--waited for him secretly in a shady place and bade him beware. The truth was that the Clan Mac-Ivor had taken it into their heads that Edward had somehow slighted their Lady Flora. They saw that the Chief's brow was dark against Edward, and therefore he became all at once fair game for a bullet or a stab in the dark. And the first of these was not long in arriving. * * * * * And here (I concluded) is the end of the fifth tale. "Go on--oh--go on!" shouted all the four listeners in chorus; "we don't want to play or to talk, just now. We want to know what happened." "Very well, then," said I, "then the next story shall be called 'Black Looks and Bright Swords.'" Carrying out which resolve we proceeded at once to the telling of THE SIXTH TALE FROM "WAVERLEY" BLACK LOOKS AND BRIGHT SWORDS IT was in the dusk of an avenue that Evan Dhu had warned Waverley to beware, and ere he had reached the end of the long double line of trees, a pistol cracked in the covert, and a bullet whistled close past his ear. "There he is," cried Edward's attendant, a stout Merseman of the Baron's troop; "it's that devil's brat, Callum Beg." And Edward, looking through the trees, could make out a figure running hastily in the direction of the camp of the Mac-Ivors. Instantly Waverley turned his horse, and rode straight up to Fergus. "Colonel Mac-Ivor," he said, without any attempt at salutation, "I have to inform you that one of your followers has just attempted to murder me by firing upon me from a lurking-place." "Indeed!" said the Chief, haughtily; "well, as that, save in the matter of the lurking-place, is a pleasure I presently propose for myself, I should be glad to know which of my clansmen has dared to anticipate me." "I am at your service when you will, sir," said Edward, with equal pride, "but in the meantime the culprit was your page, Callum Beg." "Stand forth, Callum Beg," cried Vich Ian Vohr; "did you fire at Mr. Waverley?" "No," said the unblushing Callum. "You did," broke in Edward's attendant, "I saw you as plain as ever I saw Coudingham kirk!" "You lie!" returned Callum, not at all put out by the accusation. But his Chief demanded Callum's pistol. The hammer was down. The pan and muzzle were black with smoke, the barrel yet warm. It had that moment been fired. "Take that!" cried the Chief, striking the boy full on the head with the metal butt; "take that, for daring to act without orders and then lying to disguise it." Callum made not the slightest attempt to escape the blow, and fell as if he had been slain on the spot. "And now, Mr. Waverley," said the Chief, "be good enough to turn your horse twenty yards with me out upon the common. I have a word to say to you." Edward did so, and as soon as they were alone, Fergus fiercely charged him with having thrown aside his sister Flora in order to pay his court to Rose Bradwardine, whom, as he knew, Fergus had chosen for his own bride. "It was the Prince--the Prince himself who told me!" added Fergus, noticing the astonishment on Edward's face. "Did the Prince tell you that I was engaged to Miss Rose Bradwardine?" cried Edward. "He did--this very morning," shouted Fergus; "he gave it as a reason for a second time refusing my request. So draw and defend yourself, or resign once and forever all claims to the lady." "In such a matter I will not be dictated to by you or any man living!" retorted Waverley, growing angry in his turn. In a moment swords were out and a fierce combat was beginning, when a number of Bradwardine's cavalry, who being Lowlanders were always at feud with the Highlandmen, rode hastily up, calling on their companions to follow. They had heard that there was a chance of a fight between their corps and the Highlanders. Nothing would have pleased them better. The Baron himself threatened that unless the Mac-Ivors returned to their ranks, he would charge them, while they on their side pointed their guns at him and his Lowland cavalry. A cry that the Prince was approaching alone prevented bloodshed. The Highlanders returned to their places. The cavalry dressed its ranks. It was indeed the Chevalier who arrived. His first act was to get one of his French officers, the Count of Beaujeu, to set the regiment of Mac-Ivors and the Lowland cavalry again upon the road. He knew that the Count's broken English would put them all in better humour, while he himself remained to make the peace between Fergus and Waverley. Outwardly the quarrel was soon made up. Edward explained that he had no claims whatever to be considered as engaged to Rose Bradwardine or any one else, while Fergus sulkily agreed that it was possible he had made a mistake. The Prince made them shake hands, which they did with the air of two dogs whom only the presence of the master kept from flying at each other's throats. Then after calming the Clan Mac-Ivor and riding awhile with the Baron's Lowland cavalry, the Prince returned to the Count of Beaujeu, saying with a sigh, as he reined his charger beside him, "Ah, my friend, believe me this business of prince-errant is no bed of roses!" * * * * * It was not long before the poor Prince had a further proof of this fact. On the 5th of December, after a council at Derby, the Highland chiefs, disappointed that the country did not rally about them, and that the government forces were steadily increasing on all sides, compelled the Prince to fall back toward Scotland. Fergus Mac-Ivor fiercely led the opposition to any retreat. He would win the throne for his Prince, or if he could not, then he and every son of Ivor would lay down their lives. That was his clear and simple plan of campaign. But he was easily overborne by numbers, and when he found himself defeated in council, he shed actual tears of grief and mortification. From that moment Vich Ian Vohr was an altered man. Since the day of the quarrel Edward had seen nothing of him. It was, therefore, with great surprise that he saw Fergus one evening enter his lodgings and invite him to take a walk with him. The Chieftain smiled sadly as he saw his old friend take down his sword and buckle it on. There was a great change in the appearance of Vich Ian Vohr. His cheek was hollow. His eye burned as if with fever. As soon as the two young men had reached a beautiful and solitary glen, Fergus began to tell Edward that he had found out how wrongheaded and rash he had been in the matter of their quarrel. "Flora writes me," continued Fergus, "that she never had, and never could have, the least intention of giving you any encouragement. I acted hastily--like a madman!" Waverley hastily entreated him to let all be forgotten, and the two comrades-in-arms shook hands, this time heartily and sincerely. Notwithstanding, the gloom on the Chief's brow was scarcely lightened. He even besought Waverley to betake himself at once out of the kingdom by an eastern port, to marry Rose Bradwardine, and to take Flora with him as a companion to Rose, and also for her own protection. Edward was astonished at this complete change in Fergus. "What!" he cried, "abandon the expedition on which we have all embarked?" "Embarked," answered the Chief, bitterly; "why, man, the expedition is going to pieces! It is time for all those who can, to get ashore in the longboat!" "And what," said Edward, "are the other Highland chiefs going to do?" "Oh, the chiefs," said Fergus, contemptuously, "they think that all the heading and hanging will, as before, fall to the lot of the Lowlands, and that they will be left alone in their poor and barren Highlands, to 'listen to the wind on the hill till the waters abate.' But they will be disappointed. The government will make sure work this time, and leave not a clan in all the Highlands able to do them hurt. As for me, it will not matter. I shall either be dead or taken by this time to-morrow. I have seen the _Bodach Glas_--the Grey Spectre." Edward looked the surprise he did not speak. "Why!" continued Fergus, in a low voice, "were you so long about Glennaquoich and yet never heard of the Bodach Glas? The story is well known to every son of Ivor. I will tell it you in a word. My forefather, Ian nan Chaistel, wasted part of England along with a Lowland chief named Halbert Hall. After passing the Cheviots on their way back, they quarrelled about the dividing of the spoil, and from words came speedily to blows. In the fight, the Lowlanders were cut off to the last man, and their leader fell to my ancestor's sword. But ever since that day the dead man's spirit has crossed the Chief of Clan Ivor on the eve of any great disaster. My father saw him twice, once before he was taken prisoner at Sheriff-Muir, and once again on the morning of the day on which he died." Edward cried out against such superstition. "How can you," he said, "you who have seen the world, believe such child's nonsense as that?" "Listen," said the Chief, "here are the facts, and you can judge for yourself. Last night I could not sleep for thinking on the downfall of all my hopes for the cause, for the Prince, for the clan--so, after lying long awake, I stepped out into the frosty air. I had crossed a small foot-bridge, and was walking backward and forward, when I saw, clear before me in the moonlight, a tall man wrapped in a grey plaid, such as the shepherds wear. The figure kept regularly about four yards from me." "That is an easy riddle," exclaimed Edward; "why, my dear Fergus, what you saw was no more than a Cumberland peasant in his ordinary dress!" "So I thought at first," answered Fergus, "and I was astonished at the man's audacity in daring to dog me. I called to him, but got no answer. I felt my heart beating quickly, and to find out what I was afraid of, I turned and faced first north, and then south, east, and west. Each way I turned, I saw the grey figure before my eyes at precisely the same distance! Then I knew I had seen the Bodach Glas. My hair stood up, and so strong an impression of awe came upon me that I resolved to return to my quarters. As I went, the spirit glided steadily before me, till we came to the narrow bridge, where it turned and stood waiting for me. I could not wade the stream. I could not bring myself to turn back. So, making the sign of the cross, I drew my sword and cried aloud, 'In the name of God, Evil Spirit, give place!' "'_Vich Ian Vohr_,' it said in a dreadful voice, '_beware of to-morrow!_' "It was then within half a yard of my sword's point, but as the words were uttered it was gone. There was nothing either on the bridge or on the way home. All is over. I am doomed. I have seen the Bodach Glas, the curse of my house." [Illustration: "THE spirit glided steadily before me, till we came to the narrow bridge, where it turned and stood waiting for me. I could not wade the stream. I could not bring myself to turn back. So, making the sign of the cross, I drew my sword and cried aloud, 'In the name of God, Evil Spirit, give place!' "'_Vich Ian Vohr_,' it said in a dreadful voice, '_beware of to-morrow!_'"] Edward could think of nothing to say in reply. His friend's belief in the reality of the vision was too strong. He could only ask to be allowed to march once more with the sons of Ivor, who occupied the post of danger in the rear. Edward easily obtained the Baron's leave to do so, and when the Clan Mac-Ivor entered the village, he joined them, once more arm in arm with their Chieftain. At the sight, all the Mac-Ivors' ill feeling was blown away in a moment. Evan Dhu received him with a grin of pleasure. And the imp Callum, with a great patch on his head, appeared particularly delighted to see him. But Waverley's stay with the Clan Ivor was not to be long. The enemy was continually harassing their flanks, and the rear-guard had to keep lining hedges and dikes in order to beat them off. Night was already falling on the day which Fergus had foretold would be his last, when in a chance skirmish of outposts the Chief with a few followers found himself surrounded by a strong attacking force of dragoons. A swift eddy of the battle threw Edward out to one side. The cloud of night lifted, and he saw Evan Dhu and a few others, with the Chieftain in their midst, desperately defending themselves against a large number of dragoons who were hewing at them with their swords. It was quite impossible for Waverley to break through to their assistance. Night shut down immediately, and he found it was equally impossible for him to rejoin the retreating Highlanders, whose warpipes he could still hear in the distance. INTERLUDE OF BREVITY The _Bodach Glas_ held the children. The brilliant sunshine of the High Garden in which they had listened to the tale became instantly palest moonlight, and between them and the strawberry bed they saw the filmy plaid of the Grey Spectre of the House of Ivor. It had been helpful and even laudable to play-act the chief scenes when the story was beginning, but now they had no time. It would have been an insult to the interest of the narrative. Doubtless, if they had had the book, they would have _skipped_, to know "how it all ended." But it was time for the evening walk. So, instead of stringing themselves out along the way as was their custom, seeing if the raspberry bushes had grown any taller since the morning, the four collected in a close swarm about the tale-teller, like bees about an emigrant queen. "You must tell us the rest--you _must!_" they said, linking arms about my waist to prevent any attempt at an evasion of such just demands. So, being secretly no little pleased with their eagerness, I launched out upon the conclusion of the whole matter--which showed, among other things, how Waverley-Honour was more honoured than ever and the Blessed Bear of Bradwardine threefold blessed. THE LAST TALE FROM "WAVERLEY" THE BARON'S SURPRISE AFTER wandering about for some time Edward came unexpectedly upon a hamlet. Lights gleamed down the street, and Edward could hear loud voices and the tramp of horses. The sound of shouted orders and soldiers' oaths soon told him that he was in great danger. For these were English troops, and if they caught him in his Mac-Ivor tartan, would assuredly give him short shrift and a swift bullet. Lingering a moment uncertainly near the gate of a small garden enclosure, he felt himself caught by gentle hands and drawn toward a house. "Come, Ned," said a low voice, "the dragoons are down the village, and they will do thee a mischief. Come with me into feyther's!" Judging this to be very much to the purpose, Edward followed, but when the girl saw the tall figure in tartans instead of the sweetheart she had expected, she dropped the candle she had lighted, and called out for her father. A stout Westmoreland peasant at once appeared, poker in hand, and presently Edward found himself not ill received--by the daughter on account of a likeness to her lover (so she said) and by the father because of a certain weakness for the losing side. So, in the house of Farmer Jopson, Edward slept soundly that night, in spite of the dangers which surrounded him on every side. In the morning the true Edward, whose name turned out to be Ned Williams, was called in to consult with father and daughter. It seemed impossible for Edward to go north to rejoin the Prince's forces. They had evacuated Penrith and marched away toward Carlisle. The whole intervening country was covered by scouting parties of government horsemen. Whereupon Ned Williams, who wished above all things to rid the house of his handsome namesake, lest his sweetheart Cicely should make other mistakes, offered to get Waverley a change of clothes, and to conduct him to his father's farm near Ulswater. Neither old Jopson nor his daughter would accept a farthing of money for saving Waverley's life. A hearty handshake paid one; a kiss, the other. And so it was not long before Ned Williams was introducing our hero to his family, in the character of a young clergyman who was detained in the north by the unsettled state of the country. On their way into Cumberland they passed the field of battle where Edward had lost sight of Fergus. Many bodies still lay upon the face of the moorland, but that of Vich Ian Vohr was not among them, and Edward passed on with some hope that in spite of the _Bodach Glas_, Fergus might have escaped his doom. They found Callum Beg, however, his tough skull cloven at last by a dragoon's sword, but there was no sign either of Evan or of his Chieftain. In the secure shelter of good Farmer Williams's house among the hills, it was Edward's lot to remain somewhat longer than he intended. In the first place, it was wholly impossible to move for ten days, owing to a great fall of snow. Then he heard how that the Prince had retreated farther into Scotland, how Carlisle had been besieged and taken by the English, and that the whole north was covered by the hosts of the Duke of Cumberland and General Wade. But in the month of January it happened that the clergyman who came to perform the ceremony at the wedding of Ned Williams and Cicely Jopson, brought with him a newspaper which he showed to Edward. In it Waverley read with astonishment a notice of his father's death in London, and of the approaching trial of Sir Everard for high treason--unless (said the report) Edward Waverley, son of the late Richard Waverley, and heir to the baronet, should in the meantime surrender himself to justice. It was with an aching anxious heart that Waverley set out by the northern diligence for London. He found himself in the vehicle opposite to an officer's wife, one Mrs. Nosebag, who tormented him all the way with questions, on several occasions almost finding him out, and once at least narrowly escaping giving him an introduction to a recruiting sergeant of his own regiment. However, in spite of all risks, he arrived safely under Colonel Talbot's roof, where he found that, though the news of his father's death was indeed true, yet his own conduct certainly had nothing to do with the matter--nor was Sir Everard in the slightest present danger. Whereupon, much relieved as to his family, Edward proclaimed his intention of returning to Scotland as soon as possible--not indeed to join with the rebels again, but for the purpose of seeking out Rose Bradwardine and conducting her to a place of safety. It was not, perhaps, the wisest course he might have pursued. But during his lonely stay at Farmer Williams's farm, Edward's heart had turned often and much to Rose. He could not bear to think of her alone and without protection. By means of a passport (which had been obtained for one Frank Stanley, Colonel Talbot's nephew), Waverley was able easily to reach Edinburgh. Here from the landlady, with whom he and Fergus had lodged, Edward first heard the dread news of Culloden, of the slaughter of the clans, the flight of the Prince, and, worst of all, how Fergus and Evan Dhu, captured the night of the skirmish, were presently on trial for their lives at Carlisle. Flora also was in Carlisle, awaiting the issue of the trial, while with less certainty Rose Bradwardine was reported to have gone back to her father's mansion of Tully-Veolan. Concerning the brave old Baron himself, Edward could get no news, save that he had fought most stoutly at Culloden, but that the government were particularly bitter against him because he had been '_out_' twice--that is, he had taken part both in the first rising of the year 1715, and also in that which had just been put down in blood at Culloden. Without a moment's hesitation, Edward set off for Tully-Veolan, and after one or two adventures he arrived there, only to find the white tents of a military encampment whitening the moor above the village. The house itself had been sacked. Part of the stables had been burned, while the only living being left about the mansion of Tully-Veolan was no other than poor Davie Gellatley, who, chanting his foolish songs as usual, greeted Edward with the cheering intelligence that "_A' were dead and gane--Baron--Bailie--Saunders Saunderson--and Lady Rose that sang sae sweet!_" However, it was not long before he set off at full speed, motioning Waverley to follow him. The innocent took a difficult and dangerous path along the sides of a deep glen, holding on to bushes, rounding perilous corners of rock, till at last the barking of dogs directed them to the entrance of a wretched hovel. Here Davie's mother received Edward with a sullen fierceness which the young man could not understand--till, from behind the door, holding a pistol in his hand, unwashed, gaunt, and with a three weeks' beard fringing his hollow cheeks, he saw come forth--the Baron of Bradwardine himself. After the first gladsome greetings were over, the old man had many a tale to tell his young English friend. But his chief grievance was not his danger of the gallows, nor the discomfort of his hiding-place, but the evil-doing of his cousin, to whom, as it now appeared, the Barony of Bradwardine now belonged. Malcolm of Inch-Grabbit had, it appeared, come to uplift the rents of the Barony. But the country people, being naturally indignant that he should have so readily taken advantage of the misfortune of his kinsman, received him but ill. Indeed, a shot was fired at the new proprietor by some unknown marksman in the gloaming, which so frightened the heir that he fled at once to Stirling and had the estate promptly advertised for sale. "In addition to which," continued the old man, "though I bred him up from a boy, he hath spoken much against me to the great folk of the time, so that they have sent a company of soldiers down here to destroy all that belongs to me, and to hunt his own blood-kin like a partridge upon the mountains." "Aye," cried Janet Gellatley, "and if it had not been for my poor Davie there, they would have catched the partridge, too!" Then with a true mother's pride Janet told the story of how the poor innocent had saved his master. The Baron was compelled by the strictness of the watch to hide, all day and most of the nights, in a cave high up in a wooded glen. "A comfortable place enough," the old woman explained; "for the goodman of Corse-Cleugh has filled it with straw. But his Honour tires of it, and he comes down here whiles for a warm at the fire, or at times a sleep between the blankets. But once, when he was going back in the dawn, two of the English soldiers got a glimpse of him as he was slipping into the wood and banged off a gun at him. I was out on them like a hawk, crying if they wanted to murder a poor woman's innocent bairn! Whereupon they swore down my throat that they had seen 'the auld rebel himself,' as they called the Baron. But my Davie, that some folk take for a simpleton, being in the wood, caught up the old grey cloak that his Honour had dropped to run the quicker, and came out from among the trees as we were speaking, majoring and play-acting so like his Honour that the soldier-men were clean beguiled, and even gave me sixpence to say nothing about their having let off their gun at 'poor crack-brained Sawney,' as they named my Davie!" It was not till this long tale was ended that Waverley heard what he had come so far to find out--that Rose was safe in the house of a Whig Laird, an old friend of her father's, and that the Bailie, who had early left the army of the Prince, was trying his best to save something out of the wreck for her. The next morning Edward went off to call on Bailie Macwheeble. At first the man of law was not very pleased to see him, but when he learned that Waverley meant to ask Rose to be his wife, he flung his best wig out of the window and danced the Highland fling for very joy. This rejoicing was a little marred by the fact that Waverley was still under proscription. But when a messenger of the Bailie's had returned from the nearest post-town with a letter from Colonel Talbot, all fear on this account was at an end. Colonel Talbot had, though with the greatest difficulty, obtained royal Protections for both the Baron of Bradwardine and for Edward himself. There was no doubt that full pardons would follow in due course. Right thankfully the Baron descended from his cave, as soon as Edward carried him the good news, and with Davie Gellatley and his mother, all went down to the house of Bailie Macwheeble, where supper was immediately served. It was from old Janet Gellatley, Davie's mother, that Waverley learned whom he had to thank for rescuing him from the hands of Captain Gifted Gilfillan, and to whom the gentle voice belonged which had cheered him during his illness. It was none other than Rose Bradwardine herself. To her, Edward owed all. She had even given up her jewels to Donald Bean Lean, that he might go scatheless. She it was who had provided a nurse for him in the person of old Janet Gellatley herself, and lastly she had seen him safely on his way to Holyrood under the escort of the sulky Laird of Balmawhapple. So great kindness certainly required very special thanks. And Edward was not backward in asking the Baron for permission to accompany him to the house of Duchran, where Rose was at present residing. So well did Edward express his gratitude to Rose, that she consented to give all her life into his hands, that he might go on showing how thankful he was. Of course the marriage could not take place for some time, because the full pardons of the Baron and Edward took some time to obtain. For Fergus Mac-Ivor, alas, no pardon was possible. He and Evan Dhu were condemned to be executed for high treason at Carlisle, and all that Edward could do was only to promise the condemned Chieftain that he would be kind to the poor clansmen of Vich Ian Vohr, for the sake of his friend. As for Evan Dhu, he might have escaped. The Judge went the length of offering to show mercy, if Evan would only ask it. But when Evan Dhu was called upon to plead before the Court, his only request was that he might be permitted to go down to Glennaquoich and bring up six men to be hanged in the place of Vich Ian Vohr. "And," he said, "ye may begin with me the first man!" At this there was a laugh in the Court. But Evan, looking about him sternly, added: "If the Saxon gentlemen are laughing because a poor man such as me thinks my life, or the life of any six of my degree, is worth that of Vich Ian Vohr, 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 Hielandman nor the honour of a gentleman!" After these words, there was no more laughing in that Court. Nothing now could save Fergus Mac-Ivor. The government were resolved on his death as an example, and both he and Evan were accordingly executed, along with many others of the unhappy garrison of Carlisle. * * * * * Edward and Rose were married from the house of Duchran, and some days after they started, according to the custom of the time, to spend some time upon an estate which Colonel Talbot had bought, as was reported, a very great bargain. The Baron had been persuaded to accompany them, taking a place of honour in their splendid coach and six, the gift of Sir Everard. The coach of Mr. Rubrick of Duchran came next, full of ladies, and many gentlemen on horseback rode with them as an escort to see them well on their way. At the turning of the road which led to Tully-Veolan, the Bailie met them. He requested the party to turn aside and accept of his hospitality at his house of Little Veolan. The Baron, somewhat put out, replied that he and his son-in-law would ride that way, but that they would not bring upon him the whole matrimonial procession. It was clear, however, that the Baron rather dreaded visiting the ancient home of his ancestors, which had been so lately sold by the unworthy Malcolm of Inch-Grabbit into the hands of a stranger. But as the Bailie insisted, and as the party evidently wished to accept, he could not hold out. When the Baron arrived at the avenue, he fell into a melancholy meditation, thinking doubtless of the days when he had taken such pride in the ancient Barony which had passed for ever away from the line of the Bradwardines. From these bitter thoughts he was awakened by the sight of the two huge stone bears which had been replaced over the gate-posts. Then down the avenue came the two great deer-hounds, Ban and Buscar, which had so long kept their master company in his solitude, with Daft Davie Gellatley dancing behind them. The Baron was then informed that the present owner of the Barony was no other than Colonel Talbot himself. But that if he did not care to visit the new owner of Bradwardine, the party would proceed to Little Veolan, the house of Bailie Macwheeble. Then, indeed, the Baron had need of all his greatness of mind. But he drew a long breath, took snuff abundantly, and remarked that as they had brought him so far, he would not pass the Colonel's gate, and that he would be happy to see the new master of his tenants. When he alighted in front of the Castle, the Baron was astonished to find how swiftly the marks of spoliation had been removed. Even the roots of the felled trees had disappeared. All was fair and new about the house of Tully-Veolan, even to the bright colours of the garb of Davie Gellatley, who ran first to one and then to the other of the company, passing his hands over his new clothes and crying, "Braw, braw Davie!" The dogs, Bran and Buscar, leaping upon him, brought tears into the Baron's eyes, even more than the kind welcome of Colonel Talbot's wife, the Lady Emily. Still more astonishing appeared the changes in the so lately ruined courtyard. The burned stables had been rebuilt upon a newer and better plan. The pigeon-house was restocked, and populous with fluttering wings. Even the smallest details of the garden, and the multitude of stone bears on the gables, had all been carefully restored as of old. The Baron could hardly believe his eyes, and he marvelled aloud that Colonel Talbot had not thought fit to replace the Bradwardine arms by his own. But here the Colonel, suddenly losing patience, declared that he would not, even to please these foolish boys, Waverley and Frank Stanley (and his own more foolish wife), continue to impose upon another old soldier. So without more ado he told the Baron that he had only advanced the money to buy back the Barony, and that he would leave Bailie Macwheeble to explain to whom the estate really belonged. Trembling with eagerness the Bailie advanced, a formidable roll of papers in his hand. He began triumphantly to explain that Colonel Talbot had indeed bought Bradwardine, but that he had immediately exchanged it for Brere-wood Lodge, which had been left to Edward under his father's will. Bradwardine had therefore returned to its ancient Lord in full and undisputed possession, and the Baron was once more master of all his hereditary powers, subject only to an easy yearly payment to his son-in-law. Tears were actually in the old gentleman's eyes as he went from room to room, so that he could scarce speak a word of welcome either to the guests within, or of thanks to the rejoicing farmers and cottars who, hearing of his return, had gathered without. The climax of his joy was, however, reached when the Blessed Bear of Bradwardine itself, the golden cup of his line, mysteriously recovered out of the spoil of the English army by Frank Stanley, was brought to the Baron's elbow by old Saunders Saunderson. Truth to tell, the recovery of this heirloom afforded the old man almost as much pleasure as the regaining of his Barony, and there is little doubt that a tear mingled with the wine, as, holding the Blessed Bear in his hand, the Baron solemnly proposed the healths of the united families of Waverley-Honour and Bradwardine. THE END OF THE LAST TALE FROM "WAVERLEY." RED CAP TALES TOLD FROM GUY MANNERING GUY MANNERING WHERE WE TOLD THE SECOND TALE SUMMER there had been none. Autumn was a mockery. The golden harvest fields lay prostrate under drenching floods of rain. Every burn foamed creamy white in the linns and sulked peaty brown in the pools. The heather, rich in this our Galloway as an emperor's robe, had scarce bloomed at all. The very bees went hungry, for the lashing rain had washed all the honey out of the purple bells. Nevertheless, in spite of all, we were again in Galloway--that is, the teller of tales and his little congregation of four. The country of _Guy Mannering_ spread about us, even though we could scarce see a hundred yards of it. The children flattened their noses against the blurred window-panes to look. Their eyes watered with the keen tang of the peat reek, till, tired with watching the squattering of ducks in farm puddles, they turned as usual upon the family sagaman, and demanded, with that militant assurance of youth which succeeds so often, that he should forthwith and immediately "tell them something." The tales from _Waverley_ had proved so enthralling that there was a general demand for "another," and Sir Toady Lion, being of an arithmetical turn of mind, proclaimed that there was plenty of material, in so much as he had counted no fewer than twenty-four "all the same" upon the shelf before he left home. Thus, encouraged by the dashing rain on the windows and with the low continual growl of Solway surf in our ears, we bent ourselves to fill a gap in a hopeless day by the retelling of A FIRST TALE FROM "GUY MANNERING" I. WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY THROUGH storm and darkness a young Oxford scholar came to the New Place of Ellangowan. He had been again and again refused shelter along the road for himself and his tired horse, but at last he found himself welcomed by Godfrey Bertram, the Laird of Ellangowan, attended by Dominie Sampson, his faithful companion, the village schoolmaster, on the threshold of the great house. That very night an heir was born to the line of the Bertrams of Ellangowan, one of the most ancient in Galloway, and as usual the New Place was full of company come from far and near to make merry over the event. Godfrey himself, a soft, good-natured, pliable man, welcomed Mannering (for that was the name of the young Oxford student), and set him forthwith to calculating the horoscope of the babe from the stars. This, Mannering, to whom astrology seemed no better than child's play, was at first unwilling to do, until the awkward opposition of Dominie Sampson, as well as some curiosity to see if he could remember the terms of the sham-science learned in youth, caused him to consent to make the calculation. He was still further pushed on by the appearance of a wild gipsy woman, a sort of queen among the ragged wandering tribe which camped in a little hamlet on the Laird's estates. She entered the house singing shrilly a kind of ancient spell: "Trefoil, vervain, John's wort, dill, Hinder witches of their will! Weel is them, that weel may Fast upon Saint Andrew's day. Saint Bride and her brat, Saint Colme and his cat, Saint Michael and his spear Keep the house frae reif and weir." So sang Meg Merrilies, the gipsy, a great cudgel in her hand, and her dress and bearing more like those of a man than of a woman. Elf-locks shot up through the holes in her bonnet, and her black eyes rolled with a kind of madness. Soon, however, Godfrey, who evidently only half disbelieved in her powers as a witch, dismissed her to the kitchen with fair words, while Guy Mannering, whom his strange adventure had rendered sleepless, walked forth into the night. The vast ruins of the ancient castle of the Bertrams rose high and silent on the cliffs above him, but beneath, in the little sandy cove, lights were still moving briskly, though it was the dead hour of the night. A smuggler brig was disloading a cargo of brandy, rum, and silks, most likely, brought from the Isle of Man. At sight of his figure moving on the cliffs above, a voice on the shore sang out, "Ware hawk! Douse the glim!" And in a moment all was darkness beneath him. When Mannering returned to his chamber in the dim light of the morning, he proceeded to carry out his calculations according to the strictest rules of astrology, marking carefully the hour of the birth of the babe. He found that young Harry Bertram, for so it had been decided to name the child, was threatened with danger in his _fifth_, his _tenth_, and his _twenty-first_ years. More dissatisfied than he cared to own with these results, Mannering walked out again to view the ruins of the old castle of Ellangowan in the morning light. They were, he now saw, of vast extent and much battered on the side toward the sea--so much so, indeed, that he could observe through a gap in the mason-work, the smuggling brig getting ready to be off with the tide. Guy Mannering penetrated into the courtyard, and was standing there quietly, thinking of the past greatness of the house of Bertram, when suddenly, from a chamber to the left, he heard the voice of the gipsy, Meg Merrilies. A few steps took him to a recess from which, unseen himself, he could observe what she was doing. She continued to twirl her distaff, seemingly unconscious of his presence, and also, after her own fashion, to "spae" the fortune of young Harry Bertram, just as Mannering had so lately been doing himself. Curiosity as to whether their results would agree kept him quiet while she wove her spell. At last she gave her verdict: "A long life, three score and ten years, but thrice broken by trouble or danger. The threads thrice broke, three times united. He'll be a lucky lad if he wins through wi' it!" Mannering had hardly time to be astonished at the manner in which the gipsy's prophecy confirmed his own half-playful calculations, before a voice, loud and hoarse as the waves that roared beneath the castle, called to the witch-wife, "Meg, Meg Merrilies--gipsy--hag--tousand deyvils!" "Coming, Captain--I am coming!" answered Meg, as calmly as if some one had been calling her pet names. Through the broken portion of the wall to seaward a man made his appearance. He was hard of feature, savage-looking, and there was a cruel glint in his eyes which told of a heart without pity. The man's body, powerful and thick-set as an oak, his immense strength, his savage temper made him shunned and disliked. There were few indeed who would have ventured to cross the path of Dirk Hatteraick, whose best name was "black smuggler," and whose worst a word it was safest to speak in a whisper, lest a bird of the air should carry the matter. On the present occasion Dirk had come to the gipsy queen to demand of her a charm for a fair wind and a prosperous voyage. For the less religion such a man has, the more superstitious he is apt to be. "Where are you, Mother Deyvilson?" he cried again. "Donner and blitzen, here we have been staying for you full half an hour! Come, bless the good ship and the voyage--and be cursed to ye for a hag of Satan!" At that moment, catching sight of Mannering, the smuggler stopped with a strange start. He thrust his hand into his pocket as if to draw out a hidden weapon, exclaiming: "What cheer, brother? You seem on the outlook, eh?" But with a glance at the intruder Meg Merrilies checked him. In a moment Hatteraick had altered his tone, and was speaking to Mannering civilly, yet still with an undercurrent of sullen suspicion which he tried to disguise under a mask of familiarity. "You are, I suppose," said Mannering, calmly, "the master of that vessel in the bay?" "Ay, ay, sir," answered the sailor, "I am Captain Dirk Hatteraick of the _Yungfrauw Hagenslaapen_, and I am not ashamed of my name or of my vessel, either. Right cognac I carry--rum, lace, real Mechlin, and Souchong tea--if you will come aboard, I will send you ashore with a pouchful of that last--Dirk Hatteraick knows how to be civil!" Mannering got rid of his offers without openly offending the man, and was well content to see the precious pair vanish down the stone stairs which had formerly served the garrison of the castle in time of siege. On his return to the house of Ellangowan, Mannering related his adventure, and asked of his host who this villanous-looking Dutchman might be, and why he was allowed to wander at will on his lands. This was pulling the trigger, and Mr. Bertram at once exploded into a long catalogue of griefs. According to him, the man was undoubtedly one Captain Dirk Hatteraick, a smuggler or free-trader. As for allowing him on his lands--well, Dirk was not very canny to meddle with. Besides, impossible as it was to believe, he, Godfrey Bertram of Ellangowan, was not upon his Majesty's commission of the peace for the county. Jealousy had kept him off--among other things the ill-will of the sitting member. Besides which--after all a gentleman must have his cognac, and his lady her tea and silks. Only smuggled articles came into the country. It was a pity, of course, but he was not more to blame than others. Thus the Laird maundered on, and Mannering, glad to escape being asked about the doubtful fortune which the stars had predicted for the young heir, did not interrupt him. On the next day, however, before he mounted his horse, he put the written horoscope into a sealed envelope, and, having strictly charged Bertram that it should not be opened till his son reached the age of five years, he took his departure with many expressions of regret. The next five years were outwardly prosperous ones for Godfrey Bertram of Ellangowan. As the result of an election where he had been of much service to the winning candidate, he was again made a Justice of the Peace, and immediately he set about proving to his brothers of the bench that he could be both a determined and an active magistrate. But this apparent good, brought as usual much of evil with it. Many old kindly customs and courtesies had endeared Godfrey Bertram to his poorer neighbours. He was, they said, no man's enemy, and even the gipsies of the little settlement would have cut off their right hands before they touched a pennyworth belonging to the Laird, their patron and protector. But the other landlords twitted him with pretending to be an active magistrate, and yet harbouring a gang of gipsies at his own door-cheek. Whereupon the Laird went slowly and somewhat sadly home, revolving schemes for getting rid of the colony of Derncleugh, at the head of which was the old witch-wife Meg Merrilies. Occasions of quarrel were easy to find. The sloe-eyed gipsy children swinging on his gates were whipped down. The rough-coated donkeys forbidden to eat their bite of grass in peace by the roadside. The men were imprisoned for poaching, and matters went so far that one stout young fellow was handed over to the press-gang at Dumfries and sent to foreign parts to serve on board a man-of-war. The gipsies, on their side, robbed the Ellangowan hen-roosts, stole the linen from my lady's bleaching-green, cut down and barked the young trees--though all the while scarce believing that their ancient friend the Laird of Ellangowan had really turned against them. During these five years the son, so strangely brought into the world on the night of Mannering's visit, had been growing into the boldest and brightest of boys. A wanderer by nature from his youth, he went fearlessly into each nook and corner of his father's estates in search of berries and flowers. He hunted every bog for rushes to weave grenadiers' caps, and haled the hazelnuts from the lithe coppice boughs. To Dominie Sampson, long since released from his village school, the difficult task was committed of accompanying, restraining, and guiding this daring spirit and active body. Shy, uncouth, awkward, with the memory of his failure in the pulpit always upon him, the Dominie was indeed quite able to instruct his pupil in the beginnings of learning, but it proved quite out of his power to control the pair of twinkling legs belonging to Master Harry Bertram. Once was the Dominie chased by a cross-grained cow. Once he fell into the brook at the stepping-stones, and once he was bogged in his middle in trying to gather water-lilies for the young Laird. The village matrons who relieved Dominie Sampson on this last occasion, declared that the Laird might just as well "trust the bairn to the care o' a tatie-bogle!"[2] But the good tutor, nothing daunted, continued grave and calm through all, only exclaiming, after each fresh misfortune, the single word "Prodeegious!" Often, too, Harry Bertram sought out Meg Merrilies at Derncleugh, where he played his pranks among the gipsies as fearlessly as within the walls of Ellangowan itself. Meanwhile the war between that active magistrate Godfrey Bertram and the gipsies grew ever sharper. The Laird was resolved to root them out, in order to stand well with his brother magistrates. So the gipsies sullenly watched while the ground officer chalked their doors in token that they must "flit" at the next term. At last the fatal day arrived. A strong force of officers summoned the gipsies to quit their houses, and when they did not obey, the sheriff's men broke down the doors and pulled the roofs off the poor huts of Derncleugh. Godfrey Bertram, who was really a kindly man, had gone away for the day to avoid the sight, leaving the business to the chief exciseman of the neighbourhood,--one Frank Kennedy, a bold, roistering blade, who knew no fear, and had no qualms whatever about ridding the neighbourhood of a gang of "sorners and thieves," as he called the Derncleugh gipsies. But as Godfrey was riding back to Ellangowan with a single servant, right in the middle of the King's highway, he met the whole congregation of the exiles, evicted from their ruined houses, and sullenly taking their way in search of a new shelter against the storms of the oncoming winter. His servant rode forward to command every man to stand to his beast's head while the Laird was passing. "He shall have his half of the road," growled one of the tall thin gipsies, his features half-buried in a slouch hat, "but he shall have no more. The highway is as free to our cuddies as to his horse." Never before had the Laird of Ellangowan received such a discourteous reception. Anxious at the last to leave a good impression, he stammered out as he passed one of the older men, "And your son, Gabriel Baillie, is he well?" (He meant the young man who had been sent by means of the press-gang to foreign parts.) With a deep scowl the old man replied, "If I had heard otherwise, _you_ would have heard it too!" At last Godfrey Bertram thought that he had escaped. He had passed the last laden donkey of the expelled tribe. He was urging his beast toward Ellangowan with a saddened spirit, when suddenly at a place where the road was sunk between two high banks, Meg Merrilies appeared above him, a freshly cut sapling in her hand, her dark eyes flashing anger, and her elf-locks straying in wilder confusion than ever. "Ride your ways, Laird of Ellangowan," she cried, "ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram! This day ye have quenched seven smoking hearths--see if the fire in your own parlour burns the brighter for that? Ye have riven the thatch off seven cottars' houses--look if your roof-tree stands the faster. There are thirty yonder that would have shed their lifeblood for you--thirty, from the child of a week to the auld wife of a hundred, that you have made homeless, that you have sent out to sleep with the fox and the blackcock. Our bairns are hanging on our weary backs--look to it that your braw cradle at hame is the fairer spread! Now ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram. These are the last words ye shall ever hear from Meg Merrilies, and this the last staff that I shall ever cut in the bonny woods of Ellangowan!" [Illustration: "MEG MERRILIES appeared above him, a freshly cut sapling in her hand, her dark eyes flashing anger, and her elf-locks straying in wilder confusion than ever. "'Ride your ways, Laird of Ellangowan,' she cried, 'ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram! This day ye have quenched seven smoking hearths--see if the fire in your own parlour burns the brighter for that!'"] And with the gesture of a queen delivering sentence she broke the sapling she had held in her hand, and flung the fragments into the road. The Laird was groping in his pocket for half a crown, and thinking meanwhile what answer to make. But disdaining both his reply and his peace-offering, Meg strode defiantly downhill after the caravan. * * * * * Not only was there war by land at Ellangowan. There was also war by sea. The Laird, determined for once not to do things by halves, had begun to support Frank Kennedy, the chief revenue officer, in his campaign against the smugglers. Armed with Ellangowan's warrant, and guided by his people who knew the country, Kennedy swooped down upon Dirk Hatteraick as he was in the act of landing a large cargo upon Ellangowan's ground. After a severe combat he had been able to clap the government broad-arrow upon every package and carry them all off to the nearest customs' post. Dirk Hatteraick got safely away, but he went, vowing in English, Dutch, and German, the direst vengeance against Frank Kennedy, Godfrey Bertram, and all his enemies. It was a day or two after the eviction of the gipsies when the Lady of Ellangowan, suddenly remembering that it was her son Harry's fifth birthday, demanded of her husband that he should open and read the horoscope written by the wandering student of the stars five years before. While they were arguing about the matter, it was suddenly discovered that little Harry was nowhere to be found. His guardian, Dominie Sampson, having returned without him, was summoned to give an account of his stewardship by the angry mother. "Mr. Sampson," she cried, "it is the most extraordinary thing in the world wide, that you have free up-putting in this house,--bed, board, washing, and twelve pounds sterling a year just to look after that boy,--and here you have let him out of your sight for three hours at a time!" Bowing with awkward gratitude at each clause in this statement of his advantages, the poor Dominie was at last able to stammer out that Frank Kennedy had taken charge of Master Harry, in the face of his protest, and had carried him off to Warroch Head to see the taking of Dirk Hatteraick's ship by the King's sloop-of-war, which he had ridden all the way to Wigton Bay to bring about. "And if that be so," cried the Lady of Ellangowan, "I am very little obliged to Frank Kennedy. The bairn may fall from his horse, or anything may happen." The Laird quieted his wife by telling her that he and Frank Kennedy had together seen the sloop-of-war giving chase to Dirk Hatteraick's ship, and that even then the Dutchman, disabled and on fire, was fast drifting upon the rocks. Frank Kennedy had ridden off to assist in the capture by signalling to the man-of-war from Warroch Head, and had evidently picked up little Harry upon the way. He would doubtless, continued the Laird, be back in a little time. For he had ordered the punch-bowl to be made ready, that they might drink good luck to the King's service and confusion to all smugglers and free-traders wherever found. But hour after hour went by, and neither Frank Kennedy nor the boy Harry returned. The night approached. Parties of searchers anxiously beat the woods and patrolled the cliffs. For long they found nothing, but at last a boat's crew, landing perilously at the foot of the precipices, came upon the body of the excise officer, a sword-cut in his head, lying half in and half out of the water. He had been flung from the cliffs above. Frank Kennedy was dead--as to that there was no question. But what had become of the child, Harry Bertram? That--no one could answer. Not a trace of him was to be found. The smuggler's ship still burned fiercely, but Dirk Hatteraick and his men had completely vanished. Some one suggested the gipsies, whereupon the Laird mounted the first horse he came across and rode furiously to the huts of Derncleugh. Bursting in a door, he found on the ruined hearth of the house that had once sheltered Meg Merrilies, a fire still smouldering. But there, too, Godfrey Bertram discovered nothing and no one. While he remained on the spot, dazed and uncertain, looking at the blackened hearthstone, his old servant entered hastily to bid him return at once to Ellangowan. His wife had been taken dangerously ill. Godfrey spurred as fast as horse would carry him, but Death had gone faster, and had arrived before him. When he reached the gate, the Lady of Ellangowan was dead, leaving him with a little baby girl less than an hour old. The shock of Kennedy's murder and her own little Harry's loss had killed her. INTERLUDE OF INTERROGATION The melancholy conclusion of the first _Guy Mannering_ tale kept the children quieter than usual. I think they regretted a little the gallant opening of _Waverley_, but as ever they were full of questions. "And all that happened here, in our Galloway?" began Sweetheart, looking about her at the hills of dark heather and the sparkling Solway sands, from which the storm-clouds were just beginning to lift. "Yes," I answered her, "though it is doubtful if Scott ever _was_ in Galloway. But he had seen Criffel across from Dumfries-shire, and the castle of Ellangowan is certainly described from the ruins of Caerlaverock, opposite New Abbey. Besides, had he not good old Joseph Train, the Castle Douglas exciseman, to tell him everything--than whom no man knew Galloway better?" "Did gipsies really steal children?" said Maid Margaret, with some apprehension. She was somewhat anxious, for an affirmative answer might interfere with certain wide operations in blackberrying which she was planning. "Sometimes they did," I answered, "but not nearly so often as they were blamed for. They had usually enough mouths of their own to feed. So, unless they were sure of a ransom, or perhaps occasionally for the sake of revenge, gipsies very seldom were guilty of kidnapping." "But they always do steal them in books," said Hugh John; "well, I would just like to see them cart me off! And if they took Sir Toady Lion, they would soon send him back. He eats so much!" This was Hugh John's idea of a joke, and somewhat hastily I interrupted fraternal strife by returning to the general subject. "Adam Smith, a very learned man, who afterwards wrote _The Wealth of Nations_, was stolen by gipsies when a child," I said. "_I_ wish they had just kept him," said Hugh John, unexpectedly; "then we wouldn't have had to paraphrase the beastly thing at school. It is as full of jaw-breakers as a perch is full of bones." "Was little Harry really stolen by gipsies, or was he killed over the cliff?" queried Maid Margaret. "Of course he was stolen, silly," broke in Sir Toady Lion, sagely; "look how much more of the book there has got to be all about him. Think there would be all that, if he got killed right at the beginning, eh?" "Do any people smuggle nowadays?" demanded Hugh John. "Of course they do--in Spain," interjected Sir Toady Lion, "father got put in prison there once." "That was all owing to a mistake," I explained hastily (for really this had nothing to do with Scott); "it was only because your parent happened to be wearing the same kind of hat as a certain well-known smuggler, a very desperate character." "HUM-M!" said Sir Toady Lion, suddenly developing a cold in the nose. "Well, anyway, they do smuggle--though not much in this country now," said Sweetheart, "and I'm glad father knew a man who smuggled in Spain. It makes this book so much more real." "Getting put in prison instead of him made it almost _too_ real," said Sir Toady. He is a most disconcerting and ironical boy. One often wonders where he gets it from. So to shut off further questioning, I proceeded immediately with the telling of the second tale from _Guy Mannering_. THE SECOND TALE FROM "GUY MANNERING" I. HAPPY DOMINIE SAMPSON IT was seventeen long years after the murder of Frank Kennedy and the disappearance of little Harry Bertram when Guy Mannering, now a soldier famous for his wars in the East, penetrated a second time into Galloway. His object was to visit the family of Ellangowan, and secretly, also, to find out for himself in what way his random prophesies had worked out. But he arrived at an unfortunate time. He found that, chiefly by the plotting and deceit of a rascally lawyer, one Gilbert Glossin, the Bertrams were on the point of being sold out of Ellangowan. All their money had been lost, and the sale of the estate was being forced on by the rascally lawyer Glossin for his own ends. The old man Godfrey Bertram also was very near his end. And indeed on the very day of the sale, and while Mannering was paying his respects to his former host, the sight of Glossin so enraged the feeble old man that he was taken with a violent passion, falling back in his chair and dying in a few minutes. Mannering, whose heart was greatly touched, was most anxious to do all that he could to assist Lucy Bertram, the old man's daughter, but he was compelled by an urgent summons to return into England. It had been his intention to save the estate of Ellangowan from the clutches of the scoundrel Glossin by buying it himself, but the drunkenness of a postboy whom he had sent with a letter to Mr. Mac-Morlan, the lawyer in charge of the sale, defeated his intentions, so that Ellangowan became the property of the traitor. So young Lucy Bertram and Dominie Sampson (who refused to be separated from her) became for the moment inmates of Mr. Mac-Morlan's house. The Dominie found a pupil or two in the neighbourhood that he might not be chargeable to his dear Lucy or her friend Mr. Mac-Morlan. And so, in the twenty-first year after the birth of an heir, and after Mannering's prophecy concerning him, there seemed an end to the ancient house of the Bertrams of Ellangowan. During these years, Colonel Mannering also had a tale to tell. Wedded early to the wife of his youth and his heart, he had gone to India in the service of the Honourable, the East India Company. There by his valour and talent he had rapidly acquired both wealth and position. But during the twenty-first year an event occurred which gave him a distaste for the land of his adoption, and he had come back to his native country with the idea of settling down, far away from old memories and new entanglements. In a duel which he had fought in India with a young man named Brown--a brave youth of no position, who had offended Mannering by his attentions to his daughter, and by establishing himself in his house as a friend of the family--he had left Brown for dead on the field, hardly escaping himself with his life from a sudden attack of the armed banditti who, in the India of that day, were always hovering round desert places. The shock of that morning had so told on the health of Mannering's wife that she died shortly afterwards, leaving him with one daughter, Julia--a proud, sprightly, sentimental girl, whom he had brought home, and placed under the care of a friend named Mervyn, whose house stood upon one of the Cumberland lakes. So it came about that when Mannering was in Scotland, he received a letter from his friend which took him to Mervyn Hall as fast as horse-flesh could carry him. His friend wrote, as he was careful to say, without his wife's knowledge. Mr. Mervyn told Colonel Mannering that he was certain that his daughter Julia was receiving secret visits from some one whom she did not dare to see openly. Not only were there long solitary walks and hill-climbings, but on several occasions he had heard up the lake at midnight, as if under her windows, a flageolet playing a little Indian air to which Julia Mannering was partial. This was evidently a signal, for a boat had been seen hastily crossing the lake, and the sash of Julia's window had been heard to shut down at the first alarm. Mr. Mervyn said that, little as he liked playing the part of tale-bearer, he felt that Julia was under his care, and he would not deserve his old name of Downright Dunstable if he did not inform her father of what he had discovered. Julia, he said, was both a charming and high spirited girl, but she was too much her own father's daughter to be without romantic ideas. On the whole, concluded Mr. Mervyn, it behooved the Colonel to come at once to Mervyn Hall and look after his own property. This was the letter which, put into his hands at a seaport town in Scotland, lost Mannering the estate of Ellangowan, and threw the ancient seat of many generations of Bertrams into the clutches of the scoundrelly Glossin. For Colonel Mannering instantly posted off to the south, having first of all sent despatches to Mr. Mac-Morlan by the untrustworthy postilion--the same who arrived a day too late for the sale. When Colonel Mannering first went to Mervyn Hall, he could make nothing of the case. Of course he believed Brown to have died by his hand in India, and he could find no traces of any other man likely to be making love to his daughter. Nevertheless he had brought back a plan with him from Scotland, which, he thought, would put an end to all future difficulties. The helplessness of Lucy Bertram had moved his heart. Besides, he was more amused than he cared to own by the originality of the Dominie. He had easily obtained, by means of Mr. Mac-Morlan, a furnished house in the neighbourhood of Ellangowan, and he resolved for a time at least to repose himself there after his campaigns. His daughter Julia would thus have a companion in Lucy Bertram, and it was easy to provide the Dominie with an occupation. For the library of an uncle of Mannering's, who had been a learned bishop of the Church of England, had been willed to him. The Dominie was the very man to put the books in order. So indeed it was arranged, after some saucy remarks from Miss Mannering as to the supposed Scottish accent and probable red hair of her companion. Then Colonel Mannering, accustomed to do nothing by halves, sent down his directions about Dominie Sampson, whose heart indeed would have been broken if he had been separated from the young mistress over whom he had watched from childhood. "Let the poor man be properly dressed," wrote the Colonel to Mr. Mac-Morlan, "and let him accompany his young lady to Woodbourne!" The dressing of Dominie Sampson was, however, easier said than done. For it would hurt the pride of the Dominie to have clothes presented to him as to a schoolboy. But Lucy Bertram soon settled the matter. The Dominie, she said, would never notice the difference, if they put one garment at a time into his sleeping room and took away the other. This was what her father had always done when the wardrobe of his dependent needed renewing. Nor had the Dominie ever showed the least consciousness of the change. So said, so done. A good tailor, having come and looked Mr. Sampson over, readily agreed to provide him with two excellent suits, one black and one raven grey, such as would fit the Dominie as well as a man of such an out-of-the-way build could be fitted by merely human needles and shears. The Dominie, when completely equipped, made no remark upon the change--further than that, in his opinion, the air of a seaport town like Kippletringan seemed to be favourable to wearing-apparel. It was the depth of winter when the Mannerings arrived at Woodbourne. All were a little anxious. Even Dominie Sampson longed to be at his books, and going repeatedly to the windows demanded, "Why tarry the wheels of their chariot?" But when at last they came, Lucy and Julia Bertram were soon friends, while the Dominie stood with uplifted hands, exclaiming, "Prodeegious! Prodeegious!" as, one after another, the thirty or forty cart-loads of books were deposited on the library floor ready to his hand. His arms flapped like windmills, and the uncouth scholar counted himself the happiest man on earth as he began to arrange the great volumes on the shelves. Not that he got on very quickly. For he wrote out the catalogue in his best running-hand. He put the books on the shelves as carefully as if they had been old and precious china. Yet in spite of the Dominie's zeal, his labours advanced but slowly. Often he would chance to open a volume when halfway up the ladder. Then, his eye falling upon some entrancing passage, he would stand there transfixed, oblivious of the flight of time, till a serving-maid pulled his skirts to tell him dinner was waiting. He would then bolt his food in three-inch squares, and rush back to the library, often with his dinner napkin still tied round his neck like a pinafore. Thus, for the first time in his life, Dominie Sampson was perfectly content. [Illustration: "HIS eye falling upon some entrancing passage, he would stand there transfixed, oblivious of the flight of time, till a serving-maid pulled his skirts to tell him dinner was waiting."] II. DANDIE DINMONT But the story now turns to the young man Brown, or, to give him his full title, Captain Vanbeest Brown, whom Colonel Mannering had left for dead on an Indian field. He did not die, but he had been compelled to undergo a long captivity among the bandits before he found his way back to his regiment. The new Colonel whom he found in Mannering's place had been kind to him, and he soon found himself in command of a troop of dragoons. He was at present on leave in England, and, as he was conscious that Mannering had no reason for his ill-will and apparent cruelty, Brown felt that he on his part had no reason for standing on ceremony with such a man. He loved Julia Mannering, and, to say the least of it, she did not discourage him. So it was he who had played the Hindoo air upon the lake--he with whom Julia had talked at her window, even as Mervyn had related in his letter to his friend Colonel Mannering. When the Colonel and his daughter went away to Scotland, Captain Brown, having no relatives in the country, resolved to follow them. He set out on foot, having for sole companion a little terrier named Wasp. On the way he had to pass a long and weary waste of heath and morass. One house alone broke the monotonous expanse. It was little better than a shed, but was sheltered by an ash tree, and a clay-built shed alongside served for a rude stable. A stout pony stood tethered in front of the door, busy with a feed of oats. Stillness brooded all around. It was a poor place, but Captain Brown had wandered too far and seen too much to care about appearances. He stooped his head and entered at the low door. In a few minutes he found himself attacking a round of beef and washing it down with home-brewed ale in company with the owner of the pony tethered outside, a certain Mr. Dandie Dinmont, a store-farmer on his way home from a Cumberland fair. At first only pleasant nods passed between them as they drank to each other in silence. Presently Brown noticed, seated in the great chimney, a very tall old woman clad in a red cloak and a slouched bonnet, having all the appearance of a gipsy or tinker. She smoked silently at her clay pipe, while the doubtful-looking landlady went about her affairs. Brown's terrier Wasp was the means of his striking up an acquaintance with the sturdy farmer opposite, who, hearing that he had never seen a blackcock, invited him forthwith to Charlies-hope, the name of his farm, where he promised him he should both see blackcock, shoot blackcock, and eat blackcock. Dandie Dinmont was going on to tell Brown of his wanderings, when the old crone in the red cloak by the side of the fire suddenly broke silence by asking if he had been recently in Galloway, and if he knew Ellangowan. "Ellangowan!" cried the farmer, "I ken it weel! Auld Laird Bertram died but a fortnight ago, and the estate and everything had to be sold for want of an heir male." The old gipsy (who, of course, was no other than Meg Merrilies) sprang at once to her feet. "And who dared buy the estate, when the bonny knave-bairn that heirs it may any day come back to claim his ain?" "It was, I believe," said Dandie Dinmont, "one of these writer bodies that buy up everything,--Gilbert Glossin by name!" "Ay, Gibbie Glossin," said the old witch-wife, "mony a time I hae carried him in my creels. But maybe ye'll hae heard o' Derncleugh, about a mile frae Ellangowan?" "And a wild-looking den it is," said the farmer; "nothing but old ruined walls." "It was a blithe bit once," said the gipsy, as if talking to herself; "did ye notice if there was a willow tree half blown down, that hangs over the bit burnie? Mony is the time hae I sat there and knitted my stockin'." "The deil's in the wife," cried Dandie; "let me away! Here's saxpence for ye to buy half-a-mutchkin, instead o' claverin' o' auld-world tales." The gipsy took the money from the farmer, and tendered in return this advice: "When Tib Mumps brings ye out the stirrup-cup, and asks ye whether ye will gang ower Willie's brae or by the Conscowthartmoss, be sure to choose the road ye _dinna_ tell her." The farmer laughed and promised. But to Brown he said that after all he would rather that Tib Mumps kenned where he was going than yon gipsy queen, so he would e'en hold on his way. Captain Brown soon followed on foot, but at the door he found himself stopped by Meg Merrilies, who, with much earnestness, asked his name and from whence he came. "My name is Brown," he answered, a little impatiently; "I come from the East Indies." [Illustration: "HE had not gone very far, and was still in the heart of the morass, when he saw his late companion of the ale-house engaged in deadly combat with a couple of rascals, one of them armed with a cutlass, and the other with a bludgeon."] The old gipsy appeared disappointed by his answer, and Brown put a shilling into her hand as he took his leave. However, he had not gone very far, and was still in the heart of the morass, when he saw his late companion of the ale-house engaged in deadly combat with a couple of rascals, one of them armed with a cutlass, and the other with a bludgeon. Brown's terrier Wasp ran forward, barking furiously, but before Brown could come to his assistance the ruffians had got Dandie Dinmont down, and the man with the bludgeon bestowed some merciless blows upon his head. Then with a shout they turned their attention to Brown, crying that "the first one was content." But Brown was a staunch antagonist, and they soon found that they had met more than their match. Whereupon the leader bade him follow his nose over the heath, for that they had nothing to say to him. But, since to do this was to abandon Dandie Dinmont to their mercy, Brown refused point-blank. Affairs were at this pass when Dandie, staggering to his feet, his loaded whip in his hand, managed to come to the assistance of his rescuer, whereupon the two men took to their heels and ran as hard as they could over the moor. Then the farmer, who knew their ways, bade Brown mount behind him on his horse Dumple, for he warned him that in five minutes "the whole clanjamphrey" would be down upon them. And even as he spoke five or six men made their appearance, running toward them over the moss. But Dumple was staunch, and by dint of following the safest roads, and being left to pick his own way in the difficult places, Dandie's pony soon left the villains behind him. Then, following the old Roman road, they reached Dinmont's farm of Charlies-hope, across the border, not long after nightfall. A furious barking from innumerable terriers and dogs of all breeds was their welcome. And soon Brown found himself within four hospitable walls, where not only were his own wants satisfied, but the wounds of the master of the house were bound up by his buxom wife. At kindly Charlies-hope, Brown remained several days, while Dandie Dinmont showed him the best sport to be had upon the border. Together they hunted the fox after the manner of the country--that is, treating Reynard as a thief and a robber, with whom no conditions are to be observed. Together they went to the night fishing, where Brown heard the leisters or steel tridents ringing on the stones at the bottom of the water, as the fishers struck at the salmon in the light of the blazing torches kindled to attract the fish. Otter-hunting and badger-baiting filled in the time, so that Brown had never been so well amused in his life. But he begged from his host that the badger, which had made so gallant a defence, should be allowed henceforth to go scot-free. Dandie promised with willingness, happy to oblige his guest, though quite unable to understand why any one should "care about a brock." When Brown told this hearty family that he must leave them, he was compelled to promise, over and over again, that he would soon return. The chorus of Dandie's tow-headed youngsters burst into one unanimous howl. "Come back again, Captain," cried one sturdy little chap, "and Jennie shall be your wife." Jennie, a girl of eleven, promptly ran and hid herself behind her mother. "Captain, come back," said a little fat roll-about girl of six, holding up her mouth to be kissed; "come back and I'll be your wife my ainsel'!" It was hard to leave so hospitable a home to go where, to say the least of it, one was not wanted. Especially was it so when the sturdy farmer, grasping Brown's hand, said with a certain shamefacedness, "There's a pickle siller that I do not ken what to do wi', after Ailie has gotten her new goon and the bairns their winter duds. But I was thinking, that whiles you army gentlemen can buy yoursel's up a step. If ye wad tak the siller, a bit scrape o' a pen wad be as guid to me. Ye could take your ain time about paying it back. And--and it would be a great convenience to me." Brown was much moved, but he could only thank his kind host heartily and promise that in case of need he would not forget to draw upon his purse. So they parted, Brown leaving his little terrier Wasp to share bed and board with the eldest of the Dinmont boys, who right willingly undertook the task as a kind of security for his master's return. Dinmont conveyed his guest some distance, and afterward, from the first Dumfries-shire town which they entered, Brown took a carriage to carry him part of the way in the direction of Woodbourne, where Julia Mannering was at present residing. III. IN THE LION'S MOUTH Night and mist stopped him after many miles of journeying. The postboy had lost his way, and could offer no suggestions. Brown descended to see if by chance, in this wild place, they were near any farm-house at which he could ask the way. Standing tiptoe upon a bank, it seemed as if he could see in the distance a light feebly glimmering. Brown proceeded toward it, but soon found himself stumbling among ruins of cottages, the side walls of which were lying in shapeless heaps, half covered with snow, while the gables still stood up gaunt and black against the sky. He ascended a bank, steep and difficult, and found himself in front of a small square tower, from the chinks of which a light showed dimly. Listening cautiously, he heard a noise as of stifled groaning. Brown approached softly, and looked through a long arrow-slit upon a dismal scene. Smoke filled a wretched apartment. On a couch a man lay, apparently dying, while beside him, wrapped in a long cloak, a woman sat with bent head, crooning to herself and occasionally moistening the sufferer's lips with some liquid. "It will not do," Brown heard her say at last "he cannot pass away with the crime on his soul. It tethers him here. I must open the door." As she did so she saw Brown standing without. He, on his part, recognised in the woman the gipsy wife whom he had seen on the Waste of Cumberland, when he and Dandie Dinmont had had their fight with the robbers. "Did I not tell you neither to mix nor mingle?" said the woman; "but come in. Here is your only safety!" Even as she spoke, the head of the wounded man fell back. He was dead, and, before Brown could think of seeking safety in flight, they heard in the distance the sound of voices approaching. "They are coming!" whispered the gipsy; "if they find you here, you are a dead man. Quick--you cannot escape. Lie down, and, whatever you see or hear, do not stir, as you value your life." Brown had no alternative but to obey. So the old gipsy wife covered him over with old sacks as he lay in the corner upon a couch of straw. Then Meg went about the dismal offices of preparing the dead man for burial, but Brown could see that she was constantly pausing to listen to the sounds which every moment grew louder without. At last a gang of fierce-looking desperadoes poured tumultuously in, their leader abusing the old woman for leaving the door open. But Meg Merrilies had her answer ready. "Did you ever hear of a door being barred when a man was in the death-agony?" she cried. "Think ye the spirit could win away through all these bolts and bars?" "Is he dead, then?" asked one of the ruffians, glancing in the direction of the bed. "Ay, dead enough," growled another; "but here is the wherewithal to give him a rousing lykewake!" And going to the corner he drew out a large jar of brandy, while Meg busied herself in preparing pipes and tobacco. Brown in his corner found his mind a little eased when he saw how eagerly she went about her task. "She does not mean to betray me, then!" he said to himself. Though for all that, he could see no gleam of womanly tenderness on her face, nor imagine any reason she should not give him up to her associates. That they were a gang of murderers was soon evident from their talk. The man, now wrapped in the dark sea-cloak, whose dead face looked down on their revels, was referred to as one who had often gloried in the murder of Frank Kennedy. But some of the others held that the deed was not wisely done, because after that the people of the country would not do business with the smugglers. "It did up the trade for one while!" said one; "the people turned rusty!" Then there were evident threats uttered against some one whose name Brown did not hear. "I think," said the leader of the ruffians, "that we will have to be down upon the fellow one of these nights, and let him have it well!" After a while the carousing bandits called for what they called "Black Peter." It was time (they said) "to flick it open." To Brown's surprise and indignation, Black Peter proved to be nothing else than his own portmanteau, which gave him reasons for some very dark thoughts as to the fate of his postboy. He watched the rascals force his bag open and coolly divide all that was in it among them. Yet he dared not utter a word, well aware that had he done so, the next moment a knife would have been at his throat. At last, to his great relief, Brown saw them make their preparations for departure. He was left alone with the dead man and the old woman. Meg Merrilies waited till the first sun of the winter's morn had come, lest one of the revellers of the night should take it into his head to turn back. Then she led Brown by a difficult and precipitous path, till she could point out to him, on the other side of some dense plantations, the road to Kippletringan. "And here," said she, mysteriously putting a large leathern purse into his hand, "is what will in some degree repay the many alms your house has given me and mine!" She was gone before he could reply, and when Brown opened the purse, he was astonished to find in it gold to the amount of nearly one hundred pounds, besides many valuable jewels. The gipsy had endowed him with a fortune. INTERLUDE OF LOCALITY "And all this happened here?" repeated Sweetheart, incredulously, pointing up at the dark purple mountains of Screel and Ben Gairn. "Well," I answered, "Scott's Solway is the Dumfries Solway, not the Galloway Solway. Portanferry exists not far from Glencaple on the eastern bank of Nith, and the castle of Ellangowan is as like as possible to Caerlaverock." "But he _says_ Galloway!" objected Sweetheart, who has a pretty persistence of her own. "And I wanted Ellangowan to be in Galloway. What with Carlyle having been born there, the Dumfries folk have quite enough to be proud of!" "Yes, Scott _says_ Ellangowan is in Galloway," said I, "but nevertheless to any one who knows the country, it remains obstinately in Dumfries-shire. His swamps and morasses are those of Lochar. The frith is the Dumfries-shire Solway, the castle a Dumfries-shire castle, and what Scott put in of Galloway tradition was sent him by his friend the Castle Douglas exciseman." "Oh!" said Sweetheart, a little ruefully, "but are you sure?" "Certain," I answered, "if you consider time and distance from the border--say from Charlies-hope, you will see that Brown could not possibly have reached the heart of Galloway. Besides, Scott was far too wise a man to write about what he did not know. So he wove in Train's Galloway legends, but he put the people into his own well-kenned dresses, and set them to act their parts under familiar skies. Hence it is, that though the taste of Scott was never stronger than in _Guy Mannering_, the flavour of Galloway is somehow not in the mouth!" "What does it matter where it all happened?" cried Hugh John; "it is a rattling good tale, anyway, and if the Man-who-Wrote-It imagined that it all happened in Galloway, surely _we_ can!" This being both sensible and unanswerable, the party scattered to improvise old castles of Ellangowan, and to squabble for what was to them the only wholly desirable part, that of Dirk Hatteraick. The combat between the smuggler and the exciseman was executed with particular zeal and spirit, Sir Toady Lion prancing and curvetting, as Frank Kennedy, on an invisible steed, with Maid Margaret before him on the saddle. So active was the fight indeed, that the bold bad smuggler, Dirk, assailed as to the upper part of his body by Sir Toady, and with the Heir tugging at his legs, found himself presently worsted and precipitated over the cliff in place of Frank Kennedy. This ending considerably disarranged the story, so that it was with no little trouble that the pair of strutting victors were induced to "play by the book," and to accept (severally) death and captivity in the hold of the smuggling lugger. On the other hand, after I had read the Twenty-seventh and Twenty-eighth Chapters of _Guy Mannering_ to them in the original, it was remarkable with what accuracy of detail Sweetheart wrapped a plaid about her and played the witch, Meg Merrilies, singing wild dirges over an imaginary dead body, while Hugh John hid among the straw till Sir Toady and Maid Margaret rushed in with incredible hubbub and sat down to carouse like a real gang of the most desperate characters. Seated on a barrel of gunpowder, Sir Toady declared that he smelt traitors in the camp, whereupon he held a (paper) knife aloft in the air, and cried, "If any deceive us or betray the gang, we will destroy them--_thus!_" "Yes," chimed in the rosebud mouth of Maid Margaret, "and us will chop them into teeny-weeny little bits wif a sausage minchine, and feed them to our b-r-r-lood-hounds!" "Little monsters!" cried Sweetheart, for the moment forgetting her proper character of witch-wife. Nevertheless, all in the Kairn of Derncleugh were happy, save Hugh John, who declared that Scott's heroes were always getting put under soft cushions or up the chimney. "You can't really distinguish yourself," he insisted, "in such situations!" And he referred once more to the luck of a certain Mr. James Hawkins, ship's boy, late of "Treasure Island." "It's the nobodies that have all the fun--real heroes don't count!" he continued ruefully, as he dusted himself from the bits of straw. "Wait," said I; "you have not heard the third tale from Guy Mannering. Then there will be lots for you to do!" "High time!" he answered with awful irony. THE THIRD TALE FROM "GUY MANNERING" THE RETURN OF DIRK HATTERAICK ONE event deeply stirred all Solway-side in the year of Colonel Mannering's arrival at Woodbourne--the smugglers had returned in force, and proved themselves ripe for any desperate act. Their stronghold was as of old, the Isle of Man, from which they could descend in a few hours upon the Solway coasts. Stricter laws and more severe penalties had only rendered them fiercer than of old, and in case of need, they did not hesitate in the least to shed blood. As of yore also, their leader was the savage Dirk Hatteraick, under whom served a Lieutenant named Brown. One of their first exploits was a daring attack upon the house of Woodbourne, where dwelt Colonel Mannering with his daughter and Lucy Bertram. It happened thus. Mannering, in company with young Charles Hazlewood, was setting out for a loch some miles away to look at the skaters. Hazlewood had quite often come to visit the house of Woodbourne since Lucy Bertram went to live there. Suddenly a few men, each leading a laden horse, burst through the bushes, and, pressing straight across the lawn, made for the front door. Mannering hastened to demand what they wanted. They were revenue officers, they said, and as they knew that Colonel Mannering had served in the East, they called upon him in the King's name to protect them and their captures. To this Mannering instantly agreed. No time was to be lost. The smugglers were hot in pursuit, strongly reinforced. Immediately the goods were piled in the hall. The windows were blocked up with cushions, pillows, and (what caused the Dominie many a groan) great folios out of the library, bound in wood, covered with leather, and studded with brazen bosses like a Highland targe. While these preparations were being made within the house of Woodbourne the steady earth-shaking beat of a body of horsemen was heard approaching, and in a few minutes a body of thirty mounted men rushed out upon the lawn, brandishing weapons and uttering savage yells. Most of them had their heads tied up in coloured handkerchiefs, while many wore masks by way of disguising themselves. Finding the mansion in an unexpected state of defence, they halted a moment, as if to take counsel together. But finally one of them, his face all blackened with soot, dismounted and came forward, waving a white cloth in his hand. Colonel Mannering immediately threw up a window, and asked the smuggler what he wanted. "We want our goods, of which we have been robbed by these sharks," cried the man with the blackened face, "and we mean to have them. If you give them up, we will go away quietly without harming any one, but if you refuse, then we will burn the house and have the life-blood of every soul under your roof." This he swore with many horrible and cruel oaths. "If you do not instantly ride off my lawn," answered Colonel Mannering, "I will fire upon you without any further warning!" The Ambassador returned to his troop, and no sooner had he told them the Colonel's answer than they rushed forward to the attack with horrid yells. Three volleys were fired, shattering the window-glass in all directions, but, thanks to the Colonel's preparations, the slugs and bullets rattled harmlessly against his defences. Many of the smugglers now dismounted and advanced with axe and crow-bar to force the front door. It was time for those within to take action. "Let only Charles Hazlewood and myself shoot!" said the Colonel, "Hazlewood, do you mark the Ambassador. I will take the commander of the rascals--the man on the grey horse, whom they call their Lieutenant!" Both men fell as the shots rang out. Astonished by this reception, the smugglers retreated, carrying with them their wounded. It was one of these whom Captain Brown saw die in the little ruined keep at Derncleugh the night when he was overtaken in the darkness--indeed, that very namesake of his own, Brown, the mate of Hatteraick's vessel. There were many who thought that after this Captain Mannering ought to remove his family out of danger. But that gentleman confined himself to taking greater precautions at locking-up time, and insisting that when the ladies went out walking, a gun should be carried by an attendant for their protection. One day Julia Mannering and Lucy Bertram had gone out with young Charles Hazlewood to visit a small lake much frequented by skaters and curlers, while a servant followed behind with a gun. It chanced that Lucy, who never kept Hazlewood's arm when she could avoid it, had dropped behind as they were passing along a narrow path through a pine plantation. Julia Mannering was therefore alone at Charles Hazlewood's side when Brown suddenly appeared from among the trees, right in their path. He was roughly dressed, and young Hazlewood, taking him for one of the smugglers, and mistaking the meaning of Julia's cry of surprise at seeing her lover, snatched the gun from the servant, and haughtily ordered Brown to stand back so as not to alarm the lady. Brown, piqued at finding Julia on the arm of a stranger, replied as haughtily that he did not require to take lessons from Hazlewood how to behave to any lady. Instantly Charles Hazlewood pointed the gun at his breast. Upon which Brown sprang upon him, and in the struggle the gun went off by accident, and Hazlewood fell to the ground wounded. Brown, anxious not to bring Julia Mannering into the affair, at once sprang over the hedge and disappeared. [Illustration: "HE was roughly dressed, and young Hazlewood, taking him for one of the smugglers, and mistaking the meaning of Julia's cry of surprise at seeing her lover, snatched the gun from the servant, and haughtily ordered Brown to stand back so as not to alarm the lady."] Hazlewood's wound was, happily, not serious, and being an honest open young fellow, he was the first to own himself in the wrong. Nothing of importance would have come of the affair, but for the officiousness of Glossin, the new Laird of Ellangowan, who saw in it a way of ingratiating himself with the two powerful families of Mannering and Hazlewood. Glossin began by questioning the landlady of the hotel where Brown had been staying. Then he tried to draw out the postboy. From them he gathered little, save the fact that a young man named Brown had been staying at the Gordon Arms at Kippletringan. On the day of the accident to Charles Hazlewood, Brown had taken the postboy with him to show him the skating and curling on the pond in the neighbourhood of which the supposed attack had taken place. Jock Jabos, the postboy, however, denied that "the stoutest man in Scotland could take a gun frae him and shoot him wi' it, though he was but a feckless little body, fit only for the outside o' a saddle or the fore-end of a post-chaise. Na, nae living man wad venture on the like o' that!" So Glossin, in order the better to carry out his plans, pretended to believe that Brown was the Lieutenant of the gang which had assaulted the house of Woodbourne. Much more to the point was the information which was waiting for Glossin on his return to his house of Ellangowan. Mac-Guffog, the county thief-taker, and two of his people were there. With them they had brought a prisoner, whom they had first beguiled into drink, and then easily handcuffed while asleep. Glossin was delighted. He was under a great hope that this might prove to be Brown himself. Instead, he recognised an old acquaintance--no other than Dirk Hatteraick, the smuggler. In the interview which followed, Dirk told Glossin some facts which made him tremble. His possession of Ellangowan was threatened. The true heir, the young lad Harry Bertram, lost on the night of the murder of Frank Kennedy, had not perished as had been supposed. He had been brought up by the principal partner of the Dutch firm to which he had been bound apprentice, sent to the East Indies under the name of Vanbeest Brown, and he was at that very moment upon the coast of Solway--it might be very near to Ellangowan itself. Glossin saw his hopes wither before his eyes. If the heir should find out his rights, then the fruits of his villany, the estate of Ellangowan itself, must return to its true owner. The lawyer secretly gave Dirk Hatteraick a small file with which to rid himself of his irons, and then bade his captors confine him in the strong-room of the ancient castle. "The stanchions are falling to pieces with rust," he whispered to Dirk, "the distance to the ground is not twelve feet, and the snow lies thick. After that, you must steal my boat which lies below in the cove, and wait till I come to you in the cave of the Wood of Warroch!" So saying, he called the thief-takers in, and made his arrangements. Glossin could not sleep that night. Eagerly he watched the window of the old castle. He heard the iron bars fall outward upon the rocks with a clinking sound, and feared that all was lost. The light in the window was obscured, and presently he saw a black object drop upon the snow. Then the little boat put out from the harbour, the wind caught the sail, and she bore away in the direction of Warroch Point. On the morrow, however, he overwhelmed Mac-Guffog with the full force of his anger for his carelessness in allowing his prisoner to escape. Then he sent his men off in different directions, as fast as they could, to retake Hatteraick--in all directions, that is, except the true one. Having thus disposed of the thief-takers, he set out for Warroch Head alone. But the marks of his feet in the snow startled him. Any officer, coming upon that trail, would run it up like a bloodhound. So he changed his path, descending the cliff, and making his way cautiously along the sea-beach where the snow did not lie. He passed the great boulder which had fallen with Frank Kennedy. It was now all overgrown with mussels and seaweed. The mouth of the cave opened black and dismal before him. Glossin drew breath before entering such a haunt of iniquity, and recharged his pistols. He was, however, somewhat heartened by the thought that Dirk Hatteraick had nothing to gain by his death. Finally he took courage to push forward, and immediately the voice of Hatteraick came hoarse from the back of the cave. "Donner and hagel! Be'st du?" he growled. "Are you in the dark?" said Glossin, soothingly. "Dark? Der deyvel, ay!" retorted Hatteraick, "where should I get a glim? I am near frozen also! Snow-water and hagel--I could only keep myself warm by tramping up and down this vault and thinking on the merry rouses we used to have here!" Glossin made a light, and having set down the little lantern which he carried, he gathered together some barrel-staves and driftwood. The flame showed Hatteraick's fierce and bronzed visage as he warmed his sinewy hands at the blaze. He sat with his face thrust forward and actually in the smoke itself, so great had been his agony of cold. When he was a little warmed up, Glossin gave him some cold meat and a flask of strong spirits. Hatteraick eagerly seized upon these, exclaiming, after a long draught, "Ah, that is good--that warms the liver!" After the liquor and the food had put the smuggler into a somewhat better temper, the two associates settled themselves to discuss the project which had brought Glossin to the Cave of the Warroch Point. Up to the present, Glossin had believed that the Vanbeest Brown who had wounded young Hazlewood was the mate of the smuggling lugger. But now, hearing that this Brown had been shot on the night of the Woodbourne attack, all at once a light broke upon him. The assailant could be no other than the rightful heir of Ellangowan, Harry Bertram. "If he is on this coast," he meditated, half to himself, "I can have him arrested as the leader of the attack upon Woodbourne, and also for an assault upon Charles Hazlewood!" "But," said Dirk Hatteraick, grimly, "he will be loose again upon you, as soon as he can show himself to carry other colours!" "True, friend Hatteraick," said Glossin; "still, till that is proved, I can imprison him in the custom-house of Portanferry, where your goods are also stowed. You and your crew can attack the custom-house, regain your cargo, and--" "Send the heir of Ellangowan to Jericho--or the bottom of the sea!" cried Hatteraick, with fierce bitterness. "Nay, I advise no violence," said Glossin, softly, looking at the ground. "Nein--nein," growled the smuggler; "you only leave that to me. Sturm-wetter, I know you of old! Well, well, if I thought the trade would not suffer, I would soon rid you of this younker--as soon, that is, as you send me word that he is under lock and key!" * * * * * It so happened that at the very moment when Colonel Mannering and Dominie Sampson had gone to Edinburgh to see after an inheritance, Brown, or rather young Bertram (to give his real name), had succeeded in crossing the Solway in a sailing-boat, and was safe in Cumberland. Mannering's mission was one of kindliness to his guest, Lucy Bertram. Her aunt, old Miss Bertram of Singleside, had formerly made Lucy her heiress, and the Colonel hoped that she might have continued of this excellent mind. By Mr. Mac-Morlan's advice he engaged a whimsical but able Scottish lawyer to go with him to the opening of the will--at which ceremony, among other connections of the deceased, Dandie Dinmont was also present. But all were disappointed. For Miss Bertram had put her whole property in trust on behalf of the lost heir of Ellangowan, young Harry Bertram, whom (said the will) she had good reason for believing to be still alive. The object of all these plots and plans, good and evil intentions, was, however, safe in Cumberland. And had he been content to stay where he was, safe he would have remained. But as soon as young Bertram arrived upon the English coast he had written to Julia Mannering to explain his conduct in the affair with Hazlewood, to the Colonel of his regiment to ask him for the means of establishing his identity as a Captain in one of his Majesty's dragoon regiments, to his agent to send him a sum of money, and in the meantime to Dandie Dinmont for a small temporary loan till he could hear from his man-of-affairs. So he had nothing to do but wait. However, a sharp reply from Julia Mannering stung him to the quick. In this she first of all informed him that the Colonel would be from home for some days, then reproached him for the hastiness of his conduct, and concluded by saying that he was not to think of returning to Scotland. This last was, of course, what Bertram at once proceeded to do, as perhaps the young lady both hoped and anticipated. So once more the heir of Ellangowan was set ashore beneath the old castle which had been built by his forefathers. He had worked his passage manfully, and it was with regret that the sailors put him ashore in the bay directly beneath the Auld Place of Ellangowan. Some remembrance came across him, drifting fitfully over his mind, that somehow he was familiar with these ruins. When he had entered and looked about him, this became almost a certainty. It chanced that lawyer Glossin had entered the castle at about the same time, coming, as he said aloud, to see "what could be made of it as a quarry of good hewn stone," and adding that it would be better to pull it down at any rate, than to preserve it as a mere haunt of smugglers and evil-doers. "And would you destroy this fine old ruin?" said Bertram, who had overheard the last part of Glossin's remarks. The lawyer was struck dumb, so exactly were the tone and attitude those of Harry Bertram's father in his best days. Indeed, coming suddenly face to face with the young man there within the ancient castle of Ellangowan, it seemed to Glossin as if Godfrey Bertram had indeed risen from the dead to denounce and punish his treachery. But the lawyer soon recovered himself. The scheme he had worked out together with Dirk Hatteraick matured in his mind, and this seemed as good a time as any for carrying it out. So he waited only for the coming of two of his thief-takers to lay hands on Bertram, and to send word to the father of Charles Hazlewood that he held the would-be murderer of his son at his disposition. Now Sir Robert Hazlewood was a formal old dunderhead, who was of opinion that his family, and all connected with it, were the only really important things in the universe. Still when the prisoner was brought before him, he was a good deal startled by Bertram's quiet assurance, and, in spite of Glossin's sneers, could not help being influenced by the information that Colonel Guy Mannering could speak to the fact of his being both an officer and a gentleman. But Glossin pointed out that Mannering was in Edinburgh, and that they could not let a possible malefactor go merely because he said that he was known to an absent man. It was, therefore, arranged that, pending the arrival of the Colonel, Harry Bertram (or Captain Vanbeest Brown) should be confined in the custom-house at Portanferry, where there was a guard of soldiers for the purpose of guarding the goods taken from the smugglers. Happy that his schemes were prospering so well, Glossin went off to arrange with Dirk Hatteraick for the attack, and also as to the removal of the soldiers, in such a way that no suspicion might fall upon that honourable gentleman, Mr. Gilbert Glossin, Justice of the Peace and present owner of Ellangowan. * * * * * Meanwhile, however, the emissaries of Meg Merrilies were not idle. They brought her the earliest information that the heir of Ellangowan was in the custom-house at Portanferry, and in imminent danger of his life. Far on the hills of Liddesdale one Gibbs Faa, a gipsy huntsman, warned Dandie Dinmont that if he wished his friend well, he had better take horse and ride straight for Portanferry--where, if he found Brown in confinement, he was to stay by him night and day. For if he did not, he would only regret it once--and that would be for his whole life. Glossin's plan was to work on the fears of the stupid pompous Sir Robert Hazlewood, so that he would summon all the soldiers for the defence of Hazlewood House, in the belief that it was to be assaulted by the gipsies and smugglers. But Meg Merrilies herself sent young Charles Hazlewood to order the soldiers back, in which mission he would have succeeded but for the dull persistence of his father. However, Mr. Mac-Morlan, as Sheriff-Substitute of the county, was able to do that in spite of Sir Robert's protest which the good sense of his son had been powerless to effect. The soldiers left Hazlewood House, and took the direct road back to Portanferry in spite of Sir Robert's threats and remonstrances. Lastly Colonel Mannering, but recently returned from Edinburgh, was warned by a missive which Dominie Sampson had brought from Meg herself. So that on one particular night all the forces of order, as well as those of disorder, were directing themselves toward the custom-house of Portanferry, where in a close and ignoble apartment Harry Bertram and his worthy friend, Dandie Dinmont, were sleeping. It was Bertram who wakened first. There was a strong smell of burning in the room. From the window he could see a crowded boat-load of men landing at the little harbour, and in the yard below a huge mastiff was raging on his chain. "Go down and let loose the dog!" the wife of Mac-Guffog called to her husband; "I tell you they are breaking in the door of the liquor store!" But the good man appeared to be more anxious about his prisoners. He went from cell to cell, making sure that all was safe, while his wife, affirming that he had not the heart of a chicken, descended herself into the courtyard. In the meantime, Bertram and Dandie watched from their barred window the savage figures of the smugglers triumphantly loading their boats with their recovered goods, while the whole custom-house flamed to the heavens, sending sparks and blazing fragments upon the roof of the adjoining prison. Soon at the outer gate was heard the thunder of sledge-hammers and crows. It was being forced by the smugglers. Mac-Guffog and his wife had already fled, but the underlings delivered the keys, and the prisoners were soon rejoicing in their liberty. In the confusion, four or five of the principal actors entered the cell of Bertram. "Der deyvil," exclaimed the leader, "here's our mark!" Two of them accordingly seized Bertram and hurried him along. One of them, however, whispered in his ear to make no resistance for the present--also bidding Dinmont over his shoulder to follow his friend quietly and help when the time came. Bertram found himself dragged along passages, through the courtyard, and finally out into the narrow street, where, in the crowd and confusion, the smugglers became somewhat separated from each other. The sound of cavalry approaching rapidly made itself heard. "Hagel and wetter!" cried the leader, no other than Hatteraick himself, "what is that? Keep together--look to the prisoner!" But, for all that, the two who held Bertram were left last of the party. The crowd began to break, rushing this way and that. Shots were fired, and above the press the broadswords of the dragoons were seen to glitter, flashing over the heads of the rioters. "Now," whispered the man who had before advised Bertram to be quiet, "shake off that fellow and follow me." Bertram easily did so, and his left-hand captor, attempting to draw a pistol, was instantly knocked senseless by the huge fist of Dandie Dinmont. "Now, follow quick!" said the first, diving at the word into a dirty and narrow lane. There was no pursuit. Mr. Mac-Morlan and the soldiers had appeared in the nick of time. The smugglers had enough to do to provide for their own safety. At the end of the lane they found a post-chaise with four horses. "Are you here, in God's name?" cried their guide. "Ay, troth am I," said Jock Jabos; "and I wish I were ony gate else!" The guide opened the carriage door. "Get in," he said to Bertram, "and remember your promise to the gipsy wife!" Through the windows of the coach Dinmont and he could see the village of Portanferry, and indeed the whole landscape, brilliantly lighted by a tall column of light. The flames had caught the stores of spirits kept in the custom-house. But soon the carriage turned sharply through dark woods at the top speed of the horses, and, after a long journey, finally drew up in front of a mansion, in the windows of which lights still burned, in spite of the lateness of the hour. * * * * * The listening children remained breathless as I paused. I had meant this to be the end of my tale, but I saw at once that no excuse would be held valid for such a shameful dereliction of duty. "Go on--go on," they cried; "where was the house and what happened?" "I know!" said Sweetheart; "it was the house of Julia Mannering, and her lover--" "Oh, bother her lover," cried Hugh John, impatiently; "_we_ don't want to hear about how they lived happy ever after. Tell us about the gipsy, Meg Merrilies--" "And about Dirk Hatteraick!" said Sir Toady Lion, getting his word in. "I just love Dirk!" "And how many people he killed wif his big knife, and if he was burnt up alive in the fire!" For Maid Margaret also delights in the most gory details, though she would not willingly tread upon a worm. "Yes, go on, tell us all--everything that happened!" said Sweetheart. "But do skip the lovering parts," cried the boys in chorus. So within these statutes of limitation I had perforce to recommence, without further preface, telling the fourth and last tale from _Guy Mannering_. THE FOURTH TALE FROM "GUY MANNERING" THE FIGHT IN THE CAVE IMMEDIATELY upon receiving the message of Meg Merrilies, brought by Dominie Sampson, Colonel Mannering had sent a carriage to the place designated. Bertram and his companion Dandie, having by the help of the gipsies, Meg's companions, made good their escape from the burning custom-house, took their places in it and were whirled through the darkness, they knew not whither. But it was at the door of the house of Woodbourne that they found themselves. Mr. Pleydell, the lawyer, had also arrived from Edinburgh, so that all were presently met together in the drawing-room, and it is difficult to say which of the party appeared the most surprised. In Captain Brown (or Harry Bertram, to call him by his own proper name), Colonel Mannering saw the man whom he had believed slain by his hand in India. Julia met her lover in her father's house, and apparently there by his invitation. Dominie Sampson stood half aghast to recognise the lost heir of Ellangowan. Bertram himself feared the effect which his sudden appearance might have on Julia, while honest Dandie wished his thick-soled boots and rough-spun Liddesdale plaid anywhere else than in a room filled with ladies and gentlemen. Only the lawyer, Mr. Pleydell, was wholly master of the situation, and bustled about, putting everybody at their ease. He saw himself in the thick of a great mysterious lawsuit which he alone could unravel, and he proceeded on the spot to cross-examine Bertram as to what he remembered of his life before he went to Holland. Bertram remembered, he said, quite clearly, a good-looking gentleman whom he had called father, a delicate lady who must have been his mother, but more distinctly than either he recalled a tall man in worn black who had taught him his lessons and whom he loved for his kindness. At these words Dominie Sampson could contain himself no longer. He rose hastily from his chair, and with clasped hands and trembling limbs cried out, "Harry Bertram--look at me! Was not I the man?" Bertram started up as if a sudden light had dawned upon him. "Yes," he cried, "that is my name--Bertram--Harry Bertram! And those are the voice and figure of my kind old master!" The Dominie threw himself into his arms, his whole frame shaking with emotion, and at last, his feelings overcoming him, he lifted up his voice and wept. Even Colonel Mannering had need of his handkerchief. Pleydell made wry faces and rubbed hard at his glasses, while Dandie Dinmont, after two strange blubbering explosions, fairly gave way and cried out, "Deil's in the man! He's garred me do what I haena done since my auld mither died!" After this, the examination went on more staidly. Bertram said that he remembered very well the walk he had taken with the Dominie and somebody lifting him up on horseback--then, more indistinctly, a scuffle in which he and his guide had been pulled from the saddle. Vaguely and gradually the memory came back of how he had been lifted into the arms of a very tall woman who protected him from harm. Again he was a poor half-starved cabin-boy in the Holland trade. Quickly, however, gaining the good-will of the leading partner of the firm to which the vessel belonged, he had been thoroughly well educated in Holland, before being sent to seek his fortune in India. He passed over his career there, but told in detail the accidental way in which young Hazlewood had been wounded, and ended by a request that he should now be told who the questioner might be who took such an interest in his affairs. "Why, for myself, sir," answered the counsellor, "I am Paulus Pleydell, an advocate at the Scottish bar. And as for you, it is not easy for the moment to say who you are. But I trust in a short time to hail you by the title of Henry Bertram, Esquire, representative of one of the oldest families in Scotland, and heir of entail to the estates of Ellangowan." On the morrow the plotting at Woodbourne still went on merrily, around the person of the newly found heir. The counsellor-at-law arranged his plan of campaign. The Dominie, having left Harry Bertram at half-text and words of two syllables when he was carried off in Warroch Wood, prepared to take up his education at that exact point. "Of a surety, little Harry," he said, "we will presently resume our studies. We will begin from the foundation. Yes, I will reform your education upward from the true knowledge of English grammar, even to that of the Hebrew or Chaldaic tongue!" In the meantime, Colonel Mannering, having first had an interview with the counsellor in his room, gently drew from Julia that it was no other than Bertram who had spoken with her under her window at Mervyn Hall; also that, though she had remained silent, she had perfectly recognised him before the scuffle took place with young Hazlewood at the pond. For these concealments from her father, Mannering as gently forgave her, and received in return a promise that, in future, she would hide nothing from him which it concerned him to know. The first step of the conspirators was to obtain a legal release for Bertram from Sir Robert Hazlewood, who granted it most unwillingly, having (it was evident) been secretly primed by Glossin as to what he should say and do. But it was secured at last, upon Colonel Mannering's pledging his word of honour for his appearance. And while the business was being settled, Harry Bertram, with the two ladies, wandered out to a knoll above the ancient castle of Ellangowan to look once again upon the home of his ancestors. They were standing here, looking on the crumbling walls, when suddenly, as if emerging from the earth, Meg Merrilies ascended from the hollow way beneath, and stood before them. "I sought ye at the house," she said, "but ye are right and I was wrong. It is here we should meet--here, on the very spot where my eyes last saw your father. And now, remember your promise and follow me!" In spite of the unwillingness of Lucy and Julia to allow him to depart with such a companion, Bertram and Dandie (for Meg invited Dinmont also to follow her) hastened to obey the gipsy's summons. There was something weird in the steady swiftness of her gait as she strode right forward across the moor, taking no heed either of obstacle or of well-trodden path. She seemed like some strange withered enchantress drawing men after her by her witchcrafts. But Julia and Lucy were somewhat comforted by the thought that if the gipsy had meditated any evil against Bertram, she would not have asked so doughty a fighter as Dandie Dinmont to accompany him. They therefore made the best of their way home, and while they were telling the adventure to the Colonel, young Hazlewood, who happened to be at Woodbourne, courageously offered to follow after, to see that no harm came to Dandie and his former antagonist. Meg Merrilies led them through the wood of Warroch, along the same path by which Harry had been carried on the night of the exciseman's murder. Turning for a moment, she asked Bertram if he remembered the way. "Not very clearly!" he answered. "Ay," she said, "here was the very spot where Frank Kennedy was pulled from his horse. I was hiding behind the bour-tree bush at the moment. Sair, sair he strove and sair he cried for mercy. But he was in the hands of them that never kenned the word." Continuing her way, she led them downward to the sea by a secret and rugged path, cut in the face of the cliff, and hidden among brushwood. There on the shore lay the stone under which the body of Frank Kennedy had been found crushed. A little farther on was the cave itself in which the murderers had concealed themselves. The gipsy pointed mysteriously. "He is there," she said, in a low voice, "the man who alone can establish your right--Jansen Hatteraick, the tyrant of your youth, and the murderer of Frank Kennedy. Follow me--I have put the fire between you. He will not see you as you enter, but when I utter the words, 'The Hour and the Man'--then do you rush in and seize him. But be prepared. It will be a hard battle, for Hatteraick is a very devil!" "Dandie, you must stand by me now!" said Bertram to his comrade. "That ye need never doubt," returned the Borderer; "but a' the same it's an awesome thing to leave the blessed sun and free air, and gang and be killed like a fox in his hole. But I'll never baulk ye--it'll be a hard-bitten terrier that will worry Dandie!" So forward they went, creeping cautiously on all fours after the gipsy woman. When they were about halfway in, a hand was laid on Dandie Dinmont's heel, and it was all the stout farmer could do to keep from crying out--which, in the defenceless position in which they were placed, might well have cost them all their lives. However, Dandie freed his ankle with a kick, and instantly a voice behind him whispered, "It is a friend--Charles Hazlewood!" As soon as they had gained the higher part of the cave, Meg Merrilies began rustling about among the dried branches, murmuring and singing, to cover the noise made by the entrance of the three men who followed her. From the deep dark where they stood, they could see Dirk Hatteraick at the farther end of the cave, behind a fire which he was continually building up by throwing into it bits of dried sticks. Hatteraick was of powerful build, and his features were beyond description savage and rugged. A cutlass hung by his side, and into his belt he had thrust, ready to his hand at a moment's notice, two pairs of pistols. Truly the capture of Dirk Hatteraick was no light adventure, and Bertram, having been warned by Dandie in a cautious whisper of Hazlewood's arrival, thought within himself that they would be none the worse of the third who had come so opportunely to their assistance. "Here, beldam--deyvil's kind," cried Hatteraick in his harshest voice, "have you brought me the brandy and news of my people?" "Here is the flask for you," answered Meg, passing it to him; "but as for your crew, they are all cut down and scattered by the redcoats!" "Storm and wetter, ye hag," he cried, "ye bring ill news. This coast is fatal to me! And what of Glossin?" "Ye missed your stroke there," she said; "ye have nothing to expect from him!" "Hagel," cried the ruffian, "if only I had him by the throat! He has led me to perdition--men lost, boat lost, credit lost. I dare never show my face in Flushing again!" "_You will never need!_" croaked the gipsy. Meg's sombre prophecy startled Hatteraick. He looked up suddenly. "What is that you say, witch? And what are you doing there?" he cried. Meg dropped a firebrand steeped in spirit upon some loose flax. Instantly a tall column of brilliant wavering light filled the cave. "Ye will never need to go to Flushing," she said, "because 'The Hour's come and the Man!'" At the signal, Bertram and Dandie Dinmont, springing over the brushwood, rushed upon Hatteraick. Hazlewood, not knowing the plan of assault, was a moment later. The ruffian instantly understood that he had been betrayed, and the first brunt of his anger fell upon Meg Merrilies, at whose breast he fired a pistol point-blank. She fell with a shriek which was partly the sudden pain of the wound, and partly a shout of triumphant laughter. "I kenned it would end that way--and it is e'en this way that it should end!" Bertram had caught his foot on some slippery weed as he advanced, and the chance stumble saved his life. For otherwise Hatteraick's second bullet, aimed coolly and steadily, would certainly have crashed through his skull. Before he could draw a third, Dandie Dinmont was upon him. Yet such was the giant smuggler's strength and desperation, that he actually dragged Dandie through the burning flax, before Bertram and Hazlewood could come to the farmer's assistance. Then in a moment more Hatteraick was disarmed and bound, though to master him took all the strength of three strong well-grown men. After he had been once bound securely, Hatteraick made no further attempt to escape. He lay perfectly still while Bertram, leaving Dandie to guard his prisoner, went to look to Meg Merrilies. The soldier, familiar with gunshot wounds, knew at once that her case was hopeless. But he did what he could to bind up the old gipsy's wound, while Dandie, his hand laid heavily on Hatteraick's breast, watched pistol in hand the entrance of the cave. Hazlewood, whose horse had been tied outside, mounted to ride for assistance, and in a few moments silence fell on the scene of so fierce a combat, broken only by the low moans of the wounded gipsy. It was no more than three-quarters of an hour that Bertram and Dandie Dinmont had to keep their watch. But to them it seemed as if ages had passed before Hazlewood returned and they were clear of the fatal cavern. Hatteraick allowed himself to be removed without either assisting or hindering those who had charge of him. But when his captors would have had him rest against the huge boulder which had been thrown down along with the murdered exciseman, Hatteraick shrank back with a shout: "Hagel--not there," he cried, "you would not have me sit _there!_" On the arrival of a doctor, he could only confirm Bertram's opinion that Meg Merrilies was indeed wounded to the death. But she had enough strength left to call the assembled people to witness that Bertram was indeed young Harry Bertram the lost heir of Ellangowan. "All who have ever seen his father or grandfather, bear witness if he is not their living image!" she cried. Then with her failing breath she told the tale of the murder, and how she had pleaded for the child's life. She dared Dirk Hatteraick to deny the truth of what she was saying. But the villain only kept his grim silence. Then suddenly the enthusiasm broke forth at the chance testimony of the driver of a return coach to Kippletringan, who exclaimed at sight of Bertram, "As sure as there's breath in man, there's auld Ellangowan risen from the dead!" The shouts of the people, many of whom had lived all their lives on his father's land, came gratefully to the ear of the dying woman. "Dinna ye hear?" she cried, "dinna ye hear? He's owned--he's owned! I am a sinfu' woman! It was my curse that brought the ill, but it has been my blessing that has ta'en it off! Stand oot o' the light that I may see him yince mair. But no--it may not be! The darkness is in my ain e'en. It's a' ended now: "Pass breath, Come death!" And sinking back on her bed of straw, Meg Merrilies died without a groan. * * * * * Mr. Pleydell having, as Sheriff of the county, formerly conducted the inquiry into Frank Kennedy's death, was asked by the other magistrates to preside at this. The meeting was held in the court-house of Kippletringan, and many of the chief people in the neighbourhood hastened to the little town to be present at the examination of Hatteraick. Pleydell, among the evidence formerly collected, had by him the sizes and markings of the footmarks found round the place of Frank Kennedy's death-struggle. These had, of course, been safely preserved, ever since the failure of justice on that occasion. One set evidently belonged to a long and heavy foot, and fitted the boots of Brown, the mate of Hatteraick's vessel, the same who had been killed at the attack on Woodbourne. The stouter and thicker moulds fitted those of the prisoner himself. At this Hatteraick cried out suddenly, "Der deyvil, how could there be footmarks at all on the ground when it was as hard as the heart of a Memel log?" Instantly Pleydell noted the smuggler's slip. "In the evening," he said, "I grant you the ground was hard--not, however, in the morning. But, Captain Hatteraick, will you kindly tell me where you were on the day which you remember so exactly?" Hatteraick, seeing his mistake, again relapsed into silence, and at that moment Glossin bustled in to take his place on the bench with his brother magistrates. He was, however, very coldly received indeed, though he did his best to curry favour with each in succession. Even Hatteraick only scowled at him, when he suggested that "the poor man, being only up for examination, need not be so heavily ironed." "The poor man has escaped once before," said Mr. Mac-Morlan, drily. But something worse was in store for Glossin than the cold shoulder from his fellow-justices. In his search through the documents found upon Hatteraick, Pleydell had come upon three slips of paper, being bills which had been drawn and signed by Hatteraick on the very day of the Kennedy murder, ordering large sums of money to be paid to Glossin. The bills had been duly honoured. Mr. Pleydell turned at once upon Glossin. "That confirms the story which has been told by a second eye-witness of the murder, one Gabriel, or Gibbs Faa, a nephew of Meg Merrilies, that you were an accessory after the fact, in so far as, though you did not take part in the slaughter of Kennedy, you concealed the guilty persons on account of their giving you this sum of money." In a few minutes Glossin found himself deserted by all, and he was even ordered to be confined in the prison of Kippletringan, in a room immediately underneath the cell occupied by Hatteraick. The smuggler, being under the accusation of murder and having once already escaped, was put for safety in the dungeon, called the "condemned cell," and there chained to a great bar of iron, upon which a thick ring ran from one side of the room to the other. Left to his unpleasant reflections, Glossin began to count up the chances in his favour. Meg Merrilies was dead. Gabriel Faa, besides being a gipsy, was a vagrant and a deserter. The other witnesses--he did not greatly fear them! If only Dirk Hatteraick could be induced to be steady, and to put another meaning upon the sums of money which had been paid to him on the day of Kennedy's murder! He must see Hatteraick--that very night he must see him! He slipped two guineas into Mac-Guffog's hand (who since the burning of Portanferry prison had been made under-turnkey at Kippletringan), and by the thief-taker's connivance he was to be admitted that very night at locking-up time into the cell of Dirk Hatteraick. "But you will have to remain there all night," said the man. "I have to take the keys of all the cells directly to the captain of the prison!" So on his stocking-soles Glossin stole up after his guide, and was presently locked in with the savage and desperate smuggler. At first Hatteraick would neither speak to Glossin nor listen to a word concerning his plans. "Plans," he cried at last, in a burst of fury, "you and your plans! You have planned me out of ship, cargo, and life. I dreamed this moment that Meg Merrilies dragged you here by the hair, and put her long clasp-knife into my hand. Ah, you don't know what she said! Sturm-wetter, it will be your wisdom not to tempt me!" "Why, Hatteraick," said Glossin, "have you turned driveller? Rise and speak with me!" "Hagel, nein--let me alone!" "Get up, at least! Up with you for an obstinate Dutch brute!" said Glossin, all at once losing his temper and kicking him with his heavy boot. "Donner and blitzen," cried Hatteraick, leaping up and grappling with him, "you shall have it then!" Glossin resisted as best he could, but his utmost strength was as nothing in the mighty grasp of the angry savage. He fell under Hatteraick, the back of his neck coming with a fearful crash upon the iron bar. In the morning, true to his promise, Mac-Guffog called Glossin to come out of Hatteraick's cell. "Call louder!" answered a voice from within, grimly. "Mr. Glossin, come away," repeated Mac-Guffog; "for Heaven's sake come away!" "He'll hardly do that without help!" said Hatteraick. "What are you standing chattering there for, Mac-Guffog?" cried the captain of the prison, coming up with a lantern. They found Glossin's body doubled across the iron bar. He was stone dead. Hatteraick's grip had choked the life out of him as he lay. The murderer, having thus done justice on his accomplice, asked neither favour nor mercy for himself, save only that he might have paper whereon to write to his firm in Holland. "I was always faithful to owners," he said, when they reproached him with his crimes. "I always accounted for cargo to the last stiver! As for that carrion," he added (pointing to Glossin), "I have only sent him to the devil a little ahead of me!" They gave him what he asked for--pens, ink, and paper. And on their return, in a couple of hours, they found his body dangling from the wall. The smuggler had hanged himself by a cord taken from his own truckle-bed. And though Mac-Guffog lost his place, on the suspicion of having introduced Glossin into Hatteraick's cell, there were many who believed that it was the Evil One himself who had brought the rogue and the ruffian together in order that they might save the hangman the trouble of doing his office upon them. * * * * * The end can be told in a word. Harry Bertram was duly and legally returned as heir of Ellangowan. His father's debts were soon paid, and the Colonel, in giving him his daughter, gave him also the means of rebuilding the ancient castle of the Ellangowan race. Sir Robert Hazlewood had no objections to Lucy Bertram as a daughter-in-law, so soon as he knew that she brought with her as a dowry the whole estate of Singleside, which her brother insisted on her taking in accordance with her aunt's first intention. And lastly, in the new castle, there was one chamber bigger than all the others, called the Library, and just off it a little one, in which dwelt the happiest of men upon the earth. This chamber was called on the plans "Mr. Sampson's Apartment." * * * * * THE END OF THE FOURTH AND LAST TALE FROM "GUY MANNERING." * * * * * INTERLUDE OF CONSULTATION A unanimous sigh greeted the close of _Guy Mannering_. It was the narrator's reward--the same which the orator hears, when, in a pause of speech, the strained attention relaxes, and the people, slowly bent forward like a field of corn across which the wind blows, settle back into their places. "A jolly ending--and the cave part was ripping!" summed up Hugh John, nodding his head in grave approval of Sir Walter, "but why can't he always write like that?" "Couldn't keep it up," suggested Sir Toady Lion; "books can't all be caves, you know." "Well, anyhow, I'm not going to play any more heroes," said Hugh John, emphatically. "I bags Hatteraick--when we get out to the Den!" The young man intimated by these cabalistic words that the part of Hatteraick was to be his in any future play-acting. "Which being interpreted," said Sweetheart, with spirit, "means that I am to be Gilbert Faa the gipsy, and Glossin, and all these nasty sort of people. Now I don't mind Meg Merrilies a bit. And being shot like that--that's always something. But I warn you, Hugh John, that if you were Hatteraick ten times over, you couldn't get me down over that iron bar!" "No, that you couldn't," said Sir Toady Lion, seeing a far-off chance for himself; "why, Sweetheart could just batter your head against the wall! And then when Mac-Guffog came in the morning with his lantern, he'd find that old Hatteraick hadn't any need to go and hang himself! But don't you two squabble over it; _I_ will do Hatteraick myself!" "A very likely thing!" sneered Hugh John. "You heard me say 'Bags Hatteraick,' Toady Lion! Every one heard me--you can't go back on that. You know you can't!" This was unanswerable. It was felt that to palter with such sacred formulas would be to renounce the most sacred obligations and to unsettle the very foundations of society. Whereupon I hastened to keep his Majesty's peace by proposing a compromise. "The girls surely don't want to play the villains' parts," I began. "Oh, but just don't they!" ejaculated Maid Margaret, with the eyes of a child-saint momentarily disappointed of Paradise. "Why does a cat not eat butter for breakfast every morning? Because it jolly well can't get it." "Well, at any rate," said I, severely, "girls oughtn't to _want_ to play the villains' parts." "No," said Sweetheart, with still, concentrated irony, "they ought always to do just what boys tell them to, of course--never think of wanting anything that boys want, and always be thankful for boys' leavings! U-m-m! _I_ know!" "You should wait till you hear what I meant to say, Sweetheart," I went on, with as much dignity as I could muster. "There are plenty of characters you will like to be, in every one of the books, but I think it would be fair always to draw lots for the first choice!" "Yes--yes--oh, yes!" came the chorus, from three of the party. But Hugh John, strong in the indefeasible rights of man, only repeated, "_I_ said 'Bags Hatteraick!'" "Well, then," I said, "for this time Hatteraick is yours, but for the future it will be fairer to draw lots for first choice." "All right," growled Hugh John; "then I suppose I'll have to put up with a lot more heroes! Milksops, I call them!" "Which book shall we have next?" said Sweetheart, who was beginning to be rather ashamed of her heat. "I don't believe that you could tell us _Rob Roy!_" "Well, I can try," said I, modestly. For so it behooves a modern parent to behave in the presence of his children. "_She_," said Hugh John, pointing directly at his sister, "she read nearly half the book aloud, and we never came to Rob at all. That's why she asks for _Rob Roy_." "But there's all about Alan Breck in the preface--ripping, it is!" interpolated Sir Toady, who had been doing some original research, "tell us about him." But Alan Breck was quite another story, and I said so at once. _Rob Roy_ they had asked for. _Rob Roy_ they should have. And then I would stand or fall by their judgment. RED CAP TALES TOLD FROM ROB ROY THE FIRST TALE FROM "ROB ROY" FRANK THE HIGHWAYMAN FRANK OSBALDISTONE had come back from France to quarrel with his father. A merchant he would not be. He hated the three-legged stool, and he used the counting-house quills to write verses with. His four years in Bordeaux had spoiled him for strict business, without teaching him anything else practical enough to please his father, who, when he found that his son persisted in declining the stool in the dark counting-room in Crane Alley, packed him off to the care of his brother, Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone of Osbaldistone Hall in Northumberland, there to repent of his disobedience. "I will have no idlers about me," he said, "I will not ask even my own son twice to be my friend and my partner. One of my nephews shall take the place in the firm which you have declined." And old Mr. Osbaldistone, of the firm of Osbaldistone and Tresham, merchants in London town, being above all things a man of his word, Master Frank took to the North Road accordingly, an exile from his home and disinherited of his patrimony. At first he was gloomy enough. He was leaving behind him wealth, ease, society. As he looked back from the heights of Highgate, the bells of the city steeples rang out their "Turn again, Whittington!" And to tell the truth, Frank Osbaldistone felt half inclined to obey. But the thought of his father's grave scorn held him to his purpose, and soon the delights of travel and the quickly changing scene chased the sadness from his heart. Indeed, as was natural to a young man, a good horse under his thigh and fifty guineas in his pocket helped amazingly to put him in the best humour with himself. The company Frank met with on the North Road was commonplace and dull. But one poor man, a sort of army officer in a gold-laced hat, whose martial courage was more than doubtful, amused Frank Osbaldistone by clinging desperately to a small but apparently very heavy portmanteau, which he carried on the pillion before him, never parting from it for a moment. This man's talk was all of well-dressed highwaymen, whose conversation and manners induced the unwary to join company with them. Then in some shady dell whistling up their men, the unlucky traveller found himself despoiled--of his goods certainly, perhaps also of his life. It delighted Frank's boyish humour beyond measure to play upon the fears of this gallant King's officer--which he proceeded to do by asking him first whether his bag were heavy or not, then by hinting that he would like to be informed as to his route, and finally by offering to take the bag on his own pillion and race him with the added weight to the nearest village. This last audacious proposal almost took the man's breath away, and from that moment he was convinced that Frank was none other than the "Golden Farmer" himself in disguise. At Darlington, the landlord of their inn introduced a Scotch cattle dealer, a certain Mr. Campbell, to share their meal. He was a stern-faced, dark-complexioned man, with a martial countenance and an air of instinctive command which took possession of the company at once. The lawyer, the doctor, the clergyman, even Frank himself, found themselves listening with deference to the words of this plainly dressed, unobtrusive, Scottish drover. As for the man with the weighty bag, he fairly hung upon his words. And especially so when the landlord informed the company that Mr. Campbell had with his own hand beaten off seven highwaymen. "Thou art deceived, friend Jonathan," said the Scot, "they were but two, and as beggarly loons as man could wish to meet withal!" "Upon my word, sir," cried Morris, for that was the name of the man with the portmanteau, edging himself nearer to Mr. Campbell, "really and actually did you beat two highwaymen with your own hand?" "In troth I did, sir," said Campbell, "and I think it nae great thing to mak' a sang about." "Upon my word, sir," said Morris, eagerly, "I go northward, sir--I should be happy to have the pleasure of your company on my journey." And, in spite of short answers, he continued to press his proposal upon the unwilling Scot, till Campbell had very unceremoniously to extricate himself from his grip, telling him that he was travelling upon his own private business, and that he could not unite himself to any stranger on the public highway. The next day Frank approached Osbaldistone Hall, which stood under the great rounded range of the Cheviot Hills. He could already see it standing, stark and grey, among its ancestral oaks, when down the ravine streamed a band of huntsmen in full chase, the fox going wearily before, evidently near the end of his tether. Among the rout and nearer to Frank than the others, owing to some roughness of the ground, rode a young lady in a man's coat and hat--which, with her vest and skirt, made the first riding-habit Frank had ever seen. The girl's cheeks were bright with the exercise. Her singular beauty was the more remarkable, chanced upon in so savage a scene. And when, after hearing the "Whoop--dead!" which told of poor Reynard's decease, she paused to tie up her loosened locks, Master Frank stared most undisguisedly and even impolitely. One of the young huntsmen, clad in red and green, rode towards her, waving the brush in his hand as if in triumph over the girl. "I see," she replied, "I see. But make no noise about it. If Phoebe here (patting the neck of her mare) had not got among the cliffs, _you_ would have had little cause for boasting." Then the two of them looked at Frank and spoke together in a low tone. The young man seemed sheepishly to decline some proposal which the girl made to him. "Then if you won't, Thornie," she said at last, "I must." And turning to Frank she asked him if he had seen anything of a friend of theirs, one Mr. Francis Osbaldistone, who for some days past had been expected at the Hall. Frank instantly and gladly claimed kindred. "Then," said the girl, smiling, "as this young man's politeness seems to have fallen asleep, I must e'en be master of the ceremonies, however improper it may be. So I beg to present to you young Squire Thorncliff Osbaldistone, your cousin, and Die Vernon, your accomplished cousin's poor kinswoman." The "accomplished cousin" finally decided to shake hands with mingled awkwardness and an assumption of sulky indifference. This being done, he immediately announced his intention of going to help the huntsmen couple up the hounds, and so he took himself off. "There he goes," said the young lady, following him with disdainful eyes, "the prince of grooms and cock-fighters and blackguard horse-racers. But truly there is not one of them to mend another!" She turned sharply upon Frank. "Have you read Markham?" she demanded. Poor Frank had never even heard of that author. The girl held up her hands in horror. "Never to have heard of Markham--the Koran of this savage tribe--the most celebrated author on farriery!" she cried. "Then I fear you are equally a stranger to the more modern names of Gibson and Bartlett?" "I am, indeed, Miss Vernon," answered Frank, meekly. "And do you not blush to own it?" she cried. "Why, we will disown the alliance. Then I suppose you can neither give a ball, nor a mash, nor a horn?" "I confess," said Frank, "I trust all these matters to my groom." "Incredible carelessness!" she continued. "What was your father thinking of? And you cannot shoe a horse, or cut his mane and tail. Or worm a dog, or crop his ears, or cut his dew-claws; or reclaim a hawk or give him casting-stones, or direct his diet when he is sealed! Or--" Frank could only once for all profess his utter ignorance of all such accomplishments. "Then in the name of Heaven, Mr. Frank Osbaldistone, what _can_ you do?" "Very little to the purpose, I am afraid, Miss Vernon," answered Frank; "only this--when my groom has dressed my horse I can ride him, and when my hawk is in the field, I can fly him." "Can you do this?" said Die Vernon, setting her horse to a rude gate composed of pieces of wood from the forest, and clearing it at a bound. In a moment Frank was at her side. "There are hopes for you yet," she said. "I was afraid that you were a very degenerate Osbaldistone. But what brings you to Cub Hall? I suppose you could have stayed away if you had liked?" "The Cubs of the Hall may be as you describe them," said Frank, looking at his companion, "but I am convinced there is one exception that will make amends for all their deficiencies." "Oh, you mean Rashleigh!" said Die Vernon. "Indeed, I do not," said Frank, who had not been four years in France for nothing, "I never even heard of Rashleigh. I mean some one very much nearer me." "I suppose I should pretend not to understand you," she answered, "but that is not my way. If I were not in the saddle, I would make you a courtesy. But seriously, I deserve your exception, for besides Rashleigh and the old priest, I am the only conversable being about Osbaldistone Hall." "And who, for Heaven's sake, is Rashleigh?" "Your youngest cousin, about your own age, but not so--so well-looking. Full of natural sense--learned, as being bred to the church, but in no hurry to take orders--and in addition by all odds the cleverest man in a country where such are scarce." They rode back to the Hall, but as it was some time before Frank could get any one to attend to his own horse and Diana's mare, which she had left in his charge, he had time to look about him and take in the old castle and its rough, wasteful prodigality of service. By and by, however, there arrived Sir Hildebrand, who, among his sons, seemed, by comparison at least, both intelligent and a gentleman. He gave Frank a rough but hearty welcome to his mansion. "Art welcome, lad!" he said. "I would have seen thee before but had to attend to the kennelling of the hounds. So thy father has thought on the old Hall and old Sir Hildebrand at last! Well, better late than never! Here are thy cousins--Percie, Thornie, John, Dick, and Wilfred. But where's Rashleigh? Ay, here's Rashleigh! Take thy long body aside, Thornie, and let's see thy brother a bit. And here's my little Die, my sister's daughter, the prettiest girl on our dales, be the next who she may. And so now let's to the sirloin!" The five elder brethren of Osbaldistone Hall were all cast in one mould--tall, well-formed, athletic men, but dull of feature and expression, and seemingly without any intellect whatever. Rashleigh, the youngest, was the exact opposite of his brethren. Short in stature, thick-set, and with a curious halt in his gait, there was something about his dark irregular features--something evil, relentless, and cruel, which even the assumed gentleness of his words and the melody of his voice could not hide. His brothers were mere oafs in learning, none of whom ever looked at printed paper save to make a fly-book of it. But Rashleigh was learned, and, when he pleased, of manners exquisitely refined. It was, however, Miss Diana who really introduced Frank to his cousins, and the ceremony took place that day at dinner, while the young men were devoting themselves heartily to the meat which they piled up on their platters. The clatter of knives and forks covered her voice. "Your cousins," she said, "taken all together, form a happy compound of the sot, the gamekeeper, the bully, the horse-jockey, and the fool. But as no two leaves off the same tree are quite exactly alike, so these ingredients are differently mingled in your kinsmen. Percie, the son and heir, has more of the sot than of the gamekeeper, bully, horse-jockey, or fool. My precious Thornie is more of the bully--John, who sleeps whole weeks among the hills, has most of the gamekeeper. The jockey is powerful with Dickon, who rides two hundred miles by day and night, to be bought and sold himself at a race-meeting. And the fool so predominates over Wilfred's other characteristics that he may be termed a fool positive." Though Frank pressed her, Die Vernon refused to add Sir Hildebrand to her gallery of family portraits. "I owe him some kindnesses," she said, "or what at least were meant for such. And besides, I like him. You will be able to draw his picture yourself when you know him better." Having once before been successful with a compliment, when talking to his beautiful companion, Frank now summoned his French breeding and tried a second. He had been silent for a minute, and Miss Vernon, turning her dark eyes on him, had said with her usual careless frankness, "You are thinking of me!" "How is it possible," answered Master Frank, "that I should think of anything else, seated where I have the happiness to be." But Diana only smiled with a kind of haughty scorn, and replied, "I must tell you at once, Mr. Osbaldistone, that your pretty sayings are wholly lost on me. Keep them for the other maids whom you will meet here in the north. There are plenty who will thank you for them. As for me, I happen to know their value. Come, be sensible! Why, because she is dressed in silk and gauze, should you think that you are compelled to unload your stale compliments on every unfortunate girl? Try to forget my sex. Call me Tom Vernon. Speak to me as to a friend and companion, and you have no idea how much I shall like you." Frank's expression of amazement at these words egged on Diana to further feats of daring. "But do not misjudge me," she said, "as I see you are likely to do. You are inclined to think me a strange bold girl, half coquette, half romp, desirous, perhaps, of storming you into admiration. You never were more mistaken. I would show as much favour to your father, as readily make _him_ my confidant, if he were here--and if I thought he were capable of understanding me. The truth is, I must speak of these things to some one or die." Frank changed the subject. "Will you not add Rashleigh to the family gallery?" he said. "No, no," she said hastily, "it is never safe to speak of Rashleigh--no, not even when, as you now think, he has left the table. Do not be too sure even of that--and when you speak of Rashleigh Osbaldistone, get up to the top of Otterscope Hill, stand on the very peak, and speak in whispers. And, after all, do not be too sure that a bird of the air may not carry the matter. Rashleigh was my tutor for four years. We are mutually tired of each other, and we shall heartily rejoice to be separated!" Nevertheless Rashleigh it was who had been selected in full family conclave to take Frank's empty stool in the counting-house of Osbaldistone, Tresham and Company in Crane Alley. Indeed, there was no choice. His brothers were incapable even of the multiplication table. Besides, they wished him away, with the feelings of mice who hear that the family cat is going off to fill another situation. Even his father, who stood no little in awe of his clever son, breathed more freely at the thought of Osbaldistone Hall without Rashleigh. It was not long before Mr. Frank Osbaldistone had a taste of his cousin Rashleigh's quality. The very next morning his uncle and cousins looked at him curiously when he came down early. Sir Hildebrand even quoted a rhyme for his benefit, "He that gallops his horse on Blackstone Edge, May chance to catch a fall." It was a fox-hunting morning, and during a long run Frank sustained his character as a good and daring rider, to the admiration of Diana and Sir Hildebrand, and to the secret disappointment of his other kind kinsfolk, who had prophesied that he would certainly "be off at the first burst," chiefly for the reason that he had a queer, outlandish binding round his hat. It was plain that Diana wanted to speak with him apart, but the close attendance of Cousin Thornie for some time made this impossible. That loutish youth's persistence finally fretted the girl, and having been accustomed all her life to ride the straightest way to her desire, she bade him be off to see that the earths above Woolverton Mill were duly stopped. After some objections Thornie was got safely out of the road, and Diana led the way to a little hill whence there was a fine view in every direction. She pointed, as Frank thought, somewhat significantly to the north. "Yonder whitish speck is Hawkesmore Crag in Scotland," she said, "the distance is hardly eighteen miles, as the crow flies. Your horse will carry you there in two hours--and I will lend you my mare if you think her less blown." "But," said Frank, quite mystified, "I have so little wish to be in Scotland, that if my horse's head were in Scotland, I would not give his tail the trouble of following. What should I do in Scotland, Miss Vernon?" "Why, provide for your safety--do you understand me now, Mr. Frank?" "Less than ever, Miss Vernon," he answered. "I have not the most distant conception of what you mean." "Why, then," said Diana, "to be plain, there is an information lodged with our nearest Justice of the Peace, Squire Inglewood, that you were concerned in a robbery of government papers and money sent to pay the troops in Scotland. A man with whom you travelled, and whom you certainly frightened, has lodged such a complaint against you. His name is Morris." "Morris has been robbed?" "Ay," said Diana, "and he swears you are the man who robbed him." "Then Sir Hildebrand believes it?" cried Frank. "He does," answered Diana, "and to tell the truth, so did I until this moment." "Upon my word, I am obliged to you and my uncle for your opinion of me." "Oh, it is nothing to be ashamed of," she said, smiling, "no mere highway robbery. The man was a government messenger. We are all Jacobites about here, and no man would have thought the worse of you for bidding him stand and deliver. Why, my uncle had a message from Squire Inglewood himself, that he had better provide for your safety by smuggling you over the border into Scotland." "Tell me," said Frank, somewhat impatiently, "where does this Squire Inglewood live? I will go and answer the charge instantly and in person." "Well said--I will go with you," said Diana, promptly, "it was never the Vernon way to desert a friend in time of need." Frank tried to dissuade her from this, but he could not combat the girl's resolution. So they set off together for Inglewood Hall. As they entered the courtyard, they met Rashleigh just coming out. Miss Vernon instantly challenged him, before he got time to make up a story. "Rashleigh," she said, "you have heard of Mr. Frank's affair, and you have been over to the Justice talking about it." But Rashleigh was equally ready. "Certainly," he answered, "I have been endeavouring to render my cousin what service I could. But at the same time I am sorry to meet him here." "As a friend and kinsman, Mr. Osbaldistone," said Frank, "you should have been sorry to meet me anywhere else but where my character is at stake, and where it is my intention to clear it." However, it was evidently not Miss Vernon's purpose to quarrel with Rashleigh at that time. She led him apart, and began talking to him--at first quietly, then with obvious anger. From her manner she was charging him with knowing who had really committed the robbery, and pressing upon him in some way to make plain his cousin's innocence. He resisted long, but at length gave way. "Very well, then," he said, "you are a tyrant, Diana. Still, it shall be as you desire. But you know that you ought not to be here. You must return with me at once!" "I will do no such thing," said the girl; "not a foot will I go back till such time as I see Frank well out of the hands of the Philistines. He has been bidding me to go back all the time, himself. But I know better. Also, I know you, my cousin Rashleigh, and my being here will give you a stronger motive to be speedy in performing your promise." Rashleigh departed in great anger at her obstinacy, and Frank and Die together sought the den of the Justice, to which they were guided by a high voice chanting the fag-end of an old bottle-song: "Oh, in Skipton-in-Craven Is never a haven But many a day foul weather, And he that would say A pretty girl nay I wish for his cravat a tether." "Hey day," said Die Vernon, "the genial Justice must have dined already--I did not think it had been so late." As Diana had supposed, the Justice had dined. But though both his clerk Jobson and Frank's accuser Morris were with him, he showed himself as pleased to see Diana as he was evidently disinclined for all further legal business. "Ah, ha, Die Vernon," he cried, starting up with great alacrity, "the heath-bell of Cheviot and the blossom of the border, come to see how the old bachelor keeps house? Art welcome, girl, as the flowers in May!" Miss Vernon told him that on this occasion she could not stay. She had had a long ride that morning, and she must return at once. But if he were a good kind Justice, he would immediately despatch young Frank's business and let them go. This the "good Justice" was very willing to do, but Clerk Jobson, alert in his office, pressed that the law should have its course, while Frank himself demanded no better than that the mystery should be cleared up once and for all. Whereupon the man who had been robbed repeated his statement. He had, it seemed, been first of all terrified by Frank's antics. And then on the open moor, when he had found himself stopped, and relieved of his portmanteau by two masked men, he had distinctly heard the name "Osbaldistone" applied by one of his assailants in speaking to the other. He furthermore certified that all the Osbaldistones had been Papists and Jacobites from the time of William the Conquerer. From which it was clear that Frank was the guilty man! Frank replied that it was true that, like a foolish, gamesome youth, he had certainly practised somewhat on the fears of the man Morris, but that he had never seen him since he parted from him at Darlington, and that, far from being a Papist and a Jacobite, he could easily prove that he had been brought up in the strictest school of Presbyterianism and in full obedience to the government of King George. Clerk Jobson, however, was sharp enough to turn Frank's admissions against him, and said that since he had voluntarily assumed the behaviour of a robber or malefactor, he had by that very act brought himself within the penalties of the law. But at this moment a letter was handed to the Clerk, which informed him that a certain old Gaffer Rutledge was at the point of death, and that he, Clerk Jobson, must go immediately to his house in order to settle all his worldly affairs. The clerk, after offering to make out the warrant of commitment before setting out, at last, and with great reluctance, rode away. Then the Justice, who evidently still fully believed in Frank's guilt, counselled him as a friend to let bygones be bygones, and to give Mr. Morris back his portmanteau. Frank had hardly time to be indignant at this when a servant announced--"A stranger to wait upon the Justice!" "A stranger!" echoed the Justice, in very bad temper; "not upon business, or I'll--" But his protestation was cut short by the entrance of the stranger himself, and by the stern deep voice of Mr. Campbell, who immediately produced his usual effect upon Squire Inglewood. "My business is peculiar," said the Scot, "and I ask your Honour to give it your most instant consideration." Then Mr. Campbell turned on Morris such a look of ferocity that it made that valiant gentleman shake visibly from head to foot. "I believe you cannot have forgotten what passed between us at our last meeting," he said, "and you can bear me witness to the Justice that I am a man of fortune and honour. You will be some time resident in my vicinity, and you know it will be in my power to do as much for you. Speak out, man, and do not sit there chattering your jaws like a pair of castanets." At last an answer was extracted from the trembling Mr. Morris, but with as much difficulty as if it had been a tooth. "Sir--sir--," he stammered, "yes--I do believe you to be a man of fortune and of honour--I do believe it!" "Then," said Campbell, "you will bear me witness that I was in your company when the valise was stolen, but did not think fit to interfere, the affair being none of mine. Further you will tell the Justice that no man is better qualified than I to bear testimony in this case." "No man better qualified, certainly," assented Morris, with a heavy sigh. In order to prove his character, Mr. Campbell put into the hands of Justice Inglewood a certificate given under the seal and in the handwriting of the great Duke of Argyle himself. The Justice, who had stood by the Duke in 1714, was duly impressed, and told the Scot that his additional testimonial was perfectly satisfactory. "And now," he added, "what have you to say about this robbery?" "Briefly this," said Mr. Campbell, "the robber for whom Mr. Morris took Mr. Osbaldistone was both a shorter and a thicker man. More than that, I saw under the false face he wore, when it slipped aside, that his features were altogether different!" Between terror and the determined attitude of Campbell, Morris was soon forced to withdraw his information against Frank, and the Justice, glad to be rid of so troublesome a case, instantly threw the papers into the fire. "You are now at perfect liberty, Mr. Osbaldistone," said Squire Inglewood, "and you, Mr. Morris, are set quite at your ease." In spite of this Mr. Morris did not seem exactly comfortable, especially as Mr. Campbell expressed his intention of accompanying him to the next highway, telling him that he would be as safe in his company as in his father's kailyard. "Zounds, sir," he said as they went out, "that a chield with such a black beard should have no more heart than a hen-partridge. Come on wi' ye, like a frank fellow, once and for all!" The voices died away, the clatter of horses' hoofs was heard, and after a few kindly words from the Justice, Diana and Frank set out on their way home. On the road they met Clerk Jobson returning in great haste and in a most villanous temper. The will-making, even the illness of Gaffer Rutledge, had proved to be a "bam," that is to say, a hoax. The clerk's language became so impertinent towards Miss Vernon, that, if she had not prevented him, Frank would certainly have broken the rascal's head. The revel was in full swing at Osbaldistone Hall when they returned. So for the sake of peace Diana ordered some dinner to be brought to them in the library. This was a large neglected room, walled about with great books, into which hardly any of the Osbaldistones ever came, and which accordingly Diana had appropriated as her peculiar sanctum. To this chamber Rashleigh Osbaldistone penetrated after dinner had been removed. He came to explain the events of the day, but except that he had met Campbell by chance, and that, having learned that he had been an eye-witness to the robbery, he had sent him on to Squire Inglewood's, there was not much more that he seemed inclined to reveal. Afterwards, however, in his own room, Rashleigh became more communicative. He desired to know what kind of man Frank's father was, with whom in future he was to be placed. And in return for this information he told Frank what he wished to know as to Diana Vernon. She was, said Rashleigh, to marry Thorncliff, according to a family compact of long standing. But he intimated in addition that she would greatly have preferred himself, and that, indeed, he had withdrawn from the care of her studies on account of the too evident affection she had begun to show towards one, who, as a son of the church, was destined never to marry. This information rankled in Frank's mind, and all the next day he was sullen and even brutal in his manner towards Miss Vernon. But she did not grow angry, and merely left him to fill up the measure of his folly--which he presently did by an affray with Rashleigh and his other cousins over the wine-cups in the evening, in which swords were drawn and blows given. The next morning, however, Miss Vernon called him to account. "Upon my word, Mr. Francis Osbaldistone," she said, seating herself in one of the great chairs in the library, like a judge upon the bench, "your character improves upon us. Last night's performance was a masterpiece. You contrived to exhibit in the course of one evening all the various qualifications of your several cousins--the gentle and generous temper of Rashleigh, the temperance of Percie, the cool courage of Thorncliff, John's skill in dog-breaking, Dickon's aptitude for betting--all these were exhibited by the same Mr. Francis, and with a choice of time and place worthy of the taste and sagacity of Wilfred." Frank expressed his shame and sorrow as best he could. He had been troubled, he said, by some information that he had received. Instantly Miss Vernon took him up. "And now," she said, "please tell me instantly what it was that Rashleigh said of me--I have a right to know and know I will!" It was some time before Frank could bring himself to tell Diana what her cousin had really hinted concerning herself, and when she heard that he had affirmed her wish to marry him in preference to Thorncliff, she shuddered from head to foot. "No," she cried, all her soul instantly on fire, "any lot rather than that--the sot, the gambler, the bully, the jockey, the insensate fool were a thousand times preferable to Rashleigh! But the convent, the jail--the grave--shall be welcome before them all!" INTERLUDE OF DISCUSSION At the abrupt close of the story the children looked not a little surprised, nor did they manifest their usual eagerness to rush out of doors and instantly to reduce the tale to action. The first difficulty was as to who the real highwayman could be. "Did Frank _really_ take the man's bag with the money and things?" ventured Maid Margaret, a little timidly. She knew that she would be promptly contradicted. "No, of course not," shouted Hugh John, "it was the Scotch drover, Campbell,--for how else could he know so well about it? Of course it was--_I_ knew it from the first." Meantime Sweetheart had been musing deeply. "Do you know," she said gently, "I am most of all sorry for Die Vernon. I don't think that I want to play in this story. It is too real. I think Die Vernon lived." "Why--didn't they all live?" said Maid Margaret, plaintively. For the world of books was still quite alive for her. She had not lost the most precious of all the senses. Dream-gold was as good as Queen's-head-gold fresh out of the mint for her. Happy Maid Margaret! "I am sure Die Vernon was real," Sweetheart went on; "last night when you were all out cycle-riding and I was waiting for my Latin lesson, I read a bit of the book--a chapter that father has not told us. And it made me sorry for Die. She wished that she had been born a man, so that she might say and do the same things as others. She was alone in the world, she said. She needed protection, yet if she said or did anything naturally, every one thought what a bold, forward girl she was! I have felt that too!" "Rubbish!" said Hugh John, in high remorseless scorn, "_you_ are not 'alone in the world!' No, not much. And if we say or do anything to you, you jolly well whack us over the head. Why, the last time I called you--" "That will do, Hugh John," interrupted Sweetheart, in very Die Vernonish voice. "Well, when I called you--'Thinggummy'--_you know_--you hit me with a stick and the mark lasted three days!" "And served you right!" said Sweetheart, calmly. "Well, I'm not saying it didn't, am I?" retorted honest Hugh John, "but anyway _you_ needn't go about doing _wooly-woo_-- "'My nest it is harried, My children all gone!'" "Oh, you are a boy and can't understand--or won't!" said Sweetheart, with a sigh, "I needn't have expected it. But Diana Vernon did make me cry, especially the bit about her being a Catholic--stop--I will find it!" And she foraged among the books on the shelf for the big Abbotsford edition of _Rob Roy_, the one with the fine old-fashioned pictures. "Here it is," she said with her finger on the place. "'I belong to an oppressed sect and antiquated religion (she read), and instead of getting credit for my devotion, as is due to all other good girls, my kind friend Justice Inglewood might send me to the house of correction for it. . . . I am by nature of a frank and unreserved disposition,--a plain, true-hearted girl, who would willingly act honestly and openly by all the world, and yet fate has entangled me in such a series of nets and toils and entanglements, that I dare not speak a word for fear of consequences, not to myself but to others.'" Sweetheart sighed again and repeated thoughtfully, "I _am_ sorry for Die Vernon!" "Humph," said Hugh John, with dogged masculine logic, "girls are always making up troubles, I think. I don't see what she has to 'whimp' about--everybody did just as she said at that Hall--more than I would do for any silly girl, I bet! Just you try it on, only once, Miss Sweetheart, that's all! She has all she can eat and can order it herself--lots of horses and riding--a gun--cricky, I only wish I had her chances! Think of it--just oblige me by thinking of it--secret passages to come and go by, night and day, right plumb in the wall under your nose, mysterious priests, Jesuits, Jacobites, and things. Why, it's nearly as good as Crusoe's Island, I declare." Sweetheart looked at Hugh John with the far-away gentle compassion which always drove that matter-of-fact warrior wild. "All girls are the same," he asserted insultingly, "they always get thinking they are going to die right off, if only their little finger aches!" "You'll be sorry!" said Sweetheart, warningly. "Oh, will I?" said Hugh John, truculently, "isn't what I say true, Toady Lion?" But Toady Lion was sitting upon a buffet, in the character of Morris upon his portmanteau. He was shaking and chattering with such exaggerated terror that Maid Margaret, wrapped in a dust-sheet for a disguise and armed with the kitchen poker, could not rob him for very laughter. So neither of them paid any heed. "You'll be sorry for speaking like that about Die Vernon," Sweetheart went on; "I've looked and I know. She was a true heroine. And she is worth a whole pack of your heroes any day." "And, indeed, that's not saying much!" said Hugh John, who also had his sorrows. "But at any rate that was no proper place to break off a story. And I'll tell father so. Let's tease to have some more. It's a wet day, and we can't do anything else!" "Oh, yes--let's!" said Sweetheart. "Stop all that, Toady Lion, and you, Maid Margaret. We are going to ask for the second tale from _Rob Roy!_" "Well," grumbled Hugh John, "I hope that there will be more about Rob Roy in it this time. It's not too soon." And Sweetheart only continued to regard him with the same quiet but irritating smile, and nodded her head as who would say, "Those who live the longest see the most!" THE SECOND TALE FROM "ROB ROY" I. IN THE TOILS OF RASHLEIGH BUT it became more and more evident that Frank's time at Osbaldistone Hall was growing short. A certain travelling merchant, a friend and countryman of Andrew Fairservice, the Osbaldistone gardener, brought news from London of how Frank's character had been attacked there in the matter of Morris, and that in the high court of Parliament itself. Moreover, Frank felt that he could not much longer remain in the same house with Miss Vernon. His love for her daily increased. Yet she told him plainly that she could and would only be a friend to him. He must ask her no questions, however deep the mysteries which encircled her might seem. One day he found a man's glove lying on the library table. On another occasion, after Rashleigh's departure for London, he distinguished two shadows on the windows of the library while he was patrolling the garden after dark. Last of all Frank received a letter through some secret channel of Diana's written by his father's partner, Mr. Tresham. This informed him that his father had been for some time in Holland on business of the firm, and that Rashleigh had gone north to Scotland some time ago, with a large amount of money to take up bills granted by his father to merchants in that country. Since his setting out, nothing whatever had been heard of Rashleigh, and Owen had gone north to find him. Frank was urgently prayed to proceed to Glasgow for the same purpose as soon as possible. For if Rashleigh were not found, it was likely that the great house of Osbaldistone and Tresham might have to suspend payment. At this news Frank was stricken to the heart. He saw now how his foolishness had ruined his father, because it was through his obstinacy that Rashleigh had gained admission to his father's confidence. Mr. Osbaldistone, he knew, would never survive the disgrace of bankruptcy. He must, therefore, instantly depart. And Diana willingly sped him on his way, giving him a letter which he was only to open if all other means of paying his father's debts had failed. Frank resolved to quit Osbaldistone Hall by night secretly, leaving only a letter of thanks for his uncle, and informing him that immediate and urgent business called him to Glasgow. He found a willing guide ready to his hand in the gardener Andrew Fairservice, who, as he said, had long been awaiting such an opportunity of quitting his employment. But this same Andrew came near to involving Frank in a fresh breach of the law. For, as Squire Thorncliff owed him ten pounds which he refused to pay, Andrew had mounted himself on Squire Thornie's good beast. And it was not until the animal was safely arrested by the law in the first Scotch town across the border, and Frank had written the whole story to Sir Hildebrand, that he felt easy in his mind as to the irregular act of his attendant. They arrived at Glasgow, then a small but ancient town, on the eve of the Sabbath day. It was impossible for Frank to discover Owen that night, and it proved to be no more easy the following morning. For when he proposed to his landlady to go to the dwelling-house of Mr. MacVittie, or to the counting-house of that firm, in search of Owen, she held up her hands in horror. "There will not be a soul in either place," she cried; "they are all serious men and will only be found where all good Christians ought to be on the Lord's Day Morning, and that's in the Barony Laigh (Low) Kirk!" So thither accordingly Frank betook himself, accompanied, of course, by his faithful follower, Andrew Fairservice. They found the Laigh Kirk to be a gloomy underground crypt into which light was but sparingly admitted by a few Gothic windows. In the centre the pews were already full to overflowing with worshippers, and Andrew and Frank had to take their places in the ring of those who stood in the outer dark among the gloomy ranges of pillars which stretched away into complete obscurity. Frank listened to the sermon for some time with what attention he could muster. But the thought of his father's loss and his own share in it recurred often to his mind. Suddenly he was roused from his revery by a whisper from the darkness behind, "Listen," a voice said, low but very distinct, in his ear, "do not look back. You are in danger in this place. So am I. Meet me to-night at the Brig, at twelve o'clock precisely. Keep at home till the gloaming and avoid observation!" Frank tried to find out who could be so well acquainted with his journey as to give him this rendezvous. But all that he could see, vanishing into the darkness of the vaulted arches, was a figure, wrapped in a long cloak which revealed nothing whatever of its wearer. Instinctively Frank attempted to pursue, but he had not gone many yards, when he fell over a tombstone with such a clatter that it caused the preacher to stop and order the officers to take into custody the author of the unseemly disturbance. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to wait with as much patience as he could muster for the time appointed. He did, however, see Mr. MacVittie, his father's correspondent, when as Andrew said the "kirk scaled." But he did not take that worthy's advice to speak to the merchant. The hard features of the man had in them something disagreeable and even menacing which vaguely recalled Rashleigh Osbaldistone. And Frank, remembering the warnings of his unknown friend, resolved to refrain from making his presence in Glasgow known, at least for the present, to that notable merchant Mr. MacVittie. This Sunday was the longest day of Frank Osbaldistone's life. It seemed as if the hours would never go past. Twilight came at last, however, and he issued forth to walk up and down in the public park, among the avenues of trees, till the time of his appointment should arrive. As he marched to and fro, keeping as much as possible out of sight of the passers-by, he heard the voice of Andrew Fairservice in close and somewhat loud conversation with a man in a long cloak and a slouched hat. Andrew was retailing the character of his master to the stranger, and though Frank Osbaldistone promised to himself to break Andrew's pate for his insolence on the first suitable occasion, he could not but acknowledge the fidelity of the likeness which Andrew painted. "Ay, ay, Mr. Hammorgaw," Andrew was saying, "the lad is a good lad. He is not altogether void of sense. He has a gloaming sight of what is reasonable, but he is crack-brained and cockle-headed about his nipperty-tipperty poetry nonsense. A bare crag wi' a burn jawing over it is unto him as a garden garnished with flowering knots and choice pot-herbs. And he would rather claver with a daft quean they call Diana Vernon, than hear what might do him good all the days of his life from you or me, or any other sober and sponsible person. Reason, sir, he cannot endure. He is all for the vanities and the volubilities. And he even once told me, poor blinded creature, that the Psalms of David were excellent poetry. As if the holy Psalmist thought of rattling rhymes in blether, like his own silly clinkum-clankum that he calls verse! Gude help him! Two lines of Davie Lindsay wad ding a' that he ever clerkit!" At last, after a weary waiting, the bell of the church of St. Mungo tolled the hour of midnight. The echoes had not ceased upon the air when a figure approached across the bridge, coming from the southern side. The man was strong, thick-set, and wore a horseman's cloak wrapped about him. But he passed without speaking, and held on his way to the farther end of the bridge. There he turned, and meeting Frank full in face, bade him follow him and he would know his reasons for thus warning him. Frank first demanded to know who he was, and what were his purposes with him. "I am a man," was the reply, "and my purpose is friendly to you." More than that he would not say. Frank could follow him or not, just as he chose. Only if he did not, he would rue it all his life. Furthermore, he stung the young man, perhaps intentionally, with the taunt of being afraid. Frank cast back his words in his teeth. He was young, active, armed, of a good conscience. Why then had he need to be afraid? "But," said the stranger, "if you are not afraid of what I can do to you, do you not fear the consequences of being found in the company of one whose very name whispered in this lonely street would make the stones themselves rise up to apprehend him--on whose head half the men in Glasgow would build their fortune as on a found treasure, had they the luck to grip him by the collar--the sound of whose apprehension were as welcome at the Cross of Edinburgh as ever the news of a field stricken and won in Flanders?" "And who, then, are you?" cried Frank, "whose name should create so deep a terror?" "No enemy of yours, since I am taking you to a place where, if I were recognised, cold iron for my heels and hemp for my throat would be my brief dooming." Instinctively Frank laid his hand on his sword. "What," said the stranger, "on an unarmed man and your friend?" "I am ignorant if you be either the one or the other!" said Frank, "and indeed your language and manner lead me to doubt both." "Manfully spoken," said the unknown; "well, I will be frank and free with you--I am conveying you to prison!" "To prison," cried Frank, "and by what warrant--for what offence? You shall have my life sooner than my liberty. I defy you! I will not follow you a step farther!" The unknown drew himself up haughtily. "I am not taking you there as a prisoner," he said. "I am neither messenger nor sheriff's officer. _Your_ liberty is little risked by the visit. _Mine_ is in some peril. But I care not for the risk. For I love a free young blood, that kens no protector but the cross of his sword." So saying he tapped at a low wicket, and was answered sharply from within, as by one awakened suddenly from a dream. "Fat's tat? Wha's that, I wad say? And what the deil want ye at this hour o' the e'en? Clean again rules--clean again rules--as they call them!" The speaker seemed by the yawning drone of the last words again to be composing himself to slumber. Then the stranger, who had hitherto guided Frank, spoke in a loud whisper, "Dougal man! hae ye forgotten _Ha nun Gregarach?_" Instantly there was a bustle inside. "Deil a bit, deil a bit!" said the voice within, briskly. Bolts were drawn, whispers passed in Gaelic, and presently Frank and his companion stood both of them in the vestibule of the tolbooth or public prison of Glasgow. It was a small but strong guard-room, from which passages led away to the right and left, and staircases ascended to the cells of the prisoners. Iron fetters fitly adorned the walls. Muskets, pistols, and partizans stood about, ready alike for defence or offence. Still more strange was the jailer who greeted them. This man was a wild, shock-headed savage with a brush of red hair, but he knelt and almost worshipped Frank's guide. He could not take his eyes off him. "Oich--oich," grunted Dougal, for that was the turnkey's name, "to see ye here! What would happen to ye if the bailies should come to get witting of it?" The guide, still wrapped in his cloak, placed his finger on his lip. "Fear nothing, Dougal," he said, "your hands shall never draw a bolt on me." "That shall they no," said Dougal, emphatically, "she wishes them hacked off by the elbows first. And when are ye gaun yonder again? When you return, you will not forget to tell your poor cousin--only seven times removed." "I will let you know, Dougal," said the man, "as soon as my plans are settled." "And by my sooth," cried Dougal, "when you do, I will fling my keys at the provost's head, and never gie them anither turn--see if I winna!" But Frank's guide, who had listened to all this rhapsody very much with the air of a prince accustomed to royal service and thinking little of it, interrupted Dougal with some words in Gaelic. Whereupon the turnkey, taking a lantern, led the young man up the winding stair and introduced him to a cell, where, lying on a bed, he recognised--no other than Owen, the head clerk of his father's house. At first the good Owen could only bemoan the hardness of fate, thinking that Frank also had met with the same treatment as himself, by being sent to prison. He had, it seemed, as in duty bound, gone at once to Messrs. MacVittie, MacFin, and Company and exposed to them his case, stating the difficulty in which the house were placed by Rashleigh's disappearance. Hitherto they had been most smooth and silver-tongued, but at the first word of difficulty as to payment, they had clapped poor Owen into prison on the charge of meditating flight out of the country. He had, he continued, sent a note to Bailie Nicol Jarvie, the other correspondent of the house in Glasgow. But, as he said, "If the civil house in the Gallowgate used him thus, what was to be expected from the cross-grained old crab-stock in the Salt Market?" It had fallen out even as he had expected. Bailie Nicol Jarvie had not so much as answered his letter, though it had been put into his hand as he was on his way to church that morning. Hardly were the words out of Owen's mouth, when from below came the voice of Dougal the turnkey, evidently urging Frank's guide to conceal himself. "Gang upstairs and hide behind the Sassenach gentleman's bed. Ay, ay--coming--coming!" The Highlander hastily entered Owen's cell, and, stripping off his heavy coat, stood at bay, evidently gathering himself for a leap at the officers, should it indeed prove to be the provost, magistrates, and guard of the city of Glasgow, as Dougal believed. It was obvious that he meant to spring right at any who might be seeking to apprehend him. But instead of a guard with fixed bayonets, it was only a good-looking young woman in kilted petticoats holding a lantern in her hand, who ushered in a magistrate, stout, bob-wigged, bustling, and breathless. At the sight of his face Frank's conductor instantly drew back and resumed the muffling cloak which hid the lower part of his features. The chief captain of the jail now showed himself at the door, having descended hastily to wait on the great man. But the Bailie's anger was huge against all and sundry. "A bonny thing, Captain Stanchells," he cried, "that I, a magistrate of the city, should have been kept half an hour knocking as hard for entrance into the tolbooth as the poor creatures within knock to get out! And what, pray, is the meaning of this--strangers in the jail after lock-up time? I will look after this, Stanchells, depend upon it. Keep the door locked. By and by I will speak with these gentlemen. But first, I must have a talk with an old acquaintance here. Mr. Owen, Mr. Owen, how's all with you, man?" "Well in body, I thank you, Mr. Jarvie," said poor Owen, "but sore afflicted in spirit." "Ay, ay--no doubt--no doubt," said the Bailie, briskly, "but we are all subject to a downcome, and it comes hard on those that have held their heads high. But I have not come out at twelve o'clock of a Sabbath night to cast up to an unfortunate man his backslidings. That was never Bailie Nicol Jarvie's way, nor yet was it his father the deacon's before him. Why, man, even in the Kirk I was thinking on your letter. And after supper I sat yawning wide enough to swallow St. Enoch's Kirk, till twelve of the clock struck. Then I took a bit look at my ledger just to see how matters stood between us. Syne I called up Mattie and bade her light the lamp and convoy me down to the tolbooth. I have entry here at any hour of the night and day, and so had my father before me, God bless him!" II. ROB ROY AT LAST During this harangue Frank's mysterious guide had been gradually edging toward the door, and showing signs of slipping away. But even when looking carefully over Mr. Owen's papers, the keen eyes of the magistrate detected the movement. "Shut the door, Stanchells, and keep it locked!" he cried. The Highlander took three or four steps across the room, muttered an execration in Gaelic, and then with an air of careless defiance set himself down on a table and proceeded to whistle a stave with all possible assurance. The Bailie soon arranged Mr. Owen's affairs. He would become his bail himself, and promised to secure his liberation early next morning. Then he took the lantern from his servant Mattie, and, holding it up, proceeded to examine the stern, set countenance of Frank's guide. That stout-hearted Celt did not move a muscle under the inspection, but with his arms folded carelessly, his heel beating time to the lilt of his whistled strathspey, he came very near to deceiving the acuteness of his investigator. "Eh--ah--no--it cannot be. It is! Eh, ye born deevil, ye robber--ye catheran! Can this be you?" "E'en as ye see me, Bailie!" was the short response. "Ye cheat-the-gallows, ye reiving villain--what think you is the value of your head now!" cried the Bailie. "Umph! Fairly weighed and Dutch measure," came the answer, "it might weigh down one provost's, four bailies', a town-clerk's, six deacons', besides stent-masters'--!" "Tell over your sins," interrupted Mr. Nicol Jarvie, "and prepare ye, for if I speak the word--" "But ye will _not_ speak the word," said the Highlander, coolly. [Illustration: "HE took the lantern from his servant Mattie, and, holding it up, proceeded to examine the stern, set countenance of Frank's guide. That stout-hearted Celt did not move a muscle under the inspection, but with his arms folded carelessly, his heel beating time to the lilt of his whistled strathspey, he came very near to deceiving the acuteness of his investigator."] "And why should I not?" said the Bailie, "answer me that--why should I not?" "For three sufficient reasons, Bailie Jarvie," he retorted, "first, for auld langsyne. Second, for the sake of the auld wife ayont the fire at Stuckavrallachan, that made some mixture of our bloods--to my shame be it spoken that _I_ should have a cousin a weaver. And lastly, Bailie, because if I saw a sign of your betraying me, I would plaster the wall there with your brains, long before any hand of man could rescue you!" "Ye are a bold, desperate villain, sir," retorted the undaunted Bailie, "and ye ken that I ken ye to be so--but that were it only my own risk, I would not hesitate a moment." "I ken well," said the other, "ye have gentle blood in your veins, and I would be loath to hurt my own kinsman. But I go out of here free as I came in, or the very walls of Glasgow tolbooth shall tell the tale these ten years to come!" "Well, well," said Mr. Jarvie, "after all, blood is thicker than water. Kinsfolk should not see faults to which strangers are blind. And, as you say, it would be sore news to the auld wife below the Ben, that you, ye Hieland limmer, had knockit out my brains, or that I had got you strung up in a halter. But, among other things, where is the good thousand pound Scots that I lent you, and when am I to be seeing it?" "Where is it?" said the unknown, grimly, "why, where last year's snow is, I trow!" "And that's on the tap o' Schehallion, ye Hieland dog," said Mr. Jarvie, "and I look for payment from ye where ye stand." "Ay," said the Highlander, unmoved, "but I carry neither snow nor silver in my sporran. Ye will get it, Bailie--just when the King enjoys his ain again, as the auld sang says!" Then the magistrate turned to Frank. "And who may this be?" he demanded, "some reiver ye hae listed, Rob? He looks as if he had a bold heart for the highway, and a neck that was made express for the hangman's rope!" "This," said Owen, horrified at the Bailie's easy prediction as to the fate of his young master, "this is Mr. Francis Osbaldistone, only son of the head of our house--" "Ay, I have heard of him," said the Bailie, still more contemptuously, "he that ran away and turned play-actor, through pure dislike to the work an honest man should live by!" "Indeed," said the Highlander, "I had some respect for the callant even before I kenned what was in him. But now I honour him for his contempt of weavers and spinners, and sic-like mechanical persons." "Ye are mad, Rob," said the Bailie, "mad as a March hare--though wherefore a hare should be madder in the month of March than at Martinmas is more than I can well say. But this young birkie here, that ye are hounding the fastest way to the gallows--tell me, will all his stage-plays and his poetries, or your broad oaths and drawn dirks tell him where Rashleigh Osbaldistone is? Or Macbeth and all his kernes and galloglasses, and your own to boot, procure him the five thousand pounds to answer the bills that must fall due ten days hence--were they all sold by auction at Glasgow Cross--basket hilts, Andrea Ferraras, leathern targets, brogues, brechan, and sporrans?" "Ten days!" said Frank, instinctively drawing Diana Vernon's letter out of his pocket. The time had elapsed, and he was now free to open it. A thin sealed enclosure fell out, and the wandering airs of the prison wafted it to Bailie Jarvie's feet. He lifted it and at once handed it to the Highlander, who, after glancing at the address, proceeded calmly to open it. Frank tried vainly to interpose. "You must first satisfy me that the letter is intended for you, before I can allow you to read it," he said. "Make yourself easy, Mr. Osbaldistone," answered the Highlander, looking directly at him for the first time, "remember Justice Inglewood, Clerk Jobson, Mr. Morris--above all, remember your very humble servant, Robert Campbell, and the beautiful Diana Vernon." The vague resemblance which had been haunting Frank ever since he had heard this man's voice was now at once made plain. The cloak being dropped and the man's face turned full upon him, he saw that it was indeed the same Highland drover who had borne unexpected testimony in his favour when he was in danger of his life in the house of Mr. Justice Inglewood. "It is a difficult cast she has given me to play," said the Highlander, looking at Die Vernon's letter, "but I daresay I shall be able to serve you. Only you must come and visit me in my own country. I cannot hope to aid you on the paving stones of Glasgow. And you, Bailie, if you will come up with this young gentleman as far as the Clachan of Aberfoil, I will pay you the thousand pounds Scots that I owe you." "Such a journey ill becomes my place," said the Bailie, doubtfully, "but if I did come, would you really and soothfully pay me the siller?" "I swear to you," said the Highlander, "by him that sleeps beneath the grey stane at Inch Cailleach! "But," he continued, "I must be budging. For the air of the Glasgow tolbooth is no that over salutary to a Highland constitution." "Ohon," said the Bailie, "that I should be art and part in an escape from justice--it will be a disgrace to me all the days of my life! Aweel, we have all our backslidings to answer for. Stanchells, open the door!" The head jailor stared at the two visitors who had gotten into Mr. Owen's cell without his leave, but he was reassured by the Bailie's careless "Friends of mine, Stanchells, friends of mine!" The party descended to the lower vestibule, and there called more than once for Dougal, but without effect. Whereupon Campbell observed, with a quiet smile, that "if Dougal was the lad he kenned him, he would scarce wait to be thanked for his share of that night's work, but would now be full trot for the pass of Ballamaha--" "And am I myself," cried the angry Bailie, "to be locked up in the tolbooth all night? Send for fore-hammers, sledge-hammers, pincers! Send for Deacon Yettlin, the smith. And as for that Hieland blackguard, he shall hang as high as Haman--" "When ye catch him," said Campbell, gravely, "but wait, surely the jail door is not locked!" And so it turned out. "He has some glimmerings of sense, that Dougal creature," added the Highlander; "he kenned that an open door might have served me at a pinch!" So saying he sprang into the darkness, and soon the street resounded to low signal whistles, uttered and instantly replied to. "Hear to the Hieland deevils," said Mr. Jarvie; "they think themselves already on the skirts of Ben Lomond! But what's this?" There was a clash of iron at his feet, and stooping to the causeway cobbles, the Bailie lifted the keys of the jail which Dougal had carried away in his flight. "Indeed," he said, "and that's just as well. For they cost the burgh siller, and there might have been some talk in the council about the loss of them, that I would little like to have heard. It would not be the first time they had cast up my kin to me, if Bailie Grahame and some others should get wind of this night's work." The next morning at the Bailie's hospitable table, Frank Osbaldistone met Mr. Owen--but altogether another Owen from him of the tolbooth--neat, formal, and well brushed as ever, though still in the lowest of spirits about the misfortunes of the house. They had not long begun when Frank, who could be brusque enough upon occasion, startled the Bailie by the question, "And pray, by the bye, Mr. Nicol Jarvie, who is this Mr. Robert Campbell whom I met last night?" The question, abruptly put, seemed to knock the worthy Bailie all of a heap. He stammered and repeated it over and over, as if he had no answer ready. "Wha's Mr. Robert Campbell? Ahem--ahay--! Wha's Mr. Robert Campbell, quo' he?" "Yes," repeated the young Englishman, "I mean who and what is he?" "Why, he's--ahay! He's--ahem! Where did _you_ meet Mr. Robert Campbell, as you call him yourself?" "I met him by chance," Frank answered promptly, "some months ago, in the north of England." "Then, Mr. Osbaldistone," said the Bailie, doggedly, "ye ken just as much about him as I do!" "I should suppose not, Mr. Jarvie," said Frank, "since you are, it seems, both his relation and his friend!" "There is doubtless some cousinship between us," said the Bailie, with reluctance, "but I have seen little of Rob since he left the cattle-dealing. He was hardly used by those who might have treated him better, poor fellow." More than this for the moment Frank could not extract from Mr. Jarvie, and indeed his father's affairs were naturally the first consideration. As Frank could not help with their business matters and arrangements, the Bailie dismissed him without ceremony, telling him that he might go up to the College Yards, where he would find some that could speak Greek and Latin, but that he must be back at one o'clock "_preceesely_" to partake of the Bailie's family leg of mutton and additional tup's head. It was while Frank Osbaldistone was pacing to and fro in the College Yards, that, from behind a hedge, he saw three men talking together. At first he could hardly believe his eyes. For one of them, the very sight of whom caused a disagreeable thrill to pass through his body, was none other than Rashleigh himself, while the other two were Morris and Mr. MacVittie,--the very three men who could do him the most harm in the world. At the end of the avenue MacVittie and Morris left the gardens, while Rashleigh returned alone, apparently pacing the walk in deep meditation. Frank suddenly appeared before him, and challenged him to give up the deeds and titles he had stolen from his father. Rashleigh, whom no surprise could stir out of his cool native audacity, answered that it would be better for his cousin to go and amuse himself in his world of poetical imagination, and to leave the business of life to men who understood and could conduct it. Words grew hotter and hotter between the two young men, till Rashleigh, stung by a reference to Diana Vernon, bade Frank follow him to a secluded place where he would be able to chastise him for his boyish insolence. Accordingly Frank followed him, keeping a keen watch on his adversary lest he should attempt any treachery. And it was well that he did so. For Rashleigh's sword was at his breast before he had time to draw, or even to lay down his cloak, and he only saved his life by springing a pace or two backward in all haste. In the matter of fence, Frank found Rashleigh quite his match--his own superior skill being counterbalanced by Rashleigh's longer and more manageable sword and by his great personal strength and ferocity. He fought, indeed, more like a fiend than a man. Every thrust was meant to kill, and the combat had all the appearance of being to the death. At last Frank stumbled accidentally, and Rashleigh's sword passed through his coat and out at the back, just grazing his side, whereupon Frank, seizing the hilt of his antagonist's sword, shortened his grip and was on the point of running him through the body. But the death-grapple was put an end to in the nick of time, by the intervention of Campbell, who suddenly appeared out of the bushes and threw himself between them. Rashleigh demanded fiercely of the Highlander how he dared to interfere where his honour was concerned. But Campbell, with a whistle of his broadsword about his head, reminded him that so far as "daring" went, he was ready to make mincemeat of the pair of them. But though this cooled Rashleigh's temper at once, it was far from appeasing Frank, who swore that he would keep hold of his cousin till he had given up all he had stolen from his father. [Illustration: "THE death-grapple was put an end to in the nick of time by the intervention of Campbell, who suddenly appeared out of the bushes and threw himself between them. Rashleigh demanded fiercely of the Highlander how he dared to interfere where his honour was concerned."] "You hear!" said Rashleigh to Campbell; "he rushes upon his fate. On his own head be it!" But the Highlander would not permit the young man to be ill treated, only for standing up for his own father. He took hold of Frank, however, and by a gigantic effort he caused him to release Rashleigh's coat which he had seized in his anger. "Let go his collar, Mr. Francis," he commanded. "What he says is true. Ye are more in danger of the magistrate in this place than what he is. Take the bent, Mr. Rashleigh. Make one pair of legs worth two pair of hands. You have done that before now." Rashleigh, with a last threat of future revenge, took up his sword, wiped it, put it back in its sheath, and disappeared in the bushes. In spite of his struggles the Highlander held Frank till it was vain for him to pursue Rashleigh, and then Campbell had some advice to give him. "Let him alone," he said. "I tell you, man, he has the old trap set for you. And here I cannot give you the same help that I did in the house of Justice Inglewood. Now go your ways home, like a good bairn. Keep out of the sight of Rashleigh, and Morris, and that MacVittie animal. Mind the Clachan of Aberfoil, and by the word of a gentleman I will not see you wronged." On his way back Frank had his slight wound dressed by a surgeon and apothecary in the neighbourhood, who refused to believe his explanation about the button of his adversary's foil slipping. "There never was button on the foil that made this!" he said. "Ah, young blood--young blood! But fear not--we surgeons are a secret generation!" And so dismissed, Frank soon found his way back to Mr. Jarvie's family leg of mutton and tup's head, only a few minutes after the appointed stroke of one. * * * * * III. THE BAILIE FIGHTS WITH FIRE When Frank Osbaldistone, the Bailie, and Andrew Fairservice, set forward toward the Highlands, their way lay for the first stage over barren wastes, with the blue line of the Grampian Hills continually before their eyes. Andrew had as usual tried to cheat his master by getting rid of his own pony and buying another on Frank's account. But the Bailie soon caused Andrew to recover his old horse on the penalty of being at once haled off to prison. Night came on before the little party of three arrived at the inn of the Clachan of Aberfoil, having previously crossed the infant Forth by an ancient bridge, high and narrow. The inn was a mere hovel, but the windows were cheerfully lighted up. There was a sound of revelry within that promised good cheer to hungry men, and the party were on the point of entering, when Andrew Fairservice showed them a peeled wand which was set across the half-open door. "That means," he said, "that some of their great men are birling at the wine within, and will little like to be disturbed." It proved to be even so. The landlady was most anxious to keep them out. They could get rest and shelter, she promised them, within seven Scottish miles--that is to say, within at least double that number of English ones. Her house was taken up, and the gentlemen in possession would ill like to be intruded on by strangers. Better gang farther than fare worse. But Frank, being an Englishman and hungry for his dinner, was ready to do battle against all odds in order to get it. The interior of the inn of Aberfoil was low and dark. The smoke of the fire hung and eddied under the gloomy roof about five feet from the ground. But underneath all was kept clear by the currents of air that rushed about the house when the wind blew through the wicker door and the miserable walls of stone plastered with mud. Three men were sitting at an oak table near the fire. Two of these were in Highland dress, the first small and dark, with a quick and irritable expression of countenance. He wore the "trews" of tartan, which in itself showed him a man of consideration. The other Highlander was a tall, strong man, with the national freckled face and high cheekbones. The tartan he wore had more of red in it than that of the other. The third was in Lowland dress, a bold, stout-looking man, in a showily laced riding-dress and a huge cocked hat. His sword and a pair of pistols lay on the table before him. All three were drinking huge draughts of the Highland drink called "Usquebagh," and they spoke loudly and eagerly one to the other, now in Gaelic, now in English. A third Highlander, wrapped in his plaid and with his face hidden, lay on the floor, apparently asleep. The three gentlemen were at first unconscious of the invasion. They continued their loud conversation, and it was not until Frank Osbaldistone called the landlady that they paused and looked at them, apparently stricken dumb by his audacity. "You make yourself at home," said the lesser Celt, in very good English, which however he spoke with an air of haughty disdain. "I usually do, sir," said Frank, "when I come into a house of public entertainment." "And did she not see," demanded the taller man, "by the white wand at the door, that gentlemans had taken up the public house on their ain business?" "I do not pretend to understand the customs of this country," said Frank, with firmness, "but I have yet to learn how any three persons are entitled to exclude all other travellers from the only place of shelter and refreshment for miles around." The Bailie here offered a stoup of brandy as an appropriate means of establishing a good understanding, but the three natives proceeded to snuff the air and work themselves up into a passion with the evident intention of ending the quarrel by a fray. "We are three to three," said the lesser Highlander, glancing his eyes at the intruding party. "If ye be pretty men, draw!" And so saying, he drew his own broadsword and advanced upon Frank. The young Englishman, knowing the superiority of his rapier to the claymore, especially in the confined space, was in no fear as to the issue of the combat. But when the gigantic Highlander advanced upon the worthy magistrate of Glasgow, after trying in vain once or twice to draw his father's _shabble_, as he called it, from its sheath,--a weapon which had last seen the light at Bothwell Bridge,--the Bailie seized as a substitute the red-hot coulter of a plough, which had been sticking in the fire. At the very first pass he set the Highlander's plaid on fire, and thereafter compelled him to keep a respectful distance. Andrew Fairservice had, of course, vanished at the very first symptoms of a storm, but the Lowlander, disappointed of an antagonist, drew honourably off and took no share in the fight. Nevertheless the Bailie, built for more peaceful pursuits, was quickly getting the worst of it, when from the floor started up the sleeping Highlander, crying, "Hersel' has eaten the town bread at the Cross of Glasgow, and by her troth, she will fight for Bailie Jarvie at the Clachan of Aberfoil!" And seconding words with blows, he fell upon his tall countryman. As both were armed with targes made of wood and studded with brass, the combat was more remarkable for noise and clatter than for serious damage. And it was not long before the Lowlander cried out, taking upon himself the office of peacemaker: "Hold your hands, gentlemen--enough done, enough done! The strangers have shown themselves men of honour, and have given reasonable satisfaction." There was no wish to continue the fray, save perhaps on the part of the Bailie's antagonist, who demanded to know who was going to pay for the hole burnt in his bonnie plaid, through which, he declared, any one might put a kail-pot. But the Bailie, pleased with himself for having shown spirit, declared that the Highlander should have a new plaid, especially woven, of his own clan-colours. And he added that if he could find the worthy lad who had taken his quarrel upon himself, he would bestow upon him a gill of _aqua-vitæ_. But the Highlander who had been so ready on the Bailie's behalf was now nowhere to be found. The supper was brought in presently, as if the landlady had only been waiting for the end of the fray in order to serve the repast. The Bailie had from the first recognised the Lowlander as one to whom the deacon his father had lent money, and with whose family there were many ties of cordiality and confidence. So while the friendly converse was thus proceeding indoors, Frank went out to find Andrew Fairservice, and on his way the landlady gave him a folded scrap of paper, saying that she was glad to be rid of it--what with Saxons, soldiers, and robbers--life was not worth living on the Highland line! By the light of a torch Frank read as follows, "For the honoured hands of Mr. F. O., a Saxon young gentleman--These!" The letter proved to be from Campbell, and informed Frank that as there were night hawks abroad, he must hold no communication with any one lest it should lead to future trouble. The person who gave him the letter might be trusted, but that in the meantime it would be well to avoid a meeting with "R. M. C." Frank was much disappointed at this deferring of the hope of aiding his father, by recovering the papers and titles which Rashleigh had stolen. But still there was no help for it. And so, after dragging Andrew out of the corner of the shed, where he was hidden behind a barrel of feathers, he returned to the inn. Here he found the Bailie high in dispute with his quondam friend, the Lowlander Galbraith. The quarrel concerned the Duke of Argyle and the Clan Campbell, but most of all a certain freebooter of the name of Rob Roy, who, as it now appeared, they were all assembled to pursue and make an end of. North and east the passes were being held. The westland clans were out. Southward Major Galbraith was in command of a body of Lennox horse, and to a certainty Rob Roy would swing in a rope by the morrow's morn. Scarcely were the words spoken when the ordered tramp of infantry on the march was heard, and an officer, followed by two or three files of soldiers, entered the apartment. It gave Frank a thrill of pleasure to remark his English accent, after the Scotch which he had been listening to ever since he left Osbaldistone Hall. But he liked somewhat less what he was next to hear. The English officer had received instructions to place under arrest two persons, one young and the other elderly, travelling together. It seemed to him that Frank and the Bailie answered fairly well to this description. In spite of the protests and threats of the honourable magistrate, he ordered them both to follow him in his advance into the Highland country, upon which he was immediately to set out. The letter which Frank had received from the landlady of the inn, being found upon him, was held to be evidence that he had been in treasonable correspondence with Rob Roy, whose usual initials, indeed, were at the bottom of the note. Next the shock-headed Highlander who had taken the Bailie's quarrel upon him, having been captured, was brought before the officer, and commanded, on pain of being instantly hanged, to lead them to the place where he had left the Mac-Gregor. After long persuasion, some of it of the roughest sort, poor Dougal consented for five guineas to act as guide to the party of soldiers under Captain Thornton--for such was the name of the English officer. This sinful compliance of Dougal's angered the Bailie so much that he cried to the soldiers to take Dougal away, because now he deserved hanging for his treachery more than ever. This drew the retort from the Corporal who was acting as hangman, that if it were the Bailie who was going to be hanged, he would be in no such desperate hurry! But Dougal promised to be faithful, and in a few minutes the English officer had paid the reckonings of the three gentlemen whom Frank had found drinking at the inn of Aberfoil. The hot and smoky atmosphere of the miserable inn was exchanged for the wide hill breezes. But on their passage through the villages the hatred of the natives, mostly women and children, for the "red soldiers" broke forth into shrill cursing. Andrew Fairservice, who alone of the three understood Gaelic, grew pale with terror at the threats which were lavished upon them. "And the worst of all is," he said, trembling, "that the owercome o' their sang is that we are to gang up the glen and see what we are to get." IV. THE DROWNING OF THE SPY Whereupon the Bailie took it on himself to warn Captain Thornton that the Highlanders, especially under a leader so daring as Rob Roy, were in the habit of attacking their enemies in narrow passes where regular troops had no chance against them. But the officer was not to be turned aside. He had his orders and he meant to carry them out. Rob Roy was certainly trapped, he said. All the upper passes were in the hands of the Highlanders of the western clans. Garschattachin had closed in on the south with the Lennox Horse. The latest tidings of the freebooter were in accordance with the information so reluctantly given by Dougal, and were to the effect that Rob Roy had sent away the larger part of his clan, and was seeking escape alone, or with very few in his company, trusting most likely to his superior knowledge of the passes. Meanwhile Dougal their guide answered with a natural impatience to all complaints that he was leading them by difficult or dangerous roads. "If," he said, with an appearance of reason, "gentlemans were seeking the Red Gregarach, they must expect some wee danger. And if they likit grand roads, they should hae bided at Glasgow." The party was continuing to follow the narrow path by the lake, till they came to a halt at a place where the path left the water and climbed upward by several zigzags to the top of a rock, on which the advance guard reported that they had seen the bonnets of the Highlanders as well as the shining barrels of their long muskets. The officer now ordered the Corporal with three files to dislodge the enemy from this stronghold. The soldiers accordingly moved forward while Captain Thornton, with the rest of his party, followed in support. But immediate attack was prevented by the appearance of a woman on the top of the rock. "Stand!" she cried in commanding tones, "and tell me what you seek in Mac-Gregor's country." [Illustration: "THE soldiers accordingly moved forward while Captain Thornton, with the rest of his party, followed in support. But immediate attack was prevented by the appearance of a woman on the top of the rock. "'Stand!' she cried in commanding tones, 'and tell me what you seek in Mac-Gregor's country.'"] She was tall and imposing in figure. Her features had once been handsome, but were now wasted with grief and passion. She wore a man's plaid and belt, a man's bonnet was on her head, and she held a naked sword in her hand. "That's Helen Mac-Gregor, Rob's wife," said the Bailie, in a whisper of alarm; "there will be broken heads before long!" "What seek ye here?" she demanded again of Captain Thornton, who had advanced to reconnoitre. "We seek the outlaw Rob Roy Mac-Gregor Campbell," said the officer; "we make no war upon women. Therefore offer no opposition to the King's troops and assure yourself of civil treatment." "I am no stranger to your tender mercies," the woman said, "you have left me neither name nor fame--neither house nor hold, blanket nor bedding, cattle to feed us, nor flocks to clothe us! Ye have taken from us all--all! The very name of our ancestors ye have taken away, and now ye come for our lives!" "I seek no man's life," said the officer. "I only execute my orders. Forward there--march!" "Hurrah, boys--for Rob Roy's head and a purse of gold!" cried the Corporal, taking the word from his officer. He quickened his pace to a run, followed by his six men. But as they reached the first loop of the ascent of the cliff, there came the flash of a dozen muskets from both sides of the pass. The Corporal, shot through the body, still struggled to reach the summit. He clung to the rock, but after a desperate effort his grasp relaxed. He slipped from the bare face of the cliff into the deep lake, where he perished. Of the soldiers three fell with him, while the others retired as best they could upon their main body. "Grenadiers, to the front!" cried the steady voice of Captain Thornton, "open your pouches--handle your grenades--blow up your matches--fall on!" The whole party advanced with a shout, headed by Captain Thornton, the grenadiers preparing to throw their grenades among the bushes, and the rank and file ready to support them in a close and combined assault. Dougal, finding himself forgotten in the scuffle, had wisely crept into the thicket which overhung the road, and was already mounting the cliff with the agility of a wild-cat. Frank hastily followed his example. For the spattering fire, directed on the advancing party of soldiers, the loud reports of muskets, and the explosion of the grenades, made the path no comfortable place for those without arms. The Bailie, however, had only been able to scramble about twenty feet above the path when, his foot slipping, he would certainly have fallen into the lake had not the branch of a ragged thorn caught his riding-coat and supported him in mid-air, where he hung very like a sign in front of a hostelry. Andrew Fairservice had made somewhat better speed, but even he had only succeeded in reaching a ledge from which he could neither ascend nor yet come down. On this narrow promontory he footed it up and down, much like a hen on a hot girdle, and roared for mercy in Gaelic and English alternately, accordingly as he thought the victory inclined toward the soldiers or went in favour of the outlaws. But on this occasion it was the Highlanders who were destined to win. They fought altogether under cover, and, from the number of musket flashes they held also a great superiority in point of numbers. At all events Frank soon saw the English officer stripped of his hat and arms, and his men, with sullen and dejected countenances, delivering up their muskets to the victorious foe. The Bailie was, however, rescued by "the Dougal cratur," as the magistrate called him, who cut off the tails of his coat and lowered him to the ground. Then, when at last he was somewhat appeased, on account of Frank's seeming desertion, he counselled that they should be in no hurry to approach Mac-Gregor's wife, who would certainly be most dangerous in the moment of victory. Andrew Fairservice had already been espied on his airy perch, from which the Highlanders soon made him descend, by threatening him with their guns and even firing a stray shot or two over his head, so that presently he fell to the earth among them. The outlaws stood ready to receive him, and ere he could gain his legs, they had, with the most admirable celerity, stripped him of periwig, hat, coat, doublet, stockings, and shoes. In other circumstances this might have been amusing for Frank to watch. For though Andrew fell to the earth a well-clothed and decent burgher--he arose a forked, uncased, bald-pated, and beggarly-looking scarecrow. And indeed Frank and the Bailie would soon have shared the same fate, had not Dougal appeared on the scene in the nick of time, and compelled the plunderers to restore their spoil. So to Helen Mac-Gregor they were taken, Dougal fighting and screaming all the way, evidently determined to keep his captives to himself, or at least to prevent others from claiming them. With many but (considering the time and occasion) somewhat ill-chosen words of familiarity, the Bailie claimed kindred with Rob Roy's wife. But in this he did himself more harm than good, for his ill-timed jocularity grated on Helen Mac-Gregor's ear, in her present mood of exaltation, and she promptly commanded that the Sassenachs should one and all be bound and thrown into the deeps of the lake. But here Dougal threw himself between the angry woman and her prisoners with such vehemence that he was able to stave off, at least for a time, the execution of the supreme sentence. These men were, he said, friends of the Chief and had come up on his assurance to meet him at the Clachan of Aberfoil. But at that very moment the wild strains of the pibroch were heard approaching, and a strong body of Highlanders in the prime of life arrived on the scene. It now appeared that those who had fought and beaten the troops were either beardless boys or old men scarcely able to hold a musket. But there was no joy of victory on the faces of the newcomers. The pipes breathed a heart-breaking lament. _Rob Roy was taken!_ "Taken," repeated Helen Mac-Gregor, "taken!--And do you live to say so? Did I nurse you for this, coward dogs--that you should see your father prisoner, and come back to tell it?" The sons of Rob Roy, the elder James, tall and handsome, the younger Robin Oig, ruddy and dark, both hung their heads. And after the first burst of her indignation was over, the elder explained how Rob Roy had been summoned to bide tryst with--(here Frank Osbaldistone missed the name, but it sounded like his own). Having, however, some suspicion of treachery, Rob Roy had ordered the messenger to be detained, and had gone forth attended by only Angus Breck and little Rory. Within half an hour Angus Breck came back with the tidings that the Chief had been captured by a party of the Lennox militia under Galbraith of Garschattachin, who were in waiting for him. Helen Mac-Gregor had now two purposes to carry out. First, she sent messengers in every direction to gather assistance for an immediate attack on the Lowlanders, in order to effect the rescue of her husband. Second, she ordered the spy, whose false message had sent her husband to his doom, to be brought before her. For him there was no pity. When he was haled, pale and trembling before the enraged wife of the Mac-Gregor, what was Frank's astonishment to discover that he was none other than Morris, the very same man who had accused him of the robbery of his portmanteau at Squire Inglewood's, and whom he had last seen in the Glasgow College Yards, walking and talking with Rashleigh Osbaldistone. A brief command to her followers--and the wretched man was bound. A heavy stone was tied about his neck in a plaid, and he was hurled instantly into the depths of the lake, where he perished, amid the loud shouts of vindictive triumph which went up from the clan. INTERLUDE OF EXPOSTULATION "Oh, do go on," said Sweetheart, actually pushing the narrator's arm, as if to shake more of the tale out of him. "What a perfectly horrid place to stop at! Tell us what happened after." "Nothing more happened to Morris, I can promise you that!" I replied. "That's not nice of you," said Sweetheart. "I am quite sorry for the poor man--in spite of all he had done!" "Well, I'm not," said Sir Toady Lion, truculently, "he deserved it all, and more. He has done nothing but tell lies and betray people all through the story--right from the very beginning." "Besides, he was afraid!" said Hugh John, with whom this was the sin without forgiveness. "Well," said Sweetheart, "so am I afraid often--of mice, and rats, and horrid creeping things." "Huh," said Sir Toady, crinkling up his nose, "you are a girl--of course you are afraid!" "And I know," retorted Sweetheart, "two noble, brave, gallant, fearless, undaunted BOYS, who daren't go up to the garret in the dark--_there!_" "That's not fair," said Hugh John; "that was only once, after father had been telling us about the Hand-from-under-the-Bed that pulled the bedclothes off! Anybody would have been frightened at that. You, yourself--" "Oh, but I don't pretend," cried Sweetheart; "I don't need to. I am only a girl. But for all that, I went up and lit the candle in a bedroom belonging to two boys, who dared not even go up the stair holding each other by the hand!" "If you say that, I'll hit you," said Sir Toady. "Will you!" said Sweetheart, clearing for action; "we'll see about that. It's only mice _I_ am afraid of--not cowardly boys!" I hastened to still the rising storm, and in order to bring the conversation back to the subject of Rob Roy, I asked Hugh John if this were not more to his taste in the matter of heroes. "Oh, Rob Roy's all right," he said; "that is, when once you get to him. But Frank Osbaldistone is just like the rest--always being tied up, or taken round where he doesn't want to go. Besides, he ran away at the battle!" "Well," said I, "he had no arms, and besides it was not his quarrel. He couldn't fight either for the soldiers or for the Highlanders. At any rate, you can't deny that he did fight with Rashleigh in the College Yards of Glasgow!" "Yes, and he got wounded. And then Rob Roy threatened to lick them both--I don't count that much!" said the contemner of heroes. "But, at any rate, it was something. And he didn't go spooning about after girls--that's good, anyway." "Don't be too sure," said Sweetheart; "there's Die Vernon in the background." "Well, of course, a fellow _has_ to do some of it if he's a hero," said Hugh John, who has always high ideas of the proper thing; "it's in his part, you see, and he has to--else he wouldn't be respected. But I think if ever I had to be a hero, I would dress up Sir Toady for the girl's part. Then if he monkeyed too much, why--I could welt him well after. But (he added with a sigh), with a girl, you can't, of course." "Well, anyway," said Sweetheart, thinking that possibly the tale-teller might feel aggrieved at these uncomplimentary remarks, "_I_ think it is just a beautiful story, and I love the dear Bailie for being willing to go all that way with Frank, and get hung up in the tree by the coat-tails and all!" "Rats!" said Hugh John, contemptuously, "think if he had known _that_, he would ever have left Glasgow--not much!" "Well, it was beautiful, I think," said Sweetheart, "but I _am_ sorry that they drowned the poor man Morris, especially when he was so very frightened." But the instant indignant outcry of the boys silenced her. Lochs twelve feet deep, it speedily appeared, ought to be provided by law everywhere over the kingdoms three, for the accommodation of such "sweeps" and "sneaks" and "cowards." Then Mistress Margaret spoke up for the first time. She had been sitting with her eyes fixed dreamily on the sparkle of the logs in the library fireplace. "What a blessing it is," she said, "that this is a rainy Saturday, and so we do not need to wait for more. Please go on with the story--JUST where you left off." And Maid Margaret's form of government being absolute monarchy, I did so, and the result was THE THIRD TALE FROM "ROB ROY" I. IN THE HANDS OF THE PHILISTINES AFTER the victory of the Highlanders and the drowning of Morris the spy, it was for some little while touch-and-go whether the Bailie and Frank should be made to follow him to the bottom of the loch. But at last Frank was ordered to go as an ambassador to those who had captured Rob Roy, while the Bailie with Captain Thornton and all the other prisoners remained as hostages in the hands of the victorious Helen. This was the message he was to carry to the Sassenach. The whole district of the Lennox would be ravished if the Mac-Gregor were not set free within twelve hours. Farmhouses would be burned, stack-yard and byre made desolate. In every house there would be a crying of the death wail--the coronach of sorrow. Furthermore, to begin with, Helen Mac-Gregor promised that if her request was not granted within the time specified, she would send them this Glasgow Bailie, with the Saxon Captain, and all the captive soldiers, bundled together in a plaid, and chopped into as many pieces as there were checks in the tartan! When the angry Chieftainess paused in her denunciations, the cool level voice of the soldier struck in: "Give my compliments--Captain Thornton's of the Royal's--to the commanding officer, and tell him to do his duty and secure his prisoner, without wasting a thought on me. If I have been fool enough to let myself be led into this trap, I am at least wise enough to know how to die for it without disgracing the service. I am only sorry for my poor fellows," he added, "fallen into such butcherly hands!" But the Bailie's message was far different in tone. "Whisht, man, whisht," he cried, "are ye weary of your life? Ye'll gie _my_ service, Bailie Nicol Jarvie's service--a magistrate o' Glasgow, as his father was before him--to the commanding officer, and tell him that there are here a wheen honest men in sore trouble, and like to come to mair. And tell him that the best thing he can do for the common good is just to let Rob come his ways up the glen, and nae mair about it! There has been some ill done already, but as it has lighted mostly on the exciseman Morris it will not be muckle worth making a stir about!" So young Hamish Mac-Gregor led Frank Osbaldistone across the mountains to the place where his father's captors, the horsemen of the Lennox, had taken up their position on a rocky eminence, where they would be safe from any sudden attack of the mountaineers. Before parting he made Frank promise not to reveal, either who had guided him thither, or where he had parted from his conductor. Happily Frank was not asked either of these questions. He and Andrew (who, in a tattered cloak and with a pair of brogues on his feet, looked like a Highland scarecrow) were soon perceived by the sentries and conducted to the presence of the commanding officer, evidently a man of rank, in a steel cuirass, crossed by the ribband of the Thistle, to whom the others seemed to pay great deference. This proved to be no other than his Grace the Duke of Montrose, who in person had come to conduct the operations against his enemy, Rob Roy. Frank's message was instantly listened to, and very clearly and powerfully he pointed out what would occur if Rob Roy were not suffered to depart. But the Duke bade him return to those who sent him, and tell them that if they touched so much as a hair upon the heads of their hostages, he would make their glens remember it for a hundred years. As for Rob Roy, he must surely die! But Frank Osbaldistone pointed out that to return with such a message would be to go to certain death, and pleaded for some reply which might save the lives of Captain Thornton, the Bailie, and the soldiers who were captive in Helen Mac-Gregor's hands upon the hostile shores of Loch Ard. "Why, if you cannot go yourself, send your servant!" returned the Duke. At which Andrew burst forth. He had had, he said, enough and to spare of Highland hospitality. "The deil be in my feet," quoth Andrew, "if I go the length of my toe on such an errand. Do the folk think I have a spare windpipe in my pocket, after John Highlandman has slit this one with his jocteleg? Or that I can dive down at one side of a Highland loch and come up at the other like a sheldrake? Na, na, every one for himself, and God for us all! Folk may just go on their own errands. Rob Roy is no concern of mine. He never came near my native parish of Dreepdaily to steal either pippin or pear from me or mine!" The Duke seemed much affected by the hard case of the King's officer, but he replied that the state of the country must come first, and it was absolutely necessary that Rob Roy should die. He held to this resolution even when Galbraith of Garschattachin and others of his followers seemed inclined to put in a good word for Rob. He was about to examine the prisoner further, when a Highlander brought him a letter which seemed to cause the great man much annoyance. It announced that the Highland clans, on whom the Lowlanders had been relying, had made a separate peace with the enemy and had gone home. As the night was now fast coming on, the Duke ordered Garschattachin to draw off his party in one direction, while he himself would escort the prisoner to a place called Duchray. "Here's auld ordering and counter-ordering," growled Garschattachin between his teeth, "but bide a wee--we may, ere long, play at Change Seats--for the King's coming!" The two divisions of cavalry began to move down the valley at a slow trot. One party, that commanded by Galbraith, turned to the right, where they were to spend the night in an old castle, while the other, taking along with them Frank Osbaldistone, escorted the prisoner to a place of safety. Rob Roy was mounted behind one of the strongest men present, one Ewan of Brigglands, to whom he was fastened by a horse-belt passed round both and buckled before the yeoman's breast. Frank was set on a troop-horse and placed immediately behind. They were as closely surrounded by soldiers as the road would permit, and there were always one or two troopers, pistol in hand, riding on either side of Rob Roy. Nevertheless the dauntless outlaw was endeavouring all the time to persuade Ewan of Brigglands to give him a last chance for his life. "Your father, Ewan," he said, so low that Frank had difficulty in catching the words, "would not thus have carried an old friend to the shambles, like a calf, for all the dukes in Christendom!" To this Ewan returned no answer--only shrugging his shoulders as a sign that what he was doing was by no choice of his own. "And when the Mac-Gregors come down the glen," the voice of the tempter went on in Ewan's ear, "and ye see empty folds, a bloody hearthstone, and the fire flashing out between the rafters of your house, ye may be thinking then, Ewan, that were your friend Rob Roy to the fore, you might have had that safe, which it will make your heart sore to lose!" They were at this time halted on the river-bank, waiting for the signal to bring over the Mac-Gregor. Rob made one last attempt. "It's a sore thing," said Rob Roy, still closer in the ear of his conductor, "that Ewan of Brigglands, whom Rob Roy has helped with hand, sword, and purse, should mind a gloom from a great man more than a friend's life." Ewan, sorely agitated, was silent. Then came the Duke's loud call from the opposite bank, "Bring over the prisoner!" Dashing forward precipitately, Ewan's horse, with the two men on his back, entered the water. A soldier kept back Frank from following. But in the waning light he could see the Duke getting his people into order across the river, when suddenly a splash and a cry warned him that Rob had prevailed on Ewan of Brigglands to give him one more chance for life. II. THE ESCAPE In a moment all was confusion. The Duke shouted and ordered. Men rode hither and thither in the fast-falling darkness, some really anxious to earn the hundred guineas which the Duke promised to the captor of his foe, but the most part trying rather by shouting and confusion to cover Rob's escape. At one time, indeed, he was hardly pressed, several shots coming very near him before he could lose himself in the darkness. He was compelled to come to the surface to breathe, but in some way he contrived to loosen his plaid, which, floating down the stream, took off the attention of his more inveterate pursuers while he himself swam into safety. In the confusion Frank had been left alone upon the bank, and there he remained till he heard the baffled troopers returning, some with vows of vengeance upon himself. "Where is the English stranger?" called one; "it was he who gave Rob the knife to cut the belt!" "Cleave the pock-pudding to the chafts!" said another. "Put a brace of balls into his brain-pan!" suggested yet another. "Or three inches of cold iron into his briskit!" So, in order to nullify these various amiable intentions, Frank Osbaldistone leaped from his horse, and plunged into a thicket of alder trees, where he was almost instantly safe from pursuit. It was now altogether dark, and, having nowhere else to go, Frank resolved to retrace his way back to the little inn at which he had passed the previous night. The moon rose ere he had proceeded very far, bringing with it a sharp frosty wind which made Frank glad to be moving rapidly over the heather. He was whistling, lost in thought, when two riders came behind him, ranging up silently on either side. The man on the right of Frank addressed him in an English tongue and accent strange enough to hear in these wilds. "So ho, friend, whither so late?" "To my supper and bed at Aberfoil!" replied Frank, curtly. "Are the passes open?" the horseman went on, in the same commanding tone of voice. "I do not know," said Frank; "but if you are an English stranger, I advise you to turn back till daybreak. There has been a skirmish, and the neighbourhood is not perfectly safe for travellers." "The soldiers had the worst of it, had they not?" "They had, indeed--an officer's party was destroyed or made prisoners." "Are you sure of that?" persisted the man on horseback. "I was an unwilling spectator of the battle!" said Frank. "Unwilling! Were not you engaged in it?" "Certainly not," he answered, a little nettled at the man's tone. "I was held a prisoner by the King's officer!" "On what suspicion? And who and what are you?" "I really do not know, sir," said Frank, growing quickly angry, "why I should answer so many questions put to me by a stranger. I ask you no questions as to your business here, and you will oblige me by making no inquiries as to mine." But a new voice struck in, in tones which made every nerve in the young man's body tingle. "Mr. Francis Osbaldistone," it said, "should not whistle his favourite airs when he wishes to remain undiscovered." And Diana Vernon, for it was she, wrapped in a horseman's cloak, whistled in playful mimicry the second part of the tune, which had been on Frank's lips as they came up with him. "Great heavens, can it be you, Miss Vernon," cried Frank, when at last he found words, "in such a spot--at such an hour--in such a lawless country!" While Frank was speaking, he was trying to gain a glimpse of her companion. The man was certainly not Rashleigh. For so much he was thankful, at least, nor could the stranger's courteous address proceed from any of the other Osbaldistone brothers. There was in it too much good breeding and knowledge of the world for that. But there was also something of impatience in the attitude of Diana's companion, which was not long in manifesting itself. "Diana," he said, "give your cousin his property, and let us not spend time here." Whereupon Miss Vernon took out a small case, and with a deeper and graver tone of feeling she said, "Dear cousin, you see I was born to be your better angel. Rashleigh has been compelled to give up his spoil, and had we reached Aberfoil last night, I would have found some messenger to give you these. But now I have to do the errand myself." "Diana," said the horseman, "the evening grows late, and we are yet far from our home." "Pray consider, sir," she said, lightly answering him, "how recently I have been under control. Besides, I have not yet given my cousin his packet--or bidden him farewell--farewell forever! Yes, Frank, forever. (She added the last words in a lower tone.) There is a gulf fixed between us! Where I go, you must not follow--what we do, you must not share in--farewell--be happy!" In the attitude in which she bent from her Highland pony, the girl's face, perhaps not altogether unintentionally, touched that of Frank Osbaldistone. She pressed his hand, and a tear that had gathered on Die Vernon's eyelash found its way to the young man's cheek. That was all. It was but a moment, yet Frank Osbaldistone never forgot that moment. He stood dumb and amazed with the recovered treasure in his hand, mechanically counting the sparkles which flew from the horses' hoofs which carried away his lost Diana and her unknown companion. * * * * * Frank was still dreaming over his almost unbelievable encounter with Miss Vernon--more concerned perhaps, be it said, about the fact that she had wept to part with him than about the recovery of his father's papers, when another traveller overtook him, this time on foot. "A braw nicht, Mr. Osbaldistone," said a voice which there was no mistaking for that of the Mac-Gregor himself; "we have met at the mirk hour before now, I am thinking!" Frank congratulated the Chieftain heartily on his recent wonderful escape from peril. "Ay," said Rob Roy, coolly, "there is as much between the throat and the halter as between the cup and the lip. But tell me the news!" [Illustration: "IN the attitude in which she bent from her Highland pony, the girl's face, perhaps not altogether unintentionally, touched that of Frank Osbaldistone. She pressed his hand, and a tear that had gathered on Die Vernon's eyelash found its way to the young man's cheek."] He laughed heartily at the exploits of the Bailie and the red-hot coulter in the inn of Aberfoil, and at the apprehension of Frank and his companion by the King's officer. "As man lives by bread," he cried, "the buzzards have mistaken my friend the Bailie for his Excellency, and you for Diana Vernon--oh, the most egregious night owlets!" "Miss Vernon," said Frank, trying to gain what information he could, "does she still bear that name?" But the wary Highlander easily evaded him. "Ay, ay," he said, "she's under lawful authority now; and it's time, for she's a daft hempie. It's a pity that his Excellency is a thought elderly for her. The like of you or my son Hamish would have sorted better in point of years." This blow, which destroyed all Frank's hopes, quite silenced him--so much so that Rob Roy had to ask if he were ill or wearied with the long day's work, being, as he said, "doubtless unused to such things." But in order to divert his attention Mac-Gregor asked him as to the skirmish, and what had happened afterwards. It was with genuine agony that Rob Roy listened to the tale which Frank had to tell--though he modified, as far as he could, the treatment the Bailie and himself had met with from the Mac-Gregors. "And the excise collector," said Rob Roy; "I wish he may not have been at the bottom of the ploy himself! I thought he looked very queer when I told him that he must remain as a hostage for my safe return. I wager he will not get off without ransom!" "Morris," said Frank, with great solemnity, "has paid the last great ransom of all!" "Eh--what?" cried the Mac-Gregor, "what d'ye say? I trust it was in the skirmish that he was killed?" "He was slain in cold blood, after the fight was over, Mr. Campbell!" "Cold blood!" he muttered rapidly between his teeth, "how fell this? Speak out, man, and do not Mister or Campbell me--my foot is on my native heath, and my name is Mac-Gregor!" Without noticing the rudeness of his tone, Frank gave him a distinct account of the death of Morris. Rob Roy struck the butt of his gun with great vehemence on the ground, and broke out, "I vow to God, such a deed might make one forswear kin, clan, country, wife, and bairns! And yet the villain wrought long for it. He but drees the doom he intended for me. Hanging or drowning--it is just the same. But I wish, for all that, they had put a ball or a dirk through the traitor's breast. It will cause talk--the fashion of his death--though all the world knows that Helen Mac-Gregor has deep wrongs to avenge." Whereupon he quitted the subject altogether, and spoke of Frank Osbaldistone's affairs. He was glad to hear that he had received the stolen papers from Diana Vernon's own hands. "I was sure you would get them," he said; "the letter you brought me contained his Excellency's pleasure to that effect, and it was for that purpose I asked ye to come up the glen in order that I might serve you. But his Excellency has come across Rashleigh first." Rob Roy's words made much clear to the young man, yet some things remained mysterious. He remembered that Diana Vernon had left the library and immediately returned with the letter which was afterwards claimed by Rob Roy in the tolbooth of Glasgow. The person whom he now called his Excellency must therefore have been in Osbaldistone Hall at the same time as himself, and unknown to all except Diana and possibly to her cousin Rashleigh. Frank remembered the double shadows on the windows, and thought that he could now see the reason of those. But Rob would give him no clew as to who or what his Excellency was. "I am thinking," he said cautiously, "that if you do not know that already, it cannot be of much consequence for you to know at all. So I will e'en pass over that part of it. But this I will tell you. His Excellency was hidden by Diana Vernon in her own apartment at the Hall, as best reason was, all the time you were there. Only Sir Hildebrand and Rashleigh knew of it. You, of course, were out of the question, and as for the young squires, they had not enough wit among the five of them to call the cat from the cream!" The two travellers, thus talking together, had approached within a quarter of a mile from the village, when an outpost of Highlanders, springing upon them, bade them stand and tell their business. The single word _Gregarach_, pronounced in the deep commanding tones of Frank's companion, sufficed to call forth an answering yell of joyous recognition. The men threw themselves down before the escaped Chief, clasping his knees, and, as it were, worshipping him with eyes and lips, much as poor Dougal had done in the Glasgow tolbooth. The very hills resounded with the triumph. Old and young, both sexes and all ages, came running forth with shouts of jubilation, till it seemed as if a mountain torrent was hurrying to meet the travellers. Rob Roy took Frank by the hand, and he did not allow any to come near him till he had given them to understand that his companion was to be well and carefully treated. So literally was this command acted upon, that for the time being Frank was not even allowed the use of his limbs. He was carried--will he, nill he--in triumph toward the inn of Mrs. MacAlpine. It was in Frank's heart that he might possibly meet there with Diana Vernon, but when he entered and looked around, the only known face in the smoky hovel was that of the Bailie, who, with a sort of reserved dignity, received the greetings of Rob Roy, his apologies for the indifferent accommodation which he could give him, and his well-meant inquiries after his health. "I am well, kinsman," said the Bailie, "one cannot expect to carry the Salt Market of Glasgow at one's tail, as a snail does his shell. But I am blithe to see that ye have gotten out of the hands of your unfriends!" The Bailie, however, cheered by Highland refreshment, presently unbent and had many things to say. He would also have spoken concerning Helen Mac-Gregor. But Rob stopped him. "Say nothing of my wife," he said sternly; "of me, ye are welcome to speak your full pleasure." Next the Bailie offered to bind Rob's two sons as apprentices to the weaving trade, which well-meant proposition produced from the outlaw the characteristic anathema, mostly (and happily) conceived in Gaelic, "_Ceade millia diaoul!_ My sons weavers! _Millia molligheart!_ But I would rather see every loom in Glasgow, beam, traddles, and shuttles, burnt in the deil's ain fire sooner!" However Rob Roy honestly paid the Bailie his thousand merks, principal and interest, in good French gold. And Frank quite won the outlaw's heart by the suggestion that the foreign influence of the house of Osbaldistone and Tresham could easily push the fortune of Hamish and Robin in the service of the King of France or in that of his Majesty of Spain. Rob could not for the present accept, he said. There was other work to be done at home. But all the same he thanked him for the offer, with, as it seemed, some considerable emotion. Already Frank was learning the truth that a hard man is always more moved by what one may do for his children, than with what one does for himself. Lastly he sent "the Dougal cratur," dressed in Andrew Fairservice's ancient garments, to see them safe upon their way. He had a boat in waiting for them on Loch Lomond side, and there on the pebbles the Bailie and his cousin bade each other farewell. They parted with much mutual regard, and even affection--the Bailie at the last saying to Rob Roy that if ever he was in need of a hundred "or even twa hundred pounds sterling," he had only to send a line to the Salt Market. While the chief answered that if ever anybody should affront his kinsman, the Bailie had only to let him ken, and he would pull the ears out of his head if he were the best man in Glasgow! With these assurances of high mutual consideration, the boat bore away for the southwest angle of the lake. Rob Roy was left alone on the shore, conspicuous by his long gun, waving tartans, and the single tall feather in his bonnet which denoted the chieftain. The travellers arrived safely in Glasgow, when the Bailie went instantly home, vowing aloud that since he had once more gotten within sight of St. Mungo's steeple, it would be a long day and a short one before he ventured out of eye-shot of it again. As for Frank, he made his way to his lodgings in order to seek out Owen. The door was opened by Andrew Fairservice, who set up a joyous shout, and promptly ushered the young man into the presence of the Head Clerk. But Mr. Owen was not alone. Mr. Osbaldistone the elder was there also, and in another moment Frank was folded in his father's arms. III. THE DEATH OF RASHLEIGH * * * * * Mr. Osbaldistone's first impulse seemed to be to preserve his dignity. But nature was too strong for him. "My son--my dear son!" he murmured. The head of the firm of Osbaldistone and Tresham had returned from Holland sooner than was expected, and with the resources which he had gathered there, and being now in full credit, he had no difficulty in solving the financial problems which had weighed so heavily upon the house in his absence. He refused, however, every tender of apology from MacVittie and Company, settled the balance of their account, and announced to them that that page of their ledger, with all the advantages connected with it, was closed to them forever. Soon after the home-coming of Frank Osbaldistone from the Highlands and his reconciliation with his father, the great Jacobite rebellion of 1715 broke out, in which the greater part of the Highlands burst into a flame, as well as much of the more northerly parts of England. Sir Hildebrand led out his sons to battle--all, that is to say, with the exception of Rashleigh, who had changed his politics and become a spy on behalf of the government of King George. But it was not the will of Fate that the name of Osbaldistone should make any figure in that short and inglorious campaign. Thorncliff was killed in a duel with one of his brother officers. The sot Percie died shortly after, according to the manner of his kind. Dickon broke his neck in spurring a blood mare beyond her paces. Wilfred the fool died fighting at Proud Preston on the day of the Barricades; and his gallantry was no less that he could never remember an hour together for which king he was doing battle. John also behaved boldly and died of his wounds a few days after in the prison of Newgate, to the despair of old Sir Hildebrand, who did not long survive him. Indeed he willingly laid himself down to die, after having first disinherited Rashleigh as a traitor, and left his much encumbered estates to his nephew, Frank Osbaldistone. Mr. Osbaldistone the elder now took an unexpected view of his son's prospects. He had cared nothing for his family in the past--indeed, never since he had been expelled from Osbaldistone Hall to make way for his younger brother. But now he willingly spent his money in taking up the mortgages upon the Osbaldistone estates, and he urged upon Frank the necessity of going down at once to the Hall, lest Rashleigh should get before him in that possession which is nine points of the law. So to Osbaldistone Hall went Frank once more, his heart not a little sore within him for the good days he had spent in it, and especially because of the thought that he would now find there no madcap Die Vernon to tease and torment him out of his life. First of all, to make his title clear, Frank had been desired to visit the hospitable house of old Justice Inglewood, with whom Sir Hildebrand had deposited his will. As it chanced, it was in that good gentleman's power to give the young man some information which interested him more than the right of possession to many Osbaldistone Halls. After dinner in the evening Frank and the Justice were sitting together, when all of a sudden Squire Inglewood called upon his companion to pledge a bumper to "dear Die Vernon, the rose of the wilderness, the heath-bell of Cheviot, that blossom transported to an infamous convent!" "Is not Miss Vernon, then, married?" cried Frank, in great astonishment, "I thought his Excellency--" "Pooh--pooh! His Excellency and his Lordship are all a humbug now, you know," said the Justice; "mere St. Germains titles--Earl of Beauchamp and ambassador plenipotentiary from France, when the Duke Regent scarce knew that he lived, I daresay. But you must have seen old Sir Frederick Vernon at the hall, when he played the part of Father Vaughan?" "Good Heavens," cried Frank, "then Father Vaughan was Miss Vernon's father?" "To be sure he was," said the Justice, coolly; "there's no use keeping the secret now, for he must be out of the country by this time--otherwise no doubt it would be my duty to apprehend him. Come, off with your bumper to my dear lost Die!" So Frank fared forth to Osbaldistone Hall, uncertain whether to be glad or sorry at Squire Inglewood's news. Finally he decided to be glad--or at least as glad as he could. For Diana, though equally lost to him, was at least not wedded to any one else. Syddall, the old butler of Sir Hildebrand, seemed at first very unwilling to admit them, but Frank's persistence, together with Andrew Fairservice's insolence, made a way into the melancholy house. Frank ordered a fire to be lighted in the library. Syddall tried to persuade him to take up his quarters elsewhere, on the plea that the library had not been sat in for a long time, and that the chimney smoked. To the old man's confusion, however, when they entered the room, a fire was blazing in the grate. He took up the tongs to hide his confusion, muttering, "It is burning clear now, but it smoked woundily in the morning!" Next Frank ordered Andrew to procure him two stout fellows of the neighbourhood on whom he could rely, who would back the new proprietor, in case of Rashleigh attempting any attack during Frank's stay in the home of his fathers. Andrew soon returned with a couple of his friends--or, as he described them, "sober, decent men, weel founded in doctrinal points, and, above all, as bold as lions." Syddall, however, shook his head at sight of them. "I maybe cannot expect that your Honour should put confidence in what I say, but it is Heaven's truth for all that. Ambrose Wingfield is as honest a man as lives, but if there be a false knave in all the country, it is his brother Lancie. The whole country knows him to be a spy for Clerk Jobson on the poor gentlemen that have been in trouble. But he's a dissenter, and I suppose that's enough nowadays." The evening darkened down, and trimming the wood fire in the old library Frank sat on, dreaming dreams in which a certain lady occupied a great place. He chanced to lift his eyes at a sound which seemed like a sigh, and lo! Diana Vernon stood before him. She was resting on the arm of a figure so like the portrait on the wall that involuntarily Frank raised his eyes to the frame to see whether it was not indeed empty. But the figures were neither painted canvas nor yet such stuff as dreams are made of. Diana Vernon and her father--for it was they--stood before the young man in actual flesh and blood. Frank was so astonished that for a while he could not speak, and it was Sir Frederick who first broke the silence. "We are your suppliants, Mr. Osbaldistone," he said; "we claim the refuge and protection of your roof, till we can pursue a journey where dungeons and death gape for me at every step!" "Surely you cannot suppose--" Frank found words with great difficulty--"Miss Vernon cannot suppose that I am so ungrateful--that I could betray any one--much less you!" "I know it," said Sir Frederick, "though I am conferring on you a confidence which I would have been glad to have imposed on any one else. But my fate, which has chased me through a life of perils, is now pressing me hard, and, indeed, leaving me no alternative." At this moment the door opened, and the voice of Andrew Fairservice was heard without. "I am bringing in the candles--ye can light them when ye like--'can do' is easy carried about with one!" Frank had just time to rush to the door and thrust the officious rascal out, shutting the door upon him. Then, remembering the length of his servant's tongue, he made haste to follow him to the hall to prevent his gabbling of what he might have seen. Andrew's voice was loud as Frank opened the door. "What is the matter with you, you fool?" he demanded; "you stare and look wild as if you had seen a ghost." "No--no--nothing," stammered Andrew, "only your Honour was pleased to be hasty!" Frank Osbaldistone immediately dismissed the two men whom Andrew had found for him, giving them a crown-piece to drink his health, and they withdrew, apparently contented and unsuspicious. They certainly could have no further talk with Andrew that night, and it did not seem possible that in the few moments which Andrew had spent in the kitchen before Frank's arrival, he could have had time to utter two words. But sometimes only two words can do a great deal of harm. On this occasion they cost two lives. "You now know my secret," said Diana Vernon; "you know how near and dear is the relative who has so long found shelter here. And it will not surprise you, that, knowing such a secret, Rashleigh should rule me with a rod of iron." But in spite of all that had happened, Sir Frederick was a strict and narrow Catholic, and Frank found him more than ever determined to sacrifice his daughter to the life of the convent. "She has endured trials," he said, "trials which might have dignified the history of a martyr. She has spent the day in darkness and the night in vigil, and never breathed a syllable of weakness or complaint. In a word, Mr. Osbaldistone, she is a worthy offering to that God to whom I dedicate her, as all that is left dear or precious to Frederick Vernon!" Frank felt stunned and bewildered when at last they retired. But he had sufficient forethought to order a bed to be made up for him in the library, and dismissed Syddall and Andrew with orders not to disturb him till seven o'clock in the morning. That night Frank lay long awake, and was at last dropping over to sleep when he was brought back to consciousness by a tremendous noise at the front door of Osbaldistone Hall. He hastened downstairs only in time to hear Andrew Fairservice bidding Syddall stand aside. "We hae naething to fear if they come in King George's name," he was saying; "we hae spent baith bluid and gold for him." In an agony of terror Frank could hear bolt after bolt withdrawn by the officious scoundrel, who continued to boast all the while of his master's loyalty to King George. He flew instantly to Diana's room. She was up and dressed. "We are familiar with danger," she said with a sad smile. "I have the key of the little garden door. We will escape by it. Only keep them a few moments in play! And dear, dear Frank, again--for the last time, farewell!" By this time the men were on the stairway, and presently rapping on the library door. "You robber dogs!" cried Frank, wilfully misunderstanding their purpose; "if you do not instantly quit the house, I will fire a blunderbuss upon you through the door!" "Fire a fool's bauble," returned Andrew Fairservice; "it's Clerk Jobson with a legal warrant--" "To search for, take, and apprehend," said the voice of that abominable pettifogger, "the bodies of certain persons in my warrant named, charged of high treason under the 13th of King William, chapter third." The violence on the door was renewed. "I am rising, gentlemen," said Frank, trying to gain as much time as possible; "commit no violence--give me leave to look at your warrant, and if it is formal and legal, I shall not oppose it." "God save great George our King," cried Andrew Fairservice, "I telled ye that ye would find no Jacobites here!" At last the door had to be opened, when Clerk Jobson and several assistants entered. The lawyer showed a warrant for the arrest of Diana Vernon, her father,--and, to his surprise, of Frank himself. Clerk Jobson, evidently well-informed, went directly to Diana's chamber. "The hare has stolen away," he said brutally, "but her form is still warm. The greyhounds will have her by the haunches yet." A scream from the garden announced that he had prophesied too truly. In five minutes more Rashleigh entered the library with Diana and her father, Sir Frederick, as his prisoners. "The fox," he said, "knew his old earth, but he forgot it could be stopped by a careful huntsman. I had not forgot the garden gate, Sir Frederick--or, if the title suits you better, my most noble Lord Beauchamp!" "Rashleigh," said Sir Frederick, "thou art a most detestable villain!" "I better deserved the name, my Lord," said Rashleigh, turning his eyes piously upward, "when under an able tutor I sought to introduce civil war into a peaceful country. But I have since done my best to atone for my errors." Frank Osbaldistone could hold out no longer. "If there is one thing on earth more hideous than another," he cried, "it is villainy masked by hypocrisy!" "Ha, my gentle cousin," said Rashleigh, holding a candle toward Frank and surveying him from head to foot, "right welcome to Osbaldistone Hall. I can forgive your spleen. It is hard to lose an estate and a sweetheart in one night. For now we must take possession of this poor manor-house in the name of the lawful heir, Sir Rashleigh Osbaldistone!" But though Rashleigh braved it out thus, he was clearly far from comfortable, and especially did he wince when Diana told him that what he had now done had been the work of an hour, but that it would furnish him with reflections for a lifetime. "And of what nature these will be," she added, "I leave to your own conscience, which will not slumber forever!" So presently the three prisoners were carried off. Syddall and Andrew were ordered to be turned out of the house, the latter complaining bitterly. "I only said that surely my master was speaking to a ghost in the library--and that villain Lancie--thus to betray an auld friend that has sung aff the same Psalm-book wi' him for twenty years!" However, Andrew had just got clear of the avenue when he fell among a drove of Highland cattle, the drivers of which questioned him tightly as to what had happened at the Hall. They then talked in whispers among themselves till the lumbering sound of a coach was heard coming down the road from the house. The Highlanders listened attentively. The escort consisted of Rashleigh and several peace-officers. So soon as the carriage had passed the avenue gate, it was shut behind the cavalcade by a Highlandman, stationed there for the purpose. At the same time the carriage was impeded in its further progress by some felled trees which had been dragged across the road. The cattle also got in the way of the horses, and the escort began to drive them off with their whips. "Who dares abuse our cattle," said a rough voice; "shoot him down, Angus!" "A rescue--a rescue!" shouted Rashleigh, instantly comprehending what had taken place, and, firing a pistol, he wounded the man who had spoken. "_Claymore!_" cried the leader of the Highlanders, and an affray instantly engaged. The officers of the law, unused to such prompt bloodshed, offered little real resistance. They galloped off in different directions as fast as their beasts would carry them. Rashleigh, however, who had been dismounted, maintained on foot a desperate and single-handed conflict with the leader of the band. At last he dropped. "Will you ask forgiveness for the sake of God, King James, and auld friendship?" demanded a voice which Frank knew well. "No, never!" cried Rashleigh, fiercely. "Then, traitor, die in your treason!" retorted Mac-Gregor, and plunged his sword into the prostrate antagonist. Rob Roy then drew out the attorney Clerk Jobson from the carriage, more dead than alive, and threw him under the wheel. "Mr. Osbaldistone," he said in Frank's ear, "you have nothing to fear. Your friends will soon be in safety. Farewell, and forget not the Mac-Gregor!" * * * * * "_And that_," I said, "_is all!_" But I was instantly overwhelmed by the rush of a living wave. "No, no," cried the children, throwing themselves upon me, "you must tell us what became of Rob Roy--of the Bailie--of Dougal!" These demands came from the boys. "And if Diana married Frank, or went to the convent?" interjected Sweetheart. "Well," I said, "I can soon answer all these questions. Sir Frederick died soon after, but before his end he relieved his daughter from her promise to enter a convent. She married Mr. Frank Osbaldistone instead." "And lived happy ever after?" added Maid Margaret, who was at the "fairy princess" stage of literature. "Except when she got cross with him," commented Sir Toady, an uncompromising realist, with pessimistic views on womenkind. "And Rob Roy held his ground among his native mountains until he died." "Tell us about the Bailie," said Hugh John; "I liked the Bailie--he's jolly!" I told him that he was far from being alone in that opinion. "The Bailie," I answered, "lived, as the Maid says, happily ever after, having very wisely married his servant Mattie. He carried on all the northern affairs of Osbaldistone and Tresham, now a greater commercial house than ever, and lived to be Lord Provost of the city of Glasgow." "Let Glasgow flourish!" cried Sir Toady, spontaneously. And the audience concluded the fourth tale and last from _Rob Roy_ with a very passable imitation of a Highland yell. THE END OF THE LAST TALE FROM "ROB ROY." RED CAP TALES TOLD FROM THE ANTIQUARY THE FIRST TALE FROM "THE ANTIQUARY" THE children lay prone on the floor of the library in various positions of juvenile comfort, watching the firewood in the big wide grate sparkle and crackle, or the broad snowflakes "spat" against the window-panes, where they stuck awhile as if gummed, and then began reluctantly to trickle down. As Sir Toady Lion said, "It was certainly a nice day on which to stop IN!" The choice of the book from which to tell the next Red Cap Tale had been a work of some difficulty. Hugh John had demanded _Ivanhoe_, chiefly because there was a chapter in it about shooting with the bow, the which he had read in his school reader when he ought to have been preparing his Latin. Sir Toady wanted _The Fortunes of Nigel_, because the title sounded adventurous. Sweetheart, who has been sometimes to the play, was insistent for _The Bride of Lammermoor_, while as to Maid Margaret, she was indifferent, so long as it was "nice and eecitin'." But the tale-teller, being in the position of the Man-with-the-Purse (or in that of the House of Commons with regard to the granting of supplies), held to it that, in spite of its "growed-up" title, _The Antiquary_ would be the most suitable. First, because we had agreed to go right through the Scottish stories; secondly, because _The Antiquary_ was one of the first which Sir Walter wrote; and thirdly and lastly, because he, the tale-teller aforesaid, "felt like it." At this, I saw Hugh John look at his brother with the quick glance of intelligence which children exchange when they encounter the Superior Force. That unspoken message said clearly and neatly, "Pretty thing asking us to select the book, when he had it all settled from the start!" Nevertheless, I made no remark, but with my eyes on the click of Sweetheart's knitting needles (for in the intervals of nursery wars Sweetheart grows a diligent housewife), I began in the restful silence of that snowy Saturday my first tale from _The Antiquary_. I. THE MYSTERIOUS MR. LOVEL As though all the tin pots on a tinker's wagon had been jolted and jangled, the bells of St. Giles's steeple in Edinburgh town, had just told the hour of noon. It was the time for the Queensferry diligence (which is to say, omnibus) to set out for the passage of the Firth, if it were to catch the tide of that day, and connect with the boat which sets passengers from the capital upon the shores of Fife. A young man had been waiting some time. An old one had just bustled up. "Deil's in it!" cried the latter, with a glance at the dial of the church clock, "I am late, after all!" But the young man, saluting, informed him that, instead of being late, he was early--so far, that is, as the coach was concerned. It had not yet appeared upon the stand. This information first relieved the mind of the old gentleman, and then, after a moment or two, began (no difficult matter) to arouse his anger. "Good woman! good woman!" he cried down one of the area stairs, common in the old town of Edinburgh. Then he added in a lower tone, "Doited old hag! she's deaf as a post. I say, Mrs. Macleuchar!" But Mrs. Macleuchar, the proprietress of the Queensferry diligence, was in no hurry to face the wrath of the public. She served her customer quietly in the shop below, ascended the stairs, and when at last on the level of the street, she looked about, wiped her spectacles as if a mote upon them might have caused her to overlook so minute an object as an omnibus, and exclaimed, "Did ever anybody see the like o' this?" "Yes, you abominable woman," cried the traveller, "many have seen the like before, and all will yet see the like again, that have aught to do with your trolloping sex!" And walking up and down the pavement in front of Mrs. Macleuchar's booth, he delivered a volley of abuse each time he came in front of it, much as a battleship fires a broadside as she passes a hostile fortress, till the good woman was quite overwhelmed. "Oh! man! man!" she cried, "take back your three shillings and make me quit o' ye!" "Not so fast--not so fast," her enemy went on; "will three shillings take me to Queensferry according to your deceitful programme? Or will it pay my charges there, if, by your fault, I should be compelled to tarry there a day for want of tide? Will it even hire me a pinnace, for which the regular price is five shillings?" But at that very moment the carriage lumbered up, and the two travellers were carried off, the elder of them still leaning out of the window and shouting reproaches at the erring Mrs. Macleuchar. The slow pace of the broken-down horses, and the need to replace a shoe at a wayside smithy, still further delayed the progress of the vehicle, and when they arrived at Queensferry, the elder traveller, Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck by name, saw at once, by the expanse of wet sand and the number of the black glistening rocks visible along the shore, that the time of tide was long past. But he was less angry than his young companion, Mr. Lovel, had been led to expect from the scolding he had bestowed upon Mrs. Macleuchar in the city. On the way the two had discovered a kindred taste for antique literature and the remains of the past, upon which last Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck was willing to discourse, as the saying is, till all was blue. The Hawes Inn sat (and still sits) close by the wash of the tides which scour the Firth of Forth on its southern side. It was then an old-fashioned hostelry, overgrown on one side with ivy, and with the woods of Barnbogle growing close down behind it. The host was very willing to provide dinner and shelter for the two guests, and, indeed, there was a suspicion that Mr. Mackitchinson of the Hawes was in league with Mrs. Macleuchar of the Tron, and that this fact went far to explain the frequent late appearance of the coach with "the three yellow wheels and a black one" belonging to that lady, upon the High Street of Edinburgh. At the Hawes Inn, therefore, the time of waiting before dinner was sufficient for young Mr. Lovel to step out and discover who his amusing and irascible companion of voyage might be. At South Queensferry every one knew Mr. Oldbuck of Monkbarns. Bred a lawyer, he had never practised, being ever more interested in the antiquities of his native country than in sitting in an office among legal documents and quill pens. The death of his brother had made him heir to all his father's property, and in due time he had settled comfortably down to country life and Roman inscriptions at the family seat of Monkbarns, near by to the town of Fairport, the very town to which Mr. Lovel was at that moment making his way. Mr. Oldbuck, though equally anxious, was unable to discover anything about his travelling companion. He had, however, discussed the elder dramatists with him, and found him so strong in the subject, that his mind, always searching for the reasons of things, promptly set the young man down as an actor travelling to Fairport, to fulfil an engagement at the theatre there. "Yes," he said to himself, "Lovel and Belville--these are just the names which youngsters are apt to assume on such occasions--on my life I am sorry for the lad!" It was this thought which made Mr. Oldbuck, though naturally and of habit very careful of his sixpences, slip round to the back of the Hawes Inn and settle the bill with the landlord. It was this which made him propose to pay two-thirds of the post-chaise which was to carry them across to Fairport, when at last they set foot on the northern side of the Firth. Arrived at their destination, Mr. Oldbuck recommended Lovel to the care of a decent widow, and so left him with many friendly expressions, in order to proceed to his own house of Monkbarns. But no Mr. Lovel appeared on the boards of the theatre at Fairport. On the contrary, not even the town gossips, who, having no business of their own to attend to, take charge of other people's, could find out anything about him. Furthermore they could say no evil. The Sheriff called upon him, but the stranger had evidently fully satisfied the man of law, for on his return home he sent him an invitation to dinner, which was, however, civilly declined. He paid his bills and meddled with no one. All which being reported, more or less faithfully, to the proprietor of Monkbarns, caused the young man to rise in his estimation, as one who had too much good sense to trouble himself with the "bodies" of Fairport. It was five days before Lovel made his way out to the House of Monkbarns to pay his respects. The mansion had once on a time been the storehouse of the vanished Abbey. There the monks had stored the meal which the people dwelling on their lands brought to them instead of rent. Lovel found it a rambling, hither-and-thither old house, with tall hedges of yew all about it. These last were cut into arm-chairs, crowing cocks, and St. Georges in the act of slaying many dragons, all green and terrible. But one great yew had been left untouched by the shears, and under it Lovel found his late fellow-traveller sitting, spectacles on nose, reading the _London Chronicle_. The old gentleman immediately rose to welcome his guest, and having taken him indoors, he guided him with some difficulty to the "den," as he called his study. Here Mr. Oldbuck found his niece in company with a serving-maid, both in the midst of a thick cloud of dust, endeavouring to reduce the place to some order and cleanliness. The Antiquary instantly exploded, as is the manner of all book-lovers when their "things" are disarranged. "How dare you, or Jenny either, presume to meddle with my private affairs? Go sew your sampler, you monkey, and do not let me find you here again as you value your ears--" "Why, uncle," said the girl, who still stood her ground, "your room was not fit to be seen, and I just came to see that Jenny laid everything down where she took it up." In the midst of a second discharge of great guns the young lady made her escape, with a half-humorous courtesy to Lovel. It was, indeed, some time before the young man could see, through the dense clouds of dust (which, as the Antiquary said, had been ancient and peaceful enough only an hour ago) the chamber of Mr. Oldbuck, full of great books, littered with ancient maps, engravings, scraps of parchment, old armour, broadswords, and Highland targets. In the midst of all crouched a huge black cat, glaring steadily with great yellow eyes out of the murky confusion, like the familiar spirit of this wizard's den. So, after showing Lovel many of his most valuable antiquities, and in especial his treasured books, Mr. Oldbuck gladly led the way into the open air. He would take his visitor, he said, to the Kaim of Kinprunes. It was on his own land, he affirmed, and not very far away. Arrived at a little barren eminence, the Antiquary demanded of his friend what he saw. "A very fine view!" said Lovel, promptly. But this was not the response for which the proud owner was waiting. He went on to ask Lovel if he did not see anything remarkable on the surface of the ground. "Why, yes," said Lovel, readily, "I do see something like a ditch, indistinctly marked." At this, however, the Antiquary was most indignant. "Indistinct!" he cried, "why, the indistinctness must be in your own eyes. It was clear even to that light-headed lassie, my niece, at the first glance. Here on this very Kaim of Kinprunes was fought out the final conflict between Agricola and the Caledonians! The record says--let me remind you--'in sight of the Grampian Hills.' Yonder they are! _In conspectu classis_,--'in sight of the fleet,'--and where will you find a finer bay than that on your right hand? From this very fortification, doubtless, Agrippa looked down on the immense army of Caledonians occupying the slopes of the opposite hill, the infantry rising rank over rank, the cavalry and charioteers scouring the more level space below. From this very _prætorium_--" But a voice from behind interrupted the Antiquary's poetic description, for his voice had mounted almost into a kind of ecstasy. "_Prætorian here--Prætorian there--I mind the bigging o't!_" Both at once turned round, Lovel surprised, and the Antiquary both surprised and angry. An old man in a huge slouched hat, a long white grizzled beard, weather-beaten features of the colour of brick-dust, a long blue gown with a pewter badge on the right arm, stood gazing at them. In short, it was Edie Ochiltree, the King's Blue-Gownsman, which is to say, privileged beggar. "What is that ye say, Edie?" demanded Oldbuck, thinking that his ears must have deceived him. "About this bit bower, Monkbarns," said the undaunted Edie, "I mind the biggin' (building) o' it!" "The deil ye do!" said the Antiquary with scorn in his voice; "why, you old fool, it was here before ye were born, and will be here after ye are hanged." "Hanged or drowned, alive or dead," said Edie, sticking to his guns, "I mind the biggin' o't!" "You--you--you," stammered the Antiquary, between confusion and anger, "you strolling old vagabond, what ken ye about it?" "Oh, I ken just this about it, Monkbarns," he answered, "and what profit have I in telling ye a lie? It was just some mason-lads and me, with maybe two or three herds, that set to work and built this bit thing here that ye call the prætorian, to be a shelter for us in a sore time of rain, at auld Aiken Drum's bridal. And look ye, Monkbarns, dig down, and ye will find a stone (if ye have not found it already) with the shape of a spoon and the letters A.D.L.L. on it--that is to say Aiken Drum's Lang Ladle." The Antiquary blushed crimson with anger and mortification. For indoors he had just been showing that identical stone to Lovel as his chiefest treasure, and had interpreted the ladle as a Roman sacrificing vessel, and the letters upon it as a grave Latin inscription, carved by Agrippa himself to celebrate his victory. Lovel was inclined to be amused by the old beggar's demolishing of all the Antiquary's learned theories, but he was speedily brought to himself by Edie Ochiltree's next words. "That young gentleman, too, I can see, thinks little o' an auld carle like me, yet I'll wager I could tell him where he was last night in the gloaming, only maybe he would not like to have it spoken of in company!" It was now Lovel's turn to blush, which he did with the vivid crimson of two-and-twenty. "Never mind the old rogue," said Mr. Oldbuck, "and don't think that I think any the worse of you for your profession. They are only prejudiced fools and coxcombs who do that." For, in spite of Lovel's interest in ancient history, it still remained in the Antiquary's mind that his young friend must be an actor by profession. But to this Lovel paid no attention. He was engaged in making sure of Edie's silence by the simple method of passing a crown-piece out of his own pocket into the Blue-Gown's hand; while Monkbarns, equally willing to bridle his tongue as to the building of the prætorian, was sending him down to the mansion house for something to eat and a bottle of ale thereto. * * * * * II. THE NIGHT OF STORM The Antiquary continued to hear good reports of his young friend, and, as it struck him that the lad must be lonely in such a place as Fairport, he resolved to ask Lovel to dinner, in order to show him the best society in the neighbourhood--that is to say, his friend, Sir Arthur Wardour of Knockwinnock, and his daughter Isabella. Sir Arthur was something of an antiquary also, but far less learned and serious than Mr. Oldbuck. Living so near each other the two quarrelled often about the Pictish Kings of Scotland, the character of Queen Mary, and even other matters more modern--such as the lending of various sums of money. For Sir Arthur always wanted to borrow, whereas the Antiquary did not always want to lend. Sir Arthur was entirely careless as to paying back, while Mr. Oldbuck stood firmly rooted upon the rights of principal and interest. But on the whole they were good friends enough, and the Baronet accordingly accepted, in a letter written by his daughter, the invitation to Monkbarns. Lovel arrived punctually on the afternoon appointed, for, in the Antiquary's day, dinners took place at four o'clock! It was a brooding, thundery day, sultry and threatening--the 17th of July, according to the calendar. Mr. Oldbuck had time to introduce his "most discreet sister Griselda" as he called her, who came arrayed in all the finery of half a century before, and wearing a mysterious erection on her head, something between a wedding-cake and the Tower of Babel in a picture Bible, while his niece, Miss MacIntyre, a pretty young woman with something of bright wit about her, which came undoubtedly from her uncle's family, was arrayed more in the fashion of the day. Sir Arthur, with his daughter on his arm, presently arrived, and respects, compliments, and introductions were interchanged. The dinner was made up chiefly of Scottish national dainties, and everything went well, save that the solan goose, a fragrant bird at all times, proved so underdone that Mr. Oldbuck threatened to fling it at the head of the housekeeper. As soon as the ladies left the dining room, Sir Arthur and the Antiquary plunged into their controversies, with a bottle of good port wine between them, while Lovel set himself to listen with much amusement. The language of the Picts, the building of the earliest Edinburgh Castle, with other subjects, on none of which they agreed, made the two wiseacres grow hotter and hotter, till at last the wrath of the man of pedigree was roused by a chance statement of the Antiquary's that the Baronet's famous ancestor, Gamelyn de Guardover, who had signed the Ragman Roll, showed thereby a mean example of submitting to Edward of England. "It is enough, sir," said Sir Arthur, starting up fiercely. "I shall hereafter take care how I honour with my company one who shows himself so ungrateful for my condescension." "In that you will do as you find most agreeable, Sir Arthur," returned the Antiquary. "I hope that, as I was not aware of the full extent of the obligation you had done me by visiting my poor house, I may be excused for not having carried my gratitude to the extent of servility." "Mighty well--mighty well, Mr. Oldbuck--I wish you a good evening, Mr.--ah--ah--Shovel--I wish you a very good evening." And so saying Sir Arthur flounced out, and with long strides traversed the labyrinth of passages, seeking for the drawing-room of Monkbarns. "Did you ever see such a tup-headed old ass?" said the Antiquary, "but I must not let him burst in on the ladies in this mad way either." So Mr. Oldbuck ran after his adversary, who was in great danger of tumbling down the back stairs and breaking his shins over various collections of learned and domestic rubbish piled in dark corners. "Stay a minute, Sir Arthur," said the Antiquary, at last capturing him by the arm; "don't be quite so hasty, my good old friend! I _was_ a little rude to you about Sir Gamelyn--why, he is an old acquaintance of mine--kept company with Wallace and Bruce, and only subscribed the Ragman Roll with the just intention of circumventing the Southern--'twas right Scottish craft--hundreds did it! Come, come--forget and forgive--confess we have given the young fellow here a right to think us two testy old fools." "Speak for yourself, Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck," said Sir Arthur, with much majesty. "Awell--awell," said the Antiquary, with a sigh, "a wilful man must have his way!" And the Baronet accordingly stalked into the drawing-room, pettishly refused to accept either tea or coffee, tucked his daughter under his arm, and, having said the driest of good-byes to the company at large, off he marched. "I think Sir Arthur has got the black dog on his back again!" said Miss Oldbuck. "Black dog! Black deil!" cried her brother; "he's more absurd than womankind. What say you, Lovel? Why, the lad's gone too." "Yes," said Miss MacIntyre, "he took his leave while Miss Wardour was putting on her things." "Deil's in the people!" cried the Antiquary. "This is all one gets by fussing and bustling, and putting one's self out of the way to give dinners. O Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia," he added, taking a cup of tea in one hand and a volume of the _Rambler_ in the other, "well hast thou spoken. No man can presume to say, 'This shall be a day of happiness.'" Oldbuck had continued his studies for the best part of an hour, when Caxton, the ancient barber of Fairport, thrusting his head into the room, informed the company--first, that it was going to be "an awfu' nicht," secondly, that Sir Arthur and Miss Wardour had started out to return to Knockwinnock Castle _by way of the sands!_ Instantly Miss MacIntyre set off to bear the tidings to Saunders Mucklebackit, the old fisherman, while the Antiquary himself, with a handkerchief tied round his hat and wig to keep them from being blown away, searched the cliffs for any signs of his late guests. Nor was the information brought by Caxton one whit exaggerated. Sir Arthur and his daughter had indeed started out to reach their home by the sands. On most occasions these afforded a safe road enough, but in times of high tide or when the sea was driven shoreward by a wind, the waves broke high against the cliffs in fury. Talking earnestly together as they walked, Sir Arthur and Miss Wardour did not observe the gathering of the tempest till it had broken upon them. They had reached a deep sickle-shaped bay, and having with difficulty passed one headland, they were looking with some anxiety toward the other, hoping to reach and pass it before the tide closed in upon them, when they saw a tall figure advancing toward them waving hands and arms. Their hearts rejoiced, for, they thought, where that man had passed, there would still be a road for them. But they were doomed to be disappointed. The figure was no other than that of the old Blue-Gown Edie Ochiltree. As he advanced he continued to sign to them and to shout words which were carried away by the blast, till he had arrived quite close. "Turn back! Turn back!" he cried, when at last they could hear. "Why did you not turn back when I waved to you?" "We thought," said Sir Arthur, much disturbed, "that we could still get round Halket Head." "Halket Head!" cried the vagrant; "why, the tide will be running on Halket Head by this time like the Falls of Foyers. It was all I could do to get round it twenty minutes since." [Illustration: "THE figure was no other than that of the old Blue-Gown Edie Ochiltree. As he advanced he continued to sign to them and to shout words which were carried away by the blast, till he had arrived quite close. "'Turn back! Turn back!' he cried, when at last they could hear. 'Why did you not turn back when I waved to you?'"] It was now equally impossible to turn back. The water was dashing over the skerries behind them, and the path by which Miss Wardour and her father had passed so recently was now only a confusion of boiling and eddying foam. There was nothing for it but to try to climb as far up the cliffs as possible, and trust that the tide would turn back before it reached them. With the help of the old beggar, they perched themselves upon the highest shelf to which, on that almost perpendicular wall of rock, they could hope to attain. But, nevertheless, as the waves leaped white beneath, it seemed very far indeed from safety. Sir Arthur, struck with terror, offered lands and wealth to the Blue-Gownsman if he would only guide them to a place of safety. But the old beggar could only shake his head and answer sadly: "I was a bold enough cragsman once. Many a kittywake's and seagull's nest have I taken on these very cliffs above us. But now my eyesight and my footstep and my handgrip all have failed this many and many a day! But what is that?" he cried, looking eagerly upward. "His Name be praised! Yonder comes some one down the cliff, even now." And taking heart of grace, he cried directions up through the gathering darkness to the unseen helper who was descending toward them. "Right! Right! Fasten the rope well round the Crummie's Horn--that's the muckle black stone yonder. Cast two plies about it! That's it! Now creep a little eastwards, to that other stone--the Cat's Lug, they call it. There used to be the root of an old oak tree there. Canny now! Take time! Now ye maun get to Bessie's Apron--that's the big, blue, flat stone beneath ye! And then, with your help and the rope, I'll win at ye, and we will be able to get up the young lady and Sir Arthur!" The daring adventurer, no other than Lovel himself, soon reached the place pointed out, and, throwing down the rope, it was caught by Edie Ochiltree, who ascended to the flat blue stone formerly spoken of. From this point of vantage the two of them were able by their united strength to raise Miss Wardour to safety. Then Lovel descended alone, and fastening the rope about Sir Arthur (who was now utterly unable, from fear and cold, to do anything for himself), they soon had him beside them on Bessie's Apron. Yet, even so, it seemed impossible that they could remain there all night. The wind and the dashing spray every moment threatened to sweep them from the narrow ledge they had reached. Besides, how was one so delicate as Miss Wardour to stand out such a night? Lovel offered, in spite of the gathering darkness, once more to climb the cliff, and to seek further assistance. But the old Blue-Gown withheld him. No cragsman in broadest daylight could do such a thing, he asserted. Even he himself, in the fullest of his strength, would never have attempted the feat. It was death to ascend ten yards. Miss Wardour begged that neither of them should try. She was already much better, she said. Besides, their presence was needed to control her father, who was clearly not responsible for his actions. Just then a faint halloo came from high above. Edie answered it with a shout, waving at the same time Miss Wardour's handkerchief at the end of his long beggar's staff, as far out from the cliff as possible. In a little while the signals were so regularly replied to, that the forlorn party on Bessie's Apron knew that they were again within hearing, if not within reach, of friendly assistance. On the top of the cliffs Monkbarns was heading the party of searchers. Saunders Mucklebackit, an old fisherman and smuggler, had charge of the rescue apparatus. This consisted of the mast of a boat, with a yard firmly fixed across it. Through the ends of the yard a rope ran in two blocks, and by this Saunders hoped to lower a chair down the cliffs, by means of which (said the old smuggler) the whole party would presently be "boused up and landed on board, as safe as so many kegs of brandy." The chair was accordingly let down, together with a second rope--which, being held by some one below, would keep the chair from dashing about in the wind against the rock. This Saunders called the "guy" or guide rope. Miss Wardour, after some persuasion, mounted first, being carefully bound in the rude seat by means of Lovel's handkerchief and neckcloth, in addition to the mendicant's broad leathern belt passed about her waist. Sir Arthur, whose brain appeared quite dazed, continued loudly to protest. "What are you doing with my bairn?" he cried. "What are you doing? She shall not be separated from me. Isabel, stay with me--I command you!" But the signal being given to hoist away, the chair mounted, intently watched by Lovel, who stood holding the guide rope, to the last flutter of the lady's white dress. Miss Wardour was duly and safely landed. Sir Arthur and Edie followed, and it remained for Lovel to make the more hazardous final ascent. For now there was no one left below to help him by holding the "guy" rope. Nevertheless, being young and accustomed to danger, he managed, though much banged and buffeted about by the wind, to fend himself off the rocks with the long pike-staff belonging to the beggar, which Edie had left him for that purpose. It was only when Lovel reached the safety of the cliff that he felt himself for a moment a little faint. When he came to himself Sir Arthur had already been removed to his carriage, and all that Lovel saw of the girl he had rescued from death was the last flutter of her dress vanishing through the storm. "She did not even think it worth while waiting to see whether I was dead or alive--much less to thank me for anything I had done!" And he resolved to leave Fairport on the morrow, without visiting Knockwinnock, or again seeing Miss Wardour. But what he did not know was that Miss Wardour had waited till she had been assured that Lovel was safe and sound, having sent Sir Arthur on before her to the carriage. But as the young man was not aware that she had shown him even this limited sympathy, his heart continued to be bitter within him. It was arranged that he was to sleep that night at Monkbarns. Indeed Mr. Oldbuck would hear of no other way of it. The Antiquary had looked forward to the chicken pie and the bottle of port which Sir Arthur had left untasted when he bounced off in a fume. What then was his wrath when his sister, Miss Grizel, told him how that the minister of Trotcosey, Mr. Blattergowl, having come down to Monkbarns to sympathise with the peril of all concerned, had so much affected Miss Oldbuck by his show of anxiety that she had set the pie and the wine before him--which he had accordingly consumed to show his good-will. But after some very characteristic grumbling, cold beef and hard-boiled eggs did just as well for the two friends, and while Lovel partook of them, Miss Grizel entertained him with tales of the Green Room in which he was to sleep. This apartment was haunted, it seemed, by the spirit of the first Oldenbuck, the celebrated printer of the Augsburg Confession. He had even appeared in person to a certain town-clerk of Fairport, and showed him (at the point of his toe) upstairs to an old cabinet in which was stored away the very document for the want of which the lairds of Monkbarns were likely to be worsted in a famous lawsuit before the Court of Session in Edinburgh. Furthermore, a famous German professor, a very learned man, Dr. Heavysterne by name, had found his rest so much disturbed in that very room that he could never again be persuaded to sleep there. Lovel, however, laughed at such fears, and was accordingly shown by the Antiquary up to the famous Green Room, a large chamber with walls covered by a tapestry of hunting scenes,--stags, boars, hounds, and huntsmen, all mixed together under the greenwood tree, the boughs of which, interlacing above, gave its name to the room. Lovel fell asleep after a while, still bitterly meditating on how unkindly Miss Wardour had used him, and his thoughts, mixed with the perilous adventures of the evening, made him not a little feverish. At first his dreams were wild, confused, and impossible. He flew like a bird. He swam like a fish. He was upborne on clouds, and dashed on rocks which yet received him soft as pillows of down. But at last, out of the gloom a figure approached his bedside, separating himself from the wild race of the huntsmen upon the green tapestry,--a figure like that which had been described to him as belonging to the first laird of Monkbarns. He was dressed in antique Flemish garb, a furred Burgomaster cap was on his head, and he held in his hands a black volume with clasps of brass. Lovel strove to speak, but, as usual in such cases, he could not utter a word. His tongue refused its office. The awful figure held up a warning finger, and then began deliberately to unclasp the volume he held in his hands. He turned the leaves hastily for a few minutes; then, holding the book aloft in his left hand, he pointed with his right to a line which seemed to start forth from the page glowing with supernatural fire. Lovel did not understand the language in which the book was printed, but the wonderful light with which the words glowed impressed them somehow on his memory. The vision shut the volume. A strain of music was heard, and Lovel awoke. The sun was shining full into the Green Room, and somewhere not far away a girl's voice was singing a simple Scottish air. INTERLUDE OF WARNING It was the spinner of yarns himself who broke the silence which fell on the party at the close of the first tale told out of the treasure-house of _The Antiquary_. "If I catch you," were the words of warning which fell from his lips, "you, Hugh John, or you, Toady Lion, trying to hoist one another up a cliff with a rope and a chair--well, the rope will most certainly be used for quite another purpose, and both of you will just hate to look at a chair for a fortnight after! Do you understand?" They understood perfectly. "It was me they were going to hoist," confided Maid Margaret, coming a little closer. "I saw them looking at me all the time you were telling the story!" "Well," I said, "just let me catch them at it, that's all!" This caution being necessary for the avoidance of future trouble, I went on to read aloud the whole of the Storm chapters, to the children's unspeakable delight. Hugh John even begged for the book to take to bed with him, which privilege he was allowed, on the solemn promise that he would not "peep on ahead." Since Sweetheart's prophecies as to Die Vernon, such conduct has been voted scoundrelly and unworthy of any good citizen of the nursery. On the whole, however, I could not make out whether _The Antiquary_ promised to be a favourite or not. The storm scene was declared "famous," but the accompanying prohibition to break their own or their family's necks, by pulling chairs up and down rocks, somewhat damped the ardour of the usual enthusiasts. As, however, the day was hopeless outside, the snow beating more and more fiercely on the windows, and hanging in heavy fleecy masses on the smallest twigs of the tree-branches and leafless rose stems, it was decided that nothing better could be imagined, than just to proceed with our second tale from _The Antiquary_. But before beginning I received two requests, somewhat difficult to harmonize the one with the other. "Tell us all about Miss Wardour and Lovel. He's nice!" said Sweetheart. "Skip ALL the love-making!" cried Hugh John and Sir Toady in a breath. * * * * * THE SECOND TALE FROM "THE ANTIQUARY" I. LOVEL FIGHTS A DUEL THE Antiquary, to whom Lovel told his dream, promptly pulled out a black-letter volume of great age and, unclasping it, showed him the very motto of his vision. So far, however, from glowing with fire now, the words remained in the ordinary calm chill of type. But when the Antiquary told him that these words had been the Printer's Mark or Colophon of his ancestor, Aldobrand Oldenbuck, the founder of his house, and that they meant "SKILL WINS FAVOUR," Lovel, though half ashamed of giving any credit to dreams, resolved to remain in the neighbourhood of Knockwinnock Castle and of Miss Wardour for at least some time longer. In vain Oldbuck made light of his vision of the Green Room. In vain he reminded him that he had been showing that very volume to Sir Arthur the night before in his presence, and had even remarked upon the appropriate motto of old Aldobrand Oldenbuck. Lovel was resolved to give his love for Miss Wardour one more chance. And indeed at that very moment, under the lady's window at Knockwinnock Castle, a strange love messenger was pleading his cause. Miss Wardour had been trying to persuade old Edie Ochiltree to accept a garden, a cottage, and a daily dole, for his great services in saving her own and her father's life. But of this Edie would hear nothing. "I would weary," he said, "to be forever looking up at the same beams and rafters, and out upon the same cabbage patch. I have a queer humour of my own, too, and I might be jesting and scorning where I should be silent. Sir Arthur and I might not long agree. Besides, what would the country do for its gossip--the blithe clatter at e'en about the fire? Who would bring news from one farm-town to another--gingerbread to the lassies, mend fiddles for the lads, and make grenadier caps of rushes for the bairns, if old Edie were tied by the leg at his own cottage door?" "Well, then, Edie," said Miss Wardour, "if this be so, if you feel that the folk of the countryside cannot do without you, you must just let me know when you feel old enough to settle, and in the meantime take this." And she handed him a sum of money. But for the second time again the beggar refused. "Na, na," he said, "it is against our rule to take so muckle siller at once. I would be robbed and murdered for it at the next town--or at least I would go in fear of my life, which is just as bad. But you might say a good word for me to the ground-officer and the constable, and maybe bid Sandy Netherstanes the miller chain up his big dog, and I will e'en come to Knockwinnock as usual for my alms and my snuff." Edie paused at this point, and, stepping nearer to the window on which Miss Wardour leaned, he continued, speaking almost in her ear. "Ye are a bonny young leddy, and a good one," he said, "and maybe a well-dowered one. But do not you sneer away the laddie Lovel, as ye did a while syne on the walk beneath the Briery bank, when I both saw ye and heard ye too, though ye saw not me. Be canny with the lad, for he loves ye well. And it's owing to him, and not to anything I could have done, that you and Sir Arthur were saved yestreen!" Then, without waiting for an answer, old Edie stalked toward a low doorway and disappeared. It was at this very moment that Lovel and the Antiquary entered the court. Miss Wardour had only time to hasten upstairs, while the Antiquary was pausing to point out the various features of the architecture of Knockwinnock Castle to the young man. Miss Wardour met the two gentlemen in the drawing-room of the castle with her father's apology for not being able to receive them. Sir Arthur was still in bed, and, though recovering, he continued to suffer from the fatigues and anxieties of the past night. "Indeed," said the Antiquary, "a good down pillow for his good white head were a couch more meet than Bessie's Apron, plague on her! But what news of our mining adventure in Glen Withershins?" "None," said Miss Wardour, "or at least no good news! But here are some specimens just sent down. Will you look at them?" And withdrawing into a corner with these bits of rock, the Antiquary proceeded to examine them, grumbling and pshawing over each ere he laid it aside to take up another. This was Lovel's opportunity to speak alone with Miss Wardour. "I trust," he said, "that Miss Wardour will impute to circumstances almost irresistible, this intrusion of one who has reason to think himself so unacceptable a visitor." "Mr. Lovel," said Miss Wardour, in the same low tone, "I am sure you are incapable of abusing the advantages given you by the services you have rendered us--ah, if I could only see you as a friend--or as a sister!" "I cannot," said Lovel, "disavow my feelings. They are well known to Miss Wardour. But why crush every hope--if Sir Arthur's objections could be removed?" "But that is impossible," said Miss Wardour, "his objections cannot be removed, and I am sure you will save both of us pain by leaving Fairport, and returning to the honourable career which you seem to have abandoned!" "Miss Wardour," said Lovel, "I will obey your wishes, if, within one little month I cannot show you the best of reasons for continuing to abide at Fairport." At this moment Sir Arthur sent down a message to say that he would like to see his old friend, the Laird of Monkbarns, in his bedroom. Miss Wardour instantly declared that she would show Mr. Oldbuck the way, and so left Lovel to himself. It chanced that in the interview which followed Sir Arthur let out by accident that his daughter had already met with Lovel in Yorkshire, when she had been there on a visit to her aunt. The Antiquary was at first astonished, and then not a little indignant, that neither of them should have told him of this when they were introduced, and he resolved to catechise his young friend Lovel strictly upon the point as soon as possible. But when at last he bade farewell to his friend Sir Arthur and returned below, another subject occupied his mind. Lovel and he were walking home over the cliffs, and when they reached the summit of the long ridge, Oldbuck turned and looked back at the pinnacles of the castle--at the ancient towers and walls grey with age, which had been the home of so many generations of Wardours. "Ah," he muttered, sighing, half to himself, "it wrings my heart to say it--but I doubt greatly that this ancient family is fast going to the ground." Then he revealed to the surprised Lovel how Sir Arthur's foolish speculations, and especially his belief in a certain German swindler, named Dousterswivel, had caused him to engage in some very costly mining ventures, which were now almost certain to result in complete failure. As the Antiquary described Dousterswivel, Lovel remembered to have seen the man in the inn at Fairport, where he had been pointed out to him as one of the _illuminati_, or persons who have dealings with the dwellers in another world. But while thus talking and tarrying with his friend Monkbarns, an important letter was on its way to call Lovel back to Fairport. Oldbuck had so far taken his young friend to his heart, that he would not let him depart without making sure that the trouble he read on Lovel's face was not the want of money. "If," he said, "there is any pecuniary inconvenience, I have fifty, or a hundred, guineas at your service--till Whitsunday--or indeed as long as you like!" But Lovel, assuring him that the letter boded no difficulty of the kind, thanked him for his offer, and so took his leave. It was some weeks before the Antiquary again saw Lovel. To the great astonishment of the town the young man hardly went out at all, and when he called upon him in his lodgings at Fairport, Mr. Oldbuck was astonished at the change in his appearance. Lovel was now pale and thin, and his black dress bore the badge of mourning. The Antiquary's gruff old heart was moved toward the lad. He would have had him come instantly with him to Monkbarns, telling him that, as they agreed well together, there was no reason why they should ever separate. His lands were in his own power of gift, and there was no reason why he should not leave them to whom he would. Lovel, touched also by this unexpected affection, answered that he could not at present accept, but that before leaving Scotland he would certainly pay Monkbarns a long visit. While the Antiquary remained talking thus to Lovel in his lodgings, a letter was brought from Sir Arthur Wardour inviting the young man to be a member of a party which proposed to visit the ruins of St. Ruth's Priory on the following day, and afterward to dine and spend the evening at Knockwinnock Castle. Sir Arthur added that he had made the same proposal to the family at Monkbarns. So it was agreed that they should go together, Lovel on horseback, and Oldbuck and his womenkind (as he called them) in a hired post-chaise. The morning of the next day dawned clear and beautiful, putting Lovel in better spirits than he had known of late. With the Wardour party there came the German adept, Mr. Dousterswivel, to whom, after offering his thanks to his preserver of the night of storm, Sir Arthur introduced Lovel. The young man's instinctive dislike at sight of the impostor was evidently shared in by the Antiquary, for the lowering of his shaggy eyebrow clearly proclaimed as much. Nevertheless, the first part of the day went well on the whole. Oldbuck took upon himself the office of guide, explaining and translating all the while, leading the company from point to point till they were almost as much at home as himself among the ruins of the Priory of St. Ruth. But the peaceful occupations of the day were interrupted by the arrival of a young horseman in military undress, whom the Antiquary greeted with the words, "Hector, son of Priam, whence comest thou?" "From Fife, my liege," answered Captain Hector MacIntyre, Mr. Oldbuck's nephew, who saluted the company courteously, but, as Lovel thought, seemed to view his own presence with a haughty and disapproving eye. Captain MacIntyre attached himself immediately to Miss Wardour, and even appeared to Lovel to take up a privileged position with regard to her. But Miss Wardour, after submitting to this close attendance for some time, presently turned sharply round, and asked a question of the Antiquary as to the date at which the Priory of St. Ruth was built. Of course Mr. Oldbuck started off like a warhorse at the sound of the trumpet, and, in the long harangue which ensued, mixed as it was with additions and contradictions from Sir Arthur and the minister, Captain MacIntyre found no further chance of appropriating Miss Wardour. He left her, accordingly, and walked sulkily by his sister's side. From her he demanded to know who this Mr. Lovel might be, whom he found so very much at home in a circle in which he had looked forward to shining alone. Mary MacIntyre answered sensibly that, as to who he was, her brother had better ask his uncle, who was in the habit of inviting to his house such company as pleased him; adding that, so far as she knew, Mr. Lovel was a very quiet and gentlemanly young man. Far from being satisfied, however, from that moment Captain MacIntyre, with the instinct of a dog that returns home to find a stranger making free with his bone and kennel, set himself almost openly to provoke Lovel. When by chance the latter was called on by the Antiquary to state whether or not he had been present at a certain battle abroad, MacIntyre, with an accent of irony, asked the number of his regiment. And when that had been told him, he replied that he knew the regiment very well, but that he could not remember Mr. Lovel as an officer in it. Whereupon, blushing quickly, Mr. Lovel informed Captain MacIntyre that he had served the last campaign on the staff of General Sir Blank Blank. "Indeed," said MacIntyre, yet more insolently, "that is still more remarkable. I have had an opportunity of knowing the names of all the officers who have held such a situation, and I cannot recollect that of Lovel among them." Lovel took out of his pocket-book a letter, from which he removed the envelope before handing it to his adversary. "In all probability you know the General's hand," he said, "though I own I ought not to show such exaggerated expressions of thanks for my very slight services." Captain MacIntyre, glancing his eye over it, could not deny that it was in the General's hand, but drily observed, as he returned it, that the address was wanting. "The address, Captain MacIntyre," answered Lovel, in the same tone, "shall be at your service whenever you choose to inquire for it." "I shall not fail to do so," said the soldier. "Come, come," exclaimed Oldbuck, "what is the meaning of this? We'll have no swaggering, youngsters! Are you come from the wars abroad to stir up strife in a peaceful land?" Sir Arthur, too, hoped that the young men would remain calm. But Lovel, from that moment, felt that he was to some extent under suspicion, and so, in a short time, he took the opportunity of bidding the company good-bye, on the plea of the return of a headache which had lately troubled him. He had not ridden far--rather loitering, indeed, to give MacIntyre a chance of overtaking him--when the sound of horse's hoofs behind told him that his adversary had returned to find him. The young officer touched his hat briefly, and began in a haughty tone, "What am I to understand, sir, by your telling me that your address was at my service?" "Simply," answered Lovel, "that my name is Lovel, and that my residence is, for the present, Fairport, as you will see by this card!" "And is this," said the soldier, "all the information you are disposed to give me?" "I see no right you have to require more." "I find you, sir, in company with my sister," said MacIntyre, "and I have a right to know who is admitted to her society." "I shall take the liberty of disputing that right," replied Lovel, to the full as haughty in tone and manner. "I presume then," said the young officer, "since you _say_ you have served in his Majesty's army, you will give me the satisfaction usual among gentlemen." "I shall not fail," said Lovel. "Very well, sir," rejoined Hector, and turning his horse's head he galloped off to rejoin the party. But his uncle suspected his purpose, and was determined to prevent a duel at all risks. He demanded where his nephew had been. "I forgot my glove, sir," said Hector. "Forgot your glove! You mean that you went to throw it down. But I will take order with you, young gentleman. You shall return with me this night to Monkbarns." Yet in spite of the Antiquary the duel was easily enough arranged between these two over-hasty young men. It was the custom of the time to fight about trifles, and it seemed to Lovel that as a soldier he had really no honourable alternative. He was fortunate enough to find a second in the Lieutenant-commander of one of the King's gun-brigs, which was stationed on the coast to put down smuggling. Lieutenant Taffril only put one question to Lovel before offering him every assistance. He asked if there was anything whereof he was ashamed, in the circumstances which he had declined to communicate to MacIntyre. "On my honour, no," said Lovel, "there is nothing but what, in a short time, I hope I may be able to communicate to the whole world." The duel thus insolently provoked was to be fought with pistols within the ruins of St. Ruth, and as Lovel and his second came near the place of combat, they heard no sound save their own voices mingling with those of the sheep bleating peacefully to each other upon the opposite hill. On the stump of an old thorn tree within the ruins sat the venerable figure of old Edie Ochiltree. Edie had a message to deliver. He told Lovel that he had been at the Sheriff's that very day, and had got it from the clerk himself that a warrant had been issued on Monkbarns's demand for the apprehension of Lovel. The old beggar had come hastily to warn the young man, thinking that perhaps it might be some matter of debt. But the appearance of Captain MacIntyre and his second, Mr. Lesley, soon informed him otherwise. The antagonists approached and saluted with the stern civility of the place and occasion. MacIntyre instantly ordered the old fellow off the field. "I _am_ an auld fellow," said Edie, "but I am also an auld soldier of your father's, and I served with him in the 42nd." "Serve where you please," said MacIntyre, hotly, "you have no title to intrude on us. Be off with you--or--" He lifted his cane as if to threaten the old man. But the insult roused Edie's ancient courage. "Hold down your switch, Captain MacIntyre! I am an auld soldier, and I'll tak' muckle from your father's son--but not a touch o' the wand while my pike-staff will hold together!" "I was wrong--I was wrong," said MacIntyre, relenting, "here is a crown for you--go your ways." But Edie refused the money, exhorting the young men to go and fight the French instead of each other, if they were so fighting hot. But neither his words nor the efforts of the seconds could reconcile MacIntyre to the man with whom he had from the first resolved to quarrel. The ground was measured out by the seconds, while old Edie stood unheeded at the side muttering, "Bairns, bairns--madmen, I should rather say! Weel, your blood be on your heads!" The fatal signal was given. Both fired almost at the same moment. Captain MacIntyre's ball grazed the side of his opponent, but failed to draw blood. That of Lovel was more true to the aim. MacIntyre reeled and fell. Raising himself on his arm, his first exclamation was: "It is nothing--it is nothing! Give us the other pistols!" But the moment after he added in a lower tone: "I believe I have enough, and what's worse, I fear I deserve it. Mr. Lovel, or whatever your name is, fly and save yourself. Bear witness all of you, I alone provoked the quarrel." Then raising himself on his arm, he added: "Shake hands, Lovel. I believe you to be a gentleman--forgive my rudeness, and I forgive you my death!" Lovel stood dizzy and bewildered, while the ship's surgeon approached to do his part. But presently his arm was grasped by Edie, who hurried him off the field with the assistance of Lieutenant Taffril, his late second. "He is right--he is right!" exclaimed Taffril, "go with him--there, into the wood--not by the highroad. Let him bring you to the sands at three of the morning. A boat will be in waiting to take you off to my brig, which will sail at once." "Yes--fly--fly!" said the wounded man, his voice faltering as he spoke. "It is madness to stay here," added Taffril. "It was worse than madness ever to have come!" said Lovel, following his uncouth guide into the thicket. As he went up the valley he realised the bitterness of remorse that comes too late. He had passed that way in the morning, innocent, and now--he had the stain of blood upon his hands. II. THE SEEKERS OF TREASURE Edie guided him along a deep ravine till they came to a precipice of rock overhung with brushwood and copse. Here completely concealed was the mouth of a cave, where, as Edie said, they would be in perfect safety. Only two other persons knew of its existence, and these two were at present far away. The cavern was in the shape of a cross, and had evidently been the abode of some anchorite of a time long past. In the corner was a turning stair, narrow but quite passable, which communicated with the chapel above--and so, by a winding passage in the thickness of the wall, with the interior of the priory of St. Ruth. Twilight faded into night, and the night itself wore away, while Edie sat telling Lovel all the old-world tales he could lay his tongue to, in order to keep the mind of the young man from brooding over his situation. They sat close together on a little watch-tower niched deep in the wall, and breathed the night air, while waiting for the hour at which they must betake them to the beach, to meet the boat which Lieutenant Taffril was to have in readiness. Midnight approached, the moon rose high in the sky above, but the voice of the Blue-Gown still droned on, telling his tales of old time, when suddenly Lovel, whose ears were quicker, laid his hand on his companion's arm. "Hush," he whispered, "I hear some one speaking!" So saying Lovel pointed in the direction of the sound,--toward the door of the chancel at the west end of the building, where a carved window let in a flood of moonlight upon the floor. Two human figures detached themselves from the darkness and advanced. The lantern which one of them carried gleamed pale in the bright moonlight. It was evident in a moment by their motions that they could not be officers searching for Lovel. As they approached nearer, the beggar recognised the two figures as those of Dousterswivel and Sir Arthur. Lovel was about to retreat, but a touch on the arm from the old Blue-Gown convinced him that his best course was to remain quiet where he was. In case of any alarm, there was always the passage behind, and they could gain the shelter of the wood long before any pursuit would be possible. Dousterswivel was evidently making some proposition about which Sir Arthur was uncertain. "Great expense--great expense!" were the first words they heard him mutter. "Expenses--to be sure," said Dousterswivel; "there must be great expenses. You do not expect to reap before you do sow the seed. Now, Sir Arthur, you have sowed this night a little pinch of ten guineas, and if you do not reap the big harvest, it is because you have only sowed a little pinch of seed. Much seed sown, much harvest reaped. That is the way to find treasure. You shall see, Sir Arthur, mine worthy patron!" The German now put before his dupe a little silver plate engraved with strange signs, squares of nine times nine figures, flying serpents with turkey-cocks' heads, and other wonderful things. Then having professed to lay out the baronet's ten guineas in what he called "suffumigations,"--that is, to scare away the demons which kept guard over the treasures,--he informed him that he was ready to proceed. The treasure itself could not be obtained till the stroke of midnight. But in the meanwhile he was willing to show Sir Arthur the guardian demon of the treasure-house, which, "like one fierce watchdog" (as the pretended wizard explained), could be called up by his magic power. But Sir Arthur was not particularly keen to see such marvels. He thought they had little enough time as it was, and if he could get the treasures, he preferred, supposing it to be the same thing to his guide, to let sleeping demons lie. "But I could show you the spirit very well," said Dousterswivel. "I would draw a circle with a pentagon, and make my suffumigation within it, while you kept the demon at bay with a drawn sword. You would see first a hole open in the solid wall. Then through it would come one stag pursued by three black greyhounds. They would pull him down, and then one black ugly negro would appear and take the stag from them. Then, paff! all would be gone. After that horns would be winded, and in would come the great Peolphan, the Mighty Hunter of the North, mounted on his black steed--but you are sure that you do not care to see all this?" "Why, I am not afraid," said the poor baronet, "that is, if--do any mishaps ever happen on such occasions?" "Bah--mischiefs, no!" said the German. "Sometimes if the circle be no quite just, or the beholder be frightened and not hold the sword firm and straight toward him, the Great Hunter will take his advantage, and drag him exorcist out of the circle and throttle him. That happen sometimes." This was quite enough for Sir Arthur, who did not desire any intercourse with demons on such terms. Whereupon Dousterswivel, the time of midnight being near, set fire to a little pile of chips, which instantly burned up with a bright light. Then when the flame was at its highest, he cast into the blaze a handful of perfumes which smoked with a strong and pungent odour. This made both Dousterswivel and his pupil cough and sneeze heartily, and by and by, the vapour mounting upward, it found out Lovel and Edie in their high watch-tower, making them also sneeze loudly in their turn. "Was that an echo? Or are there others present in this place?" cried the baronet, astonished at the sound. "No, no," said the German, who had so long employed himself with magic that he had grown half to believe in it, "no--at least, I hope not!" Here a complete fit of sneezing, together with a kind of hollow grunting cough from Edie Ochiltree, so alarmed the wizard that he would have fled at once, had not Sir Arthur prevented him by force. "You juggling villain," cried the baronet, whom impending ruin made desperate, "this is some trick of yours to get off fulfilling your bargain. Show me the treasure you have promised, or by the faith of a ruined man, I will send you where you will see spirits enough!" "Consider, my honoured patron," said the now thoroughly frightened treasure-seeker, "this is not the best treatment. And then the demons--" [Illustration: "AT this moment Edie Ochiltree, entering fully into the spirit of the scene, gave vent to a prolonged and melancholy howl. Dousterswivel flung himself on his knees. 