/ 
 
 OSnglifil) iHcu of iicttcvs 
 
 EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY 
 
«lPt WALTER SCOTT 
 
 .'/ 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD H. HUTTON 
 
 ^^5^5?5-^^ 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 II A II PER & BROTH EES, PUBLISHERS 
 
 FRANKLIN SQUARE 
 
 1S70 
 

 ^' ^S 
 
 ly Trewiftr 
 
 JO// a 1!*^ 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 It will bo observed that tlio greater part of tliis little 
 book has been taken in one form or other from Lockhart's 
 Life of Sir Walter Scott, in ten volumes. No introduction 
 to Scott would be worth much in which that course was 
 not followed. Indeed, excepting Sir Walter's own writ- 
 ings, there is hardly any other great source of information 
 about him ; and that is so full, that hardly anything need- 
 ful to illustrate the subject of Scott's life remains un- 
 touched. As regards the only matters of controversy, — 
 Scott's relations to the Eallantynes, I have taken care to 
 check Mr. Lockhart's statements by reading those of the 
 representatives of the Ballantyne brothers ; but with this 
 exception. Sir "Walter's own works and Lockliart's life 
 of him are the great authorities concerning his character 
 and his story. 
 
 Just ten years ago Mr. Gladstone, in exj)ressing to 
 the late ]\Ir. Hope Scott the great delight which the 
 perusal of Lockhart's life of Sir Walter had given him, 
 Avrote, *' I may be wrong, but I am vaguely under the 
 impression that it has never had a really wide circulation. 
 If so, it is the saddest pity, and I should greatly like 
 (without any censure on its present length) to see pub- 
 lished an abbreviation of it." Mr. Gladstone did not 
 then know that as lon;r Vi"o as 1848 Mr. Lockhartdid 
 
vi PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 himself prepare such an abbreviation, in which the ori- 
 ginal eighty-four chapters were compressed into eighteen, 
 — though the abbreviation contained additions as well as 
 compressions. But even this abridgment is itself a 
 bulky volume of 800 pages, containing, I should thinh, 
 considerably more than a tliird of the reading in the ori- 
 ginal ten volumes, and is not, therefore, very likely to be 
 preferred to the completer work. In some respects I hope 
 that this introduction may sup]3ly, better than that bulky 
 abbreviation, what Mr. Gladstone probably meant to 
 suggest, — some slight miniature taken from the great pic- 
 ture with care enough to tempt on those who look on it 
 to the study of the fuller life, as well as of that image of 
 Sir Walter which is impressed by his own hand upon 
 his works. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ancestry, Parentage, AND Childhood .... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Youth — Choice of a Profession 18 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Love and Marriage 30 
 
 CHAPTER 17. 
 Earliest Poetry and Border Minstrelsy ... 36 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Scott's Maturer Poems 44 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Companions and Friends 60 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 First Country Homes ..,...• C3 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Removal to Abbotsford, and Life there ... 75 
 
vUi CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FACE 
 
 Scon's Partnerships with the Ballantynes < . 84 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 The Waterley Novels . 94 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Scott's Morality and Religion . . , . . 122 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Distractions and Amusements at ABBOTsrouD . . . 128 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Scott and George IV. . . . , » . .134 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Scott as a Politician 139 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 Scott in Adversity 148 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 The Last Year , 1G2 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 The End of the Struggle , 173 
 
SIE WALTEE SCOTT. 
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 I 
 
 ANCESTRY, PARENTAGE, AND CHILDHOOD. 
 
 Sib Walter Scott was the first literary man of a great 
 riding, sporting, and fighting clan. Indeed, his father — 
 a Writer to the Signet, or Edinhurgh solicitor — was tha 
 first of his race to adopt a town life and a sedentary pro- 
 fession. Sir Walter was the lineal descendant — six 
 generations removed — of that Walter Scott commemo- 
 rated in The Lay of ihc Last Minstrel, who is known 
 in Border history and legend as Auld Wat of Harden, 
 Anld Wat's son William, captured by Sir Gideon Murray, 
 of Elihank, during a raid of the Scotts on Sir Gideon's 
 lands, was, as tradition says, given his choice between being 
 hanged on Sir Gideon's private gallows, and marrying the 
 ugliest of Sir Gideon's three ugly daughters, Meikle- 
 mouthed Meg, reputed as carrying off the prize of ugliness 
 among the women of four counties. Sir William was a hand- 
 some man. He took three dayn to consider the alternative 
 proposed to him, but chose life with the large-mouthed 
 lady in the end ; and found her, according to the tradition 
 which the poet, her descendant, has transmitted, an excel- 
 1* 
 
2 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 lent wife, with a fine talent for pickling the heef which 
 her hushand stole from the herds of his foes. Meikle- 
 moiithed Meg transmitted a distinct trace of her largo 
 mouth to all her descendants, and not least to him 
 who was to rise his *' mcikle " mouth to hest advan- 
 tage as the spokesman of his race. Eather more than 
 half-way hetwecn Auld Wat of Ilarden's times — i. v., 
 the middle of the sixteenth century — and those of Sir 
 Walter Scott, poet and novelist, lived Sir Walter's 
 great-grandfather, Walter Scott generally known in 
 Teviotdale hy the surname of Beardie, because he would 
 never cut his beard after the banishment of the Stuarts, 
 and who took arms in their cause and lost by his intrigues 
 on their behalf almost all that he had, besides running 
 the greatest risk of being hanged as a traitor. This was 
 the ancestor of whom Sir Walter speaks in the intro- 
 duction to the last canto of Marmion : — 
 
 " And tlius my Christmas still I hold, 
 Where my great grandsire came of old. 
 With amber board and flaxen hair, 
 And reverend apostolic air, — 
 The feast and holy tide to share, 
 And mis sobriety with wine. 
 And honest mirth with thoughts divine; 
 Small thought was his in after time 
 E'er to be hitch'd into a rhyme, 
 The simple sire could only boast 
 That he was loyal to his cost ; 
 The banish'd race of kings revered. 
 And lost his land — but kept his beard." 
 
 Sir Walter inherited from ISeardie that sentimental 
 Stuart bias which his better judgment condemned, but 
 which seemed to be rather part of his blood than of his 
 mind. And most useful to him this sentiment tin- 
 
I.] ANCESTRY, PAEENTAGE, AND CHILDHOOD. 3 
 
 douLtedly was in helping him to restore the mould and 
 fashion of the past. Beardie's second son was Sir 
 Walter's grandfather, and to him he owed not only his 
 first childish experience of the delights of country life, 
 hut also, — in his own estimation at least, — that risky, 
 specidative, and sanguine spirit which had so much in- 
 fluence over his fortunes. The good man of Sandy- 
 Knowe, wishing to hreed sheep, and being destitute of 
 capital, borrowed 30^. from a shepherd who was willing 
 to invest that sum for him in sheep ; and the two set off 
 to purchase a flock near Wooler, in Northumberland ; 
 but when the shepherd had found what he thought 
 would suit their jmrpose, he returned to find his master 
 galloping about a fine hunter, on which he had spent 
 the whole capital in hand. Tliis speculation, however, 
 prospered, A few days later Eobert Scott displayed 
 the qualities of the hunter to such admirable effect 
 with John Scott of Harden's hounds, that he sold the 
 horse for double the money ho had given, and, unlike his 
 grandson, abandoned specidative purchases there and 
 then. In the latter days of his clouded fortunes, after 
 Ballantyne's and Constable's failure. Sir AValter was accus- 
 tomed to point to the picture of his grandfather and 
 say, " Blood will out : my building and planting was 
 but his buying the hunter before he stocked his sheep- 
 walk, over again." But Sir Walter added, says Mr. 
 Lockhart, as he glanced at the likeness of his own staid 
 and prudent father, " Yet it was a wonder, too, for I have 
 a thread of the attorney in me," which was doubtless the 
 case ; nor was that thread the least of his inheritances, 
 for from his father certainly Sir Walter derived that 
 disposition towards conscientious, plodding industry, 
 legalism of mind, methodical habits of work, and a 
 
4 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 generous, equitalile interpretation of the scope of all his 
 obligations to others, ■which, prized and cultivated by 
 him as they were, turned a great genius, which, espe- 
 cially considering the hare-brained element in him, might 
 easily have been frittered away or devoted to worth- 
 less ends, to such fruitful account, and stamped it with 
 so grand an impress of personal magnanimity and forti- 
 tude. Sir Walter's father reminds one in not a few 
 of the formal and rather martinetish traits which are 
 related of him, of the father of Goethe, " a formal man, 
 with strong ideas of strait-laced education, passionately 
 orderly (he thought a good book nothing without a good 
 binding), and "never so much excited as by a necessary- 
 deviation from the ' pre-established harmony ' of house- 
 hold rules." That description would apply almost wholly 
 to the sketch of old Mr. Scott which the novelist has 
 given us under the thin disguise of Alexander Fairford, 
 Writer to the Signet, in Bedgamitlet, a figure confessedly 
 meant, in its chief features, to represent his father. To 
 this Sir Walter adds, in one of his later journals, the 
 trait that his father was a man of fine presence, who con- 
 ducted all conventional arrangements with a certain gran- 
 deur and dignity of air, and " absolutely loved a funeral." 
 " He seemed to preserve the list of a whole bead-roll of 
 cousins merely for the pleasure of being at their 
 funerals, which he was often asked to superintend, and 
 I suspect had sometimes to pay for. He carried me with 
 him as often as he could to these mortuary ceremonies; 
 but feeling I was not, like him, either useful or ornamental, 
 I escaped as often as I could," This strong dash of the 
 conventional in Scott's father, this satisfaction in seeing 
 people fairly to the door of life, and taking his final leave 
 of them there, with something of a ceremonious flourish 
 
I.] ANCESTRY, PARENTAGE, AND CEILDHOOD. 5 
 
 of observance, was, however, combined with a much 
 nobler and deeper kind of orderliness. Sir "Walter used 
 to say that his father had lost no small part of a very 
 flourishing business, by insisting that his clients should do 
 their duty to their own people better than they ■w^ere 
 themselves at all inclined to do it. And of this generous 
 strictness in sacrificing his own interests to his sympathy 
 for others, the son had as much as the father. 
 
 Sir Walter's mother, who was a Miss Eutherford, the 
 daughter of a physician, had been better educated than 
 most Scotchwomen of her day, in spite of having been 
 sent " to be finished off " by " the honourable Mrs. 
 'Ogilvie," whose training was so effective, in one direction 
 at least, that even in her eightieth year Mrs. Scott could 
 not enjoy a comfortable rest in her chair, but " took a? 
 much care to avoid touching her chair with her back, as if 
 she had still been under the stern eyes of Mrs. Ogilvie." 
 JSTone the less l\Irs. Scott was a motherly, comfortable 
 woman, with much tenderness of heart, and a well-stored, 
 vivid memory. Sir "Walter, writing of her, after his 
 mother's death, to Lady Louisa Stewart, says, " She had 
 a mind peculiarly well stored with much acquired infor- 
 mation and natural talent, and as she was very old, and 
 had an excellent memory, she could draw, without the 
 least exaggeration or affectation, the most striking pictures 
 of the past age. If I have been able to do anything 
 in the way of painting the past times, it is very much 
 from the studies with which she presented me. She 
 connected a long period of time with the present generation, 
 for she remembered, and had often spoken with, a person 
 who perfectly recollected the battle of Dunbar and Oliver 
 Cromwell's subsequent entry into Edinburgh." On the 
 day before the stroke of paralysis which carried her off, she 
 
6 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [ciiAp. 
 
 had told Mr. and Mrs. Scott of Harden, "with great 
 accuracy, the real story of the Bride of Lamniermuir, and 
 pointed out wherein it differed from the novel. She had 
 all the names of the parties, and pointed out (for she 
 was a great genealogist) their connexion with existing 
 families." ' Sir Walter records many evidences of the 
 tenderness of his mother's nature, and he returned 
 warmly her affection for himself. His executors, in lifting 
 up his desk, the evening after his burial, found " arranged 
 in careful order a series of little objects, which liad 
 obviously been so placed there that his eye might rest on 
 them every morning before he began his tasks. These 
 were the old-fashioned boxes that had garnished his 
 mother's toilette, when he, a sickly child, slept in her 
 dressing-room, — the silver taper-stand, which the young 
 advocate had bought for her with his first five-guinea fee, 
 — a row of small packets inscribed with her hand, and 
 containing the hair of those of her offspring that had died 
 before her, — his father's snuff-box, and etui-case, — and 
 more things of the like sort." ^ A story, characteristic 
 of both Sir Walter's parents, is told by Mr. Lockhart which 
 Vvill serve better than anything I can remember to bring 
 the father and mother of Scott vividly before the imagi- 
 nation. His father, like ]\Ir. Alexander Fairford, in 
 RedgavrdJet, thougli himself a strong Hanoverian, inhe- 
 rited enough feeling for the Stuarts from his grandfather 
 Beardie, and sympathized enough with those who were, as 
 he neutrally expressed it, " out in '45," to ignore as much 
 as possible any phrases offensive to the Jacobites. For 
 instance, he always called Charles Edward not the Pre- 
 
 ' Lockhart's Life of Scott, vi. 1 72-3. The edition i-eferr^d to ia 
 throughout the edition of 1839 in ten volumes. 
 « Lockhart's Life of Scott, x. 2il. 
 
I.] ANCESTRY, PARRNTAGE, AND CHILDHOOD. 7 
 
 tender but tlie. Chevalier, — and lie did business for many 
 Jacobites : — 
 
 " Mrs. Scott's curiosity was strongly excited one autumn 
 by the regular appearance at a certain hour every evening 
 of a sedan chair, to deposit a person carefully muffled up in 
 a mantle, who was immediately ushered into her husband's 
 private room, and commonly remained with him there until 
 loug after the usual bed-time of this orderly family. Mr. 
 Scott answered her repeated inquiries with a vagueness that 
 irritated the lady's feelings more and more ; until at last 
 she could bear the thing no longer ; but one evening, just as 
 she heard the bell ring as for the stranger's chair to carry 
 him off, she made her appearance within the forbidden 
 parlour with a salver in her hand, observing that she 
 thought the gentlemen had sat so long they would be 
 Vtter of a dish of tea, and had ventured accordingly to 
 bring some for their acceptance. The stranger, a person of 
 distinguished appearance, and richly dressed, bowed to the 
 lady and accej^ted a cup ; but her husband knit his brows, 
 and refused very coldly to partake the refreshment. A 
 moment afterwards the visitor withdrew, and Mr. Scott, 
 lifting up the window-sash, took the cup, which he had left 
 empty on the table, and tossed it out upon the pavement. 
 The lady exclaimed for her china, but was put to silence by 
 her husband's saying, " I can forgive your little curiosity, 
 madam, but you must pay the penalty. I may admit into 
 my house, on a piec« of business, persons whollj^ unworthy 
 to be treated as guests by my wife. Neither lip of me nor 
 of mine comes after Mr. Murray of Broughton's.' 
 
 " This was the nnhappy man who, after attending Prince 
 Charles Stuart as his secretary throughout the greater part 
 of his expedition, condescended to redeem his own life and 
 fortune by bearing evidence against the noblest of his late 
 master's adherents, when — 
 
 " Pitied by gentle hearts, Kihnarnock died, 
 The brave, Balmerino were on thy side." ' 
 
 1 Lockhart's Lije of Scott, i. 243-4. 
 
8 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 " Erougliton's saucer " — i. e. the saucer belonging to the 
 cup thus sacrificed by Mr. Scott to his indignation against 
 one who had redeemed his own life and fortune by turn- 
 ing king's evidence against one of Prince Charles Stuart's 
 adherents, — was carefully preserved by his son, and hung 
 up in his first study, or "den," under a little print of 
 Prince Charlie. This anecdote brings before the mind 
 very vividly the character of Sir Walter's parents. The 
 eager curiosity of the active-minded woman, whom " the 
 honourable Mrs. Ogilvie " had been able to keep upright 
 in her chair for life, but not to cure of the desire to 
 unravel the little mysteries of which she had a passing 
 glimpse ; the grave formality of the husband, fretting 
 under his wife's personal attention to a dishonoured man, 
 and making her pay the penalty by dashing to pieces the 
 cup which the king's evidence had used, — again, the 
 visitor himself, perfectly conscious no doubt that the 
 Hanoverian lawyer held him in utter scorn for his faith- 
 lessness and cowardice, and reluctant, nevertheless, to 
 reject the courtesy of the Avife, though he could not get 
 anything but cold legal advice from the husband : — all 
 these are figures which must have acted on the youthful 
 imagination of the poet with singular vivacity, and shaped 
 themselves in a hundred changing turns of the historical 
 kaleidoscope which was always before his mind's eye, as 
 he mused upon that past which he was to restore for us 
 with almost more than its original freshness of life. With 
 such scenes touching even his own home, Scott must 
 have been constantly taught to balance in his own mind, 
 the more romantic, against the more sober and rational 
 considerations, which had so recently divided house 
 against house, even in the same family and clan. That the 
 stern Calvinistic lawyer should have retained so much of 
 
I.] ANCESTRY, PARENTAGE, AND CHILDHOOD. 9 
 
 his grandfatlicr Beardie's respect for tlie adherents of tho 
 exiled house of Stuart, must in itself have struck the boy 
 as even more remarkable than the passionate loyalty of the 
 Stuarts' professed partisans, and have lent a new sanction 
 to the romantic drift of his mother's old traditions, and 
 one to Avhich they must have been indebted for a great 
 part of their fascination. 
 
 Walter Scott, the ninth of twelve children, of whom 
 the first six died in early childhood, was born in Edin- 
 burgh, on the 15th of August, 1771. Of the six later- 
 boru children, all but one were boys, and the one sister 
 Avas a somewhat querulous invalid, whom he seems to have 
 pitied almost more than he loved. At the age of eighteen 
 months the boy had a teething-fever, ending in a life-long 
 lameness ; and this Avas the reason, why the child was sent 
 to reside with his grandfather — the speculative grand- 
 father, who had doubled his capital by buying a racehorse 
 instead of sheep — at Sandy-Knowe, near the ruined tower 
 of Smailholm, celebrated afterwards in his ballad of The 
 Eve of Si. John, in the neighbourhood of some fine crags. 
 To these crags the housemaid sent from Edinburgh to 
 look after him, used to carry him up, with a design 
 (which she confessed to the housekeeper) — due, of 
 course, to incipient insanity — of murdering the child 
 there, and burying him in the moss. Of course tbo maid 
 was dismissed. After this the child used to be sent out, 
 when the weather was fine, in the safer charge of the 
 shepherd, who would often lay him beside the sheep. 
 Long afterwards Scott told Mr. Skene, during an excursion 
 with Turner, the great painter, who was drawing his illus- 
 tration of Smailholm tower for one of Scott's works, that 
 " the habit of lying on tho turf there among the sheep and 
 the lambs had given his mind a peculiar tenderness for 
 
10 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 these animals, whicli it Lad ever since retained." Being 
 forgotten one day upon the knolls when a thunderstorm 
 came on, his aunt ran out to bring him in, and found him 
 shouting, " Eonny ! bonny !" at every flash of lightning. 
 One of the old servants at Sandy-Knowo spoke of the 
 child long afterwards as "a sweet-tempered bairn, a 
 darling with all about the house," and certainly the 
 miniature taken of him in his seventh year contirms the 
 impression thus given. It is sweet-tempered above every- 
 thing, and only the long upper lip and large mouth, 
 derived from his ancestress, ]\[eg Murray, convey the pro- 
 mise of the power which was in him. Of course the high, 
 almost conical forehead, which gained him in his later 
 days from his comrades at the bar the name of " Old 
 Peveril," in allusion to "the peak " which they saw towering 
 high above the heads of other men as he approached, is not 
 so much marked beneath the childish locks of this minia- 
 ture as it was in later life ; and the massive, and, in 
 repose, certainly heavy face of his maturity, which con- 
 veyed the impression of the great bulk of his character, is 
 still quite invisible under the sunny ripple of childish 
 earnestness and gaiety. ■ Scott's hair in childhood was 
 light chestnut, which turned to nut brown in youth. His 
 eyebrows were bushy, for we find mention made of them as 
 a "pent-house." His eyes were always light blue. They 
 had in them a capacity, on the one hand, for enthu- 
 siasm, sunny brightness, and even hare-brained humour, 
 and on the other for expressing determined resolve and 
 kindly irony, which gave great range of expression to 
 the face. There are plenty of materials for judging what 
 sort of a boy Scott was. In spite of his lameness, he early 
 taught himself to clamber about with an agility that few 
 children could have surpassed, and to sit his first pony — a 
 
I.J ANCESTRY, FARENTAGE, AND CHILDHOOD. 11 
 
 little Shetland, not bigger than a large K"cwfoun(lland 
 dog, wliicli used to come into the house to be fed by him — 
 even in gallops on very rough ground. He became very 
 early a declaimer. Having learned the ballad of Hardy 
 Knute, he shouted it forth with such pertinacious enthu- 
 siasm that the clergyman of his grandfather's parish 
 complained that he " might as well speak in a cannon's 
 mouth as where that child was." At six years of age Mrs. 
 Cockburn described him as the most astounding genius 
 of a boy, she ever saw. " He was reading a poem to his 
 mother when I went in. I made him read on: it was 
 the description of a shipwreck. His passion rose with the 
 storm. ' There's the mast gone,' says he ; ' crash it goes ; 
 they will all perish.' After his agitation he turns to me, 
 * That is too melancholy,' says he ; 'I had belter read 
 you something more amusing.' " And after the call, he 
 told his aunt he liked Mrs. Cockburn, for " she was a 
 virtuoso like himself." " Dear Walter," says Aunt Jenny, 
 " \Yhat is a virtuoso ? " " Don't ye know ] Why, it's one 
 who wishes and will know everything." This last scene 
 took place in his father's house in Edinburgh ; but Scott's 
 life at Sandy-Kuowe, including even the old minister. Dr. 
 Duncan, who so bitterly complained of the boy's ballad- 
 spouting, is painted for us, as everybody knows, in the 
 picture of his infancy given in the introduction to the 
 third canto of Marmion : — 
 
 " It was a barren scene and wild, 
 Where naked cliffs were rudely piled s 
 But ever and anon between 
 Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green • 
 And well the lonely infant knew 
 Recesses where the wall-flower grew. 
 And honeysuckle loved to c^•a^vl 
 Up the low ci'ag and ruin'd wall. 
 
12 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [cr.AP. 
 
 I dcem'd such nooks the sweetest shade 
 
 Tlio sun in all its round survey'd ; 
 
 And still I thought that shatter'd tower 
 
 The mightiest work of human power ; 
 
 And marvell'd as the aged hind 
 
 With some strange tale bowitch'd my mind, 
 
 Of forayers, who, with headlong force, 
 
 Down from that strength had spurr'd their horse, 
 
 Tlieir southern rapine to renew. 
 
 Far in the distant Cheviots blue, 
 
 And, home returning, fill'd the hall 
 
 With revel, wassail -rout, and brawl. 
 
 Methought that still with trump and clang 
 
 The gateway's broken arches rang; 
 
 McthoLight grim features, seam'd with scars, 
 
 Glared tlirough the window's rusty bars ; 
 
 And ever, by the winter hearth, 
 
 Old tales I heard of woe or mirth, 
 
 Of lovers' slights, of ladies' charms, 
 
 Of witches' sj^ells, of warriors' arms, 
 
 Of patriot battles, won of old 
 
 By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold ; 
 
 Of later fields of feud and fight. 
 
 When, pouring from their Highland height; 
 
 The Scottish clans, in headlong sway. 
 
 Had swept the scarlet ranks away. 
 
 While, stretch'd at length upon the floor, 
 
 Again I fought each combat o'er. 
 
 Pebbles and shells in order laid. 
 
 The mimic ranks of war display'd ; 
 
 And onward still the Scottish lion bore. 
 
 And still the scatter'd Southron fled before. 
 
 Still, with vain fondness, could I trace 
 
 Anew each kind familiar face 
 
 That brighteu'd at our evening fire ! 
 
 From the thatch'd mansion's grey-hair'd sira^ 
 
 Wise without learning, plain and good. 
 
 And sj^rung of Scotland's gentler blood ; 
 
 Whose eye in ago, quick, clear, and keen, 
 
 Show'd what in youth its glance had been; 
 
 Whose doom discording neighbours sought. 
 
 Content with equity unbought ; 
 
I.J ANCESTRY, PARENTAGE, AND CHILDHOOD. 13 
 
 To him the venerable priest. 
 Our frequent and familiar guest, 
 Whose life and manners well could jsaint 
 Alike the student and the saint ; 
 Alas ! whose speech too oft I broke 
 With gambol rude and timeless joke ; 
 For I was wayward, bold, and wild, 
 A self-will'd imp, a grandame's child ; 
 But, half a plague and half a jest. 
 Was still endui-ed, beloved, caress'd." 
 
 A picture this of a child of great spirit, though with 
 that spirit was conihined an active and subduing sweet- 
 ness which could often conquer, as by a sudden spell, 
 those whom the boy loved. ! Towards those, however, whom 
 he did not love he could be vindictive. His relative, 
 the laird of Eaeburn, on one occasion wrung the neck of 
 a pet starling, which the child had partly tamed. " I 
 flew at his throat like a wild-cat," he said, in recalling 
 the circumstance, fifty years later, in his journal on 
 occasion of the old laird's death ; " and was torn from 
 him with no little difficulty." And, judging from this 
 journal, I doubt whether he had ever really forgiven the 
 Icird of Eaeburn. Towards those whom he loved but 
 had offended, his manner was very different. ** I seldom," 
 said one of his tutors, Mr. Mitchell, " had occasion all the 
 time I was in the family to find fault with him, even for 
 trifles, and only once to threaten serious castigation, of 
 which he was no sooner aware, than he suddenly sprang 
 up, threw his arms about my neck and kissed me." And 
 the quaint old gentleman adds this commentary : — " By 
 such generous and noble conduct my displeasure was in a 
 moment converted into esteem and admiration ; my soul 
 melted into tenderness, and I was ready to mingle my 
 tears with his." This spontaneous and fascinating sweet- 
 
14 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap 
 
 ness of his cliiklhood was naturally overshadowed to some 
 extent in later life by Scott's masculine and proud cha- 
 racter, but it was always in him. And there was 
 much of true character in the child behind this sweet- 
 ness. Ho had wonderful self-command, and a peremp- 
 tory kind of good sense, even in his infancy. While yet 
 a child under six years of age, hearing one of the servants 
 beginning to tell a ghost-story to another, and Avell know- 
 ing that if he listened, it would scare away his night's 
 rest, he acted for himself Avith all the promptness of an 
 elder person acting for him, and, in spite of the fasci- 
 nation of the subject, resolutely muffled his head in the 
 bed-clothes and refused to hear the talc. His sagacity 
 in judging of the character of others was shown, too, even 
 as a school-boy ; and once it led him to take an advan- 
 tage which caused him many compunctions in after-life, 
 whenever he recalled his skilful puerile tactics. On one 
 occasion — I tell the story as he himself rehearsed it to 
 Samuel Rogers, almost at the end of his life, after his 
 attack of apoplexy, and just before leaving England 
 for Italy in the hopeless quest of health — he had long 
 desired to get above a school-fellow in his class, Avho 
 defied all his efforts, till Scott noticed that whenever a 
 question was asked of his rival, the lad's fingers grasped 
 a particular button on his waistcoat, while his mind went 
 in search of the answer. Scott accordingly anticipated 
 that if he could remove this button, the boy would be 
 thrown out, and so it proved. The button was cut off, 
 and the next time the lad was questioned, his fingers 
 being unable to find the button, and his eyes going in 
 perplexed search after his fingers, he stood confounded, 
 and Scott mastered by strategy the place Avliich he could 
 not gain by mere industry. " Often in after-life," said 
 
I.] ANCESTRY, PARENTAGE, AND CHILDHOOD. 15 
 
 Scott, in narrating the manoeuvre to Eogers, "has the sight 
 of him smote me as I passed by him ; and often have I 
 resolved to make him some reparation, but it ended in 
 good resohitions. Though I never renewed my acquaint- 
 ance with him, I often saw him, for he filled some inferior 
 office in one of the courts of law at Edinburgh. Poor 
 fellow ! I believe he is dead ; he took early to drinking."* 
 Scott's school reputation was one of irregular ability ; he 
 " glanced like a meteor from one end of the class to the 
 other," and received more praise for his interpretation of 
 the spirit of his authors than fur his knowledge of their 
 language. Out of school his fame stood higher. He 
 extemporized innumerable stories to which his school- 
 fellows delighted to listen ; and, in spite of his lameness, 
 he was always in the thick of the " bickers," or street 
 fights with the boys of the town, and renowned for his 
 boldness in climbing the "kittle nine stanes " Avhich are 
 "projected high in air from the precipitous black granite 
 of the Castle-rock." At home he was much bullied by his 
 elder brother Eobert, a lively lad, not Avithout some powers 
 of verse-making, who went into the navy, then in an 
 unlucky moment passed into the merchant service of tlje 
 East India Company, and so lost the chance of distin- 
 guishing himseK in the great naval campaigns of kelson. 
 Perhaps Scott would have been all the better for a sister 
 a little closer to him than Anne — sickly and fanciful — 
 appears ever to have been. The masculine side of life 
 appears to predominate a little too much in his school 
 and college days, and he had such vast energy, vitality, 
 and pride, that his life at this time would have borne a 
 little taming vindcr the influence of a sister thoroughly 
 
 * Lockliart's Life of Scott, i. 123. 
 
16 SIR W^vLTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 congenial to liim. In relation to his studies he waa 
 wilful, though not perhaps perverse. Ho steadily de- 
 clined, for instance, to learn Greek, though he mastered 
 Latin pretty fairly. After a time spent at the High 
 School, Edinburgh, Scott was sent to a school at Kelso, 
 where his master made a friend and companion of him, 
 and so poured into him a certain amount of Latin scholar- 
 ship which he would never otherwise have obtained. I 
 need hardly add that as a boy Scott was, so far as a boy 
 could be, a Tory — a Avorshipper of the past, and a great 
 Conservative of any remnant of the past which reformers 
 wished to get rid of. In the autobiographical fragment 
 of 1808, he says, in relation to these school-days, "I, 
 with my head on fire for chivalry, was a Cavalier ; my 
 friend was a Soundhead ; I was a Tory, and he was a 
 Whig ; I hated Presbyterians, and admired Montrose 
 with his victoiious Higlilanders ; he liked the Presby- 
 terian Ulysses, the deep and politic Argyle ; so that we 
 never wanted subjects of dispute, but our disputes were 
 always amicable." And he adds candidly enough : " In 
 all these tenets there was no real conviction on my part, 
 arising out of acquaintance with the views or principles 
 
 of either party I took up politics at that 
 
 period, as King Charles II. did his religion, from an idea 
 that the Cavalier creed was the more gentlemaidike per- 
 suasion of the two." And the uniformly amicable character 
 of these controversies between the young people, itself 
 shows how much more they were controversies of the 
 imagination than of faith. I doubt whether Scott's con- 
 victions on the issues of the Past were ever very much 
 more decided than they were during his boyhood ; though 
 undoubtedly he learned to understand much more pro- 
 foundly what was really held by the ablest men on both 
 
!.l ANCESTRY, PAEENTAGE, AND CHILDHOOD. 17 
 
 sides- of these disputed issaes. The result, however, Avas, 
 I think, that wliile he entered better and better into both 
 sides as life Avcnt on, he never adopted either with any 
 earnestness of conviction, being content to admit, even 
 to himself, that while his feelings leaned in one direction, 
 his reason pointed decidedly in the other ; and holding 
 that it was hardly needful to identify himself positively 
 with either. As rcgnrded the present, however, feeling 
 always carried the day. Scott was a Tory all his life. 
 2 
 
18 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [cuap. 
 
 CHAPTEE IL 
 
 YOUTH — CHOICE OP A PROFESSION". 
 
 As Scott grew up, entered the classes of tlie college, and 
 began liis legal studies, first as apprentice to his father, 
 and then in the law classes of the University, he became 
 noticeable to all his friends for his gigantic memory, — the 
 rich stores of romantic material with which it was loa<led, 
 — his giant feats of industry for any cherished purpose, — 
 his delight in adventure and in all athletic enterprises, — 
 his great enjoyment of youthful " rows," so long as they 
 did not divide the knot of friends to Avhich he belonged, 
 and his skill in peacemaking amongst his own set. During 
 his apprenticeship his only means of increasing his slender 
 allowance with funds which he coidd devote to his 
 favourite studies, was to earn money by copying, and he 
 tells us himself that he remembered writing " 120 folio 
 pages Avith no interval either for food or rest," fourteen 
 or fifteen hours' very hard work at the very least, — 
 expressly for this purpose. 
 
 In the second year of Scott's apprenticeship, at about 
 the age of sixteen, he had an attack of haemorrhage, 
 no recuirence of which took place for some forty 
 years, but which was then the beginning of the end. 
 During this illness silence was absolutely imposed 
 upon him, — two old ladies putting their fingers ou 
 
II.] YOUTn-cnoiCE of a profession. ly 
 
 their lips Avlieiicver lie oITered to speak. It Avas at tliis 
 time that the lad began his study of the scenic side of 
 history, and especially of campaigns, which he illustrated 
 for himself by the arrangement of sliells, seeds, and 
 pebbles, so as to represent encountering armies, in the 
 manner referred to (and referred to apparently in anticipa- 
 tion of a later stage of his life than that he was then speak- 
 ing of) in the passage from the introduction to the third 
 canto of Marmioa which I have already given. He also 
 managed so to arrange the looking-glasses in his room as 
 to see the troops march out to exercise in the meadows, 
 as he lay in bed. His reading was almost all in the 
 direction of military exploit, or romance and me- 
 dia3val legend and the later border songs of his own 
 country. He learned Italian and read Ariosto. Later 
 he learned Spanish and devoured Cervantes, whose 
 " novclas" he said, " lirst inspired him with the ambition 
 to excel in fiction;" and all that he read and admired 
 he remembered. Scott used to illustrate the capricious 
 affinity of his own memory for what suited it, and its 
 complete rejection of what di 1 not, by old Beattie of 
 Meikledale's answer to a Scotch divine, who complimented 
 him on the strength of his memory. " ISTo, sir," said the 
 old Borderer, " I have no command of my memory. It 
 only retains what hits my ftxncy ; and probably, sir, 
 if you were to preach to me for two hours, I would not 
 be able, when you finished, to remember a word you had 
 been saying." Such a memory, when it belongs to a man 
 of genius, is really a sieve of the most valuable kind. 
 It sifts away what is foreign and alien to his genius, and 
 assimilates what is suited to it. In his very last days, 
 when he was visiting Italy for the first time, Scott delighted 
 in Malta, for it recalled to him Vcrtot's KniQliis of Malta, 
 
20 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 and mucli other mediaeval story wliicli lio had pored over 
 in liis youth. But when his friends descanted to him at 
 Pozzuoli on the Thermaj — commonly called the Temple 
 of Serapis — among the ruins of which he stood, he only 
 remarked that he would believe whatever he was told, 
 "for many of his friends, and particularly Mr. Morritt, 
 had frequently tried to drive classical antiquities, as they 
 are called, into his head, but they had always found his 
 skull too thick." AVas it not perhaps some deep literary 
 instinct, like that here indicated, which made him, as a 
 lad, refuse so steadily to learn Greek, and try to prove to 
 his indignant professor that Ariosto was superior to 
 Homer ] Scott afterwards deeply regretted this neglect 
 of Greek ; but I cannot help thinking that his regret was 
 misplaced. Greek literature would have brought before 
 his mind standards of poetry and art which could not 
 but have both deeply impressed and greatly daunted an 
 intellect of so much power ; I say both impressed and 
 daunted, because I believe that Scott himself would never 
 have succeeded in studies of a classical kind, while he 
 might — like Goethe perhaps —have been either misled, by 
 admiration for that school, into attempting what was not 
 adapted to his genius, or else disheartened iu the work 
 for which his character and ancestry really fitted him. 
 It has been said that there is a real affinity between Scott 
 and Homer. But the long and refiuent music of Homer, 
 once naturalized in his mind, would have discontented 
 him with that quick, sharp, metrical tramp of his own moss- 
 troopers, to which alone his genius as a poet Avas per- 
 fectly suited. 
 
