But the scenery depicted by Scott is only the setting of a curious and paradoxical life, and it is the light thrown on this life that lends the chief interest to Mr. Lang's History. Owing in part to the peculiar position and formation of the land, and in part to the strain of Celtic blood in the Highland tribes, there was bred in the Scotch people an unusual mingling of romance and realism, of imagination and worldly cunning, that sets them quite apart from other races; and this paradoxical mingling of opposite tendencies shows itself in the quality of their politics, their religion, and in all their social manners.
Not the least interesting of Mr. Lang's chapters is that in which he analyses the feudal chivalry of Scotland, and explains how it rested on a more imaginative basis than in other countries; how the power of the chief hung on unwritten rights instead of formal charters, and how the loyalty of the clansmen was exalted to the highest pitch of personal enthusiasm. But to complete the picture one should read Buckle's scathing arraignment of a loyalty which was ready to sell its king and was no purer than the faith that holds together a band of murderous brigands. So, too, in religion the Scotch were perhaps more given to superstition, and were more ready to sacrifice life and all else for their belief than any other people of Europe, except the Spaniards, while at the same time their bigotry never interfered with a vein of caution and shrewd worldliness. There is in Waverley an admirable example at once of this paradoxical nature, and of the true basis of Scott's strength. In the loyalism of Flora MacIvor he has attempted to embody an ideal of the imagination not based on this national mingling of qualities—though, of course, isolated individuals of that heroic type may have existed in the land; and as a result he has produced a character that leaves the reader perfectly cold and unconvinced. But the moment Waverley comes from the MacIvors and descends to the real life of Scotland, mark the change. We are immediately put on terra firma by the cautious reply of Waverley's guide when asked if it is Sunday: "Could na say just preceesely; Sunday seldom cam aboon the pass of Bally-Brough." Consider the mixture of bigotry and worldly greed in Mr. Ebenezer Cruikshanks, the innkeeper, who compounds for the sin of receiving a traveller on fastday by doubling the tariff. In any other land Mr. Ebenezer Cruikshank would have been a hypocrite and a scoundrel; in Scotland his religious fervour is quite as genuine as his cunning; and the very audacity of the combination carries with it the conviction of realism.
The same contrast of qualities will be found to mark the lesser traits of character. Consider the long list of servants and retainers with their stiff-necked devotion and their incorrigible self-seeking. In one of his notes Scott relates the story of a retainer who when ordered to leave his master's service replied: "In troth, and that will I not; if your honour disna ken when ye hae a gude servant, I ken when I hae a gude master, and go away I will not." At another time, when his master cried out in vexation: "John, you and I shall never sleep under the same roof again!" the fellow calmly retorted, "Where the deil can your honour be ganging?" In like manner the mixture of devotion and self-seeking in that quaintest of followers, Richie Moniplies, is worth a thousand false idealisations. To read almost on the same page his immovable loyalty to Nigel and his brazen treachery in presenting his own petition first to the King, is to gain at once an entrance into a new region of psychology and to acquire a truer understanding of Scotch history. At another time, when catechised about the alleged spirit in Master Heriot's house, the good Moniplies gives an example of combined superstition, scepticism, and cunning, which must be read at length—and all the world has read it—to be appreciated. Perhaps the most useful illustration to be gained from this same Moniplies is the strange contrast of solemnity and humour, of reverence and familiarity, exhibited by him. I need not repeat the description of that "half-pedant, half-bully," nor quote the whole of his account of meeting with the King; let it be enough to call attention to the curious mingling of mirth and solemnity in the way he apostrophises the royal James: "My certie, lad, times are changed since ye came fleeing down the backstairs of auld Holyrood House, in grit fear, having your breeks in your hand without time to put them on, and Frank Stewart, the wild Earl of Bothwell, hard at your haunches." There is in the temper of worthy Moniplies something wholly different from the boisterous humour of England and from the dry laughter of America; and this is due to the continually upcropping substratum of imagination and romance in his character. He would resemble the grotesque seriousness of Don Quixote, were it not for a strain of sourness and suspicion that are quite foreign to the generous Hidalgo.
