26. The first series of romances then, above-named, are all that exhibit the emphasis of his unharmed faculties. The second group, composed in the three years subsequent to illness all but mortal, bear every one of them more or less the seal of it.
They consist of the "Bride of Lammermuir," "Ivanhoe," the "Monastery," the "Abbot," "Kenilworth," and the "Pirate."[54] The marks of broken health on all these are essentially twofold—prevailing melancholy, and fantastic improbability. Three of the tales are agonizingly tragic, the "Abbot" scarcely less so in its main event, and "Ivanhoe" deeply wounded through all its bright panoply; while even in that most powerful of the series the impossible archeries and ax-strokes, the incredibly opportune appearances of Locksley, the death of Ulrica, and the resuscitation of Athelstane, are partly boyish, partly feverish. Caleb in the "Bride," Triptolemus and Halcro in the "Pirate," are all laborious, and the first incongruous; half a volume of the "Abbot" is spent in extremely dull detail of Roland's relations with his fellow-servants and his mistress, which have nothing whatever to do with the future story; and the lady of Avenel herself disappears after the first volume, "like a snaw-wreath when it's thaw, Jeanie." The public has for itself pronounced on the "Monastery," though as much too harshly as it has foolishly praised the horrors of "Ravenswood" and the nonsense of "Ivanhoe"; because the modern public finds in the torture and adventure of these, the kind of excitement which it seeks at an opera, while it has no sympathy whatever with the pastoral happiness of Glendearg, or with the lingering simplicities of superstition which give historical likelihood to the legend of the White Lady.
But both this despised tale and its sequel have Scott's heart in them. The first was begun to refresh himself in the intervals of artificial labor on "Ivanhoe." "It was a relief," he said, "to interlay the scenery most familiar to me[55] with the strange world for which I had to draw so much on imagination." Through all the closing scenes of the second he is raised to his own true level by his love for the queen. And within the code of Scott's work to which I am about to appeal for illustration of his essential powers, I accept the "Monastery" and "Abbot," and reject from it the remaining four of this group.
27. The last series contains two quite noble ones, "Redgauntlet" and "Nigel"; two of very high value, "Durward" and "Woodstock"; the slovenly and diffuse "Peveril," written for the trade;[56] the sickly "Tales of the Crusaders," and the entirely broken and diseased "St. Ronan's Well." This last I throw out of count altogether, and of the rest, accept only the four first named as sound work; so that the list of the novels in which I propose to examine his methods and ideal standards, reduces itself to these following twelve (named in order of production): "Waverley," "Guy Mannering," the "Antiquary," "Rob Roy," "Old Mortality," the "Heart of Midlothian," the "Monastery," the "Abbot," "Redgauntlet," the "Fortunes of Nigel," "Quentin Durward," and "Woodstock."[57]
28. It is, however, too late to enter on my subject in this article, which I may fitly close by pointing out some of the merely verbal characteristics of his style, illustrative in little ways of the questions we have been examining, and chiefly of the one which may be most embarrassing to many readers, the difference, namely, between character and disease.
One quite distinctive charm in the Waverleys is their modified use of the Scottish dialect; but it has not generally been observed, either by their imitators, or the authors of different taste who have written for a later public, that there is a difference between the dialect of a language, and its corruption.
A dialect is formed in any district where there are persons of intelligence enough to use the language itself in all its fineness and force, but under the particular conditions of life, climate, and temper, which introduce words peculiar to the scenery, forms of word and idioms of sentence peculiar to the race, and pronunciations indicative of their character and disposition.
Thus "burn" (of a streamlet) is a word possible only in a country where there are brightly running waters, "lassie," a word possible only where girls are as free as the rivulets, and "auld," a form of the southern "old," adopted by a race of finer musical ear than the English.
On the contrary, mere deteriorations, or coarse, stridulent, and, in the ordinary sense of the phrase, "broad" forms of utterance, are not dialects at all, having nothing dialectic in them; and all phrases developed in states of rude employment, and restricted intercourse, are injurious to the tone and narrowing to the power of the language they affect. Mere breadth of accent does not spoil a dialect as long as the speakers are men of varied idea and good intelligence; but the moment the life is contracted by mining, millwork, or any oppressive and monotonous labor, the accents and phrases become debased. It is part of the popular folly of the day to find pleasure in trying to write and spell these abortive, crippled, and more or less brutal forms of human speech.
29. Abortive, crippled, or brutal, are however not necessarily "corrupted" dialects. Corrupt language is that gathered by ignorance, invented by vice, misused by insensibility, or minced and mouthed by affectation, especially in the attempt to deal with words of which only half the meaning is understood or half the sound heard. Mrs. Gamp's "aperiently so"—and the "underminded" with primal sense of undermine, of—I forget which gossip, in the "Mill on the Floss," are master-and mistress-pieces in this latter kind. Mrs. Malaprop's "allegories on the banks of the Nile" are in somewhat higher order of mistake: Mrs. Tabitha Bramble's ignorance is vulgarized by her selfishness, and Winifred Jenkins' by her conceit. The "wot" of Noah Claypole, and the other degradations of cockneyism (Sam Weller and his father are in nothing more admirable than in the power of heart and sense that can purify even these); the "trewth" of Mr. Chadband, and "natur" of Mr. Squeers, are examples of the corruption of words by insensibility: the use of the word "bloody" in modern low English is a deeper corruption, not altering the form of the word, but defiling the thought in it.