FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER XXXII.
I do not know how far I shall be able in this letter to carry you forward in the story of Scott’s life; let me first, therefore, map its divisions clearly; for then, wherever we have to stop, we can return to our point in fit time.
First, note these three great divisions—essentially those of all men’s lives, but singularly separate in his,—the days of youth, of labour, and of death.
Youth is properly the forming time—that in which a man makes himself, or is made, what he is for ever to be. Then comes the time of labour, when, having become the best he can be, he does the best he can do. Then the time of death, which, in happy lives, is very short: but always a time. The ceasing to breathe is only the end of death.
Scott records the beginning of his own in the following entry in his diary, which reviews the life then virtually ended:—
“December 18th, 1825.[1]—What a life mine has been!—half educated, almost wholly neglected, or left to myself; stuffing my head with most nonsensical trash, and undervalued by most of my companions for a time; getting forward, and held a bold, clever fellow, contrary to the opinion of all who thought me a mere dreamer; broken-hearted for two years; my heart handsomely pieced again, but the crack will remain till my dying day. Rich and poor four or five times: once on the verge of ruin, yet opened a new source of wealth almost overflowing. Now to be broken in my pitch of pride.[2]…
“Nobody in the end can lose a penny by me; that is one comfort. Men will think pride has had a fall. Let them indulge in their own pride in thinking that my fall will make them higher, or seem so at least. I have the satisfaction to recollect that my prosperity has been of advantage to many, and to hope that some at least will forgive my transient wealth on account of the innocence of my intentions, and my real wish to do good to the poor. Sad hearts, too, at Darnick, and in the cottages of Abbotsford. I have half resolved never to see the place again. How could I tread my hall with such a diminished crest?—how live a poor, indebted man, where I was once the wealthy, the honoured? I was to have gone there on Saturday, in joy and prosperity, to receive my friends. My dogs will wait for me in vain. It is foolish, but the thoughts of parting from these dumb creatures have moved me more than any of the painful reflections I have put down. Poor things, I must get them kind masters! There may be yet those who, loving me, may love my dog because it has been mine. I must end these gloomy forebodings, or I shall lose the tone of mind with which men should meet distress. I feel my dogs’ feet on my knees; I hear them whining, and seeking me everywhere.”
He was fifty-four on the 15th August of that year, and spoke his last words—“God bless you all,”—on the 21st September, 1832: so ending seven years of death.
His youth, like the youth of all the greatest men, had been long, and rich in peace, and altogether accumulative and crescent. I count it to end with that pain which you see he remembers to his dying day, given him by—Lilias Redgauntlet, in October, 1796. Whereon he sets himself to his work, which goes on nobly for thirty years, lapping over a little into the death-time[3] (‘Woodstock’ showing scarcely a trace of diminution of power).