SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 BY 
 
 WIWJAM HENRY ^UDSON 
 
 Professor of English literature in Stanford 
 University, California 
 
 LONDON: SANDS & COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 A. WESSELS COMPANY 
 1901 
 
TO MY FRIENDS 
 
 DAVID STARR JORDAN 
 
 AND 
 
 JESSIE KNIGHT JORDAN 
 
 Of Stanford University, 
 California 
 
 158886 
 
H816 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TT has been my aim in this volume to give a 
 straightforward and fairly comprehensive account 
 of the life, character, and writings of Scott ; and if I 
 have found the task a difficult one, it has hardly, I 
 think, been more difficult than I expected when I 
 began. Scott is altogether too big a subject to be put 
 very successfully into a small book ; his picturesque 
 personality, the range and volume of his work, his 
 varied relations with the men and movements of his 
 time, and the countless delightful stories which cluster 
 about his name, combine to fill the biographer who 
 has but limited space at disposal with feelings akin to 
 despair. One is so constantly tempted to enlarge, to 
 comment, to find place for this or that familiar incident 
 or anecdote, that the writing of almost every page 
 represents the solution of that always taxing problem 
 the problem of deciding what one can best afford to 
 leave out. I am well enough aware, therefore, that 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 every lover of Scott is certain to miss many things 
 for which he had a perfect right to look. I can only 
 hope that the necessary omissions are not such as to 
 interfere seriously with the general substance of my 
 story. 
 
 It is perhaps needless to say that I have no new 
 facts to present. The greater part of my book is, of 
 course, made out of Lockhart' s great life of his father- 
 in-law, supplemented, equally of course, by Scott's 
 own Diary, the two volumes of Familiar Letters, 
 edited by Mr Douglas, and such other works of 
 biography and reminiscence as would naturally be 
 turned to in search of aid. As for my criticisms, such 
 as they are, they stand in every case, save where the 
 contrary is distinctly noted, for my own study and 
 conclusions. But while I may fairly claim this much 
 for them, I am not vain enough to imagine that they 
 will be found to be anywhere marked by freshness or 
 originality. Scott has been too much written about, 
 wisely and unwisely, for one to hope, at this time 
 of day, to contribute anything new to the general 
 judgment of the man and his work. I may add that, 
 while it is hard, when one has read a good deal on the 
 subject about which one is writing, to be certain at all 
 times of dividing one's own opinions from opinions 
 one has picked up from others, I have tried to 
 acknowledge direct indebtedness wherever I have 
 felt such acknowledgment to be due. 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 A few words of more intimately personal character 
 may be allowed me, in order that I may indicate 
 something of the spirit in which this book has been 
 written. Scott was the first great writer to draw me 
 under his spell the first to open for me the golden 
 gates of poetry and romance. I can well remember 
 the time when, a mere child, I would spend my half- 
 holidays over Ivanhoe and The Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel, seated in rapt silence on a hassock in a 
 corner of my father's library, in our old house at 
 Bristol. I can well remember, too, how I would carry 
 fragments of these enthralling stories to my fellows at 
 school, resolved, with all the enthusiasm of boyhood, 
 to make them willing or unwilling partakers of my 
 pleasure. The men and women of whom I read and 
 told were real figures to us then ; and in the organiza- 
 tion of our little school we lived out a kind of 
 chivalrous life, even emulating, to the no small alarm 
 of our elders, the scenes in Sherwood Forest, and the 
 achievements at Ashby-de-la-Zouche. Moreover, if 
 the whole truth must be told, one of my own first 
 compositions took the form of a romantic narrative 
 poem, fashioned, I suspect very closely, upon the Lay. 
 It ran to six books, I believe ; and I remember that it 
 was full of youthful energy, and had much to do with 
 fightings and enchantments. But more than this I 
 cannot say, for my early masterpiece was afterwards 
 discreetly burned. 
 
x PREFACE 
 
 Such memories and associations as these have a 
 power not to be destroyed by any enlargement of 
 intellectual horizon, changes of taste, or revision of 
 critical judgments. Whatever qualifications I may 
 lack, therefore, for dealing with Scott, these at least 
 I may lay claim to possess that in years gone by I 
 lived much with him, and that I have loved him long 
 and well. 
 
 WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON. 
 
 LONDON, 1899. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 :HAP. PAGE 
 
 I. Childhood and Schooldays (1771-1783) i 
 
 II. College, Profession, and Marriage (1783-1797) . . 23 
 
 III. Literary Beginnings The Border Minstrelsy 
 
 (1792-1803) 57 
 
 IV. From The Lay of the Last Minstrel to The Vision of 
 
 Don Roderick (1804-1811) 78 
 
 v. Removal to Abbotsford Scott and the Ballantynes 
 
 Waverley (1812-1814) 113 
 
 vi. From Waverley to Ivanhoe (1814-1819) . . . 133 
 
 vii. From The Monastery to the Tales of the Crusaders 
 
 The Collapse of Scott's fortunes (1820-1826) . 162 
 
 'Hi. Last Years and Death (1826-1832) .... 183 
 
 IX. Personal Characteristics 208 
 
 x. Scott as a Poet . . . . . . . .234 
 
 XI. The Waverley Novels 258 
 
OF THF 
 
 UNIVERSH 
 
 or 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS 
 (1771-1783) 
 
 IN his delightful fragment of autobiography, and 
 often elsewhere in his writings, Scott refers 
 humorously to the passion of his countrymen for 
 pedigrees ; but he was himself too thorough a Scots- 
 man, and far too deeply imbued with the spirit of the 
 feudal past, to treat such a matter with serious 
 contempt Frankly admitting the national weakness, 
 he enters forthwith, and at considerable length, into 
 the details of his ancestral history, and evidently 
 attaches more importance than would most readers of 
 the present day to the fact that he was connected, 
 though remotely, with ancient families on both his 
 father's and his mother's side. His was, indeed, " no 
 bad genealogy for a Border minstrel," for the blood 
 of many generations of sturdy old fighters coursed in 
 
 A 
 
2 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 his veins. As a Scott, he could trace his lineage 
 through Beardie of Teviotdale, loyal adherent of 
 " the banished dynasty of Stuart," l to auld Watt of 
 Harden, whose name he " made to ring in many a 
 ditty," and thence to the great Buccleughs ; while 
 through his mother, Anne Rutherford, he claimed 
 connection with the "bauld Rutherfords that were 
 sae stout," and with the Swintons of Swinton, "a 
 family which produced many distinguished warriors 
 during the middle ages, and which, for antiquity 
 and honourable alliances, may rank with any in 
 Britain." To these particulars due prominence 
 must be given in any account of Scott, however 
 brief. The sentiment of blood and kindred is, 
 with the majority of people, a mere sentiment ; 
 at most it does little more than fill them with a 
 vague pride in their "ancient, petrified descent." 
 With Scott, it was throughout one of the master 
 influences of his career. It stimulated and fed his 
 genius as poet and writer of romance. It inspired 
 him with that baronial ambition to establish, as Scott 
 of Abbotsford, a minor branch of his family, which 
 was largely instrumental in bringing about the 
 tragedy of his life. 
 
