“February 5th, 1826.—Missie was in the drawing-room, and overheard William Clerk and me laughing excessively at some foolery or other in the back room, to her no small surprise, which she did not keep to herself. But do people suppose that he was less sorry for his poor sister, or I for my lost fortune? If I have a very strong passion in the world, it is pride; and that never hinged upon world’s gear, which was always, with me—Light come, light go.”
You will not at first understand the tone of this last piece, in which two currents of thought run counter, or, at least, one with a back eddy; and you may think Scott did not know himself, and that his strongest passion was not pride; and that he did care for world’s gear.
Not so, good reader. Never allow your own conceit to betray you into that extremest folly of thinking that you can know a great man better than he knows himself. He may not often wear his heart on his sleeve for you; but when he does, depend upon it, he lets you see deep, and see true.
Scott’s ruling passion was pride; but it was nobly set—on his honour, and his courage, and his quite conscious intellectual power. The apprehended loss of honour,—the shame of what he thinks in himself cowardice,—or the fear of failure in intellect, are at any time overwhelming to him. But now, he felt that his honour was safe; his courage was, even to himself, satisfying; his sense of intellectual power undiminished; and he had therefore recovered some peace of mind, and power of endurance. The evils he could not have borne, and lived, have not been inflicted on him, and could not be. He can laugh again with his friend;—“but do people suppose that he was less sorry for his poor sister, or I for my lost fortune?”
What is this loss, then, which he is grieving for—as for a lost sister? Not world’s gear, “which was always, with me, Light come, light go.”
Something far other than that.
Read but these three short sentences more,[16] out of the entries in December and January:—
“My heart clings to the place I have created: there is scarce a tree on it that does not owe its being to me.”
“Poor Will Laidlaw—poor Tom Purdie—such news will wring your hearts; and many a poor fellow besides, to whom my prosperity was daily bread.”
“I have walked my last on the domains I have planted, sate the last time in the halls I have built. But death would have taken them from me if misfortune had spared them.—My poor people, whom I loved so well!”