 It might be supposed that with these romantic tastes, 
 Scott could scarcely have made much of a lawyer, though 
 the inference would, I believe, be quite mistaken. His 
 
II.] YODTH— CHOICE OF A PEOPESSIOX. 21 
 
 father, however, reproached him with being better fitted for 
 a pedlar than a lawyer, — so persistently did he trudge over 
 all the neighbouring counties in search of the beauties 
 of nature and the historic associations of battle, siege, or 
 legend. On one occasion when, Avith their last penny spent, 
 Scott and one of his companions had returned to Edin- 
 burgh, living during their last day on drinks of milk 
 offered by generous peasant- worn en, and the hips and haws 
 on the hedges, he remarked to his father how much he 
 had Avished for George Primrose's power of playing on the 
 flute in order to earn a meal by the way, old Mr. Scott, 
 catching grumpily at the idea, replied, "I greatly doubt, sir, 
 you were born for nae better then a gangrel scrape-gut," — 
 a speech which very probably suggested his son's concep- 
 tion of Darsie Latimer's adventures with the blind fiddler, 
 " Wandering Willie," in Redgaimtlei. And, it is true that 
 these were the days of mental and moral fermentation, 
 wliat was called in Germany the Sturm-und-Drang, the 
 " fret-and-fury " period of Scott's life, so far as one so 
 mellow and genial in temper ever passed through a period 
 of fret and fury at all. In other words these were the days 
 of rapid motion, of walks of thirty miles a day which 
 the lame lad yet found no fatigue to him ; of mad enter- 
 prises, scrapes and drinking-bouts, in one of which Scott 
 was half persuaded by his friends that he actually sang 
 a song for the only time in his life. But even in these 
 days of youthful sociability, with companions of his 
 own age, Scott was always himself, and his imperious will 
 often asserted itself. Writing of this time, some thirty- 
 five years or so later, he said, "When I was a boy, and 
 on foot expeditions, as we had many, no creature could be 
 so indifferent which way our course was directed, and I 
 acquiesced in Avhat any one proposed ; but if I was once 
 
22 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 driven to make a choice, and felt piqued in honour to 
 maintain my proposition, I have broken off from the 
 whole party, rather than yield to any one." 'No douht, 
 too, in that day of what he himself described as " the 
 silly smart fancies that ran in my brain like the bubbles 
 in a glass of champagne, as brilliant to my thinking, as 
 intoxicating, as evanescent," solitude was no real depriva- 
 tion to him ; and one can easily imagine him marching off 
 on his solitary way after a dispute with his companions, 
 reciting to himself old songs or ballads, with that 
 " noticeable but altogether indescribable play of the upper 
 lip," which Mr. Lockhart thinks suggested to one of 
 Scott's most intimate friends, on his first acquaintance 
 with him, the grotesque notion that he had been "a 
 hautboy-player." This was the first impression formed 
 of Scott by William Clerk, one of his earliest and life- 
 long friends. It greatly amused Scott, who not only had 
 never played on any instrument in his life, but could 
 hardly make shift to join in the chorus of a popular song 
 without marring its effect; but perhaps the impression 
 suggested was not so very far astray after all. Looking 
 to the poetic side of his character, the- trumpet certaiidy 
 would have been the instrument that would have best 
 symbolized the spirit both of Scott's thought and of his 
 verses. Mr. Lockhart himself, in summing up his impres- 
 sions of Sir Walter, quotes as the most expressive of his 
 lines : — 
 
 " Sound, sound the clarion ! fill the fife ! 
 To all the sensual world proclaim, 
 One crowded hour of glorious life 
 Is worth a world without a name." 
 
 And undoubtedly this gives us the key-note of Scott's 
 personal life as well as of his poetic power. Above every- 
 
n.] YOUTH— CHOICE OP A PEOFESSION. 23 
 
 tiling he was high-spirited, a man of nohle, and, at the same 
 time, of martial feelings. Sir Francis Doyle speaks very 
 justly of Sir Walter as " among English singers the 
 imdouhted inheritor of that trumpet-note, which, under 
 the breath of Homer, has made the wrath of Achilles 
 immortal ;" and I do not doubt that there was something 
 in Scott's face, and especially in the expression of his 
 mouth, to suggest this even to his early college com- 
 panions. Unfortunately, however, even " one crowded 
 liour of glorious life " may sometimes have a " sensual " 
 inspiration, and in these days of youthful adventure, too 
 many such hours seem to have owed their inspiration 
 to the Scottish peasant's chief bane, the Highland whisky. 
 In his eager search after the old ballads of the Border, 
 Scott had many a blithe adventure, which ended only too 
 often in a carouse. It was soon after this time that he first 
 began those raids into Liddesdale, of which all the world 
 has enjoyed the records in the sketches — embodied subse- 
 quently in Guy Mannerinrj — of Dandie Dinmont, his pony 
 Dumple, and the various Peppers and Mustards from 
 whose breed there were afterwards introduced into Scott's 
 own family, generations of terriers, always named, as Sir 
 Walter expressed it, after '' the cruet." I must quote the 
 now classic record of those youthful escapades : — 
 
 " Eh me," said Mr. Shortreed, his companion in all these 
 Liddesdale raids, " sic an endless fund of humour and drollery 
 as he had then wi' him. Never ten yards but we wei-e either 
 laughing or roaring and singing. "Wherever we stopped, how 
 brawlie he suited himsel' to everybody ! He aye did as the 
 lave did ; never made himsel' the great man or took ony airs 
 in the company. I've seen him in a' moods in these jaunts, 
 grave and gay, daft and serious, sober and drunk — (this, how- 
 ever, even in our wildest rambles, was but rare) — but drunk 
 or sober he was aye the gentleman. He looked excessively 
 
24 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 heavy and stupid wlien lie viSisfou, but he was never out o' 
 gude humour." 
 
 One of the stories of that time will illustrate Letter 
 the wilder days of Scott's youth than any comment : — 
 
 " On reaching one evening," says Mr. Lockhart, some 
 Charlieshope or other (I forget the name) among those wil- 
 dernesses, they found a kindly reception as usual : hut to 
 their agreeable surprise, after some days of hard living, a 
 measured and orderly hospitality as respected liquor. Soon 
 after supper, at which a bottle of elderbeiTy wine alone had 
 been produced, a young student of divinity who happened to 
 he in the house was called uj^on to take the ' big ha' Bible,' in 
 the good old fashion of Burns' Saturday Night : and some 
 progress had been already made in the service, when the good 
 man of the farm, whose ' tendency,' as Mr. Mitchell says, 
 * was soporific,' scandalized his wife and the dominie by start- 
 ing suddenly from his knees, and rubbing his eyes, with a 
 
 stentorian exclamation of ' By ! here's the keg at Last ! ' 
 
 and in tumbled, as he spake the word, a couple of sturdy 
 herdsmen, whom, on hearing, a day before, of the advocate's 
 approaching visit, he had despatched to a certain smuggler's 
 haunt at some considerable distance in quest of a supply of 
 run brandy from the Solway frith. The pious ' exercise ' of 
 the household was hopelessly interrupted. "With a thousand 
 apologies for his hitherto shabby entertainment, this jolly 
 Elliot or Armstrong had the welcome keff mounted on the 
 table without a moment's delay, and gentle and simple, not 
 forgetting the dominie, continued carousing about it until 
 daylight streamed in ujoon the party. Sir Walter Scott 
 seldom failed, when I saw him in company with his Liddes- 
 dale companions, to mimic with infinite humour the sudden 
 outburst of his old host on hearing the clatter of horses' feet, 
 which he knew to indicate the arrival of the keg, the con- 
 sternation of the dame, and the rueful despair with which 
 the young clergyman closed the book." ^ 
 
 ' Lockhart's Life of Scott, i. 269-71. 
 
11.] YOUTH-CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 25 
 
 No wonder old Mr. Scott felt some douLt of his son's 
 success at the bar, and thought him more fitted in many 
 respects for a "gangrel scrape-gut."^ 
 
 In spite of all this love of excitement, Scott became a 
 sound lawyer, and might have been a great lawyer, had not 
 liis pride of character, the impatience of his genius, and 
 the stir of his imagination rendered him indisposed to 
 wait and slave in the precise manner which the preposses- 
 sions of solicitors appoint. 
 
 For Scott's passion for romantic literature was not at 
 all the sort of thing which we ordinarily mean by boys' 
 or girls' love of romance. l!fo amount of drudgery or 
 labour deterred Scott from any undertaking on the prose- 
 cution of which he was bent. He was quite the reverse, 
 indeed, of what is usually meant by sentimental, either in 
 his manners or his literary interests. As regards the 
 history of his own country he was no mean antiquarian. 
 Indeed he cared for the mustiest antiquarian researches — 
 of the media3val kind — so much, that in the depth of his 
 troubles he speaks of a talk with a Scotch antiquary and 
 herald as one of the things which soothed him most. 
 " I do not know anything which relieves the mind so 
 much from the sullens as trifling discussions about anti- 
 quarian old icomanries. It is like knitting a stocking, 
 diverting the mind without occupying it." * Thus his 
 love of romantic literature was as far as possible from that of 
 a mind which only feeds on romantic excitements ; rather 
 was it that of one who was so moulded by the transmitted 
 and acquired love of feudal institutions with all their inci- 
 dents, that he could not take any deep interest in any other 
 
 s)* 
 
 » Lockhart's Life of Scott, i. 20G. 
 ' Lockhart's Life of Scott, ix. 221. 
 
26 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 fashion of human society. Now the Scotch law was full 
 of vestiges and records of that period, — was indeed a great 
 standing monument of it ; and in numbers of his writings 
 Scott shows with how deep an interest he had studied 
 the Scotch law from this point of view. He remarks some- 
 where that it was natural for a Scotchman to feel a strong 
 attachment to the principle of rank, if only on the ground 
 that almost any Scotchman might, under the Scotch law, 
 turn out to be heir-in-tail to some great Scotch title or 
 estateby the death of intervening relations. And the law 
 which sometimes caused such sudden transformations, had 
 subsequently a true interest for him of course as a novel 
 writer, to say nothing of his interest in it as an antiqua- 
 rian and historian who loved to repeople the earth, not 
 merely with the picturesque groups of the soldiers and 
 courts of the past, but with the actors in all the various 
 quaint and homely transactions and puzzlements which 
 the feudal ages had brought forth. Hence though, as a 
 matter of fact, Scott never made much figure as an advo- 
 cate, he became a very respectable, and might unquestion- 
 ably have become a very great, lawyer. When he started 
 at the bar, however, he had not acquired the tact to 
 impress an ordinary assembly. In one case which he 
 conducted before the General Assembly of the Kirk of 
 Scotland, when defending a parish minister threatened 
 with deposition for drunkenness and unseemly behaviour, 
 he certainly missed the proper tone, — first receiving a 
 censure for the freedom of his manner in treating the alle- 
 gations against his client, and then so far collapsing under 
 the rebuke of the ]\Ioderator, as to lose the force and ur- 
 gency necessary to produce an effect on his audience. But 
 these were merely a boy's mishaps. He was certainly by 
 no means a Heaven-born orator, and therefore could not 
 
II.] YOUTH— CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 27 
 
 expect to spring into exceptionally early distinction, and 
 the only true reason for his relative failure was that ho 
 was so full of literary power, and so proudly impatient of 
 the fetters which prudence seemed to impose on his extra- 
 professional proceedings, that he never gained the credit 
 he deserved fox the general common sense, the unwearied 
 industry, and the keen appreciation of the ins and outs of 
 legal method, which might have raised him to the highest 
 reputation even as a judge. 
 
 All readers of his novels know how Scott delights in 
 the humours of the law. Ey way of illustration take the 
 following passage, which is both short and amusing, in 
 which Saunders Fahford — the old solicitor painted from 
 Scott's father in Redgauntlet — descants on the laAV of 
 the stirrup-cup. " It was decided in a case hefore the 
 town bailies of Cupar Angus, Avhen Liickie Simpson's cow 
 had drunk up Luckie Jamieson's browst of ale, while it 
 stood in the door to cool, that there was no damage to 
 pay, because the crummie drank without sitting down ; 
 such being the circumstance constituting a Doch an 
 Dorroch, which is a standing drink for which no reckoning 
 is paid." I do not believe that any one of Scott's con- 
 temporaries had greater legal abilities than he, though, as 
 it happened, they were never fairly tried. But he had 
 both the pride and impatience of genius. It fretted him 
 to feel that he was dependent on the good opinions of 
 solicitors, and that they who were incapable of under- 
 standing his genius, thought the less instead of the better 
 of him as an advocate, for every indication which he gave 
 of that genius. Even on the day of his call to the bar he 
 gave expression to a sort of humorous foretaste of this 
 impatience, saying to "William Clerk, who had been called 
 with him, as he mimicked the air and tone of a Highland 
 
28 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 lass waiting at the Cross of EdinLurgli to be hired for the 
 harvest, " AVe've stood here an hour by the Tron, hinny, 
 and deil a ane has speered our price." Scott continued to 
 practise at the bar — nominally at least — for fourteen 
 years, but the most which he ever seems to have made in 
 any one year was short of 230Z., and latterly his practice 
 was much diminishing instead of increasing. His own 
 impatience of solicitors' patronage was against him ; his 
 well-known dabblings in poetry were still more against 
 him ; and his general repute for wild and unprofessional ad- 
 venturousness — which was much greater than he deserved 
 — was probably most of all against him. Before he had 
 been six years at the bar he joined the organization of the 
 Edinburgh Volunteer Cavalry, took a very active part in 
 the drill, and was made their Quartermaster. Then he 
 visited London, and became largely known for his 
 ballads, and his love of ballads. In his eighth year 
 at the bar he accepted a small permanent appointment, 
 with 300Z. a year, as sheriff of Selkirkshire ; and this 
 occurring soon after his marriage to a lady of some 
 means, no doubt diminished stiU further his p»rofes- 
 sional zeal. Eor one third of the time during which 
 Scott practised as an advocate he made no pretence of 
 taking interest in that part of his work, though he was 
 always deeply interested in the law itself. In 180G he 
 undertook gratuitously the duties of a Clerk of Session — 
 a permanent officer of the Court at Edinburgh — and dis- 
 charged them without remuneration for five years, from 
 1806 to 1811, in order to secure his ultimate succession to 
 the office in the place of an invalid, who for that 
 period received all the emoluments and did none of the 
 work. Nevertheless Scott's legal abilities were so well 
 known, that it was certainly at one time intended to offer 
 
II.] YOUTK-CnOICE OF A PROFESSION. 29 
 
 him a Earony of tlie Exchequer, and it was his own doings 
 apparently, that it was not offered. The life of literature 
 and the life of the Bar hardly ever suit, and in Scott's 
 case they suited the less, that he felt himself likely to be 
 a dictator in the one fiehl, and only a postulant in the 
 other. Literature was a far greater gainer by his choice, 
 than LaAY could have been a loser. For his capacity for 
 the law he shared with thousands of able men, hia 
 capacity for literature with few or none. 
 
30 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 LOVE AND MARRIAGE, 
 
 One Sunday, al^out two years before liis call to tlie "bar, 
 Scott offered his umbrella to a young lady of much 
 beauty who was coming out of the Greyfriars Church 
 during a shower ; the umbrella was graciously accepted ; 
 and it was not an unprecedented consequenee that Scott 
 fell in love with the borrower, who turned out to be 
 Margaret, daughter of Sir John and Lady Jane Stuart 
 Belches, of Invernay. For near six years after this, 
 Scott indulged the hope of marrying this lady, and it 
 does not seem doiibtful that the lady herself was in 
 part responsible for this impression. Scott's father, who 
 thought his son's prospects very inferior to those of JNIiss 
 Stuart Belches, felt it his duty to warn the baronet of 
 his son's views, a warning which the old gentleman 
 appears to have received with that grand imconccrn 
 characteristic of elderly persons in high position, as a 
 hint intrinsically incredible, or at least unworthy of 
 notice. But he took no alarm, and Scott's attentions to 
 Margaret Stuart Belches continued tiU close on the eve 
 of her marriage, in 1796, to "William Forbes (afterwards 
 Sir William Forbes), of Pitsligo, a banker, who proved 
 to be one of Sir Walter's most generous and most 
 delicate-minded friends, when his time of troubles came 
 
III.] LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 31 
 
 towards the end of both their lives. "Whether Scott was 
 in part mistaken as to the impression he had made on 
 the young hidy, or she was mistaken as to the impression 
 lie had made on lierself, or whether other circumstances 
 intervened to cause misunderstanding, or the grand in- 
 difference of Sir John gave way to active intervention 
 "when the question hecame a practical one, the world will 
 now never know, but it does not seem very likely that 
 a man of so much force as Scott, Avho certainly had at 
 one time assured himself at least of the young lady's 
 strong regard, should have been easily displaced even by 
 a rival of ability and of most generous and amiable 
 character. An entry in the diary which Scott kept in 
 1827, after Constable's and Ballantyne's failure, and his 
 wife's death, seems to me to suggest that there may have 
 been some misunderstanding between the young people, 
 though I am not sure that the inference is justified. 
 The passage completes the story of this passion — Scott's 
 first and only deei? passion — so far as it can ever be 
 known to us ; and as it is a very pathetic and charac- 
 teristic entry, and the attachment to which it refers had 
 a great influence on Scott's life, both in keeping him free 
 from some of the most dangerous temptations of the 
 young, during his youth, and in creating within him 
 an interior world of dreams and recollections throughout 
 his whole life, on which his imaginative nature was con- 
 tinually fed — I may as well give it. " He had taken," 
 says Mr. Lockhart, "for that winter [1827], the house 
 'No. 6, Shandwick Place, which he occupied by the 
 month during the remainder of his servitude as a clerk 
 of session. Very near this house, he was told a few 
 days after he took possession, dwelt the aged mother of 
 his first love ; and he expressed to his friend Mrs. 
 
Sa , SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap, 
 
 Skene, a \a ish that she should carry him to renew an 
 acquaintance which seems to have been interrupted from 
 the period of his youthful romance. Mrs. Skene com- 
 plied with his desire, and she tells me that a very 
 painful scene ensued." His diary says, — " J^ovemher 
 7th. Began to settle myself this morning after the hurry 
 of mind and even of body which I have lately under- 
 gone. I went to make a visit and fairly softened 
 myself, like an old fool, with recalling old stories till 
 I was fit for nothing hut shedding tears and repeating 
 verses for the whole night. This is sad work. The very 
 grave gives up its dead, and time rolls back thirty years 
 to add to my perplexities. I don't care. I begin to 
 grow case-hardened, and like a stag turning at bay, 
 luy naturally good temper grows fierce and dangerous. 
 Yet what a romance to tell — and told I fear it will one 
 day be. And then my three years of dreaming and my 
 two years of wakening will be chronicled, doubtless. But 
 the dead will feel no pain. — November 10th. At twelve 
 o'clock I went again to poor Lady Jane to talk over old 
 stories. I am not clear that it is a right or healthful 
 indulgence to be ripping up old sores, but it seems to 
 give her deep-rooted sorrow words, and that is a mental 
 blood-letting. To me these things are now matter of calm 
 and solemn recollection, never to be forgotten, yet scarce 
 to be remembered with pain."* It was in 1797, after 
 the break-up of his hopes in relation to this attachment, 
 that Scott wrote the lines To a Violet, which Mr. F. T. Pal- 
 grave, in his thoughtful and striking introduction to Scott's 
 poems, rightly characterize sas one of the most beautiful 
 of those poems. It is, however, far from one character- 
 
 1 Lockhart's Life of Scott, ix. 183-4. 
 
III.] LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 83 
 
 istic of Scott, indeed, so diiferent in style from the best 
 of his other poems, that Mr. Browning might well have 
 said of Scott, as he once affirmed of himself, that for 
 the purpose of one particular poem, he " who hlows 
 through bronze," had " breathed through silver," — had 
 "curbed the liberal hand subservient proudly," — and 
 tamed his sjpirit to a key elsewhere unknown. 
 
 ** The violet in her greenwood bo\Yer, 
 
 Where birchen boughs with hazels mingle^ 
 May boast itself the fairest flower 
 In glen, or copse, or forest dingle. 
 
 " Though fair her gems of azure hue, 
 
 Beneath the dewdrop's weight reclining, 
 I've seen an eye of lovelier blue, 
 
 More sweet through watery lustre shining. 
 
 " The summer sun that dew shall dry, 
 Ere yet the day be past its morrow ; 
 Nor longer in my false love's eye 
 
 Remain'd the tear of parting sorrow." 
 
 These lines obviously betray a feeling of resentment, 
 which may or may not have been justified ; but they are 
 perhaps the most delicate produced by his pen. The 
 pride which was always so notable a feature in Scott, pro- 
 bably sustained him through the keen, inward pain which 
 it is very certain from a great many of his own words that 
 he must have suffered in this uprooting of his most pas- 
 sionate hopes. And it was in part probably the same 
 pride which led him to form, within the year, a new tie — 
 his engagement to Mademoiselle Charpentier, or Miss 
 Carpenter as she was usually calleJ,' — the daughter of a 
 French royalist of Lyons who had died, early in the revo- 
 lution. She had come after her father's death to Eng- 
 land, chiefly, it seems, because in the Marquis of Down- 
 
34 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 shire, wlio was an old friend of the family, her mother knew 
 that she should find a protector for her children. Miss 
 Carpenter was a lively beauty, prohahly of no great depth 
 of character. The few letters given of hers in Mr. Lock- 
 hart's life of Scott, give the impression of an amiahle, 
 petted girl, of somewhat thin and espicgle character, 
 Avho was rather charmed at the depth and intensity of 
 Scott's nature, and at the expectations which he seemed 
 to form of what love should mean, than capahle of realiz- 
 ing them. Evidently she had no inconsiderable pleasure in 
 display ; but she made on the whole a very good wife, only 
 one to be protected by him from every care, and not one 
 to share Scott's deeper anxieties, or to participate in his 
 dreams. Yet INIrs. Scott w\as not devoid of spirit and self- 
 control. For instance, when Mr. Jeffrey, having reviewed 
 Marmion in the Edinburgh in that depreciating and om- 
 niscient tone which was then considered the evidence of 
 critical acumen, dined with Scott on the very day on 
 which the review had appeared, Mrs. Scott behaved to 
 liim through the whole evening with the greatest polite- 
 ness, but fired this parting shot in her broken English, 
 as he took his leave, — " Well, good night, Mr. Jeffrey, — 
 dey tell mo you have abused Scott in de Revieio, and I 
 hope Mr. Constable has paid you very well for writing 
 it." It is hinted that Mrs. Scott was, at the time of 
 Scott's greatest fame, far more exhilarated by it than her 
 husband with his strong sense and sure self-measurement 
 ever was. Mr. Lockhart records that INIrs. Grant of Laggan 
 once said of them, " Mr. Scott always seems to me like a 
 glass, through which the rays of admiration pass without 
 sensibly affecting it ; but the bit of paper that lies besido 
 it will presently be in a blaze, and no wonder." The bit 
 of paper, however, never was in a blaze that I know of] 
 
III.] LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 35 
 
 and possibly Mrs. Grant's remark may have had a little 
 feminine sjiite in it. At all events, it was not till the rays 
 of misfortune, instead of admiration, fell upon Scott's life, 
 that the delicate tissue paper shrivelled up ; nor does it 
 seem that, even then, it was the trouble, so much as a 
 serious malady that had fixed on Lady Scott before Sir 
 AValter's troubles began, which really scorched up her 
 life. That she did not feel with the depth and intensity 
 of her husband, or in the same key of feeling, is clear. 
 After the foilure, and during the preparations for abandon- 
 ing the house in Edinburgh, Scott records in his diary : — 
 " It is with a sense of pain that I leave behind a parcel 
 of trumpery prints and little ornaments, once the pride 
 of Lady Scott's heart, but Avhicli she saw consigned with 
 indifference to the chance of an auction. Things that have 
 liad their day of importance with me, I cannot forget, 
 though the merest trifles ; but I am glad that she, with 
 bad health, and enough to vex her, has not the same use- 
 less mode of associating recollections with this unpleasant 
 business." ' 
 
 Poor Lady Scott ! It was rather like a bird of paradise 
 mating with an eagle. Yet the result was happy on the 
 whole ; for she had a thoroughly kindly nature, and a true 
 heart. AYithin ten days before her death, Scott enters in 
 his diary : — " Still welcoming me with a smile, and assert- 
 ing she is better." She was not the ideal wife for Scott ; 
 but she loved him, sunned herself in his prosperity, and 
 tried to bear his adversity cheerfully. In her last illness 
 she would always reproach her husband and children fur 
 their melancholy faces, even when that melancholy was, as 
 she well knew, due to the approaching shadow of her own 
 death. 
 
 » Lockhart'a Life of Scott, viii. 273. 
 
36 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EARLIEST POETRY AND BORDER MINSTRELSY. 
 
 ScoTT'i first serious attempt in poetry was a version of 
 Biirger's Lenore, a spectre-ballad of tlio violent kind, 
 mucli in favour in Germany at a somewhat earlier period, 
 but certainly not a specimen of the higher order of ima- 
 ginative genius. However, it stirred Scott's youthful 
 blood, and made him " wish to heaven he could get a 
 skull and two cross-bones ! " a modest desire, to be ex- 
 pressed with so much fervour, and one almost immediately 
 gratified. Probably no one ever gave a more spirited 
 version of Biirger's ballad than Scott has given ; but the 
 use to which Miss Cranstoun, a friend and confidante of 
 his love for Miss Stuart Belches, strove to turn it, by 
 getting it printed, blazoned, and richly bound, and pre- 
 senting it to the young lady as a proof of her admirer's 
 abilities, was perhaps hardly very sagacious. It is quite 
 possible, at least, that IMiss Stuart Belches may have 
 regarded this vehement admirer of spectral wedding 
 journeys and skeleton bridals, as unlikely to prepare for 
 her that comfortable, trim, and decorous future which 
 young ladies usually desire. At any rate, the bold stroke 
 failed. The young lady admired the verses, but, as wq 
 have seen, declined the translator. Perhaps she regarded 
 banking as safer, if less brilliant, work than the most 
 
iv.] EARLIEST POETRY AND BORDER MINSTRELSY. S7 
 
 efTective description of skeleton riders. Indeed, Scott at 
 this time — to those who did not know what was in him, 
 which no one, not even excepting himself, did — had no 
 very sure prospects of comfort, to say nothing of wealth. 
 It is curious, too, that his first adventure in literature was 
 thus connected with his interest in the preternatural, for 
 no man ever lived whose genius was sounder and healthier, 
 and less disposed to dwell on the half-and-half lights of a 
 dim and eerie world ; yet ghostly subjects always interested 
 liim deeply, and he often touched them in his stories, more, 
 I think, from the strong artistic contrast they afforded to 
 his favourite conceptions of life, than from any other 
 motive. There never was, I fancy, an organization less 
 susceptible of this order of fears and superstitions than his 
 own. AVhcn a friend jokingly urged him, within a few 
 months of his death, not to leave Home on a Friday, as it 
 was a day of bad omen for a journey, he replied, laughing, 
 " Superstition is very picturesque, and I make it, at times, 
 stand me in great stead, but I never allow it to interfere 
 with interest or convenience." Basil Hall reports Scott's 
 having told him on the last evening of the year 1824, 
 Avhen they were talking over this subject, that " having 
 once arrived at a country inn, he was told there was no 
 bed for him. 'l^o place to lie down at all?' said he. 
 ' No,' said the people of the house ; ' none, except a room 
 in which there is a corpse lying.' ' Well,' said he, ' did 
 the person die of any contagious disorder?' 'Oh, no; 
 not at all,' said they. * Well, then,' continued he, ' let 
 me have the other bed. So,' said Sir Walter, ' I laid me 
 down, and never had a better night's sleep in my life.' " 
 He was, indeed, a man of iron nerve, whose truest artistic 
 enjoyment was in noting the forms of character seen in 
 full daylight by the light of the most ordinary experie.nco. 
 
38 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chak 
 
 Perhaps for tliat reason lie can on occasion relate a 
 preternatural incident, such as the appearance of old Alice 
 at the fountain, at the very moment of her death, to the 
 Master of Ravenswood, in The Bride of Lammermoor, 
 with great effect. It was probably the vivacity with 
 which he realized the violence which such incidents do to 
 the terrestrial common sense of our ordinary nature, and 
 at the same time the sedulous accuracy of detail with 
 which he narrated them, rather than any. even the 
 smallest, special susceptibility of his own brain to thrills 
 of the j)retcrnatural kind, which gave him rather a iinique 
 pleasure in dealing with such preternatural elements. 
 Sometimes, however, his ghosts are a little too muscular 
 to produce their due effect as ghosts. In translating 
 Biirger's ballad his great success lay in the vividness of the 
 spectre's horsemanship. Tor instance, — • 
 
 " Tramp ! tramp ! along the land they rode, 
 Splasb ! splash ! along the sea; 
 The scourge is red, the spur drops blood, 
 The flashing pebbles flee," 
 
 is far better than any ghostly touch in it ; so, too, every 
 one will remember how spirited a rider is the white Lady 
 of Avenel, in The Monastery, and how vigorously she 
 takes fords, — as vigorously as the sheriff himself, who was 
 very fond of fords. On the whole, Scott was too sunny 
 and healthy-minded for a ghost-seer ; and the skuU and 
 cross-bones with which he ornamented his " den " in his 
 father's house, did not succeed in tempting him into the 
 world of twilight and cobwebs wherein he made his first 
 literary excursion. His William and Helen, the name he 
 gave to his translation of Biirger's Lenore, made in 1795, 
 was effective, after all, more for its rapid movement, than 
 fox the weirdness of its effects. 
 
IV.] EARLIEST POETRY AND BORDER MINSTRELSY. 39 
 
 If, however, it was the raw preternaturalisiu of such 
 ballads as Biirger's which first led Scott to test his own 
 powers, his genius soon turned to more appropriate and 
 natural subjects. Ever since his earliest college days he 
 had been collecting, in those excursions of his into Lid- 
 desdale and elsewhere, materials for a book on The 
 Minstrels)j of the Scottish Border ; and the publication of 
 this work, in January, 1802 (in two volumes at first), was 
 his first great literary success. The whole edition of eight 
 hundred copies was sold within the year, while the skill 
 and care which Scott had devoted to the historical illustra- 
 tion of the ballads, and the force and sj)irit of his own new 
 ballads, written in imitation of the old, gained him at 
 once a very high literary name. And the name was well 
 deserved. The Border Mlnstrelsij was more commen- 
 surate VI range with the genius of Scott, than even the 
 romantic poems by which it was soon followed, and which 
 were received with such universal and almost unparalleled 
 delight. For Scott's Border Minstrelsy gives more than a 
 glimpse of all his many great powers — his historical in- 
 dustry and knowledge, his masculine humour, his delight 
 in. restoring the vision of the " old, simple, violent world " 
 of rugged activity and excitement, as well as that power 
 to kindle men's hearts, as by a trumpet-call, which was 
 tlie chief secret of tlie charm of his own greatest poems. 
 It is much easier to discern tlie great novelist of sub- 
 sequent years in the Border Minstrelsy than even in Tlie 
 Lay of the Last ^linstrcl, Marmion, and The Lady of the 
 Lalce taken together. From those romantic j^oems you 
 would never guess that Scott entered more eagerly and 
 heartily into the common incidents and common cares of 
 every-day human life than into the most romantic for- 
 tunes ; from them you would never know how com- 
 
40 Sm WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 pletely he Lad mastered the leading features of quite 
 different periods of our history ; from them you would 
 never infer that you had hefore you one of the hest 
 plodders, as Avell as one of the most enthusiastic dreamers, 
 in British literature. But all this might have been 
 gathered from the various introductions and notes to the 
 Border Minstrelsy, which are full of skilful illustrations, 
 of comments teeming with humour, and of historic weight. 
 The general introduction gives us a general survey of the 
 graphic pictures of Border quarrels, their simple violence 
 and simple cunning. It enters, for instance, with gi-ave 
 humour into the strong distinction taken in the dehatable 
 land between a " freebooter " and a " thief," and the difh- 
 culty which the inland counties had in grasping it, and 
 paints for us, with great vivacity, the various Border super- 
 stitions. Another commentary on a very amusing ballad, 
 commemorating the manner in which a blind harper stole 
 a horse and got paid for a mare he had not lost, gives 
 an account of the curious tenure of land, called that of 
 the "king's rentallers," or "kindly tenants;" and a third 
 describes, in language as vivid as the historical romance 
 of Kenihcorth, written years after, the manner in which 
 Queen Elizabeth received the news of a check to her 
 policy, and vented her spleen on the King of Scotland. 
 
 So much as to the breadth of the literary area which 
 this first book of Scott's covered. As regards the jioetic 
 power Avhich his own new ballads, in imitation of the 
 old ones, evinced, I cannot say that those of the first 
 issue of the Border MinstreJsy indicated anything like the 
 force which might have been expected from one who was 
 so soon to be the author of Marmion, though many of 
 Scott's warmest admirers, including Sir Francis Doyle, 
 seem to place Glenfinlas among his finest productions. But 
 
17.] EARLIEST POETllY AND BORDER MINSTRELSY. 41 
 
 in the third vohinie of the Border Minstrelsy, •which did 
 not appear till 1803, is contained a ballad on the assas- 
 sination of the Eegent Murray, the story being told 
 by his assassin, which seems to me a specimen of his very 
 highest poetical powers. In Cadyow Castle you have not 
 only that rousing trumpet-note which you hear in Mar- 
 viion, but the pomp and glitter of a grand martial scene is 
 painted with all Scott's peculiar terseness and vigour. 
 The opening is singularly happy in preparing the reader 
 for the description of a violent deed. The Earl of Arran, 
 chief of the clan of Hamiltons, is chasing among the old 
 oaks of Cadyow Castle, — oaks which belonged to the 
 ancient Caledonian forest, — the fierce, wild bulls, milk- 
 white, with black muzzles, which were not extirpated till 
 shortly before Scott's own birth : — • 
 
 " Througli tlie Huge oaks of Evandale, 
 
 Whose limbs a tliousand years liavo worn, 
 What sullen roar comes down the gale, 
 And drowns the hunter's i^ealing horn ? 
 
 " Mightiest of a,ll the beasts of chase 
 That roam in woody Caledon, 
 Crashing the forest in his race, 
 
 The mountain bull comes thundering on. 
 
 "Fierce on the hunter's quiver'd band 
 He rolls his eyes of swarthy glow, 
 Spurns, with black hoof and horn, the sand. 
 And tosses high his mane of snow. 
 
 " Aim'd well, the chieftain's lance has flown ; 
 Struggling in blood the savage lies ; 
 nis roar is sunk in hollow groan, — 
 
 Sound, merry huntsman ! sound the pryse ! " 
 
 It is while the hunters are resting after this feat, that 
 Bothwellhaugh dashes among them headlong, spurring 
 his jaded steed with poniard instead of spur : — • 
 3 
 
42 ' SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 " From gory selle and reeling steed, 
 
 Sprang the fierce horseman with a bound, 
 And reeking from the recent deed, — 
 
 He dash'd his carbine on the ground." 
 
 And then Botliwellhaugli tells his tale of blood, describ- 
 ing the procession from which he had singled out hia 
 prey :— 
 
 " ' Dark Morton, girt with many a spear, 
 Murder's foul minion, led the van ; 
 And clash'd their broadswords in the rear 
 The wild Macfarlanes' plaided clan. 
 
 " ' Glencairn and stout Parkhead were nigli, 
 Obsequious at their Regent's rein, 
 And haggard Lindsay's iron eye, 
 That saw fair Mary weep in vain. 
 
 ""Mid pennon'd spears, a steely grove. 
 Proud Murray's plumage floated liigh ; 
 Scarce could his tramj^ling charger move, 
 So close the minions crowded nigh. 
 
 " ' From the raised vizoi-'s shade, his eye, 
 Dark rolling, glanced the ranks along, 
 And his steel truncheon waved on high, 
 Seem'd marshalling the iron throng. 
 
 •* ' But yet his sadden'd brow confess'd 
 A passing shade of doubt and awe ; 
 Some fiend was whispering in his breast, 
 " Beware of injured Bothwellhaugh ! " 
 
 "'The death-shot parts, — the charger springs,- — 
 Wild rises tumult's startliug roar ! 
 And Murray's plumy helmet rings — 
 Rings on the ground to rise no more.' " 
 
 This was the ballad which made so strong an impression 
 on Thomas Campbell, the poet. Eeferring to some of the 
 
IV.] EARLIEST POETRY AND BORDER MINSTRELSY. 43 
 
 lines I have quoted, CamplDell said, — " I have repeated 
 them so often on the Korth Bridge that the whole frater- 
 nity of coachmen know ine by tongue as I pass. To he 
 sure,'toamindin sober, serious, street-walking humour, it 
 must bear an appearance of lunacy when one stamps with 
 the hurried pace and fervent shake of the head which 
 strong, pithy poetry excites."^ I suppose anecdotes of 
 this kind have been oftener told of Scott than of any 
 other English poet. Indeed, Sir "Walter, who understood 
 himself well, gives the explanation in one of his diaries : — 
 " I am sensible," he says, " that if there be anything good 
 about my poetry or prose either, it is a hurried frankness 
 of composition, which pleases soldiers, sailors, and young 
 people of bold and active dispositions."' He might have 
 included old people too. I have heard of two old men — 
 complete strangers — passing each other on a dark London 
 night, when one of them happened to be repeating to him- 
 self, just as Campbell did to the hackney coachmen of the 
 North Bridge of Edinburgh, the last lines of the account 
 of Elodden Field in Marmion, " Charge, Chester, charge," 
 when suddenly a reply came out of the darkness, " On, 
 Stanley, on," whereupon they finished the death of Mar- 
 mion between them, took off their hats to each other, and 
 parted, laughing. Scott's is almost the only poetry 
 in the English language that not only runs thus in the 
 head of average men, but heats the head in which it 
 runs by the mere force of its hurried frankness of 
 style, to use Scott's own terms, or by that of its strong 
 and pithy eloquence, as Campbell plirased it. And iii 
 Cadtjow Castle this style is at its culminating point. 
 
