To read Scott is to read Scotland. Of no other modern author can it so
freely be said that he gave to literature a whole country, its scenery, its
people, its history and traditions, its ideals of faith and courage and
loyalty.
That is a large achievement, but that is not all. It was Scott, more than
any other author, who brought poetry and romance home to ordinary readers;
and with romance came pleasure, wholesome and refreshing as a drink from a
living spring. When he began to write, the novel was in a sad
state,--sentimental, sensational, fantastic, devoted to what Charles Lamb
described as wildly improbable events and to characters that belong neither
to this world nor to any other conceivable one. When his work was done, the
novel had been raised to its present position as the most powerful literary
influence that bears upon the human mind. Among novelists, therefore, Scott
deserves his title of "the first of the modern race of giants."
Life
To his family, descendants of the old Borderers, Scott owed
that intensely patriotic quality which glows in all his work. He is
said to have borne strong resemblance to his grandfather, "Old
Bardie Scott," an unbending clansman who vowed never to cut his
beard till a Stuart prince came back to the throne. The clansmen
were now citizens of the Empire, but their loyalty to hereditary
chiefs is reflected in Scott's reverence for everything pertaining
to rank or royalty.
First Impressions
He was born (1771) in Edinburgh, but his early associations were
all of the open country. Some illness had left him lame of foot,
and with the hope of a cure he was sent to relatives at Sandy
Knowe. There in the heart of the Border he spent his days on the
hills with the shepherds, listening to Scottish legends. At bedtime
his grandmother told him tales of the clans; and when he could read
for himself he learned by heart Percy's Reliques of Ancient
Poetry. So the scenes which he loved because of their wild
beauty became sacred because of their historical association. Even
in that early day his heart had framed the sentiment which found
expression in his Lay of the Last Minstrel:
Breathes there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said:
This is my own, my native land?
Work and Play
At school, and at college at Edinburgh, the boy's heart was never
in his books, unless perchance they contained something of the
tradition of Scotland. After college he worked in his father's law
office, became an advocate, and for twenty years followed the law.
His vacations were spent "making raids," as he said, into the
Highlands, adding to his enormous store of old tales and ballads. A
companion on one of these trips gives us a picture of the man:
"Eh me, sic an endless fund o' humour and drollery as he
had wi' him! Never ten yards but we were either laughing or
roaring and singing. Whenever 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."
This boyish delight in roaming, in new scenes, in new people met
frankly under the open sky, is characteristic of Scott's poems and
novels, which never move freely until they are out of doors. The
vigor of these works may be partially accounted for by the fact
that Scott was a hard worker and a hearty player,--a capital
combination.
His Poems
He was past thirty when he began to write. [Footnote: This refers
to original composition. In 1796 Scott published some translations
of German romantic ballads, and in 1802 his Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border. The latter was a collection of old ballads, to
some of which Scott gave a more modern form.] By that time he had
been appointed Clerk of Sessions, and also Sheriff of Selkirkshire
(he took that hangman's job, and kept it even after he had won
fame, just for the money there was in it); and these offices,
together with his wife's dowry, provided a comfortable income. When
his first poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), met
with immense success he gladly gave up the law, and wrote
Marmion (1808) and The Lady of the Lake (1810). These
increased his good fortune; but his later poems were of inferior
quality, and met with a cool reception. Meanwhile Byron had
appeared to dazzle the reading public. Scott recognized the greater
poetic genius of the author of Childe Harold, and sought
another field where he was safe from all rivals.
First Romances
Rummaging in a cabinet one day after some fishing tackle, he found
a manuscript long neglected and forgotten. Instead of going fishing
Scott read his manuscript, was fascinated by it, and presently
began to write in headlong fashion. In three weeks he added
sixty-five chapters to his old romance, and published it as
Waverley (1814) without signing his name. Then he went away
on another "raid" to the Highlands. When he returned, at the end of
the summer, he learned that his book had made a tremendous
sensation, and that Fame, hat in hand, had been waiting at his door
for some weeks.
In the next ten years Scott won his name of "the Wizard of the
North," for it seemed that only magic could produce stories of such
quality in such numbers: Guy Mannering, Rob Roy,
Old Mortality, Redgauntlet, Heart of
Midlothian, portraying the deathless romance of Scotland; and
Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, The Talisman and other
novels which changed dull history to a drama of fascinating
characters. Not only England but the Continent hailed this
magnificent work with delight. Money and fame poured in upon the
author. Fortune appeared for once "with both hands full." Then the
crash came.
