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 Recently published, in cr-own 8vo, price 6s., 
 
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 By JAMES DODDS, Esq., 
 
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 Edinburgh: \V. OLIPHANT & CO. 
 
Dai WiLifElS §£©TT 
 

 ^ ^iHalM ^ 
 
 EDINBURGH, WILLIAM OLIPHANT«:C! 
 
LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT, 
 
 BARONET. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN, 
 
 DUNDEE. 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 
 WILLIAM OLIPHANT & CO. 
 
 1870. 
 
a^^^ 
 
 && 
 
 MURRAY AND GIBB, EDINBURGH, 
 PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICi 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 HE purpose of the following work re- 
 quires very little explanation. It was 
 thought by its publishers — a view in 
 Vv'hich the author thoroughly coincided — that a 
 popular life of Sir Walter Scott was a desidera- 
 tum. There are indeed various lives of Sir Walter 
 already. Lockhart's has long been the standard 
 one, and continues to be justly regarded as a very 
 able work, and as a mine of information on the 
 subject. But it is too large, and, besides the per- 
 sonalities which abound in it and rather lessen its 
 value, it contains a mass of correspondence and 
 minute details which seem somewhat irrelevant 
 and uninteresting now, — Scott's letters being the 
 dullest of all his productions. There are many 
 smaller lives ; but they are in general meagre 
 outlines. 
 
 iv.2278 
 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 The author has sought to produce something 
 between the large work of Lockhart and the 
 slighter biographies. He has not catered for 
 gossip, and his book will be found to contain little, 
 although there are not a few new facts sprinkled 
 throughout. It aims rather at being an accurate 
 summary of the leading events in Scott's life, and 
 a candid, full, and genial criticism on his principal 
 works. How far its aim has been successfully 
 gained, the public must decide. 
 
 The book, whatever be its defects, may be 
 thought a * word in season,' as connected in time 
 with that centenary celebration which is at hand, 
 and which may be regarded not merely as a 
 tribute to Scott's memory, but as at once an 
 acknowledgment and outcome of that large and 
 loving spirit which is abroad in the age, and which 
 has been partly the result of the extensive diffu- 
 sion of Sir Walter's writings. 
 
 Shakspeare says : 
 
 ' The evil that men do lives after them ; the good 
 Is oft interred with their bones.' 
 
 It has been otherwise with Scott. Whatever 
 was small and narrow in his history and opinions 
 is forgotten. His real nature, which was as broad 
 and catholic as the sun, remains with us, and is 
 still powerfully affecting the world. Sitting the 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 other day under the shadow of his Edinburgh 
 monument, with the glory of a rich September 
 afternoon bathing the city which Scott loved so 
 well, we thought that we had too long regarded 
 him as a mirror of national manners and pecu- 
 liarities, and that his true mission had been 
 misunderstood. That was of a cosmopolitan and 
 Christian character. And even as that splendid 
 monument is now pointing to the most magnificent 
 of landscapes, overhung by the most golden and 
 benignant of skies, united together into one grand 
 whole, his genius seemed to predict in its all-sided 
 character a nobler harmony, a more thorough re- 
 conciliation of the jarring elements in society and 
 human nature, than we can at present conceive of, 
 and leads us — undisturbed by the sad events of 
 the time — to anticipate, though faintly and far off, 
 that of which this beautiful day seems a prophecy 
 and a pledge : 
 
 ' The bridal of the earth and sky.' 
 Dundee, September 1870. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 SCOTT IN BOYHOOD, 
 
 PACK 
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 AT COLLEGE, AND MAKING HIMSELF, 
 
 19 
 
 CHAPTER TIL 
 
 EARLY LOVE, LITERATURE, MARRIAGE, AND POETRY, 
 
 34 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE BORDER MINSTRELSY, AND THE LAY OF THE LAST 
 MINSTREL, ......... 
 
 55 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MINOR EVENTS AND EFFORTS, . 
 
 66 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A RUN OF PERSONAL AND LITERARY SUCCESS, 
 
 79 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ASHESTIEL TO ABBOTSFORD — GLIMPSE OF FAMILY, DOMESTIC 
 
 CIRCUMSTANCES, AND HOME LIFE, .... 94 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 VICISSITUDES IN LIFE, LITERATURE, AND BUSINESS — 
 
 'WAVERLEY' LAUNCHED, I07 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 AT SEA, . , . ^ . ^ . . . .117 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE FIRST THREE WAVERLEY NOVELS, . . . . I28 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 SCOTT AND THE COVENANTERS, ....... I4I 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CONTINUED SUCCESS, WITH PRELIMINARY SHADOWS, . 151 
 
 CHAPTER XIIL 
 
 CULMINATION OF FAME AND FORTUNE — 'IVANHOE' AND 
 
 BARONETCY, 1 63 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SCOTT AT HOME, AND AGAIN IN LONDON, . . . .174 
 
CONTENTS. xi 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 PAGE 
 SCOTT'S RELATION TO HIS CONTEMPORARIES, GOETHE, 
 
 BYRON, WORDSWORTH, SOUTHEY, AND THE REST, . 1 86 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 * CARLE, NOW THE king's COME,' I97 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 SCOTT IN IRELAND, 2o8 
 
 CHAPTER XVIIL 
 
 « 
 
 DECAY AND DECADENCE BEGUN, 224 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 UNIVERSAL SMASH, 237 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 * THE UNVEILED PROPHET,' . .. . , . . 248 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 'napoleon TO THE RESCUE,' . ^ . . . . 260 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 STRUGGLES OF THE PROSTRATE, 272 
 
 CHAPTER XXIIL 
 
 THE STRONG MAN BOWED DOWN, 284 
 
xii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 VISIT TO THE CONTINENT, . . . , , , 297 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 RETURN HOME AND DEATH 3II 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 SCOTT, THE MAN AND POET, 333 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI I. 
 
 THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL, 
 
 ^ CONCLUSION. 
 
 348 
 
 THE COMING CENTENARY, 377 
 

 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SCOTT IN BOYHOOD. 
 
 ;HE child is father of the man ;' and this 
 is true of none more, or so much, as of 
 Sir Walter Scott. Nay, in him, as in 
 many great men, the man and the child refuse to 
 be separated : they are always one. In his boy- 
 hood we find clear and full exemplification of all 
 his noble qualities, his enthusiasm, warm-hearted 
 affection, bold manly feelings, sense, honesty, and 
 invincible perseverance. Afterwards these charac- 
 teristics ripened and expanded, but they never 
 changed ; and hence a unity, amidst great breadth, 
 in Scott as a man and as a writer, which has been 
 rarely equalled, and perhaps never surpassed. 
 
 Walter Scott — the possessor of a name and 
 fame only inferior in extent, and probably equal 
 in duration, to those of Homer and Shakspeare — 
 was born in Edinburgh on the 15th of August 
 
■■^i*^' 
 
 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 1771, the same day of the month as had been sig- 
 nalized two years before by the birth of Napoleon 
 Bonaparte. He was the son of Walter Scott, 
 W.S., and Anne Rutherford, daughter of Dr. John 
 Rutherford, Professor of Medicine in the Univer- 
 sity of Edinburgh. Sir Walter, by his father, was 
 descended from a family on the Border, of old 
 extraction, which had branched off from the main 
 stem of the house of Buccleugh, and produced 
 some remarkable characters : such as Auld Wat 
 of Harden, famous in Border story and in the song 
 of his great descendant ; and Beardie (so called 
 from an enormous beard, which — as was also said 
 of Thomas Dalziel the Cavalier general — he never 
 cut, in token of his regret for the banished house 
 of Stuart), who was the great-grandfather of the 
 poet. Through his mother he was connected with 
 two other ancient families : the Bauld Rutherfords, 
 mentioned in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Bor- 
 der ; and the Swintons, one of whom (Sir John) 
 is extolled by Froissart as having unhorsed, at the 
 battle of Beauge in France, the Duke of Clarence, 
 brother to Henry, and is the hero of Scott's own 
 poetic sketch, Halidon Hill. Through the Swin- 
 tons Scott could also trace a connection between 
 himself and William Alexander Earl of Stirling, 
 the well-known poet and dramatist. Sir Walter 
 
BOYHOOD. 
 
 was proud of his lineage, proud of his connection 
 with the Border, and almost looked on Harden as 
 his birthplace. He for many years made regularly 
 an autumnal excursion to the tower, picturesquely 
 situated in a deep, dark, and narrow glen, through 
 which a mountain brook discharges its waters into 
 the Borthwick, a tributary of the Teviot. To this 
 tower Auld Wat had brought home his beautiful 
 bride Mary Scott, the * Flower of Yarrow,' — the 
 subject of many a Border ditty, and whose gentle 
 disposition contrasted piquantly with the rough 
 valour and masculine virtues of her lord. It was 
 she who, when the last bullock stolen (^ conveyed,' 
 we will it call) from the English pastures was con- 
 sumed, set before the assembled guests a pair of 
 clean spurs, as a broad hint that they must work 
 if they expected any more to eat. Beardie, too, 
 he delights to commemorate for his devoted Jaco- 
 bitism, his learning, and his intimacy with Dr. Pit- 
 cairn ; although he admits that his political zeal, 
 and the intrigues and scrapes it led him into withal, 
 were the ruin of his fortunes, and nearly cost him 
 his head. From his ancestors Scott derived some 
 of his principal peculiarities — his ardent attachment 
 to Scotland, his lingering love for the Pretender, 
 his sympathy with martial enterprise and spirit, 
 and a certain * hairbrained sentimental trace * 
 
WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 which took eccentric shapes in his predecessors, 
 but in him became the fire of the great lyrical 
 bard. 
 
 Beardie left three sons, and the second — Robert 
 Scott — was the grandfather of the poet. He 
 leased from Mr. Scott of Harden, his relative and 
 chief, the farm of Sandyknowe. This is situated 
 about a bowshot from the remarkable tower of 
 Smailholm — a tower which figures in the poet's 
 Mari72io7i and Eve of St. John. It stands, a ruin, 
 on the top of a rock of considerable height, sur- 
 rounded by an amphitheatre of rugged hills, and 
 commanding a most varied and magnificent pro- 
 spect, including Dryburgh, where Scott himself 
 now lies, * not dead, but sleeping ;' Melrose, on 
 which his genius shed a light more magical than 
 even the pale moonshine in which it shows so 
 sweetly ; Mertoun, with its deep groves — the seat 
 of the Harden family ; the Broom of the Cowden- 
 knowes ; 
 
 * Bonny Teviotdale, and Cheviot mountains blue ;' 
 
 the Eildon Hills ('Yielding Hills' som^ call them, 
 since at every step almost of view they change 
 their aspect, like shifting clouds ; * Elden Hills ' 
 others, because there of old time blazed beacon- 
 fires), with their three wizard peaks, belted by 
 
BOYHOOD. 5 
 
 Bowden (Thomas Aird's birthplace), Newtown, 
 Melrose, and other haunted spots ; the Merse, 
 with the Lammermoors rising like an island in 
 the midst, where the great novelist was to fix the 
 scene of one of the grandest tragedies in any lan- 
 guage ; and relieved against the distant horizon, 
 that storm of mountains which gathers around the 
 wanderings of the Ettrick, Gala, and Yarrow. Over 
 this landscape — where it has been said every field 
 had its battle and every rivulet its song, we add 
 every peak its watch-fire and every hillside its peel 
 — Scott in boyhood often * gazed himself away,* 
 and would realize both the spectacle and the mood 
 of the heroine whom he was afterwards to portray 
 in the beautiful words : 
 
 * The lady looked in mournful mood, 
 Looked over hill and vale, 
 O'er Mertoun's wood and Tweed's fair flood, 
 And all down Teviotdale.' 
 
 Robert Chambers, in his interesting Illustrations 
 of the Waver ley Novels, will have it that S mail- 
 holm agrees in the leading features with Avenel 
 Castle ; and there are certainly some points of 
 resemblance, especially in the circumstance that 
 the tower has once been surrounded by a lake, 
 and that there are certain remains which still point 
 to the existence of a drawbridge and a causeway 
 
WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 crossing a moat. The view, however, as described 
 by Scott in The Abbot, is not the same with that 
 we have sought to portray above ; and besides, in 
 a note to The Monastery, Scott says : * It were 
 vain to search near Melrose for any such castle as 
 is here described. But in Yetholm Loch there are 
 the remains of a fortress called Lochside Tower, 
 which, like the supposed Castle of Avenel, is built 
 upon an island, and connected with the land by a 
 causeway. It is much smaller than the Castle of 
 Avenel is described.' 
 
 Robert Scott married a Miss Halyburton, a lady 
 sprung from an ancient family in Berwickshire, — a 
 family which enjoyed as portion of its patrimonial 
 possessions a part of Dryburgh, including the ruins 
 of the Abbey. This estate would have descended 
 to Scott through his father, but was lost by the 
 foolish speculations of a granduncle ; and ' thus,' 
 he says in his autobiography, ' we have nothing left 
 of Dryburgh, although my father's maternal in- 
 heritance, but the right of stretching our bones, 
 where mine may perhaps be laid ere any eye but 
 my own glances over these pages,' — words written 
 with a mixture of sadness, pride, and dignity very 
 characteristic of the author. Robert Scott's eldest 
 son was Walter, the poet's father. He was the 
 first of the Scott family who ever adopted a town 
 
BOYHOOD, 
 
 life. He was born in 1729, educated as a W.S., 
 and although not much fitted naturally, either by 
 astuteness or by temper, for the profession, yet 
 rose to eminence in it by dint of probity and 
 diligence. There is an epitaph in the HowfF 
 (burying-place) of Dundee : 
 
 * Here lies a writer and an honest man : 
 Providence works wonders nows and thanJ 
 
 Scott's father was one of these rare marvels of 
 Divine Providence, being thoroughly honest. He 
 was a man of somewhat distant and formal man- 
 ners, but of singular kindness of heart, of sterling 
 worth, and of deep-toned piety after the Calvinistic 
 mode. He had a noble presence, handsome fea- 
 tures, a sweet expression of countenance ; and, as 
 Sir Walter says, ' he looked the mourner so well,' 
 that he was often invited to funerals, and seems 
 to have positively enjoyed those monotonous and 
 melancholy formalities connected with Scottish 
 interments, for which his son has expressed in his 
 journal such disgust, and which he has limned in 
 his Gtiy Mannering with such ludicrous fidelity. 
 Old Fairford in Redgauntlet is unquestionably a 
 graphic though slightly coloured sketch of the 
 elder Scott by his son. His mother was well 
 educated, as the times then went, not at all comely 
 
WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 in aspect, short in stature, and somewhat stiff in 
 manners. She lived to a great age. Their first 
 six children (including a Walter) died in infancy. 
 The first who survived was Robert. He became 
 an officer in the East India Company's service, 
 and fell a victim to the cHmate. The second, 
 John, was a major in the army, and lived long on 
 his half-pay in Edinburgh. The third was the 
 poet. The fourth was a daughter, of a somewhat 
 flighty temperament, Anne by name, who was 
 cut off in 1 80 1. The fifth was Thomas, a man of 
 much humour and excellent parts, who went to 
 Canada as paymaster to the 70th Regiment, and 
 died there. He was at one time suspected of 
 being author, in whole or part, of the Waverley 
 Novels. The sixth was Daniel, the scapegrace of 
 the family, whose conduct was in the last degree 
 imprudent, and whose fate was disastrous : he had 
 in the West Indies disgraced himself by coward- 
 ice, and died on his return in 1806. Sir Walter 
 disowned him, and put on no mourning at the 
 news of his death, — conduct which he thought 
 afterwards harsh and unfeeling, and bitterly re- 
 gretted. Conachar, in the Fair Maid of Perth, 
 has, Lockhart thinks, some traits of this poor 
 unfortunate. 
 
 Walter Scott was born in a house belonging to 
 
BOYHOOD. 
 
 his father at the head of College Wynd, which was 
 afterwards pulled down to make room for a part of 
 the new College. He was an uncommonly healthy 
 child till eighteen months old, when he was affected 
 with a teething fever, at the close of which he was 
 found to have lost the use of his right leg. Blisters 
 and other topical remedies were applied to no pur- 
 pose. He was at last, by the advice of his grand- 
 father Dr. Rutherford, sent out to Sandyknowe, 
 in the hope that air and exercise might remove his 
 lameness. There he had the first consciousness of 
 existence, and remembered himself, in conformity 
 with some quack nostrum, wrapped up repeatedly 
 in the skin of a sheep while still warm from the 
 carcase of the animal, to encourage him to crawl, 
 — a position in which he bears a certain ludicrous 
 resemblance to his own hermit Brian, in the Lady 
 of the Lake, enclosed in the skin of a white bull, 
 and let down to the brink of a cataract to see 
 visions and dream dreams of dreadful augury: it 
 is the one step from the sublime to the ridiculous 
 inverted. This strange expedient failed. Scott 
 owed much, however, to his residence at Sandy- 
 knowe. He enjoyed the care of his venerable 
 grandfather, now somewhat stricken in years. His 
 grandmother, and his aunt Janet Scott, told him 
 tales and sung him songs about the old Border 
 
lo WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 thieves, Wat of Harden, Wight Willie of Aik- 
 wood, Jamie Telfor of the fair Dodhead, the Deil 
 of Littledean, and their merry exploits ; and thus 
 sowed in his mind the seeds of future Deloraines, 
 Clinthill Christies, and Robin Hoods. A neigh- 
 bouring farmer had witnessed the execution of the 
 Jacobite rebels at Carlisle : he recounted it to Scott ; 
 and to this tale of horror, poured into the ear of the 
 boy poet, we are indebted for the trial and death 
 scenes at the close of Waverley, — perhaps the most 
 thrilling and powerful tragic matter, out of Shak- 
 speare, in the language. The American war was 
 then raging ; and to the weekly bulletins about its 
 fluctuating progress, brought to Sandyknowe by his 
 uncle Thomas Scott, factor at Danesford, the little 
 lame child did seriously incline his ear, and his 
 cheek glowed and his eye kindled when he heard 
 of any success on the part of the British arms ; 
 so early did the Tory throb begin to beat within 
 him. Some old books, too, lay on the window seat 
 —Antomathes (a forgotten but ingenious fiction), 
 Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany, and JosepJms — 
 and were read to him during the dim days and the 
 long nights of winter. He learned, from hearing 
 the ballad of Hardyknute read, to recite it from 
 memory, and used to spout it aloud, to the annoy- 
 ance of the worthy parish minister, Dr. Duncan, 
 
BOYHOOD. II 
 
 when he called. * One may as well speak in the 
 mouth of a cannon as where that child is/ ex- 
 claimed the testy divine. To this we probably owe 
 Scott's life-long admiration and amiable overesti- 
 mate of this ballad, which he recited to Byron with 
 such effect, that the poet looked as if he had just 
 received a challenge. With all deference to Scott, 
 we have never been able to perceive any transcen- 
 dent merit in' Hardyhmte : we think it wordy and 
 diffuse, and infinitely prefer The Flowers of the 
 Forest y The Dowie Dens of Yarrow ^ and the ancient 
 ballad of Roftcesvalles. His Aunt Janet stood much 
 in relation to Scott as Betty Davidson did to Burns 
 — was his chief instructress, and the true nurse 
 within him of the poet. He began, in spite of his 
 lame limb, to stand, walk, and run, and his general 
 health was confirmed by the pure mountain air. 
 Previous to this, an old shepherd, Sandy Ormis- 
 toun, was accustomed to carry him to the hills, 
 where he contracted a strong attachment to the 
 woolly people, — an attachment which never for- 
 sook him. One Tibby Hunter described him as a 
 sweet-tempered bairn, a darling with all about the 
 house, and said that the young ewe-milkers de- 
 lighted to carry him about on their backs among 
 the crags. He had no greater pleasure than in 
 rolling about all day long in the midst of the 
 
12 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 flocks, and he knew every sheep and lamb by head- 
 mark. On one occasion, it is said, he was forgotten 
 am.ong the knolls. A thunder-storm came on. In 
 alarm, they sought for the boy, and found him, 
 not weeping or crying out, like the Goblin Page, 
 *Lost! lost! lost!' but lying on his back looking 
 at the lightning, clapping his hands at each suc- 
 cessive flash, and exclaiming, * Bonnie ! bonnie!' 
 It were a fine subject for a painter, * The Minstrel 
 Child lost in a Border thunder-storm ;' and his 
 attitude in the story reminds us of Gray's noble 
 lines about Shakspeare in his Progress of Poesy : 
 
 * Far from the sun and summer gale, 
 In thy green lap was nature's darling laid. 
 What time where lucid Avon strayed, 
 To him the mighty mother did unveil 
 Her awful face ; the dauntless child 
 Stretched forth his little arms, and smiled.' 
 
 When in his fourth year, Scott accompanied his 
 Aunt Janet to Bath, where it was hoped the waters 
 would benefit his lameness. He journeyed from 
 Leith to London in a smack called the Duchess 
 oj Buccleiigh, Captain Beatson. (A lady named 
 Wright boasted long after waggishly to Joanna 
 Baillie, that she had been once Walter Scott's bed- 
 fellow ; the irregularity, however, having taken 
 place in the Leith smack, and the Eneas being 
 
BOYHOOD. 13 
 
 only four 5^ears of age !) In London he saw the 
 usual sights, which stamped themselves with un- 
 common vividness on his memory, so that when he 
 visited the metropolis again he had hardly any- 
 thing new to see. At Bath he lived a year, but 
 derived little benefit from the waters. He attended, 
 however, while there, a dame's school, and never, 
 he says, had a 'more regular teacher of reading,' 
 although he got a few lessons in Edinburgh 
 afterwards. He met John Home, the author of 
 Douglas^ who, along with his lady, was residing 
 there. His Uncle Robert, who joined the party 
 afterwards, took his little nephew to most of the 
 amusements in the city, including the theatre, 
 where, at the sight of Orlando and Oliver, in As 
 Yotc Like it, quarrelling, he screamed out, 'Ar'n't 
 they brothers t ' — a story reminding us of young 
 Byron in the Aberdeen theatre, when Petruchio 
 was trying to force down on Kate the paradox of 
 the moon being the sun, roaring out, ' But I say it 
 is the meen, sir ! ' Bath, too, which in all but the 
 neighbourhood of the Grampians may be called 
 the Perth, or Fair City, of England, he seems to 
 have admired exceedingly. 
 
 From it he came back to Edinburgh, went thence 
 to his beloved early haunt of Sandyknowe ; and we 
 find him in his eighth year spending a few weeks 
 
14 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 at Prestonpans, enjoying sea-bathing, and encoun- 
 tering an old military veteran named Dalgetty (a 
 significant name, as the readers of the Legend of 
 Montrose know full well), who became fond of 
 Scott, and, like the soldier in Goldsmith, 
 
 * Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won.' - 
 
 It is interesting to observe how not a few of the 
 familiar names known to him in his youth or boy- 
 hood have been preserved on his written page, and 
 are now classical. Thus Meg Dodds was the real 
 name of a woman, or ' Luckie,' in Howgate, * who 
 brewed good ale for gentlemen.' In the account 
 of a Galloway trial, in which Scott was counsel, 
 occurs the name * Mac-Gufifog,' afterwards that of 
 the famous turnkey in Giiy Mannering. The 
 name * Durward ' may still be seen on the signs of 
 Arbroath and Forfar, and Scott had doubtless met 
 it there ; as well as that of * Prudfute, or Proudfoot,' 
 in or near Perth ; * Morton,' in the lists of the west- 
 ern Whigs ; and '■ Gilfillan,' in the catalogue of the 
 prisoners in Dunnottar Castle. Nothing, in fact, 
 that ever flashed on the eye or vibrated on the ear 
 of this extraordinary man but was in some form or 
 other reproduced in his writings. It was probably 
 the same with Shakspeare, although the most of 
 the data on the subject are lost ; and Mrs. Quickly, 
 
BOYHOOD, 15 
 
 Master Barnardine, Claudio, Shallow, Sir Andrew 
 Aguecheek, and Falconbridge, seem all old ac- 
 quaintances of the poet. 
 
 In 1778, Scott, having first got a few lessons from 
 one Leechman and one French, was sent to the 
 High School, under the charge of Luke Frazer, 
 whom he describes as a worthy man and a capital 
 scholar. Thence he passed to the rector's class, 
 taught by the celebrated Dr. Adam. This remark- 
 able person had not a little of his namesake Parson 
 Adams, in Fielding, about him. He was a simple- 
 minded, sincere, absent individual, as well as a 
 profound scholar ; just the kind of man, like the 
 parson when regretting that he had lost his calf- 
 skin iEschylus, to condole himself with the reflec- 
 tion, that as it was dark, it was impossible for him 
 to have seen to read it. It was another kind of 
 night which was descending on Alexander Adam 
 when he uttered his memorable last saying, ' It is 
 getting dark ; you may go home, boys.' His life, 
 otherwise a useful, laborious, and happy one, was 
 embittered first of all by the rude usage he met 
 with from William Nicol, Burns' clever but coarse- 
 minded associate, who was an under-teacher in the 
 school, and who even on one occasion waylaid and 
 assaulted the rector ; and secondly, by the obloquy 
 to which his republican principles, which he avowed 
 
1 6 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 on all occasions, and taught in his school, exposed 
 him. His works, Roman Antiquities^ Grammar 
 of Ancient Geography, etc., show vast and very- 
 exact learning, and were once popular schoolbooks. 
 Adam is said to have appreciated Scott's amazing 
 memory, and frequently called him up to answer 
 questions about dates ; and although neither he nor 
 the other teachers had any suspicion of his genius, 
 he pronounced him better acquainted than any of 
 his contemporaries with the meaning, if not with 
 the words, of the classical authors. He encouraged 
 him also to make translations from Homer and 
 Virgil. One or two trifling pieces of verse by him 
 of this date have been discovered. But on the 
 whole, although not a dunce, Scott was, as he says, 
 an * incorrigibly idle imp,' constantly glancing like 
 a meteor from the bottom to the top of the form, 
 and vice versa, and shone more in the yards — the 
 High School playgrounds — than in the class. Not- 
 withstanding his infirmity, he was the bravest of 
 football players, the swiftest of racers, the strongest 
 of pugilists, the most persevering in snowball bickers, 
 the most daring climber of the kittle nine steps (a 
 pass of peril leading along the dark brow of the 
 Castle rock), and the most dexterous and strategic 
 commander in the mimic battles fought in the 
 Crosscauseway between the children of the mob 
 
BOYHOOD. 
 
 17 
 
 and those of the better citizens. Many poets, such 
 as Cowper and Shelley, have been overborne and 
 become broken-hearted amidst the rough play of a 
 public school. But the Scott, the Byron, and the 
 Wilson, find it their element ; and their early supe- 
 riority in sports and pastimes is an augury of their 
 future greatness, and a prelibation of the manhood 
 of their character and the all-sidedness of their 
 genius. 
 
 Previous to this, a lady in all points qualified to 
 appreciate genius, the accomplished Mrs. Cock- 
 burn, the authoress of the modern version of The 
 Flowers d the Forest, had met Scott in his father's 
 house in George Square, and thus describes him : 
 'I last night supped in Mr. Walter Scott's. He 
 has the most extraordinary genius of a boy I ever 
 saw. He was reading a poem to his mother when 
 I went in. I made him read on : it was the de- 
 scription of a shipwreck. His passion rose with 
 the storm. He lifted up his eyes and hands. 
 " There's the mast gone," says he ; " crash it goes : 
 they will all perish ! " After his agitation he turns 
 to me : " This is too melancholy," says he, " I must 
 read you something more amusing." When taken 
 to bed last night, he told his aunt that he liked that 
 lady. " What lady .?" says she. " Why, Mrs. Cock- 
 burn ; for I think she is a virtuoso, like myself." ' 
 
i8 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 From Adam's tuition Scott would have instantly 
 gone to College, had it not been that his health 
 became delicate, and his father was induced to 
 send him to Kelso. There, being once more 
 under the kind care of his Aunt Janet, he added 
 to the stores of his reading, which in Edin- 
 burgh had been very miscellaneous. He became 
 acquainted with Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry ^ 
 which he read under the shade of a splendid 
 Platanus, or Oriental Plane, a huge hill of leaves 
 in his aunt's garden ; while attending the school 
 of one Lancelot he increased considerably his 
 stock of classical lore ; and he made the acquaint- 
 ance of James Ballantyne, a man whose fortunes 
 were afterwards so closely linked with his own, 
 who seemed born to be his amanuensis and 
 literary factotum, and in whose company, now in 
 the school, and now when wandering along the 
 banks of the Tweed, he began to exercise his 
 unrivalled gift of telling stories. At Kelso, too, a 
 spot distinguished by its combination of beauties, 
 the Tweed and Teviot beside it melting in music 
 into each other's arms, and with noble mansions and 
 ancient abbeys in the background, his eyes were 
 more fully opened to the beauties of that Scottish 
 nature of which he became the most ideal, yet 
 minute, the most lingering and loving depictor. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 AT COLLEGE, AND MAKING HIMSELF. 
 
 p^y^(^y/^HEN Byron felt that he had ceased to be 
 a boy, it gave him, we are told, a pang 
 of the most exquisite anguish. What 
 Scott's feelings at this era were we are not par- 
 ticularly informed ; but we suspect that it was 
 with a deep sigh that he, too (in 1784), left the 
 shade of his Platanus for that of his Alma Mater, 
 and exchanged the delightful pages of Percy for 
 the reading of the Latin and Greek classics under 
 Professors Hill and Dalziel. In Latin he became 
 a fair proficient ; Greek he hated so intensely, that 
 he was called by his fellow-students the 'Greek 
 Blockhead.' Glorying in his shame, he wrote an 
 essay, filled with all kinds of useless learning, in 
 which he preferred Ariosto to Homer, and threw 
 ignorant contempt on the fine old language of the 
 
 latter. Had Sir Daniel Sandford been his professor, 
 
 19 
 
20 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 how his beautiful face would have rayed out wrath, 
 * as through his veins ran lightning/ at the presump- 
 tuous lad, although his anger would have been short- 
 lived, and he would have soon recognised his talent 
 and independent spirit. Dalziel, whose sole claim 
 to distinction lay in a collection of Greek extracts, 
 told Scott that a dunce he was, and a dunce he 
 Avould remain, — 'a verdict,' says Scott, 'which he 
 lived to revoke over a bottle of Burgundy at our 
 literary club at Fortune's.' As it was, Scott forgot 
 the very Greek alphabet, and afterwards bitterly 
 regretted his early neglect of his Greek studies. 
 We cannot say that we share much in this regret. 
 Scott was naturally Gothic in his tastes. The only 
 writer in Greek with whom his genius could ever 
 have had much sympathy was Homer; and he 
 was in many points a Homer himself: only, had 
 he known more Greek, he might, in his ballad 
 rhyme, have written the best conceivable transla- 
 tion of the Iliad. 
 
 Besides the Latin and Greek, he attended the 
 Ethical (Logic), the Mathematical, the Moral Philo- 
 sophy, and the Historical Classes, as well as those 
 of the Civil and Municipal Law. From Dugald 
 Stewart's tuition he derived much benefit, and 
 speaks of his striking and impressive eloquence 
 as riveting the attention of the most volatile 
 
AT COLLEGE. 21 
 
 student. Most that now read Dugald Stewart 
 vote him diffuse and languid, with much elegance, 
 but little point or power ; but all who heard him 
 seem to have been profoundly impressed by his 
 oratory, which probably owed much to his manner, 
 his presence, and the excellence of his private 
 character. Scott's real university was that library 
 of strangest selection, and most miscellaneous 
 variety, which he was piling up, partly on his 
 shelves, and partly in the roomy chambers of 
 his brain ; and, like many other great men who 
 have attended school and college, he was in reality 
 a self-taught man. He read the romances and 
 poetry of the South, he made himself an excel- 
 lent French and Italian scholar, and subsequently 
 became tolerably versed in German too. He ran- 
 sacked the dusty shelves of old bookshops and 
 circulating libraries ; and in those repositories of 
 forgotten lore he enjoyed occasional glimpses of 
 the literary characters who frequented them. 
 
 Often, in the experience of a young man of 
 letters, the real instructor is not a professor at 
 all, but some student of his own standing, whom 
 he has selected on a principle of natural affinity, 
 with whom he reads favourite authors, goes to 
 hear celebrated preachers, and, above all, com- 
 munes with in those delicious private walks which 
 
WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 in youth are so dear. Thus Hall and Mackintosh 
 conversed as they wandered along the banks of 
 the Dee and the Don, and were saluted by the 
 inferior students as ' Plato and Herodotus.' Thus 
 young Wordsworth and Coleridge talked to each 
 other 'far above singing/ or schemed the Anciente 
 Marinere. Thus Byron and Charles Skinner Mat- 
 thews speculated and revelled at Newstead Abbey. 
 These men were much about the same intellectual 
 level, which was not the case with Scott and his 
 associate, John Irving, W.S. Both, however, had 
 some tastes in common. They were fond of 
 repeating old legends, and began by and by to 
 invent and recount stories of their own in imita- 
 tion. And in weaving these pleasant yarns they 
 spent many a holiday hour, by sunlight and by 
 moonlight too, around Arthur's Seat and Salisbury 
 Crags. 
 
 In conjunction with Mr Irving, too, he read 
 much Italian, and even began to turn some of 
 its treasures into English verse. One of these 
 was Gtdscard and Matilda; and Lockhart has pre- 
 served some verses, headed ' To Mr Walter Scott, 
 on reading his poem of Gtdscard and Matilda^ 
 inscribed to Miss Keith of Ravelston.' The writer, 
 he thinks, was evidently a woman, and he thinks 
 she was Scott's old admirer, Mrs. Cockburn. 
 
AT COLLEGE. 23 
 
 On the 15th of May 1786, Scott was bound 
 apprentice to his father as W.S., and from that 
 day bade farewell to his academical studies. He 
 wrote about this time a poem of 1600 lines, en- 
 titled The Conqicest of Granada^ which, so soon as 
 it was finished, he committed to the flames. This 
 and two or three love trifles, and the translation 
 commended by Mrs. Cockburn, were, up to 1796, 
 his only poetical productions. In 1786 there 
 occurred the memorable meeting between Scott 
 and Burns. Such momentary intersections of the 
 orbits of literary stars, while the one is rising and 
 the other beginning to set, are as uncommon as 
 they are interesting. Thus met Ovid with Virgil, 
 and Milton with Galileo, of which it has been 
 said : 
 
 * With what comparison shall we compare 
 The meeting ot the matchless sage and bard ? 
 Transit of Mercury across the Sun — 
 Young Mercury across his father's brow ? 
 Say rather, transit of that comet vast 
 Which erst in autumn pierced our British skies 
 And crossed Arcturus ; spectacle sublime ! 
 Which no gyration of the dancing heavens 
 Shall e'er in grandeur or in grace surpass. 
 Oh ! strange to see the wanderer advance, 
 Fearless in courage, radiant with hope, 
 Toward that ancient and serenest star. 
 As if to look into the Eye of God. 
 
24 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Thus met the twain at Florence, soon to part : 
 
 The one to England bound, to fight the cause 
 
 Of Freedom, not with sword, but with a pen 
 
 Clear, bright, and piercing as Damascus blade ; 
 
 The other to remain in darkness pent, 
 
 Till to his eye the telescope of Death 
 
 His Lord applied, and lo ! not Night, but Day/ 
 
 Less singular in circumstances, and less august 
 in aspect, the meeting of the two brightest 
 geniuses of Caledonia. It was at a literary dinner 
 party at Professor Fergusson's that Scott saw the 
 boast, pride, and shame of Scotland — the truest 
 and the worst used man our country ever pro- 
 duced. We all remember the effect produced on 
 Burns' mind by the print of Bunbury, representing 
 the soldier lying dead in the snow, his widow 
 beside him, and a child in her arms ; and how the 
 eyes of the hapless bard of Coila glowed with pity, 
 passion, and enthusiasm as he read the line which 
 Scott told him was Langhorne's — 
 
 * The child of misery baptized in tears.' 
 
 That look, and the tears through which it shone, 
 haunted Scott's memory to the last ; and those 
 ardent eyes of the poet, which gleamed like dewy 
 stars, to him never set. Nor did he forget the 
 words of Burns to himself, 'You will be a man 
 yet,' although he calls it an expression of mere 
 
AT COLLEGE, 25 
 
 civility. He pitied Burns' unhappy career, but 
 his own in the long-run was not much more for- 
 tunate. He too, as well as Burns, was rzimed, 
 though in a different way. It is melancholy to 
 remember that this is true of so many besides 
 poets. How often do we hear it said, ' It is such 
 and such a person's ruin,' almost every life being 
 in some point or other a failure, and each vessel on 
 the sad sea of time being more or less a wreck ! 
 Indeed, some may think that in all Burns' dark 
 career there was nothing more dismal than the 
 disastrous reversal of the fortunes, and the pre- 
 mature eclipse of the glorious mind, of Sir Walter 
 Scott. 
 
 While serving his apprenticeship to his father, 
 Scott commenced those yearly visits to the High- 
 lands which were destined to exert such power orx 
 the development of his genius. He saw from the 
 Wicks o' Baigley, a point to the south of Perth, 
 that superb view of the winding Tay and its rich 
 valley ; the bold adjacent hills of Kinnoul, Kin- 
 fauns, and Moncreiff ; the * Fair City ' and the 
 distant Grampians, including Benvoirlich on the 
 west, Schiehallion in the north, and Mounts Bat- 
 tock and Blair in the east, which struck his young 
 fancy, and which he has described in one of the 
 most eloquent pages of his St. Valentines Day. 
 
26 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Stewart of Invernahyle, a client of his father's — an 
 old Jacobite, who had measured swords with Rob 
 Roy, and been out with Mar and with ' Charlie ' — 
 invited the son to his Highland home, where his 
 experiences somewhat resembled those of Waver- 
 ley with Fergus M'lvor, and of Francis Osbal- 
 distone in the McGregor's country. He found the 
 Highlands in a very primitive condition indeed : 
 the daughters of a laird loading a cart with manure 
 in the morning, and reappearing in the evening in 
 full dress, with radiant complexions, and display- 
 ing no little wit, intelligence, and good breeding ; 
 the principal dish in the first course of the dinner 
 being a gigantic haggis, borne into the hall in a 
 wicker basket by two half-naked Celts, while the 
 piper strutted fiercely behind them blowing a 
 tempest of dissonance ! Ever afterwards Scott's 
 heart and imagination were equally divided be- 
 tween the Border and the Perthshire Highlands. 
 It is remarkable that the scene of almost all his 
 Highland novels, certainly of his best ones — of 
 Waver ley, of Rob Roy, the Legend of Montrose, 
 and of The Fair Maid of Perth (not to speak of 
 The Lady of the Lake) — is laid in the Yorkshire 
 of Scotland. There was one other region in our 
 country which had afterwards, as we shall see, a 
 still stronger interest for him, namely Kincardine- 
 
AT COLLEGE. 27 
 
 shire, the birthplace of his first lost love ; but the 
 painful recollections connected with the story per- 
 haps repelled him, and he never does more than 
 allude incidentally to some of its scenes — such as 
 Cairna Mount and Clochmaben. But his associa- 
 tions with Perthshire were all delightful : it he 
 visited in his fresh boyhood, his heart beating with 
 enthusiasm, his brow throbbing with inspiration, — 
 'with hope,' as Lamb says of Coleridge, 'rising 
 before him like a fiery column, the dark side not 
 yet turned! And while the inhabitants of the 
 Border may be proud that Smailholm, Carter- 
 haugh, and the Eildons attracted him about as 
 strongly as his own romantic town, the Bass Rock, 
 and Arthur's Seat, Perthshire men are quite as 
 grateful for the new glory which he poured on the 
 Trosachs, Loch Tay, Craighall, the * hazel shade ' 
 of Glenartney, and the tall peak of Benvoirlich 
 with the ' red beacon ' of the morning burning upon 
 its summit. 
 
 In the second year of his apprenticeship, accord- 
 ing to Scott himself (Lockhart fixes it a little 
 earlier), one of Scott's blood-vessels burst ; and he 
 was put on a severe regimen and confined to bed, 
 restricted, though it was in a cold spring, to a 
 single blanket, bled, blistered, and fed on vege- 
 tables. His only resources were chess and read- 
 
28 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ing. He plunged now into a wide sea of books, 
 exhausting libraries, and driving their keepers to 
 their wit's end to supply his cravings ; passing 
 from novels, romances, and poems to voyages and 
 travels, and thence to histories and to memoirs, 
 and thus preparing himself for the future exi- 
 gencies of his literary life as effectually on his 
 quiet bed, where he was not suffered to speak 
 above his breath, as when rambling through the 
 mountains of Perthshire with Invernahyle, or 
 * making himself with Shortreed among the tra- 
 ditionary v/ilds of Liddesdale. He illustrated the 
 battles he read of by arranging shells, seeds, and 
 pebbles to represent the movements of encounter- 
 ing armies, using mimic cross-bows and a small 
 model fortress. By the assistance, too, of a com- 
 bination of mirrors, he was enabled to look out 
 at the Meadows, and see the troops marching to 
 exercise, which must have been a great relief to his 
 weary hours. After some months he recovered, 
 resumed his labours in the office, and bade a long 
 farewell to disease and medicine. 
 
 In 1788 he went to attend the class of Civil Law. 
 Here, besides his old friends Irving and Fergusson, 
 he met with some other young men who united 
 literary tastes with legal aspirations. In later days 
 we have seen at the bar chiefly two classes — literary 
 
AT COLLEGE. 29 
 
 men who had no law, and plodding legalists who 
 had no genius. Before Scott's time, mere lawyers 
 constituted almost the whole tribe. But Scott, 
 Jeffrey, Cranstoun, and others, formed a conjunction 
 of the two characters, although perhaps in Jeffrey 
 alone were they thoroughly harmonized. Scott 
 was both a litterateur and a lawyer, but far more 
 a litterateitr ; Cranstoun and Cockburn were more 
 of the lawyer ; while Jeffrey united both in nearly 
 equal proportions, being at once sharp as the 
 sharpest special pleader, and as acute and lively, if 
 not as genial or profound, a critic as Britain ever 
 produced. Along with William Clerk of Eldin, 
 Abercromby, and Cranstoun, Scott spent his morn- 
 ings in the Law Class-room or in private study, 
 his evenings in the somewhat excessive conviviali- 
 ties of that time, and his holidays in rambles about 
 the surrounding country. Sometimes they strolled 
 too far for the contents of their purses, and had to 
 subsist on cold water and hips and haws in their 
 return. Such adventures are the romance and 
 magic of the early life of literary men and students. 
 We knew a youth, now a voluminous author, who 
 left Glasgow for Stirling with precisely one penny 
 in his pocket, which he .spent at Denny on a roll ; 
 and this with water from a running brook formed 
 his only refreshment for the twenty-eight miles of 
 
30 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 road. Scott's father was rather annoyed at these 
 escapades, although he was so glad to see him 
 when, he returned, that, like Kish with Saul, he 
 forgot the meditated rebuke. Scott's nickname 
 among his own set was Duns Scotus, or sometimes 
 by an alias of his own creation, Colonel Grogg. 
 His dress at this time was neglected : corduroy 
 breeches were his common attire ; and when re- 
 proached with their meanness, his reply was, 
 * They be good enough for drinking in : come, and 
 let us have some oysters in the Covenant Close.' 
 These convivialities, however, were afterwards re- 
 linquished. In his maturer years he was a strictly 
 temperate man ; and from grosser dissipation he 
 was kept almost entirely free, through means of a 
 pure and passionate attachment, of which we shall 
 speak in the sequel. 
 
 In 1792 (nth July) Scott was called to the bar. 
 He had joined previously the Speculative Society, 
 where Jeffrey first saw him, his chafts (Scottice) 
 wrapt up in a large woollen nightcap, the poet 
 being ill of toothache, and yet able to read a paper 
 on old ballads, which so interested Jeffrey, that he 
 got introduced to him, and they became great allies. 
 Like most young advocates, Scott had little busi- 
 ness at first ; but he drank claret at Fortune's, and 
 ate oysters in St. John's Coffeehouse, dear to him 
 
AT COLLEGE. 31 
 
 as erst the haunt of Dr. Pitcairn ; read now Stair's 
 Decisions, and now the last new novel ; and every- 
 day might be seen sweeping with his gown the 
 boards of that Parliament House which seems the 
 Hall of Eblis to many a weary and briefless peri- 
 patetic. 
 
 In the autumn of this year he was introduced to 
 Mr. Robert Shortreed, the respected Sherifl"-substi- 
 tute of Roxburghshire, and this led to a most im- 
 portant section of Scott's life. He had felt a strong 
 desire, which was now gratified, to visit Liddes- 
 dale, and collect the ballads and traditions which 
 were floating there, especially those riding ballads 
 which he believed to be still preserved among the 
 descendants of the mosstroopers. For seven suc- 
 cessive years the twain persevered in making 
 autumnal excursions to that romantic region. Lid- 
 desdale was then not much better known than the 
 interior of Africa is now. 
 
 * It lay like some unkenned of isle 
 Ayont New Holland.' 
 
 But Scott and Shortreed were richly rewarded 
 for their daring exploration. They saw fine 
 mountain scenes, drank in pure air, collected songs 
 and traditions, told stories, galloped long miles, 
 climbed hills, pursued foxes, speared salmon, lay in 
 
32 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Charlieshopes without number, kissed fraternally 
 the farmers' wives, fondled the children, floored if 
 possible at their own weapons of strong waters the 
 goodmen ; acted, in short, exactly as Captain Brown 
 did when residing with Dandie Dinmont, or as an 
 electioneering candidate is in the habit of doing, 
 but with a very different motive from the member ; 
 the one purchasing selfish popularity, and the other 
 laying in the materials of universal fame by con- 
 descension and kindness. The story, ' There's the 
 keg at last,' is too familiar to require to be re- 
 counted. * He was making himser a' the time,' says 
 honest Shortreed, ^ but he didna ken what he was 
 about till years had passed. At first he thought 
 o' little, I daresay, but the queerness and the fun.' 
 
 From these visits came in due time the Minstrelsy 
 of the Scottish Border. It has been said, absurdly 
 we think, that Scott had no pleasure while writing 
 his poems and novels. He had none, indeed, of 
 that half-inebriated ecstasy with which Burns wrote 
 his Tarn d Shanter^ nor of that lingering, long 
 drawn out, concentrated pleasure with which 
 Wordsworth brooded over his thoughts while form- 
 ing them into verse, saying, as it were, to each, * I 
 will not let thee go except thou bless me.' Yet 
 surely, if he had neither the joy of inspiration nor 
 of incubation, he had a large measure of delight 
 
AT COLLEGE. 
 
 33 
 
 while, amid the freshness of morning nature, with 
 the sound of the Tweed in his ears, or the sun 
 smiting the Castle rock before his eyes, he indited 
 pages which he knew were as immortal and as 
 pure as those waters or that sun-fire. But at all 
 events he had enjoyment, the most exquisite and 
 varied, while collecting their materials amongst the 
 mosses or by the firesides of the Border : he was 
 then luxuriating as well as ' making himself,* and 
 probably looked back long afterwards to this as to 
 the happiest period of his existence. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 EARLY LOVE, LITERATURE, MARRIAGE, AND 
 POETRY. 
 
 |ETTERCAIRN is a small estate in Kin- 
 'pm cardineshire, situated near the pleasant 
 village of that name, on a rich level and 
 stream-bisected spot, not far from the foot of the 
 Grampians, which here somewhat stoop their mighty 
 stature, and appear as it were kneeling before the 
 German Ocean. Fettercairn is not only beautiful 
 in itself, but surrounded on all sides by interesting 
 scenes. The spot where Queen Finella's castle (a 
 vitrified fort where Kenneth IIL was murdered) is 
 said to have stood is near it. The Burn, with all 
 its marvellous woodland and water-side beauties, 
 stands a few miles to the west ; and near it is the 
 lovely Arnhall, with its fine old park, garden, and 
 legendary memories. Fasque, the seat of the Glad- 
 stone family, is behind to the north, and in the 
 same direction a steep hill-road conducts over the 
 
 24 
 
EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 35 
 
 Cairnamount to Banchory and Balmoral. The 
 Castles of Edzell and Balbegno frown emulously 
 westward ; and a good way to the east, the proud 
 ruin of Dunnottar Castle, with its huge structure 
 and historical associations, links the mountains to 
 the sea. Sir John Stuart of Fettercairn had a 
 daughter named Williamina, who resided part of 
 the year in Edinburgh. Sir Walter met this lady, 
 it is said, in Greyfriars Churchyard after service, 
 and during a shower of rain. The offer of an 
 umbrella, which was graciously accepted, formed 
 the commencement of an acquaintance, and the 
 earnest of the offer of an heart ; not, alas ! so well 
 received by the fair one. She is described as 
 beautiful, a blue-eyed blonde, of very gentle 
 manners and considerable literary accomplish- 
 ments. Her mother had been an early companion 
 of Scott's mother. His love was exceedingly 
 ardent, and a recollection of her image colours his 
 pictures of female heroines, particularly in the Lay 
 of the Last Minstrel, Rokeby, and Redgauntlet, 
 But not more hopeless was Dairsie Latimer's pas- 
 sion for Lilias Redgauntlet (his disguised sister) 
 than Scott's for the fair Williamina. The different 
 rank of the parties was an obstacle ; and, besides, 
 although she admired his genius, and corresponded 
 with him on literary matters, her heart was given 
 
36 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 to another. In vain did he write original and 
 translate German verses to please her, and carve 
 out her name in Runic characters amidst the ruins 
 of St. Andrews. In vain was he often attracted 
 northwards by the spell of love, visiting Simprim, 
 Dunnottar, Meigle, and Glamis ; at Dunnottar 
 falling in by the way with ' Old Mortality,' and 
 spending in Glamis an eerie night, under the 
 hallucination that it was the castle where King 
 Duncan was murdered by Macbeth. She con- 
 tinued inexorable, and at last, in October 1796, he 
 received a point-blank refusal from her own lips at 
 her own Grampian home. We see him mounting 
 his horse, and bearing southwards through the 
 bleak moors toward Montrose, perhaps in a wild, 
 blustering autumn night, and with a face under the 
 gruff, grim calmness of which one could have read 
 strange matters, and caught glimpses of a wounded 
 and well-nigh broken heart. Thence, in a kind of 
 frenzy, he ' recoiled into the wilderness,' and reached 
 first Perth, and then Edinburgh, by a circuitous 
 and savage route, through * moors and mosses 
 mony O ;' dashing his steed, like his own Mowbray 
 in St. Ronans Well, over scaurs, and through 
 forests and marshes, where in those days none but 
 a desperate spirit could have preserved his life ; 
 but in the course of his journey digesting his 
 
EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 37 
 
 misery, and returning home a sadder and a wiser 
 man. His friends, especially Miss Cranstoun, after- 
 wards the Countess of Purgstall in Styria, a gifted 
 female, who had taken a deep interest in this love 
 affair, and who knew Scott's impetuous disposition, 
 had expected some fearful explosion, and were glad 
 to see him sitting down calmly to his books again. 
 He says himself, however, that he was broken- 
 hearted for two years, — a time we must surely 
 restrict a little, since his disappointment happened 
 in October 1796, and his marriage to Miss Car- 
 penter took place in December the next year. 
 Miss Stuart in 1797 married Sir. W. Forbes, son of 
 the biographer of Beattie, who was afterwards of 
 essential service to Scott in his misfortunes. The 
 iron must have entered into his soul, although he 
 contrived at first to conceal the wound ; since we 
 find him not only often alluding to his loss, but 
 in his latter days visiting the lady's mother, and 
 spending a whole night of the joy of grief in talk- 
 ing over old stories, and mingling their tears. Lady 
 Forbes being then dead. She was the first, and 
 perhaps the last, person whom Scott, affectionate 
 husband though he was, ever loved with his whole 
 being. He passed afterwards Kincardineshire by 
 sea, but we never hear of him visiting that part of 
 Scotland again. One of the few points of resem- 
 
38 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 blance (unless their infirmity of lameness) between 
 Scott and Byron lies in the early love disappoint- 
 ment which befell them both. But while Scott's 
 wound, though felt deeply and felt long, entirely 
 failed to poison his peace or to weaken his faith, 
 it was different with Byron. The image of Miss 
 Chaworth haunted him all his life afterwards — like 
 a spectre, stood between him and his bride — be- 
 tween him and 
 
 * Ada, sole daughter of his house and heart ' — 
 
 between him, shall we say, and his happiness, his 
 heaven, and his God ; and whenever he was at a 
 loss for a ground of quarrel with himself, with Pro- 
 vidence, or with society, with the present, the past, 
 or the future, he came back to her, and her memory 
 became a sore that everlastingly ran — an amari 
 aliqtdd which always retained its taste of bitterness 
 and its hue of gloom. The resemblance between 
 Scott and Byron in this matter was simply acci- 
 dental ; but the difference of the way in which each 
 managed his misery, measured all the distance 
 between one of the most morbid and one of the 
 healthiest and strongest of the children of men. 
 
 Scott had for some time previous been medi- 
 tating an incursion into the realms of authorship. 
 He had written in a single sleepless night a trans- 
 
EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 39 
 
 lation of Burger's famous ballad of Leonore, which 
 gained him much applause in his own coterie, and 
 which, if not perhaps quite equal to that of Wil- 
 liam Taylor of Norwich, is a piece of vigorous and 
 dashing verse. He had also translated The Wild 
 Huntsman, another ballad by the same poet. On 
 his return from the north in that spirit of hardiesse 
 and bravado which often follows disappointment, 
 and reveals the ferment of its remaining dregs, he 
 * rushed into print ' with those two ballads. This 
 brochure, printed by Manners & Miller, was well 
 received in Edinburgh, and warmly commended 
 by honest William Taylor himself, but gained no 
 general acceptance in the south ; and let it be 
 consoling to incipient authors to know, that the 
 first production of the most popular of writers was 
 a complete failure and a dead loss. 
 
 In July 1797, Scott, disappointed at the failure 
 of his first poem, wearied with another campaign at 
 the bar, where his gains were as yet very moderate, 
 and with a little of his love-sickness still unmelted 
 about his heart, turned his thoughts toward his 
 favourite south of Scotland again. On this occa- 
 sion, however, he extended his visit to England ; 
 and after a scamper through Peeblesshire, where 
 he had his first and only interview with David 
 Ritchie, the original of the Black Dwarfs in his 
 
40 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 residence up Manor Water — a dreary spot, moss 
 and mountains clustering all round the mud 
 cottage where the misanthrope dwelt — and a 
 rapid run through Carlisle, Penrith, Ulleswater, 
 and Windermere, he reached the then sequestered 
 little watering-place of Gilsland. His companions 
 in this tour were his brother John, and Adam 
 Fergusson. Scott had nearly fallen in love with 
 a young lady residing at the Spa, when his real 
 matrimonial Fate crossed his path. Riding one 
 day near Gilsland, they met a lady on horseback 
 whose appearance struck them so much, that they 
 followed her, and found her to belong to the party 
 at the Well, although they had not previously 
 observed her. They became speedily acquainted. 
 Her name was Charlotte Margaret Carpenter. 
 She was. the daughter of a French emigrant whose 
 widow had fled from the horrors of the Revolution 
 to England, where she and her children found an 
 efficient protector and guardian in the Marquis of 
 Downshire, who had previously known the family 
 abroad.-^ The daughter and her governess were 
 
 ^ Since writing the above, we have been favoured with 
 some additional particulars of this event, which we believe are 
 authentic. The Marquis of Downshire, going on his travels, 
 had a note of introduction from Mr. Bird, Dean of Carlisle, 
 to Monsieur Carpenter of Paris. The unhappy result of the 
 acquaintance was the elopement of Madame Carpenter, a 
 
EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 
 
 on a little excursion to some friends in the north 
 of England, and had come for a few days to 
 Gilsland. She was, as often happens with second 
 loves as well as with second marriages, of exactly 
 the opposite complexion, and perhaps also of dis- 
 position, to Scott's former flame, — having dark 
 hair, deep brown eyes, and an olive complexion, 
 very beautiful withal, and with an ' address hover- 
 ing between the reserve of a pretty young English- 
 woman who has not mingled widely with general 
 
 very beautiful woman, with his lordship. The husband did 
 nothing in the matter except transmitting his two children, 
 a boy and girl, to the care of his wife, and they lived for 
 some years under her and Lord Downshire's protection. On 
 her death he placed the girl in a French convent for her 
 education, and sent out the boy to a lucrative situation in 
 India, with the stipulation that ;^200 of his salary should go 
 yearly to his sister. Miss Carpenter returned to London, 
 and was placed under the charge of Miss Nicholson, a 
 governess. The young lady formed an attachment to a 
 young man, whose addresses were not agreeable to his lord- 
 ship. He sent her and her governess down to Mr. Bird's at 
 Carlisle, to keep her out of her lover's way. Mr. Bird had 
 fixed previously to go to Gilsland, and he took Miss Car- 
 penter and Miss Nicholson along with his family thither. 
 They were placed, as usual with new-comers, at the foot of 
 the table at the Spa ; and it so happened that a young Scotch 
 gentleman, who had arrived later that day, was placed lower 
 still, and thus brought into immediate contact with the Bird 
 party. Mrs. Bird inquired at him if he knew a Scotch 
 military man of her acquaintance, Major Riddell. Scott (for 
 it was he) knew him well. This formed instantly a link of 
 
42 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 society, and a certain natural archness and gaiety 
 that suited well with the accompaniment of a 
 French accent' She was a Protestant by faith. 
 The courtship went off successfully. She had 
 come, it is not uncharitable to suppose, to Gils- 
 land like other specimens of the female ' Coelebs 
 in search of a husband ;' and here was an ardent 
 youth, of great conversational powers and prepos- 
 sessing appearance : a ' comely creature,' accord- 
 ing to the testimony of a lady of the time. He, 
 
 connection, and the Birds invited him to tea with them in 
 their own apartment ; and although his horse was ordered to 
 the door to convey him on his journey, he at once consented. 
 He had been struck at first sight with Miss Carpenter's 
 appearance, and resolved to prosecute the acquaintance. 
 He remained at the Spa, and was continually in her com- 
 pany. He even contrived to get himself invited to the 
 Dean's country house ere he was compelled to return to 
 Edinburgh. In a short time he reappeared in Mr. Bird's 
 house, and enjoyed another fortnight of Miss Carpenter's 
 society. His attentions became very marked, and Mrs. 
 Bird at last wrote off to a friend in Edinburgh to make 
 inquiries about this stranger. The answer was that he was 
 a respectable young man, and rising at the bar. One of 
 Scott's female acquaintances, however, perhaps chagrined at 
 Scott's indifference to her, and having heard of some love 
 adventure going on at Gilsland, wrote to Mrs. Bird inquiring 
 about it, and wondering ' what kind of young lady it was 
 who was to take Watty Scott.' The poet soon after found 
 means to conciliate Lord Downshire to his views, and the 
 marriage took place as related in the text. James Hogg 
 insinuates that the Marquis was Charlotte Carpenter's father. 
 
EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 43 
 
 on the other hand, was precisely in that degree of 
 moderated love misery, and softened despair, his 
 heart a taper half-quenched, when a new object is 
 likely to surprise the man into a delight, in the 
 possibility of which he had almost forgotten to 
 believe. As an expatriated French loyalist, too, 
 there was something in her story to suit Scott's 
 political feelings, as well as to captivate his 
 romantic imagination. Then they met at a water- 
 ing-place — a ' St. Ronan's Well ' — where conven- 
 tional barriers were broken down, and where 
 sudden and singular matches were the order of the 
 day. He fell, accordingly, or seemed to himself to 
 fall, into a violent love passion, which was returned 
 by the lady. Recalled from his romantic court- 
 ship to the Jedburgh Assizes, he astonished his 
 friend Shortreed by the ardour of his new affection. 
 The two worthy young lawyers sate till one in thfe 
 morning on the 30th September; Scott toasting 
 and raving about Miss Carpenter, and Shortreed 
 not daring to rebuke the madness of the poet. 
 After some little obstructions thrown in the way by 
 the parents and guardians had been surmounted, 
 and some agreeable nonsense had been talked 
 and written on both sides by the parties them- 
 selves, Walter Scott and the beautiful Charlotte 
 Carpenter were wedded at Carlisle on the 24th of 
 
44 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 December 1797, about four months after they first 
 met. She had, it may be mentioned, about £400 
 a year in her own right. 
 
 She went with him to Edinburgh, where, not- 
 withstanding some foreign pecuHarities of manners 
 and tastes, she began her matrimonial career with 
 considerable eclat. When summer arrived, Scott 
 hired a beautiful cottage at Lasswade, on the 
 banks of the Esk, — a river sweeping down through 
 the richest woodlands and scenery of varied en- 
 chantment from Hawthornden, and thus uniting in 
 a band of beauty the abodes of Drummond and 
 Scott, two of Scotland's best and most patriotic 
 children. It is pleasant to think of each period 
 of Scott's literary history as linked with some spot 
 of special natural loveliness. At Lasswade he 
 commenced his real literary career, at Ashestiel 
 his poetic genius culminated, and with Abbots- 
 ford is connected the memory of his matchless 
 fictions. Ever to such nests of nature may the 
 winged fledgelings of genius be traced. Words- 
 worth wrote best at Rydal Mount, Burns in Ellis- 
 land, and Byron among the giant pines of the 
 forest of Ravenna. 
 
 The literary world has had at various periods 
 the strangest autocrats, varying from King Stork 
 to King Log, from, men of the most exalted genius 
 
EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 45 
 
 to clever mediocrists, from a Dryden and a Pope 
 to a Pye and a Hayley ; but we doubt if ever it 
 had such a scarecrow sovereign as Monk Lewis. 
 He was a man, no doubt, of considerable genius, 
 and of real warmth of heart, but vain, coxcombical, 
 and what is technically called *gay' in his habits. 
 His novel The Monk has some convulsive power, 
 but is marred by a prurient licence which appalls 
 and disgusts modern readers. In poetry he is a 
 good imitator of the worst style of a very inge- 
 nious but fantastic school of Germans. To many 
 even then it was a matter of astonishment how a 
 ludicrously little and over-dressed mannikin (the 
 fac-simile of Lovel in Evelina), Svith eyes project- 
 ing like those of some insects, and flattish in the 
 orbits,' should be the lion of London literary 
 society, and how the Prince of Dandies should 
 have a taste for the weird and wonderful, and be 
 the first to transfer to English the spirit of some 
 of the early German bards. On Scott, such tales 
 as Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imagine, extra- 
 vagant and absurd as he deemed them afterwards, 
 exerted much influence. William Erskine had met 
 the Monk in London, and had shown him Scott's 
 version of Burger's ballads. This led to a corre- 
 spondence ; and Lewis, shortly after visiting Edin- 
 burgh, invited Scott to his hotel, — an invitation 
 
46 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 which 'elated' our hero more than anything that 
 had ever befallen him. The two became speedily- 
 intimate, although the intimacy now seems as dis- 
 proportionate as were that of a monkey with a 
 mammoth ; and in January 1799 Lewis negotiated 
 the publication of Scott's version of Goethe's Goetz 
 von Berlichingen. One Bell bought it for twenty- 
 five guineas ; and it appeared in February, but, 
 like his Leonora, failed to make much impression. 
 It swarms with verbal blunders, yet must ever 
 be interesting, not only as one of Scott's earliest 
 productions, but because it exhibits two of the 
 mightiest, and certainly the two most popular 
 writers of their period, in contact as mirrored and 
 mirroring. The world has not yet fully made up 
 its mind about Goethe. Admitting generally his 
 extraordinary powers, the greatness of his acquire- 
 ments, and the potent grasp with which he held 
 them — as Jupiter a sheaf of thunderbolts — his pro- 
 found practical sagacity, and the splendour of three 
 or four of his poems, and of part of his novels, 
 it doubts of his taste, more than doubts of his 
 morale, and deplores the coldness of his tem- 
 perament. But it has no doubt of the powerful 
 influence he exerted on contemporary men of 
 genius, and others besides. To Faust we owe 
 Manfred, The Deformed Transformed, and Festus; 
 
EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 47 
 
 and to his Goetz of the Iron Hand we trace much 
 of the chivalric spirit which breathes in Scott's 
 poetry and prose. Indeed, one of the scenes in 
 Goethe's poem has evidently suggested to Scott 
 the death-scene in Marmionj and the beautiful 
 picture of the storm, as seen from the turret by 
 Rebecca, and described to Ivanhoe. Nothing else, 
 before or afterwards written by Goethe, would have 
 attracted Scott so much as Goetz. He, we venture 
 to say, utterly loathed Werther^ allowed some 
 passages in Wilhelm Meister, but characterized 
 the whole as fantastic and immoral ; and saw in 
 Fanst, while ardently admiring, a production cer- 
 tainly above his powers to render into English, 
 but which perhaps might have been as well left 
 unwritten, even in German, the profanity and in- 
 completeness serving to neutralize the daring of 
 the thought and the marvellous luxuriance of the 
 fancy. A few of Goethe's minor poems and ballads, 
 and that almost Solomonic wealth of wisdom v/hich 
 is scattered in so many nooks and interstices of his 
 writings, he admired, without envying or approving 
 of the personal experience through which much of 
 that wisdom was acquired. 
 
 In 1799, after the publication of GoeiZy Scott 
 took his wife with him to London, where he had 
 not been since infancy, and was introduced by 
 
48 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Lewis to many literary and fashionable people. 
 This, however, he enjoyed less than a visit to 
 the Tower, Westminster Abbey, and the British 
 Museum, where he at length was able to feed 
 full his antiquarian enthusiasm. While he was in 
 London, his worthy father — who, though not quite 
 seventy, was entirely worn out by a series of pro- 
 tracted sufferings — died, and Thomas succeeded to 
 the business. The property left was not great ; but, 
 besides enabling the widow to live in comfort for 
 the remainder of her life, it formed a considerable 
 addition to the fortunes of the rest of the family. 
 His mother and sister came and spent the summer 
 and autumn with him in Lasswade. About this 
 time Scott wrote another Germanized drama, The 
 House of Aspen, which was forwarded to London 
 to be acted, but it did not please on rehearsal. 
 The author printed it thirty years afterwards in 
 one of the Annuals. He spent a good deal of 
 time, too, in contributing revised versions of 
 Leonora and The Wild Htmtsman, and some other 
 pieces, to the ' hobgoblin repast ' which Lewis was 
 preparing in his Tales of Wo7tder. 
 
 It is worth noticing how Scott, with a native 
 tendency to superstition, and who in his early pro- 
 ductions dealt so much with the supernatural, has 
 so little of it in his maturer writings ; how he kept 
 
EARLY UNDERTAKINGS, 49 
 
 his organ of wonder, which must have been enor- 
 mous, in such severe and long-continued suppres- 
 sion. On the other hand, his bits of diablerie^ 
 when they do occur, such as the apparition to 
 Fergus Maclvor in Waverley, the story of Martin 
 Walbeck in The Antiquary, and Wandering WilHe's 
 Tale in Redgauntlet, are transcendent, and pro- 
 bably seem better from their rarity. The Wizard's 
 power of calling spirits from the vasty deep seems 
 to have been so absolute and so easy that he dis- 
 dained to exercise it, and turned him to tasks from 
 which, being more difficult, greater glory was to be 
 gathered. In his premature dotage, however, we 
 find him, in My Aunt Margaret's Mirror and 
 other pieces, snatching eagerly at marvellous ma- 
 terials, which in the day of his power he would 
 have sternly waived aside. This summer (1799) 
 he wrote his ballads of Glenfinlas, The Eve of St. 
 John, The Fire-king, and others of similar merit ; 
 and toward the close of the year, James Ballan- 
 tyne having now established his inimitable press in 
 Kelso, he printed with him a dozen copies of some 
 of these pieces, under the title of Apology for Tales 
 of Wonder, Mat Lewis' collection having been long 
 of appearing. The specimen of the printing pleased 
 Scott, and led him to project an issue from the 
 same press of the Border ballads which he had col- 
 
50 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 lected ; in other words, to form the idea of the 
 Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border ^ the publication 
 of which became an era in the history of James 
 Ballantyne, of Scott, of Scottish poetry, and of 
 modern literature in general. In December this 
 year, through the influence of the Earl of Dalkeith, 
 of Lord Montagu, and of the Dundases — Harry 
 Dundas being then the real king of Scotland — our 
 poet was appointed Sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire, 
 with ;^300 a year, little to do, and a still freer and 
 fuller access than before to the regions of Border 
 beauty and Border song, so peculiarly dear to his 
 imagination. In completing the design of the Min- 
 strelsy, Scott found able coadjutors : the accom- 
 plished and learned Richard Heber ; Dr. Jamieson, 
 the author of the Scottish Dictionary^ himself a 
 mine of antique lore even richer than his book ; 
 and the famous John Leyden. Of this man Scott 
 had a very high opinion. He says, in The Lord 
 of the IsleSy 
 
 * A distant and a deadly shore 
 Holds Leyden's cold remains.' 
 
 And in St. Ronatis Well he introduces Joseph 
 Cargill, when Leyden's name was mentioned, say- 
 ing, 'I knew him ; a lamp too early quenched.' He 
 was certainly the most determined of students, and 
 
EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 51 
 
 most eccentric of men, a Behemoth of capacity 
 and strong purpose, who took in a language ' like 
 Jordan' into his mouth ; who could master a whole 
 art like medicine in six months ; who once walked 
 forty miles and back again to procure a missing 
 ballad, and entered a company singing it with 
 enthusiastic gestures, and in the ' saw-tones ' of a 
 most energetic voice ; whose Border blood asserted 
 itself even amidst the languid atmosphere of India, 
 and on the sick-bed, whence he shouted out the old 
 chorus, 
 
 * Wha daur meddle wi' me ? ' 
 
 and in whom a certain dash of charlatanerle, and 
 perhaps more than a dash of derangement, only 
 served as foils to the vigour of his mind, the solidity 
 of his learning, the freshness of his literary enthu- 
 siasm, and the fervour of his poetic genius : for 
 although not a great poet, a poet he was. We 
 shall not soon forget visiting the little room in a 
 poor cottage in the village of Denholm where this 
 prodigy of learning, diHgence, and energy was 
 born — in the centre of those beautiful regions he 
 was afterwards to describe in his Scenes of Infancy, 
 Leyden and Thomas Campbell, both in Edin- 
 burgh at this time, never could agree. Camp- 
 bell thought Leyden boastful and self- asserting ; 
 
52 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Leyden thought Campbell jealous and envious. 
 We believe there was a modicum of truth in their 
 estimates of each other. Campbell had been un- 
 fortunate and not over well conducted in his youth ; 
 had been waylaid on his path to the pulpit by an 
 unlucky circumstance ; and this, along with poverty, 
 had soured him : and it is in the sour system that the 
 malignant acid of envy is precipitated. Nor could 
 all his after brilliant career entirely sweeten his spirit. 
 Yet he was a fine-hearted man in the main, as well 
 as a thoroughly true one. * There was nothing false 
 about him but his hair, which was a wig, and his 
 whiskers, which were dyed.' Leyden had some- 
 thing of the self-glorification of a wild Indian chief, 
 fond of showing his strings of scalps, and chanting 
 fierce war-songs over his fallen foes ; but he, too, 
 was sincere, warm-hearted, and guileless. When 
 he read Campbell's Hohenlmden, he said to Scott, 
 *Dash it ! I hate the fellow, but he has written 
 the best verses I have read for ever so long ; ' to 
 which Campbell replied, ' I detest Leyden with all 
 my soul, but I know the value of his critical appro- 
 bation.' Scott loved and was on friendly terms 
 with both of them, and bore with their faults the 
 more, as he had no envy, jealousy, or self-conceit 
 in his own system. 
 
 In 1800 and 1801 he was busy with the Min- 
 
EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 53 
 
 strelsy, with the duties — not very burdensome — of 
 his Sheriffship, and with the bar, where he was 
 slowly increasing his business. In some of his pro- 
 fessional visits to Selkirkshire he became acquainted 
 with William Laidlaw and James Hogg, both re- 
 markable men. William Laidlaw possessed the 
 canine fidelity and fondness of Boswell, without the 
 meaner qualities, and with a sense, simplicity, and 
 poetic feeling which were denied to Jamie. His 
 Lucys Flitting is an exquisitely true and pathetic 
 strain. James Hogg had a wild touch of the truest 
 genius, and an Alpine elevation and enthusiasm 
 of mind strangely co-existing with coarse tastes, 
 manners, and habits ; was one whom poetry had in- 
 spired without refining, and who had conceit, envy, 
 and spite enough to set up all Grub Street, blended 
 with a simplicity and rough kindness which partly 
 redeemed his failings, and partly served to render 
 the whole compound more intensely ridiculous. 
 Genius, like misery, has often dwelt with strange 
 bedfellows, but seldom with so many at once, and 
 seldom in such a monstrous mtsalliancey as in the 
 idiosyncrasy and life of James Hogg. Yet, like 
 the bag of honey in the rough bee, there was in 
 him a singularly sweet vein of poetry, of which 
 Kilmejiy was an outcome. His works, which are 
 very voluminous, show extraordinary versatility of 
 
54 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 powers ; and altogether, we may say of him, as 
 Lockhart is compelled to do, that he was the most 
 remarkable man that ever wore the maitd of a 
 Scottish shepherd. 
 
 Both these men adored Scott, both were pressed 
 by him into the service of the Minstrelsy, and both 
 materially aided him in his researches. At length, 
 in January 1802, the first two volumes of the work 
 appeared ; and although they did not command 
 a rapid sale, they made a great impression on the 
 lovers of poetry. George Ellis, well known in those 
 days for his collection of ancient English romances, 
 and specimens of ancient English poetry, wrote of 
 the book in terms of rapture, and was followed in a 
 similar strain by Pinkerton, Chalmers, Ritson, and 
 Miss Seward. Encouraged by their approbation, 
 Scott began to prepare a third volume, and sent 
 the old poetic romance of Sir Tristram, which he 
 had found too long for the Minstrelsy, to the Border 
 press, as it was now called, for separate publica- 
 tion. It did not, however, appear till after the 
 third volume of the Minstrelsy, which was pub- 
 lished in 1803, and contained an advertisement of 
 Sir Tristram, and the Lay of the Last Minstrel, 
 as speedily to be published. Ballantyne had now, 
 at Scott's suggestion, removed to Edinburgh, and 
 taken a printing-office near Holy rood. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE BORDER MINSTRELSY, AND THE LAY OF 
 THE LAST MINSTREL. 
 
 HERE can be no doubt that the Scottish 
 Minstrelsy exerted on poetry in general 
 a most healthful influence. The book 
 seemed a fresh well, a 'diamond of the desert' newly- 
 opened amid the dry sandy wastes and the brackish 
 streams of a literary wilderness. Wordsworth's 
 Lyrical Ballads had appeared a few years previously, 
 but had hitherto made very little impression on the 
 public m.ind. Lewis' Tales of Terror, and transla- 
 tions from the German, had been over-stimulating, 
 and were beginning to pall. It was not surprising 
 that, in such a dreary dearth, a few bunches of wild 
 flowers, culled as it were from the walls of a ruined 
 castle, but with the scent of free winds, and the 
 freshness of the dew, and the tints of the sun upon 
 the leaves, shot suddenly into the hands of men, 
 
 55 
 
56 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 should attract notice and awaken delight ; that, 
 while rejected by some of the fastidious, and the 
 idolaters of Pope and Dryden, they should refresh 
 the dispirited lovers of poetry ; and that, while the 
 vain and the worldly passed them by, if they did 
 not tear and trample them under foot with fierce 
 shouts of laughter, the simple-hearted on both sides 
 of the Border took them up and folded them to 
 their bosoms. Had the Minstrelsy appeared as an 
 original work, we doubt if it would have met with 
 such success. But, issued under the prestige of 
 antiquity, criticism was disarmed : the prejudice 
 men feel in favour of the old was enlisted in behalf 
 of the new, and the book assumed the interest at 
 once of a birth and a resurrection. 
 
 One main merit of these ballads lay in their rela- 
 tion to the period when they were sung, and in their 
 thorough reflection of the manners, feelings, super- 
 stitions, and passions of a rude age. This, joined 
 to the literary excellence possessed by most of its 
 specimens, renders the old ballad by far the most 
 interesting species of poetry. The interest springs 
 from the primitive form of society described in it, — 
 a society composed of a few simple elements, of the 
 baron's ha', the peasant's cot ; the feudal castle, the 
 little dependent hamlet beside it ; the sudden raids 
 made by one hostile chief upon another ; the wild 
 
THE BORDER MINSTRELSY, 57 
 
 games, gatherings, and huntings which reheved ever 
 and anon the monotony of life ; the few travellers, 
 chiefly pilgrims or soldiers, moving through the 
 solitudes of the landscape ; the Monastery with its 
 cowled tenants, and the Minster with its command- 
 ing tower : from the glimpses given of an early 
 and uncultivated nature ; of dreary moors, with 
 jackmen spurring their horses across to seize a 
 prey ; of little patches of culture shining like spots 
 of arrested sunshine on the desolate hills ; of evening 
 glens, down which are descending to their repose 
 long and lowing trains of cattle from the upland 
 pastures ; and of ancient forests of birch, or oak, or 
 pine, blackening along the ridges, half-choking the 
 cry of the cataracts, and furnishing a shelter for the 
 marauders of the time, if not also for the disem- 
 bodied dead, or evil spirits from the pit : from the 
 superstitions of that dark age, — ghosts standing 
 sheeted in blood by the bedside of their murderers ; 
 fairies footing it to the light of the moon, and the 
 music of the midnight wind ; witches dwelling in 
 caves communicating with hell ; and portents of the 
 sky — the new moon in the old one s arms, double suns, 
 and tearless rainbows : and from the view supplied 
 of fierce and stormy passions, boiling in hot abori- 
 ginal hearts, ever prompting to deeds of violence, 
 yet mingled with thrills of generous emotion, and 
 
58 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 touches of chlvalric grace. Then there was the build 
 of the ballad, so simple yet striking, full even in its 
 fragmentariness, bringing out all main events and 
 master-strokes with complete success, often break- 
 ing off with an unconscious art at the very point 
 where it was certain to produce the greatest effect ; 
 its very splinters, like those of aromatic wood, 
 smelling sweetest at the fracture ; its lyrical spirit, 
 so changeful, gushing, bird-like ; and its language, so 
 native, simple, graphic, yet in its simplicity power- 
 ful, and capable of the grandest occasional effects ; 
 reminding you of an oak sapling, which in the 
 hands of a strong yeoman has often turned aside 
 the keen point of the rapier, dashed the claymore 
 to the dust, and deadened the blow of the mighty 
 descending mace. Not inferior, besides, to any of 
 these elements of interest, is the figure projected 
 on our vision of the Minstrel himself, wandering 
 through the country like a breeze or a river at his 
 own sweet will, with a harp, which is his passion, 
 pride, and passport, in his hand ; now pausing on 
 the rustic bridge, and watching the progress of the 
 haunted stream, which had once ran red with gore 
 in some ancient skirmish ; now seated on the 
 mountain summit, and seeing in the castles, abbeys, 
 and towers which dot the landscape on every side, 
 as well as in the cottages, villages, braes, and woods, 
 
THE BORDER MINSTRELSY. 59 
 
 a subject for his muse ; and now beheld in a tower 
 or castle, which even then had been for centuries a 
 ruin, silent in its age, like that solemn Kilchurn 
 Castle, standing at the base of Cruachan like a 
 hoary penitent before God, but soothed amidst re- 
 morse and anguish by the sympathetic murmur of 
 the dark Orchay and the silver ripple of the blue 
 Loch Awe, — meditating over other times, and 
 passing his hand across his lyre at intervals, with a 
 touch as casual and careless, yet music-stirring as 
 that of the breeze upon the nettles and the ivy 
 which in part adorn and in part insult the sur- 
 rounding desolation, — or to view, in another aspect 
 still, the manifolded Minstrel, his figure seen now 
 entering a cottage at eventide, and drawing the 
 simple circle as if in a net around him, as he 
 sings 
 
 * Of old, unhappy, far-off things, 
 And battles long ago,' 
 
 or as he touches the trembling chords of their 
 superstition by some weird tale of diablerie ; now 
 admitted, like Scott's famous hero, into the lordly 
 hall, and there surrounded by bright-eyed maidens, 
 and stimulated by the twofold flatteries of sugared 
 lips and generous wines, pouring out his high- 
 wrought, enthusiastic, yet measured and well- 
 modulated strains ; now meeting some brother 
 
6o WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 bard, and exchanging by the lonely mountain 
 wayside or in some rude hostelry their experience 
 and their songs ; now firing warriors on the morn 
 of battle by some Tyrtaean ode ; now soothing the 
 soul of the departing soldier, as did Allan Bane 
 Roderick Dhu, by some martial strain which seems 
 to the dying ear the last echo of the last of a 
 hundred fights ; now singing his dirge after his 
 death ; and now, in fine, himself expiring, with the 
 whole fire of the minstrel spirit mounting to his 
 eye, and with the harp and the cross meeting over 
 his dying pillow, as emblems of his joy on earth 
 and of his hope in heaven. In addition to these 
 ideas, images, and associations, let us remember 
 the fact that ballads have been, as Fletcher said 
 long ago, the real laws of a country ; that they 
 have pervaded every rank of society ; mingled like 
 currents of air with men's loves, hatreds, enthu- 
 siasms, patriotic passions ; passed from the lips of 
 the Minstrel himself to those of the ploughman in 
 the field, the maid by the well (singing, perchance, 
 as in that exquisite scene in Gtiy Mannering : 
 
 ' Are these the links of Forth, she said, 
 Or are they the crooks of Dee, 
 Or the bonnie woods of Warroch-head, 
 That I sae fain wad see ? '), 
 
 the reaper among the sheaves, the herdsman in the 
 
LA V OF THE LAST MINSTREL. 6i 
 
 noontide solitude of the hill or in the snow-buried 
 shieling, the babe in the nursery, or the little maid 
 in her solitude — how strange and holy ! — with God 
 for her only companion, while wandering to school 
 through woods and wildernesses ; and the soldier 
 resting after the fatigues of a day of blood, or 
 returning- to his mountain home when the wars 
 are over, to the music of one of its own unforgotten 
 songs. Who remembers not the ploughman in Don 
 Quixote^ who, as he goes forth to his morning labour, 
 is singing the ancient ballad of ' Ronces Valles ? * 
 And add still further, as an illustration of the 
 power and charm of ballad poetry, that Homer, 
 the earliest and all but the greatest of poets, was 
 a ballad-maker ; that Shakspeare condescended 
 to borrow stanzas, and plots, and hints from old 
 English ballads ; and that many of our best 
 modern poetic productions — Coleridge's Christahel 
 and Rime of the Anciente Mariner e^ Wordsworth's 
 Lyrical Ballads, Southey's Old Woman of Berkeley, 
 Allan Cunningham's best lyrics, Macaulay's Lays 
 of Ancient Rome, some of Tennyson's well-known 
 verses, and innumerable more — are imitations in 
 style, or in spirit, or in manner, or in all three, of 
 those wild, early, spontaneous, immortal strains. 
 
 Specially did the Lay of the Last Minstrel and 
 its successors spring naturally from the Minstrelsy 
 
62 WALTER SCOTT, 
 
 of the Scottish Border. In this last Scott had been 
 collecting the materials on which his genius was to 
 feed, *like fire to heather set.' He had been edu- 
 cating, too, the public taste to the pitch when such 
 a poem as the Lay would likely be well received. 
 No doubt he ran a certain risk by putting his own 
 writings in competition with those exquisite old 
 ballads. But he knew he was of kindred genius 
 with their authors, and he hoped that by grafting 
 the interest of a story on their beautifully simple 
 structure, and connecting something like epic unity 
 with their dramatic and lyrical spirit, he would not 
 be entirely eclipsed in the comparison ; and the 
 event proved that he was right. To some incidents 
 in Scott's life, intermediate between the Border 
 Minstrelsy and the publication of the Lay, we shall 
 advert in our next chapter. Let us now look as far 
 forward as January 1805, when the first of his long 
 and popular poems appeared. The Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel was received with universal and un- 
 bounded applause. Thousands who had scarcely 
 heard of the Minstrelsy read the Lay. Scott, like 
 Byron afterwards, awoke one morning and found 
 himself famous. The Lay, Childe Harold, the 
 Course of Time, and Smith's Life Drama, have 
 probably been the four most decided hits in the 
 recent history of poetry. The Lay appeared in a 
 
LA Y OF THE LAST MINSTREL. 63 
 
 splendid quarto form, a copy of which we were 
 fortunate enough to find, some twenty-five years 
 after its first pubHcation, in a Glasgow library, not 
 quite crumbled away ; and in it first began reading 
 this enchanting poem on the street, amidst the 
 glimmering lights of an April eve. The first edi- 
 tion of 750 copies was speedily exhausted ; others 
 followed rapidly ; and before the author super- 
 intended the annotated edition in 1830, nearly 
 44,000 copies had been disposed of. 
 
 Amidst the general outburst of applause, some 
 voices of special value and influence were soon 
 distinguishable, such as those of Jeffrey in the 
 Edinburgh Review, George Ellis, William Stewart 
 Rose, Charles James Fox, and William Pitt. Pitt 
 purposed Scott's professional promotion ; and after 
 repeating some lines from the poem describing 
 the old harper's embarrassment when asked to 
 play, said, ' This is a sort of thing I might have 
 expected in painting, but could never have fancied 
 capable of being given in poetry.' 
 
 Looking at the Lay critically and calmly from 
 our present point of view, we can hardly concur 
 with the extremely high verdicts which the men of 
 that time passed upon it. It is certainly not a 
 great poem, and as certainly it is not in the main 
 a piece of consummate art. But it has many very 
 
64 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 beautiful passages and spirit-stirring scenes. And 
 these are set in a framework of the most exquisite 
 construction, superior perhaps to anything of the 
 kind in the compass of poetry, — that even of the 
 Queen's Wake, which has been so much admired, 
 not excepted. The whole has a gaiety and a grace- 
 fulness of movement, blended with a supernatural 
 awe and weird grandeur about it which may be best 
 imaged in its own lines : 
 
 * He knew by the streamers that shot so bright, 
 That spirits were riding the fiorthern lights 
 
 The poem has more of lyrical fire, and unmiti- 
 gated, elastic energy, than any of those which suc- 
 ceeded it. Scott's genius is throughout at the 
 gallop, and it is that of a winged Pegasus career- 
 ing over steeps 
 
 ' Where mortal horseman ne'er might ride.' 
 
 Let it be remembered, too, as explaining the en- 
 thusiasm of the reception, that this was the open- 
 ing of a new and fresh vein of national poetry. 
 The harp of Caledonia had but just begun to sound 
 to the master hand of Burns, when he was snatched 
 prematurely away ; and it had remained silent till 
 Scott awoke it again into loftier if not tenderer 
 vibrations. And then there were one or two pas- 
 sages which, in their sweetness and finish, as well 
 
LA V OF THE LAST MINSTREL. 6$ 
 
 as in the patriotic feeling which breathed through 
 them, had seldom been surpassed. Such was the 
 description of Melrose Abbey by moonlight, which 
 ranks with the moonlight scene in the I/iad, and 
 which, if not so grand, is more spiritual in its 
 beauty. And such is that noble burst commencing, 
 
 * Breathes there a man with soul so dead, 
 Who never to himself has said, 
 This is my own, my native land ?' 
 
 Such passages have long had a hackneyed look, 
 from the frequency of quotation, and worse, the 
 vulgarity of recitation to which they have been sub- 
 jected ; but conceive their effect on Scotch and 
 Border blood when new. Conceive them published 
 for the first time now : what a sensation they would 
 produce ! As it was, all Scotland instantly ranked 
 them with the close of the Cottars Saturday Nighty 
 and felt, and felt truly, that a kindred genius to 
 Burns had risen in their midst. And as England's 
 own poets at that period were few and far between, 
 the greatest of them struggling with natal gloom 
 and envious mists, she, too, added her unanimous 
 voice to the acclamations amidst which Walter 
 Scott ascended the poetical throne. 
 
 E 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 MINOR EVENTS AND EFFORTS. 
 
 jFTER closing his labours on the Border 
 Minstrelsy, Scott took a trip to London, 
 partly for the purpose of making some 
 researches in reference to Sir Tristrain, and partly 
 to enjoy its literary society. His wife went with 
 him, and they were domesticated under the roof of 
 Mr. Charles Dumergne, an intimate acquaintance 
 of Mrs. Scott's relatives the Carpenters, surgeon- 
 dentist to the royal family, and a man of large- 
 hearted hospitality. In London he had much in- 
 tercourse with Heber, and with Mackintosh, then in 
 the zenith of his conversational supremacy. These 
 were old acquaintances ; but he met now for the 
 first time Samuel Rogers, William Stuart Rose, 
 and. some other. men of great literary eminence. 
 He spent a happy week at Sunninghill with his 
 friends the Ellises, who had the luxury of hearing 
 
MINOR EVENTS AND EFFORTS. dy 
 
 the first two or three cantos of the Lay read to 
 them under one of the old oaks in Windsor Forest. 
 Lockhart is careful to record that in this journey- 
 Scott was accompanied by a very large and fine 
 bull-terrier called 'Camp/ one of the greatest 
 favourites among the poet's many dear canine com- 
 panions, whom he loved, however, not, like Byron, 
 for their unlikeness to men, but for the human 
 elements which they exhibited. 
 
 Thence they proceeded to Oxford, and here 
 Scott saw for the first time Richard Heber's 
 brother Reginald, afterwards the famous Bishop of 
 Calcutta, who had just gained the pofetical prize 
 for the year, and read to Scott, at a breakfast-table 
 where he met him, the MS. of his Palestine. Scott 
 noticed that in the verses on Solomon's temple one 
 remarkable circumstance had escaped him, namely, 
 that no tool had been used in its erection ; when 
 Reginald retired for a few minutes, and returned 
 with the best lines in the poem : 
 
 • No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung, 
 Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung. 
 Majestic silence !' 
 
 In October 1802 \hQ Edinburgh Review began, 
 and within a year of its commencement Scott be- 
 came a contributor ; and in the course of 1803 
 and 1804 he reviewed Southey's Amadis of Gaul y 
 
68 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry^ Godwin's 
 Life of Chaucer^ Ellis' Specimens of Ancient English 
 Poetry^ and the Life and Works of Chatterton. 
 Scott's reviews in the Edinburgh, Quarterly, Black- 
 wood's Magazine, and other periodicals, are all of a 
 pleasant, light, and gossiping kind. He nowhere 
 in them puts forth his whole strength, is nowhere 
 elaborate, never propounds principles, and his 
 critical dicta are often very questionable. But his 
 learning is great, his anecdotage exhaustless, his 
 style easy and conversational always, though care- 
 less often, his vein of humour now and then ex- 
 ceedingly rich, and, above all, his spirit genial and 
 kindly : he is never savage ; and one contrasts him 
 favourably in this point with the truculence and 
 malignity of Brougham, and even with the smart 
 and snappish severities in which Lord Jeffrey some- 
 times forgot his better nature. We may mention 
 here that Thomas Thomson, the Registrar- General 
 for Scotland, an intimate friend both of Scott's 
 and Jeffrey's, assured us that Brougham often com- 
 pelled Jeffrey to insert some of the fiercest dia- 
 tribes, such as that on Walker's Defence of Order, 
 and on Byron's Hours of Idleness, against his will. 
 Jeffrey was naturally generous and amiable ; 
 Brougham, in those days at least, all that was the 
 reverse. 
 
MINOR EVENTS AND EFFORTS. 69 
 
 But Scott had other matters to occupy him 
 besides hterature and ballad poetry. Napoleon 
 Bonaparte had * accumulated all the materials of 
 fury, havoc, and desolation into one black cloud,* 
 which hung on the other side of the Channel like a 
 menacing meteor. But, unlike the creditors of the 
 Nabob of Arcot, the inhabitants of Britain did not 
 regard it with 'idle stupefaction.* They rose as 
 one man to encounter and roll it back. Our pul- 
 pits, from that of Robert Hall downwards, rang 
 with anathemas on the usurper of France, and with 
 appeals to the patriotic sentiments of Great Britain. 
 Volunteer corps were formed all over the country. 
 That 
 
 * Wall of fire around our much-loved isle,' 
 
 which Burns had anticipated in prophetic ecstasy, 
 was now actually seen arising ; and no bosom in 
 the land beat with more heroic feelings than that 
 of Scott. He became quartermaster of the Edin- 
 burgh Light Horse, and busied himself in military 
 preparations. His blood rose with the prospect of 
 danger ; and there can be no doubt that, had the 
 haughty threat of Gaul been fulfilled, the poet of 
 the Border would have fought with all the courage 
 of his ancestors. None but a man of the most 
 dauntless bravery and martial enthusiasm could 
 
70 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 have written either the poems or the novels of 
 Scott. 
 
 In the same year he for the first time met 
 Wordsworth, who was journeying in Scotland, and 
 they became fast friends. In many points they 
 differed, the objective and the subjective being 
 found in divers proportions in their nature ; Words- 
 worth being more of the philosophic poet, Scott of 
 the northern scald. But they resembled each other 
 in the sincerity of their enthusiasm, in their love 
 for the simple and primitive in nature and in cha- 
 racter, in their attachment to mountain scenery 
 and to the antique — both traceable, phrenologists 
 would say, to their immense organ of inhabitiveness 
 — and in their domestic virtues. Wordsworth ad- 
 mired Scott as a man, without exactly believing in 
 him as a poet. Scott, while perhaps sagely smiling 
 at Wordsworth's A lice Fells and Idiot Boys, appre- 
 ciated warmly his higher strains, and owned in him 
 the presence of one of the great original masters 
 of song, so sparsely sown in these later times. 
 When the Lake poet returned to England, he wrote 
 Scott a characteristic letter, closing thus : *Your 
 sincere friend, for such I will call myself, though 
 slow to use a word of such solemn meajting to any 
 one. W. Wordsworth.' 
 
 This year (1803) also Scott published a small 
 
MINOR EVENTS AND EFFORTS. 71 
 
 edition of Sir Tristram^ the chief interest in which 
 now is that it is said to be the work of Thomas of 
 Ercildoun, or Thomas the Rhymer, and was edited 
 by Sir Walter Scott. It obtained its sole circula- 
 tion among the antiquarians of that day. 
 
 In 1804 Scott left sweet Lasswade, the home of 
 
 his early wedded life, and the cradle of his nascent 
 
 fame, for Ashestiel, a place that shall always be 
 
 dear to the lovers of poetry. Never shall we at 
 
 least forget the scene of perfect peace it presented 
 
 in a calm though cloudy day of June 1844, with 
 
 the murmur of the Tweed hardly breaking the 
 
 serene silence which lay upon the green hills, the 
 
 woods, the plain, the brook, and the ever-honoured 
 
 mansion where the great minstrel dwelt. It seemed 
 
 to us then, and seems still, far more interesting 
 
 than Abbotsford. That turned out in the long-run 
 
 a foolish speculation, and was darkened by the 
 
 shadows of disaster and of death. With Ashestiel 
 
 the associations and memories are all delightful. 
 
 Scott passed there probably his serenest days. It 
 
 is a place of almost entire solitude, standing by the 
 
 side of a deep ravine covered with trees, down 
 
 which a brook finds its way to the Tweed, from 
 
 which river the mansion is separated by a narrow 
 
 strip of beautiful meadow. All around are the 
 
 silent hills ; not another house is in sight ; and the 
 
72 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 nearest town, Selkirk, is seven miles away. ' Pas- 
 toral melancholy ' is the pervading feeling of the 
 spot, although it is a melancholy more akin to joy 
 than to sorrow, and which one would not exchange 
 for a millennium of coarse miscalled delights. 
 
 Here Scott set up for a season the staff of his 
 rest. It suited him, as in the centre of Ettrick 
 Forest, and near the scene of his duties as the 
 Sheriff of Selkirkshire. He pleased himself, too, 
 to think that Ashestiel belonged to the ancient 
 division of the country called Reged. Here he 
 took his well-known domestics Thomas Purdie 
 and Peter Mathieson into his employment, the one 
 as shepherd and the other as coachman. Purdie 
 appeared before the Sheriff first as a poacher ; but 
 Scott became interested in his story, which he told 
 with a mixture of pathos, simplicity, and pawky 
 humour, and extended to him forgiveness and 
 favour. Tom served him long and faithfully ; and 
 we have been told that Scott proposed for his 
 epitaph the words, ' Here lies one who might have 
 been trusted with untold gold, but not with un- 
 measured whisky.' Mathieson and Purdie adored 
 Scott, he being one of the very few men who have 
 been heroes to their valets. At Ashestiel, too, he 
 became intimate with the famous Mungo Park, 
 then newly returned from his first travels in Africa, 
 
MINOR EVENTS AND EFFORTS. 73 
 
 and practising as a surgeon in Selkirk. Park, as 
 all the world knows, was a brave, manly, and in- 
 teresting character, thoroughly truthful too, and 
 who told Scott that he had suppressed certain 
 incidents in his travels, lest they should be thought 
 too marvellous to be real. He soon tired of the 
 life of a country surgeon, and said he would sooner 
 be broiling in Africa than riding over dirty roads 
 and wild moorlands, rewarded sometimes, after a 
 whole night's travel and work, by nothing better 
 than a roasted potato and a draught of butter- 
 milk. Scott came one day suddenly upon Park by 
 the side of the Yarrow, dropping in stones into the 
 waters. He asked what he meant, and the traveller 
 replied that this was the way he used to find out 
 the depths of the rivers in Africa, from the time 
 the bubbles took to rise to the surface. This little 
 incident convinced Scott that Park was revolving 
 the thought of a second journey, which he effected 
 accordingly the next year, perishing, all know, in 
 one of those African streams. Park spent a night 
 at Ashestiel before starting for his journey, and 
 next day the friends parted on the Williamhope 
 Bridge ; ' the autumnal mist, floating heavily and 
 slowly down the valley of the Yarrow,' presenting 
 to Scott's fancy a * striking emblem of the troubled 
 and uncertain prospect which his undertaking 
 
74 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 afforded.' In leaping a small ditch, Park's horse 
 stumbled. ' I am afraid, Mungo,' said the Sheriff, 
 
 * that is a bad omen.' * Freits follow those who 
 follow them,' replied he, smiling, and setting spurs 
 to his horse galloped off, and Scott saw him no 
 more. Park's eldest brother remained in Scott's 
 neighbourhood for several years, and was his fre- 
 quent companion in his sports and mountain rides. 
 He was himself a man of extraordinary strength 
 and of dauntless spirit. Yet he was often alarmed 
 by Scott's reckless riding, and once exclaimed, 
 
 * The deil's in ye, Sherra ; ye'll never halt till they 
 bring ye hame wi' your feet foremost.' 
 
 The triumphant success of the Lay decided 
 Scott's mind henceforth to apply himself mainly 
 to literature. The publishers of the first edition 
 were Longman & Co. of London, and Archibald 
 Constable & Co. of Edinburgh ; the latter house, 
 however, having only a small share in the adven- 
 ture. Numerous offers were at this time made 
 to Scott by eminent booksellers. He was now a 
 popular author ; and to such, publishers are for a 
 season obedient humble servants. But Scott was 
 full of a project of his own, which offered fair at 
 first, but ultimately nearly ruined his rising for- 
 tunes. James Ballantyne had ere this, as we men- 
 tioned, removed to Edinburgh, and Scott entered 
 
MINOR EVENTS AND EFFORTS, 75 
 
 into a stib rosa partnership with him, embarking 
 in his concern almost the whole of his available 
 capital. He had fixed to quit the bar, where his 
 gains had been steadily though slowly increasing ; 
 he had no wish to attach himself exclusively to 
 any one of the many publishers who sought to 
 monopolize him ; and he determined to found, 
 under the name of Ballantyne, a gigantic publish- 
 ing business of his own. In this, had he been the 
 sole partner or the sole author, he might have 
 been successful. But from his connection with 
 men inferior to himself as publishers, and still 
 more from his connection with men inferior to 
 himself as authors, complications arose which 
 nearly strangled even the leonine man who alone 
 could, and who did afterwards, burst them asunder. 
 Meanwhile his mind was teeming with Brob- 
 dignagian projects. One of them was an edition 
 of the British Poets. And certainly never was 
 man so well qualified as he for this task, by 
 learning, enthusiasm, cautious judgment, wide 
 sympathies, and the powers of interesting narra- 
 tive and genial criticism. His only danger had 
 been in overloading the text with superfluous 
 notes. But Scott's notes to his own poems are 
 like no other body's notes : their superfluity is 
 pardoned on account of their interest. It would 
 
^() WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 have been the same had he annotated the works of 
 other bards. And his Lives of the Poets ^ if inferior 
 to Johnson's in point, massive power, and sceptral 
 majesty, would have far surpassed them in ease, 
 variety, research, accurate knowledge, catholic 
 taste, and fellow-feeling with genius. The plan, 
 however, owing to rivalship among the book- 
 sellers, came to nothing. He began then an 
 edition of Dryden, to which he prefixed a very 
 valuable memoir, written with more care and 
 condensation than usual. He wrote, besides, 
 several articles for the Edinburgh Review; one on 
 Todd's edition of Spenser, another on Godwin's 
 Fleetwood (in which he does justice to Caleb 
 Williams, but very much underrates St. LeoUy a 
 romance almost equal to his own Ivanhoe), a 
 third on the Poems of Ossian, a fourth on Frois- 
 sart, a fifth on Thornton's Sporting Tour, etc. 
 Ossian he on the whole admired, and has even 
 imitated in his Highland Widow and some other 
 of his tales ; and of Macpherson he had formed 
 a very different opinion from that which Macaulay 
 has paraded so often, and expressed with a bitter- 
 ness and animus altogether unaccountable. 
 
 He began Waverley this year ; although, hav- 
 ing read some of the opening scenes to William 
 Erskine, who disapproved of them, he threw it 
 
MINOR EVENTS AND EFFORTS. yy 
 
 aside. He was visited now by Southey, and they 
 became friends, though never very warm or inti- 
 mate ones. There were a certain strain and 
 starch about Southey which Scott did not quite 
 relish, highly as he admired his abilities and 
 principles. He resumed his Volunteerism with 
 redoubled energy. James Skene of Rubislaw 
 spent a considerable portion of the autumn of 
 1805 at Ashestiel, and gives some very interest- 
 ing sketches of Scott's occupations and amuse- 
 ments about this period of his life. He began 
 now, for the first time, the habit he pursued ever 
 afterwards, of rising very early, and, as he phrased 
 it, 'breaking the neck of the day's work' before 
 breakfast, — a practice to which some have ascribed 
 in part the limpid clearness, temperate calm, 
 freshness, and healthiness of his style. He 
 plunged occasionally, with Mr Skene, amidst the 
 wild moorlands of Moffatdale, St Mary's Loch, 
 Loch Skene, the Grey Mare's Tail, and the neigh- 
 bouring wildernesses, drinking in large draughts of 
 inspiration, which Marmion was to prove had not 
 been imbibed in vain. He visited Wordsworth, 
 then resident on the banks of Grasmere ; and one 
 day there rested on the brow of Helvellyn, sham- 
 ing all its eagles, three of the mightiest spirits in 
 Britain — Scott, Wordsworth, and Humphrey Davy. 
 
78 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 From Grasmere he carried his wife to spend a few- 
 days at the old haunt of their loves, Gilsland ; and 
 they were enjoying themselves much there when 
 the news arrived that a French force was about 
 to land in Scotland, and that all the leal-hearted 
 volunteers of the Lothians and the Border must 
 assemble themselves in Dalkeith. The poet in- 
 stantly obeyed the summons ; and in twenty-four 
 hours his noble horse, whom he had fortunately 
 brought along with him, bore him in one fiery and 
 unmitigated gallop for fully a hundred miles to the 
 place of rendezvous. Here he found the scene in 
 The Antiquary realized. It was a false alarm ; the 
 beacon fires had been lit prematurely. But he 
 met a goodly array of friends, who had come on 
 the same April errand with himself; and as there 
 was no fray toward, they feasted in lieu thereof, 
 and great were the mirth and martial jollity that 
 ensued. 
 
 Nor had his time on the road been lost. He 
 had during his ride composed The BarcTs Incanta- 
 tion, one of his most vigorous minor pieces, and 
 assuredly it * rings to boot and saddle.' 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A RUN OF PERSONAL AND LITERARY SUCCESS. 
 
 IGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIX 
 opened favourably for our poet. He 
 i^^ was appointed one of the Principal 
 Clerks of Session, with a salary of ;^8oo a year 
 and a few hours' labour, if labour it could be 
 called, which amounted only to the duty of regis- 
 tering the decisions of the judges during the sitting 
 of the Court. And there for a quarter of a century 
 was Scott to sit, the observed of all observers, 
 sometimes listening to the pleadings of the bar, 
 and sometimes not ; occasionally writing poetry 
 (as when moved by Jeffrey's eloquence he began 
 The Pibroch of Donnel Dhc, his pen galloping to 
 the tune of the pleader's voice), and often lost in 
 the far-stretching reveries of his own spirit, wan- 
 dering over the Highland hills, or carrying on 
 imaginary conversations which were afterwards to 
 
 79 
 
8o WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 be wrought into his world-famous fictions. Lock- 
 hart, indeed, tries to find a matter of marvel in 
 reference- to his hero, by magnifying the work he 
 had to do at the clerk's table. But we have con- 
 versed with lawyers of experience, who have 
 assured us that the situation was little other than 
 a sinecure. In order to gain this position he had 
 to repair to London, where Lord Spencer and Mr. 
 Fox favoured his claim, where he met for the first 
 time with Canning and Frere, and made, besides, 
 the acquaintance of two remarkable ladies of very 
 difTerent character, and moving in very different 
 spheres — Joanna Baillie, and the unfortunate Caro- 
 line Princess of Wales. Joanna he ever afterwards 
 regarded with brotherly affection, as she most 
 assuredly deserved, at once on account of her 
 masculine genius and her feminine virtues, and 
 that blended simplicity and dignity which made 
 her the true spirit-sister of Scott. His opinion of 
 Caroline was at this time favourable. He calls 
 her * an enchanting Princess, who dwells in an 
 enchanted palace, and I cannot help thinking that 
 her Prince must labour under some malignant spell 
 when he denies himself her society.' He after- 
 wards, however, in common with all the Tory party 
 except Canning, altered his view, and spoke of her 
 in language unworthy of a gentleman or a man. 
 
A RUN OF SUCCESS. 8i 
 
 Lord Melville was at this time the leading power 
 in Scotland. His character was complex. To 
 high talent and much rough kindness he added 
 many of the faults, and even vices, which charac- 
 terized the statesmen of the olden time. Loved 
 by his tenants at Dunira and his neighbours in 
 Comrie, — who combined in building the handsome 
 obelisk to his memory which stands on Dunmore, 
 and looks down on one of the noblest prospects in 
 Scotland : the massive mountains of Glenlednick 
 behind ; the Deil's Caldron sending up from below 
 a voice of thunder, unsoftened by the muffling of 
 its woods ; the plain of Dalginross and the village 
 of Comrie, washed by three mountain rivers to 
 the south ; Loch Earn ; the Abruchill Hills and 
 Benvoirlich on the west ; and the Lomond Hills 
 rounding off the prospect eastward — a prospect 
 Scott must have seen when he visited his friend, — 
 Lord Melville was hated by the Whigs, who were 
 now the governing party; and they resolved to 
 impeach him. He was acquitted, however, in spite 
 of all the manly eloquence of Whitbread, his prin- 
 cipal assailant ; and his friends in Scotland held a 
 dinner on the occasion. Though indebted for his 
 recent promotion to the Whig party, Scott not 
 only attended the dinner, but indited a song 
 steeped in ferocious Toryism, and using the follow- 
 
82 WALl^ER SCOTT. 
 
 ing truculent language about Fox, who was then 
 known to be under a mortal illness : 
 
 * The brewer (Whitbread) we'll hoax, 
 Tallyho to the Fox, 
 And drink Melville for ever as long as we live/ 
 
 Nothing in all Scott's conduct gave such offence 
 as this allusion. Lord Cockburn tells us that 
 some of his warmest friends were cooled, and that 
 a few of his enemies never forgave him. The 
 amiable Countess of Rosslyn was one of the 
 former number ; and so far down as the date of 
 the Queen's trial, the Scotsman reprinted the verses 
 to Scott's disadvantage. It was one of the few 
 errata of his life : he felt so himself very soon after- 
 wards, and made in some measure the amende 
 honorable in the well - known lines on Fox in 
 Marmion. 
 
 He was all through the brief reign of the Whigs 
 in a very uneasy and irritable state of mind. On 
 one occasion, returning from a meeting where he 
 had been opposing some proposed innovations in 
 the legal courts, and displayed unusual freedom 
 and force of eloquence, and crossing the Mound 
 in company with Jeffrey and another reforming 
 friend, who were for treating the matter lightly, 
 he actually turned his head round, and in vain 
 sought to conceal his tears by resting it on the 
 
A RUN OF SUCCESS. 83 
 
 wall of the Mound, as he said, * No, no, gentlemen, 
 'tis no laughing matter. Little by little, whatever 
 your wishes may be, you will destroy and under- 
 mine, till nothing that makes Scotland Scotland 
 shall remain.' 
 
 In November 1806 he commenced Marmiofiy 
 the second of his great poems in time, and in some 
 respects the first in talent. And ere he had read 
 a line of it Constable offered 1000 guineas, — a sum 
 then thought enormous, but which Scott instantly 
 accepted, the more eagerly as he needed money 
 to help his brother Thomas. He studied for 
 Marmion amidst the wilds of Ashestiel, often 
 sitting by himself under some tall old ashes stand- 
 ing on a knoll in a neighbouring farm which still 
 bears the name of the Sheriff's Knowe ; some- 
 times to be seen under a huge oak by the brink of 
 the Tweed ; sometimes wandering far from home, 
 with no companion but his dog, ' in among those 
 green and melancholy wildernesses where Yarrow 
 creeps from her fountains,' returning not till the 
 evening, and often, in his own language, ' having 
 many a grand gallop among the braes' while revolv- 
 ing some of the more stirring scenes, or composing 
 some of the more rapturous measures of the poem. 
 Mr. Skene, however, informs us that the Battle 
 ^f Flodden was composed by Scott during the 
 
84 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 autumn of 1807, when at quarters with the cavalry 
 at Portobello, and that in the intervals of drilling 
 he used to walk his powerful black steed up and 
 down by himself upon the sands within the beating 
 of the surge, and now and then he would plunge in 
 his spurs and go off as if at the charge, with the 
 spray dashing about him. He often repeated to 
 Skene, as they rode back to Musselburgh, the 
 verses he had composed in the morning. In the 
 course of this year he visited London to find out 
 new materials for Dryden, and the Tories, now 
 in power, welcomed him with increased warmth, 
 since he had stuck to his colours, and even suffered 
 in their cause. In returning home he visited Lich- 
 field, and saw Miss Seward, who describes him 
 * coming like a sunbeam to her dwelling,' and gives 
 a very lady-like picture, or rather inventory, of his 
 ' brown hair, flaxen eyebrows, long upper lip, and 
 light grey eyes/ She thought his recitation of 
 poetry, like Johnson's, too monotonous and violent 
 When she showed him, in Carey's Dante, the pass- 
 age where Michael Scott occurs (in the fourth 
 canto of the Inferno), he said that though he 
 admired the spirit and skill of the version, he could 
 find no pleasure in the Divina Comniedia. The 
 plan appeared to him unhappy — the personal 
 malignity and strange mode of revenge presump- 
 
A RUN OF SUCCESS. 85 
 
 tuous and uninteresting. Scott must have forgot 
 all this, when we find him in Italy remarking to 
 Mr. Cheney that it was mortifying to think how 
 Dante thought none worth sending to hell except 
 Italians ; when Mr. C. remarked, that he of all 
 men had no right to make this complaint, as his 
 ancestor Michael Scott is introduced there ! 
 
 Marniio7i appeared, amidst a hum of general 
 expectation, on the 23d of February 1808. It was 
 received by the public at large with an enthusiasm 
 only second to that which had welcomed the Lay, 
 but it was rather roughly handled by the Edin- 
 burgh Review. Jeffrey had been engaged to dine 
 with Scott on the day the review appeared ; but feel- 
 ing a little apprehensive of the consequences, wrote 
 an explanatory note along with the copy of the 
 number. Scott replied in a good spirit. Jeffrey, 
 although with manifest reluctance, came, and the 
 poet received him with his usual bland courtesy. 
 But conceive the critic's feelings when, as he was 
 leaving, the hostess of the house said, * Well, good 
 night, Mr. Jeffrey : dey tell me you have abused 
 Scott in the Review, and I hope Mr. Constable 
 has paid you very well for writing it.' She never 
 spoke to him again. The critique in some points 
 was unfair. It asserted, for example, that Scott 
 throughout neglected Scottish feelings and Scot- 
 
WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 tish characters, — a charge which to name is to 
 stamp with absurdity, and which Jeffrey could 
 hardly have himself seriously entertained. The 
 faults of Marmion were obvious, but they were 
 venial, and the critic brought down on them a 
 weight of disapprobation entirely disproportioned 
 to their guilt. It was as though the vagrant 
 courses of a truant boy had been punished by 
 death. But justice was done to the genius of the 
 author, and the Battle of Flodden especially was 
 praised as more Homeric than even Homer's best. 
 
 The general impression about Marmion now is, 
 that while in plan imperfect, in the choice of hero 
 unfortunate, and in composition very unequal, it is 
 in parts and passages superior to his other poems, 
 and shows a power which, had it been systema- 
 tically exerted on a worthier subject, and had not 
 the age of epics been over, would have achieved a 
 Scottish Iliad, or, at the least, an Orlando Furioso. 
 But Scott, industrious though he was, wanted the 
 true epic patience, * the long choosing and beginning 
 late,' the calm and cumulative workmanship, and 
 the majestic serenity of the heroic poet. His best 
 things were dashed off at a heat. Like the tiger, 
 if his first spring failed, he never tried a second, 
 but retired grumbling to his jungle ; and if he 
 could not go through his subject at the pace of the 
 
A RUN OF SUCCESS. 87 
 
 whirlwind, he was motionless. The preliminary 
 epistles were read with as much pleasure as any- 
 other parts of the book, although entirely uncon- 
 nected with it. They were beautiful excrescences, 
 and indeed had been at first intended for separate 
 publication. 
 
 Marmion was much admired by Scott's special 
 friends as well as by the public, although Words- 
 worth's severe and peculiar taste was unsatisfied. 
 In his letter, after giving the new poem some equi- 
 vocal and scanty praise, with what gusto he turns 
 to a more favourite theme — the beautiful nature 
 around him ! * The spring has burst out upon us 
 all at once, and the vale is now in exquisite beauty. 
 A gentle shower has fallen this morning, and I 
 hear the thrush who has built in my orchard 
 singing amain.' How characteristic ! What were 
 Tantallon Castle, ' Edinburgh throned on crags,' 
 or Flodden Field, to Grasmere in spring } what 
 Scott's powerful though unequal and heated strains 
 to the voice of the thrush, 
 
 ' Pouring her full heart 
 In profuse strains of unpremeditated art ?' 
 
 Jeffrey's critique produced important conse- 
 quences. It cut, although at first silently, the tie 
 between Scott and the Edinburgh Review^ and 
 
88 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 combined, along with circumstances of a later date, 
 to cool the poet with Constable. Shortly after its 
 appearance we find Scott moving heaven and earth 
 to establish in London the Quarterly Review as a 
 counterweight to the Edinburgh both in literary- 
 criticism and in politics, — a project in which, ere 
 the end of the year, he was successful. 
 
 Meanwhile his Dry den appeared in eighteen 
 volumes ; he aided Henry Weber, a poor German 
 hack, who ultimately went deranged in Scott's 
 house, in his Ancient Metrical Roinances ; began a 
 laborious edition of Swift ; edited Strutt's Queen 
 Hoo Hally Carleton's War of the Spanish Succes- 
 sion, the Memoirs of Cary Duke of Monmouth ; 
 and projected a general edition of the Novelists of 
 Britai7iy with notes. He took, besides, a lively 
 interest in the affairs, always involved and unlucky, 
 of James Hogg, and gave effectual patronage to 
 John Struthers of Glasgow, the author of The Poor 
 Mails Sabbath, a man of remarkable ability, at 
 first a shoemaker by trade, and to the end a 'poor 
 man,' but who wrote good poetry and powerful 
 prose, and has always been reckoned an honour to 
 his native city. Scott got his poem published for 
 him, and we find Struthers afterwards making a 
 pilgrimage of gratitude to Abbotsford. 
 
 Toward the close of 1808 the breach between 
 
A RUN OF SUCCESS. 89 
 
 Constable and Scott widened to its utmost. It was 
 precipitated by the appearance in the 26th number 
 of the Edinburgh Review of an article on Do7i 
 Pedro Cevallos. This paper was written by Lord 
 Brougham, and forms perhaps the best specimen 
 extant of his style, which had not then got so in- 
 volved, parenthetical, and cumbrous as it became 
 aftenvards. It is a most powerful and eloquent 
 diatribe, and told like a bombshell in the Tory 
 camp. It irritated Scott's political prejudices ; 
 and he, in common with many of the Edinburgh 
 citizens, withdrew their subscriptions. (In Con- 
 stable's list of subscribers to the Edinburgh Revieii 
 there appears, opposite Scott's name, an indignant 
 dash of Constable's pen — ' Stopt ! ! ! ') He set 
 himself immediately to take vengeance on his 
 adversaries : first, by establishing John Ballantyne 
 as a publisher in opposition to Constable ; and 
 secondly, by completing the arrangements for the 
 Quarterly Review. In the former he after a season 
 failed, but in the latter he succeeded. The Quar- 
 terly Review soon came out under Gifford in great 
 force. 
 
 In the spring of 1809 Scott again visited London 
 to prosecute his gigantic plans. There, along with 
 Canning, Croker, and Ellis, he concocted the new 
 Review. Coleridge, at that time unfortunate as an 
 
90 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 author, depressed in spirits, and straitened in cir- 
 cumstances, was nevertheless forcing his way into 
 fame by his matchless conversational and lecturing 
 powers, and had become, next to Scott himself, 
 the lion of the season, and the great orator of the 
 dining-tables in the metropolis. Scott met him at 
 Sotheby's, and was much struck by his talk, al- 
 though probably he did not understand it all, any 
 more than his other auditors, or sometimes the 
 lecturer himself. 
 