 His father, Walter Scott, the first of his line, it 
 would appear, to adopt a town residence and a 
 regular profession, was a Writer to the Signet, and 
 rose to some eminence in a vocation for which, as 
 
 1 This picturesque character gained his nickname from the "venerable 
 beard, which he wore unblemished by razor or scisssors," as a token 
 of sorrow over the fate of James II. and his House. See Marmion ; 
 Introduction to Canto III. 
 
CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS 3 
 
 the son believed, he was not naturally fitted. He 
 was a handsome man, rather formal in manner, and 
 a great stickler for etiquette ; but full of hospitality 
 and kindness, despite some austerity and an extra- 
 ordinary love of funerals. l Though in no large sense 
 a scholar, he was devoted to Church history, and 
 probably spent many a peaceful hour in his study 
 over his ecclesiastical folios, when he was currently 
 supposed to be immersed in the affairs of his calling. 
 Calvinist of the strictest kind, he was well known for 
 his personal integrity and almost Quixotic ideal of 
 professional rectitude and honour. An anecdote of his 
 declining a promising business opening because his 
 "worldly" client insisted on consulting him on the 
 Sabbath, furnishes a good illustration of his general 
 character. His portrait is drawn for us, in the larger 
 outlines at any rate, in Saunders Fairford, Writer to 
 the Signet, in Redgauntlet. 
 
 In April, 1758, being then nearly thirty years of 
 age, this Walter Scott married a daughter of Dr John 
 Rutherford, Professor of Medicine in the University 
 of Edinburgh. She was a woman of amiable manners, 
 cultivated understanding, affectionate disposition, and 
 fine taste, and, while "sincerely religious," was less 
 severe in manner than her husband. 2 As times went, 
 she had been exceptionally well educated, and so 
 thoroughly "finished off" by "the Honourable Mrs 
 Ogilvie," that "even when she approached her 
 
 1 Scott's Journal, p. 172. 
 
 45 Quoted from James Mitchell, in Lockhart's Memoirs of the Life of 
 Scott, p. 30. (The references are throughout to the complete edition in 
 one volume). 
 
4 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 eightieth year, she took as much care to avoid touching 
 her chair with her back, as if she had still been under 
 the stern eye," of that admirable mistress of deport- 
 ment 1 It is sometimes said that, unlike most men 
 of genius, Scott owed more to his father than to his 
 mother. Yet after her death he wrote to Lady 
 Louisa Stuart of her "well-stored mind," "natural 
 talent," "excellent memory," and power of vivid 
 description, adding : u If I have been able to do 
 anything in the way of painting the past times, it is 
 very much from the studies with which she presented 
 me." 2 That to the last he thought of her with warm 
 affection, is made clear by a number of occasional 
 references in his letters and journals. On the evening 
 after his burial, his executors, on opening his desk, 
 found arranged in careful order, "the old-fashioned 
 boxes that had garnished his mother's toilet, when 
 he, a sickly child, slept in her dressing-room the 
 silver taper-stand which the young advocate had 
 bought for her with his first five-guinea fee," and other 
 little objects "which had obviously been so placed 
 there that his eye might rest on them every morning 
 before he began his tasks." 3 
 
 Twelve children in all were born to Mr and Mrs 
 Scott, but of these, the first six died in infancy 
 between 1759 and 1766. Third in order of the later 
 and more prosperous six, Walter first saw the light in 
 the College Wynd, Edinburgh, on the isth August 
 1771. He was thus, roughly speaking, a year younger 
 than Wordsworth, a year older than Coleridge, and 
 
 1 Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh > quoted in Lockhart, p. 22. 
 
 2 Lockhart, p. 419. 3 Ibid.^ p. 758, 
 
CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS 5 
 
 three years the senior of Southey. The evil genius of 
 the family lay in wait for him by the cradle, for, 
 though an uncommonly robust child, he " nearly 
 died " at the outset, in consequence of his first nurse 
 "being ill of a consumption." Fortunately for the 
 world, the danger was realised in time to be averted, 
 and the youngster was consigned to a healthy peasant 
 woman, who lived long enough to boast of her laddie 
 being what she called "a grand gentleman." For 
 some eighteen months after this escape, the child 
 throve and prospered. Then a strange thing happened. 
 One night, Scott was afterwards told, he showed great 
 reluctance to be caught and put to bed, and had to be 
 chased about the room before he was secured and 
 carried off captive to the dormitory. The circum- 
 stance in itself can hardly be considered astonishing, 
 but it derives interest from what followed. " It was 
 the last time," says Scott, pathetically, " I was to show 
 such personal agility." In the morning he was ill of 
 a teething fever, which held him for three days ; and 
 on the fourth, it was discovered that he had lost the use 
 of the right leg. For many years the anxious parents 
 eagerly snatched at everything that promised cure ; 
 the best physicians were consulted, and when they 
 failed, recourse was had to all sorts of quack remedies, 
 " some of which were of a nature sufficiently singular." 
 Meanwhile, however, on the advice of his grandfather, 
 Dr Rutherford, Walter was sent to reside in the 
 country. For a time he was practically an invalid. 
 Then the natural impatience of his years inspired him 
 to struggle against his infirmity, and he " began, by 
 degrees, to stand, to walk, and to run." The limb 
 
6 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 itself was still shrunk and contracted, and was so to 
 remain to the end. But he gained in general condi- 
 tion, and presently became, in his own words, "a 
 healthy, high-spirited, and, my lameness apart, a 
 sturdy child." 
 
 There can be no doubt, I think though this is 
 a matter on which it would be at once easy and 
 dangerous to speculate too ingeniously that Scott's 
 affliction had not a little to do with determining the 
 course of his life. He was not a born man of letters 
 in the narrower sense of the term. He loved books 
 for the life that is in them ; but he loved life 
 better than books. His temper inclined him to th'e 
 highways of nature and humanity, not to the quietude 
 and seclusion of the study. " He would rather," 
 Lockhart declares, "have seen his heir carry the 
 banner of Bellenden gallantly at a football match 
 on Carterhaugh, than he would have heard that 
 the boy had attained the highest honours of the first 
 university of Europe." l For the craft of the writer, 
 as such, for " literary" manners, society, ambitions, 
 and the interests of the closet, his feeling bordered 
 on contempt. 2 Healthy in body and mind, of a 
 thoroughly large, active, robust nature, passionately 
 fond of the open air and the freedom of the fields, 
 keenly alive to the stir of great deeds, and with 
 the strongest sense of the claims of the actual world, 
 he was a man of the heroic type he loved so well 
 to depict. It can hardly be deemed fanciful, there- 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 755. 
 
