SCOTT'S CRITICISM OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES
Scott's freedom from literary jealousy—His disapproval of the typical reviewer's attitude—Jeffrey, Gifford, and Lockhart—His own practice in regard to reviewing—His informal critical remarks—Opportunity for favorable judgments afforded by the number of important writers in his period.
Poets—Burns—Coleridge—Relation of Christabel to Scott's work—Scott's dislike for extreme Romanticism—Wordsworth—Southey—Scott's review of Kehama—Byron—Scott's opinion of Byron's character—Campbell—Moore—Allan Cunningham—Hogg—Crabbe—Joanna Baillie—Matthew Lewis—Scott's judgment on his early taste for poetry—Absence of comment on the work of Lamb, Landor, Hunt, Hazlitt, and DeQuincey.
Novelists—Jane Austen—Maria Edgeworth—Cooper—Personal relations between Scott and Cooper—Scott's verdict on Americans in general—Washington Irving—Goethe—Fouqué—Scott's interest in men of action.
To study Scott's relations with contemporary writers is a very pleasant task because nothing shows better the greatness of his heart. His admirable freedom from literary jealousy was an innate virtue which he deliberately increased by cultivation, taking care, also, never to subject himself to the conditions which he thought accounted for the faults of Pope, who had "neither the business nor the idleness of life to divide his mind from his Parnassian pursuits."[231] "Those who have not his genius may be so far compensated by avoiding his foibles," Scott said; and some years later he wrote,—"When I first saw that a literary profession was to be my fate, I endeavoured by all efforts of stoicism to divest myself of that irritable degree of sensibility—or, to speak plainly, of vanity—which makes the poetical race miserable and ridiculous."[232] The record of his life clearly shows that his kindness towards other men of letters was not limited to words. One who received his good offices has written,—"The sternest words I ever heard him utter were concerning a certain poet: 'That man,' he said, 'has had much in his power, but he never befriended rising genius yet.'"[233] We may safely say that Scott enjoyed liking the work of other men. "I am most delighted with praise from those who convince me of their good taste by admiring the genius of my contemporaries,"[234] he once wrote to Southey.
It is commonly supposed that Scott's amiability led him into absurd excesses of praise for the works of his fellow-craftsmen, and indeed he did say some very surprising things. But when all his references to any one man are brought together, they will be found, with a few exceptions, pretty fairly to characterize the writer. His obiter dicta must be read in the light of one another, and in the light, also, of his known principles. Temperamentally modest about his own work, he was also habitually optimistic, and the combination gave him an utterly different quality from that of the typical Edinburgh or Quarterly critics.
His disapproval of their point of view he expressed more than once.[235] It seemed to him futile and ungentlemanly for the anonymous reviewer to seek primarily for faults, or "to wound any person's feelings ... unless where conceit or false doctrine strongly calls for reprobation."[236] "Where praise can be conscientiously mingled in a larger proportion than blame," he said, "there is always some amusement in throwing together our ideas upon the works of our fellow-labourers." He thought, indeed, that vituperative and satiric criticism was defeating its own end, in the case of the Edinburgh Review since it was overworked to the point of monotony. Such criticism he considered futile as well on this account as because he thought it likely to have an injurious effect on the work of really gifted writers.
An admirer of both Jeffrey and Scott, who once heard a conversation between the two men, has recorded a distinction which is exactly what we should expect.[237] He says: "Jeffrey, for the most part, entertained us, when books were under discussion, with the detection of faults, blunders, absurdities, or plagiarisms: Scott took up the matter where he left it, recalled some compensating beauty or excellence for which no credit had been allowed, and by the recitation, perhaps, of one fine stanza, set the poor victim on his legs again."