To understand the calamity one must remember that Scott regarded
literature not as an art but as a profitable business; that he
aimed to be not a great writer but a lord of high degree. He had
been made a baronet, and was childishly proud of the title; his
work and his vast earnings were devoted to the dream of a feudal
house which should endure through the centuries and look back to
Sir Walter as its noble founder. While living modestly on his
income at Ashestiel he had used the earnings of his poems to buy a
rough farm at Clarty Hole, on the Tweed, and had changed its
unromantic name to Abbotsford. More land was rapidly added and
"improved" to make a lordly estate; then came the building of a
castle, where Scott entertained lavishly, as lavishly as any laird
or chieftain of the olden time, offering to all visitors "the
honors of Scotland."
Enormous sums were spent on this bubble, and still more money was
needed. To increase his income Scott went into secret partnership
with his publishers, indulged in speculative ventures, ran the firm
upon the shoals, drew large sums in advance of his earnings.
Suddenly came a business panic; the publishing firm failed
miserably, and at fifty five Scott, having too much honest pride to
take advantage of the bankruptcy laws, found himself facing a debt
of more than a hundred thousand pounds.
His Last Years
His last years were spent in an heroic struggle to retrieve his
lost fortunes. He wrote more novels, but without much zest or
inspiration; he undertook other works, such as the voluminous
Life of Napoleon, for which he was hardly fitted, but which
brought him money in large measure. In four years he had repaid the
greater part of his debt, but mind and body were breaking under the
strain. When the end came, in 1832, he had literally worked himself
to death. The murmur of the Tweed over its shallows, music that he
had loved since childhood, was the last earthly sound of which he
was conscious. The house of Abbotsford, for which he had planned
and toiled, went into strange hands, and the noble family which he
had hoped to found died out within a few years. Only his work
remains, and that endures the wear of time and the tooth of
criticism.
The Poems of Scott
Three good poems of Scott are Marmion, The
Lay of the Last Minstrel and The Lady of the Lake; three others,
not so good, are Rokeby, Vision of Don Roderick and Lord
of the Isles. Among these The Lady of the Lake is such a
favorite that, if one were to question the tourists who annually visit the
Trossachs, a surprisingly large number of them would probably confess that
they were led not so much by love of natural beauty as by desire to visit
"Fair Ellen's Isle" and other scenes which Scott has immortalized in verse.
We may as well admit frankly that even the best of these poems is not
first-class; that it shows careless workmanship, and is lacking in the
finer elements of beauty and imagination. But Scott did not aim to create a
work of beauty; his purpose was to tell a good story, and in that he
succeeded. His Lady of the Lake, for example, has at least two
virtues: it holds the reader's attention; and it fulfills the first law of
poetry, which is to give pleasure.
Quality of the Poems
Another charm of the poems, for young readers especially, is that they are
simple, vigorous, easily understood. Their rapid action and flying verse
show hardly a trace of conscious effort. Reading them is like sweeping
downstream with a good current, no labor required save for steering, and
attention free for what awaits us around the next bend. When the bend is
passed, Scott has always something new and interesting: charming scenery,
heroic adventure, picturesque incidents (such as the flight of the Fiery
Cross to summon the clans), interesting fragments of folklore, and
occasionally a ballad like "Lochinvar," or a song like "Bonnie Dundee,"
which stays with us as a happy memory long after the poem is forgotten.
A secondary reason for the success of these poems was that they satisfied a
fashion, very popular in Scott's day, which we have not yet outgrown. That
fashion was to attribute chivalrous virtues to outlaws and other merry men,
who in their own day and generation were imprisoned or hanged, and who
deserved their fate. Robin Hood's gang, for example, or the Raiders of the
Border, were in fact a tough lot of thieves and cutthroats; but when they
appeared in romantic literature they must of course appeal to ladies; so
Scott made them fine, dashing, manly fellows, sacrificing to the fashion of
the hour the truth of history and humanity. As Andrew Lang says:
"In their own days the Border Riders were regarded as public
nuisances by statesmen, who attempted to educate them by means of
the gibbet. But now they were the delight of fine ladies,
contending who should be most extravagant in encomium. A blessing
on such fine ladies, who know what is good when they see it!"
[Footnote: Quoted in Nicoll and Seccombe, A History of English
Literature, Vol. Ill, p. 957.]
Scott's Novels
To appreciate the value of Scott's work one should read
some of the novels that were fashionable in his day,--silly, sentimental
novels, portraying the "sensibilities" of imaginary ladies. [Footnote: In
America, Cooper's first romance, Precaution (1820), was of this
artificial type. After Scott's outdoor romances appeared, Cooper discovered
his talent, and wrote The Spy and the Leather-Stocking tales. Maria
Edgeworth and Jane Austen began to improve or naturalize the English novel
before Scott attempted it.] That Scott was influenced by this inane fashion
appears plainly in some of his characters, his fine ladies especially, who
pose and sentimentalize till we are mortally weary of them; but this
influence passed when he discovered his real power, which was to portray
men and women in vigorous action. Waverley, Rob Roy,
Ivanhoe, Redgauntlet,--such stories of brave adventure were
like the winds of the North, bringing to novel-readers the tang of the sea
and the earth and the heather. They braced their readers for life, made
them feel their kinship with nature and humanity. Incidentally, they
announced that two new types of fiction, the outdoor romance and the
historical novel, had appeared with power to influence the work of Cooper,
Thackeray, Dickens and a host of minor novelists.