 2 See Introduction to the 1830 edition of The Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel. 
 
CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS 7 
 
 fore, to see in his physical disability and the results 
 to which it immediately gave rise, the principal 
 influence which turned his marvellous powers and 
 equally marvellous energy into imaginative channels 
 which otherwise they might never have found for 
 themselves. Even as it was, he was wont in later 
 years to speak proudly of his capacity of endurance 
 in rugged enterprises ; of his tramps of thirty and 
 rides of a hundred miles a day ; of his success in 
 " sylvan sports " ; of his military services at the time 
 of the threatened invasion of Britain by the French. 1 
 A man of such build and character, had conditions 
 favoured him, might well have found his opportunity 
 in a life of practical effort and achievement might 
 well have spent himself in making history, leaving 
 it to others to write its romance. It would be idle 
 to guess in what ways the world might thus have 
 been enriched. But to be poorer by the Waverley 
 Novels were a possibility that we should not care 
 to contemplate. 
 
 It is, however, too early as yet to deal with these 
 questions in detail, and we will pick up again, without 
 further theorising, the thread of our story. In 
 accordance with Dr Rutherford's advice, then, Walter 
 was taken, before he had " the recollection of the 
 slightest event," to the home of his grandfather, 
 Robert Scott, at Sandy-Knowe ; and there it was 
 that he first awoke to the consciousness of life. His 
 earliest memories, as will often happen, were of the 
 whimsical kind. Among the many odd remedies 
 
 1 Introduction (1830) to The Lay. In him, he was wont to say, 
 1 ' accident spoiled a capital lifeguardsman. " Lockhart, p. 224. 
 
8 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 tried for his lameness, some one had recommended 
 that so often as a sheep was killed for the use of 
 the family, he should be " stripped and swathed up in 
 the skin, warm as it was flayed from the carcase 
 of the animal ; " and he well remembered lying " in 
 this Tartar-like habiliment/' on the floor of the little 
 farm-house parlour, while his grandfather, " a vener- 
 able old man with white hair," used every endeavour 
 to make him try to crawl. He could not then have 
 been more than three years old. Robert Scott 
 presently died, but the widow, with the assistance 
 of one of her brothers-in-law, kept on the farm, and 
 the child lived happily with the family, owing most, 
 however, to his " kind and affectionate aunt," Janet 
 Scott. Many influences were already at work 
 moulding his active mind. Listening to "the songs 
 and tales of the Jacobites," he began to imbibe a 
 very strong prejudice in favour of the Stuart family ; 
 while in the stories his grandmother told him of 
 Watt of Harden, Wight Willie of Aikwood, Jamie 
 Telfer of the fair Dodhead, and other such worthies, his 
 imagination was early fired by the rude but pictur- 
 esque traditions of the Border. Later on, books, too, 
 came in his way, to beguile the long winter evenings 
 Automathes (that strange, plagiarised, philosophic 
 romance of Gibbon's tutor), Allan Ramsay's Tea- 
 Table Miscellany, and an odd volume of Josephus's 
 Wars of the Jews ; and from these the good Aunt 
 Janet used to read to him " with admirable patience," 
 until, with that prodigious memory of his, he could 
 " repeat long passages by heart." The ballad of 
 Hardyknute was a first favourite with him, to the 
 
CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS 9 
 
 great annoyance of Dr Duncan, the parish clergyman, 
 whose sober chat was often interrupted by Walter's 
 vigorous and inopportune declamation. " One may 
 as well speak in the mouth of a cannon as where that 
 child is," was the poor doctor's plaint. Yet there was 
 no doubt of the place held by the little tyrant in the 
 family affections. 
 
 " For I was wayward, bold, and wild, 
 A self-will' d imp, a grandame's child ; 
 But half a plague, and half a jest, 
 Was still endured, beloved, caress'd." l 
 
 Other potent influences blended with these of the 
 fireside, for the romantic country about the farm- 
 house, with the square towers and massive walls of 
 Smailholme Castle, the steep crags which on three 
 sides defended its outer courts, and the magnificent 
 view from the summit across to Berwick and the 
 Cheviots, as the most striking features of the land- 
 scape, formed the natural environment in which his 
 spirit began to expand. He was carried about, ere 
 yet he gained strength to walk, on the broad shoulders 
 of the young ewe-milkers " a sweet-tempered 
 bairn, a darling with all about the house ; " and in old 
 age could still recall, with the vividness of yesterday, 
 his delight in rolling about on the sward all day 
 in the midst of the flocks. He grew to love the 
 sheep as he loved all animals ; at the same time, 
 his imagination was stimulated by Nature in her 
 sterner moods. Once, it is said, he was found lying 
 on the exposed hillside in a thunderstorm, crying 
 
 1 Marmion : Introduction to Canto III. 
 
 r 
 
io SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 " bonny ! bonny ! " at each successive flash. Such 
 early experiences cut deep, and left impressions 
 never to be obliterated. 
 
 That these early days at Sandy-Knowe were 
 recognised by him as having played an important 
 part in the development of his character, is shown 
 by the well-known lines in his Epistle to Erskine, 
 in which, after his own large way, he described his 
 surroundings there and their effect upon him. 
 
 " Thus while I ape the measure wild 
 Of tales that charm'd me yet a child, 
 Rude though they be, still with the chime 
 Return the thoughts of early time ; 
 And feelings roused in life's first day, 
 Glow in the line, and prompt the lay. 
 Then rise those crags, that mountain tower, 
 Which charm'd my fancy's wakening hour. 
 Though no broad river swept along, 
 To claim, perchance, heroic song; 
 Though sigh'd no groves in summer gale, 
 To prompt of love a softer tale ; 
 Though scarce a puny streamlet's speed 
 Claim'd homage from a shepherd's reed ; 
 Yet was poetic impulse given 
 By the green hill and clear blue heaven. 
 It was a barren scene and wild, 
 Where naked cliffs were rudely piled; 
 But ever and anon between 
 Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green; 
 And well the lonely infant knew 
 Recesses where the wall-flower grew, 
 And honeysuckle loved to crawl 
 Up the low crag and ruin'd wall. 
 I deem'd such nooks the sweetest shade 
 The sun in all its round survey'd; 
 And still I thought that shatter'd tower 
 
CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS II 
 
 The mightiest work of human power ; 
 
 And marvelPd as the aged hind 
 
 With some strange tale bewitch'd my mind, 
 
 Of forayers who, with headlong force, 
 
 Down from that strength had spurr'd their horse, 
 
 Their southern rapine to renew 
 
 Far in the distant Cheviots blue, 
 
 And, home returning, filled the hall 
 
 With revel, wassail-rout, and brawl. 
 
