-•%-* ^ .."•• * >bF q,. ♦•v.** a° .0* o°" # * O 4? * * *«. IP^. -.1 ... v''V **.«•■► ^ .. ... V" v 5^. % ••■• '*,. -. r oV ^or .■ » *+, ^ .' '• A>^ * ^V^V •» " i~ "MUM o \J"" o V^V V-^',«* ^™V V *..V ^\ja*.% />;V«?;-X y.sato.' 1 *.v- l0* ••Alr,^ ^^ ;jHft-: V^ ; 5 ■s S\ .o* .•■•- ,> *U *c w o<» .^ /.. : ^o^ ^ g°+ x J > *bV° - ~«l o w . P .°J^>% .-'.^ »bF 4* *£ffe£* * f. ^ v^ V I: '**» .** •*■ >•*, o */^ s * A : ^ w * ^ »T ^1% V •* o^ * ^ 1* ,cr \* v ~*» ♦7* {J T\ t /V 0^ -o«( ■>v ^o^ 4 O V .' ^ V- ^°^ -J bv* ♦•.i«8i'. V .6' ^o* .ft* . o ■ "oV* : ^^ •o. *»T^. % ^o ,*.. ^ * <^ •••o" .^ y v r\ *■ .V v ^-. * ^ .* *.* v- SIR WALTER SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE MARGARET BALL, Ph.D. Btto pork THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 1907 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN ENGLISH Series II. Vol. II, No. 1. SIR WALTER SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE This Monograph has been approved by the Department of English in Columbia University as a contribution to knowledge worthy of publication. A. H. THORNDIKE, Secretary. SIR WALTER SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE MARGARET BALL, Ph.D. THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 1907 UbnAfiY otOONji-£SS i wo Copies Heeded DEC 10,907 _ jufeyngfi! tntry \Cvr2f.*t*i CUSS <2. XXc, NO, Copyright, 1907 By The Columbia University Printed from type November, 1907 PRESS OF The New Era Printing Company Lancaster. Pa. PREFACE The lack of any adequate discussion of Scott's critical work is a sufficient reason for the undertaking- of this study, the subject of which was suggested to me more than three years ago by Professor Trent of Columbia University. We still use critical essays and monumental editions prepared by the author of the Waverley novels, but the criticism has been so overshadowed by the romances that its importance is scarcely recognized. It is valuable in itself, as well as in the oppor- tunity it offers of considering the relation of the critical to the creative mood, an especially interesting problem when it is presented concretely in the work of a great writer. No complete bibliography of Scott's writings has been pub- lished, and perhaps none is possible in the case of an author who wrote so much anonymously. The present attempt in- cludes some at least of the books and articles commonly left unnoticed, which are chiefly of a critical or scholarly character. I am glad to record my gratitude to Professor William Allan Neilson, now of Harvard University, and to Professors A. H. Thorndike, W. W. Lawrence, G. P. Krapp, and J. E. Spingarn, of Columbia, for suggestions in connection with various parts of the work. From the beginning Professor Trent has helped me constantly by his advice as well as by the inspiration of his scholarship, and my debt to him is one which can be understood only by the many students who have known his kindness. Mount Holyoke College, June, 1907. P CONTENTS CHAPTER I. Introduction : An Outline of Scott's Literary Career 1 CHAPTER II. Scott's Qualifications as Critic 9 CHAPTER III. Scott's Work as Student and Editor in the Field of Literary History 1. The Mediaeval Period (a) Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border 17 (b) Studies in the Romances 32 (c) Other Studies in Mediaeval Literature 40 2. The Drama 46 3. The Seventeenth Century : Dryden 59 4. The Eighteenth Century (a) Swift 65 (b) The Somers Tracts 70 (c) The Lives of the Novelists, and Comments on other Eighteenth Century Writers 72 CHAPTER IV. Scott's Criticism of His Contemporaries 81 CHAPTER V. Scott as a Critic of His Own Work 108 CHAPTER VI. Scott's Position as Critic 134 APPENDICES I. Bibliography of Scott, Annotated 147 II. List of Books Quoted 174 Index 179 A DATED LIST OF SCOTT'S BOOKS, ASIDE FROM THE POEMS AND NOVELS, AND OF THE PRIN- CIPAL WORKS WHICH HE EDITED (PERI- ODICAL CRITICISM NOT INCLUDED). 1802-3 Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (edited). 1804 Sir Tristrem (edited). 1806 Original Memoirs written during the Great Civil War; the Life of Sir H. Slingsby, and Memoirs of Capt. Hodgson (edited). 1808 Memoirs of Capt. Carleton (edited). 1808 The Works of John Dryden (edited). 1808 Memoirs of Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth, and Fragmenta Regalia (edited). 1808 Queenhoo Hall, a Romance; and Ancient Times, a Drama (edited). 1809 The State Papers and Letters of Sir Ralph Sadler (edited). 1809-15 The Somers Tracts (edited). 181 1 Memoirs of the Court of Charles II, by Count Gram- mont (edited). 181 1 Secret History of the Court of James the First (edited). 1813 Memoirs of the Reign of King Charles I, by Sir Philip Warwick (edited). 1814 The Works of Jonathan Swift (edited). 1 814-17 The Border Antiquities of England and Scotland. 1816 Paul's Letters. 1818 Essay on Chivalry. 1819 Essay on the Drama. 1819-26 Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of Scotland. 1820 Trivial Poems and Triolets by Patrick Carey (edited). 182 1 Northern Memoirs, calculated for the Meridian of Scotland ; and the Contemplative and Practical Angler (edited). 1821-24 The Novelists' Library (edited). 1822 Chronological Notes of Scottish Affairs from 1680 till 1 701 (edited). 1822 Military Memoirs of the Great Civil War (edited). 1824 Essay on Romance. 1826 Letters of Malachi Malagrowther on the Currency. 1827 The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte. 1828 Tales of a Grandfather, first series. 1828 Religious Discourses, by a Layman. 1828 Proceedings in the Court-martial held upon John, Master of Sinclair, etc. (edited). 1829 Memorials of George Bannatyne (edited). 1829 Tales of a Grandfather, second series. 1829-32 The "Opus Magnum" (Novels, Tales, and Ro- mances, with Introductions and Notes by the Author). 1830 Tales of a Grandfather, third series. 1830 Letters on Dernonology and Witchcraft. 1830 History of Scotland. 1 83 1 Tales of a Grandfather, fourth series. 1831 Trial of Duncan Terig, etc. (edited). 1890 The Journal of Sir Walter Scott. 1894 Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott. CHAPTER I Introduction Importance of a study of Scott's critical and scholarly work — Con- nection between his creative work and his criticism — Chronological view of his literary career. Scott's critical work has become inconspicuous because of his predominant fame as an imaginative writer; but what it loses on this account it perhaps gains in the special interest attaching to criticism formulated by a great creative artist. One phase of his work is emphasized and explained by the other, and we cannot afford to ignore his criticism if we attempt fairly to comprehend his genius as a poet and novelist. The fact that he is the subject of one of the noblest biographies in our language only increases our obligation to become ac- quainted with his own presentation of his artistic principles. But though criticism by so great and voluminous a writer is valuable mainly because of the important relation it bears to his other work, and because of the authority it derives from this relation, Scott's scholarly and critical writings are indi- vidual enough in quality and large enough in extent to demand consideration on their own merits. Yet this part of his achieve- ment has received very little attention from biographers and critics. Lockhart's book is indeed full of materials, and con- tains also some suggestive comment on the facts presented ; but as the passing of time has made an estimation of Scott's power more safe, students have lost interest in his work as a ciitic, and recent writers have devoted little attention to this aspect of the great man of letters. 1 1 Mr. Hutton's Life of Scott, in the English Men of Letters series, con- tains no chapter nor any extended passage on Scott's critical and scholarly work, though there is a chapter on " Scott's Morality and Religion," and one on " Scott as a Politician." This, like the other short biographies of Scott, is professedly a compilation, so far as its facts are concerned, from Lockhart's book. The Lives of Scott by Gilfillan and by Mackenzie, pub- lished about the time of the Scott centenary in 1871, are longer than Hut- 1 1 2 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE The present study is an attempt to show the scope and quality of Scott's critical writings, and of such works, not exclusively or mainly critical, as exhibit the range of his schol- arship. For it is impossible to treat his criticism without dis- cussing his scholarship ; since, lightly as he carried it, this was of consequence in itself and in its influence on all that he did. The materials for analysis are abundant; and by rearrange- ment and special study they may be made to contribute both to the history of criticism and to our comprehension of the power of a great writer. In considering him from this point of view we are bound to remember the connection between the different parts of his vocation. In him, more than in most men of letters, the critic resembled the creative writer, and though