On Jeffrey Scott's verdict was, "There is something in his mode of reasoning that leads me greatly to doubt whether, notwithstanding the vivacity of his imagination, he really has any feeling of poetical genius, or whether he has worn it all off by perpetually sharpening his wit on the grindstone of criticism."[238] His comment on Gifford's reviews was to the effect that people were more moved to dislike the critic for his savagery than the guilty victim whom he flagellated.[239] In the early days of Blackwood's Magazine Scott often tried to repress Lockhart's "wicked wit,"[240] and when Lockhart became editor of the Quarterly his father-in-law did not always approve of his work. "Don't like his article on Sheridan's life,"[241] says the Journal. "There is no breadth in it, no general views, the whole flung away in smart but party criticism. Now, no man can take more general and liberal views of literature than J.G.L."[242]
With these opinions, Scott was not likely often to undertake the reviewing of books that did not, in one way or another interest him or move his admiration; and he would lay as much stress as possible on their good points. Gifford told him that "fun and feeling" were his forte.[243] In his early days he was probably somewhat influenced by Jeffrey's method, and his articles on Todd's Spenser and Godwin's Life of Chaucer indicate that he could occasionally adopt something of the tone of the Edinburgh Review. Years afterwards he refused to write an article that Lockhart wanted for the Quarterly, saying, "I cannot write anything about the author unless I know it can hurt no one alive"[244] but for the first volume of the Quarterly he reviewed Sir John Carr's Caledonian Sketches in a way that Sharon Turner seriously objected to, because it made Sir John seem ridiculous.[245] Some of Scott's critics would perhaps apply one of the strictures to himself: "Although Sir John quotes Horace, he has yet to learn that a wise man should not admire too easily; for he frequently falls into a state of wonderment at what appears to us neither very new nor very extraordinary."[246] But if admiration seems to characterize too great a proportion of Scott's critical work, it is because he usually preferred to ignore such books as demanded the sarcastic treatment which he reprehended, but which he felt perfectly capable of applying when he wished. Speaking of a fulsome biography he once said, "I can no more sympathize with a mere eulogist than I can with a ranting hero upon the stage; and it unfortunately happens that some of our disrespect is apt, rather unjustly, to be transferred to the subject of the panegyric in the one case, and to poor Cato in the other."[247]
Besides Scott's formal reviews, we find cited as evidence of his extreme amiability his letters, his journal, and the remarks he made to friends in moments of enthusiasm. These do indeed contain some sweeping statements, but in almost every case one can see some reason, other than the desire to be obliging, why he made them. He was not double-faced. One of the nearest approaches to it seems to have been in the case of Miss Seward's poetry, for which he wrote such an introduction as hardly prepares the reader for the remark he made to Miss Baillie, that most of it was "absolutely execrable." His comment in the edition of the poems—the publication of which Miss Seward really forced upon him as a dying request—is sedulously kind, and in Waverley he quotes from her a couple of lines which he calls "beautiful." But the essay is most carefully guarded, and throughout it the editor implies that the woman was more admirable than the poetry. Personally, indeed, he seems to have liked and admired her.[248]
The catalogue of Scott's contemporaries is so full of important names that his genius for the enjoyment of other men's work had a wide opportunity to display itself without becoming absurd. An argument early used to prove that Scott was the author of Waverley was the frequency of quotation in the novels from all living poets except Scott himself, and he felt constrained to throw in a reference or two to his own poetry in order to weaken the force of the evidence.[249] The reader is irresistibly reminded of the following description, given by Lockhart in a letter to his wife, of a morning walk taken by Wordsworth and Scott in company: "The Unknown was continually quoting Wordsworth's Poetry and Wordsworth ditto, but the great Laker never uttered one syllable by which it might have been intimated to a stranger that your Papa had ever written a line either of verse or prose since he was born."[250]
Scott's opinions in regard to his fellow craftsmen may best be given largely in his own words—words which cannot fail to be interesting, however little evidence they show of any attempt to make them quotable.
