[[1]] CROSS-SECTION OF THE BROCH OF MOUSA.
a, a. Rooms in Circular Wall, connected by a rude spiral stair.
b, b. Windows opening into inner court.
[[2]] The diary, containing a full account of the visit of 1814, in a lighthouse yacht, to the Shetland and Orkney Islands, the Hebrides, and the northern coasts of Scotland and Ireland, is printed in full in Lockhart's Life of Scott.
CHAPTER XXII
THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL
Hitherto our exploration of the Scott country had revealed a never-ending succession of ruined castles, palaces, and abbeys; of picturesque rivers, lakes, cataracts, and quiet pools; of seashores where thunderous waves dashed against precipitous cliffs; of quaint villages and queer-looking dwelling-houses; of weird caverns and strange monuments suggesting the superstitions and fantasies of bygone ages; of pleasant meadows, wild moors, rounded hilltops, and rugged mountains; of a thousand tangible objects of interest which had in some way suggested to Sir Walter the theme for a poem or story. But when we reached Scott's London, the camera, which had faithfully recorded all the other scenes, refused to perform its function. The tangibleness of the subjects had ceased. My lenses have excellent physical eyes but no historical insight. They insist upon seeing things as they are and will not record them as they once existed. The London of Nigel Olifaunt has completely disappeared and in its place a new London has arisen. To photograph the city of to-day as the scenes of Nigel's adventures, would be like painting the 'Purchase of Manhattan Island from the Indians' with a background of fifty-story 'sky-scrapers.' From such a task my faithful camera shrank, and I was obliged to lay it aside, to turn over, for several days, the pages of some huge piles of books on Old London in the British Museum.
Lockhart, who places 'The Fortunes of Nigel' in the first class of Scott's romances, says that his historical portrait of King James I 'stands forth preëminent and almost alone.' This, indeed, is the whole object of the book,—to picture the London of King James and the personal peculiarities of that monarch. Scott was thoroughly saturated—so to speak—with the history and literature of that period, and especially with the dramas of Ben Jonson and his contemporaries; and this enabled him to picture the manners of the time almost as if they were within his personal recollection.
It is an amusing portrait of a pompous, strutting, and absurd monarch who yet possessed enough learning, as well as ready wit, to gain the title of 'the wisest fool in Christendom.' Through his famous tutor at Stirling Castle, George Buchanan, who freely boxed the royal ears and administered spankings the same as to other boys, the King had early acquired a certain taste for learning. He evinced a fondness for the classics and yearned to become a poet. He wrote in verse a paraphrase of the Revelation of St. John and a version of the Psalms, besides prose disquisitions on every conceivable subject. His conversation, as described by Scott, was a curious compound of Latin, Greek, English, and the broad Scotch dialect. His tastes, as well as character, were suggested by the appearance of a table in the palace, which, says the novelist, 'was loaded with huge folios, amongst which lay light books of jest and ribaldry; and, amongst notes of unmercifully long orations, and essays on kingcraft, were mingled miserable roundels and ballads by the Royal 'Prentice, as he styled himself, in the art of poetry, and schemes for the general pacification of Europe, with a list of the names of the King's hounds, and remedies against canine madness.'
A man of medium height and somewhat corpulent, James managed to make his figure seem absurdly fat and clumsy, by having his green velvet dress quilted, so as to be dagger-proof, for he was both timid and cowardly. The ungainly protuberance thus artificially acquired was accentuated by a pair of weak legs, which caused him to roll about rather than walk, and to lean on other men's shoulders when standing. 'He was fond of his dignity while he was perpetually degrading it by undue familiarity; capable of much public labour, yet often neglecting it for the meanest amusement; a wit, though a pedant; and a scholar, though fond of the conversation of the ignorant and uneducated.'