Though details of this description, however, are valuable and admissible in biography, and come with peculiar propriety and grace from a female hand, it must be observed, on the other hand, that there is a limit, and a very obvious one, to the introduction of them, and that, if not inserted with caution, they may essentially injure the popularity or utility of a work. In particular, it is seldom safe to carry to any considerable length in the text the introduction of quotations from old histories or chronicles of the period, which often are filled with them to the exclusion of all other subjects. We know that such original documents have a great charm in the eyes of antiquarians or antiquarian biographers, the more especially if they have brought them to light themselves; but such persons learned in ancient lore constitute but a small fraction of the human race. The great body of readers, at least nineteen out of twenty, care nothing at all for such original authorities, but wish to see their import condensed into a flowing easy narrative in the author's own words. For this reason it is generally safest to give such original documents or quotations in notes or an appendix, and to confine quotations in the text to characteristic expressions, or original words spoken on very important occasions. Barante and Sismondi in France, Tytler in Scotland, and Lingard in England, have essentially injured the general popularity of their great and learned works, by not attending to this rule. The two Thierrys have chiefly won theirs by attending to it.
The great popularity and widely extended sale of Miss Strickland's Queens of England, almost equalling, we believe, that of any living author in this country, and much exceeding that of any prior writer, whether of her own or the other sex, in the same period in biography, is a proof both of the intrinsic excellence of that work, and the thirst which exists in the public mind for works of that description. We have long been of opinion that the narrative of human events might be rendered as popular in the outset, and far more and durably interesting in the end, than any works of fiction; and that the only reason why this has so seldom taken place, was because historical works were in general constructed on wrong principles. The great success which has recently attended historical composition in this country, especially in the case of Mr Macaulay's History and Miss Strickland's Lives, is a proof that this view of the subject is well founded. And of the two, biography, when supported by learning, and handled by genius such as both these learned writers possess, is much more likely to be generally popular than extended history, because it partakes more of the character of Romance, and possesses in a higher degree that unity of interest which is the most essential element in all arts which aim at pleasing or fascinating mankind.
Scotland is a country peculiarly fortunate in the characters it presents for biographical genius. This arises from its physical weakness when compared to the strength of its formidable neighbour, and the resources which it has ever found in the persevering and indomitable character of its inhabitants. The former in every age of the wars with England has made its plains the seat of conflict; while the latter has always secured their success in the end, though often after fearful reverses, and always against tremendous odds. The proof of this is decisive. Scotland, after three centuries of almost incessant conflict, first with the arms, and then, more formidable still, with the gold of England, was still unsubdued when her monarchs ascended the English throne, and the rivalry of two noble nations was turned into the blissful emulation of peace. It is this combination of circumstances which has caused her history to be so prolific of incident, and has rendered, as strangers so often have remarked, every step in her surface historical. Her physical weakness filled it with incident—her moral strength with heroic incident. Go where you will, you meet with some traces of the great or the beautiful, the gifted or the fascinating, of former days. The ancient walls and castellated rocks of Edinburgh teem with historical recollections of the highest interest, which the kindred spirit of modern chivalry has done so much to illustrate.[10] In the short space of twenty miles—between Falkirk and Stirling—are four battlefields,[11] on each of which the fate of Britain was determined, or armies as numerous as those which met at Waterloo encountered each other. Lochleven exhibits the mournful prison of beauty: Niddry Castle, of her evanescent joys; the field of Langside, of her final overthrow. Cartlan Crags still show the cave of Wallace; Turnberry Castle the scene of Bruce's first victory; Culloden, the last battle-field of generous fidelity. Every step in Scotland is historical: the shades of the dead arise on every side: the very rocks breathe—
"Yet, Albyn, yet the praise be thine,
Thy scenes and story to combine!
Thou bid'st him who by Roslin strays,
List to the tale of other days;
Midst Cartlan Crags thou show'st the cave,
The refuge of the champion brave;
Giving each rock its storied tale,
Pouring a lay for every dale,
Knitting, as with a moral band,
Thy native legends with thy land,
To give each scene the interest high,
Which Genius lends to Beauty's eye."
Miss Strickland's talents as a writer, and turn of mind as an individual, in a peculiar manner fit her for painting a historical gallery of the most illustrious or dignified female characters in that land of chivalry and of song. Her disposition is at once heroic and pictorial. She has the spirit of chivalry in her soul, and the colours of painting in her eye. She sympathises with all the daring spirit, the bold adventure, the chivalrous devotion, of the cavaliers of former days; and she depicts with not less animation and force the stately scenes of departed times—the dignified processions, the splendid ceremonials, the imposing pageants. She has vast powers of application, and her research is unbounded; but these qualities, so necessary as the foundation of a historian's fame, are in her united with the powers of painting and the soul of poetry, and dignified by the elevated objects to which they are directed. The incidents of individual life are of peculiar importance in Scottish annals, because, with the exception of two periods—the war of independence under Wallace and Bruce, and the national struggle for emancipation from Popish tyranny at the Reformation—there have seldom been what we now call popular movements in Scotland. Everything, or next to everything, depended on individual character; the great game of the world was played by kings and queens, nobles and knights. On this great theatre the queens played, as they do everywhere, a most important part. The instruction of man in childhood, the object of his adoration in youth, of lasting influence in manhood, woman has, in modern Europe where her destiny was first fully developed, exercised an important sway, and more so than is generally supposed on national affairs. But nowhere has this influence been more strongly felt than in Scotland, where queens have appeared, whose beauty and misfortunes have become immortal in story, and been for ever engraven on the human heart by the hand of genius, and where the chivalrous and daring disposition of the country, the perfervidum Scotorum ingenium, at once penetrated some with the most devout adoration of their charms, and inspired others with the most vehement jealousy of their ascendency.