the critical temperament seems to show itself but rarely in his romances, we find that the characteristic absence of pre- cise and conscious art is itself in harmony with his critical creed. The relation between the different parts of Scott's literary work is exemplified by the subjects he treated, for as a critic he touched many portions of the field, which in his capacity of poet and novelist he occupied in a different way. He was a historical critic no less than a historical romancer. A larger proportion of his criticism concerns itself with the eighteenth century, perhaps, than of his fiction, 1 and he often wrote re- ton's, but contain no more extended reference to the critical writings. Mackenzie's book out of nearly five hundred pages gives only one to a discussion of the edition of Dryden, and half a page to an account of the establishment of the Quarterly Review. Gilfillan characterizes the critical work in almost as short a space, but with a good deal of judgment. The German biography of Scott contemporary with these, by Dr. Felix Eberty, is concerned with the man rather than his works. Of later Lives of Scott, Prof. Saintsbury's gives, in proportion to its length, more space than any other to Scott's critical work, but the book has only a hundred and fifty- five pages in all. Another recent biographer, Mr. W. H. Hudson, says of Scott's editorial and critical work, " these exertions, though they call for passing record, occupy a minor place in his story " ; and he gives them only " passing record." Mr. Andrew Lang's still more recent and briefer Sir Walter Scott devotes only a few lines here and there to comment on Scott as a critic, and contains hardly even a reference to the little-known volumes that he edited. 1 Ten of Scott's twenty-seven novels (counting the first series of Chron- icles of the Canongate as one) have scenes laid in the eighteenth century. They are as follows, arranged approximately in the order of their periods : INTRODUCTION 3 views of contemporary literature, but on the whole the litera- ture with which he dealt critically was representative of those periods of time which he chose to portray in novel and poem. This evidently implies great breadth of scope. Yet .Scott's vivid sense of the past had its bounds, as Professor Masson pointed out. 1 It was the " Gothic " past that he venerated. The field of his studies, chronologically considered, included the period between his own time and the crusades ; and geo- graphically, was in general confined to England and Scotland, with comparatively rare excursions abroad. When, in his novels, he carried his Scottish or English heroes out of Britain into foreign countries, he was apt to bestow upon them not only a special endowment of British feeling, but also a portion of that interest in their native literature which marked the taste of their creator. We find that the personages in his books are often distinguished by that love of stirring poetry, particularly of popular and national poetry, which was a dominant trait in Scott's whole literary career. With Scotland and with popular poetry any discussion of Sir Walter properly begins. The love of Scottish minstrelsy first awakened his literary sense, and the stimulus supplied by ballads and romances never lost its force. We may say that the little volumes of ballad chap-books which he collected and bound up before he was a dozen years old suggested the future editor, as the long poem on the Conquest of Grenada, which he is said to have written and burned when he was fifteen, fore- shadowed the poet and romancer. Yet Scott's career as an author began rather late. He pub- lished a few translations when he was twenty-five years old, but his first notable work, the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, did not appear until 1802-3, when he was over thirty. This book, the outgrowth of his early interest in ballads and his own attempts at versifying, exhibited both his editorial and his creative powers. It led up to the publication of two important The Bride of Lammermoor, The Pirate, The Black Dwarf, Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian, Waverley, Guy Mannering, Redgauntlet, Chronicles of the Canongate (First series), The Antiquary. The long poems all found their setting in earlier periods. 1 British Novelists and their Styles, pp. 167-8. 4 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE volumes which contained material originally intended to form part of the Minstrelsy, but which outgrew that work. These were the edition of the old metrical romance Sir Tristrem, which showed Scott as a scholar, and the Lay of the Last Minstrel, the first of Scott's own metrical romances. So far his literary achievement was all of one kind, or of two or three kinds closely related. In this first period of his literary life, perhaps even more than later, his editorial impulse, his scholarly activ- ity, was closely connected with the inspiration for original writing. The Lay of the Last Minstrel was the climax of this series of enterprises. With the publication of the Minstrelsy, Scott of course became known as a literary antiquary. He was naturally called upon for help when the Edinburgh Reviezv was started a few weeks afterwards, especially as Jeffrey, who soon became the editor, had long been his friend. The articles that he wrote during 1803 and 1804 were of a sort that most evidently con- nected itself with the work he had been doing: reviews, for example, of Southey's Amadis de Gaul, and of Ellis's Early English Poetry. During 1805-6 the range of his reviewing became wider and he included some modern books, especially two or three which offered opportunity for good fun-making. About 1806, however, his aversion to the political principles which dominated the Edinburgh Review became so strong that he refused to continue as a contributor, and only once, years later, did he again write an article for that periodical. In the same year, 1806, Scott supplied with editorial appa- ratus and issued anonymously Original Memoirs Written during the Great Civil War, the first of what proved to be a long list of publications having historical interest, sometimes reprints, sometimes original editions from old manuscripts, to which he contributed a greater or less amount of material in the shape of introductions and notes. These were undertaken in a few cases for money, in others simply because they struck him as interesting and useful labors. It is easy to trace the relation of this to his other work, particularly to the novels. He once wrote to a friend, " The editing a new edition of Somers's Tracts some years ago made me wonderfully well INTRODUCTION 5 acquainted with the little traits which marked parties and char- acters in the seventeenth century, and the embodying them is really an amusing task." 1 Among the works which he edited in this way the number of historical memoirs is noticeable. After the volume that has been mentioned as the first, he pre- pared another book of Memoirs of the Great Civil War; and we find in the list a Secret History of the Court of James I., Memoirs of the Reign of King Charles I., Count Grammont's Memoirs of the Court of Charles II., A History of Queen Elisabeth's Favourites, etc. Such books as these, besides fur- nishing material for his novels, led Scott to acquire a mass of information that enabled him to perform with great facility and with admirable results whatever editorial work he might choose to undertake. These labors Scott always considered as trifles to be dis- patched in the odd moments of his time, but the great edition of Dryden's Complete Works, which he began to prepare soon after the Minstrelsy appeared, was more important. This, next to the Minstrelsy, was probably the most notable of all Scott's editorial enterprises. It was published in eighteen volumes in 1808, the year in which Marmion also appeared. When the poet was reproached by one of his friends for not working more steadily at his vocation, he replied, " The public, with many other properties of spoiled children, has all their eagerness after novelty, and were I to dedicate my time en- tirely to poetry they would soon tire of me. I must therefore, I fear, continue to edit a little." 2 His interest in scholarly pursuits appears even in his first attempt at writing prose fiction, since Joseph Strutt's unfinished romance, Queenhoo Hall, for which Scott wrote a conclusion, is of consequence only on account of the antiquarian learning which it exhibits. Having become seriously alarmed over the political influence of the Edinburgh Review, Scott was active in forwarding plans for starting a strong rival periodical in London, and 1809 saw the establishment of the Quarterly Review. By that time he had done a considerable amount of work in practically every 1 Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 9. 2 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 194. 