'Dear Sir Arthurs,' he cried, 'let us go--or at least let _me_ go!' 'No, you cheating scoundrel,' cried the knight, unsheathing his sword, 'that shift shall not serve you. I will see the treasure before I leave this place--or I will run my sword through you as an impostor, though all the spirits of the dead should rise around us!'"] At this moment Edie Ochiltree, entering fully into the spirit of the scene, gave vent to a prolonged and melancholy howl. Dousterswivel flung himself on his knees. "Dear Sir Arthurs," he cried, "let us go--or at least let _me_ go!" "No, you cheating scoundrel," cried the knight, unsheathing his sword, "that shift shall not serve you. I will see the treasure before I leave this place--or I will run my sword through you as an impostor, though all the spirits of the dead should rise around us!" "For the love of Heaven, be patient, mine honoured patron," said the German, "you shall have all the treasure I knows of--you shall, indeed! But do not speak about the spirits. It makes them angry!" Muttering exorcisms and incantations all the while, Dousterswivel proceeded to a flat stone in the corner, which bore on its surface the carved likeness of an armed warrior. He muttered to Sir Arthur: "Mine patrons, it is here! God save us all!" Together they managed to heave up the stone, and then Dousterswivel with a mattock and shovel proceeded to dig. He had not thrown out many spadefuls, when something was heard to ring on the ground with the sound of falling metal. Then the treasure-seeker, snatching up the object which his mattock had thrown out, exclaimed: "On mine dear word, mine patrons, this is all. I mean all that we can do to-night!" "Let me see it," said Sir Arthur, sternly, "I will be satisfied--I will judge with my own eyes!" He held the object up in the light of the lantern. It was a small case of irregular shape, which, from the joyful exclamation of the baronet, seemed to be filled with coin. "Ah!" said Sir Arthur; "this is good luck, indeed. This is a beginning. We will try again at the very next change of the moon. That six hundred pounds I owe to Goldieword would be ruin indeed unless I can find something to meet it. But this puts new hope into me!" But now Dousterswivel was more than ever eager to be gone, and he hurried Sir Arthur away with his treasure, having only taken time to thrust back the earth and replace the tombstone roughly in its place, so as to leave no very obvious traces of the midnight search for treasure. III. MISTICOT'S GRAVE The hour of going to meet the boat was now approaching, and Edie conducted Lovel by a solitary path through the woods to the sea-shore. There in the first level beams of the rising sun, they saw the little gun-brig riding at anchor in the offing. Taffril himself met his friend, and eased Lovel's mind considerably by telling him that Captain MacIntyre's wound, though doubtful, was far from desperate, and that he trusted a short cruise would cover all the consequences of his unfortunate encounter. Lovel offered gold to the beggar, but Edie once more refused it, declaring that he thought all the folk had "gone clean daft." "I have had more gold offered to me these last two or three weeks," he said, "than I have seen in all my life before. Na, na, take back your guineas, and for luck let me have but one lily-white shilling!" The boat put off toward the lieutenant's brig, impelled by six stout rowers. Lovel saw the old beggar wave his blue bonnet to him, before turning slowly about as if to resume his customary wanderings from farm to farm, and from village to village. * * * * * So excellently well did Captain MacIntyre progress toward recovery that in a little while the Antiquary declared it clean impossible for him to get a single bite of breakfast, or have his wig made decent, or a slice of unburnt toast to eat--all because his womenfolk were in constant attendance upon the wounded Captain, whose guns and spaniels filled the house, and for whom even the faithful Caxon ran messages, while his own master waited for him in his chamber, fuming and stamping the while. But as his sister often said, and as all who knew him, knew--"Monkbarns's bark was muckle waur than his bite." But an unexpected visit from Sir Arthur soon gave the Antiquary other matters to think about. The Baronet came, so he said, to ask his old friend's advice about the disposal of a sum of money. The Antiquary drew from a right-hand corner of his desk a red-covered book, of which Sir Arthur hated the very sight, and suggested that if he had money to dispose of, it might be as well to begin by clearing off encumbrances, of which the debt marked in his own red book accounted for no less than eleven hundred and thirteen pounds. But Sir Arthur put away the red book as if Monkbarns had offered him so much physic, and hastened to say that if the Antiquary would wait a few days, he would have the sum in full--that is, if he would take it in bullion. The Antiquary inquired from what Eldorado this treasure was forthcoming. "Not far from here," said Sir Arthur, confidently, "and now I think of it, you shall see the whole process in working, on one small condition." "And what is that?" inquired the Antiquary. "That it will be necessary to give me your friendly assistance, by advancing the small sum of one hundred pounds." The Antiquary, who had been rejoicing in the hope of getting both principal and interest of a debt which he had long thought desperate, could only gasp out the words, "Advance one hundred pounds!" "Yes, my good sir," said Sir Arthur, "but upon the best possible security of having it repaid in the course of a few days." To this the Antiquary said nothing. He had heard the like before from Sir Arthur's lips. So the Baronet went on to explain. "Mr. Dousterswivel having discovered--" But the Antiquary would not listen. His eyes sparkled with indignation. "Sir Arthur," he said, "I have so often warned you against that rascally quack, that I wonder you quote him to me!" But this time Sir Arthur had something to show for his faith in the expert. He placed a large ram's horn with a copper cover in his friend's hand. It contained Scottish, English, and foreign coins of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Most were silver but some were of gold, and, as even the Antiquary allowed, of exceeding rarity. "These," said the Baronet, "were found at midnight, at the last full moon, in the ruins of St. Ruth's Priory, in the course of an experiment of which I was myself the witness." "Indeed," said Oldbuck, "and what means of discovery did you employ?" "Only a simple suffumigation," said the Baronet, "accompanied by availing ourselves of a suitable planetary hour." "Simple suffumigation! Simple nonsensification! Planetary hour--planetary fiddlestick! My dear Sir Arthur, the fellow has made a gull of you under ground, and now he would make a gull of you above ground!" "Well, Mr. Oldbuck," said the Baronet, "I am obliged to you for your opinion of my discernment, but you will at least give me credit for seeing what I say I saw!" "I will give you credit for saying that you saw what you _thought_ you saw!" "Well, then," said the Baronet, "as there is a heaven above us, Mr. Oldbuck, I saw with my own eyes these coins dug out of the chancel of St. Ruth's at midnight! And if I had not been there, I doubt if Dousterswivel would have had the courage to go through with it!" The Antiquary inquired how much the discovery had cost. "Only ten guineas," said the Baronet, "but this time it is to cost a hundred and fifty pounds, but of course the results will be in proportion. Fifty I have already given him, and the other hundred I thought you might be able to assist me with." The Antiquary mused. "This cannot be meant as a parting blow," he said; "it is not of consequence enough. He will probably let you win this game also, as sharpers do with raw gamesters. Sir Arthur, will you permit me to speak to Dousterswivel? I think I can recover the treasure for you without making any advance of money." Dousterswivel had on his part no desire to see the Laird of Monkbarns. He was more in fear of him than even of the spirits of the night. Still he could not refuse, when summoned to leave Sir Arthur's carriage and face the two gentlemen in the study at Monkbarns. The Antiquary then and there told him that he and Sir Arthur proposed to trench the whole area of the chancel of St. Ruth, in plain daylight, with good substantial pickaxes and shovels, and so, without further expense, ascertain for themselves the truth as to the existence of this hidden treasure. "Bah," said the German, "you will not find one copper thimble. But it is as Sir Arthur likes--once I have showed him the real method. If he likes to try others, he only loses the gold and the silver, that is all!" The journey to the Priory was made in silence, each of the party having enough on his mind to employ his thoughts. Edie Ochiltree joined them at the ruins, and when the Antiquary pulled out of his pocket the ram's horn in which the coins had been found, Edie claimed it at once for a snuff-box of his which he had bartered with a miner at Mr. Dousterswivel's excavations in Glen Withershins. "And that brings it very near a certain friend of ours," said the Antiquary to Sir Arthur. "I trust we shall be as successful to-day without having to pay for it." It was decided to begin operations at the tomb with the carven figure on top--the same which Sir Arthur and Dousterswivel had disturbed on a former occasion, but which neither the Antiquary nor Edie ever remembered to have seen before. It appeared, however, that a large pile of rubbish, which had formerly filled up the corner of the ruins, must have been dispersed in order to bring it to light. But the diggers reached the bottom of the grave, without finding either treasure or coffin. "Some cleverer chield has been before us," said one of the men. But Edie pushed them impatiently aside, and leaping into the grave, he cried, "Ye are good seekers, but bad finders!" For the first stroke of his pike-staff into the bottom of the pit hit upon something hard and resisting. All now crowded around. The labourers resumed their task with good-will, and soon a broad surface of wood was laid bare, and a heavy chest was raised to the surface, the lid of which, being forced with a pickaxe, displayed, beneath coarse canvas bags and under a quantity of oakum, a large number of ingots of solid silver. The Antiquary inspected them one by one, always expecting that the lower layers would prove to be less valuable. But he was at last obliged to admit that the Baronet had really and truly possessed himself of treasure to the amount of about one thousand pounds. It chanced that Edie Ochiltree had observed Dousterswivel stand somewhat disconsolate and sad, looking into the open grave. Age had not dulled Edie's wit, nor caused him to relish less a boyish prank. His quick eye had caught some writing on the lid of the box of treasure, and while all were admiring the solid ingots of precious metal laid bare before them, Edie kicked the piece of wood aside without being observed by any one. Then, with all due caution, he whispered to Dousterswivel that there must certainly be more and better treasure yet to be brought to light in the place where the silver had been found, and that if he would wait only a little behind the others he would show him proof of it. When they were alone he showed him on the lid of the treasure-chest the words, written in black letter: "=Search--Number One=" Dousterswivel at once agreed to meet Edie at midnight within the ruins of the Priory, and he kept his word. It was a stormy night, great clouds being hurried across the face of the moon, and the woods were bending and moaning in the fierce blast. Edie marched up and down while he waited for the German, shouldering his pike-staff, and dreaming that he was back again on the outposts with a dozen hostile riflemen hidden in front of him. After a little, Dousterswivel arrived, having brought with him a horse and saddle-bags in which to carry away the expected treasure. Edie led him once more to the place of the former search--to the grave of the Armed Knight. On the way he told his companion the tale of that Malcolm Misticot whose treasure was supposed to have been found and rifled that day. "There is a story that the Misticot walks," said Edie; "it's an awesome nicht and an uncanny to be meeting the like of him here. Besides he might not be best pleased to come upon us when we were trying to lift his treasure!" "For the love of Heaven," said Dousterswivel, "say nothing at all, either about somebodies or nobodies!" Edie leaped into the grave and began to strike; but he soon tired or pretended to tire. So he called out to the German that turn and turn about was fair play. Whereupon, fired with the desire for wealth, Dousterswivel began to strike and shovel the earth with all his might, while Edie encouraged him, standing very much at his ease by the side of the hole. "At it again," he cried; "strike--strike! What for are ye stopping, man?" "Stopping," cried the German, angrily, looking out of the grave at his tormentor; "I am down at the bed-rock, I tell you!" "And that's the likeliest place of any," said Edie; "it will just be a big broad stone laid down to cover the treasure. Ah, that's it! There was a Wallace stroke indeed! It's broken! Hurrah, boys, there goes Ringan's pickaxe! It's a shame o' the Fairport folk to sell such frail gear. Try the shovel; at it again, Maister Dousterdeevil!" But this time the German, without replying, leaped out of the pit, and shouted in a voice that trembled with anger, "Does you know, Mr. Edie Ochiltree, who it is you are putting off your gibes and your jests upon? You base old person, I will cleave your skull-piece with this shovels!" "Ay," said Edie, "and where do ye think my pike-staff would be a' the time?" But Dousterswivel, growing more and more furious, heaved up the broken pickaxe to smite his tormentor dead--which, indeed, he might have done had not Edie, suddenly pointing with his hand, exclaimed in a stern voice, "Do ye think that heaven and earth will suffer ye to murder an auld man that gate--a man that might be your father? _Look behind you, man!_" Dousterswivel turned, and beheld, to his utter astonishment, a tall dark figure standing close behind him. Whether this was the angry Misticot or not, the newcomer certainly lifted a sturdy staff and laid it across the rascal's back, bestowing on him half-a-dozen strokes so severe that he fell to the ground, where he lay some minutes half unconscious with pain and terror. When the German came to himself, he was lying close to Misticot's open grave on the soft earth which had been thrown out. He began to turn his mind to projects of revenge. It must, he thought, be either Monkbarns or Sir Arthur who had done this, in order to be revenged upon him. And his mind finally deciding upon the latter, as most likely to have set Edie Ochiltree on to deceive him, he determined from that moment to achieve the ruin of his "dear and honoured patron" of the last five years. As he left the precincts of the ruined Priory, he continued his vows of vengeance against Edie and all associated with him. He had, he declared aloud, been assaulted and murdered, besides being robbed of fifty pounds as well. He would, on the very next day, put the law in motion "against all the peoples"--but against Edie Ochiltree first of all. A QUITE SUPERFLUOUS INTERLUDE The snow was now deep in the woods about the library. It lay sleek and drifted upon the paths, a broad-flaked, mortar-like snow, evidently produced on the borderland between thawing and freezing. "It is fine and buttery," said Hugh John, with a glance of intention at Sir Toady Lion, which was equal to any challenge ever sent from Douglas to Percy--or even that which Mr. Lesley carried for Hector MacIntyre to Mr. Lovel's Fairport lodgings. Sir Toady nodded with fierce willingness. He scented the battle from afar. "Ten yards then, twenty snowballs made before you begin, and then go as you please. But no rushing in, before first volley!" "And no holding the balls under the drip of the kitchen roof!" said Hugh John, who had suffered from certain Toady Lionish practices which personally he scorned. "Well, then," said I, "out you go in your jerseys for one hot half-hour. But no standing about, mind!" Sweetheart and Maid Margaret looked exceedingly wistful. "Of course," I said, "Sweetheart will want to go on with her knitting, but if she likes, the Maid can watch them from the window." "Oo-oh!" said Maid Margaret, "I _should_ like to go too!" "And I should not mind going either," admitted Sweetheart, "just to see that they did not hurt the Maid. They are such rough boys!" So it was arranged, as I had known it would be from the first. The snow was still falling, but the wind had gone down. There was to be no standing still, and afterward they were to change immediately for dinner. These were the conditions of permitted civil strife. "Please, is rolling in the snow permitted?" said Hugh John, to whom this was a condition of importance. "Why, yes," said I, "that is, if you catch the enemy out of his intrenchments." "Um-m-m-m!" said Hugh John, grimly rubbing his hands, "I'll catch him." In a lower tone he added, "And I'll teach him to put snowballs in the drip!" As he spoke, he mimicked the motions of one who shoves snow down inside the collar of his adversary. The cover of a deal box, with a soap advertisement on it, made a very fair intrenching tool, and soon formidable snow-works could be seen rising rapidly on the slopes of the clothes' drying ground, making a semicircle about that corner which contained the big iron swing, erect on its two tall posts. Hugh John and Maid Margaret, the attacking party, were still invisible, probably concocting a plan. But Sweetheart and Sir Toady, laughing and jesting as at some supreme stratagem, were busily employed throwing up the snow till it was nearly breast-high. The formation of the ground was in their favour. It fell away rapidly on all sides, except to the north, where the position was made impregnable by a huge prickly hedge. Nominally they were supposed to be enacting _The Antiquary_, but actually I could not see that the scene without bore any precise relation to what they had been hearing within. Perhaps, however, the day was too cold and stormy for standing upon the exactitudes of history. I did not remain all the time a spectator of the fray. The stated duel of twenty balls was over before I again reached the window. The combatants had entered upon the go-as-you-please stage. Indeed, I could gather so much even at my desk, by the confusion of yells and slogans emitted by the contending parties. Presently the cry of "It's not fair!" brought me to the window. Hugh John and Maid Margaret had evidently gained a certain preliminary success. For they had been able to reach a position from which (with long poles used at other times for the protection of the strawberry beds) they were enabled, under shelter themselves, to shake the branches of the big tree which overshadowed the swing and the position of the enemy. Every twig and branch was, of course, laden with snow, and masses fell in rapid succession upon the heads of the defenders. This was annoying at first, but at a word from Sir Toady, Sweetheart and he seized their intrenching tools, calling out: "Thank you--thank you! It's helping us so much! We've been wanting that badly! All our snow was gone, and we had to make balls off the ramparts. But now it's all right. Thank you--thank you!" The truth of this grew so evident that the baffled assailants retired to consult. Nothing better than a frontal attack, well sustained and driven home to the hilt, occurred to Hugh John; and, indeed, after all, that was the best thing that could happen on such a day. A yell, a charge, a quick batter of snowballs, and then a rush straight up the bank--Maid Margaret, lithe as a deer-hound, leading, her skirts kilted "as like a boy" as on the spur of the moment she could achieve with a piece of twine. Right on Sweetheart she rushed, who,--as in some sort her senior and legal protector,--of course, could not be very rough with her, nor yet use the methods customary and licensed between embattled brothers. But while the Maid thus held Sweetheart in play, Hugh John developed his stratagem. Leaning over the ramparts he seized Sir Toady by the collar, and then, throwing himself backward down the slope, confident in the thick blanketing of snow underneath, he dragged Sir Toady Lion along with him. "A prisoner--a prisoner!" he cried, both of them, captor and captive alike, being involved in a misty flurry of snow, which boiled up from the snowbank, in the midst of which they fraternally embraced, in that intimate tangle of legs and arms which only boys can achieve without breaking bones. "Back--come back!" rang out the order of the victorious Hugh John. "Sit on him--sit on him hard!" Thus, and not otherwise, was Sir Toady captured and Sweetheart left alone in the shattered intrenchments, which a little before had seemed so impregnable. Now in these snow wars, and, indeed, in all the combattings of the redoubtable four, it was the rule that a captive belonged to the side which took him, from the very moment of his giving in. He must utterly renounce his former allegiance, and fight for his new party as fiercely as formerly he had done against them. This is the only way of decently prolonging strife when the combatants are well matched, but various prejudices stand in the way of applying it to international conflicts. In this fashion was Sweetheart left alone in the fort which she and Sir Toady had constructed with such complete confidence. She did not, however, show the least fear, being a young lady of a singularly composed mind. On the other hand, she set herself to repair the various breaches in the walls, and so far as might be to contract them, so that she would have less space to defend. Then she sat sedately down on the swing and rocked herself to and fro to keep warm, till the storm should break on her devoted head. It broke! With unanimous yell, an army, formidable by being exactly three times her own numbers, rushed across the level space, waving flags and shouting in all the stern and headlong glory of the charge. Snowballs were discharged at the bottom of the glacis, the slope was climbed, and the enemy arrived almost at the very walls, before Sweetheart made a motion. There was something uncanny about it. She did not even dodge the balls. For one thing they were very badly aimed, and her chief safety was in sitting still. They were, you see, aiming at her. It soon became evident, however, that the works must be stormed. Still Sweetheart had made no motion to resist, except that, still seated on the broad board of the swing, she had gradually pushed herself back as far as she could go without losing her foothold on the ground. "She's afraid!--She is retreating! On--on!" No, Hugh John, for once your military genius has been at fault. For at the very moment when the snowy walls were being scaled, Sweetheart suddenly lifted her feet from the ground. The swing, pushed back to the limit of its chains, glided smoothly forward. One solidly shod boot-sole took Hugh John full on the chest. Another "plunked" Sir Toady in a locality which he held yet more tender, especially, as now, before dinner. Both warriors shot backward as if discharged from a petard, disappearing from view down the slope into the big drifts at the foot. Maid Margaret, who had not been touched at all, but who had stood (as it were) in the very middle of affairs, uttered one terrified yell and bolted. "Time!" cried the umpire, appearing in the doorway. The baffled champions entered first. While changing, they had got ready at least twenty complete explanations of their downfall. Sweetheart, coming in a little late, sat down to her sewing, and listened placidly with a faint, sweet, far-away smile which seemed to say that knitting, though an occupation despised by boys, does not wholly obscure the intellect. But she did not say a word. Her brothers somehow found this attitude excessively provoking. * * * * * Thus exercised in mind and body, and presently also fortified by the mid-day meal, the company declared its kind readiness to hear the rest of _The Antiquary_. It was not _Rob Roy_, of course--but a snowy day brought with it certain compensations. So to the crackle of the wood fire and the click and shift of the knitting needles, I began the final tale from _The Antiquary_. THE THIRD TALE FROM "THE ANTIQUARY" I. THE EARL'S SECRET ON the seashore not far from the mansion-house of Monkbarns stood the little fisherman's cottage of Saunders Mucklebackit. Saunders it was who had rigged the mast, by which Sir Arthur and his daughter were pulled to the top of the cliffs on the night of the storm. His wife came every day to the door of Monkbarns to sell fish to Miss Griselda, the Antiquary's sister, when the pair of them would stand by the hour "skirling and flyting beneath his window like so many seamaws," as Oldbuck himself said. Besides Steenie Mucklebackit, the eldest son, the same who had assisted Edie Ochiltree to bestow a well-deserved chastisement upon Dousterswivel, and a number of merry half-naked urchins, the family included the grandmother, Elspeth Mucklebackit--a woman old, but not infirm, whose understanding appeared at most times to be asleep, but the stony terror of whose countenance often frightened the bairns more than their mother's shrill tongue and ready palm. Elspeth seldom spoke. Indeed, she had done little for many years except twirl the distaff in her corner by the fire. Few cared to have much to do with her. She was thought to be "far from canny," and certainly she knew more about the great family of Glenallan than it was safe to speak aloud. It chanced on the very night when Edie and Steenie had given a skinful of sore bones to the German impostor Dousterswivel, that the Countess of Glenallan, mother of the Earl, was brought to be buried at midnight among the ruins of St. Ruth. Such had been the custom of the family from ancient times--indeed, ever since the Great Earl fell fighting at the Red Harlaw against Donald of the Isles. More recently there had been another reason for such a strange fashion of burial. For the family were Catholics, and there had long been laws in Scotland against the holding of popish ceremonials even on an occasion so solemn. The news of the death of her ancient mistress, coming at last to the ears of old Elspeth, took such hold upon her, that she could not rest till she had sent off Edie Ochiltree to the Earl of Glenallan, at Glenallan House, with a ring for a token and the message that Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot must see him before she died. She had, Edie was to say, a secret on her soul, without revealing which she could not hope to die in peace. Accordingly Edie set off for the castle of Glenallan, taking the ring with him, but with very little hope of finding his way into the Earl's presence; for Lord Glenallan had been long completely withdrawn from the world. His mother was Countess in her own right, and so long as she lived, her son had been wholly dependent upon her. In addition to which some great sorrow or some great crime, the countryside was not sure which, pressed sore upon his mind, and being a strict Catholic he passed his time in penance and prayer. However, by the help of an old soldier, one Francie Macraw, who had been his rear-rank man at Fontenoy, Edie Ochiltree was able after many delays to win a way to the Earl's presence--though the priests who were about his person evidently tried to keep everything connected with the outer world from his knowledge. The Earl, a tall, haggard, gloomy man, whose age seemed twice what it really was, stood holding the token ring in his hand. At first he took Edie for a father of his own church, and demanded if any further penance were necessary to atone for his sin. But as soon as Edie declared his message, at the very first mention of the name of Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot, the Earl's cheek became even more deathlike than it had been at Edie's entrance. "Ah," he said, "that name is indeed written on the darkest page of a terrible history. But what can the woman want with me? Is she dead or living?" "She is living in the body," said Edie, "and at times her mind lives too--but she is an awfu' woman." "She always was so," said the Earl, answering almost unconsciously. "She was different from other women--likest, perhaps, to her who is no more--" Edie knew that he meant his own mother, so lately dead. "She wishes to see me," continued the Earl; "she shall be gratified, though the meeting will be a pleasure to neither of us." Lord Glenallan gave Edie a handful of guineas, which, contrary to his usage, Edie had not the courage to refuse. The Earl's tone was too absolute. Then, as an intimation that the interview was at an end, Lord Glenallan called his servant. "See this old man safe," he said; "let no one ask him any questions. And you, my friend, be gone, and forget the road that leads to my house!" "That would indeed be difficult," said the undaunted Edie, "since your lordship has given me such good cause to remember it." Lord Glenallan stared, as if hardly comprehending the old man's boldness in daring to bandy words with him. Then, without answering, he made him another signal to depart by a simple movement of his hand, which Edie, awed far beyond his wont, instantly obeyed. II. THE MOTHER'S VENGEANCE The day of Lord Glenallan's visit to the cottage where dwelt old Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot seemed at first ill timed. That very day Steenie Mucklebackit, the young, the gallant, the handsome eldest son of the house had been carried to his grave. He had been drowned while at the fishing, though his father had risked his life in vain to save him. The family had now returned home, and were sitting alone in the first benumbing shock of their grief. It was some time before the Earl could make good his entrance into the cottage. It was still longer before he could convince the old woman Elspeth that he was really Lord Glenallan, and so obtain an opportunity of speaking with her. But at last they were left alone in the cottage, and the thick veil which had fallen upon Elspeth's spirit seemed for a while to be drawn aside. She spoke like one of an education far superior to her position, clearly and calmly, even when recounting the most terrible events. Her very first words recalled to the Earl the fair young wife, whom he had married long ago, against his mother's will and without her knowledge. "Name not her name," he cried, in agony, "all that is dead to me--dead long ago!" "I MUST!" said the old woman; "it is of her I have to speak." And in the fewest and simplest words she told him how, when his mother the Countess had found means to separate husband and wife, while he himself was fleeing half mad, none knew whither, the young wife had thrown herself in a fit of frenzy over the cliffs into the sea. It was to Elspeth's cottage that she and her babe had been brought. "And here," said the terrible old woman, suddenly thrusting a golden bodkin into his hand, "is the very dagger which your mother the Countess gave me in order that with it I might slay your infant son." The Earl looked at the gold bodkin or dagger, as if in fancy he saw the blood of his child still red upon it. "Wretch!" he cried; "and had you the heart?" "I kenna whether I would or not," said Elspeth. "My mistress commanded and I obeyed. So did I ever. But my obedience was not to be tried that time. For when I returned, the babe had gone. Your younger brother had been called up to the castle. The child had been left in the care of the Countess's Spanish maid, and when I returned to my cottage, both she and the babe were gone. The dead body of your young wife alone remained. And now," concluded Elspeth, abruptly, "can you forgive me?" Lord Glenallan was going out of the hut, overwhelmed by the disclosure to which he had been listening. He saw his young wife hounded to death by his fierce and revengeful mother. He thought of the living child so wonderfully left to him as a legacy from the dead. Yet he turned at Elspeth's last words. "May God forgive thee, miserable woman," he said. "Turn for mercy to Him. He will forgive you as sincerely as I do." As Lord Glenallan went out into the sunlight, he met face to face with the Antiquary himself, who was on his way to the cottage to offer what consolation or help might be in his power. The Earl and he recognised one another, but the Antiquary's greeting was hard and cold. As a magistrate he had made, on his own responsibility and against all the power of the Glenallan family, the legal inquiries into the death of the Earl's young wife. Indeed, during a residence which she had made at Knockwinnock Castle with the Wardour family twenty years ago, and while she was still only known as Miss Eveline Neville, the Antiquary had loved her and had asked her to be his wife. It was, indeed, chiefly on her account that he had never married. Mr. Oldbuck had never ceased to mourn her, and now, believing as he had good reason to do, that the Earl was the cause of her untimely death, and of the stigma which rested upon her name, it was little wonder that he should wish to have no dealings with him. But the Earl had a great need in his heart to speak to some one. In a moment the whole world seemed to have changed for him. For the first time he knew the truth about a dark deed of cruelty. For the first time, also, he knew that he had a son. He desired above all else the wise counsel of a true friend. In his heart he had admired the fearlessness of the Antiquary in the bold inquiry he had made at the time of Eveline Neville's death, and now, refusing to be rebuffed, he followed Mr. Oldbuck as he was turning away, and demanded that he should not deny him his counsel and assistance at a most terrible and critical moment. It was not in the good Antiquary's nature to refuse such a request from Earl or beggar, and their interview ended in the Earl's accepting the hospitality of Monkbarns for the night, in order that they might have plenty of time to discuss the whole subject of Elspeth's communication. On his own part Mr. Oldbuck had some comfort to give Lord Glenallan. He had kept the papers which concerned the inquiry carefully, and he was able to assure his lordship that his brother had carried off the babe with him, probably for the purpose of having it brought up and educated upon the English estates he had inherited from his father, and on which he had ever afterward lived. "My brother," said Lord Glenallan, "is recently dead, which makes our search the more difficult. Furthermore, I am not his heir. He has left his property to a stranger, as indeed he had every right to do. But as the heir is like himself a Protestant, he may be unwilling to aid the inquiry--" "I trust," interrupted Mr. Oldbuck, with some feeling, "that you will find a Protestant can be as honest and honourable as a Catholic." The Earl protested that he had no idea of supposing otherwise. "Only," he continued, "there was an old steward on the estate who in all probability is the only man now living who knows the truth. But it is not expected that any man will willingly disinherit himself. For if I have a living son, my father's estates are entailed on him, and the steward may very likely stand by his master." "I have a friend in Yorkshire," said Mr. Oldbuck, "to whom I can apply for information as to the character of your brother's heir, and also as to the disposition of his steward. That is all we can do at present. But take courage, my lord. I believe that your son is alive." In the morning Lord Glenallan returned to the castle in his carriage, while Mr. Oldbuck, hearing from Hector that he was going down to Fairport, in order to see that old Edie Ochiltree had fair play before the magistrates, offered to bear him company. Edie Ochiltree--in prison for thwacking the ribs of Dousterswivel, which he had done (or at least poor Steenie Mucklebackit for him), and for stealing the German's fifty pounds, which he had not done--willingly revealed to Monkbarns what he had refused to breathe to Bailie Littlejohn of the Fairport magistracy. After some delay Edie was accordingly liberated on the Antiquary's bail, and immediately accompanied his good friend to the cottage of old Elspeth Mucklebackit, where, by the Earl's request, Oldbuck was to take down a statement from her lips, such as might be produced in a court of law. But no single syllable would the old beldame now utter against her ancient mistress. "Ha," she said, at the first question put to her by the Antiquary; "I thought it would come to this. It's only sitting silent when they question me. There's nae torture in our days, and if there was, let them rend me! It ill becomes a vassal's mouth to betray the bread which it has eaten." Then they told her that her mistress, the Countess Jocelin, was dead, hoping this might bring her to confession. But the news had quite an opposite effect. "Dead!" cried Elspeth, aroused as ever by the sound of her mistress's name, "then, if she be gone before, the servant must follow. All must ride when she is in the saddle. Bring my scarf and hood! Ye wadna hae me gang in the carriage with my lady, and my hair all abroad in this fashion!" She raised her withered arms, and her hands seemed busied like those of a woman who puts on a cloak to go a journey. "Call Miss Neville," she continued; "what do you mean by Lady Geraldin? I said Eveline Neville. There's no Lady Geraldin. But tell her to change her wet gown and not to look so pale. Bairn--what should she do wi' a bairn? She has nane, I trow! Teresa--Teresa--my lady calls us! Bring a candle! The grand staircase is as black before me as a Yule midnight! Coming, my lady, we are coming!" With these words, and as if following in the train of her mistress, old Elspeth, once of the Craigburnfoot, sunk back on the settle, and from thence sidelong to the floor. III. THE HEIR OF GLENALLAN Meanwhile doom was coming fast upon poor Sir Arthur Wardour. He seemed to be utterly ruined. The treachery of Dousterswivel, the pressing and extortionate demands of a firm called Goldiebirds, who held a claim over his estate, the time-serving of his own lawyers, at last brought the officers of the law down upon him. He found himself arrested for debt in his own house. He was about to be sent to prison, when Edie Ochiltree, who in his day had been deep in many plots, begged that he might be allowed to drive over to Tannanburgh, and promised that he would certainly bring back some good news from the post-office there. It was all that Oldbuck, with his best tact and wisdom, could do to keep Hector MacIntyre from assaulting the officers of the law during the absence of Edie. Two long hours they waited. The carriage had already been ordered round to the door to convey Sir Arthur to prison. Miss Wardour was in agony, her father desperate with shame and grief, when Edie arrived triumphantly grasping a packet. He delivered it forthwith to the Antiquary. For Sir Arthur, knowing his own weakness, had put himself unreservedly into the hands of his abler friend. The packet, being opened, was found to contain a writ stopping the proceedings, a letter of apology from the lawyers who had been most troublesome, and a note from Captain Wardour, Sir Arthur's son, enclosing a thousand pounds for his father's immediate needs. It also declared that ere long he himself would come to the castle along with a distinguished officer, Major Neville, who had been appointed to report to the War Office concerning the state of the defences of the country. "Thus," said the Antiquary, summing up the situation, "was the last siege of Knockwinnock House laid by Saunders Sweepclean, the bailiff, and raised by Edie Ochiltree, the King's Blue-Gown!" There was, at the time when the story of the Antiquary and his doings draws to a close, a daily expectation of a French invasion. Beacons had been prepared on every hill and headland, and men were set to watch. One of these beacons had been intrusted to old Caxon the hairdresser, and one night he saw, directly in the line of the hill to the south which he was to watch, a flame start suddenly up. It was undoubtedly the token agreed upon to warn the country of the landing of the French. He lighted his beacon accordingly. It threw up to the sky a long wavering train of light, startling the sea-fowl from their nests, and reddening the sea beneath the cliffs. Caxon's brother warders, equally zealous, caught and repeated the signal. The district was soon awake and alive with the tidings of invasion. [Illustration: "ONE night he saw, directly in the line of the hill to the south which he was to watch, a flame start suddenly up. It was undoubtedly the token agreed upon to warn the country of the landing of the French. "He lighted his beacon accordingly."] From far and near the Lowland burghers, the country lairds, the Highland chiefs and clans responded to the summons. They had been drilling for long, and now in the dead of the night they marched with speed upon Fairport, eager to defend that point of probable attack. Last of all the Earl of Glenallan came in with a splendidly mounted squadron of horse, raised among his Lowland tenants, and five hundred Highland clansmen with their pipes playing stormily in the van. Presently also Captain Wardour arrived in a carriage drawn by four horses, bringing with him Major Neville, the distinguished officer appointed to the command of the district. The magistrates assembled at the door of their town-house to receive him. The volunteers, the yeomanry, the Glenallan clansmen--all were there awaiting the great man. What was the astonishment of the people of Fairport, and especially of the Antiquary, to see descend from the open door of the carriage,--who but the quiet Mr. Lovel. He had brought with him the news that the alarm of invasion was false. The beacon which Caxon had seen was only the burning of the mining machinery in Glen Withershins which had been ordered by Oldbuck and Sir Arthur to make a final end of Dousterswivel's plots and deceits. But there was yet further and more interesting private news. The proofs that Lovel was indeed the son of the Earl of Glenallan were found to be overwhelming. His heirship to the title had been fully made out. The chaplain who had performed his father's wedding had returned from abroad, exiled by the French Revolution. The witnesses also had been found. Most decisive of all, among the papers of the Earl's late brother, there was discovered a duly authenticated account of his carrying off the child, and of how he had had him educated and pushed on in the army. So that very night the Antiquary enjoyed in some degree the crowning pleasure of his whole life, in bringing together father and son for the first time. That is, if the marriage which took place soon after between his young friend Lovel (or Lord William Geraldin) and Miss Isabella Wardour of Knockwinnock Castle did not turn out to be a yet greater pleasure. Old Edie still travels from farm to farm, but mostly now confines himself to the short round between Monkbarns and Knockwinnock. It is reported, however, that he means soon to settle with old Caxon, who, since the marriage of his daughter to Lieutenant Taffril, has been given a cottage near the three wigs which he still keeps in order in the parish,--the minister's, Sir Arthur's, and best of all, that of our good and well-beloved Antiquary. THE END OF THE LAST TALE FROM "THE ANTIQUARY." * * * * * "Now," said Sweetheart, nodding particular approval, "that is the way a story ought to end up--everything going on from chapter to chapter, with no roundabouts, and everything told about everybody right to the very end!" "Hum," said Hugh John, with a curl of his nose; "well, that's done with! But it was good about the Storm and the Duel! The rest was--" "Hush," said Sweetheart, "remember, it was written by Sir Walter." "Sir," said I to Hugh John, heavily parental, "_The Antiquary_ may not now be much to your taste, but the day will come when you may probably prefer it to all the rest put together." At these words the young man assumed the expression common to boys who are bound to receive the wholesome advice of their elders, yet who do so with silent but respectful doubt, if not with actual disbelief. "Well," he said, after a long pause, "anyway, the Duel _was_ good. And I'd jolly well like to find a treasure in Misticot's grave. Can we have another snow fight?" THE END OF THE FIRST SERIES OF RED CAP TALES FROM THE TREASURE-CHEST OF THE WIZARD OF THE NORTH. FOOTNOTES: [1] These were Scottish children to whom the stories were retold, and they understood the Scottish tongue. So the dialect parts were originally told in that speech. Now, however, in pity for children who have the misfortune to inherit only English, I have translated all the hard words and phrases as best I could. But the old is infinitely better, and my only hope and aim is, that the retelling of these stories by the living voice may send every reader, every listener, to the Master of Romance himself. If I succeed in this, my tale-telling shall not have been in vain. [2] _i.e._ scarecrow. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes Obvious punctuation errors repaired. One reference each of "lifeblood" and "life-blood" were retained. This was also done with "sea-shore" and "seashore". Page 151, "campanion" changed to "companion" (sole companion a) Page 180, "summons" changed to "summon" (would summon all) Page 324, "than" changed to "then" (and then began) Page 374, "hims" changed to "his" (mounted on his) 
29624	----	SIR WALTER SCOTT FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES _The following Volumes are now ready_-- THOMAS CARLYLE. By Hector C. Macpherson. ALLAN RAMSAY. By Oliphant Smeaton. HUGH MILLER. By W. Keith Leask. JOHN KNOX. By A. Taylor Innes. ROBERT BURNS. By Gabriel Setoun. THE BALLADISTS. By John Geddie. RICHARD CAMERON. By Professor Herkless. SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON. By Eve Blantyre Simpson. THOMAS CHALMERS. By Professor W. Garden Blaikie. JAMES BOSWELL. By W. Keith Leask. TOBIAS SMOLLETT. By Oliphant Smeaton. FLETCHER OF SALTOUN. By G. W. T. Omond. THE BLACKWOOD GROUP. By Sir George Douglas. NORMAN MACLEOD. By John Wellwood. SIR WALTER SCOTT. By Professor Saintsbury. [Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES PUBLISHED BY OLIPHANT ANDERSON & FERRIER. EDINBURGH AND LONDON ] * * * * * The designs and ornaments of this volume are by Mr. Joseph Brown, and the printing from the press of Morrison & Gibb Limited, Edinburgh. _June 1897._ * * * * * PREFACE To the very probable remark that 'Another little book about Scott is not wanted,' I can at least reply that apparently it is, inasmuch as the publishers proposed this volume to me, not I to them. And I believe that, as a matter of fact, no 'little book about Scott' has appeared since the _Journal_ was completed, since the new and important instalment of _Letters_ appeared (in both cases with invaluable editorial apparatus by Mr. David Douglas), and especially since Mr. Lang's _Lockhart_ was published. It is true that no one of these, nor any other book that is likely to appear, has altered, or is likely to alter, much in a sane estimate of Sir Walter. His own matchless character and the genius of his first biographer combined to set before the world early an idea, of which it is safe to say that nothing that should lower it need be feared, and hardly anything to heighten it can be reasonably hoped. But as fresh items of illustrative detail are made public, there can be no harm in endeavouring to incorporate something of what they give us in fresh abstracts and _aperçus_ from time to time. And for the continued and, as far as space permits, detailed criticism of the work, it may be pleaded that criticism of Scott has for many years been chiefly general, while in criticism, even more than in other things, generalities are deceptive. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I LIFE TILL MARRIAGE 9 CHAPTER II EARLY LITERARY WORK 20 CHAPTER III THE VERSE ROMANCES 38 CHAPTER IV THE NOVELS, FROM _WAVERLEY_ TO _REDGAUNTLET_ 69 CHAPTER V THE DOWNFALL OF BALLANTYNE & COMPANY 104 CHAPTER VI LAST WORKS AND DAYS 118 CHAPTER VII CONCLUSION 139 SIR WALTER SCOTT CHAPTER I LIFE TILL MARRIAGE Scott's own 'autobiographic fragment,' printed in Lockhart's first volume, has made other accounts of his youth mostly superfluous, even to a day which persists in knowing better about everything and everybody than it or they knew about themselves. No one ever recorded his genealogy more minutely, with greater pride, or with a more saving sense of humour than Sir Walter. He was connected, though remotely, with gentle families on both sides. That is to say, his great-grandfather was son of the Laird of Raeburn, who was grandson of Walter Scott of Harden and the 'Flower of Yarrow.' The great-grandson, 'Beardie,' acquired that cognomen by letting his beard grow like General Dalziel, though for the exile of James II., instead of the death of Charles I.--'whilk was the waur reason,' as Sir Walter himself might have said. Beardie's second son, being more thoroughly sickened of the sea in his first voyage than Robinson Crusoe, took to farming and Whiggery, and married the daughter of Haliburton of Newmains--there was also Macdougal and Campbell blood on the spindle side of the older generations of the family. Their eldest son Walter, father of Sir Walter, was born in 1729, and, being bred to the law, became the original, according to undisputed tradition, of the 'Saunders Fairford' of _Redgauntlet_, the most autobiographical as well as not the least charming of the novels. He married Anne Rutherford, who, through her mother, brought the blood of the Swintons of Swinton to enrich the joint strain; and from her father, a member of a family distinguished in the annals of the University of Edinburgh, may have transmitted some of the love for books which was not the most prominent feature of the other ingredients. Walter himself was the third 'permanent child' (to adopt an agreeable phrase of Mr. Traill's about another person) of a family of twelve, only five of whom survived infancy. His three brothers, John, Thomas, and Daniel, and his sister Anne, all figure in the records; but little is heard of John and not much of Anne. Thomas, the second, either had, or was thought by his indulgent brother to have, literary talents, and was at one time put up to father the novels; while Daniel (whose misconduct in money matters, and still more in showing the white feather, brought on him the only display of anything that can be called rancour recorded in Sir Walter's history) concerns us even less. The date of the novelist's birth was 15th August 1771, the place, 'the top of the College Wynd,' a locality now whelmed in the actual Chambers Street face of the present Old University buildings, and near that of Kirk of Field. Escaping the real or supposed dangers of a consumptive wet-nurse, he was at first healthy enough; but teething or something else developed the famous lameness, which at first seemed to threaten loss of all use of the right leg. The child was sent to the house of his grandfather, the Whig farmer of Sandyknowe, where he abode for some years under the shadow of Smailholm Tower, reading a little, listening to Border legends a great deal, and making one long journey to London and Bath. This first blessed period of 'making himself'[1] lasted till his eighth year, and ended with a course of sea-bathing at Prestonpans, where he met the original in name and perhaps in nature of Captain Dalgetty, and the original in character of the Antiquary. Then he returned (_circ._ 1779) to his father's house, now in George Square, to his numerous, if impermanent, family of brothers and sisters, and to the High School. The most memorable incident of this part of his career is the famous episode of 'Greenbreeks.'[2] His health, as he grew up, becoming again weak, the boy was sent once more Borderwards--this time to Kelso, where he lived with an aunt, went to the town school, and made the acquaintance there, whether for good or ill, who shall say? of the Ballantynes. And he had to return to Kelso for the same cause, at least once during his experiences at College, where he did not take the full usual number of courses, and acquired no name as a scholar. But he always read. As it had not been decided whether he was to adopt the superior or the inferior branch of the law, he was apprenticed to his father at the age of fifteen, as a useful preparation for either career. He naturally enough did not love 'engrossing,' but he did not cross his father's soul by refusing it, and though returns of illness occurred now and then, his constitution appeared to be gradually strengthening itself, partly, as he thought, owing to the habit of very long walks, in which he took great delight. He tried various accomplishments; but he could neither draw, nor make music, nor (at this time) write. Still he always read--irregularly, uncritically, but enormously, so that to this day Sir Walter's real learning is under-estimated. And he formed a very noteworthy circle of friends--William Clerk, 'Darsie Latimer,' the chief of them all. It must have been just after he entered his father's office that he met Burns, during that poet's famous visit to Edinburgh in 1786-87. Considerably less is known of his late youth and early manhood than either of his childhood or of his later life. His letters--those invaluable and unparalleled sources of biographical information--do not begin till 1792, the year of his majority, when (on July 11) he was called to the Bar. But it is a universal tradition that, in these years of apprenticeship, in more senses than one, he, partly in gratifying his own love of wandering, and partly in serving his father's business by errands to clients, etc., did more than lay the foundation of that unrivalled knowledge of Scotland, and of all classes in it, which plays so important a part in his literary work. I say 'of all classes in it,' and this point is of the greatest weight. Scott has been accused (for the most part foolishly) of paying an exaggerated respect to rank. If this had been true, it would at least not have been due to late or imperfect acquaintance with persons of rank. Democratic as the Scotland of this century has sometimes been called, it is not uncommon to find a considerable respect for aristocracy in the greatest Scotch Radicals; and Scott was notoriously not a Radical. But his familiarity with all ranks from an early age is undoubted, and only very shallow or prejudiced observers will doubt the beneficial effect which this had on his study of humanity.[6] The uneasy caricature which mars Dickens's picture of the upper, and even the upper middle, classes is as much absent from his work as the complete want of familiarity with the lower which appears, for instance, in Bulwer. It is certain that before he had written anything, he was on familiar terms with many persons, both men and women, of the highest rank--the most noteworthy among his feminine correspondents being Lady Louisa Stuart (sister of the Marquis of Bute and grand-daughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu) and Lady Abercorn. With the former the correspondence is always on the footing of mere though close friendship, literary and other; in part at least of that with Lady Abercorn, I cannot help suspecting the presence, especially on the lady's side, of that feeling, 'Too warm for friendship and too pure for love,' which undoubtedly sometimes does exist between men and women who cannot, and perhaps who would not if they could, turn love into marriage. However this may be, it is, let it be repeated, certain that Scott, in the six years from his fifteenth, when he is said to have first visited the Highlands and seen Rob Roy's country, to his majority, and yet again in the five or six between his call to the Bar and his marriage, visited many, if not all, parts of Scotland; knew high and low, rich and poor, with the amiable interest of his temperament and the keen observation of his genius; took part in business and amusement and conviviality (he accuses himself later of having been not quite free from the prevalent peccadillo of rather deep drinking); and still and always _read_. He joined the 'Speculative Society' in January 1791, and, besides taking part in the debates on general subjects, read papers on Feudalism, Ossian, and Northern Mythology, in what were to be his more special lines. His young lawyer friends called him 'Colonel Grogg,' a _sobriquet_ not difficult to interpret on one of the hints just given, and 'Duns Scotus,' which concerns the other; while yet a third characteristic, which can surprise nobody, is indicated in the famous introduction of him to a boisterous party of midshipmen of the Marryat type by James Clerk, the brother of Darsie Latimer, who kept a yacht, and was fond of the sea: 'You may take Mr. Scott for a poor _lamiter_, gentlemen, but he is the first to begin a row and the last to end it.' It appears that it was from a time somewhat before the call that the beginning of Scott's famous, his unfortunate, and (it has been the fashion, rightly or wrongly, to add) his only love affair dates. Some persons have taken the trouble to piece together and eke out the references to 'Green Mantle,' otherwise Miss Stuart of Belches, later Lady Forbes. It is better to respect Scott's own reticence on a subject of which very little is really known, and of which he, like most gentlemen, preferred to say little or nothing. The affection appears to have been mutual; but the lady was probably not very eager to incur family displeasure by making a match decidedly below her in rank, and, at that time, distinctly imprudent in point of fortune. But the courtship, such as it was, appears to have been long, and the effects of the loss indelible. Scott speaks of his heart as 'handsomely pieced'--'pieced,' it may be observed, not 'healed.' A healed wound sometimes does not show; a pieced garment or article of furniture reminds us of the piecing till the day when it goes to fire or dustbin. But it has been supposed, with some reason, that those heroines of Scott's who show most touch of personal sympathy--Catherine Seyton, Die Vernon, Lilias Redgauntlet--bear features, physical or mental or both, of this Astarte, this 'Lost woman of his youth, yet unpossessed.' And no one can read the _Diary_ without perceiving the strange bitter-sweet, at the moment of his greatest calamity, of the fact that Sir William Forbes, who rendered him invaluable service at his greatest need, was his successful rival thirty years before, and the widower of 'Green Mantle.' This affair came to an end in October 1796; and it may astonish some wise people, accustomed to regard Scott as a rather humdrum and prosaic person, who escaped the scandals so often associated with the memory of men of letters from sheer want of temptation, to hear that one of his most intimate friends of his own age at the time 'shuddered at the violence of his most irritable and ungovernable mind.' There is no reason to doubt the fidelity of this description. And those who know something of human nature will be disposed to assign the disappearance of the irritableness and ungovernableness precisely to this incident, and to the working of a strong mind, confronted by fate with the question whether it was to be the victim or the master of its own passions, fighting out the battle once for all, and thenceforward keeping its house armed against them, it may be with some loss, but certainly with much gain. It has been said that he states (with a touch of irony, no doubt) that his heart was 'handsomely pieced'; and it is not against the theory hinted in the foregoing paragraph, but, on the contrary, in favour of it, that the piecing did not take long. In exactly a year Scott became engaged to Miss Charlotte Margaret Carpenter or Charpentier,[4] and they were married on Christmas Eve, 1797, at St. Mary's, Carlisle. They had met at Gilsland Spa in the previous July, and the courtship had not taken very long. The lady was of French extraction, had an only brother in the service of the East India Company, and, being an orphan, was the ward of the Marquis of Downshire,--circumstances on which gossips like Hogg made impertinent remarks. It is fair, however, to 'the Shepherd' to say that he speaks enthusiastically both of Mrs. Scott's appearance ('one of the most beautiful and handsome creatures I ever saw in my life'; 'a perfect beauty') and of her character ('she is cradled in my remembrance, and ever shall be, as a sweet, kind, and affectionate creature').[5] She was very dark, small, with hair which the Shepherd calls black, Lockhart dark brown; her features not regular, but her complexion, figure, and so forth 'unusually attractive.' Not very much is said about her in any of the authentic accounts, and traditional tittle-tattle may be neglected. She does not seem to have been extremely wise, and was entirely unliterary; but neither of these defects is a _causa redhibitionis_ in marriage; and she was certainly a faithful and affectionate wife. At any rate, Scott made no complaints, if he had any to make, and nearly the most touching passage in the _Diary_ is that written after her death. The minor incidents, not literary, of his life, between his call to the Bar and his marriage, require a little notice, for they had a very great influence on the character of his future work. His success at the Bar was moderate, but his fees increased steadily if slowly. He defended (unsuccessfully) a Galloway minister who was accused among other counts of 'toying with a sweetie-wife,' and it is interesting to find in his defence some casuistry about _ebrius_ and _ebriosus_, which reminds one of the Baron of Bradwardine. He took part victoriously in a series of battles with sticks, between Loyalist advocates and writers and Irish Jacobin medical students, in the pit of the Edinburgh theatre during April 1794. In June 1795 he became a curator of the Advocates' Library, and a year later engaged (of course on the loyal side) in another great political 'row,' this time in the streets. Above all, in the spring and summer between the loss of his love and his marriage, he engaged eagerly in volunteering, becoming quartermaster, paymaster, secretary, and captain in the Edinburgh Light Horse--an occupation which has left at least as much impression on his work as Gibbon's equally famous connection with the Hampshire Militia on his. His friendships continued and multiplied; and he began with the sisters of some of his friends, especially Miss Cranstoun (his chief confidante in the 'Green Mantle' business) and Miss Erskine, the first, or the first known to us, of those interesting correspondences with ladies which show him perhaps at his very best. For in them he plays neither jack-pudding, nor coxcomb, nor sentimentalist, nor any of the involuntary counterparts which men in such cases are too apt to play; and they form not the least of his titles to the great name of gentleman. But by far the most important contribution of these six or seven years to his 'making' was the further acquaintance with the scenery, and customs, and traditions, and dialects, and local history of his own country, which his greater independence, enlarged circle of friends, and somewhat increased means enabled him to acquire. It is quite true that to a man with his gifts any microcosm will do for a macrocosm in miniature. I have heard in conversation (I forget whether it is in any of the books) that he picked up the word 'whomled' (= 'bucketed over'--'turned like a tub'), which adds so much to the description of the nautical misfortune of Claud Halcro and Triptolemus in _The Pirate_, by overhearing it from a scold in the Grassmarket. But still the enlarged experience could not but be of the utmost value. It was during these years that he saw Glamis Castle in its unspoiled state, during these that, in connection with the case of the unfortunate but rather happily named devotee of Bacchus and Venus, M'Naught, he explored Galloway, and obtained the decorations and scenery, if not the story, of _Guy Mannering_. He also repeated his visits to the English side of the Border, not merely on the occasion during which he met Miss Carpenter, but earlier, in a second excursion to Northumberland. But, above all, these were the years of his famous 'raids' into Liddesdale, then one of the most inaccessible districts of Scotland, under the guidance of Mr. Shortreed of Jedburgh--raids which completed the information for _Guy Mannering_, which gave him much of the material for the _Minstrelsy_, and the history of which has, I think, delighted every one of his readers and biographers, except one or two who have been scandalised at the exquisite story of the Arrival of the Keg.[3] Of these let us not speak, but, regarding them with a tender pity not unmixed with wonder, pass to the beginnings of his actual literary life and to the history of his early married years. The literature a little preceded the life; but the life certainly determined the growth of the literature. FOOTNOTES: [1] His friend Shortreed's well-known expression for the results of the later Liddesdale 'raids.' [2] See General Preface to the Novels, or Lockhart, i. 136. [3] He attributes to Lady Balcarres the credit of being his earliest patroness, and of giving him, when a mere shy boy, the run of her drawing-room and of her box at the theatre. [4] He himself, in his entries of his children's births, always gives the order of the names as Margaret Charlotte. [5] The Boar of the Forest seems, not unnaturally, to have had a rather less warm 'cradle' in Lady Scott's feelings. She thought he took liberties; and though he meant no harm, he certainly did. [6] Lockhart, i. 270. I quote, as is usual, the second or ten-volume edition. But, for reading, some may prefer the first, in which the number of the volumes coincides with their real division, which has the memories of the death of Sophia Scott and others connected with its course, and to which the second made fewer positive additions than may be thought.--[It has been pointed out to me in reference to the word 'whomle' on the opposite page that Fergusson has 'whumble' in 'The Rising of the Session.' But if Scott had quoted, would he have altered the spelling? The Grassmarket story, moreover, exactly corresponds to his words, 'as a gudewife would whomle a bowie.'] CHAPTER II EARLY LITERARY WORK It is pretty universally known, and must have been perceived even from the foregoing summary, that Scott was by no means a very precocious writer. He takes rank, indeed, neither with those who, according to a famous phrase, 'break out threescore thousand strong' in youth; nor with those who begin original composition betimes, and by degrees arrive at excellence; nor yet with those who do not display any aptitude for letters till late in life. His class--a fourth, which, at least as regards the greater names of literature, is perhaps the smallest of all--comprises those who may almost be said to drift into literary work and literary fame, whose first production is not merely tentative and unoriginal, but, so to speak, accidental, who do not discover their real faculty for literary work till after a pretty long course of casual literary play. Part of this was no doubt due to the fact--vouched for sufficiently, and sufficiently probable, though not, so far as I know, resting on any distinct and firsthand documentary evidence--that Walter Scott the elder had, even more than his _eidolon_ the elder Fairford, that horror of literary employment on the part of his son which was for generations a tradition among persons of business, and which is perhaps not quite extinct yet. For this opposition, as is well known, rather stimulates than checks, even in dutiful offspring, the noble rage. It was due partly, perhaps, to a metaphysical cause--the fact that until Scott was well past his twentieth year, the wind of the spirit was not yet blowing, that the new poetical and literary day had not yet dawned; and partly to a more commonplace reason or set of reasons. About 1790 literary work was extremely badly paid;[11] and, even if it had been paid better, Scott had no particular need of money. Till his marriage he lived at home, spent his holidays with friends, or on tours where the expenses were little or nothing, and obtained sufficient pocket-money, first by copying while he was still apprenticed to his father, then by his fees when he was called. He could, as he showed later, spend money royally when he had it or thought he had it; but he was a man of no extravagant tastes of the ordinary kind, and Edinburgh was not in his days at all an extravagant place of living. Even when he married, he was by no means badly off. His wife, though not exactly an heiress, had means which had been estimated at five hundred a year, and which seem never to have fallen below two hundred; Scott's fees averaged about another two hundred; he evidently had an allowance from his father (who had been very well off, and was still not poor), and before very long the Sheriffship of Selkirkshire added three hundred more, though he seems to have made this an excuse for giving up practice, which he had never much liked. His father's death in 1799 put him in possession of some property; legacies from relations added more. Before the publication of the _Lay_ (when he was barely three-and-thirty), Lockhart estimates his income, leaving fees and literary work out of the question, at nearly if not quite a thousand a year; and a thousand a year at the beginning of the century went as far as fifteen hundred, if not two thousand, at its close. Thus, with no necessity to live by his pen, with no immediate or extraordinary temptation to use it for gain, and as yet, it would seem, with no overmastering inducement from his genius to do so, while he at no time of his life felt any stimulus from vanity, it is not surprising that it was long before Scott began to write in earnest. A few childish verse translations and exercises of his neither encourage nor forbid any particular expectations of literature from him; they are neither better nor worse than those of hundreds, probably thousands, of boys every year. His first published performance, now of extreme rarity, and not, of course, produced with any literary object, was his Latin call-thesis on the rather curious subject (which has been, not improbably, supposed to be connected with his German studies and the terror-literature of the last decade of the century) of the disposal of the dead bodies of legally executed persons. His first English work was directly the result of the said German studies, to which, like many of his contemporaries, he had been attracted by fashion. It consisted of nothing more than the well-known translations of Bürger's _Lenore_ and _Wild Huntsman_, which were issued in a little quarto volume by Manners & Miller of Edinburgh, in October 1796--a date which has the special interest of suggesting that Scott sought some refuge in literature from the agony of his rejection by Miss Stuart. These well-known translations, or rather imitations, the first published under the title of _William and Helen_, which it retains, the other as _The Chase_, which was subsequently altered to the better and more literal rendering, show unmistakably the result of the study of ballads, both in the printed forms and as orally delivered. Some crudities of rhyme and expression are said to have been corrected at the instance of one of Scott's (at this time rather numerous) Egerias, the beautiful wife of his kinsman, Scott of Harden, a young lady partly of German extraction, but of the best English breeding. Slight books of the kind, even translations, made a great deal more mark sometimes in those days than they would in these; but there were a great many translations of _Lenore_ about, and except by Scott's friends, little notice was taken of the volume. There were some excuses for the neglect, the best perhaps being that English criticism at the time was at nearly as low an ebb as English poetry. A really acute critic could hardly have mistaken the difference between Scott's verse and the fustian or tinsel of the Della Cruscans, the frigid rhetoric of Darwin, or the drivel of Hayley. Only Southey had as yet written ballad verses with equal vigour and facility; and, I think, he had not yet published any of them. It is Scott who tells us that he borrowed 'Tramp, tramp, along the land they rode, Splash, splash, along the sea,' from Taylor of Norwich; but Taylor himself had the good taste to see how much it was improved by the completion-- 'The scourge is red, the spur drops blood, _The fashing pebbles flee_'-- which last line, indeed, Coleridge himself hardly bettered in the not yet written _Ancient Mariner_, the _ne plus ultra_ of the style. It must be mainly a question of individual taste whether the sixes and eights of the _Lenore_ version or the continued eights of the _Huntsman_ please most. But any one who knows what the present state of British poetry was in October 1796 will be more than indifferently well satisfied with either. It was never Scott's way to be cast down at the failure or the neglect of any of his work; nor does he seem to have been ever actuated by the more masculine but perhaps equally childish determination to 'do it again' and 'shame the fools.' It seems quite on the cards that he might have calmly acquiesced in want of notoriety, and have continued a mere literary lawyer, with a pretty turn or verse and a great amount of reading, if his most intimate friend, William Erskine, had not met 'Monk' Lewis in London, and found him anxious for contributions to his _Tales of Wonder_. Lewis was a coxcomb, a fribble, and the least bit in the world of a snob: his _Monk_ is not very clean fustian, and most of his other work rubbish. But he was, though not according to knowledge, a sincere Romantic; he had no petty jealousy in matters literary; and, above all, he had, as Scott recognised, but as has not been always recognised since, a really remarkable and then novel command of flowing but fairly strict lyrical measures, the very things needed to thaw the frost of the eighteenth-century couplet. Erskine offered, and Lewis gladly accepted, contributions from Scott, and though _Tales of Wonder_ were much delayed, and did not appear till 1801, the project directly caused the production of Scott's first original work in ballad, _Glenfinlas_ and _The Eve of St. John_, as well as the less important pieces of the _Fire King_, _Frederick and Alice_, etc. In _Glenfinlas_ and _The Eve_ the real Scott first shows, and the better of the two is the second. It is not merely that, though Scott had a great liking for and much proficiency in 'eights,' that metre is never so effective for ballad purposes as eights and sixes; nor that, as Lockhart admits, _Glenfinlas_ exhibits a Germanisation which is at the same time an adulteration; nor even that, well as Scott knew the Perthshire Highlands, they could not appeal to him with the same subtle intimacy of touch as that possessed by the ruined tower where, as a half-paralysed infant, he had been herded with the lambs. But all these causes together, and others, join to produce a freer effect in _The Eve_. The eighteenth century is farther off; the genuine mediæval inspiration is nearer. And it is especially noticeable that, as in most of the early performances of the great poetical periods, an alteration of metrical etiquette (as we may call it) plays a great part. Scott had not yet heard that recitation of _Christabel_ which had so great an effect on his work, and through it on the work of others. But he had mastered for himself, and by study of the originals, the secret of the _Christabel_ metre, that is to say, the wide licence of equivalence in trisyllabic and dissyllabic feet,[10] of metre catalectic or not, as need was, of anacrusis and the rest. As is natural to a novice, he rather exaggerates his liberties, especially in the cases where the internal rhyme seduces him. It is necessary not merely to slur, but to gabble, in order to get some of these into proper rhythm, while in other places the mistake is made of using so many anapæsts that the metre becomes, not as it should be, iambic, with anapæsts for variation, but anapæstic without even a single iamb. But these are 'sma' sums, sma' sums,' as saith his own Bailie Jarvie, and on the whole the required effect of vigour and variety, of narrative giving place to terror and terror to narrative is capitally achieved. Above all, in neither piece, in the less no more than in the more successful, do we find anything of what the poet has so well characterised in one of his early reviews as the 'spurious style of tawdry and affected simplicity which trickles through the legendary ditties' of the eighteenth century. 'The hunt is up' in earnest; and we are chasing the tall deer in the open hills, not coursing rabbits with toy terriers on a bowling-green. The writing of these pieces had, however, been preceded by the publication of Scott's second volume, the translation of _Goetz von Berlichingen_, for which Lewis had arranged with a London bookseller, so that this time the author was not defrauded of his hire. He received twenty-five guineas, and was to have as much more for a second edition, which the short date of copyright forestalled. The book appeared in February 1799, and received more attention than the ballads, though, as Lockhart saw, it was in fact belated, the brief English interest in German _Sturm und Drang_ having ceased directly, though indirectly it gave Byron much of his hold on the public a dozen years later. At about the same time Scott executed, but did not publish, an original, or partly original, dramatic work of the same kind, _The House of Aspen_, which he contributed thirty years later to _The Keepsake_. Few good words have ever been said for this, and perhaps not many persons have ever cared much for the _Goetz_, either in the original or in the translation. Goethe did not, in drama at least, understand adventurous matter, and Scott had no grasp of dramatic form.[9] It has been said that there was considerable delay in the publication of the _Tales of Wonder_; and some have discussed what direct influence this delay had on Scott's further and further advance into the waters of literature. It is certain that he at one time thought of publishing his contributions independently, and that he did actually print a few copies of them privately; and it is extremely probable that his little experiments in publication, mere _hors-d'oeuvre_ as they were, had whetted his appetite. Even the accident of his friend Ballantyne's having taken to publishing a newspaper, and having room at his press for what I believe printers profanely call 'job-work,' may not have been without influence. What is certain is that the project of editing a few Border ballads--a selection of his collection which might make 'a neat little volume of four or five shillings'--was formed roughly in the late autumn of 1799, and had taken very definite shape by April 1800. Heber, the great bibliophile and brother of the Bishop, introduced Scott to that curious person Leyden, whose gifts, both original and erudite, are undoubted, although perhaps his exile and early death have not hurt their fame. And it so happened that Leyden was both an amateur of old ballads and (for the two things went together then, though they are sternly kept apart now) a skilful fabricator of new. The impetuous Borderer pooh-poohed a 'thin thing' such as a four or five shilling book, and Scott, nothing loath, extended his project. Most of his spare time during 1800 and 1801 was spent on it; and besides corresponding with the man who 'fished this murex up,' Bishop Percy, he entered into literary relations with Joseph Ritson. Even Ritson's waspish character seems to have been softened by Scott's courtesy, and perhaps even more by the joint facts that he had as yet attained no literary reputation, and neither at this nor at any other time gave himself literary airs. He also made the acquaintance of George Ellis, who became a warm and intimate friend. These were the three men of the day who, since Warton's death, knew most of early English poetry, and though Percy was too old to help, the others were not. The scheme grew and grew, especially by the inclusion in it of the publication not merely of ballads, but of the romance of _Sir Tristrem_ (of the authorship of which by someone else than Thomas the Rhymer, Scott never would be convinced), till the neat four or five shilling volume was quite out of the question. When at last the two volumes of the first (Kelso) edition appeared in 1802, not merely was _Sir Tristrem_ omitted, but much else which, still without 'the knight who fought for England,' subsequently appeared in a third. The earliest form of the _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_ is a very pretty book; it deservedly established the fame of Ballantyne as a printer, and as it was not printed in the huge numbers which have reduced the money value of Sir Walter's later books, it is rather surprising that it is not more sought after than it is at present. My copy--I do not know whether by exception or not--wears the rather unusual livery of pink boards instead of the common blue, grey, or drab. The paper and type are excellent; the printing (with a few slips in the Latin quotations such as _concedunt_ for _comedunt_) is very accurate, and the frontispiece, a view of Hermitage Castle in the rain, has the interest of presenting what is said to have been a very faithful view of the actual state of Lord Soulis' stronghold and the place of the martyrdom of Ramsay, attained by the curious stages of (1) a drawing by Scott, who could not draw at all; (2) a rifacimento by Clerk, who had never seen the place; and (3) an engraving by an artist who was equally innocent of local knowledge. The book, however, which brought in the modest profit of rather less than eighty pounds, would have been of equal moment under whatever guise it had pleased to assume. The shock of Percy's _Reliques_ was renewed, and in a far more favourable atmosphere, before a far better prepared audience. The public indeed had not yet been 'ground-baited' up to the consummation of thousands of copies of poetry as they were later by Scott himself and Byron; but an edition of eight hundred copies went off in the course of the year, and a second, with the additional volume, was at once called for. It contained, indeed, not much original verse, though 'Glenfinlas' and 'The Eve,' with Leyden's 'Cout of Keeldar,' 'Lord Soulis,' etc., appeared in it after a fashion which Percy had set and Evans had continued. But the ballads, familiar as they have become since, not merely in the _Minstrelsy_ itself, but in a hundred fresh collections, selections, and what not, could never be mistaken by anyone fitted to appreciate them. 'The Outlaw Murray,' with its rub-a-dub of _e_ rhymes throughout, opens the book very cunningly, with something not of the best, but good enough to excite expectation,--an expectation surely not to be disappointed by the immortal agony (dashed with one stroke of magnificent wrath) of 'Helen of Kirkconnell,' the bustle, frolic, and battle-joy of the Border pieces proper, the solemn notes of 'The Lyke-Wake Dirge,' the eeriness of 'Clerk Saunders' and 'The Wife of Usher's Well.' Even Percy had not been lucky enough to hit upon anything so characteristic of the _average_ ballad style at its best as the opening stanza of 'Fause Foodrage'-- 'King Easter courted her for her lands, King Wester for her fee, King Honour for her comely face And for her fair bodie'; and Percy would no doubt have been tempted to 'polish' such more than average touches as Margaret's 'turning,' without waking, in the arms of her lover as he receives his deathblow, or as the incomparable stanza in 'The Wife of Usher's Well' which tells how-- 'By the gates of Paradise That birk grew fair enough.' Those who study literature in what they are pleased to call a scientific manner have, as was to be expected, found fault (mildly or not, according to their degree of sense and taste) with Scott, for the manner in which he edited these ballads. It may be admitted that the practice of mixing imitations with originals is a questionable one; and that in some other cases, Scott, though he was far from the illegitimate and tasteless fashion of alteration, of which in their different ways Allan Ramsay and Percy himself had set the example, was not always up to the highest lights on this subject of editorial faithfulness. It must, for instance, seem odd to the least pedantic nowadays that he should have thought proper to print Dryden's _Virgil_ with Dr. Somebody's pedantic improvements instead of Dryden's own text. But the case of the ballads is very different. Here, it must be remembered, there is no authentic original at all. Even in the rare cases, where very early printed or MS. copies exist, we not only do not know that these are the originals, we have every reasonable reason for being pretty certain that they are not. In the case of ballads taken down from repetition, we know as a matter of certainty that, according to the ordinary laws of human nature, the reciter has altered the text which he or she heard, that that text was in its day and way altered by someone else, and so on almost _ad infinitum_. 'Mrs. Brown's version,' therefore, or Mr. Smith's, or Mr. Anybody's, has absolutely no claims to sacrosanctity. It is well, no doubt, that all such versions should be collected by someone (as in this case by Professor Child) who has the means, the time, and the patience. But for the purposes of reading, for the purposes of poetic enjoyment, such a collection is nearly valueless. We must have it for reference, of course; nobody grudges the guineas he has spent for the best part of the last twenty years on Professor Child's stately, if rather cumbrous, volumes. But who can _read_ a dozen versions, say, of 'The Queen's Marie' with any pleasure? What is exquisite in one is watered, messed, spoiled by the others. Therefore I shall maintain that though the most excellent way of all might have been to record his alterations, and the original, in an appendix-dustbin of _apparatus criticus_, Scott was right, and trebly right, in such dealing as that with the first stanza of 'Fause Foodrage,' which I have quoted and praised. That stanza, as it stands above, does not occur in any of the extant quasi-originals. 'Mrs. Brown's MS.,' from which, as Professor Child says, with almost silent reproach, Scott took his text, 'with some forty small changes,' reads-- 'King Easter has courted her for her gowd, King Wester for her fee, King Honour for her lands sae braid, And for her fair bodie.' Now this is clearly wrong. Either 'gowd' or 'lands' is a mere repetition of 'fee,' and if not,[8] the reading does not point any ethical antithesis between Kings Easter and Wester and their more chivalrous rival. As it happens, there are two other versions, shorter and less dramatic, but one of them distinctly giving, the other implying, the sense of Scott's alteration. Therefore I say that Scott was fully justified in adjusting the one text that he did print, especially as he did it in his own right way, and not in the wrong one of Percy and Mickle. There is here no Bentleian impertinence, no gratuitous meddling with the at least possibly genuine text of a known and definite author. The editor simply picks out of the mud, and wipes clean, something precious, which has been defaced by bad usage, and has become masterless. The third volume of the _Minstrelsy_ was pretty speedily got ready, with more matter; and _Sir Tristrem_ (which is in a way a fourth) was not very long in following. This last part contained a _tour de force_ in the shape of a completion of the missing part by Scott himself, a completion which, of course, shocks philologists, but which was certainly never written for them, and possesses its own value for others. Not the least part of the interest of the _Minstrelsy_ itself was the editor's appearance as a prose-writer. Percy had started, and others down to Ritson had continued, the practice of interspersing verse collections with dissertations in prose; and while the first volume of the _Minstrelsy_ contained a long general introduction of more than a hundred pages, and most of the ballads had separate prefaces of more or less length, the preface to 'Young Tamlane' turned itself into a disquisition on fairy lore, which, being printed in small type, is probably not much shorter than the general introduction. In these pieces (the Fairy essay is said to be based on information partly furnished by Leyden) all the well-known characteristics of Scott's prose style appear--its occasional incorrectness, from the strictly scholastic point of view, as well as its far more than counterbalancing merits of vivid presentation, of arrangement, not orderly in appearance but curiously effective in result, of multifarious facts and reading, of the bold pictorial vigour of its narrative, of its pleasant humour, and its incessant variety. Nor was this the only opportunity for exercising himself in the medium which, even more than verse, was to be his, that the earliest years of the century afforded to Scott. The _Edinburgh Review_, as everybody knows, was started in 1802. Although its politics were not Scott's, they were for some years much less violently put forward and exclusively enforced than was the case later; indeed, the Whig Review started with much the same ostensible policy as the Whig Deliverer a century before, the policy, at least in declared intention, of using both parties as far as might be for the public good. The attempt, if made _bona fide_, was not more successful in one case than in the other; but it at least permitted Tories to enlist under the blue-and-yellow banner. The standard-bearer, Jeffrey, moreover, was a very old, an intimate, and a never-quite-to-be-divorced friend of Scott's. At a later period, Scott's contributions to periodicals attained an excellence which has been obscured by the fame of the poems and novels together, even more unjustly than the poems have been obscured by the novels alone. His reviews at this time on Southey's _Amadis_, on Godwin's _Chaucer_, on Ellis's _Specimens_, etc., are a little crude and amateurish, especially in the direction (well known, to those who have ever had to do with editing, as a besetting sin of novices) of substituting a mere account of the book, with a few expressions of like and dislike, for a grasped and reasoned criticism of it. But this is far less peculiar to them than those who have not read the early numbers of the great reviews may suppose. The fact is that Jeffrey himself, Sydney Smith, Scott, and others were only feeling for the principles and practice of reviewing, as they themselves later, and the brilliant second generation of Carlyle and Macaulay, De Quincey and Lockhart, were to carry it out. Perhaps the very best specimens of Scott's powers in this direction are the prefaces which he contributed much later and gratuitously to John Ballantyne's _Novelists' Library_--things which hardly yield to Johnson's _Lives_ as examples of the combined arts of criticism and biography. At the time of which we speak he was 'making himself' in this direction as in others. I hope that Jeffrey and not he was responsible for a fling at Mary Woollstonecraft in the Godwin article, which would have been ungenerous in any case, and which in this was unpardonable. But there is nothing else to object to, and the _Amadis_ review in particular is a very interesting one. We must now look back a little, so as to give a brief sketch of Scott's domestic life, from his marriage until the publication of _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, which, with that of _Waverley_ and the crash of 1825-26, supplies the three turning-points of his career. After a very brief sojourn in lodgings (where the landlady was shocked at Mrs. Scott's habit of sitting constantly in her drawing-room), the young couple took up their abode in South Castle Street. Hence, not very long afterwards, they moved to the house--the famous No. 39--in the northern division of the same street, which continued to be her home for the rest of her Edinburgh life, and Scott's so long as he could afford a house in Edinburgh. Their first child was born on the 14th of October 1798, but did not live many hours. As was (and for the matter of that is) much more customary with Edinburgh residents, even of moderate means, than it has been for at least a century with Londoners, Scott, while his own income was still very modest, took a cottage at Lasswade in the neighbourhood. Here he lived during the summer for years; and in March 1799 he and his wife went to London, for the first time in his case since he had been almost a baby. His father died during this visit, after a painful breakdown, which is said to have suggested the touching particulars of the deathbed of Chrystal Croftangry's benefactor (not 'the elder Croftangry,' as is said in a letter quoted by Lockhart), and was repeated to some extent in Scott's own case. His appointment to the Sheriff[depute]ship of Selkirkshire was made in December 1799, and gave, for light work, three hundred a year. It need not have interfered with even an active practice at the Bar had such fallen to him, and at first did not impose on him even a partial residence. The Lord-Lieutenant, however, Lord Napier of Ettrick, insisted on this, and though Scott rather resented a strictness which seems not to have been universal, he had to comply. He did not, however, do so at once, and during the last year of the century and its two successors, Lasswade and Castle Street were Scott's habitats, with various radiations; while in the spring of 1803 he and Mrs. Scott repeated their visit to London and extended it to Oxford. It is not surprising to read his confession in sad days, a quarter of a century later, of the 'ecstatic feeling' with which he first saw this, the place in all the island which was his spiritual home. The same year saw the alarm of invasion which followed the resumption of hostilities after the armistice of Amiens; and Scott's attention to his quartermastership, which he still held, seems to have given Lord Napier the idea that he was devoting himself, not only _tam Marti quam Mercurio_, but to Mars rather at Mercury's expense.[7] Scott, however, was never fond of being dictated to, and he and his wife were still at Lasswade when the Wordsworths visited them in the autumn, though Scott accompanied them to his sheriffdom on their way back to Westmoreland. He had not yet wholly given up practice, and though its rewards were not munificent, they reached about this time, it would seem, their maximum sum of £218, which, in the days of his fairy-money, he must often have earned by a single morning's work. Lord Napier, by no means improperly (for it was a legal requirement, though often evaded, that four months' residence per annum should be observed), persisted; and Scott, after a pleasing but impracticable dream of taking up his summer residence in the Tower of Harden itself, which was offered to him, took a lease of Ashestiel, a pleasant country house,--'a decent farmhouse,' he calls it, in his usual way,--the owner of which was his relation, and absent in India. The place was not far from Selkirk, on the banks of the Tweed and in the centre of the Buccleuch country. He seems to have settled there by the end of July 1804. The family, after leaving it for the late autumn session in Edinburgh, returned at Christmas, by which time _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, though not actually published, was printed and ready. It was issued in the first week of the new year 1805, being, except Wordsworth's and Coleridge's, the first book published, which was distinctly and originally characteristic of the new poetry of the nineteenth century. FOOTNOTES: [7] Not many years before, Johnson had denied that it was possible for a working man of letters to earn even _six_ guineas a sheet (the _Edinburgh_ began at ten and proceeded to a minimum of sixteen), '_communibus sheetibus_,' as he put it jocularly to Boswell. Southey, in the year of Scott's marriage, seems to have thought about ten shillings (certainly not more) 'not amiss' for a morning's work in reviewing. [8] For an interesting passage showing how slow contemporary ears were to admit this, see Southey's excellent defence of his own practice to Wynn (_Letters_, i. 69). [9] His attempts at the kind may best be despatched in a note here. Their want of merit contrasts strangely with the admirable quality of the 'Old Play' fragments scattered about the novels. _Halidon Hill_ (1822), in the subject of which Scott had an ancestral interest from his Swinton blood, reminds one much more of Joanna Baillie than of its author. _Macduff's Cross_ (1823), a very brief thing, is still more like Joanna, was dedicated to her, and appeared in a miscellany which she edited for a charitable purpose. _The Doom of Devorgoil_, written for Terry in the first 'cramp' attack of 1817, but not published till 1830, has a fine supernatural subject, but hardly any other merit. _Auchindrane_, the last, is by far the best. [10] It is quite possible that Mrs. Brown's illiterate authority, or one of his predecessors in title, took 'fee' in the _third_ sense of 'cattle.' [11] He wrote for his corps the 'War Song of the Edinburgh Light Dragoons,' which appeared in the _Scots Magazine_ for 1802, but was written earlier. It is good, but not so good as it would have been a few years later. CHAPTER III THE VERSE ROMANCES Although Scott was hard upon his thirty-fifth year when the _Lay_ appeared, and although he had already a considerable literary reputation in Edinburgh, and some in London, the amount of his original publications was then but small. Indeed, on the austere principles of those who deny 'originality' to such things as reviews, or as the essays in the _Minstrelsy_, it must be limited to a mere handful, though of very pleasant delights, the half-dozen of ballads made up by 'Glenfinlas,' 'The Eve of St. John,' the rather inferior 'Fire King,' the beautiful 'Cadzow Castle' (not yet mentioned, but containing some of its author's most charming _topic_ lines), the fragment of 'The Grey Brother,' and a few minor pieces. With the _Lay_ he took an entirely different position. The mere bulk of the poem was considerable; and, putting for the instant entirely out of question its peculiarities of subject, metre, and general treatment, it was a daring innovation in point of class. The eighteenth century had, even under its own laws and conditions, distinctly eschewed long narrative poems, the unreadable epics of Glover, for instance, belonging to that class of exception which really does prove the rule. Pope's _Rape_ had been burlesque, and his _Dunciad_, satire; hardly the ghost of a narrative had appeared in Thomson and Young; Shenstone, Collins, Gray, had nothing _de longue haleine_; the entire poetical works of Goldsmith probably do not exceed in length a canto of the Lay; Cowper had never attempted narrative; Crabbe was resting on the early laurels of his brief _Village_, etc., and had not begun his tales. _Thalaba_, indeed, had been published, and no doubt was not without effect on Scott himself; but it was not popular, and the author was still under the sway of the craze against rhyme. To all intents and purposes the poet was addressing the public, in a work combining the attractions of fiction with the attractions of verse at considerable length, for the first time since Dryden had done so in his _Fables_, a hundred and five years before. And though the mastery of the method might be less, the stories were original, they were continuous, and they displayed an entirely new gust and seasoning both of subject and of style. There can be no doubt at all, for those who put metre in its proper place, that a very large, perhaps the much larger, part of the appeal of the _Lay_ was metrical. The public was sick of the couplet--had indeed been sickened twice over, if the abortive revolt of Gray and Collins be counted. It did not take, and was quite right in not taking, to the rhymeless, shortened Pindaric of Sayers and Southey, as to anything but an eccentric 'sport' of poetry. What Scott had to offer was practically new, or at least novel. It is universally known--and Scott, who was only too careless of his own claims, and the very last of men to steal or conceal those of others, made no secret of it--that the suggestion of the _Lay_ in metre came from a private recitation or reading of Coleridge's _Christabel_, written in the year of Scott's marriage, but not published till twenty years later, and more than ten after the appearance of the _Lay_. Coleridge seems to have regarded Scott's priority with an irritability less suitable to his philosophic than to his poetical character.[16] But he had, in the first place, only himself, if anybody, to blame; in the second, Scott more than made the loan his own property by the variations executed on its motive; and in the third, Coleridge's original right was far less than he seems to have honestly thought, and than most people have guilelessly assumed since. For the iambic dimeter, freely altered by the licences of equivalence, anacrusis, and catalexis, though not recently practised in English when _Christabel_ and the _Lay_ set the example, is an inevitable result of the clash between accented, alliterative, asyllabic rhythm and quantitative, exactly syllabic metre, which accompanied the transformation of Anglo-Saxon into English. We have distinct approaches to it in the thirteenth century _Genesis_; it attains considerable development in Spenser's _The Oak and the Brere_; anybody can see that the latter part of Milton's _Comus_ was written under the breath of its spirit. But it had not hitherto been applied on any great scale, and the delusions under which the eighteenth century laboured as to the syllabic restrictions of English poetry had made it almost impossible that it should be. At the same time, that century, by its lighter practice on the one hand in the octosyllable, on the other in the four-footed anapæstic, was making the way easier for those who dared a little: and Coleridge first, then Scott, did the rest. We have seen that in some of his early ballad work Scott had a little overdone the licence of equivalence, but this had probably been one of the formal points on which, as we know, the advice of Lewis, no poet but a remarkably good metrist, had been of use to him. And he acquitted himself now in a manner which, if it never quite attains the weird charm of _Christabel_ itself at its best, is more varied, better sustained, and, above all, better suited to the story-telling which was, of course, Scott's supremest gift. It is very curious to compare Coleridge's remarks on Scott's verse with those of Wordsworth, in reference to the _White Doe of Rylstone_. Neither in _Christabel_, nor in the _White Doe_, is there a real _story_ really told. Coleridge, but for his fatal weaknesses, undoubtedly could have told such a story; it is pretty certain that Wordsworth could not. But Scott could tell a story as few other men who have ever drawn breath on the earth could tell it. He had been distinguished in the conversational branch of the art from his youth up, and though it was to be long before he could write a story in prose, he showed now, at the first attempt, how he could write one in verse. Construction, of course, was not his forte; it never was. The plot of the _Lay_, if not exactly non-existent, is of the simplest and loosest description; the whole being in effect a series of episodes strung together by the loves of Margaret and Cranstoun and the misdeeds of the Goblin Page. Even the Book supplies no real or necessary _nexus_. But the romance proper has never required elaborate construction, and has very rarely, if ever, received it. A succession of engaging or exciting episodes, each plausibly joined to each, contents its easy wants; and such a succession is liberally provided here. So, too, it does not require strict character-drawing--a gift with which Scott was indeed amply provided, but which he did not exhibit, and had no call to exhibit, here. If the personages will play their parts, that is enough. And they all play them very well here, though the hero and heroine do certainly exhibit something of that curious nullity which has been objected to the heroes nearly always, the heroines too frequently, of the later prose novels. But even those critics who, as too many critics are wont to do, forgot and forget that 'the prettiest girl in the world' not only cannot give, but ought not to be asked to give, more than she has, must have been, and must be, very unreasonable if they find fault with the subject and stuff of the _Lay_. Jeffrey's remark about 'the present age not enduring' the Border and mosstrooping details was contradicted by the fact, and was, as a matter of taste, one of those strange blunders which diversified his often admirably acute critical utterances. When he feared their effects on '_English_ readers,' he showed himself, as was not common with him, actually ignorant of one of the simplest general principles of the poetic appeal, that is to say, the element of _strangeness_. But we must not criticise criticism here, and must only add that another great appeal, that of variety, is amply given, as well as that of unfamiliarity. The graceful and touching, if a little conventional, overture of the Minstrel introduces with the truest art the vigorous sketch of Branksome Tower. The spirits of flood and fell are allowed to impress and not allowed to bore us; for the quickest of changes is made to Deloraine's ride--a kind of thing in which Scott never failed, even in his latest and saddest days. The splendid Melrose opening of the Second Canto supports itself through the discovery of the Book, and finds due contrast in the description (or no-description) of the lovers' meeting; the fight and the Goblin Page's misbehaviour and punishment (to all, at least, but those, surely few now, who are troubled by the Jeffreyan sense of 'dignity'), the decoying and capture of young Buccleuch, and the warning of the clans are certainly no ungenerous provision for the Third; nor the clan anecdotes (especially the capital episode of the Beattisons), the parley, the quarrel of Howard and Dacre, and the challenge, for the Fourth. There is perhaps less in the Fifth, for Scott seems to have been afraid of another fight in detail; but the description of the night before, and the famous couplet-- 'I'd give the lands of Deloraine Dark Musgrave were alive again'-- would save it if there were nothing else, as there is much. And if the actual conclusion has no great interest (Scott was never good at conclusions, as we shall find Lady Louisa Stuart telling him frankly later), the Sixth Canto is full, and more than full, of brilliant things--the feast, the Goblin's tricks, his carrying-off, the pilgrimage, and, above all, the songs, especially 'Rosabelle' and the version of the 'Dies Iræ.' The mention of these last may fairly introduce a few words on the formal and metrical characteristics of the poem, remarks which perhaps some readers resent, but which must nevertheless be made, inasmuch as they are to my mind by far the most important part of poetical criticism. Scott evidently arranged his scheme of metre with extreme care here, though it is possible that after this severe exercise he let it take care of itself to some extent later. His introduction is in the strict octosyllable, with only such licences of slur or elision-- 'The pi | _tying Duch_ | ess praised its chime,' '_He had played_ | it to King Charles the Good'-- as the greatest precisians might have allowed themselves. But the First Canto breaks at once into the full licence, not merely of equivalence,--that is to say, of substituting an anapæst or a trochee for an iamb,--but of shifting the base and rhythm of any particular verse, or of set batches of verses, between the three ground-feet, and, further, of occasionally introducing sixes, as in the ballad metre, and even fours-- 'Bards long | shall tell How Lord Wal | ter fell,' instead of the usual eights. In similar fashion he varies the rhymes, passing as the subject or the accompaniment of the word-music may require, from the couplet to the quatrain, and from the quatrain to the irregularly rhymed 'Pindaric'; always, however, taking care that, except in the set lyric, the quatrain shall not fall too much into definite stanza, but be interlaced in sense or sound sufficiently to carry on the narrative. The result, to some tastes, is a medium quite unsurpassed for the particular purpose. The only objection to it at all capable of being maintained, that I can think of, is that the total effect is rather lyrical than epic. And so much of this must be perhaps allowed as comes to granting that Scott's verse-romance is rather a long and cunningly sustained and varied ballad than an epic proper. The _Lay_, though not received with quite that eager appetite for poetry which Scott was 'born to introduce,' and of which he lived long enough to see the glutting, had a large and immediate sale. The author, not yet aware what a gold mine his copyrights were, parted with this after the first edition, and received in all rather less than £770, a sum trifling in comparison with his after gains; but probably the largest that had as yet been received by any English poet for a single volume not published by subscription. It is curious that, at the estimated rate of three for one in comparing the value of money at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, the sum almost exactly equals that paid by Tonson for Dryden's _Fables_, the last book, before the _Lay_ itself, which had united popularity, merit, and bulk in English verse. But Dryden was the acknowledged head of English literature at the time, and Scott was a mere beginner. He was probably even better pleased with the quality of the praise than with the quantity of the pudding. For though professional criticism, then in no very vigorous state, said some silly things, it was generally favourable; and a saying of Pitt (most indifferent, as a rule, of all Prime Ministers to English literature) is memorable not merely as summing up the general impression, but as defining what that impression was in a fashion quite invaluable to the student of literary history. The Pilot that Weathered the Storm, it seems, said of the description of the Minstrel's hesitation before playing, 'This is a sort of thing I might have expected in painting, but could never have fancied capable of being given by poetry.' To the present generation and the last, the reverse expression would probably seem more natural. We say, of Mr. Watts or of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, that they have put, in 'Love and Death' or in 'Love among the Ruins,' what we might have expected from poetry, but could hardly have thought possible in painting. But a hundred years of studious convention and generality, of deliberate avoidance of the poignant, and the vivid, and the detailed, and the coloured in poetry had made Pitt's confession as natural as another hundred years of contrary practice from Coleridge to Rossetti have made ours. The publication of the _Lay_ immediately preceded, and perhaps its success had no small share in deciding, the most momentous and unfortunate step of Scott's life, his entry into partnership with James Ballantyne. The discussion of the whole of this business will best be postponed till the date of its catastrophe is reached, but a few words may be said on the probable reasons for it. Much, no doubt, was the result of that combination of incalculable things which foolish persons of one kind call mere chance, of which foolish persons of another kind deny the existence, and which wise men term, from different but not irreconcilable points of view, Providence, or Luck, or Fate. But a little can be cleared up. Scott had evidently made up his mind that he should not succeed at the Bar, and had also persuaded himself that the very success of the _Lay_ had made failure certain. The ill success of his brother Thomas, with the writer's business inherited from their father, perhaps inconvenienced and no doubt frightened him. In fact, though his harsher judges are wrong in attributing to him any undue haste to be rich, he certainly does seem to have been under a dread of being poor; a dread no doubt not wholly intelligible and partly morbid in a young man still under thirty-five, with brilliant literary and some legal prospects, who had, independently of fees, literary or legal, a secured income of about a thousand a year. He probably thought, and was right in thinking, that the book trade was going to 'look up' to a degree previously unknown; he seems throughout to have been under one of those inexplicable attractions towards the Ballantynes which now and then exist, as Hobbes says, 'in the greater towards the meaner, but not contrary'; and perhaps there was another cause which has not been usually allowed for enough. Good Christian and good-natured man as he was, Scott was exceedingly proud; and though joining himself with persons of dubious social position in mercantile operations seems an odd way of pride, it had its temptations. I do not doubt but that from the first Scott intended, more or less vaguely and dimly, to extend the printing business into a publishing one, and so to free himself from any necessity of going cap-in-hand to publishers. However, for good or for ill,--I think it was mainly for ill,--for this reason or for that, the partnership was formed, at first indirectly by way of loan, then directly by further advance on security of a share in the business, and finally so that Scott became, though he did not appear, the leading partner. And the very first letter that we have of his about business shows the fatal flaw which he, the soul of honour, seems never to have detected till too late, if even then. The scheme for an edition of Dryden was already afloat, and the first editor proposed was a certain Mr. Foster, who 'howled about the expense of printing.' 'I still,' says Scott to Ballantyne, 'stick to my answer that _I know nothing of the matter_, but that, settle it how he and you will, _it must be printed by you or be no concern of mine. This gives you an advantage in driving the bargain._' Perhaps; but how about the advantage to Mr. Foster of being advised by Ballantyne's partner to employ Ballantyne, while he was innocent of the knowledge of the identity of partner and adviser, and was even told that Scott 'knew nothing of the matter'? Even before the quarrel which soon occurred with Constable established the Ballantynes--nominally the other brother John--as publishers, Scott had begun, and was constantly pressing upon the different publishing houses with which he was connected, a variety of literary schemes of the most ambitious and costly character. All these books were to be printed by Ballantyne, and many of them edited by himself; while, when the direct publishing business was added, there was no longer any check on this dangerous proceeding. It is most curious how Scott, the shrewdest and sanest of men in the vast majority of affairs, seems to have lost his head wherever books or lands were concerned. Himself both an antiquary and an antiquarian,[15] as well as a lover of literature, he seems to have taken it for granted that the same combination of tastes existed in the public to an extent which would pay all expenses, however lavishly incurred. To us, nowadays, who know how cold a face publishers turn on what we call really interesting schemes, and how often these schemes, even when fostered, miscarry or barely pay expenses,--who are aware that even the editors of literary societies, where expenses are assured beforehand, have to work for love or for merely nominal fees, simply because the public will not buy the books,--it is not so wonderful that some of Scott's schemes never got into being at all, and that others were dead losses, as that any 'got home.' His _Dryden_, an altogether admirable book, on which he lavished labour, and great part of which appealed to a still dominant prestige, may just have carried the editor's certainly not excessive fee of forty guineas a volume, or about £750 for the whole. But when one reads of twice that sum paid for the _Swift_, of £1300 for the thirteen quartos of the _Somers Papers_, and so forth, the feeling is not that the sums paid were at all too much for the work done, but that the publishers must have been very lucky men if they ever saw their money again. The two first of these schemes certainly, the third perhaps, deserved success; and still more so did a great scheme for the publication of the entire _British Poets_, to be edited by Scott and Campbell, which indeed fell through in itself, but resulted indirectly in Campbell's excellent _Specimens_ and Chalmers's invaluable if not very comely _Poets_. Even another project, a _Corpus Historicorum_, would have been magnificent, though it could hardly have been bookselling war. But the _Somers Tracts_ themselves, the _Memoirs_ and papers of Sadler, Slingsby, Carleton, Cary, etc., were of the class of book which requires subvention of some kind to prevent it from being a dead loss; and when the preventive check of the unwillingness of publishers was removed by the fatal establishment of '_John_ Ballantyne & Co.,' things became worse still. There are few better instances of the eternal irony of fate than that the author of the admirable description of the bookseller's horror at Mr. Pembroke's Sermons[14] should have permitted, should have positively caused, the publishing at what was in effect his own risk, or rather his own certainty of loss, not merely of Weber's ambitious _Beaumont and Fletcher_, but of collections of _Tixall Poetry_, _Histories of the Culdees_, Wilson's _History of James the First_, and the rest. As the beginning of 1805 saw the first birth of his real books, so the end of it saw that of the last of his children according to the flesh. His firstborn, as has been said, did not live. But Walter (born November 1799), Sophia (born October 1801), Anne (born February 1803), and Charles (born December 1805) survived infancy; and it is quite probable that these regular increases to his family, by suggesting that he might have a large one, stimulated Scott's desire to enlarge his income. As a matter of fact, however, the quartette of two boys and two girls was not exceeded. The domestic life at Castle Street and Ashestiel, from the publication of the _Lay_ to that of _Marmion_ in 1808,--indeed to that of _The Lady of the Lake_ in May 1810,--ran smoothly enough; and there can be little doubt that these five years were the happiest, and in reality the most prosperous, of Scott's life. He had at once attained great fame, and was increasing it by each successive poem; his immense intellectual activity found vent besides in almost innumerable projects, some of which were in a way successful, and some of which, if they did himself no very great good pecuniarily, did good to more or less deserving friends and _protégés_. His health had, as yet, shown no signs whatever of breaking down; he was physically in perfect condition for, and at Ashestiel he had every opportunity of indulging in, the field sports in which his soul delighted at least as much as in reading and writing; he had pleasant intervals of wandering; and, to crown it all, he was, during this period, established in reversionary prospect, if not yet in actual possession, of an income which should have put even his anxieties at rest, and which certainly might have made him dissociate himself from the dangerous and doubtful commercial enterprises in which he had engaged. This reversion was that of a Clerkship of Session, one of an honourable, well-paid, and by no means laborious group of offices which seems to have been accepted as a comely and comfortable set of shelves for advocates of ability, position, and influence, who, for this reason or that, were not making absolutely first-rate mark at the Bar. The post to which Scott was appointed was in the possession of a certain Mr. Hope, and as no retiring pension was attached to these places, it was customary to hold them on the rather uncomfortable terms of doing the work till the former holder died, without getting any money. But before many years a pension scheme was put in operation; Mr. Hope took his share of it, and Scott entered upon thirteen hundred a year in addition to his Sheriffship and to his private property, without taking any account at all of literary gains. The appointment had not actually been completed, though the patent had been signed, when the Fox and Grenville Government came in, and it so happened that the document had been so made out as to have enabled Scott, if he chose, to draw the whole salary and leave his predecessor in the cold. But this was soon set right. In the visit to London which he paid (apparently for the purpose of getting the error corrected), he made the acquaintance of the unlucky Princess of Wales, who was at this time rather a favourite with the Tories. And when he came back to Scotland, the trial of Lord Melville gave him an opportunity of distinguishing himself by a natural and very pardonable partisanship, which made his Whig friends rather sore. Politics in Edinburgh ran very high during this short break in the long Tory domination, and from it dates a story, to some minds, perhaps, one of the most interesting of all those about Scott, and connected indelibly with the scene of its occurrence. It tells how, as he was coming down the Mound with Jeffrey and another Whig, after a discussion in the Faculty of Advocates on some proposals of innovation, Jeffrey tried to laugh the difference off, and how Scott, usually stoical enough, save in point of humour, broke out with actual tears in his eyes, 'No, no! it is no laughing matter. Little by little, whatever your wishes may be, you will destroy and undermine until nothing of what makes Scotland Scotland shall remain!' He would probably have found no great reason at the other end of the century to account himself a false prophet; and he might have thought his prophecies in fair way of fulfilment not in Scotland only. During 1806 and 1807 the main occupations of Scott's leisure (if he can ever be said to have had such a thing) were the _Dryden_ and _Marmion_. The latter of these appeared in February and the former in April 1808, a perhaps unique example of an original work, and one of criticism and compilation, both of unusual bulk and excellence, appearing, with so short an interval, from the same pen. As for _Marmion_, it is surely by far the greatest, taking all constituents of poetical greatness together, of Scott's poems. It was not helped at the time, and probably never has been helped, by the author's plan of prefixing to each canto introductions of very considerable length, each addressed to one or other of his chief literary friends, and having little or nothing at all to do with the subject of the tale. Contemporaries complained that the main poem was thereby intolerably interrupted; posterity, I believe, has taken the line of ignoring the introductions altogether. This is a very great pity, for not only do they contain some of Scott's best and oftenest quoted lines, but each is a really charming piece of occasional verse, and something more, in itself. The beautiful description of Tweedside in late autumn, the dirge on Nelson, Pitt, and Fox (which last, of course, infuriated Jeffrey), and, above all, the splendid passage on the _Morte d'Arthur_ (which Scott had at this time thought of editing, but gave up to Southey) adorn the epistle to Rose; the picture of Ettrick Forest in that to Marriott is one of the best sustained things the poet ever did; the personal interest of the Erskine piece is of the highest, though it has fewer 'purple' passages, and it is well-matched with that to Skene; while the fifth to Ellis and the sixth and last to Heber nobly complete the batch. Only, though the things in this case _are_ both rich and rare, 'We wonder what the devil they do there'; and Lockhart unearthed, what Scott seems to have forgotten, the fact that they were originally intended to appear by themselves. It is a pity they did not; for, excellent as they are, they are quite out of place as interludes to a story, the serried range of which not only does not require but positively rejects them. For here, while Scott had lost little, if anything, of the formal graces of the _Lay_, he had improved immensely in grip and force. Clare may be a bread-and-butter heroine, and Wilton a milk-and-water lover, but the designs of Marmion against both give a real story-interest, which is quite absent from the _Lay_. The figure of Constance is really tragic, not melodramatic merely, and makes one regret that Scott, in his prose novels, did not repeat and vary her. All the accessories, both in incident and figure, are good, and it is almost superfluous to praise the last canto. It extorted admiration from the partisan rancour and the literary prudishness of Jeffrey; it made the disturbed dowagers of the _Critical Review_, who thought, with Rymer, that 'a hero ought to be virtuous,' mingle applause with their fie-fies; it has been the delight of every reader, not a milksop, or a faddist, or a poetical man-of-one-idea, ever since. The last canto of _Marmion_ and the last few 'Aventiuren' of the _Nibelungen Lied_ are perhaps the only things in all poetry where a set continuous battle (not a series of duels as in Homer) is related with unerring success; and the steady _crescendo_ of the whole, considering its length and intensity, is really miraculous. Nay, even without this astonishing finale, the poem that contained the opening sketch of Norham, the voyage from Whitby to Holy Island, the final speech of Constance, and the famous passage of her knell, the Host's Tale, the pictures of Crichton and the Blackford Hill view, the 'air and fire' of the 'Lochinvar' song, the phantom summons from the Cross of Edinburgh, and the parting of Douglas and Marmion, could spare half of these and still remain one of the best of its kind, while every passage so spared would be enough to distinguish any poem in which it occurred. The considerable change in the metre of _Marmion_ as compared with the _Lay_ is worth noticing. Here, as there, the 'introductions' are, for the most part, if not throughout, in continuous octosyllabic couplets. But, in the text, the couplet plays also a much larger part than it does in the _Lay_, and where it is dropped the substitute is not usually the light and extremely varied medley of the earlier poem, so much as a sort of irregular (and sometimes almost regular) stanza arrangement, sets of (usually three) octosyllables being interspersed with sixes, rhyming independently. The batches of monorhymed octosyllables sometimes extend to even four in number, with remarkably good effect, as, for instance, in the infernal proclamation from the Cross. Altogether the metrical scheme is of a graver cast than that of the _Lay_, and suits the more serious and tragical colour of the story. It has been mentioned above in passing that Jeffrey reviewed _Marmion_ on the whole unfavourably. The story of this review is well known: how the editor-reviewer (with the best intentions doubtless) sent the proof with a kind of apology to Scott on the morning of a dinner-party in Castle Street; how Scott showed at least outward indifference, and Mrs. Scott a not unamiable petulance; and how, though the affair caused no open breach of private friendship, it doubtless gave help to the increasing Whiggery of the _Review_ and its pusillanimous policy in regard to the Spanish War in severing Scott's connection with it, and determining him to promote, heart and soul, the opposition venture of the _Quarterly_. Of this latter it was naturally enough proposed by Canning that Scott should be editor; but, as naturally, he does not seem to have even considered the proposal. He would have hated living in London; no salary that could have been offered him could have done more than equal, if so much, the stipends of his Sheriffship and the coming Clerkship, which he would have had to give up; and the work would have interfered much more seriously than his actual vocations with his literary avocations. Besides, it is quite certain that he would not have made a good editor. In the first place, he was fitted neither by education nor by temperament for the troublesome and 'meticulous' business of knocking contributions into shape. And, in the second, he would most assuredly have fallen into the most fatal of all editorial errors--that of inserting articles, not because they were actually good or likely to be popular, but because the subjects were interesting, or the writers agreeable, to himself. But he backed the venture manfully with advice, by recruiting for it, and afterwards by contributing to it. It so happened, too, that about the same time he had dissensions with the publisher as well as with the editor of the _Edinburgh_. Constable, though he had not entered into the intimate relations with Scott and the Ballantynes that were afterwards so fatal, had made the spirited bid of a thousand pounds for _Marmion_, and the much more spirited and (it is to be feared) much less profitable one of fifteen hundred for the _Swift_. He had, however, recently taken into partnership a certain Mr. Hunter of Blackness. This Hunter must have had some merits--he had at any rate sufficient wit to throw the blame of the fact that sojourn in Scotland did not always agree with Englishmen on their disgusting habit of 'eating too much _and not drinking enough_.' But he was a laird of some family, and he seems to have thought that he might bring into business the slightly hectoring ways which were then tolerated in Scotland from persons of quality to persons of none or less. He was a very bitter Whig, and, therefore, ill disposed towards Scott. And, lastly, he had, or thought he had, a grievance against his distinguished 'hand' in respect of the _Swift_, to wit, that the editor of that well-paid compilation did not devote himself to it by any means exclusively enough. Now Scott, though the most good-natured of men and only too easy to lead, was absolutely impossible to drive; and his blood was as ready as the 'bluid of M'Foy' itself to be set on fire at the notion of a cock-laird from Fife not merely treating a Scott with discourtesy, but imputing doubtful conduct to him. He offered to throw up the _Swift_, and though this was not accepted, broke for a time all other connection with Constable--an unfortunate breach, as it helped to bring about the establishment of the Ballantyne publishing business, and so unquestionably began Scott's own ruin. It is remarkable that a similar impatience of interference afterwards broke Scott's just-begun connection with Blackwood, which, could it have lasted, would probably have saved him. For that sagacious person would certainly never have plunged, or, if he could have helped it, let anyone else plunge, into Charybdis. Between the publication of _Marmion_ and that of _The Lady of the Lake_ Scott was very busy in bookmaking and bookselling projects. It was characteristic of the mixture of bad luck and bad management which hung on the Ballantynes from the first that even their _Edinburgh Annual Register_, published as it was in the most stirring times, and written by Scott, by Southey, and others of the very best hands, was a failure. He made some visits to London, and (for the scenery of the new poem) to the Trossachs and Loch Lomond; and had other matters of concern, the chief of which were the death of his famous bull-terrier Camp, and two troublesome affairs connected with his brothers. One of these, the youngest, Daniel, after misconduct of various kinds, had, as mentioned above, shown the white feather during a negro insurrection in Jamaica, and so disgusted his brother that when he came home to die, Scott would neither see him, nor, when he died, go to his funeral. The other concerned his brother Thomas, who, after his failure as a writer, had gone from prudential motives to the Isle of Man, where he for a time was an officer in the local Fencibles. But before leaving Edinburgh, and while he was still a practising lawyer, his brother had appointed him to a small post in his own gift as Clerk. Not only was there nothing discreditable in this according to the idea of any time,--for Thomas Scott's education and profession qualified him fully for the office,--but there were circumstances which, at that time, showed rather heroic and uncommon virtue. For the actual vacancy had occurred in a higher and more valuable post, also in Scott's gift, and he, instead of appointing his brother to this, promoted a deserving subordinate veteran, and gave the lower and less valuable place to Thomas. The latter's circumstances, however, obliged him to perform his duties by deputy, and a Commission then sitting ultimately abolished the office altogether, with a retiring allowance of about half the salary. Certain Whig peers took this up as a job, and Lord Lauderdale, supported by Lord Holland, made in the House of Lords very offensive charges against Scott personally for having appointed his brother to a place which he knew would be abolished,[13] and against Thomas for claiming compensation in respect of duties which he had never performed. The Bill was, however, carried; but Scott was indignant at the loss threatened to his brother and the imputation made on himself, and 'cut' Lord Holland at a semi-public dinner not long afterwards. For this he was and has since been severely blamed, and his behaviour was perhaps a little 'perfervid.' But everybody knows, or should know, that there are few things more trying to humanity than to be accused of improper conduct when a man is hugging himself on having behaved with unusual and saint-like propriety. _The Lady of the Lake_ appeared in May 1810, being published by Ballantyne and Miller, and at once attained enormous popularity. Twenty thousand copies were sold within the year, two thousand of which were costly quartos; and while there can be no doubt that this was the highest point of Scott's poetical vogue, there is, I believe, not much doubt that the poem has always continued to be a greater favourite with the general than any other of his. It actually, more than any other, created the _furore_ for Scottish scenery and touring, which has never ceased since; it supplied in the descriptions of that scenery, in the fight between Roderick and Fitz-James, and in other things, his most popular passages; and it has remained probably the type of his poetry to the main body of readers. Yet there are some who like it less than any other of the major divisions of that poetry, and this is by no means necessarily due either to a desire to be eccentric or to the subtler but almost equally illegitimate operation of the want of novelty--of the fact that its best effects are but repetitions of those of _Marmion_ and the _Lay_. For, fine as it is, it seems to me to display the drawbacks of Scott's scheme and method more than any of the longer poems. Douglas, Ellen, Malcolm, are null; Roderick and the king have a touch of theatricality which I look for in vain elsewhere in Scott; there is nothing fantastic in the piece like the Goblin Page, and nothing tragical like Constance. There is something teasing in what has been profanely called the 'guide-book' character--the cicerone-like fidelity which contrasts so strongly with the skilfully subordinated description in the two earlier and even in the later poems. Moreover, though Ellis ought not to have called the octosyllable 'the Hudibrastic measure' (which is only a very special variety of it), he was certainly right in objecting to its great predominance in unmixed form here. The critics, however, sang the praises of the poem lustily. Even Jeffrey--perhaps because it was purely Scottish (he had thought _Marmion_ not Scottish enough), perhaps because its greater conventionality appealed to him, perhaps because he wished to make atonement--was extremely complimentary. And certainly no one need be at a loss for things to commend positively, whatever may be his comparative estimate. The fine Spenserian openings (which Byron copied almost slavishly in the form of the stanza he took for _Harold_), the famous beginning of the stag, the description of the pass (till Fitz-James begins to soliloquise), some of the songs (especially the masterly 'Coronach'), the passage of the Fiery Cross, the apparition of the clan (not perhaps so great as some have thought it, but still great), the struggle, the guard-room (which shocked Jeffrey dreadfully)--these are only some of the best things. But I own that I turn from the best of them to the last stand of the spearmen at Flodden, and the unburying of the Book in the _Lay_. It may, perhaps, not be undesirable to anticipate somewhat, in order to complete the sketch of the verse romances in this chapter; for not very long after the publication of the _Lady of the Lake_, Scott resumed the writing of _Waverley_, which effected an entire change in the direction of his literature; and it was not a twelvemonth later that he planned the establishment at Abbotsford, which was thenceforward the headquarters of his life. The first poem to follow was one which lay out of the series in subject, scheme, and dress, and which perhaps should rather be counted with his minor and miscellaneous pieces--_The Vision of Don Roderick_. It was written with rapidity, even for him, and with a special purpose; the profits being promised beforehand to the Committee of the Portuguese Relief Fund, formed to assist the sufferers from Massena's devastations. It consists of rather less than a hundred Spenserian stanzas, the story of Roderick merely ushering in a magical revelation, to that too-amorous monarch, of the fortunes of the Peninsular War and its heroes up to the date of writing. The _Edinburgh Review_, which hated the war, was very angry because Scott did not celebrate Sir John Moore (whether as a good Whig or a bad general it did not explain); but even Jeffrey was not entirely unfavourable, and the piece was otherwise well received. The description of the subterranean hall beneath the Cathedral of Toledo is as good as we should expect, and the verses on Saragossa and on the forces of the three kingdoms are very fine. But the whole was something of a _torso_, and it is improbable that Scott could ever have used the Spenserian stanza to good effect for continuous narrative. Even in its individual shape, that great form requires the artistic patience as well as the natural gift of men like its inventor, or like Thomson, Shelley, and Tennyson, in other times and of other schools, to get the full effect out of it; while to connect it satisfactorily with its kind and adjust it to narrative is harder still. The true succession, however, after this parenthesis, was taken up by _Rokeby_, which was dated on the very last day of 1812. Its reception was not exceedingly enthusiastic; for Byron, borrowing most of his technique and general scheme from Scott, and joining with these greater apparent passion and a more novel and unfamiliar local colour, had appeared on the scene as a 'second lion.' The public, a 'great-sized monster of ingratitudes,' had got accustomed to Scott, if not weary of him. The title[12] was not very happy; and perhaps some harm was really done by one of the best of Moore's many good jokes in the _Twopenny Postbag_, where he represented Scott as coming from Edinburgh to London 'To do all the gentlemen's seats by the way' in romances of half a dozen cantos. The poem, however, is a very delightful one, and to some tastes at least very far above the _Lady of the Lake_. Scott, indeed, clung to the uninterrupted octosyllable more than ever; but that verse, if a poet knows how to manage it, is by no means so unsuited for story-telling as Ellis thought; and Scott had here more story to tell than in any of his preceding pieces, except _Marmion_. The only character, indeed, in which one takes much interest is Bertram Risingham; but he is a really excellent person, the cream of Scott's ruffians, whether in prose or verse; appearing well, conducting himself better, and ending best of all. Nor is Oswald, the contrasted villain, by any means to be despised; while the passages--on which the romance, in contradistinction to the classical epic, stands or falls--are equal to all but the very best in _Marmion_ or the _Lay_. Bertram's account of the first and happier events at Marston Moor, as well as of his feelings as to his comradeship with Mortham; the singularly beautiful opening of the second canto-- 'Far in the chambers of the west'; with the description of Upper Teesdale; Bertram's clamber on the cliff, with its reminiscences of the 'Kittle Nine Steps,'--these lead on to many other things as good, ending with that altogether admirable bit of workmanship, Bertram's revenge on Oswald and his own death. Matilda is one of the best of Scott's verse-heroines, except Constance--that is to say, the best of his good girls--and she has the interest of being avowedly modelled on 'Green Mantle.' Nor in any of the poems do the lyrics give more satisfactory setting-off to the main text. Indeed, it may be questioned whether any contains such a garland as--to mention only the best--is formed by 'O, Brignall banks are wild and fair'; the exquisite 'A weary lot is thine, fair maid,' adapted from older matter with a skill worthy of Burns himself; the capital bravura of Allen-a-Dale; and that noble Cavalier lyric-- 'When the dawn on the mountain was misty and grey.' _The Bridal of Triermain_ was published in 1813, not long after _Rokeby_, and, like that poem, drew its scenery from the North of England; but in circumstances, scale, and other ways it forms a pair with _Harold the Dauntless_, and they had best be noticed together. _The Lord of the Isles_, the last of the great quintet, appeared in December 1814. Scott had obtained part of the scenery for it in an earlier visit to the Hebrides, and the rest in his yachting voyage (see below) with the Commissioners of Northern Lights, which also gave the _décor_ for _The Pirate_. The poem was not more popular than _Rokeby_ in England, and it was even less so in Scotland, chiefly for the reason, only to be mentioned with all but silent amazement, that it was 'not bitter enough against England.' Its faults are, of course, obvious enough. Central story there is simply none; the inconvenience that arises to the hero from his being addressed by two young ladies cannot awake any very sympathetic tear, nor does either Edith of Lorn or Isabel Bruce awaken any violent desire to offer to relieve him of one of them. The versification, however, is less uniform than that of _Rokeby_ or _The Lady of the Lake_, and there are excellent passages--the best being, no doubt, the Abbot's extorted blessing on the Bruce; the great picture of Loch Coruisk, which, let people say what they will, is marvellously faithful; part of the voyage (though one certainly could spare some of the 'merrilys'); the landing in Carrick; the rescue of the supposed page; and, finally, Bannockburn, which even Jeffrey admired, though its want of 'animosity' shocked him. The two last of the great poems--there was indeed a third, _The Field of Waterloo_, written hastily for a subscription, and not worthy either of Scott or of the subject--have not by any means the least interest, either intrinsic or that of curiosity. Indeed, as a matter of liking, not quite disjoined from criticism, I should put them very high indeed. Both were issued anonymously, and with indications intended to mislead readers into the idea that they were by Erskine; the intention being, it would seem, partly to ascertain how far the author's mere name counted in his popularity, partly also to 'fly kites' as to the veering of the public taste in reference to the verse romance in general. By the time of the publication of _Harold the Dauntless_ in 1817, Scott could hardly have had any intention of deserting the new way--his own exclusive right--in which he was already walking firmly. But the _Bridal of Triermain_ appeared very shortly after _Rokeby_, and was, no doubt, seriously intended as a test. In both pieces the author fell back upon his earlier scheme of metre, the _Christabel_ blend of iambic with anapæstic passages, instead of the nearly pure iambs of his middle poems. The _Bridal_, partly to encourage the Erskine notion, it would seem, is hampered by an intermixed outline-story, told in the introductions, of the wooing and winning of a certain Lucy by a certain Arthur, both of whom may be very heartily wished away. But the actual poem is more thoroughly a Romance of Adventure than even the _Lay_, has much more central interest than that poem, and is adorned by passages of hardly less beauty than the best of the earlier piece. It is astonishing how anyone of the slightest penetration could have entertained the slightest doubt about the authorship of 'Come hither, come hither, Henry my page, Whom I saved from the sack of Hermitage'; still more of that of the well-known opening of the Third Canto, one of the triumphs of that 'science of names' in which Scott was such a proficient-- '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, Tarras and Ewes keep nightly stir, And Eskdale foray Cumberland!' But these are only the most unmistakable, not the best. The opening specification of the Bride; the admirable 'Lyulph's Tale,' with the first appearance of the castle, and the stanza (suggested no doubt by a famous picture) of the damsels dragging Arthur's war-gear; the courtship, and Guendolen's wiles to retain Arthur, and the parting; the picture of the King's court; the tournament; all these are good enough. But I am not sure that the description of Sir Roland's tantalised vigil in the Vale of St. John, with the moonlit valley (itself a worthy pendant even to the Melrose), and the sudden and successful revelation of the magic hold when the knight flings his battle-axe, does not even surpass the Tale. Nor do I think that the actual adventures of this Childe Roland in the dark towers are inferior. The trials and temptations are of stock material, but all the best matter is stock, and this is handled with a rush and dash which more than saves it. I hope the tiger was only a magic tiger, and went home comfortably with the damsels of Zaharak. It seems unfair that he should be actually killed. But this is the only thing that disquiets me; and it is impossible to praise too much De Vaux's ingenious compromise between tasteless asceticism and dangerous indulgence in the matter of 'Asia's willing maids.' _Harold the Dauntless_ is much slighter, as indeed might be expected, considering that it was finished in a hurry, long after the author had given up poetry as a main occupation. But the half burlesque Spenserians of the overture are very good; the contrasted songs, 'Dweller of the Cairn' and 'A Danish Maid for Me,' are happy. Harold's interview with the Chapter is a famous bit of bravura; and all concerning the Castle of the Seven Shields, from the ballad introducing it, through the description of its actual appearance (in which, by the way, Scott shows almost a better grasp of the serious Spenserian stanza than anywhere else) to the final battle of Odin and Harold, is of the very best Romantic quality. Perhaps, indeed, it is because (as the _Critical Review_, the Abdiel of 'classical' orthodoxy among the reviews of the time, scornfully said), 'both poems are romantic enough to satisfy all the parlour-boarders of all the ladies' schools in England,' that they are so pleasant. It is something, in one's grey and critical age, to feel genuine sympathy with the parlour-boarder. The chapter has already stretched to nearly the utmost proportions compatible with the scale of this little book, and we must not indulge in very many critical remarks on the general character of the compositions discussed in it. But I have never carried out the plan (which I think indispensable) of reading over again whatever work, however well known, one has to write about, with more satisfaction. The main defects lie on the surface. Despite great felicities of a certain kind, these poems have no claim to formal perfection, and occasionally sin by very great carelessness, if not by something worse. The poet frankly shows himself as one whose appeal is not that of 'jewels five words long,' set and arranged in phrases of that magical and unending beauty which the very greatest poets of the world command. His effect, even in description, is rather of mass than of detail. He does not attempt analysis in character, and only skirts passion. Although prodigal enough of incident, he is very careless of connected plot. But his great and abiding glory is that he revived the art, lost for centuries in England, of telling an interesting story in verse, of riveting the attention through thousands of lines of poetry neither didactic nor argumentative. And of his separate passages, his patches of description and incident, when the worst has been said of them, it will remain true that, in their own way and for their own purpose, they cannot be surpassed. The already noticed comparison of any of Scott's best verse-tales with _Christabel_, which they formally imitated to some extent, and with the _White Doe of Rylstone_, which followed them, will no doubt show that Coleridge and Wordsworth had access to mansions in the house of poetry where Scott is never seen. But in some respects even their best passages are not superior to his; and as tales, as romances, his are altogether superior to theirs. FOOTNOTES: [12] It is fair to him to say that he made no public complaints, and that when some gutter-scribbler in 1810 made charges of plagiarism from him against Scott, he furnished Southey with the means of clearing him from all share in the matter (_Lockhart_, iii. 293; Southey's _Life and Correspondence_, iii. 291). But there is a suspicion of fretfulness even in the Preface to _Christabel_; and the references to Scott's poetry (not to himself) in the _Table Talk_, etc., are almost uniformly disparaging. It is true that these last are not strictly evidence. [13] The objection taken to this word by precisians seems to ignore a useful distinction. The _antiquary_ is a collector; the _antiquarian_ a student or writer. The same person may be both; but he may not. [14] _Waverley_, chap. vi. It owes a little to Smollett's Introduction to _Humphry Clinker_, but as usual improves the loan greatly. [15] Inasmuch as he himself was secretary to the Commission which did away with it. [16] Taken from the name of his friend Morritt's place on the Greta. CHAPTER IV THE NOVELS, FROM _WAVERLEY_ TO _REDGAUNTLET_ In the opening introduction to the collected edition of the novels, Scott has given a very full account of the genesis of _Waverley_. These introductions, written before the final inroad had been made on his powers by the united strength of physical and moral misfortune, animated at once by the last glow of those powers, and by the indefinable charm of a fond retrospection, displaying every faculty in autumn luxuriance, are so delightful that they sometimes seem to be the very cream and essence of his literary work in prose. Indeed, I have always wondered why they have not been published separately as a History of the Waverley Novels by their author. Yet the public, I believe, with what I fear must be called its usual lack of judgment in some such matters, seems never to have read them very widely. An exception, however, may possibly have been made in the case of this first one, opening as it has long done every new issue of the whole set of novels. At anyrate, in one way or another, it is probably known, at least to those who take an interest in Scott, that he had begun _Waverley_ and thrown it aside some ten years before its actual appearance, at a time when he was yet a novice in literature. He had also attempted one or two other things,--a completion of Strutt's _Queenhoo Hall_, the beginning of a tale about Thomas the Rhymer, etc., which are now appended to the introduction itself,--and he had once, in 1810, resumed _Waverley_, and again thrown it aside. At last, when his supremacy as a popular poet was threatened by Byron, and when, perhaps, he himself was a little wearying of the verse tale, he discovered the fragment while searching for fishing-tackle in the old desk where he had put it, and after a time resolved to make a new and anonymous attempt on public favour. By the time--1814--when the book actually appeared, considerable changes, both for good and for bad, had occurred in Scott's circumstances; and the total of his literary work, independently of the poems mentioned in the last chapter, had been a good deal increased. Ashestiel had been exchanged for Abbotsford; the new house was being planned and carried out so as to become, if not exactly a palace, something much more than the cottage which had been first talked of; and the owner's passion for buying, at extravagant prices, every neighbouring patch of mostly thankless soil that he could get hold of was growing by indulgence. He himself, in 1811 and the following years, was extremely happy and extremely busy, planting trees, planning rooms, working away at _Rokeby_ and _Triermain_ in the general sitting-room of the makeshift house, with hammering all about him (now, the hammer and the pen are perhaps of all manual implements the most deadly and irreconcilable foes!), corresponding with all sorts and conditions of men; furnishing introductions and contributions (in some cases never yet collected) to all sorts and conditions of books, and struggling, as best he saw his way, though the way was unfortunately not the right one, with the ever-increasing difficulties of Ballantyne & Company. I forget whether there is any evidence that Dickens consciously took his humorous incarnation of the duties of a 'Co.' from Scott's own experience. But Scott as certainly had to provide the money, the sense, the good-humour, and the rest of the working capital as Mark Tapley himself. The merely pecuniary part of these matters may be left to the next chapter; it is sufficient to say that, aggravated by misjudgment in the selection and carrying out of the literary part, it brought the firm in 1814 exceedingly near the complete smash which actually happened ten years later. One is tempted to wish that the crash had come, for it was only averted by the alliance with Constable which was the cause of the final downfall. Also, it would have come at a time when Scott was physically better able to bear it; it could hardly in any degree have interfered with the appearance of _Waverley_ and its followers; and it would have had at least a chance of awakening their author to a sense of the double mistake of engaging his credit in directly commercial concerns, and of sinking his money in land and building. However, things were to be as they were, and not otherwise. How anxious Constable must have been to recover Scott (Hunter, the stone of stumbling, was now removed by death) is evident from the mere list of the titles of the books which he took over in whole or part from the Ballantynes. Even his Napoleonic audacity quailed before the _Edinburgh Annual Register_, with its handsome annual loss of a thousand a year, at Brewster's _Persian Astronomy_, in 4to and 8vo, and at _General Views of the County of Dumfries_. But he saddled himself with a good deal of the 'stock' (which in this case most certainly had not its old sense of 'assets'), and in May 1813, Scott seems to have thought that if John Ballantyne would curb his taste for long-dated bills, things might go well. Unluckily, John did not choose to do so, and Scott, despite the warning, was equally unable to curb his own for peat-bogs, marl-pits, the Cauldshiels Loch, and splendid lots of ancient armour. By July there was again trouble, and in August things were so bad that they were only cleared by Scott's obtaining from the Duke of Buccleuch a guarantee for £4000. It was in consenting to this that the Duke expressed his approval of Scott's determination to refuse the Laureateship, which had been offered to him, and which, in consequence of his refusal and at his suggestion, was conferred upon Southey. Even the guarantee, though it did save the firm, saved it with great difficulty. In the following winter Scott had an adventure with his eccentric German amanuensis, Henry Weber, who had for some time been going mad, and who proposed a duel with pistols (which he produced) to his employer in the study at Castle Street. _Swift_ appeared at last in the summer, and it was in June 1814 that the first of a series of wonderful _tours de force_ was achieved by the completion, in about three weeks, of the last half of _Waverley_. One of the most striking things in Lockhart is the story of the idle apprentice who became industrious by seeing Scott's hand traversing the paper hour after hour at his study window. The novel actually appeared on July 7, and, being anonymous, made no immediate 'move,' as booksellers say, before Scott set off a fortnight later for his long-planned tour with the Commissioners of Northern Lights--the Scottish Trinity House--in their yacht, round the northern half of the island and to Orkney and Shetland. To abstract his own admirable account of the tour[27] would be a task grateful neither to writer nor to reader, the latter of whom, if he does not know it already, had better lose no time in making its acquaintance. On the return in September, Scott was met by two pieces of bad and good tidings respectively--the death of the Duchess of Buccleuch, and the distinct, though not as yet 'furious,' success of his novel. There is no doubt that the early fragments in tale-telling which have been noticed above do not display any particular skill in the art; nor is there much need to quarrel with those who declare that the opening of _Waverley_[26] itself ranks little, if at all, above them. I always read it myself; but I believe most people plunge almost at once into the Tullyveolan visit. By doing so, however, they miss not merely the critical pleasure of comparing a man's work (as can rarely be done) during his period of groping for the way, with his actual stumble into it for the first time, but also such justification as there is for the hero's figure. Nobody ever judged the unlucky captain of Gardiner's better than his creator, who at the time frankly called him 'a sneaking piece of imbecility,' and avowed, with as much probability as right, that 'if he had married Flora, she would have set him up on the chimney-piece, as Count Borowlaski's[25] wife used to do.' But his weaknesses have at least an excuse from his education and antecedents, which does not appear if these antecedents are neglected. Still, the story-interest only begins when Waverley rides into the bear-warded avenue; it certainly never ceases till the golden image of the same totem is replaced in the Baron of Bradwardine's hand. And it is very particularly to be observed that this interest is of a kind absolutely novel in combination and idiosyncrasy. The elements of literary interest are nowhere new, except in what is, for aught we know, accidentally the earliest literature _to us_. They are all to be found in Homer, in the Book of Job, in the _Agamemnon_, in the _Lancelot_, in the _Poem of the Cid_. But from time to time, in the hands of the men of greater genius, they are shaken up afresh, they receive new adjustments, and a touch of something personal which transforms them. This new adjustment and touch produced in Scott's case what we call the Historical Novel.[24] It is quite a mistake to think that he was limited to this. _Guy Mannering_ and _The Antiquary_ among the earlier novels, _St. Ronan's Well_ and the exquisite introductory sketch to the _Chronicles of the Canongate_ among the later, would disprove that. But the historical novel was the new kind that he was 'born to introduce,' after many failures in many generations. It is difficult to say whether it was accident or property which made his success in it co-existent with his success in depicting national character, scenery, and manners. Attempts at this, not always unsuccessful attempts, had indeed been made before. It had been tried frequently, though usually in the sense of caricature, on the stage; it had been done quite recently in the novel by Miss Edgeworth (whom Scott at least professed to regard as his governess here), and much earlier in this very department of Scotch matters by Smollett. But it had never been done with really commanding ability on the great scale. In _Waverley_ Scott supplied these two aspects, the historical-romantic and the national-characteristic, with a felicity perhaps all the more unerring in that it seems to have been only partly conscious. The subject of 'the Forty-five' was now fully out of taboo, and yet retained an interest more than antiquarian. The author had the amplest stores of knowledge, and that sympathy which is so invaluable to the artist when he keeps it within the limits of art. He seems to have possessed by instinct (for there was nobody to teach him) the paramount secret of the historical novelist, the secret of making his central and prominent characters fictitious, and the real ones mostly subsidiary. On the other hand, the knowledge of his native country, which he had been accumulating for almost the whole of his nearly four-and-forty years of life, was joined in him with that universal knowledge of humanity which only men of the greatest genius have. I am, indeed, aware that both these positions have been attacked. I was much pleased, some time after I had begun to write this little book, to find in a review of the present year of grace these words: 'Scott only knew a small portion of human nature, and he was unable to portray the physiognomy of the past.' I feared at first that this might be only one of the numerous flings of our young barbarians, a pleasant, or pleasantly intended, flirt of the heels of the New Humour. But the context showed that the writer was in deadly earnest. I shall not attempt here to explain to him, in a popular or any other style, that he is, perhaps, not quite right. Life itself is not long enough--'little books' are decidedly too short--for a demonstration that the Pacific Ocean is not really a small portion of the terrestrial water-space, or that Alexander was able to overrun foreign countries. We may find a little room in the Conclusion to say something more about Scott's range and his faculty. Here it will be enough to wear our friend's rue with a slight difference, and to say that _Waverley_ and its successors showed in their author knowledge, complete in all but certain small parts, of human nature, and an almost unlimited faculty of portraying the physiognomy of the past. It was scarcely to be expected that a book which was anonymous, and of which only a very few persons knew the real authorship, while even those who guessed it at all early were not so very many, should attain immediate popularity. Lockhart says that the slowness of the success was exaggerated, but his own figures prove that it was somewhat leisurely. Five editions, one (the second) of two thousand, the others of one thousand each, supplied the demand of the first six months, and a thousand copies more that of the next eighteen months--a difference from the almost instantaneous myriads of the poems, quite sufficient to show very eloquently how low the prose novel then stood in popular favour. It is the greatest triumph of Scott, from this low point of view, that his repeated blows heated the public as they did, till at the fourth publication, within but a year or two, Constable actually dared to start with ten thousand copies at once, and they were all absorbed in no time. Scott had always been a rapid worker, but it was only now, under the combined stimulus of the new-found gift, the desire for more land and a statelier Abbotsford, and the pressure of the affairs of Ballantyne & Co., that he began to work at the portentous rate which, though I do not believe that it at all injured the quality of his production, pretty certainly endangered his health. During 1814 he had written nearly all his _Life of Swift_, nearly all _Waverley_, the _Lord of the Isles_, and an abundance of 'small wares,' essays, introductions, and what not. The major part of _Guy Mannering_--perhaps the very best of the novels, for merit of construction and interest of detail--seems to have been written in less than a month, at the extreme end of this year and the beginning of 1815. The whole appears to have been done in six weeks, to 'shake himself free of _Waverley_'--probably the most gigantic exhibition of the 'hair of the dog' recorded in literature. The _donnée_ of this novel was furnished by a Dumfries surveyor of taxes, Mr. Train, the scenery by that early visit to Galloway, in the interest of the reverend toyer with sweetie-wives, which has been recorded. Other indebtedness, such as that of Hatteraick to the historical or legendary free-trader, Yawkins, and the like, has been traced. But the charm of the whole lies in none of these things, nor in all together, but in Scott's own fashion of working them up. Nothing at first could seem to be a greater contrast with _Waverley_ than this tale. No big wars, no political hazards; but a double and tenfold portion of human nature and local colour. This last element had in the earlier book been almost entirely supplied by Tullyveolan and its master; for Fergus and the Highland scenes, good as they are, are not much more than a furbishing up of the poem-matter of this kind, especially in the _Lady of the Lake_. But here the supply of character was liberal and the variety of scenery extraordinary. We cannot judge the innovation fully now, but let anyone turn to the theatrical properties of Godwin and Holcroft, of Mrs. Radcliffe and 'Monk' Lewis, and he will begin to have a better idea of what _Guy Mannering_ must have been to its first readers. As usual, the personages who head the _dramatis personæ_ are not the best. Bertram, though less of a nincompoop than Waverley, is not very much; Lucy is a less lively _ange de candeur_ than Rose, and nothing else; and Julia's genteel-comedy missishness does not do much more than pair off with Flora's tragedy-queen air. 'Mannering, Guy, a Colonel returned from the Indies,' is, perhaps, also too fair a description of the player of the title-part.[23] But we trouble ourselves very little about these persons. As for characters, the author opens fire on us almost at the very first with Dominie Sampson and Meg Merrilees, and the hardly less excellent figure of Bertram's well-meaning booby of a father; gives us barely time to make their acquaintance before we meet Dandie Dinmont; brings up almost superfluous reinforcements with Mr. Pleydell, and throughout throws in Hatteraick and Glossin, Jock Jabos and his mistress, and Sir Robert Haslewood, the company at Kippletringan, and at the funeral, and elsewhere, in the most reckless spirit of literary lavishness. Nor is he less prodigal of incident and scene. The opening passage of Mannering's night-ride could not have been bettered if the painter had taken infinitely more pains. Bertram's walk and the skirmish with the prowlers are simply first-rate; the Edinburgh scenes have always excited admiration as the very best of their kind; and the various passages which lead to the working out of justice on Glossin and Hatteraick are not merely told with a gusto, but arranged with a craftsmanship, of which the latter is unfortunately less often present than the former in the author's later work. There is hardly any book of Scott's on which it is more tempting to dwell than this. Although the demand had not yet reached anything like its height, two thousand copies were sold in forty-eight hours, and five thousand in three months. In March 1815 Scott went to London, and met two persons of distinction, the Regent and Lord Byron. There seems to be a little doubt whether George did or did not adapt the joke of the hanging judge, about 'checkmating this time,' to the authorship of the _Waverley_ novels; but there is no doubt that he was very civil. With Byron Scott was at once on very good terms, for Scott was not the man to bear any grudge for the early fling in _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_; and Byron, whatever his faults, 'had more of lion' in him than to be jealous of such a rival. The difference of their characters was such as to prevent them from being in the strict sense friends; and Scott's comparison of Byron, after the separation, to a peacock parted from the hen and lifting up his voice to tell the world about it, has a rather terribly far-reaching justice, both of moral and literary criticism, on that noble bard's whole life and conversation. But there were no little jealousies between them, and apparently some real liking. This visit to London was extended to Brussels and Paris, with the result in verse of the already mentioned and not particularly happy _Field of Waterloo_, in prose of the interesting _Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk_, an account of the tour. Both were published (the poem almost immediately, _Paul_ not till the new year) after Scott's return to Abbotsford at the end of September; and he set to work during the later autumn on his third novel, _The Antiquary_. The book appeared in May 1816, at about the time of the death of Major John Scott, the last but one of the poet's surviving brothers. It was not at first so popular as _Guy Mannering_, which, however, it very rapidly caught up even in that respect: nor is this bad start surprising. To good judges nowadays the book appeals as strongly at least as any other of its author's--in fact, Monkbarns and the Mucklebackits, the rescue of Sir Arthur and Isabel, the scenes in the ruins of St. Ruth's, and especially Edie Ochiltree, were never surpassed by him. But the story was a daring innovation, or return, among the novels of its own day. It boldly rejected most of the ordinary sources of romance interest. It had very little plot; its humorous characters, though touched with the rarest art, were not caricatured; and (for which it certainly cannot be praised) that greatest fault of Scott's,--perhaps his only great fault as a novelist,--the 'huddling up' of the end, appears in it for the first, though unluckily by no means for the last, time. But it would have been a very sad thing for the public taste if it had definitely refused _The Antiquary_. A book which contains within the compass of the opening chapters such masterpieces as the journey to the Hawes, the description of the Antiquary's study, and the storm and rescue, must have had a generation of idiots for an audience if it had not been successful. Moreover, it had, as Scott's unwearied biographer has already noted, a new and special source of interest in the admirable fragmentary mottoes, invented to save the greater labour of discovery, which adorn its chapter-headings.[22] Lockhart himself thought that Scott never quite equalled these first three novels. I cannot agree with him there; but what is certain is that he in them discovered, with extraordinary felicity, skill in three different kinds of novel--the historical, the romantic-adventurous, and that of ordinary or almost wholly ordinary life; and that even he never exactly added a fourth kind to his inventions, though he varied them wonderfully within themselves. The romance partly historical, the romance mainly or wholly fictitious, and the novel of manners; these were his three classes, and hardly any others. It is not entirely explained what were the reasons which determined Scott to make his next venture, the _Tales of my Landlord_, under a fresh pseudonym, and also to publish it not with Constable, but with Murray and Blackwood. Lockhart's blame of John Ballantyne may not be unfair; but it is rather less supported by documentary evidence than most of his strictures on the Ballantynes. And the thing is perhaps to be sufficiently accounted for by Scott's double dislike, both as an independent person and a man of business, of giving a monopoly of his work to one publisher, and by his constant fancy for trying experiments on the public--a fancy itself not wholly, though partially, comprehensible. As a matter of fact, _Old Mortality_ and the _Black Dwarf_ were offered to and pretty eagerly accepted by Murray and Blackwood, on the terms of half profits and the inevitable batch of 'old stock.' The story of the unlucky quarrel with Blackwood in consequence of some critical remarks of his on the end of the _Black Dwarf_,--remarks certainly not inexcusable,--and of Scott's famous letter in reply, will doubtless receive further elucidation in the forthcoming chronicle of the House of 'Ebony'; but it is told with fair detail, in the second edition of Lockhart, from the actual archives. Scott doubled his work during the summer and autumn by undertaking the historical department, relinquished by Southey, of the _Edinburgh Annual Register_, yet the two _Tales_ were ready in November, and appeared on the 1st of December 1816. Murray wrote effusively to Scott (who, it must be remembered, was not even to his publishers the known author), and received a very amusing reply, from which one sentence may be quoted as an example of those which have brought upon Sir Walter the reproach of falsehood, or at least disingenuousness, from Goodman Dull. 'I assure you,' he writes, 'I have never read a volume of them till they were printed,' a delightful selection of words, for it looks decisive, and means absolutely nothing. Nobody but a magician, and no ordinary magician, could read a _volume_ (which in the usual parlance means a printed volume) before it was printed. To back his disclaimer, Scott offered to review himself in the _Quarterly_, which he did. I certainly do not approve of authors being their own reviewers; though when (as sometimes happens) they have any brains, they probably know the faults and merits of their books better than anyone else, and can at anyrate state, with a precision which is too rare in the ordinary critic, what the book is meant to be and tries to do. But this case was clearly one out of the common way, and rather part of an elaborate practical joke than anything else. Dulness, however, had in many ways found stumbling-blocks in the first foster-children of the excellent Jedediah. The very pious and learned, if not exactly humorous or shrewd, Dr. M'Crie, fell foul of the picture of the Covenanters given in _Old Mortality_. No one who knows the documents is likely to agree with him now, and from hardly any point of view but his could the greatness of the book be denied. Although Scott's humour is by no means absent from it, that quality does not perhaps find quite such an opportunity, even in Mause and Cuddie, as in the Baron, and the Dominie, and the inhabitants of Monkbarns. But as a historical novel, it is a far greater one than _Waverley_. Drumclog, the siege of Tillietudlem, above all, the matchless scene where Morton is just saved from murder by his own party, surpass anything in the earlier book. But greater than any of these single things is one of the first and the greatest of Scott's splendid gallery of romantic-historic portraits, the stately figure of Claverhouse. All the features which he himself was to sum up in that undying sentence of Wandering Willie's Tale later are here put in detail and justified. As for the companion to this masterly book, I have always thought the earlier part of the _Black Dwarf_ as happy as all but the best of Scott's work. But the character of the _Dwarf_ himself was not one that he could manage. The nullity of Earnscliff and Isabel is complete. Isabel's father is a stagy villain, or rather rascal (for Victor Hugo's antithesis between _scélérat_ and _maroufle_ comes in here), and even Scott has never hustled off a conclusion with such complete _insouciance_ as to anything like completeness. Willie of Westburnflat here, like Christie of the Clinthill later, is one of our old friends of the poems back again, and welcome back again. But he and Hobbie can hardly save a book which Scott seems to have thrown in with its admirable companion, not as a makeweight, but rather as a foil. Between the first and the second sets of _Tales_, the 'Author of _Waverley_,' true to his odd design of throwing the public off the scent, reappeared, and the result was _Rob Roy_. Perhaps because it was written under the first attacks of that 'cramp of the stomach' which, though obscurely connected with his later and more fatal ailments, no doubt ushered them in something more than an accidental manner, Scott did not at first much like _Rob_. But he was reconciled later; and hardly anybody else (except those exceedingly unhappy persons who cannot taste him at all) can ever have had any doubt about it. That the end is even more than usually huddled, that the beginning may perhaps have dawdled a little over commercial details (I do not think so myself, but Lady Louisa Stuart did), and that the distribution of time, which lingers over weeks and months before and after it devotes almost the major part of the book to the events of forty-eight hours, is irregular, even in the eyes of those who are not serfs to the unities, cannot be denied. But almost from the introduction of Frank to Diana, certainly from his setting off in the grey of the morning with Andrew Fairservice, to the point at least where the heroine stoops from her pony in a manner equally obliging and graceful, there is no dropped stitch, no false note. Nor in any book are there so many of Scott's own characters, and others not quite so much his own. Helen Macgregor, perhaps, does not 'thrill our blood and overpower our reason,' as she did Lady Louisa's, simply because we were born some hundred years later than that acute and accomplished granddaughter of Lady Mary; and Rashleigh pretty frequently, Rob himself now and then, may also savour to us a little of the boards and the sawdust. But, as a rule, Rob does not; and for nobody else, not even for the fortunate Frank,--who has nothing to do but to walk through his part creditably, and does it,--need any allowance be made. The Bailie is, with Shallow, his brother justice (upon whom he justly looks down, but to whom he is, I think, kind) in Arthur's bosom; Andrew Fairservice and the Dougal creature, Justice Inglewood and Sir Hildebrand, are there too. As for Die Vernon, she is the one of Scott's heroines with whom one _has to_ fall in love, just as, according to a beautiful story, a thoughtless and reluctant world _had to_ believe the Athanasian Creed. It is painful to say that persons on whom it is impossible to retort the charge, have sometimes insinuated a touch of vulgarity in Di. For these one can but pray; and, after all, they are usually of her sex, which in such judgments of itself counts not. All men, who are men and gentlemen, must delight in her. And here, as always, to all but the very last, even in the twilight of _Anne of Geierstein_, the succession of scenes hurries the reader along without breath or time to stop and criticise, with nothing to do, if he is a reasonable person, but to read and enjoy and admire. Lockhart has taken the opportunity of this point of time (1817-1818), which may be said to mark the zenith of Scott's prosperity, if not of his fame, to halt and to give a sort of survey of his father-in-law's private life at Castle Street and at Abbotsford. It forms one of the pleasantest portions of his book, containing nothing more tragic than the advent of the famous American tragedy of _The Cherokee Lovers_, which its careful author sent, that Scott might approve and publish it, in duplicate, so that the unfortunate recipient had to pay five pounds twice over for the postage of the rubbish. Of course things were not entirely as they seemed. The cramps with which, as mentioned, Scott had been already seized, during the progress of _Rob Roy_, were, though probably not caused, yet all too much helped and hastened, by the ferocious manner in which he worked his brains. For it must be doubted whether social intercourse, or even bodily exercise in company with others, is really the best refreshment after very severe mental labour. Both distract and amuse; but they do not refresh, relax, relieve, like a bath of pure solitude. Divers events of importance happened to Scott, in the later course of the year 1818[21] (besides a much worse recurrence of his disorder), after the _Heart of Midlothian_ (the second series of the _Tales_) had been published in June, and the _Bride of Lammermoor_ (the third series) had been begun. The Duke of Buccleuch, his chief, his (as he would himself have cheerfully allowed) patron, his helper in time of need, and his most intimate friend, died. So did his brother-in-law, Charles Carpenter, this latter death adding considerably, though to an extent exaggerated at first and only reversionary, to the prospects of Scott's children. He gave up an idea, which he had for some time held, of obtaining a judgeship of the Scotch Exchequer; but he received his baronetcy in April 1820. Abbotsford went on gradually and expensively completing itself; the correspondence which tells us so much and is such delightful reading continued, as if the writer had nothing else to write and nothing else to do. But for us the chief matters of interest are the two novels mentioned, and that admirable supplement to the second of them, the _Legend of Montrose_. There can be little doubt, I think, that in at least passages, and those very large ones, of the _Heart of Midlothian_, Scott went as high as he ever had done, or ever did thereafter. I have never agreed with Lady Louisa Stuart that 'Mr. Saddletree is not amusing,' nor that there is too much Scots law for English readers. It must be remembered that until Scott opened people's eyes, there were some very singular conventions and prejudices, even in celestial minds, about novels. Technical details were voted tedious and out of place--as, Heaven knows! M. Zola and others have shown us since, that they may very easily be made. Professional matters, the lower middle classes, etc., were thought 'low,' as Goldsmith's audience had had it, 'vulgar,' as Madame de Staël said of Miss Austen. That the farrago of the novelist's book is absolutely universal and indiscriminate, provided only that he knows what to do with it, had not dawned on the general mind. On the other hand, Lady Louisa was right in objecting to the finale,--it has been admitted that Scott was never good at a conclusion,--and personally I have always thought George Staunton uninteresting throughout. But how much does this leave! The description of the lynching of Porteous and the matchless interview with Queen Caroline are only the very best of such a series of good things that, except just at the end, it may be said to be uninterrupted. Jeanie it is unnecessary to praise; the same Lady Louisa's admiration of the wonderful art which could attract so much interest to a plain, good, not clever, almost middle-aged woman sums up all. But almost everyone plays up to Jeanie in perfection--her father and, to no small extent, her sister, her husband and Dumbiedykes, Madge Wildfire (a most difficult and most successful character) and her old fiend of a mother, the Duke and the tobacco-shop keeper. Abundant as are the good things afterwards, I do not know that Scott ever showed his actual original genius, his faculty of creation and combination, to such an extent and in such proportion again. He certainly did not, so far as my taste goes, in _The Bride of Lammermoor_, a book which, putting the mere fragment of the _Black Dwarf_ aside, seems to me his first approach to failure in prose. Lockhart, whose general critical opinions deserve the profoundest respect, thought differently--thought it, indeed, 'the most pure and perfect of all the tragedies that Scott ever penned.' Perhaps there is something in this of the same ingenuity which Scott himself showed in his disclaimer to Murray quoted above, for tragedy _per se_ was certainly not Scott's forte to the same extent as were comedy and history. But I know that there are many who agree with Lockhart. On the other hand, I should say that while we do not know enough of the House of Ravenswood to feel much sympathy with its fortunes as a house, the 'conditions,' in the old sense, of its last representative are not such as to attract us much to him personally. He is already far too much of that hero of opera which he was destined to become, a sulky, stagy creature, in theatrical poses and a black-plumed hat, who cannot even play the easy and perennially attractive part of _desdichado_ so as to keep our compassion. Lucy is a simpleton so utter and complete that it is difficult even to be sorry for her, especially as Ravenswood would have made a detestable husband. The mother is meant to be and is a repulsive virago, and the father a time-serving and almost vulgar intriguer. Moreover--and all this is not in the least surprising, since he was in agonies during most of the composition, and nearly died before its close[20]--the author has, contrary to his wont, provided very few subsidiary characters to support or carry off the principals. Caleb Balderstone has been perhaps unduly objected to by the very persons who praise the whole book; but he is certainly somewhat of what the French call a _charge_. Bucklaw, though agreeable, is very slight; Craigengelt a mere 'super'; the Marquis shadowy. Even such fine things as the hags at the laying-out, and the visit of Lucy and her father to Wolf's Crag, and such amusing ones as Balderstone's _fabliau_-like expedients to raise the wind in the matter of food, hardly save the situation; and though the tragedy of the end is complete, it leaves me, I own, rather cold.[19] One is sorry for Lucy, but it was really her own fault--a Scottish maiden is not usually unaware of the possibilities and advantages of 'kilting her coats of green satin' and flying from the lad she does not love to the lad she does. The total disappearance of Edgar is the best thing that could happen to him, and the only really satisfactory point is Bucklaw's very gentlemanlike sentence of arrest on all impertinent questioners. But if the companion of the first set of _Tales_ was a dead-weight rather than a make-weight, the make-weight of the third would have atoned for anything. Sometimes I think, allowing for scale and conditions, that Scott never did anything much better than _A Legend of Montrose_. First, it is pervaded by the magnificent figure of Dugald Dalgetty. Secondly, the story, though with something of the usual huddle at the end, is interesting throughout, with the minor figures capitally sketched in. Menteith, though merely outlined, is a good fellow, a gentleman, and not a stick; Allan escapes the merely melodramatic; 'Gillespie Grumach' is masterly in his brief appearances; and Montrose himself seems to me to be brought in with a skill which has too often escaped notice. For it would mar the story to deal with the tragedy of his end, and his earlier history is a little awkward to manage. Moreover, that faculty of hurrying on the successive _tableaux_ which is so conspicuous in most of Scott's work, and so conspicuously absent in the _Bride_ (where there are long passages with no action at all) is eminently present here. The meeting with Dalgetty; the night at Darnlinvarach, from the bravado of the candlesticks to Menteith's tale; the gathering and council of the clans; the journey of Dalgetty, with its central point in the Inverary dungeon; the escape; and the battle of Inverlochy,--these form an exemplary specimen of the kind of interest which Scott's best novels possess as nothing of the kind had before possessed it, and as few things out of Dumas have possessed it since. Nor can the most fervent admirer of Chicot and of Porthos--I know none more fervent than myself--say in cool blood that their creator could have created Dalgetty, who is at once an admirable human being, a wonderful national type of the more eccentric kind, and the embodiment of an astonishing amount of judiciously adjusted erudition. Many incidents of interest and some of importance occurred in Scott's private life between the date of 1818 and that of 1820, besides those mentioned already. One of these was the acquisition by Constable of the whole of his back-copyrights for the very large sum of twelve thousand pounds, a contract supplemented twice later in 1821 and 1823 by fresh purchases of rights as they accrued for nominal sums of eleven thousand pounds in addition. Unfortunately, this transaction, like almost all his later ones, was more fictitious than real. And though it was lucky that the publisher never discharged the full debt, so that when his bankruptcy occurred something was saved out of the wreck which would otherwise have been pure loss, the proceeding is characteristic of the mischievously unreal system of money transactions which brought Scott to ruin. Except for small things like review articles, etc., and for his official salaries, he hardly ever touched real money for the fifteen most prosperous years of his life, between 1810 and 1825. Promises to receive were interchanged with promises to pay in such a bewildering fashion that unless he had kept a chartered accountant of rather unusual skill and industry perpetually at work, it must have been utterly impossible for him to know at any given time what he had, what he owed, what was due to him, and what his actual income and expenditure were. The commonly accepted estimate is that during the most flourishing time, 1820-1825, he made about fifteen thousand a year, and on paper he probably did. Nor can he ever have spent, in the proper sense of the term, anything like that sum, for the Castle Street house cannot have cost, even with lavish hospitality, much to keep up, and the Abbotsford establishment, though liberal, was never ostentatious. But when large lump sums are constantly expended in purchases of land, building, furnishing, and the like; when every penny of income except official salaries goes through a complicated process of abatement in the way of discounts for six and twelve months' bills, fines for renewal, payments to banks for advances and the like--the 'clean' sums available at any given moment bear quite fantastic and untrustworthy relations to their nominal representatives. It may be strongly suspected, from the admitted decrease of a very valuable practice under Walter Scott _père_, and from its practical disappearance under Thomas, that the genius of the Scott family did not precisely lie in the management of money. The marriage of Sophia Scott to Lockhart, and the purchase of a commission for her eldest brother Walter in the 18th Hussars, made gaps in Scott's family circle, and also, beyond all doubt, in his finances. The first was altogether happy for him. It did not, for at anyrate some years, absolutely sever him from the dearest of his children, a lady who, to judge from her portraits, must have been of singular charm, and who seems to have been the only one of the four with much of his mental characteristics; it provided him with an agreeable companion, a loyal friend, and an incomparable biographer. Of Sir Walter Scott the second and last, not much personal idea is obtainable. The few anecdotes handed down, and his father's letters to him (we have no replies), suggest a good sort of person, slightly 'chuckle-headed' and perfervid in the wrong places, with next to no intellectual gifts, and perhaps more his mother's son than his father's. He had some difficulties in his first regiment, which seems to have been a wild one, and not in the best form; he married an heiress of the unpoetical name of Jobson, to whom and of whom his father writes with a pretty old-fashioned affection and courtesy, which perhaps gave Thackeray some traits for Colonel Newcome. Of the younger brother Charles, an Oxford man, who went into the Foreign Office, even less is recorded than of Walter. Anne Scott, the third of the family, and the faithful attendant of her father in his last evil days, died in her sister's house shortly after Sir Walter, and Mrs. Lockhart herself followed before the _Life_ was finished. Scott can hardly be said to have bequeathed good luck to any of these his descendants. It was at the end of 1819, after Walter the younger left home, and before Sophia's marriage, that the next in order of the _Waverley Novels_ (now again such by title, and not _Tales of my Landlord_) appeared. This was _Ivanhoe_, which was published in a rather costlier shape than its forerunners, and yet sold to the extent of twelve thousand copies in its three-volume form. Lockhart, perhaps with one of the few but graceful escapes of national predilection (it ought not to be called prejudice) to be noticed in him, pronounces this a greater work of art, but a less in genius than its purely Scottish predecessors. As there is nothing specially English in _Ivanhoe_, but only an attempt to delineate Normans and Saxons before the final blend was formed, an Englishman may, perhaps, claim at least impartiality if he accepts the positive part of Lockhart's judgment and demurs to the negative. Although the worst of Scott's cramps were past, he was still in anything but good health when he composed the novel, most of which was dictated, not written; and his avocations and bodily troubles together may have had something to do with those certainly pretty flagrant anachronisms which have brought on _Ivanhoe_ the wrath of Dryasdust. But Dryasdust is _adeo negligibile ut negligibilius nihil esse possit_, and the book is a great one from beginning to end. The mere historians who quarrel with it have probably never read the romances which justify it, even from the point of view of literary 'document.' The picturesque opening; the Shakespearean character of Wamba; the splendid Passage of Arms; the more splendid siege of Torquilstone; the gathering up of a dozen popular stories of the 'King-and-the-Tanner' kind into the episodes of the Black Knight and the Friar; the admirable, if a little conventional, sketch of Bois-Guilbert, the pendant in prose to Marmion; the more admirable contrast of Rebecca and Rowena; and the final Judgment of God, which for once vindicates Scott from the charge of never being able to wind up a novel,--with such subsidiary sketches as Gurth, Prior Aymer, Isaac, Front-de-Boeuf (Urfried, I fear, will not quite do, except in the final interview with her tempter-victim), Athelstane, and others--give such a plethora of creative and descriptive wealth as nobody but Scott has ever put together in prose. Even the nominal hero, it is to be observed, escapes the curse of most of Scott's young men (the young men to several of whom Thackeray would have liked to be mother-in-law), and if he is not worthy of Rebecca, he does not get her. As for Richard, no doubt, he is not the Richard of history, but what does that matter? He is a most admirable re-creation, softened and refined, of the Richard of a romance which, be it remembered, is itself in all probability as old as the thirteenth century. After speaking frankly of the _Bride of Lammermoor_ and of some others of Scott's works, it may perhaps be permissible to rate the successor to _Ivanhoe_ rather higher than it was rated at the time, or than it has generally been rated since. _The Monastery_ was at its appearance (March 1820) regarded as a failure; and quite recently a sincere admirer of Scott confided to a fellow in that worship the opinion that 'a good deal of it really is rot, you know.' I venture to differ. Undoubtedly it does not rank with the very best, or even next to them. In returning to Scottish ground, Scott may have strengthened himself on one side, but from the distance of the times and the obscure and comparatively uninteresting period which he selected (just after the strange and rapid panorama of the five Jameses and before the advent of Queen Mary), he lost as much as he gained. An intention, afterwards abandoned, to make yet a fresh start, and try a new double on the public by appearing neither as 'Author of _Waverley_' nor as Jedediah Cleishbotham, may have hampered him a little, though it gave a pleasant introduction. The supernatural part, though much better, as it seems to me, than is generally admitted, is no doubt not entirely satisfactory, being uncertainly handled, and subject to the warning of _Nec deus intersit_. There is some return of that superabundance of interval and inaction which has been noted in the _Bride_. And, above all, there appears here a fault which had not been noticeable before, but which was to increase upon Scott,--the fault of introducing a character as if he were to be of great pith and moment, and then letting his interest, as the vernacular says, 'tail off.' The trouble taken about Halbert by personages natural and supernatural promises the case of some extraordinary figure, and he is but very ordinary. Still, at the works of how many novelists except Scott should we grumble, if we had the admirable descriptions of Glendearg, the scenes in the Abbey, the night-ride of poor Father Philip, the escape from the Castle of Avenel, the passage of the interview of Halbert with Murray and Morton? Even the episode of Sir Piercie Shafton, though it is most indisputably true that Scott has not by any means truly represented Euphuism, is good and amusing in itself; while there are those who boldly like the White Lady personally. She is more futile than a sprite beseems; but she is distinctly 'nice.' At any rate, nobody could (or indeed did) deny that the author, six months later, made up for any shortcoming in _The Abbot_, where, except the end (eminently of the huddled order), everything is as it should be. The heroine is, except Die Vernon, Scott's masterpiece in that kind, while all the Queen Mary scenes are unsurpassed in him, and rarely equalled out of him. Nor was there any falling off in _Kenilworth_ (Jan. 1821), where he again shifted his scene to England. He has not indeed interested us very much personally in Amy Robsart, but as a hapless heroine she is altogether the superior of Lucy Ashton. The book is, among his, the 'novel without a hero,' and, considering his defects in that direction, this was hardly a drawback. It cannot be indeed said to have any one minor character which is a success of the first class. But the whole is interesting throughout. The journeys of Tressilian to Devonshire and of Amy and Wayland to Kenilworth have the curious attraction which Scott, a great traveller, and a lover of it, knew how to give to journeys, and the pageantry and Court scenes, at Greenwich and elsewhere, command admiration. Indeed, _Kenilworth_ equals any of the novels in sustained variety of interest, and, unlike too many of them, it comes to a real end. It was in 1821 that a book now necessarily much forgotten and even rare (it is comparatively seldom that one sees it in catalogues), Adolphus's _Letters on the Author of Waverley_, at once showed the interest taken in the identity of the 'Great Unknown,' and fixed it as being that of the author of the _Lay_, with a great deal of ingenuity and with a most industrious abundance of arguments, bad and good. After such a proof of public interest, neither Scott nor Constable could be much blamed for working what has been opprobriously called the 'novel manufactory' at the highest pressure; and _The Pirate_, _The Fortunes of Nigel_, _Peveril of the Peak_, _Quentin Durward_, _St. Ronan's Well_, and _Redgauntlet_ were written and published in the closest succession. These books, almost all of wonderful individual excellence (_Peveril_, I think, is the only exception), and of still more wonderful variety, were succeeded, before the crash of 1825-26, by the _Tales of the Crusaders_, admirable in part, if not wholly. When we think that all these were, with some other work, accomplished in less than five years, it scarcely seems presumption in the author to have executed, or rashness in the bookseller to have suggested, a contract for four of them in a batch--a batch unnamed, unplanned, not even yet in embryo, but simply existing _in potentia_ in the brain of Walter Scott himself. In surveying together this batch, written when the first novelty of the novels was long over, and before there was any decadence, one obtains, as well perhaps as from any other division of his works, an idea of their author's miraculous power. Many novelists since have written as much or more in the same time. But their books for the most part, even when well above the average, popular, and deservedly popular too, leave next to no trace on the mind. You do not want to read them again; you remember, even with a strong memory, nothing special about their plots; above all, their characters take little or no hold on the mind in the sense of becoming part of its intellectual circle and range. How different is it with these six or eight novels, 'written with as much care as the others, that is to say, with none at all,' as the author wickedly remarked! _The Pirate_ (December 1821) leads off, its scenery rendered with the faithfulness of recent memory, and yet adjusted and toned by the seven years' interval since Scott yachted round Orkney and Shetland. Here are the admirable characters of Brenda (slight yet thoroughly pleasing), and her father, the not too melodramatic ones of Minna, Cleveland, and Norna, the triumph of Claud Halcro (to whom few do justice), and again, the excellent keeping of story and scenery to character and incident. _The Fortunes of Nigel_ (May 1822) originated in a proposed series of 'Letters of the Seventeenth Century,' in which others were to take part, and perhaps marks a certain decline, though only in senses to be distinctly defined and limited. Nothing that Scott ever did is better than the portrait of King James, which, in the absence of one from the hand of His Majesty's actual subject for some dozen years, Mr. William Shakespeare of New Place, Stratford, is probably the most perfect thing of the kind that ever could have been or can be done. And the picture of Whitefriars, though it is borrowed to a great extent, and rather anticipated in point of time, from Shadwell's _Squire of Alsatia_, sixty or seventy years after date, is of the finest, whilst Sir Mungo Malagrowther[18] all but deserves the same description. But this most cantankerous knight is not touched off with the completeness of Dalgetty, or even of Claud Halcro. Lord Glenvarloch adds, to the insipidity which is the bane of Scott's good heroes, some rather disagreeable traits which none of them had hitherto shown. Dalgarno in the same way falls short of his best bad heroes. Dame Suddlechop suggests, for the first time _un_favourably, a Shakespearean ancestress, Mistress Quickly, and the story halts and fails to carry the reader rapidly over the stony path. Even Richie Moniplies, even Gentle Geordie, good as both are, fall short of their predecessors. Ten years earlier _The Fortunes of Nigel_ would have been a miracle, and one might have said, 'If a man begins like this, what will he do later?' Now, thankless and often uncritical as is the chatter about 'writing out,' we can hardly compare _Nigel_ with _Guy Mannering_, or _Rob Roy_, or even _The Abbot_, and not be conscious of something that (to use a favourite quotation of Scott's own), 'doth appropinque an end,' though an end as yet afar off. The 'bottom of the sack,' as the French say, is a long way from us; but it is within measurable distance. Even a friendly critic must admit that this distance seemed to be alarmingly shortened by _Peveril of the Peak_ (January 1823), which among the full-sized novels seems to me quite his least good book, worse even than 'dotages,' as they are sometimes thought, like _Anne of Geierstein_ and _Count Robert_. No one has defended the story, which, languid as it is, is made worse by the long gaps between the passages that ought to be interesting, and by a (for Scott) quite abnormal and portentous absence of really characteristic characters. Lockhart pleads for some of these, but I fear the plea can hardly be admitted. I imagine that those who read Scott pretty regularly are always sorely tempted to skip _Peveril_ altogether, and that when they do read it, they find the chariot wheels drive with a heaviness of which elsewhere they are entirely unconscious. But in the same year (1823), _Quentin Durward_ not only made up for _Peveril_, but showed Scott's powers to be at least as great as when he wrote _The Abbot_, if not as great as ever. He has taken some liberties with history, but no more than he was perfectly entitled to take; he has paid the historic muse with ample interest for anything she lent him, by the magnificent sketch of Louis and the fine one of Charles; he has given a more than passable hero in Quentin, and a very agreeable if not ravishing heroine in Isabelle. Above all, he has victoriously shown his old faculty of conducting the story with such a series of enthralling, even if sometimes episodic passages, that nobody but a pedant of 'construction' would care to inquire too narrowly whether they actually make a whole. Quentin's meeting with the King and his rescue from Tristan by the archers; the interviews between Louis and Crevecoeur, and Louis and the Astrologer; the journey (another of Scott's admirable journeys); the sack of Schonwaldt, and the feast of the Boar of Ardennes; Louis in the lion's den at Peronne,--these are things that are simply of the first order. Nor need the conclusion, which has shocked some, shock any who do not hold, with critics of the Rymer school, that 'the hero ought always to be successful.' For as Quentin wins Isabelle at last, what more success need we want? and why should not Le Balafré, that loyal Leslie, be the instrument of his nephew's good fortune? The recovery was perfectly well maintained in _St. Ronan's Well_ (still 1823) and _Redgauntlet_ (1824), the last novels of full length before the downfall. They were also, be it noticed, the first planned (while _Quentin_ itself was completed) after some early symptoms of apoplectic seizure, which might, even if they had not been helped by one of the severest turns of fortune that any man ever experienced, have punished Scott's daring contempt of ordinary laws in the working of his brains.[17] The harm done to _St. Ronan's Well_ by the author's submission to James Ballantyne's Philistine prudery in protesting against the original story (in which Clara did not discover the cheat put on her till a later period than the ceremony) is generally acknowledged. As it is, not merely is the whole thing made a much ado about nothing,--for no law and no Church in Christendom would have hesitated to declare the nullity of a marriage which had never been consummated, and which was celebrated while one of the parties took the other for some one else,--but Clara's shattered reason, Tyrrel's despair, and Etherington's certainty that he has the cards in his hand, are all incredible and unaccountable--mere mid-winter madness. Nevertheless, this, Scott's only attempt at actual contemporary fiction, has extraordinary interest and great merit as such, while Meg Dods would save half a dozen novels, and the society at the Well is hardly inferior. And then came _Redgauntlet_. A great lover of Scott once nearly invoked the assistance of Captain M'Turk to settle matters with a friend of his who would not pronounce _Redgauntlet_ the best of all the novels, and would only go so far as to admit that it contains some, and many, of the best things. The best as a novel it cannot be called, because the action is desultory in the extreme. There are wide gaps even in the chain of story interest that does exist, and the conclusion, admirable in itself, has even for Scott a too audacious disconnection with any but the very faintest concern of the nominally first personages. But even putting 'Wandering Willie's Tale' aside, and taking for granted the merits of that incomparable piece (of which, it may yet be gently hinted, it was not so very long ago still a singularity and mark of daring to perceive the absolute supremacy), the good things in this fascinating book defy exaggeration. The unique autobiographic interest--so fresh and keen and personal, and yet so free from the odious intrusion of actual personality--of the earlier epistolary presentment of Saunders and Alan Fairford, of Darsie and Green Mantle; Peter Peebles, peer of Scott's best; Alan's journey and Darsie's own wanderings; the scenes at the Provost's dinner-table and in Tam Turnpenny's den; that unique figure, the skipper of the _Jumping Jenny_; the extraordinarily effective presentment of Prince Charles, already in his decadence, if not yet in his dotage; the profusion of smaller sketches and vignettes everywhere grouped round the mighty central triumph of the adventures of Piper Steenie,--who but Scott has done such things? He never put so much again in a single book. There is something in it which it is hardly fanciful to take as a 'note of finishing,' as the last piece of the work, that, gigantic as it was, was not exactly collar work, not sheer hewing of wood and drawing of water for the taskmasters. And it was fitting that the book, so varied, so fresh, so gracious and kindly, so magnificent in part, with a magnificence dominating Scott's usual range, should begin with the beginnings of his own career, and should end with the practical finish, not merely of the good days, but of the days that dawned with any faint promise of goodness, in the career of the last hope of the Jacobite cause. FOOTNOTES: [17] _Lockhart_, iv. chaps. xxviii.-xxxiii. [18] The name, which, as many people now know since Aldershot Camp was established, is a real one, had been already used with the double meaning by Charlotte Smith, a now much-forgotten novelist, whom Scott admired. [19] The once celebrated 'Polish dwarf.' [20] I may be permitted to refer--as to a _pièce justificatif_ which there is no room here to give or even abstract in full--to a set of three essays on this subject in my _Essays in English Literature_. Second Series. London, 1895. [21] This part, however, has a curious adventitious interest, owing to the idea--fairly vouched for--that Scott intended to delineate in the Colonel some points of his own character. His pride, his generosity, and his patronage of the Dominie, are not unrecognisable, certainly. And a man's idea of himself is often, even while strange to others, perfectly true to his real nature. [22] All who do not skip such things must have enjoyed these scraps, sometimes labelled particularly, sometimes merely dubbed 'Old Play'; and they are well worth reading together, as they appear in the editions of the _Poems_. At the same time, they have been, in some cases, too hastily attributed to Sir Walter himself. For instance, that in _The Legend of Montrose_, ch. xiv., assigned to _The Tragedy of Brennoralt_ (not '_v_alt,' as misprinted), is really from Sir John Suckling's sententious play (act iv. sc. 1), though loosely quoted. [23] In the earlier months had taken place that famous rediscovery of the Regalia of Scotland in Edinburgh Castle, which was one of the central moments of Scott's life, and in which, as afterwards in the restoring of Mons Meg, he took a great, if not the chief, part. His influence with George IV. as Prince and King had much to do with both, and in the earlier he took the very deepest interest. The effect on himself (and on his daughter Sophia) of the actual finding of the Crown jewels is a companion incident to that previously noticed (p. 52) as occurring on the Mound. Those who cannot sympathise with either can hardly hope to understand either Scott or his work. [24] From March to May 1819 he had a series of attacks of the cramp, so violent that he once took solemn leave of his children in expectation of decease, that the eccentric Earl of Buchan forced a way into his bedchamber to 'relieve his mind as to the arrangements of his funeral,' and that he entirely forgot the whole of the _Bride_ itself. This, too, was the time of his charge to Lockhart (_Familiar Letters_, ii. 38), as to his successor in Tory letters and politics-- 'Take thou the vanguard of the three, And bury me by the bracken-bush That grows upon yon lily lee.' [25] It has always struck me that the other form of the legend itself--that in which the 'open window' suggests that the bridegroom's wounds were due to his rival--has far greater capabilities. [26] Said to embody certain mental peculiarities of that ingenious draughtsman, but rather unamiable person, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. [27] He had said in a letter to Terry, as early as November 20, 1822, that he feared _Peveril_ 'would smell of the apoplexy.' But he made no definite complaint to any one of a particular seizure, and the date, number, and duration of the attacks are unknown. CHAPTER V THE DOWNFALL OF BALLANTYNE & COMPANY _Redgauntlet_, it has been said, was the last novel on the full scale before the downfall of Scott's prosperity. But before this he had begun _The Life of Napoleon_ and _Woodstock_, and, in June 1825, had published the _Tales of the Crusaders_, which contain some work almost, if not quite, equal to his best, and which obtained at first a greater popularity than their immediate predecessors. It was, and generally is, held that _The Betrothed_, the earlier of the two, was saved by _The Talisman_; and there can be no doubt that this latter is the better. Contrary to the wont of novelists, Scott was at least as happy with Richard here as he had been in _Ivanhoe_, and though he owed a good deal in both to the presentation of his hero in the very interesting romance published by his old secretary Weber,--one of the best of all the English verse romances and the first English poem to show a really English patriotism,--he owed nothing but suggestion. The duel at the Diamond in the Desert is admittedly one of the happiest things of the kind by a master in that kind, and if the adventures in the chapel of Engedi are both a little farcical and a little 'apropos of nothing in particular,' the story nowhere else halts or fails till it reaches its real 'curtain' with the second _Accipe hoc!_ If it had been longer, it might not have been so strong, but as it is, it is nearly perfect. But there is also more good in _The Betrothed_ than it is usual to allow. The beginning, the siege of the Garde Doloureuse, and the ghostly adventure of Eveline at the Saxon manor are excellent; while, even later, Scott has entangled the evidence against Damian and the heroine with not a little of the skill which he had shown in compromising Waverley. Had not James Ballantyne dashed the author's spirits with some of his cavillings, the whole might have been as much of a piece as _The Talisman_ is. Indeed, it must be confessed that, though Lockhart is generous enough on this point to the man to whom he has been accused of being unjust, we have very little evidence of any improvement in Scott's work due to James, while we know that he did harm not once only. But, as it stands, the book no doubt exhibits the usual faults, that languishing of the middle action, for instance, which injures _The Bride of Lammermoor_ and _The Monastery_, together with the much more common huddling and improbability of the conclusion. But we know that this last was put on hurriedly, against the grain, and after the author, disgusted by the grumblings of others, had relinquished his work; so that we cannot greatly wonder. It is impossible here to depict in detail Scott's domestic life during the years which passed since we last noticed it, and which represent the most flourishing time of his worldly circumstances. The estate of Abbotsford gradually grew, always at fancy prices, till the catastrophe itself finally prevented an expenditure of £40,000 in a lump on more land. The house grew likewise to its hundred and fifty feet of front, its slightly confused but not disagreeable external muddle of styles, and reproductions, and incorporated fragments, and its internal blend of museum and seignorial hall. It was practically completed and splendidly 'house-warmed' to celebrate the marriage (3rd February 1825) of the heir, on whom both house and estate were settled, with no very fortunate result. Between it and Castle Street the family oscillated as usual, when summer and winter, term and vacation, called them. At Abbotsford open house was always kept to a Noah's ark-full of visitors, invited and uninvited, high and low, and Castle Street saw more modest but equally cordial and constant hospitalities, in which the Lockharts were pretty frequent participators; while their country home at Chiefswood was a sort of escaping place for Sir Walter when visitors made Abbotsford unbearable. The 'Abbotsford Hunt' yearly rejoiced the neighbours; and though, as his health grew weaker, Scott's athletic and sporting exercises were necessarily and with insidious encroachment curtailed, he still did all he could in this way. In 1822 there was the great visit of George IV. to Scotland, wherein Sir Walter took a part which was only short, if short at all, of principal; and of this Lockhart has left one of his liveliest and most pleasantly subacid accounts. Visits to England were not unfrequent; and at last, in the summer of 1825, Scott made a journey, which was a kind of triumphal progress, to Ireland, with his daughter Anne and Lockhart as companions. The party returned by way of the Lakes, and the triumph was, as it were, formally wound up at Windermere in a regatta, with Wilson for admiral of the lake and Canning for joint-occupant of the triumphal boat. 'It was roses, roses all the way,' till in the autumn of the year the rue began, according to its custom, to take their place. The immediate cause of the disaster was Scott's secret partnership in the house of Ballantyne & Co., which, dragged down by the greater concerns of Constable & Co. in Edinburgh and Hurst, Robinson, & Co. in London, failed for the nominal amount of £117,000 at the end of January 1826.[34] Their assets were, in the first place, claims on the two other firms, which realised a mere trifle; and, in the second place, the property, the genius, the life, and the honour of Sir Walter Scott. When one has to deal briefly with very complicated and much-debated matters, there is nothing more important than to confine the dealing to as few points as possible. We may, I think, limit the number here to two,--the nature and amount of the indebtedness itself, and the manner in which it was met. The former, except so far as the total figures on the debtor side are concerned, is the question most in dispute. That the printing business of Ballantyne & Co. (the publishing business had lost heavily, but it had long ceased to be a drain), in the ordinary literal sense owed £117,000--that is to say, that it had lost that sum in business, or that the partners had overdrawn to that amount--nobody contends. Lockhart's account, based on presumably accurate information, not merely from his father-in-law's papers, but from Cadell, Constable's partner, is that the losses were due partly to the absolutely unbusinesslike conduct of the concern, and the neglect for many years to come to a clear understanding what its profits were and what they were not; partly to the ruinous system of eternally interchanged and renewed bills, so that, for instance, sums which Constable nominally paid years before were not actually liquidated at the time of the smash; but most of all to a proceeding which seems to pass the bounds of recklessness on one side, and to enter pretty deeply into those of fraud on the other. This is the celebrated affair of the counter-bills, things, according to Lockhart, representing no consideration or value received of any kind, but executed as a sort of collateral security to Constable when he discounted any of John Ballantyne's innumerable acceptances, and intended for use only if the real and original bills were not met. Still, according to Lockhart, this system was continued long after there was any special need for it, and a mass of counter-bills, for which the Ballantynes had never had the slightest value, and the amount of which they had either discharged or stood accountable for already on other documents, was in whole or part flung upon the market by Constable in the months of struggle which preceded his fall, and ranked against Ballantyne & Co., that is to say, Scott, when that fall came. This account, when published in the first edition of Lockhart's _Life_, provoked strong protests from the representatives of the Ballantynes, and a rather acrimonious pamphlet war followed, in which Lockhart is accused by some not merely of acrimony, but of a supercilious and contemptuous fashion of dealing with his opponents. He made, however, no important retractations later, and it is fair to say that not one of his allegations has ever been disproved by documentary evidence, as certainly ought to have been possible while all the documents were at hand. Nor did the _Memoirs_ of Constable, published many years later, supply what was and is missing; nor does Mr. Lang, with all his pains, seem to have found anything decisive. The assertions opposed to Lockhart's are that the 'counter-bill' story is not true, and that the distresses of Ballantyne & Co., and the dangerous extent to which they were involved in complicated bill transactions with Constable, were at least partly due to reckless drawings by the senior partner for his land purchases and other private expenses. Between the two it is impossible to decide with absolute certainty.[32] All that can be said is this. First, considering that the whole original capital of the firm was Scott's, that he had repeatedly saved it from ruin by his own exertions and credit, and that a very large part of the legitimate grist that came to its mill was supplied by his introduction of work to be printed, he was certainly entitled to the lion's share of any profit that was actually earned. Secondly, the neglect to balance accounts, and the reckless fashion of interweaving acceptance with drawing and drawing with acceptance, had, as we know, been repeatedly protested against by him. Thirdly, his private expenditure, very moderate at Castle Street, and not recklessly lavish even at Abbotsford, must have been amply covered by his official and private income _plus_ no great proportion of the always large and latterly immense supplies which for nearly twenty years he derived from his pen. It is impossible to see that, except by his carelessness in neglecting to ascertain from time to time the exact liabilities of the firm, he had added to the original fault of joining it, or had in any other way deserved the blow that fell upon him. No one can believe, certainly no one has ever proved, that his earnings, and his salaries, and the value of his property, if capitalised, would not have covered, and far more than covered, the cost of Abbotsford, land and house, the settlements on his children, and the household expenses of the whole fifteen years and more since he became a housekeeper there. While, as for the printing business itself, it admittedly ought to have made a handsome profit from first to last, and certainly did make a handsome profit as soon as it fell under reasonably business-like management afterwards. There remains the said 'original fault' of engaging in the business at all, and that, I think, can never be denied. The very introduction of joint-stock companies, to which, in part, Scott owed his ruin, has made a confusion between professional and commercial occupations which did not then exist; but even now I think it would hardly be considered decent for a public servant, discharging judicial functions, to carry on actual business in a private trading concern. Moreover, the secrecy which Scott observed--to such an extent that his family and his most intimate friends did not know the facts--could come from nothing but a sense of something amiss, and certainly led to the commission of not a little that was so. Scott had to conceal the actual and very material truth when he applied to the Duke of Buccleuch for the guarantee that saved him a dozen years earlier. He had to conceal it from the various persons who employed Ballantyne & Co., and were induced to do so by him. He had to conceal it when he executed those settlements on his son's marriage, which certainly would have been affected had it been known that the whole of his fortune was subject to an unlimited liability. The mystery of his unconsciousness of all this may be left pretty much where Lockhart, with full acknowledgment, left it. I have said that his action seems to have originated partly in a blind and causeless fear of poverty, which, as blind and causeless fear so often does, made him run into the very danger he tried to avoid, partly in an incomprehensible partiality for the Ballantynes.[30] We have no evidence, in any degree trustworthy, that during the entire term of his connection with the firm he derived any positive profit from it at all commensurate with his actual sinkings of money and his sacrifices and exertions of various kinds. The whole thing is, once more, a mystery, and the best comment is perhaps the simple one that the means which a man takes to ruin or seriously damage himself generally do seem a mystery to others, and probably are so to himself. Nor is there anything more unusual in the colossal irony of the situation, when we find Scott, just before his own ruin, and in the act of giving his friend Terry the actor a guarantee (which, as it happened, he had to pay), writing[36] words of the most excellent sense on the rashness of engaging in commercial undertakings without sufficient capital, the madness of dealing in bills, and his own resolve to have nothing to do with any business carried on 'by discounts and renewals.' The irony, let it be repeated, is colossal; yet we meet it, we commit it, every day. It is painful to read that during the months of uncertainty which preceded the actual crash, Scott threw the helve after the hatchet by charging himself personally, first, with an advance, or, at least, bond for £5000, and then for another of double that amount,[29] to help two firms, Constable and Hurst & Robinson, whose combined indebtedness was over half a million. But the fact of his doing so was sufficient indication of the spirit in which he would meet the crash of Ballantyne & Co. itself. The whole of the _Diary_ (_v. infra_) of the period is one long illustration (without the slightest pretentiousness or self-consciousness) of the famous line of perhaps his own greatest poetical passage-- 'No thought was there of dastard flight.' He had made up his mind, before it was certainly imminent, that bankruptcy was not to be accepted; evasion of any more thorough kind, if it occurred, he dismissed at once as not even to be thought of. Yet it is perhaps to be regretted that the mode in which the disaster was actually met, heroic as it was, was substituted for that of which he had at first thought--the simple throwing up of every scrap of his property, including all but a bare subsistence out of his official incomes, which could not have been touched without difficulty. Had he done, or been able to do this, had he shaken off the vampire in stone and lime and hungry soil which had so long sucked his blood, had he sold the library, and the 'Gabions of Jonathan Oldbuck,'[35] and the Japanese papers, and the Byron vase, and the armour, had he mortgaged his incomes by help of insurance, sold his copyrights outright, and, in short, realised everything, it does not seem absolutely certain that he might not have paid off his creditors in full, or, at least, left but a small balance to be discharged by less superhuman and fatal exertions than those actually made. The time was not a good time for selling, no doubt; but, on the other hand, the interest in Abbotsford and its master was still at its height, and the enthusiasm, which actually inspired one anonymous offer of thirty thousand pounds on loan in a lump, would probably have made good bargains for him on sales. He would then have been a free, or nearly a free man, with his own exertions untrammelled, or nearly so; and, serious as were the warnings that his health had given or received, the actual history of the next six or seven years seems to show that, had the machine been driven with less unsparing ferocity, and at a more moderate rate, it might have lasted for years, and even restored its master to competence, if not to wealth. Unfortunately, if nothing else--family affection and perhaps also family pride did still, it may be feared, supply something else--the unlucky settlement of Abbotsford stood in the way. Legally, it is true or at least probable, this settlement might have been upset; but the trustees of Mrs. Walter Scott would probably also have felt bound to resist this, and leave to unsettle could only have been obtained on the humiliating and even slightly disgraceful plea that the granter, being practically insolvent at the time, was acting beyond his rights. It seems to have been proposed by the Bank of Scotland, during the negotiations for the arrangement which followed, that this should be done; and the reasons which dictated Scott's refusal would have equally, no doubt, prevented him from doing it in the other case. Accordingly, it was resolved, as he declined to go into bankruptcy, that his whole property should, under a procedure half legal, half amicable, be vested in trustees for the benefit of his creditors; nothing except the Castle Street house and some minor chattels being actually sold. He, on the other hand, undertook to devote to the liquidation of the balance of his debts all the proceeds of his future work, except a bare maintenance for himself and (on a reduced scale) for Abbotsford. How 'this fatal venture of mistaken chivalry' (to borrow a most applicable phrase of Kingsley's about another matter) was carried out we shall see, but how grossly unfair it was to Scott himself must appear at once. In return for his sacrifices he had no real legal protection; any creditor could, as a Jew named Abud actually did, threaten at any time to force bankruptcy unless he were paid at once and in full. Instead of retaining (as he would have done had the whole of his property been actually surrendered, and had he allowed the debts which came with the law to go with it) complete control of his future earnings and exertions, and making, as he might have made, restitution by instalments as a free gift, he was in such a plight that any creditor was entitled to regard him as a kind of thrall, paying debt by service as a matter of course, and deserving neither rest, nor gratitude, nor commendation. One really sometimes feels inclined to regret that Abud or somebody else was not more relentless--to pray for a Sir Giles Overreach or a Shylock among the creditors. For such a one, by his apparently malevolent but really beneficent grasping, would have in effect liberated the bondsman, who, as it was, was compelled to toil at a hopeless task to his dying day, and to hasten that dying day by the attempt. Mention has been made above of a certain _Diary_ which is our main authority, and, indeed, makes other authorities merely illustrative for a great part of the few and evil last years of Sir Walter's life. It was begun before the calamities, and just after the return from Ireland, being pleasantly christened 'Gurnal,' after a slight early phonetic indulgence of his daughter Sophia's. It was suggested--and Lockhart seems to think that it was effective--as a relief from the labour of _Napoleon_, which went slightly against the grain, even before it became bond-work. It may have been a doubtful prescription, for 'the cud[28] of sweet and bitter fancy' is dangerous food. But it has certainly done _us_ good. When Mr. Douglas obtained leave to publish it as a whole, there were, I believe, wiseacres who dreaded the effect of the publication, thinking that the passages which Lockhart himself had left out might in some way diminish and belittle our respect for Scott. They had no need to trouble themselves. It was already, as published in part in the Life, one of the most pathetically interesting things in biographical literature. This quality was increased by the complete publication, while it also became a new proof that 'good blood cannot lie,' that the hero is a hero even in utterances kept secret from the very valet. If, as has happened before and might conceivably happen again, some cataclysm destroyed all Scott's other work, we should still have in this not merely an admirable monument of literature, but the picture of a character not inhumanly flawless, yet almost superhumanly noble; of the good man struggling against adversity, not, indeed, with a sham pretence of stoicism, but with that real fortitude of which stoicism is too often merely a caricature and a simulation. It is impossible not to recur to the _Marmion_ passage already quoted as one reads the account of the successive misfortunes, the successive expedients resorted to, the absolute determination never to cry craven.[33] It is from the _Diary_ that we learn his own complete knowledge of the fact urged above, that it would have been better for him if his creditors had been in appearance less kind. 'If they drag me into court,' he says,[31] 'instead of going into this scheme of arrangement, they would do themselves a great injury, and _perhaps eventually do the good, though it would give me great pain_.' The _Diary_, illustrated as it is by the excellent selections from Skene's _Reminiscences_ and other scattered or unpublished matter which Mr. Douglas has appended, exhibits the whole history of this period with a precision that could not otherwise have been hoped for, especially as pecuniary misfortunes were soon, according to the fashion of this world, to be complicated by others. For some two years before the catastrophe Lady Scott had been in weak health; and though the misfortune itself does not seem to have affected her much after the first shock, she grew rapidly worse in the spring of 1826, and, her asthma changing into dropsy, died at Abbotsford during Scott's absence in Edinburgh, when his work began in May. His successive references to her illness, and the final and justly-famous passage on her death, are excellent examples of the spirit which pervades this part of the _Diary_. This spirit is never unmanly, but displays throughout, and occasionally, as we see, to his own consciousness, that strange yet not uncommon phenomenon which is well expressed in a French phrase, _il y a quelque chose de cassé_, and which frequently comes upon men after or during the greater misfortunes of life. Neither in his references to this, nor in those to another threatened, though as yet deferred blow, expected from the ever-declining health of the Lockharts' eldest child, the 'Hugh Littlejohn' of the _Tales of a Grandfather_, is there any tone of whining on the one hand, or any mark of insensibility on the other. But there is throughout something like a confession, stoutly avoided in words, but hinted in tone and current of quotation and sentiment, that the strength, though not the courage, is hardly equal to the day. The _Diary_, both here and elsewhere, is full of good things, pleasant wit still, shrewd criticism of life, quaint citation of wise old Scots saws and good modern instances, happy judgment of men and books,--above all, that ever-present touch of literature, without mere bookishness, which is as delightful to those who can taste it as any of Scott's gifts. And perhaps, too, we may trace, even behind this, a secret sense that, as his own Habakkuk Mucklewrath has it in the dying curse on Claverhouse, the wish of his heart had indeed been granted to his loss, and that the hope of his own pride had gone too near to destroy him. FOOTNOTES: [28] Some say £130,000, but this seems to include the £10,000 mortgage on Abbotsford. This, however, was a private affair of Scott's own, not a transaction of the firm. [29] I have consulted high authority on the legal side of this counter-bill story, and have been informed (with the expected caution that, the facts being so doubtful, the law is hard to give) that under Scots law these counter-bills, if they existed, would probably be allowed to rank, supposing that twenty shillings in the pound had not been paid on the first set, and to an extent sufficient to make up that sum. But Lockhart's allegation clearly is that they were so used as to charge Scott's estate to the extent of _forty_ shillings in the pound. [30] John Ballantyne had died in 1821, before the mischief was punished, but after it was done. [31] _Lockhart_, vii. 370, 371. [32] I am not certain whether the second advance, which was secured by mortgage on Abbotsford, included the first or not. Probably it did. [33] A pet name for his 'curios.' [34] Our now-accepted texts, of course, read 'food'; but no one who remembers the pleasant use which Sir Walter himself has made of the other reading in the Introduction to _Quentin Durward_ will readily give it up. [35] As Scott, like Swift and Shakespeare, like Thackeray and Fielding, never hesitated at a touch of grim humour even though it might border on grotesque, he himself would probably not have missed the coincidence of-- 'Though _bill_men ply the ghastly blow,' which suggests itself only too tragi-comically. [36] _Journal_, Feb. 3, 1826, p. 103, ed. Douglas; _Lockhart_, viii. 216, 217. CHAPTER VI LAST WORKS AND DAYS It has been mentioned that when Scott returned from Ireland, and before his misfortunes came upon him, he had already engaged in two works of magnitude, a new novel, _Woodstock_, and a _Life of Napoleon_, planned upon a very large scale, for which Constable made great preparations, and from which he expected enormous profits. After the catastrophe it became a question whether Constable's estate could claim the fulfilment of these contracts, or whether the profits of them could be devoted wholly to the liquidation of Scott's, or rather Ballantyne & Co.'s, own debts. The completion of _Woodstock_ was naturally delayed until this point was settled. But from the very moment when Sir Walter had resolved to devote himself to the heroic but apparently hopeless task of paying off his nominal liabilities in full, he arranged a system of work upon these two books, and especially upon the _Napoleon_, which exceeded in dogged determination anything that even he had hitherto done. The novel was, of course, to him comparative child's play: he had written novels before in six weeks or thereabouts all told, though his impaired vigour, the depression of his spirits, and the sense of labouring for the mere purpose of pouring the results into a sieve, made things harder now. But the _Napoleon_, though he had made some preparation for this kind of writing by his elaborate and multifarious editorial work, especially by that on Dryden and Swift, was to a great extent new; and it required, what was always irksome to him, elaborate reading up of books and documents for the special purpose. No man has ever utilised the results of previous reading for his own pleasure better than Scott, and few men, not mere professed book-grubbers, have ever had vaster stores of it. But he frequently confesses--a confession which in many ways makes his plight in these years still more to be pitied--an ingrained dislike to task-work of any kind; and there is no more laborious task-work than getting up and piecing together the materials for history. The book, one, at a rough guess, of at least a million words, was completed from end to end in less than eighteen months, during which he also wrote _Woodstock_, _Malachi Malagrowther_ (_vide infra_), with several reviews and minor things, besides serving his usual number of days at the Clerk's table, devoting necessarily much time to the not more painful than troublesome business of his pecuniary affairs, his removal from Castle Street, etc., and taking one journey of some length in the summer of 1826 to London and Paris for materials. The feat was accomplished by a rigid system of 'so much per day'--by dint of which, no doubt, an amount of work, surprising to the inexperienced, can be turned out with no necessarily disastrous consequences. But Scott, disgusted with society, and avoiding it from motives of economy as well as of want of heart, disturbed hardly at all by strangers at Abbotsford, and not at all in the lodgings and furnished houses which he took while in Edinburgh, let 'his own thought drive him like a goad' to work in the interest of his task-masters, and perhaps, also, for the sake of drowning care, pushed the system to the most extravagant lengths. We know that he sometimes worked from six in the morning to six at even, with breakfast and luncheon brought into his study and consumed there; and though his court duties made this fortunately impossible for a part of the year, at least during a part of the week, they were not a complete preservative. In the eighteen months he cleared for his bloodsuckers nearly twenty thousand pounds, eight thousand for _Woodstock_ and eleven or twelve for _Napoleon_. The trifling profits of _Malachi_ and the reviews seem to have been permitted to go into his own pocket. He was naturally proud of the exploit, but it may be feared that it made the end certain. Of the merits of the _Napoleon_ (the second edition of which, by the way, carried its profits to eighteen thousand pounds) it is perhaps not necessary to say very much. I should imagine that few living persons have read it word for word through, and I confess very frankly that I have not done so myself, though I think I have read enough to qualify me for judging it. It is only unworthy of its author in the sense that one feels it to have been not in the least the work that he was born to do. It is nearly as good, save for the technical inferiority of Scott's prose style, as the historical work of Southey, and very much better than the historical work of Campbell and Moore. The information is sufficient, the narrative clear, and the author can at need rise to very fair eloquence, or at least rhetoric. But it is too long to be read, as one reads Southey's _Nelson_, for its merits as biography, and not technically authoritative enough to be an exhaustive work of reference from the military, diplomatic, and political side. Above all, one cannot read a page without remembering that there were living then in England at least a dozen men who could have done it better,--Grote, Thirlwall, Mitford, Arnold, Hallam, Milman, Lingard, Palgrave, Turner, Roscoe, Carlyle, Macaulay, to mention only the most prominent, and mention them at random, were all alive and of man's estate,--and probably scores who could have done it nearly or quite as well; while there was not one single man living, in England or in the world, who was capable of doing the work which Scott, if not as capable as ever, was still capable of doing like no one before and scarcely any one after him. Take, for instance, _Woodstock_ itself. In a very quaint, characteristic, agreeable, and, as criticism, worthless passage of _Wild Wales_, Borrow has stigmatised it as 'trash.' I only wish we had more such trash outside the forty-eight volumes of the _Waverley Novels_, or were likely to have more. The book, of course, has certain obvious critical faults--which are not in the least what made Borrow object to it. Although Scott, and apparently Ballantyne, liked the catastrophe, it has always seemed to me one of his worst examples of 'huddling up.' For it is historically and dramatically impossible that Cromwell should change his mind, or that Pearson and Robbins should wish to thwart severity which, considering the death of Humgudgeon, had a good deal more excuse than Oliver often thought necessary. Nor may the usual, and perhaps a little more than the usual, shortcomings in construction be denied. But as of old, and even more than on some occasions of old, the excellences of character, description, dialogue, and incident are so great as to atone over and over again for defects of the expected kind. If Everard has something of that unlucky quality which the author recognised in Malcolm Graeme when he said, 'I ducked him in the lake to give him something to do; but wet or dry I could make nothing of him,' Alice is quite of the better class of his heroines; and from her we ascend to personages in whose case there is very little need of apology and proviso. Sir Henry Lee, Wildrake, Cromwell himself, Charles, may not satisfy others, but I am quite content with them; and the famous scene where Wildrake is a witness to Oliver's half-confession seems to me one of its author's greatest serious efforts. Trusty Tomkins, perhaps, might have been a little better; he comes somewhat under the ban of some unfavourable remarks which Reginald Heber makes in his diary on this class of Scott's figures, though the good bishop seems to me to have been rather too severe. But the pictures of Woodstock Palace and Park have that indescribable and vivid charm which Scott, without using any of the 'realist' minuteness or 'impressionist' contortions of later days, has the faculty of communicating to such things. For myself, I can say--and I am sure I may speak for hundreds--that Tullyveolan, Ellangowan, the Bewcastle moor where Bertram rescued Dandie, Clerihugh's, Monkbarns (I do not see Knockwinnock so clearly), the home of the Osbaldistones, and the district from Aberfoyle to Loch Ard, the moors round Drumclog, Torquilstone, and, not to make the list tedious, a hundred other places, including Woodstock itself, are as real as if I had walked over every inch of the ground and sat in every room of the houses. In some cases I have never seen the supposed originals, in others, I have recognised them as respectable, though usually inferior, representatives of Scott's conceptions. But in any case _these_ are all real, all possessions, all part of the geographical and architectural furniture of the mind. They are like the wood in the 'Dream of Fair Women': one knows the flowers, one knows the leaves, one knows the battlements and the windows, the platters and the wine-cups, the cabinets and the arras. They are, like all the great places of literature, like Arden and Elsinore, like the court before Agamemnon's palace, and that where the damsel said to Sir Launcelot, 'Fair knight, thou art unhappy,' our own--our own to 'pass freely through until the end of time.' It must not be forgotten in this record of his work that Scott wrote 'Bonnie Dundee' in the very middle of his disaster, and that he had not emerged from the first shock of that disaster, when the astonishingly clever _Letters of Malachi Malagrowther_ appeared. Of the reasonableness of their main purpose--a strenuous opposition to the purpose of doing away, in Scotland as in England, with notes of a less denomination than five pounds--I cannot pretend to judge. It is possible that suppressed rage at his own misfortunes found vent, and, for him, very healthy vent, while it did harm to no one, in a somewhat too aggressive patriotism, of a kind more particularist than was usual with him. But the fire and force of the writing are so great, the alternations from seriousness to humour, from denunciation to ridicule, so excellently managed, that there are few better specimens of this particular kind of pamphlet. As for 'Bonnie Dundee,' there are hardly two opinions about that. As a whole, it may not be quite equal to 'Lochinvar,' to which it forms such an excellent pendant, and which it so nearly resembles in rhythm. But the best of it is equal as poetry, and perhaps superior as meaning. And it admirably completes in verse the tribute long before paid by _Old Mortality_ in prose, to the 'last and best of Scots,' as Dryden called him in the noble epitaph,[46] which not improbably inspired Scott himself to do what he could to remove the vulgar aspersions on the fame of the hero of Killiecrankie. Moreover, according to his wont, Scott had barely finished, indeed he had not finished, the _Napoleon_ before he had arranged for new work of two different kinds; and he was soon, without a break, actually engaged upon both tasks, one of them among the happiest things he ever undertook, and the other containing, at least, one piece of his most interesting work. These were the _Tales of a Grandfather_ and the _Chronicles of the Canongate_. Both supplied him with his tasks, his daily allowance of 'leaves,'[38] for great part of 1827, and both were finished and the _Chronicles_ actually published, before the end of it.[39] For the actual stories comprising these _Chronicles_ I have never cared much. The chief in point of size, the _Surgeon's Daughter_, deals with Indian scenes, of which Scott had no direct knowledge, and in connection with which there was no interesting literature to inspire him. It appears to me almost totally uninteresting, more so than _Castle Dangerous_ itself. _The Two Drovers_ and _The Highland Widow_ have more merit; but they are little more than anecdotes.[40] On the other hand, the 'Introduction' to these _Chronicles_, with the history of their supposed compiler, Mr. Chrystal Croftangry, is a thing which I should be disposed to put on a level with his very greatest work. Much is admittedly personal reminiscence of himself and his friends, handled not with the clumsy and tactless directness of reporting, which has ruined so many novels, but in the great transforming way of Fielding and Thackeray. Chrystal's early thoughtless life, the sketch of his ancestry (said to represent the Scotts of Raeburn), the agony of Mr. Somerville, suggested partly by the last illness of Scott's father, the sketches of Janet M'Evoy and Mrs. Bethune Baliol (Mrs. Murray Keith of Ravelston), the visit to the lost home,--all these things are treated not merely with consummate literary effect, but with a sort of _sourdine_ accompaniment of heart-throbs which only the dullest ear can miss. Nor, as we see from the _Diary_, were the author's recent misfortunes, and his sojourn in a moral counterpart of the Deserted Garden of his friend Campbell, the only disposing causes of this. He had in several ways revived the memory of his early love, Lady Forbes, long since dead. Her husband had been among the most active of his business friends in arranging the compromise with creditors, and was shortly (though Scott did not know it) to discharge privately the claim of the recalcitrant Jew bill-broker Abud, who threatened Sir Walter's personal liberty. Her mother, Lady Jane Stuart, had renewed acquaintance with him, and very soon after the actual publication sent him some MS. memorials of the days that were long enough ago--memorials causing one of those paroxysms of memory which are the best of all things for a fairly hale and happy man, but dangerous for one whom time and ill-luck have shaken.[41] He had, while the _Chronicles_ were actually a-writing, revisited St. Andrews, and, while his companions were climbing St. Rule's Tower, had sat on a tombstone and thought how he carved her name in Runic letters thirty-four years before. In short, all the elements, sentimental and circumstantial, of the moment of literary projection were present, and the Introduction was no vulgar piece of 'chemic gold.' The delightful and universally known _Tales of a Grandfather_ present no such contrasts of literary merit, and were connected with no such powerful but exhausting emotions of the mind. They originated in actual stories told to 'Hugh Littlejohn,' they were encouraged by the fact that there was no popular and readable compendium of Scottish history, they came as easily from his pen as the _Napoleon_ had run with difficulty, and are as far removed from hack-work as that vast and, to his creditors, profitable compilation must be pronounced to be on the whole near to it. The book, of course, is not in the modern sense strictly critical, though it must be remembered that the authorities for at least the earlier history of Scotland are so exceedingly few and meagre, that criticism of the saner kind has very little to fasten upon. But in this book eminently, in the somewhat later compilation for _Lardner's Cyclopædia_ to a rather less degree, this absence of technical criticism is more than made up by Scott's knowledge of humanity, by the divining power, so to say, which his combined affection for the subject and general literary skill gave him, and by that singularly shrewd and pervading common sense which in him was so miraculously united with the poetical and romantic gift. I was pleased, but not at all surprised, when, some year or so ago, I asked a professed historian, and one of the best living authorities on the particular subject, what he thought of the general historic effect of Scott's work, to find him answer without the slightest hesitation that it was about the soundest thing, putting mere details aside, that exists on the matter. It may be observed, in passing, that the later compilation referred to was a marked example of the way in which Scott could at this time 'coin money.' He was offered a thousand pounds for one of the Lardner volumes; and as his sketch swelled beyond the limit, he received fifteen hundred. The entire work, much of which was simple paraphrase of the _Tales_, occupied him, it would seem, about six working weeks, or not quite so much. Can it be wondered that both before and after the crash this power of coining money should have put him slightly out of focus with pecuniary matters generally? Mediæval and other theorisers on usury have been laughed at for their arguments as to the 'unnatural' nature of usurious gain, and its consequent evil. One need not be superstitious more than reason, to scent a certain unnaturalness in the gift of turning paper into gold in this other way also. Every _peau de chagrin_ has a faculty of revenging itself on the possessor. For the time, however, matters went with Scott as swimmingly as they could with a man who, by his own act, was, as he said, 'eating with spoons and reading books that were not his own,' and yet earning by means absolutely within his control, and at his pleasure to exercise or not, some twenty thousand a year. _The Fair Maid of Perth_, a title which has prevailed over what was its first, _St. Valentine's Eve_, and has entirely obscured the fact that it was issued as a second series of the _Chronicles of the Canongate_, provided money for a new scheme. This scheme, outlined by Constable himself, and now carried out by Cadell and accepted by Scott's trustees, was for buying in the outstanding copyrights belonging to the bankrupt firm, and issuing the entire series of novels, with new introductions and notes by Scott himself, with attractive illustrations and in a cheap and handy form. Scott himself usually designates the plan as the _Magnum Opus_, or more shortly (and perhaps not without remembrance of more convivial days) 'the _Magnum_'. _The Fair Maid_ itself was very well received, and seems to have kept its popularity as well as any of the later books. Indeed, the figures of the Smith, of Oliver Proudfute (the last of Scott's humorous-pathetic characters), of the luckless Rothsay, and of Ramornie (who very powerfully affected a generation steeped in Byronism), are all quite up to the author's 'best seconds.' The opening and the close are quite excellent, especially the fight on the North Inch and 'Another for Hector!' and the middle part is full of attractive bits of the old kind. But Conachar-Eachin is rather a thing of shreds and patches, and the entire episode of Father Clement and the heresy business is dragged in with singularly little initial excuse, valid connection, or final result. We have unluckily no diary for the last half of 1828, after Scott returned from a long stay with the Lockharts in London, and we thus hear little of the beginnings of the next novel, _Anne of Geierstein_. When the _Journal_ begins again, complaints are heard from Ballantyne. Alterations (which Scott always loathed, and which certainly are detestable things) became or were thought necessary, and when the poor _Maid of the Mist_ at length appeared in May 1829, she was dismissed by her begetter very unkindly, as 'not a good girl like the other Annes'--his daughter and her cousin, _fille de Thomas_, who were living with him. The book was not at all ill received, but Lockhart is apologetic about it, and it has been the habit of criticism since to share the opinions of 'Aldiborontiphoscophormio.'[45] I cannot agree with this, and should put _Anne of Geierstein_--as a mere romance and not counting the personal touches which exalt _Redgauntlet_ and the Introduction to the _Chronicles_--on a level with anything, and above most things, later than _The Pirate_. Its chief real fault is not so much bad construction--it is actually more, not less, well knit than _The Fair Maid of Perth_,--as the too great predominance of merely episodic and unnecessary things and persons, like the _Vehmgericht_ and King's René's court. Its merits are manifold. The opening storm and Arthur's rescue by Anne, as well as the quarrel with Rudolf, are excellent; the journey (though too much delayed by the said Rudolf's tattlings), with the sojourn at Grafslust and the adventures at La Ferette, ranks with Scott's many admirable journeys, and high among them; Queen Margaret is nobly presented (I wish Shakespeare, Lancastrian that he was, had had the chance of versifying the scene where she flings the feather and the rose to the winds, as a pendant to 'I called thee then vain shadow of my fortune'); and not only Philipson's rattling peal of thunder to wake Charles the Bold from his stupor, but the Duke's final scenes, come well up to the occasion. Earlier, Scott would not have made René quite such a mere old fool, and could have taken the slight touch of pasteboard and sawdust out of the Black Priest of St. Paul's. But these are small matters, and the whole merits of the book are not small. Even Arthur and Anne are above, not below, the usual hero and heroine. The gap in the _Journal_ for the last half of 1828 is matched by another and more serious one for nearly a twelvemonth, from July 1829 to May 1830, a period during which Sir Walter's health went from bad to worse, and in which he lost his Abbotsford factotum, Tom Purdie. But the first six months of 1829, and perhaps a little more, are among its pleasantest parts. The shock of the failure and of his wife's death were, as far as might be, over; he had resumed the habit of seeing a fair amount of society; his work, though still busily pursued, was less killing than during the composition of the _Napoleon_; and his affairs were looking almost rosily. A first distribution, of thirty-two thousand pounds at once, had been made among the creditors. Cadell's scheme of the _Magnum_--wisely acquiesced in by the trustees, and facilitated by a bold purchase at auction of Constable's copyrights for some eight thousand pounds, and later, of those of the poems from Longmans for about the same or a little less--was turning out a great success. They had counted on a sale of eight thousand copies; they had to begin with twelve thousand, and increase it to twenty, while the number ultimately averaged thirty-five thousand. The work of annotation and introduction was not hard, and was decidedly interesting. Unluckily, irreparable mischief had already been done, and when the _Diary_ begins again, we soon see signs of it. The actual beginning of the end had occurred before the resumption, on February 15, 1830, when Sir Walter had, in the presence of his daughter and of Miss Violet Lockhart, experienced an attack of an apoplectic-paralytic character, from which he only recovered by much blood-letting and starvation. There can be little doubt that this helped to determine him to do what he had for some time meditated, and resign his place at the Clerk's table: nor perhaps could he have well done otherwise. But the results were partly unfortunate. The work had been very trifling, and had saved him from continual drudgery indoors at home, while it incidentally provided him with society and change of scene. He was now to live at Abbotsford,--for neither his means nor his health invited an Edinburgh residence when it was not necessary,--with surroundings only too likely to encourage 'thick-coming fancies,' out of reach of immediate skilled medical attendance, and with very dangerous temptations to carry on the use of his brain, which was now becoming almost deadly. Yet he would never give in. The pleasant and not exhausting task of arranging the _Magnum_ (which was now bringing in from eight to ten thousand a year for the discharge of his debts) was supplemented by other things, especially _Count Robert of Paris_, and a book on Demonology for Murray's _Family Library_. This last occupied him about the time of his seizure, and after the _Diary_ was resumed, it was published in the summer of 1830. Scott was himself by this time conscious of a sort of aphasia of the pen (the direct result of the now declared affection of his brain), which prevented him from saying exactly what he wished in a connected manner; and the results of this are in part evident in the book. But it must always remain a blot, quite unforgivable and nearly inexplicable, on the memory of Wilson, that 'Christopher North' permitted himself to comment on some lapses in logic and style in a way which would have been rather that side of good manners and reasonable criticism in the case of a mere beginner in letters. It is true that he and Scott were at no time very intimate friends, and that there were even some vague antipathies between them. But Wilson had been deeply obliged to Scott in the matter of his professorship;[44] he at least ought to have been nearly as well aware as we are of the condition of his benefactor's health; and even if he had known nothing of this, the rest of Sir Walter's circumstances were known to all the world, and should surely have secured silence. But it seems that Wilson was for the moment in a pet with Lockhart, to whom the _Letters on Demonology_ were addressed, and so he showed, as he seldom, but sometimes did, the 'black drop,' which in his case, though not in Lockhart's, marred at times a generally healthy and noble nature. As a matter of fact, it needs either distinct malevolence or silly hypercriticism to find any serious fault with the _Demonology_. If not a masterpiece of scientific treatment in reference to a subject which hardly admits of any such thing, it is an exceedingly pleasant and amusing and a by no means uninstructive medley of learning, traditional anecdote, reminiscence, and what not, on a matter which, as we know, had interested the writer from very early days, and which he regarded from his usual and invaluable combined standpoint of shrewd sense and poetical appreciation. The decay, now not to be arrested, though its progress was comparatively slow, was more evident in the last two works of fiction which Scott completed, _Count Robert of Paris_ and _Castle Dangerous_. Against the first ending of the former (we do not possess it, so we cannot criticise their criticism) Ballantyne and Cadell formally protested, and Scott rewrote a great deal of it by dictation to Laidlaw. The loss of command both of character and of story-interest is indeed very noticeable. But the opening incident at the Golden Gate, the interview of the Varangian with the Imperial family, the intrusion of Count Robert, and, above all, his battle with the tiger and liberation from the dungeon of the Blachernal, with some other things, show that astonishing power of handling single incidents which was Scott's inseparable gift, and which seems to have accompanied him throughout to the very eve of his death. The much briefer _Castle Dangerous_ (which is connected with an affecting visit of Scott and Lockhart to the tombs of the Douglases) is too slight to give room for very much shortcoming. Its chief artistic fault is the happy ending--for though a romancer is in no respect bound to follow his text exactly, and happy endings are quite good things, yet it is rather too much to turn upside down the historic catastrophe of the Good Lord James's fashion of warfare. Otherwise the book is more noticeable for a deficiency of spirit, life, and light--for the evidence of shadow and stagnation falling over the once restless and brilliant scene--than for anything positively bad. These two books were mainly dictated, the paralytic affection having injured the author's power of handwriting,[43] to William Laidlaw between the summer of 1830 and the early autumn of 1831, increasing weakness, and the demands of the _Magnum_, preventing more speed. The last pages of _Castle Dangerous_ contain Scott's farewell, and the announcement to the public of that voyage to Italy which had actually begun when the novels appeared in the month of November. The period between the fatal seizure and the voyage to the Mediterranean has not much diary concerning it, but has been related with inimitable judgment and sympathy by Lockhart. It was, even putting failing health and obscured mental powers aside, not free from 'browner shades'; for the Reform agitation naturally grieved Sir Walter deeply, while on two occasions he was the object of popular insult and on one of popular violence. Both were at Jedburgh; but the blame is put upon intrusive weavers from Hawick. The first, a meeting of Roxburghshire freeholders, saw nothing worse than unmannerly interruption of a speech made partially unintelligible by the speaker's failing articulation. He felt it bitterly, and when hissing was repeated as he bowed farewell, is said to have replied, low, but now quite distinctly, '_Moriturus vos saluto!_' On the second, the election after the throwing out of the first Bill, he was stoned, spat upon, and greeted with cries of 'Burke Sir Walter.'[42] Natural indignation has often been expressed at this behaviour towards the best neighbour and the greatest man in Scotland--behaviour which, as we know, haunted him on his deathbed; but it is to be presumed that the persons who thus proclaimed their cause knew the line of conduct most worthy of it. It does not appear with absolute certainty who first suggested the Italian journey. It could not have been expected to produce any radical cure; but it seems to have been hoped that change of scene would prevent the patient from indulging in that attempt to write from which at Abbotsford it was impossible to keep him, though it was simply slow, and not so very slow, suicide. The wishes of his family were most kindly and generously met by the Government of the day, among whose members he had many personal friends, though political opponents; and the frigate _Barham_, a cut-down seventy-four, which had the credit of being one of the smartest vessels in the navy, was assigned to take him to Malta. He had, before he left Abbotsford itself, an affecting interview with Wordsworth, which occasioned _Yarrow Revisited_ and the beautiful sonnet, 'A trouble, not of clouds or weeping rain,' and had no doubt part in the initiation of the last really great thing that Wordsworth ever wrote--the _Effusion_ on the deaths of Hogg, Coleridge, Crabbe, Lamb, and Scott himself, in 1835. Some stay was made with the Lockharts in London, and a little at Portsmouth, waiting for a wind; but the final departure took place on October 29, 1831. Scott was abroad for the best part of a year, the time being chiefly made out in visits of some length to Malta, Naples, and Rome. We have a good deal of diary for this period, and it, even more than the subsidiary documents and Lockhart's summary of no doubt much that is unpublished, betrays the state of the case. Every now and then--indeed, for long passages--there is nothing very different from the matter to which, since the first warning in 1818, we have been accustomed. Scott is, if not the infinitely various but never mutable Scott of the earlier years, still constant in fun and kindness, in quaint erudition and hearty friendship, though he is all this in a slightly deadened and sicklied degree. But there are strange breaks-down and unfamiliar touches, now of almost querulous self-concern (the thing most foreign to his earlier nature), as where he complains that his companions, his son and daughter, 'are neither desirous to follow his amusements nor anxious that he should adopt theirs'; now of still more foreign callousness, as where he dismisses the news of the death of Hugh Littlejohn, whose illnesses earlier had been almost his chief anxiety, and records in the same entry that he 'went to the opera.' The passage in the Introduction to the _Chronicles_, written not so very long before, traces with an almost horrible exactness the changes which were now taking place in himself. Moreover, he would resume the pen; and, first in Malta, then at Naples, began and went far to complete two new novels, _The Siege of Malta_ and _Il Bizarro_, which, I suppose, are still at Abbotsford, with Lockhart's solemn curse on the person who shall publish them. He had now (it does not seem clear on what grounds, or by what stages) confirmed himself in the belief that he had paid off all his debts, instead of nearly half of them.[37] And he founded divers schemes on the profits of these works, added to the (as he thought) liberated returns of the _Magnum_; and even revived his notions of buying Faldonside with its thousand acres, and 'holding all Tweed-bank, from Ettrick-foot to Calla weel.' Fêted, too, as he was, and in this condition of mind, it seems to have been difficult for his companions to make him observe the absolute temperance in food and drink which was as necessary to the staving off of the end as abstinence from brain-work; and it must be regarded as a signal proof of the extraordinary strength of his constitution that it resisted as long as it did. At last, and of course suddenly, came the final warning of all: the occurrence, without notice, of an almost agonising home-sickness. The party travelled by land, as speedily as they could, to the Channel, a last attack of apoplectic paralysis taking place at Nimeguen; and after crossing it and reaching London, Sir Walter was taken by sea to the Forth, and thence home. The actual end was delayed but very little longer, and it has been told by Lockhart in one of those capital passages of English literature on which it is folly to attempt to improve or even to comment, and which, a hundred times quoted, can never be stale. Sir Walter Scott died at Abbotsford on September 21, 1832, and was buried four days later at Dryburgh, a post-mortem examination having disclosed considerable softening of the brain. There remained unpaid at his death about fifty-five thousand pounds of the Ballantyne debts, besides private encumbrances on Abbotsford, etc., including the ten thousand which Constable had extracted, he knowing, from Scott unknowing, the extent of the ruin, in the hours just before it. The falling in of assurances cleared off two-fifths of this balance, and Cadell discharged the rest on the security of the _Magnum_, which was equal, though not much more than equal, to the burden in the longrun. Thus, if Scott's exertions during the last seven years of his life had benefited his own pocket, his ambition--whether wise or foolish, persons more confident in their judgment of human wishes than the present writer must decide--would have been amply fulfilled, and his son, supposing the money to have been invested with ordinary care and luck, would have been left a baronet and squire, with at least six or seven thousand a year. As it was, he did not succeed to much more than the title, a costly house, and a not very profitable estate, burdened, though not heavily, with mortgages. This burden was reduced by the good sense of the managers of the English memorial subscription to Scott, who devoted the six or seven thousand pounds, remaining after some embezzlement, to clearing off the encumbrances as far as possible. The chief result of many Scottish tributes of the same kind was the well-known Scott Monument on the edge of Princes Street Gardens, which has the great good luck to be one of the very few not unsatisfactory things of the kind in the British Islands. By mishap rather than neglect, no monument in Westminster Abbey was erected for the greater part of the century; but one has been at last set up in May of the present year. FOOTNOTES: [37] This is a translation, of course; but if anyone will compare Pitcairn's Latin and Dryden's English, he will see where the poetry comes in. [38] He wrote on sheets of a large quarto size, in a very small and close hand, so that his usual 'task' of six 'leaves' meant about thirty pages of print, though not very small or close print. [39] It was early in this year, on February 23, at a Theatrical Fund dinner, that he made public avowal of the authorship of _Waverley_. [40] Cadell did not like any of them much, and objected still more to others intended to follow them. Sir Walter, therefore, kept these back, and gave them later to Heath's _Keepsake_. They now appear with their intended companions: the slightest, _The Tapestried Chamber_, is perhaps the best. [41] Compare _Diary_, 1827, Nov. 7 ('I fairly softened myself like an old fool with recalling old stories, till I was fit for nothing but shedding tears and repeating verses the whole night'), with the famous couplet in 'Rose Aylmer'-- 'A night of memories and of sighs I consecrate to thee.' [42] Scott's name for _James_ Ballantyne, as 'Rigdumfunnidos' was for John. [43] See his own unqualified and almost too gushing acknowledgment of this ten years before, in the _Familiar Letters_, ii. 84-85, _note_. [44] It had also caused great and very painful trouble in his lame leg, which from this time onwards had to be mechanically treated. [45] The Burke and Hare murders were recent. [46] The success of the _Magnum_ had allowed a second large dividend to be paid, and the creditors had been generous enough to restore Scott's forks, spoons, and books to him. CHAPTER VII CONCLUSION It is natural--indeed the feeling is not merely easy of excuse, but entitled to respect--that 'the pity of it,' the sombre close of so brilliant a career as Scott's, should attract somewhat disproportionate attention. Thus readers of his life are drawn more especially either to sorrow for his calamities, or to admiration of this stoutest of all hearts set to nearly the stiffest of all hills, or to casuistical debate on the 'dram of eale' that brought about his own share in causing his misfortunes. Undoubtedly, none of these things ought to escape our attention. But, in the strict court of literary and critical audit, they must not have more than their share. As a matter of fact, Scott's work was almost finished--nothing distinctly novel in kind and first-rate in quality, except the _Tales of a Grandfather_ and the Introduction to the _Chronicles_, remained to be added to it--when that fatal bill of Constable's was suffered by Hurst & Robinson to be returned. And the trials which followed, though they showed the strength, the nobleness, the rare balance and solidity of his character, did not create these virtues, which had been formed and established by habit long before. _Respice finem_ is not here a wise, at least a sufficient, maxim: we must look along the whole line to discern satisfactorily and thoroughly what manner of man this was in life and in letters. What manner of man he was physically is pretty well-known from his originally numerous and almost innumerably reproduced and varied portraits; not extremely tall, but of a goodly height, somewhat shortened by his lameness and massive make, the head being distinguished by a peculiar domed, or coned, cranium. This made 'Lord Peter' Robertson give him the nickname of 'Peveril of the Peak,' which he himself after a little adopted, and which, shortened to 'Peveril,' was commonly used by his family. His expression, according to the intelligence of those who saw him and the mood in which he found himself, has been variously described as 'heavy,' 'homely,' and in more complimentary terms. But the more appreciative describers recognise the curiously combined humour, shrewdness, and kindliness which animated features naturally irregular and quite devoid of what his own generation would have called 'chiselled elegance.' He himself asserts--and it seems to be the fact--that from the time of the disappearance of his childish maladies to the attack of cramp, or gallstones, or whatever the evil was which came on in 1818, and from which he never really recovered, his health was singularly robust; and he appears as quite a young man to have put it to considerable, though not excessive, tests. His conversation, like his countenance, has been variously characterised, and it is probable that the complexion of both depended, even more than it does with most men, on his company. He is acknowledged never to have 'talked for victory,' an evil and barbarous practice, which the Edinburgh wits seem to have caught from their great enemy and guest, Dr. Johnson; to have (like all good men) simply abominated talking about his own works, or indeed bookishly at all, full as his conversation was of literature; and, though a great tale-teller, to have been no monopoliser of the conversation in any way. He admits having been in youth and early middle age not disinclined to solitude,--and he does not appear to have at any time liked miscellaneous society much, though he prided himself, and very justly, on having, from all but his earliest youth, frequented many kinds of it, including the best. The perfect ease of his correspondence with all sorts and conditions of men and women may have owed something to this; but, no doubt, it owed as much to the happy peculiarities and composition of his nature and temperament. The only fault or faults of which he has been accused with any plausibility are those which attend or proceed from a somewhat too high estimate of rank and of riches;--that is to say, a too great eagerness to obtain these things, and at the same time a too great deference for those who possessed them. From avarice, in any of the ordinary senses of the word, he was, indeed, entirely free. His generosity, if not absolutely and foolishly indiscriminate, was extraordinary, and as unostentatious as it was lavish. He certainly had no delight in hoarding money, and his personal tastes, except in so far as books, 'curios,' and so forth were concerned, were of the simplest possible. Yet, as we have seen, he was never quite content with an income which, after very early years, was always competent, and when he launched into commercial ventures, already, in prospect at least, considerable; while in the one article of spending money on house and lands he was admittedly excessive. So, too, he seems to have been really indifferent about his title, except as an adjunct to these possessions, and as something transmissible to, and serving to distinguish, the family he longed to found. Yet no instance of the slightest servility on his part to rank--much less to riches--has been produced. His address, no doubt, both in writing and conversation, was more ceremonious than would now be customary. But it must be remembered that this was then a point of good manners, and that 'your Lordship' and 'my noble friend,' even between persons intimate with each other and on the common footing of gentlemen, were then phrases as proper and usual in private as they still are in public life.[51] Attempts have been made to excuse his attitude, on the plea that it was inherited from his father (_vide_ the scene between Saunders Fairford and Herries), that it was national, that it was this, that, and the other. For my own part, I have never read or heard of any instance of it which seemed to me to exceed the due application to etiquette of the rule of distributive justice, to give every man his own. Scott, I think, would have accepted the principle, though not the application, of the sentence of Timoléon de Cossé, Duke of Brissac--'God has made thee a gentleman, and the king has made thee a duke.' And he honoured God and the king by behaving accordingly. Of his infinite merits as a host and a guest, as a friend and as a relation, there is a superabundance of evidence. It does not appear that he ever lost an old friend; and though, like most men who have more talent for friendship than for acquaintance, he did not latterly make many new ones, the relations existing between himself and Lockhart are sufficient proof of his faculty of playing the most difficult of all parts, that of elder friend to younger. I have said above that, though in no sense touchy, he was a very dangerous person to take a liberty with; he adopted to the full the morality of his time about duelling, though he disapproved of it;[49] he was in all respects a man of the world, yet without guile. It is, moreover, quite certain that Scott, though never talking much about religion (as, indeed, he never talked much about any of the deeper feelings of the heart), was a man very sincerely religious. He was not a metaphysician in any way, and therefore had no special inclination towards that face or summit of metaphysics which is called theology. And it is pretty clear that he had towards disputed points of doctrine, ceremony, and discipline, a not sharply or decidedly formulated attitude. But there is no doubt whatever that he was a thoroughly and sincerely orthodox Christian, and there are some slight escapes of confession unawares in his private writings, which show in what thorough conformity with his death his life had been. Few men have ever so well observed the one-half of the apostle's doctrine as to pure religion; and if he did not keep himself (in the matter of the secret partnership and others) altogether unspotted from the world, the sufferings of his last seven years may surely be taken as a more than sufficient purification. More blameless morally, I think, few men have been; fewer still better equipped with the positive virtues. And, above all, we must recognise in Scott (if we have any power of such recognition) what has been already called a certain nobleness, a certain natural inclination towards all things high, and great, and pure, and of good report, which is rarer still than negative blamelessness or even than positive virtue. To speak of Scott's politics is a little difficult and perhaps a little dangerous; yet they played so large a part in his life and work that the subject can hardly be omitted, especially as it comes just between those aspects of him which we have already discussed, and those to which we are coming. It has sometimes been disputed whether his Toryism was much more than mere sentiment; and of course there were not wanting in his own day fellows of the baser sort who endeavoured to represent it as mere self-interest. But no impartial person nowadays, I suppose, doubts, however meanly he may think of Scott's political creed, that that creed was part, not of his interests, not even of his mere crotchets and crazes, literary and other, but of his inmost heart and soul. That reverence for the past, that distaste for the vulgar, that sense of continuity, of mystery, of something beyond interest and calculation, which the worst foes of Toryism would, I suppose, allow to be its nobler parts, were the blood of Scott's veins, the breath of his nostrils, the marrow of his bones. My friend Mr. Lang thinks that Scott's Toryism is dead, that no successor has arisen on its ruins, that it was, in fact, almost a private structure, of which he was the architect, a tree fated to fall with its planter. Perhaps; but perhaps also 'The Little Tower with no such ease Is won'; and there are enough still to keep watch and ward of it. But we have of course here to look even more to his mental character than to his moral, to do with him rather as a man of genius than as a 'man of good,' though it is impossible to overlook, and difficult to overestimate, his singular eminence as both combined. Of his actual literary accomplishment, something like a detailed view has been given in this little book, and of some of its separate departments estimates have been attempted.[48] But we may, or rather must, gather all these up here. Nor can we proceed better than by the old way of inquiry--first, What were the peculiar characteristics of his thought? and, secondly, What distinguished his expression of this thought? As to the first point, it has been pretty generally admitted--though the admissions have in some cases been carried almost too far--that we are not to look for certain things in Scott. We are not to look for any elaborately or at least scholastically minute faculty or practice of analysis or of argument. But to proceed from this to a general denial of 'philosophy' to him--that is to say, to allow him a merely superficial knowledge of human nature--is an utter mistake. I have quoted elsewhere, but the book from which the quotation is made is so rare that I may well quote here again, some remarkable words on this subject from M. Milsand, Mr. Browning's friend, and the recipient of the Dedication of the reprint of _Sordello_.[50] It is certain that this praise might be supported with a large anthology of passages in the novels and even the poems--passages indicating an anthropological science as intimate as it is unpretentiously expressed. To some good folk in our days, who think that nothing can be profound which is naturally and simply spoken, and who demand that a human philosopher shall speak gibberish and wear his boots on his brows, the fact may be strange, but it is a fact. And it may be added that even if chapter and verse could not thus be produced, a sufficient proof, the most sufficient possible, could be otherwise provided. Scott, by the confession of all competent judges, save a very few, has created almost more men and women, undoubtedly real and lifelike, than any other prose novelist. Now you cannot create a man or a woman without knowing whereof a man and a woman are made, though the converse proposition is unfortunately by no means so universally predicable. He was content, as a rule, to put this great science of his into practice rather than to expound it in theory, to demonstrate it rather than to lecture on it, but that is all. In the second place, we are not to look to him for any great intensity of delineation of passion, especially in the sense to which that word is more commonly confined. He has nowhere left us (as some other men of letters have) any hint that he abstained from doing this because the passion would have been so tremendous that it was on the whole best for mankind that they should not be exposed to it. The qualities of humour and of taste which were always present with Scott would have prevented this. But I should doubt whether he felt any temptation to unbosom himself, or any need to do so. The slight hints given at the time of the combined action of his misfortunes and the agitation arising from his renewed communications with Lady Jane Stuart, are almost all the indications that we have on the subject, and they are too slight to found any theory upon. It is evident that this was not his vein, or that, if the vein was there, he did not choose to work it. To pass from negations to positives, the region in which Scott's power of conception and expression did lie, and which he ruled with wondrous range and rarely equalled power, was a strangely united kingdom of common-sense fact and fanciful or traditional romance. No writer who has had such a sense of the past, of tradition, of romantic literature, has had such a grasp of the actual working motives and conduct of mankind; none who has had the latter has even come near to his command of the former. We may take Spenser and Fielding as the princes of these separate principalities in English literature, and though each had gifts that Scott had not,--though Scott had gifts possessed by neither,--yet if we could conceive Spenser and Fielding blended, the blend would, I think, come nearer to Scott's idiosyncrasy than anything else that can be imagined. He had advanced (or rather returned) from that one-sided eighteenth-century conception of nature which was content to know _human_ nature pretty thoroughly up to a certain point, and to dismiss 'prospects,' in Johnson's scornful language to Thrale, as one just like the other. But he had retained the eighteenth-century grasp of man himself, while recovering the path to the Idle Lake and the Cave of Despair, to the many-treed wood through which Una and her knight journeyed, and the Rich Strand where all the treasures of antiquity lay. We may think--apparently some of us do think--that we have improved on him in the recovery, and even in the retaining grasp. The fact of the improvement on him will take a great deal of proving, I am inclined to think; of the fact of his achievement there is no doubt. If I must select Scott's special literary characteristic, next to that really magical faculty of placing scenes and peopling them with characters in the memory of his readers which I have noticed before, I should certainly fix on his humour. It is a good old scholastic doctrine, that the greatest merit of anything is to be excellent in the special excellence of its kind. And in that quality which so gloriously differentiates English literature from all others, Scott is never wanting, and is almost always pre-eminent. If his patriotism, intense as it is, is never grotesque or offensive, as patriotism too often is to readers who do not share it; if his pathos never touches the maudlin; if his romantic sentiment is always saved by the sense of solid fact,--and we may assert these things without hesitation or qualification,--it is due to his humour. For this humour, never merely local, never bases its appeal on small private sympathies and understandings and pass-words which leave the world at large cold, or mystified, or even disgusted. Nor is it perhaps uncritical to set down that pre-eminently happy use, without abuse, of dialect, which has attracted the admiration of almost all good judges, to this same humour, warning him alike against the undisciplined profusion and the injudicious selection which have not been and are not unknown in some followers of his. And, further, his universal quality is free from some accompanying drawbacks which must be acknowledged in the humour of some of the other very great humorists. It is not coarse--a defect which has made prigs at all times, and especially at this time, affect horror at Aristophanes; it is not grim, like that of Swift; it is free from any very strong evidences of its owner having lived at a particular date, such as may be detected by the Devil's Advocate even in Fielding, even in Thackeray. No tricks or grimaces, no mere elaboration, no lingering to bespeak applause; but a moment of life and nature subjected to the humour-stamp and left recorded and transformed for ever--there is Scott. That the necessary counterpart and companion of this breadth of humour should be depth of feeling can be no surprise to those who accept the only sound distinction between humour and wit. Scott himself never wore his heart on his sleeve; but to those who looked a little farther than the sleeve its beatings were sufficiently evident. The Scott who made that memorable exclamation on the Mound, and ejaculated 'No, by----!' at the discovery of the Regalia,[47] who wrote Jeanie's speech to Queen Caroline and Habakkuk Mucklewrath's to Claverhouse, had no need ever to affect emotion, because it was always present, though repressed when it had no business to exhibit itself. And his romantic imagination was as sincere as his pathos or his indignation. He never lost the clue to 'the shores of old romance'; and, at least, great part of the secret which made him such a magician to his readers was that the spell was on himself--that the regions of fancy were as open, as familiar as Princes Street or the Parliament Square to this solid practical Clerk of Session, who avowed that no food could to his taste equal Scotch broth, and in everything but the one fatal delusion was as sound a man of business as ever partook of that nourishing concoction. In his execution both in prose and verse, but especially, or at least more obviously, in the latter there are certain peculiarities, in the nature (at least partly) of defect, which strike every critical eye at once. At no time, and in no case, was Scott of the order of the careful, anxious miniaturists of work, who repaint every stroke a hundred times, adjust every detail of composition over and over again, and can never have done with rehandling and perfecting. Nor did he belong to that very rare class whose work seems to be, at any rate after a slight apprenticeship, faultless from the first, to whom inelegancies of style, incorrect rhymes, licences of metre--not deliberate and intended to produce the effect they achieve, but the effect of carelessness or of momentary inability to do what is wanted--are by nature or education impossible. His nature did not give him this endowment, and his education was of the very last sort to procure it for him. He himself, not out of pique or conceit, things utterly alien from his nature, still less out of laziness, but, I believe, as a genuine, and, what is more, a correct self-criticism, has left in his private writings repeated expressions of his belief that revision and correction in his case not only did not improve the work, but were in most cases likely to do it positive harm, that the spoon was made or the horn spoiled (to adapt his country proverb) at the first draft, and once for all. I think that this was a correct judgment, and I do not see that it implies any inferiority on his part. It is not as if he ever aimed at the methods of the precisians and failed, as if it was his desire to be a 'correct' writer, a careful observer of proportion and construction, a producer of artful felicities in metre, rhythm, rhyme, phrase. We may yield to no one in the delight of tracing the exact correspondence of strophe and antistrophe in a Greek chorus, the subtle vowel-music of a Latin hymn or a passage of Rossetti's. But I cannot see why, because we rejoice in these things, we should demand them of all poetry, or why, because we rejoice in the faultless construction of Fielding or the exquisite finish of Jane Austen as novelists, we should despise the looser handling and more sweeping touch of Scott in prose fiction. It is extremely probable that, as Mr. Balfour suggested the other day in unveiling the Westminster Abbey monument, this breadth of touch obtained him his popularity abroad, nor need it impair his fame at home. Unquestionably, though he had many minor gifts and graces, including that of incomparable lyric snatch, from the drums and fifes of 'Lochinvar' and 'Bonnie Dundee' to the elfin music of 'Proud Maisie,' his faculty of weaving a story in prose or in verse, with varied decorations of dialogue and description and character, rather than on a cunning canvas of plot, was Scott's main forte. If it is in verse--and admirable as it is here, I think we must allow it to be--less pre-eminent than in prose, it is, first, because minor formal defects are more felt in verse than in prose; secondly, because the scope of the medium is less; and thirdly, because the medium itself was in reality not what he wanted. The verse romance of Scott is a great achievement and a delightful possession: it has had extraordinary influence on English literature, from the work of Byron, which it directly produced, and which pretty certainly would never have been produced without it, to that of Mr. William Morris, which may not impossibly have been its last echo--transformed and refreshed, but still an echo--for some time to come. But there was a little of the falsetto in it, and the interludes, of which the introductions to _Marmion_ and to the _Bridal_ are the most considerable, show that it gave no outlets, or outlets only awkward, for much of what he wanted to say. He defines his own general literary object admirably in a letter to Morritt. 'I have tried to induce the public to relax some of the rules of criticism, and to be amused with that medley of tragic and comic with which life presents us, not only in the same course of action, but in the same character.' The detailed remarks which have been given in earlier chapters make it unnecessary to bring out the application of this to all his work, both verse and prose. And it need but be pointed out in passing how much more satisfactorily the form of prose fiction lent itself, than the form of verse romance, to the expression of a creed which, as it had been that of Shakespeare, so it was the creed of Scott. But a few words must be added in reference to the complaint which is often openly made, and which, I understand, is still more often secretly entertained, or taken for proved, by the younger generation--to wit, the complaint that Scott is 'commonplace' and 'conventional,' not merely in thought, but in expression. As to the thought, that is best met by the reply churlish, if not even by the reproof valiant. Scott's thought is never commonplace, and never merely conventional: it can only seem so to those who have given their own judgments in bondage to a conventional and temporary cant of unconventionality. In respect of expression, the complaint will admit of some argument which may best take the form of example. It is perfectly true that Scott's expression is not 'quintessenced'--that it has to a hasty eye an air of lacking what is called distinction; and, especially, that it has no very definite savour of any particular time. At present, as at other periods during the recorded story of literature, there is a marked preference for all these things which it is not; and so Scott is, with certain persons, in disfavour accordingly. But it so happens that the study of this now long record of literature is itself sufficient to convince anyone how treacherous the tests thus suggested are. There never, for instance, was an English writer fuller of all the marks which these, our younger critics, desiderate in Scott, and admire in some authors of our own day, than John Lyly, the author of _Euphues_, of a large handful of very charming and interesting court dramas, and of some delightful lyrics. Those who have to teach literature impress the importance, and try to impress the interest, of Lyly on students and readers, and they do right. For he was a man not merely of talent, but (with respect to my friend Mr. Courthope, who thinks differently), I think, of genius. He had a poetical fancy, a keen and biting wit, a fairly exact proficiency in the scholarship of his time. He eschewed the obvious, the commonplace in thought, and still more in style, as passionately as any man ever has eschewed it, and, having not merely will and delicacy, but power, he not only achieved an immense temporary popularity, but even influenced the English language permanently. Yet--and those who thus praise him know it--he, the apostle of ornate prose, the model of a whole generation of the greatest wits that England has seen, the master of Shakespeare in more things than one, including romantic comedy, the originator of the English analytic novel, the 'raiser' (as I think they call it) 'of his native language to a higher power,' is dead. We shall never get anybody outside the necessarily small number of those who have cultivated the historic as well as the æsthetic sense in literature, to read him except as a curiosity or a task, because he not merely cultivated art, but neglected nature for it; because he fooled the time to the top of its bent, and let the time fool him in return; because, instead of making the common as though it were not common, he aimed and strained at the uncommon _in_ and _per se_. Scott did just the contrary. He never tried to be unlike somebody else; if he hit, as he did hit, upon great new styles of literature,--absolutely new in the case of the historical novel, revived after long trance in the case of the verse tale,--it was from no desire to innovate, but because his genius called him. Though in ordinary ways he was very much a man of his time, he did not contort himself in any fashion by way of expressing a (then) modern spirit, a Georgian idiosyncrasy, or anything of that sort; he was content with the language of the best writers and the thoughts of the best men. He was no amateur of the topsy-turvy, and had not the very slightest desire to show how a literary head could grow beneath the shoulders. He was satisfied that his genius should flow naturally. And the consequence is that it was never checked, that it flows still for us with all its spontaneous charm, and that it will flow _in omne volubilis ævum_. Among many instances of the strength which accompanied this absence of strain one already alluded to may be mentioned again. Scott is one of the most literary of all writers. He was saturated with reading; nothing could happen but it brought some felicitous quotation, some quaint parallel to his mind from the great wits, or the small, of old. Yet no writer is less _bookish_ than he; none insults his readers less with any parade, with any apparent consciousness of erudition; and he wears his learning so lightly that pedants have even accused him of lacking it because he lacks pedantry. His stream, to resume the simile, carries in solution more reading as well as more wit, more knowledge of life and nature, more gifts of almost all kinds than would suffice for twenty men of letters, yet the very power of its solvent force, as well as the vigour of its current, makes these things comparatively invisible. In dealing with an author so voluminous and so various in his kinds and subjects of composition, it is a hard matter to say what has to be said within prescribed limits such as these, just as it is still harder to select from so copious a store of biographical information details which may be sufficient, and not more than sufficient, to give a firm and distinct picture of his life. Yet it may perhaps be questioned whether very elaborate handling is necessary for Scott. No man probably, certainly no man of letters, is more of a piece than he. As he has been subjected to an almost unparalleled trial in the revelation of his private thoughts, so his literary powers and performances extend over a range which is unusual, if not absolutely singular, in men of letters of the first rank. Yet he is the same throughout, in romance as in review, in novel as in note-writing. Except his dramatic work, a department for which he seems to have been almost totally unfitted (despite the felicity of his 'Old Play' fragments), nothing of his can be neglected by those who wish to enjoy him to the full. Yet though there is no monotony, there is a uniformity which is all the more delightfully brought out by the minor variations of subject and kind. The last as the first word about Scott should perhaps be, 'Read him. And, as far as may be, read all of him.' When, in comparatively early days of his acquaintance with Lockhart, Scott, thinking himself near death in the paroxysms of his cramps, bequeathed to his future son-in-law, in the words of the ballad, 'the vanguard of the three,' the duty of burying him and continuing his work, if possible, he had himself limited the heritage to the defence of ancient faith and loyalty--a great one enough. But his is, in fact, a greater. From generation to generation, whosoever determines, in so far as fate and the gods allow, to hold these things fast, and, moreover, to love all good literature, to temper erudition with common sense, to let humour wait always upon fancy, and duty upon romance; whosoever at least tries to be true to the past, to show a bold front to the present, and to let the future be as it may; whosoever 'spurns the vulgar' while endeavouring to be just to individuals, and faces 'the Secret' with neither bravado nor cringing,--he may take, if not the vanguard, yet a place according to his worth and merit, in the legion which this great captain led. Of the frequent parallels or contrasts drawn between him and Shakespeare it is not the least noteworthy that he is, of all men of letters, that one of whom we have the most intimate and the fullest revelation, while of Shakespeare we have the least. There need be very little doubt that if we knew everything about Shakespeare, he would come, as a man of mould might, scathless from the test. But we do know everything, or almost everything, about Scott, and he comes out nearly as well as anyone but a faultless monster could. For all the works of the Lord in literature, as in other things, let us give thanks--for Blake and for Beddoes as well as for Shelley and for Swift. But let everyone who by himself, or by his fathers, claims origin between Tol-Pedn-Penwith and Dunnet Head give thanks, with more energy and more confidence than in any other case save one, for the fact that his is the race and his the language of Sir Walter Scott. FOOTNOTES: [47] So, in a still earlier generation, Johnson, after calling his step-daughter 'my dearest love,' and writing in the simplest way, will end, and quite properly, with, 'Madam, your obedient, humble servant.' [48] He made, as is well known, preparations to 'meet' General Gourgaud, who was wroth about the _Napoleon_, but who never actually challenged him. [49] Most injustice has perforce been done to his miscellaneous verse lying outside the great poems, and not all of it included in the novels. It would be impossible to dwell on all the good things, from _Helvellyn_ and _The Norman Horseshoe_ onward; and useless to select a few. Some of his best things are among them: few are without force, and fire, and unstudied melody. The song-scraps, like the mottoes, in his novels are often really marvellous snatches of improvisation. [50] Il y a plus de philosophie dans ses écrits ... que dans bon nombre de _romans philosophiques_. [51] When some tactless person tried to play tricks with the Crown. INDEX SCOTT, SIR WALTER: Ancestry and parentage, 9, 10; birth, 10; infancy, 11; school and college days, _ibid._; apprenticeship, _ibid._; friends and early occupations, 12, 13; call to the Bar, 12, 14; first love, 14-16; engagement and marriage, 16; briefs, fights, and volunteering, 17; journeys to Galloway and elsewhere, 18, 19; slowness of literary production and its causes, 20, 21; call-thesis and translations of Bürger, 22; reception of these last and their merit, 23; contributes to _Tales of Wonder_, 24; remarks on _Glenfinlas_ and _The Eve of St. John_, 25, 26; _Goetz von Berlichingen_ and _The House of Aspen_, 26; dramatic work generally, 27, _note_; friendship with Leyden, Ritson, and Ellis, 28; _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, 28-33; contributes to the _Edinburgh Review_, 33-35; his domestic life for the first seven years after his marriage, 35-37; _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, 38-46; partnership with Ballantyne, 46-50; children and pecuniary affairs, 50, 51; Clerkship of Session, 51; politics during Fox and Grenville administration, 52; anecdote of, on Mound, _ibid._; _Marmion_, 52-55; coolness with _Edinburgh_ and starting of _Quarterly Review_, 55, 56; quarrel with Constable, 56, 57; affair of Thomas Scott's appointment, 58, 59; _The Lady of the Lake_, 59, 60; _The Vision of Don Roderick_, 61; _Rokeby_, 61-63; _The Lord of the Isles_, 63, 64; _The Bridal of Triermain_, 64-66; _Harold the Dauntless_, 66, 67; remarks on the verse romances generally, 67, 68; _Waverley_, its origin, character, and reception, 69-76; settlement at Abbotsford, 70, 71; danger of Ballantyne & Co., and closer alliance with Constable, 71, 72; yachting tour, 72; _Guy Mannering_, 77-79; introduced in London to the Regent and to Byron, 79; journey to Brussels, _Field of Waterloo_, and _Paul's Letters_, 79; _The Antiquary_, 80; original mottoes, 81 and _note_; _Old Mortality_ and _Black Dwarf_, 81-84; quarrel with Blackwood, 82; _Rob Roy_, 84, 85; domestic affairs, 85-87; _Heart of Midlothian_, 87, 88; _Bride of Lammermoor_ and _Legend of Montrose_, 88-91; attacked by cramp, 84, 86, 89, _note_; domestic affairs, 91-93; _Ivanhoe_, 93, 96; _The Monastery_, 95, 96; _The Abbot_ and _Kenilworth_, 96, 97; _The Pirate_, 97, 98; _The Fortunes of Nigel_, 99; _Peveril of the Peak_, 100; _Quentin Durward_, 100, 101; _St. Ronan's Well_, 101, 102; _Redgauntlet_, 102, 103; _Tales of the Crusaders_, 104, 105; domestic affairs, to tour in Ireland, 105, 106; commercial crisis and fall of Constable and Ballantyne, 106, 107; discussion of the facts, 107-114; the _Journal_, 114-117; death of Lady Scott, 116; _Life of Napoleon_, 118-121; _Woodstock_, 121-123; _Letters of Malachi Malagrowther_, 123; 'Bonnie Dundee,' _ibid._; _Chronicles of the Canongate_, 124-126; _Tales of a Grandfather_, 126, 127; _The Fair Maid of Perth_ and the '_Magnum Opus_,' 128; _Anne of Geierstein_, 129; declining health, 130; success of the '_Magnum_,' _ibid._; stroke of paralysis and resignation of Clerkship, 131; _Letters on Demonology_ and Christopher North's criticism, 131, 132; _Count Robert of Paris_ and _Castle Dangerous_, 133; political annoyances and insults at Jedburgh, 134; last visit of Wordsworth and departure for Italy, 135; sojourn on the Mediterranean, 136; return and death, 137; settlement of debts, _ibid._; monuments to Scott, 138; general view of Scott desirable, 139; his physique and conversation, 140; his alleged subserviency to rank, 141, 142; his moral and religious character, 142, 143; his politics, 144; characteristics of his thought, 145-147; his combination of the practical and the romantic, 147; his humour, 148; his feeling, 149; his style, 150; his power of story, 151; not 'commonplace,' 151, 154; comparison with Lyly, 153; final remarks, 155, 156. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON THE "FAMOUS SCOTS" SERIES. Of THOMAS CARLYLE, by H. C. MACPHERSON, the _British Weekly_ says:-- "We congratulate the publishers on the in every way attractive appearance of the first volume of their new series. The typography is everything that could be wished, and the binding is most tasteful.... We heartily congratulate author and publishers on the happy commencement of this admirable enterprise." The _Literary World_ says:-- "One of the very best little books on Carlyle yet written, far outweighing in value some more pretentious works with which we are familiar." The _Scotsman_ says:-- "As an estimate of the Carlylean philosophy, and of Carlyle's place in literature and his influence in the domains of morals, politics, and social ethics, the volume reveals not only care and fairness, but insight and a large capacity for original thought and judgment." The _Glasgow Daily Record_ says:-- "Is distinctly creditable to the publishers, and worthy of a national series such as they have projected." The _Educational News_ says:-- "The book is written in an able, masterly, and painstaking manner." Of ALLAN RAMSAY, by OLIPHANT SMEATON, the _Scotsman_ says:-- "It is not a patchwork picture, but one in which the writer, taking genuine interest in his subject, and bestowing conscientious pains on his task, has his materials well in hand, and has used them to produce a portrait that is both lifelike and well balanced." The _People's Friend_ says:-- "Presents a very interesting sketch of the life of the poet, as well as a well-balanced estimate and review of his works." The _Edinburgh Dispatch_ says:-- "The author has shown scholarship and much enthusiasm in his task." The _Daily Record_ says:-- "The kindly, vain, and pompous little wig-maker lives for us in Mr. Smeaton's pages." The _Glasgow Herald_ says:-- "A careful and intelligent study." Of HUGH MILLER, by W. KEITH LEASK, the _Expository Times_ says:-- "It is a right good book and a right true biography.... There is a very fine sense of Hugh Miller's greatness as a man and a Scotsman; there is also a fine choice of language in making it ours." The _Bookseller_ says:-- "Mr. Leask gives the reader a clear impression of the simplicity, and yet the greatness, of his hero, and the broad result of his life's work is very plainly and carefully set forth. A short appreciation of his scientific labours, from the competent pen of Sir Archibald Geikie, and a useful bibliography of his works, complete a volume which is well worth reading for its own sake, and which forms a worthy installment in an admirable series." The _Daily News_ says:-- "Leaves on us a very vivid impression." Of JOHN KNOX, by A. TAYLOR INNES, Mr. Hay Fleming, in the _Bookman_ says:-- "A masterly delineation of those stirring times in Scotland, and of that famous Scot who helped so much to shape them." The _Freeman_ says:-- "It is a concise, well written, and admirable narrative of the great Reformer's life, and in its estimate of his character and work it is calm, dispassionate, and well balanced.... It is a welcome addition to our Knox literature." The _Speaker_ says:-- "There is vision in this book, as well as knowledge." The _Sunday School Chronicle_ says:-- "Everybody who is acquainted with Mr. Taylor Innes's exquisite lecture on Samuel Rutherford will feel instinctively that he is just the man to do justice to the great Reformer, who is more to Scotland 'than any million of unblameable Scotsmen who need no forgiveness.' His literary skill, his thorough acquaintance with Scottish ecclesiastical life, his religious insight, his chastened enthusiasm, have enabled the author to produce an excellent piece of work.... It is a noble and inspiring theme, and Mr. Taylor Innes has handled it to perfection." Of ROBERT BURNS, by GABRIEL SETOUN, the _New Age_ says:-- "It is the best thing on Burns we have yet had, almost as good as Carlyle's Essay and the pamphlet published by Dr. Nichol of Glasgow." The _Methodist Times_ says:-- "We are inclined to regard it as the very best that has yet been produced. There is a proper perspective, and Mr. Setoun does neither praise nor blame too copiously.... A difficult bit of work has been well done, and with fine literary and ethical discrimination." _Youth_ says:-- "It is written with knowledge, judgment, and skill.... The author's estimate of the moral character of Burns is temperate and discriminating; he sees and states his evil qualities, and beside these he places his good ones in their fulness, depth, and splendour. The exposition of the special features marking the genius of the poet is able and penetrating." Of THE BALLADISTS, by JOHN GEDDIE, the _Birmingham Daily Gazette_ says:-- "As a popular sketch of an intensely popular theme, Mr. Geddie's contribution to the 'Famous Scots Series' is most excellent." The _Publishers' Circular_ says:-- "It may be predicted that lovers of romantic literature will re-peruse the old ballads with a quickened zest after reading Mr. Geddie's book. We have not had a more welcome little volume for many a day." The _New Age_ says:-- "One of the most delightful and eloquent appreciations of the ballad literature of Scotland that has ever seen the light." The _Spectator_ says:-- "The author has certainly made a contribution of remarkable value to the literary history of Scotland. We do not know of a book in which the subject has been treated with deeper sympathy or out of a fuller knowledge." 