 On his return he commenced the Lady of the 
 Lake. While writing it he was subject to fits of 
 absence. His mind was in the Trosachs ; and 
 once he mistook another house in Castle Street for 
 his own, but cried out, when he discovered the 
 blunder, ^ Ah ! there are too many bairns' bannets 
 here for this hoose to be mine ! ' He went with his 
 wife in autumn to revisit the well-known localities 
 of his new poem, and satisfied himself in his own 
 person that a good horseman might gallop from 
 Loch Venachar to Stirling within the space he was 
 to allot to Fitz- James. He then visited Ross 
 Priory and Buchanan House, and read there to the 
 assembled guests the description of the stag-chase 
 which he had not long before composed, — read it 
 almost in the shadow of Ben Ledi. 
 
 At Buchanan House he saw, for the first time, 
 
A RUN OF SUCCESS. 91 
 
 Byron's English Bards aiid Scotch Reviewers, and 
 was not at all annoyed by the young poet's attack 
 on himself. He had read the Hotirs of Idleness, 
 and even from it had predicted the future fame of 
 the poet — had deprecated the article in the Edin- 
 burgh Review, and once thought of remonstrating 
 with Jeffrey on the subject. 
 
 He issued this year an edition of Sir Ralph 
 Sadler s State_ Papers, in three quarto volumes. 
 John Kemble visited him in the autumn, and 
 * seduced him somewhat into the old compotatory 
 habits of "Colonel Grogg.'" It was on this occa- 
 sion that the twain were pursued by a furious 
 bull. They tried to escape by crossing a stream, 
 but found it in spate, when Kemble exclaimed, in 
 all the pomp of stage declamation (as Scott used 
 to relate with exquisite mimicry), 'The flood is 
 angry, Sheriff; methinks I'll get me up into a 
 tree ! ' But no tree was at hand ; and had not 
 the dogs succeeded in diverting the animal, King 
 John's days had been numbered. This year Miss 
 Seward died ; but her loss was more than supplied 
 to Scott by his becoming acquainted with Daniel 
 Terry, who afterwards adapted so many of his 
 novels for the stage, and was, besides, a warm, 
 intelligent, and amusing friend. 
 
 1 8 10 was one of Scott's brightest years. Early 
 
92 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 in May appeared the Lady of the Lake, and was 
 received with boundless enthusiasm. The critics 
 and the public were for once of the same opinion 
 to an iota. On all the roads leading to the 
 Trosachs was suddenly heard the rushing of 
 many horses and chariots. Old inns were crowded 
 to suffocation ; bad dinners and breakfasts, and 
 enormous charges, were endured with exemplary 
 patience ; and new inns sprung up like mushrooms. 
 Post-hire permanently rose. Every corner of that 
 fine gorge was explored, and every foot of that 
 beautiful loch was traversed, by travellers carrying 
 copies of the book in their hands ; and as they 
 sailed toward Glengyle, or climbed the grey scalp 
 of Ben An, or sate in the shady hollow of Coir- 
 nan-Uriskin, or leaned over the still waters of Loch 
 Achray, repeating passages from it with unfeigned 
 rapture. It was as if a ray from another sphere 
 had fallen on and revealed a nook of matchless 
 loveliness, and all rejoiced in the gleam and its 
 revelation. 
 
 The Lady of the Lake has always been, as a 
 whole, our favourite among Scott's poems. We 
 love it for the delicious naturalness and interest 
 of the story, — the breathless rapidity of the verse, 
 reminding you of the gallop of the gallant grey 
 which bore its hero in the storm of chase till he 
 
A RUN OF SUCCESS. 93 
 
 sank in death ; the freshness of its spirit, like 
 morning dew sparkling on the heath flowers of 
 Ellen's Isle ; its exquisitely assorted and con- 
 trasted characters, — and because we have known 
 from boyhood so well the scenery of the poem : 
 Glenartney's hazel shade ; the wild heights of 
 Uamvar; lone Glenfinlas; Ben Ledi's heaving sides 
 and hoary summit; the down-rushing masses of 
 Ben Venue ; Loch Achray, as sweet, if not so soli- 
 tary still, as when Allan Bane uttered his thrilling 
 farewell ; and the gnarled defile of the Trosachs, 
 in which to fancy's ear the horn of Fitz-James is 
 heard * still sounding for evermore.' In the un- 
 mixed delight afforded by this poem there is no 
 parallel in literature, save in two or three of the 
 author's own novels, or in a few of Shakspeare's 
 plays ; and he that has given that to all readers 
 may well defy carping criticism. Walter Savage 
 Landor justly magnifies its closing verses as un- 
 equalled in princely dignity and gracefulness. 
 
 In the same propitious year Scott recommenced 
 Waverley, but threw it again aside upon a cold 
 criticism from James Ballantyne. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 ASHESTIEL TO ABBOTSFORD — GLIMPSE OF FAMILY, 
 DOMESTIC CIRCUMSTANCES, AND HOME LIFE. 
 
 ;N the Lady of the Lake Scott's poetical 
 career had come to its height. He 
 had come to the first 'Rest and be 
 Thankful' in his upward course. Even then, 
 indeed, as usually happens, the chariot of his 
 triumph had a slave riding behind it. But before 
 speaking of the business entanglements which 
 were beginning slowly to gather round him, we 
 shall now look at his domestic circumstances, 
 growing family, and his change of residence, and 
 what it implied. 
 
 Scott's married life, as we saw, commenced 
 under auspices on the whole favourable. We 
 are aware that rumours affecting Mrs. Scott's 
 prudence, education, economy, and other still 
 more indispensable virtues in the female charac- 
 
 94 
 
ASHESTIEL TO ABBOTSFORD. 95 
 
 ter, were long and are still afloat, and that many- 
 did not hesitate to say that the match was un- 
 happy, and that she was by no means a fitting 
 life-companion for Scott. But, in the first place, 
 we wonder where a lady exactly adapted to and 
 on the level of a man like Scott could at that time 
 be found. Would Miss Stuart of Fettercairn have 
 been the person? She was never tried, and we 
 have our doubts on the matter. Joanna Baillie 
 we have called his * soul's sister,' but a soul's sister 
 may be sometimes a poor heart and home wife. 
 (We shall quote immediately what Miss Baillie 
 herself says of Mrs. Scott.) The marriage, no 
 doubt, was a hasty one ; but hasty marriages have 
 often been happy, — the difference only being, that 
 the disenchantment which takes place in all mar- 
 riages to a certain extent may, in these Hove at 
 first sight' matches, begin a little sooner, and 
 contrast somewhat more strongly with the first 
 effervescence of feeling. But in them, as well 
 as in the others, the re-reaction, so beautifully 
 described by Emerson in his paper on ' Love,' 
 usually takes place, and the object of ardent first 
 passion becomes 
 
 * A gentle wife — though fairy none ; ' 
 and a * thorough good understanding' established 
 
96 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 between them makes up for the once wild and 
 tumultuous love of espousals. We think this was 
 the case with Scott. If his wife did not come 
 up to the high-strung expectations he had formed 
 when courting her at Gilsland, or toasting her 
 all that September night with Shortrede, she was 
 nevertheless an affectionate partner, a kind mother ; 
 and her faults, whatever they were, did not com- 
 promise her status in society, and bore hardest on 
 herself Scott, when he met Byron in London in 
 1815, spoke to him warmly of his domestic com- 
 fort, and the unhappy poet (then himself married) 
 envied his friend's lot. Henry Crabb Robinson 
 records the following in his journal : ' Mrs. Walter 
 Scott was spoken of rather disparagingly, when 
 Miss Baillie gave her this good word : " When I 
 visited her, I saw a great deal to like. She seemed 
 to admire and look up to her husband. She was 
 very kind to her guests. Her children were well 
 bred, and the house was in excellent order. And 
 she had some smart roses in her cap, and I did 
 not like her the less for that.'" Scott, as we shall 
 see, sincerely and deeply mourned her loss. Alto- 
 gether, Mrs., latterly Lady Scott, although neither 
 a Minerva nor a Venus, neither a Miss Baillie, Mrs. 
 Hemans, or Madame de Stael, neither a Rebecca, 
 Jeanie Deans, or Die Vernon, was a very fair speci- 
 
ASHESTIEL TO ABBOTSFORD. 97 
 
 men of a poet's wife, and so Scott accordingly- 
 rated her. 
 
 Scott had in all four children, two boys and two 
 girls. Charlotte Sophia, afterwards Mrs. Lockhart, 
 was born on the 15th November 1799. She is 
 described as by far the best of the family, 
 the likest her father, was his special favourite, 
 and devoted to him, amiable, full of a gentle 
 enthusiasm, and a beautiful singer of the 'auld 
 Scottish sangs ' and Border ballads. Walter, also 
 a great favourite of the father, was born 28th 
 October 1801. Scott, in his later days, doted on 
 his son's personal appearance and athletic accom- 
 plishments, and used to say, ' Isn't he a fine fellow.-*' 
 The intellect of the sire, however, like Hamlet 
 in the mutilated play, was, we fear, omitted by 
 special desire ; nor was the paternal prudence con- 
 spicuous in the character. Ann, born 2d February 
 1803, was the wag of the family, with a good deal 
 of tart, sardonic humour in her composition, as well 
 as warm attachment to her father. Charles, the 
 youngest, was born on the 24th December 1805, 
 studied at Lampeter and Oxford, became a clerk 
 in the Foreign Office, was attached to the Embassy 
 at Naples, and accompanied his father part of his 
 last melancholy journey. 
 
 Scott warmly loved children, his own and others. 
 G 
 
98 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 We may refer our readers, in proof of this, to Dr. 
 John Brown's delightful little paper entitled Pet 
 Marjorie, a paper intensely interesting in itself, 
 as descriptive of a young girl of promise early re- 
 moved — lest we might imagine she should ever 
 become less than * a little lower than the angels ' — 
 and one of the sweetest of those ' child cherubs ' 
 whom so many memories cherish as having sparkled, 
 been exhaled, and gone to heaven ; and interesting, 
 as revealing a secret flowery nook in the history of 
 a great and good man, which otherwise would have 
 been unsuspected. What finer spectacle than that 
 of Scott with sweet Marjory on his knee, or in a 
 corner of his plaid, or reciting poetry to him till 
 he blubbered and shook with emotion — the lion 
 dandling the kid ! To his own children Scott was 
 less a sire than a companion — a playmate called 
 ' Papa.' He rollicked, laughed, tumbled with them, 
 told them stories ; and all the while was insinuat- 
 ing instruction into their minds. He allowed them 
 to read no Pinnock's Catechisms, and other rubbish 
 pretending to teach children science, and set old 
 heads upon young shoulders by some premature 
 and preposterous process ; but he let them loose, as 
 he had been in his early time let loose, on Bhte- 
 heard, Jack the Giant-killer , AH Baba, and Aladdin 
 with the Wonderful Lamp. And as they read to- 
 
ASHESTIEL TO ABBOTSFORD. 99 
 
 gether, one could hardly distinguish the glee of the 
 parent from that of the children, so merry and 
 ringing was the laughter which rose around and 
 enveloped them all. He taught them history, and 
 particularly that of their own country, with special 
 care ; and on Sundays he often, after morning 
 service, took them with him to the braeside, and 
 told them scriptural narratives, with all the fas- 
 cinating power which distinguished his fictions, 
 adding new interest to the most interesting stories 
 in the world. The Lambs have given us Tales 
 from Shakspeare, and they are admirable ; but what 
 * Tales from Scripture ' could Scott have produced ! 
 He did not send his daughters to boarding-schools 
 to be 'finished' (a word with two edges!), but 
 he had a private governess of approved character 
 for them ; and he took care, above all, that they 
 should be well instructed in Scottish music and 
 song, which he loved, as he did everything that 
 was Scottish, with his whole heart, and soul, and 
 mind, and strength. 
 
 Strange, after such training, that his family did 
 not make a greater figure, some one will say. 
 There might have been counteracting elements. 
 On the whole, however, they were a comfort and 
 a blessing to Scott : cheered him when his great 
 calamities came upon him ; stood round his death- 
 
WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 bed and received his last breath. And what more 
 would we have, the rather as Scott has left hun- 
 dreds of * dream children/ and men have them to 
 solace and to inspire them for evermore ? 
 
 At home, Scott was not only happy himself, but 
 a spring of pleasure to all that knew him. No one 
 worked harder, no one enjoyed life more. This is 
 almost always the case : even the galley-slave is in 
 heaven compared to the idle man ; his labour by 
 practice becomes light, his moments of leisure are 
 divine, and his sleep is Elysium. We are never weary 
 of seeing Scott, as Lockhart describes him, having 
 finished his task in the morning, coming down 
 stairs rubbing his hands for glee ; and having laid 
 in the amplest stores a Scotch breakfast-table could 
 supply, sallying forth to his well-won recreation, — 
 his walk with ' Camp ' or ' Maida,' his gallop o'er 
 the hills, or his picnic party with friends to Melrose, 
 Cauldshields Loch, or his old haunt of Smailholm 
 Tower. This was while he spent his vacations in 
 the country ; but scarcely less delightful were his 
 dinner parties or evening reunions in Castle Street, 
 when, surrounded by his family and selected friends, 
 he poured out the full riches of his knowledge, of 
 his sense, of his fun, of his feeling : at one time 
 repeating poetry, such as Wordsworth's KilcJmrn 
 Castle^ * with a trumpet voice, while his grey eyes 
 
ASHESTIEL TO ABBOtsWl^A ' ' ' ' *^6i ' 
 
 now glowed and now gloomed, and alternate 
 fires and clouds seemed to flicker and float over 
 that pile of forehead;' and anon telling ludicrous 
 stories, Svhile his lungs did crow like chanticleer, 
 his syllables in the struggle growing more em- 
 phatic, his accent more strongly Scotch, and his 
 voice plaintive with excess of merriment' Some 
 consequential people thought his conversation not 
 very logical or consecutive ; but Henry Cockburn 
 rebuked them by saying, * I beg your pardon, 
 gentlemen ; but Scott's sense has always appeared 
 to me more wonderful than even his genius.' 
 
 His dinner-table was, on the whole, a catholic 
 one ; ' Tullochgorum ' being then and there his 
 gathering march. Jeffrey came to it with his sharp 
 features, dark flashing eyes, frightened - SQcmmg 
 hair, and brisk, melodious, endless talk ; Cock- 
 burn, with his beautiful oval face, and rich Scotch 
 brogue ; Constable, with his distinguished bearing 
 and crafty eye ; James Ballantyne, with his ore 
 rotitndoy black beard, bull neck, turned up upper 
 lip, and great gloating eyes ; John his brother, 
 with his theatrical airs, frowns, starts, twistings of 
 features, and floods of merriment ; Washington 
 Irving, with his mild, dreaming countenance ; James 
 Hogg, with his Calibanic manners, strong shepherd 
 sense, grotesque humour, and inordinate self-esteem, 
 
162 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 calling, as the cups circulated, his host ' Wattie/ 
 and his hostess Charlotte, till both screamed with 
 laughter ; and latterly Lockhart, with his fine 
 Italian features, haughty sneer, high, thin, shrill, 
 scornful laugh, and keen, cutting, sententious 
 conversation ; and Professor Wilson, with his 
 * storm of golden hair,' glowing cheek, stately 
 stature, wild, tameless eye, and talk wilder and 
 more tameless still, although often in the presence 
 of the Mighty Minstrel he was silent as are the 
 mountains at the rising of the morning sun. 
 
 Others of less note now were there, although then 
 thought men of much mark and likelihood. Such 
 were his old friends William Erskine and William 
 Clerk of Eldin, — the one more a woman, and a 
 woman of a very sensitive nature, than a man, the 
 other of a more masculine type ; George Cranstoun, 
 afterwards Lord Corehouse, a most accomplished 
 person in taste, eloquence, and manners ; Scott's 
 colleagues in the clerk's office, — David Hume, 
 nephew of the historian. Hector MacDonald 
 Buchanan of Drummakiln, Sir Robert Dundas of 
 Beechwood, and Colin Mackenzie of Portmore ; 
 the humorists Charles Matthews and Daniel 
 Terry ; Adam Fergusson, and Thomas Thomson, . 
 and his brother the preacher and painter of Dud- 
 dingston ; and last, not least, Mr. Morritt of 
 
ASHESTIEL TO ABBOTSFORD. 103 
 
 Rokeby, one of Scott's steadiest correspondents 
 and warmest friends, whose mansion he has im- 
 mortalized, although at less expenditure of power 
 than might have been desired. These, after all, 
 are only a few of the dite of the Scotland of that 
 day who sate often at Scott's hospitable board, 
 and were privileged to hear his conversation while 
 still in the prime of his early manhood. 
 
 Ashestiel had been a favourite residence of 
 Scott's, and never lost its charm for his mind. 
 But the lease expired ; and besides, he began to 
 hanker after a wider if not a more congenial 
 sphere. The aspiration to be a landed proprietor, a 
 feudal baron, arose in an evil hour in his mind. He 
 was a baron already by nature. His tastes, habits, 
 opinions, all proved it. Round his large, lord-like 
 being gathered dependants, like the Ballantynes, 
 Hogg, Laidlaw, and the rest, as if by inevitable 
 instinct. His very dogs and horses — Camp, Maida, 
 Lenore (his first charger), Captain, Lieutenant, and 
 Brown Adam, who in succession bore him — seemed 
 all to recognise in him, what he had playfully 
 called himself, an ' Earl Walter,' and some of them 
 would not allow themselves to be backed by any 
 other rider. But * Earl Walter ' was ' landless, 
 landless,' like his own Gregarach, and he could 
 not fulfil his dream of feudal power till he had 
 
I04 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 broad acres as well as a large following. He set 
 himself therefore to add field to field, and to build 
 for himself a mansion worthy of a Norman, if not 
 rather copied after some piece of aerial architec- 
 ture — some castle in the clouds, 
 
 ' For ever flushing round a summer's sky.* 
 
 The result was Abbotsford. 
 
 In 1811 his salary had, through a new arrange- 
 ment of Court of Session matters, been increased 
 from ;^8oo to ;^I300. The Lady of the Lake had 
 been a triumphant mercantile success. Flushed 
 with this, Scott fixed his eyes on a small farm 
 which lay a few miles from Ashestiel, and was soon 
 to be in the market. It included a spot where a 
 battle had taken place in 1526 between the Earls 
 of Angus and Home and the two chiefs of the race 
 of Kerr on the one side, and Buccleugh on the 
 other ; the possession of King James the Fifth 
 being the object, and that prince himself a spec- 
 tator, of the contest, — a rude stone still marking 
 the spot 
 
 ' Where gallant Cessford's life-blood dear 
 Reeked on dark Elliot's Border spear.' 
 
 This interested Scott ; and the place, though only 
 then a strip of meadow land along the river, with 
 some undulating country above, was in the centre 
 
ASHESTIEL TO ABBOTSFORD. 105 
 
 of the Melrose district, so dear to the poet's mind, 
 and had indeed once belonged to the Abbey, as 
 the word A bbotsford itself indicated. At all events, 
 the purchase was made, and Scott proceeded to 
 improve, to plant, to annex, to build, and, in fine, to 
 flit, in the end of May 181 2, leaving Ashestiel with 
 much regret, in which we think all his admirers 
 must share. Yet Abbotsford, if it was to be the 
 grave of Scott's towering worldly hopes, was to be 
 the cradle of the Waverley Novels. 
 
 In 1 8 12 he was occupied with minor matters: 
 he read Byron's CJiilde Harold^ and frankly ad- 
 mitted its transcendent power ; began the poem 
 Rokeby, and visited the place Rokeby ; passed by 
 Hexham, near which he met -the famous black- 
 smith John Lundie, turned doctor, whose specifics 
 were ' latidamy and calaniy', and who consoled 
 himself with the thought that if he did accidentally 
 kill a few Southrons by his drugs, it would be long 
 ere he made up for Flodden ! corresponded with 
 and cheered the heart of worthy George Crabbe, 
 the poet ; and, in fine, published Rokeby ; and when 
 that poem had appeared, returned to his * Patmos 
 of Abbotsford, as blithe as bird on tree.' 
 
 Rokeby was pronounced the first decided failure 
 among his poems. The Vision of Don Roderick^ 
 indeed, which appeared a year or two before, was 
 
io6 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 not a great success ; but then it was not a great 
 effort. It claimed to be only an improvise, pub- 
 lished for a benevolent purpose. Rokeby was a 
 serious trial of strength. But although its sale was 
 rapid and large, its reception was not nearly so 
 favourable as even Roderick. It had less power 
 than any of his previous poems, and consisted 
 of more commonplace and Minerva press -like 
 materials. It sprung, too, less from impulse than 
 from a desire to gratify Mr. Morritt, by ' doing ' his 
 beautiful seat for him in song. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 VICISSITUDES IN LIFE, LITERATURE, AND 
 BUSINESS — 'WAVERLEY' LAUNCHED. 
 
 f%W^T^ was sympathy with the Portuguese, at 
 " that time trampled under the iron hoof 
 of the French armies, which had led Scott 
 in 1811 to write his Visio7i of Don Roderick, ihe 
 profits of which he gave to the distressed patriots. 
 There were in it two or three noble passages. 
 Who has forgot the description of the landing of 
 the three nations, English, Scotch, and Irish, on 
 the shores of Portugal } and who that ever heard 
 can forget Professor Wilson's recitation of that de- 
 scription in his class-room, in the deepest of his 
 deep and lingering tones, with the fieriest of his 
 soul-quelling glances, and with the most impas- 
 sioned of his natural and commanding gestures ? 
 The book, however, was less admired than its re- 
 view in the Edinburgh, where Jeffrey in his best 
 
 107 
 
io8 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 style rebuked the author for his silence in reference 
 to the good, gallant, and unfortunate Sir John 
 Moore, — an omission as inexcusable in a Scotch- 
 man, as if one writing an epic on Bruce were to 
 take no notice at all of the name of Wallace. 
 
 With a certain falling off in the power of his 
 poetry there coincided the uprise of Byron, who, 
 after some elegant trifling in his first production, 
 and some adroit grinning in his second, began fairly 
 to exert his force in the third. CJiilde Harold's 
 Pilgrimage had come like a comet across the lite- 
 rary sky, and the poems of Scott seemed tame as 
 lunar rainbows in the comparison. The victory of 
 the English bard needed but one or two fiery frag- 
 ments like the Giaour on his part, and one more 
 splendid failure on Scott's (the Lord of the Lsles)^ 
 to make it complete, and, so far as verse was 
 concerned, final. Lockhart, indeed, says that the 
 success of Byron's first pieces arose chiefly from 
 their resemblance to, and unconscious imitation of, 
 Scott's poetry. But this is the criticism of a son- 
 in-law. Had these poems been mere imitations 
 of Scott, they would have fallen powerless,, as all 
 echoes do, on the public ear. And whatever re- 
 semblance they bore to Scott's, it was not the 
 similitude, it was the difference, between the Eng- 
 lish and the Scottish poet, and their respective 
 
VICISSITUDES— 'WAVERLEY' LAUNCHED. 109 
 
 Styles, which secured Byron's success. The public 
 saw intensity substituted for slipshod ease, the pas- 
 sionate for the picturesque, the thoughtful for the 
 lively, — the scenery, the manners, and the suns of 
 Spain and Greece, for those of Scotland ; and the 
 change was grateful and stimulating at the time. 
 In short, as Scott confessed long after, Byron bett 
 (beat) him, although, by happily shifting his ground, 
 and, like his own Ivanhoe^ disguising himself, he 
 more than recovered his laurels. Immediately 
 after Rokeby, appeared anonymously his Bridal of 
 Triermaiiiy which he meant as a trap for the critics, 
 Jeffrey particularly, but which was instantly dis- 
 covered to be a second or third rate effusion of his 
 own master mind. It was the same afterwards 
 with Harold the Datmtless, another anonymous 
 production of his pen. 
 
 While writing the Vision, Scott lost two of his 
 friends very suddenly — President Blair and Lord 
 Melville. He tells a curious story about a dentist 
 called Dubisson, who met the President the day 
 before his death, and he used a particular expres- 
 sion to him. He met Lord Melville the day before 
 his death, who, to the man's surprise, used the same 
 expression. Dubisson, after the second death, jocu- 
 larly remarked that he himself would be the third 
 to die. He was taken ill, and expired in an hour's 
 
no WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 space! Lord Melville had been hurried from his 
 seat of Dunira in Perthshire to Edinburgh by the 
 news of Blair's death. While driving through the 
 village of Comrie, two boys, one of them an elder 
 brother of ours, were playing on the street. They 
 caught a glimpse of him in his carriage, and the 
 one said to the other, ' That's a dying man ! ' The 
 boy himself could not account for the impulse 
 which led him to the exclamation ; but perhaps, 
 though Melville was thought in his usual health, 
 there might have been some pallid and ghastly 
 expression on his face. Scott felt the loss of these 
 two men keenly. Blair was a man of colossal 
 understanding, the son of Robert Blair of Athel- 
 staneford, the author of The Grave. With Mel- 
 ville the head of the Tory regime in Scotland 
 dropped off, and its palmy and pristine health was 
 never to recover. We find Scott repeatedly saying 
 afterwards, 'Ah, honest Hal Dundas ! such things 
 would not have been permitted in thy day.' 
 
 Bookselling matters were beginning to assume 
 rather a serious aspect with the firm of which Scott 
 was a veiled partner. Even while the Lady of the 
 Lake was careering on in its unrivalled success, the 
 shelves of John Ballantyne & Co. were groaning 
 under unsold thousands of Histories of Ctddees (a 
 very learned book by Dr. Jamieson, of the Die- 
 
VICISSITUDES—' WAVERLEY' LAUNCHED, iii 
 
 tionary), Tixall Poetry y and Edinburgh Annual 
 Registers, all printed at the instance and under the 
 patronage of the most popular of poets and most 
 reckless of publishers. 
 
 In May 1813 things came to a crisis with the 
 Ballantynes ; and Scott, dissolving partnership with 
 them, opened up negotiations with Constable, who 
 was again to be his publisher, on the condition of 
 his taking off a great part of the unsaleable rubbish 
 which had accumulated on the shelves of the un- 
 fortunate firm. We shall recur to the subject of 
 Scott's connection with the Ballantynes when we 
 come to speak of his failure. Scarce had his good 
 terms with Constable been resumed, than we find 
 Scott offering to sell him the copyright of a poem, 
 as yet unwritten, entitled The Nameless Glen. He 
 was prompted to this by a desire to acquire a hilly 
 tract behind Abbotsford, leading up to Cauldshields 
 Loch. He gained his object by and by, although 
 not till the Nameless Glen yielded to the Lord of 
 the Isles, the last of Scott's serious efforts in poetry. 
 
 At this time the Prince Regent, in a very hand- 
 some manner, gave Scott the offer of the Laureate- 
 ship, vacant by the death of Pye. He declined it, 
 however, ' unwilling,* he says, ' to incur the censure 
 of engrossing the emolument attached to one of 
 the few appointments which seems proper to be 
 
112 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 filled by a man of literature who has no other views 
 in life.' He bethought him of Southey, and gave 
 Croker, then omnipotent with the Prince, the hint 
 to offer the vacant office to him, which was done, 
 and accepted ; Scott cordially congratulating him 
 on his new dignity : * Long may you live, as Paddy 
 says, to rule over us, and to redeem the crown of 
 Spenser and Dryden to its pristine dignity. I 
 know no man so welcome to Xeres sack as your- 
 self, though many bards would make a better figure 
 at drinking it.' 
 
 He was at this time deep in an edition of Swift, 
 after the fashion of his edition of Dryden, and spent 
 the autumn months of 1 813 in annotating its clos- 
 ing volumes, and writing a long and very interest- 
 ing life of the Dean. He was all the while harassed 
 excessively by the affairs of the Ballantynes, and 
 by their applications for his aid, alike in money and 
 in literary work, and says in a postscript to one of 
 his letters to James B. : * For God's sake, treat me 
 as a man, and not as a milch cow.' 
 
 He began to mature in his own mind the plan of 
 the Lord of the Isles, and wrote a portion of the 
 first canto so much to his own satisfaction, that he 
 renewed negotiations with Constable for the sale of 
 the whole or part of its copyright. 
 
 Looking, as he describes himself, one day into 
 
VICISSITUDES—' WA VERLE V ' LA UNCHED. 1 1 3 
 
 an old cabinet in search of some fishing tackle, 
 he happened to light upon the old fragment of 
 Waverley, which had been twice condemned by 
 friends. He read it over again, thought it had 
 been underrated, and resolved to continue the story. 
 Two lessons from the facts connected with the 
 early history of Waverley may be taught us. First, 
 let friends beware of their critical advices. Two 
 of the best novels ever written had nearly been 
 strangled in this way. Godwin gave his Caleb 
 Williams to be read by a friend, who returned it, 
 telling him Hhat, if published, it would be the 
 grave of his literary reputation.' And how it fared 
 with Waverley we know. Probably hundreds of 
 similar instances might be quoted from DTsraeli 
 the elder, and other collectors of Viterdiry Ana. The 
 second lesson is, that authors should never allow 
 the severe criticisms of friends to drive them in 
 rash disgust to burn or otherwise destroy the 
 children of their brains. Let them put them under 
 as many locks and keys as they like ; let them 
 observe Horace's precept, ' Premat ad nonum 
 annum,' as religiously as they please ; but let them 
 spare their lives. Nay, let them keep them as 
 carefully as the Mohammedans do the least scrap 
 of paper they find, lest peradventure it contains 
 the name of Mohammed or Allah. Depend on it, 
 
 H 
 
114 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 their day may come. Clergymen have often re- 
 gretted that they did not preserve their early ser- 
 mons, their students* discourses and all, however 
 poor or juvenile. And for this there are two good 
 reasons : first, such discourses, rewritten and cor- 
 rected, may serve them in good stead amidst their 
 pressing labours in after life ; and secondly, they 
 would form a silent history of their intellectual 
 progress. And so with literary men when they 
 are wise. Godwin dared the risk, and his novel 
 is now the principal pillar of his reputation. 
 Scott serenely shut up the 'trash' of Waver ley; 
 and returning after many days, found it to be a 
 priceless treasure. Wordsworth murmured to him- 
 self, while writing down his every line, * Scribo in 
 aeternitatem.* If the preserved MSS. be worthless, 
 all we need grudge is the room they occupy ! And 
 if they be too bad ever to be printed, they at least 
 are interesting to the author himself as landmarks 
 of memory ; and one old leaf may tell us what 
 heart histories! and, like Painting in Campbell's 
 fine verses, 
 
 * May give us back the dead, 
 Even in the loveliest looks they wore.' 
 
 1 8 14 may be regarded as one of the most im- 
 portant years in Scott's career. In it appeared his 
 valuable edition of Swift. His life of that strange, 
 
VICISSITUDES—' WA VERLE V ' LA UNCHED. 1 1 5 
 
 strong, and most unhappy man was able, but, like 
 his Roderick, was eclipsed in the splendour of the 
 review it obtained in the Edinburgh, — a review in 
 which, in power of writing, Jeffrey surpassed him- 
 self. We think, however, especially since a recent 
 perusal of Swift's JoiLrnal to Stella, that the 
 critic's view of Swift's morale is far too harsh and 
 sweeping. Swift, with all his faults, which the 
 public now knows passing well, and with all his 
 madness, which, as in the case of poor Byron, none 
 can know, was altogether a noble spirit, loved, and 
 deserving to be loved, by the most gifted men and 
 the most accomplished women of his time ; the idol, 
 and most justly the idol, of the people of Ireland ; 
 and in point of mental power and original genius, 
 ranking with Edmund Burke and Daniel O'Connell, 
 as the first three men that country has hitherto 
 produced. * We shall never have such a Rector of 
 Laracor ; ' no, nor ever such a creator of new worlds 
 as the author of Gulliver's Travels, or such a daring 
 humorist as the author of the Tale of a Tub. Be- 
 sides writing some papers on chivalry and the drama 
 for the supplement to the Edinburgh Encyclopcsdia, 
 Scott completed Waver ley, which appeared in July, 
 and became instantly popular. And so soon as it 
 was off his hands, he, as we shall see in the next 
 chapter, proceeded on a sea voyage round Scotland. 
 
ii5 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Here let us linger for a moment on the fact of 
 the publication of Waverley. With what emotion 
 do we see the first welling out of one of the great 
 rivers of the earth from its far desert or mountain 
 spring ! Surely with deeper feeling may the lover 
 of literature turn back to the day when there began 
 a series of the finest creations of the human mind, 
 combining lifelike reality with ideal beauty, full of 
 simplicity, essentially Christian feeling, pathos and 
 humanity, as well as of the highest eloquence, in- 
 terest, and imagination, — a series which has bettered 
 and blessed, as well as cheered and electrified, 
 myriads and myriads more of mankind, and which, 
 so far from having exhausted its artistic or beneficent 
 power, is likely to increase in widespread influence 
 as man advances and as ages roll on. And if Bruce 
 was not blamed when, as he stood by the fountain 
 whence he deemed the ' Great Father of Egypt's 
 waters ' took his rise, he swelled that fountain by his 
 tears, let our emotion now not be counted false 
 or factitious, while standing beside a well whence 
 streams of intellectual life, as bountiful and copious 
 as the Nile, have flowed out to gladden, to instruct, 
 and to elevate the human race. To effect this, let 
 it be remembered, was the purpose, the pride, and 
 the joy, and that he had efl"ected it was ultimately 
 the consolation, of our noble Scottish novelist. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 AT SEA. 
 
 ^^COTT was now culminating, if not exactly- 
 culminated. His prestige as a poet had, 
 ^^^^^^ indeed, in some measure declined ; but 
 he had established his name, and had newly opened 
 up a mine of virgin richness in Waverley. He was 
 still young, only forty-three ; and there was as yet 
 no indication of those complicated maladies which 
 were destined first to shake, and then prematurely 
 to destroy, one of the most robust constitutions, 
 both in body and mind, that ever existed. Having 
 propelled Waverley to the point of publication, he 
 joyfully threw down the oar, and started on a long 
 delightful excursion round the northern coast of 
 Scotland. He writes, ere starting, to Morritt : ' I 
 have accepted an invitation from the Commissioners 
 of the Northern Lights (I don't mean the Edin- 
 burgh reviewers, but the bona fide Commissioners for 
 117 
 
ii8 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the beacons) to accompany them upon a nautical 
 tour round Scotland, visiting all that is curious in 
 continent and isle. The party are three gentlemen.' 
 Those gentlemen were : Robert Hamilton, Sheriff 
 of Lanarkshire ; Adam Duff, Sheriff of Forfarshire ; 
 and William Erskine, Sheriff of Orkney and Shet- 
 land ; besides a few others, with Mr. Stevenson as 
 surveyor-viceroy over the Commissioners, — all more 
 or less kindred spirits to Scott, and all pleasant, 
 gentlemanly persons. 
 
 There is som.ething peculiarly exhilarating in a 
 tour undertaken immediately after some strenuous 
 and successful literary effort. The mind continues 
 cheerfully to chew the cud of its recent felicitous 
 endeavour, and is at the same time, having shaken 
 off a load, free to welcome every new impression, 
 and ready to feel that idleness is a duty as well 
 as an exquisite delight. Scott, too, had so much 
 enthusiasm for the scenery of the North, that he 
 must have looked forward to this excursion as to a 
 long gala-day. And so it proved. Surrounded by 
 such sympathetic friends as William Erskine, every 
 new morning lighting in some new spot of loveli- 
 ness, grandeur, or romantic interest, their time and 
 the vessel at the entire disposal of the party, Scott 
 was thoroughly in his element, as his journal kept 
 during the voyage proves. Then he was not 
 
AT SEA. 119 
 
 altogether idle, since he was traversing scenes 
 which he designed to turn to account at a future 
 and not a very remote day, in the Lord of the Isles, 
 a poem already begun, as well as afterwards in 
 The Pirate. 
 
 His Edinburgh friends saw him embark with 
 pleasure more than regret, knowing that he would 
 return with many spoils, as well as greatly enjoy 
 himself during the journey. James Hogg, indeed, 
 wrote a curious letter to Lord Byron on the sub- 
 ject, which his Lordship thus quizzically notices 
 in one of his epistles to Moore : ' Oh ! I have had 
 the most amusing letter from Hogg, the Ettrick 
 minstrel and shepherd. 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 !* 
 
 On the 29th of July 18 14, Scott started on his 
 norland tour; and he had scarcely cleared the 
 Firth when the gale of wind did overtake him, 
 and blew him on to Arbroath, where, after having 
 
I20 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 been very sick at sea, he landed and spent some 
 hours. He says : ' I visited the Abbey Church for 
 the third time, — the first being, eheii ! the second 
 with T. Thomson.' 'There is here an allusion, 
 without doubt,' says Lockhart, 'to some happy 
 day's excursion, when his first love was of the 
 party.' Poor fellow! he had not forgotten her 
 yet ; and probably the next day, when with a fair 
 wind he 'glided enchantingly ' along the coast of 
 Kincardineshire, part of the enchantment resulted 
 from the recollections which steeped that country 
 in the joy of grief, and he would heave some of 
 these delicious sighs, in which regret and pleasure 
 are so beautifully blended, beyond all chymical 
 solution. He saw Dunnottar Castle, with its mas- 
 sive ruins, rise and sink on his left, and that also 
 would waken old memories of joy and sorrow ; 
 he admired the view of the ' Granite City ' from 
 the sea ; he admired Slaines Castle, standing 
 sheer on its sea-beat rock, and circled by the 
 everlasting clang of the wings of sea-birds ; he 
 landed at the Bullars of Buchan, entered the 
 dark cavern in which boils the caldron, and pro- 
 bably thought, with Dr. Johnson, that there was 
 no more suitable place for the confinement of a 
 demon ; he passed the Reef of Rattray, after- 
 wards commemorated in The Antiquary. Leav- 
 
AT SEA. 121 
 
 ing Fraserburgh and the Moray Firth behind, he 
 stretched across for Shetland, which at first, he 
 says, seemed i?i vieditatio7ie jugce from him and 
 his companion the Sheriff of these isles, whom 
 he urged to issue a warrant accordingly ; but the 
 weather cleared up, and they made the harbour of 
 Lerwick, — a town the situation of which, ' screened 
 on all sides from the wind by hills of a gentle eleva- 
 tion,' Scott admired exceedingly. He spent some 
 time in studying the manners of this primitive 
 country ; in exploring its savage scenery, its stony 
 moorlands, its silent voes, its bold and beetling 
 headlands, the Cradle of Noss, Sumburgh Head, 
 etc. ; and in gleaning those picturesque particulars 
 of character and superstition which he was after- 
 wards to work into TJie Pirate. He visited then 
 Orkney, touching with much interest on the Fair 
 Isle in his way ; he examined with great care the 
 Cathedral of St. Magnus ; he saw, but did not 
 climb, Whiteford Hill, to the north of Kirkwall, — 
 whence perhaps it is, that, according to Orcadians, 
 his description of the view from it in the novel is 
 not so accurate or felicitous as his wont ; felt the 
 eternal rocking of the Pentland Firth, Scotland's 
 Bay of Biscay ; landed on the bold Hill of Hoy, 
 with its three peaks rising sheer up from the wave, 
 — its Dwarfie stone, — its mysterious Carbuncle, 
 
122 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 seen, it is said, on the breast of a mountain from 
 below, but which, when the hill is climbed, can 
 nowhere be found, — with the magnificent view of 
 the Atlantic from its steep western side, — and 
 with the midnight sun, if you can believe the 
 natives, seen in summer from its summit ; visited 
 Stromness, and those old grey spectres the 
 Stones of Stennis, Avhere in ancient days human 
 victims were sacrificed to demon-gods, and where, 
 in his own novel, a nobler sacrifice — that of 
 Minna laying her misplaced love for Cleveland 
 on the stormy altar — was consummated ; made 
 Cape Wrath, the weather being in keeping with 
 the stormy name ; and entered the marvellous 
 Cave of Smowe, with its rocky ledges, inky waters, 
 dark cavern -sides sparkling with ten thousand 
 times ten thousand stalactites, and slippery preci- 
 pices hanging over bottomless gulfs, where it 
 occurred to his imagination that a Water Kelpie, 
 or some spirit lonelier and fiercer still, might find 
 a fitting abode. Scott compares this cave to that 
 of Montesinos in Don Quixote, describes it with 
 great eloquence, and it had manifestly impressed 
 his imagination very deeply. 
 
 After rounding Cape Wrath, he passed, and 
 very much admired, the wild mountains of Assynt 
 in Ross-shire, as exhibiting the true Highland 
 
AT SEA, 123 
 
 character — torn, serrated, and tempestuous in out- 
 line. He went on shore at Coruisk in Skye, the 
 darkest and most terrific of Scotland's lochs, liker 
 the ' Last Lake of God's Wrath ' in Aird's magni- 
 ficent Devil's Dream than an earthly scene, and 
 which he was afterwards thus to describe : 
 
 * 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 shattered 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 sun, the spring's sweet dew, 
 That clothe with many a varied hue 
 
 The bleakest mountain side.' 
 
 Lord of the Isles, Canio iii. 
 
124 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 He visited also MacAlister's Cave, and a cave 
 in Egg ; revisited lona and Staffa, and felt, like 
 Johnson, his piety grow warmer amidst the ruins of 
 the former, and his poetic genius touched with the 
 deepest sense of the sublime in the Fingal's Cave 
 of the latter. He had more congenial society 
 when there, than it was our fortune to enjoy when 
 visiting it. Conceive, in the heart of that cathe- 
 dral of nature, that great Sanctuary of the Sea, 
 a proposition made in a large boatful of people, 
 for three cheers! It seemed to us as absurd as 
 though one should ruff the thunder, or encore the 
 earthquake. And yet it was carried, and perhaps 
 not three in the company felt the profanation. 
 At Torloisk, in Mull, he and his companions 
 went on shore, and called on their old acquaint- 
 ances the family of the Clephanes, in whom, and 
 especially in the eldest daughter, afterwards Mar- 
 chioness of Northampton, Scott took a great 
 interest, giving her away in marriage, and watch- 
 ing sedulously over her career, which was, we be- 
 lieve, a chequeredly brilliant one. He and the 
 rest of them felt it quite a luxury to find them- 
 selves in the most refined female society, regaled 
 by music and intellectual conversation, in the 
 centre of these lonely and desolate Hebrides, 
 * Placed far amidst the melancholy main ;' 
 
AT SEA. 125 
 
 and it was with no little reluctance that they 
 proceeded on their journey. They admired that 
 noble prospect in the Sound of Mull, of the wall of 
 mountains stretching between Ben Cruachan and 
 Ben Nevis, as between two mighty watch-towers. 
 They touched at the beautiful little town of Oban, 
 and examined the ruins of Dunolly and Dun- 
 staffnage Castles ; the latter commanding a grand 
 view of Loch Etive, Ben Cruachan, and the sup- 
 posed site of the ancient Caledonian city of Bere- 
 genium. Thence they crossed over to the Giant's 
 Causeway, watching the Paps of Jura, and listen- 
 ing to the roar of the whirlpool of Corrievreckan 
 on their way. When they reached Port Rush, 
 Scott learned the news of the death of the 
 Duchess of Buccleugh, a most admirable woman, 
 and one of his warmest friends. And, in fine, he 
 returned to Edinburgh, * having enjoyed as much 
 pleasure as in any six weeks of his life.* He had 
 left, as we saw, on the 29th of July, and returned 
 on the 9th of September — six weeks, to a day. 
 This tour did not merely tend to strengthen his 
 body and to exhilarate his mind, but had an 
 important influence on his genius. It brought 
 him in contact with scenery and manners of a 
 new and very peculiar kind, and qualified him 
 for writing his Lord of the Isles and The Piratey 
 
126 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 which, if not the best of his works, are yet valu- 
 able for their pictures of the wildest and most 
 romantic Scottish scenes, and because one of 
 them at least preserves the memory of interest- 
 ing customs and characters which have now 
 passed away. During the journey he was often 
 in a truly bardic state of inspiration, sometimes 
 'pacing the deck rapidly, muttering to himself,' 
 and at Loch Corriskin quite overwhelmed with 
 hia feelings as he roamed and gazed about by 
 himself. 
 
 On his return, to balance the sadness produced 
 by the death of the good Duchess, he found 
 that during his abence two editions of Waverley 
 had gone off, — that the applause was universal, 
 and that equally so was the curiosity about the 
 name of the author. It was surmised by many 
 that it was Scott — such acute judges as Jeffrey 
 and Mat Lewis knew at a glance the fine Roman 
 hand ; but the secret had been entrusted to only 
 a few, including, besides the Ballantynes and 
 Constable, Erskine and Morritt He had scarcely 
 reached home till he resumed the Lord of the Isles, 
 which he meant as a trial of strength — in order to 
 determine the question whether he should retire 
 or not from the poetical arena. He wrote the last 
 three cantos with fiery rapidity, finished them in 
 
AT SEA. 127 
 
 December 18 14, and started for Abbotsford to 
 'refresh the machine/ which might well be worn 
 out with the labours of the year. These included 
 the Life of Swift, Waver ley, the Lord of the Lsles, 
 two essays in the Encyclopcedia supplement, several 
 annotated reprints of old treatises and memoirs, 
 and a vast mass of correspondence, besides the 
 journal kept during his six weeks' tour. Probably 
 no man has ever, unless Scott at another time, 
 compressed so much valuable literary work into 
 twelve months before or since. And ere the bells 
 rung in the year of Waterloo, he had commenced 
 another and one of the very happiest efforts of his 
 genius. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE FIRST THREE WAVERLEY NOVELS. 
 
 E have often envied those who lived 
 while the great battles of Napoleon 
 were succeeding each other ; heard 
 safely on this side of the Channel, like succes- 
 sive peals of distant thunder, by those basking 
 in sunshine, — serving to enhance the sense of 
 security, and to deepen the feeling of repose, 
 and yet starting the sublimest emotions. How 
 many eyes must have kindled, and hearts beat 
 high, when the news of Austerlitz arrived ! And 
 so have we envied those who had reached their 
 full consciousness when the first Waverley Novels 
 came forth in softer music, like sweet and lofty 
 melodies succeeding each other from the harp of 
 some great minstrel, who was himself unseen ! 
 Ere we were capable of appreciating them, their 
 
 prestige was in some measure lessened, and their 
 128 
 
THE FIRST THREE NOVELS. 
 
 129 
 
 power in some measure gone. Guy Mannering or 
 Old Mortality read fresh from the press ! what a 
 luxury there is in the mere idea ; how much more 
 in the reality ! 
 
 The pubHcation of Waverley, strange to say, 
 had been preceded by considerable misgivings on 
 the part of Constable and his house. To test 
 its merits, and secure for it friends, proof-sheets 
 of some of its chapters were put by James Bal- 
 lantyne into the hands of Henry Mackenzie, Dr. 
 Thomas Brown, Mrs. Hamilton (the authoress of 
 TJu Cottagers of Glenburnie), and others, who 
 were unanimous in its favour. Then Constable 
 came to terms. When it appeared, these critics 
 were of course ready to take its part openly, 
 as they had done in private ; and the result 
 was, after a little hesitation on the part of the 
 public, triumphant success. One smiles at all 
 this now, but it has not been uncommon in the 
 history of popular works. With Childe Harold, 
 for instance, a similar tentative process took 
 place. With Vanity Fair, again, it was worse, 
 as it had to go the round of the trade before 
 it was accepted. It is quite possible that some 
 real masterpieces have been strangled in the effort 
 to be born, and that Mr. Home in his False 
 
 Medium was right after all. 
 
 I 
 
ISO WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Waverley, the first, is also with many still the 
 chief favourite among these fine productions. It 
 is less finished in composition than some of them, 
 and less probable in story. Its hero, as Scott says 
 himself, is a * sneaking piece of imbecility;' and 
 the first five or six chapters are heavy and lumber- 
 ing. But from the moment that he catches a 
 glimpse of the ' Highlands of Perthshire, which at 
 first had appeared a blue outline on the horizon, but 
 now swelled into gigantic masses which frowned 
 defiance on the more level country,' Scott goes on 
 with unmitigated energy and unwearying interest. 
 The manners are painted with a bold pencil. The 
 style has an elastic movement, as if it trode on 
 heather. The characters, which are fresh, varied, 
 and admirably contrasted, are seen to vivid ad- 
 vantage against the magnificent background of 
 Highland scenery. Many of the separate passages 
 are written with great elegance as well as power. 
 Some of the incidents are of the most thrilling 
 character ; and the scenes in Carlisle, for example, 
 have never been surpassed in manly pathos. 
 
 Meanwhile the Lord of the Isles had appeared, 
 and turned out a disappointment. It read more 
 like an imitation of Scott by an inferior hand, than 
 a new work of the author. It had the rush with- 
 out the force, the sound and fury but not the 
 
THE FIRST THREE NOVELS. 131 
 
 strength, the eloquence but not the inspiration, of 
 his former poems. In only one or two passages, 
 such as the pictures of Staffa and Loch Coriskin, 
 did the old minstrel genius display itself; for, 
 although Lockhart says the contrary, the public 
 has never put the battle-piece of Bannockburn on 
 the same level with that of Flodden : the former 
 seems a faint pencil sketch, while the latter is 
 painted in colours of fire. The comparative failure 
 of this poem determined the author to devote 
 himself to prose. 
 
 Scott, we saw, had gone down to Abbotsford at 
 Christmas 18 14, to 'refresh the machine.' And 
 this he did by writing another novel in six weeks ! 
 This was Guy Mannering. Let us, in passing, 
 notice one rather curious circumstance. This 
 novel was written in the depth of winter, and all 
 the scenes in Guy Mannering occur in the winter 
 season, which may partly explain their exceeding 
 verisimilitude. 
 
 Scott had previously to this become acquainted 
 with Mr. Joseph Train, supervisor of Excise in 
 Newton-Stewart. This ingenious and estimable 
 man had been occupied in collecting materials for 
 a history of Galloway, and had communicated to 
 Scott a number of anecdotes concerning the Gal- 
 loway gipsies, and a story of an astrologer who 
 
132 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 had called at a farm-house when the good-wife 
 was in travail, and had spaed the child's fortune 
 much as the novel describes it. , On these hints, 
 and on an imperfect recollection of a Durham 
 ballad, containing the same tale at greater length, 
 was Gtcy Mannering founded. Scott, the great 
 lion, had several lion's providers ; but to none is 
 the public more indebted than to the modest and 
 worthy Joseph Train. 
 
 This novel appeared on the 24th of February 
 1 815. We question if the feat implied in its rapid 
 writing was ever equalled in the annals of improvi- 
 sation. Byron's writing the Corsair in a fortnight 
 is hardly equal to it. It is not merely at the size, 
 but at the exquisite and varied quality, of a work 
 written in so short a space, that we are called to 
 wonder. It is to us at least the most delightful of 
 Scott's novels. It reads like one sentence. The 
 interest never flags for a moment, not even in 
 Julia's letters, and, as Lockhart remarks, continues 
 increasing till almost the last page. Critics have 
 justly magnified the admirable ease, unity, and 
 thorough fusion of materials which distinguish 
 Tarn d Shunter; but to find the same qualities in a 
 work a thousand times as large is proportionably 
 more marvellous. Guy Mannering is by far the 
 most Scott-like of Scott's tales, if it does not con- 
 
THE FIRST THREE NOVELS. 133 
 
 tain his very highest flights of genius. Its hearty 
 homeh'ness, as exhibited in the Dandie Dinmont and 
 Charlieshope scenes ; the wild flavour of romance 
 and enthusiasm manifested in the astrological and 
 gipsy departments of the book ; the passionate 
 love for Scottish scenery, for rocks, woods, and 
 waves ; and its sympathy with the old mirthful life 
 of the Edinburgh lawyers, are all characteristic of 
 the composite genius and broad, manifold nature 
 of the author, who united intense interest in simple 
 country manners, and enjoyment of every-day ex- 
 istence, with feelings of the loftiest poetry. 
 
 The reception of this novel was as rapturous as 
 that of Waverley, perhaps more so ; although the 
 Quarterly Review gave it a cold and captious 
 notice, quite unworthy of the book, although quite 
 worthy of a journal which was soon after to 
 abuse and insult such writers as Shelley, Hazlitt, 
 Lamb, and Keats, which had previously damned 
 Wordsworth with faint praise, and ignored Cole- 
 ridge entirely. The Edinbitrgh Review neither 
 noticed Guy Mannering nor The Antiquary at the 
 time of their publication, although this seems to 
 have arisen from anything but indifference. Im- 
 mediately after Guy Mannering appeared, Scott, 
 his wife, and their eldest daughter, visited London. 
 During this visit a long expected interview took 
 
134 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 place with Lord Byron, then in the morning splen- 
 dour of a career soon to be clouded by heavy 
 shadows, and to go down in premature night. 
 Scott had, with a half-humorous, half-earnest in- 
 terest, eagerly anticipated a meeting with his 
 brother bard, telling James Ballantyne that they 
 should accost each other when they encountered 
 in the language of the farce of Tom Thumb. 
 
 * Art thou the man whom men famed Grizzle call ? 
 Art thou the still more famed Tom Thumb the small ?' 
 
 It was, we think, John Murray's drawing-room 
 that first witnessed the meeting of these two poets. 
 They became instantly intimate : their very diver- 
 sity of character serving to weld their attachment. 
 Byron reposed his weary and racking self-conscious- 
 ness on the wide and genial temperament of Scott 
 as on a pillow ; and Scott was deeply moved with 
 admiration for the fervent genius, and with sym- 
 pathy for the unhappy disposition and unsettled 
 opinions of Byron, of whose natural goodness of 
 heart he formed a better opinion than the rest of 
 the world. Scott told Byron he would alter, if he 
 lived, his religious views, not by turning Methodist, 
 but Catholic devotee. He thought him a Whig 
 by accident, and a patrician by principle. Byron 
 envied Scott's domestic felicity, and said he would 
 
THE FIRST THREE NOVELS, 135 
 
 give all fame, and the other advantages of his 
 position, to be happy at home. They met often 
 and exchanged gifts ; Scott conferring on Byron a 
 beautiful Turkish dagger mounted with gold. Byron 
 reciprocated by the present of a large vase of silver 
 full of Grecian bones ; and they rallied each other 
 about the gloomy and ominous nature of their 
 mutual gifts. Byron, by the way, had a singular 
 superstition about the ill omen connected with 
 sharp-pointed objects as presents, and once re- 
 turned a splendid pin given him by Lady Blessing- 
 ton ; and it is almost a wonder he retained Scott's 
 present, which might afterwards have seemed, like 
 that fatal air-drawn dagger in Macbeth, to marshal 
 the way to the disastrous catastrophe of the poet's 
 separation from his wife and exile from his country, 
 which occurred a few months afterwards. On 
 Scott's return from Paris he had a parting inter- 
 view with Byron at Long's, where the latter was as 
 playful as a kitten, full of gaiety and good humour. 
 So he seemed to Scott. But his namesake, Scott 
 of Gala, who was present, says that Byron's pale 
 face had a miserable expression, and that his con- 
 versation was 'bitter, bitter,' strongly contrasting 
 with that of the author of Guy Mannering. Speak- 
 ing of some one at Waterloo who had lost his head 
 by a cannon-ball, Byron remarked, * No great loss ; 
 
136 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 it was never of much use to him.' Scott was just 
 starting for the north, and he and Byron never 
 met again. They continued, however, friends and 
 occasional correspondents to the close of the un- 
 happy poet's life. Scott watched with deep in- 
 terest the fluctuating but splendid career of his 
 friend. He did him good service in the darkest 
 hour of his life, by defending him in the Quarterly 
 Review against the howl of the whole world ; and 
 he anticipated much from his matured and sobered 
 genius, and from his expedition to Greece. Scott 
 is one of the few men of whom Byron speaks uni- 
 formly well, and he was never weary of devouring 
 his novels. It is singular that the two men of 
 genius in the age most opposite in temperament 
 to Scott, seem to have read him with the greatest 
 avidity, and to have found in his works the best 
 anodyne for their habitual gloom — Foster and 
 Byron. In a future chapter we intend some more 
 remarks on Scott's relation to Byron, and to his 
 other eminent contemporaries. 
 
 At this period, too, Scott dined twice with the 
 Prince Regent, and narrowly escaped betraying 
 his connection with the Scotch Novels in reply to 
 a toast proposed by the Prince. When asked what 
 he thought of the Prince's intellect, he said he 
 could hardly judge of the mind of a man who intro- 
 
THE FIRST THREE NOVELS. 137 
 
 duced whatever subject he liked, talked of it as long 
 as he liked, and dropped it whenever he liked. He 
 thought highly of his manners, but was too acute a 
 judge of human nature to be blind to that selfish 
 heartlessness which a fine address decorated but 
 could not disguise, although far too thorough a 
 Tory to acknowledge it. He returned to Edin- 
 burgh on the 22d of May. 
 
 A month afterwards, the cannon of Waterloo 
 startled every ear, and the Empire of the Hundred 
 Days and its founder sunk with a shock which 
 echoed through the world. While Robert Hall 
 was saying in England that this event had put the 
 clock of the world several degrees backward, our 
 poet in Scotland was exulting and straining on the 
 slip to visit the memorable field. In company 
 with some friends and neighbours, he started for 
 the Continent in July, having made a previous 
 arrangement with Constable to describe his tour in 
 a series of letters. He visited Brussels, Waterloo, 
 Paris, and met a flattering reception from Welling- 
 ton, Blucher, the Emperor Alexander, and other of 
 the magnates of the earth, who were then dancing 
 their giddy and guilty dance over what Shelley 
 calls * the last hopes of trampled France.' It was 
 both here and on the Continent a time of joy, 
 amounting to foolish and wicked delirium, in which 
 
138 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Scott participated to a degree which seems to have 
 weakened his powers ; for although his PauVs 
 Letters to his Kinsfolk are graphic and interesting, 
 his poem on Waterloo, which appeared in October, 
 is not up to the mark. Scott at that period was 
 too happy and triumphant a man to write well on 
 the gloomier and sublimer aspects of war. The 
 Spirit of the spot where 
 
 * That red rain had made the harvest grow,* 
 
 was to lead Byron to it next year, and to tell him 
 to limn it in the everlasting chiaroscuro of Childe 
 Harold. Scott returned to Abbotsford in Sep- 
 tember, passing by and examining the old castles 
 of Warwick and Kenilworth on his homeward 
 way. Toward the close of the year he seems to 
 have written a few pages of The Antiquary. 
 