In her delineation of individual character, Miss Strickland evidently takes the greatest pains to be impartial; and the multitude of new documents and facts which she has brought on both sides of the question in regard to her heroines, is a sufficient proof that this most laudable principle is a ruling one in her mind. But she would be something more or something less than mortal, if no trace of predilection was to be found in her pages. It is rather, however, in regard to families than individuals that this leaning is apparent. She is evidently inimical to the Tudor and friendly to the Stuart race. In this she only shares the feelings of the chivalrous and the enthusiastic of every age and country; for the leading qualities of the one were as calculated, on a retrospect, to inspire aversion as those of the other were to awaken sympathy. The first was selfish, overbearing, cruel, but often exceedingly able: the latter generous, unsuspecting, heroic, but sometimes sadly imprudent. Success at the time crowned the worldly wisdom of the one, and disaster, long-continued and crushing, at length punished the unhappy want of foresight of the other. But the results of the time are not always indicative of the opinion of futurity: and already the verdict of mankind has been secured in regard to the rival Queens who brought their fortunes into collision, by two pleaders of surpassing power in swaying the human heart. Scotland may be proud that one of these was found in the most gifted of her sons, whose genius has, in one of his most perfect historical novels, immortalised the prison of Lochleven and the field of Langside; and Germany may well exult in the reflection that the other appeared in that matchless genius who three centuries after her death imbibed, on the banks of the Saale, the very soul and spirit of the age of Mary in England, and has for ever engraven her heroic death, and the imperishable scenes of Fotheringay, on the hearts of men.[12]
Miss Strickland's partiality for the Stuart and aversion to the Tudor race, may be explained by another and still more honourable circumstance. It is the inevitable effect of a long course of injustice, whether in the rulers of men, or the judges of those rulers, the annalists of their lives, to produce in the end a reaction in the general mind. This is more particularly the case in persons like Miss Strickland, actuated by generous and elevated feelings, and who feel conscious of power to redress much of the injustice which the long-continued ascendency of a particular party, whether in religion or politics, has inflicted on the characters of History. Nowhere has this injustice been more strongly experienced than in Great Britain during the last two centuries. The popular party in politics, and the reformed in religion, having in both these countries, after a sanguinary struggle, been successful, and a family seated on the throne which embodied, and in a manner personified, both these triumphs, nearly the whole historians who treated of the period for a century and a half were entirely one-sided. When Hume wrote his immortal history, he complained, with justice, that for seventy years power, reward, and emolument had been confined to one party in the state, and that the sources of History had in consequence been irremediably corrupted. His rhetorical powers and impartial spirit did much to remedy the evil, but he had not industry and research sufficient to do the whole. Much was left to the just feelings, and generous because disinterested effort, of the high-minded who succeeded him in the path of historical inquiry. Mr Tytler's great and authentic History of Scotland, and Lingard's able and valuable, though one-sided, History of England, have gone far to give the opposite side of the picture which Malcolm Laing and Burnet had painted in so vehement a party spirit, and Macaulay has since continued with such remarkable historical power. But much remained yet to be done. Antiquarian industry, chivalrous zeal, have of late brought many of the concealed or suppressed treasures of History to light; and it is those which Miss Strickland proposes to embody in her Queens of Scotland.
Of the general plan which she proposes to adopt in this work, our author gives the following admirable account:—
"As long as Scotland, in consequence of bad roads and tedious travelling, remained a sort of terra incognita, vulgar prejudice prevailed among the ignorant and narrow-minded portion of society in England; but Scotland only required to be seen to be appreciated. Strong in native talent, rich in native worth, valiant, persevering, and wise, her sons have been ever foremost in the field of honourable enterprise, whether in deeds of arms, science, jurisprudence, or the industrial arts of peaceful life. In poetry, music, and song, she has certainly never been surpassed. It was, however, reserved for the genius of Sir Walter Scott to draw English hearts and English gold to Scotland, and to knit those bonds of brotherly regard which no act of legislature could do. His graphic pictures of Scotland and the Scotch acted like a spell of enchantment on the imaginations of the English. Those who were able to indulge the enthusiastic feelings which his writings had excited, crossed the Border, rushed into Highland glens, scaled Highland hills, congregated at Scotch hostelries, peeped into Scotch cottages, were invited to partake of Scotch hospitality—and found themselves in a land flowing with milk and honey, not merely in its festive character, but in its kindliness to strangers, which is the glory of all lands.