37631	----	[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling has been maintained. Superscript are marked with { }.] Large-Paper Edition LOCKHART'S LIFE OF SCOTT COPIOUSLY ANNOTATED AND ABUNDANTLY ILLUSTRATED IN TEN VOLUMES VOL. VI [Illustration: WALTER SCOTT IN 1820 _From the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence_] MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT BART. by JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART In Ten Volumes VOLUME VI [Illustration: Editor's logo.] Boston and New York Houghton, Mifflin and Company The Riverside Press, Cambridge MCMI Copyright, 1901 by Houghton, Mifflin and Company All Rights Reserved Six Hundred Copies Printed Number, TABLE OF CONTENTS Chap. Page XLIII. Declining Health of Charles, Duke of Buccleuch. -- Letter on the Death of Queen Charlotte. -- Provincial Antiquities, etc. -- Extensive Sale of Copyrights to Constable & Co. -- Death of Mr. Charles Carpenter. -- Scott accepts the Offer of a Baronetcy. -- He declines to renew his Application for a Seat on the Exchequer Bench. -- Letters to Morritt, Richardson, Miss Baillie, the Duke of Buccleuch, Lord Montagu, and Captain Ferguson. -- Rob Roy played at Edinburgh. -- Letter from Jedediah Cleishbotham to Mr. Charles Mackay. 1818-1819 1 XLIV. Recurrence of Scott's Illness. -- Death of the Duke of Buccleuch. -- Letters to Captain Ferguson, Lord Montagu, Mr. Southey, and Mr. Shortreed. -- Scott's Sufferings while dictating The Bride of Lammermoor. -- Anecdotes by James Ballantyne, etc. -- Appearance of the Third Series of Tales of my Landlord. -- Anecdote of the Earl of Buchan. 1819 24 XLV. Gradual Reëstablishment of Scott's Health. -- Ivanhoe in Progress. -- His Son Walter joins the Eighteenth Regiment of Hussars. -- Scott's Correspondence with his Son. -- Miscellaneous Letters to Mrs. Maclean Clephane, M. W. Hartstonge, J. G. Lockhart, John Ballantyne, John Richardson, Miss Edgeworth, Lord Montagu, etc. -- Abbotsford visited by Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. -- Death of Mrs. William Erskine. 1819 69 XLVI. Political Alarms. -- The Radicals. -- Levies of Volunteers. -- Project of the Buccleuch Legion. -- Death of Scott's Mother, her Brother Dr. Rutherford, and her Sister Christian. -- Letters to Lord Montagu, Mr. Thomas Scott, Cornet Scott, Mr. Laidlaw, and Lady Louisa Stuart. -- Publication of Ivanhoe. 1819 106 XLVII. The Visionary. -- The Peel of Darnick. -- Scott's Saturday Excursions to Abbotsford. -- A Sunday there in February. -- Constable. -- John Ballantyne. -- Thomas Purdie, etc. -- Prince Gustavus Vasa. -- Proclamation of King George IV. -- Publication of The Monastery. 1820 132 XLVIII. Scott revisits London. -- His Portrait by Lawrence, and Bust by Chantrey. -- Anecdotes by Allan Cunningham. -- Letters to Mrs. Scott, Laidlaw, etc. -- His Baronetcy gazetted. -- Marriage of his Daughter Sophia. -- Letter to "the Baron of Galashiels." -- Visit of Prince Gustavus Vasa at Abbotsford. -- Tenders of Honorary Degrees from Oxford and Cambridge. -- Letter to Mr. Thomas Scott. 1820 147 XLIX. Autumn at Abbotsford. -- Scott's Hospitality. -- Visit of Sir Humphry Davy, Henry Mackenzie, Dr. Wollaston, and William Stewart Rose. -- Coursing on Newark Hill. -- Salmon-fishing. -- The Festival at Boldside. -- The Abbotsford Hunt. -- The Kirn, etc. 1820 172 L. Publication of The Abbot. -- The Blair-Adam Club. -- Kelso, Walton Hall, etc. -- Ballantyne's Novelists' Library. -- Acquittal of Queen Caroline. -- Service of the Duke of Buccleuch. -- Scott elected President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. -- The Celtic Society. -- Letters to Lord Montagu, Cornet Scott, Charles Scott, Allan Cunningham, etc. -- Kenilworth published. 1820-1821 189 LI. Visit to London. -- Project of the Royal Society of Literature. -- Affairs of the 18th Hussars. -- Marriage of Captain Adam Ferguson. -- Letters to Lord Sidmouth, Lord Montagu, Allan Cunningham, Mrs. Lockhart, and Cornet Scott. 1821 219 LII. Illness and Death of John Ballantyne. -- Extract from his Pocketbook. -- Letters from Blair-Adam. -- Castle-Campbell. -- Sir Samuel Shepherd. -- "Bailie Mackay," etc. -- Coronation of George IV. -- Correspondence with James Hogg and Lord Sidmouth. -- Letter on the Coronation. -- Anecdotes. -- Allan Cunningham's Memoranda. -- Completion of Chantrey's Bust. 1821 241 LIII. Publication of Mr. Adolphus's Letters on the Authorship of Waverley. 1821 267 LIV. New Buildings at Abbotsford. -- Chiefswood. -- William Erskine. -- Letter to Countess Purgstall. -- Progress of The Pirate. -- Franck's Northern Memoir, and Notes of Lord Fountainhall, published. -- Private Letters in the Reign of James I. -- Commencement of The Fortunes of Nigel. -- Second Sale of Copyrights. -- Contract for "Four Works of Fiction." -- Enormous Profits of the Novelist, and Extravagant Projects of Constable. -- The Pirate published. -- Lord Byron's Cain, dedicated to Scott. -- Affair of the Beacon Newspaper. 1821 288 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page WALTER SCOTT IN 1820 _Frontispiece_ From the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence, P. R. A., in the Royal Gallery, Windsor Castle. CHARLES MACKAY AS BAILIE NICOL JARVIE 22 From the painting by Sir D. Macnee, P. R. S. A., in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. ANNE RUTHERFORD, MOTHER OF SIR WALTER SCOTT 106 After the painting at Abbotsford. SOPHIA SCOTT (Mrs. J. G. LOCKHART) 136 After the painting at Abbotsford by William Nicholson, R. S. A. WALTER SCOTT IN 1820 150 From the pencil sketch by Sir Francis Chantrey, R. A. CHIEFSWOOD 288 After the drawing by J. M. W. Turner, R. A. SIR WALTER SCOTT CHAPTER XLIII Declining Health of Charles, Duke of Buccleuch. -- Letter on the Death of Queen Charlotte. -- Provincial Antiquities, Etc. -- Extensive Sale of Copyrights to Constable and Co. -- Death of Mr. Charles Carpenter. -- Scott Accepts the Offer of a Baronetcy. -- He Declines to Renew his Application for a Seat on the Exchequer Bench. -- Letters to Morritt, Richardson, Miss Baillie, The Duke of Buccleuch, Lord Montagu, and Captain Ferguson. -- Rob Roy Played at Edinburgh. -- Letter from Jedediah Cleishbotham to Mr. Charles Mackay. 1818-1819 I have now to introduce a melancholy subject--one of the greatest afflictions that ever Scott encountered. The health of Charles, Duke of Buccleuch was by this time beginning to give way, and Scott thought it his duty to intimate his very serious apprehensions to his noble friend's brother. TO THE RIGHT HON. LORD MONTAGU, DITTON PARK, WINDSOR. EDINBURGH, 12th November, 1818. MY DEAR LORD,--I am about to write to you with feelings of the deepest anxiety. I have hesitated for two or three days whether I should communicate to your Lordship the sincere alarm which I entertain on account of the Duke's present state of health, but I have come to persuade myself, that it will be discharging a part of the duty which I owe to him, to mention my own most distressing apprehensions. I was at the cattle-show on the 6th, and executed the delegated task of toast-master, and so forth. I was told by **** that the Duke is under the influence of the muriatic bath, which occasions a good deal of uneasiness when the medicine is in possession of the system. The Duke observed the strictest diet, and remained only a short time at table, leaving me to do the honors, which I did with a sorrowful heart, endeavoring, however, to persuade myself that ****'s account, and the natural depression of spirits incidental to his finding himself unable for the time to discharge the duty to his guests, which no man could do with so much grace and kindness, were sufficient to account for the alteration of his manner and appearance. I spent Monday with him quietly and alone, and I must say that all I saw and heard was calculated to give me the greatest pain. His strength is much less, his spirits lower, and his general appearance far more unfavorable than when I left him at Drumlanrig a few weeks before. What ****, and indeed what the Duke himself, says of the medicine, may be true--but **** is very sanguine, and, like all the personal physicians attached to a person of such consequence, he is too much addicted to the _placebo_--at least I think so--too apt to fear to give offence by contradiction, or by telling that sort of truth which may controvert the wishes or habits of his patient. I feel I am communicating much pain to your Lordship, but I am sure that, excepting yourself, there is not a man in the world whose sorrow and apprehension could exceed mine in having such a task to discharge; for, as your Lordship well knows, the ties which bind me to your excellent brother are of a much stronger kind than usually connect persons so different in rank. But the alteration in voice and person, in features, and in spirits, all argue the decay of natural strength, and the increase of some internal disorder, which is gradually triumphing over the system. Much has been done in these cases by change of climate. I hinted this to the Duke at Drumlanrig, but I found his mind totally averse to it. But he made some inquiries of Harden (just returned from Italy), which seemed to imply that at least the idea of a winter in Italy or the south of France was not altogether out of his consideration. Your Lordship will consider whether he can or ought to be pressed upon this point. He is partial to Scotland, and feels the many high duties which bind him to it. But the air of this country, with its alternations of moisture and dry frost, although excellent for a healthy person, is very trying to a valetudinarian. I should not have thought of volunteering to communicate such unpleasant news, but that the family do not seem alarmed. I am not surprised at this, because, where the decay of health is very gradual, it is more easily traced by a friend who sees the patient from interval to interval, than by the affectionate eyes which are daily beholding him. Adieu, my dear Lord. God knows you will scarce read this letter with more pain than I feel in writing it. But it seems indispensable to me to communicate my sentiments of the Duke's present situation to his nearest relation and dearest friend. His life is invaluable to his country and to his family, and how dear it is to his friends can only be estimated by those who know the soundness of his understanding, the uprightness and truth of his judgment, and the generosity and warmth of his feelings. I am always, my dear Lord, most truly yours, WALTER SCOTT. Scott's letters of this and the two following months are very much occupied with the painful subject of the Duke of Buccleuch's health; but those addressed to his Grace himself are, in general, in a more jocose strain than usual. His friend's spirits were sinking, and he exerted himself in this way, in the hope of amusing the hours of languor at Bowhill. These letters are headed "Edinburgh Gazette Extraordinary," No. 1, No. 2, and so on; but they deal so much in laughable gossip about persons still living, that I find it difficult to make any extracts from them. The following paragraphs, however, from the Gazette of November the 20th, give a little information as to his own minor literary labors:-- "The article on Gourgaud's Narrative[1] _is_ by a certain _Vieux Routier_ of your Grace's acquaintance, who would willingly have some military hints from you for the continuation of the article, if at any time you should feel disposed to amuse yourself with looking at the General's most marvellous performance. His lies are certainly like the father who begot them. Do not think that at any time the little trumpery intelligence this place affords can interrupt my labors, while it amuses your Grace. I can scribble as fast in the Court of Session as anywhere else, without the least loss of time or hindrance of business. At the same time, I cannot help laughing at the miscellaneous trash I have been putting out of my hand, and the various motives which made me undertake the jobs. An article for the Edinburgh Review[2]--this for the love of Jeffrey, the editor--the first for ten years. Do., being the article _Drama_ for the Encyclopædia--this for the sake of Mr. Constable, the publisher. Do. for the Blackwoodian Magazine--this for love of the cause I espoused. Do. for the Quarterly Review[3]--this for the love of myself, I believe, or, which is the same thing, for the love of £100, which I wanted for some odd purpose. As all these folks fight like dog and cat among themselves, my situation is much like the _Suave mare magno_, and so forth.... [Footnote 1: Article on _General Gourgaud's Memoirs_ in _Blackwood's Magazine_ for November, 1818.] [Footnote 2: Article on Maturin's _Women, or Pour et Contre_. (_Miscellaneous Prose Works_, vol. xviii.)] [Footnote 3: Article on _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. (_Miscellaneous Prose Works_, vol. xvii.)] "I hope your Grace will never think of answering the Gazettes at all, or even replying to letters of business, until you find it quite convenient and easy. The Gazette will continue to appear as materials occur. Indeed I expect, in the end of next week, to look in upon Bowhill, per the Selkirk mail, about eight at night, with the hope of spending a day there, which will be more comfortable than at Abbotsford, where I should feel like a mouse below a firlot. If I find the Court can spare so important a person for one day, I shall order my pony up to meet me at Bowhill, and, supposing me to come on Friday night, I can easily return by the Blucher on Monday, dining and sleeping at Huntly Burn on the Sunday. So I shall receive all necessary reply in person." Good Queen Charlotte died on the 17th of this month; and in writing to Mr. Morritt on the 21st, Scott thus expresses what was, I believe, the universal feeling at the moment:-- "So we have lost the old Queen. She has only had the sad prerogative of being kept alive by nursing for some painful weeks, whereas perhaps a subject might have closed the scene earlier. I fear the effect of this event on public manners--were there but a weight at the back of the drawing-room door, which would slam it in the face of w----s, its fall ought to be lamented; and I believe that poor Charlotte really adopted her rules of etiquette upon a feeling of duty. If we should suppose the Princess of Wales to have been at the head of the matronage of the land for these last ten years, what would have been the difference on public opinion! No man of experience will ever expect the breath of a court to be favorable to correct morals--_sed si non caste caute tamen_. One half of the mischief is done by the publicity of the evil, which corrupts those which are near its influence, and fills with disgust and apprehension those to whom it does not directly extend. Honest old Evelyn's account of Charles the Second's court presses on one's recollection, and prepares the mind for anxious apprehensions." Towards the end of this month Scott received from his kind friend Lord Sidmouth, then Secretary of State for the Home Department, the formal announcement of the Prince Regent's desire (which had been privately communicated some months earlier through the Lord Chief Commissioner Adam) to confer on him the rank of Baronet. When Scott first heard of the Regent's gracious intention, he had signified considerable hesitation about the prudence of his accepting any such accession of rank; for it had not escaped his observation, that such airy sounds, however modestly people may be disposed to estimate them, are apt to entail in the upshot additional cost upon their way of living, and to affect accordingly the plastic fancies, feelings, and habits of their children. But Lord Sidmouth's letter happened to reach him a few days after he had heard of the sudden death of his wife's brother, Charles Carpenter, who had bequeathed the reversion of his fortune to his sister's family; and this circumstance disposed Scott to waive his scruples, chiefly with a view to the professional advantage of his eldest son, who had by this time fixed on the life of a soldier. As is usually the case, the estimate of Mr. Carpenter's property transmitted at the time to England proved to have been an exaggerated one; as nearly as my present information goes, the amount was doubled. But as to the only question of any interest, to wit, how Scott himself felt on all these matters at the moment, the following letter to one whom he had long leaned to as a brother, will be more satisfactory than anything else it is in my power to quote:-- TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., M. P., ROKEBY. EDINBURGH, 7th December, 1818. MY DEAR MORRITT,--I know you are indifferent to nothing that concerns us, and therefore I take an early opportunity to acquaint you with the mixture of evil and good which has very lately befallen us. On Saturday last we had the advice of the death of my wife's brother, Charles Carpenter, commercial resident at Salem, in the Madras Establishment. This event has given her great distress. She has not, that we know of, a single blood-relation left in the world, for her uncle, the Chevalier de la Volere,[4] colonel of a Russian regiment, is believed to have been killed in the campaign of 1813. My wife has been very unwell for two days, and is only now sitting up and mixing with us. She has that sympathy which we are all bound to pay, but feels she wants that personal interest in her sorrow which could only be grounded on a personal acquaintance with the deceased. Mr. Carpenter has, with great propriety, left his property in life-rent to his wife--the capital to my children. It seems to amount to about £40,000. Upwards of £30,000 is in the British funds; the rest, to an uncertain value, in India. I hope this prospect of independence will not make my children different from that which they have usually been--docile, dutiful, and affectionate. I trust it will not. At least, the first expression of their feelings was honorable, for it was a unanimous wish to give up all to their mother. This I explained to them was out of the question; but that, if they should be in possession at any time of this property, they ought, among them, to settle an income of £400 or £500 on their mother for her life, to supply her with a fund at her own uncontrolled disposal, for any indulgence or useful purpose that might be required. Mrs. Scott will stand in no need of this; but it is a pity to let kind affections run to waste; and if they never have it in their power to pay such a debt, their willingness to have done so will be a pleasant reflection. I am Scotchman enough to hate the breaking up of family ties, and the too close adherence to personal property. For myself, this event makes me neither richer nor poorer _directly_; but indirectly it will permit me to do something for my poor brother Tom's family, besides pleasing myself in "_plantings_, and _policies_, and _biggings_,"[5] with a safe conscience. There is another thing I have to whisper to your faithful ear. Our fat friend, being desirous to honor Literature in my unworthy person, has intimated to me, by his organ the Doctor,[6] that, with consent ample and unanimous of all the potential voices of all his ministers, each more happy than another of course on so joyful an occasion, he proposes to dub me Baronet. It would be easy saying a parcel of fine things about my contempt of rank, and so forth; but although I would not have gone a step out of my way to have asked, or bought, or begged or borrowed a distinction, which to me personally will rather be inconvenient than otherwise, yet, coming as it does directly from the source of feudal honors, and as an honor, I am really gratified with it;--especially as it is intimated that it is his Royal Highness's pleasure to heat the oven for me expressly, without waiting till he has some new _batch_ of Baronets ready in dough. In plain English, I am to be gazetted _per se_. My poor friend Carpenter's bequest to my family has taken away a certain degree of _impecuniosity_, a necessity of saving cheese-parings and candle-ends, which always looks inconsistent with any little pretension to rank. But as things now stand, Advance banners in the name of God and Saint Andrew. Remember, I anticipate the jest, "I like not such grinning honor as Sir Walter hath."[7] After all, if one must speak for himself, I have my quarters and emblazonments, free of all stain but Border theft and High Treason, which I hope are gentlemanlike crimes; and I hope Sir Walter Scott will not sound worse than Sir Humphry Davy, though my merits are as much under his, in point of utility, as can well be imagined. But a name is something, and mine is the better of the two. Set down this flourish to the account of national and provincial pride, for you must know we have more Messieurs de Sotenville[8] in our Border counties than anywhere else in the Lowlands--I cannot say for the Highlands. The Duke of Buccleuch, greatly to my joy, resolves to go to France for a season. Adam Ferguson goes with him, to glad him by the way. Charlotte and the young folks join in kind compliments. Most truly yours, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 4: I know nothing of the history or fate of this gentleman, except that he was an ardent Royalist, and emigrated from France early in the Revolution.] [Footnote 5: I believe this is a quotation from some old Scotch chronicler on the character of King James V.] [Footnote 6: _The Doctor_ was Mr. Canning's nickname for Lord Sidmouth, the son of an accomplished physician, the intimate friend of the great Lord Chatham. Mr. Sheridan, when the Scotch Members deserted the Addington administration upon a trying vote, had the grace to say to the Premier, across the table of the House of Commons,--"Doctor! the Thanes fly from thee!"] [Footnote 7: Sir Walter Blunt--_1st King Henry IV._, Act V. Scene 3.] [Footnote 8: See Molière's _George Dandin_.] A few additional circumstances are given in a letter of the same week to Joanna Baillie. To her, after mentioning the testamentary provisions of Mr. Carpenter, Scott says:-- MY DEAR FRIEND,--I am going to tell you a little secret. I have changed my mind, or rather existing circumstances have led to my altering my opinions in a case of sublunary honor. I have now before me Lord Sidmouth's letter, containing the Prince's gracious and unsolicited intention to give me a Baronetcy. It will neither make me better nor worse than I feel myself--in fact it will be an incumbrance rather than otherwise; but it may be of consequence to Walter, for the title is worth something in the army, although not in a learned profession. The Duke of Buccleuch and Scott of Harden, who, as the heads of my clan and the sources of my gentry, are good judges of what I ought to do, have both given me their earnest opinion to accept of an honor directly derived from the source of honor, and neither begged nor bought, as is the usual fashion. Several of my ancestors bore the title in the seventeenth century; and were it of consequence, I have no reason to be ashamed of the decent and respectable persons who connect me with that period when they carried into the field, like Madoc-- "The crescent, at whose gleam the _Cambrian_ oft, Cursing his perilous tenure, wound his horn"-- so that, as a gentleman, I may stand on as good a footing as other new creations. Respecting the reasons peculiar to myself which have made the Prince show his respect for general literature in my person, I cannot be a good judge, and your friendly zeal will make you a partial one: the purpose is fair, honorable, and creditable to the Sovereign, even though it should number him among the monarchs who made blunders in literary patronage. You know Pope says:-- "The Hero William, and the Martyr Charles, One knighted Blackmore, and one pensioned Quarles."[9] So let the intention sanctify the error, if there should be one on this great occasion. The time of this grand affair is uncertain: it is coupled with an invitation to London, which it would be inconvenient to me to accept, unless it should happen that I am called to come up by the affairs of poor Carpenter's estate. Indeed, the prospects of my children form the principal reason for a change of sentiments upon this flattering offer, joined to my belief that, though I may still be a scribbler from inveterate habit, I shall hardly engage again in any work of consequence. We had a delightful visit from the Richardsons, only rather too short. He will give you a picture of Abbotsford, but not as it exists in my mind's eye, waving with all its future honors. The pinasters are thriving very well, and in a year or two more Joanna's Bower will be worthy of the name. At present it is like Sir Roger de Coverley's portrait, which hovered between its resemblance to the good knight and to a Saracen. Now the said bower has still such a resemblance to its original character of a gravel pit, that it is not fit to be shown to "bairns and fools," who, according to our old canny proverb, should never see half-done work; but Nature, if she works slowly, works surely, and your laurels at Abbotsford will soon flourish as fair as those you have won on Parnassus. I rather fear that a quantity of game, which was shipped awhile ago at Inverness for the Doctor, never reached him: it is rather a transitory commodity in London; there were ptarmigan, grouse, and black game. I shall be grieved if they have miscarried.--My health, thank God, continues as strong as at any period in my life; only I think of rule and diet more than I used to do, and observe as much as in me lies the advice of my friendly physician, who took such kind care of me: my best respects attend him, Mrs. Baillie, and Mrs. Agnes. Ever, my dear friend, most faithfully yours, W. S. [Footnote 9: _Imitations of Horace._ B. ii. Ep. 1. v. 386.] In the next of these letters Scott alludes, among other things, to a scene of innocent pleasure which I often witnessed afterwards. The whole of the ancient ceremonial of the _daft days_, as they are called in Scotland, obtained respect at Abbotsford. He said it was _uncanny_, and would certainly have felt it very uncomfortable, not to welcome the new year in the midst of his family and a few old friends, with the immemorial libation of a _het pint_; but of all the consecrated ceremonies of the time, none gave him such delight as the visit which he received as _Laird_ from all the children on his estate, on the last morning of every December--when, in the words of an obscure poet often quoted by him, "The cottage bairns sing blithe and gay, At the ha' door for _hogmanay_." TO MISS JOANNA BAILLIE, HAMPSTEAD. ABBOTSFORD, 1st January, 1819. MY DEAR FRIEND,--Many thanks for your kind letter. Ten brace of ptarmigan sailed from Inverness about the 24th, directed for Dr. Baillie;--if they should have reached, I hope you would seize some for yourself and friends, as I learn the Doctor is on duty at Windsor. I do not know the name of the vessel, but they were addressed to Dr. Baillie, London, which I trust was enough, for there are not _two_. The Doctor has been exercising his skill upon my dear friend and chief, the Duke of Buccleuch, to whom I am more attached than to any person beyond the reach of my own family, and has advised him to do what, by my earnest advice, he ought to have done three years ago--namely, to go to Lisbon: he left this vicinity with much reluctance to go to Toulouse, but if he will be advised, should not stop save in Portugal or the south of Spain. The Duke is one of those retired and high-spirited men who will never be known until the world asks what became of the huge oak that grew on the brow of the hill, and sheltered such an extent of ground. During the late distress, though his own immense rents remained in arrears, and though I know he was pinched for money, as all men were, but more especially the possessors of entailed estates, he absented himself from London in order to pay with ease to himself the laborers employed on his various estates. These amounted (for I have often seen the roll and helped to check it) to nine hundred and fifty men, working at day wages, each of whom on a moderate average might maintain three persons, since the single men have mothers, sisters, and aged or very young relations to protect and assist. Indeed it is wonderful how much even a small sum, comparatively, will do in supporting the Scottish laborer, who is in his natural state perhaps one of the best, most intelligent, and kind-hearted of human beings; and in truth I have limited my other habits of expense very much since I fell into the habit of employing mine honest people. I wish you could have seen about a hundred children, being almost entirely supported by their fathers' or brothers' labor, come down yesterday to dance to the pipes, and get a piece of cake and bannock, and pence apiece (no very deadly largess) in honor of _hogmanay_. I declare to you, my dear friend, that when I thought the poor fellows who kept these children so neat, and well taught, and well behaved, were slaving the whole day for eighteen-pence or twenty-pence at the most, I was ashamed of their gratitude, and of their becks and bows. But, after all, one does what one can, and it is better twenty families should be comfortable according to their wishes and habits, than half that number should be raised above their situation. Besides, like Fortunio in the fairy tale, I have my gifted men--the best wrestler and cudgel-player--the best runner and leaper--the best shot in the little district; and as I am partial to all manly and athletic exercises, these are great favorites, being otherwise decent persons, and bearing their faculties meekly. All this smells of sad egotism, but what can I write to you about, save what is uppermost in my own thoughts: and here am I, thinning old plantations and planting new ones; now undoing what has been done, and now doing what I suppose no one would do but myself, and accomplishing all my magical transformations by the arms and legs of the aforesaid genii, conjured up to my aid at eighteen-pence a day. There is no one with me but my wife, to whom the change of scene and air, with the facility of easy and uninterrupted exercise, is of service. The young people remain in Edinburgh to look after their lessons, and Walter, though passionately fond of shooting, only stayed three days with us, his mind running entirely on mathematics and fortification, French and German. One of the excellencies of Abbotsford is very bad pens and ink; and besides, this being New Year's Day, and my writing-room above the servants' hall, the progress of my correspondence is a little interrupted by the Piper singing Gaelic songs to the servants, and their applause in consequence. Adieu, my good and indulgent friend: the best influences of the New Year attend you and yours, who so well deserve all that they can bring. Most affectionately yours, WALTER SCOTT. Before quitting the year 1818, I ought to have mentioned that among Scott's miscellaneous occupations in its autumn, he found time to contribute some curious materials toward a new edition of Burt's Letters from the North of Scotland, which had been undertaken by his old acquaintance, Mr. Robert Jameson. During the winter session he appears to have made little progress with his novel; his painful seizures of cramp were again recurring frequently, and he probably thought it better to allow the story of Lammermoor to lie over until his health should be reëstablished. In the mean time he drew up a set of topographical and historical essays, which originally appeared in the successive numbers of the splendidly illustrated work, entitled Provincial Antiquities of Scotland.[10] But he did this merely to gratify his own love of the subject, and because, well or ill, he must be doing something. He declined all pecuniary recompense; but afterwards, when the success of the publication was secure, accepted from the proprietors some of the beautiful drawings by Turner, Thomson, and other artists, which had been prepared to accompany his text. These drawings are now in the little breakfast-room at Abbotsford--the same which had been constructed for his own den, and which I found him occupying as such in the spring of 1819. [Footnote 10: These charming essays are now reprinted in his _Miscellaneous Prose Works_ (Edition 1834) vol. vii.] In the course of December, 1818, he also opened an important negotiation with Messrs. Constable, which was completed early in the ensuing year. The cost of his building had, as is usual, exceeded his calculation; and he had both a large addition to it, and some new purchases of land, in view. Moreover, his eldest son had now fixed on the cavalry, in which service every step infers very considerable expense. The details of this negotiation are remarkable;--Scott considered himself as a very fortunate man when Constable, who at first offered £10,000 for all his then existing copyrights, agreed to give for them £12,000. Meeting a friend in the street, just after the deed had been executed, he said he wagered no man could guess at how large a price Constable had estimated his "eild kye" (cows barren from age). The copyrights thus transferred were, as specified in the instrument:-- "The said Walter Scott, Esq.'s present share, being the entire copyright, of Waverley. Do. do Guy Mannering. Do. do Antiquary. Do. do Rob Roy. Do. do Tales of My Landlord, 1st Series. Do. do do. 2d Series. Do. do do. 3d Series. Do. do Bridal of Triermain. Do. do Harold the Dauntless. Do. do Sir Tristrem. Do. do Roderick Collection, Do. do Paul's Letters. Do. being one eighth of The Lay of the Last Minstrel. Do. being one half of The Lady of the Lake. Do. being one half of Rokeby. Do. being one half of The Lord of the Isles." The instrument contained a clause binding Messrs. Constable never to divulge the name of the Author of Waverley during his life, under a penalty of £2000. I may observe, that had these booksellers fulfilled their part of this agreement, by paying off, prior to their insolvency in 1826, the whole bonds for £12,000, which they signed on the 2d of February, 1819, no interest in the copyrights above specified could have been expected to revert to the Author of Waverley: but more of this in due season. He alludes to the progress of the treaty in the following letter to Captain Adam Ferguson, who had, as has already appeared, left Scotland with the Duke of Buccleuch. His Grace hearing, when in London, that one of the Barons of Exchequer at Edinburgh meant speedily to resign, the Captain had, by his desire, written to urge on Scott the propriety of renewing his application for a seat on that bench; which, however, Scott at once refused to do. There were several reasons for this abstinence; among others, he thought such a promotion at this time would interfere with a project which he had formed of joining "the Chief and the Aide-de-Camp" in the course of the spring, and accomplishing in their society the tour of Portugal and Spain--perhaps of Italy also. Some such excursion had been strongly recommended to him by his own physicians, as the likeliest means of interrupting those habits of sedulous exertion at the desk, which they all regarded as the true source of his recent ailments, and the only serious obstacle to his cure; and his standing as a Clerk of Session, considering how largely he had labored in that capacity for infirm brethren, would have easily secured him a twelve-month's leave of absence from the Judges of his Court. But the principal motive was, as we shall see, his reluctance to interfere with the claims of the then Sheriff of Mid-Lothian, his own and Ferguson's old friend and schoolfellow, Sir William Rae--who, however, accepted the more ambitious post of Lord Advocate, in the course of the ensuing summer. TO CAPTAIN ADAM FERGUSON, DITTON PARK, WINDSOR. 15th January, 1819. DEAR ADAM,--Many thanks for your kind letter, this moment received. I would not for the world stand in Jackie (I beg his pardon, Sir John) Peartree's way.[11] He has merited the cushion _en haut_, and besides he needs it. To me it would make little difference in point of income. The _otium cum dignitate_, if it ever come, will come as well years after this as now. Besides, I am afraid the opening will be soon made, through the death of our dear friend the Chief Baron, of whose health the accounts are unfavorable.[12] Immediate promotion would be inconvenient to me, rather than otherwise, because I have the desire, like an old fool as I am, _courir un peu le monde_. I am beginning to draw out from my literary commerce. Constable has offered me £10,000 for the copyrights of published works which have already produced more than twice the sum. I stand out for £12,000. Tell this to the Duke; he knows how I managed to keep the hen till the rainy day was past. I will write two lines to Lord Melville, just to make my bow for the present, resigning any claims I have through the patronage of my kindest and best friend, for I have no other, till the next opportunity. I should have been truly vexed if the Duke had thought of writing about this. I don't wish to hear from him till I can have his account of the lines of Torres Vedras. I care so little how or where I travel, that I am not sure at all whether I shall not come to Lisbon and surprise you, instead of going to Italy by Switzerland; that is, providing the state of Spain will allow me, without any unreasonable danger of my throat, to get from Lisbon to Madrid, and thence to Gibraltar. I am determined to roll a little about, for I have lost much of my usual views of summer pleasure here. But I trust we shall have one day the Maid of Lorn (recovered of her lameness), and Charlie Stuart (reconciled to bogs), and Sibyl Grey (no longer retrograde), and the Duke set up by a southern climate, and his military and civil aides-de-camp, with all the rout of younkers and dogs, and a brown hillside, introductory to a good dinner at Bowhill or Drumlanrig, and a merry evening. Amen, and God send it. As to my mouth being stopped with the froth of the title, that is, as the learned Partridge says, a _non sequitur_. You know the schoolboy's expedient of first asking mustard for his beef, and then beef for his mustard. Now, as they put the mustard on my plate, without my asking it, I shall consider myself, time and place serving, as entitled to ask a slice of beef; that is to say, I would do so if I cared much about it; but as it is, I trust it to time and chance, which, as you, dear Adam, know, have (added to the exertions of kind friends) been wonderful allies of mine. People usually wish their letters to come to hand, but I hope you will not receive this in Britain. I am impatient to hear you have sailed. All here are well and hearty. The Baronet[13] and I propose to go up to the Castle to-morrow to fix on the most convenient floor of the Crown House for your mansion, in hopes you will stand treat for gin-grog and Cheshire cheese on your return, to reward our labor. The whole expense will fall within the Treasury order, and it is important to see things made convenient. I will write a long letter to the Duke to Lisbon. Yours ever, WALTER SCOTT. P. S.--No news here, but that the goodly hulk of conceit and tallow, which was called Macculloch, of the Royal Hotel, Prince's Street, was put to bed dead-drunk on Wednesday night, and taken out the next morning dead-by-itself-dead. Mair skaith at Sheriffmuir. [Footnote 11: _Jackie Peartree_ had, it seems, been Sir William Rae's nickname at the High School. He probably owed it to some exploit in an orchard.] [Footnote 12: The Right Honorable Robert Dundas of Arniston, Chief Baron of the Scotch Exchequer, died 17th June, 1819. See _post_, p. 123.] [Footnote 13: Mr. William Clerk.] TO J. RICHARDSON, ESQ., FLUDYER STREET, WESTMINSTER. EDINBURGH, 18th January, 1819. MY DEAR RICHARDSON,--Many thanks for your kind letter. I own I did mystify Mrs. **** a little about the report you mention; and I am glad to hear the finesse succeeded.[14] She came up to me with a great overflow of gratitude for the delight and pleasure, and so forth, which she owed to me on account of these books. Now, as she knew very well that I had never owned myself the author, this was not _polite_ politeness, and she had no right to force me up into a corner and compel me to tell her a word more than I chose, upon a subject which concerned no one but myself--and I have no notion of being pumped by any old dowager Lady of Session, male or female. So I gave in dilatory defences, under protestation to add and eik; for I trust, in learning a new slang, you have not forgot the old. In plain words, I denied the charge, and as she insisted to know who else _could_ write these novels, I suggested Adam Ferguson as a person having all the information and capacity necessary for that purpose. But the inference that he _was_ the author was of her own deducing; and thus ended her attempt, notwithstanding her having primed the pump with a good dose of flattery. It is remarkable, that among all my real friends to whom I did not choose to communicate this matter, not one ever thought it proper or delicate to tease me about it. Respecting the knighthood, I can only say, that coming as it does, and I finding myself and my family in circumstances which will not render the _petit titre_ ridiculous, I think there would be more vanity in declining than in accepting what is offered to me by the express wish of the Sovereign as a mark of favor and distinction. Will you be so kind as to inquire and let me know what the fees, etc., of a baronetcy amount to--for I must provide myself accordingly, not knowing exactly when this same title may descend upon me. I am afraid the sauce is rather smart. I should like also to know what is to be done respecting registration of arms and so forth. Will you make these inquiries for me _sotto voce_? I should not suppose, from the persons who sometimes receive this honor, that there is any inquiry about descent or genealogy; mine were decent enough folks, and enjoyed the honor in the seventeenth century, so I shall not be first of the title; and it will sound like that of a Christian knight, as Sir Sidney Smith said. I had a letter from our immortal Joanna some fortnight since, when I was enjoying myself at Abbotsford. Never was there such a season, flowers springing, birds singing, grubs eating the wheat--as if it was the end of May. After all, nature had a grotesque and inconsistent appearance, and I could not help thinking she resembled a withered beauty who persists in looking youthy, and dressing conform thereto. I thought the loch should have had its blue frozen surface, and russet all about it, instead of an unnatural gayety of green. So much are we the children of habit, that we cannot always enjoy thoroughly the alterations which are most for our advantage.--They have filled up the historical chair here. I own I wish it had been with our friend Campbell, whose genius is such an honor to his country. But he has cast anchor I suppose in the south. Your friend, Mrs. Scott, was much cast down with her brother's death. His bequest to my family leaves my own property much at my own disposal, which is pleasant enough. I was foolish enough sometimes to be vexed at the prospect of my library being sold _sub hasta_, which is now less likely to happen. I always am, most truly yours, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 14: The wife of one of the Edinburgh Judges is alluded to.] On the 15th of February, 1819, Scott witnessed the first representation, on the Edinburgh boards, of the most meritorious and successful of all the _Terryfications_, though Terry himself was not the manufacturer. The drama of Rob Roy will never again be got up so well, in all its parts, as it then was by William Murray's company; the manager's own _Captain Thornton_ was excellent--and so was the _Dugald Creature_ of a Mr. Duff--there was also a good _Mattie_--(about whose equipment, by the bye, Scott felt such interest that he left his box between the acts to remind Mr. Murray that she "must have a mantle with her lanthorn;")--but the great and unrivalled attraction was the personification of _Bailie Jarvie_, by Charles Mackay, who, being himself a native of Glasgow, entered into the minutest peculiarities of the character with high _gusto_, and gave the west-country dialect in its most racy perfection. It was extremely diverting to watch the play of Scott's features during this admirable realization of his conception; and I must add, that the behavior of the Edinburgh audience on all such occasions, while the secret of the novels was preserved, reflected great honor on their good taste and delicacy of feeling. He seldom, in those days, entered his box without receiving some mark of general respect and admiration; but I never heard of any pretext being laid hold of to connect these demonstrations with the piece he had come to witness, or, in short, to do or say anything likely to interrupt his quiet enjoyment of the evening in the midst of his family and friends. The Rob Roy had a continued run of forty-one nights, during February and March; and it was played once a week, at least, for many years afterwards.[15] Mackay, of course, always selected it for his benefit;--and I now print from Scott's MS. a letter, which, no doubt, reached the mimic Bailie in the handwriting of one of the Ballantynes, on the first of these occurrences:-- [Footnote 15: "Between February 15, 1819, and March 14, 1837, _Rob Roy_ was played in the Theatre-Royal, Edinburgh, 285 times."--_Letter from Mr. W. Murray._ [Nicol Jarvie remained Mr. Mackay's masterpiece, but his Dominie Sampson and Meg Dods in the dramas founded on _Guy Mannering_ and _St. Ronan's Well_ were very successful. He died in Glasgow in 1857.]] TO MR. CHARLES MACKAY, THEATRE-ROYAL, EDIN{R}. (_Private._) FRIEND MACKAY,--My lawful occasions having brought me from my residence at Gandercleuch to this great city, it was my lot to fall into company with certain friends, who impetrated from me a consent to behold the stage-play, which hath been framed forth of an history entitled Rob (_seu potius_ Robert) Roy; which history, although it existeth not in mine erudite work, entitled Tales of my Landlord, hath nathless a near relation in style and structure to those pleasant narrations. Wherefore, having surmounted those arguments whilk were founded upon the unseemliness of a personage in my place and profession appearing in an open stage-play house, and having buttoned the terminations of my cravat into my bosom, in order to preserve mine incognito, and indued an outer coat over mine usual garments, so that the hue thereof might not betray my calling, I did place myself (much elbowed by those who little knew whom they did incommode) in that place of the Theatre called the two-shilling gallery, and beheld the show with great delectation, even from the rising of the curtain to the fall thereof. [Illustration: CHARLES MACKAY _From the painting by Sir D. Macnee_] Chiefly, my facetious friend, was I enamored of the very lively representation of Bailie Nicol Jarvie, in so much that I became desirous to communicate to thee my great admiration thereof, nothing doubting that it will give thee satisfaction to be apprised of the same. Yet further, in case thou shouldst be of that numerous class of persons who set less store by good words than good deeds, and understanding that there is assigned unto each stage-player a special night, called a benefit (it will do thee no harm to know that the phrase cometh from two Latin words, _bene_ and _facio_), on which their friends and patrons show forth their benevolence, I now send thee mine in the form of a five-ell web (_hoc jocose_, to express a note for £5), as a meet present for the Bailie, himself a weaver, and the son of a worthy deacon of that craft. The which propine I send thee in token that it is my purpose, business and health permitting, to occupy the central place of the pit on the night of thy said beneficiary or benefit. Friend Mackay! from one, whose profession it is to teach others, thou must excuse the freedom of a caution. I trust thou wilt remember that, as excellence in thine art cannot be attained without much labor, so neither can it be extended, or even maintained, without constant and unremitted exertion; and further, that the decorum of a performer's private character (and it gladdeth me to hear that thine is respectable) addeth not a little to the value of his public exertions. Finally, in respect there is nothing perfect in this world,--at least I have never received a wholly faultless version from the very best of my pupils--I pray thee not to let Rob Roy twirl thee around in the ecstasy of thy joy, in regard it oversteps the limits of nature, which otherwise thou so sedulously preservest in thine admirable national portraiture of Bailie Nicol Jarvie.--I remain thy sincere friend and well-wisher, JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM. CHAPTER XLIV Recurrence of Scott's Illness. -- Death of the Duke of Buccleuch. -- Letters to Captain Ferguson, Lord Montagu, Mr. Southey, and Mr. Shortreed. -- Scott's Sufferings while Dictating the Bride of Lammermoor. -- Anecdotes by James Ballantyne, Etc. -- Appearance of the Third Series of Tales of My Landlord. -- Anecdote of the Earl of Buchan. 1819 It had been Scott's purpose to spend the Easter vacation in London, and receive his baronetcy; but this was prevented by the serious recurrence of the malady which so much alarmed his friends in the early part of the year 1817, and which had continued ever since to torment him at intervals. The subsequent correspondence will show that afflictions of various sorts were accumulated on his head at the same period:-- TO THE LORD MONTAGU, DITTON PARK, WINDSOR. EDINBURGH, 4th March, 1819. MY DEAR LORD,--The Lord President tells me he has a letter from his son, Captain Charles Hope, R. N., who had just taken leave of our High Chief, upon the deck of the Liffey. He had not seen the Duke for a fortnight, and was pleasingly surprised to find his health and general appearance so very much improved. For my part, having watched him with such unremitting attention, I feel very confident in the effect of a change of air and of climate. It is with great pleasure that I find the Duke has received an answer from me respecting a matter about which he was anxious, and on which I could make his mind quite easy. His Grace wished Adam Ferguson to assist him as his confidential secretary; and with all the scrupulous delicacy that belongs to his character, he did not like to propose this, except through my medium as a common friend. Now, I can answer for Adam, as I can for myself, that he will have the highest pleasure in giving assistance in every possible way the Duke can desire; and if forty years' intimacy can entitle one man to speak for another, I believe the Duke can find nowhere a person so highly qualified for such a confidential situation. He was educated for business, understands it well, and was long a military secretary;--his temper and manners your Lordship can judge as well as I can, and his worth and honor are of the very first water. I confess I should not be surprised if the Duke should wish to continue the connection even afterwards, for I have often thought that two hours' letter-writing, which is his Grace's daily allowance, is rather worse than the duty of a Clerk of Session, because there is no vacation. Much of this might surely be saved by an intelligent friend, on whose style of expression, prudence, and secrecy, his Grace could put perfect reliance. Two words marked on any letter by his own hand would enable such a person to refuse more or less positively--to grant directly or conditionally--or, in short, to maintain the exterior forms of the very troublesome and extensive correspondence which his Grace's high situation entails upon him. I think it is Monsieur le Duc de Saint-Simon who tells us of one of Louis XIV.'s ministers _qu'il avoit la plume_--which he explains by saying that it was his duty to imitate the King's handwriting so closely, as to be almost undistinguishable, and make him on all occasions _parler très noblement_. I wonder how the Duke gets on without such a friend. In the mean time, however, I am glad I can assure him of Ferguson's willing and ready assistance while abroad; and I am happy to find still further that he had got that assurance before they sailed, for tedious hours occur on board of ship, when it will serve as a relief to talk over any of the private affairs which the Duke wishes to entrust to him. I have been very unwell from a visitation of my old enemy, the cramp in my stomach, which much resembles, as I conceive, the process by which _the deil_ would make one's _king's-hood_ into a _spleuchan_,[16] according to the anathema of Burns. Unfortunately, the opiates which the medical people think indispensable to relieve spasms, bring on a habit of body which has to be counteracted by medicines of a different tendency, so as to produce a most disagreeable see-saw--a kind of pull-devil, pull-baker contention, the field of battle being my unfortunate _præcordia_. I am better to-day, and I trust shall be able to dispense with these alternations. I still hope to be in London in April. I will write to the Duke regularly, for distance of place acts in a contrary ratio on the mind and on the eye: trifles, instead of being diminished, as in prospect, become important and interesting, and therefore he shall have a budget of them. Hogg is here busy with his Jacobite songs. I wish he may get handsomely through, for he is profoundly ignorant of history, and it is an awkward thing to read in order that you may write.[17] I give him all the help I can, but he sometimes poses me. For instance, he came yesterday, open mouth, inquiring what great dignified clergyman had distinguished himself at Killiecrankie--not exactly the scene where one would have expected a churchman to shine--and I found, with some difficulty, that he had mistaken Major-General Canon, called, in Kennedy's Latin Song, _Canonicus Gallovidiensis_, for the canon of a cathedral. _Ex ungue leonem._ Ever, my dear Lord, your truly obliged and faithful WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 16: _King's-Hood_--"The second of the four stomachs of ruminating animals." JAMIESON.--_Spleuchan_--The Gaelic name of the Highlander's tobacco-pouch.] [Footnote 17: "I am sure I produced two volumes of Jacobite Relics, such as no man in Scotland or England could have produced but myself." So says Hogg, _ipse_--see his _Autobiography_, 1832, p. 88. I never saw the Shepherd so elated as he was on the appearance of a very severe article on this book in the _Edinburgh Review_; for, to his exquisite delight, the hostile critic selected for _exceptive_ encomium one "old Jacobite strain," namely, _Donald M'Gillavry_, which Hogg had fabricated the year before. Scott, too, enjoyed this joke almost as much as the Shepherd.] Before this letter reached Lord Montagu, his brother had sailed for Lisbon. The Duke of Wellington had placed his house in that capital (the Palace _das Necessidades_) at the Duke of Buccleuch's disposal; and in the affectionate care and cheerful society of Captain Ferguson, the invalid had every additional source of comfort that his friends could have wished for him. But the malady had gone too far to be arrested by a change of climate; and the letter which he had addressed to Scott, when about to embark at Portsmouth, is endorsed with these words: "_The last I ever received from my dear friend the Duke of Buccleuch.--Alas! alas!_" The principal object of this letter was to remind Scott of his promise to sit to Raeburn for a portrait, to be hung up in that favorite residence where the Duke had enjoyed most of his society. "My prodigious undertaking," writes his Grace, "of a west wing at Bowhill, is begun. A library of forty-one feet by twenty-one is to be added to the present drawing-room. A space for one picture is reserved over the fireplace, and in this warm situation I intend to place the Guardian of Literature. I should be happy to have my friend Maida appear. It is now almost proverbial, 'Walter Scott and his Dog.' Raeburn should be warned that I am as well acquainted with my friend's hands and arms as with his nose--and Vandyke was of my opinion. Many of R.'s works are shamefully finished--the face studied, but everything else neglected. This is a fair opportunity of producing something really worthy of his skill." I shall insert by and by Scott's answer--which never reached the Duke's hand--with another letter of the same date to Captain Ferguson; but I must first introduce one, addressed a fortnight earlier to Mr. Southey, who had been distressed by the accounts he received of Scott's health from an American traveller, Mr. George Ticknor of Boston--a friend, and worthy to be such, of Mr. Washington Irving.[18] The Poet Laureate, by the way, had adverted also to an impudent trick of a London bookseller, who shortly before this time announced certain volumes of Grub Street manufacture, as "A New Series of the Tales of my Landlord," and who, when John Ballantyne, as the "agent for the Author of Waverley," published a declaration that the volumes thus advertised were not from that writer's pen, met John's declaration by an audacious rejoinder--impeaching his authority, and asserting that nothing but the personal appearance in the field of the gentleman for whom Ballantyne pretended to act, could shake his belief that he was himself in the confidence of the true Simon Pure.[19] This affair gave considerable uneasiness at the time, and for a moment the dropping of Scott's mask seems to have been pronounced advisable by both Ballantyne and Constable. But he was not to be worked upon by such means as these. He calmly replied, "The author who lends himself to such a trick must be a blockhead--let them publish, and that will serve our purpose better than anything we ourselves could do." I have forgotten the names of the "tales," which, being published accordingly, fell still-born from the press. Mr. Southey had likewise dropped some allusions to another newspaper story of Scott's being seriously engaged in a dramatic work--a rumor which probably originated in the assistance he had lent to Terry in some of the recent highly popular adaptations of his novels to the purposes of the stage; though it is not impossible that some hint of the _Devorgoil_ matter may have transpired. "It is reported," said the Laureate, "that you are about to bring forth a play, and I am greatly in hopes it may be true; for I am verily persuaded that in this course you might run as brilliant a career as you have already done in narrative--both in prose and rhyme;--for as for believing that you have a double in the field--not I! Those same powers would be equally certain of success in the drama, and were you to give them a dramatic direction, and reign for a third seven years upon the stage, you would stand alone in literary history. Indeed already I believe that no man ever afforded so much delight to so great a number of his contemporaries in this or in any other country. God bless you, my dear Scott, and believe me ever yours affectionately, R. S." Mr. Southey's letter had further announced his wife's safe delivery of a son; the approach of the conclusion of his History of Brazil; and his undertaking of the Life of Wesley. [Footnote 18: [In _The Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor_ will be found some interesting notes regarding his visits to Castle Street, and two days spent at Abbotsford in March, 1819.]] [Footnote 19: June, 1839.--A friend has sent me the following advertisement from an Edinburgh newspaper of 1819:-- TALES OF MY LANDLORD. "The Public are respectfully informed, that the Work announced for publication under the title of 'TALES OF MY LANDLORD, Fourth Series, containing _Pontefract Castle_,' is not written by the Author of the First, Second, and Third Series of TALES OF MY LANDLORD, of which we are the Proprietors and Publishers. ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO."] TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ., KESWICK. ABBOTSFORD, 4th April, 1819. MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--Tidings from you must be always acceptable, even were the bowl in the act of breaking at the fountain--and my health is at present very _totterish_. I have gone through a cruel succession of spasms and sickness, which have terminated in a special fit of the jaundice, so that I might sit for the image of Plutus, the god of specie, so far as complexion goes. I shall like our American acquaintance the better that he has sharpened your remembrance of me, but he is also a wondrous fellow for romantic lore and antiquarian research, considering his country. I have now seen four or five well-lettered Americans, ardent in pursuit of knowledge, and free from the ignorance and forward presumption which distinguish many of their countrymen. I hope they will inoculate their country with a love of letters, so nearly allied to a desire of peace and a sense of public justice--virtues to which the great Transatlantic community is more strange than could be wished. Accept my best and most sincere wishes for the health and strength of your latest pledge of affection. When I think what you have already suffered, I can imagine with what mixture of feelings this event must necessarily affect you; but you need not to be told that we are in better guidance than our own. I trust in God this late blessing will be permanent, and inherit your talents and virtues. When I look around me, and see how many men seem to make it their pride to misuse high qualifications, can I be less interested than I truly am in the fate of one who has uniformly dedicated his splendid powers to maintaining the best interests of humanity? I am very angry at the time you are to be in London, as I must be there in about a fortnight, or so soon as I can shake off this depressing complaint, and it would add not a little that I should meet you there. My chief purpose is to put my eldest son into the army. I could have wished he had chosen another profession, but have no title to combat a choice which would have been my own had my lameness permitted. Walter has apparently the dispositions and habits fitted for the military profession, a very quiet and steady temper, an attachment to mathematics and their application, good sense, and uncommon personal strength and activity, with address in most exercises, particularly horsemanship. --I had written thus far last week when I was interrupted, first by the arrival of our friend Ticknor with Mr. Cogswell, another well-accomplished Yankee--(by the bye, we have them of all sorts, _e. g._, one Mr. ****, rather a fine man, whom the girls have christened, with some humor, the Yankee Doodle _Dandie_). They have had Tom Drum's entertainment, for I have been seized with one or two successive _crises_ of my cruel malady, lasting in the utmost anguish from eight to ten hours. If I had not the strength of a team of horses, I could never have fought through it, and through the heavy fire of medical 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-gallant. I should be a great fool, and a most ungrateful wretch, to complain of such inflictions 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; and so I can look forward to the possible conclusion of these scenes of agony with reasonable equanimity, and suffer chiefly through the sympathetic distress of my family. --Other ten days have passed away, for I would not send this Jeremiad to tease you, while its termination seemed doubtful. For the present, "The game is done--I've won, I've won, Quoth she, and whistles thrice."[20] I am this day, for the first time, free from the relics of my disorder, and, except in point of weakness, perfectly well. But no broken-down hunter had ever so many sprung sinews, whelks, and bruises. I am like Sancho after the doughty affair of the Yanguesian Carriers, and all through the unnatural twisting of the muscles under the influence of that _Goule_, the cramp. I must be swathed in Goulard and Rosemary spirits--_probatum est_. I shall not fine and renew a lease of popularity upon the theatre. To write for low, ill-informed, and conceited actors, whom you must please, for your success is necessarily at their mercy, I cannot away with. How would you, or how do you think I should relish being the object of such a letter as Kean[21] wrote t'other day to a poor author, who, though a pedantic blockhead, had at least the right to be treated as a gentleman by a copper-laced, twopenny tearmouth, rendered mad by conceit and success? Besides, if this objection were out of the way, I do not think the character of the audience in London is such that one could have the least pleasure in pleasing them. One half come to prosecute their debaucheries, so openly that it would degrade a bagnio. Another set to snooze off their beef-steaks and port wine; a third are critics of the fourth column of the newspaper; fashion, wit, or literature, there is not; and, on the whole, I would far rather write verses for mine honest friend Punch and his audience. The only thing that could tempt me to be so silly, would be to assist a friend in such a degrading task who was to have the whole profit and shame of it. Have you seen decidedly the most full and methodized collection of Spanish romances (ballads) published by the industry of Depping (Altenburgh and Leipsic), 1817? It is quite delightful. Ticknor had set me agog to see it, without affording me any hope it could be had in London, when by one of these fortunate chances which have often marked my life, a friend, who had been lately on the Continent, came unexpectedly to inquire for me, and plucked it forth _par manière de cadeau_. God prosper you, my dear Southey, in your labors; but do not work too hard--_experto crede_. This conclusion, as well as the confusion of my letter, like the Bishop of Grenada's sermon, savors of the apoplexy. My most respectful compliments attend Mrs. S. Yours truly, WALTER SCOTT. P. S.--I shall long to see the conclusion of the Brazil history, which, as the interest comes nearer, must rise even above the last noble volume. Wesley you alone can touch; but will you not have the hive about you? When I was about twelve years old, I heard him preach more than once, standing on a chair, in Kelso churchyard. He was a most venerable figure, but his sermons were vastly too colloquial for the taste of Saunders. He told many excellent stories. One I remember, which he said had happened to him at Edinburgh. "A drunken dragoon," said Wesley, "was commencing an assertion in military fashion, G--d eternally d--n me, just as I was passing. I touched the poor man on the shoulder, and when he turned round fiercely, said calmly, you mean _God bless you_." In the mode of telling the story he failed not to make us sensible how much his patriarchal appearance, and mild yet bold rebuke, overawed the soldier, who touched his hat, thanked him, and, I think, came to chapel that evening. [Footnote 20: These lines are from Coleridge's _Ancient Mariner_.] [Footnote 21: The reader will find something about this actor's quarrel with Mr. Bucke, author of _The Italians_, in Barry Cornwall's _Life of Kean_, vol. ii. p. 178.] TO ROBERT SHORTREED, ESQ., SHERIFF-SUBSTITUTE, ETC., JEDBURGH. ABBOTSFORD, 13th April, 1819. DEAR BOB,--I am very desirous to procure, and as soon as possible, Mrs. Shortreed's excellent receipt for making yeast. The Duke of Buccleuch complains extremely of the sour yeast at Lisbon as disagreeing with his stomach, and I never tasted half such good bread as Mrs. Shortreed has baked at home. I am sure you will be as anxious as I am that the receipt should be forwarded to his Grace as soon as possible. I remember Mrs. Shortreed giving a most distinct account of the whole affair. It should be copied over in a very distinct hand, lest Monsieur Florence makes blunders. I am recovering from my late indisposition, but as weak as water. To write these lines is a fatigue. I scarce think I can be at the circuit at all--certainly only for an hour or two. So on this occasion I will give Mrs. Shortreed's kind hospitality a little breathing time. I am tired even with writing these few lines. Yours ever, WALTER SCOTT.[22] [Footnote 22: "Sir Walter got not only the recipe for making bread from us--but likewise learnt the best mode of cutting it 'in a family way.' The breadboard and large knife used at Abbotsford at breakfast-time were adopted by Sir Walter, after seeing them 'work well' in our family."--_Note by Mr. Andrew Shortreed._] TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH, ETC., LISBON. ABBOTSFORD, 15th April, 1819. MY DEAR LORD DUKE,--How very strange it seems that this should be the first letter I address to your Grace, and you so long absent from Scotland, and looking for all the news and nonsense of which I am in general such a faithful reporter. Alas, I have been ill--very--very ill--only Dr. Baillie says there is nothing of consequence about my malady _except the pain_--a pretty exception--said pain being intense enough to keep me roaring as loud as your Grace's _ci-devant_ John of Lorn, and of, generally speaking, from six to eight hours' incessant duration, only varied by intervals of deadly sickness. Poor Sophia was alone with me for some time, and managed a half-distracted pack of servants with spirit, and sense, and presence of mind, far beyond her years, never suffering her terror at seeing me in a state so new to her, and so alarming, to divert her mind an instant from what was fit and proper to be done. Pardon this side compliment to your Grace's little Jacobite, to whom you have always been so kind. If sympathy could have cured me, I should not have been long ill. Gentle and simple were all equally kind, and even old Tom Watson crept down from Falshope to see how I was coming on, and to ejaculate "if anything ailed the Shirra, it would be sair on the Duke." The only unwelcome resurrection was that of old ****, whose feud with me (or rather dryness) I had well hoped was immortal; but he came jinking over the moor with daughters and ponies, and God knows what, to look after my precious health. I cannot tolerate that man; it seems to me as if I hated him for things not only past and present, but for some future offence, which is as yet in the womb of fate. I have had as many remedies sent me for cramp and jaundice as would set up a quack doctor: three from Mrs. Plummer, each better than the other--one at least from every gardener in the neighborhood--besides all sorts of recommendations to go to Cheltenham, to Harrowgate, to Jericho for aught I know. Now if there is one thing I detest more than another, it is a watering-place, unless a very pleasant party be previously formed, when, as Tony Lumpkin says, "a gentleman may be in a concatenation." The most extraordinary recipe was that of my Highland piper, John Bruce, who spent a whole Sunday in selecting twelve stones from twelve _south-running_ streams, with the purpose that I should sleep upon them, and be whole. I caused him to be told that the recipe was infallible, but that it was absolutely necessary to success that the stones should be wrapt up in the petticoat of a widow who had never wished to marry again; upon which the piper renounced all hope of completing the charm. I had need of a softer couch than Bruce had destined me, for so general was the tension of the nerves all over the body, although the pain of the spasms in the stomach did not suffer the others to be felt, that my whole left leg was covered with swelling and inflammation, arising from the unnatural action of the muscles, and I had to be carried about like a child. My right leg escaped better, the muscles there having less irritability, owing to its lame state. Your Grace may imagine the energy of pain in the nobler parts, when cramps in the extremities, sufficient to produce such effects, were unnoticed by me during their existence. But enough of so disagreeable a subject. Respecting the portrait, I shall be equally proud and happy to sit for it, and hope it may be so executed as to be in some degree worthy of the preferment to which it is destined.[23] But neither my late golden hue (for I was covered with jaundice), nor my present silver complexion (looking much more like a spectre than a man), will present any idea of my quondam beef-eating physiognomy. I must wait till the _age of brass_, the true juridical bronze of my profession, shall again appear on my frontal. I hesitate a little about Raeburn, unless your Grace is quite determined. He has very much to do; works just now chiefly for cash, poor fellow, as he can have but a few years to make money; and has twice already made a very chowder-headed person of me. I should like much (always with your approbation) to try Allan, who is a man of real genius, and has made one or two glorious portraits, though his predilection is to the historical branch of the art. We did rather a handsome thing for him, considering that in Edinburgh we are neither very wealthy nor great amateurs. A hundred persons subscribed ten guineas apiece to raffle[24] for his fine picture of the Circassian Chief selling Slaves to the Turkish Pacha--a beautiful and highly poetical picture. There was another small picture added by way of second prize, and, what is curious enough, the only two peers on the list, Lord Wemyss and Lord Fife, both got prizes. Allan has made a sketch which I shall take to town with me when I can go, in hopes Lord Stafford, or some other picture-buyer, may fancy it, and order a picture. The subject is the murder of Archbishop Sharp on Magus Moor, prodigiously well treated. The savage ferocity of the assassins, crowding one on another to strike at the old prelate on his knees--contrasted with the old man's figure--and that of his daughter endeavoring to interpose for his protection, and withheld by a ruffian of milder mood than his fellows:--the dogged fanatical severity of Rathillet's countenance, who remained on horseback, witnessing, with stern fanaticism, the murder he did not choose to be active in, lest it should be said that he struck out of private revenge--are all amazingly well combined in the sketch. I question if the artist can bring them out with equal spirit in the painting which he meditates.[25] Sketches give a sort of fire to the imagination of the spectator, who is apt to fancy a great deal more for himself, than the pencil, in the finished picture, can possibly present to his eye afterwards.--Constable has offered Allan three hundred pounds to make sketches for an edition of the Tales of my Landlord, and other novels of that cycle, and says he will give him the same sum next year, so, from being pinched enough, this very deserving artist suddenly finds himself at his ease. He was long at Odessa with the Duke of Richelieu, and is a very entertaining person. [Footnote 23: The position in the Library at Bowhill, originally destined by the late Duke of Buccleuch for a portrait that never was executed, is now filled by that which Raeburn painted in 1808 for Constable.] [Footnote 24: Three pictures were ultimately raffled for; and the following note, dated April the 1st, 1819, shows how keenly and practically Scott, almost in the crisis of his malady, could attend to the details of such a business:-- TO J. G. LOCKHART, ESQ., ADVOCATE, EDINBURGH. ... I have been dreadfully ill since I wrote to you, but I think I have now got the turn fairly. It was quite time, for though the doctors say the disease is not dangerous, yet I could not have endured six days more agony. I have a summons from the ingenious Mr. David Bridges to attend to my interests at his shop next Saturday, or send some qualified person to act on my behalf. I suppose that this mysterious missive alludes to the plan about Allan's pictures, and at any rate I hope you will act for me. I should think a raffle with dice would give more general satisfaction than a lottery. Yon would be astonished what unhandsome suspicions well-educated and sensible persons will take into their heads, when a selfish competition awakens the mean and evil passions of our nature. Let each subscriber throw the dice in person or by proxy, leaving out all who throw under a certain number, and let this be repeated till the number is so far reduced that the three who throw highest may hold the prizes. I have much to say to you, and should you spare me a day about the end of next week, I trust you will find me pretty _bobbish_. Always yours affectionately, W. S. The Mr. David Bridges here mentioned has occurred already.--See _ante_, vol. v. p. 262. The jokers in _Blackwood_ made him happy by dubbing him, "The Director-General of the Fine Arts for Scotland."--He says the subscribers for the Allan-Raffle were not so numerous as Scott had supposed. (Mr. Bridges died in November, 1840, in his 64th year.)] [Footnote 25: The fine picture which Allan executed is in the possession of Mr. Lockhart of Milton-Lockhart, and has been well engraved.] I saw with great pleasure Wilkie's sketch of your Grace, and I think when I get to town I shall coax him out of a copy, to me invaluable. I hope, however, when you return, you will sit to Lawrence. We should have at least one picture of your Grace from the real good hand. Sooth to speak, I cannot say much for the juvenile representations at Bowhill and in the library at Dalkeith. Return, however, with the original features in good health, and we shall not worry you about portraits. The library at Bowhill will be a delightful room, and will be some consolation to me who must, I fear, lose for some time the comforts of the eating-room, and substitute panada and toast and water for the bonny haunch and buxom bottle of claret. Truth is, I must make great restrictions on my creature-comforts, at least till my stomach recovers its tone and ostrich-like capacity of digestion. Our spring here is slow, but not unfavorable: the country looking very well, and my plantings for the season quite completed. I have planted quite up two little glens, leading from the Aide-de-Camp's habitation up to the little loch, and expect the blessings of posterity for the shade and shelter I shall leave, where, God knows, I found none. It is doomed this letter is not to close without a request. I conclude your Grace has already heard from fifty applicants that the kirk of Middlebie is vacant, and I come forward as the fifty-first (always barring prior engagements and better claims) in behalf of George Thomson, a son of the minister of Melrose, being the grinder of my boys, and therefore deeply entitled to my gratitude and my good offices, as far as they can go. He is nearer Parson Abraham Adams than any living creature I ever saw--very learned, very religious, very simple, and extremely absent. His father, till very lately, had but a sort of half stipend, during the incumbency of a certain notorious Mr. MacLagan, to whom he acted only as assistant. The poor devil was brought to the grindstone (having had the want of precaution to beget a large family), and became the very figure of a fellow who used to come upon the stage to sing "Let us all be unhappy together." This poor lad George was his saving angel, not only educating himself, but taking on him the education of two of his brothers, and maintaining them out of his own scanty pittance. He is a sensible lad, and by no means a bad preacher, a stanch Anti-Gallican, and orthodox in his principles. Should your Grace find yourself at liberty to give countenance to this very innocent and deserving creature, I need not say it will add to the many favors you have conferred on me; but I hope the parishioners will have also occasion to say, "Weel bobbit, George of Middlebie." Your Grace's Aide-de-Camp, who knows young Thomson well, will give you a better idea of him than I can do. He lost a leg by an accident in his boyhood, which spoiled as bold and fine-looking a grenadier as ever charged bayonet against a Frenchman's throat. I think your Grace will not like him the worse for having a spice of military and loyal spirit about him. If you knew the poor fellow, your Grace would take uncommon interest in him, were it but for the odd mixture of sense and simplicity, and spirit and good morals. Somewhat too much of him. I conclude you will go to Mafra, Cintra, or some of these places, which Baretti describes so delightfully, to avoid the great heats, when the Palace de las Necessidades must become rather oppressive. By the bye, though it were only for the credit of the name, I am happy to learn it has that useful English comfort, a water-closet. I suppose the armorer of the Liffey has already put it in complete repair. Your Grace sees the most secret passages respecting great men cannot be hidden from their friends. There is but little news here but death in the clan. Harden's sister is dead--a cruel blow to Lady Die,[26] who is upwards of eighty-five, and accustomed to no other society. Again, Mrs. Frank Scott, his uncle's widow, is dead, unable to survive the loss of two fine young men in India, her sons, whose death closely followed each other. All this is sad work; but it is a wicked and melancholy world we live in. God bless you, my dear, dear Lord. Take great care of your health for the sake of all of us. You are the breath of our nostrils, useful to thousands, and to many of these thousands indispensable. I will write again very soon, when I can keep my breast longer to the desk without pain, for I am not yet without frequent relapses, when they souse me into scalding water without a moment's delay, where I lie, as my old _grieve_ Tom Purdie said last night, being called to assist at the operation, "like a _haulded saumon_." I write a few lines to the Aide-de-Camp, but I am afraid of putting this letter beyond the bounds of Lord Montagu's frank. When I can do anything for your Grace here, you know I am most pleased and happy.--Ever respectfully and affectionately your Grace's WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 26: See _ante_, vol. i. p. 230.] TO CAPTAIN ADAM FERGUSON, ETC., ETC., ETC. ABBOTSFORD, April 16, 1819. MY DEAR ADAM,--Having only been able last night to finish a long letter to the Chief, I now add a few lines for the Aide-de-Camp. I have had the pleasure to hear of you regularly from Jack,[27] who is very regular in steering this way when packets arrive; and I observe with great satisfaction that you think our good Duke's health is on the mending hand. Climate must operate as an alterative, and much cannot perhaps be expected from it at first. Besides, the great heat must be a serious drawback. But I hope you will try by and by to get away to Cintra, or some of those sequestered retreats where there are shades and cascades to cool the air. I have an idea the country there is eminently beautiful. I am afraid the Duke has not yet been able to visit Torres Vedras, but _you_ must be meeting with things everywhere to put you in mind of former scenes. As for the Senhoras, I have little doubt that the difference betwixt your military hard fare and Florence's high sauces and jellies will make them think that time has rather improved an old friend than otherwise. Apropos of these ticklish subjects. I am a suitor to the Duke, with little expectation of success (for I know his engagements), for the kirk of Middlebie to George Thomson, the very Abraham Adams of Presbytery. If the Duke mentions him to you (not otherwise) pray lend him a lift. With a kirk and a manse the poor fellow might get a good farmer's daughter, and beget grenadiers for his Majesty's service. But as I said before, I dare say all St. Hubert's black pack are in full cry upon the living, and that he has little or no chance. It is something, however, to have tabled him, as better may come of it another day. All at Huntly Burn well and hearty, and most kind in their attentions during our late turmoils. Bauby[28] came over to offer her services as sick-nurse, and I have drunk scarce anything but delicious ginger-beer of Miss Bell's brewing, since my troubles commenced. They have been, to say the least, damnable; and I think you would hardly know me. When I crawl out on Sibyl Grey, I am the very image of Death on the pale horse--lanthorn-jawed, decayed in flesh, stooping as if I meant to eat the pony's ears, and unable to go above a footpace. But although I have had, and must expect, frequent relapses, yet the attacks are more slight, and I trust I shall mend with the good weather. Spring sets in very pleasantly, and in a settled fashion. I have planted a number of shrubs, etc., at Huntly Burn, and am snodding up the drive of the old farmhouse, enclosing the Toftfield, and making a good road from the parish road to your gate. This I tell you to animate you to pick up a few seeds both of forest trees, shrubs, and vegetables; we will rear them in the hot-house, and divide honorably. _Avis au lecteur._ I have been a good deal entrusted to the care of Sophia, who is an admirable sick-nurse. Mamma has been called to town by two important avocations: to get a cook--no joking matter,--and to see Charles, who was but indifferent, but has recovered. You must have heard of the death of Joseph Hume, David's only son. Christ! what a calamity!--just entering life with the fairest prospects--full of talent, and the heir of an old and considerable family--a fine career before him: all this he was one day, or rather one hour--or rather in the course of five minutes--so sudden was the death--and then--a heap of earth. His disease is unknown; something about the heart, I believe; but it had no alarming appearance, nothing worse than a cold and sore throat, when convulsions came, and death ensued. It is a complete smash to poor David, who had just begun to hold his head up after his wife's death. But he bears it stoutly, and goes about his business as usual. A woeful case. London is now out of the question with me; I have no prospect of being now able to stand the journey by sea or land; but the best is, I have no pressing business there. The Commie[29] takes charge of Walter's matters--cannot, you know, be in better hands; and Lord Melville talks of gazetting _quam primum_. I will write a long letter very soon, but my back, fingers, and eyes ache with these three pages. All here send love and fraternity. Yours ever most truly, WALTER SCOTT. P. S.--By the bye, old Kennedy, the tinker, swam for his life at Jedburgh, and was only, by the sophisticated and timid evidence of a seceding doctor, who differed from all his brethren, saved from a well-deserved gibbet. He goes to botanize for fourteen years. Pray tell this to the Duke, for he was "An old soldier of the Duke's, And the Duke's old soldier." Six of his brethren, I am told, were in court, and kith and kin without end. I am sorry so many of the clan are left. The cause of quarrel with the murdered man was an old feud between two gypsy clans, the Kennedies and Irvings, which, about forty years since, gave rise to a desperate quarrel and battle on Hawick Green, in which the grandfathers of both Kennedy, and Irving whom he murdered, were engaged. [Footnote 27: Captain John Ferguson, R. N.] [Footnote 28: Bauby--_i. e._, Barbara, was a kind old housekeeper of the Miss Fergusons.] [Footnote 29: The Lord Chief-Commissioner Adam.] In the next of these letters there is allusion to a drama, on the story of The Heart of Mid-Lothian, of which Mr. Terry had transmitted the MS. to Abbotsford--and which ultimately proved very successful. Terry had, shortly before this time, become the acting manager of the Haymarket Theatre. TO D. TERRY, ESQ., HAYMARKET, LONDON. ABBOTSFORD, 18th April, 1819. DEAR TERRY,--I am able (though very weak) to answer your kind inquiries. I have thought of you often, and been on the point of writing or dictating a letter, but till very lately I could have had little to tell you of but distress and agony, with constant relapses into my unhappy malady, so that for weeks I seemed to lose rather than gain ground, all food nauseating on my stomach, and my clothes hanging about me like a potato-bogle,[30] with from five or six to ten hours of mortal pain every third day; latterly the fits have been much milder, and have at last given way to the hot bath without any use of opiates; an immense point gained, as they hurt my general health extremely. Conceive my having taken, in the course of six or seven hours, six grains of opium, three of hyoscyamus, near 200 drops of laudanum--and all without any sensible relief of the agony under which I labored. My stomach is now getting confirmed, and I have great hopes the bout is over; it has been a dreadful set-to. I am sorry to hear Mrs. Terry is complaining; you ought not to let her labor, neither at Abbotsford sketches nor at anything else, but to study to keep her mind amused as much as possible. As for Walter, he is a shoot of an _Aik_,[31] and I have no fear of him: I hope he remembers Abbotsford and his soldier namesake. I send the MS.--I wish you had written for it earlier. My touching, or even thinking of it, was out of the question; my corrections would have smelled as cruelly of the cramp as the Bishop of Grenada's homily did of the apoplexy. Indeed I hold myself inadequate to estimate those criticisms which rest on stage effect, having been of late very little of a play-going person. Would to Heaven these sheets could do for you what Rob Roy has done for Murray; he has absolutely netted upwards of £3000: to be sure, the man who played the Bailie made a piece of acting equal to whatever has been seen in the profession. For my own part, I was actually electrified by the truth, spirit, and humor which he threw into the part. It was the living Nicol Jarvie: conceited, pragmatical, cautious, generous, proud of his connection with Rob Roy, frightened for him at the same time, and yet extremely desirous to interfere with him as an adviser: the tone in which he seemed to give him up for a lost man after having provoked him into some burst of Highland violence, "Ah Rab! Rab!" was quite inimitable. I do assure you I never saw a thing better played. It is like it may be his only part, for no doubt the Patavinity and knowledge of the provincial character may have aided him much; but still he must be a wonderful fellow; and the houses he drew were tremendous. I am truly glad you are settled in London--"a rolling stone"--"the proverb is something musty:"[32] it is always difficult to begin a new profession; I could have wished you quartered nearer us, but we shall always hear of you. The becoming stage-manager at the Haymarket I look upon as a great step: well executed, it cannot but lead to something of the same kind elsewhere. You must be aware of stumbling over a propensity which easily besets you from the habit of not having your time fully employed--I mean what the women very expressively call _dawdling_. Your motto must be _Hoc age_. Do instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of reflection or recreation after business, and never before it. When a regiment is under march, the rear is often thrown into confusion because the front do not move steadily and without interruption. It is the same thing with business. If that which is first in hand is not instantly, steadily, and regularly despatched, other things accumulate behind till affairs begin to press all at once, and no human brain can stand the confusion: pray mind this, it is one of your few weak points--ask Mrs. Terry else. A habit of the mind it is which is very apt to beset men of intellect and talent, especially when their time is not regularly filled up, but left at their own arrangement. But it is like the ivy round the oak, and ends by limiting, if it does not destroy, the power of manly and necessary exertion. I must love a man so well to whom I offer such a word of advice, that I will not apologize for it, but expect to hear you are become as regular as a Dutch clock--hours, quarters, minutes, all marked and appropriated. This is a great cast in life, and must be played with all skill and caution. We wish much to have a plan of the great bed, that we may hang up the tester. Mr. Atkinson offered to have it altered or exchanged; but with the expense of land-carriage and risk of damage, it is not to be thought of. I enclose a letter to thank him for all his kindness. I should like to have the invoice when the things are shipped. I hope they will send them to Leith, and not to Berwick. The plasterer has broke a pane in the armory. I enclose a sheet with the size, the black lines being traced within the lead; and I add a rough drawing of the arms, which are those of my mother. I should like it replaced as soon as possible, for I will set the expense against the careless rascal's account. I have got a beautiful scarlet paper, inlaid with gold (rather crimson than scarlet) in a present from India, which will hang the parlor to a T; but we shall want some articles from town to enable us to take possession of the parlor--namely, a _carpet_--you mentioned a _wainscot pattern_, which would be delightful--item, _grates_ for said parlor and armory--a plain and unexpensive pattern, resembling that in my room (which vents most admirably), and suited by half-dogs for burning wood. The sideboard and chairs you have mentioned. I see Mr. Bullock (George's brother) advertises his museum for sale. I wonder if a good set of _real tilting_ armor could be got cheap there. James Ballantyne got me one very handsome bright steel cuirassier of Queen Elizabeth's time, and two less perfect, for £20--dog cheap; they make a great figure in the armory. Hangings, curtains, etc., I believe we shall get as well in Edinburgh as in London; it is in your joiner and cabinet work that your infinite superiority lies. Write to me if I can do aught about the play--though I fear not: much will depend on Dumbiedikes, in whom Listen will be strong. Sophia has been chiefly my nurse, as an indisposition of little Charles called Charlotte to town. She returned yesterday with him. All beg kind compliments to you and Mrs. Terry and little Walter. I remain your very feeble but convalescent to command, WALTER SCOTT. P. S.--We must not forget the case for the leaves of the table while out of use; without something of the kind, I am afraid they will be liable to injury, which is a pity, as they are so very beautiful.[33] [Footnote 30: _Anglice_--Scarecrow.] [Footnote 31: _Anglice_--an Oak.] [Footnote 32: _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 2.] [Footnote 33: The Duke of Buccleuch gave Scott some old oak-roots from Drumlanrig, out of which a very beautiful set of dinner-tables were manufactured by Messrs. Bullock.] The accounts of Scott's condition circulated in Edinburgh in the course of this April were so alarming, that I should not have thought of accepting his invitation to revisit Abbotsford, unless John Ballantyne had given me better tidings about the end of the month.[34] He informed me that his "illustrious friend" (for so both the Ballantynes usually spoke of him) was so much recovered as to have resumed his usual literary tasks, though with this difference, that he now, for the first time in his life, found it necessary to employ the hand of another. I have now before me a letter of the 8th April, in which Scott says to Constable: "Yesterday I began to dictate, and did it easily and with comfort. This is a great point, but I must proceed by little and little; last night I had a slight return of the enemy, but baffled him;"--and he again writes to the bookseller on the 11th, "John Ballantyne is here, and returns with copy, which my increasing strength permits me to hope I may now furnish regularly." [Footnote 34: [An extract from a letter of March 23 will show how warm a regard Scott already felt for Lockhart: "I am but just on my feet after a fourth very severe spasmodic affection, which held me from half-past six last night to half-past three this morning in a state little short of the extreme agony, during which time, to the infinite consternation of my terrified family, I waltzed with Madam Cramp to my own sad music. I sighed and howl'd, And groaned and growl'd, A wild and wondrous sound; incapable of lying in one posture, yet unable to find any possible means of changing it. I thought of you amid all this agony, and of the great game which with your parts and principles lies before you in Scotland, and having been for very many years the only man of letters who at least stood by, if he could not support, the banner of ancient faith and loyalty, I was mentally bequeathing to you my baton, like old Douglas:-- 'Take _thou_ the vanguard of the three And bury me by the bracken bush, That grows upon yon lily lea.' "I believe the women thought I was growing light-headed as they heard me repeat a rhyme apparently so little connected with my situation. I have much to say to you on these subjects, for which I hope we shall have a fit time; for, like old Sir Anthony Absolute, I hope still to live long and be very troublesome to you. Indeed, the surgeon could not help expressing his astonishment at the great strength of my temperament, and I think had an eye to my ribs as glorious hoops for a skeleton."--_Familiar Letters_, vol. ii. p. 38.]] The _copy_ (as MS. for the press is technically called) which Scott was thus dictating, was that of The Bride of Lammermoor, and his amanuenses were William Laidlaw and John Ballantyne;--of whom he preferred the latter, when he could be at Abbotsford, on account of the superior rapidity of his pen; and also because John kept his pen to the paper without interruption, and, though with many an arch twinkle in his eyes, and now and then an audible smack of his lips, had resolution to work on like a well-trained clerk; whereas good Laidlaw entered with such keen zest into the interest of the story as it flowed from the author's lips, that he could not suppress exclamations of surprise and delight--"Gude keep us a'!--the like o' that!--eh sirs! eh sirs!"--and so forth--which did not promote despatch. I have often, however, in the sequel, heard both these secretaries describe the astonishment with which they were equally affected when Scott began this experiment. The affectionate Laidlaw beseeching him to stop dictating, when his audible suffering filled every pause, "Nay, Willie," he answered, "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 when I am in woollen." John Ballantyne told me, that after the first day he always took care to have a dozen of pens made before he seated himself opposite to the sofa on which Scott lay, and that though he often turned himself on his pillow with a groan of torment, he usually continued the sentence in the same breath. But when dialogue of peculiar animation was in progress, spirit seemed to triumph altogether over matter--he arose from his couch and walked up and down the room, raising and lowering his voice, and as it were acting the parts. It was in this fashion that Scott produced the far greater portion of The Bride of Lammermoor--the whole of the Legend of Montrose--and almost the whole of Ivanhoe. Yet, when his health was fairly reëstablished, he disdained to avail himself of the power of dictation, which he had thus put to the sharpest test, but resumed, and for many years resolutely adhered to, the old plan of writing everything with his own hand. When I once, some time afterwards, expressed my surprise that he did not consult his ease, and spare his eyesight at all events, by occasionally dictating, he answered, "I should as soon think of getting into a sedan chair while I can use my legs." On one of the envelopes in which a chapter of The Bride of Lammermoor reached the printer in the Canongate about this time (May 2, 1819), there is this note in the author's own handwriting:-- DEAR JAMES,--These matters will need more than your usual carefulness. Look sharp--double sharp--my trust is constant in thee:-- "Tarry woo, tarry woo, Tarry woo is ill to spin; Card it weel, card it weel, Card it weel ere ye begin. When 'tis carded, row'd, and spun, Then the work is hafflins done; But when woven, drest, and clean, It may be cleading for a queen." So be it,--W. S. But to return: I rode out to Abbotsford with John Ballantyne towards the end of the spring vacation, and though he had warned me of a sad change in Scott's appearance, it was far beyond what I had been led to anticipate. He had lost a great deal of flesh--his clothes hung loose about him--his countenance was meagre, haggard, and of the deadliest yellow of the jaundice--and his hair, which a few weeks before had been but slightly sprinkled with gray, was now almost literally snow-white. His eye, however, retained its fire unquenched; indeed it seemed to have gained in brilliancy from the new languor of the other features; and he received us with all the usual cordiality, and even with little perceptible diminishment in the sprightliness of his manner. He sat at the 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. "One day there was," he said, "when I certainly began to have great doubts whether the mischief was not getting at my mind--and I'll tell you how I tried to reassure myself on that score. I was quite unfit for anything like original composition; but I thought if I could turn an old German ballad I had been reading into decent rhymes, I might dismiss my worst apprehensions--and you shall see what came of the experiment." He then desired his daughter Sophia to fetch the MS. of The Noble Moringer, as it had been taken down from his dictation, partly by her and partly by Mr. Laidlaw, during one long and painful day while he lay in bed. He read it to us as it stood, and seeing that both Ballantyne and I were much pleased with the verses, he said he should copy them over,--make them a little "tighter about the joints,"--and give me them to be printed in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1816,--to consult him about which volume had partly been the object of my visit; and this promise he redeemed before I left him. The reading of this long ballad, however (it consists of forty-three stanzas),[35] seemed to have exhausted him: he retired to his bedroom; and an hour or two after, when we were about to follow his example, his family were distressed by the well-known symptoms of another sharp recurrence of his affliction. A large dose of opium and the hot bath were immediately put in requisition. His good neighbor, Dr. Scott of Darnlee, was sent for, and soon attended; and in the course of three or four hours we learned that he was once more at ease. But I can never forget the groans which, during that space, his agony extorted from him. Well knowing the iron strength of his resolution, to find him confessing its extremity, by cries audible not only all over the house, but even to a considerable distance from it (for Ballantyne and I, after he was put into his bath, walked forth to be out of the way, and heard him distinctly at the bowling-green), it may be supposed that this was sufficiently alarming, even to my companion; how much more to me, who had never before listened to that voice, except in the gentle accents of kindness and merriment. [Footnote 35: See Scott's _Poetical Works_ (Ed. 1834), vol. vi. p. 343 [Cambridge Ed. p. 444].] I told Ballantyne that I saw this was no time for my visit, and that I should start for Edinburgh again at an early hour--and begged he would make my apologies--in the propriety of which he acquiesced. But as I was dressing, about seven next morning, Scott himself tapped at my door, and entered, looking better I thought than at my arrival the day before. "Don't think of going," said he; "I feel hearty this morning, and if my devil does come back again, it won't be for three days at any rate. For the present, I want nothing to set me up except a good trot in the open air, to drive away the accursed vapors of the laudanum I was obliged to swallow last night. You have never seen Yarrow, and when I have finished a little job I have with Jocund Johnny, we shall all take horse and make a day of it." When I said something about a ride of twenty miles being rather a bold experiment after such a night, he answered that he had ridden more than forty, a week before, under similar circumstances, and felt nothing the worse. He added, that there was an election on foot, in consequence of the death of Sir John Riddell, of Riddell, Member of Parliament for the Selkirk district of Burghs, and that the bad health and absence of the Duke of Buccleuch rendered it quite necessary that he should make exertions on this occasion. "In short," said he, laughing, "I have an errand which I shall perform--and as I must pass Newark, you had better not miss the opportunity of seeing it under so excellent a cicerone as the old minstrel, 'Whose withered cheek and tresses grey Shall yet see many a better day.'" About eleven o'clock, accordingly, he was mounted, by the help of Tom Purdie, upon a stanch, active cob, yclept Sibyl Grey,--exactly such a creature as is described in Mr. Dinmont's _Dumple_--while Ballantyne sprang into the saddle of noble _Old Mortality_, and we proceeded to the town of Selkirk, where Scott halted to do business at the Sheriff-Clerk's, and begged us to move onward at a gentle pace until he should overtake us. He came up by and by at a canter, and seemed in high glee with the tidings he had heard about the canvass. And so we rode by Philiphaugh, Carterhaugh, Bowhill, and Newark, he pouring out all the way his picturesque anecdotes of former times--more especially of the fatal field where Montrose was finally overthrown by Leslie. He described the battle as vividly as if he had witnessed it; the passing of the Ettrick at daybreak by the Covenanting General's heavy cuirassiers, many of them old soldiers of Gustavus Adolphus, and the wild confusion of the Highland host when exposed to their charge on an extensive _haugh_ as flat as a bowling-green. He drew us aside at _Slain-men's-lee_, to observe the green mound that marks the resting-place of the slaughtered royalists; and pointing to the apparently precipitous mountain, Minchmoor, over which Montrose and his few cavaliers escaped, mentioned that, rough as it seemed, his mother remembered passing it in her early days in a coach and six, on her way to a ball at Peebles--several footmen marching on either side of the carriage to prop it up, or drag it through bogs, as the case might require. He also gave us, with all the dramatic effect of one of his best chapters, the history of a worthy family who, inhabiting at the time of the battle a cottage on his own estate, had treated with particular kindness a young officer of Leslie's army quartered on them for a night or two before. When parting from them to join the troops, he took out a purse of gold, and told the good woman that he had a presentiment he should not see another sun set, and in that case would wish his money to remain in her kind hands; but, if he should survive, he had no doubt she would restore it honestly. The young man returned mortally wounded, but lingered awhile under her roof, and finally bequeathed to her and hers his purse and his blessing. "Such," he said, "was the origin of the respectable lairds of----, now my good neighbors." The prime object of this expedition was to talk over the politics of Selkirk with one of the Duke of Buccleuch's great store-farmers, who, as the Sheriff had learned, possessed private influence with a doubtful bailie or deacon among the Souters. I forget the result, if ever I heard it. But next morning, having, as he assured us, enjoyed a good night in consequence of this ride, he invited us to accompany him on a similar errand across Bowden Moor, and up the Valley of the Ayle; and when we reached a particularly bleak and dreary point of that journey, he informed us that he perceived in the waste below a wreath of smoke, which was the appointed signal that a _wavering_ Souter of some consequence had agreed to give him a personal interview where no Whiggish eyes were likely to observe them;--and so, leaving us on the road, he proceeded to thread his way westward, across moor and bog, until we lost view of him. I think a couple of hours might have passed before he joined us again, which was, as had been arranged, not far from the village of Lilliesleaf. In that place, too, he had some negotiation of the same sort to look after; and when he had finished it, he rode with us all round the ancient woods of Riddell, but would not go near the house; I suppose lest any of the afflicted family might still be there. Many were his lamentations over the catastrophe which had just befallen them. "They are," he said, "one of the most venerable races in the south of Scotland--they were here long before these glens had ever heard the name of Soulis or of Douglas--to say nothing of Buccleuch: they can show a Pope's bull of the tenth century, authorizing the then Riddell to marry a relation within the forbidden degrees. Here they have been for a thousand years at least; and now all the inheritance is to pass away, merely because one good worthy gentleman would not be contented 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 day-book and ledger, and all the rest of it, as accurately as if he had been a cheesemonger in the Grassmarket." Some of the most remarkable circumstances in Scott's own subsequent life have made me often recall this conversation--with more wonder than he expressed about the ruin of the Riddells. I remember he told us a world of stories, some tragical, some comical, about the old lairds of this time-honored lineage; and among others, that of the seven Bibles and the seven bottles of ale, which he afterwards inserted in a note to The Bride of Lammermoor.[36] He was also full of anecdotes about a friend of his father's, a minister of Lilliesleaf, who reigned for two generations the most popular preacher in Teviotdale; but I forget the orator's name. When the original of Saunders Fairford congratulated him in his latter days on the undiminished authority he still maintained--every kirk in the neighborhood being left empty when it was known he was to mount the _tent_ at any country sacrament--the shrewd divine answered: "Indeed, Mr. Walter, I sometimes think it's vera surprising. There's aye a talk of this or that wonderfully gifted young man frae the college; but whenever I'm to be at the same _occasion_ with ony o' them, I e'en mount the white horse in the Revelations, and he dings them a'." [Footnote 36: "It was once the universal custom to place ale, wine, or some strong liquor, in the chamber of an honored guest, to assuage his thirst should he feel any on awakening in the night, which, considering that the hospitality of that period often reached excess, was by no means unlikely. The author has met some instances of it in former days, and in old-fashioned families. It was, perhaps, no poetic fiction that records how 'My cummer and I lay down to sleep With two pint stoups at our bed feet; And aye when we waken'd we drank them dry; What think you o' my cummer and I?' "It is a current story in Teviotdale, that in the house of an ancient family of distinction, much addicted to the Presbyterian cause, a Bible was always put into the sleeping apartment of the guests, along with a bottle of strong ale. On some occasion there was a meeting of clergymen in the vicinity of the castle, all of whom were invited to dinner by the worthy Baronet, and several abode all night. According to the fashion of the times, seven of the reverend guests were allotted to one large barrack-room, which was used on such occasions of extended hospitality. The butler took care that the divines were presented, according to custom, each with a Bible and a bottle of ale. But after a little consultation among themselves, they are said to have recalled the domestic as he was leaving the apartment. 'My friend,' said one of the venerable guests, 'you must know, when we meet together as brethren, the youngest minister reads aloud a portion of Scripture to the rest;--only one Bible, therefore, is necessary; take away the other six, and in their place bring six more bottles of ale.' "This synod would have suited the 'hermit sage' of Johnson, who answered a pupil who inquired for the real road to happiness with the celebrated line, 'Come, my lad, and drink some beer!'" --See _The Bride of Lammermoor_, note to chap. xiv.] Thus Scott amused himself and us as we jogged homewards: and it was the same the following day, when (no election matters pressing) he rode with us to the western peak of the Eildon hills, that he might show me the whole panorama of his Teviotdale, and expound the direction of the various passes by which the ancient forayers made their way into England, and tell the names and the histories of many a monastic chapel and baronial peel, now mouldering in glens and dingles that escape the eye of the traveller on the highways. Among other objects on which he descanted with particular interest, were the ruins of the earliest residence of the Kerrs of Cessford, so often opposed in arms to his own 'chieftains of Branksome, and a desolate little kirk on the adjoining moor, where the Dukes of Roxburghe are still buried in the same vault with the hero who fell at Turn-again. Turning to the northward, he showed us the crags and tower of Smailholm, and behind it the shattered fragment of Ercildoune--and repeated some pretty stanzas ascribed to the last of the real wandering minstrels of this district, by name _Burn_:-- "Sing Erceldoune, and Cowdenknowes, Where Homes had ance commanding, And Drygrange, wi' the milk-white ewes, 'Twixt Tweed and Leader standing. The bird that flees through Redpath trees And Gledswood banks each morrow, May chaunt and sing--_sweet Leader's haughs_ And _Bonny howms of Yarrow_. "But Minstrel Burn cannot assuage His grief while life endureth, To see the changes of this age Which fleeting time procureth; For mony a place stands in hard case, Where blythe folks kent nae sorrow, With Homes that dwelt on Leader side, And Scotts that dwelt on Yarrow."[37] [Footnote 37: [See _ante_, vol. ii. p. 114, note.]] That night he had again an attack of his cramp, but not so serious as the former. Next morning he was again at work with Ballantyne at an early hour; and when I parted from him after breakfast, he spoke cheerfully of being soon in Edinburgh for the usual business of his Court. I left him, however, with dark prognostications; and the circumstances of this little visit to Abbotsford have no doubt dwelt on my mind the more distinctly, from my having observed and listened to him throughout under the painful feeling that it might very probably be my last. On the 5th of May he received the intelligence of the death of the Duke of Buccleuch, which had occurred at Lisbon on the 20th April; and next morning he wrote as follows to his Grace's brother:-- TO THE LORD MONTAGU, DITTON PARK. ABBOTSFORD, 6th May, 1819. MY DEAR LORD,--I heard from Lord Melville, by yesterday's post, the calamitous news which your Lordship's very kind letter this moment confirmed, had it required confirmation. For this fortnight past, my hopes have been very faint indeed, and on Wednesday, when I had occasion to go to Yarrow, and my horse turned from habit to go up the avenue at Bowhill, I felt deeply impressed that it was a road I should seldom travel for a long time at least. To your Lordship--let me add, to myself--this is an irreparable loss; for such a fund of excellent sense, high principle, and perfect honor have been rarely combined in the same individual. To the country the inestimable loss will be soon felt, even by those who were insensible to his merits, or wished to detract from them, when he was amongst us. In my opinion he never recovered from his domestic calamity. He wrote to me, a few days after that cruel event, a most affectionate and remarkable letter, explaining his own feelings, and while he begged that I would come to him, assuring me that I should find him the same he would be for the future years of his life. He kept his word; but I could see a grief of that calm and concentrated kind which claims the hours of solitude and of night for its empire, and gradually wastes the springs of life. Among the thousand painful feelings which this melancholy event had excited, I have sometimes thought of his distance from home. Yet this was done with the best intention, and upon the best advice, and was perhaps the sole chance which remained for reëstablishment. It has pleased God that it has failed; but the best means were used under the best direction, and mere mortality can do no more. I am very anxious about the dear young ladies, whose lives were so much devoted to their father, and shall be extremely desirous of knowing how they are. The Duchess has so much firmness of mind, and Lady M. so much affectionate prudence, that they will want no support that example and kindness can afford. To me the world seems a sort of waste without him. We had many joint objects, constant intercourse, and unreserved communication, so that through him and by him I took interest in many things altogether out of my own sphere, and it seems to me as if the horizon were narrowed and lowered around me. But God's will be done; it is all that brother or friend can or dare say.--I have reluctance to mention the trash which is going on here. Indeed, I think little is altered since I wrote to your Lordship fully, excepting that last night late, Chisholm[38] arrived at Abbotsford from Lithgow, recalled by the news which had somehow reached Edinburgh,--as I suspect by some officiousness of ****. He left Lithgow in such a state that there is no doubt he will carry that burgh, unless Pringle[39] gets Selkirk. He is gone off this morning to try the possible and impossible to get the single vote which he wants, or to prevail on one person to stand neuter. It is possible he may succeed, though this event, when it becomes generally known, will be greatly against his efforts. I should care little more about the matter, were it not for young Walter,[40] and for the despite I feel at the success of speculations which were formed on the probability of the event which has happened. Two sons of ******* came here yesterday, and with their father's philosophical spirit of self-accommodation, established themselves for the night. Betwixt them and Chisholm's noise, my head and my stomach suffered so much (under the necessity of drowning feelings which I could not express), that I had a return of the spasms, and I felt as if a phantasmagoria was going on around me. Quiet, and some indulgence of natural and solitary sorrow, have made me well. To-day I will ride up to Selkirk and see the magistrates, or the chief of them. It is necessary they should not think the cause deserted. If it is thought proper to suspend the works at Bowhill, perhaps the measure may be delayed till the decision of this matter. I am sure, my dear Lord, you will command me in all I can do. I have only to regret it is so little. But to show that my gratitude has survived my benefactor, would be the pride and delight of my life. I never thought it possible that a man could have loved another so much, where the distance of rank was so very great. But why recur to things so painful? I pity poor Adam Ferguson, whose affections were so much engaged by the Duke's kindness, and who has with his gay temper a generous and feeling heart. The election we may lose, but not our own credit, and that of the family--that you may rest assured of. My best respects and warmest sympathy attend the dear young ladies, and Lady Montagu. I shall be anxious to know how the Duchess-Dowager does under this great calamity. The poor boy--what a slippery world is before him, and how early a dangerous, because a splendid, lot is presented to him! But he has your personal protection. Believe me, with a deep participation in your present distress, your Lordship's most faithfully, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 38: Mr. Chisholm was the Tory candidate for the Selkirk burghs.] [Footnote 39: Mr. Pringle of Clifton, the Whig candidate.] [Footnote 40: Walter Francis, the present Duke of Buccleuch.] Scott drew up for Ballantyne's newspaper of that week the brief character of Charles, Duke of Buccleuch, which has since been included in his Prose Miscellanies (vol. iv.); and the following letter accompanied a copy of it to Ditton Park:-- TO THE LORD MONTAGU, ETC., ETC., ETC. MY DEAR LORD,--I send you the newspaper article under a different cover. I have studied so much to suppress my own feelings, and so to give a just, calm, and temperate view of the excellent subject of our present sorrow, such as I conceive might be drawn by one less partially devoted to him, that it has to my own eye a cold and lifeless resemblance of an original so dear to me. But I was writing to the public, and to a public less acquainted with him than a few years' experience would have made them. Even his own tenantry were but just arrived at the true estimation of his character. I wrote, therefore, to insure credit and belief, in a tone greatly under my own feelings. I have ordered twenty-five copies to be put in a different shape, of which I will send your Lordship twenty. It has been a painful task, but I feel it was due from me. I am just favored with your letter. I beg your Lordship will not write more frequently than you find quite convenient, for you must have now more than enough upon you. The arrangement respecting Boughton[41] is what I expected--the lifeless remains will be laid where the living thoughts had long been. I grieve that I shall not see the last honors, yet I hardly know how I could have gone through the scene. Nothing in the circumstances could have given me the satisfaction which I receive from your Lordship's purpose of visiting Scotland, and bringing down the dear young ladies, who unite so many and such affecting ties upon the regard and affection of every friend of the family. It will be a measure of the highest necessity for the political interest of the family, and your Lordship will have an opportunity of hearing much information of importance, which really could not be made the subject of writing. The extinction of fire on the hearths of this great house would be putting out a public light and a public beacon in the time of darkness and storms. Ever your most faithful W. S. [Footnote 41: Boughton, in Northamptonshire. This seat came into the possession of Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, by his marriage with the daughter and heiress of John, the last Duke of Montagu, who survived for many years her son, Duke Charles. At Boughton, as the reader will see, Scott's early friend, the Duchess Harriet of Buccleuch, had been buried in 1814.] On the 11th of May, Scott returned to Edinburgh, and was present next day at the opening of the Court of Session; when all who saw him were as much struck as I had been at Abbotsford with the lamentable change his illness had produced in his appearance. He was unable to persist in attendance at the Clerks' Table--for several weeks afterwards I think he seldom if ever attempted it;--and I well remember that, when the Third Series of the Tales of my Landlord at length came out (which was on the 10th of June), he was known to be confined to bed, and the book was received amidst the deep general impression that we should see no more of that parentage. On the 13th he wrote thus to Captain Ferguson, who had arrived in London with the remains of the Duke of Buccleuch:-- TO CAPTAIN ADAM FERGUSON, ETC., ETC., MONTAGU HOUSE, WHITEHALL. MY DEAR ADAM,--I am sorry to say I have had another eight days' visit of my disorder, which has confined me chiefly to my bed. It is not attended with so much acute pain as in spring, but with much sickness and weakness. It will perhaps shade off into a mild chronic complaint--if it returns frequently with the same violence, I shall break up by degrees, and follow my dear Chief. I do not mean that there is the least cause for immediate apprehension, but only that the constitution must be injured at last, as well by the modes of cure, or rather of relief, as by the pain. My digestion as well as my appetite are for the present quite gone--a change from former days of Leith and Newhaven parties. I thank God I can look at this possibility without much anxiety, and without a shadow of fear. Will you, if your time serves, undertake two little commissions for me? One respects a kind promise of Lord Montagu to put George Thomson's name on a list for kirk preferment. I don't like to trouble him with letters--he must be overwhelmed with business, and has his dear brother's punctuality in replying even to those which require none. I would fain have that Scottish Abraham Adams provided for if possible. My other request is, that you will, if you can, see Terry, and ask him what is doing about my dining-room chairs, and especially about the carpet, for I shall not without them have the use of what Slender calls "mine own great parlor" this season. I should write to him, but am really unable. I hope you will soon come down--a sight of you would do me good at the worst turn I have yet had. The Baronet[42] is very kind, and comes and sits by me. Everybody likes the Regalia, and I have heard of no one grudging their _hog_[43]--but you must get something better. I have been writing to the Commie[44] about this. He has been inexpressibly kind in Walter's matter, and the Duke of York has promised an early commission. When you see our friend, you can talk over this, and may perhaps save him the trouble of writing particular directions what further is to be done. Iago's rule, I suppose--"put money in thy purse." I wish in passing you would ask how the ladies are in Piccadilly. Yours ever, W. SCOTT. [Footnote 42: Mr. William Clerk.] [Footnote 43: A shilling.] [Footnote 44: The Lord Chief-Commissioner Adam.] The Bride of Lammermoor, and A Legend of Montrose, would have been read with indulgence had they needed it; for the painful circumstances under which they must have been produced were known wherever an English newspaper made its way; but I believe that, except in numerous typical errors, which sprung of necessity from the author's inability to correct any proof sheets, no one ever affected to perceive in either tale the slightest symptom of his malady. Dugald Dalgetty was placed by acclamation in the same rank with Bailie Jarvie--a conception equally new, just, and humorous, and worked out in all the details, as if it had formed the luxurious entertainment of a chair as easy as was ever shaken by Rabelais; and though the character of Montrose himself seemed hardly to have been treated so fully as the subject merited, the accustomed rapidity of the novelist's execution would have been enough to account for any such defect. Of Caleb Balderstone--(the hero of one of the many ludicrous delineations which he owed to the late Lord Haddington, a man of rare pleasantry, and one of the best tellers of old Scotch stories that I ever heard)--I cannot say that the general opinion was then, nor do I believe it ever since has been, very favorable. It was pronounced at the time, by more than one critic, a mere caricature; and though Scott himself would never in after-days admit this censure to be just, he allowed that "he might have sprinkled rather too much parsley over his chicken." But even that blemish, for I grant that I think it a serious one, could not disturb the profound interest and pathos of The Bride of Lammermoor--to my fancy the most pure and powerful of all the tragedies that Scott ever penned. The reader will be well pleased, however, to have, in place of any critical observations on this work, the following particulars of its composition from the notes which its printer dictated when stretched on the bed from which he well knew he was never to rise. "The book" (says James Ballantyne) "was not only written, but published, before Mr. Scott was able to rise from his bed; and he assured me, that when it was first put into his hands in a complete shape, he did not recollect one single incident, character, or conversation it contained! He did not desire me to understand, nor did I understand, that his illness had erased from his memory the original incidents of the story, with which he had been acquainted from his boyhood. These remained rooted where they had ever been; or, to speak more explicitly, he remembered the general facts of the existence of the father and mother, of the son and daughter, of the rival lovers, of the compulsory marriage, and the attack made by the bride upon the hapless bridegroom,[45] with the general catastrophe of the whole. All these things he recollected just as he did before he took to his bed: but he literally recollected nothing else--not a single character woven by the romancer, not one of the many scenes and points of humor, nor anything with which he was connected as the writer of the work. 'For a long time,' he said, 'I felt myself very uneasy in the course of my reading, lest I should be startled by meeting something altogether glaring and fantastic. However, I recollected that you had been the printer, and I felt sure that you would not have permitted anything of this sort to pass.' 'Well,' I said, 'upon the whole, how did you like it?' 'Why,' he said, 'as a whole, I felt it monstrous gross and grotesque; but still the worst of it made me laugh, and I trusted the good-natured public would not be less indulgent.' I do not think I ever ventured to lead to the discussion of this singular phenomenon again; but you may depend upon it, that what I have now said is as distinctly reported as if it had been taken down in short-hand at the moment; I should not otherwise have ventured to allude to the matter at all. I believe you will agree with me in thinking that the history of the human mind contains nothing more wonderful." [Footnote 45: There appeared in the _Edinburgh Evening Post_ of October 10, 1840, a letter dated September 5, 1823, addressed by Sir J. Horne Dalrymple Elphinstone, Bart., to the late Sir James Stewart Denham of Coltness, Bart., both descendants of the Lord President Stair, whose daughter was the original of the Bride of Lammermoor, from which it appears that, according to the traditional creed of the Dalrymple family, the lady's unhappy lover, Lord Rutherford, had found means to be secreted in the nuptial chamber, and that the wound of the bridegroom, Sir David Dunbar of Baldoon, was inflicted by his Lordship's hand. The letter in question will be appended to future editions of the novel.--(1841.)] Soon after Scott reappeared in the Parliament House, he came down one Saturday to the vaulted chambers below, where the Advocates' Library was then kept, to attend a meeting of the Faculty, and as the assembly was breaking up, he asked me to walk home with him, taking Ballantyne's printing-office in our way. He moved languidly, and said, if he were to stay in town many days, he must send for Sibyl Grey; but his conversation was heart-whole; and, in particular, he laughed till, despite his weakness, the stick was flourishing in his hand, over the following almost incredible specimen of that most absurd personage the late Earl of Buchan. Hearing one morning shortly before this time, that Scott was actually _in extremis_, the Earl proceeded to Castle Street, and found the knocker tied up. He then descended to the door in the area, and was there received by honest Peter Mathieson, whose face seemed to confirm the woeful tidings, for in truth his master was ill enough. Peter told his Lordship that he had the strictest orders to admit no visitor; but the Earl would take no denial, pushed the bashful coachman aside, and elbowed his way upstairs to the door of Scott's bedchamber. He had his fingers upon the handle before Peter could give warning to Miss Scott; and when she appeared to remonstrate against such an intrusion, he patted her on the head like a child, and persisted in his purpose of entering the sickroom so strenuously, that the young lady found it necessary to bid Peter see the Earl downstairs again, at whatever damage to his dignity. Peter accordingly, after trying all his eloquence in vain, gave the tottering, bustling, old, meddlesome coxcomb a single shove,--as respectful, doubt not, as a shove can ever be,--and he accepted that hint, and made a rapid exit. Scott, meanwhile, had heard the confusion, and at length it was explained to him; when, fearing that Peter's gripe might have injured Lord Buchan's feeble person, he desired James Ballantyne, who had been sitting by his bed, to follow the old man home--make him comprehend, if he could, that the family were in such bewilderment of alarm, that the ordinary rules of civility were out of the question--and, in fine, inquire what had been the object of his Lordship's intended visit. James proceeded forthwith to the Earl's house in George Street and found him strutting about his library in a towering indignation. Ballantyne's elaborate demonstrations of respect, however, by degrees softened him, and he condescended to explain himself. "I wished," said he, "to embrace Walter Scott before he died, and inform him that I had long considered it as a satisfactory circumstance that he and I were destined to rest together in the same place of sepulture. The principal thing, however, was to relieve his mind as to the arrangements of his funeral--to show him a plan which I had prepared for the procession--and, in a word, to assure him that I took upon myself the whole conduct of the ceremonial at Dryburgh." He then exhibited to Ballantyne a formal programme, in which, as may be supposed, the predominant feature was not Walter Scott, but David, Earl of Buchan. It had been settled, _inter alia_, that the said Earl was to pronounce an eulogium over the grave, after the fashion of French Academicians in the _Père la Chaise_. And this silliest and vainest of busybodies was the elder brother of Thomas and Henry Erskine! But the story is well known of his boasting one day to the late Duchess of Gordon of the extraordinary talents of his family--when her unscrupulous Grace asked him, very coolly, whether the wit had not come by the mother, and been all settled on the younger branches? Scott, as his letters to be quoted presently will show, had several more attacks of his disorder, and some very severe ones, during the autumn of 1819; nor, indeed, had it quite disappeared until about Christmas. But from the time of his return to Abbotsford in July, when he adopted the system of treatment recommended by a skilful physician (Dr. Dick), who had had large experience in maladies of this kind during his Indian life, the seizures gradually became less violent, and his confidence that he was ultimately to baffle the enemy remained unshaken.[46] [Footnote 46: ["For nearly two years he had to struggle for his life with that severe illness, which the natural strength of his constitution at length proved sufficient to throw off. With its disappearance, although restored to health, disappeared also much of his former vigor of body, activity, and power of undergoing fatigue, while in personal appearance he had advanced twenty years in the downward course of life; his hair had become bleached to pure white and scanty locks; the fire of his eye quenched; and his step, more uncertain, had lost the vigorous swinging gait with which he was used to proceed; in fact, old age had by many years anticipated its usual progress and marked how severely he had suffered."--James Skene's _Reminiscences_,--See _Journal_, vol. ii. p. 97, note.]] As I had no opportunity of seeing him again until he was almost entirely reëstablished, I shall leave the progress of his restoration to be collected from his correspondence. But I must not forget to set down what his daughter Sophia afterwards told me of his conduct upon one night in June, when he really did despair of himself. 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 omitted 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 hand 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." They obeyed him; but he presently fell into a deep sleep; and when he awoke from it after many hours, the crisis of extreme danger was felt by himself, and pronounced by his physician, to have been overcome. CHAPTER XLV Gradual Reëstablishment of Scott's Health. -- Ivanhoe in Progress. -- His Son Walter Joins the Eighteenth Regiment of Hussars. -- Scott's Correspondence with Hhis Son. -- Miscellaneous Letters to Mrs. Maclean Clephane, M. W. Hartstonge, J. G. Lockhart, John Ballantyne, John Richardson, Miss Edgeworth, Lord Montagu, Etc. -- Abbotsford Visited by Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. -- Death of Mrs. William Erskine. 1819 Before Scott left Edinburgh, on the 12th of July, he had not only concluded his bargain with Constable for another novel, but, as will appear from some of his letters, made considerable progress in the dictation of Ivanhoe. That he already felt great confidence on the score of his health may be inferred from his allowing his son, Walter, about the middle of the month, to join the 18th regiment of Hussars in which he had, shortly before, received his commission as Cornet. Scott's letters to his son, the first of his family that left the house, will merit henceforth a good deal of the reader's attention. Walter was, when he thus quitted Abbotsford to try his chances in the active world, only in the eighteenth year of his age; and the fashion of education in Scotland is such, that he had scarcely ever slept a night under a different roof from his parents, until this separation occurred. He had been treated from his cradle with all the indulgence that a man of sense can ever permit himself to show to any of his children; and for several years he had now been his father's daily companion in all his out-of-doors occupations and amusements. The parting was a painful one; but Scott's ambition centred in the heir of his name, and instead of fruitless pinings and lamentings, he henceforth made it his constant business to keep up such a frank correspondence with the young man as might enable himself to exert over him, when at a distance, the gentle influence of kindness, experience, and wisdom. The series of his letters to his son is, in my opinion, by far the most interesting and valuable, as respects the personal character and temper of the writer. It will easily be supposed that, as the young officer entered fully into his father's generous views of what their correspondence ought to be, and detailed every little incident of his new career with the same easy confidence as if he had been writing to a friend or elder brother not very widely differing from himself in standing, the answers abound with opinions on subjects with which I have no right to occupy or entertain my readers: but I shall introduce in the prosecution of this work, as many specimens of Scott's paternal advice as I can hope to render generally intelligible without indelicate explanations--and more especially such as may prove serviceable to other young persons when first embarking under their own pilotage upon the sea of life. Scott's manly kindness to his boy, whether he is expressing approbation or censure of his conduct, can require no pointing out; and his practical wisdom was of that liberal order, based on such comprehensive views of man and the world, that I am persuaded it will often be found available to the circumstances of their own various cases, by young men of whatever station or profession. I shall, nevertheless, adhere as usual to the chronological order; and one or two miscellaneous letters must accordingly precede the first article of his correspondence with the Cornet. He alludes, however, to the youth's departure in the following:-- TO MRS. MACLEAN CLEPHANE OF TORLOISK. ABBOTSFORD, July 15, 1819. DEAR MRS. CLEPHANE,--Nothing could give me more pleasure than to hear you are well, and thinking of looking this way. You will find all my things in very different order from when you were here last, and plenty of room for matron and miss, man and maid. We have no engagements, except to Newton Don about the 20th August--if we be alive--no unreasonable proviso in so long an engagement. My health, however, seems in a fair way of being perfectly restored. It is a joke to talk of any other remedy than that forceful but most unpleasant one--_calomel_. I cannot say I ever felt advantage from anything else; and I am perfectly satisfied that, used as an alterative, and taken in very small quantities for a long time, it must correct all the inaccuracies of the biliary organs. At least it has done so in my case more radically than I could have believed possible. I have intermitted the régime for some days, but begin a new course next week for precaution. Dr. Dick, of the East India Company's service, has put me on this course of cure,[47] and says he never knew it fail unless when the liver was irreparably injured. I believe I shall go to Carlsbad next year. If I must go to a watering-place, I should like one where I might hope to see and learn something new myself, instead of being hunted down by some of the confounded lion-catchers who haunt English spas. I have not the art of being savage to those people, though few are more annoyed by them. I always think of Snug the Joiner-- "----If I should as lion _come in strife_ Into such place, 't were pity on my life." I have been delayed in answering your kind letter by Walter's departure from us to join his regiment, the 18th Dragoons. He has chosen a profession for which he is well suited, being of a calm but remarkably firm temper--fond of mathematics, engineering, and all sorts of calculation--clear-headed, and good-natured. When you add to this a good person and good manners, with great dexterity in horsemanship and all athletic exercises, and a strong constitution, one hopes you have the grounds of a good soldier. My own selfish wish would have been that he should have followed the law; but he really had no vocation that way, wanting the acuteness and liveliness of intellect indispensable to making a figure in that profession. So I am satisfied all is for the best, only I shall miss my gamekeeper and companion in my rides and walks. But so it was, is, and must be--the young must part from the nest, and learn to wing their own way against the storm. I beg my best and kindest compliments to Lady Compton. Stooping to write hurts me, or I would have sent her a few lines. As I shall be stationary here for all this season, I shall not see her, perhaps, for long enough. Mrs. Scott and the girls join in best love, and I am ever, dear Mrs. Clephane, your faithful and most obedient servant, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 47: [An interesting letter from Dr. Dick to Scott will be found in _Familiar Letters_ (vol. ii. p. 53), in which he speaks of their common friend, Leyden, and expresses sorrow at the tone regarding him taken by some of the Edinburgh periodicals, which ridiculed the idea of comparing him with Sir William Jones as a linguist. The writer, who knew both, shows Leyden to have been in this respect much the greater of the two. The Doctor makes light of his efficient services in Scott's case, and says: "I have only to offer my grateful thanks for your intended present, which, however, I must beg leave to decline, because I am rewarded already a thousandfold, by being allowed the honor of prescribing for you, and by being assured, under your own hand, that you are so well.... But if you will send me one volume of any kind, and write on it that it is from yourself, I shall consider it a great favor. I have the vanity to wish that my son and his descendants may have it to show as a proof that I was honored with the friendship of the author."]] I have had some hesitation about introducing the next letter--which refers to the then recent publication of a sort of mock-tour in Scotland, entitled Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk. Nobody but a very young and a very thoughtless person could have dreamt of putting forth such a book; yet the Epistles of the imaginary Dr. Morris have been so often denounced as a mere string of libels, that I think it fair to show how much more leniently Scott judged of them at the time. Moreover, his letter is a good specimen of the liberal courtesy with which, on all occasions, he treated the humblest aspirants in literature. Since I have alluded to Peter's Letters at all, I may as well take the opportunity of adding that they were not wholly the work of one hand.[48] [Footnote 48: [The other hand is supposed to have been Wilson's. It is difficult for any reader of to-day to understand why these clever and interesting sketches of the men and manners of the Edinburgh of 1819 should have been so emphatically denounced in certain quarters. This is not the first occasion on which Scott sent words of praise concerning the _Letters_, which first appeared in part in _Blackwood's Magazine_. He says of the Pleaders' portraits [John Clerk, Cranstoun, and Jeffrey], they "are about the best I ever read, and will preserve these three very remarkable and original men, for all of whom, however differing in points whereon I wish we had agreed, I entertain not only deep respect, but sincere friendship and regard."--_Familiar Letters_, vol. ii. p. 39.]] TO J. G. LOCKHART, ESQ., CARNBROE HOUSE, HOLLYTOWN. ABBOTSFORD, July 19, 1819. MY DEAR SIR,--_Distinguendum est._ When I receive a book _ex dono_ of the author, in the general case I offer my thanks with all haste before I cut a leaf, lest peradventure I should feel more awkward in doing so afterwards, when they must not only be tendered for the well-printed volumes themselves, and the attention which sent them my way, but moreover for the supposed pleasure I have received from the contents. But with respect to the learned Dr. Morris, the case is totally different, and I formed the immediate resolution not to say a word about that gentleman's labors without having read them at least twice over--a pleasant task, which has been interrupted partly by my being obliged to go down the country, partly by an invasion of the Southron, in the persons of Sir John Shelley, famous on the turf, and his lady. I wish Dr. Morris had been of the party, chiefly for the benefit of a little Newmarket man, called Cousins, whose whole ideas, similes, illustrations, etc., were derived from the course and training stable. He was perfectly good-humored, and I have not laughed more this many a day. I think the Doctor has got over his ground admirably;--only the general turn of the book is perhaps too favorable, both to the state of our public society, and of individual character:-- "His fools have their follies so lost in a crowd Of virtues and feelings, that folly grows proud."[49] But it was, in every point of view, right to take this more favorable tone, and to throw a Claude Lorraine tint over our northern landscape. We cannot bear the actual bare truth, either in conversation, or that which approaches nearest to conversation, in a work like the Doctor's, published within the circle to which it refers. For the rest, the Doctor has fully maintained his high character for force of expression, both serious and comic, and for acuteness of observation--_rem acu tetigit_--and his scalpel has not been idle, though his lenient hand has cut sharp and clean, and poured balm into the wound. What an acquisition it would have been to our general information to have had such a work written, I do not say fifty, but even five-and-twenty years ago; and how much of grave and gay might then have been preserved, as it were, in amber, which have now mouldered away. When I think that at an age not much younger than yours I knew Black, Ferguson, Robertson, Erskine, Adam Smith, John Home, etc., etc., and at least saw Burns, I can appreciate better than any one the value of a work which, like this, would have handed them down to posterity in their living colors. Dr. Morris ought, like Nourjahad, to revive every half century, to record the fleeting manners of the age, and the interesting features of those who will be only known to posterity by their works. If I am very partial to the Doctor, which I am not inclined to deny, remember I have been bribed by his kind and delicate account of his visit to Abbotsford. Like old Cumberland, or like my own gray cat, I will e'en purr and put up my back, and enjoy his kind flattery, even when I know it goes beyond my merits. I wish you would come and spend a few days here, while this delightful weather lasts. I am now so well as quite to enjoy the society of my friends, instead of the woeful pickle in which I was in spring, when you last favored me. It was, however, _dignus vindice nodus_, for no less a deity descended to my aid than the potent Mercury himself, in the shape of calomel, which I have been obliged to take daily, though in small quantities, for these two months past. Notwithstanding the inconveniences of this remedy, I thrive upon it most marvellously, having recovered both sleep and appetite; so when you incline to come this way, you will find me looking pretty _bobbishly_. Yours very truly, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 49: Goldsmith's _Retaliation_.] On the same day, Scott wrote as follows to John Ballantyne, who had started for London, on his route to Paris in quest of articles for next winter's auction-room--and whose good offices he was anxious to engage on behalf of the Cornet, in case they should happen to be in the metropolis at the same time:-- TO MR. JOHN BALLANTYNE, CARE OF MESSRS. LONGMAN & CO., LONDON. ABBOTSFORD, July 19, 1819. DEAR JOHN,--I have only to say, respecting matters here, that they are all going on quietly. The first volume is very nearly finished, and the whole will be out in the first or second week of September. It will be well if you can report yourself in Britain by that time at farthest, as something must be done on the back of this same Ivanhoe. Walter left us on Wednesday night, and will be in town by the time this reaches you, looking, I fancy, very like a cow in a fremd loaning.[50] He will be heard of at Miss Dumergue's. Pray look after him, and help him about his purchases. I hope you will be so successful in your foreign journey as to diddle the Edinburgh folk out of some cash this winter. But don't forget September, if you wish to partake the advantages thereof. I wish you would see what good reprints of old books are come out this year at Triphook's, and send me a note of them.--Yours very truly, W. SCOTT. [Footnote 50: _Anglice_--a strange pasture.] John Ballantyne found the Cornet in London, and did for him what his father had requested. TO MR. JOHN BALLANTYNE. ABBOTSFORD, July 26, 1819. DEAR JOHN,--I have yours with the news of Walter's rattle-traps, which are abominably extravagant. But there is no help for it but submission. The things seem all such as cannot well be wanted. How the devil they mount them to such a price, the tailors best know. They say it takes _nine_ tailors to make a man--apparently, one is sufficient to ruin him. We shall rub through here well enough, though James is rather glumpy and dumpy--chiefly, I believe, because his child is unwell. If you can make any more money for me in London, good and well. I have no spare cash till Ivanhoe comes forth. Yours truly, W. SCOTT. P. S.--Enclosed are sundry letters of introduction for the _ci-devant_ Laird of Gilnockie. TO MISS EDGEWORTH OF EDGEWORTHSTOWN. ABBOTSFORD, July 21, 1819. MY DEAR MISS EDGEWORTH,--When this shall happen to reach your hands, it will be accompanied by a second edition of Walter Scott, a _tall_ copy, as collectors say, and bound in Turkey leather, garnished with all sorts of fur and frippery--not quite so well _lettered_, however, as the old and vamped original edition. In other and more intelligible phrase, the tall Cornet of Hussars, whom this will introduce to you, is my eldest son, who is now just leaving me to join his regiment in Ireland. I have charged him, and he is himself sufficiently anxious, to avoid no opportunity of making your acquaintance, as to be known to the good and the wise is by far the best privilege he can derive from my connection with literature. I have always felt the value of having access to persons of talent and genius to be the best part of a literary man's prerogative, and you will not wonder, I am sure, that I should be desirous this youngster should have a share of the same benefit. I have had dreadful bad health for many months past, and have endured more pain than I thought was consistent with life. But the thread, though frail in some respects, is tough in others; and here am I with renewed health, and a fair prospect of regaining my strength, much exhausted by such a train of suffering. I do not know when this will reach you, my son's motions being uncertain. But, find you where or when it will, it comes, dear Miss Edgeworth, from the sincere admirer of your genius, and of the patriotic and excellent manner in which it has always been exerted. In which character I subscribe myself ever yours truly, WALTER SCOTT. I believe, at the time when the foregoing letter was written, Scott and Miss Edgeworth had never met. The next was addressed to a gentleman whose acquaintance the poet had formed when collecting materials for his edition of Swift. On that occasion Mr. Hartstonge was of great service to Scott--and he appears to have paid him soon afterwards a visit at Abbotsford. Mr. Hartstonge was an amiable and kind-hearted man, and enthusiastically devoted to literature; but his own poetical talents were undoubtedly of the sort that finds little favor either with gods or columns. He seems to have written shortly before this time to inquire about his old acquaintance's health. TO MATTHEW WELD HARTSTONGE, ESQ., MOLESWORTH STREET, DUBLIN. ABBOTSFORD, July 21, 1819. MY DEAR SIR,--... Fortunately at present my system is pretty strong. In the mean while my family are beginning to get forwards. Walter (you remember my wading into Cauldshiels Loch to save his little frigate from wreck) is now a Cornet of six feet two inches in your Irish 18th Hussars; the regiment is now at Cork, and will probably be next removed to Dublin, so you will see your old friend with a new face; be-furred, be-feathered, and be-whiskered in the highest military _ton_. I have desired him to call upon you, should he get to Dublin on leave, or come there upon duty. I miss him here very much, for he was my companion, gamekeeper, etc., etc., and when one loses one's own health and strength, there are few things so pleasant as to see a son enjoying both in the vigor of hope and promise. Think of this, my good friend, and as you have kind affections to make some good girl happy, settle yourself in life while you are young, and lay up, by so doing, a stock of domestic happiness, against age or bodily decay. There are many good things in life, whatever satirists and misanthropes may say to the contrary; but probably the best of all, next to a conscience void of offence (without which, by the bye, they can hardly exist), are the quiet exercise and enjoyment of the social feelings, in which we are at once happy ourselves, and the cause of happiness to them who are dearest to us. I have no news to send you from hence. The addition to my house is completed with battlement and bartisan, but the old cottage remains hidden among creepers, until I shall have leisure--_i. e._, time and money--to build the rest of my mansion--which I will not do hastily, as the present is amply sufficient for accommodation. Adieu, my dear sir; never reckon the degree of my regard by the regularity of my correspondence, for besides the vile diseases of laziness and procrastination, which have always beset me, I have had of late both pain and languor sufficient to justify my silence. Believe me, however, always most truly yours, WALTER SCOTT. The first letter the young Cornet received from his father after mounting his "rattle-traps" was the following:-- TO CORNET WALTER SCOTT, 18TH HUSSARS, CORK. ABBOTSFORD, August 1, 1819. DEAR WALTER,--I was glad to find you got safe to the hospitable quarters of Piccadilly, and were put on the way of achieving your business well and expeditiously. You would receive a packet of introductory letters by John Ballantyne, to whom I addressed them. I had a very kind letter two days ago from your Colonel.[51] Had I got it sooner it would have saved some expense in London, but there is no help for it now. As you are very fully provided with all these appointments, you must be particular in taking care of them, otherwise the expense of replacing them will be a great burden. Colonel Murray seems disposed to show you much attention. He is, I am told, rather a reserved man, which indeed is the manner of his family. You will, therefore, be the more attentive to what he says, as well as to answer all advances he may make to you with cordiality and frankness; for if you be shy on the one hand, and he reserved on the other, you cannot have the benefit of his advice, which I hope and wish you may gain. I shall be guided by his opinion respecting your allowance: he stipulates that you shall have only two horses (not to be changed without his consent), and on no account keep a gig. You know of old how I detest that mania of driving wheel-barrows up and down, when a man has a handsome horse, and can ride him. They are both foolish and expensive things, and, in my opinion, are only fit for English bagmen--therefore gig it not, I pray you. In buying your horses you will be very cautious. I see Colonel Murray has delicacy about assisting you directly in the matter--for he says very truly that some gentlemen make a sort of traffic in horse-flesh--from which his duty and inclination equally lead him to steer clear. But he will take care that you don't buy any that are unfit for service, as in the common course they must be approved by the commandant as _chargers_. Besides which, he will probably give you some private hints, of which avail yourself, as there is every chance of your needing much advice in this business. Two things I preach on my own experience: _1st_, Never to buy an aged horse, however showy. He must have done work, and, at any rate, will be unserviceable in a few years. _2dly_, To buy rather when the horse is something low in condition, that you may the better see all his points. Six years is the oldest at which I would purchase. You will run risk of being jockeyed by knowing gentlemen of your own corps parting with their _experienced_ chargers to _oblige_ you. Take care of this. Any good-tempered horse learns the dragoon duty in wonderfully short time, and you are rider enough not to want one quite broke in. Look well about you, and out into the country. Excellent horses are bred all through Munster, and better have a clever young one than an old regimental brute foundered by repeated charges and bolts. If you see a brother-officer's horse that pleases you much, and seems reasonable, look particularly how he stands on his forelegs, and for that purpose see him in the stable. If he shifts and shakes a little, have nothing to say to him. This is the best I can advise, not doubting you will be handsomely excised after all. The officer who leaves his corps may be disposing of good horses, and perhaps selling reasonable. One who continues will not, at least should not, part with a good horse without some great advantage. You will remain at Cork till you have learned your regimental duty, and then probably be despatched to some outquarter. I need not say how anxious I am that you should keep up your languages, mathematics, and other studies. To have lost that which you already in some degree possess--and that which we don't practise we soon forget--would be a subject of unceasing regret to you hereafter. You have good introductions, and don't neglect to avail yourself of them. Something in this respect your name may do for you--a fair advantage, if used with discretion and propriety. By the way, I suspect you did not call on John Richardson. The girls were very dull after you left us; indeed the night you went away, Anne had hysterics, which lasted some time. Charles also was down in the mouth, and papa and mamma a little grave and dejected. I would not have you think yourself of too great importance neither, for the greatest personages are not always long missed, and to make a bit of a parody,-- "Down falls the rain, up gets the sun, Just as if Walter were not gone." We comfort ourselves with the hopes that you are to be happy in the occupation you have chosen, and in your new society. Let me know if there are any well-informed men among them, though I don't expect you to find out that for some time. Be civil to all, till you can by degrees find out who are really best deserving. I enclose a letter from Sophia, which doubtless contains all the news. St. Boswell's Fair rained miserably, and disappointed the misses. The weather has since been delightful, and harvest advances fast. All here goes its old round--the habits of age do not greatly change, though those of youth do. Mamma has been quite well, and so have I--but I still take calomel. I was obliged to drink some claret with Sir A. Don, Sir John Shelley, and a funny little Newmarket quizzy, called Cousins, whom they brought here with them the other day, but I was not the worse. I wish you had Sir J. S. at your elbow when you are buying your horses--he is a very knowing man on the turf. I like his lady very much. She is perfectly feminine in her manners, has good sense, and plays divinely on the harp; besides all which, she shoots wild boars, and is the boldest horsewoman I ever saw. I saw her at Paris ride like a lapwing, in the midst of all the aide-de-camps and suite of the Duke of Wellington. Write what your horses come to, etc. Your outfit will be an expensive matter; but once settled, it will be fairly launching you into life in the way you wished, and I trust you will see the necessity of prudence and a gentlemanlike economy, which consists chiefly in refusing one's self trifling indulgences until we can easily pay for them. Once more, I beg you to be attentive to Colonel Murray and to his lady. I hear of a disease among the moorfowl. I suppose they are dying for grief at your departure. Ever, my dear boy, your affectionate father, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 51: The then commandant of the 18th Hussars was Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. Henry Murray, brother to the Earl of Mansfield.] TO THE SAME. 7th August, 1819. DEAR WALTER,--... I shall be curious to know how you like your brother-officers, and how you dispose of your time. The drills and riding-school will, of course, occupy much of your mornings for some time. I trust, however, you will keep in view drawing, languages, etc. It is astonishing how far even half an hour a day regularly bestowed on one object, will carry a man in making himself master of it. The habit of dawdling away time is easily acquired, and so is that of putting every moment either to use or to amusement. You will not be hasty in forming intimacies with any of your brother-officers, until you observe which of them are most generally respected, and likely to prove most creditable friends. It is seldom that the people who put themselves hastily forward to please are those most worthy of being known. At the same time you will take care to return all civility which is offered, with readiness and frankness. The Italians have a proverb, which I hope you have not forgot poor Pierrotti's lessons so far as not to comprehend, "_Volto sciolto e pensieri stretti_." There is no occasion to let any one see what you exactly think of him; and it is the less prudent, as you will find reason, in all probability, to change your opinion more than once. I shall be glad to hear of your being fitted with a good servant. Most of the Irish of that class are scapegraces--drink, steal, and lie like the devil. If you could pick up a canny Scot, it would be well. Let me know about your mess. To drink hard is none of your habits; but even drinking what is called a certain quantity every day, hurts the stomach, and by hereditary descent yours is delicate. I believe the poor Duke of Buccleuch laid the foundation of that disease which occasioned his premature death in the excesses of Villars's regiment; and I am sorry and ashamed to say, for your warning, that the habit of drinking wine, so much practised when I was a young man, occasioned, I am convinced, many of my cruel stomach complaints. You had better drink a bottle of wine on any particular occasion, than sit and soak and sipple at an English pint every day. All our bipeds are well. Hamlet had an inflammatory attack, and I began to think he was going mad, after the example of his great namesake, but Willie Laidlaw bled him, and he has recovered. Pussy is very well. Mamma, the girls, and Charlie, join in love. Yours affectionately, W. S. P. S.--Always mention what letters of mine you have received, and write to me whatever comes into your head. It is the privilege of great boys when distant that they cannot tire papas by any length of detail upon any subject. TO THE SAME. ABBOTSFORD, 13th August, 1819. MY DEAREST WALTER,--I am very much obliged to Colonel Murray for the trouble he has taken on your behalf. I hope he has received the letter which I wrote to him a fortnight since under Mr. Freeling's cover. It enclosed a parcel of letters to you. I took the liberty of asking his advice what allowance you should have to assist you. You know pretty well my circumstances and your own, and that I wish you to be comfortable, but not in any respect extravagant; and this for your own sake, and not for that of money, which I never valued very much, perhaps not so much as I ought to have done. I think by speaking to Colonel Murray you may get at his opinion, and I have so much trust in your honor and affection as to confide in your naming your own allowance. Meantime, lest the horse should starve while the grass grows, I enclose a cheque upon Messrs. Coutts for £50, to accompt of your first year's allowance. Your paymaster will give you the money for it I dare say. You have to endorse the bill, _i. e._, write your name on the back of it. All concerned are pleased with your kind tokens of remembrance from London. Mamma and I like the caricatures very much. I think, however, scarce any of them shows the fancy and talent of old Gilray: he became insane, I suppose by racking his brain in search of extravagant ideas, and was supported in his helpless condition by the woman who keeps the great print-shop in St. James's Street, who had the generosity to remember that she had made thousands by his labor. Everything here goes on in the old fashion, and we are all as well as possible, saving that Charles rode to Lawrence fair yesterday in a private excursion, and made himself sick with eating gingerbread, whereby he came to disgrace. Sophia has your letter of the 4th, which she received yesterday. The enclosed will help you to set up shop and to get and pay whatever is necessary. I wish we had a touch of your hand to make the parties rise in the morning, at which they show as little alertness as usual. I beg you will keep an account of money received and paid. Buy a little book ruled for the purpose, for pounds, shillings, and pence, and keep an account of cash received and expended. The balance ought to be cash in purse, if the book is regularly kept. But any very small expenses you can enter as "Sundries, £0: 3: 6," which saves trouble. You will find this most satisfactory and useful. But, indeed, arithmetic is indispensable to a soldier who means to rise in his profession. All military movements depend upon calculation of time, numbers, and distance. Dogs all well--cat sick--supposed with eating birds in their feathers. Sisters, brother, and mamma join in love to the "poor wounded hussa-a-r;"--I dare say you have heard the song; if not, we shall send it for the benefit of the mess. Yours affectionately, WALTER SCOTT. P. S.--Yesterday, _the 12th_, would, I suppose, produce some longings after the Peel heights. In the following letter to Mr. Richardson, we see Scott busied about certain little matters of heraldic importance which had to be settled before his patent of baronetcy could be properly made out. He also alludes to two little volumes, which he edited during this autumn--the Memorials of the Haliburtons, a thin quarto (never published)--and the poems of Patrick Carey, of which he had given specimens some years before in the Annual Register. TO JOHN RICHARDSON, ESQ., FLUDYER STREET, WESTMINSTER. ABBOTSFORD, 22d August, 1819. MY DEAR RICHARDSON,--I am sorry Walter did not get to your kind domicile. But he stayed but about five or six days in London, and great was his haste, as you may well suppose. He had a world of trinkums to get, for you know there goes as much to the man-millinery of a young officer of hussars as to that of an heiress on her bridal day. His complete equipage, horses not included, cost about £360, and if you add a couple of blood horses, it will be £200 more, besides the price of his commission, for the privilege of getting the hardness of his skull tried by a brick-bat at the next meeting of Radical Reformers. I am not much afraid of these folks, however, because I remember 1793 and 1794, when the same ideas possessed a much more formidable class of the people, being received by a large proportion of farmers, shopkeepers, and others, possessed of substance. A mere mob will always be a fire of loose straw; but it is melancholy to think of the individual mischief that may be done. I did not find it quite advisable to take so long a journey as London this summer. I am quite recovered; but my last attack was of so dreadful a nature, that I wish to be quite insured against another--_i. e._, as much as one can be insured against such a circumstance--before leaving home for any length of time. To return to the vanities of this world, from what threatened to hurry me to the next: I enclose a drawing of my arms, with the supporters which the heralds here assign me. Our friend Harden seems to wish I would adopt one of his Mer-maidens, otherwise they should be both Moors, as on the left side. I have also added an impression of my seal. You can furnish Sir George Naylor with as much of my genealogy as will serve the present purpose. I shall lose no time in connecting myself by a general service with my grand-uncle, the last Haliburton of Dryburgh Abbey, or Newmains, as they call it. I spoke to the Lyon-office people in Edinburgh. I find my entry there will be an easy matter, the proofs being very pregnant and accessible. I would not stop for a trifling expense to register my pedigree in England, as far as you think may be necessary, to show that it is a decent one. My ancestors were brave and honest men, and I have no reason to be ashamed of them, though they were neither wealthy nor great. As something of an antiquary and genealogist, I should not like there were any mistakes in this matter, so I send you a small note of my descent by my father and my paternal grandmother, with a memorandum of the proofs by which they may be supported, to which I might add a whole cloud of oral witnesses. I hate the being suspected of fishing for a pedigree, or bolstering one up with false statements. How people can bring themselves to this, I cannot conceive. I send you a copy of the Haliburton MS., of which I have printed twenty for the satisfaction of a few friends. You can have any part of them copied in London which ought to be registered. I should like if Sir George Naylor would take the trouble of looking at the proofs, which are chiefly extracts from the public records. I take this opportunity to send you also a copy of a little amateur-book--Carey's Poems--a thoroughbred Cavalier, and, I think, no bad versifier. Kind compliments to Mrs. Richardson. Yours, my dear Richardson, most truly, WALTER SCOTT. TO CORNET W. SCOTT, 18TH HUSSARS, CORK. ABBOTSFORD, 4th September, 1819. DEAR WALTER,--Your very acceptable letter of the 26th reached me to-day. I had begun to be apprehensive that the draft had fallen into the hands of the Philistines, but the very long calm must have made the packets slow in their progress, which I suppose was the occasion of the delay. Respecting the allowance, Colonel Murray informs me that from £200 to £250, in addition to the pay of a Cornet, ought to make a young man very comfortable. He adds, which I am much pleased to hear, that your officers are, many of them, men of moderate fortune, and disposed to be economical. I had thought of £200 as what would suit us both, but when I see the account which you very properly keep, I shall be better able to determine. It must be considered that any uncommon expense, as the loss of a horse or the like, may occasion an extra draft over and above the allowance. I like very much your methodical arrangement as to expenses; it is rather a tiresome thing at first to keep an accompt of pounds, shillings, and pence, but it is highly necessary, and enables one to see how the money actually goes. It is, besides, a good practical way of keeping up acquaintance with arithmetic, and you will soon find that the principles on which all military movements turn are arithmetical, and that though one may no doubt learn to do them by rote, yet to _understand_ them, you must have recourse to numbers. Your adjutant will explain this to you. By the way, as he is a foreigner, you will have an opportunity to keep up a little of your French and German. Both are highly necessary to you; the knowledge of the last, with few other qualifications, made several officers' fortunes last war. I observe with pleasure you are making acquaintances among the gentry, which I hope you will not drop for want of calling, etc. I trust you have delivered all your recommendations, for it is an affront to omit doing so, both to the person who writes them, and those for whom they are designed. On the other hand, one always holds their head a little better up in the world when they keep good society. Lord and Lady Melville are to give you recommendations when you go to Dublin. I was at Melville Castle for two days, and found them both well. I was also one day at Langholm Lodge to meet Lord Montagu. Possibly, among your Irish friends, you may get some shooting. I shall be glad you avail yourself of any such opportunities, and also that, when you get your own horses, you hunt in the winter, if you be within the reach of hounds. Nothing confirms a man in horsemanship so well as hunting, though I do not recommend it to beginners, who are apt to learn to ride like grooms. Besides the exercise, field-sports make a young soldier acquainted with the country, and habituate him to have a good eye for distance and for taking up the _carte de pays_ in general, which is essential to all, but especially to officers of light troops, who are expected to display both alertness and intelligence in reporting the nature of the country, being in fact the _eyes_ of the army. In every point of view, field-sports are preferable to the indoors amusement of a billiard-table, which is too often the lounging-place for idle young officers, where there is nothing to be got but a habit of throwing away time, and an acquaintance with the very worst society--I mean at public billiard-rooms--for unquestionably the game itself is a pretty one, when practised among gentlemen, and not made a constant habit of. But public billiard-tables are almost always the resort of blacklegs and sharpers, and all that numerous class whom the French call _chevaliers d'industrie_, and we, _knights of the whipping-post_. I am glad you go to the anatomical lectures. An acquaintance with our own very extraordinary frame is a useful branch of general knowledge, and as you have some turn for drawing, it will also enable you to judge of the proper mode of disposing the limbs and muscles of your figures, should you prosecute the art so far. In fact, there is no branch of study can come much amiss to a young man, providing he does study, and very often the precise occupation of the time must be trusted to taste and opportunity. The White Boys made a great noise when I was a boy. But Ireland (the more is the pity) has never been without White Boys, or Right Boys, or Defenders, or Peep-of-day Boys, or some wild association or another for disturbing the peace of the country. We shall not be many degrees better if the Radical Reformers be not checked. The Manchester Yeomen behaved very well, upsetting the most immense crowd ever was seen, and notwithstanding the lies in the papers, without any unnecessary violence. Mr. Hunt pretends to have had several blows on his head with sabres, but has no wound to show for it. I am disposed to wish he had got such a one as once on a day I could have treated him to. I am apt to think his politic pate would have broached no more sedition. Miss Rutherford and Eliza Russell are now with us. We were also favored with a visit of the Miss ----s, who are rather empty canisters, though I dare say very good girls. Anne tired of them most inhospitably. Mrs. Maclean Clephane and her two unmarried daughters are now here; being, as we say, pears of another tree. Your sisters seem very fond of the young ladies, and I am glad of it, for they will see that a great deal of accomplishment and information may be completely reconciled with liveliness, fun, good-humor, and good-breeding. All here send love. Dogs and cat are well. I dare say you have heard from some other correspondent that poor Lady Wallace died of an inflammation, after two days' illness. Trout[52] has returned here several times, poor fellow, and seems to look for you; but Henry Scott is very kind to him, and he is a great favorite. As you Hussars smoke, I will give you one of my pipes, but you must let me know how I can send it safely. It is a very handsome one, though not my best. I will keep my _Meerschaum_ until I make my Continental tour, and then you shall have that also. I hope you will get leave for a few months, and go with me. Yours very affectionately, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 52: _Lady Wallace_ was a pony; _Trout_ a favorite pointer which the Cornet had given, at leaving home, to the young Laird of Harden, now the Master of Polwarth.] About this time, as the succeeding letters will show, Abbotsford had the honor of a short visit from Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, now King of the Belgians. Immediately afterwards Scott heard of the death of Mrs. William Erskine, and repaired to Edinburgh to condole with his afflicted friend.[53] His allusions, meanwhile, to views of buying more land on Tweedside, are numerous. These speculations are explained in a most characteristic style to the Cornet; and we see that one of them was cut short by the tragical death of a _bonnet-laird_ already introduced to the reader's notice--namely, _Lauchie Longlegs_, the admired of Geoffrey Crayon. [Footnote 53: For Scott's Epitaph for Mrs. Erskine, see his _Poetical Works_ (Ed. 1834), vol. xi. p. 347 [Cambridge Ed. p. 447].] TO CORNET WALTER SCOTT, 18TH HUSSARS, CORK. ABBOTSFORD, 27th September, 1819. MY DEAR WALTER,--Your letter of the 10th gave me the pleasant assurance that you are well and happy, and attending to your profession. We have been jogging on here in the old fashion, somewhat varied by an unexpected visit, on Friday last, from no less a person than Prince Leopold. I conclude you will have all the particulars of this important event from the other members of the family, so I shall only say that when I mentioned the number of your regiment, the Prince said he had several friends in the 18th, and should now think he had one more, which was very polite. By the way, I hear an excellent character of your officers for regularity and gentlemanlike manners. This report gives me great pleasure, for to live in bad society will deprave the best manners, and to live in good will improve the worst. I am trying a sort of bargain with neighbor Nicol Milne at present. He is very desirous of parting with his estate of Faldonside, and if he will be contented with a reasonable price, I am equally desirous to be the purchaser. I conceive it will come to about £30,000 at least. I will not agree to give a penny more; and I think that sum is probably £2000 and more above its actual marketable value. But then it lies extremely convenient for us, and would, joined to Abbotsford, make a very gentlemanlike property, worth at least £1800 or £2000 a year. I can command about £10,000 of my own, and if I be spared life and health, I should not fear rubbing off the rest of the price, as Nicol is in no hurry for payment. As you will succeed me in my landed property, I think it right to communicate my views to you. I am much moved by the prospect of getting at about £2000 or £3000 worth of marle, which lies on Milne's side of the loch, but which can only be drained on my side, so that he can make no use of it. This would make the lands of Abbotsford worth 40_s._ an acre over-head, excepting the sheep farm. I am sensible I might dispose of my money to more advantage, but probably to none which, in the long run, would be better for you--certainly to none which would be productive of so much pleasure to myself. The woods are thriving, and it would be easy, at a trifling expense, to restore Faldonside loch, and stock it with fish. In fact, it would require but a small dam-head. By means of a little judicious planting, added to what is already there, the estate might be rendered one of the most beautiful in this part of Scotland. Such are my present plans, my dear boy, having as much your future welfare and profit in view as the immediate gratification of my own wishes. I am very sorry to tell you that poor Mrs. William Erskine is no more. She was sent by the medical people on a tour to the lakes of Cumberland, and was taken ill at Lowood, on Windermere. Nature, much exhausted by her previous indisposition, sunk under four days' illness. Her husband was with her, and two of her daughters--he is much to be pitied. Mr. Rees, the bookseller, told me he had met you in the streets of Cork, and reported well of the growth of your _Schnurr-bart_. I hope you know what that means. Pray write often, as the post comes so slow. I keep all your letters, and am much pleased with the frankness of the style. No word of your horses yet? but it is better not to be impatient, and to wait for good ones. I have been three times on Newark, and killed six hares each time. The two young dogs are capital good. I must not omit to tell you our old, and, I may add, our kind neighbor Lauchie, has departed, or, as Tom expresses it, has been fairly _flytten out o' the warld_. You know the old quarrel betwixt his brother and him about the wife: in an ill-fated hour Jock the brother came down to Lochbreist with a sister from Edinburgh, who was determined to have her share of the scolding-match; they attacked poor old Lauchie like mad folks, and reviled his wife in all sort of evil language. At length his passion was wrought up to a great pitch, and he answered with much emotion, that if she were the greatest ---- in Edinburgh, it was not their business, and as he uttered this speech, he fell down on his back, and lay a dead man before them. There is little doubt the violence of the agitation had broke a blood-vessel in the heart or brain. A very few days since he was running up and down calling for a coffin, and wishing to God he was in one; to which Swanston,[54] who was present, answered, he could not apply to a better hand, and he would make him one if he had a mind. He has left a will of his own making, but from some informality I think it will be set aside. His land cannot come into the market until his girl comes of age, which, by the way, makes me more able for the other bargain.... The blackcocks are very plenty. I put up fourteen cocks and hens in walking up the Clappercleuch to look at the wood. Do you not wish you had been on the outside with your gun? Tom has kept us well supplied with game; he boasts that he shot fifteen times without a miss. I shall be glad to hear that you do the same on Mr. Newenham's grounds. Mamma, the girls, and Charles, all join in love and affection. Believe me ever, dear Walter, your affectionate father, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 54: John Swanston had then the care of the sawmill at Toftfield; he was one of Scott's most valued dependents, and in the sequel succeeded Tom Purdie as his henchman.] TO THE LORD MONTAGU, ETC., ETC., ETC. ABBOTSFORD, 3d October, 1819. MY DEAR LORD,--I am honored with your Buxton letter.... _Anent_ Prince Leopold, I only heard of his approach at eight o'clock in the morning, and he was to be at Selkirk by eleven. The magistrates sent to ask me to help them to receive him. It occurred to me he might be coming to Melrose to see the Abbey, in which case I could not avoid asking him to Abbotsford, as he must pass my very door. I mentioned this to Mrs. Scott, who was lying quietly in bed, and I wish you had heard the scream she gave on the occasion. "What have we to offer him?"--"Wine and cake," said I, thinking to make all things easy; but she ejaculated, in a tone of utter despair, "Cake!! where am I to get cake?" However, being partly consoled with the recollection that his visit was a very improbable incident, and curiosity, as usual, proving too strong for alarm, she set out with me in order not to miss a peep of the great man. James Skene and his lady were with us, and we gave our carriages such additional dignity as a pair of leaders could add, and went to meet him in full puff. The Prince very civilly told me, that, though he could not see Melrose on this occasion, he wished to come to Abbotsford for an hour. New despair on the part of Mrs. Scott, who began to institute a domiciliary search for cold meat through the whole city of Selkirk, which produced _one shoulder of cold lamb_. In the mean while, his Royal Highness received the civic honors of the BIRSE[55] very graciously. I had hinted to Bailie Lang,[56] that it ought only to be licked _symbolically_ on the present occasion; so he flourished it three times before his mouth, but without touching it with his lips, and the Prince followed his example as directed. Lang made an excellent speech--sensible, and feeling, and well delivered. The Prince seemed much surprised at this great propriety of expression and behavior in a magistrate, whose people seemed such a rabble, and whose whole band of music consisted in a drum and fife. He noticed to Bailie Anderson that Selkirk seemed very populous in proportion to its extent. "On an occasion like this it seems so," answered the Bailie,--neatly enough, I thought. I question if any magistrates in the kingdom, lord mayors and aldermen not excepted, could have behaved with more decent and quiet good-breeding. Prince Leopold repeatedly alluded to this during the time he was at Abbotsford. I do not know how Mrs. Scott ultimately managed; but with broiled salmon, and blackcock, and partridges, she gave him a very decent lunch; and I chanced to have some very fine old hock, which was mighty germane to the matter. The Prince seems melancholy, whether naturally or from habit, I do not pretend to say; but I do not remember thinking him so at Paris, where I saw him frequently, then a much poorer man than myself; yet he showed some humor, for, alluding to the crowds that followed him everywhere, he mentioned some place where he had gone out to shoot, but was afraid to proceed for fear of "bagging a boy." He said he really thought of getting some shooting-place in Scotland, and promised me a longer visit on his return. If I had had a day's notice to have _warned the waters_, we could have met him with a very respectable number of the gentry; but there was no time for this, and probably he liked it better as it was. There was only young Clifton who could have come, and he was shy and cubbish, and would not, though requested by the Selkirk people. He was perhaps ashamed to march through Coventry with them. It hung often and sadly on my mind that _he_ was wanting who could and would have received him like a Prince indeed; and yet the meeting betwixt them, had they been fated to meet, would have been a very sad one. I think I have now given your Lordship a very full, true, and particular account of our royal visit, unmatched even by that of King Charles at the Castle of Tillietudlem. That we did not speak of it for more than a week after it happened, and that that emphatic monosyllable, _The Prince_, is not heard amongst us more than ten times a day, is, on the whole, to the credit of my family's understanding. The piper is the only one whose brain he seems to have endangered; for, as the Prince said he preferred him to any he had heard in the Highlands--(which, by the way, shows his Royal Highness knows nothing of the matter)--the fellow seems to have become incapable of his ordinary occupation as a forester, and has cut stick and stem without remorse to the tune of _Phail Phranse_, _i. e._, the Prince's Welcome. I am just going to the head-court with Donaldson, and go a day sooner to exhume certain old monuments of the Rutherfords at Jedburgh. Edgerstone[57] is to meet me at Jedburgh for this research, and then we shall go up with him to dinner. My best respects attend Lady Montagu. I wish this letter may reach you on a more lively day than it is written in, for it requires little to add to its dulness. Tweed is coming down very fast, the first time this summer. Believe me, my dear Lord, most truly yours, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 55: See _ante_, vol. v. p. 88.] [Footnote 56: Scott's good friend, Mr. Andrew Lang, Sheriff-Clerk for Selkirkshire, was then chief magistrate of the county town. [He was the grandfather of the accomplished man of letters who bears his name.]] [Footnote 57: The late John Rutherford of Edgerstone, long M. P. for Roxburghshire, was a person of high worth, and universally esteemed. Scott used to say Edgerstone was his _beau ideal_ of the character of a country gentleman. He was, I believe, the head of the once great and powerful clan of Rutherford.] TO W. SCOTT, ESQ., 18TH HUSSARS, CORK. ABBOTSFORD, 14th October, 1819. DEAR WALTER,--I had your last letter, and am very glad you find pleasant society. Mrs. Dundas of Arniston is so good as to send you some introductions, which you will deliver as soon as possible. You will be now in some degree accustomed to meet with strangers, and to form your estimate of their character and manners. I hope, in the mean time, the French and German are attended to; please to mention in your next letter what you are reading, and in what languages. The hours of youth, my dear Walter, are too precious to be spent all in gayety. We must lay up in that period when our spirit is active, and our memory strong, the stores of information which are not only to facilitate our progress through life, but to amuse and interest us in our later stage of existence. I very often think what an unhappy person I should have been, if I had not done something more or less towards improving my understanding when I was at your age; and I never reflect, without severe self-condemnation, on the opportunities of acquiring knowledge which I either trifled with, or altogether neglected. I hope you will be wiser than I have been, and experience less of that self-reproach. My last acquainted you with Mrs. Erskine's death, and I grieve to say we have just received intelligence that our kind neighbor and good friend Lord Somerville is at the very last gasp. His disease is a dysentery, and the symptoms, as his brother writes to Mr. Samuel Somerville, are mortal. He is at Vevay, upon his road, I suppose, to Italy, where he had purposed spending the winter. His death, for I understand nothing else can be expected, will be another severe loss to me; for he was a kind, good friend, and at my time of day men do not readily take to new associates. I must own this has been one of the most melancholy years I ever passed. The poor Duke, who loved me so well--Mrs. Erskine--Lord Somerville--not to mention others with whom I was less intimate, make it one year of mourning. I should not forget the Chief Baron, who, though from ill health we met of late seldom, was always my dear friend, and indeed very early benefactor. I must look forwards to seeing in your success and respectability, and in the affection and active improvement of all of you, those pleasures which are narrowed by the death of my contemporaries. Men cannot form new intimacies at my period of life, but must be happy or otherwise according to the good fortune and good conduct of those near relatives who rise around them. I wish much to know if you are lucky in a servant. Trust him with as little cash as possible, and keep short accounts. Many a good servant is spoiled by neglecting this simple precaution. The man is tempted to some expense of his own, gives way to it, and then has to make it up by a system of overcharge and peculation; and thus mischief begins, and the carelessness of the master makes a rogue out of an honest lad, and cheats himself into the bargain. I have a letter from your uncle Tom, telling me his eldest daughter is to be forthwith married to a Captain Huxley of his own regiment. As he has had a full opportunity of being acquainted with the young gentleman, and approves of the match, I have to hope that it will be a happy one. I fear there is no great fortune in the case on either side, which is to be regretted. Of domestic affairs I have little to tell you. The harvest has been excellent, the weather delightful; but this I must often have repeated. To-day I was thinning out fir-trees in the thicket, and the men were quite exhausted with the heat, and I myself, though only marking the trees, felt the exercise sufficiently warm. The wood is thriving delightfully. On the 28th we are to have a dance in honor of your birthday. I wish you could look in upon us for the day at least--only I am afraid we could not part with you when it was over, and so you would be in the guise of Cinderella, when she outstayed her time at the ball, and all her finery returned into its original base materials. Talking of balls, the girls would tell you the Melrose hop, where mamma presided, went off well. I expect poor Erskine and his daughter next week, or the week after. I went into town to see him--and found him bearing his great loss with his natural gentleness and patience. But he was sufficiently distressed, as he has great reason to be. I also expect Lord and Lady Melville here very soon. Sir William Rae (now Lord Advocate) and his lady came to us on Saturday. On Sunday Maida walked with us, and in jumping the paling at the Greentongue park contrived to hang himself up by the hind leg. He howled at first, but seeing us making towards him he stopped crying, and waved his tail, by way of signal, it was supposed, for assistance. He sustained no material injury, though his leg was strangely twisted into the bars, and he was nearly hanging by it. He showed great gratitude, in his way, to his deliverers. This is a long letter, and little in it; but that is nothing extraordinary. All send best love--and I am ever, dear Walter, your affectionate father, WALTER SCOTT. TO THOMAS SCOTT, ESQ., PAYMASTER, 70th REGIMENT, CANADA. ABBOTSFORD, 16th October, 1819. DEAR TOM,--I received yesterday your very acceptable letter, containing the news of Jessie's approaching marriage, in which, as a match agreeable to her mother and you, and relieving your minds from some of the anxious prospects which haunt those of parents, I take the most sincere interest. Before this reaches you the event will probably have taken place. Meantime, I enclose a letter to the bride or wife, as the case may happen to be. I have sent a small token of good-will to ballast my good wishes, which you will please to value for the young lady, that she may employ it as most convenient or agreeable to her. A little more fortune would perhaps have done the young folks no harm; but Captain Huxley, being such as you describe him, will have every chance of getting forward in his profession; and the happiest marriages are often those in which there is, at first, occasion for prudence and economy. I do certainly feel a little of the surprise which you hint at, for time flies over our heads one scarce marks how, and children become marriageable ere we consider them as out of the nursery. My eldest son, Walter, has also wedded himself--but it is to a regiment of hussars. He is at present a cornet in the 18th, and quartered in Cork barracks. He is capital at most exercises, but particularly as a horseman. I do not intend he shall remain in the cavalry, however, but shall get him into the line when he is capable of promotion. Since he has chosen this profession, I shall be desirous that he follows it out in good earnest, and that can only be done by getting into the infantry. My late severe illness has prevented my going up to London to receive the honor which the Prince Regent has announced his intention to inflict upon me. My present intention is, if I continue as well as I have been, to go up about Christmas to get this affair over. My health was restored (I trust permanently) by the use of calomel, a very severe and painful remedy, especially in my exhausted state of body, but it has proved a radical one. By the way, _Radical_ is a word in very bad odor here, being used to denote a set of blackguards a hundred times more mischievous and absurd than our old friends in 1794 and 1795. You will learn enough of the doings of the _Radical Reformers_ from the papers. In Scotland we are quiet enough, excepting in the manufacturing districts, and we are in very good hands, as Sir William Rae, our old commander, is Lord Advocate. Rae has been here two or three days, and left me yesterday; he is the old man, sensible, cool-headed, and firm, always thinking of his duty, never of himself. He inquired kindly after you, and I think will be disposed to serve you, should an opportunity offer. Poor William Erskine has lost his excellent wife, after a long and wasting illness. She died at Lowood on Windermere, he having been recommended to take her upon a tour about three weeks before her death. I own I should scarce forgive a physician who should contrive to give me this addition to family distress. I went to town last week to see him, and found him, upon the whole, much better than I expected. I saw my mother on the same occasion, admirably well indeed. She is greatly better than this time two years, when she rather quacked herself a little too much. I have sent your letter to our mother, and will not fail to transmit to our other friends the agreeable news of your daughter's settlement. Our cousin, Sir Harry Macdougal, is marrying his eldest daughter to Sir Thomas Brisbane, a very good match on both sides. I have been paying a visit on the occasion, which suspends my closing this letter. I hope to hear very soon from you. Respecting our silence, I, like a ghost, only waited to be spoken to, and you may depend on me as a regular correspondent, when you find time to be one yourself. Charlotte and the girls join in kind love to Mrs. Scott and all the family. I should like to know what you mean to do with young Walter, and whether I can assist you in that matter. Believe me, dear Tom, ever your affectionate brother, W. SCOTT. TO DANIEL TERRY, ESQ., LONDON. ABBOTSFORD, November 10, 1819. MY DEAR TERRY,--I should be very sorry if you thought the interest I take in you and yours so slight as not to render your last letter extremely interesting. We have all our various combats to fight in this best of all possible worlds, and, like brave fellow-soldiers, ought to assist one another as much as possible. I have little doubt, that if God spares me till my little namesake be fit to take up his share of the burden, I may have interest enough to be of great advantage to him in the entrance of life. In the present state of your own profession, you would not willingly, I suppose, choose him to follow it; and, as it is very seductive to young people of a lively temper and good taste for the art, you should, I think, consider early how you mean to dispose of little Walter, with a view, that is, to the future line of life which you would wish him to adopt. Mrs. Terry has not the good health which all who know her amiable disposition and fine accomplishments would anxiously wish her; yet, with impaired health and the caution which it renders necessary, we have very frequently instances of the utmost verge of existence being attained, while robust strength is cut off in the middle career. So you must be of good heart, and hope the best in this as in other cases of a like affecting nature. I go to town on Monday, and will forward under Mr. Freeling's cover as much of Ivanhoe as is finished in print. It is completed, but in the hands of a very slow transcriber; when I can collect it, I will send you the MS., which you will please to keep secret from every eye. I think this will give a start, if it be worth taking, of about a month, for the work will be out on the 20th of December. It is certainly possible to adapt it to the stage, but the expense of scenery and decorations would be great, this being a tale of chivalry, not of character. There is a tale in existence, by dramatizing which, I am certain, a most powerful effect might be produced: it is called Undine, and I believe has been translated into French by Mademoiselle Montolieu, and into English from her version: do read it, and tell me your opinion: in German the character of Undine is exquisite. The only objection is, that the catastrophe is unhappy, but this might be altered. I hope to be in London for ten days the end of next month; and so good-by for the present, being in great haste, most truly yours, W. SCOTT. I conclude this chapter with a letter written two or three days before Scott quitted Abbotsford for the winter session. It is addressed to his friend Hartstonge, who had taken the opportunity of the renewal of Scott's correspondence to solicit his opinion and assistance touching a MS. drama; and the reader will be diverted with the style in which the amiable tragedian is treated to his _quietus_:-- TO MATTHEW WELD HARTSTONGE, ESQ., DUBLIN. ABBOTSFORD, 11th November, 1819. MY DEAR SIR,--I was duly favored with your packet, containing the play, as well as your very kind letter. I will endeavor (though extremely unwilling to offer criticism on most occasions) to meet your confidence with perfect frankness. I do not consider the Tragedy as likely to make that favorable impression on the public which I would wish that the performance of a friend should effect--and I by no means recommend to you to hazard it upon the boards. In other compositions, the neglect of the world takes nothing from the merit of the author; but there is something ludicrous in being _affiché_ as the author of an unsuccessful play. Besides, you entail on yourself the great and eternal plague of altering and retrenching to please the humors of performers, who are, speaking generally, extremely ignorant, and capricious in proportion. These are not vexations to be voluntarily undertaken; and the truth is, that in the present day there is only one reason which seems to me adequate for the encountering the plague of trying to please a set of conceited performers and a very motley audience,--I mean the want of money, from which, fortunately, you are exempted. It is very true that some day or other a great dramatic genius may arise to strike out a new path; but I fear till this happens no great effect will be produced by treading in the old one. The reign of Tragedy seems to be over, and the very considerable poetical abilities which have been lately applied to it, have failed to revive it. Should the public ever be indulged with small theatres adapted to the hours of the better ranks in life, the dramatic art may recover; at present it is in abeyance--and I do therefore advise you in all sincerity to keep the Tragedy (which I return under cover) safe under your own charge. Pray think of this as one of the most unpleasant offices of friendship--and be not angry with me for having been very frank, upon an occasion when frankness may be more useful than altogether palatable. I am much obliged to you for your kind intentions towards my young Hussar. We have not heard from him for three weeks. I believe he is making out a meditated visit to Killarney. I am just leaving the country for Edinburgh, to attend my duty in the courts; but the badness of the weather in some measure reconciles me to the unpleasant change. I have the pleasure to continue the most satisfactory accounts of my health; it is, to external appearance, as strong as in my strongest days--indeed, after I took once more to Sancho's favorite occupations of eating and sleeping, I recovered my losses wonderfully. Very truly yours, WALTER SCOTT. CHAPTER XLVI Political Alarms. -- The Radicals. -- Levies of Volunteers. -- Project of the Buccleuch Legion. -- Death of Scott's Mother, her Brother Dr. Rutherford, and her Sister Christian. -- Letters to Lord Montagu, Mr. Thomas Scott, Cornet Scott, Mr. Laidlaw, and Lady Louisa Stuart. -- Publication of Ivanhoe. 1819 [Illustration: ANNE RUTHERFORD (MOTHER OF SIR WALTER SCOTT) _After the painting at Abbotsford_] Towards the winter of 1819 there prevailed a spirit of alarming insubordination among the mining population of Northumberland and the weavers of the West of Scotland; and Scott was particularly gratified with finding that his own neighbors at Galashiels had escaped the contagion. There can be little doubt that this exemption was principally owing to the personal influence and authority of the Laird of Abbotsford and Sheriff of the Forest; but the people of Galashiels were also fortunate in the qualities of their own beneficent landlords, Mr. Scott of Gala, and Mr. Pringle of Torwoodlee. The progress of the western _Reformers_ by degrees led even the most important Whigs in that district to exert themselves in the organization of volunteer regiments, both mounted and dismounted; and, when it became generally suspected that Glasgow and Paisley maintained a dangerous correspondence with the refractory colliers of Northumberland--Scott, and his friends the Lairds of Torwoodlee and Gala, determined to avail themselves of the loyalty and spirit of the men of Ettrick and Teviotdale, and proposed first raising a company of sharpshooters among their own immediate neighbors, and afterwards--this plan receiving every encouragement--a legion or brigade upon a large scale, to be called the Buccleuch Legion. During November and December, 1819, these matters formed the chief daily care and occupation of the author of Ivanhoe; and though he was still obliged to dictate most of the chapters of his novel, we shall see that, in case it should be necessary for the projected levy of Foresters to march upon Tynedale, he was prepared to place himself at their head. He had again intended, as soon as he should have finished Ivanhoe, to proceed to London, and receive his baronetcy; but as that affair had been crossed at Easter by his own illness, so at Christmas it was again obliged to be put off in consequence of a heavy series of domestic afflictions. Within one week Scott lost his excellent mother, his uncle Dr. Daniel Rutherford, Professor of Botany in the University of Edinburgh--and their sister, Christian Rutherford, already often mentioned as one of the dearest and most esteemed of all his friends and connections. The following letters require no further introduction or comment:-- TO THE LORD MONTAGU, BUXTON. ABBOTSFORD, 12th November, 1819. MY DEAR LORD,--... I wish I had any news to send your Lordship; but the best is, we are all quiet here. The Galashiels weavers, both men and masters, have made their political creed known to me, and have sworn themselves anti-radical. They came in solemn procession, with their banners, and my own piper at their head, whom they had borrowed for the nonce. But the Tweed being in flood, we could only communicate like Wallace and Bruce across the Carron. However, two deputies came through in the boat, and made me acquainted with their loyal purposes. The evening was crowned with two most distinguished actions--the weavers refusing, in the most peremptory manner, to accept of a couple of guineas to buy whiskey, and the renowned John of Skye, piper in ordinary to the Laird of Abbotsford, no less steadily refusing a very handsome collection, which they offered him for his minstrelsy. All this sounds very nonsensical, but the people must be humored and countenanced when they take the right turn, otherwise they will be sure to take the wrong. The accounts from the West sometimes make me wish our little Duke five or six years older, and able to get on horseback. It seems approaching to the old song-- "Come fill up our cup, come fill up our can, Come saddle the horses, and call up our men, Come open the gates, and let us go free, And we'll show them the bonnets of bonny Dundee."[58] I am rather too old for that work now, and I cannot look forward to it with the sort of feeling that resembled pleasure--as I did in my younger and more healthy days. However, I have got a good following here, and will endeavor to keep them together till times mend. My respectful compliments attend Lady Montagu, and I am always, with the greatest regard, your Lordship's very faithful WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 58: See Scott's _Poetical Works_, vol. xii. p. 195 [Cambridge Ed. p. 485].] TO CORNET WALTER SCOTT, 18TH HUSSARS. EDINBURGH, 13th November, 1819. DEAR WALTER,--I am much surprised and rather hurt at not hearing from you for so long a while. You ought to remember that, however pleasantly the time may be passing with you, we at home have some right to expect that a part of it (a very small part will serve the turn) should be dedicated, were it but for the sake of propriety, to let us know what you are about. I cannot say I shall be flattered by finding myself under the necessity of again complaining of neglect. To write once a week, to one or other of us, is no great sacrifice, and it is what I earnestly pray you to do. We are to have great doings in Edinburgh this winter. No less than Prince Gustavus of Sweden is to pass the season here, and do what Princes call studying. He is but half a Prince either, for this Northern Star is somewhat shorn of his beams. His father was, you know, dethroned by Buonaparte, at least by the influence of his arms, and one of his generals, Bernadotte, made heir of the Swedish throne in his stead. But this youngster, I suppose, has his own dreams of royalty, for he is nephew to the Emperor of Russia (by the mother's side), and that is a likely connection to be of use to him, should the Swedish nobles get rid of Bernadotte, as it is said they wish to do. Lord Melville has recommended the said Prince particularly to my attention, though I do not see how I can do much for him. I have just achieved my grand remove from Abbotsford to Edinburgh--a motion which you know I do not make with great satisfaction. We had the Abbotsford hunt last week. The company was small, as the newspapers say, but select, and we had excellent sport, killing eight hares. We coursed on Gala's ground, and he was with us. The dinner went off with its usual alacrity, but we wanted you and Sally to ride and mark for us. I enclose another letter from Mrs. Dundas of Arniston. I am afraid you have been careless in not delivering those I formerly forwarded, because in one of them, which Mrs. Dundas got from a friend, there was enclosed a draft for some money. I beg you will be particular in delivering any letters entrusted to you, because though the good-nature of the writers may induce them to write to be of service to you, yet it is possible that they may, as in this instance, add things which are otherwise of importance to their correspondents. It is probable that you may have picked up among your military friends the idea that the mess of a regiment is all in all sufficient to itself; but when you see a little of the world you will be satisfied that none but pedants--for there is pedantry in all professions--herd exclusively together, and that those who do so are laughed at in real good company. This you may take on the authority of one who has seen more of life and society, in all its various gradations, from the highest to the lowest, than a whole hussar regimental mess, and who would be much pleased by knowing that you reap the benefit of an experience which has raised him from being a person of small consideration to the honor of being father of an officer of hussars. I therefore enclose another letter from the same kind friend, of which I pray you to avail yourself. In fact, those officers who associate entirely among themselves see and know no more of the world than their messman, and get conceited and disagreeable by neglecting the opportunities offered for enlarging their understanding. Every distinguished soldier whom I have known, and I have known many, was a man of the world, and accustomed to general society. To sweeten my lecture, I have to inform you that, this being quarter-day, I have a remittance of £50 to send you whenever you are pleased to let me know it will be acceptable--for, like a ghost, I will not speak again till I am spoken to. I wish you not to avail yourself of your leave of absence this winter, because, if my health continues good, I shall endeavor to go on the Continent next summer, and should be very desirous to have you with me; therefore, I beg you to look after your French and German. We had a visit from a very fine fellow indeed at Abbotsford,--Sir Thomas Brisbane, who long commanded a brigade in the Peninsula. He is very scientific, but bores no one with it, being at the same time a well-informed man on all subjects, and particularly alert in his own profession, and willing to talk about what he has seen. Sir Harry Hay Macdougal, whose eldest daughter he is to marry, brought him to Abbotsford on a sort of wedding visit, as we are cousins according to the old fashion of country kin; Beardie, of whom Sir Harry has a beautiful picture, being a son of an Isabel Macdougal, who was, I fancy, grand-aunt to Sir Harry. Once more, my dear Walter, write more frequently, and do not allow yourself to think that the first neglect in correspondence I have ever had to complain of has been on your part. I hope you have received the Meerschaum pipe.--I remain your affectionate father, WALTER SCOTT. TO THE SAME. EDINBURGH, 3d December, 1819. MY DEAR WALTER,--I hope your servant proves careful and trusty. Pray let me know this. At any rate, do not trust him a bit further than you can help it, for in buying anything you will get it much cheaper yourself than he will. We are now settled for the winter; that is, all of them excepting myself, who must soon look southwards. On Saturday we had a grand visitor, _i. e._, the Crown Prince of Sweden, under the name of Count Itterburg. His travelling companion or tutor is Baron de Polier, a Swiss of eminence in literature and rank. They took a long look at King Charles XII., who, you cannot have forgotten, keeps his post over the dining-room chimney; and we were all struck with the resemblance betwixt old Ironhead, as the janissaries called him, and his descendant. The said descendant is a very fine lad, with very soft and mild manners, and we passed the day very pleasantly. They were much diverted with Captain Adam,[59] who outdid his usual outdoings, and, like the Barber of Bagdad, danced the dance and sung the song of every person he spoke of. I am concerned I cannot give a very pleasant account of things here. Glasgow is in a terrible state. The Radicals had a plan to seize on 1000 stand of arms, as well as a depôt of ammunition, which had been sent from Edinburgh Castle for the use of the volunteers. The Commander-in-Chief, Sir Thomas Bradford, went to Glasgow in person, and the whole city was occupied with patrols of horse and foot, to deter them from the meditated attack on the barracks. The arms were then delivered to the volunteers, who are said to be 4000 on paper; how many effective and trustworthy, I know not. But it was a new sight in Scotland on a Sunday to see all the inhabitants in arms, soldiers patrolling the streets, and the utmost precaution of military service exacted and observed in an apparently peaceful city. The Old Blue Regiment of volunteers was again summoned together yesterday. They did not muster very numerous, and looked most of them a little _ancient_. However, they are getting recruits fast, and then the veterans may fall out of the ranks. The Commander-in-Chief has told the President that he may soon be obliged to leave the charge of the Castle to these armed citizens. This looks serious. The President[60] made one of the most eloquent addresses that ever was heard, to the Old Blues. The Highland Chiefs have offered to raise their clans, and march them to any point in Scotland where their services shall be required. To be sure, the Glasgow folks would be a little surprised at the arrival of Dugald Dhu, "brogues an' brochan an' a'." I shall, I think, bid Ballantyne send you a copy of his weekly paper, which often contains things you would like to see, and will keep you in mind of Old Scotland. They are embodying a troop of cavalry in Edinburgh--nice young men and good horses. They have paid me the compliment to make me an honorary member of the corps, as my days of active service have been long over. Pray take care, however, of my sabre, in case the time comes which must turn out all. I have almost settled that, if things look moderately tranquil in Britain in spring and summer, I will go abroad, and take Charles, with the purpose of leaving him, for two or three years, at the famous institution of Fellenborg, near Berne, of which I hear very highly. Two of Fraser Tytler's sons are there, and he makes a very favorable report of the whole establishment. I think that such a residence abroad will not only make him well acquainted with French and German, as indeed he will hear nothing else, but also prevent his becoming an Edinburgh _petit-maître_ of fourteen or fifteen, which he could otherwise scarce avoid. I mentioned to you that I should be particularly glad to get you leave of absence, providing it does not interfere with your duty, in order that you may go with us. If I have cash enough, I will also take your sister and mamma, and you might return home with them by Paris, in case I went on to Italy. All this is doubtful, but I think it is almost certain that Charles and I go, and hope to have you with us. This will be probably about July next, and I wish you particularly to keep it in view. If these dark prospects become darker, which God forbid! neither you nor I will have it in our power to leave the post to which duty calls us. Mamma and the girls are quite well, and so is Master Charles, who is of course more magnificent, as being the only specimen of youthhead at home. He has got an old broadsword hanging up at his bed-head, which, to be the more ready for service, hath no sheath. To this I understand we are to trust for our defence against the Radicals. Anne (notwithstanding the assurance) is so much afraid of the disaffected, that last night, returning with Sophia from Portobello, where they had been dancing with the Scotts of Harden, she saw a Radical in every man that the carriage passed. Sophia is of course wise and philosophical, and mamma has not yet been able to conceive why we do not catch and hang the whole of them, untried and unconvicted. Amidst all their various emotions, they join in best love to you; and I always am very truly yours, W. SCOTT. P. S.--I shall set off for London on the 25th. [Footnote 59: Sir Adam Ferguson.] [Footnote 60: The Right Honorable Charles Hope, Lord President of the Court of Session, was Colonel-commandant of the Old Blues, or First Regiment of Edinburgh Volunteers.] TO THE SAME. EDINBURGH, 17th December, 1819. MY DEAR WALTER,--I have a train of most melancholy news to acquaint you with. On Saturday I saw your grandmother perfectly well, and on Sunday the girls drank tea with her, when the good old lady was more than usually in spirits; and, as if she had wished to impress many things on their memory, told over a number of her old stories with her usual alertness and vivacity. On Monday she had an indisposition, which proved to be a paralytic affection, and on Tuesday she was speechless, and had lost the power of one side, without any hope of recovery, although she may linger some days. But what is very remarkable, and no less shocking, Dr. Rutherford, who attended his sister in perfect health upon Tuesday, died himself upon the Wednesday morning. He had breakfasted without intimating the least illness, and was dressed to go out, and particularly to visit my mother, when he sunk backwards, and died in his daughter Anne's arms, almost without a groan. To add to this melancholy list, our poor friend, Miss Christie, is despaired of. She was much affected by my mother's fatal indisposition, but does not know as yet of her brother's death. Dr. Rutherford was a very ingenious as well as an excellent man, more of a gentleman than his profession too often are, for he could not take the back-stairs mode of rising in it, otherwise he might have been much more wealthy. He ought to have had the Chemistry class, as he was one of the best chemists in Europe;[61] but superior interest assigned it to another, who, though a neat experimentalist, is not to be compared to poor Daniel for originality of genius. Since you knew him, his health was broken and his spirits dejected, which may be traced to the loss of his eldest son on board an East Indiaman, and also, I think, to a slight paralytic touch which he had some years ago. To all this domestic distress I have to add the fearful and unsettled state of the country. All the regular troops are gone to Glasgow. The Mid-Lothian Yeomanry and other corps of volunteers went there on Monday, and about 5000 men occupied the town. In the mean while, we were under considerable apprehension here, the Castle being left in the charge of the city volunteers and a few veterans. All our corner, high and low, is loyal. Torwoodlee, Gala, and I, have offered to raise a corps, to be called the Loyal Foresters, to act anywhere south of the Forth. If matters get worse, I will ask leave of absence for you from the Commander-in-Chief, because your presence will be materially useful to levy men, and you can only be idle where you are, unless Ireland should be disturbed. Your old corps of the Selkirkshire Yeomanry have been under orders, and expect to be sent either to Dumfries or Carlisle. Berwick is dismantled, and they are removing the stores, cannon, etc., from one of the strongest places here, for I defy the devil to pass the bridge at Berwick, if reasonably well kept by 100 men. But there is a spirit of consternation implied in many of the orders, which, _entre nous_, I like worse than what I see or know of the circumstances which infer real danger. For myself I am too old to fight, but nobody is too old to die, like a man of virtue and honor, in defence of the principles he has always maintained. I would have you to keep yourself ready to return here suddenly, in case the Duke of York should permit your temporary services in your own country, which, if things grow worse, I will certainly ask. The fearful thing is the secret and steady silence observed by the Radicals in all they do. Yet, without anything like effective arms or useful discipline, without money and without a commissariat, what can they do, but, according to their favorite toast, have blood and plunder? Mamma and the girls, as well as Charles, send kind love. Your affectionate father, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 61: "The subject of his _Thesis_ is singular, and entitles Rutherford to rank very high among the chemical philosophers of modern times. Its title is _De Aere Mephitico_, etc.--It is universally admitted that Dr. Rutherford first discovered this gas--the reputation of his discovery being speedily spread through Europe, his character as a chemist of the first eminence was firmly established, and much was augured from a young man in his twenty-second year having distinguished himself so remarkably."--Bower's _History of the University of Edinburgh_, vol. iii. (1830), pp. 260, 261.] TO MR. WILLIAM LAIDLAW, KAESIDE. EDINBURGH, December 20, 1819. MY DEAR WILLIE,--Distress has been very busy with me since I wrote to you. I have lost, in the course of one week, my valued relations, Dr. and Miss Rutherford--happy in this, that neither knew of the other's dissolution. My dear mother has offered me deeper subject of affliction, having been struck with the palsy, and being now in such a state that I scarce hope to see her again. But the strange times compel me, under this pressure of domestic distress, to attend to public business. I find Mr. Scott of Gala agrees with me in thinking we should appeal at this crisis to the good sense and loyalty of the lower orders, and we have resolved to break the ice, and be the first in the Lowlands, so far as I have yet heard of, to invite our laborers and those over whom circumstances and fortune give us influence, to rise with us in arms, and share our fate. You know, as well as any one, that I have always spent twice the income of my property in giving work to my neighbors, and I hope they will not be behind the Galashiels people, who are very zealous. Gala and I go hand in hand, and propose to raise at least a company each of men, to be drilled as sharpshooters or infantry, which will be a lively and interesting amusement for the young fellows. The dress we propose to be as simple, and at the same time as serviceable, as possible;--a jacket and trousers of Galashiels gray cloth, and a smart bonnet with a small feather, or, to save even that expense, a sprig of holly. And we will have shooting at the mark, and prizes, and fun, and a little whiskey, and daily pay when on duty or drill. I beg of you, dear Willie, to communicate my wish to all who have received a good turn at my hand, or may expect one, or may be desirous of doing me one--(for I should be sorry Darnick and Brigend were beat)--and to all other free and honest fellows who will take share with me on this occasion. I do not wish to take any command farther than such as shall entitle me to go with the corps, for I wish it to be distinctly understood that, in whatever capacity, _I go with them_, and take a share in good or bad as it casts up. I cannot doubt that I will have your support, and I hope you will use all your enthusiasm in our behalf. Morrison volunteers as our engineer. Those who I think should be spoke to are the following, among the higher class:-- John Usher.[62] He should be lieutenant, or his son ensign. Sam Somerville.[63] I will speak to him--he may be lieutenant, if Usher declines; but I think, in that case, Usher should give us his son. Young Nicol Milne[64] is rather young, but I will offer to his father to take him in. Harper[65] is a _sine qua non_. Tell him I depend on him for the honor of Darnick. I should propose to him to take a gallant halbert. Adam Ferguson thinks you should be our adjutant. John Ferguson I propose for captain. He is steady, right bold, and has seen much fire. The auld captain will help us in one shape or other. For myself, I know not what they propose to make of me, but it cannot be anything very active. However, I should like to have a steady quiet horse, drilled to stand fire well, and if he has these properties, no matter how stupid, so he does not stumble. In this case the price of such a horse will be no object. These, my dear friend, are your beating orders. I would propose to raise about sixty men, and not to take old men. John the Turk[66] will be a capital corporal; and I hope in general that all my young fellows will go with me, leaving the older men to go through necessary labor. Sound Tom what he would like. I think, perhaps, he would prefer managing matters at home in your absence and mine at drill. John of Skye is cock-a-hoop upon the occasion, and I suppose has made fifty blunders about it by this time. You must warn Tom Jamieson, Gordon Winness, John Swanston (who will carry off all the prizes at shooting), Davidson, and so forth. If you think it necessary, a little handbill might be circulated. But it may be better to see if Government will accept our services; and I think, in the situation of the country, when work is scarce, and we offer pay for their playing themselves, we should have choice of men. But I would urge no one to do what he did not like. The very precarious state of my poor mother detains me here, and makes me devolve this troublesome duty upon you. All you have to do, however, is to sound the men, and mark down those who seem zealous. They will perhaps have to fight with the pitmen and colliers of Northumberland for defence of their firesides, for these literal _blackguards_ are got beyond the management of their own people. And if such is the case, better keep them from coming into Scotland, than encounter the mischief they might do there. Yours always most truly, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 62: Mr. Usher has already been mentioned as Scott's predecessor in the property of Toftfield. He now resided near those lands, and was Scott's tenant on the greater part of them.] [Footnote 63: Samuel Somerville, W. S. (a son of the historian of Queen Anne), had a pretty villa at Lowood, on the Tweed, immediately opposite the seat of his relation, Lord Somerville, of whose estate he had the management.] [Footnote 64: Nicol Milne, Esq. (now advocate), eldest son of the Laird of Faldonside.] [Footnote 65: Harper, keeper of a little inn at Darnick, was a gallant and spirited yeoman--uniformly the gainer of the prizes at every contest of strength and agility in that district.] [Footnote 66: One of Scott's foresters--thus designated as being, in all senses of the word, a _gallant_ fellow.] TO THOMAS SCOTT, ESQ., 70th REGIMENT, KINGSTON, CANADA. EDINBURGH, 22d December, 1819. MY DEAR TOM,--I wrote you about ten days since, stating that we were all well here. In that very short space a change so sudden and so universal has taken place among your friends here, that I have to communicate to you a most miserable catalogue of losses. Our dear mother was on Sunday the 12th December in all her usual strength and alertness of mind. I had seen and conversed with her on the Saturday preceding, and never saw her better in my life of late years. My two daughters drank tea with her on Sunday, when she was uncommonly lively, telling them a number of stories, and being in rather unusual spirits, probably from the degree of excitation which sometimes is remarked to precede a paralytic affection. In the course of Monday she received that fatal summons, which at first seemed slight; but in the night betwixt Monday and Tuesday our mother lost the use both of speech and of one side. Since that time she has lain in bed constantly, yet so sensible as to see me and express her earnest blessing on all of us. The power of speech is totally lost; nor is there any hope, at her advanced age, that the scene can last long. Probably a few hours will terminate it. At any rate, life is not to be wished, even for our nearest and dearest, in those circumstances. But this heavy calamity was only the commencement of our family losses. Dr. Rutherford, who had seemed perfectly well, and had visited my mother upon Tuesday the 14th, was suddenly affected with gout in his stomach, or some disease equally rapid, on Wednesday the 15th, and, without a moment's warning or complaint, fell down a dead man, almost without a single groan. You are aware of his fondness for animals: he was just stroking his cat after eating his breakfast, as usual, when, without more warning than a half-uttered exclamation, he sunk on the ground, and died in the arms of his daughter Anne. Though the Doctor had no formed complaint, yet I have thought him looking poorly for some months; and though there was no failure whatever in intellect, or anything which approached it, yet his memory was not so good; and I thought he paused during the last time he attended me, and had difficulty in recollecting the precise terms of his recipe. Certainly there was a great decay of outward strength. We were very anxious about the effect this fatal news was likely to produce on the mind and decayed health of our aunt, Miss C. Rutherford, and resolved, as her health had been gradually falling off ever since she returned from Abbotsford, that she should never learn anything of it until it was impossible to conceal it longer. But God had so ordered it that she was never to know the loss she had sustained, and which she would have felt so deeply. On Friday the 17th December, the second day after her brother's death, she expired, without a groan and without suffering, about six in the morning. And so we lost an excellent and warm-hearted relation, one of the few women I ever knew whose strength of mental faculties enabled her, at a mature period of life, to supply the defects of an imperfect education. It is a most uncommon and afflicting circumstance, that a brother and two sisters should be taken ill the same day--that two of them should die, without any rational possibility of the survivance of the third--and that no one of the three could be affected by learning the loss of the other. The Doctor was buried on Monday the 20th, and Miss Rutherford this day (Wednesday the 22d), in the burial-place adjoining to and surrounding one of the new Episcopal chapels,[67] where Robert Rutherford[68] had purchased a burial-ground of some extent, and parted with one half to the Russells. It is surrounded with a very high wall, and all the separate burial-grounds (five, I think, in number) are separated by party-walls going down to the depth of twelve feet, so as to prevent the possibility either of encroachment, or of disturbing the relics of the dead. I have purchased one half of Miss Russell's interest in this sad spot, moved by its extreme seclusion, privacy, and security. When poor Jack was buried in the Greyfriars' Churchyard, where my father and Anne lie,[69] I thought their graves more encroached upon than I liked to witness; and in this new place I intend to lay our poor mother when the scene shall close; so that the brother and the two sisters, whose fate has been so very closely entwined in death, may not be divided in the grave,--and this I hope you will approve of. _Thursday, December 23d._--My mother still lingers this morning, and as her constitution is so excellent, she may perhaps continue to exist some time, or till another stroke. It is a great consolation that she is perfectly easy. All her affairs of every sort have been very long arranged for this great change, and with the assistance of Donaldson and Macculloch, you may depend, when the event takes place, that your interest will be attended to most pointedly.--I hope our civil tumults here are like to be ended by the measures of Parliament. I mentioned in my last that Kinloch of Kinloch was to be tried for sedition. He has forfeited his bail, and was yesterday laid under outlawry for non-appearance. Our neighbors in Northumberland are in a deplorable state; upwards of 50,000 blackguards are ready to rise between Tyne and Wear.[70] On the other hand, the Scottish frontiers are steady and loyal, and arming fast. Scott of Gala and I have offered 200 men, all fine strapping young fellows, and good marksmen, willing to go anywhere with us. We could easily double the number. So the necessity of the times has made me get on horseback once more. Our mother has at different times been perfectly conscious of her situation, and knew every one, though totally unable to speak. She seemed to take a very affectionate farewell of me the last time I saw her, which was the day before yesterday; and as she was much agitated, Dr. Keith advised I should not see her again, unless she seemed to desire it, which hitherto she has not done. She sleeps constantly, and will probably be so removed. Our family sends love to yours. Yours most affectionately:-- WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 67: St. John's Chapel.] [Footnote 68: Robert Rutherford, Esq., W. S., son to the Professor of Botany.] [Footnote 69: "Our family heretofore buried in the Greyfriars' Churchyard, close by the entrance to Heriot's Hospital, and on the southern or left-hand side as you pass from the churchyard."--_MS. Memorandum._] [Footnote 70: This was a ridiculously exaggerated report of that period of alarm.] Scott's excellent mother died on the 24th December--the day after he closed the foregoing letter to his brother. On the 18th, in the midst of these accumulated afflictions, the romance of Ivanhoe made its appearance. The date has been torn from the following letter, but it was evidently written while all these events were fresh and recent:-- TO THE LADY LOUISA STUART, DITTON PARK, WINDSOR. DEAR LADY LOUISA,--I am favored with your letter from Ditton, and am glad you found anything to entertain you in Ivanhoe.[71] Novelty is what this giddy-paced time demands imperiously, and I certainly studied as much as I could to get out of the old beaten track, leaving those who like to keep the road, which I have rutted pretty well. I have had a terrible time of it this year, with the loss of dear friends and near relations; it is almost fearful to count up my losses, as they make me bankrupt in society. My brother-in-law; our never-to-be-enough regretted Duke; Lord Chief Baron, my early, kind, and constant friend, who took me up when I was a young fellow of little mark or likelihood; the wife of my intimate friend William Erskine; the only son of my friend David Hume, a youth of great promise, and just entering into life, who had grown up under my eye from childhood; my excellent mother; and, within a few days, her surviving brother and sister. My mother was the only one of these whose death was the natural consequence of very advanced life. And our sorrows are not at an end. A sister of my mother's, Mrs. Russell of Ashestiel, long deceased, had left (besides several sons, of whom only one now survives and is in India) three daughters, who lived with her youngest sister, Miss Rutherford, and were in the closest habits of intimacy with us. The eldest of these girls, and a most excellent creature she is, was in summer so much shocked by the sudden news of the death of one of the brothers I have mentioned, that she was deprived of the use of her limbs by an affection either nervous or paralytic. She was slowly recovering from this afflicting and helpless situation, when the sudden fate of her aunts and uncle, particularly of her who had acted as a mother to the family, brought on a new shock; and though perfectly possessed of her mind, she has never since been able to utter a word. Her youngest sister, a girl of one or two and twenty, was so much shocked by this scene of accumulated distress, that she was taken very ill, and having suppressed and concealed her disorder, relief came too late, and she has been taken from us also. She died in the arms of the elder sister, helpless as I have described her; and to separate the half dead from the actual corpse was the most melancholy thing possible. You can hardly conceive, dear Lady Louisa, the melancholy feeling of seeing the place of last repose belonging to the devoted family open four times within so short a space, and to meet the same group of sorrowing friends and relations on the same sorrowful occasion. Looking back on those whom I have lost, all well known to me excepting my brother-in-law, whom I could only judge of by the general report in his favor, I can scarce conceive a group possessing more real worth and amiable qualities, not to mention talents and accomplishments. I have never felt so truly what Johnson says so well,-- "Condemn'd to Hope's delusive mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blasts, or slow decline, Our social comforts drop away."[72] I am not sure whether it was your Ladyship, or the poor Duchess of Buccleuch, who met my mother once, and flattered me by being so much pleased with the good old lady. She had a mind peculiarly well stored with much acquired information and natural talent, and as she was very old, and had an excellent memory, she could draw without the least exaggeration or affectation the most striking pictures of the past age. If I have been able to do anything in the way of painting the past times, it is very much from the studies with which she presented me. She connected a long period of time with the present generation, for she remembered, and had often spoken with, a person who perfectly recollected the battle of Dunbar, and Oliver Cromwell's subsequent entry into Edinburgh. She preserved her faculties to the very day before her final illness; for our friends Mr. and Mrs. Scott of Harden visited her on the Sunday; and, coming to our house after, were expressing their surprise at the alertness of her mind, and the pleasure which she had in talking over both ancient and modern events. She had told them with great accuracy the real story of the Bride of Lammermuir, and pointed out wherein it differed from the novel. She had all the names of the parties, and detailed (for she was a great genealogist) their connection with existing families. On the subsequent Monday she was struck with a paralytic affection, suffered little, and that with the utmost patience; and what was God's reward, and a great one to her innocent and benevolent life, she never knew that her brother and sister, the last thirty years younger than herself, had trodden the dark path before her. She was a strict economist, 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 on her to accept of any assistance. You cannot conceive how affecting it was to me to see the little preparations of presents which she had assorted for the New Year--for she was a great observer of the old fashions of her period--and to think that the kind heart was cold which delighted in all these acts of kindly affection. I should apologize, I believe, for troubling your ladyship with these melancholy details; but you would not thank me for a letter written with constraint, and my mind is at present very full of this sad subject, though I scarce know any one to whom I would venture to say so much. I hear no good news of Lady Anne, though Lord Montagu writes cautiously. The weather is now turning milder, and may, I hope, be favorable to her complaint. After my own family, my thought most frequently turns to these orphans, whose parents I loved and respected so much.--I am always, dear Lady Louisa, your very respectful and obliged WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 71: [Lady Louisa's letter was written January 16, 1820, and can be found in _Familiar Letters_, vol. ii. p. 71. In it she says:-- "Everybody in this house has been reading an odd new kind of a book called _Ivanhoe_, and nobody, as far as I have observed, has willingly laid it down again till finished. By this, I conclude that its success will be fully equal to that of its predecessors, notwithstanding it has quite abandoned their ground and ploughed up a field hitherto untouched. The interest of it, indeed, is most powerful; few things in prose or verse seize upon one's mind so strongly, or are read with such breathless eagerness, as the storming of the castle, related by Rebecca, and her trial at Templestowe. Few characters ever were so forcibly painted as hers: the Jew, too, the Templar, the courtly knight De Bracy, the wavering, inconstant wickedness of John, are all worthy of Shakespeare. I must not omit paying my tribute to Cedric, that worthy forefather of the genuine English country gentleman.... And according to what has been alleged against the author in some other instances, the hero and the heroine are the people one cares least about. But provided one does but care enough about somebody, it is all one to me; and I think the cavil is like that against Milton for making the Devil his hero."]] [Footnote 72: _Lines on the Death of Mr. Robert Levett._] There is in the library at Abbotsford a fine copy of Baskerville's folio Bible, two volumes, printed at Cambridge in 1763; and there appears on the blank leaf, in the trembling handwriting of Scott's mother, this inscription: "_To my dear son, Walter Scott, from his affectionate mother, Anne Rutherford,--January 1st, 1819._" Under these words her son has written as follows: "This Bible was the gift of my grandfather Dr. John Rutherford, to my mother, and presented by her to me; being, alas, the last gift which I was to receive from that excellent parent, and, as I verily believe, the thing which she most loved in the world,--not only in humble veneration of the sacred contents, but as the dearest pledge of her father's affection to her. As such she gave it to me; and as such I bequeath it to those who may represent me--charging them carefully to preserve the same, in memory of those to whom it has belonged. 1820." * * * * * If literary success could have either filled Scott's head or hardened his heart, we should have no such letters as those of December, 1819. Ivanhoe was received throughout England with a more clamorous delight than any of the Scotch novels had been. The volumes (three in number) were now, for the first time, of the post 8vo form, with a finer paper than hitherto, the press-work much more elegant, and the price accordingly raised from eight shillings the volume to ten; yet the copies sold in this original shape were twelve thousand. I ought to have mentioned sooner, that the original intention was to bring out Ivanhoe as the production of a new hand, and that, to assist this impression, the work was printed in a size and manner unlike the preceding ones; but Constable, when the day of publication approached, remonstrated against this experiment, and it was accordingly abandoned. The reader has already been told that Scott dictated the greater part of this romance. The portion of the MS. which is his own, appears, however, not only as well and firmly executed as that of any of the Tales of my Landlord, but distinguished by having still fewer erasures and interlineations, and also by being in a smaller hand. The fragment is beautiful to look at--many pages together without one alteration.[73] It is, I suppose, superfluous to add, that in no instance did Scott rewrite his prose before sending it to the press. Whatever may have been the case with his poetry, the world uniformly received the _prima cura_ of the novelist. [Footnote 73: Three of these MS. pages were a fair day's work in the author's estimation--equal to fifteen or sixteen of the original impression.] As a work of art, Ivanhoe is perhaps the first of all Scott's efforts, whether in prose or in verse; nor have the strength and splendor of his imagination been displayed to higher advantage than in some of the scenes of this romance. But I believe that no reader who is capable of thoroughly comprehending the author's Scotch character and Scotch dialogue will ever place even Ivanhoe, as a work of genius, on the same level with Waverley, Guy Mannering, or The Heart of Mid-Lothian. There is, to me, something so remarkably characteristic of Scott's mind and manner in a particular passage of the Introduction, which he penned ten years afterwards for this work, that I must be pardoned for extracting it here. He says: "The character of the fair Jewess found so much favor in the eyes of some fair readers, that the writer was censured, because, when arranging the fates of the characters of the drama, he had not assigned the hand of Wilfred to Rebecca, rather than the less interesting Rowena. But, not to mention that the prejudices of the age rendered such a union almost impossible, the author may, in passing, observe that he thinks a character of a highly virtuous and lofty stamp is degraded rather than exalted by an attempt to reward virtue with temporal prosperity. Such is not the recompense which Providence has deemed worthy of suffering merit; and it is a dangerous and fatal doctrine to teach young persons, the most common readers of romance, that rectitude of conduct and of principle are either naturally allied with, or adequately rewarded by, the gratification of our passions, or attainment of our wishes. In a word, if a virtuous and self-denied character is dismissed with temporal wealth, greatness, rank, or the indulgence of such a rashly formed or ill-assorted passion as that of Rebecca for Ivanhoe, the reader will be apt to say, verily Virtue has had its reward. But a glance on the great picture of life will show that the duties 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." The introduction of the charming Jewess and her father originated, I find, in a conversation that Scott held with his friend Skene during the severest season of his bodily sufferings in the early part of this year. "Mr. Skene," says that gentleman's wife, "sitting by his bedside, and trying to amuse him as well as he could in the intervals of pain, happened to get on the subject of the Jews, as he had observed them when he spent some time in Germany in his youth. Their situation had naturally made a strong impression; for in those days they retained their own dress and manners entire, and were treated with considerable austerity by their Christian neighbors, being still locked up at night in their own quarter by great gates; and Mr. Skene, partly in seriousness, but partly from the mere wish to turn his mind at the moment upon something that might occupy and divert it, suggested that a group of Jews would be an interesting feature if he could contrive to bring them into his next novel." Upon the appearance of Ivanhoe, he reminded Mr. Skene of this conversation, and said, "You will find this book owes not a little to your German reminiscences." Mrs. Skene adds: "Dining with us one day, not long before Ivanhoe was begun, something that was mentioned led him to describe the sudden death of an advocate of his acquaintance, a Mr. Elphinstone, which occurred in the _Outer-house_ soon after he was called to the Bar. It was, he said, no wonder that it had left a vivid impression on his mind, for it was the first sudden death he ever witnessed; and he now related it so as to make us all feel as if we had the scene passing before our eyes. In the death of the Templar in Ivanhoe, I recognized the very picture--I believe I may safely say the very words."[74] [Footnote 74: See _Ivanhoe_, end of chap. xliv.] By the way, before Ivanhoe made its appearance, I had myself been formally admitted to the author's secret; but had he favored me with no such confidence, it would have been impossible for me to doubt that I had been present some months before at the conversation which suggested, and indeed supplied all the materials of, one of its most amusing chapters. I allude to that in which our Saxon terms for animals in the field, and our Norman equivalents for them as they appear on the table, and so on, are explained and commented on. All this Scott owed to the after-dinner talk one day in Castle Street of his old friend Mr. William Clerk,--who, among other elegant pursuits, has cultivated the science of philology very deeply.[75] [Footnote 75: [It is said that the character of Rebecca was suggested to Scott by Washington Irving's description of Rebecca Gratz of Philadelphia, a lady belonging to a Jewish family of high position in that city, with whom Irving was intimate. Miss Gratz had been a friend of his betrothed, Matilda Hoffman, and in her youth had loved devotedly a man in every way worthy of her, but the difference of religion made their union impossible. During a conversation with Scott, Irving spoke with much feeling of Rebecca Gratz, of her extraordinary beauty, of her adherence to her faith under most trying circumstances, of her nobility, distinction, and loveliness of character, and her untiring zeal in works of charity, greatly interesting his host, as the guest recalled when _Ivanhoe_ appeared. Rebecca Gratz died in 1869 in her eighty-ninth year. A sketch of her, with a portrait after a miniature by Malbone, was published in the _Century Magazine_ for September, 1882.]] I cannot conclude this chapter without observing that the publication of Ivanhoe marks the most brilliant epoch in Scott's history as the literary favorite of his contemporaries. With the novel which he next put forth, the immediate sale of these works began gradually to decline; and though, even when that had reached its lowest declension, it was still far above the most ambitious dreams of any other novelist, yet the publishers were afraid the announcement of anything like a falling-off might cast a damp over the spirits of the author. He was allowed to remain, for several years, under the impression that whatever novel he threw off commanded at once the old triumphant sale of ten or twelve thousand, and was afterwards, when included in the collective edition, to be circulated in that shape also as widely as Waverley or Ivanhoe. In my opinion, it would have been very unwise in the booksellers to give Scott any unfavorable tidings upon such subjects after the commencement of the malady which proved fatal to him,--for that from the first shook his mind; but I think they took a false measure of the man when they hesitated to tell him exactly how the matter stood, throughout 1820 and the three or four following years, when his intellect was as vigorous as it ever had been, and his heart as courageous; and I regret their scruples (among other reasons), because the years now mentioned were the most costly ones in his life; and for every twelvemonth in which any man allows himself, or is encouraged by others, to proceed in a course of unwise expenditure, it becomes proportionably more difficult for him to pull up when the mistake is at length detected or recognized. CHAPTER XLVII The Visionary. -- The Peel of Darnick. -- Scott's Saturday Excursions to Abbotsford. -- A Sunday there in February. -- Constable. -- John Ballantyne. -- Thomas Purdie, Etc. -- Prince Gustavus Vasa. -- Proclamation of King George IV. -- Publication of the Monastery. 1820 In the course of December, 1819 and January, 1820, Scott drew up three essays, under the title of The Visionary, upon certain popular doctrines or delusions, the spread of which at this time filled with alarm, not only Tories like him, but many persons who had been distinguished through life for their adherence to political liberalism. These papers appeared successively in James Ballantyne's Edinburgh Weekly Journal, and their parentage being obvious, they excited much attention in Scotland. Scott collected them into a pamphlet, which had also a large circulation; and I remember his showing very particular satisfaction when he observed a mason reading it to his comrades, as they sat at their dinner, by a new house on Leith Walk. During January, however, his thoughts continued to be chiefly occupied with the details of the proposed corps of Foresters; of which, I believe it was at last settled, as far as depended on the other gentlemen concerned in it, that he should be the Major. He wrote and spoke on this subject with undiminished zeal, until the whole fell to the ground in consequence of the Government's ultimately declining to take on itself any part of the expense; a refusal which must have been fatal to any such project when the Duke of Buccleuch was a minor. He felt the disappointment keenly; but, in the mean time, the hearty alacrity with which his neighbors of all classes gave in their adhesion had afforded him much pleasure, and, as regarded his own immediate dependents, served to rivet the bonds of affection and confidence, which were to the end maintained between him and them. Darnick had been especially ardent in the cause, and he thenceforth considered its volunteers as persons whose individual fortunes closely concerned him. I could fill many a page with the letters which he wrote at subsequent periods, with the view of promoting the success of these spirited young fellows in their various departments of industry: they were proud of their patron, as may be supposed, and he was highly gratified, as well as amused, when he learned that--while the rest of the world were talking of "The Great Unknown"--his usual _sobriquet_ among these villagers was "The Duke of Darnick." Already his possessions almost encircled this picturesque and thriving hamlet; and there were few things on which he had more strongly fixed his fancy than acquiring a sort of symbol of seigniory there, by becoming the purchaser of a certain then ruinous tower that predominated, with a few coeval trees, over the farmhouses and cottages of his _ducal_ vassals. A letter, previously quoted, contains an allusion to this Peelhouse of Darnick; which is moreover exactly described in the novel which he had now in hand--The Monastery. The interest Scott seemed to take in the Peel awakened, however, the pride of its hereditary proprietor: and when that worthy person, who had made some money by trade in Edinburgh, resolved on fitting it up for the evening retreat of his own life, _his Grace of Darnick_ was too happy to waive his pretensions. This was a winter of uncommon severity in Scotland; and the snow lay so deep and so long as to interrupt very seriously all Scott's country operations. I find, in his letters to Laidlaw, various paragraphs expressing the concern he took in the hardships which his poor neighbors must be suffering. Thus, on the 19th of January, he says:-- DEAR WILLIE,--I write by the post that you may receive the enclosed, or rather subjoined, cheque for £60, in perfect safety. This dreadful morning will probably stop Mercer.[76] It makes me shiver in the midst of superfluous comforts to think of the distress of others. £10 of the £60 I wish you to distribute among our poorer neighbors, so as may best aid them. I mean not only the actually indigent, but those who are, in our phrase, _ill aff._ I am sure Dr. Scott[77] will assist you with his advice in this labor of love. I think part of the wood-money,[78] too, should be given among the Abbotstown folks if the storm keeps them off work, as is like. Yours truly, WALTER SCOTT. Deep, deep snow lying here. How do the goodwife and bairns? The little bodies will be half-buried in snow-drift. [Footnote 76: The weekly Darnick carrier.] [Footnote 77: Dr. Scott of Darnlee.--See _ante_, vol. v. p. 277. This very amiable, modest, and intelligent friend of Sir Walter Scott's died in 1837.] [Footnote 78: Some money expected from the sale of larches.] And again, on the 25th, he writes thus:-- DEAR WILLIE,--I have yours with the news of the inundation, which, it seems, has done no damage. I hope _Mai_ will be taken care of. He should have a bed in the kitchen, and always be called indoors after it is dark, for all the kind are savage at night. Please cause Swanston to knock him up a box, and fill it with straw from time to time. I enclose a cheque for £50 to pay accounts, etc. Do not let the poor bodies want for a £5, or even a £10, more or less;-- "We'll get a blessing wi' the lave, And never miss 't."[79] Yours, W. S. [Footnote 79: Burns--_Lines to a Mouse._] In the course of this month, through the kindness of Mr. Croker, Scott received from the late Earl Bathurst, then Colonial Secretary of State, the offer of an appointment in the civil service of the East India Company for his second son: and this seemed at the time too good a thing not to be gratefully accepted; though the apparently increasing prosperity of his fortunes induced him, a few years afterwards, to indulge his parental feelings by throwing it up. He thus alludes to this matter in a letter to his good old friend at Jedburgh:-- TO ROBERT SHORTREED, ESQ., SHERIFF-SUBSTITUTE OF ROXBURGHSHIRE, JEDBURGH. EDINBURGH, 19th January, 1820. MY DEAR SIR,--I heartily congratulate you on getting the appointment for your son William in a manner so very pleasant to your feelings, and which is, like all Whytbank does, considerate, friendly, and generous.[80] I am not aware that I have any friends at Calcutta, but if you think letters to Sir John Malcolm and Lieut.-Colonel Russell would serve my young friend, he shall have my best commendations to them. It is very odd that almost the same thing has happened to me; for about a week ago I was surprised by a letter, saying that an unknown friend (who since proves to be Lord Bathurst, whom I never saw or spoke with) would give my second son a Writer's situation for India. Charles is two years too young for this appointment; but I do not think I am at liberty to decline an offer so advantageous, if it can be so arranged that, by exchange or otherwise, it can be kept open for him. Ever yours faithfully, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 80: "An India appointment, with the name blank, which the late Mr. Pringle of Whytbank sent unsolicited, believing it might be found useful to a family where there were seven sons to provide for."--_Note by Mr. A. Shortreed._] [Illustration: SOPHIA SCOTT (MRS. J. G. LOCKHART) _After the painting by William Nicholson_] About the middle of February--it having been ere that time arranged that I should marry his eldest daughter[81] in the course of the spring--I accompanied him and part of his family on one of those flying visits to Abbotsford, with which he often indulged himself on a Saturday during term. Upon such occasions Scott appeared at the usual hour in Court, but wearing, instead of the official suit of black, his country morning dress--green jacket and so forth--under the clerk's gown; a license of which many gentlemen of the long robe had been accustomed to avail themselves in the days of his youth--it being then considered as the authentic badge that they were lairds as well as lawyers--but which, to use the dialect of the place, had fallen into _desuetude_ before I knew the Parliament House. He was, I think, one of the two or three, or at most the half dozen, who still adhered to this privilege of their order; and it has now, in all likelihood, become quite obsolete, like the ancient custom, a part of the same system, for all Scotch barristers to appear without gowns or wigs, and in colored clothes, when upon circuit. At noon, when the Court broke up, Peter Mathieson was sure to be in attendance in the Parliament Close, and five minutes after, the gown had been tossed off, and Scott, rubbing his hands for glee, was under weigh for Tweedside. On this occasion, he was, of course, in mourning; but I have thought it worth while to preserve the circumstance of his usual Saturday's costume. As we proceeded, he talked without reserve of the novel of The Monastery, of which he had the first volume with him; and mentioned, what he had probably forgotten when he wrote the Introduction of 1830, that a good deal of that volume had been composed before he concluded Ivanhoe. "It was a relief," he said, "to interlay the scenery most familiar to me with the strange world for which I had to draw so much on imagination." [Footnote 81: [Of Miss Scott, not long before her marriage, Mr. George Ticknor writes:-- "Sophia Scott is a remarkable girl, with great simplicity and naturalness of manners, full of enthusiasm, with tact in everything, a lover of old ballads, a Jacobite, and, in short, in all respects, such a daughter as Scott ought to have and ought to be proud of. And he is proud of her, as I saw again and again when he could not conceal it. "One evening, after dinner, he told her to take her harp and play five or six ballads he mentioned to her, as a specimen of the different ages of Scottish music. I hardly ever heard anything of the kind that moved me so much. And yet, I imagine, many sing better; but I never saw such an air and manner, such spirit and feeling, such decision and power.... I was so much excited that I turned round to Mr. Scott and said to him, probably with great emphasis, 'I never heard anything so fine;' and he, seeing how involuntarily I had said it, caught me by the hand, and replied, very earnestly, 'Everybody says so, sir,' but added in an instant, blushing a little, 'but I must not be too vain of her.' "I was struck, too, with another little trait in her character and his, that exhibited itself the same evening. Lady Hume asked her to play _Rob Roy_, an old ballad. A good many persons were present, and she felt a little embarrassed by the recollection of how much her father's name had been mentioned in connection with this strange Highlander's; but, as upon all occasions, she took the most direct means to settle her difficulties; ... she ran across the room to her father, and, blushing pretty deeply, whispered to him. 'Yes, my dear,' he said, loud enough to be heard, 'play it, to be sure, if you are asked, and _Waverley_ and the _Antiquary_, too, if there be any such ballads.' ... She is as perfectly right-minded as I ever saw one so young, and, indeed, perhaps right-mindedness is the prevailing feature in her character."--_Life of George Ticknor_, vol. i. pp. 281, 283.]] Next morning there appeared at breakfast John Ballantyne, who had at this time a shooting or hunting box a few miles off, in the vale of the Leader, and with him Mr. Constable, his guest; and it being a fine clear day, as soon as Scott had read the Church service and one of Jeremy Taylor's sermons, we all sallied out, before noon, on a perambulation of his upland territories; Maida and the rest of the favorites accompanying our march. At starting we were joined by the constant henchman, Tom Purdie--and I may save myself the trouble of any attempt to describe his appearance, for his master has given us an inimitably true one in introducing a certain personage of his Redgauntlet: "He was, perhaps, sixty years old; yet his brow was not much furrowed, and his jet black hair was only grizzled, not whitened, by the advance of age. All his motions spoke strength unabated; and, though rather undersized, he had very broad shoulders, was square-made, thin-flanked, and apparently combined in his frame muscular strength and activity; the last somewhat impaired, perhaps, by years, but the first remaining in full vigor. 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 a size and breadth which might have become the jaws of an ogre, completed this delightful portrait." Equip this figure in Scott's cast-off green jacket, white hat and drab trousers; and imagine that years of kind treatment, comfort, and the honest consequence of a confidential _grieve_, had softened away much of the hardness and harshness originally impressed on the visage by anxious penury and the sinister habits of a _black-fisher_,--and the Tom Purdie of 1820 stands before us. We were all delighted to see how completely Scott had recovered his bodily vigor, and none more so than Constable, who, as he puffed and panted after him up one ravine and down another, often stopped to wipe his forehead, and remarked that "it was not every author who should lead him such a dance." But Purdie's face shone with rapture as he observed how severely the swag-bellied bookseller's activity was tasked. Scott exclaiming exultingly, though perhaps for the tenth time, "This will be a glorious spring for our trees, Tom!"--"You may say that, Shirra," quoth Tom,--and then lingering a moment for Constable--"My certy," he added, scratching his head, "and I think it will be a grand season for _our buiks_ too." But indeed Tom always talked of _our buiks_ as if they had been as regular products of the soil as _our aits_ and _our birks_.[82] Having threaded, first the Haxelcleugh, and then the Rhymer's Glen, we arrived at Huntly Burn, where the hospitality of the kind _Weird-Sisters_, as Scott called the Miss Fergusons, reanimated our exhausted Bibliopoles, and gave them courage to extend their walk a little further down the same famous brook. Here there was a small cottage in a very sequestered situation, by making some little additions to which Scott thought it might be converted into a suitable summer residence for his daughter and future son-in-law. The details of that plan were soon settled--it was agreed on all hands that a sweeter scene of seclusion could not be fancied. He repeated some verses of Rogers's Wish, which paint the spot:-- "Mine be a cot beside the hill-- A bee-hive's hum shall soothe my ear; A willowy brook that turns a mill, With many a fall shall linger near:" etc. [Footnote 82: [Mr. Skene, in his _Reminiscences_, says of Tom Purdie:-- "He used to talk of Sir Walter's publications as our books, and said that the reading of them was the greatest comfort to him, for whenever he was off his sleep, which sometimes happened, he had only to take one of the novels, and before he read two pages it was sure to set him asleep. Tom, with the usual shrewdness common to his countrymen in that class of life, joined a quaintness and drollery in his notions and mode of expressing himself that was very amusing; he was familiar, but at the same time perfectly respectful, although he was sometimes tempted to deal sharp cuts, particularly at Sir Adam Ferguson, whom he seemed to take a pleasure in assailing. When Sir Walter obtained the honor of knighthood for Sir Adam, upon the plea of his being Custodier of the Regalia of Scotland, Tom was very indignant, because, he said, 'It would take some of the shine out of us,' meaning Sir Walter.... He was remarkably fastidious in his care of the Library, and it was exceedingly amusing to see a clodhopper (for he was always in the garb of a ploughman) moving about in the splendid apartment, scrutinizing the state of the books, putting derangement to rights, remonstrating when he observed anything that indicated carelessness."--See _Journal_, vol. ii. p. 318, note.]] But when he came to the stanza,-- "And Lucy at her wheel shall sing, In russet-gown and apron blue," he departed from the text, adding,-- "But if Bluestockings here you bring, The Great Unknown won't dine with you." Johnny Ballantyne, a projector to the core, was particularly zealous about this embryo establishment. Foreseeing that he should have had walking enough ere he reached Huntly Burn, his dapper little Newmarket groom had been ordered to fetch Old Mortality thither, and now, mounted on his fine hunter, he capered about us, looking pallid and emaciated as a ghost, but as gay and cheerful as ever, and would fain have been permitted to ride over hedge and ditch to mark out the proper line of the future avenue. Scott admonished him that the country-people, if they saw him at such work, would take the whole party for heathens; and clapping spurs to his horse, he left us. "The deil's in the body," quoth Tom Purdie; "he'll be ower every _yett_ atween this and Turn-again, though it be the Lord's day. I wadna wonder if he were to be _ceeted_ before the Session." "Be sure, Tam," cries Constable, "that ye egg on the Dominie to blaw up his father--I wouldna grudge a hundred miles o' gait to see the ne'er-do-weel on the stool, and neither, I'll be sworn, would the Sheriff."--"Na, na," quoth the Sheriff; "we'll let sleeping dogs be, Tam." As we walked homeward, Scott, being a little fatigued, laid his left hand on Tom's shoulder, and leaned heavily for support, chatting to his "Sunday pony," as he called the affectionate fellow, just as freely as with the rest of the party, and Tom put in his word shrewdly and manfully, and grinned and grunted whenever the joke chanced to be within his apprehension. It was easy to see that his heart swelled within him from the moment that the Sheriff got his collar in his gripe. There arose a little dispute between them about what tree or trees ought to be cut down in a hedge-row that we passed, and Scott seemed somewhat ruffled with finding that some previous hints of his on that head had not been attended to. When we got into motion again, his hand was on Constable's shoulder--and Tom dropped a pace or two to the rear, until we approached a gate, when he jumped forward and opened it. "Give us a pinch of your snuff, Tom," quoth the Sheriff. Tom's mull was produced, and the hand resumed its position. I was much diverted with Tom's behavior when we at length reached Abbotsford. There were some garden chairs on the green in front of the cottage porch. Scott sat down on one of them to enjoy the view of his new tower as it gleamed in the sunset, and Constable and I did the like. Mr. Purdie remained lounging near us for a few minutes, and then asked the Sheriff "to speak a word." They withdrew together into the garden--and Scott presently rejoined us with a particularly comical expression of face. As soon as Tom was out of sight, he said--"Will ye guess what he has been saying, now?--Well, this is a great satisfaction! Tom assures me that he has thought the matter over, and _will take my advice_ about the thinning of that clump behind Captain Ferguson's."[83] [Footnote 83: I am obliged to my friend Mr. Scott of Gala for reminding me of the following trait of Tom Purdie. The first time Mr. John Richardson of Fludyer Street came to Abbotsford, Tom (who took him for a Southron) was sent to attend upon him while he tried for a _fish_ (_i. e._, a salmon) in the neighborhood of Melrose Bridge. As they walked thither, Tom boasted grandly of the size of the fish he had himself caught there, evidently giving the stranger no credit for much skill in the Waltonian craft. By and by, however, Richardson, who is an admirable angler, hooked a vigorous fellow, and after a beautiful exhibition of the art, landed him in safety. "A fine _fish_, Tom."--"Oo, aye, Sir," quoth Tom, "it's a bonny grilse." "A _grilse_, Tom!" says Mr. R., "it's as heavy a _salmon_ as the heaviest you were telling me about." Tom showed his teeth in a smile of bitter incredulity; but while they were still debating, Lord Somerville's fisherman came up with scales in his basket, and Richardson insisted on having his victim weighed. The result was triumphant for the captor. "Weel," says Tom, letting the salmon drop on the turf, "weel, ye _are_ a meikle fish, mon--and a meikle _fule_, too" (he added in a lower key), "to let yoursell be kilt by an Englander."--(1839.) [Mr. Richardson's own account of this incident can be found in the memorial sketch of him in the _North British Review_ for November, 1864. The scene was not Abbotsford, but Ashestiel, in September, 1810.]] I must not forget that, whoever might be at Abbotsford, Tom always appeared at his master's elbow on Sunday, when dinner was over, and drank long life to the Laird and the Lady and all the good company, in a quaigh of whiskey, or a tumbler of wine, according to his fancy. I believe Scott has somewhere expressed in print his satisfaction that, among all the changes of our manners, the ancient freedom of personal intercourse may still be indulged between a master and an _out-of-doors_ servant; but in truth he kept by the old fashion even with domestic servants, to an extent which I have hardly seen practised by any other gentleman. He conversed with his coachman if he sat by him, as he often did on the box--with his footman, if he happened to be in the rumble; and when there was any very young lad in the household, he held it a point of duty to see that his employments were so arranged as to leave time for advancing his education, made him bring his copy-book once a week to the library, and examined him as to all that he was doing. Indeed he did not confine this humanity to his own people. Any steady servant of a friend of his was soon considered as a sort of friend too, and was sure to have a kind little colloquy to himself at coming and going. With all this, Scott was a very rigid enforcer of discipline--contrived to make it thoroughly understood by all about him, that they must do their part by him as he did his by them; and the result was happy. I never knew any man so well served as he was--so carefully, so respectfully, and so silently; and I cannot help doubting if, in any department of human operations, real kindness ever compromised real dignity. In a letter, already quoted, there occurs some mention of the Prince Gustavus Vasa, who was spending this winter in Edinburgh, and his Royal Highness's accomplished attendant, the Baron Polier. I met them frequently in Castle Street, and remember as especially interesting the first evening that they dined there. The only portrait in Scott's Edinburgh dining-room was one of Charles XII. of Sweden, and he was struck, as indeed every one must have been, with the remarkable resemblance which the exiled Prince's air and features presented to the hero of his race. Young Gustavus, on his part, hung with keen and melancholy enthusiasm on Scott's anecdotes of the expedition of Charles Edward Stewart.--The Prince, accompanied by Scott and myself, witnessed the ceremonial of the proclamation of King George IV. on the 2d of February at the Cross of Edinburgh, from a window over Mr. Constable's shop in the High Street; and on that occasion, also, the air of sadness that mixed in his features with eager curiosity was very affecting. Scott explained all the details to him, not without many lamentations over the barbarity of the Auld Reekie bailies, who had removed the beautiful Gothic Cross itself, for the sake of widening the thoroughfare. The weather was fine, the sun shone bright; and the antique tabards of the heralds, the trumpet notes of _God save the King_, and the hearty cheerings of the immense uncovered multitude that filled the noble old street, produced altogether a scene of great splendor and solemnity. The Royal Exile surveyed it with a flushed cheek and a watery eye, and Scott, observing his emotion, withdrew with me to another window, whispering: "Poor lad! poor lad! God help him." Later in the season, the Prince spent a few days at Abbotsford; but I have said enough to explain some allusions in the next letter to Lord Montagu, in which Scott also adverts to several public events of January and February, 1820,--the assassination of the Duke of Berri, the death of King George III., the general election which followed the royal demise, and its more unhappy consequence, the reagitation of the old disagreement between George IV. and his wife, who, as soon as she learned his accession to the throne, announced her resolution of returning from the Continent (where she had been leading for some years a wandering life), and asserting her rights as Queen. The Tory gentleman, in whose canvass of the Selkirk boroughs Scott was now earnestly concerned, was his worthy friend, Mr. Henry Monteith of Carstairs, who ultimately carried the election. TO THE LORD MONTAGU, ETC., DITTON PARK. EDINBURGH, 22d February, 1820. MY DEAR LORD,--I have nothing to say, except that Selkirk has declared decidedly for Monteith, and that his calling and election seem to be sure. Roxburghshire is right and tight. Harden will not stir for Berwickshire. In short, within my sphere of observation, there is nothing which need make you regret your personal absence; and I hope my dear young namesake and chief will not find his influence abated while he is unable to head it himself. It is but little I can do, but it shall always be done with a good will--and merits no thanks, for I owe much more to his father's memory than ever I can pay a tittle of. I often think what he would have said or wished, and, within my limited sphere, _that_ will always be a rule to me while I have the means of advancing in any respect the interest of his son;--certainly, if anything could increase this desire, it would be the banner being at present in your Lordship's hand. I can do little but look out ahead, but that is always something. When I look back on the house of Buccleuch, as I once knew it, it is a sad retrospect. But we must look forward, and hope for the young blossom of so goodly a tree. I think your Lordship judged quite right in carrying Walter in his place to the funeral.[84] He will long remember it, and may survive many occasions of the same kind, to all human appearance.--Here is a horrid business of the Duke de Berri. It was first told me yesterday by Count Itterburg (_i. e._, Prince Gustavus of Sweden, son of the ex-King), who comes to see me very often. No fairy tale could match the extravagance of such a tale being told to a private Scotch gentleman by such a narrator, his own grandfather having perished in the same manner. But our age has been one of complete revolution, baffling all argument and expectation. As to the King and Queen, or, to use the abbreviation of an old Jacobite of my acquaintance, who, not loving to hear them so called at full length, and yet desirous to have the newspapers read to him, commanded these words always to be pronounced as the letters K. and Q.--I say then, as to the K. and the Q., I venture to think, that whichever strikes the first blow will lose the battle. The sound, well-judging, and well-principled body of the people will be much shocked at the stirring such a hateful and disgraceful question. If the K. urges it unprovoked, the public feeling will put him in the wrong; if he lets her alone, her own imprudence, and that of her hot-headed adviser Harry Brougham, will push on the discussion; and, take a fool's word for it, as Sancho says, the country will never bear her coming back, foul with the various kinds of infamy she has been stained with, to force herself into the throne. On the whole, it is a discussion most devoutly to be deprecated by those who wish well to the Royal family. Now for a very different subject. I have a report that there is found on the farm of Melsington, in a bog, the limb of a bronze figure, full size, with a spur on the heel. This has been reported to Mr. Riddell, as Commissioner, and to me as Antiquary in chief, on the estate. I wish your Lordship would permit it to be sent provisionally to Abbotsford, and also allow me, if it shall seem really curious, to make search for the rest of the statue. Clarkson[85] has sent me a curious account of it; and that a Roman statue (for such it seems) of that size should be found in so wild a place, has something very irritating to the curiosity. I do not of course desire to have anything more than the opportunity of examining the relique. It may be the foundation of a set of bronzes, if stout Lord Walter should turn to _virtu_. Always, my dear Lord, most truly yours, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 84: The funeral of George III. at Windsor: the young Duke of Buccleuch was at this time at Eton.] [Footnote 85: Ebenezer Clarkson, Esq., a surgeon of distinguished skill at Selkirk, and through life a trusty friend and crony of the Sheriff's.] The novel of The Monastery was published by Messrs. Longman and Company in the beginning of March. It appeared, not in the post 8vo form of Ivanhoe, but in three volumes 12mo, like the earlier works of the series. In fact, a few sheets of The Monastery had been printed before Scott agreed to let Ivanhoe have "By the Author of Waverley" on its title-page; and the different shapes of the two books belonged to the abortive scheme of passing off "Mr. Laurence Templeton" as a hitherto unheard-of candidate for literary success. CHAPTER XLVIII Scott Revisits London. -- His Portrait by Lawrence, and Bust by Chantrey. -- Anecdotes by Allan Cunningham. -- Letters to Mrs. Scott, Laidlaw, Etc. -- His Baronetcy Gazetted. -- Marriage of his Daughter Sophia. -- Letter to "The Baron of Galashiels." -- Visit of Prince Gustavus Vasa at Abbotsford. -- Tenders of Honorary Degrees from Oxford and Cambridge. -- Letter to Mr. Thomas Scott. 1820 At the rising of his Court on the 12th of March, Scott proceeded to London, for the purpose of receiving his baronetcy, which he had been prevented from doing in the spring of the preceding year by his own illness, and again at Christmas by accumulated family afflictions. On his arrival in town, his son, the Cornet, met him; and they both established themselves at Miss Dumergue's. One of his first visitors was Sir Thomas Lawrence, who informed him that the King had resolved to adorn the great gallery, then in progress at Windsor Castle, with portraits by his hand of his Majesty's most distinguished contemporaries; all the reigning monarchs of Europe, and their chief ministers and generals, had already sat for this purpose: on the same walls the King desired to see exhibited those of his own subjects who had attained the highest honors of literature and science--and it was his pleasure that this series should commence with Walter Scott. The portrait was of course begun immediately, and the head was finished before Scott left town. Sir Thomas has caught and fixed with admirable skill one of the loftiest expressions of Scott's countenance at the proudest period of his life: to the perfect truth of the representation, every one who ever surprised him in the act of composition at his desk, will bear witness. The expression, however, was one with which many who had seen the man often were not familiar; and it was extremely unfortunate that Sir Thomas filled in the figure from a separate sketch after he had quitted London. When I first saw the head, I thought nothing could be better; but there was an evident change for the worse when the picture appeared in its finished state--for the rest of the person had been done on a different scale, and this neglect of proportion takes considerably from the majestic effect which the head itself, and especially the mighty pile of forehead, had in nature. I hope one day to see a good engraving of the head alone, as I first saw it floating on a dark sea of canvas. Lawrence told me, several years afterwards, that, in his opinion, the two greatest men he had painted were the Duke of Wellington and Sir Walter Scott; "and it was odd," said he, "that they both chose usually the same hour for sitting--seven in the morning. They were both as patient sitters as I ever had. Scott, however, was, in my case at least, a very difficult subject. I had selected what struck me as his noblest look; but when he was in the chair before me, he talked away on all sorts of subjects in his usual style, so that it cost me great pains to bring him back to solemnity, when I had to attend to anything beyond the outline of a subordinate feature. I soon found that the surest recipe was to say something that would lead him to recite a bit of poetry. I used to introduce, by hook or by crook, a few lines of Campbell or Byron--he was sure to take up the passage where I left it, or _cap_ it by something better--and then, when he was, as Dryden says of one of his heroes,-- 'Made up of three parts fire--so full of heaven It sparkled at his eyes'-- then was my time--and I made the best use I could of it. The hardest day's work I had with him was once when *****[86] accompanied him to my painting room. ***** was in particularly gay spirits, and nothing would serve him but keeping both artist and sitter in a perpetual state of merriment by anecdote upon anecdote about poor Sheridan. The anecdotes were mostly in themselves black enough--but the style of the _conteur_ was irresistibly quaint and comical. When Scott came next, he said he was ashamed of himself for laughing so much as he listened to them; 'for truly,' quoth he, 'if the tithe was fact, ***** might have said to Sherry--as Lord Braxfield once said to an eloquent culprit at the Bar--"Ye 're a vera clever chiel', man, but ye wad be nane the waur o' a hanging."'" [Footnote 86: A distinguished Whig friend.] It was also during this visit to London that Scott sat to Mr. (now Sir Francis) Chantrey for that bust which alone preserves for posterity the cast of expression most fondly remembered by all who ever mingled in his domestic circle. Chantrey's request that Scott would sit to him was communicated through Mr. Allan Cunningham, then (as now) employed as Clerk of the Works in our great Sculptor's establishment. Mr. Cunningham, in his early days, when gaining his bread as a stonemason in Nithsdale, made a pilgrimage on foot into Edinburgh, for the sole purpose of seeing the author of Marmion as he passed along the street. He was now in possession of a celebrity of his own, and had mentioned to his patron his purpose of calling on Scott to thank him for some kind message he had received, through a common friend, on the subject of those Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, which first made his poetical talents known to the public. Chantrey embraced this opportunity of conveying to Scott his own long-cherished ambition of modelling his head; and Scott at once assented to the flattering proposal. "It was about nine in the morning," says Mr. Cunningham, "that I sent in my card to him at Miss Dumergue's in Piccadilly. It had not been gone a minute, when I heard a quick heavy step coming, and in he came, holding out both hands, as was his custom, and saying, as he pressed mine, 'Allan Cunningham, I am glad to see you.' I said something," continues Mr. C., "about the pleasure I felt in touching the hand that had charmed me so much. He moved his hand, and with one of his comic smiles, said, 'Ay--and a big brown hand it is.' I was a little abashed at first: Scott saw it, and soon put me at my ease; he had the power--I had almost called it the art, but art it was not--of winning one's heart and restoring one's confidence beyond any man I ever met." Then ensued a little conversation, in which Scott complimented Allan on his ballads, and urged him to try some work of more consequence, quoting Burns's words, "for dear auld Scotland's sake;" but being engaged to breakfast in a distant part of the town, he presently dismissed his visitor, promising to appear next day at an early hour, and submit himself to Mr. Chantrey's inspection. [Illustration: WALTER SCOTT IN 1820 _The Chantrey Bust_] Chantrey's purpose had been the same as Lawrence's--to seize a poetical phasis of Scott's countenance; and he proceeded to model the head as looking upwards, gravely and solemnly. The talk that passed, meantime, had equally amused and gratified both, and fortunately, at parting, Chantrey requested that Scott would come and breakfast with him next morning before they recommenced operations in the studio. Scott accepted the invitation, and when he arrived again in Ecclestone Street, found two or three acquaintances assembled to meet him,--among others, his old friend Richard Heber. The breakfast was, as any party in Sir Francis Chantrey's house is sure to be, a gay and joyous one, and not having seen Heber in particular for several years, Scott's spirits were unusually excited by the presence of an intimate associate of his youthful days. I transcribe what follows from Mr. Cunningham's Memorandum:-- "Heber made many inquiries about old friends in Edinburgh, and old books and old houses, and reminded the other of their early socialities. 'Ay,' said Mr. Scott, 'I remember we once dined out together, and sat so late that when we came away the night and day were so neatly balanced, that we resolved to walk about till sunrise. The moon was not down, however, and we took advantage of her Ladyship's lantern, and climbed to the top of Arthur's Seat; when we came down we had a rare appetite for breakfast.'--'I remember it well,' said Heber; 'Edinburgh was a wild place in those days,--it abounded in clubs--convivial clubs.'--'Yes,' replied Mr. Scott, 'and abounds still; but the conversation is calmer, and there are no such sallies now as might be heard in other times. One club, I remember, was infested with two Kemps, father and son; when the old man had done speaking, the young one began,--and before he grew weary, the father was refreshed, and took up the song. John Clerk, during a pause, was called on for a stave; he immediately struck up, in a psalm-singing tone, and electrified the club with a verse which sticks like a burr to my memory,-- "Now, God Almighty judge James Kemp, And likewise his son John, And hang them over Hell in hemp, And burn them in brimstone."'-- "In the midst of the mirth which this specimen of psalmody raised, John (commonly called _Jack_) Fuller, the member for Surrey, and standing jester of the House of Commons, came in. Heber, who was well acquainted with the free and joyous character of that worthy, began to lead him out by relating some festive anecdotes: Fuller growled approbation, and indulged us with some of his odd sallies; things which he assured us 'were damned good, and true too, which was better.' Mr. Scott, who was standing when Fuller came in, eyed him at first with a look grave and considerate; but as the stream of conversation flowed, his keen eye twinkled brighter and brighter; his stature increased, for he drew himself up, and seemed to take the measure of the hoary joker, body and soul. An hour or two of social chat had meanwhile induced Mr. Chantrey to alter his views as to the bust, and when Mr. Scott left us, he said to me privately, 'This will never do--I shall never be able to please myself with a perfectly serene expression. I must try his conversational look, take him when about to break out into some sly funny old story.' As Chantrey said this, he took a string, cut off the head of the bust, put it into its present position, touched the eyes and the mouth slightly, and wrought such a transformation upon it, that when Scott came to his third sitting, he smiled and said,--'Ay, ye're mair like yoursel now!--Why, Mr. Chantrey, no witch of old ever performed such cantrips with clay as this.'"[87] [Footnote 87: [Mr. C. R. Leslie, himself the painter of an admirable portrait of Scott, says of Chantrey's work:-- "Of the many portraits of him, Chantrey's bust is, to my mind, the most perfect; ... the gentle turn of the head, inclined a little forwards and down, and the lurking humor in the eye and about the mouth, are Scott's own. Chantrey watched Sir Walter in company, and invited him to breakfast previous to the sittings, and by these means caught the expression that was most characteristic."--_Leslie's Autobiographical Recollections._]] These sittings were seven in number; but when Scott revisited London a year afterwards, he gave Chantrey several more, the bust being by that time in marble. Allan Cunningham, when he called to bid him farewell, as he was about to leave town on the present occasion, found him in court dress, preparing to kiss hands at the Levee, on being gazetted as Baronet. "He seemed anything but at his ease," says Cunningham, "in that strange attire; he was like one in armor--the stiff cut of the coat--the large shining buttons and buckles--the lace ruffles--the queue--the sword--and the cocked hat, formed a picture at which I could not forbear smiling. He surveyed himself in the glass for a moment, and burst into a hearty laugh. 'O Allan,' he said, 'O Allan, what creatures we must make of ourselves in obedience to Madam Etiquette! Seest thou not, I say, what a deformed thief this fashion is? how giddily she turns about all the hot bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty?'"[88] [Footnote 88: _Much Ado about Nothing_, Act III. Scene 3.] Scott's baronetcy was conferred on him, not in consequence of any Ministerial suggestion, but by the King personally, and of his own unsolicited motion; and when the poet kissed his hand, he said to him, "I shall always reflect with pleasure on Sir Walter Scott's having been the first creation of my reign." The Gazette announcing his new dignity was dated March 30, and published on the 2d of April, 1820; and the Baronet, as soon afterwards as he could get away from Lawrence, set out on his return to the North; for he had such respect for the ancient prejudice (a classical as well as a Scottish one) against marrying in May, that he was anxious to have the ceremony in which his daughter was concerned over before that unlucky month should commence.[89] It is needless to say, that during this stay in London he had again experienced, in its fullest measure, the enthusiasm of all ranks of his acquaintance; and I shall now transcribe a few paragraphs from domestic letters, which will show, among other things, how glad he was when the hour came that restored him to his ordinary course of life. [Footnote 89: [On March 15 Scott had written to Lady Abercorn: "Sophia is going to be married, and to a young man of uncommon talents,--indeed of as promising a character as I know. He is highly accomplished, a beautiful poet and fine draughtsman, and, what is better, of a most honorable and gentlemanlike disposition. He is handsome besides, and I like everything about him, except that he is more grave and retired than I (who have been all my life something of an _étourdi_) like particularly, but it is better than the opposite extreme. In point of situation they have enough to live upon, and 'the world for the winning.' ... Your Ladyship will see some beautiful lines of his writing in the last number of a very clever periodical publication called _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_. The verses are in an essay on the ballad poetry of the Spaniards, which he illustrates by some beautiful translations which--to speak truth--are much finer than the originals.... The youngster's name is John Gibson Lockhart; he comes of a good Lanarkshire family, and is very well connected. His father is a clergyman." Two months later, in a letter to Morritt, Sir Walter says:-- "To me, as it seems neither of my sons have a strong literary turn, the society of a son-in-law possessed of learning and talent must be a very great acquisition, and relieve me from some anxiety with respect to a valuable part of my fortune, consisting of copyrights, etc., which, though advantageous in my lifetime, might have been less so at my decease, unless under the management of a person acquainted with the nature of such property. All I have to fear on Lockhart's part, is a certain rashness, which I trust has been the effect of youth and high spirits, joined to lack of good advice, as he seems perfectly good-humored and very docile. So I trust your little friend Sophia, who I know has an interest in your bosom, has a very fair chance for such happiness as this motley world can afford."