 * Lockhart's Life of Scott, ii. 79. 
 
 * Lockhart's Life of Scott, viii. 370. 
 
44 SIE WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SCOTTS MATURER POEMS. 
 
 Scott's genius flowered late. Cachjoio Castle, the first of 
 his poems, I think, that has indisputable genius plainly 
 stamped on its terse and fiery lines, was composed in 1802, 
 when he was already thirty-one years of age. It was in 
 the same year that he wrote the first canto of his first 
 great romance in verse. The Lay of the Last Minstrel, a 
 poem Avhich did not appear till 1805, when he was thirty- 
 four. The first canto (not including the framework, of 
 Avhich the aged harper is the principal figure) was written 
 in the lodgings to which he Avas confined for a fortnight 
 in 1802, hy a kick received from a horse on Portohello 
 sands, during a charge of the Volunteer Cavalry in which 
 Scott was cornet. The poem was originally intended to 
 be included in the Border Minstrelsy, as one of tlie 
 studies in the antique style, but soon outgrew the limits of 
 such a study both in length and in the freedom of its 
 manner. Both the poorest and the best parts of The Lay 
 were in a special manner due to Lady Dalkeith (afterwards 
 Duchess of Luccleugh), who suggested it, and in whose 
 honour the poem was written. It was she who requested 
 Scott to write a poem on the legend of the goblin 
 page, Gilpin Horner, and this Scott attempted, — and, 
 so far as the golilin himself was concerned, conspicuously 
 
v.] SCOTT'S MATURER POEMS. 45 
 
 failed. He himself clearly saw that the story of this 
 unmanageable imp was both confused and uninteresting, 
 and that in fact he had to extricate himself from the 
 original groundwork of the tale, as from a regular literary 
 scrape, in the best way he could. In a letter to Miss 
 Seward, Scott says, — '* At length the story appeared so 
 uncouth that I was fain to put it into the mouth of my 
 old minstrel, lest the nature of it should bo misunder- 
 stood, and I should be suspected of setting up a new 
 school of poetry, instead of a feeble attempt to imitate the 
 old. In the process of the romance, the page, intended 
 to be a principal person in the work, contrived (from 
 the baseness of his natural propensities, I suppose) to slink 
 down stairs into the kitchen, and now he must e'en abide 
 there."' And I venture to say that no reader of the poem 
 ever has distinctly understood what the goblin page did or 
 did not do, what it was that was " lost " throughout the 
 poem and " found " at the conclusion, what was the object 
 of his personating the young heir of the house of Scott, 
 and whether or not that object was answered ; — what use, 
 if any, the magic book of Michael Scott was to the Lady 
 of Branksome, or whetlier it Avas only harm to her ; and I 
 doubt moreover whether any one ever cared an iota what 
 answer, or whether any answer, might be given to any of 
 these questions. All this, as Scott himself clearly per- 
 ceived, was left confused, and not simply vague. The 
 goblin imp had been more certainly an imp of mischief to 
 him than even to his boyish ancestor. But if Lady 
 Dalkeith suggested the poorest part of the poem, she 
 certainly inspired its best part. Scott says, as we have 
 seen, that he brought in the aged harper to save himself 
 
 • Lockhart's Life of Scott, ii. 217. 
 
46 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 from the imputation of "setting up a new school of 
 poetry " instead of humbly imitating an old school. But 
 I think that the chivalrous wish to do honour to Lady 
 Dalkeith, both as a personal friend and as the wife of his 
 " chief," — as he always called the head of the house of 
 Scott, — had more to do with the introduction of the aged 
 harper, than the wish to guard himself against the impu- 
 tation of attempting a new poetic style. He clearly 
 intended the Duchess of The Lay to represent the 
 Countess for whom he Avrote it, and the aged harper, with 
 his reverence and gratitude and self-distrust, was only the 
 disguise in which he felt that he could best pour out his loy- 
 alty, and the romantic devotion with which both Lord and 
 Lady Dalkeith, but especially the latter, had inspired him. 
 It was certainly this beautiful framework which assured 
 the immediate success and permanent charm of the poem ; 
 and the immediate success was for that day something 
 marvellous. The magnificent quarto edition of 750 copies 
 was soon exhausted, and an octavo edition of 1500 copies 
 was sold out within the year. In the following year two 
 editions, containing together 4250 copies, were disposed 
 of, and before twenty-five years had elapsed, that is, before 
 1830, 44,000 copies of the poem had been bought by the 
 public in this country, taking account of the legitimate 
 trade alone. Scott gained in all by The Lay 769Z., an 
 unprecedented sum in those times for an author to obtain 
 from any poem. Little more than half a century before, 
 Johnson received but fifteen guineas for his stately poem 
 on Tlie Vanity of Human Wishes, and but ten guineas for 
 his London. I do not say that Scott's poem had not much 
 more in it of true poetic fire, though Scott himself, I 
 believe, preferred these poems of Johnson's to anything 
 that he himself ever Avrote. But the disproportion iu 
 
v.] SCOTT'S MATURER POEMS. 47 
 
 tlio reward Avas certainly enormous, and j^ct what Scott 
 gained by his Lay was of course much less than he 
 gained hy any of his subsequent poems of equal, or any- 
 thing like equal, length. Thus for Marmion he received 
 1000 guineas long before the poem was published, and 
 for one half of the copyright of The Lord of the Isles 
 Constable paid Scott 1500 guineas. If we ask ourselves to 
 what this vast popularity of Scott's poems, and especially 
 of the earlier of them (for, as often happens, he was better 
 remunerated for his later and much inferior poems than, 
 for his earlier and more brilliant productions) is due, I 
 think the answer must be for the most part, the high 
 romantic glow and extraordinary romantic simplicity of the 
 poetical elements they contained. Take the old harper 
 of The Lay, a figure which arrested the attention of Pitt 
 diuing even that last most anxious year of his anxious life, 
 the year of Ulm and Austerlitz. ( The lines in which Scott 
 describes the old man's embarrassment when first urged 
 to play, produced on Pitt, according to his own account, 
 " an effect which I might have expected in painting, but 
 could never have fancied capable of being given in poetry." i 
 Every one knows the lines to which Pitt refers : — 
 
 " The humble boon was soon obtain'd ; 
 The aged minstrel audience gain'd. 
 But, when he reach'd the room of state. 
 Where she with all her ladies sate, 
 Perchance he wish'd his boon denied ; 
 For, when to tune the harp he tried, 
 His trembling hand had lost the ease 
 Which marks security to please j 
 And scenes long past, of joy and pain, 
 Came wildering o'er his aged brain, — 
 He tried to tune his harp in vain ! 
 
 » Lockhart's Life of Scott, ii. 226. 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 The pitying Duchess praised its chime, 
 
 And gave him heart, and gave him time, 
 
 Till every string's according glee 
 
 Was blended into harmony. 
 
 And then, he said, he would full fain 
 
 He could recall an ancient strain 
 
 lie never thought to sing again. 
 
 It was not framed for village churls, 
 
 But for high dames and mighty earls ; 
 
 He'd play'd it to King Charles the Good, 
 
 When he kciDt Court at Holyrood ; 
 
 And much he wish'd, yet fear'd, to try 
 
 The long-forgotten melody. 
 
 Amid the strings his fingers stray'd, 
 
 And an uncertain warbling made, 
 
 And oft he shook his hoary head. 
 
 Bat when he caught the measure wild 
 
 The old man raised his face, and smiled ; 
 
 And lighten'd up his faded eye, 
 
 With all a poet's ecstasy ! 
 
 In varying cadence, soft or strong. 
 
 He swept the sounding chords along j 
 
 The present scene, the future lot. 
 
 His toils, his wants, wore all forgot ; 
 
 Cold diffidence and age's frost 
 
 In the full tide of song were lost ; 
 
 Each blank in faithless memory void 
 
 The poet's glowing thought supplied ; 
 
 And, while his harp responsive rung, 
 
 'Twas thus the latest minstrel sung. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Here paused the harp ; and with its swell 
 
 The master's fire and courage fell j 
 
 Dejectedly and low he bow'd, 
 
 And, gazing timid on the crowd, 
 
 He seem'd to seek in every eye 
 
 If they approved his minstrelsy ; 
 
 And, diffident of present praise, 
 
 Somewhat he spoke of former days, 
 
 And how old age, and wandering long, 
 
 Had done his hand and harp some wrong.** 
 
v.] SCOTT'S MATURER POEMS. 49 
 
 These lines hardly illustrate, I think, the particular form 
 of Mr. Pitt's criticism, for a qnick succession of fine 
 shades of feeling of this kind could never have been 
 delineated in a painting, or indeed in a series of paintings, 
 at all, while they are so given in the poem. But the 
 praise itself, if not its exact form, is amply deserved. 
 ( The singular depth of the romantic glow in this passage, 
 and its equally singular simplicity, — a simplicity which 
 makes it intelligible to every one, — are conspicuous to 
 every reader. It is not what is called classical poetry, for 
 there is no severe outline, — no sculptured completeness 
 and repose, — no satisfying wholeness of effect to the eye 
 of the mind, — no embodiment of a great action. The poet 
 gives us a breath, a ripple of alternating fear and hope in 
 the heart of an old man, and that is all. He catches an 
 emotion that had its roots deep in the past, and that is 
 striving onward towards something in the future ; — he 
 traces the wistfulncss and self-distrust with which age seeks 
 to recover the feelings of youth, — the delight with which it 
 greets them when they come, — the hesitation and diffi- 
 dence with which it recalls them as they pass away, and 
 questions the triumph it has just won, — and he paints all 
 this without subtlety, without complexity, but with a 
 swiftness such as few poets ever surpassed. Generally, 
 however, Scott prefers action itself for his subject, to any 
 feeling, however active in its bent. The cases in which 
 he makes a study of any mood of feeling, as he does of 
 this harper's feeling, are comparatively rare. ) Deloraine's 
 night-ride to IMebose is a good deal more in Scott's 
 ordinary way, than this study of the old harper's wistful 
 mood. Eut whatever his subject, his treatment of it 
 is the same. His lines are always strongly drawn ; 
 his handling ls 'ilwavs simple : and his subject always 
 3* 
 
50 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 romantic. But thougli romantic, it is simple almost to 
 "baieness, — one of the great causes both of his popularity, 
 and of that deficiency in his poetry of which so many 
 of his admirers hecome conscious when they compare him 
 with other and richer poets. Scott used to say that in 
 poetry Byron " bet " him ; and no doubt that in which 
 chiefly as a poet he " bet " him, was in the variety, the 
 richness, the lustre of his effects. A certain rnggedness 
 and bareness was of the essence of Scott's idealism and 
 romance. It was so in relation to scenery. He told 
 Washington Irving that he loved the very nakedness of 
 the Border country. " It has something," he said, " bold 
 and stern and solitary about it. When I have been for 
 some time in the rich scenery about Edinburgh, which 
 is like ornamented garden-land, I begin to wish myself 
 back again among my honest grey hills, and if I did not 
 see the heather at least once a year, I think I should die.^* ^ 
 Now, the bareness which Scott so loved in his native 
 scenery, there is in all his romantic elements of feeling. 
 It is while he is bold and stern, that he is at his highest 
 ideal point. Directly he begins to attempt rich or pretty 
 subjects, as in parts of The Lady of the Lake, and a good 
 deal of The Lord of the Isles, and still more in The Bridal 
 of Triermain, his charm disappears. It is in painting 
 those moods and exploits, in relation to which Scott 
 shares most completely the feelings of ordinary men, but 
 experiences them with far greater strength and purity 
 than ordinary men, that he triumphs as a poet. \ Mr. 
 Lockhart tells us that some of Scott's senses were de- 
 cidedly " blunt," and one seems to recognize this in the 
 simplicity of his romantic effects. *' It is a fact," he saya, 
 
 ' fiockhart's Life of Scott, v. 248. 
 
T.] SCOTT'S MATUEER POEMS. 51 
 
 "which some philosopliers may tliink worth setting 
 down, that Scott's organization, as to more than one of 
 the senses, was the reverse of exqiiisite. He had very 
 little of what musicians call an ear ; his smell Avas hardly 
 more delicate. I have seen him stare ahout, quite un- 
 conscious of the cause, when his whole company betrayed 
 their uneasiness at the approach of an overkept haunch 
 of venison ; and neither hy the nose nor the palate could 
 he distinguish corked wine from sound. He could never 
 tell Madeira from sherry, — nay, an Oriental friend 
 having sent him a butt of slieeraz, when he remembered 
 the circumstance some time afterwards and called for a 
 bottle to have Sir John INIalcolm's opinion of its quality, 
 it turned out that his butler, mistaking the label, had 
 already served up half the bin as sherry. Port he con- 
 sidered as physic .... in truth he liked no wines 
 except sparkling champagne and claret ; but even as to 
 the last he was no connoisseur, and sincerely preferred a 
 tumbler of whisky-toddy to the most precious * liquid- 
 ruby ' that ever flowed in the cup of a prince." ^ 
 
 However, Scott's eye was very keen : — " It teas com- 
 monly ?nm," as his little son once said, " that saw the 
 hare sitting." And his perception of colour was very 
 delicate as well as his mere sight. As Mr. Euskin has 
 pointed out, his landscape painting is almost all done by 
 the lucid use of colour. Nevertheless this bluntness 
 of organization in relation to the less important senses, 
 no doubt contributed something to the singleness and sim- 
 plicity of the deeper and more vital of Scott's romantic 
 impressions ; at least there is good reason to suppose tlmt 
 delicate and complicated susceptibilities do at least 
 
 » Lockhart's Life of Scott, v. 333. 
 
52 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [cnAP 
 
 diminish the chance of living a strong and concentrated 
 life — do risk the frittering away of feeling on the mere 
 backwaters of sensations, even if they do not directly 
 tend towards artificial and indirect forms of character, 
 Scott's romance is like his native scenery, — bold, bare 
 and rugged, with a swift deep stream of strong pure 
 feeling running through it. There is plenty of colour 
 in his pictures, as there is on the Scotch hiUs when the 
 heather is out. And so too there is plenty of intensity 
 in his romantic situations ; but it is the intensity of 
 simple, natural, unsophisticated, hardy, and manly charac- 
 ters. But as for subtleties and fine shades of feeling in 
 his poems, or anything like the manifold harmonies of the 
 richer arts, they are not to be found, or, if such 
 complicated shading is to be found — and it is perhaps 
 attempted in some faint measure in Tlie Bridal of Trier- 
 main, the poem in wliich Scott tried to pass himself off 
 for Erskine, — it is only at the expense of the higher 
 qualities of his romantic poetry, that even in this small 
 measure it is supplied. Again, there is no rich music in 
 his verse. It is its rapid onset, its hurrying strength, 
 which so fixes it in the mind. 
 
 It was not till 1808, three years after the publication of 
 The Lay, that Marmion, Scott's greatest poem, was pub- 
 lished. Eut I may as well say what seems necessary of that 
 and his other poems, while I am on the subject of his 
 poetry. Marmion has all the advantage over Tlie Lay of 
 the Last Ulinstrel that a coherent story told with force and 
 fulness, and concerned with the same class of subjects as 
 T'he Lay, must have over a confused and ill-managed 
 legend, the only original purpose of wliich was to serve 
 as the opportunity for a picture of Border life and strife. 
 Scott's poems have sometimes been depreciated as mere 
 
▼.] SCOTT'S MATURER POEMS. 53 
 
 novelettes in verse, and I tliink that some of tliem may be 
 more or less liable to this criticism. For instance, Tlie 
 Lady of the Lake, with the exception of two or three 
 brilliant passages, has always seemed to me more of a ver- 
 sified novelette, — without the higher and broader character- 
 istics of Scott's prose novels— than of a poem. } I suppose 
 what one expects from a poem as distinguished from a 
 romance — even though the poem incorporates a story — is 
 that it should nut rest for its chief interest on the mero 
 development of the story ; but rather that the narrative 
 should be quite subordinate to that insight into the deeper 
 side of life and manners, in expressing which poetry has 
 so great an advantage over prose. Of Tlie Lay and il/ar- 
 mion this is true ; less true of The Lady of the Lalce, and 
 still less of Rokeby, or The Lord of the Isles, and this is 
 why The Lay and Marmlon seem so much superior as 
 poems to the others. They lean less on the interest of 
 mere incident, more on that of romantic feeling and the 
 great social and historic features of the day. Marmlon was 
 composed in great part in the saddle, and the stir of a 
 charge of cavalry seems to be at the very core of it. 
 " For myself," said Scott, writing to a lady correspondent 
 at a time when he was in active service as a volunteer, " I 
 must own that to one who has, like myself, la tete un peu 
 exaltee, the pomp and circumstance of war gives, for a 
 time, a very poignant and pleasing sensation." * And you 
 feel this all through Marmion even more than in The Lay. 
 Mr. Darwin would probably say that Auld Wat of Har- 
 den had about as much responsibility for Marmlon as Sir 
 Walter liimself. " You wiU expect," he wrote to the same 
 lady, who was personally unknown to him at that time, 
 
 J Lockhart's Life of Scott, ii. 137. 
 
64 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 " to see a person who had dedicated himself to literary pur- 
 suits, and you will find me a rattle-skulled, half-lawyer, 
 half-sportsman, tlixough whose head a regiment of horse 
 has been exercising since he was five years old." ^ And what 
 Scott himself felt in relation to the martial elements of his 
 poetry, soldiers in the field felt with equal force. "In the 
 course of the day when The Lady of the Lake first reached 
 Sir Adam Fergusson, he was posted with his company 
 on a point of ground exposed to the enemy's artillery, some- 
 where no doubt on the lines of Torres Vedras, The men 
 were ordered to lie prostrate on the ground ; while they 
 kept that attitude, the captain, kneeling at the head, read 
 aloud the description of the battle in Canto VI., and the 
 listening soldiers only interrupted him by a joyous huzza 
 when the French shot struck the bank close above them." ^ 
 It is not often that martial poetry has been put to such a 
 test ; but we can well understand with what rapture a 
 Scotch force lying on the ground to shelter from the French 
 fire, would enter into such passages as the folloAviiig : — 
 
 "Their light-arm'd archers far and near 
 
 Survey'd the tangled ground. 
 Their centre ranks, with pike and spear, 
 
 A twilight forest frown' d, 
 Their barbed horsemen, in the rear, 
 
 The stern battalia crown'd. 
 No cymbal clash'd, no clarion rang, 
 
 Still were the pipe and drum ; 
 Save heavy tread, and armour's clang. 
 
 The sullen march was dumb. 
 There breathed no wind their crests to shake, 
 
 Or wave their flags abroad ; 
 Scarce the frail aspen seem'd to quake, 
 
 That shadow'd o'er their road. 
 
 * Lockhart's Life of Scott, ii. 259. 
 " Lockhart's Life of Scott, iii. 327. 
 
▼0 SCOTT'S MATURER POEMS. £t5 
 
 Their vanward scouts no tidings bring, 
 
 Can rouse no lurking foe, 
 Nor spy a trace of living thing 
 
 Save when they stirr'd the roe ; 
 The host moves like a deep sea wave. 
 Where rise no rocks its power to brave, 
 
 High-swelling, dark, and slow. 
 The lake is pass'd, and now they gain 
 A narrow and a broken plain, 
 Before the Trosach's rugged jaws. 
 And here the horse and spearmen pause. 
 While, to explore the dangerous glen, 
 Dive through the pass the archer-men. 
 
 *' At once there rose so wild a yell 
 
 Within that dark and narrow dell, 
 
 As all the fiends from heaven that fell 
 
 Had peal'd the banner-cry of Hell ! 
 
 Forth from the pass, in tumult driven. 
 Like chaff before the wind of heaven. 
 
 The archery appear ; 
 For life ! for life ! their plight they ply. 
 And shriek, and shout, and battle -cry, 
 And plaids and bonnets waving high. 
 And broadswords flashing to the sky. 
 Are maddening in the rear. 
 
 Onward they drive, in dreadful race. 
 Pursuers and pursued ; 
 
 Before that tide of flight and chase, 
 
 How shall it keep its rooted place. 
 The spearmen's twilight wood ? 
 
 Down, down, cried Mar, ' your lances dowu 
 Bear back both friend and foe ! ' 
 
 Like reeds before the tempest's frown, 
 
 That serried grove of lances brown 
 At once lay levell'd low ; 
 
 And, closely shouldering side to side. 
 
 The bristling ranks the onset bide, — 
 
 ' We'll quell the savage mountaineer. 
 As their Tinchel cows the game ! 
 
 They came as fleet as forest deer. 
 We'll drive them back as tame.' " 
 
58 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 Eut admiraLle in its stern and deep excitement as 
 that is, the "battle of Tlodden in Marmion passes it in 
 vigour, and constitutes perhaps the most perfect de- 
 scription of war by one who was — almost — both poet and 
 warrior, which tho English language contains. 
 
 And Marmion registers the high-water mark of Scott's 
 poetical power, not only in relation to the painting of 
 war, but in relation to the painting of nature. Critics 
 from the beginning onwards have complained of the 
 six introductory epistles, as breaking the unity of the 
 story. Eut I cannot see that the remark has weight. No 
 poem is written for those wlio read it as they do a novel — 
 merely to follow the interest of the story ; or if any poem 
 be written for such readers, it deserves to die. On such 
 a principle — which treats a poem as a mere novel and 
 nothing else, — you might object to Homer that he in- 
 terrupts the battle so often to dwell on the origin of 
 the heroes who are waging it ; or to Eyron that he 
 deserts Childe Harold to meditate on the rapture of 
 solitude. To my mind the ease and frankness of these 
 confessions of the author's recollections give a picture 
 of his life and character while writing Marmion, 
 M-hicb adds greatly to its attraction as a poem. You 
 have a picture at once not only of the scenery, but cf 
 the mind in which that scenery is mirrored, and arc 
 brought back frankly, at fit intervals, from the one to, the 
 other, in the mode best adapted to help you to appreciate 
 the relation of the poet to the poem. At least if 
 Milton's various interruptions of a much more ambitious 
 theme, to muse upon his own qualifications or disqualifi- 
 cations for the task he had attempted, be not artistic 
 mistakes — and I never heard of any one who thought 
 them so — I cannot see any reason why Scott's periodic 
 
.T] SCOTT'S MATURER POEMS. 57 
 
 recurrence to Lis own personal history slionld be artistic 
 mistakes either. If Scott's reverie was less lofty than 
 IMilton's, so also was his story. It seems to me as 
 fitting to describe the relation between the poet and his 
 theme in the one case as in the other. What can bo 
 more truly a part of Ilarmion, as a poem, though not as 
 a story, than that introduction to the first canto in which 
 Scott expresses his po,ssionate sympathy with the high 
 national feeling of the moment, in his tribute to Pitt and 
 Fox, and then reproaches himself for attempting so great 
 a subject and returns to what he calls his " rude legend," 
 the very essence of Avhich was, however, a passionate 
 appeal to the spirit of national independence 1 What can 
 be more germane to the poem than the delineation of the 
 strength the poet had derived from musing in the bare 
 and rugged solitudes of St. Mary's Lake, in the intro- 
 duction to the second canto ? Or than the striking auto- 
 biographical study of his own infancy which I have before 
 extracted from the introduction to the third 1 It seems 
 to me that Mai'inion without these introductions would 
 be like the hiUs which border Yarrow, without the stream 
 and lake in which they are reflected. 
 
 ISTever at all events in any later poem was Scott's touch 
 as a mere painter so terse and strong. What a picture 
 of a Scotch winter is given in these few lines : — 
 
 " The slieep before tte pinching heaven 
 To sheltcr'd dale and down are driven, 
 Where yet some faded herbage pines, 
 And yet a watery sunbeam shines : 
 In meek despondency they eye 
 The wither'd sward and wintry sky, 
 And from beneath their snmmer hill 
 Stray sadly by Glcnkiunon's rill." 
 
 Again, if Scott is ever Homeric (which I cannot think 
 
58 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 he often is, in spite of Sir Francis Doyle's cable criticism, — • 
 (he is too short, too sharp, and too eagerly Lent on his 
 rugged way, for a poet who is always delighting to find 
 loopholes, even in battle, from which to look out upon the 
 great story of human nature), he is certainly nearest to 
 it in such a passage as this : — 
 
 " The Isles-men carried at their backs 
 The ancient Danish battle-axe. 
 Thej raised a wild and wondering cry 
 As with his guide rode Marmion by. 
 Loud were their clamouring tongues, as when 
 The clanging sea-fowl leave the fen, 
 And, with their cries discordant mix'd. 
 Grumbled and yell'd the pipes betwixt." 
 
 In hardly any of Scott's poetry do we find much oi 
 what is called the curiosa felicitas of expression, — the 
 magic use of %oords, as distinguished from the mere general 
 effect of vigour, purity, and concentration of purpose. 
 But in Marm'ion occasionally we do find such a use. 
 Take this description, for instance, of the Scotch tents 
 near Edinburgh : — 
 
 " A thousand did I say ? I ween 
 Thousands on thousands there were seen. 
 That chequer'd all the heath between 
 
 The streamlet and the town ; 
 In crossing ranks extending far, 
 Forming a camp irregular ; 
 Oft giving way where still there stood 
 Some relics of the old oak wood. 
 That darkly huge did intervene, 
 And tamed the glaring white with green } 
 In these extended lines there lay 
 A martial kingdom's vast array." ' 
 
 The line I have italicized seems to me to hare more of 
 the poet's special magic of expression than is at all usual 
 
T.] SCOTT'S MATURER POEMS. 59 
 
 with Scott. The conception of the peaceful green oak- 
 wood taming the glaring white of the tented field, is as 
 fine in idea as it is in relation to the effect of the mere 
 colour on the eye. Judge Scott's poetry by whatever test 
 you wiU — whether it be a test of that which is peculiar 
 to it, its glow of national feeling, its martial ardour, its 
 swift and rugged simplicity, or whether it he a test of 
 that which is common to it with most other poetry, its 
 attraction for all romantic excitements, its special feeling 
 for the pomp and circumstance of war, its love of light 
 and colour — and tested either way, Marmion will remain 
 his finest poem. The battle of Flodden Field touches his 
 highest point in its expression of stern patriotic feeling, 
 in its passionate love of daring, and in the force and 
 swiftness of its movement, no less than in the brilliancy 
 of its romantic interests, the charm of its picturesque 
 detail, and the glow of its scenic colouring. Xo poet ever 
 equalled Scott in the description of wild and simple scenes 
 and the expression of wild and simple feelings. But I 
 have said enough now of his poetry, in which, good as it 
 is, Scott's genius did not reach its highest point. The 
 hurried tramp of his somewhat monotonous metre, is apt 
 to weary the ears of men who do not find their sufficient 
 happiness, as he did, in dreaming of the wild and daring 
 enterprises of his loved Eorder-land. The very quality 
 in his verse which makes it seize so powerfully on the 
 imaginations of plain, bold, adventurous men, often makes 
 it hammer fatiguingly against the brain of those v.dio 
 need the relief of a wider horizon and a richer world. 
 
60 BIH WALTER SCOTT. [cnAP, 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 COMPANIONS AND FRIEXD3. 
 
 I HAVE an iicipatetl in some degree, in speaking of Scott's 
 later poetical works, what, in point of time at least, should 
 follow some slight sketch of his chosen companions, and 
 of his occupations in the first period of his married life. 
 Scott's most intimate friend for some time after he went 
 to college, probably the one who most stimulated his ima- 
 gination in his youth, and certainly one of his most inti- 
 mate friends to the very last, was William Clerk, who was 
 called to the bar on the same day as Scott. He was tlie 
 son of John Clerk of Eldin, the author of a book of some 
 celebrity in its time on Naval Tactics. Even in the 
 earliest days of this intimacy, the lads who had been Scott's 
 fellow-apprentices in his father's office, saw with some 
 jealousy his growing friendship with William Clerk, 
 and remonstrated wdth Scott on the decline of his 
 regard for them, but only succeeded in eliciting from 
 him one of those outbursts of peremptory frankness which 
 anything that he regarded as an attempt to encroach on 
 his own interior liberty of choice always provoked. " I 
 win never cut any man," he said, " unless I detect him in 
 scoundrelism, but I know not what right any of you have 
 to interfere with my choice of my company. As it is, I 
 fairly own that though I lilce many of you very much, and 
 
VI.] COMPANIOA'S AND FRIENDS. 61 
 
 liave long done so, I think "Williani Clerk well Avorth you 
 all put together." ^ Scott never lost the friendship which 
 began with this eager enthusiasm, but his chief intimacy 
 with Clerk was during his younger days. 
 
 In 1808 Scott describes Clerk as "a man of the most 
 acute intellects and powerful apprehension, who, if he 
 should ever shake loose the fetters of indolence by which 
 he has been hitherto trammelled, cannot fail to be dis- 
 tinguished in the liighest degree." "Whether for the reason 
 suggested, or for some other. Clerk never actually gained any 
 other distinction so great as his friendship with Scott con- 
 ferred upon him. Probably Scott had discerned the true 
 secret of his friend's comparative obscurity. Even Avhile 
 preparing for the bar, when they had agreed to go 
 ou alternate mornings to each other's lodgings to read 
 together, Scott found it necessary to modify the arrange- 
 ment by always visiting his friend, whom ho usually found 
 in bed. It was "William Clerk who sat for the picture of 
 Darsie Latimer, the hero of RcJgaiintld, — whence we 
 should suppose him to have been a lively, generous, sus- 
 ceptible, contentious, and rather helter-skelter young man, 
 much alive to the ludicrous in all situations, very eager to 
 see life in all its phases, and somewhat vain of his power 
 of adapting himself equally to all these phases. Scott 
 tells a story of Clerk's being once baffled — almost for the 
 first time — by a stranger in a stage coach, who would not, 
 or could not, talk to him on any subject, until at last 
 Clerk addressed to him this stately remonstrance, "I 
 have talked to you, my friend, on all the ordinary subjects 
 — literature, farming, merchandise, gaming, game-laws, 
 horse-races, suits-at-law, politics, swindling, blasphemy, 
 
 1 Lockhart's Life of Scoit, i. 214. 
 
63 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 and philosophy, — is there any one subject that you will 
 favour me by opening upon? " " Sir," replied the inscru- 
 table stranger, " can you say anything clever about * hend- 
 Icatlier ? " ^ No doubt this superficial familiarity with a 
 vast number of subjects was a great fascination to Scott, 
 and a great stimulus to his own imagination. To the 
 last he held the same opinion of his friend's latent powers. 
 "To my thinking," he wrote in his diary in 1825, "I 
 never met a man of greater powers, of more complete 
 information on all desirable subjects." But in youth at 
 least Clerk seems to have had what Sir "Walter calls a 
 characteristic Edinburgh complaint, the " itch for dis- 
 putation," and though he softened this down in later life, 
 he had always that slight contentiousness of bias which 
 enthusiastic men do not often heartilj^ like, and which may 
 have prevented Scott from continuing to the full the 
 close intimacy of those earlier years. Yet almost his 
 last record of a really delightful evening, refers to a 
 bachelor's dinner given by Mr. Clerk, who remained 
 unmarried, as late as 1827, after all Sir Walter's worst 
 troubles had come upon him. " In short," says the diary, 
 " we really laughed, and real laughter is as rare as real 
 tears. I must say, too, there was a heart, a kindly feeling 
 prevailed over the party. Can London give such a 
 dinner r"^ It is clear , then, that Clerk's charm for his 
 friend survived to the last, and that it was not the more 
 inexperience of boyhood, which made Scott esteem him 
 so highly in his early clays. 
 
 If Clerk pricked, stimulated, and sometimes badgered Scott, 
 another of his friends who became more and more intimate 
 with him, as life went on, and who died before him, always 
 
 • Lockhart's Life of Scott, iii. 344. 
 
 * Lockhart's Life of Scott, ix. 75. 
 
vi] COMPANIONS AND FRIENDS. 63 
 
 soothed him, partly "by his gentleness, partly hy his almost 
 feminine dependence. This was William Erskine, also a 
 barrister, and son of an Episcopalian clergyman in Perthshire, 
 — to whose influence it is probably due that Scott himself 
 always read the English Church service in his own country 
 house, and does not appear to have retained the Pres- 
 byterianism into which he was born. Erskine, who was 
 afterwards raised to the Eench as Lord Kinnedder — a dis- 
 tinction which he did not survive for many months — was 
 a good classic, a man of fine, or, as some of his com- 
 panions thought, of almost superfine taste. The style 
 apparently for which he had credit must have been a some- 
 wliat mimini-pimini style, if we may judge by Scott's 
 attempt in The Bridal of Triermain, to write in a manner 
 whicli he intended to be attributed to his friend. 
 Erskine was left a widower in middle life, and Scott used 
 to accuse him of philandering with pretty women, — a 
 mode of love-making which Scott certainly contrived to 
 render into verse, in painting Arthur's love-making to 
 Lucy in that poem. It seems that some absolutely false 
 accusation brought against Lord Kinnedder, of an intrigue 
 with a lady with whom he had been thus philandering, 
 broke poor Erskine's heart, during his first j-ear as a Judge. 
 "The Counsellor (as Scott always called him) was," 
 says Mr. Lockhart, " a little man of feeble make, who 
 seemed unliappy when his pony got beyond a footpace, 
 and had never, I should suppose, addicted himself to any 
 out of door's sports whatever. He would, I fancy, as soon 
 have thought of slaying his own mutton as of handling a 
 fowling-piece ; he used to shudder when he saw a party 
 equipped for coursing, as if murder was in the wind j but 
 the cool, meditative angler was in his eyes the abomination 
 of abominations. His small elegant features, hectic cheek 
 
64 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 and soft hazel eyes, were the index of the quick, sensitive, 
 gentle spirit within." " He would dismount to lead his 
 horse down what his friend hardly perceived to he a 
 descent at all ; grew pale at a precipice ; and, unlike the 
 white lady of Avenel, would go a long way round for a 
 hridge." He shrank from general society, and lived in 
 closer intimacies, and his intimacy with Scott was of the 
 closest. He was Scott's confidant in all literary matters, 
 and his advice was oftener followed on questions of style 
 and form, and of literary enterprise, than that of any other 
 of Scott's friends. It is into Erskine's mouth that Scott 
 puts the supposed exhortation to himself to choose more 
 classical suhjects for his poems : — 
 
 " ' Api^roacli those masters o'er whose tomb 
 Immortal laurels ever bloom ; 
 Instructive of the feebler bard, 
 Still from the grave their voice is heard j 
 From them, and from the paths they show'd. 
 Choose honour'd guide and practised road ; 
 Nor ramble on through brake and maze, 
 With harpers rude of barbarous days." 
 
 And it is to Erskine that Scott replies, — 
 •' For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask 
 The classic poet's well-conn'd task ? 
 Nay, Ei'skine, nay, — on the wild hill 
 Let the wild heath-bell flourish still ; 
 Cherish the tulip, prune the vine. 
 But freely let the woodbine twine. 
 And leave untrimm'd the eglantine : 
 Nay, my friend, nay, — since oft thy praise 
 Ilath given fresh vigour to my lays j 
 Since oft thy judgment could refine 
 My flatten' d thought or cumbrous line. 
 Still kind, as is thy wont, attend. 
 And in the minstrel spare the friend ! " 
 
 It was Erskine, too, as Scott expressly states in hia 
 
VI.] COMPANIONS AND FRIENDS. 65 
 
 introduction to the Chronicles of the Canongate, wlio 
 reviewed with far too much partiality tlie Tales of my 
 Landlord, in the Quarterhj Review, for January, 1817, — a 
 review unjustifiably included among Scott's own critical 
 essays, on the very insufficient ground that the MS. 
 reached Murray in Scott's own handwriting. There can, 
 however, he no douht at all that Scott copied out his friend's 
 MS., in order to increase the mystification which he so 
 much enjoyed as to the authorship of his variously named 
 series of tales. Possibly enough, too, he may have drawn 
 Erskine's attention to the evidence which justified his 
 sketch of the Puritans in Old Mortality, evidence which 
 lie certainly intended at one time to embody in a reply of 
 his own to the adverse criticism on that book. Eut though 
 Erskine was Scott's alter ego for literary purposes, it is 
 certain that Erskine, with his fastidious, not to say finical, 
 sense of honour, would never have lent his name to cover 
 a puff written by Scott of his own Avorks. A man who, 
 in Scott's own words, died " a victim to a hellishly false 
 story, or rather, I should say, to the sensibility of his own 
 nature, which could not endure even the shadow of re- 
 proach, — like the ermine, which is said to pine if its fur is 
 soiled," was not the man to father a puff, even by his dearest 
 friend, on that friend's own creations. Erskine was indeed 
 almost feminine in his love of Scott ; but he was feminine 
 with all the irritable and scrupulous delicacy of a man 
 who could not derogate from his own ideal of right, even 
 to serve a friend. 
 