6 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE kind except the novel, and he was recognized as a most efficient assistant and adviser in any such enterprise as the promoters of the Quarterly were undertaking. Moreover, his own writ- ings were prominent among the books which supplied material for the reviewer. He worked hard for the first volume. But after that year he wrote little for the Quarterly until 1818, and again little until after Lockhart became editor in 1825. From that time until 1831 he was an occasional contributor. 1814 was the year of Waverley. Before that the poems had been appearing in rapid succession, and Scott had been busy with the Works of Swift, which came out also in 1814. The thirteen volumes of the edition of Sowers? Tracts, already mentioned, and several smaller books, bore further witness to his editorial energy. The last of the long poems was published in 181 5, about the same time with Guy Mannering, the second novel, and after that the novels continued to appear with that rapidity which constitutes one of the chief facts of Scott's literary career. For a few years after this period he did com- paratively little in the way of editorial work, but his odd mo- ments were occupied in writing about history, travels, and antiquities. 1 In 1820 Scott wrote the Lives of the Novelists, which ap- peared the next year in Ballantyne's Novelists' Library. By this time he had begun, with Ivanhoe, to strike out from the Scottish field in which all his first novels had been placed. The martial pomp prominent in this novel reflects the eager interest with which he was at that time following his son's opening career in the army; just as Marmion, written by the young quartermaster of the Edinburgh Light Horse, also expresses the military ardor which was so natural to Scott, and which reminds us of his remark that in those days a regiment of dragoons was tramping through his head day and night. Probably we might trace many a reason for his literary pre- occupations at special times besides those that he has himself commented upon. In the case of the critical work, however, 1 See particularly Paul's Letters ; Provincial Antiquities ; and the Histories of the years 1814 and 181 5, each a respectable volume, written for the Edinburgh Annual Register. INTRODUCTION / the matter was usually determined for him by circumstances of a much less intimate sort, such as the appeal of an editor or the appearance of a book which excited his special interest. When Scott was obliged to make as much money as possible he wrote novels and histories rather than criticism. His Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, which appeared in nine volumes in 1827, enabled him to make the first large payment on the debts that had fallen upon him in the financial crash of the preceding year, and the Tales of a Grandfather were among the most successful of his later books. His critical biographies and many of his other essays were brought together for the first time in 1827, and issued under the title of Miscellaneous Prose Works. The world of books was making his life weary with its importunate demands in those years when he was writing to pay his debts, and it is pleasant to see that some of his later reviews discussed matters that were not less dear to his heart because they were not literary. The articles on fishing, on ornamental gardening, on planting waste lands, remind us of the observation he once made, that his oaks would outlast his laurels. By this time the " Author of Waverley " was no longer the " unknown." His business complications compelled him to give his name to the novels, and with the loss of a certain kind of privacy he gained the freedom of which later he made such fortunate use in annotating his own works. From the begin- ning of 1828 until the end of his life in 1832, Scott was en- gaged, in the intervals of other occupations, in writing these introductions and notes for his novels, for an edition which he always called the Opus Magnum. This was a pleasant task, charmingly done. Indeed we may call it the last of those great editorial labors by which Scott's fame might live unsup- ported by anything else. First came the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, then the editions of Dryden and Swift. Next we may count the Lives of the Novelists, even in the frag- mentary state in which the failure of the Novelists' Library left them ; and finally the Opus Magnum. When, in addition, we remember the mass of his critical work written for period- icals, and the number of minor volumes he edited, it becomes 8 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE evident that a study of Scott which disregards this part of his work can present only a one-sided view of his achievement. And the qualities of his abundant criticism, especially its large fresh sanity, seem to make it worthy of closer analysis than it usually receives, not only because it helps to reveal Scott's genius, but also on account of the historical and ethical impor- tance which always attaches to the ideals, literary and other, of a noble man and a great writer. CHAPTER II Scott's Qualifications as Critic Wide reading Scott's first qualification — Scott the antiquary — Char- acter of his interest in history — His imagination — His knowledge of practical affairs — Common-sense in criticism — Cheerfulness, good- humor, and optimism — General aspect of Scott's critical work. Wide and appreciative reading was Scott's first qualification for critical work. A memory that retained an incredible amount of what he read was the second. One of the severest censures he ever expressed was in regard to Godwin, who, he thought, undertook to do scholarly work without adequate equipment. " We would advise him," Scott said in his review of Godwin's Life of Chaucer, " in future to read before he writes, and not merely while he is writing." Scott himself had accumulated a store of literary materials, and he used them according to the dictates of a temperament which had vivid interests on many sides. We may distinguish three points of view which were habitual to Scott, and which determined the direction of his creative work, as well as the tone of his criticism. These were — as all the world knows — the historical, the romantic, the practical. He was, as he often chose to call himself, an antiquary; he felt the appeal of all that was old and curious. But he was much more than that. The typical antiquary has his mind so thoroughly devoted to the past that the present seems remote to him. The sheer intellectual capacity of such a man as Scott might be enough to save him from such a limitation, for he could give to the past as much attention as an ordinary man could muster, and still have interest for contemporary affairs ; but his capacity was not all that saved Scott. He viewed the past always as filled with living men, whose chief occupation was to think and feel rather than to provide towers and armor 10 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE for the delectation of future antiquaries. 1 A sympathetic stu- dent of his work has said, "There is . . . throughout the poetry of this author, even when he leads us to the remotest wildernesses and the most desolate monuments of antiquity, a constant reference to the feelings of man in his social condi- tion." - The past, to the author of Kenilworth, was only the far end of the present, and he believed that the most useful result of the study of history is a comprehension of the real quality of one's own period and a wisdom in the conduct of present day affairs. 3 The favorite pursuits of Scott's youth indicate that his char- acteristic taste showed itself early; indeed it is said that he retained his boyish traits more completely than most people do. We can trace much of his love of the past to the family traditions which made the adventurous life of his ancestors vividly real to him. The annals of the Scotts were his earliest study, and he developed such an affection for his freebooting grandsires that in his manhood he confessed to an unconquer- able liking for the robbers and captains of banditti of his romances, characters who could not be prevented from usurp- ing the place of the heroes. " I was always a willing listener to tales of broil and battle and hubbub of every kind," he wrote in later life, "and now I look back upon it, I think what a godsend I must have been while a boy to the old Trojans of 1745, nay 1715, who used to frequent my father's house, and who knew as little as I did for what market I was laying up the raw materials of their oft-told tales." 4 What attracted him in his boyhood, and what continued to attract him, was the picturesque incident, the color of the past, the mere look 1 Ruskin's remark that " The excellence of Scott's work is precisely in proportion to the degree in which it is sketched from present nature," should not necessarily lead on to the condemnation which follows : " He does not see how anything is to be got out of the past but confusion, old iron on drawing-room chairs, and serious inconvenience to Dr. Heavysterne." {Modern Painters, Part IV, ch. 16, § 32.) "^Letters to Richard Heber, etc. (by J. L. Adolphus), pp. 136-137. 