 Early in i8i6 appeared Paul's Letters to his 
 Kinsfolk, which was well but not rapturously re- 
 ceived. Some other books on the subject, such as 
 John Scott's Visit to Paris in 1 815, had got the 
 start of it. In May appeared The Antiquary. It 
 sold rapidly, 6000 copies going off in six days ; 
 but otherwise at first received a frigid welcome. 
 Some even said the author's vein was manifestly 
 exhausted ! It by and by, however, rose to, and 
 has ever since kept, its level. It had not the high 
 
THE FIRST THREE NOVELS. 139 
 
 historic character of Waverley, nor the unique yet 
 varied charm of Guy Manneriiig; but in certain 
 scenes and characters surpassed them both, nay, 
 surpassed perhaps aught else the author ever wrote. 
 The storm scene has seldom been equalled in power 
 of language and thrilling interest of incident. It 
 is curious, however, that he has marred an other- 
 wise magnificent passage by the gross blunder of 
 making the sun set in the German Ocean ; and 
 more curious still, that not even the * inevitable eye' 
 of James Ballantyne, who looked over all the sheets 
 of his tales, seems to have detected the oversight. 
 Scott no doubt practised, in his descriptions, the art 
 of compositioji, as painters call it ; but that art has 
 its limits, and he might as well have introduced 
 palms into Glencoe or bananas into Balquhidder, 
 as describe the sun seen from the eastern coasts of 
 Scotland sinking in the sea. Edie Ochiltree is one 
 of the very happiest of its author's creations, in 
 his combination of humour, kindliness, and atdd- 
 farrand sense, of pawkiness and poetry. But by 
 far the most original and Shaksperean portions 
 of the book are the scenes in the fisherman's cot- 
 tage. The funeral is a masterpiece of pathos and 
 picturesque effect ; and Elspeth Mucklebackit is 
 a character resembling the style of Crabbe, but 
 tinged with an imagination and shown in a weird 
 
I40 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 light which that poet could not command. She is 
 more fearful in the fell passions which lurk in 
 the blood of old age, and inspire the lips of 
 dotage, than the witches of Macbeth ; and, although 
 with no supernaturalism about her, has a wild 
 sublimity of thought and language more impres- 
 sive still. And what exquisite humour and know- 
 ledge of Scotch character in the Post Office scene, 
 and in the story of 'Little Davie and his pony!' 
 Altogether, The Antiquary is a mine of the purest 
 and richest ore. It never disappoints, and it can 
 never be exhausted. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 SCOTT AND THE COVENANTERS. 
 
 ^aCARCELY had The Antiquary left its 
 author's hands, than he planned the 
 Tales of my Landlord^ projected a series 
 of Letters on the History of Scotland, which were 
 never completed, and undertook to write the his- 
 torical department of the Edinburgh A nnual Regis- 
 ter. Not willing that Constable should monopolize 
 the publication of his novels, and for certain per- 
 sonal reasons besides, Scott offered his new work 
 to Murray and Blackwood. Discouraged a little 
 by the coldness with which The A ntiqnary was at 
 first received, he once thought of bringing out the 
 Tales of my Landlord without the words 'by the 
 Author of Waverley,' although in this he changed 
 his mind. William Blackwood, a man of rare 
 penetration and rough vigour of speech, found fault 
 
 with the closing part of the Black Dwarf and even 
 141 
 
142 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 suggested another way in which he thought the 
 story should terminate. Scott got very indignant, 
 and wrote, saying, * Confound his impudence ! Tell 
 him I belong to the Black Hussars of literature, 
 who neither give nor take quarter.' This being out 
 of Scott's usual measured style, had a proportion- 
 ate effect, and told like thunder from a cloudless 
 sky. The T^ai/ifi- appeared in December i8i6, and 
 the reception of the first of them showed the saga- 
 cious bibliopole was right. The Black Dwarf was 
 thought to begin delightfully, but to come to a 
 lame and impotent conclusion. But Old Mortality, 
 while bearing up its weaker brother, challenged a 
 place instantly among Scott's proudest works. In 
 the upper literary circles of London especially its 
 reception was rapturous. The lion and the lamb, 
 Gifford and Lord Holland, here lay down together. 
 The latter distinguished nobleman sate up all night 
 to read it ; ' nothing slept but his gout' 
 
 In Scotland, too, its power was felt, but speedily 
 a storm arose against it for its treatment of the 
 Covenanters ; a storm swelled, if not originally 
 stirred, by Dr. M'Crie, who, in a succession of able 
 and eloquent papers in the Edinburgh Christian 
 htstructor, then edited by Dr. Andrew Thomson of 
 St. George's, assailed its statements, and went nigh 
 to impugn the integrity of its author's motives. 
 
SCOTT AND THE COVENANTERS. 143 
 
 Scott at first resolved to remain silent ; but finding 
 the impression strong and general, he wrote a reply- 
 to the Doctor in the somewhat equivocal form of a 
 review of his own book in the Quarterly. M'Crie's 
 work was published separately, ran through various 
 editions, and was in 1 846 re-issued under the patron- 
 age of the Free Church General Assembly. We 
 are disposed, looking back at the controversy, to 
 think that the whole truth lay with neither of the 
 contending parties ; and it is our wish to steer 
 between the Charybdis of the Quarterly Review on 
 the one side, and the Scylla of Dr. M'Crie on the 
 other. We do not think that Scott was animated 
 by any intense and virulent hatred against the 
 Covenanters, as has been supposed. All Claver- 
 house was not slumbering in his breast. He was a 
 good hater, but incapable of deliberate and long- 
 drawn malice. He had strong prejudices and pas- 
 sions ; but neither against individuals nor parties 
 can we conceive him cherishing slow, burning, 
 vindictive resentment. He was attracted to the 
 subject by its historic interest, and the opportunity 
 it afforded him of exercising his favourite powers ; 
 and he sate down to Old Mortality, as he did to 
 his other novels, with little definite plan or purpose, 
 and least of all with the intention of systematically 
 blackening the memory of any party. But, on the 
 
144 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 other hand, it is certain that he had imbibed strong 
 prejudices against the Covenanters, which, finding 
 this channel open, ran too readily and recklessly 
 along it. Scott had been brought up in the atmo- 
 sphere partly of Edinburgh persiflage and scepti- 
 cism, and partly of Border enthusiasm. The mix- 
 ture of something of the Jeffrey and something of 
 the Leyden element in him, with a dash besides of 
 Highland superstition and Jacobite prejudice, ren- 
 dered his own character a singular compound, and 
 accounts for his unfitness fully to sympathize with 
 the narrow, intense current of genuine earnestness 
 which ran in the Presbyterian veins. Yet his en- 
 thusiasm, though very different from that of the 
 Covenanters (being more that of personal genius, 
 class, and country, than of cause), prevented him, 
 along with his sense of justice, from treating them 
 as mere subjects of scorn. His early Edinburgh 
 training might have suggested unmitigated ridicule ; 
 but his Border blood and poetic fire interposed, and 
 compelled him to blend with it a certain respect 
 and admiration. Hence his novel veers to and fro 
 in feeling. Like Balaam, he comes to curse, and 
 remains to bless. He is, like many men of genius, 
 overruled by the power behind him. He awakens 
 a demon, to whom he is compelled to be obedient. 
 The fine instinct in him works out of his original 
 
SCOTT AND THE COVENANTERS. 145 
 
 atmosphere, casts it off as the sun a ring of clouds, 
 and pours undesigned and therefore more precious 
 light upon his subject. Moreover, the people of 
 Scotland were not fair judges. Taught and trained 
 in unbounded reverence for their forefathers, they 
 were prepared to fasten on every word and syllable 
 that told against them ; to find the blame out- 
 rageous, and the praise null. They judged of the 
 work from particular scenes, from what they thought 
 its apparent purpose, and from the general result it 
 produced. It was otherwise, on the whole, with the 
 men of the South. Take Hazlitt as a specimen. 
 This celebrated critic always speaks of Old Mor- 
 tality as Scott's noblest work ; and, in verifying his 
 criticism, uniformly appeals, not to the passages in 
 which it caricatures, but to those in which it honours 
 the Covenanters ; not to Mause Headrigg or Ha- 
 bakkuk Mucklewrath, but to MacBriar preaching on 
 the evening of Drumclog, or to Bessie MacLure in 
 her disinterested heroism, now sitting in her red 
 cloak by the wayside to warn a friend, and now 
 exposing her life to danger to save a foe of the 
 Covenanting cause. The book, in fact, had pro- 
 duced in his mind, which on that subject was on 
 the whole unprejudiced, an impression most favour- 
 able to the Covenanters ; and he, we believe, is the 
 
 type of southland thousands. 
 
 K 
 
146 WALTER SCOTT, 
 
 No doubt Scott has caricatured Covenanting 
 manners. His picture of the coarseness and vul- 
 garity of their lowest rank, of the cant of their 
 ministers, of the fierceness, the rancour, and the 
 bigotry of the Cameronians, of the selfishness, 
 revenge, and cruelty, which blend with nobler 
 elements in Burley, is undoubtedly overdrawn. 
 Such a being as Mucklewrath never existed. Wild 
 as some of the hillmen were, the wildest of them 
 was sobriety personified compared to that mon- 
 strous mixture of monomania, fanaticism, and fury. 
 Old Mause is a more credible character, and is 
 drawn with exquisite humour, but is also highly 
 caricatured. MacBriar's conduct to Morton in the 
 farmhouse, where they are about to put him to 
 death, totally belies all the finer traits the novelist 
 had given him before, and jars on the memory as 
 we witness his heroic and sublime appearance in the 
 trial scene. It is gratifying to see Poundtext made 
 ridiculous as one of the indulged parsons of the 
 period, those ' dumb dogs that could not bark,' 
 keeping by their comfortable cribs, and munching 
 their bones, while their brave brethren were chased 
 like wolves upon the mountains. But Kettle- 
 drummle is a clumsy caricature of the more rigid 
 divine. All the wit connected with him, indeed, lies 
 in his name. To Burley we have just alluded. 
 
SCOTT AND THE COVENANTERS. 147 
 
 His whole conduct in reference to Basil Olifant, to 
 Edith Bellenden, and to Lord Evandale, is a libel 
 alike on the Covenanters and on human nature. 
 His killing of Sharpe at Magus Muir rises to an 
 act of virtue when compared to the mean, cold- 
 blooded, and long-winded atrocities which are 
 gratuitously transferred to his character. But Sir 
 Walter has sinned more deeply when he seeks to 
 whitewash the persecutors, than when he blackens 
 their victims. A good character aspersed soon 
 rights itself; the dirt dries and disappears by a 
 sure and swift process. A bad character defended 
 and deified is often allowed without opposition to 
 slip into the Pantheon. Men are more interested — 
 and it says something for them — in defending the 
 unjustly assailed than in pulling down the graven 
 images of the guilty. Scott was too favourable to 
 the cavalier character. Hence, in his picture of 
 the persecutors, their every dragoon is half a hero ; 
 Sergeant Bothwell a whole one, made so in spite 
 of his admitted faults ; and Lord Evandale is 
 something higher, a kind of link between the 
 soldier and the seraph. Claverhouse is marred by 
 gross inconsistency of conception, and is much 
 more melodramatic than natural. He is not re- 
 presented as a mere brutal butcher, nor yet as a 
 perfect model of chivalry, but as an awkward com- 
 
148 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 pound of the fierce, careless warrior, and the refined 
 and gallant knight. Few readers, we suspect, lay 
 down Old Mortality without a deeper detestation 
 for the dancing bear, the educated tiger, the hand- 
 some and accomplished murderer, which is all, in 
 reality, the author makes him out to be. 
 
 Yet if in some parts of this novel no one has 
 caricatured the Covenanters more severely, none 
 has brought out their picturesque aspects with 
 such felicity and force. None but Scott could 
 have described that scene in the inn, where Burley 
 overthrows Bothwell ; or that profounder scene in 
 the barn, where, on the old sleeping homicide's 
 brow, the sweat-drops of a great agony are stand- 
 ing like ' bubbles on the late disturbed stream,' as 
 the tragedy of Magus Muir is being re-enacted in 
 his soul ; or the skirmish of Drumclog ; or the 
 tent -preaching which succeeded ; or the rout of 
 Bothwell ; or the torture scene ; or the shaggy 
 mountain solitude where Burley found his last 
 desperate retreat, retiring from the company of 
 men to that of devils, and who can match, in the 
 fierce passions of his own breast, that ' hell of 
 waters ' which is perpetually thundering around 
 him. It sometimes happens that a caricature is 
 more forcible, more life-like, more characteristic 
 than a picture, especially if the countenance be 
 
SCOTT AND THE COVENANTERS. 149 
 
 strongly marked. And so, probably, Scott has to 
 many given an impression of the rough energy, the 
 honesty, the daring, and the zeal of the Covenanters, 
 which a tamer and more friendly portraiture could 
 never have produced. These concessions of an 
 enemy are confessedly more valuable than the ex 
 parte statements of a friend. And still more, when 
 an enemy is transcendently powerful, may his reluc- 
 tant testimony, and the rude, careless grandeur of his 
 touch, be more effectual than all the pleadings and 
 reclamations of weaker advocates on the other side. 
 
 A modified sentence is that, therefore, of wisdom. 
 Few can think Old Mortality a strictly accurate or 
 fair account of its age ; and few, on the other hand, 
 would be disposed to erase it as a blot from the 
 list of its author's works. It is a great partisan 
 production, like the histories of Clarendon and 
 Hume. Like them, it must always be read, but 
 like them, too, should be read with great caution, 
 and with the addition of not a few grains of salt. 
 
 M'Crie's reply was also partisan. He would 
 scarcely admit that the Covenanters committed an 
 error, or, if he did yield an inch of ground, it was 
 after a struggle like that of Morton and Burley 
 when they kept Bothwell Brigg. He weakened 
 the effect, too, by commencing with an under- 
 estimate of the genius and works of his opponent, — 
 
I50 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 in this case a signal error. He speaks, for instance, 
 rather coldly of Guy Mannering, contemptuously 
 of The Antiquary, and admits little literary merit 
 in the book he was answering. Still his reply was 
 vigorous and eloquent. He carried the war, too, 
 with triumphant success into the enemy's camp ; 
 and, by way of counterpoise to Scott's caricatures of 
 Presbyterian preaching, quoted from Episcopalian 
 divines of the same period specimens of bathos 
 profounder still, of a more adventurous nonsense, of 
 silliness and stupidity more unique, and of prejudice, 
 bigotry, and blindness far more total and hopeless. 
 Old Mortality was and yet was not answered. 
 Where it grossly offended against truth and fact, 
 its errors were now exposed ; but its powerful 
 pictures of an enthusiasm which sometimes erred, 
 and of a zeal and energy which often mistook or 
 missed their mark, remained intact, and are as 
 immortal as the memory of the Covenant itself. 
 The controversy on the subject did much good. 
 It attracted attention to a topic and a time which 
 had been allowed, in a great measure, to drop from 
 the minds of men, and it poured a flood of light 
 upon a field over which thick mists were beginning 
 to gather, and yet which had been one of the 
 noblest in the history of Scotland or of the Church 
 of Christ. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CONTINUED SUCCESS, WITH PRELIMINARY 
 SHADOWS. 
 
 )COTT, to a mind of gigantic power 
 united a tall and massive bodily frame- 
 work. When the first Napoleon met 
 Goethe, he was prodigiously struck with his per- 
 sonal appearance, — his majestic stature, stately 
 gait, noble forehead, and great flashing eyes, — his 
 whole aspect combining the fire of a poet with 
 the dignity of a prince. The conqueror of Italy, 
 the hero of Marengo, Lodi, and Austerlitz, felt 
 himself small in the presence of the author of 
 Werter and Fatist, and exclaimed, *Vous etes 
 homme!' — You are a man. And although Scott 
 had not the ideal physiognomy or the perfect 
 figure of the great German, yet there was some- 
 thing in his pile of forehead, the curtained light- 
 ning of his eye, and the gruff sagacity of his lower 
 
 151 
 
152 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 face, in which Napoleon, who was a great observer, 
 and looked quite through the deeds of men, would 
 have owned a true type of manhood, and granted 
 that, if there were more splendour and subtlety 
 in Goethe, there was in Scott quite as much 
 strength, and a vast deal more simplicity. There 
 was enough about him, at least, soul and body 
 combined, to awaken (if the pagan poets are to 
 be believed) in the gods the envy they feel at the 
 superior mortals, and to start Apollonic shafts 
 against a mark so conspicuous and so broad. It 
 was on the body that the arrow was first to alight ; 
 the mind was for more than another decade to be 
 spared. 
 
 He had made himself the easier prey by the 
 incessant labours in which he had been occu- 
 pied, alternating with many social engagements. 
 Against the effects of all this, while in the country, 
 air and exercise hardened him ; but it was other- 
 wise in the town. And in the town, accordingly, 
 the first blow fell. On the 5th March 18 17, at 
 the close of a joyous party in Castle Street, he 
 was seized with severe cramp in the stomach, 
 and had to retire from the room, as he himself 
 describes it, ^roaring like a bull-calf Such attacks 
 yielded readily enough to medicine at first, but 
 they recurred at intervals for more than two years, 
 
CONTINUED SUCCESS. 153 
 
 and terribly shattered his constitution, although 
 they served to reveal new resources in his mar- 
 vellous genius. During the convalescence succeed- 
 ing the first attack, he commenced his dramatic 
 sketch of the Doom of Devorgoilj one of that set 
 of third-rate poetic productions with which he 
 continued to the close to amuse his leisure, and 
 to tantalize rather than gratify the public. Some 
 smaller things also dropped from his pen, such 
 as a ' Farewell Address,' recited by John Kemble 
 on leaving the Edinburgh stage, and some anec- 
 dotes of the Scotch gipsies, containing the crude 
 germ of Guy Mannering, inserted in Constables 
 Magazine. William Laidlaw, his faithful ally, 
 came to live at Kaeside, and to be his amanu- 
 ensis. Scott began to project Rob Roy as the 
 subject of his next novel, and sent in to Edinburgh 
 for Constable and John Ballantyne to arrange the 
 publication. The three dined joyously ; and Scott, 
 though he had had a severe attack of cramp the 
 day before, got into high spirits, and told Con- 
 stable that he believed he would make a great hit 
 in a Glasgow weaver, whom he would ravel up 
 with Rob ; and he proceeded to extemporize a 
 dialogue between the two, something like that 
 which he afterwards described as taking place 
 in the Tolbooth. Hence came in due time the 
 
154 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 immortal Bailie Nicol Jarvie. Ere commencing 
 the tale, he paid a visit to Loch Lomond and 
 Glasgow to study the scenery, and gather up 
 the disjecta membra of the Bailie. 
 
 At this time his friend Captain Fergusson, 
 relieved by the peace from campaigning, took 
 a house at Huntly Burn, in his vicinity. Scott 
 had newly purchased much adjacent land there, 
 and was now master of all the haunts of 'True 
 Thomas' the Rhymer, and of the whole ground 
 of the battle of Melrose. The dreary cramp, 
 however, poisoned all his pleasures ; and we find 
 him writing verses at this time as sweet and sad 
 as ever came from the broken heart of Byron, 
 or from the lyre which Shelley flung aside, to lie 
 down on the Bay of Naples, seeking, 
 
 ' Like a tired child, 
 To weep away this life of care.' 
 
 STANZAS. 
 
 ^ The sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill, 
 In Ettrick Vale, is sinking sweet, 
 The westland wind is hush and still, 
 The lake lies sleeping at my feet. 
 
 ' Yet not the landscape to mine eye 
 
 Bears those bright hues that once it bore, 
 Though evening with her richest dye 
 Flames o'er the hills of Ettrick's shore. 
 
CONTINUED SUCCESS. 155 
 
 * With listless look along the plain 
 
 I see Tweed's silver current glide, 
 And coldly mark the holy fane 
 Of Melrose rise in ruined pride. 
 
 * The quiet lake, the balmy air, 
 
 The hill, the stream, the tower, the tree, 
 Are they still such as once they were, 
 Or is the dreary change in me ? 
 
 * Alas ! the warped and broken board, 
 
 How can it bear the painter's dye ? 
 The harp of strained and tuneless chord, 
 How to the minstrel's skill reply ? 
 
 ' To aching eyes each landscape lowers, 
 
 To feverish pulse each gale blows chill, 
 And Araby's or Eden bowers 
 
 Were barren as this moorland hill/ 
 
 The house of Abbotsford was meanwhile in- 
 creasing in size and splendour, and assuming its 
 castellated form. It had become a resort for dis- 
 tinguished strangers from every part of the world ; 
 and this summer it was visited by such welcome 
 guests as Washington Irving (who has gracefully 
 recorded the particulars of his visit), Lady Byron, 
 of whom Scott speaks highly, wondering why 
 Byron could have failed to love her, and Sir 
 David Wilkie. In the end of the year he com- 
 pleted Rob Roy, which was written amidst many 
 obstructions, springing from his severe attacks of 
 
156 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 cramp, and the duUifying effects of the opium he 
 was obliged to use, and which gave him 
 
 * All the wild trash of sleep without the rest.' 
 
 William Laidlaw took down the most of it from 
 his lips. Sometimes he wrote at it himself. On 
 one occasion James Ballantyne, calling on him for 
 copy, found him sitting with a clean pen and a 
 blank sheet before him. He expressed his sur- 
 prise. 'Ay, ay. Jemmy,' said he, 'it is easy for 
 you to tell me to get on ; but how the mischief can 
 I make Rob Roy's wife speak with such a curmur- 
 ring in my guts V 
 
 It became very popular. In no novel has he 
 been less happy in the construction of his plot, 
 and, some think, in the adjustment to each other 
 of the very different materials ; but in no novel 
 has he surpassed the individual portraitures of 
 character, or more beautifully described the 
 scenery of his country. The Bailie is the general 
 favourite ; but we think quite as much, in his way, 
 of Andrew Fairservice, the ideal of a Scottish 
 serving -man of the last century; nay, we are 
 mistaken if he has not been met in this too, — 
 impudent, greedy, conceited, pragmatical, and yet 
 attached to his master, and overflowing with 
 mother-wit. Nothing can be better than the 
 
CONTINUED SUCCESS. 157 
 
 * Dougal Cratur/ or than Rob Roy, especially 
 among his own rocks, ' his foot on his native 
 heath, and his name MacGregor.' Diana Vernon 
 is the first of his heroines who has much character, 
 and ranks in interest with the Rebeccas, Lucy 
 Ashtons, Margaret Ramsays, and Clara Mowbrays 
 who followed. His common run of heroines, as 
 well as heroes, is singularly insipid. The most 
 unpleasing characters are Rashleigh and Helen 
 MacGregor ; but both are used to much, though 
 melodramatic purpose. Among the descriptions, 
 those of the preaching in the High Church of 
 Glasgow, the midnight scene at the bridge there, 
 and the Clachan of Aberfoyle on a harvest morn- 
 ing, were exceedingly admired. 
 
 Stimulated by its success, Scott began another 
 and a higher effort of his genius. This was the 
 Heart of Midlothian, which appeared in June 18 18. 
 In Edinburgh, owing to the choice of the locale, 
 its reception was enthusiastic beyond precedent. 
 Some thirteen years ago we saw a MS. letter, in 
 which Walter Savage Landor declared that if 
 'Scott had written nothing else, it would have 
 stamped him the most illustrious author of the 
 age.' The power lay in the pathetic interest of 
 the story (a story which the authoress of Adam 
 Bede has imitated unsuccessfully) ; in the simpli- 
 
158 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 city of Jeanie Deans, — a simplicity which soars up 
 by a quick yet natural gradation into sublime 
 heroism, and returns as easily into simplicity 
 again ; in the romantic interest attaching to the 
 subordinate characters, especially to Madge Wild- 
 fire, whom Coleridge pronounces the most original 
 of all Scott's characters ; in the admirably drawn 
 portrait of David Deans, who looks like an amende 
 Jwnorable to the insulted Covenanters ; and in the 
 purely historical part of the narrative, the de- 
 scription of the fate of Porteous, which shows 
 what an historian of Scotland Sir Walter might 
 have been, had he sought the smiles of Clio at 
 an earlier period of his life. The last volume, 
 notwithstanding all the humour of Duncan Knock- 
 dunder, should not have been written. It is 
 hastily and carelessly composed. Roseneath is 
 called an island again and again ; and the incident 
 of the father falling by the hand of his illegiti- 
 mate son is unpleasing. Effie, too, in her trans- 
 formation into the fine lady, has left all that was 
 interesting and natural behind her with her short- 
 gown and her snood. 
 
 Lockhart marks the completion of this novel 
 as the climax of Scott's career. He was appa- 
 rently realizing ;^ 10,000 a year by his writings ; 
 his house was expanding into a castle ; a fine 
 
PRELIMINAR Y SHADO WS. 1 59 
 
 family were growing up around him ; his popu- 
 larity as a man and as a poet was unbounded ; 
 and he was still sheltered by the shield of the 
 Anonymous from some of the pains and penalties 
 of authorship. We would rather fix it a little later, 
 when his illness had been mastered, and Ivanhoey 
 his most brilliantly successful tale, was speedily 
 succeeded by a baronetcy. At present there were 
 dark spots on his sun. His constitution had re- 
 ceived a dreadful shock ; and he felt, along with 
 this, that hard toil was now essential to him. He 
 was annoyed, too, although he bore this better 
 than we believe any other man of his day could 
 have done, by the intrusion of endless visitants on 
 the precincts of Abbotsford, and by an incessant 
 shower of MSS. and letters from every quarter under 
 heaven. What might have been the case under 
 the penny postage we can only conjecture. As it 
 was, he was pressed beyond measure and strength 
 although he seldom complained, and attended to 
 every request. 
 
 Lockhart at this time made the acquaintance 
 of his future father-in-law. One of the very best 
 bits in all his biography is where he describes 
 himself dining with William Menzies, afterwards 
 a supreme judge at the Cape. They were ca- 
 rousing in a room looking northwards to Castle 
 
i6o WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Street, when suddenly a shade came over Menzies' 
 face, who was seated opposite Lockhart. 'Are 
 you well enough ?' — 'Yes ; at least when I change 
 places with you I shall. But the fact is, there is 
 a confounded hand in sight of me here, which 
 has often bothered me before, and it won't let me 
 fill my glass with right good-will. It never stops. 
 Page after page it throws upon the pile of MS., 
 and still it goes on.' — ' Poh ! ' said Lockhart, glanc- 
 ing across and seeing the hand ; '' it is that of some 
 stupid engrossing, everlasting clerk.' — ' No,' replied 
 the other; 'it is that of Walter Scott!' And it 
 was at that moment writing Waverley ! 
 
 This was in 1814. In 181 8 Lockhart met Scott 
 for the first time ; and we must refer our readers 
 to his graphic description of his habits of un- 
 wearied labour, — his private manners, so manly yet 
 bland ; his amusing symposia with his publishers 
 on occasion of a new tale ; and his daily life in 
 Abbotsford, where, while the caressed of princes, 
 men of letters, and the nobility of the land, he 
 was also the administrator of justice, and a com- 
 mon good to the whole country-side. ' I have 
 neighbours beside me,' writes to us this year a 
 gentleman residing near Melrose, 'old men who, 
 when they are started, will talk for any length of 
 time about the memory of their kind-hearted, un- 
 
PRELIMINARY SHADOWS. i6i 
 
 selfish master, — for I find this is the universal feel- 
 ing ; and Sir Walter's large-hearted charity to the 
 labouring poor about Darnick is the great feature 
 in his character ; and it, independent of his 
 works, causes his memory to be cherished round 
 Abbotsford.' 
 
 During all the close of i8i8, and the beginning 
 of 1 8 19, he continued to be assaulted by cramp, and 
 was reduced to a skeleton. His hair became white 
 as snow, his cheek faded, and the last days of the 
 Last Minstrel seemed to have come. He laboured 
 on, however, dictating to William Laidlaw and 
 John Ballantyne (his dictation often interrupted by 
 shouts of agony) The Bride of Lammer^noor^ The 
 Legend of Montrose, and the most of Ivanhoe. The 
 first two of these appeared in June 18 19, and were 
 read with intenser interest that they were thought 
 the last creations of his mind. One day Scott 
 thought himself dying, summoned his family 
 around him, bade them a pathetic and Christian 
 farewell, expressing confidence in his Redeemer, 
 turned then his face to the wall, but fell into a 
 deep sleep, and from that hour began slowly to 
 recover. His disease, which had resisted opiates, 
 heated salt, etc., at last yielded to small doses, 
 composed chiefly of calomel. It is doubtful, how- 
 ever, if he ever became so strong as he had been. 
 
i62 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 He was forty-six when first assailed by the malady, 
 but, ere three years had elapsed, his constitution 
 was at least a decade older. And, while yet the 
 die of his life span doubtful, his aged mother ex- 
 pired on the 24th of December. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CULMINATION OF FAME AND FORTUNE — 
 ' IVANHOE ' AND BARONETCY. 
 
 "N the same month that his mother died, 
 and his own life hung trembling in the 
 balance, IvanJioe appeared. Never in the 
 literary world had there been, perhaps, such a 
 tumult of applause, particularly in England. 
 
 * Men met each other with erected look, 
 The steps were higher that they took; 
 Friends to congratulate their friends made haste, 
 And long estranged foes saluted as they passed.' 
 
 It seemed an event of national triumph when 
 Ivanhoe rode with his vizor down into the lists, 
 Rebecca by his side, and the Black Knight hover- 
 ing on the skirts of the scene. As Dr. Johnson 
 says of Gray's Odes, ' Criticism was lost in 
 wonder.' But it was not, as Johnson would imply 
 
 in reference to Gray, a wonder blended with doubt 
 163 
 
i64 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 and a spice of scorn, but wonder mixed with un- 
 bounded delight, the very feeling of the Queen of 
 Sheba : * The half had not been told us. We were 
 prepared for much, but never for aught like this.' 
 We shall inquire as to the justice of these senti- 
 ments in a little ; at present we record the 
 unquestionable fact. The two tales which pre- 
 ceded it had been welcomed warmly too. There 
 is a fine romantic spirit hovering over the Legend 
 of Montrose. It has a smell of heather, wears a 
 coronet of mist, and a deep autumnal charm 
 breathes in every page, Byron says of it, indeed 
 justly, ' He don't make enough of Montrose.' That 
 hero is dwindled beside three other characters, 
 all admirable and all eccentric, — Sir Dugald Dal- 
 getty, a mixture in equal proportions of trooper, 
 pedant, and picaroon ; Ranald MacEagh, the grey- 
 haired Son of the Mist, with his inimitable dying 
 speech to his grandson ; and Allan MacAulay, 
 parcel hero, parcel homicide, parcel maniac, and 
 parcel poet. Annot Lyle, whose song comes over 
 his dark soul like a * sunbeam on a sullen sea,' is 
 a sweet creation. And no episode in all Scott's 
 novels surpasses in stirring adventure, blended with 
 humour, Dalgetty's tour to Inveraray. 
 
 Coleridge says that there is an exaggeration in 
 the third series of the Tales of my Landlord and 
 
*IVANHOE' AND BARONETCY. 165 
 
 in Ivanhoe not to be found in any other of Scott's 
 stories. Perhaps the cause of this lay partly in his 
 disease, and partly in the enormous quantity of 
 laudanum he was compelled, contrary to his taste 
 and habits, to swallow to relieve it. Caleb Balder- 
 stone, in some of his exhibitions, is precisely such 
 an extravaganza as you might expect from a brain 
 under a twofold morbific influence. Yet what 
 must have been the strength of the mind which * 
 could in such an unfavourable state retain so much 
 of its balance t Scott, it will be remembered, 
 when he recovered, had no recollection of having 
 written these novels. Perhaps a morbid mood 
 was the appropriate chiaroscuro through which to 
 show us the dark tragedy of Lucy Ashton, — a 
 tragedy which may be compared to those stern 
 adumbrations of Fate contained in the Grecian 
 plays, and the pathos of which is so heart-rending. 
 There is no point of interest in all literature supe- 
 rior to that in which, as Ravenswood bursts on 
 the assembled marriage party, Lucy exclaims, 
 * He is come, he is come ;' and out of Shakspeare 
 there are no dialogues superior to those of the 
 two old witch women at the bridal and at the burial 
 of the hapless victim. 
 
 Ivanhoe is certainly less natural, less probable, 
 less life-like than his first novels. And so are The 
 
i66 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Tempest and the Midsummer Night's Dream less 
 life-like and probable than the Julius Ccesar or 
 Kiug Henry the Fourth of Shakspeare. But they 
 show more invention and more fancy. Much of 
 the best matter in Waverley, Guy Mannering, and 
 The AntiqiLary is borrowed from real incidents and 
 characters, while in Ivanhoe he is compelled to 
 make many of his materials. It introduces us into 
 a world almost as distinctly new as that of The 
 Tempest J full of characters for which there exists 
 no real historical type ; knights breathing a more 
 than mortal spirit of chivalry ; Saxons with a 
 plusquam Saxonic boldness and independence; 
 banditti, ' minions of the moon ' not only in their 
 clandestine calling, but in the poetic light which 
 colours them ; and, above all, a Jewess, who, amidst 
 the depths of her nation's degeneracy, exhibits 
 more than the grandeur of Deborah, more than 
 the tenderness of Rachel, and more than the love- 
 liness of Solomon's spouse, and sings a song of 
 Zion almost equal to those old strains which 
 marched with the ark, or trembled out a more sub- 
 dued and solemn music of adoration, while Jahveh 
 was thundering on Sinai's summit. Nowhere, too, 
 does Scott display more of the master's power 
 than in his management of these strange mate- 
 rials : the adjustment of each to each, and all to all; 
 
'IVANHOE' AND BARONETCY. 167 
 
 the happy cross lights of contrast which he throws 
 in ever and anon, and the perfect oneness of the 
 dream which they combine to form. There is 
 another point, too, in which Ivanhoe is very re- 
 markable. It has three climaxes, each rising above 
 the other like mountain stairs, — the first at the 
 close of the tournament, the second at the comple- 
 tion of the storm of Torquilstone, and the third 
 at the final deliverance of Rebecca. He gains a 
 height on which inferior writers would have paused, 
 and makes that the mere basis from which he 
 takes a bolder and yet a bolder step. Thrice in the 
 course of the novel is that exquisite pang, which 
 the close of a good story always inflicts, felt in our 
 bosoms, and each pang is more exquisite and 
 more intense than that which went before. And 
 what can be imagined superior to the parting inter- 
 view between Rowena and Rebecca? It reads 
 almost like the book of Ruth. 
 
 Scott's eldest son Walter had ere this joined the 
 4th Regiment of Hussars. In the beginning of 1 820 
 he published some papers entitled The Visionary, in 
 order to calm down the political agitation of the 
 times, and bolster up the reign of Toryism, then 
 beginning to totter to its fall. Like Professor 
 Wilson, Scott's power always deserted him when 
 he wrote on political subjects. Wilson foamed and 
 
i68 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 screamed like a maniac ; Scott maundered like an 
 old doting woman. 
 
 In March appeared The Monastery. It was com- 
 monly thought the first failure in the splendid 
 series ; yet it succeeded the Black Dwarf j which 
 assuredly was much worse. It cannot be denied, 
 in reference to the Waverley Novels, that they are 
 not only, like most works, unequal, but that from 
 the date of the Black Dwarf there ever and anon 
 appears in them a layer of utterly inferior and un- 
 worthy matter. Previous to Scott's acknowledg- 
 ment of the sole authorship, many accounted for 
 this on the supposition of another and inferior 
 hand being sometimes employed on the work ; and 
 certainly this surmise was rendered probable at the 
 time by the immense contrast between the two 
 stories in the first Tales of my Landlord, in one of 
 which the author drivels like James Hogg in his 
 worst novels, while in the other he writes like a 
 man inspired. We have sometimes thought that 
 the disease, softening of the brain, of which he 
 ultimately died, began to affect him, although fit- 
 fully, at an earlier period than is usually thought. 
 
 With all its faults, we love The Monastery, — 
 partly, indeed, because it was the first of the series 
 we read. The White Lady is a failure, — rather, how- 
 ever, as Scott himself maintains, in execution than 
 
'IVANHGE' AND BARONETCY. 169 
 
 in design. The witching scenes connected with 
 her are, for the most part, exceedingly poor. She 
 is far inferior to Undine, that fairy of the waters ; 
 yet we love to haunt her well, in the depths of 
 Corrinanshian, — love to see her holly-tree 
 
 * Startling the bewildered hind, 
 Who sees it wave without a wind ;' 
 
 and love to hear her soft, sad voice from the sky 
 exclaiming, — 
 
 * The breeze that brought me hither now must sweep Egyptian 
 ground ; 
 The fleecy cloud on which I ride for Araby is bound. 
 The fleecy cloud is drifting by, the breeze sighs for my stay, 
 And I must sail a thousand miles before the close of day.' 
 
 Piercy Shaften is a fool, but a generous, brave, 
 and warm-hearted fool ; and Mysie Happer is one 
 of the most interesting of all Scott's female charac- 
 ters, — incomparably more so than Mary Avenel, 
 who is pale and cold as the secondary cloud which 
 rises from a cataract, and seems the spirit of spray. 
 The scenes in Avenel Castle are written with power 
 and pathos. Murray and Morton are painted to the 
 life. And when the Last Minstrel hears, like Job's 
 horse, the sound of the trumpet and the shouting, 
 he becomes all himself; and the death of Julian 
 Avenel, the cry from his paramour, ' Christie of 
 
I70 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the Clinthill, Rowley, Hutcheon, ye were con- 
 stant at the feast, but ye fled from him at the fray, 
 false villains that ye are ! ' and Christie's exclama- 
 tion ere he dies, ' Not I, by heaven ! ' are worthy 
 of him who described Brian De Bois Guilbert in his 
 last and noblest moments, dying in his steel harness 
 full knightly. Yet The Monastery WAS a failure ; 
 but this was little more regarded than is one stumble 
 in the walk of a stately and stalwart man. While 
 the public were reading it with mingled feelings, 
 swallowing it eagerly, but disputing about the 
 taste it left behind, Scott was off to London, to 
 receive an honour which, cheap as it now appears 
 to the admirers of his genius, was very gratifying 
 at the time to him and to his family, — a baronetcy. 
 This should have been conferred in the spring of 
 the previous year, but for his illness ; and at Christ- 
 mas, had it not been for family afflictions. He had 
 scarcely reached town till Sir Thomas Lawrence 
 called on, and got him to sit as a figure in a great 
 gallery of distinguished men for Windsor Castle ; 
 and the painter has, according to Lockhart, ' fixed 
 with admirable skill one of the loftiest expressions 
 of Scott's face at the proudest period of his life.' 
 Lawrence said afterwards, that, in his judgment, 
 the two greatest men he ever drew were the Duke 
 of Wellington and Scott; and, curiously, both 
 
'IVANHOE' AND BARONETCY. 171 
 
 selected the same hour for sitting, — seven in the 
 morning. The only way to catch Scott's best and 
 highest look was to get him to repeat a piece of 
 poetry, and then the fire of the Makkar looked 
 out from his eye in almost stormy grandeur. To 
 Chantrey, too, he sat for a bust, and on this 
 occasion made the personal acquaintance of Allan 
 Cunningham. This gifted and admirable man had 
 long admired Scott with all the enthusiasm of a 
 self-taught genius. He describes himself, in a letter 
 to Hogg, reading The Lay of the Last Minstrel 
 along with the shepherd on Queensberry Hill 
 * under the sunny rain ;' and he had on one occa- 
 sion, when a stone-mason in Nithsdale, walked all 
 the way to Edinburgh simply to see the author of 
 Marmioii passing along the street. Scott heartily 
 responded, and spoke of him afterwards as Honest 
 Allan, and being a credit to Caledonia. 
 
 This was altogether a happy as well as a proud 
 and eclatant visit. Scott met. lords many, including 
 Lords Melville and Huntly ; some gifted and noble 
 women, especially Lady Huntly, who * sang Scotch 
 tunes like a Highland angel,' and whose variations 
 of * Kenmure's on and awa ' were, he told her, 
 enough to raise a whole country-side ; saw the 
 Duke of York, and others of the great of the hour. 
 But he had far more true pleasure when going 
 
172 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 out and spending a Sabbath-day quietly with 
 Joanna Baillie and John Richardson at Hampstead. 
 Nor did he allow ' champagne and plovers' eggs,' 
 the blandishments of lords, ladies, or literati, to 
 hinder him from using his influence, while in 
 London, in behalf of his friend John Wilson, who 
 was then, against much opposition, canvassing the 
 Edinburgh Town Council for the Moral Philosophy 
 chair. In a letter to Lockhart on this subject, he 
 says, * You are aware that the only point of excep- 
 tion 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.' Wilson, every one 
 knows, got the chair, did not become a model 
 Metaphysical or Moral Philosophy professor either, 
 but filled his class-room with the strong breath 
 of genius, and left such impressions on the minds 
 of the successive students, who for thirty-one years 
 attended his prelections, as more than justified 
 Scott's canvassing eagerness and prognosticating 
 foresight 
 
'IVANHOE' AND BARONETCY. 
 
 73 
 
 When the King in person conferred on Scott the 
 baronetcy, he said, as the poet kissed his hand, ' I 
 shall always reflect with pleasure on Sir Walter 
 Scott's having been the first creation of my reign.' 
 TJie Gazette announcing this event was dated the 
 30th March, and published on the 2d of April ; 
 and soon afterwards his native land again welcomed 
 back her most distinguished son as Sir Walter 
 Scott. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SCOTT AT HOME, AND AGAIN IN LONDON. 
 
 ! E came home a little earlier, that he might 
 be present at a marriage, — the marriage 
 of his eldest daughter Sophia to J. G. 
 Lockhart. This took place on the 29th of April, 
 Scott having arranged that it should not be deferred 
 to the unlucky month of May. He liked to cherish 
 all these old superstitions, which, though only vene- 
 rable cobwebs, he treated as if they were antique 
 tapestry. We have already characterized the bride 
 in this fair marriage. The bridegroom was of a 
 more composite character. Possessed of a robust 
 intellect, powerful though limited imagination, keen 
 and savage sarcasm, and of a varied and catholic 
 culture, he seemed destined to take the very highest 
 place in the world of letters. But there was a cross- 
 grained element in his nature. He was rather strong 
 than genial ; his humour often coarse and poisoned 
 with personalities ; and he now appears in the eye 
 
 174 
 
AT HOME AND AGAIN IN LONDON. 175 
 
 of the public a * secondary Scottish novelist/ a 
 translator, not a poet, and an admirable biographer, 
 as his Lives of Scott, Burns, and Napoleon prove. 
 With culture about equal, and a more masculine 
 style of thought and language, he has not nearly 
 now such acceptance as Professor Wilson with the 
 Scottish people. What a different destiny might 
 have been expected for the man who in youth could 
 write Valerius! 
 
 As it is, his immortality now rests almost entirely 
 on his connection with Sir Walter Scott. His pic- 
 tures of the great novelist's private life and habits, 
 — his companions, amusements, ancJ methods of 
 study, — combine breadth and minute accuracy, are 
 written with a rare vigour and felicity of style, and 
 for them all after time must be grateful. Lockhart 
 has done for Castle Street and Abbotsford what 
 Boswell did for Bolt Court ; for Scott what Boswell 
 did for Johnson ; and yet has not much compro- 
 mised his dignity, or at all sacrificed his individu- 
 ality. And if he has not recorded so many pithy 
 sayings and bon mots of his hero, he has given a 
 general view of his everyday life quite as vivid ; 
 and, while bringing him out as the centre of the 
 literary scene, has not omitted faithfully and fully 
 to depict the surrounding and subordinate figures, 
 some of whom were among the first men of their 
 
176 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 time. Well might he say to William Allan, when 
 standing before the porch of Abbotsford house after 
 breakfast, and when a brilliant party were about to 
 start on a day's coursing match, ' 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 ex- 
 hibit in Somerset House ;' and Allan might well 
 grant that he was right. 
 
 In defect of Allan's sketch, we have Lockhart's 
 own most masterly picture of Sir Humphrey Davy 
 in 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 ; Dr. Wollaston in black, 
 with his noble and dignified countenance, like a 
 sporting archbishop ; Mackenzie, the Man of Feel- 
 ing, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, with a white 
 hat turned up with green, green spectacles, green 
 jacket, long brown leathern gaiters, and a dog- 
 whistle round his neck ; and Sir Walter himself, 
 mounted on Sybil Grey, the giant Maida gam- 
 bolling about and barking for joy, and Scott's pet, 
 a little black pig, frisking around the pony, and 
 evidently ambitious to join the party, while her 
 master exclaims, — 
 
AT HOME AND AGAIN IN LONDON. 177 
 
 * What will I do gin my hoggie die, 
 My joy, my pride, my hoggie ; 
 My only beast, I had na mae. 
 And vow but I was vogie ! ' 
 
 Davy especially enjoyed Scott. He had much 
 of the poet in his own composition, and has written 
 some splendid lines on the doctrine of Spinoza. 
 Scott and he served to draw each other out, partly 
 by their points of resemblance and partly of con- 
 trast, and the effects were electrical. Both talked 
 their best, Scott becoming less anecdotical and more 
 impassioned ; Davy impregnating his science with 
 Imagination till it shone and burned ; and William 
 Laldlaw standing by, the happiest of the sons of 
 men, and whispering to Lockhart, with his eye 
 cocked like a bird's, *Gude preserve us, this Is a 
 very superior occasion. Eh, sirs ! I wonder If Shak- 
 speare and Bacon ever met to screw Ilk Ither up ! ' 
 
 These were gala days, and nodes coencEqtie Deiiin. 
 
 But there were others which, though homelier, 
 
 were quite as happy. Such, each 28th of October, 
 
 young Walter's birthday, was the Abbotsford 
 
 Hunt, with all its glee and glory, which made 
 
 farmers wish that they could sleep all the year 
 
 through till it came again ; * for there's only ae 
 
 thing in this warld worth living for, and that's the 
 
 Abbotsford Hunt !' And such was his annual bout 
 M 
 
178 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 of salmon-fishing, closing sometimes with such a 
 spearing of the water as is described in Guy Man- 
 nering, — the Sherra himself often appearing on the 
 boat, wielding, if not a spear, a torch, the more 
 poetical of the two, and seeming a premature morn 
 risen on the midnight. Let us not forget the regale 
 on the newly -caught prey, boiled or grilled or 
 roasted, with a great old ash bending over the 
 heads of the party, the Tweed murmuring like a 
 happy bee beside, and the harvest moon rising on 
 the scene ere it was closed, and adding to it her 
 weird light and nameless ecstasy. We fancy Scott 
 exclaiming, ' Burke might be a great man, but he 
 was absurdly wrong when he said the age of 
 chivalry and romance is gone : it is here. Bear 
 witness, that rejoicing river, those grey hills, that 
 lovely moon, and those hearts as young and blithe 
 as can be found in " Christendie ! " ' 
 
 In September 1820 appeared The Abbot, the 
 sequel to The Monastery, and usually thought the 
 stronger of the two. Appearing as it did at the 
 time when the miserable business of George IV. 
 and his Queen was agitating the country, many 
 thought that there must be some allusion, open or 
 covert, in the novel to the times. As Scott's 
 animus in favour of the King was well known, and 
 as the tale might be construed into an apology for 
 
AT HOME AND AGAIN IN LONDON. 179 
 
 the Queen, some wiseacres (including, as Moore's 
 Memoirs inform us, one or two of the Holland 
 House circle) came to the conclusion that Green- 
 field, a man of accomplishments, who had been 
 forced to flee from Edinburgh on account of a 
 frightful scandal, and was in hiding somewhere on 
 the other side of the Border, was its author, as 
 well as of two or three of the other novels. This 
 was a mere falsehood, although it continued long 
 afterwards to be repeated in periodicals, one writer 
 in the Eclectic Revieiv renewing it almost every 
 year ; and the resemblance on which it principally 
 rested, of Mary's case to Caroline's, was quite 
 arbitrary and absurd. A ' Queen,' however, this 
 autumn was triumphant in fiction as well as in 
 reality. Caroline was acquitted ; and Mary, in 
 The Abbots was welcomed with universal applause. 
 The beginning of that novel, though full of a cer- 
 tain melancholy beauty, is rather tedious. But 
 the scenes in Edinburgh, when Roland Graeme 
 enters it, are spirited ; and those in Lochleven, 
 circling round the Queen, are equal to anything in 
 Scott's historical fictions for grace, vraisemblance, 
 and romantic interest. The battle at Langside, 
 and Mary's retreat to England, are most tenderly 
 pictured. Among the characters, Roland and Ca- 
 therine, the lovers, are lively and natural ; Dryfes- 
 
l8o WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 dale, a gloomy spirit, starts from the canvas ; Queen 
 
 Mary is every inch a queen ; and what pathos in 
 
 George of Douglas, and power and character in 
 
 his words, when the Queen fancies herself on the 
 
 back of Rosabelle, her favourite palfrey : ' Mary 
 
 needed Rosabelle, and Rosabelle is here !' Most 
 
 touching, too, the character of the noble abbot, 
 
 Edward Glendinning, to whom, devoted to duty 
 
 as he is in the watches of the night, memories 
 
 of his happier period of life at Glendearg, and 
 
 the pale face of Mary Avenel, still unutterably 
 
 beloved, are often recurring ; and the conversation 
 
 between the Queen, Lords Ruthven and Lindsay of 
 
 the Byres, is one of the most delicately beautiful 
 
 and profoundly heart-searching in all the Novels. 
 
 Scott knew he had recovered his ground, and wrote 
 
 to Lockhart (on a slip of paper inserted in the first 
 
 volume) two lines from a forgotten jezc desprit 
 
 entitled * Tom Cribb's Memorial to Congress,' 
 
 * Up he rose in a funk, lapped a toothful of brandy, 
 And to it again ! any odds upon Sandy.' 
 
 Scott had picked up some of the materials of 
 The Abbot in the course of the annual visits he 
 had been in the habit of paying to Blair Adam, in 
 the neighbourhood of Kinross, where the Right 
 Honourable William Adam fixed his summer 
 residence. In midsummer 1816 he was visited 
 
A T HOME AND AGAIN IN LONDON i8i 
 
 there by some of his friends, William Clark, Adam 
 Fergusson, and Scott. They enjoyed each other 
 so much that they determined to hold a similar 
 meeting every year at the same season and at the 
 same place, along with a few additions to the party. 
 Thus was formed the Blair Adam Club, where 
 Scott never failed to attend from 1816 to 1831. 
 To it, besides those mentioned before, and some 
 near relations of Chief Commissioner Adam, there 
 belonged Thomson of Duddingston, his brother the 
 Registrar-General, and Sir Samuel Shepherd, the 
 Chief Baron of Exchequer. They usually met on 
 a Friday, spent the Saturday on a visit to some 
 scene of historical or picturesque interest in the 
 neighbourhood, on Sunday attended duly and 
 devoutly the parish church of Cleish, devoted 
 Monday to another excursion, and returned to 
 Edinburgh on Tuesday in time for the Courts. In 
 this way they visited St. Andrews, Magus Muir, 
 Castle Campbell, Falkland, and Dunfermline ; and 
 what a picnic in Scott's company would be, we may 
 gather from its picture on the written page of The 
 Antiquary. On one occasion the Chief Commis- 
 sioner and Scott were waiting for the boat at the 
 Hawes Inn near Queensferry. The seals were sport- 
 ing in the glassy bay, and Sir Walter exclaimed, 
 * What fine fellows they are ! I have the greatest 
 
i82 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 respect for them. I would as soon kill a man as a 
 Phoca! The scene on the beach in the novel 
 instantly flashed in the Chief Commissioner's mind, 
 and he saw the author of Waverley and the father 
 of Jonathan Oldbuck standing by his side. In his 
 Abbot he had mentioned the Kiery Craggs, a 
 place of romantic scenery enclosed in the grounds 
 of Blair Adam, and the name of which was not 
 generally known. Soon after its publication the 
 party had met on the top of this rocky ridge, when 
 the Chief Baron Shepherd, looking Scott full in 
 the face, and stamping his staff on the ground, 
 exclaimed, ' Now, Sir Walter, I think we be on the 
 top of the Kiery Craggs V Sir Walter said nothing, 
 but looked down as if conscious he was Mound, 
 found,' like his own Goblin Page. Constable, since 
 Mary had fared so well, insisted on his bringing 
 her great rival Elizabeth on the stage in his next 
 tale ; and, with his usual sagacity, he proposed as 
 subject 'The Armada.' What a pity Scott had 
 not taken the hint ! How the mere words, * The 
 Armada, by the author of Ivanhoe'^ would at that 
 time have startled the public imagination ! It 
 may be said that he could not bear to write up to 
 a title, and that he might have failed. One is 
 reminded of Sir Thomas Vaux's whisper to Richard 
 Coeur de Lion when he was about to cut the mass 
 
A T HOME AND A GAIN IN LONDON. 183 
 
 of steel with his two-handed sword in the company 
 of Saladin, ' Take care ; your majesty is not fully 
 recovered.' — 'Fool!' replied the monarch; Mo 
 you think I could fail in his presence ?' So it is 
 difficult to conceive of Scott failing in the presence 
 of a subject so great as the Armada, — a subject 
 swelled, as it were, by so many elements of 
 grandeur — danger, battle, shipwreck, the war of 
 elements, patriotic passion, defiance, defeat, and 
 glorious deliverance. Elizabeth's medal ran, ' HE' 
 blew with His wind, and they were scattered ;' and 
 that would have been a sublime motto, and have 
 ministered inspiration to the great novelist, in the 
 wind of v/hose awakened spirit the whole mar- 
 vellous story would have begun to live and move, 
 to breathe and burn again, not an atom of the 
 life lost, nor quenched one spark of the heaven- 
 kindled fire ! Scott, however, chose Kenitworth 
 instead ; and in January 1821 appeared that most 
 interesting, varied, pathetic, and sparkling tale. 
 In the word ' sparkling ' we allude to its dialogue, 
 which equals that of the Elizabethan drama in wit 
 and elastic brilliance. Queen Elizabeth, if not a 
 portrait true to her^ is true to Scott's idea of her, 
 and is executed with wonderful power and skill. 
 Amy Robsart is one of his most natural and 
 wom.an-like females. Scott calls some of his other 
 
i84 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 heroines lovely, but he makes her so, both in body 
 and mind. Dickie Sludge escapes from criticism 
 as he does from pursuit, by his dexterity and 
 mother-wit And Lambourne, Varney, and Alasco 
 constitute a famous cluster of villains, — three dark 
 stars, with their different shades of gloom most 
 accurately discriminated. The interest, too, of the 
 story never flags, and becomes near the close un- 
 endurably thrilling. Immediately after the pub- 
 lication of this novel Scott hied to London on 
 legal business ; heard while there of the birth of 
 his grandchild, John Hugh Lockhart, to whom he 
 afterwards addressed his Tales of a Grandfather ; 
 and was consulted about the establishment of a 
 Society of Literature, — a project which bore fruit by 
 and by. In June died his old and most devoted 
 friend, John Ballantyne, after a long and lingering 
 illness. While committing poor Rigdum Funni- 
 dos' remains to the Calton Burying-ground, the 
 heavens, which had been dark, cleared up, and the 
 mid-day sun shone forth. Scott glanced his eye 
 along the gleaming Calton Hill, and then, turning 
 to the grave, said in a whisper to Lockhart, ' I feel 
 as if there would be less sunshine for me from this 
 day forth.' * Garrick's death eclipsed the gaiety of 
 nations.' Ballantyne's, in shading that of Scott, 
 shaded that of Scotland and of the world. 
 
AT HOME AND AGAIN IN LONDON. 185 
 
 On the 19th of July we find him again in Lon- 
 don, present at what one calls the 'contemptible 
 mummery of a coronation/ never so contemptible 
 in the eyes of the public as when George IV. was 
 the king crowned, although to Scott it seemed a 
 personal triumph. He met, indeed, there with what 
 was equivalent. Returning home on foot after the 
 banquet, he got locked in the crowd about three 
 in the morning, and his friend with him became 
 apprehensive of some accident to his lame limb. 
 Scott, observing an open space in the middle of the 
 street, asked a sergeant of the Scots Greys on guard 
 to allow him to pass. He replied it was impossible, 
 his orders were strict. At this moment a wild wave 
 of the multitude came rolling behind, and his com- 
 panion exclaimed, * Sir Walter Scott, take care ! ' The 
 soldier cried out, * What ! Sir Walter Scott ! he shall 
 pass at all events. Make room, men, for our illus- 
 trious countryman.' And amidst shouts of 'Walter 
 Scott, God bless him !' he gained the place of safety. 
 During this visit he called again on Allan Cun- 
 ningham, and talked with him about Crechope 
 Linn, where he had been when a boy, and other 
 Scottish matters; and in returning home he visited 
 Stratford-on-Avon, and wrote on the wall of the 
 room a name only second among British authors 
 to that of its original tenant. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 SCOTT'S RELATION TO HIS CONTEMPORARIES, 
 GOETHE, BYRON, WORDSWORTH, SOUTHEY, 
 AND THE REST. 
 
 'O literary man in Britain since Johnson, 
 
 and before him, Pope, and before him, 
 
 Dryden, had such a good title to the 
 
 name autocrat as Sir Walter Scott. But while 
 
 Dryden and Pope were tyrants, and active tyrants 
 
 too, constantly warring with their rebel subjects, 
 
 writing MacFlecknoes and Dunciads ; and Johnson, 
 
 a lazy despot, who would only take the trouble to 
 
 growl at those who would not kiss his ferula for 
 
 a sceptre ; Scott was a wise, calm, and moderate 
 
 monarch. He had few who did not bow to his 
 
 supremacy, none who hated his rule, none who 
 
 envied him, and none whom he hated or envied. 
 
 Hazlitt abhorred his politics, bitterly assailed 
 
 them, misunderstood the man, and depreciated 
 ■ 18G 
 
NTS CONTEMPORARIES. 187 
 
 the Poet ; but Hazlitt admired the novelist and 
 the novels to enthusiasm. Byron, when most 
 powerful as a writer, on the publication, namely, 
 of his 4th Canto of Childe Harold, was most un- 
 popular as a man ; and when he produced his Don 
 Juan, he lost his poetical prestige too. It was, he 
 says, 
 
 ' His Leipsic, Fahero, 
 His Moscow and his Waterloo was Cain ;' 
 
 and it was not merely the satiated voluptuary but 
 the dethroned king of song who took refuge in 
 Greece. But such was the love felt universally for 
 Scott, that, as in his heyday of power, all rejoiced 
 in his great light, when it sank prematurely, every- 
 body mourned as at a personal calamity, and 
 tried to catch warmth even from the feeble beams 
 of his setting sun. Some authors, while generally 
 popular with the public, are not so with their con- 
 temporaries and rivals in fame. To this Shak- 
 speare and Scott were happy exceptions. All ac- 
 counts show this to have been the case with the first 
 of these, the 'Gentle Willy.' His contemporaries, 
 though they had to look up such a vast height, 
 looked up with love as well as wonder. Words- 
 worth was said by Coleridge to stride so far before 
 other men as to dwindle in the distance. Shak- 
 speare, like Mont Blanc, though exceedingly remote 
 
i88 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 in his altitude, looked close at hand : his distance 
 seemed annihilated by his dazzling splendour. 
 Goethe alone, in his age, was counted as great or 
 greater than Scott ; yet how delightful the relation 
 which subsisted between these two sovereigns of 
 literature ! Scott, who had commenced his career 
 as a translator trom the German Bard, was always 
 ready to acknowledge his admiration of him, speaks 
 in a letter to Goethe himself of * the obligations 
 which he owed to ONE to whom all the authors of 
 this generation have been so much obliged that 
 they are bound to look up to him with filial 
 reverence,' and felt the news of his death very 
 deeply. Goethe, on the other hand, in writing 
 Scott, acknowledges *the lively interest he had 
 long taken in his wonderful pictures of human 
 life.' When he read The Fair Maid of Perth, he 
 expressed his intense appreciation of the masterly 
 genius which that novel exhibited ; and even the 
 Life of Napoleon he valued, not historically, nor 
 artistically, but as a true record of the im- 
 pressions made on such a mind as Scott's, by 
 the marvellous revolutions which were in progress 
 during his own time. To find two men of their 
 order so far eri rapport was the more pleasing, as 
 in taste, certain points of morale, and religious 
 views, they differed very widely, and as Scott was 
 
HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 189 
 
 compelled to severely censure the spirit of some 
 of Goethe's works. 
 