 Another friend of Scott's earlier days was John Leyden, 
 Scott's most efficient coadjutor in the collection of the 
 Border Minstrelsy, — that eccentric genius, marvellous lin- 
 guist, and good-natured bear, who, bred a shepherd in one 
 of the wildest valleys of Eoxburghshire, had accumulated 
 4 
 
tJ6 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 before the age of nineteen an amount of learning which 
 confounded the Edinburgh Professors, and who, without 
 any previous knowledge of medicine, prepared himself to 
 pass an examination for the medical profession, at six 
 months' notice of the offer of an assistant-surgeoncy in the 
 East India Company. It Avas Leyden who once Avalked 
 between forty and fifty miles and back, for the sole pur- 
 pose of visiting an old person Avho possessed a copy of a 
 border ballad that was wanting for tlie Minstrelsy. Scott 
 was sitting at dinner one day with company, when he 
 heard a sound at a distance, " like that of the whistling of 
 a temj)est through the torn rigging of a vessel which scuds 
 before it. The sounds increased as they approached more 
 near ; and Leyden (to the great astonishment of such of 
 the guests as did not know him) burst into the room 
 chanting the desiderated ballad with the most enthusiastic 
 gesture, and all the energy of what he used to call the 
 saio-tones of his voice." ^ Leyden's great antipathy was 
 Eitson, an ill-conditioned antiquarian, of vegetarian prin- 
 ciples, Avhom Scott alone of all the antiquarians of that 
 day could manage to tame anel tolerate. In Scott's 
 absence one day, during his early married life at Lass- 
 wade, Mrs. Scott inadvertently offered Eitson a slice of beef, 
 when that strange man burst out in such outrageous tones 
 at what he chose to suppose an insult, that Leyden threat- 
 ened to "thraw his neck " if he Avere not silent, a threat 
 which frightened Eitson out of the cottage. On another 
 occasion, simply in order to tease Eitson, Leyden com- 
 plained that the meat was overdone, and sent to the 
 kitchen for a plate of literally raw beef, and ate it up 
 solely for the purpose of shocking his crazy rival in anti- 
 
 ' Lockhart's Life of Scott, ii. 56. 
 
VI.] COMPANIONS AND FRIENDS. 67 
 
 quarian research. Poor Leyden did not long survive his 
 experience of the Indian climate. And with him died a 
 passion lor knowledge of a very high order, combined 
 with no inconsiderable poetical gifts. It was in the study 
 of such eccentric beings as Leyden that Scott doubtless 
 acquired his taste for painting the humours of Scotch 
 character. 
 
 Another wild shepherd, and wilder genius among Scott's 
 associates, not only in those earlier days, but to the end, was 
 that fiimous Ettrick Shepherd, James Hogg, who was 
 always quarrelling with his brother poet, as far as Scott per- 
 mitted it, and making it up again when his better feelings 
 returned. In a shepherd's dress, and with hands fresh 
 from sheep-shearing, he came to dine for the first time with 
 Scott in Castle Street, and finding Mrs. Scott lying on the 
 sofa, immediately stretched himself at full length on an- 
 other sofii ; for, as he explained afterwards, *' I thought I 
 could not do better than to imitate the lady of the house." 
 At dinner,as thewine passed, he advanced from "Mr.Scott," 
 to "Shirra" (Sheriff), ''Scott," ''Walter," and finally 
 " Wattie," till at supper he convulsed every one by address- 
 ing Mrs. Scott familiarly as " Charlotte." ' Hogg .wrote 
 certain short poems, the beauty of which in their kind 
 Sir Walter himself never approached ; but he was a man 
 almost without self-restraint or self-knowledge, though 
 he had a great deal of self-importance, and hardly knew 
 how much he owed to Scott's magnanimous and ever- 
 forbearing kindness, or if he did, felt the weight of grati- 
 tude a bui'den on his heart. Very different was WiUiam 
 Laidlaw, a farmer on the banks of the Yarrow, always Scott's 
 friend, and afterwards his manager at Abbotsford, through 
 
 * Lockliart's Lije of Scott, ii. lGS-9. 
 
68 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [cHAf 
 
 ■whose hand he dictated many of his novels. Mr. Laidlaw 
 was one of Scott's humbler friends, — a class of friends 
 •with "whom he seems always to have felt more completely 
 at his ease than any others — who gave at least as much as 
 he received, one of those wise, loyal, and thoughtful men 
 in a comparatively modest position of life, whom Scott 
 delighted to trust, and never trusted without finding his 
 tiust justified. In addition to these Scotch friends, Scott 
 had made, even before the publication of his Border Min- 
 strehy, not a few in London or its neighbourhood, — of 
 whom the most important at this time was the grey-eyed, 
 hatchet-faced, courteous George Ellis, as Ley den described 
 him, the author of various works on ancient English poetry 
 and romance, who combined with a shrewd, satirical vein, 
 and a great knowledge of the world, political as well as 
 literary, an exquisite taste in poetry, and a warm heart. 
 Certainly Ellis's criticism on his poems was the truest and 
 best that Scott ever received ; and had he lived to read his 
 novels, — only one of which was published before Ellis's 
 death, — he might have given Scott more useful help than 
 either Ballantyne or even Erskine. 
 
vii.] FIIIST COUNTRY HOMES. C9 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 FIRST COUNTRY HOMES. 
 
 So completely was Scott hj nature an out-of-doors man 
 that lie cannot be adequately known either through his 
 poems or through his friends, Avithout also knowing his 
 external surroundings and occupations. His first country 
 home was the cottage at Lasswade, on the Esk, about six 
 miles from Edinburgh^ which he took in 1 798, a few months 
 after his marriage, and retained till 1804. It Avas a pretty 
 little cottage, in tlie beautification of which Scott felt 
 great pride, and where he exercised himself in the small 
 beginnings of those tastes for altering and planting which 
 grew so rapidly upon him, and at last enticed him into 
 castle-building and tree-culture on a dangerous, not to 
 say, ruinous scale. One of Scott's intimate friends, 
 the master of Eokeby, by whose house and neighbourhood 
 the poem of that name was suggested, Mr, Morritt, walked 
 along the Esk in 1808 with Scott four years after he had 
 loft it, and was taken out of his way to see it. " I have 
 been bringing you," he said, "where there is little enough 
 to be seen, only tliat Scotch cottage, but though not worth 
 looking at, I could not pass it. It was our first country 
 house when newly married, and many a contrivance it had 
 to make it comfortable. I made a dining-table for it with 
 my own hands. Look at these two miserable willow-trees 
 
70 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 on either side tlie gate into the enclosure ; tliey are tied 
 together at the top to he an arch, and a cross made of two 
 sticks over them is not yet decayed. To he sure it is not 
 much of a lion to show a stranger ; hut I wanted to see it 
 again myself, for I assure you that after I had constructed 
 it, viamma (Mrs. Scott) and I hoth of us thought it so fine, 
 we turned out to see it hy moonlight, and walked haclv- 
 wards from it to the cottage-door, in admiration of our own 
 magnificence and its picturesque effect." It was here at Lass- 
 wade that he bought the phaeton, which was the first 
 wheeled carriage that ever penetrated to Liddesdale, a feat 
 which it accomplished in the first August of this centur3\ 
 When Scott left the cottage at Lasswade in 1804, it was 
 to take up his country residence in Selkirkshire, of which 
 he had now been made sheriff, in a beautiful little house 
 belonging to his cousin, Major-General Sir James Eussell, 
 and known to all the readers of Scott's poetry as the 
 Ashesticl of the Marndon introductions. The Glenkinnon 
 brook dashes in a deep ravine through the grounds to join 
 the Tweed ; behind the house rise the hills which divide 
 the Tweed from the Yarrow ; and an easy ride took Scott 
 into the scenery of the Yarrow. The description of 
 Ashestiel, and the brook which runs through it, in the 
 introduction to the first canto of Marmion is indeed one 
 of the finest specimens of Scott's descriptive poetry :— - 
 
 " November's sky is cLill and drear, 
 November's leaf is red and sear ; 
 Late, gazing down tbe stcepy linn, 
 That liems our little garden in, 
 Low in its dark and narrow glen, 
 You scarce tbe rivulet migbt ken. 
 So thick the tangled greenwood grew. 
 So feeble ti'ill'd the streamlet through ; 
 Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen, 
 Through bush and briar no longer green, 
 
vn.] FIRST COUNTRY HOMES. 71 
 
 An angry brook, it sweeps tlie glaJo, 
 Brawls over rock and wild cascade, 
 And, foaming brown with doubled speed, 
 llurries its waters to the Tweed." 
 
 Selkirk was his nearest town, and that was seven miles 
 from Ashestiel; and even his nearest neighbour was at 
 Yair, a few miles off lower down the Tweed, — Yair of 
 wiiich he wrote in another of the introductions to 
 Marmion : — 
 
 " From Tair, wbich hills so closely bind 
 Scarce can the Tweed his passage find, 
 Though much he fret, and chafe, and toil, 
 Till all his eddying currents boil." 
 
 At Ashestiel it was one of his greatest delights to look 
 after his relative's woods, and to dream of planting and 
 thinning woods of his own, a dream only too amply 
 realized. It was here that a new kitchen-range was sunk 
 for some time in the ford, which was so swollen by a storm 
 in 1805 that the horse and cart that brought it were 
 themselves with difficulty rescued from the waters. And 
 it was here that Scott first entered on that active life of 
 literary labour in close conjunction with an equally active 
 life of rural sport, which gained him a well-justified repu- 
 tation as the hardest worker and the heartiest player in 
 the kingdom. At Lasswade Scott's work had been done 
 at night; but serious headaches made him change his 
 habit at Ashestiel, and rise steadily at five, lighting his own 
 fir3 in winter. "Arrayed in his shooting-jacket, or what- 
 ever dress he meant to use till dinner-time, he was seated 
 at his desk by six o'clock, aU his papers arranged before 
 him in the most accurate order, and his books of reference 
 marshalled around him on the floor, while at least one 
 favourite dog lay watching his eye, just beyond the line 
 
72 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 of circumvallation. Thus, "by the time the family assembled 
 for breakfast, between nine and ten, he had done enough, 
 in his own language, ' to break the neck of the day's work.' 
 After breakfast a couple of hours more were given to his 
 solitary tasks, and by noon he was, as he used to say, his 
 ' own man.' "When the weather Avas bad, he would labour 
 incessantly all the Tnorning ; but the general rule was to be 
 out and on horseback by one o'clock at the latest ; while, 
 if any more distant excursion had been proposed overnight, 
 lie was ready to start on it by ten ; his occasional rainy 
 days of uninterniitted study, forming, as he said, a fund 
 in his favour, out of which he was entitled to draw for 
 accommodation whenever the sun shone with special bright- 
 ness." In his earlier days none of his horses liked to be ) 
 fed except by their master. When Brown Adam was 
 saddled, and the stable-door opened, the horse would trot 
 round to the leaping-on stone of his own accord, to be 
 mounted, and was quite intractable under any one but 
 Scott. Scott's life might Avell be fairly divided — ^just as 
 history is divided into reigns — by the succession of 
 his horses and dogs. The reigns of Captain, Lieu- 
 tenant, Erown Adam, Daisy, divide at least the 
 period np to Waterloo ; while the reigns of Sybil 
 Grey, and the Covenanter, or Douce Davie, divide the 
 period of Scott's declining years. During the brilliant 
 period of the earlier novels we hear less of Scott's horses ; 
 but of his deerhounds there is an unbroken succession. 
 Camp, Maida (the "Bevis" of Woodstuclc), and ^STim- 
 rod, reigned successively between Sir Walter's marriage 
 and his death. It was Camp on whose death he . relin- 
 quished a dinner invitation previously accepted, on the 
 ground that the death of "an old friend" rendered him 
 unwilling to dine out ; Maida to whom he erected a marblo 
 
?ii.] FIRST COUNTRY HOMES. 73 
 
 monument, and Kimrod of whom he spoke so affect- 
 ingly as too good a dog for his diminished fortunes during 
 liis absence in Italy on the last hopeless journey. 
 
 Scott's amusements at Ashestiel, besides riding, in which 
 he was fearless to rashness, and coursing, which was the 
 chief form of sporting in the neighbourhood, comprehended 
 " burning the water," as salmon-spearing by torchlight was 
 called, in the course of which he got many a ducking. Mr. 
 Skene gives an amusing picture of their excursions together 
 from Ashestiel among the hills, he himself followed by 
 a lanky Savoyard, and Scott by a portly Scotch butler 
 — both servants alike highly sensitive as to their personal 
 dignity — on horses which neither of the attendants could 
 sit well. " Scott's heavy lumbering buffetier had pro- 
 vided himself against the mountain storms with a huge 
 cloak, which, when the cavalcade was at gallop, streamed 
 at full stretch from his shoulders, and kept flapping in the 
 other's face, who, having more than enough to do in pre- 
 serving his own equilibrium, could not think of attempting 
 at any time to control the pace of his steed, and had no 
 relief but fuming and vesting at the sacre manteau, in 
 language happily unintelligible to its wearer. ISTow and 
 then some ditch or turf-fence rendered it indispensable to 
 adventure on a leap, and no farce could have been more 
 amusing than the display of politeness which then occurred 
 between these worthy equestrians, each courteously declin- 
 ing in favour of his friend the honour of the first exj)eri- 
 nient, the horses fretting impatient beneath them, and 
 the dogs clamouring encouragement."^ Such was Scott's 
 order of life at Ashestiel, where he remained from 1804 
 to 1812. As to his literary work here, it was enormous. 
 
 » Lockbart's Life of Scott, ii. 268-9. 
 
74 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 Eesidcs finishing Tlte Lay of the Last Minstrel, writing 
 Marmion, The Lady of the Lalic, part of The Bridal 
 of Triennain, and part of Rolcehy, and writing reviews, 
 lie wrote a Life of Dryden, and edited his works anew 
 witli some care, in eighteen volumes, edited Somers's Col- 
 lection of Tracts, in thirteen volumes, quarto. Sir Baljih 
 Sadler's Life, Letters, and State Fojyers, in three volumes, 
 quarto. Miss Seward's Life and Poetical TForfe, The Secret 
 History of the Court of James L, in two volumes, Stridt's 
 Queenhoo Hall, in four volumes, 12mo.,and various other 
 single volumes, and hegan his heavy work on the edition 
 of Swift. This was the literary work of eight years, 
 during which he had the duties of his Sherifiship, and, 
 after he gave up his practice as a barrister, the duties of 
 Ins Deputy Clerkship of Session to discharge regularly. 
 The editing of Dryden alone would have seemed to most 
 men of leisure a pretty full occupation for these eight 
 years, and though I do not know that Scott edited 
 with the anxious care Avitli which that sort of work is 
 often now prej)ared, that he went into all the arguments 
 for a doubtful reading with the pains that ]\Ir. Dyce spent 
 on the various readings of Shakespeare, or that Mr. 
 Spedding spent on a various reading of Bacon, yet Scott 
 did his work in a steady, workmanlike manner, which 
 satisfied the most fastidious critics of that day, and he was 
 never, I believe, charged with hurrying or scamping it. 
 His biographies of Swift and Dryden are plain solid pieces 
 of work — not exactly the works of art which biographies 
 have been made in our day — not comparable to Carlyle's 
 studies of Cromwell or Frederick, or, in point of art, even 
 to the life of John Sterling, but still sensible and interesting, 
 sound in judgment, and animated in style. 
 
vm.] REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFOED, AND LIFE THERE. 75 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD, AND LIFE THERE. 
 
 In May, 1812, Scott having now at last obtained the salary 
 of the Clerkship of Session, the work of which he had for 
 more than five years discharged without pay, indulged him- 
 self in realizing his favourite dream of buying a "mountain 
 farm " at Abbotsford, — five miles lower down the Tweed 
 than his cottage at Ashestiel, which was now again 
 claimed by the ftimily of Eussell, — and migrated thither 
 Avith his household gods. The children, long remembered 
 the leave-taking as one of pure grief, for the villagers 
 were much attached both to Scott and to his wife, who 
 had made herself greatly beloved by her untiring goodness 
 to the sick among her poor neighbours. But Scott him- 
 self describes the migration as a scene in which their 
 neighbours found no small share of amusement. " Our 
 flitting and removal from Ashestiel baffled all description ; 
 we had twenty-five cartloads of the veriest trash in nature, 
 besides dogs, pigs, ponies, poultry, cows, calves, bare- 
 headed wenches, and bare-breeched boys." ^ 
 
 To another friend Scott wrote that the neighbours had 
 " been much delighted with the procession of my furni- 
 ture, in which old swords, bows, targets, and lances, made 
 a very conspicuous show. A family of turkeys was 
 
 • Lockhart's Life of Scott, iv. 6. 
 
76 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [ciiap. 
 
 accommodated witliin the helmet of some j?rez/a; chevalier 
 of ancient border fame ; and the very cows, for aught I 
 know, were bearing banners and muskets. I assure your 
 ladyship that this caravan attended by a dozen of ragged 
 rosy peasant children, carrying fishing-rods and spears, 
 and leading ponies, greyhounds, and spaniels, would, as 
 it crossed the Tweed, have furnished no bad subject for 
 the pencil, and really reminded me of one of the gipsy 
 groups of Callot upon their march." * 
 
 The place thus bought for 4000?., — half of which, ac- 
 cording to Scott's bad and sanguine habit, was borrowed 
 from his brother, and half raised on the security of a poem 
 at the moment of sale wholly unwritten, and not com- 
 pleted even when lie removed to Abbotsford — " Eokeby " 
 — became only too much of an idol for the rest of Scott's 
 life. Mr. Lockhart admits that before the crash came ho 
 had invested 29,000Z. in the purchase of land alone. 
 Eut at this time only the kernel of the subsequent estate 
 was bought, in the shape of a hundred acres or rather 
 more, part of which ran along the shores of the Tweed — 
 " a beautiful river flowing broad and bright over a bed 
 of milk-white pebbles, unless here and there where it 
 darkened into a deep pool, overhung as yet only by 
 birches and alders." There was also a poor farm-house, a 
 staring barn, and a pond so dirty that it had hitherto given 
 the name of " Clarty Hole " to the place itself. Scott re- 
 named the place from the adjoining ford which was just 
 above the confluence of the Gala with the Tweed. He chose 
 the name of Abbotsford because the land had formerly all 
 belonged to the Abbots of Melrose, — the ruin of whoso 
 beautiful abbey was visible from many parts of the little 
 
 * Lockhart's Life of Scott, iv. 3. 
 
VIII.] REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD, AND LIFE THERE. 77 
 
 property. On the other side of the river the old British 
 barrier called " the Catrail " was full in view. As yet 
 the place "svas not planted, — the only effort made in this 
 direction hy its former owner, Dr. Douglas, having leen 
 a long narrow stripe of firs, which Scott used to compare 
 to a black hair-comb, and which gave the name of " The 
 Doctor's Eedding-Kame " to the stretch of woods of 
 which it is still the central line. Such was the place 
 which he made it the too great delight of the remainder 
 of his life to increase and beautify, by spending on it a 
 good deal more than he had earned, and that too in times 
 when he should have earned a good deal more than ho 
 ought to have thought even for a moment of spending. The 
 cottage grew to a mansion, and the mansion to a castle. 
 The farm by the Tweed made him long for a farm by 
 the Cauldshiers loch, and the farm by the Cauldshiel's 
 loch for Thomas the Khymer's Glen ; and as, at every 
 step in the ladder, his means of buying were really in- 
 creasing — though they were so cruelly discounted and 
 forestalled by this growing land-hunger, — Scott never 
 realized into what troubles he was carefully running 
 himself. 
 
 Of his life at Abbotsford at a later period when 
 his building was greatly enlarged, and his children 
 grown up, we have a brilliant picture from the pen of 
 Mr. Lockhart. And though it does not belong to his 
 first years at Abbotsford, I cannot do better than include 
 it here as conveying probably better than anything I 
 could elsewhere find, the charm of that ideal life which 
 lured Scott on from one project to another in that scheme 
 of castle-building, in relation to which he confused so 
 dangerously the world of dreams with the harder world 
 of wages, capital, interest, and rent. 
 
78 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 " I remember saying to William Allan one morning, as the 
 whole party mustered before the porch after breakfast, * A 
 faithful sketch of what you at this moment see would be more 
 interesting a hundred years hence than the grandest so-called 
 historical picture that you will ever exhibit in Somerset 
 House ;' and my friend agreed with me so cordially that I 
 often wondered afterwards he had not attempted to realizp 
 the suggestion. The subject ought, however, to have been 
 treated conjointly by him (or Wilkie) and Edwia Landseer. 
 
 " It was a clear, bright September morning, with a sharp- 
 ness in the air that doubled the animating influence of the 
 sunshine, and all was in readiness for a grand coursing match 
 on Newark Hill. The only guest who had chalked out other 
 sport for himself was the staunchest of anglers, Mr. Rose; 
 but he too was there on his shelty, armed with his salmon- 
 rod and landing-net, and attended by his humorous squire, 
 Hinves, and Charlie Pui-die, a brother of Tom, in those days 
 the most celebrated fisherman of the district. This little 
 group of Waltonians, bound for Lord Somerville's preserve, 
 remained lounging about to witness the start of the main 
 cavalcade. Sir Walter, mounted on Sybil, was marshalling 
 the order of procession with a huge hunting-whip ; and 
 among a dozen frolicsome youths and iniidens, who seemed 
 disposed to laugh at all discipline, appeared, each on horse- 
 back, each as eager as the youngest sportsman in the troop. 
 Sir Humphry Davy, Dr. Wollastou, and the patriarch of 
 Scottish belles lettrcs, Henry Mackenzie. The Man of Feeling, 
 however, was persuaded with some difficulty to resiga his 
 steed for the present to his faithful negro follower, and to 
 join Lady Scott in the sociable, until we should reach the 
 ground of our lattne, Laidlaw, on a long-tailed, wiry 
 Highlander, yclept Hoddin Grey, which carried him nimbly 
 and stoutly, although his feet almost touched the ground as 
 he sat, was the adjutant. But the most picturesque figure 
 was the illustrious inventor of the safety-lamp. He had come 
 for his favourite sport of angling, and had been practising 
 it successfully with Hose, his travelling-companion, for 
 two or three days preceding this, but he had not pre- 
 pared for coursing fields, and had left Charlie Purdie's 
 
viii.] REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD, AND LIFE THERE. 7D 
 
 troop for Sir "Walter's on a sudden tbouglit ; and his 
 fisherman's costume — a brown liat with, flexible brim, sur- 
 rounded with line upon line, and innumerable flj-hooks, 
 jack-boots worthy of a Dutch smuggler, and a fustian surtout 
 dabbled with the blood of salmon, — made a fine contrast with 
 the smart jactets, white cord breeches, and well-polished 
 jockey-boots of the less distinguished cavaliers about him. 
 Dr. Wollaston was in black, and, with his noble, serene 
 dignity of countenance, might have passed for a sporting 
 archbishop. Mr. Mackenzie, at this time in the seventy- 
 sixth year of his age, with a white hat turned up with green, 
 green spectacles, green jacket, and long brown leather 
 gaiters buttoned upon his nether anatomy, wore a dog- 
 whistle round his neck, and had all over the air of as reso- 
 lute a devotee as the gay captain of Huntly Burn. Tom 
 Purdie and his subalterns had preceded us by a few hours 
 with all the greyhounds that could be collected at Abbots- 
 ford, Darnick, and Melrose; but the giant Maida had 
 remained as his master's orderly, and now gambolled about 
 Sibyl Grey, barking for mere joy, like a spaniel puppy. 
 
 " The order of march had been all settled, and the sociable 
 was just getting under weigh, when the Lady Anne broke 
 from the line, screaming with laughter, and exclaimed, 
 ' Papa ! papa ! I know you could never think of going with- 
 out your pet.' Scott looked round, and I rather think there 
 was a blush as well as a smile upon his face, when he per- 
 ceived a little black pig frisking about his pony, and evi- 
 dently a self-elected addition to the party of the day. He 
 tried to look stern, and cracked his whip at the creature, but 
 was in a moment obliged to join in the general cheers. 
 Poor piggy soon found a strap round his neck, and was 
 dragged into the background. Scott, watching the retreat, 
 repeated with mock pathos the first verse of an old pastoral 
 song : — 
 
 " What will I do gin my hoggie die ? 
 My joy, my pride, my hoggie ! 
 My only beast, I had nae mae. 
 And wow ! but I was vogie ! ** 
 
80 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 TLe cheers wert redoubled, and the squadron moved on. This 
 pig had taken, nobody could tell how, a most sentimental 
 attachment to Scott, and was constantly urging its preten- 
 sion to be admitted a regular member of his tail, along with 
 the greyhounds and terriers ; but indeed I remember him 
 suffering another summer under the same sort of pertinacity 
 on the part of an affectionate hen. I leave the explanation 
 for philosophers ; but such were the facts. I have too much 
 respect for the vulgarly calumniated donkey to name him in 
 the same category of j^ets with the pig and the hen ; but a 
 year or two after this time, my wife used to drive a couple of 
 these animals in a little garden chair, and whenever her father 
 appeared at the door of our cottage, we were sure to see 
 Hannah More and Lady Morgan (as Anne Scott had wickedly 
 christened them) trotting from their pasture to lay their 
 noses over the paling, and, as "Washington Irving says of 
 the old white-haired hedger with the Parisian snuff-box, ' to 
 have a pleasant crack wi' the laird.' " ' 
 
 Carlylc, in his criticism on Scott — a criticism which 
 will hardly, I think, stand the test of criticism in its 
 turn, so greatly does he overdo the reaction against the first 
 excessive appreciation of his genius — adds a contribution 
 of his own to this charming idyll, in reference to the 
 natural fascination which Scott seemed to exert over almost 
 all dumb creatures. A little Blenheim cocker, "one of the 
 smallest, beautifuUest, and tiniest of lapdogs," with which 
 Carlyle was well acquainted, and which was also one of 
 the shyest of dogs, that would crouch towards his mistress 
 and draw back " with angry timidity " if any one did 
 but look at him admiringly, once met in the street " a 
 taU, singular, busy-looking man," who halted by. The 
 dog ran towards him and began " fawning, frisking, 
 licking at his feet ;" and every time he saw Sir "Walter 
 
 > Lockhart's Life of Scott, vi. 238—242. 
 
VIII.] REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFOED, AND LIFE THERE. 81 
 
 afterwards, in Ediubiirgh, lie repeated Ins demonstration 
 of deliglit. Thus discriminating was this fastidious Blen- 
 heim cocker ev^n in the busy streets of Edinburgh, 
 
 x\nd Scott's attraction for dumb animals was only a 
 lesser form of his attraction for all who were in any 
 way dependent on him, especially his own servants and 
 labourers. The story of his demeanour towards them is 
 one of the most touching ever written. " Sir Walter 
 speaks to every man as if they were blood-relations " was 
 the common formula in which this demeanour was de- 
 scribed. Take this illustration. There was a little 
 hunchbacked tailor, named William Goodfellow, living 
 on his property (but who at Abbotsford w\as termed Eobin 
 Goodfellow). This tailor was employed to make the 
 curtains for the new library, and had been very proud of 
 his work, but fell ill soon afterwards, and Sir Walter was 
 unremitting in his attention to him. " I can never 
 forget," says ]\f r. Lockhart, " the evening on which the 
 poor tailor died. When Scott entered the hovel, he 
 found everything silent, and inferred, from the looks of 
 the good women in attendance that the jDatient had fallen 
 asleep, and that they feared his sleep was the final one. 
 He murmured some syllables of kind regret : at the 
 sound of his voice the dying tailor unclosed his eyes, 
 and eagerly and wistfully sat up, clasping his hands with 
 an expression of rapturous gratefulness and devotion that, 
 in the midst of deformity, disease, pain, and wretched- 
 ness, was at once beautiful and sul)lime. He cried with 
 a loud voice, 'The Lord bless and reward you!' and 
 expired with the effort."^ Still more striking is the 
 account of his relation Avith Tom Purdie, the wide- 
 
 1 Lockliart's Life of Scoit, vii. 218. 
 
82 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap, 
 
 mouthed, under-sized, Lroad-sliouldered, square-made, thin- 
 flanked woodsman, so well known afterwards hy all Scott's 
 friends as he waited for his master in his green shooting- 
 jacket, white hat, and drab trousers. Scott first made 
 Tom Purdie's acquaintance in his capacity as judge, the 
 man heing brought before him for poaching, at the time 
 that Scott was living at Ashcstiel. Tom gave so touching 
 an account of his circumstances — work scarce — wife and 
 children in want — grouse abundant — and his account of 
 himself was so fresh and even humorous, that Scott let 
 him off the penalty, and made him his shepherd. He 
 discharged these duties so faithfully that he came to be 
 his master's forester and factotum, and indeed one of his 
 best friends, though a little disposed to tyrannize over 
 Scott in his own fashion. A virfitor describes him as 
 unpacking a box of new importations for his master " as if 
 he had been sorting some toys for a restless child." ]jut 
 after Sir Walter had lost the bodily strength requisite 
 for riding, and was too melancholy for ordinary conversa- 
 tion, Tom Purdie's shoulder was hid great stay in wan- 
 dering through his woods, for with him he felt that he 
 might either speak or be silent at his pleasure. " What 
 a blessing there is," Scott wrote in his diary at that time, 
 " in a fellow like Tom, whom no familiarity can spoil, 
 whom you may scold and praise and joke with, knowing 
 the quality of the man is unalterable in his love and 
 reverence to his master." After Scott's failure, Mr. 
 Lockhart writes : " Before I leave this period, I must 
 note how greatly I admired the manner in which all his 
 dependents appeared to have met the reverse of his for- 
 tunes — a reverse which inferred very considerable altera- 
 tion in the circumstances of every one of them. The butler, 
 instead of being the easy chief of a large establishment, 
 
VIII.] EEMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD, AND LIFE THEEE. S3 
 
 was now doing half tlie work of the house at prohaloly 
 half his former wages. Old Peter, who had been for five 
 and twenty years a dignified coachman, was now plough- 
 man in ordinary, only putting his horses to the carriage 
 upon high and rare occasions ; and so on with all the rest 
 that remained of the ancient train. And all, to my view, 
 seemed happier than they had ever done before."^ The 
 illustration of this true confidence between Scott and his 
 Bcrvants and labourers might be extended to almost any 
 length. 
 
 * Locktaii'e Life of Scot ix. 170. 
 
84 SIK WALTER SCOTT. [cniP, 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 SCOTt's PARTXERSmPS WITH THE BALLANTYNES. 
 
 Before I make mention of Scott's greatest works, Ms 
 novels, I must say a few words of Lis relation to the 
 Ballantyne Brothers, who involved him, and were 
 involved by him, in so many troubles, and Avitb 
 whose name the story of his broken fortunes is inextri- 
 cably bound up. Jaraes Eallantyne, the elder brother, 
 was a schoolfellow of Scott's at Kelso, and was the editor 
 and manager of the Kcho Mail, an anti-democratic journal, 
 which had a fair circulation. Ballantyne was something 
 of an artist as regarded " type," and Scott got him there- 
 fore to print his Minstrelsij of the Border, the excellent 
 workmanship of which attracted much attention in 
 London. In 1802, on Scott's suggestion, Ballantyne 
 moved to Edinburgh ; and to help him to move, Scott, 
 Avho was already meditating some investment of his 
 little capital in business other than literary, lent him 
 500/. Between this and 1805, when Scott first became a 
 partner of Ballantyne's in the printing biisiness, he used 
 every exertion to get legal and literary printing oflfered to 
 James Ballantyne, and, according to Mr. Lockhart, tho 
 concern "grew and prospered." At Whitsuntide, 1805, 
 when TJ.e Lay had been published, but before Scott had 
 the least idea of the prospects of gain which mere lite- 
 
i\.3 PARTNERSHIPS WITH THE BALLANTYNES. 83 
 
 raturo would open to liiiu, lie formally, though, secretly, 
 joined Ballantyne as a partner in the printing business. 
 He explains his motives for this step, so far at least as ho 
 then recalled them, in a letter written after his misfor- 
 tunes, in 182G. "It is easy," ho said, "no doubt for any 
 friend to blame mo for entering into connexion with com- 
 mercial matters at all. Eut I wish to know what I could 
 have done better — excluded from the bar, and then from 
 all profits for six years, by my colleague's prolonged life. 
 Literature was not in those days what poor Constable has 
 made it ; and with my little capital I was too glad to 
 make commercially the means of supporting my family. 
 I got but GOOZ. for Tlio Lay of the Last Minstrel, and — it 
 was a price that made men's hair stand on end — lOOOZ. for 
 Marmion. I have been far from suffering by James 
 Ballantyne. I owe it to him to say, that his difficulties, 
 as well as his advantages, are owing to mc." 
 
 This, though a true, was probably a very imi^erfect ac- 
 count of Scott's motives. He ceased practising at the bar, 
 I do not doubt, in great degree from a kind of hurt pride 
 at his ill-success, at a time when he felt during every 
 month more and more confidence in his own p)owers. 
 He believed, with some justice, that he understood some 
 of the secrets of popularity in literature, but he had always, 
 till towards the end of his life, the greatest horror of resting 
 on literature alone as his main resource ; and he was not a 
 man, nor was Lady Scott a woman, to pinch and live nar- 
 rowly. Were it only for his lavish generosity, that kind 
 of life would have been intolerable to him. Hence, he 
 reflected, that if he could but use his Literary instinct to 
 feed some commercial undertaking, managed by a man 
 he could trust, he might gain a considerable percentage 
 on his little capital, without so embarking in commerce 
 
86 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 as to oblige him either to give up liis status as a slierifF, 
 or his official duties as a clerk of session, or his literary- 
 undertakings. In his old schoolfellow, James Ballantyne, 
 he believed he had found just such an agent as ho 
 wanted, the requisite link between literary genius like 
 his own, and the world which reads and buys books ; 
 and ho thought that, by feeling his way a little, he might 
 secure, through, this partnership, besides the then very 
 bare rewards of authorship, at least a share in those 
 more liberal rewards Avhich commercial men managed to 
 squeeze for themselves out of successful authors. And, 
 further, he felt — and this was probably tlie greatest un- 
 conscious attraction for him in this scheme — that with 
 James Ballantyne for his partner he should be the real 
 leader and chief, and rather in the position of a patron 
 and benefactor of his colleague, than of one in any degree 
 dependent on the generosity or approval of others. *' If 
 I have a very strong passion in the world," he once wrote 
 of himself — and the whole story of his life seems to con- 
 firm it — "it is pride."* In James Lallantyne he had 
 a faithful, but almost humble friend, with whom he could 
 deal much as he chose, and fear no wound to his pride. 
 He had himself helped Ballantyne to a higher line of 
 business than any hitherto aspired to by him. It was 
 his own book which first got the Ballantyne press its 
 public credit. And if he could but create a great com- 
 mercial success upon this foundation, he felt that he should 
 be fairly entitled to share in the gains, which not merely 
 his loan of capital, but his foresight and courage had 
 opened to Ballantyne. 
 
 And it is quite possible that Scott might have suc- 
 ceeded — or at all events not seriously failed — if he had 
 ^ Lockliart's Life of Scott, viii. 221. 
 
IX.] PARTNERSHIPS WITH THE BALLANTYNES. 87 
 
 been content to stick to the printing firm of James Bal- 
 lantyne and Co., and had not launched also into the book- 
 selling and publishing firm of John Ballantyne and Co., 
 or had never begun the wild and dangerous practice of 
 forestalling his gains, and spending wealth which he had 
 not earned. Eut when by way of feeding the jirinting 
 press of James Ballantyne and Co., he started in 1809 
 the bookselling and publishing firm of John Ballantyne 
 and Co., using as his agent a man as inferior in sterling 
 worth to James, as James was inferior in general ability 
 to himself, he carefully dug a mine under his own feet, 
 of which Ave can only say, that nothing except his genius 
 could have prevented it from exploding long before it 
 did. The truth was evidently that James Ballantyne's 
 respectful homage, and John's humorous appreciation, 
 all but blinded Scott's eyes to the utter inadequacy of 
 either of these men, especially the latter, to supply the 
 deficiencies of his own character for conducting business 
 of this kind with proper discretion. James Ballantyne, 
 who was pompous and indolent, though thorou£;hly 
 honest, and not without some intellectual insight, Scott 
 used to call Aldiborontiphoscophornio. John, who was 
 clever but frivolous, dissipated, and tricksy, he termed 
 Kigdumfunnidos, or his "little Picaroon." It is clear 
 from Mr. Lockhart's account of the latter that Scott 
 not only did not respect, but despised him, though he 
 cordially liked him, and that he passed over, in judging 
 him, vices which in a brother or son of his own he Avould 
 severely have rebuked. I believe myself that his liking 
 for co-operation with both, was greatly founded on his 
 feeling that they were simply creatures of his, to whom he 
 could pretty well dictate what he wanted, — colleagues Avhose 
 inferiority to himself unconsciously flattered his pride. 
 
88 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 lie was evidently inclined to resent bitterly tlic patronage 
 of publishers. He sent word to Blackwood once with 
 great hauteur, after some suggestion from that house 
 had been made to him which appeared to him to interfere 
 ■with his independence as an author, that he was one 
 of " the Black Hussars " of literature, who Avould not en- 
 dure that sort of treatment. Constable, who was really 
 very liberal, hurt his sensitive pride through the Edin- 
 hurgli Review, of which Jeffrey was editor. Thus the 
 Ballantynes' great deficiency — that neither of them had 
 any independent capacity for the publishing business, which 
 Avould in any way hamper his discretion — though this 
 is just what commercial partners ought to have had, or 
 they were not worth their salt, — was, I believe, precisely 
 what induced this Black Hussar of literature, in spite 
 of liis otherwise considerable sagacity and knowledge of 
 human nature, to select tliem for partners. 
 