3 Mr. Herford distinguishes two lines of romantic sentiment — " the one pursuing the image of the past as a refuge from reality, the other as a portion of it : the medievalism of Tieck and the medisevalism of Scott." The Age of Wordsworth, Introduction, p. xxiv, note. 4 Letters of Lady Louisa Stuart, p. 249. HIS QUALIFICATIONS AS CRITIC 11 of its varied activity. The philosophy of history was grad- ually revealed to him, however, and his generalizing faculty found congenial employment in tracing out the relation of men to movements, of national impulses to world history. But however much he might exercise his analytical powers, history was never abstract to him, nor did it require an effort for him to conjure up scenes of the past. An acquaintance with the stores of early literature served to give him the spirit of remote times as well as to feed his literary tastes. On this side he had an ample equipment for critical work, conditioned, of course, by the other qualities of his mind, which determined how the equipment should be used. That Scott was not a dull digger in heaps of ancient lore was owing to his imaginative power, — the second of the quali- ties which we have distinguished as dominating his literary temperament. " I can see as many castles in the clouds as any man," he testified. 1 A recent writer has said that Scott had more than any other man that ever lived a sense of the roman- tic, and adds that his was that true romance which " lies not upon the outside of life, but absolutely in the centre of it." 2 The situations and the very objects that he described have the power of stirring the romantic spirit in his readers because he was alive to the glamour surrounding anything which has for generations been connected with human thoughts and emotions. The subjectivity which was so prominent an element in the romanticism of Shelley, Keats, and Byron, does not appear in Scott's work. Nor was his sense of the mystery of things so subtle as that of Coleridge. But Scott, rather than Coleridge, was the interpreter to his age of the romantic spirit, for the ordinary person likes his wonders so tangible that he may know definitely the point at which they impinge upon his conscious- ness. In Scott's work the point of contact is made clear: the author brings his atmosphere not from another world but from the past, and with all its strangeness it has no unearthly quality. 1 Journal, Vol. I, p. 333 ; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 81. The edition of Lock- hart's Life of Scott to which reference is made throughout this study is that in five volumes, published by Macmillan & Co. in the " Library of English Classics." * Chesterton, Varied Types, pp. 161-2. 12 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE In general the romance of his nature is rather taken for granted than insisted on, for there are the poems and the novels to bear witness to that side of his temperament; and the sur- prising thing is that such an author was a business man, a large landowner, an industrious lawyer. 1 Scott's imaginative sense, which clothed in fine fancies any incident or scene presented, however nakedly, to his view, accounts in part for his notorious tendency to overrate the work of other writers, especially those who wrote stories in any form. This explanation was hinted at by Sir Walter himself, and formulated by Lockhart; it seems a fairly reasonable way of accounting for a trait that at first appears to indicate only a foolish excess of good-nature. This rich and active invagina- tion, which Scott brought to bear on everything he read, per- haps explains also his habit of paying little attention to care- fully worked out details, and of laying almost exclusive em- phasis upon main outlines. When he was writing his Life of Napoleon, he said in his Journal: " Better a superficial book which brings well and strikingly together the known and acknowledged facts, than a dull boring narrative, pausing to see further into a mill-stone at every moment than the nature of the mill-stone admits." 2 Probably his high gift of imagi- nation made him a little impatient with the remoter reaches of the analytic faculties. Any sustained exercise of the pure rea- son was outside his province, reasonable as he was in every- day affairs. He preferred to consider facts, and to theorize only so far as was necessary to establish comfortable relations between the facts, — never to the extent of trying to look into 1 The fact that Scott was a Clerk of the Court of Sessions is remem- bered less frequently than the fact that he had business complications. But this employment of his, which could be undertaken only by a lawyer, occupied a large proportion of his time during twenty-four years. He once wrote, " I cannot work well after I have had four or five hours of the court, for though the business is trifling, yet it requires constant attention, which is at length exhausting." (Constable's Correspondence, Vol. Ill, p. 195.) Again he wrote, " I saw it reported that Joseph Hume said I com- posed novels at the clerk's table ; but Joseph Hume said what neither was nor could be correct, as any one who either knew what belonged to com- posing novels, or acting as clerk to a court of justice, would easily have discovered." (Memoirs of Sir William Knighton, p. 252.) 2 Journal, Vol. I, p. 60 ; Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 390. HIS QUALIFICATIONS AS CRITIC 13 the center of a mill-stone. It was not unusual for him to make very acute observations in the spheres of ethics, economics, and psychology, and to use them in explaining any situation which might seem to require their assistance ; but these remarks were brief and incidental, and bore a very definite relation to the concrete ideas they were meant to illustrate. Scott was a business man as well as an antiquary and a poet. Mr. Palgrave thought Lockhart went too far in creating the impression that Scott could detach his mind from the world of imagination and apply its full force to practical affairs. 1 Yet the oversight of lands and accounts and of all ordinary matters was so congenial to him, and his practical activities were on the whole conducted with so much spirit and capa- bility, that after emphasizing his preoccupation with the poetic aspects of the life of his ancestors, we must turn immediately about and lay stress upon his keen judgment in everyday affairs. To a school-boy poet he once wrote : " I would . . . caution you against an enthusiasm which, while it argues an excellent disposition and a feeling heart, requires to be watched and restrained, though not repressed. It is apt, if too much indulged, to engender a fastidious contempt for the ordinary business of the world, and gradually to render us unfit for the exercise of the useful and domestic virtues which depend greatly upon our not exalting our feelings above the temper of well-ordered and well-educated society." 2 He phrased the same matter differently when he said : " ' I'd rather be a kitten and cry, Mew ! ' than write the best poetry in the world on condition of laying aside common-sense in the ordinary trans- actions and business of the world." 3 " He thought," said Lockhart, " that to spend some fair portion of every day in any matter-of-fact occupation is good for the higher faculties them- selves in the upshot." 4 Whether or not we consider this the ideal theory of life for a poet, we find it reasonable to suppose that a critic will be the better critic if he preserve some balance between matter-of-fact occupation and the exercise of his 1 See the Memoir prefixed to the Globe Edition of Scott's poems. 2 Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 217. 3 Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 447. 4 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 122. 14 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE higher faculties. Sir Walter's maxim applies well to himself at least, and an analysis of his powers as a critic derives some light from it. The thing that is waiting to be said is of course that his criticism is distinguished by common-sense. Whether common- sense should really predominate in criticism might perhaps be debated; the quality indicates, indeed, not only the excellence but also the limitations of his method. For example, Scott was rather too much given to accepting popular favor as the test of merit in literary work, and though the clamorously eager reception of his own books was never able to raise his self- esteem to a very high pitch, it seems to have been the only thing that induced him to respect his powers in anything like an appreciative way. 1 His instinct and his judgment agreed in urging him to avoid being a man of " mere theory," 2 and he sought always to test opinions by practical standards. More or less connected with his good sense are other quali- ties which also had their effect upon his critical work, — his cheerfulness, his sweet temper and human sympathy, his mod- esty, his humor, his independence of spirit, and his enthusiastic delight in literature. That his cheerfulness was a matter of temperament we cannot doubt, but it was also founded on prin- ciple. He had remarkable power of self-control. 