In considering Scott's estimation of his contemporaries it is chronologically proper to mention Burns first. As a boy of fifteen Scott met Burns, an event which filled him with the suitable amount of awe. He was most favorably impressed with the poet's appearance and with everything in his manner. The boy thought, however, that "Burns' acquaintance with English poetry was rather limited, and also, that having twenty times the abilities of Allan Ramsay and of Ferguson, he talked of them with too much humility as his models."[251] Scott's admiration of Burns was always expressed in the highest and, if one may say so, the most affectionate terms. He refused to let himself be named "in the same day" with Burns.[252] "Long life to thy fame and peace to thy soul, Rob Burns!" he exclaimed, in his Journal; "when I want to express a sentiment which I feel strongly, I find the phrase in Shakespeare—or thee."[253] On another day he compared Burns with Shakspere as excelling all other poets in "the power of exciting the most varied and discordant emotions with such rapid transitions."[254] Again, "The Jolly Beggars, for humorous description and nice discrimination of character, is inferior to no poem of the same length in the whole range of English poetry."[255] Scott wished that Burns might have carried out his plan of dramatic composition, and regretted, from that point of view, the excessive labor at songs which in the nature of things could not all be masterpieces.[256]
Of writers who were more precisely contemporaries of Scott, the Lake Poets and Byron are the most important. The precedence ought to be given to Coleridge because of the suggestion Scott caught from a chance recitation of Christabel for the meter he made so popular in the Lay.[257] Fragments from Christabel are quoted or alluded to so often in the novels[258] and throughout Scott's work that we should conclude it had made a greater impression upon him than any other single poem written in his own time, if Lockhart had not spoken of Wordsworth's sonnet on Neidpath Castle as one which Scott was perhaps fondest of quoting.[259] Christabel is not the only one of Coleridge's poems which Scott used for allusion or reference, but it was the favorite. "He is naturally a grand poet," Scott once wrote to a friend. "His verses on Love, I think, are among the most beautiful in the English language. Let me know if you have seen them, as I have a copy of them as they stood in their original form, which was afterwards altered for the worse."[260] The Ancient Mariner also made a decided impression on him, if we judge from the fact that he quoted from it several times.[261] Scott evidently felt that Coleridge was a most tantalizing poet, and once intimated that future generations would in regard to him feel something like Milton's desire "to call up him who left half told the story of Cambuscan bold."[262] "No man has all the resources of poetry in such profusion, but he cannot manage them so as to bring out anything of his own on a large scale at all worthy of his genius.... His fancy and diction would have long ago placed him above all his contemporaries, had they been under the direction of a sound judgment and a steady will."[263] Such, in effect, was the opinion that Scott always expressed concerning Coleridge, and it is practically that of posterity. In The Monastery Coleridge is called "the most imaginative of our modern bards." In another connection, after speaking of the "exquisite powers of poetry he has suffered to remain uncultivated," Scott adds, "Let us be thankful for what we have received, however. The unfashioned ore, drawn from so rich a mine, is worth all to which art can add its highest decorations, when drawn from less abundant sources."[264] These remarks are worth quoting, not only because of their wisdom, but also because Scott had small personal acquaintance with Coleridge and was rather repelled than attracted by what he knew of the character of the author of Christabel. His praises cannot in this case be called the tribute of friendship, and his own remarkable power of self-control might have made him a stern judge of Coleridge's shortcomings.
One of his most interesting comments on Coleridge is contained in a discussion of Byron's Darkness, a poem which to his mind recalled "the wild, unbridled, and fiery imagination of Coleridge."[265] Darkness is characterized as a mass of images and ideas, unarranged, and the critic goes on to warn the author against indulging in this sort of poetry. He says: "The feeling of reverence which we entertain for that which is difficult of comprehension, gives way to weariness whenever we begin to suspect that it cannot be distinctly comprehended by anyone.... The strength of poetical conception and beauty of diction bestowed upon such prolusions [sic], is as much thrown away as the colors of a painter, could he take a cloud of mist or a wreath of smoke for his canvas." It is disappointing that we have no comment from Scott upon Shelley's poetry, but we can imagine what is would have been.[266] Scott's position as the great popularizer of the Romantic movement in poetry makes particularly interesting his very evident though not often expressed repugnance to the more extreme development of that movement.
Wordsworth's peculiar theory of poetry seemed to Scott superfluous and unnecessary, though he was never, so far as we can judge, especially irritated by it.[267] Of Wordsworth and Southey he wrote to Miss Seward: "Were it not for the unfortunate idea of forming a new school of poetry, these men are calculated to give it a new impulse; but I think they sometimes lose their energy in trying to find not a better but a different path from what has been travelled by their predecessors."[268] Scott paid tribute in the introduction to The Antiquary to as much of Wordsworth's poetical creed as he could acquiesce in when he said, "The lower orders are less restrained by the habit of suppressing their feelings, and ... I agree with my friend Wordsworth that they seldom fail to express them in the strongest and most powerful language." In a letter to Southey Scott calls Wordsworth "a great master of the passions,"[269] and in his Journal he said: His imagination "is naturally exquisite, and highly cultivated by constant exercise."[270] At another time he compared Wordsworth and Southey as scholars and commented on the "freshness, vivacity, and spring" of Wordsworth's mind.[271]
The personal relations between Scott and Wordsworth were, as Wordsworth's tribute in Yarrow Revisited would indicate, those of affectionate intimacy. And if Scott took exception to Wordsworth's choice of subjects and manner, Wordsworth used the same freedom in disagreeing with Scott's poetical ideals. "Thank you," he wrote in 1808, "for Marmion, which I have read with lively pleasure. I think your end has been attained. That it is not in every respect the end which I should wish you to purpose to yourself, you will be well aware, from what you know of my notions of composition, both as to matter and manner."[272] When, in 1821, Chantrey was about to exhibit together his busts of the two poets, Scott wrote: "I am happy my effigy is to go with that of Wordsworth, for (differing from him in very many points of taste) I do not know a man more to be venerated for uprightness of heart and loftiness of genius. Why he will sometimes choose to crawl upon all fours, when God has given him so noble a countenance to lift to heaven, I am as little able to account for as for his quarrelling (as you tell me) with the wrinkles which time and meditation have stamped his brow withal."[273]
These remarks upon Wordsworth and Coleridge touch merely the fringe of the subject, and indeed we do not find that Scott exercised any such sublimated ingenuity in appreciating these men as has often been considered essential. We can see that he admired certain parts of their work intensely, but we look in vain for any real analysis of their quality. But as he never had occasion to write essays upon their poetry, it is perhaps hardly fair to expect anything more than the general remarks that we actually do find, and as far as they go they are satisfactory.