 And yet it is strange that he not only chose them, but 
 chose the inferior and lighter-headed of the two for far the 
 most important and difficult of the two businesses. In the 
 printing concern there was at least this to be said, that 
 of part of the business — the selection of type and the 
 superintendence of the executive part, — James Ballan- 
 tyne was a good judge. He was never apparently a 
 good man of business, for he kept no strong hand over 
 the expenditure and accounts, which is the core of success 
 in every concern. But he understood types ; and his 
 customers were publishers, a wealthy and judicious class, 
 who were not likely all to fail together. But to select a 
 " Eigdumfunnidos," — a dissipated comic-song singer and 
 horse-fancier, — for the head of a publishing concern, was 
 indeed a kind of insanity. It is told of John Ballantyne, 
 that after the successful negotiation with Constable for 
 
IX.] PARTNERSHIPS WITK THE BALLANTYNES. 89 
 
 Roh Roy, and while " hopping np and down in his glee," 
 he exclaimed, " ' Is Eob's gun here, Mr. Scott 1 Would 
 you object to my trying the old barrel with a few de 
 j(vj .? ' ' Nay, j\rr, Pufi',' said Scott, ' it would burst 
 and blow you to the devil before your time.' ' Johnny, 
 my man,' said Constable, ' what the mischief puts 
 drawing at sight into your head ? ' Scott laughed 
 heartily at this innuendo ; and then observing that the 
 little man felt somewhat sore, called attention to the notes 
 of a bird in the adjoining shrubbery. ' And by-the-bye,' 
 said he, as they continued listening, ' 'tis a long time, 
 Johnny, since we have had " The Cobbler of Kelso." ' 
 Mr. Puff forthwith jumped up on a mass of stone, and 
 seating himself in the proper attitude of one working with 
 an awl, began a favourite interlude, mimicking a certain 
 son of Crispin, at whose stall Scott and he had often 
 lingered when they were schoolboys, and a blackbird, the 
 only companion of his cell, that used to sing to him while 
 he talked and whistled to it all day long. With this 
 performance Scott Avas always delighted, Nothing could be 
 richer than the contrast of the bird's wild, sweet notes, 
 some of which he imitated with wonderful skill, and the ac- 
 companiment of the cobbler's hoarse, cracked voice, uttering 
 all manner of endearing epithets, which Johnny multiplied 
 and varied in a style worthy of the old women in Eabelais 
 at the birth of Pantagruel." ^ That passage gives pre- 
 cisely the kind of estimation in which John Pallantyne 
 was held both by Scott and Constable. And yet it was 
 to him that Scott entrusted the dangerous and difficult 
 duty of setting up a new publishing house as a rival to 
 the best publishers of the day. No doubt Scott really 
 
 * Lockhart's Life of Scott, v. 218. 
 
00 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [ciiAr. 
 
 relied on his own judgment for working the publishing 
 house. But except where his own books were concerned, 
 no judgment could have been worse. In the first place ho 
 was always wanting to do literary jobs for a friend, and so 
 advised the publishing of all sorts of unsaleable books, be- 
 cause his friends desired to write them. In the next place, 
 he was a genuine historian, and one of the antiquarian 
 kind himself; he was himself reallj' interested in all sorts 
 of historical and antiquarian issues,— and very mistakenly 
 gave the public credit for wishing to know what he him- 
 self wished to know. I should add that Scott's good 
 nature and kindness of heart not only led him to help on 
 many books which he knew in himself could never 
 answer, and some which, as he well knew, would be alto- 
 gether worthless, but that it greatly biassed his own 
 intellectual judgment. ISTothing can bo plainer than that 
 he really held his intimate friend, Joanna Eaillie, a very 
 great dramatic poet, a much greater poet than himself, for 
 instance ; one fit to be even mentioned as following — at a 
 distance — in the track of Shakespeare. He supposes 
 Erskine to exhort him thus : — 
 
 " Or, if to touch such chord be thiue, 
 Restore the ancient tragic line, 
 And emulate the notes that rung 
 From the wild harp which silent hung 
 By silver Avon's holy shore, 
 Till twice a hundred years roll'd o'er, — 
 When she, the bold enchantress, camo 
 With fearless hand and heart on flame. 
 From the pale willow snatch'd the treasure, 
 And swept it with a kindred measure, 
 Till Avon's swans, while ning the gi'ovo 
 With Montfort's hate and Basil's love, 
 Awakening at the inspired strain, 
 Deem'd their own Shakespeare lived again." 
 
ix.j r-ARTNERSHIPS WITH TEE BALLANTYNES. 91 
 
 Avon's swans must have been Avon's geese, I think, if 
 they had deemed anything of the kind. Joanna Baillie's 
 dramas are " nice," and rather dull ; now and then she 
 can write a song with the ease and sweetness that suggest 
 Shakespearian echoes. Bat Scott's judgment was obviously 
 blinded by his just and warm regard for Joanna Baillie 
 lierself. 
 
 Of course witli such interfering causes to bring unsale- 
 able books to the house — of course I do not mean that 
 John Ballantyne and Co. published for Joanna Bail- 
 lie, or that they would have lost by it if they had— the 
 new firm published all sorts of books which did not sell 
 at all ; while John Ballantyne himself indulged in a great 
 many expenses and dissipations, for Avhich John Ballan- 
 tyne and Co. had to pay. Ifor was it very easy for a 
 partner who himself drew bills on the future — even 
 though he were the well-spring of all the paying business 
 the company had — to be very severe on a fellow-partner 
 who supplied his pecuniary needs in the same Avay. 
 At all events, there is no question that all through 1813 
 and 1814 Scott was kept in constant suspense and fear of 
 bankruptcy, by the ill success of John Ballantyne and 
 Co., and the utter Avant of straightforwardness in John 
 Ballantyne himself as to the bills out, and which had 
 to be provided against. It Avas the publication of Waver- 
 loj, and the consequent opening up of the richest vein 
 not only in Scott's OAvn genius, but in his popularity Avith 
 the public, Avhicii alone ended these alarms ; and tlie 
 many unsaleable Avorks of John Ballantyne and Co, 
 Avere then gradually disposed of to Constable and others, 
 to their OAvn great loss, as part of the conditions on Avhich 
 they received a share in the copyright of the wonderfid 
 novels Avhich sold like Avildlire. But though in this Avay 
 
92 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 tlio publishing business of John Dallantyne and Co. 
 was saved, and its affairs pretty decently wound up, the 
 printing firm remained saddled with some of tlicir obliga- 
 tions ; while Constable's business, on which Scott de- 
 pended for the means with which he was biiying his 
 estate, building his castle, and settling money on his 
 daughter-in-law, was seriously injured by the purchase of 
 all this unsaleable stock. 
 
 I do not think that any one who looks into the compli- 
 cated controversy between the representatives of the Eal- 
 lantynes and Mr. Lockhart, concerning these matters, can 
 be content with ISIr. Lockhart's — no doubt perfectly sincere 
 — ^judgment on the case. It is obvious that amidst these 
 intricate accounts, he fell into one or two serious blunders 
 — blunders very unjust to James Ballantyne. And without 
 pretending to have myself formed any minute judgment 
 on the details, I think the following points clear : — 
 (1.) That James Ballantyne was very severely judged hj 
 Mr. Lockhart, on grounds which were never alleged by 
 Scott against him at all, — indeed on grounds on which 
 he was expressly exempted from all blame by Sir Walter. 
 (2.) That Sir Walter Scott w^as very severely judged by 
 the representatives of the Ballantynes, on grounds on 
 which James Ballantyne himself never brought anj- charge 
 against him ; on the contrary, he declared that he had no 
 charge to bring. (3.) That both Scott and his part- 
 ners invited ruin by freely spending gains which they 
 only expected to earn, and that in this Scott certainly set 
 an example which he could hardly expect feebler men not 
 to follow. On the whole, I think the troubles with the 
 Ballantyne brothers brought to light not only that eager 
 gambling spirit in him, which his grandfather indulged 
 with better success and more moderation when he bought 
 
IX.] PARTNEKSHIPS WITH THE BALLANTYNES. 93 
 
 tlio hunter with money destined for a flock of sheep, and 
 then gave up gambling for ever, hut a tendency still more 
 dangerous, and in some respects involving an even greater 
 moral defect, — I mean a tendency, chiefly due, I think, 
 to a very deep-seated pride, — to prefer inferior men as 
 working colleagues in business. And yet it is clear that if 
 Scott Avere to dabble in publishing at all, he really needed 
 the check of men of larger experience, and less literary 
 turn of mind. The great majority of consumers of popular 
 literature are not, and indeed will hardly ever be, literary 
 men ; and that is precisely why a publisher who is not, in 
 the main, literary, — who looks on authors' MSS. for the 
 most part with distrust and susj^icion, much as a rich man 
 looks at a beggmg-lettcr, or a sober and judicious fish at 
 an angler's fly, — is so much less likely to run aground 
 than such a man as Scott, The untried author should be 
 regarded by a wise publisher as a natural enemy, — an 
 enemy indeed of a class, rare specimens whereof will 
 always be his best friends, and who, therefore, should not 
 be needlessly afironted — but also as one of a class of 
 whom nineteen out of every twenty will dangle before the 
 publisher's eyes wiles and hopes and expectations of the 
 most dangerous and illusory character, — which constitute 
 indeed the very perils that it is his true function in life 
 skilfully to evade. The Eallantynes Avere quite unfit for 
 this function ; first, they had not the experience requisite 
 for it ; next, they were altogether too much under Scott's 
 influence. 'No wonder that the partnership came to no 
 good, and left behind it the germs of calamity even more 
 Berious still. 
 
94 Sia WALTER SCOTT. Icii&f. 
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 THE WAVERLET NOVELS. 
 
 In tlie Slimmer of 1814, Scott took np again and com- 
 pleted — almost at a single lieat, — a fragment of a Jacoljite 
 story, begun in 1805 and then laid aside. It was pub- 
 lished anonymously, and its astonishing success turned 
 back again the scales of Scott's fortunes, already inclining 
 ominously towards a catasti-ophe. Tliis story was Waver- 
 ley. Mr. Carlyle has praised Wavcrley above its fellows. 
 " On the whole, contrasting Wacerlei/, which was care- 
 fully written, with most of its followers which Avere 
 written extempore, one may regret the extempore method." 
 This is, however, a very unfortunate judgment. Ilot one 
 of the whole series of novels appears to have been written 
 more completely extempore than the great bulk of Waver- 
 ley, including almost everything that made it either popular 
 with the million or fascinating to the fastidious ; and it 
 is even likely that this is one of the causes of its excel- 
 lence. 
 
 " The last two volumes," says Scott, in a letter to IVFr. 
 !Morritt, " were written in three weeks." And here is 
 Mr. Lockhart's description of the eifect which Scott's in- 
 cessant toil during the composition, produced on a friend 
 whose window happened to command the novelist's 
 study : — 
 
X.l THE WAVERLEY NOVELS. 95 
 
 " Happening to pass throngli Edinbnrgli in June, 1814, I 
 dined one day witli the gentleman in question (now tbo 
 Honourable "VVilHam Menzies, one of the Supreme Judg(;s at 
 the Cape of Good Hope), whose residence was then in George 
 Street, situated very near to, and at right arigles with, 
 North Castle Street. It was a party of very yoimg persons, 
 most of them, like Menzies and myself, destined for the 
 Bar o£ Scotland, all gay and thoughtless, enjoying the first 
 flush of manhood, with little remembrance of the yesterday, 
 or care of the morrow. When my companion's worthy father 
 and uncle, after seeing two or three bottles go round, left the 
 juveniles to themselves, the weather being hot, we adjourned 
 to a library which had one large window looking northwards. 
 After carousing here for an hour or more, I observed that a 
 shade had come over the aspect of my friend, who hap- 
 pened to be placed immediately opposite to myself, and said 
 something that intimated a fear of his being unwell. ' No,' 
 said he, ' I shall be well enough presently, if you will only 
 let me sit where you are, and take my chair ; for there is a 
 confounded hand in sight of me here, which has often 
 bothered me before, and now it won't let me fill my glass 
 with a good will.' I rose to change places with him accord- 
 ino-ly, and he pointed out to me this hand, which, like the 
 writing on Belshazzar's wall, disturbed his hour of hilarity. 
 ' Since we sat down,' he said, ' I have been watching it — 
 it fascinates my eye — it never stops— page after page is 
 finished, and thrown on that heap of MS., and still it goes on 
 unwearied ; and so it will be till candles are brought in, and 
 God knows how long after that. It is the same every night 
 — I can't stand a sight of it when I am not at my books.' 
 ' Some stupid, dogged engrossing clerk, probably,' ex- 
 claimed myself, * or some other giddy youth in our society.' 
 ' No, boys,' said our host ; ' I well know what hand it is — 
 'tis Walter Scott's.' " ' 
 
 If that is not extempore writing, it is difncult to say 
 what extempore writing is. Cut in truth there is no 
 ' liOckhart's Life of Scott, iv. 171-3. 
 
96 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 evidence that any one of the novels Avas laboured, or even 
 so much as carefully composed. Scott's method of com- 
 position was always the same ; and, when writing an 
 imaginative work, the rate of progress seems to have 
 heen pretty even, depending much more on the absence of 
 disturbing engagements, than on any mental irregularity. 
 The morning was always his brightest time ; but morning 
 or evening, in country or in town, well or ill, writing 
 with his own pen or dictating to an amanuensis in the 
 intervals of screaming-fits due to the torture of cramp in 
 the stomach, Scott spun away at his imaginative web 
 almost as evenly as a silkworm spins at its golden cocoon. 
 jS'or can I detect the slightest trace of any difference in 
 quality between the stories, such as can be reasonably 
 ascribed to comparative care or haste. There are diffe- 
 rences, and even great differences, of course, ascribable to 
 the less or greater suitability of the subject chosen to 
 Scott's genius, but I can find no trace of the sort of 
 cause to which Mr. Carlyle refers. Thus, few, I suppose, 
 would hesitate to say that while Old Mortality is very 
 near, if not quite, the finest of Scott's Avorks, Tlia 
 Black Dwarf is not far from the other end of the scale. 
 Yet the two were written in immediate succession (The 
 Black Dioarf being the first of the two), and Avere pub- 
 lished together, as the first series of Tales of my Land- 
 lord, in 1816. Nor do I think that any competent critic 
 would find any clear deterioration of quality in the novels 
 of the later years, — excepting of course the tAvo Avritten 
 after the stroke of paralysis. It is true, of course, that 
 some of the subjects Avhich most poAverfuUy stirred his 
 imagination Avere among his earlier themes, and that 
 he could not effectually use the same subject twice, 
 though he noAV and then tried it. But making allowance 
 
X.] THE WAVERLEY NOVELS. 97 
 
 for this consideration, tlio imaginative poAver of the 
 novels is as astonishingly even as the rate of composition 
 itself. Tor my own part, I greatly prefer The Fortunes oj 
 Nigel (which was written in 1822) to Waverley which 
 was begun in 1805, and finished in 1814, and though 
 very many better critics would probably decidedly dis- 
 agree, I do not think that any of them would consider 
 this j)reference grotesque or purely copricious. Indeed, 
 though Anne of Geierstein, — the last composed before 
 Scott's stroke, — would hardly seem to any careful judge 
 the equal of Waverley, I do not much doubt that if it 
 had appeared in place of Waverley, it would have excited 
 very nearly as much interest and admiration; nor that 
 had Waverley appeared in 1829, in place of Anne of 
 Geierstein, it w^ould have failed to excite very much more. 
 In these fourteen most effective years of Scott's literary life, 
 during which he wrote twenty-three novels besides 
 shorter tales, the best stories appear to have been on the 
 whole the most rapidly written, probably because they 
 took the strongest hold of the author's imagination. 
 
 Till near the close of his career as an author, Scott 
 never avowed his responsibility for any of these series of 
 novels, and even took some pains to mystify the public 
 as to the identity between the author of Waverley and 
 tlie author of Tales of my Landlord. The care with 
 which the secret was kept is imputed by Mr. Lockhart in 
 some degree to the habit of mystery which had grown 
 upon Scott during his secret partnership) with the Ballan- 
 tynes ; but in this he seems to be confounding two very 
 different phases of Scott's character. No doubt he was, 
 as a professional man, a little ashamed of his commercial 
 speculation, and unwilling to betray it. But he was far 
 from ashamed of his literary enterprise, though it seems 
 
S8 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 that lie was at first very anxious lest a comparative 
 failure, or even a mere moderate success, in a less am- 
 bitious sphere than that of poetry, should endanger the 
 great reputation he had gained as a jDoet. That was 
 apparently the first reason for secrecy. But, over and 
 above this, it is clear that the mystery stimulated Scott's 
 imagination and saved him trouble as ■well. He was 
 obviously more free under the veil — free from the liability 
 of having to answer for the views of life or history 
 suggested in his stories ; but besides this, what was of 
 more importance to him, the slight disguise stimulated his 
 sense of humour, and gratified the whimsical, boyish 
 pleasure which he always had in acting an imaginary 
 character. He used to talk of himself as a sort of Abon 
 Hassan — a private man one day, and acting tlie part of a 
 monarch the next — with the kind of glee which indicated 
 a real delight in the change of parts, and I have little 
 doubt that he threw himself with the more gusto into 
 characters very different from liis own, in consequence of 
 the pleasure it gave him to conceive his friends hopelessly 
 misled by this display of traits, with which lie supposed 
 that they could not have credited him even in imagination. 
 Thus besides relieving him of a host of compliments which 
 he did not enjoy, and enabling him the better to evade 
 an ill-bred curiosity, the disguise no doubt was the same 
 sort of filliji to the fancy which a mask and domino or a 
 fancy dress are to that of their wearers. Even in a disguise 
 a man cannot cease to be himself ; but he can get rid of 
 his improjierly " imputed " righteousness — often the 
 greatest burden he has to bear — and of all the exjiectations 
 formed on the strength, as Mr. Clough says, — 
 
 " Of having been what one has been, 
 What one thinks one is, or thinks that others suppose one." 
 
K.j THE WAVERLEY NOVELS. C9 
 
 To some men tlic freedom of this disguise is a real 
 danger and temptation. It never could have been so to 
 Scott, who was in the main one of the simplest as "w^ell as 
 the boldest and proudest of men. And as most men 
 perhaps would admit that a good deal of even the best part 
 of their nature is rather suppressed than expressed by the 
 name by which they are known in the world, Scott must 
 have felt this in a far higher degree, and probably re- 
 garded the manifold characters under which he was known 
 to society, as representing him in some respects more 
 justly than any individual name could have done. His 
 mind ranged hither and thither over a wide field — far 
 beyond that of his actual experience, — and probably 
 ranged over it all the more easily for not being absolutely 
 tethered to a single class of associations by any public 
 confession of his authorship. After all, when it became 
 universally known that Scott was the only author of all 
 these tales, it may be doubted whether the public thought 
 as adequately of the imaginative efibrts which had created 
 them, as they did while they remained in some doubt 
 whether there was a multiplicity of agencies at work, or 
 only one. The uncertainty helped them to realize the 
 many lives which were really led by the author of all 
 these tales, more completely than any confession of the 
 individual authorship could have done. The shrinking 
 of activity in public curiosity and wonder which follows 
 the final determination of such ambiguities, is very aj^t to 
 result rather in a dwindling of the imaginative effort to 
 enter into the genius which gave rise to them, than in an 
 increase of respect for so manifold a creative power. 
 
 When Scott wrote, such fertility as his in the produc- 
 tion of novels was regarded with amazement approaching 
 to absolute incredulity. Yet he was in this respect only 
 
100 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chaf. 
 
 the advanced-guard of a not inconsiderable class of men 
 and women who have a special gift for pouring out story 
 after story, containing a great variety of figures, while re- 
 taining a certaiu even level of merit. There is more than 
 one novelist of the present day who has far surpassed 
 Scott in tho number of his tales, and one at least of very 
 high repute, who has, I believe, produced more even 
 within the same time. But though to our larger expe- 
 rience, Scott's achievement, in respect of mere fertility, is 
 by no means the miracle which it once seemed, I do not 
 think one of his successors can compare with him for a 
 moment in the ease and truth with which he painted, 
 not merely the life of his own time and country — seldom 
 indeed that of precisely his own time — but that of days 
 long past, and often too of scenes far distant. The most 
 powerful of all his stories, Old Mortality, was the story of a 
 period more than a century and a cpiarter before he wrote; 
 and others, — which though inferior to this in force, are 
 nevertheless, when compared with the so-called historical 
 romances of any other English writer, what sunlight is to 
 moonlight, if you can say as much for tho latter as to 
 admit even that comparison, — go back to the period of the 
 Tudors, that is, two ceaturies and a half. Queniin 
 Durward, which is all but amongst the best, runs back 
 farther still, far into the previous century, while Ivanlwe 
 and Tlie Talisman, though not among the greatest of 
 Scott's works, carry us back more than five hundred years. 
 The new class of extempore novel writers, though more 
 considerable than, sixty years ago, any one could have 
 expected ever to see it, is still limited, and on any high 
 level of merit will probably always be limited, to the 
 delineation of the times of which the narrator has personal 
 experience. Scott seemed to have had something very 
 
X.J THE WAYERLEY NOVELS. 101 
 
 like personal expcricnco of a few centuries at least, judging 
 by the ease and frcslmess with which lie poured out his 
 stories of these centuries, and though no one can pretend 
 that even lie could describe the period of the Tudors as 
 Miss Austen described the country parsons and squires of 
 George the Third's reign, or as Mr. Trollope describes the 
 politicians and hunting-men of Queen Victoria's, it is never- 
 theless the evidence of a greater imagination to make us live 
 so familiarly as Scott does amidst the political and religious 
 controversies of two or three centuries' duration, to be the 
 actual witnesses, as it were, of Margaret of Anjou's throes 
 of vain ambition, and Mary Stuart's fascinating remorse, 
 and Elizabeth's domineering and jealous balancings of 
 noble against noble, of James the First's shrewd pedantries, 
 and the Eegent Murray's large forethought, of the politic 
 craft of Argyle, the courtly ruthlessness of Claverhouse, 
 and the high-bred clemency of Monmouth, than to reflect 
 in countless modifications the freaks, figures, and fashions 
 of our own time. 
 
 The most striking feature of Scott's romances is that, 
 for the most part, they are pivoted on public rather than 
 mere private interests and passions. With but few excep- 
 tions — {Tlie Antlquarii, St. Eoncm's Well, and Gu>j Man- 
 nering are the most important) — Scott's novels give us an 
 imaginative view, not of mere individuals, but of indi- 
 viduals as they are affected by the public strifes and social 
 divisions of the age. And tliis it is which gives his books 
 so large an interest for old and young, soldiers and states- 
 men, the world of society and the recluse, alike. You can 
 hardly read any novel of Scott's and not become better 
 aware what public life and political issues mean. And 
 yet there is no artificiality, no elaborate attitudinizing 
 before the antique mirrors of the past, like Bulwer's no 
 
1C3 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 dressing out of clotlies-horscs like G, P. E. James. Tlio 
 boldness and freslmess of the present are carried back into 
 the past, and you see Papists and Puritans, Cavaliers and 
 Eoundheads, Jews, Jacobites, and freebooters, preachers, 
 schoolmasters, mercenary soldiers, gipsies, and beggars, all 
 living the sort of life which the reader feels that in their 
 circumstances and under the same conditions of time and 
 place and parentage, he might have lived too. Indeed, 
 no man can read Scott without being more of a public 
 man, whereas the ordinary novel tends to make its readers 
 rather less of one than before. 
 
 Next, though most of these stories are rightly called 
 romances, no one can avoid observing that they give that 
 side of life v,'hich is unromantic, quite as vigorously as the 
 romantic sid'\ Tliis Avas not true of Scott's poems, which 
 only expressed one-half of his nature, and were almost pure 
 romances. I3ut in the novels the business of life is even 
 better portrayed than its sentiments. Mr. Bagehot, one of 
 the ablest of Scott's critics, has pointed out this admirably 
 in his essay on Tlie Waverlc'U Novels. " Many historical 
 novelists," he says, " especialy those who with care and 
 pains have read iip the detail, are often evidently in 
 a strait how to pass from tlieir history to their sentiment. 
 The fancy of Sir Walter could not help connecting the 
 two. If he had given us the Euglish side of the race to 
 Derby, lie ivould have described the Banlc of England 
 paying in sixjoences, and also tlie loves of ilie cashier." 
 No one who knows the novels well can question this. 
 Fergus Maclvor's ways and means, his careful arrange- 
 m.ents for receiving subsidies in black mail, are as care- 
 fully recorded as his lavish highland hospitalities ; and 
 when he sends his silver cup to the Gaelic bard who 
 chaunts his greatness, the ftiithfid historian does not for- 
 
t.] TUE WAVERLEY NOVELS. 103 
 
 get, to let us know tliat the cup is liis last, and that lie is 
 hard-pressed for the generosities of tlie future. So too 
 the habitual thievishness of the highlanders is pressed 
 upon us quite as vividly as their gallantry and supersti- 
 tions. And so careful is Sir "Walter to paint the petty 
 pedantries of the Scotch traditional conservatism, that he 
 will not spare even Charles Edward — of whom he draws 
 so graceful a picture — the humiliation of submitting to 
 old Bradwardine's " solemn act of homage," but makes him 
 go through the absurd ceremony of placing his foot on a 
 cushion to have its brogue unlatched by the dry old 
 enthusiast of heraldic lore. Indeed it was because Scott 
 so much enjoyed the contrast between the high sentiment 
 of life and its dry and often absurd detail, that his imagi- 
 nation found, so much freer a vent in the historical 
 romance, than it ever found in the romantic poem. 
 Yet he clearly needed the romantic excitement of pictu- 
 resque scenes and historical interests, too. I do not 
 think he would ever have gained any brilliant success in 
 the narrower region of the domestic novel. He said him- 
 self, in expressing Iiis admiration of Miss Austen, " The big 
 bow-wow strain I can do myself, like any now going, but 
 the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace 
 things and characters interesting, from the truth of the 
 description and the sentiment, is denied to me." Indeed 
 he tried it to some extent in Si. Ronan's Well, and so far 
 as he tried it, I think he failed. Scott needed a certain 
 largeness of type, a strongl^^narked class-life, and, -where 
 it was possible, a free, out-of-doors life, for his delinea- 
 tions. ISTo one could paint beggars and gipsies, and wan- 
 dering fiddlers, and mercenary soldiers, and peasants and 
 farmers and lawyers, and magistrates, and preachers, and 
 courtiers, and statesmen, and best of all perhaps queens 
 
101 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 and kings, -with anything like his aLility. Eut when it 
 came to describing tlie small differences of manner, diffe- 
 rences not due to external habits, so mucli as to internal 
 sentiment or education, or mere domestic circumstance, 
 he was beyond his proper fiekh/ In the sketch of the St. 
 Eonan's Spa and the company at the table-cVhute, he is 
 of course somewhere near the mark, — he was too able a 
 man to fall far short of success in anything he really gave 
 to the world ; but it is not interesting. Miss Austen 
 would have made Lady Penelope Penfeather a hundred 
 times as amusing. "We turn to Meg Dods and Touch- 
 wood, and Cargill, and Captain Jekyl, and Sir Bingo 
 Binks, and to Clara Mowbray, — i. e, to the lives reallj'' 
 moulded by large and specific causes, for enjoyment, and 
 leave the small gossip of the company at the Wells as, 
 relatively at least, a failure. And it is well for all the world 
 that it was so. Tlie domestic novel, when really of the 
 highest kind, is no doubt a perfect work of art, and an 
 unfailing source of amusement ; but it has nothing of the 
 tonic influence, the large instructiveness, the stimulating 
 intellectual air, of Scott's historic tales. Even when Scott 
 is farthest from reality — as in IvanTioe or Tlie Monas- 
 tery — he makes you open your eyes to all sorts of histo- 
 rical conditions to which you would otherwise be blind. 
 The domestic novel, even when its art is perfect, gives 
 little but pleasure at the best ; at the worst it is simply 
 scandal idealized. 
 
 Scott often confessed his contempt for his own heroes. 
 He said of Edward Waverley, for instance, that ho 
 was *' a sneaking piece of imbecilitj^," and that " if he 
 had married Elora, she would have set him up upon the 
 chimney-piece as Count Borowlaski's wife used to do 
 with him. I am a bad hand at depicting a hero, pro- 
 
X.] THE WAVEELEY NOVELS. 105 
 
 perly so called, and have an nnfortunate propensity for 
 the dubious characters of "borderers, buccaneers, highland 
 robbers, and all others of a Eobin-Hood description." ^ In 
 another letter he says, " My rogue always, in despite of 
 mo, turns out my hero."^ And it seems very likely that 
 in most of the situations Scott desciibes so well, his own 
 course would have been that of his wilder impulses, 
 and not that of his reason. Assuredly he would never 
 have stojjped hesitating on the line between opposite 
 courses as his Waverleys, his Mortons, his Osbaldistones 
 do. Whenever he was reaUy involved in a party strife, 
 he flung prudence and impartiality to the winds, and 
 went in like the hearty partisan which his strong im- 
 pulses made of him. Eut granting this, I do not agree 
 with his condemnation of all his own colourless heroes. . 
 However much they differed in nature from Scott himself, 
 the even balance of their reason against their sympathies 
 is certainly well conceived, is in itself natural, and is an 
 admirable expedient for effecting that which was pro- 
 bably its real use to Scott, — the affording an opportunity 
 for the delineation of all the pros and cons of the case, so 
 that the characters on both sides of the struggle should 
 be properly understood. Scott's imagination was clearly 
 far wider — was far more permeated with the fixed air of 
 sound judgment — than his practical impulses. He needed 
 a machinery for displaying his insight into both sides of a 
 public quarrel, and his colourless heroes gave him the 
 instrument he needed. • Both in Morton's case (in Old 
 Mortality)^ and in "VVaverley's, the hesitation is certainly 
 well described. Indeed in relation to the controversy 
 between Covenanters and Eoyalists, while his iDolitical 
 
 ' Lockliart's Life of Scott, iv. 175-6. 
 ' Lockhart's Life of Scott, iv. 4G. 
 
103 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 and martial prepossessions went with Claverliouse, liis 
 reason and educated moral feeling certainly were clearly 
 idcntifiid with Morton, 
 
 It is, however, obviously true that Scott's heroes are 
 mostly created for the sake of the facility they give in de- 
 lineating the other characters, and not the other characters 
 for the sake of the heroes. They are the imaginative 
 neutral ground, as it were, on which opposing influences 
 are brought to play ; and what Scott best loved to paint 
 was those who, whether by nature, by inheritance, or by 
 choice, had become unique and characteristic types of 
 one-sided feeling, not those who were merely in process of 
 growth, and had not ranged themselves at all. Mr. 
 Carlyle, Avho, as I have said before, places Scott's romances 
 far below their real level, maintains that these great 
 types of his are drawn from the outside, and not made 
 actually to live. ^ "His Bailie Jarvies, Dinmonts, Dal- 
 gettys (for their name is legion), do look and talk like 
 what they give themselves out for ; they are, if not 
 created and made poetically alive, yet deceptively enacted 
 as a good player might do tliem. What more is wanted, 
 then ? Tor the reader lying on a sofa, nothing more ; yet 
 for another sort of reader much./' It were a long chapter to 
 nnfold the difference in drawing a character between a 
 Scott and a Shakespeare or Goethe. Yet it is a difference 
 literally immense ; they are of a different species ; the 
 value of the one is not to be counted in the coin of the 
 other. We might say in a short Avord, which covers a long 
 matter, that your Shakespeare fashions his characters from 
 the heart outwards ; your Scott fashions them from the 
 skin inwards, never getting near the heart of them. The 
 one set become living men and women ; the other amount 
 to little more than mechanical cases, deceptively painted 
 
t] THE WAVERLEY NOVELS. 107 
 
 Rutoniatons." * And then he goes on to contrast Fenella in 
 Peveril of the Peak with Goethe's Mignon. ]\Ir. Car- 
 lyle could hardly have chosen a less fair comparison. If 
 Goethe is to be judged by his women, let Scott be judged 
 by his men. So judged, I think Scott will, as a painter 
 of character — of course, I am not now speaking of him as a 
 poet, — come out far above Goethe. Excepting the hero 
 of his first drama (Gotz of the iron hand), which by tlie 
 way was so much in Scott's line that liis first essay in 
 poetry was to translate it — not very well — I doubt if 
 Goethe was ever successful with his pictures of men. 
 WiUidni Melder is, as Niebuhr truly said, ''a mena- 
 gerie of tame animals." Doubtless Goethe's women — cer- 
 tainly his women of culture — are more truly and inwardly 
 conceived and created than Scott's. Excej)t Jeanie 
 Deans and Madge Wildfire, and perhaps Lucy Ashton, 
 Scott's women are apt to be uninteresting, either pink and 
 white toys, or hardish women of the world. But then no 
 one can compare the men of the two writers, and not see 
 Scott's vast pre-eminence on that side. 
 
 I think the deficiency of his pictures of women, odd as 
 it seems to say so, should be greatly attributed to his natural 
 chivalry. His conce2)tion of women of his own or a higher 
 class was always too romantic. He hardly ventured, as it 
 were, in his tenderness for them, to look deeply into their 
 little weaknesses and intricacies of character. With women 
 of an inferior class, he had not this feeling. Nothing 
 can be more perfect than the manner in which he blends 
 the dairy-woman and woman of business in Jeanie Deans, 
 with the lover and the sister. Eut once make a woman 
 beautiful, or in any way an object of homage to him, and 
 
 ' Carlyle's Jilisccllaneo^is Essays, iv. 174-5. 
 
>;■ 
 
 108 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 Scott bowed so low before tlie image of her, that he could 
 not go deep into her heart. He could no more have ana- 
 lysed such a woman, as Thackeray analyzed Lady Castle- 
 wood, or Amelia, or Eecky, or as George Eliot analysed 
 Eosamond Vincy, than he could have vivisected Camp or 
 Maida. To some extent, therefore, Scott's pictures of women 
 remain something in the style of the miniatures of the 
 last age — bright and beautiful beiugs without any special 
 character in them. He was dazzled by a fair heroine. He 
 could not take them up into his imagination as real beings 
 as he did men. But then how living are his men, whether 
 coarse or noble ! What a picture, for instance, is that in 
 A Legend of Montrose of the conceited, pragmatic, but 
 prompt and dauntless soldier of fortune, rejecting Argyle's 
 attempts to tamper with him, in the dungeon at Inverary, 
 suddenly throwing himself on the disguised Duke so soon 
 as he detects him by his voice, and wresting from him the 
 means of his own liberation ! Who could read that scene 
 and say for a moment that Dalgetty is painted " from the 
 skin inwards " ? It was just Scott himself breathing his own 
 life through the habits of a good specimen of the mercenary 
 soldier — realizing where the spirit of hire would end, and 
 the sense of honour would begin — and preferring, even in a 
 dungeon, the audacious policy of a sudden attack to that 
 of crafty negotiation. ) What a picture (and a very different 
 one) again is that -in Redgauntlet of Peter Peebles, the 
 mad litigant, with face emaciated by poverty and anxiety, 
 and rendered wild by " an insane lightness about the eyes," 
 dashing into the English magistrate's court for a warrant 
 against his fugitive counsel. Or, to take a third instance, 
 as different as possible from either, how powerfully con- 
 ceived is the situation in Old Mortalitij, where Balfour ctf 
 Burley, in his fanatic fury at the defeat of his plan for a 
 
K.] THE WAVERLEY NOVELS. 109 
 
 new rebellion, pushes the oak-tree, Avhich connects Lis 
 wild retreat with the outer world, into the stream, and 
 tries to tslay Morton for opposing him. In such scenes 
 and a hundred others — for these are mere random examples 
 — Scott undoubtedly painted his masculine figures from as 
 deep and inward a conception of the character of the 
 situation as Goethe ever attained, even in drawing Mignon, 
 or Kliirchen, or Gretchen. The distinction has no real 
 existence. Goethe's pictures of women were no doubt the 
 intuitions of genius ; and so are Scott's of men — and here 
 and there of his women too. Professional women he can 
 always paint with power. Meg Dods, the innkeeper, INIeg 
 Merrilies, the gipsy, ]\fauso Headcigg, the Covenanter, 
 Elspeth, the old fishwife in. The Antiquary, and the old 
 crones employed to nurse and watch, and lay out the 
 corpse, in The Bride of Lammcriiioor, are all in their way 
 impressive figures. 
 