--_Familiar Letters_, vol. ii. pp. 73, 77.]] TO MRS. SCOTT, 39 CASTLE STREET, EDINBURGH. PICCADILLY, 20th March, 1820. MY DEAR CHARLOTTE,--I have got a delightful plan for the addition at Abb----, which I think will make it quite complete, and furnish me with a handsome library, and you with a drawing-room and better bedroom, with good bedrooms for company, etc. It will cost me a little hard work to meet the expense, but I have been a good while idle. I hope to leave this town early next week, and shall hasten back with great delight to my own household gods. I hope this will find you from under Dr. Ross's charge. I expect to see you quite in beauty when I come down, for I assure you I have been coaxed by very pretty ladies here, and look for merry faces at home. My picture comes on, and will be a grand thing, but the sitting is a great bore. Chantrey's bust is one of the finest things he ever did. It is quite the fashion to go to see it--there's for you. Yours, my dearest love, with the most sincere affection, WALTER SCOTT. TO THE SAME. PICCADILLY, March 27. MY DEAR CHARLOTTE,--I have the pleasure to say that Lord Sidmouth has promised to dismiss me in all my honors by the 30th, so that I can easily be with you by the end of April; and you and Sophia may easily select the 28th, 29th, or 30th, for the ceremony. I have been much fêted here, as usual, and had a very quiet dinner at Mr. Arbuthnot's yesterday with the Duke of Wellington, where Walter heard the great Lord in all his glory talk of war and Waterloo. Here is a hellish--yes, literally a hellish bustle. My head turns round with it. The whole mob of the Middlesex blackguards pass through Piccadilly twice a day, and almost drive me mad with their noise and vociferation.[90] Pray do, my dear Charlotte, write soon. You know those at a distance are always anxious to hear from home. I beg you to say what would give you pleasure that I could bring from this place, and whether you want anything from Mrs. Arthur for yourself, Sophia, or Anne; also what would please little Charles. You know you may stretch a point on this occasion. Richardson says your honors will be gazetted on Saturday; certainly very soon, as the King, I believe, has signed the warrant. When, or how I shall see him, is not determined, but I suppose I shall have to go to Brighton. My best love attends the girls, little Charles, and all the quadrupeds. I conclude that the marriage will take place in Castle Street, and want to know where they go, etc. All this you will have to settle without my wise head; but I shall be terribly critical--so see you do all right. I am always, dearest Charlotte, most affectionately yours, WALTER SCOTT. (_For the Lady Scott of Abbotsford--to be._) [Footnote 90: The general election was going on.] TO MR. JAMES BALLANTYNE, PRINTER, ST. JOHN'S STREET, EDINBURGH. 96 PICCADILLY, 28th March. DEAR JAMES,--I am much obliged by your attentive letter. Unquestionably Longman and Co. sell their books at subscription price, because they have the first of the market, and only one third of the books; so that, as they say with us, "let them care that come ahint." This I knew and foresaw, and the ragings of the booksellers, considerably aggravated by the displeasure of Constable and his house, are ridiculous enough; and as to their injuring the work, if it have a principle of locomotion in it, they cannot stop it--if it has not, they cannot make it move. I care not a bent twopence about their quarrels; only I say now, as I always said, that Constable's management is best, both for himself and the author; and, had we not been controlled by the narrowness of discount, I would put nothing past him. I agree with the public in thinking the work not very interesting; but it was written with as much care as the others--that is, with no care at all; and, "If it is na weil bobbit, we'll bobb it again." On these points I am Atlas. I cannot write much in this bustle of engagements, with Sir Francis's mob holloing under the windows. I find that even this light composition demands a certain degree of silence, and I might as well live in a cotton-mill. Lord Sidmouth tells me I will obtain leave to quit London by the 30th, which will be delightful news, for I find I cannot bear late hours and great society so well as formerly; and yet it is a fine thing to hear politics talked of by Ministers of State, and war discussed by the Duke of Wellington.[91] [Footnote 91: [Soon after his return, Scott writes to Morritt:-- "London I thought incredibly tiresome; I wanted my sheet anchors,--you and poor George Ellis,--by whom I could ride at quiet moorings without mixing entirely in the general vortex. The great lion--great in every sense--was the gigantic Belzoni, the handsomest man (for a giant) I ever saw or could suppose to myself. He is said completely to have overawed the Arabs, your old friends, by his great strength, height, and energy. I had one delightful evening in company with the Duke of Wellington, and heard him fight over Waterloo and his other battles with the greatest good-humor. It is odd, he says, that the most distinct writer on military affairs whose labors he has perused is James II., in the warlike details given in his own Memoirs. I have not read over these Memoirs lately, but I think I do not recollect much to justify the eulogium of so great a master."--_Familiar Letters_, vol. ii. p. 77.]] My occasions here will require that John or you send me two notes payable at Coutts's for £300 each, at two and three months' date. I will write to Constable for one at £350, which will settle my affairs here--which, with fees and other matters, come, as you may think, pretty heavy. Let the bills be drawn payable at Coutts's, and sent without delay. I will receive them safe if sent under Mr. Freeling's cover. Mention particularly what you are doing, for now is your time to push miscellaneous work. Pray take great notice of inaccuracies in the Novels. They are very, very many--some mine, I dare say--but all such as you may and ought to correct. If you would call on William Erskine (who is your well-wisher, and a little mortified he never sees you), he would point out some of them. Do you ever see Lockhart? You should consult him on every doubt where you would refer to me if present. Yours very truly, W. S. You say nothing of John, yet I am anxious about him. TO MR. LAIDLAW, KAESIDE, MELROSE. LONDON, April 2, 1820. DEAR WILLIE,--I had the great pleasure of your letter, which carries me back to my own braes, which I love so dearly, out of this place of bustle and politics. When I can see my Master--and thank him for many acts of favor--I think I will bid adieu to London forever; for neither the hours nor the society suit me so well as a few years since. There is too much necessity for exertion, too much brilliancy and excitation from morning till night. I am glad the sheep are away, though at a loss. I should think the weather rather too dry for planting, judging by what we have here. Do not let Tom go on sticking in plants to no purpose--better put in firs in a rainy week in August. Give my service to him. I expect to be at Edinburgh in the end of this month, and to get a week at Abbotsford before the Session sits down. I think you are right to be in no hurry to let Broomielees. There seems no complaint of wanting money here just now, so I hope things will come round. Ever yours truly, WALTER SCOTT. TO MISS SCOTT, CASTLE STREET, EDINBURGH. LONDON, April 3, 1820. DEAR SOPHIA,--I have no letter from any one at home excepting Lockhart, and he only says you are all well; and I trust it is so. I have seen most of my old friends, who are a little the worse for the wear, like myself. A five years' march down the wrong side of the hill tells more than ten on the right side. Our good friends here are kind as kind can be, and no frumps. They lecture the Cornet a little, which he takes with becoming deference and good-humor. There is a certain veil of Flanders lace floating in the wind for a certain occasion, from a certain godmother, but that is more than a dead secret. We had a very merry day yesterday at Lord Melville's, where we found Lord Huntly[92] and other friends, and had a bumper to the new Baronet, whose name was Gazetted that evening. Lady Huntly plays Scotch tunes like a Highland angel. She ran a set of variations on "Kenmure's on and awa'," which I told her were enough to raise a whole country-side. I never in my life heard such fire thrown into that sort of music. I am now laying anchors to windward, as John Ferguson says, to get Walter's leave extended. We saw the Duke of York, who was very civil, but wants altogether the courtesy of the King. I have had a very gracious message from the King. He is expected up very soon, so I don't go to Brighton, which is so far good. I fear his health is not strong. Meanwhile all goes forward for the Coronation. The expense of the robes for the peers may amount to £400 apiece. All the ermine is bought up at the most extravagant prices. I hear so much of it, that I really think, like Beau Tibbs,[93] I shall be tempted to come up and see it, if possible. Indeed, I don't see why I should not stay here, as I seem to be forgotten at home. The people here are like to smother me with kindness, so why should I be in a great hurry to leave them? I write, wishing to know what I could bring Anne and you and mamma down, that would be acceptable; and I shall be much obliged to you to put me up to that matter. To little Charles also I promised something, and I wish to know what he would like. I hope he pays attention to Mr. Thomson, to whom remember my best compliments. I hope to get something for him soon. To-day I go to spend my Sabbath quietly with Joanna Baillie and John Richardson, at Hampstead. The long Cornet goes with me. I have kept him amongst the seniors; nevertheless he seems pretty well amused. He is certainly one of the best-conditioned lads I ever saw, in point of temper. I understand you and Anne have gone through the ceremony of confirmation. Pray write immediately, and let me know how you are all going on, and what you would like to have, all of you. You know how much I would like to please you. Yours, most affectionately, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 92: The late Duke of Gordon.] [Footnote 93: See Goldsmith's _Citizen of the World_, No. 105.] While Scott remained in London, the Professorship of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh became vacant by the death of Dr. Thomas Brown; and among others who proposed themselves as candidates to fill it, was the author of the Isle of Palms. He was opposed in the Town Council (who are the patrons of most of the Edinburgh Chairs), on various pretences, but solely, in fact, on party grounds,--certain humorous political pieces having much exacerbated the Whigs of the North against him; and I therefore wrote to Scott, requesting him to animate the Tory Ministers in his behalf. Sir Walter did so, and Mr. Wilson's canvass was successful.[94] The answer to my communication was in these terms:-- [Footnote 94: [This academic struggle was as fiercely contested as though it had been a political contest, which in truth it was. Lockhart celebrated Wilson's victory in the _Testimonium_ (prefacing the seventh volume of _Blackwood_), thus keeping alive the passion of the hour. In July Scott wrote to his son-in-law, and through him to Wilson, a letter which is especially interesting, as showing the writer's attitude in regard to the personalities of _Maga_, which his political opponents were inclined to believe had at least his tacit approval. The letter, from which these extracts are taken, will be found in Lang's _Life of Lockhart_ (vol. i. pp. 239-245), where it was published for the first time:-- ... "I am sure our friend has been taught the danger of giving way to high spirits in mixed society, where there is some one always ready to laugh at the joke and to put it into his pocket to throw in the jester's face on some future occasion. It is plain Wilson must have walked the course had he been cautious in selecting the friends of his lighter hours, and now, clothed with philosophical dignity, his friends will really expect he should be on his guard in this respect, and add to his talents and amiable disposition the proper degree of _retenue_ becoming a moral teacher. Try to express all this to him in your own way, and believe that, as I have said it from the best motives, so I would wish it conveyed in the most delicate terms, as from one who equally honors Wilson's genius and loves his benevolent, ardent, and amiable disposition, but who would willingly see them mingled with the caution which leaves calumny no pin to hang her infamous accusations upon. "For the reasons above mentioned I wish you had not published the _Testimonium_. It is very clever, but descends to too low game. If Jeffrey or Cranstoun, or any of the dignitaries, chose to fight such skirmishes, there would be some credit in it; but I do not like to see you turn out as a sharpshooter with ****. 'What does thou drawn among these heartless hinds?' ... I have hitherto avoided saying anything on this subject, though some little turn towards personal satire is, I think, the only drawback to your great and powerful talents, and I think I may have hinted as much to you. But I wished to see how this matter of Wilson's would turn, before making a clean breast upon this subject. It might have so happened that you could not handsomely or kindly have avoided a share in his defence, if the enemy had prevailed, and where friendship, or country, or any strong call demands the use of satiric talent, I hope I should neither fear risk myself or desire a friend to shun it. But now that he has triumphed, I think it would be bad taste to cry out,-- 'Strike up our drums--pursue the scattered stray.' Besides, the natural consequence of his new situation must be his relinquishing his share in these compositions--at least, he will injure himself in the opinion of many friends, and expose himself to a continuation of galling and vexatious disputes to the embittering of his life, should he do otherwise. In that case I really hope you will pause before you undertake to be the Boaz of the _Maga_; I mean in the personal and satirical department, when the Jachin has seceded. "Besides all other objections of personal enemies, personal quarrels, constant obloquy, and all uncharitableness, such an occupation will fritter away your talents, hurt your reputation both as a lawyer and a literary man, and waste away your time in what at best will be but a monthly wonder. What has been done in this department will be very well as a frolic of young men, but let it suffice, 'the gambol has been shown'--the frequent repetition will lose its effect even as pleasantry, for Peter Pindar, the sharpest of personal satirists, wrote himself down, and wrote himself out, and is forgotten.... "Revere yourself, my dear boy, and think you were born to do your country better service than in this species of warfare. I make no apology (I am sure you will require none) for speaking plainly what my anxious affection dictates. As the old warrior says, 'May the name of Mevni be forgotten among the people, and may they only say, Behold the father of Gaul.' I wish you to have the benefit of my experience without purchasing it; and be assured, that the consciousness of attaining complete superiority over your calumniators and enemies by the force of your general character, is worth a dozen of triumphs over them by the force of wit and raillery. I am sure Sophia, as much as she can or ought to form any judgment respecting the line of conduct you have to pursue in your new character of a man married and settled, will be of my opinion in this matter, and that you will consider her happiness and your own, together with the respectability of both, by giving what I have said your anxious consideration." Lockhart's reply to this letter, expressing gratitude, and promising amendment, can be found in _Familiar Letters_, vol. ii. p. 86.]] TO J. G. LOCKHART, ESQ., GREAT KING STREET, EDINBURGH. LONDON, 30th March, 1820. DEAR LOCKHART,--I have yours of the Sunday morning, which has been terribly long of coming. There needed no apology for mentioning anything in which I could be of service to Wilson; and, so far as good words and good wishes _here_ can do, I think he will be successful; but the battle must be fought in Edinburgh. You are aware that the only point of exception to Wilson may be, that, with the fire of genius, he has possessed some of its eccentricities; but, did he ever approach to those of Henry Brougham, who is the god of Whiggish idolatry? If the high and rare qualities with which he is invested are to be thrown aside as useless, because they may be clouded by a few grains of dust which he can blow aside at pleasure, it is less a punishment on Mr. Wilson than on the country. I have little doubt he would consider success in this weighty matter as a pledge for binding down his acute and powerful mind to more regular labor than circumstances have hitherto required of him, for indeed, without doing so, the appointment could in no point of view answer his purpose. He must stretch to the oar for his own credit, as well as that of his friends; and if he does so, there can be no doubt that his efforts will be doubly blessed, in reference both to himself and to public utility. He must make every friend he can amongst the Council. Palladio Johnstone should not be omitted. If my wife canvasses him, she may do some good.[95] You must, of course, recommend to Wilson great temper in his canvass--for wrath will do no good. After all, he must leave off sack, purge and live cleanly as a gentleman ought to do; otherwise people will compare his present ambition to that of Sir Terry O'Fag, when he wished to become a judge. "Our pleasant follies are made the whips to scourge us," as Lear says; for otherwise, what could possibly stand in the way of his nomination? I trust it will take place, and give him the consistence and steadiness which are all he wants to make him the first man of the age. I am very angry with Castle Street--not a soul has written me, save yourself, since I came to London. Yours very truly, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 95: Mr. Robert Johnstone, a grocer on a large scale on the North Bridge of Edinburgh, and long one of the leading Bailies, was about this time the prominent patron of some architectural novelties in Auld Reekie, which had found no favor with Scott;--hence his prænomen of _Palladio_--which he owed, I believe, to a song in _Blackwood's Magazine_. The good Bailie had been at the High School with Sir Walter, and their friendly intercourse was never interrupted but by death.] Sir Walter, accompanied by the Cornet, reached Edinburgh late in April, and on the 29th of that month he gave me the hand of his daughter Sophia. The wedding, _more Scotico_, took place in the evening; and adhering on all such occasions to ancient modes of observance with the same punctiliousness which he mentions as distinguishing his worthy father, he gave a jolly supper afterwards to all the friends and connections of the young couple.[96] [Footnote 96: ["On Friday evening I gave away Sophia to Mr. Lockhart.... I own my house seems lonely to me since she left us, but that is a natural feeling, which will soon wear off. I have every reason to think I have consulted her happiness in the match, as became the father of a most attached and dutiful daughter, who never in her life gave me five minutes' vexation. In the mean time the words run strangely in my ear:-- 'Ah me! the flower and blossom of my house The wind has blown away to other towers.'" --Scott to Lady Abercorn--_Familiar Letters_, vol. ii. p. 75.]] His excursions to Tweedside during Term-time were, with very rare exceptions, of the sort which I have described in the preceding chapter; but he departed from his rule about this time in honor of the Swedish Prince, who had expressed a wish to see Abbotsford before leaving Scotland, and assembled a number of his friends and neighbors to meet his Royal Highness. Of the invitations which he distributed on this occasion, I insert one specimen--that addressed to Mr. Scott of Gala:-- _To the Baron of Galashiels The Knight of Abbotsford sends greeting._ Trusty and well-beloved,--Whereas Gustavus, Prince Royal of Sweden, proposeth to honor our poor house of Abbotsford with his presence on Thursday next, and to repose himself there for certain days, We do heartily pray you, out of the love and kindness which is and shall abide betwixt us, to be aiding to us at this conjuncture, and to repair to Abbotsford with your lady, either upon Thursday or Friday, as may best suit your convenience and pleasure, looking for no denial at your hands. Which loving countenance we will, with all thankfulness, return to you at your mansion of Gala. The hour of appearance being five o'clock, we request you to be then and there present, as you love the honor of the name; and so advance banners in the name of God and St. Andrew. WALTER SCOTT. Given at EDINBURGH, 20th May, 1820. The visit of Count Itterburg is alluded to in this letter to the Cornet, who had now rejoined his regiment in Ireland. It appears that on reaching headquarters he had found a charger _hors de combat_. TO WALTER SCOTT, ESQ., 18TH HUSSARS, CORK. CASTLE STREET, May 31, 1820. DEAR WALTER,--I enclose the cheque for the allowance; pray take care to get good notes in exchange. You had better speak to the gentleman whom Lord Shannon introduced you to, for, when banks take a-breaking, it seldom stops with the first who go. I am very sorry for your loss. You must be economical for a while, and bring yourself round again, for at this moment I cannot so well assist as I will do by and by. So do not buy anything but what you _need_. I was at Abbotsford for three days last week, to receive Count Itterburg, who seemed very happy while with us, and was much affected when he took his leave. I am sorry for him--his situation is a very particular one, and his feelings appear to be of the kindest order. When he took leave of me, he presented me with a beautiful seal, with all our new blazonries cut on a fine amethyst; and what I thought the prettiest part, on one side of the setting is cut my name, on the other the Prince's--_Gustaf_. He is to travel through Ireland, and will probably be at Cork. You will, of course, ask the Count and Baron to mess, and offer all civilities in your power, in which, I dare say, Colonel Murray will readily join. They intend to inquire after you. I have bought the land adjoining to the Burnfoot cottage, so that we now march with the Duke of Buccleuch all the way round that course. It cost me £2300--but there is a great deal of valuable fir planting, which you may remember; fine roosting for the black game. Still I think it is £200 too dear, but Mr. Laidlaw thinks it can be made worth the money, and it rounds the property off very handsomely. You cannot but remember the ground; it lies under the Eildon, east of the Chargelaw. Mamma, Anne, and Charles are all well. Sophia has been complaining of a return of her old sprain. I told her Lockhart would return her on our hands as not being sound wind and limb. I beg you to look at your French, and have it much at heart that you should study German. Believe me, always affectionately yours, WALTER SCOTT. In May, 1820, Scott received from both the English Universities the highest compliment which it was in their power to offer him. The Vice-Chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge communicated to him, in the same week, their request that he would attend at the approaching Commemorations, and accept the honorary degree of Doctor in Civil Law. It was impossible for him to leave Scotland again that season; and on various subsequent renewals of the same flattering proposition from either body, he was prevented, by similar circumstances, from availing himself of their distinguished kindness. In the course of a few months, Scott's family arrangements had undergone, as we have seen, considerable alteration. Meanwhile he continued anxious to be allowed to adopt, as it were, the only son of his brother Thomas; and the letter, in consequence of which that promising youth was at last committed to his charge, contains so much matter likely to interest parents and guardians, that, though long, I cannot curtail it. TO THOMAS SCOTT, ESQ., PAYMASTER 70th REGIMENT. ABBOTSFORD, 23d July, 1820. MY DEAR TOM,--Your letter of May, this day received, made me truly happy, being the first I have received from you since our dear mother's death, and the consequent breaches which fate has made in our family. My own health continues quite firm, at no greater sacrifice than bidding adieu to our old and faithful friend John Barleycorn, whose life-blood has become a little too heavy for my stomach. I wrote to you from London concerning the very handsome manner in which the King behaved to me in conferring my _petit titre_, and also of Sophia's intended marriage, which took place in the end of April, as we intended. I got Walter's leave prolonged, that he might be present, and I assure you, that when he attended the ceremony in full regimentals, you have scarce seen a handsomer young man. He is about six feet and an inch, and perfectly well made. Lockhart seems to be everything I could wish,--and as they have enough to live easily upon for the present, and good expectations for the future, life opens well with them. They are to spend their vacations in a nice little cottage, in a glen belonging to this property, with a rivulet in front, and a grove of trees on the east side to keep away the cold wind. It is about two miles distant from this house, and a very pleasant walk reaches to it through my plantations, which now occupy several hundred acres. Thus there will be space enough betwixt the old man of letters and the young one. Charles's destination to India is adjourned till he reaches the proper age: it seems he cannot hold a Writership until he is sixteen years old, and then is admitted to study for two years at Hertford College. After my own sons, my most earnest and anxious wish will be, of course, for yours,--and with this view I have pondered well what you say on the subject of your Walter; and whatever line of life you may design him for, it is scarce possible but that I can be of considerable use to him. Before fixing, however, on a point so very important, I would have you consult the nature of the boy himself. I do not mean by this that you should ask his opinion, because at so early an age a well bred up child naturally takes up what is suggested to him by his parents; but I think you should consider, with as much impartiality as a parent can, his temper, disposition, and qualities of mind and body. It is not enough that you think there is an opening for him in one profession rather than another,--for it were better to sacrifice the fairest prospects of that kind than to put a boy into a line of life for which he is not calculated. If my nephew is steady, cautious, fond of a sedentary life and quiet pursuits, and at the same time a proficient in arithmetic, and with a disposition towards the prosecution of its highest branches, he cannot follow a better line than that of an accountant. It is highly respectable--and is one in which, with attention and skill, aided by such opportunities as I may be able to procure for him, he must ultimately succeed. I say ultimately--because the harvest is small and the laborers numerous in this as in other branches of our legal practice; and whoever is to dedicate himself to them, must look for a long and laborious tract of attention ere he reaches the reward of his labors. If I live, however, I will do all I can for him, and see him put under a proper person, taking his 'prentice fee, etc., upon myself. But if, which may possibly be the case, the lad has a decided turn for active life and adventure, is high-spirited, and impatient of long and dry labor, with some of those feelings not unlikely to result from having lived all his life in a camp or a barrack, do not deceive yourself, my dear brother--you will never make him an accountant; you will never be able to convert such a sword into a pruning-hook, merely because you think a pruning-hook the better thing of the two. In this supposed case, your authority and my recommendation might put him into an accountant's office; but it would be just to waste the earlier years of his life in idleness, with all the temptations to dissipation which idleness gives way to; and what sort of a place a writing-chamber is, you cannot but remember. So years might wear away, and at last the youth starts off from his profession, and becomes an adventurer too late in life, and with the disadvantage, perhaps, of offended friends and advanced age standing in the way of his future prospects. This is what I have judged fittest in my own family, for Walter would have gone to the Bar had I liked; but I was sensible (with no small reluctance did I admit the conviction) that I should only spoil an excellent soldier to make a poor and undistinguished gownsman. On the same principle I shall send Charles to India,--not, God knows, with my will, for there is little chance of my living to see him return; but merely that, judging by his disposition, I think the voyage of his life might be otherwise lost in shallows. He has excellent parts, but they are better calculated for intercourse with the world than for hard and patient study. Having thus sent one son abroad from my family, and being about to send off the other in due time, you will not, I am sure, think that I can mean disregard to your parental feelings in stating what I can do for your Walter. Should his temper and character incline for active life, I think I can promise to get him a cadetship in the East India Company's service; so soon as he has had the necessary education, I will be at the expense of his equipment and passage-money; and when he reaches India, there he is completely provided, secure of a competence if he lives, and with great chance of a fortune if he thrives. I am aware this would be a hard pull at Mrs. Scott's feelings and yours; but recollect, your fortune is small, and the demands on it numerous, and pagodas and rupees are no bad things. I can get Walter the first introductions, and if he behaves himself as becomes your son, and my nephew, I have friends enough in India, and of the highest class, to insure his success, even his rapid success--always supposing my recommendations to be seconded by his own conduct. If, therefore, the youth has anything of your own spirit, for God's sake do not condemn him to a drudgery which he will never submit to--and remember, to sacrifice his fortune to your fondness will be sadly mistaken affection. As matters stand, unhappily you must be separated; and considering the advantages of India, the mere circumstance of distance is completely counterbalanced. Health is what will naturally occur to Mrs. Scott; but the climate of India is now well understood, and those who attend to ordinary precautions live as healthy as in Britain. And so I have said my say. Most heartily will I do my best in any way you may ultimately decide for; and as the decision really ought to turn on the boy's temper and disposition, you must be a better judge by far than any one else. But if he should resemble his father and uncle in certain indolent habits, I fear he will make a better subject for an animating life of enterprise than for the technical labor of an accountant's desk. There is no occasion, fortunately, for forming any hasty resolution. When you send him here, I will do all that is in my power to stand in the place of a father to him, and you may fully rely on my care and tenderness. If he should ultimately stay at Edinburgh, as both my own boys leave me, I am sure I shall have great pleasure in having the nearest in blood after them with me. Pray send him as soon as you can, for at his age, and under imperfect opportunities of education, he must have a good deal to make up. I wish I could be of the same use to you which I am sure I can be to your son. Of public news I have little to send. The papers will tell you the issue of the Radical row for the present. The yeomanry behaved most gallantly. There is in Edinburgh a squadron as fine as ours was--all young men, and zealous soldiers. They made the western campaign with the greatest spirit, and had some hard and fatiguing duty, long night-marches, surprises of the enemy, and so forth, but no fight, for the whole Radical plot went to the devil when it came to gun and sword. Scarce any blood was shed, except in a trifling skirmish at Bonnymuir, near Carron. The rebels were behind a wall, and fired on ten hussars and as many yeomen--the latter under command of a son of James Davidson, W. S. The cavalry cleared the wall, and made them prisoners to a man. The Commission of Oyer and Terminer is now busy trying them and others. The Edinburgh young men showed great spirit; all took arms, and my daughters say (I was in London at the time) that not a feasible-looking beau was to be had for love or money. Several were like old Beardie; they would not shave their moustaches till the Radicals were put down, and returned with most awful whiskers. Lockhart is one of the cavalry, and a very good trooper. It is high to hear these young fellows talk of the Raid of Airdrie, the trot of Kilmarnock, and so on, like so many moss-troopers. The Queen is making an awful bustle, and though by all accounts her conduct has been most abandoned and beastly, she has got the whole mob for her partisans, who call her injured innocence, and what not. She has courage enough to dare the worst, and a most decided desire to be revenged of _him_, which, by the way, can scarce be wondered at. If she had as many followers of high as of low degree (in proportion), and funds to equip them, I should not be surprised to see her fat bottom in a pair of buckskins, and at the head of an army--God mend all. The things said of her are beyond all usual profligacy. Nobody of any fashion visits her. I think myself monstrously well clear of London and its intrigues, when I look round my green fields, and recollect I have little to do, but to ----"make my grass mow, And my apple-tree grow." I beg my kind love to Mrs. Huxley. I have a very acceptable letter from her, and I trust to retain the place she promises me in her remembrance. Sophia will be happy to hear from Uncle Tom, when Uncle Tom has so much leisure. My best compliments attend your wife and daughters, not forgetting Major Huxley and Walter. My dear Tom, it will be a happy moment when circumstances shall permit us a meeting on this side Jordan, as Tabitha says, to talk over old stories, and lay new plans. So many things have fallen out which I had set my heart upon strongly, that I trust this may happen amongst others.--Believe me, yours very affectionately, WALTER SCOTT.[97] [Footnote 97: Here ended Vol. IV. of the Original Edition.--(1839.)] CHAPTER XLIX Autumn at Abbotsford. -- Scott's Hospitality. -- Visit of Sir Humphry Davy, Henry Mackenzie, Dr. Wollaston, and William Stewart Rose. -- Coursing on Newark Hill. -- Salmon-fishing. -- The Festival at Boldside. -- The Abbotsford Hunt. -- The Kirn, Etc. 1820 About the middle of August, my wife and I went to Abbotsford; and we remained there for several weeks, during which I became familiarized to Sir Walter Scott's mode of existence in the country. It was necessary to observe it, day after day, for a considerable period, before one could believe that such was, during nearly half the year, the routine of life with the most productive author of his age. The humblest person who stayed merely for a short visit, must have departed with the impression that what he witnessed was an occasional variety; that Scott's courtesy prompted him to break in upon his habits when he had a stranger to amuse; but that it was physically impossible that the man who was writing the Waverley romances at the rate of nearly twelve volumes in the year, could continue, week after week, and month after month, to devote all but a hardly perceptible fraction of his mornings to out-of-doors occupations, and the whole of his evenings to the entertainment of a constantly varying circle of guests. The hospitality of his afternoons must alone have been enough to exhaust the energies of almost any man; for his visitors did not mean, like those of country-houses in general, to enjoy the landlord's good cheer and amuse each other; but the far greater proportion arrived from a distance, for the sole sake of the Poet and Novelist himself, whose person they had never before seen, and whose voice they might never again have any opportunity of hearing. No other villa in Europe was ever resorted to from the same motives, and to anything like the same extent, except Ferney; and Voltaire never dreamt of being visible to his _hunters_, except for a brief space of the day;--few of them even dined with him, and none of them seem to have slept under his roof. Scott's establishment, on the contrary, resembled in every particular that of the affluent idler, who, because he has inherited, or would fain transmit, political influence in some province, keeps open house--receives as many as he has room for, and sees their apartments occupied, as soon as they vacate them, by another troop of the same description. Even on gentlemen guiltless of inkshed, the exercise of hospitality upon this sort of scale is found to impose a heavy tax; few of them, nowadays, think of maintaining it for any large portion of the year: very few indeed below the highest rank of the nobility--in whose case there is usually a staff of led-captains, led-chaplains, servile dandies, and semi-professional talkers and jokers from London, to take the chief part of the burden. Now, Scott had often in his mouth the pithy verses,-- "Conversation is but carving:-- Give no more to every guest, Than he's able to digest; Give him always of the prime, And but little at a time; Carve to all but just enough, Let them neither starve nor stuff, _And that you may have your due, Let your neighbors carve for you:_"-- and he, in his own familiar circle always, and in other circles where it was possible, furnished a happy exemplification of these rules and regulations of the Dean of St. Patrick's. But the same sense and benevolence which dictated adhesion to them among his old friends and acquaintance, rendered it necessary to break them when he was receiving strangers of the class I have described above at Abbotsford: he felt that their coming was the best homage they could pay to his celebrity, and that it would have been as uncourteous in him not to give them their fill of his talk, as it would be in your every-day lord of manors to make his casual guests welcome indeed to his venison, but keep his grouse-shooting for his immediate allies and dependents. Every now and then he received some stranger who was not indisposed to take his part in the _carving_; and how good-humoredly he surrendered the lion's share to any one that seemed to covet it--with what perfect placidity he submitted to be bored even by bores of the first water, must have excited the admiration of many besides the daily observers of his proceedings. I have heard a spruce Senior Wrangler lecture him for half an evening on the niceties of the Greek epigram; I have heard the poorest of all parliamentary blunderers try to detail to him the _pros_ and _cons_ of what he called the _Truck System_; and in either case the same bland eye watched the lips of the tormentor. But, with such ludicrous exceptions, Scott was the one object of the Abbotsford pilgrims; and evening followed evening only to show him exerting, for their amusement, more of animal spirits, to say nothing of intellectual vigor, than would have been considered by any other man in the company as sufficient for the whole expenditure of a week's existence. Yet this was not the chief marvel; he talked of things that interested himself, because he knew that by doing so he should give most pleasure to his guests. But how vast was the range of subjects on which he could talk with unaffected zeal; and with what admirable delicacy of instinctive politeness did he select his topic according to the peculiar history, study, pursuits, or social habits of the stranger!--How beautifully he varied his style of letter-writing, according to the character and situation of his multifarious correspondents, the reader has already been enabled to judge; but to carry the same system into practice _at sight_--to manage utter strangers, of many and widely different classes, in the same fashion, and with the same effect--called for a quickness of observation, and fertility of resource, such as no description can convey the slightest notion of to those who never witnessed the thing for themselves. And all this was done without approach to the unmanly trickery of what is called _catching the tone_ of the person one converses with. Scott took the subject on which he thought such a man or woman would like best to hear him speak--but not to handle it in their way, or in any way but what was completely, and most simply his own;--not to flatter them by embellishing, with the illustration of his genius, the views and opinions which they were supposed to entertain,--but to let his genius play out its own variations, for his own delight and theirs, as freely and easily, and with as endless a multiplicity of delicious novelties, as ever the magic of Beethoven or Mozart could fling over the few primitive notes of a village air. It is the custom in some, perhaps in many country-houses, to keep a register of the guests, and I have often regretted that nothing of the sort was ever attempted at Abbotsford. It would have been a curious record--especially if so contrived (as I have seen done) that the names of each day should, by their arrangement on the page, indicate the exact order in which the company sat at dinner. It would hardly, I believe, be too much to affirm, that Sir Walter Scott entertained, under his roof, in the course of the seven or eight brilliant seasons when his prosperity was at its height, as many persons of distinction in rank, in politics, in art, in literature, and in science, as the most princely nobleman of his age ever did in the like space of time.--I turned over, since I wrote the preceding sentence, Mr. Lodge's compendium of the British Peerage, and on summing up the titles which suggested _to myself_ some reminiscence of this kind, I found them nearly as one out of six.--I fancy it is not beyond the mark to add, that of the eminent foreigners who visited our island within this period, a moiety crossed the Channel mainly in consequence of the interest with which his writings had invested Scotland--and that the hope of beholding the man under his own roof was the crowning motive with half that moiety. As for countrymen of his own, like him ennobled, in the higher sense of that word, by the display of their intellectual energies, if any one such contemporary can be pointed out as having crossed the Tweed, and yet not spent a day at Abbotsford, I shall be surprised. It is needless to add, that Sir Walter was familiarly known, long before the days I am speaking of, to almost all the nobility and higher gentry of Scotland; and consequently, that there seldom wanted a fair proportion of them to assist him in doing the honors of his country. It is still more superfluous to say so respecting the heads of his own profession at Edinburgh: _Sibi et amicis_--Abbotsford was their villa whenever they pleased to resort to it, and few of them were ever absent from it long. He lived meanwhile in a constant interchange of easy visits with the gentlemen's families of Teviotdale and the Forest; so that, mixed up with his superfine admirers of the Mayfair breed, his staring worshippers from foreign parts, and his quick-witted coevals of the Parliament House--there was found generally some hearty homespun laird, with his dame--the young laird, a bashful bumpkin, perhaps, whose ideas did not soar beyond his gun and pointer--or perhaps a little pseudo-dandy, for whom the Kelso race-course and the Jedburgh ball were "Life," and "the World;" and not forgetting a brace of "Miss Rawbolds,"[98] in whom, as their mamma prognosticated, some of Sir Walter's young Waverleys or Osbaldistones might peradventure discover a Flora MacIvor or a Die Vernon. To complete the _olla podrida_, we must remember that no old acquaintance, or family connections, however remote their actual station or style of manners from his own, were forgotten or lost sight of. He had some, even near relations, who, except when they visited him, rarely, if ever, found admittance to what the haughty dialect of the upper world is pleased to designate exclusively as _society_. These were welcome guests, let who might be under that roof; and it was the same with many a worthy citizen of Edinburgh, habitually moving in the obscurest of circles, who had been in the same class with Scott at the High School, or his fellow-apprentice when he was proud of earning threepence a page by the use of his pen. To dwell on nothing else, it was surely a beautiful perfection of real universal humanity and politeness, that could enable this great and good man to blend guests so multifarious in one group, and contrive to make them all equally happy with him, with themselves, and with each other. [Footnote 98: "There were the six Miss Rawbolds--pretty dears! All song and sentiment; whose hearts were set Less on a convent than a coronet." _Don Juan_, canto xiii. st. 85.] I remember saying to William Allan one morning as the whole party mustered before the porch after breakfast, "A faithful sketch of what you at this moment see would be more interesting a hundred years hence, than the grandest so-called historical picture that you will ever exhibit at Somerset House;" and my friend agreed with me so cordially, that I often wondered afterwards he had not attempted to realize the suggestion. The subject ought, however, to have been treated conjointly by him (or Wilkie) and Edwin Landseer. It was a clear, bright September morning, with a sharpness in the air that doubled the animating influence of the sunshine, and all was in readiness for a grand coursing-match on Newark Hill. The only guest who had chalked out other sport for himself was the stanchest of anglers, Mr. Rose;--but he, too, was there on his _shelty_, armed with his salmon-rod and landing-net, and attended by his humorous squire Hinves, and Charlie Purdie, a brother of Tom, in those days the most celebrated fisherman of the district. This little group of Waltonians, bound for Lord Somerville's preserve, remained lounging about to witness the start of the main cavalcade. Sir Walter, mounted on Sibyl, was marshalling the order of procession with a huge hunting-whip; and among a dozen frolicsome youths and maidens, who seemed disposed to laugh at all discipline, appeared, each on horseback, each as eager as the youngest sportsman in the troop, Sir Humphry Davy, Dr. Wollaston, and the patriarch of Scottish belles-lettres, Henry Mackenzie. The Man of Feeling, however, was persuaded with some difficulty to resign his steed for the present to his faithful negro follower, and to join Lady Scott in the sociable, until we should reach the ground of our _battue_. Laidlaw, on a long-tailed wiry Highlander, yclept _Hoddin Grey_, which carried him nimbly and stoutly, although his feet almost touched the ground as he sat, was the adjutant. But the most picturesque figure was the illustrious inventor of the safety-lamp. He had come for his favorite sport of angling, and had been practising it successfully with Rose, his travelling companion, for two or three days preceding this, but he had not prepared for coursing fields, or had left Charlie Purdie's troop for Sir Walter's on a sudden thought; and his fisherman's costume--a brown hat with flexible brims, surrounded with line upon line, and innumerable fly-hooks--jack-boots worthy of a Dutch smuggler, and a fustian surtout dabbled with the blood of salmon, made a fine contrast with the smart jackets, white-cord breeches, and well-polished jockey-boots of the less distinguished cavaliers about him. Dr. Wollaston was in black, and, with his noble serene dignity of countenance, might have passed for a sporting archbishop.[99] Mr. Mackenzie, at this time in the seventy-sixth year of his age, with a white hat turned up with green, green spectacles, green jacket, and long brown leathern gaiters buttoned upon his nether anatomy, wore a dog-whistle round his neck, and had all over the air of as resolute a devotee as the gay Captain of Huntly Burn. Tom Purdie and his subalterns had preceded us by a few hours with all the greyhounds that could be collected at Abbotsford, Darnick, and Melrose; but the giant Maida had remained as his master's orderly, and now gambolled about Sibyl Grey, barking for mere joy like a spaniel puppy. [Footnote 99: [William Hyde Wollaston, the distinguished physiologist, chemist, and physicist.]] The order of march had been all settled, and the sociable was just getting under weigh, when _the Lady Anne_ broke from the line, screaming with laughter, and exclaimed, "Papa, papa, I knew you could never think of going without your pet." Scott looked round, and I rather think there was a blush as well as a smile upon his face, when he perceived a little black pig frisking about his pony, and evidently a self-elected addition to the party of the day. He tried to look stern, and cracked his whip at the creature, but was in a moment obliged to join in the general cheers. Poor piggy soon found a strap round its neck, and was dragged into the background:--Scott, watching the retreat, repeated with mock pathos the first verse of an old pastoral song,-- "What will I do gin my hoggie[100] die? My joy, my pride, my hoggie! My only beast, I had nae mae, And wow! but I was vogie!" --the cheers were redoubled--and the squadron moved on. [Footnote 100: _Hog_ signifies in the Scotch dialect a young sheep that has never been shorn. Hence, no doubt, the name of the Poet of Ettrick--derived from a long line of shepherds. Mr. Charles Lamb, however, in one of his sonnets suggests this pretty origin of _his_ "Family Name:"-- "Perhaps some shepherd on Lincolnian plains, In manners guileless as his own sweet flocks, Received it first amid the merry mocks And arch allusions of his fellow swains."] This pig had taken--nobody could tell how--a most sentimental attachment to Scott, and was constantly urging its pretensions to be admitted a regular member of his _tail_ along with the greyhounds and terriers; but, indeed, I remember him suffering another summer under the same sort of pertinacity on the part of an affectionate hen. I leave the explanation for philosophers--but such were the facts. I have too much respect for the vulgarly calumniated donkey to name him in the same category of pets with the pig and the hen; but a year or two after this time, my wife used to drive a couple of these animals in a little garden chair, and whenever her father appeared at the door of our cottage, we were sure to see Hannah More and Lady Morgan (as Anne Scott had wickedly christened them) trotting from their pasture to lay their noses over the paling, and, as Washington Irving says of the old white-haired hedger with the Parisian snuff-box, "to have a pleasant crack wi' the laird." But to return to our _chasse_. On reaching Newark Castle, we found Lady Scott, her eldest daughter, and the venerable Mackenzie, all busily engaged in unpacking a basket that had been placed in their carriage, and arranging the luncheon it contained upon the mossy rocks overhanging the bed of the Yarrow. When such of the company as chose had partaken of this refection, the Man of Feeling resumed his pony, and all ascended the mountain, duly marshalled at proper distances, so as to beat in a broad line over the heather, Sir Walter directing the movement from the right wing--towards Blackandro. Davy, next to whom I chanced to be riding, laid his whip about the fern like an experienced hand, but cracked many a joke, too, upon his own jack-boots, and surveying the long eager battalion of bushrangers, exclaimed, "Good heavens! is it thus that I visit the scenery of The Lay of the Last Minstrel?" He then kept muttering to himself, as his glowing eye (the finest and brightest that I ever saw) ran over the landscape, some of those beautiful lines from the _Conclusion_ of the Lay:-- ---- "But still, When summer smiled on sweet Bowhill, And July's eve, with balmy breath, Waved the blue-bells on Newark heath, When throstles sung in Hareheadshaw, And corn was green on Carterhaugh, And flourished, broad, Blackandro's oak, The aged harper's soul awoke," etc. Mackenzie, spectacled though he was, saw the first sitting hare, gave the word to slip the dogs, and spurred after them like a boy. All the seniors, indeed, did well as long as the course was upwards, but when puss took down the declivity, they halted and breathed themselves upon the knoll--cheering gayly, however, the young people, who dashed at full speed past and below them. Coursing on such a mountain is not like the same sport over a set of fine English pastures. There were gulfs to be avoided and bogs enough to be threaded--many a stiff nag stuck fast--many a bold rider measured his length among the peat-hags--and another stranger to the ground besides Davy plunged neck-deep into a treacherous well-head, which, till they were floundering in it, had borne all the appearance of a piece of delicate green turf. When Sir Humphry emerged from his involuntary bath, his habiliments garnished with mud, slime, and mangled water-cresses, Sir Walter received him with a triumphant _encore!_ But the philosopher had his revenge, for joining soon afterwards in a brisk gallop, Scott put Sibyl Grey to a leap beyond her prowess, and lay humbled in the ditch, while Davy, who was better mounted, cleared it and him at a bound. Happily there was little damage done--but no one was sorry that the sociable had been detained at the foot of the hill. I have seen Sir Humphry in many places, and in company of many different descriptions; but never to such advantage as at Abbotsford. His host and he delighted in each other, and the modesty of their mutual admiration was a memorable spectacle. Davy was by nature a poet--and Scott, though anything but a philosopher in the modern sense of that term, might, I think it very likely, have pursued the study of physical science with zeal and success, had he happened to fall in with such an instructor as Sir Humphry would have been to him, in his early life. Each strove to make the other talk--and they did so in turn more charmingly than I ever heard either on any other occasion whatsoever. Scott in his romantic narratives touched a deeper chord of feeling than usual, when he had such a listener as Davy; and Davy, when induced to open his views upon any question of scientific interest in Scott's presence, did so with a degree of clear energetic eloquence, and with a flow of imagery and illustration, of which neither his habitual tone of table-talk (least of all in London), nor any of his prose writings (except, indeed, the posthumous Consolations of Travel) could suggest an adequate notion. I say his prose writings--for who that has read his sublime quatrains on the doctrine of Spinoza can doubt that he might have united, if he had pleased, in some great didactic poem, the vigorous ratiocination of Dryden and the moral majesty of Wordsworth? I remember William Laidlaw whispering to me, one night, when their "rapt talk" had kept the circle round the fire until long after the usual bedtime of Abbotsford: "Gude preserve us! this is a very superior occasion! Eh, sirs!" he added, cocking his eye like a bird, "I wonder if Shakespeare and Bacon ever met to screw ilk other up?" Since I have touched on the subject of Sir Walter's autumnal diversions in these his later years, I may as well notice here two annual festivals, when sport was made his pretext for assembling his rural neighbors about him--days eagerly anticipated, and fondly remembered by many. One was a solemn bout of salmon-fishing for the neighboring gentry and their families, instituted originally, I believe, by Lord Somerville, but now, in his absence, conducted and presided over by the Sheriff. Charles Purdie, already mentioned, had charge (partly as lessee) of the salmon-fisheries for three or four miles of the Tweed, including all the water attached to the lands of Abbotsford, Gala, and Allwyn; and this festival had been established with a view, besides other considerations, of recompensing him for the attention he always bestowed on any of the lairds or their visitors that chose to fish, either from the banks or the boat, within his jurisdiction. His selection of the day, and other precautions, generally secured an abundance of sport for the great anniversary; and then the whole party assembled to regale on the newly caught prey, boiled, grilled, and roasted in every variety of preparation, beneath a grand old ash, adjoining Charlie's cottage at Boldside, on the northern margin of the Tweed, about a mile above Abbotsford. This banquet took place earlier in the day or later, according to circumstances; but it often lasted till the harvest moon shone on the lovely scene and its revellers. These formed groups that would have done no discredit to Watteau--and a still better hand has painted the background in the Introduction to The Monastery: "On the opposite bank of the Tweed might be seen the remains of ancient enclosures, surrounded by sycamores and ash-trees of considerable size. These had once formed the crofts or arable ground of a village, now reduced to a single hut, the abode of a fisherman, who also manages a ferry. The cottages, even the church which once existed there, have sunk into vestiges hardly to be traced without visiting the spot, the inhabitants having gradually withdrawn to the more prosperous town of Galashiels, which has risen into consideration within two miles of their neighborhood. Superstitious eld, however, has tenanted the deserted grove with aërial beings, to supply the want of the mortal tenants who have deserted it. The ruined and abandoned churchyard of Boldside has been long believed to be haunted by the Fairies, and the deep broad current of the Tweed, wheeling in moonlight round the foot of the steep bank, with the number of trees originally planted for shelter round the fields of the cottagers, but now presenting the effect of scattered and detached groves, fill up the idea which one would form in imagination for a scene that Oberon and Queen Mab might love to revel in. There are evenings when the spectator might believe, with Father Chaucer, that the ----'Queen of Faëry, With harp, and pipe, and symphony, Were dwelling in the place.'" Sometimes the evening closed with a "burning of the water;" and then the Sheriff, though now not so agile as when he practised that rough sport in the early times of Ashestiel, was sure to be one of the party in the boat,--held a torch, or perhaps took the helm,--and seemed to enjoy the whole thing as heartily as the youngest of his company,-- "'T is blithe along the midnight tide, With stalwart arm the boat to guide-- On high the dazzling blaze to rear, And heedful plunge the barbed spear; Rock, wood, and scaur, emerging bright, Fling on the stream their ruddy light, And from the bank our band appears Like Genii armed with fiery spears."[101] [Footnote 101: See _Poetical Works_, vol. xi. pp 334, 335 [Cambridge Ed. p. 467].] The other "superior occasion" came later in the season; the 28th of October, the birthday of Sir Walter's eldest son, was, I think, that usually selected for _the Abbotsford Hunt_. This was a coursing-field on a large scale, including, with as many of the young gentry as pleased to attend, all Scott's personal favorites among the yeomen and farmers of the surrounding country. The Sheriff always took the field, but latterly devolved the command upon his good friend Mr. John Usher, the ex-laird of Toftfield; and he could not have had a more skilful or a better-humored lieutenant. The hunt took place either on the moors above the Cauldshiels Loch, or over some of the hills on the estate of Gala, and we had commonly, ere we returned, hares enough to supply the wife of every farmer that attended, with soup for a week following. The whole then dined at Abbotsford, the Sheriff in the chair, Adam Ferguson croupier, and Dominie Thomson, of course, chaplain. George, by the way, was himself an eager partaker in the preliminary sport; and now he would favor us with a grace, in Burns's phrase, "as long as my arm," beginning with thanks to the Almighty, who had given man dominion over the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the field, and expatiating on this text with so luculent a commentary, that Scott, who had been fumbling with his spoon long before he reached his Amen, could not help exclaiming as he sat down, "Well done, Mr. George! I think we've had everything but the view holla!" The company, whose onset had been thus deferred, were seldom, I think, under thirty in number, and sometimes they exceeded forty. The feast was such as suited the occasion--a baron of beef, roasted, at the foot of the table, a salted round at the head, while tureens of hare-soup, hotchpotch, and cocky-leeky, 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 favorite 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. The wine decanters made a few rounds of the table, but the hints for hot punch and toddy soon became clamorous. Two or three bowls were introduced, and placed under the supervision of experienced manufacturers,--one of these being usually the Ettrick Shepherd,--and then the business of the evening commenced in good earnest. The faces shone and glowed like those at Camacho's wedding: the chairman told his richest stories of old rural life, Lowland or Highland; Ferguson and humbler heroes fought their peninsular battles o'er again; the stalwart Dandie Dinmonts lugged out their last winter's snowstorm, the parish scandal, perhaps, or the dexterous bargain of the Northumberland _tryste_; and every man was knocked down for the song that he sung best, or took most pleasure in singing. Sheriff-Substitute Shortreed (a cheerful, hearty, little man, with a sparkling eye and a most infectious laugh) gave us Dick o' the Cow, or Now Liddesdale has ridden a Raid; his son Thomas (Sir Walter's assiduous disciple and assistant in Border Heraldry and Genealogy) shone without a rival in The Douglas Tragedy and The Twa Corbies; a weather-beaten, stiff-bearded veteran, _Captain_ Ormistoun, as he was called (though I doubt if his rank was recognized at the Horse-Guards), had the primitive pastoral of Cowdenknowes in sweet perfection; Hogg produced The Women Folk, or The Kye comes Hame; and, in spite of many grinding notes, contrived to make everybody delighted, whether with the fun or the pathos of his ballad; the Melrose doctor sang in spirited style some of Moore's masterpieces; a couple of retired sailors joined in Bould Admiral Duncan upon the High Sea;--and the gallant croupier crowned the last bowl with Ale, good Ale, thou art my Darling! Imagine some smart Parisian _savant_--some dreamy pedant of Halle or Heidelberg--a brace of stray young Lords from Oxford or Cambridge, or perhaps their prim college tutors, planted here and there amidst these rustic wassailers--this being their first vision of the author of Marmion and Ivanhoe, and he appearing as heartily at home in the scene as if he had been a veritable _Dandie_ himself--his face radiant, his laugh gay as childhood, his chorus always ready. And so it proceeded until some worthy, who had fifteen or twenty miles to ride home, began to insinuate that his wife and bairns would be getting sorely anxious about the fords, and the Dumples and Hoddins were at last heard neighing at the gate, and it was voted that the hour had come for _doch an dorrach_--the stirrup-cup--to wit, a bumper all round of the unmitigated _mountain dew_. How they all contrived to get home in safety, 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!" It may well be supposed that the President of the Boldside Festival and the Abbotsford Hunt did not omit the good old custom of _the Kirn_. Every November, before quitting the country for Edinburgh, he gave a _harvest-home_, on the most approved model of former days, to all the peasantry on his estate, their friends and kindred, and as many poor neighbors besides as his barn could hold. Here old and young danced from sunset to sunrise,--John of Skye's bagpipe being relieved at intervals by the violin of some Wandering Willie;--and the laird and all his family were present during the early part of the evening--he and his wife to distribute the contents of the first tub of whiskey-punch, and his young people to take their due share in the endless reels and hornpipes of the earthen floor. As Mr. Morritt has said of him as he appeared at Laird Nippy's kirn of earlier days, "To witness the cordiality of his reception might have unbent a misanthrope." He had his private joke for every old wife or "gausie carle," his arch compliment for the ear of every bonny lass, and his hand and his blessing for the head of every little _Eppie Daidle_ from Abbotstown or Broomielees. "The notable paradox," he says in one of the most charming of his essays, "that the residence of a proprietor upon his estate is of as little consequence as the bodily presence of a stockholder upon Exchange, has, we believe, been renounced. At least, as in the case of the Duchess of Suffolk's relationship to her own child, the vulgar continue to be of opinion that there is some difference in favor of the next hamlet and village, and even of the vicinage in general, when the squire spends his rents at the manor-house, instead of cutting a figure in France or Italy. A celebrated politician used to say he would willingly bring in one bill to make poaching felony, another to encourage the breed of foxes, and a third to revive the decayed amusements of cock-fighting and bullbaiting--that he would make, in short, any sacrifice to the humors and prejudices of the country gentlemen, in their most extravagant form, provided only he could prevail upon them to 'dwell in their own houses, be the patrons of their own tenantry, and the fathers of their own children.'"[102] [Footnote 102: Essay on Landscape Gardening, _Miscellaneous Prose Works_, vol. xxi. p. 77.] CHAPTER L Publication of the Abbot. -- The Blair-Adam Club. -- Kelso, Walton Hall, Etc. -- Ballantyne's Novelists' Library. -- Acquittal of Queen Caroline. -- Service of the Duke of Buccleuch. -- Scott Elected President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. -- The Celtic Society. -- Letters to Lord Montagu, Cornet Scott, Charles Scott, Allan Cunningham, Etc. -- Kenilworth Published. 1820-1821 In the September of 1820, Longman, in conjunction with Constable, published The Abbot--the continuation, to a certain extent, of The Monastery, of which I barely mentioned the appearance under the preceding March. I had nothing of any consequence to add to the information which the subsequent Introduction affords us respecting the composition and fate of the former of these novels. It was considered as a failure--the first of the series on which any such sentence was pronounced;--nor have I much to allege in favor of the White Lady of Avenel, generally criticised as the primary blot--or of Sir Piercie Shafton, who was loudly, though not quite so generally, condemned. In either case, considered separately, he seems to have erred from dwelling (in the German taste) on materials that might have done very well for a rapid sketch. The phantom, with whom we have leisure to become familiar, is sure to fail--even the witch of Endor is contented with a momentary appearance and five syllables of the shade she evokes. And we may say the same of any grotesque absurdity in human manners. Scott might have considered with advantage how lightly and briefly Shakespeare introduces _his_ Euphuism--though actually the prevalent humor of the hour when he was writing. But perhaps these errors might have attracted little notice had the novelist been successful in finding some reconciling medium capable of giving consistence and harmony to his naturally incongruous materials. "These," said one of his ablest critics, "are joined--but they refuse to blend. Nothing can be more poetical in conception, and sometimes in language, than the fiction of the White Maid of Avenel; but when this ethereal personage, who rides on the cloud which 'for Araby is bound'--who is 'Something between heaven and hell, Something that neither stood nor fell,' whose existence is linked by an awful and mysterious destiny to the fortunes of a decaying family; when such a being as this descends to clownish pranks, and promotes a frivolous jest about a tailor's bodkin, the course of our sympathies is rudely arrested, and we feel as if the author had put upon us the old-fashioned pleasantry of selling a bargain."[103] [Footnote 103: Adolphus's _Letters to Heber_, p. 13.] The beautiful natural scenery, and the sterling Scotch characters and manners introduced in The Monastery are, however, sufficient to redeem even these mistakes; and, indeed, I am inclined to believe that it will ultimately occupy a securer place than some romances enjoying hitherto a far higher reputation, in which he makes no use of Scottish materials. Sir Walter himself thought well of The Abbot when he had finished it. When he sent me a complete copy I found on a slip of paper at the beginning of volume first, these two lines from Tom Crib's Memorial to Congress:-- "Up he rose in a funk, lapped a toothful of brandy, And _to it_ again!--any odds upon Sandy!"-- and whatever ground he had been supposed to lose in The Monastery, part at least of it was regained by this tale, and especially by its most graceful and pathetic portraiture of Mary Stuart. "The Castle of Lochleven," says the Chief-Commissioner Adam, "is seen at every turn from the northern side of Blair-Adam. This castle, renowned and attractive above all the others in my neighborhood, became an object of much increased attention, and a theme of constant conversation, after the author of Waverley had, by his inimitable power of delineating character--by his creative poetic fancy in representing scenes of varied interest--and by the splendor of his romantic descriptions, infused a more diversified and a deeper tone of feeling into the history of Queen Mary's captivity and escape." I have introduced this quotation from a little book privately printed for the amiable Judge's own family and familiar friends, because Sir Walter owned to myself at the time, that the idea of The Abbot had arisen in his mind during a visit to Blair-Adam. In the pages of the tale itself, indeed, the beautiful localities of that estate are distinctly mentioned, with an allusion to the virtues and manners that adorn its mansion, such as must have been intended to satisfy the possessor (if he could have had any doubts on the subject) as to the authorship of those novels. The Right Honorable William Adam (who must pardon my mentioning him here as the only man I ever knew that rivalled Sir Walter Scott in uniform graciousness of _bonhomie_ and gentleness of humor)[104] was appointed, in 1815, to the Presidency of the Court for Jury Trial in Civil Cases, then instituted in Scotland, and he thenceforth spent a great part of his time at his paternal seat in Kinross-shire. Here, about midsummer, 1816, he received a visit from his near relation William Clerk, Adam Ferguson, his hereditary friend and especial favorite, and their lifelong intimate, Scott. They remained with him for two or three days, in the course of which they were all so much delighted with their host, and he with them, that it was resolved to reassemble the party, with a few additions, at the same season of every following year. This was the origin of the Blair-Adam Club, the regular members of which were in number nine; namely, the four already named--the Chief-Commissioner's son, Admiral Sir Charles Adam--his son-in-law, the late Mr. Anstruther Thomson of Charleton, in Fifeshire--Mr. Thomas Thomson, the Deputy-Register of Scotland--his brother, the Rev. John Thomson, minister of Duddingston, who, though a most diligent and affectionate parish priest, has found leisure to make himself one of the first masters of the British School of Landscape Painting--and the Right Hon. Sir Samuel Shepherd, who, after filling with high distinction the office of Attorney-General in England, became Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer in Scotland, shortly after the third anniversary of this brotherhood, into which he was immediately welcomed with unanimous cordiality. They usually contrived to meet on a Friday; spent the Saturday in a ride to some scene of historical interest within an easy distance; enjoyed a quiet Sunday at home--"duly attending divine worship at the Kirk of Cleish (not Cleishbotham)"--gave Monday morning to another antiquarian excursion, and returned to Edinburgh in time for the Courts of Tuesday. From 1816 to 1831 inclusive, Sir Walter was a constant attendant at these meetings. He visited in this way Castle Campbell, Magus Moor, Falkland, Dunfermline, St. Andrews, and many other scenes of ancient celebrity: to one of those trips we must ascribe his dramatic sketch of Macduff's Cross--and to that of the dog-days of 1819, we owe the weightier obligation of The Abbot. [Footnote 104: See _ante_, vol. v. p. 34.] I expect an easy forgiveness for introducing from the _liber rarissimus_ of Blair-Adam the page that belongs to that particular meeting--which, though less numerous than usual, is recorded as having been "most pleasing and delightful." "There were," writes the President, "only five of us; the Chief Baron, Sir Walter, Mr. Clerk, Charles Adam, and myself. The weather was sultry, almost beyond bearing. We did not stir beyond the bounds of the pleasure-ground, indeed not far from the vicinity of the house; wandering from one shady place to another, lolling upon the grass, or sitting upon prostrate trees not yet carried away by the purchaser. Our conversation was constant, though tranquil; and what might be expected from Mr. Clerk, who is a superior converser, and whose mind is stored with knowledge; and from Sir Walter Scott, who has let the public know what his powers are. Our talk was of all sorts (except of _beeves_). Besides a display of their historic knowledge, at once extensive and correct, they touched frequently on the pleasing reminiscences of their early days. Shepherd and I could not go back to those periods; but we could trace our own intimacy and constant friendship for more than forty years back, when in 1783 we began our professional pursuits on the Circuit. So that if Scott could describe, with inconceivable humor, their doings at Mr. Murray's of Simprim, when emerging from boyhood; when he, and Murray, and Clerk, and Adam Ferguson, acted plays in the schoolroom (Simprim making the dominie bear his part)--when Ferguson was prompter, orchestra, and audience--and as Scott said, representing the whole pit, kicked up an 'O. P.' row by anticipation; and many other such recollections--Shepherd and I could tell of our Circuit fooleries, as old Fielding (the son of the great novelist) called them--of the Circuit songs which Will Fielding made and sung,--and of the grave Sir William Grant (then a briefless barrister), ycleped by Fielding the Chevalier Grant, bearing his part in those fooleries, enjoying all our pranks with great zest, and who talked of them with delight to his dying day. When the conversation took a graver tone, and turned upon literary subjects, the Chief-Baron took a great share in it; for notwithstanding his infirmity of deafness, he is a most pleasing and agreeable converser, and readily picks up what is passing; and having a classical mind and classical information, gives a pleasing, gentlemanly, and well-informed tone to general conversation.--Before I bring these recollections of our social and cheerful doings to a close, let me observe, that there was a characteristic feature attending them, which it would be injustice to the individuals who composed our parties not to mention. The whole set of us were addicted to take a full share of conversation, and to discuss every subject that occurred with sufficient keenness. The topics were multifarious, and the opinions of course various; but during the whole time of our intercourse, for so many years, four days at a time, and always together, except when we were asleep, there never was the least tendency, on any occasion, to any unruly debate, nor to anything that deviated from the pure delight of social intercourse." The Chief-Commissioner adds the following particulars in his appendix:-- "Our return from Blair-Adam (after the first meeting of the Club) was very early on a Tuesday morning, that we might reach the Courts by nine o'clock. An occurrence took place near the Hawes' Inn, which left little doubt upon my mind that Sir Walter Scott was the author of Waverley, of Guy Mannering, and of The Antiquary, his only novels then published. The morning was prodigiously fine, and the sea as smooth as glass. Sir Walter and I were standing on the beach, enjoying the prospect; the other gentlemen were not come from the boat. The porpoises were rising in great numbers, when Sir Walter said to me, 'Look at them, how they are showing themselves; what fine fellows they are! I have the greatest respect for them: I would as soon kill a man as a phoca.' I could not conceive that the same idea could occur to two men respecting this animal, and set down that it could only be Sir Walter Scott who made the phoca have the better of the battle with the Antiquary's nephew, Captain M'Intyre.[105] "Soon after, another occurrence quite confirmed me as to the authorship of the novels. On that visit to Blair-Adam, in course of conversation, I mentioned an anecdote about Wilkie, the author of The Epigoniad, who was but a formal poet, but whose conversation was most amusing, and full of fancy. Having heard much of him in my family, where he had been very intimate, I went, when quite a lad, to St. Andrews, where he was a Professor, for the purpose of visiting him. I had scarcely let him know who I was, when he said, 'Mr. William, were you ever in this place before?' I said, no. 'Then, sir, you must go and look at Regulus' Tower,--no doubt you will have something of an eye of an architect about you;--walk up to it at an angle, advance and recede until you get to see it at its proper distance, and come back and tell me whether you ever saw anything so beautiful in building: till I saw that tower and studied it, I thought the beauty of architecture had consisted in curly-wurlies, but now I find it consists in symmetry and proportion.' In the following winter Rob Roy was published, and there I read that the Cathedral of Glasgow was 'a respectable Gothic structure, without any _curly-wurlies_.' "But what confirmed, and was certainly meant to disclose to me the author (and that in a very elegant manner), was the mention of the Kiery Craigs--a picturesque piece of scenery in the grounds of Blair-Adam--as being in the vicinity of Kelty Bridge, the _howf_ of Auchtermuchty, the Kinross carrier.--It was only an intimate friend of the family, in the habit of coming to Blair-Adam, who could know anything of the Kiery Craigs or its name; and both the scenery and the name had attractions for Sir Walter. "At our first meeting after the publication of The Abbot, when the party was assembled on the top of the rock, the Chief-Baron Shepherd, looking Sir Walter full in the face, and stamping his staff on the ground, said, 'Now, Sir Walter, I think we be upon the top of the Kiery _Craggs_.' Sir Walter preserved profound silence; but there was a conscious looking down, and a considerable elongation of his upper lip." [Footnote 105: The good Chief-Commissioner makes a little mistake here--a _Phoca_ being, not a porpoise, but a _Seal_.] Since I have obtained permission to quote from this private volume, I may as well mention that I was partly moved to ask that favor, by the author's own confession that his "Blair-Adam, from 1733 to 1834," originated in a suggestion of Scott's. "It was," says the Judge, "on a fine Sunday, lying on the grassy summit of Bennarty, above its craggy brow, that Sir Walter said, looking first at the flat expanse of Kinross-shire (on the south side of the Ochils), and then at the space which Blair-Adam fills between the hill of Drumglow (the highest of the Cleish hills) and the valley of Lochore, 'What an extraordinary thing it is, that here to the north so little appears to have been done, when there are so many proprietors to work upon it; and to the south, here is a district of country entirely made by the efforts of one family, in three generations, and one of them amongst us in the full enjoyment of what has been done by his two predecessors and himself. Blair-Adam, as I have always heard, had a wild, uncomely, and unhospitable appearance, before its improvements were begun. It would be most curious to record in writing its original state, and trace its gradual progress to its present condition.'" Upon this suggestion, enforced by the approbation of the other members present, the President of the Blair-Adam Club commenced arranging the materials for what constitutes a most instructive as well as entertaining history of the agricultural and arboricultural progress of his domains, in the course of a hundred years, under his grandfather, his father (the celebrated architect), and himself. And Sir Walter had only suggested to his friend of Kinross-shire what he was resolved to put into practice with regard to his own improvements on Tweedside; for he begun at precisely the same period to keep a regular Journal of all his rural transactions, under the title of Sylva Abbotsfordiensis. For reasons, as we have seen, connected with the affairs of the Ballantynes, Messrs. Longman published the first edition of The Monastery; and similar circumstances induced Sir Walter to associate this house with that of Constable in the succeeding novel. Constable disliked its title, and would fain have had The Nunnery instead: but Scott stuck to his Abbot. The bookseller grumbled a little, but was soothed by the author's reception of his request that Queen Elizabeth might be brought into the field in his next romance, as a companion to the Mary Stuart of The Abbot.[106] Scott would not indeed indulge him with the choice of the particular period of Elizabeth's reign, indicated in the proposed title of The Armada; but expressed his willingness to take up his own old favorite, the legend of Meikle's ballad. He wished to call the novel, like the ballad, Cumnor-Hall, but in further deference to Constable's wishes, substituted Kenilworth. John Ballantyne objected to this title, and told Constable the result would be "something worthy of the kennel;" but Constable had all reason to be satisfied with the child of his christening. His partner, Mr. Cadell, says: "His vanity boiled over so much at this time, on having his suggestion gone into, that when in his high moods, he used to stalk up and down his room, and exclaim, 'By G--, I am all but the author of the Waverley Novels!'" Constable's bibliographical knowledge, however, it is but fair to say, was really of most essential service to Scott upon many of these occasions; and his letter (now before me) proposing the subject of The Armada, furnished the Novelist with such a catalogue of materials for the illustration of the period as may, probably enough, have called forth some very energetic expression of thankfulness. [Footnote 106: [Scott writes in December to Lady Louisa Stuart: "I do not design any scandal about Queen Bess, whom I admire much, although, like an old _true blue_, I have malice against her on Queen Mary's account. But I think I shall be very fair. The story is the tragedy of Leicester's first wife, and I have made it, as far as my facilities would permit, 'a pleasant tragedy, stuffed with most pitiful mirth.'"--_Familiar Letters_, vol. ii. p. 102.]] Scott's kindness secured for John Ballantyne the usual interest in the profits of Kenilworth, the last of his great works in which this friend was to have any concern. I have already mentioned the obvious drooping of his health and strength; and a document, to be introduced presently, will show that John himself had occasional glimpses, at least, of his danger, before the close of 1819. Nevertheless, his spirits continued, at the time of which I am now treating, to be in general as high as ever;--nay, it was now, after his maladies had taken a very serious shape, and it was hardly possible to look on him without anticipating a speedy termination of his career, that the gay hopeful spirit of the shattered and trembling invalid led him to plunge into a new stream of costly indulgence. It was an amiable point in his character that he had always retained a tender fondness for his native place. He had now taken up the ambition of rivalling his illustrious friend, in some sort, by providing himself with a summer retirement amidst the scenery of his boyhood; and it need not be doubted, at the same time, that in erecting a villa at Kelso, he anticipated and calculated on substantial advantages from its vicinity to Abbotsford. One fine day of this autumn I accompanied Sir Walter to inspect the progress of this edifice, which was to have the title of Walton Hall. John had purchased two or three old houses of two stories in height, with notched gables and thatched roofs, near the end of the long original street of Kelso, and not far from the gateway of the Duke of Roxburghe's magnificent park, with their small gardens and paddocks running down to the margin of the Tweed. He had already fitted up convenient bachelor's lodgings in one of the primitive tenements, and converted the others into a goodly range of stabling, and was now watching the completion of his new _corps de logis_ behind, which included a handsome entrance-hall, or saloon, destined to have old Piscator's bust, on a stand, in the centre, and to be embellished all round with emblems of his sport. Behind this were spacious rooms overlooking the little _pleasance_, which was to be laid out somewhat in the Italian style, with ornamental steps, a fountain and _jet d'eau_, and a broad terrace hanging over the river, and commanding an extensive view of perhaps the most beautiful landscape in Scotland. In these new dominions John received us with pride and hilarity; and we then walked with him over this pretty town, lounged away an hour among the ruins of the Abbey, and closed our perambulation with _the Garden_, where Scott had spent some of the happiest of his early summers, and where he pointed out with sorrowful eyes the site of the Platanus under which he first read Percy's Reliques. Returning to John's villa, we dined gayly, _al fresco_, by the side of his fountain; and after not a few bumpers to the prosperity of Walton Hall, he mounted Old Mortality, and escorted us for several miles on our ride homewards. It was this day that, overflowing with kindly zeal, Scott revived one of the long-forgotten projects of their early connection in business, and offered his services as editor of a Novelists' Library, to be printed and published for the sole benefit of his host. The offer was eagerly embraced, and when, two or three mornings afterwards John returned Sir Walter's visit, he had put into his hands the MS. of that admirable life of Fielding, which was followed at brief intervals, as the arrangements of the projected work required, by others of Smollett, Richardson, Defoe, Sterne, Johnson, Goldsmith, Le Sage, Horace Walpole, Cumberland, Mrs. Radcliffe, Charles Johnstone, Clara Reeve, Charlotte Smith, and Robert Bage. The publication of the first volume of Ballantyne's Novelists' Library did not take place, however, until February, 1821; and the series was closed soon after the proprietor's death in the ensuing summer. In spite of the charming prefaces, in which Scott combines all the graces of his easy narrative with a perpetual stream of deep and gentle wisdom in commenting on the tempers and fortunes of his best predecessors in novel literature, and also with expositions of his own critical views, which prove how profoundly he had investigated the principles and practice of those masters before he struck out a new path for himself--in spite of these delightful and valuable essays, the publication was not prosperous. Constable, after Ballantyne's death, would willingly have resumed the scheme. But Scott had by that time convinced himself that it was in vain to expect much success for a collection so bulky and miscellaneous, and which must of necessity include a large proportion of matter, condemned by the purity, whether real or affected, of modern taste. He could hardly have failed to perceive, on reflection, that his own novels, already constituting an extensive library of fiction, in which no purist could pretend to discover danger for the morals of youth, had in fact superseded the works of less strait-laced days in the only permanently and solidly profitable market for books of this order. He at all events declined Constable's proposition for renewing and extending this attempt. What he did, was done gratuitously for John Ballantyne's sake; and I have dwelt on it thus long, because, as the reader will perceive by and by, it was so done during (with one exception) the very busiest period of Scott's literary life. Shortly before Scott wrote the following letters, he had placed his second son (at this time in his fifteenth year) under the care of the Reverend John Williams, who had been my intimate friend and companion at Oxford, with a view of preparing him for that University.[107] Mr. Williams was then Vicar of Lampeter, in Cardiganshire, and the high satisfaction with which his care of Charles Scott inspired Sir Walter, induced several other Scotch gentlemen of distinction by and by to send their sons also to his Welsh parsonage; the result of which northern connections was important to the fortunes of one of the most accurate and extensive scholars and most skilful teachers of the present time. [Footnote 107: [Writing to Lady Louisa Stuart, December 14, Scott says: "My youngest son, who is very clever and very idle, I have sent to a learned clergyman ... to get more thoroughly grounded in classical learning. For two years Mr. Williams has undertaken to speak with him in Latin, and, as everybody else talks Welsh, he will have nobody to show off his miscellaneous information to, and thus a main obstacle to his improvement will be removed. It would be a pity any stumbling-block were left for him to break his shins over, for he has a most active mind and a good disposition."--_Familiar Letters_, vol. ii. p. 103.]] TO WALTER SCOTT, ESQ., 18TH HUSSARS, CORK. EDINBURGH, 14th November, 1820. MY DEAR WALTER,--I send you a cheque on Coutts for your quarter's allowance. I hope you manage your cash like a person of discretion--above all, avoid the card-tables of ancient dowagers. Always remember that my fortune, however much my efforts may increase it, and although I am improving it for your benefit, not for any that can accrue in my own time,--yet never can be more than a decent independence, and therefore will make a poor figure unless managed with good sense, moderation, and prudence--which are habits easily acquired in youth, while habitual extravagance is a fault very difficult to be afterwards corrected. We came to town yesterday, and bade adieu to Abbotsford for the season. Fife,[108] to mamma's great surprise and scandal, chose to stay at Abbotsford with Mai, and plainly denied to follow the carriage--so our canine establishment in Castle Street is reduced to little Ury.[109] We spent two days at Arniston, on the road,--and on coming here, found Sophia as nicely and orderly settled in her house as if she had been a married woman these five years. I believe she is very happy--perhaps unusually so, for her wishes are moderate, and all seem anxious to please her. She is preparing in due time for the arrival of a little stranger, who will make you an uncle, and me (God help me!) a grandpapa. The Round Towers you mention are very curious, and seem to have been built, as the Irish hackney-coachman said of the Martello one at the Black Rock, "to puzzle posterity." There are two of them in Scotland--both excellent pieces of architecture; one at Brechin, built quite close to the old church, so as to appear united with it, but in fact it is quite detached from the church, and sways from it in a high wind, when it vibrates like a lighthouse. The other is at Abernethy in Perthshire--said to have been the capital city of the Picts. I am glad to see you observe objects of interest and curiosity, because otherwise a man may travel over the universe without acquiring any more knowledge than his horse does. We had our hunt, and our jollification after it, on last Wednesday. It went off in great style, although I felt a little sorry at having neither Charles nor you in the field. By the way, Charles seems most admirably settled. I had a most sensible letter on the subject from Mr. Williams, who appears to have taken great pains, and to have formed a very just conception both of his merits and foibles. When I have an opportunity, I will hand you his letter; for it will entertain you, it is so correct a picture of Monsieur Charles. Dominie Thomson has gone to a Mrs. Dennistoun, of Colgrain, to drill her youngsters. I am afraid he will find a change; but I hope to have a nook open to him by and by--as a sort of retreat or harbor on his lee. Adieu, my dear--always believe me your affectionate father, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 108: _Finette_--a spaniel of Lady Scott's.] [Footnote 109: _Urisk_ [Ourisque]--a small terrier of the long silky-haired Kintail breed.] TO MR. CHARLES SCOTT. _Care of the Rev. John Williams, Lampeter._ EDINBURGH, 14th November, 1820. MY DEAR BOY CHARLES,--Your letters made us all very happy, and I trust you are now comfortably settled and plying your task hard. Mr. Williams will probably ground you more perfectly in the grammar of the classical languages than has hitherto been done, and this you will at first find but dry work. But there are many indispensable reasons why you must bestow the utmost attention upon it. A perfect knowledge of the classical languages has been fixed upon, and not without good reason, as the mark of a well-educated young man; and though people may have scrambled into distinction without it, it is always with the greatest difficulty, just like climbing over a wall, instead of giving your ticket at the door. Perhaps you may think another proof of a youth's talents might have been adopted; but what good will arise from your thinking so, if the general practice of society has fixed on this particular branch of knowledge as the criterion? Wheat or barley were as good grain, I suppose, as _sesamum_; but it was only to _sesamum_ that the talisman gave way, and the rock opened; and it is equally certain that, if you are not a well-founded grammatical scholar in Greek and Latin, you will in vain present other qualifications to distinction. Besides, the study of grammar, from its very asperities, is calculated to teach youth that patient labor which is necessary to the useful exertion of the understanding upon every other branch of knowledge; and your great deficiency is want of steadiness and of resolute application to the dry as well as the interesting parts of your learning. But exerting yourself, as I have no doubt you will do, under the direction of so learned a man and so excellent a teacher as Mr. Williams, and being without the temptations to idleness which occurred at home, I have every reason to believe that to your natural quickness you will presently add such a _habit_ of application and steadiness, as will make you a respected member of society, perhaps a distinguished one. It is very probable that the whole success of your future life may depend on the manner in which you employ _the next two years_; and I am therefore most anxious you should fully avail yourself of the opportunities now afforded you. You must not be too much disconcerted with the apparent dryness of your immediate studies. Language is the great mark by which man is distinguished from the beasts, and a strict acquaintance with the manner in which it is composed becomes, as you follow it a little way, one of the most curious and interesting exercises of the intellect. We had our grand hunt on Wednesday last, a fine day, and plenty of sport. We hunted all over Huntly wood, and so on to Halidon and Prieston--saw twelve hares, and killed six, having very hard runs, and tiring three packs of grews completely. In absence of Walter and you, Stenhouse the horse-couper led the field, and rode as if he had been a piece of his horse, sweltering like a wild-drake all through Marriage-Moss, at a motion betwixt swimming and riding. One unlucky accident befell;--Queen Mab, who was bestrode by Captain Adam, lifted up her heels against Mr. Craig of Galashiels,[110] whose leg she greeted with a thump like a pistol-shot, while by the same movement she very nearly sent the noble Captain over her ears. Mr. Craig was helped from horse, but would not permit his boot to be drawn off, protesting he would faint if he saw the bone of his leg sticking through the stocking. Some thought he was reluctant to exhibit his legs in their primitive and unclothed simplicity, in respect they have an unhappy resemblance to a pair of tongs. As for the Captain, he declared that if the accident had happened _in action_, the surgeon and drum-boys would have had off, not his _boot_ only, but his _leg to boot_, before he could have uttered a remonstrance. At length Gala and I prevailed to have the boot drawn, and to my great joy I found the damage was not serious, though the pain must have been severe. On Saturday we left Abbotsford, and dined and spent Sunday at Arniston, where we had many inquiries after you from Robert Dundas, who was so kind to you last year. I must conclude for the present, requesting your earnest pursuit of such branches of study as Mr. Williams recommends. In a short time, as you begin to comprehend the subjects you are learning, you will find the path turn smoother, and that which at present seems wrapped up in an inextricable labyrinth of thorns and briers, will at once become easy and attractive.--Always, dear Charlie, your affectionate father, W. S. [Footnote 110: Mr. George Craig, factor to the laird of Gala, and manager of a little branch bank at Galashiels. This worthy man was one of the regular members of the Abbotsford Hunt.] On the same day Scott wrote as follows to the manly and amiable author of Sir Marmaduke Maxwell, who had shortly before sent the MS. of that romantic drama to Abbotsford for his inspection:-- TO MR. ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. _Care of F. Chantrey, Esq., R. A., London._ EDINBURGH, 14th November, 1820. MY DEAR ALLAN,--I have been meditating a long letter to you for many weeks past; but company, and rural business, and rural sports, are very unfavorable to writing letters. I have now a double reason for writing, for I have to thank you for sending me in safety a beautiful specimen of our English Michael's talents in the cast of my venerable friend Mr. Watt: it is a most striking resemblance, with all that living character which we are apt to think life itself alone can exhibit. I hope Mr. Chantrey does not permit his distinguished skill either to remain unexercised, or to be lavished exclusively on subjects of little interest. I would like to see him engaged on some subject of importance completely adapted to the purpose of his chisel, and demanding its highest powers. Pray remember me to him most kindly. I have perused twice your curious and interesting manuscript. Many parts of the poetry are eminently beautiful, though I fear the great length of the piece, and some obscurity of the plot, would render it unfit for dramatic representation. There is also a fine tone of supernatural impulse spread over the whole action, which I think a common audience would not be likely to adopt or comprehend--though I own that to me it has a very powerful effect. Speaking of dramatic composition in general, I think it is almost essential (though the rule be most difficult in practice) that the plot, or business of the piece, should advance with every line that is spoken. The fact is, the drama is addressed chiefly to the eyes, and as much as can be, by any possibility, represented on the stage, should neither be told nor described. Of the miscellaneous part of a large audience, many do not understand, nay, many cannot hear, either narrative or description, but are solely intent upon the action exhibited. It is, I conceive, for this reason that very bad plays, written by performers themselves, often contrive to get through, and not without applause; while others, immeasurably superior in point of poetical merit, fail, merely because the author is not sufficiently possessed of the trick of the scene, or enough aware of the importance of a maxim pronounced by no less a performer than Punch himself--(at least he was the last authority from whom I heard it),--_Push on, keep moving!_[111] Now, in your very ingenious dramatic effort, the interest not only stands still, but sometimes retrogrades. It contains, notwithstanding, many passages of eminent beauty,--many specimens of most interesting dialogue; and, on the whole, if it is not fitted for the modern stage, I am not sure that its very imperfections do not render it more fit for the closet, for we certainly do not always read with the greatest pleasure those plays which act best. If, however, you should at any time wish to become a candidate for dramatic laurels, I would advise you, in the first place, to consult some professional person of judgment and taste. I should regard friend Terry as an excellent Mentor, and I believe he would concur with me in recommending that at least one third of the drama be retrenched, that the plot should be rendered simpler, and the motives more obvious, and I think the powerful language and many of the situations might then have their full effect upon the audience. I am uncertain if I have made myself sufficiently understood; but I would say, for example, that it is ill explained by what means Comyn and his gang, who land as shipwrecked men, become at once possessed of the old lord's domains, merely by killing and taking possession. I am aware of what you mean--namely, that being attached to the then rulers, he is supported in his ill-acquired power by their authority. But this is imperfectly brought out, and escaped me at the first reading. The superstitious motives, also, which induced the shepherds to delay their vengeance, are not likely to be intelligible to the generality of the hearers. It would seem more probable that the young Baron should have led his faithful vassals to avenge the death of his parents; and it has escaped me what prevents him from taking this direct and natural course. Besides it is, I believe, a rule (and it seems a good one) that one single interest, to which every other is subordinate, should occupy the whole play,--each separate object having just the effect of a mill-dam, sluicing off a certain portion of the sympathy, which should move on with increasing force and rapidity to the catastrophe. Now, in your work, there are several divided points of interest; there is the murder of the old Baron--the escape of his wife--that of his son--the loss of his bride--the villainous artifices of Comyn to possess himself of her person--and, finally, the fall of Comyn, and acceleration of the vengeance due to his crimes. I am sure your own excellent sense, which I admire as much as I do your genius, will give me credit for my frankness in these matters; I only know, that I do not know many persons on whose performances I would venture to offer so much criticism. I will return the manuscript under Mr. Freeling's Post-Office cover, and I hope it will reach you safe.--Adieu, my leal and esteemed friend--yours truly, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 111: _Punch_ had been borrowing from _Young Rapid_, in the _Cure for the Heart-ache_.] Shortly afterwards, Mr. Cunningham, thanking his critic, said he had not yet received back his MS.; but that he hoped the delay had been occasioned by Sir Walter's communication of it to some friend of theatrical experience. He also mentioned his having undertaken a collection of The Songs of Scotland, with notes. The answer was in these terms:-- TO MR. ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. MY DEAR ALLAN,--It was as you supposed--I detained your manuscript to read it over with Terry. The plot appears to Terry, as to me, ill-combined, which is a great defect in a drama, though less perceptible in the closet than on the stage. Still, if the mind can be kept upon one unbroken course of interest, the effect even in perusal is more gratifying. I have always considered this as the great secret in dramatic poetry, and conceive it one of the most difficult exercises of the invention possible, to conduct a story through five acts, developing it gradually in every scene, so as to keep up the attention, yet never till the very conclusion permitting the nature of the catastrophe to become visible,--and all the while to accompany this by the necessary delineation of character and beauty of language. I am glad, however, that you mean to preserve in some permanent form your very curious drama, which, if not altogether fitted for the stage, cannot be read without very much and very deep interest. I am glad you are about Scottish song. No man--not Robert Burns himself--has contributed more beautiful effusions to enrich it. Here and there I would pluck a flower from your Posy to give what remains an effect of greater simplicity; but luxuriance can only be the fault of genius, and many of your songs are, I think, unmatched. I would instance, It's Hame and it's Hame, which my daughter Mrs. Lockhart sings with such uncommon effect. You cannot do anything either in the way of original composition, or collection, or criticism, that will not be highly acceptable to all who are worth pleasing in the Scottish public--and I pray you to proceed with it. Remember me kindly to Chantrey. I am happy my effigy is to go with that of Wordsworth,[112] for (differing from him in very many points of taste) I do not know a man more to be venerated for uprightness of heart and loftiness of genius. Why he will sometimes choose to crawl upon all fours, when God has given him so noble a countenance to lift to heaven, I am as little able to account for, as for his quarrelling (as you tell me) with the wrinkles which time and meditation have stamped his brow withal. I am obliged to conclude hastily, having long letters to write--God wot upon very different subjects. I pray my kind respects to Mrs. Chantrey.--Believe me, dear Allan, very truly yours, etc., WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 112: Mr. Cunningham had told Scott that Chantrey's bust of Wordsworth (another of his noblest works) was also to be produced at the Royal Academy's Exhibition for 1821.] The following letter touches on the dropping of the Bill which had been introduced by Government for the purpose of degrading the consort of George the Fourth; the riotous rejoicings of the Edinburgh mob on that occasion; and Scott's acquiescence in the request of the guardians of the young Duke of Buccleuch, that he should act as chancellor of the jury about to _serve_ his grace _heir_ (as the law phrase goes) to the Scottish estates of his family. TO THE LORD MONTAGU. EDINBURGH, 30th November, 1820. MY DEAR LORD,--I had your letter some time since, and have now to congratulate you on your two months' spell of labor-in-vain duty being at length at an end. The old sign of the Labor-in-vain Tavern was a fellow attempting to scrub a black-a-moor white; but the present difficulty seems to lie in showing that one _is_ black. Truly, I congratulate the country on the issue; for, since the days of Queen Dollalolla[113] and the _Rumti-iddity_ chorus in Tom Thumb, never was there so jolly a representative of royalty. A good ballad might be made, by way of parody, on Gay's Jonathan Wild,-- "Her Majesty's trial has set us at ease, And every wife round me may kiss if she please." We had the Marquis of Bute and Francis Jeffrey, very brilliant in George Street, and I think one grocer besides. I was hard threatened by letter, but I caused my servant to say in the quarter where I thought the threatening came from, that I should suffer my windows to be broken like a Christian, but if anything else was attempted, I should become as great a heathen as the Dey of Algiers. We were passed over, but many houses were terribly _Cossaqué_, as was the phrase in Paris in 1814 and 1815. The next night, being, like true Scotsmen, wise behind the hand, the bailies had a sufficient force sufficiently arranged, and put down every attempt to riot. If the same precautions had been taken before, the town would have been saved some disgrace, and the loss of at least £1000 worth of property.--Hay Donaldson[114] is getting stout again, and up to the throat in business; there is no getting a word out of him that does not smell of parchment and special service. He asked me, as it is to be a mere _law_ service, to act as chancellor on the Duke's inquest, which honorable office I will of course undertake with great willingness, and discharge--I mean the _hospitable_ part of it--to the best of my power. I think you are right to avoid a more extended service, as £1000 certainly would not clear the expense, as you would have to dine at least four counties, and as sweetly sing, with Duke Wharton on Chevy Chase, "Pity it were So much good wine to spill, As these bold freeholders would drink, Before they had their fill." I hope we shall all live to see our young baron take his own chair, and feast the land in his own way. Ever your Lordship's most truly faithful WALTER SCOTT. P. S.--In the illumination row, young Romilly was knocked down and robbed by the mob, just while he was in the act of declaiming on the impropriety of having constables and volunteers to interfere with the harmless mirth of the people. [Footnote 113: _Queen._--"What though I now am half-seas o'er, I scorn to baulk this bout; Of stiff rack-punch fetch bowls a score, 'Fore George, I'll see them out! _Chorus._--"Rumti-iddity, row, row, row, If we'd a good sup, we'd take it now." Fielding's _Tom Thumb_.] [Footnote 114: This gentleman, Scott's friend and confidential solicitor, had obtained (I believe), on his recommendation, the legal management of the Buccleuch affairs in Scotland.] TO MR. CHARLES SCOTT. _Care of the Rev. John Williams, Lampeter._ EDINBURGH, 19th December, 1820. MY DEAR CHARLES,--We begin to be afraid that, in improving your head, you have lost the use of your fingers, or got so deep into the Greek and Latin grammar, that you have forgotten how to express yourself in your own language. To ease our anxious minds in these important doubts, we beg you will write as soon as possible, and give us a full account of your proceedings, as I do not approve of long intervals of silence, or think that you need to stand very rigorously upon the exchange of letters, especially as mine are so much the longest. I rely upon it that you are now working hard in the classical mine, getting out the rubbish as fast as you can, and preparing yourself to collect the ore. I cannot too much impress upon your mind that _labor_ is the condition which God has imposed on us in every station of life--there is nothing worth having, that can be had without it, from the bread which the peasant wins with the sweat of his brow, to the sports by which the rich man must get rid of his ennui. The only difference betwixt them is, that the poor man labors to get a dinner to his appetite, the rich man to get an appetite to his dinner. As for knowledge, it can no more be planted in the human mind without labor, than a field of wheat can be produced without the previous use of the plough. There is indeed this great difference, that chance or circumstances may so cause it that another shall reap what the farmer sows; but no man can be deprived, whether by accident or misfortune, of the fruits of his own studies; and the liberal and extended acquisitions of knowledge which he makes are all for his own use. Labor, my dear boy, therefore, and improve the time. In youth our steps are light, and our minds are ductile, and knowledge is easily laid up; but if we neglect our spring, our summers will be useless and contemptible, our harvest will be chaff, and the winter of our old age unrespected and desolate. It is now Christmas-tide, and it comes sadly round to me as reminding me of your excellent grandmother, who was taken from us last year at this time. Do you, my dear Charles, pay attention to the wishes of your parents while they are with you, that you may have no self-reproach when you think of them at a future period. You hear the Welsh spoken much about you, and if you can pick it up without interfering with more important labors, it will be worth while. I suppose you can easily get a grammar and dictionary. It is, you know, the language spoken by the Britons before the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons, who brought in the principal ingredients of our present language, called from thence English. It was afterwards, however, much mingled with Norman French, the language of William the Conqueror and his followers; so if you can pick up a little of the Cambro-British speech, it will qualify you hereafter to be a good philologist, should your genius turn towards languages. Pray, have you yet learned who Howel Dha was?--Glendower you are well acquainted with by reading Shakespeare. The wild mysterious barbaric grandeur with which he has invested that chieftain has often struck me as very fine. I wish we had some more of him. We are all well here, and I hope to get to Abbotsford for a few days--they cannot be many--in the ensuing vacation, when I trust to see the planting has got well forward. All are well here, and Mr. Cadell[115] is come back, and gives a pleasant account of your journey. Let me hear from you very soon, and tell me if you expect any _skating_, and whether there is any ice in Wales. I presume there will be a merry Christmas, and beg my best wishes on the subject to Mr. Williams, his sister, and family. The Lockharts dine with us, and the Scotts of Harden, James Scott[116] with his pipes, and I hope Captain Adam. We will remember your health in a glass of claret just about _six_ o'clock at night; so that you will know exactly (allowing for variation of time) what we are doing at the same moment. But I think I have written quite enough to a young Welshman, who has forgot all his Scots kith, kin, and allies. Mamma and Anne send many loves. Walter came like a shadow, and so departed--after about ten days' stay. The effect was quite dramatic, for the door was flung open as we were about to go down to dinner, and Turner announced _Captain Scott_. We could not conceive who was meant, when in walked Walter as large as life. He is positively a new edition of the Irish giant.--I beg my kind respects to Mr. Williams. At his leisure I should be happy to have a line from him.--I am, my dear little boy, always your affectionate father, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 115: Mr. Robert Cadell, of the house of Constable, had this year conveyed Charles Scott from Abbotsford to Lampeter.] [Footnote 116: Sir Walter's cousin, a son of his uncle Thomas. See _ante_, vol. i. p. 62.] The next letter contains a brief allusion to an affair, which in the life of any other man of letters would have deserved to be considered as of some consequence. The late Sir James Hall of Dunglass resigned, in November, 1820, the Presidency of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; and the Fellows, though they had on all former occasions selected a man of science to fill that post, paid Sir Walter the compliment of unanimously requesting him to be Sir James's successor in it. He felt and expressed a natural hesitation about accepting this honor--which at first sight seemed like invading the proper department of another order of scholars. But when it was urged upon him that the Society is really a double one,--embracing a section for literature as well as one of science,--and that it was only due to the former to let it occasionally supply the chief of the whole body,--Scott acquiesced in the flattering proposal; and his gentle skill was found effective, so long as he held the Chair, in maintaining and strengthening the tone of good feeling and good manners which can alone render the meetings of such a Society either agreeable or useful. The new President himself soon began to take a lively interest in many of their discussions--those at least which pointed to any discovery of practical use;--and he by and by added some eminent men of science, with whom his acquaintance had hitherto been slight, to the list of his most valued friends: I may mention in particular Doctor, now Sir David, Brewster. Sir Walter also alludes to an institution of a far different description,--that called "The Celtic Society of Edinburgh;" a club established mainly for the patronage of ancient Highland manners and customs, especially the use of "the Garb of Old Gaul"--though part of their funds have always been applied to the really important object of extending education in the wilder districts of the north. At their annual meetings Scott was, as may be supposed, a regular attendant. He appeared, as in duty bound, in the costume of the Fraternity, and was usually followed by "John of Skye," in a still more complete, or rather incomplete, style of equipment. TO THE LORD MONTAGU, DITTON PARK. EDINBURGH, 17th January, 1821. MY DEAR LORD,--We had a tight day of it on Monday last, both dry and wet. The dry part was as dry as may be, consisting in rehearsing the whole lands of the Buccleuch estate for five mortal hours, although Donaldson had kindly selected a clerk whose tongue went over baronies, lordships, and regalities, at as high a rate of top speed as ever Eclipse displayed in clearing the course at Newmarket. The evening went off very well--considering that while looking forward with the natural feelings of hope and expectation on behalf of our young friend, most of us who were present could not help casting looks of sad remembrance on the days we had seen. However, we did very well, and I kept the chair till eleven, when we had coffee, and departed, "no very fou, but gaily yet."[117] Besides the law gentlemen, and immediate agents of the family, I picked up on my own account Tom Ogilvie,[118] Sir Harry Hay Macdougal, Harden and his son, Gala, and Captain John Ferguson, whom I asked as from myself, stating that the party was to be quite private. I suppose there was no harm in this, and it helped us well on. I believe your nephew and my young chief enters life with as favorable auspices as could well attend him, for to few youths can attach so many good wishes, and _none_ can look back to more estimable examples both in his father and grandfather. I think he will succeed to the warm and social affections of his relatives, which, if they sometimes occasion pain to those who possess them, contain also the purest sources of happiness as well as of virtue. Our late Pitt meeting amounted to about 800, a most tremendous multitude. I had charge of a separate room, containing a detachment of about 250, and gained a headache of two days, by roaring to them for five or six hours almost incessantly. The Foxites had also a very numerous meeting,--500 at least, but sad scamps. We had a most formidable band of young men, almost all born gentlemen and zealous proselytes. We shall now begin to look anxiously to London for news. I suppose they will go by the ears in the House of Commons: but I trust Ministers will have a great majority. If not, they should go out, and let the others make the best of it with their acquitted Queen, who will be a ticklish card in their hand, for she is by nature _intrigante_ more ways than one. The loss of Canning is a serious disadvantage; many of our friends have good talents and good taste; but I think he alone has that higher order of parts which we call genius. I wish he had had more prudence to guide it. He has been a most unlucky politician. Adieu. Best love to all at Ditton, and great respect withal. My best compliments attend my young chief, now seated, to use an Oriental phrase, upon the _Musnud_. I am almost knocked up with public meetings, for the triple Hecate was a joke to my plurality of offices this week. On Friday I had my Pittite stewardship;--on Monday my chancellorship;--yesterday my presidentship of the Royal Society; for I had a meeting of that learned body at my house last night, where mulled wine and punch were manufactured and consumed according to the latest philosophical discoveries. Besides all this, I have before my eyes the terrors of a certain Highland Association, who dine bonneted and _kilted_ in the old fashion (all save myself, of course), and armed to the teeth. This is rather severe service; but men who wear broadswords, dirks, and pistols, are not to be neglected in these days; and the Gael are very loyal lads, so it is as well to keep up an influence with them. Once more, my dear Lord, farewell, and believe me always most truly yours, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 117: ["It was often remarked as a proof that they [the novels] were all Sir Walter's, that he was never known to refer to them, though they were the constant topic of conversation in every company at the time. I recollect, however, one striking instance to the contrary. In the month of January, 1821, a dinner was given in the Waterloo Rooms, Edinburgh, to a large party of gentlemen, to celebrate the serving Heir, as it is called in Scotland, of a young gentleman, to the large estates of his ancestors. Sir Walter having been Chancellor of the Inquest, also presided at the dinner, and after the usual toasts on such occasions, he rose, and, with a smiling face, spoke to the following effect: 'Gentlemen, I dare say you have read of a man called Dandie Dinmont, and his dogs. He had old Pepper and old Mustard, and young Pepper and young Mustard, and little Pepper and little Mustard; but he used to say that "beast or body, education should aye be minded; a dog is good for nothing until it has been weel entered; I have always had my dogs weel entered." Now, gentlemen, I am sure [the Duke] has been weel entered, and if you please we shall drink to the health of his guardians.'"--Gibson's _Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott_.]] [Footnote 118: The late Thomas Elliot Ogilvie, Esq., of Chesters, in Roxburghshire--one of Sir Walter's good friends among his country neighbors.] In the course of the riotous week commemorated in the preceding letter, appeared Kenilworth, in three volumes post 8vo, like Ivanhoe, which form was adhered to with all the subsequent novels of the series. Kenilworth was one of the most successful of them all at the time of publication; and it continues, and, I doubt not, will ever continue to be placed in the very highest rank of prose fiction.[119] The rich variety of character, and scenery, and incident in this novel, has never indeed been surpassed; nor, with the one exception of The Bride of Lammermoor, has Scott bequeathed us a deeper and more affecting tragedy than that of Amy Robsart. [Footnote 119: [Mr. Morritt writes to Scott, January 28, 1821: "I feel that I am leaving Rokeby in your debt, and before I set out for town, amongst other things I have to settle, I may as well discharge my account by paying you a reasonable and no small return of thanks for _Kenilworth_, which was duly delivered, read, re-read, and thumbed with great delight by our fireside. You know, when I first heard that Queen Elizabeth was to be brought forward as a heroine of a novel, how I trembled for her reputation. Well knowing your not over-affectionate regard for that flower of maidenhood, I dreaded lest all her venerable admirers on this side of the Tweed would have been driven to despair by a portrait of her Majesty after the manner of Mr. Sharpe's ingenious sketches. The author, however, has been so very fair, and has allowed her so many of her real historical merits, that I think he really has, like Squire Western, a fair right to demand that we should at least allow her to have been a b----. I am not sure that I do not like and enjoy _Kenilworth_ quite as much as any of its predecessors. I think it peculiarly happy in the variety and facility of its portraits, and the story is so interesting, and so out of the track of the common sources of novel interest, that perhaps I like it better from its having so little of the commonplace heroes and heroines who adorn all other tales of the sort."--_Familiar Letters_, vol. ii. p. 107.]] CHAPTER LI Visit to London. -- Project of the Royal Society of Literature. -- Affairs of the 18th Hussars. -- Marriage of Captain Adam Ferguson. -- Letters to Lord Sidmouth, Lord Montagu, Allan Cunningham, Mrs. Lockhart, and Cornet Scott. 1821 Before the end of January, 1821, Scott went to London at the request of the other Clerks of Session, that he might watch over the progress of an Act of Parliament, designed to relieve them from a considerable part of their drudgery, in attesting recorded deeds by signature;--and his stay was prolonged until near the beginning of the Summer term of his Court. His letters while in London are mostly to his own family, and on strictly domestic topics; but I shall extract a few of them, chiefly (for reasons which I have already sufficiently intimated) those addressed to his son the Cornet. I need not trespass on the reader's attention by any attempt to explain in detail the matters to which these letters refer. It will be seen that Sir Walter had heard some rumors of irregularity in the interior of the 18th Hussars; and that the consequent interference of the then Commander of the Forces in Ireland, the late Sir David Baird, had been received in anything but a spirit of humility. The reports that reached Scott proved to have been most absurdly exaggerated; but nevertheless his observations on them seem well worth quoting. It so happened that the 18th was one of several regiments about to be reduced at this time; and as soon as that event took place, Cornet Scott was sent to travel in Germany, with a view to his improvement in the science of his profession. He afterwards spent a brief period, for the same purpose, in the Royal Military College of Sandhurst; and erelong he obtained a commission as lieutenant in the 15th or King's Hussars, in which distinguished corps his father lived to see him Major. It will also be seen, that during this visit to London Sir Walter was released from considerable anxiety on account of his daughter Sophia, whom he had left in a weak state of health at Edinburgh, by the intelligence of her safe accouchement of a boy,--John Hugh Lockhart, the "Hugh Littlejohn" of the Tales of a Grandfather. The approaching marriage of Captain, now Sir Adam Ferguson, to which some jocular allusions occur, may be classed with these objects of family interest; and that event was the source of unmixed satisfaction to Scott, as it did not interrupt his enjoyment of his old friend's society in the country; for the Captain, though he then pitched a tent for himself, did so at a very short distance from Huntly Burn. I believe the ensuing extracts will need no further commentary. TO MRS. LOCKHART, GREAT KING STREET, EDINBURGH. DITTON PARK, February 18, 1821. MY DEAREST SOPHIA,--I received as much pleasure, and was relieved from as much anxiety, as ever I felt in my life, by Lockhart's kind note, which acquainted me with the happy period that has been put to your suffering, and, as I hope and trust, to the complaints which occasioned it. You are now, my dearest girl, beginning a new course of pleasures, anxieties, and duties, and the best I can wish for you is, that your little boy may prove the same dutiful and affectionate child which you have always been to me, and that God may give him a sound and healthy mind, with a good constitution of body--the greatest blessings which this earth can bestow. Pray be extremely careful of yourself for some time. Young women are apt to injure their health by thinking themselves well too soon. I beg you to be cautious in this respect. The news of the young stranger's arrival was most joyfully received here, and his health and yours toasted in a bumper. Lady Anne is quite well, and Isabella also; and Lady Charlotte, who has rejoined them, is a most beautiful creature indeed. This place is all light and splendor, compared to London, where I was forced to use candles till ten o'clock at least. I have a gay time of it. To-morrow I return to town, and dine with old Sotheby; on Tuesday with the Duke of Wellington; Wednesday with Croker, and so on. Love to L., the Captain, and the Violet, and give your bantling a kiss extraordinary for Grandpapa. I hope Mungo[120] approves of the child, for that is a serious point. There are no dogs in the hotel where I lodge, but a tolerably conversible cat, who eats a mess of cream with me in the morning. The little chief and his brother have come over from Eton to see me, so I must break off.--I am, my dear love, most affectionately yours, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 120: Mungo was a favorite Newfoundland dog.] TO WALTER SCOTT, ESQ., PORTOBELLO BARRACKS, DUBLIN. WATERLOO HOTEL, Jermyn Street, February 19, 1821. MY DEAR WALTER,--I have just received your letter. I send you a draft for £50, which you must make go as far as you can. There is what I have no doubt is a very idle report here, of your paying rather marked attention to one young lady in particular. I beg you would do nothing that can justify such a rumor, as it would excite my _highest displeasure_ should you either entangle yourself or any other person. I am, and have always been, quite frank with you, and beg you will be equally so with me. One should, in justice to the young women they live with, be very cautious not to give the least countenance to such rumors. They are not easily avoided, but are always highly prejudicial to the parties concerned; and what begins in folly ends in serious misery--_avis au lecteur._ Believe me, dear Cornet, your affectionate father, WALTER SCOTT. P. S.--I wish you could pick me up the Irish lilt of a tune to "Patrick Fleming." The song begins,-- "Patrick Fleming was a gallant soldier, He carried his musket over his shoulder. When I cock my pistol, when I draw my raper, I make them stand in awe of me, for I am a taker. Falala," etc. From another verse in the same song, it seems the hero was in such a predicament as your own:-- "If you be Peter Fleming, as I suppose you be, sir, We are three pedlars walking on so free, sir. We are three pedlars a-walking on to Dublin, With nothing in our pockets to pay for our lodging. Falala," etc. TO WALTER SCOTT, ESQ., 18TH HUSSARS, CAPPOQUIN. LONDON, 17th March, 1821. MY DEAR COMMANDANT OF CAPPOQUIN,--Wishing you joy of your new government, these are to inform you that I am still in London. The late aspersion on your regiment induced me to protract my stay here, with a view to see the Duke of York on your behalf, which I did yesterday. His Royal Highness expressed himself most obligingly disposed, and promised to consider what could best be done to forward your military education. I told him frankly, that in giving you to the King's service I had done all that was in my power to show our attachment to his Majesty and the country which had been so kind to me, and that it was my utmost ambition that you should render yourself capable of serving them both well. He said he would give the affair his particular consideration, and see whether he could put you on the establishment at Sandhurst, without any violent infringement on the rules; and hinted that he would make an exception to the rule of seniority of standing and priority of application in your favor when an opportunity occurs. From H. R. H.'s very kind expressions, I have little doubt you will have more than justice done you in the patronage necessary to facilitate your course through life; but it must be by your own exertions, my dearest boy, that you must render yourself qualified to avail yourself of the opportunities which you may have offered to you. Work, therefore, as hard as you can, and do not be discontented for want of assistance of masters, etc., because the knowledge which we acquire by our own unaided efforts, is much more tenaciously retained by the memory, while the exertion necessary to gain it strengthens the understanding. At the same time, I would inquire whether there may not be some Catholic priest, or Protestant clergyman, or scholar of any description, who, for love or money, would give you a little assistance occasionally. Such persons are to be found almost everywhere; not professed teachers, but capable of smoothing the road to a willing student. Let me earnestly recommend in your reading to keep fast to particular hours, and suffer no one thing to encroach on the other. Charles's last letter was uncommonly steady, and prepared me for one from Mr. Williams, in which he expresses satisfaction with his attention, and with his progress in learning, in a much stronger degree than formerly. This is truly comfortable, and may relieve me from the necessity of sending the poor boy to India. All in Edinburgh are quite well, and no fears exist, saving those of little Catherine[121] for the baby, lest the fairies take it away before the christening. I will send some books to you from hence, if I can find means to transmit them. I should like you to read with care the campaigns of Buonaparte, which have been written in French with much science.[122] I hope, indeed I am sure, I need not remind you to be very attentive to your duty. You have but a small charge, but it is a charge, and rashness or carelessness may lead to discredit in the commandant of Cappoquin, as well as in a field-marshal. In the exercise of your duty, be tender of the lower classes; and as you are strong, be merciful. In this you will do your master good service, for show me the manners of the man, and I will judge those of the master. In your present situation, it may be interesting to you to know that the bill for Catholic Emancipation will pass the Commons without doubt, and very probably the Peers also, unless the Spiritual Lords make a great rally. Nobody here cares much about it, and if it does not pass this year, it will the next, without doubt. Among other improvements, I wish you would amend your hand. It is a deplorable scratch, and far the worst of the family. Charles writes a firm good hand in comparison. You may address your next to Abbotsford, where I long to be, being heartily tired of fine company and fine living, from dukes and duchesses, down to turbot and plovers' eggs. It is very well for a while, but to be kept at it makes one feel like a poodle dog compelled to stand forever on his hind legs.--Most affectionately yours, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 121: Mrs. Lockhart's maid.] [Footnote 122: This letter was followed by a copy of General Jomini's celebrated work.] During this visit to London, Sir Walter appears to have been consulted by several persons in authority as to the project of a Society of Literature, for which the King's patronage had been solicited, and which was established soon afterwards--though on a scale less extensive than had been proposed at the outset. He expressed his views on this subject in writing at considerable length to his friend the Hon. John Villiers (afterwards Earl of Clarendon);[123] but of that letter, described to me as a most admirable one, I have as yet failed to recover a copy. I have little doubt that both the letter in question, and the following, addressed, soon after his arrival at Abbotsford, to the then Secretary of State for the Home Department, were placed in the hands of the King; but it seems probable, that whatever his Majesty may have thought of Scott's representations, he considered himself as already, in some measure, pledged to countenance the projected academy. [Footnote 123: The third Earl (of the Villierses) died in 1838.] TO THE RIGHT HON. THE LORD VISCOUNT SIDMOUTH, ETC., ETC., ETC., WHITEHALL. ABBOTSFORD, April 20, 1821. MY DEAR LORD,--Owing to my retreat to this place, I was only honored with your Lordship's letter yesterday. Whatever use can be made of my letter to stop the very ill-contrived project to which it relates, will answer the purpose for which it was written. I do not well remember the terms in which my remonstrance to Mr. Villiers was couched, for it was positively written betwixt sleeping and waking; but your Lordship will best judge how far the contents may be proper for his Majesty's eye; and if the sentiments appear a little in dishabille, there is the true apology that they were never intended to go to Court. From more than twenty years' intercourse with the literary world, during which I have been more or less acquainted with every distinguished writer of my day, and, at the same time, an accurate student of the habits and tastes of the reading public, I am enabled to say, with a feeling next to certainty, that the plan can only end in something very unpleasant. At all events, his Majesty should get out of it; it is nonsense to say or suppose that any steps have been taken which, in such a matter, can or ought to be considered as irrevocable. The fact is, that nobody knows as yet how far the matter has gone beyond the _projet_ of some well-meaning but misjudging persons, and the whole thing is asleep and forgotten so far as the public is concerned. The Spanish proverb says, "God help me from my friends, and I will keep myself from my enemies;" and there is much sense in it; for the zeal of misjudging adherents often contrives, as in the present case, to turn to matter of reproach the noblest feelings on the part of a sovereign. Let men of letters fight their own way with the public, and let his Majesty, according as his own excellent taste and liberality dictate, honor with his patronage, expressed in the manner fitted to their studies and habits, those who are able to distinguish themselves, and alleviate by his bounty the distresses of such as, with acknowledged merit, may yet have been unfortunate in procuring independence. The immediate and direct favor of the Sovereign is worth the patronage of ten thousand societies. But your Lordship knows how to set all this in a better light than I can, and I would not wish the cause of letters in better hands. I am now in a scene changed as completely as possible from those in which I had the great pleasure of meeting your Lordship lately, riding through the moors on a pony, instead of traversing the streets in a carriage, and drinking whiskey-toddy with mine honest neighbors, instead of Champagne and Burgundy. I have gained, however, in point of exact political information; for I find we know upon Tweedside with much greater accuracy what is done and intended in the Cabinet, than ever I could learn when living with the Ministers five days in the week. Mine honest Teviotdale friends, whom I left in a high Queen-fever, are now beginning to be somewhat ashamed of themselves, and to make as great advances towards retracting their opinion as they are ever known to do, which amounts to this: "God judge me, Sir W----, the King's no been so dooms far wrong after a' in yon Queen's job like;" which, being interpreted, signifies, "We will fight for the King to the death." I do not know how it was in other places; but I never saw so sudden and violent a delusion possess the minds of men in my life, even those of sensible, steady, well-intentioned fellows, that would fight knee-deep against the Radicals. It is well over, thank God. My best compliments attend the ladies. I ever am, my dear Lord, your truly obliged and faithful humble servant, WALTER SCOTT. I have thought it right to insert the preceding letter, because it indicates with sufficient distinctness what Scott's opinions always were as to a subject on which, from his experience and position, he must have reflected very seriously. In how far the results of the establishment of the Royal Society of Literature have tended to confirm or to weaken the weight of his authority on these matters, I do not presume to have formed any judgment. He received, about the same time, a volume of poetry by Allan Cunningham, which included the drama of Sir Marmaduke Maxwell; and I am happy to quote his letter of acknowledgment to that high-spirited and independent author in the same page with the foregoing monition to the dispensers of patronage. TO MR. ALLAN CUNNINGHAM, ECCLESTONE STREET, PIMLICO. ABBOTSFORD, 27th April. DEAR ALLAN,--Accept my kind thanks for your little modest volume, received two days since. I was acquainted with most of the pieces, and yet I perused them all with renewed pleasure, and especially my old friend Sir Marmaduke with his new face, and by the assistance of an April sun, which is at length, after many a rough blast, beginning to smile on us. The drama has, in my conception, more poetical conception and poetical expression in it, than most of our modern compositions. Perhaps, indeed, it occasionally sins even in the richness of poetical expression; for the language of passion, though bold and figurative, is brief and concise at the same time. But what would, in acting, be a more serious objection, is the complicated nature of the plot, which is very obscure. I hope you will make another dramatic attempt; and, in that case, I would strongly recommend that you should previously make a model or skeleton of your incidents, dividing them regularly into scenes and acts, so as to insure the dependence of one circumstance upon another, and the simplicity and union of your whole story. The common class of readers, and more especially of spectators, are thick-skulled enough, and can hardly comprehend what they see and hear, unless they are hemmed in, and guided to the sense at every turn. The unities of time and place have always appeared to me fopperies, as far as they require close observance of the French rules. Still, the nearer you can come to them, it is always, no doubt, the better, because your action will be more probable. But the unity of action--I mean that continuity which unites every scene with the other, and makes the catastrophe the natural and probable result of all that has gone before--seems to me a critical rule which cannot safely be dispensed with. Without such a regular deduction of incidents, men's attention becomes distracted, and the most beautiful language, if at all listened to, creates no interest, and is out of place. I would give, as an example, the suddenly entertained and as suddenly abandoned jealousy of Sir Marmaduke (p. 85), as a useless excrescence in the action of the drama. I am very much unaccustomed to offer criticism, and when I do so, it is because I believe in my soul that I am endeavoring to pluck away the weeds which hide flowers well worthy of cultivation. In your case, the richness of your language, and fertility of your imagination, are the snares against which I would warn you. If the one had been poor, and the other costive, I would never have made remarks which could never do good, while they only gave pain. Did you ever read Savage's beautiful poem of The Wanderer? If not, do so, and you will see the fault which, I think, attaches to Lord Maxwell--a want of distinct precision and intelligibility about the story, which counteracts, especially with ordinary readers, the effect of beautiful and forcible diction, poetical imagery, and animated description. All this freedom you will excuse, I know, on the part of one who has the truest respect for the manly independence of character which rests for its support on honest industry, instead of indulging the foolish fastidiousness formerly supposed to be essential to the poetical temperament, and which has induced some men of real talents to become coxcombs--some to become sots--some to plunge themselves into want--others into the equal miseries of dependence, merely because, forsooth, they were men of genius, and wise above the ordinary, and, I say, the manly duties of human life. "I'd rather be a kitten, and cry, Mew!"[124] than write the best poetry in the world on condition of laying aside common sense in the ordinary transactions and business of the world; and therefore, dear Allan, I wish much the better to the Muse whom you meet by the fireside in your hours of leisure when you have played your part manfully through a day of labor. I should like to see her making those hours also a little profitable. Perhaps something of the dramatic romance, if you could hit on a good subject, and combine the scenes well, might answer. A beautiful thing with appropriate music, scenes, etc., might be woven out of the Mermaid of Galloway. When there is any chance of Mr. Chantrey coming this way, I hope you will let me know; and if you come with him, so much the better. I like him as much for his manners as for his genius. "He is a man without a clagg; His heart is frank without a flaw." This is a horrible long letter for so vile a correspondent as I am. Once more, my best thanks for the little volume, and believe me yours truly, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 124: _1st King Henry IV._ Act III. Scene 1.] I now return to Sir Walter's correspondence with the Cornet at Cappoquin. TO WALTER SCOTT, ESQ., 18TH HUSSARS. ABBOTSFORD, April 21, 1821. MY DEAR WALTER,--...A democrat in any situation is but a silly sort of fellow, but a democratical soldier is worse than an ordinary traitor by ten thousand degrees, as he forgets his military honor, and is faithless to the master whose bread he eats. Three distinguished heroes of this class have arisen in my time--Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Colonel Despard, and Captain Thistlewood--and, with the contempt and abhorrence of all men, they died the death of infamy and guilt. If a man of honor is unhappy enough to entertain opinions inconsistent with the service in which he finds himself, it is his duty at once to resign his commission; in acting otherwise, he disgraces himself forever.... The reports are very strange, also, with respect to the private conduct of certain officers.... Gentlemen maintain their characters even in following their most licentious pleasures, otherwise they resemble the very scavengers in the streets.... I had written you a long letter on other subjects, but these circumstances have altered my plans, as well as given me great uneasiness on account of the effects which the society you have been keeping may have had on your principles, both political and moral. Be very frank with me on this subject. I have a title to expect perfect sincerity, having always treated you with openness on my part. Pray write immediately, and at length.--I remain your affectionate father, WALTER SCOTT. TO THE SAME. ABBOTSFORD, April 28, 1821. DEAR WALTER,--... The great point in the mean while is to acquire such preliminary information as may render you qualified to profit by Sandhurst when you get thither. Amongst my acquaintance, the men of greatest information have been those who seemed but indifferently situated for the acquisition of it, but who exerted themselves in proportion to the infrequency of their opportunities. The noble Captain Ferguson was married on Monday last. I was present at the bridal, and I assure you the like hath not been seen since the days of Lesmahago. Like his prototype, the Captain advanced in a jaunty military step, with a kind of leer on his face that seemed to quiz the whole affair. You should write to your brother sportsman and soldier, and wish the veteran joy of his entrance into the band of Benedicts. Odd enough that I should christen a grandchild and attend the wedding of a contemporary within two days of each other. I have sent John of Skye with Tom, and all the rabblement which they can collect, to play the pipes, shout, and fire guns below the Captain's windows this morning; and I am just going over to hover about on my pony, and witness their reception. The happy pair returned to Huntly Burn on Saturday; but yesterday being Sunday, we permitted them to enjoy their pillows in quiet. This morning they must not expect to get off so well. Pray write soon, and give me the history of your still-huntings, etc.--Ever yours affectionately, W. SCOTT. TO CHARLES SCOTT, ESQ. _Care of the Rev. Mr. Williams, Lampeter._ ABBOTSFORD, 9th May, 1821. MY DEAR CHARLES,--I am glad to find, by your letter just received, that you are reading Tacitus with some relish. His style is rather quaint and enigmatical, which makes it difficult to the student; but then his pages are filled with such admirable apothegms and maxims of political wisdom, as infer the deepest knowledge of human nature; and it is particularly necessary that any one who may have views as a public speaker should be master of his works, as there is neither ancient nor modern who affords such a selection of admirable quotations. You should exercise yourself frequently in trying to make translations of the passages which most strike you, trying to invest the sense of Tacitus in as good English as you can. This will answer the double purpose of making yourself familiar with the Latin author, and giving you the command of your own language, which no person will ever have who does not study English composition in early life.... I conclude somewhat abruptly, having trees to cut, and saucy Tom watching me like a Calmuck with the axe in his hand. Yours affectionately, W. SCOTT. TO WALTER SCOTT, ESQ., 18TH HUSSARS, CAPPOQUIN. ABBOTSFORD, 10th May, 1821. DEAR WALTER,--I wrote yesterday, but I am induced immediately to answer your letter, because I think you expect from it an effect upon my mind different from what it produces. A man may be violent and outrageous in his liquor, but wine seldom makes a gentleman a blackguard, or instigates a loyal man to utter sedition. Wine unveils the passions and throws away restraint, but it does not create habits or opinions which did not previously exist in the mind. Besides, what sort of defence is this of intemperance? I suppose if a private commits riot, or is disobedient in his cups, his officers do not admit whiskey to be an excuse. I have seen enough of that sort of society where habitual indulgence drowned at last every distinction between what is worthy and unworthy,--and I have seen young men with the fairest prospects, turn out degraded miserable outcasts before their life was half spent, merely from soaking and sotting, and the bad habits these naturally lead to. You tell me *** and *** frequent good society, and are well received in it; and I am very glad to hear this is the case. But such stories as these will soon occasion their seclusion from the _best_ company. There may remain, indeed, a large enough circle, where ladies, who are either desirous to fill their rooms or to marry their daughters, will continue to receive any young man in a showy uniform, however irregular in private life; but if these cannot be called _bad_ company, they are certainly anything but _very good_, and the facility of access makes the _entrée_ of little consequence. I mentioned in my last that you were to continue in the 18th until the regiment went to India, and that I trusted you would get the step within the twelve months that the corps yet remains in Europe, which will make your exchange easier. But it is of far more importance that you learn to command yourself, than that you should be raised higher in commanding others. It gives me pain to write to you in terms of censure, but _my duty_ must be done, else I cannot expect you to do _yours_. All here are well, and send love.--I am your affectionate father, WALTER SCOTT. TO THE SAME. EDINBURGH, 15th May, 1821. DEAR WALTER,--I have your letter of May 6th, to which it is unnecessary to reply very particularly. I would only insinuate to you that the _lawyers_ and _gossips_ of Edinburgh, whom your military politeness handsomely classes together in writing to a lawyer, know and care as little about the 18th as they do about the 19th, 20th, or 21st, or any other regimental number which does not happen for the time to be at Piershill, or in the Castle. Do not fall into the error and pedantry of young military men, who, living much together, are apt to think themselves and their actions the subject of much talk and rumor among the public at large.--I will transcribe Fielding's account of such a person, whom he met with on his voyage to Lisbon, which will give two or three hours' excellent amusement when you choose to peruse it:-- "In his conversation it is true there was something military enough, as it consisted chiefly of oaths, and of the great actions and wise sayings of Jack, Will, and Tom of _ours_, a phrase eternally in his mouth, and he seemed to conclude that it conveyed to all the officers such a degree of public notoriety and importance that it entitled him, like the head of a profession, or a first minister, to be the subject of conversation amongst those who had not the least personal acquaintance with him." Avoid this silly narrowness of mind, my dear boy, which only makes men be looked on in the world with ridicule and contempt. Lawyer and gossip as I may be, I suppose you will allow I have seen something of life in most of its varieties; as much at least as if I had been, like you, eighteen months in a cavalry regiment, or, like Beau Jackson in Roderick Random, had cruised for half a year in the chops of the Channel. Now, I have never remarked any one, be he soldier, or divine, or lawyer, that was exclusively attached to the narrow habits of his own profession, but what such person became a great twaddle in good society, besides, what is of much more importance, becoming narrow-minded, and ignorant of all general information. That this letter may not be unacceptable in all its parts, I enclose your allowance without stopping anything for the hackney. Take notice, however, my dear Walter, that this is to last you till midsummer.--We came from Abbotsford yesterday, and left all well, excepting that Mr. Laidlaw lost his youngest child, an infant, very unexpectedly. We found Sophia, Lockhart, and their child in good health, and all send love. I remain your affectionate father, WALTER SCOTT. TO WALTER SCOTT, ESQ., 18TH HUSSARS. EDINBURGH, 26th May, 1821. MY DEAR WALTER,--I see you are of the mind of the irritable prophet Jonah, who persisted in maintaining "he did well to be angry," even when disputing with Omnipotence. I am aware that Sir David is considered as a severe and ill-tempered man; and I remember a story that, when report came to Europe that Tippoo's prisoners (of whom Baird was one) were chained together two and two, his mother said, "God pity the poor lad that's chained to _our Davie_." But though it may be very true that he may have acted towards you with caprice and severity, yet you are always to remember,--1st, That in becoming a soldier you have subjected yourself to the caprice and severity of superior officers, and have no comfort except in contemplating the prospect of commanding others in your turn. In the mean while, you have in most cases no remedy so useful as patience and submission. But, _2dly_, As you seem disposed to admit that you yourselves have been partly to blame, I submit to you, that in turning the magnifying end of the telescope on Sir D.'s faults, and the diminishing one on your own, you take the least useful mode of considering the matter. By studying _his_ errors, you can acquire no knowledge that will be useful to you till you become Commander-in-Chief in Ireland,--whereas, by reflecting on _your own_, Cornet Scott and his companions may reap some immediate moral advantage. Your fine of a dozen of claret, upon any one who shall introduce females into your mess in future, reminds me of the rule of a country club, that whoever "behaved ungenteel" should be fined in a pot of porter. Seriously, I think there was bad taste in the style of the forfeiture. I am well pleased with your map, which is very businesslike. There was a great battle fought between the English and native Irish near the Blackwater, in which the former were defeated, and Bagenal the Knight-Marshal killed. Is there any remembrance of this upon the spot? There is a clergyman in Lismore, Mr. John Graham--originally, that is by descent, a Borderer. He lately sent me a manuscript which I intend to publish, and I wrote to him enclosing a cheque on Coutts. I wish you could ascertain if he received my letter safe. You can call upon him with my compliments. You need only say I was desirous to know if he had received a letter from me lately. The manuscript was written by a certain Mr. Gwynne, a Welsh loyalist in the great Civil War, and afterwards an officer in the guards of Charles II. This will be an object for a ride to you.[125] I presided last night at the dinner of the Celtic Society, "all plaided and plumed in their tartan array," and such jumping, skipping, and screaming you never saw. Chief-Baron Shepherd dined with us, and was very much pleased with the extreme enthusiasm of the Gael when liberated from the thraldom of breeches. You were voted a member by acclamation, which will cost me a tartan dress for your long limbs when you come here. If the King takes Scotland in coming or going to Ireland (as has been talked of), I expect to get you leave to come over.--I remain your affectionate father, WALTER SCOTT. P. S.--I beg you will not take it into your wise noddle that I will act either hastily or unadvisedly in your matters. I have been more successful in life than most people, and know well how much success depends, first upon desert, and then on knowledge of the _carte de pays_. [Footnote 125: The Rev. John Graham is known as the author of a _History of the Siege of Londonderry, Annals of Ireland_, and various political tracts. Sir Walter Scott published _Gwynne's Memoirs_, with a Preface, etc., in 1822.] The following letter begins with an allusion to a visit which Captain Ferguson, his bride, and his youngest sister, Miss Margaret Ferguson, had been paying at Ditton Park:-- TO THE LORD MONTAGU, ETC., ETC. EDINBURGH, 21st May, 1821. MY DEAR LORD,--I was much diverted with the account of Adam and Eve's visit to Ditton, which, with its surrounding moat, might make no bad emblem of Eden, but for the absence of snakes and fiends. He is a very singular fellow; for, with all his humor and knowledge of the world, he by nature is a remarkably shy and modest man, and more afraid of the possibility of intrusion than would occur to any one who only sees him in the full stream of society. His sister Margaret is extremely like him in the turn of thought and of humor, and he has two others who are as great curiosities in their way. The eldest is a complete old maid, with all the gravity and shyness of the character, but not a grain of its bad humor or spleen; on the contrary, she is one of the kindest and most motherly creatures in the world. The second, Mary, was in her day a very pretty girl; but her person became deformed, and she has the sharpness of features with which that circumstance is sometimes attended. She rises very early in the morning, and roams over all my wild land in the neighborhood, wearing the most complicated pile of handkerchiefs of different colors on her head, and a stick double her own height in her hand, attended by two dogs, whose powers of yelping are truly terrific. With such garb and accompaniments, she has very nearly established the character in the neighborhood of being _something no canny_--and the urchins of Melrose and Darnick are frightened from gathering hazel-nuts and cutting wands in my cleugh, by the fear of meeting _the daft lady_. With all this quizzicality, I do not believe there ever existed a family with so much mutual affection and such an overflow of benevolence to all around them, from men and women down to hedge-sparrows and lame ass-colts, more than one of which they have taken under their direct and special protection. I am sorry there should be occasion for caution in the case of little Duke Walter, but it is most lucky that the necessity is early and closely attended to. How many actual valetudinarians have outlived all their robust contemporaries, and attained the utmost verge of human life, without ever having enjoyed what is usually called high health. This is taking the very worst view of the case, and supposing the constitution habitually delicate. But how often has the strongest and best confirmed health succeeded to a delicate childhood--and such, I trust, will be the Duke's case. I cannot help thinking that this temporary recess from Eton may be made subservient to Walter's improvement in general literature, and particularly in historical knowledge. The habit of reading useful, and at the same time entertaining books of history, is often acquired during the retirement which delicate health in convalescence imposes on us. I remember we touched on this point at Ditton; and I think again, that though classical learning be the _Shibboleth_ by which we judge, generally speaking, of the proficiency of the youthful scholar, yet, when this has been too exclusively and pedantically impressed on his mind as the one thing needful, he very often finds he has entirely a new course of study to commence, just at the time when life is opening all its busy or gay scenes before him, and when study of any kind becomes irksome. For this species of instruction I do not so much approve of tasks and set hours for serious reading, as of the plan of endeavoring to give a taste for history to the youths themselves, and suffering them to gratify it in their own way, and at their own time. For this reason I would not be very scrupulous what books they began with, or whether they began at the middle or end. The knowledge which we acquire of free will and by spontaneous exertion, is like food eaten with appetite--it digests well, and benefits the system ten times more than the double cramming of an alderman. If a boy's attention can be drawn in conversation to any interesting point of history, and the book is pointed out to him where he will find the particulars conveyed in a lively manner, he reads the passage with so much pleasure that he very naturally recurs to the book at the first unoccupied moment, to try if he cannot pick more amusement out of it; and when once a lad gets the spirit of information, he goes on himself with little trouble but that of selecting for him the best and most agreeable books. I think Walter has naturally some turn for history and historical anecdote, and would be disposed to read as much as could be wished in that most useful line of knowledge;--for in the eminent situation he is destined to by his birth, acquaintance with the history and institutions of his country, and her relative position with respect to others, is a _sine qua non_ to his discharging its duties with propriety. All this is extremely like prosing, so I will harp on that string no longer. Kind compliments to all at Ditton; you say nothing of your own rheumatism. I am here for the session, unless the wind should blow me south to see the coronation, and I think 800 miles rather a long journey to see a show. I am always, my dear Lord, Yours very affectionately, WALTER SCOTT. CHAPTER LII Illness and Death of John Ballantyne. -- Extract from his Pocketbook. -- Letters from Blair-Adam. -- Castle-Campbell. -- Sir Samuel Shepherd. -- "Bailie Mackay," Etc. -- Coronation of George IV. -- Correspondence with James Hogg and Lord Sidmouth. -- Letter on the Coronation. -- Anecdotes. -- Allan Cunningham's Memoranda. -- Completion of Chantrey's Bust. 1821 On the 4th of June, Scott, being then on one of his short Sessional visits to Abbotsford, received the painful intelligence that his friend John Ballantyne's maladies had begun to assume an aspect of serious and even immediate danger. The elder brother made the communication in these terms:-- TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART., OF ABBOTSFORD, MELROSE. EDINBURGH, Sunday, 3d June, 1821. DEAR SIR,--I have this morning had a most heart-breaking letter from poor John, from which the following is an extract. You will judge how it has affected me, who, with all his peculiarities of temper, love him very much. He says,-- "A spitting of blood has commenced, and you may guess the situation into which I am plunged. We are all accustomed to consider death as certainly inevitable; but his obvious approach is assuredly the most detestable and abhorrent feeling to which human nature can be subject." This is truly doleful. There is something in it more absolutely bitter to my heart than what I have otherwise suffered. I look back to my mother's peaceful rest, and to my infant's blessedness--if life be not the extinguishable worthless spark which I cannot think it--but here, cut off in the very middle of life, with good means and strong powers of enjoying it, and nothing but reluctance and repining at the close--I say the truth when I say that I would joyfully part with my right arm to avert the approaching result. Pardon this, dear sir; my heart and soul are heavy within me. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . With the deepest respect and gratitude, J. B. At the date of this letter, the invalid was in Roxburghshire; but he came to Edinburgh a day or two afterwards, and died there on the 16th of the same month. I accompanied Sir Walter when one of their last interviews took place, and John's deathbed was a thing not to be forgotten. We sat by him for perhaps an hour, and I think half that space was occupied with his predictions of a speedy end, and details of his last will, which he had just been executing, and which lay on his coverlid; the other half being given, five minutes or so at a time, to questions and remarks, which intimated that the hope of life was still flickering before him--nay, that his interest in all its concerns remained eager. The proof sheets of a volume of his Novelists' Library lay also by his pillow; and he passed from them to his will, and then back to them, as by jerks and starts the unwonted veil of gloom closed upon his imagination, or was withdrawn again. He had, as he said, left his great friend and patron £2000 towards the completion of the new library at Abbotsford,--and the spirit of the auctioneer virtuoso flashed up as he began to describe what would, he thought, be the best style and arrangement of the bookshelves. He was interrupted by an agony of asthma, which left him with hardly any signs of life; and ultimately he did expire in a fit of the same kind. Scott was visibly and profoundly shaken by this scene and its sequel. As we stood together a few days afterwards, while they were smoothing the turf over John's remains in the Canongate Churchyard, the heavens, which had been dark and slaty, cleared up suddenly, and the midsummer sun shone forth in his strength. Scott, ever awake to the "skiey influences," cast his eye along the overhanging line of the Calton Hill, with its gleaming walls and towers, and then turning to the grave again, "I feel," he whispered in my ear, "I feel as if there would be less sunshine for me from this day forth." As we walked homewards, Scott told me, among other favorable traits of his friend, one little story which I must not omit. He remarked one day to a poor student of divinity attending his auction, that he looked as if he were in bad health. The young man assented with a sigh. "Come," said Ballantyne, "I think I ken the secret of a sort of draft that would relieve you--particularly," he added, handing him a cheque for £5 or £10--"particularly, my dear, if taken upon an empty stomach." John died in his elder brother's house in St. John Street; a circumstance which it gives me pleasure to record, as it confirms the impression of their affectionate feelings towards each other at this time, which the reader must have derived from James's letter to Scott last quoted. Their confidence and cordiality had undergone considerable interruption in the latter part of John's life; but the close was in all respects fraternal. A year and a half before John's exit,--namely, on the last day of 1819,--he happened to lay his hand on an old pocketbook, which roused his reflections, and he filled two or three of its pages with a brief summary of the most active part of his life, which I think it due to his character, as well as Sir Walter Scott's, to transcribe in this place. "31st Dec., 1819. In moving a bed from the fireplace to-day upstairs, I found an old memorandum-book, which enables me to trace the following recollections of _this day_, the last of the year. "1801. A shopkeeper in Kelso; at this period my difficulties had not begun in business; was well, happy, and 27 years old; new then in a connection which afterwards gave me great pain, but can never be forgotten. "1802. 28 old: In Kelso as before--could scarcely be happier--hunted, shot, kept ****'s company, and neglected business, the fruits whereof I soon found. "1803. 29: Still fortunate, and happy from same cause. James in Edinburgh thriving as a printer. When I was ennuied at home, visited him. Business neglected every way. "1804. 30: Material change; getting into difficulties; all wrong, and changes in every way approaching. "1805. 31: All consummated; health miserable all summer and **** designated in an erased mem., _the scoundrel_. I yet recollect the cause--can I ever forget it? My furniture, goods, etc., sold at Kelso, previous to my going to Edinburgh to become my brother's clerk; whither I _did_ go, for which God be praised eternally, on Friday, 3d January, 1806, on £200 a year. My effects at Kelso, with labor, paid my debts, and left me penniless. "From this period till 1808. 34: I continued in this situation--then the scheme of a bookselling concern in Hanover Street was adopted, which I was to manage; it was £300 a year, and one fourth of the profits besides. "1809. 35: Already the business in Hanover Street getting into difficulty, from our ignorance of its nature, and most extravagant and foolish advances from its funds to the printing concern. I ought to have resisted this, but I was thoughtless, although not young, or rather reckless, and lived on as long as I could make ends meet. "1810. 36: Bills increasing--the destructive system of accommodations adopted. "1811. 37: Bills increased to a most fearful degree. Sir Wm. Forbes and Co. shut their account. No bank would discount with us, and everything leading to irretrievable failure. "1812. 38: The first partner stepped in, at a crisis so tremendous, that it shakes my soul to think of it. By the most consummate wisdom, and resolution, and unheard-of exertions, he put things in a train that finally (so early as 1817) paid even himself (who ultimately became the sole creditor of the house) _in full_, with a balance of a thousand pounds. "1813. 39: In business as a literary auctioneer in Prince's Street; from which period to the present I have got gradually forward, both in that line and as third of a partner of the works of the Author of Waverley, so that I am now, at 45, worth about (I owe £2000) £5000, with, however, alas, many changes--my strong constitution much broken; my father and mother dead, and James estranged--the chief enjoyment and glory of my life being the possession of the friendship and confidence of the greatest of men." In communicating John's death to the Cornet, Sir Walter says: "I have had a very great loss in poor John Ballantyne, who is gone, after a long illness. He persisted to the very last in endeavoring to take exercise, in which he was often imprudent, and was up and dressed the very morning before his death. In his will the grateful creature has left me a legacy of £2000, life-rented, however, by his wife; and the rest of his little fortune goes betwixt his two brothers. I shall miss him very much, both in business, and as an easy and lively companion, who was eternally active and obliging in whatever I had to do." I am sorry to take leave of John Ballantyne with the remark, that his last will was a document of the same class with too many of his _states_ and _calendars_. So far from having £2000 to bequeath to Sir Walter, he died as he had lived, ignorant of the situation of his affairs, and deep in debt.[126] [Footnote 126: No specimen of John's inaccuracy as to business-statements could be pointed out more extraordinary than his assertion in the above sketch of his career, that the bookselling concern, of which he had had the management, was finally wound up with a balance of £1000 in favor of the first partner. At the time he refers to (1817), John's name was on floating bills to the extent of at least £10,000, representing _part_ of the debt which had been accumulated on the bookselling house, and which, on its dissolution, was assumed by the printing company in the Canongate.--(1839.)] The two following letters, written at Blair-Adam, where the Club were, as usual, assembled for the dog-days, have been selected from among several which Scott at this time addressed to his friends in the South, with the view of promoting Mr. Mackay's success in his _début_ on the London boards as Bailie Jarvie. TO MISS JOANNA BAILLIE, HAMPSTEAD. The immediate motive of my writing to you, my dearest friend, is to make Mrs. Agnes and you aware that a Scots performer, called Mackay, is going up to London to play Bailie Nicol Jarvie for a single night at Covent Garden, and to beg you of all dear loves to go and see him; for, taking him in that single character, I am not sure I ever saw anything in my life possessing so much truth and comic effect at the same time: he is completely the personage of the drama, the purse-proud consequential magistrate, humane and irritable in the same moment, and the true Scotsman in every turn of thought and action; his variety of feelings towards Rob Roy, whom he likes, and fears, and despises, and admires, and pities all at once, is exceedingly well expressed. In short, I never saw a part better sustained, certainly; I pray you to collect a party of Scotch friends to see it. I have written to Sotheby to the same purpose, but I doubt whether the exhibition will prove as satisfactory to those who do not know the original from which the resemblance is taken. I observe the English demand (as is natural) broad caricature in the depicting of national peculiarities: they did so as to the Irish till Jack Johnstone taught them better, and at first I should fear Mackay's reality will seem less ludicrous than Liston's humorous extravagances. So let it not be said that a dramatic genius of Scotland wanted the countenance and protection of Joanna Baillie: the Doctor and Mrs. Baillie will be much diverted if they go also, but somebody said to me that they were out of town. The man, I am told, is perfectly respectable in his life and habits, and consequently deserves encouragement every way. There is a great difference betwixt his _bailie_ and all his other performances: one would think the part made for him, and him for the part--and yet I may do the poor fellow injustice, and what we here consider as a falling off may arise from our identifying Mackay so completely with the worthy Glasgow magistrate, that recollections of Nicol Jarvie intrude upon us at every corner, and mar the personification of any other part which he may represent for the time. I am here for a couple of days with our Chief-Commissioner, late Willie Adam, and we had yesterday a delightful stroll to Castle-Campbell, the Rumbling Brig, Cauldron Linns, etc. The scenes are most romantic, and I know not by what fatality it has been, that living within a step of them, I never visited any of them before. We had Sir Samuel Shepherd with us, a most delightful person, but with too much English fidgetiness about him for crags and precipices,--perpetually afraid that rocks would give way under his weight which had over-brow'd the torrent for ages, and that good well-rooted trees, moored so as to resist ten thousand tempests, would fall because he grasped one of their branches; he must certainly be a firm believer in the simile of the lover of your native land, who complains,-- "I leant my back unto an aik, I thought it was a trusty tree, But first it bow'd and then it brake," etc., etc., etc.[127] Certes these Southrons lack much the habits of the wood and wilderness,--for here is a man of taste and genius, a fine scholar and a most interesting companion, haunted with fears that would be entertained by no shopkeeper from the Luckenbooths or the Saut Market. A sort of _Cockneyism_ of one kind or another pervades their men of professional habits, whereas every Scotchman, with very few exceptions, holds country exercises of all kinds to be part of his nature, and is ready to become a traveller, or even a soldier on the slightest possible notice. The habits of the moorfowl shooting, salmon-fishing, and so forth, may keep this much up among the gentry, a name which our pride and pedigree extend so much wider than in England; and it is worth notice that these amusements, being cheap and tolerably easy come at by all the petty dunniewassals, have a more general influence on the national character than fox-hunting, which is confined to those who can mount and keep a horse worth at least 100 guineas. But still this hardly explains the general and wide difference betwixt the countries in this particular. Happen how it will, the advantage is much in favor of Scotland: it is true that it contributes to prevent our producing such very accomplished lawyers, divines, or artisans[128] as when the whole mind is bent with undivided attention upon attaining one branch of knowledge,--but it gives a strong and muscular character to the people in general, and saves men from all sorts of causeless fears and flutterings of the heart, which give quite as much misery as if there were real cause for entertaining apprehension. This is not furiously to the purpose of my letter, which, after recommending Monsieur Mackay, was to tell you that we are all well and happy. Sophia is getting stout and pretty, and is one of the wisest and most important little mammas that can be seen anywhere. Her bower is _bigged in gude green wood_, and we went last Saturday in a body to enjoy it, and to consult about furniture; and we have got the road stopt which led up the hill, so it is now quite solitary and approached through a grove of trees, actual well-grown trees, not Lilliputian forests like those of Abbotsford. The season is dreadfully backward. Our ashes and oaks are not yet in leaf, and will not be, I think, in anything like full foliage this year, such is the rigor of the east winds.--Always, my dear and much respected friend, most affectionately yours, W. SCOTT. BLAIR-ADAM, 11 June, 1821, In full sight of Lochleven. P. S.--Pray read, or have read to you by Mrs. Agnes, The Annals of the Parish. Mr. Galt wrote the worst tragedies ever seen, and has now written a most excellent novel, if it can be called so. [Footnote 127: Ballad of the Marchioness of Douglas, "O waly, waly, up yon bank!" etc.] [Footnote 128: The great engineer, James Watt, of Birmingham--in whose talk Scott took much delight--told him, that though hundreds probably of his northern countrymen had sought employment at his establishment, he never could get one of them to become a first-rate artisan. "Many of them," said he, "were too good for that, and rose to be valuable clerks and book-keepers; but those incapable of this sort of advancement had always the same insuperable aversion to toiling so long at any one point of mechanism as to gain the highest wages among the workmen." I have no doubt Sir Walter was thinking of Mr. Watt's remark when he wrote the sentence in the text.] TO THE LORD MONTAGU, ETC., ETC., LONDON. BLAIR-ADAM, June 11, 1821. MY DEAR LORD,--There is a man going up from Edinburgh to play one night at Covent Garden, whom, as having the very unusual power of presenting on the stage a complete Scotsman, I am very desirous you should see. He plays Bailie Nicol Jarvie in Rob Roy, but with a degree of national truth and understanding, which makes the part equal to anything I have ever seen on the stage, and I have seen all the best comedians for these forty years. I wish much, if you continue in town till he comes up, that you would get into some private box and take a look of him. Sincerely, it is a real treat--the English will not enjoy it, for it is not broad enough, or sufficiently caricatured for their apprehensions, but to a Scotsman it is inimitable, and you have the Glasgow Bailie before you, with all his bustling conceit and importance, his real benevolence, and his irritable habits. He will want in London a fellow who, in the character of the Highland turnkey, held the backhand to him admirably well. I know how difficult it is for folks of condition to get to the theatre, but this is worth an exertion,--and, besides, the poor man (who I understand is very respectable in private life) will be, to use an admirable simile (by which one of your father's farmers persuaded the Duke to go to hear his son, a probationer in divinity, preach his first sermon in the town of Ayr), _like a cow in a fremd loaning_, and glad of Scots countenance. I am glad the Duke's cold is better--his stomach will not be put to those trials which ours underwent in our youth, when deep drinking was the fashion. I hope he will always be aware, however, that his is not a strong one. Campbell's Lives of the Admirals is an admirable book, and I would advise your Lordship e'en to redeem your pledge to the Duke on some rainy day. You do not run the risk from the perusal which my poor mother apprehended. She always alleged it sent her eldest son to the navy, and did not see with indifference any of her younger olive branches engaged with Campbell except myself, who stood in no danger of the cockpit or quarterdeck. I would not swear for Lord John though. Your Lordship's tutor was just such a well-meaning person as mine, who used to take from me old Lindsay of Pitscottie, and set me down to get by heart Rollin's infernal list of the Shepherd Kings, whose hard names could have done no good to any one on earth, unless he had wished to raise the devil, and lacked language to conjure with.--Always, my dear Lord, most truly yours, WALTER SCOTT. The coronation of George IV., preparations for which were (as has been seen) in active progress by March, 1820, had been deferred, in consequence of the unhappy affair of the Queen's Trial. The 19th of July, 1821, was now announced for this solemnity, and Sir Walter resolved to be among the spectators. It occurred to him that if the Ettrick Shepherd were to accompany him, and produce some memorial of the scene likely to catch the popular ear in Scotland, good service might thus be done to the cause of loyalty. But this was not his only consideration. Hogg had married a handsome and most estimable young woman, a good deal above his own original rank in life, the year before; and expecting with her a dowry of £1000, he had forthwith revived the grand ambition of an earlier day, and become a candidate for an extensive farm on the Buccleuch estate, at a short distance from Altrive Lake. Various friends, supposing his worldly circumstances to be much improved, had supported his application, and Lord Montagu had received it in a manner for which the Shepherd's letters to Scott express much gratitude. Misfortune pursued the Shepherd--the unforeseen bankruptcy of his wife's father interrupted the stocking of the sheep-walk; and the arable part of the new possession was sadly mismanaged by himself. Scott hoped that a visit to London, and a coronation poem, or pamphlet, might end in some pension or post that would relieve these difficulties, and he wrote to Hogg, urging him to come to Edinburgh, and embark with him for the great city. Not doubting that this proposal would be eagerly accepted, he, when writing to Lord Sidmouth, to ask a place for himself in the Hall and Abbey of Westminster, mentioned that Hogg was to be his companion, and begged suitable accommodation for him also. Lord Sidmouth, being overwhelmed with business connected with the approaching pageant, answered by the pen of the Under-Secretary of State, Mr. Hobhouse, that Sir Walter's wishes, both as to himself and the Shepherd, should be gratified, _provided_ they would both dine with him the day after the coronation, in Richmond Park, "where," says the letter before me, "his Lordship will invite the Duke of York and a few other Jacobites to meet you." All this being made known to the tenant of Mount-Benger, he wrote to Scott, as he says, "with the tear in his eye," to signify, that if he went to London he must miss attending the great annual Border fair, held on St. Boswell's Green, in Roxburghshire, on the 18th of every July; and that his absence from that meeting so soon after entering upon business as a store-farmer, would be considered by his new compeers as highly imprudent and discreditable. "In short," James concludes, "the thing is impossible. But as there is no man in his Majesty's dominions admires his great talents for government, and the energy and dignity of his administration, so much as I do, I will write something at home, and endeavor to give it you before you start." The Shepherd probably expected that these pretty compliments would reach the royal ear; but however that may have been, his own Muse turned a deaf ear to him--at least I never heard of anything that he wrote on this occasion. Scott embarked without him, on board a new steamship called The City of Edinburgh, which, as he suggested to the master, ought rather to have been christened The New Reekie. This vessel was that described and lauded in the following letter:-- TO THE LORD MONTAGU, ETC., ETC. EDINBURGH, July 1, 1821. MY DEAR LORD,--I write just now to thank you for your letter. I have been on board the steamship, and am so delighted with it, that I think I shall put myself aboard for the coronation. It runs at nine knots an hour (_me ipso teste_) against wind and tide, with a deck as long as a frigate's to walk upon, and to sleep on also, if you like, as I have always preferred a cloak and a mattress to these crowded cabins. This reconciles the speed and certainty of the mail-coach with the ease and convenience of being on shipboard. So I really think I will run up to see the grandee show, and run down again. I scorn to mention economy, though the expense is not one fifth, and that is something in hard times, especially to me, who, to choose, would always rather travel in a public conveyance, than with my domestic's good company in a po-chay. But now comes the news of news. I have been instigating the great Caledonian Boar, James Hogg, to undertake a similar trip--with the view of turning an honest penny, to help out his stocking, by writing some sort of Shepherd's Letters, or the like, to put the honest Scots bodies up to this whole affair. I am trying with Lord Sidmouth to get him a place among the newspaper gentry to see the ceremony. It is seriously worth while to get such a popular view of the whole as he will probably hit off. I have another view for this poor fellow. You have heard of the Royal Literary Society, and how they propose to distribute solid pudding, _alias_ pensions, to men of genius. It is, I think, a very problematical matter, whether it will do the good which is intended; but if they do mean to select worthy objects of encouragement, I really know nobody that has a better or an equal claim to poor Hogg. Our friend Villiers takes a great charge of this matter, and good-naturedly forgave my stating to him a number of objections to the first concoction, which was to have been something resembling the French Academy. It has now been much modified. Perhaps there may be some means fallen upon, with your Lordship's assistance, of placing Hogg under Mr. Villiers's view. I would have done so myself, but only I have battled the point against the whole establishment so keenly, that it would be too bad to bring forward a protégé of my own to take advantage of it. They intended at one time to give pensions of about £100 a year to thirty persons. I know not where they could find half a dozen with such pretensions as the Shepherd's. There will be risk of his being lost in London, or kidnapped by some of those ladies who open literary _menageries_ for the reception of _lions_. I should like to see him at a rout of blue-stockings. I intend to recommend him to the protection of John Murray the bookseller; and I hope he will come equipped with plaid, kent, and colley.[129] I wish to heaven Lord Melville would either keep the Admiralty, or in Hogg's phrase,-- "O I would eagerly press him The keys of the _east_ to require,"-- for truly the Board of Control is the Corn Chest for Scotland, where we poor gentry must send our younger sons, as we send our black cattle to the south.--Ever most truly yours, WALTER SCOTT. [Footnote 129: _Kent_ is the shepherd's staff--_Colley_ his dog. Scott alludes to the old song of the _Lea Rig_,-- "Nae herds wi' kent and colley there," etc.] From London, on the day after the coronation, Sir Walter addressed a letter descriptive of the ceremonial to his friend James Ballantyne, who published it in his newspaper. It has been since reprinted--but not in any collection of Scott's own writings; and I therefore insert it here. It will probably possess considerable interest for the student of English history and manners in future times; for the coronation of George the Fourth's successor was conducted on a vastly inferior scale of splendor and expense--and the precedent of curtailment in any such matters is now seldom neglected. TO THE EDITOR OF THE EDINBURGH WEEKLY JOURNAL. LONDON, July 20, 1821. SIR,--I refer you to the daily papers for the details of the great National Solemnity which we witnessed yesterday, and will hold my promise absolved by sending a few general remarks upon what I saw with surprise amounting to astonishment, and which I shall never forget. It is, indeed, impossible to conceive a ceremony more august and imposing in all its parts, and more calculated to make the deepest impression both on the eye and on the feelings. The most minute attention must have been bestowed to arrange all the subordinate parts in harmony with the rest; so that, amongst so much antiquated ceremonial, imposing singular dresses, duties, and characters, upon persons accustomed to move in the ordinary routine of society, nothing occurred either awkward or ludicrous which could mar the general effect of the solemnity. Considering that it is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, I own I consider it as surprising that the whole ceremonial of the day should have passed away without the slightest circumstance which could derange the general tone of solemn feeling which was suited to the occasion. You must have heard a full account of the only disagreeable event of the day. I mean the attempt of the misguided lady, who has lately furnished so many topics of discussion, to intrude herself upon a ceremonial, where, not being in her proper place, to be present in any other must have been voluntary degradation. That matter is a fire of straw which has now burnt to the very embers, and those who try to blow it into life again will only blacken their hands and noses, like mischievous children dabbling among the ashes of a bonfire. It seems singular, that being determined to be present at all hazards, this unfortunate personage should not have procured a Peer's ticket, which, I presume, would have insured her admittance. I willingly pass to pleasanter matters. The effect of the scene in the Abbey was beyond measure magnificent. Imagine long galleries stretched among the aisles of that venerable and august pile--those which rise above the altar pealing back their echoes to a full and magnificent choir of music--those which occupied the sides filled even to crowding with all that Britain has of beautiful and distinguished, and the cross-gallery most appropriately occupied by the Westminster schoolboys, in their white surplices, many of whom might on that day receive impressions never to be lost during the rest of their lives. Imagine this, I say, and then add the spectacle upon the floor,--the altar surrounded by the Fathers of the Church, the King encircled by the Nobility of the land and the Counsellors of his throne, and by warriors wearing the honored marks of distinction bought by many a glorious danger;--add to this the rich spectacle of the aisles crowded with waving plumage, and coronets, and caps of honor, and the sun, which brightened and saddened as if on purpose, now beaming in full lustre on the rich and varied assemblage, and now darting a solitary ray, which catched, as it passed, the glittering folds of a banner, or the edge of a group of battle-axes or partizans, and then rested full on some fair form, "the cynosure of neighboring eyes," whose circlet of diamonds glistened under its influence. Imagine all this, and then tell me if I have made my journey of four hundred miles to little purpose. I do not love your _cui bono_ men, and therefore I will not be pleased if you ask me in the damping tone of sullen philosophy, what good all this has done the spectators. If we restrict life to its real animal wants and necessities, we shall indeed be satisfied with "food, clothes, and fire;" but Divine Providence, who widened our sources of enjoyment beyond those of the animal creation, never meant that we should bound our wishes within such narrow limits; and I shrewdly suspect that those _non est tanti_ gentlefolks only depreciate the natural and unaffected pleasure which men like me receive from sights of splendor and sounds of harmony, either because they would seem wiser than their simple neighbors at the expense of being less happy, or because the mere pleasure of the sight and sound is connected with associations of a deeper kind, to which they are unwilling to yield themselves. Leaving these gentlemen to enjoy their own wisdom, I still more pity those, if there be any, who (being unable to detect a peg on which to hang a laugh) sneer coldly at this solemn festival, and are rather disposed to dwell on the expense which attends it, than on the generous feelings which it ought to awaken. The expense, so far as it is national, has gone directly and instantly to the encouragement of the British manufacturer and mechanic; and so far as it is personal to the persons of rank attendant upon the Coronation, it operates as a tax upon wealth and consideration for the benefit of poverty and industry; a tax willingly paid by the one class, and not the less acceptable to the other because it adds a happy holiday to the monotony of a life of labor. But there were better things to reward my pilgrimage than the mere pleasures of the eye and ear; for it was impossible, without the deepest veneration, to behold the voluntary and solemn interchange of vows betwixt the King and his assembled People, whilst he, on the one hand, called God Almighty to witness his resolution to maintain their laws and privileges, whilst they called, at the same moment, on the Divine Being, to bear witness that they accepted him for their liege Sovereign, and pledged to him their love and their duty. I cannot describe to you the effect produced by the solemn, yet strange mixture of the words of Scripture, with the shouts and acclamations of the assembled multitude, as they answered to the voice of the Prelate, who demanded of them whether they acknowledged as their Monarch the Prince who claimed the sovereignty in their presence. It was peculiarly delightful to see the King receive from the royal brethren, but in particular from the Duke of York, the fraternal kiss in which they acknowledged their sovereign. There was an honest tenderness, an affectionate and sincere reverence in the embrace interchanged betwixt the Duke of York and his Majesty, that approached almost to a caress, and impressed all present with the electrical conviction, that the nearest to the throne in blood was the nearest also in affection. I never heard plaudits given more from the heart than those that were thundered upon the royal brethren when they were thus pressed to each other's bosoms,--it was an emotion of natural kindness, which, bursting out amidst ceremonial grandeur, found an answer in every British bosom. The King seemed much affected at this and one or two other parts of the ceremonial, even so much so as to excite some alarm among those who saw him as nearly as I did. He completely recovered himself, however, and bore (generally speaking) the fatigue of the day very well. I learn from one near his person, that he roused himself with great energy, even when most oppressed with heat and fatigue, when any of the more interesting parts of the ceremony were to be performed, or when anything occurred which excited his personal and immediate attention. When presiding at the banquet, amid the long line of his Nobles, he looked "every inch a King;" and nothing could exceed the grace with which he accepted and returned the various acts of homage rendered to him in the course of that long day. It was also a very gratifying spectacle to those who think like me, to behold the Duke of Devonshire and most of the distinguished Whig nobility assembled round the throne on this occasion; giving an open testimony that the differences of political opinions are only skin-deep wounds, which assume at times an angry appearance, but have no real effect on the wholesome constitution of the country. If you ask me to distinguish who bore him best, and appeared most to sustain the character we annex to the assistants in such a solemnity, I have no hesitation to name Lord Londonderry, who, in the magnificent robes of the Garter, with the cap and high plume of the order, walked alone, and by his fine face and majestic person formed an adequate representative of the order of Edward III., the costume of which was worn by his Lordship only. The Duke of Wellington, with all his laurels, moved and looked deserving the baton, which was never grasped by so worthy a hand. The Marquis of Anglesea showed the most exquisite grace in managing his horse, notwithstanding the want of his limb, which he left at Waterloo. I never saw so fine a bridle-hand in my life, and I am rather a judge of "noble horsemanship." Lord Howard's horse was worse bitted than those of the two former noblemen, but not so much so as to derange the ceremony of retiring back out of the Hall. The Champion was performed (as of right) by young Dymocke, a fine-looking youth, but bearing, perhaps, a little too much the appearance of a maiden-knight to be the challenger of the world in a King's behalf. He threw down his gauntlet, however, with becoming manhood, and showed as much horsemanship as the crowd of knights and squires around him would permit to be exhibited. His armor was in good taste, but his shield was out of all propriety, being a round _rondache_, or Highland target, a defensive weapon which it would have been impossible to use on horseback, instead of being a three-corner'd, or _heater-shield_, which in time of the tilt was suspended round the neck. Pardon this antiquarian scruple, which, you may believe, occurred to few but myself. On the whole, this striking part of the exhibition somewhat disappointed me, for I would have had the Champion less embarrassed by his assistants, and at liberty to put his horse on the _grand pas_. And yet the young Lord of Scrivelsbaye looked and behaved extremely well. Returning to the subject of costume, I could not but admire what I had previously been disposed much to criticise,--I mean the fancy dress of the Privy-Councillors, which was of white and blue satin, with trunk-hose and mantles, after the fashion of Queen Elizabeth's time. Separately, so gay a garb had an odd effect on the persons of elderly or ill-made men; but when the whole was thrown into one general body, all these discrepancies disappeared, and you no more observed the particular manner or appearance of an individual, than you do that of a soldier in the battalion which marches past you. The whole was so completely harmonized in actual coloring, as well as in association, with the general mass of gay and gorgeous and antique dress which floated before the eye, that it was next to impossible to attend to the effect of individual figures. Yet a Scotsman will detect a Scotsman amongst the most crowded assemblage, and I must say that the Lord Justice-Clerk of Scotland[130] showed to as great advantage in his robes of Privy-Councillor, as any by whom that splendid dress was worn on this great occasion. The common Court-dress used by the Privy-Councillors at the last coronation must have had a poor effect in comparison of the present, which formed a gradation in the scale of gorgeous ornament, from the unwieldy splendor of the heralds, who glowed like huge masses of cloth of gold and silver, to the more chastened robes and ermine of the Peers. I must not forget the effect produced by the Peers placing their coronets on their heads, which was really august. The box assigned to the foreign Ambassadors presented a most brilliant effect, and was perfectly in a blaze with diamonds. When the sunshine lighted on Prince Esterhazy, in particular, he glimmered like a galaxy. I cannot learn positively if he had on that renowned coat which has visited all the courts of Europe save ours, and is said to be worth £100,000, or some such trifle, and which costs the Prince £100 or two every time he puts it on, as he is sure to lose pearls to that amount. This was a hussar dress, but splendid in the last degree; perhaps too fine for good taste--at least it would have appeared so anywhere else. Beside the Prince sat a good-humored lass, who seemed all eyes and ears (his daughter-in-law, I believe), who wore as many diamonds as if they had been Bristol stones. An honest Persian was also a remarkable figure, from the dogged and imperturbable gravity with which he looked on the whole scene, without ever moving a limb or a muscle during the space of four hours. Like Sir Wilful Witwoud, I cannot find that your Persian is orthodox; for if he scorned everything else, there was a Mahometan paradise extended on his right hand along the seats which were occupied by the peeresses and their daughters, which the Prophet himself might have looked on with emotion. I have seldom seen so many elegant and beautiful girls as sat mingled among the noble matronage of the land; and the waving plumage of feathers, which made the universal head-dress, had the most appropriate effect in setting off their charms. I must not omit that the foreigners, who are apt to consider us as a nation _en frac_, and without the usual ceremonials of dress and distinction, were utterly astonished and delighted to see the revival of feudal dresses and feudal grandeur when the occasion demanded it, and that in a degree of splendor which they averred they had never seen paralleled in Europe. The duties of service at the Banquet, and of attendance in general, were performed by pages drest very elegantly in Henri Quatre coats of scarlet, with gold lace, blue sashes, white silk hose, and white rosettes. There were also marshal's-men for keeping order, who wore a similar dress, but of blue, and having white sashes. Both departments were filled up almost entirely by young gentlemen, many of them of the very first condition, who took these menial characters to gain admission to the show. When I saw many of my young acquaintance thus attending upon their fathers and kinsmen, the Peers, Knights, and so forth, I could not help thinking of Crabbe's lines, with a little alteration:-- 'T was schooling pride to see the menial wait, Smile on his father, and receive his plate. It must be owned, however, that they proved but indifferent valets, and were very apt, like the clown in the pantomime, to eat the cheer they should have handed to their masters, and to play other _tours de page_, which reminded me of the caution of our proverb "not to man yourself with your kin." The Peers, for example, had only a cold collation, while the Aldermen of London feasted on venison and turtle; and similar errors necessarily befell others in the confusion of the evening. But these slight mistakes, which indeed were not known till afterwards, had not the slightest effect on the general grandeur of the scene. I did not see the procession between the Abbey and Hall. In the morning a few voices called _Queen! Queen!_ as Lord Londonderry passed, and even when the Sovereign appeared. But these were only signals for the loud and reiterated acclamations in which these tones of discontent were completely drowned. In the return, no one dissonant voice intimated the least dissent from the shouts of gratulation which poured from every quarter; and certainly never Monarch received a more general welcome from his assembled subjects. You will have from others full accounts of the variety of entertainments provided for John Bull in the Parks, the River, in the Theatres, and elsewhere. Nothing was to be seen or heard but sounds of pleasure and festivity; and whoever saw the scene at any one spot, was convinced that the whole population was assembled there, while others found a similar concourse of revellers in every different point. It is computed that about _five hundred thousand people_ shared in the Festival in one way or another; and you may imagine the excellent disposition by which the people were animated, when I tell you, that, excepting a few windows broken by a small bodyguard of ragamuffins, who were in immediate attendance on the Great Lady in the morning, not the slightest political violence occurred to disturb the general harmony--and that the assembled populace seemed to be universally actuated by the spirit of the day--loyalty, namely, and good-humor. Nothing occurred to damp those happy dispositions; the weather was most propitious, and the arrangements so perfect, that no accident of any kind is reported as having taken place.--And so concluded the coronation of GEORGE IV., whom GOD long preserve. Those who witnessed it have seen a scene calculated to raise the country in their opinion, and to throw into the shade all scenes of similar magnificence, from the Field of the Cloth of Gold down to the present day. I remain, your obedient servant, AN EYE-WITNESS. [Footnote 130: Scott's schoolfellow, the Right Hon. D. Boyle.] At the close of this brilliant scene, Scott received a mark of homage to his genius which delighted him not less than Laird Nippy's reverence for the _Sheriff's Knoll_, and the Sheffield cutler's dear acquisition of his signature on a visiting ticket. Missing his carriage, he had to return home on foot from Westminster, after the banquet--that is to say, between two or 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 sergeant 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 the thing was impossible. While he was endeavoring to persuade the sergeant 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. I shall now take another extract from the _memoranda_ with which I have been favored by my friend Allan Cunningham. After the particulars formerly quoted about Scott's sitting to Chantrey in the spring of 1820, he proceeds as follows:-- "I saw Sir Walter again, when he attended the coronation, in 1821. In the mean time his bust had been wrought in marble, and the sculptor desired to take the advantage of his visit to communicate such touches of expression or lineament as the new material rendered necessary. This was done with a happiness of eye and hand almost magical: for five hours did the poet sit, or stand, or walk, while Chantrey's chisel was passed again and again over the marble, adding something at every touch. "'Well, Allan,' he said, when he saw me at this last sitting, 'were you at the coronation? it was a splendid sight.'--'No, Sir Walter,' I answered, 'places were dear and ill to get: I am told it was a magnificent scene: but having seen the procession of King Crispin at Dumfries, I was satisfied.' I said this with a smile: Scott took it as I meant it, and laughed heartily. 'That's not a bit better than Hogg,' he said. 'He stood balancing the matter whether to go to the coronation or the fair of Saint Boswell--and the fair carried it.' "During this conversation, Mr. Bolton the engineer came in. Something like a cold acknowledgment passed between the poet and him. On his passing into an inner room, Scott said, 'I am afraid Mr. Bolton has not forgot a little passage that once took place between us. We met in a public company, and in reply to the remark of some one, he said, "That's like the old saying,--in every quarter of the world you will find a Scot, a rat, and a Newcastle grindstone." This touched my Scotch spirit, and I said, "Mr. Bolton, you should have added--_and a Brummagem button_." There was a laugh at this, and Mr. Bolton replied, "We make something better in Birmingham than buttons--we make steam-engines, sir." "'I like Bolton,' thus continued Sir Walter; 'he is a brave man,--and who can dislike the brave? He showed this on a remarkable occasion. He had engaged to coin for some foreign prince a large quantity of gold. This was found out by some desperadoes, who resolved to rob the premises, and as a preliminary step tried to bribe the porter. The porter was an honest fellow,--he told Bolton that he was offered a hundred pounds to be blind and deaf next night. "Take the money," was the answer, "and I shall protect the place." Midnight came--the gates opened as if by magic--the interior doors, secured with patent locks, opened as of their own accord--and three men with dark lanterns entered and went straight to the gold. Bolton had prepared some flax steeped in turpentine--he dropt fire upon it, a sudden light filled all the place, and with his assistants, he rushed forward on the robbers,--the leader saw in a moment he was betrayed, turned on the porter, and shooting him dead, burst through all obstruction, and with an ingot of gold in his hand, scaled the wall and escaped.' "'That is quite a romance in robbing,' I said;--and I had nearly said more, for the cavern scene and death of Meg Merrilies rose in my mind;--perhaps the mind of Sir Walter was taking the direction of the Solway too, for he said, 'How long have you been from Nithsdale?'--'A dozen years.' 'Then you will remember it well. I was a visitor there in my youth; my brother was at Closeburn school, and there I found Creehope Linn, a scene ever present to my fancy. It is at once fearful and beautiful. The stream jumps down from the moorlands, saws its way into the freestone rock of a hundred feet deep, and, in escaping to the plain, performs a thousand vagaries. In one part it has actually shaped out a little chapel,--the peasants call it the Sutors' Chair. There are sculptures on the sides of the linn too, not such as Mr. Chantrey casts, but etchings scraped in with a knife perhaps, or a harrow-tooth.'--'Did you ever hear,' said Sir Walter, 'of Patrick Maxwell, who, taken prisoner by the King's troops, escaped from them on his way to Edinburgh, by flinging himself into that dreadful linn on Moffat water, called the Douglasses' Beef-tub?'--'Frequently,' I answered; 'the country abounds with anecdotes of those days: the popular feeling sympathizes with the poor Jacobites, and has recorded its sentiments in many a tale and many a verse.'--'The Ettrick Shepherd has collected not a few of those things,' said Scott, 'and I suppose many snatches of song may yet be found.'--_C._ 'I have gathered many such things myself, Sir Walter, and as I still propose to make a collection of all Scottish songs of poetic merit, I shall work up many of my stray verses and curious anecdotes in the notes.'--_S._ 'I am glad that you are about such a thing; any help which I can give you, you may command; ask me any questions, no matter how many, I shall answer them if I can. Don't be timid in your selection; our ancestors fought boldly, spoke boldly, and sang boldly too. I can help you to an old characteristic ditty not yet in print:-- "There dwalt a man into the wast, And O gin he was cruel, For on his bridal night at e'en He gat up and grat for gruel. "They brought to him a gude sheep's head, A bason, and a towel; Gar take thae whim-whams far frae me, I winna want my gruel."' "_C._--'I never heard that verse before: the hero seems related to the bridegroom of Nithsdale,-- "The bridegroom grat as the sun gade down, The bridegroom grat as the sun gade down; To ony man I'll gie a hunder marks sae free, This night that will bed wi' a bride for me."' "_S._--'A cowardly loon enough. I know of many crumbs and fragments of verse which will be useful to your work; the Border was once peopled with poets, for every one that could fight could make ballads, some of them of great power and pathos. Some such people as the minstrels were living less than a century ago.'--_C._ 'I knew a man, the last of a race of district tale-tellers, who used to boast of the golden days of his youth, and say, that the world, with all its knowledge, was grown sixpence a day worse for him.'--_S._ 'How was that? how did he make his living?--by telling tales, or singing ballads?'--_C._ 'By both: he had a devout tale for the old, and a merry song for the young; he was a sort of beggar.'--_S._ 'Out upon thee, Allan--dost thou call that begging? Why, man, we make our bread by story-telling, and honest bread it is.'" I ought not to close this extract without observing that Sir F. Chantrey presented the original bust, of which Mr. Cunningham speaks, to Sir Walter himself; by whose remotest descendants it will undoubtedly be held in additional honor on that account. The poet had the further gratification of learning that three copies were executed in marble before the original quitted the studio: One for Windsor Castle--a second for Apsley House--and a third for the friendly sculptor's own private collection. The casts of this bust have since been multiplied beyond perhaps any example whatever. Sir Walter returned to Scotland in company with his friend William Stewart Rose; and they took the way by Stratford-upon-Avon, where, on the wall of the room in which Shakespeare is supposed to have been born, the autograph of these pilgrims may still, I believe, be traced. CHAPTER LIII PUBLICATION OF MR. ADOLPHUS'S LETTERS ON THE AUTHORSHIP OF WAVERLEY 1821 During Scott's visit to London in July, 1821, there appeared a work which was read with eager curiosity and delight by the public--with much private diversion besides by his friends--and which he himself must have gone through with a very odd mixture of emotions. I allude to the volume entitled "Letters to Richard Heber, Esq., containing critical remarks on the series of novels beginning with Waverley, and an attempt to ascertain their author;" which was soon known to have been penned by Mr. John Leycester Adolphus, a distinguished alumnus of the University then represented in Parliament by Sir Walter's early friend Heber.[131] Previously to the publication of these letters, the opinion that Scott was the author of Waverley had indeed become well settled in the English, to say nothing of the Scottish mind; a great variety of circumstances, external as well as internal, had by degrees coöperated to its general establishment: yet there were not wanting persons who still dissented, or at least affected to dissent from it. It was reserved for the enthusiastic industry, and admirable ingenuity of this juvenile academic, to set the question at rest by an accumulation of critical evidence which no sophistry could evade, and yet produced in a style of such high-bred delicacy, that it was impossible for the hitherto "veiled prophet" to take the slightest offence with the hand that had forever abolished his disguise. The only sceptical scruple that survived this exposition was extinguished in due time by Scott's avowal of the _sole and unassisted_ authorship of his novels; and now Mr. Adolphus's Letters have shared the fate of other elaborate arguments, the thesis of which has ceased to be controverted. Hereafter, I am persuaded, his volume will be revived for its own sake;--but, in the mean time, regarding it merely as forming, by its original effect, an epoch in Scott's history, I think it my duty to mark my sense of its importance in that point of view, by transcribing the writer's own summary of its CONTENTS. "LETTER I.--Introduction--General reasons for believing the novels to have been written by the author of Marmion. "LETTER II.--Resemblance between the novelist and poet in their tastes, studies, and habits of life, as illustrated by their works--Both Scotchmen--Habitual residents in Edinburgh--Poets--Antiquaries--German and Spanish scholars--Equal in classical attainment--Deeply read in British history--Lawyers--Fond of field sports--Of dogs--Acquainted with most manly exercises--Lovers of military subjects--The novelist apparently not a soldier. "LETTER III.--The novelist is, like the poet, a man of good society--His stories never betray forgetfulness of honorable principles, or ignorance of good manners--Spirited pictures of gentlemanly character--Colonel Mannering--Judicious treatment of elevated historical personages--The novelist quotes and praises most contemporary poets, except the author of Marmion--Instances in which the poet has appeared to slight his own unacknowledged, but afterwards avowed productions. "LETTER IV.--Comparison of the works themselves--All distinguished by good morals and good sense--The latter particularly shown in the management of character--Prose style--Its general features--Plainness and facility--Grave banter--Manner of telling a short story--Negligence--Scotticisms--Great propriety and correctness occasionally, and sometimes unusual sweetness. "LETTER V.--Dialogue in the novels and poems--Neat colloquial turns in the former, such as cannot be expected in romantic poetry--Happy adaptation of dialogue to character, whether merely natural, or artificially modified, as by profession, local habits, etc.--Faults of dialogue, as connected with character of speakers--Quaintness of language and thought--Bookish air in conversation--Historical personages alluding to their own celebrated acts and sayings--Unsuccessful attempts at broad vulgarity--Beauties of composition peculiar to the dialogue--Terseness and spirit--These qualities well displayed in quarrels; but not in scenes of polished raillery--Eloquence. "LETTER VI.--The poetry of the author of Marmion generally characterized--His habits of composition and turn of mind as a poet, compared with those of the novelist--Their descriptions simply conceived and composed, without abstruse and far-fetched circumstances or refined comments--Great advantage derived by both from accidental combinations of images, and the association of objects in the mind with persons, events, etc.--Distinctness and liveliness of effect in narrative and description--Narrative usually picturesque or dramatic, or both--Distinctness, etc., of effect, produced in various ways--Striking pictures of individuals--Their persons, dress, etc.--Descriptions sometimes too obviously picturesque--Subjects for painters--Effects of light frequently noticed and finely described--Both writers excel in grand and complicated scenes--Among detached and occasional ornaments, the similes particularly noticed--Their frequency and beauty--Similes and metaphors sometimes quaint, and pursued too far. "LETTER VII.--Stories of the two writers compared--These are generally connected with true history, and have their scene laid in a real place--Local peculiarities diligently attended to--Instances in which the novelist and poet have celebrated the same places--they frequently describe these as seen by a traveller (the hero or some other principal personage) for the first time--Dramatic mode of relating story--Soliloquies--Some scenes degenerate into melodrame--Lyrical pieces introduced sometimes too theatrically--Comparative unimportance of heroes--Various causes of this fault--Heroes rejected by ladies, and marrying others whom they had before slighted--Personal struggle between a civilized and a barbarous hero--Characters resembling each other--Female portraits in general--Fathers and daughters--Characters in Paul's Letters--Wycliffe and Risingham--Glossin and Hatteraick--Other characters compared--Long periods of time abruptly passed over--Surprises, unexpected discoveries, etc.--These sometimes too forced and artificial--Frequent recourse to the marvellous--Dreams well described--Living persons mistaken for spectres--Deaths of Burley, Risingham, and Rashleigh. "LETTER VIII.--Comparison of particular passages--Descriptions--Miscellaneous thoughts--Instances in which the two writers have resorted to the same sources of information, and borrowed the same incidents, etc.--Same authors quoted by both--The poet, like the novelist, fond of mentioning his contemporaries, whether as private friends or as men publicly distinguished--Author of Marmion never notices the Author of Waverley (see Letter III.)--Both delight in frequently introducing an antiquated or fantastic dialect--Peculiarities of expression common to both writers--Conclusion." [Footnote 131: [John Leycester Adolphus, son of John Adolphus, eminent as a barrister and the author of various historical works, was born in 1795, and was educated at Merchant Taylors', and St. John's College, Oxford, where in 1814 he gained the Newdigate prize for English verse. He held a reputable position in his father's profession, and, beside the work described in the text, published _Letters from Spain in 1856 and 1857_. He also wrote a number of clever metrical _jeux d'esprit_. He was engaged in completing his father's _History of England under George III._ at the time of his death in 1862.]] I wish I had space for extracting copious specimens of the felicity with which Mr. Adolphus works out these various points of his problem. As it is, I must be contented with a narrow selection--and I shall take two or three of the passages which seem to me to connect themselves most naturally with the main purpose of my own compilation. "A thorough knowledge and statesmanlike understanding of the domestic history and politics of Britain at various and distant periods; a familiar acquaintance with the manners and prevailing spirit of former generations, and with the characters and habits of their most distinguished men, are of themselves no cheap or common attainments; and it is rare indeed to find them united with a strong original genius, and great brilliancy of imagination. We know, however, that the towering poet of Flodden Field is also the diligent editor of Swift and Dryden, of Lord Somers's Tracts, and of Sir Ralph Sadler's State Papers; that in these and other parts of his literary career he has necessarily plunged deep into the study of British history, biography, and antiquities, and that the talent and activity which he brought to these researches have been warmly seconded by the zeal and liberality of those who possessed the amplest and rarest sources of information. 'The Muse found him,' as he himself said long ago, 'engaged in the pursuit of historical and traditional antiquities, and the excursions which he has made in her company have been of a nature which increases his attachment to his original study.' Are we then to suppose that another writer has combined the same powers of fancy with the same spirit of investigation, the same perseverance, and the same good fortune? and shall we not rather believe, that the labor employed in the illustration of Dryden has helped to fertilize the invention which produced Montrose and Old Mortality?... "However it may militate against the supposition of his being a poet, I cannot suppress my opinion, that our novelist is a 'man of law.' He deals out the peculiar terms and phrases of that science (as practised in Scotland) with a freedom and confidence beyond the reach of any uninitiated person. If ever, in the progress of his narrative, a legal topic presents itself (which very frequently happens), he neither declines the subject, nor timidly slurs it over, but enters as largely and formally into all its technicalities, as if the case were actually 'before the fifteen.' The manners, humors, and professional _bavardage_ of lawyers, are sketched with all the ease and familiarity which result from habitual observation. In fact, the subject of law, which is a stumbling-block to others, is to the present writer a spot of repose; upon this theme he lounges and gossips, he is _discinctus et soleatus_, and, at times, almost forgets that when an author finds himself at home and perfectly at ease, he is in great danger of falling asleep.--If, then, my inferences are correct, the unknown writer who was just now proved to be an excellent poet, must also be pronounced a follower of the law: the combination is so unusual, at least on this side of the Tweed, that, as Juvenal says on a different occasion-- ... 'bimembri Hoc monstrum puero, vel mirandis sub aratro Piscibus inventis, et foetæ comparo mulsæ.' Nature has indeed presented us with one such prodigy in the author of Marmion; and it is probable, that in the author of Waverley, we only see the same specimen under a different aspect; for, however sportive the goddess may be, she has too much wit and invention to wear out a frolic by many repetitions.... "A striking characteristic of both writers is their ardent love of rural sports, and all manly and robust exercises.--But the importance given to the canine race in these works ought to be noted as a characteristic feature by itself. I have seen some drawings by a Swiss artist, who was called the Raphael of cats; and either of the writers before us might, by a similar phrase, be called the Wilkie of dogs. Is it necessary to justify such a compliment by examples? Call Yarrow, or Lufra, or poor Fangs, Colonel Mannering's Plato, Henry Morton's Elphin, or Hobbie Elliot's Kilbuck, or Wolfe of Avenel Castle:--see Fitz-James's hounds returning from the pursuit of the lost stag-- 'Back limped with slow and crippled pace The sulky leaders of the chase'-- or swimming after the boat which carries their Master-- 'With heads erect and whimpering cry The hounds behind their passage ply.' See Captain Clutterbuck's dog _quizzing_ him when he missed a bird, or the scene of 'mutual explanation and remonstrance' between 'the venerable patriarchs old Pepper and Mustard,' and Henry Bertram's rough terrier Wasp. If these instances are not sufficient, turn to the English bloodhound assailing the young Buccleuch,-- 'And hark! and hark! the deep-mouthed bark Comes nigher still and nigher; Bursts on the path a dark blood-hound, His tawny muzzle tracked the ground, And his red eye shot fire. Soon as the wildered child saw he, He flew at him right furiouslie.... I ween you would have seen with joy The bearing of the gallant boy.... So fierce he struck, the dog, afraid, At cautious distance hoarsely bayed, But still in act to spring.' Or Lord Ronald's deerhounds, in the haunted forest of Glenfinlas,-- 'Within an hour return'd each hound; In rush'd the rousers of the deer; They howl'd in melancholy sound, Then closely couch beside the seer.... Sudden the hounds erect their ears, And sudden cease their moaning howl; Close press'd to Moy, they mark their fears By shivering limbs and stifled growl. Untouch'd the harp began to ring, As softly, slowly, oped the door,' etc. Or look at Cedric the Saxon, in his antique hall, attended by his greyhounds and slowhounds, and the terriers which 'waited with impatience the arrival of the supper; but, with the sagacious knowledge of physiognomy peculiar to their race, forbore to intrude upon the moody silence of their master.' To complete the picture, 'One grisly old wolf-dog alone, with the liberty of an indulged favorite, had planted himself close by the chair of state, and occasionally ventured to solicit notice by putting his large hairy head upon his master's knee, or pushing his nose into his hand. Even he was repelled by the stern command, "Down, Balder, down! I am not in the humor for foolery."' "Another animated sketch occurs in the way of simile:--'The interview between Ratcliffe and Sharpitlaw had an aspect different from all these. They sate for five minutes silent, on opposite sides of a small table, and looked fixedly at each other, with a sharp, knowing, and alert cast of countenance, not unmingled with an inclination to laugh, and resembled, more than anything else, two dogs, who, preparing for a game at romps, are seen to crouch down, and remain in that posture for a little time, watching each other's movements, and waiting which shall begin the game.' "Let me point out a still more amusing study of canine life: 'While the Antiquary was in full declamation, Juno, who held him in awe, according to the remarkable instinct by which dogs instantly discover those who like or dislike them, had peeped several times into the room, and, encountering nothing very forbidding in his aspect, had at length presumed to introduce her full person, and finally, becoming bold by impunity, she actually ate up Mr. Oldbuck's toast, as, looking first at one, then at another of his audience, he repeated with self-complacence,-- "'Weave the warp, and weave the woof.'-- You remember the passage in the Fatal Sisters, which, by the way, is not so fine as in the original--But, hey-day! my toast has vanished! I see which way--Ah, thou type of womankind, no wonder they take offence at thy generic appellation!"--(So saying, he shook his fist at Juno, who scoured out of the parlor.)' "In short, throughout these works, wherever it is possible for a dog to contribute in any way to the effect of a scene, we find there the very dog that was required, in his proper place and attitude. In Branksome Hall, when the feast was over,-- 'The stag-hounds, weary with the chase, Lay stretched upon the rushy floor, And urged, in dreams, the forest race From Teviot-stone to Eskdale-moor.' The gentle Margaret, when she steals secretly from the castle, 'Pats the shaggy blood-hound As he rouses him up from his lair.' When Waverley visits the Baron of Bradwardine, in his concealment at Janet Gellatley's, Ban and Buscar play their parts in every point with perfect discretion; and in the joyous company that assembles at Little Veolan, on the Baron's enlargement, these honest animals are found 'stuffed to the throat with food, in the liberality of Macwheeble's joy,' and 'snoring on the floor.' In the perilous adventure of Henry Bertram, at Portanferry gaol, the action would lose half its interest, without the by-play of little Wasp. At the funeral ceremony of Duncraggan (in The Lady of the Lake), a principal mourner is ----'Stumah, who, the bier beside, His master's corpse with wonder eyed; Poor Stumah! whom his least halloo Could send like lightning o'er the dew.' Ellen Douglas smiled (or did not smile) ----'to see the stately drake, Lead forth his fleet upon the lake, While her vexed spaniel from the beach, Bayed at the prize beyond his reach.' "I will close this growing catalogue of examples with one of the most elegant descriptions that ever sprang from a poet's fancy:-- 'Delightful praise! like summer rose, That brighter in the dew-drop glows, The bashful maiden's cheek appeared, For Douglas spoke, and Malcolm heard. The flush of shame-faced joy to hide, The hounds, the hawk, her cares divide; The loved caresses of the maid The dogs with crouch and whimper paid; And, at her whistle, on her hand, The falcon took his favorite stand, Closed his dark wing, relaxed his eye, Nor, though unhooded, sought to fly.' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "Their passion for martial subjects, and their success in treating them, form a conspicuous point of resemblance between the novelist and poet. No writer has appeared in our age (and few have ever existed) who could vie with the author of Marmion in describing battles and marches, and all the terrible grandeur of war, except the author of Waverley. Nor is there any man of original genius and powerful inventive talent as conversant with the military character, and as well schooled in tactics, as the author of Waverley, except the author of Marmion. Both seem to exult in camps, and to warm at the approach of a soldier. In every warlike scene that awes and agitates, or dazzles and inspires, the poet triumphs; but where any effect is to be produced by dwelling on the minutiæ of military habits and discipline, or exhibiting the blended hues of individual humor and professional peculiarity, as they present themselves in the mess-room or the guard-room, every advantage is on the side of the novelist. I might illustrate this position by tracing all the gradations of character marked out in the novels, from the Baron of Bradwardine to Tom Halliday: but the examples are too well known to require enumeration, and too generally admired to stand in need of panegyric. Both writers, then, must have bestowed a greater attention on military subjects, and have mixed more frequently in the society of soldiers, than is usual with persons not educated to the profession of arms. "It may be asked, why we should take for granted that the writer of these novels is not himself a member of the military profession? The conjecture is a little improbable if we have been right in concluding that the minuteness and multiplicity of our author's legal details are the fruit of his own study and practice, although the same person may certainly, at different periods of life, put on the helmet and the wig, the gorget and the band; attend courts and lie in trenches; head a charge and lead a cause. I cannot help suspecting, however (it is with the greatest diffidence I venture the remark), that in those warlike recitals which so strongly interest the great body of readers, an army critic would discover several particulars that savor more of the amateur than of the practised campaigner. It is not from any technical improprieties (if such exist) that I derive this observation, but, on the contrary, from a too great minuteness and over-curious diligence, at times perceptible in the military details; which, amidst a seeming fluency and familiarity, betray, I think, here and there, the lurking vestiges of labor and contrivance, like the marks of pickaxes in an artificial grotto. The accounts of operations in the field, if not more circumstantial than a professional author would have made them, are occasionally circumstantial on points which such an author would have thought it idle to dwell upon. A writer who derived his knowledge of war from experience would, no doubt, like the Author of Waverley, delight in shaping out imaginary manoeuvres, or in filling up the traditional outline of those martial enterprises and conflicts, which have found a place in history; perhaps, too, he would dwell on these parts of his narrative a little longer than was strictly necessary; but in describing (for example) the advance of a party of soldiers, threatened by an ambuscade, he would scarcely think it worth while to relate at large that the captain 're-formed his line of march, commanded his soldiers to unsling their firelocks and fix their bayonets, and formed an advanced and rear-guard, each consisting of a non-commissioned officer and two privates, who received strict orders to keep an alert look-out:' or that when the enemy appeared, 'he ordered the rear-guard to join the centre, and both to close up to the advance, doubling his files, so as to occupy with his column the whole practicable part of the road,' etc. Again, in representing a defeated corps retiring and pressed by the enemy, he would probably never think of recording (as our novelist does in his incomparable narrative of the engagement at Drumclog) that the commanding officer gave such directions as these: 'Let Allan form the regiment, and do you two retreat up the hill in two bodies, each halting alternately as the other falls back. I'll keep the rogues in check with the rear-guard, making a stand and facing from time to time.' I do not offer these observations for the purpose of depreciating a series of military pictures, which have never been surpassed in richness, animation, and distinctness; I will own, too, that such details as I have pointed out are the fittest that could be selected for the generality of novel-readers; I merely contend, that a writer practically acquainted with war would either have passed over these circumstances as too common to require particular mention, or if he had thought it necessary to enlarge upon these, would have dwelt with proportionate minuteness on incidents of a less ordinary kind, which the recollections of a soldier would have readily supplied, and his imagination would have rested on with complacency. He would, in short, have left as little undone for the military, as the present author has for the legal part of his narratives. But the most ingenious writer who attempts to discourse with technical familiarity on arts or pursuits with which he is not habitually conversant, will too surely fall into a superfluous particularity on common and trivial points, proportioned to his deficiency in those nicer details which imply practical knowledge.... "'The prince of darkness is a gentleman.'[132] "Another point of resemblance between the author of Waverley and him of Flodden Field is, that both are unquestionably men of good society. Of the anonymous writer I infer this from his works; of the poet it is unnecessary to deduce such a character from his writings, because they are not anonymous. I am the more inclined to dwell upon this merit in the novelist, on account of its rarity; for among the whole multitude of authors, well or ill educated, who devote themselves to poetry or to narrative or dramatic fiction, how few there are who give any proof in their works, of the refined taste, the instinctive sense of propriety, the clear spirit of honor, nay, of the familiar acquaintance with conventional forms of good-breeding, which are essential to the character of a gentleman! Even of the small number who, in a certain degree, possess these qualifications, how rarely do we find one who can so conduct his fable, and so order his dialogue throughout, that nothing shall be found either repugnant to honorable feelings, or inconsistent with polished manners! How constantly, even in the best works of fiction, are we disgusted with such offences against all generous principle, as the reading of letters by those for whom they were not intended; taking advantage of accidents to overhear private conversation; revealing what in honor should have remained secret; plotting against men as enemies, and at the same time making use of their services; dishonest practices on the passions or sensibilities of women by their admirers; falsehoods, not always indirect; and an endless variety of low artifices, which appear to be thought quite legitimate if carried on through subordinate agents. And all these knaveries are assigned to characters which the reader is expected to honor with his sympathy, or at least to receive into favor before the story concludes. "The sins against propriety in manners are as frequent and as glaring. I do not speak of the hoyden vivacity, harlot tenderness, and dancing-school affability, with which vulgar novel-writers always deck out their countesses and _principessas_, chevaliers, dukes, and marquises; but it would be easy to produce, from authors of a better class, abundant instances of bookish and laborious pleasantry, of pert and insipid gossip or mere slang, the wrecks, perhaps, of an obsolete fashionable dialect, set down as the brilliant conversation of a witty and elegant society; incredible outrages on the common decorum of life, represented as traits of eccentric humor; familiar raillery pushed to downright rudeness; affectation or ill-breeding over-colored so as to become insupportable insolence; extravagant rants on the most delicate topics indulged in before all the world; expressions freely interchanged between gentlemen, which, by the customs of that class, are neither used nor tolerated; and quarrels carried on most bombastically and abusively, even to mortal defiance, without a thought bestowed upon the numbers, sex, nerves, or discretion of the bystanders. "You will perceive, that in recapitulating the offences of other writers, I have pronounced an indirect eulogium on the Author of Waverley. No man, I think, has a clearer view of what is just and honorable in principle and conduct, or possesses in a higher degree that elegant taste, and that chivalrous generosity of feeling, which, united with exact judgment, give an author the power of comprehending and expressing, not merely the right and fit, but the graceful and exalted in human action. As an illustration of these remarks, a somewhat homely one perhaps, let me call to your recollection the incident, so wild and extravagant in itself, of Sir Piercie Shafton's elopement with the miller's daughter. In the address and feeling with which the author has displayed the high-minded delicacy of Queen Elizabeth's courtier to the unguarded village nymph, in his brief reflections arising out of this part of the narrative, and indeed in his whole conception and management of the adventure, I do not know whether the moralist or the gentleman is most to be admired: it is impossible to praise too warmly either the sound taste, or the virtuous sentiment which have imparted so much grace and interest to such a hazardous episode. "It may, I think, be generally affirmed, on a review of all the six-and-thirty volumes, in which this author has related the adventures of some twenty or more heroes and heroines (without counting second-rate personages), that there is not an unhandsome action or degrading sentiment recorded of any person who is recommended to the full esteem of the reader. To be blameless on this head is one of the strongest proofs a writer can give of honorable principles implanted by education and refreshed by good society. "The correctness in morals is scarcely more remarkable than the refinement and propriety in manners, by which these novels are distinguished. Where the character of a gentleman is introduced, we generally find it supported without affectation or constraint, and often with so much truth, animation, and dignity, that we forget ourselves into a longing to behold and converse with the accomplished creature of imagination. It is true that the volatile and elegant man of wit and pleasure, and the gracefully fantastic _petite-maîtresse_, are a species of character scarcely ever attempted, and even the few sketches we meet with in this style are not worthy of so great a master. But the aristocratic country gentleman, the ancient lady of quality, the gallant cavalier, the punctilious young soldier, and the jocund veteran, whose high mind is mellowed, not subdued by years, are drawn with matchless vigor, grace, and refinement. There is, in all these creations, a spirit of gentility, not merely of that negative kind which avoids giving offence, but of a strong, commanding, and pervading quality, blending unimpaired with the richest humor and wildest eccentricity, and communicating an interest and an air of originality to characters which, without it, would be wearisome and insipid, or would fade into commonplace. In Waverley, for example, if it were not for this powerful charm, the severe but warm-hearted Major Melville and the generous Colonel Talbot would become mere ordinary machines for carrying on the plot, and Sir Everard, the hero of an episode that might be coveted by Mackenzie, would encounter the frowns of every impatient reader, for unprofitably retarding the story at its outset. "But without dwelling on minor instances, I will refer you at once to the character of Colonel Mannering, as one of the most striking representations I am acquainted with, of a gentleman in feelings and in manners, in habits, taste, predilections; nay, if the expression may be ventured, a gentleman even in prejudices, passions, and caprices. Had it been less than all I have described; had any refinement, any nicety of touch, been wanting, the whole portrait must have been coarse, common, and repulsive, hardly distinguishable from the moody father and domineering chieftain of every hackneyed romance-writer. But it was no vulgar hand that drew the lineaments of Colonel Mannering: no ordinary mind could have conceived that exquisite combination of sternness and sensibility, injurious haughtiness and chivalrous courtesy; the promptitude, decision, and imperious spirit of a military disciplinarian; the romantic caprices of an untamable enthusiast; generosity impatient of limit or impediment; pride scourged but not subdued by remorse; and a cherished philosophical severity, maintaining ineffectual conflicts with native tenderness and constitutional irritability. Supposing that it had entered into the thoughts of an inferior writer to describe a temper of mind at once impetuous, kind, arrogant, affectionate, stern, sensitive, deliberate, fanciful; supposing even that he had had the skill to combine these different qualities harmoniously and naturally,--yet how could he have attained the Shakespearean felicity of those delicate and unambitious touches, by which this author shapes and chisels out individual character from general nature, and imparts a distinct personality to the creature of his invention? Such are (for example) the slight tinge of superstition, contracted by the romantic young Astrologer in his adventure at Ellangowan, not wholly effaced in maturer life, and extending itself by contagion to the mind of his daughter," etc., etc. [Footnote 132: _King Lear_, Act III. Scene 4.] It would have gratified Mr. Adolphus could he have known when he penned these pages a circumstance which the reperusal of them brings to my memory. When Guy Mannering was first published, the Ettrick Shepherd said to Professor Wilson, "I have done wi' doubts now. Colonel Mannering is just Walter Scott, painted by himself." This was repeated to James Ballantyne, and he again mentioned it to Scott--who smiled in approbation of the Shepherd's shrewdness, and often afterwards, when the printer expressed an opinion in which he could not concur, would cut him short with, "James--James--you'll find that Colonel Mannering has laid down the law on this point."--I resume my extract:-- "All the productions I am acquainted with, both of the poet and of the prose writer, recommend themselves by a native piety and goodness, not generally predominant in modern works of imagination; and which, where they do appear, are too often disfigured by eccentricity, pretension, or bad taste. In the works before us there is a constant tendency to promote the desire of excellence in ourselves, and the love of it in our neighbors, by making us think honorably of our general nature. Whatever kindly or charitable affection, whatever principle of manly and honest ambition exists within us, is roused and stimulated by the perusal of these writings; our passions are won to the cause of justice, purity, and self-denial; and the old, indissoluble ties that bind us to country, kindred, and birthplace, appear to strengthen as we read, and brace themselves more firmly about the heart and imagination. Both writers, although peculiarly happy in their conception of all chivalrous and romantic excellencies, are still more distinguished by their deep and true feeling and expressive delineation of the graces and virtues proper to domestic life. The gallant, elevated, and punctilious character which a Frenchman contemplates in speaking of '_un honnête homme_,' is singularly combined, in these authors, with the genial, homely good qualities that win from a Caledonian the exclamation of 'honest man!' But the crown of their merits, as virtuous and moral writers, is the manly and exemplary spirit with which, upon all seasonable occasions, they pay honor and homage to religion, ascribing to it its just preëminence among the causes of human happiness, and dwelling on it as the only certain source of pure and elevated thoughts, and upright, benevolent, and magnanimous actions. "This, then, is common to the books of both writers,--that they furnish a direct and distinguished contrast to the atrabilious gloom of some modern works of genius, and the wanton, but not artless levity of others. They yield a memorable, I trust an immortal, accession to the evidences of a truth not always fashionable in literature, that the mind of man may put forth all its bold luxuriance of original thought, strong feeling, and vivid imagination, without being loosed from any sacred and social bond, or pruned of any legitimate affection; and that the Muse is indeed a 'heavenly goddess,' and not a graceless, lawless runagate, '[Greek: aphrêtôr, athemistos, anestios].' "Good sense, the sure foundation of excellence in all the arts, is another leading characteristic of these productions. Assuming the author of Waverley and the author of Marmion to be the same person, it would be difficult in our times to find a second equally free from affectation, prejudice, and every other distortion or depravity of judgment, whether arising from ignorance, weakness, or corruption of morals. It is astonishing that so voluminous and successful a writer should so seldom be betrayed into any of those 'fantastic tricks' which, in such a man, make 'the angels weep,' and (_è converso_) the critics laugh. He adopts no fashionable cant, colloquial, philosophical, or literary; he takes no delight in being unintelligible; he does not amuse himself by throwing out those fine sentimental and metaphysical threads which float upon the air, and tease and tickle the passengers, but present no palpable substance to their grasp; he aims at no beauties that 'scorn the eye of vulgar light;' he is no dealer in paradoxes; no affecter of new doctrines in taste or morals; he has no eccentric sympathies or antipathies; no maudlin philanthropy, or impertinent cynicism; no nondescript hobby-horse; and with all his matchless energy and originality of mind, he is content to admire popular books, and enjoy popular pleasures; to cherish those opinions which experience has sanctioned; to reverence those institutions which antiquity has hallowed; and to enjoy, admire, cherish, and reverence all these with the same plainness, simplicity, and sincerity as our ancestors did of old. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "I cannot help dwelling for a moment on the great similarity of manner apparent in the female portraits of the two writers. The pictures of their heroines are executed with a peculiar fineness, delicacy, and minuteness of touch, and with a care at times almost amounting to timidity, so that they generally appear more highly finished, but less boldly and strikingly thrown out, than the figures with which they are surrounded. Their elegance and purity are always admirable, and are happily combined, in most instances, with unaffected ease and natural spirit. Strong practical sense is their most prevailing characteristic, unaccompanied by any repulsive air of selfishness, pedantry, or unfeminine harshness. Few writers have ever evinced, in so strong a degree as the authors of Marmion and Waverley, that manly regard, and dignified but enthusiastic devotion, which may be expressed by the term loyalty to the fair sex, the honorable attribute of chivalrous and romantic ages. If they touch on the faults of womankind, their satire is playful, not contemptuous; and their acquaintance with female manners, graces, and foibles, is apparently drawn, not from libertine experience, but from the guileless familiarity of domestic life. "Of all human ties and connections there is none so frequently brought in view, or adorned with so many touches of the most affecting eloquence by both these writers, as the pure and tender relation of father and daughter. Douglas and Ellen in The Lady of the Lake will immediately occur to you as a distinguished example. Their mutual affection and solicitude; their pride in each other's excellencies; the parent's regret of the obscurity to which fate has doomed his child; and the daughter's self-devotion to her father's welfare and safety, constitute the highest interest of the poem, and that which is most uniformly sustained; nor does this or any other romance of the same author contain a finer stroke of passion than the overboiling of Douglas's wrath, when, mixed as a stranger with the crowd at Stirling, he sees his daughter's favorite Lufra chastised by the royal huntsman. "In Rokeby, the filial attachment and duteous anxieties of Matilda form the leading feature of her character, and the chief source of her distresses. The intercourse between King Arthur and his daughter Gyneth, in The Bridal of Triermain, is neither long, nor altogether amicable; but the monarch's feelings on first beholding that beautiful 'slip of wilderness,' and his manner of receiving her before the queen and court, are too forcibly and naturally described to be omitted in this enumeration. "Of all the novels, there are at most but two or three in which a fond father and affectionate daughter may not be pointed out among the principal characters, and in which the main interest of many scenes does not arise out of that paternal and filial relation. What a beautiful display of natural feeling, under every turn of circumstances that can render the situations of child and parent agonizing or delightful, runs through the history of David Deans and his two daughters! How affecting is the tale of Leicester's unhappy Countess, after we have seen her forsaken father consuming away with moody sorrow in his joyless manor-house! How exquisite are the grouping and contrast of Isaac, the kind but sordid Jew, and his heroic Rebecca, of the buckram Baron of Bradwardine and the sensitive Rose, the reserved but ardent Mannering, and the flighty coquette Julia! In The Antiquary, and Bride of Lammermoor, anxiety is raised to the most painful height by the spectacle of father and daughter exposed together to imminent and frightful peril. The heroines in Rob Roy and The Black Dwarf are duteous and devoted daughters, the one of an unfortunate, the other of an unworthy parent. In the whole story of Kenilworth there is nothing that more strongly indicates a master-hand than the paternal carefulness and apprehensions of the churl Foster; and among the most striking scenes in A Legend of Montrose is that in which Sir Duncan Campbell is attracted by an obscure yearning of the heart toward his unknown child, the supposed orphan of Darlinvarach." I must not attempt to follow out Mr. Adolphus in his most ingenious tracings of petty coincidences in thought, and, above all, in expression, between the poet of Marmion and the novelist of Waverley. His apology for the minuteness of his detail in that part of his work is, however, too graceful to be omitted: "It cannot, I think, appear frivolous or irrelevant, in the inquiry we are pursuing, to dwell on these minute coincidences. Unimportant indeed they are if looked upon as subjects of direct criticism; but considered with reference to our present purpose, they resemble those light substances which, floating on the trackless sea, discover the true setting of some mighty current: they are the buoyant driftwood which betrays the hidden communication of two great poetic oceans." I conclude with re-quoting a fragment from one of the quaint tracts of Sir Thomas Urquhart. The following is the epigraph of Mr. Adolphus's 5th Letter:-- "O with how great liveliness did he represent the conditions of all manner of men! From the overweening monarch to the peevish swaine, through all intermediate degrees of the superficial courtier or proud warrior, dissembling churchman, doting old man, cozening lawyer, lying traveler, covetous merchant, rude seaman, pedantick scolar, the amorous shepheard, envious artisan, vain-glorious master, and tricky servant;----He had all the jeers, squibs, flouts, buls, quips, taunts, whims, jests, clinches, gybes, mokes, jerks, with all the several kinds of equivocations and other sophistical captions, that could properly be adapted to the person by whose representation he intended to inveagle the company into a fit of mirth!" I have it not in my power to produce the letter in which Scott conveyed to Heber his opinion of this work. I know, however, that it ended with a request that he should present Mr. Adolphus with his thanks for the handsome terms in which his poetical efforts had been spoken of throughout, and request him, in the name of the _author of Marmion_, not to revisit Scotland without reserving a day for Abbotsford; and the _Eidolon_ of the author of _Waverley_ was made, a few months afterwards, to speak as follows in the Introduction to The Fortunes of Nigel: "These letters to the member for the University of Oxford show the wit, genius, and delicacy of the author, which I heartily wish to see engaged on a subject of more importance; and show, besides, that the preservation of my character of _incognito_ has engaged early talent in the discussion of a curious question of evidence. But a cause, however ingeniously pleaded, is not therefore gained. You may remember the neatly wrought chain of circumstantial evidence, so artificially brought forward to prove Sir Philip Francis's title to the Letters of Junius, seemed at first irrefragable; yet the influence of the reasoning has passed away, and Junius, in the general opinion, is as much unknown as ever. But on this subject I will not be soothed or provoked into saying one word more. To say who I am not, would be one step towards saying who I am; and as I desire not, any more than a certain Justice of Peace mentioned by Shenstone, the noise or report such things make in the world, I shall continue to be silent on a subject which, in my opinion, is very undeserving the noise that has been made about it, and still more unworthy of the serious employment of such ingenuity as has been displayed by the young letter-writer." CHAPTER LIV New Buildings at Abbotsford. -- Chiefswood. -- William Erskine. -- Letter to Countess Purgstall. -- Progress of the Pirate. -- Franck's Northern Memoir, and Notes of Lord Fountainhall, Published. -- Private Letters in the Reign of James I. -- Commencement of the Fortunes of Nigel. -- Second Sale of Copyrights. -- Contract for "Four Works of Fiction." -- Enormous Profits of the Novelist, and Extravagant Projects of Constable. -- The Pirate Published. -- Lord Byron's Cain, Dedicated to Scott. -- Affair of the Beacon Newspaper. 1821 [Illustration: CHIEFSWOOD _After the drawing by J. M. W. Turner_] When Sir Walter returned from London, he brought with him the detailed plans of Mr. Atkinson for the completion of his house at Abbotsford; which, however, did not extend to the gateway or the beautiful screen between the court and the garden--for these graceful parts of the general design were conceptions of his own, reduced to shape by the skill of the Messrs. Smith of Darnick. It would not, indeed, be easy for me to apportion rightly the constituent members of the whole edifice;--throughout there were numberless consultations with Mr. Blore, Mr. Terry, and Mr. Skene, as well as with Mr. Atkinson--and the actual builders placed considerable inventive talents, as well as admirable workmanship, at the service of their friendly employer. Every preparation was now made by them, and the foundations might have been set about without farther delay; but he was very reluctant to authorize the demolition of the rustic porch of the old cottage, with its luxuriant overgrowth of roses and jessamines; and, in short, could not make up his mind to sign the death-warrant of this favorite bower until winter had robbed it of its beauties. He then made an excursion from Edinburgh, on purpose to be present at its downfall--saved as many of the creepers as seemed likely to survive removal, and planted them with his own hands about a somewhat similar porch, erected expressly for their reception, at his daughter Sophia's little cottage of Chiefswood. There my wife and I spent this summer and autumn of 1821--the first of several seasons, which will ever dwell on my memory as the happiest of my life. We were near enough Abbotsford to partake as often as we liked of its brilliant society; yet could do so without being exposed to the worry and exhaustion of spirit which the daily reception of newcomers entailed upon all the family except Sir Walter himself. But, in truth, even he was not always proof against the annoyances connected with such a style of open-house-keeping. Even his temper sunk sometimes under the solemn applauses of learned dulness, the vapid raptures of painted and periwigged dowagers, the horse-leech avidity with which underbred foreigners urged their questions, and the pompous simpers of condescending magnates. When sore beset at home in this way, he would every now and then discover that he had some very particular business to attend to on an outlying part of his estate, and craving the indulgence of his guests overnight, appear at the cabin in the glen before its inhabitants were astir in the morning. The clatter of Sibyl Grey's hoofs, the yelping of Mustard and Spice, and his own joyous shout of _reveillée_ under our windows, were the signal that he had burst his toils, and meant for that day to "take his ease in his inn." On descending, he was to be found seated with all his dogs and ours about him, under a spreading ash that overshadowed half the bank between the cottage and the brook, pointing the edge of his woodman's axe for himself, and listening to Tom Purdie's lecture touching the plantation that most needed thinning. After breakfast, he would take possession of a dressing-room upstairs, and write a chapter of The Pirate; and then, having made up and despatched his packet for Mr. Ballantyne, away to join Purdie wherever the foresters were at work--and sometimes to labor among them as strenuously as John Swanston himself--until it was time either to rejoin his own party at Abbotsford, or the quiet circle of the cottage.--When his guests were few and friendly, he often made them come over and meet him at Chiefswood in a body towards evening;[133] and surely he never appeared to more amiable advantage than when helping his young people with their little arrangements upon such occasions. He was ready with all sorts of devices to supply the wants of a narrow establishment; he used to delight particularly in sinking the wine in a well under the _brae_ ere he went out, and hauling up the basket just before dinner was announced--this primitive process being, he said, what he had always practised when a young housekeeper; and in his opinion far superior in its results to any application of ice; and, in the same spirit, whenever the weather was sufficiently genial, he voted for dining out of doors altogether, which at once got rid of the inconvenience of very small rooms, and made it natural and easy for the gentlemen to help the ladies, so that the paucity of servants went for nothing. Mr. Rose used to amuse himself with likening the scene and the party to the closing act of one of those little French dramas, where "Monsieur le Comte" and "Madame la Comtesse" appear feasting at a village bridal under the trees; but in truth, our "M. le Comte" was only trying to live over again for a few simple hours his own old life of Lasswade. [Footnote 133: [Among the friendly visitors at this time was Mr. Charles Young, who brought with him his son. The latter in his diary sketches, not without some vivid touches, the days spent at Abbotsford. One slight incident connected with Scott's greeting of his guests may be noted. On hearing the lad's Christian name, he exclaimed with emphasis, "Why, whom is he called after?" On being told that the name was in memory of the boy's mother, Julia Anne, he replied, "Well, it is a capital name for a novel, I must say;" a remark which Julian Young naturally recalled when _Peveril_ was published. The Youngs also visited Chiefswood, and the youthful diarist was much impressed by Lockhart's strikingly handsome face, while "his deference and attention to his father-in-law were delightful to witness."--See _Memoir of Charles Mayne Young_, pp. 88-96.]] When circumstances permitted, he usually spent one evening at least in the week at our little cottage; and almost as frequently he did the like with the Fergusons, to whose table he could bring chance visitors, when he pleased, with equal freedom as to his daughter's. Indeed it seemed to be much a matter of chance, any fine day when there had been no alarming invasion of the Southron, whether the three families (which, in fact, made but one) should dine at Abbotsford, Huntly Burn, or at Chiefswood; and at none of them was the party considered quite complete, unless it included also Mr. Laidlaw. Death has laid a heavy hand upon that circle--as happy a circle I believe as ever met. Bright eyes now closed in dust, gay voices forever silenced, seem to haunt me as I write. With three exceptions, they are all gone. Even since the last of these volumes[134] was finished, she whom I may now sadly record as, next to Sir Walter himself, the chief ornament and delight at all those simple meetings--she to whose love I owed my own place in them--Scott's eldest daughter, the one of all his children who in countenance, mind, and manners, most resembled himself, and who indeed was as like him in all things as a gentle innocent woman can ever be to a great man deeply tried and skilled in the struggles and perplexities of active life--she, too, is no more. And in the very hour that saw her laid in her grave, the only other female survivor, her dearest friend Margaret Ferguson, breathed her last also.--But enough--and more than I intended--I must resume the story of Abbotsford. [Footnote 134: The 4th vol. of the original edition was published in July--the 5th (of which this was the sixth chapter) in October, 1837.] During several weeks of that delightful summer, Scott had under his roof Mr. William Erskine and two of his daughters; this being, I believe, their first visit to Tweedside since the death of Mrs. Erskine in September, 1819. He had probably made a point of having his friend with him at this particular time, because he was desirous of having the benefit of his advice and corrections from day to day as he advanced in the composition of The Pirate--with the localities of which romance the Sheriff of Orkney and Zetland was of course thoroughly familiar. At all events, the constant and eager delight with which Erskine watched the progress of the tale has left a deep impression on my memory; and indeed I heard so many of its chapters first read from the MS. by him, that I can never open the book now without thinking I hear his voice. Sir Walter used to give him at breakfast the pages he had written that morning; and very commonly, while he was again at work in his study, Erskine would walk over to Chiefswood, that he might have the pleasure of reading them aloud to my wife and me under our favorite tree, before the packet had to be sealed up for the printer, or rather for the transcriber in Edinburgh. I cannot paint the delight and the pride with which he acquitted himself on such occasions. The little artifice of his manner was merely superficial, and was wholly forgotten as tender affection and admiration, fresh as the impulses of childhood, glistened in his eye, and trembled in his voice. This reminds me that I have not yet attempted any sketch of the person and manners of Scott's most intimate friend. Their case was no contradiction to the old saying, that the most attached comrades are often very unlike each other in character and temperament. The mere physical contrast was as strong as could well be, and this is not unworthy of notice here; for Erskine was, I think, the only man in whose society Scott took great pleasure, during the more vigorous part of his life, that had neither constitution nor inclination for any of the rough bodily exercises in which he himself delighted. The Counsellor (as Scott always called him) was a little man of feeble make, who seemed unhappy when his pony got beyond a footpace, and had never, I should suppose, addicted himself to any out-of-doors sport whatever. He would, I fancy, have as soon thought of slaying his own mutton as of handling a fowling-piece: he used to shudder when he saw a party equipped for coursing, as if murder were in the wind; but the cool meditative angler was in his eyes the abomination of abominations. His small elegant features, hectic cheek, and soft hazel eyes, were the index of the quick sensitive gentle spirit within. He had the warm heart of a woman, her generous enthusiasm, and some of her weaknesses. A beautiful landscape, or a fine strain of music, would send the tears rolling down his cheek; and though capable, I have no doubt, of exhibiting, had his duty called him to do so, the highest spirit of a hero or a martyr, he had very little command over his nerves amidst circumstances such as men of ordinary mould (to say nothing of iron fabrics like Scott's) regard with indifference. He would dismount to lead his horse down what his friend hardly perceived to be a descent at all; grew pale at a precipice; and, unlike the White Lady of Avenel, would go a long way round for a bridge. Erskine had as yet been rather unfortunate in his professional career, and thought a sheriffship by no means the kind of advancement due to his merits, and which his connections might naturally have secured for him. These circumstances had at the time when I first observed him tinged his demeanor; he had come to intermingle a certain wayward snappishness now and then with his forensic exhibitions, and in private seemed inclined (though altogether incapable of abandoning the Tory party) to say bitter things of people in high places; but with these exceptions, never was benevolence towards all the human race more lively and overflowing than his evidently was, even when he considered himself as one who had reason to complain of his luck in the world. Now, however, these little asperities had disappeared; one great real grief had cast its shadow over him, and submissive to the chastisement of heaven, he had no longer any thoughts for the petty misusage of mankind. Scott's apprehension was, that his ambition was extinguished with his resentment; and he was now using every endeavor, in connection with their common friend the Lord Advocate Rae, to procure for Erskine that long-coveted seat on the bench, about which the subdued widower himself had ceased to occupy his mind. By and by these views were realized to Scott's high satisfaction, and for a brief season with the happiest effect on Erskine's own spirits;--but I shall not anticipate the sequel. Meanwhile he shrunk from the collisions of general society in Edinburgh, and lived almost exclusively in his own little circle of intimates. His conversation, though somewhat precise and finical on the first impression, was rich in knowledge. His literary ambition, active and aspiring at the outset, had long before this time merged in his profound veneration for Scott; but he still read a great deal, and did so as much I believe with a view to assisting Scott by hints and suggestions, as for his own amusement. He had much of his friend's tact in extracting the picturesque from old, and, generally speaking, dull books; and in bringing out his stores he often showed a great deal of quaint humor and sly wit. Scott, on his side, respected, trusted, and loved him, much as an affectionate husband does the wife who gave him her heart in youth, and thinks his thoughts rather than her own in the evening of life; he soothed, cheered, and sustained Erskine habitually. I do not believe a more entire and perfect confidence ever subsisted than theirs was and always had been in each other; and to one who had duly observed the creeping jealousies of human nature, it might perhaps seem doubtful on which side the balance of real nobility of heart and character, as displayed in their connection at the time of which I am speaking, ought to be cast. Among the common friends of their young days, of whom they both delighted to speak--and always spoke with warm and equal affection--was the sister of their friend Cranstoun, the confidant of Scott's first unfortunate love, whom neither had now seen for a period of more than twenty years. This lady had undergone domestic afflictions more than sufficient to have crushed almost any spirit but her own. Her husband, the Count Purgstall, had died some years before this time, leaving her an only son, a youth of the most amiable disposition, and possessing abilities which, had he lived to develop them, must have secured for him a high station in the annals of genius. This hope of her eyes, the last heir of an illustrious lineage, followed his father to the tomb in the nineteenth year of his age. The desolate Countess was urged by her family in Scotland to return, after this bereavement, to her native country; but she had vowed to her son on his deathbed, that one day her dust should be mingled with his; and no argument could induce her to depart from the resolution of remaining in solitary Styria. By her desire, a valued friend of the house of Purgstall, who had been born and bred up on their estates, the celebrated Orientalist, Joseph von Hammer, compiled a little memoir of The Two Last Counts of Purgstall, which he put forth, in January, 1821, under the title of Denkmahl, or Monument; and of this work the Countess sent a copy to Sir Walter (with whom her correspondence had been during several years suspended), by the hands of her eldest brother, Mr. Henry Cranstoun, who had been visiting her in Styria, and who at this time occupied a villa within a few miles of Abbotsford. Scott's letter of acknowledgment never reached her; and indeed I doubt if it was ever despatched. He appears to have meditated a set of consolatory verses for its conclusion, and the Muse not answering his call at the moment, I suspect he had allowed the sheet, which I now transcribe, to fall aside and be lost sight of among his multifarious masses of MS. TO THE COUNTESS PURGSTALL, ETC., ETC. MY DEAR AND MUCH-VALUED FRIEND,--You cannot imagine how much I was interested and affected by receiving your token of your kind recollection, after the interval of so many years. Your brother Henry breakfasted with me yesterday, and gave me the letter and the book, which served me as a matter of much melancholy reflection for many hours. Hardly anything makes the mind recoil so much upon itself, as the being suddenly and strongly recalled to times long past, and that by the voice of one whom we have so much loved and respected. Do not think I have ever forgotten you, or the many happy days I passed in Frederick Street, in society which fate has separated so far, and for so many years. The little volume was particularly acceptable to me, as it acquainted me with many circumstances, of which distance and imperfect communication had either left me entirely ignorant, or had transmitted only inaccurate information. Alas, my dear friend, what can the utmost efforts of friendship offer you, beyond the sympathy which, however sincere, must sound like an empty compliment in the ear of affliction? God knows with what willingness I would undertake anything which might afford you the melancholy consolation of knowing how much your old and early friend interests himself in the sad event which has so deeply wounded your peace of mind. The verses, therefore, which conclude this letter, must not be weighed according to their intrinsic value, for the more inadequate they are to express the feelings they would fain convey, the more they show the author's anxious wish to do what may be grateful to you. In truth, I have long given up poetry. I have had my day with the public; and being no great believer in poetical immortality, I was very well pleased to rise a winner, without continuing the game till I was beggared of any credit I had acquired. Besides, I felt the prudence of giving way before the more forcible and powerful genius of Byron. If I were either greedy, or jealous of poetical fame--and both are strangers to my nature--I might comfort myself with the thought, that I would hesitate to strip myself to the contest so fearlessly as Byron does; or to command the wonder and terror of the public, by exhibiting, in my own person, the sublime attitude of the dying gladiator. But with the old frankness of twenty years since, I will fairly own, that this same delicacy of mine may arise more from conscious want of vigor and inferiority, than from a delicate dislike to the nature of the conflict. At any rate, there is a time for everything, and without swearing oaths to it, I think my time for poetry has gone by. My health suffered horridly last year, I think from over-labor and excitation; and though it is now apparently restored to its usual tone, yet during the long and painful disorder (spasms in the stomach) and the frightful process of cure, by a prolonged use of calomel, I learned that my frame was made of flesh, and not of iron--a conviction which I will long keep in remembrance, and avoid any occupation so laborious and agitating as poetry must be, to be worth anything. In this humor I often think of passing a few weeks on the Continent--a summer vacation if I can--and of course my attraction to Gratz would be very strong. I fear this is the only chance of our meeting in this world--we, who once saw each other daily! for I understand from George and Henry that there is little chance of your coming here. And when I look around me, and consider how many changes you would see in feature, form, and fashion, amongst all you knew and loved; and how much, no sudden squall, or violent tempest, but the slow and gradual progress of life's long voyage, has severed all the gallant fellowships whom you left spreading their sails to the morning breeze, I really am not sure that you would have much pleasure. The gay and wild romance of life is over with all of us. The real, dull, and stern history of humanity has made a far greater progress over our heads; and age, dark and unlovely, has laid his crutch over the stoutest fellow's shoulders. One thing your old society may boast, that they have all run their course with honor, and almost all with distinction; and the brother suppers of Frederick Street have certainly made a very considerable figure in the world, as was to be expected from her talents under whose auspices they were assembled. One of the most pleasant sights which you would see in Scotland, as it now stands, would be your brother George in possession of the most beautiful and romantic place in Clydesdale--Corehouse. I have promised often to go out with him, and assist him with my deep experience as a planter and landscape gardener. I promise you my oaks will outlast my laurels; and I pique myself more upon my compositions for manure than on any other compositions whatsoever to which I was ever accessary. But so much does business of one sort or other engage us both, that we never have been able to fix a time which suited us both; and with the utmost wish to make out the party, perhaps we never may. This is a melancholy letter, but it is chiefly so from the sad tone of yours--who have had such real disasters to lament--while mine is only the humorous sadness, which a retrospect on human life is sure to produce on the most prosperous. For my own course of life, I have only to be ashamed of its prosperity, and afraid of its termination; for I have little reason, arguing on the doctrine of chances, to hope that the same good fortune will attend me forever. I have had an affectionate and promising family, many friends, few unfriends, and, I think, no enemies--and more of fame and fortune than mere literature ever procured for a man before. I dwell among my own people, and have many whose happiness is dependent on me, and which I study to the best of my power. I trust my temper, which you know is by nature good and easy, has not been spoiled by flattery or prosperity; and therefore I have escaped entirely that irritability of disposition which I think is planted, like the slave in the poet's chariot, to prevent his enjoying his triumph. Should things, therefore, change with me--and in these times, or indeed in any times, such change is to be apprehended--I trust I shall be able to surrender these adventitious advantages, as I would my upper dress, as something extremely comfortable, but which I can make shift to do without.[135]... [Footnote 135: In communicating this letter to my friend Captain Hall, when he was engaged in his Account of a Visit to Madame de Purgstall during the last months of her life, I suggested to him, in consequence of an expression about Scott's health, that it must have been written in 1820. The date of the _Denkmahl_, to which it refers, is, however, sufficient evidence that I ought to have said 1821.] As I may have no occasion hereafter to allude to the early friend with whose sorrows Scott thus sympathized amidst the meridian splendors of his own worldly career, I may take this opportunity of mentioning, that Captain Basil Hall's conjecture, of her having been the original of Diana Vernon, appeared to myself from the first chimerical; and that I have since heard those who knew her best in the days of her intercourse with Sir Walter, express the same opinion in the most decided manner. But to return. While The Pirate was advancing under Mr. Erskine's eye, Scott had even more than the usual allowance of minor literary operations on hand. He edited a reprint of a curious old book, called Franck's Northern Memoir, and the Contemplative Angler; and he also prepared for the press a volume published soon after, under the title of "Chronological Notes on Scottish Affairs, 1680 to 1701, from the Diary of Lord Fountainhall." The professional writings of that celebrated old lawyer had been much in his hands from his early years, on account of the incidental light which they throw on the events of a most memorable period in Scottish history: and he seems to have contemplated some more considerable selection from his remains, but to have dropped these intentions, on being given to understand that they might interfere with those of Lord Fountainhall's accomplished representative, the present Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Baronet. It is, however, to be regretted that Sir Thomas's promise of a Life of his eminent ancestor has not yet been redeemed. In August appeared the volume of the Novelists' Library containing Scott's Life of Smollett; and it being now ascertained that John Ballantyne had died a debtor, the editor offered to proceed with this series of prefaces, on the footing that the whole profits of the work should go to his widow. Mr. Constable, whose health was now beginning to break, had gone southwards in quest of more genial air, and was at Hastings when he heard of this proposition. He immediately wrote to me, entreating me to represent to Sir Walter that the undertaking, having been coldly received at first, was unlikely to grow in favor if continued on the same plan--that in his opinion the bulk of the volumes, and the small type of their text, had been unwisely chosen, for a work of mere entertainment, and could only be suitable for one of reference; that Ballantyne's Novelists' Library, therefore, ought to be stopped at once, and another in a lighter shape, to range with the late collected edition of the first series of the Waverley Romances, announced with his own name as publisher, and Scott's as editor. He proposed at the same time to commence the issue of a Select Library of English Poetry, with prefaces and a few notes by the same hand; and calculating that each of these collections should extend to twenty-five volumes, and that the publication of both might be concluded within two years--"the writing of the prefaces, etc., forming perhaps an occasional relief from more important labors"!--the bookseller offered to pay their editor in all the sum of £6000: a small portion of which sum, as he hinted, would undoubtedly be more than Mrs. John Ballantyne could ever hope to derive from the prosecution of her husband's last publishing adventure. Various causes combined to prevent the realization of these magnificent projects. Scott now, as at the beginning of his career of speculation, had views about what a collection of English Poetry should be, in which even Constable could not, on consideration, be made to concur; and I have already explained the coldness with which he regarded further attempts upon our Elder Novelists. The Ballantyne Library crept on to the tenth volume, and was then dropped abruptly; and the double negotiation with Constable was never renewed. Lady Louisa Stuart had not, I fancy, read Scott's Lives of the Novelists until, some years after this time, they were collected into two little piratical duodecimos by a Parisian bookseller; and on her then expressing her admiration of them, together with her astonishment that the speculation of which they formed a part should have attracted little notice of any sort, he answered as follows: "I am delighted they afford any entertainment, for they are rather flimsily written, being done merely to oblige a friend: they were yoked to a great, ill-conditioned, lubberly, double-columned book, which they were as useful to tug along as a set of fleas would be to draw a mail-coach. It is very difficult to answer your Ladyship's curious question concerning change of taste; but whether in young or old, it takes place insensibly without the parties being aware of it.[136] A grand-aunt of my own, Mrs. Keith of Ravelston,--who was a person of some condition, being a daughter of Sir John Swinton of Swinton,--lived with unabated vigor of intellect to a very advanced age. She was very fond of reading, and enjoyed it to the last of her long life. One day she asked me, when we happened to be alone together, whether I had ever seen Mrs. Behn's novels?--I confessed the charge.--Whether I could get her a sight of them?--I said, with some hesitation, I believed I could; but that I did not think she would like either the manners, or the language, which approached too near that of Charles II.'s time to be quite proper reading. 'Nevertheless,' said the good old lady, 'I remember them being so much admired, and being so much interested in them myself, that I wish to look at them again.' To hear was to obey. So I sent Mrs. Aphra Behn, curiously sealed up, with 'private and confidential' on the packet, to my gay old grand-aunt. The next time I saw her afterwards, she gave me back Aphra, properly wrapped up, with nearly these words: 'Take back your bonny Mrs. Behn; and, if you will take my advice, put her in the fire, for I found it impossible to get through the very first novel. But is it not,' she said, 'a very odd thing that I, an old woman of eighty and upwards, sitting alone, feel myself ashamed to read a book which, sixty years ago, I have heard read aloud for the amusement of large circles, consisting of the first and most creditable society in London?' This, of course, was owing to the gradual improvement of the national taste and delicacy. The change that brings into and throws out of fashion particular styles of composition, is something of the same kind. It does not signify what the greater or less merit of the book is;--the reader, as Tony Lumpkin says, must be in a concatenation accordingly--the fashion, or the general taste, must have prepared him to be pleased, or put him on his guard against it. It is much like dress. If Clarissa should appear before a modern party in her lace ruffles and head-dress, or Lovelace in his wig, however genteelly powdered, I am afraid they would make no conquests; the fashion which makes conquests of us in other respects, is very powerful in literary composition, and adds to the effect of some works, while in others it forms their sole merit." [Footnote 136: [Lady Louisa in her letter, written in 1826, after speaking of the delight which the _Lives_ had given to some of her friends, tells of their being induced, by something said of Mackenzie, to read aloud _The Man of Feeling_. The experiment failed sadly, the (supposedly) finest touches only causing laughter. And yet the writer could remember when the book had been read with rapture and many tears. In her girlhood the _Nouvelle Héloïse_ was the prohibited book which all young persons longed to read. Now she finds that if it falls in their way, it interests them not at all. So she propounds the question which Sir Walter tries to answer.--See _Selections from the Manuscripts of Lady Louisa Stuart_, pp. 233-236.]] Among other miscellaneous work of this autumn, Scott amused some leisure hours with writing a series of Private Letters, supposed to have been discovered in the repositories of a Noble English Family, and giving a picture of manners in town and country during the early part of the reign of James I. These letters were printed as fast as he penned them, in a handsome quarto form, and he furnished the margin with a running commentary of notes, drawn up in the character of a disappointed chaplain, a keen Whig, or rather Radical, overflowing on all occasions with spleen against Monarchy and Aristocracy. When the printing had reached the 72d page, however, he was told candidly by Erskine, by James Ballantyne, and also by myself, that, however clever his imitation of the epistolary style of the period in question, he was throwing away in these letters the materials of as good a romance as he had ever penned; and a few days afterwards he said to me--patting Sibyl's neck till she danced under him,--"You were all quite right: if the letters had passed for genuine they would have found favor only with a few musty antiquaries, and if the joke were detected, there was not story enough to carry it off. I shall burn the sheets, and give you Bonny King Jamie and all his tail in the old shape, as soon as I can get Captain Goffe within view of the gallows." Such was the origin of The Fortunes of Nigel. As one set of the uncompleted Letters has been preserved, I shall here insert a specimen of them, in which the reader will easily recognize the germ of more than one scene of the novel.[137] [Footnote 137: [Two of Sir Walter's friends were to assist him in these _Private Letters_. On June 16 he writes to Mr. Morritt: "Pray, my good Lord of Rokeby, be my very gracious good lord, and think of our pirated letters. It will be an admirable amusement for you, and I hold you accountable for two or three academical epistles of the period, full of thumping quotations of Greek and Latin in order to explain what needs no explanation, and fortify sentiments which are indisputable." In another letter, one of his last, written to Lockhart from Naples in the spring of 1832, Scott says: "You may remember a work in which our dear and accomplished friend, Lady Louisa, condescended to take an oar, and which she handled most admirably. It is a supposed set of extracts ... from a collection in James VI.'s time, the costume admirably preserved, and like the fashionable wigs more natural than one's own hair."--_Familiar Letters_, vol. ii. p. 120, and _Journal_, vol. ii. p. 473.]] JENKIN HARMAN TO THE LORD ----. MY LORD,--Towching this new mishappe of Sir Thomas, whereof your Lordshippe makes querie of me, I wolde hartilie that I could, truth and my bounden dutie alweys firste satisfied, make suche answer as were fullie pleasaunte to me to write, or unto your Lordshippe to reade. But what remedy? young men will have stirring bloodes; and the courtier-like gallants of the time will be gamesome and dangerous, as they have beene in dayes past. I think your Lordshippe is so wise as to caste one eye backe to your own more juvenile time, whilest you looke forward with the other upon this mischaunce, which, upon my lyfe, will be founde to be no otherwise harmful to Sir Thomas than as it shews him an hastie Hotspur of the day, suddenlie checking at whatsoever may seem to smirche his honour. As I am a trew man, and your Lordship's poore kinsman and bounden servant, I think ther lives not a gentleman more trew to his friende than Sir Thomas; and although ye be but brothers uterine, yet so dearly doth he holde your favour, that his father, were the gode knight alyve, should not have more swaye with him than shalle your Lordship; and, also, it is no kindly part to sow discord betwene brethrene; for, as the holy Psalmist saythe, "_Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum habitare fratres_," etc. And moreover, it needes not to tell your Lordshippe that Sir Thomas is suddene in his anger; and it was but on Wednesday last that he said to me, with moche distemperature,--Master Jenkin, I be tolde that ye meddle and make betwene me and my Lorde my brother; wherfore, take this for feyr warninge, that when I shall fynde you so dooyng, I will incontinent put my dager to the hilte in you:--and this was spoken with all earnestness of visage and actioun, grasping of his poinard's handle, as one who wolde presentlie make his words good. Surely, my Lord, it is not fair carriage toward you pore kinsman if anie out of your house make such reports of me, and of that which I have written to you in sympleness of herte, and in obedience to your commandemente, which is my law on this matter. Truely, my Lord, I wolde this was well looked to, otherweys my rewarde for trew service might be to handsell with my herte's blode the steel of a Milan poignado. Natheless, I will procede with my mater, fal back fal edge, trustyng all utterly in the singleness of my integretie, and in your Lordshippe's discretioun. My Lorde, the braule which hath befallen chaunced this waye, and not otherwise. It hap'd that one Raines, the master of the ordinarie where his honour Sir Thomas eteth well nie dailie (when he is not in attendance at courte, wherein he is perchance more slacke than were wise), shoulde assemble some of the beste who haunte his house, havyng diet ther for money. The purpose, as shewn forthe, was to tast a new piece of choice wyne, and ther Sir Thomas must nedes be, or the purpos holdes not, and the Alicant becometh Bastard. Wel, my Lord, dice ther wer and music, lustie helthes and dizzie braines,--some saye fair ladyes also, of which I know nought, save that suche cockatrices hatch wher such cockes of the game do haunt. Alweys ther was revel and wassail enow and to spare. Now it chaunced, that whilst one Dutton, of Graie's-Inn, an Essex man, held the dice, Sir Thomas fillethe a fulle carouse to the helth of the fair Ladie Elizabeth. Trulie, my Lord, I cannot blame his devotioun to so fair a saint, though I may wish the chapel for his adoration had been better chosen, and the companie more suitable; _sed respice finem_. The pledge being given, and alle men on foote, aye, and some on knee, to drink the same, young Philip Darcy, a near kinsman of my Lorde's, or so callyng himself, takes on him to check at the helthe, askyng Sir Thomas if he were willinge to drink the same in a Venetian glasse? the mening of whiche hard sentence your Lordshippe shal esilie construe. Whereupon Sir Thomas, your Lordshippe's brother, somewhat shrewishly demanded whether that were his game or his earnest; to which demaunde the uther answers recklessly as he that wolde not be brow-beaten, that Sir Thomas might take it for game or ernest as him listed. Whereupon your Lordshippe's brother, throwing down withal the woodcocke's bill, with which, as the fashioun goes, he was picking his teeth, answered redily, he cared not that for his game or ernest, for that neither were worth a bean. A small matter this to make such a storie, for presentlie young Darcie up with the wine-pot in which they had assaid the freshe hogshede, and heveth it at Sir Thomas, which vessel missing of the mark it was aym'd at, encountreth the hede of Master Dutton, when the outside of the flaggon did that which peradventure the inside had accomplish'd somewhat later in the evening, and stretcheth him on the flore; and then the crie arose, and you might see twenty swords oute at once, and none rightly knowing wherfor. And the groomes and valets, who waited in the street and in the kitchen, and who, as seldom failes, had been as besy with the beer as their masters with the wine, presentlie fell at odds, and betoke themselves to their weapones; so ther was bouncing of bucklers, and bandying of blades, instede of clattering of quart pottles, and chiming of harpis and fiddles. At length comes the wache, and, as oft happens in the like affraies, alle men join ageynst them, and they are beten bak: An honest man, David Booth, constable of the night, and a chandler by trade, is sorely hurt. The crie rises of Prentices, prentices, Clubs, clubs, for word went that the court-gallants and the Graie's-Inn men had murther'd a citizen; all mene take the street, and the whole ward is uppe, none well knowing why. Menewhile our gallants had the lucke and sense to disperse their company, some getting them into the Temple, the gates wherof were presentlie shut to prevent pursuite I warrant, and some taking boat as they might; water thus saving whom wyne hath endaunger'd. The Alderman of the ward, worthy Master Danvelt, with Master Deputy, and others of repute, bestow'd themselves not a litel to compose the tumult, and so al past over for the evening. My Lord, this is the hole of the mater, so far as my earnest and anxious serch had therein, as well for the sake of my blode-relation to your honourable house, as frome affectioun to my kinsman Sir Thomas, and especiallie in humble obedience to your regarded commandes. As for other offence given by Sir Thomas, whereof idle bruites are current, as that he should have call'd Master Darcie a codshead or an woodcocke, I can lerne of no such termes, nor any nere to them, only that when he said he cared not for his game or ernest, he flung down the woodcock's bill, to which it may be there was sticking a part of the head, though my informant saithe otherwise; and he stode so close by Sir Thomas, that he herde the quart-pot whissel as it flew betwixt there too hedes. Of damage done among the better sort, there is not muche; some cuts and thrusts ther wer, that had their sequents in blood and woundes, but none dedlie. Of the rascal sort, one fellowe is kill'd, and sundrie hurt. Hob Hilton, your brother's grome, for life a maymed man, having a slash over the right hande, for faulte of a gauntlet.--Marry he has been a brave knave and a sturdie: and if it pleses your goode Lordshippe, I fynd he wolde gladlie be preferr'd when tym is fitting, to the office of bedle. He hath a burlie frame, and scare-babe visage; he shall do wel enoughe in such charge, though lackyng the use of four fingers.[138] The hurtyng of the constabel is a worse matter; as also the anger that is between the courtiers and Graie's-Inn men; so that yf close hede be not given, I doubt me we shall here of more _Gesto Graiorum_. Thei will not be persuaded but that the quarrel betwixt Sir Thomas and young Darcie was simulate; and that Master Button's hurte wes wilful; whereas, on my lyfe, it will not be founde so. The counseyl hath taen the matter up, and I here H. M. spoke many things gravely and solidly, and as one who taketh to hert such unhappie chaunces, both against brauling and drinking. Sir Thomas, with others, hath put in plegge to be forthcoming; and so strictly taken up was the unhappie mater of the Scots Lord,[139] that if Booth shulde die, which God forefend, there might be a fereful reckoning: For one cityzen sayeth, I trust falslie, he saw Sir Thomas draw back his hand, having in it a drawn sword, just as the constabel felle. It seems but too constant, that thei were within but short space of ech other when his unhappy chaunce befel. My Lord, it is not for me to saie what course your Lordshippe should steer in this storm, onlie that the Lord Chansellour's gode worde wil, as resen is, do yeoman's service. Schulde it come to fine or imprisonment, as is to be fered, why should not your Lordshippe cast the weyght into the balance for that restraint which goode Sir Thomas must nedes bear himself, rather than for such penalty as must nedes pinche the purses of his frendes. Your Lordship always knoweth best; but surely the yonge knyght hath but litel reson to expect that you shulde further engage yourself in such bondes as might be necessary to bring this fine unto the Chequer. Nether have wise men helde it unfit that heated bloode be coold by sequestration for a space from temptation. There is dout, moreover, whether he may not hold himself bounden, according to the forme of faythe which such gallants and stirring spirits profess, to have further meeting with Master Philip Darcie, or this same Dutton, or with bothe, on this rare dependence of an woodcocke's hede, and a quart-pot; certeynly, methoughte, the last tym we met, and when he bare himself towards me, as I have premonish'd your Lordshippe, that he was fitter for quiet residence under safe keeping, than for a free walk amongst peceful men. And thus, my Lord, ye have the whole mater before you; trew ye shall find it,--my dutie demands it,--unpleasing, I cannot amende it: But I truste neither more evil _in esse_ nor _in posse_, than I have set forth as above. From one who is ever your Lordshippe's most bounden to command, etc.--J. H. [Footnote 138: "The death of the _rascal_ sort is mentioned as he would have commemorated that of a dog; and his readiest plan of providing for a profligate menial, is to place him in superintendence of the unhappy poor, over whom his fierce looks and rough demeanor are to supply the means of authority, which his arm can no longer enforce by actual violence!"] [Footnote 139: "Perhaps the case of Lord Sanquhar. His Lordship had the misfortune to be hanged, for causing a poor fencing-master to be assassinated, which seems the unhappy matter alluded to."] I think it must have been about the middle of October that he dropped the scheme of this fictitious correspondence. I well remember the morning that he began The Fortunes of Nigel. The day being destined for Newark Hill, I went over to Abbotsford before breakfast, and found Mr. Terry (who had been staying there for some time) walking about with his friend's master-mason (John Smith), of whose proceedings he took a fatherly charge, as he might well do, since the plan of the building had been in a considerable measure the work of his own taste. While Terry and I were chatting, Scott came out, bare-headed, with a bunch of MS. in his hand, and said, "Well, lads, I've laid the keel of a new lugger this morning--here it is--be off to the waterside, and let me hear how you like it." Terry took the papers, and walking up and down by the river, read to me the first chapter of Nigel. He expressed great delight with the animated opening, and especially with the contrast between its thorough stir of London life, and a chapter about Norna of the Fitful-head, in the third volume of The Pirate, which had been given to him in a similar manner the morning before. I could see that (according to the Sheriff's phrase) _he smelt roast meat_; here there was every prospect of a fine field for the art of _Terryfication_. The actor, when our host met us returning from the haugh, did not fail to express his opinion that the new novel would be of this quality. Sir Walter, as he took the MS. from his hand, eyed him with a gay smile, in which genuine benevolence mingled with mock exultation, and then throwing himself into an attitude of comical dignity, he rolled out, in the tones of John Kemble, one of the loftiest bursts of Ben Jonson's Mammon:-- "Come on, sir. Now you set your foot on shore In _Novo orbe_-- ----------------Pertinax, my Surly,[140] Again I say to thee aloud, Be rich, This day thou shalt have ingots." [Footnote 140: The fun of this application of "my Surly" will not escape any one who remembers the kind and good-humored Terry's power of assuming a peculiarly saturnine aspect. This queer grimness of look was invaluable to the comedian in several of his best parts; and in private he often called it up when his heart was most cheerful.] This was another period of "refreshing the machine." Early in November, I find Sir Walter writing thus to Constable's partner, Mr. Cadell: "I want two books, Malcolm's London Redivivus, or some such name, and Derham's Artificial Clock-maker." [The reader of Nigel will understand these requests.] "All good luck to you, commercially and otherwise. I am grown a shabby letter-writer, for my eyes are not so young as they were, and I grudge everything that does not go to press." Such a feeling must often have been present with him; yet I can find no period when he grudged writing a letter that might by possibility be of use to any of his family or friends, and I must quote one of the many which about this very time reached his second son. TO MR. CHARLES SCOTT. _Care of the Rev. Mr. Williams, Lampeter._ 21st November, 1821. MY DEAR CHARLES,--I had the pleasure of your letter two days since, being the first symptom of your being alive and well which I have had _directly_ since you left Abbotsford. I beg you will be more frequent in your communications, which must always be desirable when you are at such a distance. I am very glad to hear you are attending closely to make up lost time. Sport is a good thing both for health and pastime; but you must never allow it to interfere with serious study. You have, my dear boy, your own fortune to make, with better assistance of every kind than I had when the world first opened on me; and I assure you that had I not given some attention to learning (I have often regretted that, from want of opportunity, indifferent health, and some indolence, I did not do all I might have done), my own situation, and the advantages which I may be able to procure for you, would have been very much bounded. Consider, therefore, study as the principal object. Many men have read and written their way to independence and fame; but no man ever gained it by exclusive attention to exercises or to pleasures of any sort. You do not say anything of your friend Mr. Surtees,[141] who I hope is well. We all remember him with much affection, and should be sorry to think we were forgotten. Our Abbotsford Hunt went off extremely well. We killed seven hares, I think, and our dogs behaved very well. A large party dined, and we sat down about twenty-five at table. Every gentleman present sung a song, _tant bien que mal_, excepting Walter, Lockhart, and I myself. I believe I should add the melancholy Jaques, Mr. Waugh, who, on this occasion, however, was not melancholy.[142] In short, we had a very merry and sociable party. There is, I think, no news here. The hedger, Captain Davidson,[143] has had a bad accident, and injured his leg much by the fall of a large stone. I am very anxious about him as a faithful and honest servant. Every one else at Abbotsford, horses and dogs included, are in great preservation. You ask me about reading history. You are quite right to read Clarendon--his style is a little long-winded; but, on the other hand, his characters may match those of the ancient historians, and one thinks they would know the very men if you were to meet them in society. Few English writers have the same precision, either in describing the actors in great scenes, or the deeds which they performed. He was, you are aware, himself deeply engaged in the scenes which he depicts, and therefore colors them with the individual feeling, and sometimes, doubtless, with the partiality of a partisan. Yet I think he is, on the whole, a fair writer; for though he always endeavors to excuse King Charles, yet he points out his mistakes and errors, which certainly are neither few nor of slight consequence. Some of his history regards the country in which you are now a resident; and you will find that much of the fate of that Great Civil War turned on the successful resistance made by the city of Gloucester, and the relief of that place by the Earl of Essex, by means of the trained bands of London,--a sort of force resembling our local militia or volunteers. They are the subject of ridicule in all the plays and poems of the time; yet the sort of practice of arms which they had acquired, enabled them to withstand the charge of Prince Rupert and his gallant cavalry, who were then foiled for the first time. Read, my dear Charles, read, and read that which is useful. Man only differs from birds and beasts, because he has the means of availing himself of the knowledge acquired by his predecessors. The swallow builds the same nest which its father and mother built; and the sparrow does not improve by the experience of its parents. The son of the learned pig, if it had one, would be a mere brute, fit only to make bacon of. It is not so with the human race. Our ancestors lodged in caves and wigwams, where we construct palaces for the rich, and comfortable dwellings for the poor; and why is this--but because our eye is enabled to look back upon the past, to improve upon our ancestors' improvements, and to avoid their errors? This can only be done by studying history, and comparing it with passing events. God has given you a strong memory, and the power of understanding that which you give your mind to with attention--but all the advantage to be derived from these qualities must depend on your own determination to avail yourself of them, and improve them to the uttermost. That you should do so, will be the greatest satisfaction I can receive in my advanced life, and when my thoughts must be entirely turned on the success of my children. Write to me more frequently, and mention your studies particularly, and I will on my side be a good correspondent. I beg my compliments to Mr. and Mrs. Williams. I have left no room to sign myself your affectionate father, W. S. [Footnote 141: Mr. Villiers Surtees, a schoolfellow of Charles Scott's at Lampeter, had spent the vacation of this year at Abbotsford. He is now one of the Supreme Judges at the Mauritius.] [Footnote 142: Mr. Waugh was a retired West Indian, of very dolorous aspect, who had settled at Melrose, built a large house there, surrounded it and his garden with a huge wall, and seldom emerged from his own precincts except upon the grand occasion of the Abbotsford Hunt. The villagers called him "the Melancholy Man"--and considered him as already "dreein' his dole for doings amang the poor niggers."] [Footnote 143: This hedger had got the title of Captain, in memory of his gallantry at some _row_.] To return to business and Messrs. Constable.--Sir Walter concluded, before he went to town in November, another negotiation of importance with this house. They agreed to give for the remaining copyright of the four novels published between December, 1819, and January, 1821--to wit, Ivanhoe, The Monastery, The Abbot, and Kenilworth--the sum of five thousand guineas. The stipulation about not revealing the author's name, under a penalty of £2000, was repeated. By these four novels, the fruits of scarcely more than twelve months' labor, he had already cleared at least £10,000 before this bargain was completed. They, like their predecessors, were now issued in a collective shape, under the title of "Historical Romances, by the Author of Waverley." I cannot pretend to guess what the actual state of Scott's pecuniary affairs was at the time when John Ballantyne's death relieved them from one great source of complication and difficulty. But I have said enough to satisfy every reader, that when he began the second, and far the larger division of his building at Abbotsford, he must have contemplated the utmost sum it could cost him as a mere trifle in relation to the resources at his command. He must have reckoned on clearing £30,000 at least in the course of a couple of years by the novels written within such a period. The publisher of his Tales, who best knew how they were produced, and what they brought of gross profit, and who must have had the strongest interest in keeping the author's name untarnished by any risk or reputation of failure, would willingly, as we have seen, have given him £6000 more within a space of two years for works of a less serious sort, likely to be despatched at leisure hours, without at all interfering with the main manufacture. But alas, even this was not all. Messrs. Constable had such faith in the prospective fertility of his imagination, that they were by this time quite ready to sign bargains and grant bills for novels and romances to be produced hereafter, but of which the subjects and the names were alike unknown to them and to the man from whose pen they were to proceed.[144] A forgotten satirist well says,-- "The active principle within Works on some brains the effect of gin;" but in his case, every external influence combined to stir the flame, and swell the intoxication of restless exuberant energy. His allies knew, indeed, what he did not, that the sale of his novels was rather less than it had been in the days of Ivanhoe; and hints had sometimes been dropped to him that it might be well to try the effect of a pause. But he always thought--and James Ballantyne had decidedly the same opinion--that his best things were those which he threw off the most easily and swiftly; and it was no wonder that his booksellers, seeing how immeasurably even his worst excelled in popularity, as in merit, any other person's best, should have shrunk from the experiment of a decisive damper. On the contrary, they might be excused for from time to time flattering themselves that if the books sold at a less rate, this might be counterpoised by still greater rapidity of production. They could not make up their minds to cast the peerless vessel adrift; and, in short, after every little whisper of prudential misgiving, echoed the unfailing burden of Ballantyne's song--to push on, hoisting more and more sail as the wind lulled. [Footnote 144: Mr. Cadell says: "This device for raising the wind was the only real legacy left by John Ballantyne to his generous friend; it was invented to make up for the bad book stock of the Hanover Street concern, which supplied so much good money for the passing hour."--(1848.)] He was as eager to do as they could be to suggest--and this I well knew at the time. I had, however, no notion, until all his correspondence lay before me, of the extent to which he had permitted himself thus early to build on the chances of life, health, and continued popularity. Before The Fortunes of Nigel issued from the press, Scott had exchanged instruments, and received his bookseller's bills, for no less than four "works of fiction"--not one of them otherwise described in the deeds of agreement--to be produced in unbroken succession, each of them to fill at least three volumes, but with proper saving clauses as to increase of copy-money, in case any of them should run to four. And within two years all this anticipation had been wiped off by Peveril of the Peak, Quentin Durward, St. Ronan's Well, and Redgauntlet; and the new castle was by that time complete, and overflowing with all its splendor; but by that time the end also was approaching! The splendid romance of The Pirate was published in the beginning of December, 1821; and the wild freshness of its atmosphere, the beautiful contrast of Minna and Brenda, and the exquisitely drawn character of Captain Cleveland, found the reception which they deserved. The work was analyzed with remarkable care in the Quarterly Review, by a critic second to few, either in the manly heartiness of his sympathy with the felicities of genius, or in the honest acuteness of his censure in cases of negligence and confusion. This was the second of a series of articles in that Journal, conceived and executed in a tone widely different from those given to Waverley, Guy Mannering, and The Antiquary. I fancy Mr. Gifford had become convinced that he had made a grievous mistake in this matter, before he acquiesced in Scott's proposal about "quartering the child" in January, 1816; and if he was fortunate in finding a contributor able and willing to treat the rest of Father Jedediah's progeny with excellent skill, and in a spirit more accordant with the just and general sentiments of the public, we must also recognize a pleasing and honorable trait of character in the frankness with which the recluse and often despotic editor now delegated the pen to Mr. Senior. On the 13th December, Sir Walter received a copy of Cain, as yet unpublished, from Lord Byron's bookseller, who had been instructed to ask whether he had any objection to having the "Mystery" dedicated to him. He replied in these words:-- TO JOHN MURRAY, ESQ., ALBEMARLE STREET, LONDON. EDINBURGH, 17th December, 1821. MY DEAR SIR,--I accept with feelings of great obligation the flattering proposal of Lord Byron to prefix my name to the very grand and tremendous drama of Cain. I may be partial to it, and you will allow I have cause; but I do not know that his Muse has ever taken so lofty a flight amid her former soarings. He has certainly matched Milton on his own ground. Some part of the language is bold, and may shock one class of readers, whose tone will be adopted by others out of affectation or envy. But then they must condemn the Paradise Lost, if they have a mind to be consistent. The fiendlike reasoning and bold blasphemy of the fiend and of his pupil lead exactly to the point which was to be expected--the commission of the first murder, and the ruin and despair of the perpetrator. I do not see how any one can accuse the author himself of Manichæism. The devil takes the language of that sect, doubtless; because, not being able to deny the existence of the Good Principle, he endeavors to exalt himself--the Evil Principle--to a seeming equality with the Good; but such arguments, in the mouth of such a being, can only be used to deceive and to betray. Lord Byron might have made this more evident, by placing in the mouth of Adam, or of some good and protecting spirit, the reasons which render the existence of moral evil consistent with the general benevolence of the Deity. The great key to the mystery is, perhaps, the imperfection of our own faculties, which see and feel strongly the partial evils which press upon us, but know too little of the general system of the universe, to be aware how the existence of these is to be reconciled with the benevolence of the great Creator.--Ever yours truly, WALTER SCOTT. In some preceding narratives of Sir Walter Scott's Life, I find the principal feature for 1821 to be an affair of which I have as yet said nothing; and which, notwithstanding the examples I have before me, I must be excused for treating on a scale commensurate with his real share and interest therein. I allude to an unfortunate newspaper, by name The Beacon, which began to be published in Edinburgh in January, 1821, and was abruptly discontinued in the August of the same year. It originated in the alarm with which the Edinburgh Tories contemplated the progress of Radical doctrines during the agitation of the Queen's business in 1820--and the want of any adequate counteraction on the part of the Ministerial newspapers in the north. James Ballantyne had on that occasion swerved from his banner--and by so doing given not a little offence to Scott. He approved, therefore, of the project of a new Weekly Journal, to be conducted by some steadier hand;[145] and when it was proposed to raise the requisite capital for the speculation by private subscription, expressed his willingness to contribute whatever sum should be named by other gentlemen of his standing. This was accepted of course; but every part of the advice with which the only man in the whole conclave that understood a jot about such things coupled his tender of alliance, was departed from in practice. No experienced and responsible editor of the sort he pointed out as indispensable was secured; the violence of disaffected spleen was encountered by a vein of satire which seemed more fierce than frolicsome; the Law Officers of the Crown, whom he had most strenuously cautioned against any participation in the concern, were rash enough to commit themselves in it; the subscribers, like true Scotchmen, in place of paying down their money, and thinking no more of that part of the matter, chose to put their names to a bond of security on which the sum-total was to be advanced by bankers; and thus, by their own over-caution as to a few pounds, laid the foundation for a long train of humiliating distresses and disgraces; and finally, when the rude drollery of the young hot bloods to whom they had entrusted the editorship of their paper, produced its natural consequences, and the ferment of Whig indignation began to boil over upon the dignified patrons of what was denounced as a systematic scheme of calumny and defamation--these seniors shrunk from the dilemma as rashly as they had plunged into it, and instead of compelling the juvenile allies to adopt a more prudent course, and gradually give the journal a tone worthy of open approbation, they, at the first blush of personal difficulty, left their instruments in the lurch, and, without even consulting Scott, ordered the Beacon to be extinguished at an hour's notice. [Footnote 145: It has been asserted, since this work first appeared, that the editorship of the proposed journal was offered to Ballantyne, and declined by him. If so, he had no doubt found the offer accompanied with a requisition of political pledges, which he could not grant.--(1839.)] A more pitiable mass of blunder and imbecility was never heaped together than the whole of this affair exhibited; and from a very early period Scott was so disgusted with it, that he never even saw the newspaper, of which Whigs and Radicals believed, or affected to believe, that the conduct and management were in some degree at least under his dictation. The results were lamentable: the Beacon was made the subject of Parliamentary discussion, from which the then heads of Scotch Toryism did not escape in any very consolatory plight; but above all, the Beacon bequeathed its rancor and rashness, though not its ability, to a Glasgow paper of similar form and pretensions, entitled The Sentinel. By that organ the personal quarrels of the Beacon were taken up and pursued with relentless industry; and finally, the Glasgow editors disagreeing, some moment of angry confusion betrayed a box of MSS., by which the late Sir Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck was revealed as the writer of certain truculent enough pasquinades. A leading Edinburgh Whig, who had been pilloried in one or more of these, challenged Boswell--and the Baronet fell in as miserable a quarrel as ever cost the blood of a high-spirited gentleman.[146] This tragedy occurred in the early part of 1822; and soon afterwards followed those debates on the whole business in the House of Commons, for which, if any reader feels curiosity about them, I refer him to the Parliamentary Histories of the time. A single extract from one of Scott's letters to a member of the then Government in London will be sufficient for my purpose; and abundantly confirm what I have said as to his personal part in the affairs of the Beacon:-- [Footnote 146: [James Stuart of Dunearn was Boswell's opponent. Lockhart in writing to Scott of Sir Alexander's death [March 27] adds: "I hope I need not say how cordially I enter into the hope you express, that this bloody lesson may be a sufficient and lasting one. I can never be sufficiently grateful for the advice which kept me from having any hand in all these newspaper skirmishes. Wilson also is totally free from any concern in any of them, and for this I am sure he also feels himself chiefly indebted to your counsel."--_Familiar Letters_, vol. ii. p. 137. Stuart's trial took place on June 10, and his acquittal was hailed as a triumph by the Whigs. Lord Cockburn was one of Stuart's counsel, and in his _Memorials_, pp. 392-399, will be found an account of the affair, as viewed by a distinguished member of that party.]] TO J. W. CROKER, ESQ., ADMIRALTY. MY DEAR CROKER,--... I had the fate of Cassandra in the Beacon matter from beginning to end. I endeavored in vain to impress on them the necessity of having an editor who was really up to the business, and could mix spirit with discretion--one of those "gentlemen of the press," who understand the exact lengths to which they can go in their vocation. Then I wished them, in place of that _Bond_, to have each thrown down his hundred pounds, and never inquired more about it--and lastly, I exclaimed against the Crown Counsel being at all concerned. In the two first remonstrances I was not listened to--in the last I thought myself successful, and it was not till long afterwards that I heard they had actually subscribed the Bond. Then the hasty renunciation of the thing, as if we had been doing something very atrocious, put me mad altogether. The younger brethren, too, allege that they are put into the front of the fight, and deserted on the first pinch; and on my word I cannot say the accusation is altogether false, though I have been doing my best to mediate betwixt the parties, and keep the peace if possible. The fact is, it is a blasted business, and will continue long to have bad consequences.--Yours in all love and kindness, WALTER SCOTT. 