Like most of his distinguished contemporaries, Scott held the work of Southey in surprisingly high estimation.[274] Southey, more than anyone else except Wordsworth, and more than Wordsworth in some ways, was the "real poet" of the period, devoting his whole heart to literature and his whole time to literary pursuits. Scott commented on the fact, saying, "Southey's ideas are all poetical," and, "In this respect, as well as in many others, he is a most striking and interesting character."[275] Nevertheless Scott found it easy to criticise Southey's poems adversely, as we may see from his correspondence. Writing to Miss Seward he pointed out flaws in the story and the characterization of Madoc,[276] yet after repeated readings he saw enough to convince him that Madoc would in the future "assume his real place at the feet of Milton."[277] Thalaba was one of the poems he liked to have read aloud on Sunday evenings.[278] A review of The Curse of Kehama, in which he seemed to express the opinion that this surpassed the poet's previous work, illustrates his professed creed as to criticism. He wrote to Ellis concerning his article: "What I could I did, which was to throw as much weight as possible upon the beautiful passages, of which there are many, and to slur over the absurdities, of which there are not a few.... This said Kehama affords cruel openings for the quizzers, and I suppose will get it roundly in the Edinburgh Review. I could have made a very different hand of it, indeed, had the order of the day been pour déchirer."[279] If Scott had to make an effort in writing the review, he made it with abundant energy. Some absurdities are indeed mentioned, but various particular passages are characterized in the most enthusiastic way, with such phrases as "horribly sublime," "impressive and affecting," "reminds us of the Satan of Milton, yet stands the comparison," "all the gloomy power of Dante." It may be noted that Scott used Milton's name rather freely in comparisons, and that for Dante his admiration was altogether unimpassioned,[280] but the review, after all, is on the whole very laudatory.[281] In it Scott awards to Southey the palm for a surpassing share of imagination, which he elsewhere gave to Coleridge. Possibly Scott was the less inclined to be severe over the absurdities of Kehama because Southey agreed with his own theory as to the evil of fastidious corrections.[282] At any rate he seems to have been quite sincere in saying to Southey, in connection with the poet-laureateship which, according to Scott's suggestion, was offered to him in 1813, "I am not such an ass as not to know that you are my better in poetry, though I have had, probably but for a time, the tide of popularity in my favour."[283]
Much as Scott admired Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, he considered Byron the great poetical genius of the period. He once spoke of Byron as the only poet of transcendent talents that England had had since Dryden.[284] At another time his comment was: "He wrote from impulse, never from effort; and therefore I have always reckoned Burns and Byron the most genuine poetical geniuses of my time, and half a century before me. We have ... many men of high poetical talent, but none, I think, of that ever-gushing and perennial fountain of natural water."[285] The likenesses between Byron's poetical manner and Scott's own must have made it easy for the elder poet to recognize the power of the younger, since Scott was innocent of all repining or envy over the fact which he so freely acknowledged in later years, that Byron "beat" him out of the field.[286] From the time of the appearance of the first two cantos of Childe Harold he acknowledged the author's "extraordinary power,"[287] and even before that he had tried to soften Jeffrey's harsh treatment of Hours of Idleness.[288] In 1814 he was ready to say, "Byron hits the mark where I don't even pretend to fledge my arrow."[289]