 And even in relation to women of a rank more fasci- 
 nating to Scott, and whose inner character was perhaps on 
 that account, less familiar to his imagination, grant him but 
 a few hints from history, and he draws a picture which, 
 for vividness and brilliancy, may almost compare with 
 Shakespeare's own studies in English history. Had 
 Shakespeare painted the scene in The Abbot, in which 
 Mary Stuart commands one of her Mary's in waiting to 
 tell her at what bridal she last danced, and Mary Fleming 
 blurts out the reference to the marriage of Sel3astian at 
 Holyrood, would any one hesitate to regard it as a stroke 
 of genius worthy of the great dramatist? This picture 
 of the Queen's mind suddenly thrown off its balance, and 
 betraying, iu the agony of the moment, the fear and 
 remorse which every association with Darnley conjured 
 up, is painted '•' from the heart outwards," not " from the 
 
110 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 skill inwards," if ever there were such a painting in the 
 world. Scott hardly ever failed in painting kings or 
 peasants, queens or peasant-women. There was something 
 in the well-marked type of both to catch liis imagina- 
 tion, which can always hit off the grander features of 
 royalty, and the homelier features of laborious humility. 
 Is there any sketch traced in lines of more sweeping gran- 
 deur and more impressive force than the following of Mary 
 Stuart's lucid interval of remorse — lucid compared with her 
 ordinary mood, though it was of a remorse that was almost 
 delirious — which breaks in upon her hour of fascinating 
 condescension 1— 
 
 " ' Are tliey not a lovely couple, my Fleming ? and is it not 
 Leart-rendiug to think that I must be their ruin ?' 
 
 " 'Not so,' said Roland Grjeme, ' it is we, gracious sove- 
 reign, who will be your deliverers.' 'Ex orilus ^arvii- 
 lorum 1 ' said the queen, looking upward ; ' if it is by tbe 
 mouth of these children that heaven calls me to resume the 
 stately thoughts which become my birth and my rights, thou 
 wilt grant them thy pi'otection, and to me the power of 
 rewarding their zeal.' Then turning to Fleming, she in- 
 stantly added, ' Thou knowest, my friend, whether to make 
 those who have served me happy, was not ever Mary'a 
 favourite pastime. When I have been rebuked by the stern 
 preachers of the Calviulstic heresy — when I have seen the 
 fierce countenances of my nobles averted from me, has it 
 not been because I mixed in the harmless pleasures of the 
 young and gay, and rather for the sake of their happiness 
 than my own, have mingled in the masque, the song or 
 the dance, with the youth of my household ? Well, I repent 
 not of it — though Knox termed it sin, and Morton degrada- 
 tion — I was happy because I saw happiness around me : 
 and woe betide the wretched jealousy that can extract guilt 
 out of the overflowings of an unguarded gaiety ! — Fleming, 
 if we are restored to our throne, shall we not have one 
 blithesome day at a blithesome bridal, of which we must 
 now name neither the bride nor the brideoToom ? But that 
 
X.] THE WAVERLEY NOVELS. Ill 
 
 bridegroom sliall liave tlie barony of Blairgowrie, a fair 
 gift even for a queeu to give, and that bride's cliaplet shall 
 be twined with the fairest j)earls that ever were found in the 
 depths of Lochlomond ; and thou tliyself, Mary Fleming, 
 the best dresser of tires that ever busked the tresses of a 
 queen, and who would scorn to touch those of any woman 
 of lower rank — thou thyself shalt for my love twine them 
 into the bride's tresses. — Look, my Tleming, suppose then 
 such clustered locks as these of our Catherine, they would 
 not put shame upon thy skill.' So saying she jiassed her 
 hand fondly over the head of her youthful favourite, while 
 her more aged attendant replied despondently, ' Alas, 
 madam, your thoughts stray far from home.' ' They do, 
 my Fleming,' said the queen, 'but is it well or kind in 
 you to call them back ? — God knows they have kept the 
 perch this night but too closely. — Come, I will recall the 
 gay vision, were it but to punish them. Yes, at that 
 blithesome bridal, Mary herself shall forget the weight of 
 sorrows, and the toil of state, and herself once more lead a 
 measure. — At whose wedding was it that we last danced, 
 my Fleming ? I think care has troubled my memory — yet 
 something of it I should remember, canst thou not aid me ? 
 I know thou canst.' 'Alas, madam,' replied the lady. 
 ' What,' said Mary, ' wilt thou not help us so far ? this is 
 a peevish adherence to thine own graver opinion which holds 
 our talk as folly. But thou art court-bred and wilt well 
 understand me when I say the queen commands Lady 
 Fleming to tell her when she led the last hranle.' With a 
 face deadly pale and a mien as if she were about to sink 
 into the earth, the court-bred dame, no longer daring to 
 refuse obedience, faltered out, ' Gracious lady — if my 
 memory err not — it was at a masque in Holyrood — at the 
 marriage of Sebastian.' The unhappy queen, who had 
 hitherto listened with a melancholy smile, provoked by the 
 reluctance with which the Lady Fleming brought out her 
 story, at this ill-fated word interrupted her with a shriek 
 so wild and loud that the vaulted apartment rang, and 
 both Roland and Catherine sprung to their feet in the 
 utmost terror and alarm. Meantime, Mary Kcemcd, by the 
 
112 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [cuap. 
 
 train of horrible ideas thus suddenly excited, surprised not 
 only beyond self-command, but for the moment beyond the 
 verge of reason. ' Traitress,' she said to the Lady Fleming, 
 ' thou wouldst slay thy sovereign. Call my French guards — 
 a moi I a moi J mes Fran^ais ! — I am beset with traitors in 
 mine own palace — they have murdered my husband — 
 Rescue ! Eescue ! for the Queen of Scotland ! ' She started 
 up from her chair — her features late so exquisitely lovely 
 in their paleness, now inflamed with the fury of frenzy, and 
 resembling those of a Bellona. * We will take the field our- 
 self,' she said ; * warn the city — warn Lothian and Fife — 
 saddle our Spanish barb, and bid French Paris see our 
 petronel be charged. Better to die at the head of our brave 
 Scotsmen, like our grandfather at Flodden, than of a 
 broken heart like our ill-starred father.' ' Be patient — be 
 composed, dearest sovereign,' said Catherine ; and then 
 addressing Lady Fleming angrily, she added, ' How could 
 you say aught that reminded her of her husband?' The 
 word reached the ear of the unhappy princess who cauglit 
 it up, speaking with great rapidity, ' Husband ! — what 
 husband.'' Not his most Christian Majesty — he is ill at 
 ease — he cannot mount on horseback — not him of the 
 Lennox — hut it was the Duke of Orkney thou wouldst say ?' 
 ' For God's love, madam, be patient ! ' said the Lady 
 Fleming. But the queen's excited imagination could by no 
 entreaty be diverted from its course. ' Bid him come hither 
 to our aid,' she said, ' and bring with him his lambs, as he 
 calls them — Bowton, Hay of Talla, Black Ormiston and 
 his kinsman Hob — Fie, how swart they are, and how they 
 smell of sulphur ! What ! closeted with Morton ? Nay, if 
 the Douglas and the Hepburn hatch the complot together, 
 the bird when it breaks the shell will scare Scotland, will 
 it not, my Fleming ? ' ' She grows wilder and wilder,' said 
 Fleming. ' We have too many hearers for these strange 
 words.' 'Eoland," said Catherine, 'in the name of God 
 begone ! — you cannot aid us here — leave us to deal with her 
 alone — away — away ! " 
 
 And equally fine is the scene in Kenihoortk iu -vvliicli 
 
X.] THE WAVEELEY NOVELS. 113 
 
 Elizabeth undertakes tlio reconciliation of the haughty- 
 rivals, Sussex and Leicester, unaware that in the course 
 of the audience she herself will have to hear a great strain 
 ou her self-command, both in her feelings as a queen and 
 her feelings as a lover. Her grand rebukes to both, her 
 ill-concealed preference for Leicester, her whispered ridi- 
 cule of Sussex, the impulses of tenderness which she 
 fitifles, the flashes of resentment to which she gives way, 
 the triumph of policy over private feeling, her imperious 
 impatience when she is bafQed, her jealousy as she grows 
 suspicious of a personal rival, her gratified pride and 
 vanity when the suspicion is exchanged for the clear evi- 
 dence, as she supposes, of Leicester's love, and her peremp- 
 tory conclusion of the audience, bring before the mind a 
 series of pictures far more vivid and impressive than 
 the greatest of historical painters could fix on canvas, 
 even at the cost of the labour of years. Even more 
 brilliant, though not so sustained and difficult an effort 
 of genius, is the later scene in the same story, in Avhich 
 Elizabeth drags the unhappy Countess of Leicester from 
 her concealment in one of the grottoes of Kenilworth 
 Castle, and strides off with her, in a fit of vindictive 
 humiliation and Amazonian fury, to confront her with 
 her husband, Lut this last scene no doubt is more in 
 Scott's way. He can always paint women in their more 
 masculine moods. Where he frequently fails is in the 
 attempt to indicate the finer shades of women's nature. 
 In Amy Eobsart herself, for example, he is by no means 
 generally successful, though in an early scene her childish 
 delight in the various orders and decorations of her 
 husband is painted with much freshness and delicacy. 
 But wherever, as in the case of queens, Scott can get a 
 telling hint from actual history, he can always so use it 
 G 
 
114 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 as to make history itself seem dim to the equivalent for 
 it which he gives us. 
 
 And yet, as every one knows, Scott was excessively 
 free in his manipulations of history for the purposes of 
 romance. In Kenilworth he represents Shakespeare's 
 plays as already in the mouths of courtiers and statesmen, 
 though he lays the scene in the eighteenth year of Eliza- 
 beth, when Shakespeare was hardly old enough to rob an 
 orchard. In Woodstock, on the contrary, he insists, if . 
 you compare Sir Henry Lee's dates with the facts, that 
 Shakespeare died twenty years at least before he actually 
 died. The historical basis, again, of Woodstock and of 
 Redgauntlct is thoroughly untrustworthy, and about all the 
 minuter details of history,. — unless so far as they were 
 characteristic of the age,-^I do not suppose that Scott 
 in his romances ever troubled himself at all. And yet 
 few historians — not even Scott himself when he exchanged 
 romance for history — ever drew the great figures of history 
 with so powerful a hand. In writing history and bio- 
 graphy Scott has little or no advantage over very inferior 
 men. His pictures of SAvift, of Dryden, of Napoleon, are 
 in no way very vivid. It is only where he is working 
 from the pure imagination, — though imagination stirred 
 by historic study, — that he paints a picture which follows 
 us about, as if with living eyes, instead of creating for us 
 a mere series of lines and colours. Indeed, whether Scott 
 draws truly or falsely, he draws with such genius that 
 his pictures of Eichard and Saladin, of Louis XL and 
 Charles the Bold, of JMargaret of Anjou and Lene of 
 Provence, of Mary Stuart and Elizabeth Tudor, of Sussex 
 and of Leicester, of James and Charles and Buckingham, 
 of the two Dukes of Argyle — the Argyle of the time 
 of the revolution, and the Argyle of George II., — 
 
X.] THE WAVERLEY NOVELS. 115 
 
 of Queen Caroline, of Claverhouse, and Monmouth, 
 and of Eob Roy, •will live in English literature beside 
 Shakespeare's" pictures — probably loss faithful if more 
 imaginative — of John and Richard and the later Henries, 
 and all the great figures by whom they were surrounded. ; 
 No historical portrait that we possess will take prece- 
 dence — as a mere portrait — of Scott's brilliant study 
 of James I. in The Fortunes of Nhjel. Take this illus- 
 tration for instance, where George Heriot the goldsmith 
 (Jingling Geordie, as the king familiarly calls him) has 
 just been speaking of Lord Huntinglen, as "a man of the 
 old rough world that will drink and swear :" — 
 
 " ' O Geordie! ' exclaimed the king, * these are auld-warld 
 frailties, of whilk we dare not pronounce even ourselves 
 absolutely free. But the warld grows worse from day to day, 
 Geordie. The juveniles of this age may weel say with the 
 poet, — 
 
 " iEtas parentuni pcjor avis tulit 
 Nos nequiores — " 
 
 This Dalgarno does not drink so much, aye or swear so much, 
 as his father, but he wenches, Geordie, and he breaks his 
 word and oath baith. As to what ye say of the leddy and 
 the ministers, we are all fallible creatures, Geordie, priests 
 and kings as weel as others ; and wha kens but what that 
 may account for the difference between this Dalgarno and 
 his father ? The earl is the vei-a soul of honour, and cares 
 nae mair for warld's gear than a noble hound for the quest 
 of a foulmart ; but as for his son, he was like to brazen us 
 all out— ourselves, Steenie, Baby Charles, and our Council, 
 till he heard of the tocher, and then by my kingly crown he 
 lap like a cock at a grossart ! These are discrepancies be- 
 twixt parent and son not to be accounted for naturally, 
 according to Baptista Porta, Michael Scott de sccretis, and 
 others. Ah, Jingling Geordie, if your clouting the caldron, 
 and jingling on pots, pans, and vcshcls of all manner of 
 
116 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [crup. 
 
 metal, hadna jingled a' your grammar out of your liead, I 
 could have touclied on tliat matter to you at mair length.' 
 .... Heriot inquired whether Lord Dalgarno had consented 
 to do the Lady Hermione justice. * Troth, man, I have 
 small doubt that he will,' quoth the king, 'I gave him the 
 schedule of her worldly substance, which you delivered, to xis 
 in the council, and we allowed him half an hour to chew 
 the cud upon that. It is rare reading for bringing him to 
 reason. I left Baby Chai'lcs and Steenie laying his duty 
 before him, and if he can resist doing what they desire 
 him, why I wish he would teach me the gate of it. 
 O Geordie, Jingling Geordie, it was gi'and to hear Baby 
 Charles laying down tbe guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie 
 lecturing on the turpitude of incontinence.' ' I am afraid,' 
 Baid George Heriot, more hastily than prudently, * I might 
 have thought of the old proverb of Satan reproving 
 sin.' • Deil hae our saul, neighbour,' said the king, redden- 
 ing, 'but ye are not blate ! I gie ye licence to speak freely, 
 and by our saul, ye do not let the privilege become lost, non 
 uiendo — it will suffer no negative prescription in your 
 hands. Is it fit, think ye, that Baby Charles should let 
 his thoughts be publicly seen ? No, no, princes' thoughts 
 are arcana imperii : qui nescii dissimulare, nescit regnare. 
 Every liege subject is bound to speak the whole truth to the 
 king, but there is nae reciprocity of obligation — and for 
 Steenie having been whiles a dike-louper at a time, is it 
 for you, who are his goldsmith, and to whom, I doubt, he 
 awes an uncomatable sum, to cast that up to him ? " 
 
 Assuredly there is no undue favouring of Stuarts in 
 such a picture as that. 
 
 Scott's humour is, I think, of very different qualities in 
 relation to different subjects. Certainly he was at times 
 capable of considerable heaviness of hand, — of the Scotch 
 " wut " which has been so irreverently treated by 
 English critics. His rather elaborate jocular introductions, 
 under the name of Jedediah Cleishbotham, are clearly 
 
X.] THE WAYERLEY NOVELS. 117 
 
 laborious at times. And even his own letters to his 
 daughter-in-law, -wliich ]Mr. Lockhart seems to regard aa 
 models of tender playfulness and pleasantry, seem to me 
 decidedly elephantine. Not unfrequently, too, his stereo- 
 typed jokes weary. Dalgetty bores you almost as much as 
 ho would do in real life, — which is a great fault in art. Brad- 
 wardine becomes a nuisance, and as for Sir Piercie Shafton, 
 he is beyond endurance. Like some other Scotchmen of 
 genius, Scott twanged away at any effective chord till it 
 more than lost its expressiveness. But in dry humour, 
 and in that higher humour which skilfully blends the 
 ludicrous and the pathetic, so that it is hardly possible to 
 separate between smiles and tears, Scott is a master. His 
 canny innkeeper, who, having sent away all the pease- 
 meal to the camp of the Covenanters, and all the oatmeal 
 (with deep professions of duty) to the castle and its 
 cavaliers, in compliance with the requisitions sent to 
 him on each side, admits with a sigh to his daughter 
 that " they maun gar wheat flour serve themsels for a 
 blink," — his firm of solicitors. Greenhorn and Grinder- 
 son, whose senior partner writes respectfully to clients in 
 prosperity, and whose junior partner writes familiarly to 
 those in adversity, — his arbitrary nabob who asks how the 
 devil any one should be able to mix spices so well " as 
 one who has been where they grow ;" — his little ragamuffin 
 who indignantly denies that he has broken his promise 
 not to gamble away his sixpences at pitch-and-toss because 
 he has gambled them away at " neevie-neevie-nick-nack," — 
 and similar figures abound in his tales, — are all creations 
 which make one laugh inwardly as we read. But he has 
 a much higher humour still, that inimitable power of 
 shading off ignorance into knowledge and simplicity into 
 wisdom, vdiich makes his picture of Jeanie Deans, for 
 
118 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 instance, so liumorous as ■well as so affecting. When 
 Jeanie reunites her father to her liushand by reminding the 
 former how it would sometimes happen that " twa precious 
 saints might pu' sundrywise like twa cows riving at the 
 same hayband," she gives us an admirable instance of 
 Scott's higher humour. Or take Jeanie Deans's letter to 
 her father communicating to him the pardon of his 
 daughter and her own interview with the Queen : — 
 
 "Deakest and truly honoured Father. — This comes 
 with my duty to inform you, that it has pleased God to 
 redeem that captivitie of my poor sister, in respect the 
 Queen's blessed Majesty, for whom we are ever bound to 
 j)ray, hath redeemed her soul from the slayer, granting the 
 ransom of her, whilk is ane pardon or reprieve. And I spoke 
 with the Queen face to face, and yet live ; for she is not 
 muckle differing from other grand leddies, saving that she 
 has a stately presence, and een like a blue huntin' hawk's, 
 whilk gaed throu' and throu' me like a Highland durk — And 
 all this good was, alway under the Great Giver, to whom all 
 are but instruments, wrought for us by the Duk of Argile, 
 wha is ane native true-hearted Scotsman, and not pridefu', 
 like other folk we ken of — and likewise skeely enow in bestial, 
 whereof lie has promised to gie me twa Devonshire kye, of 
 which he is enamoured, although I do still hand by the real 
 hawkit Airshire breed — and I have promised him a cheese ; 
 and I wad wuss ye, if Gowans, the brockit cow, has a quey, 
 that she suld suck her fill of milk, as I am given to under- 
 stand he has none of that breed, and is not scornfu' but will 
 take a thing frae a puir body, that it may lighten their heart 
 of the loading of debt that they awe him. Also his honour 
 the Duke will accept ane of our Dunlop cheeses, and it sail 
 be my faut if a better was ever yearned in Lowden." — [Here 
 follow some observations respecting the breed of cattle, and 
 the produce of the dairy, which it is our intention to forward 
 to the Board of Agriculture.] — " Nevertheless, these are but 
 matters of the after-harvest, in respect of the great good 
 which Providence hath gifted us with — and, in especial, poor 
 
X.] THE WAVERLEY NOVELS. 119 
 
 EfBe's life. And oli, my dear father, since it liatli pleased 
 God to be merciful to her, let lier not want your free pardon, 
 whilk wiU make her meet to be ane vessel of grace, and also 
 a comfort to your ain graie hairs. Dear Father, will ye let 
 the Laird ken that we have had friends strangely raised np 
 to us, and that the talent whilk he lent me will be thankfully 
 repaid. I hae some of it to the fore ; and the rest of it is 
 not knotted up in ane purse or napkin, but in ane wee bit 
 paper, as is the fashion heir, whilk I am assured is gude for 
 the siller. And, dear father, through Mr. Butler's means I 
 hae gude friendship with the Duke, for there had been kind- 
 ness between their forbears in the auld troublesome time 
 byepast. And Mrs. Glass has been kind like my very 
 mother. She has a braw house here, and lives bien and 
 warm, wi' twa servant lasses, and a man and a callaut in the 
 shop. And she is to send you doun a pound of her hie- 
 dried, and some other tobaka, and we maun think of some 
 propine for her, since her kindness hath been great. And 
 the Duk is to send the pardon doun by an express mes- 
 senger, in resjaect that I canna travel sae fast ; and I am to 
 come doun wi' twa of his Honour's servants — that is, John 
 Archibald, a decent elderly gentleman, that says he has seen 
 you lang syne, when ye were buying beasts in the west frae 
 the Laird of Aughtermuggitie — but maybe ye winna mind 
 him — ony way, he's a civil man — and Mrs. Dolly Dutton, 
 that is to be dairy-maid at Inverara : and they bring me on 
 as far as Glasgo', whilk will make it nae pinch to win hame, 
 whilk I desire of all things. May the Giver of all good 
 things keep ye in your outgauns and incomings, whereof 
 devoutly prayeth your loving dauter, 
 
 "Jean Dkans." 
 
 Tills contains an example of Scott's rather heavy jocu- 
 larity as well as giving us a fine illustration of liis highest 
 and deepest and sunniest humour. Coming where it 
 does, the joke inserted about tlie Eoard of Agriculture is 
 rather like the gambol of a rhinoceros trying to imitate 
 the curvettings of a thoroughbred horse. 
 
120 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [coap. 
 
 Some of the finest toiiclies of Lis humour are no doubt 
 much heightened by his perfect command of the genius 
 as well as the dialect of a peasantry'', in whom a true 
 culture of mind and sometimes also of heart is found in 
 the closest possible contact with the humblest pursuits 
 and the quaintest enthusiasm for them. But Scott, with 
 all his turn for irony — and ]\Ir. Lockhart says that even on 
 his death-bed he used towards his children the same sort 
 of good-humoured irony to which he had always accus- 
 tomed them in his life — certainly never gives us any 
 example of that highest irony which is found so frequently 
 in Shakespeare, which touches the paradoxes of the 
 spiritual life of the children of earth, and which reached 
 its highest point in Isaiah. Now and then in his latest 
 diaries — the diaries written in his deep aflliction — 
 he comes near the edge of it. Once, for instance, he 
 says, " What a strange scene if the surge of conversation 
 could suddenly ebb like the tide, and show us the state of 
 people's real minds ! 
 
 * No eyes the rocks discover 
 Which lurk beneath the deep.' 
 
 Life could not be endured were it seen in reality." 
 But this is not irony, only the sort of meditation Avhich, 
 in a mind inclined to thrust deep into the secrets of life's 
 paradoxes, is apt to lead to irony. Scott, however, does 
 not thrust deep in this direction. He met the cold steel 
 which inflicts the deepest interior wounds, like a soldier, 
 and never seems to have meditated on the higher paradoxes 
 of life till reason reeled. The irony of Hamlet is far from 
 Scott. His imagination was essentially one of distinct 
 embodiment. He never even seemed so much as to con- 
 template that sundering of substance and form, that rending 
 
X.] THE WAVERLEY NOVELS. 121 
 
 away of outward garments, that unclothing of the soul, in 
 order that it might be more efTectually clothed upon, which 
 is at the heart of anything that may be called spiritual 
 irony. The constant abiding of his mind within the 
 well-defined forms of some one or other of the conditions of 
 outward life and manners, among the scores of different 
 spheres of human habit, was, no doubt, one of the secrets 
 of his genius ; but it was also its greate3t limitation. 
 
122 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 CHAPTEE XL 
 
 MORALITY AND RELIGION. 
 
 The very same causes "vvliich limited Scott's humour and 
 irony to tlie commoner fields of experience, and prevented 
 him from ever introducing into his stories characters of 
 the highest type of moral thoughtfulness, gave to his own 
 morality and religion, -which were, I think, true to the 
 core so far as they went, a shade of distinct conven- 
 tionality. It is no douht quite true, as he himself tells 
 us, that he took more interest in his mercenaries and 
 moss-troopers, outlaws, gipsies, and beggars, than he 
 did in the fine ladies and gentlemen under a cloud 
 whom he adopted as heroines and heroes. Dut that was 
 the very sign of his conventionalism. Though he inte- 
 rested himself more in these irregular persons, he hardly 
 ever ventured to paint their inner life so as to show how 
 little there was to choose between the sins of those who 
 are at war with society and the sins of those who bend to 
 the yoke of society. He widened rather than narrowed 
 the chasm between the outlaw and the respectable citizen, 
 even while he did not disguise his own romantic interest 
 in the former. He extenuated, no doubt, the sins of aU 
 brave and violent defiers of the law, as distinguished from 
 the sins of crafty and cunning abusers of the law. But 
 the leaning he had to the former was, as he was willing to 
 
xt] MORALITY AND RELIGION. 123 
 
 admit, what ho regarded as a *' naughty " leaning. He did 
 not attempt for a moment to balance accounts between 
 them and society. He paid his tribute as a matter of 
 course to the established morality, and only put in a word 
 or two by way of attempt to diminish the severity of the 
 sentence on the bold transgressor. And then, where what 
 is called the "law of honour" comes in to traverse the law 
 of religion, he had no scruple in setting aside the latter 
 in ftivour of the customs of gentlemen, without any 
 attempt to justify that course. Yet it is evident from 
 various passages in his writings that he held Christian 
 duty inconsistent with duelling, and that lie held himself 
 a sincere Christian. In spite of this, when he was fifty- 
 six, and under no conceivable hurry or perturbation of 
 feeling, but only concerned to defend his own conduct 
 — which was indeed plainly right — as to a political dis- 
 closure which he had made in his life of Napoleon, lie 
 asked his old friend William Clerk to be his second, if the 
 expected challenge from General Gourgaiid should come, 
 and declared his firm intention of accepting it. On the 
 strength of official evidence he had exposed some conduct 
 of General Gourgaud's at St. Helena, Avhich appeared to 
 be Itir from honourable, and he thought it his duty on 
 that account to submit to be shot at by General Gourgaud, 
 if General Gourgaud had wished it. In writing to William 
 Clerk to ask him to be his second, he says, " Like a 
 man who finds himself in a scrape, General Gourgaud may 
 wi.'jh to fight himself out of it, and if the quarrel should 
 be thrust on me, why, I will not baulk liim, Jackie. He 
 ehall not dishonour the country through my sides, I can 
 assure him." In other words, Scott acted just as he had 
 made Waverley and others of his heroes act, on a code of 
 honour which he knew to be false, and he must have felt 
 
124 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 in this case to be something worse. He thought himself 
 at that time under the most stringent ohligations both to 
 his creditors and his children, to do all in his power to 
 redeem himself and his estate from debt. Nay, more, he 
 held that his life was a trust from his Creator, which he 
 had no right to throw away merely because a man whom 
 he had not really injured, was indulging a strong wish to 
 injure him ; but he could so little brook the imputation of 
 physical cowardice, that he was moral coward enough to 
 resolve to meet General Gourgaud, if General Gourgaud 
 lusted after a shot at him. 'Nov is there any trace pre- 
 served of so much as a moral scruple in his own mind on 
 the subject, and this though there are clear traces in hig 
 other writings as to what he thought Christian morality 
 required. But the Border chivalry was so strong in Scott 
 that, on subjects of this kind at least, his morality was 
 the conventional morality of a day rapidly passing 
 away. 
 
 He showed the same conventional feeling in his severity 
 towards one of his own brothers who had been guilty of 
 cowardice. Daniel Scott was the black sheep of the 
 family. He got into difficulties in business, formed a bad 
 connexion with an artful woman, and was sent to try his 
 fortunes in the West Indies. There he was employed in 
 some service against a body of refractory negroes — we do 
 not know its exact nature — and apparently showed the 
 white feather. Mr. Lockhart says that " he returned to 
 Scotland a dishonoured man; and though he found shelter 
 and compassion from his mother, his brother would never 
 Bee him again. I^ay, when, soon after, his health, 
 shattered by dissolute indulgence, . . . gave way altogether, 
 and he died, as yet a young man, the poet refused either 
 in attend his funeral or to wear mourning for him, like tlie 
 
XI.] MORALITY AND RELIGION. 125 
 
 rest of his family." * Indeed he always spoke of him as 
 his "relative," not as his brother. Here again Scott's 
 severity -was duo to his brother's failure as a " man of 
 honour," i. e. in courage. He was forbearing enough with 
 vices of a different kind ; made John Ballantyne's dissipa- 
 tion the object rather of his jokes than of his indignation ; 
 and not only mourned for him, but really grieved for him 
 Avhen he died. It is only fair to say, however, that for 
 this conventional scorn of a weakness rather than a sin, 
 Scott sorrowed sincerely later in life, and that in sketching 
 the physical cowardice of Connochar in The Fair Maid of 
 Perth, he deliberately made an attempt to atone for this 
 hardness towards his brother by showing how frequently 
 the foundation of cowardice may be laid in perfectly 
 involuntary physical temperament, and pointing out with 
 what noble elements of disposition it may be combined. 
 But tiU reflection on many forms of human character had 
 enlarged Scott's charity, and perhaps also the range of his 
 speculative ethics, he remained a conventional moralist, 
 and one, moreover, the type of whose conventional code 
 was borrowed more from that of honour than from that of 
 religious principle. There is one curious passage in his 
 diary, written very near the end of his life, in which 
 Scott even seems to declare that conventional standards of 
 conduct are better, or at least safer, than religious standards 
 of conduct. He says in his diary for the 15th April, 
 1828, — "Dined with Sir Eobert Inglis, and met Sir 
 Thomas Acland, my old and kind friend. I was happy to 
 see him. He may be considered now as the head of the 
 religious party in the House of Commons — a powerful 
 body which Wilberforce long commanded. It is a difficult 
 situation, for the adaptation of religious motives to earthly 
 ' Lockhart's Life of Scott, iii. 19S-9. 
 
126 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 policy is apt — among the infinite delusions of the human 
 heart — to be a snare."* His letters to his eldest son, 
 the young cavaliy officer, on his first start in life, are 
 much admired by Mr. Lockhart, but to me they read 
 a little hard, a little worldly, and extremely conven- 
 tional. Conventionality was certainly to his mind almost 
 a virtue. 
 
 Ofenthiisiasm in religion Scott always spoke very severely » 
 both in his novels and in his letters and private diary. 
 In writing to Lord Montague, he speaks of such enthusiasm 
 as was then prevalent at Oxford, and which makes, he says, 
 "religion a motive and a pretext for particular lines of 
 thinking in politics and in temporal affairs " [as if it could 
 help doing that !] as " teaching a new way of going to the 
 devil for God's sake," and this expressly, because when 
 the young are infected with it, it disunites families, and 
 sets " children in opposition to their parents." ^ He gives 
 us, however, one reason for his dread of anything like en- 
 thusiasm, which is not conventional ; — that it interferes 
 with the submissive and tranqud mood which is the only 
 true religious mood. Speaking in his diary of a weakness 
 and fluttering at the heart, from which he had suffered, he 
 says, " It is an awful sensation, and would have made an 
 enthusiast of me, had I indulged my imagination on reli- 
 gious subjects. I have been always careful to place my 
 mind in the most tranquil posture which it can assume, 
 during my private exercises of devotion." * And in this 
 avoidance of indulging the imagination on religious, or 
 even spiritual subjects, Scott goes far beyond Shakespeare. 
 I do not think there is a single study in all his romances 
 
 * Lockhart's Life of Scott, ix. 231. 
 
 « Ibid., vii. 255-6. » Ibid., viii. 292. 
 
XI.] MORALITY AND RELIGION. 127 
 
 of wliat may be fairly called a pre-eminently spiritual 
 cliaructer as such, though Jcanie Deans approaches nearest 
 to it. The same may he said of Shakespeare. But 
 Shakespeare, though he has never drawn a pre-eminently 
 spiritual character, often enough indulged his imagination 
 while meditating on spiritual themes. 
 
 k 
 
128 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 CHAPTEPw XII. 
 
 DISTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS AT ABBOTSPORD. 
 
 Between 1814 and tlie end of 1825, Scott's literary 
 labour was interrupted only by one serious illness, and 
 hardly interrupted by that, — by a few journeys, — one to 
 Paris after the battle of Waterloo, and several to London, 
 — and by the worry of a constant stream of intrusive visi- 
 tors. Of his journeys he has left some records ; but 1 
 cannot say that I think Scott would ever have reached, as 
 a mere observer and recorder, at all the high point which 
 he reached directly his imagination went to work to create 
 a story. That imagination was, indeed, far less subser- 
 vient to his mere percei:)tions than to his constructive 
 powers. PauTs Letters to liis KinsfoUc — the records of his 
 Paris journey after Waterloo — for instance, are not at all 
 above the mark of a good special correspondent. His 
 imagination was less the imagination of insight, than 
 the imagination of one whose mind was a great kaleido- 
 scope of human life and fortunes. But far more interrupt- 
 ing than either illness or travel, was the lion-hunting of 
 which. Scott became the object, directly after the publica- 
 tion of the earlier novels. In great measure, no doubt, on 
 account of the mystery as to his authorship, his fame 
 became something oppressive. At one time as many as 
 sixteen parties of visitors applied to see Abbotsford in a 
 single day. Strangers, — especially the American travel- 
 
xii.] DISTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS. 129 
 
 lers of that day, wlio were much less reticent and more 
 irrepressible than the American travellers of this, — would 
 come to him without introductions, facetiously cry out 
 " Prodigious ! " in imitation of Dominie Sampson, what- 
 ever they were shown, inquire Avhcther the new house 
 was called Tullyvcolan or Tilly tudlem, cross-examine, 
 with open note-hooks, as to Scott's age, and the age of his 
 wife, and appear to he taken quite by surprise when they 
 were bowed out without being asked to dine.' In those 
 days of high postage Scott's bill for letters " seldom came 
 under 150Z, a year," and " as to coach parcels, they were a 
 j)erfect ruination." On one occasion a mighty package 
 came by post from the United States, for which Scott had 
 to pay five pounds sterling. It contained a MS. play 
 called The Cherokee Lovers, by a young lady of !N"ew York, 
 who begged Scott to read and correct it, write a prologue 
 and epilogue, get it put on the stage at Drury Lane, and 
 negotiate with Constable or Murray for the copyright. In 
 about a fortnight another packet not less formidable 
 arrived, charged with a similar postage, Avhich. Scott, not 
 grown cautious through experience, recklessly opened ; out 
 jumped a duplicate copy of The Gherolcee Lovers, with a 
 second letter from the authoress, stating that as the wea- 
 ther had been stormy, and she feared that something 
 might have happened to her former MS., she had thought 
 it prudent to send him a duplicate.^ Of course, when 
 fame reached such a point as this, it became both a worry 
 and a serious waste of money, and what was far more 
 valuable than money, of time, privacy, and tranquillity of 
 mind. And though no man ever boro such worries with 
 the equanimity of Scott, no man over received less plea- 
 
 ' Lockhart's Life of Scott, r. 387. 
 3 Lookhart's Life of Scott, v. 3S3. 
 
130 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 sure fit im tlio adulation of unknown and often vulgar and 
 ignorant admirers. His real amusements were his trees 
 and Lis friends. " Planting and pruning trees," he said 
 " I conld work at from morning to night. There is a sort 
 of self-congratulation, a little tickling self-flattery, in the 
 idea that while yon are pleasing and amusing yourself, 
 you are seriously contributing to the future welfare of 
 the country, and that your very acorn may send its future 
 ribs of oak to future victories like Trafalgar," ' — for the 
 day of iron ships was not yet. And again, at a later 
 stage of his planting : — " You can have no idea of the 
 exquisite delight of a planter, — he is like a painter laying 
 on his colours, — at every moment he sees his effects coming 
 out. There is no art or occupation comparable to this ; it 
 is full of past, present, and future enjoyment. I look 
 back to the time when there was not a tree here, only bare 
 heath ; I look round and see thousands of trees growing up ' 
 all of which, I may say almost each of which, have received 
 my personal attention. I remember, five years ago, look- 
 ing forward with the most delighted expectation to this 
 very hour, and as each jeav has passed, the expectation 
 has gone on increasing. I do the same now. I anticipate 
 what this plantation and that one will presently be, if only 
 taken care of, and there is not a spot of which I do not 
 watch the progress. Unlike building, or even painting, or 
 indeed any other kind of pursuit, this has no end, and 
 is never interrupted ; but goes on from day to day, and 
 from year to year, with a perpetually augmenting interest. 
 Farming I hate. What have I to do with fattening 
 and killing beasts, or raising corn, only to cut it down, 
 and to wrangle with farmers about prices, and to be con- 
 stantly at the mercy of the seasons? There can be no 
 1 Lockhart's Life of Scott, iii. 288. 
 
XII.] DISTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS. 131 
 
 such disappointments or annoyances in planting trees," * 
 Scott indeed regarded planting as a mode of so moulding 
 the form and colour of the outward world, that nature herself 
 became indebted to him for finer outlines, richer masses of 
 colour, and deeper shadows, as well as for more fertile and 
 sheltered soils. And he was as skilful in producing the 
 last result, as he was in the artistic effects of his plant- 
 ing. In the essay on the planting of Avasto lands, ho 
 mentions a story, — drawn from his own experience, — of a 
 planter, who having scooped out the lowest part of his 
 land for enclosures, and " planted the wood round them in 
 masses enlarged or contracted as the natural lying of the 
 ground seemed to dictate," met, six years after these 
 changes, his former tenant on the ground, and said to him, 
 
 " I suppose, Mr. E , you wiJl say I have ruined your 
 
 farm by laying half of it into woodland ? " "I should have 
 
 expected it, sir," answered Mr. R , "if you had told 
 
 me beforehand what you were going to do ; but I am now 
 of a very different opinion; and as I am looking for land 
 at present, if you are inclined to take for the remaining 
 sixty acres the same rent which I formerly gave for a hun- 
 dred and twenty, I will give you an offer to that amount. 
 I consider the benefit of the enclosing, and the complete 
 shelter afforded to the fields, as an advantage which fairly 
 counterbalances the loss of one-half of the land."* 
 
 And Scott was not only thoughtfid iu his own 
 planting, but induced his neighbours to become so too. 
 So great was their regard for him, that many of them 
 planted their estates as much with reference to the effect 
 which their plantations would have on the view from 
 Abbotsford, as with reference to the effect they would 
 
 » Lockhart's Life of Scott, vii. 287-8. 
 