54980	----	[Frontispiece: Sir Walter Scott] THE COUNTRY OF SIR WALTER SCOTT BY CHARLES S. OLCOTT _Author of George Eliot: Scenes and People of Her Novels_ ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY CHARLES S. OLCOTT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published September 1913 TO MY WIFE THE COMPANION OF MY TRAVELS TO WHOSE SYMPATHETIC COOPERATION I AM INDEBTED FOR MUCH OF THE MATERIAL THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED CONTENTS Introduction I. The 'Making' of Sir Walter II. The Lay of the Last Minstrel III. Marmion IV. The Lady of the Lake V. Rokeby VI. The Bridal of Triermain VII. The Lord of the Isles VIII. Waverley IX. Guy Mannering X. The Antiquary XI. The Black Dwarf XII. Old Mortality XIII. Rob Roy XIV. The Heart of Midlothian XV. The Bride of Lammermoor XVI. A Legend of Montrose XVII. Ivanhoe XVIII. The Monastery XIX. The Abbot XX. Kenilworth XXI. The Pirate XXII. The Fortunes of Nigel XXIII. Peveril of the Peak XXIV. Quentin Durward XXV. St. Ronan's Well XXVI. Redgauntlet XXVII. Tales of the Crusaders XXVIII. Woodstock XXIX. The Fair Maid of Perth XXX. The Chronicles of the Canongate and Other Tales The Highland Widow The Two Drovers The Surgeon's Daughter Anne of Geierstein Count Robert of Paris Castle Dangerous XXXXI. A Successful Life Index ILLUSTRATIONS Portrait of Sir Walter Scott . . . . . . Frontispiece Photogravure from an engraving by William Walker of a painting by Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A., 1822. Smailholm Kelso Abbey The Popping Stone Lasswade Cottage Map Of Scotland Showing localities of Scott's writings St. Mary's Loch Branksome Hall Melrose Abbey Ashestiel Entrance to Norham Castle Llndisfarne Abbey Tantallon Castle Loch Achray Cambusmore Glenfinglas Stirling Castle Brackenbury Tower, Barnard Castle The Valley of the Tees From Barnard Castle The Valley of St. John Showing Triermain Castle Rock Turnberry Castle, Coast of Ayrshire Grandtully Castle Doune Castle From the Teith Ullswater Waverley's retreat after the defeat of the Chevalier Caerlaverock Castle Edinburgh from the Castle Auchmuthie The Black Dwarf's Cottage Craignethan Castle (Tillietudlem) Crichope Linn Chillingham Castle Loch Lomond from Inversnaid St. Anthony's Chapel Crichton Castle Loch Lubnaig Map of England Showing Localities of Scott's writings Castle of Ashby de la Zouch The Buck-Gate Entrance to the Duke of Portland's estate, Sherwood Forest The Avenue of Limes, Sherwood Forest Interior of Fountains Abbey Coningsburgh Castle Cathcart Castle Leicester's Buildings, Kenilworth Cæsar's Tower, Kenilworth Entrance to Warwick Castle Mervyn's Tower, Kenilworth Lerwick, Shetland A Crofter's Cottage, Orkney Sumburgh Head, Shetland Scalloway, Shetland The Standing Stones of Stennis Stromness, Orkney Map of London Showing localities of Scott's writings The Pack-Horse Bridge, Haddon Hall The Saxon Tower, Isle of Man The Tweed and Eildon Hills Scott's Tomb, Dryburgh Hoddam Castle Powis Castle, Wales Godstow Priory Burial-place of 'The Fair Rosamond' Loch Tay House of the Fair Maid of Perth Abbotsford Scott Monument, Edinburgh {xiii} INTRODUCTION On the first day of May, 1911, we began our exploration of the 'Scott Country.' I say we, because I was accompanied by the companion of a much longer journey, of which that year was the twenty-fifth milestone. Whether from reasons of sentiment resulting from the near approach of our silver anniversary, or because of more prosaic geographical considerations, we began at the place where Walter Scott discovered that he would be likely to see more of the beauty of life if he were equipped with two pairs of eyes rather than one. This was at the village of Gilsland, in the north of England, where the poet first met the companion who was to share the joys and sorrows of the best years of his life. A pony and dogcart took us clattering up to the top of the hill, where, leaving our conveyance, we started down the glen to the banks of the river Irthing. Here the camera promptly responded to the call of a beautiful view and the first exposure was made:--a gently flowing stream of shallow water, scarcely covering the rocky bed of the river; a pleasant path along the bank, well shaded from the sun; and a slender little waterfall in the distance;--the same scene which so often met the eyes of Walter Scott and his future bride as they strolled along the stream in their 'courting' days. This was the beginning of a tour which eventually led into nearly every county of Scotland, as far north as the Shetland Islands, and through a large part of England {xiv} and Wales. We went wherever we thought we might find a beautiful or an interesting picture, connected in some way with the life of Sir Walter, or mentioned by him in some novel or poem. Knowing that he had derived his inspiration from an intimate knowledge of the country, we sought to follow his footsteps so far as possible. Months of preparation had been devoted to the work before leaving home. Every novel and poem had to be read, besides many books of reference, including, of course, Lockhart's _Life_, for it would not have been safe to trust to the recollections of earlier reading. Notes were made of the places to be sought, and two large maps were prepared on which I marked circles with a red pencil around all points which I thought ought to be visited, until my maps began to look as though they were suffering from a severe attack of measles. Then the route was laid out by 'centres.' The first was Carlisle, then Dumfries, Melrose, Edinburgh, Berwick, Glasgow, Stirling, Callander, the Trossachs, Oban, and so on until the entire country had been covered. From each 'centre' as a convenient point of departure we explored the country in many directions, visiting so far as possible every scene of the novels and poems that could be identified. It was surprising to find so many of these scenes exactly as Sir Walter had described them. The mountains and valleys, the rivers, lakes, and waterfalls, the wild ruggedness of the seaside cliffs, the quaint little old-fashioned villages, the ruined castles and abbeys, all brought back memories of the romances which he had so charmingly set amidst these scenes. It was like actually living the Waverley Novels to see them. And in seeing {xv} them, we came to know, on intimate terms, Sir Walter himself; to feel the genial influence of his presence as if he were a fellow traveller, and to love him as his companions had done a century ago. But our constant purpose was to do more than this. With the help of the camera we sought to catch something of the spirit of the scenery and to bring it home with us, in the hope that those who have never seen the 'Scott Country' might at least have a few glimpses of it, and that those who have seen all or a part of it, might find in these views a pleasant reminder of what must have been a happy experience. There is no occasion to add at the present time to the volume of literary criticism of such well-known novels and poems as those of Scott, nor is it possible to add any material facts to his biography. This book makes no such claim. It does not attempt to retell the romances, except in so far as may be necessary to explain their connexion with the scenery or to introduce the 'original' of some well-known character. If a glimpse of the novelist's genial face is seen now and then, it is because his spirit pervades every nook and corner of bonnie Scotland, and it would be impossible for appreciative eyes to view the scenery without seeing something of the man whose genius has added so greatly to its charm. If this book shall add to the pleasure of any of the readers of Sir Walter Scott by bringing them into the atmosphere of his novels and poems, and so a little nearer to the kindly personality of the man, its purpose will have been fulfilled. {1} THE COUNTRY OF SIR WALTER SCOTT CHAPTER I THE 'MAKING' OF SIR WALTER 'He was makin' himsel' a' the time, but he didna ken maybe what he was about till years had passed; at first he thought o' little, I dare say, but the queerness and the fun.' In these expressive words, Robert Shortreed, who guided Walter Scott on the celebrated 'raids' into the Liddesdale country, correctly summarized the youth and early manhood of the future poet and novelist. Scott was thirty-four years old when the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel' appeared, and had reached the mature age of forty-three before he published the first of the Waverley Novels. But from early childhood he was busily engaged, with more or less conscious purpose, in gathering the materials for his future work. It is the purpose of this chapter to show, by a brief survey of these preparatory years, how he acquired that intimate knowledge of human nature that enabled him to record so truthfully and with such real sympathy the thoughts and feelings, the hopes and fears, the manners of life, the dress, the conversation, and the personal peculiarities of people of every degree, from Mary, Queen of Scots, to Meg Merrilies, the Queen of the {2} Gipsies; from the lordly Earl of Montrose down to the humblest of the Children of the Mist. It will also aim to suggest something of the method by which he learned to paint such charming pictures of ancient castles and ruined abbeys, of princes' palaces and fishermen's cottages, of rocky shores and wild paths through the woods, of rivers, lakes, and mountains, and all the other elements that make up the varied and beautiful scenery of Scotland and England. In the hilly country south of Edinburgh, standing alone on a high rock, is an old feudal tower called Smailholm. Outlined against the western sky, in the glow of a summer sunset, it seemed to us like a proud and beautiful capital letter 'I,' saying with some emphasis on the personal pronoun, '_I_ am a thing of some importance.' We forgave the egotism, for the old tower really is important, marking the very beginning of Walter Scott's career, the spot where he received his first poetic impulse. Here at the age of three years, he rolled about on the rocks with the sheep and lambs as if he were one of them. He had been brought to Sandy Knowe, the home of his grandfather, in an effort to save his life, for he had been a sickly child, and six brothers and sisters had died in infancy, so that his parents were naturally more than anxious. The life out of doors soon brought a marked improvement, and except for the lameness, which never left him, the boy became healthy and vigorous. He was attended by an old shepherd, known as the 'cow-bailie,' who had a great fund of Border stories, to which the lad listened eagerly. [Illustration: SMAILHOLM] A devoted aunt, Miss Janet Scott, who lived at the farm, often read to him stories of Bible heroes and of the {3} great men of Scottish history. From a few volumes of miscellaneous poetry which the family chanced to own, she read some Scottish ballads which quickly seized upon his childish fancy. He was especially fond of historical tales, and under the shadow of the old tower he used to marshal the armies of Scotland and England, fighting their battles with mimic forces of pebbles and shells, and always ending the conflict with the complete rout of the English and the triumph of the Scottish arms. One day he was missed during a violent thunderstorm, and the household set out in search of him. He was found lying on his back on the rocks, kicking his heels in the air and clapping his hands with delight as he watched the vivid lightning; and as one flash followed another, each more brilliant than the one before, he would shout, 'Bonnie! Bonnie!! Dae it again! Dae it again!' I like to think of this scene as symbolic; as a prophecy of the time, soon to come, when the lad, grown to manhood, would be sending out flash after flash of his genius while the whole world looked on in delight, shouting, 'Bonnie! Bonnie!! Dae it again! Dae it again!' How much the old tower of Smailholm really had to do with Scott's earliest poetic fancy he has himself told in a touching reference in the Introduction to the Third Canto of 'Marmion':-- And still I thought that shattered tower The mightiest work of human power, And marvelled as the aged hind With some strange tale bewitched my mind. He made it the setting of one of his earliest poems, 'The Eve of St. John,' and probably had it in mind, when {4} writing 'The Monastery' and 'The Abbot,' as the original of Avenel Castle. Smailholm was once surrounded by water, all of which has been drained off except a very small portion on the eastern side. With the addition of the original lake it would make a very good prototype of Avenel. At the age of six, Scott was taken for a visit to Prestonpans, where he made the acquaintance of George Constable, the original of Monkbarns in 'The Antiquary.' This statement should be qualified, however, for Scott himself was the real 'Antiquary' in many ways. None but a genuine antiquarian could ever have written that keen bit of humorous characterization. This old gentleman, besides giving Scott his first knowledge of Shakespeare, told him many excellent stories of the 'affair of 1745' and of the battle of Prestonpans. Here he also made the acquaintance of an old man who had seen much service in the German wars and who was delighted to find a good listener to his tales of military feats. Under the guidance of this old soldier, whose name, Dalgetty, subsequently reappears in 'A Legend of Montrose,' he explored the battle-field, heard the story of Colonel Gardiner's death, and found the grave of 'Balmawhapple,' 'where the grass grew rank and green, distinguishing it from the rest of the field.' This was in 1777, when Scott was only six. Thirty-seven years later these early impressions found a place in 'Waverley.' At about the same period young Walter was presented with a Shetland pony, an animal not so large as a full-grown Newfoundland dog. He soon learned to ride, and often frightened his Aunt Jenny by dashing recklessly {5} over the rocks about the tower. The importance of the event lies in the fact that it was the beginning of Scott's fondness for horseback riding, his proficiency in which played an important part in later years, enabling him to gather valuable material that would not otherwise have been accessible. Scott's father now thought best to bring him back to Edinburgh, where he lived the life of an average schoolboy, with this difference, that his lameness frequently confined him to the house, compelling him to seek his amusement in books instead of romping with his fellows in George's Square. At twelve years, and again a little later, he went for a vacation visit to his Aunt Jenny,--Miss Janet Scott,--who was then living at Kelso in a small house, pleasantly situated in a garden of seven or eight acres, 'full of long straight walks, between hedges of yew and hornbeam' and 'thickets of flowery shrubs.' The Grammar School of Kelso was attached to the old Abbey. Here he met the two men who, though lifelong friends, were destined to bring to Walter Scott the saddest experience of his career--James and John Ballantyne, the publishers, whose failure clouded the last years of the novelist's life, forcing upon him the payment of a debt of £117,000,--a task which he manfully assumed, and wore out his life in the execution of it. Another school fellow here was Robert Waldie, whose mother showed Scott many attentions. It was through his association with 'Lady Waldie,' who was a member of the Society of Friends, that Scott in subsequent years was enabled to paint the lovely picture of the home life at Mount Sharon of Joshua Geddes and his sister, which adds so much to the pleasure of 'Redgauntlet.' {6} An old vault in Kelso Abbey was used as the village prison--the kind of a jail which Edie Ochiltree thought 'wasna so dooms bad a place as it was ca'd.' No doubt the real Edie was often confined here. He was an old mendicant, well known in the neighbourhood, by the name of Andrew Gemmels. Scott met him often. Many curious stories are related of his eccentricities. He was once presented with a good suit of clothes which he thankfully accepted. The friendly donor chanced to meet him later in the day, dragging the clothes behind him along the road through the dirt and mud. Being asked why he treated the gift in that way he replied that he would have 'to trail the duds that way for twa days, to mak them _fit for use_.' [Illustration: KELSO ABBEY] A few miles southeast of Kelso, in the village of Kirk Yetholm, Scott picked up another of his most famous characters--the picturesque Meg Merrilies. Kirk Yetholm was in Scott's boyhood, and even later in his life, the headquarters of a large gipsy tribe. Such a people could not fail to interest one of his temperament and he soon came to know them on familiar terms. The Queen of the Gipsies introduced herself by giving him an apple. She was a woman of extraordinary height, dressed in a long red cloak, who naturally inspired the boy with a feeling of awe. Her name was Madge Gordon, a granddaughter of Jean Gordon, the most famous of the Gipsies. Jean's history was well known. She was an ardent Jacobite, and met her death at Carlisle in 1746, in a most inhuman fashion, being drowned by a mob in the river Eden. She was a powerful woman and as the men struggled to keep her head under the water, she kept coming to the surface, each time screaming, {7} 'Charlie yet! Charlie yet!' Scott as a child often heard her story and cried piteously for old Jean Gordon. She was the real Meg Merrilies. During his frequent visits to Kelso and subsequent residence at Rosebank, near by, Scott explored the country in every direction. He rode over the battlefield of Flodden, becoming convinced that 'never was an affair more completely bungled.' He explored the heights of Branxton Hill, and riding through the village of Coldstream, passed the old town of Lennel, where Marmion paused on the eve of the battle. Then recrossing the river, he came to Twisel Bridge, and following the course of the Tweed, reached the ruins of Norham Castle, where Marmion was entertained by Sir Hugh Heron. This was an old Border fortress which passed from Scottish to English hands and back again for several centuries. Thus, without conscious effort, Scott laid the foundation for 'Marmion' early in life, though the poem did not take final shape until nearly twenty years later. When not spending his vacations in the country, Scott was attending the college in Edinburgh and later preparing himself for the practice of the law. During all these years the gathering of materials for his future writings continued. A favourite companion of the days in Edinburgh was John Irving. On Saturdays, or more frequently during vacations, the two used to borrow three or four books from the circulating library and walk to Salisbury Crags, climb high up to some sequestered nook and read the books together. After continuing this practice for two years, during which they devoured a prodigious number of volumes, Scott {8} proposed that they should make up adventures of their favourite knights-errant, and recite them to each other alternately--a pastime in which Scott greatly excelled his companion. At this time the former began to collect old ballads, and as Irving's mother knew a great many, he used to go to her and learn all she could repeat. Salisbury Crags and Arthur's Seat found their way into 'Waverley,' and later, with St. Leonard's Hill, in the same vicinity, became the background for the earlier chapters of the 'Heart of Midlothian.' The ruins of St. Anthony's Chapel, on the ascent to Arthur's Seat, must have been one of these favourite nooks. Blackford Hill, the third of these resorts, lies south of Edinburgh. Here Scott carried Marmion for that superb view of Edinburgh, 'mine own romantic town,' so well described in the poem:--. Still on the spot Lord Marmion stayed, For fairer scene he ne'er surveyed. The scene is still a beautiful one, for though the plain that held the Scottish camp is now filled with well-built suburban homes, we still may see Yon Empress of the North Sit on her hilly throne, Her palace's imperial bowers, Her castle, proof to hostile powers, Her stately halls and holy towers. So great was Scott's love of the picturesque and especially of the old feudal castles that he yearned to become a painter. But it was of no use. His lessons came to naught and he could make no progress. Perhaps this was fortunate, for, as Lockhart points out, success with the pencil might have interfered with his future greatness {9} as a 'painter with the pen.' At fifteen, Scott entered upon an apprenticeship to his father as a writer's (lawyer's) clerk, during which period he formed an intimate companionship with a relative of his friend Irving, William Clerk, a young man of good intellect and many accomplishments. The experiences of these two young law students will be found in 'Redgauntlet.' William Clerk was the Darsie Latimer of that story, while Scott himself was Alan Fairford. Alan's precise and dignified father, Mr. Saunders Fairford, whose highest hope in life was to see his son attain 'the proudest of all distinctions--the rank and fame of a well-employed lawyer,' was a fairly good portrait of Scott's own father. The house in which the Fairfords lived was in Brown Square, then considered 'an extremely elegant improvement.' It is still standing, and is now used as a dental college. Old 'Peter Peebles,' whose interminable lawsuit was used for young lawyers to practise on, actually existed and haunted the law courts at this time. Scott himself admits that he took his turn as 'counsel' to the grotesque old litigant. The Edinburgh of Scott's day was still chiefly confined to the Old Town. High Street in those days was considered the most magnificent street in the world. Again and again Scott refers to it. At one end is the great Castle, old enough to remember the time when even the Old Town did not exist. Lower down is St. Giles and the Parliament House. Next to St. Giles is the site of the Old Tolbooth, which, after serving the city as a prison for two hundred and fifty years, was pulled down in 1817. In Writer's Court in the same locality was the tavern where the lawyers held 'high {10} jinks' in 'Guy Mannering.' Greyfriars Church, where Colonel Mannering heard a sermon by Scott's old friend, the Rev. John Erskine, is not far off. Down the street, in the part called the Canongate, is the house of the Earl of Murray, the Regent of Scotland in Queen Mary's time, who figures prominently in 'The Abbot.' Street fighting was a common occurrence in Edinburgh in those days and there is a good description of such a broil in 'The Abbot.' 'My Lord Seton's Lodging,' where Roland Graeme took refuge after a scrimmage, is in the same street, and a little farther on is the 'White Horse Close,' where the officers of Prince Charles made their headquarters in 'Waverley.' Holyrood Palace is at the extreme end of the street, about a mile from the Castle. The great ball, which Scott describes in 'Waverley,' was given here by the young Chevalier, Charles Edward Stuart, on the evening of September 17, 1745. While still in his fifteenth year, Scott made his first excursion into the Highlands of Perthshire through scenery unsurpassed in natural beauty by any other region in all Scotland. Approaching from the south, he rode over the mountains, through a pass no longer accessible, known as the Wicks of Baiglie. Here 'he beheld, stretching beneath him, the valley of the Tay, traversed by its ample and lordly stream; the town of Perth, with its two large meadows, or Inches, its steeples and its towers: the hills of Moncreiff and Kinnoul faintly rising into picturesque rocks, partly clothed with woods; the rich margin of the river, studded with elegant mansions; and the distant view of the huge Grampian Mountains, the northern screen of this exquisite landscape.' These words were written as part of the Introduction to the {11} 'Fair Maid of Perth' in 1828. The impression they record was made upon the mind of a boy of fifteen, forty-two years earlier. On this visit, no doubt, he saw the original house of Simon Glover in Curfew Street, and also the home of Hal o' the Wynd, not far away. Both houses still remain, and the stories connected with them were of course current in Scott's time. During all the time that the scenes and the stories connected with this and other excursions were making their impress upon the mind of Walter Scott, it must be remembered that he was not thinking of any ultimate use of them in literature, but was only ambitious to make a success of his chosen profession of the law. It so happened that one of the earliest duties which fell to his lot as a writer's apprentice was to serve a writ upon a certain obstreperous family in the Braes of Balquhidder, the country made famous by the exploits of Rob Roy. Fearing that the execution of the summons would be resisted, an escort of a sergeant and six men was procured, and Scott, a young man of scarcely sixteen, marched into the Highlands, 'riding,' as he said, 'in all the dignity of danger, with a front and rear guard, and loaded arms.' The sergeant was full of good stories, principally about Rob Roy, and proved to be a very good companion. This expedition was Scott's first introduction to the scenery around Loch Katrine, which later owed most of its fame to his pen. It enabled him, by actual contact with the Highland clans, to learn for the first time some of the thrilling tales with which the region abounded and to become familiar with the habits, the speech, the dress, and all the other marked characteristics of a romantic people. The delightful {12} scenery of Loch Vennachar, Loch Achray, and Loch Katrine, the rugged slopes of Ben Venue and Ben An, the more distant peaks of Ben Lomond and Ben Ledi, the tangled masses of foliage in the 'deep Trossachs' wildest nook,'--all appealed at once to the artistic sense within him, to his poetic feeling, and to his love of nature. 'The Lady of the Lake' was not written until twenty-three years later, but the germ of that poem was planted in his bosom by this first youthful experience and its writing was only a labor of love. On his subsequent excursions to the Highlands, Scott gathered some valuable material which later appeared in 'Waverley.' He found one old gentleman who had been obliged to make a journey to the cave of Rob Roy, where he dined on 'collops' or steaks, cut from his own cattle. This cavern is on Loch Lomond in the midst of most beautiful scenery. Scott makes it the retreat of Donald Bean Lean in 'Waverley,' but does not refer to it in his story of 'Rob Roy.' From another aged gentleman he heard the history of Doune Castle, a fine old ruin on the river Teith, near Stirling, and this he also introduced into 'Waverley.' The story of Waverley's saving the life of Colonel Talbot and the death at Carlisle of Fergus MacIvor are based upon incidents related to Scott at this time. Among the many places visited was Craighall, in Perthshire, from which some of the features of Tully Veolan were copied. The situation of this country-seat was convenient for the story, and near by was a cave, similar to that in which the Baron of Bradwardine sought concealment. But there is another house, a little to the west, on the river Tay, which is said to correspond {13} even more closely with Scott's description. This is Grandtully Castle, the beautiful estate of the Stewart family. Another house which entered into this composite picture was the residence of the Earl of Traquair, a place on the Scottish Border well known to Scott and frequently visited by him during the time when he was writing 'Waverley.' It has a curious entrance gate, surmounted by some queer-looking bears, which doubtless suggested the Bears of Bradwardine. These numerous excursions, however fruitful they may have proved in later years, were not by any means the chief business of Scott's life at this time. They were only vacation trips, except the first, which seems to have had a business purpose. He was for the most part hard at work in Edinburgh in the study of the law and in the duties of a writer's apprentice, which meant copying by hand page after page of legal documents, sometimes accomplishing as much as a hundred and twenty pages in one day. In 1792, at the age of twenty-one, he successfully passed the law examinations and was admitted to the Bar, very much to his father's delight. The real Alan Fairford and Darsie Latimer 'put on the gown' the same day, a solemn ceremony followed by a jolly dinner to their companions. Scott was now a fine, handsome young fellow with a host of friends. The sickliness of childhood had given way to a robust and vigorous manhood. His lameness still remained, but in spite of this he had acquired the frame of a young athlete. He was tall, well formed, big-chested, and powerful. His complexion was fresh and even brilliant; his eyes were bright and twinkling with fun; there was a queer little look about his lips as though {14} they were about to break out into some funny remark--an expression that was the delight of all his friends and the despair of portrait painters. Perhaps the most striking feature of his face was the high forehead, bespeaking intellectual power and dignity, yet in perfect consonance with his good humour and affectionate kindliness. In every company of young people he was easily the life and soul of the group. They crowded around him to revel in his store of anecdotes and ballads à propos to every occasion, and his jokes usually kept them in a gale of merriment. He was fond of every kind of outdoor amusement, especially of fishing, hunting, and riding. Few could excel him in horsemanship, either in skill or endurance. From the days of his first Shetland pony he had loved horses, and but for his ability to make long journeys on horseback to remote regions at a time when there were no railways and few coach-roads, he would have been unable to acquire the knowledge of places and people which gave a peculiar charm to all his writings. The day after his admission to the Bar, Scott 'escaped' to the country, going first to Rosebank and then to Jedburgh, where he met Robert Shortreed, a sheriff-substitute of Roxburghshire, who consented to become his guide on a visit to the wild and inaccessible district of Liddesdale. For seven successive years they made these 'raids' as Scott called them, 'exploring every rivulet to its source and every ruined peel from foundation to battlement.' 'There was no inn or public-house of any kind in the whole valley; the travellers passed from the shepherd's hut to the minister's manse, and again from the cheerful hospitality of the manse to the {15} rough and jolly welcome of the homestead; gathering, wherever they went, songs and tunes, and occasionally more tangible relics of antiquity.' To his friendly familiarity with these unsophisticated people and the intimate knowledge thus acquired of their manner of living, we are indebted for some of the most charming pages of 'Guy Mannering.' Whether the future poet had any plan in his mind for using the material so gathered is doubtful, though much of it went into the 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border' and perhaps these raids suggested that undertaking. In the summer vacation of 1797, Scott set out for a visit to the English Lakes. He was accompanied by his brother John and Adam Ferguson, an intimate friend through whom he had been introduced to the highest literary circles of Edinburgh. Their first stop was at the country home of Dr. Ferguson, the distinguished philosopher and historian, and the father of Scott's friend. This was at Hallyards, in the vale of Manor Water, near Peebles. The venerable old gentleman, then in his seventy-third year, had become interested in one of the strangest men, physically and mentally, who ever lived,--a poor, ungainly, and hideous dwarf named David Ritchie. Dr. Ferguson conducted his young friend to the rude hut of this horrible being, and Scott, strong and fearless as he was, is said to have come away as pale as ashes and shaking in every limb. This singular meeting resulted, nineteen years later, in the story of 'The Black Dwarf,' where Scott skilfully combined some good traits, which Ritchie was known to possess, with the grotesque and terrifying external figure. Proceeding to the English Lakes, Scott now saw for the {16} first time the wild and rugged beauty of Saddleback and Skiddaw and the desolate loneliness of Helvellyn, contrasting with the calm loveliness of Grasmere and Windermere and with the sweet homeliness of the dalesmen's cottages, their pastures and peaceful flocks. Like all other scenes of beauty, it made its impression upon his mind. He found a home here for Colonel Mannering; when Waverley was hard-pressed after the failure of the insurrection of 1745, he found it convenient to make a home for his hero with a farmer at Ullswater; and he marched his gallant Baron of Triermain into 'the narrow Valley of St. John' in search of the mysterious castle, as directed by the sage of Lyulph's tower. The tower of Lyulph may be seen near the shores of Ullswater, and on the side of a hill rising above St. John's Beck, a little stream flowing out of Lake Thirlmere, is a huge rock now called 'Triermain Castle,' which at a distance, under certain conditions of the atmosphere, bears a fancied resemblance to the phantom castle of the poem. Scott frequently showed his profound admiration for the English Lake district, and if he did not love it with all the devotion of his friend Wordsworth, it was only because his own beloved Highlands had a prior claim upon his affections. On a summer day soon after his return from the Lake District, in the same year, Scott and his friend Adam Ferguson were riding together along a country road near the pleasant little village of Gilsland, in the north of England. The former was then twenty-six years of age. He was a tall man of athletic frame, who rode as though incapable of fatigue. There was a peculiar grace and charm in both face and figure, which almost irresistibly {17} caused a passer-by to follow his first glance with a second and longer scrutiny. As they rode along, the two companions chanced to pass a young lady, also on horseback, who immediately attracted their notice. Her form was like that of a fairy, light and full of grace. Her long silken tresses were jet black, her complexion a clear olive, and her eyes a lovely brown, large, deep-set, and brilliant. Young and vivacious, with a natural air of gaiety, she was both pleasant to meet and charming to look upon. At the ball which took place in the evening there was much rivalry among the young men for the honour of dancing with this vision of loveliness, who had blotted out all other thoughts from their morning ride. To the tall young man fell the privilege of taking the fair stranger to supper, and this was the introduction of Walter Scott to Miss Charlotte Margaret Carpenter. The evening of September 30, immediately following the ball, was one of the happiest Scott ever knew. A friend records that he 'was _sair_ beside himself about Miss Carpenter;--we toasted her twenty times over--and sat together, he raving about her until it was one in the morning.' This was not Scott's first love affair, but it was equally genuine. Some four years previously he had chanced to meet at the Greyfriars Church in Edinburgh, a very charming young lady of seventeen. As the Sunday service closed, an unexpected shower came up. Scott had an umbrella and the lady had none--sufficient reason for escorting the fair one to her home. There was also sufficient reason for falling in love with her, for Miss Williamina Stuart was not only beautiful in face and {18} figure, but lovely in character. Highly educated, accomplished in music and painting, well versed in literature, and with the best family connections, she was still a sweet girl, of charming manners and no affectation. For three years Scott cherished the most ardent feelings of love, but in silence. He was then a young man of small worldly prospects. He had written nothing and was unknown outside the circle of friends in the law courts, where he was but a beginner. This, however, would not have been an insurmountable difficulty had the love been mutual. But the young lady had already given her heart unreservedly to an intimate friend of Scott's, William Forbes, a man of noble character. She gave Scott no encouragement, but frequently, wrote him in a friendly way, chiefly concerning literary topics. After many months of patient restraint, Scott finally wrote her a frank and unreserved declaration of his feelings, and received in reply a letter which filled him with many forebodings but with 'new admiration of her generosity and candour.' She urged upon him the continuation of their simple friendship as the 'prudent line of conduct.' Unfortunately, Scott read between the lines, as too hopeful persons sometimes do, sentiments which were not intended. The final disappointment came in the autumn of 1796, and in the following January Miss Stuart became the bride of Walter Scott's successful rival. It is pleasant to think that the success of the one and the disappointment of the other led to no bitterness. Both were men of noble and generous minds. And in the days of Scott's adversity, when he was wearing away his vitality in a desperate but honourable endeavour to pay his debts, Sir William Forbes, though {19} his own bank was one of the heavy losers in the disaster that overwhelmed Scott, came forward with offers of assistance, and even went so far as to pay secretly a large and pressing debt, that his friend Sir Walter might not be entirely crushed. The poet never forgot the tender experiences of these years, and long afterward drew a lovely picture of Williamina in 'Rokeby':-- Wreathed in its dark brown rings, her hair Half hid Matilda's forehead fair, Half hid and half revealed to view Her full dark eye of hazel hue. The rose, with faint and feeble streak, So lightly tinged the maiden's cheek, That you had said her hue was pale: But if she faced the summer gale, Or spoke, or sung, or quicker moved, Or heard the praise of those she loved, The mantling blood in ready play Rivalled the blush of rising day. But Walter Scott was a young man, and in his great big heart there was still room for love. If he thought his heart was broken, he admitted that it was 'handsomely pieced' again. Fascinated with the vivacity and attractiveness of Miss Carpenter, Scott remained at Gilsland much longer than he had intended. The lovers strolled through many delightful paths--walks which left their impress upon the poet's mind and gave him many backgrounds for his future verses and tales. Miss Carpenter had rooms at a large hotel, known as Shaw's, where the momentous ball was held, and Scott was at Wardrew House, a private residence with a picturesque walled-in garden on the slope of a hill not far away. We followed them in fancy as they descended {20} into the glen which separates these two houses, where they might drink of the mineral spring which gives a local fame to the place. Then like the faithful page of the Baron of Triermain, no doubt they 'crossed green Irthing's Mead' and wandering along the shady bank of this pleasant stream, reached the favourite glade, Paled in by copsewood, cliff and stone, Where never harsher sounds invade To break affection's whispering tone Than the deep breeze that waves the shade, Than the small brooklet's feeble moan. Then, turning a bend in the stream, perchance he invited her to Come! rest thee on thy wonted seat; Mossed is the stone, the turf is green, A place where lovers best may meet Who would not that their love be seen. Here is the so-called 'Popping Stone,' where, local tradition asserts, Scott asked the all-important question. Whether this is true or not makes no difference. The question was asked and the stone is there. Whatever virtue there may be in the stone, it is certain that thousands of young couples have found their way thither, and they have literally worn it away until now it is scarcely half its original size. [Illustration: THE POPPING STONE] A little farther west we came to the beautiful old ruins of Lanercost, in which is the tomb of Thomas, Lord Dacre, to whom Marmion, with his last dying gasp on the field of Flodden, sent a message with his signet ring. Near by and entered through a beautiful park is the fine old feudal castle of Naworth, the stronghold of the {21} Dacres and later of the Howards, both of whom are mentioned in 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel.' The place which seems to have interested Scott the most in these rambles was the old ruined wall of Triermain Castle. He saw more of it than can be seen to-day, for a great part of it remained standing until 1832. But it was a ruin in the time of Queen Elizabeth. Scott's imagination, however, soon rebuilt and repeopled it, and Sir Ronald de Vaux became immortalized in 'The Bridal of Triermain,' though forgotten in the pages of history. In almost the latest years of his life, the novelist came back to these scenes of his early manhood for another character whom he took from the same old castle of Triermain, the big and burly, but always faithful, Sir Thomas de Multon of 'The Talisman.' During the autumn of 1797, Scott was a frequent visitor to the city of Carlisle, where Miss Carpenter was living in Castle Street. A few steps beyond the site of her house is Carlisle Cathedral, the most striking feature of which is the beautiful East Window, said to be the finest in England. The cathedral was founded by Henry I in 1101. During the Civil War it was occupied by soldiers, who pulled down ninety-six feet of the nave to build fortifications. The portion that remained, thirty-nine feet, was later enclosed and used as the parish Church of St. Mary. Here, standing between two great Norman pillars of red sandstone, on the day before Christmas, 1797, Walter Scott and Charlotte Carpenter were married. They went to live in Edinburgh, but during the following summer took up their abode in a charming little cottage with a thatched roof and a delightful garden on {22} the banks of the river Esk at Lasswade. It was then a small house with only one room of fair size, though now very much enlarged. The thatched portion, however, is carefully preserved. Mrs. Scott's good taste and her husband's enthusiasm soon converted the house and grounds into a veritable bower of delight. Unfortunately, the rustic archway of ivy, which Scott took so much pleasure in fashioning, has disappeared. But the vale of the Esk still remains, to thrill the souls of the romantic. Not even in lovely Scotland is there a river or glen to surpass it. Deep down between precipitous cliffs and rocks, shaded by tall trees and overgrown by a bewildering profusion of creeping plants and overhanging vines, the little river flows merrily along, seeming to sparkle at every bend with some new recollection of the romantic legends or fantastic tales of the barons of old, who once peopled its ancient castles and drank their wine while they listened to the rhythmic stories of the minstrel bards. Here six happy summers were spent. Friends came down from Edinburgh and new friendships were formed with important personages living in the villas and castles of the vicinity. All found that Scott had formed a connection with one who had the 'sterling qualities of a good wife,' to quote Lockhart's phrase. The brothers of the _Mountain_--a group of boon companions who were closely associated and very fond of each other's society--welcomed Mrs. Scott with the greatest delight. A married life of perfect serenity was inaugurated, which lasted until the death of 'the ever faithful and true companion' in 1826. In a confidential letter to Lady Abercorn, written in 1810, Scott refers to his attempt, in the 'Lady of the {23} Lake,' to make 'a knight of love who never broke a vow,' and mentions his own melancholy experience of early days. He adds: 'Mrs. Scott's match and mine was one 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 their lives; folks who have been nearly drowned in bathing rarely venturing a second time out of their depth.' These words should not be misconstrued. Whatever the ardency of his first love, the second was no less sincere and true. If the first was the highly poetic type, the young dream of a peculiarly sensitive nature, the second was the kind that enables young couples to meet in peace and serenity all the varied problems of life, to establish their housekeeping in mutual helpfulness, to laugh away their cares, as Scott wrote to Miss Carpenter, or if the load is too heavy, to share it between them, 'until it becomes almost as light as pleasure itself.' It was in this spirit that the young people established their household gods in the cottage at Lasswade. To a man of Scott's disposition, happy in his new home life, with every incentive to improve his opportunities, his mind steeped from infancy in the rude ballads of the border country and his heart bounding with delight at the beauties of nature, this new environment seemed all that was needed to turn his whole thought to poetry. Sweet are the paths, O passing sweet! By Esk's fair streams that run O'er airy steep through copsewood deep Impervious to the sun. {24} There the rapt poet's step may rove, And yield the muse the day; There Beauty, led by timid Love May shun the telltale ray. No afternoon stroll could be more delightful than one through the valley of the Esk as far as Roslin. Many go to Roslin by coach from Edinburgh, but they fail to see the glen. Guided by a Scottish friend, we found that the better way is to go to Hawthornden and walk through the gardens and grounds of the ancient castle where the poet Drummond lived and wrote to his heart's content of the beauties of the scene. Here we saw the caves, cut out of the solid rock beneath the castle, which sheltered Robert Bruce during the troublous times when Fortune seemed to frown. Here, too, we stood under the sycamore tree where Drummond welcomed Ben Jonson to his home. Descending the path to the river, we crossed by a little wooden bridge, with a gate in the middle, which can be opened only from the Hawthornden side. Then a walk, which was half scramble, brought us finally to Roslin Castle, on a rock peeping over the foliage, high above the river. Both Roslin and Hawthornden are mentioned in 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel' in the ballad of the lovely Rosabelle:-- O'er Roslin all that dreary night A wondrous blaze was seen to gleam; 'T was broader than the watch-fire light, And redder than the bright moonbeam. It glared on Roslin's castled rock, It ruddied all the copsewood glen; 'T was seen from Dreyden's groves of oak, And seen from caverned Hawthornden. {25} [Illustration: LASSWADE COTTAGE] The quiet of Lasswade gave Scott the opportunity for the compilation of the 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' and its romantic beauty furnished the inspiration for his first serious attempts to write new ballads in imitation of the old ones. 'It was amidst these delicious solitudes,' says Lockhart, 'that he produced the pieces which laid the imperishable foundations of all his fame. It was here that when his warm heart was beating with young and happy love, and his whole mind and spirit were nerved with new motives for exertion--it was here in the ripened glow of manhood he seems to have first felt something of his real strength, and found himself out in those splendid original ballads which were at once to fix his name.' At this period Scott was a man of unusually robust health. In spite of the lameness with which he had been afflicted from infancy, his powers of endurance were very great. He could walk thirty miles a day or ride one hundred without resting. He was quartermaster of the Edinburgh Volunteers and had a great reputation as a skilful horseman. 'He had a remarkably firm seat on horseback,' said Mr. Skene, 'and in all situations a fearless one: no fatigue ever seemed too much for him, and his zeal and animation served to sustain the enthusiasm of the whole corps.' His companions called him 'Earl Walter,' and whenever there came, at drills, a moment of rest, all turned intuitively to the quartermaster, whose ever ready fun never failed to lighten the burdens of the day. It was really this remarkable gift of good companionship, coupled with his fondness for horses and unusual powers of endurance, that enabled Scott to gather the materials for his poems. {26} 'Eh me,' said Shortreed, his companion and guide in the Liddesdale raids, 'sic an endless fund o' humour and drollery as he then had wi' him! Never ten yards but we were either laughing or roaring or singing. Wherever we stopped, how brawlie he suited himsel' to everybody! He aye did as the lave did; never made himsel' the great man, or took ony airs in the company.' It was literally true, as he said, that he 'had a home in every farmhouse.' To his rare good fellowship and his powers of endurance, Scott added one other quality without which his vigorous search for literary material might have been of little use, namely, a most extraordinary memory, which enabled him to retain what he had heard and use it many years afterward. James Hogg, the eccentric Ettrick shepherd, gives a fine instance of this power. One night Scott, with his friends, Hogg and Skene, was out on a fishing expedition. 'While we three sat down on the brink of a river,' says Hogg, 'Scott desired me to sing them my ballad of Gilman's Cleugh. Now be it remembered that this ballad had never been printed: I had merely composed it by rote, and, on finishing it three years before, had sung it over once to Sir Walter. I began it, at his request, but at the eighth or ninth stanza I stuck in it and could not get on with another verse, on which he began it again and recited it every word from beginning to end. It being a very long ballad, consisting of eighty-eight stanzas, I testified my astonishment, knowing that he had never heard it but once, and even then did not appear to be paying particular attention. He said he had been out with a pleasure party as far as the opening of the Firth of Forth, and, {27} to amuse the company, he had recited both that ballad and one of Southey's ("The Abbot of Aberbrothock"), both of which ballads he had only heard once from their respective authors, and he believed he recited them both without misplacing a word.' Living in a country where new beauty appears at every turn in the road and romance is echoed from every hillside, happy in his domestic relations, blessed with the faculty of making friends wherever he went, whether among farmers and shepherds or lords and ladies, active in travelling into every nook or corner where material could be found, keen to appreciate a good story or a pleasing ballad, and able to remember all he ever heard or read, Walter Scott became a poet as easily and naturally as the rippling waters of his beloved Tweed find their way to the sea. {28} CHAPTER II THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL The years at Lasswade were marked by one of the most momentous decisions of Scott's life. He had reached the parting of the ways; one leading to the practice of the law; the other--and the more alluring one--to literature as a profession. Had his father been alive, it is probable that a high sense of duty and loyalty would have determined him to continue in the law, for the old gentleman had set his heart upon that, and Scott would have submitted to almost any irksome requirement rather than wound the feelings of his parent. But the worthy barrister's death a year or two after his son's marriage had put an end to any scruples on his account. Although Scott had not made a failure, his success at the Bar was not remarkable. In the year preceding his marriage and the fifth year of his practice, his fee-book showed an income of only one hundred forty-four pounds, ten shillings. He never had any fondness for the law. As he afterwards expressed it: 'My profession and I came to stand nearly upon the footing which honest Slender consoled himself on having established with Mistress Anne Page: "There was no great love between us at the beginning and it pleased Heaven to decrease it on farther acquaintance."' He began to realize that 'the Scottish Themis was peculiarly jealous of any flirtation with the Muses,' and that a young lawyer could not expect to succeed unless he kept up the appearance of {29} being busy even when he had nothing to do. A barrister who spent his time 'running after ballads' was not to be trusted. To succeed in the law meant, therefore, a farewell to literature. It meant other sacrifices, too. His vigorous health at this period enabled him to indulge a natural fondness for country sports, horseback riding, hunting, fishing, and the like. His membership in the Edinburgh Volunteers gave him a most agreeable companionship with a fine class of men, among whom he was extremely popular and with whom he spent some of the happiest hours of his life. All this would have to be given up if he continued at the Bar, and instead he would feel obliged to tie himself down to a severe course of study in some musty old office in Edinburgh. Two circumstances combined to make feasible the more attractive path. The first was Scott's appointment as Sheriff of Selkirk with an income of three hundred pounds a year, which gave him a certain degree of independence, while the duties were not onerous. The second was the success of the 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.' For several years Scott had travelled extensively through many remote nooks and corners in search of material for this compilation, and its publication had brought him into public notice as a man of no small literary skill. His gratification with its success may be judged from a letter to his brother-in-law, Charles Carpenter, in 1803:-- I have continued to turn a very slender portion of literary talents to some account by a publication of the poetical antiquities of the Border, where the old people had preserved many ballads descriptive of the manners of the country during the wars with England. This trifling collection was {30} so well received by a discerning public, that, after receiving about £100 profit for the first edition, which my vanity cannot omit informing you went off in six months, I have sold the copyright for £500 more. This enterprise, paying as much as the entire proceeds of Scott's first five years of legal effort, gave assurance of a financial success in literature, which coupled with a certain income as Sheriff seemed to make the future fairly secure. Reasoning in this way, Scott finally reached his decision to abandon the law and devote his life to literature. [Illustration: Map of Scotland] 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel' was the immediate result. Scott felt the responsibility of his position. He was now the head of a family, having a wife and three children of whom he might well be proud, and he felt impelled to make a financial as well as literary success of his chosen profession. He had previously tried his hand at original composition. Inspired perhaps by his familiarity with the old Scottish ballads, he had essayed something of the same character. The first of these productions was 'Glenfinlas,' growing out of his early visits to the Highlands. Glenfinlas is a forest in Perthshire, north of the Trossachs and east of Loch Katrine. Next came 'The Eve of St. John,' in which Scott rebuilt and repeopled the old tower of Smailholm which had so fascinated his boyish fancy. In 'The Gray Brother,' an incomplete ballad of this period, the poet sang the praises of the vale of the Esk, then the scene of his almost daily walks. The fourth of these early poems was 'Cadyow Castle,' a ballad on the assassination of the Regent Murray. Cadyow Castle is a very dilapidated old ruin in a park of wondrous beauty near Hamilton, {31} southeast of Glasgow. There is a deep glen, through which runs a little river, the Avon, and on the banks are many tall and beautiful trees. The park was once a part of the old Caledonian forest, a few of the ancient oaks of which still remain standing. It was the habitation of the fierce wild cattle which furnished the liveliest and most dangerous sport whenever a hunt was arranged. Something of the spirit and fire of Scott's later work is seen in these lines:-- Mightiest of all the beasts of chase That roam in woody Caledon, Crashing the forest in his race, The Mountain Bull comes thundering on. Fierce on the hunter's quivered band He rolls his eyes of swarthy glow, Spurns, with black hoof and horn, the sand And tosses high his mane of snow. The man who could write such lines as these must have felt an instinct for poetry which no amount of reasoning could ever set aside. It was, therefore, well that Scott did not attempt to resist his natural inclinations. We find him, then, deliberately turning to poetry, and carefully surveying the field to choose his first subject. Three influences, widely different in character, combined to solve this problem. The first was his interest in the stories of Border warfare aroused by the tales of his childhood and immensely stimulated by his thorough search for ballads to make up the 'Border Minstrelsy.' The second was his membership in the Edinburgh Volunteers which gave a military trend to his thoughts. The third was his desire to oblige a lady. The young Countess of Dalkeith, afterward Duchess of Buccleuch, {32} was an intellectual woman of extreme beauty and lovely character. She was, moreover, the wife of the chief of the clan of Scott, and therefore entitled, in the poet's view at least, to the fealty of her kinsmen. Having heard the legend of Gilpin Horner, a goblin dwarf in whom most of the people implicitly believed, the Countess, much delighted with the story, enjoined upon Scott the task of composing a ballad on the subject. The slightest wish of one so beloved was a command. The poet soon realized that the goblin was likely to prove a veritable imp of mischief, threatening to ruin his ballad, and before the poem was finished, relegated him to the kitchen where he properly belonged. With the goblin story reduced to a mere incident, the poem expanded to a tale of Border warfare in which all of Scott's military spirit and knowledge of history and legend came to the front. He wrote it, as he declared in a letter to Wordsworth, to discharge his mind of the ideas which from infancy had rushed upon it. In a letter to George Ellis in 1802, he refers to it as a 'kind of romance of Border chivalry in a light-horseman sort of stanza.' In the autumn of that year, while on duty with his troop at Musselburgh, during a charge on Portobello sands, he received a kick from his horse which confined him to his rooms for three days. This accident gave an unexpected opportunity, and in these three days the actual writing of the poem was started and the whole of the first canto completed except the introductory framework. It is easy to recognize the 'light-horseman' stanza. Indeed, the clatter of horses' hoofs is heard distinctly as Sir William of Deloraine sets forth upon his night ride to Melrose:-- {33} 'O swiftly can speed my dapple-grey steed Which drinks of the Teviot clear; Ere break of day,' the warrior 'gan say, 'Again will I be here: And safer by none may thy errand be done Than, noble dame, by me!' * * * * * Soon in his saddle sate he fast, And soon the steep descent he passed, Soon crossed the sounding barbican, And soon the Teviot side he won. * * * * * And soon he spurred his courser keen Beneath the tower of Hazeldean. The clattering hoofs the watchmen mark: 'Stand ho! thou courier of the dark!' 'For Branksome, ho!' the knight rejoined, And left the friendly tower behind. The spirited ride to Melrose; the opening of the wizard's grave; the delightful picture of the ruined abbey; the meeting of Lady Margaret and Lord Cranstoun; the telling encounter of the latter with the Knight of Deloraine; the manly spirit of the young heir of Branksome; the tales of Watt Tinlinn and the Scotts of Thirlstane, of Harden and of Eskdale, the coming of the Englishmen, Belted Will Howard and Lord Dacre, the duel resulting in the death of Richard of Musgrave, and the triumph of Cranstoun's love for the fair Margaret, all combine to produce a vivid impression of the stirring events, the conditions of life, and the ideals of the Border country in the days of chivalry. The framework of this picture, from which it takes its name, is generally considered the most beautiful part of the poem. The old minstrel is supposed to relate the tale, with the accompaniment of his harp, to the noble {34} Duchess of Buccleuch. The minstrel, with his reverence and enthusiasm for the old ballad poetry, now in its decadence, is of course the poet himself and the Duchess is his patron, who first suggested the poem. In no more beautiful and delicate way could the poet have shown his devotion to the lord and lady who had so greatly inspired him. Moreover, it gave him the method of showing, as he said, that he had no intention of setting up a new school of poetry, but was only making 'a feeble attempt to imitate the old.' The historical basis of the poem is told in a letter to Lady Dalkeith:-- Dame Janet Beatoun, Lady Buccleuch, who flourished in Queen Mary's time, was a woman of high spirit and great talents. According to the superstition of the times, the vulgar imputed her extraordinary abilities to supernatural knowledge. If Lady Dalkeith will look into the Introduction to the 'Border Ballads,' pages xv and xxix, she will find some accounts of a deadly feud betwixt the clans of Scott and Kerr, which, among other outrages, occasioned the death of Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, the husband of Janet Beatoun, who was slain by the Kerrs in the streets of Edinburgh. The lady resented the death of her husband by many exploits against the Kerrs and their allies. In particular the Laird of Cranstoun fell under her displeasure, and she herself headed a party of three hundred horse with the intention of surprising and killing that baron in the chapel of St. Mary, beside St. Mary's Loch at the head of Yarrow. The Baron escaped, but the lady burned the chapel and slew many of the attendants.... The feud was finally ended by Cranstoun marrying the lady's daughter. [Illustration: ST. MARY'S LOCH] About this fragment of history Scott wove his stirring tale of the Scottish lowlands in the sixteenth century. The last of all the bards was he Who sung of Border chivalry, {35} The aged minstrel is introduced as he passes where Newark's stately tower Looks out from Yarrow's birchen bower. The old ruin was a favourite resort for Scott, and many a happy holiday excursion was made to those 'rich groves of lofty stature' which Wordsworth celebrated in his 'Yarrow Visited.' The ancient tower stands on high ground above the Yarrow, on a road leading westward from Selkirk, over which Scott often walked or rode. About two miles away is Bowhill, a country-seat of the Duke of Buccleuch, where the poet was always a welcome guest. He refers to it affectionately in the closing stanza of the 'Lay':-- When summer smiled on sweet Bowhill. Still farther south is Oakwood Tower, a stronghold of the celebrated Wat of Harden, one of the poet's ancestors. Wide lay his lands round Oakwood Tower And wide round haunted Castle-Ower. This was 'Auld Wat,' who married the 'Flower of Yarrow,' one of the most beautiful women of the Border, who lived at Dryhope, near the foot of St. Mary's Loch. High over Borthwick's mountain flood His wood-embosomed mansion stood. The Borthwick joins the Teviot just above the town of Hawick. The house of Harden stands high up above a deep and romantic glen where there was ample room to conceal 'the herds of plundered England.' Marauding chief! his sole delight The moonlight raid, the morning fight; Not even the Flower of Yarrow's charms In youth might tame his rage for arms. {36} Auld Wat's son, afterwards Sir William Scott of Harden, a remarkably handsome man and an early favourite of King James VI, inherited some of his father's propensities for driving off his neighbour's cattle and other irregularities common to the time. In a raid upon the lands of Sir Gideon Murray of Elibank he was captured and carried in chains to the castle. Elibank is now a ruin on the banks of the Tweed not far from Ashestiel, whither Scott was fond of walking on Sunday mornings. The legend which Scott tells, about as it was told to him in his youth, and not, perhaps, in exact accordance with the facts, is as follows:-- When the young marauder was brought to the castle in chains, the Lady Murray asked her lord what he proposed to do with him. 'Why, hang the robber, assuredly,' was the answer. 'What,' answered the lady, 'hang the handsome young knight of Harden when I have three ill-favoured daughters unmarried! No, no, Sir Gideon, we'll force him to marry our Meg.' 'Meikle-mouthed Meg' was the ugliest woman in the country, and young Sir William promptly decided that he would rather hang. Three days were given him to think the matter over, after which he was led out beneath a convenient oak, with a rope tied around his neck and the other end was passed over a stout limb of the tree. Then he began to reconsider and decided that, as between nooses, he preferred the matrimonial one. There may be some advantages in ugly wives after all, and one of them, in this case at least, seemed to be an entire absence of jealousy. It was said, moreover, that 'Meg' had 'a curious hand at pickling the beef which Sir William stole.' They lived a very happy life. The marriage {37} contract was written on the head of a drum and the parchment is still preserved. Scott was so fond of the legend that he wanted to make it the subject of a comic ballad. He accordingly began, but never finished 'The Reiver's Wedding.' The grandson of this couple was Walter Scott, known as 'Beardie,' the great-grandfather of the poet. About a mile above the junction of the Teviot with the Borthwick stands the castle of Branksome. Seen from the opposite side of the river standing on a terraced slope, partly hidden by the trees and shrubs, it makes a pretty picture. All, all is peaceful, all is still, and there is nothing to suggest the time when Nine and twenty knights of fame-- Hung their shields in Branksome Hall. It seemed to us more modern than it really is, for it was completed in its present form in the year 1576. The barony of Branxholme, or Branksome, came into the possession of Sir William Scott of Buccleuch in the early part of the fifteenth century and still remains in the family. The towers which formerly occupied the site were attacked by the English again and again, and the castle burned and pillaged. It will be remembered that after a preliminary survey of the castle and its attendant knights, the minstrel tells the story of how Lord Walter fell, of the widow's desire for vengeance, and of the Lady Margaret's love for Lord Cranstoun, her father's foe. Then for some purpose which is not clearly defined, the 'Ladye' calls to her side the boldest knight of her train, Sir William of Deloraine, and bids him ride with all {38} haste to Melrose Abbey, there to open the grave of the wizard, Michael Scott, and to take from it the 'Mighty Book.' Sir Michael Scott was a man of learning who flourished in the thirteenth century. He wrote several philosophical treatises and devoted much time to the study of alchemy, astrology, chiromancy, and other abstruse subjects, whence he gained the reputation of being a wizard. Many weird tales are told of his performances. Being sent as an ambassador to France to demand satisfaction for certain grievances, he opened his magic book and caused a fiend in the shape of a huge black horse to fly out. Mounting, he flew across the sea and presented himself to the king. His demands were about to be met with a curt refusal when Michael begged the king to defer his answer until the black horse had stamped three times. The first stamp set all the bells in Paris to ringing; the second tumbled over three towers of the palace; the horse raised his foot for the third stamp, but the king would not risk another and gave to Michael what he wanted. It was this same wizard who 'cleft the Eildon Hills in three,' the triple peaks which so picturesquely dominate the entire landscape in the vicinity of Melrose, having been formerly, so it is said, a single summit. It has always been understood that the 'magic book' was buried with the wizard, and that no one dared remove it because of the 'terrible spells' which it contained. [Illustration: BRANKSOME HALL] The knight arrived after a spirited gallop, and shortly after midnight rapped with the hilt of his dagger on the wicket gate. The porter hurried to admit him, and soon he greeted the aged monk of St. Mary's Aisle. Sighing heavily the monk conducted the man of arms through {39} the cloisters, which may still be seen looking very much as the poet described them in lines not only poetically beautiful but literally true:-- Spreading herbs and flowerets bright Glistened with the dew of night; Nor herb nor floweret glistened there But was carved in the cloister arches as fair. Seven graceful arches, forming stalls or seats once used by the dignitaries of the church, make a continuous line along the eastern wall. Above the arches, and joining one to another, are stone carvings of rare delicacy and beauty. Of the more than a hundred separate figures in this frieze no two are alike. There are roses, lilacs, thistles, ferns, oak leaves, and scores of other representations of the forms of nature, all exquisitely carved with inimitable accuracy. Scott admired these arches so greatly that he copied one of them for the fireplace of the entrance hall at Abbotsford. The 'steel-clenched postern door,' through which the monk and the knight now entered the chancel, stands nearly intact. Its three arches rest on graceful pilasters surmounted by capitals, with carved foliage so delicate that a straw can be passed behind the stalks of the leaves. We found it interesting upon entering this door to note the accuracy of the poet's descriptions, which the guide quoted with great fluency. The pillars supporting the lofty roof spread out to form the great arches, seeming to be 'bundles of lances which garlands had bound.' We stood beneath this arched roof for a long time to admire the beautiful East Window, and the guide quoted:-- {40} The moon on the East oriel shone Through slender shafts of shapely stone By foliaged tracery combined. It is almost impossible to realize that these long and slender shafts are really carved out of stone and that the work was done many centuries ago. Scott accounts for it poetically:-- Thou wouldst have thought some fairy's hand Twixt poplars straight the osier wand In many a freakish knot had twined, Then framed a spell when the work was done, And changed the willow wreaths to stone. Beneath the window lies the heart of Robert Bruce. It had been the desire of the monarch that his heart be interred in the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. After his death the body was buried beneath the high altar of the church at Dunfermline, but the heart was taken out and committed to the keeping of James, Lord Douglas, who undertook to carry it to the Holy Land. But James was defeated and killed by the Saracens, and the heart of his royal master was taken to Melrose and buried there. This was as it should be, for the heart of Bruce, figuratively speaking, was always in Melrose. After the destruction of the abbey in 1322 by Edward II on his retreat from Scotland, Bruce made a grant of £2000 sterling, a sum equivalent to about £50,000 in the money of to-day. Because of this munificence the abbey was rebuilt in all the beauty and perfection which Gothic architecture could suggest, so that even in ruins it is still a structure of graceful magnificence. In 1384, the abbey was again destroyed, but later restored. In 1544, 1545, and finally a century later under the Reformation, {41} the abbey suffered serious damage from which it never recovered. The grave of Michael Scott which Deloraine was sent to open was pointed out to us, as it is to all visitors, but in reality its exact position is not known. Johnny Bower, an old guide of whom Scott was very fond, discovered the position of the grave by noting the direction of the moonbeams through the oriel window. 'I pointed out the whole to the Shirra,' said he, 'and he couldna' gainsay but it was varra clear.' 'Scott,' says Washington Irving, who tells the story, 'used to amuse himself with the simplicity of the old man and his zeal in verifying every passage of the poem, as though it had been authentic history, and always acquiesced in his deductions.' Like all other visitors we wanted to see the abbey properly, and that, according to the poet, could only be done by moonlight. If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright, Go visit it by the pale moonlight. The moon was full while we were there and seemed to offer a splendid opportunity. But an unexpected obstacle appeared. In Scotland, in the summer time, the evenings are very long, the twilight lasting until ten or eleven o'clock, while the moon makes very little impression until a late hour. And the custodian of the abbey goes to bed early! So it was impossible to see the moon shining through the east oriel, but fortunately we could see the outer walls from the windows of our hotel, which adjoins the ruin, and the moon kindly favoured us by making Buttress and buttress alternately Seem framed of ebon and ivory. {42} The next day we were treated to a superb view from the private grounds of a gentleman whose estate adjoins the abbey. From this point the entire southern wall, which remains nearly intact, gives at first glance the impression of a complete and beautiful Gothic structure. The distant hills furnish a fine background and the well-kept lawns and graceful birches perform the double duty of shutting out the graveyard and making a charming foreground. But to return to the story. While William of Deloraine, with the mystic book pressed close to his breast, was eagerly returning to Branksome, the fair Lady Margaret was early awake and seeking the greenwood at dawn of light to meet her lover, the Baron Henry. A fairer pair were never seen To meet beneath the hawthorn green. He was stately and young and tall, Dreaded in battle and loved in hall; And she, when love, scarce told, scarce hid, Lent to her cheek a livelier red, When the half sigh her swelling breast Against the silken ribbon pressed, When her blue eyes their secret told, Though shaded by her locks of gold-- Where would you find the peerless fair With Margaret of Branksome might compare! Lockhart finds in this passage 'the form and features of Scott's first love,' and also says that the choice of the hero was dictated by the poet's affection for the living descendants of the Baron of Cranstoun. One of these, George Cranstoun, afterward Lord Corehouse, was one of Scott's earliest friends. His sister, the Countess of Purgstall, was the confidante of Scott at the time of his early disappointment in love. [Illustration: MELROSE ABBEY] {43} The meeting of the lovers was all too brief. The Baron's horse pricked up his ears, 'as if a distant noise he hears,' and the goblin dwarf signed to the lovers to part and fly. William of Deloraine, returning from his all-night ride, was seen coming down the hill into 'Branksome's hawthorn green.' No words were wasted. Their very coursers seemed to know That each was other's mortal foe. Like the bursting of a thundercloud the two champions met, and in another moment William of Deloraine lay on the ground, with Cranstoun's lance, broken, in his bosom. The goblin page was directed to attend the wounded knight, and in doing so discovered the 'Mighty Book' from which he learned some mischievous 'spells.' The son of the Ladye of Branksome was lured into the woods and fell into the hands of an English yeoman who took him, a captive, to Lord Dacre. Scouts hurrying into the castle brought news of the approach of three thousand Englishmen led by 'Belted Will Howard' and 'Hot Lord Dacre.' Naworth Castle, the home of the Dacres and later of the Howards, was one of the first places we visited. It is a fine old baronial castle in Cumberland County, about twelve miles from Carlisle. It was built in the fourteenth century by the Dacre family, who derived their name from the exploits of an ancestor who was conspicuous at the Siege of Acre in the Holy Land, under King Richard the Lion-Hearted. In the sixteenth century it passed into the possession of Lord William Howard, a famous 'warden of the marches,' who became known as 'Belted Will Howard.' {44} His Bilboa blade, by Marchmen felt, Hung in a broad and studded belt; Hence, in rude phrase, the Borderers still Called noble Howard Belted Will. One of the towers of Naworth, which this celebrity occupied, still remains much as he left it, even to the books that formed his library. Lanercost Priory, the burial-place of the Howards and Dacres, is an unusually picturesque and interesting ruin in the same vicinity. The beacon fires soon summoned a goodly array of the best blood of Scotland to meet the English invaders, among whom were Archibald Douglas, seventh Earl of Angus, a descendant of James, Lord Douglas, who attempted to carry the heart of Bruce to the Holy Land. But the battle was averted, and instead a single combat arranged between Richard of Musgrave and William of Deloraine, the prize of the field to be the young Buccleuch, who had fallen into the hands of the English. The Lady of Branksome was escorted to the field of the tournament by Lord Howard, while Margaret had the stately Douglas by her side. The strife was desperate and long, and in the end Musgrave was slain. But not by the hand of William of Deloraine. Lord Cranstoun, by the aid of magic learned from the 'Mighty Book' and assisted by the goblin page, had contrived to array himself in the armour of Sir William and so had won the fight. 'And who art thou,' they cried, 'Who hast this battle fought and won?' His pluméd helm was soon undone-- 'Cranstoun of Teviot-side! For this fair prize I've fought and won'-- And to the Ladye led her son. {45} Then and there the feud was ended. The Ladye of Branksome, declaring that 'pride is quelled and love is free,' gave the hand of Margaret to the Baron of Cranstoun, with all the noble lords assembled to grace the betrothal with their presence. The sixth canto is superfluous if we consider that the story ends with the betrothal. And yet it contains some of the finest passages in the whole poem. It opens with that superb outburst of patriotism, beginning,-- Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land?-- which shows, better than anything else, the extent to which Scott's inspiration was derived from his own Scotland. O Caledonia, stern and wild, Meet nurse for a poetic child! Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, Land of the mountain and the flood, Land of my sires! what mortal hand Can e'er untie the filial band That knits me to thy rugged strand! Here, too, we find the ballad of the lovely Rosabelle, having its scene in the Castle of Roslin, in the vale of the Esk, which Scott learned to love during those six bright years spent at Lasswade. This alone would almost justify the extra canto, but we have in addition the stately requiem of Melrose Abbey, bringing the poem to a solemn and beautiful close. Then comes the final word of the old minstrel:-- Hushed is the harp--the Minstrel gone. And did he wander forth alone? Alone, in indigence and age, To linger out his pilgrimage? {46} No: close beneath proud Newark's tower Arose the Minstrel's lowly bower, A simple hut; but there was seen The little garden hedged with green, The cheerful hearth, and lattice clean. These lines are but the embodiment of one of Scott's dreams at the time he wrote them. The small estate of Broadmeadows, near the ruins of Newark, was about to be offered for sale, and Scott, dreaming of the time when he might have a home of his own, rode around it frequently with Lord and Lady Dalkeith, earnestly hoping that some day he might possess it. But the vision faded when the success of the poem gave him larger ambitions, leading ultimately to the purchase of Abbotsford. {47} CHAPTER III MARMION There was no title of which Scott was more fond than that of 'Sheriff of Ettrick Forest.' The 'Shirra,' as he was affectionately called, was a welcome guest in every farmhouse and there were few in the region where he had not been entertained. The 'Forest' comprises the great tract of hilly country lying between the Tweed and Ettrick Water and extending as far east as Selkirk. Perhaps because we were familiar with the Adirondacks and the Blue Ridge Mountains, where one may travel for hours in the shade of the 'forest primeval,' it was to us a distinct disappointment, and recalled the remark of Washington Irving, that you could almost see a stout fly walking along the profile of the hills. Centuries ago these hills, now completely denuded, were clothed with a dense growth of trees and the entire region was set apart as a royal hunting-ground. It is recorded that in the sixteenth century King James V gave a royal hunting-party, in which the nobles and gentlemen of Scotland to the extent of twelve thousand men participated. But love of sport at length gave way to royal cupidity. For the sake of increasing his revenue, the king turned the forest into a huge sheep pasture, and these hungry animals, still retaining possession, have literally destroyed the forest and changed the whole aspect of the land. Scott, nevertheless, loved the bare hills, and said, 'If I {48} could not see the heather at least once a year, I think I should die.' The duties of the Sheriff's office compelled a change from Lasswade to a place nearer the town of Selkirk, and Scott found a small farm well suited to his fancy, near the northern limits of the 'Forest,' at Ashestiel, on high ground overlooking the Tweed. Here he spent some of the happiest summers of his life. In a letter to Dr. Leyden, he gives a pleasant picture of his happy family at this time:-- Here we live all the summer like little kings, and only wish that you could take a scamper with me over the hills in the morning, and return to a clean tablecloth, a leg of forest mutton, and a blazing hearth in the afternoon. Walter has acquired the surname of Gilnockie, being large of limb and bone and dauntless in disposition like that noted chieftain. Your little friend Sophia is grown a tall girl, and I think promises to be very clever, as she discovers uncommon acuteness of apprehension. We have, moreover, a little roundabout girl with large dark eyes, as brown, as good-humoured, and as lively as the mother that bore her, and of whom she is the most striking picture. Over and above all this, there is in _rerum natura_ a certain little Charles, so called after the Knight of the Crocodile; but of this gentleman I can say but little, as he is only five months old, and consequently not at the time of life when I can often enjoy the 'honour of his company.' [Illustration: ASHESTIEL] Of the house itself and its surroundings Lockhart has given a charming description:-- You approached it through an old-fashioned garden, with holly hedges, and broad, green terrace walks. On one side, close under the windows, is a deep ravine, clothed with venerable trees, down which a mountain rivulet is heard, more than seen, in its progress to the Tweed. The river itself is {49} separated from the high bank on which the house stands only by a narrow meadow of the richest verdure. Opposite, and all around, are the green hills. The valley there is narrow and the aspect in every direction is that of perfect pastoral repose. They were eight miles from the nearest town and four from the nearest neighbour. The latter circumstance Scott did not regret, though he found the former somewhat inconvenient for obtaining needed supplies and naïvely complains to Lady Abercorn that he had been compelled to go out and shoot a crow to get a quill with which to write her. Nearly the whole country roundabout belonged to the Duke of Buccleuch, who gave the poet full liberty to hunt upon his estates. The Tweed in the vicinity of Ashestiel and of Elibank, a little above, was unsurpassed for fishing. A favourite sport was 'leistering kippers,' or spearing salmon at night by the light of a blazing peat fire. Perhaps the most exhilarating pastime of all was the horseback riding, in which the poet was an expert. Accompanied by one or more of his most congenial friends, he would make excursions into remote regions, never dismounting in the very worst paths and displaying powers of endurance and fearlessness that made him the wonder and the envy of his companions. Scott was now in the full vigour of his manhood. The weakness of earlier years had disappeared, and with the exception of the lameness, which never left him, he was strong and healthy in body as well as mind. He was in the full flush of his first great fame as a man of letters, and the trials of his later life had not yet begun. It was at this period and under these circumstances {50} that the poem of 'Marmion' was written. The poet's enthusiasm for the locality in which he lived, and for the friends who made that life a joy, found expression in the Introductions to the six cantos, each addressed to one of his intimate companions. Most readers of 'Marmion,' becoming absorbed in the story, have regarded these introductions as unnecessary interruptions. But no one would wish them to be omitted, for they reveal the author who is telling the tale, and we seem to see him in his changing environment, through the successive seasons as the poem advances, beginning with the day at Ashestiel, when November's sky is chill and drear November's leaf is red and sear; and closing with the Christmas-time, a year later at Mertoun House, where the poet passed the happy days in the house where his great grandsire came of old, 'the feast and holy tide to share.' The introductions were originally intended to be published in a separate volume as 'Six Epistles from Ettrick Forest.' The first, as of course every one knows, is inscribed to William Stewart Rose, a poet who is chiefly known for his translation of Ariosto's 'Orlando Furioso.' It opens with a fine description of the beginning of winter at Ashestiel, then turns to thoughts of 'My country's wintry state,' and the loss to Britain brought by the death of the two rival statesmen, Pitt and Fox, who had passed away in the same year, 1806, in which the poem was begun. The second canto, inscribed to the Rev. John Marriott, is reminiscent of scenes and incidents of the Ettrick Forest. The third canto is the most important of {51} all because of its autobiographic character. It is addressed to William Erskine, a warm friend of the poet's youth, in whose literary judgment Scott reposed the firmest faith. He had been from the beginning a kind of literary monitor, sympathizing fully with Scott's feeling for the picturesque side of Scottish life, but strongly urging him to follow more closely the masters of poetry in some of the minor graces of arrangement and diction. This the poet declares is impossible, and exclaims:-- Though wild as cloud, as stream, as gale Flow forth, flow unrestrained, my tale! In this Introduction the poet's mind reverts to the scenes of his childhood, the old farm at Sandy Knowe, where he lived with his grandfather, and the ancient tower of Smailholm near by. Then rise those crags, that mountain tower, Which charmed my fancy's wakening hour. * * * * * It was a barren scene and wild, Where naked cliffs were rudely piled, But ever and anon between Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green; And well the lonely infant knew Recesses where the wall-flower grew, And honeysuckle loved to crawl Up the low crag and ruined wall. I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade The sun in all its round surveyed. The preparation for the writing of 'Marmion' began right here, for the love of martial tales so early implanted in the poet's breast never ceased to grow until it reached its full maturity. While stretched at length upon the floor, Again I fought each combat o'er, {52} Pebbles and shells, in order laid, The mimic ranks of war displayed; And onward still the Scottish lion bore, And still the scattered Southron fled before. The fourth canto is inscribed to the poet's artist friend, James Skene, with whom he made many an excursion on horseback through the Border country. It recalls many memories of summer days and winter nights, happily spent with mutual friends. The fifth is addressed to George Ellis, a man of wide knowledge of poetry and extensive literary attainments, with whom Scott was on terms of almost brotherly intimacy. It was written from Edinburgh, more than a year after the beginning of the poem, and is distinguished by a fine outburst of enthusiasm for the poet's native city, 'Caledonia's Queen.' The sixth canto and the last is dedicated to Richard Heber, who had rendered able assistance in the preparation of the 'Border Minstrelsy.' He was a member of Parliament for Oxford and a man of profound knowledge of the literary monuments of the Middle Ages. He possessed an extensive library to which he gave the poet free access, and his oral commentaries were scarcely less important. The introduction was written at Mertoun House, where Scott had gone to spend the Christmas season at the home of the head of his clan. Heap on more wood!--the wind is chill; But let it whistle as it will, We'll keep our Christmas merry still. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO NORHAM CASTLE] A brief review of the well-known narrative will serve to point out the most important of the many interesting and often beautiful scenes which the poet so graphically {53} describes. The story opens, as everybody knows, at Norham Castle at close of day, when Lord Marmion, mounted on his red-roan charger, proudly enters,-- Armed from head to heel In mail and plate of Milan steel, with helm richly embossed with burnished gold and surmounted by a flowing crest, amid which A falcon hovered on her nest, With wings outspread and forward breast. He was followed by two gallant and ambitious squires; then came four men-at-arms 'with halbert, bill, and battle-axe,' bearing their chieftain's lance and pennon; and finally twenty yeomen, each a chosen archer who could bend a six-foot bow, and all with falcons embroidered on their breasts. They were welcomed with blare of trumpets and the martial salute of cannon, making a clangor, such as the old turrets of Norham had seldom heard. Marmion responded to the noisy welcome of soldiers and minstrels by a lavish distribution of gold and was ushered into the presence of Sir Hugh the Heron, with whom he spent the hours till midnight in sumptuous feasting. Norham Castle, the ruins of which we reached at the close of day, after a long tour by motor from Berwick, was once a magnificent mansion and fortress, standing on high ground overlooking the Tweed. For a thousand years it was the scene of alternating peace and turmoil. Founded in the seventh century, it passed from English to Scottish hands and back again for many years. By the beginning of the thirteenth century it had become one of the strongest of English fortresses. James IV captured it just before the battle of Flodden Field, but {54} after that event the English recovered it. For the past three hundred years it has been crumbling to ruins, and now there is little left except a single wall and a remnant of the sable palisade, That closed the castle barricade before which Marmion's bugle-horn was sounded. Like so many of Scott's characters, Marmion, though a fictitious personage, moved among the real people of history and could boast a genuine ancestry. There was a distinguished family of Marmion, Lords of Fontenoy in Normandy, one of whom became a follower of William the Conqueror and received a grant of the castle and tower of Tamworth and the manor of Scrivelby, in Lincolnshire. The family became extinct in the latter part of the thirteenth century. In the second canto the scene changes to St. Cuthbert's Holy Isle, where Constance de Beverley is a prisoner. She had broken her vows as a nun and deserted the convent to follow Marmion, in the guise of a page, as his paramour-- And forfeited to be his slave All here, and all beyond the grave. The island, so called, is on the English coast of the North Sea, about ten miles southeast of Berwick. We reached it by crossing the sands in a two-wheeled vehicle, something like an Irish jaunting-car, in which springless instrument of torture we were compelled to travel about three miles. At intervals along the route there are little groups of poles standing in the water, with miniature platforms near the top. These are havens of refuge. If {55} you get caught by the rising tides you have only to make for one of these, and, after watching your horse drown, wait for five or six hours until, with the turn of the tide, somebody comes along to rescue you. Our enterprising Jehu assured us that the tide would be running out, and that there was no danger. But when about halfway over we began to notice that the ride was rising, and the water was soon nearly up to the bed of the wagon. We had made the entire journey in the face of a rising tide and reached the island none too soon, for it was nearly high tide. Cuthbert, the patron saint of the Holy Island, flourished in the seventh century. He was a prior of the original Melrose Abbey--not the one which is now a ruin in the town of that name, but its predecessor which occupied a site farther down the Tweed. Later he became Prior of Lindisfarne and afterward Bishop. The ruins of the abbey show that it must have been a very extensive establishment of great antiquity. Besides the foundation stones, little now remains except part of the walls of the church which are best described in the poet's words:-- In Saxon strength that abbey frowned, With massive arches broad and round, That rose alternate, row and row, On ponderous columns, short and low, Built ere the art was known By pointed aisle and shafted stalk The arcades of an alleyed walk To emulate in stone. We searched in vain for the dreadful 'Vault of Penitence,' the awful dungeon below the abbey, its position known only by the abbot, to which both victim and {56} executioner were led blindfold. There is no trace of any underground vaults nor of anything resembling the niche where poor Constance was immured, to die a slow death from starvation. As a matter of fact, Lindisfarne was never a convent at all. But at Coldingham Abbey, on the coast of Scotland not many miles away, there was discovered, in Scott's time, a female skeleton which, from the shape of the niche and the position of the figure, seemed to be that of a nun immured very much as Constance was supposed to have been. [Illustration: LINDISFARNE ABBEY] Returning to Norham Castle, and continuing the narrative, we find Marmion and his men preparing to depart at an early hour of the morning following their arrival. Guided by the supposed Holy Palmer, they travelled all day, following the mountain paths straight across the Lammermuir Hills, in a northwesterly direction, until at close of day they came to the village of Gifford, four or five miles south of the town of Haddington. A night at the village inn, a weird ghost story by the landlord, and a strange, uncanny adventure of Marmion resulting from it, complete the experiences of the first twenty-four hours. The next day the travellers meet a messenger from the King, Sir David Lindsay, by whom they are escorted to Crichton Castle and entertained in royal magnificence. We found the ruins of this picturesque old castle on the banks of the Tyne, a dozen miles southeast from Edinburgh. From his boyhood they had exercised a fascinating influence upon the poet. Crichtoun! though now thy miry court But pens the lazy steer and sheep, Thy turrets rude and tottered keep Have been the minstrel's loved resort. {57} During his school days, Scott took many a vacation tramp to visit the scenes in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh which appealed to his fancy, and nothing ever made a stronger appeal than some old ruin to which was attached a bit of history or legend. Referring to the time when he was about thirteen years old, he says, in the brief fragment of his 'Autobiography':-- To this period I can trace distinctly the awaking of that delightful feeling for the beauties of natural objects which has never since deserted me.... 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 my 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, which, if circumstances had permitted, I would willingly have gratified by travelling over half the globe. It was with something of this same feeling that the poet caused Marmion to travel from Norham to Edinburgh by a circuitous route, in order that he might visit Crichton and afterward view Edinburgh from the Blackford Hills. Mr. Guthrie Wright, a friend and relative of Scott's friend, Erskine, once asked the poet: 'Why did ever mortal coming from England to Edinburgh go by Gifford, Crichton Castle, Borthwick Castle, and over the top of Blackford Hill? Not only is it a circuitous detour, but there never was a road that way since the world was created!' 'That is a most irrelevant objection,' said Sir Walter; 'it was my good pleasure to bring Marmion {58} by that route, for the purpose of describing the places you have mentioned, and the view from Blackford Hill--it was his business to find the road and pick his steps the best way he could.' At Crichton, Marmion heard from Sir David Lindsay a legend of King James and the Palace of Linlithgow. Of all the palaces so fair Built for the royal dwelling In Scotland, far beyond compare Linlithgow is excelling. This famous palace, now a ruin, lies about midway between Edinburgh and Glasgow. It is beautifully situated on a small loch, from the opposite shores of which it makes an imposing appearance. The walls are in a good state of preservation and still give some intimations of the early magnificence of the royal residence. Three of the Stuart kings, James III, IV, and V, occupied it in succession. Mary, Queen of Scots, was born here in what was once a large and beautiful room. On the opposite side of the building is a room ninety-eight feet long and thirty feet wide, formerly used by the Scottish Parliaments, and the scene of many a state banquet. At one end is an immense fireplace which still remains in almost perfect condition. In the large court are the remains of a fine fountain, with elaborate carvings, erected by James V in anticipation of his marriage with the Princess Madeleine of France. The most striking feature of the palace is Queen Margaret's Bower, a lofty turret, where it is said the Queen watched all day for her husband's return from Flodden Field, only to learn of his disastrous defeat and death. As I stood on the parapet opposite the bower, preparing to make its photograph, {59} the custodian reminded me that I was standing where many famous people used to promenade. Adjoining the palace is the ancient church of St. Michael's, where, according to Lindsay's story, King James received the ghostly visitor in the semblance of the Apostle John, bearing the prophetic warning:-- 'My mother sent me from afar, Sir King, to warn thee not to war,-- Woe waits on thine array; If war thou wilt, of woman fair, Her witching wiles and wanton snare, James Stuart, doubly warned, beware: God keep thee as he may!' From Crichton the journey to the Scottish camp was resumed, and the party now traverses ground even more familiar to the poet:-- Early they took Dun-Edin's road, And I could trace each step they trode; Hill, brook, nor dell, nor rock, nor stone, Lies on the path to me unknown. Over this well-worn road they reached the top of Blackford Hill, and the view that met their eyes aroused an enthusiasm that even Marmion, sullen warrior that he was, could scarcely suppress. The Scottish camp, lying on the plain below, is painted in all the colours of the rainbow:-- A thousand streamers flaunted fair; Various in shape, device, and hue, Green, sanguine, purple, red, and blue. The city, too, is pictured in colours no less vivid and glows 'with gloomy splendour, red.' The Ochil Mountains, reflecting the morning rays are like a 'purple {60} amethyst'; the islands in the Firth are like 'emeralds chased in gold'; and a 'dusky grandeur clothed the height, where the huge castle holds its state.' The scene which Marmion saw, the poet admits, was far different in his own time; and it has changed, perhaps, even more since Sir Walter's day, for the plain where King James's army lay is now filled with well-built cottages. But the dominating features of the view, the huge castle on the left, Arthur's Seat and the Salisbury Crags on the right, Calton Hill, and the crown-shaped steeple of St. Giles still remain to command our admiration and delight. [Illustration: TANTALLON CASTLE] Passing through the Scottish camp, Marmion and his train soon came to Holyrood Palace. The tower on the left was built by James IV as a royal palace in 1498-1503. In the latter year it was the scene of the marriage of the King to Princess Margaret, the daughter of Henry VII of England. The wedding was celebrated with great magnificence. Here Marmion is received by the King, who, on the night before marching to the south, is making Holyrood ring with 'wassail, mirth, and glee.' He is devoting much attention to the wife of Sir Hugh the Heron, who sings for him the song of the young Lochinvar. A glance, thrown by 'the witching dame' to Marmion, arouses the jealous displeasure of the King, and Marmion is hurried off to Tantallon Castle, under conduct of the owner of that stronghold, Douglas, Earl of Angus, known as Archibald Bell-the-Cat. Tantallon is on the north coast of Haddingtonshire, near the town of North Berwick. The ruins still remain, Broad, massive, high, and stretching far. {61} They stand on a high, projecting rock, guarded on three sides by the ocean, while on the land side the remnant of the 'double mound and fosse' may still be seen. The castle was a favourite residence of the Douglas family, though its fame owes less to history than to the genius of Sir Walter. It was here that Marmion dared To beard the lion in his den The Douglas in his hall,-- and in defiance of Lord Angus gave utterance to one of those dramatic passages which have made the poem linger so long in the memory of all its readers. This is one of the chief characteristics of Scott's poetry, that certain lines will insist upon 'running in one's head.' George Ellis pointed out the significant fact that 'everybody reads Marmion more than once' and that it improves on second reading. Perhaps this is why so many people can quote freely from the poem, particularly such passages as the quarrel of Marmion and Douglas. From Tantallon, Marmion and his men, with the Lady Clare, proceed to Flodden Field, reaching at eve the convent of Lennel where 'now is left but one frail arch.' This resting place is on the river Tweed just below the town of Coldstream and not far from the famous ford at the mouth of the river Leet, used by Edward I in the invasion of Scotland near the close of the thirteenth century and by the contending armies of England and Scotland for nearly four hundred years afterward. Over this ford Marmion rushes impetuously to throw himself into the thick of the battle. Then on that dangerous ford and deep Where to the Tweed Leet's eddies creep He ventured desperately: {62} And not a moment will he bide Till squire or groom before him ride; Headmost of all he stems the tide, And stems it gallantly. Sir Walter wrote this passage, and many more like it, from experience, for it was one of his chief delights to ford a stream. James Skene said he believed there was not a single ford in the whole course of the Tweed that he and Scott had not traversed together. 'He had an amazing fondness for fords, and was not a little adventurous in plunging through, whatever might be the state of the flood, and this even though there happened to be a bridge in view. If it seemed possible to scramble through, he scorned to go ten yards about, and in fact preferred the ford.' There was a ford at Ashestiel that was never a good one. At one time, after a severe storm, it became quite perilous. Scott was the first to attempt the passage, which he accomplished in safety, thanks to his steady nerve and good horsemanship, for his favourite black horse, Captain, was obliged to swim nearly the whole distance across. Many of the landmarks of Flodden Field may still be seen. The Twisel Bridge over which the English crossed the Till; Ford Castle, the residence of Sir William Heron, whom Scott transfers to Norham, changing his name to Hugh; Etal Castle, which with Ford, Norham, and Wark was captured by King James; a remnant of the old cross in the field where Marmion died; the well of Sybil Grey, a spring running into a small stone basin, upon which has been cut an inscription something like that referred to in the poem; and 'Marmion's well' at the edge of the village of Branxton, which the local {63} inhabitants are certain is the real spring where Clare filled Marmion's helm with the cooling water,--all these are easily visited in a day's drive. On the summit of Piper's Hill a monument has been erected, marking the spot where King James fell. The King failed to heed the warning given in Linlithgow. He insisted upon going to war and wasted too much precious time with the Lady Heron. As a result he seemed to do everything that a good general would not have done and he failed to do all that a competent leader would have done. The poet gives full vent to his righteous indignation:-- And why stands Scotland idly now, Dark Flodden! on thy airy brow, Since England gains the pass the while, And struggles through the deep defile? What checks the fiery soul of James? Why sits that champion of the dames Inactive on his steed? * * * * * O Douglas, for thy leading wand! Fierce Randolph for thy speed! Oh! for one hour of Wallace wight, Or well-skilled Bruce, to rule the fight And cry, 'Saint Andrew and our right!' Another sight had seen that morn, From Fate's dark book a leaf been torn, And Flodden had been Bannockbourne. The King fell, bravely fighting, it is said, within a lance's length of the Earl of Surrey. The noblest of the Scottish army lay dead and dying about the field. Never before in Scottish history had there been so great a disaster as that Of Flodden's fatal field Where shivered was fair Scotland's spear And broken was her shield! {64} Richard H. Hutton thinks that Scott's description of war in this account is perhaps the most perfect which the English language contains, and that 'Marmion' is Scott's finest poem. 'The Battle of Flodden Field,' he says, 'touches his highest point in its expression of stern, patriotic feeling, in its passionate love of daring, and in the force and swiftness of its movement, no less than in the brilliancy of its romantic interests, the charm of its picturesque detail, and the glow of its scenic colouring.' Lockhart, whose judgment must always be regarded, also believed 'Marmion' to be the greatest of Scott's poems, because of its 'superior strength and breadth and boldness both of conception and execution.' It has been severely criticized. That Marmion, a knight of many noble qualities, should have been guilty of the contemptible crime of forgery, is a blot which Scott himself acknowledged. Mr. Andrew Lang thinks that 'our age could easily dispense with Clara and her lover.' George Ellis, on the contrary, thought it too short, that 'the masterly character of Constance would not have been less bewitching had it been much more minutely painted--and that De Wilton might have been dilated with great ease and even to considerable advantage.' Lord Jeffrey denounced it in characteristic fashion as an 'imitation of obsolete extravagance.' Such a thing, he thought, might be excused for once as a 'pretty caprice of genius,' but a second production imposed 'a sort of duty to drive the author from so idle a task.' But Jeffrey's crabbed remarks were universally condemned as unjust and the public responded to 'Marmion' with enthusiasm. Scott had painted a picture full of lofty patriotism and glowing with life and colour. {65} He had glorified his native city with a fervour that went straight to the hearts of its people. The bravery of the Scottish troops as they rallied around their king and fought to the bitter end seemed to turn the worst disaster in their history into a scene of which every Scotchman might well be proud. The great chieftains of Scotland had been exalted. The hills and mountains, the rivers and brooks, and all the delightful scenes of the southern border had been painted in charming colours. And so the poet had touched the pride of his countrymen and if there were faults of composition or of diction they saw them not. {66} CHAPTER IV THE LADY OF THE LAKE The most popular of all Scott's poems, as 'The Lady of the Lake' has proved to be, is in reality a romantic story set to music and staged in an environment of wondrous natural beauty. It is like an open-air play, but with this advantage, that the audience seems to move continually from one scene of beauty to another, each more entrancing than the one before. You may travel from Stirling to Loch Katrine and from the Trossachs to the Braes of Balquhidder and all the time feel the thrill of the poem, which seems fairly to permeate the atmosphere. It is full of incident, and there is never a dull moment from the beginning of the stag hunt in the solitudes of Glenartney to the final scenes of generosity and gratitude, of love and joyous reunion, in the King's Palace of Stirling Castle. The characters are types, each presenting a poetic interest of his own, of a race of men famous in history and in song for deeds of personal prowess, for skill in the use of claymore and battle-axe, for loyalty to friends, for bitter resentment of wrongs, for courage, for endurance, for hospitality, for love of music and poetry, for strength of physique and for picturesque personal appearance and attire. The spell of the Wizard of the North came upon us as we entered the enchanted land and his whole company of players appeared as if by magic. In the centre of the group there seemed to be the figure of a young woman, {67} pure, beautiful, and good--yet not too good to be human, for she was at least sensitive to the admiring glances of a certain handsome, well-built, and courteous stranger. But Ellen Douglas was nevertheless true to her accepted lover, faithful to her father, and loyal to her own ideals of truth and right. And ne'er did Grecian chisel trace A Nymph, a Naiad, or a Grace Of finer form or lovelier face. * * * * * A chieftain's daughter seemed the maid: Her satin snood, her silken plaid, Her golden brooch, such birth betrayed. And seldom was a snood amid Such wild, luxuriant ringlets hid Whose glossy black to shame might bring The plumage of the raven's wing: And seldom o'er a breast so fair Mantled a plaid with modest care, And never brooch the folds combined Above a heart more good and kind. Grouped about the maiden were the figures of a Lowland king, a Highland chieftain, a stalwart father, and a sturdy lover. The first two presented a striking contrast. The King, disguised as a hunter in Lincoln green, with a bold visage upon which middle age had not yet quenched the fiery vehemence of youth; with sturdy limbs fitted for any kind of active sport or contest; with stately mien and ready speech, 'in phrase of gentlest courtesy'; jovial, kindly, even gleeful and frolicsome at times, with the will to do and the soul to dare, made a splendid picture as he stood upon the Silver Strand, face to face with Ellen Douglas. Far different was the sullen visage of Roderick Dhu, as {68} Twice through the hall the Chieftain strode: The waving of his tartan broad, And darkened brow, where wounded pride With ire and disappointment vied, Seemed, by the torch's gloomy light, Like the ill Demon of the night. Yet in spite of the fierce aspect of this terrible chief, one cannot withhold his admiration, and we feel like echoing the shout of enthusiasm of the cheering boatmen as they approach the island, singing,-- Loud should Clan-Alpine then Ring from her deepmost glen, Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe! When Roderick scorns to take advantage of Fitz-James, though the latter is in his power, and shares with him his camp-fire, his supper, and his bed, finally conducting him in safety through hundreds of hostile Highlanders to the very limits of Clan-Alpine's territory, there to battle single-handed and on equal terms, we begin to feel what real Highland hospitality and chivalry mean and to realize the true nobility of character beneath the rough exterior of this stern soldier. Ellen's father, the exiled Douglas, was a giant in stature who could wield as lightly as a hazel wand a sword which other men could scarcely lift. The women praised his stately form, Though wrecked by many a winter's storm; The youth with awe and wonder saw His strength surpassing Nature's law. Contrasting with this fine old man was Malcolm Graeme, Ellen's lover:-- Of stature fair, and slender frame But firmly knit was Malcolm Graeme. {69} The belted plaid and tartan hose Did ne'er more graceful limbs disclose; His flaxen hair, of sunny hue, Curled closely round the bonnet blue. His mind was 'lively and ardent, frank and kind,' and he had a scorn of wrong and a zeal for truth that promised to make his name one of the greatest in the mountains. But poor Malcolm was to the poet's mind not an artistic success. The latter confessed that he compelled him to swim from Ellen's Isle to the shore merely to give him something to do, but 'wet or dry,' he said, 'I could do nothing with him.' [Illustration: LOCH ACHRAY] Behind these five figures we could fancy a white-haired minstrel, harp in hand; a hermit monk, in frock and hood, barefooted, with grizzled hair and matted beard, naked arms and legs seamed with scars, and a wild and savage face that spoke of nothing but despair; three young men in kilt skirts and Highland plaids, every movement showing the agile strength of their youthful limbs, passing from one to another a cross of fire,--Malise, Angus, and Norman, the messengers who summoned the clans to battle; and back of all, filling up the picture, Highlanders of high and low degree, men, women, and children, all fired with intense loyalty to the Clan-Alpine. The whole picture seemed to project itself upon a background of mountains and valleys, lakes, rivers and waterfalls, fantastic rocks and weather-beaten crags, grey birches and warrior oaks, ferns and wild flowers, all So wondrous wild, the whole might seem The scenery of a fairy dream. Scott was always fond of brilliant hues, but here he fairly revels in colour:-- {70} The western waves of ebbing day Rolled o'er the glen their level way: Each purple peak, each flinty spire, Was bathed in floods of living fire. * * * * * All twinkling with the dew-drop sheen, The brier rose fell in streamers green And creeping shrubs of thousand dyes Waved in the west wind's summer sighs. * * * * * Boon nature scattered, free and wild, Each plant or flower, the mountain's child, Here eglantine embalmed the air, Hawthorn and hazel mingled there: The primrose pale and violet flower Found in each clift a narrow bower. The best way to read 'The Lady of the Lake' is to see the Trossachs; the best way to see the Trossachs is to read 'The Lady of the Lake.' There is a peculiar affinity between the poem and the country that makes each indispensable to the other. Those who read the poem without some knowledge of the scenery are likely to have an inadequate conception of its real significance, or possibly to feel that the poet has painted in colours too vivid and that his enthusiasm is not perhaps fully justified by the facts. Those who see the Trossachs without reading the poem are apt to say, as one man did say to me, 'Yes, this is beautiful, but after all I have seen just such roads in New Hampshire.' He might have added, 'The Rocky Mountains are much higher and more sublime, and the Italian lakes reflect a sky of more brilliant blue and are bordered by foliage infinitely more gorgeous in its colourings,'--all of which is true. But when you come to read the poem with a mental vision of the Trossachs {71} before you and to see the Trossachs with the exquisite descriptions of the poem fully in mind, each acquires a new charm which alone it did not possess. Before the poem was written the Trossachs were scarcely known and Loch Katrine was no more than any other Highland lake. Now these regions are visited yearly by thousands of tourists and to those who know the poem, every turn in the road seems to suggest some favourite stanza. To us the tour was one of unfailing delight and productive of mental visions that will never fade. The Brig o' Turk is to me not merely an old stone bridge over a placid rivulet; but, rushing over it at full speed, eagerly spurring his fine grey horse to further effort, I see the figure of a gallant hunter clad in a close-fitting suit of green, his eyes intently fixed on the road ahead, where a splendid stag, now nearly exhausted, is straining his last ounce of energy in a final effort to distance the pursuing hounds. To me the low ground on the edge of Loch Vennachar, known as Lanrick Mead, appears like a military camp, with great crowds of giant clansmen, in Highland kilts and plaids of many colours, their spears and battle-axes glistening in the sun. The aged oak, bending over the water's edge on Ellen's Isle, is not merely an old dead tree, but it brings the vision of Ellen Douglas putting forth in her frail shallop to answer (as she supposes) the bugle call of her noble father from the Silver Strand. This is the secret charm of the Trossachs. The tourist who goes through, as many do, with whole-hearted devotion to the time-table and guide-book, and whose mind is fixed upon the absolute necessity of 'making' all the points in his itinerary, does not see these scenes any {72} more than do the horses who draw the lumbering coaches. The more leisurely traveller who can follow the course of the poem, viewing each scene as Scott has so charmingly described it, finds exhilaration and delight in every step of the way. Scott was only fifteen when he began to make those merry expeditions to the Highlands in the company of congenial companions which gave him so much material of the right kind as to make a poem inevitable. He learned to know the strange but romantic Highland clansmen; he heard many tales and bits of history which his memory stored up for the future, and the rare beauty of the scenery fascinated him as it does every one else. 'This poem,' he said, 'the action of which lay among scenes so beautiful and so deeply imprinted on my recollections, was a labour of love and it was no less so to recall the memories and incidents introduced.' In one of these excursions (in 1793), he visited the home of the young Laird of Cambusmore, John Buchanan, one of his associates, and subsequently revisited the place many times. Cambusmore is a charming estate about two miles southeast of Callander. Entering by the porter's gate, we drove through a beautiful winding road, lined with rhododendrons. The shrubs, or rather trees (for their extraordinary height and wide-spreading branches entitle them to the more dignified name), were in full bloom, thousands of great, splendid clusters vying with each other to see which could catch and reflect the most sunlight. Here we were hospitably received by the present owner, Mrs. Hamilton, a great-granddaughter of Scott's friend, John Buchanan. The house has been considerably enlarged, but the older portion, {73} thickly covered with ivy, is very much as it was when Scott was a guest and sat on the porch, listening to the story of Buchanan's ancestors. While he was writing 'The Lady of the Lake,' Scott revisited Cambusmore and recited parts of the poem to Mrs. Hamilton's grandfather. He also demonstrated, by actually performing the feat himself, that it would be possible for a horseman to ride from the foot of Loch Vennachar to Stirling Castle in the time allotted to Fitz-James. [Illustration: CAMBUSMORE] From the road in front of this mansion, far away to the north, but faintly visible through the trees, we could see the 'wild heaths of Uam Var,' where the stag first sought refuge when, driven by the deep baying of the hounds, he left the cool shades of Glenartney's hazel woods. From another side we caught a fine glimpse of what the huntsmen saw When rose Ben Ledi's ridge in air. These hills of Scotland have witnessed many a hunt where scores of men dashed wildly after the frightened game. But no stag, ever before or since, has been pursued by so many eager hunters as the creature of Scott's fancy. We joined in the hunt, as all tourists are supposed to do, provided they have the time, which many, especially Americans, have not, for as one Scotchman put it, 'they go through so fast, sir, that you could set a tea-table on their coat-tails, sir.' We saw 'the varied realms of fair Menteith,' a lovely little lake with irregular shores and studded with bright green islands. I remember I had to walk a long way over a lonely heath to get my picture of the lake, and that I was closely followed by a large flock of angry plovers {74} who feared that I might harm their nests. They flew so close that I had to keep one arm above my head for defence, and all the time they were screaming vociferously. We visited 'far Loch Ard' and Aberfoyle, both associated more closely with Rob Roy. We found the copsewood grey That waved and wept on Loch Achray; and climbed up among the pine trees blue On the bold cliffs of Ben Venue. We passed along 'Bocastle's heath' and reached the shores of Loch Vennachar, more fortunate than the huntsmen of the poem, most of whom gave up from sheer exhaustion before they reached that place. For, when the Brig o' Turk was won, The headmost horseman rode alone. This picturesque old stone bridge, spanning the little stream that waters the valley of Glen Finglas, is the entrance to the Trossachs, a region, as the name implies, of wild and rugged beauty. Alone, but with unbated zeal, That horseman plied the scourge and steel; For jaded now, and spent with toil, Embossed with foam, and dark with soil, While every gasp with sobs he drew, The labouring stag strained full in view. Thus the race went along the shore of Loch Achray until they reached the dense woods that lie between this little lake and Loch Katrine. Then just as the hunter,-- Already glorying in the prize, Measured his antlers with his eyes, {75} the wily stag dashed suddenly down a darksome glen and disappeared In the deep Trossach's wildest nook. The place thus indicated may be reached by leaving the fine wagon road and walking up the hill on the right by a path that leads along a little rill to a dense thicket, over which hang some rugged cliffs. We spent a pleasant Sunday afternoon exploring the dark ravines,-- Where twined the path in shadow hid, Round many a rocky pyramid, Shooting abruptly from the dell Its thunder-splintered pinnacle. This is one of the most delightful spots in the Trossachs, though never seen by the thousands who whirl through all this enchanted land in a single day, packed five or six in a seat on a jolting coach, breathing the dust of the road and frittering away their golden opportunity in idle chatter. You cannot catch the spirit of this wild and rugged region unless you walk into the unfrequented parts and see the 'native bulwarks of the pass,' where The rocky summits, split and rent, Formed turret, dome, or battlement, Or seemed fantastically set With cupola or minaret. Here Fitz-James found himself alone and on foot, for his good grey horse had fallen, exhausted, never to rise again. Marvelling at the beauty of the scene, he wandered on, until, seeing no pathway by which to issue from the glen, he climbed a 'far-projecting precipice'; when suddenly there burst upon his sight the grandest view of all, Loch Katrine,-- {76} gleaming with the setting sun One burnished sheet of living gold. As sentinels guarding an enchanted land, two mountains stood like giants: on the south rose Ben Venue, its sides strewn with rough volcanic rocks and its summit 'a wildering forest feathered o'er': on the north 'Ben An heaved high his forehead bare.' The stranger stood enraptured and amazed. Then, thinking to call some straggler of his train, he blew a loud blast upon his horn. To his great surprise the sound was answered by a little skiff which glided forth From underneath an aged oak That slanted from the islet's rock. The old oak was the supposed landing place of Ellen Douglas on what has since been known as 'Ellen's Isle.' The oak, old in Scott's day, is dead now, but singularly enough it died not of old age but by drowning. Loch Katrine is now the reservoir that supplies the city of Glasgow. In preparing it for this service the engineers raised the level of the lake about twenty-five feet, creating many new islands to keep the 'lone islet' company, and completely submerging the 'Silver Strand' so often mentioned in the poem. But the beauty of the lake has not been marred, and the scenes, though changed, are still as lovely as when they aroused the poetic fervour of Sir Walter Scott. [Illustration: GLENFINGLAS] The visitor who takes the trouble, as we did, to row out to Ellen's Isle, will find nothing to suggest the imagined home of Roderick Dhu and the temporary shelter of the Douglas and his daughter. But he will have an excellent opportunity to indulge his fancy and call back {77} to memory the stirring incidents which served to bring together all the leading people of the tale. He may stand on the shore of the island and see the barges, filled with the warriors of Roderick Dhu, bearing down upon him, their spears, pikes, and axes flashing and their banners, plaids, and plumage dancing in the air. He may hear the sound of the war-pipes and the chorus of the clansmen as they shout their chieftain's praise. Then, as the storm of war rises higher and higher, he may fancy Brian the Hermit with wild incantations calling the clans to battle and uttering a terrible curse upon any who failed to heed the summons. He may see the fiery Cross placed in the hands of the young Malise, and watch the fleet messenger as he crosses the lake to the Silver Strand where he lightly bounds ashore. Then, if he be a real enthusiast, he may follow the course of the fiery cross. Malise carried it through the Trossachs, and along the shore of Loch Achray to the hamlet of Duncraggan, just beyond the Brig o' Turk, and in sight of Lanrick Mead, the gathering-place of the clans. Then young Angus, the stripling son of Duncan, seized the fatal symbol, and hurried over the mountains, crossing the southern slopes of Ben Ledi, until, reaching the river Leny at the outlet of Loch Lubnaig, he swam the stream, and after a desperate struggle with the swollen torrent, reached the opposite bank at the chapel of St. Bride. No chapel now exists, but a stone wall marks the site where the little church once stood, and within the enclosure is a single grave. As Angus arrived, a little wedding party was issuing from the churchyard gate. The dreadful sign of fire and sword was thrust into the hands of Norman, the bridegroom, and the command given to 'speed {78} forth the signal.' Not daring to look a second time upon the tearful face of his lovely bride, Norman manfully seized the torch and hurried to the north. He followed the shores of Loch Lubnaig and the swampy course of the river Balvaig, then, turning sharply to the left, entered the Braes of Balquhidder and passed along the northern shores of Loch Voil and Loch Doine, two lovely little Highland lakes that lie hidden away in the solitude of the hills. Thence, turning to the south, he crossed the intervening mountains until he came to the valley of Strathgartney on the northern shore of Loch Katrine. The scene now changes to the slopes of Ben Venue, a rugged mountain peak, towering high above the south-eastern end of Loch Katrine and dominating the entire region of the Trossachs. On the side nearest the lake is a confused mass of huge volcanic rocks overhung here and there by scraggly oaks or birches. Ancient Celtic tradition assigned this wild spot to the Urisk or shaggy men whose form was part man, part goat, like the satyrs of Greek mythology. In later times the Celtic name of Coir-nan-Uriskin gave way to the more euphonious title of the Goblin Cave. To this 'wild and strange retreat,' fit only for wolves and wild-cats, Douglas brought his daughter for safety. Roderick Dhu, hovering about the place like a restless ghost, heard the soft voice of Ellen, singing her 'Hymn to the Virgin.' Then, goaded by the thought that he should never hear that angel voice again, the chieftain strode sullenly down the mountain-side, and crossing the lake soon rejoined his men at Lanrick Mead. In the night Douglas silently departed, resolved to go to Stirling Castle and give his life as a ransom for his {79} daughter and his friends. In the morning Fitz-James found the retreat of Ellen and offered to carry her away in safety. But Ellen in simple confidence told of her love for Malcolm Graeme, and warned the knight that his life was in danger from his treacherous guide. Fitz-James then gave a signet ring to Ellen, telling her to present it to the King, who would redeem it by granting whatever she might ask. The wanderer then went on his way, passing through the Trossachs again, where he met the half-crazed maid, Blanche of Devon. The poet actually saw the original of this strange character in the Pass of Glencoe. 'This poor woman,' he says, 'had placed herself in the wildest attitude imaginable upon the very top of a huge fragment of rock: she had scarce any covering but a tattered plaid, which left her arms, legs, and neck bare to the weather. Her long shaggy black hair was streaming backwards in the wind and exposed a face rather wild and wasted than ugly, and bearing a very peculiar expression of frenzy. She had a handful of eagle feathers in her hand.' Following the dramatic death of Blanche and the swift justice to her murderer, the treacherous guide Murdoch, comes the well-remembered meeting of Fitz-James and Roderick Dhu. Clan-Alpine's chief extended to his enemy the hospitality of 'a soldier's couch, a soldier's fare,' and conducted him safely through countless hordes of his own men concealed behind every bush and stone until they reached the ford of Coilantogle, at the extreme limit of the Highland chief's territory. The place is at the outlet of Loch Vennachar, about two miles west of Callander, and is readily seen from the main road to the Trossachs. Here occurred the terrific {80} combat, so vividly painted by the poet, and Roderick was left upon the field, severely wounded, a prisoner in the hands of Fitz-James's men, who had responded to the bugle call of their leader. The latter, accompanied by two of his knights, rode rapidly along the shores of the Forth. They passed 'the bannered towers of Doune,' now a ruin, which makes a pretty picture seen in the distance from the bridge over the river. Pressing on, they were soon in sight of Stirling Castle, when Fitz-James saw a woodsman 'of stature tall and poor array,' and at once recognized 'the stately form and step' of Douglas. Cambus Kenneth, from which Douglas had just come, is a tall square tower on the banks of the Forth, west of Stirling. It was once a large abbey, founded in the twelfth century and built on the site of the battle-field, where the Scots under Kenneth MacAlpine defeated the Picts. The tower is all that now remains, but the foundations of some of the walls show the great extent of the structure. Amid the ruins is the grave of King James III, over which is a monument erected by Queen Victoria. It is supposed to be in exactly the place where King James was buried, under the high altar, but is so far away from the tower as to indicate that the original abbey must have been unusually large. Next to Edinburgh Castle, Stirling is the most imposing fortress in Scotland. It stands on a rock four hundred and twenty feet above the sea, commanding a fine view in every direction. On the esplanade is a statue of King Robert the Bruce. The figure is clad in chain armour and the king is sheathing his sword, satisfied with his great victory as he gazes toward the field of {81} Bannockburn. Across the valley on the Abbey Craig, two miles away, is a tall tower in memory of that other great national hero, the mention of whose name still brings a tingle into the blood of the loyal Scotsman, William Wallace. The castle is entered by a gateway between two round towers, beneath one of which is the dungeon where Roderick Dhu may be supposed to have been carried after the fatal duel. Here one may fancy the aged minstrel Allan-bane, singing to the dying chief the story of the Battle of Beal' an Duine. A poem that can hold the attention of a company of soldiers when actually under fire themselves must be thrilling, indeed; yet this test was successfully applied to the tale as Scott told it through the minstrel. Sir Adam Ferguson received the poem on the day when he was posted with his company on a point of ground exposed to the enemy's artillery. The men were ordered to lie prostrate on the ground, while the captain, kneeling at their head, read the description of the battle. The soldiers listened attentively, only interrupting occasionally with a loud huzza, when a shot struck the bank just above their heads. On the left of the castle gate is the Royal Palace, built by James III and a favourite residence of James IV and James V. All the windows have heavy iron bars, making the palace look more like a prison than a king's mansion. They were placed there for the protection of the infant James VI, son of Mary, Queen of Scots. He was born in Edinburgh Castle; but considered unsafe there, he was lowered over the walls in a basket and carried to Stirling Castle. Queen Mary had lived here for four years in her childhood and it was here that she was secretly married to Darnley. Two years later, on a {82} visit to the castle to see her son, she was intercepted by Bothwell and carried away to Dunbar, probably with her own connivance, where a month later the two were married. James VI, afterward James I of England, spent most of his boyhood here, and when he left to assume the English crown, Stirling ceased to be a royal residence. Among the many strange and much mutilated statues on the exterior of the palace is one representing King James V as the 'Gudeman of Ballengeich.' It was the custom of this king, as it had been of his father, to disguise himself and mingle with the people, thereby finding relief from the strain of more serious affairs and doubtless learning at first hand what the people thought of him. Their opinions must have been favourable, for the King enjoyed the experiences and the intercourse was always friendly and often amusing. Once on a hunting expedition, the King became separated from the others of his party and was obliged to spend the night at a cottage in the moorlands. The 'gudeman,' like all true Highlanders, was extremely hospitable to the stranger, and ordered the 'gude wife,' to kill for supper the plumpest of the hens. The stranger, departing the next morning, invited the farmer to call on the 'Gudeman of Ballengeich' when he next visited Stirling. The farmer soon accepted the invitation and was much astonished to find himself received by the King, who enjoyed his confusion most heartily and gave him the facetious title, 'King of the Moors.' This story and others like it gave the idea to Scott which he so skilfully made the basis of 'The Lady of the Lake.' [Illustration: STIRLING CASTLE] Another gateway leads into the upper court, on the right of which is the old Parliament House, where {83} the last Scottish Parliament met. At the north end of the court is the Chapel Royal. A third gateway leads to the Douglas Garden, at the left of which is the Douglas Room, where James II treacherously stabbed the Earl of Douglas. The latter had visited the castle under a safe-conduct granted by the King himself. The body was dragged into an adjoining room and thrown out of the window. Later it was buried just where it fell. Scott makes James Douglas refer to the incident as he sadly returns to Stirling to surrender himself and die for his family. Ye towers, within those circuit dread A Douglas by his sovereign bled. From the parapet along the walls of this garden, built on a rock three hundred feet high, a splendid landscape may be seen. Down below appear the windings of the river Forth and the old Stirling Bridge, known as the 'Key to the Highlands,' the only bridge across the Forth during all the stirring times of Scottish history. There too is the 'Heading Hill' to which Douglas also refers:-- And thou, O sad and fatal mound! Thou oft hast heard the death-axe sound, As on the noblest of the land Fell the stern headsman's bloody hand. From another place on the wall, far down on the plain below, we could see the King's Knot, a curiously shaped, octagonal mound of great antiquity, near the base of the precipitous rock upon which the castle stands. This plain, so easily seen from the castle, was the place where many a knightly tournament was held, and it was to this castle park that Douglas went to take part in the games, so that {84} King James shall mark If age has tamed these sinews stark, Whose force so oft in happier days His boyish wonder loved to praise. Here was held the archery contest where Douglas won the silver dart; here was the wrestling match where he won the golden ring; here his brave dog Lufra pulled down the royal stag, and Douglas knocked senseless with a single blow the groom who struck his noble hound; and from here Douglas was led a captive into the fortress. Meanwhile Ellen had found her way to the castle determined to see the King and with his signet ring beg the boon of her father's life. She learned to her astonishment that the King and Fitz-James were one, and that her suit was granted before it was asked, for the genial monarch announced Lord James of Douglas as 'a friend and bulwark of our throne.' The monarch drank, that happy hour, The sweetest, holiest draught of Power,-- When it can say with godlike voice, Arise, sad Virtue, and rejoice! Then Ellen blushingly craved, through her father, the pardon of her lover, and the King in jovial mood commanded Malcolm to stand forth, exclaiming,-- 'Fetters and warder for the Graeme!' His chain of gold the King unstrung, The links o'er Malcolm's neck he flung, Then gently drew the glittering band, And laid the clasp on Ellen's hand. Looking out from Stirling Castle over the delightful scenery of the Scottish Highlands, made a hundred times more lovely by the romantic poem, whose magic has {85} seemed to touch every lake and river, hill and valley, with its influence, we felt a strange reluctance to leave the scene, akin to that of the poet himself as he bids farewell to the Harp of the North:-- Hark! as my lingering footsteps slow retire, Some Spirit of the Air has waked thy string! 'T is now a seraph bold, with touch of fire, 'T is now the brush of Fairy's frolic wing. Receding now, the dying numbers ring Fainter and fainter down the rugged dell; And now the mountain breezes scarcely bring A wandering witch-note of the distant spell, And now, 't is silent all!--Enchantress, fare thee well! {86} CHAPTER V ROKEBY The town of Barnard Castle, where we arrived one evening after a long tour through Yorkshire, is on the left bank of the river Tees and on the southern boundary of the county of Durham. In the morning we were told by 'Boots,' the one man in an English hotel who knows everything, that the castle, which gives its name to the town, could be reached through the stable-yard back of the house. After travelling far out of our way to view the setting of Rokeby, which in the natural beauty of its scenery is unsurpassed by that of any of Scott's other poems, except 'The Lady of the Lake,' the suggestion of such an entrance to the locality of the opening stanzas was a rude shock to our sense of romantic propriety. The reality was worse than the suggestion and we began to think that possibly Mr. Boots might have misdirected us, supposing we wished to see the barnyard instead of Barnard Castle. We proceeded on our way, however, soon coming to a small cottage with a pretty little garden,--nearly every English cottage boasts one of these delightful little areas of colour and of fragrance,--and passing through, reached the enclosure where all that is left of the castle, or nearly all, now stands. Two impressive ruined towers and a short connecting wall are practically all that remain of a once splendid royal residence. On the left is 'Brackenbury's dungeon-tower,' no longer 'dismal,' for the ancient stones are partly clothed with {87} the foliage of fruit trees, trained English fashion against the walls, while a bed of bright-blooming flowers on the right, the fresh green leaves of some overhanging branches on the left, and the lawn, plentifully besprinkled with the dainty little English daisies, each catching its own ray of sunshine and giving a sparkle to the whole scene, all spoke eloquently of the change from death to life since the time when these walls cast only deep shadows of darkness and despair. On the right of the enclosure is the old Baliol Tower, and in the wall connecting it with Brackenbury is an oriel window, where the arms of King Richard III may still be faintly traced in the stone. Baliol Tower is a heavy round structure of great antiquity. It has a remarkable vaulted ceiling composed entirely of keystones arranged in circles. A narrow staircase within the walls leads to the battlements from which we obtained a magnificent view of the valley of the Tees. What prospects from his watch-tower high Gleam gradual on the warder's eye! Far sweeping to the east he sees Down his deep woods the course of Tees, And tracks his wanderings by the steam Of summer vapours from the stream. If Barnard Castle appeared unromantic, approached from the yard of the inn, exactly the opposite feeling took possession of us when we viewed it from the footbridge, just above the dam. Here the river widens until it looks like a placid lake. The castle rises high above the stream, its base concealed by trees of heavy growth, but not tall enough to cover the two great towers and {88} the oriel window of King Richard. It is no longer a single ruined wall, but the imposing front of a vast structure, well placed for defence, once strong in war but now beautiful in peace. Barnard Baliol, whose father was one of the followers of William the Conqueror, founded the castle in the beginning of the twelfth century. He was the grandfather of John Baliol, who contested with Robert Bruce the claim to the Scottish crown. The original castle or fortress covered an extensive area of over six acres, most of which is now given over to sheep-raising or to the cultivation of fruit trees. An extensive domain, comprising much of the surrounding country, was granted to the descendants of Barnard Baliol in the reign of King Rufus. Edward I granted it to Guy Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, in whose family it remained for several generations. Through the marriage of the daughter of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, famous as the king-maker, to the Duke of Gloucester, afterward King Richard III, the estate came into possession of the Crown. The castle was a favourite residence of Richard, who made many additions to it. In the reign of Charles I it was purchased by Sir Henry Vane the elder. When Scott makes it the property of Oswald Wycliffe, he does not go very far astray, for John Wycliffe, the great forerunner of the Reformation in England, was born on the banks of the river Tees and received his education at Baliol College, Oxford, which was founded by the Baliols of Barnard Castle, who were the neighbours of his family. [Illustration: BRACKENBURY TOWER, BARNARD CASTLE] Barnard Castle, however, interesting as it is, was not the magnet that drew the poet to this region for his {89} scenery. In 1808, Scott began his intimacy with John B. S. Morritt, a man of sterling character and high literary attainments, for whom he came to entertain a genuine affection. Morritt had inherited the estate of Rokeby, situated about four miles southeast of Barnard Castle. The Rokebys, like their neighbours, the Baliols, were descended from one of the followers of the Conqueror. The old manor house was destroyed by the Scotch after the battle of Bannockburn (1314), and the Rokeby of that day built the Castle of Mortham, much of which still remains standing on the opposite bank of the Greta. The present Hall was built in 1724. It stands in the midst of an extensive and beautiful park, which Scott, on the occasion of his first visit, thought 'one of the most enviable places' he had ever seen. 'It unites,' said he, 'the richness and luxuriance of English vegetation with the romantic variety of glen, torrent, and copse, which dignifies our Northern scenery. The Greta and Tees, two most beautiful and rapid rivers, join their currents in the demesne. The banks of the Tees resemble, from the height of the rocks, the Glen of Roslin, so much and justly admired.' The letter containing this enthusiastic praise of his friend's estate was written in 1809. Two years later, when the purchase of Abbotsford seemed to require another poem for its consummation, it was to the one place worthy of comparison with his beloved Glen of Roslin that the poet instinctively turned for his backgrounds. Scott's ambition to be the 'laird' of an estate was gratified in the summer of 1811 when he became the owner of an unprepossessing farm of about one hundred acres. The land was in a neglected state, but little of it {90} having been under cultivation. The farmhouse was small and poor, and immediately in front of it was a miserable duck pond. The place, from its disreputable appearance, had been known as 'Clarty Hole.' But Scott's prophetic vision could look beyond all this and see something, if not all, of the transformation which was to be wrought in the next twelve years. The farm lay for half a mile along the banks of the beautiful Tweed, the river which Scott loved. He knew the fertility of the soil and saw the possibility of making the place a beautiful grove. At first he thought only of 'a cottage and a few fields,' but as the passion for buying, planting, and building grew with his apparent prosperity, the farm became a beautifully wooded estate of eighteen hundred acres, the cottage grew into a castle, and 'Clarty Hole,' its name changed into 'Abbotsford' within less than an hour after the new owner took possession, became one of the most famous private possessions in the world. The farm cost £4000, one half of which was borrowed from the poet's brother, Major John Scott, and the other half advanced by the Ballantynes on the security of 'Rokeby,' though the poem was not yet written. The plans for the purchase out of the way, Scott wrote to his friend, Morritt, outlining the new poem, having for its scene the domain of Rokeby and its subject the civil wars of Charles I. Morritt was delighted and immediately responded with a letter full of valuable information. The following summer was a busy one. Until the middle of July, Scott's duties as Clerk of the Court of Sessions kept him at Edinburgh five days in the week. Saturdays and Sundays were spent at Abbotsford. He composed poetry while planting trees and wrote down the verses {91} amid the noise and confusion incident to building his new cottage. 'As for the house and the poem,' he wrote to Morritt, 'there are twelve masons hammering at the one and one poor noddle at the other.' Both 'Rokeby' and 'The Bridal of Triermain' were written under these conditions and at the same time, while Scott found opportunity also to continue his work on the 'Life of Swift,' which eventually reached nineteen octavo volumes, and to render other literary services to his publishers, the Ballantynes. It was not long before Scott found an opportunity to visit Rokeby again, where he remained about a week. On the morning after his arrival, he informed Morritt that he needed 'a good robber's cave and an old church of the right sort.' Morritt promptly undertook to supply both, and to find the former rode with his friend to Brignall Woods, where the Greta flows through a deep glen, on one side of which are some perpendicular rocks, the site of an old quarry. I could not find any robber's caves, but it was easy enough for Scott to make one in such a rock formation. I could, however, form a pretty good idea of the wild flight of Bertram Risingham as he Now clomb the rocks projecting high To baffle the pursuer's eye: Now sought the stream, whose brawling sound The echo of his footsteps drowned. In all probability, the scene is the same to-day, as it was in Scott's time, wild and beautiful. The stream winds around through shady nooks, here rippling over the rocks and then widening out into a placid pool; occasionally passing out from beneath the trees into an open glade, where the well-worn boulders that punctuated its {92} course lay gleaming in the sun, and presenting at every turn some new and changing view. O, Brignall banks are wild and fair, And Greta Woods are green. In describing the visit to this place Mr. Morritt gives an excellent idea of Scott's method:-- I observed him noting down even the peculiar little wild flowers and herbs that accidentally grew round and on the side of a bold crag near his intended cave of Guy Denzil; and could not help saying that as he was not to be upon oath in his work, daisies, violets, and primroses would be as poetical as any of the humble plants he was examining. I laughed, in short, at his scrupulousness; but I understood him when he replied, 'that in nature herself no two scenes were ever exactly alike, and that whoever copied truly what was before his eyes would possess the same variety in his descriptions and exhibit apparently an imagination as boundless as the range of nature in the scenes he recorded; whereas whoever trusted to imagination would soon 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 bareness which had always haunted descriptive poetry in the hands of any but the patient worshippers of truth. The 'old church of the right sort' was found on the other side of Rokeby Park. We reached it from Barnard Castle by crossing the high Abbey Bridge, beneath which the Tees flows in a narrow, rippling, foaming lane of water, flanked on either side by trees of rich foliage whose bright green branches wave to each other continually across the stream in a sort of friendly salute. The old grey Abbey of Egliston is pleasantly situated on rising ground near where the Tees is joined by the rivulet known as Thorsgill. {93} Yet scald or kemper erred, I ween, Who gave that soft and quiet scene, With all its varied light and shade, And every little sunny glade, And the blithe brook that strolls along Its pebbled bed with summer song, To the grim God of blood and scar, The grisly King of Northern War. The abbey was founded in the twelfth century and dedicated to St. Mary and St. John the Baptist. It was once a beautiful cruciform building in the Early English style, but has been allowed to fall into decay and now only parts of the walls of the choir and nave remain. The reverend pile lay wild and waste, Profound, dishonoured, and defaced. Through storied lattices no more, In softened light the sunbeams pour, Gilding the Gothic sculpture rich Of shrine and ornament and niche. This was the scene which Scott chose for the culminating tragedy of the poem. There are many other places in the neighbourhood to which the poet refers. There is 'Raby's battered tower,' a large castle which boasts the honour of twice entertaining Charles I. There is the Balder, 'a sweet brooklet's silver line,' which flows into the Tees a few miles above Barnard Castle, and farther to the northwest, where the three counties of York, Durham, and Westmoreland meet, is the place Where Tees in tumult leaves his source Thundering o'er Cauldron and High-Force. These two cataracts are most impressive when rainstorms have swelled the stream to its full capacity. Just {94} outside the park of Rokeby is a charming spot where the Greta meets the Tees,-- Where, issuing from her darksome bed, She caught the morning's eastern red, And through the softening vale below Rolled her bright waves in rosy glow All blushing to her bridal bed, Like some shy maid in convent bred, While linnet, lark, and blackbird gay Sang forth her nuptial roundelay. Half hidden by the trees, the old stone 'dairy bridge' crosses the Greta, just where the river emerges from the park. It makes a pretty picture as you look through the single arch into the cool shades of the peaceful domain. Passing over this bridge we came to the old tower of Mortham. We did not find it deserted as did Wilfrid and Bertram, for it is now used as a farm and the tower is almost completely surrounded by low buildings of comparatively recent construction. From the garden, however, a fairly good view can be obtained. And last and least, and loveliest still, Romantic Deepdale's slender rill. Who in that dim-wood glen hath strayed, Yet longed for Roslin's magic glade? The glen which Scott would compare with his favourite Roslin must be romantic, indeed. The rill of Deepdale joins the Tees just above Barnard Castle. The scenery increases in beauty as the stream is ascended, to the solitary spot near the Cat Castle rocks-- Where all is cliff and copse and sky,-- and reaches its climax at the pretty waterfall of Cragg Force. {95} [Illustration: THE VALLEY OF THE TEES, FROM BARNARD CASTLE] The Cavaliers and Roundheads whom Scott introduces into the midst of this beautiful scenery are not, it must be confessed, particularly interesting, nor is the villain Bertram, in spite of the fact that the poet was a little proud of him as a sketch full of dash and vigour. There are three people, however, who hold the attention. The first is Matilda, who, by the poet's faintly veiled admission, was intended to be the picture of his early love, Williamina Stuart. In Wilfrid, the youth of poetic temperament, who loved in vain, and Redmond, his successful but generous rival, there is a suggestion, which one can scarcely escape, of the poet himself and Sir William Forbes, who married Williamina. Redmond showed his kindly heart and soldierly strength by fighting desperately over the prostrate figure of his wounded rival, at length carrying him in his arms from the burning castle to a place of safety, after his entire train had deserted their leader. Sir William Forbes was one of the first to offer aid when financial misfortune overtook Sir Walter, and when one creditor undertook to make serious trouble, privately paid the entire claim of nearly £2000, taking care that Scott should not know how it was managed. As a matter of fact, Sir Walter did not learn the truth until some time after the death of his generous friend. {96} CHAPTER VI THE BRIDAL OF TRIERMAIN One of Scott's chief delights was the little game of _fooling the critics_. No sooner had he arranged for the publication of 'Rokeby' than he began to _lay a trap for Jeffrey_, whose reviews of the earlier poems had not been altogether agreeable. From this innocent little scheme the poet and his confidant, William Erskine, anticipated great amusement. The plan was to publish simultaneously with 'Rokeby,' a shorter and lighter romance, in a different metre and to 'take in the knowing ones' by introducing certain peculiarities of composition suggestive of Erskine. The poem thus projected, of which fragments had already been published, was 'The Bridal of Triermain.' The scheme so far succeeded that for a long while the public was completely mystified. A writer in the 'Quarterly Review,' probably George Ellis, thought it 'an imitation of Mr. Scott's style of composition,' and added, 'if it be inferior in vigour to some of his productions, it equals or surpasses them in elegance and beauty.' Jeffrey escaped the trap by the chance of a voyage to America that year, though it may be doubted whether he would have fallen into it. I have already referred to the fact (chapter I) that much of the material for this poem came to Scott in the summer of 1797, when, after a visit to the English Lakes, he found some weeks of real romance near the village of {97} Gilsland. To this period the poet's recollection turned for his 'light romance.' In the passage where Arthur derides the pretensions of his military rival,-- Who comes in foreign trashery Of tinkling chain and spur, A walking haberdashery Of feathers, lace, and fur,-- Lockhart finds an allusion to some incident of the ball at Gilsland Spa where Scott first met his future wife. Whether the walk along the Irthing River below the 'Spa' was really in the poet's mind, when he wrote of the 'woodland brook' beside which Arthur and Lucy wandered, is of course unknown, but I do not doubt that it may have been, since so much of the poem was suggested by the experiences of that pleasant summer. Triermain Castle, or what is left of it, is about three miles west of Gilsland. Only a fragment about the size of an ordinary chimney is now standing, though Scott saw more of it, for a considerable portion of the ruin fell in 1832. The Barons of Gilsland received a grant of land from Henry II sometime in the twelfth century, and Robert de Vaux, son of the original grantee, was probably the builder of the castle. On his tombstone in Lannercost Priory, near by, is this inscription:-- Sir Robert Vaux that sometime was the Lord of Triermain, Is dead, his body clad in lead, ligs law under this stane; Evin as we, evin as he, on earth a levan man, Evin as he, evin so maun we, for all the craft of men. The castle was built of the stones of the old Roman wall which passes near the place. From Triermain, Sir Roland de Vaux sent his page to Ullswater, passing {98} through Kirkoswald, a village of Cumberland on the river Eden. He came to Penrith, to the south of which is a circular mound supposed to have been used for the exercise of feats of chivalry, which the poet calls 'red Penrith's Table Round.' In the same locality near the river Eamont is 'Mayburgh's mound,' a collection of stones said to have been erected by the Druids. Continuing to the southward, he came to the shores of Ullswater, where he found the wizard of Lyulph's Tower. The venerable sage then related the story of King Arthur's adventure in the Valley of St. John. [Illustration: THE VALLEY OF ST. JOHN, SHOWING TRIERMAIN CASTLE ROCK] We set out in quest of the mysterious phantom castle and found the drive through the narrow valley a delightful one. Nearly everybody who visits the English Lakes drives over the hills from Ambleside to Keswick. After passing Dunmailraise and skirting the shores of Thirlmere Lake beneath the shadows of Helvellyn, we turned off the main road near the mouth of St. John's Beck, one of the many pretty brooks that are found everywhere in the neighbourhood. A huge pile of rocks, projecting curiously from the side of a green-coated hill, is called, from the poem, Triermain Castle Rock. Following the course of the streamlet, upward, we found a view much like that which appeared to King Arthur, after the goblet with its liquid fire had disenchanted him. The monarch, breathless and amazed, Back on the fatal castle gazed-- Nor tower nor donjon could he spy, Darkening against the morning sky; But on the spot where once they frowned, The lonely streamlet brawled around A tufted knoll, where dimly shone Fragments of rock and rifted stone. {99} As we proceeded up the valley, looking back time and again for a last view of the rock, it was easy to fancy that what we saw in the distance might well be a castle and that under certain atmospheric conditions the illusion might be heightened. {100} CHAPTER VII THE LORD OF THE ISLES 'The Lord of the Isles,' was another effort to deceive the critics. A long poem acknowledged by Walter Scott, following soon after 'Waverley' and only a month preceding 'Guy Mannering,' was calculated to 'throw off' those who were trying to identify the mysterious author of the Waverley Novels with the well-known poet. It was the result of a vacation journey of about six weeks in a lighthouse yacht, made in the summer of 1814 in the company of a party of congenial friends. The chief of the expedition was Robert Stevenson, a distinguished civil engineer in charge of the lighthouse service on the north coast of Scotland, and the grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson. After circling the Shetland and Orkney Islands they came down into the Minch or channel which separates the west coast of Scotland from the Hebrides, and stopped at Dunvegan, on the Isle of Skye, to see the ancient castle. Two days later they stopped to examine Loch Corriskin, which made a profound impression upon the poet's mind. 'We were surrounded,' he said in his Diary of the expedition, 'by hills of the boldest and most precipitous character and on the margin of a lake which seemed to have sustained the constant ravages of torrents from these rude neighbours. The shores consist of huge layers of naked granite, here and there intermixed with bogs and heaps of gravel and sand, marking the course of torrents. Vegetation there was {101} little or none, and the mountains rose so perpendicularly from the water's edge that Borrowdale is a jest to them. We proceeded about one mile and a half up this deep, dark, and solitary lake, which is about two miles long, half a mile broad, and, as we learned, of extreme depth.... It is as exquisite as a savage scene, as Loch Katrine is as a scene of stern beauty.' In the poem he gives a little more vivid description:-- For rarely human eye has known A scene so stern as that dread lake With its dark ledge of barren stone. Seems that primeval earthquake's sway Hath rent a strange and shatter'd way Through the rude bosom of the hill, And that each naked precipice, Sable ravine, and dark abyss, Tells of the outrage still. The wildest glen but this can show Some touch of Nature's genial glow; On high Benmore green mosses grow, And heath-bells bud in deep Glencroe, And copse on Cruchan-Ben; But here--above, around, below, On mountain or in glen, Nor tree nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower, Nor aught of vegetative power The weary eye may ken. For all is rocks at random thrown, Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone, As if were here denied The summer's sun, the spring's sweet dew, That clothe with many a varied hue The bleakest mountain-side. No wonder that the exiled monarch, Bruce, should say: A scene so rude, so wild as this, Yet so sublime in barrenness, {102} Ne'er did my wandering footsteps press Where'er I happed to roam. Returning to their vessel after an extraordinary walk, the party left Loch Scavig and, rounding its southern cape, sailed into the Loch of Sleapin, where they visited Macallister's Cave. Here they found a wonderful pool, which, 'surrounded by the most fanciful mouldings in a substance resembling white marble, and distinguished by the depth and purity of its waters, might be the bathing grotto of a Naiad.' In the morning they sailed toward the south and Merrily, merrily goes the bark On a breeze from the northward free, So shoots through the morning sky the lark, Or the swan through the summer sea. The shores of Mull on the eastward lay, And Ulva dark and Colonsay, And all the group of islets gay That guard famed Staffa round. They were following the same route, or nearly so, which the poet afterward laid down for Robert Bruce on his return from the Island of Skye to his native coast of Carrick. They stopped at Staffa to view the famous basaltic formation,-- Where, as to shame the temples decked By skill of earthly architect, Nature herself, it seemed, would raise A minster to her Maker's praise. 'The stupendous columnar side walls,' says the Diary; 'the depth and strength of the ocean with which the cavern is filled--the variety of tints formed by stalactites {103} dropping and petrifying between the pillars and resembling a sort of chasing of yellow or cream-coloured marble filling the interstices of the roof--the corresponding variety below, where the ocean rolls over a red, and in some places a violet-coloured rock, the basis of the basaltic pillars--the dreadful noise of those august billows so well corresponding with the grandeur of the scene--are all circumstances unparalleled.' They also stopped to view 'Old Iona's holy fane,' the ancient burial-place of kings and abbots and other men of eminence. It is said that Macbeth was buried here and before him sixty other Scottish kings whose names are now unknown. The vivid descriptions of scenes along the route of Bruce to Scotland, with which 'The Lord of the Isles' abounds, were gathered on this memorable journey of the poet. It was not so, however, with the arrival of Bruce at his ancestral castle of Turnberry on the coast of Ayr, the information for which was supplied by Scott's indefatigable friend, Joseph Train, whose investigations brought to light the ancient superstition that on each anniversary of the night of Bruce's return a meteoric gleam reappeared in the same quarter of the heavens. The light that seemed a twinkling star Now blazed portentous, fierce and far, Dark red the heaven above it gleamed, Dark red the sea beneath it flowed, Red-rose the rocks on ocean's brim, In blood-red light her islets swim. The ruins of Bruce's castle may still be seen close by the lighthouse at Turnberry. So little remains that they are scarcely visible from the land side, and though {104} thousands visit the locality for a run over the superb golf links, few realize that here was the birthplace of Robert Bruce, and that the skirmishes here begun, when the future king returned prematurely from exile, led eventually to the series of successes which terminated in the great victory of Bannockburn. The poetic description of this terrific combat lacks nothing of the vigour and dramatic force that characterize the story of Flodden Field. The scene where the Bruce, suddenly attacked by Sir Henry de Bohun, rises in his stirrups and fells the fierce knight with a single blow of his battle-axe; the stratagem of the concealed ditches into which the English rode with fearful losses; the kneeling of the Scottish army in prayer before the battle; the charge of the cavalry against the English archers; the sudden appearance of the Scottish camp-followers on the brow of the hill, waving their spears and banners, so that they resembled a fresh army of reinforcements; the tragic death of De Argentine and the final triumph of the Scottish cause are vividly portrayed with all the poet's accustomed power. 'The Lord of the Isles' was the last of Scott's important poems. Two other attempts followed, 'The Field of Waterloo' and 'Harold, the Dauntless,' but neither was considered successful. [Illustration: TURNBERRY CASTLE, COAST OF AYRSHIRE] 'Rokeby,' 'The Bridal of Triermain,' and 'The Lord of the Isles,' though well worthy of the genius of the poet, had failed to equal in popularity the three greater poems by which his fame had been established. The brilliant success of Byron was, as Scott feared, 'taking the wind out of his sails.' Moreover, his own interest in poetry had waned under the influence of his greater achievements {105} in prose. As the author of the Waverley Novels he had stepped into a new and vastly more important field, where he now stood alone. So with the passing of Walter Scott the poet came the rising star of the novelist, and the world was the richer by the transition. {106} CHAPTER VIII WAVERLEY One morning during our stay at Melrose, we drove by motor westward along the Tweed, passing Ashestiel, situated high up on the opposite bank, but catching only a glimpse of it through the trees. Here 'Waverley' was begun in 1805 and laid aside because of the criticism of a close friend. Here, too, in 1810, it was resumed and again put aside because of the faint praise of James Ballantyne. This time the manuscript was lost and completely forgotten. It came to light in 1813 when Scott was searching in an old cabinet for some fishing-tackle. He was seized with a desire to finish it, and the work was done so fast that the last two of the original three volumes were written in three weeks. It was published on the 7th of July, 1814. Farther up the stream we could see in the distance on a high elevation the ruins of Elibank, where Scott's ancestor, young Wat of Harden, came so near paying the penalty for 'lifting' a few head of his neighbour's cattle. Scott always said that the blood of the old cattle-drivers of Teviotdale still stirred in his veins, and in this way he accounted for his 'propensity for the dubious characters of borderers, buccaneers, Highland robbers, and all others of a Robin Hood description.' Our journey on this particular morning was for the purpose of visiting an old baronial mansion which Scott no doubt had very much in his mind during the writing {107} of 'Waverley.' This was Traquair House, situated in the village of that name, about two miles south of Innerleithen. It presents some striking resemblances to the description of Tully Veolan. There is a long and wide avenue, having an upper and a lower gate. 'This avenue was straight and of moderate length, running between a double row of very ancient horse-chestnuts, planted alternately with sycamores, which rose to such huge height, and flourished so luxuriantly, that their boughs completely overarched the broad road beneath.' Two narrow drives, one on each side of the broad avenue, converge immediately in front of the inner gate. Between these is a broad space 'clothed with grass of a deep and rich verdure.' The outer entrance to the avenue is barred by a pair of iron gates, hung between two massive pillars of stone, on each of which is a curious beast, standing on his hind legs, his fore legs resting on a sort of scroll-work support. The animals face each other like a couple of rival legislators holding a joint debate from behind tall reading-desks. Scott says somewhat dubiously that these 'two large weather-beaten mutilated masses of upright stone ... if the tradition of the hamlet could be trusted, had once represented, or at least been designed to represent, two rampant Bears, the supporters of the family of Bradwardine.' If any of the village people, who stood around as I arranged my camera, their wide-stretched eyes and open mouths betraying their curiosity, had told me that these 'bears' were 'rampant hippopotami,' I should have rewarded them with my usual credulous nod and 'thank you.' There can be little doubt that Scott took the idea of the Bears of Bradwardine from this gate, although he {108} multiplied the two and scattered them all over the place. Like Tully Veolan, the house seems to consist of high, narrow, and steep-roofed buildings, with numberless windows, all very small, while the roofs have little turrets, 'resembling pepper-boxes.' It was built 'at a period when castles were no longer necessary and when the Scottish architects had not yet acquired the art of designing a domestic residence.' Scott no doubt was a frequent visitor here. In one of his letters he refers to the owner in connection with a plan to plant some 'aquatic trees,--willows, alders, poplars, and so forth,'--around a little pond in Abbotsford and to have a 'preserve of wild ducks' and other water-fowl. He says, 'I am to get some eggs from Lord Traquair, of a curious species of half-reclaimed wild ducks, which abound near his solitary old château and nowhere else in Scotland that I know of.' This denotes a somewhat intimate acquaintance with the Earl of Traquair. The house, indeed, was so near Ashestiel that Scott could hardly fail to visit so interesting a place many times. It is doubtful if there is another inhabited house in Scotland more ancient than Traquair. The present owner takes care to preserve its appearance of antiquity. No repairs or alterations are made except such as are absolutely necessary, and then the work is done in such a way as to conceal its 'newness.' Among the early owners of the estate was James, Lord Douglas, the friend of Bruce, who attempted to carry his chief's heart to the Holy Land. The founder of the family of Traquair was James Stuart, and his descendants have held the estate for nearly four centuries. {109} The great gate with the grotesque bears has been closed for more than a century. One tradition is that the defeat of the young Prince Charles at the battle of Culloden in 1746 was the direct cause of its final closing. The Prince visited the Earl of that day (Charles, the fifth Earl of Traquair) to persuade him to lend his active support to the Jacobite cause. The Earl felt compelled to decline, but in escorting his visitor from the park, made a vow that the gate should never be opened again until a Stuart was on the throne. The defeat of the Prince was a severe disappointment to the Traquair family and the vow of the Earl has been kept to this day, even though the earldom is now extinct. It is not correct, however, in spite of the striking resemblances, to speak of Traquair House as the 'original' of Tully Veolan. Scott himself says in his note in the edition of 1829, 'There is no particular mansion described under the name of Tully Veolan; but the peculiarities of description occur in various old Scottish seats.' Among these were the house of Sir George Warrender upon Bruntsfield Links; the old house of Ravelston, owned by Sir Alexander Keith, the author's friend and kinsman, from which he took some hints for the garden; and the house of Dean, near Edinburgh. He adds,'The author has, however, been informed that the house of Grandtully resembles that of the Baron of Bradwardine still more than any of the above.' Acting upon this hint, when we were making the city of Perth our centre, we took a long journey by motor with Grandtully Castle as the objective point. I doubt if there is a more beautiful drive in all Scotland. We followed the left bank of the river Tay through a fertile {110} valley of surpassing loveliness. In the whole journey of nearly one hundred miles it seemed as though there was never a blot on the landscape. No neglected farms, no rough patches of naked earth, no tumble-down fences, no unsightly railroad excavations nor bare embankments, no swamps filled with fallen timber, no hideous bill-boards, none of the hundreds of unsightly objects which mar the scenery of so many country drives. Everything seemed well kept. The big estates were filled with beautiful trees and shrubs, many of them in full bloom, and the humbler places did equally well, though on a smaller scale. I remember passing a hedge of beeches, half a mile long, the trees growing ninety feet high and so close together as to make a wall impenetrable to the sunlight. I was told that this hedge was trimmed once in three years at an expense of fifteen hundred dollars each time. This is only one item in the care of a large estate. We passed the park and palace of Scone, where the coronation stone was kept before its removal to Westminster Abbey, and from which it received its name. Farther to the north we stopped a few minutes at Campsie Linn, which I shall mention later in connection with 'The Fair Maid of Perth.' A little beyond Cargill our course turned sharply to the West, although the main road continues to the north until it reaches Blairgowrie, some two or three miles beyond which is another 'original' of Tully Veolan, the house of Craighall. Unfortunately lack of time did not permit a visit to this place, but I must digress long enough to explain its significance. It was the seat of the Rattray family, who were related to William Clerk, one of Scott's most intimate companions of the early days {111} spent among the law courts of Edinburgh. During one of the Highland excursions the friends stopped at Craighall. When 'Waverley' came out, twenty-one years later, Mr. Clerk was so much struck with the resemblance of Tully Veolan to the old mansion of the Rattrays that he immediately said, 'This is Scott's.' The reason for the conviction was probably not so much the similarity of the real house to the fictitious one as the recollection of a little incident of the early excursion. Clerk, seeing the smoke of a little hamlet before them, when they were tired and heated from their journey, is said to have exclaimed, 'How agreeable if we should here fall in with one of those signposts where a red lion predominates over a punch-bowl!' In spite of the lapse of so many years, Clerk recognized his own expression (with which he knew Scott had been particularly amused) in that part of the description of Tully Veolan where 'a huge bear, carved in stone, predominated over a large stone basin.' [Illustration: GRANDTULLY CASTLE] Following the course of the beautiful river, upstream, we came at length, far up in the Perthshire hills, to the Castle of Grandtully. It is a large and stately mansion, situated in one of those beautiful parks with which the region abounds. It has the pepper-box turrets and small windows of Tully Veolan. It is now, as in Scott's time, the home of a family of Stewarts, one of whom, Sir George, supported the cause of 'the Young Chevalier' in 1745. The gardener, who, in the absence of the family, did the honours of the place, told me that Scott had visited the house many years after 'Waverley' appeared and had said then that it was more nearly like what he had described than any other castle, and that {112} 'the only mistake he had made was in putting bears on the gateway instead of bees.' There is a fine wrought-iron gate at Grandtully with the figures of two bees, forming a part of the coat of arms of the Stewart family. An avenue of limes formerly led to this gate, but it is no longer used and only two of the trees remain. Scott was always cautious about admitting any connection of his writings with definite 'originals,' but was ever ready to humour those who fancied they saw certain resemblances. It is curious that he does not mention either Traquair House or Craighall in his note, though both were identified as 'originals' during his lifetime. No doubt, consciously or unconsciously, he wove into his novel partial descriptions of both, as well as of Grandtully, while the houses which he particularly mentions also furnished some of the details. The historical value of 'Waverley' lies in its picture of the rising of the Highland clans in favour of Charles Edward Stuart, called the 'Young Pretender' by the supporters of the reigning king, but affectionately known among his Scottish adherents as 'Bonnie Prince Charlie.' The ambitious young man, the grandson of James II, left France in the summer of 1745 in a small vessel, with only seven friends, and landed on one of the Hebridean Islands. Before the end of August he had raised his standard in the valley of Glenfinnan and found himself at the head of an army of fifteen hundred men, chiefly of the clans of MacDonald and Cameron. He soon made a triumphant march to Edinburgh, where he established himself in the Palace of Holyrood, which the Stuart family had already made famous. On Tuesday, the 17th of September, he caused the proclamation {113} of his father, 'the Old Pretender,' as King James VIII, to be read by the heralds at the old Market Cross in Parliament Square. The people crowded around the 'Young Chevalier,' eager to kiss his hand or even to touch for a single instant the Scottish tartan which he wore. So great was the crowd that he was compelled to call for his horse, for otherwise he could make no progress. It is said that his noble appearance so won the hearts of all who beheld him that before he reached the palace the polish of his boots was dimmed by the kisses of the multitude. That night the old palace reawakened to something of its former brilliancy, on the occasion of a great ball, given by the Prince. The old picture gallery, with its array of queer portraits of long-forgotten Scottish kings, was a scene of glittering splendour. The long-deserted halls, now brilliant with a thousand lights, were crowded with an assembly of men of education and fortune, accompanied by their ladies in gowns of such elegance as the confusion of the times might permit. Mingling with these representations of the Jacobean gentry of Edinburgh were the handsomely arrayed officers of the clans, the Highland gentlemen of importance, with their many coloured plaids and sashes, their broadswords glittering with heavy silver plate and inlaid work, and all the other elegant appurtenances for which the picturesque Highland costume offered abundant scope. In the chapter on the Ball, Scott merely introduced into an historic assemblage two handsome women, Flora MacIvor and Rose Bradwardine, and two men, Fergus MacIvor and Edward Waverley. The palace is to-day much the same as it was in the {114} time of the Prince, though the adjoining abbey is now roofless and very much more of a ruin. A walk through the Canongate, from Holyrood to the Market Cross, would give one a very fair idea of the street through which Fergus MacIvor and Waverley passed to the lodgings of the former in the house of the buxom Widow Flockhart, where Waverley received his new Highland costume from the hands of James of the Needle. At the other end of the town, beneath the castle, is St. Cuthbert's Church, then called the West Kirk, where the honest Presbyterian clergyman, MacVicar, preached every Sunday and prayed for the House of Hanover in spite of the fact that many of the Jacobites were present. In one of those petitions he referred to the fact that 'a young man has recently come among us seeking an earthly crown' and prayed that he might speedily be granted a heavenly one! Much of the material for 'Waverley' was stored up in the retentive memory of the novelist when he was a mere boy. At six years of age he was taken for a visit to Prestonpans. If the old veteran of the German wars, Dalgetty, whom he met here and who found a ready listener in the bright-eyed little boy, was able to tell the story of the battle in anything like a graphic manner, it must have made a profound impression upon the mind of a lad who had already learned to fight the battles of Scotland with miniature armies of pebbles and shells. On one side was an army of Highlanders, the chief men of each clan proudly dressed in their distinctive tartans. They were tall, vigorous, hardy men, all proud of their ancestry, each capable of deeds of individual daring and courage, but all loyal to their chiefs and to their temporary leader, {115} Prince Charles Edward Stuart. They were not only well dressed but well armed, each man having a broadsword, target, dirk, and fusee, or flintlock gun, and perhaps a steel pistol. These were the gentlemen of the Highlands. Contrasting strangely with them and forming the larger part of the army was the rear guard, a motley crowd, bearing every appearance of extreme poverty. They were rough, uncouth, half-naked men of savage aspect, armed with whatever weapon could be most easily obtained. Some had pole-axes; some carried scythes, securely fastened to the ends of poles; a few had old guns or swords; while many had only dirks and bludgeons. But all had the fighting spirit and a keen desire for plunder. To complete this curious but formidable array, there was an old iron cannon, dragged along by a string of Highland ponies. This constituted the entire artillery of the army and it could only be used for firing signals, yet the leaders allowed it to be retained because of the belief on the part of the men in the ranks that it would in some miraculous way contribute to their expected victory. On the English side a complete army of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, well equipped and disciplined, confronted the Highland hordes. As they wheeled into line the fixed bayonets of the infantry glistened in the sun like 'successive hedges of steel.' These, with the trains of artillery and troop after troop of well-equipped dragoons, presented a formidable appearance. But they struck no terror into the hearts of the wild 'petticoat-men.' With terrific yells the forces of the rebellious Scotchmen rushed into battle. Discipline and order gave way before the impact of savage zeal, and panic {116} seized the English army. The result was what the child Scott always contrived to accomplish in his mimic battles of pebbles,--the complete victory of the Scots and the utter rout of their enemy. There is now little to be seen on the battle-field. The old thorn tree, which was once the central landmark, has almost disappeared. The fertile fields, once trampled by hostile armies, have given way to railroad tracks and unsightly collieries. Colonel Gardiner's house, however, where that hero died after receiving a mortal wound upon the battle-field, still remains standing, and in front, at the end of a fine avenue of trees, is a plain but dignified monument to his memory. The principal incident of the battle, as told in 'Waverley,' is based upon a true story, which Scott heard from Alexander Stewart of Invernahyle, on one of his early visits to the Highlands. When the Highlanders in 1745 attacked the army of Sir John Cope at Prestonpans, Stewart was one of the leaders in charge. Noticing an officer of the English army standing alone, sword in hand, too proud to fly with the others, he called on him to surrender. The officer answered by a thrust of his sword which Stewart received in his target, breaking the blade. A huge Highlander rushed up to the defenceless man with lifted battle-axe, and in another moment would have killed his victim but for the chivalrous interference of Stewart, who protected him from injury, took care of his personal property, and finally secured his release on parole. This officer was a Scotch gentleman, serving in the King's army, whose name was Colonel Whitefoord. Stewart later paid him a visit at his home in Ayrshire. After the battle of Culloden had put an end to the hopes of Prince Charles and his loyal Scottish {117} friends, when those who had supported the rebellion were in grave danger of death and the confiscation of their property, Colonel Whitefoord took occasion to repay the debt to Mr. Stewart. He called in person on the Duke of Cumberland to plead for his friend's life, or at least for the protection of his family and property. On receiving a positive refusal, he took his commission from his pocket, and laying it on the table before the Duke, with great emotion begged leave to retire from the service of a king who did not know how to be merciful to a vanquished enemy. The Duke was deeply affected and granted the desired protection. It was none too soon, for the troops were even then beginning to plunder the country in the immediate vicinity of Invernahyle's home. That unfortunate gentleman had lain for many days concealed in a cave, his food being brought by one of his daughters, a child so young that she was not suspected by the soldiers. The rescue of Colonel Talbot by Waverley and the subsequent friendly assistance of that officer, upon which so much of the plot of the novel depends, was founded upon this incident, which the old soldier related to Walter Scott, a boy of fifteen. It will be remembered that Scott's first Highland visit took place in 1786, so that Stewart, who was 'out' in the rebellion of 1715, must have been a very old man when he told the story. The lad, who no doubt listened eagerly, absorbing every detail into his extraordinary memory, did not use the tale until nearly a quarter of a century later. An example of Scott's remarkable way of remembering and reproducing the little details of the stories he heard is the use he made of Stewart's experience in {118} hiding in a cave. The Baron of Bradwardine is supposed to have concealed himself in similar manner and to have had important assistance from 'Davie Gellatley,' the Baron's 'natural' or fool, who was 'no sae silly as folk tak him for.' Colonel Stewart, a grandson of Stewart of Invernahyle, in his book on the Highlands, points out that while some gentlemen 'who had been out' in the rebellion were obliged to conceal themselves in the woods near his grandfather's house, they were supplied with food and other necessaries by one of these poor, half-witted creatures, who showed an extraordinary sagacity as well as fidelity in protecting the friends of his patron. 'Davie Gellatley' was a type common enough, especially in the country districts of Scotland, a century ago. These rustic fools were usually treated with kindness, the good people feeling a sense of duty to help those to whom Providence had denied their full share of mental power. They frequently possessed a certain sagacity or cunning, combined with sly humour, which enabled them at times to make quick and unexpected answers, causing much amusement and wonder. Such a man was Daft Jock Gray, who lived on a farm in Ettrick and was well known to all the Border people. He was a frequent visitor at Ashestiel, where he entertained the family with his wild snatches of songs and ballads and his eccentric performances. Jock was once travelling with a man of his own type, Jamie Renwick. When night came, they lodged in a convenient barn. Jock could not sleep and got up and walked about singing his wild and incoherent songs. This so irritated Jamie that he shouted, 'Come to your bed, ye skirlin' deevil! I canna get a wink o' sleep for ye; I daur say the folk will think us daft! Od, if ye {119} dinna come and lie down this instant, I'll rise and _bring ye to your senses_ wi' my rung!' 'Faith,' says Jock, 'if ye do that, it will be mair than ony ither body has ever been able to do.'[1] The visit of Waverley to the cave of Donald Bean Lean was based upon another incident, told to Scott on a later excursion to the Highlands in 1793, when he stopped for a time at Tullibody, the residence of Mr. Abercrombie, the grandfather of his intimate friend and companion, George Abercrombie. The old gentleman related how he had been compelled to make a visit to the wild retreats of Rob Roy, where he was entertained with great courtesy by that Highland chief in a cave very much like that described in Waverley. He was treated to a dinner of 'collops' or steaks, cut from his own cattle, which he recognized hanging by the heels in the cavern. He found it necessary to arrange for the payment of blackmail to the cateran, which insured the protection of his herds against not only Rob Roy himself, but all other freebooters. We found just such a cave on the east shore of Loch Lomond in the heart of the Rob Roy country. It is reached by rowing from Inversnaid about a mile up the lake, and clambering over some rough rocks to the opening. It is known as Rob Roy's Cave and gave an excellent idea of the place where Waverley was entertained by Donald Bean Lean and the good-natured Highland girl, his daughter, who thought nothing of walking four miles to 'borrow' enough eggs for his breakfast. From the rocks we enjoyed a superb view of Loch Lomond, {120} strongly suggesting the Highland loch of 'Waverley,' 'surrounded by heathy and savage mountains, on the crests of which the morning mist was still sleeping.' I was fortunate enough to get a good photograph of these mists as they rose above the summit of Ben Vorlich on the opposite side of the lake. On this same excursion to the Highlands, Scott learned from another old gentleman something of the history of Doune Castle, the ruins of which now stand on the banks of the Ardoch, a tributary of the Tieth, some ten miles or more north of Stirling. We found the most beautiful view from the bridge on the main road, crossing the Tieth. The ruins show that the castle was once of great extent. It was built by Murdoch, Duke of Albany, while governor of Scotland in the exile of James I. When James returned in 1423, he took vengeance upon the unfaithful guardian of his kingdom and beheaded Murdoch on the Heading Hill of Stirling Castle. The Scottish monarchs, or several of them, utilized the castle as a dower-house for their queen consorts. James II in 1451 bestowed it upon his queen, Mary of Gueldres; James III gave it to his consort, Margaret of Denmark, in 1471; and James IV presented it to Queen Margaret in 1503, making it one of his royal residences. In the year 1745 it came into the possession of Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, who used it as a prison. Scott is quite consistent with the facts of history, therefore, when he causes Waverley to be detained there on his way to Holyrood Palace. [Illustration: DOUNE CASTLE FROM THE TEITH] One other incident of this same Highland excursion must be mentioned. It was then that Scott first visited the home of his friend, Buchanan, the Laird of Cambusmore. {121} Francis Buchanan, the great uncle of the young laird, was carried away from this house to Carlisle, where he was hanged on a charge of treason, this estate and another at Strathyre being confiscated. The property was later restored to the family, by whom it is still owned. The account of the execution of Fergus MacIvor at Carlisle Castle was based upon this story, as told to Scott on the porch of Cambusmore by his friend Buchanan. Another spot in the Highlands of which Scott was very fond is the little waterfall of Lediard. We found the place because we were looking for it, but the casual tourist would not be likely to see it. It is reached from the road leading along the north shore of Loch Ard, west of Aberfoyle and south of the Trossachs. I found it necessary to walk through a lane to a near-by farmhouse and then go up a slight incline by a narrow winding path along a little brook until I came to a thick wood. There the rush of the waters could be plainly heard, and guided by the sound, I was able after some search to find a rock where I could place my camera for a view of the little cascade. It is not remarkable either for the height of the fall or for the volume of water, but its charm comes from the dense foliage through which the sunlight dances and sparkles, from the rough rocks clothed in ferns and moss and wild flowers, except where the fantastic play of the streamlet keeps them bare, and from the deep pool at the bottom filled to the brim with pure, cold water. This exquisite scene was chosen by Scott for one of his most romantic pictures--the meeting of Waverley and Flora MacIvor, when the graceful and beautiful daughter of the Highlands, blending her voice with the music of the waterfall and the accompaniment of the harp, {122} sang the Celtic verses so full of devotion to her native land and the cause of the Prince, calling to the clans:-- For honour, for freedom, for vengeance awake! It is interesting to compare the character of Flora MacIvor and her devotion to the fortunes of the exiled Stuarts with that of the famous Flora MacDonald. In the circumstances of their environment there is no similarity between the two heroines, one of fiction and the other of real life. Flora MacDonald was born in the Island of South Uist and brought in infancy to the neighbouring island of Skye. Except for a brief visit to Argyleshire, she never left those islands until after the stirring events which made her famous. She did not meet the Prince until she engaged in her efforts to rescue him, after the battle of Culloden. In personal characteristics there is a very striking resemblance. Flora MacDonald, though reared in the solitude of a remote island, acquired an excellent education, to which she added the natural love of poetry and romance peculiar to her people. 'There was nothing unfeminine, either in her form or in her manners, to detract from the charm of her great natural vivacity, or give a tone of hardness to her strong good sense, calm judgment, and power of decision. Her voice was sweet and low; the harsher accents of the Scottish tongue were not to be detected in her discourse.'[2] She always manifested a perfect modesty and propriety of behaviour coupled with a noble simplicity of character which led her to regard with surprise the many tributes of praise which her conduct merited. These were the characteristics {123} with which Scott invested his heroine. Flora MacDonald's family belonged to the clan of MacDonald of Clanronald, and one of Scott's most valued friends, Colonel Ronaldson MacDonnel of Glengarry,[3] was a descendant of the same clan. He was an eccentric character who tried to play the chieftain and thought, felt, and acted about as he might have done a hundred years earlier, but could not do in his own time without provoking censure and ridicule. He even attempted to have himself recognized as the chief of the whole clan of Clanronald, though his own ancestors had been unable to establish the right. Scott regarded him as a treasure, 'full of information as to the history of his own clan, and the manners and customs of the Highlanders in general.' In his effort to make Fergus MacIvor, Vich Ian Vohr, a typical leader of one of the Highland clans, Scott no doubt received considerable help from Glengarry, whose castle of Invergarry was on Loch Oich, in Inverness, in the very heart of the country of the rebellious chiefs and only a few miles distant from Culloden, the scene of their final defeat. Cosmo Comyne Bradwardine, Esq., the pompous, tiresome, but laughable bore, with his endless quotations in Latin, the honourable soldier, the excellent father and the lovable friend, is one of Scott's most interesting characters. Though an original creation, there was more than one man of his time who might have sat for the portrait of the brave, honourable, kind-hearted gentleman who spoke Latin as fluently as his native Scotch dialect and who loved his 'Livy' so much that {124} after escaping from some soldiers who had arrested him, he risked recapture in order to return and secure the beloved volume which he had forgotten in his haste. The absurd old Baron is represented as insisting upon his right and duty, under a charter of Robert Bruce, by which his lands were held, to pull off the boots of the King. Two difficulties present themselves:--first that Prince Charles is not the King, and second that he does not wear boots. But it is decided that Charles represents the King, and that a service performed to him is done for the King; also that brogues are a legitimate substitute for boots. So with the good-natured consent of the Prince, the ridiculous ceremony takes place with due solemnity. This incident, fantastic as it seems, is only an example of the way in which certain Scottish tenures were held. Mrs. Hughes, of Uffington, says that Scott told her of a similar tenure under which the Howistons of Braehead held their lands, namely, by presenting a basin and ewer with water and a towel for the King to wash whenever he came to Holyrood. The Laird of Balmawhapple was a purely fictitious character, but the method of his death at Prestonpans was one of the true stories told to Scott as a child when he first visited the battle-field. A brave and honourable gentleman, one of the few cavalrymen who followed Prince Charles, was pursuing some fugitive dragoons. Suddenly discovering that they were followed only by one man and his two servants, the soldiers turned and cut down the courageous Highlander. [Illustration: ULLSWATER (WAVERLEY'S RETREAT AFTER THE DEFEAT OF THE CHEVALIER)] As in many of Scott's novels, the hero is less attractive than some of the subordinate characters. The author himself characterized Edward Waverley, somewhat too {125} severely, as a 'sneaking piece of imbecility' and added, 'if he had married Flora, she would have set him up upon the chimneypiece, as Count Borowlaski's wife used to do with him.' Yet in the third chapter, where the subject is Waverley's education, he is really giving a bit of autobiography. He refers to Edward's power of imagination and love of literature and mentions the pleasure which his uncle's large library afforded him. 'He had read and stored, in a memory of uncommon tenacity, much curious though ill-arranged and miscellaneous information. In English literature he was master of Shakespeare and Milton, of our earlier dramatic authors, of many picturesque and interesting passages from our old historical chronicles, and was particularly well acquainted with Spenser, Drayton, and other poets, who have exercised themselves on romantic fiction.' 'Waverley' will always be remembered for its graphic picture of the Scottish Highlands in the period just before they ceased to have a distinctive individual existence, and for the portrait of the Young Pretender, who in 'the affair of 1745' achieved such a remarkable hold upon the affections of the Scottish people. Scott pictures the young Prince in the most brilliant period of his career, and if he does so in colours more attractive than his character deserves, it must be remembered that these were the traits which won the love of his followers and by which alone that affection can be explained. The excesses of later years had not yet marred the fine promise of youth, which, under happier circumstances, might have developed into a higher type of manhood. [1] From _Illustrations of the Author of Waverley_, by Robert Chambers. [2] From a Memoir, by Mrs. Thomson, 1846. [3] It was to this good friend that Scott was indebted for the gift of his famous staghound Maida. {126} CHAPTER IX GUY MANNERING For the principal scenery of Scott's second novel, we found it desirable to change our headquarters to the city of Dumfries, a royal burgh of great antiquity, on the banks of the river Nith. A mile or more to the north, where the Cluden flows into the Nith, are the picturesque ruins of Lincluden Abbey, to which Robert Burns made many a pilgrimage. His favourite walk was along the opposite bank of the stream, and here, at the close of a summer's day, he would promenade in the twilight, enjoying the calm of the evening while he composed his lyrics. Several miles farther north is Ellisland, where Burns endeavoured to combine the pursuit of farming with the collection of the king's revenue in the excise service, and incidentally 'met the Muses' to the extent of producing 'Tam o' Shanter' and several other well-known poems. South of the city the Nith is a tidal river, gradually broadening until it becomes an arm of the Solway Firth. Two fine old ruins guard its outlet, one on either side. On the west is Sweetheart Abbey, a beautiful ruin in an excellent state of preservation. Its name comes from a pretty story. The Lady Devorgilla, mother of John Baliol, who became King of Scotland, founded the abbey in 1275 and erected a tomb near the high altar. At her husband's death, six years before, she had caused his heart to be embalmed and enclosed in a casket adorned {127} with precious stones, which she ever after carried with her wherever she went. She gave orders that at her death her body should be laid in the tomb which she had built and that the precious casket should be laid on her breast. Thus the two 'sweethearts' were to rest together. In the opening chapter of the novel, Scott refers to some monastic ruins which the young English gentleman, Guy Mannering, had spent the day in sketching. Doubtless Sweetheart Abbey was in his mind, or possibly Lincluden. On the opposite side of the river, or of the bay, for it is difficult to tell where the river ends and the Solway begins, is the fine old ruin of Caerlaverock Castle, the original of 'Ellangowan Auld Place,' the ancestral home of the Bertram family and the place around which revolves the whole plot of 'Guy Mannering.' The day after our arrival at Dumfries we set out to examine this ruin, stopping first at Glencaple, a small town on the Nith just below the place where the river begins to widen into an arm of the sea. It was low tide, and there was a sandy beach of extraordinary width which the receding waters had sculptured in waving lines of strange contour. The sky above was filled with fleecy clouds, and in the distance the summit of Criffell reared its height in a majestic background. It was on such a coast that Van Beest Brown, or Harry Bertram, landed when he returned to Scotland after many years, and found himself at the ruins of the house of his ancestors. The locality might be taken for the original of Portanferry, if geographical relations were to be considered. Caerlaverock Castle is one of the most picturesque ruins in Scotland. Enough of the original walls remain {128} to show the unusual extent of the building. It was triangular in form, with two massive round turrets at one angle, forming the entrance, and a single turret at each of the others. The two entrance turrets and one of the others are still intact and well preserved. The turret which once stood at the third angle has completely disappeared. Between the front towers is a very tall arched doorway, now reached by a little wooden bridge over the moat. Many of these old ruins have mounds showing where the moat used to be, but this is one of the few in which the water still remains. For centuries the lofty turrets have been appropriated by rooks, and the moat is now a safe retreat for geese. The inner court was three stories high, containing a magnificent suite of apartments, all richly sculptured. Behind these was a great banqueting-hall, ninety feet long, extending between the two rear towers along the base of the triangle. There was a great dais and ample arrangements for the seating of all guests of high and low degree. Judging from an ancient document, the castle was richly furnished. According to this inventory, there were eighty-six beds, five of them so sumptuous that they were valued at £110 sterling each. There were forty carpets, and a library worth more than £200. These figures would not, perhaps, seem large to a twentieth-century millionaire, but they indicate a scale of magnificence almost without parallel in the period when this castle flourished. [Illustration: CAERLAVEROCK CASTLE] Caerlaverock was in existence as early as the sixth century, when it was founded by Lewarch Og. From him it received the name of Caer Lewarch Og, which in Gaelic signifies 'the city or fortress of Lewarch Og.' This {129} was subsequently corrupted to Caer-laverock. In the beginning of the fourteenth century it was besieged and captured by Edward I and recovered by Robert Bruce, changing hands twice again during the wars for independence that ensued. Murdoch, Duke of Albany, who was arrested for treason on the return of James I from exile, was imprisoned in one of these towers, and the castle was the residence of James V when he heard the news that broke his heart, the defeat of his forces at Solway Moss and the serious disaffection of his nobles. On the day of our visit the ruin made a charming picture. The sky was partly filled with cumulus clouds of a foamy, filmy whiteness through the open spaces of which the sun was shining brightly. The clear water of the moat reflected the azure tint of the heavens, so that the old ruin, its turrets and walls thickly covered with the deep green of the ivy, was clearly defined against a background of white, bordered above and below with shades of the loveliest blue. The dry, yellow grass of the field in the foreground, the green rushes bordering the moat, some purple flowers at the base of the turrets and hundreds of bright golden wallflowers in the broken interstices of the walls completed a brilliancy of colour which I have seldom seen equalled in any landscape. The surroundings of Caerlaverock do not in any way correspond with the environments of Ellangowan Auld Place. I had already learned, however, not to depend too much upon geographical considerations. It requires only a superficial knowledge of Scott's method of work to understand that while he was a most careful observer of all that interested him and wrote many accurate descriptions of scenery, he did not hesitate to use his {130} material with a free hand. It was perfectly simple for him to transplant an old ruin, which admirably fitted one requirement of the story, to a rocky coast, thirty or forty miles away, where the other necessary features were to be found, or even to combine two different parts of the coast for his purpose. We found it necessary, therefore, to return to Dumfries, for there is no bridge below the city, and there, crossing the river, travel again to the south, this time on the west shore, to the town of Kirkcudbright, where we stopped long enough to learn to pronounce the name ('Kir-koo'bry') and to have our lunch. Then, continuing southward, we stopped our motor at Balmae, the country-seat of Lady Selkirk, and walked about a mile to the rocky coast of the Solway at Torr's Point, where we could enjoy a superb view of the Irish Sea, the English coast far away on the left, and the Isle of Man, faintly visible in the distance. The coast is high and rocky. It is broken into many coves or bays, which were a convenient resort for pirates and smugglers. It would be easy to imagine Ellangowan Auld Place situated on one of these cliffs, except that some other features have to be taken from another part of the coast. Scott's description of the smuggling trade carried on by Dirk Hatteraick and others of his kind was taken from the local traditions. The coast, to sailors who knew it well, offered many a haven of refuge, but was an extremely dangerous place for a stranger ship. There are many stories current regarding the exploits of Paul Jones, who was a native of Kirkcudbright. After embracing the American cause in the War of the Revolution, he cruised in his little ship, the Ranger, along the coasts of England and Scotland, {131} his familiarity with the Solway enabling him to make use of its numerous coves to excellent advantage. To complete the investigation of the scenery which Scott supposed to be within a mile of Ellangowan, I made another long journey the next day, taking the train from Dumfries to Kirkcudbright and thence driving westward by pony-cart, through Gatehouse-of-Fleet to Ravenshall Point on the coast of Wigtown Bay. Here we put up the horse at a farm and walked westward along the shore, my driver acting as guide. Chancing to meet a gentleman whose family are large land-holders in the neighbourhood, I was conducted to the Gauger's Loup,[1] a cliff on the rocky coast, beneath which were some huge rocks that had dislodged and fallen to the shore. At this point a revenue officer was once attacked by smugglers and thrown over the cliffs, dashing out his brains on the ragged rocks below. This well-known incident gave Scott the basis for his account of the death of Kennedy. Standing on this cliff, my new-found friend pointed out a notch in a distant hill, called the 'Nick of the Doon,' which he said local tradition assigned as the place where Meg Merrilies pronounced her malediction upon the Laird of Ellangowan. Not many hundred yards away is the original of Dirk Hatteraick's Cave, so called because it was once used by smugglers and particularly by a Dutch skipper named Yawkins, who was the prototype of Scott's famous character. To reach it by direct line was impossible, so we walked down the road a quarter of a mile, crossed a field, climbed a stone wall, and dropped into a thick {132} wood. Here the land sloped at an angle of forty-five degrees. The ground was thickly covered with garlic, emitting a strong odour. We finally reached the rocks and began a scramble worthy of a mountain goat, until at last we discovered the cave. The entrance is a narrow opening between two great rocks, barely large enough to admit a man of moderate size. We could look down a steep incline of about thirty feet, full of dirt and slime. It would be very easy to enter, for it would be like pushing a cork into an empty bottle. The difficulty would be to get the cork out. Having no desire to experiment, I took the guide's word for it, that the cave is about sixty feet long, from six to twelve feet wide, and high enough for a man to stand erect. It would, therefore, afford plenty of room for the crew of a smuggler's boat and a large cargo of whiskey and other contraband stores. I asked the driver to impersonate Dirk Hatteraick for a few minutes, and he, good-naturedly, complied, crawling into the opening, which he completely filled, and looking out at me with a pipe in his mouth and a broad grin. I took his picture, but his honest young face and amiable smile made a very poor pose for the desperate old smuggler. It served, however, to show the small size of the opening, which might easily have been concealed by shrubbery or brushwood. Scott's information regarding this coast came from Joseph Train, a resident of Newton-Stewart, a town in Galloway on the river Cree, just above its outlet into Wigtown Bay. He was an excise officer who performed his duties faithfully. He had early in life developed a passion for antiquarian research as well as a taste for poetry. With a friend he had begun the collection {133} of material for a History of Galloway, when he was surprised and delighted to receive a letter from Walter Scott, asking for some copies of a poem which he had written. In a subsequent letter Scott asked for any local traditions or legends which he did not wish to turn to his own account, adding, 'Nothing interests me so much as local anecdotes; and, as the applications for charity usually conclude, the smallest donation will be thankfully received.' Train immediately abandoned the idea of attempting any work of original authorship and determined to devote himself to collecting material for the benefit of one who could make far better use of it,--a decision in which his friend acquiesced. 'Upon receiving Mr. Scott's letter,' he said, 'I became still more zealous in the pursuit of ancient lore, and being the first person who had attempted to collect old stories in that quarter with any view to publication, I became so noted, that even beggars, in the hope of reward, came frequently from afar to Newton-Stewart, to recite old ballads and relate old stories to me.' In later years Train often visited Abbotsford; a genuine affection sprang up between him and the novelist; he became one of the few who knew the secret of the authorship of 'Waverley'; and no other of the author's many friends ever did so much in furnishing him material of the kind he wanted. Not only stories and ballads, but more tangible objects of antiquarian interest were picked up by him and forwarded to his patron. One of the most interesting possessions now in the study at Abbotsford is the Wallace Chair, made from the wood of the house in which Sir William Wallace {134} Was done to death by felon hand For guarding well his fathers' land. The chair was made under the direction of Train and presented by him to Sir Walter 'as a small token of gratitude.' Besides giving Scott many descriptions of scenery and much local history, Train supplied a collection of anecdotes of the Galloway gipsies, and a story about an astrologer which reminded Scott of a similar story he had heard in his youth. This tale, as related to the novelist by an old servant of his father's, named John MacKinlay, appears in full in the Introduction to 'Guy Mannering.' Later Mr. Train put in writing 'The Durham Garland,' a ballad which was recited to him by a Mrs. Young, of Castle Douglas, who had been in the habit of repeating the verses to her family once a year in order not to forget them. It contains practically the same story. This old tale, reappearing in several different ways, became the basis of the novel.[2] In January, 1813, Scott wrote to his friend, Morritt, mentioning a murder case in Galloway where the identity of the murderer was discovered by means of a footprint left upon the clay floor of the cottage where the {135} death struggle took place. The 'old ram-headed sheriff,' nicknamed 'Leatherhead,' suddenly became sagacious. He advertised that all persons in the neighbourhood would be expected to be present at the burial of the victim and to attest their own innocence. This would be certain to include the murderer. When the people were assembled in the kirk he caused all the doors to be locked, and carefully measured the shoes of all present until he found the guilty man. The method by which the astute Counsellor Pleydell trapped Dirk Hatteraick was clearly suggested by this incident. It will be seen from the above that the story was put together from fragments of Galloway incidents, mostly supplied by Train, and from various legal experiences known to the author. Scott himself made a visit to Dumfries in 1807, when he spent several days visiting Sweetheart Abbey, Caerlaverock Castle, and other ancient buildings. Mr. Guthrie Wright, who made the trip with him, wrote: 'I need hardly say how much I enjoyed the journey. Every one who had the pleasure of his acquaintance knows the inexhaustible store of anecdote and good humour he possessed. He recited poetry and old legends from morn until night, and in short it is impossible that anything could be more delightful than his society.' When Scott made his visit to the English Lakes in 1797, he became impressed with the beauty of Westmoreland and Cumberland and particularly with the grandeur of the chain of mountains of which Skiddaw and Saddleback are the best known. It was in this pleasant country that he placed the home of Colonel Mannering. It will be remembered that Scott returned {136} from that excursion, through Cumberland to Gilsland. This is the route which he selected for Harry Bertram on his return to Scotland after many years. Bertram (or Brown, as he was then called) paused to view the remains of an old Roman wall, precisely as Scott himself had done. There are many such ruins in the vicinity of Gilsland, all remnants of the wall which it is believed the Roman general Agricola built from the Tyne to the Solway Firth about A.D. 79. One of these suggested to Scott the lines which he addressed to a lady friend in the year of his first visit:-- Take these flowers, which, purple waving, On the ruined rampart grew, Where, the sons of freedom braving, Rome's imperial standards flew. Warriors from the breach of danger Pluck no longer laurels there; They but yield the passing stranger Wild-flower wreaths for Beauty's hair. A few miles from Amboglanna, the most interesting of these remains, in the village of Gilsland, is a neat little building, occupied by a store, which is pointed out as 'Mump's Ha'.' It has been so much rebuilt that it now suggests but little of the disreputable Border inn which once marked the site, nor does the present well-kept village suggest much of the scene that was supposed to greet the eyes of Bertram on his approach. The alehouse was the resort of Border thieves, and its reputation was so bad that a man known to possess a fair supply of money dared not remain overnight. Tib Mumps, the landlady, who was secretly in league with the freebooters who came to her place, was a real character; or perhaps {137} it would be better to say there were two women, either of whom might have served for her prototype. The tavern was kept by Margaret Carrick, who died in 1717 at the age of one hundred years. She was succeeded by her granddaughter, Margaret Teasdale, who lived to be ninety-eight. Both are buried in the churchyard of Over-Denton, a mile away. Scott no doubt heard much about them both at the time of his visit, and also the story of 'Fighting Charlie of Liddesdale' which suggested some of the material for the exploits of Dandie Dinmont. Dandie was one of those 'real characters' who are not 'real' because there were a dozen of him. In Scott's so-called raids into Liddesdale, where he 'had a home in every farmhouse,' he met many prototypes of Dandie. James Davidson, one of these worthy farmers, possessed a large family of terriers, all of whom he named Mustard and Pepper, according as they were yellow or greyish black. For this reason and because of his great passion for fox-hunting, the name of Dandie Dinmont became fixed upon him. Far from resenting it, Davidson considered that he had achieved a great honour. Robert Shortreed, Scott's guide through Liddesdale, fixed upon Willie Elliott, of Millburnholm, the first of these farmers whom Scott visited, as the real Dandie. Lockhart, however, gives the honour to neither, and believes that Scott built up the description of this kind and manly character and of his gentle wife, Ailie, from his observation of the early home of William Laidlaw, who later became the novelist's amanuensis and one of his most affectionate friends. At 'Mump's Ha', Bertram first met the old witch, {138} Meg Merrilies, who played so important a part in his destiny. Scott, as a boy attending school at Kelso, had made several visits to Kirk Yetholm, a village near the English Border, then known as the capital of the gipsies. A certain gipsy soldier, having rendered a service to the Laird of Kirk Yetholm in 1695, was allowed to settle on his estate, which thereafter was the headquarters of the tribe. Scott remembered being accosted on one of his visits by a 'woman of more than female height, dressed in a long red cloak,' who gave him an apple. This woman was Madge Gordon, who was the Queen of the Yetholm tribes. She was a granddaughter of Jean Gordon, whom she greatly resembled in appearance. An interesting story of the latter, who was the real Meg Merrilies, is told in the Introduction to 'Guy Mannering.' The royal name of the gipsies was Faa, supposed to be a corruption of Pharaoh from whom they claimed descent. Gabriel Faa, the nephew of Meg Merrilies, was a character whom Scott met when on an excursion with James Skene. 'He was one of those vermin-destroyers,' says Skene, 'who gain a subsistence among the farmers in Scotland by relieving them of foxes, polecats, rats, and such-like depredators. The individual in question was a half-witted, stuttering, and most original-looking creature, ingeniously clothed in a sort of tattered attire, to no part of which could any of the usual appellations of man's garb be appropriately given. We came suddenly upon this crazy sportsman in one of the wild glens of Roxburghshire, shouting and bellowing on the track of a fox, which his not less ragged pack of mongrels were tracking around the rocky face of a hill. He was {139} like a scarecrow run off, with some half-dozen grey-plaided shepherds in pursuit of him, with a reserve of shaggy curs yelping at their heels.' Scott was able to write the vivid description of the salmon-spearing incident, in which Gabriel lets the torch drop into the water just as one of the fishermen had speared a thirty-pound fish, because the sport was one of his own favourite amusements. One night in January, he, with James Skene, Hogg the Ettrick Shepherd, and one or two others, were out on the Tweed by the side of Elibank. They had a fine, blazing light and the salmon were plentiful. The boat, however, was a crazy old craft, and just as they reached the deepest pool in the river she began to sink. His companions begged him to push for the shore, but Scott, in great glee, replied, 'Oh, she goes fine,' and began some verses of an old song:-- An gin the boat war bottomless, An seven miles to row,-- when the boat suddenly went to the bottom. Nothing worse than a good drenching happened to any of the party and Scott enjoyed the experience heartily. While attending lectures in the University of Edinburgh, it happened frequently that Scott sat by the side of a modest but diligent student, whose extreme poverty was quite obvious. This did not deter him from making a companion of the boy, and they often walked together in the country. Toward the end of the session, he was strolling alone one day when he saw his friend talking, in a confidential manner, with an old beggar to whom he had often given small sums of money. Observing some confusion on the part of the young man, he made some inquiries, and learned that the beggar was his friend's {140} father. It was characteristic of Scott's generous heart that he did not allow this fact to break the acquaintance, but with great sympathy he kept the secret. Some time later he called by special request of the old man at the latter's humble cottage, where he found his fellow student, pale and emaciated from a recent illness. He learned that the old man had saved enough for his own maintenance, but had voluntarily subjected himself to the humiliation of professional mendicancy for no other purpose than to pay for his son's college expenses. In the course of the conversation the poor father often expressed the hope that his bairn 'might wag his pow in a pulpit yet.' These are the words attributed to the parents of Dominie Sampson, of whom the poor lad was the earliest suggestion. When the family came to live at Abbotsford, a tutor for Walter, the eldest son, was required. Scott, always eager to help the unfortunate, employed George Thomson, 'a gallant son of the church,' who by accident had lost a leg. He was 'tall, vigorous, athletic, a dauntless horseman, and expert at the single-stick.' Scott often said of him, 'In the Dominie, like myself, accident has spoiled a capital lifeguardsman.' He was a man of many eccentricities and peculiarities of disposition, among them a remarkable absent-mindedness, but kind-hearted, faithful, upright, and an excellent scholar. In these respects he was the prototype of Dominie Sampson, though the story of the latter's devotion to Lucy Bertram in the days of her adversity is based upon an incident in the life of another person. Counsellor Pleydell, whom Dominie Sampson regarded as 'a very erudite and fa-ce-ti-ous person,' was generally identified, by those who knew Edinburgh a century {141} ago, with Mr. Andrew Crosbie,[3] a flourishing member of the Scottish Bar of that period. Eminent lawyers were then in the habit of meeting their clients in taverns, where important business was transacted to the accompaniment of drinking and revelry. This typical old Scottish gentleman of real life lived in Lady Stair's Close and later in Advocate's Close, both resembling the quarters assigned to Counsellor Pleydell. In those days, the extremely high buildings, crowded closely together in that part of the Old Town nearest to the Parliament House, were occupied by the elite of Edinburgh society. They were ten and twelve stories high and reached by narrow winding stairs. Access from High Street was gained by means of narrow and often steep alleyways or closes. As a rule the more aristocratic and exclusive families lived on the top floors, and as there were no elevators, it might be said, the higher a man's social position, the more he had to work for his living. Like his brethren in the profession, Mr. Crosbie had his favourite tavern, where he could always be found by any of the 'cadies'[4] in the street. This was Dawny Douglas's tavern in Anchor Close, the meeting-place of the 'Crochallan Fencibles,' a convivial club of which William Smellie, a well-known printer and editor of the {142} day, was the inspiring genius, and where Robert Burns, when in Edinburgh, joined heartily in the bacchanalian revels which were famous for their duration and intensity. Smellie's printing-office in this close was frequented by some of the most eminent literary men of the day. The game of 'High Jinks' was played on Saturday nights in Douglas's tavern very much as described in the novel. Clerihugh's, which Scott mentions as Mr. Pleydell's resort, was a somewhat more respectable place in Writers' Court. It is a curious fact that Mr. Crosbie had a clerk very much like Pleydell's 'Driver,' who could write from dictation just as well, asleep or awake, drunk or sober, and whose principal recommendation was that he could always be found at the same tavern, while less 'steady' fellows often had half a dozen. The incident which Mr. Pleydell relates to Colonel Mannering, of how certain legal papers were prepared while both lawyer and clerk were intoxicated, was, we are assured by the author, no uncommon occurrence. It will be remembered that Mr. Pleydell had been dining on Saturday night and at a late hour, when he 'had a fair tappit hen[5] under his belt,' was asked to draw up some papers. Driver was sent for and brought in both speechless and motionless. He was unable to see the inkstand, and it was necessary for some one to dip the pen in the ink. Nevertheless he was able to write as handsomely as ever and the net result of this attempt to 'worship Bacchus and Themis' {143} at the same time, was a document in which 'not three words required to be altered.' [Illustration: EDINBURGH FROM THE CASTLE] Crosbie's clerk, though a dissipated wretch, was well versed in the law. He had been known to destroy a paper in his employer's writing and draw up a better one himself. An old Scotchman used to say that 'he would not give ----'s drunken glour at a paper for the serious opinions of the haill bench.' Unfortunately, both Crosbie and his clerk gave up the 'steady' habit of drinking at a single tavern and in later life began to frequent many places. The result was the complete ruin of both. Scott's highly amusing account of the convivial habits of Counsellor Pleydell and his dissipated clerk is a fairly accurate, if not entirely complimentary picture of the daily life of a certain class of prominent lawyers in Edinburgh, in the middle of the eighteenth century. The more pleasing side of Pleydell's character was taken from Adam Rolland, an old friend of Scott's, who died at the age of eighty-five, four years after 'Guy Mannering' was published. He was an accomplished gentleman, an excellent scholar, an eminent lawyer, and a man of the highest probity and Christian character. He would have been quite incapable of such a performance as 'high jinks.' As in many of his other novels, Scott makes the subordinate characters of 'Guy Mannering' the most interesting. Dominie Sampson, Dandie Dinmont, Meg Merrilies, Dirk Hatteraick, and Paulus Pleydell are original creations of strong, dramatic interest. Each had a prototype in real life, but it was the genius of the novelist that brought them into existence in the sense that Mr. Pickwick and Becky Sharp are real people, and {144} conferred upon them a kind of immortality that will be as sure to delight the generations of the future as they have been successful in appealing to the readers of the past century. As to Colonel Mannering himself, I need only repeat the exclamation of James Hogg when he first read the novel:--'Colonel Mannering is just Walter Scott painted by himself!' Though doubtless not intended for a portrait, the fine, dignified, soldierly, and scholarly colonel is the picture of a perfect gentleman, intended to embody the high ideals which were a part of Scott's own character and for which we like to remember him. [1] A 'Gauger' is an excise officer and 'Loup' is Scottish for 'leap.' [2] Another story, some of the details of which may have suggested a part of the plot, concerns the experiences of James Annesley, a full account of which appeared in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ of July, 1840, and is reprinted in full in Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vol. v. Lockhart says, 'That Sir Walter must have read the record of this celebrated trial, as well as Smollett's edition of the story in _Peregrine Pickle_, there can be no doubt.' The trial took place in 1743. It suggested, perhaps, something of the method by which Glossin undertook to deprive Harry Bertram of his rights. Another legal case, which came within Scott's own knowledge and may have suggested some of the details of the novel, was related by him in a letter to Lady Abercorn. See _Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott_, vol. 1, p. 292. [3] As Crosbie died when Scott was only fourteen, the novelist could scarcely have known him personally; on the other hand, he could hardly have failed to hear the stories of such an individual, whose exploits were well known to the frequenters of Parliament Square. [4] These cadies (or caddies, a name that has become familiar through the introduction of the Scotch game of golf) were a class of men and boys who in the eighteenth century frequented the law courts of Edinburgh, eager to be employed upon any errand. They knew the particular haunts of all the lawyers of any consequence, and never dreamed of looking for anybody at his own home, or in any place other than the special tavern which he was known to frequent. [5] The 'Tappit Hen' was a pewter mug, with the figure of a hen on the lid. It held three quarts of claret, which was drawn from the tap,--hence the name. {145} CHAPTER X THE ANTIQUARY Washington Irving's story of a week spent with Scott at Abbotsford always leaves in my mind an indescribable thrill of pleasure. Partly because Irving really did have a delightful experience such as falls to the lot of few men and partly because he knew, better than others, how to transfer his own pleasurable emotions to the minds of other people, it is certain that, to my mind at least, there is no single sketch in all the Scott literature, not even in Lockhart's brilliant work, that throws a stronger light upon the Great Wizard's character or illuminates a more attractive picture. It was a happy week for the American visitor, and I imagine it contained no happier moment than when the younger author nestled by the side of his warm-hearted friend, under the lee of a sheltering bank during a shower, the plaid of the Scotchman closely wrapped around them both, while the enchanting flow of anecdote, reminiscence, and whimsical suggestion went merrily on in spite of the Scottish mist. It was in the course of their walk on this particular morning that Scott stopped at the cottage of a labourer on his estate to examine some tongs that had been dug up in the Roman camp near by. 'As he stood regarding the relic,' says Irving, 'turning it round and round, and making comments on it, half grave, half comic, with the cottage group around him, all joining occasionally in the {146} colloquy, the inimitable character of Monkbarns was again brought to mind and I seemed to see before me that prince of antiquarians and humourists, holding forth to his unlearned and unbelieving neighbours.' There was something peculiarly delightful about Scott's antiquarianism. He seemed to feel that those who were without his own knowledge of values were inclined to smile at his enthusiasm, and whenever he talked on his favourite subject there was an undercurrent of sly humour which gave an exquisite flavour to his conversation. The discovery of anything ancient, whether a ruined castle, a broadsword or sporran from the Highlands, or a scrap of some old ballad, gave him the greatest pleasure, and nothing afforded his friends more enjoyment than to be able to present him with such relics and curiosities as they knew he would appreciate. A casual walk through the Entrance Hall and Armory of Abbotsford, where hundreds of helmets, suits of armour, swords, guns, pistols, and curiosities of infinite variety are displayed, is enough to suggest to any one that Sir Walter himself was the real Jonathan Oldbuck of 'The Antiquary.' A glance at the Library, with its collection of twenty thousand rare old volumes, is enough to prove that Scott, like Monkbarns, was not only an antiquary but a bibliophile as well. Who but a genuine enthusiast could have written that chapter in which the worthy Mr. Oldbuck exhibits the treasures of his sanctum sanctorum to Mr. Lovel? 'These little Elzevirs are the memoranda and trophies of many a walk by night and morning through the Cowgate, the Canongate, the Bow, St. Mary's Wynd,--wherever, in fine, there were to be found brokers and trokers, those miscellaneous dealers in things {147} rare and curious. How often have I stood haggling on a half penny, lest, by a too ready acquiescence in the dealer's first price, he should be led to suspect the value I set upon the article!--how have I trembled, lest some passing stranger should chop in between me and the prize, and regarded each poor student of divinity that stopped to turn over the books at the stall as a rival amateur, or prowling bookseller in disguise!--And, then, Mr. Lovel, the sly satisfaction with which one pays the consideration, and pockets the article, affecting a cold indifference, while the hand is trembling with pleasure!' It was during the visit to Prestonpans, previously mentioned, that Scott, a child of six, first made the acquaintance of George Constable, an old friend of his father's, who resided near Dundee. He must have learned from this gentleman something which started in him the antiquarian instincts, for, as he himself has remarked, 'children derive impulses of a powerful and important kind in hearing things which they cannot entirely comprehend.' Certainly he put enough of Mr. Constable into the description of Jonathan Oldbuck to cause various friends to recognize him; and as Constable's intimacy with Scott's father was well known, this gave colour to the suspicion that Scott himself was the unknown author of 'The Antiquary.' But even a more faithful delineation of George Constable than the book contains would have failed to bring out the real charm of the delightful Oldbuck. It is the Scott part of his nature that we really enjoy. Next to the Antiquary himself, old Edie Ochiltree is the character who is chiefly responsible for the pleasant {148} flavour of this book. He is a mendicant whom it is a real pleasure to meet. His amiable nature, his sly good humour, and his genuine friendliness win your affection in the beginning and hold it to the very end. He is a picture drawn from real life, though it is probable that old Andrew Gemmels, his prototype, did not possess the many endearing qualities with which the novelist invested Edie. The 'blue gowns' of the south of Scotland were a class of licensed beggars, known as the 'King's Bedesmen.' The number of them was supposed to be the same as the years of the King's life, so it was necessary to initiate a new member of the aristocracy of paupers every year. At every royal birthday each bedesman received a new light-blue cloak or gown and a pewter badge, together with a purse containing as many pennies as the years of the King's life. Their sole duty was to pray for long life for the King, which, considering that the older the sovereign the larger the purse, they might very cheerfully do. In return, all laws against beggars were suspended in their favour, and the 'blue gowns' went about from house to house, fairly assured of food and lodging and seemingly free from care. The service of the 'blue gown' to the community is best set forth in the words of Edie Ochiltree, who apparently considered himself a public benefactor:-- And then what wad a' the country about do for want o' auld Edie Ochiltree, that brings news and country cracks frae ae farm-steading to anither and gingerbread to the lasses, and helps the lads to mend their fiddles and the gudewives to clout their pans, and plaits rush-swords and grenadier caps for the weans and busks the lairds' flees, and has skill o' {149} cow-ills and horse-ills, and kens mair auld sangs and tales than a' the barony besides, and gars ilka body laugh whereever he comes? Troth, my leddy, I canna lay down my vocation; it would be a public loss. Andrew Gemmels was well known throughout the Border country of Scotland for more than half a century as a professional beggar or 'gaberlunzie.' He had been a soldier in his youth and maintained his erect military carriage even in old age. He was very tall and carried a walking-stick almost as high as himself. His features were strongly intellectual, but marked by a certain fierceness and austerity of expression, the result of his long and peculiar contact with all sorts of hard experiences. Scott, who had often met him, comments upon his remarkable gracefulness. With his striking attitudes he would have made a fine model for an artist. One of his chief assets was an unusual power of sarcasm, coupled with a keen wit, the fear of which often gained for him favours which might otherwise have been denied. He was full of reminiscences of the wars and of adventures in foreign lands, which he told in a droll fashion, coupled with a shrewd wit, that always made him an entertaining visitor. He wandered about the country at pleasure, demanding entertainment as a right, which was accorded usually without question. His preference as to sleeping quarters was the stable or some outbuilding where cattle were kept. He never burdened anybody, usually appearing at the same place only once or twice a year. He always had money--frequently more than those of whom he begged. When a certain parsimonious gentleman expressed regret that he had no silver in his pocket or he would have given him sixpence, Andrew promptly {150} replied, 'I can give you change for a note, laird.' In later years he travelled about on his own horse, a very good one, and carried a gold watch. He died at the age of a hundred and six years, leaving enough wealth to enrich a nephew, who became a considerable landholder. His tombstone in Roxburgh Churchyard, near Kelso, contains a quaint carved figure of the mendicant, above which are the words, 'Behold the end o' it.' This refers to an incident related by a writer in the 'Edinburgh Magazine' in 1817, the year after the publication of the novel:-- Many curious anecdotes of Andrew's sarcastic wit and eccentric manners are current in the Borders. I shall for the present content myself with one specimen, illustrative of Andrew's resemblance to his celebrated representative. The following is given as commonly related with much good humour by the late Mr. Dodds, of the War-Office, the person to whom it chiefly refers: Andrew happened to be present at a fair or market somewhere in Teviotdale (St. Boswell's if I mistake not) where Dodds, at that time a non-commissioned officer in His Majesty's service, happened also to be with a military party recruiting. It was some time during the American War, when they were eagerly beating up for fresh men--to teach passive obedience to the obdurate and ill-mannered Columbians; and it was then the practice for recruiting sergeants, after parading for a due space with all the warlike pageantry of drums, trumpets, 'glancing blades, and gay cockades,' to declaim in heroic strains the delights of the soldier's life, of glory, patriotism, plunder, the prospect of promotion for the bold and the young, and His Majesty's munificent pension for the old and the wounded, etc., etc. Dodds, who was a man of much natural talent, and whose abilities afterwards raised him to an honourable rank and independent fortune, had made one of his most brilliant speeches on this occasion. A crowd of ardent and anxious {151} rustics were standing round, gaping with admiration at the imposing mien, and kindling at the heroic eloquence, of the manly soldier, whom many of them had known a few years before as a rude tailor boy; and the sergeant himself, already leading in idea a score of new recruits, had just concluded, in a strain of more than usual elevation, his oration in praise of the military profession, when Gemmels, who, in tattered guise, was standing close behind him, reared aloft his _meal-pocks_ on the end of his kent or pike-staff, and exclaimed, with a tone and aspect of the most profound derision, 'Behold the end o' it!' The contrast was irresistible--the beau-ideal of Sergeant Dodds, and the ragged reality of Andrew Gemmels, were sufficiently striking; and the former, with his red-coat followers, beat a retreat in some confusion, amidst the loud and universal laughter of the surrounding multitude. The character of the old 'gaberlunzie,' as revealed in this anecdote, was so faithfully transferred by the novelist to Edie Ochiltree, that in spite of some embellishments he was immediately recognized. To study the scenery of 'The Antiquary,' we went to Arbroath, a town on the east coast of Scotland, which traces its beginnings back to the twelfth century. This is the original of Fairport, and we found all of the scenery of the novel in the immediate neighbourhood. In the midst of a shower which threatened destruction to all photographic attempts, we made our first visit to the ruins of the Abbey of St. Thomas, the original of St. Ruth's. It was a disappointment to find this ruin in the heart of the city, instead of a 'wild, sequestered spot,' where a 'pure and profound lake' discharged itself into a 'huddling and tumultuous brook.' But the Wizard always reserved the right to transplant his ruined castles and abbeys to suit his taste, and he was quite justified {152} in transferring St. Ruth's to more romantic surroundings, particularly as there is a deep ravine known as Seaton Den, on the coast north of Arbroath, which answers every requirement. Thanks to the British Government, which took charge of the abbey in 1815, there is still left enough of the walls to make a picturesque ruin of considerable extent. For two centuries previously the people of the village freely used the stones for building purposes. It is necessary to go back six centuries to find the church in its full perfection, when it was one of the richest and most sumptuously furnished establishments in Scotland. In the year 1320, a parliament was held in the abbey by King Robert the Bruce, and a letter, regarded as one of the most remarkable documents in early British history, was sent to the Pope, appealing for a recognition of Scottish independence. The original abbey was founded in the year 1178 by William the Lion, a Scottish monarch whose name is associated with nearly all of the principal buildings which form the scenes of 'The Antiquary.' It was dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury, the famous Thomas à Becket, whom William had met at the court of the English King, Henry II, when a young man. From ancient documents it would seem that the monastery was maintained in a state of great opulence and that it was open to all comers, rich and poor alike. The predominating feature of the ruin, as it stands to-day, is the south wall, containing what the people of Arbroath call the 'Roond O,' a window twelve feet in diameter, immediately over the altar of St. Catharine. Beneath this opening is a gallery with seven arches of {153} carved stone, suggesting the scene in 'The Antiquary' where the impostor, Dousterswivel, and Sir Arthur Wardour are digging for treasure in the ruins, while Lovel and Edie Ochiltree watch the performance from just such a place of concealment. We could almost smell the fumes of the 'suffumigation' and hear the violent sneezes of old Edie and the terrified ejaculation of Dousterswivel, 'Alle guten Geistern, loben den Herrn!' Monkbarns, the home of Jonathan Oldbuck, is closely associated with the history of the abbey. When the fame of that establishment had spread throughout Scotland and England, there were many pilgrimages to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket. Many of these pilgrims arrived sick and exhausted. To provide for them, a rude hospital was ordered built, about two miles away from the abbey, on lands now occupied by a handsome building known as Hospitalfield. In Scott's day this house was very much less pretentious and might well have corresponded with his description of an 'irregular and old-fashioned building, some part of which had belonged to a grange, or solitary farmhouse, inhabited by the bailiff, or steward of the monastery, when the place was in possession of the monks. It was here that the community stored up the grain which they received as ground-rent from their vassals; ... and hence, as the present proprietor loved to tell, came the name of Monkbarns.' Readers of 'The Antiquary' will remember the altercation between Oldbuck and his sister when the latter was requested to make a bed ready for Mr. Lovel. '"A bed? The Lord preserve us!" ejaculated Grizel. "Why, what's the matter now? Are there not beds and rooms enough in the house? Was it not an ancient _hospitium_ {154} in which, I am warranted to say, beds were nightly made down for a score of pilgrims?"' The property has a beautiful situation and is otherwise so desirable that it passed from the monks into private hands centuries ago. It finally came into the possession of Patrick Allan-Fraser, who made such extensive additions that whatever is left of the original building owned by the monks is completely covered up. This public-spirited gentleman, who died in 1890, left the estate in trust for the benefit and encouragement of young men who desired to study painting, sculpture, wood-carving, architecture, or engraving, and the house is now occupied by teachers and students. It has an art gallery containing some valuable paintings, sculptures, and wood-carvings, and a library of old documents and rare folios that would delight the soul of Jonathan Oldbuck himself. It was the most natural thing in the world for us, after visiting Monkbarns, to seek the residence of his Tory friend and fellow antiquarian, Sir Arthur Wardour, although we did not find it within easy walking distance as might have been inferred. Ethie Castle has been generally fixed upon by local writers as the original of Knockwinnock. The present building is one of the country-seats of the Earl of Northesk. It is a red-stone structure of considerable antiquity and irregular design, which nevertheless made a pleasing picture when seen at a distance of several hundred yards from the front. A tiny brook crossed by a wooden bridge and flanked by huge rhododendrons in full bloom made a charming foreground. Beyond was a sloping field of tall grass, which had been mown only enough to make a broad path in {155} the midst of which were countless thousands of dainty pink-and-white daisies. On either side were ample groves of well-foliaged trees, making a vista in which the old red mansion appeared to excellent advantage. Ethie Castle was part of the endowment which William the Lion granted to the Abbey of Aberbrothock. It therefore dates back to the year 1178. In the sixteenth century it was the residence of Cardinal Beaton, who seems to have bequeathed to it the 'Cardinal's Chapel,' by which name a room in the house is still known and 'the tramp of the Cardinal's leg,' a weird, ghostly sound of footsteps on the old stone stairs, with which the castle is haunted. After the death of the Cardinal, a natural daughter laid claim to the estate. Thus, as with Knockwinnock, the 'bar-sinister' appears on the escutcheon of the family. Directly east of Ethie Castle and not far distant are the cliffs of Red Head. The coast for some miles north of Arbroath is a series of huge cliffs, with many strange caverns and curious rock formations. Almost any of them, but Red Head perhaps better than the others, would serve as the scene of the thrilling incident in 'The Antiquary,' in which Sir Arthur Wardour and his daughter are overtaken by the tide and rescued with great difficulty by Saunders Mucklebackit, ably assisted by Lovel and Edie Ochiltree. Two huge rocks rise almost perpendicularly from the shore. It is easily conceivable that any attempt to walk around them, in the face of a swiftly rising tide, would be fraught with dangerous, if not fatal, consequences. The village of Auchmithie, the home of the Mucklebackits, is situated on one of the cliffs south of Red {156} Head. This is the most realistic of all the scenes of 'The Antiquary.' The village, with the exception of a new hotel, is practically as it was when Scott was a visitor in 1814. There is but one street, and that has no name; but the houses are numbered, city-fashion. The post-office address of an inhabitant would, therefore, give the number of the house and the name of the town, omitting any mention of a street; thus the old fisherman, who posed for me and to whom I mailed a photograph, lives at Number 58, Auchmithie, Scotland. This old fellow is a type of the neighbours of Saunders Mucklebackit. The habits of life of the people, their dress, their occupations, their houses, their furniture, even their names, are the same as they were a hundred years ago. I asked the old man how old his house was. He replied, 'Ou, I dinna ken hoo auld. I'se seventy-two mysel' and I was born here and my grandfeyther, too.' Several others of whom I asked the same question gave substantially the same answer. [Illustration: AUCHMITHIE] The post-office was in one of these ancient cottages, with a new front, but otherwise unchanged. Its occupant was quite communicative. He said it was the original Cargill Cottage, and that George Cargill, who occupied it a century ago, was the original Mucklebackit. 'When Walter Scott came to Auchmithie,' said he, 'he came by boat. There was n't any way to land except through the breakers and he could n't do that without getting his feet wet. So Cargill had to carry him ashore on his back. When he set him down on dry land, Scott clapped him on the back and said, '"What a muckle backed fellow you are, Geordie, to be sure!" Muckle, you see, sir, means "much" or "big," and George had a {157} great big broad back, so that's how Walter Scott got the name, Mucklebackit.' He let me take a photograph of the interior of the cottage, where a single room served for bedroom, breakfast-room, kitchen, and numerous other purposes. I suppose the cottage of Saunders Mucklebackit must have presented much the same appearance to Monkbarns when he walked in to attend the funeral of young Steenie Mucklebackit and won the hearts of all by performing the office of chief mourner, according the family the rare honour of having the laird 'carry the head of the deceased to the grave.' I found a very pleasant family group in front of the next cottage, and after a few moment's conversation asked permission to take their picture. Not hearing a dissenting voice, I understood my request would be granted and began to set up my camera in the street. Before I had half made ready, the entire group had disappeared. The police department of the town then marched up to me,--one man strong,--and for a moment I felt afraid I had been violating some law. But he was only curious, and told me that the people had a strange aversion to being photographed. I left my camera all focused and ready in the street and sauntered with the constable to the side of the road. In a few minutes a picturesque old fishwife, carrying two large empty pails in each hand, came out of her house, all unconscious of the awful presence of a loaded camera and I quickly stepped out and pressed the bulb. 'That's Coffee Betz you got then,' laughed the constable. 'She would n't let you take her picture, but she's one of the Cargills.' In this way I came as near as possible to getting a photograph of the original Luckie Mucklebackit {158} with whom Monkbarns haggled over the price of a bannock-fluke and a cock-padle. For the fishwives of to-day are the same as those of a century ago,--'they keep the man, and keep the house, and keep the siller, too.' The men consider their own work ended when the boat is pulled up on the beach. It is the wife who must market the fish, which she does by carrying them on her back to the nearest town, where she must 'scauld and ban wi' ilka wife that will scauld and ban wi' her' until the fish are sold. 'Them that sell the goods guide the purse--them that guide the purse rule the house,' and therefore by common consent in these communities, the wife is the head of the family. Back from Auchmithie is the mansion house of Kinblethmont, surrounded by some fine old woods. It will be remembered that Edie Ochiltree was passing this place on his return from the Earl of Glenallan's castle when he was arrested on a charge of assaulting Dousterswivel. Colonel Lindsay, of Kinblethmont, and the Laird of Hospitalfield were the leaders who took the direction of affairs when a French privateer named the 'Dreadnought' threatened the town of Arbroath in very much the same way as Fairport was menaced in 'The Antiquary.' The same scenes of excitement so vividly described in the novel were there enacted. Scott, however, had passed through a similar experience himself, which enabled him to write the dramatic event with greater ease. For several years, in the early part of the nineteenth century, the people of England and Scotland were kept in a state of nervous dread by the expectation of an invasion by the French. Beacons were erected all along the coast ready to give instant {159} alarm, and militia organizations were everywhere kept in a state of readiness. A false alarm on February 2, 1804, brought out the volunteers of Berwickshire, Roxburghshire, and Selkirkshire with surprising rapidity. Scott had gone with his wife for a visit to Gilsland, the scene of their courtship. He was then a member of the Edinburgh Volunteers. When the alarm came he promptly mounted his horse and rode with all speed to Dalkeith, a distance of one hundred miles, within twenty-four hours. The alarm had subsided when he reached his destination, and after a few jolly evenings with his fellow volunteers he returned to the south. It was on this hurried trip that he composed a poem, entitled, 'The Bard's Incantation.' 'The Antiquary' thus closes as it began, with a leaf out of the author's personal experience. I have no doubt that he heartily enjoyed its composition. It must have been an exquisite pleasure to one so appreciative of genuine humour to caricature his own antiquarian foibles; to weave into the pages of romance the many tales he had heard in his youth of a character so interesting as the old 'gaberlunzie'; and to make the people of his fancy walk the streets of the ancient seaport town, visit the old abbey, saunter along the cliffs of the seashore, or roam about over the adjacent country, where he had spent many pleasant hours in the company of well-loved friends. Although Scott's own opinion at first was that 'The Antiquary' lacked the romance of 'Waverley' and the adventure of 'Guy Mannering,' yet in subsequent years he came to regard it as his favourite among all the Waverley Novels. {160} CHAPTER XI THE BLACK DWARF Late in the afternoon of a beautiful May day, while on one of our drives from Melrose, we turned off the main road a few miles west of Peebles, and, crossing the Tweed, entered the vale of Manor Water. This secluded valley, peaceful and charming, would make an ideal retreat for any one who wished to escape the noise and confusion of a busy world. The distinguished philosopher and historian, Dr. Adam Ferguson, found it so, when in old age he took up his residence at Hallyards, where his young friend, Walter Scott, paid him a visit in the memorable summer of 1797. It was not a desire to retire from worldly activities, however, or to visit the house of Dr. Ferguson, that led us into the quiet valley. Our purpose was to see the former home of one of the strangest human beings who ever lived; one who found the seclusion of the beautiful vale well adapted to shield him from the unwelcome observation of the curious-minded. David Ritchie, or 'Bow'd Davie o' the Wud'use,'[1] as he was called, was for many years a familiar figure to the few farmers of the valley. He was born about 1735, and lived to be seventy-six years of age. He had been horribly deformed from birth. His shoulders were broad and muscular, and his arms unusually long and powerful, though he could not lift them higher than his breast. But Nature seemed {161} to have omitted providing him with legs and thighs. The upper part of his body, with proportions seemingly intended for a giant, was set upon short fin-like legs, so small that when he stood erect they were almost invisible. His height was scarcely three feet and a half. His feet were badly adapted for walking and were kept wrapped in masses of rags as though they were the particular feature of which their owner was most ashamed. So completely did he depend upon the strength of his arms and chest that, unable to use his feet in the ordinary way in digging his garden, he contrived a peculiar spade which he could force into the soil with his breast. With his great arms he had been known to tear a tree up by the roots, which had defied the strength of two ordinary men. His head was unusually large, particularly behind the ears. He had a long nose, a wide, ugly mouth, and a protruding chin covered with a grisly black beard. He had eyes of piercing black which in moments of excitement gleamed with wild and awe-inspiring brightness. His voice was shrill, harsh, and discordant, more like that of a screech-owl than a human being, and his laugh was said to be horrible. His mind corresponded in deformity with his body. He was eccentric, irritable, jealous, and strangely superstitious. He was sensitive beyond all reason and could not endure even the glance of his curious fellow men. He read insult and scorn in faces where neither was intended. He thoroughly despised all children and most strangers. His whole nature seemed to have been poisoned with bitterness of spirit because he was not like other men. Scott was introduced to this singular {162} individual by Dr. Ferguson, who had taken a great interest in him. Nineteen years later, and five years after the death of David Ritchie, he made the recluse of Manor Valley known to the world as 'The Black Dwarf,' in the first of the 'Tales of My Landlord.' We found the cottage a little off the road and not far from the river, nestling under the brow of a hill. I should, perhaps, say two cottages, joined together and nearly of the same size. The one on the left is of comparatively recent date and has a weather-stained bust of Sir Walter over the door. The older cottage is divided by a partition. On the right is a door and window of ordinary size. On the left is a door three and a half feet high and a very small window. There is no means of communication between the two apartments. The left side was occupied by David Ritchie and the right by his half-crazed sister, Agnes. There was never any affection between these two unfortunates, but on the contrary, and in spite of the loneliness of their lives, there was an almost complete estrangement. [Illustration: THE BLACK DWARF'S COTTAGE] The cottage has a stone over the dwarf's door inscribed 'D. R. 1802.' This commemorates the date when it was built, by the charity of Sir James Nasmyth, the owner of the land. It replaces a hut built by David himself in very much the same manner as described in the novel. With his own hands the dwarf rolled the heavy stones down from the hill, and with what seemed to be almost superhuman strength, lifted them into position. He enlisted the aid of passers-by, however, to help lift the weightiest ones, which added to the wonderment of the next comers, who could not know how much he had been assisted. Scott says he settled on the land {163} without asking or receiving permission, but was allowed to remain when discovered by the good-natured laird. William Chambers, however, who gave considerable study to the subject, says that the owner not only gave him possession of the ground rent-free, but instructed his servants to render such assistance as might be required. The immediate occasion of building a house in this sequestered neighbourhood was the fact that Ritchie's painful sensitiveness about his ungainly appearance made it intolerable for him to remain in Edinburgh, whither he had gone to learn the trade of brush-making. Whatever instinct guided him to Manor Water, he could scarcely have found anywhere in Scotland a location better adapted to his requirements. Here the good part of his nature asserted itself--for there is good in every human being, if only the key can be discovered that unlocks the secret chambers. The poor misshapen dwarf found his in the cultivation of a little garden, shut out from an unsympathetic world by a stone wall of his own construction. Within this sacred enclosure a profusion of flowers rankly unfolded their beauties to his eyes and shrank not from his touch. He had contrived to obtain some rare exotics and to learn their scientific names. He planted fruit trees in his garden and surrounded his little house with willows and mountain ashes, until he had converted it into a fairy bower. He found pleasure and profit in the raising of vegetables, and even cultivated certain medicinal herbs which he sold or gave to the neighbours. He also supplied some of the gentlemen of the vicinity with honey and took great delight in the care of his bees. A {164} cat, a dog, and a goat completed the roll of his best-loved companions. Besides the pleasure he took in the contemplation of his own garden, Ritchie was an ardent admirer of the natural beauty of the country which he had chosen for his home. 'The soft sweep of the green hill, the bubbling of a clear fountain or the complexities of a wild thicket, were scenes on which he often gazed for hours and, as he said, with inexpressible delight.' He felt that sense of rest and refreshment from the contemplation of nature which Bryant has so finely expressed:-- To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language: for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware. To this great comfort, the poor misanthrope added another--the reading of good books. He was fond of the history of Wallace, Bruce, and other Scottish heroes, and he also had a love of poetry. Scott speaks of his familiarity with 'Paradise Lost' and says he has heard 'his most unmusical voice repeat the celebrated description of Paradise, which he seemed fully to appreciate.' Though not a man of orthodox religious beliefs, he would occasionally speak of the future life with great earnestness and on such occasions would sometimes burst into tears. He had chosen a wild and beautiful spot on a neighbouring hillside for the place of his burial. It was covered with green ferns and enclosed with a circle of his favourite rowan or mountain ash, planted with his {165} own hands, partly because of their beauty, but largely on account of their potency in guarding the grave against evil spirits. He haughtily expressed great abhorrence of being interred in the parish churchyard with what he contemptuously called the 'common brush,' but in the last moments his heart became softened towards his fellow men, his antipathies relaxed, and his final wish was that he might be buried with his fathers. The writing of a novel based upon a character so grotesque and repellent was not well suited to a man of Scott's wholesome and genial temperament. He soon tired of it, and indeed the only satisfaction he got out of it was in presenting the better side of the Black Dwarf's nature. He came in time to agree with the criticism of the publisher, William Blackwood, to which at first he had strenuously objected, and the novel, originally intended to be in two volumes, was crowded into one and hurried to an end, thereby producing a narrative, as the author facetiously remarked in later years, 'as much disproportioned and distorted as the Black Dwarf, who is its subject.' [1] Or Bowed Davie of the Woodhouse Farm. {166} CHAPTER XII OLD MORTALITY In the grounds of the Observatory at Maxwelltown, across the river from Dumfries, is a small pavilion, enclosing two sculptured figures. One represents an old Scotchman, half reclining on a tombstone, a chisel in his left hand and a mallet resting by his side; the other is a pony, apparently waiting for his master to arise. The sculptures were the work of a local artist. They were disposed of by lottery to a young man, who died by accident the next day, and they are here deposited as a curious 'memorial to departed worth.' The figures, thus used as a monument to the man who chanced to own them, were intended to represent a very different person. 'Old Mortality' and his pony were familiar to the people of Dumfriesshire and other parts of Scotland for more than forty years. His real name, as is well known, was Robert Paterson. He was a mason or stone-cutter by trade, who operated a small quarry. In middle life he became so thoroughly imbued with the religious enthusiasm of the Cameronians, of which austere sect he was a zealous member, that he felt impelled to desert his wife and five children, in order that he might perform the duty which, he conceived, had devolved upon him. This was to travel about the country and repair the gravestones of the martyred Covenanters. He would clear off the moss from the old stones and recut the half-defaced inscriptions, doing this often in {167} remote and almost inaccessible recesses of the mountains and moors. Scarcely a churchyard in Ayr, Galloway, or Dumfriesshire is without some evidences of his work. In spite of his eccentricity there was a fine sincerity of purpose in the old man's devotion to his self-appointed task. He believed that each grave should serve as a warning to posterity to defend their religious faith, and he purposed to make every one, however obscure, a beacon light, so to speak, to proclaim to all the world the sufferings and devotion of the Covenanters, and thus to perpetuate the ideals for which they strove. However mistaken he may have been as to the wisdom of his methods, his calling was apparently as real to himself and as sincere as that of any minister of the Gospel. He was found dying on the highway one day in his eighty-sixth year, the little old white pony standing patiently by his side. Thus he wore out his life in the service of his religion, as truly devoted to it as any of the martyrs who perished on battle-field or scaffold. His grave is marked by an appropriate stone in the churchyard of Caerlaverock, south of Dumfries. Scott, who once met the old man in the churchyard of Dunottar and saw him actually engaged in his usual task, sought an interview, but in spite of a good dinner and some liquid refreshments, which were quite acceptable, was unable to induce him to speak of his experiences. This was when the novelist was a young lawyer and long before he had thought of looking for materials for a novel. 'Old Mortality,' which many, including Lord Tennyson, have regarded as the greatest of Scott's novels, was {168} introduced to the public in a curious way. The real author, as usual, concealed his identity. The ostensible writer is Jedediah Cleishbotham, a schoolmaster, who in turn denies the actual authorship of the story, but claims to be merely the possessor of some posthumous papers of his late pupil, Peter Pattieson, who has only transcribed some tales he had heard from the landlord of Wallace Inn. Even the landlord was not original, for he received his information from the lips of 'Old Mortality.' Thus, by a circuitous route, the novelist derives this lengthy but extremely interesting tale from old Robert Paterson, whom he never saw but once, and then failed to make him talk! After the Introduction and the first chapter, in which 'Old Mortality' is briefly presented, we hear no more of him. In this respect the novel irresistibly reminds me of the celebrated American humourist, who advertised his lecture on 'Milk.' When his usual large audience had assembled, he would step to the front of the platform and pour out, from a pitcher conveniently provided for the purpose, a glass of milk, which he would drink with great deliberation before uttering a word. The lecture then followed in which he kept his hearers convulsed with laughter, but there was never a word about milk. Three events, all within the space of two months, form the historical basis of 'Old Mortality.' These are the murder of Archbishop Sharp on May 3, 1679, the skirmish at Drumclog on June 1, and the battle of Bothwell Bridge, June 22. It was during the era of the persecution, in the reign of Charles II, of the Scottish Covenanters, who persistently resisted the 'Conventicle Act' forbidding the gathering of more than five persons for {169} religious worship, except in accordance with the Established Church. James Sharp, Archbishop of St. Andrews, had incurred the hatred of the Covenanters by selfishly betraying the Scottish Kirk. An attempt upon his life was made in 1668 by Robert Mitchell, who was not arrested until six years later. He confessed under Sharp's personal promise of pardon, but was sent to Bass Island, where he remained a prisoner without trial for four years. Sharp then denied his promise, though it was proved by the court records, and demanded Mitchell's death. His base action met with speedy revenge. While driving with his daughter he was set upon by a party of nine men and put to death with the most atrocious cruelty. The real leader in this murder was John Balfour of Burley, one of the fiercest and most fanatical of the proscribed sect. Though he professed the utmost religious fervour, Burley was more noted for the violence and zeal with which he undertook the most desperate enterprises and for his courage and skill with the sword. The murder of Sharp aroused the Government to new activities and no less stimulated the zeal of the Covenanters. Burley and a handful of his followers openly defied their enemies. On the anniversary of the Restoration, May 29, they interrupted the holiday, which they considered 'presumptuous and unholy.' They rode into the town of Rutherglen, extinguished the bonfires in honour of the day, burned the acts of Parliament for the suppression of the conventicles and other obnoxious laws, and concluded their 'solemn testimony' with prayer and psalms. Three days later a conventicle was held near Loudon {170} Hill, at which no doubt sermons like those of Gabriel Kettledrummle and Habakkuk Mucklewrath were preached with fiery vehemence. The Covenanters seemed to depend upon their religious enthusiasm, for they were poorly armed and badly organized. Men and women who had no arms marched out to battle, relying upon 'the spirit given forth from the Lord.' They did not wait to be attacked, but advanced eastward about two miles from Loudon Hill to the farm of Drumclog, singing psalms all the way. Whether by accident or design they made their stand on peculiarly favourable ground behind a marsh too soft to support the weight of cavalry. As it was covered with green herbage and only a few yards in width, the attacking party, led by John Grahame of Claverhouse, did not know of its existence. 'No quarter' was the word passed along on both sides. Claverhouse and his dragoons, despising their foe, dashed down the declivity. The horses' feet were entangled in the marsh and the ranks thrown into confusion. The Covenanters, seizing the opportunity for which they had waited, made a spirited attack and completely routed the cavalry, Claverhouse himself having a narrow escape. Thirty-six dragoons were killed, while the victors lost only three. The successful skirmish aroused tremendous enthusiasm among the Covenanters, and had they been able to maintain harmony in their own ranks, might have led to a serious rebellion. It did lead to the battle of Bothwell Bridge which took place on the 22d of the same month, June, 1679. The Government leader was the Duke of Monmouth, who was anxious to preserve peace and avoid bloodshed. {171} The more moderate of the insurgents sent a message offering terms upon which they would surrender. The Duke offered to interpose with the King on their behalf, provided they would first lay down their arms. The Cameronians violently opposed the moderate policy and favoured a fierce and even desperate resistance. While they were debating the question, the sound of the enemy's guns broke in upon them. In their disorganized condition, the cause of the Covenanters was hopeless and the Government gained an easy victory. Claverhouse rode at the head of his own troop, who were thus able to avenge the disgraceful defeat at Drumclog. It was the portrait of John Grahame of Claverhouse, hanging in the library of Abbotsford, which, according to Lockhart, first suggested the idea of the novel. Joseph Train had called to present the purse of Rob Roy and 'a fresh heap of traditionary gleanings, which he had gathered among the tale-tellers of his district.' Noticing the handsome features revealed by the portrait of a man whom most Scotchmen regarded as 'a ruffian desperado, who rode a goblin horse, was proof against shot, and in league with the Devil,' Train expressed his surprise. After Scott had defended his hero's character, Train, always alive to the possibilities of a new story, asked whether he might not 'be made, in good hands, the hero of a national romance, as interesting as any about either Wallace or Prince Charlie.' Upon receiving the novelist's conditional assent, Train resumed: 'And what if the story were to be delivered as if from the mouth of "Old Mortality?"' Train then told what he knew of old Paterson, offering to learn more and report later. Though Scott did not mention it at the time, the {172} conversation recalled his earlier meeting with Paterson, and led to the immediate writing of the novel. The scenery of 'Old Mortality' required us to explore the course of the river Clyde for almost its entire length. This picturesque stream rises in the high country near Moffat. An old rhyme, as repeated to us by a native of Moffat, runs thus:-- Evan, Annan, Tweed and Clyde All flow out from ae hillside. In its short course of less than seventy-five miles to the Firth of Clyde at Dumbarton, it descends toward the sea by leaps and bounds, forming a series of beautiful cataracts. The highest and most famous of these is Corra Linn where Wordsworth composed a poem, inspired by the sight of Wallace's Tower. Here the river takes a triple plunge over the rocks for a distance of eighty-four feet. Not less imposing is Stonebyres Linn, below the city of Lanark, where the fall is seventy-six feet. Following the downward course of the stream we came to the ruins of Craignethan Castle, at the juncture of the Nethan with the Clyde. 'A crag above the river Nethan' is the literal meaning of the name. This is Tillietudlem, the castle which Scott made the residence of Lady Bellenden and her granddaughter, Edith. A ravine under the old castle of Lanark, near by, known as Gillytudlem, no doubt suggested the name. [Illustration: CRAIGNETHAN CASTLE (TILLIETUDLEM)] In the autumn of 1799, while on a visit to Lord Douglas at Bothwell Castle, on the Clyde, Scott made an excursion to Craignethan and, as he afterwards said, immediately fell in love with it so much that he wanted to live there. Lord Douglas offered him the use for life {173} of a very good house at one corner of the court. It was built in 1665 and we found it still in excellent repair. Scott did not at once decline the offer, but circumstances made it impossible to accept. That he made a very careful examination of the ruin, however, is shown by the unusually accurate descriptions. The castle stands on a high rock, reached by a long road through the woods, by the side of a deep glen. I climbed some stairways through a corner of the building which still remains intact, and stood on the ruined battlement from which Major Bellenden valiantly defended the castle. Here I had a fine view over the tree-tops and could see the village of Braidwood, two miles away; but the road over which Lady Bellenden saw the troops approaching was not visible to my eyes. From this point also I had a good view of the court, which I could fancy almost filled with a motley crowd of soldiers, domestic servants, and retainers, including the bluff and stout-hearted Sergeant Bothwell, who died 'hoping nothing, believing nothing--and fearing nothing'; the intrepid Tam Halliday; the infamous Inglis; the old drunken cavaliering butler, John Gudyill; the faithful ploughman, Cuddie Headrigg, with his sweetheart, Jenny Dennison; and even poor little half-witted Goose Gibbie, muffled in a big buff coat, 'girded rather _to_ than _with_ the sword of a full-grown man,' his feeble legs 'plunged into jack-boots' and a steel cap on his head so big as completely to extinguish him. In the centre of the court is the entrance gate, formerly the chapel; on the right a watch-tower and stable, and on the left the very substantial house now occupied by the keeper's family, to which I have referred. {174} The keeper next conducted me to the rear of the castle, where he pointed out a well-preserved square tower below which the ground slopes at a sharp angle to the river's edge. The lower part was used as a dungeon, where we may suppose Henry Morton to have been confined. It was once occupied by a nobleman of real life, who, not so fortunate as the hero of the novel, was led away to execution. Above the dungeon was the kitchen and pantry, with windows perhaps twenty feet above the ground. At the corner there was once an old yew, the stump of which may still be seen. Readers of 'Old Mortality' will recall that during the siege of the castle, Cuddie Headrigg, though an old servant, found himself with the opposing army. With five or six companions he found his way to the rear, where there was less danger, and proceeded to attempt to capture the stronghold by climbing the tree and gaining access through the window of the pantry. All might have gone well had it not been for the fact that Jenny Dennison had chosen the pantry as the safest place of retreat. When, therefore, Cuddie's figure appeared at the window, clad in the steel cap and buff coat which had belonged to Sergeant Bothwell, Jenny not only failed to recognize her lover, but was terribly frightened. With an hysteric scream she rushed to the kitchen, where she had hung on the fire a pot of kail-brose (a kind of vegetable stew), having promised to prepare Tam Halliday his breakfast. Seizing the pot and still screaming, she jumped to the window and poured the whole scalding contents upon the head and shoulders of the unfortunate Cuddie, thus 'conferring upon one admirer's outward man the viands which her fair hands {175} had so lately been in the act of preparing for the stomach of another.' I had great difficulty in photographing this tower. The declivity was so steep that it was almost impossible either to place the tripod in proper position or to find a footing from which to look into the camera. While in the midst of my preparations the keeper informed me casually that a man had fallen down the slope three weeks before and broken his neck. With this encouragement, I persevered and was finally able to obtain what I believe to be one of the best evidences of the accuracy with which Scott often made his investigations and subsequent descriptions. On one of our excursions from Melrose, we followed the course of the Yarrow, from its junction with the Ettrick to its source in St. Mary's Loch; then continuing to the southwest, we traced the course of Moffat Water, which forms the outlet of the Loch of the Lowes, to a point just above the place where the stream meets the Evan and the Annan; then turning westward and passing through the town of Moffat, we followed the course of the Tweed northward and eastward from its source to our starting-place. For a large part of this drive, we were in wild, desolate regions, which presented to us, we were well assured, exactly the same aspect as they did to Sir Walter Scott, and to the Covenanters a century or more before his time. From St. Mary's Loch to Moffat and from the latter northward for at least fifteen or twenty miles, we were in the very region where the Covenanters were wont to find a safe retreat from persecution. Scott was fond of riding through these wild mountain {176} passes, and often did so with his friend, Skene, of Rubislaw, who has left an entertaining account of one of these expeditions:-- One of our earliest expeditions was to visit the wild scenery of the mountainous tract above Moffat, including the cascade of the Grey Mare's Tail and the dark tarn called Loch Skene. In our ascent to the lake we got completely bewildered in the thick fog which generally envelops the rugged features of that lovely region; and as we were groping through the maze of bogs, the ground gave way, and down went horse and horsemen pell-mell into a slough of peaty mud and black water, out of which, entangled as we were with our plaids and floundering nags, it was no easy matter to get extricated. Indeed, unless we had prudently left our gallant steeds at a farmhouse below and borrowed hill-ponies for the occasion, the result might have been worse than laughable. As it was, we rose like the spirits of the bogs, covered _cap-à-pie_ with slime, to free themselves from which our wily ponies took to rolling about on the heather, and we had nothing for it but following their example. At length, as we approached the gloomy loch, a huge eagle heaved himself from the margin and rose right over us, screaming his scorn of the intruders; and altogether it would be impossible to picture anything more desolately savage than the scene which opened, as if raised by enchantment on purpose to gratify the poet's eye, thick clouds of fog rolling incessantly over the face of the inky waters, but rent asunder, now in one direction and then in another--so as to afford us a glimpse of some projecting rock or naked point of land, or island bearing a few scraggy stumps of pine--and then closing again in universal darkness upon the cheerless waste. Much of the scenery of 'Old Mortality' was drawn from that day's ride. James Hogg, who conducted the party on that day, says:-- I conducted them through that wild region by a path, which if not rode by Clavers, as reported, never was rode by {177} another gentleman.... Sir Walter, in the very worst paths, never dismounted save at Loch Skene to take some dinner. We went to Moffat that night, where we met with Lady Scott and Sophia and such a day and night of glee I never witnessed. Our very perils were to him matters of infinite merriment. The Grey Mare's Tail is a waterfall three or four hundred feet in height, forming the outlet of Loch Skene. It is a narrow stream and the water comes boiling and bubbling in foamy whiteness over the ruggedest of rocks and through the wildest of ravines. I am inclined to think that Scott, in striving to find a retreat for Balfour, or Burley, poetically in keeping with the stern, fierce, and dangerous character of that terrible individual, combined the awesome features of the Grey Mare's Tail with the wild beauty of another ravine which he had visited. The latter is the deep gulch known as Crichope Linn, near the village of Closeburn, north of Dumfries. A narrow stream, flowing through a thick wood, has cut a deep chasm in the solid rock, through which the water has carved many curious channels. One of these is called 'Hell's Cauldron,' where the water has worn a deep round hole, through which it rushes with terrific force. Near by is the Soutar's Seat, so called from the legend that a 'soutar' or cobbler used to conceal himself there to mend the shoes of the Covenanters. I had the pleasure of walking up the stream to the falls through the wet woods, in a rainstorm, without a guide. The loneliness of my situation,--for I did not encounter a soul on the journey,--added to the mist in the atmosphere, gave an impression, which I might {178} not otherwise have had, of the absolute security of such a hiding-place. I tried to fancy old Burley appearing at some opening in the rocks and myself leaping across the chasm, as did Henry Morton, to get out of his way. I was not obliged to attempt any such feat. But I felt that a visit to this strange locality had given me a better idea of the closing scenes of the novel than I had ever had before. [Illustration: CRICHOPE LINN] 'Old Mortality' will always be remembered for its animated picture of the Covenanters and the conditions under which they lived. It was an era of perverted sentiment in politics and religion. The times were 'out of joint' more truly than in the days of Hamlet. A powerful and tyrannical Government was exhibiting cowardly fear of a small minority of determined people, who demanded only the rights that had been previously guaranteed. A policy of intolerant persecution prevailed. The bullies of the Government laughed to scorn the more statesmanlike propositions of moderation and fair dealing. Under these conditions a helpless and miserable people found their strength in an underlying perception of the truth and justice of their cause. They were exhibiting that quality which, from Magna Charta to the present time, has come to the front at every crisis in the history of Britain and America and is at the root of the power of the Anglo-Saxon race--the quality of earnest and sincere faith in the right of man to civil liberty and religious freedom. If, in the excess of their enthusiasm, these people became bigoted and intolerant, and if their frenzied reading of the Scriptures enabled them to find texts to justify every sort of deed of violence and cruelty, the harsh measures of a corrupt, {179} selfish, and incompetent Government would at least explain the unhappy conditions. Scott's marvellous imagination enabled him to reanimate the people of this excited period. In Habakkuk Mucklewrath we have the extreme of crazy religious fervor and in Balfour of Burley the perfect embodiment of that brute force which was so strangely blended with pious ideals. Henry Morton, the hero of the tale, whose lot is cast with the Covenanters, is out of place in the picture, but he sufficiently typifies that class who were opposed to the extreme measures of the Cameronians. On the Government side, Claverhouse, to whom Scott endeavours to do justice, General Dalzell, the Duke of Monmouth, and the Duke of Lauderdale are pictured, fairly enough, in the colours of history. Scott's treatment of the Covenanters aroused great controversy, some of their admirers taking him to task in severe terms for his alleged lack of fairness. Whatever may be said on this point, there is no doubt that he touches the true sublimity of their faith in his account of the torture and death of the Reverend Ephraim Macbriar. The dauntless preacher was brought before the Privy Council and interrogated by the Duke of Lauderdale. Refusing to reply to an important question, he was dramatically confronted with the ghastly apparition of the public executioner and his horrible implements of torture. 'Do you know who that man is?' said Lauderdale in a low, stern voice, almost sinking into a whisper. 'He is, I suppose,' replied Macbriar, 'the infamous executioner of your bloodthirsty commands upon the persons of God's people. He and you are equally beneath my regard; {180} and, I bless God, I no more fear what he can inflict than what you can command. Flesh and blood may shrink under the sufferings you can doom me to, and poor frail nature may shed tears, or send forth cries; but I trust my soul is anchored firmly on the rock of ages.' By the Duke's command the executioner then advanced and placed before the prisoner an iron case called the Scottish boot, so constructed that it would enclose the leg and knee of the victim with a tight fit. An iron wedge and a mallet completed the equipment. This wedge, when placed between the knee and the unyielding iron frame, and struck a sharp blow with the mallet, was calculated to inflict the most excruciating pain. Macbriar faced the implement without flinching, while the executioner asked in harsh, discordant tones which leg he should take first. 'Since you leave it to me,' said the prisoner, stretching forth his right leg, 'take the best--I willingly bestow it in the cause for which I suffer.' Here Scott makes use of the actual words of James Mitchell, who suffered similar torture for his attempt on the life of Archbishop Sharp. When Macbriar was led to his execution, he thanked the Council for his sentence and forgave them, saying:-- And why should I not?--Ye send me to a happy exchange--to the company of angels and spirits of the just, for that of frail dust and ashes.