3 His opin- ion that it is a man's duty to live a happy life appears rather quaintly in the sermonizing with which he felt called upon to temper the admiration expressed in his articles on Childe Harold, and it is implicit in many of his biographical studies. His own amiability of course influenced all his work. Satire he considered objectionable, " a woman's fault," 4 as he once called it ; though he did not feel himself " altogether disquali- 1 Cooper measured his own success by the same test. At the conclusion of the Letter to the Publisher with which The Pioneers originally opened he said he should look to his publisher for ".the only true account of the reception of his book." (Lounsbury's Life of Cooper, pp. 43-4.) 2 Napoleon, Vol. I, ch. 2. 3 " He fixed his attention on his employments without the slightest con- sideration for his own feelings of whatever kind, either in regard to state of health or domestic sorrows." {Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, by R. P. Gillies, Vol. Ill, p. 141.) 4 Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 365. HIS QUALIFICATIONS AS CRITIC 15 fied for it by nature." 1 " I have refrained, as much as human frailty will permit, from all satirical composition," 2 he said. For satire he seems to have substituted that kind of " serious banter, a style hovering between affected gravity and satirical slyness," which has been pointed out as characteristic of him. 3 Washington Irving noticed a similar tone in all his familiar conversations about local traditions and superstitions. 4 He was really optimistic, except on some political questions. In his Lives of the Novelists he shows that he thought man- ners and morals had improved in the previous hundred years; and none of his reviews exhibits the feeling so common among men of letters in all ages, that their own times are intellectually degenerate. It is true that he looked back to the days of Blair, Hume, Adam Smith, Robertson, and Ferguson, as the "golden days of Edinburgh," 5 but those golden days were no farther away than his own boyhood, and he had felt the exhilaration of the stimulating society which he praised. One of his con- temporaries spoke of Scott's own works as throwing " a literary splendour over his native city " ; 6 and George Ticknor said of him, " He is indeed the lord of the ascendant now in Edin- burgh, and well deserves to be, for I look upon him to be quite as remarkable in intercourse and conversation, as he is in any of his writings, even in his novels." 7 But he could hardly be expected to perceive the luster surrounding his own person- ality, and this one instance of regret for former days counts little against the abundant evidence that he thought the world was improving. Yet of all his contemporaries he was probably the one who looked back at the past with the greatest interest. The impression made by the author of Waverley upon the mind of a young enthusiast of his own time is too delightful to pass over without quotation. " He has no eccentric sympathies or antipathies " ; wrote J. L. Adolphus, " no maudlin philanthropy or impertinent cynicism ; no nondescript hobby-horse ; and with 1 Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 112. 2 Journal, Vol. I, p. 303 ; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 68. 3 Letters to Heber, p. 69. i Irving's Abbotsford. 5 Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor, Vol. I, p. 282. See also Scott's review of the Life of Home ; and Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 304. 6 Cockbum's Memorials, p. 181. ''Ticknor, Vol. I, p. 280. 16 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE all his matchless energy and originality of mind, he is content to admire popular books, and enjoy popular pleasures; to cherish those opinions which experience has sanctioned ; to rev- erence those institutions which antiquity has hallowed; and to enjoy, admire, cherish, and reverence all these with the same plainness, simplicity, and sincerity as our ancestors did of old." 1 By temperament, then, Scott was enthusiastic over the past and cheerful in regard to his own day; he was imaginative, practical, genial ; and these traits must be taken into account in judging his critical writings. These and other qualities may be deduced from the most superficial study of his creative work. The mere bulk of that work bears witness to two things : first that Scott was primarily a creative writer ; again, that he was of those who write much rather than minutely. It is obvious that to attack details would be easy. And since he was only secondarily a critic, it is natural that his critical opinions should not have been erected into any system. But while they are essentially desultory, they are the ideas of a man whose information and enthusiasm extended through a wide range of studies ; and they are rendered impressive by the abundance, variety, and energy, which mark them as charac- teristic of Scott. 1 Letters to Heber, p. 63 ; Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 496. CHAPTER III Scott's Work as Student and Editor in the Field of Literary History the mediaeval period Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border Scott's early interest in ballads — Casual origin of the Minstrelsy — Importance of the book in Scott's career — Plan of the book — Medi- aeval scholarship of Scott's time — His theory as to the origin of ballads and their deterioration — His attitude toward the work of pre- vious editors — His method of forming texts — Kinds of changes he made — His qualifications for emending old poetry — Modern imitations of the ballad included in the Minstrelsy — Remarks on the ballad style — Impossibility of a scientific treatment of folk-poetry in Scott's time — Real importance of the Minstrelsy. We think of the Border Minstrelsy as the first work which resulted from the preparation of Scott's whole youth, between the days when he insisted on shouting the lines of Hardyknute into the ears of the irate clergyman making a parish call, and the time when he and his equally ardent friends gathered their ballads from the lips of old women among the hills. But we have seen that the inspiration for his first attempts at writing poetry came only indirectly from the ballads of his own coun- try. We learn from the introduction to the third part of the Minstrelsy that some of the young men of Scott's circle in Edinburgh were stimulated by what the novelist, Henry Mac- kenzie, told them of the beauties of German literature, to form a class for the study of that language. This was when Scott was twenty-one, but it was still four years before he found him- self writing those translations which mark the sufficiently modest beginning of his literary career. His enthusiasm for German literature was not at first tempered by any critical dis- crimination, if we may judge from the opinions of one or two 2 17 18 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE of his friends who labored to point out to him the extravagance and false sentiment which he was too ready to admire along with the real genius of some of his models. 1 Apparently their efforts were useful, for in a review written in 1806 we find Scott, in a remark on Burger, referring to " the taste for out- rageous sensibility, which disgraces most German poetry." 2 His special interest in the Germans was an early mood which seems not to have returned. After the process of translation had discovered to him his verse-making faculty, he naturally passed on to the writing of original poems, and circumstances of a half accidental sort determined that the Scottish ballads which he had always loved should absorb his attention for the next two or three years. The publication of a book of ballads was first suggested by Scott as an opportunity for his friend Ballantyne to exhibit his skill as a printer and so increase his business. " I have been for years collecting old Border ballads," Scott remarked, " and I think I could with little trouble put together such a selection from them as might make a neat little volume to sell for four or five shillings." 3 From this casual proposition resulted The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, published in three vol- umes in 1802-3 and often revised and reissued during the editor's lifetime. This book and the prefaces to his own novels are likely to be thought of first when Scott is spoken of as a critic. The connection between the Minstrelsy and the novels has often been pointed out, ever since the day of the contemporary who, on reading the ballads with their introductions, exclaimed that in that book were the elements of a hundred historical ro- mances. 