 • Scott's Miscellaneous Prose Works, xxi. 22-3. 
 
132 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [cuap. 
 
 have on the view from their own grounds. Many was 
 the consultation which he and his neighbours, Scott of 
 Gala, for instance, and Mr. Henderson of Eildon Hall, had 
 together on the effect which would be produced on the 
 view from their respective houses, of the planting going on 
 upon the lands of each. The reciprocity of feeling was 
 such that the various proprietors acted more like bothers 
 in this matter, than like the jealous and exclusive creatures 
 which landowners, as such, so often are. 
 
 Xext to his interest in the management and growth 
 of his own little estate was Scott's interest in the manage- 
 ment and growth of the Duke of Buccleuch's. To the 
 Duke he looked up as the head of his clan, with some- 
 thing almost more than a feudal attachment, greatly 
 enhanced of course by the personal friendship which 
 he had formed for him in early life as the Earl of 
 Dalkeith. This mixture of feudal and personal feeling 
 towards the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch continued 
 during their lives. Scott was away on a yachting tour 
 to the Shetlands and Orkneys in July and August, 1814, 
 and it was during this absence that the Duchess of 
 Buccleuch died. Scott, who was in no anxiety about 
 her, employed himself in writing an amusing descriptive 
 epistle to the Duke in rough verse, chronicling his 
 voyage, and containing expressions of the profoundest 
 reverence for the goodness and oharity of the Duchess, 
 a letter which did not reach its destination till after the 
 Duchess's death. Scott himself heard of her death by 
 chance when they landed for a few hours on the coast of 
 Ireland; he was quite overpowered by the news, and went 
 to bed only to drop into short nightmare sleeps, and to 
 wake with the dim memory of some heavy weight at his 
 heart. The Duize himself died five years later, leaving 
 
XII.] DISTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS. 133 
 
 a son only thirteen years of age (the present Duke), over 
 M'hose interests, both as regarded his education and Ms 
 estates, Scott watched as jealously as if they had been 
 those of his own son. Many were the anxious letters he 
 wrote to Lord Montague as to his " young chiefs " affairs, 
 as ho called them, and great his pride in watching the 
 promise of his yonth. K'othing can be clearer than that 
 to Scott the feudal principle was something flir beyond a 
 name ; that he had at least as much pride in his devotion 
 to his chief, as he had in founding a house which he 
 believed would increase the influence — both territorial 
 and personal — of tjie clan of Scotts. The unaffected 
 reverence which he felt for the Duke, though mingled 
 Avith warm personal affection, showed that Scott's feudal 
 feeling had something real and substantial in it, which 
 did not vanish even when it came into close contact with 
 strong personal feelings. This reverence is curiously 
 marked in his letters. He speaks of " the distinction of 
 rank " being ignored by both sides, as of something quite 
 exceptional, but it was never reaUy ignored by him, for 
 though he continued to write to the Duke as an intimate 
 friend, it was with a mingling of awe, very different indeed 
 from that which he ever adopted to Ellis or Erskine. It 
 is necessary to remember this, not only in estimating the 
 strength of the feeling which made him so anxious to 
 become himself the founder of a house within a house, — 
 of a new branch of the clan of Seotts, — bat in estimating 
 the loyalty which Scott always displayed to one of the 
 least respectable of English sovereigns, George IV., — a 
 matter of which I must now say a few words, not only 
 because it led to Scott's receiving the baronetcy, but 
 because it forms to my mind the most grotesque of all 
 the threads in the lot of this strong and proud man. 
 
134 SUi WALTER SCOTT. J^cbap. 
 
 CHAPTER XIIL 
 
 SCOTT AND GEORGE IV. 
 
 The first relations of Scott with the Court were, oddly 
 enough, formed with the Princess, not with the Prince of 
 "Wales. In 1806 Scott dined with tlie Princess of \\''ales at 
 Plackheath, and spoke of liis invitation as a great honour. 
 He wrote a tribute to her father, the Duke of Brunswick, 
 in the introduction to one of the cantos of Marmion, and 
 received from the Princess a silver vase in acknowledgment 
 of this passage in the poem. Scott's relations with the 
 Prince Eegent seem to have begun in an offer to Scott of 
 the Laureateship in the summer of 1813, an offer which 
 Scott would have found it very difficult to accept, so 
 strongly did his pride revolt at the idea of having to 
 commemorate in verse, as an official duty, all conspicuous 
 incidents affecting the throne. Put he was at the time 
 of the offer in the thick of his first difficulties on account 
 of Messrs. John Ballantyne and Co., and it was only tho 
 Duke of Puccleuch's guarantee of 4000?,— a guarantee sub- 
 sequently cancelled by Scott's paying the sum for which it 
 was a security — that enabled him at this time to decline 
 what, after Southey had accepted it, he compared in a 
 letter to Southey to the herring for which the poor Scotch 
 clergyman gave thanks in a grace wherein he described 
 it as " even this, the V3ry least of Providence's mercies." 
 
XIII.] SCOTT AND GEORGE IV. 135 
 
 In March, 1815, Scott being then in London, the Prince 
 liegent asked him to dinner, addressed him uniformly as 
 Walter, and struck up a friendship with him which seems 
 to liavo lasted their lives, and which certainly did much 
 more honour to George than to Sir Walter Scott. It is 
 impossible not to think rather better of George IV. for 
 thus valuing, and doing his best in every way to show his 
 value for, Scott. It is equally impossible not to think 
 rather worse of Scott for thus valuing, and in every way 
 doing his best to express his value for, this very worthless, 
 though by no means incapable king. The consequences 
 were soon seen in the indignation Avitli which Scott began 
 to speak of the Princess of Wales's sins. In 1806, in the 
 squib he wrote on Lord Melville's acquittal, when im- 
 peached for corruption by the Liberal Government, he 
 had written thus of the Princess Caroline : — 
 
 " Our King, too — our Princess, — I dare not say more, sir, — 
 May Providence watch them with mercy and might ! 
 While there's one Scottish hand that can wag a claymore, sir. 
 They shall ne'er want a friend to stand x'.p for their right. 
 Be damn'd he that dare not — • 
 For my part Pll sjjare not 
 To beauty afflicted a tribute to give ; 
 Pill it up steadily, 
 Drink it off readily, 
 Here's to the Princess, and long may she lis^e." 
 
 But whoever " stood up " for the Princess's right, certainly 
 Scott did not do so after his intimacy with the Prince 
 Eegent began. He mentioned her only Avith severity, 
 and in one letter at least, written to his brother, with 
 something much coarser than severity;^ but tie king's 
 similar vices did not at all alienate him from what at 
 
 » Lockliart's Life of Scott, vi. 229-30. 
 
136 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 least Lad all the appearance of a deep personal devotion to 
 his sovereign. The first baronet whoni George IV. made 
 on succeeding to the throne, after his long Eegency, -was 
 Scott, who not only accepted the honour gratefully, but 
 dwelt with extreme pride on the fact that it was offered to 
 him by the king himself, and was in no way due to the 
 prompting of any minister's advice. lie Avrote to Joanna 
 Baillie on hearing of the Eegent's intention — for the offer 
 Avas made by the Eegent at the end of 1818, though it 
 was not actually conferred till after George's accession, 
 namely, on the 30th March, 1820,— "The Duke of 
 Buccleuch and Scott of Harden, who, as the heads of 
 my clan and the sources of my gentry, are good judges 
 of what I ought to do, have both given me their earnest 
 opinion to accept of an honour directly derived from the 
 source of honour, and neither begged nor bought, as is 
 the usual fashion. Several of my ancestors bore the title 
 in the seventeenth century, and, were it of consequence, 
 I have no reason to be ashamed of the decent and respect- 
 able persons Avho connect me with that period when they 
 carried into the field, like Madoc, 
 
 " The Crescent at whose gleam the Cambrian oft. 
 Cursing his perilous tenure, wound his horn,'' 
 
 so that, as a gentleman, I may stand on as good a footiug 
 as other new creations." * Why the honour was any 
 greater for coming from such a king as George, than it 
 would have been if it had been suggested by Lord Sid- 
 mouth, or even Lord Liverpool, — or half as great as if 
 ]\rr. Canning had proposed it, it is not easy to conceive. 
 George was a fair judge of literary merit, but not one to 
 
 • Lockhart's Life of Scott, vi. 13, I4t. 
 
XIII.] SCOTT AND GEORGE IV. 137 
 
 be compared for a moment with that great orator and wit ; 
 and as to his being the fountain of honour, there was so 
 much dishonour of which the king was certainly the 
 fountain too, that I do not think it was very easy for two 
 fountains both springing from such a person to have flowed 
 quite unmingled, George justly prided himself on Sir 
 AValter Scott's having been the first creation of his reign, 
 and I think the event showed that the poet was the foun- 
 tain of much more honour for the king, than the king was 
 for the poet. 
 
 When George came to Edinburgh in 1822, it was Sir 
 Walter who acted virtually as the master of the cere- 
 monies, and to whom it was chiefly due that the visit was 
 so successful. It was then that George clad his substantial 
 person for the first time in the Highland costume — to wit, 
 in the Steuart Tartans— and was so much annoyed to find 
 liimself outvied by a wealthy alderman. Sir William 
 Curtis, who had gone and done likewise, and, in his equally 
 grand Steuart Tartans, seemed a kind of parody of 
 the king. The day on which the king arrived, Tuesday, 
 14tli of August, 1822, was also the day on which Scott's 
 most intimate friend, William Erskine, then Lord Ivin- 
 ncdder, died. Yet Scott went on board the royal yacht, 
 was most graciously received by George, had his health 
 drunk by the king in a bottle of Highland whiskey, and 
 with a projier show of devoted loyalty entreated to bo 
 allowed to retain the glass out of which his IMajcsty had 
 just drunk his health. The request was graciously acceded 
 to, but let it be pleaded on Scott's behalf, that on reaching 
 homo and finding there his friend Crabbe the poet, he sat 
 down on the royal gift, and crushed it to atoms. One 
 would hope that he was really thinking more even of 
 Crabbe, and much more of Erskine, than of the royul 
 
138 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 favour for wliich ho had appeared, and doubtless had 
 really believed himself, so grateful. Sir Walter retained 
 his regard for the king, such as it was, to the last, aiiftl oven 
 persuaded himself that George's death would be a great 
 political calamity for the nation. And really I cannot help 
 thinking that Scott believed more in the king, than he did 
 in his friend George Canning. Assuredly, greatly as he 
 admired Canning, he condemned him more and more as 
 Canning grew more liberal, and sometimes speaks of his 
 veerings in that direction with positive asperity. George, 
 on the other hand, who believed more in number one than 
 in any other number, however large, became much more 
 conservative after he became Eegent than he was before, 
 and as he grew more conservative Scott grew more con- 
 servative likewise, till he came to think this particular 
 king almost a pillar of the Constitution. I suppose we 
 ought to explain this little bit of fetish-worship in Scott 
 much as we should the quaint practical adhesion to duelling 
 which he gave as an old man, who had had all his life 
 much more to do with the pen than the sword — that is, as 
 an evidence of the tendency of an improved type to recur 
 to that of the old wild stock on which it had been grafted. 
 But certainly no feudal devotion of his ancestors to thcii* 
 chief was ever less justified by moral qualities than Scott's 
 loyal devotion to the fountain of honour as embodied in 
 " our fat friend." The whole relation to George was a 
 grotesque thread in Scott's life ; and I cannot quite forgive 
 him for the utterly conventional severity with which he 
 threw over his first patron, the Queen, for sins which 
 were certainly not grosser, if they were not much less 
 gross, than those of his second patron, the husband who 
 had set her the example which she faithfully, though at a 
 distance, followed. 
 
iiv.] SCOTT AS A rOLITICIAN. 13d 
 
 CIIAPTEK XIV. 
 
 SCOTT AS a' POLITICIAN. 
 
 Scott usually professed great ignorance of politics, and did 
 what he could to hold aloof from a world in which his 
 feelings were very easily heated, while his knowledge was 
 apt to be very imperfect. But now and again, and notably 
 towards the close of his life, he got himself mixed up in 
 politics, and I need hardly say that it was always on the 
 Tory, and generally on the red-hot Tory, side. His first 
 hasty intervention in politics was the song I have just 
 referred to on Lord Melville's acquittal, during the short 
 Whig administration of 1806. In fact Scott's comparative 
 abstinence from politics was due, I believe, chiefly to the 
 fact that during almost the Avhole of his literary life, 
 Tories and not Whigs were in power. JS^o sooner was any 
 reform proposed, any abuse threatened, than Scott's eager 
 Conservative spirit flashed up. Proposals were made in 
 1806 for changes — and, as it was thought, reforms — in the 
 Scotch Courtsof Law, and Scott immediately saw something 
 like national calamity in the prospect. The mild proposals 
 in question were discussed at a meeting of the Faculty of 
 Advocates, when Scott made a speech longer than ho had 
 ever before delivered, and animated by a "flow and energy 
 of eloquence " for Avliich those Avho were accustomed to 
 hear his debating speeches were quite unprepared. IIo 
 
140 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 ^yalked home between two of the reformers, Mr. Jeffrey 
 and another, when his companions began to compliment 
 him on his eloquence, and to speak playfully of its 
 subject. Eut Scott was in no mood for playfulness. 
 " 'No, no," he exclaimed, " 'tis no laughing matter ; little 
 by little, whatever your wishes may be, you will destroy 
 and undermine, until nothing of what makes Scotland 
 Scotland shall remain !" "And so saying," adds Mr. Lock- 
 hart, " he turned round to conceal his agitation, but not 
 until Mr. Jeffrey saw tears gushing down his cheek, — rest- 
 ing his head, until he recovered himself, on the wall of the 
 Mound." ^ It Avas the same strong feeling for old Scotch 
 institutions which broke out so quaintly in the midst of his 
 own worst troubles in 1826, on behalf of the Scotch bank- 
 ing-system, when he so eloquently defended, in the letters 
 of Malaclii Malagrowther, what would now be called 
 Home-Eule for Scotland, and indeed really defeated the 
 attempt of his friends the Tories, who were the innovators 
 this time, to encroach on those sacred institutions — the 
 Scotch one-pound note, and the private-note circulation of 
 the Scotch banks. Eut when I speak of Scott as a Home- 
 Euler, I should add that had not Scotland been for gene- 
 rations governed to a great extent, and, as he thought 
 successfully, by IIome-Eule, he was fur too good a Conser- 
 vative to have apologized for it at all. The basis of his 
 Conservatism Avas always the danger of undermining a 
 system which had answered so well. In the concluding 
 passages of the letters to which I have just referred, ho 
 contrasts " Theory, a scroll in her hand, full of deep and 
 mysterious combinations of figures, the least failure in 
 any one of which may alter the result entirely," Avith 
 
 * Lockbai't's Life of Scott, ii. 32S. 
 
XIV,] SCOTT AS A POLITICIAN. 141 
 
 " a practical system successful for upwards of a century." 
 His velicment and unquailing opposition to Eeform in 
 almost the very last year of his life, when he had already 
 suffered more than one stroke of paralysis, was grounded 
 on precisely the same argument. At Jedburgh, on the 
 21st IMarch, 1S31, he appeared in the midst of an angry 
 population (who hooted and jeered at him till he turned 
 round fiercely ujDonthem with the defiance, "I regard your 
 gahhle no more than the geese on the green,") to urge the 
 very same protest. " We in this district," he said, " are 
 proud, and with reason, that the first chain-bridge was the 
 work of a Scotchman. It still hangs where he erected 
 it a pretty long time ago. The French heard of our 
 invention, and determined to introduce it, but with 
 great improvements and embellishments. A friend of 
 my own saw the thing tried. It Avas on the Seine at 
 JMarly. The French chain-bridge looked lighter and 
 airier than the prototype. Every Englishman present 
 was disposed to confess that we had been beaten at our 
 own trade. But by-and-by the gates were opened, and 
 the multitude were to pass over. It began to swing 
 rather formidably beneath the pressure of the good com- 
 pany ; and by the time the architect, who led the proces- 
 sion in great pomp and glory, reached the middle, the 
 Avhole gave way, and he — worthy, patriotic artist — was 
 the first that got a ducking. They had forgot the middle 
 bolt, — or rather this ingenious person had conceived that 
 to bo a clumsy-looking feature, which might safely bo 
 dispensed with, while he put some invisible gimcrack of 
 his own to supply its place." ^ It is strange that Sir 
 Vf alter did not see that this kind of criticism, so far as it 
 
 • Lockhart's Life of Scott, x. 47. 
 
142 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 applied at all to such an experiment as the Eeform Bill, 
 was even more in point as a rebuke to the rashness of the 
 Scotch reformer who hung the first successful chain-bridge, 
 than to the rashness of the French reformer of reform who 
 devised an unsuccessful variation on it. The audacity of 
 the first experiment was much the greater, though the com- 
 petence of the person who made it was the greater also. 
 And as a matter of fact, the political structure against the 
 supposed insecurity of which Sir Walter was protesting, 
 with aU the courage of that dauntless though dying nature, 
 was made by one who understood his work at least as well 
 as the Scotch architect. The tramp of the many multi- 
 tudes who have passed over it has never yet made it to 
 " swing dangerously," and Lord Eussell in the fulness of 
 his age was but yesteixlay rejoicing in wliat he had acliicvcd, 
 and even in what those have achieved who have altered 
 his work in the same spirit in which he designed it. 
 
 But though Sir Walter persuaded himself that his 
 Conservatism was all founded in legitimate distrust of 
 reckless change, there is evidence, I think, that at times 
 at least it was due to elements less noble. The least 
 creditable incident in the story of his political life — which 
 Mr. Lockhart, with his usual candour, did not conceal — 
 was the bitterness with which he resented a most natural 
 and reasonable Parliamentary opposition to an appoint- 
 ment which he had secured for his favourite brother, Tom. 
 In 1810 Scott appointed his brother Tom, who had failed 
 as a Writer to the Signet, to a place vacant under himself 
 as Clerk of Session. lie had not given him the best place 
 vacant, because he thought it his duty to appoint an 
 official who had grown grey in the service, but he gave 
 Tom Scott this man's place, which was worth about 250/. 
 a year. In the meantime Tom Scott's affairs did not 
 
XIV.] SCOTT AS A rOLITICIAN. 113 
 
 render it convenient for him to be come-at-able, and ho 
 absented himself, while they were being settled, in the 
 Isle of Man. Further, the Commission on the Scotch 
 system of judicature almost immediately reported that his 
 office was one of supererogation, and ought to be abolished ; 
 but, to soften the blow, they proposed to allow him a 
 pension of 130Z. per annum. This proposal was dis- 
 cussed with some natural jealousy in the House of Lords. 
 Lord Lauderdale thought that when Tom Scott was 
 appointed, it must have been pretty evident that the 
 Commission would propose to abolish his office, and that 
 the appointment therefore should not have been made. 
 " Mt. Thomas Scott," he said, " would have 130/. for hfc 
 as an indemnity for an office the duties of which he never 
 had performed, while those clerks who had laboured for 
 twenty years had no adequate remuneration." Lord Hol- 
 land supported this very reasonaljle and moderate view of 
 the case ; but of course the INIinistry carried their way, 
 and Tom Scott got his unearned pension. ^Nevertheless, 
 Scott Avas furious with Lord Holland, Writing soon after 
 to the happy recipient of this little pension, he says, 
 " Lord Holland has been in Edinburgh, and we met acci- 
 dentally at a public party. He made np to me, but I 
 remembered his part in your affair, and cut him with as 
 little remorse as an old pen." Mr. Lockhart says, on 
 Lord Jeffrey's authority, that the scene was a very painful 
 one. Lord Jeffrey himself declared that it was the only 
 rudeness of which he ever saw Scott guilty in the course 
 of a life-long familiarity. And it is pleasant to know that 
 lie renewed his cordiality with Lord Holland in later years, 
 though there is no evidence that he ever adndtted that he 
 had been in the Avrong. But the incident shows how 
 very doubtful Sir Walter ought to have felt as to the purity 
 
144 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 of his Conservatism. It is quite certain that the 
 proposal to abolish Tom Scott's office without compen- 
 sation was not a reckless experiment of a fundamental 
 kind. It was a mere attempt at diminishing the heavy 
 burdens laid on the people for the advantage of a small 
 portion of the middle cLxss, and yet Scott resented it witli 
 as much display of selfish passion — considering his 
 genuine nobility of breeding — as that with which the 
 rude working men of Jedburgh afterwards resented his 
 gallant protest against the Eeform Bill, and, later again, 
 saluted the dauntless old man with the dastardly cry of 
 " Eurk Sir Walter ! " Judged truly, I think Sir Walter's 
 conduct in cutting Lord Holland " with as little remorse 
 as an old pen," for simply doing his duty in the House of 
 Lords, was quite as ignoble in him as the bidlying and 
 insolence of the democratic party in 1831, when the dying 
 lion made his last dash at what he regarded as the foes of 
 the Constitution. Doubtless he held that the mob, or, 
 as we more decorously say, the residuum, were in some 
 sense the enemies of true freedom. " I cannot read in 
 history," he writes once to Mr. Laidlaw, " of any free 
 State which has been brought to slavery till the rascal 
 and uninstructed populace had had their short hour of 
 anarchical government, which naturally leads to the stern 
 repose of military despotism." But he does not seem 
 ever to have perceived that educated men identify them- 
 Belves with " the rascal and uninstructed populace," when- 
 ever they indulge on behalf of the selfish interests 
 of their own class, passions such as he had indulged in 
 fighting for his brother's pension. It is not the want of 
 instruction, it is the rascaldom, i. e. the violent esi^rit da 
 coi'ps of a selfish class, which " naturally leads " to violent 
 remedies. Such rascaldom exists in all classes, and not 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 XIV.] SCOTT AS A POLITICIAN. 145 
 
 least in the class of the cultivated and refined. Generous 
 and magnanimous as Scott was, lie was evidently ty no 
 means free from the germs of it. 
 
 One more illustration of Scott's political Conservatism, 
 and I may leave his political life, which Avas not indeed his 
 strong side, though, as with all sides of Scott's nature, it 
 had an energy and spirit all his own. On the subject of 
 Catholic Emancipation he took a peculiar view. As he 
 justly said, ho hated bigotry, and would have left the 
 Catholics quite alone, but for the great claims of their 
 creed to interfere with political life. And even so, v/hen 
 the penal laws were once abolished, he would have 
 abolished also the representative disabilities, as quite 
 useless, as well as very irritating Avhen the iron system of 
 effective repression had ceased. Lut he disapproved of the 
 abolition of the political parts of tlie penal laws. lie 
 thought they would have stamped out Eoman Catholicism ; 
 and whether that were just or unjust, he thought it would 
 have been a great national service. "As for Catholic 
 Emancipation," ho wrote to Southey in 1807, " I am not, 
 God knows, a bigot in religious matters, nor a friend to 
 persecution ; but if a particular set of religionists are ipso 
 facto connected with foreign politics, and placed under 
 the spiritual direction of a class of priests, whose unrivalled 
 dexterity and activity are increased by the rules which 
 detach them from the rest of the world — I humbly think 
 that Ave may be excused from entrusting to them those 
 places in the State where the influence of such a clergy, 
 who act under the direction of a passive tool of our worst 
 foe, is likely to be attended with the most fatal conse- 
 quences. If a gentleman chooses to Avalk about with a 
 couple of pounds of gunpowder in his pocket, if I give 
 him the shelter of my roof, I may at least be permitted 
 
146 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 to exclude him from the seat next to the fire." * And in 
 relation to the year 1825, when Scott visited Ireland, Mr. 
 Lockhart writes, " He on all occasions expressed manfully 
 his belief that the best thing for Ireland would have been 
 never to relax the siricily political enactments of the j^enal 
 laws, however harsh these might appear. Had they been 
 kept in vigour for another half-century, it was his convic- 
 tion that Popery would have been all but extinguished in 
 Ireland. But he thought that after admitting Eomanists 
 to the elective franchise, it was a vain notion that they 
 could be permanently or advantageously deterred from 
 using that franchise in favour of those of their own per- 
 suasion." 
 
 In his diary in 1829 he puts the same view still more 
 strongly : — " I cannot get myself to feel at all anxious 
 about the Catholic question. 1 cannot see the use of 
 fighting about the platter, when you have let them snatch 
 the meat off it. I hold Popery to be such a mean and 
 degrading superstition, that I am not sure I could have 
 found myself liberal enough for voting the repeal of the 
 penal laws as they existed before 1780. They must and 
 would, in course of time, have smothered PojDery ; and I 
 confess that I should have seen the old lady of Babylon's 
 mouth stopped with pleasure. But now that you have 
 taken the plaster off her mouth, and given her free respi- 
 ration, I cannot see the sense of keeping up the irritation 
 about the claim to sit in Parliament. Unopposed, the 
 Catholic superstition may sink into dust, with all its 
 absurd ritual and solemnities. Still it is an awful risk. 
 The world is in fact as silly as ever, and a good compe- 
 tence of nonsense will always find believers." * That is 
 
 • Lockhart's Life of Scott, iii. 34. 
 2 Ibid., ix. 305. 
 
XIV.] SCOTT AS A POLITICIAN. 117 
 
 tlie view of a strorg and ratlier imscriipulous politician 
 • — a moss-trooper in politics — Avliich Scott certainly 
 was. He was thinking evidently very little of justice, 
 almost entirely of the most effective means of keeping 
 the Kingdom, the Kingdom which he loved. Had he 
 nnderstood — what none of the jjoliticians of that day 
 understood — the strength of the Church of Eome as the 
 only consistent exponent of the principle of Authority 
 in religion, I helieve his opposition to Catholic eman- 
 cipation would have been as bitter as his opposition 
 to Parliamentary "reform. But he took for granted that 
 while only " silly " persons believed in Eome, and only 
 "infidels" rejected an authoritative creed altogether, it 
 was quite easy by the exercise of common sense, to find 
 the true compromise between reason and religious humility. 
 Had Scott lived through the religious controversies of our 
 own days, it seems not unlikely that with his vivid imagi- 
 nation, his warm Conservatism, and his rather inadequate 
 critical powers, he might himself have become a Eoman 
 Catholic. 
 
148 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 SCOTT IN ADVERSITY. 
 
 Wjtii the year 1825 came a financial crisis, and Con- 
 stable began to tremble for his solvency. From the date 
 of his baronetcy Sir Walter had launched out into a con- 
 siderable increase of expenditure. He got plans on a 
 rather large scale in 1821 for the increase of Abbotsford, 
 which were aU carried out. To meet his expenses in this 
 and other ways he received Constable's bills for " four 
 unnamed works of fiction," of which he had not written 
 a line, but which came to exist in time, and were called 
 Peicril of the Pealc, Quentin Durward, St. Bonan's Well, 
 and Hedgcnmtlet. Again, in the very year before the crash, 
 1825, he married his eldest son, the heir to the title, to 
 a young lady, who was herself an heiress, Miss Jobson 
 of Lochore, when Abbotsford and its estates were 
 settled, with the reserve of 10,OOOZ., which Sir Walter 
 took power to charge on the property for purposes of 
 business. Immediately afterwards he purchased a cap- 
 taincy in the King's Hussars for his son, which cost him 
 3500Z. Kor were the obligations he incurred on his own 
 account, or that of his family, the only ones by which he 
 was burdened. He was always incurring expenses, often 
 heavy expenses, for other people. Thus, when Mr. Terry, 
 the actor, became joint lessee and manager of the Adclphi 
 
XV.] SCOTT IN ADVERSITY. 140 
 
 Theatre, London, Scott became liis surety fori 25 0/'.,av1u1o 
 James Ballantyno became his surety for 5001. more, and 
 both these sums had to bo paid by Sir Walter after 
 Terry's failure in 1828. Such obligations as these, how- 
 ever, would have been nothing when compared with Sir 
 Walter's means, had all his bills on Constable been duly 
 honoured, and had not the printing firm of Ballantyne 
 and Co. been so deeply involved with Constable's house 
 that it necessarily became insolvent when he stopped. 
 Taken altogether, I beheve that Sir Walter earned during 
 his own lifetime at least 140,000/. by his literary work 
 alone, probably more; while even on his land and building 
 combined he did not apparently spend more than half 
 that sum. Then he had a certain income, about 1000?. a 
 year, from his own and Lady Scott's private property, as 
 well as 1300/. a year as Clerk of Session, and 300/. more 
 as Sheriff of Selkirk. Thus even his loss of the price 
 of several novels by Constable's failure would not 
 seriously have compromised Scott's position, but for his 
 share in the printing-house which fell with Constable, 
 and the obligations of which amounted to 117,000/. 
 
 As Scott had always forestalled his income, — spend- 
 ing the purchase-money of his poems and novels before 
 they were written, — such a failure as this, at the ago 
 of fifty-five, when all the freshness of his youth was 
 gone out of him, when he saw his son's prospects blighted 
 as well as his own, and knew perfectly that James 
 Ballantyne, unassisted by him, could never hope to pay 
 any fraction of the debt worth mentioning, would have 
 been paralysing, had ho not been a man of iron nerve, 
 and of a pride and courage hardly ever equalled. Domes- 
 tic calamity, too, was not far off. For two years he had 
 been watching the failure of his wife's health with in- 
 
160 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 creasing anxiety, and as calamities seldom come single, 
 her illness took a most serious form at the very time when 
 the hlow fell, and she died within four months of the 
 failure, l^ay, Scott was himself unwell at tlie critical 
 moment, and was taking sedatives which discomposed his 
 brain. Twelve days before the final failure, — which was 
 announced to him on the 17th January, 1826, — he enters 
 in his diary, " Much alarmed. I had walked till twelve 
 with Skene and Eussell, and then sat down to my work. 
 To my horror and surprise I could neither write nor spell, 
 but put down one word for another, and wrote nonsense. 
 I was much overpowered at the same time and could not 
 conceive the reason. I fell asleep, however, in my chair, 
 and slept for two hours. On my waking my head Avas 
 clearer, and I began to recollect that last night I had 
 taken the anodyne left for the purpose by Clarkson, and 
 being disturbed in the course of the night, I had not 
 slept it off." In fact the hyoscyamus had, combined 
 with his anxieties, given him a slight attack of what 
 is now called apliasia, that brain disease the most 
 striking symptom of which is that one word is mis- 
 taken for another. And this was Scott's preparation 
 for his failure, and the bold resolve which followed 
 it, to work for his creditors as he had worked for 
 himself, and to payoff, if possible, the whole 117,O00Z. 
 by his own literary exertions. 
 
 There is nothing in its way in the whole of English 
 biography more impressive than the stoical extracts from 
 Scott's diary which note the descent of this blow. Here 
 is the anticipation of the previous day: "Edinburgh, 
 January IGth. — Came through cold roads to as cold news. 
 Hurst and Eobinson have suffered a bill to come back ujDon 
 Constable, which, I suppose, infers the ruin of both houses. 
 
v.] SCOTT IN ADVERSITY. 151 
 
 We shall soon sec. Dined with the Skenes." And here 
 is the record itself: "January 17th. — James Eallantyne 
 this morning, good honest fellow, with a visage as black 
 as the crook. He hopes no salvation ; has, indeed, taken 
 measures to stop. It is hard, after having fought such a 
 battle, I have apologized for not attending the Royal 
 Society Club, who have a gaudeamus on this day, and 
 seemed to count much on my being the praises. My old 
 acquaintance Miss Elizabeth Clerk, sister of Willie, died 
 suddenly. I cannot choose but wish it had been Sir 
 W. S., and yet the feeling is unmanly. I have Anne, 
 my wife, and Charles to look after. I felt rather sneak- 
 ing as I came home from the Parliament-house — felt as if 
 I were liable monstrari digito in no very pleasant way. 
 But this must be borne cinn cceteris ; and, thank God, 
 however uncomfortable, I do not feel despondent."' On 
 the following day, the 18th January, the day after the 
 blow, he records a bad night, a wish that the next two 
 days were over, but that " the worst is over," and on 
 the same day he set about making notes for the magnum 
 ojms, as he called it — the complete edition of all the 
 novels, with a new introduction and notes. On the 19 th 
 January, two days after the failure, he calmly resumed the 
 composition of Woodstoch — the novel on which he was 
 then engaged — and completed, he says, "about twenty 
 printed pages of it ;" to which he adds that he had " a 
 painful scene after dinner and another after supper, 
 endeavouring to convince these poor creatures " [his wife 
 and daughter] " that they must not look for miracles, but 
 consider the misfortune as certain, and only to be lessened 
 by patience and labour." On the 21st January, after a 
 
 1 Lockhart's Life of Scott, viii. 197. 
 
152 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 number of business details, he quotes from Job, " ISTalved 
 we entered the world and naked we leave it ; blessed bo 
 the name of the Lord." On the 22nd he says, "I feel 
 neither dishonoured nor broken down by the bad, now 
 truly bad, news I have received. I have walked my last 
 in the domains I have planted — sat the last time in the 
 halls I have built. Lut death would have taken tliem 
 from me, if misfortune had spared them. My poor people 
 whom I loved so well ! There is just another die to turn 
 uj) against me in this run of ill-luck, i. c. if I should break 
 my magic wand in the fall from this elephant, and lose 
 my popularity with my fortune. Then WoocMocIc and 
 Boncy" [his life of I^apoleon] "may both go to the 
 paper-maker, and I may take to smoking cigars and 
 drinking grog, or turn devotee and intoxicate the brain 
 another way." ' He adds that when he sets to work 
 doggedly, he is exactly the same man he ever was, " neither 
 low-spirited nor didrait," nay, that adversity is to him 
 " a tonic and bracer." 
 
 The heaviest blow was, I think, the blow to his pride. 
 Very early he begins to note painfully the different way in 
 which different friends greet him, to remark that some 
 smile as if to say, " think nothing about it, my lad, it is 
 quite out of our thoughts ;" that others adopt an affected 
 gravity, " such as one sees and despises at a funeral," and 
 the best-bred "just shook hands and went on." He writes 
 to Mr. Morritt with a proud indifference, clearly to some 
 extent simulated : — " My womenkind will be the greater 
 sufferers, yet even they look cheerily forward ; and, for 
 myself, the blowing off of my hat on a stormy day has 
 given me more uneasiness." '^ To Lady Davy he writes 
 
 * Lockhart's Life of Scott, viii. 203-4. 
 s Ibid., viii. 235. 
 
Jtv.] SCOTT IN ADVERSITY. 153 
 
 Iriily cnoiigli : — "I "beg my liumLlest compliments to Sir 
 Ilumplirey, and tell him, 111 Luck, that direful chemist, 
 never put into his crucible a more indissoluble piece of 
 stuff than your affectionate cou.sia and sincere well- 
 Avishcr, "Walter Scott." ' When his Letters of Malacld 
 Malagroidlier came out he writes : — " I am glad of this 
 bruilzie, as far as I am concerned ; people will not dare 
 talk of rac as an object of pity — no more * poor-manning.* 
 Who asks how many punds Scots the old champion had 
 in his pocket when 
 
 * He set a bugle to his moutli, 
 And blew so loud and shrill. 
 The trees in greenwood shook thereat, 
 Sae loud rang every hill.' 
 
 This sounds conceited enough, yet is not far from truth."' 
 His dread of pity is just the same when his wife dies : — 
 "Will it be better," he writes, "when left to my own 
 feelings, I see the whole world pipe and dance around 
 me 1 I think it will. Their sympathy intrudes on my 
 present affliction." Again, on returning for the first time 
 from Edinburgh, to Abbotsford after Lady Scott's funeral: — 
 " I again took possession of the family bedroom and my 
 widowed couch. This was a sore trial, but it was neces- 
 sary not to blink such a resolution. Indeed I do not like 
 to have it thought that there is any way in which I can 
 be beaten." And again: — "I have a secret pride — I 
 fancy it will be so most truly termed — which impels me to 
 mix with my distresses strange snatches of mirth, ' which 
 have no mirth in them.' "* 
 
 > Lockhart's Life of Scott, viii. 238. 
 
 » viii 277. » viii., 317, 371, 381. 
 