--Ye send me from darkness into day--from mortality to immortality--and in a word, from earth to heaven! If the thanks therefore, and pardon of a dying man can do you good, take them at my hand, and may your last moments be as happy as mine! {181} And thus, 'his countenance radiant with joy and triumph,' he was led to his execution, 'dying with the same enthusiastic firmness which his whole life had evinced.' The book which contains this superb presentation of a thrilling epoch of Scottish history is justly termed, by Lockhart, the Marmion of the Waverley Novels. {182} CHAPTER XIII ROB ROY An old flintlock gun of extreme length, with silver plate containing the initials R.M.C.; a fine Highland broadsword, with the highly prized Andrea Ferrara mark on the blade; a dirk two feet long, with carved handle and silver-mounted sheath; a _skene dhu_, or black knife, a short thick weapon of the kind used in the Highlands for dispatching game or other servile purposes for which it would be a profanation to use the dirk; a well-worn brown leather purse; and a _sporran_, with semicircular clasp and secret lock, which for a century has defied the ingenuity of all who have attempted to open it, are among the treasures of Abbotsford. They were all once the property of Robert MacGregor Campbell, or Rob Roy, the famous 'Robin Hood of the Highlands.' When I was permitted to take the long old-fashioned gun into my own hands and to test its weight by carrying the butt to my shoulder and casting my eye over the long octagonal barrel, I could not help feeling that Rob Roy was a far less mythical person than his prototype of the Forest of Sherwood. Rob Roy was, indeed, a very real person, as the Duke of Montrose knew to his sorrow, but the stories of his exploits are so strange, and at the same time so fascinating, that it is difficult to determine where biography ends and pure fiction begins. The MacGregor clan to which he belonged had been for three hundred years the victims {183} of gross injustice. David II, the son of Robert Bruce, began the oppression by wrongfully bestowing their lands upon the rival clan of the Campbells. The MacGregors were forced to a struggle for self-preservation, and manfully fought to maintain their rights, exhibiting extraordinary courage and endurance. But their acts of heroism and self-defence were construed at court as evidences of lawlessness and rebellion. Strenuous efforts were made to suppress them, but all such attempts were met with fiery vindictiveness. Each act of violence led to one of vengeance. The clan came to be regarded as a fierce and untameable race of outlaws. Rendered savage and cruel by a treatment which left no lawful means of obtaining a livelihood, pursued with fire and sword by the leaders of powerful neighbouring clans, whose subjects were forbidden to give them food or shelter, the MacGregors were driven to desperation. Violent deeds of retaliation occurred which no amount of provocation would justify. Murders, outrages, and bloody skirmishes were of frequent occurrence. These conflicts reached a terrible crisis in the battle of Glenfruin, fought on the shores of Loch Lomond with the powerful clan of Colquhoun, of whom two hundred or three hundred were slaughtered, many of them being killed without reason after the battle was over. One of the leaders of the MacGregors, who was accused, perhaps unjustly, of murdering a party of clerical students who had merely stopped to witness the fight, was Dugald Ciar Mohr, the 'great mouse-coloured man,' so called from the colour of his face and hair. He was a man of ferocious character and enormous strength, and was one of the ancestors of Rob Roy. {184} This event led to various Acts of Council, proscribing the MacGregors as outlaws, prohibiting them from carrying weapons, and forbidding them even to meet together in groups of more than four. The very name of the clan was abolished, and any one who should call himself either Gregor or MacGregor was made liable to suffer the penalty of death. Rob Roy was the product of these long years of relentless persecution and retaliation. His family occupied the mountain ranges between Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine, where they possessed considerable property. The date of his birth is uncertain, but it was probably 1660 or 1661. In the latter year, through the orders of King Charles II, the acts against the MacGregors were annulled and their name restored. The king, however, could not annul the effects of three centuries of civil warfare and vengeful retribution, nor prevent Rob Roy from inheriting some of the traits of his 'mouse-coloured' ancestor. Rob is described as a man of medium height, but of extraordinary strength. His powers of endurance were greater than those of any other member of his clan. His arms were said to be seven inches longer than those of the average man. This gave him a great advantage with the broadsword, which he could wield with uncommon skill and effectiveness. His head was covered with a shock of thick, curly red hair, from which fact he derived his name, Rob Roy, or Rob the Red. He had keen, flashing, grey eyes and a firm mouth, which betokened a man with whom it would be dangerous to trifle, but these features could be frank, cheerful, and full of kindness when among his friends. He had none of the ferocity or cruelty of that ancestor whose {185} great powers he seemed to have inherited. On the contrary, though bold in the execution of his purposes, he avoided unnecessary bloodshed. Though driven by fate to the life of an outlaw, he was a man of humane instincts and under happier circumstances might have been a public benefactor. This is the explanation of his extraordinary success in eluding pursuit. His kindliness of disposition and friendly helpfulness had raised up friends in every part of the country. In this respect he was like Robin Hood. He struck at the rich and powerful when they molested him, but to the poor he was generous and helpful. He was a kind and gentle robber, who carried a sense of humour into his boldest outrages, and contrived to take the property of his rich enemy without molesting the latter's poor tenants, usually managing to make the victim ridiculous in the eyes of his associates. Again and again the Duke of Montrose sent expeditions after him, but invariably some friend of Rob's carried the news to him well in advance or sent the Duke's people off in a wrong direction, so that they were always either disgracefully defeated or hopelessly bewildered. Meanwhile, Rob would be pretty sure to appear unexpectedly at some point on the Duke's estate and sweep away everything in sight. Each new failure brought added wrath to the Duke, which the satirical remarks of his companions did not tend to soften. When Montrose deprived MacGregor of his lands of Craigroyston, along the eastern shore of Loch Lomond, Rob had no redress in the courts, but he managed to square accounts pretty well by driving off annually large numbers of the Duke's cattle, and collecting rents, {186} for which he invariably gave receipts. He made Craigroyston unbearable for any one who attempted to live there, until finally a Mr. Graham of Killearn, the Duke's factor, took possession. This was exactly what Rob Roy wanted, for Graham was the man who, in MacGregor's absence, had burned the house of the latter at Balquhidder and brutally thrust his wife out of doors in a cold winter night. Rob ever after regarded him with fierce vindictiveness. Graham's cattle mysteriously disappeared time after time until Craigroyston became unbearable for him also. Rob had a queer way of appearing suddenly in places where he was least expected. One day when Graham was drinking at a tavern and angrily relating his troubles to a chance acquaintance, he exclaimed, 'Gin God or the de'il wad gie me a meeting wi' that thievin' loon, Rob Roy MacGregor, I'd pay aff my score wi' him. But the villain aye keeps oot o' my road.' 'Here we are, then,' was the reply, 'whether it's God or the de'il has brocht us thegether. Nae time like the noo, sir, for if ye're Graham o' Killearn, I'm Rob Roy MacGregor.' Graham did not stand on the order of his going, but made his exit by leaps and bounds until three long miles were put between him and 'that devil of a MacGregor.' On one occasion Graham had called the tenants of a certain district to meet at a small house, according to custom, to pay their rent. Rob Rob, with a single attendant, whom he called 'the Bailie,' reached the house after dark, and looking through the window, saw Killearn with a bag of money in his hand and heard him say he would cheerfully give it all for Rob Roy's head. Rob instantly gave orders in a loud voice to place two {187} men at each window, two at each corner and four at each of the doors, as if he had twenty men. He and his attendant then walked boldly in, each with broadsword in his right hand and a pistol in his left, and a goodly display of dirks and pistols in their belts. He then coolly ordered Killearn to put the money on the table and count it, and to draw a proper receipt showing that he, Rob Roy, had received the money from the Duke of Montrose on account. Then, finding that some of the tenants had not been given receipts for their rent, he caused these to be drawn so that no poor man should suffer, after which he ordered supper for all present, for which he paid. When they had eaten their meal and drunk together for several hours, he called upon 'the Bailie' to produce his dirk and take the solemn oath of the factor that he would not move nor direct any one else to move out of the house for at least one hour. Pointing to the dirk to signify what the agent might expect if he broke his oath, Rob calmly walked away with the bag of money, which he considered rightfully his own, and was soon beyond pursuit. On another occasion MacGregor not only took possession of the rents which this same gentleman had collected, but also carried him away to a small island in the west end of Loch Katrine, where, after entertaining him five or six days, he dismissed his guest (or prisoner), returning all the books and papers, but taking good care to keep the cash. The escape of Rob Roy from the Duke of Montrose was based upon an actual occurrence. He was surprised by Montrose and taken prisoner in the Braes of Balquhidder. He was then mounted behind a soldier named {188} James Stewart and secured by a horse-girth. In crossing a stream, probably the Forth at the Fords of Frew, MacGregor induced Stewart to give him a chance 'for auld acquaintance' sake.' Stewart, moved by compassion or possibly fear, slipped the girth-buckle and Rob, dropping off the horse, dived, swam below the surface, and finally escaped. The novelist's acquaintance with the country of Rob Roy began in his sixteenth year, when with a military escort of a sergeant and six men, he first entered the Highlands. He was then a lawyer's clerk, and his object was to obtain possession of a certain small farm in the Braes of Balquhidder, known as Invernenty, to secure some debts due from the owner, Stewart of Appin. The farm had been a part of the property claimed by Rob Roy, and in the late years of the cateran's life there had been a great dispute over it with the Stewarts. The quarrel was finally adjusted and a family of MacLarens took possession as tenants of Stewart. After the death of Rob Roy, his son, Robin Oig, probably instigated by his mother, declared that if he could get possession of a certain gun of his father's, he would shoot MacLaren. He kept his word, using the weapon to which I have referred at the beginning of this chapter. The descendants of MacLaren remained on the farm and refused to leave. So long as they were there, the property could not be sold. It chanced that one of Scott's earliest legal undertakings was to secure the eviction of these undesirable tenants. When he arrived the house was empty, the MacLarens not caring to make any serious opposition. The Kirk of Balquhidder, where Rob Roy made his {189} settlement with the Stewarts, stands at the foot of Loch Voil, a few miles off the main road from Callander to Lochearnhead. It is a small ivy-covered chapel, standing beneath the shadow of two large trees. In front is an iron railing, of recent construction, enclosing the graves of Rob Roy, his wife, Helen MacGregor, whose real name was Mary, and two of his sons. He died a natural death in 1734, at an age which has been variously stated as between seventy and eighty years. The first appearance of Rob Roy in the novel is when under the name of Campbell (his mother's name, which he assumed, probably for prudential reasons), he makes the acquaintance of Mr. Frank Osbaldistone at the Black Bear of Darlington. Frank, it will be remembered, is on the way to his uncle's estate in Northumberland. There is little by which Osbaldistone Hall can be identified, but if geographical considerations count for anything, it is not improbable that Scott may have had in mind Chillingham Castle, the seat of the Earl of Tankerville. This is one of the places to which he refers in a letter written in the summer of 1791, as 'within the compass of a forenoon's ride,' from the farm in the Cheviot Hills, south-west of Wooler, where he was then staying. During that vacation excursion he became very familiar with all the surrounding country, an experience which doubtless had something to do with choosing Northumberland as the scene of an important part of the novel. Chillingham Castle is a fine type of the old baronial residence. It was designed by Inigo Jones, the famous architect of the seventeenth century, though portions of the building are still preserved which were built as early as the thirteenth century. It stands in a magnificent park of {190} fifteen hundred acres, about two thirds of which is set apart for the accommodation of deer and wild cattle. The latter, almost the only descendants of the herds of savage wild cattle which once roamed the Caledonian forests, are famous throughout England and Scotland. Sir Walter refers to them in the 'Bride of Lammermoor' and again in a note to 'Castle Dangerous.' The present castle is a large square structure enclosing the walls of the older building. Entering the inner court, which is paved with stone, we came to what was once the front of the ancient structure, looking something like 'the inside of a convent or of one of the older and less splendid colleges of Oxford,' to quote from the description of Osbaldistone Hall. We were shown a large banqueting-room, now used as a library, which extends across the entire width of the building. Its walls were decorated, after the fashion of Osbaldistone, with many trophies of the chase, such as the heads of deer, elk, buffalo, and other animals, all shot by the present earl. But in this splendid apartment with its luxurious furnishings, there was little else to suggest the dingy old hall, with its stone floor and massive range of oaken tables, where the bluff old Sir Hildebrand and 'the happy compound of sot, gamekeeper, bully, horse-jockey, and fool,' which, with the addition of a highly educated villain, constituted his family, daily consumed huge quantities of meat and 'cups, flagons, bottles, yea, barrels of liquor.' [Illustration: CHILLINGHAM CASTLE] Frank Osbaldistone had nearly reached the entrance to his uncle's house when he met the beautiful Diana Vernon. Miss Cranstoun, afterwards the Countess of Purgstall, one of Scott's early friends in the social circles of Edinburgh, was thought by many to be the original {191} of Diana,--a belief which she herself shared, chiefly because she was an expert horsewoman. Others have said that Scott's first love was the real Diana. But Miss Vernon is totally unlike either Margaret of Branksome or Matilda of Rokeby, both of whom were, to some extent, portraits of Miss Williamina Stuart. Moreover, in the unexpected meeting of a charming young woman on horseback, her long black hair streaming in the breeze, her animated face glowing with the exercise, and her costume attractively arranged in the most striking fashion, there is a strong suggestion of the circumstances to which I have previously referred,[1] under which the poet first met the future Lady Scott. The next day after our visit to Chillingham we followed the footsteps of Frank Osbaldistone to Glasgow, where we soon found the cathedral to which Frank was conducted by Andrew Fairservice. It well justifies the old gardener's encomium: 'Ah! it's a brave kirk--none o' yere whigmaleeries and curliewurlies and open steek hems about it!--a' solid, weel-jointed mason-wark, that will stand as lang as the warld, keep hands and gunpowther aff it.' A part of the present building was erected in 1175. It has been the scene of some important events in Scottish history. At Christmas of 1301, Edward I of England, on his campaign against Scotland, made offerings at the high altar. Five years later, Robert Bruce stood before the same altar and was there absolved for the murder of his rival, the Red Comyn, at Dumfries. The cathedral is supported by sixty-five pillars, some of them eighteen feet in circumference. The effect of {192} these huge masses is to throw the crypt into almost total darkness except in the parts near the narrow stained-glass windows. To make my photograph I set up the camera, opened the shutter, and left a workman to keep watch while I went to luncheon. Returning in an hour I shut off the exposure and realized later that two hours would have been better. In this dark crypt it was formerly the custom to hold services. While standing in front of one of the huge pillars, listening to the sermon, Frank Osbaldistone heard the mysterious voice of Rob Roy, warning him that his life was in danger. Turning quickly he could see no one. I could never understand this scene until I saw the crypt. The large size of the pillars and the dense shadows which they cast would make it easy for one to disappear in the darkness as Rob Roy was supposed to do. On High Street, Glasgow, we found an old tower, which was a part of the Tolbooth, where Rob Roy had his curious interview with Bailie Nicol Jarvie. The old Salt Market has changed greatly since the days of the good Bailie and his father, the deacon, and it is no longer necessary at night to be escorted along the city streets by a young maidservant with a lantern. Rob Roy's parting injunction to Frank was 'forget not the clachan of Aberfoyle.' We therefore made it our business to find that interesting spot, combining it, as did Scott, with our investigation of the scenery of 'The Lady of the Lake.' The portion of the Scottish Highlands generally included in the so-called Rob Roy country comprises all that part of central Perthshire from Loch Ard and the river Forth on the south to Strath Fillan and Glen Dochart on the north, and from Loch {193} Lubnaig on the east to Loch Lomond on the west. This region, so easily accessible to us by means of carriages and automobiles, was in the time of Rob Roy not only difficult to approach, but exceedingly dangerous. The only highways of travel were narrow defiles through the mountains, easy enough, perhaps, for the experienced and hardy clansman, who knew every twist and turn of the paths, but as impassable to the unguided Lowlander or 'Sassenach' as the tablelands of Tibet. Frank Osbaldistone and Bailie Nicol Jarvie, guided by the officious and rascally, but always laughable, Andrew Fairservice, are supposed to enter the hamlet of Aberfoyle by crossing an old stone bridge over the Forth. It is the bridge which Scott doubtless crossed when he visited the place, and is still standing, but it had not been built in the time of Rob Roy. That, however, was one of those details which never interested Sir Walter to any great extent. We approached from the opposite direction, driving over the hills from the Trossachs and pausing just above the village to view the splendid valley to the westward, the termination of which was the mountain peak of Ben Lomond. Arriving at Aberfoyle, we were fortunately spared the necessity of stopping at an inn such as the novelist describes, where the worthy Bailie valiantly defended himself against a too aggressive Highlander, by wielding a red-hot poker so vigorously as to burn a hole in his opponent's plaid. But the enterprising landlord of the modern hotel near the bridge capitalizes the incident by exhibiting the _identical poker_, which he has attached to the limb of a tree, thereby recalling Scott's story of the keeper of a museum who showed the very {194} sword with which Balaam was about to kill his ass. A visitor interrupted him with the remark that Balaam did not possess a sword; he only wished for one. 'True, sir,' was the ready reply, 'but this is the very sword he wished for.' There are two groups of old cottages in Aberfoyle, corresponding closely with those described in the novel. The miserable little bourocks (or heap of rocks) as the Bailie termed them, of which about a dozen formed the village called the clachan of Aberfoyle, were composed of loose stones, cemented by clay instead of mortar, and thatched by tufts, laid rudely upon rafters formed of native and unhewn birches and oaks from the woods around. The roofs approached the ground so nearly, that Andrew Fairservice observed, we might have ridden over the village the night before, and never found out we were near it, unless our horses' feet had 'gane through the riggin'.' About half a mile from the bridge, which is the exact distance referred to in the novel, we found the largest of these clachans, which bore a very striking resemblance to the one described by Scott, even to the squalor of its surroundings, for it is still inhabited at one end, though the other is in ruins. But by way of compensation, the miserable hovel, with the high bleak hills in the background, made a strikingly picturesque view, not differing greatly from that which met the eyes of Rob Roy himself, whenever his 'business' brought him to that locality. Following the road to the westward, we came to some cliffs on the north shore of Loch Ard, near the foot of the lake, which are pointed out as the place where Bailie Nicol Jarvie found himself suspended by the coat-tails {195} from the projecting branches of a thorn-tree, dangling in mid-air 'not unlike the sign of the Golden Fleece over the door of a mercer in the Trongate of his native city.' The beauty of the lake as it appears from this road, and particularly from the point where Ben Lomond looms high in the distance, fully justifies the novelist's enthusiasm. The 'huge grey rocks and shaggy banks' are neither so high nor so wild as they are described, nor did we find an elevation from which Helen MacGregor might have pitched the miserable Morris headlong into the lake. Indeed, had we been able to look backward through the mists of two centuries and see the famous Helen herself, we should doubtless have discovered that she, too, was much less 'wild' than she has been painted. Scott represents her as a virago, fiercely inspiring her husband and sons to deeds of bloody vengeance. The real name of Rob Roy's wife was Mary. Mr. A. H. Miller, in his 'History of Rob Roy,' thinks she has been sadly misrepresented. 'Mary MacGregor,' says he, 'was of a gentle and amiable disposition, one who never meddled in the political schemes of her husband, and whose virtues were of the domestic order.' Scott's fondness for the little waterfall of Lediard, north of Loch Ard, to which I have already referred in connection with 'Waverley,' led him to introduce it again in 'Rob Roy.' It was the place chosen by Rob's wife and followers as 'a scene well calculated to impress strangers with some feelings of awe,' and here Helen MacGregor presented to Frank Osbaldistone the ring of Diana Vernon as the love-token of one from whom he believed himself separated forever. {196} The two sections of the Rob Roy country which the cateran most frequented, were the eastern shores of Loch Lomond and the valley where Loch Voil nestles calmly among the hills, known as the Braes of Balquhidder. After Rob was driven away from Craigroyston, on the margin of Loch Lomond, he made his headquarters for many years at Fort Inversnaid, on the high land, about two miles east of the lake. The story of how Rob Roy took possession of this place stamps him as a modern Ulysses as well as a Robin Hood. The Government authorized the building of the fort on Rob's own land, as a means of guarding the district from his depredations. The crafty cateran, learning from some of his numerous spies all about the plans well in advance, took good care to see that none of his clansmen interfered in the least, so that all the material for the fort, including ample supplies, guns, and ammunition, were brought up without molestation. The contractor, happy in the thought that the peaceful state of the country had enabled him to complete his task promptly, dismissed most of his men and prepared to turn the property over to the Duke of Montrose. One evening, in the midst of a heavy snowstorm, a knocking was heard at the gate. In response to inquiry, a voice said that a poor pedlar had lost his way in the snow. The gate was opened, and Rob Roy at the head of a strong force, rushed in and took possession. The fort made an excellent vantage-ground from which he harried his enemies for many years. [Illustration: LOCH LOMOND FROM INVERSNAID] Just below the fort, the little river which forms the outlet of Loch Arklet joins the Snaid, and finally tumbles over the cliff in a beautiful little cascade, known as {197} Inversnaid Falls. About two miles to the north, well hidden among the rocks, is a cave which Rob Roy was sometimes compelled to use as a hiding-place. It was visited by Walter Scott and introduced in the story of 'Waverley' as the cave of Donald Bean Lean, but he refrained from mentioning it in 'Rob Roy.' Scott never felt quite satisfied with this novel, although he did remark in a letter to John Richardson, 'I really think I may so far do some good by giving striking and, to the best of my information and abilities, correct likenesses of characters long since passed away.' As a presentation of the real character of one of the most picturesque and interesting of all Highlanders, as well as a superb word-painting of the conditions under which men lived in the country and the time of Rob Roy, the novel possesses a genuine value. Scott's discontent with it arose from the hard conditions under which it was written. In a letter to Daniel Terry, dated March 29, 1817, he says, referring to it, 'I have made some progress in ye ken what, but not to my satisfaction; it smells of the cramp, and I must get it into better order before sending it to you.' After the book was published, he used the same expression in a letter to Morritt. Lady Louisa Stuart, one of Scott's most valued friends, who wrote to him with perfect freedom, thought the end of the story indicated that the author was 'tired, and wanted to get rid of his personages as fast as he could, knocking them on the head without mercy.' There is certainly some justification in this when we consider that the old Baronet and five of his worthless sons are disposed of within three or four pages, while the last and worst of the lot, the traitorous Rashleigh, is put {198} out of the way two chapters later. On the other hand, the Squire and his family were always treated collectively, and as they were in the way it was just as well to get rid of them by wholesale. Of course, no good could come from letting the villain live. If this is a defect, or if there are any other faults in the novel, they are all redeemed by the happy picture of Bailie Nicol Jarvie, one of the most original as well as delightful of all the company of actors in the Waverley Novels,--'a carefu' man, as is weel kend, and industrious as the hale town can testify; and I can win my crowns, and keep my crowns, and count my crowns wi' ony body in the Saut-Market, or it may be in the Gallowgate. And I'm a prudent man, as my father the deacon was before me.' The poor bailie never could (and neither can the reader) forget how he must have looked when he hung head down from the thorn tree in the Pass of Aberfoyle: 'And abune a', though I am a decent, sponsible man, when I am on my right end, I canna but think I maun hae made a queer figure without my hat and my periwig, hinging by the middle like bawdrons, or a cloak flung over a cloak-pin. Bailie Graham wad hae an unco hair in my neck and he got that tale by the end.' Charles Mackay, the famous actor, made the hit of his career in his rendition of Bailie Nicol Jarvie, and the dramatization of the novel enjoyed a remarkable popularity for many years. [1] Chapter 1, page 17. {199} CHAPTER XIV THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN 'Dis-is-de-heart-of-Midlothian-Jeanie-Deans-walked-t'- Lunnon-t'-save-her-sister-fr'm-hangin!' This sentence, uttered rapidly in a monotone, as though it were all a single word, long-drawn-out, startled us as we were standing in Parliament Square, Edinburgh, looking up at the stately crown which forms the distinguishing mark of the old Cathedral of St. Giles. Our eyes quickly dropped, to meet the wistful, upturned face of a small urchin, very ragged and very dirty. 'What is that you say?' said I, looking down into his expectant eyes. 'Dis-is-de-heart-of-Midlothian-Jeanie-Deans-walked-to-Lunnon, sir,' was the reply, in the same quick accents, running the words all together. 'Why did she do that?' I asked, hoping to draw him out. 'To save her sister from hangin', sir,' was the ready reply. 'But who was Jeanie Deans and how did she save her sister?' To this double inquiry the boy only shook his head. 'Where did you hear that story?' Another shake. 'Did you ever hear of Sir Walter Scott?' Another slow movement of a downcast head indicated that the little lad was hopelessly out of his depth, so I gave him his penny and let him go. He had evidently learned his lesson by heart from some one whom instinct had taught that this reference to one of the most popular novels of Edinburgh's most famous citizen would be likely to prove the readiest means of interesting the casual tourist and thereby extracting an {200} honest penny. All the other objects of interest,--the fine old Cathedral, the Parliament House, the Market Cross, the grave of John Knox--were as nothing compared to the figure of a heart, outlined in the pavement, designed to mark the site of the old Tolbooth, but more strongly reminding the visitor, not of an ancient prison, but of a great novel, and impressing him with the feeling that, wherever one may go in Edinburgh, the spirit of Sir Walter Scott seems to permeate the very atmosphere. The square in which we were standing was for centuries the civic centre of Edinburgh. The southwest corner is occupied by the House of Parliament, where the Scottish Parliaments met in a room, a hundred and twenty-two feet long and forty-nine feet wide, with an arched oaken roof. This large hall is now adorned with numerous portraits and statues of eminent judges, and its floor, when the courts are in session, is filled with a throng of advocates, their wigs and gowns suggesting something of the ceremonials of olden times. Since the union of England and Scotland under the name of Great Britain, in 1707, and the consequent dissolution of the Scottish Parliament, the building has been used by the Court of Session. In the rooms of the First Division, on the left of the lobby, Sir Walter Scott, as one of the Principal Clerks, performed his official duties for twenty-five years. His attendance averaged from four to six hours daily during the sessions of the court, which usually occupied two months in the late spring and early summer, and four in the winter. His letter of resignation, in the last year but one of his life, is one of the valued treasures of the Advocates' Library. In the first half of the eighteenth century, the period {201} of 'The Heart of Midlothian,' Parliament Close, as it was then called, did not present the clean, open appearance of to-day. Almost the entire space between St. Giles on the east and the County Hall on the west was occupied by the Tolbooth, leaving only a narrow and partly covered passage at the northwest corner of the square. The prison projected into the middle of High Street, seeming to form 'the termination of a huge pile of buildings called the Luckenbooths,' which had been 'jammed into the midst of the principal street,' and little booths or shops were plastered against the buttresses of the old Gothic cathedral. The headquarters of the 'City Guard' were in 'a long, low, ugly building, which to a fanciful imagination might have suggested the idea of a long black snail crawling up the middle of the High Street and deforming its beautiful esplanade.' In this way, what was intended to be and is now a broad street was at that time so encumbered as to be converted into a series of narrow, crooked lanes, which were kept in anything but tidy condition. South of High Street the Cowgate was reached by descending the steep incline through various narrow lanes, and the two parallel thoroughfares were connected, a little to the east, by a crooked but famous street, called West Bow. At the foot of the latter was a wide, open space known as the Grassmarket, where the public executions took place. These were the streets through which the rioters of the Porteous Mob made their way in the exciting days of September, 1736. The Tolbooth, considered two centuries ago to be one of the largest and most sombre buildings in the kingdom, was built by the citizens of Edinburgh in 1561, {202} originally for a Town Hall, but later devoted to the use of Parliament and the courts of justice. With the completion of the Parliament House in 1640, its original usage ceased, and from that time until its demolition in 1817, it was devoted exclusively to the imprisonment of debtors and criminals. No distinction was made between the lowest of the criminal classes and the poor persons whose only offence was the inability to pay some small debt. The latter were shut up for months in cells too loathsome for the most vicious of criminals. There were no areas for exercise nor any ways of affording the captives a breath of fresh air. The narrow windows were half-blocked to the light by massive bars of iron. The exterior was not less horrible, for on its highest pinnacle were displayed the heads of prisoners of state who had been executed, and it was seldom lacking in such tokens. The Regent Morton, accused of the murder of Darnley; the Duke of Montrose, and later his great enemy, the Duke of Argyle, were among the most distinguished of these victims; but there were many others. The Church of St. Giles almost touched elbows, so to speak, with the prison. The central portion was set apart for religious services under the name of the 'Old Church,' the worshippers of those days having a strong aversion to the use of the name of a saint. They seemed to have no objection to attaching to their sacred edifice the designation of the temporary abode of sinners, for the southwest quarter was called the 'Tolbooth Church,' from its proximity to the prison. On the morning of the 11th of April, 1736, according to the account of Robert Chambers, Wilson and Robertson were conducted to the Tolbooth Church, to listen to their last sermon, their {203} execution having been planned for the following Wednesday. Very much as described in the novel, except that the incident took place almost instantly after they had seated themselves in the pew, instead of after the sermon as Scott says, Wilson seized three of the guards and shouted to Robertson to run. The latter tripped up the fourth soldier and quickly escaped, aided by the sympathetic church-goers, who contrived to block up the passages so that pursuit was impossible. Three days later, Wilson was executed in the Grassmarket. The sympathy of all Edinburgh was with him, for several reasons. First, his crime was only the robbery of a revenue officer, in reprisal for the seizure of his own goods on a charge of smuggling. In those days (and even now, it may be feared) the crime of cheating the Government out of its revenues was not considered an enormous one. If a poor smuggler happened to be caught, there was no reason why he should n't 'get even' with the officers if he had a good chance. At least, so Wilson argued, and many sympathized with his view. Second, the Scots were not yet entirely reconciled to the union, and the exhibition of too much authority at London was likely to be resented. Third, Wilson had acted the part of a generous friend and courageous man in sacrificing his own chances to secure the escape of Robertson. Some stones were thrown at the captain of the City Guard, John Porteous, and that officer, beside himself with rage, snatched a gun from a soldier and, setting the example himself, commanded his party to fire. The result was the loss of six lives and the wounding of eleven persons, many of the victims being innocent spectators {204} who were watching the affair from neighbouring windows. For this offence Porteous was tried and convicted, his execution being set for the 8th of September. Before the prisoner could be executed, a pardon reached Edinburgh, signed by Queen Caroline, acting as Regent. Robert Chambers says that it came on the 2d of September, giving the mob five days for preparation instead of a single afternoon, as described by Scott. It is a matter of history that the 'mob' acted with remarkable moderation, harming no one except their intended victim. Ladies of the upper classes, travelling in their chairs to meet evening engagements, were quietly turned back. The shopkeeper in the West Bow, whose place was broken into for a coil of rope, found himself reimbursed with a guinea. The town guard was disarmed and the city gates closed without confusion, showing that cool heads were in the lead. The jail was stormed and, as the door would not yield, it was set on fire. When this finally became effective, the fire was extinguished. All the prisoners were set free except Porteous, who was taken to the Grassmarket and hanged on a post near the scene of his own crime. The event caused great excitement, not only in Edinburgh, but in London. The House of Lords proposed a severe punishment, including the imprisonment of the Lord Provost, but finally compromised with a fine upon the city of £2000 for the benefit of Porteous's widow, thus throwing the punishment upon those who had nothing to do with the affair and could not have prevented it. When the discreditable old Tolbooth was finally demolished, Scott was presented with the door and its {205} frame, which are now built into the outer walls of the mansion at Abbotsford and the keys of the prison are among the treasures of his museum. In 1816, he wrote to Terry, 'I expect to get some decorations from the old Tolbooth of Edinburgh, particularly the copestones of the doorway, or lintels, as we call them, and a _niche_ or two--one very handsome, indeed! Better a niche _from_ the Tolbooth than a niche _in_ it, to which such building operations are apt to bring the projectors!' The first part of the novel is a skilful blending of the history of the Porteous Mob, with the true story of an unfortunate girl and her noble sister, who lived in another part of Scotland. The author represents Effie Deans as having been incarcerated in the old Tolbooth and places her trial in one of the buildings of Parliament Close. The real Effie was imprisoned in the jail at Dumfries and her trial occurred in an upper room of a curious old building of that city, known as the Mid-Steeple, a structure, now over two centuries old, which stands in the middle of the High Street and gives a picturesque effect to that thoroughfare. On the south front, above a stairway which ascends across the face of the building, is a sculptured figure of St. Michael treading on a serpent, the arms of the burgh, and above this are the royal arms of Scotland, also carved in stone. The space in front is given a pleasant bit of colour by the display of flowers and vegetables, here offered for sale. The story of Helen Walker, the original of Jeanie Deans, is well remembered in Dumfries. A stone or two may still be discovered, by those who care to search for the remnant of her little cottage, near the banks of the river Cluden. She lived to be seventy or eighty years {206} old, supporting herself by working stocking-feet and raising chickens, besides occasionally teaching a few children to read. In early life she had been left an orphan, charged with the support of a younger sister, named Isabella, or 'Tibby,' to whom she devoted herself with many evidences of genuine affection. It was a great shock to her, therefore, when she learned that the young girl had been accused of child-murder and that she herself would be called upon as the principal witness against her. Under the law, as her counsel explained, if she could testify that her sister had made the slightest preparation or had even confided to her an intimation on the subject, such a declaration would save her sister's life. The temptation to tell a plausible lie, which no one could dispute, was undeniably strong. But Helen was a woman of finer mould, and not even the purest sisterly love could induce her to violate her conscience. She swore to the truth and Isabella was condemned. As she left the court, the latter was heard to exclaim, 'Oh, Nelly! ye've been the cause of my death!' The same moral courage which gave resolution to Helen Walker to stand for the truth, now impelled her to a remarkable exercise of the power of an indomitable will. The difficulties seemed insurmountable. There was no hope except in the royal pardon. There was no one to intercede with the King and London was many miles away. But Helen did not waste a moment. A petition was hastily drawn, setting forth the facts in the case, and on the very night of the conviction, the dauntless Scotch lassie set out on foot for London, clad in her simple country dress and tartan plaid, without letters of introduction or recommendation, with little money in her {207} purse, and scarcely a chance of success except a sublime faith in Providence and reliance upon her own stout heart. There was one nobleman in London to whom the heart of any of his Scotch countrymen would instinctively turn in such an emergency. This was John, Duke of Argyle, who had stoutly resisted the efforts to inflict an undeserved punishment on the people of Edinburgh for their part in the Porteous affair. To him Helen Walker presented herself, after watching three days at his door, just as he was about to enter his carriage. Her unpretentious dress, her honest face, and the pathos of her story won the heart of the generous nobleman, who procured the pardon and forwarded it to Dumfries. Helen returned on foot as she had come, and had the satisfaction of witnessing the release of her sister. Isabella married the man who had wronged her and lived many years, always acknowledging in the most affectionate terms the high nobility of her sister's character. Helen died in poverty and was buried in the picturesque churchyard of Kirkpatrick Irongray, northwest of Dumfries, where her grave might have been forgotten but for the generosity of Sir Walter and the interest of Mrs. Goldie, who told him the story. This good lady requested the novelist to write an inscription, saying that if he would do so, she would be able to raise the necessary funds for a monument. Scott, however, insisted upon supplying both the inscription and the stone. We made it our first care on the afternoon of our arrival in Dumfries to drive to the old Kirk where, in spite of the inconvenience of an unexpected shower, we {208} photographed the memorial and afterwards stood under an umbrella copying the following inscription:-- This Stone was erected By the author of Waverley To the memory of HELEN WALKER Who died in the year of God, 1791. This humble individual Practised in real life The virtues With which fiction has invested The imaginary character of JEANIE DEANS Refusing the slightest departure From veracity Even to save the life of a sister, She nevertheless shewed her Kindness and fortitude In rescuing her From the severity of the law, At the Expense of personal exertions. Which the times rendered as difficult As the motive was laudable. Respect the grave of poverty When combined with love of truth And dear affection. One day during our stay in Edinburgh we hired a conveyance to take us to the suburban scenes of 'The Heart of Midlothian.' Our driver was recommended as 'one {209} of the best guides in Edinburgh,' and so he proved to be. In spite of orders to drive direct to the King's Park, he insisted upon going by way of High Street and the Canongate, when, every few rods it seemed, he would bring his horse to a walk, then turn in his seat until he faced us and point with his long whip to some window 'where the famous Adam Smith lived' or 'where Dugald Stewart had his rooms.' Perhaps he was only following the example of Sir Walter, of whom Lockhart said, 'No funeral hearse crept more leisurely than did his landau up the Canongate; and not a queer tottering gable but recalled to him some long-buried memory of splendour or bloodshed, which, by a few words, he set before his hearers in the reality of life.' All of this was interesting enough, or would have been, had I not wished to reach my objective point before sundown, but Jehu was like the burro I once rode in the Garden of the Gods in Colorado, which beast responded to the spur by two convulsive steps, then settled down to his previous pace, which neither coaxing nor threatening, caressing nor spurring, soft words nor sharp ones, would induce him to change for the space of more than a minute at a time. So with our 'best guide.' I finally concluded to let him have his own way, as I had been obliged to do with his obstinate relative, the burro, and so finally got through the Canongate after listening to a rehearsal of the entire catalogue of Edinburgh worthies for several centuries. When the King's Park was reached, after passing Holyrood Palace, the guide found himself 'out of bounds' and kindly permitted me to direct the further proceedings. Here the city seems to come to a sudden end, and {210} looking toward the southwest we saw only a mass of steep cliffs backed by a rugged mountain. This was a favorite resort with Sir Walter, when a boy. In later years, the Radical Road, which winds around the edge of the Salisbury Crags in a broad pathway, was laid out at his suggestion, to give employment to idle men. In writing 'The Heart of Midlothian,' Scott was therefore more at home than with any other of his novels. Muschat's Cairn and St. Anthony's Chapel, where Jeanie had her midnight interview with the betrayer of her sister, were familiar sights of the author's boyhood. On a dark night they would be lonely enough even now. Near the park gate we passed some boulders known as Muschat's Cairn, but as they were carefully enclosed and surrounded by a well-kept plot of grass, they gave no suggestion of the weird and desecrated ground where evil spirits had power to make themselves visible to human eyes. The original cairn was made by passing travellers, each throwing a stone upon the spot, to express his detestation of the horrible murder committed in 1720 by Nicol Muchet or Muschat, who killed his wife under circumstances of great cruelty. In the ordinary course of improvements, the cairn was swept away, but the novel created a new interest in its story, which led to its restoration. [Illustration: ST. ANTHONY'S CHAPEL] St. Anthony's Chapel, on the rugged hillside overlooking St. Margaret's Loch, gives more of the impression of Scott's tale. The scene on any moonlight night even now would be the same as it was on that night when Jeanie met George Robertson at the cairn and was followed by Ratcliffe and Sharpitlaw, guided by Madge Wildfire. The ruined chapel, where the jailer and the {211} lawyer succeeded only in capturing each other instead of the fugitive, is still as lonely and difficult of access as it was then, the only difference being that some of the walls have fallen. We drove as near to the base of the hill as it was possible to go. I then left the carriage and began the ascent, stopping a moment at St. Anthony's Well, where Madge Wildfire wanted to meet the ghost of the murdered Ailie Muschat to wash the blood out of her clothes 'by the beams of the bonny Lady Moon.' Arriving at the chapel after a hard climb, I was studying the composition of a picture when I was accosted by a policeman, who had toiled after me all the way up that steep incline. He informed me that I was welcome to photograph the ruins, but I must n't take any group pictures. As there was nobody in sight but the policeman and myself, and as I did not wish to make a 'group' of him, I wondered why he had taken so much trouble. Perhaps he felt the proud satisfaction of the hero, who, in the language of an admiring rustic friend, 'seen his duty and done it noble.' The chapel of St. Anthony, of which now only a fragment remains, was once a Gothic structure, with a tower forty feet high, in which a light was kept for the guidance of mariners. A hermitage, of which scarcely a trace remains, was partly formed of one of the sheltering crags near by. The lofty site, commanding an extensive prospect of sea and sky was supposed to be favourable for pious meditations. The sight of the palace below was expected to make an impression in the minds of the monks of the 'striking contrast between the court, so frequently assaulted by an unprincipled rabble, and their own tranquil situation in which they {212} were gladly preparing for the regions of everlasting repose.' Although overlooking a populous city, the residents of the hermitage had all the 'advantages' of life in a wilderness, as secluded and peaceful as a Highland desert. On the opposite side of the intervening valley we visited St. Leonard's Crags at the southwest edge of the King's Park. A neat cottage, with a little garden on the slope below, passes as the house of David Deans. Whether Scott had in mind this particular building is immaterial. It is in the exact locality described in the novel, and we thought it pleasant to stand on the side of the hill overlooking the same extensive sheep pasture, and the same crags and mountain beyond, that met the eyes of Jeanie Deans when she stood at the cottage door anxiously looking along the various tracks which led to their dwelling, 'to see if she could descry the nymph-like form of her sister.' A house known as 'Dumbiedykes,' so called because in Scott's time it was used as a private school for the deaf and dumb, is not far distant. The novelist borrowed only the name, which he seems to have transferred to an old farm called Peffermill, in the vicinity of Liberton. 'Douce David Deans' is an original creation, the result of Scott's absorption of the descriptions of character in Patrick Walker's biographical accounts of the Covenanters. In acknowledging his indebtedness to this authority, Scott says, 'It is from such tracts as these, written in the sense, feeling, and spirit of the sect, and not from the sophisticated narratives of a later period, that the real character of the persecuted class is {213} to be gathered.' 'David' is just a touch of the same kind of which we have seen so much in 'Old Mortality.' His lecture to his daughters on the evil of dancing is taken from Patrick Walker's Life of Cameron:-- Dance?--dance, said ye? I daur ye, limmers that ye are, to name sic' a word at my door-cheek! It's a dissolute, profane pastime, practiced by the Israelites only at their base and brutal worship of the Golden Calf at Bethel, and by the unhappy lass who danced off the head of John the Baptist, upon whilk chapter I will exercise this night for your further instruction, since ye need it sae muckle, nothing doubting that she has cause to rue the day, lang or this time, that e'er she suld hae shook a limb on sic' an errand. Better for her to hae been born a cripple, and carried frae door to door, like auld Bessie Bowie, begging bawbees, than to be a king's daughter, fiddling and flinging the gate she did.... And now, if I hear ye, quean lassies, sae muckle as name dancing, or think there's sic' a thing in this warld as flinging to fiddle's sounds and piper's springs, as sure as my father's spirit is with the just, ye shall be no more either charge or concern of mine! What a treat it would be to hear Douce David express an opinion of the elaborate present-day performances of 'Salome'! Madge Wildfire, or Murdockson, was drawn from a crazy woman, called Feckless Fannie, who travelled over Scotland and England at the head of a flock of sheep. They were remarkable animals, who recognized their names as bestowed by their mistress, and responded promptly to her commands. She slept in the fields in the midst of her flock, and one very polite old ram, named Charlie, always claimed the honour of assisting her to rise. He would push the others out of the way, {214} then bend down his head, and when Madge had taken a firm grasp upon his large horns, he would raise his head and gently lift his mistress to her feet. This and numerous other stories of Feckless Fannie were furnished the novelist by his indefatigable friend, Joseph Train. The great popularity of 'The Heart of Midlothian' may be judged from a letter of Lady Louisa Stuart, who said, 'I am in a house where everybody is tearing it out of each other's hands and talking of nothing else,' and from Lockhart's testimony, that he had never seen such 'all-engrossing enthusiasm' in Edinburgh 'on the appearance of any other literary novelty.' Andrew Lang only voices the feeling of other Scotchmen when he declares that it is 'second to none' of the Waverley Novels and that 'no number of formal histories can convey nearly so full and true a picture of Scottish life about 1730-40 as 'The Heart of Midlothian.' Lockhart, as usual, sets forth the true secret of the author's success and does it in a single paragraph. 'Never before,' he says, 'had he seized such really noble features of the national character as were canonized in the person of his homely heroine; no art had ever devised a happier running contrast than that of her and her sister, or interwoven a portraiture of lowly manners and simple virtues, with more graceful delineations of polished life or with bolder shadows of terror, guilt, crime, remorse, madness, and all the agony of passions.' {215} CHAPTER XV THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR Ralph Waldo Emerson, who frequently showed his familiarity with the Waverley Novels, regarded 'The Bride of Lammermoor' as Scott's highest achievement. He declared that it 'almost goes back to Æschylus for a counterpart, as a painting of Fate--leaving on every reader the impression of the highest and purest tragedy.' The dramatic close of the story is based upon a calamity which marred the private life of James Dalrymple, the first Lord Stair, a great lawyer, legal writer, and judge, who was the ancestor of a long line of distinguished advocates, judges, and public men. This gentleman was born in Ayrshire in 1619. He was carefully educated, and when a young man lectured in the University of Glasgow on mathematics, logic, ethics, and politics. At twenty-nine he began the practice of law at Edinburgh, winning great fame in his profession, because of extensive legal attainments. His great work on 'The Institutions of the Law of Scotland' is still held in high esteem by Scottish lawyers, although the feudal law which it elucidated has become antiquated. It is considered, however, that something of its spirit still survives. He became a judge, was appointed President of the Court of Session, served as a member of the Scottish Parliament, and took a prominent part in various political and diplomatic undertakings. Unfortunately incurring the enmity of the Duke of York, he {216} lost his influence at court and was deprived of office. Fearing prosecution for treason, he retired to Holland, returning, however, a year later in the suite of William of Orange. He lived to the age of seventy-six, his latest years saddened by the bitter attacks of his enemies. This is the man whom Scott introduces as Sir William Ashton, though without meaning to impute to Lord Stair the tricky and mean-spirited qualities of the fictitious character. James Dalrymple was married in 1644 to Margaret Ross, the heiress of a large estate in Galloway. She was a woman of great ability and strong character, who seems to have exerted a powerful influence in promoting her husband's prosperity and political ambition. She shared his fortunes, whether good or bad, for nearly half a century, always exerting an imperious will, which even he did not dare to contradict, but ever faithful in advancing his interests. Following her husband's downfall, when the number of his enemies had greatly increased and his life was in danger, Lady Stair was accused of attending conventicles and of harbouring 'silenced preachers' in her house. Others went farther and accused her of witchcraft, maintaining that the great prosperity of her family was attributable solely to the lady's partnership with His Satanic Majesty. Whatever may have been the slanders directed against her good name, the Lady Stair of history was clearly the prototype of Lady Ashton. The lord and lady of real life had a daughter Janet, who was betrothed, without the consent of her parents, to Lord Rutherford. Lady Stair's will asserted itself in opposition, and without consideration of her daughter's {217} feelings, the mother proceeded to annul the engagement, notifying the lover that his fiancée had retracted her unlawful vow. After a stormy interview, in which Lord Rutherford argued his case with the determined mother in the presence of the younger woman, the latter, who had feebly remained silent and motionless, at last obeyed with sad reluctance her mother's command and gave back to her lover the half of a broken coin, which had been the symbol of their mutual pledge. In a burst of passion Lord Rutherford left the room and soon after went abroad never to return. The marriage desired by Lady Stair now took place, the bridegroom being David Dunbar, the heir of an estate in Wigtownshire, the lady's native county. On the night of the wedding some tragic event took place which resulted in the death of Janet two weeks later. Either the bride stabbed the husband or the husband stabbed the bride. The family seem to have thrown a veil of secrecy over the whole affair and the exact truth was never positively known. According to one account, when the door of the chamber was opened, the young bridegroom lay upon the floor badly wounded, while the wife was found in a state of frenzy, screaming as the door opened, 'Tak' up your bonnie bridegroom.' Another story is that the mother, inspired by Satan, attempted the murder, the marriage having been contracted against her will, and that the bridegroom went crazy. A third rendition is that the disappointed lover concealed himself in the apartment and committed the crime. Scott adopts the most plausible view, namely, that the young lady, forced to marry against her will, simply lost her reason and in a mad delirium assaulted her {218} husband. That young gentleman recovered from his wounds. Thirteen years later, he was killed by a fall from his horse, a catastrophe which the novelist transfers to the disappointed suitor. The scenery of the drama which led to such a tragic event is placed by the author in the Lammermuir Hills, a stretch of mountainous country lying along the borders of Haddington and Berwick, in the southeastern corner of Scotland. At the extreme eastern limits of this elevated section, the land drops abruptly into the North Sea, forming a line of precipitous cliffs, rising three or four hundred feet above the ocean. To gain some idea of the character of the region, we drove as far as the motor-car could carry us and came to a stop at the end of the road on the northern edge of the village of Northfield. A long walk, leading at first through an open field in which cattle were grazing, then along a narrow path by a brook, where numerous sheep were pasturing, thence by a winding road to the summit of a hill, brought me at last to the lighthouse of St. Abbs Head. Vast masses of rocks rise directly out of the ocean to enormous heights and stretch along the coast as far as the eye can see. Except for the lighthouse, there was no sign of life save the sea-fowl, which flew wildly in every direction, screaming in one incessant chorus of shrill complaint. A lowering sky added to the weird loneliness of the scene. I was gone so long that my wife, who wisely remained in the car, began to feel certain that I had tumbled over the rocks into the sea, and busied herself for an hour in unpleasant thoughts of how she should manage to get my remains home. But after nearly two hours, the remains came walking back without even the {219} excitement of being chased by a wild bull. Thus do most of our worries melt away if we give them time enough. Somewhere on this rugged shore was the castle of Wolf's Crag, the last remnant of the property of the Master of Ravenswood and the scene of Caleb Balderstone's wonderful expedients to maintain the honour of his house. Caleb, by the way, who would make a first-class performer in a farce comedy, and who served a useful purpose in relieving the strain of a sombre narrative, was not without a prototype in real life. His exploit in carrying off the roast goose and the brace of wild ducks from the kitchen of the cooper, to make a dinner for his master's guests, was based upon a story told to Scott by a nobleman of his acquaintance. A certain gentleman in reduced circumstances had a servant named John, whose resourcefulness was much like Caleb's. A party of four or five friends once sought to surprise this gentleman by unexpectedly presenting themselves for dinner, suspecting there would be no provision in the house for such an entertainment. But promptly as the village clock struck the hour for the noonday meal, John placed on the table 'a stately rump of boiled beef, with a proper accompaniment of greens, amply sufficient to dine the whole party.' He had simply appropriated the 'kail-pot' of a neighbour, leaving the latter and his friends to dine on bread and cheese, which, John said, was 'good enough for them.' Caleb's trick of magniloquently referring to scores of imaginary servants and detailing the particulars of fictitious banquets, all to maintain the honour of the house, had a parallel in the antics of a Scotch innkeeper of the Border country, who, on the arrival of a person of {220} importance, would call Hostler No. 10 down from Hayloft No. 15 to conduct the gentleman's horse to one of the best stalls in Stable No. 20, and do it in such an eloquent style as to convey the impression of accommodations on a scale of magnificent proportions.[1] Wolf's Crag, according to the novel, is between St. Abbs Head and the village of Eyemouth. There is no such castle on that part of the coast, but in the opposite direction, only a few miles from St. Abbs Head, on a high rock overlooking the sea, is Fast Castle, which answers very well to the description. This much Scott himself acknowledged, but in his usual cautious way, asserting that he never saw the castle except from the sea.[2] An interesting painting of Fast Castle, presented to Sir Walter by the artist, the Rev. John Thomson of Duddingston, adorns the drawing-room at Abbotsford. Viewed from the sea, Fast Castle is more like the nest of some gigantic Roc or Condor, than a dwelling for human beings; being so completely allied in colour and rugged appearance with the huge cliffs, amongst which it seems to be jammed, that it is difficult to discover what is rock and what is building. To the land side the only access is by a rocky path of a very few feet wide, bordered on either hand by a tremendous precipice. This leads to the castle, a donjon tower of moderate size, surrounded by flanking walls, as usual, which, rising without interval and abruptly from the verge of the precipice must in ancient times have rendered the place nearly impregnable.[3] {221} Fast Castle gained some notoriety from the attempt, in 1600, of an infamous character, Logan of Restalrig, in conspiracy with the Earl of Gowrie and his brother, to kidnap King James VI, the intent being to imprison him there, and to collect their reward from Queen Elizabeth. Fortunately for James, the plot failed. The original of Ravenswood Castle is uncertain. Constable, who published a volume of 'illustrations to the Waverley Novels' in 1821, two years after the appearance of 'The Bride of Lammermoor' included an engraving of Crichton Castle, with a quotation referring to Ravenswood: 'on the gorge of a pass or mountain glen, ascending from the fertile plains of East Lothian, there stood in former times an extensive castle, of which only the ruins are now visible.' Crichton is at the western extremity of the high country of which the Lammermuir Hills constitute the greatest portion. Scott's fondness for it is well known, as readers of 'Marmion' will remember. Others have supposed Wintoun House, a fine old mansion farther to the north, to have been the original. Scott could hardly have had this in mind, however, for he distinctly refers to the place as now in ruins. Bearing in mind that Scott paid little attention to geographical requirements, it seems probable that he really referred to the ruins of Crichton. This is further confirmed by the fact that the picture to which I have referred was painted by Alexander Nasmyth, who was a friend of Scott's and the father-in-law of the author's frequent correspondent, Daniel Terry. If Crichton Castle is Ravenswood, the Crichton Kirk may be considered as the place where the wedding of Lucy Ashton and Bucklaw took place. It is a curious-shaped building, with {222} square tower and walls, partly covered with ivy, standing in the midst of a well-kept churchyard. The novel opens with the dramatic burial-scene of the father of the young Master of Ravenswood. The chapel where this took place may be supposed to be Coldingham Priory, the oldest nunnery in Scotland, a quaint little structure, partly in ruins, but partly used for religious worship. In the chapter on 'Marmion' I have already referred to this chapel as the place where the body of a nun was found immured in the walls. The village of Eyemouth, a quaint old fishing settlement at the mouth of the river Eye, will serve as an 'original' of Wolf's Hope. On the links or sand knolls, north of here, were the quicksands called the 'Kelpie's Flow.' While in the village I made diligent inquiries, but could get no information except from one man, who thought that the sandy beach of Coldingham Bay might be the locality which Scott meant, but he had never heard of the quicksands, and said if any had ever existed in the vicinity they must have disappeared long since. [Illustration: CRICHTON CASTLE] It will be remembered that the Kelpie's Flow was the culminating scene of the tragedy. The prophecies of Thomas the Rhymer, so Scott would have us believe, were always fulfilled, and one of them was hanging over the head of the Master of Ravenswood, to the great trepidation of the faithful Caleb. The lines were these:-- 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. {223} After the tragedy in the Castle, young Ravenswood rode out to meet the bride's brother, Colonel Ashton, to fight a duel on the sands of Wolf's Hope. In the agitated state of his mind, he neglected the precaution of keeping on the firm sands near the rocks, and took a shorter and more dangerous course. Horse and man disappeared in the deadly quicksands, and thus was the prophecy fulfilled. Only a large sable feather was found as a sign of the young man's dreadful fate. Old Caleb took it up, dried it, and put it in his bosom. Thus ended the tale which Lockhart considered 'the most pure and powerful of all the tragedies that Scott ever penned.' [1] From Robert Chambers's _Illustrations of the Author of Waverley_. [2] In a note to the introduction to the _Chronicles of the Canongate_, Scott says, 'I would particularly intimate the Kaim of Uric, on the eastern coast of Scotland, as having suggested an idea for the tower called Wolf's Crag, which the public more generally identified with the ancient tower of Fast Castle.' [3] From _Provincial Antiquities of Scotland_. {224} CHAPTER XVI A LEGEND OF MONTROSE Dalgetty--Dugald Dalgetty; Ritt-master Dugald Dalgetty of Drumthwacket; learned graduate of the Mareschal College, Aberdeen; stalwart soldier; cavalier of fortune; lieutenant under that invincible monarch, the bulwark of the Protestant faith, the Lion of the North, the terror of Austria, Gustavus Adolphus; Captain Dalgetty; and finally Sir Dugald Dalgetty--stalks with egregious effrontery through the pages of this novel, from start to finish, dragging his good horse Gustavus along with him. He is a bore,--undeniably so. Yet we can laugh at his eccentricities in spite of their tediousness, especially when reading the novel a second time after the desire to know the outcome of the story has been satisfied. As an original character he stands by the side of Bailie Nicol Jarvie, although he does not arouse the same subtle feeling of delightful satisfaction. The Bailie is always welcome, but Dalgetty is everlastingly in the way. And yet we could not possibly get along without him. We can forgive his pedantry and overlook his interminable lectures on military strategy in view of the loyalty and courage with which he faces Argyle in the dungeon, compels that nobleman to furnish a means of escape and rescues Ranald of the Mist. Nor can we help admiring the very effrontery of the man, when he uses it to such excellent advantage in cajoling the Presbyterian chaplain, thereby causing {225} that worthy man to furnish the one thing needed to facilitate his safe retreat. The story might well have been called, as it is in the Italian and Portuguese versions, 'A Soldier of Fortune,' for Dalgetty, rather than Montrose, is the real hero. In this connection it is curious to note that, in so far as its chief incidents concern Montrose, the tale is not a legend, but history. The two important words of the title are both, therefore, slightly misleading. The journey into the Highlands of the Marquis of Montrose, in disguise and attended by only two gentlemen, is a matter of history. It was in 1644, during the Civil War, when the forces of Charles I were being menaced by an army of twenty thousand men under the Scotch Covenanter, General Leslie. Montrose urged Charles to make a counter-demonstration in the North and to draw Leslie back to the defence of Scotland by uniting the Highlanders with a strong force of ten thousand Irish Catholics. At length, armed with extraordinary powers, as the representative of the King, he was permitted to set out with a small army of about one thousand men. These became dissatisfied, however, and most of them deserted. In despair Montrose now resolved upon the bold stroke which proved to be the beginning of his brilliant military record. Disguised as a groom and attended only by Sir William Rollo and Colonel Sibbald, he made his way to the Perthshire Highlands, where he was joined by Lord Kilpont, son of the Earl of Airth and Menteith, with about five hundred men. The Irish troops, after being in danger of complete extermination by the Marquis of Argyle, finally arrived, but mustered only twelve hundred men instead of ten thousand. They were ordered to march {226} to Blair Atholl, where Montrose met the Highland chiefs and sent out the call to arms. The 'fiery cross,' no doubt very much as described in 'The Lady of the Lake,' went out from house to house and from clan to clan, and Montrose soon had an army of three thousand men. He marched toward Perth, and at Tippermuir, four miles west of that city, defeated the Covenanters on the 1st day of September, 1644. Marching rapidly towards Aberdeen, he won another victory at the Bridge of Dee on the 12th of the same month. With the swift movements which characterized his generalship, Montrose won many a battle. Meanwhile the Marquis of Argyle, whom most of the clans hated for his unscrupulous aggressions, was gathering a strong force on the shores of Loch Linnhe. In midwinter, with snow upon the ground, Montrose crossed the mountains with his army, a feat hitherto regarded as impossible, but quite within the compass of that leader's remarkable genius. He met Argyle at Inverlochy and defeated him with a loss of fifteen hundred men, his own losses being only one officer and three privates. Argyle's forces scattered in every direction and were pursued for many miles. The Marquis himself, regarding discretion as the better part of valour, turned over the command of his forces to his cousin and watched the battle from his ship--an act that was severely condemned as cowardice, even by his own friends. In extenuation it can only be said that Argyle, while an able politician and statesman, was never a soldier. While Scott based his story upon these historical events, he departed from the facts in some of the less important details, to serve the purposes of his romance. {227} The most conspicuous of these variations is in the part played by Lord Kilpont, as the Earl of Menteith. According to the novel, the Earl is a young man who falls in love with Annot Lyle, a pretty little maiden living in the household of the McAulays and supposed to be a rescued waif of the hated and greatly feared tribe, known as the 'Children of the Mist.' Annot is also beloved by the half-crazy Highlander, Allan McAulay. Lord Menteith, so long as the girl's antecedents are supposed to be so lowly, can entertain no thought of marriage and so informs Allan. When it is discovered, however, that she is really the daughter of Sir Duncan Campbell, and the heiress of Ardenvohr, a family as honourable as his own, Menteith no longer hesitates, and as Annot has long reciprocated his affection, the marriage is easily arranged. Allan does not consent so readily, but hastily encounters the Earl and fiercely challenges him. Convinced that the man is insane, the Earl hesitates a moment, when Allan suddenly draws his dirk and with terrific force plunges it into the Earl's bosom. A steel corslet saves the latter's life, though a severe wound is inflicted, and in a few weeks he is well enough to be married and the ceremony takes place in Sir Duncan's castle. Allan meanwhile appears suddenly before the Marquis of Argyle at Inverary, throws a bloody dirk upon the table, makes a brief explanation, and disappears forever. The novel closes in the conventional way. The Earl of Menteith, adding his bride's large estate to his own, 'lived long, happy alike in public regard and in domestic affection, and died at a good old age.' The Earl, Lord Kilpont, was not so fortunate. He was {228} suddenly stabbed by James Stewart of Ardvoirlich, a supposed friend with whom he was on terms of the closest intimacy. This event, which was immediately fatal, took place a few days after the battle of Tippermuir and not after Inverlochy. There was no question of jealous rivalry in love. Kilpont had been married about twelve years and left a family of several children. The most probable explanation is that Stewart, who had a streak of insanity owing to the frightful circumstances of his birth,[1] quarrelled with his friend at a time when he was heated with drink and killed him under some sudden mad impulse. He immediately deserted Montrose and was subsequently made a major in one of the regiments of Argyle, a fact which gave colour to the suspicion that he had sought Lord Kilpont's assistance in a conspiracy to assassinate Montrose, for which Argyle would have paid a rich reward, but upon meeting with an indignant refusal, struck his friend with a dirk as the readiest means of avoiding the betrayal of his plans. Stewart, like McAulay, is described as 'uncommonly tall, strong, and active, with such power in the grasp of his hand as could force the blood from beneath the nails of the persons who contended with him in this feat of strength. His temper was moody, fierce, and irascible.' There was good reason for this savage disposition and for his implacable hostility toward the 'Children of the Mist,' his father and mother having been the victims of one of the most fiendish outrages which ever disgraced the history of the Highlanders. The scenery of 'A Legend of Montrose' brings us back {229} to the people and the country which Scott described with so much enthusiasm in 'The Lady of the Lake' and again in 'Waverley' and 'Rob Roy.' To catch something of the spirit of it we drove westward from Callander and paused for a short time at the beautiful Falls of Leny, where the river of that name forms the outlet of Loch Lubnaig and the head waters of the river Teith. Here we may suppose Lord Menteith and 'Anderson,' the disguised earl, to be passing on their way to the north when they fell in with the garrulous Captain Dalgetty. Darnlinvarich, where the clans gathered, is wholly fictitious, the real meeting having taken place near Blair Atholl. One of the incidents which happened there is, however, based upon fact. An Englishman, Sir Miles Musgrave, it will be remembered, had made a wager with Angus McAulay which threatened to embarrass that gentleman. When on a visit to the house of the former, Angus had seen six solid silver candlesticks put on the table. The Englishman rallied Angus a little, knowing that the sight was a novelty to the Scotchman, and the latter promptly swore that he had more and better candlesticks in his own castle. A wager was immediately offered and accepted that the Scotch laird could not produce them, the amount being so large that its payment would have embarrassed either party, but more particularly the Scotchman. The Englishman appeared with a friend at Darnlinvarich, just at the time of the arrival of the Earl of Menteith and his party, and there was great anxiety over the apparently certain loss of the wager. But Allan, the brother of Angus, was equal to the emergency. Dinner was announced and the company marched in. A large {230} oaken table, spread with substantial joints of meat, was set for eight guests, and behind each chair stood a gigantic Highlander, in full native costume, holding in his right hand a drawn broadsword, the point turned downward, and in his left a blazing pine torch. Then Allan stepped forth, and pointing to the torch-bearers, said in a deep and stern voice: 'Behold, gentlemen cavaliers, the chandeliers of my brother's house, the ancient fashion of our ancient name; not one of these men knows any law but their Chief's command. Would you dare to compare to _them_ in value the richest ore that ever was dug out of the mine? How say you, cavaliers?--is your wager won or lost?' 'Lost, lost,' said Musgrave, gaily; 'my own silver candlesticks are all melted and riding on horseback by this time, and I wish the fellows that enlisted were half as trusty as these.' The meeting of the clans was interrupted by an unwelcome guest, Sir Duncan Campbell, who came with a message from Argyle. Captain Dalgetty was appointed to return with him, under a flag of truce, and together they journeyed to the Castle of Ardenvohr, the residence of Sir Duncan. [Illustration: LOCH LUBNAIG] The ancient Celtic fortress here described is the ruined castle of Dunstaffnage, reached by a short drive north from Oban. Its origin is unknown. According to one tradition, it was founded by a Pictish monarch, contemporary with Julius Cæsar. In its present shape the building probably dates from about 1250. It fell into the hands of Robert Bruce in 1308. The castle is a heavy structure of stone, standing on a solid rock, and protected by the waters of Loch Linnhe on three sides. It was originally accessible only by a drawbridge. It is {231} about one hundred and forty feet long and one hundred feet wide. The walls are ten feet thick and sixty feet high. This ancient castle is the place where the Scottish princes were once crowned. They sat on the same stone that was used at the recent coronation of King George V, and of a long line of his predecessors,--the famous Stone of Scone. This ancient relic was carried from Ireland to the Island of Iona, and thence to Dunstaffnage, where it remained many years. Kenneth MacAlpine, in the ninth century, removed it to the palace of Scone, near Perth, where it remained five centuries. It was finally seized by Edward I and carried to London, where it has remained for the last six centuries. A knoll on the south of the castle curiously suggests the Drumsnab of the novel, which Dalgetty insisted should be fortified according to his own military ideas. The castle of Inverary, on the shore of Loch Fyne, has been replaced by a magnificent modern mansion, the seat of the present Duke of Argyle. The secret passage to the dungeon, under the old castle, through which the novelist supposes the Marquis to have visited his prisoners, was suggested by a similar arrangement in the castle of Naworth, to which I have previously referred.[2] A private stairway leads from the apartment of Lord William Howard to the dungeon, by which the experiment of Argyle might have been and doubtless was practised. A sail of less than four hours, from Oban, north through the picturesque channels of Loch Linnhe, brought us to Fort William. From this point we walked about two miles to the battle-field of Inverlochy and the {232} ruins of the old castle of that name, which we found to be in a sadly neglected state, far different from its neighbour, Dunstaffnage. The four walls of the enclosure may still be seen, but everything is in a ruinous condition. An antiquated horse with large protruding hip-bones was grazing in what was once the moat, and before taking a picture I was about to ask a boy to chase him away. But on second thought I let him stay, because he harmonized so perfectly with the surroundings. The courtyard is about one hundred feet square. The walls are nine feet thick and of varying height. Like Dunstaffnage the castle is so old that its early history is shrouded in mystery. Tradition ascribes its origin to the Comyns, near the end of the thirteenth century. The view in every direction is charming. Across the river Lochy, a small stream which joins the Caledonian Canal to the waters of Loch Linnhe, may be seen the town of Banavie, and in the distance the highlands of Inverness-shire. In the opposite direction we could barely see the peaks of Ben Nevis, peeping through the mists that hung over the mountains. To the north are the heights of Lochaber over which the Marquis of Montrose made his famous march of thirty miles by an unfrequented route, during a heavy fall of snow, and suddenly confronted his enemy in the night, when they supposed him to be far away in another part of the country. I think this novel must have been inspired by Scott's admiration of the 'Great Marquis,' whose brief but brilliant campaign in the Highlands appealed to his imagination just as the longer career of Rob Roy had done. It took him back among the picturesque people whom he loved to describe, and amidst scenery where {233} he had roamed with never-failing delight. The one possession in the remarkable antiquarian collection at Abbotsford which Scott cherished more than any other--more even than Rob Roy's gun--was the sword of Montrose, presented to the Marquis by Charles I and formerly the property of the monarch's father, King James. Sir Walter thought a dialogue between this sword and Rob Roy's gun might be composed with good effect. It seems a pity he did not undertake it. The sword bears on both sides the royal arms of Great Britain. The blade is handsomely ornamented, the hilt is finished in open scrollwork of silver gilt, and the grip is bound with chains of silver, alternating with bands of gold. Scott did not follow the fortunes of his hero beyond the battle of Inverlochy, where he left him in triumph. Montrose continued his success until, on the 15th of August, 1645, he reached his climax in the decisive victory of Kilsyth. He was now the master of Scotland, but, unfortunately, fate deprived him of the fruits of his genius. Summoned to England to meet the exigencies which threatened the King, and unable to hold his Highlanders for an invasion of the South, he was attacked at Philiphaugh by Leslie, who easily overcame the small opposing force. Montrose escaped to the Highlands, but was never again able to organize an army. After spending the next few years abroad, he returned to Scotland in 1650, where, after failing again to summon the clans, he was betrayed and carried a prisoner to the Tolbooth in Edinburgh. On the 21st of May, when only thirty-eight years old, he was hanged in the Grassmarket and bravely met his death. [1] The story is related at length in the Introduction to _A Legend of Montrose_. [2] Pages 20 and 43. {234} CHAPTER XVII IVANHOE From 'Bonnie Scotland' to 'Merrie England' was not a long step for Sir Walter, for he had already peeped into Yorkshire at Barnard Castle for his poem, 'Rokeby.' The principal scenes of 'Ivanhoe' are laid in the opposite end of the same county, between Sheffield and Doncaster. They extend, however, as far south as Ashby de la Zouch, and northward to the ancient city of York. As we rode through this populous country, humming with the industry of thousands of busy mills, its crowded cities showing street after street of substantial business houses, its more open spaces dotted with neat cottages surrounded by well-kept gardens, its streams crossed by bridges of stone and steel, its roads in excellent repair, and its entire aspect betokening the peace and prosperity of a great civilization, it was difficult to picture it in fancy as the great forest roamed by Robin Hood and his merry men; as a land in which King Richard and Wilfred of Ivanhoe performed their feats of chivalry and daring; as the region in which Cedric the Saxon still resented the intrusion of the Normans, and Front-de-Boeuf maintained a feudal castle concealing horrors too frightful to mention. [Illustration: Map of England] We succeeded, however, in finding a bit of the original forest, in identifying the ruins of two castles which figure prominently in the story, and several others which doubtless served as types of the prevailing Norman style {235} of architecture, besides other interesting places more remotely associated with the tale. The town of Ashby de la Zouch, to which all the people of the story wend their way in the early chapters, is on the western edge of Leicestershire, about midway between Birmingham and Nottingham. The ancient castle derives its name from the fact that it was formerly owned by the Zouch family, who seem to have had possession until 1399. Scott was slightly in error in stating that at this time (1194) 'the castle and town of Ashby belonged to Roger de Quincey, Earl of Winchester,' who was then absent in the Holy Land. It is not inconceivable, however, that Prince John might have taken temporary possession, and, after all, that is the main point of the story. The castle was a ruin in Scott's day, presenting an appearance very much the same as now. It suggested the scene of Prince John's banquet, but the novelist well knew that it was not the original castle which stood on the spot in 1194. Of the old castle we found only a single wall. The date of its foundation is uncertain, but it was probably built in the earlier part of the same century. Its successor, represented by the ruins now visible, was built in 1474, nearly three hundred years after the period of the novel. The reigning king was Edward IV, and one of his prime favourites was William, Lord Hastings, who was not only loaded with wealth by his sovereign, but given almost unlimited authority to enclose for private use whatever land he wished and to build wherever he pleased. Accordingly Hastings took possession of three thousand acres of land at Ashby and erected a huge castle, despoiling the {236} neighbouring castle of Belvoir of much lead, with which he covered his towers. The strong fortress and splendid castle thus erected stood intact for less than two centuries. During the Civil War it was besieged and captured by the Parliamentary Army, and in 1648 was deliberately made untenable by a Committee of the House of Commons, who had been appointed to determine what castles and other fortified places were to be retained and which ones were to be destroyed. Ashby, unfortunately, was condemned and huge sections of its walls and towers were undermined and pulled down. The ruin consists of two large towers, connected by an underground passage, the great hall, the chapel, and the room of Mary Queen of Scots. The kitchen tower was of great strength, having walls in some places ten feet thick, and the remains of a huge kitchen fireplace may still be seen. The most imposing part of the ruin is the keep. This was a tower eighty feet high, fitted up in great magnificence as the Earl's apartment. [Illustration: CASTLE OF ASHBY DE LA ZOUCH] The great tournament was supposed to be held in a field a mile or two from the tower. After the tournament and the banquet in the castle which followed, Cedric the Saxon and his kinsman, Athelstane of Coningsburgh, with the Lady Rowena and their servants and retainers, set out for Rotherwood, the house of Cedric, presumably in the neighbourhood of, or possibly a fictitious substitute for, the present city of Rotherham. Their way led through a great forest, some remnants of which may still be seen. In King Richard's time the entire country between Ashby and Rotherham may have been thickly wooded. The famous Sherwood Forest occupied the western portion of Nottinghamshire, extending north {237} and south about twenty-five miles, with a width varying from six to eight miles. In this extensive woodland, Robin Hood, with the jolly Friar Tuck and the minstrel Allan-a-Dale, and all the rest of the 'merry men,' hunted the king's deer, robbed the rich and bestowed charity upon the poor, worshipped the Virgin and pillaged the ecclesiastical establishments, supported themselves by means of their marvellous archery, played practical jokes and indulged in no end of fun, and lived a free, open, adventurous, brave, and generous life, in spite of their outlawry. Robin Hood was undoubtedly an historical character, who may have had an existence as early as the time of King Richard, but whose deeds have been so much enveloped in fiction and poetry that his real exploits cannot be determined. The legends that have been woven about him are like the tales of King Arthur--mythical but probably evolved from some hidden germ of truth. From 1377, when the oldest known mention of him was made in an edition of 'Piers the Ploughman,' down to the Elizabethan era, his popularity is evinced by the great volume of ballad poetry recording his performances. That such a personage should have made a strong appeal to Sir Walter Scott was inevitable, and he seems to have woven the characteristic exploits of Robin Hood into the tale of 'Ivanhoe' with the same zest which he displayed in 'The Lady of the Lake,' 'Waverley,' 'Rob Roy,' and 'A Legend of Montrose,' where he so delighted to picture the Scottish Highlanders in their native country. North of Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire, a beautiful part of the Forest of Sherwood may still be seen. For {238} many miles we drove through endless glades and avenues, the rugged oaks intertwining their branches over our heads, now and then forming those 'long sweeping vistas' which Scott describes so well, 'in the intricacy of which the eye delights to lose itself, while imagination considers them as the paths to yet wilder scenes of silvan solitude.' Here and there we could see herds of deer, coming boldly into view, knowing well that the arrows of Robin Hood's men are things of the past. All this region is now well cared for. There are splendid palaces with lakes, fountains, and flowers, transforming the old forest into a veritable fairy-land. Thoresby House with its beautiful park is the property of Earl Manvers; Clumber, on the border of the Carburton Lakes, is the stately seat of the Duke of Newcastle, and Welbeck Abbey, with gardens covering thirty-two acres, lakes of one hundred and fifty-nine acres, and a deer park of sixteen hundred and forty acres, is the magnificent domain of the Duke of Portland. All this section, which has been dubbed 'the Dukeries,' while preserving something of the appearance of a forest, can only present a striking contrast to the wild tangle of the woods, with their narrow and devious paths, through which the Saxon party passed on their way to Rotherwood. [Illustration: THE BUCK-GATE. ENTRANCE TO THE DUKE OF PORTLAND'S ESTATE, SHERWOOD FOREST] Cedric, it will be remembered, soon overtook Isaac of York, the rich Jew, and his lovely daughter, Rebecca, who had been deserted by their cowardly escort. They were carrying, in a litter, 'a sick friend,' under which designation they concealed the identity of Ivanhoe. The whole party was later surprised and captured by some of the Norman nobles of Prince John's party, {239} disguised as outlaws, by whom they were carried to Torquilstone, the castle of Front-de-Boeuf. This imaginary feudal edifice may be supposed to be in the vicinity of Harthill, a village nine miles south of Rotherham. The dramatic incidents that occurred here are familiar to every one: how De Bracy made his futile attempt to woo the Lady Rowena, trusting to his handsome face and foppish clothes; how the Templar tried his blandishments upon Rebecca and was defeated by her courage in threatening to leap from the battlements, should he advance a single step; how Front-de-Boeuf sought to extort a fortune from Isaac the Jew by the most cruel torture; and how the villainy of all three was interrupted by a bugle blast, announcing an attack upon the castle by a band of outlaws, headed by the gallant Robin Hood, who was ably supported by the powerful battle-axe of the Black Knight and the wit of Wamba the Jester. After the fall of the castle it will be remembered that the victors assembled under a huge oak to divide the spoils, and that Isaac of York and the rich Prior Aymer were compelled to sentence each other to the payment of a heavy ransom--a clever scheme well calculated to furnish not only amusement but substantial profit to the outlaws. There are several large oaks of Sherwood Forest still in existence, any one of which might have been in the mind of Sir Walter. We found an excellent type, which was perhaps known to him, near Edwinstowe, northeast of Mansfield. It is called the 'Major Oak' and was a monarch of the forest in Robin Hood's time. It is said to be fourteen hundred years old. Its circumference, just {240} above the ground, is sixty feet, and there is room inside the hollow trunk for a round dozen of average-sized men. Unlike many other ancient oaks, its huge limbs are well preserved and remarkably symmetrical, its foliage forming a huge ellipsoid, seventy-five feet in length. Although Torquilstone was imaginary, Sir Walter was not without types of the old Norman castles. He refers to Middleham as the seat of the brother of Prior Aymer, and the ruins of this castle may still be seen in the village of that name, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The interior or keep is in the distinctive Norman style of architecture, but the outer walls belong to a later period. This castle was founded by Robert Fitz-Ralph or Ranulph, a nephew of King William Rufus, about 1190. Its walls are plain and massive, suggesting great strength, but no beauty. In the interior of the keep may be seen the remains of what was once a huge and magnificent banqueting-hall, with high arched windows on the side. For centuries Middleham was the residence of powerful barons and at times of royalty. In the fifteenth century it came into the possession of the famous Earl of Warwick, 'the Kingmaker,' and later of his infamous son-in-law, the Duke of Gloucester, afterward King Richard III. Edward, Prince of Wales, the only legitimate son of Richard, was born here. It was to secure the succession of this prince to the throne that Richard caused the murder of his two nephews to be perpetrated in the Tower of London. [Illustration: THE AVENUE OF LIMES, SHERWOOD FOREST] Edward IV was a prisoner here, and made his escape as told by Shakespeare in 'King Henry VI.'[1] After the battle of Bosworth, Henry VII took possession of {241} Middleham. In the Civil Wars the forces of Cromwell destroyed the castle. From that time until 1884, when it came into possession of the present owner, the ruins have been a stone quarry for the neighbourhood and a large part of the castle has been carried away piecemeal. The enclosure became a dumping-ground for all kinds of trash and a free pig-pen and cow-stable. In 1884, it was cleaned out and is now in charge of a keeper. This famous castle, occupied as it was at times by men of all the ferocious and conscienceless qualities of Front-de-Boeuf, might well have served as a suggestion for Torquilstone. Richmond Castle, lying a few miles north of Middleham, is of even greater antiquity and a far nobler specimen of the Norman architecture. It was founded in 1071 by Alan Rufus, to whom William the Conqueror granted the land of Richmondshire. Alan selected a rock on the bank of the river Swale and here he constructed a fortress that was well-nigh impregnable. The great 'keep' was built in 1146, and still stands proudly erect, in spite of its nearly eight hundred years' resistance to wind and weather as well as the storms of war, looking as if conscious of its power to stand the assaults of eight centuries more. We went to Richmond expecting to see a ruin; we were astonished to find, instead, a fine tower one hundred and eight feet high, fifty-four feet long, and forty-eight feet wide, used as an armoury by a modern regiment of soldiers. Its walls are of extraordinary thickness and the masonry looks as fresh and clean as that of many a building of half a century's duration. Aside from the remarkable keep, the castle is really a ruin. Its walls, which originally enclosed a triangular {242} space of five acres, have crumbled away, but enough remains to identify various halls, chapels, dungeons, and underground passages. The castle was seized by Richard Coeur-de-Lion and held by him and his successor King John for several years. For five centuries thereafter it passed from royalty to nobility and back again, time after time, as a reward for services or the spoils of war, until in 1674 it was granted by Charles II to the ancestor of the present Duke of Richmond. Torquilstone is described as 'a fortress of no great size, consisting of a donjon, or large and high square tower, surrounded by buildings of inferior height, which were encircled by an inner courtyard.' It had 'towers upon the outward wall so as to flank it at every angle.' It would appear from this that the castle of Front-de-Boeuf might have been a miniature copy of Richmond Castle. South of Richmond and about three miles from Middleham are the ruins of Jorvaulx Abbey, the seat of the Prior Aymer, 'a free and jovial priest, who loves the wine-cup and the bugle-horn better than bell and book.' The monks of Jorvaulx were famous for their love of feasting and the excellence of their wines. The Abbey church was originally an extensive structure, two hundred and seventy feet long, with transepts one hundred and thirteen feet wide. It was roughly treated and nearly demolished during the Reformation and neglected in the succeeding years until about a century ago, when the accumulated rubbish was cleared away. It now presents a picturesque appearance because of the ivy, moss, and shrubbery with which nature has softened {243} the aspect of its rudely broken walls and the fragments of stone which once were heavy columns supporting a lofty nave. Still farther south are the imposing ruins of Fountains Abbey, which must not be overlooked in any survey of the scenery of 'Ivanhoe,' for here was the alleged abode of that delightful character, the jolly Clerk of Copmanhurst, Friar Tuck, whose all-night carousal with King Richard in the forest 'Chapel of St. Dunstan' will be ever memorable as one of Scott's choicest bits of humour. This celebrated 'churchman' was the type of a class of so-called 'hedge-priests' who flourished in the period preceding the Reformation, when every great house maintained a confessor to say masses and grant absolution. The bands of outlaws, with equal superstition, felt the need of the same services, and maintained their own priests accordingly. Many of these performed their holy offices in ragged and dirty attire and with improper forms of ritual, for the benefit of thieves and murderers in out-of-the-way ruins and other hiding places, thereby incurring the wrath of the dignitaries of the Church. Not infrequently, no doubt, their uncanonical performances were no better than those of Friar Tuck. Fountains Abbey is, next to Melrose, the most beautiful ruin of the kind in Great Britain--at least so far as I have been able to observe. In beauty of situation, it far surpasses Melrose. The latter is in the midst of a town with nothing to make a picturesque setting except its own churchyard and the garden of an adjoining estate. Fountains is reached by walking nearly a mile through the beautiful park of Studley Royal, first by the {244} side of a canal, bordered by trees of luxuriant foliage, through which, at intervals, are various 'peeps,' revealing carefully studied scenes, with temples, statuary, rustic bridges, towers, lakes, and woods; then by a path of more natural beauty, beside the little rivulet called the Skell, until the extensive ruins are reached. The foundation of Fountains Abbey has been traced to the year 1132, according to the narrative of a monk which was committed to writing in 1205. In the winter of 1132-33, a small company of Benedictine monks from St. Mary's Abbey at York, becoming dissatisfied with the laxity of discipline there, felt impelled to withdraw. They retired to a wild and uncultivated valley, covered with stones and briars, and better suited for wild beasts and reptiles than for humanity, and built a monastery beside the brook Skell. From this humble beginning, Fountains Abbey grew until the establishment became one of the richest in England, comprising sixty-four thousand acres of valuable lands and its buildings, covering an area of twelve acres, were among the most magnificent. In 1539, King Henry VIII confiscated the entire property, and rendered the monastery unfit for further use. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF FOUNTAINS ABBEY] The ruins are more complete than those of any other similar structure, and give an excellent idea of the extent and arrangement of an important monastery. From the Chapel of the Nine Altars to the west doorway, which was the chief entrance, is a distance of three hundred and sixty-nine feet. It is an impressive architectural vista, the eye sweeping over the choir and transepts and down through the narrow nave, where the walls are supported by eleven obtuse pointed arches, springing {245} from massive columns, each sixteen feet in circumference and twenty-three feet high. The Chapel of the Nine Altars, considered to have been the most magnificent architectural feature of the structure, is divided into three parts by a series of very high pointed arches, supported by slender octagonal pillars scarcely two feet in diameter. A great east window, sixty feet high and twenty-three feet wide, completed the dignity and beauty of the chapel. From the exterior, the most striking feature is the tower, rising one hundred and sixty-eight feet high, with walls nearly thirty feet square, and projecting buttresses, adding an effect of great solidity. The connection of Friar Tuck with this fine abbey is derived from the ancient ballad of 'Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar.' The outlaws were indulging in an exhibition of their wonderful archery when an unusually fine shot caused Robin Hood to exclaim:-- I would ride my horse an hundred miles To finde one could match with thee. This brought a laugh from Will Scarlet, who declared:-- There lives a curtal frier in Fountains Abby Will beat both him and thee. Robin Hood could not rest until he found the friar, walking by the waterside near the abbey. A conflict followed in which the friar threw Robin into the stream. After Robin had shot all his arrows at the friar without effect,-- They took their swords and steel bucklers And fought with might and maine; From ten oth' clock that day, Till four ith' afternoon. {246} Then Robin blew three blasts of his horn and called half a hundred yeomen. The friar whistled with fist in his mouth and half a hundred ban-dogs answered. The end of the battle proved the stout friar well qualified to join the band of merry men. This curtal frier had kept Fountains Dale Seven long years or more; There was neither knight, lord, nor earl Could make him yield before. An arched recess, of stone, well covered with foliage, by the side of the path along the river, marks the traditional site of this famous combat, and is known as 'Robin Hood's Well.' The following lines were written by Sir Walter while a guest at Studley Royal, and the manuscript is now in the possession of the Marquess of Ripon:-- Beside this crystal font of old, Cooled his flushed brow an outlaw bold, His bow was slackened while he drank, His quiver rested on the bank, Giving brief pause of doubt and fear To feudal lords and forest deer. Long runs the tale, but village sires Still sing his feats by Christmas fires; And still old England's free-born blood Stirs at the name of Robin Hood. After the fall of Torquilstone and the almost miraculous deliverance of all the prisoners, Cedric and his company journeyed to the Castle of Coningsburgh, the seat of Athelstane, to perform the funeral rites of that noble warrior, who had fallen a victim to the Templar's battle-axe. Athelstane interrupts the proceedings, somewhat {247} unnecessarily it would seem, by coming to life again. A visit to this castle takes us back to the valley of the Don, where the story began. Conisborough, as the village is now called, is situated about midway between Rotherham and Doncaster. There is nothing fanciful in Scott's description here. He introduced the castle because it interested him, and made it the seat of Athelstane for convenience. In a letter to his friend Morritt in 1811 Scott inquires, 'Do you know anything of a striking ancient castle ... called Coningsburgh? ... I once flew past it in a mail-coach when its round tower and flying buttresses had a most romantic effect in the morning dawn.' It was characteristic of Scott, not only that every old ruined castle appealed to his imagination, but that his curiosity, once aroused, usually had to be satisfied by a personal inspection. It was so with Coningsburgh. He went to the village and spent two nights at the Sprotbrough Boathouse, a near-by inn, that he might have leisure to examine the ruins of the castle. The result of his study and the further reading of such antiquarian authorities as were available, convinced him that the round tower was an ancient Saxon castle. He found satisfaction in comparing it with the rude towers, or burghs, built by the Saxons or Northmen, of which one of the most striking examples is the Castle of Mousa[2] in the Shetland Islands. These were built of rough stone, without cement. They were roofless, and had small apartments constructed within the circular walls themselves. In this last respect Coningsburgh somewhat resembles these ancient burghs, and Scott conceived {248} that the former was an evolution from the latter, and therefore Saxon. He says, 'the outer walls have probably been added by the Normans, but the inner keep bears token of very great antiquity.' He also says: 'When Coeur-de-Lion and his retinue approached this rude yet stately building, it was not, as at present, surrounded by external fortifications. The Saxon architect had exhausted his art in rendering the main keep defensible, and there was no other circumvallation than a rude barrier of palisades.' The facts, as indicated by more recent investigation, seem to be that the Saxons selected the hill of hard limestone as a suitable place for a stronghold, excavated a ditch around it and erected some outworks. There is no doubt that Harold, the last of the Anglo-Saxon kings, either purchased or inherited the property, and there is mention of a certain 'lord of Coningesboro,' who possessed part of the domain as early as the year 1000 A.D. William the Conqueror, shortly after his accession to the English throne, granted the estate to an adherent, William de Warrenne, who was created Earl of Surrey. A great-granddaughter of this earl married Hameline Plantagenet, a half-brother of Henry II, and he was one of the soldiers and faithful attendants of Richard I. It is this earl who is supposed to have built the tower, or keep, at least a century after his Norman predecessors had erected the outer walls of the castle. This, it will be noted, is exactly the reverse of Scott's supposition. [Illustration: CONINGSBURGH CASTLE] The Saxon founders selected a steep hill, or knoll, rising one hundred and seventy-five feet above the river--an ideal site for a fortress in those days. {249} Earl Warren, who came into possession about 1068, found the place already well fortified. His son and grandson were the ones who, it is supposed, constructed the outer walls, with their various buildings for domestic purposes, comprising a hall, kitchen, chapel, etc. These cover a large area, but present no features of extraordinary interest. The inner tower, or keep, however, is one of the most remarkable structures in England. It is a huge cylindrical tower built of grey limestone on a base of solid natural rock. It formerly rose to a height of one hundred and twenty feet, and is now about ninety feet high. It is sixty-six feet in diameter at the base, and is supported by six massive buttresses, each fifteen and one half feet broad and extending outward about nine feet. The walls themselves are nearly fifteen feet in thickness. The only entrance is a door, twenty feet above the ground, originally reached by an outside stair connecting with a small drawbridge. The rooms beneath the main floor were used for the storage of provisions and in the centre was a well, said to have been one hundred and five feet deep. There was then ample provision to resist a siege, lack of food and water being the only danger to be feared, inasmuch as the catapults and other engines of war of that period would be powerless against the massiveness of such a castle. The upper rooms are built within the walls and reached by narrow stairways. The main floor was probably used by the lord of the castle with his family and guests; the rooms above were occupied by the ladies of the household, and on the same floor was a small oratory or chapel, hexagonal in shape and about eight feet wide. The top floor contained the kitchen and the {250} sleeping-rooms of the garrison. The six buttresses projected above the level of the parapet, forming turrets, convenient for defence. These have now disappeared. The parapet floor is still accessible, and from it a fine view is obtained of the surrounding country. The Castle of York, where Prince John is supposed to have feasted the nobles and leaders after the exciting scenes of Torquilstone, and where De Bracy announced to him that Richard was really in England, was the Norman fortress built by William the Conqueror in 1068, some portions of which are now incorporated in the building known as Clifford's Tower. A substantial rectangular structure stands between two ancient and ruined turrets, which lean outward, looking as though the stronger building were trying to usurp the hill on which they stand and push his feebler brethren out of the way. This castle was the scene in 1190 of a terrible massacre of the Jews. Two rich Jewish bankers, Joses and Benedict, attended the coronation of Richard I. In a general attack upon the Jews, Benedict was killed, but Joses got back to York. The house of Benedict in York was plundered and his wife and children murdered. Joses rallied the other Jews, who took refuge, with their property, in the castle. The governor ordered an assault, and the Jews, finding themselves unable to hold the citadel, set fire to the buildings, put to death all their relatives, and killed themselves, over five hundred lives being sacrificed. This incident throws some light upon the state of mind of the wealthy Isaac, who was a resident of the city of York. 'Ivanhoe' closes with the wedding of Wilfred and Rowena, 'celebrated in the most august of temples, the {251} noble minster of York.' The cathedral as it stands to-day is, indeed, noble. Perhaps it cannot properly be called the largest in England; Winchester Cathedral is longer, and Lincoln's towers are higher; but in the length of its choir and nave, the breadth of its transepts, the height of the great pointed arches supporting the roof, and the massive grandeur and dignity of the whole, whether viewed from the exterior or the interior, it is unsurpassed by any other cathedral in England and by few on the continent. It was not in this magnificent temple, however, that the wedding took place, and perhaps if we could see a picture of the old Norman church which stood on the site in 1194, we might not think of it as 'a noble minster.' The church of that period was the structure built by the first Norman Archbishop of York, with the addition of the choir, erected a century later. In the crypt of the present cathedral some bits of the walls of these early buildings are still preserved. They replaced the first stone church, built about 633, which had superseded the original wooden church, built by Eadwine, King of Northumbria, then the most powerful monarch in England. The minster was, therefore, more than five centuries old even in the period of 'Ivanhoe.' Of the characters in the novel, King Richard and his brother John were of course historical. Cedric and Athelstane were types of the Saxon nobles who still resented the intrusion of the Normans. Front-de-Boeuf represents a class of Norman noblemen who did not hesitate at any deed of villainy to accomplish their selfish purposes. Brian de Bois-Guilbert typifies the chivalry which professed great zeal for the Christian {252} religion, but used it as a cloak to cover motives of vengeance or other base purposes. Prior Aymer stands for the wealthy churchman and Isaac of York for the Jewish banker, upon whom all classes, kings, barons, and churchmen, were obliged to depend for the accomplishment of their various plans. Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, and the men in Lincoln Green were borrowed from the ballad poetry of the Middle Ages. All of these were introduced to perfect the picture of the conditions of social and political life in the reign of King Richard. One character only found a place in the novel for another reason. The story of Rebecca reveals an interesting incident in the life of Washington Irving. When the American author visited Sir Walter at Abbotsford a feeling of mutual respect and admiration quickly sprang up between them and developed into a friendly intimacy. In the course of their conversations, Irving told Sir Walter something of the character of Rebecca Gratz, a young woman of Jewish family, living in the city of Philadelphia. One of this lady's brothers was a warm personal friend of Irving's, who was always a welcome guest at their home. One of Rebecca's dearest friends was Matilda Hoffman, Irving's first and only love. This estimable young woman died at the early age of eighteen, tenderly nursed to the end by her friend Rebecca, in whose arms she expired. Rebecca Gratz is described as a very beautiful girl. 'Her eyes were of exquisite shape, large, black, and lustrous; her figure was graceful and her carriage was marked by a quiet dignity,--attractions which were heightened by elegant and winning manners. Gentle, benevolent, with instinctive refinement and innate {253} purity, she inspired affection among all who met her.'[3] Although a Jewess, Rebecca Gratz found many companions among the Christians by whom she was held in high esteem. She was interested in all kinds of benevolent work, founded an orphan asylum and a mission Sabbath-School for Hebrew children, and contributed to many charities. A Christian gentleman of wealth and high social position fell in love with her and his feelings were reciprocated. But Rebecca conceived that duty demanded loyalty to her religion, and her lofty conscientiousness and remarkable moral courage enabled her to maintain her resolution. She refused to marry, in spite of the pain to herself and the bitter disappointment to her lover which the self-denial involved. Her life was devoted to 'a long chain of golden deeds,' until the end came at the good old age of eighty-eight. Such a story could not fail to capture the sympathetic heart of Sir Walter, and as usual when anything appealed strongly to him, he wove it into a novel at the earliest opportunity, later writing to Irving, 'How do you like your Rebecca? Does the picture I have painted compare well with the pattern given?' 'Ivanhoe' marks the high-tide of Scott's literary success. The book instantly caught the attention of thousands to whom the Scottish romances had not appealed. It sold better than its predecessors, and from the day of its publication has been easily the most popular of the Waverley Novels. Lockhart, who, in common with most Scotchmen, could not help {254} preferring the tales of his native land and thought 'Waverley,' 'Guy Mannering,' and 'The Heart of Midlothian' superior as 'works of genius,' nevertheless gave 'Ivanhoe' the first place among all Scott's writings, whether in prose or verse, as a 'work of art.' Its historical value is perhaps greater than that of any of the others, and certainly no other author has ever given a picture, so graphic and yet so comprehensible, of 'merrie England' in the days of chivalry. [1] Part iii, act iv, scene v. [2] See Chapter xxi, 'The Pirate,' p. 300. [3] From an article by Grata van Rensselaer, in the _Century Magazine_, September, 1882. {255} CHAPTER XVIII THE MONASTERY Scott had some strange ways of seeking relaxation from the strain of his work. On Christmas Day, 1814, he wrote Constable that he was 'setting out for Abbotsford to refresh the machine.' During the year he had written his first great novel, 'Waverley'; one of his longer poems, 'The Lord of the Isles'; nearly the whole of his 'Life of Swift'; two essays for an encyclopædia; a two-volume family memoir for a friend; and kept up a voluminous personal correspondence,--an amount of industry which is best described by Dominie Sampson's word, _prodigious_. Surely the 'machine' needed 'refreshment,' and it consisted in producing, in six weeks' time, another great novel, 'Guy Mannering'! In the same way, while dictating 'Ivanhoe,' in spite of severe bodily pain which prevented the use of his pen, he sought refreshment by starting another novel, 'The Monastery.' 'It was a relief,' he said, 'to interlay the scenery most familiar to me with the strange world for which I had to draw so much on imagination.' 'The Monastery' was the first of Scott's novels in which the scenery is confined to the immediate vicinity of his own home. It is all within walking distance of Abbotsford and much of it had been familiar to the author from childhood. Melrose, or Kennaquhair, is only about two miles away. This little village is as ancient as the abbey from which it takes its name, and {256} that splendid ruin dates from 1136, when the pious Scottish king, known as St. David, founded the monastery and granted extensive lands to the Cistercian Order of Monks for its maintenance. The village has followed the fortunes of the abbey--prospering when the monks prospered, and suffering the blight of war whenever the English kings descended upon it. Its present prosperity, so far as it has any, is the gift of Sir Walter Scott. Hawthorne, who rambled through the country in 1856, noted in his journal that 'Scotland--cold, cloudy, barren little bit of earth that it is--owes all the interest that the world feels in it to him.' I cannot endorse this view of Scotland, for it left quite the opposite impression upon my mind, but the last part of the remark is certainly true of Melrose. It bears about the same relation to Scotland that Stratford does to England. Thousands go there every year to see the work of art, glorious even in ruins, which represents the highest development of the Gothic architecture and to marvel at the rich carvings in stone which, after the lapse of nearly six hundred years, still remain as a monument to the patience, skill, and devotion of the monks of St. Mary's. But they go because the great Wizard of the North has thrown the glamour of his genius over the whole of the Border country, of which Melrose is the natural centre. And when they arrive, they find the abbey interpreted in the words of 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel,' which the custodians of the ruin, for fourscore years, have never tired of quoting. In the novel, no attempt is made to describe the beauty of the ruin. The poem had already done that to perfection. But the monks spring into life again, the {257} venerable ruin is transformed into a church, the monastic buildings resume their former shape, and the palace of their ruler is refurnished in all its original magnificence. A fire of glowing logs gives warmth to the apartments. An oaken stand, with a roasted capon and 'a goodly stoup of Bourdeaux of excellent flavour,' suggests the truth of the old rhyme:-- The monks of Melrose made fat kail On Fridays when they fasted, Nor wanted they gude beef and ale So lang's their neighbours' lasted. In a richly carved chair before the fire sits a portly abbot, with round face, rosy cheeks, and good-natured, laughing eyes, the product of a long life of good feeding and indolent ease. By his side stands the sub-prior, a cadaverous, sharp-faced little man, with piercing grey eyes bespeaking a high order of intellect, his emaciated features testifying to rigid fastings and relentless self-abasement. The abuse of the monastic privileges, common enough at the time, is thus contrasted with the conscientious observance of all the rules of the order. In and out of the cloisters, the refectory, and the palace, monks in black gowns and white scapularies are continually passing. The old ruin has been restored by the genius of the novelist to the life and activity of the sixteenth century. The earliest date referred to in the story is 1547, the year of the battle of Pinkie, when the Scottish forces met with a disaster exceeded only by Flodden Field. In this battle Simon Glendinning, a soldier fighting for the 'Halidome' of St. Mary's, met his death. His son Halbert was then nine or ten years old. The story comes {258} to a close when he is nineteen, which would be 1557. The hostility of Henry VIII had caused great anxiety to the abbots of Melrose long before this time and the persecution reached a climax in 1545. Sir Ralph Ewers and Sir Brian Latoun systematically ravaged the Scottish Border, burning hundreds of towns, castles, and churches, slaughtering and imprisoning the people by the thousands and driving off their cattle and horses. In the course of their raids, they reached Melrose with a force of five thousand men and vented their spite on the beautiful old abbey. The Scots took prompt vengeance. They quickly raised an army, and under the leadership of Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, met the English and defeated them with heavy losses. Both Ewers and Latoun were among the slain, and the monks of Melrose buried them in the abbey with great satisfaction. 'The Monastery' does not refer to this event, but its graphic picture of the unsettled state of the country and the consequent anxiety of the monks constitutes its chief value. North of the abbey and across the Tweed is a green hillside, at the base of which is a weir or dam. This is the place where the sacristan of St. Mary's was pitched out of his saddle into the stream by the 'White Lady of Avenel,' who dipped him in the water two or three times to make sure that 'every part of him had its share of wetting.' The old bridge, which the sacristan was prevented from crossing by the perversity of old Peter, the bridge-tender, was about a mile and a half up the stream. Such a bridge once existed, though now there are no traces visible. Scott used to see the foundations {259} occasionally when drifting down the river at night in pursuit of one of his favourite pastimes, spearing salmon by torchlight. There were three towers in the water. A keeper lived in the middle one and controlled the traffic by raising or lowering the draws at his pleasure. Those who refused to pay his price, or whom he did not wish to accommodate, might ford the stream, but at some stages of the water this was a perilous operation. The river Allan flows into the Tweed near the site of this bridge. It is a little mountain brook that flows, in serpentine course, through the valley of Glendearg. A mile or so up the rivulet there is a picturesque and shady glen called Fairy Dean. After a flood, little pieces of curious stones, in fantastic shapes, are often found, the play of the waters having transformed the fragments of rock into fairy cups and saucers, guns, boats, cradles, or whatever a childish imagination might suggest. This was the abode of the fairies where the little elfin folk held their nightly carnivals, and who knows but Queen Titania herself might have held her moonlight revels upon this very spot? At any rate, the neighbouring people, for centuries, by common consent, recognized the feudal rights of the fairy race to this little dell, and left them undisturbed. It must have been the abode of the White Lady, and no doubt stood in the author's mind for the secluded glen which he calls, in Celtic, _Corrie nan Shian_, meaning 'Hollow of the Fairies,' where Halbert Glendinning found the huge rock, the wild holly tree, and the spring beneath its branches. Here, doubtless, for no more appropriate spot can be found, Halbert summoned the mystic maiden with the words:-- {260} Thrice to the holly brake-- Thrice to the well:-- I bid thee awake, White Maid of Avenel! Noon gleams in the Lake-- Noon glows on the Fell-- Wake thee, O wake, White Maid of Avenel! At the head of the glen there are three ruined peel-houses or Border towers, known as Hillslap, Colmslie, and Langshaw. The first of these may fairly stand for the original of Glendearg, the home of the Glendinnings. This old tower has a sculptured date on the lintel of the entrance which seems to indicate that it was built in 1585--a little too late for the story, to be sure, but trifles like that never worried Sir Walter. He wanted to place the Widow Glendinning and her two children in a tower suited to the ancient family connexions of her husband who might have been able to defend his secluded retreat against all comers for many years, had not the necessities of the time required his service in the wars for the defence of his country. Hillslap offered an excellent type of such a Border fortalice, and its situation at the head of the glen, well protected by the surrounding mountains and isolated by its remoteness from the ordinary lines of travel, made it suitable for the purposes of the tale. Referring to the castle of Julian Avenel, Scott, in a footnote, remarks that it is vain to search near Melrose for any such castle, but adds that in Yetholm Loch, a small sheet of water southeast of Kelso, there is a small castle on an island, connected with the mainland by a {261} causeway, but it is much smaller than Avenel. Of course we must take the author's word for this, and yet, whether he did it with conscious purpose or not, he succeeded in putting into his description some features which irresistibly suggest a castle only seven miles from Melrose, the tower of Smailholm, associated with the dearest memories of his childhood. Smailholm is one of the most perfect examples of the old feudal keeps to be found in Scotland. A very small pool lies on one side of the tower, but it is suggestive of the loch which once surrounded the entire castle, making it a retreat of great security. 'The surprise of the spectator was chiefly excited by finding a piece of water situated in that high and mountainous region, and the landscape around had features which might rather be termed wild, than either romantic or sublime.' It was a surprise to me to find even a small pool of water in such a locality, and I cannot help thinking that at least some recollections of the peculiar situation of Smailholm may have been in the author's mind when he wrote this description. Scott has himself mentioned a prototype of the vulgar, brutal, and licentious Julian Avenel in the person of the Laird of Black Ormiston, a friend and confidant of Bothwell and one of the agents in the murder of Darnley. The concluding scene of the novel represents a sorrowful procession of monks, in long black gowns and cowls, marching solemnly to the market-place of the town, where they formed a circle around 'an ancient cross of curious workmanship, the gift of some former monarch of Scotland.' This old Mercat Cross still stands {262} in the centre of the market-place of Melrose. It is about twenty feet high and is surmounted by the figure of the unicorn and the arms of Scotland. It requires a vivid imagination to identify the unicorn, however, the ravages of time giving it more the aspect of a walrus, rampant. 'The Monastery,' following so soon after Scott's greatest success, suffers severely by comparison with 'Ivanhoe,' and, perhaps for this reason, was considered something of a failure. The cause, generally assigned by the critics, was twofold, or rather, may be attributed to two characters, which did not appeal to the public as Scott had expected. One of these was the 'White Lady of Avenel' and the other, Sir Piercie Shafton. Scott had always manifested a fondness for ghosts, goblins, witches, and the supernatural. The goblin-page made a nuisance of himself in 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel' and came near spoiling the poem; Marmion had to fight a phantom knight, and so did Bertram Risingham, but in both cases a rational explanation dispelled the mystery; the Baron of Triermain visited a phantom castle in the Valley of St. John; Bruce landed on the shores of Carrick, guided by a weird supernatural light; Fergus MacIvor was dismayed by the Bodach Glas, a cheerful sort of family ghost which always appeared when disaster was impending; the guest of the Antiquary was compelled to sleep in a haunted chamber; a mysterious fountain had a fatal influence upon the life of the Bride of Lammermoor; and so throughout the pages of Scott's poems and novels we find these strange incidents and phantom appearances. The real orthodox ghost only peeps in at you occasionally and quickly vanishes. {263} Although you may be frightened a little, you delight, nevertheless, in the mystery. But there is something too substantial about a female ghost who climbs up behind a man on horseback, guides him into a stream of deep water, and ducks him three times, meanwhile reciting long stanzas of poetry. And when the same ghost appears again and again, as though the whole plot depended upon her personal exertions, the constant exposure to the limelight causes the illusion to melt away. This, I fancy, is the reason the Maid of Avenel failed to appeal to Scott's readers. Sir Piercie Shafton, the Euphuist, seems in like manner to have been overdone. A suggestion of the foppery and absurdities of the coxcombs of Queen Elizabeth's court might have been interesting, but Sir Piercie remains on the stage too long and becomes a bore. The pedantic Baron of Bradwardine in 'Waverley' is a bore, but we like him. The garrulous Dalgetty is tiresome, but we could not do without him. Sir Piercie, on the contrary, has no redeeming traits. Aside from the failure of these two characters to please the public, the novel lacks the interest that attaches to all its predecessors. There is no Dandie Dinmont, nor Meg Merrilies, nor Dominie Sampson; no Jonathan Oldbuck nor Edie Ochiltree; no historical personage of interest like Rob Roy or King Richard; no Jeanie Deans; no Flora MacIvor; no Die Vernon; no Rebecca. On the other hand, it has some fine pictures of the sturdy Scotch character, it gives a glimpse of monastic life in the sixteenth century, and has an historical value in its presentation of the conflict of cross-currents of {264} thought and feeling, as they affected the people who lived amid the furious contentions of the Reformation. Father Eustace is a fine type of the able, intelligent, and devoted Catholic priest, and Henry Warden of the brave, unflinching, determined apostle of the reformed doctrines. {265} CHAPTER XIX THE ABBOT Scott was quick to realize the mistake in 'The Monastery,' and promptly redeemed his popularity by the bold stroke of writing a sequel. The White Maiden was banished along with Sir Piercie, and in their place came a train of new characters, well calculated to win the sympathetic approval of the public. Mary Queen of Scots was the chief of these, and the novelist's skilful portrayal of her character made a success of 'The Abbot.' Roland Graeme, who proved to be one of the best of Scott's heroes, and Catherine Seyton, a young woman of charming vivacity, added not a little to the popularity of the novel. The scenery, at first, remains the same. The story opens at the Castle of Avenel, of which Sir Halbert Glendinning is now the knight and Mary Avenel the lady. Henry Warden is established there as chaplain. The monks are still permitted to linger in the cloisters of St. Mary's, and among them is Edward Glendinning, known as Father Ambrose, who, later, becomes the abbot. The beautiful abbey is pictured at the beginning of its decay. The niches have been stripped of their sculptured images, on the inside as well as the outside of the building. The tombs of warriors and of princes have been demolished. The church is strewn with confused heaps of broken stone, the remnants of beautifully {266} carved statues of saints and angels, with lances and swords torn from above the tombs of famous knights of earlier days, and sacred relics brought by pious pilgrims. The disheartened monks are seen conducting their ceremonials in the midst of all the rubbish, scarcely daring to clear it away. In keeping with this picture of decay and ruin is the vivid presentation of the invasion of the sacred abbey by the irreverent mob of masqueraders in grotesque costumes, led by 'the venerable Father Howleglas, the learned Monk of Misrule and the Right Reverend Abbot of Unreason.' The tale now leads to Edinburgh, where young Roland Graeme is struck with surprise as he comes, for the first time, into the Canongate. 'The extreme height of the houses, and the variety of Gothic gables, and battlements, and balconies' are still surprising. Graeme gets involved in a street scrimmage, common enough in the Edinburgh of those days, and, without knowing it, renders service to Lord Seyton, one of the most faithful adherents of Queen Mary. A few minutes later he catches sight of Catherine Seyton as that pretty damsel is about to 'dive under one of the arched passages which afforded an outlet to the Canongate from the houses beneath.' Many of these arched passages may still be seen in the Canongate. The house of Lord Seyton into which Roland followed the maiden was about opposite Queensbury House, near the eastern end of the street. Holyrood Palace comes into the story as the place where Roland was presented to the Regent Murray, an introduction into which Scott is believed to have woven some recollections of his own presentation to the Duke {267} of Wellington. Although the palace has stood for many centuries and has been the abode of many kings, its real interest centres about the fortunes of Mary Queen of Scots. Visitors are shown the audience chamber in which the Queen received John Knox, and found that the great Reformer, unlike other men, was proof against the loveliness of her countenance, the charm of her manner, and the softness of her speech. Knox found, too, that Mary was proof against the bitterness of his arraignment and the violence of his denunciation. Opening out of the audience chamber is Queen Mary's bedroom, where a bed, said to be Mary's own, is carefully preserved, its dingy and tattered hangings conveying little suggestion of the former richness of the crimson damask, with its fringe and tassels of green. A narrow door leads to a small dressing-closet, and another to the supper-room, where Mary sat with David Rizzio and other friends on the fatal night of February 13, 1565. Darnley, in a state of intoxication, burst into the room with a party of brutal conspirators, put his arms around Mary in seeming endearment, while the others dragged Rizzio into the audience chamber and stabbed him to death with their daggers. The introduction of Loch Leven Castle gives a new scene to the novel and one of great beauty and interest. It was partly Scott's association with the Blair Adam Club that led to the use of this scene and the historical incident associated with it. A visit of Scott and his life-long friends, William Clerk and Adam Ferguson, to the Right Honourable William Adam, in 1816, led to the formation of the Blair Adam Club, at the meetings of which Scott was a constant attendant for fifteen years. {268} Mr. Adam, who held the distinguished office of Lord Chief Commissioner of the Jury Court in Scotland, was, says Lockhart, 'the only man I ever knew that rivalled Sir Walter Scott in uniform graciousness of bonhomie and gentleness of humour.' In a book privately printed for the benefit of his own family and friends, the judge says:-- The Castle of Loch Leven is seen at every turn from the northern side of Blair Adam. This castle, renowned and attractive above all others in my neighbourhood, became an object of much increased attention and a theme of constant conversation, after the author of 'Waverley' had, by his inimitable power of delineating character, by his creative poetic fancy in representing scenes of varied interest, and by the splendour of his romantic descriptions, infused a more diversified and a deeper tone of feeling into the history of Queen Mary's captivity and escape. Many little allusions to localities on the estate of Blair Adam and references to the virtues and manners of its occupants, were woven into the story, which, while they escape the attention of the casual reader, did not fail to please the genial owner. The castle stands on an island in Loch Leven, a pretty sheet of water, about three or four miles long, on the western border of which lies the town of Kinross. Two sturdy fishermen rowed us out to the island where we found the ruin of a square building. The tower is in good repair, but the remaining walls are quite ruinous. In one corner the room where Queen Mary was imprisoned was pointed out by the guides. It is very small, but has windows overlooking the lake, and there is room on the island for a pleasant garden. Except for {269} the loss of her liberty, Queen Mary might have found the castle a pleasant abode. Loch Leven Castle was the property of Sir William Douglas, whose wife was the mother of the Earl of Murray, the illegitimate son of James V. The Lady Douglas could be supposed to have little sympathy for the legitimate daughter of the king to whom she pretended to have been married. In placing Mary in the hands of such a custodian, the lords who opposed her felt reasonably secure. Scott gives a wonderfully dramatic picture of the visit of Lord Lindsay, Lord Ruthven, and Sir Robert Melville to the castle, and the method by which they extorted Mary's signature to deeds abdicating the throne in favour of her infant son and creating the Earl of Murray regent, and although the scene is purely fictitious, the facts of history are not distorted. Roland Graeme is represented as unsheathing his sword and discovering a hidden parchment rolled around the blade. It proved to be a secret message from Lord Seyton, advising Mary to yield to the necessity of the situation. The incident is based upon the fact that Sir Robert Melville was sent to accompany the ruffianly Lindsay, and his no less harsh associate Ruthven, to prevent violence to the Queen, and to carry, concealed in the scabbard of his sword, a message from her friends advising submission and carrying the assurance that deeds signed under such compulsion would not be legally binding when she regained her liberty. The escape of the Queen is told in substantial accordance with the facts, though with a variation of details which the license of the novelist would easily permit. {270} George Douglas, a younger brother of the lord of Loch Leven, was much impressed by the beauty of the Queen, and captivated by her pleasant manners and fair promises. He devised a plan of escape, but this was discovered and George was expelled from the castle by his brother. Another attempt was more successful. An inmate of the castle, called 'the Little Douglas,' had also felt a sympathy for the Queen. He was a lad of seventeen or eighteen and really played the part which Scott assigned to Roland Graeme. He stole the keys and set the prisoner at liberty in the night. Placing her in a boat, he paused long enough to lock the iron gates of the tower from the outside so that pursuit would be impossible, then, throwing the keys into the lake, rowed his passenger ashore. George Douglas, Lord Seyton, and other friends were waiting to receive her and conveyed her in triumph to Hamilton. An army of six thousand men was quickly assembled, the plan being to place the Queen safely in the fortress of Dumbarton, and then give battle to the Regent Murray. The latter was too quick for the allies, however. He was then at Glasgow and marched at once, though with an inferior force, to intercept the advancing army. They met at Langside, now a suburb of Glasgow, and after a fierce struggle the Queen's forces were scattered. Mary herself continued her flight, until she reached the Abbey of Dundrennan, in the County of Kirkcudbright, where she spent her last night in Scotland. [Illustration: CATHCART CASTLE] The novelist represents Queen Mary as viewing the battle from the Castle of Crookston, and the unfortunate lady dramatically exclaims, 'O, I must forget much ere I can look with steady eyes on these well-known {271} scenes! I must forget the days which I spent here as the bride of the lost--the murdered'--Here Mary Fleming interrupts to explain to the Abbot that in this castle 'the Queen held her first court after she was married to Darnley.' Mary could not have witnessed the battle of Langside from Crookston, unless, indeed, she had had, in the language of Sam Weller, instead of eyes, 'a pair o' patent double million magnifyin' gas microscopes of hextra power,' for Langside is at least four miles away and the contour of the country would make such a view impossible. She really watched it from a knoll near the old Castle of Cathcart, which has since been known as Court Knowe. Scott admitted the error, but did not much regret it, as Crookston seemed the place best suited to the dramatic requirements of the tale, because of Mary's former association with the castle. Here again the facts are against him. Crookston was the property of the Earl of Lennox, Darnley's father, but Darnley himself never lived there, except possibly as a boy, before he went to France at the age of sixteen. It seems to be certain to those who have investigated the facts that after his return he had no opportunity of going there and that he and Queen Mary could not have visited the place together, either before or after their marriage. Nevertheless, Scott was wise to let the incident remain as he wrote it, for 'The Abbot' is not a work of history, but a romance. {272} CHAPTER XX KENILWORTH The successful introduction of Mary Queen of Scots as the central figure of 'The Abbot' resulted, not only in repairing the reputation which had been somewhat damaged by its predecessor, but in suggesting the theme of a new novel which was to achieve a popularity second only to 'Ivanhoe.' The desire to portray, in the form of romance, the great rival of Queen Mary, was perhaps irresistible, particularly in view of the fact that it meant a new opportunity to reach that English audience which had given to 'Ivanhoe' so cordial a reception. Constable, the publisher, was of course delighted to have a new English novel and particularly one in which Queen Elizabeth was to be an important figure. With characteristic presumptuousness he argued that it should be a story of the Armada. Scott, however, had been enchanted in his youth by a ballad of the Scotch poet, Mickle, entitled 'Cumnor Hall,' and particularly by its first stanza:-- The dews of summer night did fall; The moon, sweet regent of the sky, Silver'd the walls of Cumnor Hall, And many an oak that grew thereby. He insisted, therefore, in spite of his adviser, upon taking the theme of the ballad for his subject and would even have called the novel 'Cumnor Hall.' In deference to Constable, however, he accepted the title, 'Kenilworth,' {273} although John Ballantyne growled a little at a name which he thought suggested 'something worthy of a kennel.' Here, then, were the determining points of the new novel, namely, a favourite poem concerning the marriage of the Earl of Leicester to a lady whom he kept concealed at Cumnor Hall, the desire to sketch, in a romantic way, the character of Queen Elizabeth, and the opportunity to secure a dramatic climax by confronting the Queen with the wife of her favourite courtier, in the splendid castle of the latter at Kenilworth. Cumnor is one of those lovely little villages in the Midlands of England where Father Time employs his talents as an artist, softening the outlines of the stone walls and fences with graceful mantles of dark green ivy and imparting richer and deeper shades of brown to the old thatched roofs of the cottages. We saw few evidences of activity on the part of the inhabitants, and reached the conclusion that Cumnor, in Walter Scott's time, and even in the days of the Earl of Leicester, could not have been very different from its present aspect. We did not ruin our reputation as travellers by failing to 'wet a cup at the bonny Black Bear,' for that 'excellent inn of the old stamp,' if indeed it ever existed, has disappeared as effectually as its famous landlord, Giles Gosling. Its prototype, bearing the sign of the 'Bear and Ragged Staff,' formerly stood opposite the church, but its bar-room became objectionable to the vicar and, by what a local writer calls 'an impious act of vandalism,' the inn was destroyed. Cumnor Place has likewise disappeared. The site {274} where it stood appears to be a comparatively small piece of land, near the street, but well covered with large trees. It was not an extensive park with formal walks and avenues, nor was the house itself so large or high as the structure described in the novel. It was a single-story building or series of buildings, forming an enclosure about seventy feet long and fifty feet wide. It was built about 1350 as a country residence for the Abbot of Abingdon and as a sanitarium for the monks. After two centuries its use by the monastery ceased and Cumnor Place passed into the hands of the Court physician, George Owen, who leased it to Anthony Foster. As the servant of Lord Robert Dudley, Foster received into his house the ill-fated Amy Robsart, whom that gentleman had married in 1550. The marriage was not secret, but was celebrated in the presence of the young King, Edward VI, and his Court. It had been arranged by Dudley's father, John, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland, who seems to have had a fondness for match-making, of the kind which promised a profit. He managed to marry his fourth son, Guildford Dudley, to Lady Jane Grey, a great-granddaughter of Henry VII. In the last two years of the reign of Edward VI, Northumberland was virtually the ruler of England. He induced the King to execute a will, disinheriting his two sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, who were the legal heirs to the crown, and naming Lady Jane Grey as his successor. The reign of this unfortunate lady, who never desired the throne, lasted but nine days. The rightful Queen, Mary, was restored by the people, and Northumberland, like his father before him, was beheaded in the Tower. His son, Guildford, with Jane {275} Grey, his wife, suffered the same penalty a year later, as the result of another revolt, in which the lady, at least, had no share. [Illustration: LEICESTER'S BUILDINGS, KENILWORTH] Robert Dudley came near falling a victim to the same fate as his father and grandfather. He took up arms against Queen Mary, was sent to the Tower and condemned to death. But the Queen pardoned him and made him Master of the Ordnance. On the accession of Elizabeth he became Master of the Horse, and thereafter rose rapidly in the royal favour. Elizabeth made him a Knight of the Garter, bestowed upon him the Castle of Kenilworth, the lordship of Denbigh and other rich lands in Warwickshire and Wales. In 1564 the Queen made him Earl of Leicester, and recommended him (perhaps not seriously) as a possible husband of Mary Queen of Scots. The University of Oxford made him their chancellor and the King of France conferred upon him the order of St. Michael. He reached the culmination of the high honours which Elizabeth and others crowded upon him, in the appointment as Lieutenant-General of the army mustered to meet the Spanish invasion, in the year of the great Armada, 1588. This was the outward show, and it was brilliant enough; but the Earl was like a worm-eaten apple--fair enough to look upon, but rotten to the core--and his private life was thoroughly contemptible. The marriage to Amy Robsart in 1550 was not a happy one. She was never a countess, for Dudley did not become Earl of Leicester until four years after her death. After the favours of Elizabeth began to be showered upon him, Dudley had good reason for concealing this marriage, for the Queen soon began to show a longing to make him {276} her royal husband. In 1560, two years after the accession of Elizabeth, the dead body of Amy was found at the foot of the stairs at Cumnor. All the servants had gone to a neighbouring fair and apparently Anthony Foster was the only person besides Amy at home on that day. It was given out that Amy had accidentally fallen downstairs and broken her neck. She was ostentatiously buried in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford, though Lord Dudley was not present at the funeral nor did he again visit Cumnor. More than twenty years later a pamphlet was published, anonymously, under the title 'Leicester's Commonwealth,' in which the Earl was bitterly attacked as an atheist and a traitor as well as a man of infamous character. He was openly accused of the murder of his wife, and there were not wanting many evidences seeming to corroborate this view. It was alleged that efforts to poison her were made, by direction of the Earl. That Leicester was not incapable of such an act is indicated by the circumstances of his own death. The tradition is that he gave his wife (the third one) a bottle of medicine to be used for faintness. The lady kept it, unused, and later, not knowing it to be poison, administered a dose to her husband, with a fatal result. This lady was the widow of Walter, Earl of Essex, with whom the Earl of Leicester was carrying on an intrigue before her husband's death. There was a quarrel and Essex died suddenly, under some suspicion of poison. Leicester's secret marriage with the widow led to serious accusations against him. According to the author of 'Leicester's Commonwealth,' when the Earl fell in love with Lady Douglas Sheffield (who became his second wife), {277} her husband suddenly died under mysterious circumstances. Leicester had in his employ an Italian physician who was a skilful compounder of poisons. It was said that his cunning and skill enabled him to cause a person to die with the symptoms of any disease he might choose, or to administer a poison so that the victim would expire at whatever hour he might appoint. These weird tales no doubt suggested something of the character of the fraudulent alchemist and astrologer, Alasco. The stair at the foot of which Amy Robsart's body was found was a narrow winding flight, something like a corkscrew. It has been pointed out that Amy would have had considerable difficulty in hurling herself headlong around the twists and turns of such a staircase with enough force to break her neck. Without definite knowledge of the facts, the most reasonable supposition is that Lord Dudley, having a motive for the crime and being a man of unscrupulous character, would not hesitate to order it committed. His grandfather had been the agent of Henry VII in the infamous extortions which gave that sovereign an enormous fortune; his father had not hesitated to risk the lives of his son and an innocent lady to accomplish his own treasonable purposes, besides directly causing the death of the Duke of Somerset, and indirectly bringing about the execution of the Duke's brother, Lord Seymour. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that the scion of this ambitious family, who was himself cherishing no less bold a project than his own marriage with the Queen, should willingly give orders to remove the one great obstacle in his path. The great festivities at Kenilworth occurred in 1575. Amy Robsart had been dead fifteen years. The Earl of {278} Leicester was none the less entangled, however, for he was at the time married to Lady Sheffield, who strongly maintained the validity of the marriage, though it was denied by the Earl and concealed from the Queen. At the same time, also, the intrigue with the Countess of Essex was in progress. From this it will be seen that although Scott departed from the facts of history in bringing poor Amy to Kenilworth, he nevertheless gave a true picture of the Earl of Leicester's embarrassment in the presence of his Queen. Scott softens the black-hearted villainy of the Earl, by making him an unwilling victim of his own ambition, duped into deeds of infamy by the determination of the conscienceless Richard Varney. He admits that he preferred to make the Earl 'rather the dupe of villains than the unprincipled author of their atrocities,' because in the latter capacity, he would have been a character too disgustingly wicked for the purposes of fiction. [Illustration: CÆSAR'S TOWER, KENILWORTH] According to Scott's account, the unfortunate Amy, after falling completely into the toils of Varney, was carried back to Cumnor Place, and lodged in a tower room at the top of the building. A gallery, arranged by a secret contrivance to be used as a drawbridge, which, when dropped, would cut off all access to the chamber, was the only means of entrance or exit. After Amy had entered the chamber, Varney and Foster withdrew the supports of the bridge in such manner that the slightest weight would cause it to fall. Varney then reached the consummation of his villainy by imitating the whistle of Leicester. Amy, deceived by the signal and eager to meet her Lord, rushed upon the bridge and fell to the deepest vault of the castle. The method of the real {279} Amy's death is not definitely known, but it was probably by no such elaborate invention. She was doubtless strangled in her room and her body carried to the foot of the stairs to suggest an accidental death. Anthony Foster lies buried in Cumnor Church, which stands on land adjoining the site of Cumnor Place, near the entrance to the village on the road from Oxford. It is one of those stone churches, with square, substantial towers and ivy-clad walls, which add to the charm of the landscape throughout the length and breadth of England, as though she intended thereby to express both the beauty and the solidity of her religion. The Foster tomb is an elaborate monument of grey marble, within the altar rail, and is easily the most noteworthy feature of the interior of the church. Two engraved brass plates represent the family at prayers, and beneath is a long inscription in Latin, indicating that Anthony Foster was a distinguished gentleman of good birth, skilled in the arts of music and horticulture, a good linguist and renowned for charity, benevolence, and religious fidelity. Looking upon this elaborate memorial, one cannot escape the conviction that Tony Foster was either a greatly maligned saint or the parent of a family of hypocrites. If the intention of those who composed the inscription was to convince the world of his innocence, they could not have been expected to foresee that, for every person who should read and understand the epitaph, ten thousand would be led to a perception of Foster's real character through the pen of a Scottish novelist, but for whom few of us would ever have known the sad story of the Lady of Cumnor Hall. {280} As for the Earl of Leicester, a more truthful epitaph exists, not indeed carved upon stone, but preserved in the Collections of Drummond of Hawthornden. It reads:-- Here lies a valiant warrior, Who never drew a sword; Here lies a noble courtier, Who never kept his word; Here lies the Erle of Leister, Who govern'd the estates; Whom the earth could never living love, And the just Heaven now hates. The escape of Amy Robsart from Cumnor Place was achieved through the aid of Wayland Smith, a blacksmith, pedler, and strolling juggler, who had picked up from a former master some knowledge of medicine which he employed to good advantage. There was a legend current in Berkshire of a mysterious smith, who lived among the rocks and replaced lost horseshoes for a fee of sixpence, feeling offended if more were offered. Scott used this tale as the basis of his story of Wayland Smith. The idea of having his smithy in a cave may have been suggested by just such a place in Gilmerton, a village on the outskirts of Edinburgh, with which Scott must have been familiar. I had no difficulty in finding it. It is an artificial cavern, with many ramifications, and as the light can enter only from the door at the head of a stone stairway, its farther corners are extremely dark. Near the entrance is a blacksmith's forge. In a small and dark alcove opposite is an oblong stone, evidently intended as a dining-table. A rough shelf or ledge, cut out of the stone partition, served as a bench at meal-times. Any of the dark corners could be {281} used as sleeping-rooms. The cave was probably used by thieves or smugglers as a convenient hiding-place. Amy's journey from Cumnor Village, four miles west of Oxford, to Kenilworth, in the centre of Warwickshire, was a ride of about fifty miles. Perhaps the Countess's mental condition would not permit her to enjoy it and doubtless the country then was wild and the roads rough; but the route to-day would be a delightful one, especially that part of it which passes through Warwickshire with its 'hedgerows of unmarketable beauty.' As they approached the old town of Warwick, travelling by circuitous paths to avoid the crowds then journeying to witness the festivities at Kenilworth, Amy and her humble guide, the blacksmith, passed through some of the most beautiful country in England. But they were obliged to avoid what to-day forms the grand climax of interest to the tourist, the magnificent Castle of Warwick. This was the resting-place of Queen Elizabeth on the day preceding her triumphal progress to Kenilworth. In those days it was the seat of Ambrose Dudley, a brother to the Earl of Leicester and the third son of the notorious John Dudley. There was never a time, say the local antiquaries, back as far as the reign of the celebrated King Arthur, when Warwick did not have its Earls. The most renowned of these was Guy, a great warrior supposed to stand nine feet high, among whose exploits were the killing of 'a Saracen giant, a wild boar, a dun cow, and a green dragon.' After a life devoted to these pleasant diversions, he retired to Guy's Cliffe, a retreat near Warwick, famed for its natural beauty, where he lived as a hermit until his death. The real building of the {282} castle began when the Normans took possession, William the Conqueror granting the vast estate, including the castle and the town, to Henry de Newburgh, the first Earl of Warwick. In the fifteenth century it came into the possession of Richard Neville, the famous 'King-Maker.' Since that time many improvements have been made, especially in the spacious grounds, which now make a splendid park, with well-kept lawns and paths, stately trees, formal gardens with yews fantastically trimmed, and a profusion of flowers. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO WARWICK CASTLE] The entrance road, cut through solid rock, looks as if carved out of soft moss, so thickly does the ivy cling to the walls. Trees of varied foliage overarch the path, and near the entrance the edges are bordered by narrow lines of flowers. At the end of this delightful avenue a sharp turn to the left brought us in front of the great Castle. On the right is Guy's Tower, rising one hundred and twenty-eight feet high and having walls ten feet thick. On the left is Cæsar's Tower, built by the Normans eight hundred years ago and still firm as the rock upon which it stands. The two are joined by an ivy-covered wall in the centre of which is a great gate between two towers. Passing through this gateway we entered the spacious court. Directly opposite is the mound, or keep, almost completely covered from base to summit with trees and shrubs, over the tops of which the towers and battlements peep out. On the right are two unfinished towers, one of them begun by Richard III, the whole side of the quadrangle forming a massive line of ramparts and embattled walls. On the left is the great mansion, occupied for centuries by the Earls of Warwick. The square formed by these huge stone buildings {283} is beautiful in its simplicity--a wide expanse of lawn, its rich velvet green broken only by the white gravel walks. To see the interior of the castle we were compelled to join a party of tourists, and march in solemn procession through the rooms of state, while our guide, an old soldier with a Cockney accent, loquaciously explained that his 'hobject' in telling us about the 'hearls' in this room was to prepare us to appreciate the 'hearls' in the next! This agony over, we departed by the road which leads across the Avon, where we were rewarded by a superb view of the castle from the bridge. The next day we were at Kenilworth. It requires the exercise of a vivid imagination to walk among the ruins and trace the progress of Scott's story, but we found it a delightful study. We entered by the little wicket gate, next to the mansion known as the Gatehouse, erected by Dudley in 1570 as the chief entrance to the castle. Walking south, across the outer court, we came to the ancient entrance in the southeast angle known as Mortimer's Tower. From this point an embankment stretched to the southeast for about one hundred and fifty yards. It was eighteen yards wide and twenty feet high. Besides serving its original purpose of a dam, to hold back the waters of a great lake covering one hundred and eleven acres, this bank of earth made an admirable tilt-yard. At the extreme end of the embankment was the Gallery Tower, containing a spacious room from which the ladies could witness the tournaments. A wall eight feet high and eighty-five feet long is all that remains of this structure. It was built by Henry III in the thirteenth century and reconstructed {284} by the Earl of Leicester in preparation for the great festivities. Here Amy presented herself under strange circumstances. As the wife of the great Earl of Leicester, the magnificent castle was her own and all its army of servants, and the vast crowd of sight-seers, could they have recognized their countess, would have bowed in humble reverence and have delighted to execute her slightest wish. But she came unknown and unrespected, not as the honoured Countess, but as 'the bale of woman's gear' belonging to a blacksmith, disguised as a juggler. At the Gallery Tower the two strange companions were halted by a giant porter, and gained admission only by the intercession of the mischievous little imp called Flibbertigibbet. They traversed the length of the tilt-yard, and passing through Mortimer's Tower, came in front of the splendid buildings, all with doors and gates wide open as a sign of unlimited hospitality. On their right stood the stately Cæsar's Tower, a fine specimen of the military architecture of the Normans, built about 1170 to 1180, and still the best-preserved portion of the ruins. On their left was the great 'Leicester's Building,' erected in honour of the occasion for the accommodation of the Queen. It reached a height of ninety-three feet and was ninety feet long and fifty feet wide. The walls are thin, however, and although the most recent in date of all the important parts of the castle, this structure has crumbled into ruins to such an extent that it can be preserved only by constant attention. Between Cæsar's Tower and Leicester's Building, and joining the two, Amy and her guide saw a stately edifice, {285} then known as King Henry VIII's Lodgings, because it was used by that monarch on the occasion of his visits to the castle. The portion on the left, immediately adjoining Leicester's Building, was called Dudley's Lobby. No vestige of these structures, which originally formed the eastern side of a magnificent quadrangle, can now be seen. Passing through an open gateway between Cæsar's Tower and King Henry's Lodgings, the Countess entered the Inner Court. On the right, and in the rear of Cæsar's Tower, she could see the great kitchens, then a busy part of the establishment, but now showing little more than the remains of a huge fireplace and a thick wall from which project a broken arch or two. On the left were the White Hall, now entirely destroyed, and next to it the Presence Chamber, which had a fine oriel window looking into the court. Directly in front Amy could see the 'Great Hall' in which her princely husband had made lavish preparations to entertain the Queen with unprecedented extravagance. It was built in the fourteenth century by John of Gaunt, son of Edward III, who took up his residence at the castle on the death of his father, and spent the remainder of his life in adding to its magnificence. The hall was ninety feet long and forty-five feet wide. The floor has disappeared, but the remains of the pillars and arches which once supported it may still be seen. The Great Hall was lighted by large and very high windows, set in deep recesses, the outlines of which are still well preserved. The remains of two large fireplaces, one on each side, may still be seen. At the southern end was a dais, upon which was the Throne of State, with crimson canopy of {286} richly embroidered velvet. At the opposite end was a minstrel gallery for the musicians. From the centre of the roof hung a chandelier of brass, shaped like an eagle, its spreading wings supporting six human figures, each of which carried a pair of branches containing huge candles. The tables, chairs, cushions, carpets, and silken tapestries were all of the costliest workmanship. It is stated that the Earl of Leicester spent £60,000 upon this lavish entertainment, a sum which, to-day, would be better represented by half a million. [Illustration: MERVYN'S TOWER, KENILWORTH] Amy and her escort were not at liberty to view this regal magnificence. They proceeded across the court to a tower at the northwestern angle, which was doubtless intended for a prison, judging from the thickness of the walls and the small size of the rooms. It was called, for this reason, the Strong Tower, though Scott's name for it is Mervyn's Tower. During the Elizabethan festivities it was used for the accommodation of guests. Here we must leave Amy for the present and go back to trace the movements of Elizabeth. The Queen approached by way of the Gallery Tower, heralded by the roll of drums, the blare of trumpets, the roar of cannon, and the tumultuous shouts of a vast multitude. Two hundred thick waxen torches, each borne by a horseman, cast a glare of light upon the cavalcade. The Queen, mounted upon a milk-white horse and clad in gorgeous raiment, blazing with jewels, was accompanied by the Earl of Leicester, 'glittering like a golden image with jewels and cloth of gold.' He rode a jet-black horse, renowned as one of the most splendid chargers in Europe. Both horse and rider seemed perfectly formed to grace an occasion so glorious. {287} A great procession of the most distinguished noblemen, the ablest statesmen, and the proudest knights of England followed the Queen, together with the ladies of the Court, famed for splendour and beauty and arrayed in garments only a little less magnificent than those of the Queen herself. Passing upon the bridge or dam which stretched between the gallery and Mortimer's Tower, the royal procession paused to witness a gorgeous spectacular performance on the lake. Then, entering the Base Court, they moved through various pageants to the Inner Court, and came at length to the Great Hall, where the Queen was handed to the Throne by the Earl of Leicester. The Pleasance was an irregular-shaped enclosure, visible to the west from Mervyn's Tower and connecting with a rectangular section on the north known as the garden. The latter had a terrace along the castle wall, ten feet high and twelve feet wide, covered with grass and decorated with obelisks, spheres, and stone bears. At each end was an arbour of trees and fragrant flowers. The garden was intersected by walks or alleys, each of which had, in the middle, a square pilaster, fifteen feet high, surmounted by an orb. In the centre of the garden was a fountain of white marble, its pedestal carved with allegorical subjects and surmounted by two Atlantes, back to back, holding a ball, from which streams of water poured into the basin. At the side of the terrace was a large aviary, well filled with birds. This was the scene of the dramatic climax toward which the novel trends, where Queen Elizabeth finally confronts Amy Robsart and begins to unravel the whole story of Leicester's duplicity. {288} Aside from their associations with the novel, the ruins of Kenilworth seem to exert a strong fascination. It is as though Nature were reasserting herself. A thousand years ago the domain was untouched by the hand of man. Then came kings and conquerors, who replaced the pristine beauty with artificial structures. Stately halls and palaces sprang into existence. Their inner walls were hung with the costliest of silks. Their floors were covered with the richest carpets from the looms of the Orient. Chairs, stools, tables, and bedsteads of elaborate workmanship, gorgeously covered with lace and embroidered with cloth of gold; paintings; musical instruments; curiously wrought plate, of silver and mother-of-pearl; everything, indeed, that the handicraft of the times could fashion and the wealth of its owners could buy, was brought to the castle in mute testimonial of man's conception of beauty. But these things passed. Kings and queens no longer made the castle their home, nor honoured it with even a brief visit. The people seized the government and, jealous lest royalty should again find shelter there, demolished the costly buildings. For the sake of a few pounds of lead, the roofs were torn away and sold. The artificial dam which backed up the waters of the great lake was cut and the waters flowed once more in their natural channels. Nature again assumed control. The formal gardens became a green pasture. The spacious courts which had been worn hard by the iron hoofs of countless steeds became soft again with a covering of deep and velvety grass. The proud war-horses vanished and in their place the gentle sheep appeared. The frightful scars on the face of the ruined buildings were concealed {289} beneath a rich cloak of deep-green ivy. Wall-flowers sprang out of the broken crevices below the arches. All is peaceful, all is still. Nature has brought to the castle her own conception of beauty, and once more reigns supreme. {290} CHAPTER XXI THE PIRATE The Shetland and Orkney Islands, seen from an aeroplane at great height on a calm day, would resemble, I fancy, two handfuls of gravel thrown upon a horizontal sheet of window-glass. When I was a boy they meant little to me except a few black specks at the top of the map of Great Britain. Upon examining a larger map, an active lad might fancy that it would be great fun to skip from one island to another, or to play tag, leaping over the numerous indentations in the coast. The Shetland group is broken into about one hundred islands, stretching north and south for seventy miles, but the total land surface is only five hundred and fifty-one square miles, or less than half the area of the State of Rhode Island. The Orkney group, lying fifty miles farther south, is even smaller, its fifty-six islands containing only three hundred and seventy-five square miles. Upon closer acquaintance, however, the islands do not seem so diminutive. Great rugged cliffs tower perpendicularly to enormous heights above the sea-level. Huge broken fragments of rock form gigantic towers, or stacks, rising out of the sea to a height of hundreds of feet. One of the most picturesque of these, the Old Man of Hoy, would tower above the dome of St. Peter's in Rome. Our small boy, standing on the edge of one of these cliffs, looking down upon the ocean, boiling and seething through strange caverns and natural arches, {291} five hundred feet below, would quickly forget his desire to leap to the nearest island. The wildness of the scene is accentuated by the screaming of thousands of cormorants, guillemots, and gulls, mingling with the roar of the sea and the mournful soughing of the wind. We sailed into the Sound of Bressay, the harbour of Lerwick, at twelve o'clock on a Saturday night in June. It was still light enough to see plainly, for in these regions the summer sun has to rise so early in the morning that he does not think it worth while to go to bed. Expecting to land at the wharf of some quiet little seaport town, we were astonished at the sight which the twilight revealed. A forest of masts crowded the sound, which is here a mile wide. It was at the height of the herring-fishing, and nearly a thousand vessels had arrived to land their fish and enable their crews to spend Sunday on shore, for these fishermen observe the Sabbath, piously or otherwise, as a day of rest. All the remainder of that night and all day Sunday the stone pavements of Lerwick resounded to the clatter of wooden shoes worn by the Dutch fishermen. These Dutchmen are largely responsible for the importance of Lerwick, having discovered many years ago that it would be a convenient centre for the curing and shipping of herring. Other nations are also represented, particularly Norway, Sweden, Germany, and France, while the native Shetlanders still retain a portion of the trade, though relatively a small one. Besides filling the harbour, the vessels were crowded along the quays, five or six deep, so that the crews of late arrivals could reach the shore only by crossing the decks of several other ships. As soon as possible after a boat arrives, its cargo is auctioned off at {292} the Fishmarket, after which it proceeds to one of the curing stations. Nearly all the vessels were 'steam-drifters,' which have superseded the old sailing-boats. These drifters usually carry a crew of ten men. Their engines are capable of ten knots an hour, sometimes more. As it often happens that profitable shoals of fish cannot be found without travelling at least a hundred miles, the advantage over the old sailing-ships is apparent. Crowds of people flock to Lerwick in the season to look for employment in the curing establishments. On the little steamer which conveyed us thither, we noticed, in various out-of-the-way corners of the deck, what seemed to be piles of black and brown rags. They were there when we came on board at Aberdeen, and remained nearly all the next day. They turned out to be women, huddling together to keep warm, and covered only by their thick dresses and a few old shawls. They belonged to a class known by the not very pleasing, but thoroughly descriptive, name of gutters, and were making their annual trip to Lerwick to spend the season in the great curing establishments. These sturdy women become very expert. Each fish is eviscerated with two quick motions of the knife, assisted by the thumb and fingers, the process continuing for long hours, at the rate of about two dozen of herring a minute. [Illustration: LERWICK, SHETLAND] Lerwick, the capital of the Shetland Islands, is a town of picturesque appearance. When it was built there were no carts in the islands, and no occasion for any, for there were no roads. A long zigzag street runs the length of the town, near the shore, and is the main business thoroughfare. A century ago it would have been impossible to drive an ordinary wagon through its narrow and awkward {293} turnings. Now the buildings are sufficiently altered to admit the passage of teams, but in many places, when a vehicle passes, the pedestrians must step into the nearest doorways. The town is built on a hillside, so that the cross-streets are steep lanes, alternating with short flights of stairs. They have rough pavements, and usually a rail is placed along the buildings for the safety of the pedestrians in icy weather. The main thoroughfare, varying in width from ten to twenty-five feet, is paved with flagging and its stone buildings, though small and of many different shapes, have a substantial look. Strolling through the streets of Lerwick, one might estimate the population at about five thousand; looking out over the harbour on Sunday morning he would be inclined to change the figure to twenty times that number; but again looking seaward on Monday afternoon, when the fishing fleet has disappeared, he would doubtless revert to his original estimate. The men of the islands are nearly all fishermen. They work hard in the season, which lasts from June to September, and spend their money, during the long dark days of winter, in various amusements. Some maintain small farms of five or ten acres each, known as crofts, where they raise a few cattle and sheep. Only about one sixth of the land is under cultivation, and of this about three fourths is pasture land. The soil and climate of the Shetlands is decidedly unfavourable to agriculture. The women look after the cattle, till the soil in their small kail-yards, or gardens, bring in the winter supply of peat, and attend to all the duties of housekeeping. In the intervals of their busy lives, they knit shawls and other garments, out of wool which they card and spin {294} themselves. Indeed, they knit nearly all the time. It is not uncommon to see them walking along the roads or across the moors, with heavy baskets of peat on their backs, the knitting-needles clicking busily, as if every woman had been born with these implements in her hands. On the morning after our arrival we set out to discover the scenes of 'The Pirate.' Not knowing what changes had occurred since Scott's visit to the islands in 1814, I was not sure whether I should be obliged to catch a Shetland pony upon which to travel or make up my mind to walk the twenty-seven miles between Lerwick and Sumburgh Head, over a roadless country of rocks and mountains, morasses, and quagmires. It was a delight, therefore, to learn not only that there was a good road all the way, but that Lerwick now boasted the possession of an automobile, the only one on the islands. I lost no time in hiring the car, with a chauffeur who said he 'knew the road,' though he afterwards confessed he had never been over it. When he reached the mountainous regions, where the road dodges in and out around a bewildering succession of short curves, along the edges of cliffs from which we could look down upon rugged rocks or into the lakes and voes a hundred feet below, speeding the machine as though he were on level ground and familiar with every foot of it, he gave us a thrill or two at every turn. [Illustration: A CROFTER'S COTTAGE, ORKNEY] We started out in the general direction taken by Mordaunt Mertoun, when he left the comfortable home of Magnus Troil and his two pretty daughters, Minna and Brenda, to return to the forlorn habitation of his father at Jarlshof. There was just enough strong wind, with occasional dashes of rain, to suggest the storm which {295} Mordaunt faced. But he had to find his way around the edges of the numerous inland lakes and voes by a kind of instinct, having no path to follow. We travelled, on the contrary, over a good hard road, one of the improvements of the last half-century. Most of the people whom we passed had never seen an automobile. They not only hastily gave us the road, but usually climbed high up on the adjacent banks, sometimes dragging their pony-carts after them. One old man, when he saw us coming, hastily took his horse out of the shafts, and rushed up the side of the hill with the animal, to a safe distance of a hundred yards before he dared look back. The horse gazed upon us in mild-eyed curiosity, but the man's expression of terror suggested that he might have seen old Norna of the Fitful Head herself and her leering, sneering, grinning, and goggling dwarf, Nick Strumpfer, flying along in a vehicle of the Devil's own invention. Though not particularly grateful for the implied compliment, we were obliged to accept some such explanation of the fact, which became more and more apparent, that the men and women feared us far more than did their horses. At one point we stopped to watch some women gathering peat. Only the wealthy can afford to import coal and there is no wood on the islands, because the fierce winds and rocky soil prevent the growth of trees. The universal fuel for the poor is therefore peat, which seems to have been providentially provided. For a fee of half-a-crown a year, or in some cases a little more, paid to some large landowner, each family may take a winter's supply. Every crofter's cottage has its peat-stack near the door. Peat is simply decayed moss, the most common variety of which is called _Sphagnum_. It is a small plant with {296} thin, scaly leaves. In the light it has a hue of vivid green, changing in the lower and darker places to a sickly yellow, and finally in the lowest and dampest places, where it is thoroughly decayed, to a deep black. This decayed portion is the peat, which, when well dried, burns with a smouldering fire, of greater heat than an equal weight of wood, but with far greater volume of smoke. The peat-banks resemble miniature terraces, each about a foot high. The cutting is done with a curious spade, with long narrow blade, called a _twiscar_ or _tuskar_. The top layer, consisting of coarse dry grasses and the roots of heather and other plants, is of no value. The second layer is a thick, moist, spongy substance of a dark brown or black colour, while the third is still more compressed, and, but for the moisture, looks somewhat like coal. Each spadeful resembles a big, blackened brick, of unusual length. They are laid in rows to dry and finally carried away to the crofter's cottages, generally in baskets. The women swing their heavy loads upon their backs and trudge long distances. Occasionally the peat is loaded upon small sledges drawn by ponies. We saw an old woman, with a very pretty granddaughter, loading their fuel upon one of these sledges, which was drawn by a little 'Sheltie' with furry coat of pure white. The old woman kindly allowed me to take her picture, a favour which two other women declined to grant, because they did n't have on their best clothes! Burgh-Westra, the home of Magnus Troil and his daughters, is purely fictitious. It was supposed to be twenty miles from Sumburgh Head, which would make it seven miles south of Lerwick. We passed numerous voes, as the long arms of the sea are called, any of which {297} would have answered the description of the one upon which the Udaller's residence was situated, and we could have found many sheltered places among the rocks, corresponding to that in which Mordaunt Mertoun secretly met Brenda, or to the beach of white sand beneath a precipice, where Minna offered to pledge her hand to the pirate, Cleveland, by the mysterious 'promise of Odin.' Ten miles below Burgh-Westra was Stourburgh, where Triptolemus Yellowley and Mistress Baby took up their residence. This, too, is fictitious. Sumburgh Head, on the contrary, is very real. It is a rocky promontory, three hundred feet high, at the southern extremity of the Mainland, as the largest of the Shetland Islands is called. Conflicting tides, sweeping around the rugged headland from two oceans, make a dangerous current, called the Roost of Sumburgh, from the Icelandic word, _röst_, signifying a strong tide. It has been a menace to navigation for centuries and the scene of countless shipwrecks. The novelist, quite naturally, therefore, made it the scene of the wreck and rescue of Cleveland. Such a place would appeal strongly to Scott, whose visit to the islands was made on a lighthouse yacht, the business of which was to inspect just such points of danger. He climbed the grassy slope to the top of the head, where he could look down from the loftiest crag upon a wild mass of rocks below, and said it would have been a fine situation in which to compose an ode to the Genius of Sumburgh Head or an elegy upon a cormorant or to have written and spoken madness of any kind. Instead of doing this he gave vent to his enthusiasm by sitting down on the grass and sliding a few hundred feet down to the beach! {298} Whether the performance was voluntary or involuntary, he did not see fit to inform us. A short distance north of Sumburgh Head, and in full view of it, we found the ruins of Jarlshof, the abode of Basil Mertoun and his son. It was a poorly built house of rough, unhewn stone, and even at its best must have been desolate enough. Its age and history are not definitely known. Robert Stewart, a son of James V, who received the earldom of the Orkney and Shetland Islands from Mary Queen of Scots in 1565, may have been the builder. He is known to have dwelt in the house, as did his son, Patrick, who abandoned Jarlshof after building the Castle of Scalloway. When Scott visited Sumburgh he saw nothing in Jarlshof more interesting than a ruined dwelling-house, partly buried by the sand, and once the residence of one of the Orkney earls. But directly beneath his feet, though he knew it not, was an object that would have delighted his antiquarian instincts more than anything else in the islands. He gave great attention to the old Pictish castles or brocks, especially to a small one on the shores of a lake near Lerwick, called by him Cleik-him-in (Clickimin), and later to the larger tower on the island of Mousa. Here at Jarlshof, though the fact was unknown to the inhabitants at the time of Scott's visit, there was once a series of brocks, as old as Mousa or Clickimin, and far more extensive. [Illustration: SUMBURGH HEAD, SHETLAND] This interesting discovery was made in 1897. Mr. John Bruce, the principal landowner in the parish of Kinrossness, upon whose property the ruin of Jarlshof stands, noticing the encroachments of the sea after a storm, began to suspect the existence of masonry beneath {299} the old castle. Two friends who were visiting him saw what seemed to be jutting ends of walls. They threw off their coats and began to excavate, continuing with enthusiasm until they discovered, to their great surprise, evidences of a far more extensive building than they had suspected. Mr. Bruce then engaged labourers and continued the work of excavation for five years. The Castle of Jarlshof was erected on top of an older structure, the existence of which was evidently entirely unknown to the builder. The excavations reveal a circular tower sixty-three feet in diameter, similar in design to the other Shetland brochs, but larger at the base. Its main wall is pierced with a passage three feet wide, evidently leading to a staircase, and it has, within its thickness several chambers. Half of the broch has been swept away by the sea. On the west are portions of three smaller buildings, resembling beehives in form, the largest of which is oval in shape with a length of thirty-four feet and a width of nineteen. Outside of this structure was a great wall, varying from ten to twenty feet thick. It has been uncovered for a distance of seventy feet. Its shape suggests that it may have been part of a great circular wall surrounding the whole group of buildings, of which the central tower was the strongest and most important. Away back in the eighth or ninth century, some Pictish ruler may have constructed this immense fortress at the southern end of the islands, to repel attacks by sea, and to afford a refuge to the inhabitants in case of danger. Had Walter Scott known of its existence, he would have fairly revelled in the discovery, and perhaps the plot of 'The Pirate' might have been different. {300} Standing on the sands at Jarlshof, we could see, toward the northwest, the towering promontory of the Fitful Head, rising nine hundred and twenty-eight feet above the sea. This seemed a little puzzling at first, for Scott places the residence of Norna of the Fitful Head at the extreme northwestern edge of the Mainland. The Pictish burgh, or broch, which Norna is supposed to have inhabited, is on the island of Mousa,[1] off the eastern coast about ten miles north of Sumburgh Head. The Wizard, for a very good reason, set the old tower on the top of a great headland, ten miles to the south-west, and then moved the combination fifty miles to the north. [Illustration: CROSS-SECTION OF THE BROCH OF MOUSA] The dwelling of Norna, therefore, which to the casual reader seems so weird, was a very real thing. It represents {301} one of the earliest forms of architecture, a rude attempt to construct a dwelling of loose stones, without cement or timber, and with very slight knowledge of the art of building. The Norsemen did not come to the Shetland Islands until late in the eighth century and they found many of these brochs already in existence. The most perfect of them all is the one on the island of Mousa. It measures fifty-three feet in diameter at the base and thirty-eight feet at the top. It is forty-two feet high. The interior of what appears, externally, to be a rather large building, is less than twenty feet in diameter owing to the peculiar construction of the walls, which are really double. They are seventeen feet wide at the base. Inside the walls is a kind of rude stair, or inclined plane, winding around the building, and a series of very narrow galleries or chambers. These receive air through openings in the inner wall, but, excepting the door, there is no aperture in the outer wall. This is the real building which Scott made the residence of Norna because of his profound interest in it as a structure of unknown antiquity. But standing in full view, firmly planted on a solid and easily accessible rock, its situation was too commonplace for the requirements of the story. He knew well how to create quite a different impression, by supposing the same kind of house situated in a wild and remote locality, on a ragged piece of rock split off from the main plateau and leaning outward over the sea as though the slightest weight would tumble the whole structure, rock and all, into the ocean. Then, to supply the needed air of mystery, he fancied it occupied by a crazy old witch, claiming sovereignty over the winds and the seas; her servant an ugly, big-mouthed, {302} tongueless dwarf, with malignant features and a horrible, discordant laugh; her favourite pet an uncouth and uncanny trained seal; her companions the unseen demons of the air; and her occupations the utterance of sibylline prophecies and the incantation of weird spells. Clearly, all this would have been impossible on the island of Mousa, so the author simply adjusted the geography of the country to the requirements of his romance. [Illustration: SCALLOWAY, SHETLAND] Although Lerwick is now the only town of importance in the Shetlands, the village of Scalloway, directly across the Mainland on the eastern coast, once held that distinction. It is picturesquely situated on an arm of the sea. Approaching from the east, we paused at the top of the hill to look down upon it. Just below was one of those long narrow voes, so common in these islands. The whale-hunt described in 'The Pirate' came instantly to mind. It was easy to understand how one of these monsters might come in at high tide and find himself stranded at the ebb. At the mouth of this voe and circling around a small bay of its own lies the quaint little village. At the extremity of a point of land between the voe and the bay, rising higher than any of the surrounding buildings, stands the ruined Castle of Scalloway. It was built in 1600 by Patrick Stewart, the Earl of Orkney to whom I have previously referred. He was the 'Pate Stewart' whose name is still a synonym on the islands for all that is cruel and oppressive. He compelled the people to do his bidding. They were obliged to work in the quarries, drag the stone to the town, build the house as best they could without proper appliances, and perform any kind of menial service he might exact. For this they received a penny a day if the Earl felt {303} good-natured. Otherwise they received nothing. If they displeased him they were thrown into dungeons and not infrequently hanged. A huge iron ring near the top of the castle, which was used for this purpose, still bears witness to Pate Stewart's cruelty. He is said to have boasted that the ring seldom lacked a tassel. As mentioned in 'The Pirate,' the inhabitants only remembered one thing to his credit, and that was a law which accorded well with Patrick's own ideas of the rights of people to possess their own property. This was the law, so dear to boyish hearts, of 'finders keepers.' Property washed up from wrecks at sea belonged to those who found it. There was a prevalent superstition that to save a drowning person was unlucky, and no doubt this was one of the results of Pate Stewart's ruling. If a man was not rescued he could claim no rights of property. It was this superstition, so prevalent on the islands, that Scott wove into his plot, making the rescue of Cleveland and the saving of his chest an extremely unlucky occurrence for Mordaunt Mertoun. We left Lerwick at midnight and stood on deck for an hour enjoying the scenery by twilight. The little steamer was loaded to the gunwales with barrels of fish, piled upon the decks in every nook and corner, so that there was scarcely room to stand, making us feel like two very insignificant bits of merchandise in the midst of such a valuable cargo of good salt herring. In the morning we reached the port of Kirkwall, the capital and chief city of the Orkneys. Instead of a long busy quay, lined with hundreds of steam-drifters as at Lerwick, we saw an almost empty harbour and a dock, which, but for the arrival of our {304} own vessel, would have been deserted. The permanent population of the two towns is about the same, Kirkwall having the advantage of the better agricultural facilities of the Orkneys. Its streets are narrow like those in Lerwick. Bridge Street, up which the pirates marched so insolently to meet the city magistrates, and down which they swaggered again, dragging the terrified Triptolemus Yellowley, is one of the narrowest of thoroughfares. It is commonly said that here, 'two wheelbarrows tremble as they meet.' At the end, or 'top' of this street we turned to the right and found ourselves in Albert Street, one striking feature of which is a solitary tree. It was said, enviously, in Lerwick, that the people of Kirkwall were so proud of this wonderful vegetation that they took it in every night and set it out again in the morning. Kirkwall is far more interesting than Lerwick because of its historical associations, most of which centre about the Cathedral of St. Magnus. The ancient building looks almost modern as you approach the wide plaza opening out from Broad Street. Although older than Melrose, Dryburgh, Holyrood, and Dunfermline abbeys, all of which are now in ruins, and in spite of the fact that it is built of the soft red and yellow sandstone, it still stands, complete and proudly erect. When Melrose was rebuilt, through the munificence of Robert Bruce in the fourteenth century, the central portions of St. Magnus had been standing for two centuries. In the sixteenth century, when an English king was battering down the fine old Gothic churches of Scotland, the people of Kirkwall not only protected their cathedral, but witnessed the addition of some of its finest features, notably the west doorway. In earlier times it had a spire, which, judging {305} from the massive columns upon which it rested, must have been an imposing one. The steeple was burned in 1671, and never replaced, except by a stumpy little tower which completely spoils the effect of an otherwise impressive building. The story of the founding of St. Magnus is one of the most interesting of the sagas of the Orkneys. Hakon and Magnus, both grandsons of the great Earl Thorfinn, were joint rulers of the islands. Hakon was ambitious and treacherous; Magnus was virtuous, kind-hearted, and well-beloved. By a wicked conspiracy of Hakon and his associates, the saintly Magnus was murdered in the island of Egilsay in 1115, bravely meeting his death as a noble martyr. Hakon died soon after, and his son Paul inherited the earldom. Another claimant appeared in the person of Rognvald, a nephew of Earl Magnus, now called 'Saint' Magnus, a bold and skilful warrior and a born leader of men. Before proceeding against Paul, Rognvald accepted the advice of his father, who told him not to trust to his own strength, but to make a vow, that if, by the grace of St. Magnus, he should succeed in gaining his inheritance, he would build and dedicate to him a minster in Kirkwall, more magnificent in size and splendour than any other in the North. With the powerful but mysterious assistance of Sweyn Asleifson, 'the last of the Vikings,' who seized Earl Paul and carried him away bodily, Earl Rognvald became the sole ruler of the earldom. He set to work at once to fulfil his vow, and began work upon the cathedral in the year 1137. The massiveness of the building is best realized by looking into the nave from the west doorway. The roof {306} is supported by immense round pillars of red sandstone, seven on each side. On the north and south of these pillars are long aisles, the walls of which are covered with ancient tombstones, taken up from the floor and set on end. In the north aisle is a mort-brod, or death-board, inscribed with the name of a departed Orcadian, whose picture is shown, sitting on the ground in his grave-clothes, a spade over his shoulder, an hour-glass in his lap, and a joyful grin on his face. On the reverse is the following:-- Below Doeth lye If ye wold trye Come read upon This brod The Corps of on Robert Nicholsone whos souls above With God. He being 70 years of age ended This mortal life and 50 of that he Was married to Jeane Davidson His wife. Betwixt them 2 12 children had, whereof 5 left behind the other 7 with him 's In Heaven, who's Joy's shall never end In the south aisle are some curious tombstones, most of them having carved representations of the skull and crossbones. The death's heads are all much enlarged on the left side, the Orcadian idea being that the soul escapes at death through the left ear. {307} The pirate, Cleveland, it will be remembered, was kept a prisoner in these aisles, and was walking about disconsolately when Minna Troil entered. Concealed from the guards at the door by the huge pillars, they planned an escape. Suddenly Norna of the Fitful Head mysteriously appeared, and warning Minna that her plan would lead to certain discovery, sent the young woman away. Norna then led Cleveland through a secret passage out of the church to a place of safety. In the south aisle there is a low arch which formerly led, so it is said, through a secret underground passage to the Bishop's Palace across the street. This fact doubtless suggested to the novelist the means by which Norna might spirit away the captive pirate. Across the street which runs by the south side of the cathedral are the ruins of two large mansions. The Bishop's Palace, which is not mentioned in 'The Pirate,' is chiefly interesting from the fact that Hakon Hakonson, the last of the great sea-kings of Norway, after his splendid fleet had been driven on the rocks by the fury of a great storm and there almost annihilated by the fierce onset of the Scottish warriors, sought refuge within its walls, only to die a few days later. This was in 1263. How much older the palace is, nobody knows. The Earl's Palace, with its grounds, occupies the opposite corner, a narrow street intervening between the two ruins. The enclosure is filled with sycamores and other trees, thus refuting the slander of the envious Shetlanders. In fact, when we came to look for them, we found more than one enclosure in Kirkwall which could boast of fairly good-sized trees. The castle is, or was, a very substantial building, with fine broad {308} stairways and many turrets. Seen from the south, across the bowling-green, it might be taken for the ruin of some large church. It was built by the notorious Patrick Stewart, the same earl who abandoned Jarlshof, and compelled the people to build him a larger castle at Scalloway. By the same methods, he constructed the palace at Kirkwall, forcing the people to quarry the stone and do all his work without pay. An example of his tyranny was related to me by a resident of Kirkwall. According to this tale, the Earl coveted a piece of land adjoining the palace, with which the owner refused to part. Patrick, not accustomed to be thwarted in his plans, was quick to apply the remedy. He secretly caused some casks of brandy to be buried in the desired tract. In due time he began to complain that somebody was stealing his liquor and finally charged his neighbour with the offence. The casks were then triumphantly 'discovered' as proof positive. Inasmuch as the Earl was his own judge, jury, and court of appeals, the poor innocent landowner was quickly condemned, hanged, and his property confiscated. Many a man made over a part of his land to the Earl on demand, having no alternative. We noticed many portholes under the windows, showing that the castle was intended to serve as a fortress as well as a mansion. This was the secret of the Earl's final downfall. The authorities of Edinburgh could go to sleep when the Earl of the far-distant islands merely oppressed his own people, but to fortify a castle against the King was an act of treason. When Patrick Stewart and his son Robert prepared to maintain their independence by fortifying not only the castle but the cathedral, Scotland woke up. The Earl of Caithness {309} was sent against the rebels. Robert, who was in command, withstood the siege for one month, when he was overcome, carried to Edinburgh, and hanged. Patrick took refuge in the Castle of Scalloway and for a time baffled his pursuers by hiding in a secret chamber. He could not resist the consolation of tobacco and took a few surreptitious pulls at his pipe, while the searchers were in the house. The smoke, or the smell, betrayed him. He was speedily taken to Edinburgh, where he paid the penalty on the gallows of a long career of tyranny, cruelty, extortion, confiscation, robbery, and murder. The most interesting room in the Earl's castle is the banqueting-hall, which had a high roof or ceiling and was lighted on the south by three tall but narrow arched windows. On one side is a huge fireplace with two arches, the lower one flat. Supporting this curious combination are two pillars, on which are carved the initials P.E.O., meaning Patrick, Earl of Orkney, the letters being still legible. In this room Cleveland is supposed to have met Jack Bunce upon his return to Kirkwall. The two pirates, after leaving the castle, walked to Wideford Hill, two miles from the town, where the Fair of St. Olla was being held. The annual Lammas Market or Fair at this place is still one of the institutions of Kirkwall, although no longer so important as in the time of 'The Pirate.' If Scott took liberties with the geography of Shetland, he was scrupulously exact in his treatment of the Orkneys. Every movement of the brig of Magnus Troil, as well as those of the pirate ship, can be traced on the map. The latter, it will be recalled, sailed around to {310} Stromness, where she dropped anchor. Two inland lakes, known as the Loch of Stennis and the Loch of Harray, now favourite resorts for anglers, lie northeast of the town. They are separated by a narrow causeway called the Bridge of Brogar. This is the place where the pirates landed their boat on the night of the final tragedy of the story. We found the locality one of the most interesting in the islands. At the entrance of the bridge stands a huge, rough-hewn stone, eighteen feet high, known as the 'watch-stone' or 'sentinel.' This is the largest of the 'stones of Stennis,' a collection of ancient monoliths comparable in Great Britain only to those of Stonehenge. At the farther end of the bridge is the so-called 'Circle of the Sun,' a ring about one hundred and twenty yards in diameter, surrounded by a trench about six feet deep. The stones composing this circle are from eight to sixteen feet high and of irregular shape. One of them is at least five or six feet wide. There were about forty stones originally, but now only fifteen remain standing. A smaller group, known as the 'Circle of the Moon,' but composed of larger stones, stands in a field near the eastern end of the bridge. A horizontal stone, laid on top of these vertical ones, makes a rude table or altar. This may have been a place of druidical sacrifices, if the most prevalent belief is to be accepted, or possibly the work of Scandinavian hands. It was by this table of stone that Minna stood, to meet and bid farewell to her lover, looking like a druidical priestess, or, if the Scandinavian theory be accepted, 'she might have seemed a descended vision of Freya, the spouse of the Thundering Deity, before whom some bold sea-king or champion bent with an awe {311} which no mere mortal terror could have inflicted upon him.' [Illustration: THE STANDING STONES OF STENNIS] The Stone of Odin formerly stood on the east side of this circle. Minna had offered to pledge her faith to Cleveland by the 'promise of Odin' and Norna of the Fitful Head had married her lover by the same rite. This stone differed from the others only in the fact that it had a round hole near the base. Lovers who found it inconvenient to be married by a priest, or who wished to plight their troth by some unusually solemn vow, resorted to this stone, and a promise here given was regarded as sacred and never to be broken. The marriage ceremony was peculiar. The couple first visited the Circle of the Moon, where the woman, in the presence of the man, knelt and prayed to the god Woden, or Odin, that he would enable her to perform all her obligations and promises. They next went to the Circle of the Sun, where the man in like manner made his prayers. Then they returned to the Stone of Odin, where, the man standing on one side and the woman on the other, they joined hands through the hole and took upon themselves the solemn vows of matrimony. Such a marriage could never be broken. Scott visited the Stones of Stennis in 1814. Had he arrived a year later he would not have seen the Stone of Odin, for some irreverent Orcadian broke it up, probably to help build the foundation of his cottage. Leaving, with some reluctance, these relics of a civilization more than a thousand years old, we resumed our journey toward Stromness. The town lies on the slope of a hill, resembling Lerwick in this respect and in the closeness of the houses to the sea. Some of the buildings {312} stand so near the water that parts of the bay look like a miniature Venice. Our motor-car frequently occupied the entire width of the street, sidewalks and all, as we twisted our tortuous course for a mile along the main thoroughfare. From the high ground behind the town, we had a fine view of the sea, and across the sound, the great towering island of Hoy, the highest and most impressive of all the Orkney group. On the western side a long line of precipitous cliffs, rising a thousand feet above the sea, opposes an unbroken front to the full force of the Atlantic. At the western end as we saw it from above Stromness, the rocks form the profile of a man's face, not so stern as that in the Franconia Notch of the White Mountains, but having rather a more genial look. It is said to resemble Sir Walter Scott, a likeness which, I confess, I could see only when I shut my eyes and thought of Chantrey's bust. The island of Hoy plays an important part in 'The Pirate.' It was the original home of Norna when the old witch was a handsome young girl. The Dwarfie Stone, where she met the demon Trolld, and bartered her life's happiness for the power to control the tempests and the waves of the sea, is on the southwest slope of Ward Hill, the highest peak of which rises to a height of over fifteen hundred feet. It is in a desolate peat-bog, two miles from the nearest human habitation. The stone is about thirty feet long and half as wide. Hollowed out of the interior is a chamber, with two beds, one of them a little over five feet long. It is difficult to conceive why any human being should have taken the trouble to cut out the rock for a hermitage or place of refuge, or why any one should seek so desolate an abode. {313} Tradition therefore affirmed that the rock was fashioned by spirit hands and was the dwelling of the elfin dwarf, Trolld. It was to this island that Norna conducted Mordaunt after he had received a wound at the hands of Cleveland. It was at Stromness that Scott, in 1814, made the acquaintance of Bessie Millie, an aged dame who made her living by selling favourable winds to mariners at the reasonable price of sixpence each. The touch of insanity, and the strong influence she possessed over the natives of the island, who feared her power, were strongly suggestive of Norna. This old sibyl related to Scott the story of John Gow, whose boyhood was spent in Stromness. This daring individual had gone to sea at an early age and returned to the home of his youth, a pirate, commanding a former English galley of two hundred tons which he had captured and renamed the 'Revenge.' He boldly came ashore and mingled with the people, giving dancing-parties in the village of Stromness. Before his real character was known he became engaged to a young woman, and the two plighted their troth at the Stone of Odin. The houses of his former neighbours were plundered and many acts of insolence and violence committed. At length, through the exertions of a former schoolmate, Gow was captured with his entire crew and speedily executed at London. The young woman journeyed to London, too, for the purpose of touching her former lover's dead body. In that way only, according to the superstition of her country, could she obtain a release from her vow and avoid a visit from the pirate's ghost, in case she should ever marry. Gow's brief career furnished an excellent model for Cleveland, {314} though the author endowed his 'pirate' with some very commendable qualities which the prototype probably did not possess. Bessie Millie, the old hag of Stromness, needed, in addition to her own eccentricities, only a few touches of the gipsy nature, to make her a good 'original' for Norna. A local preacher in the parish of Tingwall, whom Scott met on his visit to Shetland, is said to have suggested Triptolemus Yellowley. Three or four families, in whose homes the novelist was a welcome visitor, have laid claim to the honour of supplying the 'originals' of Minna and Brenda Troil. These two delightful characters, however, were no doubt intended merely to embody the ideal of perfect sisterly affection, and external resemblances to real people, though such might easily be fancied, were probably far from the author's purpose. [Illustration: STROMNESS, ORKNEY] For the rest, the great charm of 'The Pirate' lies in the expression of the novelist's enthusiasm for the fresh and fascinating scenery of a wild country, where strange weird tales are wafted on every breeze, where the quaint customs of past ages are still retained, where Nature reveals herself in a constant succession of new and ever captivating forms, where the rush of the wind and the roar of the sea impart fresh joys to the senses and fill one's soul with renewed veneration for the Power that rules the elements. As we sailed away for Aberdeen, it was with very much the same feeling which Scott expressed at the close of his diary of the vacation of 1814.[2] He said he had taken {315} as much pleasure in the excursion as in any six weeks of his life. 'The Pirate' was not written until seven years later, but it carries as much freshness and enthusiasm as though it had been composed on the return voyage. [1] CROSS-SECTION OF THE BROCH OF MOUSA. _a, a._ Rooms in Circular Wall, connected by a rude spiral stair. _b, b._ Windows opening into inner court. [2] The diary, containing a full account of the visit of 1814, in a lighthouse yacht, to the Shetland and Orkney Islands, the Hebrides, and the northern coasts of Scotland and Ireland, is printed in full in Lockhart's _Life of Scott_. {316} CHAPTER XXII THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL Hitherto our exploration of the Scott country had revealed a never-ending succession of ruined castles, palaces, and abbeys; of picturesque rivers, lakes, cataracts, and quiet pools; of seashores where thunderous waves dashed against precipitous cliffs; of quaint villages and queer-looking dwelling-houses; of weird caverns and strange monuments suggesting the superstitions and fantasies of bygone ages; of pleasant meadows, wild moors, rounded hilltops, and rugged mountains; of a thousand tangible objects of interest which had in some way suggested to Sir Walter the theme for a poem or story. But when we reached Scott's London, the camera, which had faithfully recorded all the other scenes, refused to perform its function. The tangibleness of the subjects had ceased. My lenses have excellent physical eyes but no historical insight. They insist upon seeing things as they are and will not record them as they once existed. The London of Nigel Olifaunt has completely disappeared and in its place a new London has arisen. To photograph the city of to-day as the scenes of Nigel's adventures, would be like painting the 'Purchase of Manhattan Island from the Indians' with a background of fifty-story 'sky-scrapers.' From such a task my faithful camera shrank, and I was obliged to lay it aside, to turn over, for several days, the pages of {317} some huge piles of books on Old London in the British Museum. Lockhart, who places 'The Fortunes of Nigel' in the first class of Scott's romances, says that his historical portrait of King James I 'stands forth preëminent and almost alone.' This, indeed, is the whole object of the book,--to picture the London of King James and the personal peculiarities of that monarch. Scott was thoroughly saturated--so to speak--with the history and literature of that period, and especially with the dramas of Ben Jonson and his contemporaries; and this enabled him to picture the manners of the time almost as if they were within his personal recollection. It is an amusing portrait of a pompous, strutting, and absurd monarch who yet possessed enough learning, as well as ready wit, to gain the title of 'the wisest fool in Christendom.' Through his famous tutor at Stirling Castle, George Buchanan, who freely boxed the royal ears and administered spankings the same as to other boys, the King had early acquired a certain taste for learning. He evinced a fondness for the classics and yearned to become a poet. He wrote in verse a paraphrase of the Revelation of St. John and a version of the Psalms, besides prose disquisitions on every conceivable subject. His conversation, as described by Scott, was a curious compound of Latin, Greek, English, and the broad Scotch dialect. His tastes, as well as character, were suggested by the appearance of a table in the palace, which, says the novelist, 'was loaded with huge folios, amongst which lay light books of jest and ribaldry; and, amongst notes of unmercifully long orations, and essays on kingcraft, were mingled miserable roundels {318} and ballads by the Royal 'Prentice, as he styled himself, in the art of poetry, and schemes for the general pacification of Europe, with a list of the names of the King's hounds, and remedies against canine madness.' A man of medium height and somewhat corpulent, James managed to make his figure seem absurdly fat and clumsy, by having his green velvet dress quilted, so as to be dagger-proof, for he was both timid and cowardly. The ungainly protuberance thus artificially acquired was accentuated by a pair of weak legs, which caused him to roll about rather than walk, and to lean on other men's shoulders when standing. 'He was fond of his dignity while he was perpetually degrading it by undue familiarity; capable of much public labour, yet often neglecting it for the meanest amusement; a wit, though a pedant; and a scholar, though fond of the conversation of the ignorant and uneducated.' [Illustration: Sketch Map of London] Contrasting strongly with this weak and ludicrous character, Scott introduced the sterling qualities of a noble Scotchman, George Heriot, to whom Edinburgh is indebted for one of her most splendid benevolent institutions, Heriot's Hospital, where for nearly three centuries the poor fatherless boys of the city have been transformed into eminent and useful citizens, honoured and respected in many parts of the world. George Heriot, nicknamed by the King 'Jingling Geordie,' was the son of an Edinburgh goldsmith, to whose business he succeeded. At thirty-six years of age he had the good fortune to be appointed goldsmith to Queen Anne, and shortly after, goldsmith and jeweller to her husband, then James VI of Scotland. On his accession to the English throne as James I, in 1603, Heriot followed the King {319} to London. In those times, and until the eighteenth century, goldsmiths commonly acted as bankers. Heriot made full use of his unusual opportunity and laid the foundation of a large fortune. Disheartened by the loss of his young and beautiful wife, who died at the age of twenty-one, Heriot made a will leaving his entire property, amounting to £23,625, for the establishment of the hospital. His picture is thus described in a quotation copied by Scott in one of his notes: 'His fair hair, which overshades the thoughtful brow and calm, calculating eye, with the cast of humour on the lower part of the countenance, are all indicative of the genuine Scottish character, and well distinguish a person fitted to move steadily and wisely through the world, with a strength of resolution to ensure success and a disposition to enjoy it.' The weakness of James is still further accentuated in the novel by the introduction of his imperious favourite, George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham, whom the King called 'Steenie,' from his fancied resemblance to the portrait of the martyr, Stephen, as painted by the Italian artists. 'James endured his domination rather from habit, timidity, and a dread of encountering his stormy passions, than from any heartfelt continuation of regard towards him.' The King's favour, nevertheless, made Buckingham the richest nobleman in England (with possibly a single exception) and the virtual ruler of the kingdom. The constant companion of the Duke was Baby Charles, as James insisted upon calling his son, afterward King Charles I, for whose ruin and death on the scaffold James was himself, all unconsciously, rapidly paving the way. David Ramsay, the whimsical {320} and absent-minded watchmaker, who kept shop in Fleet Street, near Temple Bar, was a real character, who held the post of 'watchmaker and horologer' to James I. His most famous performance was a search for hidden treasure in the cloister of Westminster Abbey, by the use of Mosaic rods, or divining rods, which, according to the current account, failed solely because of the presence of too many people. The irreverent laughter of these persons caused a fierce wind to spring up so suddenly that 'the demons had to be dismissed' for fear the church would fall in on them. These are the real characters of the story. To identify the scenes a good map of Old London, will accomplish more than a personal visit. Such a map need only follow the windings of the Thames, which for centuries was the great silent highway of London,--a distinction which it did not lose until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Over the highway passed the royal barge of Elizabeth, as described in 'Kenilworth,' and it was by this same method of travelling that George Heriot conducted his young friend, Nigel, to the presence of the King at Whitehall. For the streets of the city were narrow and crowded, and rioting, as the result of debauchery and licentiousness, was not infrequent, so that few cared to ride on horseback, and carriages, except for the high nobility, were entirely unknown. So the Thames was the one great artery through which flowed both the business and social life of the city. When King George and Queen Mary, at the recent coronation, passing through the Admiralty Arch in Trafalgar Square, turned into Whitehall on their way to Westminster Abbey, their route lay between great {321} rows of government buildings, lined with thousands of cheering subjects. Had conditions remained as they were in King James's time, this part of the triumphal procession would have been entirely within the limits of their own royal palace. Whitehall Palace, originally built in 1240, was for three centuries called York House, or York Place, taking its name from the fact that it was the London residence of the Archbishop of York. Under Cardinal Wolsey it was rebuilt and refurnished in a style of magnificence excelling anything ever before known in England and equal in splendour to the best in the palaces of the kings. With the fall of Wolsey in 1529 the mansion became the property of King Henry VIII, who changed the name to Whitehall, and proceeded to enlarge and improve both the palace and the grounds. A plan published in 1680 shows that the buildings, with their courtyards and areas, then covered twenty-three acres. It included a cock-pit and a tennis-court, on the site of the present Treasury buildings, and the Horse-Guards Parade was then a tilt-yard. These arrangements sufficiently suggest some of the favourite amusements of royalty. Henry VIII took great delight in cock-fighting and James I amused himself with it regularly twice a week. Queen Elizabeth found pleasure in tournaments and pageants, and it is recorded that in the sixty-seventh year of her age she 'commanded the bear, the bull, and the ape to be bayted in the Tilt-yard.'[1] King James I found the palace in bad repair and determined to rebuild it on a vast and magnificent scale. {322} Inigo Jones, one of the most famous architects of his time, was employed and made plans for a building, which, if completed, would have covered an area of twenty-four acres. Judging from drawings now in the British Museum, it seems a pity that this admirable project was never fully executed. Only the banqueting-hall was finished, and this still remains as the sole survivor of the Palace of Whitehall. Its chief historical interest lies in the fact that, from one of its windows, Charles I stepped out upon the scaffold where he was beheaded. If we were to follow ancient custom and use the Thames for our highway, as did two hundred peers and peeresses at the late coronation, we should now row down the river and land at Charing Cross Pier, where we should find the remnant of the sumptuous palace built by 'Steenie,' the Duke of Buckingham. This is the York Water Gate, formerly the entrance to the Duke's mansion from the Thames, but now high above the water, overlooking the garden of the Victoria Embankment. Continuing down the river, we should stop at Temple Pier, and visit the Temple Gardens, where Nigel walked in despair, after his encounter with Lord Dalgarno in St. James's Park, and where, it will be remembered, he fell in with the friendly Templar, Reginald Lowestoffe. The Temple property was granted in 1609 by James I to the benchers of the Inner and Middle Temple for the education of students and professors of the law. Oliver Goldsmith lived in Middle Temple Lane, and in the same house, Sir William Blackstone, the great English jurist, and William Makepeace Thackeray, also had chambers. {323} Dr. Johnson lived in Inner Temple Lane, as did Charles Lamb, who was born within the Temple. Coming out into Fleet Street, we should stand before the figure of a griffin on a high pedestal, which marks the site of Temple Bar. In Scott's time it was an arch crossing the street, and in the time of King James, merely a barricade of posts and chains. When the coronation procession passed this point, King George V, according to ancient custom, paused to receive permission from the Lord Mayor to enter the City of London. The civic sword was presented to the King and immediately returned to the Lord Mayor, after which the procession resumed its march. Within Temple Bar and on the north side of Fleet Street, between Fetter Lane and Chancery Lane, is St. Dunstan's Church, built in 1832 on the site of an older church building. A few yards to the eastward, according to Scott, was the shop of David Ramsay, the watch-maker, before which the two 'stout-bodied and strong-voiced' apprentices kept up the shouts of 'What d'ye lack? what d' ye lack?'--very much after the fashion of a modern 'barker.' This was the opening scene of the novel, though not suggested in the slightest by the Fleet Street of to-day. On the opposite side a narrow lane, called Bouverie Street, leads down toward the river along the eastern boundary of The Temple, into 'Whitefriars,' or Alsatia, where Nigel was compelled to take refuge for a time in the house of the old miser, Trapbois. The 'Friars of the Blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel,' otherwise known as the 'White Friars,' established their London house in 1241, between Fleet Street and the Thames, on land {324} granted by Edward I. This carried with it the privileges of sanctuary or immunity from arrest, which were allowed to the inhabitants long after the dissolution of the religious houses. Indeed, before the suppression of the monastery, the persons of bad repute, who had flocked to the district in great numbers, were wont to make so much disturbance with their continual clamours and outcries, that the friars complained that they could not conduct divine service. The privilege was confirmed by James I, and in his time, as a consequence, 'Alsatia,' as the district came to be called, was one of the worst quarters in London. It was the common habitation of thieves, gamblers, swindlers, murderers, bullies, and drunken, dissipated reprobates of both sexes. Its atmosphere, thick with the fogs of the river, fairly reeked with the smell of alehouses of the lowest order, which outnumbered all the other houses. The shouts of rioters, the profane songs and boisterous laughter of the revellers, mingled with the wailing of children and the screaming of women. The men were 'shaggy, uncombed ruffians whose enormous mustaches were turned back over their ears,' and they swaggered through the dirty streets, quarrelling, brawling, fighting, swearing, and 'smoking like moving volcanoes.' They waged a ceaseless warfare against their proud and noisy, but not so disreputable, neighbours of The Temple. Coming back to our imaginary trip by river (for we really visited these sites either on foot or by taxi-cab), we continue down the river, passing under Blackfriars Bridge, and stop for a moment at Paul's Wharf, near where Nigel found quarters in the house of John Christie, the honest ship-chandler. Journeying {325} onward, we pass under London Bridge, which in James's time was the only means of crossing the river, other than by boat. It was then overloaded with a great weight of huge buildings, many stories high, under which passed a narrow roadway. At the southern entrance was a gate, the top of which was decorated with the heads of traitors. All the buildings were finally cleared away in 1757 and 1758. Passing under London Bridge we soon come to the Tower of London, which the unfortunate Nigel entered through the Traitor's Gate. From the time of William the Conqueror, by whom its foundations were begun, until the reign of Charles II, the Tower of London was used as a palace by the kings of England. It has been said that the 'strong monarchs employed the Tower as a prison, the weak ones as a fortress.' It was as a prison that the Tower achieved its unenviable fame in history as London's lasting shame; With many a foul and midnight murder fed. In its dark precincts many of the noblest of England's men and women found themselves prisoners, the majority of them perishing upon the block. Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, wives of Henry VIII; Lady Jane Grey and her husband Guildford Dudley; the father[2] and the grandfather[3] of Dudley; and Sir Walter Raleigh were among the most famous of these victims. Nigel was confined in the Beauchamp Tower, where many distinguished persons were imprisoned. The inscriptions to which Scott refers may still be seen, including that {326} of Lady Jane Grey, though it is probable that this was written by her husband or by his brother, who is supposed to have carved the device of the bear and ragged staff, 'the emblem of the proud Dudleys,' which is an elaborate piece of sculpture on the right of the fireplace. To complete our survey of the scenery of 'The Fortunes of Nigel,' we have to continue our journey down the Thames until we land in Greenwich Hospital and the Royal Naval College, which occupy the site of the old royal palace, formerly called Placentia or Pleasaunce. It was a favourite royal palace as early as 1300, though it passed into the hands of the nobility and came back to the Crown in 1433 on the death of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. It was the birthplace of King Henry VIII and of Mary and Elizabeth. The building was enlarged by Henry VIII, James I, and Charles I. Charles II caused it to be pulled down, intending to carry out some ambitious plan, but succeeded in erecting only the building which is now the west wing of the hospital. Back of the palace is an extensive park of one hundred and ninety acres. This is where Nigel unexpectedly encountered the King, at the very climax of a stag-hunt, frightening him nearly to death; and here he was unceremoniously arrested and hurried off to the Tower. The park still has herds of deer, though they are no longer hunted, and a row of fine old chestnuts, originally planted by command of Charles II, who laid out the enclosure. In the centre is a hill, surmounted by the famous Royal Greenwich Observatory, from whose meridian longitude is reckoned and whose clock determines the standard of time for all England. Just as 'The Heart of Midlothian' had produced {327} a vivid picture of life in Edinburgh during the reign of George II, so 'The Fortunes of Nigel' reproduced the life of London in the time of King James. For this brilliant study, not only of the curious monarch, but of the strange manners and customs as well as the lawlessness of the city, which the King's folly did so much to create, the novel has been generally accorded a very high rank among Scott's productions. [1] Quoted from Sydney's 'State Papers,' in _The Old Royal Palace of Whitehall_, by Edgar Sheppard, D.D. [2] John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. [3] Edmund Dudley, the notorious agent of King Henry VII. {328} CHAPTER XXIII PEVERIL OF THE PEAK 'Old Peveril' was one of the pet nicknames with which Scott was dubbed by some of his young legal friends in Parliament House, and he carried the sobriquet for the remainder of his life, taking great delight in it. He did not, however, take much pleasure from the composition of the novel, finding it a tiresome task from which he could only find relief by planning its successor. It marks the beginning of a malady which ultimately proved fatal. Scott concealed the symptoms from his family, but confided to a friend that he feared Peveril 'will smell of the apoplexy.' It proved a heavy undertaking, covering a period of twenty years of exciting history and three distinct, but widely differing, localities, namely, Derbyshire, the Isle of Man, and London in the time of Charles II. In the high Peak country of Derbyshire, about fifteen miles west of Sheffield, lies the village of Castleton, nestling snugly at the foot of a somewhat precipitous hill. Away back in the time of William the Conqueror, a son of that monarch received a grant of large estates in Derbyshire, and selected the very summit of this steep and almost inaccessible rock as the site of his castle. His name was William Peveril and the bit of a ruin which still remains, high in the air above the village, is called Peveril Castle. We reached it after a very hard climb, by a steep path running zigzag across the face of a long {329} grassy slope. It was scarcely worth the effort, for the 'castle' is now only a small square tower, of no interest whatever, except from the fact that it gave the name to one of the Waverley Novels. The domain of this William Peveril seems to have extended far to the south of Castleton, and included in it was the site of Haddon Hall, a fine mediæval mansion, picturesquely situated on the river Wye, between Bakewell and Rowsley, and still in wonderfully good repair. The Peverils held the property for about a century, when they were deprived of the lands by King Henry II. In 1195, Haddon came into the possession of the Vernon family, who continued to reside there for nearly four centuries. The last of the name was Sir George Vernon, who became celebrated as the 'King of the Peak.' His large possessions passed into the hands of his youngest daughter, Dorothy, whose elopement and marriage with John Manners, youngest son of the Earl of Rutland, threw about the old mansion that atmosphere of poetry and romance which has ever since been associated with it. To me, the most pleasing part of the old hall is the terrace and lawn, back of the house. A flight of broad stairs, with stone balustrades, leads to Dorothy Vernon's Walk, which is shaded by the thick foliage of oaks, limes, sycamores, and other forest trees, for which the park was once famous. Grassy mounds mark the boundaries of the lawn, and the castle walls, with their wide windows and luxurious mantle of deep green ivy, add a delightful charm to the picture. This is further enhanced by the romantic associations of the place. Traditions say that John Manners, who, for some reason, was forbidden the opportunity to {330} visit the fair Dorothy openly, hovered about these terraces disguised as a forester, seeking brief interviews in secret. On the night of a ball in celebration of her sister's wedding, Dorothy slipped into the garden, and passing through the terrace made her way across the Wye over a quaint little bridge, built just large enough for a single pack-horse, and now known as the 'Pack-Horse Bridge.' On the other side, John waited with horses, and the two rode away to be married. Whatever may have been the objection to the marriage, events soon adjusted the affair and Dorothy Vernon became the sole owner of the mansion. It has remained ever since in the possession of the Manners family, the Earls and Dukes of Rutland. In his description of Martindale Castle, the seat of Sir Geoffrey Peveril, Scott doubtless had in mind, to some extent at least, this more pretentious mansion on the original property of the Peverils, rather than the uninteresting tower at Castleton. He refers to Haddon Hall in one of his notes as having suggested a certain arrangement of rooms, and in his account of Lady Peveril's dinner to the Cavaliers and Roundheads, in honour of the restoration of King Charles II, he makes use of two large dining-rooms, which Haddon Hall could readily supply, but which might be difficult to find in any ordinary mansion of the period. [Illustration: THE PACK-HORSE BRIDGE, HADDON HALL] Lady Peveril, it will be remembered, in spite of the 'good fellowship' and 'reconciliation' which the banquet was to celebrate, dared not permit the rival factions to dine together, so she adopted the unique expedient of placing the jovial Cavaliers in the hall, while the strict Puritans occupied the large parlour. The great hall of {331} Haddon is about thirty-five feet long and twenty-five feet wide. At one end is an ancient table, many centuries old, and at the other is a minstrel's gallery, with carved panellings and ornamented by stag's heads. A great open fireplace gives a suggestion of good cheer, even to the bare room. Back of this is another large dining-room on the oaken walls of which are some fine old carvings. It also has a large open fireplace, above which is the motto _Drede God and Honor the Kyng._ The room was formerly larger than now and may have been in the author's mind as the scene of the Puritan part of the banquet. Haddon Hall, however, although it doubtless furnished some few suggestions, must not be taken as an 'original' of Martindale Castle. The novelist never felt the necessity of an exact model, but freely used the places with which he was familiar for such suggestions as they might chance to furnish. In his later work he often described localities which he had never visited, frequently doing so with an exactness suggesting the most intimate personal knowledge. This was true of the Isle of Man, which Scott had never seen, but which he describes in 'Peveril of the Peak' with great accuracy, relying for his information upon Waldron's 'Description of the Isle of Man,' published in 1731. After an interval of several years following the events in Derbyshire, Julian Peveril appears as a visitor at Castle Rushen, in the southern end of the Isle of Man. Tradition says that this ancient castle was founded in the tenth century by Guttred, the son of a Norwegian {332} chief named Orry, who took possession and with his sons and successors reigned for many years as kings of the Isle of Man. Later the Earls of Derby ruled as monarchs of the island and Castle Rushen was their royal residence. The traditional castle of the Norwegians was replaced in the thirteenth century by a strong fortress of limestone. This was partly destroyed by Robert Bruce in 1313 and remained in ruins for three centuries. It was then rebuilt by the Earls of Derby in its present form. The central keep is a strong tower with walls twenty-two feet thick at the base and about seventy feet high. It is surrounded by an embattled wall twenty-five feet high and nine feet thick. On the tower facing the market square is a clock presented in 1597 by Queen Elizabeth. In 1627, James Stanley, celebrated as 'the great Earl of Derby,' became lord of the island. This nobleman was executed in 1651, charged with the crime of assisting Charles II before the battle of Worcester. During his absence in England the Castle Rushen was heroically defended by his wife, the brave Charlotte de la Tremouille, Countess of Derby. William Christian, popularly known as William Dhône, or 'the fair-haired William,' had been entrusted by the Earl with the care of his wife and children. Whatever may have been his motive, the Receiver-General, by which title Christian was known, surrendered the island without resistance, on the appearance of the Parliamentary army, and the Countess was imprisoned in the castle. After the Restoration of Charles II, the Countess accused Christian of treachery to herself and brought about his execution in 1662. {333} These were the main facts which, coming to the novelist's attention through his brother, Thomas Scott, who for several seasons resided in the Isle of Man, attracted his fancy and suggested the writing of 'Peveril of the Peak.' Peel Castle, to which the action of the story is soon transferred, stands on a rocky islet off the western coast of the island. It was once a vast ecclesiastical establishment and now contains the ruins of two churches, two chapels, two prisons, and two palaces. Of these the best preserved and most interesting is the Cathedral of St. Germain, a cruciform building, some parts of which were built in the thirteenth century. In a crypt below was the ecclesiastical prison where many remarkable captives were confined, the most notable of whom was Eleanor Cobham, wife of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who was accused of witchcraft and of devising a wicked plot to kill the King and place her husband upon the throne. Higher up on the rock are the remains of St. Patrick's Church, in the walls of which are some good examples of the 'herring-bone' masonry indicating great antiquity. The walls are thought by antiquarians to date back to the fifth century. Behind this is the remarkable round tower, about fifty feet high, which Mr. Hall Caine has introduced in 'The Christian.' The custodian, when he learned of our interest in Sir Walter Scott, could scarcely restrain his anxiety to show us Fenella's Tower. This is a bit of the surrounding wall, containing a small square turret. Beneath is a narrow stairway, forming a sally-port, through which entrance could be gained to a space between two {334} parallel outside walls. In time of siege, soldiers could go out and fire at the enemy from this place of concealment through openings in the walls. If hard-pressed they could retire to the tower and pour scalding water or hot lead upon an attacking body. In Scott's tale, Julian Peveril, seeking to leave the castle by this stair, is intercepted by Fenella, who is anxious to prevent his departure. Finally eluding her grasp, he hastens down the stair only to be confronted again by the deaf-and-dumb maiden, who has accomplished her purpose by leaping over the parapet. We gazed down from the walls upon a ledge of rocks at least fifteen feet below and concluded that, for a little girl, this was a pretty big leap! [Illustration: THE SAXON TOWER, ISLE OF MAN] The keep and guard-house near the entrance was the scene of the Manx legend of the Moddey Dhoo, a large black spaniel with shaggy hair, which haunted Peel Castle. This dog is referred to in 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel': For he was speechless, ghastly, wan, Like him of whom the story ran Who spoke the spectre-hound in Man. The Moddey Dhoo was the terror of all the soldiers on the island, who believed he was an evil spirit, only awaiting an opportunity to do them harm. At length, a drunken soldier declared he would find out whether the animal were dog or devil. He departed bravely, with much noise and boasting, but none dared follow. When he returned the fellow was sober and silent. He never spoke again, but three days later died in agony. The remaining scenery of 'Peveril of the Peak' is London in the time of Charles II. The 'dark and shadowy' city had now attracted nearly all the personages of {335} the story. In St. James's Park, adjoining the Palace of Whitehall, Fenella danced with wondrous grace and agility before the King. As in 'The Fortunes of Nigel,' the Thames is the great highway of traffic, and Julian Peveril is carried by coach to the river from old Newgate Prison, and thence by boat to the Tower, which, like Nigel, he enters through the Traitor's Gate. The Savoy, a dilapidated old pile, where Julian unexpectedly meets Fenella, was once a great palace. It was built by Simon de Montfort, the great Earl of Leicester, in 1245. In the following century it was almost demolished by a mob, but in 1509 King Henry VII restored and rebuilt the palace and converted it into a hospital. Half a century later, Queen Mary refounded and reëndowed the institution. In the time of the story the building was probably not so antiquated and ruinous as Scott describes it. Charles II, after the Restoration, used it as the meeting-place of the Savoy conference for the revision of the Liturgy. In Scott's time it was ruinous enough and since then has entirely disappeared. Westminster Hall, where the trial of the Peverils was held, is now the vestibule of the Houses of Parliament. It was originally built by William Rufus, son of the Conqueror, in 1097, but afterward destroyed by fire and rebuilt. In it some of the earliest English Parliaments were held and it has been the scene of many coronation festivals. The novel gives a graphic picture of the gay, dissipated, and scandalous court of Charles II, and an excellent portrait of that selfish, indolent, and sensual, but witty and good-natured monarch. His chief favourite, George Villiers, the second Duke of Buckingham, is painted in no more flattering colours. He was a statesman of fickle {336} character who could not long be trusted by any one. He was a writer of verses, farces, and comedies, a musician, and a man of great talent and accomplishments; but he was a profligate, absolutely insincere and without principle. 'Peveril of the Peak' cannot be considered one of Scott's best novels. It has never been popular. Scott himself tired of it, and even Lockhart can find little to say in its praise. Lady Louisa Stuart, who was one of Scott's most valued friends, summarized it all, at the end of a good-natured criticism, with the remark: 'However, in all this I recognize the old habit of a friend of mine, growing tired before any of his readers, huddling up a conclusion anyhow, and so kicking the book out of his way; which is a provoking trick, though one must bear it rather than not _have_ his book, with all its faults on its head. The best amends he can make is to give us another as soon as may be.' {337} CHAPTER XXIV QUENTIN DURWARD The true 'Scott Country' is limited strictly to Scotland, England, and Wales. So long as he remained upon the soil of his own native kingdom, Sir Walter wrote of what he had seen and for the most part traversed only familiar ground. In Scotland, he was equally at home in the Lowlands or Highlands. He visited England often enough to know well the inspiring mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland, the hills and valleys of Northumberland, the broad expanse of Yorkshire, with its delightful scenery and many historical associations, the moorlands of Derby, the charming roads and pleasant villages of Nottingham, Leicester, Warwick, and Oxford, and the highways and by-ways of the ever-fascinating London. With the history, the legends and the poetry of his own country he was as familiar as a child would be with the environment of his own home. They were a part of the mental equipment that had been developing steadily from the time he was three years old. When he stepped out of this familiar region, for the first time, there came a remarkable change, and in January, 1823, when he began the composition of 'Quentin Durward,' we find him floundering about in a sea of gazetteers, atlases, histories, and geographies. On the 23d of that month he wrote to Constable:--'It is a vile place, this village of Plessis les Tours, that can baffle {338} both you and me. It is a place famous in history ... yet I have not found it in any map, provincial or general, which I have consulted.... Instead of description holding the place of sense, I must try to make such sense as I can find, hold the place of description.' Fortunately he had the assistance of his friend Skene, who about this time returned from a tour in France, and placed at the disposal of the author a great variety of sketches of landscapes and ancient buildings, besides a journal full of accurate notes; for the novelist's artist-friend knew from long companionship exactly what would be most appreciated. Though a stranger in a strange land, Scott was not entirely alone, for he took with him into the unknown country three good Scotchmen, namely, Quentin Durward, whom he made an archer in the Scots Guard of King Louis XI; the picturesque and interesting Le Balafré, Quentin's uncle, already a guardsman; and Lord Crawford, the aged commander of the guard, a Scotch nobleman, whose great ability and experience had won the esteem and confidence even of the suspicious King. This was surely a stroke of genius. The old Scotch friends of the novelist could not help following with interest the thrilling adventures of their countrymen in a foreign land, while, on the other hand, the tale raised up a host of new admirers in France and throughout the Continent. The Frenchmen saw with amazement King Louis XI and Charles the Bold suddenly come to life and, under the skilful direction of the Scottish Wizard, walk about again amidst some of the most stirring scenes of European history. Not in all their literature had the French people seen such striking {339} portraiture of these famous men nor such vivid pictures of the ancient manners of their own people. A line, nearly straight, drawn diagonally across the map of France and Belgium, representing a distance of perhaps three hundred and fifty miles, will fairly suggest the geography of 'Quentin Durward.' Its southwestern extremity would be Tours, about one hundred and forty-five miles from Paris. It would pass through Péronne, in the north of France directly east of Amiens; then dropping slightly to the south, and across the border of Belgium would reach its northeastern termination in the city of Liège. The town of Tours was much favoured in the fifteenth century by the frequent visits of Charles VII, Louis XI, and Charles VIII, in consequence of which it then reached its highest state of prosperity. It was long famed for its silk industry, founded by Louis XI. Two miles west of the town, on a low marshy plain between the rivers Loire and Cher, and close by a hamlet of a few scattered cottages, is the famous Castle of Plessis les Tours, where the action of the story begins. Only a fragment of the original structure now remains, as part of a modern château. The old castle looked more like a prison than a king's palace, and seemed well adapted to be the den of the 'universal spider,' as Louis came to be called, from which he could weave his dangerous web in every direction and ensnare the feet of those whom he selected for his prey. It was in this dismal place that Louis XI shut himself in the last days of his life, weak from illness and pain and almost insane from distrust. Here he died, in 1483, to the great joy of the kingdom. {340} Every year he had added new walls and ditches to his fortress. The towers were covered with iron as a protection against arrows. Eighteen hundred heavy planks bristling with nails were placed outside the ditches to impede the approach of cavalry. Four hundred crossbowmen manned the towers and the villainous Tristan l'Hermite had full authority to seize and hang any innocent stranger whom he might choose to suspect. As I write, I have before me two pictures:--one a contemporary print of the ancient castle, the other a portrait of the King. The former, a group of low, irregular buildings, with slanting roofs and small barred windows, having a chapel attached to one end, contains nothing whatever to suggest a royal palace. The latter shows the face of a sly, cunning, unscrupulous plotter, full of cruelty, baseness, vulgarity, and hypocrisy, yet terribly in earnest and revealing the features that mark an irresistible will. I can almost fancy a resemblance between the two pictures. The mean unpretentiousness of the castle and its lack of symmetry suggest the unprepossessing appearance of the King, whose whole aspect was vulgar, his clothing purposely plain and often untidy and his manners completely devoid of dignity and common courtesy. Its numerous defences, including turrets, battlements, ditches, and drawbridges, suggest the constant fear of treachery in which the King lived, never daring to regard his most intimate companions with aught but jealous suspicion. The real strength of the fortress, in spite of its ugliness and apparent insignificance are typical of the tremendous power of this monarch, who pursued his purposes without regard to truth, decency, honour, or human rights, reducing the {341} people to a state of abject poverty and misery, yet enlarging the borders of France to nearly their present extent, reorganizing the army, centralizing the government, and laying the foundations of the nation in its modern form. One might almost indulge the whimsical notion that the little chapel to which I have referred, pointing heavenward with an attenuated spire of absurdly slender proportions, symbolizes the King's own feeble efforts to point in the same direction. His piety was manifested by a dozen 'paltry figures of saints stamped in lead' which he wore on the band of his hat. He endeavoured to atone for the most atrocious acts of selfishness and cruelty by gifts of money and outward penance, continuing his wickedness all the while, but apologizing for it in his prayers to the saints. But the crowning act of hypocritical piety, as well as the most absurd, was his attempt to insure his ultimate salvation by the unique expedient of creating the Virgin Mary a countess and an honorary colonel of his guards. This was the strange, but intensely interesting, character, whom Scott, making free use of the 'Memoirs of Philippe de Comines,' one of the King's most intimate councillors, succeeded in portraying so vividly that the tale of which he is the real hero has won universal recognition as a novel of genuine historical value. A few miles southeast of Tours is the ruin of a castle still more terrible in its suggestiveness than even Plessis, for here Louis XI perpetrated deeds of secret cruelty, which he shrank from committing within the walls of his own palace. It is the Castle of Loches, for many years a royal residence. It is interesting to Scotchmen from {342} the fact that it was the scene of the royal wedding of King James V to the Princess Magdalene, in whose honour the Palace of Linlithgow was remodelled and greatly embellished. The castle is now a pile of ruined buildings, standing on the summit of a lofty rock, where it dominates the landscape. Its principal tower is one hundred and twenty feet high, with walls eight feet thick. Its date is said to be the twelfth century. A part of it is now the local jail, and the building has been used as a prison for centuries. Beneath were dungeons under dungeons, dimly lighted by narrow windows, cut through small recesses in the walls, which are here ten or twelve feet thick. In two of these were the iron cages invented by Cardinal John de La Balue. He was a cobbler, some say a tailor, whom Louis elevated to the highest rank and employed in his secret devices. The cage was built of iron bars and was only eight feet square. The Cardinal proved a traitor to his king and the latter's severity kept him in the dungeon cells for eleven years, a part of which time, at least, was spent in one of the cages of his own invention. The governor and gaoler of this dreaded prison was Oliver le Daim, the King's barber and prime minister. The events culminating in the murder of the Bishop of Liège were, of course, purely fictitious. Scott did not hesitate to 'violate history,' as he afterward expressed it, to meet the requirements of his story. The actual murder of the Bishop occurred in 1482, fourteen years after the period of the novel and five years after the death of Charles the Bold. William de la Marck, called the 'Wild Boar of Ardennes,' wishing to place the mitre {343} on the head of his own son, entered into a conspiracy with some of the rebellious citizens of Liège, against their Bishop, Louis de Bourbon. The latter was enticed to the edge of the town, where he was met by the fierce and bloodthirsty knight, who murdered him with his own hand and caused the body to be exposed naked in St. Lambert's Place, before the cathedral. Scott's version, never intended to be historically accurate, places the scene of the murder in the fictitious Castle of Schonwaldt, outside the city. The description of the meeting of Louis XI and Charles the Bold at the town of Péronne and the King's imprisonment in the castle, while somewhat amplified with fictitious details, is in the essential facts quite in accord with history. Péronne is a small town of great antiquity, ninety-four miles northeast of Paris, in the Department of the Somme. Its castle still retains four conical-roofed towers in fairly good repair. On the ground floor are many dark and dismal dungeons. In one of these miserable cells Charles the Simple, in the year 929, ended his days in agony. He was confined in the tower by the treachery of Herbert, Count of Vermandois, and left there to starve to death. Adjoining this room, in what is known as the Tour Herbert, is the chamber said to have been occupied by Louis XI. Great was the surprise and alarm among the retainers of Louis when that monarch, trusting to an exaggerated notion of his own wit and powers of persuasion, proposed to visit his most formidable adversary, Charles of Burgundy, at the town of Péronne. The latter granted the King's request for a safe-conduct, and Louis set forth in October, 1482, accompanied by a small {344} detachment of his Scots Guard and men-at-arms, and two faithless councillors, the Constable de St. Pol and the Cardinal de La Balue. The Duke met the King outside the town and together they walked in apparent friendliness to the house of the Chamberlain, Charles apologizing for not taking the King to the castle because it was not in fit condition. Some portion of the Duke's army arrived the same day and encamped outside the walls. Learning this, the King became greatly frightened and demanded quarters in the castle--a request which Charles granted with great, but secret, glee. The next day brought forth nothing but ill-feeling and misunderstanding, which was brought to a climax by the news from Liège. It was reported that the emissaries of Louis had stirred up sedition against the Duke, and had killed the Bishop of Liège, and the Lord of Humbercourt. Charles was a man of tremendous passions and this news threw him into a fury which he made little attempt to control. His royal guest became his prisoner, the gates of the town and the castle were closed, and for a time Louis was in danger of his life at the hands of his enraged vassal. Louis, meanwhile, remained calm, making full use of his native shrewdness, keenness of penetration, and unusual cunning. By a liberal use of money, with which he had sagaciously provided himself, the Duke's servants were corrupted wherever he could hope to secure information or assistance. His craftiness, however, proved unnecessary. Charles cooled off after a day or two and realized that he could not well afford to violate his safe-conduct. Meanwhile the news from Liège turned out more favourably. The Bishop had not been slain and the revolt had been less serious than {345} supposed. Charles, however, compelled the King to swear a new treaty, which Louis did by taking from one of his boxes a piece of the 'true cross,' a relic, formerly belonging, so it was said, to Charlemagne, which Louis regarded with great veneration. The oath upon the cross duly made, Louis accompanied his captor on an expedition against the town of Liège, the particulars of which were not essentially different from the version of Scott. The novel brings out to great advantage the striking contrast between the King and the Duke. Charles was strong, vigorous, clear-sighted, and in the words of Philippe de Comines, 'a great and honourable prince, as much esteemed for a time amongst his neighbours as any prince in Christendom.' The great fault of his character was that expressed in the sobriquet, Charles the Rash; and this was the cause of his downfall. That, however, is a tale which Scott reserved for a later novel. Though received at first with apparent indifference, 'Quentin Durward' came in time to be regarded as one of the best of the Waverley Novels, dividing the honours, in the minds of the boys, at least, with 'Ivanhoe' and 'The Talisman.' {346} CHAPTER XXV ST. RONAN'S WELL If, as I have said in the preceding chapter, the true Scott Country comprises the United Kingdom, except Ireland, the inner circle of that country, the _Sanctum Sanctorum_, so to speak, must be considered as including that part of Scotland lying between the Firth of Forth and the English border; or, more strictly, the counties of Edinburgh, Peebles, Selkirk, and Roxburgh. This was Scott's home, his workshop, and his playground. From the spring of 1806 to the early winter of 1830, a period of nearly twenty-five years, he performed the duties of Clerk of the Court of Session. This required his presence in Edinburgh usually from the 12th of May to the 12th of July and from the 12th of November to the 12th of March, excepting an interval at Christmas. This meant from four to six hours' work a day for four or five days each week, extending over about six months of every year. During the sessions of the court his residence was No. 39, North Castle Street, a three-story stone dwelling-house, within sight of Edinburgh Castle. The day after the rising of the court usually found its distinguished clerk ready to 'escape to the country.' For six years his retreat was the little thatched cottage at Lasswade, in the vale of the Esk. The next eight summers found him at Ashestiel, and after that Abbotsford was the lodestone that drew him from the city. Scott loved the wide sweep of the bare hills, especially {347} when tinged with the purple hue of the heather. Their pure air was the tonic which had saved his life, when as a child he rolled about on the rocks of Smailholm, a companion of the sheep and lambs. Their streams gave him an opportunity to lure the salmon from their hiding-places. Their rounded summits gave him many a distant view of battle-fields, famed in the Border warfare, which filled up centuries of Scottish and English history. Their pleasant glens and thickets gave him delightful walks in the woods. Their hospitable cottages extended him a never failing welcome, and yielded up to him, from the lips of hundreds of old wives, a treasure of Scottish ballads, songs, and tales of Border chivalry. Their castles and mansions threw open their doors at his approach, rivalling the humbler dwellings in the cordiality of their greeting. No wonder Scott loved the Border country. 'It may be partiality,' said he to Washington Irving, 'but to my eye, these grey hills and all this wild Border country have beauties peculiar to themselves. I like the very nakedness of the land; it has something bold, and stern, and solitary about it. When I have been for some time in the rich scenery about Edinburgh, which is like ornamented garden land, I begin to wish myself back again among my own honest grey hills; and if I did not see the heather at least once a year, I think I should die!' It was while riding with Lockhart and Willie Laidlaw, along the brow of the Eildon Hills, looking down upon Melrose, one fine afternoon in July, 1823, that the suggestion came which led eventually to 'St. Ronan's Well.' 'Quentin Durward' had recently appeared and Scott, commenting upon its reception, remarked that he {348} could probably do something better with a German subject. 'Na, na, sir,' protested Laidlaw, '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.' 'Hame 's hame,' smilingly assented Scott, 'be it ever sae hamely. There's something in what you say, Willie.' Although Laidlaw insisted that his friend should 'stick to Melrose in July, 1823,' Scott took a little broader field and made the scene of 'St. Ronan's Well,' the valley of the Tweed. This was the country which he had pictured in 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel,' at the very beginning of his fame. He had come back to it for a bit of the scenery of 'The Monastery' and 'The Abbot.' These, however, were romances of an earlier period. He was now for the first time to write of his own country in his own time. The tale was to depict society life, not of the wholesome and genuine kind to which Scott was personally accustomed, whether in Edinburgh or the country, but of the type he had seen at various watering-places and summer resorts which he had visited. [Illustration: THE TWEED AND EILDON HILLS] 'St. Ronan's Well' may be considered a true picture of this society or a caricature, according to one's own sympathies. Some of its readers have been able to find among their own 'social set,' Lady Penelope Penfeather, Sir Bingo and Lady Sinks, Mr. Winterblossom, Dr. Quackleben, and even the 'man of peace,' Captain Mungo MacTurk, and have praised or condemned the author's portraits according to their own predilections toward such personages. {349} Scott saw something of this life at Gilsland in the memorable summer of 1797, the year when he met Miss Carpenter at the dance in Shaw's Hotel. Below the hostelry is a deep and attractive glen, through which flows the river Irthing, and just above the bridge spanning the river, is one of those mineral springs, which have the strange power, whatever may be their medicinal virtues, of drawing hundreds of people away from their homes in the summer months. There is another of these springs at Innerleithen, on the banks of the Tweed, and for this reason--for I can see no other--the people of that town have laid claim to the honour of residing in the original 'St. Ronan's.' Innerleithen, now a prosperous town of about three thousand inhabitants, is situated amid the hills which border the Tweed in the most picturesque part of its course. In Scott's time it was only a small village. Traquair, on the contrary, a few miles to the south, was of more importance in Scott's time than now, when it is a mere hamlet, remarkable for nothing except the fine old feudal mansion to which I have previously referred.[1] If we are to think of Innerleithen, then, as the 'ancient and decayed village of St. Ronan's' we must picture it, not as the thriving commercial town of to-day, but more like its neighbour on the south. Of course I felt anxious to taste the waters of the real St. Ronan's Well, and made a journey to Innerleithen for the purpose. I gained nothing beyond the experience of exchanging a good shilling for a bad drink. One taste was enough, and when the girl was n't looking I threw the rest away. I found an old two-story house in the {350} town which claims to be the original 'Cleikum Inn'--a claim which is disputed by a public house in Peebles, 'The Cross Keys Hotel,' formerly a pretentious seventeenth-century mansion. The latter was kept in Scott's time by a maiden lady named Marian Ritchie, who seems to have possessed some of the characteristics which the novelist exaggerated in his delightfully humorous picture of Meg Dods. She found fault with the new 'hottle,' and did not hesitate to vent her sarcasm upon those travellers who ventured to stay there in preference to her own respectable inn. Scott, according to local history, was occasionally one of her guests. She ruled with a rod of iron, permitting no excesses, and did not hesitate to send a young man 'hame to his mither' if she suspected him to be imbibing too freely. Scott gave this model landlady the real name of a hostess whom he had patronized when only seventeen years old. It was on a fishing excursion to a loch near Howgate, in the Moorfoot Hills, when Scott and three of his boon companions stopped at a little public-house kept by Mrs. Margaret Dods. It was thirty-five years later when, in writing 'St. Ronan's Well' the novelist adopted the name of the real landlady for his fictitious character. So far as the rival claimants of the 'Cleikum Inn' honours are concerned, I do not believe that Scott had any particular house in mind, either for the 'inn,' or the 'hottle.' Nor can I find any evidence of the existence of an 'original' for Shaw's Castle, the family seat of the Mowbrays, though Raeburn House, near St. Boswell's Green may be taken as a excellent type. The same doubt applies to the village of St. Ronan's itself. Scott's {351} design seems to have been merely to place the scene of his story, broadly speaking, in the valley of the Tweed. This picturesque stream rises in the high lands near Moffat and flows north through a country still wild and solitary. A score of miles or less from its source, it makes a bend toward the east, above the town of Peebles, and from this point, until it discharges its waters into the North Sea at Berwick, there is scarcely a bend in the river or a village or town on its banks that does not suggest memories of Sir Walter Scott. From the high ground overlooking the river, just at the point where it bends to the east, we had a view, through the trees, of surpassing beauty. Below was the ancient Castle of Neidpath, once a scene of stately splendour, when nobles and monarchs frequented its halls, and richly attired ladies promenaded in the well-kept gardens, laden with the perfume and brilliant with the hues of many flowers; when well-ordered terraces lined the banks of the stream and orchards smiled from the surrounding hillsides. Amid such scenes the 'Maid of Neidpath' sat in the tower,-- To watch her love's returning-- and broke her heart when the lover came and passed with heedless gaze-- As o'er some stranger glancing.[2] Time and Nature, working together as landscape artists, have converted the castle into a picturesque ruin, and replaced the artificial gardens and terraces with thick groves of fine old trees, clothing the hillsides {352} with a richer and deeper verdure, and leaving only the river as of yore, still brightening the scene with the sparkle of its silvery tide. In the distance we could see the spires and chimneys of Peebles. [Illustration: SCOTT'S TOMB, DRYBURGH] Following the river, we passed Innerleithen, six miles below Peebles, and a short distance beyond we paused for a moment to look toward the ruins of Elibank, high up on the hillside. This was Scott's favourite objective point for a summer afternoon walk from Ashestiel, and the scene of the famous legend of 'Muckle-Mouthed Meg.'[3] Two miles farther on is Ashestiel, where Scott spent many happy summers. Keeping the left bank we soon came to a place where we could see Abbotsford on the opposite side of the river--and a charming view it makes. Then comes Melrose with all its varied associations. Driving toward the east, we ascended a hill near the summit of Bemerside Heights and halted to enjoy 'Scott's favourite view.' Below was a bend of the river marking the site of Old Melrose, the establishment which preceded the more pretentious abbey in the village. Far away were the summits of the Eildon Hills. On the day of Scott's funeral, the procession climbed this hill on the way to Dryburgh Abbey, the hearse being drawn by Sir Walter's own coach-horses. At the spot where we were standing, it is said, the faithful animals halted of their own accord, not knowing that their master could no longer enjoy his favourite view. We soon came to the beautiful ruins of Dryburgh Abbey, where Scott lies buried. It is a place he was fond of visiting, so much so that in a letter to Miss Carpenter, before they were married, he referred to it {353} with enthusiasm, adding, 'When I die, Charlotte, you must cause my bones to be laid there.' This brought a lively reply from the young lady: 'What an idea of yours was that to mention where you wished to have your _bones laid_. If you were married, I should think you were tired of me. A very pretty compliment _before marriage_.... Take care of yourself if you love me, as I have _no wish_ that you should _visit_ that _beautiful_ and _romantic_ scene, the burying-place.' Still farther to the east lies Kelso, where Scott spent several summers with a relative and attended the village school; while in the valley below lie the principal scenes of 'Marmion.' In the hills to the north, between Melrose and Kelso, is Sandy Knowe, the farm of the poet's grandfather, where the fresh air of the Scottish hills gave a new lease of life to the child of three years. Some recollections of these early days found their way into 'St. Ronan's Well,' published nearly half a century later. A frequent visitor at the fireside of Sandy Knowe was the parish clergyman, Dr. Duncan, who perhaps failed to appreciate the presence of a poet in embryo. Scott had early committed to memory long passages from Ramsay's 'Tea-Table Miscellany' and one or two other favourite volumes, which he would shout at the top of his voice, regardless of the presence of the good minister, who would testily exclaim, 'One may as well speak in the mouth of a cannon as where that child is.' The old gentleman lived to be nearly ninety. 'He was,' says Scott, 'a most excellent and benevolent man, a gentleman in every feeling, and altogether different from those of his order who cringe at the tables of the gentry or domineer and riot at those of the yeomanry.' There {354} seems to be no doubt that in the personage of Mr. Josiah Cargill, the shy, absent-minded, but learned and conscientious, and always lovable, clergyman of 'St. Ronan's Well,' Scott drew a portrait of the excellent divine whom he had learned to respect in his early days. [1] See _ante_, p. 106, Chapter viii, 'Waverley.' [2] _The Maid of Neidpath_, 1806. [3] See _ante_, Chapter 1, page 36. {355} CHAPTER XXVI REDGAUNTLET I was standing, one afternoon, among some rugged rocks, half covered with sand and seaweed, which lined the shores of the Solway Firth, when my attention was suddenly attracted by a large black horse ridden by a woman. They were far away from shore and the animal seemed to be lightly cantering over the surface of the water. I suddenly realized the peculiar characteristic of the Solway. The tide was going out and what seemed to be the surface of a wide, inland sea was in reality a broad stretch of glistening white sand, still wet enough to catch and reflect the rays of the sun. In spite of the fact that the rider was a woman, I was reminded of the thrilling incident that marks one of the earlier chapters of 'Redgauntlet.' Darsie Latimer had wandered out in the late afternoon over the wet sands of the Solway, watching with great interest the exertions of some horsemen, who were intent upon the sport of spearing salmon. The ebb of the tide leaves numberless little pools, formed by the inequality of the surface, and in these the fish dart about, making frantic efforts to escape to deeper water. The horsemen chase the salmon at full gallop, striking at them with their spears,--a form of amusement requiring great skill and perfect horsemanship. The riders had ceased their sport and were returning to the shore, while Darsie lingered on the sands. Suddenly he heard an abrupt voice, calling out, {356} 'Soho, brother! you are late for Bowness to-night'; and, turning, recognized the most expert of the salmon fishers, a tall man riding a powerful black horse. Darsie replied that he was a stranger and about to return to the shore. 'Best make haste, then,' said the fisherman. 'He that dreams on the bed of the Solway, may wake in the next world. The sky threatens a blast that will bring in the waves three feet abreast.' The young man, not realizing the danger, had to be warned a third time, and finally was pulled up on the horse behind his rescuer, who was compelled to gallop to safety at full speed. At a later time, the tall fisherman, who proved to be Hugh Redgauntlet, kidnapped young Latimer, whom he had recognized as his long-lost nephew, and carried him in a cart across the Solway to England. While lying on his back upon some sacks of straw, his arms and legs tightly bound with cloth bandages, Darsie again heard the rush of the advancing tide. He 'not only heard the roar of this dreadful torrent, but saw, by the fitful moonlight, the foamy crests of the devouring waves, as they advanced with the speed and fury of a pack of hungry wolves.' One or two of the great waves of the 'howling and roaring sea' had reached the cart, when he was again rescued by Redgauntlet in much the same manner as before. The reality of these fearful tides exceeds even Scott's vivid description. In a volume published more than eighty years ago[1] by a local writer, I find this account:-- During spring tides, and particularly when impelled by a strong southwester, the Solway rises with prodigious {357} rapidity. A loud booming noise indicates its approach, and is distinguishable at the distance of several miles. At Caerlaverock and Glencaple, where it enters the Nith, the scene is singularly grand and imposing; and it is beautiful to see a mighty volume of water advancing, foam-crested, and with a degree of rapidity which, were the race a long one, would outmatch the speed of the swiftest horses. The tide-head, as it is called, is often from four to six feet high, chafed into spray, with a mighty trough of bluer water behind--swelling in some places into little hills, and in others scooped into tiny valleys, which, when sunlit, form a brilliant picture of themselves. From the tide-head proceed two huge jets of water, which run roaring along, searching the banks on either side--the antennæ, as it were, which the ocean puts forth, and by which it feels its way when confined within narrow limits. A large fire-engine discharging a strong stream of water bears a close resemblance to this part of the phenomena of a strong spring tide; but the sea-water is broken while the other is smooth, and runs hissing, or rather gallops, along in a manner to which no language of ours can do justice. Between Bowness, the northernmost point of Cumberland, and Whinnyrig, south of Annan in Dumfriesshire, the Solway is only two miles wide. It is now safely crossed by a railroad bridge, but two generations ago the Scottish farmers and dealers were in the habit of crossing the sands at low tide to save a long and tedious detour of about thirty miles by way of Carlisle. Many a belated traveller, missing his way in the darkness or the fog, has been overtaken by the tide and lost. All the scenes of 'Redgauntlet,' except those in Edinburgh and Dumfries, are laid near the shores of the Solway. Shepherd's Bush and Brokenburn, imaginary places, of course, may be considered to be somewhere on the Scottish side near Annan. Mount Sharon, the {358} residence of the kind-hearted Joshua Geddes, supposed to be in the same vicinity, was really modelled after some pleasant recollections of the author's boyhood at Kelso. It was a place of quiet contentment, where one might wander through fields and pastures and woodlands by convenient paths amid scenes of peaceful beauty. Even the partridges and the hares had learned the kindly nature of the good Quaker and his amiable sister, and did not fear their approach. Scott drew the charming picture of the Quaker household from his early friendship for the Waldie family in Kelso. Their son Robert was one of his school-fellows. He spent many happy hours in their hospitable home, where he was treated with the utmost kindness by Robert's mother, universally known in the neighbourhood as Lady Waldie. A privilege which Scott particularly appreciated was the permission to 'rummage at pleasure' through the small but well-selected library which the good lady's deceased husband had left her. On the English side of the Solway, the Wampool River, where the Jumping Jenny landed Alan Fairford, along with a cargo of contraband goods, including gunpowder for the use of the Jacobites, may be easily found on the map. The English scenes were laid between here and Carlisle, but the story of the visit to this region of Charles Edward, disguised as Father Buonaventure, is pure fiction, and of course the localities cannot be identified, except Burgh-upon-Sands, where there is a monument to Edward I, to which Hugh Redgauntlet refers as the party is passing by. The English residence of Hugh Redgauntlet to which Darsie was conducted by his captor, described as ancient {359} and strong, with battlemented roof and walls of great thickness, but otherwise resembling a comfortable farmhouse, is purely fictitious. We visited, however, on the Scottish side of the Solway, a splendid modern castle, which, judged by an old painting of the place as it was in 1789, would admirably fit the description. This is Hoddam Castle, five miles southwest of the village of Ecclefechan, Carlyle's birthplace, where we spent a night in one of the quaintest little inns in Scotland, a survival of the time when Scottish inns offered few comforts to the traveller, but made up for it in proffered sociability. Hoddam Castle is beautifully situated in the midst of a grove of fine trees overlooking the river Annan. A battlemented tower, surmounted by conical turrets, rises high above the extensive modern structure surrounding it. This is the ancient building, for centuries occupied by the Herries family. Scott originally intended to call his novel 'Herries' instead of 'Redgauntlet,' and was with much difficulty persuaded by Constable to accept the latter title. The old castle was built in the fifteenth century by John, Lord Herries, to whom was granted an extensive tract of land, extending over three or four counties. The Herries family, to which Hugh Redgauntlet is supposed to belong, was always powerful. In their later years, like their fictitious descendant, its members were ardent supporters of the Stuart family. John Maxwell, who took the name of Lord Herries upon his marriage, was a zealous defender of Mary Queen of Scots. He assisted her escape from Loch Leven Castle, fought for her at Langside, escorted her, after the battle, to his {360} own house in Galloway, and thence to Dundrennan Abbey, and finally conducted her, in a small vessel, to England. His descendant, William, the ninth Lord Herries and fifth Earl of Nithsdale, participated in the Jacobite uprising of 1715. He was made a prisoner at Preston and sent to the Tower, where he was tried and condemned to death. His countess, with rare courage and resourcefulness, first forced her way to an audience with the King in St. James's Palace, and pleaded on her knees for her husband's life. Finding this ineffectual, she paid a last farewell visit to her husband, taking several lady friends with her. They succeeded in disguising the Earl in feminine apparel and thus effected his escape. When Darsie Latimer was obliged, at his uncle's command, to wear petticoats as a means of concealing his identity, he was only following the example of one of his ancestors. [Illustration: HODDAM CASTLE] In 1690 the castle and Barony of Hoddam passed from the Herries family to John Sharpe, and remained in the hands of his heirs until very recent times. One of these was Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Scott's intimate friend, who helped collect the 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' to which he contributed two ballads. Scott was a frequent guest at his house, and he often dined with Scott's family in Edinburgh or at Abbotsford. He was a man of distinction in letters and an artist as well. Two well-known etchings by him, the 'Dish of Spurs' and 'Muckle-Mouthed Meg,' besides a caricature of Queen Elizabeth, adorn the walls of Abbotsford. His ancestors, like the Herries family, were ardent Jacobites. The Sharpes claimed relationship to the notorious {361} Grierson of Lag, who was the original of Sir Robert Redgauntlet in 'Wandering Willie's Tale.' Sir Robert Grierson, who was born in 1655 and died in 1733, was an infamous scoundrel who took fiendish delight in persecuting the Covenanters. In his drunken revels he made them the theme of scurrilous jests. In a vaulted chamber of his Castle of Lag, now in ruins, he had an iron hook upon which he hanged his prisoners. Often he would amuse himself by rolling his victims down a steep hill in barrels filled with knives and iron spikes. He was an object of terror and hatred through all the neighbouring country and for many years after his death was represented in theatrical productions as a hideous monster. Scott heard in his youth the wild tales of the terrible Grierson, and made them the basis of the story told by Wandering Willie. If by Redgauntlet Castle we mean the house of the blind fiddler's hero, we must take for its original the ancient ruin of Lag Castle, built in the fourteenth century; but if the seat of the Herries family is meant, Hoddam Castle is of course the prototype, even though Scott places it on the English side of the Solway. A bit of scenery worth recalling in connection with this novel is the Marquis of Annandale's Beefstand, or as it is now called, the Devil's Beef Tub, the place where the Laird of Summertrees had his wonderful adventure, escaping from his captors by rolling, over and over, like a barrel, down the steep incline that leads to the bottom of the hollow. It is as lonely and desolate a spot as we saw anywhere in Scotland. The hills circle about to form a huge bowl, in the rim of which there is apparently no break, so that one wonders how the little brook at the {362} bottom manages to find an outlet so as to remain a brook at all, instead of accumulating its waters to form a great natural lake. The old Border raiders used the hollow as a convenient place in which to collect stolen cattle. From the road on the rim it seems to be a dark, dismal hole, without sign of life except an occasional ring of earth and stone, built for the protection of the sheep. Scott knew personally a Jacobite gentleman, who escaped at this place in precisely the same manner as 'Pate-in-Peril,' while being taken to Carlisle a prisoner for participation in the 'affair of 1745.' 'Redgauntlet' is autobiographical to a greater extent than any other of Scott's novels. It is true that 'Waverley' gives a hint of his own early love of reading, while 'The Antiquary' reflects his interest in the relics of an older civilization. Indeed, bits of personal reminiscence are woven into nearly all his tales. But 'Redgauntlet' more directly reveals Scott himself and those nearest to him than any or all of the others. The voluminous correspondence of Alan Fairford and Darsie Latimer is full of recollections of school days in Edinburgh, when as a boy Scott climbed the 'kittle nine stanes,' a difficult and dangerous passage over the steep granite rock upon which the castle stands, or helped 'man the Cowgate Port,' an ancient gateway to the city from which the youngsters in snowballing time annoyed the passers-by and defied the town guard. One of his most intimate companions in the days when he was reading law was William Clerk, whom he describes as a man of acute 'intellect and powerful apprehension,' but somewhat trammelled with 'the fetters of indolence.' There is no doubt that Scott himself was the original of {363} Alan Fairford nor that William Clerk was the model for Darsie Latimer. The fine portrait of Saunders Fairford, who was so anxious to have his son 'attain the proudest of all distinctions--the rank and fame of a well-employed lawyer,' was drawn from Scott's own father, many years after the death of that worthy gentleman. Mr. Saunders Fairford, ... was a man of business of the old school, moderate in his charges, economical and even niggardly in his expenditure, strictly honest in conducting his own affairs and those of his clients, but taught by long experience to be wary and suspicious in observing the motions of others. Punctual as the clock of St. Giles tolled nine, the neat dapper form of the little hale old gentleman was seen at the threshold of the Court-hall ... trimly dressed in a complete suit of snuff-coloured brown, with stockings of silk or woolen, as suited the weather; a bob wig and a small cocked hat; shoes blacked as Warren would have blacked them; silver shoe-buckles and a gold stock-buckle. A nosegay in summer, and a sprig of holly in winter, completed his well-known dress and appearance. Even Peter Peebles, the poor old derelict, ruined by a lifetime of perpetual litigation, was a real character, well known in Edinburgh, and Scott himself, in common with most young lawyers, took his turn in 'practising' on this case. The re-introduction of Charles Edward, who was so fascinating as a figure in 'Waverley,' was not so successful. In the earlier novel, his movements are, in the main, historically accurate. His reappearance, twenty years later, under circumstances purely fictitious, is by comparison almost wholly lacking in interest. There is, however, a certain attractiveness about the enthusiasm of his ardent supporter, Hugh Redgauntlet, and the {364} book is not lacking in minor characters, who are almost as fascinating as any of the novelist's earlier creations. Wandering Willie is one of these--the blind fiddler who holds communication with the captive Darsie, by the rendering of appropriate tunes, the words of which the latter is quick to recall and clever enough to interpret. Another is Nanty Ewart, the skipper of the Jumping Jenny, who can read his Sallust like a scholar, and appeals to one's sympathies in spite of his dissipation. Although 'Redgauntlet' was at first received somewhat coldly, it is nevertheless true, in the words of Lady Louisa Stuart, that 'the interest is so strong one cannot lay it down.' Its lack of value historically is more than offset by the personal interest of its characters and the many episodes of intense dramatic realism. [1] _Picture of Dumfries, with Historical and Descriptive Notices_, by John McDiarmid, 1832. {365} CHAPTER XXVII TALES OF THE CRUSADERS The two stories published simultaneously under this title are widely different in character. In 'The Betrothed,' the reader gets no glimpse of the Holy Land, though he is amply compensated by a view of some of the most delightful portions of picturesque Wales. In 'The Talisman,' on the contrary, not only is the whole of the stage-setting in Palestine, but our old friend, Richard the Lion-Hearted, who made such strong appeals to our sympathies in 'Ivanhoe,' appears once more on the scene. Perhaps this fact accounts for the great popularity of 'The Talisman,' which has always gone hand in hand with 'Ivanhoe,' in the estimation of the younger readers, at least, and possibly the older ones, especially in England and America, as among the most attractive of Scott's novels. 'The Betrothed' is no more a tale of the Crusades than is 'Ivanhoe.' In the former the Constable de Lacy is supposed to be absent in the Holy Land a few years and returns in disguise. King Richard does the same in 'Ivanhoe.' James Ballantyne, who was always a candid critic, found so much fault with 'The Betrothed' that Scott, bitterly disappointed, decided to cancel it altogether. The sheets were hung up in Ballantyne's warehouse, while Scott started a new tale which should be really a story of the Crusades. Ballantyne was as much pleased with 'The Talisman' as he had been disappointed with {366} its predecessor. Both author and printer hesitated to destroy the sheets of an entire edition of the earlier production, and it was finally decided that 'The Talisman' was such a masterpiece that it might be relied upon to 'take the other under its wing.' The publication of the two volumes as the 'Tales of the Crusaders' seemed to justify Ballantyne's faith, for, says Lockhart, 'The brightness of "The Talisman" dazzled the eyes of the million as to the defects of the twin story.' Whether this opinion would be endorsed by careful readers of to-day is doubtful, for 'The Betrothed' has some excellent characters, notably Eveline Berenger, Wilkin Flammock, and his daughter Rose, Hugo de Lacy, and his high-minded nephew Damian. Moreover, Scott here adds to his 'country' a bit of the United Kingdom, which he had not previously touched, and does it with his usual charm. The novelist's information regarding Welsh history and antiquities was derived largely from conversations with his friend, the Rev. John Williams, Archdeacon of Cardigan, who had made a special study of the subject. But he had always felt an interest in that region. 'There are,' he writes to Joanna Bailie in 1814, 'few countries I long so much to see as Wales. The first time I set out to see it I was caught by the way and married. God help me! The next time, I went to London and spent all my money there. What will be my third interruption, I do not know, but the circumstances seem ominous.' Whether he actually saw the country before writing the novel is doubtful. He did visit it, however, in August of 1825, just after 'The Betrothed' was published, and stopped at Llangollen, where he paid a visit to the {367} famous 'Ladies' of that place. These two old ladies, one seventy and the other sixty-five when Scott saw them, had 'eloped' together from Ireland, when they were young girls, one of them dressed as a footman in buckskin breeches. Valuing their liberty above all the allurements of matrimony, they made a secret journey to Wales, and for fifty years lived a quiet and comfortable life in the beautiful vale of Llangollen. Local tradition assigns this lovely valley as the scene of 'The Betrothed.' Although this may be doubted, it is nevertheless fairly representative of what Scott evidently had in mind. The river Dee winds among a maze of low, partially wooded, and well-rounded hilltops, here and there finding its way through green meadows, set off by hedges of full-grown trees, and at each turn glistening in the sun like a broad ribbon of silver. I was induced to walk up a long sloping hillside for a distance of about three miles from the village, and was rewarded at the summit by a superb view of northern Wales, for many miles in every direction, and at the same time saw the ruins of the ancient Castell Dinas Bran. This, or something very like it, must have been the Garde Doloureuse of the novel. It certainly had all the natural advantages claimed for that ancient Welsh stronghold, for no army would have found it easy to ascend that hill in the face of a determined garrison. The ruin has the indications also of having been well fortified by the art of man, its walls enclosing an area two hundred and ninety feet long by one hundred and forty feet wide. The castle may have been built by the Britons before the Roman invasion. A well-founded tradition fixes it {368} as the seat of Eliseg, Prince of Powys, in the eighth century, and it figures in actual history as early as 1200, when it was the residence of a turbulent Welsh baron named Madog. At Welshpool, directly to the south and near the English border, we visited the magnificent park and castle of the Earl of Powis. It stands on the site of the ancient Castell Coch, or Red Castle, famous as the seat of the great Welsh hero, Gwenwynwyn, who flourished in the latter part of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century. That hero, whom Scott calls Gwenwyn, it will be remembered, upon seeing for the first time the beautiful damsel of sixteen, Eveline Berenger, the only child of his greatest rival and the heir of the strong fortress which he coveted, promptly resolved to marry her, thus starting the train of events which are recorded in the novel. [Illustration: POWIS CASTLE, WALES] The present Powis Castle Park is a magnificent demesne of nearly a thousand acres. Its most important portion is a great deer-park, in the midst of which stands the imposing modern palace. The herds of deer quietly feeding on the lawn were kind enough to pose for me, when I made a picture of the castle, and added greatly to its picturesque aspect. On the south, the sloping ground has been cut into broad and beautiful terraces, surmounted by huge yews, trimmed smoothly in conical form. The stone walls are broken by a series of arches, above which are balustrades and statuary in great variety. Clinging vines and garden flowers of every description add colour to the beauty of the arrangement. Below the terraces is a gentle slope, planted with fruit trees, and then a level lawn, in the {369} midst of which is a stately elm. The whole is a triumph of landscape gardening which would have amazed the famous Gwenwynwyn. Following the course of the tale our next objective was the city of Gloucester, the crowning glory of which is the great cathedral, founded by the Saxon earl, Osric, in 680 A.D. The massive Norman nave was commenced in 1088 and the fine choir was completed in the fourteenth century. The great east window, measuring seventy-two feet in height, thirty-eight feet in width, and containing two thousand seven hundred and thirty-six square feet of glass, is the largest in England if not in the world. Passing around the cathedral we found a house which figures in the story,--the Deanery, as it is now called. It was formerly the prior's lodge of the old Benedictine abbey, and is the oldest house in Gloucester. Within its walls a meeting of Parliament is said to have been held by Richard II. Of the scenery of 'The Talisman' it is difficult to say much beyond what is generally known about the Holy Land. Scott never visited Palestine and wrote only in general terms. He did contrive, however, to inject a bit of Scottish scenery with which he was familiar, just as he managed to begin the novel with the adventures of a Scottish knight, and to find another countryman among the retainers of King Richard, in the person of Sir Thomas de Multon, the Lord of Gilsland, whose 'love and devotion to the King was like the vivid affection of the old English mastiff to his master.' Readers of 'The Talisman' will recall, in the mansion of the hermit of Engaddi, the beautiful miniature Gothic chapel, and will quickly note the resemblance to Roslin {370} Chapel, near Edinburgh. The famous feudal baron, William St. Clair, built the latter in a spirit of penitence. An old manuscript informs us that 'to the end he might not seem altogether unthankfull to God for the benefices received from Him, it came in his minde to build a house for God's service of most curious work, the which, that it might be done with greater glory and splendour he caused artificers to be brought from other regions and forraigne kingdoms and caused dayly to be abundance of all kinde of workemen present.' The foundation was laid in 1446. It is called 'florid Gothic' for want of a better name. There is no other architecture like it in the world. It is a medley of all architectures, the Egyptian, Grecian, Roman, and Saracenic being intermingled with all kinds of decorations and designs, some exquisitely beautiful and others quaint and even grotesque. There are thirteen different varieties of the arch. The owner possessed wealth and wanted novelty. He secured the latter by engaging architects and builders from all parts of Europe. The most striking feature of an ulterior crowded with beautiful forms is the 'Prentice's Pillar, a column with spiral wreaths of exquisitely carved foliage. It is curious to think of such a chapel as this concealed in a mysterious mansion in the desert of Engaddi, but it is the only touch of realistic description in the whole book, and Scott makes use of it with his usual skill. {371} CHAPTER XXVIII WOODSTOCK Between the completion of the 'Tales of the Crusaders' and the next novel, 'Woodstock,' came the distressing change in Scott's affairs, that set apart the remaining years of his life as a period of sadness, disappointment, grief, and physical pain. They were years of almost superhuman exertion, when the superb personal character of the man, backed by an unconquerable will, triumphed over an accumulation of afflictions that would have broken the heart of an ordinary person. The victory cost him his life--but it was only after a battle of six hard years, and even then it was the frail body and not the heart of the man that succumbed. In the year 1825, when 'Woodstock' was commenced, the old, happy days, when writing a story was a joyous pastime, came to an end forever, and in their stead came a sense of toil and conscious effort. 'It was a pleasant sight,' said Lockhart, 'when one happened to take a passing peep into his den, to see the white head erect, and the smile of conscious inspiration on his lips, while the pen, held boldly and at a commanding distance, glanced steadily and gayly along a fast-blackening page of "The Talisman." It now often made me sorry to catch a glimpse of him, stooping and poring with his spectacles, amidst piles of authorities, a little notebook ready in his left hand, that had always used to be at liberty for patting Maida.' {372} Lockhart is here referring to the vast toil required in the preparation of a 'Life of Napoleon,' which Scott had undertaken immediately after returning from the tour through Ireland and Wales, made soon after the completion of 'The Talisman.' It was the year when rumours of financial troubles in London began to reach his ears, followed swiftly by the failure of Constable and the Ballantynes, and later by the sickness and death of Lady Scott and his own physical suffering. Undaunted by misfortune he bravely continued his 'Napoleon,' and soon conceived the idea of composing a work of imagination at the same time. The first of three volumes of 'Woodstock' was, under these trying circumstances, completed in fifteen days and the entire novel in three months. The news of Scott's distress had spread throughout Scotland and England and into many parts of Europe, and there was naturally a keen interest in the story which he was known to be writing. The announcement that Scott was the author of the Waverley Novels and that the man who had accomplished this marvellous success had met with financial failure came as a shock and a thrill. 'Scott ruined!' exclaimed the Earl of Dudley; 'the author of "Waverley" ruined! Good God! Let every man to whom he has given months of delight give him a sixpence, and he will rise to-morrow morning richer than Rothschild!' The result of this state of the public mind was that 'Woodstock' was successful beyond the author's fondest dreams. The village of Woodstock, where practically the whole of the scene is laid, lies about eight miles north-west of Oxford. The market-place still has an ancient {373} look, though the houses are in fairly good repair. To readers of the novel the chief place of interest in the village is the old parish church where the Reverend Nehemiah Holdenough was rudely crowded from his pulpit by the canting Independent soldier, Trusty Tomkins, who proceeded to preach one of those weird sermons, common enough at that time, in which the texts of Scripture were perverted to apply to current events, with whatever significance the orator might choose. A fine Norman doorway on the south side marks the oldest part of the edifice, dating back probably as far as the twelfth century. The north side is modern, having been built to replace the older walls that were torn down. The tower was built in 1783. The real interest of Woodstock lies not in the church nor the village, but in the vast park and palace, now called Blenheim, the property of the Duke of Marlborough. As early as the reign of William the Conqueror, Woodstock was a royal forest, and was so designated in the Domesday Book. His son, Henry I, enclosed it with a wall six miles in circumference (not so large as its present extent) and rebuilt the house. It was here that Thomas à Becket in 1162 began the quarrel with King Henry II, which led to his murder at Canterbury. King Henry added to the old palace of Woodstock the famous tower and maze, where 'the fair Rosamond' might be safely concealed from the jealous eyes of Queen Eleanor. 'Rosamond's Well,' where Tomkins met his well-deserved death at the hands of Joceline Joliffe, is the only remnant of the old palace in existence. It is a spring, walled in and paved, and guarded by an iron fence. We drank of its waters {374} and, following the instructions of the old woman who acts as its keeper, threw what was left in the glasses over our left shoulders 'for luck.' The well was originally within the walls of the palace, so that its occupant could obtain water without the risk of stepping outside. It may, therefore, be considered as marking approximately the site of the old palace. Richard the Lion-Hearted and John were visitors to Woodstock. Henry III made some improvements in the house. Edward III and Queen Philippa were much attached to Woodstock and often made it their residence. It was during their reign that the poet Chaucer, who was first a page and later a royal 'esquire,' was frequently at Woodstock. He married one of the Queen's maids of honour, and lived in a house in the village which is still standing. As late as the time of James II, Woodstock continued to be occupied, as a favourite country seat, by the English sovereigns. During the great Civil War it was the scene of frequent skirmishes and in the time of the Commonwealth was in the possession of Cromwell. The fantastic performances by which the commissioners of the Long Parliament were imposed upon and badly frightened when they visited Woodstock, after the execution of Charles I, for the purpose of destroying it, are fully explained in Scott's Introduction. [Illustration: GOLSTOW PRIORY (BURIAL-PLACE OF THE 'THE FAIR ROSAMOND')] In 1704, as a reward for his famous triumph in the battle of Blenheim, the victorious commander, John Churchill, was created first Duke of Marlborough, and presented with the vast estates of Woodstock. Queen Anne and the Parliament bestowed upon him in addition the princely sum of £240,000 with which to build a {375} mansion. Blenheim Palace is the finest work of the most famous architect of his day, Sir John Vanbrugh, who designed the building by command of the Queen. Its front extends, from wing to wing, three hundred and forty-eight feet. The style is Italo-Corinthian. Its spacious halls are filled with splendid tapestries and many valuable paintings. There is a long ballroom, equipped as a library at one end and with a great pipe-organ at the other. The park comprises two thousand six hundred acres, with many fine beeches, oaks, elms, cedars of Lebanon, and an avenue of lindens. The river Glyme, which flowed through the estate of Woodstock, was dammed by the landscape gardener of Blenheim and converted into a picturesque lake, over which is an imposing bridge. In a remote corner of the grounds we found the celebrated King's Oak, a fine old tree supposed to be at least a thousand years old. Two characters of 'Woodstock' stepped into the tale, direct from Scott's own household, thus giving a charming personal touch to this novel in common with 'Redgauntlet' and several of the others. One of these is the fine old hound, Bevis. It seems curious, in view of Scott's fondness for his dogs, that not one of them should find a place in any of his stories until so late a period of his life. Bevis, however, made up for the previous omissions, and he is a splendid picture of Sir Walter's favourite staghound Maida, 'the noblest dog ever seen on the Border since Johnnie Armstrong's time.' So wrote Scott to his friend Terry, adding, 'He is between the wolf and deer greyhound, about six feet long from the tip of the nose to the tail, and high and strong in proportion.... Tell Will Erskine he will eat off his {376} plate without being at the trouble to put a paw on the table or chair.' This noble animal, who for eight years enjoyed the distinction of daily companionship with one of the most appreciative masters who ever lived, came to his end in 1824, the year before 'Woodstock' was commenced. His image, sculptured in stone, had stood for a year or more by the door of the main entrance to Abbotsford, as a 'leaping-on' stone, which Scott found convenient in mounting his horse. Maida was buried beneath the stone, and an epitaph in Latin was carved around its base, Scott's English version of which reads:-- Beneath the sculptured form which late you wore Sleep soundly, Maida, at your master's door. The other character from Scott's household was his daughter Anne--the Alice Lee of the novel. The same loving care which Alice bestowed upon her aged parent, Scott had felt at the hands of his youngest daughter. When financial disaster began to weigh him down, and Lady Scott's health began to fail, it was Anne who tenderly supported her beloved father. In the sad days following the death of Lady Scott, she accompanied him to London and Paris and was by his side when he received his first paralytic stroke. Her health was shattered by the long strain of her mother's illness and death, followed by that of her father, and she survived her distinguished parent less than a year. Regarding the historical characters in the novel, the critics seem to agree that the portraits of Cromwell and Charles II are far from accurate and of course their part in the story is imaginary. When Scott's enthusiasm for the Stuart family is considered, and his sympathy for {377} royalty in general, as well as the habit among Scotchmen of his time of regarding the great Protector as a hypocrite, it must be admitted that his picture of Cromwell, while far from flattering, is on the whole remarkably fair to that stern and powerful leader. Although 'Woodstock' is not ranked among Scott's greatest novels, it is noteworthy that many critics, including Lockhart and Andrew Lang, both of whom usually preferred the Scottish romances, saw in it great merit. In one respect it is the most wonderful of all novels--in the self-control which enabled its author calmly to compose a well-constructed story, full of incident and dramatic power, in the face of afflictions which would have borne down a common mind to those depths of despair in which the ordinary duties of life are forgotten. Scott here proved to be not only a master of the art of story-telling, but the master of himself. {378} CHAPTER XXIX THE FAIR MAID OF PERTH Twoscore years elapsed between the day when Walter Scott, a lad of fifteen, felt a thrill of rapture as he viewed the valley of the Tay from the Wicks of Baiglie and the time when the same Walter, a worn-out man, first used the beautiful scene as the setting of a novel. The 'inimitable landscape,' as he called it, took possession of his mind and retained its influence during the greater part of his life. During the sad years of discouragement, when the 'Canongate Chronicles' had met with a cold reception, and his critical publishers were expressing their views somewhat too sharply, Scott turned once more to his well-loved Highlands for the theme of a story, and the picture which had so aroused his 'childish wonder' came back again after more than forty years. Naturally our first thought upon arriving at Perth was to find the Wicks of Baiglie and enjoy the same sensation of wonder which Sir Walter had so graphically described. We accordingly drove out over the hills south of the town, on the Edinburgh road, till we came to the Inn of Baiglie, but all to no purpose. A burly blacksmith, who looked as if he might have been a descendant of Henry Gow himself, told us that many people sought the view which Scott had described, but 'it did not exist.' Changes in the road and the growth of foliage had completely destroyed the prospect from the {379} Wicks of Baiglie. We were compensated for our disappointment, however, by several glimpses of the valley from Moncreiff Hill and by a superb view, which we enjoyed the following day, from the summit of Kinnoull Hill, east of the city. At the foot of this hill is the modern Castle of Kinfauns, replacing the seat of Sir Patrick Charteris, to which the burghers of Perth made their memorable journey. Perthshire is one of the largest counties in Scotland and excels all the others in the beauty and variety of its scenery. Along its southern border lies a region of moorlands, set with sparkling lochs and rippling streams, in the midst of which are the famous Trossachs. On the north are the rugged summits of the Grampian Mountains. In the centre is Loch Tay, one of the loveliest of Highland lakes, fed by the pure mountain streams that come down through the wild passes of Glen Lochay and Glen Dochart. Its outlet is the pleasant river Tay, passing down the eastern border through a valley of green meadows, waving groves, fertile fields, and princely palaces. In a drive of one hundred miles from Perth to Taymouth and back again by another route, we saw not so much as half a mile of scenery that might be called commonplace or uninteresting. North of the city is the Palace of Scone, which became the seat of government in the eighth century, at which time the famous Stone of Scone was brought from Dunstaffnage. Most of the Scottish kings were crowned here, until Edward I, in the fourteenth century, carried the stone to Westminster Abbey. Farther north, in the same valley, is a bit of Shakespeare's scenery. We {380} passed through the Birnam Wood of 'Macbeth,' though we saw no trees. Perhaps this was natural, for according to Shakespeare they all went to Dunsinane Hill many years ago and the bard does n't say that they ever came back. [Illustration: LOCH TAY] Perth is an ancient city, having received a charter from David I in the early part of the twelfth century. For nearly three hundred years it was the residence of the Scottish kings, who occupied during the greater part of that time the monastery of the Dominicans or Black Friars, formerly situated near the west end of the present bridge. This is the church to which Simon Glover and his daughter were walking when they were accosted by the frivolous young Duke of Rothsay, heir to the throne of Scotland. It was founded in 1231. The city was well provided with other religious houses, notably the Carthusian Monastery founded in 1429, the Grey Friars in 1460, and the Carmelites or White Friars, west of the town, dating from 1260. All of these have disappeared, the result of a famous sermon preached by John Knox, in 1559, in the old Church of St. John, which aroused the populace to a frenzy of excitement against the Church of Rome. St. John's Church was itself despoiled of everything which the mob thought savoured of popery, its altars, its images, and even its organ being destroyed. The building itself remained unhurt. Old St. John's was established as early as the fifth century. The transept and nave of the present building were erected in the thirteenth century and the choir in the fifteenth. At present the structure is divided into three churches, the East, the Middle, and the West. The appeal to the direct judgment {381} of Heaven, to determine the identity of the murderer of Oliver Proudfute, which is described as taking place within this building, was based upon a widespread belief that the corpse of a murdered person would bleed upon the approach of the guilty person,--the same superstition which Hawthorne used in 'The Marble Faun.' Scott gives the Black Friars' Monastery a conspicuous place in his story, as the residence of King Robert III. That well-meaning but weak monarch had three sons: the eldest, David, Duke of Rothsay, died at Falkland Palace, under suspicious circumstances; the second, John, died in infancy; while the third, known in history as James I, nominally succeeded to the throne on the death of his father in 1406, but was held a prisoner by the English and did not actually come into his inheritance until 1424. One of his first acts was to throw Murdoch, the son and successor of the Duke of Albany, into prison, and a little later he punished the treachery of that nobleman by execution at Stirling Castle. James I was a great contrast to his weak-minded father and by the decisiveness of his character, the sagacity of his statesmanship, and the brilliancy of his literary attainments gave Scotland a memorable reign. It was due to his untimely death that Perth lost her prestige as the seat of the Scottish kings. He was suddenly surrounded by a band of three hundred Highlanders, who entered his apartment at the Dominican Priory and stabbed him to death with their daggers. The horror inspired by this assassination caused the abrupt transfer of the Court to Edinburgh and the King's successor, James II, was crowned at Holyrood Abbey instead of at Scone. {382} The house of the Fair Maid of Perth may still be seen in Curfew Street, near the site of the old monastery. A comparison of its neat, well-kept appearance with the pictures of the same house as it was before the 'restoration' shows that it has improved with age as wonderfully as Shakespeare's birthplace at Stratford-on-Avon. Not far away, in a very narrow and squalid close, is another house celebrated in the story--the veritable residence of Hal o' the Wynd. The rapid multiplication of the Smith family may cause the sceptical to doubt the authenticity of this landmark, but to the citizens of Perth it is the original dwelling of the famous Henry Smith, or Henry Gow. The great public park and playground, north of the bridge, known as the North Inch, was the scene of the famous Battle of the Clans which took place in 1396. Thirty sturdy representatives of the Clan Chattan fought to the death with an equal number of the Clan Kay, or as Scott calls them, the Clan Quhele. When the conflict was about to commence, it was discovered that the Clan Chattan numbered only twenty-nine, whereupon a citizen of Perth, having no interest in the struggle, volunteered, for the paltry sum of half a mark, to risk his life in the frightful battle, and thus made up the required number. An ancient chronicler sums up the result in these quaint words:-- At last, the Clankayis war al slane except ane, that swam throw the watter of Tay. Of Glenquhattannis, was left xi personis on live; bot thay war sa hurt, that thay micht nocht hold thair swerdis in thair handis. There is a touch of contrition in Scott's portrayal of the cowardice of Conachar. The novelist's brother, {383} Daniel, a man of dissipated habits, had been employed in the island of Jamaica in some service against a body of insurgent Negroes, and had shown a deficiency in courage. He returned to Scotland a dishonoured man and Scott refused to see him. A stern sense of duty impelled him to refuse even to attend the funeral of the man who had disgraced his family. In later years he bitterly repented this austerity and atoned for it by tenderly caring for the unfortunate brother's child. Something of these feelings may have been in his mind when he wrote in his Diary on December 5, 1827: 'The fellow that swam the Tay would be a good ludicrous character. But I have a mind to try him in the serious line of tragedy.... Suppose a man's nerves, supported by feelings of honour, or say by the spur of jealousy, sustaining him against constitutional timidity to a certain point, then suddenly giving way, I think something tragic might be produced.... Well, I'll try my brave coward or cowardly brave man.' Campsie Linn, where Conachar made his final appearance, and with a last despairing shriek 'plunged down the precipice into the raging cataract beneath,' is a pleasant little waterfall in the Tay, seen through a small clearing in the woods. It is scarcely a cataract nor are the precipices formidable. The religious house where Catharine took refuge has completely disappeared. Falkland Castle, to which the Duke of Rothsay was carried, a prisoner, is in Fifeshire, about fifteen miles southeast of Perth. The rooms in which the Prince was quartered were probably in the old tower, which has completely disappeared. Excavations made by the Marquis of Bute in 1892 show it to have been an {384} extensive building fifty feet in diameter. The present castle, or the greater part of it, was built at a period somewhat later than that of the story. As early as 1160, Falkland was known as part of the property of the Earls of Fife, who were descendants of Macduff, the famous Thane of Fife, who put an end to the reign of Macbeth in 1057. On the death of Isabel, Countess of Fife, the last of her race, Falkland came into the hands of the Duke of Albany, the brother of King Robert III. Albany was intensely jealous of his nephew, the Duke of Rothsay, who, after attaining his majority, began to display traits of character more worthy than those ascribed to him in the novel. He was entrusted by the King with affairs of some importance and gave promise of developing into an active and vigorous successor to his father. This was, of course, a menace to the plans of Albany, who sought the crown for himself, and he therefore managed to exaggerate the young man's faults to the King and to stir up suspicions against him, until the feeble monarch consented to allow his son to be imprisoned for a time as a cure for his profligacy. The Queen, who might have interceded for the Prince, was dead, as was also the Bishop of St. Andrew, who had often been a mediator in the royal quarrels. Sir John de Ramorny, the young man's tutor, who had suggested to him the assassination of Albany and had been indignantly repulsed, revenged himself by false reports to his pupil's uncle, and was commissioned by the latter to arrest his former charge. The Duke of Rothsay was thereupon waylaid and carried to the Castle of Falkland. The common report was that he was placed in a dungeon and starved to death. It was said that a poor woman, who heard {385} his groans while she was passing through the garden, kept him alive for a time by passing small pieces of barley cake through the bars. Another woman fed him with her own milk, which she conveyed through a small reed to the famished prisoner. Another story is that the daughter of the governor of the castle was the one who took compassion on the Prince, and that her wicked father put her to death as a punishment for showing mercy. The Duke of Albany and the Earl of Douglas were charged with the murder, but maintained that the Prince had died from natural causes and the Parliament unanimously acquitted them. Lord Bute, who gave much study to the records of the case, was inclined to doubt the commission of an actual murder, but admitted that the cause of the young Duke's death must always remain uncertain. [Illustration: HOUSE OF THE FAIR MAID OF PERTH] James I and James II made important additions to Falkland, and James V, who found it in a ruinous condition, made many extensive repairs and additions. It was here that the latter king died of a broken heart, at the early age of thirty-two. A few moments before his death, when informed of the birth of his daughter, Mary, who became the Queen of Scots, he exclaimed prophetically, referring to the crown, 'It cam' wi' a lass and it'll gang wi' a lass.' Mary herself visited the castle annually for five or six years, before her marriage with Darnley and spent many happy days there. Her son, James VI, also made it his residence and was living there at the time he was enticed away in the 'Gowrie Conspiracy.' The last king to visit the palace was Charles II, who came for a stay of several days, after his coronation at Scone in 1651. Later the troops of Cromwell {386} occupied the place, and its historical interest ceased soon afterward. 