It was Byron, rather than Scott, who realized the debt of the new popular favorite to the old; and their personal relations were of the pleasantest, though they were never intimate as Scott was with Southey and Wordsworth. As poets, Scott and Byron seem to have understood each other thoroughly.[290] None of the other great poets of the period did justice to Scott, nor did he succeed so well in defining the power of any of the others. His first review of Childe Harold is the most important of all his articles on the poetry of his time; and his remarks written at the death of Lord Byron, though brief, are not less full of good judgment. Originality, spontaneity, and the ability and inclination to write rapidly were traits Scott admired most in Byron, and in the vigor and beauty of the poems he found the fine flower of all these qualities. "We cannot but repeat our conviction," he says, "that poetry, being, in its higher classes, an art which has for its elements sublimity and unaffected beauty, is more liable than any other to suffer from the labour of polishing.... It must be remembered that we speak of the higher tones of composition; there are others of a subordinate character where extreme art and labour are not bestowed in vain. But we cannot consider over-anxious correction as likely to be employed with advantage upon poems like those of Lord Byron, which have for their object to rouse the imagination and awaken the passions."[291]
Byron's temperament was far from being of a sort that Scott could admire, though he was very susceptible to his personal charm: "Byron's countenance is a thing to dream of," he once said;[292] but he felt that popular estimation did Byron injustice. His articles on this poet contain some of his most characteristic moral reflections. Something of Byron's gloominess Scott attributes to the sensitive poetic organization which he felt that Byron had in an extreme degree; but more to the perverted habit of looking within rather than around upon the realities of life, in which Providence intended men to find their happiness. The philosophy is not novel or brilliant; it is only very sincere and very just; and it supplies to Scott's criticism of Byron that element of moral reflection which we feel was necessary to the occasion.[293]
But though Scott never failed to express disapproval of Byron's attitude toward life, he kept his criticism on this point essentially distinct from his judgment on the poetry. In a way it was impossible to separate the two subjects, and the public demanded some discussion of the man when his poetry was reviewed. But Scott's verdict on the importance of the poems as such was unaffected by his disapproval of the author's point of view. He praised Don Juan no less heartily than Childe Harold.
His criticism of Don Juan is, however, to be gathered only from short and incidental remarks, as he never reviewed the poem. A satire written by R.P. Gillies is commemorated thus in Scott's Journal: "This poem goes to the tune of Don Juan, but it is the champagne after it has stood two days with the cork drawn."[294] He called Byron "as various in composition as Shakspeare himself"; and added, "this will be admitted by all who are acquainted with his Don Juan.... Neither Childe Harold, nor any of the most beautiful of Byron's earlier tales, contain more exquisite morsels of poetry than are to be found scattered through the cantos of Don Juan."[295] The defence of Cain which Scott wrote in accepting the dedication of that poem to himself is well known.[296] He calls it a "very grand and tremendous drama," and continues, "Byron has certainly matched Milton on his own ground. Some part of the language is bold, and may shock one class of readers, whose tone will be adopted by others out of affectation or envy. But then they must condemn the Paradise Lost, if they have a mind to be consistent."
Scott's comments on Byron are closely paralleled by those of Goethe, who considered that Byron had the greatest talent of any man of his century.[297] The opinions of continental critics in general were similar. Among English critics Matthew Arnold aroused many protests when he ranked Byron as one of the two greatest English poets of the nineteenth century, but his views seem perfectly rational now; and though he remarked upon the extravagance of Scott's phrases his own verdict was not very unlike that we have been considering.
