There should be a few books on the family shelf—books which are meant to be daily companions—the Bible, the “Imitation of Christ,” something of Father Faber’s, “Fabiola” and “Dion and the Sibyls,” and some great novels.
People of to-day do not realize how much the greatest of all the romancers owes to the Catholic Dryden. Sir Walter Scott, in spite of frequent change in public taste, still holds his own. Cardinal Newman, in one of his letters, regrets that young people have ceased to be interested in so admirable a writer. But there is only partial reason for this regret. Sir Walter’s long introductions and some of his elaborate descriptions of natural scenery are no longer read with interest. Still, it is evident that people do not care to have his works changed in any way. Not long ago, Miss Braddon, the indefatigable novelist, “edited” Sir Walter Scott’s novels. She cut out all those passages which seemed dull to her. But the public refused to read the improved edition. It remained unsold.
It is safe to predict that neither Sir Walter Scott nor Miss Austen will ever go entirely out of fashion. Sir Walter’s muse is to Miss Austen’s as the Queen of Sheba to a very prim modern gentlewoman: one is attired in splendid apparel, wreathed with jewels, sparkling; the other is neutral-tinted, timid, shy. But of all novelists, Sir Walter Scott admired Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austen. He said, with almost a sigh of regret, that he could do the big “bow-wow” business, but that they pictured real life.
Nevertheless, while Miss Austen is not forgotten—in fact, interest has increased in her delightful books of late years—Sir Walter Scott’s novels are found everywhere. Not to have read the most notable of the Waverley Novels is to give one’s acquaintances just reason for lamenting one’s illiberal education.
The name of Sir Walter Scott naturally suggests that of Dryden, from whom the “Wizard” borrowed some of the best things in “Ivanhoe”—and “Ivanhoe” is without doubt the most popular of Sir Walter Scott’s novels. That picturesque humbug Macaulay, who could sacrifice anything for a brilliant antithesis, has done much harm to the reputation of Dryden. He gives us the impression that Dryden was a mere timeserver, if a brilliant satirist and a third-rate poet. Some years will pass before the superficial criticism of Macaulay shall be taken at its full value. Dryden was honest—honest in his changes of opinion, and entirely consistent in his change of faith. No church but that of his ancestors could have satisfied the mind of a man to whom the mutilated doctrine and bald services of the Anglican sect were naturally obnoxious. Of the charge that Dryden changed his religious opinions for gain, Mr. John Amphlett Evans, a sympathetic critic, says that, if Dryden gained the approval of King James II., he lost that of the English people. Dryden understood this, for he wrote:
“If joys hereafter must be purchased here
With loss of all that mortals hold so dear,
Then welcome infamy and public shame,
And last, a long farewell to worldly fame.”
If Scott, through ignorance or carelessness, misrepresented certain Catholic practices, he never consciously misrepresented Catholic ideas; and, as a recent writer in the Dublin Review remarks, he showed that all that was best and heroic in the Middle Ages was the result of Catholic teaching. This was his attraction for Cardinal Newman. This made him so fascinating to another convert, James A. McMaster, who had an inherited Calvinistic horror of most other novels. Scott, robust and broad-minded as he was, could understand the mighty genius and the great heart of Dryden. He was the ablest defender of the poet who abjured the licentiousness of the Restoration—mirrored in his earlier dramas—to adopt a purer mode of thought. Although Dryden was really Scott’s master in art, Sir Walter did not fully understand how very great was Dryden’s poem, “Almanzor and Almahide.” If Tasso’s “Jerusalem Delivered,” or Ariosto’s “Orlando Furioso,” or Milton’s “Paradise Regained,” or Fénelon’s “Telemachus” is an epic, this splendid poem of Dryden’s is an epic, and greater than them all. It is from this poem, founded on episodes of the siege of Granada, that Sir Walter Scott borrows so liberally in “Ivanhoe.”