But a few words must be added in reference to the complaint which is often openly made, and which, I understand, is still more often secretly entertained, or taken for proved, by the younger generation—to wit, the complaint that Scott is 'commonplace' and 'conventional,' not merely in thought, but in expression. As to the thought, that is best met by the reply churlish, if not even by the reproof valiant. Scott's thought is never commonplace, and never merely conventional: it can only seem so to those who have given their own judgments in bondage to a conventional and temporary cant of unconventionality. In respect of expression, the complaint will admit of some argument which may best take the form of example. It is perfectly true that Scott's expression is not 'quintessenced'—that it has to a hasty eye an air of lacking what is called distinction; and, especially, that it has no very definite savour of any particular time. At present, as at other periods during the recorded story of literature, there is a marked preference for all these things which it is not; and so Scott is, with certain persons, in disfavour accordingly. But it so happens that the study of this now long record of literature is itself sufficient to convince anyone how treacherous the tests thus suggested are. There never, for instance, was an English writer fuller of all the marks which these, our younger critics, desiderate in Scott, and admire in some authors of our own day, than John Lyly, the author of Euphues, of a large handful of very charming and interesting court dramas, and of some delightful lyrics. Those who have to teach literature impress the importance, and try to impress the interest, of Lyly on students and readers, and they do right. For he was a man not merely of talent, but (with respect to my friend Mr. Courthope, who thinks differently), I think, of genius. He had a poetical fancy, a keen and biting wit, a fairly exact proficiency in the scholarship of his time. He eschewed the obvious, the commonplace in thought, and still more in style, as passionately as any man ever has eschewed it, and, having not merely will and delicacy, but power, he not only achieved an immense temporary popularity, but even influenced the English language permanently. Yet—and those who thus praise him know it—he, the apostle of ornate prose, the model of a whole generation of the greatest wits that England has seen, the master of Shakespeare in more things than one, including romantic comedy, the originator of the English analytic novel, the 'raiser' (as I think they call it) 'of his native language to a higher power,' is dead. We shall never get anybody outside the necessarily small number of those who have cultivated the historic as well as the æsthetic sense in literature, to read him except as a curiosity or a task, because he not merely cultivated art, but neglected nature for it; because he fooled the time to the top of its bent, and let the time fool him in return; because, instead of making the common as though it were not common, he aimed and strained at the uncommon in and per se.
Scott did just the contrary. He never tried to be unlike somebody else; if he hit, as he did hit, upon great new styles of literature,—absolutely new in the case of the historical novel, revived after long trance in the case of the verse tale,—it was from no desire to innovate, but because his genius called him. Though in ordinary ways he was very much a man of his time, he did not contort himself in any fashion by way of expressing a (then) modern spirit, a Georgian idiosyncrasy, or anything of that sort; he was content with the language of the best writers and the thoughts of the best men. He was no amateur of the topsy-turvy, and had not the very slightest desire to show how a literary head could grow beneath the shoulders. He was satisfied that his genius should flow naturally. And the consequence is that it was never checked, that it flows still for us with all its spontaneous charm, and that it will flow in omne volubilis ævum. Among many instances of the strength which accompanied this absence of strain one already alluded to may be mentioned again. Scott is one of the most literary of all writers. He was saturated with reading; nothing could happen but it brought some felicitous quotation, some quaint parallel to his mind from the great wits, or the small, of old. Yet no writer is less bookish than he; none insults his readers less with any parade, with any apparent consciousness of erudition; and he wears his learning so lightly that pedants have even accused him of lacking it because he lacks pedantry. His stream, to resume the simile, carries in solution more reading as well as more wit, more knowledge of life and nature, more gifts of almost all kinds than would suffice for twenty men of letters, yet the very power of its solvent force, as well as the vigour of its current, makes these things comparatively invisible.
In dealing with an author so voluminous and so various in his kinds and subjects of composition, it is a hard matter to say what has to be said within prescribed limits such as these, just as it is still harder to select from so copious a store of biographical information details which may be sufficient, and not more than sufficient, to give a firm and distinct picture of his life. Yet it may perhaps be questioned whether very elaborate handling is necessary for Scott. No man probably, certainly no man of letters, is more of a piece than he. As he has been subjected to an almost unparalleled trial in the revelation of his private thoughts, so his literary powers and performances extend over a range which is unusual, if not absolutely singular, in men of letters of the first rank. Yet he is the same throughout, in romance as in review, in novel as in note-writing. Except his dramatic work, a department for which he seems to have been almost totally unfitted (despite the felicity of his 'Old Play' fragments), nothing of his can be neglected by those who wish to enjoy him to the full. Yet though there is no monotony, there is a uniformity which is all the more delightfully brought out by the minor variations of subject and kind. The last as the first word about Scott should perhaps be, 'Read him. And, as far as may be, read all of him.'