4 The interest of the earlier work is undoubtedly mul- tiplied by the associations in the light of which we read it — associations connected with the editor's whole experience as an author, from the Lay of the Last Minstrel to Castle Dangerous. Important as the Minstrelsy is from the point of view of literary criticism, the material of its introductions is chiefly 1 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 177. 2 Review of Poems of William Herbert, Edinburgh Review, October, 1806. 3 Lockhart, Vol. I, pp. 275-6. 4 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 333- MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER 19 historical. The introduction in the original edition gives an account of life on the Border in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with the outlines of many of the events that stimu- lated ballad-making, and an analysis of the temper of the Marchmen among whom this kind of poetry flourished; then by special introductions and notes to the poems an attempt is made to explain both the incidents on which they seem to have been founded, and parallel cases that appear in tradition or record. Some enthusiastic comment is included, of the kind that was so natural to Scott, on the effect of ballad poetry upon a spirited and warlike people. The writer continues : " But it is not the Editor's present intention to enter upon a history of Border poetry; a subject of great difficulty, and which the ex- tent of his information does not as yet permit him to engage in." It was, in fact, nearly thirty years later 1 that Scott wrote the Remarks on Popular Poetry which since that date have formed an introduction to the book, as well as the essay, On Imitations of the Ancient Ballad, which at present precedes the third part. The more purely literary side of the editor's duty — leaving out of account the modern poems written by Scott and others — was exhibited chiefly in the construction of texts, a matter of which I shall speak later, after considering his views of the origin and character of folk-poetry in general. But first we may recall the fact that Scott was following a fairly well established vogue in giving scholarly attention to ancient popular poetry. A revival of interest in the study of mediaeval literature had been stimulated in England by the publication of Percy's Reliques in 1765 and Warton's History of English Poetry in 1774. In 1800 there were enough well- known antiquaries to keep Scott from being in any sense lonely. Among them Joseph Ritson 2 was the most learned, but he was crotchety in the extreme ; and while his notions as to x In 1830. 2 Ritson's principal works were as follows : Select Collection of English Songs (1783) ; Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry from Authentic Manu- scripts and Old Printed Copies (1791) ; Ancient Songs from the Time of Henry III. to the Revolution (1792) ; Scottish Songs with the Genuine Music (1794); Poems by Laurence Minot (1795); Robin Hood Poems (1795) ; Ancient English Metrical Romances (1802). 20 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE research were in advance of his time, his controversial style resembled that of the seventeenth century. George Ellis, 1 on the other hand, was distinguished by an eighteenth-century urbanity, and his combination of learning and good taste fitted him to influence a broader public than that of specialists. At the same time he was a delightful and stimulating friend to other scholars. Southey was becoming known as an authority on the history and literature of the Spanish peninsula. A review in the Quarterly a dozen years later mentions these three, — Ellis, Scott, and Southey, — as " good men and true " to serve as guides in the remote realms of literature. 2 Ellis's friend, John Hookham Frere, had great abilities but was an incurable dillettante. Scott particularly admired a Middle- English version of The Battle of Brunanburgh which Frere wrote in his school-boy days, and considered him an authoritative critic of mediaeval English poetry. Robert Sur- tees 3 and Francis Douce 4 were antiquaries of some importance, and both, like all the others named, were friends of Scott. Mr. Herford calls this period a day of " Specimens " and extracts : " Mediaeval romance was studied in Ellis's Specimens" he says, " the Elizabethan drama in Lamb's, literary history at large in D'Israeli's gently garrulous compilations of its ' quar- rels,' ' amenities,' ' calamities,' and ' curiosities.' " 5 But the scholarship of the time on the whole is worthy of respect. In the case of ballads and romances notable work had been done before Scott entered the field, 6 and he and his contemporaries 1 Ellis published his Specimens o.f the Early English Poets in 1790, and it was reissued with the addition of the Introduction in 1801 and 1803. He edited also Way's translations of the Fabliaux (1796), and Specimens of Early English Romances in Metre (1805). 2 Review of Dunlop's History of Fiction, July, 181 5. 3 The Magnum Opus of Robert Surtees was his History of Durham, pub- lished 1816-1840. 4 Douce published Illustrations of Shakespeare in 1807. Later he edited Arnold's Chronicle; Judicium, a Pageant ; and a metrical Life of St. Robert. The two latter, which appeared in 1822 and 1824, were done for the Rox- burghe Club. In 1824 he also wrote some notes for Warton's History of English Poetry. 5 Age of Wordsworth, p. 39. 6 A number of volumes containing old ballads together with modern imitations had been published both before and after the appearance of Percy's Reliques, but Ritson's collections were the first, except Percy's, to treat the material in a scholarly way. MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER 21 were carrying out the promise of the half century before them — continuing the work that Percy and Warton had begun. Among the problems connected with ballad study, that which arises first is naturally the question of origins. Scott made no attempt to formulate a theory different in any main element from that which was held by his predecessors. He agreed with Percy that ballads were composed and sung by minstrels, and based his discussion on the materials brought forward by Percy and Ritson for use in their great controversy. 1 Ritson himself never doubted that ballads were composed and sung by individual authors, though he might refuse to call them minstrels. The idea of communal authorship, which Jacob Grimm was to suggest only half a dozen years after the first edition of the Minstrelsy, would doubtless have been rejected by Scott, even if he had considered it. But we have no evi- dence that he did so. Probably he did not, as he never felt the need of a new theory. 2 x The discussion centered upon the social and literary position of min- strels. The first edition of the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, pub- lished in 1765, contained an essay on the History of Minstrelsy, and one on the Origin of the Metrical Romances, which, taken together, says Mr. Courthope, " may be said to furnish the first generalized theory of the nature of mediaeval poetry." {History of English Poetry, Vol. I, p. 426.) Percy considered the minstrels as the authors of the compositions which they sang to the harp, and as holding a dignified social position similar to that of the Anglo-Saxon scop or the old Norse scald. This theory was vigorously attacked by Joseph Ritson in the preface of his Select Collection of English Songs in 1783, and again in his Ancient English Metrical Romances in 1802, and in his essay On the Ancient English Minstrels in Ancient Songs and Ballads (1792). Ritson contended that minstrels were musical per- formers of a low class, or even acrobats, and that they were not literary composers. Scott used his knowledge of ballads and romances and the customs depicted in them to reinforce his own decision that the truth lay somewhere between the two extremes. He pointed out that the word may have covered a wide variety of professional entertainers. A modern com- ment (by E. K. Chambers, in The Mediaeval Stage, Vol. I, p. 66) seems like an echo of Scott : " This general antithesis between the higher and lower minstrelsy may now, perhaps, be regarded as established. It was the neglect of it, surely, that led to that curious and barren logomachy between Percy and Ritson, in which neither of the disputants can be said to have had hold of more than a bare half of the truth." 2 Scott's theory as to the authorship of ballads is even now held by Mr. Courthope. At the end of his chapter on Minstrelsy, in The History of English Poetry, he thus sums up the matter : " All the evidence cited in 22 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE Scott's opinion in regard to the transmission of ballads fol*- lowed naturally from his theory of their origin. His aristo- cratic instincts perhaps helped to determine his belief that ballads were composed by gifted minstrels, and that they had deteriorated in the process of being handed down by reci- tation. He called tradition " a sort of perverted alchymy which converts gold into lead." " All that is abstractedly poetical," he said, " all that is above the comprehension of the merest peasant, is apt to escape in frequent repetition ; and the lacunae thus created are filled up either by lines from other ditties or from the mother wit of the reciter or singer. The injury, in either case, is obvious and irreparable." 