'The Fair Maid of Perth' was finished in the spring of 1828. When the author laid down his pen, it was to mark the real close of the Waverley Novels. True, others were yet to be written, but they were the work of a broken man, and failed to come up to Scott's high standard. It is one of the marvels of literature that a novel so attractive and interesting as 'The Fair Maid' could be produced under circumstances so distracting and painful. No one places it in the same rank as 'Guy Mannering' and 'Ivanhoe,' yet it was popular at the time of publication and has always been regarded as entirely worthy of the reputation of the 'Great Wizard.' The indomitable will of the master was still able to hold his matchless imagination to its task, though the days of its power were now numbered. {387} CHAPTER XXX THE CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE AND OTHER TALES The remaining tales of the Waverley Novels require only brief mention. There is but little in them of the 'Country of Sir Walter Scott,' and scarcely more of the author himself. They are the final efforts of a man whose extraordinary buoyancy of youthful spirit is at last beginning to sink beneath a burden too great for human endurance. To begin at fifty-five the uninspiring task of 'paying for dead horses' the vast sum of £117,000, an amount which few men are able to earn by honest labour in all the days of their lives, required a superb courage which only Scott's high sense of honour could have sustained. Scarcely had the resolve been made when a second crushing blow fell with a force more stunning than the first. His beloved wife, the companion of thirty years, was taken away at the hour of his greatest need. She who could relieve the tedium of his toil by slipping quietly into the room to see if the fire burned, or to ask some kind question, was no longer present to comfort him. He felt a paralyzing sense of loneliness and old age, which even the devotion of his daughter Anne could not relieve. To continue the awful grind of writing for money--for something which he could not enjoy nor save for any cherished purpose, but must surrender at once to others--required an almost superhuman exertion of will power. His health began to fail. Headaches and insomnia, added to rheumatism, {388} caused him great distress. His early lameness became intensified and made walking so painful that he had to abandon what had been his favourite form of exercise. The once vigorous frame had prematurely worn out under the strain imposed upon it. Scott had become an aged man at less than threescore years. Yet in these years of disappointment, grief, and physical pain he produced an amount of work of which an ordinary man might well be proud had it represented a lifetime of toil. From 1826, the year of Constable's failure, to 1831, this man of iron will produced no less than forty[1] volumes, besides fifteen important reviews, essays, etc., and in addition supervised the publication of his complete prose writings and the Waverley Novels, preparing for the latter a series of exhaustive introductions and notes. I have anticipated a little by devoting a separate chapter to 'The Fair Maid of Perth' which appeared as {389} the Second Series of the 'Chronicles of the Canongate' in 1828. The 'First Series' was published in 1827 and comprised 'The Two Drovers,' 'The Highland Widow,' and 'The Surgeon's Daughter.' To many the chief interest lies in the Introduction. When the work was first projected, Scott thought of preserving his incognito by conceiving the tales to be the work of one Chrystal Croftangry, an elderly gentleman who had taken quarters for a time within the Sanctuary, as the immediate vicinity of Holyrood was called. Here, as in the famous Alsatia of London, debtors were safe from arrest. Scott at one time feared that the importunities of a certain relentless creditor might force him to take refuge in the Sanctuary. On November 1, 1827, he made this entry in his Journal: 'I waked in the night and lay two hours in feverish meditation ... I suppose that I, the Chronicler of the Canongate, will have to take up my residence in the Sanctuary, unless I prefer the more airy residence of the Colton Jail, or a trip to the Isle of Man.' Fortunately this creditor was silenced by Scott's generous friend, Sir William Forbes, who privately paid the claim out of his own pocket.[2] There is much in Mr. Croftangry's lengthy biography to remind one of Sir Walter himself. He finds pleasure in visiting the Portobello sands to see the cavalry drill, suggesting at once the young quartermaster of the Edinburgh Volunteers, who rode a black charger up and down the sands while he composed some of the most spirited stanzas of 'Marmion.' He delights to spend the wet mornings with his book and the pleasant ones in strolling upon the Salisbury Crags--just as Walter, {390} the high-school boy and college student loved to do. In Mrs. Bethune Baliol, the genial old lady who assists Mr. Croftangry in his literary speculations, we have a kindly reference to a dear friend of the author--Mrs. Murray Keith, who died at eighty-two years of age, 'one of the few persons whose spirits and cleanliness, and freshness of mind and body made old age lovely and desirable.' The volume is still more interesting because it contains Scott's first printed acknowledgment of the authorship of the Waverley Novels and gives an insight into some of the original suggestions of both characters and scenery. It also contains an account of the Theatrical Fund Dinner held in Edinburgh in February, 1827, in which Scott was publicly referred to as the author of the Waverley Novels and acknowledged in the presence of three hundred gentlemen the secret which he had hitherto confided to only twenty. 'The Highland Widow' is a story of that wild but beautiful portion of Argyllshire of which Loch Awe is the chief attraction. Dumbarton Castle, where the widow's unfortunate son bravely paid with his life for the mistaken teachings and indiscretions of his mother, is a conspicuous object on the right bank of the Clyde, a few miles below Glasgow. It stands on a high rock, the circumference of which at the base is fully a mile. It is still maintained as one of the defences of Scotland, in accordance with the Treaty of Union. 'The Two Drovers' is an excellent short story picturing the life of those men who drove their cattle from the {391} Highlands about Doune, to the markets of Lincolnshire or elsewhere in England, making the entire journey on foot, sleeping with their droves at night in all kinds of weather and enduring many hardships. 'The Surgeon's Daughter,' though it opens in one of the midland counties of Scotland, is chiefly a story of India, and the scenery is therefore not a part of Scott's Country, for he never saw it. The good old doctor, Gideon Grey, was, however, an old friend who lived in Selkirk, Dr. Ebenezer Clarkson, one of those hard-working country doctors who often combine, 'under a blunt exterior, professional skill and enthusiasm, intelligence, humanity, courage, and science.' 'Anne of Geierstein,' though sharply criticized by James Ballantyne and regarded by the author himself as a task which he hated, is nevertheless a wonderful work of imagination, in which the old-time genius is clearly manifest. Lockhart points out the power, which Scott retained in advanced years, of depicting 'the feelings of youth with all their original glow and purity,' and says that nowhere has the author 'painted such feelings more deliciously' than in certain passages of 'Anne of Geierstein.' He assigns as a reason the fact that Scott always retained in memory the events of his own happy life, and besides 'he was always living over again in his children, young at heart whenever he looked on them.' Though admittedly erroneous in certain historical details, the volume contains some wonderful descriptions of scenery. Scott never visited Switzerland, where {392} the chief interest of the story lies, but seemed to have an instinctive grasp of its charm, which he accounted for by saying, 'Had I not the honour of an intimate personal acquaintance with every pass in the Highlands; and if that were not enough, had I not seen pictures and prints _galore_?' The story opens at the village of Lucerne, and the Lake of the Four Cantons, beneath the shadow of the awe-inspiring Mount Pilatus. Those who have travelled from this point to Bâle, and thence down the Rhine to Strasburg, should have a fairly good idea of the scenery of the novel--better, perhaps, than the author himself. Charles of Burgundy, whose character and career had made a strong impression upon Scott through the pages of Philippe de Comines, appears once more, and the novel closes with his defeat at Nancy and tragic death in a half-frozen swamp, the victim of the traitorous Campo-basso. The story of King René and the events at Aix in Provence was an afterthought, woven into the tale at the suggestion of James Skene, who supplied the necessary details. 'Count Robert of Paris' is a tale of Constantinople, a city which Scott had not visited. The difficulties under which it was written may be judged from such expressions in the Journal as these: 'My pen stammers egregiously and I write horridly incorrect'; 'The task of pumping my brain becomes inevitably harder'; 'My bodily strength is terribly gone; perhaps my mental also.' The spirit which enabled him to persevere in spite of Cadell and Ballantyne, who were again criticizing severely, may be seen from these lines: 'But I will fight it out if I can. It would argue too great an attachment {393} of consequence to my literary labours to sink under critical clamour. Did I know how to begin, _I would begin again this very day, although I knew I should sink at the end._' In spite of the doctor's advice, he kept on with his dictation--for he could no longer use the pen--and finished 'Count Robert' amidst a frightful sea of troubles. He had suffered three or four strokes of apoplexy or palsy, and had experienced daily tortures from cramp, rheumatism, and increasing lameness. Yet in the midst of all this affliction he thought of his creditors and said repeatedly to Lockhart, 'I am very anxious to be done, one way or another, with this "Count Robert," and a little story about the "Castle Dangerous"'--thus to the last continuing the old trick of starting a new story before its predecessor was finished. He even resumed his youthful practice of going in search of material, and actually undertook an excursion to Douglas in Lanarkshire, where he examined attentively the old ivy-covered fragment of the original castle, the ruins of the old church, and the crypt of the Douglases, filled with leaden coffins. He even talked with the people of the village, after his old-time fashion, and gathered such legends as they could remember. He was now on familiar ground and speedily finished the latest story, bringing 'Count Robert' to a close about the same time. The two were published in November, 1831, as the Fourth Series of 'Tales of My Landlord.' These volumes completed the literary labours of Sir Walter, except that he continued to work a little at his notes and introductions, but at last he took the advice of his friends and agreed to do no more work of an exacting {394} nature. A journey to the Continent followed, including a visit to Malta, but in the following year he was glad to return to his beloved Abbotsford. On the 21st of September, 1832, lying in the dining-room of the mansion which his industry and courage had saved to his family, and listening to the rippling of his beloved river Tweed, the brave and honourable as well as honoured writer, breathed his last. He had fought a good fight and died in the belief that he had won. And so he had. For although the debt was not entirely paid, the subsequent sale of copyrights realized enough to satisfy all claims. Scott's sense of honour and superb courage had won a glorious victory. [1] The volumes were:-- Woodstock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 volumes Life of Napoleon Buonaparte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Chronicles of the Canongate, First Series,--comprising The Two Drovers, The Highland Widow, and The Surgeon's Daughter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Tales of a Grandfather . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Chronicles of the Canongate, Second Series--The Fair Maid of Perth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Anne of Geierstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 A History of Scotland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Doom of Devorgoil and Auchindrane . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Tales of My Landlord, Fourth Series,--Count Robert of Paris, and Castle Dangerous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 __ 40 Three short stories, which Ballantyne objected to including in the Canongate Chronicles, were printed in The Keepsake. These were 'My Aunt Margaret's Mirror,' 'The Tapestried Chamber,' and the 'Death of the Laird's Jock.' [2] See Chapter V, _Rokeby_, page 95. {395} CHAPTER XXXI A SUCCESSFUL LIFE In travelling so many miles to view the scenery of Scott's work, I think the strongest impression I have received is that of the all-pervading personality of Scott himself. It was one of the joys of the experience that so many places, not particularly attractive in themselves, should suddenly become interesting when found to be connected in some way with Scott's life or with something he had written; and that scenes of great natural beauty should become invested with a new fascination whenever they were found to suggest some line of poetry or to recall some well-remembered incident. I am sure I should never have given a second thought to the bit of an old wall which is now the scant remnant of Triermain Castle, had I passed it without knowledge of its identity; but it was worth going far out of the way to see, if only for the sake of realizing how the merest fragment of an old ruin could suggest a poem to Scott and how he could rebuild a castle in all its early magnificence and people it with the children of his fancy. I know of no more romantic place in all of beautiful Scotland than the vale of the Esk, where the river flows between high cliffs, clothed with thick shrubbery and overhanging vines; and one can stand by the side of the stream, looking over the lacelike foliage of the tree-tops, and catch glimpses now and then of some fascinating old ruin, peeping down like a fairy castle, lodged in the {396} topmost branches. Yet when I recall its charm, I cannot help remembering how it transformed an Edinburgh lawyer of small reputation into a poet of world-wide fame. Wherever we went, whether driving through the Canongate of Edinburgh, or looking across the Tweed toward the Eildon Hills, or listening to the shrill screams of the sea-fowl as they dashed about the dizzy heights of St. Abb's Head, or wandering quietly through the woods that lend a wild and fairy-like enchantment to the Trossachs, there was always the feeling that Scott had been there before and had so left the impress of his personality that his spirit seemed to remain. It was a pleasant sensation, for there seemed to be in it an indefinable consciousness of the presence of Scott's own genial nature, that spirit of good-fellowship which so delighted Washington Irving when he enjoyed the rare privilege of wandering over the hills and valleys with Sir Walter, listening to countless anecdotes and ballads, and sharing his boundless hospitality for several days. [Illustration: ABBOTSFORD] This feeling became more and more intense as we went about in the Border Country, which must be regarded as Scott's real home, and it reached its culmination when we came to Abbotsford. Here, thanks to the courtesy of Mr. James Curie, the representative in Melrose of the Honourable Mrs. Maxwell-Scott, a great-granddaughter of the poet and the present owner of the estate, we were greeted with a kindness worthy of Sir Walter's own ideas of hospitality. We seemed to meet the original owner face to face--not the poet--not the novelist--but Walter Scott, the man. The great mansion and the spacious, well-wooded estate which he took so much joy in creating and {397} struggled so desperately to save, seemed to typify all the success and all the failure of his career. The garden with the arched screen, copied by his own desire from the cloisters of Melrose Abbey; the pile of stones in the centre, that once formed the base of the ancient Mercat Cross of his native city; the stone image of the favourite old stag-hound Maida, placed just outside the door, as a constant reminder of the faithful friend of many years; the entrance itself, copied from the Palace of Linlithgow; the hall, with its fine carved woodwork from the old Kirk of Dunfermline; the museum with its collection of guns, swords, armour, and curious articles of every description, suggesting the author's antiquarian tastes and the loving interest which scores of friends took in presenting him with the things they knew he would appreciate; the library with its thousands of volumes representing the author's own literary tastes; the study with his own desk and chair; the dining-room with its highly prized ancestral portraits; and the bay-window through which Sir Walter looked for the last time upon the rippling waters of his beloved Tweed--all these seemed to bring his kindly personality nearer to us. I believe it was this all-pervading personality, the spirit of brotherly kindness, of generosity and of love, that made Scott's life a success. It is reflected through page after page in the novels and poems, and shines out brilliantly from the beginning to the end of Lockhart's great biography. It is the very essence of that wholesome quality which has been so often remarked as one of the most distinguishing characteristics of the Waverley Novels. There were no signs on Scott's property warning {398} trespassers to 'keep out.' He felt that such things would be offensive to the feelings of the people and if any of his neighbours could shorten a journey by walking through his grounds, he wanted them to have the advantage. There was one sign on his land, by a broad path through the woods, reading 'The _Rod_ to Selkirk.' The spelling was Tom Purdie's, but the implied invitation to take a 'short cut' through the private estate was warmly endorsed by his master. It was a pleasure to him to see children come up with a pocketful of nuts gathered from his trees, rather than run away at sight of him, and he declared that no damage had ever been done in consequence of the free access which all the world had to his place. When he walked over his estate, talking familiarly with Maida, who almost invariably accompanied him, he would stop for a friendly word with every tenant. 'Sir Walter speaks to every man as if they were blood relations,' said one of them. Happy the companion who could take such a walk with him. 'Oh! Scott was a master spirit--as glorious in his conversation as in his writings,' wrote Irving. 'He spoke from the fulness of his mind, pouring out an incessant flow of anecdote and story, with dashes of humour, and then never monopolizing, but always ready to listen and appreciate what came from others. I never felt such a consciousness of happiness as when under his roof.' The same kindliness, experienced by tenants and visitors, was extended to the servants of the family, as Tom Purdie could heartily testify. Tom was brought before Scott, as sheriff, charged with poaching. He told his story with such pathos,--of a wife and many children {399} to feed, of scarcity of work and abundance of grouse,--mingling with it so much sly humour, that the 'Shirra's' kind heart was touched. He took Tom into his own employment as shepherd, and no master ever had a more faithful servant. When Purdie died, twenty-five years later, he was laid to rest in the churchyard of Melrose Abbey, where his grave is marked by a simple monument, inscribed by his master, 'in sorrow for a humble but sincere friend.' Peter Mathieson, a brother-in-law of Tom, who was employed as coachman about the same time, survived his master. The portraits of both these servants occupy an honoured place on the walls of the armoury at Abbotsford. No man was ever on more delightful terms with his family than Sir Walter. Captain Basil Hall, who spent a Christmas fortnight at Abbotsford, recorded that 'even the youngest of his nephews and nieces can joke with him, and seem at all times perfectly at ease in his presence--his coming into the room only increases the laugh and never checks it--he either joins in what is going on, or passes.' When writing in his study, if Lady Scott or the children entered, his train of thought was not disturbed. He merely regarded the interruption as a welcome diversion by which he felt refreshed. Sometimes he would lay down his pen and, taking the children on his knee, tell them a story; then kissing them, and telling them to run away till supper-time, he would resume his work with a contented smile. He considered it 'the highest duty and sweetest pleasure' of a parent to be a companion to his children. They in turn reciprocated by sharing with 'papa' all their little joys and sorrows and taking him into their hearts as their {400} very best playfellow. No man ever took more pleasure in the education of his children. On Sundays he would often go out with the whole family, dogs included, for a long walk, and when the entire party were grouped about him, by the side of some pleasant brook, he would tell stories from the Bible, weaving into them all that picturesque charm and richness which have made his written stories so delightful. He taught his children to love the out-of-door life, and especially insisted upon their attaining proficiency in horsemanship, that they might become as fearless as himself. 'Without courage,' he said, 'there cannot be truth; and without truth, there can be no other virtue.' What Scott taught his children, he impressed upon all, by the force of example, throughout his life. Shortly before his death, in a few simple words, he epitomized his creed--without intending to do so--in a tender parting message to his son-in-law. '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.' When Lockhart asked if he should send for Sophia and Anne, he said, 'No, don't disturb them. Poor souls! I know they were up all night--God bless you all.' This lifelong desire to 'be good' and to do good, without the slightest affectation, prudery, or sanctimoniousness, was I believe the crowning glory of Scott's life and the secret of his success. Yet in many ways Scott was not successful. Judged by that test which is the only one allowed to many men, his life was distinctly a failure. In the ordinary usage of {401} the term, a man is accounted successful if he accomplishes his chief aim in life. Wealth is the aim of so many that rich men are usually considered successful, and those who die poor are commonly supposed to be failures. Scott aimed to write a popular kind of poetry, and in this he succeeded. He then turned to fiction and here he was even more successful. But this kind of success did not represent his supreme desire. He sought to make it the means to an end, and the dream of his life was, after all, wealth. Not riches for himself. He was never mean enough for that, and selfishness did not enter into his nature. It was wealth for his family that he desired. He was a man of great pride and the old feudal system was full of attractiveness. He knew every detail of the history of the Scott family for centuries. He revered the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch as the head of his clan. As his writings, year after year, brought him financial returns almost fabulous in size, he began to cherish the desire to found a new branch of the Scott Clan. The irresistible impulse to add new lands to Abbotsford, regardless of cost, and to erect a great mansion, fit for the residence of an earl, all sprang from this one motive. The readiness with which he purchased a captaincy in the army for his eldest son, at a cost of £3500, and the cheerfulness with which he settled nearly the whole of Abbotsford upon young Walter and his affianced bride, promising that if he should be spared ten years he would give them as much more, are striking indications of his intense longing to establish the Scotts of Abbotsford among the great families of Scotland. In this, the greatest ambition of his life, Scott was {402} completely thwarted. Though Abbotsford was saved from the wreck of his fortunes by an almost superhuman effort, the estate which passed to his heirs was not so large as he had expected, nor did his sons live long to enjoy it. The eldest, Walter, died in 1847, and as he had no son, the baronetcy expired with him. The younger son, Charles, had died in 1841. The failure of Scott's hopes was the result of a long chain of circumstances. In early life he had undertaken the practice of law, and continued for ten years without rising above the level of mere drudgery, his earnings for the first five years averaging only eighty pounds annually and probably not rising very much higher during the subsequent years. Finding it necessary, at length, to give up the law entirely, he arranged to secure an appointment as Clerk of the Court of Session, to succeed an aged incumbent of that office. The agreement was that Scott should do the work while his predecessor drew the pay, in consideration of which he was to have the entire emolument after the old gentleman's death. The office was worth eight hundred pounds a year and offered a very fair substitute for the small earnings at the bar. Unfortunately the gentleman was so inconsiderate as to prolong his existence for six years after the bargain was made. Scott was already in possession of a private income of one thousand pounds, to which the office of Sheriff of Selkirk added three hundred pounds, and was beginning to receive large rewards for his literary labour, 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel' bringing him £769 6_s._ for the first and second editions. It might be supposed that such an income would satisfy a young man not yet {403} thirty-four. Scott, however, was ambitious, and feeling the need of the additional income which did not at once materialize from the clerkship, sought to make up the deficiency by investing nearly all his capital in a commercial venture. He entered into a secret partnership with James Ballantyne in the printing business, which proved, with one exception, to be the greatest mistake of his life. The exception, which marked, in Lockhart's phrase, 'the blackest day in his calendar,' was in connecting his fortunes with John Ballantyne in the publishing business. James Ballantyne's greatest fault was a tendency to rely too much upon Scott's judgment, and the latter was too much swayed by generous motives to be a prudent business manager. He would favour the publication of an unmarketable book rather than disappoint a friend. Moreover, his own great interest in works of an historical or antiquarian nature often led him astray. His judgment of good literature was better than his knowledge of what the public was likely to buy. The firm became loaded with unprofitable enterprises, which they, in turn, unloaded, in part, upon Constable, thus contributing one of the causes of the latter's downfall. Another weakness of James Ballantyne, who was an excellent printer and in many ways an exemplary man, was his distaste for figures and utter indifference to his balance-sheets--a fatal error for a business man. John Ballantyne, a younger brother of James, was a light-headed, happy-go-lucky, careless little fellow, who could amuse a company of friends with comic songs and droll mimicry, who loved all kinds of sports, drove a tandem down the Canongate, was fond of {404} dissipation and gay company, and without the slightest capacity for business or interest in it. Like his brother he was intensely fond of Scott and loyal to him, but a reckless adventurer and spendthrift. Scott nicknamed him 'Rigdumfunnidos' and was always amused by him, but could scarcely have had respect for his business qualities. It must always remain a mystery why he entrusted so large an interest in his own fortunes to such a weakling. An alliance, and, what is worse, a secret one, with two such men, who could not in any sense act as a brake upon Scott's own impulses nor steady him with the business experience which he sadly lacked, was mistake enough; but Scott himself committed a serious error in his own affairs. He fell into the habit of selling his literary productions before they were written, and carried this folly to such an extreme that about the time of the issue of 'The Fortunes of Nigel,' he had received payment, by notes, from the bookseller, for no less than four works of fiction, which at that time had not even been planned. They subsequently appeared as 'Peveril of the Peak,' 'Quentin Durward,' 'St. Ronan's Well,' and 'Redgauntlet.' The proceeds were spent upon the castle at Abbotsford before the books were even named. John Ballantyne was rapidly spending money which his firm had not earned, and Scott, who ought to have remonstrated against such rashness, was committing the same fault on a larger scale. Under the circumstances the only wonder is that the disaster was so long averted. When it came, Scott found himself involved in the debts of the Ballantynes to the extent of £117,000. [Illustration: SCOTT MONUMENT, EDINBURGH] With superb courage he rose to the emergency. {405} Assuming the entire burden, and struggling against almost insuperable difficulties, he succeeded in paying £63,000, or considerably more than half of the indebtedness. Life insurance of £22,000 and £2000 in the hands of his trustees reduced the debt to about £30,000, which sum was advanced by Cadell, the publisher. All the creditors, except the latter, were then paid in full, and in 1847, fifteen years after Scott's death, Cadell was paid by a transfer of copyrights and the entire obligation was thus finally extinguished. Had Scott died at the time of the Constable failure, leaving his affairs to be settled by the ordinary process of the law, and the Ballantyne creditors unpaid, the world would never have known whether the unprecedented success of his literary labours was after all quite sufficient to counterbalance the disastrous failure of his business affairs. The catastrophe, however, brought out all the sterling qualities of his character. How much courage he possessed, what a high sense of honour, what patience, what endurance, even his closest friends had never realized. Just as those kindly personal qualities had woven an indescribable charm into the products of his fancy, such as no other series of writings had ever before possessed, so the highest and noblest traits of his character responded to the call of a great emergency, and converted the failures of a lifetime into a final triumph. THE END {407} INDEX ABBOT, THE, 4, 10, 265-271; 348. Abbotsford, 39, 46, 89, 90, 133, 146, 220, 233, 346, 352, 360, 376, 394, 396, 397, 398, 399, 401, 402. Abercorn, Lady, letter to, 22. Abercrombie, George, 119. Aberfoyle, 74; clachan of, 192, 193; 194; old bridge, 193. Adam, Rt. Hon. William, 267, 268. Albany, Duke of, 381, 384, 385. Allan-Fraser, Patrick, 154. Allan, the river, 259. Alsatia (Whitefriars), 323, 324. Amboglanna, 136. Annan, 357. Annan, the river, 359. ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN, 391, 392. Anne, Queen, 374. ANTIQUARY, THE, 145-159. Arbroath, 151-155; 158. Argyle, John, Duke of, 202, 207. Argyle, Marquis of, 225, 226, 227, 228, 231. Arthur's Seat, 8, 60. Ashby de la Zouch, 234, 235, 236. Ashestiel, 48, 62, 106, 346, 352. Auchmithie, 155, 158. Avon, the river, 283. Baiglie, the Wicks of, 10, 378. Bailie, Joanna, letter to, 366. Balfour, John, of Burley, 169, 177, 178, 179. Baliol, Barnard, founder of Barnard Castle, 88. Ballantyne, James, 5, 106, 365, 372, 391, 392, 403. Ballantyne, John, 5, 273, 372, 403, 404. Balmawhapple, 124. Balquhidder, Kirk of, 188, 189. Balue, Cardinal John de la, 234, 343. Bannockburn, 81, 104. Bard's Incantation, The, 159. Barnard Castle, 86-88, 92. Beaton, Cardinal, 155. Becket, Thomas à, 373. Bemerside Heights, 352. Ben An, 12, 76. Ben Ledi, 12, 73, 77. Ben Lomond, 12, 193. Ben Nevis, 233. Ben Venue, 12, 74, 76, 78. BETROTHED, THE, 365-369. Birnam Wood, 380. Bishop's Palace, the, Kirkwall, 307. Blackford Hill, 8, 57, 59. Black Ormiston, the Laird of, original of Julian Avenel, 261. Blackwood, William, criticism by, of _The Black Dwarf_, 165. Blair Adam Club, The, 267. BLACK DWARF, THE, 15, 160-165. Blenheim, battle of, 374. Blenheim Palace, 373-375. Bohun, Sir Henry de, 104. Border Minstrelsy, 52. Borthwick, the river, 35. Bothwell Bridge, 168, 170, 171. Bothwell Castle, 172. Bower, Johnny, guide at Melrose, 41. Bowhill, seat of the Duke of Buccleuch, 35. Bowness, 357. Bradwardine, Bears of, 107, 109. Bradwardine, Cosmo Comyne, 118, 123. Bradwardine, Rose, 113. Braes of Balquhidder, 11, 66, 78, 186, 187, 196. Branksome Hall, 37, 43. Branxton Hill, 7. BRIDAL OF TRIERMAIN, THE, 16, 20, 21, 91, 96-99; 104. BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR, THE, 215-223; 190. Brignall Woods, 91, 92. Brig o' Turk, 71, 74, 77. Brogar, Bridge of, 310. Brown Square, 9. Bruce, John, discoveries of, in Kinrossness, Shetland, 208, 209. Bruce, Robert, 40, 80, 101, 102, 103, 124, 129, 152, 191, 230, 262, 304, 332. Bryant, William Cullen, quoted, 164. Buccleuch, Duchess of (Countess of Dalkeith), 31, 32, 34, 46. Buccleuch, Duke of, 32; 35; 46; 49. Buchanan, Francis, 120. Buchanan, John, 72, 120. Burgh-upon-Sands, 358. Burns, Robert, 126, 142. Byron, Lord, 104. Cadell, Robert, 392, 405. Cadyow Castle, 30; quotation, 31. Caerlaverock Castle, 127-129, 135, 357. Caerlaverock Churchyard, grave of Old Mortality, 167. Calton Hill, 60. Cambus Kenneth, 80. Cambusmore, 72, 120. Campbell, Robert MacGregor, original of Rob Roy, exploits of, 182-188; death of, 189. Campsie Linn, 110, 383. Canongate, The, Edinburgh, 209. Cargill, George, original of Saunders Mucklebackit, 156. Carlisle, 21, 121, 357, 358, 362. Caroline, Queen, 204. Carpenter, Miss Charlotte Margaret. _See_ Lady Scott. Carrick, Margaret, original of Tib Mumps, 137. Castell Coch, Wales, 368. Castell Dinas Bran, 367. CASTLE DANGEROUS, 190, 393. Castle Street, Edinburgh, Number 39, Scott's residence, 346. Castleton, 328. Cat Castle rocks, 94. Cathcart Castle, 271. Chambers, Robert, quoted, 202, 204. Chambers, William, quoted, 163. Charles I, 90, 225, 233, 319, 322, 326, 374. Charles II, 184, 242, 325, 326, 330, 332, 334, 335, 376, 385. Charles of Burgundy, 338, 343, 344, 345, 392. Chaucer, 374. Chillingham Castle, 189-190, 191. Christian, William (William Dhône), 332. CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE, THE, 387-394. Churchill, John, Duke of Marlborough, 374. Clare, Lady, 61, 63. Claverhouse, John Grahame of, 170, 171, 179. Cleikum Inn, 350. Clerk, William, original of Darsie Latimer, 9, 110, 267. Clickimin (_Cleik-him-in_), Pictish broch, 298. Clifford Tower, 250. Cluden, the river, 126, 205. Clyde, the river, 172. Coldingham Abbey, 56. Coldingham Priory, 222. Coldstream, 7, 61. Colmslie, 260. Comines, Philippe de, 341, 345, 392. Coningsburgh, Castle of, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250. Constable, Archibald, 272, 372, 403, 404, 405. Constable, George, original of Monkbarns, 4, 147. Constance de Beverly, 54-56, 64. Corehouse, Lord, 42. Corra Linn, 172. COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS, 392. Cragg Force, 94. Craighall, 12, 110, 111, 112. Craignethan Castle, original of Tillietudlem, 172-175. Craigroyston, 185, 186. Cranstoun (Lord Corehouse), original of the Baron of Cranstoun, 42. Cranstoun, Miss (The Countess of Purgstall), 190. Crichope Linn, 177. Crichton Castle, 56-58, 221. Cromwell, Oliver, 241, 374, 376, 377, 385. Crookston Castle, 270, 271. Crosbie, Andrew, original of Paulas Pleydell, 141. Culloden, battle of, 116, 122, 123. Cumberland, 135, 136. Cumnor Church, 279. Cumnor Hall, 272, 273, 276, 277, 278. Cumnor, the village, 273, 281. Curle, James, 396. Dacre, Thomas, Lord, 20, 43. Daim, Oliver le, 342. Dalgetty, old soldier, 114. Dairymple, James, Lord Stair, original of Sir William Ashton, 215, 216. Dalzell, General, 179. Darnley, Henry, Lord, husband of Mary Queen of Scots, 267, 271. David I, 380. David II, son of Robert Bruce, 183. David Deans, house of, 212. Davidson, James, original of Dandie Dinmont, 137. Dee, river in Wales, 367. Deepdale, 94. Derby, Countess of (Charlotte de la Tremouille), 332. Derby, Earls of, 332. Derbyshire, 328. Devil's Beef Tub, 361. Dirk Hatteraick's cave, 131, 132. Dods, Mrs. Margaret, 350. Don, the river, 247. Douglas, George, 269, 270. Douglas, Lady, 269. Douglas, 'The Little,' original of Roland Graeme, 270. Douglas, Sir William, 269. Douglas, village of, 393. Doune Castle, 12, 80, 120. Driver, Counsellor Pleydell's clerk, 142. Drumclog, battle of, 170, 171. Dryburgh Abbey, 304, 352. Dryhope, 35. Dudley, Edmund, 325. Dudley, Guildford, 274, 325, 326. Dudley, John, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland, 274, 277, 281, 325. Dudley, Robert. _See_ Leicester. Dugald Ciar Mohr, ancestor of Rob Roy, 183. Dumbarton, 172, 270. Dumbiedykes, 212. Dumfries, 126, 127, 130, 131, 135, 191. Maxwelltown observatory, 166; the Mid Steeple, 205; Church of Kirkpatrick Irongray, 207. Duncan, Rev. Dr., 353. Duncraggin, 77. Dundrennan Abbey, 270, 360. Dunfermline, the Abbey, 40, 304. Dunottar, Scott's meeting with Old Mortality, 167. Dunstaffnage, 230, 231, 232, 379. Dwarfie Stone, the, 312. Earl's Palace, the, Kirkwall, 307. Edinburgh, 7, 8. The Old Town, 9, 10; Brown Square, 9; High Street, 141; Parliament Square, 190-202; St. Giles, 60, 109-203; Tolbooth, 9, 200-205, 233; Advocates' Library, 200; Grassmarket, 203, 204; King's Park, 209, 212; Canongate, 209, 266; Salisbury Crags, 7, 8, 60, 210, 389; Queensbury House, 266; the Castle, 346; Castle St., 346; St. Cuthbert's Church, 114; St. Leonard's Crags, 8, 212; the Cowgate, 201; West Bow, 201; St. Anthony's Chapel, 8, 210, 211. Edward I, 129, 191, 231, 324, 358, 379. Edward III, 374. Edward IV, 235, 240. Edward VI, 274. Egliston Abbey, 92, 93. Eildon Hills, the, 38, 347, 352, 396. Elibank, 36, 49, 106, 139, 332. Elizabeth, Queen, 272, 273, 274, 275, 286, 287, 321, 326, 332. Ellen's Isle, 69, 76. Ellis, George, 32, 52, 96; quoted, 61, 64. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, opinion of _The Bride of Lammermoor_, quoted, 215. English Lakes, the, 15, 16, 96. Engaddi, 369, 370. Erskine, Rev. John, 10. Erskine, William, 51, 96, 375. Esk, vale of the. _See_ Roslin Glen. Etal Castle, 62. Ethie Castle, 154, 155. Ettrick Forest, 47. Ettrick, the river, 175. EVE OF ST. JOHN, THE, 3, 30. Eyemouth, 222. Faa, Gabriel (Tod Gabbie), 138. FAIR MAID OF PERTH, THE, 11, 378-386; house of, 382. Fairy Dean, 259. Falkland Castle, 383, 384, 385. Fast Castle, 220. Feckless Fannie, original of Madge Wildfire, 213. Ferguson, Dr. Adam, 15, 160, 162. Ferguson, Sir Adam, 15, 16, 81, 267. FIELD OF WATERLOO, THE, 104. Fitful Head, the, 300. Fitz James. _See_ James V. Flodden Field, 7, 53, 58, 61, 62, 64, 257. 'Flower of Yarrow,' the, 35. Forbes, Sir William, 18, 95, 389. Ford Castle, 62. Forth, the river, 188, 192. FORTUNES OF NIGEL, THE, 316-327, 404. Fort William, 231. Foster, Anthony, 274, 276, 279. Fountains Abbey, 243, 244. Friar Tuck, 237, 243, 252. Gardiner, Colonel, 4, 116. Gauger's Loup, the, 131. Gemmels, Andrew, original of Edie Ochiltree, 6, 148. George II, 327. George V, 231, 320, 323. Gilmerton, 280. Gilsland, 16, 20, 97, 136, 159, 349. Glasgow-- The Cathedral, 191, 192; the Tolbooth, 192; the Salt Market, 192; the Trongate, 195; Langside, 270. Glencaple, 127, 357. Glendearg, 259, 260. Glen Finglas, 74. GLENFINLAS, 30. Glenfruin, battle of, 183. Glengarry. _See_ MacDonnel. Gloucester, Cathedral of, 369. Goblin Cave, the, 78. Goldie, Mrs., 207. Gordon, Jean, original of Meg Merrilies, 6, 7, 138. Gordon, Madge, Queen of the Gipsies, 6, 138. Gow, John, original of Cleveland, 313. Gowrie Conspiracy, 221, 385. Grahame, John. _See_ Claverhouse. Graham of Killearn, 186-187. Grassmarket, Edinburgh, 203, 204. Gratz, Rebecca, original of Rebecca, 252. GRAY BROTHER, THE, 30. Gray, Daft Jock, original of Davie Gellatley, 118. Grandtully Castle, 13, 109, 111, 112. Greenwich Palace, called Placentia, 326. Greta, the river, 89, 91, 94. Grey, Lady Jane, 274, 325, 326. Grey Mare's Tail, 176, 177. Grierson of Lag, 361. GUY MANNERING, 126-144; scenes from, in Edinburgh, 10; Liddesdale, 15; England, 16. Guy's Cliffe, 281. Gwenwynwyn, Welsh hero, 368, 369. Haddon Hall, 329, 330, 331. Hall, Captain Basil, 399. Kailyards, residence of Dr. Adam Ferguson, 160. Hal o' the Wynd, house of, 382. Harden, 35. Harden, Wat of, 106. HAROLD THE DAUNTLESS, 104. Harthill, site of Front-de-Boeuf's castle, 239. Hastings, William, Lord, 235. Hawthornden, 24. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, his opinion of Scotland, 256. HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN, THE, 8, 199-214, 326. Heber, Richard, 52. Henry I, 373. Henry II, 329, 373. Henry III, 374. Henry VII, 240, 274, 335. Henry VIII, 244, 258, 321, 325, 326. Heriot, George, 318, 319. Heron, Lady, 60, 63. Heron, Sir Hugh, 7, 53. Herries family, the, 359-360. HIGHLAND WIDOW, THE, 389, 390. High Street, Edinburgh, 9, 141. Hillslap, 260. Hoddam Castle, 359, 360, 361. Hogg, James, the Ettrick shepherd, 26, 139, 144, 176. Holyrood Abbey, 304, 381. Holyrood Palace, 10, 60, 112, 113, 209, 266, 267. Hospitalfield, Arbroath, 153. Howard, Lord William ('Belted Will'), 21, 43, 331. Hoy, Island of, 312. Hughes, Mrs., of Uffington, quoted, 124. Hutton, Richard H., quoted, 64. Innerleithen, 349. Inverary Castle, 227, 231. Inverlochy, battle of, 226, 231-233; Castle, 232. Inversnaid, 119; the fort, 196; the falls, 197. Iona, 103, 231. Irthing River, the, 20, 97, 349. Irving, John, 7. Irving, Washington, visit of, to Abbotsford, 252, 306; Scott's letter to, 253; quoted, 41, 47, 145, 146, 347, 398. IVANHOE, 234-254, 345. James I of Scotland, 120, 129, 381, 385. James II of Scotland, 83, 120, 381, 385. James III, 58, 81, 120. James IV, 53, 58, 59, 60, 63, 81, 120. James V, 47, 58, 81; as Fitz James, 67, 75, 79, 80, 84; as 'Gudeman of Ballangeich,' 82, 129, 342, 385. James VI of Scotland (James I of England), 36, 82, 221, 233, 317-321, 324-327, 385. James VIII, the 'Old Pretender,' 113. Jarlshof, Shetland Islands, 294, 298, 299, 300, 308. Jedburgh, 14. Jeffrey, Lord, 96; quoted, 64. Jervaulx Abbey, 242. John, King, 235, 242, 251, 374. Jones, Paul, 130. Keith, Mrs. Murray, original of Mrs. Bethune Baliol, 300. Keith, Sir Alexander, 109. Kelso, 5, 6, 7, 26, 150, 353, 358. KENILWORTH, 272-289. Kenilworth Castle, 273, 275, 277, 281, 283, 288, 289. Mortimer's Tower, 283, 284, 287. The Gallery Tower, 283, 284, 286. Cæsar's Tower, 284. Leicester's Building, 284. Henry VIII's Lodgings, 285. The White Hall, 285. The Presence Chamber, 285. The Great Hall, 285, 287. Mervyn's Tower, 286, 287. The Pleasance, 287. Kenneth MacAlpine, 231. Kilpont, Lord, original of the Earl of Menteith, 225-228. Kilsyth, battle of, 233. Kinblethmont, 158. Kinfauns, Castle of, 379. Kinross, 268. Kirkcudbright, 130, 131. Kirk Yetholm, 6, 138. Kirkwall, capital of the Orkney Islands, 303-309. Knox, John, 267, 380. LADY OF THE LAKE, THE, 12, 22, 23, 66-85. Lag, Castle of, 361. Laidlaw, William, 347, 348. Lammermuir Hills, 218, 221. Lanark, 172. Lanercost Priory, 20, 44, 97. Lang, Andrew, quoted, 64, 214, 377. Langshaw, 260. Langside, battle of, 270, 271. Lasswade Cottage, 22, 25, 45, 346. Lauderdale, Duke of, 179, 180. Lanrick Mead, 71, 77, 78. LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL, THE, 21, 28-46, 348; quotation from, 24. Lediard Falls, 121, 195. LEGEND OF MONTROSE, A, 4, 224-233. Leicester, Earl of (Lord Robert Dudley), 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 280, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287. _Leicester's Commonwealth_, anonymous pamphlet, 276. Lennel, 7, 61. Leny, Falls of, 229. Lerwick, capital of the Shetland Islands, 291-293, 296, 303, 311. Leslie, General, 225, 233. Leyden, Dr. John, letter to, 48. Liddesdale, raids into, 1, 14, 26, 137. Liège, 319, 343, 344, 345. LIFE OF NAPOLEON, 372. Lincluden Abbey, 126, 127. Lindisfarne Abbey, 54-56. Lindsay, Sir David, 56, 58. Linlithgow, 58. Llangollen, Wales, 366, 367; the 'Ladies' of, 367. Loch Achray, 12, 74. Loch Ard, 74, 192, 194, 195. Loch Arklet, 196. Loch Corriskin, 100. Loch Doine, 78. Loch Fyne, 231. Loch of Harray, 310. Loch Katrine, 11, 12, 66, 71, 74, 76, 78, 101, 184, 187. Loch Leven Castle, 267, 268, 269, 359. Loch Linnhe, 226, 230, 231, 232. Loch Lomond, 12, 119, 120, 183-185, 196. Loch of the Lowes, 175. Loch Lubnaig, 77, 78, 193, 229. Loch Oich, 123. Loch Scavig, 102. Loch Skene, 176, 177. Loch of Sleapin, 102. Loch of Stennis, 310. Loch Tay, 379. Loch Vennachar, 12, 71. Loch Voil, 78, 189, 196. Loches, Castle of, 341, 342. Lockhart, John Gibson, 97, 347, 400; quoted, 48, 64, 214, 253, 317, 336, 366, 371, 372, 377, 391. London, 316, 317, 320, 327, 334, 335. London Bridge, 325. LORD OF THE ISLES, THE, 100-105. Louis XI of France, 338, 339, 340, 341, 343, 344, 345. Lyulph's Tower, 98. Macallister's Cave, 102. MacDonald, Flora, original of Flora MacIvor, 122. MacDonnel, Colonel Ronaldson, of Glengarry, 123. MacGregor, Clan, 182-184. MacGregor, Helen, Rob Roy's wife, 195. Mackay, Charles, 198. MacVicar, Minister of St. Cuthbert's, 114. Maida, Scott's favourite dog, 123, note; 371-375, 398. Major Oak, the, in Sherwood Forest, 239-240. 'Making' of Sir Walter, the, 1-27. Malcolm Graeme, 68, 79, 84. Man, Isle of, 130, 331. Manor Water, vale of, 15, 160, 163. Marck, William de la, 342. Margaret, Lady, of Branksome Hall, 33, 37, 41, 44 45. MARMION, 7, 8, 20, 47-65, 353; quotations from, 3, 8. Marquis of Annandale's Beefstand, 361. Marriott, Rev. John, 50. Mary, Queen of England, 274, 275, 326, 335. Mary, Queen of Scots, 58, 81, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 275, 359, 385. Mathieson, Peter, 399. Mayburgh, 98. Meg Merrilies, 131, 137, 138. 'Meikle-mouthed Meg,' story of, 36. Melrose, 33, 38-42, 45, 106, 255, 258, 265, 266, 304, 347, 348, 352, 399. Menteith, Lake, 73. Mercat Cross, of Melrose, 261. Middleham Castle, 240, 241. Miller, A. H., quoted, 195. Millie, Bessie, original of Norna of the Fitful Head, 313, 314. MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER, 15, 25, 29, 31. Mitchell, Robert, 169, 180. Moddey Dhoo, legend of the, 334. Moffat, 172, 175, 176. Moffat Water, 175. MONASTERY, THE, 4, 255-264, 348. Monkbarns (Hospitalfield), 153. Monmouth, Duke of, 170, 171, 179. Montrose, Duke of, 182, 185, 187, 196, 202. Montrose, the Marquis of, 225, 226, 228, 232, 233; sword of, 233. Morritt, John B. S., 89, 90, 91, 134, 197. Mortham Castle, 89, 94. Morton, The Regent, 202. Mount Sharon, 5. Mousa, broch of, 247, 300, 301. Mucklebackit, Saunders, 155-157. Multon, Sir Thomas de, of Gilsland, 21, 369. Mump's Ha', 136, 137. Murdock, Duke of Albany, 129. Murray, Earl of, 10, 30. Murray, Sir Gideon, of Elibank, 36. Muschat's Cairn, Edinburgh, 210. Nasmyth, Sir James, 162. Naworth Castle, 20, 43, 44, 231. Neidpath Castle, 351. Nethan, the river, 172. Neville, Richard, Earl of Warwick, 282. Newark Castle, 35. Nith, the river, 126, 127, 357. Norham Castle, 7, 53, 56. Oakwood Tower, Stronghold of Wat of Harden, 35. Oban, 230, 231. Ochil Mountains, 59. Odin, Stone of, 311, 313. OLD MORTALITY, 166-181; Tennyson's opinion of, 167. ORIGINALS OF CHARACTERS-- Alasco, an Italian physician employed by the Earl of Leicester, 277. Lucy Ashton, Janet Dalrymple, 216, 217. Lady Ashton, Lady Stair, 216, 217. Sir William Ashton, James Dalrymple, Lord Stair, 215, 216. Julian Avenel, the Laird of Black Ormiston, 261. Mrs. Bethune Baliol, Mrs. Murray Keith, 300. Bevis, Maida, Scott's dog, 123, note; 371-375, 398. The Black Dwarf, David Ritchie, 160. Josiah Cargill, Rev. Dr. Duncan, 353. Cleveland, John Gow, 313. Baron Cranstoun, George Cranstoun, 42. Effie Deans, Isabella Walker, 205-208. Jeanie Deans, Helen Walker, 205-208. Dandie Dinmont, James Davidson, 137; Willie Elliott, 137; Mr. Laidlaw, 137. Meg Dods, Marian Ritchie, 350. Driver, a clerk of Andrew Crosbie's, 142-143. Alan Fairford, Sir Walter Scott, 9, 362. Saunders Fairford, Walter Scott, father of Sir Walter, 9, 363. Rachel Geddes, 'Lady' Waldie, 5, 358. Davie Gellatley, Daft Jock Gray, 118. Roland Graeme, 'The Little Douglas,' 270. Dr. Gideon Gray, Dr. Ebenezer Clarkson, 391. Dirk Hatteraick, Yawkins, a Dutch skipper, 131. Darsie Latimer, William Clerk, 9, 362. Alice Lee, Anne Scott, 376. Allan McAulay, James Stewart, 227, 228. Flora MacIvor, Flora MacDonald, 122. Colonel Mannering, Sir Walter Scott, 144. Margaret of Branksome, Williamina Stuart, 43. Matilda of Rokeby, Williamina Stuart, 95. Earl of Menteith, Lord Kilpont, 227. Meg Merrilies, Jean Gordon, 6, 138, 148-151. Saunders Mucklebackit, George Cargill, 156. Tib Mumps, Margaret Carrick, 137; Margaret Teasdale, 137. Norna of the Fitful Head, Bessie Millie, 313. Edie Ochiltree, Andrew Gemmels, 6. Jonathan Oldbuck (Monkbarns), Sir Walter Scott, 4, 146; George Constable, 4, 147 Old Mortality, Robert Paterson, 166. Paulus Pleydell, Andrew Crosbie, 141-142; Adam Rolland, 143. Rebecca of York, Rebecca Gratz, 252, 253. Sir Robert Redgauntlet, Grierson of Lag, 361. Hugh Redgauntlet, one of the Herries family, 359. Rob Roy, Robert MacGregor Campbell, 182. Dominie Sampson, George Thomson, 140. Diana Vernon, Miss Cranstoun, 190; Miss Williamina Stuart, 191; Lady Scott, 191. Edward Waverley, Sir Walter Scott, 125. Madge Wildfire, Feckless Fannie, 213. Orkney Islands, Scott's visit to, in a light-house yacht, 100. Osbaldistone Hall (Chillingham Castle), 189-190. Oxford, University of, 275, 276. Paterson, Robert, original of Old Mortality, 166-168, 171. Peat, description of, 295-296. Peebles, 350, 331, 352. Peel Castle, Isle of Man, 333. Penrith, 98. Péronne, 319, 343, 344. Perth, 10, 109, 226, 231, 378-382. Peveril Castle, 328, 330. PEVERIL OF THE PEAK, 328-336, 404. Philiphaugh, 233. Pinkie, battle of, 257. PIRATE, THE, 290-315. Plessis les Tours, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341. Pleydell, Paulus, 135, 140-143. 'Popping Stone,' the, 20. Porteous, John, 203-204. Porteous Mob, story of, 205. Powis Castle, Wales, 368. 'Prentice's Pillar, the, 370. Prestonpans, 4, 114, 115, 116, 147. Purdie, Tom, 308, 399. Purgstall, Countess of, 42. Queen Margaret's Bower, 58. QUENTIN DURWARD, 337-346; 347, 404. Raby Castle, 93. Raeburn House, 350. Ramsay, David, 319, 320, 323. Red Comyn, the, 191. REDGAUNTLET, 5, 9, 355-364, 404. Red Head, Cliffs of, 155. REIVER'S WEDDING, THE, 37. René, King, 392. Richard I, 43, 234, 239, 242, 248, 251, 365, 369, 374. Richard II, 369. Richard III, 240, 282. Richmond Castle, 241, 242. Ritchie David, original of the Black Dwarf, 15, 160. Robert III, 381, 384. Robin Hood, 237, 239, 245, 246, 252. Robin Hood's Well, 246. Rob Roy, 11, 12, 182-198. Rob Roy's cave, 119, 197. Rob Roy's gun, 233. Robsart, Amy, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 280, 284, 287. Roderick Dhu, 67, 68, 76, 77, 78, 79. ROKEBY, 19, 86-95, 96, 104. Roman wall at Amboglanna, 136. Rosamond's Well, 373. Rosebank, 14. Rose, William Stewart, 50. Roslin Chapel, 369. Roslin Glen (vale of the Esk), 22, 23, 24, 30, 45, 89, 94. Rotherham, 236. Rothsay, Duke of, 381, 384. Rushen, Castle, Isle of Man, 331, 332. Saddleback, 135. St. Abbs Head, 218, 220. St. Anthony's Chapel, Edinburgh, 8, 210, 211. St. Bride, the chapel of, 77. St. Clair, William, 370. St. Cuthbert's Church, 114. St. Cuthbert's Holy Isle, 54-56. St. Giles Cathedral, 60, 199-203. St. John, Church of, Perth, 380. St. John, Valley of, 98. St. Leonard's Crags, Edinburgh, 8, 212. St. Magnus, Cathedral of, 304, 305, 306, 307. St. Margaret's Loch, Edinburgh, 210. St. Mary's Loch, 35, 175. ST. RONAN'S WELL, 346-354, 404. St. Thomas's Abbey (St. Ruth's), 151, 152. Salisbury Crags, the, Edinburgh, 7, 8, 60, 210, 389. Sandy Knowe, 2, 51, 353. Scalloway, Castle of, 298, 302, 303, 309. Scalloway, village in the Shetland Islands, 302. Scone, Palace of, 110, 231, 379, 381, 385. Scott Country, the, limits of, 337, 346, 366. Scott, Anne, daughter of Sir Walter, 48, 376, 400. Scott, Charles, son of Sir Walter, 48, 402. Scott, Daniel, brother of Sir Walter, 383. Scott, Miss Janet, aunt of Sir Walter, 2, 5. Scott, John, brother of Sir Walter, 15, 90. Scott, Lady (wife of Sir Walter), introduction of, to Sir Walter, 17, 329; courtship, 19, 20; marriage, 21; home at Lasswade, 22, 23; reference to Dryburgh, 352, 353; sickness and death, 372, 376, 399. Scott, Michael, the wizard, 38, 41. Scott, Mrs. Maxwell-, granddaughter of Sir Walter, 396. Scott, Sophia, daughter of Sir Walter, 48, 400. Scott, Thomas, brother of Sir Walter, 333. Scott, Sir Walter-- Liddesdale raids, 1; residence at Sandy Knowe, 2; visit to Prestonpans, 4; his first pony, 4; at Kelso, 5; passes law examinations, 13; visit to English Lakes, 15; to Gilsland, 16; meets Miss Carpenter, 17, 349; marriage, 21; quartermaster of Edinburgh Volunteers, 25; his memory, 26; decides to abandon the practice of law, 28-30; Sheriff of Selkirk, 29; early poems, 30; Ashestiel, 48, 49; visit to Highlands, 72, 116; purchases Abbotsford, 89; Clerk of Court of Session, 90; aided by Sir William Forbes, 95; later Highland excursion, 119, 120; visit from Joseph Train, 133; visit to Dumfries, 135; to English Lakes, 135; salmon spearing incident, 139; at University of Edinburgh, 139; visited by Irving, 145-146; experience as member of Edinburgh Volunteers, 158-159; visit to Hallyards, 160; visit to Loch Skene, 175-177; visit to the Braes of Balquhidder, 188; clerk of Court of Session, 200; driving through Canongate, 209; suggests building the Radical Road, 210; guest at Studley Royal, 246; visited by Washington Irving, 252; 'refreshing the machine,' 255; presentation to the Duke of Wellington, 266; visit to Shetland Islands, 294, 298, 311, 313, 314; familiarity with history and literature of England, 317; duties as clerk of the Court of Session, 346; residence in Edinburgh, 346; fondness for country life, 347; practices in case of Peter Peebles, 363; visit to Wales, 366; distressing change in personal affairs, 371; announcement of authorship of Waverley Novels, 372; visit to Wicks of Baiglie, Perth, 378; feeling toward brother Daniel, 383; circumstances under which _The Fair Maid of Perth_ was written, 386; paying off the debt, 387; writings of the last five years, 388; importunities of a creditor, 389; Theatrical Fund Dinner, 300; spirit of perseverance, 392; apoplexy and other ailments, 393; journey to the Continent, 394; death, 394; personality of, 395; kindness, 397; generosity, 398; conversation, 398; relations with family, 399, 400; creed, 400; ambition, 401; failure of hopes, 402; relations with the Ballantynes, 403, 404; indiscretion, 404; courage and final triumph, 405. Scott, Walter, 'Beardie,' great-grandfather of Sir Walter, 37. Scott, Walter, father of Sir Walter, original of Saunders Fairford, 9. Scott, Walter, son of Sir Walter, 48, 401, 402. Scott, Sir William, of Harden, 36. Scott, Sir William, of Buccleuch, 37. Seymour, Lord, 277. Sharp, James, Archbishop, 168-169, 180. Sharpe, Charles Kirkpatrick, 360. Sherwood Forest, 236, 237. Shetland Islands, visit to, in a lighthouse yacht, 100. Shortreed, Robert, 1, 14, 26,137. Skene, James of Rubislaw, 52, 338, 392; quoted, 25, 26, 62, 138, 139, 176. Skiddaw, 135. Skye, Island of, 100, 102. Smailholm, 2, 3, 4, 30, 261, 347. Smellie, William, 141. Solway Firth, 126, 127, 355, 356, 357. Somerset, the Duke of, 277. Staffa, 102. Stennis, stones of, 310, 311. Stewart, Alexander of Invernahyle, 116, 117, 118. Stewart, James, of Ardvoirlich, original of Allan McAulay, 188, 227, 228. Stewart, Patrick, Earl of Orkney, 298, 302, 308, 309. Stirling Castle, 66, 78, 80-84, 381. Stonebyres Linn, 172. Strathgartney, 78. Stromness, village in Orkney, 310, 311, 312, 313. Stuart, Charles Edward, 10, 109, 111, 112, 113, 114, 116, 120, 125, 358, 363. Stuart, Lady Louisa, 197, 214, 336, 364. Stuart, Miss Williamina (Lady Stuart-Forbes), Scott's first love, 17, 18, 23; original of Margaret of Branksome, 42; original of Matilda, 95. Studley Royal, 243, 246. Sumburgh Head, 294, 296, 297, 208, 300. SURGEON'S DAUGHTER, THE, 389, 390. Sweetheart Abbey, 126, 127, 135. SWIFT, LIFE OF, 91. TALES OF THE CRUSADERS, 365-370. TALISMAN, THE, 21, 345, 365, 369-372. Tantallon Castle, 60, 61. Tay, the river, 109, 110, 379. Teasdale, Margaret, original of Tib Mumps, 137. Tees, the river, 89, 92, 93, 94. Teith, the river, 229. Temple, the, London, 322, 323, 324. Terry, Daniel, 197, 375. Teviot, the river, 35. Thames, the, London, 320, 322. Thomas the Rhymer, 222. Thomson, George, original of Dominie Sampson, 140. Thomson, Rev. John, of Duddingston, 220. THORESBY HOUSE, 238. Thorsgill, the river, 92, 93. Tillietudlem. _See_ Craignethan. Tippermuir, battle of, 226. Tolbooth, Edinburgh, 9, 201-205, 233. Tours, 339, 341. Tower of London, 325. Train, Joseph, provides information used in _The Lord of the Isles_, 103; in _Guy Mannering_, 132-135; in _Old Mortality_, 171; in _The Heart of Midlothian_, 214. Traquair, Earl of, 108, 109. Traquair House, 13, 107, 108, 109, 112, 329. Triermain Castle, 11, 97, 395. Triermain Castle Rock, 16, 98. Trossachs, the, 12, 66, 70, 71, 74, 75. Tully Veolan, 107-111. Turnberry Castle, 103. Tweed, the river, 258, 348-353, 396, 397. Twisel Bridge, 7. TWO DROVERS, THE, 389, 390, 391. Ullswater, 97. Vaux, Sir Roland de, 97. Vernon, Dorothy, of Haddon Hall, 329. Villiers, George, first Duke of Buckingham, called 'Steenie,' 319, 322. Villiers, George, second Duke of Buckingham, 335. Waldie family, the, of Kelso, 5, 358. Waldie, 'Lady,' original of Rachel Geddes, 5. Waldie, Robert, 5. Wales, 366, 367, 368. Walker, Helen, original of Jeanie Deans, 205-208. Walker, Isabella, original of Effie Deans, 205-208. Walker, Patrick, author of _Life of Cameron_, 213. Wallace, William, 81. Wampool River, the, 358. Wark Castle, 62. Warrender, Sir George, 109. Warwick Castle, 281, 282, 383. Warwick, Earl of, 240. Warwickshire, 281. Wat of Harden, 35. WAVERLEY, 8, 10, 106-125, 197. Welbeck Abbey, 238. Welshpool, 368. Westmoreland, 135. Whinnyrig, 357. Whitefoord, Colonel, 116, 117. Whitefriars (Alsatia), 323, 334. Whitehall, Palace of, 321, 322, 335. Wideford Hill, Kirkwall, 309. William the Conqueror, 241, 248, 250, 282, 328, 373. William the Lion, 152, 155. Williams, Rev. John, Archdeacon of Cardigan, 366. Wolf's Crag, 220. Wolf's Hope, 222. WOODSTOCK, 371-377. Woodstock, village of, 372; palace of, 373-375. Wordsworth, 16; letter to, 32; 35, 172. Wright, Guthrie, 57; quoted, 135. Wycliffe, Oswald, 88. Yarrow, the river, 175. Yawkins, Dutch skipper, original of Dirk Hatteraick, 131. Yetholm Loch, 260. York, Castle of, 250. York Minister, 251. York, city of, 234, 250. York Water Gate, 322. The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE * MASSACHUSETTS U.S.A. 
42062	----	Large Paper Edition LOCKHART'S LIFE OF SCOTT COPIOUSLY ANNOTATED AND ABUNDANTLY ILLUSTRATED IN TEN VOLUMES VOL. IV [Illustration: WALTER SCOTT IN 1817 _From the water-color portrait by William Nicholson_] MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT BART. by JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART In Ten Volumes VOLUME IV Boston and New York Houghton, Mifflin and Company The Riverside Press, Cambridge MCMI Copyright, 1901 by Houghton, Mifflin and Company All Rights Reserved Six Hundred Copies Printed Number, 200 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page XXV. The "Flitting" to Abbotsford. -- Plantations. -- George Thomson. -- Rokeby and Triermain in Progress. -- Excursion to Flodden. -- Bishop-Auckland, and Rokeby Park. -- Correspondence with Crabbe. -- Life of Patrick Carey, etc. -- Publication of Rokeby, -- and of The Bridal of Triermain. 1812-1813 1 XXVI. Affairs of John Ballantyne and Co. -- Causes of their Derangement. -- Letters of Scott to his Partners. -- Negotiation for Relief with Messrs. Constable. -- New Purchase of Land at Abbotsford. -- Embarrassments continued. -- John Ballantyne's Expresses. -- Drumlanrig, Penrith, etc. -- Scott's Meeting with the Marquis of Abercorn at Longtown. -- His Application to the Duke of Buccleuch. -- Offer of the Poet-Laureateship, -- considered, -- and declined. -- Address of the City of Edinburgh to the Prince Regent. -- Its Reception. -- Civic Honors conferred on Scott. -- Question of Taxation on Literary Income. -- Letters to Mr. Morritt, Mr. Southey, Mr. Richardson, Mr. Crabbe, Miss Baillie, and Lord Byron. 1813 50 XXVII. Insanity of Henry Weber. -- Letters on the Abdication of Napoleon, etc. -- Publication of Scott's Life and Edition of Swift. -- Essays for the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica. -- Completion and Publication of Waverley. 1814 100 XXVIII. Voyage to the Shetland Isles, etc. -- Scott's Diary kept on Board the Lighthouse Yacht. 1814 124 XXIX. Diary on Board the Lighthouse Yacht continued. -- The Orkneys. -- Kirkwall. -- Hoy. -- The Standing Stones of Stennis, etc. 1814 163 XXX. Diary continued. -- Stromness. -- Bessy Millie's Charm. -- Cape Wrath. -- Cave of Smowe. -- The Hebrides. -- Scalpa, etc. 1814 178 XXXI. Diary continued. -- Isle of Harris. -- Monuments of the Chiefs of Macleod. -- Isle of Skye. -- Dunvegan Castle. -- Loch Corriskin. -- Macallister's Cave. 1814 193 XXXII. Diary continued. -- Cave of Egg. -- Iona. -- Staffa. -- Dunstaffnage. -- Dunluce Castle. -- Giant's Causeway. -- Isle of Arran, etc. -- Diary concluded. 1814 206 XXXIII. Letter in Verse from Zetland and Orkney. -- Death of the Duchess of Buccleuch. -- Correspondence with the Duke. -- Altrive Lake. -- Negotiation concerning The Lord of the Isles completed. -- Success of Waverley. -- Contemporaneous criticisms on the Novel. -- Letters to Scott from Mr. Morritt, Mr. Lewis, and Miss Maclean Clephane. -- Letter from James Ballantyne to Miss Edgeworth. 1814 237 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page WALTER SCOTT IN 1817 _Frontispiece_ From the water-color portrait by William Nicholson, R. S. A., in the possession of W. C. C. Erskine, Esq. Through the courtesy of David Douglas, Esq., Edinburgh. ABBOTSFORD IN 1812 6 ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE 50 From the painting by Sir Henry Raeburn, R. A., at Braeburn, Currie, Mid-Lothian. By permission of William Patrick Bruce, Esq. J. B. S. MORRITT 100 From the painting by Sir M. A. Shee, P. R. A., in the possession of R. A. Morritt, Esq., of Rokeby. WILLIAM ERSKINE, LORD KINNEDDER 124 From the water-color portrait by William Nicholson, R. S. A., in the possession of W. C. C. Erskine, Esq. Through the courtesy of David Douglas, Esq., Edinburgh. JAMES HOGG 250 From the water-color portrait by Stephen Poyntz Denning, in the National Portrait Gallery. SIR WALTER SCOTT CHAPTER XXV THE "FLITTING" TO ABBOTSFORD. -- PLANTATIONS. -- GEORGE THOMSON. --ROKEBY AND TRIERMAIN IN PROGRESS. -- EXCURSION TO FLODDEN. --BISHOP-AUCKLAND, AND ROKEBY PARK. -- CORRESPONDENCE WITH CRABBE. --LIFE OF PATRICK CAREY, ETC. -- PUBLICATION OF ROKEBY, -- AND OF THE BRIDAL OF TRIERMAIN 1812-1813 Towards the end of May, 1812, the Sheriff finally removed from Ashestiel to Abbotsford. The day when this occurred was a sad one for many a poor neighbor--for they lost, both in him and his wife, very generous protectors. In such a place, among the few evils which counterbalance so many good things in the condition of the peasantry, the most afflicting is the want of access to medical advice. As far as their means and skill would go, they had both done their utmost to supply this want; and Mrs. Scott, in particular, had made it so much her business to visit the sick in their scattered cottages, and bestowed on them the contents of her medicine-chest as well as of the larder and cellar, with such unwearied kindness, that her name is never mentioned there to this day without some expression of tenderness. Scott's children remember the parting scene as one of unmixed affliction--but it had had, as we shall see, its lighter features. Among the many amiable English friends whom he owed to his frequent visits at Rokeby Park, there was, I believe, none that had a higher place in his regard than the late Anne, Lady Alvanley, the widow of the celebrated Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. He was fond of female society in general; but her ladyship was a woman after his heart; well born and highly bred, but without the slightest tinge of the frivolities of modern fashion; soundly informed, and a warm lover of literature and the arts, but holding in as great horror as himself the imbecile chatter and affected ecstasies of the bluestocking generation. Her ladyship had written to him early in May, by Miss Sarah Smith (now Mrs. Bartley), whom I have already mentioned as one of his theatrical favorites; and his answer contains, among other matters, a sketch of the "Forest Flitting." TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE LADY ALVANLEY. ASHESTIEL, 25th May, 1812. I was honored, my dear Lady Alvanley, by the kind letter which you sent me with our friend Miss Smith, whose talents are, I hope, receiving at Edinburgh the full meed of honorable applause which they so highly merit. It is very much against my will that I am forced to speak of them by report alone, for this being the term of removing, I am under the necessity of being at this farm to superintend the transference of my goods and chattels, a most miscellaneous collection, to a small property, about five miles down the Tweed, which I purchased last year. The neighbors 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 ponies, 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. EDINBURGH, 28th May. I have got here at length, and had the pleasure to hear Miss Smith speak the Ode on the Passions charmingly last night. It was her benefit, and the house was tolerable, though not so good as she deserves, being a very good girl, as well as an excellent performer. I have read Lord Byron with great pleasure, though pleasure is not quite the appropriate word. I should say admiration--mixed with regret, that the author should have adopted such an unamiable misanthropical tone.--The reconciliation with Holland House is extremely edifying, and may teach young authors to be in no hurry to exercise their satirical vein. I remember an honest old Presbyterian, who thought it right to speak with respect even of the devil himself, since no one knew in what corner he might one day want a friend. But Lord Byron is young, and certainly has great genius, and has both time and capacity to make amends for his errors. I wonder if he will pardon the Edinburgh Reviewers, who have read their recantation of their former strictures. Mrs. Scott begs to offer her kindest and most respectful compliments to your ladyship and the young ladies. I hope we shall get into Yorkshire this season to see Morritt: he and his lady are really delightful persons. Believe me, with great respect, dear Lady Alvanley, your much honored and obliged WALTER SCOTT. A week later, in answer to a letter, mentioning the approach of the celebrated sale of books in which the Roxburghe Club originated, Scott says to his trusty ally, Daniel Terry:-- EDINBURGH, 9th June, 1812. MY DEAR TERRY,--I wish you joy of your success, which, although all reports state it as most highly flattering, does not exceed what I had hoped for you. I think I shall do you a sensible pleasure in requesting that you will take a walk over the fields to Hampstead one of these fine days, and deliver the enclosed to my friend Miss Baillie, with whom, I flatter myself, you will be much pleased, as she has all the simplicity of real genius. I mentioned to her some time ago that I wished to make you acquainted, so that the sooner you can call upon her, the compliment will be the more gracious. As I suppose you will sometimes look in at the Roxburghe sale, a memorandum respecting any remarkable articles will be a great favor. Abbotsford was looking charming, when I was obliged to mount my wheel in this court, too fortunate that I have at length some share in the roast meat I am daily engaged in turning. Our flitting and removal from Ashestiel baffled all description; we had twenty-four cart-loads of the veriest trash in nature, besides dogs, pigs, ponies, poultry, cows, calves, bare-headed wenches, and bare-breeched boys. In other respects we are going on in the old way, only poor Percy is dead. I intend to have an old stone set up by his grave, with "_Cy gist li preux Percie,_" and I hope future antiquaries will debate which hero of the house of Northumberland has left his bones in Teviotdale.[1] Believe me yours very truly, WALTER SCOTT. This was one of the busiest summers of Scott's busy life. Till the 12th of July he was at his post in the Court of Session five days every week; but every Saturday evening found him at Abbotsford, to observe the progress his laborers had made within doors and without in his absence; and on Monday night he returned to Edinburgh. Even before the Summer Session commenced, he appears to have made some advance in his Rokeby, for he writes to Mr. Morritt, from Abbotsford, on the 4th of May: "As for the house and the poem, there are twelve masons hammering at the one, and one poor noddle at the other--so they are both in progress;"--and his literary labors throughout the long vacation were continued under the same sort of disadvantage. That autumn he had, in fact, no room at all for himself. The only parlor which had been hammered into anything like habitable condition served at once for dining-room, drawing-room, school-room, and study. A window looking to the river was kept sacred to his desk; an old bed-curtain was nailed up across the room close behind his chair, and there, whenever the spade, the dibble, or the chisel (for he took his full share in all the work on hand) was laid aside, he pursued his poetical tasks, apparently undisturbed and unannoyed by the surrounding confusion of masons and carpenters, to say nothing of the lady's small talk, the children's babble among themselves, or their repetition of their lessons. The truth no doubt was, that when at his desk he did little more, as far as regarded _poetry_, than write down the lines which he had fashioned in his mind while pursuing his vocation as a planter, upon that bank which received originally, by way of joke, the title of _the thicket_. "I am now," he says to Ellis (October 17), "adorning a patch of naked land with trees _facturis nepotibus umbram_, for I shall never live to enjoy their shade myself otherwise than in the recumbent posture of Tityrus or Menalcas." But he did live to see _the thicket_ deserve not only that name, but a nobler one; and to fell with his own hand many a well-grown tree that he had planted there. Another plantation of the same date, by his eastern boundary, was less successful. For this he had asked and received from his early friend, the Marchioness of Stafford, a supply of acorns from Trentham, and it was named in consequence _Sutherland bower_; but the field-mice, in the course of the ensuing winter, contrived to root up and devour the whole of her ladyship's goodly benefaction. A third space had been set apart, and duly enclosed, for the reception of some Spanish chestnuts offered to him by an admirer established in merchandise at Seville; but that gentleman had not been a very knowing ally as to such matters, for when the chestnuts arrived, it turned out that they had been boiled. [Illustration: ABBOTSFORD IN 1812] Scott writes thus to Terry, in September, while the Roxburghe sale was still going on:-- I have lacked your assistance, my dear Sir, for twenty whimsicalities this autumn. Abbotsford, as you will readily conceive, has considerably changed its face since the auspices of Mother Retford were exchanged for ours. We have got up a good garden wall, complete stables in the haugh, according to Stark's plan, and the old farmyard being enclosed with a wall, with some little picturesque additions in front, has much relieved the stupendous height of the Doctor's barn. The new plantations have thriven amazingly well, the acorns are coming up fast, and Tom Purdie is the happiest and most consequential person in the world. My present work is building up the well with some debris from the Abbey. Oh, for your assistance, for I am afraid we shall make but a botched job of it, especially as our materials are of a very miscellaneous complexion. The worst of all is, that while my trees grow and my fountain fills, my purse, in an inverse ratio, sinks to zero. This last circumstance will, I fear, make me a very poor guest at the literary entertainment your researches hold out for me. I should, however, like much to have the Treatise on Dreams, by the author of the New Jerusalem, which, as John Cuthbertson the smith said of the minister's sermon, must be neat work. The Loyal Poems, by N. T.,[2] are probably by poor Nahum Tate, who associated with Brady in versifying the Psalms, and more honorably with Dryden in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel. I never saw them, however, but would give a guinea or thirty shillings for the collection. Our friend John Ballantyne has, I learn, made a sudden sally to London, and doubtless you will crush a quart with him or a pottle pot; he will satisfy your bookseller for The Dreamer, or any other little purchase you may recommend for me. You have pleased Miss Baillie very much both in public and in society, and though not fastidious, she is not, I think, particularly lavish of applause either way. A most valuable person is she, and as warm-hearted as she is brilliant.--Mrs. Scott and all our little folks are well. I am relieved of the labor of hearing Walter's lesson by a gallant son of the church, who, with one leg of wood and another of oak, walks to and fro from Melrose every day for that purpose. Pray stick to the dramatic work,[3] and never suppose either that you can be intrusive, or that I can be uninterested in whatever concerns you. Yours, W. S. The tutor alluded to at the close of this letter was Mr. George Thomson, son of the minister of Melrose, who, when the house afforded better accommodation, was and continued for many years to be domesticated at Abbotsford. Scott had always a particular tenderness towards persons afflicted with any bodily misfortune; and Thomson, whose leg had been amputated in consequence of a rough casualty of his boyhood, had a special share in his favor from the high spirit with which he refused at the time to betray the name of the companion that had occasioned his mishap, and continued ever afterwards to struggle against its disadvantages. Tall, vigorous, athletic, a dauntless horseman, and expert at the singlestick, George formed a valuable as well as picturesque addition to the _tail_ of the new laird, who often said, "In the Dominie, like myself, accident has spoiled a capital lifeguardsman." His many oddities and eccentricities in no degree interfered with the respect due to his amiable feelings, upright principles, and sound learning; nor did _Dominie Thomson_ at all quarrel in after-times with the universal credence of the neighborhood that he had furnished many features for the inimitable personage whose designation so nearly resembled his own; and if he has not yet "wagged his head" in a "pulpit o' his ain," he well knows it has not been so for want of earnest and long-continued intercession on the part of the author of Guy Mannering.[4] For many years Scott had accustomed himself to proceed in the composition of poetry along with that of prose essays of various descriptions; but it is a remarkable fact that he chose this period of perpetual noise and bustle, when he had not even a summer-house to himself, for the new experiment of carrying on two poems at the same time--and this, too, without suspending the heavy labor of his edition of Swift, to say nothing of the various lesser matters in which the Ballantynes were, from day to day, calling for the assistance of his judgment and his pen. In the same letter in which William Erskine acknowledges the receipt of the first four pages of Rokeby, he adverts also to The Bridal of Triermain as being already in rapid progress. The fragments of this second poem, inserted in the Register of the preceding year, had attracted considerable notice; the secret of their authorship had been well kept; and by some means, even in the shrewdest circles of Edinburgh, the belief had become prevalent that they proceeded not from Scott, but from Erskine. Scott had no sooner completed his bargain as to the copyright of the unwritten Rokeby, than he resolved to pause from time to time in its composition, and weave those fragments into a shorter and lighter romance, executed in a different metre, and to be published anonymously, in a small pocket volume, as nearly as possible on the same day with the avowed quarto. He expected great amusement from the comparisons which the critics would no doubt indulge themselves in drawing between himself and this humble candidate; and Erskine good-humoredly entered into the scheme, undertaking to do nothing which should effectually suppress the notion of his having set himself up as a modest rival to his friend. Nay, he suggested a further refinement, which in the sequel had no small share in the success of this little plot upon the sagacity of the reviewers. Having said that he much admired the opening of the first canto of Rokeby, Erskine adds, "I shall request your _accoucheur_ to send me your _little Dugald_ too as he gradually makes his progress. What I have seen is delightful. You are aware how difficult it is to form any opinion of a work, the general plan of which is unknown, transmitted merely in legs and wings as they are formed and feathered. Any remarks must be of the most minute and superficial kind, confined chiefly to the language, and other such subordinate matters. I shall be very much amused if the secret is kept and the knowing ones taken in. To prevent any discovery from your prose, what think you of putting down your ideas of what the preface ought to contain, and allowing me to write it over? And perhaps a quizzing review might be concocted." This last hint was welcome; and among other parts of the preface to Triermain which threw out "the knowing ones," certain Greek quotations interspersed in it are now accounted for. Scott, on his part, appears to have studiously interwoven into the piece allusions to personal feelings and experiences more akin to his friend's history and character than to his own; and he did so still more largely, when repeating this experiment, in the introductory parts of Harold the Dauntless. The same post which conveyed William Erskine's letter, above quoted, brought him an equally wise and kind one from Mr. Morritt, in answer to a fresh application for some minute details about the scenery and local traditions of the Valley of the Tees. Scott had promised to spend part of this autumn at Rokeby Park himself; but now, busied as he was with his planting operations at home, and continually urged by Ballantyne to have the poem ready for publication by Christmas, he would willingly have trusted his friend's knowledge in place of his own observation and research. Mr. Morritt gave him in reply various particulars, which I need not here repeat, but added,-- I am really sorry, my dear Scott, at your abandonment of your kind intention of visiting Rokeby, and my sorrow is not quite selfish, for seriously, I wish you could have come, if but for a few days, in order, on the spot, to settle accurately in your mind the localities of the new poem, and all their petty circumstances, of which there are many that would give interest and ornament to your descriptions. I am too much flattered by your proposal of inscribing the poem to me, not to accept it with gratitude and pleasure. I shall always feel your friendship as an honor--we all wish our honors to be permanent--and yours promises mine at least a fair chance of immortality. I hope, however, you will not be obliged to write in a hurry on account of the impatience of your booksellers. They are, I think, ill advised in their proceeding, for surely the book will be the more likely to succeed from not being forced prematurely into this critical world. Do not be persuaded to risk your established fame on this hazardous experiment. If you want a few hundreds independent of these booksellers, your credit is so very good, now that you have got rid of your Old Man of the Sea, that it is no great merit to trust you, and I happen at this moment to have five or six for which I have no sort of demand--so rather than be obliged to spur Pegasus beyond the power of pulling him up when he is going too fast, do consult your own judgment and set the midwives of the trade at defiance. Don't be scrupulous to the disadvantage of your muse, and above all be not offended at me for a proposition which is meant in the true spirit of friendship. I am more than ever anxious for your success--The Lady of the Lake more than succeeded--I think Don Roderick is less popular--I want this work to be another Lady at the least. Surely it would be worth your while for such an object to spend a week of your time, and a portion of your Old Man's salary, in a mail-coach flight hither, were it merely to renew your acquaintance with the country, and to rectify the little misconceptions of a cursory view. Ever affectionately yours, J. B. S. M. This appeal was not to be resisted. Scott, I believe, accepted Mr. Morritt's friendly offer so far as to ask his assistance in having some of Ballantyne's bills discounted; and he proceeded the week after to Rokeby, by the way of Flodden and Hexham, travelling on horseback, his eldest boy and girl on their ponies, while Mrs. Scott followed them in the carriage. Two little incidents that diversified this ride through Northumberland have found their way into print already; but, as he was fond of telling them both down to the end of his days, I must give them a place here also. Halting at Flodden to expound the field of battle to his young folks, he found that Marmion had, as might have been expected, benefited the keeper of the public house there very largely; and the village Boniface, overflowing with gratitude, expressed his anxiety to have a _Scott's Head_ for his sign-post. The poet demurred to this proposal, and assured mine host that nothing could be more appropriate than the portraiture of a foaming tankard, which already surmounted his doorway. "Why, the painter-man has not made an ill job," said the landlord, "but I would fain have something more connected with the book that has brought me so much good custom." He produced a well-thumbed copy, and handing it to the author, begged he would at least suggest a motto from the tale of Flodden Field. Scott opened the book at the death scene of the hero, and his eye was immediately caught by the "inscription" in black-letter,-- "Drink, weary pilgrim, drink, and pray For the kind soul of Sibyl Grey," etc. "Well, my friend," said he, "what more would you have? You need but strike out one letter in the first of these lines, and make your painter-man, the next time he comes this way, print between the jolly tankard and your own name,-- "Drink, weary pilgrim, drink and PAY." Scott was delighted to find, on his return, that this suggestion had been adopted, and, for aught I know, the romantic legend may still be visible. The other story I shall give in the words of Mr. Gillies:-- "It happened at a small country town that Scott suddenly required medical advice for one of his servants, and, on inquiring if there was any doctor at the place, was told that there were two,--one long established, and the other a newcomer. The latter gentleman, being luckily found at home, soon made his appearance;--a grave, sagacious-looking personage, attired in black, with a shovel hat, in whom, to his utter astonishment, Sir Walter recognized a Scotch blacksmith, who had formerly practised, with tolerable success, as a veterinary operator in the neighborhood of Ashestiel.--'How, in all the world,' exclaimed he, 'can it be possible that this is John Lundie?'--'In troth is it, your honor--just _a' that's for him_.'--'Well, but let us hear; you were a _horse_-doctor before; now, it seems, you are a _man_-doctor; how do you get on?'--'Ou, just extraordinar weel; for your honor maun ken my practice is vera sure and orthodox. I depend entirely upon twa _simples_.'--'And what may their names be? Perhaps it is a secret?'--'I'll tell your honor,' in a low tone; 'my twa simples are just _laudamy_ and _calamy_!'--'Simples with a vengeance!' replied Scott. 'But, John, do you never happen to _kill_ any of your patients?'--'Kill? Ou ay, may be sae! Whiles they die, and whiles no;--but it's the will o' Providence. _Ony how, your honor, it wad be lang before it makes up for Flodden!_'"[5] It was also in the course of this expedition that Scott first made acquaintance with the late excellent and venerable Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham. The travellers having reached Auckland over night were seeing the public rooms of the Castle at an early hour next morning, when the Bishop happened, in passing through one of them, to catch a glimpse of Scott's person, and immediately recognizing him, from the likeness of the engravings by this time multiplied, introduced himself to the party, and insisted upon acting as cicerone. After showing them the picture-gallery and so forth, his Lordship invited them to join the morning service of the chapel, and when that was over, insisted on their remaining to breakfast. But Scott and his Lordship were by this time so much pleased with each other that they could not part so easily. The good Bishop ordered his horse, nor did Scott observe without admiration the proud curvetting of the animal on which his Lordship proposed to accompany him during the next stage of his progress. "Why, yes, Mr. Scott," said the gentle but high-spirited old man, "I still like to feel my horse under me." He was then in his seventy-ninth year, and survived to the age of ninety-two, the model in all things of a real prince of the Church. They parted after a ride of ten miles, with mutual regret; and on all subsequent rides in that direction, Bishop-Auckland was one of the poet's regular halting-places.[6] At Rokeby, on this occasion, Scott remained about a week; and I transcribe the following brief account of his proceedings while there from Mr. Morritt's _Memorandum_:-- "I had, of course," he says, "had many previous opportunities of testing the almost conscientious fidelity of his local descriptions; but I could not help being singularly struck with the lights which this visit threw on that characteristic of his compositions. The morning after he arrived he said, 'You have often given me materials for romance--now I want a good robber's cave, and an old church of the right sort.' We rode out, and he found what he wanted in the ancient slate quarries of Brignall and the ruined Abbey of Egglestone. I observed him noting down even the peculiar little wild flowers and herbs that accidentally grew round and on the side of a bold crag near his intended cave of Guy Denzil; and could not help saying, that as he was not to be upon oath in his work, daisies, violets, and primroses would be as poetical as any of the humble plants he was examining. I laughed, in short, at his scrupulousness; but I understood him when he replied, '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 descriptions, and exhibit apparently an imagination as boundless as the range of nature in the scenes he recorded; whereas, whoever trusted to imagination would soon find his own mind circumscribed, and contracted to a few favorite 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,' he said, 'local names and peculiarities make a fictitious story look so much better in the face.' In fact, from his boyish habits, he was but half satisfied with the most beautiful scenery when he could not connect with it some local legend, and when I was forced sometimes to confess with the Knife-grinder, 'Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir,'--he would laugh and say, 'Then let us make one--nothing so easy as to make a tradition.'" Mr. Morritt adds, that he had brought with him about half The Bridal of Triermain--told him that he meant to bring it out the same week with Rokeby--and promised himself particular satisfaction in _laying a trap for Jeffrey_; who, however, as we shall see, escaped the snare. Some of the following letters will show with what rapidity, after having refreshed and stored his memory with the localities of Rokeby, he proceeded in the composition of the romance:-- TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ. ABBOTSFORD, 12th October, 1812. MY DEAR MORRITT,--I have this morning returned from Dalkeith House, to which I was whisked amid the fury of an election tempest, and I found your letter on my table. More on such a subject cannot be said among friends who give each other credit for feeling as they ought. We peregrinated over Stanmore, and visited the Castles of Bowes, Brough, Appleby, and Brougham with great interest. Lest our spirit of chivalry thus excited should lack employment, we found ourselves, that is, _I_ did, at Carlisle, engaged in the service of two distressed ladies, being no other than our friends Lady Douglas and Lady Louisa Stuart, who overtook us there, and who would have had great trouble in finding quarters, the election being in full vigor, if we had not anticipated their puzzle, and secured a private house capable of holding us all. Some distress occurred, I believe, among the waiting damsels, whose case I had not so carefully considered, for I heard a sentimental exclamation--"Am I to sleep with the greyhounds?" which I conceived to proceed from Lady Douglas's _suivante_, from the exquisite sensibility of tone with which it was uttered, especially as I beheld the fair one descend from the carriage with three half-bound volumes of a novel in her hand. Not having it in my power to alleviate her woes, by offering her either a part or the whole of my own couch.--"_Transeat_," quoth I, "_cum cæteris erroribus_." I am delighted with your Cumberland admirer,[7] and give him credit for his visit to the vindicator of Homer; but you missed one of another description, who passed Rokeby with great regret, I mean General John Malcolm, the Persian envoy, the Delhi resident, the poet, the warrior, the polite man, and the Borderer. He is really a fine fellow. I met him at Dalkeith, and we returned together;--he has just left me, after drinking his coffee. A fine time we had of it, talking of Troy town, and Babel, and Persepolis, and Delhi, and Langholm, and Burnfoot;[8] with all manner of episodes about Iskendiar, Rustan, and Johnny Armstrong. Do you know, that poem of Ferdusi's must be beautiful. He read me some very splendid extracts which he had himself translated. Should you meet him in London, I have given him charge to be acquainted with you, for I am sure you will like each other. To be sure, I know him little, but I like his frankness and his sound ideas of morality and policy; and I have observed, that when I have had no great liking to persons at the beginning, it has usually pleased Heaven, as Slender says, to decrease it on further acquaintance. Adieu, I must mount my horse. Our last journey was so delightful that we have every temptation to repeat it. Pray give our kind love to the lady, and believe me ever yours, WALTER SCOTT. TO THE SAME. EDINBURGH, 29th November, 1812. MY DEAR MORRITT,--I have been, and still am, working very hard, in hopes to face the public by Christmas, and I think I have hitherto succeeded in throwing some interest into the piece. It is, however, a darker and more gloomy interest than I intended; but involving one's self with bad company, whether in fiction or in reality, is the way not to get out of it easily; so I have been obliged to bestow more pains and trouble upon Bertram, and one or two blackguards whom he picks up in the slate quarries, than what I originally designed. I am very desirous to have your opinion of the three first Cantos, for which purpose, so soon as I can get them collected, I will send the sheets under cover to Mr. Freeling, whose omnipotent frank will transmit them to Rokeby, where, I presume, you have been long since comfortably settled-- "So York may overlook the town of York."[9] I trust you will read it with some partiality, because, if I have not been so successful as I could wish in describing your lovely and romantic glens, it has partly arisen from my great anxiety to do it well, which is often attended with the very contrary effect. There are two or three songs, and particularly one in praise of Brignall Banks, which I trust you will like--because, _entre nous_, I like them myself. One of them is a little dashing banditti song, called and entitled Allen-a-Dale. I think you will be able to judge for yourself in about a week. Pray, how shall I send you the _entire goose_, which will be too heavy to travel the same way with its _giblets_--for the Carlisle coach is terribly inaccurate about parcels? I fear I have made one blunder in mentioning the brooks which flow into the Tees. I have made the Balder distinct from that which comes down Thorsgill--I hope I am not mistaken. You will see the passage; and if they are the same rivulet, the leaf must be cancelled. I trust this will find Mrs. Morritt pretty well; and I am glad to find she has been better for her little tour. We were delighted with ours, except in respect of its short duration, and Sophia and Walter hold their heads very high among their untravelled companions, from the predominance acquired by their visit to England. You are not perhaps aware of the polish which is supposed to be acquired by the most transitory intercourse with your more refined side of the Tweed. There was an honest carter who once applied to me respecting a plan which he had formed of breeding his son, a great booby of twenty, to the Church. As the best way of evading the scrape, I asked him whether he thought his son's language was quite adapted for the use of a public speaker?--to which he answered, with great readiness, that he could knap English with any one, having twice driven his father's cart to Etal coal-hill. I have called my heroine Matilda. I don't much like Agnes, though I can't tell why, unless it is because it begins like Agag. Matilda is a name of unmanageable length; but, after all, is better than none, and my poor damsel was likely to go without one in my indecision. We are all hungering and thirsting for news from Russia. If Boney's devil does not help him, he is in a poor way. The Leith letters talk of the unanimity of the Russians as being most exemplary; and troops pour in from all quarters of their immense empire. Their commissariat is well managed under the Prince Duke of Oldenburgh. This was their weak point in former wars. Adieu! Mrs. Scott and the little people send love to Mrs. Morritt and you. Ever yours, WALTER SCOTT. TO THE SAME. EDINBURGH, Thursday, 10th December, 1812. MY DEAR MORRITT,--I have just time to say that I have received your letters, and am delighted that Rokeby pleases the owner. As I hope the whole will be printed off before Christmas, it will scarce be worth while to send you the other sheets till it reaches you altogether. Your criticisms are the best proof of your kind attention to the poem. I need not say I will pay them every attention in the next edition. But some of the faults are so interwoven with the story, that they must stand. Denzil, for instance, is essential to me, though, as you say, not very interesting; and I assure you that, generally speaking, the _poeta loquitur_ has a bad effect in narrative; and when you have twenty things to tell, it is better to be slatternly than tedious. The fact is, that the tediousness of many really good poems arises from an attempt to support the same tone throughout, which often occasions periphrasis, and always stiffness. I am quite sensible that I have often carried the opposite custom too far; but I am apt to impute it partly to not being able to bring out my own ideas well, and partly to haste--not to error in the system. This would, however, lead to a long discussion, more fit for the fireside than for a letter. I need not say that, the poem being in fact your own, you are at perfect liberty to dispose of the sheets as you please. I am glad my geography is pretty correct. It is too late to inquire if Rokeby is insured, for I have burned it down in Canto V.; but I suspect you will bear me no greater grudge than at the noble Russian who burned Moscow. Glorious news to-day from the North--_pereat iste_! Mrs. Scott, Sophia, and Walter, join in best compliments to Mrs. Morritt; and I am, in great haste, ever faithfully yours, WALTER SCOTT. P. S.--I have heard of Lady Hood by a letter from herself. She is well, and in high spirits, and sends me a pretty topaz seal, with a talisman which secures this letter, and signifies (it seems), which one would scarce have expected from its appearance, my name. We are now close upon the end of this busy twelvemonth; but I must not turn the leaf to 1813, without noticing one of its miscellaneous incidents--his first intercourse by letter with the poet Crabbe. Mr. Hatchard, the publisher of his Tales, forwarded a copy of the book to Scott as soon as it was ready; and, the bookseller having communicated to his author some flattering expressions in Scott's letter of acknowledgment, Mr. Crabbe addressed him as follows:-- TO WALTER SCOTT, ESQ., EDINBURGH. MUSTON, GRANTHAM, 13th October, 1812. SIR,--Mr. Hatchard, judging rightly of the satisfaction it would afford me, has been so obliging as to communicate your two letters, in one of which you desire my Tales to be sent; in the other, you acknowledge the receipt of them; and in both you mention my verses in such terms, that it would be affected in me were I to deny, and I think unjust if I were to conceal, the pleasure you give me. I am indeed highly gratified. I have long entertained a hearty wish to be made known to a poet whose works are so greatly and so universally admired; and I continued to hope that I might at some time find a common friend, by whose intervention I might obtain that honor; but I am confined by duties near my home, and by sickness in it. It may be long before I be in town, and then no such opportunity might offer. Excuse me, then, sir, if I gladly seize this which now occurs to express my thanks for the politeness of your expressions, as well as my desire of being known to a gentleman who has delighted and affected me, and moved all the passions and feelings in turn, I believe--Envy surely excepted--certainly, if I know myself, but in a moderate degree. I truly rejoice in your success; and while I am entertaining, in my way, a certain set of readers, for the most part, probably, of peculiar turn and habit, I can with pleasure see the effect you produce on all. Mr. Hatchard tells me that he hopes or expects that thousands will read my Tales, and I am convinced that your publisher might, in like manner, so speak of your ten thousands; but this, though it calls to mind the passage, is no true comparison with the related prowess of David and Saul, because I have no evil spirit to arise and trouble me on the occasion; though, if I had, I know no David whose skill is so likely to allay it. Once more, sir, accept my best thanks, with my hearty wishes for your health and happiness, who am, with great esteem, and true respect, Dear Sir, your obedient servant, GEORGE CRABBE. I cannot produce Scott's reply to this communication. Mr. Crabbe appears to have, in the course of the year, sent him a copy of all his works, "ex dono auctoris," and there passed between them several letters, one or two of which I must quote. TO WALTER SCOTT, ESQ., EDINBURGH. Know you, sir, a gentleman in Edinburgh, A. Brunton (the Rev.), who dates St. John Street, and who asks my assistance in furnishing hymns which have relation to the Old or New Testament--anything which might suit the purpose of those who are cooking up a book of Scotch Psalmody? Who is Mr. Brunton? What is his situation? If I could help one who needed help, I would do it cheerfully--but have no great opinion of this undertaking.... With every good wish, yours sincerely, GEORGE CRABBE. Scott's answer to this letter expresses the opinions he always held in conversation on the important subject to which it refers; and acting upon which, he himself at various times declined taking any part in the business advocated by Dr. Brunton:-- TO THE REV. GEORGE CRABBE, MUSTON, GRANTHAM. MY DEAR SIR,--I was favored with your kind letter some time ago. Of all people in the world, I am least entitled to demand regularity of correspondence; for being, one way and another, doomed to a great deal more writing than suits my indolence, I am sometimes tempted to envy the reverend hermit of Prague, confessor to the niece of Queen Gorboduc, who never saw either pen or ink. Mr. Brunton is a very respectable clergyman of Edinburgh, and I believe the work in which he has solicited your assistance is one adopted by the General Assembly, or Convocation of the Kirk. I have no notion that he has any individual interest in it; he is a well-educated and liberal-minded man, and generally esteemed. I have no particular acquaintance with him myself, though we speak together. He is at this very moment sitting on the outside of the bar of our Supreme Court, within which I am fagging as a clerk; but as he is hearing the opinion of the Judges upon an action for augmentation of stipend to him and to his brethren, it would not, I conceive, be a very favorable time to canvass a literary topic. But you are quite safe with him; and having so much command of scriptural language, which appears to me essential to the devotional poetry of Christians, I am sure you can assist his purpose much more than any man alive. I think those hymns which do not immediately recall the warm and exalted language of the Bible are apt to be, however elegant, rather cold and flat for the purposes of devotion. You will readily believe that I do not approve of the vague and indiscriminate Scripture language which the fanatics of old and the modern Methodists have adopted, but merely that solemnity and peculiarity of diction, which at once puts the reader and hearer upon his guard as to the purpose of the poetry. To my Gothic ear, indeed, the _Stabat Mater_, the _Dies Iræ_, and some of the other hymns of the Catholic Church, are more solemn and affecting than the fine classical poetry of Buchanan; the one has the gloomy dignity of a Gothic church, and reminds us instantly of the worship to which it is dedicated; the other is more like a Pagan temple, recalling to our memory the classical and fabulous deities.[10] This is, probably, all referable to the association of ideas--that is, if the "association of ideas" continues to be the universal pick-lock of all metaphysical difficulties, as it was when I studied moral philosophy--or to any other more fashionable universal solvent which may have succeeded to it in reputation. Adieu, my dear sir,--I hope you and your family will long enjoy all happiness and prosperity. Never be discouraged from the constant use of your charming talent. The opinions of reviewers are really too contradictory to found anything upon them, whether they are favorable or otherwise; for it is usually their principal object to display the abilities of the writers of the critical lucubrations themselves. Your Tales are universally admired here. I go but little out, but the few judges whose opinions I have been accustomed to look up to, are unanimous. Ever yours, most truly, WALTER SCOTT. TO WALTER SCOTT, ESQ., EDINBURGH. _MY DEAR SIR_,--Law, then, is your profession--I mean a profession you give your mind and time to--but how "fag as a _clerk_"? Clerk is a name for a learned person, I know, in our Church; but how the same hand which held the pen of Marmion holds that with which a clerk fags, unless a clerk means something vastly more than I understand, is not to be comprehended. I wait for elucidation. Know you, dear sir, I have often thought I should love to read _reports_--that is, brief histories of extraordinary cases, with the judgments. If that is what is meant by _reports_, such reading must be pleasant; but, probably, I entertain wrong ideas, and could not understand the books I think so engaging. Yet I conclude there are _histories of cases_, and have often thought of consulting Hatchard whether he knew of such kind of reading, but hitherto I have rested in ignorance.... Yours truly, GEORGE CRABBE. TO THE REV. GEORGE CRABBE. MY DEAR SIR,--I have too long delayed to thank you for the most kind and acceptable present of your three volumes. Now am I doubly armed, since I have a set for my cabin at Abbotsford as well as in town; and, to say truth, the auxiliary copy arrived in good time, for my original one suffers as much by its general popularity among my young people, as a popular candidate from the hugs and embraces of his democratical admirers. The clearness and accuracy of your painting, whether natural or moral, renders, I have often remarked, your works generally delightful to those whose youth might render them insensible to the other beauties with which they abound. There are a sort of pictures--surely the most valuable, were it but for that reason--which strike the uninitiated as much as they do the connoisseur, though the last alone can render reason for his admiration. Indeed our old friend Horace knew what he was saying when he chose to address his ode, "_Virginibus puerisque_," and so did Pope when he told somebody he had the mob on the side of his version of Homer, and did not mind the high-flying critics at Button's. After all, if a faultless poem could be produced, I am satisfied it would tire the critics themselves, and annoy the whole reading world with the spleen. You must be delightfully situated in the Vale of Belvoir--a part of England for which I entertain a special kindness, for the sake of the gallant hero, Robin Hood, who, as probably you will readily guess, is no small favorite of mine; his indistinct ideas concerning the doctrine of _meum_ and _tuum_ being no great objection to an outriding Borderer. I am happy to think that your station is under the protection of the Rutland family, of whom fame speaks highly. Our lord of the "cairn and the scaur," waste wilderness and hungry hills, for many a league around, is the Duke of Buccleuch, the head of my clan; a kind and benevolent landlord, a warm and zealous friend, and the husband of a lady--_comme il y en a peu_. They are both great admirers of Mr. Crabbe's poetry, and would be happy to know him, should he ever come to Scotland, and venture into the Gothic halls of a Border chief. The early and uniform kindness of this family, with the friendship of the late and present Lord Melville, enabled me, some years ago, to exchange my toils as a barrister, for the lucrative and respectable situation of one of the Clerks of our Supreme Court, which only requires a certain routine of official duty, neither laborious nor calling for any exertion of the mind; so that my time is entirely at my own command, except when I am attending the Court, which seldom occupies more than two hours of the morning during sitting. I besides hold _in commendam_ the Sheriffdom of Ettrick Forest, which is now no forest; so that I am a pluralist as to law appointments, and have, as Dogberry says, "two gowns, and everything handsome about me."[11] I have often thought it is the most fortunate thing for bards like you and me to have an established profession, and professional character, to render us independent of those worthy gentlemen, the retailers, or, as some have called them, the midwives of literature, who are so much taken up with the abortions they bring into the world, that they are scarcely able to bestow the proper care upon young and flourishing babes like ours. That, however, is only a mercantile way of looking at the matter; but did any of my sons show poetical talent, of which, to my great satisfaction, there are no appearances, the first thing I should do would be to inculcate upon him the duty of cultivating some honorable profession, and qualifying himself to play a more respectable part in society than the mere poet. And as the best corollary of my doctrine, I would make him get your tale of The Patron by heart from beginning to end. It is curious enough that you should have republished The Village for the purpose of sending your young men to college, and I should have written The Lay of the Last Minstrel for the purpose of buying a new horse for the Volunteer Cavalry. I must now send this scrawl into town to get a frank, for, God knows, it is not worthy of postage. With the warmest wishes for your health, prosperity, and increase of fame--though it needs not--I remain most sincerely and affectionately yours, WALTER SCOTT.[12] The contrast of the two poets' epistolary styles is highly amusing; but I have introduced these specimens less on that account, than as marking the cordial confidence which a very little intercourse was sufficient to establish between men so different from each other in most of the habits of life. It will always be considered as one of the most pleasing peculiarities in Scott's history, that he was the friend of every great contemporary poet: Crabbe, as we shall see more largely in the sequel, was no exception to the rule: yet I could hardly name one of them who, manly principles and the cultivation of literature apart, had many points of resemblance to him; and surely not one who had fewer than Crabbe. Scott continued, this year, his care for the Edinburgh Annual Register--the historical department of which was again supplied by Mr. Southey. The poetical miscellany owed its opening piece, the Ballad of Polydore, to the readiness with which Scott entered into correspondence with its author, who sent it to him anonymously, with a letter which, like the verses, might well have excited much interest in his mind, even had it not concluded with stating the writer's age to be _fifteen_. Scott invited the youth to visit him in the country, was greatly pleased with the modesty of his manners and the originality of his conversation, and wrote to Joanna Baillie, that, "though not one of the crimps for the muses," he thought he could hardly be mistaken in believing that in the boyish author of Polydore he had discovered a true genius. When I mention the name of my friend William Howison of Clydegrove, it will be allowed that he prognosticated wisely. He continued to correspond with this young gentleman and his father, and gave both much advice, for which both were most grateful. There was inserted in the same volume a set of beautiful stanzas, inscribed to Scott by Mr. Wilson, under the title of The Magic Mirror, in which that enthusiastic young poet also bears a lofty and lasting testimony to the gentle kindness with which his earlier efforts had been encouraged by him whom he designates, for the first time, by what afterwards became one of his standing titles, that of The Great Magician. "Onwards a figure came, with stately brow, And, as he glanced upon the ruin'd pile A look of regal pride, 'Say, who art thou' (His countenance bright'ning with a scornful smile, He sternly cried), 'whose footsteps rash profane The wild romantic realm where I have willed to reign?' "But ere to these proud words I could reply, How changed that scornful face to soft and mild! A witching frenzy glitter'd in his eye, Harmless, withal, as that of playful child. And when once more the gracious vision spoke, I felt the voice familiar to mine ear; While many a faded dream of earth awoke, Connected strangely with that unknown seer, Who now stretch'd forth his arm, and on the sand A circle round me traced, as with magician's wand," etc. Scott's own chief contribution to this volume was a brief account of the Life and Poems (hitherto unpublished)[13] of Patrick Carey, whom he pronounces to have been not only as stout a Cavalier, but almost as good a poet as his contemporary Lovelace. That Essay was expanded, and prefixed to an edition of Carey's Trivial Poems and Triolets, which Scott published in 1820; but its circulation in either shape has been limited: and I believe I shall be gratifying the majority of my readers by here transcribing some paragraphs of his beautiful and highly characteristic introduction of this forgotten poet of the seventeenth century. "The present age has been so distinguished for research into poetical antiquities, that the discovery of an unknown bard is, in certain chosen literary circles, held as curious as an augmentation of the number of fixed stars would be esteemed by astronomers. It is true, these 'blessed twinklers of the night' are so far removed from us, that they afford no more light than serves barely to evince their existence to the curious investigator; and in like manner the pleasure derived from the revival of an obscure poet is rather in proportion to the rarity of his volume than to its merit; yet this pleasure is not inconsistent with reason and principle. We know by every day's experience the peculiar interest which the lapse of ages confers upon works of human art. The clumsy strength of the ancient castles, which, when raw from the hand of the builder, inferred only the oppressive power of the barons who reared them, is now broken by partial ruin into proper subjects for the poet or the painter; and as Mason has beautifully described the change, 'Time Has mouldered into beauty many a tower, Which, when it frowned with all its battlements, Was only terrible.' "The monastery, too, which was at first but a fantastic monument of the superstitious devotion of monarchs, or of the purple pride of fattened abbots, has gained by the silent influence of antiquity the power of impressing awe and devotion. Even the stains and weather-taints upon the battlements of such buildings add, like the scars of a veteran, to the affecting impression:-- 'For time has softened what was harsh when new, And now the stains are all of sober hue; The living stains which nature's hand alone, Profuse of life, pours forth upon the stone.'--_Crabbe._ "If such is the effect of Time in adding interest to the labors of the architect, if partial destruction is compensated by the additional interest of that which remains, can we deny his exerting a similar influence upon those subjects which are sought after by the bibliographer and poetical antiquary? The obscure poet, who is detected by their keen research, may indeed have possessed but a slender portion of that spirit which has buoyed up the works of distinguished contemporaries during the course of centuries, yet still his verses shall, in the lapse of time, acquire an interest, which they did not possess in the eyes of his own generation. The wrath of the critic, like that of the son of Ossian, flies from the foe that is low. Envy, base as she is, has one property of the lion, and cannot prey on carcases; she must drink the blood of a sentient victim, and tear the limbs that are yet warm with vital life. Faction, if the ancient has suffered her persecution, serves only to endear him to the recollection of posterity, whose generous compassion overpays him for the injuries he sustained while in life. And thus freed from the operation of all unfavorable prepossessions, his merit, if he can boast any, has more than fair credit with his readers. This, however, is but part of his advantages. The mere attribute of antiquity is of itself sufficient to interest the fancy by the lively and powerful train of associations which it awakens. Had the pyramids of Egypt, equally disagreeable in form and senseless as to utility, been the work of any living tyrant, with what feelings, save those of scorn and derision, could we have regarded such a waste of labor? But the sight, nay, the very mention of these wonderful monuments, is associated with the dark and sublime ideas which vary their tinge according to the favorite hue of our studies. The Christian divine recollects the land of banishment and of refuge; to the eyes of the historian's fancy, they excite the shades of Pharaohs and of Ptolemies, of Cheops and Merops, and Sesostris drawn in triumph by his sceptred slaves; the philosopher beholds the first rays of moral truth as they dawned on the hieroglyphic sculptures of Thebes and Memphis; and the poet sees the fires of magic blazing upon the mystic altars of a land of incantation. Nor is the grandeur of size essential to such feelings, any more than the properties of grace and utility. Even the rudest remnant of a feudal tower, even the obscure and almost indistinguishable vestige of an altogether unknown edifice, has power to awaken such trains of fancy. We have a fellow interest with the 'son of the winged days,' over whose fallen habitation we tread:-- 'The massy stones, though hewn most roughly, show The hand of man had once at least been there.'--_Wordsworth._ "Similar combinations give a great part of the delight we receive from ancient poetry. In the rude song of the Scald, we regard less the strained imagery and extravagance of epithet, than the wild impressions which it conveys of the dauntless resolution, savage superstition, rude festivity, and ceaseless depredation of the ancient Scandinavians. In the metrical romance, we pardon the long, tedious, and bald enumeration of trifling particulars; the reiterated sameness of the eternal combats between knights and giants; the overpowering languor of the love speeches, and the merciless length and similarity of description--when Fancy whispers to us that such strains may have cheered the sleepless pillow of the Black Prince on the memorable eves of Cressy or Poictiers. There is a certain romance of Ferumbras, which Robert the Bruce read to his few followers, to divert their thoughts from the desperate circumstances in which they were placed, after an unsuccessful attempt to rise against the English. Is there a true Scotsman who, being aware of this anecdote, would be disposed to yawn over the romance of Ferumbras? Or, on the contrary, would not the image of the dauntless hero, inflexible in defeat, beguiling the anxiety of his war-worn attendants by the lays of the minstrel, give to these rude lays themselves an interest beyond Greek and Roman fame?" The year 1812 had the usual share of minor literary labors--such as contributions to the journals; and before it closed, the Romance of Rokeby was finished. Though it had been long in hand, the MS. sent to the printer bears abundant evidence of its being the _prima cura_: three cantos at least reached Ballantyne through the Melrose post--written on paper of various sorts and sizes--full of blots and interlineations--the closing couplets of a despatch now and then encircling the page, and mutilated by the breaking of the seal. According to the recollection of Mr. Cadell, though James Ballantyne read the poem, as the sheets were advancing through the press, to his usual circle of literary _dilettanti_, their whispers were far from exciting in Edinburgh such an intensity of expectation as had been witnessed in the case of The Lady of the Lake. He adds, however, that it was looked for with undiminished anxiety in the south. "Send me _Rokeby_," Byron writes to Murray on seeing it advertised,--"Who the devil is he? No matter--he has good connections, and will be well introduced."[14] Such, I suppose, was the general feeling in London. I well remember, being in those days a young student at Oxford, how the booksellers' shops there were beleaguered for the earliest copies, and how he that had been so fortunate as to secure one was followed to his chambers by a tribe of friends, all as eager to hear it read as ever horse-jockeys were to see the conclusion of a match at Newmarket; and indeed not a few of those enthusiastic academics had bets depending on the issue of the struggle, which they considered the elder favorite as making, to keep his own ground against the fiery rivalry of Childe Harold. The poem was published a day or two before Scott returned to Edinburgh from Abbotsford, between which place and Mertoun he had divided his Christmas vacation. On the 9th and 10th of January, 1813, he thus addresses his friends at Sunning Hill and Hampstead:-- TO GEORGE ELLIS, ESQ. MY DEAR ELLIS,--I am sure you will place it to anything rather than want of kindness that I have been so long silent--so very long, indeed, that I am not quite sure whether the fault is on my side or yours--but, be it what it may, it can never, I am sure, be laid to forgetfulness in either. This comes to train you on to the merciful reception of a Tale of the Civil Wars; not political, however, but merely a pseudo-romance of pseudo-chivalry. I have converted a lusty buccaneer into a hero with some effect; but the worst of all my undertakings is, that my rogue always, in despite of me, turns out my hero. I know not how this should be. I am myself, as Hamlet says, "indifferent honest;" and my father, though an attorney (as you will call him), was one of the most honest men, as well as gentlemanlike, that ever breathed. I am sure I can bear witness to that--for if he had at all _smacked_, or _grown to_, like the son of Lancelot Gobbo, he might have left us all as rich as Croesus, besides having the pleasure of taking a fine primrose path himself, instead of squeezing himself through a tight gate and up a steep ascent, and leaving us the decent competence of an honest man's children. As to our more ancient pedigree, I should be loath to vouch for them. My grandfather was a horse-jockey and cattle-dealer, and made a fortune; my great-grandfather a Jacobite and traitor (as the times called him), and lost one; and after him intervened one or two half-starved lairds, who rode a lean horse, and were followed by leaner greyhounds; gathered with difficulty a hundred pounds from a hundred tenants; fought duels; cocked their hats,--and called themselves gentlemen. Then we come to the old Border times, cattle-driving, halters, and so forth, for which, in the matter of honesty, very little I suppose can be said--at least in modern acceptation of the word. Upon the whole, I am inclined to think it is owing to the earlier part of this inauspicious generation that I uniformly find myself in the same scrape in my fables, and that, in spite of the most obstinate determination to the contrary, the greatest rogue in my canvas always stands out as the most conspicuous and prominent figure. All this will be a riddle to you, unless you have received a certain packet, which the Ballantynes were to have sent under Freeling's or Croker's cover, so soon as they could get a copy done up. And now let me gratulate you upon the renovated vigor of your fine old friends the Russians. By the Lord, sir! it is most famous, this campaign of theirs. I was not one of the very sanguine persons who anticipated the actual capture of Buonaparte--a hope which rather proceeded from the ignorance of those who cannot conceive that military movements, upon a large scale, admit of such a force being accumulated upon any particular point as may, by abandonment of other considerations, always insure the escape of an individual. But I had no hope, in my time, of seeing the dry bones of the Continent so warm with life again, as this revivification of the Russians proves them to be. I look anxiously for the effect of these great events on Prussia, and even upon Saxony; for I think Boney will hardly trust himself again in Germany, now that he has been plainly shown, both in Spain and Russia, that protracted, stubborn, unaccommodating resistance will foil those grand exertions in the long run. All laud be to Lord Wellington, who first taught that great lesson. Charlotte is with me just now at this little scrub habitation, where we weary ourselves all day in looking at our projected improvements, and then slumber over the fire, I pretending to read, and she to work trout-nets, or cabbage-nets, or some such article. What is Canning about? Is there any chance of our getting him in? Surely Ministers cannot hope to do without him. Believe me, dear Ellis, ever truly yours, W. SCOTT. ABBOTSFORD, 9th January, 1813. TO MISS JOANNA BAILLIE. ABBOTSFORD, January 10, 1813. Your kind encouragement, my dear friend, has given me spirits to complete the lumbering quarto, which I hope has reached you by this time. I have gone on with my story _forth right_, without troubling myself excessively about the development of the plot and other critical matters-- "But shall we go mourn for that, my dear? The pale moon shines by night; And when we wander here and there, We then do go most right." I hope you will like Bertram to the end; he is a Caravaggio sketch, which, I may acknowledge to you--but tell it not in Gath--I rather pique myself upon; and he is within the keeping of Nature, though critics will say to the contrary. It may be difficult to fancy that any one should take a sort of pleasure in bringing out such a character, but I suppose it is partly owing to bad reading, and ill-directed reading, when I was young. No sooner had I corrected the last sheet of Rokeby, than I escaped to this Patmos as blithe as bird on tree, and have been ever since most decidedly idle--that is to say, with busy idleness. I have been banking, and securing, and diking against the river, and planting willows, and aspens, and weeping-birches, around my new old well, which I think I told you I had constructed last summer. I have now laid the foundations of a famous background of copse, with pendent trees in front; and I have only to beg a few years to see how my colors will come out of the canvas. Alas, who can promise that? But somebody will take my place--and enjoy them, whether I do or no. My old friend and pastor, Principal Robertson (the historian), when he was not expected to survive many weeks, still watched the setting of the blossom upon some fruit-trees in the garden with as much interest as if it was possible he could have seen the fruit come to maturity, and moralized on his own conduct, by observing that we act upon the same inconsistent motive throughout life. It is well we do so for those that are to come after us. I could almost dislike the man who refuses to plant walnut-trees, because they do not bear fruit till the second generation; and so--many thanks to our ancestors, and much joy to our successors, and truce to my fine and very new strain of morality. Yours ever, W. S. The following letter lets us completely behind the scenes at the publication of Rokeby. The "horrid story" it alludes to was that of a young woman found murdered on New Year's Day in the highway between Greta Bridge and Barnard Castle--a crime, the perpetrator of which was never discovered. The account of a parallel atrocity in Galloway, and the mode of its detection, will show the reader from what source Scott drew one of the most striking incidents in his Guy Mannering:-- TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., ROKEBY PARK. EDINBURGH, 12th January, 1813. DEAR MORRITT,--Yours I have just received in mine office at the Register-House, which will excuse this queer sheet of paper. The publication of Rokeby was delayed till Monday, to give the London publishers a fair start. My copies, that is, my friends', were all to be got off about Friday or Saturday; but yours may have been a little later, as it was to be what they call a picked one. I will call at Ballantyne's as I return from this place, and close the letter with such news as I can get about it there. The book has gone off here very bobbishly, for the impression of 3000 and upwards is within two or three score of being exhausted, and the demand for these continuing faster than they can be boarded. I am heartily glad of this, for now I have nothing to fear but a bankruptcy in the Gazette of Parnassus; but the loss of five or six thousand pounds to my good friends and school-companions would have afflicted me very much. I wish we could whistle you here to-day. Ballantyne always gives a christening dinner, at which the Duke of Buccleuch, and a great many of my friends, are formally feasted. He has always the best singing that can be heard in Edinburgh, and we have usually a very pleasant party, at which your health as patron and proprietor of Rokeby will be faithfully and honorably remembered. Your horrid story reminds me of one in Galloway, where the perpetrator of a similar enormity on a poor idiot girl was discovered by means of the print of his foot which he left upon the clay floor of the cottage in the death struggle. It pleased Heaven (for nothing short of a miracle could have done it) to enlighten the understanding of an old ram-headed sheriff, who was usually nicknamed Leather-head. The steps which he took to discover the murderer were most sagacious. As the poor girl was pregnant (for it was not a case of violation), it was pretty clear that her paramour had done the deed, and equally so that he must be a native of the district. The sheriff caused the minister to advertise from the pulpit that the girl would be buried on a particular day, and that all persons in the neighborhood were invited to attend the funeral, to show their detestation of such an enormous crime, as well as to evince their own innocence. This was sure to bring the murderer to the funeral. When the people were assembled in the kirk, the doors were locked by the sheriff's order, and the shoes of all the men were examined; that of the murderer was detected by the measure of the foot, tread, etc., and a peculiarity in the mode in which the sole of one of them had been patched. The remainder of the curious chain of evidence upon which he was convicted will suit best with twilight, or a blinking candle, being too long for a letter. The fellow bore a most excellent character, and had committed this crime for no other reason that could be alleged, than that, having been led accidentally into an intrigue with this poor wretch, his pride revolted at the ridicule which was likely to attend the discovery. On calling at Ballantyne's, I find, as I had anticipated, that your copy, being of royal size, requires some particular nicety in hot-pressing. It will be sent by the Carlisle mail _quam primum_.--Ever yours, WALTER SCOTT. P. S.--Love to Mrs. Morritt. John Ballantyne says he has just about eighty copies left, out of 3250, this being the second day of publication, and the book a two-guinea one. It will surprise no one to hear that Mr. Morritt assured his friend he considered Rokeby as the best of all his poems. The admirable, perhaps the unique fidelity of the local descriptions, might alone have swayed, for I will not say it perverted, the judgment of the lord of that beautiful and thenceforth classical domain; and, indeed, I must admit that I never understood or appreciated half the charm of this poem until I had become familiar with its scenery. But Scott himself had not designed to rest his strength on these descriptions. He said to James Ballantyne while the work was in progress (September 2), "I hope the thing will do, chiefly because the world will not expect from _me_ a poem of which the interest turns upon _character_;" and in another letter (October 28, 1812), "I think you will see the same sort of difference taken in all my former poems,--of which I would say, if it is fair for me to say anything, that the force in the Lay is thrown on style--in Marmion, on description--and in The Lady of the Lake, on incident."[15] I suspect some of these distinctions may have been matters of afterthought; but as to Rokeby, there can be no mistake. His own original conceptions of some of its principal characters have been explained in letters already cited; and I believe no one who compares the poem with his novels will doubt that, had he undertaken their portraiture in prose, they would have come forth with effect hardly inferior to any of all the groups he ever created. As it is, I question whether even in his prose there is anything more exquisitely wrought out, as well as fancied, than the whole contrast of the two rivals for the love of the heroine in Rokeby; and that heroine herself, too, has a very particular interest attached to her. Writing to Miss Edgeworth five years after this time (10th May, 1818), he says, "I have not read one of my poems since they were printed, excepting last year The Lady of the Lake, which I liked better than I expected, but not well enough to induce me to go through the rest--so I may truly say with Macbeth-- 'I am afraid to think what I have done-- Look on 't again I dare not.' "This much of _Matilda_ I recollect--(for that is not so easily forgotten)--that she was attempted for the existing person of a lady who is now no more, so that I am particularly flattered with your distinguishing it from the others, which are in general mere shadows."[16] I can have no doubt that the lady he here alludes to was the object of his own unfortunate first love; and as little, that in the romantic generosity, both of the youthful poet who fails to win her higher favor, and of his chivalrous competitor, we have before us something more than "a mere shadow." In spite of these graceful characters, the inimitable scenery on which they are presented, and the splendid vivacity and thrilling interest of several chapters in the story--such as the opening interview of Bertram and Wycliffe--the flight up the cliff on the Greta--the first entrance of the cave at Brignall--the firing of Rokeby Castle--and the catastrophe in Eglistone Abbey;--in spite certainly of exquisitely happy lines profusely scattered throughout the whole composition, and of some detached images--that of the setting of the tropical sun,[17] for example--which were never surpassed by any poet; in spite of all these merits, the immediate success of Rokeby was greatly inferior to that of The Lady of the Lake; nor has it ever since been so much a favorite with the public at large as any other of his poetical romances. He ascribes this failure, in his Introduction of 1830, partly to the radically unpoetical character of the Roundheads; but surely their character has its poetical side also, had his prejudices allowed him to enter upon its study with impartial sympathy; and I doubt not, Mr. Morritt suggested the difficulty on this score, when the outline of the story was as yet undetermined, from consideration rather of the poet's peculiar feelings, and powers as hitherto exhibited, than of the subject absolutely. Partly he blames the satiety of the public ear, which had had so much of his rhythm, not only from himself, but from dozens of mocking-birds, male and female, all more or less applauded in their day, and now all equally forgotten.[18] This circumstance, too, had probably no slender effect; the more that, in defiance of all the hints of his friends, he now, in his narrative, repeated (with more negligence) the uniform octosyllabic couplets of The Lady of the Lake, instead of recurring to the more varied cadence of the Lay or Marmion. It is fair to add that, among the London circles at least, some sarcastic flings in Mr. Moore's Twopenny Post Bag must have had an unfavorable influence on this occasion.[19] But the cause of failure which the poet himself places last was unquestionably the main one. The deeper and darker passion of Childe Harold, the audacity of its morbid voluptuousness, and the melancholy majesty of the numbers in which it defied the world, had taken the general imagination by storm; and Rokeby, with many beauties and some sublimities, was pitched, as a whole, on a key which seemed tame in the comparison. I have already adverted to the fact that Scott felt it a relief, not a fatigue, to compose The Bridal of Triermain _pari passu_ with Rokeby. In answer, for example, to one of James Ballantyne's letters, urging accelerated speed with the weightier romance, he says, "I fully share in your anxiety to get forward the grand work; but, I assure you, I feel the more confidence from coquetting with the guerilla." The quarto of Rokeby was followed, within two months, by the small volume which had been designed for a twin birth;--the MS. had been transcribed by one of the Ballantynes themselves, in order to guard against any indiscretion of the press-people; and the mystification, aided and abetted by Erskine, in no small degree heightened the interest of its reception. Except Mr. Morritt, Scott had, so far as I am aware, no English confidant upon this occasion. Whether any of his daily companions in the Parliament House were in the secret, I have never heard; but I can scarcely believe that any of those intimate friends, who had known him and Erskine from their youth upwards, could have for a moment believed the latter capable either of the invention or the execution of this airy and fascinating romance in little. Mr. Jeffrey, for whom chiefly "the trap had been set," was far too sagacious to be caught in it; but, as it happened, he made a voyage that year to America, and thus lost the opportunity of immediately expressing his opinion either of Rokeby or of The Bridal of Triermain. The writer in the Quarterly Review (July, 1813) seems to have been completely deceived. "We have already spoken of it," says the critic, "as an imitation of Mr. Scott's style of composition; and if we are compelled to make the general approbation more precise and specific, we should say, that if it be inferior in vigor to some of his productions, it equals or surpasses them in elegance and beauty; that it is more uniformly tender, and far less infected with the unnatural prodigies and coarseness of the earlier romances. In estimating its merits, however, we should forget that it is offered as an imitation. The diction undoubtedly reminds us of a rhythm and cadence we have heard before; but the sentiments, descriptions, and characters, have qualities that are native and unborrowed." If this writer was, as I suppose, Ellis, he probably considered it as a thing impossible that Scott should have engaged in such a scheme without giving him a hint of it; but to have admitted into the secret any one who was likely to criticise the piece, would have been to sacrifice the very object of the device. Erskine's own suggestion, that "perhaps a quizzical review might be got up," led, I believe, to nothing more important than a paragraph in one of the Edinburgh newspapers. He may be pardoned for having been not a little flattered to find it generally considered as not impossible that he should have written such a poem; and I have heard James Ballantyne say that nothing could be more amusing than the style of his coquetting on the subject while it was yet fresh; but when this first excitement was over, his natural feeling of what was due to himself, as well as to his friend, dictated many a remonstrance; and, though he ultimately acquiesced in permitting another minor romance to be put forth in the same manner, he did so reluctantly, and was far from acting his part so well. Scott says, in the Introduction to The Lord of the Isles, "As Mr. Erskine was more than suspected of a taste for poetry, and as I took care, in several places, to mix something that might resemble (as far as was in my power) my friend's feeling and manner, the train easily caught, and two large editions were sold." Among the passages to which he here alludes are no doubt those in which the character of the minstrel Arthur is shaded with the colorings of an almost effeminate gentleness. Yet, in the midst of them, the "mighty minstrel" himself, from time to time, escapes; as, for instance, where the lover bids Lucy, in that exquisite picture of crossing a mountain stream, trust to his "stalwart arm"-- "Which could yon oak's prone trunk uprear." Nor can I pass the compliment to Scott's own fair patroness, where Lucy's admirer is made to confess, with some momentary lapse of gallantry, that he "Ne'er won--best meed to minstrel true-- One favoring smile from fair Buccleuch;" nor the burst of genuine Borderism,-- "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, Tarras and Ewes keep nightly stir, And Eskdale foray Cumberland." But, above all, the choice of the scenery, both of the Introductions and of the story itself, reveals the early and treasured predilections of the poet. For who that remembers the circumstances of his first visit to the vale of St. John, but must see throughout the impress of his own real romance? I own I am not without a suspicion that, in one passage, which always seemed to me a blot upon the composition--that in which Arthur derides the military coxcombries of his rival-- "Who comes in foreign trashery Of tinkling chain and spur, A walking haberdashery Of feathers, lace, and fur; In Rowley's antiquated phrase, Horse-milliner of modern days"-- there is a sly reference to the incidents of a certain ball, of August, 1797, at the Gilsland Spa.[20] Among the more prominent Erskinisms, are the eulogistic mention of Glasgow, the scene of Erskine's education; and the lines on Collins--a supplement to whose Ode on the Highland Superstitions is, as far as I know, the only specimen that ever was published of Erskine's verse.[21] As a whole, The Bridal of Triermain appears to me as characteristic of Scott as any of his larger poems. His genius pervades and animates it beneath a thin and playful veil, which perhaps adds as much of grace as it takes away of splendor. As Wordsworth says of the eclipse on the lake of Lugano-- "'T is sunlight sheathed and gently charmed;" and I think there is at once a lightness and a polish of versification beyond what he has elsewhere attained. If it be a miniature, it is such a one as a Cooper might have hung fearlessly beside the masterpieces of Vandyke. The Introductions contain some of the most exquisite passages he ever produced; but their general effect has always struck me as unfortunate. No art can reconcile us to contemptuous satire of the merest frivolities of modern life--some of them already, in twenty years, grown obsolete--interlaid between such bright visions of the old world of romance, when "Strength was gigantic, valor high, And wisdom soared beyond the sky, And beauty had such matchless beam As lights not now a lover's dream." The fall is grievous, from the hoary minstrel of Newark, and his feverish tears on Killiecrankie, to a pathetic swain, who can stoop to denounce as objects of his jealousy-- "The landaulet and four blood bays-- The Hessian boot and pantaloon." Before Triermain came out, Scott had taken wing for Abbotsford; and indeed he seems to have so contrived it in his earlier period, that he should not be in Edinburgh when any unavowed work of his was published; whereas, from the first, in the case of books that bore his name on the title-page, he walked as usual to the Parliament House, and bore all the buzz and tattle of friends and acquaintance with an air of good-humored equanimity, or rather total apparent indifference. The following letter, which contains some curious matter of more kinds than one, was written partly in town and partly in the country:-- TO MISS JOANNA BAILLIE, HAMPSTEAD. EDINBURGH, March 13, 1813. MY DEAREST FRIEND,--The pinasters have arrived safe, and I can hardly regret, while I am so much flattered by, the trouble you have had in collecting them. I have got some wild larch-trees from Loch Katrine, and both are to be planted next week, when, God willing, I shall be at Abbotsford to superintend the operation. I have got a little corner of ground laid out for a nursery, where I shall rear them carefully till they are old enough to be set forth to push their fortune on the banks of Tweed.--What I shall finally make of this villa-work I don't know, but in the mean time it is very entertaining. I shall have to resist very flattering invitations this season; for I have received hints, from more quarters than one, that my bow would be acceptable at Carlton House in case I should be in London, which is very flattering, especially as there were some prejudices to be got over in that quarter. I should be in some danger of giving new offence, too; for, although I utterly disapprove of the present rash and ill-advised course of the princess, yet, as she always was most kind and civil to me, I certainly could not, as a gentleman, decline obeying any commands she might give me to wait upon her, especially in her present adversity. So, though I do not affect to say I should be sorry to take an opportunity of peeping at the splendors of royalty, prudence and economy will keep me quietly at home till another day. My great amusement here this some time past has been going almost nightly to see John Kemble, who certainly is a great artist. It is a pity he shows too much of his machinery. I wish he could be double-capped, as they say of watches;--but the fault of too much study certainly does not belong to many of his tribe. He is, I think, very great in those parts especially where character is tinged by some acquired and systematic habits, like those of the Stoic philosophy in Cato and Brutus, or of misanthropy in Penruddock; but sudden turns and natural bursts of passion are not his forte. I saw him play Sir Giles Overreach (the Richard III. of middling life) last night; but he came not within a hundred miles of Cooke, whose terrible visage, and short, abrupt, and savage utterance, gave a reality almost to that extraordinary scene in which he boasts of his own successful villainy to a nobleman of worth and honor, of whose alliance he is ambitious. Cooke contrived somehow to impress upon the audience the idea of such a monster of enormity as had learned to pique himself even upon his own atrocious character. But Kemble was too handsome, too plausible, and too smooth, to admit its being probable that he should be blind to the unfavorable impression which these extraordinary vaunts are likely to make on the person whom he is so anxious to conciliate. ABBOTSFORD, 21st March. This letter, begun in Edinburgh, is to take wing from Abbotsford. John Winnos (now John Winnos is the sub-oracle of Abbotsford, the principal being Tom Purdie)--John Winnos pronounces that the pinaster seed ought to be raised at first on a hot-bed, and thence transplanted to a nursery; so to a hot-bed they have been carefully consigned, the upper oracle not objecting, in respect his talent lies in catching a salmon, or finding a hare sitting--on which occasions (being a very complete Scrub) he solemnly exchanges his working jacket for an old green one of mine, and takes the air of one of Robin Hood's followers. His more serious employments are ploughing, harrowing, and overseeing all my premises; being a complete Jack-of-all-trades, from the carpenter to the shepherd, nothing comes strange to him; and being extremely honest, and somewhat of a humorist, he is quite my right hand. I cannot help singing his praises at this moment, because I have so many odd and out-of-the-way things to do, that I believe the conscience of many of our jog-trot countrymen would revolt at being made my instrument in sacrificing good corn-land to the visions of Mr. Price's theory. Mr. Pinkerton, the historian, has a play coming out at Edinburgh; it is by no means bad poetry, yet I think it will not be popular; the people come and go, and speak very notable things in good blank verse, but there is no very strong interest excited; the plot also is disagreeable, and liable to the objections (though in a less degree) which have been urged against the Mysterious Mother; it is to be acted on Wednesday; I will let you know its fate. P., with whom I am in good habits, showed the MS., but I referred him, with such praise as I could conscientiously bestow, to the players and the public. I don't know why one should take the task of damning a man's play out of the hands of the proper tribunal. Adieu, my dear friend. I have scarce room for love to Miss, Mrs., and Dr. B. W. SCOTT. To this I add a letter to Lady Louisa Stuart, who had sent him a copy of these lines, found by Lady Douglas on the back of a tattered bank-note:-- "Farewell, my note, and wheresoe'er ye wend, Shun gaudy scenes, and be the poor man's friend. You've left a poor one; go to one as poor, And drive despair and hunger from his door." It appears that these noble friends had adopted, or feigned to adopt, the belief that The Bridal of Triermain was a production of Mr. R. P. Gillies--who had about this time published an imitation of Lord Byron's Romaunt, under the title of Childe Alarique. TO THE LADY LOUISA STUART, BOTHWELL CASTLE. ABBOTSFORD, 28th April, 1813. DEAR LADY LOUISA,--Nothing can give me more pleasure than to hear from you, because it is both a most acceptable favor to me, and also a sign that your own spirits are recovering their tone. Ladies are, I think, very fortunate in having a resource in work at a time when the mind rejects intellectual amusement. Men have no resource but striding up and down the room, like a bird that beats itself to pieces against the bars of its cage; whereas needle-work is a sort of sedative, too mechanical to worry the mind by distracting it from the points on which its musings turn, yet gradually assisting it in regaining steadiness and composure; for so curiously are our bodies and minds linked together, that the regular and constant employment of the former on any process, however dull and uniform, has the effect of tranquillizing, where it cannot disarm, the feelings of the other. I am very much pleased with the lines on the guinea note, and if Lady Douglas does not object, I would willingly mention the circumstance in the Edinburgh Annual Register. I think it will give the author great delight to know that his lines had attracted attention, and _had_ sent the paper on which they were recorded, "heaven-directed, to the poor." Of course I would mention no names. There was, as your Ladyship may remember, some years since, a most audacious and determined murder committed on a porter belonging to the British Linen Company's Bank at Leith, who was stabbed to the heart in broad daylight, and robbed of a large sum in notes.[22] If ever this crime comes to light, it will be through the circumstance of an idle young fellow having written part of a playhouse song on one of the notes, which, however, has as yet never appeared in circulation. I am very glad you like Rokeby, which is nearly out of fashion and memory with me. It has been wonderfully popular, about ten thousand copies having walked off already, in about three months, and the demand continuing faster than it can be supplied. As to my imitator, the Knight of Triermain, I will endeavor to convey to Mr. Gillies (_puisque Gillies il est_) your Ladyship's very just strictures on the Introduction to the second Canto. But if he takes the opinion of a hacked old author like myself, he will content himself with avoiding such bevues in future, without attempting to mend those which are already made. There is an ominous old proverb which says, _Confess and be hanged_; and truly if an author acknowledges his own blunders, I do not know who he can expect to stand by him; whereas, let him confess nothing, and he will always find some injudicious admirers to vindicate even his faults. So that I think after publication the effect of criticism should be prospective, in which point of view I dare say Mr. G. will take your friendly hint, especially as it is confirmed by that of the best judges who have read the poem.--Here is beautiful weather for April! an absolute snow-storm mortifying me to the core by retarding the growth of all my young trees and shrubs.--Charlotte begs to be most respectfully remembered to your Ladyship and Lady D. We are realizing the nursery tale of the man and his wife who lived in a vinegar bottle, for our only sitting-room is just twelve feet square, and my Eve alleges that I am too big for our paradise. To make amends, I have created a tolerable garden, occupying about an English acre, which I begin to be very fond of. When one passes forty, an addition to the quiet occupations of life becomes of real value, for I do not hunt and fish with quite the relish I did ten years ago. Adieu, my dear Lady Louisa, and all good attend you. WALTER SCOTT. Footnotes of the Chapter XXV. [1: The epitaph of this favorite greyhound may be seen on the edge of the bank, a little way below the house of Abbotsford.] [2: The Reverend Alexander Dyce says, "N. T. stands for _Nathaniel Thompson_, the Tory bookseller, who published these _Loyal Poems_."--(1839.)] [3: An edition of the British Dramatists had, I believe, been projected by Mr. Terry.] [4: Mr. Thomson died 8th January, 1838, before the publication of the first edition of these Memoirs had been completed.--(1839.)] [5: _Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott_, p. 56.] [6: [From a passage in a letter to Lady Abercorn, written September 10, 1818, on the return from a similar journey (see _Familiar Letters_, vol. ii. p. 24), it seems probable that some at least of the incidents of this visit belong to that of the later date.]] [7: This alluded to a ridiculous hunter of lions, who, being met by Mr. Morritt in the grounds at Rokeby, disclaimed all taste for picturesque beauties, but overwhelmed their owner with Homeric Greek; of which he had told Scott.] [8: _Burnfoot_ is the name of a farmhouse on the Buccleuch estate, not far from Langholm, where the late Sir John Malcolm and his distinguished brothers were born. Their grandfather had, I believe, found refuge there after forfeiting a good estate and an ancient baronetcy in the _affair_ of 1715. A monument to the gallant General's memory has recently been erected near the spot of his birth.] [9: _3d King Henry VI._ Act I. Scene 4.] [10: See _Life of Dryden_, Scott's _Miscellaneous Prose Works_, vol. i. p. 293.] [11: _Much Ado about Nothing_, Act IV. Scene 2.] [12: Several of these letters having been enclosed in franked covers, which have perished, I am unable to affix the exact dates to them.] [13: The Rev. Alexander Dyce informs me that _nine_ of Carey's pieces were printed in 1771, for J. Murray of Fleet Street, in a quarto of thirty-five pages, entitled _Poems from a MS. written in the time of Oliver Cromwell_. This rare tract had never fallen into Scott's hands.--(1839.)] [14: Byron's _Life and Works_, vol. ii. p. 169.] [15: Several letters to Ballantyne on the same subject are quoted in the notes to the last edition of _Rokeby_. See Scott's _Poetical Works_, 1834, vol. ix. pp. 1-3; and especially the note on p. 300, from which it appears that the closing stanza was added, in deference to Ballantyne and Erskine, though the author retained his own opinion that "it spoiled one effect without producing another."] [16: [See _Familiar Letters_, vol. ii. p. 16.]] [17: "My noontide, India may declare; Like her fierce sun, I fired the air! Like him, to wood and cave bid fly Her natives, from mine angry eye. And now, my race of terror ran, Mine be the eye of tropic sun! No pale gradations quench his ray, No twilight dews his wrath allay; With disk like battle-target red, He rushes to his burning bed. Dyes the wide wave with bloody light, Then sinks at once--and all is night."--_Canto_ vi. 21.] [18: "Scott found peculiar favor and imitation among the fair sex. There was Miss Holford, and Miss Mitford, and Miss Francis; but, with the greatest respect be it spoken, none of his imitators did much honor to the original except Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, until the appearance of _The Bridal of Triermain_ and _Harold the Dauntless_, which, in the opinion of some, equalled if not surpassed him; and, lo! after three or four years, they turned out to be the master's own compositions."--Byron, vol. xv. p. 96.] [19: See, for instance, the Epistle of Lady Corke--or that of Messrs. Lackington, booksellers, to one of their dandy authors,-- "Should you feel any touch of _poetical_ glow, We've a scheme to suggest--Mr. Scott, you must know (Who, we're sorry to say it, now works for the _Row_), Having quitted the Borders to seek new renown, Is coming by long Quarto stages to town, And beginning with Rokeby (the job's sure to pay), Means to do all the gentlemen's seats on the way. Now the scheme is, though none of our hackneys can beat him, To start a new Poet through Highgate to meet him; Who by means of quick proofs--no revises--long coaches-- May do a few Villas before Scott approaches; Indeed if our Pegasus be not curst shabby, He'll reach, without foundering, at least Woburn-Abbey," etc., etc.] [20: See _ante_, vol. i. p. 246.] [21: It is included in the _Border Minstrelsy_, vol. i. p. 270.] [22: This murder, perpetrated in November, 1806, remains a mystery in 1836. The porter's name was Begbie. [See _Familiar Letters_, vol. i. p. 63.]] CHAPTER XXVI AFFAIRS OF JOHN BALLANTYNE AND CO. -- CAUSES OF THEIR DERANGEMENT. --LETTERS OF SCOTT TO HIS PARTNERS. -- NEGOTIATION FOR RELIEF WITH MESSRS. CONSTABLE. -- NEW PURCHASE OF LAND AT ABBOTSFORD. --EMBARRASSMENTS CONTINUED. -- JOHN BALLANTYNE'S EXPRESSES. --DRUMLANRIG, PENRITH, ETC. -- SCOTT'S MEETING WITH THE MARQUIS OF ABERCORN AT LONGTOWN. -- HIS APPLICATION TO THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH. --OFFER OF THE POET-LAUREATESHIP, -- CONSIDERED, -- AND DECLINED. --ADDRESS OF THE CITY OF EDINBURGH TO THE PRINCE REGENT. -- ITS RECEPTION. -- CIVIC HONORS CONFERRED ON SCOTT. -- QUESTION OF TAXATION ON LITERARY INCOME. -- LETTERS TO MR. MORRITT, MR. SOUTHEY, MR. RICHARDSON, MR. CRABBE, MISS BAILLIE, AND LORD BYRON 1813 About a month after the publication of The Bridal of Triermain, the affairs of the Messrs. Ballantyne, which had never apparently been in good order since the establishment of the bookselling firm, became so embarrassed as to call for Scott's most anxious efforts to disentangle them. Indeed, it is clear that there had existed some very serious perplexity in the course of the preceding autumn; for Scott writes to John Ballantyne, while Rokeby was in progress (August 11, 1812),--"I have a letter from James, very anxious about your health and state of spirits. If you suffer the present inconveniences to depress you too much, you are wrong; and if you conceal any part of them, are very unjust to us all. I am always ready to make any sacrifices to do justice to engagements, and would rather sell anything, or everything, than be less than true men to the world." [Illustration: ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE _From the painting by Raeburn_] I have already, perhaps, said enough to account for the general want of success in this publishing adventure; but Mr. James Ballantyne sums up the case so briefly in his deathbed paper, that I may here quote his words. "My brother," he says, "though an active and pushing, was not a cautious bookseller, and the large sums received 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's hasty results. By May, 1813, in a word, the absolute throwing away of our own most valuable publications, and the rash adoption of some injudicious speculations of Mr. Scott, had introduced such losses and embarrassments, that after a very careful consideration, Mr. Scott determined to dissolve the concern." He adds: "This became a matter of less difficulty, because time had in a great measure worn away the differences between Mr. Scott and Mr. Constable, and Mr. Hunter was now out of Constable's concern.[23] A peace, therefore, was speedily made up, and the old habits of intercourse were restored." How reluctantly Scott had made up his mind to open such a negotiation with Constable, as involved a complete exposure of the mismanagement of John Ballantyne's business as a publisher, will appear from a letter dated about the Christmas of 1812, in which he says to James, who had proposed asking Constable to take a share both in Rokeby and in the Annual Register, "You must be aware, that in stating the objections which occur to me to taking in Constable, I think they ought to give way either to absolute necessity or to very strong grounds of advantage. But I _am_ persuaded nothing ultimately good can be expected from any connection with that house, unless for those who have a mind to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. We will talk the matter coolly over, and, in the mean while, perhaps you could see W. Erskine, and learn what impression this odd union is like to make among your friends. Erskine is sound-headed, and quite to be trusted with _your whole story_. I must own I can hardly think the purchase of the Register is equal to the loss of credit and character which your surrender will be conceived to infer." At the time when he wrote this, Scott no doubt anticipated that Rokeby would have success not less decisive than The Lady of the Lake; but in this expectation--though 10,000 copies in three months would have seemed to any other author a triumphant sale--he had been disappointed. And meanwhile the difficulties of the firm, accumulating from week to week, had reached, by the middle of May, a point which rendered it absolutely necessary for him to conquer all his scruples. Mr. Cadell, then Constable's partner, says in his _Memoranda_,--"Prior to this time the reputation of John Ballantyne and Co. had been decidedly on the decline. It was notorious in the trade that their general speculations had been unsuccessful; they were known to be grievously in want of money. These rumors were realized to the full by an application which Messrs. B. made to Mr. Constable in May, 1813, for pecuniary aid, accompanied by an offer of some of the books they had published since 1809, as a purchase, along with various shares in Mr. Scott's own poems. Their difficulties were admitted, and the negotiation was pressed urgently; so much so, that a pledge was given, that if the terms asked were acceded to, John Ballantyne and Co. would endeavor to wind up their concerns, and cease as soon as possible to be publishers." Mr. Cadell adds: "I need hardly remind you that this was a period of very great general difficulty in the money market. It was the crisis of the war. The public expenditure had reached an enormous height; and even the most prosperous mercantile houses were often pinched to sustain their credit. It may easily, therefore, be supposed that the Messrs. Ballantyne had during many months besieged every banker's door in Edinburgh, and that their agents had done the like in London." The most important of the requests which the laboring house made to Constable was that he should forthwith take entirely to himself the stock, copyright, and future management of the Edinburgh Annual Register. Upon examining the state of this book, however, Constable found that the loss on it had never been less than £1000 per annum, and he therefore declined that matter for the present. He promised, however, to consider seriously the means he might have of ultimately relieving them from the pressure of the Register, and, in the mean time, offered to take 300 sets of the stock on hand. The other purchases he finally made on the 18th of May were considerable portions of Weber's unhappy Beaumont and Fletcher--of an edition of De Foe's novels in twelve volumes--of a collection entitled Tales of the East in three large volumes, 8vo, double-columned--and of another in one volume, called Popular Tales--about 800 copies of The Vision of Don Roderick--and a fourth of the remaining copyright of Rokeby, price £700. The immediate accommodation thus received amounted to £2000; and Scott, who had personally conducted the latter part of the negotiation, writes thus to his junior partner, who had gone a week or two earlier to London in quest of some similar assistance there:-- TO MR. JOHN BALLANTYNE, CARE OF MESSRS. LONGMAN & CO., LONDON. PRINTING-OFFICE, May 18, 1813. DEAR JOHN,--After many _offs_ and _ons_, and as many _projets_ and _contre-projets_ as the treaty of Amiens, I have at length concluded a treaty with Constable, in which I am sensible he has gained a great advantage;[24] but what could I do amidst the disorder and pressure of so many demands? The arrival of your long-dated bills decided my giving in, for what could James or I do with them? I trust this sacrifice has cleared our way, but many rubs remain; nor am I, after these hard skirmishes, so able to meet them by my proper credit. Constable, however, will be a zealous ally; and for the first time these many weeks I shall lay my head on a quiet pillow, for now I do think that, by our joint exertions, we shall get well through the storm, save Beaumont from depreciation, get a partner in our heavy concerns, reef our topsails, and move on securely under an easy sail. And if, on the one hand, I have sold my gold too cheap, I have, on the other, turned my lead to gold. Brewster[25] and Singers[26] are the only heavy things to which I have not given a blue eye. Had your news of Cadell's sale[27] reached us here, I could not have harpooned my grampus so deeply as I have done, as nothing but Rokeby would have barbed the hook. Adieu, my dear John. I have the most sincere regard for you, and you may depend on my considering your interest with quite as much attention as my own. If I have ever expressed myself with irritation in speaking of this business, you must impute it to the sudden, extensive, and unexpected embarrassments in which I found myself involved all at once. If to your real goodness of heart and integrity, and to the quickness and acuteness of your talents, you added habits of more universal circumspection, and, above all, the courage to tell disagreeable truths to those whom you hold in regard, I pronounce that the world never held such a man of business. These it must be your study to add to your other good qualities. Meantime, as some one says to Swift, I love you with all your failings. Pray make an effort and love me with all mine. Yours truly, W. S. Three days afterwards Scott resumes the subject as follows:-- TO MR. JOHN BALLANTYNE, LONDON. EDINBURGH, 21st May, 1813. DEAR JOHN,--Let it never escape your recollection, that shutting your own eyes, or blinding those of your friends, upon the actual state of business, is the high road to ruin. Meanwhile, we have recovered our legs for a week or two. Constable will, I think, come in to the Register. He is most anxious to maintain the printing-office; he sees most truly that the more we print the less we publish; and for the same reason he will, I think, help us off with our heavy quire-stock. I was aware of the distinction between the _state_ and the _calendar_ as to the latter including the printing-office bills, and I summed and docked them (they are marked with red ink), but there is still a difference of £2000 and upwards on the calendar against the business. I sometimes fear that, between the long dates of your bills, and the tardy settlements of the Edinburgh trade, some difficulties will occur even in June; and July I always regard with deep anxiety. As for loss, if I get out without public exposure, I shall not greatly regard the rest. Radcliffe the physician said, when he lost £2000 on the South Sea scheme, it was only going up 2000 pair of stairs; I say, it is only writing 2000 couplets, and the account is balanced. More of this hereafter. Yours truly, W. SCOTT. P. S.--James has behaved very well during this whole transaction, and has been most steadily attentive to business. I am convinced that the more he works the better his health will be. One or other of you will need to be constantly in the printing-office henceforward,--it is the sheet-anchor. The allusion in this _postscript_ to James Ballantyne's health reminds me that Scott's letters to himself are full of hints on that subject, even from a very early period of their connection; and these hints are all to the same effect. James was a man of lazy habits, and not a little addicted to the more solid, and perhaps more dangerous, part of the indulgences of the table. One letter (dated Ashestiel, 1810) will be a sufficient specimen:-- TO MR. JAMES BALLANTYNE. MY DEAR JAMES,--I am very sorry for the state of your health, and should be still more so, were I not certain that I can prescribe for you as well as any physician in Edinburgh. You have naturally an athletic constitution and a hearty stomach, and these agree very ill with a sedentary life and the habits of indolence which it brings on. Your stomach thus gets weak; and from those complaints of all others arise most certainly flatulence, hypochondria, and all the train of unpleasant feelings connected with indigestion. We all know the horrible sensation of the nightmare arises from the same cause which gives those waking nightmares commonly called the blue devils. You must positively put yourself on a regimen as to eating, not for a month or two, but for a year at least, and take regular exercise--and my life for yours. I know this by myself, for if I were to eat and drink in town as I do here, it would soon finish me, and yet I am sensible I live too genially in Edinburgh as it is. Yours very truly, W. SCOTT. Among Scott's early pets at Abbotsford there was a huge raven, whose powers of speech were remarkable, far beyond any parrot's that he had ever met with; and who died in consequence of an excess of the kind to which James Ballantyne was addicted. Thenceforth, Scott often repeated to his old friend, and occasionally scribbled by way of postscript to his notes on business-- "When you are craving, Remember the Raven." Sometimes the formula is varied to-- "When you've dined half, Think on poor Ralph!" His preachments of regularity in book-keeping to John, and of abstinence from good cheer to James Ballantyne, were equally vain; but on the other hand it must be allowed that they had some reason for displeasure--(the more felt, because they durst not, like him, express their feelings)[28]--when they found that scarcely had these "hard skirmishes" terminated in the bargain of May 18, before Scott was preparing fresh embarrassments for himself, by commencing a negotiation for a considerable addition to his property at Abbotsford. As early as the 20th of June he writes to Constable as being already aware of this matter, and alleges his anxiety "to close at once with a very capricious person," as the only reason that could have induced him to make up his mind to sell the whole copyright of an as yet unwritten poem, to be entitled The Nameless Glen. This copyright he then offered to dispose of to Constable for £5000; adding, "this is considerably less in proportion than I have already made on the share of Rokeby sold to yourself, and surely that is no unfair admeasurement." A long correspondence ensued, in the course of which Scott mentions The Lord of the Isles, as a title which had suggested itself to him in place of The Nameless Glen; but as the negotiation did not succeed, I may pass its details. The new property which Scott was so eager to acquire was that hilly tract stretching from the old Roman road near Turn-again towards the Cauldshiels Loch: a then desolate and naked mountain-mere, which he likens, in a letter of this summer (to Lady Louisa Stuart), to the Lake of the Genie and the Fisherman in the Arabian Tale. To obtain this lake at one extremity of his estate, as a contrast to the Tweed at the other, was a prospect for which hardly any sacrifice would have appeared too much; and he contrived to gratify his wishes in the course of that July, to which he had spoken of himself in May as looking forward "with the deepest anxiety." Nor was he, I must add, more able to control some of his minor tastes. I find him writing to Mr. Terry, on the 20th of June, about "that splendid lot of ancient armor, advertised by Winstanley," a celebrated auctioneer in London, of which he had the strongest fancy to make his spoil, though he was at a loss to know where it should be placed when it reached Abbotsford; and on the 2d of July, this acquisition also having been settled, he says to the same correspondent: "I have written to Mr. Winstanley. My bargain with Constable was otherwise arranged, but Little John is to find the needful article, and I shall take care of Mr. Winstanley's interest, who has behaved too handsomely in this matter to be trusted to the mercy of our little friend the Picaroon, who is, notwithstanding his many excellent qualities, a little on the score of old Gobbo--doth somewhat smack--somewhat grow to.[29] We shall be at Abbotsford on the 12th, and hope soon to see you there. I am fitting up a small room above _Peter-House_, where an unceremonious bachelor may consent to do penance, though the place is a cock-loft, and the access that which leads many a bold fellow to his last nap--a ladder."[30] And a few weeks later, he says, in the same sort, to his sister-in-law, Mrs. Thomas Scott: "In despite of these hard times, which affect my patrons the booksellers very much, I am buying old books and old armor as usual, and adding to what your old friend Burns[31] calls-- 'A fouth of auld nick-nackets, Rusty airn caps and jingling jackets, Wad haud the Lothians three in tackets A towmont gude, And parritch-pats and auld saut-backets, Before the flude.'" Notwithstanding all this, it must have been with a most uneasy mind that he left Edinburgh to establish himself at Abbotsford that July. The assistance of Constable had not been granted, indeed it had not been asked, to an extent at all adequate for the difficulties of the case; and I have now to transcribe, with pain and reluctance, some extracts from Scott's letters, during the ensuing autumn, which speak the language of anxious, and, indeed, humiliating distress; and give a most lively notion of the incurable recklessness of his younger partner. TO MR. JOHN BALLANTYNE. ABBOTSFORD, Saturday, 24th July. DEAR JOHN,--I sent you the order, and have only to hope it arrived safe and in good time. I waked the boy at three o'clock myself, having slept little, less on account of the money than of the time. Surely you should have written, three or four days before, the probable amount of the deficit, and, as on former occasions, I would have furnished you with means of meeting it. These expresses, besides every other inconvenience, excite surprise in my family and in the neighborhood. I know no justifiable occasion for them but the unexpected return of a bill. I do not consider you as answerable for the success of plans, but I do and must hold you responsible for giving me, in distinct and plain terms, your opinion as to any difficulties which may occur, and that in such time that I may make arrangements to obviate them if possible. Of course, if anything has gone wrong you will come out here to-morrow. But if, as I hope and trust, the cash arrived safe, you will write to me, under cover to the Duke of Buccleuch, Drumlanrig Castle, Dumfries-shire. I shall set out for that place on Monday morning early. W. S. TO MR. JAMES BALLANTYNE. ABBOTSFORD, 25th July, 1813. DEAR JAMES,--I address the following jobation for John to you, that you may see whether I do not well to be angry, and enforce upon him the necessity of constantly writing his fears as well as his hopes. You should rub him often on this point, for his recollection becomes rusty the instant I leave town and am not in the way to rack him with constant questions. I hope the presses are doing well, and that you are quite stout again. Yours truly, W. S. (_Enclosure._) TO MR. JOHN BALLANTYNE. MY GOOD FRIEND JOHN,--The post brings me no letter from you, which I am much surprised at, as you must suppose me anxious to learn that your express arrived. I think he must have reached you before post-hours, and James or you _might_ have found a minute to say so in a single line. I once more request that you will be a businesslike correspondent, and state your provisions for every week prospectively. I do not expect you to _warrant them_, which you rather perversely seem to insist is my wish, but I do want to be aware of their nature and extent, that I may provide against the possibility of miscarriage. The calendar, to which you refer me, tells me what sums are due, but cannot tell your shifts to pay them, which are naturally altering with circumstances, and of which alterations I request to have due notice. You say you _could not suppose_ Sir W. Forbes would have refused the long dated bills; but that you _had_ such an apprehension is clear, both because in the calendar these bills were rated two months lower, and because, three days before, you wrote me an enigmatical expression of your apprehensions, instead of saying plainly there was a chance of your wanting £350, when I would have sent you an order to be used conditionally. All I desire is unlimited confidence and frequent correspondence, and that you will give me weekly at least the fullest anticipation of your resources, and the probability of their being effectual. I may be disappointed in my own, of which you shall have equally timeous notice. Omit no exertions to procure the use of money, even for a month or six weeks, for time is most precious. The large balance due in January from the trade, and individuals, which I cannot reckon at less than £4000, will put us finally to rights; and it will be a shame to founder within sight of harbor. The greatest risk we run is from such ill-considered despatches as those of Friday. Suppose that I had gone to Drumlanrig--suppose the pony had set up--suppose a thousand things--and we were ruined for want of your telling your apprehensions in due time. Do not plague yourself to vindicate this sort of management; but if you have escaped the consequences (as to which you have left me uncertain), thank God, and act more cautiously another time. It was quite the same to me on what day I sent that draft; indeed it must have been so if I had the money in my cash account, and if I had not, the more time given me to provide it the better. Now, do not affect to suppose that my displeasure arises from your not having done your utmost to realize funds, and that utmost having failed. It is one mode, to be sure, of exculpation, to suppose one's self accused of something they are not charged with, and then to make a querulous or indignant defence, and complain of the injustice of the accuser. The head and front of your offending is precisely your not writing explicitly, and I request this may not happen again. It is your fault, and I believe arises either from an ill-judged idea of smoothing matters to me--as if I were not behind the curtain--or a general reluctance to allow that any danger is near, until it is almost unparriable. I shall be very sorry if anything I have said gives you pain; but the matter is too serious for all of us, to be passed over without giving you my explicit sentiments. To-morrow I set out for Drumlanrig, and shall not hear from you till Tuesday or Wednesday. Make yourself master of the post-town--Thornhill, probably, or Sanquhar. As Sir W. F. & Co. have cash to meet my order, nothing, I think, can have gone wrong, unless the boy perished by the way. Therefore, in faith and hope, and--that I may lack none of the Christian virtues--in charity with your dilatory worship, I remain very truly yours, W. S. Scott proceeded, accordingly, to join a gay and festive circle, whom the Duke of Buccleuch had assembled about him on first taking possession of the magnificent Castle of Drumlanrig, in Nithsdale, the principal messuage of the dukedom of Queensberry, which had recently lapsed into his family. But, _post equitem sedet atra cura_--another of John Ballantyne's unwelcome missives, rendered necessary by a neglect of precisely the same kind as before, reached him in the midst of this scene of rejoicing. On the 31st, he again writes:-- TO MR. JOHN BALLANTYNE, BOOKSELLER, EDINBURGH. DRUMLANRIG, Friday. DEAR JOHN,--I enclose the order. Unfortunately, the Drumlanrig post only goes thrice a week; but the Marquis of Queensberry, who carries this to Dumfries, has promised that the guard of the mail-coach shall deliver it by five to-morrow. I was less anxious, as your note said you could clear this month. It is a cruel thing that no State you furnish excludes the arising of such unexpected claims as this for the taxes on the printing-office. What unhappy management, to suffer them to run ahead in such a manner!--but it is in vain to complain. Were it not for your strange concealments, I should anticipate no difficulty in winding up these matters. But who can reckon upon a State where claims are kept out of view until they are in the hands of a _writer_? If you have no time to say that _this_ comes safe to hand, I suppose James may favor me so far. Yours truly, W. S. Let the guard be rewarded. Let me know exactly what you _can_ do and _hope_ to do for next month; for it signifies nothing raising money for you, unless I see it is to be of real service. Observe, I make you responsible for nothing but a fair statement.[32] The guard is known to the Marquis, who has good-naturedly promised to give him this letter with his own hand; so it must reach you in time, though probably past five on Saturday. Another similar application reached Scott the day after the guard delivered his packet. He writes thus, in reply: TO MR. JOHN BALLANTYNE. DRUMLANRIG, Sunday. DEAR JOHN,--I trust you got my letter yesterday by five, with the draft enclosed. I return your draft accepted. On Wednesday I think of leaving this place, where, but for these damned affairs, I should have been very happy. W. S. Scott had been for some time under an engagement to meet the Marquis of Abercorn at Carlisle, in the first week of August, for the transaction of some business connected with his brother Thomas's late administration of that nobleman's Scottish affairs; and he had designed to pass from Drumlanrig to Carlisle for this purpose, without going back to Abbotsford. In consequence of these repeated harassments, however, he so far altered his plans as to cut short his stay at Drumlanrig, and turn homewards for two or three days, where James Ballantyne met him with such a statement as in some measure relieved his mind. He then proceeded to fulfil his engagement with Lord Abercorn, whom he encountered travelling in a rather peculiar style between Carlisle and Longtown. The ladies of the family and the household occupied four or five carriages, all drawn by the Marquis's own horses, while the noble Lord himself brought up the rear, mounted on horseback, and decorated with the ribbon of the order of the Garter. On meeting the cavalcade, Scott turned with them, and he was not a little amused when they reached the village of Longtown, which he had ridden through an hour or two before, with the preparations which he found there made for the dinner of the party. The Marquis's major-domo and cook had arrived there at an early hour in the morning, and everything was now arranged for his reception in the paltry little public house, as nearly as possible in the style usual in his own lordly mansions. The ducks and geese that had been dabbling three or four hours ago in the village pond were now ready to make their appearance under numberless disguises as _entrées_; a regular bill-of-fare flanked the noble Marquis's allotted cover; every huckaback towel in the place had been pressed to do service as a napkin; and, that nothing might be wanting to the mimicry of splendor, the landlady's poor remnants of crockery and pewter had been furbished up, and mustered in solemn order on a crazy old beauffet, which was to represent a sideboard worthy of Lucullus. I think it worth while to preserve this anecdote, which Scott delighted in telling, as perhaps the last relic of a style of manners now passed away, and never likely to be revived among us. Having despatched this dinner and his business, Scott again turned southwards, intending to spend a few days with Mr. Morritt at Rokeby; but on reaching Penrith, the landlord there, who was his old acquaintance (Mr. Buchanan), placed a letter in his hands: _ecce iterum_--it was once more a cry of distress from John Ballantyne. He thus answered it:-- TO MR. JOHN BALLANTYNE. PENRITH, August 10, 1813. DEAR JOHN,--I enclose you an order for £350. I shall remain at Rokeby until Saturday or Sunday, and be at Abbotsford on Wednesday at latest. I hope the printing-office is going on well. I fear, from the state of accompts between the companies, restrictions on the management and expense will be unavoidable, which may trench upon James's comforts. 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. If James could find a monied partner, an active man who understood the commercial part of the business, and would superintend the conduct of the cash, it might be the best for all parties; for I really am not adequate to the fatigue of mind which these affairs occasion me, though I must do the best to struggle through them. Believe me yours, etc. W. S. At Brough he encountered a messenger who brought him such a painful account of Mrs. Morritt's health, that he abandoned his intention of proceeding to Rokeby; and, indeed, it was much better that he should be at Abbotsford again as soon as possible, for his correspondence shows a continued succession, during the three or four ensuing weeks, of the same annoyances that had pursued him to Drumlanrig and to Penrith. By his desire, the Ballantynes had, it would seem, before the middle of August, laid a statement of their affairs before Constable. Though the statement was not so clear and full as Scott had wished it to be, Constable, on considering it, at once assured them, that to go on raising money in driblets would never effectually relieve them; that, in short, one or both of the companies must stop, unless Mr. Scott could find means to lay his hand, without farther delay, on at least £4000; and I gather that, by way of inducing Constable himself to come forward with part at least of this supply, John Ballantyne again announced his intention of forthwith abandoning the bookselling business altogether, and making an effort to establish himself--on a plan which Constable had shortly before suggested--as an auctioneer in Edinburgh. The following letters need no comment:-- TO MR. JOHN BALLANTYNE. ABBOTSFORD, August 16, 1813. DEAR JOHN,--I am quite satisfied it is impossible for J. B. and Co. to continue business longer than is absolutely necessary for the sale of stock and extrication of their affairs. The fatal injury which their credit has sustained, as well as your adopting a profession in which I sincerely hope you will be more fortunate, renders the closing of the bookselling business inevitable. With regard to the printing, it is my intention to retire from that also, so soon as I can possibly do so with safety to myself, and with the regard I shall always entertain for James's interest. Whatever loss I may sustain will be preferable to the life I have lately led, when I seem surrounded by a sort of magic circle, which neither permits me to remain at home in peace, nor to stir abroad with pleasure. Your first exertion as an auctioneer may probably be on "that distinguished, select, and inimitable collection of books, made by an amateur of this city retiring from business." I do not feel either health or confidence in my own powers sufficient to authorize me to take a long price for a new poem, until these affairs shall have been in some measure digested. This idea has been long running in my head, but the late fatalities which have attended this business have quite decided my resolution. I will write to James to-morrow, being at present annoyed with a severe headache. Yours truly, W. SCOTT. Were I to transcribe all the letters to which these troubles gave rise, I should fill a volume before I had reached the end of another twelvemonth. The two next I shall quote are dated on the same day (the 24th August), which may, in consequence of the answer the second of them received, be set down as determining the crisis of 1813. TO MR. JAMES BALLANTYNE. ABBOTSFORD, 24th August, 1813. DEAR JAMES,--Mr. Constable's advice is, as I have always found it, sound, sensible, and friendly,--and I shall be guided by it. But I have no wealthy friend who would join in security with me to such an extent; and to apply in quarters where I might be refused would insure disclosure. I conclude John has shown Mr. C. the state of the affairs; if not, I would wish him to do so directly. If the proposed accommodation could be granted to the firm on my personally joining in the security, the whole matter would be quite safe, for I have to receive in the course of the winter some large sums from my father's estate.[33] Besides which, I shall certainly be able to go to press in November with a new poem; or, if Mr. Constable's additional security would please the bankers better, I could insure Mr. C. against the possibility of loss, by assigning the copyrights, together with that of the new poem, or even my library, in his relief. In fact, if he looks into the affairs, he will I think see that there is no prospect of any eventual loss to the creditors, though I may be a loser myself. My property here is unincumbered; so is my house in Castle Street; and I have no debts out of my own family, excepting a part of the price of Abbotsford, which I am to retain for four years. So that, literally, I have no claims upon me unless those arising out of this business; and when it is considered that my income is above £2000 a year, even if the printing-office pays nothing, I should hope no one can possibly be a loser by me. Clerkship, £1300} Sheriffdom, 300 } Mrs. Scott, 200 } Interest, 100 } Somers, (say) 200 } ______ £2100 } I am sure I would strip myself to my shirt rather than it should be the case; and my only reason for wishing to stop the concern was to do open justice to all persons. It must have been a bitter pill to me. I can more confidently expect some aid from Mr. Constable, or from Longman's house, because they can look into the concern and satisfy themselves how little chance there is of their being losers, which others cannot do. Perhaps between them they might manage to assist us with the credit necessary, and go on in winding up the concern by occasional acceptances. An odd thing has happened. I have a letter, by order of the Prince Regent, offering me the laureateship in the most flattering terms. Were I my own man, as you call it, I would refuse this offer (with all gratitude); but, as I am situated, £300 or £400 a year is not to be sneezed at upon a point of poetical honor--and it makes me a better man to that extent. I have not yet written, however. I will say little about Constable's handsome behavior, but shall not forget it. It is needless to say I shall wish him to be consulted in every step that is taken. If I should lose all I advanced to this business, I should be less vexed than I am at this moment. I am very busy with Swift at present, but shall certainly come to town if it is thought necessary; but I should first wish Mr. Constable to look into the affairs to the bottom. Since I have personally superintended them, they have been winding up very fast, and we are now almost within sight of harbor. I will also own it was partly ill-humor at John's blunder last week that made me think of throwing things up. Yours truly, W. S. After writing and despatching this letter, an idea occurred to Scott that there was a quarter, not hitherto alluded to in any of these anxious epistles, from which he might consider himself as entitled to ask assistance, not only with little, if any, chance of a refusal, but (owing to particular circumstances) without incurring any very painful sense of obligation. On the 25th he says to John Ballantyne:-- After some meditation, last night, it occurred to me I had some title to ask the Duke of Buccleuch's guarantee to a cash account for £4000, as Constable proposes. I have written to him accordingly, and have very little doubt that he will be my surety. If this cash account be in view, Mr. Constable will certainly _assist us_ until the necessary writings are made out--I beg your pardon--I dare say I am very stupid; but very often you don't consider that I can't follow details which would be quite obvious to a man of business;--for instance, you tell me daily, "that _if_ the sums I count upon _are_ forthcoming, the results must be as I suppose." But--in a week--the scene is changed, and all I can do, and more, is inadequate to bring about these results. I protest I don't know if at this moment £4000 _will_ clear us out. After all, you are vexed, and so am I; and it is needless to wrangle who has a right to be angry. Commend me to James. Yours truly, W. S. Having explained to the Duke of Buccleuch the position in which he stood--obliged either to procure some guarantee which would enable him to raise £4000, or to sell abruptly all his remaining interest in the copyright of his works; and repeated the statement of his personal property and income, as given in the preceding letter to James Ballantyne--Scott says to his noble friend:-- I am not asking nor desiring any loan from your Grace, but merely the honor of your sanction to my credit as a good man for £4000; and the motive of your Grace's interference would be sufficiently obvious to the London Shylocks, as your constant kindness and protection is no secret to the world. Will your Grace consider whether you can do what I propose, in conscience and safety, and favor me with your answer?--I have a very flattering offer from the Prince Regent, of his own free motion, to make me poet laureate; I am very much embarrassed by it. I am, on the one hand, afraid of giving offence where no one would willingly offend, and perhaps losing an opportunity of smoothing the way to my youngsters through life; on the other hand, the office is a ridiculous one, somehow or other--they and I should be well quizzed,--yet that I should not mind. My real feeling of reluctance lies deeper--it is, that favored as I have been by the public, I should be considered, with some justice, I fear, as engrossing a petty emolument which might do real service to some poorer brother of the Muses. I shall be most anxious to have your Grace's advice on this subject. There seems something churlish, and perhaps conceited, in repelling a favor so handsomely offered on the part of the Sovereign's representative; and on the other hand, I feel much disposed to shake myself free from it. I should make but a bad courtier, and an ode-maker is described by Pope as a poet out of his way or out of his senses. I will find some excuse for protracting my reply till I can have the advantage of your Grace's opinion; and remain, in the mean time, very truly your obliged and grateful WALTER SCOTT. P. S.--I trust your Grace will not suppose me capable of making such a request as the enclosed, upon any idle or unnecessary speculation; but, as I stand situated, it is a matter of deep interest to me to prevent these copyrights from being disposed of either hastily or at under prices. I could have half the booksellers in London for my sureties, on a hint of a new poem; but bankers do not like people in trade, and my brains are not ready to spin another web. So your Grace must take me under your princely care, as in the days of lang syne; and I think I can say, upon the sincerity of an honest man, there is not the most distant chance of your having any trouble or expense through my means. The Duke's answer was in all respects such as might have been looked for from the generous kindness and manly sense of his character. TO WALTER SCOTT, ESQ., ABBOTSFORD. DRUMLANRIG CASTLE, August 28, 1813. MY DEAR SIR,--I received yesterday your letter of the 24th. I shall with pleasure comply with your request of guaranteeing the £4000. You must, however, furnish me with the form of a letter to this effect, as I am completely ignorant of transactions of this nature. I am never willing to _offer_ advice, but when my opinion is asked by a friend I am ready to give it. As to the offer of his Royal Highness to appoint you laureate, I shall frankly say that I should be mortified to see you hold a situation which, by the general concurrence of the world, is stamped ridiculous. There is no good reason why this should be so; but so it is. _Walter Scott, Poet Laureate_, ceases to be the Walter Scott of the Lay, Marmion, etc. Any future poem of yours would not come forward with the same probability of a successful reception. 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 into harness. We know how lightly she trots along when left to her natural paces, but do not try driving. I would write frankly and openly to his Royal Highness, but with respectful gratitude, for he _has_ paid you a compliment. I would not fear to state that you had hitherto written when in poetic mood, but feared to trammel yourself with a fixed periodical exertion; and I cannot but conceive that his Royal Highness, who has much taste, will at once see the many objections which you must have to his proposal, but which you cannot write. Only think of being chaunted and recitatived by a parcel of hoarse and squeaking choristers on a birthday, for the edification of the bishops, pages, maids of honor, and gentlemen-pensioners! Oh horrible! thrice horrible! Yours sincerely, BUCCLEUCH, ETC. The letter which first announced the Prince Regent's proposal was from his Royal Highness's librarian, Dr. James Stanier Clarke; but before Scott answered it he had received a more formal notification from the late Marquis of Hertford, then Lord Chamberlain. I shall transcribe both these documents. TO WALTER SCOTT, ESQ., EDINBURGH. PAVILION, BRIGHTON, August 18, 1813. MY DEAR SIR,--Though I have never had the honor of being introduced to you, you have frequently been pleased to convey to me very kind and flattering messages,[34] and I trust, therefore, you will allow me, without any further ceremony, to say--That I took an early opportunity this morning of seeing the Prince Regent, who arrived here late yesterday; and I then delivered to his Royal Highness my earnest wish and anxious desire that the vacant situation of poet laureate might be conferred on you. The Prince replied, "that you had already been written to, and that if you wished it, everything would be settled as I could desire." I hope, therefore, I may be allowed to congratulate you on this event. You are the man to whom it ought first to have been offered, and it gave me sincere pleasure to find that those sentiments of high approbation which my Royal Master had so often expressed towards you in private, were now so openly and honorably displayed in public. Have the goodness, dear sir, to receive this intrusive letter with your accustomed courtesy, and believe me, yours very sincerely, J. S. CLARKE, Librarian to H. R. H., the Prince Regent. TO WALTER SCOTT, ESQ., EDINBURGH. RAGLEY, 31st August, 1813. SIR,--I thought it my duty to his Royal Highness, the Prince Regent, to express to him my humble opinion that I could not make so creditable a choice as in your person for the office, now vacant, of poet laureate. I am now authorized to offer it to you, which I would have taken an earlier opportunity of doing, but that, till this morning, I have had no occasion of seeing his Royal Highness since Mr. Pye's death. I have the honor to be, sir, your most obedient, humble servant, INGRAM HERTFORD. The following letters conclude this matter:-- TO THE MOST NOBLE THE MARQUIS OF HERTFORD, ETC., ETC., RAGLEY, WARWICKSHIRE. ABBOTSFORD, 4th September. MY LORD,--I am this day honored with your Lordship's letter of the 31st August, tendering for my acceptance the situation of poet laureate in the Royal Household. I shall always think it the highest honor of my life to have been the object of the good opinion implied in your Lordship's recommendation, and in the gracious acquiescence of his Royal Highness, the Prince Regent. I humbly trust I shall not forfeit sentiments so highly valued, although I find myself under the necessity of declining, with every acknowledgment of respect and gratitude, a situation above my deserts, and offered to me in a manner so very flattering. The duties attached to the office of poet laureate are not indeed very formidable, if judged of by the manner in which they have sometimes been discharged. But an individual selected from the literary characters of Britain, upon the honorable principle expressed in your Lordship's letter, ought not, in justice to your Lordship, to his own reputation, but above all to his Royal Highness, to accept of the office, unless he were conscious of the power of filling it respectably, and attaining to excellence in the execution of the tasks which it imposes. This confidence I am so far from possessing, that, on the contrary, with all the advantages which do now, and I trust ever will, present themselves to the poet whose task it may be to commemorate the events of his Royal Highness's administration, I am certain I should feel myself inadequate to the fitting discharge of the regularly recurring duty of periodical composition, and should thus at once disappoint the expectation of the public, and, what would give me still more pain, discredit the nomination of his Royal Highness. Will your Lordship permit me to add, that though far from being wealthy, I already hold two official situations in the line of my profession, which afford a respectable income. It becomes me, therefore, to avoid the appearance of engrossing one of the few appointments which seem specially adapted for the provision of those whose lives have been dedicated exclusively to literature, and who too often derive from their labors more credit than emolument. Nothing could give me greater pain than being thought ungrateful to his Royal Highness's goodness, or insensible to the honorable distinction his undeserved condescension has been pleased to bestow upon me. I have to trust to your Lordship's kindness for laying at the feet of his Royal Highness, in the way most proper and respectful, my humble, grateful, and dutiful thanks, with these reasons for declining a situation which, though every way superior to my deserts, I should chiefly have valued as a mark of his Royal Highness's approbation. For your Lordship's unmerited goodness, as well as for the trouble you have had upon this occasion, I can only offer you my respectful thanks, and entreat that you will be pleased to believe me, my Lord Marquis, your Lordship's much obliged and much honored humble servant, WALTER SCOTT. TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH, ETC., DRUMLANRIG CASTLE. ABBOTSFORD, September 5, 1813. MY DEAR LORD DUKE,--Good advice is easily followed when it jumps with our own sentiments and inclinations. I no sooner found mine fortified by your Grace's opinion than I wrote to Lord Hertford, declining the laurel in the most civil way I could imagine. I also wrote to the Prince's librarian, who had made himself active on the occasion, dilating, at somewhat more length than I thought respectful to the Lord Chamberlain, my reasons for declining the intended honor. My wife has made a copy of the last letter, which I enclose for your Grace's perusal: there is no occasion either to preserve or return it--but I am desirous you should know what I have put my apology upon, for I may reckon on its being misrepresented. I certainly should never have survived the recitative described by your Grace: it is a part of the etiquette I was quite unprepared for, and should have sunk under it. It is curious enough that Drumlanrig should always have been the refuge of bards who decline court promotion. Gay, I think, refused to be a gentleman-usher, or some such post;[35] and I am determined to abide by my post of Grand Ecuyer Trenchant of the Chateau, varied for that of tale-teller of an evening. I will send your Grace a copy of the letter of guarantee when I receive it from London. By an arrangement with Longman and Co., the great booksellers in Paternoster Row, I am about to be enabled to place their security, as well as my own, between your Grace and the possibility of hazard. But your kind readiness to forward a transaction which is of such great importance both to my fortune and comfort can never be forgotten--although it can scarce make me more than I have always been, my dear Lord, your Grace's much obliged and truly faithful, WALTER SCOTT. (_Copy--Enclosure._) TO THE REV. J. S. CLARKE, ETC., ETC., ETC., PAVILION, BRIGHTON. ABBOTSFORD, 4th September, 1813. SIR,--On my return to this cottage, after a short excursion, I was at once surprised and deeply interested by the receipt of your letter. I shall always consider it as the proudest incident of my life that his Royal Highness, the Prince Regent, whose taste in literature is so highly distinguished, should have thought of naming me to the situation of poet laureate. I feel, therefore, no small embarrassment lest I should incur the suspicion of churlish ingratitude in declining an appointment in every point of view so far above my deserts, but which I should chiefly have valued as conferred by the unsolicited generosity of his Royal Highness, and as entitling me to the distinction of terming myself an immediate servant of his Majesty. But I have to trust to your goodness in representing to his Royal Highness, with my most grateful, humble, and dutiful acknowledgments, the circumstances which compel me to decline the honor which his undeserved favor has proposed for me. The poetical pieces I have hitherto composed have uniformly been the hasty production of impulses, which I must term fortunate, since they have attracted his Royal Highness's notice and approbation. But I strongly fear, or rather am absolutely certain, that I should feel myself unable to justify, in the eye of the public, the choice of his Royal Highness, by a fitting discharge of the duties of an office which requires stated and periodical exertion. And although I am conscious how much this difficulty is lessened under the government of his Royal Highness, marked by paternal wisdom at home and successes abroad which seem to promise the liberation of Europe, I still feel that the necessity of a regular commemoration would trammel my powers of composition at the very time when it would be equally my pride and duty to tax them to the uttermost. There is another circumstance which weighs deeply in my mind while forming my present resolution. I have already the honor to hold two appointments under Government, not usually conjoined, and which afford an income, far indeed from wealth, but amounting to decent independence. I fear, therefore, that in accepting one of the few situations which our establishment holds forth as the peculiar provision of literary men, I might be justly censured as availing myself of his Royal Highness's partiality to engross more than my share of the public revenue, to the prejudice of competitors equally meritorious at least, and otherwise unprovided for; and as this calculation will be made by thousands who know that I have reaped great advantages by the favor of the public, without being aware of the losses which it has been my misfortune to sustain, I may fairly reckon that it will terminate even more to my prejudice than if they had the means of judging accurately of my real circumstances. I have thus far, sir, frankly exposed to you, for his Royal Highness's favorable consideration, the feelings which induce me to decline an appointment offered in a manner so highly calculated to gratify, I will not say my vanity only, but my sincere feelings of devoted attachment to the crown and constitution of my country, and to the person of his Royal Highness, by whom its government has been so worthily administered. No consideration on earth would give me so much pain as the idea of my real feelings being misconstrued on this occasion, or that I should be supposed stupid enough not to estimate the value of his Royal Highness's favor, or so ungrateful as not to feel it as I ought. And you will relieve me from great anxiety if you will have the goodness to let me know if his Royal Highness is pleased to receive favorably my humble and grateful apology. I cannot conclude without expressing my sense of your kindness and of the trouble you have had upon this account, and I request you will believe me, sir, your obliged humble servant, WALTER SCOTT. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ., KESWICK. ABBOTSFORD, 4th September, 1813. MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--On my return here I found, to my no small surprise, a letter tendering me the laurel vacant by the death of the poetical Pye. I have declined the appointment, as being incompetent to the task of annual commemoration; but chiefly as being provided for in my professional department, and unwilling to incur the censure of engrossing the emolument attached to one of the few appointments which seems proper to be filled by a man of literature who has no other views in life. Will you forgive me, my dear friend, if I own I had you in my recollection? I have given Croker the hint, and otherwise endeavored to throw the office into your option. I am uncertain if you will like it, for the laurel has certainly been tarnished by some of its wearers, and, as at present managed, its duties are inconvenient and somewhat liable to ridicule. But the latter matter might be amended, as I think the Regent's good sense would lead him to lay aside these regular commemorations; and as to the former point, it has been worn by Dryden of old, and by Warton in modern days. If you quote my own refusal against me, I reply--first, I have been luckier than you in holding two offices not usually conjoined; secondly, I did not refuse it from any foolish prejudice against the situation, otherwise how durst I mention it to you, my elder brother in the muse?--but from a sort of internal hope that they would give it to you, upon whom it would be so much more worthily conferred. For I am not such an ass as not to know that you are my better in poetry, though I have had, probably but for a time, the tide of popularity in my favor. I have not time to add ten thousand other reasons, but I only wished to tell you how the matter was, and to beg you to think before you reject the offer which I flatter myself will be made to you. If I had not been, like Dogberry, a fellow with two gowns already, I should have jumped at it like a cock at a gooseberry. Ever yours most truly, WALTER SCOTT. Immediately after Mr. Croker received Scott's letter here alluded to, Mr. Southey was invited to accept the vacant laurel. But, as the birthday ode had been omitted since the illness of King George III., and the Regent had good sense and good taste enough to hold that ancient custom as "more honored in the breach than the observance," the whole fell completely into disuse.[36] The office was thus relieved from the burden of ridicule which had, in spite of so many illustrious names, adhered to it; and though its emoluments did not in fact amount to more than a quarter of the sum at which Scott rated them when he declined it, they formed no unacceptable addition to Mr. Southey's income. Scott's answer to his brother poet's affectionate and grateful letter on the conclusion of this affair is as follows:-- TO R. SOUTHEY, ESQ., KESWICK. EDINBURGH, November 13, 1813. I do not delay, my dear Southey, to say my _gratulor_. Long may you live, as Paddy says, to rule over us, and to redeem the crown of Spenser and of Dryden to its pristine dignity. I am only discontented with the extent of your royal revenue, which I thought had been £400, or £300 at the very least. Is there no getting rid of that iniquitous modus, and requiring the _butt_ in kind? I would have you think of it; I know no man so well entitled to Xeres sack as yourself, though many bards would make a better figure at drinking it. I should think that in due time a memorial might get some relief in this part of the appointment--it should be at least, £100 wet and £100 dry. When you have carried your point of discarding the ode, and my point of getting the sack, you will be exactly in the situation of Davy in the farce, who stipulates for more wages, less work, and the key of the ale-cellar.[37] I was greatly delighted with the circumstances of your investiture. It reminded me of the porters at Calais with Dr. Smollett's baggage, six of them seizing upon one small portmanteau, and bearing it in triumph to his lodgings. You see what it is to laugh at the superstitions of a gentleman-usher, as I think you do somewhere. "The whirligig of time brings in his revenges."[38] Adieu, my dear Southey; my best wishes attend all that you do, and my best congratulations every good that attends you--yea even this, the very least of Providence's mercies, as a poor clergyman said when pronouncing grace over a herring. I should like to know how the Prince received you; his address is said to be excellent, and his knowledge of literature far from despicable. What a change of fortune even since the short time when we met! The great work of retribution is now rolling onward to consummation, yet am I not fully satisfied--_pereat iste_!--there will be no permanent peace in Europe till Buonaparte sleeps with the tyrants of old. My best compliments attend Mrs. Southey and your family. Ever yours, WALTER SCOTT. To avoid returning to the affair of the laureateship, I have placed together such letters concerning it as appeared important. I regret to say that, had I adhered to the chronological order of Scott's correspondence, ten out of every twelve letters between the date of his application to the Duke of Buccleuch, and his removal to Edinburgh on the 12th of November, would have continued to tell the same story of pecuniary difficulty, urgent and almost daily applications for new advances to the Ballantynes, and endeavors, more or less successful, but in no case effectually so, to relieve the pressure on the bookselling firm by sales of its heavy stock to the great publishing houses of Edinburgh and London. Whatever success these endeavors met with, appears to have been due either directly or indirectly to Mr. Constable; who did a great deal more than prudence would have warranted, in taking on himself the results of its unhappy adventures,--and, by his sagacious advice, enabled the distressed partners to procure similar assistance at the hands of others, who did not partake his own feelings of personal kindness and sympathy. "I regret to learn," Scott writes to him on the 16th October, "that there is great danger of your exertions in our favor, which once promised so fairly, proving finally abortive, or at least being too tardy in their operation to work out our relief. If anything more can be honorably and properly done to avoid a most unpleasant shock, I shall be most willing to do it; if not--God's will be done! There will be enough of property, including my private fortune, to pay every claim; and I have not used prosperity so ill, as greatly to fear adversity. But these things we will talk over at meeting; meanwhile believe me, with a sincere sense of your kindness and friendly views, very truly yours, W. S."--I have no wish to quote more largely from the letters which passed during this crisis between Scott and his partners. The pith and substance of his, to John Ballantyne at least, seems to be summed up in one brief _postscript_: "For God's sake treat me as a man, and not as a milch-cow!" The difficulties of the Ballantynes were by this time well known throughout the commercial circles not only of Edinburgh, but of London; and a report of their actual bankruptcy, with the addition that Scott was engaged as their surety to the extent of £20,000, found its way to Mr. Morritt about the beginning of November. This dear friend wrote to him, in the utmost anxiety, and made liberal offers of assistance in case the catastrophe might still be averted; but the term of Martinmas, always a critical one in Scotland, had passed before this letter reached Edinburgh, and Scott's answer will show symptoms of a clearing horizon. I think also there is one expression in it which could hardly have failed to convey to Mr. Morritt that his friend was involved, more deeply than he had ever acknowledged, in the concerns of the Messrs. Ballantyne. TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., ROKEBY PARK. EDINBURGH, 20th November, 1813. I did not answer your very kind letter, my dear Morritt, until I could put your friendly heart to rest upon the report you have heard, which I could not do entirely until this term of Martinmas was passed. I have the pleasure to say that there is no truth whatever in the Ballantynes' reported bankruptcy. They have had severe difficulties for the last four months to make their resources balance the demands upon them, and I, having the price of Rokeby, and other monies in their hands, have had considerable reason for apprehension, and no slight degree of plague and trouble. They have, however, been so well supported, that I have got out of hot water upon their account. They are winding up their bookselling concern with great regularity, and are to abide hereafter by the printing-office, which, with its stock, etc., will revert to them fairly. I have been able to redeem the offspring of my brain, and they are like to pay me like grateful children. This matter has set me a-thinking about money more seriously than ever I did in my life, and I have begun by insuring my life for £4000, to secure some ready cash to my family should I slip girths suddenly. I think my other property, library, etc., may be worth about £12,000, and I have not much debt. Upon the whole, I see no prospect of any loss whatever. Although in the course of human events I may be disappointed, there certainly _can_ be none to vex your kind and affectionate heart on my account. I am young, with a large official income, and if I lose anything now, I have gained a great deal in my day. I cannot tell you, and will not attempt to tell you, how much I was affected by your letter--so much, indeed, that for several days I could not make my mind up to express myself on the subject. Thank God! all real danger was yesterday put over--and I will write, in two or three days, a funny letter, without any of these vile cash matters, of which it may be said there is no living with them nor without them. Ever yours, most truly, WALTER SCOTT. All these annoyances produced no change whatever in Scott's habits of literary industry. During these anxious months of September, October, and November, he kept feeding James Ballantyne's press, from day to day, both with the annotated text of the closing volumes of Swift's works, and with the MS. of his Life of the Dean. He had also proceeded to mature in his own mind the plan of The Lord of the Isles, and executed such a portion of the First Canto as gave him confidence to renew his negotiation with Constable for the sale of the whole, or part of its copyright. It was, moreover, at this period, that, looking into an old cabinet in search of some fishing-tackle, his eye chanced to light once more on the Ashestiel fragment of Waverley.--He read over those introductory chapters--thought they had been undervalued--and determined to finish the story. All this while, too, he had been subjected to those interruptions from idle strangers, which from the first to the last imposed so heavy a tax on his celebrity; and he no doubt received such guests with all his usual urbanity of attention. Yet I was not surprised to discover, among his hasty notes to the Ballantynes, several of tenor akin to the following specimens:-- "September 2, 1813. "My temper is really worn to a hair's breadth. The intruder of yesterday hung on me till twelve to-day. When I had just taken my pen, he was relieved, like a sentry leaving guard, by two other lounging visitors; and their post has now been supplied by some people on real business." Again:-- "Monday evening. "Oh James! oh James! Two Irish dames Oppress me very sore; I groaning send one sheet I've penned-- For, hang them! there's no more." A scrap of nearly the same date to his brother Thomas may be introduced, as belonging to the same state of feeling:-- DEAR TOM,--I observe what you say as to Mr. ****; and as you may often be exposed to similar requests, which it would be difficult to parry, you can sign such letters of introduction as relate to persons whom you do not delight to honor short, _T. Scott_; by which abridgment of your name I shall understand to limit my civilities. It is proper to mention that, in the very agony of these perplexities, the unfortunate Maturin received from him a timely succor of £50, rendered doubly acceptable by the kind and judicious letter of advice in which it was enclosed; and I have before me ample evidence that his benevolence had been extended to other struggling brothers of the trade, even when he must often have had actual difficulty to meet the immediate expenditure of his own family. All this, however, will not surprise the reader. Nor did his general correspondence suffer much interruption; and, as some relief after so many painful details, I shall close the narrative of this anxious year by a few specimens of his miscellaneous communications:-- TO MISS JOANNA BAILLIE, HAMPSTEAD. ABBOTSFORD, September 12, 1813. MY DEAR MISS BAILLIE,--I have been a vile lazy correspondent, having been strolling about the country, and indeed a little way into England, for the greater part of July and August; in short, "aye skipping here and there," like the Tanner of Tamworth's horse. Since I returned, I have had a gracious offer of the laurel on the part of the Prince Regent. You will not wonder that I have declined it, though with every expression of gratitude which such an unexpected compliment demanded. Indeed, it would be high imprudence in one having literary reputation to maintain, to accept of an offer which obliged him to produce a poetical exercise on a given theme twice a year; and besides, as my loyalty to the royal family is very sincere, I would not wish to have it thought mercenary. The public has done its part by me very well, and so has Government: and I thought this little literary provision ought to be bestowed on one who has made literature his sole profession. If the Regent means to make it respectable, he will abolish the foolish custom of the annual odes, which is a drudgery no person of talent could ever willingly encounter--or come clear off from, if he was so rash. And so, peace be with the laurel, "Profaned by Cibber and contemned by Gray." I was for a fortnight at Drumlanrig, a grand old chateau, which has descended, by the death of the late Duke of Queensberry, to the Duke of Buccleuch. It is really a most magnificent pile, and when embosomed amid the wide forest scenery, of which I have an infantine recollection, must have been very romantic. But old Q. made wild devastation among the noble trees, although some fine ones are still left, and a quantity of young shoots are, in despite of the want of every kind of attention, rushing up to supply the places of the fathers of the forest from whose stems they are springing. It will now I trust be in better hands, for the reparation of the castle goes hand in hand with the rebuilding of all the cottages, in which an aged race of pensioners of Duke Charles, and his pious wife,--"Kitty, blooming, young and gay,"--have, during the last reign, been pining into rheumatisms and agues, in neglected poverty. All this is beautiful to witness: the indoor work does not please me so well, though I am aware that, to those who are to inhabit an old castle, it becomes often a matter of necessity to make alterations by which its tone and character are changed for the worse. Thus a noble gallery, which ran the whole length of the front, is converted into bedrooms--very comfortable, indeed, but not quite so magnificent; and as grim a dungeon as ever knave or honest man was confined in, is in some danger of being humbled into a wine-cellar. It is almost impossible to draw your breath, when you recollect that this, so many feet under-ground, and totally bereft of air and light, was built for the imprisonment of human beings, whether guilty, suspected, or merely unfortunate. Certainly, if our frames are not so hardy, our hearts are softer than those of our forefathers, although probably a few years of domestic war, or feudal oppression, would bring us back to the same case-hardening both in body and sentiment. I meant to have gone to Rokeby, but was prevented by Mrs. Morritt being unwell, which I very much regret, as I know few people that deserve better health. I am very glad you have known them, and I pray you to keep up the acquaintance in winter. I am glad to see by this day's paper that our friend Terry has made a favorable impression on his first appearance at Covent Garden--he has got a very good engagement there for three years, at twelve guineas a week, which is a handsome income.--This little place comes on as fast as can be reasonably hoped; and the pinasters are all above the ground, but cannot be planted out for twelve months. My kindest compliments--in which Mrs. Scott always joins--attend Miss Agnes, the Doctor, and his family. Ever, my dear friend, yours most faithfully, WALTER SCOTT. TO DANIEL TERRY, ESQ., LONDON. ABBOTSFORD, 20th October, 1813. DEAR TERRY,--You will easily believe that I was greatly pleased to hear from you. I had already learned from The Courier (what I had anticipated too strongly to doubt for one instant) your favorable impression on the London public. I think nothing can be more judicious in the managers than to exercise the various powers you possess, in their various extents. A man of genius is apt to be limited to one single style, and to become perforce a mannerist, merely because the public is not so just to its own amusement as to give him an opportunity of throwing himself into different lines; and doubtless the exercise of our talents in one unvaried course, by degrees renders them incapable of any other, as the over-use of any one limb of our body gradually impoverishes the rest. I shall be anxious to hear that you have played _Malvolio_, which is, I think, one of your _coups-de-maître_, and in which envy itself cannot affect to trace an imitation. That same charge of imitation, by the way, is one of the surest scents upon which dunces are certain to open. Undoubtedly, if the same character is well performed by two individuals, their acting must bear a general resemblance--it could not be well performed by both were it otherwise. But this general resemblance, which arises from both following nature and their author, can as little be termed imitation as the river in Wales can be identified with that of Macedon. Never mind these dunderheads, but go on your own way, and scorn to laugh on the right side of your mouth, to make a difference from some ancient comedian who, in the same part, always laughed on the left. Stick to the public--be uniform in your exertions to study even those characters which have little in them, and to give a grace which you cannot find in the author. Audiences are always grateful for this--or rather--for gratitude is as much out of the question in the theatre, as Bernadotte says to Boney it is amongst sovereigns--or rather, the audience is gratified by receiving pleasure from a part which they had no expectation would afford them any. It is in this view that, had I been of your profession, and possessed talents, I think I should have liked often those parts with which my brethren quarrelled, and studied to give them an effect which their intrinsic merit did not entitle them to. I have some thoughts of being in town in spring (not resolutions by any means); and it will be an additional motive to witness your success, and to find you as comfortably established as your friends in Castle Street earnestly hope and trust you will be. The summer--an uncommon summer in beauty and serenity--has glided away from us at Abbotsford, amidst our usual petty cares and petty pleasures. The children's garden is in apple-pie order, our own completely cropped and stocked, and all the trees flourishing like the green bay of the Psalmist. I have been so busy about our domestic arrangements, that I have not killed six hares this season. Besides, I have got a cargo of old armor, sufficient to excite a suspicion that I intend to mount a squadron of cuirassiers. I only want a place for my armory; and, thank God, I can wait for that, these being no times for building. And this brings me to the loss of poor Stark, with whom more genius has died than is left behind among the collected universality of Scottish architects. O Lord!--but what does it signify?--Earth was born to bear, and man to pay (that is, lords, nabobs, Glasgow traders, and those who have wherewithal)--so wherefore grumble at great castles and cottages, with which the taste of the latter contrives to load the back of Mother Terra?--I have no hobbyhorsical commissions at present, unless if you meet the Voyages of Captain Richard, or Robert Falconer, in one volume--"cow-heel, quoth Sancho"--I mark them for my own. Mrs. Scott, Sophia, Anne, and the boys, unite in kind remembrances. Ever yours truly, W. SCOTT. TO THE RIGHT HON. LORD BYRON, 4 BENNET STREET, ST. JAMES'S, LONDON. ABBOTSFORD, 6th November, 1813. MY DEAR LORD,--I was honored with your Lordship's letter of the 27th September,[39] and have sincerely to regret that there is such a prospect of your leaving Britain, without my achieving your personal acquaintance. I heartily wish your Lordship had come down to Scotland this season, for I have never seen a finer, and you might have renewed all your old associations with Caledonia, and made such new ones as were likely to suit you. I dare promise you would have liked me well enough--for I have many properties of a Turk--never trouble myself about futurity--am as lazy as the day is long--delight in collecting silver-mounted pistols and ataghans, and go out of my own road for no one--all which I take to be attributes of your good Moslem. Moreover, I am somewhat an admirer of royalty, and in order to maintain this part of my creed, I shall take care never to be connected with a court, but stick to the _ignotum pro mirabili_. The author of The Queen's Wake will be delighted with your approbation. He is a wonderful creature for his opportunities, which were far inferior to those of the generality of Scottish peasants. Burns, for instance--(not that their extent of talents is to be compared for an instant)--had an education not much worse than the sons of many gentlemen in Scotland. But poor Hogg literally could neither read nor write till a very late period of his life; and when he first distinguished himself by his poetical talent, could neither spell nor write grammar. When I first knew him, he used to send me his poetry, and was both indignant and horrified when I pointed out to him parallel passages in authors whom he had never read, but whom all the world would have sworn he had copied. An evil fate has hitherto attended him, and baffled every attempt that has been made to place him in a road to independence. But I trust he may be more fortunate in future. I have not yet seen Southey in the Gazette as Laureate. He is a real poet, such as we read of in former times, with every atom of his soul and every moment of his time dedicated to literary pursuits, in which he differs from almost all those who have divided public attention with him. Your Lordship's habits of society, for example, and my own professional and official avocations, must necessarily connect us much more with our respective classes in the usual routine of pleasure or business, than if we had not any other employment than _vacare musis_. But Southey's ideas are all poetical, and his whole soul dedicated to the pursuit of literature. In this respect, as well as in many others, he is a most striking and interesting character. I am very much interested in all that concerns your Giaour, which is universally approved of among our mountains. I have heard no objection except by one or two geniuses, who run over poetry as a cat does over a harpsichord, and they affect to complain of obscurity. On the contrary, I hold every real lover of the art is obliged to you for condensing the narrative, by giving us only those striking scenes which you have shown to be so susceptible of poetic ornament, and leaving to imagination the says I's and says he's, and all the minutiæ of detail which might be proper in giving evidence before a court of justice. The truth is, I think poetry is most striking when the mirror can be held up to the reader, and the same kept constantly before his eyes; it requires most uncommon powers to support a direct and downright narration; nor can I remember many instances of its being successfully maintained even by our greatest bards. As to those who have done me the honor to take my rhapsodies for their model, I can only say they have exemplified the ancient adage, "One fool makes many;" nor do I think I have yet had much reason to suppose I have given rise to anything of distinguished merit. The worst is, it draws on me letters and commendatory verses, to which my sad and sober thanks in humble prose are deemed a most unmeet and ungracious reply. Of this sort of plague your Lordship must ere now have had more than your share, but I think you can hardly have met with so original a request as concluded the letter of a bard I this morning received, who limited his demands to being placed in his due station on Parnassus--_and_ invested with a post in the Edinburgh Custom House. What an awakening of dry bones seems to be taking place on the Continent! I could as soon have believed in the resurrection of the Romans as in that of the Prussians--yet it seems a real and active renovation of national spirit. It will certainly be strange enough if that tremendous pitcher, which has travelled to so many fountains, should be at length broken on the banks of the Saale; but from the highest to the lowest we are the fools of fortune. Your Lordship will probably recollect where the Oriental tale occurs, of a Sultan who consulted Solomon on the proper inscription for a signet-ring, requiring that the maxim which it conveyed should be at once proper for moderating the presumption of prosperity and tempering the pressure of adversity. The apophthegm supplied by the Jewish sage was, I think, admirably adapted for both purposes, being comprehended in the words, "And this also shall pass away." When your Lordship sees Rogers, will you remember me kindly to him? I hope to be in London next spring, and renew my acquaintance with my friends there. It will be an additional motive if I could flatter myself that your Lordship's stay in the country will permit me the pleasure of waiting upon you. I am, with much respect and regard, your Lordship's truly honored and obliged humble servant, WALTER SCOTT. I go to Edinburgh next week, _multum gemens_. TO MISS JOANNA BAILLIE, HAMPSTEAD. EDINBURGH, 10th December, 1813. Many thanks, my dear friend, for your kind token of remembrance, which I yesterday received. I ought to blush, if I had grace enough left, at my long and ungenerous silence: but what shall I say? The habit of procrastination, which had always more or less a dominion over me, does not relax its sway as I grow older and less willing to take up the pen. I have not written to dear Ellis this age,--yet there is not a day that I do not think of you and him, and one or two other friends in your southern land. I am very glad the whiskey came safe: do not stint so laudable an admiration for the liquor of Caledonia, for I have plenty of right good and sound Highland Ferintosh, and I can always find an opportunity of sending you up a bottle. We are here almost mad with the redemption of Holland, which has an instant and gratifying effect on the trade of Leith, and indeed all along the east coast of Scotland. About £100,000 worth of various commodities, which had been dormant in cellars and warehouses, was sold the first day the news arrived, and Orange ribbons and _Orange Boven_ was the order of the day among all ranks. It is a most miraculous revivification which it has been our fate to witness. Though of a tolerably sanguine temper, I had fairly adjourned all hopes and expectations of the kind till another generation: the same power, however, that opened the windows of heaven and the fountains of the great deep has been pleased to close them, and to cause his wind to blow upon the face of the waters, so that we may look out from the ark of our preservation, and behold the reappearance of the mountain crests, and old, beloved, and well-known land-marks, which we had deemed swallowed up forever in the abyss: the dove with the olive branch would complete the simile, but of that I see little hope. Buonaparte is that desperate gambler, who will not rise while he has a stake left; and, indeed, to be King of France would be a poor pettifogging enterprise, after having been almost Emperor of the World. I think he will drive things on, till the fickle and impatient people over whom he rules get tired of him and shake him out of the saddle. Some circumstances seem to intimate his having become jealous of the Senate; and indeed anything like a representative body, however imperfectly constructed, becomes dangerous to a tottering tyranny. The sword displayed on both frontiers may, like that brandished across the road of Balaam, terrify even dumb and irrational subjection into utterance;--but enough of politics, though now a more cheerful subject than they have been for many years past. I have had a strong temptation to go to the Continent this Christmas; and should certainly have done so, had I been sure of getting from Amsterdam to Frankfort, where, as I know Lord Aberdeen and Lord Cathcart, I might expect a welcome. But notwithstanding my earnest desire to see the allied armies cross the Rhine, which I suppose must be one of the grandest military spectacles in the world, I should like to know that the roads were tolerably secure, and the means of getting forward attainable. In spring, however, if no unfortunate change takes place, I trust to visit the camp of the allies, and see all the pomp and power and circumstance of war, which I have so often imagined, and sometimes attempted to embody in verse.--Johnnie Richardson is a good, honorable, kind-hearted little fellow as lives in the world, with a pretty taste for poetry, which he has wisely kept under subjection to the occupation of drawing briefs and revising conveyances. It is a great good fortune to him to be in your neighborhood, as he is an idolater of genius, and where could he offer up his worship so justly? And I am sure you will like him, for he is really "officious, innocent, sincere."[40] Terry, I hope, will get on well; he is industrious, and zealous for the honor of his art. Ventidius must have been an excellent part for him, hovering between tragedy and comedy, which is precisely what will suit him. We have a woeful want of him here, both in public and private, for he was one of the most easy and quiet chimney-corner companions that I have had for these two or three years past. I am very glad if anything I have written to you could give pleasure to Miss Edgeworth, though I am sure it will fall very short of the respect which I have for her brilliant talents. I always write to you _à la volée_, and trust implicitly to your kindness and judgment upon all occasions where you may choose to communicate any part of my letters.[41] As to the taxing men, I must battle them as I can: they are worse than the great Emathian conqueror, who "bade spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower Went to the ground."[42] Your pinasters are coming up gallantly in the nursery-bed at Abbotsford. I trust to pay the whole establishment a Christmas visit, which will be, as Robinson Crusoe says of his glass of rum, "to mine exceeding refreshment." All Edinburgh have been on tiptoe to see Madame de Staël, but she is now not likely to honor us with a visit, at which I cannot prevail on myself to be very sorry; for as I tired of some of her works, I am afraid I should disgrace my taste by tiring of the authoress too. All my little people are very well, learning, with great pain and diligence, much which they will have forgotten altogether, or nearly so, in the course of twelve years hence: but the habit of learning is something in itself, even when the lessons are forgotten. I must not omit to tell you that a friend of mine, with whom that metal is more plenty than with me, has given me some gold mohurs to be converted into a ring for enchasing King Charles's hair; but this is not to be done until I get to London, and get a very handsome pattern. Ever, most truly and sincerely, yours, W. SCOTT. The last sentence of this letter refers to a lock of the hair of Charles I., which, at Dr. Baillie's request, Sir Henry Halford had transmitted to Scott when the royal martyr's remains were discovered at Windsor, in April, 1813.[43] Sir John Malcolm had given him some Indian coins to supply virgin gold for the setting of this relic; and for some years he constantly wore the ring, which is a massive and beautiful one, with the word REMEMBER surrounding it in highly relieved black-letter. The poet's allusion to "taxing men" may require another word of explanation. To add to his troubles during this autumn of 1813, a demand was made on him by the commissioners of the income-tax, to return in one of their schedules an account of the profits of his literary exertions during the last three years. He demurred to this, and took the opinion of high authorities in Scotland, who confirmed him in his impression that the claim was beyond the statute. The grounds of his resistance are thus briefly stated in one of his letters to his legal friend in London:-- TO JOHN RICHARDSON, ESQ., FLUDYER STREET, WESTMINSTER. MY DEAR RICHARDSON,--I have owed you a letter this long time, but perhaps my debt might not yet be discharged, had I not a little matter of business to trouble you with. I wish you to lay before either the King's counsel, or Sir Samuel Romilly and any other you may approve, the point whether a copyright being sold for the term during which Queen Anne's act warranted the property to the author, the price is liable in payment of the property-tax. I contend it is not so liable, for the following reasons: 1st, It is a patent right, expected to produce an annual, or at least an incidental profit, during the currency of many years; and surely it was never contended that if a man sold a theatrical patent, or a patent for machinery, property-tax should be levied in the first place on the full price as paid to the seller, and then on the profits as purchased by the buyer. I am not very expert at figures, but I think it clear that a double taxation takes place. 2d, It should be considered that a book may be the work not of one year, but of a man's whole life; and as it has been found, in a late case of the Duke of Gordon, that a fall of timber was not subject to property-tax because it comprehended the produce of thirty years, it seems at least equally fair that mental exertions should not be subjected to a harder principle of measurement. 3d, The demand is, so far as I can learn, totally new and unheard of. 4th, Supposing that I died and left my manuscripts to be sold publicly along with the rest of my library, is there any ground for taxing what might be received for the written book, any more than any rare printed book, which a speculative bookseller might purchase with a view to republication? You will know whether any of these things ought to be suggested in the brief. David Hume, and every lawyer here whom I have spoken to, consider the demand as illegal. Believe me truly yours, WALTER SCOTT. Mr. Richardson having prepared a case, obtained upon it the opinions of Mr. Alexander (afterwards Sir William Alexander and Chief Baron of the Exchequer) and of the late Sir Samuel Romilly. These eminent lawyers agreed in the view of their Scotch brethren; and after a tedious correspondence, the Lords of the Treasury at last decided that the Income-Tax Commissioners should abandon their claim upon the produce of literary labor. I have thought it worth while to preserve some record of this decision, and of the authorities on which it rested, in case such a demand should ever be renewed hereafter. In the beginning of December, the Town Council of Edinburgh resolved to send a deputation to congratulate the Prince Regent on the prosperous course of public events, and they invited Scott to draw up their address, which, on its being transmitted for previous inspection to Mr. William Dundas, then Member for the City, and through him shown privately to the Regent, was acknowledged to the penman, by his Royal Highness's command, as "the most elegant congratulation a sovereign ever received, or a subject offered."[44] The Lord Provost of Edinburgh presented it accordingly at the levee of the 10th, and it was received most graciously. On returning to the north, the Magistrates expressed their sense of Scott's services on this occasion by presenting him with the freedom of his native city, and also with a piece of plate,--which the reader will find alluded to, among other matters of more consequence, in a letter to be quoted presently. At this time Scott further expressed his patriotic exultation in the rescue of Europe, by two songs for the anniversary of the death of Pitt; one of which has ever since, I believe, been chanted at that celebration:-- "O dread was the time and more dreadful the omen, When the brave on Marengo lay slaughter'd in vain," etc.[45] Footnotes of the Chapter XXVI. [23: Mr. Hunter died in March, 1812.] [24: "These and after purchases of books from the stock of J. Ballantyne and Co. were resold to the trade by Constable's firm, at less than one half and one third of the prices at which they were thus obtained."--_Note from Mr. R. Cadell._] [25: Dr. Brewster's edition of Ferguson's _Astronomy_, 2 vols. 8vo, with plates, 4to, Edin. 1811. 36_s_.] [26: Dr. Singers's _General View of the County of Dumfries_, 8vo, Edin. 1812. 18_s_.] [27: A trade sale of Messrs. Cadell and Davies in the Strand.] [28: Since this work was first published, I have been compelled to examine very minutely the details of Scott's connection with the Ballantynes, and one result is, that both James and John had trespassed so largely, for their private purposes, on the funds of the Companies, that, Scott being, as their letters distinctly state, the only "monied partner," and his over-advances of capital having been very extensive, any inquiry on their part as to his uncommercial expenditure must have been entirely out of the question. To avoid misrepresentation, however, I leave my text as it was.--(1839.)] [29: _Merchant of Venice_, Act II. Scene 2.] [30: The court of offices, built on the haugh at Abbotsford in 1812, included a house for the faithful coachman, Peter Mathieson. One of Scott's Cantabrigian friends, Mr. W. S. Rose, gave the whole pile soon afterwards the name, which it retained to the end, of _Peter-House_. The loft at Peter-House continued to be occupied by occasional bachelor guests until the existing mansion was completed.] [31: Mrs. Thomas Scott had met Burns frequently in early life at Dumfries. Her brother, the late Mr. David MacCulloch, was a great favorite with the poet, and the best singer of his songs that I ever heard.] [32: John Ballantyne had embarked no capital--not a shilling--in the business; and was bound by the contract to limit himself to an allowance of £300 a year, in consideration of his _management_, until there should be an overplus of profits!--(1839.)] [33: He probably alludes to the final settlement of accounts with the Marquis of Abercorn.] [34: The Royal Librarian had forwarded to Scott presentation copies of his successive publications--_The Progress of Maritime Discovery_--Falconer's _Shipwreck, with a Life of the Author_--_Naufragia_--_A Life of Nelson_, in two quarto volumes, etc., etc., etc.] [35: Poor Gay--"In wit a man, simplicity a child"--was insulted, on the accession of George II., by the offer of a gentleman-ushership to one of the royal infants. His prose and verse largely celebrate his obligations to Charles, third Duke of Queensberry, and the charming Lady Catharine Hyde, his Duchess--under whose roof the poet spent the latter years of his life.] [36: See the Preface to the third volume of the late Collective Edition of Mr. Southey's _Poems_, p. xii., where he corrects a trivial error I had fallen into in the first edition of these Memoirs, and adds, "Sir Walter's conduct was, as it always was, characteristically generous, and in the highest degree friendly."--(1839.)] [37: Garrick's _Bon Ton, or High Life Above Stairs_.] [38: _Twelfth Night_, Act V. Scene 1.] [39: The letter in question has not been preserved in Scott's collection of correspondence. This leaves some allusions in the answer obscure.] [40: Scott's old friend, Mr. John Richardson, had shortly before this time taken a house in Miss Baillie's neighborhood, on Hampstead Heath.] [41: Miss Baillie had apologized to him for having sent an extract of one of his letters to her friend at Edgeworthstown.] [42: Milton, _Sonnet No. VIII._ [_When the Assault was intended to the City._]] [43: [On May 3, Scott had written to his daughter, that this hair was light brown, and later, writing to Joanna Baillie, he says, "I did not think Charles's hair had been quite so light; that of his father, and I believe of all the Stuarts till Charles II., was reddish." Of the king, he goes on to say: "Tory, as I am, my heart only goes with King Charles in his struggles and distresses, for the fore part of his reign was a series of misconduct; however, if he sow'd the wind, God knows he reap'd the whirlwind.... Sound therefore be the sleep, and henceforward undisturbed the ashes, of this unhappy prince.... His attachment to a particular form of worship was in him conscience, for he adhered to the Church of England ... when by giving up that favorite point he might have secured his reëstablishment; and in that sense he may be justly considered as a martyr, though his early political errors blemish his character as King of England."--_Familiar Letters_, vol. i. p. 288.]] [44: Letter from the Right Hon. W. Dundas, dated 6th December, 1813.] [45: See Scott's _Poetical Works_, vol. xi. p. 309, Edition 1834 [Cambridge Edition, p. 409].] CHAPTER XXVII INSANITY OF HENRY WEBER. -- LETTERS ON THE ABDICATION OF NAPOLEON, ETC. -- PUBLICATION OF SCOTT'S LIFE AND EDITION OF SWIFT. -- ESSAYS FOR THE SUPPLEMENT TO THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA. -- COMPLETION AND PUBLICATION OF WAVERLEY 1814 I have to open the year 1814 with a melancholy story. Mention has been made, more than once, of Henry Weber, a poor German scholar, who escaping to this country in 1804, from misfortunes in his own, excited Scott's compassion, and was thenceforth furnished, through his means, with literary employment of various sorts. Weber was a man of considerable learning; but Scott, as was his custom, appears to have formed an exaggerated notion of his capacity, and certainly countenanced him, to his own severe cost, in several most unfortunate undertakings. When not engaged on things of a more ambitious character, he had acted for ten years as his protector's amanuensis, and when the family were in Edinburgh, he very often dined with them. There was something very interesting in his appearance and manners: he had a fair, open countenance, in which the honesty and the enthusiasm of his nation were alike visible; his demeanor was gentle and modest; and he had not only a stock of curious antiquarian knowledge, but the reminiscences, which he detailed with amusing simplicity, of an early life chequered with many strange-enough adventures. He was, in short, much a favorite with Scott and all the household; and was invited to dine with them so frequently, chiefly because his friend was aware that he had an unhappy propensity to drinking, and was anxious to keep him away from places where he might have been more likely to indulge it. This vice, however, had been growing on him; and of late Scott had found it necessary to make some rather severe remonstrances about habits which were at once injuring his health, and interrupting his literary industry. [Illustration: J. B. S. MORRITT _From the painting by Sir M. A. Shee_] They had, however, parted kindly when Scott left Edinburgh at Christmas, 1813,--and the day after his return, Weber attended him as usual in his library, being employed in transcribing extracts during several hours, while his friend, seated over against him, continued working at the Life of Swift. The light beginning to fail, Scott threw himself back in his chair, and was about to ring for candles, when he observed the German's eyes fixed upon him with an unusual solemnity of expression. "Weber," said he, "what's the matter with you?" "Mr. Scott," said Weber, rising, "you have long insulted me, and I can bear it no longer. I have brought a pair of pistols with me, and must insist on your taking one of them instantly;" and with that he produced the weapons, which had been deposited under his chair, and laid one of them on Scott's manuscript. "You are mistaken, I think," said Scott, "in your way of setting about this affair--but no matter. It can, however, be no part of your object to annoy Mrs. Scott and the children; therefore, if you please, we will put the pistols into the drawer till after dinner, and then arrange to go out together like gentlemen." Weber answered with equal coolness, "I believe that will be better," and laid the second pistol also on the table. Scott locked them both in his desk, and said, "I am glad you have felt the propriety of what I suggested--let me only request further, that nothing may occur while we are at dinner to give my wife any suspicion of what has been passing." Weber again assented, and Scott withdrew to his dressing-room, from which he immediately despatched a message to one of Weber's intimate companions,--and then dinner was served, and Weber joined the family circle as usual. He conducted himself with perfect composure, and everything seemed to go on in the ordinary way, until whiskey and hot water being produced, Scott, instead of inviting his guest to help himself, mixed two moderate tumblers of toddy, and handed one of them to Weber, who, upon that, started up with a furious countenance, but instantly sat down again, and when Mrs. Scott expressed her fear that he was ill, answered placidly that he was liable to spasms, but that the pain was gone. He then took the glass, eagerly gulped down its contents, and pushed it back to Scott. At this moment the friend who had been sent for made his appearance, and Weber, on seeing him enter the room, rushed past him and out of the house, without stopping to put on his hat. The friend, who pursued instantly, came up with him at the end of the street, and did all he could to soothe his agitation, but in vain. The same evening he was obliged to be put into a strait-waistcoat; and though in a few days he exhibited such symptoms of recovery that he was allowed to go by himself to pay a visit in the north of England, he there soon relapsed, and continued ever afterwards a hopeless lunatic, being supported to the end of his life, in June, 1818, at Scott's expense, in an asylum at York. The reader will now appreciate the gentle delicacy of the following letter:-- TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., ROKEBY, GRETA BRIDGE. EDINBURGH, 7th January, 1814. Many happy New Years to you and Mrs. Morritt. MY DEAR MORRITT,--I have postponed writing a long while, in hopes to send you the Life of Swift. But I have been delayed by an odd accident. Poor Weber, whom you may have heard me mention as a sort of grinder of mine, who assisted me in various ways, has fallen into a melancholy state. His habits, like those of most German students, were always too convivial--this, of course, I guarded against while he was in my house, which was always once a week at least; but unfortunately he undertook a long walk through the Highlands of upwards of 2000 miles, and, I suppose, took potations pottle deep to support him through the fatigue. His mind became accordingly quite unsettled, and after some strange behavior here, he was fortunately prevailed upon to go to **** who resides in Yorkshire. It is not unlikely, from something that dropped from him, that he may take it into his head to call at Rokeby, in which case you must parry any visit, upon the score of Mrs. Morritt's health. If he were what he used to be, you would be much pleased with him; for besides a very extensive general acquaintance with literature, he was particularly deep in our old dramatic lore, a good modern linguist, a tolerable draughtsman and antiquary, and a most excellent hydrographer. I have not the least doubt that if he submits to the proper regimen of abstinence and moderate exercise, he will be quite well in a few weeks or days--if not, it is miserable to think what may happen. The being suddenly deprived of his services in this melancholy way, has flung me back at least a month with Swift, and left me no time to write to my friends, for all my memoranda, etc., were in his hands, and had to be new-modelled, etc., etc. Our glorious prospects on the Continent called forth the congratulations of the City of Edinburgh among others. The Magistrates asked me to draw their address, which was presented by the Lord Provost in person, who happens to be a gentleman of birth and fortune.[46] The Prince said some very handsome things respecting the address, with which the Magistrates were so much elated, that they have done the genteel thing (as Winifred Jenkins says) by their literary adviser, and presented me with the freedom of the city, and a handsome piece of plate. I got the freedom at the same time with Lord Dalhousie and Sir Thomas Graham, and the Provost gave a very brilliant entertainment. About 150 gentlemen dined at his own house, all as well served as if there had been a dozen. So if one strikes a cuff on the one side from ill-will, there is a pat on the other from kindness, and the shuttlecock is kept flying. To poor Charlotte's great horror, I chose my plate in the form of an old English tankard, an utensil for which I have a particular respect, especially when charged with good ale, cup, or any of these potables. I hope you will soon see mine.[47] Your little friends, Sophia and Walter, were at a magnificent party on Twelfth Night at Dalkeith, where the Duke and Duchess entertained all Edinburgh. I think they have dreamed of nothing since but Aladdin's lamp and the palace of Haroun Al-Raschid. I am uncertain what to do this spring. I would fain go on the Continent for three or four weeks, if it be then safe for non-combatants. If not, we will have a merry meeting in London, and, like Master Silence, "Eat, drink, and make good cheer, And praise heaven for the merry year."[48] I have much to say about Triermain. The fourth edition is at press. The Empress Dowager of Russia has expressed such an interest in it, that it will be inscribed to her, in some doggerel sonnet or other, by the unknown author. This is funny enough.--Love a thousand times to dear Mrs. Morritt, who, I trust, keeps pretty well. Pray write soon--a modest request from WALTER SCOTT. The last of Weber's literary productions were the analyses of the Old German Poems of the _Helden Buch_, and the _Nibelungen Lied_, which appeared in a massive quarto, entitled Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, published in the summer of 1814, by his and Scott's friend, Mr. Robert Jameson. Scott avowedly contributed to this collection an account of the Eyrbiggia Saga, which has since been included in his Prose Miscellanies (Vol. V., edition 1834); but any one who examines the share of the work which goes under Weber's name will see that Scott had a considerable hand in that also. The rhymed versions from the Nibelungen Lied came, I can have no doubt, from his pen; but he never reclaimed these, or any other similar benefactions, of which I have traced not a few; nor, highly curious and even beautiful as many of them are, could they be intelligible, if separated from the prose narrative on which Weber embroidered them, in imitation of the style of Ellis's Specimens of Metrical Romance. The following letters, on the first abdication of Napoleon, are too characteristic to be omitted here. I need not remind the reader how greatly Scott had calmed his opinions, and softened his feelings, respecting the career and fate of the most extraordinary man of our age, before he undertook to write his history. TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., PORTLAND PLACE, LONDON. ABBOTSFORD, 30th April, 1814 "Joy--joy in London now!"--and in Edinburgh, moreover, my dear Morritt; for never did you or I see, and never again shall we see, according to all human prospects, a consummation so truly glorious, as now bids fair to conclude this long and eventful war. It is startling to think that, but for the preternatural presumption and hardness of heart displayed by the arch-enemy of mankind, we should have had a hollow and ominous truce with him, instead of a glorious and stable peace with the country over which he tyrannized, and its lawful ruler. But Providence had its own wise purposes to answer--and such was the deference of France to the ruling power--so devoutly did they worship the Devil for possession of his burning throne, that, it may be, nothing short of his rejection of every fair and advantageous offer of peace could have driven them to those acts of resistance which remembrance of former convulsions had rendered so fearful to them. Thank God! it is done at last: and--although I rather grudge him even the mouthful of air which he may draw in the Isle of Elba--yet I question whether the moral lesson would have been completed either by his perishing in battle, or being torn to pieces (which I should greatly have preferred), like the De Witts, by an infuriated crowd of conscripts and their parents. Good God! with what strange feelings must that man retire from the most unbounded authority ever vested in the hands of one man, to the seclusion of privacy and restraint! We have never heard of one good action which he did, at least for which there was not some selfish or political reason; and the train of slaughter, pestilence, and famine and fire, which his ambition has occasioned, would have outweighed five hundredfold the private virtues of a Titus. These are comfortable reflections to carry with one to privacy. If he writes his own history, as he proposes, we may gain something; but he must send it here to be printed. Nothing less than a neck-or-nothing London bookseller, like John Dunton of yore, will venture to commit to the press his strange details uncastrated. I doubt if he has _stamina_ to undertake such a labor; and yet, in youth, as I know from the brothers of Lauriston, who were his school-companions, Buonaparte's habits were distinctly and strongly literary. Spain, the Continental System, and the invasion of Russia he may record as his three leading blunders--an awful lesson to sovereigns that morality is not so indifferent to politics as Machiavelians will assert. _Res nolunt diu male administrari._ Why can we not meet to talk over these matters over a glass of claret? and when shall that be! Not this spring, I fear, for time wears fast away, and I have remained here nailed among my future oaks, which I measure daily with a foot-rule. Those which were planted two years ago begin to look very gayly, and a venerable plantation of four years old looks as _bobbish_ as yours at the dairy by Greta side. Besides, I am arranging this cottage a little more conveniently, to put off the plague and expense of building another year; and I assure you, I expect to spare Mrs. Morritt and you a chamber in the wall, with a dressing-room and everything handsome about you. You will not stipulate, of course, for many square feet.--You would be surprised to hear how the Continent is awakening from its iron sleep. The utmost eagerness seems to prevail about English literature. I have had several voluntary epistles from different parts of Germany, from men of letters, who are eager to know what we have been doing, while they were compelled to play at blind man's buff with the _ci-devant Empereur_. The feeling of the French officers, of whom we have many in our vicinity, is very curious, and yet natural.[49] Many of them, companions of Buonaparte's victories, and who hitherto have marched with him from conquest to conquest, disbelieve the change entirely. This is all very stupid to write to you, who are in the centre of these wonders; but what else can I say, unless I should send you the measure of the future fathers of the forest? Mrs. Scott is with me here--the children in Edinburgh. Our kindest love attends Mrs. Morritt. I hope to hear soon that her health continues to gain ground. I have a letter from Southey, in high spirits on the glorious news. What a pity this last battle[50] was fought. But I am glad the rascals were beaten once more. Ever yours, WALTER SCOTT. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ., KESWICK. EDINBURGH, 17th June, 1814. MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--I suspended writing to thank you for the Carmen Triumphale--(a happy omen of what you can do to immortalize our public story)--until the feverish mood of expectation and anxiety should be over. And then, as you truly say, there followed a stunning sort of listless astonishment and complication of feeling, which, if it did not lessen enjoyment, confused and confounded one's sense of it. I remember the first time I happened to see a launch, I was neither so much struck with the descent of the vessel, nor with its majestic sweep to its moorings, as with the blank which was suddenly made from the withdrawing so large an object, and the prospect which was at once opened to the opposite side of the dock crowded with spectators. Buonaparte's fall strikes me something in the same way: the huge bulk of his power, against which a thousand arms were hammering, was obviously to sink when its main props were struck away--and yet now--when it has disappeared--the vacancy which it leaves in our minds and attention marks its huge and preponderating importance more strongly than even its presence. Yet I so devoutly expected the termination, that in discussing the matter with Major Philips, who seemed to partake of the doubts which prevailed during the feverish period preceding the capture of Paris, when he was expressing his apprehensions that the capital of France would be defended to the last, I hazarded a prophecy that a battle would be fought on the heights of Montmartre--(no great sagacity, since it was the point where Marlborough proposed to attack, and for which Saxe projected a scheme of defence)--and that if the allies were successful, which I little doubted, the city would surrender, and the Senate proclaim the dethronement of Buonaparte. But I never thought nor imagined that he would have _given in_ as he has done. I always considered him as possessing the genius and talents of an Eastern conqueror; and although I never supposed that he possessed, allowing for some difference of education, the liberality of conduct and political views which were sometimes exhibited by old Hyder Ally, yet I did think he might have shown the same resolved and dogged spirit of resolution which induced Tippoo Saib to die manfully upon the breach of his capital city with his sabre clenched in his hand. But this is a poor devil, and cannot play the tyrant so rarely as Bottom the Weaver proposed to do. I think it is Strap in Roderick Random, who, seeing a highwayman that had lately robbed him, disarmed and bound, fairly offers to box him for a shilling. One has really the same feeling with respect to Buonaparte, though if he go out of life after all in the usual manner, it will be the strongest proof of his own insignificance, and the liberality of the age we live in. Were I a son of Palm or Hoffer, I should be tempted to take a long shot at him in his retreat to Elba. As for coaxing the French by restoring all our conquests, it would be driving generosity into extravagance: most of them have been colonized with British subjects, and improved by British capital; and surely we owe no more to the French nation than any well-meaning individual might owe to a madman, whom--at the expense of a hard struggle, black eyes, and bruises--he has at length overpowered, knocked down, and by the wholesome discipline of a bull's pizzle and strait-jacket, brought to the handsome enjoyment of his senses. I think with you, what we return to them should be well paid for; and they should have no Pondicherry to be a nest of smugglers, nor Mauritius to nurse a hornet-swarm of privateers. In short, draw teeth, and pare claws, and leave them to fatten themselves in peace and quiet, when they are deprived of the means of indulging their restless spirit of enterprise. --The above was written at Abbotsford last month, but left in my portfolio there till my return some days ago; and now, when I look over what I have written, I am confirmed in my opinion that we have given the rascals too good an opportunity to boast that they have got well off. An intimate friend of mine,[51] just returned from a long captivity in France, witnessed the entry of the King, guarded by the Imperial Guards, whose countenances betokened the most sullen and ferocious discontent. The mob, and especially the women, pelted them for refusing to cry, "Vive le Roi." If Louis is well advised, he will get rid of these fellows gradually, but as soon as possible. "Joy, joy in London now!" What a scene has been going on there! I think you may see the Czar appear on the top of one of your stages one morning. He is a fine fellow, and has fought the good fight. Yours affectionately, WALTER SCOTT. On the 1st of July, 1814, Scott's Life and Edition of Swift, in nineteen volumes 8vo, at length issued from the press. This adventure, undertaken by Constable in 1808, had been proceeded in during all the variety of their personal relations, and now came forth when author and publisher felt more warmly towards each other than perhaps they had ever before done. The impression was of 1250 copies; and a reprint of similar extent was called for in 1824. The Life of Swift has subsequently been included in the author's Miscellanies, and has obtained a very wide circulation. By his industrious inquiries, in which, as the preface gratefully acknowledges, he found many zealous assistants, especially among the Irish literati,[52] Scott added to this edition many admirable pieces, both in prose and verse, which had never before been printed, and still more which had escaped notice amidst old bundles of pamphlets and broadsides. To the illustration of these and of all the better known writings of the Dean, he brought the same qualifications which had, by general consent, distinguished his Dryden, "uniting," as the Edinburgh Review expresses it, "to the minute knowledge and patient research of the Malones and Chalmerses, a vigor of judgment and a vivacity of style to which they had no pretensions." His biographical narrative, introductory essays, and notes on Swift, show, indeed, an intimacy of acquaintance with the obscurest details of the political, social, and literary history of the period of Queen Anne, which it is impossible to consider without feeling a lively regret that he never accomplished a long-cherished purpose of preparing a Life and Edition of Pope on a similar scale. It has been specially unfortunate for that "true deacon of the craft," as Scott often called Pope, that first Goldsmith, and then Scott, should have taken up, only to abandon it, the project of writing his life and editing his works. The Edinburgh Reviewer thus characterizes Scott's Memoir of the Dean of St. Patrick's:-- "It is not everywhere extremely well written, in a literary point of view, but it is drawn up in substance with great intelligence, liberality, and good feeling. It is quite fair and moderate in politics; and perhaps rather too indulgent and tender towards individuals of all descriptions--more full, at least, of kindness and veneration for genius and social virtue, than of indignation at baseness and profligacy. Altogether, it is not much like the production of a mere man of letters, or a fastidious speculator in sentiment and morality; but exhibits throughout, and in a very pleasing form, the good sense and large toleration of a man of the world, with much of that generous allowance for the 'Fears of the brave and follies of the wise,' which genius too often requires, and should therefore always be most forward to show. It is impossible, however, to avoid noticing that Mr. Scott is by far too favorable to the personal character of his author, whom we think it would really be injurious to the cause of morality to allow to pass either as a very dignified or a very amiable person. The truth is, we think, that he was extremely ambitious, arrogant, and selfish; of a morose, vindictive, and haughty temper; and though capable of a sort of patronizing generosity towards his dependents, and of some attachment towards those who had long known and flattered him, his general demeanor, both in public and private life, appears to have been far from exemplary; destitute of temper and magnanimity, and we will add, of principle, in the former; and in the latter, of tenderness, fidelity, or compassion."--_Edinburgh Review_, vol. xvii. p. 9. I have no desire to break a lance in this place in defence of the personal character of Swift. It does not appear to me that he stands at all distinguished among politicians (least of all, among the politicians of his time) for laxity of principle; nor can I consent to charge his private demeanor with the absence either of tenderness, or fidelity, or compassion. But who ever dreamed--most assuredly not Scott--of holding up the Dean of St. Patrick's as on the whole an "exemplary character"? The biographer felt, whatever his critic may have thought on the subject, that a vein of morbid humor ran through Swift's whole existence, both mental and physical, from the beginning. "He early adopted," says Scott, "the custom of observing his birthday, as a term not of joy but of sorrow, and of reading, when it annually recurred, the striking passage of Scripture in which Job laments and execrates the day upon which it was said in his father's house _that a man-child was born_;" and I should have expected that any man who had considered the black close of the career thus early clouded, and read the entry of Swift's diary on the funeral of Stella, his epitaph on himself, and the testament by which he disposed of his fortune, would have been willing, like Scott, to dwell on the splendor of his immortal genius, and the many traits of manly generosity "which he unquestionably exhibited," rather than on the faults and foibles of nameless and inscrutable disease, which tormented and embittered the far greater part of his earthly being. What the critic says of the practical and businesslike style of Scott's biography, appears very just--and I think the circumstance eminently characteristic; nor, on the whole, could his edition, as an edition, have been better dealt with than in the Essay which I have quoted. It was, by the way, written by Mr. Jeffrey, at Constable's particular request. "It was, I think, the first time I ever asked such a thing of him," the bookseller said to me; "and I assure you the result was no encouragement to repeat such petitions." Mr. Jeffrey attacked Swift's whole character at great length, and with consummate dexterity; and, in Constable's opinion, his article threw such a cloud on the Dean, as materially checked, for a time, the popularity of his writings. Admirable as the paper is, in point of ability, I think Mr. Constable may have considerably exaggerated its effects; but in those days it must have been difficult for him to form an impartial opinion upon such a question; for, as Johnson said of Cave, that "he could not spit over his window without thinking of The Gentleman's Magazine," I believe Constable allowed nothing to interrupt his paternal pride in the concerns of his Review, until the Waverley Novels supplied him with another periodical publication still more important to his fortunes. And this consummation was not long delayed: a considerable addition having by that time been made to the original fragment, there appeared in The Scots Magazine, for February 1, 1814, an announcement, that "Waverley; or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since, a novel, in 3 vols., 12mo," would be published in March. And before Scott came into Edinburgh, at the close of the Christmas vacation, on the 12th of January, Mr. Erskine had perused the greater part of the first volume, and expressed his decided opinion that Waverley would prove the most popular of all his friend's writings.[53] The MS. was forthwith copied by John Ballantyne, and sent to press. As soon as a volume was printed, Ballantyne conveyed it to Constable, who did not for a moment doubt from what pen it proceeded, but took a few days to consider of the matter, and then offered £700 for the copyright. When we recollect what the state of novel literature in those days was, and that the only exceptions to its mediocrity, the Irish Tales of Miss Edgeworth, however appreciated in refined circles, had a circulation so limited that she had never realized a tithe of £700 by the best of them--it must be allowed that Constable's offer was a liberal one. Scott's answer, however, transmitted through the same channel, was that £700 was too much, in case the novel should not be successful, and too little in case it should. He added, "If our fat friend had said £1000, I should have been staggered." John did not forget to hint this last circumstance to Constable, but the latter did not choose to act upon it; and he ultimately published the work, on the footing of an equal division of profits between himself and the author. There was a considerable pause between the finishing of the first volume and the beginning of the second. Constable had, in 1812, acquired the copyright of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and was now preparing to publish the valuable Supplement to that work, which has since, with modifications, been incorporated into its text. He earnestly requested Scott to undertake a few articles for the Supplement; he agreed--and, anxious to gratify the generous bookseller, at once laid aside his tale until he had finished two essays--those on Chivalry and the Drama. They appear to have been completed in the course of April and May, and he received for each of them--as he did subsequently for that on Romance--£100. The two next letters will give us, in more exact detail than the author's own recollection could supply in 1830, the history of the completion of Waverley. It was published on the 7th of July; and two days afterwards he thus writes:-- TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., M. P., LONDON. EDINBURGH, 9th July, 1814. MY DEAR MORRITT,--I owe you many apologies for not sooner answering your very entertaining letter upon your Parisian journey. I heartily wish I had been of your party, for you have seen what I trust will not be seen again in a hurry; since, to enjoy the delight of a restoration, there is a necessity for a previous _bouleversement_ of everything that is valuable in morals and policy, which seems to have been the case in France since 1790.[54] The Duke of Buccleuch told me yesterday of a very good reply of Louis to some of his attendants, who proposed shutting the doors of his apartments to keep out the throng of people. "Open the door," he said, "to John Bull; he has suffered a great deal in keeping the door open for me." Now, to go from one important subject to another, I must account for my own laziness, which I do by referring you to a small anonymous sort of a novel, in three volumes, Waverley, which you will receive by the mail of this day. It was a very old attempt of mine to embody some traits of those characters and manners peculiar to Scotland, the last remnants of which vanished during my own youth, so that few or no traces now remain. I had written great part of the first volume, and sketched other passages, when I mislaid the MS., and only found it by the merest accident as I was rummaging the drawers of an old cabinet;[55] and I took the fancy of finishing it, which I did so fast, that the last two volumes were written in three weeks. I had a great deal of fun in the accomplishment of this task, though I do not expect that it will be popular in the south, as much of the humor, if there be any, is local, and some of it even professional. You, however, who are an adopted Scotchman, will find some amusement in it. It has made a very strong impression here, and the good people of Edinburgh are busied in tracing the author, and in finding out originals for the portraits it contains. In the first case, they will probably find it difficult to convict the guilty author, although he is far from escaping suspicion. Jeffrey has offered to make oath that it is mine, and another great critic has tendered his affidavit _ex contrario_; so that these authorities have divided the Gude Town. However, the thing has succeeded very well, and is thought highly of. I don't know if it has got to London yet. I intend to maintain my _incognito_. Let me know your opinion about it. I should be most happy if I could think it would amuse a painful thought at this anxious moment. I was in hopes Mrs. Morritt was getting so much better, that this relapse affects me very much. Ever yours truly, W. SCOTT. P. S.--As your conscience has very few things to answer for, you must still burthen it with the secret of the Bridal. It is spreading very rapidly, and I have one or two little fairy romances, which will make a second volume, and which I would wish published, but not with my name. The truth is, that this sort of muddling work amuses me, and 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_. This statement of the foregoing letter (repeated still more precisely in the following one), as to the time occupied in the composition of the second and third volumes of Waverley, recalls to my memory a trifling anecdote, which, as connected with a dear friend of my youth, whom I have not seen for many years, and may very probably never see again in this world, I shall here set down, in the hope of affording him a momentary, though not an unmixed pleasure, when he may chance to read this compilation on a distant shore--and also in the hope that my humble record may impart to some active mind in the rising generation a shadow of the influence which the reality certainly exerted upon his. Happening to pass through Edinburgh in June, 1814, I dined one day with the gentleman in question (now the Honorable William Menzies, one of the Supreme Judges at the Cape of Good Hope), whose residence was then in George Street, situated very near to, and at right angles with, North Castle Street. It was a party of very young persons, most of them, like Menzies and myself, destined for the Bar of Scotland, all gay and thoughtless, enjoying the first flush of manhood, with little remembrance of the yesterday, or care of the morrow. When my companion's worthy father and uncle, after seeing two or three bottles go round, left the juveniles to themselves, the weather being hot, we adjourned to a library which had one large window looking northwards. After carousing here for an hour or more, I observed that a shade had come over the aspect of my friend, who happened to be placed immediately opposite to myself, and said something that intimated a fear of his being unwell. "No," said he, "I shall be well enough presently, if you will only let me sit where you are, and take my chair; for there is a confounded hand in sight of me here, which has often bothered me before, and now it won't let me fill my glass with a good will." I rose to change places with him accordingly, and he pointed out to me this hand which, like the writing on Belshazzar's wall, disturbed his hour of hilarity. "Since we sat down," he said, "I have been watching it--it fascinates my eye--it never stops--page after page is finished and thrown on that heap of MS., and still it goes on unwearied--and so it will be till candles are brought in, and God knows how long after that. It is the same every night--I can't stand a sight of it when I am not at my books."--"Some stupid, dogged, engrossing clerk, probably," exclaimed myself, or some other giddy youth in our society. "No, boys," said our host, "I well know what hand it is--'tis Walter Scott's." This was the hand that, in the evenings of three summer weeks, wrote the last two volumes of Waverley. Would that all who that night watched it had profited by its example of diligence as largely as William Menzies! In the next of these letters Scott enclosed to Mr. Morritt the Prospectus of a new edition of the old poems of the Bruce and the Wallace, undertaken by the learned lexicographer, Dr. John Jamieson; and he announces his departure on a sailing excursion round the north of Scotland. It will be observed that when Scott began his letter, he had only had Mr. Morritt's opinion of the first volume of Waverley, and that before he closed it he had received his friend's honest criticism on the work as a whole, with the expression of an earnest hope that he would drop his _incognito_ on the title-page of a second edition. TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., M. P., PORTLAND PLACE, LONDON. ABBOTSFORD, July 24, 1814. MY DEAR MORRITT,--I am going to say my _vales_ to you for some weeks, having accepted an invitation from a committee of the Commissioners for the Northern Lights (I don't mean the Edinburgh Reviewers, but the _bona-fide_ Commissioners for the Beacons), to accompany them upon a nautical tour round Scotland, visiting all that is curious on continent and isle. The party are three gentlemen with whom I am very well acquainted, William Erskine being one. We have a stout cutter, well fitted up and manned for the service by Government; and to make assurance double sure, the admiral has sent a sloop of war to cruise in the dangerous points of our tour, and sweep the sea of the Yankee privateers, which sometimes annoy our northern latitudes. I shall visit the Clephanes in their solitude--and let you know all that I see that is rare and entertaining, which, as we are masters of our time and vessel, should add much to my stock of knowledge. As to Waverley, I will play Sir Fretful for once, and assure you that I left the story to flag in the first volume on purpose; the second and third have rather more bustle and interest. I wished (with what success Heaven knows) to avoid the ordinary error of novel writers, whose first volume is usually their best. But since it has served to amuse Mrs. Morritt and you _usque ab initio_, I have no doubt you will tolerate it even unto the end. It may really boast to be a tolerably faithful portrait of Scottish manners, and has been recognized as such in Edinburgh. The first edition of a thousand instantly disappeared, and the bookseller informs me that the second, of double the quantity, will not supply the market long.--As I shall be very anxious to know how Mrs. Morritt is, I hope to have a few lines from you on my return, which will be about the end of August or beginning of September. I should have mentioned that we have the celebrated engineer, Stevenson, along with us. I delight in these professional men of talent; they always give you some new lights by the peculiarity of their habits and studies, so different from the people who are rounded, and smoothed, and ground down for conversation, and who can say all that every other person says, and--nothing more. What a miserable thing it is that our royal family cannot be quiet and decent at least, if not correct and moral in their deportment. Old farmer George's manly simplicity, modesty of expense, and domestic virtue, saved this country at its most perilous crisis; for it is inconceivable the number of persons whom these qualities united in his behalf, who would have felt but feebly the abstract duty of supporting a crown less worthily worn. --I had just proceeded thus far when your kind favor of the 21st reached Abbotsford. I am heartily glad you continued to like Waverley to the end. The hero is a sneaking piece of imbecility; and if he had married Flora, she would have set him up upon the chimney-piece, as Count Borowlaski's wife used to do with him.[56] 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. I do not know why it should be, as I am myself, like Hamlet, indifferent honest; but I suppose the blood of the old cattle-drivers of Teviotdale continues to stir in my veins. I shall _not_ own Waverley; my chief reason is that it would prevent me of the pleasure of writing again. David Hume, nephew of the historian, says the author must be of a Jacobite family and predilections, a yeoman-cavalry man, and a Scottish lawyer, and desires me to guess in whom these happy attributes are united. I shall not plead guilty, however; and as such seems to be the fashion of the day, I hope charitable people will believe my _affidavit_ in contradiction to all other evidence. The Edinburgh faith now is, that Waverley is written by Jeffrey, having been composed to lighten the tedium of his late transatlantic voyage. So you see the unknown infant is like to come to preferment. In truth, I am not sure it would be considered quite decorous for 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. So, whatever I may do of this kind, "I shall whistle it down the wind, and let it prey at fortune."[57] I will take care, in the next edition, to make the corrections you recommend. The second is, I believe, nearly through the press. It will hardly be printed faster than it was written; for though the first volume was begun long ago, and actually lost for a time, yet the other two were begun and finished between the 4th June and the 1st July, during all which I attended my duty in Court, and proceeded without loss of time or hindrance of business. I wish, for poor auld Scotland's sake,[58] and for the manes of Bruce and Wallace, and for the living comfort of a very worthy and ingenious dissenting clergyman, who has collected a library and medals of some value, and brought up, I believe, sixteen or seventeen children (his wife's ambition extended to twenty) upon about £150 a year--I say I wish, for all these reasons, you could get me among your wealthy friends a name or two for the enclosed proposals. The price is, I think, too high; but the booksellers fixed it two guineas above what I proposed. I trust it will be yet lowered to five guineas, which is a more come-at-able sum than six. The poems themselves are great curiosities, both to the philologist and antiquary; and that of Bruce is invaluable even to the historian. They have been hitherto wretchedly edited. I am glad you are not to pay for this scrawl. Ever yours, WALTER SCOTT. P. S.--I do not see how my silence can be considered as imposing on the public. If I give my name to a book without writing it, unquestionably that would be a trick. But, unless in the case of his averring facts which he may be called upon to defend or justify, I think an author may use his own discretion in giving or withholding his name. Harry Mackenzie never put his name in a title-page till the last edition of his works; and Swift only owned one out of his thousand-and-one publications. In point of emolument, everybody knows that I sacrifice much money by withholding my name; and 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. W. S. I am not able to give the exact date of the following reply to one of John Ballantyne's expostulations on the subject of _the secret_:-- "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." Footnotes of the Chapter XXVII. [46: The late Sir John Marjoribanks of Lees, Bart.] [47: The inscription for this tankard was penned by the late celebrated Dr. James Gregory, Professor of the Practice of Physic in the University of Edinburgh; and I therefore transcribe it. GUALTERUM SCOTT DE ABBOTSFORD VIRUM SUMMI INGENII SCRIPTOREM ELEGANTEM POETARUM SUI SECULI FACILE PRINCIPEM PATRIÆ DECUS OB VARIA ERGA IPSAM MERITA IN CIVIUM SUORUM NUMERUM GRATA ADSCRIPSIT CIVITAS EDINBURGENSIS ET HOC CANTHARO DONAVIT A. D. M.DCCC.XIII.] [48: _2d King Henry IV._ Act V. Scene 3.] [49: A good many French officers, prisoners of war, had been living on parole in Melrose, and the adjoining villages; and Mr. and Mrs. Scott had been particularly kind and hospitable to them.] [50: The battle of Toulouse.] [51: Sir Adam Ferguson, who had been taken prisoner in the course of the Duke of Wellington's retreat from Burgos.] [52: The names which he particularly mentions are those of the late Matthew Weld Hartstonge, Esq., of Dublin, Theophilus Swift, Esq., Major Tickell, Thomas Steele, Esq., Leonard Macnally, Esq., and the Rev. M. Berwick.] [53: Entertaining one night a small party of friends, Erskine read the proof sheets of this volume after supper, and was confirmed in his opinion by the enthusiastic interest they excited in his highly intelligent circle. Mr. James Simpson and Mr. Norman Hill, advocates, were of this party, and from the way in which their host spoke, they both inferred that they were listening to the first effort of some unknown aspirant. They all pronounced the work one of the highest classical merit. The sitting was protracted till daybreak.--(1839.)] [54: Mr. Morritt had, in the spring of this year, been present at the first levee held at the Tuileries by Monsieur (afterwards Charles X.), as representative of his brother Louis XVIII. Mr. M. had not been in Paris till that time since 1789.] [55: [The old writing-desk, in which, while searching for some fishing-tackle for a guest, Scott found the long-lost manuscript, was given by him to William Laidlaw, who till his death cherished with religious care all his memorials of Abbotsford. The desk is now a treasured possession of his grandson, Mr. W. L. Carruthers, of Inverness.]] [56: _Count Borowlaski_ was a Polish dwarf, who, after realizing some money as an itinerant object of exhibition, settled, married, and died (September 5, 1837) at Durham. He was a well-bred creature, and much noticed by the clergy and other gentry of that city. Indeed, even when travelling the country as a show, he had always maintained a sort of dignity. I remember him as going from house to house, when I was a child, in a sedan chair, with a servant in livery following him, who took the fee--_M. le Comte_ himself (dressed in a scarlet coat and bag wig) being ushered into the room like any ordinary visitor. The Count died in his 99th year-- "A SPIRIT brave, yet gentle, has dwelt, as it appears, Within three feet of flesh for near one hundred years; Which causes wonder, like his constitution, strong, That one _so short alive_ should be _alive so long_!" _Bentley's Miscellany_ for November, 1837.] [57: _Othello_, Act III. Scene 3.] [58: Burns--lines _On my early days_.] CHAPTER XXVIII VOYAGE TO THE SHETLAND ISLES, ETC. -- SCOTT'S DIARY KEPT ON BOARD THE LIGHTHOUSE YACHT 1814 The gallant composure with which Scott, when he had dismissed a work from his desk, awaited the decision of the public--and the healthy elasticity of spirit with which he could meanwhile turn his whole zeal upon new or different objects--are among the features in his character which will always, I believe, strike the student of literary history as most remarkable. We have now seen him before the fate of Waverley had been determined--before he had heard a word about its reception in England, except from one partial confidant--preparing to start on a voyage to the northern isles, which was likely to occupy the best part of two months, and in the course of which he could hardly expect to receive any intelligence from his friends in Edinburgh. The Diary which he kept during this expedition is--thanks to the leisure of a landsman on board--a very full one; and, written without the least notion probably that it would ever be perused except in his own family circle, it affords such a complete and artless portraiture of the man, as he was in himself, and as he mingled with his friends and companions, at one of the most interesting periods of his life, that I am persuaded every reader will be pleased to see it printed in its original state. A few extracts from it were published by himself, in one of the Edinburgh Annual Registers--he also drew from it some of the notes to his Lord of the Isles, and the substance of several others for his romance of the Pirate. But the recurrence of these detached passages will not be complained of--expounded and illustrated as the reader will find them by the personal details of the context. [Illustration: WILLIAM ERSKINE (LORD KINNEDDER) _From the water-color portrait by William Nicholson_] I have been often told by one of the companions of this voyage, that heartily as Scott entered throughout into their social enjoyments, they all perceived him, when inspecting for the first time scenes of remarkable grandeur, to be in such an abstracted and excited mood, that they felt it would be the kindest and discreetest plan to leave him to himself. "I often," said Lord Kinnedder, "on coming up from the cabin at night, found him pacing the deck rapidly, muttering to himself--and went to the forecastle, lest my presence should disturb him. I remember, that at Loch Corriskin, in particular, he seemed quite overwhelmed with his feelings; and we all saw it, and retiring unnoticed, left him to roam and gaze about by himself, until it was time to muster the party and be gone." Scott used to mention the surprise with which he himself witnessed Erskine's emotion on first entering the Cave of Staffa. "Would you believe it?" he said--"my poor Willie sat down and wept like a woman!" Yet his own sensibilities, though betrayed in a more masculine and sterner guise, were perhaps as keen as well as deeper than his amiable friend's. The poet's Diary, contained in five little paper books, is as follows:-- VACATION, 1814. _Voyage in the Lighthouse Yacht to Nova Zembla, and the Lord knows where._ "_July 29, 1814_.--Sailed from Leith about one o'clock on board the Lighthouse Yacht, conveying six guns, and ten men, commanded by Mr. Wilson. The company: Commissioners of the Northern Lights, Robert Hamilton, Sheriff of Lanarkshire; William Erskine, Sheriff of Orkney and Zetland; Adam Duff, Sheriff of Forfarshire. Non-commissioners, Ipse Ego; Mr. David Marjoribanks, son to John Marjoribanks, Provost of Edinburgh, a young gentleman; Rev. Mr. Turnbull, minister of Tingwall, in the presbytery of Shetland. But the official chief of the expedition is Mr. Stevenson, the Surveyor-Viceroy over the Commissioners--a most gentlemanlike and modest man, and well known by his scientific skill.[59] "Reached the Isle of May in the evening; went ashore, and saw the light--an old tower, and much in the form of a border-keep, with a beacon-grate on the top. It is to be abolished for an oil revolving-light, the grate-fire only being ignited upon the leeward side when the wind is very high. _Quære_--Might not the grate revolve? The isle had once a cell or two upon it. The vestiges of the chapel are still visible. Mr. Stevenson proposed demolishing the old tower, and I recommended _ruining_ it _à la picturesque_--_i. e._, demolishing it partially. The island might be made a delightful residence for sea-bathers. "On board again in the evening: watched the progress of the ship round Fifeness, and the revolving motion of the now distant Bell-Rock light until the wind grew rough, and the landsmen sick. To bed at eleven, and slept sound. "_30th July_.--Waked at six by the steward; summoned to visit the Bell-Rock, where the beacon is well worthy attention. Its dimensions are well known; but no description can give the idea of this slight, solitary, round tower, trembling amid the billows, and fifteen miles from Arbroath, the nearest shore. The fitting up within is not only handsome, but elegant. All work of wood (almost) is wainscot; all hammer-work brass; in short, exquisitely fitted up. You enter by a ladder of rope, with wooden steps, about thirty feet from the bottom, where the mason-work ceases to be solid, and admits of round apartments. The lowest is a storehouse for the people's provisions, water, etc.; above that a storehouse for the lights, of oil, etc.; then the kitchen of the people, three in number; then their sleeping chamber; then the saloon or parlor, a neat little room; above all, the lighthouse; all communicating by oaken ladders, with brass rails, most handsomely and conveniently executed. Breakfasted in the parlor.[60] On board again at nine, and run down, through a rough sea, to Aberbrothock, vulgarly called Arbroath. All sick, even Mr. Stevenson. God grant this occur seldom! Landed and dined at Arbroath, where we were to take up Adam Duff. We visited the appointments of the lighthouse establishment--a handsome tower, with two wings. These contain the lodgings of the keepers of the light--very handsome, indeed, and very clean. They might be thought too handsome, were it not of consequence to give those men, entrusted with a duty so laborious and slavish, a consequence in the eyes of the public and in their own. The central part of the building forms a single tower, corresponding with the lighthouse. As the keepers' families live here, they are apprised each morning by a signal that _all is well_. If this signal be not made, a tender sails for the rock directly. I visited the abbey church for the third time, the first being--_eheu!_[61]--the second with T. Thomson. Dined at Arbroath, and came on board at night, where I made up this foolish journal, and now beg for wine and water. So the vessel is once more in motion. "_31st July_.