Scott's enthusiasm about the literature of his own time seems natural enough when we consider that the list of his notable contemporaries is far from exhausted after Burns, the Lake Poets, and Byron have been named. Campbell was a poet of whose powers he thought very highly, but who, he believed had given only a sample of the great things he might do if he would cease to "fear the shadow of his own reputation." Before he wrote about Byron Scott had given in his review of Gertrude of Wyoming an exposition of his opinion as to the dangers of extreme care in revision. "The truth is," he says, "that an author cannot work upon a beautiful poem beyond a certain point without doing it real and irreparable injury in more respects than one."[298] He felt that Campbell had worked, in many cases, beyond the "certain point." For the "impetuous lyric sally," like the Mariners of England and the Battle of the Baltic, Scott rightly thought that Campbell excelled all his contemporaries. Moore was another lyrist whose poetry Scott greatly admired. In Moore's case, as in Southey's, the contemporary estimate was higher than can now be maintained, but Moore is to-day underrated. From what Scott says about him we conclude that the man's personality and his way of singing added much to the exquisiteness of his songs. "He seems almost to think in music," Scott said, "the notes and words are so happily suited to each other";[299] and, "it would be a delightful addition to life if T.M. had a cottage within two miles of one."[300] Allan Cunningham was a young protege of Scott whose songs, "Its hame and it's hame," and "A wet sheet and a flowing sea," seemed to him "among the best going."[301] Another poet who received Scott's good offices was Hogg, whose relations with the greater man are described so vividly and at some points so amusingly by Lockhart. Scott called him a "wonderful creature for his opportunities."[302]
For the poet Crabbe, Scott, like Byron and Wordsworth,[303] had a steady and high admiration. In the Sunday evening readings that Lockhart describes as being so pleasant a feature of the life of the family in Edinburgh, Crabbe was perhaps the chief standing resource after Shakspere.[304] His work was particularly recommended to the young people of the family,[305] and when the venerable poet visited the Scotts in 1822, he was received as a man whom they always looked upon as nobly gifted. Scott once wrote of him: "I think if he had cultivated the sublime and the pathetic instead of the satirical cast of poetry, he must have stood very high (as indeed he does at any rate) on the list of British poets. His Sir Eustace Grey and The Hall of Justice indicate prodigious talent."[306] Scott did not like Crabbe's choice of subjects,[307] but he appreciated the "force and vigour" of a poet whom students of our own day are once more beginning to admire, after a period during which he was practically ignored.
Scott's very high estimation of Joanna Baillie has already been mentioned.[308] In this case as in many others he was proud and happy in the personal friendship of the writer whose works he admired. He once wrote to Miss Edgeworth: "I have always felt the value of having access to persons of talent and genius to be the best part of a literary man's prerogative."[309] Almost the earliest of the writers for whose friendship Scott felt grateful was Matthew Lewis, famed as the author of The Monk. Lewis was also something of a poet, and was really helpful to Scott in giving him advice on literary subjects. Though Scott perceived that Lewis's talents "would not stand much creaming"[310] he continued to regard him as one who had had high imagination and a "finer ear for rhythm than Byron's."
Scott felt that his own taste in respect to poetry became more rigorous as he grew older. In 1823 in a letter to Miss Baillie he commented on Mrs. Hemans as "somewhat too poetical for my taste—too many flowers, I mean, and too little fruit—but that may be the cynical criticism of an elderly gentleman; for it is certain that when I was young I read verses of every kind with infinitely more indulgence, because with more pleasure than I can now do—the more shame for me now to refuse the complaisance which I have had so often to solicit."[311] Similarly he speaks in the preface to Kenilworth of having once been delighted with the poems of Mickle and Langhorne: "There is a period in youth when the mere power of numbers has a more strong effect on ear and imagination than in after-life." With these comments we may put Lockhart's sagacious remark: "His propensity to think too well of other men's works sprung, of course, mainly from his modesty and good nature; but the brilliancy of his imagination greatly sustained the delusion. It unconsciously gave precision to the trembling outline, and life and warmth to the vapid colours before him."[312] This and his kindness would account for the latter half of the observation made by his publisher: "I like well Scott's ain bairns—but heaven preserve me from those of his fathering."[313]
I have found no reference to Landor, a poet whom Southey and Wordsworth read with eagerness, but Mr. Forster makes this statement in his Biography of Landor: "Among Landor's papers I found a list, prepared by himself, of resemblances to passages of his own writing to be found in Scott's Tales of the Crusaders. There were several from Gebir.... The poem had made a great impression on Scott, who read it at Southey's suggestion."[314] Forster also notes the fact that Southey, in a letter to Scott written in 1812, spoke very highly of Landor's Count Julian.[315] I am similarly unable to cite any comment by Scott on the writings of Lamb. Was it because Scott's genius clung to Scotland and Lamb's to London, that the two seemed so little to notice each other? It does seem odd that Scott never refers to the delightful Specimens of English Dramatic Poets. At one time Lamb wrote to Sir Walter asking a contribution toward a fund that was being raised to help William Godwin out of pecuniary troubles, and Scott replied, through the artist Haydon, with a cheque for ten pounds and a pleasant message to Mr. Lamb, "whom I should be happy to see in Scotland, though I have not forgotten his metropolitan preference of houses to rocks, and citizens to wild rustics and highland men."[316] Hazlitt and Hunt were two other writers whose literary work Scott ignored.[317] This, as well as his neglect of Lamb's and DeQuincey's essays, may be due largely to the fact that he seldom read newspapers and magazines, and these writers were journalists and contributors to periodicals. Voracious reader as Scott was, he had to economize time somewhere, and the hours saved from papers could be given to books. We do find one or two references to these men as political writers. Scott hoped Lockhart would learn, as editor of the Quarterly, to despise petty adversaries, for "to take notice of such men as Hazlitt and Hunt in the Quarterly would be to introduce them into a world which is scarce conscious of their existence."[318]