When, in comparatively early days of his acquaintance with Lockhart, Scott, thinking himself near death in the paroxysms of his cramps, bequeathed to his future son-in-law, in the words of the ballad, 'the vanguard of the three,' the duty of burying him and continuing his work, if possible, he had himself limited the heritage to the defence of ancient faith and loyalty—a great one enough. But his is, in fact, a greater. From generation to generation, whosoever determines, in so far as fate and the gods allow, to hold these things fast, and, moreover, to love all good literature, to temper erudition with common sense, to let humour wait always upon fancy, and duty upon romance; whosoever at least tries to be true to the past, to show a bold front to the present, and to let the future be as it may; whosoever 'spurns the vulgar' while endeavouring to be just to individuals, and faces 'the Secret' with neither bravado nor cringing,—he may take, if not the vanguard, yet a place according to his worth and merit, in the legion which this great captain led. Of the frequent parallels or contrasts drawn between him and Shakespeare it is not the least noteworthy that he is, of all men of letters, that one of whom we have the most intimate and the fullest revelation, while of Shakespeare we have the least. There need be very little doubt that if we knew everything about Shakespeare, he would come, as a man of mould might, scathless from the test. But we do know everything, or almost everything, about Scott, and he comes out nearly as well as anyone but a faultless monster could. For all the works of the Lord in literature, as in other things, let us give thanks—for Blake and for Beddoes as well as for Shelley and for Swift. But let everyone who by himself, or by his fathers, claims origin between Tol-Pedn-Penwith and Dunnet Head give thanks, with more energy and more confidence than in any other case save one, for the fact that his is the race and his the language of Sir Walter Scott.
INDEX
Scott, Sir Walter:
Ancestry and parentage, [9], [10];
birth, [10];
infancy, [11];
school and college days, ibid.;
apprenticeship, ibid.;
friends and early occupations, [12], [13];
call to the Bar, [12], [14];
first love, [14]-[16];
engagement and marriage, [16];
briefs, fights, and volunteering, [17];
journeys to Galloway and elsewhere, [18], [19];
slowness of literary production and its causes, [20], [21];
call-thesis and translations of Bürger, [22];
reception of these last and their merit, [23];
contributes to Tales of Wonder, [24];
remarks on Glenfinlas and The Eve of St. John, [25], [26];
Goetz von Berlichingen and The House of Aspen, [26];
dramatic work generally, [27], [note];
friendship with Leyden, Ritson, and Ellis, [28];
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, [28]-[33];
contributes to the Edinburgh Review, [33]-[35];
his domestic life for the first seven years after his marriage, [35]-[37];
The Lay of the Last Minstrel, [38]-[46];
partnership with Ballantyne, [46]-[50];
children and pecuniary affairs, [50], [51];
Clerkship of Session, [51];
politics during Fox and Grenville administration, [52];
anecdote of, on Mound, ibid.;
Marmion, [52]-[55];
coolness with Edinburgh and starting of Quarterly Review, [55], [56];
quarrel with Constable, [56], [57];
affair of Thomas Scott's appointment, [58], [59];
The Lady of the Lake, [59], [60];
The Vision of Don Roderick, [61];
Rokeby, [61]-[63];
The Lord of the Isles, [63], [64];
The Bridal of Triermain, [64]-[66];
Harold the Dauntless, [66], [67];
remarks on the verse romances generally, [67], [68];
Waverley, its origin, character, and reception, [69]-[76];
settlement at Abbotsford, [70], [71];
danger of Ballantyne & Co., and closer alliance with Constable, [71], [72];
yachting tour, [72];
Guy Mannering, [77]-[79];
introduced in London to the Regent and to Byron, [79];
journey to Brussels, Field of Waterloo, and Paul's Letters, [79];
The Antiquary, [80];
original mottoes, [81] and [note];
Old Mortality and Black Dwarf, [81]-[84];
quarrel with Blackwood, [82];
Rob Roy, [84], [85];
domestic affairs, [85]-[87];
Heart of Midlothian, [87], [88];
Bride of Lammermoor and Legend of Montrose, [88]-[91];
attacked by cramp, [84], [86], [89], [note];
domestic affairs, [91]-[93];
Ivanhoe, [93], [96];
The Monastery, [95], [96];
The Abbot and Kenilworth, [96], [97];
The Pirate, [97], [98];
The Fortunes of Nigel, [99];
Peveril of the Peak, [100];
Quentin Durward, [100], [101];
St. Ronan's Well, [101], [102];
Redgauntlet, [102], [103];
Tales of the Crusaders, [104], [105];
domestic affairs, to tour in Ireland, [105], [106];
commercial crisis and fall of Constable and Ballantyne, [106], [107];
discussion of the facts, [107]-[114];
the Journal, [114]-[117];
death of Lady Scott, [116];
Life of Napoleon, [118]-[121];
Woodstock, [121]-[123];
Letters of Malachi Malagrowther, [123];
'Bonnie Dundee,' ibid.;
Chronicles of the Canongate, [124]-[126];
Tales of a Grandfather, [126], [127];
The Fair Maid of Perth and the 'Magnum Opus,' [128];
Anne of Geierstein, [129];
declining health, [130];
success of the 'Magnum,' ibid.;
stroke of paralysis and resignation of Clerkship, [131];
Letters on Demonology and Christopher North's criticism, [131], [132];
Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous, [133];
political annoyances and insults at Jedburgh, [134];
last visit of Wordsworth and departure for Italy, [135];
sojourn on the Mediterranean, [136];
return and death, [137];
settlement of debts, ibid.;
monuments to Scott, [138];
general view of Scott desirable, [139];
his physique and conversation, [140];
his alleged subserviency to rank, [141], [142];
his moral and religious character, [142], [143];
his politics, [144];
characteristics of his thought, [145]-[147];
his combination of the practical and the romantic, [147];
his humour, [148];
his feeling, [149];
his style, [150];
his power of story, [151];
not 'commonplace,' [151], [154];
comparison with Lyly, [153];
final remarks, [155], [156].
FOOTNOTES
[1] His friend Shortreed's well-known expression for the results of the later Liddesdale 'raids.'