1 From this point of view Scott considered that the ballads were only getting their rights when a skilful hand gave them such a retouching as should enable them to appear in something of what he called their original vigor. 2 We may learn what qualities he considered necessary for an editor in this field, from the latter part of his Remarks on Popular Poetry, in which he discusses previous attempts to col- lect English and Scottish ballads. Of Percy he speaks in the highest terms, here and elsewhere. We have seen that he felt this chapter shows that, so far from the ballad being a spontaneous product of popular imagination, it was a type of poem adapted by the professors of the declining art of minstrelsy, from the romances once in favour with the educated classes. Everything in the ballad — matter, form, composition — is the work of the minstrel ; all that the people do is to remember and repeat what the minstrel has put together." This statement represents a position which is actively assailed by the adherents of the communal origin theory. Another critical idea which originated in Germany, and in which Scott had no interest, though he knew something about it, was the Wolf- fian hypothesis in regard to the Homeric poems. He once heard Coleridge expound the subject, but failed to join in the discussion. (Journal, Vol. II, p. 164; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 193.) He said the theory could never be held by any poet. See a note by Lockhart on the essay on Popular Poetry. Henderson's edition of Minstrelsy, Vol. I, p. 3. 1 Review of Cromek's Reliques of Bums. Quarterly Review, February, 1809. 2 " No one but Burns ever succeeded in patching up old Scottish songs with any good effect," Scott wrote in his Journal (Vol. II, p. 25). And in his review of Cromek's Reliques of Burns he said on the same subject of Scottish songs : " Few, whether serious or humorous, past through his hands without receiving some of those magic touches which, without greatly altering the song, restored its original spirit, or gave it more than it had ever possessed." (Quarterly, February, 1809.) MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER 23 a strong sympathy with Percy's desire to dress up the ballads and make them as attractive to the public as their intrinsic charms render them to their friends. He did not of course realize the extent to which the Bishop reworked his materials, as the publication of the folio manuscript has since revealed it, and Ritson's captious remarks on the subject were naturally discounted on the score of their ill-temper. But it is not to be doubted that Ritson had an appreciable effect on Scott's atti- tude, by stirring him up to some comprehension of the things that might be said in favor even of dull accuracy. Ritson's collections are cited in their place, with a tribute to the extreme fidelity of their editor. It is a pity that this accurate scholar could not have had a sufficient amount of literary taste, to say nothing of good manners, to inspire others with a fuller trust in his method. Scott expresses impatience with him for seem- ing to prefer the less effective text in many instances, " as if a poem was not more likely to be deteriorated than improved by passing through the mouths of many reciters." 1 He admitted, however, that it was not in his own period necessary to rework the ballads as much as Bishop Percy had done, since the Reliqiies had already created an audience for popular poetry. His purpose evidently was to steer a middle course between such graceful but sophisticated versions as were given in the Reliques, and the exact transcript of everything to be gathered from tradition, whether interesting or not, that was attempted by Ritson. In his later revisions he gave way more than at first to his natural impulse in favor of the added graces which he could supply. 2 It is easy to see how his own contributions of word and phrase might slip in, since his avowed method was to collate the different texts secured from manuscripts or recitation or both, and so to give what to his mind was the worthiest ver- sion. Believing that the ballads had been composed by men not unlike himself, he assumed, in the manner well known to clas- sical text-critics, that his familiarity with the conditions of the 1 Remarks on Popular Poetry, Henderson's edition of Minstrelsy, Vol. I, p. 46. 2 Henderson's edition of Minstrelsy, Vol. I, p. xix. 24 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE ancient social order gave him some license for changing here and there a word or a line. In determining which stanzas or lines to choose, when choice was possible, he was guided by his antiquarian knowledge and by the general principle of selecting the most poetic rendering among those at his com- mand. This was his way of showing his respect for the min- strel bards of whom he was fond of considering himself a successor. So far it is perfectly easy to take his point of view. But it is more difficult to reconcile his practice with his professions. We find this declaration in the forefront of the book: "No liberties have been taken either with the recited or written copies of these ballads, farther than that, where they disagreed, which is by no means unusual, the editor, in justice to the author, has uniformly preserved what seemed to him the best or most poetical rendering of the passage. . . . Some arrange- ment was also occasionally necessary to recover the rhyme, which was often, by the ignorance of the reciters, transposed or thrown into the middle of the line. With these freedoms, which were essentially necessary to remove obvious corruptions and fit the ballads for the press, the editor presents them to the public, under the complete assurance that they carry with them the most indisputable marks of their authenticity." 1 In the face of this fair announcement we are surprised, to say the least, at the number of lines and stanzas which scholars have discovered to be of Scott's own composition. 2 1 Henderson's edition of Minstrelsy, Vol. I, pp. 167-8. 2 The matter may be traced in Child's collection of ballads, or more easily in the latest edition of the Minstrelsy, edited by T. F. Henderson and published in four volumes in 1902. Mr. Henderson's views of ballad origins are quite in accord with Scott's own, but he notes the points at which Scott failed to follow any originals. There seems to be some reason to believe, however, though Mr. Henderson does not say so, that Scott wrote Kinmont Willie without any originals at all, except the very similar situa- tions in three or four other ballads. See the introduction by Professor Kittredge to the abridged edition of Child's ballads, edited by himself and Helen Child Sargent. It is unnecessary to give here any detailed account of Scott's procedure, as the matter has been thoroughly worked out by students of ballads. A few examples may be given as illustrations, however. In The Doivie Dens of Yarrow (Henderson's edition, Vol. Ill, p. 173) 28 lines out of the 68 MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER 25 Occasionally his notes give some slight indication of his method of treatment, as for instance this, on The Dowie Dens of Yarrow: " The editor found it easy to collect a variety of copies ; but very difficult indeed to select from them such a col- lated edition as might in any degree suit the taste of ' these more light and giddy-paced times.' " Notes on some others of the ballads say that "a few conjectural emendations have been found necessary," but no one of these remarks would seem really ingenuous in a modern scholar when we consider how far the " conjectural emendations " extended. Moreover, changes were often made without the slightest clue in intro- duction or note. 1 The case was complicated for Scott by the poetical tastes of his assistants. Leyden 2 was apparently quite capable of taking are noted by Mr. Henderson as either changed or added by Scott. Scott writes (beginning of fifth stanza), "As he gaed up the Tennies bank" for " As he gaed up yon high, high hill," and we find from a note of Lockhart's that The Tennies is the name of a farm belonging to the Duke of Buc- cleuch. In the sixth stanza Scott changes the lines, " O ir ye come to drink the wine As we hae done before, O ? " to " O come ye here to part your land, The bonnie forest thorough ? " In the seventeenth stanza he changes, " A better rose will never spring Than him I've lost on Yarrow?" to " A fairer rose did never bloom Than now lies cropp'd on Yarrow." In Jellon Grame (Vol. Ill, p. 203), Mr. Henderson notes changes in 15 different lines, and points out 2 whole stanzas, out of the 21, that are interpolated. In the Gay Goss-hawk (Vol. Ill, p. 187) 6 stanzas out of 39 are noted as probably wholly or mainly by Scott, and 30 stanzas were changed by him. Sometimes his alterations occurred in every line of a stanza. It is probable that Scott changed Jamie Telfer enough to make the Scotts take the place of prominence that had been held by the Elliotts in the original form of the story. See The Trustworthiness of Border Ballads as Exemplified by 'Jamie Telfer i' the Fair Dodhead' and other Ballads; by Lieut.