 His friendship with Byron was still more re- 
 markable. No two poets were ever more unlike 
 in most respects, — their chief resemblance lying in 
 the fact that their unbounded popularity during 
 life passed with little pause, and as certainly as 
 the crescent becomes the full moon, into permanent 
 fame. The one was the least, the other the most 
 self-conscious of men. The one was constitutionally 
 happy, though subject to temporary depressions ; 
 the other constitutionally melancholy to wretched- 
 ness, though often surprised into strange excesses 
 of boyish mirth. The one was theoretically a Tory, 
 but, in sympathy with the lower orders, a Liberal ; 
 the other theoretically a Whig, but in feeling as 
 proud an aristocrat as ever admired the Norman 
 blood seen and scarcely seen to flow in his delicate 
 white hands. Byron was dissipated in life ; Scott a 
 domestic, regular, yet genial man. Byron was a 
 sceptic more from pride and passion than from 
 conviction ; Scott a Christian more from the acci- 
 dents of a Scotch training and constitutional vene- 
 ration than from personal experience. Scott was 
 intensely healthy in thought, temperament, and 
 style ; Byron was a strong disease, embodied with 
 weaknesses equal to, and which almost seemed to 
 
IQO WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 support and beautify his strength. Both resembled 
 each other in their lameness ; but this, while it 
 constituted to Byron a constant source of torment, 
 and inspirited some insane utterances of discon- 
 tent, was to Scott a gentle, ever-living lesson, a 
 constant hint, ' Thou also art mortal' Sir Walter 
 imagined that the link connecting him with Byron 
 (as well as afterwards with Moore) was that they 
 were both men of the world rather than authors. 
 But this name, applied to them, did not signify the 
 same thing as when used to others, nor were they 
 men of the world at all in the strict sense of that 
 term. Both, indeed, were tip to the manners and 
 usages of the world ; both mingled at ease in all 
 circles ; both loved the world too well, — the one 
 the position, the other the fame and pleasure, it 
 gave them ; but neither must be confounded with 
 that heartless, soulless slave of form and fashion, 
 that prostrate worshipper of success and eclat, 
 which the ordinary ' man of the world ' too often 
 becomes. And, latterly, both seceded in a great 
 measure from society, — Byron in disgust and dis- 
 appointment ; Scott because, while he perhaps still 
 loved, he had failed in it, and knew that even in 
 his case it had exacted a certain penalty, and fixed 
 a certain brand on his brow. 
 
 In point of genius, taking Scott in the entire 
 
HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 191 
 
 sphere of his achievements, he was undoubtedly 
 the larger orb of the two. He was simpler and 
 sincerer; his sympathies were much wider, his 
 dramatic power greater, his knowledge immensely 
 larger, his touches of nature making the whole 
 world kin were far more numerous. As Shakspeare 
 to Marlowe, as Goethe to Schiller, so was Scott to 
 Byron. But as a poet Byron was unquestionably 
 superior. Scott has produced no such compact 
 and consummate masterpiece as The Corsair ; no 
 such long and splendid gush of high -wrought 
 enthusiasm as the 4th Canto of Childe Harold; 
 no such exquisite poetical drama as Manfred; no 
 such daring flight of imagination as Cain; and no 
 amalgam in a similar compass, of wit, sarcasm, 
 poetry, passion, knowledge of human nature, inimi- 
 table ease of writing, interesting adventure, terse 
 sentiment, concentred power of description, and 
 melting pathos, as Don Juati. In sobriety, sweet- 
 ness, health, and breadth, he is as far superior to 
 Byron as he is in moral sentiment ; but he is inferior 
 in strength of muscle, in intensity, eloquence, and 
 eagle-winged genius. It must be remembered, 
 too, that Byron had performed all his marvellous 
 achievements and was dead, at an age when Scott 
 had only written the first ot his larger poems. 
 In his relation to the Lakers, and particularly to 
 
192 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge, Scott had ample room 
 at once for his generosity and for his wisdom. He 
 knew that these men were much underrated in 
 their own time, and that before them lay a great 
 empire in the future, — an empire which, though 
 it could not overturn, yet might divide dominion 
 with his own. Men of less kindly and manly 
 nature might have felt prospective jealousy toward 
 these poets who, though struggling, were secure 
 of triumph, and whose influence might probably 
 become profounder, if not so wide as his. Instead, 
 however, of seeking to repress or damn them with 
 faint praise, Scott is never weary, in his correspon- 
 dence and conversation, of praising them ; and in 
 his Novels, now. by quotations from their works in 
 the text, and now by allusions in footnotes to their 
 talents, he writes them up with all his might. He 
 procured, we have seen, the poet-laureateship for 
 Southey. He listened to Coleridge, ^ that extra- 
 ordinary man who, during a very hearty dinner, 
 did not say a single word, and then uttered a long 
 and most eloquent harangue on the Samothracian 
 mysteries ' with profound admiration, and did not 
 dare to interrupt him even when he questioned 
 the unity of Homer and the integrity of the Homeric 
 poems. In The Monastery he calls him the most 
 imaginative of our modern bards ; and in Ivanhoey 
 
HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 193 
 
 after speaking of him in the text as having written 
 but too httle, he adds in a note, ' that his unfinished 
 sketches display more talent than the laboured 
 masterpieces of others.' For Wordsworth he felt 
 the highest respect — a feeling compounded of 
 admiration for his original genius, and of love for 
 that genuineness and depth of nature, that sound 
 moral feeling and pure enthusiasm, which he pos- 
 sessed in a degree only inferior to Milton. 
 
 In doing and feeling all this Scott was thoroughly 
 disinterested. Even had he needed a quid pro quo 
 and expected it, it did not come. Southey is 
 rather stingy in his laudations of Scott ; and when 
 he does not speak out plainly, he can hint a fault 
 and hesitate dislike. Wordsworth never even pro- 
 fessed any great admiration for Scott's poetry, 
 although he loved the man warmly, and wrote a 
 plaintive sonnet on his leaving his native land, 
 which we shall quote in the sequel. 
 
 Coleridge eloquently eulogized many of Scott's 
 novels ; but in this as in other matters his judg- 
 ments were to a great extent neutralized by his 
 caprice, uncertainty, and thousand-and-one way- 
 ward moods. Toryism no doubt formed an element 
 of union between the Lakers and Scott. But we 
 are persuaded that even had these men been 
 
 Radicals, and bitter detractors of Scott withal, 
 
 N 
 
194 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 he would have spoken of their genius just as he 
 did, — such was the largeness of his heart, and the 
 sweet-blooded tone of his mental and moral con- 
 stitution. 
 
 With Moore, too, he was on kindly terms. And 
 for George Crabbe he had a special affection, and 
 did not know whether more to admire his simplicity 
 as a man or his strong sinewy genius as a poet. 
 And we shall find that Crabbe's poetry was read 
 to him (as it had been a generation before to 
 Charles James Fox) in his dying days. 
 
 Constable knew to his cost how indulgent Scott 
 was to the inferior writers, for whom the author of 
 Waverley persuaded him to publish. He said he 
 always ^ liked Scott's ain bairns, but not those of 
 his fostering.' On the other hand, a vast number 
 of young writers of verse and of prose from every 
 county in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and from 
 every civilised country in the world, sent in books 
 or MSS. to the affable Archangel of Abbotsford ; 
 and hundreds of instances are on record of the real 
 kindness which he showed them, — a kindness all the 
 more valuable that he was strictly honest in his 
 judgments and faithful in his strictures, although 
 mild and measured in his expressions. Merciful to 
 all, he never praised any in whom he did not per- 
 ceive real merit. Ingratitude his placid nature 
 
HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 195 
 
 prepared for, and would have forgiven ; but in- 
 gratitude, unless from Hogg in one of his wild, 
 senseless moods, which he lived himself to regret, 
 he never met. He had the art of sheathing the 
 sting of his censure in such honeyed phrases that 
 it was scarcely felt, or, as the Irishman has it, — 
 
 * He kicked them down-stairs with such a good grace, 
 That they thought he was handing them up.' 
 
 It were well if all who in a lesser but still a large 
 measure are pestered with sucking writers, and feel 
 the penalty rather greater than the honour, could 
 take a leaf out of the master's book, and be enabled 
 to imitate his inward honesty and his outward bon- 
 homie. Not till one tries can he feel how difficult 
 it is to do so. 
 
 Around Scott there rose a giant brood of novelists, 
 in Scotland and elsewhere, inferior to him, but of 
 decided power and genius, — strong spurs upon his 
 mountain chain. Such were Professor Wilson, 
 Lockhart, Gait, Miss Ferrier the authoress of The In- 
 heritmice and Marriage, and, some time afterwards, 
 Lord Bulwer Lytton. In all of these Scott took a 
 warm interest, and felt for them a true admiration. 
 He lived long enough to read and see the promise 
 in Bulwer's earlier novels. And all these authors 
 have reciprocated his feelings, — Bulwer dedicating 
 
196 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 his Eugene Aram to Scott in language glowing 
 with gratitude and enthusiasm. Unless Bulwer, 
 none of these writers approached their model 
 in popularity, nor did any other, till Dickens 
 arose, — Dickens, of whose sudden and premature 
 death we have this day heard (the lOth of June), 
 in whom, in common with the whole literary world, 
 and far beyond that world's limits, we mourn a 
 great cheerful light quenched ere it was evening, 
 and in whom we have always traced many of Scott's 
 qualities, specially his warmth and width of sym- 
 pathies, his genial and kindly nature, and the 
 desire, which was ever uppermost with him, to find 
 the soul of goodness in things that are evil, and the 
 essence of beauty in objects thought by vulgar 
 eyes common and unclean. We called him in his 
 youth VBonnie Prince Charlie,' and must now 
 lament that in the fulness of his powers, and in the 
 height of his benignant dominion, he has been 
 called away ! 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 ' CARLE, NOW THE KING 'S COME.' 
 
 J^ROM London Scott came down to Abbots- 
 ford, — plans for the completion of which 
 he had brought along with him. Lock- 
 hart and his young wife had established themselves 
 in the little cottage of Chiefswood, and there Scott 
 was often with them, adding fresh brightness to 
 what was then a bright and happy spot. Often in 
 the mornings, after his daily task was over, ' the 
 clatter of Sybil Grey's hoofs, the yelping of Mus- 
 tard and Spice, and his own joyous shout of 
 reveillee under our windows, were the signal that 
 he had burst his toils, and meant for that day to 
 " take his ease in his inn." ' He was then busy with 
 T/ie Pirate, and sometimes wrote chapters of it in 
 a dressing-room in Chiefswood, which he would 
 hand to his friend William Erskine, who, as sheriff 
 of Orkney and Shetland, knew the localities well, 
 
 197 
 
198 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 and was proud of being consulted in the progress 
 of the book. Altogether this was a busy and 
 joyous autumn with Scott. Besides The Pirate, he 
 was writing some miscellaneous things. Among 
 others, he had begun a series of Private Letters in 
 the antique style, descriptive of manners in the 
 time of James First of England. On reflection, he 
 threw them aside, and employed their materials in 
 the Fortimes of Nigel, the first chapters of which 
 he wrote ere The Pirate was completed. His 
 pleasure, indeed, might have been somewhat abated 
 had he known that the sale of his novels was 
 falling off considerably, and that their reputation 
 was slowly waning. This, however, was carefully, 
 but we think injudiciously, concealed from him 
 by his publishers ; and his confidence in his 
 powers was such, that he had, ere Nigel appeared, 
 exchanged instruments and received bills for four 
 works of fiction, all unwritten, and their names 
 unknown. 
 
 In December 1821 The Pirate a.ppQ3Lred, and was, 
 on the whole, well received. The story, indeed, 
 was extremely improbable, and in many parts not 
 pleasing. Noma was a fantastic character, — Meg 
 Merrilees reproduced, and made ridiculous by her 
 own father. But there was a strong smell of the 
 sea throughout ; and the wild scenery of Shetland 
 
'CARLE, NOW THE KINGS COME! 199 
 
 was described with picturesque and vivid power. 
 The ancient manners of Ultima Thule were pre- 
 served in amber. The characters, as a whole, were 
 admirable, — the Pirates, rough, fresh, and strong, 
 with Cleveland towering above them into a man, 
 if not into a finished hero, — Claud Halcro, capital 
 with his catchword of ' glorious John,' and his fine, 
 spirited songs, — Magnus Troil, genuine heart of 
 Norway fir, true, genial, frank, and noble, — Bryce 
 Snailsfoot, the most hypocritical of professors, and 
 Triptolemus Yellowley, the most ludicrously un- 
 fortunate of agricultural improvers. And what a 
 magical eftect is produced by the picturesque con- 
 trast between the amiable sisters, Minna and 
 Brenda, — one dark, starry, and beautiful as an 
 oriental night, and the other serene and mildly 
 lustrous as a Zetland summer day ! 
 
 Nothing very remarkable occurred in his history 
 till, in the course of two rainy mornings, he pro- 
 duced Halidoii Hill. This was at first intended as 
 a contribution to a volume of Poetical Miscellanies 
 Joanna Baillie was projecting in behalf of a friend 
 who had got into deep commercial waters, but, as 
 it expanded beyond his intentions, he published it 
 in a separate volume, and wrote for Miss Baillie 
 instead MacDuff's Cross. This small mediocrity 
 of Halidon Hill Constable purchased from him at 
 
WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the price for which, fourteen years before, Marmion 
 had been sold — a thousand pounds ! 
 
 Byron, meanwhile, had dedicated Cain to Scott, 
 — a poem which the spice of profanity it contains 
 rendered very unpopular at the time, but which 
 Scott regarded as one of the grandest of the noble 
 poet's productions ; certainly it is one of the most 
 original, and in parts the purest and most plaintive. 
 In May 1822 The Fortunes of Nigel -dj^^^^ds^di, and 
 was received in London with much enthusiasm ; 
 in other places with a kind of sober delight suit- 
 able to its general character. As a picture of an 
 age, and as a portraiture of James the First, it is 
 almost perfect. Alsatia is a unique sketch, as good 
 as could have come from one of the Elizabethan 
 dramatists, and with some touches of exquisite 
 depth and humour, as, where describing the cap- 
 tain and the hedge parson fighting and swearing 
 at each other, he says, 'A strife in which the 
 parson's superior acquaintance with theology en- 
 abled him greatly to surpass the Captain,' a stroke 
 worthy of Fielding. Margaret Ramsay and the 
 Lady Hermione are both finely drawn and finely 
 contrasted, and so are Jin Vin and Frank Tunstall. 
 The three villains, Dalgarno, Captain Culpepper, and 
 Andrew Skurliewhitter, are all damned to divers 
 degrees of everlasting infamy with a discrimination 
 
'CARLE, NOW THE KINGS COME: 201 
 
 equal to the severity of the sentence. George 
 Heriot has full and heaped justice done to his 
 shrewd and benevolent character. The Prince and 
 Buckingham, too, are vigorously sketched. Nor 
 must Ritchie Moniplies be forgotten, with his 
 solemn countenance and coiled -up self-conceit, 
 dismissed in company, — surely the punishment is 
 too penal, — with Martha Trapbois, with her long 
 purse, horrible squint, and vinegar visage. Nigel, 
 in its usually quiet and subdued tone, resembles 
 one of the tragedies of Lillo ; and its power is as 
 homely in its elements as commanding in its 
 results. Peveril of the Peak was begun ere Nigel 
 was fully launched ; but whether from rapidity of 
 production, or some other cause, it ranked far down 
 in the scale of his Novels, — the first part being in- 
 tolerably tedious, and the second improbable and 
 overdone — a long convulsive spasm. Fenella alone 
 (partly derived from Goethe's Mignon), like a 
 strange shooting meteor, crosses and relieves the 
 dulness ; and even she is more distinguished by 
 oddity than by strength. Yet this romance of 
 Peveril served to give a new cognomen to Scott. 
 Patrick Robertson, the famous wit, was busy crack- 
 ing jests to the younger lawyers, when he saw 
 Sir Walter approaching. * Silence, boys, here 
 comes old Peveril. I see the Peak' Scott's reply 
 
202 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 was ready, * Better Peveril of the Peak any day 
 than Peter with \ki^painch' 
 
 Besides various other matters, Scott had found 
 time amidst all this for writing The Lives of the 
 Novelists in the big, clumsy series of the Ballan- 
 tynes, and had written them with consummate 
 skill, taste, and good feeling. 
 
 In August 1822 George the Fourth visited Edin- 
 burgh; and while Byron was writing with prodi- 
 gious spirit, and the very sublime of scorn, his 
 Irish Avatar y where he satirizes in the bitterest 
 terms the visit the year before of Fum the Fourth 
 to Ireland, that land 
 
 ' Which he loved hke his bride,' 
 
 Scott was moving heaven and earth to secure him 
 a triumphant reception in the northern metropolis. 
 Among a hundred other appliances and means 
 which he was compelled to use, not only to raise, 
 but to direct and control the steam of enthusiasm, 
 he consulted the Muse, and she produced a clever 
 ballad, entitled 'Carle, now the King's come,' in 
 which he flattered with great tact all the parties, 
 particularly the Highland chieftains, who had con- 
 flicting claims to precedence in connection with the 
 royal arrival. He employed means more substan- 
 tial than poetry. He gave sumptuous entertain- 
 
'CARLE, NOW THE KINGS COME: 203 
 
 ments, and these had their own conciliating influ- 
 ence. At length, on the 14th of August, we see 
 * Peverir and his snowy Peak rowing, through thick 
 rain, to the Royal George, which is riding at anchor 
 in Leith roads. The King is standing on the 
 deck of the yacht, and when told that Scott is 
 alongside, he exclaims, '■ What ! Sir Walter Scott ! 
 the man in Scotland I most wish to see ! Let him 
 come up.' Scott then ascended the ship, and, with 
 an appropriate speech, presented His Majesty, in 
 the name of the ladies of Edinburgh, with a St. 
 Andrew's Cross in silver, which the King of course 
 received graciously, and promised to wear in public 
 in gratitude to the fair donors. The 15 th, the day 
 of the landing, saw Sir Walter a proud and a busy 
 man. He formed, of course, a prominent object 
 in the procession from Leith to Holy rood, which 
 must have been a magnificent spectacle, although 
 mixed with a good deal of trumpery, with the 
 military element preponderating too much, and 
 certainly not so interesting as when Queen Vic- 
 toria, on the 3d September 1842, with Albert by her 
 side, rode up from Holyrood to the Castle through 
 multitudes, every heart in which felt the loyalty 
 which the lips were loudly proclaiming; nor so 
 sublime as the Volunteer Review on the 7th August 
 i860, when the eye of royalty and the loveliest 
 
204 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 light of autumn blended in looking down on the 
 collected might, manhood, and valour of the Scot- 
 tish nation, and when many an enthusiast felt 
 Scott's words burning on his tongue, 
 
 * Where is the coward that would not dare 
 To fight for such a land ?' 
 
 Two of the remarkable men who witnessed the 
 procession of 1822 we must single out from the 
 rest : George Crabbe, who has come from the 
 Vale of Belvoir to visit Sir Walter, and who stands 
 amidst the crowd thinking much, saying nothing, 
 adding not a soHtary cheer to the sea of sound 
 which is roaring on all sides ; and Dr. Chalmers, 
 who has lifted off his hat from his grand head not 
 yet grown grey, and is waving it in the air, ex- 
 claiming the while, ' God bless him ; he is a fine 
 fellow.' 
 
 We need not dwell on the further particulars of 
 an event at which Scotland now blushes, and at 
 nothing more than at the share her greatest son 
 had in this act of public degradation. At the 
 time. Sir Walter received a share of attention and 
 applause only second to the sovereign. Sir Robert 
 Peel says, * On the day on which His Majesty 
 was to pass from Holyrood, Scott proposed to me 
 to accompany him up the High Street to see 
 
'CARLE, NOW THE KINGS COME: 205 
 
 whether the arrangements were completed. I said 
 to him, " You are trying a dangerous experiment ; 
 you will never get through in privacy." He said, 
 " They are entirely absorbed in loyalty." But I 
 was the better prophet. He was recognised from 
 the one extremity of the street to the other ; and 
 never did I see such an instance of national devo- 
 tion expressed.' 
 
 Yet some ludicrous misadventures, along with 
 one serious calamity and one signal mortification, 
 befell Scott during these gala days. When the 
 King received him in his yacht, he ordered a bottle 
 of Highland whisky to be produced, took a glass 
 himself, and made Scott drink another. Scott 
 requested that the King would present him with 
 the glass out of which he had just drunk his 
 health, and proceeded to deposit it in the safest 
 portion of his dress. When he returned to Castle 
 Street, he found Crabbe newly arrived. He saluted 
 him with warmth, and, forgetting all about the 
 King's present, sat down beside him ; the glass 
 perished, and he screamed aloud under the advent 
 of a considerable wound. This was only a scratch. 
 But a day or two after this, his friend Lord Kin- 
 neder (William Erskine) died, stung to death by 
 a base calumny, and Scott, on one of the busiest 
 days of the royal visit, attended his funeral, and 
 
2o6 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 returning in a most melancholy plight, had to 
 plunge into gaieties, or, ^ as Crabbe has it,' 
 said he, 
 
 ' To hide in rant the heartache of the night/ 
 
 There were other circumstances which annoyed 
 him. There was a general rumour that His Majesty 
 did not fully appreciate Scott's services in the visit 
 matters, and that he spoke of him and his ever- 
 lasting clans and tartans as a bore. Lockhart, 
 indeed, denies this, but some believe it notwith- 
 standing. Mrs. Johnstone, the well-known author 
 of Clan Albin and editor of Tait, then on the spot, 
 asserted it often in print, and specially insisted 
 on the fact that cards were issued for a royal 
 entertainment at Castle Street, but withdrawn in 
 disgust. If so, the King's conduct was very un- 
 grateful to one who had done so much to gild his 
 stained reputation, and to uphold his tottering 
 throne both by his private and public efforts. 
 
 Another dark event blackened still more this 
 August. Lord Castlereagh died by his own hands, 
 it being understood that one cause at least of the 
 sad event was his counsel, like that of Achitophel, 
 having been rejected. He had opposed the royal 
 visit, but opposed it in vain. It seemed the 
 Man's Hand writing prophetic characters of lamen- 
 
'CARLE, NOW THE KINGS COME: 207 
 
 tation, mourning, and woe on the wall of a Bel- 
 shazzar banqueting-room, and 
 
 * Made men tremble who never wept/ 
 
 In fine, Scott's exertions on this occasion nearly- 
 cost him his life, and, but for the safety-valve of a 
 prickly eruption on the skin, he would have fallen 
 a victim to the effects of his sincere but short- 
 sighted loyalty. When recovered, he instantly re- 
 sumed his gigantic labours. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 SCOTT IN IRELAND. 
 
 'N the close of 1822 Scott commenced 
 Quentin Durward, but was considerably 
 retarded by his environment with the 
 various clubs, — Bannatyne, Roxburgh, Blair Adam, 
 etc., — of which he was a member, as well as by his 
 connection with some of those joint-stock com- 
 panies, such as the Edinburgh Oil Company, which 
 were beginning to spring up like mushrooms 
 around him. The subject was probably suggested 
 to him by the return of his friend Mr. Skene from 
 France, bringing along with him drawings and 
 landscapes of that beautiful land, besides an ac- 
 curately kept and well-written journal. It was, 
 however, a drawback to the novelist that he had 
 never visited the country himself, and he got at 
 times perplexed and bewildered amidst the locali- 
 ties he was compelled to describe. 
 
 208 
 
SCOTT IN IRELAND. loc) 
 
 In June 1823 the novel appeared, fitly coming 
 out amidst the blaze and splendour of summer, for 
 it is one of the gayest and most buoyant of all his 
 tales. At home it was, strange to tell, not well 
 received at first, but was welcomed on the Con- 
 tinent with a burst of applause so loud and unani- 
 mous, that its spent echo returned on this country 
 Avas fame. The power was seen to lie, first of all, 
 in the youthful freshness breathing out of Quentin 
 himself, one of the most life-like of all Scott's 
 heroes ; again, in the unmitigated interest of the 
 story, and the elastic, easy force of the style ; but 
 especially in the contrast, drawn out with a line so 
 long and bold, between the bull-headed Burgundy 
 and the crafty, cunning, unscrupulous, cruel, and 
 superstitious Louis XI. Shakspeare in many of 
 his plays adds a fool to his dramatis personcs 
 as a foil, a wild ornament, and a running com- 
 mentary. Scott often uses, for a similar purpose, 
 a villain with a dash of romance in him, and never 
 with more effect than in Hayraddin Maugrabin the 
 Bohemian, who is no commonplace town black- 
 guard, but a poetical ragamuffin, his eye flashing with 
 a mystic fire, with strange Oriental blasphemies 
 mingling with unmeasured leasings as they flow 
 out of his supple yet burning lips, and his swarthy 
 countenance, seeming to shine, not in the light of 
 
 O 
 
2IO WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 sun or moon, but in the weird lustre of the star 
 Aldeboran, the Cynosure for ages of his wandering 
 race. Scott puts into his mouth a * dying speech/ 
 but there is no 'confession,' unless it be of his 
 hardened, hopeless, and glorying atheism. How 
 he dashes his daring hand into the waters of an- 
 nihilation before plunging amidst them ! Danton 
 alone has equalled the following burst : ' Soul ! 
 Name not that word to me again. There is, there 
 can be, there shall be no such thing : it is a dream 
 of priestcraft. My hope, trust, and expectation is 
 that the mysterious frame of humanity shall melt 
 into the general mass of nature, to be recom- 
 pounded in the other forms with which she daily 
 supplies those which daily disappear, and return 
 under different forms, — the watery particles to 
 streams and showers, the earthy parts to enrich 
 their mother earth, the airy portions to wanton in 
 the breeze, and those of fire to supply the blaze of 
 Aldeboran and his brethren. In this faith have I 
 lived, and in this faith shall I die !' 
 
 In August 1823 Abbotsford was brightened still 
 more by the presence of Miss Edgeworth ; and a 
 most delightful reunion took place between two 
 spirits who, notwithstanding great disparity of 
 genius, resembled each other in nature, simplicity, 
 healthiness, humour, good sense, and the power of 
 
SCO TT IN IRELAND. 1 1 1 
 
 painting the manners of primitive races. The 
 harvest moon of that beautiful season saw no 
 happier hearts, 
 
 * In all that slept beneath her soft voluptuous ray/ 
 
 than hers who produced Castle Rackrent and 
 Enmii, and his who had equalled if not surpassed 
 them both in Waverley and Guy Mannering. It 
 was a fortnight of unmingled felicity to them, and 
 the whole party circling round them. 
 
 About the middle of December Scott published 
 St. Ronaiis Well, where, again, the old layer of 
 weak and commonplace matter made its appear- 
 ance, and that so prominently, that not the most 
 forcible writing in parts was able to counteract its 
 influence. As in the story, the hostelry of Meg 
 Dodds was injured by the tawdry modern hotel 
 with its gimcrack inhabitants. The villain of the 
 tale was too bad, and as mean as he was detestable ; 
 and the termination was painfully tragic. There 
 was no tedium, however, in the slip-slop matter, 
 and the power of the master came out ever and 
 anon in all its plenitude. Indeed, the characters of 
 this novel are wonderfully fresh and numerous. 
 There is Meg Dodds herself, the queen of alehouse- 
 keepers, the lady of Luckies, the modern and more 
 than Mrs. Quickly; Clara Mowbray, the very 
 
212 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 crack, in whose mirror-like mind follows always 
 the waving line of beauty, and whose death is so 
 overpoweringly pathetic ; Touchwood, that noble 
 old Nabob ; Captain MacTurk, with his short red 
 nose, snuffing Glenlivet or gunpowder in every 
 wind, and fearing the broom of Meg Dodds more 
 than a whole battery of cannon ; the melancholy 
 Tyrrell ; Joseph Cargill, the sad, gifted, amiable, 
 dreaming recluse ; Solmes, the double-faced sombre 
 scoundrel ; Mucklewham, the well-named doer, or 
 man of Scottish business in the past age ; the 
 odd urchin who crosses Tekyll on his way to the 
 well ; Bindloose, the wary banker ; the old hump- 
 backed postilion, who (a thing Thomas Aird 
 specially notices), when Tyrrell, who had been 
 thought dead, reappears, flees into the stable, and 
 — a touch of quite Shakspearean verisimilitude — 
 begins in the extremity of his terror to saddle a 
 horse ; and last, not least, the inimitable Widow 
 Blower, changing Dr. Quackleben's name at every 
 second sentence, and at last changing her own, and 
 becoming Mrs. Quackleben, and who is led to the 
 nuptial altar like a fat hog to sacrifice, rejoicing 
 in her fillet 'braws/ ;Such variety and richness 
 of character found in one of Scott's second-class 
 novels is something quite wonderful. The village 
 of Inverleithen, although not at all like St. Ronan's 
 
SCO TT IN IRELAND. 2 1 3 
 
 in the main features of its scenery, eagerly claimed 
 the name ; and the St, Ronan's Games were formed, 
 and continued long to be celebrated there, being 
 usually followed by a dinner, at Avhich such men 
 as Hogg, Lockhart, and Professor Wilson were the 
 presiding spirits. 
 
 1824 produced but one novel, Redgatmtlef, — a 
 novel where, unlike the former, all the separate 
 parts in point of writing are excellent, but do 
 npt blend happily into a whole. The book is an 
 awkward compound of narrative and correspon- 
 dence. Of Charles Stuart brought again into the 
 play we cry, — 
 
 * Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage,' 
 
 and are tempted to hiss him off as a solemn, 
 pompous noodle. Others of the characters are 
 failures. Dairsie Latimer is, begging his pardon, a 
 donkey ; Allan Fairford a prig ; Redgauntlet him- 
 self a spasmodic abortion ; Lilias a doll ; Pate in 
 Peril an incident rather than a character ; Fair- 
 ford's father too stiff and formal ; Crystal Nixon a 
 villain pure and simple, almost the only villain in 
 all Scott's Novels without a single redeeming trait ; 
 old Tom Trumbull a hideous, incredible hypocrite ; 
 and Joshua Geddes the driest of all dry Quakers. 
 But Peter Peebles, with thy tow wig, thy ever- 
 
214 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 lasting lawsuit, and thine insatiable thirst, and 
 Nanty Ewart, with thy sunburnt face, eyes shot 
 with bile and blood, wasted constitution, and 
 broken heart, ye must live for ever. And so, too, 
 shall the boy Benjie and Wandering Willy, and 
 that ancestor of his, riding ' bauld wi' brandy and 
 desperate with distress' through the black wood 
 of Pitmurkie, and forgathering there with the 
 terrible stranger, who takes him to the mouth of 
 hell and a step farther. Indeed, the whole of 
 'Wandering Willy's Tale' is Shakspearean in power 
 of imagination and graphic ease of description. 
 
 Redgaimtlet was rather a disappointment at the 
 time, and, whether for this reason or not, no other 
 novel appeared this year. Scott, however, found 
 for himself full employment in furnishing his library 
 and museum, painting his house, corresponding 
 with his many friends, speaking at the opening of 
 the New Edinburgh Academy, — an academy which 
 has since produced so many fine scholars, and been 
 presided over by such able teachers : need we 
 name among the former the Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury and Robertson of Brighton, and among 
 the latter Archdeacon Williams, Carmichael, and 
 MacDougall, — writing an epitaph on his favourite 
 dog Maida, and watching with a poet's eye the 
 red billows of that terrible fire which, in November, 
 
SCOTT IN IRELAND. 215 
 
 reduced so many of the old buildings of Edin- 
 burgh to ashes. This year died Byron ; and Sir 
 Walter wrote, in the Edhiburgh Weekly Journaly 
 a generous and glowing tribute to his memory, 
 which ranks in eloquence, if not in exquisite de- 
 licacy, with those testimonials paid by Jeffrey 
 to Playfair and to James Watt immediately after 
 their deaths, and which contains one very noble 
 image. Alluding to Byron's faults, and to his 
 early and sudden death, Scott says, ' It is as 
 if the great orb of day were to disappear for 
 ever from our view while we were busy looking' 
 through our telescopes at the spots which bedijnmed 
 its lustre! This would have been as true as it is 
 sublime a few years before ; but at the time re- 
 ferred to men were rather gazing at the sun throw- 
 ing off an eclipse which had been strangling his 
 beams, and now, with the last speck of the dark- 
 ness, the luminary himself had vanished. This 
 tribute of Scott only expressed the universal feel- 
 ing at the time. No death, unless that of the 
 Princess Charlotte or Prince Albert, ever produced 
 such a wide sensation as that of Lord Byron. It 
 seemed to stun the very heart of the world. En- 
 thusiasts in Greece, who were flocking to his stan- 
 dard, when they heard that the Pilgrim of Eternity 
 had departed, turned back and went homewards. 
 
2i6 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Poets and literary men in all countries of the 
 earth, from the patriarch Goethe to the youngest 
 rhymster, vied with each other in pouring out 
 tributes to his memory, which had one unques- 
 tionable merit — they were all sincere. Old men in 
 London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow wept ; and boys 
 on the verge of the Perthshire Highlands stood 
 dumb and awestruck at the tidings, as if an earth- 
 quake were shaking their native vale. Many 
 blamed destiny for his death ; many the Grecian 
 war ; none, at this time, the unhappy victim him- 
 self. Death seemed to have expiated all his 
 offences ; and that * late remorse of love ' which he 
 had predicted was seen shedding tears and sowing 
 laurels over his early grave. Thus, in the main, 
 for., five or six years, it continued till the year 1830, 
 when Moore's Life awoke a fresh gush of interest in 
 his memory, and Lady Byron, no doubt under consi- 
 derable provocation, stepped forward and uttered — 
 what "^ a hint, an insinuation, a whisper ; but a hint 
 of the most damning character, — an insinuation of 
 the most deadly and damaging kind, — a whisper, 
 methinks, resembling that of which Coleridge in 
 his Mariner speaks, — 
 
 * A wicked whisper came, and made 
 Their hearts as dry as dust.' 
 
 And we need hardly mention how Mrs. Stowe 
 
SCOTT IN IRELAND. 217 
 
 came out lately with her True Story, opening up 
 all the old sluices of slander, and giving to the hint- 
 whispers airy-nothing — foul gas of Lady Byron's 
 document a 'local habitation and a name,' — a rash 
 and rank embodiment. On this subject we shall 
 say no more than this, that Scott, from his letters, 
 seems to have known the very worst about Byron ; 
 and yet, though he says of some things he heard 
 about him, 'Premat alta nox,' he continued to 
 love, admire, and defend him, while lamenting that 
 he was a Genie mal loge, — words we may translate 
 into, ' Byron was an Apollo saddled with a lame 
 foot, a bad temper, a bilious temperament, a 
 foolish mother, and the passions of a demoniac ; 
 but, notwithstanding all his infirmities, vices, and 
 misfortunes, the scion of a celestial race, — an 
 erring man, or fallen angel if you will, but not a 
 monster.' 
 
 1825 began gaily with Scott; and in February 
 his son Walter married Miss Jobson, the heiress 
 of Lochore, in Fife, — the young couple repairing, 
 after the marriage, to the bridegroom's regimental 
 quarters in Ireland, where Sir Walter promised 
 to visit them in the summer. The Tales of the 
 Crusaders appeared in June. The Betrothed was 
 good in the commencement, and powerful near 
 the close. The hawking scene at the Red Pool 
 
2i8 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 is in Scott's best style, but much of it was tedious 
 and drawling ; and the novel, as a whole, had too 
 much of that old wives* fable shape, in which, 
 alas, like the formosa mulier of Horace, ending in 
 atruin piscentj his unequalled story-telling power 
 was doomed to degenerate. But The Talisman 
 was received nearly as Ivanhoe had been. En- 
 chantment and elaborate finish were never more 
 thoroughly united than in this tale, which Wilson 
 has pronounced Scott's only artistic whole, and 
 which drew from Mrs. Hemans, after spending 
 some delightful hours reading it in her garden, 
 one of her sweetest minor strains. About this 
 time Archibald Constable projected his famous 
 Miscellany ; and it was agreed that one-half of 
 a cheap issue of Waverley should begin the 
 series, and be followed by a Life of Napoleon, in 
 four parts, by the author of Waverley. To this 
 Scott jocularly alludes in the introduction to 
 The Crusaders. And no sooner was the scheme 
 started than he commenced, with characteristic 
 promptitude, the preliminary sketch of the French 
 Revolution. 
 
 On the 8th of July he set out, along with Lock- 
 hart, for Ireland. He went there to see his son, 
 to visit Miss Edgeworth, and to gratify the warm- 
 hearted people of that country. They sailed down 
 
SCOTT IN IRELAND, iic^ 
 
 the Firth of Clyde, where Scott got very gracious 
 with a Glasgow bailie, — a veritable Nicol Jarvie ; 
 and as they were drinking their rum punch, told 
 him an amusing story about Thom of Govan, 
 a witty divine of the last century, who once 
 preached before the Town Council of Glasgow 
 from the words, * Ephraim's drink is sour, and he 
 hath committed whoredom continually;' on which 
 the bailie groaned, and said that he doubted 
 *Tham o' Govan was at heart a ne'er-do-weel/ 
 They crossed to Belfast, paying a guinea each 
 for the passage across. On their way to Dublin 
 they halted at Drogheda, where Scott visited 
 the field of the battle of the Boyne, and recited 
 to an astonished veteran who accompanied him 
 the famous ballad. The Crossing of the Water. 
 Arrived, they went to Walter's house ; and Scott 
 looked round with joy and pride as he first sat 
 at his son's table. Most people will remember 
 with what a peculiar feeling they first sat at 
 their own ; but this was a purer emotion, and is 
 well likened by Lockhart to a passage in Pindary 
 where, in order to paint the highest rapture of 
 happiness, he represents an old man, with a foam- 
 ing wine-cup in his hand, at his child's wedding- 
 feast. So soon as his arrival in Dublin was known, 
 he received every possible attention, both in public 
 
220 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 and private. When recognised in the street, and 
 when visiting the theatre, he was received with 
 loud huzzas ; indeed, the enthusiasm was so great, 
 that it scandalized the worthy Glasgow bailie, 
 who said it was *owre like worshipping the crea- 
 ture.' This is only a specimen of the droll stories 
 with which this Irish excursion characteristically 
 abounded. A college librarian said to Scott, 'I 
 have been so busy that I have not read yo2i7' 
 Redgatmtlet^ * I have not happened to fall in with 
 such a work,' was Scott's quiet reply. A female 
 guide had shown him and his party some of the 
 usual show-scenes ; when he was gone, a gentle- 
 man told her he was a poet. 'Poet,' said she, 
 * divil a bit of him, but an honourable gentle- 
 man ; he gave me half-a-crown.' On one occa- 
 sion he gave a fellow a shilling when sixpence 
 was the fee. * Remember you owe me sixpence, 
 Pat' * May your honour live till I pay you.' All 
 Pat's clothes would have been dearly bought at 
 the sum. 
 
 After visiting Wicklow and its romantic and 
 famous spots, he went to Edgeworthstown, where he 
 renewed his friendship with the gifted Maria ; and 
 she, with tears in her eyes, agreed with him when 
 he said that all things w^ere moonshine when com- 
 pared to the education of the heart. He rebuked 
 
SCOTT IN IRELAND, 221 
 
 there one of his daughters, who was despising 
 something as vulgar. * What is vulgar ? it is only- 
 common ; and nothing that is common, except 
 wickedness, can deserve to be spoken of with 
 contempt' 
 
 A mad poet amused him much, named O' Kelly, 
 who, calling on Scott, inflicted on him the lines : 
 
 * Three poets, of three different nations bom, 
 The United Kingdom in this age adorn : 
 Byron of England, Scott of Scotland's blood, 
 And Erin's pride, O' Kelly great and good.' 
 
 Scott needed all these little ludicrous interludes 
 to support his spirits under the sight of the ruined 
 country he found Ireland to be. He visited Kil- 
 larney, Cork, the Groves of Blarney, Fermoy, 
 Lismore, Kilkenny, etc., and returned to Dublin, 
 his whole journey being a procession of triumph; 
 deputations meeting him at the entrance of every 
 town, and crowds attending him all through the 
 streets ; saluted everywhere as the monarch man 
 of the time. Yet he seems to have left the Green 
 Isle without regret. 
 
 He returned home by the Cumberland Lakes. 
 There took place one of the most brilliant re- 
 unions and regattas which even that classical 
 region ever witnessed. Seldom have so many 
 eminent men met in such favourable circum- 
 
222 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 stances, as in August 1825, under Mr Bolton's 
 roof-tree, and on the banks of Windermere. There 
 was Canning, pale in cheek, and with the winding- 
 sheet already well up his breast, but with his 
 genius as lively, his eye as bright, and his brow 
 as commanding as ever. There was Wordsworth, 
 stooping, not yet under the load of years, but of 
 that brooding thought and inverted reverence with 
 which, all his life, he had admired the 'ground out 
 of which he was taken,' and 
 
 ' Worshipped Nature with a thought profound.' 
 
 There, in the prime of his majestic manhood, was 
 Christopher North, probably by gifts, if not by 
 culture or achievements, a greater man than any of 
 them all ; in appearance unquestionably the first, — 
 the facsimile of Scott's own Coeur de Lion, but 
 more anxious to obtain fame as the Admiral of 
 the Lake than as a world-poet, critic, or humorist. 
 There was Lockhart, certainly one of the cleverest 
 and sharpest of men, if not quite on the level of 
 his companions. And there the Mighty Minstrel, 
 flushed with his Irish reception, with the success 
 of the Talisman, and with the projected Life of 
 Napoleon, spent his last thoroughly triumphant 
 days. Ah! little thought he they were the last. 
 Yet there was no undue or ominous elation ; and 
 
SCOTT IN IRELAND. 223 
 
 when he returned to Abbotsford, he sat quietly- 
 down to his labours connected with the Life of the 
 Emperor, and to his usual routine of country- 
 business and country pleasures. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 DECAY AND DECADENCE BEGUN. 
 
 COTT was now fifty-four, an age when 
 ^^ many men are at their very best, with 
 the strength of their bodies unimpaired, 
 and the faculties of their minds in full vigour. But 
 ever since the attack of cramp his constitution was 
 not so strong as it seemed ; and he had, besides, 
 complained of what he calls a * thickening of the 
 blood, or whoreson apoplexy,' the disease of which 
 he ultimately died, and to which he attributed 
 the dulness of Peveril And Lockhart hints that 
 attacks of this sort occurred now and then before 
 his terrible seizure in 1830. But the angel of 
 disease at present suspended his blow, and left 
 other ministers of ruin to do their work instead. 
 
 His labour in the preparation of Napoleon was 
 of a very different kind from that of his Novels. 
 These required no previous study, — that had been 
 
 224 
 
DECA V AND DECADENCE BEGUN-. 225 
 
 the work of the first half of his life ; but for the 
 other he had to consult authorities and pore over 
 note-books, so that we may venture to say that he 
 had to read as much for a single page in the 
 Napoleofi as for a whole volume in the Waverley 
 series. When we looked through the library in 
 Abbotsford some years ago, and saw the shelves 
 crowded with folio MonitetirSy we said, ' These are 
 the great French guns which laid the flower of 
 Scotchmen low.' When he came to the work of 
 original composition, he cam_e well crammed, no 
 doubt, but jaded, with an aching brow and a dim 
 eye ; and his writing, though generally spirited, 
 was often hasty and careless. 
 
 During the latter months of 1825 Scott enter- 
 tained some distinguished visitors, — among others. 
 Lord Gififord and his lady, Harry of Exeter, and, 
 above all, Tom Moore, who had expressed his 
 regret that he was not present when Scott and 
 Killarney were introduced to each other, — a regal 
 interview verily worth not only seeing, but, as Dr. 
 Johnson used to distinguish, ' going to see.' The 
 conjunction of Moore and Scott itself must have 
 been an interesting sight — the delicious butterfly- 
 bard of Erin, carrying, however, what butterflies do 
 not, a bag of highly concentrated venom and a 
 sharp and polished sting ; the slight, dapper little 
 
226 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 person, looking insignificant till you noticed ' The 
 Twopenny Post Bag ' and other such dangerous 
 explosives slung around him, — the dainty and 
 fastidious darling of society, — the Hafiz Anacreon 
 Catullus of his day, — the pungent morsel of a 
 man, like Mustard Seed in the Midsimimer Night's 
 Dreamy meeting with the brawny poet and novelist 
 of Scotland, with his white hair, sagacious face, tall 
 figure, and Matterhorn-like forehead ; Moore in 
 his walks armed with a smart Malacca cane — Scott 
 with a sturdy oak plant, which Friar Tuck might 
 have flourished ; Moore at table sipping his French 
 wines, and Scott imbibing his mountain dew; 
 Moore warbling his Irish Melodies with the ' treble 
 of a fay ' — Scott adding his rough and tuneless but 
 hearty chorus, with voice like a Westphalian boar ; 
 and yet both delighted with each other, and con- 
 nected, like Goldsmith's Dwarf and Giant, in close 
 offensive and defensive league. They had much 
 common ground, were both intimate friends of 
 Byron, both patriotic poets, both men who com- 
 bined great enthusiasm with great common sense 
 and a thorough knowledge of the ways of society, 
 including the upper and the lower orders alike, and 
 were both kindly and generous men. Moore kept 
 a diary while there, and sent it to Lockhart, with 
 the additional words, ' I parted from Scott with the 
 
DECA V AND DECADENCE BEGUN. 227 
 
 feeling that all the world might admire him in his 
 works, but that those only could learn to love him 
 as he deserved who had seen him at Abbotsford.' 
 Of course you never can ihoroughly understand 
 any man, or love him with sufficient warmth, till 
 you have known him in private ; but it is the pecu- 
 liarity of Scott's works that they compel you, not 
 only to admire the author, but to love the man, 
 and make all his readers feel as if they, like Mr. 
 Moore, had been at Abbotsford. Moore adds : * I 
 give you carte blanche to say what you please of 
 my sense of his cordial kindness and gentleness ; 
 perhaps a not very dignified phrase would express 
 my feeling better than any fine one, — it was that 
 he was a thorough good fellow.' This we may 
 know and say without having lived a while with 
 the Great Unknown. Every page of his works 
 proves it ; and especially every character in his 
 Novels into whom he has thrown his whole soul, 
 such as the Baron of Bradwardine, Paulus Pleydell, 
 Esq., Dandie Dinmont, Jonathan Oldbuck, Bailie 
 Nicol Jarvie, John Duke of Argyle, Robin Hood, 
 Rob Roy ; and Richard Cceur de Lion is, like his 
 creator, a thorough good fellow. 
 
 Scott astonished Moore by revealing to him, with- 
 out reserve, that he was the author of the Waverley 
 Novels. The mask had been long worn ; he was 
 
228 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 beginning to tire of it ; he wore it now carelessly, 
 and, alas ! did not know that his dropping it, like 
 the dropping of the glass mask to his own Alascor, 
 was to be the signal of doom. It was not in expec- 
 tation of the ruin which was at hand, rendering 
 concealment impossible, but in mere gaiety and 
 triumph, that he mentioned the Novels to Moore as 
 his own, and spoke of them as a source of great 
 wealth ; yet he added that he was not making 
 them so good as he used to do. The two thorough 
 good fellows parted, as Scott said to the other, 
 ^ friends for life.' 
 
 After Moore came Mrs. Coutts, the famous 
 banker's widow, afterwards Duchess of St Alban's, 
 whom Scott treated with high respect, partly be- 
 cause his high-born guests were disposed to cut her 
 for her vulgarity, and Scott did not, as he said, 
 recognise that word as English ; and partly be- 
 cause, with a feeling seemingly opposite to this, he 
 had a profound reverence for the distinction of 
 wealth, as well as for other of the world's distinc- 
 tions. This certainly was a weakness, but it were 
 useless to hide it, — more useless still to seek to 
 apologize for it, any more than for the wart on the 
 brow of a noble-looking man, or the cast in the 
 eye of a beautiful woman. Scott could afford a 
 hundred weak points, and he had not ten. 
 
DECA V AND DECADENCE BEGUN. 229 
 
 At this time mutterings of the great commer- 
 cial storm of 1825-26, so soon to break upon 
 the country with unprecedented violence, began 
 to startle even the echoes of Abbotsford. Pope 
 says, — 
 
 * Now a bubble bursts, and now a world/ 
 
 But the bubble about to burst was a world. It 
 had attained the most gigantic proportions, and 
 shone with the most glittering hues. Speculation 
 had, in joint-stock schemes, companies, mining 
 adventures, wind bills, wild and visionary projects 
 of every sort, come to its height, and, as it could 
 neither climb farther nor stop where it was, it must 
 come down, and with a vengeance. Lockhart, then 
 in London, heard that the crash was at hand, — that 
 the trade, and even Constable, was in danger. He 
 hurried down to Chiefswood and told Scott his 
 fears. Scott derided them at first, but, on reflec- 
 tion, ordered his carriage and rode over to Polton 
 where Constable dwelt, and was reassured for the 
 time by the publisher's statement. The tempest, 
 however, was only delayed for a season. 
 
 Napoleon, meanwhile, was in progress ; but some- 
 times Scott felt fagged with the researches neces- 
 sary for it, and, in order to fill up the intervals of 
 time when his historic * line laboured and his words 
 
230 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 moved slow/ he began a journal in imitation of 
 Byron's Ravenna Diary, with a transcript of which 
 Murray had presented Lockhart, and Lockhart 
 showed to Scott. Each is very characteristic of each 
 poet. Byron's is reckless, rapid, careless in style, but 
 extremely vivid in many of its touches, and has an 
 air of thorough honesty throughout, although you 
 think of a great mind going to pieces like a ship in 
 a storm-drift. We are afraid that the keeping of a 
 diary is, in most instances, a morbid symptom, and 
 imagine that Scott, in the prime of his powers, 
 would have disdained the collecting of such a dish 
 of orts and leavings. Still his Journal is intensely 
 interesting, and reveals, better than any biogra- 
 phical statement could do, the hidden man, or 
 rather woman, of his heart, — the amiable weak- 
 nesses, the old sores and unforgotten sorrows, the 
 palpitations of spirit, and incipient frailty of brain 
 which the brave man concealed from the world 
 under a firm and almost stern outward deportment. 
 Even this did not afford his active mind a suf- 
 ficient employment. At the suggestion of Con- 
 stable, who knew that Scott used sometimes to 
 carry on two romances abreast, and who was 
 anxious that every minute of such valuable time 
 should be occupied, he commenced another novel, 
 to be taken up whenever Napoleon was standing 
 
DECA Y AND DECADENCE BEGUN. 231 
 
 still and the Journal found inadequate. Hence 
 Woodstock was begun. 
 
 Scott's fortunes were now nearing the edge of a 
 precipice. He knew it not We of course do, 
 and are disposed to linger before describing in the 
 next chapter the terrible downfall ; and therefore 
 we may spend the rest of this in culling, upon the 
 verge, a few flowers, and thistles too, from his 
 Journal, which is full throughout of matter, al- 
 though it is a matter which gets drearier and 
 darker every page. 
 
 He finds one reason of his rapid intimacy with 
 Moore in the fact, *We are both good-humoured 
 fellows, who rather seek to enjoy what is going 
 forward than to maintain our dignity as lions ; and 
 we have both seen the world too widely and too 
 well not to contemn in our souls the imaginary 
 consequence of literary people who walk with their 
 noses in the air, and remind me always of the 
 fellow whom Johnson met in an alehouse, and 
 who called himself the " Great Twalmly, inventor 
 of the floodgate iron for smoothing linen ! "' 
 
 Here is a hint of his weakening constitution: 
 * My pleasure is in the simplest diet. Wine I sel- 
 dom taste when alone, and use instead a little 
 spirits and water. I have of late diminished the 
 quantity, for fear of a weakness inductive to a dia- 
 
232 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 betes, — a disease which broke up my father's 
 health, though one of the most temperate men 
 that ever lived.' 
 
 Here is his estimate, not too severe, of the late 
 Ugo Foscolo : ' Ugly as a baboon, and intolerably 
 conceited, he spluttered, blustered, and disputed 
 without even knowing the principles on which men 
 of sense render a reason, and screamed all the 
 while like a pig with a knife at his throat/ The 
 same Ugo seems, like Shelley's Sensitive Plant, to 
 have * desired what he had not — the beautiful ;' for 
 we find one of his biographers describing him 
 as surrounded in his lodgings by three lovely 
 young women, hovering between servants and mis- 
 tresses, — a Satyr attended by three Graces ! Yet 
 he was a scholar and a poet. 
 
 Here we find Scott in an ominous fix. * I had 
 a bad fall last night coming home. There were 
 unfinished houses at the east end of Athole Cre- 
 scent, and, as I was on foot, I crossed the street to 
 avoid the materials which lay about, but, deceived 
 by the moonlight, I slipped ankle-deep into a sea of 
 mud (honest earth and water, thank God !), and 
 fell on my hands. Never was there such a repre- 
 sentative of "Wall" in Pyramus and Thisbe. I 
 was absolutely rough-cast.' To T. S. Gillies he 
 thus described what was probably the same acci- 
 
DECA Y AND DECADENCE BEGUN. 233 
 
 dent : * One moonlight night I found Sir Walter 
 standing in a newly-built street, apparently in a 
 deep reverie. " I was considering," he said, " what 
 it is best to do. I have been at one party, and 
 was engaged to another ; but look at these habili- 
 ments ! It happened by a most ludicrous chance, 
 and to my own very great surprise, that I found my- 
 self a few minutes ago lying at the bottom of a wet 
 gravel-pit, from which I have just emerged ; and 
 I believe it is indispensable to steer homewards 
 and refity otherwise the whole discourse at Lady 
 
 's rout will consist of explanations why the 
 
 unfortunate lion appears in such bad condition." 
 And at this he laughed heartily.' His lameness 
 began to get worse ; but that, too, he bore with 
 the same equanimity that he did such penalties 
 of popularity as he specifies in the following: 
 * People make me the oddest requests. It is not 
 unusual for an Oxonian or Cantab, who has out- 
 run his allowance, and of whom I know nothing, 
 to apply to me for the loan of ;^20, £^0y or £\oo. 
 A captain of the Danish naval service writes to 
 me that, being in distress for a sum of money by 
 which he might transport himself to Columbia to 
 offer his services in assisting to free that province, 
 he had dreamed I had generously made him a 
 present of it. I can tell him his dream by con- 
 
234 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 traries. I begin to find, like Joseph Surface, that 
 a good character is inconvenient.' 
 
 The next is a kindly notice of poor William 
 Knox, a nearly forgotten poet : * A young poet 
 of considerable talent died here a week or two 
 ago. His father was a respectable yeoman ; and 
 he himself, succeeding to good farms, became too 
 soon his master, and plunged into dissipation and 
 ruin. His talent then showed itself in a fine 
 strain of pensive poetry, called, I think, The 
 Lonely Hearth, far superior to that of Michael 
 Bruce, whose consumption, by the way, has been 
 the life of his poems. I had Knox at Abbots- 
 ford, but found him unfit for that sort of society. 
 He scrambled on writing for booksellers, and living 
 like the Otways and Savages of former days. His 
 last works were spiritual hymns, which he wrote 
 very well.' Scott was very friendly to Knox, 
 and sometimes sent him £iQ at a time. We 
 are familiar with some of his Biblical verses, which 
 are sweet and sad, and resemble, at times, in his 
 own words, 
 
 ' The harp-strings' holiest measures, 
 When dreams the soul of lands of rest 
 And everlasting pleasures.' 
 
 Here is a characteristic touch : ' A stormy and 
 rainy day. Walk it from the Court through the 
 
DECA Y AND DECADENCE BEGUN. 235 
 
 rain. I like this ; for no man that ever stepped 
 on heather has less dread than I of the catch-cold, 
 and I seem to regain, in buffeting with the wind, 
 some of the high spirits with which in younger 
 days I used to enjoy a Tam o' Shanter ride 
 through darkness, wind, and rain, the boughs 
 groaning and cracking over my head, the good 
 horse free to the road, and impatient for home.' 
 Premature senility, nevertheless, comes out in the 
 following optical delusion : * When I have laid 
 aside my spectacles to step into a room dimly 
 lighted out of the strong light which I use for 
 writing, I have seen, or seemed to see, through 
 the rims of the same spectacles I have left behind 
 me, — nay, at first put up my hands to my eyes, 
 believing that I had the actual spectacles on.' 
 
 Mingled with the following fine passage, the 
 last we shall quote here, we fancy a certain dim 
 foreboding or prevision of calamity : * There is 
 nothing more awful than to attempt to cast a 
 glance among the clouds and mists which hide 
 the broken extremity of the celebrated Bridge 
 of Mirza. Yet when every day brings us nigher 
 that termination, we would almost think our 
 views should become clearer. Alas! it is not so. 
 There is a curtain to be withdrawn, a veil to be 
 rent, before we shall see things as they really 
 
236 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 are. With the beh'ef of a Deity, the immortality 
 of the soul and of the state of rewards and punish- 
 ments is indissolubly linked. More we are not 
 to know; but neither are we prohibited from all 
 attempts, however vain, to pierce the solemn, 
 sacred gloom. The expressions used in Scrip- 
 ture are doubtless metaphorical ; for penal fires 
 and heavenly melody are only applicable to 
 beings endowed with corporeal senses. Har- 
 mony is obviously chosen as the least corporeal 
 of all gratifications of the senses, and as the 
 type of love, unity, and a state of peace and 
 perfect happiness. But they have a poor idea 
 of the Deity, and the rewards destined for the 
 just made perfect, who can only adopt the literal 
 sense of an eternal concert, a never-ending birth- 
 day ode. I rather suppose this should be under- 
 stood as some commission from the Highest, some 
 duty to discharge, with the applause of a satisfied 
 conscience.' 
 
 Lockhart says that Wilson might have been the 
 best preacher of the age. We think that, in that 
 department, had both tried it, as well as in poetry 
 and novels. North would have had a dangerous 
 rival in Scott. 
 

 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 UNIVERSAL SMASH. 
 
 ,UT now, as Lockhart has it, 'the muffled 
 drum was in prospect.' The fabric of 
 c/v^~^^c^ prosperity which Scott had reared with 
 such prodigious labour, and which seemed to him 
 and others sohd as Ben Nevis, was about to sink hke 
 a castle in the clouds, and to leave to the architect 
 only the reality of ruin. We have neither inclina- 
 tion nor sufficient knowledge of the ways of busi- 
 ness to dilate at large on the particular causes and 
 circumstances of the well-known catastrophe. A 
 few remarks, founded on a perusal of the docu- 
 ments on both sides of the controversy excited 
 by Lockhart's Life, may, however, be adventured. 
 Scott, as we saw before, had established a business 
 as a printer and bookseller in connection with the 
 Ballantynes. Owing to various causes, the book- 
 selling firm was utterly unsuccessful. When wound 
 
 237 
 
238 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 up, a vast amount of useless stock had been 
 accumulated ; but this, by successive forced sales 
 to Constable and others, Scott ultimately cleared 
 off, and so paid the debts of the concern in full. 
 