 Methought that still, with trump and clang, 
 
 The gateway's broken arches rang; 
 
 Methought grim features, seam'd with scars, 
 
 Glar'd through the window's rusty bars, 
 
 And ever, by the winter hearth, 
 
 Old tales I heard of woe and mirth, 
 
 Of lovers' slights, of ladies' charms, 
 
 Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms; 
 
 Of patriot battles, won of old 
 
 By Wallace wight, and Bruce the bold; 
 
 Of later fields of feud and fight, 
 
 When, pouring from their Highland height, 
 
 The Scottish clans, in headlong sway, 
 
 Had swept the scarlet ranks away. 
 
 While stretch'd at length upon the floor, 
 
 Again I fought each combat o'er, 
 
 Pebbles and shells, in order laid, 
 
 The mimic ranks of war display'd; 
 
 And onward still the Scottish Lion bore, 
 
 And still the scatter'd Southron fled before. 1 
 
 These lines, familiar as they are, have been quoted 
 at length because they contain at once a record and 
 an apologia. From one so nurtured it were vain to 
 demand " the classic poet's well-conn'd task." These 
 childish surroundings, he declares, gave bent to his 
 
 1 Marmion : Introduction to Canto III. Smailholme Tower is the 
 scene of Scott's early ballad, The Eve of St John. 
 
12 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 genius ; these early influences had made him what he 
 was. 1 
 
 The stay at Sandy-Knowe was interrupted by a 
 visit to Bath, whither Walter was taken by his aunt in 
 the hope that the waters might be of some advantage 
 to his lameness. There he saw and met " Douglas " 
 Home, then an old man ; and there he made 
 acquaintance with the stage. The play was As You 
 Like It, and " the witchery of the whole scene " re- 
 mained alive in his mind when, only half-a-dozen 
 years before his death, he wrote of the effect upon the 
 childish imagination of a first visit to the theatre. 2 
 Lockhart was amazed at " the minute recollection he 
 seemed to possess of all the striking features of the 
 city of Bath," which he never saw again after quitting 
 it before he was six. 3 He stayed there a twelve- 
 month, and then, after a few weeks at his father's 
 house in Edinburgh, he returned to Sandy-Knowe, 
 where he remained, with the exception of a short trip 
 to Prestonpans for the sea-bathing, till he was nearly 
 eight. 
 
 The flying visit to Edinburgh, just mentioned, took 
 place in the winter of 1777, and is for one reason 
 memorable. A certain Mrs Cockburn, a distant 
 relative on the mother's side, and a woman of great 
 accomplishment, chanced during this time to spend 
 
 1 It is interesting, and for the student of the romantic movement 
 instructive, to turn from Scott's account of himself to the description of 
 the influences under which the genius of the young poet ripened in 
 Beattie's Minstrel r , the first part of which was published in the very 
 year of Scott's birth. 
 
 * Life of Kemble (1826) ; or Lockhart, p. 24. 
 
 3 Lockhart, p. 24. 
 
CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS 13 
 
 an evening with the Scotts in George's Square. The 
 next day, in a letter to her parish minister, she re- 
 corded her impressions of the future poet. 
 
 " I last night supped in Mr Walter Scott's. He has the most 
 extraordinary genius of a boy I ever saw. He was reading a 
 poem to his mother when I went in. I made him read on ; it 
 was a description of a shipwreck. His passion rose with the 
 storm. He lifted his eyes and hands. ' There's the mast gone ! ' 
 says he. * Crash it goes ! They will all perish ! ' After his 
 agitation, he turns to me. ' That is too melancholy,' says he ; 
 ' I had better read you something more amusing.' I preferred 
 a little chat, and asked his opinion of Milton and other books 
 he was reading, which he gave me wonderfully. One of his 
 observations was : ' How strange it is that Adam, just new 
 come into the world, should know everything ; that must be the 
 poet's fancy,' says he. But when he was told he was created 
 perfect by God, he instantly yielded. When taken to bed last 
 night, he told his aunt he liked that lady. * What lady?' says 
 she. ' Why, Mrs Cockburn ; for I think she is a virtuoso 
 like myself.' ' Dear Walter,' says Aunt Jenny, ' what is a 
 virtuoso ? ' ' Don't ye know ? Why, it's one that wishes and 
 will know everything.' " 
 
 This report is valuable because, itself dating from 
 the time of the incidents it describes, it cannot have 
 been coloured, as such reminiscences of distinguished 
 men are apt to be, by later knowledge and judg- 
 ments. 
 
 Returning to Edinburgh in 1778, Scott became an 
 inmate of his father's house, henceforth his "most 
 established place of residence " until his marriage. 
 The change was at first anything but pleasant. 
 Hitherto, he had been "a single indulged brat," 
 enjoying, under the government of grandmother and 
 aunt, a degree of license which " could not be per- 
 mitted in a large family." He notes, however, that 
 
 
14 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 he had sense enough to bend his temper to his new 
 circumstances. This is significant. High-spirited 
 and impulsive as he was he once flew " like a wild 
 cat" at the throat of a relative who had wrung the 
 neck of a pet starling he early formed a habit of 
 self-control unusual in children. Before he was six, 
 he had the strength of mind on one occasion to wrap 
 his head in the bed-clothes, that he might not hear a 
 servant-girl's ghost story : knowledge that it would 
 frighten him out of his wits for the rest of the night, 
 conquering his natural curiosity. 1 The combined 
 firmness and sagacity illustrated by such an incident 
 stood the child in good stead under the circumstances 
 of a home-life where there was much to try both tact 
 and patience. 
 
 In his new conditions, Walter found much con- 
 solation in the kindness of his mother, who "joined 
 to a light and happy temper of mind a strong turn 
 to study poetry and works of imagination." He 
 complains of the strictness of the Presbyterian 
 Sabbath, the tedium of which was relieved only by 
 such books as the Pilgrim's Progress, and Gessner's 
 Death of Abel; but adds that the week-day 
 routine was far more agreeable. " My lameness and 
 my solitary habits had made me a tolerable reader, 
 and my hours of leisure were usually spent in reading 
 aloud to my mother Pope's translation of Homer, 
 which, excepting a few traditionary ballads, and the 
 songs in Allan Ramsay's Evergreen, was the first 
 poetry which I perused." The good woman made 
 him pause "upon those passages which expressed 
 1 Letter to Lady Louisa Stuart (1817), in Lockhart, p. 341. 
 
CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS 15 
 
 generous and worthy sentiments," and sought to 
 divert him from those " descriptive of battle and 
 tumult." Her efforts in this direction, however, met 
 with indifferent success. His enthusiasm was chiefly 
 awakened by the wonderful and the terrible "the 
 common taste of children, but in which," he confesses, 
 " I have remained a child even unto this day." The 
 " portentous tenacity " of his memory was already 
 revealing itself in the ease with which he got by 
 heart, " not as a task, but almost without intending 
 it," passages which appealed to his fancy. This 
 faculty, which grew with his growth, was recognised 
 throughout life as one of his most remarkable 
 characteristics, though he himself, after his wont, 
 commonly attached but little importance to it. 1 He 
 speaks of it as "a very fickle ally," which " acted 
 merely upon its own capricious motion," and which, 
 while preserving most faithfully " a favourite passage 
 of poetry, a playhouse ditty, or, above all, a Border- 
 raid ballad," quietly dropped, as through a sieve, 
 everything in the nature of " useful " information. In 
 other words, Scott, from the very beginning, seems to 
 have absorbed and retained, without effort, and in an 
 almost miraculous manner, everything that was likely 
 to serve the purposes of his life impressions of 
 characters and places, scraps of conversation, odds 
 and ends of out-of-the-way lore, and to have rejected 
 instinctively the burden of knowledge which, however 
 valuable in itself, could never be turned to account. 
 
 1 Yet he valued it as a possession, and saw in its first symptoms of 
 failure the signs of mental collapse. " If memory goes, all is up with 
 me, for that was always my strong point." Lockhart, p. 683, note. 
 
 
16 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 Few of us, I fancy, would be inclined to underrate 
 such a power as this on the score of its uncertainty 
 and caprice. 
 
 With his return, as permanent inmate, to George's 
 Square, Walter's education, heretofore a very hap- 
 hazard affair, was taken regularly in hand. He 
 entered the Edinburgh High School, remained three 
 years in the second class, under Luke Fraser, " a good 
 Latin scholar, and a very worthy man," and then, in 
 the usual routine, passed over to Dr Adam, the 
 Rector. His school reputation was a mingled one, 
 good and ill together. He speaks of himself as 
 having " glanced like a meteor from one end of the 
 class to the other," disgusting his master " as much by 
 negligence and frivolity " as he occasionally surprised 
 him " by flashes of intellect and talent." In the Percy 
 Anecdotes \\e long afterwards found it recorded that he 
 had been known as a dunce. This he emphatically 
 denies, while freely admitting that he "was an in- 
 corrigibly idle imp, who was always longing to do 
 something else than what was enjoined him." His 
 scholastic success was measured, according to the 
 standard of those days, mainly by his progress in the 
 Latin classics, and here the nature of his mind was 
 shown in its weakness and strength ; for while he 
 gave only an enforced attention to grammatical detail, 
 his power of seizing the meaning and entering into 
 the spirit of what he read often called forth the 
 Rector's favourable comment. He was popular with 
 his fellows, who liked him for his good nature and 
 " flow of ready imagination ; " and despite his lame- 
 ness, he shared regularly in all the school sports 
 
CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS 17 
 
 making on the whole, he declares with some pride, 
 a brighter figure in the playground than in the 
 class. 1 
 
 Meanwhile, the more important part of his educa- 
 tion was going on outside the school routine. His 
 acquaintance with English literature was gradually 
 extending itself. " In the intervals of my school 
 hours I had always perused with avidity such books 
 of history or poetry or voyages and travels as chance 
 presented to me not forgetting the usual, or rather 
 ten times the usual, quantity of fairy tales, eastern 
 stories, romances, etc." Totally unregulated and 
 undirected as all this reading had been, it had not 
 led to satiety, but had, on the contrary, kept the 
 appetite alive for more carefully chosen food. 
 Presently, in his mother's dressing-room, he came 
 across some odd volumes of Shakespeare ; and over 
 these, night after night, he would pore with rapture, 
 devouring them, in his night-shirt, by the light of the 
 fire, " until the bustle of the family rising from supper 
 warned me it was time to creep back to my bed, 
 where I was supposed to have been safely deposited 
 since nine o'clock." Through the kindness of Dr 
 Blacklock, the blind poet, whose notice he attracted 
 about this time, he also became intimate with Ossian 
 and Spenser. The " tawdry repetitions of the Ossianic 
 phraseology" disgusted him sooner, he says, than 
 might have been expected from his age. But Spenser 
 
 1 The story of Green Breeks, with its description of the street fighting 
 of the time, given in the appendix to the General Preface to the 
 Waverley Novels^ helps us to realise some of the outer conditions of 
 Scott's life as a High School boy. 
 
 B 
 
18 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 he could have read for ever. " Too young to trouble 
 myself about the allegory, I considered all the knights 
 and ladies and dragons and giants in their outward 
 and exoteric sense, and God only knows how delighted 
 I was to find myself in such society." His health 
 having become delicate again from over-rapidity of 
 growth, he was sent for several months to the care 
 of Aunt Janet at Kelso, and there, with the deduction 
 of a few hours each day at the village grammar school, 
 he was master of his own time. Left to himself, he 
 read more widely and indefatigably than ever, his 
 fresh conquests including the Jerusalem Delivered (in 
 the " flat " translation of Hoole), and the works of 
 Richardson, Mackenzie, Fielding, and Smollett. 
 Above all, it was then that Percy's Reliques fell into 
 his hands, marking an epoch in his life. " As I had 
 been from infancy devoted to legendary lore of this 
 nature," he writes, describing the incident, " and only 
 reluctantly withdrew my attention, from the scarcity of 
 materials and the rudeness of those which I possessed, 
 it may be imagined . . . with what delight I saw 
 pieces of the same kind which had amused my child- 
 hood, and still continued in secret the Delilahs of my 
 imagination, considered as the subject of sober re- 
 search, grave commentary, and apt illustration, by an 
 editor who showed his poetical genius was capable 
 of emulating the best qualities of what his pious labour 
 preserved. I remember well the spot where I read 
 these volumes for the first time. It was beneath a 
 huge plantanus tree, in the ruins of what had been 
 intended for an old-fashioned arbour. . . . The 
 summer day sped onward so fast, that, notwithstand- 
 
CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS 19 
 
 ing the sharp appetite of thirteen, I forgot the hour of 
 dinner, was sought for with anxiety, and was still 
 found entranced in my intellectual banquet. To read 
 and to remember was in this instance the same thing, 
 and henceforth I overwhelmed my school-fellows, and 
 all who would hearken to me, with tragical recitations 
 from the ballads of Bishop Percy. The first time, 
 too, I could scrape a few shillings together, which were 
 not common occurrences with me, I bought unto 
 myself a copy of these beloved volumes ; nor do I 
 believe I ever read a book half so frequently, or with 
 half the enthusiasm." We shall presently see that 
 this enthusiastic language is justified by the part 
 played by the Reliques in opening Scott's poetic 
 career. 
 