154 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 Eut tliougli pride was part of Scott's strength, pride 
 alone never enatled any man to struggle so vigorously and 
 so unremittingly as he did to meet the obligations he had 
 incurred. When he was in Ireland in the previous year, 
 a poor woman who had offered to sell him gooseberries, 
 hut whose offer had not heen accepted, remarked, on 
 seeing his daughter give some jience to a beggar, that they 
 might as well give her an alms too, as she was " an old 
 struggler." Sir AValter was struck with the expression, 
 and said that it deserved to become classical, as a name 
 for those who take arms against a sea of troubles, in- 
 stead of yielding to the waves. It was certainly a name 
 the full meaning of which he himself deserved. His 
 house in Edinburgh was sold, and he had to go into 
 a certain Mrs. Erown's lodgings, when he was dis- 
 charging his duties as Clerk of Session. His wife was 
 dead. His estate was conveyed to trustees for the benefit 
 of his creditors till such time as he should i>ay oif 
 Eallantyne and Go's, debt, which of course in his lifetime 
 he never did. Yet between January, 1826, and January, 
 1828, he earned for his creditors very nearly 40,000/. 
 Woodstock sold for 8228/., "a matchless sale," as Sir 
 Walter remarked, " for less than three months' work." 
 The first two editions of TJie Life of Napoleon Bona- 
 parte, on Avhich Mr. Loekhart says that Scott had spent 
 the unremitting labour of about two years — labour in- 
 volving a far greater strain on eyes and brain than his 
 imaginative work ever caused him — sold for 18,000/. 
 Had Sir Walter's health lasted, he would have redeemed 
 his obligations on behalf of Ballantyne and Co. within 
 eight or nine years at most from the time of his failure. 
 Eut what is more remarkable still, is that after his health 
 failed he struggled on with little more than half a brain, 
 
IV.] SCOTT IN ADVERSITY. 155 
 
 but a whole Avill, to work -while it was yet day, tliough 
 the evening was dropping fast. Count Robert of Paris 
 and Castle Dangerous were really the compositions of a 
 paralytic patient. 
 
 It was in Septemher, 1830, that the first of these 
 talcs was begun. As early as the 15th February of that 
 year he had had his first true paralytic seizure. He had 
 been discharging his duties as clerk of session as usual, 
 and received in the afternoon a visit from a lady friend of 
 his. Miss Young, who was submitting to him some manii- 
 script memoirs of her father, when the stroke came. It 
 was but slight. He struggled against it with his usual 
 iron power of will, and actually managed to stagger out of 
 the room where the lady was sitting with him, into the 
 drawing-room where his daughter was, but there he fell 
 his full length on the floor. He was cupped, and fully 
 recovered his speech during the course of the day, but 
 Mr. Lockhart thinks that never, after this attack, did his 
 style recover its full lucidity and terseness. A cloudiness 
 in words and a cloudiness of arrangement began to be 
 visible. In the course of the year he retired from his 
 duties of clerk of session, and his publishers hoped that, 
 by engaging him on the new and complete edition of his 
 works, they might detach him from the attempt at imagi- 
 native creation for which he was now so much less fit. 
 But Sir \Yalter's will survived his judgment. When, 
 in the previous year, Ballantyne had been disabled from 
 attending to business by his wife's illness (which ended in 
 her death), Scott had written in his diary, "It is his 
 (Ballantyne's) nature to indulge apprehensions of the 
 worst which incapacitate him for labour. I cannot help 
 regarding this amiable weakness of the mind with some- 
 tliing too nearly allied to contempt," and assuredly ho 
 
15G SIR WALTER SCOTT. [en a p. 
 
 was guilty of no sucli •weakness himself. ISTot only did 
 lie row much harder against the stream of fortune than ho 
 had ever rowed with it, but, what required still more 
 resolution, he fought on against the growing conviction 
 that his imagination would not kindle, as it used to do, 
 to its old heat. 
 
 When he dictated to Laidlaw, — for at this time he could 
 hardly write himself for rheumatism in the hand, — he 
 would frequently i^auso and look round him, like a man 
 " mocked with shadows." Then he bestirred himself with 
 a great effort, rallied his force, and the style again flowed 
 clear and bright, but not for long. Tlie clouds would 
 gather again, and the mental blank recur. This soon 
 became visible to his publishers, who wrote discouragingly 
 of the new novel — to Scott's own great distress and irrita- 
 tion. The oddest feature in the matter was that his 
 letters to them were full of the old terseness, and force, 
 and caustic turns. On business he was as clear and keen 
 as in his best days. It was only at his highest task, the 
 task of creative work, that his cunning began to fail him. 
 Here, for instance, are a few sentences written to Cadell, 
 his publisher, toi;ching this very point — the discourage- 
 ment which James Ballantyne had been pouring on the 
 new novel. Ballantyne, he says, finds fault with the 
 subject, when what he really should have found fanlt with 
 was the failing power of the author : — " James is, with 
 many other kindly critics, perhaps in the predicament of 
 an honest drunkard, when crop-sick the next morning, 
 who does not ascribe the malady to the wine he has 
 drunk, but to having tasted some particular dish at dinner 
 
 which disagreed with his stomach I have lost, it 
 
 is plain, the power of interesting the country, and ought, 
 in justice to all parties, to retire while I have some credit. 
 
xv.l SCOTT IN ADVERSITY. 157 
 
 r.at this is an important step, and I will not bo obstinate 
 
 about it if it be necessary Frankly, I cannot tbink 
 
 of flinging aside the half-finished volume, as if it were a 
 
 corked bottle of wine I may, perhaps, take a trip 
 
 to the Continent for a year or two, if I find Othello's 
 occupation gone, or rather Othello's reputation"^ And 
 again, in a very able letter written on the 1 2th of De- 
 cember, 1830, to Cadell, he takes a view of the situation 
 Avith as much calmness and imperturbability as if he Averc 
 an outside spectator. " There were many circumstances in 
 the matter Avhich you and J. B. (James Eallantyne) could 
 not be aware of, and which, if you Avere aAvare of, might 
 have influenced your judgment, which had, and yet have. 
 a most powerful eff"ect upon mine. The deaths of both 
 my father and mother have been preceded by a paralytic 
 shock. My father survived it for nearly tAvo years — a 
 melancholy respite, and not to be desired. I Avas 
 alarmed Avith Miss Young's morning visit, when, as you 
 knoAv, I lost my speech. The medical people said it 
 Avas from the stomach, which might be, but Avhile 
 there is a doubt upon a point so alarming, you Avill not 
 Avonder that the subject, or to use Hare's lingo, the 67^0/, 
 should be a little anxious." He relates how he had 
 followed all the strict medical re'jime prescribed to him 
 Avith scrupulous regularity, and then begun his Avork 
 again Avith as much attention as he could. " And having 
 taken pains with my story, I find it is not relished, 
 nor indeed tolerated, by those Avho have no interest in 
 condemning it, but a strong interest in putting even a 
 face" (] force) "i;pon their consciences. Was not this, 
 in the circumstances, a damper to an invalid already 
 
 ' LockLart's Lije of Scott, x. 11, 12. 
 
158 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 afraid that the sharp edge might bo taken off his in- 
 tellect, though ho was not himself sensible of that?" In 
 fact, no more masterly discussion of the question whether 
 his mind were fading or not, and what lie ought to do in 
 the interval of doubt, can be conceived, than these letters 
 give us. At this time the debt of Ballantyne and Co. had 
 been reduced by repeated dividends — all the fruits of 
 Scott's literary work — more than one half. On the 17tli 
 of December, 1830, the liabilities stood at 54,000Z., 
 having been reduced G 3,000/. within five years. And Sir 
 Walter, encouraged by this great rcbult of his labour, 
 resumed the suspended novel. 
 
 But with the beginning of 1831 came new alarms. On 
 January 5th Sir Walter enters in his diary, — *' Yery 
 indifferent, with more awkward feelings than I can well 
 bear up against. My voice sunk and my head strangely 
 confused." Still he struggled on. On the 31st January 
 he went alone to Edinburgh to sign his Avill, and stayed 
 at his bookseller's (Cadell's) house in Athol Crescent. 
 A great snow-storm set in which kept him in Edin- 
 burgh and in Mr. Cadell's house till the 9th February. 
 One day while tho snow was still falling heavily, Bal- 
 lantyne reminded him that a motto was wanting for 
 one of the chapters of Cuunt Rohcrt of Paris. Ho 
 went to the window, looked out for a moment, and then 
 wrote, — 
 
 " The storm iDcrcascs ; 'tis no sunny shower, 
 Foster'd in tho moist breast of March or April, 
 Or such as parched summer cools his lips with. 
 Heaven's windows are flung wide ; the inmost deeps 
 Call, in hoarse greeting, one upon another ; 
 On comes tho flood, in all its foaming horrors, 
 And whore's the dike shall stop it ? 
 
 The Deluge : a Poem." 
 
iv.J SCOTT IN ADVERSITY. 159 
 
 Clearly this failing imagination of Sir Walter's was still 
 a great deal more vivid than that of most men, Avith 
 brains as sound as it ever pleased Providence to make 
 them. Eut his troubles were not yet even numbered. 
 The "storm increased," and it was, as he said, "no sunny 
 shower." His lame leg became so painful that he had to 
 get a mechanical apparatus to relieve him of some of tho 
 burden of supporting it. Then, on the 21st March, he 
 was hissed at Jedburgh, as I have before said, for his 
 vehement opposition to Eeform. In Aprd he had another 
 stroke of paralysis which he now himself recognized as 
 one. Still he struggled on at his novel Under the date 
 of May 6, 7, 8, he makes this entry in his diary : — " Here 
 is a precious job. I have a formal remonstrance from those 
 critical people, Ballantyne and Cadell, against the last 
 volume of Count Rohert, which is within a sheet of being 
 finished. I suspect their oj^inion will be found to coincide 
 with that of the public ; at least it is not very different 
 from my own. The blow is a stunning one, I suppose, 
 for I scarcely feel it. It is singular, but it comes with 
 as little sur^jrise as if I had a remedy ready ; yet God 
 knows I am at sea in the dark, and the vessel leakj^, I 
 think, into the bai'gain. I cannot conceive that I have 
 tied a knot with my tongue which my teeth cannot untie. 
 We shall see. I have suffered terribly, that is tlie truth, 
 rather in body than mind, and I often wish I could lie 
 down and sleep without waking. But I will fight it out 
 if I can." ^ The medical men with one accord tried to 
 make Mm give up his novel-writing. But he smiled and 
 put them by. He took up Count Robert of Paris again, 
 and tried to recast it. On the 18th May ho insisted on 
 
 • LockliarL's Life of Scott, x. G5-6. 
 
IGO SIE WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 atteiicling the election for Eoxburghsliire, to be held at 
 Jedburgh, and in spite of the unmannerly reception ho 
 had met with in IMarch, no dissuasion would keep him at 
 home. lie was saluted in the town with groans and 
 blasphemies, and Sir Walter had to escape from Jedburgh 
 by a back way to avoid personal violence. The cries 
 of " Burk Sir Walter," with which he Avas saluted on this 
 occasion, haunted him throughout his illness and on his 
 dying bed. At the Selkirk election it was Sir Walter's 
 duty as Sheriff to preside, and his family therefore made 
 no attempt to dissuade him from his attendance. There 
 he was so well known and loved, that in sj)ite of his Tory 
 views, he was not insulted, and the only man who made 
 liny attempt to hustle the Tory electors, was seized by Sir 
 Walter with his own hand, as he got out of his carriage, 
 and committed to prison without resistance till the election 
 day was over. 
 
 A seton which had been ordered for his head, gave him 
 some relief, and of course the first result was that he 
 turned immediately to his novel-writing again, and began 
 Castle Dangerous in July, 1831,— the last Jidy but one 
 which he was to see at all. He even made a little 
 journey in company with Mr. Lockharfc, in order to see 
 the scene of the story he wished to tell, and on liis return 
 set to work with all his old vigour to finish his talc, 
 and put the concluding touches to Count Robert of Paris. 
 But his temper was no longer what it had been. He 
 quarrelled with Ballantyne, partly for his depreciatory 
 criticism of Count Rolert of Paris, partly for his growing 
 tendency to a mystic and strait-laced sort of dissent and 
 his increasing Liberalism. Even Mr. Laidlaw and Scott's 
 children had much to bear. But he struggled on even to 
 the end, and did not consent to try the experiment of a 
 
XV.] SCOTT IN ADVERSITY. 161 
 
 voyage and visit to Italy till his immediate work was done. 
 Well might Lord Chief Earon Shepherd apply to Scott 
 Cicero's description of some contemporary of his own, who 
 **had borne adversity wisely, who had not been broken by 
 fortune, and who, amidst the buffets of fate, had main- 
 tained his dignity." There was in Sir Walter, I think, 
 at least as much of the Stoic as the Christian. But 
 Stoic or Christian, he was a hero of the old, indomitable 
 typo. Even the last fragments of his imaginative power 
 were all turned to account by that unconquerable will, 
 amidst the discouragement of friends, and the still moro 
 disheartening doubts of his own mind. Like the head- 
 land stemming a rough sea, he was gradually worn away, 
 but never crushed. 
 
162 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE LAST YEAR. 
 
 In the month of September, 1831, the disease of the 
 brain which had long been in existence must have made 
 a considerable step in advance. For the first time the 
 illusion seemed to possess Sir Walter that he had paid 
 off all the debt for which he was liable, and that he was 
 once more free to give as his generosity prompted. Scott 
 sent Mr. Lockhart 50Z. to save his grandchildren some 
 slight inconvenience, and told another of liis corre- 
 spondents that he had " put his decayed fortune into as 
 good a condition as he could desire." It was well, there- 
 fore, that he had at last consented to try the effect of 
 travel on his health, — not that he could hope to arrest 
 by it such a disease as his, but that it diverted him from 
 the most painful of all efforts, that of trying anew the 
 spell which had at last failed him, and perceiving in the 
 disappointed eyes of his old admirers that the magic of 
 his imagination was a thing of the past. The last day 
 of real enjoyment at Abbotsford — for when Sir Walter 
 returned to it to die, it was but to catch once more the 
 outlines of its walls, the rustle of its woods, and the 
 gleam of its waters, through senses abeady darkened to 
 all less familiar and less fascinating visions — was the 
 22nd September, 1831. On the 21st, Wordsworth had 
 
XVI.] THE LAST YEAR. 163 
 
 come to Lid liis old friend adieu, and on the 22nd — tlic last 
 day at home— tbcy spent the morning together in a visit 
 to Newark. It was a day to deepen alike in Scott and 
 in Wordsworth whatever of sympathy either of them had 
 with the very different genius of the other, and that it 
 had this result in Wordsworth's case, we know from the 
 very beautifid. poem, — *' Yarrow Eevisited," — and the son- 
 net which the occasion also produced. And even Scott, 
 who was so little of a Wordsworthian, A\ho enjoyed 
 Johnson's stately but formal verse, and Crabbe's vivid 
 Dutch painting, more than he enjoyed the poetry of the 
 transcendental school, must have recurred that day with 
 more than usual emotion to his favourite Wordsworthian 
 poem. Soon after his wife's death, he had remarked in 
 his diary how finely " the effect of grief upon persons who 
 like myself are highly susceptible of humour " had been 
 " touched by Wordsworth in the character of the merry 
 village teacher, Matthew, whom Jeffrey profanely calls 
 a half-crazy, sentimental person." ^ And long before this 
 time, duruig the brightest period of his life, Scott had 
 made the old Antiquary of his novel quote the same 
 poem of Wordsworth's, in a passage where the period of 
 life at which he had now arrived is anticipated with 
 singular pathos and force. " It is at such moments as 
 these," says Mr. Oldbuck, "that we feel the changes of 
 time. The same objects are before us — those inanimate 
 things which we have gazed on in wayward infancy and 
 impetuous youth, in anxious and scheming manhood — they 
 are permanent and the same; but when Ave look upon 
 them in cold, unfeeling old age, can we, changed in our 
 temper, our pursuits, our feelings, — changed in our form, 
 our limbs, and our strength, — can we be ourselves called the 
 
 * Lockhart's Life of Scott, ix. C3. 
 
164 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [cHAt. 
 
 same] or do we not rather look "back with a sort uf wonder 
 upon our former selves as beings separate and distinct from 
 what we now are 1 The philosopher who appealed from 
 Philip inflamed with wine to Philip in his hours of 
 sobriety, did not claim a judge so different as if he had 
 appealed from Philip in his youth to Philip in his old 
 age. I cannot but be touched with the feeling so beauti- 
 fully expressed in a poem whicli I have heard repeated: — 
 
 ' My eyes are dim with cLildisli tears, 
 
 My heart is idly stirr'd, 
 For the same sound is in my ears 
 
 Which in those days I heard. 
 Thus fares it still in our decay, 
 
 And yet the wiser mind 
 Mourns less for what ago takes away 
 
 Than what it leaves behind.' " ' 
 
 Sir AValter's memory, Avliich, in spite of the slight 
 failure of brain and the mild illusions to Avhich, on the 
 subject of his own prospects, he was now liable, had as yet 
 been little impaired — indeed, he could still quote whole 
 pages frgm all his favourite authors — must have recurred 
 to those favourite Wordsworthian lines of his Avith sin- 
 gular force, as, with Wordsworth for his companion, ho 
 gazed on the refuge of the last Minstrel of his imagination 
 for the last time, and felt in himself how much of joy in 
 the sight, age had taken away, and how much, too, of 
 tlie habit of expecting it, it had unfortunately left behind. 
 Whether Sir Walter recalled this poem of Wordsworth's on 
 this occasion or not — and if he recalled it, his delight in 
 giving pleasure would assuredly have led him to let Words- 
 worth know that he recalled it — tlie mood it paints was 
 unquestionably that in which his last day at Abbotsfurd 
 
 * The Antiquary, chap. x. 
 
x/i.] THE LAST TEAR. 165 
 
 was passed. In the evening, referring to the journey 
 ^ylncll was to tegin tlie next day, he remarked tliat 
 Fielding and Smollett had been driven abroad by declin- 
 ing health, and that they had never returned ; while 
 Wordsworth — willing perhaps to bring out a brighter 
 feature in the present picture — regretted that the last days 
 of those two great novelists had not been surrounded by 
 due marks of respect. "With Sir "Walter, as he well knew, 
 it was different. The Liberal Government that he had so 
 bitterly opposed were pressing on him signs of the honour 
 in which he was held, and a ship of his Majesty's navy 
 liad been placed at his disposal to take him to the 
 Mediterranean. And Wordsworth himself added his 
 own more durable token of reverence. As long as English 
 poetry lives, Englishmen will know something of that 
 last day of the last ^Minstrel at XeAvark : — 
 
 " Gi'ave thoughts ruled wide on that sweet day, 
 
 TLeir dignity installing 
 In gentle bosoms, while sere leaves 
 
 Were on the bough or falling ; 
 But breezes play'd, and sunshine gleam'd 
 
 The forest to embolden, 
 Redden'd the fiery lines, and shot 
 
 Transjiarence through the golden. 
 " For busy thoughts the stream flow'd on 
 
 In foamy agitation ; 
 And slept in many a crystal pool 
 
 For quiet contemplation : 
 No public and no private cai-e 
 
 The free-born mind enthralling, 
 We made a day of happy hours, 
 
 Our happy days recalling. 
 
 * ii: :k * 
 
 "And if, as Yarrow through the woods 
 And down the meadow ranging, 
 Did meet us with unalter'd face, 
 
 Though we were changed and changing; 
 
166 SIR WALTER SCOTT. ["chap. 
 
 If then some natural shadow spread 
 
 Our inward prospect over, 
 The soul's deep valley was not slow 
 
 Its brightness to recover. 
 
 " Eternal blessings on the Muso 
 And her divine employment, 
 The blameless Muso who trains her sons 
 
 For hope and calm enjoymcntj 
 Albeit sickness lingering yet 
 
 Has o'er their pillow brooded, 
 And care waylays their steps — a sprite 
 
 Not easily eluded. 
 ***** 
 
 " Nor deem that localized Romance 
 
 Plays false with our affections ; 
 Unsanctifics our tears — made sport 
 
 For fanciful dejections : 
 Ah, no ! the visions of the past 
 
 Sustain the heart in feeling 
 Life as she is — our changeful Lifo 
 
 With friends and kindred dealing. 
 
 " Bear witness ye, whose thoughts that day 
 
 In Yarrow's groves were centred. 
 Who through the silent portal arch 
 
 Of mouldering Newark enter'd ; 
 And clomb the winding stair that once 
 
 Too timidly was mounted 
 By the last Minstrel — not the last ! — 
 
 Ere he his tale recounted."' 
 
 Thus did the meditative poetry, the day of which was 
 not yet, do honour to itself in doing homage to the 
 Minstrel of romantic energy and martial enterprise, who, 
 with the school of poetry he loved, was passing away. 
 
 On the 23rd September Scott left Ahbotsford, spend- 
 ing five daj^s on his journey to London ; nor would ho 
 allow any of the old objects of interest to he passed with- 
 
xvi.] THE LAST YEAR. lf)7 
 
 out getting out of tlio carriage to see them. He did not 
 leave London for Portsmouth till the 23rd October, but 
 spent the intervening time in London, where he took me- 
 dical advice, and with his old shrewdness wheeled his chair 
 into a dark corner during the physicians' absence from the 
 room to consult, that he might read their faces clearly on 
 their return without their being able to read his. They 
 recognizer] traces of brain disease, but Sir "Walter was 
 relieved by their comparatively f;^vourable opinion, for he 
 admitted that he had feared insanity, and therefore had 
 " feared them." On the 29th October he sailed for Malta, 
 and on the 20th November Sir Walter insisted on being 
 landed on a small volcanic island which had appeared four 
 months previously, and which disappeared again in a few 
 days, and on clambering about its crumbling lava, in spite 
 of sinking at nearly every step almost iip to his knees, in 
 order that he might send a description of it to his old 
 friend Mr. Skene. On the 22nd !N'ovember he reached 
 ]\[alta, where he looked eagerly at the antiquities of the 
 place, for he still hoped to write a novel — and, indeed, 
 actually wrote one at IS'aples, which was never published, 
 called TJie Siege of Malta — on the subject of the Knights 
 of Malta, who had interested him so much in his youth. 
 From Malta Scott went to Naples, which he reached 
 on tlie 17th December, and where he found much 
 pleasure in the society of Sir William Gell, an invalid 
 like himself, but not one who, like himself, struggled 
 against the admission of his infirmities, and refused 
 to be carried when his own legs would not safely carry 
 liim. Sir William Gell's dog delighted the old man ; ho 
 would pat it and call it "Poor boy!" and confide to 
 Sir AVilliam how he had at home " two very fine favourite 
 dogs, so large that I am always afraid they lool: too largo 
 
168 Sm WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 and too feudal for my diminished income." In all liis 
 letters home he gave some injunction to Mr. Laidlaw 
 ahout the poor people and the dogs. 
 
 On the 22nd of March, 1832, Goethe died, an event 
 which made a great impression on Scott, who had intended 
 to visit AVeimar on his way back, on purpose to see 
 Goethe, and this much increased his eager desire to 
 return home. Accordingly on the IGth of April, the last 
 day on which he made any entry in his diary, he 
 quitted Naples for Eome, Avhere he stayed long enough 
 only to let his daughter see something of the place, and 
 hurried off homewards on the 21st of May. In Venice 
 he was still strong enough to insist on scrambling down 
 into the dungeons adjoining the Bridge of Sighs ; and at 
 Frankfort he entered a bookseller's shop, Avlien the man 
 brought out a lithograph of Abbotsford, and Scott remark- 
 ing, "I know that already, sir," left the shop unrecog- 
 nized, more than ever craving for home. . At Nimegucn, 
 on the 9th of June, while in a steamboat on the Rhine, 
 he had his most serious attack of apoplexy, but would not 
 discontinue his journey, was lifted into an English steam- 
 boat at Rotterdam on the lllh of June, and arrived in 
 London on the 13th. There he recognized his children, 
 and appeared to expect immediate death, as he gave them 
 repeatedly his most solemn blessing, but for the most part 
 he lay at the St. James's Hotel, in Jermyn Street, without 
 any power to converse. There it was that AUan Cun- 
 ningham, on walking home one night, found a group of 
 working men at the corner of the street, who stopped him 
 and asked, " as if there was but one death-bed in London, 
 *Do you know, sir, if this is the street where he is 
 ying 1 ' " According to the usual irony of destiny, it was 
 while the working men were doing him this hearty and 
 
XVI.] THE LAST YEAR. 169 
 
 unconscious homage, that Sir Walter, whenever disturbed 
 by the noises of tlie street, imagined himself at the polling- 
 booth of Jedburgh, where the people had cried out, " Burk 
 Sir Walter." And it was while lying here, — only now 
 and then uttering a few words, — that Mr. Lockliart says 
 of him, " He expressed his will as determinedly as ever, 
 and expressed it with the same apt and good-natured 
 irony that he was wont to use." 
 
 Sir Walter's great and urgent desire was to return to 
 Abbotsford, and at last his physicians yielded. On the 
 7th July he was lifted into his carriage, followed by his 
 trembling and weeping daughters, and so taken to a 
 steamboat, where the captain gave up his private cabin — 
 a cabin on deck — for his use. He remained unconscious 
 of any change till after his arrival in Edinburgh, when, 
 on the 1 1 th July, he was placed again in his carriage, and 
 remained in it quite unconscious during the first two 
 stages of the journey to Tweedside. But as the carriage 
 entered the valley of the Gala, he began to look about him. 
 Presently he murmured a name or two, " Gala water, 
 surely, — Buckholm, — Torwoodlee." When the outline 
 of the Eildon hills came in view, Scott's excitement Avas 
 great, and when his eye caught the towers of Abbotsford, 
 he sprang up with a cry of delight, and while the towers 
 remained in sight it took his physician, his son-in-law, 
 and his servant, to keep him in the carriage. Mr. Laidlaw 
 was waiting for him, and he met him with a cry, " Ha ! 
 AVillie Laidlaw ! 0, man, how often I have thought of 
 you !" His dogs came round his chair and began to fawn 
 on him and lick his hands, while Sir Walter smiled or 
 sobbed over them. The next morning he was wheeled 
 about his garden, and on the following morning was out 
 in this way for a couple of hours ; within a day or two he 
 8* 
 
170 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 fancied that lie could write again, but on taking the pen into 
 his hand, his fingers could not clasp it, and he sank back 
 with tears rolling down his cheek. Later, when Laid- 
 law said in his hearing that Sir Walter had had a little 
 repose, he replied, " ISTo, Willie; no repose for Sir Walter 
 but in the grave." As the tears rushed from his eyes, his 
 old pride revived. " Friends," he said, " don't let me ex- 
 pose myself — get me to bed, — that is the only place." 
 
 After this Sir Walter never left his room. Occasionally 
 he dropped off into delirium, and the old painful memory, — 
 that cry of " Burk Sir Walter," — might be again heard 
 on his lips. He lingered, however, till the 21st Sep- 
 tember, — more than two months from the day of his 
 reaching home, and a year from the day of Wordsworth's 
 arrival at Abbotsford before his departure for the INIe- 
 diterranean, with only one clear interval of conscious- 
 ness, on Monday, the 17th September. On that day Mr. 
 Lockhart was called to Sir Walter's bedside with the news 
 that he had awakened in a state of composure and con- 
 sciousness, and wished to see him. " ' Lockhart,' he said, 
 ' I may have but a minute to speak to you. My dear, 
 be a good man, — be virtuous, — be religious, — be a good 
 man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you 
 come to lie here.' He paused, and I said, * Shall I send 
 for Sophia and Annel' *I^o,' said he, 'don't disturb 
 them. Poor souls ! I know they were up all night. 
 Goii bless you all ! ' " With this he sank into a very 
 tranqud sleep, and, indeed, he scarcely afterwards gave 
 any sign of consciousness except for an instant on tlio 
 arrival of his sons. And so four days afterwards, on tho 
 day of the autumnal equinox in 1832, at half -past one iu 
 the afternoon, on a glorious autumn day, with every 
 window wide open, and the ripple of the Tweed over its 
 
XVI.] THE LAST YEAR. 171 
 
 pebbles distinctly audible in bis room, lie passed away, 
 and " bis eldest son kissed and closed bis eyes." He died 
 a montb after completing bis sixty-first year. Nearly 
 seven years earlier, on tbe 7tb December, 1825, be bad 
 in bis diary taken a survey of bis own bealtb in relation 
 to tbe age reacbed by bis fatber and otber members of bis 
 family, and bad stated as tbe result of bis considerations, 
 "Square tbe odds and goodnigbt. Sir Walter, about sixty. 
 I care not if I leave my name unstained and my family 
 property settled. Sat est vixisse" Tbus be lived just a 
 year — but a year of gradual death — beyond bis own 
 calculation. 
 
17a SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 CHAPTEE XVII. 
 
 THE END OF THE STRUGGLE. 
 
 Sir "Walter certainly left his "name unstained," unless 
 the serious mistakes natural to a sanguine temperament 
 such as his, are to be counted as stains upon his name ; 
 and if they are, where among the sons of men woukl 
 you find many unstained names as noLle as his witli 
 such a stain upon it? lie was not only sensitively 
 honourahle in motive, hut, when he found what evil his 
 sanguine temper had worked, he used his gigantic powers 
 to repair it, as Samson used his great strength to repair 
 the mischief he had inadvertently done to Israel. But Avith 
 all his exertions he had not, when death came upon him, 
 cleared off much more than half his obligations. There 
 was stiU 54,O00Z. to pay. Lut of this, 22,000Z. was 
 secured in an insurance on his life, and there were besides 
 a thousand pounds or two in the hands of the trustees, 
 which had not been applied to the extinction of the debt. 
 Mr. Cadell, his publisher, accordingly advanced the 
 remaining 30,000/. on the security of Sir Walter's copy- 
 rights, and on the 21st February, 1833, the general 
 creditors were paid in full, and Mr. Cadell remained the 
 only creditor of the estate. In February, 1847, Sir 
 Walter's son, the second baronet, died childless ; and in 
 May, 1847, j\lr. Cadell gave a discharge in full of all 
 
XVII ] THE END OF THE STRUGGLE. 173 
 
 claims, including tlio bond for 10,000Z. executed by Sir 
 "Walter during the struggles of Constable and Co. to 
 I)revent a failure, on the transfer to him of all the copy- 
 rights of Sir Walter, including " the results of some 
 literary exertions of the sole surviving executor," which 
 I conjecture to ineau the copyright of the admirable 
 biography of Sir AValter Scott in ten volumes, to which I 
 have made such a host of references — probably the most 
 perfect specimen of a biography rich in great materials, 
 which our language contains. And thus, nearly fifteen 
 years after Sir Walter's death, the debt Avhich, within six 
 years, he had more than half discharged, was at last, 
 through the value of the copyrights he had left behind 
 him, finally extinguished, and the small estate of Abbots- 
 ford left cleared. 
 
 Sir Walter's effort to found a new house was even less 
 successful than the effort to endow it. His eldest sou 
 died cliildlcss. In 1839 he went to Madras, as Lieutenant- 
 Colonel of the 15th Hussars, and subsequently com- 
 manded that regiment. He was as much beloved by the 
 officers of his regiment as his father had been by his own 
 friends, and was in every sense an accomplished soldier, 
 and one whose greatest anxiety it was to promote the welfare 
 of the privates as well as of the officers of his regiment. 
 He took great pains in founding a library for the soldiers 
 of his corps, and his only legacy out of his own family 
 was one of lOOZ. to this library. The cause of his death 
 was his having exposed himself raslily to the sun in a 
 tiger-hunt, in August, 184G ; he never recovered from the 
 fever which was the immediate consequence. Ordered 
 home for his health, he died near the Cape of Good Hope, 
 on the 8th of February, 1847. His brother Charles died 
 before him. He was rising rapidly in the diplomatic 
 
174 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 service, and was taken to Persia by Sir John MacNeill, on 
 a diplomatic mission, as attache and private secretary. 
 I3ut the climate struck him down, and he died at Teheran, 
 almost immediately on his arrival, on the 28th October, 
 1841. Both the sisters had died previously. Anne 
 Scott, the younger of the two, whose health had suffered 
 greatly during the prolonged anxiety of her father's illness, 
 died on the Midsummer-day of the year following her 
 father's death ; and Sophia, Mrs. Lockhart, died on the 
 17th May, 1837. Sir Walter's eldest grandchild, John 
 Hugh Lockhart, for whom the Tales of a Grandfather 
 were written, died before his grandfather ; indeed Sir 
 Walter heard of the child's death at ]!^aples. The second 
 son, Walter Scott Lockhart Scott, a lieutenant in the 
 army, died at Versailles, on the 10th January, 1853. 
 Charlotte Harriet Jane Lockhart, who was married in 
 1847 to James Robert Hope-Scott, and succeeded to the 
 Abbotsford estate, died at Edinburgh, on the 2Gth 
 October, 1858, leaving three children, of whom only one 
 survives. Walter Michael and Margaret Anne Hope- 
 Scott both died in infancy. The only direct descendant, 
 therefore, of Sir Walter Scott, is now Mary Monica Hope- 
 Scott who was born on the 2nd October, 1852, the 
 grandchild of IMrs. Lockhart, and the great-grandchild of 
 the founder of Abbotsford. 
 
 There is something cf irony in such a result of the 
 Herculean labours of Scott to found and endow a new 
 branch of the clan of Scott. When fifteen years after his 
 death the estate was at length freed from debt, aU his own 
 children and the eldest of his grandchildren were dead ; 
 and now forty-six years have elapsed, and there only re- 
 mains one girl of his descendants to borrow his name and 
 live in the halls of which he was so proud. And yet this, 
 
XTii.] TnE END OF THE STRUGGLE. 175 
 
 and this only, was wanting to give something of the gran- 
 deur of tragedy to the end of Scott's great enterprise. He 
 valued his works little compared with the house and 
 lands which they were to be the means of gaining for his 
 descendants ; yet every end for which he struggled so 
 gallantly is all but lost, while his works have gained more 
 of added lustre from the losing battle which he fought so 
 long, than they could ever have gained from his success. 
 ( "What there was in him of true grandeur could never 
 have been seen, had the fifth act of his life been less 
 tragic than it Avas. Generous, large-hearted, and mag- 
 nanimous as Scott was, there was something in the days 
 of his prosperity that fell short of Avhat men need for their 
 highest ideal of a strong man. Unbroken success, un- 
 rivalled popularity, imaginative effort flowing almost as 
 steadily as the current of a stream, — these are charac- 
 teristics, which, even when enhanced as they were in his 
 case, by the power to defy physical pain, and to live in 
 his imaginative world when his body was writhing in 
 torture, fail to touch the heroic point. And there was 
 nothing in Scott, while he remained prosperous, to relieve 
 adequately the glare of triumphant prosperity. His 
 religious and moral feeling, though strong and sound, was 
 purely regulative, and not always even, regulative, where 
 his inward principle was not reflected in the opinions of 
 the society in which b^ lived. The finer spiritual ele- 
 ment in Scott was relatively deficient, and so the 
 strength of the natural man was almost too equal, com- 
 plete, and glaring. Something that should " tame 
 the glaring white " of that broad sunshine, was needed ; 
 and in the years of reverse, when one gift after 
 another was taken away, till at length what he called 
 even his "inagi; wand" was broken, and the old man 
 
176 SIR WALTER SCOTT. [chap. 
 
 struggled on to the last, without bitterness, Avithout 
 defiance, without murmuring, hut not without such sud- 
 den flashes of suhduing sweetness as melted away the 
 auger of the teacher of his childhood, — that something 
 seemed to be supplied. Till calamity came, Scott ap- 
 peared to be a nearly complete natural man, and no 
 more. Then first was perceived in liim something above 
 nature, something Avhich could endure though every 
 end in life for which he had fought so boldly should 
 be defeated, — something which could endure and more 
 than endure, which could shoot a soft transparence of 
 its own through his years of darkness and decay. That 
 there was nothing very elevated in Scott's personal or 
 moral, or political or literary ends, — that he never for a 
 moment thought of liinisolf as one who was bound to 
 leave the earth better than he found it, — that he never 
 seems to liave so much as contemplated a social or political 
 reform for which he ought to contend, — that he lived to 
 some extent like a child blowing soap-bubbles, the brightest 
 and most gorgeous of which — the Abbotsford bubble — 
 vanished before his eyes, is not a take-off from the 
 charm of his career, but adds to it the very speciality of 
 its fascination. For it was his entire unconsciousness of 
 moral or spiritual efforts, the simple straightforward way 
 in which he laboured for ends of the most ordinary kind, 
 which made it clear how much greater the man was than 
 his ends, how great was the mind and cliaracter which 
 prosperity failed to display, but which became visible at 
 once so soon as the storm came down and the night fell. 
 Few men who battle avowedly for the right, battle for it 
 with the calm fortitude, the cheerful equanimity, with 
 which Scott battled to fulfil his engagements and to save 
 his family from ruin. He stood high amongst those — 
 
XVII.] THE END OF THE STRUGGLE. 177 
 
 " Wbo ever with a frolic welcome took 
 The tbunder and the sunshine, and oj^posccl 
 Free hearts, free foreheads," 
 
 among those who have been able to display — 
 
 " One equal temper of heroic hearts 
 Made weak by time and fate, hut strong in will, 
 To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." 
 
 And it was because the man was so much greater than the 
 ends for which he strove, that there is a sort of grandeur 
 in the tragic fate which denied them to him, and yet 
 exhibited to all the world the infinite superiority of tlie 
 striver himself to the toy he was thus passionately craving. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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