 After John Ballantyne's death, James Ballantyne 
 and Scott entered into a new partnership, James, 
 besides, acting as Scott's agent in procuring and 
 paying money, which was accomplished, as is 
 well known, by means of bills drawn for literary 
 work done, or even to be done, by Scott for the 
 booksellers, but very frequently also by recourse 
 to mere accommodation bills. The enormous 
 expense of this system, the extravagance of Sir 
 Walter's building schemes and style of living, 
 the diminished sale and over-multiplied editions 
 of the novels, and the complications of the whole 
 business with Constable's firm, on whom most of 
 these bills were drawn, paved the way for the 
 tremendous smash, which was precipitated by a 
 great commercial panic, — a panic in which the 
 Bank of England itself shook like an oak in a 
 tempest, — so that, on the failure of Hurst & Co. 
 and Constable, which became certain on the i6th 
 of January 1826, Scott found himself a debtor to 
 the extent of about ;^ 120,000, besides a personal 
 debt of ;^ 1 0,000. 
 
 In addition to this very general outline of the 
 
UNIVERSAL SMASH. 239 
 
 facts, there are two or three points to be noticed. 
 In the first place, when Scott entered into partner- 
 ship with the two Ballantynes, there was unques- 
 tionably a certain inequality between the parties, 
 Scott bringing not only (after a short while) more 
 capital into the firm, but immense literary influ- 
 ence, which procured a copious supply of work for 
 the Ballantyne press. Still, secondly, the minor 
 parties were by no means so inferior to Scott as 
 Lockhart pretends. James Ballantyne brought 
 some capital, and great talent both as a printer 
 and litterateur^ to the business. John had pleasant 
 manners, accomplishments, vivacity, and enthu- 
 siasm ; and both had unbounded attachment to 
 Scott. Thirdly, Scott undoubtedly, as he had the 
 chief share in raising, had also the chief share in 
 ruining the original firm, effecting this by a number 
 of unsaleable publications, partly his own, but chiefly 
 by other hands, such as an ill-edited edition of 
 Beaumont and Fletcher^ a cumbrously got-up series 
 of British Novelists, which Scott's interesting lives 
 were not able to float, an able \iM\,\vQ.2csry History 
 of the Culdees, and the like. Fourthly, to stem the 
 torrent of disaster he had himself in a great mea- 
 sure let loose, Scott manfully and nobly strove ; 
 and to the failure of John Ballantyne and Co. we 
 owe some of the finest of his poems. Fifthly, 
 
240 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Lockhart has in vain pretended that Scott was in- 
 attentive to business, a ' magician wrapt in mists,' 
 and so forth. The facts that he demanded in one 
 ms\.dincQ. fiftee?t per cent, for a sum of money he lent 
 to the firm ; that he forced off, as we have seen, 
 John Ballantyne and Co.'s bad stock upon Con- 
 stable and other booksellers with whom he had 
 transactions ; and that, notwithstanding his intricate 
 and enormous money connections with James Bal- 
 lantyne, he (although with no dishonourable pur- 
 pose), without his knowledge, alienated his estate, 
 mansion, etc., and settled them in 1825 upon his 
 eldest son ; — these facts, and the whole tenor of his 
 correspondence, prove, to say the least, a most minute 
 and lynx-eyed, if not a self-seeking attention to his 
 own personal interests, — more, certainly, than you 
 might have expected in a poet. While, sixthly, not 
 freeing the Ballantynes from blame in point of im- 
 prudence and extravagance, they were in these 
 respects left far behind by their illustrious partner, 
 whose love for family aggrandisement, and whose 
 passion for accumulating land, and for baronial 
 hospitality, amounted to a degree of derangement. 
 And, finally, whatever may be thought of the 
 relative shares of fault contracted by the different 
 parties in these complicated transactions, there can, 
 we fear, be but one opinion as to the conduct of 
 
UNIVERSAL SMASH. 241 
 
 Scott's biographer. None but a Lockhart, the un- 
 genial son-in-law of a most genial sire, could or 
 durst defend a Lockhart's conduct in seeking to 
 blast with scorn two men whom Scott had honoured 
 with his confidence and affection ; who had shared 
 in his success ; one, and, in a measure, both of whom 
 had been ruined through their connection with him, 
 and who idolized as well as materially served him. 
 He that allows the biographer to be swallowed up 
 in the satirist, who pollutes the stream of the record 
 of a great man's life by foul and gratuitous per- 
 sonalities, may be compared to the Oriental despot 
 who offers up all the kindred of a deceased king as 
 a propitiation to his Manes. Now Lockhart has 
 done all this. In his reply to the first pamphlet 
 published by the trustees of James Ballantyne, his 
 usual talent deserts him, while it abounds in more 
 than his usual hauteur ; the reasoning is as feeble as 
 the language is coarse ; and his whole spirit reminds 
 you of that of a pampered menial, who uses liberties 
 of insolent language which his master would dis- 
 dain. From the whole subject we may draw the 
 conclusion, that the less a man of genius, however 
 acute, entangles himself in the complications of 
 this world's afiairs, the better for his peace and 
 prosperity. 
 
 It is painful to watch the shadow of disaster 
 Q 
 
242 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 slowly gaining upon the great orb, and to see every 
 inch of the observation registered in his Journal. 
 In vain did Constable make every effort to keep 
 off the ruin, ' searching impossible places/ like Ford 
 in the Merry Wives, proposing impossible measures, 
 rushing to London, and there fretting, fuming, 
 and plunging about in downright desperation. 
 Scott must, on the 1 6th of January 1826, write 
 thus : * Came through cold roads to as cold news. 
 Hurst & Robinson have suffered a bill to come 
 back upon Constable, which I suppose infers the 
 ruin of both houses.' He went that evening to 
 dine with Mr. Skene, and appeared in his usual 
 spirits. On going away, he whispered to his host 
 to call on him next morning, as he had something 
 to say to him. Skene called accordingly, and 
 found Sir Walter writing in his study. He rose 
 and said, * My friend, give me a grasp of your 
 hand ; mine is that of a beggar.' He was working 
 at Woodstock ere he made this declaration ; and 
 when Skene went away, he resumed it. And during 
 that dark week, in which every post brought him 
 tidings of some new calamity, he wrote several 
 chapters of the novel. 
 
 His mind was speedily made up. Instead of 
 declaring himself bankrupt, as he might have 
 done, he determined by his own exertions alone to 
 
UNIVERSAL SMASH. 243 
 
 liquidate all the bills accepted by Constable & Co., 
 and bearing his indorsation. He said, * My own 
 right hand shall pay my debts.' He surrendered 
 everything to his creditors. He reduced his estab- 
 lishment, left dear old Castle Street, and took a 
 lodging in St. David Street. With a quietness 
 and depth of resolution almost unparalleled, he 
 sat down under the darkened sky of his for- 
 tunes, and proceeded, with a constitution prema- 
 turely old, a heart wounded, and a brain partially 
 enfeebled, to execute his vast literary projects. 
 He had, besides, insured his life in favour of his 
 creditors for ;^2 5,000, and signed a trust-deed over 
 his own effects at Abbotsford, including an obli- 
 gation to pay in cash a certain sum annually until 
 the debts were liquidated. 
 
 In all this he met with great and all but uni- 
 versal sympathy. A few, indeed, of his creditors 
 grumbled, and were disposed to recalcitrate, 
 and some cantankerous persons out of that circle 
 joined with them in this ; but the majority were 
 kind and genet;ous. Some people of wealth made 
 him munificent offers of help, which he respect- 
 fully but most decidedly declined ; and the feeling 
 of the general public on the subject was healthy, 
 and in a high measure kind. * The aythor of 
 Waverley ruined ! ' cried the Earl of Dudley. * Good 
 
244 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 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.' 
 
 During the crisis his Journal is full of melancholy 
 entries. It, in fact, formed the safety-valve to those 
 wretched feelings which he was able to conceal 
 from the world under a look of stern and silent 
 magnanimity. He says : ' I have walked my last 
 on the domains I planted, sat the last time in 
 the halls I have built. My poor people, whom I 
 loved so well ! There is just another die to turn 
 up against me in this run of ill-luck. If I should 
 break my magic wand in the fall from the elephant, 
 and lose my popularity with my fortune, then 
 Woodstock and Bo7iey (Napoleon) may both go 
 to the paper-maker, and I may take to smoking 
 cigars and drinking grog, or turn devotee, and 
 intoxicate my brain another way. In prospect 
 of absolute ruin, I wonder if they would let me 
 leave the Court of Session. I would like, methinks, 
 to go abroad, 
 
 " And lay my bones far from the Tweed." 
 
 But I find my eyes moistening, and that will 
 not do.' 
 
 Again : * I have a funeral letter to the burial of 
 Chevalier Yelin, a foreigner of learning and talent. 
 
UNIVERSAL SMASH. 245 
 
 who has died at the Royal Hotel. He wished to 
 be introduced to me, and was to have read a 
 paper at the Royal Society, where this introduc- 
 tion was to have taken place. I was not at the 
 Society that evening, and the poor gentleman was 
 taken ill at the meeting and unable to proceed. 
 He went to his bed, and never rose again ; and now 
 his funeral will be the first public place I shall 
 appear at. He dead, and I ruined : this is what 
 you call a meeting.' 
 
 He thus describes his first visit to the Court 
 after his downfall : ' I went to the Court for the 
 first time to-day, and, like the man with the large 
 nose, thought everybody was thinking of me and 
 my mishaps. Many were undoubtedly, and all 
 rather regrettingly, some obviously affected. Some 
 sm.iled as they wished me good-day, as if to say, 
 " Think nothing about it, my lad ; it is quite out 
 of our thoughts." Others greeted me with the 
 affected gravity which one sees and despises at a 
 funeral. The best bred just shook hands and 
 passed on.' 
 
 In reference to the meeting of his creditors he 
 speaks in the following terms of his ancient and 
 successful rival in love : * Sir William Forbes took 
 the chair, and behaved as he has ever done, with 
 the generosity of ancient faith and early friendship. 
 
246 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 That house is more deeply concerned than most. 
 In what scenes have Sir William and I not borne 
 share together ! — desperate and almost bloody 
 affrays, rivalries, deep drinking matches ; and, 
 finally, with the kindliest feelings on both sides, 
 somewhat separated by his retiring much within 
 the bosom of his family, and I moving little beyond 
 mine. It is fated our planets should cross, though, 
 and that at the periods most interesting to me. 
 Down, down — a hundred thoughts.' The follow- 
 ing will be understood and felt by many : * Have 
 set to work to clear away papers and pack them 
 up for my journey. What a strange medley of 
 thoughts such a task produces ! There lie letters, 
 which made the heart throb when received, now 
 lifeless and uninteresting, as are, perhaps, their 
 writers ; riddles which have been read ; schemes 
 which time has destroyed or brought to maturity ; 
 memorials of friendships and enmities which are 
 now alike faded. Thus does the ring of Saturn 
 consume itself To-day annihilates yesterday.' 
 
 Calamities, like crows, fly in crowds. And this 
 poor Sir Walter Scott now felt in his experience. 
 His favourite grandson, John Hugh Lockhart, 
 became unwell of the illness from which he never 
 recovered. And, to put the copestone on all, his 
 poor wife, who had long suffered under nervous 
 
UNIVERSAL SMASH. 247 
 
 irritation, died at Abbotsford on the 15 th of May. 
 He was in Edinburgh at the time, but had visited 
 her a few days before, and on the tidings of her 
 death returned instantly. He describes his feel- 
 ings as sometimes firm as the Bass Rock, and 
 sometimes weak as the water that breaks on it. 
 '■ It is not,' he says, ' my Charlotte, it is not the 
 bride of my youth, the mother of my children, that 
 Avill be laid among the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey, 
 which we have so often visited in gaiety and 
 pastime. No! no!' She was buried on the 22d 
 of May ; and next day he says : * The whole scene 
 floats as a sort of dream before me : the beautiful 
 day, the grey ruins covered and hidden among 
 clouds of foliage and flourish, where the grave, even 
 in the lap of beauty, lay lurking and gaped for its 
 prey.' Surely his heart was entombed along with 
 her ; and his body, too, has long been at her side. 
 A week later we find him returned to Edinburgh, 
 and resuming his ordinary labours, although now 
 alonCy and to be alone till the close. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 'THE UNVEILED PROPHET.' 
 
 WRITER in a forgotten magazine, dated 
 1826, says something to the following 
 effect : — * There has the author of Wa- 
 verley been the other day putting out Woodstock. 
 The man has been often called a magician, but 
 never so much deserved the name as now. How 
 but by sorcery has he in these dreadful times, 
 when money, credit, and confidence are all alike 
 gone, been able to get ;^ 10,000 for a novel, by no 
 means the best, either, of his productions ?* The 
 sum here is overstated, — it was only ;^8228 ; but 
 the wonder, though lessened by several hundreds, 
 remains great. The price undoubtedly was en- 
 hanced by the competition among the booksellers, 
 anxious, now that the Constable monopoly was 
 broken down, to secure an interest in the most 
 popular works of their time. The shock of sym- 
 
 248 
 
* THE UNVEILED PROPHET: 249 
 
 pathy, too, produced by the news of Scott's mis- 
 fortunes had its own share in increasing, for a 
 time, the value of his productions. The novel con- 
 sequently sold well, and its success came upon the 
 author like a gleam of sunshine in a cloudy eve. 
 
 About Woodstock the anonymous writer is cor- 
 rect. It by no means comes up to the first, no, 
 nor yet to the second, nor yet to the third file 
 of his fictions. It is in many parts exceedingly 
 tedious. It ought to have embraced the period 
 closing with the battle of Worcester, and had the 
 Royal Oak for FINIS, instead of which 'the mere 
 lees ' of that impressive story are * left the vault 
 to brag off.* The apparitions at Woodstock are 
 managed with very little skill, not certainly as 
 even Mrs. Radcliffe would have managed them. 
 Scott admits himself that when he wrote the novel 
 he had not the spirits to caricature the Puritans as 
 he had done the Covenanters ; so, instead of making 
 them ridiculous, he has made them simply loath- 
 some. Witness Trusty Tomkins. And, above all, 
 his picture of Cromwell, the greatest historical 
 character he ever grappled with, is a failure. He 
 halts between two opinions in his estimate of 
 him ; and this irresolution is fatal to the power 
 and fidelity of the likeness. Charles XL, too, is 
 a wretched daub. But there are many scenes 
 
250 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 and passages of striking interest. The characters 
 and connection of Sir Harry Lee and his daughter 
 are exquisitely tender, — the more so if we suppose 
 that Scott was here shadowing out his own family 
 history. Bevis, the noble hound, is his own Maida ; 
 and altogether, when we remember that the tale, 
 like the fatal bark in Lycidas, was * built in the 
 eclipse,' we are astonished to find it built so well. 
 It resembles the work of a blind architect, where 
 faults are forgiven and merits exaggerated, on 
 account of the circumstances surmounted and the 
 difficulties overcome. He no sooner finished and 
 launched Woodstock than he began The Chronicles 
 of the ,Cano7igate. Frequently since his failure he 
 had contemplated the possibility of taking refuge 
 from his creditors in the ancient sanctuary of 
 Holyrood, and this gave a strange charm to the 
 Canongate, that fine old street opening upon it, 
 and led to the conception of Chrystal Croftangry. 
 We wish he had given us what we believe he 
 at one time intended, a series of Tales of the 
 Abbey. No one certainly could have thrown such 
 vivid light as Scott upon the numerous paths of 
 misfortune, carelessness, extravagance, and crime, 
 leading so many victims to this Scottish city of 
 refuge, defended almost superfluously, and conse- 
 crated, too, by a royal palace, the giant-snouted 
 
< THE UNVEILED PROPHET: it^i 
 
 crags of Salisbury, and the couchant lion of 
 Arthur's Seat ! 
 
 NapoleoiZy however, was still his magnum opuSy 
 and he devoted to it his more earnest and intense 
 moments. He now carried on his labours, not 
 merely in the morning before breakfast, which had 
 long been his chief time for composition, but in the 
 evening, as well as in the forenoon, to the great 
 detriment of his health. Mr. Gillies says, ^ I have 
 always thought that to the domestic affliction, the 
 painful impressions and incessant labours of the 
 year 1826, was imputable the break of his consti- 
 tution, although the injury was not then apparent. 
 In St. David Street he kept earlier hours than 
 ever ; and sometimes in one morning, before the 
 meeting of the Court at ten o'clock, he had finished 
 an entire sheet of twenty-four pages for the printer. 
 His handwriting was now so small and cramped, 
 that one of his ordinary quarto pages made at least 
 double that amount in print ; " and, after all," he 
 observed, " it was really no great exploit to finish 
 twelve pages in a morning." But, on his return 
 from the Parliament House, however wearied he 
 might be, the task was again resumed. Seldom 
 receiving any company, he scarcely sat a quarter 
 of an hour at dinner, but turned directly to his 
 writing-desk. Yet there never seemed the slightest 
 
252 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 flurry or irritation in his demeanour. He never 
 seemed vexed or in a hurry, but took up the pen 
 with a smile on his countenance, and as if he had 
 been writing merely for his own amusement' 
 
 In this way, besides his ordinary tasks, he had 
 found time for writing some very spirited letters 
 on the monetary questions of that agitated period, 
 under the nom de pkime of ' Sir Malachi Malagrow- 
 ther,' — letters which made a sensation, although 
 not quite equal to the Drapier or to Junius. 
 Almost his only relaxation all this dreadfully hot 
 summer of 1826 was joining the Blair Adam Club 
 for two or three days about the longest day, where, 
 however, the heat compelled them to creep about 
 and lounge under the shadow of great trees, and 
 prevented any extended excursion. 
 
 In October he interrupted, or rather varied his 
 labours, by a journey, undertaken along with his 
 unmarried daughter Anne, to London and Paris, in 
 search of materials for Napoleon. At London he 
 saw some of his old friends, and made a few new 
 acquaintances. In Paris the honours of his Irish 
 reception were renewed with interest. He describes 
 the French as absolutely * outrageous in their 
 civilities,' and seemed as glad to get safe out of 
 Paris as if it had been a forest of officious baboons. 
 He bore it all, however, with great apparent equa- 
 
* THE UNVEILED PROPHET: 253 
 
 nimity. Cooper, the American novelist, was there 
 at the same time. Hazlitt (who was also then in 
 Paris, we think) describes the different behaviour 
 of the two with his usual sarcastic vigour, — Cooper 
 going about with his chin in the air, and assuming 
 vast consequence as the ^American Scott,' while 
 the real Scott was entirely untouched and unmoved 
 amidst the palaver, seeing the usual sights, meeting 
 with some famous people, and pursuing quietly the 
 main purpose for which he had crossed the Channel, 
 — the getting fresh materials for his book. Attend- 
 ing the Odeon one evening, he found the play to 
 be Ivanhoe. The story was sadly mangled, and 
 the words nonsense, ' yet it was strange to hear 
 anything like the words which I (then in agony of 
 pain with spasms in my stomach) 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 com- 
 pleting of this novel.' 
 
 In London, on his way back, he met Allan Cun- 
 ningham, Theodore Hook, Croker, Peel, the Duke 
 of Wellington, and many others. He dined once 
 especially with Wellington, Peel, Huskisson, Mel- 
 ville, and Canning, and on returning said, * I have 
 seen some of these great men at the same table 
 for the last timel — words which seem in a twofold 
 
254 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 sense prophetic, since he never, we think, dined 
 with any of them afterwards ; and since, owing to 
 their divisions and separations, they seldom after- 
 wards ever dined amicably among themselves. 
 He sat at this time again to Lawrence, and was 
 pleased with the portrait, as conveying the Idea of 
 ' the stout blunt carle who cares for few things and 
 who fears nothing.' He valued this journey as 
 having caused * his thoughts to flow in another 
 and pleasanter channel' than for some time pre- 
 viously. On his return to Scotland in the end of 
 November, he took a house In Walker Street, Edin- 
 burgh, and spent there the winter months, tor- 
 mented with rheumatisms, which he had caught in 
 France from damp sheets, and often sunk in deep 
 depressions ; but, ill or well, serene or melancholy, 
 always tugging on at the oar. 
 
 We quote one or two painfully interesting pas- 
 sages from his Journal of this year. On the last 
 day of 1826 he held a little party: 'The Fer- 
 gussons came, and we had the usual appliances of 
 mirth and good cheer; yet our party, like the 
 chariot-wheels of Pharaoh in the Red Sea, dragged 
 heavily.. It must be allowed that the regular re- 
 currence of annual festivals among the same indi- 
 viduals has, as life advances, something in it that 
 is melancholy. We meet like the survivors of some 
 
'THE UNVEILED PROPHET: 255 
 
 perilous expedition, wounded and weakened in our- 
 selves, and looking through diminished ranks to 
 think of those that are no more ; or they are like 
 the feasts of the Caribs, in which they held that 
 the pale and speechless phantoms of the deceased 
 appeared and mingled among the living.' Thus 
 he describes a walk and what followed : ' Wandered 
 from place to place in the woods, chewing the cud 
 of sweet and bitter fancies which alternated in 
 my mind, idly stirred by the succession of a thou- 
 sand vague thoughts and fears, — the gay strangely 
 mingled with those of dismal melancholy ; tears 
 which seemed ready to flow unbidden ; smiles 
 which approached to those of insanity, — all that 
 wild variety of mood which solitude engenders. 
 Came in and assorted papers. I never could help 
 admiring the concatenation between Achitophel's 
 setting his house in order and hanging himself. 
 The one seems to follow the other as a matter of 
 course. But what frightens and disgusts me is 
 those fearful letters from those who have been long 
 dead to those whp linger on their wayfare through 
 the valley of tears. What is this world } a dream 
 within a dream. As we grow older, each step is an 
 awakening. The youth awakes, as he thinks, from 
 childhood ; the full-grown man despises the pur- 
 suits of youth as visionary ; the old man looks on 
 
256 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 manhood as a feverish dream. The grave the last 
 sleep ! No ; it is the last and final awakening.' 
 
 The following is gloomier still : ' Heard the true 
 
 history of ^ (a suicide). Imagination renders 
 
 us liable to be the victims of occasional low spirits. 
 All belonging to this gifted but unhappy class must 
 have felt that, but for the dictates of religion, or the 
 natural recoil of the mind from the idea of dissolu- 
 tion, there have been times when they have been 
 willing to throw away life as a child does a broken 
 toy. I am sure I know one who has often felt so. 
 O God ! what are we ? Lords of nature ! Why, 
 a tile drops from a house-top, which an elephant 
 would no more feel than the fall of a piece of paste- 
 board, and there lies his lordship ! or something of 
 inconceivably minute origin, — the pressure of a 
 bone, or the inflammation of a particle of the brain 
 takes place, — and the emblem of Deity destroys 
 himself or somebody else ! We hold our health and 
 our reason on terms slighter than one would desire, 
 were it in their choice, to hold an Irish cabin.* 
 
 These extracts are rather in the mood of John 
 Foster than of Walter Scott ; more like the gloomy 
 misanthrope and ascetic than the broad, benignant 
 Scottish Shakspeare, and seem to point to begun 
 disease. And yet we could quote from his earlier 
 
 ^ This was, we think, Irving, Scott's early companion. 
 
' THE UNVEILED PROPHET: 257 
 
 writings passages sprinkled here and there of a 
 similar purport, as where, in Waverley, he says, 
 * If this compound of fools and knaves called the 
 world be still in existence.' And it is singular how 
 so many of his most powerful characters are soured, 
 disappointed, and disrespectable beings, — gipsies, 
 villains, smugglers, and caterans, — and might augur 
 that he had, like Shakspeare, a dark sore deep 
 sunk in his nature, which he relieved by creat- 
 ing such queer, ambiguous, and somewhat savage 
 people. Every castle of old had its dungeon, and, 
 we suspect, every lofty mind has its deep misan- 
 thropic pit, with plenty of sullen, waveless water, 
 and many reptiles, living or dead, swimming or 
 rotting within ; yet Scott mingled even his dark 
 portraits with kindly elements, and his very devils 
 are brown, not black. To show the good that is 
 in evil characters is a more amiable task than to 
 show the evil that is in good, or to make the good 
 incredibly perfect. 
 
 One splendid and gratifying incident occurred 
 this otherwise disastrous season. This was the 
 dinner of the Theatrical Fund, which took place 
 on the 23d of February 1827, and at which he pre- 
 sided. Lord Meadowbank, as it was the first time 
 Scott had appeared at a public entertainment since 
 his misfortunes, determined, after consulting him 
 
 R 
 
258 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 in private, to give his health as 'the Author of 
 Waver ley! He did so, accordingly, in glowing 
 terms. A storm of applause is said to have fol- 
 lowed. A Glasgow litterateur present on the 
 occasion says, on the contrary, that the applause 
 was rather cold, and would have been much more 
 enthusiastic had the toast been given in the capital 
 of the West. Be this as it may, Scott's reply was 
 in admirable taste ; and the last sentence must 
 have brought down the house : ' I beg leave to pro- 
 pose the health of my friend Bailie Nicol Jarvie 
 (Mackay the Actor) ; and I am sure that, when the 
 author of Waverley and Rob Roy drinks to the 
 health of Nicol Jarvie, the applause shall be pro- 
 digious' To which Mr. Mackay replied, 'My 
 conscience ! my worthy father the deacon could 
 never have believed that his son would have such 
 a compliment paid him by the Great Unknown.' 
 Lockhart adds a ludicrous thing. * After resuming 
 the chair, Scott sent a slip of paper to Patrick 
 Robertson, begging him to confess something too ; 
 why not the murder of Begbie .? but this, if done 
 by the facetious Peter, must have been at a late 
 hour of the evening.' We can imagine the solemn 
 gravity with which Peter of the Painch would rise, 
 like a penitent Sir John Falstaff, as if some awful 
 birth of guilt were riving his continental bosom ; 
 
* THE UNVEILED PROPHET: 259 
 
 what profoundly ludicrous sorrow would sit upon 
 his heavy features and half-shut eyne ; and how, 
 after some beatings of breast and painch, sepulchral 
 sighs, and genuine Burgundy begot tears, he would 
 proceed, in tones as dolorous and guttural as those 
 of his famous Gaelic sermons, to deliver himself of 
 his dread secret ; and how, when from the Man 
 Mountain in labour there sprang to light the old 
 story of the robbery and murder at noonday of 
 the bank porter, thunders of applause, dying away 
 in convulsive laughter, would welcome the off- 
 spring, and almost drown its parent as he sank 
 exhausted in the chair! We can fancy all this,, 
 and fancy, too, with what delight Scott would have 
 witnessed it had he waited, and prided himself on 
 being the grandfather of the joke of the evening ! 
 
 The Waverley secret had ceased to be one from 
 the date of the failure. It had been well kept, 
 considering that twenty persons had been apprised 
 of it. Scott says in his diary : * Funny thing at 
 the theatre last night. Among the discourse on 
 High Life below Stairs, one of the ladies' ladies 
 asks, " Who wrote Shakspeare ? " One says, " Ben 
 Johnson ;" another, " Finis." " No," said an actor, 
 " Sir Walter Scott ; he confessed it at a public 
 meeting t'other day.'" And thus the Prophet 
 was at last unveiled. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 'NAPOLEON TO THE RESCUE.' 
 
 REAT things had been expected of his 
 
 Napoleon, at least by the general and 
 
 distant public. They imagined that it 
 
 would at once re-establish his fading fame and 
 
 redeem his ruined fortunes. * Napoleon to the 
 
 rescue!' became the cry along the line of his 
 
 wavering battle. The initiated, however, knew 
 
 better. They were aware that the sum he might 
 
 get for this work, however large, was a mere drop 
 
 in the great bucket of his engagements, and they 
 
 were aware of the difficulties with which disease, 
 
 sorrow, bereavement, and his careless habits of 
 
 composition, had environed his task. Some of 
 
 them must have known that, although two years 
 
 had elapsed since he began the work, the actual 
 
 time consumed in the writing was hardly more 
 
 than a year. And what a year of * pain, sorrow, 
 260 
 
* NAPOLEON TO THE RESCUE: 261 
 
 and ruin!' None less than a Michael Scott, or 
 some similar supernatural personage, could have 
 been expected in such a time to write a work 
 worthy of such an author and such a subject. 
 Wreathing ropes of the ribbed sea-sand, or splitting 
 the Eildon Hills in three, were child's play to the 
 task of recording worthily, in the course of a few 
 hundred sittings, the career of the most marvellous 
 man of modern times, — himself, too, the centre of 
 the most multiform and marvellous events in the 
 grandest of eras, — the ' man without a model and 
 without a shadow,' whose flag for twenty years had 
 been Victory, and his will Fate. 
 
 In June 1827 Scott's Life of Napoleon appeared 
 in nine volumes, and met, if not with a rapturous 
 reception, with an enormous sale. It realized, first 
 and second editions included, a profit of ;^ 18,000, — 
 a fabulous sum in itself, but which, placed against 
 his debts, was a wart to Ossa. Scripture critics 
 speak of ' notes of time ' in portions of the ancient 
 volume. Scott's Napoleon bore but too distinctly 
 its note of time. Haste was visible in every page ; 
 and this not the haste of his novels, in which he had 
 been emptying his oldest and richest repositories, 
 spreading out like the wise men of old his far- 
 brought treasures, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, 
 but the haste of one who loads his waggon with 
 
262 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 goods in one street to catch the market in another. 
 Many of the descriptions, indeed, especially of 
 battles, are worthy of the author of Marmion and 
 Old Mortality; and the spirit of the whole, particu- 
 larly in reference to Napoleon himself, is wonder- 
 fully impartial. But altogether it ranks rather with 
 compilations than with works of genuine history, 
 and classes its author's name with the SmoUetts 
 rather than with the Humes and Robertsons of 
 his country. In profound political and philo- 
 sophical sagacity it is deficient. Of its sketches 
 of individuals we remember none, unless where he 
 speaks of Danton as a character worthy of the 
 treatment of Shakspeare or Schiller, and as the 
 ' Mahomet of the Revolution.' The style is in some 
 parts exceedingly bald and careless, and in others 
 too florid for narrative ; and the flowers have not 
 the natural beauty and bloom of those in his earlier 
 v/orks. Burke was an older man than Scott when 
 he wrote his Regicide Peace, and the figures in 
 its style are as numerous, but they never seem 
 to disguise weakness, always to augment as well as 
 adorn strength. Indeed, Scott's book is not nearly 
 so good, so clear, so compact, and so strong as 
 Lockhart's own two little volumes of NapoleoiUs 
 Life published in John Murray's Family Library. 
 William Hazlitt wrote shortly after Scott's work, 
 
'NAPOLEON TO THE RESCUE: 263 
 
 and in almost avowed rivalship, his Life of Napo- 
 leon. Hazlitt is a poor describer of battles, unless 
 of racket and pugilistic contests, where he shines ; 
 while Scott has the old cavalier blood in him, and 
 evermore rises when he smells the battle afar off. 
 Scott has always great ease, and sometimes a 
 grand sweep of style, but has not that constant 
 watchful, lynx-eyed intellect, like a whole com- 
 mittee of vigilance in permanent session, which 
 distinguished Hazlitt. There are no descriptions 
 in all Scott's nine volumes to be compared to 
 Hazlitt's pictures of the Reign of Terror, of the 
 poetical power and charm of the Catholic religion, 
 and of the Fire at Moscow. This last is specially 
 fine. There is something, indeed, very grand in 
 the thought of the two great elements. Fire and 
 Snow, making common cause against this new 
 Kehama or Man Almighty, and checking his pro- 
 gress. Snow as an enemy in Russia he might have 
 expected ; but Fire too — there was something he 
 could not have calculated on, and which seems for 
 the first time to have awed Napoleon's spirit. And 
 how little he and his army look, first in the glare 
 of the Kremlin, and then in the white boundless 
 waste of the snow ! 
 
 , Apart from the splendid passages of Hazlitt's 
 Life, it is a book which raises materially our esti- 
 
264 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 mate of his sense. There is less paradox and 
 personal feeling than in his other writings, and a 
 vast deal of strong, sagacious, weighty reflection. 
 Having been himself a flighty thinker at times, he 
 is excellent: at exposing flightiness in others ; and 
 Napoleon had a good deal of it blended with his 
 great general soundness of judgment. 
 
 The efl*ect of Scott's book on the public was 
 to produce a mixture of wonder, sympathy, con- 
 siderable admiration, and much disappointment. 
 Everybody read, few criticised it. Goethe, as we 
 saw, stated the truth in saying that its chief value 
 lay in its satisfying the interest felt as to the 
 general impression which a career like Napoleon's 
 had produced on such a mind as Scott's ; although 
 a captious critic now, comparing Scott's fierce and 
 vulgar abuse of Bonaparte in those letters, written 
 during his brilliant career, with the estimate in the 
 Life, might allege that the impression varied so 
 much at different times as to be of less conse- 
 quence. There would, however, be more captious- 
 ness than sense in this criticism. Compare the 
 abuse poured out by the Northern journalists on 
 Stonewall Jackson and General Lee, while both 
 were in arms, with the language of universal ad- 
 miration, softening in the one case into a deeper 
 feeling because the object is dead, which is em- 
 
'NAPOLEON TO THE RESCUE: 265 
 
 ployed to both noiv ! Scott only passed through 
 a process which is as common in, as we think it 
 is honourable to, human nature. 
 
 After all that Scott, Lockhart, Hazlitt, Thiers, 
 and a hundred others have done, the life of 
 Napoleon is not yet adequately written, nor his 
 portrait fully taken. We see only as yet a few 
 scratches on the canvas, and dim outlines of the 
 future photograph. It may never be done ; it can- 
 not be done, we suspect, for long ages. The only 
 man now alive who could have painted Napoleon 
 with a force and fire, a sweep and mastery at all 
 worthy of the subject, has devoted himself to other 
 and surely not worthier heroes, such as Frederick 
 the Great, — the life of whom, by the most powerful 
 pen extant, must be pronounced a clumsy com- 
 pilation, a colossal blunder, and might, were we 
 using his own metaphorical language, be called a 
 * Sphinx Swine,' the size enormous, the shape dis- 
 gusting. Curious employment, certainly, that of 
 Thomas Carlyle, with his almost last (authorial) 
 breath inflating an unprincipled scoundrel, with the 
 talents of a clever corporal or drill-sergeant and 
 the habits of a satyr, into a hero, and the * last of 
 the kings !' Napoleon, whom Carlyle now abuses, 
 had probably as many faults as Frederick, although 
 of a less offensive kind ; but his genius was of a far 
 
266 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 loftier order, and his achievements transcendently 
 greater. And when did Frederick ever blend such 
 feeling, poetry, and common sense, as Napoleon in 
 the following instance ? Talking in the park at 
 Malmaisoft to one of his counsellors, he said, * I 
 was here last Sunday, walking out in this solitude 
 in the silence of nature. The sound of the bells of 
 the church at Ruel suddenly struck my ear. I was 
 affected, so great is the power of early habit and 
 education. I said to myself, What an impression 
 must it not make on simple and credulous minds ! 
 Let your philosophers, your metaphysicians reply 
 to that : a religion is necessary for the people !' 
 
 Scott now stood relieved, as Atlas when Her- 
 cules took his place under the weight of the heavens, 
 from a tremendous load. New tasks he instantly 
 undertook, but they all seemed easy to him after 
 Napoleon. Lockhart and his family having come 
 to spend part of the summer at Portobello, Sir 
 Walter was often there in the long days of June, 
 strolling along the beautiful beach, and inhaling 
 the sea breeze. When the Court rose, he returned 
 to Abbotsford, where Lockhart's household, too, 
 were gone ; and there the Wizard might be seen 
 riding through the woods with little John Hugh 
 Lockhart, his grandson, and telling to him one of 
 those stories from Scottish history which in the 
 
'NAPOLEON TO THE RESCUE: 267 
 
 evening or next day he was to write down for the 
 whole world in his book already begun, Tales of a 
 Grandfather. He was working, too, at his Chronicles 
 of tJie Canongate. This summer the Blair Adam 
 Club met in Charleston, Fife, and enjoyed some 
 pleasant little excursions. Scott once more visited 
 St. Andrews; and while his friends climbed St. 
 Rule's Tower, which his lameness and rheumatisms 
 prevented him doing, he thus meditated : ' I sat 
 down on a gravestone and recollected the first visit 
 I made to St. Andrews, now thirty-four years ago. 
 What changes in my feelings and fortunes have 
 since then taken place, — some for the better, many 
 for the worse ! I remembered the name I then 
 carved in Runic characters on the turf beside 
 the Castle gate, and I asked why it should still 
 agitate my heart } " Still harping on my daughter." * 
 His friends, however, came down from the tower, 
 and the sad, delicious reverie fled away. 
 
 While he was, soon after, at Minto, he heard the 
 news of the death of Archibald Constable, who 
 died utterly broken down by his misfortunes, and 
 sketched him* in his diary with generous fidelity. 
 One curious thing he mentions about him : * He knew 
 the rare volumes of his library, not only by the eye, 
 but by touch when blindfolded. Thomas Thomson 
 saw him make this experiment, and, that it might 
 
268 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 be complete, placed in his hand an ordinary volume 
 instead of one of these libri rariores. He said he 
 had overestimated his memory, — he could not re- 
 collect that volume/ Scott grants to him to have 
 been the * prince of booksellers ; his views sharp, 
 liberal, and powerful ; too sanguine and speculative, 
 but who knew more of the business of a bookseller, 
 in planning and executing popular works, than any 
 man of his time. He was generous, and far from 
 bad-hearted ; in person good-looking (* The Crafty,' 
 he said on another occasion, 'is a grand-looking 
 chield, but not equal to Jupiter Carlyle'), but very 
 corpulent latterly ; a large feeder and deep drinker, 
 till his health became weak. I have no great 
 reason to regret him, yet I do. If he deceived 
 others, he deceived also himself* Constable was 
 only fifty-four, but looked ten years older. He 
 died the occupant of an obscure closet called by 
 courtesy a shop, in poverty and wretchedness ; and 
 most of his great schemes had perished before him. 
 Yet he must be remembered as long as the Edin- 
 burgh Review and the Waverley Novels. 
 
 In August died a greater man, who had also 
 been closely connected with Scott, George Can- 
 ning. We remember no eminent person of this 
 century whose reputation is now so much a tradi- 
 tion as Canning's. Byron said of him : ' Canning 
 
'NAPOLEON TO THE RESCUE: 269 
 
 is a genius, — almost a universal one, — a wit, a 
 statesman, and a poet.' But his speeches are 
 forgotten, — all save a few bold strokes, such as, ' I 
 called a new world into existence ' (by acknowledg- 
 ing the South American States) ; his wit lingers in 
 such scraps of sarcasm, of questionable taste and 
 unquestionable bad feeling, as 'the revered and 
 ruptured Ogden' (a worthy patriot, who had con- 
 tracted a rupture while confined for a political 
 offence) ; his poetry never deserved the name, 
 and is now nowhere, unless in obsolete books of 
 extracts, where you may find still his Knife- 
 grindeVy and his ballad of The German Studejit, 
 who exclaims, — 
 
 * Here doomed to starve on water gru- 
 El, never shall I see the U- 
 Niversity ot Gottingen !' 
 
 Yet he was a most b/illiant and a most useful 
 man. His power over the Commons and country 
 was immense ; his oratory at once refined and 
 brilliant. As Scott says of him : ' No man possessed 
 a gayer and more playful wit in society ; no one, 
 since Pitt's time, had more commanding sarcasm 
 in debate in the House of Commons. He was 
 the terror of that species of orators called the 
 " Yelpers." His lash fetched away both skin and 
 bone, and would have penetrated the hide of a 
 
270 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 rhinoceros.' As a statesman, he was given some- 
 what to intrigue, but had large views and progres- 
 sive tendencies, although the Tories accused him, 
 as they have since accused Gladstone and D'Israeli, 
 of breaking down their ranks ; and certainly, as 
 Falstaff has it, ' he led his rogues where they were 
 well peppered/ As a man, although irritable, 
 haughty, and not willing to work amicably with 
 inferior statesmen, he was frank, if not always 
 open, and often yielded, as in his defence of 
 Queen Caroline, to generous impulses. When 
 appointed Premier, he said the office was his 
 by inheritance, and as he could not from con- 
 stitution hold it more than two years, it would 
 descend to Peel. But he did not enjoy it for 
 even that brief space. He was hunted to death 
 by the organs of the extreme party he had left, 
 which openly shouted out, * We are killing him ;^ 
 and was mourned by Scott the more tenderly 
 that he strongly disapproved of his latter policy. 
 It is singular to find in Scott's Journal, immedi- 
 ately after a feeling notice of Canning's death, 
 the following sentence : * My nerves have for 
 these two or three last days been susceptible of 
 acute excitement from the slightest causes. The 
 beauty of the evening, the sighing of the summer 
 breeze, bring the tears into my eyes, not un- 
 
'NAPOLEON TO THE RESCUE: 271 
 
 pleasantly/ This was nature's untimely signal 
 that he must at no distant day follow his great 
 statesman friend. 
 
 Before the close of the year he had two danger- 
 ous rencontres, — the one with a vapouring French- 
 man, General Gourgaud, who had taken offence 
 at some statements in Napoleotis Life, and wished 
 personal satisfaction, and another with Abud the 
 Jew, who threatened him, on account of a debt, 
 with incarceration; but, as Bunyan would say, 
 * the Lord being merciful to him, he escaped both 
 their hands/ 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 STRUGGLES OF THE PROSTRATE. 
 
 HE vigorous rally made by Napoleon 
 
 had on the whole failed. Even had 
 
 the work been as good in the historical 
 
 style as Waverley was in fiction, we doubt if, at 
 
 that stage of the business, it could have redeemed 
 
 him. Its success would have probably led to a 
 
 second effort, and, had that triumphed, the victory 
 
 would have been bought by the author's life. 
 
 More probably it would have been a failure, and 
 
 Scott might have had to return to novel -writing 
 
 over the ruins of his historical reputation. As it 
 
 was, he was compelled to do this to some extent ; 
 
 and most of his after efforts in novel - writing 
 
 appear like the convulsive struggles of his own 
 
 Dirk Hatteraick after he was mastered and bound, 
 
 strong but ineffectual. 
 
 272 
 
STRUGGLES OF THE PROSTRATE, 273 
 
 Early in the winter appeared the first series 
 of the Chronicles of the Canojigate, heralded by- 
 one of Christopher North's splendid jubilates of 
 applause in Blackwood. They were, however, 
 rather coldly received by the public. At this 
 we wonder, who look at them simply on their 
 own merits, and do not remember that the 
 generation of 1827 were compelled to compare 
 them with their more brilliant predecessors. We 
 land in France, and find a day warm, which the 
 natives, contrasting it with the previous part of 
 the week, vote to be somewhat dull and chilly. 
 Scott himself liked The Highland Widow while 
 writing it, and thought it written in his ' bettermost 
 manner.' It is certainly a powerful Ossianic pro- 
 duction, quite a prose poem ; and the style is grave 
 and solemn as the ' stalk of the bold wolf in the 
 harvest moon.' The Woman of the Tree has some 
 slender resemblance to his Nomas and Elspeth 
 Mucklebackits, but is on the whole as original, 
 as powerful. And who can forget her exclamation 
 over her lost son, * My beautiful, my brave ! ' The 
 others are spirited and varied tales. The Two 
 Drovers is little more than a newspaper incident, 
 but it is admirably told. In The Surgeon's 
 Daughter Middlemas is an unredeemable and 
 
 unnatural scoundrel ; and the part of the story 
 
 S 
 
274 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 described as passing in Scotland is commonplace 
 enough. But the scenes in Hindostan, such as the 
 story of the Indian whose bride is devoured by a 
 tiger, and who keeps a life-long watch over her 
 tomb, and the unveiling of Hyder Ali, are most 
 excellent, and create the desire that Scott had given 
 us a full-length portrait of that extraordinary man, 
 and opened up a little more of the ' gloomy recesses' 
 of a mind so * capacious,' as Burke has it, of wild jus- 
 tice and wide retribution, as well as of that severe 
 and measured mercy which often mingled with it 
 in his actions, and the descent of which resembled 
 less the gentle rain from heaven than the first slow, 
 large drops of a thunder shower. 
 
 If The Chronicles, however, did not create any 
 sensation. The Tales of a Grandfather, which came 
 forth immediately after, did. They were welcomed, 
 according to Lockhart, with greater rapture than 
 any of Scott's productions since Ivanhoe. They 
 extended his fame into a place where it had not 
 got full footing before, — ^into the nursery, — and 
 tended to confirm it in all other directions. Sir 
 Walter now, for the first time, ranked with such 
 enviable writers as the authors, many in number, 
 of The Arabian Nights, and as Bunyan, Defoe, and 
 Goldsmith, whose works are equally relished by 
 boys and bearded men, and whose praise is per- 
 
STRUGGLES OF THE PROSTRATE. 275 
 
 fected out of the mouths of babes and sucklings as 
 well as in the encomiums of critics, and in the 
 thanks of all. At first, indeed, the language of 
 The Tales is rather babyish even for babes ; but 
 after a little practice the author finds out the true 
 golden mean of style which, while children crow 
 and clap their hands over it, glues elder people (as 
 we are told of Sir Joshua Reynolds when reading 
 The Life of Savage in a country inn) to the 
 mantelpiece till their arms are stiff and cold. 
 Often, when it appeared in its three small volumes, 
 was it read at one sitting. It is often read at a 
 single sitting still, and may be called the history of 
 Scotland illuminated by a fairy's lantern, — so tiny 
 and so true, so childlike and so real, the radiance 
 it casts upon a story, romantic enough of itself, 
 and which, even in its barest version, is stranger far 
 than fiction. 
 
 In the course of two years Scott had cleared off 
 about ;^40,ooo of his debt. Still the remainder 
 loomed large before him. But now Cadell, who 
 had been Constable's partner, and had recently pur- 
 chased the copyrights of the Novels, projected, — it 
 was a project worthy of Constable, and, indeed, 
 was in its original germ his, — the Magnimi Opus, 
 i.e. a new, cheap, and uniform edition of the 
 Waverley Novels, illustrated by eminent artists, 
 
276 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 and accompanied with notes from the pen of 
 the author. This became ultimately a mine of 
 wealth. 
 
 The first announcement of Scott's literary labours 
 in 1828 was that he had a volume of sermons in 
 the press, — an announcement which sounded then 
 as strange as though a few years ago Dickens had 
 advertised a reply to Colenso. In spring, accord- 
 ingly, there appeared a thin octavo volume entitled 
 Religions Discourses^ which we remember seeing 
 when a boy in a parish manse that summer, and 
 hearing highly commended by a respectable Estab- 
 lished minister as good, sensible discourses, * better 
 than he expected from Sir Walter,' but did not 
 read then, and have never met with since. They 
 were written out of a kindly motive for a young 
 man named Gordon, who had acted as Scott's 
 amanuensis ; had studied for the Church, although 
 labouring under an infirmity of deafness ; who got 
 a presentation to a parish, but had been seized 
 with a nervous dread of appearing before the 
 presbytery to deliver the necessary discourses, — 
 something like Cowper's terror at facing the House 
 of Lords, — and came to Scott with tears in his ^y^s^ 
 telling him that his pen was powerless. 'Never 
 mind,' said the kindly Scott, ' I'll write two sermons 
 for you which will pass muster ;' and next morning 
 
STRUGGLES OF THE PROSTRATE. 277 
 
 presented him with them. They were not ulti- 
 mately required, but Gordon retained them in his 
 possession, and being pressed with pecuniary diffi- 
 culties, sold them (after getting Scott's consent) 
 for £2^0, the largest price which had ever hitherto 
 been paid for two sermons. They were published 
 by Colburn, then the great vender of fashionable 
 novels, and we suppose had a run alongside of 
 PelhafUy The Disowjied, The Ktizzilbash, and the 
 GHara Tales, with which that year his press was 
 teeming. 
 
 In March appeared The Fair Maid of Perth, the 
 reception of which was, in Scotland at least, en- 
 thusiastic. We remember in Glasgow, where we 
 were then attending college, that the estimate of 
 the press, — a press very ably conducted at that time 
 by Sheridan Knowles, Malcolm, Kerr, Northhouse, 
 and others, — was exceedingly high. It has undoubt- 
 edly here and there an appearance of forcing and 
 uneasy elaboration, but is on the whole a most 
 successful production, with the genius great, but 
 the art greater ; indeed, we may call it Scott's last 
 real novel. It is full of spirit-stirring incident, of 
 graphic painting, and of admirably portrayed 
 character. In reference to its pictures of scenery, 
 we often regret that the season selected is early 
 spring, or rather winter, so that we have the 
 
278 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 beauties of the Fair City and Loch Tay rather 
 cast in statuary than revealed in the rich colours 
 of painting. What he would have made of Killin 
 in summer, and of Keiimore and Kinfauns in 
 autumn ! The Highland funeral and the battle 
 of the Inch are splendid descriptions, — the latter 
 perhaps too frightfully accurate, although there 
 gleams on us a raw and bloody glory from that 
 field of desperate and all-devouring death, over 
 which are echoing the cries, * Another for Hec- 
 tor! Death for Hector!' like accompaniments of 
 thunder! Harry Wynd is a portrait drawn with 
 a mixture of care and boldness worthy of Scott's 
 very best days. Catherine Glover has character, 
 though it is hardly the character of the time ; is a 
 fair maid, but not the Fair Maid of Perth in that 
 age. Louise is more true to her, perhaps to any, 
 period. All the Court scenes ranging round 
 Rothesay are powerfully pictured ; and his frightful 
 death is artistically relieved by Catherine's tender- 
 ness and his own patience. Conachar is a coward 
 whom we pity more than we despise ; nay, pro- 
 perly speaking, he is not a coward at all. Morally 
 he is brave, constitutionally he is timid ; he unites 
 a nerve of aspen with an heart of oak. It is him- 
 self, not death, that he fears ; and his suicide seals 
 not his disgrace, but his restoration to our respect. 
 
STRUGGLES OF THE PROSTRATE. 279 
 
 But Henbane Dwining is in our judgment the 
 flower of the flock. He is the most original cha- 
 racter of them all. Strange how he always suggests 
 to our mind the image of Thomas De Quincey, 
 and seems to resemble him in his small stature, 
 extremely complaisant, almost cringing manners, 
 unsearchable eye, and transcendent powers, al- 
 though De Quincey was an amiable man and a 
 believer. Dwining, on the contrary, represents the 
 last result of Materialism ; and to his eye frequent 
 dissection of the human frame has reduced man 
 to the level of a worm hacked to pieces by a 
 schoolboy's knife. Yet he assumes a certain sub- 
 limity of aspect from his powerful intellect and his 
 worship of intellect, the contempt with which he 
 regards the brutal desperadoes with whom he is 
 nevertheless mixed up, and whom he uses as 
 his tools, and from his undoubting conviction of 
 his miserable creed. The Bohemian in Quenthi 
 Durward avows himself an atheist, but he does so 
 in a fierce defiant spirit, which may after all dis- 
 guise a fear lest his creed be false ; but Dwining is 
 cool, collected, absolutely certain of his, and dies 
 with the sneer of its avowal sculptured upon his 
 lips. How you tremble at the lean little incarna- 
 tion of malignity, skill, cunning, sarcasm, infidelity, 
 and intellectual pride, and at the ^he, he, he!' the 
 
28o WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 fatal chuckle which proclaims his diabolic pre- 
 sence ; and still more when he says to Catherine 
 on the battlements of Falkland, pointing to Ra- 
 morny's soldiers, who are turning traitors to him, 
 * These things thought themselves the superiors of 
 a man like me ! And you, foolish wench, think so 
 meanly of your Deity as to suppose that wretches 
 like them are the work of Omnipotence!' Byron 
 has been called the searcher of dark bosoms ; but 
 Scott could search them too, although with a very 
 different spirit and purpose from the other. 
 
 After Scott had completed this tale, he set out 
 for London, in or near which were his eldest son, 
 his second son, Lockhart and his family, and 
 where he spent six weeks, on the whole pleasantly, 
 although little Johnnie Lockhart was still very 
 unwell ; and this and other family distresses pre- 
 vented him going much into general society. He 
 saw, however, on this, as on former occasions, a 
 good many distinguished people, such as Sir 
 Robert Inglis, Sotheby, and Coleridge ; sat to 
 poor Haydon, and also to Northcote, who re- 
 minded him of an ' animated mummy ; * dined 
 and remained all night at Holland House ; visited 
 the Duchess of Kent, and was presented to the 
 little * Princess Victoria,' who, being then nine, 
 must still have some faint recollection of the tall, 
 
STRUGGLES OF THE PROSTRATE. 281 
 
 lame, white-haired baronet, probably introduced 
 to her as the cleverest man in the British empire. 
 He says of her : ' This little lady is educating with 
 much care, and watched so closely that no busy 
 maid has a moment to whisper, " You are heir of 
 England." I suspect that, if we could dissect the 
 little head, we should find that some pigeon or 
 other bird of the air had carried the matter.' 
 And ere he went north he spent a pleasant day 
 at Hampton Court, where his son Walter then 
 resided, in the company of Samuel Rogers, Tom 
 Moore, Wordsworth, and his wife and daughter, — 
 Rogers presenting the Scottish poet with a pair 
 of gold-mounted spectacles, and Scott valuing the 
 gift and giver highly. 
 
 This was the last visit paid by the unmutilated 
 Scott to London. With some little infirmities, 
 and although his eye had waxed dim, his natural 
 strength was not yet abated. One slight symptom, 
 however, of begun loss of memory he gave during 
 this journey. Hearing Mrs. Arkwright singing, 
 with great power and beauty, the lines, — 
 
 ' Farewell, farewell ! the voice you hear 
 Has left its last soft tones with you ; 
 The next must join the seaward cheer, 
 And shout among the shouting crew,' — 
 
 he said to his neighbour in the room, ' Capital 
 
282 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 words, — whose are they ? Byron's, I suppose ; 
 but I don't remember them.' He was astonished 
 when I told him they were his own in The Pirate. 
 He seemed pleased at the moment, but said next 
 minute, * You have distressed me. - If memory goes, 
 it is all up with me, for that was always my strong 
 point' Ere he visited London again, he was the 
 mere wreck of what he had been in memory, mind, 
 and body. When he returned to Scotland he 
 recommenced his literary labours, and during the 
 remainder of this year completed his second series 
 of Tales of a Grandfather, wrote some interesting 
 papers for The Quarterly, worked at the Magnum 
 Opus, and commenced Anne of Geier stein. This 
 novel was published in May 1829. Lockhart 
 speaks of its being as well received as The Fair 
 Maid of Perth. This is a misstatement. We 
 remember its publication distinctly, and that a 
 general feeling of disappointment prevailed. One 
 of the cleverest students we knew in Glasgow 
 College could with difficulty, we remember, read 
 it through ; and we were prevented by his experi- 
 ence from even making the attempt. The open- 
 ing scene in the Alps we found afterwards, and 
 find still, at every renewed perusal, magnificent, 
 and shall not soon forget the picture contained in 
 it of Pilate washing his hands in the * Infernal 
 
STRUGGLES OF THE PROSTRATE. 283 
 
 Lake' for ever in vain. But with this exception, 
 and one or two other passages scattered through 
 the book, it is a mere piece of senile garruHty, — hke 
 a long, endless story told by an old man half asleep 
 in his easy-chair ; and the first chapter or two, 
 contrasted with the rest, reminds us of one of the 
 passes from the low country to the Highlands, 
 very grand, but leading up often to dreary mono- 
 tonies of desolation. Ten years before, Anne of 
 Geierstein would have come out from his hands a 
 
 * Child of strength and state ; ' 
 
 and Switzerland would have hailed Scott as her 
 novelist as indisputably as he had long been that 
 of his native land. ' 
 
CHAPTER XXIII, 
 
 THE STRONG MAN BOWED DOWN. 
 
 lY the close of 1829 Scott had done a 
 great deal more work. He had written 
 the first volume of a History of Scot- 
 land for Dr. Lardner's Cyclopcedia ; he had ready 
 for publication by December the last of the Scot- 
 tish series of The Tales of a Grandfather ; and had 
 been working diligently at the prefaces and notes 
 to the Opis Magnum. The sale of this last was 
 most cheering. Ere 1829 was over, eight volumes 
 had been issued, and the monthly sale amounted 
 to 35,000 copies. This gave the prospect that, 
 with the continuance of health and his usual capa- 
 city of work, his debts in a few years would be 
 entirely liquidated. 
 
 But, alas! although his industry could always 
 be calculated on, his health now could not. Be- 
 sides rheumatisms, symptoms of diabetes, — a here- 
 
 284 
 
THE STRONG MAN BOWED DOWN. 285 
 
 ditary trouble from which his father had suffered, — 
 and other minor ailments, he complained for some 
 weeks of headaches and great nervous irritation, till 
 haemorrhage gave him a doubtful and ominous 
 relief. Cupping became necessary, and he man- 
 fully submitted to it, although he describes it as a 
 ' giant twisting about your flesh between his finger 
 and thumb.' He felt for the time better than he 
 had been for years before ; but his friends were 
 alarmed, for they knew that the first preliminary 
 blow of the axe of apoplexy had been struck. In 
 his Diary, among its last entries this season, he 
 records an interview, the first and last, with Ed- 
 ward Irving. His description will interest more 
 now than when it was first published : * I met 
 to-day the celebrated divine and soi disant prophet 
 Irving. He is a fine-looking man (bating a dia- 
 bolical squint), with talent on his brow, and mad- 
 ness in his eye. I could hardly keep my eyes off 
 him while we were at table. He put me in mind 
 of the devil disguised as an angel of light, so ill 
 did that horrible obliquity of vision harmonize 
 with the dark, tranquil features of his face, resem- 
 bling that of our Saviour in Italian pictures, with 
 the hair carefully arranged in the same manner. 
 There was much real or affected simplicity in the 
 manner in which he spoke. He spoke with that 
 
286 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 kind of unction which is nearly allied to cajolery. 
 He boasted much of the tens of thousands that 
 attended his ministry at the town of Annan, his 
 native place, till he well-nigh provoked me to say 
 he was a distinguished exception to the rule that 
 " a prophet was not esteemed in his own country." ' 
 There is a spice of prejudice in this picture, though 
 we presume it is in the main true. We imagine 
 Irving would not be quite at ease, or altogether 
 himself, when meeting at a dinner party with 
 Edinburgh lawyers, litterateurs, and fashionables. 
 Had he met Scott alone, they would have taken 
 to each other at once ; for Irving was the most 
 genial of men, and as thorough a Scotchman as 
 Sir Walter. Perhaps Scott, too, was under the 
 influence of Lockhart, who speaks here of Irving 
 *as deposed on account of his wild heresies,' and 
 who, in a letter inserted in Mrs. Gordon's Life of 
 Professor Wilson^ talks of him as a mere quack, 
 whose popularity was entirely owing to his atti- 
 tudes and the tones of his voice. How differently 
 the world rates Lockhart and Irving now ! And 
 how all must regret that two such noble beings 
 as Irving and Scott had not got into rapport with 
 each other, — the one the great Border Preacher, 
 and the other the great Border Poet, — both men 
 of the warmest heart and the most exalted genius ! 
 
THE STRONG MAN BOWED DOWN. 287 
 
 Tom Purdie died this autumn in a moment. 
 Scott mourned his loss greatly. We gave before 
 an extempore epitaph he proposed for him ; his 
 more deliberate one, written by the heart as well 
 as hand of his master, may be found over his 
 grave near the Abbey of Melrose. 
 