-Col. the Hon. Fitzwilliam Elliott. Reviewed in Edin- burgh Review, No. 418, p. 306 (October, 1906). 1 See the examples given in the preceding note. Most of the changes there spoken of were made without annotation. 2 This extraordinary young man was poet and scholar on his own account by 1800, though he was four years younger than Scott. His erudition in many fields was remarkable, and he was as enthusiastic as Scott himself about Scotch poetry, and was the chief assistant in gathering ballads for 26 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE down a ballad from recitation in such a way as to produce a more finished poem than one would expect a traditional ballad to be. And Hogg, 1 who supplied several ballads from the reci- tations of his mother and other old people, was probably still less strict. " Sure no man," he is quoted as having said, " will think an old song the worse of being somewhat harmonious." 2 Yet it is easy to see that Scott's friends might have acted dif- ferently if his own practice had favored absolute fidelity to the texts. A remark in Scott's review of Evans's Old Ballads seems a pretty definite arraignment of his own procedure. " It may be asked by the severer antiquary of the present day, why an editor, thinking it necessary to introduce such alterations in order to bring forth a new, beautiful, and interesting sense from a meagre or corrupted original, did not in good faith to his readers acquaint them with the liberties he had taken and make them judge whether in so doing he transgressed his limits. We answer that unquestionably such would be the express duty of a modern editor, but such were not the rules of the service when Dr. Percy first opened the campaign." 3 One wonders whether the " rules of the service " did not in Scott's opinion occasionally permit a little wilful mystification. The case of Kinmont Willie tempts one to such an explanation. the Minstrelsy. He also collected the material for the essay on Fairies in the second volume, which was especially praised by the reviewer in the Edinburgh Review (January, 1803). Leyden's chief fame was derived from his wonderfully varied activities in India, from 1803 to his early death in 181 1. Any reader of Lockhart's Life of Scott or of Scott's delightful little memoir, published first in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 181 1, and included in the Miscellaneous Prose Works, must feel that the uncouth young genius is a familiar acquaintance. 1 The Ettrick Shepherd, who, after reading the first two volumes of the Minstrelsy, sought an acquaintance with Scott, and offered assistance which was gladly made use of in the preparation of the third volume. Scott in his turn provided much of the material for Hogg's Jacobite Relics, pub- lished in 1819. The following note on one of the songs in that work adds to the reader's doubts concerning the accuracy of Scott's texts : " I have not altered a word from the manuscript, which is in the handwriting of an amanuensis of Mr. Scott's, the most incorrect transcriber, perhaps, that ever tried the business." {Jacobite Relics, Vol. I, p. 282. Note on song lxiii.) 2 Henderson's edition of the Minstrelsy, Vol. I, p. 284. 3 Quarterly, May, 1810. MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER 27 Besides the capital instance of his anonymity as regards the novels, Scott several times seemed to amuse himself in per- plexing the public. There was the case of the Bridal of Trier- main, which he tried by means of various careful devices to pass off as the work of a friend. But perhaps the best ex- ample appears in connection with The Fortunes of Nigel. He first designed the material of that book for a series of " private letters " purporting to have been written in the reign of James I., but when he had finally complied with the advice of his friends and used it for a novel, he said to Lockhart, " You were all quite right : if the letters had passed for genuine, they would have found favour only with a few musty antiquaries." 1 This suggests comparison with the conduct of his friend Robert Surtees, who palmed off upon him three whole ballads of his own and got them inserted in the Minstrelsy as ancient, with a plausible tale concerning the circumstances of their recovery. Surtees, one is interested to observe, never dared tell Scott the truth, and Scott always accepted the ballads as genuine — a lack of discernment rather compromising in an editor, though one may perhaps excuse him on the ground of his confidence in his brother antiquary. 2 In one direction Scott seems to have been more conscientious than we might be inclined to suppose after seeing the discrep- ancy between the standard of exactness that his own statements lead us to expect and the results that actually appear. I believe that he intended to preserve the manuscript texts just as he received them, and that he would have wished to have them given to the public when the public was prepared to want them. To support this theory we have first the fact that most of his own emendations have been traced by means of the manu- 1 Lockhart, Vol. Ill, p. 514. 2 Still more striking evidence that Scott lacked an infallible sense of the difference between genuine and spurious ballad material is afforded by his comments on Peter Buchan's collection, which is now considered par- ticularly untrustworthy. He thought that with two or three exceptions the pieces in the book were genuine, and said : " I scarce know anything so easily discovered as the piecing and patching of an old ballad ; the darns in a silk stocking are not more manifest." {Correspondence of C. K. Sharpe, Vol. II, p. 424.) 28 SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE scripts which he used. 1 It is significant that in speaking of a poet who had altered a manuscript to suit a revised reading he grew indignant over that fault far more than over the mere change in the published version. The Raid of the Reidswire, he said, " first appeared in Allan Ramsay's Evergreen, but some liberties have been taken by him in transcribing it; and, what is altogether unpardonable, the manuscript, which is itself rather inaccurate, has been interpolated to favour his readings ; of which there remain obvious marks." 2 Scott said also that the time had come for the publication of Percy's folio manu- script ; though we must believe that he would not have wished to see the manuscript published until the ballads had become familiar to the world in what he considered a beautified form. The changes Scott made were usually in style rather than in substance. Often he merely substituted an archaic word for a modern one; but often whole lines and longer passages offered temptations which the poet in him could not resist, and he " improved " lavishly. For example, we have his note on Earl Richard — " The best verses are here selected from both copies, and some trivial alterations have been adopted from tradition," — with the comment by Mr. Henderson — " The emendations of Scott are so many, and the majority relate so entirely to style, that no mere tradition could have supplied them." 3 His versions are in general characterized by a smooth- ness and precision of meter which to the student of ballads is very suspicious. But he seems occasionally to have altered or supplied incidents as well as phrases. The historical event 1 Scott's manuscript collections of ballads dropped partially out of sight after his death, and it was only about 1890 that their magnitude and im- portance became known. Professor Child and later editors have found them of very great service. (On Child's use of the Abbotsford materials, see the Advertisement to Part VIII of his collection, contained in Volume IV.) In 1880 appeared a reprint of the Ballad Book of C. K. Sharpe, " with notes and ballads from the unpublished manuscripts of C. K. Sharpe and Sir Walter Scott," but the contributions from Scott's papers did not amount to much. Scott's materials were at the service of his friend for use in the original edition of the Ballad Book, published in 1823. See Sharpe' s Correspondence, Vol. II, pp. 264, 271 and 325, for letters from Scott on this subject. 2 Note on The Raid of the Reidswire, in the Minstrelsy. 3 Henderson's edition of the Minstrelsy, Vol. Ill, p. 232. MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER 29 which furnished the purpose for the expedition of Sir Patrick Spens seems to have been introduced into the ballad by Scott, and Mr. Henderson thinks that " when the deeds of his ances- tors were concerned it was impossible for him to resist the temptation to employ some of his own minstrel art on their behalf." 1