So we might follow the paradox of Scotch character through its union of gloomy moroseness with homely affections, of unrestrained emotionalism with cold calculation, of awesome second-sight with the cheapest charlatanry. In the end, perhaps, all these contradictions would resolve themselves into the one peculiar anomaly of seeing the free romance of enthusiasm rising like a flower—a flower often enough of sinister aspect—out of the most prosaic grossness. Certainly it is the chief interest of Scotch history—by showing that these contradictions actually exist in the national temperament and by explaining so far as may be their origin—to confirm for us our belief in what may be called the realism of Scott's romance. This is that guiding thread which leads the weary voyager through the mists and chaotic confusions of Caledonian annals up to light. And in that region of light what wonderful cheer for the soul! Here, if anywhere in prose, the illusions of the imagination may take pleasant possession of our heart, for they come with the authority of a great national experience and walk hand in hand with the soberest realities. Even the wild enthusiasm of a Meg Merrilies barely awakens the voice of slumbering scepticism in the midst of our secure conviction. And sojourning for a while in that world of strange enchantment we seem to feel the limitations that vex our larger hopes and hem in our wills broken down at the command of a magic voice. It is as if that incompleteness of our nature, which the schoolmen called in their fantastic jargon the principium individuationis and ascribed to the bondage of these material bodies, were for a time forgotten, while we form a part of that free and complex existence so faithfully portrayed in the Scotch novels.
SWINBURNE
It is no more than fair to confess at the outset that my knowledge of Swinburne's work until recently was of the scantiest. The patent faults of his style were of a kind to warn me away, and it might be equally true that I was not sufficiently open to his peculiar excellences. Gladly, therefore, I accepted the occasion offered by the new edition of his Collected Poems[5] to enlarge my acquaintance with one of the much-bruited names of the age. Nor did it seem right to trust to a hasty impression. The six volumes of his poems, together with the plays and critical essays, have lain on my table for several months, the companions of many a long day of leisure and the relish thrown in between other readings of pleasure and necessity. Yet even now I must admit something alien to me in the man and his work; I am not sure that I always distinguish between what is spoken with the lips only and what springs from the poet's heart. Possibly the lack of biographical information is the partial cause of this uncertainty, for by a curious anomaly Swinburne, one of the most egotistical writers of the century, has shown a fine reticence in keeping the details of his life from the public. He was, we know, born in London, in 1837, of an ancient and noble family, his father, as befitted one whose son was to sing of the sea so lustily, being an admiral in the navy. His early years were passed either at his grandfather's estate in Northumbria or at the home of his parents in the Isle of Wight. From Eton he went, after an interval of two years, to Balliol College, Oxford, leaving in 1860 without a degree. The story runs that he knew more Greek than his examiners, but failed to show a proper knowledge of Scripture. If the tale is true, he made up well in after years for the deficiency, for few of our poets have been more steeped in the language of the Bible. In London he came under the influence of many of the currents moving below the surface; the spell of that master of souls, Rossetti, touched him, and the dominance of the ardent Mazzini. Since 1879 he has lived at "The Pines," on the edge of Wimbledon Common, with Mr. Watts-Dunton, in what appears to be an ideal atmosphere of sympathetic friendship. Mr. Douglas's recent indiscretion on Theodore Watts-Dunton tells nothing of the life in this scholarly retreat, but it does contain many photogravures of the works of art, the handicraft of Rossetti largely, which adorn the dwelling with beautiful memories.
Such is the meagre outline of Swinburne's life, nor do the few other events recorded or the authentic anecdotes help us much to a more intimate knowledge of the man. Yet he has the ambiguous gift of awakening curiosity. Probably the first question most people ask on laying down his Poems and Ballads (that péché de jeunesse, as he afterwards called it) is to know how much of the book is "true." Mr. Swinburne has expressed a becoming contempt for "the scornful or mournful censors who insisted on regarding all the studies of passion or sensation attempted or achieved in it as either confessions of positive fact or excursions of absolute fancy." One does not like to be classed among the scornful or mournful, and yet I should feel much easier in my appreciation of the Poems and Ballads if I knew how far they were based on the actual experience of the author. The reader of Swinburne feels constantly as if his feet were swept from the earth and he were carried into a misty mid-region where blind currents of air beat hither and thither; he longs for some anchor to reality. In the later books this sensation becomes almost painful, and it is because the earlier publications, the Atalanta and the first Poems and Ballads, contain more of definable human emotion, whatever their relation to fact may be, that they are likely to remain the most popular and significant of Swinburne's works.
The publication of Atalanta at the age of twenty-eight made him famous, Poems and Ballads the next year made him almost infamous. The alarm aroused in England by Dolores and Faustine still vibrates in our ears as we repeat the wonderful rhythms. The impression is deepened by the remarkable unity of feeling that runs through these voluble songs—the feeling of infinite satiety. The satiety of the flesh hangs like a fatal web about the Laus Veneris; the satiety of disappointment clings "with sullen savour of poisonous pain" to The Triumph of Time; satiety speaks in the Hymn to Proserpine, with its regret for the passing of the old heathen gods; it seeks relief in the unnatural passion of Anactoria—