'Ivanhoe' marks the high-tide of Scott's literary success. The book instantly caught the attention of thousands to whom the Scottish romances had not appealed. It sold better than its predecessors, and from the day of its publication has been easily the most popular of the Waverley Novels. Lockhart, who, in common with most Scotchmen, could not help preferring the tales of his native land and thought 'Waverley,' 'Guy Mannering,' and 'The Heart of Midlothian' superior as 'works of genius,' nevertheless gave 'Ivanhoe' the first place among all Scott's writings, whether in prose or verse, as a 'work of art.' Its historical value is perhaps greater than that of any of the others, and certainly no other author has ever given a picture, so graphic and yet so comprehensible, of 'merrie England' in the days of chivalry.
[[1]] Part iii, act iv, scene v.
[[2]] See Chapter xxi, 'The Pirate,' p. 300.
[[3]] From an article by Grata van Rensselaer, in the Century Magazine, September, 1882.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MONASTERY
Scott had some strange ways of seeking relaxation from the strain of his work. On Christmas Day, 1814, he wrote Constable that he was 'setting out for Abbotsford to refresh the machine.' During the year he had written his first great novel, 'Waverley'; one of his longer poems, 'The Lord of the Isles'; nearly the whole of his 'Life of Swift'; two essays for an encyclopædia; a two-volume family memoir for a friend; and kept up a voluminous personal correspondence,—an amount of industry which is best described by Dominie Sampson's word, prodigious. Surely the 'machine' needed 'refreshment,' and it consisted in producing, in six weeks' time, another great novel, 'Guy Mannering'! In the same way, while dictating 'Ivanhoe,' in spite of severe bodily pain which prevented the use of his pen, he sought refreshment by starting another novel, 'The Monastery.' 'It was a relief,' he said, 'to interlay the scenery most familiar to me with the strange world for which I had to draw so much on imagination.'
'The Monastery' was the first of Scott's novels in which the scenery is confined to the immediate vicinity of his own home. It is all within walking distance of Abbotsford and much of it had been familiar to the author from childhood. Melrose, or Kennaquhair, is only about two miles away. This little village is as ancient as the abbey from which it takes its name, and that splendid ruin dates from 1136, when the pious Scottish king, known as St. David, founded the monastery and granted extensive lands to the Cistercian Order of Monks for its maintenance. The village has followed the fortunes of the abbey—prospering when the monks prospered, and suffering the blight of war whenever the English kings descended upon it. Its present prosperity, so far as it has any, is the gift of Sir Walter Scott. Hawthorne, who rambled through the country in 1856, noted in his journal that 'Scotland—cold, cloudy, barren little bit of earth that it is—owes all the interest that the world feels in it to him.' I cannot endorse this view of Scotland, for it left quite the opposite impression upon my mind, but the last part of the remark is certainly true of Melrose. It bears about the same relation to Scotland that Stratford does to England. Thousands go there every year to see the work of art, glorious even in ruins, which represents the highest development of the Gothic architecture and to marvel at the rich carvings in stone which, after the lapse of nearly six hundred years, still remain as a monument to the patience, skill, and devotion of the monks of St. Mary's. But they go because the great Wizard of the North has thrown the glamour of his genius over the whole of the Border country, of which Melrose is the natural centre. And when they arrive, they find the abbey interpreted in the words of 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel,' which the custodians of the ruin, for fourscore years, have never tired of quoting.
In the novel, no attempt is made to describe the beauty of the ruin. The poem had already done that to perfection. But the monks spring into life again, the venerable ruin is transformed into a church, the monastic buildings resume their former shape, and the palace of their ruler is refurnished in all its original magnificence. A fire of glowing logs gives warmth to the apartments. An oaken stand, with a roasted capon and 'a goodly stoup of Bourdeaux of excellent flavour,' suggests the truth of the old rhyme:—