Among novelists, those of Scott's contemporaries to whom he gave the highest praise were women. This is, however to be expected, and it is natural to find Jane Austen receiving the highest praise of all; since Scott was emphatically not of the tribe of critics who are able to appreciate only one kind of novel or poem. Her novels seemed to grow upon him and he read them often. It was in connection with her "exquisite touch" that he was moved to reflect, in the words so often quoted from his Journal, "The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going."[319] Among the expressions of admiration which occur in his review of Emma,[320] Scott records a characteristic bit of protest in regard to the tendency of Miss Austen and other novelists to make prudence the guiding motive of all their favorite young women characters, especially in matters of the heart. He did not like this pushing out of Cupid to make way for so moderate a virtue as prudence; he thought that it is often good for young people to fall in love without regard to worldly considerations. Scott rated Miss Edgeworth nearly as high as Miss Austen, and hers is the added honor of having inspired the author of Waverley with a desire to emulate her power.[321] With these two novelists he associated Miss Ferrier, as well as the somewhat earlier writer, Fanny Burney.[322]
Aside from these women and Henry Mackenzie, perhaps the highest praise that Scott bestowed on any contemporary novelist was given to Cooper. Here, as in the case of Byron, Scott seemed to ignore the other writer's indebtedness to himself. He speaks, in the general preface to the Waverley Novels, of "that striking field in which Mr. Cooper has achieved so many triumphs"; and at another time calls him "the justly celebrated American novelist." In his Journal he comments on The Red Rover[323] and The Prairie;[324] The Pilot he recommends warmly in a letter to Miss Edgeworth.[325]
The personal relations between "the Scotch and American lions," as Scott called himself and Cooper, when they met in Parisian society in 1826,[326] had some interesting consequences. Cooper suggested to Scott that he try to secure for himself part of the profits arising from the publication of his works in America, by entering them as the property of some citizen.[327] They finally concluded to substitute for this plan one suggested by Scott, which involved the writing by the Author of Waverley, of a letter addressed to Cooper, to be transmitted by him to some American publisher who would undertake the publication of an authorized edition of which half the profits should go to the author. Future works were to be sent over to this publisher in advance of their appearance in England. The letter was really an appeal to the justice of the American people, and contained an allusion to the publication of Irving's works in England according to a plan very similar to that proposed by Scott. But the scheme failed here in America, and apparently the letter was not made public until Cooper, irritated by the appearance in Lockhart's Life of Scott of Sir Walter's comments on his personal manner,[328] explained the affair (except the reason for dropping the plan), and published the correspondence in the Knickerbocker Magazine for April, 1838.[329] Later in the same year Cooper wrote a severe review of the biography of Scott, attacking his character in a way that seems absurdly exaggerated.[330] Yet Charles Sumner seems to have thought that Cooper made his points, and Mr. Lounsbury is inclined to agree with him.[331]
One of the milder strictures in Cooper's review was as follows "As he was ambitious of, so was he careful to preserve, his personal popularity, of which we have a striking proof in the studied kindnesses that for years were laid before this country in deeds and words, as compared with his real acts and sentiments toward America and Americans which are now revealed in his letters." A passage which doubtless roused Cooper's ire may be quoted. Of the Americans Scott said, in a letter to Miss Edgeworth, "They are a people possessed of very considerable energy, quickened and brought into eager action by an honourable love of their country and pride in their institutions; but they are as yet rude in their ideas of social intercourse, and totally ignorant, speaking generally, of all the art of good breeding, which consists chiefly in a postponement of one's own petty wishes or comforts to those of others. By rude questions and observations, an absolute disrespect to other people's feelings, and a ready indulgence of their own, they make one feverish in their company, though perhaps you may be ashamed to confess the reason. But this will wear off and is already wearing away. Men, when they have once got benches, will soon fall into the use of cushions. They are advancing in the lists of our literature, and they will not be long deficient in the petite morale, especially as they have, like ourselves, the rage for travelling."[332]
Scott liked George Ticknor,[333] and he called Washington Irving "one of the best and pleasantest acquaintances I have made this many a day."[334] In later life he congratulated himself on having from the first foreseen Irving's success.[335] When we remember also that Scott quotes from Poor Richard,[336] refers to Cotton Mather's Magnalia,[337] and speaks of "the American Brown" as one whose novels might be reprinted in England,[338] we ought probably to conclude that his acquaintance with our literature was as comprehensive as could have been expected.