 Early in 1830 Scott published The Ayrshire 
 Tragedy^ a piece of some interest as a story, but 
 not much poetical merit. On the 15th of February 
 a tragic event occurred to himself. At two o'clock 
 afternoon he returned home from the Parliament 
 House, and while conversing with an old lady, 
 a Miss Young of Hawick, who had called to show 
 him some MS. memoirs of her father, a Dissenting 
 clergyman of eminence in his day, sunk down, with 
 a slight convulsion agitating his features. He ulti- 
 mately fell at all his length on the floor, speechless 
 and senseless. He was instantly bled, and then 
 cupped, submitted to a severe regimen, and after 
 some weeks he partially recovered. He resumed, 
 of course, his pen, and became as busy as he 
 had been in 1829, with Letters on Demonology 
 and Witchcraft for Murray's Family Library, the 
 second volume of his History of Scotla7id for 
 Lardner, and the fourth series of Tales of a 
 Grandfather on French History. All of them 
 bore unmistakeable indications of the shock he 
 
288 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 had sustained, — unmistakeable now, although his 
 contemporaries out of the circle of his own friends 
 seem, while aware of the weakness of these pro- 
 ductions, to have been ignorant of its cause. Thus 
 we find even Wilson, in one of his Nodes, tearing 
 the Letters on Demonology to pieces in a style 
 which, savage as it seems at any rate, would have 
 been cruel in the extreme had he known that they 
 sprung from a diseased brain. The Phrenological 
 Journal, on the other hand, discovered from the 
 same production that Sir Walter Scott had no 
 philosophical faculty, but added that neither had 
 Shakspeare. Certainly neither Scott nor Shak- 
 speare had in the same sense as George Combe. 
 But we would have credited these philosophers 
 with more acuteness had they discovered from 
 these Letters that Scott's brain was not in a normal 
 state. Toward August he had very much rallied, 
 and wrote a pleasant review of Southey's Life and 
 edition of John Bunyan, 
 
 In June died George IV., who, whatever were 
 his relations to the country, had certainly been 
 Scott's warm friend. Before his death, hearing 
 that Sir Walter was to retire from the clerkship, 
 he suggested that he might come to London to 
 spend the winter, and overlook the MS. collections 
 of the exiled house of Stewart, which had come 
 
THE STRONG MAN BOWED DOWN. "zZc) 
 
 into the King's hands by the death of the Car- 
 dinal of York. Scott heard of this gladly ; but 
 when offered the rank of privy councillor, he, as 
 Dickens too has since done, at once and decidedly 
 refused. 
 
 When the term ended in July, Scott ceased to 
 be a Clerk of Session, but was told that, in lieu 
 of his salary, ;^I300, he should have a retiring 
 allowance of £Zqo, He received also an intima- 
 tion from the Home Secretary that the Ministry 
 were prepared to give him a pension covering the 
 difference. He laid the matter before his creditors, 
 who advised him to consult his own feelings in the 
 matter. In fine, he declined respectfully, acknow- 
 ledging the intended favour, but declaring that he 
 would accept of no more than had been allowed 
 to his former colleagues, over whom he did not 
 feel himself entitled to preference. 
 
 He received this eventful summer — was it leap- 
 year i* — an offer of marriage from a lady of rank, 
 which he somewhat roughly declined to her brother, 
 who had been the medium of the communication. 
 Yet probably, worn out, diseased, and only recover- 
 ing from ruin, lame, half-blind, and deaf, his con- 
 stitution twenty years older than his years, he may 
 have felt flattered by the proposal, the lady being 
 young and wealthy. But although he felt, he never 
 
290 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 acted on flattery ; and his mind was made up, he 
 tells us, to regard woman as no more to him than 
 her picture. Instead of yielding to the siren 
 strains of the present, he was ever recurring to 
 the past. We find him, for instance, writing thus 
 in his Journal : ' 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 the 
 dead, and time rolls back thirty years to add to 
 my perplexities. 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.' Again, three days afterwards : ' At 
 
 twelve' I went again to poor Lady 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 recol- 
 lection, never to be forgotten, and yet scarce to 
 be remembered with pain.' Somehow the pain the 
 reader feels connected with these entries points to 
 the grave of poor forgotten Charlotte Carpenter, 
 the wife of his youth, and the mother of his 
 
THE STRONG MAN BOWED DOWN. 291 
 
 children. But Scott was of imagination all com- 
 pact ; his brain, too, was affected ; and, as a poet 
 in decay, he must be forgiven and deeply pitied 
 too. 
 
 When the Court rose, he went to Abbotsford, 
 which again seemed to have resumed its ancient 
 glory and happiness. Lockhart and his wife and 
 family were once more in Chiefswood ; William 
 Laidlaw had returned to Kaeside. There was 
 now, indeed, no Tom Purdie to lean upon in his 
 walk through the woods ; but he had his pony 
 Douce Davie to ride on, and his grandchildren to 
 surround him on donkeys as he rode. And the 
 woods were green this moist summer, and he 
 thought them again as soon to be his own. 
 Report had magnified the success of the Mag- 
 nimi ; his debts were generally believed to be 
 paid ; and once more, where the carcase was, 
 the eagles were gathered together. The table 
 of Abbotsford was surrounded as deeply as ever 
 by distinguished guests ; and Scott, although he 
 now passed the bottle himself, and sipped his 
 toast-and- water, had much of the old jollity of 
 ' mine host,' and found his friends in mirth as 
 well as in meat and wine. Few suspected that 
 he was all the while sinking more and more daily 
 into the arms of his disease, and that, while he was 
 
292 [ WAL TER SCO TT. 
 
 writing as much as ever, his pages were beginning 
 to smell of decay, like the last sodden leaves of 
 autumn. 
 
 Cadell came out one September day with his 
 
 * horn filled with good news.' By October, he told 
 Scott, the debt was to be reduced to ;^6o,ooo, 
 about one-half of its original amount. One object 
 of this visit was to induce Sir Walter to confine 
 himself entirely to the notes and prefaces of the 
 Magnum and let novel-writing alone. He sug- 
 gested also to him that he should employ some 
 time in drawing up a catalogue of the most rare 
 and curious articles in his library and museum. 
 Next morning, on this hint, he spake and began 
 dictating to William Laidlaw a book, entitled, 
 
 * Reliquiae Trottcosienses, or the Gabions of Jona- 
 than Oldbuck.' But after a few days he threw it 
 aside, and reserving it for hours of leisure, he com- 
 menced a romance. This was Count Robert of 
 Paris, destined to be the last and least of his long 
 line of fictions. As he had now with the weakness 
 much of the obstinacy of a child, all opposition was 
 in vain. The usual agreements for publication were 
 made, and the story proceeded. 
 
 Lockhart expresses pity for Scott's friends at 
 this crisis and afterwards. We share in this feel- 
 ing, and particularly for William Laidlaw. How 
 
THE STRONG MAN BOWED DOWN, 293 
 
 different the circumstances when he wrote at Scott's 
 dictation in 1819-20 and now ! Then Scott was in 
 disease, now in decay. Then the sturdy oak was 
 shaken by a tempest ; now it was stooping heavy- 
 laden under infirmities, and its proud apex touched 
 the ground. Then, as the author warmed with his 
 theme, spirit triumphed over matter, and, after 
 demoniac tortures, there was an angelic birth ; 
 now the flow of the thought was free and full in 
 general, but the result was feeble. Then Laid- 
 law's feeling, as he contrasted the pained Titan 
 with the glorious product, was delighted astonish- 
 ment ; now pity and sorrow predominated, especi- 
 ally when at times the mighty Wizard seemed to 
 have dropped his wand, lost his way, and, instead 
 of seeing the invisible, saw nothing but clouds and 
 thick darkness. It seemed a transfiguration in- 
 verted, — a god turning into a man, — a giant dwind- 
 ling into a dwarf; and it might be said of this 
 strong man, like Sisera of old, *At his feet he 
 bowed, he fell, he lay down ; at his feet he bowed, 
 he fell ; where he bowed, there he fell down dead.' 
 And Laidlaw such an idolater too ! We wonder 
 his pen was not petrified, — it surely sometimes 
 trembled. And how Scott must have missed those 
 interjections of praise, ' Eh, sirs ! heard ye ever 
 the like o' that !' which were wont to burst from 
 
294 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the lips of the enthusiastic henchman, and to cheer 
 him on his task. Now there was a sad silence, 
 broken only by the voice of the author, waxing 
 feebler and lower every hour, and by the racing 
 over the paper of the amanuensis' reluctant and 
 hurrying pen. 
 
 The times were not of the kind to infuse new 
 energy into Sir Walter, or to recall old. The 
 three days at Paris had uttered their voice, and 
 all Europe, Britain included, were returning it in 
 assenting or angry echoes. Charles X. had taken 
 refuge in Holyrood, and was even there so in- 
 secure that Scott had to write a letter to the 
 newspapers, imploring for him common courtesy 
 and respect. The Whig Government was big with 
 the Reform Bill. Scott became greatly agitated, 
 and threw out his agitation into a political pam- 
 phlet, which had of course plenty of zeal, but was 
 exceedingly feeble in composition, and which his 
 friends strongly condemned, and with some dif- 
 ficulty persuaded him to destroy. 
 
 Previous to this he had another slight touch 
 of apoplexy, which was followed by others ; and 
 greater severity of regimen, and abstinence from 
 work, were enjoined on him by his physicians. 
 Cadell and James Ballantyne had been compelled 
 to condemn Cowit Robei't as altogether unworthy 
 
THE STRONG MAN BOWED DOWN. 295 
 
 of his reputation. Frightened, however, almost 
 out of their senses by his political pamphlet, they 
 were driven in despair to advise him to return to 
 his novel ; and this, nothing loath, he consented 
 to do. 1830 closed in one point well with Scott. 
 In December his creditors, gratified by the success 
 of the Magnum, presented him with his furniture, 
 plate, linen, paintings, library, etc., — an act which 
 gave him great satisfaction. 
 
 His debt was now reduced to ;^54,ooo. The 
 Magnumy notwithstanding the disturbed state of 
 the country, continued to flourish, its sale being 
 scarcely at all diminished. When told of what the 
 creditors had so handsomely done, he thought his 
 affairs in such a satisfactory state that he deter- 
 mined to execute his last will, which he did the 
 next year. 
 
 He resumed his Journal, and on the 20th of 
 December we find him saying : ^ Ever since my 
 fall in February I have seemed to speak with an 
 impediment. To add to this, I have the constant 
 increase of my lameness. I move with very 
 great pain, and am at every minute, during an 
 hour's walk, reminded of my mortality. My 
 fear is lest the blow be not sufficient to destroy 
 life, and that I should linger on " a driveller and 
 a show.'" He often repeated the lines in Johnson's 
 
296 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Vanity of Human Wishes^ of which this is an 
 extract, — 
 
 * From Marlborough's eyes the tears of dotage flow, 
 And Swift expires a driveller and a show.' 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 VISIT TO THE CONTINENT. 
 
 COTT closed his Journal for 1 830 gloomily. 
 He opens it for 1831 in language more 
 melancholy still: — * January ist, 1831. 
 I cannot say the world opens pleasantly for me 
 this new year. There are many things for which I 
 have reason to be thankful, especially that Cadell's 
 plans seem to have succeeded, and he augurs that 
 the next two years will nearly clear me. But I 
 feel mj^self decidedly wrecked in point of health, 
 and am now confirmed that I have had a paralytic 
 touch. I speak and read with embarrassment, and 
 even my handwriting seems to stammer. This 
 general failure, 
 
 " With mortal crisis doth portend 
 My days to appropinque an end." 
 
 I am not solicitous about this. Only, if I were 
 207 
 
298 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 worthy, I would pray God for a sudden death, and 
 no interregnum between. I cease to exercise 
 reason, and I cease to exist/ 
 
 On the 31st of January he went to Edinburgh 
 to execute his last will. At Mr. Cadell's, where he 
 lived, he saw some articles of furniture which had 
 belonged to his house in Castle Street, and the 
 sight of them moved him deeply. He wrote in the 
 mornings at Count Robert, and sometimes saw an 
 old friend, Clerk, Skene, or Thomson, at a quiet 
 dinner. On the 4th of February the will was 
 signed. A storm of snow had detained him in 
 town ; but when the thaw came he returned to 
 Abbotsford. 
 
 The times continued portentous ; and when a 
 meeting of freeholders was called in March in 
 Jedburgh, to discuss the Reform Bill, he, to the 
 great alarm of his daughter, determined to attend 
 and speak on the Tory side. His tone was low, 
 and his utterance hesitating. At one point of the 
 speech, the crowd who had filled the courthouse 
 hissed and hooted. He became silent, but when 
 the interruption ceased resumed his speech. Again 
 they broke out into clamour. He abruptly and 
 unheard proposed the resolution, and then, turning 
 to the crowd, said, a glow of indignation passing 
 over his face, ' I regard your gabble no more than 
 
VISIT TO THE CONTINENT. 299 
 
 the geese on the green.' He soon, however, re- 
 covered his equanimity, and as he retired bowed to 
 the assembly. Two or three renewed their hissing ; 
 he bowed again, and added, as he took leave, in the 
 words of the doomed gladiator, ^ Moriturus vos 
 sahito! 
 
 Still he was labouring on, invitd Minerva, at his 
 novel. When Dr. Abercromby remonstrated, he 
 replied : ^ As for bidding me not work, Molly 
 might as well put the kettle on the fire and say, 
 "Now don't boil"* To another of his friends who 
 used similar language he said : * I understand you, 
 and I thank you from my heart ; but I must tell 
 you at once how it is with me. I am not sure that 
 I am quite myself in all things, but I am sure that 
 in one point there is no change. I mean, that I 
 foresee distinctly that if I were to be idle I should 
 go mad. In comparison with this, death is no risk 
 to shrink from.' For months he abstained from 
 wine and similar stimulants. One day, however, 
 having given a dinner party, where Lord Meadow- 
 bank was present, he neglected the prescriptions of 
 his physician, and took two or three glasses of 
 champagne, and was seized, on retiring for the 
 evening, with another severe shock of paralysis, 
 which forced him to keep his bed for days, and 
 changed his appearance in the most lamentable 
 
300 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 manner. When he got a little better, he resumed 
 and recast his novel ; and there was something 
 sublime yet ghastly in beholding this mere wreck 
 of a man, after several apoplectic seizures, and ill 
 besides with cramp, rheumatism, gravel, and in- 
 creasing lameness, still struggling shorewards 
 against the breakers, and keeping his eye upon 
 Laidlaw as his faithful pilot. On the i8th of May 
 he says : * Went to Jedburgh greatly against the 
 wish of my daughter. The mob were exceedingly 
 vociferous and brutal. Henry Scott was elected 
 for the last time, I suppose. Troja fuit. I left 
 the borough in the midst of abuse, and the gentle 
 hint of " Burke Sir Walter." Much obliged to the 
 brave lads of Jeddart !' 
 
 He now, after the elections with their turmoil 
 were over, got a little better ; but no sooner felt 
 himself in a measure restored than he commenced 
 a new romance. Castle Dangerous. Lockhart was 
 with him at the time, and in order to see the scenery 
 of the novel, the twain set out on an excursion to 
 Lanarkshire, passing on the way his dear old places, 
 Yair, Ashestiel, Inverleithen, and Traquair. During 
 his journey to Douglas Mill, Lesmahagow, and 
 Castle Dangerous, he was in a state of great nervous 
 excitement, repeating poetry from Winton, Bar- 
 bour, and Blind Harry. He met with an old friend, 
 
VISIT TO THE CONTINENT. 301 
 
 Borthwickbrae, also suffering under paralytic affec- 
 tion. They had a joyous, too joyous a meeting ; 
 and next day Scott was informed that his friend 
 had had another severe stroke, and was despaired 
 of. He was greatly struck, and insisted on going 
 home immediately, saying, ' I must home to work 
 while it is called to-day, for the night cometh when 
 no man can work. I put this text many a year 
 ago on my dial-stone.' (Dr. Johnson inscribed the 
 same on his watch-seal.) He set out straightway, 
 and never rested till he reached Abbotsford. 
 
 Returned, he finished Castle Dangerous and Count 
 Robert. Shortly after it was suggested that he 
 should spend the next winter in Italy. His son 
 Charles was attached to the British legation at 
 Naples, and to Naples his heart naturally turned. 
 The kind and indefatigable Basil Hall, learning 
 Scott's intentions, wrote Sir James Grahame, 
 without Scott's knowledge, suggesting that the 
 King's Government should place a frigate at his 
 disposal for his voyage to the Mediterranean. Sir 
 James at once and in the handsomest manner con- 
 sented. Scott was gratified, and said he was glad 
 to find things were still in the hands of gentlemen. 
 He resolved to remain at Abbotsford till Septem- 
 ber, and make himself as happy as he could, re- 
 visiting the principal points of interest in the valley, 
 
302 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 calling on his old friends, and gathering as many 
 around him as possible. Thus engaged, and freed 
 from the drudgery of authorship, his spirits and 
 health revived wonderfully. 
 
 On the 17th of September James Glencairn 
 Burns, returned on furlough from India, along with 
 MacDiarmid of Dumfries, visited Abbotsford ; and 
 once more, and for the last time, a party was held, 
 and a most delightful day ensued. We quote some 
 of the verses which Lockhart wrote on the occa- 
 sion, which are really good : 
 
 * A day I've seen whose brightness pierced the cloud 
 
 Of pain and sorrow ; both for great and small 
 A night of flowing cups and pibrochs loud,. 
 
 Once more within the Minstrel's blazoned hall. 
 Upon this frozen hearth pile crackling trees, 
 
 Let every silent clarshach find its strings ; 
 Unfurl once more the banner to the breeze, 
 
 No warmer welcome for the blood of kings ! 
 What princely stranger comes ? what exiled lord 
 
 From the far East to Scotia's strand returns, 
 To stir with joy the towers of Abbotsford, 
 
 And wake the Minstrel's soul ? — the boy of Burns. 
 
 * The children sang the ballads of their sires. 
 
 Serene among them sat the hoary knight ; 
 And if dead bards have ears for earthly lyres, 
 
 The peasant's shade was near, and drank delight. 
 As through the woods we took our homeward way, 
 
 Fair shone the moon last night on Eldon hill, 
 Soft rippled Tweed's broad wave beneath her ray, 
 
 And in sweet murmurs gushed the Huntly rill. 
 
VISIT TO THE CONTINENT. 303 
 
 Heaven send the guardian genius of the vale 
 
 Health yet, and strength, and length of honoured days, 
 To cheer the world with many a gallant tale. 
 
 And hear his children's children chant his lays. 
 Through seas unruffled may the vessel glide 
 
 That bears her poet far from Melrose glen ; 
 And may his pulse be stedfast as our pride. 
 
 When happy breezes waft him back again/ 
 
 Wordsworth came and took farewell of him, and 
 wrote then the beautiful sonnet : 
 
 ' A trouble not of clouds, nor weeping rain. 
 
 Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light 
 
 Engendered, hangs o'er Eildon's triple height ; 
 Spirits of power assembled there complain. 
 
 For kindred power departing from their sight. 
 While Tweed, best pleased in chanting a blithe strain, 
 Saddens his voice again, and yet again. 
 
 Lift up your hearts, ye mourners, for the might 
 Of the whole world's good wishes with him go ; 
 
 Blessings and prayers, in nobler retinue 
 Than sceptred king or laurelled conqueror knows, 
 
 Follow this wondrous potentate. Be true, 
 Ye winds of ocean and the midland sea. 
 
 Wafting your charge to soft Parthenope.' 
 
 On the 23d September, Scott, accompanied by 
 his daughter Anne and Lockhart, set out for Lon- 
 don. They spent one day at Rokeby, and Scott 
 took a solemn farewell of his ancient friend Mor- 
 ritt. They reached London on the 25 th of the 
 month, and found it in a state of terrific excite- 
 ment connected with the rejection of the Reform 
 
304 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Bill, — the Duke of Wellington's house having suf- 
 fered along with some others from a popular 
 eruption. 
 
 During the month he was in London, Scott went 
 very little into society, although he saw a few 
 old friends. He was very far indeed from being 
 well, yet Sir Henry Halford and Dr. Holland, 
 while recognising incipient disease of the brain, 
 thought that with great care and complete abstin- 
 ence from literary labour he might recover. 
 
 Moore, Milman, Sir David Wilkie, and Washing- 
 ton Irving saw him sometimes in the evenings. 
 Croker rose from his seat at dinner to make one 
 of his brilliant speeches against the Scottish Re- 
 form Bill, and said that Scott's company had in- 
 spired him. But his most frequent visitor was one 
 he had known but slightly before. Sir James Mac- 
 kintosh. He as well as Scott was in delicate 
 health, — both, indeed, were prematurely arrived at 
 second childhood, — and whenever they met, the 
 dear old men ! their conversation, wherever it 
 might begin, was sure to fasten ere long upon 
 Lochaber. When in Edinburgh he had given 
 orders to erect a monument to Helen Walker, the 
 prototype of Jeanie Deans, in the churchyard of 
 Irongray, her native parish. He now, before start- 
 ing on his journey, wrote that fine epitaph on her, 
 
VISIT TO THE CONTINENT. 305 
 
 which may be read, as we read it once on a lovely 
 autumn day, on the monument standing in the 
 centre of its wood, the Cluden murmuring near, 
 and which for exquisite simplicity has few rivals in 
 the literature of the churchyard. 
 
 We can conceive no event more interesting and 
 suggestive than a visit from Scott to the Medi- 
 terranean in the prime of his health and powers. 
 Although Scandinavia and the North might, in 
 some respects, have been more congenial to his 
 Scald-like genius, yet Italy too, and Malta, had 
 very great attractions to him as a lover of chivalry 
 and a worshipper of nature. How, had he gone 
 abroad ten years previously, would he have en- 
 joyed 
 
 * The Alps and Apennine, 
 The Pyrenean, and the river Po ;' 
 
 the blue sweep of the Mediterranean, with the 
 
 mountains of Africa seen in the distance ; the Bay 
 
 of Naples, with Vesuvius as a pillar of fire and 
 
 cloud towering above it ; the Cities of the Dead ; 
 
 Rome, the capital of the Catholic world and the 
 
 grave of the ancient ; the Rhine singing its old 
 
 psalm in the ears of Europe with changeless 
 
 and unwearied melody; Frankfort, where Goethe 
 
 was born ; — ^what living power would Scott have 
 
 brought to and derived from these time-hallowed 
 
 U 
 
3o6 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 scenes ! what materials for superb fiction would he 
 have accumulated ! How his expectations would 
 have been exceeded, and his imaginative dreams 
 been verified ! But now, alas ! in his enfeebled 
 state, while going to see the ruins of empires, 
 he seemed carrying dust to dust, and ashes to 
 ashes. 
 
 On the 29th of October, in company with his 
 son and two daughters, he sailed from Portsmouth 
 in the Barham. He was sick, like everybody else, 
 in the Bay of Biscay ; but when it was passed, he 
 got on deck and greatly enjoyed the feeling of the 
 air, the sea scenery, and the arrangements of the 
 frigate, which were admirable. The vessel seemed 
 his yacht. It 'wandered at his own sweet will,' 
 often altering its course to allow him to see some 
 famous place, and would have halted at Algiers 
 had not a favourable breeze arisen. There had 
 shot up, some few months before, from the depths 
 of the sea, as if to salute the mighty Wizard as he 
 passed, a submarine volcano. It had lingered its 
 allotted time, got a name, * Graham's Island,* and 
 was beginning to crumble down into the ocean 
 again when Scott arrived. Nothing would pre- 
 vent him landing on it; and he was soon seen 
 limping over its lava with all his old agility, find- 
 ing on it two suffocated dolphins and one starved 
 
VISIT TO THE CONTINENT. z<yj 
 
 robin redbreast ; looking down into its tiny crater 
 and breathing its brimstone gales, and coming on 
 board again with no other trophy than a nautilus 
 shell he had found, and meant to turn into a fairy 
 cup. On this subject a most interesting painting 
 might be founded, — Sir Walter Scott on Graham's 
 Island. It was a meeting of two worn-out and 
 half-quenched volcanoes on the lone salt deep : 
 full of cold scoriae ; fires going out in steam and 
 smoke ; creations dead ; footing uneasy and full 
 of dreary chasms; both crumbling and soon to 
 disappear in the immeasurable abyss. Alike, 
 Scott and Byron, were lighted on their last pil- 
 grimage by volcanic fires, — Scott by the dull 
 embers of this smouldering island, Byron by the 
 fresh flames of Lipari, — both pointing to doom, to 
 death without return, or to a return more disastrous 
 still. 
 
 At Malta Scott found himself very much at 
 home, — in the midst of old friends, such as Hook- 
 ham Frere, who was residing there, * the captive of 
 the enchanting climate and the romantic monu- 
 ments of the old chivalry ;' Sir John Stoddart, chief 
 judge of the island, who had known Scott in his 
 early and happy days, when Lasswade was his 
 real and Glenfinlas his imaginary home ; and Dr. 
 John Davy, brother of the great chymist. He spent 
 
3o8 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 much of his time in visiting La Valetta with its 
 knightly antiquities, the church and monuments of 
 St. John, and the deserted palaces and libraries of 
 the Knights of Malta. He met a lady, too, here, 
 a Mrs. John Davy, daughter of a brother advo- 
 cate, — a Mr. A. Fletcher, whose house had stood 
 close to 'poor dear 39,' as he called his own old 
 house in Castle Street. This lady, who watched 
 him with all the truth of a woman's eye and the 
 tenderness of a woman's heart, has left in her 
 diary some pleasingly pathetic ghmpses of the 
 faded but amiable poet as she saw him at Malta, 
 and contrasted him with the Scott she had known 
 in Scotland only five or six years before : ' His 
 articulation was manifestly affected, though not, I 
 think, quite so much so as his expression of face. 
 He wore trousers of the Lowland small-checked 
 plaid, and, sitting with his hands crossed over the 
 top of a shepherd-like staff, he was very like the 
 picture painted by Leslie and engraved for one of 
 the annuals ; but when he spoke, the varied expres- 
 sion that used quite to redeem all heaviness of 
 features was no longer to be seen. . . . Hearing the 
 sound of his voice as he chatted sociably with Mr, 
 Greig, on whose arm he leaned while walking from 
 the carriage to the door of the hotel, it seemed to 
 me that I had hardly heard so homelike a sound 
 
VISIT TO THE CONTINENT. 309 
 
 in this strange land, or one that took me so back 
 to Edinburgh and our own Castle Street, where I 
 had heard it as he passed so often. Nobody was 
 at hand at the moment for me to show him to but 
 an English maid, who, not having my Scotch in- 
 terest in the matter, only said, when I tried to 
 enlighten her on the subject of his arrival, " Poor 
 old gentleman, how ill he looks !" It showed how 
 sadly a little time must have changed him ; for 
 when I had seen him last in Edinburgh, perhaps 
 five or six years before, no one would have thought 
 of calling him an old gentleman. At dinner parties 
 he retired soon, being resolutely prudent as to 
 keeping early hours, though he was unfortunately 
 careless as to what he ate or drank, especially of 
 the latter.' 
 
 She met him afterwards at a party where he was 
 all himself, with the same rich felicitous quotation 
 from favourite authors, the same happy introduc- 
 tion of old traditionary stories — Scotch especially 
 — in a manner so easy and so unprepared. To Dr. 
 Davy, then preparing a life of his great brother, 
 Scott made a feeling and characteristic remark : * I 
 hope. Dr. Davy, your mother lived to see your 
 brother's eminence. There must have been such 
 great pleasure in that to her.' Neglecting medical 
 advice, he had one or two additional shocks while 
 
3IO WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 at Malta. On Tuesday the 14th December he and 
 his party went again on board the Barham, and 
 reached Naples on the 17th of the same month, 
 where his son Charles was waiting to receive 
 him. 
 
■^^^B! 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 RETURN HOME AND DEATH. 
 
 |T Naples a similar reception with that 
 of Malta awaited Scott. The British 
 minister — Mr. Hill, afterwards Lord 
 Berwick — took the lead in showing him every 
 attention, and the English nobility and gentry vied 
 with him in the task. Some remarkable men were 
 then in Naples, such as Mr. Auldjo, who gained 
 fame in his day by an ascent of Mont Blanc, and 
 published an account of it which will be found 
 noticed in the Edinburgh Review for 1829-30. 
 There, too, was old Matthias, whose Pursuits of 
 Literature y seldom read now, had great vogue 
 about the beginning of the century. Few are 
 aware that it was a lengthy poem, with much 
 lengthier notes, and that alike text and notes were 
 steeped in the bitterest personalities and Tory 
 prejudices, blended with vast learning and classical 
 
 311 
 
312 WALTER SCOTT, 
 
 taste. The author had outlived his power, though 
 not his powers ; had had the mortification to see 
 the authors he had underrated, such as Parr and 
 Godwin, universally acknowledged, and the party- 
 he had vilified — the Whigs — in place ; and was 
 now in Naples resting under the shadow of 
 withered laurels. Scott in his ruins he must have 
 surveyed with something of a Sir Mungo Mala- 
 growther satisfaction. Metal more attractive was 
 found in Sir William Gell, the famous topographer, 
 a gentleman who at fifty-six was nearly as com- 
 plete a wreck as Sir Walter, and this fellow-feeling 
 secured their intimacy. They leaned on each 
 other like two half-fallen pillars in the same 
 crumbling temple. 
 
 Sir Walter appeared each morning at the Nea- 
 politan court in the dress of a Scottish archer, of 
 light green and gold embroidery, following in this 
 the same fine instinctive taste which led O'Connell, 
 when he stood on the Calton Hill in 1835, to stand 
 
 * In Erin's verdant vesture clad,' 
 
 with a gold band around his cap, while all else was 
 green as emerald ! Scott would thus cut a gallant 
 figure ; and only those near could see in the loose 
 hanging lips and the vacant eye, marks of deep- 
 seated decay. In the evenings the old cacoethes 
 
RETURN HOME AND DEATH. 313 
 
 scribe7idi came upon him. He at first busied him- 
 self in collecting Neapolitan and Sicilian ballads 
 and broadsides, and was aided in this by Matthias ; 
 but by and by, to the horror of his friends, began 
 two tales, one a novel entitled The Siege of Malta, 
 and the other a story entitled Bizarro, both tend- 
 ing to excite the deepest pity for the proud genius 
 that had now, even before his body, become dust. 
 On the 1 6th of January he heard of poor Johnny 
 Lockhart's death, which he simply notices thus : 
 * This boy is gone whom we made so much of. I 
 could not have borne it better than I now do, and 
 I might have borne it much worse.' 
 
 Sir William Gell and Scott employed much of 
 their time in visiting interesting spots near Naples. 
 One was the Lago d'Agnano, where he was de- 
 lighted with the tranquil beauty of the spot, and 
 to find that he had overtaken the autumn, and 
 found the leaves yet lingering on the trees, while 
 the meadows around were green as in summer. 
 It reminded him of a lake in Scotland, to which 
 country his thoughts were already beginning to 
 revert with an incipient home - sickness. They 
 visited Pompeii ; and Scott, being soon fatigued, 
 allowed himself to be carried through the disen- 
 tombed city in a chair, and as he went along he 
 murmured repeatedly, ' The City of the dead ! the 
 
314 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 City of the dead!' Probably Dryburgh was as 
 much in his thoughts as Pompeii. He now some- 
 times imagined that his debts were all paid, and 
 thought that as this was the case he should again 
 take to poetry for his amusement ; and Cell en- 
 couraged him to think of Rhodes as a subject. 
 He spent a day among the hills at La Cava and 
 Paestum, and visited the grand Benedictine monas- 
 tery of La Trinita de la Cava, situated in a noble 
 forest of chestnuts, which spreads over very striking 
 hills. Something in the view again reminded him 
 of Scotland, and he repeated Jock of Hazeldean 
 with great emphasis and in a clear voice. In the 
 convent, mass was sung upon the organ. He exa- 
 mined some of the curious MSS. in the archives, 
 and was shown a book containing pictures of the 
 Lombard kings. The whole day was spent delight- 
 fully ; the fine weather, too, aided in raising his 
 spirits, and in the forest the voice of the Minstrel 
 might be heard, while the evening shadows were 
 descending, repeating once more, 
 
 * Aye she loot the tears doon fa' 
 For Jock o' Hazeldean,' 
 
 and some stanzas from his favourite ballad, Hardy- 
 knute. He was interested when told that his Old 
 Mortality was translated into Italian under the 
 title of The Scottish Puritans. 
 
RETURN HOME AND DEATH. 315 
 
 Gell took him, in fine, to Pozzuoli and to Cumae. 
 On the way Monte Nuovo was pointed out, and 
 Scott's eye kindled as he heard of its springing up 
 in one night, 
 
 * Like fiery arrow shot aloft from some unmeasured bow,' 
 
 destroying the village of Tre Pergole and part of 
 the Lucrine Lake. At an elevated spot on the 
 road Gell showed Scott an extensive prospect of 
 the Lake Avernus, the temple of Apollo, the Lu- 
 crine Lake, Monte Nuovo, Baiae, Misenum, and the 
 sea; and being more a topographer than a poet, 
 tried to enforce on him the names and knowledge 
 of the localities. Scott listened with respect, but 
 it soon became manifest that, while his ear seemed 
 attentive, his soul was far ; for scarcely had they 
 resumed their journey than he repeated in a grave 
 tone, and with great emphasis, 
 
 * Up the craggy mountain, and down the mossy glen, 
 We canna gang a-milking lor Charlie and his men.' 
 
 Grantully, the lochs of the Stormont, — those 
 seven sisters of beauty, — the braes of Angus, the 
 distant Dunkeld and Rannoch hills, — in short, the 
 scene of the first half of Waverley was now in the 
 view of the poet, from which Avernus, Baiae, and 
 even the blue Italian sea had vanished. 
 
3i6 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 He had wished to return by the Tyrol and 
 Germany, partly to see the monuments at Ins- 
 pruck and the feudal ruins on the Rhine, chiefly 
 to visit a grander ruin still — what had once been 
 Goethe — at Weimar. On the 2d of March Goethe 
 died, and the melancholy luxury was denied the 
 world of beholding the momentary conjunction of 
 the two waning stars — the two grand old leaning 
 towers. Scott heard of his death with surprise 
 and a fearful sorrow. Like that of Borthwickbrae, 
 it was a warning cry, — ' Be ye also ready.' ' Alas 
 for Goethe!' he exclaimed; *but heat least died 
 at home. Let us to Abbotsford.' 
 
 On the 1 6th of April his son Charles (who had 
 obtained leave of absence, Walter having been 
 compelled to return to his regiment) set out with 
 his father on their homeward way, travelling in a 
 barouche, which could be easily turned into a bed. 
 The journey revived him, and still more the 
 reception he met at Rome. In the ancient city 
 of the Caesars, with its massive ruins and gigantic 
 death-smiles of art, he took little interest now, — 
 perhaps never would have taken so much as many 
 vastly inferior men. Into the treasures of the 
 Vatican his strength forbade him to penetrate. 
 He was not, as he had been, *a gigantic genius 
 grappling with whole libraries,' but a feeble vale- 
 
RETURN HOME AND DEATH. 317 
 
 tudinarian, creeping and stumbling through them. 
 For Rome as the Catholic metropolis he now 
 cared little or nothing ; but there was still an- 
 other aspect of the Eternal City which proved 
 attractive to the mighty novelist. He valued it 
 as the centre of intrigues, plots, dark assignations, 
 darker assassinations, and all those abnormal 
 incidents and strange characters which make up 
 the wild romance of history, and form the ele- 
 ments of sensational fiction. To this kind of 
 style there had always been a lurking tendency 
 in Scott's mind, but his good sense had suppressed 
 and modified it, till now, in his second child- 
 hood, it came out in full force, and would have 
 produced a great deal in the most extravagant 
 vein had it not been that a dead hand was holding 
 the pen. Hence we find him listening with extra- 
 ordinary delight to the Duke of Corchiano, when 
 he told him he was possessed of a vast collection 
 of papers, giving true accounts of all the murders, 
 poisonings, intrigues, and curious adventures of all 
 the great Roman families during many centuries, 
 all of which were at his service to copy and 
 publish in his own way as historical romances, 
 only disguising the names, so as not to com- 
 promise the living descendants. Scott was so 
 captivated that he at one time thought of remain- 
 
3i8 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ing for some time in Rome, and at another of 
 returning there the next winter. 'Too late/ of 
 course, was inscribed on this and many other 
 schemes. At an earlier date he would undoubt- 
 edly have made much of these Italian stories. 
 Yet we need hardly regret his lack of service, 
 when we remember, first, that the selection of such 
 themes might have given a morbid hue to his 
 writings, and left on them a sort of Monk Lewis 
 savour, instead of the fresh smell of the gowans 
 which was natural to them ; and, secondly, since 
 such masters as Schiller, Shelley, Croly, and 
 Washington Irving have treated them so well, — 
 Schiller in his Ghost Seer ; Shelley in his Ce7tci ; 
 Irving in some of his better Tales of a Traveller ; 
 Croly in his magnificent Colonna the Painter ; 
 not to speak of Aird's beautiful Buy a Broom, 
 which is essentially of an Italian type; and not 
 inferior to any of all we have named, that very 
 powerful and thrilling anonymous story which 
 appeared in Blackwood during 1828, and is 
 entitled 'Di Vasari, a Tale of the Plague at 
 Florence.' 
 
 Whatever might be the cause, and feeble and 
 diseased as Sir Walter was now, the records of his 
 conversation at Rome are as rich as are to be 
 found in any part of his biography. One reason 
 
RETURN HOME AND DEA TH. 319 
 
 doubtless was, that he was watched as a setting sun 
 is watched ; every parting gleam registered, and 
 its zodiacal light fancied if not seen above. Sparks 
 of intellect and wit shone forth occasionally. 
 Speaking of a ruined castle which he loved to visit, 
 and where he used to stand uncovered : ' If it had 
 remained uncovered for a century, surely he might 
 uncover for an hour.' He quoted with great 
 humour Mrs. Siddons' solemn hexameter, when 
 asked by the Provost of Edinburgh if the beef were 
 not too salt : 
 
 * Beef cannot be too salt for me, my lord ;' 
 
 and seemed to agree with another of the party, who 
 said he should eat salt to a limb of Lot's wife. 
 His criticism on Lord Holland was, that his 
 * language illustrates and adorns his thoughts as 
 light streaming through coloured glass heightens 
 the brilliancy of the objects it falls upon.' Even 
 when wit was thick and intellect wandering, the 
 good humour and the heart remained. When 
 asked once why he had done for another party 
 something very disagreeable for him to do, he 
 replied, * Why, as I am now good for nothing else, 
 I think it is as well to be good-natured.' How 
 many, on the other hand, religiously retain their ill 
 conditions when all else is gone, as if there were 
 
320 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 some commandment somewhere for a man who 
 may have Hved a fool to die a devil ! Scott always 
 and most emphatically near his close acknow- 
 ledged that he had much reason to be grateful to 
 the public for their indulgence, yet who, after all, 
 in the present age has been so kind to them? 
 Perhaps his most affecting saying was to Mr. 
 Cheney. They had been speaking of Goethe, and 
 Scott was deploring the tendency of some of his 
 famous works. 'I answered that he must derive 
 great consolation in the reflection that his own 
 popularity was owing to no such cause. He re- 
 mained silent for a moment, with his eyes fixed 
 on the ground ; when he raised them, as he shook 
 me by the hand, I perceived the light blue eye 
 sparkled with unusual moisture. He added: " I am 
 drawing near the close of my career ; I am fast 
 shuffling off the stage. I have been perhaps the 
 most voluminous author of the day; and it is a 
 comfort to me to think that I have tried to un- 
 settle no man's faith, to corrupt no man's principle, 
 and that I have written nothing which on my 
 deathbed I should wish blotted." ' 
 
 On the next day, Friday the nth of May, 
 Scott had determined to leave Rome. Mr. Cheney 
 tried in vain to get him to stop, because he should 
 not begin his journey on a Friday. He laughed, 
 
RETURN HOME AND DEA TH. 32 1 
 
 and replied, * 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.' 
 Yet he had hurried to Scotland, we saw, to prevent 
 his daughter being married in May. On Friday, 
 therefore, the nth of May, Scott left Rome, with 
 indifference, if not with delight. What although 
 every street was filled with his admirers, every 
 book-shop and book-stall with his works, and 
 every playhouse echoing with operas founded upon 
 them } What although every door was thrown 
 open to receive him, and every curiosity, from the 
 Codex Vaticanus, that sacred book kept with sacer- 
 dotal jealousy, downwards, would have been free 
 to his inspection } Homewards was now his watch- 
 word ; 'Scotland's hills for m^e' the burden of his 
 song, although he knew right well that he would 
 only see them and die. Every hour in his carriage 
 lessened his distance from home, but increased his 
 impatience to arrive there. As he went along, 
 Terni thundered with a louder voice, as if to attract 
 his ear ; but he could scarcely be persuaded to turn 
 aside to see this great sight, 
 
 * Charming the eye with dread, a matchless cataract.' 
 
 He looked at it, and also at the grand church of 
 
 X 
 
322 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Santa Croce in Florence, but derived no inspiration 
 from the lion roar of the one or the ' frozen music * 
 of the other. On the 17th of the month he crossed 
 the Apennines, and dined on the top of the moun- 
 tains. Here he felt at home. Here was snow, and 
 here were pines, and these suggested Scotland, his 
 own Scotland, 
 
 * O'er the hills and far away,' 
 
 and he expressed himself delighted. He hurried 
 through Bologna and Ferrara, but would not even 
 look at any of their interesting objects. On the 
 19th he arrived at Venice, and remained there four 
 days, but would see none of its wonders, unless 
 that he leaned a little pensively over the Bridge 
 of Sighs, and scrambled down with difficulty and 
 danger into the dungeons which are beneath it. 
 Entering the Tyrol, that magnificent country had 
 no charms, and on a page of the Book of Guests 
 an after traveller found Scott's name registered by 
 himself thus, *Sir Walter Scott, for Scotland! 
 The chapel even of Inspruck started no en- 
 thusiasm, and through Munich, Ulm, and Heidel- 
 berg he moved on as if in his coffin to Frankfort, 
 There, on the 5th of June, he entered a bookseller's 
 shop, and the people, seeing an English party, pro- 
 duced some lithographs, among others one of 
 
RETURN HOME AND DEATH. 323 
 
 Abbotsford. He said, *I have that already, sir,' 
 and hastened, as if a serpent had stung him, back 
 to the inn, unrecognised. 
 
 On the 8th of June they embarked at Frankfort 
 on the Rhine steamboat, and during the first two 
 days, as they descended that 'abounding and re- 
 joicing river,' he seemed placidly happy. At 
 Nimeguen, however, on the 9th, some hours of 
 great depression were succeeded by a serious 
 attack of apoplexy, combined with paralysis. His 
 faithful attendant Nicholson bled him, which pro- 
 duced partial reanimation ; but he immediately 
 insisted on renewing his journey, and on the nth 
 was lifted at Rotterdam into an English steam- 
 boat. He reached London on the 13th of June, 
 and was carried to the St. James' Hotel, Jermyn 
 Street. Here many of his friends in London, some 
 from Edinburgh, and all his family, rallied round 
 him. He recognised and blessed, but could not con- 
 verse with his children. The first medical men were 
 in daily attendance, but could do nothing for him. 
 He lay in a stupor which seemed changeless as death. 
 
 Allan Cunningham was in London then. He 
 had been in Dumfries while Burns was dying, and 
 says : ' During his illness Dumfries was like a be- 
 sieged place, and the whole conversation on the 
 streets was about him and him alone.' He found 
 
324 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 it, strange to tell, much the same in reference to 
 Scott in London. Walking home late one night, 
 he found several working men standing at the 
 corner of Jermyn Street ; and one of them 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 ?' Yes, a king lying in state ! 
 
 Messages without number were incessantly sent 
 to his hotel, including daily inquiries from all the 
 members of the royal family. Reports being 
 circulated that his funds were exhausted, the 
 Government most munificently offered him what- 
 ever sum from the public treasury might be neces- 
 sary, but the offer was respectfully declined. 
 
 Whenever the cloud partially broke, Abbotsford 
 still shone out on the eyes of the sufferer, and 
 seemed by its summer beauty to beckon him north- 
 wards. It Avas as if, like his own Meg Merrilees 
 with Derncleugh, his spirit would not leave the body 
 but in his favourite spot. Toward it, therefore, he 
 proceeded on the 7th July in the James Watt 
 steamer, accompanied by Lockhart, Cadell, Dr. 
 Thomas Watson (a medical man), and his two 
 daughters. The party arrived at Newhaven on the 
 9th, and being still, as he had been all the voyage, 
 unconscious, he was conveyed to Douglas' Hotel, 
 St. Andrew Square. Here he lay for two days, 
 
RETURN HOME AND DEA TH. 325 
 
 Edinburgh on the whole unaware that he had re- 
 turned ; at least, no demonstration whatever was 
 made. We forget if even the newspapers recorded 
 the arrival. And hence, too, to preserve mcognito as 
 much as possible, it was at a very early hour of the 
 morning of the nth that Sir Walter Scott, lifted 
 into his carriage, left, and knew not that he was leav- 
 ing his own romantic town for ever. He remained 
 torpid, till, descending the valley of the Gala, he 
 raised his head, and began, like a man waking from 
 a dream, to gaze about him. Suddenly he mur- 
 mured, * Gala Water surely, Buckholm, Torwood- 
 lee.' When he saw the Eildons, he became greatly 
 excited ; and when, turning on his couch, he caught 
 a glimpse of Abbotsford, he uttered a cry of delight, 
 and could hardly be kept in the carriage. His ex- 
 citement continued ungovernable till he reached 
 the threshold of the door. Laidlaw was in waiting, 
 and assisted in carrying him to the dining-room. 
 Here he sat bewildered for a few minutes, when, 
 resting his eye on his old kind friend, he said, * Ha ! 
 Willie Laidlaw; how often, man, have I thought 
 of you !* By this time his dogs assembled around 
 his chair. They fawned on him, and licked his 
 hands. He now sobbed and now smiled, till ex- 
 hausted nature laid him asleep in his own Abbots- 
 ford. 
 
326 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Next day he awoke perfectly conscious where he 
 was, and was wheeled round the garden, the grand- 
 children pushing the chair before them, and the 
 venerable patriarch smiling serenely on them, on 
 the dogs, on the house, and on the July roses in 
 full bloom. He even talked a little, said he was 
 better of being at home, and might cheat the 
 doctors yet. * Nothing like my ain house in all my 
 travels. Just one turn more.' And then he slept 
 like an infant. 
 
 Next day he was again wheeled round the 
 garden, and then into the library, and placed by 
 the central window, that he might look out on the 
 Tweed. He expressed a wish that Lockhart should 
 read to him, and when he asked from what book, 
 he replied, * Need you ask ? there is but one.' Very 
 impressive, certainly ! This man had read the most 
 of the books in the literature of his own country 
 and of other lands ; he had written himself hun- 
 dreds of volumes ; he was surrounded at the 
 moment by a vast library of books in all lan- 
 guages ; and yet, now in his dying hours, there 
 was but one book he thought worth listening 
 to. Lockhart read him the 14th chapter of John. 
 What pencil shall give us the aged and worn-out 
 Wizard, with velvet cap, faded features, but bril- 
 liant eye, listening in the library of Abbotsford to 
 
RETURN HOME AND DEA TH. 327 
 
 the blended sounds of the Tweed gently murmur- 
 ing o'er its pebbles, and the accents of the divinest 
 love and compassion flowing from the lips of the 
 Man of Sorrows ? 'Let not your heart be troubled, 
 neither let it be afraid : ye believe in God, believe 
 also in me. In my Father's house there are many 
 mansions. I go to prepare a place for you.' Scott, 
 when the chapter was read, said to his son-in-law, 
 ' Well, this is a great comfort. I have followed you 
 distinctly, and I feel as if I were yet to be myself 
 again.' He again was put to bed, and sunk into a 
 deep, sweet slumber. 
 
 Next day was much the same, only he asked 
 Lockhart to read him something amusing, — some- 
 thing of Crabbe. Lockhart complied ; and Scott, 
 imagining it was a new production, cried out, 
 * Capital ! Crabbe has lost nothing.' It was the 
 attack in The Borough on players. *How will 
 poor Terry endure these cuts V At last he could 
 not stand it. * Shut the book ; it will touch Terry 
 to the quick.' 
 
 Next day, he again mistook Pho&be Dawson (a 
 story which had been read to C. J. Fox on his 
 deathbed) for some part of a new volume published 
 by Crabbe while he was in Italy. 'That evening 
 he heard the Church Service, and when I was about 
 to close the book, said, "Why do you omit the 
 
328 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Visitation for the Sick?'" which Lockhart accord- 
 ingly added. 
 
 On Tuesday the 17th he tried once more to 
 write, but the right hand had lost its cunning, and 
 the pen dropped from it helplessly. It was like 
 Napoleon resigning his empire. The sceptre had 
 departed from Judah : Scott was to write no more. 
 Little wonder that he sunk back on his pillow with 
 the large tears flowing down his cheek ; or that, 
 when after a brief sleep, Laidlaw having said, '■ Sir 
 Walter has had a little repose,' he exclaimed, 
 ' No, Willie ; no repose for Sir Walter but in the 
 grave ! ' and again he wept bitterly. 
 
 Deliriums and delusions without number followed. 
 Now he thought himself administering justice as 
 the Selkirkshire sheriff; anon he was giving Tom 
 Purdie orders anent trees ; now, it is said, he 
 dreamed he was in hell, — a dream not uncommon 
 with imaginative persons in extremis. Sometimes, 
 according to Lockhart, his fancy was in Jedburgh, 
 and the words ^ Burke Sir Walter ' escaped him in 
 a dolorous tone ; and anon his mind seemed for 
 the last time time to 
 
 * Yoke itself with whirlwinds and the northern blast j' 
 
 and, as it * swept the long tract of day,' words 
 issued from it worthy of the Great Minstrel, 
 
RETURN HOME AND DEATH. 329 
 
 snatches from Isaiah or the Book of Job, some 
 grand ragged verse torn off from the Scottish 
 Psalms, or an excerpt sublimer still from the 
 Romish Litany, such as, 
 
 * Dies irse, dies ilia, 
 Solvet saeclum in favilla ;' 
 
 or, in a more pensive mood, when the whirlwind 
 was moaning its last, 
 
 * Stabat mater dolorosa, 
 Juxta crucem lachrymosa, 
 Dum pendebat Filius.' 
 
 Perhaps his family, who remembered how, to 
 the harp of Allan Bane, Roderick Dhu's 
 
 * Freed spirit burst away, 
 As though it soared from battle fray,' 
 
 wished that the soul of the *old Makkar' would 
 spring up on one of those words of winged fire 
 to return no more ; but it was otherwise ordered. 
 The end was near, but it was not yet, and it was 
 not thus. 
 
 On the 17th September Sir Walter awoke from 
 those whirling dreams, conscious and composed. 
 He told Nicholson to bring Lockhart instantly 
 to his side ; and when he came, he said to him, 
 * Lockhart, I may have but a minute to speak to 
 
330 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 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 Lockhart said, * Shall I send 
 for Sophia and Anne.?' * No,' he replied, Mon't 
 disturb them. Poor souls ! I know they were up 
 all night. God bless you all.' He fell into a 
 deep sleep, and seemed scarcely again conscious, 
 except on the arrival of his sons, who were now 
 both summoned in haste to see the close. This 
 came about half-past one P.M. on the 2d Sep- 
 tember, when, in the presence of all his children, 
 the sun of autumn shining softly in at the open 
 window, and the Tweed uttering its silver monody 
 as it crept along, the spirit of Scott was released 
 from its body of death. His eldest son kissed and 
 closed his eyes. 
 
 A post mortem examination discovered that the 
 cause of his death was a slight softening of the 
 brain. 
 
 He was buried on the 26th September in Dry- 
 burgh churchyard, — a very large company, some 
 of them from distant parts of Scotland, following 
 his remains, which were carried by the hands of 
 his old domestics and foresters, the pall being 
 borne by his sons, his sons-in-law, his little grand- 
 son, and his cousins. Prayers were offered up in 
 
RETURN HOME AND DEA TH. 331 
 
 the house by Dr. Baird, and Dr. Dickson of St. 
 Cuthbert's, Edinburgh. The train of carriages 
 extended over a mile, and the Yeomanry followed 
 on horseback in great numbers. Some accident 
 made the hearse pause for a few minutes on the 
 top of the hill at Bemerside, a point where Scott 
 used often in admiration to rein up his steed/ and 
 the view from which the late Angell James pro- 
 nounced the grandest he had ever seen. 
 
 The trees of Dryburgh were waving with a 
 stormy wind, and the sky was lowering as the 
 coffin was, about half-past five P.M., deposited in 
 the dust. A sob burst from a thousand hearts, 
 but was stilled by the voice of Archdeacon 
 Williams reading over him the beautiful service 
 of the Church of England, and laying him down 
 in the sure and certain hope of a blessed resur- 
 rection. 
 
 All the newspapers in Scotland, and many in 
 England, clothed their columns in black for his 
 death ; and on the day of his funeral the bells of 
 most of our cities rung a muffled peal, — those of 
 Glasgow, as heard on that dark September morn- 
 ing, are still sounding in our ears. 
 
 Sir Walter died free of debt. The sale of his 
 
 ^ The horse of the hearse is said to have been the one 
 Scott used to ride. 
 
332 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 works, the insurance of his Hfe, and a sum ad- 
 vanced by Cadell on the security of his copyrights, 
 completely cleared his engagements. The subse- 
 quent fates of his family and estate are too well 
 known to be rehearsed here. We happened to be 
 present at the meeting held in Edinburgh to pave 
 the way for a monument to his memory, and 
 listened with delight to the speeches of Lord 
 Jeffrey, who spoke of all classes coming into the 
 Assembly Rooms as if 'into the temple of the 
 Deity,' to do honour to the great departed ; and of 
 Professor Wilson, who closed by quoting, in tones 
 of trembling pathos, the lines of the poet, — 
 
 ' Ne'er to those dwellings, where the mighty rest, 
 Since their foundations came a nobler guest.' 
 
 The Duke of Buccleugh, too, spoke in a good spirit, 
 as became a chief over a bard. The result of this 
 meeting is now that superb column which, towering 
 above the city of palaces, almost challenges equality 
 with the mountains which do around it, as with 
 ancient Jerusalem, ' stand alway.' 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 SCOTT, THE MAN AND POET. 
 
 ^^EW literary characters have been so 
 M blameless as Sir Walter Scott. Genial, 
 gentlemanly, frank, open, homely, kind- 
 hearted, considerate, utterly free from vanity, 
 jealousy, envy, malice, or guile, he was also distin- 
 guished by high principle and the most honourable 
 feelings. He had plenty, withal, of prudence, with 
 the slightest spice of what the Scotch call pawki- 
 ness, but duplicity and craft were unknown to, 
 perhaps inconceivable by him. We forget if in all 
 his characters there be one that is sly, or, properly 
 speaking, cunning. His very hypocrites wear glass 
 masks and dissolving cloaks, and are all too trans- 
 parent. He had strong sensuous appetites and 
 passions, as most healthy men have, but he kept 
 them under strict control. He ate an enormous 
 
 breakfast, but it was his main meal. He picked 
 833 
 
334 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 away at dinner, and seldom supped at all. While 
 the richest and most sparkling wines were circu- 
 lating at his board, he preferred a little spirits and 
 water, and diminished his quantity latterly to almost 
 zero. He slept, after working double tides, on a 
 tankard of porter and a single cigar ; and a great 
 deal of his talk about 'flowing quaichs' and sturdy 
 'morning draughts' was rather antiquarian than 
 real. One amusing little story we heard in Cum- 
 berland about him. Wordsworth and he were to 
 climb Helvellyn, and on the way passed a small 
 public-house, the proprietor of which, standing at 
 the door, saluted Wordsworth as a neighbour but 
 no customer ; Scott, whose name he did not know, 
 more warmly as a stranger but a customer. It 
 turned out that Wordsworth, being in his house as 
 well as habits a very strict teetotaller, Scott had 
 walked out on various occasions alone, and enjoyed 
 his ' morning ' at the little hostelry. A hearty 
 laugh followed the eclaircissement, and the im- 
 mortal pair proceeded (inorningless) up the moun- 
 tain! But to excessive or habitual drinking he 
 was in his latter years a determined foe, — led to 
 this by warnings connected with more than one of 
 his relatives ; and he said to Lockhart once, ' De- 
 pend on it, of all vices intemperance is the most 
 adverse to greatness.' Like most men of such 
 
THE MAN AND POET. 335 
 
 unbounded popularity as he, — and especially in the 
 past age, — he might have encountered temptations 
 to intrigues, but such follies he seems invariably 
 to have waved away from him ; and his life on this 
 point stood in edifying contrast to many of the 
 most celebrated men of his period. We have heard 
 him called an indifferent husband ; but this, we 
 believe, does not convey the full truth on the sub- 
 ject, — hardly a fond husband, he was a kind and a 
 faithful one. As a father he was tender and con- 
 fiding to a degree. In friendship he was steady 
 as steel ; and as a landlord was eminently kind- 
 hearted, considerate, and dutiful. This his foresters 
 and small tenants felt as they hoisted aloft the 
 coffin of their father and friend ! In all private 
 and business and family and literary matters he 
 was the most methodical of men. He despised the 
 litter and gown-and-slipper tricks of literary men. 
 His study was not a Chaos but a Kosmos, and he 
 the Demiurge who had reduced it all to comely 
 order, and sat in the midst clothed as well as in 
 his right mind. He liked order in others too. 
 When a correspondent sent him a letter sealed 
 with a wafer, he replied, * I am not a particular 
 man, but I detest wafers.* To his brethren on 
 the Bench, and his contemporaries or juniors at 
 the Bar, he was ever courteous without fudge, 
 
336 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 accessible, and on easy terms. He never needed 
 and never tried on the airs of the great man. 
 There is often as much pride in the mode and 
 angle of stooping as in going on tiptoe. Scott did 
 neither the one nor the other ; he simply stood 
 erect and walked straight forward. To young and 
 rising authors he was indulgent rather than severe, 
 as a rule ; and his purse as well as criticism was 
 ever open to those of them who required and 
 deserved aid, — nay, sometimes whether they de- 
 served it or not. According to Hogg, he almost 
 literally supported some unfortunate authors. 
 
 In political zeal, as well as in family pride, he was 
 at one time excessive, but experience tended much 
 to modify his feelings. He mourned more, ulti- 
 mately, over his own hard treatment of his brother 
 Daniel than over that brother's pusillanimous 
 and unworthy conduct. The ' greatest of these is 
 charity' rose gradually into the centre of his moral 
 code. In his sheriffdom he was the father of the 
 fatherless, the shield of the oppressed, and known 
 and welcomed as a sudden sunbeam in the dwell- 
 ing of the poor and the dependent, acting in the 
 very spirit of the grand words of Burke when he 
 speaks of Howard * remembering the forgotten.' 
 From his flaming Pittism of 1806 he was subsid- 
 ing into a very moderate Conservative, when the 
 
THE MAN AND POET. 337 
 
 panic of the Reform Bill came over the land, and 
 he proceeded to adjust his Tory mantle round him 
 ere he fell, — fell, as he thought, with his country 
 and his race ! Had he lived a few years longer, he 
 might have gone on with Peel in his slow but 
 certain movement toward Liberalism. He was by 
 far too wide-minded and warm-hearted to have 
 stood sullenly still, or come in last in such a 
 generous and inevitable advancement. 
 