 To this short stay at Aunt Janet's, Scott also traced 
 the awakening of his conscious love for Nature. The 
 country round about Kelso is not only beautiful in 
 itself, but is also rich in romantic associations ; and 
 the boy's heart was stirred by a new passion in which 
 were blended a sense of all that was picturesque and 
 wonderful in the glorious landscape unrolled before 
 him, and " a sort of intense impression of reverence " 
 inspired by the historic and legendary memories which 
 everywhere clustered about it. Here, as elsewhere, 
 Scott the child was father of Scott the man. From 
 this time on, he records, " the love of natural beauty, 
 more especially when combined with ancient ruins, 
 or the remains of our father's piety or splendour, 
 became with me an insatiable passion, which, if 
 circumstances had permitted, I would willingly have 
 gratified by travelling over half the globe." 
 
20 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 Before his school-days were over, this boy with well- 
 stored memory and vivid imagination, enjoyed high 
 reputation among his fellows as a tale-teller of great 
 power, and quite delightful long-windedness. In the 
 winter play-hours when out-door sports were impos- 
 sible, the attractions of his talent " used to assemble an 
 admiring audience round Lucky Brown's fireside, and 
 happy was he that could sit next to the inexhaustible 
 narrator." l " The best story-teller I ever heard then 
 or since," says James Ballantyne, whom Scott met at 
 the Kelso Grammar School, and with whom he at once 
 struck up an intimacy destined to be fraught with 
 momentous consequences in after life. " Come, slink 
 over beside me, Jamie, and I'll tell you a story," were 
 the words which only too often seduced poor Jamie 
 from the appointed task. The two lads would walk 
 together daily by the banks of the Tweed, the one 
 happy in drinking in the endless narratives which the 
 other was equally happy in pouring out. 2 Young 
 Scott was fond, too, of recounting the " visions " which 
 came to him lying alone on the sofa on Sundays, 
 when ill-health prevented him from going to church. 
 Then the expression of his face, usually "that of 
 genuine benevolence mingled with a shrewd, innocent 
 humour," would change greatly, showing "a deep 
 intenseness of feeling, as if he were awed even by his 
 own recital." 3 Such a change later friends noted, 
 when, in the midst of ordinary table-talk, he would 
 quote some " fragment of high poetry." 
 
 1 Cf. General Preface to the Waverley Novels. 
 
 2 Lockhart, p. 32. 
 
 3 Quoted from Mrs Churnside, by Lockhart, p. 29. 
 
CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS 21 
 
 To supplement the work of the High School, Mr 
 Scott, in 1782, engaged as tutor for his children a 
 young man named Mitchell, of excellent disposition, 
 but of the severest Presbyterianism. 1 Many a lively 
 discussion did master and pupil hold together over the 
 early history of the Church of Scotland, and the wars 
 and sufferings of the Covenanters ; and in these the 
 bias of Scott's mind was unmistakable. " I, with a 
 head on fire for chivalry, was a Cavalier ; my friend 
 was a Roundhead ; I was a Tory, and he was a Whig, 
 I hated Presbyterians, and admired Montrose with 
 his victorious Highlanders ; he liked the Presbyterian 
 Ulysses, the dark and politic Argyle. ... In all 
 these tenets there was no real conviction on my 
 part, arising out of acquaintance with the views or 
 principles of either party. ... I took up my politics 
 at that period, as King Charles II. did his religion, 
 from an idea that the Cavalier creed was the 
 more gentleman-like persuasion of the two." What 
 is remarkable about this confession, apart from 
 its engaging frankness, is the clearness with which it 
 foreshadows the Scott of later years. Tory to the 
 last, he had always at least a kind of sentimental 
 sympathy with Jacobitism, while his attitude towards 
 past and present alike was largely determined by 
 emotion and a passion for romance and the 
 picturesque. 
 
 About this we shall have more to say by-and-bye. 
 
 1 This good fellow, who thought Shakespeare "profane," must have 
 frowned at the private theatricals with which the children sometimes 
 amused themselves in the evening. In later life, he expressed his 
 regret that Sir Walter should have wasted so much of his " precious " 
 time in writing novels. 
 
22 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 Meanwhile, it is not without a purpose that we have 
 dealt with Scott's early years with a minuteness 
 which, in view of the general limitations of our space, 
 might at first sight seem excessive. There are 
 biographies in which the particulars of childhood 
 have only an anecdotal interest. His is not one of 
 them. For by the time that Scott was ready for 
 college, his character was practically complete in all 
 its main outlines, and it was left for maturer experi- 
 ence only to expand these, and to fill them in. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 COLLEGE, PROFESSION, AND MARRIAGE 
 
 (1783-1797) 
 
 '"TOWARDS the end of 1783, Scott entered the 
 College of Edinburgh, carrying with him a vast 
 quantity of unsystematized general information, but on 
 the whole, poorly prepared for an academic career. 
 His college course did little for him. He studied 
 ethics, the humanities, history, mathematics, and, 
 with an eye to his future profession, already deter- 
 mined, civil and municipal law. In most of these 
 subjects he seems to have acquitted himself with 
 ordinary success, but his classical record was 
 positively unsatisfactory. In Latin he lost much of 
 what he had previously gained ; while Greek, out of 
 wilfulness and bravado, he obstinately refused to take 
 up at all. This resolution was the outcome of a bit 
 of not unnatural boyish pride and sensitiveness. Of 
 those who had been his companions at the High 
 School, and now went up with him to College, most 
 had already at least a smattering of Greek. He had 
 none, and, feeling his disadvantage in a matter which 
 