--Waked at seven; vessel off Fowlsheugh and Dunnottar. Fair wind, and delightful day; glide enchantingly along the coast of Kincardineshire, and open the bay of Nigg about ten. At eleven, off Aberdeen; the gentlemen go ashore to Girdle-Ness, a projecting point of rock to the east of the harbor of Foot-Dee. There the magistrates of Aberdeen wish to have a fort and beacon-light. The Oscar, whaler, was lost here last year, with all her hands, excepting two; about forty perished. Dreadful, to be wrecked so near a large and populous town! The view of Old and New Aberdeen from the sea is quite beautiful. About noon proceed along the coast of Aberdeenshire, which, to the northwards, changes from a bold and rocky to a low and sandy character. Along the bay of Belhelvie, a whole parish was swallowed up by the shifting sands, and is still a desolate waste. It belonged to the Earls of Errol, and was rented at £500 a year at the time. When these sands are passed the land is all arable. Not a tree to be seen; nor a grazing cow, or sheep, or even a labor-horse at grass, though this be Sunday. The next remarkable object was a fragment of the old castle of Slains, on a precipitous bank, overlooking the sea. The fortress was destroyed when James VI. marched north [A. D. 1594], after the battle of Glenlivet, to reduce Huntly and Errol to obedience. The family then removed to their present mean habitation, for such it seems, a collection of low houses forming a quadrangle, one side of which is built on the very verge of the precipice that overhangs the ocean. What seems odd, there are no stairs down to the beach. Imprudence, or ill-fortune as fatal as the sands of Belhelvie, has swallowed up the estate of Errol, excepting this dreary mansion-house, and a farm or two adjoining. We took to the boat, and running along the coast had some delightful sea-views to the northward of the castle. The coast is here very rocky; but the rocks, being rather soft, are wasted and corroded by the constant action of the waves,--and the fragments which remain, where the softer parts have been washed away, assume the appearance of old Gothic ruins. There are open arches, towers, steeples, and so forth. One part of this scaur is called _Dunbuy_, being colored yellow by the dung of the sea-fowls, who build there in the most surprising numbers. We caught three young gulls. But the most curious object was the celebrated Buller of Buchan, a huge rocky cauldron, into which the sea rushes through a natural arch of rock. I walked round the top; in one place the path is only about two feet wide, and a monstrous precipice on either side. We then rowed into the cauldron or buller from beneath, and saw nothing around us but a regular wall of black rock, and nothing above but the blue sky. A fishing hamlet had sent out its inhabitants, who, gazing from the brink, looked like sylphs looking down upon gnomes. In the side of the cauldron opens a deep black cavern. Johnson says it might be a retreat from storms, which is nonsense. In a high gale the waves rush in with incredible violence. An old fisher said he had seen them flying over the natural wall of the buller, which cannot be less than 200 feet high. Same old man says Slains is now inhabited by a Mr. Bowles, who comes so far from the southward that naebody kens whare he comes frae. 'Was he frae the Indies?'--'Na; he did not think he came that road. He was far frae the southland. Naebody ever heard the name of the place; but he had brought more guid out o' Peterhead than a' the Lords he had seen in Slains, and he had seen three.' About half-past five we left this interesting spot, and after a hard pull reached the yacht. Weather falls hazy, and rather calm; but at sea we observe vessels enjoying more wind. Pass Peterhead, dimly distinguishing two steeples and a good many masts. Mormounthill said to resemble a coffin--a likeness of which we could not judge, Mormount being for the present invisible. Pass Rattray-Head: near this cape are dangerous shelves, called the Bridge of Rattray. Here the wreck of the Doris merchant vessel came on shore, lost last year with a number of passengers for Shetland. We lie off all night. "_1st August_.--Off Fraserburgh--a neat little town. Mr. Stevenson and the Commissioners go on shore to look at a light maintained there upon an old castle, on a cape called Kinnaird's Head. The morning being rainy, and no object of curiosity ashore, I remain on board, to make up my journal, and write home. "The old castle, now bearing the light, is a picturesque object from the sea. It was the baronial mansion of the Frasers, now Lords Saltoun--an old square tower with a minor fortification towards the landing-place on the sea-side. About eleven, the Commissioners came off, and we leave this town, the extreme point of the Moray Firth, to stretch for Shetland--salute the castle with three guns, and stretch out with a merry gale. See Mormount, a long flattish-topped hill near to the West Trouphead, and another bold cliff promontory projecting into the firth. Our gale soon failed, and we are now all but becalmed; songs, ballads, recitations, backgammon, and piquet, for the rest of the day. Noble sunset and moon rising; we are now out of sight of land. "_2d August_.--At sea in the mouth of the Moray Firth. This day almost a blank--light baffling airs, which do us very little good; most of the landsmen sick, more or less; piquet, backgammon, and chess, the only resources.--_P.M._ A breeze, and we begin to think we have passed the Fair Isle, lying between Shetland and Orkney, at which it was our intention to have touched. In short, like one of Sinbad's adventures, we have run on till neither captain nor pilot know exactly where we are. The breeze increases--weather may be called rough; worse and worse after we are in our berths, nothing but booming, trampling, and whizzing of waves about our ears, and ever and anon, as we fall asleep, our ribs come in contact with those of the vessel; hail Duff and the Udaller[62] in the after-cabin, but they are too sick to answer. Towards morning, calm (comparative), and a nap. "_3d August_.--At sea as before; no appearance of land; proposed that the Sheriff of Zetland do issue a _meditatione fugæ_ warrant against his territories, which seem to fly from us. Pass two whalers; speak the nearest, who had come out of Lerwick, which is about twenty miles distant; stand on with a fine breeze. About nine at night, with moonlight and strong twilight, we weather the point of Bard-head, and enter a channel about three quarters of a mile broad which forms the southern entrance to the harbor of Lerwick, where we cast anchor about half-past ten, and put Mr. Turnbull on shore. "_4th August_.--Harbor of Lerwick. Admire the excellence of this harbor of the metropolis of Shetland. It is a most beautiful place, screened on all sides from the wind by hills of a gentle elevation. The town, a fishing village built irregularly upon a hill ascending from the shore, has a picturesque appearance. On the left is Fort Charlotte, garrisoned of late by two companies of veterans. The Greenlandmen, of which nine fine vessels are lying in the harbor, add much to the liveliness of the scene. Mr. Duncan, Sheriff-substitute, came off to pay his respects to his principal; he is married to a daughter of my early acquaintance, Walter Scott of Scotshall. We go ashore. Lerwick, a poor-looking place, the streets flagged instead of being causewayed, for there are no wheel-carriages. The streets full of drunken riotous sailors from the whale-vessels. It seems these ships take about 1000 sailors from Zetland every year, and return them as they come back from the fishery. Each sailor may gain from £20 to £30, which is paid by the merchants of Lerwick, who have agencies from the owners of the whalers in England. The whole return may be between £25,000 and £30,000. These Zetlanders, as they get a part of this pay on landing, make a point of treating their English messmates, who get drunk of course, and are very riotous. The Zetlanders themselves do _not_ get drunk, but go straight home to their houses, and reserve their hilarity for the winter season, when they spend their wages in dancing and drinking. Erskine finds employment as Sheriff, for the neighborhood of the fort enables him to make _main forte_, and secure a number of the rioters. We visit F. Charlotte, which is a neat little fort mounting ten heavy guns to the sea, but only one to the land. Major F., the Governor, showed us the fort; it commands both entrances of the harbor: the north entrance is not very good, but the south capital. The water in the harbor is very deep, as frigates of the smaller class lie almost close to the shore. Take a walk with Captain M'Diarmid, a gentlemanlike and intelligent officer of the garrison; we visit a small fresh-water loch called _Cleik-him-in_; it borders on the sea, from which it is only divided by a sort of beach, apparently artificial: though the sea lashes the outside of this beach, the water of the lake is not brackish. In this lake are the remains of a Picts' castle, but ruinous. The people think the castle has not been built on a natural island, but on an artificial one formed by a heap of stones. These Duns or Picts' castles are so small, it is impossible to conceive what effectual purpose they could serve excepting a temporary refuge for the chief.--Leave _Cleik-him-in_, and proceed along the coast. The ground is dreadfully encumbered with stones; the patches which have been sown with oats and barley bear very good crops, but they are mere _patches_, the cattle and ponies feeding amongst them, and secured by tethers. The houses most wretched, worse than the worst herd's house I ever saw. It would be easy to form a good farm by enclosing the ground with Galloway dykes, which would answer the purpose of clearing it at the same time of stones; and as there is plenty of limeshell, marle, and alga-marina, manure could not be wanting. But there are several obstacles to improvement, chiefly the undivided state of the properties, which lie _run-rig_; then the claims of Lord Dundas, the lord of the country, and above all, perhaps, the state of the common people, who, dividing their attention between the fishery and the cultivation, are not much interested in the latter, and are often absent at the proper times of labor. Their ground is chiefly dug with the spade, and their ploughs are beyond description awkward. An odd custom prevails: any person, without exception (if I understand rightly), who wishes to raise a few kail, fixes upon any spot he pleases, encloses it with a dry stone wall, uses it as a kailyard till he works out the soil, then deserts it and makes another. Some dozen of these little enclosures, about twenty or thirty feet square, are in sight at once. They are called _planty-cruives_; and the Zetlanders are so far from reckoning this an invasion, or a favor on the part of the proprietor, that their most exaggerated description of an avaricious person is one who would refuse liberty for a _planty-cruive_; or to infer the greatest contempt of another, they will say, they would not hold a _planty-cruive_ of him. It is needless to notice how much this license must interfere with cultivation. "Leaving the _cultivated_ land, we turn more inland, and pass two or three small lakes. The muirs are mossy and sterile in the highest degree; the hills are clad with stunted heather, intermixed with huge great stones; much of an astringent root with a yellow flower, called _Tormentil_, used by the islanders in dressing leather in lieu of the oak bark. We climbed a hill, about three miles from Lerwick, to a cairn which presents a fine view of the indented coast of the island, and the distant isles of Mousa and others. Unfortunately the day is rather hazy--return by a circuitous route, through the same sterile country. These muirs are used as a commonty by the proprietors of the parishes in which they lie, and each, without any regard to the extent of his peculiar property, puts as much stock upon them as he chooses. The sheep are miserable looking, hairy-legged creatures, of all colors, even to sky-blue. I often wondered where Jacob got speckled lambs; I think now they must have been of the Shetland stock. In our return, pass the upper end of the little lake of _Cleik-him-in_, which is divided by a rude causeway from another small loch, communicating with it, however, by a sluice, for the purpose of driving a mill. But such a mill! The wheel is horizontal, with the cogs turned diagonally to the water; the beam stands upright, and is inserted in a stone-quern of the old-fashioned construction. This simple machine is enclosed in a hovel about the size of a pig-sty--and there is the mill![63] There are about 500 such mills in Shetland, each incapable of grinding more than a sack at a time. "I cannot get a distinct account of the nature of the land rights. The Udal proprietors have ceased to exist, yet proper feudal tenures seem ill understood. Districts of ground are in many instances understood to belong to Townships or Communities, possessing what may be arable by patches, and what is muir as a commonty, _pro indiviso_. But then individuals of such a Township often take it upon them to grant feus of particular parts of the property thus possessed _pro indiviso_. The town of Lerwick is built upon a part of the commonty of Sound, the proprietors of the houses having feu-rights from different heritors of that Township, but why from one rather than another, or how even the whole Township combining (which has not yet been attempted) could grant such a right upon principle, seems altogether uncertain. In the mean time the chief stress is laid upon occupance. I should have supposed, upon principle that Lord Dundas, as superior, possessed the _dominium eminens_, and ought to be resorted to as the source of land rights. But it is not so. It has been found that the heritors of each Township hold directly of the Crown, only paying the _Scat_, or Norwegian land-tax, and other duties to his lordship, used and wont. Besides, he has what are called property lands in every Township, or in most, which he lets to his tenants. Lord Dundas is now trying to introduce the system of leases and a better kind of agriculture.[64] Return home and dine at Sinclair's, a decent inn--Captain M'Diarmid and other gentlemen dine with us.--Sleep at the inn on a straw couch. "_5th August 1814_.--Hazy disagreeable morning;--Erskine trying the rioters--notwithstanding which, a great deal of rioting still in the town. The Greenlanders, however, only quarrelled among themselves, and the Zetland sailors seemed to exert themselves in keeping peace. They are, like all the other Zetlanders I have seen, a strong, clear-complexioned, handsome race, and the women are very pretty. The females are rather slavishly employed, however, and I saw more than one carrying home the heavy sea-chests of their husbands, brothers, or lovers, discharged from on board the Greenlanders. The Zetlanders are, however, so far provident, that when they enter the navy they make liberal allowance of their pay for their wives and families. Not less than £15,000 a year has been lately paid by the Admiralty on this account; yet this influx of money, with that from the Greenland fishery, seems rather to give the means of procuring useless indulgences than of augmenting the stock of productive labor. Mr. Collector Ross tells me that from the King's books it appears that the quantity of spirits, tea, coffee, tobacco, snuff, and sugar, imported annually into Lerwick for the consumption of Zetland, averages at sale price, £20,000 yearly, at the least. Now the inhabitants of Zetland, men, women, and children, do not exceed 22,000 in all, and the proportion of foreign luxuries seems monstrous, unless we allow for the habits contracted by the seamen in their foreign trips. Tea, in particular, is used by all ranks, and porridge quite exploded. "We parade Lerwick. The most remarkable thing is, that the main street being flagged, and all the others very narrow lanes descending the hill by steps, anything like a cart, of the most ordinary and rude construction, seems not only out of question when the town was built, but in its present state quite excluded. A road of five miles in length, on the line between Lerwick and Scalloway, has been already made--upon a very awkward and expensive plan, and ill-lined as may be supposed. But it is proposed to extend this road by degrees: carts will then be introduced, and by crossing the breed of their ponies judiciously, they will have Galloways to draw them. The streets of Lerwick (as one blunder perpetrates another) will then be a bar to improvement, for till the present houses are greatly altered, no cart can approach the quay. In the garden of Captain Nicolson, R. N., which is rather in a flourishing state, he has tried various trees, almost all of which have died except the willow. But the plants seem to me to be injured in their passage; seeds would perhaps do better. We are visited by several of the notables of the island, particularly Mr. Mowat, a considerable proprietor, who claims acquaintance with me as the friend of my father, and remembers me as a boy. The day clearing up, Duff and I walk with this good old gentleman to _Cleik-him-in_, and with some trouble drag a boat off the beach into the fresh-water loch, and go to visit the Picts' castle. It is of considerable size, and consists of three circular walls of huge natural stones admirably combined without cement. The outer circuit seems to have been simply a bounding wall or bulwark; the second or interior defence contains lodgments such as I shall describe. This inner circuit is surrounded by a wall of about sixteen or eighteen feet thick, composed, as I said, of huge massive stones placed in layers with great art, but without mortar or cement. The wall is not perpendicular, but the circle lessens gradually towards the top, as an old-fashioned pigeon-house. Up the interior of this wall there proceeds a circular winding gallery ascending in the form of an inclined plane, so as to gain the top by circling round like a corkscrew within the walls. This is enlightened by little apertures (about two feet by three) into the inside, and also, it is said, by small slits--of which I saw none. It is said there are marks of galleries within the circuit, running parallel to the horizon; these I saw no remains of; and the interior gallery, with its apertures, is so extremely low and narrow, being only about three feet square, that it is difficult to conceive how it could serve the purpose of communication. At any rate, the size fully justifies the tradition prevalent here as well as in the south of Scotland, that the Picts were a diminutive race. More of this when we see the more perfect specimen of a Pict castle in Mousa, which we resolve to examine, if it be possible. Certainly I am deeply curious to see what must be one of the most ancient houses in the world, built by a people who, while they seem to have bestowed much pains on their habitations, knew neither the art of cement, of arches, or of stairs. The situation is wild, dreary, and impressive. On the land side are huge sheets and fragments of rocks, interspersed with a stinted vegetation of grass and heath, which bears no proportion to the rocks and stones. From the top of his tower the Pictish Monarch might look out upon a stormy sea, washing a succession of rocky capes, reaches, and headlands, and immediately around him was the deep fresh-water loch on which his fortress was constructed. It communicates with the land by a sort of causeway, formed, like the artificial islet itself, by heaping together stones till the pile reached the surface of the water. This is usually passable, but at present overflooded.--Return and dine with Mr. Duncan, Sheriff-substitute--are introduced to Dr. Edmonstone, author of a History of Shetland, who proposes to accompany us to-morrow to see the Cradle of Noss. I should have mentioned that Mr. Stevenson sailed this morning with the yacht to survey some isles to the northward; he returns on Saturday, it is hoped. "_6th August._--Hire a six-oared boat, whaler-built, with a taper point at each end, so that the rudder can be hooked on either at pleasure. These vessels look very frail, but are admirably adapted to the stormy seas, where they live when a ship's boat stiffly and compactly built must necessarily perish. They owe this to their elasticity and lightness. Some of the rowers wear a sort of coats of dressed sheep leather, sewed together with thongs. We sailed out at the southern inlet of the harbor, rounding successively the capes of the Hammer, Kirkubus, the Ving, and others, consisting of bold cliffs, hollowed into caverns, or divided into pillars and arches of fantastic appearance, by the constant action of the waves. As we passed the most northerly of these capes, called, I think, the Ord, and turned into the open sea, the scenes became yet more tremendously sublime. Rocks upwards of three or four hundred feet in height presented themselves in gigantic succession, sinking perpendicularly into the main, which is very deep even within a few fathoms of their base. One of these capes is called the Bard-head; a huge projecting arch is named the Giant's Leg. 'Here the lone sea-bird wakes its wildest cry.'[65] Not lone, however, in one sense, for their numbers and the variety of their tribes are immense, though I think they do not quite equal those of Dunbuy, on the coast of Buchan. Standing across a little bay, we reached the Isle of Noss, having hitherto coasted the shore of Bressay. Here we see a detached and precipitous rock, or island, being a portion rent by a narrow sound from the rest of the cliff, and called the Holm. This detached rock is wholly inaccessible, unless by a pass of peril, entitled the Cradle of Noss, which is a sort of wooden chair, travelling from precipice to precipice on rings, which run upon two cables stretched across over the gulf. We viewed this extraordinary contrivance from beneath, at the distance of perhaps one hundred fathoms at least. The boatmen made light of the risk of crossing it, but it must be tremendous to a brain disposed to be giddy. Seen from beneath, a man in the basket would resemble a large crow or raven floating between rock and rock. The purpose of this strange contrivance is to give the tenant the benefit of putting a few sheep upon the Holm, the top of which is level, and affords good pasture. The animals are transported in the cradle by one at a time, a shepherd holding them upon his knees. The channel between the Holm and the isle is passable by boats in calm weather, but not at the time when we saw it. Rowing on through a heavy tide, and nearer the breakers than any but Zetlanders would have ventured, we rounded another immensely high cape, called by the islanders the Noup of Noss, but by sailors Hang-cliff, from its having a projecting appearance. This was the highest rock we had yet seen, though not quite perpendicular. Its height has never been measured: I should judge it exceeds 600 feet; it has been conjectured to measure 800 and upwards. Our steersman had often descended this precipitous rock, having only the occasional assistance of a rope, one end of which he secured from time to time round some projecting cliff. The collecting sea-fowl for their feathers was the object, and he might gain five or six dozen, worth eight or ten shillings, by such an adventure. These huge precipices abound with caverns, many of which run much farther into the rock than any one has ventured to explore. We entered (with much hazard to our boat) one called the Orkney-man's Harbor, because an Orkney vessel run in there some years since to escape a French privateer. The entrance was lofty enough to admit us without striking the mast, but a sudden turn in the direction of the cave would have consigned us to utter darkness if we had gone in farther. The dropping of the sea-fowl and cormorants into the water from the sides of the cavern, when disturbed by our approach, had something in it wild and terrible. "After passing the Noup, the precipices become lower, and sink into a rocky shore with deep indentations, called by the natives, _Gios_. Here we would fain have landed to visit the Cradle from the top of the cliff, but the surf rendered it impossible. We therefore rowed on like Thalaba, in 'Allah's name,' around the Isle of Noss, and landed upon the opposite side of the small sound which divides it from Bressay. Noss exactly resembles in shape Salisbury crags, supposing the sea to flow down the valley called the Hunter's bog, and round the foot of the precipice. The eastern part of the isle is fine smooth pasture, the best I have seen in these isles, sloping upwards to the verge of the tremendous rocks which form its western front. "As we are to dine at Gardie-House (the seat of young Mr. Mowat), on the Isle of Bressay, Duff and I--who went together on this occasion--resolve to walk across the island, about three miles, being by this time thoroughly wet. Bressay is a black and heathy isle, full of little lochs and bogs. Through storm and shade, and dense and dry, we find our way to Gardie, and have then to encounter the sublunary difficulties of wanting the keys of our portmanteaus, etc., the servants having absconded to see the Cradle. These being overcome, we are most hospitably treated at Gardie. Young Mr. Mowat, son of my old friend, is an improver, and a _moderate_ one. He has got a ploughman from Scotland, who acts as _grieve_, but as yet with the prejudices and inconveniences which usually attach themselves to the most salutary experiments. The ploughman complains that the Zetlanders work as if a spade or hoe burned their fingers, and that though they only get a shilling a day, yet the labor of three of them does not exceed what one good hand in Berwickshire would do for 2_s._ 6_d._ The islanders retort that a man can do no more than he can; that they are not used to be taxed to their work so severely; that they will work as their fathers did, and not otherwise; and at first the landlord found difficulty in getting hands to work under his Caledonian task-master. Besides, they find fault with his _ho_, and _gee_, and _wo_, when ploughing. 'He speaks to the horse,' they say, 'and they gang--and there's something no canny about the man.' In short, between the prejudices of laziness and superstition, the ploughman leads a sorry life of it;--yet these prejudices are daily abating, under the steady and indulgent management of the proprietor. Indeed, nowhere is improvement in agriculture more necessary. An old-fashioned Zetland plough is a real curiosity. It had but one handle, or stilt, and a coulter, but no sock; it ripped the furrow, therefore, but did not throw it aside. When this precious machine was in motion, it was dragged by four little bullocks yoked abreast, and as many ponies harnessed, or rather strung, to the plough by ropes and thongs of rawhide. One man went before, walking backward, with his face to the bullocks, and pulling them forward by main strength. Another held down the plough by its single handle, and made a sort of slit in the earth, which two women, who closed the procession, converted into a furrow, by throwing the earth aside with shovels. An antiquary might be of opinion that this was the very model of the original plough invented by Triptolemus; and it is but justice to Zetland to say, that these relics of ancient agricultural art will soon have all the interest attached to rarity. We could only hear of one of these ploughs within three miles of Lerwick. "This and many other barbarous habits to which the Zetlanders were formerly wedded seem only to have subsisted because their amphibious character of fishers and farmers induced them to neglect agricultural arts. A Zetland farmer looks to the sea to pay his rent; if the land finds him a little meal and kail, and (if he be a very clever fellow) a few potatoes, it is very well. The more intelligent part of the landholders are sensible of all this, but argue like men of good sense and humanity on the subject. To have good farming, you must have a considerable farm, upon which capital may be laid out to advantage. But to introduce this change suddenly would turn adrift perhaps twenty families, who now occupy small farms _pro indiviso_, cultivating by patches, or _rundale_ and _runrig_, what part of the property is arable, and stocking the pasture as a common upon which each family turns out such stock as they can rear, without observing any proportion as to the number which it can support. In this way many townships, as they are called, subsist indeed, but in a precarious and indigent manner. Fishing villages seem the natural resource for this excess of population; but, besides the expense of erecting them, the habits of the people are to be considered, who, with 'one foot on land and one on sea,' would be with equal reluctance confined to either element. The remedy seems to be, that the larger proprietors should gradually set the example of better cultivation, and introduce better implements. They will, by degrees, be imitated by the inferior proprietors, and by their tenants; and, as turnips and hay crops become more general, a better and heavier class of stock will naturally be introduced. "The sheep in particular might be improved into a valuable stock, and would no doubt thrive, since the winters are very temperate. But I should be sorry that extensive pasture farms were introduced, as it would tend to diminish a population invaluable for the supply of our navy. The improvement of the arable land, on the contrary, would soon set them beyond the terrors of famine with which the islanders are at present occasionally visited; and, combined with fisheries, carried on not by farmers, but by real fishers, would amply supply the inhabitants, without diminishing the export of dried fish. This separation of trades will in time take place, and then the prosperous days of Zetland will begin. The proprietors are already upon the alert, studying the means of gradual improvement, and no humane person would wish them to drive it on too rapidly, to the distress and perhaps destruction of the numerous tenants who have been bred under a different system. "I have gleaned something of the peculiar superstitions of the Zetlanders, which are numerous and potent. Witches, fairies, etc., are as numerous as ever they were in Teviotdale. The latter are called _Trows_, probably from the Norwegian _Dwärg_ (or _dwarf_) the D being readily converted into T. The dwarfs are the prime agents in the machinery of Norwegian superstition. The _trows_ do not differ from the fairies of the Lowlands, or _Sighean_ of the Highlanders. They steal children, dwell within the interior of green hills, and often carry mortals into their recesses. Some, yet alive, pretend to have been carried off in this way, and obtain credit for the marvels they tell of the subterranean habitations of the trows. Sometimes, when a person becomes melancholy and low-spirited, the trows are supposed to have stolen the real being, and left a moving phantom to represent him. Sometimes they are said to steal only the heart--like Lancashire witches. There are cures in each case. The party's friends resort to a cunning man or woman, who hangs about the neck a triangular stone in the shape of a heart, or conjures back the lost individual, by retiring to the hills and employing the necessary spells. A common receipt, when a child appears consumptive and puny, is that the conjurer places a bowl of water on the patient's head, and pours melted lead into it through the wards of a key. The metal assumes of course a variety of shapes, from which he selects a portion, after due consideration, which is sewn into the shirt of the patient. Sometimes no part of the lead suits the seer's fancy. Then the operation is recommenced, until he obtains a fragment of such a configuration as suits his mystical purpose. Mr. Duncan told us he had been treated in this way when a boy. "A worse and most horrid opinion prevails, or did prevail, among the fishers--namely, that he who saves a drowning man will receive at his hands some deep wrong or injury. Several instances were quoted to-day in company, in which the utmost violence had been found necessary to compel the fishers to violate this inhuman prejudice. It is conjectured to have arisen as an apology for rendering no assistance to the mariners as they escaped from a shipwrecked vessel, for these isles are infamous for plundering wrecks. A story is told of the crew of a stranded vessel who were warping themselves ashore by means of a hawser which they had fixed to the land. The islanders (of Unst, as I believe) watched their motions in silence, till an old man reminded them that if they suffered these sailors to come ashore, they would consume all their winter stock of provisions. A Zetlander cut the hawser, and the poor wretches, twenty in number, were all swept away. This is a tale of former times--the cruelty would not now be _active_; but I fear that even yet the drowning mariner would in some places receive no assistance in his exertions, and certainly he would in most be plundered to the skin upon his landing. The gentlemen do their utmost to prevent this infamous practice. It may seem strange that the natives should be so little affected by a distress to which they are themselves so constantly exposed. But habitual exposure to danger hardens the heart against its consequences, whether to ourselves or others. There is yet living a man--if he can be called so--to whom the following story belongs: He was engaged in catching sea-fowl upon one of the cliffs, with his father and brother. All three were suspended by a cord, according to custom, and overhanging the ocean, at the height of some hundred feet. This man being uppermost on the cord, observed that it was giving way, as unable to support their united weight. He called out to his brother who was next to him--'Cut away a nail below, Willie,' meaning he should cut the rope beneath, and let his father drop. Willie refused, and bid him cut himself, if he pleased. He did so, and his brother and father were precipitated into the sea. He never thought of concealing or denying the adventure in all its parts. We left Gardie-House late; being on the side of the Isle of Bressay, opposite to Lerwick, we were soon rowed across the bay. A laugh with Hamilton,[66] whose gout keeps him stationary at Lerwick, but whose good-humor defies gout and every other provocation, concludes the evening. "_7th August, 1814._--Being Sunday, Duff, Erskine, and I rode to Tingwall upon Zetland ponies, to breakfast with our friend Parson Turnbull, who had come over in our yacht. An ill-conducted and worse-made road served us four miles on our journey. This _Via Flaminia_ of Thule terminates, like its prototype, in a bog. It is, however, the only road in these isles, except about half a mile made by Mr. Turnbull. The land in the interior much resembles the Peel-heights, near Ashestiel; but, as you approach the other side of the island, becomes better. Tingwall is rather a fertile valley, up which winds a loch of about two miles in length. The kirk and manse stand at the head of the loch, and command a view down the valley to another lake beyond the first, and thence over another reach of land, to the ocean, indented by capes and studded with isles; among which, that of St. Ninian's, abruptly divided from the mainland by a deep chasm, is the most conspicuous. Mr. Turnbull is a Jedburgh man by birth, but a Zetlander by settlement and inclination. I have reason to be proud of my countryman; he is doing his best, with great patience and judgment, to set a good example both in temporals and spirituals, and is generally beloved and respected among all classes. His glebe is in far the best order of any ground I have seen in Zetland. It is enclosed chiefly with dry-stone, instead of the useless turf-dykes; and he has sown grass, and has a hay-stack, and a second crop of clover, and may claim well-dressed fields of potatoes, barley, and oats. The people around him are obviously affected by his example. He gave us an excellent discourse and remarkably good prayers, which are seldom the excellence of the Presbyterian worship.[67] The congregation were numerous, decent, clean, and well-dressed. The men have all the air of seamen, and are a good-looking hardy race. Some of the old fellows had got faces much resembling Tritons; if they had had conchs to blow, it would have completed them. After church, ride down the loch to Scalloway--the country wild but pleasant, with sloping hills of good pasturage, and patches of cultivation on the lower ground. Pass a huge standing stone or pillar. Here, it is said, the son of an old Earl of the Orkneys met his fate. He had rebelled against his father, and fortified himself in Zetland. The Earl sent a party to dislodge him, who, not caring to proceed to violence against his person, failed in the attempt. The Earl then sent a stronger force, with orders to take him dead or alive. The young Absalom's castle was stormed--he himself fled across the loch, and was overtaken and slain at this pillar. The Earl afterwards executed the perpetrators of this slaughter, though they had only fulfilled his own mandate. "We reach Scalloway, and visit the ruins of an old castle, composed of a double tower or keep, with turrets at the corners. It is the principal, if not the only ruin of Gothic times in Zetland, and is of very recent date, being built in 1600. It was built by Patrick Stewart, Earl of Orkney, afterwards deservedly executed at Edinburgh for many acts of tyranny and oppression. It was this rapacious lord who imposed many of those heavy duties still levied from the Zetlanders by Lord Dundas. The exactions by which he accomplished this erection were represented as grievous. He was so dreaded that upon his trial one Zetland witness refused to say a word till he was assured that there was no chance of the Earl returning to Scalloway. Over the entrance of the castle are his arms, much defaced, with the unicorns of Scotland for supporters, the assumption of which was one of the articles of indictment. There is a Scriptural inscription also above the door, in Latin, now much defaced:-- 'PATRICIUS ORCHADIÆ ET ZETLANDIÆ COMES. A. D. 1600. CUJUS FUNDAMEN SAXUM EST, DOMUS ILLA MANEBIT STABILIS: E CONTRA, SI SIT ARENA, PERIT.' "This is said to have been furnished to Earl Patrick by a Presbyterian divine, who slyly couched under it an allusion to the evil practices by which the Earl had established his power. He perhaps trusted that the language might disguise the import from the Earl.[68] If so, the Scottish nobility are improved in literature, for the Duke of Gordon pointed out an error in the Latinity. "Scalloway has a beautiful and very safe harbor, but as it is somewhat difficult of access, from a complication of small islands, it is inferior to Lerwick. Hence, though still nominally the capital of Zetland, for all edictal citations are made at Scalloway, it has sunk into a small fishing hamlet. The Norwegians made their original settlement in this parish of Tingwall. At the head of this loch, and just below the manse, is a small round islet accessible by stepping-stones, where they held their courts; hence the islet is called Law-ting--Ting, or Thing, answering to our word business, exactly like the Latin _negotium_. It seems odd that in Dumfries-shire, and even in the Isle of Man, where the race and laws were surely Celtic, we have this Gothic word Ting and Tingwald applied in the same way. We dined with Mr. Scott of Scalloway, who, like several families of this name in Shetland, is derived from the house of Scotstarvet. They are very clannish, marry much among themselves, and are proud of their descent. Two young ladies, daughters of Mr. Scott's, dined with us--they were both Mrs. Scotts, having married brothers--the husband of one was lost in the unfortunate Doris. They were pleasant, intelligent women, and exceedingly obliging. Old Mr. Scott seems a good country gentleman. He is negotiating an exchange with Lord Dundas, which will give him the Castle of Scalloway and two or three neighboring islands: the rest of the archipelago (seven, I think, in number) are already his own. He will thus have command of the whole fishing and harbor, for which he parts with an estate of more immediate value, lying on the other side of the mainland. I found my name made me very popular in this family, and there were many inquiries after the state of the Buccleuch family, in which they seemed to take much interest. I found them possessed of the remarkable circumstances attending the late projected sale of Ancrum, and the death of Sir John Scott, and thought it strange that, settled for three generations in a country so distant, they should still take an interest in those matters. I was loaded with shells and little curiosities for my young people. "There was a report (January was two years) of a kraken or some monstrous fish being seen off Scalloway. The object was visible for a fortnight, but nobody dared approach it, although I should have thought the Zetlanders would not have feared the devil if he came by water. They pretended that the suction, when they came within a certain distance, was so great as to endanger their boats. The object was described as resembling a vessel with her keel turned upmost in the sea, or a small ridge of rock or island. Mr. Scott thinks it might have been a vessel overset, or a large whale: if the latter, it seems odd they should not have known it, as whales are the intimate acquaintances of all Zetland sailors. Whatever it was it disappeared after a heavy gale of wind, which seems to favor the idea that it was the wreck of a vessel. Mr. Scott seems to think Pontopiddan's narrations and descriptions are much more accurate than we inland men suppose; and I find most Zetlanders of the same opinion. Mr. Turnbull, who is not credulous upon these subjects, tells me that this year a parishioner of his, a well-informed and veracious person, saw an animal, which, if his description was correct, must have been of the species of sea-snake, driven ashore on one of the Orkneys two or three years ago. It was very long, and seemed about the thickness of a Norway log, and swam on the top of the waves, occasionally lifting and bending its head. Mr. T. says he has no doubt of the veracity of the narrator, but still thinks it possible it may have been a mere log, or beam of wood, and that the spectator may have been deceived by the motion of the waves, joined to the force of imagination. This for the Duke of Buccleuch. "At Scalloway my curiosity was gratified by an account of the sword-dance, now almost lost, but still practised in the Island of Papa, belonging to Mr. Scott. There are eight performers, seven of whom represent the Seven Champions of Christendom, who enter one by one with their swords drawn, and are presented to the eighth personage, who is not named. Some rude couplets are spoken (in _English_, not _Norse_), containing a sort of panegyric upon each champion as he is presented. They then dance a sort of cotillion, as the ladies described it, going through a number of evolutions with their swords. One of my three Mrs. Scotts readily promised to procure me the lines, the rhymes, and the form of the dance. I regret much that young Mr. Scott was absent during this visit; he is described as a reader and an enthusiast in poetry. Probably I might have interested him in preserving the dance, by causing young persons to learn it. A few years since, a party of Papa-men came to dance the sword-dance at Lerwick as a public exhibition with great applause. The warlike dances of the northern people, of which I conceive this to be the only remnant in the British dominions,[69] are repeatedly alluded to by their poets and historians. The introduction of the Seven Champions savors of a later period, and was probably ingrafted upon the dance when _mysteries_ and _moralities_ (the first scenic representations) came into fashion. In a stall pamphlet, called the history of Buckshaven, it is said those fishers sprung from Danes, and brought with them their _war-dance_ or _sword-dance_, and a rude wooden cut of it is given. We resist the hospitality of our entertainers, and return to Lerwick despite a most downright fall of rain. My pony stumbles coming down hill; saddle sways round, having but one girth and that too long, and lays me on my back. _N. B._ The bogs in Zetland as soft as those in Liddesdale. Get to Lerwick about ten at night. No yacht has appeared. "_8th August._--No yacht, and a rainy morning; bring up my journal. Day clears up, and we go to pay our farewell visits of thanks to the hospitable Lerwegians, and at the Fort. Visit kind old Mr. Mowat, and walk with him and Collector Ross to the point of Quaggers, or Twaggers, which forms one arm of the southern entrance to the sound of Bressay. From the eminence a delightful sea view, with several of those narrow capes and deep reaches or inlets of the sea, which indent the shores of that land. On the right hand a narrow bay, bounded by the isthmus of Sound, with a house upon it resembling an old castle. In the indenture of the bay, and divided from the sea by a slight causeway, the lake of _Cleik-him-in_, with its Pictish castle. Beyond this the bay opens another yet; and, behind all, a succession of capes, headlands, and islands, as far as the cape called Sumburgh-head, which is the furthest point of Zetland in that direction. Inland, craggy, and sable muirs, with cairns, among which we distinguish the Wart or Ward of Wick, to which we walked on the 4th. On the left the island of Bressay, with its peaked hill called the Wart of Bressay. Over Bressay see the top of Hang-cliff. Admire the Bay of Lerwick, with its shipping, widening out to the northwards, and then again contracted into a narrow sound, through which the infamous Bothwell was pursued by Kirkaldy of Grange, until he escaped through the dexterity of his pilot, who sailed close along a sunken rock, upon which Kirkaldy, keeping the weather-gage, struck, and sustained damage. The rock is visible at low water, and is still called the Unicorn, from the name of Kirkaldy's vessel. Admire Mr. Mowat's little farm, of about thirty acres, bought about twenty years since for £75, and redeemed from the miserable state of the surrounding country, so that it now bears excellent corn; here also was a hay crop. With Mr. Turnbull's it makes two. Visit Mr. Ross, collector of the customs, who presents me with the most superb collection of the stone axes (or adzes, or whatever they are), called _celts_. The Zetlanders call them _thunder-bolts_, and keep them in their houses as a receipt against thunder; but the Collector has succeeded in obtaining several. We are now to dress for dinner with the Notables of Lerwick, who give us an entertainment in their Town-hall. Oho! "Just as we were going to dinner, the yacht appeared, and Mr. Stevenson landed. He gives a most favorable account of the isles to the northward, particularly Unst. I believe Lerwick is the worst part of Shetland. Are hospitably received and entertained by the Lerwick gentlemen. They are a quick, intelligent race--chiefly of Scottish birth, as appears from their names, Mowat, Gifford, Scott, and so forth. These are the chief proprietors. The Norwegian or Danish surnames, though of course the more ancient, belong, with some exceptions, to the lower ranks. The Veteran Corps expects to be disbanded, and the officers and Lerwegians seem to part with regret. Some of the officers talk of settling here. The price of everything is moderate, and the style of living unexpensive. Against these conveniences are to be placed a total separation from public life, news, and literature; and a variable and inhospitable climate. Lerwick will suffer most severely if the Fort is not occupied by some force or other; for, between whiskey and frolic, the Greenland sailors will certainly burn the little town. We have seen a good deal, and heard much more, of the pranks of these unruly guests. A gentleman of Lerwick, who had company to dine with him, observed beneath his window a party of sailors eating a leg of roast mutton, which he witnessed with philanthropic satisfaction, till he received the melancholy information, that that individual leg of mutton, being the very sheet-anchor of his own entertainment, had been violently carried off from his kitchen, spit and all, by these honest gentlemen, who were now devouring it. Two others, having carried off a sheep, were apprehended, and brought before a Justice of the Peace, who questioned them respecting the fact. The first denied he had taken the sheep, but said he had seen it taken away by a fellow with a red nose and a black wig (this was the Justice's description). 'Don't you think he was like his honor, Tom?' he added, appealing to his comrade. 'By G--, Jack,' answered Tom, 'I believe it was the very man!' Erskine has been busy with these facetious gentlemen, and has sent several to prison, but nothing could have been done without the soldiery. We leave Lerwick at eight o'clock, and sleep on board the yacht. "_9th August, 1814._--Waked at seven, and find the vessel has left Lerwick harbor, and is on the point of entering the sound which divides the small island of Mousa (or Queen's Island) from Coningsburgh, a very wild part of the main island so called. Went ashore, and see the very ancient castle of Mousa, which stands close on the seashore. It is a Pictish fortress, the most entire probably in the world. In form it resembles a dice-box, for the truncated cone is continued only to a certain height, after which it begins to rise perpendicularly, or rather with a tendency to expand outwards. The building is round, and has been surrounded with an outer-wall, of which hardly the slightest vestiges now remain. It is composed of a layer of stones, without cement; they are not of large size, but rather small and thin. To give a vulgar comparison, it resembles an old ruinous pigeon-house. Mr. Stevenson took the dimensions of this curious fort, which are as follows: Outside diameter at the base is fifty-two feet; at the top thirty-eight feet. The diameter of the interior at the base is nineteen feet six inches; at the top twenty-one feet; the curve in the inside being the reverse of the outside, or nearly so. The thickness of the walls at the base seventeen feet; at the top eight feet six inches. The height outside forty-two feet; the inside thirty-four feet. The door or entrance faces the sea, and the interior is partly filled with rubbish. When you enter you see, in the inner wall, a succession of small openings like windows, directly one above another, with broad flat stones, serving for lintels; these are about nine inches thick. The whole resembles a ladder. There were four of these perpendicular rows of windows or apertures, the situation of which corresponds with the cardinal points of the compass. You enter the galleries contained in the thickness of the wall by two of these apertures, which have been broken down. These interior spaces are of two descriptions: one consists of a winding ascent, not quite an inclined plane, yet not by any means a regular stair; but the edges of the stones, being suffered to project irregularly, serve for rude steps--or a kind of assistance. Through this narrow staircase, which winds round the building, you creep up to the top of the castle, which is partly ruinous. But besides the staircase, there branch off at irregular intervals horizontal galleries, which go round the whole building, and receive air from the holes I formerly mentioned. These apertures vary in size, diminishing as they run, from about thirty inches in width by eighteen in height, till they are only about a foot square. The lower galleries are full man height, but narrow. They diminish both in height and width as they ascend, and as the thickness of the wall in which they are enclosed diminishes. The uppermost gallery is so narrow and low, that it was with great difficulty I crept through it. The walls are built very irregularly, the sweep of the cone being different on the different sides. "It is said by Torfæus that this fort was repaired and strengthened by Erlind, who, having forcibly carried off the mother of Harold, Earl of the Orkneys, resolved to defend himself to extremity in this place against the insulted Earl. How a castle could be defended which had no opening to the outside for shooting arrows, and which was of a capacity to be pulled to pieces by the assailants, who could advance without annoyance to the bottom of the wall (unless it were battlemented upon the top), does not easily appear. But to Erlind's operations the castle of Mousa possibly owes the upper and perpendicular, or rather overhanging, part of its elevation, and also its rude staircase. In these two particulars it seems to differ from all other Picts' castles, which are ascended by an inclined plane, and generally, I believe, terminate in a truncated cone, without that strange counterpart of the perpendicular or projecting part of the upper wall. Opposite to the castle of Mousa are the ruins of another Pictish fort: indeed, they all communicate with each other through the isles. The island of Mousa is the property of a Mr. Piper, who has improved it considerably, and values his castle. I advised him to clear out the interior, as he tells us there are three or four galleries beneath those now accessible, and the difference of height between the exterior and interior warrants his assertion. "We get on board, and in time, for the wind freshens, and becomes contrary. We beat down to Sumburgh-head, through rough weather. This is the extreme south-eastern point of Zetland; and as the Atlantic and German oceans unite at this point, a frightful tide runs here, called Sumburgh-rost. The breeze, contending with the tide, flings the breakers in great style upon the high broken cliffs of Sumburgh-head. They are all one white foam, ascending to a great height. We wished to double this point, and lie by in a bay between that and the northern or north-western cape, called Fitful-head, and which seems higher than Sumburgh itself--and tacked repeatedly with this view; but a confounded islet, called _The Horse_, always baffled us, and, after three heats, fairly distanced us. So we run into a roadstead, called Quendal Bay, on the south-eastern side, and there anchor for the night. We go ashore with various purposes,--Stevenson to see the site of a proposed lighthouse on this tremendous cape--Marjoribanks to shoot rabbits--and Duff and I to look about us. "I ascended the head by myself, which is lofty, and commands a wild sea-view. Zetland stretches away, with all its projecting capes and inlets, to the north-eastward. Many of those inlets approach each other very nearly; indeed, the two opposite bays at Sumburgh-head seem on the point of joining, and rendering that cape an island. The two creeks from those east and western seas are only divided by a low isthmus of blowing sand, and similar to that which wastes part of the east coast of Scotland. It has here blown like the deserts of Arabia, and destroyed some houses, formerly the occasional residences of the Earls of Orkney. The steep and rocky side of the cape, which faces the west, does not seem much more durable. These lofty cliffs are all of sand-flag, a very loose and perishable kind of rock, which slides down in immense masses, like avalanches, after every storm. The rest lies so loose, that, on the very brow of the loftiest crag, I had no difficulty in sending down a fragment as large as myself: he thundered down in tremendous style, but splitting upon a projecting cliff, descended into the ocean like a shower of shrapnel shot. The sea beneath rages incessantly among a thousand of the fragments which have fallen from the peaks, and which assume an hundred strange shapes. It would have been a fine situation to compose an ode to the Genius of Sumburgh-head, or an Elegy upon a Cormorant--or to have written and spoken madness of any kind in prose or poetry. But I gave vent to my excited feelings in a more simple way; and sitting gently down on the steep green slope which led to the beach, I e'en slid down a few hundred feet, and found the exercise quite an adequate vent to my enthusiasm. I recommend this exercise (time and place suiting) to all my brother scribblers, and I have no doubt it will save much effusion of Christian ink. Those slopes are covered with beautiful short herbage. At the foot of the ascent, and towards the isthmus, is the old house of Sumburgh, in appearance a most dreary mansion. I found, on my arrival at the beach, that the hospitality of the inhabitants had entrapped my companions. I walked back to meet them, but escaped the gin and water. On board about nine o'clock at night. A little schooner lies between us and the shore, which we had seen all day buffeting the tide and breeze like ourselves. The wind increases, and the ship is made SNUG--a sure sign the passengers will not be so. "_10th August, 1814._--The omen was but too true--a terrible combustion on board, among plates, dishes, glasses, writing-desks, etc., etc.; not a wink of sleep. We weigh and stand out into that delightful current called _Sumburgh-rost_, or _rust_. This tide certainly owes us a grudge, for it drove us to the eastward about thirty miles on the night of the first, and occasioned our missing the Fair Isle, and now it has caught us on our return. All the landsmen sicker than sick, and our Viceroy, Stevenson, qualmish. This is the only time that I have felt more than temporary inconvenience, but this morning I have headache and nausea; these are trifles, and in a well-found vessel, with a good pilot, we have none of that mixture of danger which gives dignity to the traveller. But he must have a stouter heart than mine, who can contemplate without horror the situation of a vessel of an inferior description caught among these headlands and reefs of rocks, in the long and dark winter nights of these regions. Accordingly, wrecks are frequent. It is proposed to have a light on Sumburgh-head, which is the first land made by vessels coming from the eastward; Fitful-head is higher, but is to the west, from which quarter few vessels come. "We are now clear of Zetland, and about ten o'clock reach the Fair Isle;[70] one of their boats comes off, a strange-looking thing without an entire plank in it, excepting one on each side, upon the strength of which the whole depends, the rest being patched and joined. This trumpery skiff the men manage with the most astonishing dexterity, and row with remarkable speed; they have two banks, that is, two rowers on each bench, and use very short paddles. The wildness of their appearance, with long elf-locks, striped worsted caps, and shoes of raw-hide--the fragility of their boat--and their extreme curiosity about us and our cutter, give them a title to be distinguished as _natives_. One of our people told their steersman, by way of jeer, that he must have great confidence in Providence to go to sea in such a vehicle; the man very sensibly replied that without the same confidence he would not go to sea in the best _tool_ in England. We take to our boat, and row for about three miles round the coast, in order to land at the inhabited part of the island. This coast abounds with grand views of rocks and bays. One immense portion of rock is (like the Holm of Noss) separated by a chasm from the mainland. As it is covered with herbage on the top, though a literal precipice all round, the natives contrive to ascend the rock by a place which would make a goat dizzy, and then drag the sheep up by ropes, though they sometimes carry a sheep up on their shoulders. The captain of a sloop of war, being ashore while they were at this work, turned giddy and sick while looking at them. This immense precipice is several hundred feet high, and is perforated below by some extraordinary apertures, through which a boat might pass; the light shines distinctly through these hideous chasms. "After passing a square bay called the North-haven, tenanted by sea-fowl and seals (the first we have yet seen), we come in view of the small harbor. Land, and breakfast, for which, till now, none of us felt inclination. In front of the little harbor is the house of the tacksman, Mr. Strong, and in view are three small assemblages of miserable huts, where the inhabitants of the isle live. There are about thirty families and 250 inhabitants upon the Fair Isle. It merits its name, as the plain upon which the hamlets are situated bears excellent barley, oats, and potatoes, and the rest of the isle is beautiful pasture, excepting to the eastward, where there is a moss, equally essential to the comfort of the inhabitants, since it supplies them with peats for fuel. The Fair Isle is about three miles long and a mile and a half broad. Mr. Strong received us very courteously. He lives here, like Robinson Crusoe, in absolute solitude as to society, unless by a chance visit from the officers of a man-of-war. There is a signal-post maintained on the island by Government, under this gentleman's inspection; when any ship appears that cannot answer his signals, he sends off to Lerwick and Kirkwall to give the alarm. Rogers[71] was off here last year, and nearly cut off one of Mr. Strong's express-boats, but the active islanders outstripped his people by speed of rowing. The inhabitants pay Mr. Strong for the possessions which they occupy under him as sub-tenants, and cultivate the isle in their own way, _i. e._, by digging instead of ploughing (though the ground is quite open and free from rocks, and they have several scores of ponies), and by raising alternate crops of barley, oats, and potatoes; the first and last are admirably good. They rather over-manure their crops; the possessions lie runrig, that is, by alternate ridges, and the outfield or pasture ground is possessed as common to all their cows and ponies. The islanders fish for Mr. Strong at certain fixed rates, and the fish is his property, which he sends to Kirkwall, Lerwick, or elsewhere, in a little schooner, the same which we left in Quendal Bay, and about the arrival of which we found them anxious. An equal space of rich land on the Fair Isle, situated in an inland county of Scotland, would rent for £3000 a year at the very least. To be sure it would not be burdened with the population of 250 souls, whose bodies (fertile as it is) it cannot maintain in bread, they being supplied chiefly from the mainland. Fish they have plenty, and are even nice in their choice. Skate they will not touch; dog-fish they say is only food for Orkney-men, and when they catch them, they make a point of tormenting the poor fish for eating off their baits from the hook, stealing the haddocks from their lines, and other enormities. These people, being about halfway between Shetland and Orkney, have unfrequent connection with either archipelago, and live and marry entirely among themselves. One lad told me, only five persons had left the island since his remembrance, and of those, three were pressed for the navy. They seldom go to Greenland; but this year five or six of their young men were on board the whalers. They seemed extremely solicitous about their return, and repeatedly questioned us about the names of the whalers which were at Lerwick, a point on which we could give little information. "The manners of these islanders seem primitive and simple, and they are sober, good-humored and friendly,--but _jimp_ honest. Their comforts are, of course, much dependent on _their master's_ pleasure; for so they call Mr. Strong. But they gave him the highest character for kindness and liberality, and prayed to God he might long be their ruler. After mounting the signal-post hill, or Malcolm's Head, which is faced by a most tremendous cliff, we separated on our different routes. The Sheriff went to rectify the only enormity on the island, which existed in the person of a drunken schoolmaster; Marchie[72] went to shoot sea-fowl, or rather to frighten them, as his calumniators allege. Stevenson and Duff went to inspect the remains or vestiges of a Danish lighthouse upon a distant hill, called, as usual, the Ward, or Ward-hill, and returned with specimens of copper ore. Hamilton went down to cater fish for our dinner, and see it properly cooked--and I to see two remarkable indentures in the coast called _Rivas_, perhaps from their being rifted or _riven_. They are exactly like the Buller of Buchan, the sea rolling into a large open basin within the land through a natural archway. These places are close to each other; one is oblong, and it is easy to descend into it by a rude path; the other gulf is inaccessible from the land, unless to a _crags-man_, as these venturous climbers call themselves. I sat for about an hour upon the verge, like the cormorants around me, hanging my legs over the precipice; but I could not get free of two or three well-meaning islanders, who held me fast by the skirts all the time--for it must be conceived that our numbers and appointments had drawn out the whole population to admire and attend us. After we separated, each, like the nucleus of a comet, had his own distinct train of attendants.--Visit the capital town, a wretched assemblage of the basest huts, dirty without, and still dirtier within; pigs, fowls, cows, men, women, and children, all living promiscuously under the same roof, and in the same room--the brood-sow making (among the more opulent) a distinguished inhabitant of the mansion. The compost, a liquid mass of utter abomination, is kept in a square pond of seven feet deep; when I censured it, they allowed it might be dangerous to the _bairns_; but appeared unconscious of any other objection. I cannot wonder they want meal, for assuredly they waste it. A great _bowie_ or wooden vessel of porridge is made in the morning; a child comes and sups a few spoonfuls; then Mrs. Sow takes her share; then the rest of the children or the parents, and all at pleasure; then come the poultry when the mess is more cool; the rest is flung upon the dunghill--and the goodwife wonders and complains when she wants meal in winter. They are a long-lived race, notwithstanding utter and inconceivable dirt and sluttery. A man of sixty told me his father died only last year, aged ninety-eight; nor was this considered as very unusual. "The clergyman of Dunrossness, in Zetland, visits these poor people once a year, for a week or two during summer. In winter this is impossible, and even the summer visit is occasionally interrupted for two years. Marriages and baptisms are performed, as one of the Isles-men told me, _by the slump_, and one of the children was old enough to tell the clergyman who sprinkled him with water, 'Deil be in your fingers.' Last time, four couple were married; sixteen children baptized. The schoolmaster reads a portion of Scripture in the church each Sunday, when the clergyman is absent; but the present man is unfit for this part of his duty. The women knit worsted stockings, night-caps, and similar trifles, which they exchange with any merchant vessels that approach their lonely isle. In these respects they greatly regret the American war; and mention with unction the happy days when they could get from an American trader a bottle of peach-brandy or rum in exchange for a pair of worsted stockings or a dozen of eggs. The humanity of their _master_ interferes much with the favorite but dangerous occupation of the islanders, which is _fowling_, that is, taking the young sea-fowl from their nests among these tremendous crags. About a fortnight before we arrived, a fine boy of fourteen had dropped from the cliff, while in prosecution of this amusement, into a roaring surf, by which he was instantly swallowed up. The unfortunate mother was laboring at the peat-moss at a little distance. These accidents do not, however, strike terror into the survivors. They regard the death of an individual engaged in these desperate exploits as we do the fate of a brave relation who falls in battle, when the honor of his death furnishes a balm to our sorrow. It therefore requires all the tacksman's authority to prevent a practice so pregnant with danger. Like all other precarious and dangerous employments, the occupation of the crags-men renders them unwilling to labor at employments of a more steady description. The Fair Isle inhabitants are a good-looking race, more like Zetlanders than Orkney-men. Evenson, and other names of a Norwegian or Danish derivation, attest their Scandinavian descent. Return and dine at Mr. Strong's, having sent our cookery ashore, not to overburthen his hospitality. In this place, and perhaps in the very cottage now inhabited by Mr. Strong, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, Commander-in-Chief of the Invincible Armada, wintered, after losing his vessel to the eastward of the island. It was not till he had spent some weeks in this miserable abode, that he got off to Norway. Independently of the moral consideration, that, from the pitch of power in which he stood a few days before, the proudest peer of the proudest nation in Europe found himself dependent on the jealous and scanty charity of these secluded islanders, it is scarce possible not to reflect with compassion on the change of situation from the palaces of Estremadura to the hamlet of the Fair Isle-- 'Dost thou wish for thy deserts, O Son of Hodeirah? Dost thou long for the gales of Arabia?'[73] "Mr. Strong gave me a curious old chair belonging to Quendale, a former proprietor of the Fair Isle, and which a more zealous antiquary would have dubbed 'the Duke's chair.' I will have it refitted for Abbotsford, however. About eight o'clock we take boat, amid the cheers of the inhabitants, whose minds, subdued by our splendor, had been secured by our munificence, which consisted in a moderate benefaction of whiskey and tobacco, and a few shillings laid out on their staple commodities. They agreed no such day had been seen in the isle. The signal-post displayed its flags, and to recompense these distinguished marks of honor, we hung out our colors, stood into the bay, and saluted with three guns, 'Echoing from a thousand caves." and then bear away for Orkney, leaving, if our vanity does not deceive us, a very favorable impression on the mind of the inhabitants of the Fair Isle. The tradition of the Fair Isle is unfavorable to those shipwrecked strangers, who are said to have committed several acts of violence to extort the supplies of provision, given them sparingly and with reluctance by the islanders, who were probably themselves very far from being well supplied. "I omitted to say we were attended in the morning by two very sportive whales, but of a kind, as some of our crew who had been on board Greenland-men assured us, which it was very dangerous to attack. There were two Gravesend smacks fishing off the isle. Lord, what a long draught London makes! "_11th August, 1814._--After a sound sleep to make amends for last night, we find, at awaking, the vessel off the Start of Sanda, the first land in the Orkneys which we could make. There a lighthouse has been erected lately upon the best construction. Landed and surveyed it. All in excellent order, and the establishment of the keepers in the same style of comfort and respectability as elsewhere, far better than the house of the master of the Fair Isle, and rivalling my own baronial mansion of Abbotsford. Go to the top of the tower and survey the island, which, as the name implies, is level, flat, and sandy, quite the reverse of those in Zetland: it is intersected by creeks and small lakes, and, though it abounds with shell marle, seems barren. There is one dreadful inconvenience of an island life, of which we had here an instance. The keeper's wife had an infant in her arms--her first-born, too, of which the poor woman had been delivered without assistance. Erskine told us of a horrid instance of malice which had been practised in this island of Sanda. A decent tenant, during the course of three or four successive years, lost to the number of twenty-five cattle, stabbed as they lay in their fold by some abominable wretch. What made the matter stranger was, that the poor man could not recollect any reason why he should have had the ill-will of a single being, only that in taking up names for the _militia_, a duty imposed upon him by the Justices, he thought he might possibly have given some unknown offence. The villain was never discovered. "The wrecks on this coast were numerous before the erection of the lighthouse. It was not uncommon to see five or six vessels on shore at once. The goods and chattels of the inhabitants are all said to savor of _Flotsome_ and _Jetsome_, as the floating wreck and that which is driven ashore are severally called. Mr. Stevenson happened to observe that the boat of a Sanda farmer had bad sails--'If it had been His (_i. e._, God's) will that you hadna built sae many lighthouses hereabout'--answered the Orcadian, with great composure--'I would have had new sails last winter.' Thus do they talk and think upon these subjects; and so talking and thinking, I fear the poor mariner has little chance of any very anxious attempt to assist him. There is one wreck, a Danish vessel, now aground under our lee. These Danes are the stupidest seamen, by all accounts, that sail the sea. When this light upon the Start of Sanda was established, the Commissioners, with laudable anxiety to extend its utility, had its description and bearings translated into Danish and sent to Copenhagen. But they never attend to such trifles. The Norwegians are much better liked, as a clever, hardy, sensible people. I forgot to notice there was a Norwegian prize lying in the Sound of Lerwick, sent in by one of our cruisers. This was a queer-looking, half-decked vessel, all tattered and torn, and shaken to pieces, looking like Coleridge's Spectre Ship. It was pitiable to see such a prize. Our servants went aboard, and got one of their loaves, and gave a dreadful account of its composition. I got and cut a crust of it; it was rye-bread, with a slight mixture of pine-fir bark or sawings of deal. It was not good, but (as Charles XII. said) might be eaten. But after all, if the people can be satisfied with such bread as this, it seems hard to interdict it to them. What would a Londoner say if, instead of his roll and muffins, this black bread, relishing of tar and turpentine, were presented for his breakfast? I would to God there could be a Jehovah-jireh, 'a ram caught in the thicket,' to prevent the sacrifice of that people. "The few friends who may see this Journal are much indebted for these pathetic remarks to the situation under which they are recorded; for since we left the lighthouse we have been struggling with adverse wind (pretty high too), and a very strong tide, called the Rost of the Start, which, like Sumburgh Rost, bodes no good to our roast and boiled. The worst is that this struggle carries us past a most curious spectacle, being no less than the carcases of two hundred and sixty-five whales, which have been driven ashore in Taftsness Bay, now lying close under us. With all the inclination in the world, it is impossible to stand in close enough to verify this massacre of Leviathans with our own eyes, as we do not care to run the risk of being drawn ashore ourselves among the party. In fact, this species of spectacle has been of late years very common among the isles. Mr. Stevenson saw upwards of a hundred and fifty whales lying upon the shore in a bay at Unst, in his northward trip. They are not large, but are decided whales, measuring perhaps from fifteen to twenty-five feet. They are easily mastered, for the first that is wounded among the sounds and straits so common in the isles usually runs ashore. The rest follow the blood, and, urged on by the boats behind, run ashore also. A cut with one of the long whaling knives under the back-fin is usually fatal to these huge animals. The two hundred and sixty-five whales, now lying within two or three miles of us, were driven ashore by seven boats only. "_Five o'clock._--We are out of the _Rost_ (I detest that word), and driving fast through a long sound among low green islands, which hardly lift themselves above the sea--not a cliff or hill to be seen--what a contrast to the land we have left! We are standing for some creek or harbor, called Lingholm Bay, to lie to or anchor for the night; for to pursue our course by night, and that a thick one, among these isles, and islets, and sand-banks, is out of the question--clear moonlight might do. Our sea is now moderate. But, oh gods and men! what misfortunes have travellers to record! Just as the quiet of the elements had reconciled us to the thought of dinner, we learn that an unlucky sea has found its way into the galley during the last infernal combustion, when the lee-side and boltsprit were constantly under water; so our soup is poisoned with salt water--our cod and haddocks, which cost ninepence this blessed morning, and would have been worth a couple of guineas in London, are soused in their primitive element--the curry is undone--and all gone to the devil. We all apply ourselves to comfort our Lord High Admiral Hamilton, whose despair for himself and the public might edify a patriot. His good-humor--which has hitherto defied every incident, aggravated even by the gout--supported by a few bad puns, and a great many fair promises on the part of the steward and cook, fortunately restores his equilibrium. "_Eight o'clock._--Our supplemental dinner proved excellent, and we have glided into an admirable roadstead or harbor, called Lingholm Bay, formed by the small island of Lingholm embracing a small basin dividing that islet from the larger isle of Stronsay. Both, as well as Sanda, Eda, and others which we have passed, are low, green, and sandy. I have seen nothing to-day worth marking, except the sporting of a very large whale at some distance, and H.'s face at the news of the disaster in the cook-room. We are to weigh at two in the morning, and hope to reach Kirkwall, the capital of Orkney, by breakfast to-morrow. I trust there are no _rusts_ or _rosts_ in the road. I shall detest that word even when used to signify verd antique or patina in the one sense, or roast venison in the other. Orkney shall begin a new volume of these exquisite memoranda. * * * * * "OMISSION.--At Lerwick the Dutch fishers had again appeared on their old haunts. A very interesting meeting took place between them and the Lerwegians, most of them being old acquaintances. They seemed very poor, and talked of having been pillaged of everything by the French, and expected to have found Lerwick ruined by the war. They have all the careful, quiet, and economical habits of their country, and go on board their busses with the utmost haste so soon as they see the Greenland sailors, who usually insult and pick quarrels with them. The great amusement of the Dutch sailors is to hire the little ponies, and ride up and down upon them. On one occasion, a good many years ago, an English sailor interrupted this cavalcade, frightened the horses, and one or two Dutchmen got tumbles. Incensed at this beyond their usual moderation, they pursued the cause of their overthrow, and wounded him with one of their knives. The wounded man went on board his vessel, the crew of which, about fifty strong, came ashore with their long flinching knives with which they cut up the whales, and falling upon the Dutchmen, though twice their numbers, drove them all into the sea, where such as could not swim were in some risk of being drowned. The instance of aggression, or rather violent retaliation, on their part, is almost solitary. In general they are extremely quiet, and employ themselves in bartering their little merchandise of gin and gingerbread for Zetland hose and night-caps." Footnotes of the Chapter XXVIII. [59: [Robert Stevenson, the eminent civil engineer, for nearly half a century the engineer to the Board of Northern Lights. He inaugurated the present Scottish lighthouse system, and no less than twenty lighthouses were designed and constructed under his superintendence, the most remarkable being the famous Bell Rock tower. He died in 1850. Three of his sons, one of whom became his biographer, greatly distinguished themselves in their father's profession. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his fragment of family history, _Records of a Family of Engineers_, has left a vivid picture of his grandfather, though it be but an unfinished sketch.]] [60: On being requested, while at breakfast, to inscribe his name in the album of the tower, Scott penned immediately the following lines:-- PHAROS LOQUITUR. "Far in the bosom of the deep, O'er these wild shelves my watch I keep; A ruddy gem of changeful light, Bound on the dusky brow of night, The seaman bids my lustre hail, And scorns to strike his timorous sail."] [61: This is, without doubt, an allusion to some happy day's excursion when his _first love_ was of the party.] [62: Erskine--Sheriff of Shetland and Orkney.] [63: Here occurs a rude scratch of drawing.] [64: Lord Dundas was created Earl of Zetland in 1838, and died in February, 1839.] [65: Campbell--_Pleasures of Hope_.] [66: Robert Hamilton, Sheriff of Lanarkshire, and afterwards one of the Clerks of Session, was a particular favorite of Scott--first, among many other good reasons, because he had been a soldier in his youth, had fought gallantly and been wounded severely in the American war, and was a very Uncle Toby in military enthusiasm; secondly, because he was a brother antiquary of the genuine Monkbarns breed; thirdly (last, not least), because he was, in spite of the example of the head of his name and race, a steady Tory. Mr. Hamilton sent for Scott when upon his deathbed in 1831, and desired him to choose and carry off as a parting memorial any article he liked in his collection of arms. Sir Walter (by that time sorely shattered in his own health) selected the sword with which his good friend had been begirt at Bunker's Hill.] [67: During the winter of 1837-38, this worthy clergyman's wife, his daughter, and a servant, perished within sight of the manse, from a flaw in the ice on the loch--which they were crossing as the nearest way home.--(1839.)] [68: In his reviewal of Pitcairn's _Trials_ (1831), Scott says: "In erecting this Earl's Castle of Scalloway, and other expensive edifices, the King's tenants were forced to work in quarries, transport stone, dig, delve, climb, and build, and submit to all possible sorts of servile and painful labor, without either meat, drink, hire, or recompense of any kind. 'My father,' said Earl Patrick, 'built his house at Sumburgh on the sand, and it has given way already; this of mine on the rock shall abide and endure.' He did not or would not understand that the oppression, rapacity, and cruelty, by means of which the house arose, were what the clergyman really pointed to in his recommendation of a motto. Accordingly, the huge tower remains wild and desolate--its chambers filled with sand, and its rifted walls and dismantled battlements giving unrestrained access to the roaring sea blast."--For more of Earl Patrick, see Scott's _Miscellaneous Prose Works_, vol. xxi. pp. 230, 233; vol. xxiii. pp. 327, 329.] [69: Mr. W. S. Rose informs me, that when he was at school at Winchester, the morris-dancers there used to exhibit a sword-dance resembling that described at Camacho's wedding in Don Quixote; and Mr. Morritt adds, that similar dances are even yet performed in the villages about Rokeby every Christmas.] [70: This is a solitary island, lying about halfway between Orkney and Zetland.] [71: An American Commodore.] [72: Mr. Marjoribanks.] [73: _Thalaba_, Book VIII.] CHAPTER XXIX DIARY ON BOARD THE LIGHTHOUSE YACHT CONTINUED. -- THE ORKNEYS. --KIRKWALL. -- HOY. -- THE STANDING STONES OF STENNIS, ETC. 1814 "_12th August, 1814._--With a good breeze and calm sea we weighed at two in the morning, and worked by short tacks up to Kirkwall Bay, and find ourselves in that fine basin upon rising in the morning. The town looks well from the sea, but is chiefly indebted to the huge old cathedral that rises out of the centre. Upon landing we find it but a poor and dirty place, especially towards the harbor. Farther up the town are seen some decent old-fashioned houses, and the Sheriff's interest secures us good lodgings. Marchie goes to hunt for a pointer. The morning, which was rainy, clears up pleasantly, and Hamilton, Erskine, Duff, and I walk to Malcolm Laing's, who has a pleasant house about half a mile from the town. Our old acquaintance, though an invalid, received us kindly; he looks very poorly, and cannot walk without assistance, but seems to retain all the quick, earnest, and vivacious intelligence of his character and manner. After this, visit the antiquities of the place, namely, the Bishop's palace, the Earl of Orkney's castle, and the cathedral, all situated within a stone-cast of each other. The two former are ruinous. The most prominent part of the ruins of the Bishop's palace is a large round tower, similar to that of Bothwell in architecture, but not equal to it in size. This was built by Bishop Reid, _tempore Jacobi V._, and there is a rude statue of him in a niche in the front. At the north-east corner of the building is a square tower of greater antiquity, called the Mense or Mass Tower; but, as well as a second and smaller round tower, it is quite ruinous. A suite of apartments of different sizes fills up the space between these towers, all now ruinous. The building is said to have been of great antiquity, but was certainly in a great measure reëdified in the sixteenth century. "Fronting this castle or palace of the Bishop, and about a gun-shot distant, is that of the Earl of Orkney. The Earl's palace was built by Patrick Stewart, Earl of Orkney, the same who erected that of Scalloway, in Shetland. It is an elegant structure, partaking at once of the character of a palace and castle. The building forms three sides of an oblong square, but one of the sides extends considerably beyond the others. The great hall must have been remarkably handsome, opening into two or three huge rounds or turrets, the lower part of which is divided by stone shafts into three windows. It has two immense chimneys, the arches or lintels of which are formed by a flat arch, as at Crichton Castle. There is another very handsome apartment communicating with the hall like a modern drawing-room, and which has, like the former, its projecting turrets. The hall is lighted by a fine Gothic-shafted window at one end, and by others on the sides. It is approached by a spacious and elegant staircase of three flights of steps. The dimensions may be sixty feet long, twenty broad, and fourteen high, but doubtless an arched roof sprung from the side walls, so that fourteen feet was only the height from the ground to the arches. Any modern architect, wishing to emulate the real Gothic architecture, and apply it to the purposes of modern splendor, might derive excellent hints from this room. The exterior ornaments are also extremely elegant. The ruins, once the residence of this haughty and oppressive Earl, are now so disgustingly nasty, that it required all the zeal of an antiquary to prosecute the above investigation. Architecture seems to have been Earl Patrick's prevailing taste. Besides this castle and that of Scalloway, he added to or enlarged the old castle of Bressay. To accomplish these objects, he oppressed the people with severities unheard of even in that oppressive age, drew down on himself a shameful though deserved punishment, and left these dishonored ruins to hand down to posterity the tale of his crimes and of his fall. We may adopt, though in another sense, his own presumptuous motto--_Sic Fuit, Est, et Erit_. "We visit the cathedral, dedicated to St. Magnus, which greeted the Sheriff's approach with a merry peal. Like that of Glasgow, this church has escaped the blind fury of Reformation. It was founded in 1138, by Ronald, Earl of Orkney, nephew of the Saint. It is of great size, being 260 feet long, or thereabout, and supported by twenty-eight Saxon pillars, of good workmanship. The round arch predominates in the building, but I think not exclusively. The steeple (once a very high spire) rises upon four pillars of great strength, which occupy each angle of the nave. Being destroyed by lightning, it was rebuilt upon a low and curtailed plan. The appearance of the building is rather massive and gloomy than elegant, and many of the exterior ornaments, carving around the doorways, etc., have been injured by time. We entered the cathedral, the whole of which is kept locked, swept, and in good order, although only the eastern end is used for divine worship. We walked some time in the nave and western end, which is left unoccupied, and has a very solemn effect as the avenue to the place of worship. There were many tombstones on the floor and elsewhere; some, doubtless, of high antiquity. One, I remarked, had the shield of arms hung by the corner, with a helmet above it of a large proportion, such as I have seen on the most ancient seals. But we had neither time nor skill to decipher what noble Orcadian lay beneath. The church is as well fitted up as could be expected; much of the old carved oak remains, but with a motley mixture of modern deal pews. All, however, is neat and clean, and does great honor to the kirk-session who maintain its decency. I remarked particularly Earl Patrick's seat, adjoining to that of the magistrates, but surmounting it and every other in the church: it is surrounded with a carved screen of oak, rather elegant, and bears his arms and initials, and the motto I have noticed. He bears the royal arms _without any mark of bastardy_ (his father was a natural son of James V.) quarterly, with a lymphad or galley, the ancient arms of the county. This circumstance was charged against him on his trial.[74] I understand the late Mr. Gilbert Laing Meason left the interest of £1000 to keep up this cathedral. "There are in the street facing the cathedral the ruins of a much more ancient castle; a proper feudal fortress belonging to the Earls of Orkney, but called the King's Castle. It appears to have been very strong, being situated near the harbor, and having, as appears from the fragments, very massive walls. While the wicked Earl Patrick was in confinement, one of his natural sons defended this castle to extremity against the King's troops, and only surrendered when it was nearly a heap of ruins, and then under condition he should not be brought in evidence against his father. "We dine at the inn, and drink the Prince Regent's health, being that of the day--Mr. Baikie of Tankerness dines with us. "_13th August, 1814._--A bad morning, but clears up. No letters from Edinburgh. The country about Kirkwall is flat, and tolerably cultivated. We see oxen generally wrought in the small country carts, though they have a race of ponies, like those of Shetland, but larger. Marchie goes to shoot on a hill called Whiteford, which slopes away about two or three miles from Kirkwall. The grouse is abundant, for the gentleman who chaperons Marchie killed thirteen brace and a half, with a snipe. There are no partridges nor hares. The soil of Orkney is better, and its air more genial than Shetland; but it is far less interesting, and possesses none of the wild and peculiar character of the more northern archipelago. All vegetables grow here freely in the gardens, and there are one or two attempts at trees where they are sheltered by walls. How ill they succeed may be conjectured from our bringing with us a quantity of brushwood, commissioned by Malcolm Laing from Aberbrothock, to be sticks to his pease. This trash we brought two hundred miles. I have little to add, except that the Orkney people have some odd superstitions about a stone on which they take oaths to Odin. Lovers often perform this ceremony in pledge of mutual faith, and are said to account it a sacred engagement.--It is agreed that we go on board after dinner, and sail with the next tide. The magistrates of Kirkwall present us with the freedom of their ancient burgh; and Erskine, instead of being cumbered with drunken sailors, as at Lerwick, or a drunken schoolmaster, as at Fair Isle, is annoyed by his own Substitute. This will occasion his remaining two days at Kirkwall, during which time it is proposed we shall visit the lighthouse upon the dangerous rocks called the Skerries, in the Pentland Frith; and then, returning to the eastern side of Pomona, take up the counsellor at Stromness. It is further settled that we leave Marchie with Erskine to get another day's shooting. On board at ten o'clock, after a little bustle in expediting our domestics, washerwomen, etc. "_14th August, 1814._--Sail about four, and in rounding the mainland of Orkney, called Pomona, encounter a very heavy sea; about ten o'clock, get into the Sound of Holm or Ham, a fine smooth current meandering away between two low green islands, which have little to characterize them. On the right of the Sound is the mainland, and a deep bay called Scalpa Flow indents it up to within two miles of Kirkwall. A canal through this neck of the island would be of great consequence to the burgh. We see the steeple and church of Kirkwall across the island very distinctly. Getting out of the Sound of Holm, we stand in to the harbor or roadstead of Widewall, where we find seven or eight foreign vessels bound for Ireland, and a sloop belonging to the lighthouse service. These roadsteads are common all through the Orkneys, and afford excellent shelter for small vessels. The day is pleasant and sunny, but the breeze is too high to permit landing at the Skerries. Agree, therefore, to stand over for the mainland of Scotland, and visit Thurso. Enter the Pentland Frith, so celebrated for the strength and fury of its tides, which is boiling even in this pleasant weather; we see a large ship battling with this heavy current, and though with all her canvas set and a breeze, getting more and more involved. See the two Capes of Dungsby or Duncansby, and Dunnet-head, between which lies the celebrated John o' Groat's house, on the north-eastern extremity of Scotland. The shores of Caithness rise bold and rocky before us,--a contrast to the Orkneys, which are all low, excepting the Island of Hoy. On Duncansby-head appear some remarkable rocks, like towers, called the Stacks of Duncansby. Near this shore runs the remarkable breaking tide called the _Merry Men of Mey_, whence Mackenzie takes the scenery of a poem-- 'Where the dancing Men of Mey, Speed the current to the land.'[75] Here, according to his locality, the Caithness-man witnessed the vision, in which was introduced the song, translated by Gray, under the title of The Fatal Sisters. On this subject, Mr. Baikie told me the following remarkable circumstance: A clergyman told him, that while some remnants of the Norse were yet spoken in North Ronaldsha, he carried thither the translation of Mr. Gray, then newly published, and read it to some of the old people as referring to the ancient history of their islands. But so soon as he had proceeded a little way, they exclaimed they knew it very well in the original, and had often sung it to himself when he asked them for an old Norse song; they called it The Enchantresses.--The breeze dies away between two wicked little islands called Swona and Stroma,--the latter belonging to Caithness, the former to Orkney.--_Nota Bene_. The inhabitants of the rest of the Orcades despise those of Swona for eating limpets, as being the last of human meannesses. Every land has its fashions. The Fair-Isles-men disdain Orkney-men for eating dog-fish. Both islands have dangerous reefs and whirlpools, where, even in this fine day, the tide rages furiously. Indeed, the large high unbroken billows, which at every swell hide from our deck each distant object, plainly intimate what a dreadful current this must be when vexed by high or adverse winds. Finding ourselves losing ground in the tide, and unwilling to waste time, we give up Thurso--run back into the roadstead or bay of Long-Hope, and anchor under the fort. The bay has four entrances and safe anchorage in most winds, and having become a great rendezvous for shipping (there are nine vessels lying here at present) has been an object of attention with Government. "Went ashore after dinner, and visited the fort, which is only partly completed: it is a _flêche_ to the sea, with eight guns, twenty-four pounders, but without any land defences; the guns are mounted _en barbette_, without embrasures, each upon a kind of movable stage, which stage wheeling upon a pivot in front, and traversing by means of wheels behind, can be pointed in any direction that may be thought necessary. Upon this stage, the gun-carriage moves forward and recoils, and the depth of the parapet shelters the men even better than an embrasure. At a little distance from this battery they are building a Martello tower, which is to cross the fire of the battery, and also that of another projected tower upon the opposite point of the bay. The expedience of these towers seems excessively problematical. Supposing them impregnable, or nearly so, a garrison of fourteen or fifteen men may be always blockaded by a very trifling number, while the enemy dispose of all in the vicinity at their pleasure. In the case of Long-Hope, for instance, a frigate might disembark 100 men, take the fort in the rear, where it is undefended even by a palisade, destroy the magazines, spike and dismount the cannon, carry off or cut out any vessels in the roadstead, and accomplish all the purposes that could bring them to so remote a spot, in spite of a sergeant's party in the Martello tower, and without troubling themselves about them at all. Meanwhile, Long-Hope will one day turn out a flourishing place; there will soon be taverns and slop-shops, where sailors rendezvous in such numbers; then will come quays, docks, and warehouses; and then a thriving town. Amen, so be it. This is the first fine day we have enjoyed to an end since Sunday, 31st ult. Rainy, cold, and hazy, have been our voyages around these wild islands; I hope the weather begins to mend, though Mr. Wilson, our master, threatens a breeze to-morrow. We are to attempt the Skerries, if possible; if not, we will, I believe, go to Stromness. "_15th August, 1814._--Fine morning. We get again into the Pentland Frith, and with the aid of a pilot-boat belonging to the lighthouse service, from South Ronaldsha, we attempt the Skerries. Notwithstanding the fair weather, we have a specimen of the violence of the flood-tide, which forms whirlpools on the shallow sunken rocks by the islands of Swona and Stroma, and in the deep water makes strange, smooth, whirling, and swelling eddies, called by the sailors, _wells_. We run through the _wells of Tuftile_ in particular, which, in the least stress of weather, wheel a large ship round and round, without respect either to helm or sails. Hence the distinction of _wells_ and _waves_ in Old English; the _well_ being that smooth, glassy, oily-looking eddy, the force of which seems to the eye almost resistless. The bursting of the waves in foam around these strange eddies has a bewildering and confused appearance, which it is impossible to describe. Get off the Skerries about ten o'clock, and land easily; it is the first time a boat has got there for several days. The _Skerries_[76] is an island about sixty acres, of fine short herbage, belonging to Lord Dundas; it is surrounded by a reef of precipitous rocks, not very high, but inaccessible, unless where the ocean has made ravines among them, and where stairs have been cut down to the water for the lighthouse service. Those inlets have a romantic appearance, and have been christened by the sailors, the Parliament House, the Seals' Lying-in-Hospital, etc. The last inlet, after rushing through a deep chasm, which is open overhead, is continued under ground, and then again opens to the sky in the middle of the island; in this hole the seals bring out their whelps; when the tide is high, the waves rise up through this aperture in the middle of the isle--like the blowing of a whale in noise and appearance. There is another round cauldron of solid rock, to which the waves have access through a natural arch in the rock, having another and lesser arch rising just above it; in hard weather, the waves rush through both apertures with a horrid noise; the workmen called it the Carron Blast, and, indeed, the variety of noises which issued from the abyss, somewhat reminded me of that engine. Take my rifle, and walk round the cliffs in search of seals, but see none, and only disturb the digestion of certain aldermen-cormorants, who were sitting on the points of the crags after a good fish breakfast; only made one good shot out of four. The lighthouse is too low, and on the old construction, yet it is of the last importance. The keeper is an old man-of-war's-man, of whom Mr. Stevenson observed that he was a great swearer when he first came; but after a year or two's residence in this solitary abode, became a changed man. There are about fifty head of cattle on the island; they must be got in and off with great danger and difficulty. There is no water upon the isle, except what remains after rain in some pools; these sometimes dry in summer, and the cattle are reduced to great straits. Leave the isle about one; and the wind and tide being favorable, crowd all sail, and get on at the rate of fourteen miles an hour. Soon reach our old anchorage at the Long-Hope, and passing, stand to the north-westward, up the Sound of Hoy, for Stromness. "I should have mentioned, that in going down the Pentland Frith this morning, we saw Johnnie Groat's house, or rather the place where it stood, now occupied by a storehouse. Our pilot opines there was no such man as Johnnie Groat, for, he says, he cannot hear that anybody _ever saw him_. This reasoning would put down most facts of antiquity. They gather shells on the shore, called _Johnnie Groat's buckies_, but I cannot procure any at present. I may also add, that the interpretation given to _wells_ may apply to the Wells of Slain, in the fine ballad of Clerk Colvill; such eddies in the romantic vicinity of Slains Castle would be a fine place for a mermaid.[77] "Our wind fails us, and, what is worse, becomes westerly. The Sound has now the appearance of a fine land-locked bay, the passages between the several islands being scarce visible. We have a superb view of Kirkwall Cathedral, with a strong gleam of sunshine upon it. Gloomy weather begins to collect around us, particularly on the island of Hoy, which, covered with gloom and vapor, now assumes a majestic mountainous character. On Pomona we pass the Hill of Orphir, which reminds me of the clergyman of that parish, who was called to account for some of his inaccuracies to the General Assembly; one charge he held particularly cheap, namely, that of drunkenness. 'Reverend Moderator,' said he, in reply, 'I _do_ drink, as other gentlemen do.' This Orphir of the north must not be confounded with the Orphir of the south. From the latter came gold, silver, and precious stones; the former seems to produce little except peats. Yet these are precious commodities, which some of the Orkney Isles altogether want, and lay waste and burn the turf of their land instead of importing coal from Newcastle. The Orcadians seem by no means an alert or active race; they neglect the excellent fisheries which lie under their very noses, and in their mode of managing their boats, as well as in the general tone of urbanity and intelligence, are excelled by the less favored Zetlanders. I observe they always crowd their boat with people in the bows, being the ready way to send her down in any awkward circumstance. There are remains of their Norwegian descent and language in North Ronaldsha, an isle I regret we did not see. A missionary preacher came ashore there a year or two since, but being a very little black-bearded unshaved man, the seniors of the isle suspected him of being an ancient Pecht or Pict, and _no canny_, of course. The schoolmaster came down to entreat our worthy Mr. Stevenson, then about to leave the island, to come up and verify whether the preacher was an ancient Pecht, yea or no. Finding apologies were in vain, he rode up to the house where the unfortunate preacher, after three nights' watching, had got to bed, little conceiving under what odious suspicion he had fallen. As Mr. S. declined disturbing him, his boots were produced, which being a _little_--_little_--_very little_ pair, confirmed, in the opinion of all the bystanders, the suspicion of Pechtism. Mr. S. therefore found it necessary to go into the poor man's sleeping apartment, where he recognized one Campbell, heretofore an ironmonger in Edinburgh, but who had put his hand for some years to the missionary plough; of course he warranted his quondam acquaintance to be no ancient Pecht. Mr. Stevenson carried the same schoolmaster who figured in the adventure of the Pecht, to the mainland of Scotland, to be examined for his office. He was extremely desirous to see a tree; and, on seeing one, desired to know what _girss_ it was that grew at the top on't--the leaves appearing to him to be grass. They still speak a little Norse, and indeed I hear every day words of that language; for instance, _Ja, kul_, for '_Yes, sir_.' We creep slowly up Hoy Sound, working under the Pomona shore; but there is no hope of reaching Stromness till we have the assistance of the evening tide. The channel now seems like a Highland loch; not the least ripple on the waves. The passage is narrowed, and (to the eye) blocked up by the interposition of the green and apparently fertile isle of Græmsay, the property of Lord Armadale.[78] Hoy looks yet grander, from comparing its black and steep mountains with this verdant isle. To add to the beauty of the Sound, it is rendered lively by the successive appearance of seven or eight whaling vessels from Davies' Straits; large strong ships, which pass successively, with all their sails set, enjoying the little wind that is. Many of these vessels display the _garland_; that is, a wreath of ribbons which the young fellows on board have got from their sweethearts, or come by otherwise, and which hangs between the foremast and mainmast, surmounted sometimes by a small model of the vessel. This garland is hung up upon the 1st of May, and remains till they come into port. I believe we shall dodge here till the tide makes about nine, and then get into Stromness: no boatman or sailor in Orkney thinks of the wind in comparison of the tides and currents. We must not complain, though the night gets rainy, and the Hill of Hoy is now completely invested with vapor and mist. In the forepart of the day we executed very cleverly a task of considerable difficulty and even danger. "_16th August, 1814._--Get into Stromness Bay, and anchor before the party are up. A most decided rain all night. The bay is formed by a deep indention in the mainland, or Pomona; on one side of which stands Stromness--a fishing village and harbor of _call_ for the Davies' Straits whalers, as Lerwick is for the Greenlanders. Betwixt the vessels we met yesterday, seven or eight which passed us this morning, and several others still lying in the bay, we have seen between twenty and thirty of these large ships in this remote place. The opposite side of Stromness Bay is protected by Hoy, and Græmsay lies between them; so that the bay seems quite land-locked, and the contrast between the mountains of Hoy, the soft verdure of Græmsay, and the swelling hill of Orphir on the mainland, has a beautiful effect. The day clears up, and Mr. Rae, Lord Armadale's factor, comes off from his house, called Clestrom, upon the shore opposite to Stromness, to breakfast with us. We go ashore with him. His farm is well cultivated, and he has procured an excellent breed of horses from Lanarkshire, of which county he is a native; strong hardy Galloways, fit for labor or hacks. By this we profited, as Mr. Rae mounted us all, and we set off to visit the Standing Stones of Stenhouse or Stennis. "At the upper end of the bay, about halfway between Clestrom and Stromness, there extends a loch of considerable size, of fresh water, but communicating with the sea by apertures left in a long bridge or causeway which divides them. After riding about two miles along this lake, we open another called the Loch of Harray, of about the same dimensions, and communicating with the lower lake, as the former does with the sea, by a stream, over which is constructed a causeway, with openings to suffer the flow and reflux of the water, as both lakes are affected by the tide. Upon the tongues of land which, approaching each other, divide the lakes of Stennis and Harray, are situated the Standing Stones. The isthmus on the eastern side exhibits a semicircle of immensely large upright pillars of unhewn stone, surrounded by a mound of earth. As the mound is discontinued, it does not seem that the circle was ever completed. The flat or open part of the semicircle looks up a plain, where, at a distance, is seen a large tumulus. The highest of these stones may be about sixteen or seventeen feet, and I think there are none so low as twelve feet. At irregular distances are pointed out other unhewn pillars of the same kind. One, a little to the westward, is perforated with a round hole, perhaps to bind a victim; or rather, I conjecture, for the purpose of solemnly attesting the deity, which the Scandinavians did by passing their head through a ring,--_vide_ Eyrbiggia Saga. Several barrows are scattered around this strange monument. Upon the opposite isthmus is a complete circle, of ninety-five paces in diameter, surrounded by standing stones, less in size than the others, being only from ten or twelve to fourteen feet in height, and four in breadth. A deep trench is drawn around this circle on the outside of the pillars, and four tumuli, or mounds of earth, are regularly placed, two on each side. "Stonehenge excels these monuments, but I fancy they are otherwise unparalleled in Britain. The idea that such circles were exclusively Druidical is now justly exploded. The northern nations all used such erections to mark their places of meeting, whether for religious purposes or civil policy; and there is repeated mention of them in the Sagas. See the Eyrbiggia Saga,[79] for the establishment of the Helga-fels, or holy mount, where the people held their Comitia, and where sacrifices were offered to Thor and Woden. About the centre of the semicircle is a broad flat stone, probably once the altar on which human victims were sacrificed.--Mr. Rae seems to think the common people have no tradition of the purpose of these stones, but probably he has not inquired particularly. He admits they look upon them with superstitious reverence; and it is evident that those which have fallen down (about half the original number) have been wasted by time, and not demolished. The materials of these monuments lay near, for the shores and bottom of the lake are of the same kind of rock. How they were raised, transported, and placed upright, is a puzzling question. In our ride back, noticed a round entrenchment, or _tumulus_, called the Hollow of Tongue. "The hospitality of Mrs. Rae detained us to an early dinner at Clestrom. About four o'clock took our long-boat and rowed down the bay to visit the Dwarfie Stone of Hoy. We have all day been pleased with the romantic appearance of that island, for though the Hill of Hoy is not very high, perhaps about 1200 feet, yet rising perpendicularly (almost) from the sea, and being very steep and furrowed with ravines, and catching all the mists from the western ocean, it has a noble and picturesque effect in every point of view. We land upon the island, and proceed up a long and very swampy valley broken into peat-bogs. The one side of this valley is formed by the Mountain of Hoy, the other by another steep hill, having at the top a circular belt of rock; upon the slope of this last hill, and just where the principal mountain opens into a wide and precipitous and circular _corrie_ or hollow, lies the Dwarfie Stone. It is a huge sandstone rock, of one solid stone, being about seven feet high, twenty-two feet long, and seventeen feet broad. The upper end of this stone is hewn into a sort of apartment containing two beds of stone and a passage between them. The uppermost and largest is five feet eight inches long, by two feet broad, and is furnished with a stone pillow. The lower, supposed for the Dwarf's Wife, is shorter, and rounded off, instead of being square at the corners. The entrance may be about three feet and a half square. Before it lies a huge stone, apparently intended to serve the purpose of a door, and shaped accordingly. In the top, over the passage which divides the beds, there is a hole to serve for a window or chimney, which was doubtless originally wrought square with irons, like the rest of the work, but has been broken out by violence into a shapeless hole. Opposite to this stone, and proceeding from it in a line down the valley, are several small barrows, and there is a very large one on the same line, at the spot where we landed. This seems to indicate that the monument is of heathen times, and probably was meant as the temple of some northern edition of the _Dii Manes_. There are no symbols of Christian devotion--and the door is to the westward; it therefore does not seem to have been the abode of a hermit, as Dr. Barry[80] has conjectured. The Orcadians have no tradition on the subject, excepting that they believe it to be the work of a dwarf, to whom, like their ancestors, they attribute supernatural powers and malevolent disposition. They conceive he may be seen sometimes sitting at the door of his abode, but he vanishes on a nearer approach. Whoever inhabited this den certainly enjoyed 'Pillow cold and sheets not warm.' "Duff, Stevenson, and I now walk along the skirts of the Hill of Hoy, to rejoin Robert Hamilton, who in the mean while had rode down to the clergyman's house, the wet and boggy walk not suiting his gout. Arrive at the manse completely wet, and drink tea there. The clergyman (Mr. Hamilton) has procured some curious specimens of natural history for Bullock's Museum, particularly a pair of fine eaglets. He has just got another of the golden, or white kind, which he intends to send him. The eagle, with every other ravenous bird, abounds among the almost inaccessible precipices of Hoy, which afford them shelter, while the moors, abounding with grouse, and the small uninhabited islands and holms, where sheep and lambs are necessarily left unwatched, as well as the all-sustaining ocean, give these birds of prey the means of support. The clergyman told us that a man was very lately alive in the island of ....., who, when an infant, was transported from thence by an eagle over a broad sound, or arm of the sea, to the bird's nest in Hoy. Pursuit being instantly made, and the eagle's nest being known, the infant was found there playing with the young eaglets. A more ludicrous instance of transportation he himself witnessed. Walking in the fields, he heard the squeaking of a pig for some time, without being able to discern whence it proceeded, until looking up, he beheld the unfortunate grunter in the talons of an eagle, who soared away with him towards the summit of Hoy. From this it may be conjectured, that the island is very thinly inhabited; in fact, we only saw two or three little wigwams. After tea we walked a mile farther, to a point where the boat was lying, in order to secure the advantage of the flood-tide. We rowed with toil across one stream of tide, which set strongly up between Græmsay and Hoy; but, on turning the point of Græmsay, the other branch of the same flood-tide carried us with great velocity alongside our yacht, which we reached about nine o'clock. Between riding, walking, and running, we have spent a very active and entertaining day. "_Domestic Memoranda._--The eggs on Zetland and Orkney are very indifferent, having an earthy taste, and being very small. But the hogs are an excellent breed--queer wild-looking creatures, with heads like wild-boars, but making capital bacon." Footnotes of the Chapter XXIX. [74: "This noted oppressor was finally brought to trial, and beheaded at the Cross of Edinburgh (6th February, 1614). It is said that the King's mood was considerably heated against him by some ill-chosen and worse written Latin inscriptions with which his father and himself had been unlucky enough to decorate some of their insular palaces. In one of these, Earl Robert, the father, had given his own designation thus: 'Orcadiæ Comes _Rex_ Jacobi Quinti Filius.' In this case he was not, perhaps, guilty of anything worse than bad Latin. But James VI., who had a keen nose for puzzling out treason, and with whom an assault and battery upon Priscian ranked in nearly the same degree of crime, had little doubt that the use of the nominative _Rex_, instead of the genitive _Regis_, had a treasonable savor."--Scott's _Miscellaneous Prose Works_, vol. xxiii. p. 232.] [75: Henry Mackenzie's Introduction to _The Fatal Sisters_.--_Works_, 1808, vol. viii. p. 63.] [76: "A Skerrie means a flattish rock which the sea does not overflow."--Edmonstone's _View of the Zetlands_.] [77: Clerk Colvill falls a sacrifice to a meeting with "a fair Mermaid," whom he found washing her "Sark of Silk" on this romantic shore. He had been warned by his "gay lady" in these words:-- "O promise me now, Clerk Colvill, Or it will cost ye muckle strife, Ride never by the Wells of Slane, If ye wad live and brook your life."] [78: Sir William Honeyman, Bart.--a Judge of the Court of Session by the title of Lord Armadale.] [79: _Miscellaneous Prose Works_, vol. v. p. 355.] [80: _History of the Orkney Islands_, by the Rev. George Barry, D. D., 4to, Edinburgh, 1805.] CHAPTER XXX DIARY CONTINUED. -- STROMNESS. -- BESSY MILLIE'S CHARM. -- CAPE WRATH. -- CAVE OF SMOWE. -- THE HEBRIDES. -- SCALPA, ETC. 1814 "_Off Stromness, 17th August, 1814._--Went on shore after breakfast, and found W. Erskine and Marjoribanks had been in this town all last night, without our hearing of them or they of us. No letters from Abbotsford or Edinburgh. Stromness is a little dirty straggling town, which cannot be traversed by a cart, or even by a horse, for there are stairs up and down, even in the principal streets. We paraded its whole length like turkeys in a string, I suppose to satisfy ourselves that there was a worse town in the Orkneys than the metropolis, Kirkwall. We clomb, by steep and dirty lanes, an eminence rising above the town, and commanding a fine view. An old hag lives in a wretched cabin on this height, and subsists by selling winds. Each captain of a merchantman, between jest and earnest, gives the old woman sixpence, and she boils her kettle to procure a favorable gale. She was a miserable figure; upwards of ninety, she told us, and dried up like a mummy. A sort of clay-colored cloak, folded over her head, corresponded in color to her corpselike complexion. Fine light-blue eyes, and nose and chin that almost met, and a ghastly expression of cunning, gave her quite the effect of Hecate. She told us she remembered _Gow the pirate_, who was born near the House of Clestrom, and afterwards commenced buccaneer. He came to his native country about 1725, with a _snow_ which he commanded, carried off two women from one of the islands, and committed other enormities. At length, while he was dining in a house in the island of Eda, the islanders, headed by Malcolm Laing's grandfather, made him prisoner, and sent him to London, where he was hanged. While at Stromness, he made love to a Miss Gordon, who pledged her faith to him by shaking hands, an engagement which, in her idea, could not be dissolved without her going to London to seek back again her 'faith and troth,' by shaking hands with him again after execution. We left our Pythoness, who assured us there was nothing evil in the intercession she was to make for us, but that we were only to have a fair wind through the benefit of her prayers. She repeated a sort of rigmarole which I suppose she had ready for such occasions, and seemed greatly delighted and surprised with the amount of our donation, as everybody gave her a trifle, our faithful Captain Wilson making the regular offering on behalf of the ship. So much for buying a wind. Bessy Millie's habitation is airy enough for Æolus himself, but if she is a special favorite with that divinity, he has a strange choice. In her house I remarked a quern, or hand-mill.--A cairn, a little higher, commands a beautiful view of the bay, with its various entrances and islets. Here we found the vestiges of a bonfire, lighted in memory of the battle of Bannockburn, concerning which every part of Scotland has its peculiar traditions. The Orcadians say that a Norwegian prince, then their ruler, called by them Harold, brought 1400 men of Orkney to the assistance of Bruce, and that the King, at a critical period of the engagement, touched him with his scabbard, saying, 'The day is against us.'--'I trust,' returned the Orcadian, 'your Grace will _venture again_;' which has given rise to their motto, and passed into a proverb. On board at half-past three, and find Bessy Millie a woman of her word, for the expected breeze has sprung up, if it but last us till we double Cape Wrath. Weigh anchor (I hope) to bid farewell to Orkney.[81] "The land in Orkney is, generally speaking, excellent, and what is not fitted for the plough is admirably adapted for pasture. But the cultivation is very bad, and the mode of using these extensive commons, where they tear up, without remorse, the turf of the finest pasture, in order to make fuel, is absolutely execrable. The practice has already peeled and exhausted much fine land, and must in the end ruin the country entirely. In other respects, their mode of cultivation is to manure for barley and oats, and then manure again, and this without the least idea of fallow or green crops. Mr. Rae thinks that his example--and he farms very well--has had no effect upon the natives, except in the article of potatoes, which they now cultivate a little more, but crops of turnips are unknown. For this slovenly labor the Orcadians cannot, like the Shetland men, plead the occupation of fishing, which is wholly neglected by them, excepting that about this time of the year all the people turn out for the dogfish, the liver of which affords oil, and the bodies are a food as much valued here by the lower classes as it is contemned in Shetland. We saw nineteen boats out at this work. But cod, tusk, ling, haddocks, etc., which abound round these isles, are totally neglected. Their inferiority in husbandry is therefore to be ascribed to the prejudices of the people, who are all peasants of the lowest order. On Lord Armadale's estate, the number of tenantry amounts to 300, and the average of rent is about seven pounds each. What can be expected from such a distribution? and how is the necessary restriction to take place, without the greatest immediate distress and hardship to these poor creatures? It is the hardest chapter in Economics; and if I were an Orcadian laird, I feel I should shuffle on with the old useless creatures, in contradiction to my better judgment. Stock is improved in these islands, and the horses seem to be better bred than in Shetland; at least, I have seen more clever animals. The good horses find a ready sale; Mr. Rae gets twenty guineas readily for a colt of his rearing--to be sure, they are very good. "_Six o'clock._--Our breeze has carried us through the Mouth of Hoy, and so into the Atlantic. The north-western face of the island forms a ledge of high perpendicular cliffs, which might have surprised us more, had we not already seen the Ord of Bressay, the Noup of Noss, and the precipices of the Fair Isle. But these are formidable enough. One projecting cliff, from the peculiarities of its form, has acquired the name of the Old Man of Hoy, and is well known to mariners as marking the entrance to the Mouth. The other jaw of this mouth is formed by a lower range of crags, called the Burgh of Birsa. The access through this strait would be easy, were it not for the Island of Græmsay, lying in the very throat of the passage, and two other islands covering the entrance to the harbor of Stromness. Græmsay is infamous for shipwrecks, and the chance of these _God-sends_, as they were impiously called, is said sometimes to have doubled the value of the land. In Stromness, I saw many of the sad relics of shipwrecked vessels applied to very odd purposes, and indeed to all sorts of occasions. The gates, or _grinds_, as they are here called, are usually of ship planks and timbers, and so are their bridges, etc. These casualties are now much less common since the lights on the Skerries and the Start have been established. Enough of memoranda for the present.--We have hitherto kept our course pretty well; and a King's ship about eighteen guns or so, two miles upon our lee-boom, has shortened sail, apparently to take us under her wing, which may not be altogether unnecessary in the latitude of Cape Wrath, where several vessels have been taken by Yankee-Doodle. The sloop of war looks as if she could bite hard, and is supposed by our folks to be the Malay. If we can speak the captain, we will invite him to some grouse, or send him some, as he likes best, for Marchie's campaign was very successful. "_18th August, 1814._--Bessy Millie's charm has failed us. After a rainy night, the wind has come round to the north-west, and is getting almost contrary. We have weathered Whitten-head, however, and Cape Wrath, the north-western extremity of Britain, is now in sight. The weather gets rainy and squally. Hamilton and Erskine keep their berths. Duff and I sit upon deck, like two great bears, wrapt in watch-cloaks, the sea flying over us every now and then. At length, after a sound buffeting with the rain, the doubling Cape Wrath with this wind is renounced as impracticable, and we stand away for Loch Eribol, a lake running into the extensive country of Lord Reay. No sickness; we begin to get hardy sailors in that particular. The ground rises upon us very bold and mountainous, especially a very high steep mountain, called Ben-y-Hope, at the head of a lake called Loch Hope. The weather begins to mitigate as we get under the lee of the land. Loch Eribol opens, running up into a wild and barren scene of crags and hills. The proper anchorage is said to be at the head of the lake, but to go eight miles up so narrow an inlet would expose us to be wind-bound. A pilot-boat comes off from Mr. Anderson's house, a principal tacksman of Lord Reay's. After some discussion we anchor within a reef of sunken rocks, nearly opposite to Mr. Anderson's house of Rispan; the situation is not, we are given to understand, altogether without danger if the wind should blow hard, but it is now calm. In front of our anchorage a few shapeless patches of land, not exceeding a few yards in diameter, have been prepared for corn by the spade, and bear wretched crops. All the rest of the view is utter barrenness; the distant hills, we are told, contain plenty of deer, being part of a forest belonging to Lord Reay, who is proprietor of all the extensive range of desolation now under our eye. The water has been kinder than the land, for we hear of plenty of salmon, and haddocks, and lobsters, and send our faithful minister of the interior, John Peters, the steward, to procure some of those good things of this very indifferent land, and to invite Mr. Anderson to dine with us. Four o'clock,--John has just returned, successful in both commissions, and the evening concludes pleasantly. "_19th August, 1814, Loch Eribol, near Cape Wrath._--Went off before eight A. M. to breakfast with our friend Mr. Anderson. His house, invisible from the vessel at her moorings, and indeed from any part of the entrance into Loch Eribol, is a very comfortable one, lying obscured behind a craggy eminence. A little creek, winding up behind the crag, and in front of the house, forms a small harbor, and gives a romantic air of concealment and snugness. There we found a ship upon the stocks, built from the keel by a Highland carpenter, who had magnanimously declined receiving assistance from any of the ship-carpenters who happened to be here occasionally, lest it should be said he could not have finished his task without their aid. An ample Highland breakfast of excellent new-taken herring, equal to those of Lochfine, fresh haddocks, fresh eggs, and fresh butter, not forgetting the bottle of whiskey, and bannocks of barley, and oat-cakes, with the Lowland luxuries of tea and coffee. After breakfast, took the long-boat, and, under Mr. Anderson's pilotage, row to see a remarkable natural curiosity, called Uamh Smowe, or the Largest Cave. Stevenson, Marchie, and Duff go by land. Take the fowling-piece, and shoot some sea-fowl and a large hawk of an uncommon appearance. Fire four shots, and kill three times. After rowing about three miles to the westward of the entrance from the sea to Loch Eribol, we enter a creek, between two ledges of very high rocks, and landing, find ourselves in front of the wonder we came to see. The exterior apartment of the cavern opens under a tremendous rock, facing the creek, and occupies the full space of the ravine where we landed. From the top of the rock to the base of the cavern, as we afterwards discovered by plumb, is eighty feet, of which the height of the arch is fifty-three feet; the rest, being twenty-seven feet, is occupied by the precipitous rock under which it opens; the width is fully in proportion to this great height, being 110 feet. The depth of this exterior cavern is 200 feet, and it is apparently supported by an intermediate column of natural rock. Being open to daylight and the sea-air, the cavern is perfectly clean and dry, and the sides are incrusted with stalactites. This immense cavern is so well proportioned, that I was not aware of its extraordinary height and extent, till I saw our two friends, who had somewhat preceded us, having made the journey by land, appearing like pigmies among its recesses. Afterwards, on entering the cave, I climbed up a sloping rock at its extremity, and was much struck with the prospect, looking outward from this magnificent arched cavern upon our boat and its crew, the view being otherwise bounded by the ledge of rocks which formed each side of the creek. We now propose to investigate the farther wonders of the cave of Smowe. In the right or west side of the cave opens an interior cavern of a different aspect. The height of this second passage may be about twelve or fourteen feet, and its breadth about six or eight, neatly formed into a Gothic portal by the hand of nature. The lower part of this porch is closed by a ledge of rock, rising to the height of between five and six feet, and which I can compare to nothing but the hatch-door of a shop. Beneath this hatch a brook finds its way out, forms a black deep pool before the Gothic archway, and then escapes to the sea, and forms the creek in which we landed. It is somewhat difficult to approach this strange pass, so as to gain a view into the interior of the cavern. By clambering along a broken and dangerous cliff, you can, however, look into it; but only so far as to see a twilight space filled with dark-colored water in great agitation, and representing a subterranean lake, moved by some fearful convulsion of nature. How this pond is supplied with water you cannot see from even this point of vantage, but you are made partly sensible of the truth by a sound like the dashing of a sullen cataract within the bowels of the earth. Here the adventure has usually been abandoned, and Mr. Anderson only mentioned two travellers whose curiosity had led them farther. We were resolved, however, to see the adventures of this new cave of Montesinos to an end. Duff had already secured the use of a fisher's boat and its hands, our own long-boat being too heavy and far too valuable to be ventured upon this Cocytus. Accordingly the skiff was dragged up the brook to the rocky ledge or hatch which barred up the interior cavern, and there, by force of hands, our boat's crew and two or three fishers first raised the boat's bow upon the ledge of rock, then brought her to a level, being poised upon that narrow hatch, and lastly launched her down into the dark and deep subterranean lake within. The entrance was so narrow, and the boat so clumsy, that we, who were all this while clinging to the rock like sea-fowl, and with scarce more secure footing, were greatly alarmed for the safety of our trusty sailors. At the instant when the boat sloped inward to the cave, a Highlander threw himself into it with great boldness and dexterity, and, at the expense of some bruises, shared its precipitate fall into the waters under the earth. This dangerous exploit was to prevent the boat drifting away from us, but a cord at its stern would have been a safer and surer expedient. "When our _enfant perdu_ had recovered breath and legs, he brought the boat back to the entrance, and took us in. We now found ourselves embarked on a deep black pond of an irregular form, the rocks rising like a dome all around us, and high over our heads. The light, a sort of dubious twilight, was derived from two chasms in the roof of the vault, for that offered by the entrance was but trifling. Down one of those rents there poured from the height of eighty feet, in a sheet of foam, the brook, which, after supplying the subterranean pond with water, finds its way out beneath the ledge of rock that blocks its entrance. The other skylight, if I may so term it, looks out at the clear blue sky. It is impossible for description to explain the impression made by so strange a place, to which we had been conveyed with so much difficulty. The cave itself, the pool, the cataract, would have been each separate objects of wonder, but all united together, and affecting at once the ear, the eye, and the imagination, their effect is indescribable. The length of this pond, or loch as the people here call it, is seventy feet over, the breadth about thirty at the narrowest point, and it is of great depth. "As we resolved to proceed, we directed the boat to a natural arch on the right hand, or west side of the cataract. This archway was double, a high arch being placed above a very low one, as in a Roman aqueduct. The ledge of rock which forms this lower arch is not above two feet and a half high above the water, and under this we were to pass in the boat; so that we were fain to pile ourselves flat upon each other like a layer of herrings. By this judicious disposition we were pushed in safety beneath this low-browed rock into a region of utter darkness. For this, however, we were provided, for we had a tinder-box and lights. The view back upon the twilight lake we had crossed, its sullen eddies wheeling round and round, and its echoes resounding to the ceaseless thunder of the waterfall, seemed dismal enough, and was aggravated by temporary darkness, and in some degree by a sense of danger. The lights, however, dispelled the latter sensation, if it prevailed to any extent, and we now found ourselves in a narrow cavern, sloping somewhat upward from the water. We got out of the boat, proceeded along some slippery places upon shelves of the rock, and gained the dry land. I cannot say _dry_, excepting comparatively. We were then in an arched cave, twelve feet high in the roof, and about eight feet in breadth, which went winding into the bowels of the earth for about an hundred feet. The sides, being (like those of the whole cavern) of limestone rock, were covered with stalactites, and with small drops of water like dew, glancing like ten thousand thousand sets of birthday diamonds under the glare of our lights. In some places these stalactites branch out into broad and curious ramifications, resembling coral and the foliage of submarine plants. "When we reached the extremity of this passage, we found it declined suddenly to a horrible ugly gulf, or well, filled with dark water, and of great depth, over which the rock closed. We threw in stones, which indicated great profundity by their sound; and growing more familiar with the horrors of this den, we sounded with an oar, and found about ten feet depth at the entrance, but discovered in the same manner, that the gulf extended under the rock, deepening as it went, God knows how far. Imagination can figure few deaths more horrible than to be sucked under these rocks into some unfathomable abyss, where your corpse could never be found to give intimation of your fate. A water kelpy, or an evil spirit of any aquatic propensities, could not choose a fitter abode; and, to say the truth, I believe at our first entrance, and when all our feelings were afloat at the novelty of the scene, the unexpected plashing of a seal would have routed the whole dozen of us. The mouth of this ugly gulf was all covered with slimy alluvious substances, which led Mr. Stevenson to observe, that it could have no separate source, but must be fed from the waters of the outer lake and brook, as it lay upon the same level, and seemed to rise and fall with them, without having anything to indicate a separate current of its own. Rounding this perilous hole, or gulf, upon the aforesaid alluvious substances, which formed its shores, we reached the extremity of the cavern, which there ascends like a vent, or funnel, directly up a sloping precipice, but hideously black and slippery from wet and sea-weeds. One of our sailors, a Zetlander, climbed up a good way, and by holding up a light, we could plainly perceive that this vent closed after ascending to a considerable height; and here, therefore, closed the adventure of the cave of Smowe, for it appeared utterly impossible to proceed further in any direction whatever. There is a tradition that the first Lord Reay went through various subterranean abysses, and at length returned, after ineffectually endeavoring to penetrate to the extremity of the Smowe cave; but this must be either fabulous, or an exaggerated account of such a journey as we performed. And under the latter supposition, it is a curious instance how little the people in the neighborhood of this curiosity have cared to examine it. "In returning, we endeavored to familiarize ourselves with the objects in detail, which, viewed together, had struck us with so much wonder. The stalactites, or limy incrustations, upon the walls of the cavern, are chiefly of a dark-brown color, and in this respect, Smowe is inferior, according to Mr. Stevenson, to the celebrated cave of Macallister in the Isle of Skye. In returning, the men with the lights, and the various groups and attitudes of the party, gave a good deal of amusement. We now ventured to clamber along the side of the rock above the subterranean water, and thus gained the upper arch, and had the satisfaction to see our admirable and good-humored commodore, Hamilton, floated beneath the lower arch into the second cavern. His goodly countenance being illumined by a single candle, his recumbent posture, and the appearance of a hard-favored fellow guiding the boat, made him the very picture of Bibo, in the catch, when he wakes in Charon's boat:-- 'When Bibo thought fit from this world to retreat, As full of Champagne as an egg's full of meat, He waked in the boat, and to Charon he said, That he would be row'd back, for he was not yet dead.' "Descending from our superior station on the upper arch, we now again embarked, and spent some time in rowing about and examining this second cave. We could see our dusky entrance, into which daylight streamed faint, and at a considerable distance; and under the arch of the outer cavern stood a sailor, with an oar in his hand, looking, in the perspective, like a fairy with his wand. We at length emerged unwillingly from this extraordinary basin, and again enjoyed ourselves in the large exterior cave. Our boat was hoisted with some difficulty over the ledge, which appears the natural barrier of the interior apartments, and restored in safety to the fishers, who were properly gratified for the hazard which their skiff, as well as one of themselves, had endured. After this we resolved to ascend the rocks, and discover the opening by which the cascade was discharged from above into the second cave. Erskine and I, by some chance, took the wrong side of the rocks, and, after some scrambling, got into the face of a dangerous precipice, where Erskine, to my great alarm, turned giddy, and declared he could not go farther. I clambered up without much difficulty, and shouting to the people below, got two of them to assist the Counsellor, who was brought into, by the means which have sent many a good fellow out of, the world--I mean a rope. We easily found the brook, and traced its descent till it precipitates itself down a chasm of the rock into the subterranean apartment, where we first made its acquaintance. Divided by a natural arch of stone from the chasm down which the cascade falls, there is another rent, which serves as a skylight to the cavern, as I already noticed. Standing on a natural foot-bridge, formed by the arch which divides these two gulfs, you have a grand prospect into both. The one is deep, black, and silent, only affording at the bottom a glimpse of the dark and sullen pool which occupies the interior of the cavern. The right-hand rent, down which the stream discharges itself, seems to ring and reel with the unceasing roar of the cataract, which envelops its side in mist and foam. This part of the scene alone is worth a day's journey. After heavy rains, the torrent is discharged into this cavern with astonishing violence; and the size of the chasm being inadequate to the reception of such a volume of water, it is thrown up in spouts like the blowing of a whale. But at such times the entrance of the cavern is inaccessible. "Taking leave of this scene with regret, we rowed back to Loch Eribol. Having yet an hour to spare before dinner, we rowed across the mouth of the lake to its shore on the east side. This rises into a steep and shattered stack of mouldering calcareous rock and stone, called Whitten-head. It is pierced with several caverns, the abode of seals and cormorants. We entered one, where our guide promised to us a grand sight, and so it certainly would have been to any who had not just come from Smowe. In this last cave the sea enters through a lofty arch, and penetrates to a great depth; but the weight of the tide made it dangerous to venture very far, so we did not see the extremity of Friskin's Cavern, as it is called. We shot several cormorants in the cave, the echoes roaring like thunder at every discharge. We received, however, a proper rebuke from Hamilton, our commodore, for killing anything which was not fit for _eating_. It was in vain I assured him that the Zetlanders made excellent hare-soup out of these sea-fowl. He will listen to no subordinate authority, and rules us by the Almanach des Gourmands. Mr. Anderson showed me the spot where the Norwegian monarch, Haco, moored his fleet, after the discomfiture he received at Largs. He caused all the cattle to be driven from the hills, and houghed and slain upon a broad flat rock, for the refreshment of his dispirited army. Mr. Anderson dines with us, and very handsomely presents us with a stock of salmon, haddocks, and so forth, which we requite by a small present of wine from our sea stores. This has been a fine day; the first fair day here for these eight weeks. "_20th August, 1814._--Sail by four in the morning, and by half-past six are off Cape Wrath. All hands ashore by seven, and no time allowed to breakfast, except on beef and biscuit. On this dread Cape, so fatal to mariners, it is proposed to build a lighthouse, and Mr. Stevenson has fixed on an advantageous situation. It is a high promontory, with steep sides that go sheer down to the breakers, which lash its feet. There is no landing, except in a small creek about a mile and a half to the eastward. There the foam of the sea plays at long bowls with a huge collection of large stones, some of them a ton in weight, but which these fearful billows chuck up and down as a child tosses a ball. The walk from thence to the Cape was over rough boggy ground, but good sheep pasture. Mr. ---- Dunlop, brother to the laird of Dunlop, took from Lord Reay, some years since, a large track of sheep-land, including the territories of Cape Wrath, for about £300 a year, for the period of two-nineteen years and a life-rent. It is needless to say that the tenant has an immense profit, for the value of pasture is now understood here. Lord Reay's estate, containing 150,000 square acres, and measuring eighty miles by sixty, was, before commencement of the last leases, rented at £1200 a year. It is now worth £5000, and Mr. Anderson says he may let it this ensuing year (when the leases expire) for about £15,000. But then he must resolve to part with his people, for these rents can only be given upon the supposition that sheep are generally to be introduced on the property. In an economical, and perhaps in a political point of view, it might be best that every part of a country were dedicated to that sort of occupation for which nature has best fitted it. But to effect this reform in the present instance, Lord Reay must turn out several hundred families who have lived under him and his fathers for many generations, and the swords of whose fathers probably won the lands from which he is now expelling them. He is a good-natured man, I suppose, for Mr. A. says he is hesitating whether he shall not take a more moderate rise (£7000 or £8000), and keep his Highland tenantry. This last war (before the short peace), he levied a fine fencible corps (the Reay fencibles), and might have doubled their number. _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 the means of tempting the strong to plunder the possessors. Much may be said on both sides.[82] "Cape Wrath is a striking point, both from the dignity of its own appearance, and from the mental association of its being the extreme cape of Scotland, with reference to the north-west. There is no land in the direct line between this point and America. I saw a pair of large eagles, and if I had had the rifle-gun might have had a shot, for the birds, when I first saw them, were perched on a rock within about sixty or seventy yards. They are, I suppose, little disturbed here, for they showed no great alarm. After the Commissioners and Mr. Stevenson had examined the headland, with reference to the site of a lighthouse, we strolled to our boat, and came on board between ten and eleven. Get the boat up upon deck, and set sail for the Lewis with light winds and a great swell of tide. Pass a rocky islet called Gousla. Here a fine vessel was lately wrecked; all her crew perished but one, who got upon the rocks from the boltsprit, and was afterwards brought off. In front of Cape Wrath are some angry breakers, called the _Staggs_; the rocks which occasion them are visible at low water. The country behind Cape Wrath swells in high sweeping elevations, but without any picturesque or dignified mountainous scenery. But on sailing westward a few miles, particularly after doubling a headland called the Stour of Assint, the coast assumes the true Highland character, being skirted with a succession of picturesque mountains of every variety of height and outline. These are the hills of Ross-shire--a waste and thinly peopled district at this extremity of the island. We would willingly have learned the names of the most remarkable, but they are only laid down in the charts by the cant names given them by mariners, from their appearance, as the Sugar-loaf, and so forth. Our breeze now increases, and seems steadily favorable, carrying us on with exhilarating rapidity, at the rate of eight knots an hour, with the romantic outline of the mainland under our lee-beam, and the dusky shores of the Long Island beginning to appear ahead. We remain on deck long after it is dark, watching the phosphoric effects occasioned, or made visible, by the rapid motion of the vessel, and enlightening her course with a continued succession of sparks and even flashes of broad light, mingled with the foam which she flings from her bows and head. A rizard haddock and to bed. Charming weather all day. "_21st August, 1814._--Last night went out like a lamb, but this morning came in like a lion, all roar and tumult. The wind shifted and became squally; the mingled and confused tides that run among the Hebrides got us among their eddies, and gave the cutter such concussions, that, besides reeling at every wave, she trembled from head to stern, with a sort of very uncomfortable and ominous vibration. Turned out about three, and went on deck; the prospect dreary enough, as we are beating up a narrow channel between two dark and disconsolate-looking islands, in a gale of wind and rain, guided only by the twinkling glimmer of the light on an island called Ellan Glas.--Go to bed and sleep soundly, notwithstanding the rough rocking. Great bustle about four; the light-keeper having seen our flag, comes off to be our pilot, as in duty bound. Asleep again till eight. When I went on deck, I found we had anchored in the little harbor of Scalpa, upon the coast of Harris, a place dignified by the residence of Charles Edward in his hazardous attempt to escape in 1746. An old man, lately alive here, called Donald Macleod, was his host and temporary protector, and could not, until his dying hour, mention the distresses of the adventurer without tears. From this place, Charles attempted to go to Stornoway; but the people of the Lewis had taken arms to secure him, under an idea that he was coming to plunder the country. And although his faithful attendant, Donald Macleod, induced them by fair words, to lay aside their purpose, yet they insisted upon his leaving the island. So the unfortunate Prince was obliged to return back to Scalpa. He afterwards escaped to South Uist, but was chased in the passage by Captain Fergusson's sloop of war. The harbor seems a little neat secure place of anchorage. Within a small island, there seems more shelter than where we are lying; but it is crowded with vessels, part of those whom we saw in the Long-Hope--so Mr. Wilson chose to remain outside. The ground looks hilly and barren in the extreme; but I can say little for it, as an incessant rain prevents my keeping the deck. Stevenson and Duff, accompanied by Marchie, go to examine the lighthouse on Ellan Glas. Hamilton and Erskine keep their beds, having scarce slept last night--and I bring up my journal. The day continues bad, with little intermission of rain. Our party return with little advantage from their expedition, excepting some fresh butter from the lighthouse. The harbor of Scalpa is composed of a great number of little uninhabited islets. The masts of the vessels at anchor behind them have a good effect. To bed early, to make amends for last night, with the purpose of sailing for Dunvegan in the Isle of Skye with daylight." Footnotes of the Chapter XXX. [81: Lord Teignmouth, in his recent _Sketches of the Coasts and Islands of Scotland_, says: "The publication of _The Pirate_ satisfied the natives of Orkney as to the authorship of the Waverley Novels. It was remarked by those who had accompanied Sir Walter Scott in his excursions in these Islands, that the vivid descriptions which the work contains were confined to those scenes which he visited."--Vol. i. p. 28.] [82: The whole of the immense district called _Lord Reay's country_--the habitation, as far back as history reaches, of the clan Mackay--has passed, since Sir W. Scott's journal was written, into the hands of the noble family of Sutherland.] CHAPTER XXXI DIARY CONTINUED. -- ISLE OF HARRIS. -- MONUMENTS OF THE CHIEFS OF MACLEOD. -- ISLE OF SKYE. -- DUNVEGAN CASTLE. -- LOCH CORRISKIN. --MACALLISTER'S CAVE 1814 "_22d August, 1814._--Sailed early in the morning from Scalpa Harbor, in order to cross the Minch, or Channel, for Dunvegan; but the breeze being contrary, we can only creep along the Harris shore, until we shall gain the advantage of the tide. The east coast of Harris, as we now see it, is of a character which sets human industry at utter defiance, consisting of high sterile hills, covered entirely with stones, with a very slight sprinkling of stunted heather. Within, appear still higher peaks of mountains. I have never seen anything more unpropitious, excepting the southern side of Griban, on the shores of Loch-na-Gaoil, in the Isle of Mull. We sail along this desolate coast (which exhibits no mark of human habitation) with the advantage of a pleasant day, and a brisk, though not a favorable gale. _Two o'clock_--Row ashore to see the little harbor and village of Rowdill, on the coast of Harris. There is a decent three-storied house, belonging to the laird, Mr. Macleod of the Harris,[83] where we were told two of his female relations lived. A large vessel had been stranded last year, and two or three carpenters were about repairing her, but in such a style of Highland laziness that I suppose she may float next century. The harbor is neat enough, but wants a little more cover to the eastward. The ground, on landing, does not seem altogether so desolate as from the sea. In the former point of view, we overlook all the retired glens and crevices, which, by infinite address and labor, are rendered capable of a little cultivation. But few and evil are the patches so cultivated in Harris, as far as we have seen. Above the house is situated the ancient church of Rowdill. This pile was unfortunately burned down by accident some years since, by fire taking to a quantity of wood laid in for fitting it up. It is a building in the form of a cross, with a rude tower at the eastern end, like some old English churches. Upon this tower are certain pieces of sculpture, of a kind the last which one would have expected on a building dedicated to religious purposes. Some have lately fallen in a storm, but enough remains to astonish us at the grossness of the architect and the age. "Within the church are two ancient monuments. The first, on the right hand of the pulpit, presents the effigy of a warrior completely armed in plate armor, with his hand on his two-handed broadsword. His helmet is peaked, with a gorget or upper corselet which seems to be made of mail. His figure lies flat on the monument, and is in bas-relief, of the natural size. The arch which surmounts this monument is curiously carved with the figures of the apostles. In the flat space of the wall beneath the arch, and above the tombstone, are a variety of compartments, exhibiting the arms of the Macleods, being a galley with the sails spread, a rude view of Dunvegan Castle, some saints and religious emblems, and a Latin inscription, of which our time (or skill) was inadequate to decipher the first line; but the others announced the tenant of the monument to be _Alexander, filius Willielmi MacLeod, de Dunvegan, Anno Dni_ M.CCCC.XXVIII. A much older monument (said also to represent a laird of Macleod) lies in the transept, but without any arch over it. It represents the grim figure of a Highland chief, not in feudal armor like the former, but dressed in a plaid--(or perhaps a shirt of mail)--reaching down below the knees, with a broad sort of hem upon its lower extremity. The figure wears a high-peaked open helmet, or skull-cap, with a sort of tippet of mail attached to it, which falls over the breast of the warrior, pretty much as women wear a handkerchief or short shawl. This remarkable figure is bearded most tyrannically, and has one hand on his long two-handed sword, the other on his dirk, both of which hang at a broad belt. Another weapon, probably his knife, seems to have been also attached to the baldric. His feet rest on his two dogs entwined together, and a similar emblem is said to have supported his head, but is now defaced, as indeed the whole monument bears marks of the unfortunate fire. A lion is placed at each end of the stone. Who the hero was, whom this martial monument commemorated, we could not learn. Indeed, our cicerone was but imperfect. He chanced to be a poor devil of an excise-officer who had lately made a seizure of a still upon a neighboring island, after a desperate resistance. Upon seeing our cutter, he mistook it, as has often happened to us, for an armed vessel belonging to the revenue, which the appearance and equipment of the yacht, and the number of men, make her resemble considerably. He was much disappointed when he found we had nothing to do with the tribute to Cæsar, and begged us not to undeceive the natives, who were so much irritated against him that he found it necessary to wear a loaded pair of pistols in each pocket, which he showed to our Master, Wilson, to convince him of the perilous state in which he found himself while exercising so obnoxious a duty in the midst of a fierce-tempered people, and at many miles' distance from any possible countenance or assistance. The village of Rowdill consists of Highland huts of the common construction, _i. e._, a low circular wall of large stones, without mortar, deeply sunk in the ground, surmounted by a thatched roof secured by ropes, without any chimney but a hole in the roof. There may be forty such houses in the village. We heard that the laird was procuring a schoolmaster--he of the parish being ten miles distant--and there was a neatness about the large house which seems to indicate that things are going on well. Adjacent to the churchyard were two eminences, apparently artificial. Upon one was fixed a stone, seemingly the staff of a cross; upon another the head of a cross, with a sculpture of the crucifixion. These monuments (which refer themselves to Catholic times of course) are popularly called _The Croshlets_--crosslets, or little crosses. "Get on board at five, and stand across the Sound for Skye with the ebb-tide in our favor. The sunset being delightful, we enjoy it upon deck, admiring the Sound on each side bounded by islands. That of Skye lies in the east, with some very high mountains in the centre, and a bold rocky coast in front, opening up into several lochs, or arms of the sea;--that of Loch Folliart, near the upper end of which Dunvegan is situated, is opposite to us, but our breeze has failed us, and the flood-tide will soon set in, which is likely to carry us to the northward of this object of our curiosity until next morning. To the west of us lies Harris, with its variegated ridges of mountains, now clear, distinct, and free from clouds. The sun is just setting behind the Island of Bernera, of which we see one conical hill. North Uist and Benbecula continue from Harris to the southerly line of what is called the Long Island. They are as bold and mountainous, and probably as barren as Harris--worse they cannot be. Unnumbered islets and holms, each of which has its name and its history, skirt these larger isles, and are visible in this clear evening as distinct and separate objects, lying lone and quiet upon the face of the undisturbed and scarce rippling sea. To our berths at ten, after admiring the scenery for some time. "_23d August, 1814._--Wake under the Castle of Dunvegan, in the Loch of Folliart. I had sent a card to the Laird of Macleod in the morning, who came off before we were dressed, and carried us to his castle to breakfast. A part of Dunvegan is very old; 'its birth tradition notes not.' Another large tower was built by the same Alaster Macleod whose burial-place and monument we saw yesterday at Rowdill. He had a Gaelic surname, signifying the Hump-backed. Roderick More (knighted by James VI.) erected a long edifice combining these two ancient towers: and other pieces of building, forming a square, were accomplished at different times. The whole castle occupies a precipitous mass of rock overhanging the lake, divided by two or three islands in that place, which form a snug little harbor under the walls. There is a courtyard looking out upon the sea, protected by a battery, at least a succession of embrasures, for only two guns are pointed, and these unfit for service. The ancient entrance rose up a flight of steps cut in the rock, and passed into this courtyard through a portal, but this is now demolished. You land under the castle, and walking round, find yourself in front of it. This was originally inaccessible, for a brook coming down on the one side, a chasm of the rocks on the other, and a ditch in front, made it impervious. But the late Macleod built a bridge over the stream, and the present laird is executing an entrance suitable to the character of this remarkable fortalice, by making a portal between two advanced towers and an outer court, from which he proposes to throw a drawbridge over to the high rock in front of the castle. This, if well executed, cannot fail to have a good and characteristic effect. We were most kindly and hospitably received by the chieftain, his lady, and his sister;[84] the two last are pretty and accomplished young women, a sort of persons whom we have not seen for some time; and I was quite as much pleased with renewing my acquaintance with them as with the sight of a good field of barley just cut (the first harvest we have seen), not to mention an extensive young plantation and some middle-aged trees, though all had been strangers to mine eyes since I left Leith. In the garden--or rather the orchard which was formerly the garden--is a pretty cascade, divided into two branches, and called Rorie More's Nurse, because he loved to be lulled to sleep by the sound of it. The day was rainy, or at least inconstant, so we could not walk far from the castle. Besides the assistance of the laird himself, who was most politely and easily attentive, we had that of an intelligent gentlemanlike clergyman, Mr. Suter, minister of Kilmore, to explain the _carte-de-pays_. Within the castle we saw a remarkable drinking-cup, with an inscription dated A. D. 993, which I have described particularly elsewhere.[85] I saw also a fairy flag, a pennon of silk, with something like round red rowan-berries wrought upon it. We also saw the drinking-horn of Rorie More, holding about three pints English measure--an ox's horn tipped with silver, not nearly so large as Watt of Harden's bugle. The rest of the curiosities in the castle are chiefly Indian, excepting an old dirk and the fragment of a two-handed sword. We learn that most of the Highland superstitions, even that of the second-sight, are still in force. Gruagach, a sort of tutelary divinity, often mentioned by Martin in his history of the Western Islands, has still his place and credit, but is modernized into a tall man, always a Lowlander, with a long coat and white waistcoat. Passed a very pleasant day. I should have said the fairy flag had three properties: produced in battle, it multiplied the numbers of the Macleods--spread on the nuptial bed, it insured fertility--and lastly, it brought herring into the loch.[86] "_24th August, 1814._--This morning resist with difficulty Macleod's kind and pressing entreaty to send round the ship, and go to the cave at Airds by land; but our party is too large to be accommodated without inconvenience, and divisions are always awkward. Walk and see Macleod's farm. The plantations seem to thrive admirably, although I think he hazards planting his trees greatly too tall. Macleod is a spirited and judicious improver, and if he does not hurry too fast, cannot fail to be of service to his people. He seems to think and act much like a chief, without the fanfaronade of the character. See a female school patronized by Mrs. M. There are about twenty girls, who learn reading, writing, and spinning; and being compelled to observe habits of cleanliness and neatness when at school, will probably be the means of introducing them by degrees at home. The roads around the castle are, generally speaking, very good; some are old, some made under the operation of the late act. Macleod says almost all the contractors for these last roads have failed, being tightly looked after by Government, which I confess I think very right. If Government is to give relief where a disadvantageous contract has been engaged in, it is plain it cannot be refused in similar instances, so that all calculations of expenses in such operations are at an end. The day being delightfully fair and warm, we walk up to the Church of Kilmore. In a cottage, at no great distance, we heard the women singing as they _waulked_ the cloth, by rubbing it with their hands and feet, and screaming all the while in a sort of chorus. At a distance, the sound was wild and sweet enough, but rather discordant when you approached too near the performers. In the churchyard (otherwise not remarkable) was a pyramidical monument erected to the father of the celebrated Simon, Lord Lovat, who was fostered at Dunvegan. It is now nearly ruinous, and the inscription has fallen down. Return to the castle, take our luncheon, and go aboard at three--Macleod accompanying us in proper style with his piper. We take leave of the castle, where we have been so kindly entertained, with a salute of seven guns. The chief returns ashore, with his piper playing the Macleod's Gathering, heard to advantage along the calm and placid loch, and dying as it retreated from us. "The towers of Dunvegan, with the banner which floated over them in honor of their guests, now showed to great advantage. On the right were a succession of three remarkable hills, with round flat tops, popularly called Macleod's Dining-Tables. Far behind these, in the interior of the island, arise the much higher and more romantic mountains, called Quillen, or Cuillin, a name which they have been said to owe to no less a person than Cuthullin, or Cuchullin, celebrated by Ossian. I ought, I believe, to notice, that Macleod and Mr. Suter have both heard a tacksman of Macleod's, called Grant, recite the celebrated Address to the Sun; and another person, whom they named, repeat the description of Cuchullin's car. But all agree as to the gross infidelity of Macpherson as a translator and editor. It ends in the explanation of the Adventures in the cave of Montesinos, afforded to the Knight of La Mancha, by the ape of Gines de Passamonte--some are true and some are false. There is little poetical tradition in this country, yet there should be a great deal, considering how lately the bards and genealogists existed as a distinct order. Macleod's _hereditary_ piper is called MacCrimmon, but the present holder of the office has risen above his profession. He is an old man, a lieutenant in the army, and a most capital piper, possessing about 200 tunes and pibrochs, most of which will probably die with him, as he declines to have any of his sons instructed in his art. He plays to Macleod and his lady, but only in the same room, and maintains his minstrel privilege by putting on his bonnet so soon as he begins to play. These MacCrimmons formerly kept a college in Skye for teaching the pipe-music. Macleod's present piper is of the name, but scarcely as yet a deacon of his craft. He played every day at dinner.--After losing sight of the Castle of Dunvegan, we open another branch of the loch on which it is situated, and see a small village upon its distant bank. The mountains of Quillen continue to form a background to the wild landscape with their variegated and peaked outline. We approach Dunvegan-head, a bold bluff cape, where the loch joins the ocean. The weather, hitherto so beautiful that we had dined on deck _en seigneurs_, becomes overcast and hazy, with little or no wind. Laugh and lie down. "_25th August, 1814._--Rise about eight o'clock, the yacht gliding delightfully along the coast of Skye, with a fair wind and excellent day. On the opposite side lie the islands of Canna, Rum, and Muick, popularly Muck. On opening the sound between Rum and Canna, see a steep circular rock, forming one side of the harbor, on the point of which we can discern the remains of a tower of small dimensions, built, it is said, by a King of the Isles to secure a wife of whom he was jealous. But, as we kept the Skye side of the Sound, we saw little of these islands but what our spy-glasses could show us. The coast of Skye is highly romantic, and at the same time displayed a richness of vegetation on the lower grounds, to which we have hitherto been strangers. We passed three salt-water lochs, or deep embayments, called Loch Bracadale, Loch Eynort, and Loch Britta--and about eleven o'clock open Loch Scavig. We were now under the western termination of the high mountains of Quillen, whose weather-beaten and serrated peaks we had admired at a distance from Dunvegan. They sunk here upon the sea, but with the same bold and peremptory aspect which their distant appearance indicated. They seemed to consist of precipitous sheets of naked rock, down which the torrents were leaping in a hundred lines of foam. The tops, apparently inaccessible to human foot, were rent and split into the most tremendous pinnacles; towards the base of these bare and precipitous crags, the ground, enriched by the soil washed away from them, is verdant and productive. Having passed within the small isle of Soa, we enter Loch Scavig under the shoulder of one of these grisly mountains, and observe that the opposite side of the loch is of a milder character softened down into steep green declivities. From the depth of the bay advanced a headland of high rocks which divided the lake into two recesses, from each of which a brook seemed to issue. Here Macleod had intimated we should find a fine romantic loch, but we were uncertain up what inlet we should proceed in search of it. We chose, against our better judgment, the southerly inlet, where we saw a house which might afford us information. On manning our boat and rowing ashore, we observed a hurry among the inhabitants, owing to our being as usual suspected for _king's men_, although, Heaven knows, we have nothing to do with the revenue but to spend the part of it corresponding to our equipment. We find that there is a lake adjoining to each branch of the bay, and foolishly walk a couple of miles to see that next the farmhouse, merely because the honest man seemed jealous of the honor of his own loch, though we were speedily convinced it was not that which we had been recommended to examine. It had no peculiar merit excepting from its neighborhood to a very high cliff or mountain of precipitous granite; otherwise, the sheet of water does not equal even Cauldshiels Loch. Returned and reëmbarked in our boat, for our guide shook his head at our proposal to climb over the peninsula which divides the two bays and the two lakes. In rowing round the headland, surprised at the infinite number of sea-fowl, then busy apparently with a shoal of fish; at the depth of the bay find that the discharge from this second lake forms a sort of waterfall or rather rapid; round this place were assembled hundreds of trout, and salmon struggling to get up into the fresh water; with a net we might have had twenty salmon at a haul, and a sailor, with no better hook than a crooked pin, caught a dish of trouts, during our absence. "Advancing up this huddling and riotous brook, we found ourselves in a most extraordinary scene: we were surrounded by hills of the boldest and most precipitous character, and on the margin of a lake which seemed to have sustained the constant ravages of torrents from these rude neighbors. The shores consisted of huge layers of naked granite, here and there intermixed with bogs, and heaps of gravel and sand marking the course of torrents. Vegetation there was little or none, and the mountains rose so perpendicularly from the water's edge, that Borrowdale is a jest to them. We proceeded about one mile and a half up this deep, dark, and solitary lake, which is about two miles long, half a mile broad, and, as we learned, of extreme depth. The vapor which enveloped the mountain ridges obliged us by assuming a thousand shapes, varying its veils in all sorts of forms, but sometimes clearing off altogether. It is true, it made us pay the penalty by some heavy and downright showers, from the frequency of which, a Highland boy, whom we brought from the farm, told us the lake was popularly called the Water Kettle. The proper name is Loch Corriskin, from the deep _corrie_ or hollow in the mountains of Cuillin, which affords the basin for this wonderful sheet of water. It is as exquisite as a savage scene, as Loch Katrine is as a scene of stern beauty. After having penetrated so far as distinctly to observe the termination of the lake, under an immense mountain which rises abruptly from the head of the waters, we returned, and often stopped to admire the ravages which storms must have made in these recesses when all human witnesses were driven to places of more shelter and security. Stones, or rather large massive fragments of rock of a composite kind, perfectly different from the granite barriers of the lake, lay upon the rocky beach in the strangest and most precarious situations, as if abandoned by the torrents which had borne them down from above; some lay loose and tottering upon the ledges of the natural rock, with so little security that the slightest push moved them, though their weight exceeded many tons. These detached rocks were chiefly what are called plum-pudding stones. Those which formed the shore were granite. The opposite side of the lake seemed quite pathless, as a huge mountain, one of the detached ridges of the Quillen, sinks in a profound and almost perpendicular precipice down to the water. On the left-hand side, which we traversed, rose a higher and equally inaccessible mountain, the top of which seemed to contain the crater of an exhausted volcano. I never saw a spot on which there was less appearance of vegetation of any kind; the eye rested on nothing but brown and naked crags,[87] and the rocks on which we walked by the side of the loch were as bare as the pavement of Cheapside. There are one or two spots of islets in the loch which seem to bear juniper, or some such low bushy shrub. "Returned from our extraordinary walk and went on board. During dinner, our vessel quitted Loch Scavig, and having doubled its southern cape, opened the bay or salt-water Loch of Sleapin. There went again on shore to visit the late discovered and much celebrated cavern, called Macallister's cave. It opens at the end of a deep ravine running upward from the sea, and the proprietor, Mr. Macallister of Strath Aird, finding that visitors injured it, by breaking and carrying away the stalactites with which it abounds, has secured this cavern by an eight or nine feet wall, with a door. Upon inquiring for the key, we found it was three miles up the loch at the laird's house. It was now late, and to stay until a messenger had gone and returned three miles, was not to be thought of, any more than the alternative of going up the loch and lying there all night. We therefore, with regret, resolved to scale the wall, in which attempt, by the assistance of a rope and some ancient acquaintance with orchard breaking, we easily succeeded. The first entrance to this celebrated cave is rude and unpromising, but the light of the torches with which we were provided is soon reflected from roof, floor, and walls, which seem as if they were sheeted with marble, partly smooth, partly rough with frost-work and rustic ornaments, and partly wrought into statuary. The floor forms a steep and difficult ascent, and might be fancifully compared to a sheet of water, which, while it rushed whitening and foaming down a declivity, had been suddenly arrested and consolidated by the spell of an enchanter. Upon attaining the summit of this ascent, the cave descends with equal rapidity to the brink of a pool of the most limpid water, about four or five yards broad. There opens beyond this pool a portal arch, with beautiful white chasing upon the sides, which promises a continuation of the cave. One of our sailors swam across, for there was no other mode of passing, and informed us (as indeed we partly saw by the light he carried), that the enchantment of Macallister's cave terminated with this portal, beyond which there was only a rude ordinary cavern speedily choked with stones and earth. But the pool, on the brink of which we stood, surrounded by the most fanciful mouldings in a substance resembling white marble, and distinguished by the depth and purity of its waters, might be the bathing grotto of a Naiad. I think a statuary might catch beautiful hints from the fanciful and romantic disposition of the stalactites. There is scarce a form or group that an active fancy may not trace among the grotesque ornaments which have been gradually moulded in this cavern by the dropping of the calcareous water, and its hardening into petrifactions; many of these have been destroyed by the senseless rage of appropriation among recent tourists, and the grotto has lost (I am informed), through the smoke of torches, much of that vivid silver tint which was originally one of its chief distinctions. But enough of beauty remains to compensate for all that may be lost. As the easiest mode of return, I slid down the polished sheet of marble which forms the rising ascent, and thereby injured my pantaloons in a way which my jacket is ill calculated to conceal. Our wearables, after a month's hard service, begin to be frail, and there are daily demands for repairs. Our eatables also begin to assume a real nautical appearance--no soft bread--milk a rare commodity--and those gentlemen most in favor with John Peters, the steward, who prefer salt beef to fresh. To make amends, we never hear of sea-sickness, and the good-humor and harmony of the party continue uninterrupted. When we left the cave we carried off two grandsons of Mr. Macallister's, remarkably fine boys; and Erskine, who may be called _L'ami des Enfans_, treated them most kindly, and showed them all the curiosities in the vessel, causing even the guns to be fired for their amusement, besides filling their pockets with almonds and raisins. So that, with a handsome letter of apology, I hope we may erase any evil impression Mr. Macallister may adopt from our storming the exterior defences of his cavern. After having sent them ashore in safety, stand out of the bay with little or no wind, for the opposite island of Egg." Footnotes of the Chapter XXXI. [83: The Harris has recently passed into the possession of the Earl of Dunmore.--(1839.)] [84: Miss Macleod, now Mrs. Spencer Perceval.] [85: See Note, _Lord of the Isles_, Scott's _Poetical Works_, vol. x. p. 294 [Cambridge Ed. p. 558].] [86: The following passage, from the last of Scott's _Letters on Demonology_ (written in 1830), refers to the night of this 23d of August, 1814. He mentions that twice in his life he had experienced the sensation which the Scotch call _eerie_: gives a night-piece of his early youth in the castle of Glammis, which has already been quoted (_ante_, vol. i. p. 197), and proceeds thus: "Amid such tales of ancient tradition, I had from Macleod and his lady the courteous offer of the haunted apartment of the castle, about which, as a stranger, I might be supposed interested. Accordingly I took possession of it about the witching hour. Except, perhaps, some tapestry hangings, and the extreme thickness of the walls, which argued great antiquity, nothing could have been more comfortable than the interior of the apartment; but if you looked from the windows, the view was such as to correspond with the highest tone of superstition. An autumnal blast, sometimes clear, sometimes driving mist before it, swept along the troubled billows of the lake, which it occasionally concealed, and by fits disclosed. The waves rushed in wild disorder on the shore, and covered with foam the steep pile of rocks, which, rising from the sea in forms something resembling the human figure, have obtained the name of Macleod's Maidens, and, in such a night, seemed no bad representative of the Norwegian goddesses, called Choosers of the Slain, or Riders of the Storm. There was something of the dignity of danger in the scene; for, on a platform beneath the windows, lay an ancient battery of cannon, which had sometimes been used against privateers even of late years. The distant scene was a view of that part of the Quillen mountains, which are called, from their form, Macleod's Dining-Tables. The voice of an angry cascade, termed the Nurse of Rorie Mhor, because that chief slept best in its vicinity, was heard from time to time mingling its notes with those of wind and wave. Such was the haunted room at Dunvegan; and, as such, it well deserved a less sleepy inhabitant. In the language of Dr. Johnson, who has stamped his memory on this remote place,--'I looked around me, and wondered that I was not more affected; but the mind is not at all times equally ready to be moved.' In a word, it is necessary to confess that, of all I heard or saw, the most engaging spectacle was the comfortable bed in which I hoped to make amends for some rough nights on shipboard, and where I slept accordingly without thinking of ghost or goblin, till I was called by my servant in the morning."] [87: "Rarely human eye has known A scene so stern as that dread lake, With its dark ledge of barren stone. Seems that primeval earthquake's sway Hath rent a strange and shatter'd way Through the rude bosom of the hill, And that each naked precipice, Sable ravine, and dark abyss, Tells of the outrage still. The wildest glen, but this, can show Some touch of Nature's genial glow; On high Benmore green mosses grow, And heath-bells bud in deep Glencroe, And copse on Cruchan-Ben; But here--above, around, below, On mountain or in glen, Nor tree, nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower, Nor aught of vegetative power, The weary eye may ken; For all is rocks at random thrown, Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone, As if were here denied The summer's sun, the spring's sweet dew, That clothe with many a varied hue The bleakest mountain-side." _Lord of the Isles_, iii. 14.] CHAPTER XXXII DIARY CONTINUED. -- CAVE OF EGG. -- IONA. -- STAFFA. -- DUNSTAFFNAGE. -- DUNLUCE CASTLE. -- GIANT'S CAUSEWAY. -- ISLE OF ARRAN, ETC. --DIARY CONCLUDED 1814 "_26th August, 1814._--At seven this morning were in the Sound which divides the Isle of Rum from that of Egg. Rum is rude, barren, and mountainous; Egg, although hilly and rocky, and traversed by one remarkable ridge called Scuir-Egg, has, in point of soil, a much more promising appearance. Southward of both lies Muick, or Muck, a low and fertile island, and though the least, yet probably the most valuable of the three. Caverns being still the order of the day, we man the boat and row along the shore of Egg, in quest of that which was the memorable scene of a horrid feudal vengeance. We had rounded more than half the island, admiring the entrance of many a bold natural cave which its rocks exhibit, but without finding that which we sought, until we procured a guide. This noted cave has a very narrow entrance, through which one can hardly creep on knees and hands. It rises steep and lofty within, and runs into the bowels of the rock to the depth of 255 measured feet. The height at the entrance may be about three feet, but rises to eighteen or twenty, and the breadth may vary in the same proportion. The rude and stony bottom of this cave is strewed with the bones of men, women, and children, being the sad relics of the ancient inhabitants of the island, 200 in number, who were slain on the following occasion: The Macdonalds of the Isle of Egg, a people dependent on Clanranald, had done some injury to the Laird of Macleod. The tradition of the isle says, that it was by a personal attack on the chieftain, in which his back was broken; but that of the other isles bears that the injury was offered to two or three of the Macleods, who, landing upon Egg and using some freedom with the young women, were seized by the islanders, bound hand and foot, and turned adrift in a boat, which the winds and waves safely conducted to Skye. To avenge the offence given, Macleod sailed with such a body of men as rendered resistance hopeless. The natives, fearing his vengeance, concealed themselves in this cavern, and after strict search, the Macleods went on board their galleys, after doing what mischief they could, concluding the inhabitants had left the isle. But next morning they espied from their vessel a man upon the island, and, immediately landing again, they traced his retreat, by means of a light snow on the ground, to this cavern. Macleod then summoned the subterraneous garrison, and demanded that the individuals who had offended him should be delivered up. This was peremptorily refused. The chieftain thereupon caused his people to divert the course of a rill of water, which, falling over the mouth of the cave, would have prevented his purposed vengeance. He then kindled at the entrance of the cavern a huge fire, and maintained it until all within were destroyed by suffocation. The date of this dreadful deed must have been recent, if one can judge from the fresh appearance of those relics. I brought off, in spite of the prejudices of our sailors, a skull, which seems that of a young woman. "Before reëmbarking, we visit another cave opening to the sea, but of a character widely different, being a large open vault as high as that of a cathedral, and running back a great way into the rock at the same height; the height and width of the opening give light to the whole. Here, after 1745, when the Catholic priests were scarcely tolerated, the priest of Egg used to perform the Romish service. A huge ledge of rock, almost halfway up one side of the vault, served for altar and pulpit; and the appearance of a priest and Highland congregation in such an extraordinary place of worship might have engaged the pencil of Salvator. Most of the inhabitants of Egg are still Catholics, and laugh at their neighbors of Rum, who, having been converted by the cane of their chieftain, are called _Protestants of the yellow stick_. The Presbyterian minister and Catholic priest live upon this little island on very good terms. The people here were much irritated against the men of a revenue vessel who had seized all the stills, etc., in the neighboring Isle of Muck, with so much severity as to take even the people's bedding. We had been mistaken for some time for this obnoxious vessel. Got on board about two o'clock, and agreed to stand over for Coll, and to be ruled by the wind as to what was next to be done. Bring up my journal. "_27th August, 1814._--The wind, to which we resigned ourselves, proves exceedingly tyrannical, and blows squally the whole night, which, with the swell of the Atlantic, now unbroken by any islands to windward, proves a means of great combustion in the cabin. The dishes and glasses in the steward's cupboards become locomotive--portmanteaus and writing-desks are more active than necessary--it is scarce possible to keep one's self within bed, and impossible to stand upright if you rise. Having crept upon deck about four in the morning, I find we are beating to windward off the Isle of Tyree, with the determination on the part of Mr. Stevenson that his constituents should visit a reef of rocks called Skerry Vhor where he thought it would be essential to have a lighthouse. Loud remonstrances on the part of the Commissioners, who one and all declare they will subscribe to his opinion, whatever it may be, rather than continue this infernal buffeting. Quiet perseverance on the part of Mr. S., and great kicking, bouncing, and squabbling upon that of the Yacht, who seems to like the idea of Skerry Vhor as little as the Commissioners. At length, by dint of exertion, come in sight of this long ridge of rocks (chiefly under water), on which the tide breaks in a most tremendous style. There appear a few low broad rocks at one end of the reef, which is about a mile in length. These are never entirely under water, though the surf dashes over them. To go through all the forms, Hamilton, Duff, and I resolve to land upon these bare rocks in company with Mr. Stevenson. Pull through a very heavy swell with great difficulty, and approach a tremendous surf dashing over black pointed rocks. Our rowers, however, get the boat into a quiet creek between two rocks, where we contrive to land well wetted. I saw nothing remarkable in my way, excepting several seals, which we might have shot, but, in the doubtful circumstances of the landing, we did not care to bring guns. We took possession of the rock in name of the Commissioners, and generously bestowed our own great names on its crags and creeks. The rock was carefully measured by Mr. S. It will be a most desolate position for a lighthouse--the Bell Rock and Eddystone a joke to it, for the nearest land is the wild island of Tyree, at fourteen miles' distance. So much for the Skerry Vhor. "Came on board proud of our achievement; and, to the great delight of all parties, put the ship before the wind, and run swimmingly down for Iona. See a large square-rigged vessel, supposed an American. Reach Iona about five o'clock. The inhabitants of the Isle of Columba, understanding their interest as well as if they had been Deal boatmen, charged two guineas for pilotage, which Captain W. abridged into fifteen shillings, too much for ten minutes' work. We soon got on shore, and landed in the bay of Martyrs, beautiful for its white sandy beach. Here all dead bodies are still landed, and laid for a time upon a small rocky eminence, called the Sweyne, before they are interred. Iona, the last time I saw it, seemed to me to contain the most wretched people I had anywhere seen. But either they have got better since I was here, or my eyes, familiarized with the wretchedness of Zetland and the Harris, are less shocked with that of Iona. Certainly their houses are better than either, and the appearance of the people not worse. This little fertile isle contains upwards of 400 inhabitants, all living upon small farms, which they divide and subdivide as their families increase, so that the country is greatly over-peopled, and in some danger of a famine in case of a year of scarcity. Visit the nunnery and _Reilig Oran_, or burial-place of St. Oran, but the night coming on we return on board. "_28th August, 1814._--Carry our breakfast ashore--take that repast in the house of Mr. Maclean, the schoolmaster and cicerone of the island--and resume our investigation of the ruins of the cathedral and the cemetery. Of these monuments, more than of any other, it may be said with propriety,-- 'You never tread upon them but you set Your feet upon some ancient history.' I do not mean to attempt a description of what is so well known as the ruins of Iona. Yet I think it has been as yet inadequately performed, for the vast number of carved tombs containing the reliques of the great exceeds credibility. In general, even in the most noble churches, the number of the vulgar dead exceed in all proportion the few of eminence who are deposited under monuments. Iona is in all respects the reverse: until lately, the inhabitants of the isle did not presume to mix their vulgar dust with that of chiefs, reguli, and abbots. The number, therefore, of carved and inscribed tombstones is quite marvellous, and I can easily credit the story told by Sacheverell, who assures us that 300 inscriptions had been collected, and were lost in the troubles of the seventeenth century. Even now, many more might be deciphered than have yet been made public, but the rustic step of the peasants and of Sassenach visitants is fast destroying these faint memorials of the valiant of the Isles. A skilful antiquary remaining here a week, and having (or assuming) the power of raising the half-sunk monuments, might make a curious collection. We could only gaze and grieve; yet had the day not been Sunday, we would have brought our seamen ashore, and endeavored to have raised some of these monuments. The celebrated ridges called _Jomaire na'n Righrean_, or Graves of the Kings, can now scarce be said to exist, though their site is still pointed out. Undoubtedly, the thirst of spoil, and the frequent custom of burying treasures with the ancient princes, occasioned their early violation; nor am I any sturdy believer in their being regularly ticketed off by inscriptions into the tombs of the Kings of Scotland, of Ireland, of Norway, and so forth. If such inscriptions ever existed, I should deem them the work of some crafty bishop or abbot, for the credit of his diocese or convent. Macbeth is said to have been the last King of Scotland here buried; sixty preceded him, all doubtless as powerful in their day, but now unknown--_carent quia vate sacro_. A few weeks' labor of Shakespeare, 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. It also occurred to me in Iona (as it has on many similar occasions) that the traditional recollections concerning the monks themselves are wonderfully faint, contrasted with the beautiful and interesting monuments of architecture which they have left behind them. In Scotland particularly, the people have frequently traditions wonderfully vivid of the persons and achievements of ancient warriors, whose towers have long been levelled with the soil. But of the monks of Melrose, Kelso, Aberbrothock, Iona, etc., etc., etc., they can tell nothing but that such a race existed, and inhabited the stately ruins of these monasteries. The quiet, slow, and uniform life of those recluse beings glided on, it may be, like a dark and silent stream, fed from unknown resources, and vanishing from the eye without leaving any marked trace of its course. The life of the chieftain was a mountain torrent thundering over rock and precipice, which, less deep and profound in itself, leaves on the minds of the terrified spectators those deep impressions of awe and wonder which are most readily handed down to posterity. "Among the various monuments exhibited at Iona is one where a Maclean lies in the same grave with one of the Macfies or Macduffies of Colonsay, with whom he had lived in alternate friendship and enmity during their lives. 'He lies above him during death,' said one of Maclean's followers, as his chief was interred, 'as he was above him during life.' There is a very ancient monument lying among those of the Macleans, but perhaps more ancient than any of them; it has a knight riding on horseback, and behind him a minstrel playing on a harp: this is conjectured to be Reginald Macdonald of the Isles, but there seems no reason for disjoining him from his kindred who sleep in the cathedral. A supposed ancestor of the Stewarts, called Paul Purser, or Paul the Purse-bearer (treasurer to the King of Scotland), is said to lie under a stone near the Lords of the Isles. Most of the monuments engraved by Pennant are still in the same state of preservation, as are the few ancient crosses which are left. What a sight Iona must have been, when 360 crosses, of the same size and beautiful workmanship, were ranked upon the little rocky ridge of eminences which form the background to the cathedral! Part of the tower of the cathedral has fallen since I was here. It would require a better architect than I am, to say anything concerning the antiquity of these ruins, but I conceive those of the nunnery and of the _Reilig nan Oran_, or Oran's chapel, are decidedly the most ancient. Upon the cathedral and buildings attached to it, there are marks of repairs at different times, some of them of a late date being obviously designed not to enlarge the buildings, but to retrench them. We take a reluctant leave of Iona, and go on board. "The haze and dulness of the atmosphere seem to render it dubious if we can proceed, as we intended, to Staffa to-day--for mist among these islands is rather unpleasant. Erskine reads prayers on deck to all hands, and introduces a very apt allusion to our being now in sight of the first Christian Church from which Revelation was diffused over Scotland and all its islands. There is a very good form of prayer for the Lighthouse Service, composed by the Rev. Mr. Brunton.[88] A pleasure vessel lies under our lee from Belfast, with an Irish party related to Macneil of Colonsay. The haze is fast degenerating into downright rain, and that right heavy--verifying the words of Collins:-- 'And thither where beneath the _showery west_ The mighty Kings of three fair realms are laid.'[89] After dinner, the weather being somewhat cleared, sailed for Staffa, and took boat. The surf running heavy up between the island and the adjacent rock, called Booshala, we landed at a creek near the Cormorant's cave. The mist now returned so thick as to hide all view of Iona, which was our land-mark; and although Duff, Stevenson, and I had been formerly on the isle, we could not agree upon the proper road to the cave. I engaged myself, with Duff and Erskine, in a clamber of great toil and danger, and which at length brought me to the _Cannon-ball_, as they call a round granite stone moved by the sea up and down in a groove of rock, which it has worn for itself, with a noise resembling thunder. Here I gave up my research, and returned to my companions, who had not been more fortunate. As night was now falling, we resolved to go aboard and postpone the adventure of the enchanted cavern until next day. The yacht came to an anchor with the purpose of remaining off the island all night, but the hardness of the ground, and the weather becoming squally, obliged us to return to our safer mooring at Y-Columb-Kill. "_29th August, 1814._--Night squally and rainy--morning ditto--we weigh, however, and return toward Staffa, and, very happily, the day clears as we approach the isle. As we ascertained the situation of the cave, I shall only make this memorandum, that when the weather will serve, the best landing is to the lee of Booshala, a little conical islet or rock, composed of basaltic columns placed in an oblique or sloping position. In this way, you land at once on the flat causeway, formed by the heads of truncated pillars, which leads to the cave. But if the state of tide renders it impossible to land under Booshala, then take one of the adjacent creeks; in which case, keeping to the left hand along the top of the ledge of rocks which girdles in the isle, you find a dangerous and precipitous descent to the causeway aforesaid, from the table. Here we were under the necessity of towing our Commodore, Hamilton, whose gallant heart never fails him, whatever the tenderness of his toes may do. He was successfully lowered by a rope down the precipice, and proceeding along the flat terrace or causeway already mentioned, we reached the celebrated cave. I am not sure whether I was not more affected by this second, than by the first view of it. The stupendous columnar side walls--the depth and strength of the ocean with which the cavern is filled--the variety of tints formed by stalactites dropping and petrifying between the pillars, and resembling a sort of chasing of yellow or cream-colored marble filling the interstices of the roof--the corresponding variety below, where the ocean rolls over a red, and in some places a violet-colored rock, the basis of the basaltic pillars--the dreadful noise of those august billows so well corresponding with the grandeur of the scene--are all circumstances elsewhere unparalleled. We have now seen in our voyage the three grandest caverns in Scotland,--Smowe, Macallister's cave, and Staffa; so that, like the Troglodytes of yore, we may be supposed to know something of the matter. It is, however, impossible to compare scenes of natures so different, nor, were I compelled to assign a preference to any of the three, could I do it but with reference to their distinct characters, which might affect different individuals in different degrees. The characteristic of the Smowe cave may in this case be called the terrific, for the difficulties which oppose the stranger are of a nature so uncommonly wild, as, for the first time at least, convey an impression of terror--with which the scenes to which he is introduced fully correspond. On the other hand, the dazzling whiteness of the incrustations in Macallister's cave, the elegance of the entablature, the beauty of its limpid pool, and the graceful dignity of its arch, render its leading features those of severe and chastened beauty. Staffa, the third of these subterraneous wonders, may challenge sublimity as its principal characteristic. Without the savage gloom of the Smowe cave, and investigated with more apparent ease, though, perhaps, with equal real danger, the stately regularity of its columns forms a contrast to the grotesque imagery of Macallister's cave, combining at once the sentiments of grandeur and beauty. The former is, however, predominant, as it must necessarily be in any scene of the kind. "We had scarce left Staffa when the wind and rain returned. It was Erskine's object and mine to dine at Torloisk on Loch Tua, the seat of my valued friend, Mrs. Maclean Clephane, and her accomplished daughters. But in going up Loch Tua between Ulva and Mull with this purpose,-- 'So thick was the mist on the ocean green, Nor cape nor headland could be seen.'[90] It was late before we came to anchor in a small bay presented by the little island of Gometra, which may be regarded as a continuation of Ulva. We therefore dine aboard, and after dinner, Erskine and I take the boat and row across the loch under a heavy rain. We could not see the house of Torloisk, so very thick was the haze, and we were a good deal puzzled how and where to achieve a landing; at length, espying a cartroad, we resolved to trust to its guidance, as we knew we must be near the house. We therefore went ashore with our servants, _à la bonne aventure_, under a drizzling rain. This was soon a matter of little consequence, for the necessity of crossing a swollen brook wetted me considerably, and Erskine, whose foot slipped, most completely. In wet and weary plight we reached the house, after a walk of a mile, in darkness, dirt, and rain, and it is hardly necessary to say, that the pleasure of seeing our friends soon banished all recollection of our unpleasant voyage and journey. "_30th August, 1814._--The rest of our friends come ashore by invitation, and breakfast with the ladies, whose kindness would fain have delayed us for a few days, and at last condescended to ask for one day only--but even this could not be, our time wearing short. Torloisk is finely situated upon the coast of Mull, facing Staffa. It is a good comfortable house, to which Mrs. Clephane has made some additions. The grounds around have been dressed, so as to smooth their ruggedness, without destroying the irregular and wild character peculiar to the scene and country. In this, much taste has been displayed. At Torloisk, as at Dunvegan, trees grow freely and rapidly; and the extensive plantations formed by Mrs. C. serve to show that nothing but a little expense and patience on the part of the proprietors, with attention to planting in proper places at first, and in keeping up fences afterward, are a-wanting to remove the reproach of nakedness, so often thrown upon the Western Isles. With planting comes shelter, and the proper allotment and division of fields. With all this Mrs. Clephane is busied, and, I trust, successfully; I am sure, actively and usefully. Take leave of my fair friends, with regret that I cannot prolong my stay for a day or two. When we come on board, we learn that Staffa-Macdonald is just come to his house of Ulva: this is a sort of unpleasant dilemma, for we cannot now go there without some neglect towards Mrs. Maclean Clephane; and, on the other hand, from his habits with all of us, he may be justly displeased with our quitting his very threshold without asking for him. However, upon the whole matter, and being already under weigh, we judged it best to work out of the loch, and continue our purpose of rounding the northern extremity of Mull, and then running down the Sound between Mull and the mainland. We had not long pursued our voyage before we found it was like to be a very slow one. The wind fell away entirely, and after repeated tacks we could hardly clear the extreme north-western point of Mull by six o'clock--which must have afforded amusement to the ladies whose hospitable entreaties we had resisted, as we were almost all the while visible from Torloisk. A fine evening, but scarce a breath of wind. "_31st August, 1814._--Went on deck between three and four in the morning, and found the vessel almost motionless in a calm sea, scarce three miles advanced on her voyage. We had, however, rounded the north-western side of Mull, and were advancing between the north-eastern side and the rocky and wild shores of Ardnamurchan on the mainland of Scotland. Astern were visible in bright moonlight the distant mountains of Rum; yet nearer, the remarkable ridge in the Isle of Egg, called Scuir-Egg; and nearest of all, the low isle of Muick. After enjoying this prospect for some time, returned to my berth. Rise before eight--a delightful day, but very calm, and the little wind there is, decidedly against us. Creeping on slowly, we observe, upon the shore of Ardnamurchan, a large old castle called Mingary. It appears to be surrounded with a very high wall, forming a kind of polygon, in order to adapt itself to the angles of a precipice overhanging the sea, on which the castle is founded. Within or beyond the wall, and probably forming part of an inner court, I observed a steep roof and windows, probably of the seventeenth century. The whole, as seen with a spy-glass, seems ruinous. As we proceed, we open on the left hand Loch Sunart, running deep into the mainland, crossed by distant ridges of rocks, and terminating apparently among the high mountains above Strontian. On the right hand we open the Sound of Mull, and pass the Bloody Bay, which acquired that name from a desperate battle fought between an ancient Lord of the Isles and his son. The latter was assisted by the Macleans of Mull, then in the plenitude of their power, but was defeated. This was a sea-fight; galleys being employed on each side. It has bequeathed a name to a famous pibroch. "Proceeding southward, we open the beautiful bay of Tobermory, or Mary's Well. The mouth of this fine natural roadstead is closed by an isle called Colvay, having two passages, of which only one, the northerly, is passable for ships. The bay is surrounded by steep hills, covered with copsewood, through which several brooks seek the sea in a succession of beautiful cascades. The village has been established as a fishing station by the Society for British Fisheries. The houses along the quay are two and three stories high, and well built; the feuars paying to the Society sixpence per foot of their line of front. On the top of a steep bank, rising above the first town, runs another line of second-rate cottages, which pay fourpence per foot; and behind are huts, much superior to the ordinary sheds of the country, which pay only twopence per foot. The town is all built upon a regular plan, laid down by the Society. The new part is reasonably clean, and the old not unreasonably dirty. We landed at an excellent quay, which is not yet finished, and found the little place looked thriving and active. The people were getting in their patches of corn; and the shrill voices of the children attending their parents in the field, and loading the little ponies which are used in transporting the grain, formed a chorus not disagreeable to those whom it reminds of similar sounds at home. The praise of comparative cleanliness does not extend to the lanes around Tobermory, in one of which I had nearly been effectually bogged. But the richness of the round steep green knolls, clothed with copse, and glancing with cascades, and a pleasant peep at a small fresh-water loch embosomed among them--the view of the bay, surrounded and guarded by the island of Colvay--the gliding of two or three vessels in the more distant Sound--and the row of the gigantic Ardnamurchan mountains closing the scene to the north, almost justify the eulogium of Sacheverell, who, in 1688, declared the bay of Tobermory might equal any prospect in Italy. It is said that Sacheverell made some money by weighing up the treasures lost in the Florida, a vessel of the Spanish Armada, which was wrecked in the harbor. He himself affirms, that though the use of the diving-bells was at first successful, yet the attempt was afterwards disconcerted by bad weather. "Tobermory takes its name from a spring dedicated to the Virgin, which was graced by a chapel; but no vestiges remain of the chapel, and the spring rises in the middle of a swamp, whose depth and dirt discouraged the nearer approach of Protestant pilgrims. Mr. Stevenson, whose judgment is unquestionable, thinks that the village should have been built on the island called Colvay, and united to the continent by a key, or causeway, built along the southernmost channel, which is very shallow. By this means the people would have been much nearer the fishings, than retired into the depth of the bay. "About three o'clock we get on board, and a brisk and favorable breeze arises, which carries us smoothly down the Sound. We soon pass Arros, with its fragment of a castle, behind which is the house of Mr. Maxwell (an odd name for this country), chamberlain to the Duke of Argyle, which reminds me of much kindness and hospitality received from him and Mr. Stewart, the Sheriff-Substitute, when I was formerly in Mull. On the shore of Morven, on the opposite side, pass the ruins of a small fortalice, called Donagail, situated as usual on a precipice overhanging the sea. The 'woody Morven,' though the quantity of shaggy diminutive copse, which springs up where it obtains any shelter, still shows that it must once have merited the epithet, is now, as visible from the Sound of Mull, a bare country--of which the hills towards the sea have a slope much resembling those in Selkirkshire, and accordingly afford excellent pasture, and around several farmhouses well-cultivated and improved fields. I think I observe considerable improvement in husbandry, even since I was here last: but there is a difference in coming from Oban and Cape Wrath.--Open Loch Alline, a beautiful salt-water lake, with a narrow outlet to the Sound. It is surrounded by round hills, sweetly fringed with green copse below, and one of which exhibits to the spy-glass ruins of a castle. There is great promise of beauty in its interior, but we cannot see everything. The land on the southern bank of the entrance slopes away into a sort of promontory, at the extremity of which are the very imperfect ruins of the castle of Ardtornish, to which the Lords of the Isles summoned parliaments, and from whence one of them dated a treaty with the Crown of England as an independent Prince. These ruins are seen to most advantage from the south, where they are brought into a line with one high fragment towards the west predominating over the rest. The shore of the promontory on the south side becomes rocky, and when it slopes round to the west, rises into a very bold and high precipitous bank, skirting the bay on the western side, partly cliffy, partly covered with brushwood, with various streams dashing over it from a great height. Above the old castle of Ardtornish, and about where the promontory joins the land, stands the present mansion, a neat whitewashed house, with several well-enclosed and well-cultivated fields surrounding it. "The high and dignified character assumed by the shores of Morven, after leaving Ardtornish, continues till we open the Loch Linnhe, the commencement of the great chain of inland lakes running up to Fort William, and which it is proposed to unite with Inverness by means of the Caledonian Canal. The wisdom of the plan adopted in this national measure seems very dubious. Had the canal been of more moderate depth, and the burdens imposed upon passing vessels less expensive, there can be no doubt that the coasters, sloops, and barks would have carried on a great trade by means of it. But the expense and plague of lochs, etc., may prevent these humble vessels from taking this abridged voyage, while ships above twenty or thirty tons will hesitate to engage themselves in the intricacies of a long lake navigation, exposed, without room for manoeuvring, to all the sudden squalls of the mountainous country. Ahead of us, in the mouth of Loch Linnhe, lies the low and fertile isle of Lismore, formerly the appanage of the Bishops of the Isles, who, as usual, knew where to choose church patrimony. The coast of the Mull, on the right hand of the Sound, has a black, rugged, and unimproved character. Above Scallister Bay are symptoms of improvement. Moonlight has risen upon us as we pass Duart Castle, now an indistinct mass upon its projecting promontory. It was garrisoned for Government so late as 1780, but is now ruinous. We see, at about a mile's distance, the fatal shelve on which Duart exposed the daughter of Argyle, on which Miss Baillie's play of The Family Legend is founded, but now,-- 'Without either sign or sound of their shock, The waves flowed over the Lady's rock.'[91] The placid state of the sea is very different from what I have seen it, when six stout rowers could scarce give a boat headway through the conflicting tides. These fits of violence so much surprised and offended a body of the Camerons, who were bound upon some expedition to Mull, and had been accustomed to the quietness of lake-navigation, that they drew their dirks, and began to stab the waves--from which popular tale this run of tide is called _the Men of Lochaber_. The weather being delightfully moderate, we agree to hover hereabout all night, or anchor under the Mull shore, should it be necessary, in order to see Dunstaffnage to-morrow morning. The isle of Kerrera is now in sight, forming the bay of Oban. Beyond lie the varied and magnificent summits of the chain of mountains bordering Loch Linnhe, as well as those between Loch Awe and Loch Etive, over which the summit of Ben Cruachan is proudly prominent. Walk on deck, admiring this romantic prospect, until ten; then below, and turn in. "_1st September, 1814._--Rise betwixt six and seven, and having discreetly secured our breakfast, take boat for the old castle of Dunstaffnage, situated upon a promontory on the side of Loch Linnhe and near to Loch Etive. Nothing could exceed the beauty of the day and of the prospect. We coasted the low, large, and fertile isle of Lismore, where a Catholic Bishop, Chisholm, has established a seminary of young men intended for priests, and what is a better thing, a valuable lime-work. Report speaks well of the lime, but indifferently of the progress of the students. Tacking to the shore of the loch, we land at Dunstaffnage, once, it is said, the seat of the Scottish monarchy, till success over the Picts and Saxons transferred their throne to Scoone, Dunfermline, and at length to Edinburgh. The castle is still the King's (nominally), and the Duke of Argyle (nominally also) is hereditary keeper. But the real right of property is in the family of the depute-keeper, to which it was assigned as an appanage, the first possessor being a natural son of an Earl of Argyle. The shell of the castle, for little more now remains, bears marks of extreme antiquity. It is square in form, with round towers at three of the angles, and is situated upon a lofty precipice, carefully scarped on all sides to render it perpendicular. The entrance is by a staircase, which conducts you to a wooden landing-place in front of the portal-door. This landing-place could formerly be raised at pleasure, being of the nature of a drawbridge. When raised, the place was inaccessible. You pass under an ancient arch, with a low vault (being the porter's lodge) on the right hand, and flanked by loopholes, for firing upon any hostile guest who might force his passage thus far. This admits you into the inner court, which is about eighty feet square. It contains two mean-looking buildings, about sixty or seventy years old; the ancient castle having been consumed by fire in 1715. It is said that the nephew of the proprietor was the incendiary. We went into the apartments, and found they did not exceed the promise of the exterior; but they admitted us to walk upon the battlements of the old castle, which displayed a most splendid prospect. Beneath, and far projected into the loch, were seen the woods and houses of Campbell of Lochnell. A little summer-house, upon an eminence, belonging to this wooded bank, resembles an ancient monument. On the right, Loch Etive, after pouring its waters like a furious cataract over a strait called Connell Ferry, comes between the castle and a round island belonging to its demesne, and nearly insulates the situation. In front is a low rocky eminence on the opposite side of the arm, through which Loch Etive flows into Loch Linnhe. Here was situated _Beregenium_, once, it is said, a British capital city; and, as our informant told us, the largest market town in Scotland. Of this splendor are no remains but a few trenches and excavations, which the distance did not allow us to examine. The ancient masonry of Dunstaffnage is mouldering fast under time and neglect. The foundations are beginning to decay, and exhibit gaps between the rock and the wall; and the battlements are become ruinous. The inner court is encumbered with ruins. A hundred pounds or two would put this very ancient fortress in a state of preservation for ages, but I fear this is not to be expected. The stumps of large trees, which had once shaded the vicinity of the castle, gave symptoms of decay in the family of Dunstaffnage. We were told of some ancient spurs and other curiosities preserved in the castle, but they were locked up. In the vicinity of the castle is a chapel which had once been elegant, but by the building up of windows, etc., is now heavy enough. I have often observed that the means adopted in Scotland for repairing old buildings are generally as destructive of their grace and beauty, as if that had been the express object. Unfortunately most churches, particularly, have gone through both stages of destruction, having been first repaired by the building up of the beautiful shafted windows, and then the roof being suffered to fall in, they became ruins indeed, but without any touch of the picturesque farther than their massive walls and columns may afford. Near the chapel of Dunstaffnage is a remarkable echo. "Reëmbarked, and, rowing about a mile and a half or better along the shore of the lake, again landed under the ruins of the old castle of Dunolly. This fortress, which, like that of Dunstaffnage, forms a marked feature in this exquisite landscape, is situated on a bold and precipitous promontory overhanging the lake. The principal part of the ruins now remaining is a square tower or keep of the ordinary size, which had been the citadel of the castle; but fragments of other buildings, overgrown with ivy, show that Dunolly had once been a place of considerable importance. These had enclosed a courtyard, of which the keep probably formed one side, the entrance being by a very steep ascent from the land side, which had formerly been cut across by a deep moat, and defended doubtless by outworks and a drawbridge. Beneath the castle stands the modern house of Dunolly,--a decent mansion, suited to the reduced state of the MacDougalls of Lorn, who, from being Barons powerful enough to give battle to and defeat Robert Bruce, are now declined into private gentlemen of moderate fortune. "This very ancient family is descended from Somerled, Thane, or rather, under that name, _King_ of Argyle and the Hebrides. He had two sons, to one of whom he left his insular possessions--and he became founder of the dynasty of the Lords of the Isles, who maintained a stirring independence during the Middle Ages. The other was founder of the family of the MacDougalls of Lorn. One of them being married to a niece of the Red Cumming, in revenge of his slaughter at Dumfries, took a vigorous part against Robert Bruce in his struggles to maintain the independence of Scotland. At length the King, turning his whole strength towards MacDougall, encountered him at a pass near Loch Awe; but the Highlanders, being possessed of the strong ground, compelled Bruce to retreat, and again gave him battle at Dalry, near Tynedrum, where he had concentrated his forces. Here he was again defeated; and the tradition of the MacDougall family bears, that in the conflict the Lord of Lorn engaged hand to hand with Bruce, and was struck down by that monarch. As they grappled together on the ground, Bruce being uppermost, a vassal of MacDougall, called MacKeoch, relieved his master by pulling Bruce from him. In this close struggle the King left his mantle and brooch in the hands of his enemies, and the latter trophy was long preserved in the family, until it was lost in an accidental fire. Barbour tells the same story, but I think with circumstances somewhat different. When Bruce had gained the throne for which he fought so long, he displayed his resentment against the MacDougalls of Lorn, by depriving them of the greatest part of their domains, which were bestowed chiefly upon the Steward of Scotland. Sir Colin Campbell, the Knight of Loch Awe, and the Knight of Glenurchy, Sir Dugald Campbell, married daughters of the Steward, and received with them great portion of the forfeiture of MacDougall. Bruce even compelled or persuaded the Lord of the Isles to divorce his wife, who was a daughter of MacDougall, and take in marriage a relation of his own. The son of the divorced lady was not permitted to succeed to the principality of the Isles, on account of his connection with the obnoxious MacDougall. But a large appanage was allowed him upon the Mainland, where he founded the family of Glengarry. "The family of MacDougall suffered farther reduction during the great civil war, in which they adhered to the Stewarts, and in 1715 they forfeited the small estate of Dunolly, which was then all that remained of what had once been a principality. The then representative of the family fled to France, and his son (father of the present proprietor) would have been without any means of education, but for the spirit of clanship, which induced one of the name, in the humble situation of keeper of a public-house at Dumbarton, to take his young chief to reside with him, and be at the expense of his education and maintenance until his fifteenth or sixteenth year. He proved a clever and intelligent man, and made good use of the education he received. When the affair of 1745 was in agitation, it was expected by the south-western clans that Charles Edward would have landed near Oban, instead of which he disembarked at Loch-nan-augh, in Arisaig. Stuart of Appin sent information of his landing to MacDougall, who gave orders to his brother to hold the clan in readiness to rise, and went himself to consult with the chamberlain of the Earl of Breadalbane, who was also in the secret. He found this person indisposed to rise, alleging that Charles had disappointed them both in the place of landing, and the support he had promised. MacDougall then resolved to play cautious, and went to visit the Duke of Argyle, then residing at Roseneath, probably without any determined purpose as to his future proceedings. While he was waiting the Duke's leisure, he saw a horseman arrive at full gallop, and shortly after, the Duke entering the apartment where MacDougall was, with a map in his hand, requested him, after friendly salutations, to point out Loch-nan-augh on that map. MacDougall instantly saw that the secret of Charles's landing had transpired, and resolved to make a merit of being the first who should give details. The persuasions of the Duke determined him to remain quiet, and the reward was the restoration of the little estate of Dunolly, lost by his father in 1715. This gentleman lived to a very advanced stage of life, and was succeeded by Peter MacDougall, Esq., now of Dunolly. I had these particulars respecting the restoration of the estate from a near relation of the family, whom we met at Dunstaffnage. "The modern house of Dunolly is on the neck of land under the old castle, having on the one hand the lake with its islands and mountains; on the other, two romantic eminences tufted with copsewood, of which the higher is called Barmore, and is now planted. I have seldom seen a more romantic and delightful situation, to which the peculiar state of the family gave a sort of moral interest. Mrs. MacDougall, observing strangers surveying the ruins, met us on our return, and most politely insisted upon our accepting fruit and refreshments. This was a compliment meant to absolute strangers, but when our names became known to her, the good lady's entreaties that we would stay till Mr. MacDougall returned from his ride became very pressing. She was in deep mourning for the loss of an eldest son, who had fallen bravely in Spain and under Wellington, a death well becoming the descendant of so famed a race. The second son, a lieutenant in the navy, had, upon this family misfortune, obtained leave to visit his parents for the first time after many years' service, but had now returned to his ship. Mrs. M. spoke with melancholy pride of the death of her eldest son, with hope and animation of the prospects of the survivor. A third is educated for the law. Declining the hospitality offered us, Mrs. M. had the goodness to walk with us along the shore towards Oban, as far as the property of Dunolly extends, and showed us a fine spring, called _Tobar nan Gall_, or the Well of the Stranger, where our sailors supplied themselves with excellent water, which has been rather a scarce article with us, as it soon becomes past a landsman's use on board ship. On the seashore, about a quarter of a mile from the castle, is a huge fragment of the rock called _plum-pudding stone_, which art or nature has formed into a gigantic pillar. Here, it is said, Fion or Fingal tied his dog Bran--here also the celebrated Lord of the Isles tied up his dogs when he came upon a visit to the Lords of Lorn. Hence it is called _Clach nan Con_; _i. e._, the Dog's Stone. A tree grew once on the top of this bare mass of composite stone, but it was cut down by a curious damsel of the family, who was desirous to see a treasure said to be deposited beneath it. Enjoyed a pleasant walk of a mile along the beach to Oban, a town of some consequence, built in a semicircular form, around a good harbor formed by the opposite isle of Kerrera, on which Mrs. M. pointed out the place where Alexander II. died, while, at the head of a powerful armament, he meditated the reduction of the Hebrides. The field is still called Dal-ry--the King's field. "Having taken leave of Mrs. MacDougall, we soon satisfied our curiosity concerning Oban, which owed its principal trade to the industry of two brothers, Messrs. Stevenson, who dealt in ship-building. One is now dead, the other almost retired from business, and trade is dull in the place. Heard of an active and industrious man, who had set up a nursery of young trees, which ought to succeed, since at present, whoever wants plants must send to Glasgow; and how much the plants suffer during a voyage of such length, any one may conceive. Go on board after a day delightful for the serenity and clearness of the weather, as well as for the objects we had visited. I forgot to say, that through Mr. MacDougall's absence we lost an opportunity of seeing a bronze figure of one of his ancestors, called _Bacach_, or the lame, armed and mounted as for a tournament. The hero flourished in the twelfth century. After a grand council of war, we determine, as we are so near the coast of Ulster, that we will stand over and view the celebrated Giant's Causeway; and Captain Wilson receives directions accordingly. _"2d September, 1814._--Another most beautiful day. The heat, for the first time since we sailed from Leith, is somewhat incommodious; so we spread a handsome awning to save our complexions, God wot, and breakfast beneath it in style. The breeze is gentle, and quite favorable. It has conducted us from the extreme cape of Mull, called the Black Head of Mull, into the Sound of Islay. We view in passing that large and fertile island, the property of Campbell of Shawfield, who has introduced an admirable style of farming among his tenants. Still farther behind us retreats the Island of Jura, with the remarkable mountains called the Paps of Jura, which form a landmark at a great distance. They are very high, but in our eyes, so much accustomed of late to immense height, do not excite much surprise. Still farther astern is the small isle of Scarba, which, as we see it, seems to be a single hill. In the passage or sound between Scarba and the extremity of Jura, is a terrible run of tide, which, contending with the sunk rocks and islets of that foul channel, occasions the succession of whirlpools called the Gulf of Corrievreckan. Seen at this distance, we cannot judge of its terrors. The sight of Corrievreckan and of the low rocky isle of Colonsay, betwixt which and Islay we are now passing, strongly recalls to my mind poor John Leyden and his tale of the Mermaid and MacPhail of Colonsay.[92] Probably the name of the hero should have been MacFie, for to the MacDuffies (by abridgment MacFies) Colonsay of old pertained. It is said the last of these MacDuffies was executed as an oppressor by order of the Lord of the Isles, and lies buried in the adjacent small island of Oransay, where there is an old chapel with several curious monuments, which, to avoid losing this favorable breeze, we are compelled to leave unvisited. Colonsay now belongs to a gentleman named MacNeil. On the right beyond it, opens at a distance the western coast of Mull, which we already visited in coming from the northward. We see the promontory of Ross, which is terminated by Y-Columb-kill, also now visible. The shores of Loch Tua and Ulva are in the blue distance, with the little archipelago which lies around Staffa. Still farther, the hills of Rum can just be distinguished from the blue sky. We are now arrived at the extreme point of Islay, termed, from the strong tides, the _Runs of Islay_. We here only feel them as a large but soft swell of the sea, the weather being delightfully clear and serene. In the course of the evening we lose sight of the Hebrides, excepting Islay, having now attained the western side of that island. "_3d September, 1814._--In the morning early, we are off Innistulhan, an islet very like Inchkeith in size and appearance, and, like Inchkeith, displaying a lighthouse. Messrs. Hamilton, Duff, and Stevenson go ashore to visit the Irish lighthouse and compare notes. A fishing-boat comes off with four or five stout lads, without neckerchiefs or hats, and the best of whose joint garments selected would hardly equip an Edinburgh beggar. Buy from this specimen of Paddy in his native land some fine John Dories for threepence each. The mainland of Ireland adjoining to this island (being part of the county of Donegal) resembles Scotland, and, though hilly, seems well cultivated upon the whole. A brisk breeze directly against us. We beat to windward by assistance of a strong tide-stream, in order to weather the head of Innishowen, which covers the entrance of Lough Foyle, with the purpose of running up the loch to see Londonderry, so celebrated for its siege in 1689. But short tacks and long tacks were in vain, and at dinner-time, having lost our tide, we find ourselves at all disadvantage both against wind and sea. Much combustion at our meal, and the manoeuvres by which we attempted to eat and drink remind me of the enchanted drinking-cup in the old ballad,-- 'Some shed it on their shoulder, Some shed it on their thigh; And he that did not hit his mouth Was sure to hit his eye.'[93] In the evening, backgammon and cards are in great request. We have had our guns shotted all this day for fear of the Yankees--a privateer having been seen off Tyree Islands, and taken some vessels--as is reported.--About nine o'clock weather the Innishowen head, and enter the Lough, and fire a gun as a signal for a pilot. The people here are great smugglers, and at the report of the gun, we see several lights on shore disappear.--About the middle of the day, too, our appearance (much resembling a revenue cutter) occasioned a smoke being made in the midst of a very rugged cliff on the shore--a signal probably to any of the smugglers' craft that might be at sea. Come to anchor in eight fathom water, expecting our pilot. _"4th September, 1814._--Waked in the morning with good hope of hearing service in Derry Cathedral, as we had felt ourselves under weigh since daylight; but these expectations vanished when, going on deck, we found ourselves only halfway up Lough Foyle, and at least ten miles from Derry. Very little wind, and that against us; and the navigation both shoally and intricate. Called a council of war; and after considering the difficulty of getting up to Derry, and the chance of being wind-bound when we do get there, we resolve to renounce our intended visit to that town. We had hardly put the ship about, when the Irish Æolus shifted his trumpet, and opposed our exit, as he had formerly been unfavorable to our progress up the lake. At length, we are compelled to betake ourselves to towing, the wind fading into an absolute calm. This gives us time enough to admire the northern, or Donegal, side of Lough Foyle--the other being hidden from us by haze and distance. Nothing can be more favorable than this specimen of Ireland.--A beautiful variety of cultivated slopes, intermixed with banks of wood; rocks skirted with a distant ridge of heathy hills, watered by various brooks; the glens or banks being, in general, planted or covered with copse; and finally, studded by a succession of villas and gentlemen's seats, good farmhouses, and neat white-washed cabins. Some of the last are happily situated upon the verge of the sea, with banks of copse or a rock or two rising behind them, and the white sand in front. The land, in general, seems well cultivated and enclosed--but in some places the enclosures seem too small, and the ridges too crooked, for proper farming. We pass two gentlemen's seats, called White Castle and Red Castle; the last a large good-looking mansion, with trees, and a pretty vale sloping upwards from the sea. As we approach the termination of the Lough, the ground becomes more rocky and barren, and the cultivation interrupted by impracticable patches, which have been necessarily abandoned. Come in view of Green Castle, a large ruinous castle, said to have belonged to the MacWilliams. The remains are romantically situated upon a green bank sloping down to the sea, and are partly covered with ivy. From their extent, the place must have been a chieftain's residence of the very first consequence. Part of the ruins appear to be founded upon a high red rock, which the eye at first blends with the masonry. To the east of the ruins, upon a cliff overhanging the sea, are a modern fortification and barrack-yard, and beneath, a large battery for protection of the shipping which may enter the Lough; the guns are not yet mounted. The Custom-house boat boards us and confirms the account that American cruisers are upon the coast. Drift out of the Lough, and leave behind us this fine country, all of which belongs in property to Lord Donegal; other possessors only having long leases, at sixty years, or so forth. Red Castle, however, before distinguished as a very good-looking house, is upon a perpetual lease. We discharge our pilot--the gentlemen go ashore with him in the boat, in order to put foot on Irish land. I shall defer that pleasure till I can promise myself something to see. When our gentlemen return, we read prayers on deck. After dinner go ashore at the small fishing-village of Port Rush, pleasantly situated upon a peninsula, which forms a little harbor. Here we are received by Dr. Richardson, the inventor of the fiorin-grass (or of some of its excellencies). He cultivates this celebrated vegetable on a very small scale, his whole farm not exceeding four acres. Here I learn, with inexpressible surprise and distress, the death of one of the most valued of the few friends whom these memoranda might interest.[94] She was, indeed, a rare example of the soundest good sense, and the most exquisite purity of moral feeling, united with the utmost grace and elegance of personal beauty, and with manners becoming the most dignified rank in British society. There was a feminine softness in all her deportment, which won universal love, as her firmness of mind and correctness of principle commanded veneration. To her family her loss is inexpressibly great. I know not whether it was the purity of her mind, or the ethereal cast of her features and form, but I could never associate in my mind her idea and that of mortality; so that the shock is the more heavy, as being totally unexpected. God grant comfort to the afflicted survivor and his family! "_5th September, 1814._--Wake, or rather rise at six, for I have waked the whole night, or fallen into broken sleeps only to be hag-ridden by the nightmare. Go ashore with a heavy heart, to see sights which I had much rather leave alone. Land under Dunluce, a ruined castle built by the MacGilligans, or MacQuillens, but afterwards taken from them by a Macdonnell, ancestor of the Earls of Antrim, and destroyed by Sir John Perrot, Lord-Lieutenant in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. This Macdonnell came from the Hebrides at the head of a Scottish colony. The site of the castle much resembles Dunnottar, but it is on a smaller scale. The ruins occupy perhaps more than an acre of ground, being the level top of a high rock advanced into the sea, by which it is surrounded on three sides, and divided from the mainland by a deep chasm. The access was by a narrow bridge, of which there now remains but a single rib, or ledge, forming a doubtful and a precarious access to the ruined castle. On the outer side of the bridge are large remains of outworks, probably for securing cattle, and for domestic offices--and the vestiges of a chapel. Beyond the bridge are an outer and inner gateway, with their defences. The large gateway forms one angle of the square enclosure of the fortress, and at the other landward angle is built a large round tower. There are vestiges of similar towers occupying the angles of the precipice overhanging the sea. These towers were connected by a curtain, on which artillery seems to have been mounted. Within this circuit are the ruins of an establishment of feudal grandeur on the large scale. The great hall, forming, it would seem, one side of the inner court, is sixty paces long, lighted by windows which appear to have been shafted with stone, but are now ruined. Adjacent are the great kitchen and ovens, with a variety of other buildings, but no square tower, or keep. The most remarkable part of Dunluce, however, is that the whole mass of plum-pudding rock on which the fort is built is completely perforated by a cave sloping downwards from the inside of the moat or dry-ditch beneath the bridge, and opening to the sea on the other side. It might serve the purpose of a small harbor, especially if they had, as is believed, a descent to the cave from within the castle. It is difficult to conceive the use of the aperture to the land, unless it was in some way enclosed and defended. Above the ruinous castle is a neat farmhouse. Mrs. More, the good-wife, a Scoto-Hibernian, received us with kindness and hospitality which did honor to the nation of her birth, as well as of her origin, in a house whose cleanliness and neatness might have rivalled England. Her churn was put into immediate motion on our behalf, and we were loaded with all manner of courtesy, as well as good things. We heard here of an armed schooner having been seen off the coast yesterday, which fired on a boat that went off to board her, and would seem therefore to be a privateer, or armed smuggler. "Return on board for breakfast, and then again take boat for the Giant's Causeway--having first shotted the guns, and agreed on a signal, in case this alarming stranger should again make his appearance. Visit two caves, both worth seeing, but not equal to those we have seen: one, called Port Coon, opens in a small cove, or bay--the outer reach opens into an inner cave, and that again into the sea. The other, called Down Kerry, is a sea-cave, like that on the eastern side of Loch Eribol--a high arch up which the sea rolls:--the weather being quiet, we sailed in very nearly to the upper end. We then rowed on to the celebrated Causeway, a platform composed of basaltic pillars, projecting into the sea like the pier of a harbor. As I was tired, and had a violent headache, I did not land, but could easily see that the regularity of the columns was the same as at Staffa; but that island contains a much more extensive and curious specimen of this curious phenomenon. "Row along the shores of this celebrated point, which are extremely striking as well as curious. They open into a succession of little bays, each of which has precipitous banks graced with long ranges of the basaltic pillars, sometimes placed above each other, and divided by masses of interweaving strata, or by green sloping banks of earth of extreme steepness. These remarkable ranges of columns are in some places chequered by horizontal strata of a red rock or earth, of the appearance of ochre; so that the green of the grassy banks, the dark-gray or black appearance of the columns, with those red seams and other varieties of the interposed strata, have most uncommon and striking effects. The outline of these cliffs is as singular as their coloring. In several places the earth has wasted away from single columns, and left them standing insulated and erect, like the ruined colonnade of an ancient temple, upon the verge of the precipice. In other places, the disposition of the basaltic ranges presents singular appearances, to which the guides give names agreeable to the images which they are supposed to represent. Each of the little bays or inlets has also its appropriate name. One is called the Spanish Bay, from one of the Spanish Armada having been wrecked there. Thus our voyage has repeatedly traced the memorable remnants of that celebrated squadron. The general name of the cape adjacent to the Causeway is Bengore Head. To those who have seen Staffa, the peculiar appearance of the Causeway itself will lose much of its effect; but the grandeur of the neighboring scenery will still maintain the reputation of Bengore Head. The people ascribe all these wonders to Fin MacCoul, whom they couple with a Scottish giant called Ben-an something or other. The traveller is plied by guides, who make their profit by selling pieces of crystal, agate, or chalcedony, found in the interstices of the rocks. Our party brought off some curious joints of the columns, and, had I been quite as I am wont to be, I would have selected four to be capitals of a rustic porch at Abbotsford. But, alas! alas! I am much out of love with vanity at this moment. From what we hear at the Causeway, we have every reason to think that the pretended privateer has been a gentleman's pleasure-vessel.--Continue our voyage southward, and pass between the Main of Ireland and the Isle of Rachrin, a rude heathy-looking island, once a place of refuge to Robert Bruce. This is said, in ancient times, to have been the abode of banditti, who plundered the neighboring coast. At present it is under a long lease to a Mr. Gage, who is said to maintain excellent order among the islanders. Those of bad character he expels to Ireland, and hence it is a phrase among the people of Rachrin, when they wish ill to any one, '_May Ireland be his hinder end_.' On the Main we see the village of Ballintry, and a number of people collected, the remains of an Irish fair. Close by is a small island, called Sheep Island. We now take leave of the Irish coast, having heard nothing of its popular complaints, excepting that the good lady at Dunluce made a heavy moan against the tithes, which had compelled her husband to throw his whole farm into pasture. Stand over toward Scotland, and see the Mull of Cantyre light. "_6th September, 1814._--Under the lighthouse at the Mull of Cantyre; situated on a desolate spot among rocks, like a Chinese pagoda in Indian drawings. Duff[95] and Stevenson go ashore at six. Hamilton follows, but is unable to land, the sea having got up. The boat brings back letters, and I have the great comfort to learn all are well at Abbotsford. About eight the tide begins to run very strong, and the wind rising at the same time, makes us somewhat apprehensive for our boat, which had returned to attend D. and S. We observe them set off along the hills on foot, to walk, as we understand, to a bay called Carskey, five or six miles off, but the nearest spot at which they can hope to reëmbark in this state of the weather. It now becomes very squally, and one of our jibsails splits. We are rather awkwardly divided into three parties--the pedestrians on shore, with whom we now observe Captain Wilson, mounted upon a pony--the boat with four sailors, which is stealing along in-shore, unable to row, and scarce venturing to carry any sail--and we in the yacht, tossing about most exceedingly. At length we reach Carskey, a quiet-looking bay, where the boat gets into shore, and fetches off our gentlemen.--After this the coast of Cantyre seems cultivated and arable, but bleak and unenclosed, like many other parts of Scotland. We then learn that we have been repeatedly in the route of two American privateers, who have made many captures in the Irish Channel, particularly at Innistruhul, at the back of Islay, and on the Lewis. They are the Peacock, of twenty-two guns, and 165 men, and a schooner of eighteen guns, called the Prince of Neuchatel. These news, added to the increasing inclemency of the weather, induce us to defer a projected visit to the coast of Galloway; and indeed it is time one of us was home on many accounts. We therefore resolve, after visiting the lighthouse at Pladda, to proceed for Greenock. About four drop anchor off Pladda, a small islet lying on the south side of Arran. Go ashore and visit the establishment. When we return on board, the wind being unfavorable for the mouth of Clyde, we resolve to weigh anchor and go into Lamlash Bay. "_7th September, 1814._--We had ample room to repent last night's resolution, for the wind, with its usual caprice, changed so soon as we had weighed anchor, blew very hard, and almost directly against us, so that we were beating up against it by short tacks, which made a most disagreeable night; as, between the noise of the wind and the sea, the clattering of the ropes and sails above, and of the movables below, and the eternal '_ready about_,' which was repeated every ten minutes when the vessel was about to tack, with the lurch and clamor which succeeds, sleep was much out of the question. We are not now in the least sick, but want of sleep is uncomfortable, and I have no agreeable reflections to amuse waking hours, excepting the hope of again rejoining my family. About six o'clock went on deck to see Lamlash Bay, which we have at length reached after a hard struggle. The morning is fine and the wind abated, so that the coast of Arran looks extremely well. It is indented with two deep bays. That called Lamlash, being covered by an island with an entrance at either end, makes a secure roadstead. The other bay, which takes its name from Brodick Castle, a seat of the Duke of Hamilton, is open. The situation of the castle is very fine, among extensive plantations, laid out with perhaps too much formality, but pleasant to the eye, as the first tract of plantation we have seen for a long time. One stripe, however, with singular want of taste, runs straight up a finely rounded hill, and turning by an obtuse angle, cuts down the opposite side with equal lack of remorse. This vile habit of opposing the line of the plantation to the natural line and bearing of the ground is one of the greatest practical errors of early planters. As to the rest, the fields about Brodick, and the lowland of Arran in general, seem rich, well enclosed, and in good cultivation. Behind and around rise an amphitheatre of mountains, the principal a long ridge with fine swelling serrated tops, called Goat-Fell. Our wind now altogether dies away, while we want its assistance to get to the mouth of the Firth of Clyde, now opening between the extremity of the large and fertile Isle of Bute, and the lesser islands called the Cumbrays. The fertile coast of Ayrshire trends away to the south-westward, displaying many villages, and much appearance of beauty and cultivation. On the north-eastward arises the bold and magnificent screen formed by the mountains of Argyleshire and Dumbartonshire, rising above each other in gigantic succession. About noon a favorable breath of wind enables us to enter the mouth of the Clyde, passing between the larger Cumbray and the extremity of Bute. As we advance beyond the Cumbray, and open the opposite coast, see Largs, renowned for the final defeat of the Norwegian invaders by Alexander III. [A. D. 1263]. The ground of battle was a sloping, but rather gentle, ascent from the sea, above the modern Kirk of Largs. Had Haco gained the victory, it would have opened all the south-west of Scotland to his arms. On Bute, a fine and well-improved island, we open the Marquis of Bute's house of Mount Stewart, neither apparently large nor elegant in architecture, but beautifully situated among well-grown trees, with an open and straight avenue to the seashore. The whole isle is prettily varied by the rotation of crops: and the rocky ridges of Goat-Fell and other mountains in Arran are now seen behind Bute as a background. These ridges resemble much the romantic and savage outline of the mountains of Cullin, in Skye. On the southward of Largs is Kelburn, the seat of Lord Glasgow, with extensive plantations; on the northward Skelmorlie, an ancient seat of the Montgomeries. The Firth, closed to appearance by Bute and the Cumbrays, now resembles a long irregular inland lake, bordered on the one side by the low and rich coast of Renfrewshire, studded with villages and seats, and on the other by the Highland mountains. Our breeze dies totally away, and leaves us to admire this prospect till sunset. I learn incidentally, that, in the opinion of honest Captain Wilson, I have been myself the cause of all this contradictory weather. 'It is all,' says the Captain to Stevenson, 'owing to the cave at the Isle of Egg,'--from which I had abstracted a skull. Under this odium I may labor yet longer, for assuredly the weather has been doggedly unfavorable. Night quiet and serene, but dead calm--a fine contrast to the pitching, rolling, and walloping of last night. "_8th September._--Waked very much in the same situation--a dead calm, but the weather very serene. With much difficulty, and by the assistance of the tide, we advanced up the Firth, and, passing the village of Gourock, at length reached Greenock. Took an early dinner, and embarked in the steamboat for Glasgow. We took leave of our little yacht under the repeated cheers of the sailors, who had been much pleased with their erratic mode of travelling about, so different from the tedium of a regular voyage. After we reached Glasgow--a journey which we performed at the rate of about eight miles an hour, and with a smoothness of motion which probably resembles flying--we supped together and prepared to separate.--Erskine and I go to-morrow to the Advocate's at Killermont, and thence to Edinburgh. So closes my journal. But I must not omit to say, that among five or six persons, some of whom were doubtless different in tastes and pursuits, there did not occur, during the close communication of more than six weeks aboard a small vessel, the slightest difference of opinion. Each seemed anxious to submit his own wishes to those of his friends. The consequence was, that by judicious arrangement all were gratified in their turn, and frequently he who made some sacrifices to the views of his companions was rewarded by some unexpected gratification calculated particularly for his own amusement. Thus ends my little excursion, in which, bating one circumstance, which must have made me miserable for the time wherever I had learned it, I have enjoyed as much pleasure as in any six weeks of my life. We had constant exertion, a succession of wild and uncommon scenery, good-humor on board, and objects of animation and interest when we went ashore-- 'Sed fugit interea--fugit irrevocabile tempus.'" Footnotes of the Chapter XXXII. [88: The Rev. Alexander Brunton, D. D., now (1836) Professor of Oriental Languages in the University of Edinburgh.] [89: _Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands._] [90: "So thick a haze o'erspreads the sky, They cannot see the Sun on high." Southey's _Inchcape Rock_.] [91: Southey's _Inchcape Rock_.] [92: See _Minstrelsy of the Border_, vol. iv. pp. 285-306 (Edin. Ed.).] [93: _The Boy and the Mantle_--Percy's _Reliques_, vol. iii. p. 10.] [94: Harriet, Duchess of Buccleuch, died August 24, 1814.] [95: Adam Duff, Esq., afterwards and for many years Sheriff of the county of Edinburgh, died on 17th May, 1840.--(1845.)] CHAPTER XXXIII LETTER IN VERSE FROM ZETLAND AND ORKNEY. -- DEATH OF THE DUCHESS OF BUCCLEUCH. -- CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE DUKE. -- ALTRIVE LAKE. --NEGOTIATION CONCERNING THE LORD OF THE ISLES COMPLETED. -- SUCCESS OF WAVERLEY. -- CONTEMPORANEOUS CRITICISMS ON THE NOVEL. -- LETTERS TO SCOTT FROM MR. MORRITT, MR. LEWIS, AND MISS MACLEAN CLEPHANE. --LETTER FROM JAMES BALLANTYNE TO MISS EDGEWORTH 1814 I question if any man ever drew his own character more fully or more pleasingly than Scott has done in the preceding diary of a six weeks' pleasure voyage. 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 thorough-bred gentleman;--and surely never was the tenderness of a manly heart portrayed more touchingly than in the closing pages. I ought to mention that Erskine received the news of the Duchess of Buccleuch's death on the day when the party landed at Dunstaffnage; but, knowing how it would affect Scott, took means to prevent its reaching him until the expedition should be concluded. He heard the event casually mentioned by a stranger during dinner at Port Rush, and was for the moment quite overpowered. Of the letters which Scott wrote to his friends during those happy six weeks, I have recovered only one, and it is, thanks to the leisure of the yacht, in verse. The strong and easy heroics of the first section prove, I think, that Mr. Canning did not err when he told him that if he chose he might emulate even Dryden's command that noble measure; and the dancing anapæsts of the second show that he could with equal facility have rivalled the gay graces of Cotton, Anstey, or Moore. This epistle did not reach the Duke of Buccleuch till his lovely Duchess was no more; and I shall annex to it some communications relating to that affliction, which afford a contrast, not less interesting than melancholy, to the light-hearted glee reflected in the rhymes from the region of Magnus Troil. TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH, ETC., ETC., ETC. LIGHTHOUSE YACHT IN THE SOUND OF LERWICK, ZETLAND, 8th August, 1814. Health to the chieftain from his clansman true! From her true Minstrel, health to fair Buccleuch! Health from the isles, where dewy Morning weaves Her chaplet with the tints that Twilight leaves; Where late the sun scarce vanished from the sight, And his bright pathway graced the short-lived night, Though darker now as autumn's shades extend, The north winds whistle and the mists ascend!-- Health from the land where eddying whirlwinds toss The storm-rocked _cradle_ of the Cape of Noss; On outstretched cords the giddy engine slides, His own strong arm the bold adventurer guides, And he that lists such desperate feat to try, May, like the sea-mew, skim 'twixt surf and sky, And feel the mid-air gales around him blow, And see the billows rage five hundred feet below. Here by each stormy peak and desert shore, The hardy islesman tugs the daring oar, Practised alike his venturous course to keep, Through the white breakers or the pathless deep, By ceaseless peril and by toil to gain A wretched pittance from the niggard main. And when the worn-out drudge old ocean leaves, What comfort greets him, and what hut receives? Lady! the worst your presence ere has cheered (When want and sorrow fled as you appeared) Were to a Zetlander as the high dome Of proud Drumlanrig to my humble home. Here rise no groves, and here no gardens blow, Here even the hardy heath scarce dares to grow; But rocks on rocks, in mist and storm arrayed, Stretch far to sea their giant colonnade, With many a cavern seam'd, the dreary haunt Of the dun seal and swarthy cormorant. Wild round their rifted brows with frequent cry, As of lament, the gulls and gannets fly, And from their sable base, with sullen sound, In sheets of whitening foam the waves rebound. Yet even these coasts a touch of envy gain From those whose land has known oppression's chain; For here the industrious Dutchman comes once more To moor his fishing craft by Bressay's shore; Greets every former mate and brother tar, Marvels how Lerwick 'scaped the rage of war, Tells many a tale of Gallic outrage done, And ends by blessing God and Wellington. Here too the Greenland tar, a fiercer guest, Claims a brief hour of riot, not of rest; Proves each wild frolic that in wine has birth, And wakes the land with brawls and boisterous mirth. A sadder sight on yon poor vessel's prow The captive Norse-man sits in silent woe, And eyes the flags of Britain as they flow. Hard fate of war, which bade her terrors sway His destined course, and seize so mean a prey; A bark with planks so warp'd and seams so riven, She scarce might face the gentlest airs of heaven: Pensive he sits, and questions oft if none Can list his speech and understand his moan; In vain--no islesman now can use the tongue Of the bold Norse, from whom their lineage sprung. Not thus of old the Norse-men hither came, Won by the love of danger or of fame; On every storm-beat cape a shapeless tower Tells of their wars, their conquests, and their power; For ne'er for Grecia's vales, nor Latian land, Was fiercer strife than for this barren strand; A race severe--the isle and ocean lords, Loved for its own delight the strife of swords; With scornful laugh the mortal pang defied, And blest their gods that they in battle died. Such were the sires of Zetland's simple race, And still the eye may faint resemblance trace In the blue eye, tall form, proportion fair, The limbs athletic, and the long light hair-- (Such was the mien, as Scald and Minstrel sings, Of fair-haired Harold, first of Norway's Kings); But their high deeds to scale these crags confined, Their only warfare is with waves and wind. Why should I talk of Mousa's castled coast? Why of the horrors of the Sumburgh Rost? May not these bald disjointed lines suffice, Penn'd while my comrades whirl the rattling dice-- While down the cabin skylight lessening shine The rays, and eve is chased with mirth and wine? Imagined, while down Mousa's desert bay Our well-trimm'd vessel urged her nimble way, While to the freshening breeze she leaned her side, And bade her bowsprit kiss the foamy tide? Such are the lays that Zetland Isles supply; Drenched with the drizzly spray and dropping sky, Weary and wet, a sea-sick minstrel I.----W. SCOTT. POSTSCRIPTUM. KIRKWALL, ORKNEY, August 13, 1814. In respect that your Grace has commissioned a Kraken, You will please be informed that they seldom are taken; It is January two years, the Zetland folks say, Since they saw the last Kraken in Scalloway bay; He lay in the offing a fortnight or more, But the devil a Zetlander put from the shore, Though bold in the seas of the North to assail The morse and the sea-horse, the grampus and whale. If your Grace thinks I'm writing the thing that is not, You may ask at a namesake of ours, Mr. Scott-- (He's not from our clan, though his merits deserve it, But springs, I'm informed, from the Scotts of Scotstarvet;)[96] He questioned the folks who beheld it with eyes, But they differed confoundedly as to its size. For instance, the modest and diffident swore That it seemed like the keel of a ship, and no more-- Those of eyesight more clear, or of fancy more high, Said it rose like an island 'twixt ocean and sky-- But all of the hulk had a steady opinion That 't was sure a _live_ subject of Neptune's dominion-- And I think, my Lord Duke, your Grace hardly would wish, To cumber your house, such a kettle of fish. Had your order related to nightcaps or hose, Or mittens of worsted, there's plenty of those. Or would you be pleased but to fancy a whale? And direct me to send it--by sea or by mail? The season, I'm told, is nigh over, but still I could get you one fit for the lake at Bowhill. Indeed, as to whales, there's no need to be thrifty, Since one day last fortnight two hundred and fifty, Pursued by seven Orkneymen's boats and no more, Betwixt Truffness and Luffness were drawn on the shore! You'll ask if I saw this same wonderful sight; I own that I did not, but easily might-- For this mighty shoal of leviathans lay On our lee-beam a mile, in the loop of the bay, And the islesmen of Sanda were all at the spoil, And _flinching_ (so term it) the blubber to boil; (Ye spirits of lavender, drown the reflection That awakes at the thoughts of this odorous dissection.) To see this huge marvel full fain would we go, But Wilson, the wind, and the current said no. We have now got to Kirkwall, and needs I must stare When I think that in verse I have once called it _fair_; 'Tis a base little borough, both dirty and mean-- There is nothing to hear, and there's nought to be seen, Save a church, where, of old times, a prelate harangued, And a palace that's built by an earl that was hanged. But farewell to Kirkwall--aboard we are going, The anchor's a-peak and the breezes are blowing; Our commodore calls all his band to their places, And 't is time to release you--good-night to your Graces! TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH, ETC. GLASGOW, September 8, 1814. MY DEAR LORD DUKE,--I take the earliest opportunity, after landing, to discharge a task so distressing to me, that I find reluctance and fear even in making the attempt, and for the first time address so kind and generous a friend without either comfort and confidence in myself, or the power of offering a single word of consolation to his affliction. I learned the late calamitous news (which indeed no preparation could have greatly mitigated) quite unexpectedly, when upon the Irish coast; nor could the shock of an earthquake have affected me in the same proportion. Since that time I have been detained at sea, thinking of nothing but what has happened, and of the painful duty I am now to perform. If the deepest interest in this inexpressible loss could qualify me for expressing myself upon a subject so distressing, I know few whose attachment and respect for the lamented object of our sorrows can or ought to exceed my own, for never was more attractive kindness and condescension displayed by one of her sphere, or returned with deeper and more heartfelt gratitude by one in my own. But selfish regret and sorrow, while they claim a painful and unavailing ascendance, cannot drown the recollection of the virtues lost to the world, just when their scene of acting had opened wider, and to her family when the prospect of their speedy entry upon life rendered her precept and example peculiarly important. And such an example! for of all whom I have ever seen, in whatever rank, she possessed most the power of rendering virtue lovely--combining purity of feeling and soundness of judgment with a sweetness and affability which won the affections of all who had the happiness of approaching her. And this is the partner of whom it has been God's pleasure to deprive your Grace, and the friend for whom I now sorrow, and shall sorrow while I can remember anything. The recollection of her excellencies can but add bitterness, at least in the first pangs of calamity, yet it is impossible to forbear the topic; it runs to my pen as to my thoughts, till I almost call in question, for an instant, the Eternal Wisdom which has so early summoned her from this wretched world, where pain and grief and sorrow is our portion, to join those to whom her virtues, while upon earth, gave her so strong a resemblance. Would to God I could say, _be comforted_; but I feel every common topic of consolation must be, for the time at least, even an irritation to affliction. Grieve, then, my dear Lord, or I should say my dear and much honored friend,--for sorrow for the time levels the highest distinctions of rank; but do not grieve as those who have no hope. I know the last earthly thoughts of the departed sharer of your joys and sorrows must have been for your Grace and the dear pledges she has left to your care. Do not, for their sake, suffer grief to take that exclusive possession which disclaims care for the living, and is not only useless to the dead, but is what their wishes would have most earnestly deprecated. To time, and to God, whose are both time and eternity, belongs the office of future consolation; it is enough to require from the sufferer under such a dispensation to bear his burthen of sorrow with fortitude, and to resist those feelings which prompt us to believe that that which is galling and grievous is therefore altogether beyond our strength to support. Most bitterly do I regret some levity which I fear must have reached you when your distress was most poignant, and most dearly have I paid for venturing to anticipate the time which is not ours, since I received these deplorable news at the very moment when I was collecting some trifles that I thought might give satisfaction to the person whom I so highly honored, and who, among her numerous excellencies, never failed to seem pleased with what she knew was meant to afford her pleasure. But I must break off, and have perhaps already written too much. I learn by a letter from Mrs. Scott, this day received, that your Grace is at Bowhill--in the beginning of next week I will be in the vicinity; and when your Grace can receive me without additional pain, I shall have the honor of waiting upon you. I remain, with the deepest sympathy, my Lord Duke, your Grace's truly distressed and most grateful servant, WALTER SCOTT. The following letter was addressed to Scott by the Duke of Buccleuch, before he received that which the Poet penned on landing at Glasgow. I present it here, because it will give a more exact notion of what Scott's relations with his noble patron really were, than any other single document which I could produce: and to set that matter in its just light is essential to the business of this narrative. But I am not ashamed to confess that I embrace with satisfaction the opportunity of thus offering to the readers of the present time a most instructive lesson. They will here see what pure and simple virtues and humble piety may be cultivated as the only sources of real comfort in this world and consolation in the prospect of futurity,--among circles which the giddy and envious mob are apt to regard as intoxicated with the pomps and vanities of wealth and rank; which so many of our popular writers represent systematically as sunk in selfish indulgence--as viewing all below them with apathy and indifference--and last, not least, as upholding, when they do uphold, the religious institutions of their country, merely because they have been taught to believe that their own hereditary privileges and possessions derive security from the prevalence of Christian maxims and feelings among the mass of the people. TO WALTER SCOTT, ESQ., POST OFFICE, GREENOCK. BOWHILL, September 3, 1814. MY DEAR SIR,--It is not with the view of distressing you with my griefs, in order to relieve my own feelings, that I address you at this moment. But knowing your attachment to myself, and more particularly the real affection which you bore to my poor wife, I thought that a few lines from me would be acceptable, both to explain the state of my mind at present, and to mention a few circumstances connected with that melancholy event. I am calm and resigned. The blow was so severe that it stunned me, and I did not feel that agony of mind which might have been expected. I now see the full extent of my misfortune; but that extended view of it has come gradually upon me. I am fully aware how imperative it is upon me to exert myself to the utmost on account of my children. I must not depress their spirits by a display of my own melancholy feelings. I have many new duties to perform,--or rather, perhaps, I now feel more pressingly the obligation of duties which the unceasing exertions of my poor wife rendered less necessary, or induced me to attend to with less than sufficient accuracy. I have been taught a severe lesson; it may and ought to be a useful one. I feel that my lot, though a hard one, is accompanied by many alleviations denied to others. I have a numerous family, thank God, in health, and profiting, according to their different ages, by the admirable lessons they have been taught. My daughter, Anne, worthy of so excellent a mother, exerts herself to the utmost to supply her place, and has displayed a fortitude and strength of mind beyond her years, and (as I had foolishly thought) beyond her powers. I have most kind friends willing and ready to afford me every assistance. These are my worldly comforts, and they are numerous and great. Painful as it may be, I cannot reconcile it to myself to be totally silent as to the last scene of this cruel tragedy. As she had lived, so she died,--an example of every noble feeling--of love, attachment, and the total want of everything selfish. Endeavoring to the last to conceal her suffering, she evinced a fortitude, a resignation, a Christian courage, beyond all power of description. Her last injunction was to attend to her poor people. It was a dreadful but instructive moment. I have learned that the most truly heroic spirit may be lodged in the tenderest and the gentlest breast. Need I tell _you_ that she expired in the full hope and expectation, nay, in the firmest certainty, of passing to a better world, through a steady reliance on her Saviour? If ever there was a proof of the efficacy of our religion in moments of the deepest affliction, and in the hour of death, it was exemplified in her conduct. But I will no longer dwell upon a subject which must be painful to you. Knowing her sincere friendship for you, I have thought it would give you pleasure, though a melancholy one, to hear from me that her last moments were such as to be envied by every lover of virtue, piety, and true and genuine religion. I will endeavor to do in all things what I know she would wish. I have therefore determined to lay myself open to all the comforts my friends can afford me. I shall be most happy to cultivate their society as heretofore. I shall love them more and more, because I know they loved her. Whenever it suits your convenience I shall be happy to see you here. I feel that it is particularly my duty not to make my house the house of mourning to my children; for I know it was _her_ decided opinion that it is most mischievous to give an early impression of gloom to the mind. You will find me tranquil, and capable of going through the common occupations of society. Adieu for the present. Yours very sincerely, BUCCLEUCH, etc. TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH, ETC., ETC., ETC. EDINBURGH, 11th September, 1814. MY DEAR LORD DUKE,--I received your letter (which had missed me at Greenock) upon its being returned to this place, and cannot sufficiently express my gratitude for the kindness which, at such a moment, could undertake the task of writing upon such a subject to relieve the feelings of a friend. Depend upon it, I am so far worthy of your Grace's kindness, that, among many proofs of it, this affecting and most distressing one can never be forgotten. It gives me great though melancholy satisfaction to find that your Grace has had the manly and Christian fortitude to adopt that resigned and patient frame of spirit, which can extract from the most bitter calamity a wholesome mental medicine. I trust in God, that, as so many and such high duties are attached to your station, and as He has blessed you with the disposition that draws pleasure from the discharge of them, your Grace will find your first exertions, however painful, rewarded with strength to persevere, and finally with that comfort which attends perseverance in that which is right. The happiness of hundreds depends upon your Grace almost directly, and the effect of your example in the country, and of your constancy in support of a constitution daily undermined by the wicked and designing, is almost incalculable. Justly, then, and well, has your Grace resolved to sacrifice all that is selfish in the indulgence of grief, to the duties of your social and public situation. Long may you have health and strength to be to your dear and hopeful family an example and guide in all that becomes their high rank. It is enough that one light, and alas, what a light that was!--has been recalled by the Divine Will to another and a better sphere. I wrote a hasty and unconnected letter immediately on landing. I am detained for two days in this place, but shall wait upon your Grace immediately on my return to Abbotsford. If my society cannot, in the circumstances, give much pleasure, it will, I trust, impose no restraint. Mrs. Scott desires me to offer her deepest sympathy upon this calamitous occasion. She has much reason, for she has lost the countenance of a friend such as she cannot expect the course of human life again to supply. I am ever, with much and affectionate respect, your Grace's truly faithful humble servant, WALTER SCOTT. TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., M. P., WORTHING. EDINBURGH, September 14, 1814. MY DEAR MORRITT,--"At the end of my tour on the 22d August"!!! Lord help us!--this comes of going to the Levant and the Hellespont, and your Euxine, and so forth. A poor devil who goes to Nova Zembla and Thule is treated as if he had been only walking as far as Barnard Castle or Cauldshiels Loch.[97] I would have you to know I only returned on the 10th current, and the most agreeable thing I found was your letter. I am sure you must know I had need of something pleasant, for the news of the death of the beautiful, the kind, the affectionate, and generous Duchess of Buccleuch gave me a shock, which, to speak God's truth, could not have been exceeded unless by my own family's sustaining a similar deprivation. She was indeed a light set upon a hill, and had all the grace which the most accomplished manners and the most affable address could give to those virtues by which she was raised still higher than by rank. As she always distinguished me by her regard and confidence, and as I had many opportunities of seeing her in the active discharge of duties in which she rather resembled a descended angel than an earthly being, you will excuse my saying so much about my own feelings on an occasion where sorrow has been universal. But I will drop the subject. The survivor has displayed a strength and firmness of mind seldom equalled, where the affection has been so strong and mutual, and amidst the very high station and commanding fortune which so often render self-control more difficult, because so far from being habitual. I trust, for his own sake, as well as for that of thousands to whom his life is directly essential, and hundreds of thousands to whom his example is important, that God, as He has given him fortitude to bear this inexpressible shock, will add strength of constitution to support him in the struggle. He has written to me on the occasion in a style becoming a man and a Christian, submissive to the will of God, and willing to avail himself of the consolations which remain among his family and friends. I am going to see him, and how we shall meet, God knows; but though "an iron man of iron mould" upon many of the occasions of life in which I see people most affected, and a peculiar contemner of the commonplace sorrow which I see paid to the departed, this is a case in which my stoicism will not serve me. They both gave me reason to think they loved me, and I returned their regard with the most sincere attachment--the distinction of rank being, I think, set apart on all sides. But God's will be done. I will dwell no longer upon this subject. It is much to learn that Mrs. Morritt is so much better, and that if I have sustained a severe wound from a quarter so little expected, I may promise myself the happiness of your dear wife's recovery. I will shortly mention the train of our voyage, reserving particulars till another day. We sailed from Leith, and skirted the Scottish coast, visiting the Buller of Buchan and other remarkable objects--went to Shetland--thence to Orkney--from thence round Cape Wrath to the Hebrides, making descents everywhere, where there was anything to be seen--thence to Lewis and the Long Island--to Skye--to Iona--and so forth, lingering among the Hebrides as long as we could. Then we stood over to the coast of Ireland, and visited the Giant's Causeway and Port Rush, where Dr. Richardson, the inventor (discoverer, I would say) of the celebrated fiorin-grass, resides. By the way, he is a chattering charlatan, and his fiorin a mere humbug. But if he were Cicero, and his invention were potatoes, or anything equally useful, I should detest the recollection of the place and the man, for it was there I learned the death of my friend. Adieu, my dear Morritt; kind compliments to your lady; like poor Tom, "I cannot daub it farther." When I hear where you are, and what you are doing, I will write you a more cheerful epistle. Poor Mackenzie, too, is gone--the brother of our friend Lady Hood--and another Mackenzie, son to the Man of Feeling. So short time have I been absent, and such has been the harvest of mortality among those whom I regarded! I will attend to your corrections in Waverley. My principal employment for the autumn will be reducing the knowledge I have acquired of the localities of the islands into scenery and stage-room for The Lord of the Isles, of which renowned romance I think I have repeated some portions to you. It was elder born than Rokeby, though it gave place to it in publishing. After all, scribbling is an odd propensity. I don't believe there is any ointment, even that of the Edinburgh Review, which can cure the infected. Once more, yours entirely, WALTER SCOTT. Before I pass from the event which made August, 1814, so black a month in Scott's calendar, I may be excused for once more noticing the kind interest which the Duchess of Buccleuch had always taken in the fortunes of the Ettrick Shepherd, and introducing a most characteristic epistle which she received from him a few months before her death. The Duchess--"fearful" (as she said) "of seeing herself in print"--did not answer the Shepherd, but forwarded his letter to Scott, begging him to explain that circumstances did not allow the Duke to concede what he requested, but to assure him that they both retained a strong wish to serve him whenever a suitable opportunity should present itself. Hogg's letter was as follows:-- TO HER GRACE THE DUCHESS OF BUCCLEUCH, DALKEITH PALACE. FAVORED BY MESSRS. GRIEVE AND SCOTT, HATTERS, EDINBURGH.[98] ETTRICKBANK, March 17, 1814. May it please your Grace,--I have often grieved you by my applications for this and that. I am sensible of this, for I have had many instances of your wishes to be of service to me, could you have known what to do for that purpose. But there are some eccentric characters in the world, of whom no person can judge or know what will prove beneficial, or what may prove their bane. I have again and again received of your Grace's private bounty, and though it made me love and respect you the more, I was nevertheless grieved at it. It was never your Grace's money that I wanted, but the honor of your countenance; indeed my heart could never yield to the hope of being patronized by any house save that of Buccleuch, whom I deemed bound to cherish every plant that indicated anything out of the common way on the Braes of Ettrick and Yarrow. I know you will be thinking that this long prelude is to end with a request. No, Madam! I have taken the resolution of never making another request. I will, however, tell you a story, which is, I believe, founded on a fact:-- There is a small farm at the head of a water called *****, possessed by a mean fellow named ****. A third of it has been taken off and laid into another farm--the remainder is as yet unappropriated. Now, there is a certain poor bard, who has two old parents, each of them upwards of eighty-four years of age; and that bard has no house nor home to shelter those poor parents in, or cheer the evening of their lives. A single line from a certain very great and very beautiful lady, to a certain Mr. Riddle,[99] would insure that small pendicle to the bard at once. But she will grant no such thing! I appeal to your Grace if she is not a very bad lady that? I am your Grace's ever obliged and grateful JAMES HOGG, THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD. [Illustration: JAMES HOGG _From the water-color portrait by Denning_] Though the Duke of Buccleuch would not dismiss a poor tenant merely because Hogg called him "a mean fellow," he had told Scott that if he could find an unappropriated "pendicle," such as this letter referred to, he would most willingly bestow it on the Shepherd. It so happened, that when Scott paid his first visit at Bowhill after the death of the Duchess, the Ettrick Shepherd was mentioned: "My friend," said the Duke, "I must now consider this poor man's case as _her_ legacy;" and to this feeling Hogg owed, very soon afterwards, his establishment at Altrive, on his favorite braes of Yarrow. As Scott passed through Edinburgh on his return from his voyage, the negotiation as to The Lord of the Isles, which had been protracted through several months, was completed--Constable agreeing to give fifteen hundred guineas for one half of the copyright, while the other moiety was retained by the author. The sum mentioned had been offered by Constable at an early stage of the affair, but it was not until now accepted, in consequence of the earnest wish of Scott and Ballantyne to saddle the publisher of the new poem with part of their old "quire stock,"--which, however, Constable ultimately persisted in refusing. It may easily be believed that John Ballantyne's management of money matters during Scott's six weeks' absence had been such as to render it doubly convenient for the Poet to have this matter settled on his arrival in Edinburgh--and it may also be supposed that the progress of Waverley during that interval had tended to put the chief parties in good-humor with each other. In returning to Waverley, I must observe most distinctly that nothing can be more unfounded than the statement which has of late years been frequently repeated in memoirs of Scott's life, that the sale of the first edition of this immortal Tale was slow. It appeared on the 7th of July, and the whole impression (1000 copies) had disappeared within five weeks; an occurrence then unprecedented in the case of an anonymous novel, put forth at what is called among publishers _the dead season_. A second edition, of 2000 copies, was at least projected by the 24th of the same month;[100]--that appeared before the end of August, and it, too, had gone off so rapidly, that when Scott passed through Edinburgh, on his way from the Hebrides, he found Constable eager to treat, on the same terms as before, for a third of 1000 copies. This third edition was published in October, and when a fourth of the like extent was called for in November, I find Scott writing to John Ballantyne, "I suppose Constable won't quarrel with a work on which he has netted £612 in four months, with a certainty of making it £1000 before the year is out;" and, in fact, owing to the diminished expense of advertising, the profits of this fourth edition were to each party £440. To avoid recurring to these details, I may as well state at once, that a fifth edition of 1000 copies appeared in January, 1815; a sixth of 1500 in June, 1816; a seventh of 2000 in October, 1817; an eighth of 2000 in April, 1821; that in the collective editions, prior to 1829, 11,000 were disposed of; and that the sale of the current edition, with notes, begun in 1829, has already reached 40,000 copies. Well might Constable regret that he had not ventured to offer £1000 for the whole copyright of Waverley! I must now look back for a moment to the history of the composition.--The letter of September, 1810, was not the only piece of discouragement which Scott had received, during the progress of Waverley, from his first confidant. James Ballantyne, in his deathbed _memorandum_, says: "When Mr. Scott first questioned me as to my hopes of him as a novelist, it somehow or other did chance that they were not very high. He saw this, and said: 'Well, I don't see why I should not succeed as well as other people. At all events, faint heart never won fair lady--'tis only trying.' When the first volume was completed, I still could not get myself to think much of the Waverley-Honor scenes; and in this I afterwards found that I sympathized with many. But, to my utter shame be it spoken, when I reached the exquisite descriptions of scenes and manners at Tully-Veolan, what did I do but pronounce them at once to be utterly vulgar!--When the success of the work so entirely knocked me down as a man of taste, all that the good-natured author said was: 'Well, I really thought you were wrong about the Scotch. Why, Burns, by his poetry, had already attracted universal attention to everything Scottish, and I confess I could n't see why I should not be able to keep the flame alive, merely because I wrote Scotch in prose, and he in rhyme.'"--It is, I think, very agreeable to have this manly avowal to compare with the delicate allusion which Scott makes to the affair in his Preface to the Novel. The only other friends originally entrusted with his secret appear to have been Mr. Erskine and Mr. Morritt. I know not at what stage the former altered the opinion which he formed on seeing the tiny fragment of 1805. The latter did not, as we have seen, receive the book until it was completed; but he anticipated, before he closed the first volume, the station which public opinion would ultimately assign to Waverley. "How the story may continue," Mr. Morritt then wrote, "I am not able to divine; but, as far as I have read, pray let us thank you for the Castle of Tully-Veolan, and the delightful drinking-bout at Lucky Mac-Leary's, for the characters of the Laird of Balmawhapple and the Baron of Bradwardine; and no less for Davie Gelatly, whom I take to be a transcript of William Rose's motley follower, commonly yclept Caliban.[101] If the completion be equal to what we have just devoured, it deserves a place among our standard works far better than its modest appearance and anonymous title-page will at first gain it in these days of prolific story-telling. Your manner of narrating is so different from the slipshod sauntering verbiage of common novels, and from the stiff, precise, and prim sententiousness of some of our female moralists, that I think it can't fail to strike anybody who knows what style means; but, amongst the gentle class, who swallow every blue-backed book in a circulating library for the sake of the story, I should fear half the knowledge of nature it contains, and all the real humor, may be thrown away. Sir Everard, Mrs. Rachael, and the Baron are, I think, in the first rank of portraits for nature and character; and I could depone to their likeness in any court of taste. The ballad of St. Swithin, and scraps of _old songs_, were measures of danger if you meant to continue your concealment; but, in truth, you wear your disguise something after the manner of Bottom the weaver; and in spite of you the truth will soon peep out." And next day he resumes: "We have finished Waverley, and were I to tell you all my admiration, you would accuse me of complimenting. You have quite attained the point which your _postscript-preface_ mentions as your object--the discrimination of Scottish character, which had hitherto been slurred over with clumsy national daubing." He adds, a week or two later: "After all, I need not much thank you for your confidence. How could you have hoped that I should not discover you? I had heard you tell half the anecdotes before--some turns you owe to myself; and no doubt most of your friends must have the same sort of thing to say." Monk Lewis's letter on the subject is so short that I must give it as it stands:-- TO WALTER SCOTT, ESQ., ABBOTSFORD. THE ALBANY, August 17, 1814. MY DEAR SCOTT,--I return some books of yours which you lent me '_sixty years since_'--and I hope they will reach you safe. I write in great haste; and yet I must mention, that hearing Waverley ascribed to you, I bought it, and read it with all impatience. I am now told it is not yours, but William Erskine's. If this is so, pray tell him from me that I think it excellent in every respect, and that I believe every word of it. Ever yours, M. G. LEWIS. Another friend (and he had, I think, none more dear), the late Margaret Maclean Clephane of Torloisk, afterwards Marchioness of Northampton, writes thus from Kirkness, in Kinross-shire, on the 11th October:-- "In this place I feel a sort of pleasure, not unallied to pain, from the many recollections that every venerable tree, and every sunny bank, and every honeysuckle bower, occasions; and I have found something here that speaks to me in the voice of a valued friend--_Waverley_. The question that rises, it is perhaps improper to give utterance to. If so, let it pass as an exclamation.--Is it possible that Mr. Erskine can have written it? The poetry, I think, would prove a different descent in any court in Christendom. The turn of the phrases in many places is so peculiarly yours, that I fancy I hear your voice repeating them; and there wants but verse to make all Waverley an enchanting poem--varying to be sure from grave to gay, but with so deepening an interest as to leave an impression on the mind that few--very few poems--could awaken. But, why did not the author allow me to be his Gaelic Dragoman? Oh! Mr. ----, whoever you are, you might have safely trusted--M. M. C." There was one person with whom it would, of course, have been more than vain to affect any concealment. On the publication of the third edition, I find him writing thus to his brother Thomas, who had by this time gone to Canada as paymaster of the 70th regiment:-- DEAR TOM,--A novel here called Waverley has had enormous success. I sent you a copy, and will send you another, with The Lord of the Isles, which will be out at Christmas. The success which it has had, with some other circumstances, has induced people "To lay the bantling at a certain door, Where lying store of faults, they'd fain heap more."[102] You will guess for yourself how far such a report has credibility; but by no means give the weight of your opinion to the transatlantic public; for you must know there is also a counter-report, that _you_ have written the said Waverley. Send me a novel intermixing your exuberant and natural humor with any incidents and descriptions of scenery you may see--particularly with characters and traits of manners. I will give it all the cobbling that is necessary, and, if you do but exert yourself, I have not the least doubt it will be worth £500; and, to encourage you, you may, when you send the MS., draw on me for £100, at fifty days' sight--so that your labors will at any rate not be quite thrown away. You have more fun and descriptive talent than most people; and all that you want--_i. e._, the mere practice of composition--I can supply, or the devil's in it. Keep this matter a dead secret, and look knowing when Waverley is spoken of. If you are not Sir John Falstaff, you are as good a man as he, and may therefore face Colville of the Dale. You may believe I don't want to make you the author of a book you have never seen; but if people will, upon their own judgment, suppose so, and also on their own judgment give you £500 to try your hand on a novel, I don't see that you are a pin's-point the worse. Mind that your MS. attends the draft. I am perfectly serious and confident that in two or three months you might clear the cobs. I beg my compliments to the hero who is afraid of Jeffrey's scalping-knife. In truth, no one of Scott's intimate friends ever had, or could have had, the slightest doubt as to the parentage of Waverley: nor, although he abstained from communicating the fact formally to most of them, did he ever affect any real concealment in the case of such persons; nor, when any circumstance arose which rendered the withholding of direct confidence on the subject incompatible with perfect freedom of feeling on both sides, did he hesitate to make the avowal. Nor do I believe that the mystification ever answered much purpose, among literary men of eminence beyond the circle of his personal acquaintance. But it would be difficult to suppose that he had ever wished that to be otherwise; it was sufficient for him to set the mob of readers at gaze, and above all, to escape the annoyance of having productions, actually known to be his, made the daily and hourly topics of discussion in his presence.[103] Mr. Jeffrey had known Scott from his youth--and, in reviewing Waverley, he was at no pains to conceal his conviction of its authorship. He quarrelled, as usual, with carelessness of style, and some inartificialities of plot, but rendered justice to the substantial merits of the work, in language which I shall not mar by abridgment. The Quarterly was far less favorable in its verdict. Indeed, the articles on Waverley, and afterwards on Guy Mannering, which appeared in that journal, will bear the test of ultimate opinion as badly as any critical pieces which our time has produced. They are written in a captious, cavilling strain of quibble, which shows as complete blindness to the essential interest of the narrative, as the critic betrays on the subject of the Scottish dialogue, which forms its liveliest ornament, when he pronounces that to be "a dark dialogue of Anglified Erse." With this remarkable exception, the professional critics were, on the whole, not slow to confess their belief, that, under a hackneyed name and trivial form, there had at last appeared a work of original creative genius, worthy of being placed by the side of the very few real masterpieces of prose fiction. Loftier romance was never blended with easier, quainter humor, by Cervantes himself. In his familiar delineations he had combined the strength of Smollett with the native elegance and unaffected pathos of Goldsmith; in his darker scenes he had revived that real tragedy which appeared to have left our stage with the age of Shakespeare; and elements of interest so diverse had been blended and interwoven with that nameless grace, which, more surely perhaps than even the highest perfection in the command of any one strain of sentiment, marks the master-mind cast in Nature's most felicitous mould. Scott, with the consciousness (avowed long afterwards in his General Preface) that he should never in all likelihood have thought of a Scotch novel had he not read Maria Edgeworth's exquisite pieces of Irish character, desired James Ballantyne to send her a copy of Waverley on its first appearance, inscribed "from the author." Miss Edgeworth, whom Scott had never then seen, though some literary correspondence had passed between them, thanked the nameless novelist, under cover to Ballantyne, with the cordial generosity of kindred genius;[104] and the following answer, not from Scott, but from Ballantyne--(who had kept a copy, now before me)--is not to be omitted:-- TO MISS EDGEWORTH, EDGEWORTHSTOWN, IRELAND. EDINBURGH, 11th November, 1814. MADAM,--I am desired by the Author of Waverley to acknowledge, in his name, the honor you have done him by your most flattering approbation of his work--a distinction which he receives as one of the highest that could be paid him, and which he would have been proud to have himself stated his sense of, only that being _impersonal_, he thought it more respectful to require my assistance than to write an anonymous letter. There are very few who have had the opportunities that have been presented to me, of knowing how very elevated is the admiration entertained by the Author of Waverley for the genius of Miss Edgeworth. From the intercourse that took place betwixt us while the work was going through my press, _I know_ that the exquisite truth and power of your characters operated on his mind at once to excite and subdue it. He felt that the success of his book was to depend upon the characters, much more than upon the story; and he entertained so just and so high an opinion of your eminence in the management of both, as to have strong apprehensions of any comparison which might be instituted betwixt his picture and story and yours; besides, that there is a richness and _naïveté_ in Irish character and humor, in which the Scotch are certainly defective, and which could hardly fail, as he thought, to render his delineations cold and tame by the contrast. "If I could but hit Miss Edgeworth's wonderful power of vivifying all her persons, and making them live as _beings_ in your mind, I should not be afraid:"--Often has the Author of Waverley used such language to me; and I knew that I gratified him most when I could say,--"Positively this _is_ equal to Miss Edgeworth." You will thus judge, Madam, how deeply he must feel such praise as you have bestowed upon his efforts. I believe he himself thinks the Baron the best drawn character in his book--I mean the Bailie--honest Bailie Macwheeble. He protests it is the most _true_, though from many causes he did not expect it to be the most popular. It appears to me, that amongst so many splendid portraits, all drawn with such strength and truth, it is more easy to say which is your favorite, than which is best. Mr. Henry Mackenzie agrees with you in your objection to the resemblance to Fielding. He says you should never be forced to recollect, _maugre_ all its internal evidence to the contrary, that such a work is a work of fiction, and all its fine creations but of air. The character of Rose is less finished than the author had at one period intended; but I believe the characters of humor grew upon his liking, to the prejudice, in some degree, of those of a more elevated and sentimental kind. Yet what can surpass Flora, and her gallant brother? I am not authorized to say--but I will not resist my impulse to say to Miss Edgeworth, that another novel, descriptive of more ancient manners still, may be expected erelong from the Author of Waverley. But I request her to observe, that I say this in strict confidence--not certainly meaning to exclude from the knowledge of what will give them pleasure, her respectable family. Mr. Scott's poem, The Lord of the Isles, promises fully to equal the most admired of his productions. It is, I think, equally powerful, and certainly more uniformly polished and sustained. I have seen three cantos. It will consist of six. I have the honor to be, Madam, with the utmost admiration and respect, Your most obedient and most humble servant, JAMES BALLANTYNE. Footnotes of the Chapter XXXIII. [96: The Scotts of Scotstarvet, and other families of the name in Fife and elsewhere, claim no kindred with the great clan of the Border--and their armorial bearings are different.] [97: Lord Byron writes to Mr. Moore, August 3, 1814: "Oh! I have had the most amusing letter from Hogg, the Ettrick Minstrel and Shepherd. I think very highly of him as a poet, but he and half of these Scotch and Lake troubadours are spoilt by living in little circles and petty coteries. London and the world is the only place to take the conceit out of a man--in the milling phrase. Scott, he says, is gone to the Orkneys in a gale of wind, during which wind, he affirms, the said Scott, he is sure, is not at his ease, to say the least of it. Lord! Lord! if these home-keeping minstrels had crossed your Atlantic or my Mediterranean, and tasted a little open boating in a white squall--or a gale in 'the Gut,'--or the Bay of Biscay, with no gale at all--how it would enliven and introduce them to a few of the sensations!--to say nothing of an illicit amour or two upon shore, in the way of Essay upon the Passions, beginning with simple adultery, and compounding it as they went along."--_Life and Works_, vol. iii. p. 102. Lord Byron, by the way, had written on July the 24th to Mr. Murray, "_Waverley_ is the best and most interesting novel I have redde since--I don't know when," etc.--_Ibid._ p. 98.] [98: Mr. Grieve was a man of cultivated mind and generous disposition, and a most kind and zealous friend of the Shepherd.] [99: Major Riddell, the Duke's Chamberlain at Branksome Castle.] [100: See letter to Mr. Morritt, _ante_, p. 120.] [101: This alludes to some mummery in which David Hinves, of merry memory, wore a Caliban-like disguise. He lived more than forty years in the service of Mr. W. S. Rose, and died in it last year. Mr. Rose was of course extremely young when he first picked up Hinves--a bookbinder by trade, and a preacher among the Methodists. A sermon heard casually under a tree in the New Forest had such touches of good feeling and broad humor, that the young gentleman promoted him to be his valet on the spot. He was treated latterly more like a friend than a servant by his master, and by all his master's intimate friends. Scott presented him with a copy of all his works; and Coleridge gave him a corrected (or rather an altered) copy of _Christabel_, with this inscription on the flyleaf: "DEAR HINVES,--Till this book is concluded, and with it '_Gundimore_, a poem, by the same author,' accept of this _corrected_ copy of _Christabel_ as a _small_ token of regard; yet such a testimonial as I would not pay to any one I did not esteem, though he were an emperor. Be assured I shall send you for your private library every work I have published (if there be any to be had) and whatever I shall publish. Keep steady to the FAITH. If the fountain-head be always full, the stream cannot be long empty. Yours sincerely, S. T. COLERIDGE." 11th November, 1816--Muddeford. Mr. Rose imagines that the warning, "keep steady to the faith," was given in allusion to Ugo Foscolo's "supposed license in religious opinions."--_Rhymes_ (Brighton, 1837), p. 92.--(1839.)] [102: Garrick's Epilogue to _Polly Honeycombe_, 1760.] [103: ["Except the first opening of the _Edinburgh Review_, no work that has appeared in my time made such an instant and universal impression. It is curious to remember it. The unexpected newness of the thing, the profusion of original characters, the Scotch language, Scotch scenery, Scotch men and women, the simplicity of the writing, and the graphic force of the descriptions, all struck us with an electric shock of delight. I wish I could again feel the sensations produced by the first year of these two Edinburgh works. If the concealment of the authorship of the novels was intended to make mystery heighten their effect, it completely succeeded. The speculations and conjectures, and nods and winks, and predictions and assertions were endless, and occupied every company, and almost every two men who met and spoke in the street. It was proved by a thousand indications, each refuting the other, and all equally true in fact, that they were written by old Henry Mackenzie, and by George Cranstoun, and William Erskine, and Jeffrey, and above all by Thomas Scott.... But 'the great unknown' as the true author was then called, always took good care, with all his concealment, to supply evidence amply sufficient for the protection of his property and his fame; in so much that the suppression of the name was laughed at as a good joke not merely by his select friends in his presence, but by himself. The change of line, at his age, was a striking proof of intellectual power and richness. But the truth is that these novels were rather the outpourings of old thoughts than new inventions."--Lord Cockburn's _Memorials of His Time_.]] [104: [Miss Edgeworth wrote from Edgeworthstown, October 23, 1814, addressing her letter to the Author of _Waverley_ (see _Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth_, vol. i. pp. 239-244):-- _Aut Scotus, aut Diabolus._ We have this moment finished _Waverley_. It was read aloud to this large family, and I wish the author could have witnessed the impression it made--the strong hold it seized of the feelings both of young and old--the admiration raised by the beautiful description, of nature--by the new and bold delineations of character--the perfect manner in which every character is sustained in every change of situation from first to last, without effort, without the affectation of making the persons speak in character--the ingenuity with which each person introduced in the drama is made useful and necessary to the end--the admirable art with which the story is constructed and with which the author keeps his own secrets till the proper moment when they should be revealed, whilst in the mean time, with the skill of Shakespeare, the mind is prepared by unseen degrees for all the changes of feeling and fortune, so that nothing, however extraordinary, shocks us as improbable; and the interest is kept up to the last moment. We were so possessed with the belief that the whole story and every character in it was real, that we could not endure the occasional addresses from the author to the reader. They are like Fielding; but for that reason we cannot bear them, we cannot bear that an author of such high powers, of such original genius, should for a moment stoop to imitation. This is the only thing we dislike, these are the only passages we wish omitted in the whole work; and let the unqualified manner in which I say this, and the very vehemence of my expression of this disapprobation, be a sure pledge to the author of the sincerity of all the admiration I feel for his genius. I have not yet said half we felt in reading the work. The characters are not only finely drawn as separate figures, but they are grouped with great skill, and contrasted so artfully, and yet so naturally, as to produce the happiest dramatic effect and at the same time to relieve the feelings and attention in the most agreeable manner. The novelty of the Highland world which is discovered to our view excites curiosity and interest powerfully; but though it is all new to us it does not embarrass or perplex, or strain the attention. We never are harassed by doubts of the probability of any of these modes of life; though we did not know them, we are quite certain they did exist exactly as they are represented. We are sensible that there is a peculiar merit in the work which is in a measure lost upon us, the dialects of the Highlanders and Lowlanders, etc. But there is another and a higher merit with which we are as much struck and as much delighted as any true-born Scotchman could be: the various gradations of Scotch feudal character, from the high-born chieftain and the military baron, to the noble-minded lieutenant Evan Dhu, the robber Bean Lean, and the savage Callum Beg. The Pre--the Chevalier is beautifully drawn,-- "A prince: aye, every inch a prince!" His polished manners, his exquisite address, politeness, and generosity, interest the reader irresistibly, and he pleases the more from the contrast between him and those who surround him. I think he is my favorite character; the Baron Bradwardine is my father's. He thinks it required more genius to invent, and more ability uniformly to sustain, this character than any one of the masterly characters with which the book abounds. There is indeed uncommon art in the manner in which his dignity is preserved by his courage and magnanimity, in spite of all his pedantry and his _ridicules_.... I acknowledge that I am not as good a judge as my father and brothers are of his recondite learning and his law Latin, yet I feel the humor, and was touched to the quick by the strokes of generosity, gentleness, and pathos in this old man, who is, by the bye, all in good time worked up into a very dignified father-in-law for the hero.... Jinker, in the battle, pleading the cause of the mare he had sold to Balmawhapple, and which had thrown him for want of the proper bit, is truly comic; my father says that this and some other passages respecting horsemanship could not have been written by any one who was not master both of the great and little horse. I tell you without order the great and little strokes of humor and pathos just as I recollect, or am reminded of them at this moment by my companions.... Judging by our own feeling as authors, we guess that he would rather know our genuine first thoughts, than wait for cool second thoughts, or have a regular eulogium or criticism put in the most lucid manner, and given in the finest sentences that ever were rounded. Is it possible that I have got thus far without having named Flora or Vich Ian Vohr--the last Vich Ian Vohr! Yet our minds were full of them the moment before I began this letter; and could you have seen the tears forced from us by their fate, you would have been satisfied that the pathos went to our hearts. Ian Vohr from the first moment he appears, till the last, is an admirably drawn and finely sustained character--new, perfectly new to the English reader--often entertaining--always heroic--sometimes sublime. The gray spirit, the Bodach Glas, thrills us with horror. _Us!_ What effect must it have upon those under the influence of the superstitions of the Highlands?... Flora we could wish was never called Miss MacIvor, because in this country there are tribes of vulgar Miss Macs, and this association is unfavorable to the sublime and beautiful of your Flora--she is a true heroine.... There is one thing more we could wish changed or omitted in Flora's character.... In the first visit to her, where she is to sing certain verses, there is a walk, in which the description of the place is beautiful, but too long, and we did not like the preparation for a scene--the appearance of Flora and her harp was too like a common heroine; she should be far above all stage effect or novelist's trick. These are, without reserve, the only faults we found or can find in this work of genius. We should scarcely have thought them worth mentioning, except to give you proof positive that we are not flatterers. Believe me, I have not, nor can I convey to you the full idea of the pleasure, the delight we have had in reading _Waverley_, nor of the feeling of sorrow with which we came to the end of the history of persons whose real presence had so filled our minds--we felt that we must return to the flat realities of life, that our stimulus was gone, and we were little disposed to read the "Postscript, which should have been a Preface." "Well, let us hear it," said my father, and Mrs. Edgeworth read on. Oh! my dear sir, how much pleasure would my father, my mother, my whole family as well as myself have lost, if we had not read to the last page! And the pleasure came upon us so unexpectedly--we had been so completely absorbed that every thought of ourselves, of our own authorship, was far, far away. Thank you for the honor you have done us, and for the pleasure you have given us, great in proportion to the opinion we had formed of the work we had just perused--and believe me, every opinion I have in this letter expressed was formed before any individual in the family had peeped to the end of the book or knew how much we owed you. Your obliged and grateful MARIA EDGEWORTH.] END OF VOLUME FOUR [Transcriber's note: Only obvious printer's errors have been corrected (e.g.: 3 s instead of 2, etc.). The author's spelling has been maintained and inconsistencies have not been standardised.]