Groups of Stories
The most convenient way of dealing with Scott's works is to arrange
them in three groups. In the first are the novels of Scotland:
Waverley, dealing with the loyalty of the clans to the
Pretender; Old Mortality, with the faith and struggles of
the Covenanters; Redgauntlet, with the plots of the
Jacobites; The Abbot and The Monastery, with the
traditions concerning Mary Queen of Scots; Guy Mannering, The
Antiquary and The Heart of Midlothian, with private life
and humble Scottish characters.
In the second group are the novels which reveal the romance of
English history: Ivanhoe, dealing with Saxon and Norman in
the stormy days when Richard Lionheart returned to his kingdom;
Kenilworth, with the intrigues of Elizabeth's Court; The
Fortunes of Nigel, with London life in the days of Charles
First; Woodstock, with Cromwell's iron age; Peveril of
the Peak, with the conflict between Puritan and Cavalier during
the Restoration period.
In the third group are the novels which take us to foreign lands:
Quentin Durward, showing us the French court as dominated by
the cunning of Louis Eleventh, and The Talisman, dealing
with the Third Crusade.
In the above list we have named not all but only the best of
Scott's novels. They differ superficially, in scenes or incidents;
they are all alike in motive, which is to tell a tale of adventure
that shall be true to human nature, no matter what liberties it may
take with the facts of history.
Quality of the Novels
In all these novels the faults are almost as numerous as the virtues; but
while the faults appear small, having little influence on the final result,
the virtues are big, manly, wholesome,--such virtues as only the greatest
writers of fiction possess. Probably all Scott's faults spring from one
fundamental weakness: he never had a high ideal of his own art. He wrote to
make money, and was inclined to regard his day's labor as "so much
scribbling." Hence his style is frequently slovenly, lacking vigor and
concentration; his characters talk too much, apparently to fill space; he
caters to the romantic fashion (and at the same time indulges his Tory
prejudice) by enlarging on the somewhat imaginary virtues of knights,
nobles, feudal or royal institutions, and so presents a one-sided view of
history.
On the other hand, Scott strove to be true to the great movements of
history, and to the moral forces which, in the end, prevail in all human
activity. His sympathies were broad; he mingled in comradeship with all
classes of society, saw the best in each; and from his observation and
sympathy came an enormous number of characters, high or low, good or bad,
grave or ridiculous, but nearly all natural and human, because drawn from
life and experience.
Scene and Incident
Another of Scott's literary virtues is his love of wild nature, which led
him to depict many grand or gloomy scenes, partly for their own sake, but
largely because they formed a fitting background for human action. Thus,
The Talisman opens with a pen picture of a solitary Crusader moving
across a sun-scorched desert towards a distant island of green. Every line
in that description points to action, to the rush of a horseman from the
oasis, to the fierce trial of arms before the enemies speak truce and drink
together from the same spring. Many another of Scott's descriptions of wild
nature is followed by some gallant adventure, which we enjoy the more
because we imagine that adventures ought to occur (though they seldom do)
amid romantic surroundings.
What to Read
At least one novel in each group should be read; but if it be
asked, Which one? the answer is as much a matter of taste as of judgment.
Of the novels dealing with Scottish life, Waverley, which was
Scott's first attempt, is still an excellent measure of his story-telling
genius; but there is more adventurous interest in Old Mortality or
Rob Roy; and in The Heart of Midlothian (regarded by many as
the finest of Scott's works) one feels closer to nature and human nature,
and especially to the heart of Scotland. Ivanhoe is perhaps the best
of the romances of English history; and of stories dealing with adventure
in strange lands, The Talisman will probably appeal strongest to
young readers, and Quentin Durward to their elders. To these may be
added The Antiquary, which is a good story, and which has an element
of personal interest in that it gives us glimpses of Scott himself,
surrounded by old armor, old legends, old costumes,--mute testimonies to
the dreams and deeds of yesterday's men and women.
Such novels should be read once for the story, as Scott intended; and then,
if one should grow weary of modern-problem novels, they may be read again
for their wholesome, bracing atmosphere, for their tenderness and wisdom,
for their wide horizons, for their joy of climbing to heights where we look
out upon a glorious Present, and a yet more glorious Past that is not dead
but living.
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