 23 
 
24 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 was reckoned of critical importance, he could hit upon 
 no better mode of vindicating himself than by adopt- 
 ing the familiar principle of sour grapes that is, by 
 openly declaring his contempt for the language, and 
 his resolution not to learn it. " If we cannot attain to 
 greatness," said Montaigne, " let us have our revenge 
 by railing against it." This, in brief, was Scott's 
 principle. When presently his stubbornness won for 
 him the unenviable nickname of " the Greek Block- 
 head," the boy, not to be chaffed or bullied into 
 compliance, replied by an essay in which Homer and 
 Ariosto were pitted against each other to the complete 
 discomfiture of the former a heresy supported by 
 much " bad reading and flimsy argument," to the 
 natural horror of the professor, who was none the less 
 astonished at the amount of out-of-the-way knowledge 
 displayed by the audacious disputant. Thus he 
 effectually burned his bridges behind him, and cut off 
 all chance of retreat. Lockhart believes that Scott 
 was inclined to underrate his classical attainments, 
 for in after life he could read any Latin author " so as 
 to catch without difficulty his meaning " ; but he 
 admits that his ignorance of Greek extended even to 
 the letters of the alphabet. Scott himself never ceased 
 to deplore the loss which his youthful folly had 
 entailed, as he regretted, in general, the random 
 character of his whole early education. We can 
 understand his feeling, without finding it necessary to 
 agree with him. His wide, if desultory reading 
 probably served him far better than the strictest 
 scholastic discipline would have done ; and even the 
 lack of Greek may have been to this extent a gain, 
 
COLLEGE, PROFESSION, AND MARRIAGE 25 
 
 that his mind was thereby kept free from critical 
 influences, which might have deflected his genius and 
 interfered with its spontaneous development. In 
 following the growth of Scott's poetic powers, there is 
 nothing more interesting than to observe the certainty 
 with which he seized upon all the materials likely to 
 aid him which fortunate circumstances threw into his 
 way ; and we cannot but conclude, considering the 
 work he was presently to undertake, that he might 
 have been impeded, rather than helped, by the study 
 of a literature which, by reason of the very fascination 
 it would undoubtedly have exercised over him, would 
 only too probably have led him astray, for a time at 
 any rate, into bypaths of imitation and ill-advised 
 experiment. 
 
 But if Scott in the College class-room was accom- 
 plishing little, outside he was, in the phrase used by 
 one of his friends on a later occasion, " makin' himsell 
 a' the time." 1 He fastened " like a tiger " upon every 
 collection of old songs and ballads brought to light 
 by happy chance, or discovered by ransacking the 
 dusty shelves of Sibbald's circulating library a store- 
 house which contained at that time many rare and 
 curious works. He renewed and extended his 
 knowledge of French, and made himself familiar with 
 Tressan's romances, the Bibliotheque Bleue, and the 
 Bibliotheque de Romans; and, learning from the 
 notes to Hoole's Ariosto^ that Italian literature was 
 rich in romantic lore, he joined an Italian class, rapidly 
 acquired a reading knowledge of the language, and 
 
 1 This is what Robert Shortreed said of the "raids" into Liddesdale, 
 (See post, chap, iii.) 
 
 X^ HH ^v^ 
 
 f Or Thi *^ \ 
 
 I UNIVERSITY J 
 
 V or J 
 
26 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 became intimate with Dante, Boiardo, Pulci, and other 
 well-known Italian writers. Nor did his researches 
 stop here. Italian and French led naturally to 
 Spanish, of which, about the same period, or shortly 
 afterwards, he soon picked up enough to serve for the 
 Guerras Civiles de Granada, Lazarillo de Tonnes, and 
 above all, Don Quixote. All this constituted a pretty 
 fair offset to any shortcomings in the regular College 
 curriculum. 
 
 Once more, but now for the last time for hence- 
 forth Scott was to enjoy many years of robust health 
 illness came to interrupt his prescribed studies and 
 throw him back upon himself. He was in his 
 sixteenth year when the bursting of a blood-vessel in 
 the lower bowels condemned him for a considerable 
 period to low diet, a severe regimen, and absolute 
 silence. Under these trying conditions he found his 
 chief solace in his beloved books. He exhausted the 
 resources of the circulating library in the way of 
 romances, old plays, and epic poetry, 1 and then 
 turned to memoirs and history to such history 
 particularly as dealt with military events. Lying in 
 " dreary and silent solitude," he conceived the idea 
 of illustrating the battles he read of " by the childish 
 expedient" already mentioned, it will be remembered, 
 in connection with his early days at Sandy-Knowe 
 " of arranging shells, and seeds, and pebbles, so as to 
 represent encountering armies ; " and with the assist- 
 ance of a friendly carpenter, contrived a model of a 
 fortress which, like that of Uncle Toby, was made to 
 represent whatever place happened at the moment to 
 
 1 General Preface to the Waverley Novels. 
 
COLLEGE, PROFESSION, AND MARRIAGE 27 
 
 be uppermost in his imagination. He thus fought 
 his way through Vertot's Knights of Malta a book 
 which, blending history and romance, interested him 
 greatly, and which he had not forgotten when he 
 visited Malta, just before his death and Orme's 
 History of Indostan. Chess was recommended to 
 him as affording a desirable change from these some- 
 times too engrossing studies, and he engaged eagerly 
 in a pastime " which had found favour with so many 
 of his Paladins/' x But after boyhood he character- 
 istically enough gave up a game which rewarded so 
 large a mental outlay with so little practical result. 
 " Surely," he would say, " chess-playing is sad waste 
 of brains." 
 
 The most intimate friend of these college days was 
 John Irving, afterwards Writer to the Signet, who 
 proved himself a devoted nurse in the season of 
 sickness, and who, sharing Walter's literary en- 
 thusiasms, was, for several years, his chosen com- 
 panion in those long country rambles to which 
 affectionate reference is made both in the fragment 
 of autobiography and, later, in the General Preface to 
 the Waverley Novels. Irving's account of these 
 expeditions tells us of Scott's physical strength and 
 prowess in climbing, his miraculous way of absorbing 
 books, and extraordinary tenacity of memory : 
 
 " Every Saturday, and more frequently during the vacations, 
 we used to retire, with three or four books ... to Salisbury 
 Crags, Arthur's Seat, or Blackford Hill, and read them together. 
 He read faster than I, and had, on this account, to wait a little 
 at finishing every two pages, before turning the leaf. The books 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 35. 
 
28 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 we most delighted in were romances of knight-errantry ; the 
 Castle of Otranto, Spenser, Ariosto, and Boiardo, were great 
 favourites. We used to climb up the rocks in search of places 
 where we might sit sheltered from the wind ; and the more 
 inaccessible they were, the better we liked them. He was very 
 expert at climbing. Sometimes we got into places where we 
 found it difficult to move either up or down, and I recollect 
 it being proposed, on several occasions, that I should go for a 
 ladder to see and extricate him ; but I never had any need really 
 to do so, for he always managed somehow either to get down 
 or ascend to the top. The number of books we thus devoured 
 was very great. I forgot great part of what I read, but my 
 friend, notwithstanding he read with such rapidity, remained, to 
 my surprise, master of it all, and could even weeks or months 
 afterwards repeat a whole page in which anything had par- 
 ticularly struck him at the moment. After we had continued 
 this practice of reading for two years or more together, he pro- 
 posed that we should recite to each other alternately such 
 adventures of knight-errants as we could ourselves contrive ; 
 and we continued to do so a long while. He found no difficulty 
 in it, and used to recite for half an hour or more at a time, while 
 I seldom continued half that space. The stories we told were, 
 as Sir Walter has said, interminable 1 for we were unwilling 
 to have any of our favourite knights killed." 2 
 