Among continental writers belonging to his period, Goethe was very properly the one for whom Scott had the strongest admiration. But we find comparatively few references to his reading the great German after the early period of translation. Throughout Lockhart's Life of Scott it is evident that the biographer had a more thorough acquaintance with Goethe than had Scott, and it seems probable that the younger man influenced the elder in his judgment on Faust and on Goethe's character. In the Introduction to Quentin Durward we find an interesting comment on Goethe's success in creating a really wicked Mephistopheles, who escapes the noble dignity that Milton and Byron gave to their pictures of Satan. Goethe and Scott exchanged letters once in 1827,[339] and it was a personal grief to Sir Walter that the German poet's death prevented a visit Scott proposed to make him in 1832. In Anne of Geierstein Goethe is called "an author born to arouse the slumbering fame of his country";[340] and in the Journal Scott characterizes him as "the Ariosto at once and almost the Voltaire of Germany."[341] The suggestion for the character of Fenella in Peveril of the Peak was taken from Goethe, as we learn by Scott's acknowledgment in the Introduction. Another German from whom Scott borrowed a suggestion—this time for the unlucky "White Lady of Avenel"—was the Baron de la Motte Fouqué. Scott was evidently interested in his work, though he thought Fouqué sometimes used such a profusion of historical and antiquarian lore that readers would find it difficult to follow the narrative.[342] Sir Walter asked his son to tell the Baroness de la Motte Fouqué that he had been much interested in her writings and those of the Baron, and added, "It will be civil, for folks like to know that they are known and respected beyond the limits of their own country."[343]
In the literary circles of Paris Scott more than once experienced the pleasure of finding himself "known and respected" by foreigners,[344] and he had intimate relations with men of letters in London. On one of his visits there he saw Byron almost every morning for some time, at the house of Murray the publisher. In Edinburgh society Scott was naturally a prominent figure, being noted for his fund of anecdote and his superior gifts in presiding at dinners. But however much his kindly personal feeling is reflected in his comments on the literary work of his friends, he was too well-balanced to assume anything of the patronizing tone that such success as his might have made natural to another sort of man. His fellow-poets thought him a delightful person whom they liked so much that they could almost forgive the preposterous success of his facile and unimportant poetry.
His full-blooded enjoyment of life and literature tempered without obscuring his critical instinct, and though he was "willing to be pleased by those who were desirous to give pleasure",[345] he noted the weak points of men to whose power he gladly paid tribute. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and Byron, whom he classed as the great English poets of his time, may, with the exception of Southey, be given the places he assigned to them. In regard to Byron, Scott expressed a critical estimate that the public is only now getting ready to accept after a long period of depreciating Byron's genius. The men whose work Scott judged fairly and sympathetically represent widely different types. With some of them he was connected by the new impulse that they were imparting to English poetry, but he was so close to the transition period that he could look backward to his predecessors with no sense of strangeness. He was never inclined to quarrel with the "erroneous system" of a poem which he really liked. His comments on Byron's Darkness suggest that if he had read more than he did of Shelley and others among his younger contemporaries he might have found much to reprehend, but he held that "we must not limit poetical merit to the class of composition which exactly suits one's own particular taste."[346] Among novelists even less than among poets can we trace a "school" to which he paid special allegiance. He read and enjoyed all sorts of good stories, growing in this respect more catholic in his tastes, though perhaps more severe in his standards, as he grew older.
In speaking of Scott's relations with his contemporaries, we must especially remember his ardent interest in those realities of life which he considered greater than the greatest books. In one of his reviews he laid stress on the merit of writing on contemporary events,[347] and he seemed to think there was too little of such celebration. There are many evidences of his great admiration for those of his contemporaries who were men of action, but it is sufficient to remember that the only man in whose presence Scott felt abashed was the Duke of Wellington, for he counted that famous commander the greatest man of his time.