 Scott's great fault, as • is now universally con- 
 ceded, was his desire of territorial acquisition and 
 family aggrandizement. To be a laird, to found 
 a family, to reach a patriarchal or feudal ideal, 
 was his ambition, — an ambition partly springing 
 from his idiosyncrasy as a lover of Scotland, as 
 an echo of past ages, and which we could not 
 sternly blame, had it not led to reckless specula- 
 tions, and to an extravagance of expenditure in- 
 volving a certain degree of moral turpitude. As 
 it is, the turreted mansion of Abbotsford looks 
 like a Castle Folly, and worse, because it rose 
 over the head of one of the most sensible as well 
 as gifted men that ever lived, reminding you of a 
 cap and bells on the brow of some hoary senior, 
 who has attained more than the age, and deems 
 that he has all the wisdom of Solomon. There 
 
 is almost an immoral incongruity in the spectacle. 
 
 Y 
 
338 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Hundreds of anecdotes are floating through the 
 south of Scotland anent Scott's kindly private 
 ways. One of the Ettrick Shepherd's children 
 was born with a weak foot. Scott never met the 
 father without inquiring, ' How's the footie V At 
 Altrive a curious little incident occurred. Scott 
 was dining with Hogg there. Before dinner he 
 was looking at Hogg's library. He drew out a 
 volume, one of several, labelled * Scott's Novels.* 
 It was Waverley. Putting back the volume, he 
 said, * Your binder has put a " t " too many in the 
 word Scots.' * Not at all,' said Hogg ; ' I wrote 
 out the copy.' Scott smiled. The secret had not 
 yet been divulged. 
 
 He used to call those he knew well by their 
 Christian names, — ^Willie Laidlaw, Jamy Ballan- 
 tyne, Johnnie Ditto. The late Mr. William Banks, 
 engraver, Edinburgh, was assistant to Mr. Lizars. 
 Whenever Scott entered the office, he would sit 
 down beside the assistant, with the kind words, 
 * How are ye, Willie 1 ' Lockhart does not relate 
 that Sir Walter was elected Rector of St. Andrews 
 University in March 1825. The election was con- 
 trary to the then existing laws of the University. 
 When a deputation of the students waited on him, 
 he kindly thanked them, and begged them to 
 ' mind the laws and their studies.' 
 
THE MAN AND POET. 339 
 
 His appearance need not be described, and 
 cannot be well described by one that never saw 
 him. It had great variety of aspect and expres- 
 sion. Edward Irving insisted on it to De Quincey 
 that the permanent expression on Scott's face was 
 that of the Border horse-jockey, — shrewd, gruff, 
 and rather selfish. Ordinary people, who saw him 
 in his ordinary moods in the Parliament House, 
 have described his look to us as that of dense 
 stolidity, like the face of a heavy country bumpkin. 
 But he had higher and more characteristic expres- 
 sions. Those who waited on his countenance till 
 it * waukened,' — till the angel disturbed the placid 
 pool, — were well rewarded for their patience, when 
 the blended fires of the poet and the warrior 
 looked out at his eyes, and his tall brow lightened 
 up like a mountain in the morning sun ; and even 
 on that cold bench, and surrounded by those dry, 
 keen lawyers, he was suddenly 
 
 * Attired 
 In sudden brightness like a man inspired.' 
 
 Latterly, when his hair had become snow-white, 
 such moments of glory 'made him seem like Mont 
 Blanc with the dawn shining on his summit.' 
 Wilson and Lockhart both describe him well ; and 
 in Carlyle we find his familiar features shown us 
 
340 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 in a new and strange light, as if in the gleam of 
 an apothecary's evening window, ghastlily, luridly 
 like him, liker his corpse. Scott the man and 
 Scott the poet may seem at first to furnish 
 rather elements of contrast than of harmony. As 
 a man, he was plain, practical, worldly even to 
 some extent ; as a poet, chivalrous, impulsive, full 
 of minstrel enthusiasm, selecting by choice all his 
 subjects and all his characters in the wildest and 
 most out-of-the-way corners. Hence some others 
 besides Carlyle have been led to believe that, 
 unless we can conceive him formed on the prin- 
 ciple of the composite figures in Ezekiel, half ox 
 and half eagle, half business man and half Border 
 minstrel, we must doubt the thoroughness of his 
 poetic vein, and deem his mantle put on for the 
 nonce. We grant, however, at once his bifold 
 nature, and Carlyle himself admits his sincerity. 
 He says, indeed, that he was not a Vates, that he 
 was possessed by no great idea, that he wrote 
 m.ost of his poetry and prose to order, and that 
 there was ' not fire enough in his belly to consume 
 all the sins of the world.' Much of this might 
 be alleged with equal truth against Shakspeare. 
 Shakspeare was not consciously a Vates. Shak- 
 speare would have been puzzled to reply to Car- 
 lyle or to Ulrici, had they been alive to ask what 
 
THE MAN AND POET. 341 
 
 his main idea was. Shakspeare 'was great, nor 
 knew how great he was.' Shakspeare taught, and 
 guided, and cheered the world very much as the 
 sun does, in grand, unconscious might, ' God being 
 in him, and he knew it not.' Shakspeare wrote, 
 we beHeve, most of his plays to secure that mo- 
 derate competence on which he retired at the 
 early age of fifty. Shakspeare had even less out- 
 standing personality than Scott. A munificent 
 and modest benefactor, he knocked at the door 
 of the human family by night, threw in inestimable 
 wealth, fled, and the sound of his footsteps dying 
 away in the distance was all the tidings he has 
 given of himself. Carlyle, indeed, sees the resem- 
 blance of Shakspeare to Scott, but he grossly per- 
 verts it, calling Shakspeare's utterance * living fire,' 
 and Scott's 'futile phosphorescence,' — an asser- 
 tion we must denounce as absurdly false and in- 
 consistent with his other statements. Nothing but 
 futile phosphorescence from a most 'genuine man !' 
 Impossible ! As to fire-eating and fire-bellied 
 consumption of evil, we venture to say that Scott, 
 with little definite purpose in him, with a contempt 
 for most of the so-called moral and religious novels 
 which were then pouring from the press, and with a 
 greater scorn still for such ^V/^moral and irreligious 
 tales as The Elective Affinities, which Goethe was 
 
342 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 sweating out with the animus of a Priapus, and 
 polishing after production with the skill and pains 
 of an Ovid, has, by the healthy tone of his morals, 
 and his usually reverent spirit, done a vast deal 
 to purify the literary atmosphere ; and if he did 
 not forcefully blast, yet he silently sapped many 
 of the vices of the times, meeting them on what 
 is their strong point, namely, the pleasure they 
 give, and substituting for that a rarer and purer 
 enjoyment. 
 
 Carlyle accuses Scott of *want of finish,' — a 
 charge which had been more worthy of a Vol- 
 taire blaming Shakspeare for putting a seaport 
 in Bohemia, or for violating the unities, than of 
 a critic who glories in being an admirer of a 
 chartered libertine like Jean Paul, and whose 
 own writings in general set finish, order, logic, 
 grammar, and a hundred other conventionalisms 
 at defiance. But the truth is, that when Carlyle 
 wrote his estimate of Scott, noble and true as it 
 is in many points, he was himself steeped to the 
 lips in disappointment and disgust ; his own wheel 
 had reached its lowest and most wintry point ; and 
 the cry, ' Ho ! we go up to summer now,' had not 
 yet been raised. He would probably write differ- 
 ently at present. Yet his closing words are very 
 beautiful : * When he departed, he took a man's life 
 
THE MAN AND POET, 343 
 
 along with him. No sounder piece of British man- 
 hood was put together in that eighteenth century of 
 time. Alas ! his fine Scotch face, with its shaggy- 
 honesty, sagacity, and goodness, when we saw it 
 latterly on the Edinburgh streets, was all worn 
 with care ; the joy all fled from it ; ploughed deep 
 with labour and sorrow. We shall never forget it ; 
 we shall never see it again. Adieu, Sir Walter, 
 pride of all Scotchmen, take our proud and sad 
 farewell!' 
 
 Whether a Vates or not, and whether his poetry 
 was written, like Peter Pindar's razors, simply to 
 sell, there can be no doubt that the article he 
 produced was a very pleasant one. Scott's poetry, 
 considerably over-rated in its day, has since re- 
 ceived rather sparing justice, and this mainly 
 because it has been compared to that of others, 
 with which it has scarcely one element of simi- 
 larity. You may say it is not deep like that of 
 Wordsworth, nor exquisitely artless like that of 
 Burns, nor soaringly spiritual like Shelley's, nor 
 passionately powerful like Byron's, — ^but what is all 
 this to the point } It does not seek nor pretend 
 to be aught of all this, — no, nor to be everlastingly 
 witty like Butler's, nor polished to the pitch of 
 pin-points or fire-irons like Pope's, nor artistically 
 and elaborately perfect like Tennyson's, nor para- 
 
344 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 doxical like Browning's, nor splendidly smutty 
 like Swinburne's. It pretends to be Scott's poetry 
 — coming after Homer's and the Ballads of the 
 Border; and it has, besides their martial energy, 
 a picturesque force, a chivalric spirit and fire, a free 
 and graceful movement, and at times an aerial 
 charm and sweetness, all its own. Call Marmio7i, 
 The Lay of the Last Mmstrel, and the rest, as 
 Coleridge does call them, rhymed romances, and 
 not poems, if you please ; they are so delightful, 
 that, in spite of the critic, the delight will overflow 
 into all ages, as it has already into all lands. 
 
 Ere we can do justice to Scott's poetry, we 
 must remember what it succeeded and supplanted. 
 Previous to his rise, Darwin, with the cold ingenui- 
 ties of his Botanical Garden; Hayley, with the 
 turgid tameness of his Triumphs of Tejnper ; and 
 Monk Lewis, with the clever monstrosities of his 
 Tales of Terror^ were among our most popular 
 authors. Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth 
 were all singing indeed, but singing to an audi- 
 ence rather few than fit. Campbell alone, of the 
 true poets of the time, had gained the popular 
 ear, and he was fallen sound asleep — a boy Apollo 
 — under the early laurels which the Pleasures of 
 Hope had given him. In such a state of things, 
 even had the merit of Scott's poetry been much 
 
THE MAN AND POET. 345 
 
 less than it was, it would have done good service. 
 For it was, if not great, eminently true ; if not 
 thoroughly original, the models it imitated were 
 the best ; and if not charged with profound 
 thought, it was fresh, natural, unconventional in 
 spirit, and eminently free, flowing, and unhack- 
 neyed in style. And then it had characters of 
 much interest, and contained many passages of 
 transcendent power. The Last Minstrel himself, 
 Brian the Hermit, Roderick Dhu, Allan Bane, 
 Margaret of Branksome, and Ellen Douglas, 
 belonged to the former. Melrose Abbey by 
 Moonlight, Love of Country, the Battle of Flod- 
 den, the Battle in The Lady of the Lake by the 
 side of Loch Katrine, the Death of Roderick 
 Dhu, and the Picture of Skye, belonged to 
 the latter class, and were worthy of any poet, 
 living or dead. Altogether, at that period, and 
 before Byron had written his strong poetry, and 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge had been appreciated, 
 and Campbell had been again aroused to indite 
 his later and better strains, and the wild genius 
 of Shelley had flashed and died in the horizon 
 like a monster meteor, we cannot blame Scott 
 for captivating the public with his song, or the 
 public for being captivated with Scott. It was 
 the best thing of the kind going. The author 
 
346 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 was a true poet, and it was scarcely his mis- 
 fortune, and certainly not his fault, that his poetry 
 was even more popular than it was good. 
 
 Carlyle himself, although he had spoken of Scott 
 as producing little but futile phosphorescence in 
 comparison with Shakspeare, is compelled to admit 
 some real merit in his poetry. 'We in this age 
 have fallen into spiritual languor, destitute of 
 belief, yet terrified at scepticism ; reduced to live a 
 stinted half-life, under strange, new circumstances. 
 Now vigorous whole-life, this was what of all things 
 these delineations afford. The reader was carried 
 back to rough, strong times, wherein these maladies 
 of ours had not yet arisen. Brawny fighters, all 
 cased in buff and iron, their hearts, too, sheathed 
 in oak and triple brass, caprioled their huge horses, 
 shook their death-doing spears, and went forth in 
 the most determined manner, nothing doubting. 
 The reader sighed, " Oh that I too had lived in 
 these times, had never known these logic cobwebs, 
 this doubt, this sickliness, and been and felt myself 
 alive among men alive !'" 
 
 So that, after all, Scott's poetry was not mere 
 phosphorescence, nor mere honeycomb, nor yet, 
 as Carlyle calls it immediately afterwards, ' a 
 beatific land of Cockaigne and Paradise of Do- 
 nothings.' It had tonic and bracing qualities 
 
THE MAN AND POET. ' 347 
 
 withal. It had something of old Homer in it ; 
 and, like his poetry, and others of that grand age, 
 
 * Flashed o'er the soul a few heroic rays, 
 Such as ht onward to the Golden Fleece, 
 And fired their fathers in the Colchian days.* 
 
 What Scotchman, at least, has not felt his blood 
 boil while singing or hearing sung Blue Bonnets 
 over the Border, or the Gathering of Gregarach : 
 
 * There's mist on the mountain, and night on the brae, 
 But the clan has a name that is nameless by day. 
 Then gather, gather, gather, Gregarach.' 
 
 Or Norman's song in the Lady of the Lake: 
 
 ' No fond regret must Norman know ; 
 
 When bursts Clan Alpine on the foe. 
 
 His heart must be like bended bow, 
 
 His foot like arrow free, Mary.' 
 
 Or Flora's fine chant in Waver ley : 
 
 * O high-minded Moray, the exiled, the dear. 
 In the blush of the dawning the Standard uprear ; 
 Wide, wide on the winds of the North let it fly, 
 Like the sun's latest flash when the tempest was nigh.' 
 
 We venture to assert that the poetry in the 
 Waverley Novels alone would have entitled its 
 author to rank as one of our foremost modern 
 bards. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 
 
 E come, while admiring Scott's poetry, to 
 speak of his prose with greater plea- 
 sure, because, Avhile exhibiting all the 
 finer traits of his verse, it manifests qualities not to 
 be found in it, and which serve to bring out better 
 the strength, breadth, richness, and originality of 
 his genius. 
 
 Surely those were halcyon days for Scotland ; 
 and though then a boy of ten or eleven, we 
 remember the latter portion of them well, and 
 watched them as closely as we would do now, when 
 twice or thrice every year it was announced : ' A 
 new novel by the author of Waver ley may be ex- 
 pected.' What interest was excited ! What an 
 almost, yea, altogether audible smacking of lips 
 was heard ! What speculations were started about 
 
 the probable era of history to be embraced, or 
 348 
 
THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 349 
 
 particular portion of country to be described ! 
 How many were saying, * Will he give us a novel 
 on Wallace by and by, supplanting the small 
 swipes of Miss Porter, and forming a pendant to 
 his picture of Bruce in the Lord of the Isles f ' Not 
 a few in the country districts of Scotland were ask- 
 ing, * Will he fix the scene this time in our county, 
 or, oh joy ! in our native parish ?' If an elderly 
 gentleman, with tall, rather clumsy form, white 
 hair, and a little lame withal, were seen prowling 
 about the environs of a Highland village, the 
 rumour instantly ran, ' This is the Great Unknown 
 studying for his next novel.' (We knew a case 
 where the name of Walter Scott and a grey head, 
 possessed by a dissenting preacher, — a very worthy 
 man, but one of the dullest dogs that ever barked in 
 a pulpit, — had nearly procured for him the freedom 
 of a northern county town, and did, dexterously 
 used by a wag, elicit a peal of bells on his entrance.) 
 How proud were Perthshire and Perth when 
 Catherine Glover stepped forth, leaning on Sir 
 Walter Scott's stalwart arm ! We remember how 
 the quidnuncs and critics of an old Scottish village 
 were puzzled, and even somewhat alarmed, at the 
 possible meaning of the word * Redgauntlet,' when 
 it was first announced. And when each expected 
 tale appeared, what crowding of booksellers' shops ! 
 
350 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 what enormous parcels, making the stage-coaches 
 in those ante-railway days tremble and vibrate to 
 and fro, and carriers' carts collapse ! what copious 
 extracts filled- the papers ! how critics perspired 
 and panted in uttering words vast enough to ex- 
 press their admiration ! and how, while Edinburgh, 
 Glasgow, London, Paris, Copenhagen, Leipsic, 
 Vienna, and New York were rejoicing over the 
 humours or weeping at the pathos of the new story, 
 the shepherd was guffawing upon the mountain 
 side, or wiping his tears with his maud ; the young 
 maiden reading it on a garden-seat, or on her 
 father's house stairs, with her long golden hair fall- 
 ing neglected over her shoulders ; while the en- 
 thusiast boy, after he had waited for it for long 
 weeks, when it did at last arrive, perhaps in the 
 dimness of the late summer evening, when it could 
 not be read, would take it up and clasp it to his 
 bosom ! We know something from personal obser- 
 vation, too, of the delight with which the better 
 writings of Dickens, such as David Copperfieldj 
 were welcomed in London ; but if they produced 
 more laughter, we are certain they did not make 
 such a deep and permanent impression, had not 
 the same broad, natural interest, or the same ideal, 
 poetical, and most romantic charm. 
 
 All this is long over. The man is long dead. The 
 
THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 351 
 
 works, stripped of their halo of novelty, must be 
 judged of as they are in themselves, and in the severe 
 and searching light of the new age which has risen 
 around us ; and that test they can stand, and that 
 light they have already borne. Often a century 
 must elapse ere a writer attain his true niche in 
 the temple of Fame. About half that time passed 
 from the appearance of Milton's Paradise Lost till 
 Addison made it popular by his criticisms in the 
 Spectator ; but Scott, though dead not forty years 
 ago, is already a classic, has had his popularity 
 confirmed, and his fame endorsed by the civilised 
 world, and is as secure of his place in the future, 
 although not precisely the same place, as Milton, 
 Homer, and Shakspeare. Not the slightest danger 
 of this verdict being reversed. A writer of great 
 ability, in the Westminster Review, predicted a few 
 years ago that the future popularity of the three 
 principal idols of our present literary hour, Carlyle, 
 Tennyson, and Ruskin, was precarious ; and this 
 he grounded on what he thought their imperfect 
 and belated political and religious opinions. But 
 whether this vaticination be true or false, it is 
 the glory of Scott, as well as of Shakspeare and 
 Homer, that the power of his writings is altogether 
 irrespective of any political principles, and of 
 aught except the broadest and most humane 
 
353 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 religious sentiments. He, although a Conservative 
 by blood and training, has never, no, not in Old 
 Mortality itself, defended tyranny, never become 
 the devil's advocate, never entangled any esoteric 
 or exoteric creed into his writings, never indulged 
 in senseless outbursts against commerce, or law, or 
 logic, or metaphysics, nor in outbursts against 
 anything. He has identified his genius with the 
 deep, general principles of humanity, and has 
 learned and used a language understood and felt 
 wherever man eats and drinks, falls and rises, sins 
 and suffers, loves and hates ; and aims at being 
 neither a politician, nor a philosopher, nor a theo- 
 logian, but at being what many politicians, philo- 
 sophers, and theologians are not — a man. 
 
 In the Waverley Novels the poetic element which 
 was in him so strongly, is held quite subordinate to 
 that of the noble humanity and the wide reflection 
 of all that swept across his universal soul. Scott 
 never pauses too long on a description of nature, 
 never daUies with a fine image ; seldom, if ever, 
 indulges in the luxury of rounding sentences 
 merely for the sake of the euphony thereby pro- 
 duced. He looks at dead scenery by the side of 
 living characters, and they must move and he must 
 move along with them ; he makes, but has not 
 time to mount his metaphor and turn it into a 
 
THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 353 
 
 hippogriff, hobby-horse, or velocipede ; and although 
 
 he often drops the most beautiful sentences in the 
 
 language, — sentences not surpassed in Burke, or 
 
 Addison, or Robert Hall, — it is half consciously, 
 
 and as he is pursuing, without pause or thought 
 
 of pausing, the path of his story. As Scott is 
 
 generally read fast, and more for his plot or his 
 
 characters and the incidents of the tale than for 
 
 his writing, we would refer our readers, without 
 
 quoting at present, to such passages in his works, 
 
 as authenticating our statement, as the night scene 
 
 in one of the first chapters of Guy Mamierhig ; 
 
 the description of Bothwell Bridge in a summer 
 
 evening in Old Mortality ; the pictures of autumn 
 
 in the Monastery and in St Ronaiis Well ; the 
 
 description of the glorious achievements of alchymy 
 
 in Kenilworth ; and there are hundreds besides. 
 
 Carlyle recites with approbation a saying of 
 
 somebody : ' No man has written so many volumes 
 
 with so few sentences that can be quoted,' — that 
 
 have been quoted were nearer the truth ; and the 
 
 reason of this is obvious enough : what good or 
 
 profit in quoting a writer who is in everybody's 
 
 hands } Besides, the power of many of our best 
 
 writers lies in the whole. But we are prepared, 
 
 whenever we deem it necessary, to prove that in no 
 
 other novelist — not even in Cervantes, or Bulwer, 
 
 z 
 
354 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 or Godwin — do we find a greater number of sepa- 
 rable and quotable beauties than in Scott. And 
 were all these beauties shorn away, there would 
 remain a residuum of worth and power, of interest 
 and invention, enough to secure their pre-eminence. 
 How copious they are in matter; how sweet- 
 blooded in spirit ; how strong, yet simple and 
 limpid in style, — * simple as the water, strong as the 
 cataract ! ' How profound, without any laboured 
 search or ostentatious anatomy, in their knowledge 
 of human nature ! how minutely accurate usually in 
 their historical costume ! how their characters teem 
 with life, and move and walk and seem blushing 
 with the blood which a master spirit has shot into 
 their resuscitated veins ! how delightfully true, yet 
 splendidly ideal, in their pictures of battle scenery 
 and historical incident ! how pure, amidst all their 
 genialities and generosities, in their moral tone! 
 and how sound in the main, healthy and Christian, 
 broad and charitable, in their religious spirit ! 
 
 In regarding him as the master of the novel, the 
 greatest by far that ever lived (Cervantes posr 
 sibly was a greater genius, and his Don Quixote is 
 perhaps a better novel than any one of Scott's; 
 but we look at Scott as the creator of a whole 
 world of fiction), more minutely we have to speak 
 of the width of his sympathy, of the use he makes 
 
THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 355 
 
 of the power of contrast, of his immeasurable 
 variety, and of the moral and religious character 
 and influences of his Novels. 
 
 Scott's main quality is his exceeding breadth 
 of sympathy. Shakspeare has been called the 
 greatest of men because he was the widest of sym- 
 pathisers. Scott on this point was not very far 
 inferior, and this enabled him to furnish a table 
 with viands adapted for every taste. He pre- 
 sented pictures of nature in her grandest and most 
 solitary aspects; sketches of romantic character; 
 incidents of heroic adventure and sublime super- 
 stitions ; traditions for the lovers of the strange, 
 the mysterious, and the poetical. Then for anti- 
 quarians he had 
 
 * A rowth o' auld nicknackets, 
 Rusty airn caps and jinglin' jackets 
 Wad haud the Lothians three in tackets 
 
 A towmont guid ; 
 And parritch pats and auld saut backets 
 Afore the flood.' 
 
 Then for the lovers of sport he could intersperse 
 the liveliest descriptions of hunting, fishing, dogs, 
 horses, and falcons. To the lovers of the military 
 art his Novels were a perfect study, — valuable for 
 their strategic details as well as for the martial fire 
 which burns in them. In courts he is as much at 
 home as in camps, and has been called peculiarly 
 
356 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the poet of princes ; and yet, who has painted 
 the life of the lower ranks with greater force, 
 fidelity, and sympathy? How many gentlemen 
 have come glowing from his plastic hand, and yet 
 with what gusto he has depicted blackguards and 
 villains of every shape and hue ! To scholars every 
 page teems with recondite lore ; to the students of 
 human nature he unbares the deepest secrets of 
 the heart. Readers of history find his writings 
 nearly as true, and far more delightful, than the 
 works of Robertson and Hume. The books teem 
 with stories for the lovers of the Ana ; and ladies 
 are attracted to them by the purity of their tone 
 and the chivalric gallantry of their spirit. Gour- 
 mands even, revel in their imaginary meals so 
 heartily described, and Scott's Novels are the best 
 appetizers in the world. In all countries, too, and 
 in most ages, he is at home, — as strong among the 
 lilies of France as on the sands of Syria, on the 
 green turf of Sherwood Forest as on the heather of 
 Caledonia. All this not only proclaims powers 
 nearly Shakspearean in width though not in depth, 
 but proves prodigious culture ; and the mere mass 
 of miscellaneous knowledge in Scott's works were 
 enough to have founded a brilliant reputation. 
 Scott's breadth of sympathy is not confined to the 
 human race. His dogs and horses are much better 
 
THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 357 
 
 drawn than most other novelists' men and women, 
 aye, than the most of nature's ordinary produc- 
 tions in the human line. Witness the terrier Wasp 
 and the mare Dumple ; the cow Brockie in The 
 Heart of Midlothian; Klepper the Bohemian's pal- 
 frey, in Quentin Diirivard\ Bevis in Woodstock ; 
 Roswal, that nobler hound of the Scottish knight, 
 in The Talisman; and, best of all, Gustavus, the 
 faithful and congenial horse, who long bears and 
 at last clothes the immortal limbs of Sir Dugald 
 Dalgetty of Drumthwacket, and who was the name- 
 sake of Gustavus Adolphus, the lion of the North, 
 and the bulwark of the Protestant faith ! Scott 
 had lived much with the lower animals (not the 
 brute but the mute creation, as Lord Erskine used 
 to call them), and learned to understand their 
 habits, and had entered further than most men 
 do into their natures, and those souls of theirs 
 so mysteriously hid in God, but which do really 
 exist, and connect them by strangest cords and 
 sympathies with the human family. 
 
 Connected with his breadth is his extreme y^2>- 
 iiess to all his characters, — except, perhaps, the 
 wilder of his Cameronians, — and the justice he does 
 to them even when bad or dubious ; faithful thus 
 to his poetic — let us call it rather his Christian — 
 instinct ot finding a ' soul of goodness in things 
 
358 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 that are evil/ Few men of his time were freer 
 from evil than Scott, and yet, as Shelley says of 
 Leigh Hunt, ' none had a more exalted tolerance 
 for those who do and are evil.' He looks on all 
 his characters with the benevolent regard of a 
 creator, and gives them all their due, and nothing 
 more : if bad, makes the best of them ; if good, 
 faithfully registers their evil as well as good quali- 
 ties. Hence his homicides, caterans, and smug- 
 glers are all human, and have virtues of their own. 
 Meg Merrilees, * harlot, thief, witch, and gipsy,' 
 has wild fidelity and undaunted resolution. Hen- 
 bane Dwining is a careful and kind leech to those 
 whom it is not his interest to poison. Ranald 
 MacEagh loves his grandchild, and robs from a 
 hundred Campbells to support Dalgetty his de- 
 liverer for nothing. Varney is devoted to Leicester. 
 The Bohemian loves Klepper, and the star Alde- 
 boran and his brethren, and has a lurking liking for 
 Ouentin Durward. Dirk Hatteraick, when charged 
 with the want of a single virtue, replies, 'Virtue, 
 Donner ! I was always faithful to my owners, 
 always accounted for cargo to the last stiver ;' and 
 his last action ere he hangs himself is to write an 
 account of the state of the trade to Flushing, and 
 we have no doubt it was a very accurate account ! 
 The murderess, Meg Murdockson, loves Madge 
 
THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 359 
 
 her mad daughter, and will not betray Staunton 
 because she had nursed him at her own breast. 
 Thus ever will the great artist, like the dog in 
 Byron's Darkness, be * faithful to a corpse, and 
 keep the hounds and wolves away from it,' as 
 much as to a living subject, place every picture in 
 its best possible light, and feel himself bound to 
 express something of that ideal which his genius 
 and his heart see hovering over all beings that 
 God has made. Akin to this fairness is his total 
 want of exaggeration. How well is this shown 
 in the trial scene of Effie Deans ! After the heart- 
 rending scene, an ordinary writer would probably 
 have described the crowd as still agitated on 
 leaving the court. Scott, more true to reality, 
 says, * The crowd rushed shouldering each other 
 out of the court, and soon forgot whatever they 
 had felt as impressive in the scene which they had 
 witnessed.' We find the same moderation and 
 * moral sweetness ' in nearly all his works ; and it 
 is in this respect, more than in subtlety of thought 
 or power of imagination, that he approaches Shak- 
 speare. Yet he has occasional touches which, 
 in sudden and almost supernatural felicity and 
 pathos, are worthy of the great English poet. 
 Such is Meg Merrilees saying, ' I am nae good 
 woman. I am bad eneugh ; but / cmi do whai 
 
36o WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 good women canna and darefia do! Such is Re- 
 becca's reply when ordered to remove her veil : 
 * I will obey you. Ye are elders among your people ; 
 and at your command I will show you the features 
 of an ill-fated maiden ;' and the wonderful words 
 she utters when about to spring from the battle- 
 ments of Torquilstone. Such is the entire scene 
 between Jeanie and Effie Deans in prison, and the 
 account of Sir Hugh Robsart's illness in Kenil- 
 worth. The once celebrated John Scott of Aber- 
 deen (cut off prematurely ere he had established 
 fully his claim to be one of the finest prose writers 
 of the day, but whose Trip to Paris, CJiaracter of 
 Robert Hall as a Preacher, and paper * On the 
 Waverley Novels ' in the first volume of The Lon- 
 don Magazine, will long survive as most admirable 
 specimens of chaste yet vigorous composition) 
 thus notices one of his inimitable hits : * The 
 Bailie in Rob Roy assures his kinsman that if 
 ever a hundred pound, or even twa ! would put 
 him and his family into a settled way, he need but 
 just send him a line to the Saut-market ; and Rob 
 returns the compliment by squeezing the Bailie's 
 hand, grasping his basket-hilt, and protesting that, 
 if any one affronted his kinsman, he wad stow the 
 lugs oot of his head were he the best man in Glas- 
 gow. How exquisite is all this ! The citizen, in 
 
THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 361 
 
 a moment of enthusiasm, offering a hundred 
 pounds, or even twa ! It is like the spring of a 
 cripple, who, not being able to walk a moderate 
 pace, throws himself forward four feet at a time. 
 His liberality bursts out with impetuosity, like a 
 dam of water when the sluice is raised. Such 
 touches as these are not the fruit of study. The 
 giving of them is not probably accompanied with 
 a preconception of their effect. When given, they 
 escape, as it were, like natural oozings from a 
 mind gifted with a wonderfully quick and true 
 feeling of what is picturesque in the operation of 
 the principles of character.' 
 
 Still more obvious and equally delightful are 
 the uniform healthiness of Sir Walter's spirit ; the 
 simplicity, clearness, and flexibility of his style, 
 which, capable of the highest eloquence, elabora- 
 tion, and passionate fervour, pursues in general the 
 tenor of its way as evenly as a common letter ; 
 his constant vein of strong sound sense ; his rich 
 but never excessive or ostentatious use of imagery ; 
 his dramatic power; his vivid, if not always 
 minutely accurate, descriptions of scenery ; his 
 intense nationality, beautifully blended with a true 
 cosmopolitan width, and the sudden breaking out, 
 amidst prosaic details and mere commonplace, 
 of the bardic spirit, like Hecla's fire spouting out 
 
362 WALTER SCOTT, 
 
 of Hecla's ice. His faults may be summed up 
 thus : frequent carelessness of language ; occa- 
 sional quaintness of thought; a trick of intro- 
 ducing learned terms into conversation, and, as 
 with Baron Bradwardine and Jonathan Oldbuck, 
 pursuing the humours of an odd character to a 
 wearisome length ; a frequent awkwardness in the 
 disentanglement of plots, and, in the latter tales, 
 prolixity of introductions ; occasional repetition of 
 himself; an overloading of his page with anti- 
 quarian details ; an obvious walking through his 
 part at times, and now and then, though very 
 rarely, a profusion of dreary prose. His broad 
 humour, too, is apt to degenerate into farce ; nor 
 is his wit always so felicitous or finished as are 
 the efforts of his fancy and imagination. 
 
 Scott uses contrast with great frequency and 
 uniformly powerful effect in his Novels. Contrast, 
 indeed, producing unity may be called Scott's artis- 
 tically great and peculiar power, — the two-handed 
 sword of his genius. One of the main merits in 
 Waverley lies in its blending of the past and the 
 present in such a thorough union, that you are re- 
 minded of the phenomenon described in the grand 
 old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, ' of the auld mune 
 in the new ane's arms ;' and the eagle flying over 
 the Pass of Ballybrough, at which Evan Dhu aims 
 
THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL, 363 
 
 his fowling-piece in ' vain, seems a lofty link be- 
 tween the Highland hills and the Lowland braes, 
 and a metaphor of the splendid tale itself as con- 
 necting the Sassenach and the Gael together ! In 
 Gtcy Mannering, over the quiet pastoral scenes 
 and simple characters hovers the weird light of 
 the supernatural like an electric arch, and one feels 
 that there was intense beauty if not truth in that 
 old astrology, of which it is not perhaps too much 
 to say, — 
 
 * Surely no fantasy that ever crossed 
 The heaven of midnight like a golden haze, 
 Making the lovely lovelier, as a crown 
 Of halo does the moon, so fair as thou, 
 Divinest falsehood called Astrology ! 
 Wild dawn of science ! morning dream of Truth ! ' 
 
 In Rob Roy, the life of a counting-house in 
 London and the abode of a cateran in Balquhidder 
 are brought into sharp, and, on the whole, very 
 striking contrast. In the Heart of Midlothian, the 
 extremes of Edinburgh Canongate and of Court 
 life in London, Meg Murdockson and Queen Caro- 
 line, John Duke of Argyle and Daddie Ratcliffe, 
 are reconciled. In Old Mortality, we have Came- 
 ronians of the very straitest sect pitted against 
 Claverhouse; Mause Headrigg and Edith Bellen- 
 den brought into juxtaposition. In Kenilworth, 
 the inn at Cumnor balances the castle of the 
 
364 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Earl of Leicester, and the dwarfish Dicky Sludge 
 determines the fate of the beautiful Amy Robsart. 
 In The Bride of Lammermuiry the extravagant 
 humours of Caleb Balderstone relieve yet deepen 
 the horrors of Lucy Ashton's tragedy ; and we 
 have already seen the magical effect produced in 
 The Pirate by the contrast between Minna and 
 Brenda, as w^ell as between both and the savage 
 rovers of the sea. Many trace a deepening de- 
 generacy in those novels following Ivanhoe ; but 
 others, we think with more justice, find the same 
 spirit and power working quite as freely, if not 
 with such conscious and exuberant force, in his 
 Nigel and Quejiti^i Durward, and even in parts of 
 his Abbot, St. Ronatis Well, and Redgauntlet, not 
 to speak of his splendid and sustained Talisman, 
 which, occurring very late in the series, exhibits all 
 the original strength and glory of his genius under 
 the subjugation of an art more exquisitely per- 
 fect than any other of his Novels, or perhaps any 
 other fiction whatever, has displayed. Contrast in 
 that superb story, too, is the great charm, the 
 contrast especially between Saladin and Coeur de 
 Lion, — a contrast including that of race and re- 
 ligion, as well as of the two persons and characters, 
 and extending to the very exercises in which they 
 both approve themselves matchless proficients, — the 
 
THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 365 
 
 one cutting a bar of iron in sunder with his two- 
 handed sword, and the other severing a pillow in 
 twain with his delicate scimitar ! No narrow- 
 minded man could ever have done such justice as 
 Scott does in this novel to the better parts and 
 spirit of Islam ; and he, be it noticed, did so fifteen 
 years before Carlyle wrote his Heroes and Hero- 
 worships with its warm commendation of Ma- 
 homet, and forty-four ere the Quarterly Review 
 startled the literary world with its recent extra- 
 ordinary paper entitled ' Islam,' — a paper which, 
 had it appeared in the days of Gifford, or even 
 Lockhart, would have terminated the existence of 
 that venerable organ of Conservatism. Genius 
 like Scott's is 'before all ages;' and even philo- 
 sophy must take many rests ere it can overtake it. 
 The variety and originality of Scott's charac- 
 ters is another point in which he may be likened, 
 though still at a great distance, to Shakspeare. 
 What galleries they form of the bold, the bad, 
 the grotesque, the ludicrous, the beautiful, and the 
 noble, now arranged in graceful groupes, now pro- 
 jected in striking contrast, and now standing out 
 in strong relief like solitary pines upon a mountain 
 side ! Let us notice a very few out of multitudes. 
 In Waverley^ we have the venerable Baron Brad- 
 wardine, the gallant Vich Ian Vohr, the adventu- 
 
366 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 rous Charles Edward, the beautiful Flora Maclvor, 
 and the sweet and girlish Rose, set in the front of 
 a picture, the background of which is peopled by 
 Bailie MacWheeble (Coleridge's special favourite), 
 Callum Begg, the Gifted Gilfillan, Mrs. Flockhart, 
 Balmawhapple, and David Gellatley dancing to 
 the wild wind of his own music. In Gtiy Manner- 
 i7zg, there is room under the tall shoulder of Meg 
 Merrilees, the real heroine of the tale, for the 
 stalwart Dandie Dinmont, the rugged Hatteraick, 
 Paulus Pleydell, Esq., the most astute of advocates, 
 Gilbert Glossin, the wiliest of lawyers, Jock Jabos, 
 prince of postilions, and Duncan MacGuffog, most 
 ugsome of turnkeys. In the Antiquary, two of the 
 humbler characters, Edie Ochiltree and Elspeth 
 of the Craigburnfoot, are the best ; but the drop- 
 ping of Oldbuck's grey shaggy eyebrows when he 
 is angry is a trait taken from Scott himself, as 
 James Hogg in his Me77ioirs often testifies ; and he 
 bears, besides, a striking resemblance in his early 
 love disappointment to his creator. Old Caxon, 
 though he does not rise much higher than Mor- 
 land's asses, is depicted with equal power ; his 
 daughter Jenny is sweetness and modesty itself; 
 and alike Lieutenant Taffril, Hector Maclntyre, 
 and the Phoca who robs him of his cane, are fine 
 animals. In Rob Roy, the Bailie and Rob form a 
 
THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 367 
 
 pair altogether inimitable, united by downright 
 dissimilitude, cemented by the elements of ex- 
 plosion ; and besides them, and Andrew Fair- 
 service and Diana, there are the precentor, Mr. 
 Hammorgaw ; Mattie, the lassie quean, afterwards 
 Mrs. Jarvie ; Clerk Jobson, the pettifogger ; Clerk 
 Touthope ; Garschattachin, with his drunken cour- 
 age ; Iverach, with his singed plaid ; and last, not 
 least, the hack, Souple Sam, with his * curious and 
 complete lameness, making use of three legs for 
 the sake of progression, while the fourth appeared 
 as if meant to be flourished in the air by way of 
 accompaniment/ And even in some of his later 
 novels we have seen already how this wealth of 
 character continues startling, although the quality 
 is not always equal. We have often regretted that 
 Sir Walter did not commence writing novels ten 
 years sooner than he did, in which case we would 
 have had other twenty novels as fresh and over- 
 flowing with life, and character, and poetry, and fun, 
 as those we are privileged at present to possess. 
 
 We pass now to some closing remarks on the 
 moral and religious influences of Sir Walter Scott's 
 Novels. And let us observe here, once for all, 
 that if we look in Scott for any narrow, con- 
 tracted, or merely conventional morality, we shall 
 look in vain. The morality that crushes natural 
 
368 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 instincts, that confounds the positive with the 
 moral, that refuses to grant innocent recreations 
 or gives them with a grudge which taints them with 
 bitterness, that identifies duty and life with aus- 
 terity, gloom, and useless self-denial, and founds 
 its rules and regulations very much on the old 
 Manichean hypothesis that matter is evil and the 
 body the creation of the Wicked one, — that nature 
 is fallen as well as man ; this is entirely opposite 
 to Scott's spirit, as it is, indeed, if we err not, to 
 that of the Great Teacher Himself. Scott felt that 
 morality on these terms may be possible, but can 
 never be attractive and scarcely permanent ; for, 
 while casting out some evils, it often introduces 
 others worse and wickeder than those superseded, 
 leading to pride, formality, cold-heartedness, and 
 the want of that broad charity which thinketh 
 no evil (having enough to do with the evil which 
 requires no thinking to see, and no search to find), 
 and that beareth and believeth all things. Scott's 
 moral code is founded on a deep knowledge of 
 human nature in all its strength and weakness, 
 and sympathy with its sore struggles and thick 
 temptations ; on a firm conviction that compara- 
 tively few men are in themselves much better 
 or worse than their neighbours ; that morality'*is 
 far more a matter of the inward heart and soul 
 
THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 369 
 
 than of the outward deportment, depends more 
 on the soundness of the kernel than on the com- 
 pleteness of the shell ; and that in loving our 
 neighbour as ourselves lies the marrow of the 
 Law, just as in loving God with all our mind and 
 strength lies the essence of the Gospel. In show- 
 ing us the faults of the generous and the good, he 
 uniformly acts on the principle of first getting us 
 warmly to appreciate their merits, to feel for them 
 as personal friends, and to be as anxious as are 
 personal friends to wean those they love from their 
 errors. He delights, too, rather in lashing the 
 sins of the soul than those of the temperament 
 and passions ; and so did the Master of Christian 
 morals before him. 
 
 On the other hand, he is not afraid, whenever 
 occasion serves, to show vice its own feature with 
 all the fidelity of Solomon and all the force of 
 Hogarth. What vice has Scott not exposed, what 
 villany has he spared ! Is it hypocrisy } Think 
 of mine Host of the Candlestick in Waverley, Tom 
 Trumbull in Redgauntlet^ and Ned Christian in 
 Peveril, Is it legal chicanery, leading by sure gra- 
 dation to darker crime .^ Think of Glossin in Guy 
 Mannering. Is it sottishness } Think of Michael 
 Lambourne and Nanty Ewart. Is it seduction } 
 
 Remember George Staunton. Is it quackery ? 
 2 A 
 
370 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Down, Dousterswivel, on thy knees and confess 
 what an impostor and charlatan thou art! Is it 
 accompHshed, far-stretching, but self-destroying 
 fraud ? Think of Rashleigh Osbaldistone and his 
 hideous dying moments. Is it idleness and the 
 self-indulgent frivolity of youth? Think of his 
 cousin Francis. Is it selfish family pride } Think 
 of Lady Ashton. Is it that somewhat loftier but 
 equally ruinous ambition, which, mounting the 
 ladder of power, is ready to trample on the ten- 
 derest ties, and to moisten its rounds by the 
 dearest blood } Remember the Earl of Leicester. 
 Is it a thorough want of principle and almost of 
 human feeling } Think of such men as Varney 
 and Etherington, and the Templar, Giles Amaury, 
 in The Talisman. Is it even the excess of human 
 affection mismanaged to madness .«* Think of 
 Elspeth MacTavish, the Highland Widow, or 
 Woman of the Tree. And let it be marked that 
 Scott is as faithful in administering the ideal 
 punishments as he is in branding the crimes, or 
 exposing the errors. His works, in one view of 
 them, may be called a long hymn to Retribution, 
 and a many-volumed proof that justice is done 
 certainly, if not fully, in this present preliminary 
 life. Yet he is aware of important exceptions to 
 the rule, as will be proved by a remarkable quota- 
 
THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL, 371 
 
 tion from one of his prefaces : ' The writer of 
 Ivaiihoe was censured because he had not assigned 
 Wilfred to Rebecca rather than to the less in- 
 teresting Rowena. But, not to mention that the 
 prejudices of that age rendered such a union im- 
 possible, 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 pro- 
 sperity. Such is not the recompense which Provi- 
 dence 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 the attainment 
 of our wishes. If a virtuous and self-denied cha- 
 racter is always dismissed with temporal wealth, 
 greatness, or rank, the reader will be apt to say. 
 Verily virtue has had its reward. But a glance at 
 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 in their own reflections a more 
 adequate recompense, in the form of that peace 
 which the world cannot give nor take away.' 
 
372 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 After all this, it may seem poor praise to say 
 that not only do Scott's writings never inflame the 
 passions, or seek to shake the moral principles, but 
 they are entirely free from that levity and coarse- 
 ness of language which are often found where 
 there is no corruption, and unite a manly code of 
 morals with a feminine delicacy of feeling. The 
 best proof of this will be found in the great im- 
 provement which has taken place in the moral 
 tone of fictions since he wrote. Godwin, no doubt, 
 Mrs. Inchbald, Miss Austen, and Miss Edgeworth 
 were pure, and so far purified the taste ; but Scott, 
 a mightier genius than all of them put together, 
 set the copestone on the reformation they had 
 begun. And, with the exception, of course, of some 
 of the French school abroad and their imitators 
 at home, most fictionists are now compelled to 
 observe decency of language, and to pay outward 
 respect, at least, to those great common laws of 
 morality which the world has sanctioned as 
 essential to its well-being and its healthy action. 
 
 In reference to Scott's religion, so far as that 
 was 3, personal matter, we have nothing to say. He 
 always professed himself an attached member of 
 the Church of England, in love with her liturgy 
 and worship, if not, perhaps, exactly en rapport with 
 all her articles. Yet if we take his Journal as a 
 
THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 373 
 
 full, as it was a final exponent of his religious senti- 
 ments, his deviations from the orthodox creed were 
 exceedingly slight, and his general belief in Chris- 
 tianity seems never to have been shaken. We 
 have quoted above his significant and earnest 
 dying words to Lockhart. We are not prepared 
 to deny that he had somewhat strong prejudices 
 against what is called the Evangelical School, that 
 he disliked very pious females, and that no more 
 than Jonathan Oldbuck was he a regular attender 
 on church : but he paid, on the whole, a satis- 
 factory homage to the Sabbath, always spending 
 a portion of that day in religious exercises and the 
 instruction of his children ; he believed as well as 
 admired the Bible, and religious reverence was 
 indeed an essential part of his constitution. How 
 his views and feelings might have been modified in 
 our strange, faith-shattering, or rather faith-shifting 
 days, — days in which, perhaps, after all, faith is gain- 
 ing in breadth what it is losing in intensity ; less 
 drying up than changing its channel, — cannot, of 
 course, be either stated or surmised. But, without 
 contending for the evangelical character of any of 
 his works in the strict sense of that term, we main- 
 tain that no one who had not drunk into the very 
 depth of the spirit of Christianity could have 
 created a Jeanie Deans. He did not, indeed, create, 
 
374 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 he only copied her from many living examples he 
 had met with among the Christian women of his 
 native land ; but unless he had admired and under- 
 stood, he would not have condensed these examples 
 into this consummate one, or would have dared — 
 and in that age it required some daring — to make 
 Rebecca the Jewess the finest character and the 
 truest Christian in the most brilliant of all his tales, 
 and put into her lips that noble strain which ranks 
 almost beside the old Psalms of David : 
 
 * When Israel, of the Lord beloved, 
 
 Out from the land of bondage came, 
 Her fathers' God before her moved, 
 An awful Guide in cloud and flame. 
 
 * By day along the astonished lands 
 
 The cloudy pillar glided slow. 
 By night Arabia's crimsoned sands 
 Returned the fiery column's glow. 
 
 * There rose the choral hymn of praise, 
 
 And trump and timbrel answered keen. 
 And Zion's daughters poured their lays, 
 And priests' and warriors' voice between ;' 
 
 or could have sustained throughout his numerous 
 tales that general respect for the institutions and 
 the ministers of religion, that reverence for the 
 Scriptures, or that all-embracing charity, which 
 so distinguish his every page. He that is not 
 against us is on our part, says the Founder of 
 Christianity Himself; and His words, we venture 
 
THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 375 
 
 to say, may be applied fearlessly to the author 
 
 of the Waverley Novels. 
 
 Old Mortality, all may remember, spent his life 
 
 in visiting the tombs of the martyrs ; and there 
 
 exists at least one remarkable man of the day who 
 
 might earn the name of 'New Mortality' from a 
 
 similar habit. We refer to the author of the Life 
 
 of Chalmers in the present series. The tendency, 
 
 however, is rather now-a-days to repair to the tombs 
 
 of the poets. It has been at least our own fortune 
 
 to have stood at some of the most celebrated of 
 
 the resting-places of the renowned. Years ago we 
 
 visited the mausoleum which, in Dumfries, 
 
 ' Directs pale Scotia's way 
 To pour her sorrows o'er her poet's dust,' 
 
 with many conflicting emotions, as we remembered 
 
 how much power and weakness lay buried there ; 
 
 although the feeling left last and uppermost was 
 
 that expressed in the words, 
 
 ' The glory dies not, and the grief is past? 
 
 Some time after we visited Wordsworth's grave, 
 
 as evening was dropping her dewy curtain over 
 
 Grasmere Lake, and the Rotha, blue darling of 
 
 her poet's eye, was softening her voice amidst the 
 
 stillness, and the New Moon had suddenly shone 
 
 out in the west, as if to certify the immortality 
 
 of his song and himself, and to cut with her silver 
 
376 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 sickle whatever doubts as to either might have 
 been crossing our souls. A year or two later we 
 visited the grave of Southey, with Derwentwater 
 spreading out her beautiful bosom on the left ; 
 Portinscale, the loveliest of English villages, laugh- 
 ing through roses in the foreground ; and old 
 Skiddaw standing up like the poet's everlasting 
 monument behind. But none of these visits 
 moved us more than when, one splendid Sep- 
 tember forenoon in 1859, we stood in Dryburgh 
 Abbey, and leaned over the tomb of Scott, with 
 a vast yew that might have formed a coronet 
 for the head of Death shadowing it, and the 
 sound of the Tweed — the sound of all others 
 sweetest in the ear of the mighty Wizard — com- 
 ing up through the woodland as a lullaby to 
 his dust ; — and thus leaning and musing there, 
 thought of the benign creations of that man's 
 mind ; of the stores of knowledge it had accumu- 
 lated ; of the entire literature which had emanated 
 from it ; and of the intellectual, moral, and purely 
 and loftily spiritual influences which that literature 
 had produced, was producing, and would produce 
 for evermore ; — we felt as if a multitude of men, 
 as if a nation were slumbering below, and, full of 
 blended awe and love, turning away, we left him 
 alone with his glory ! 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 THE COMING CENTENARY. 
 
 'E cannot close this brief and imperfect, 
 but not, we trust, inaccurate or insincere 
 life of Sir Walter Scott without a very 
 few closing words in reference to the centenary of 
 his birth which is at hand. 
 
 The time draws nigh when Scotland is to do 
 herself and her most gifted son the honour of a 
 centenary celebration ; and certainly, if it exhibit 
 the loyalty and enthusiasm, or even a portion of it, 
 which saluted that of Robert Burns, it will add a 
 lustre and a laurel to the year 1871 that shall 
 render it only second to the year 1771, when the 
 great Minstrel of the Border and the prose Shak- 
 speare of Scotland appeared in the metropolis of 
 his native land. 
 
 We use the words * d, portion of it' advisedly, for we 
 are aware that there were circumstances connected 
 377 
 
378 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 with the Burns celebration which secured greater 
 enthusiasm than we can expect in the case of Sir 
 Walter Scott. Mrs. Stowe, in her Sunny Memories, 
 notices that, at the public meetings held in Scot- 
 land in her honour in 1853, any allusion made to 
 Burns brought down the house, while Scott's name 
 was received rather coldly. We may supply some 
 reasons for what seems to have puzzled her con- 
 siderably ; and these reasons will be found to apply 
 to the point in hand. In the first place, Mrs. 
 Stowe's admirers — and we state it in her honour, 
 not in her disparagement — belonged principally to 
 the people, the very class among whom Burns is 
 most highly admired ; the upper classes were not 
 so fully represented at her gatherings, and they in 
 general prefer Scott to Burns. Secondly, there is 
 a feeling very prevalent in Scotland that Burns 
 was a shamefully used man ; that his treatment at 
 the hands of the nobility, and middle class too, 
 of his time led to much of his misery and reckless 
 conduct ; and that his country had contracted a 
 debt to his memory which must be publicly and 
 in the amplest measure discharged. Every raptu- 
 rous cheer Mrs. Stowe heard at her meetings, when 
 the name Burns was pronounced, was a separate 
 instalment in the clearance of that debt; and it 
 seemed entirely liquidated on the memorable 25th 
 
THE COMING CENTENARY. 379 
 
 of January 1859. Scott, on the other hand, had 
 been for the greater part of his life a prosperous 
 gentleman, and, so far as money was concerned, 
 had received his reward. His misfortunes after- 
 wards were to a great extent the result of his own 
 extravagance and ambition. Ebenezer Elliott says 
 of the Scotch people and Burns : 
 
 ' They gave him more than gold, 
 They read the brave 7naiis book^ 
 
 But the people of Scotland, England, and the 
 world read Scott and gave him gold besides. 
 Thirdly, there was lingering in 1853, and there 
 lingers still, a certain prejudice, partly political and 
 partly religious, against Scott, founded on his Tory 
 principles, and on his treatment of the Covenanters. 
 That this prejudice has to a great extent subsided 
 since, we fondly believe ; but it is not entirely gone. 
 Burns, on the contrary, although sometimes pro- 
 fane enough, was a Radical in politics ; and his 
 Cottar's Saturday Night, like charity, covered a 
 multitude of sins. Hence nothing will shake him 
 in the estimation of his countrymen. While admit- 
 ting Scott's general superiority, they trace it partly 
 to his happier circumstances and greater success, 
 and determinedly hold to it that Burns is the re- 
 presentative poet of his nation. 
 
38o WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 This, we say, is the feeling of the majority. With 
 some, again, Scott stands on a much higher vantage- 
 ground ; and by all he is admired. This ought to, 
 and must, secure a noble centenary ; but we ques- 
 tion if it will have the same heartiness of celebra- 
 tion as that of 1859, although it shall be far more 
 enthusiastic, in Scotland at any rate, than the tre- 
 centenary of Shakspeare in 1864. 
 
 About the propriety of such a centenary celebra- 
 tion there can, we think, be no reasonable doubt. 
 The Scotch are slow to recognise their great men 
 in their lifetime, and their recognition, even when 
 it comes, seldom takes any very enthusiastic or 
 demonstrative form. It sometimes amounts to little 
 else than a cessation from abuse ; and we are re- 
 minded of the one privilege which befell Words- 
 worth's old Cumberland beggar through his long 
 lingering on the road, that 
 
 * The dogs turned away, 
 Weary oj barking at Jmn.^ 
 
 Such is, too, the inherent, call it coldness, or 
 reticence, or bashfulness of the Scottish character, 
 that whenever we hear of any great testimonial 
 to living national merit suddenly paid, or any 
 keen enthusiasm suddenly excited, we begin to 
 ask. Why, what evil has the recipient been doing ? 
 
THE COMING CENTENARY, 381 
 
 over what flickering fama is this meant to be 
 the golden extinguisher ? or, if not, Is there 
 not some political end to be thus served, or 
 party animus to be thus covertly gained ? When 
 death comes, this is all changed, and then every 
 opportunity for the outflow of the pent-up feeling 
 is given and welcomed. And even after the great 
 man has been dead, as Scott has been, for nearly 
 forty years, it becomes incumbent on the people to 
 prove that their feeling has not been of the mere 
 de mortuis nil nisi bonum kind, — not a mere evan- 
 escent and got-up sensation, — but a deep, quiet, 
 sober, and growing conviction of the solid worth of 
 his achievements, and of the thorough identification 
 of his name and works with the nation's pride and 
 the nation's glory. Since Scott departed, some 
 great changes have taken place in literature, and 
 especially in the novel. New dynasties of power 
 have sprung up abroad and at home. Names to 
 conjure with — such as those of Victor Hugo, and 
 Alexandre Dumas, and Balzac, and Bulwer Lytton, 
 and Thackeray, and Dickens, and others scarcely 
 inferior — have been placed by their admirers, if 
 not by those who bear them, not very far from Sir 
 Walter's own ; and it behoves Scotland to embrace 
 the opportunity afforded by the 15th of August 
 1 87 1 to declare, in a manner worthy of herself, and 
 
382 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 unmistakeable in the certainty of its sound, that she 
 prefers her own child still, while most cheerfully 
 conceding the transcendent merit of others ; and is 
 ready to exclaim (as Scott himself said in refer- 
 ence to the candidate he proposed at Jedburgh at 
 the last election before the Reform Bill), — 
 
 * We hae tried this Border lad. 
 And we '11 try him yet again.' 
 
 He js to us the Master of the novel, and the Master 
 of the song too. There may be larger and brighter 
 suns in other regions of space, — and let those other 
 lands glory in and admire them, — but Scott is our 
 sun here in the north, and we are content to con- 
 tinue to bask in his beams and to rejoice in^the 
 anniversary of his rising. Other ends may be served 
 by the celebration of the great Scotchman's cen- 
 tenary, — such as 'the vindicating the true great- 
 ness of our national genius and of our national 
 character ; the asserting that the language of 
 Scotland is not the language of a province but 
 of an independent kingdom ; and the resistance or 
 modification of that centralizing tendency which 
 is sucking in the Scotch manners and literature, 
 and all that is Scotch, into our southern Mael- 
 strom. Not very long ago we remarked to an 
 English Dissenting clergyman of great eminence, 
 
THE COMING CENTENARY. 383 
 
 how England had so many large towns. His 
 reply was, ' Yes, sir ; England's one vast city 
 turning, and Scotland is our pleasure-ground' We 
 must go, we thought, and inform our gardeners of 
 this. When Queen Caroline threatened to turn 
 Scotland into a hunting-field on account of its 
 complicity with the Porteous mob, the Duke of 
 Argyle replied, with a low bow, ' Then, Madam, I 
 must go north and get m-y hounds ready/ 
 
 With regard to the manner of a celebration, for 
 which there exist such strong and various rea- 
 sons, we need only say, to be worthy of Scott, it 
 must be carefully pondered, and not spoiled by 
 undue hurry or enthusiasm. The details, as well 
 as the general programme, must be thoroughly 
 digested ere they are presented to the public. 
 While national, it should be of a most catholic 
 character ; and the memory of the Minstrel should 
 on that occasion be severed, even in idea, from all 
 petty associations and political or religious pre- 
 judices. It should be imposing and splendid in 
 its circumstances, but without an atom of sensa- 
 tionalism. It should be connected, as we believe 
 it is to be connected, with some permanent insti- 
 tution, — some bursary or fund which may, perad- 
 venture, encourage and educate future Scotts, if 
 there be virtue in the coming ages to produce such 
 
384 
 
 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 prodigies ; it should be, in short, a celebration which 
 shall not only attract but enrich the eyes of the 
 whole world, express worthily cosmopolitan grati- 
 tude and admiration, and be such as the benignant 
 but solemn shade of the departed himself may 
 regard with pride and complacency. 
 
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 TRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERV OFFICE, 
 
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 4 . 
 
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