 Already, Irving's reminiscences further inform us, 
 Scott had begun the systematic collecting of ancient 
 ballads. Old Mrs Irving, John's mother, knew many 
 by heart, and these Scott would learn by simply 
 listening to her recitation of them ; at the same time, 
 he " used to get all the copies of these ballads he 
 could, and select the best." Six little manuscript 
 volumes of such fugitive pieces, long preserved 
 at Abbotsford, testify to his early industry and 
 success as a collector. Scott's own literary career 
 
 1 General Preface to the Waverley Novels. 
 
 2 Lockhart, p, 33. 
 
COLLEGE, PROFESSION, AND MARRIAGE 29 
 
 opened late, but the influences which led up to it, and 
 the studies which prepared him for it, are as it is the 
 main business of these chapters to insist to be 
 traced back, not vaguely but distinctly, to the period 
 of youth and childhood. Few great writers have 
 begun the true work of their lives more thoroughly 
 equipped than he ; in few cases is the line of 
 approach to a destined career to be marked out with 
 such certainty. It is needful to emphasize and re- 
 emphasize this fact, because otherwise, accepting the 
 superficial view, we might be led to fancy that his 
 initial experiments, first in verse and afterwards in 
 prose romance, were matters of simple chance. Let 
 us attach their full value, then, to these boyish 
 antiquarian undertakings. The Border Minstrelsy 
 was not to come till Scott was thirty years of age ; 
 but before he was sixteen he was unconsciously 
 feeling his way towards it. 
 
 In the foregoing paragraphs, which summarise the 
 more interesting details of several years, we have 
 followed Scott into the period when, though still 
 attending some classes at the college, he had 
 abandoned regular academic study, and had made a 
 start in professional life. It was, as we have said, 
 already decided that he should follow the law, but 
 whether in the higher or lower branch was for the 
 present an open question ; and though the elder Scott, 
 like Saunders Fairford, seems early to have entertained 
 the ambition of seeing his son at the Bar, he very 
 properly held that the technical training of a writer's 
 office would be of great practical service even to one 
 who might afterwards don the advocate's gown. Walter 
 
30 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 accordingly signed articles of apprenticeship with his 
 father, and in the spring of 1786 "entered upon the 
 dry and barren wilderness of forms and conveyances." 
 Scott never seems to have regretted this step, or 
 to have regarded as wasted the years afterwards 
 given up to labours which at first sight might have 
 appeared ill-adapted to help him forward to his 
 career as poet and novelist ; and, indeed, the con- 
 ditions of his life as a law-apprentice, and the pretty 
 rigid discipline which they imposed upon him, proved 
 in many ways both directly and indirectly beneficial. 
 His father's practice lay very largely among con- 
 nections in the country, and it was in visiting these, 
 in his professional capacity, that he first made his 
 way into the Highlands, and came into personal 
 contact with men and women who remembered, and 
 had in some cases been mixed up with, "the affair 
 of 1745." Here was grist to the mill, though not to 
 be used for many years to come. The law itself, 
 with all its delightful intricacy and capriciousness, 
 its ancient forms and quaint phraseology, could 
 hardly fail to possess an attraction of its own for 
 such a mind as his. In theory, it everywhere bore 
 reminiscences and suggestions of the feudal past ; 
 while in practice, it afforded a rare opportunity for 
 the study of many interesting if not always admirable 
 aspects of human nature. That Scott's legal ex- 
 periences yielded capital presently turned to good 
 account, a very superficial acquaintance with the 
 Waverley Novels would suffice to show. Who, for 
 instance, but one who knew the tortuosities of litiga- 
 tion familiarly, and from the inside, could have given 
 
COLLEGE, PROFESSION, AND MARRIAGE 31 
 
 us the mingled pathos and humour of "that un- 
 fortunate victim of Themis" poor Peter Peebles? 1 
 Finally, the drill of an office routine did much for 
 him in fostering those habits of industry, regularity, 
 and punctual attention to little things, to which 
 men of letters, as a class, are proverbially indifferent, 
 but which in his case became a kind of second 
 nature. Lockhart notes the care with which he 
 always docketed his letters, and Robert Chambers 
 could recollect once "folding a paper in a wrong 
 fashion in his presence, when he instantly undid it, 
 and showed with a schoolmaster-like nicety, but with 
 great good-humour, the proper way to perform this 
 little bit of business." 2 The characteristic orderliness 
 of mind which such details illustrate was undoubtedly, 
 in the main, a result of what Scott himself jocosely 
 called " the old shop." It is seldom that imaginative 
 writers have shown anything like his easy mastery of 
 his own powers, his steady diligence, his faculty of 
 sheer plodding ; and though we may hesitate to 
 
 1 The fondness for law, and the thorough grasp of it, displayed 
 throughout the Waver ley Novels were points specially dwelt upon by 
 Mr Adolphus, in his clever attempt to prove the identity of the Great 
 Unknown. " He deals out the peculiar terms and phrases of that 
 science (as practised in Scotland) with a freedom and confidence beyond 
 the reach of any uninitiated person. If ever, in the progress of his 
 narrative, a legal topic presents itself (which very frequently happens), 
 he neither declines the subject, nor timidly slurs it over, but enters as 
 largely and formally into all its technicalities as if the case were 
 actually * before the fifteen. ' The manners, humours, and professional 
 bavardage of lawyers, are sketched with all the ease and familiarity 
 which result from habitual observation. In fact, the subject of law, 
 which is a stumbling-block to others, is to the present writer a spot of 
 repose. 
 
 2 Story of the Life of Scott, p. 176. 
 
32 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 admit with him that these traits were all acquired 
 his confession of " constitutional indolence" comes 
 oddly from a man who throughout life revealed heroic 
 determination and an almost superhuman capacity 
 for work their development was no less certainly 
 favoured by the discipline of these 'prentice years, 
 when the business of life was regulated with almost 
 mechanical precision, and the thing to be done had to 
 be done after the manner and in the time prescribed. 
 
 Personal considerations had much to do with 
 Scott's quiet settlement in his new career ; he disliked 
 the drudgery of the office, and the necessary confine- 
 ment he altogether detested ; but he loved his father, 
 felt pride and pleasure in rendering himself useful to 
 him, and with his usual sound sense soon realised that 
 the only way in which he could gratify his growing 
 ambitions was to labour " hard and well." A writer's 
 apprentice in his day, at any rate received a small 
 payment for the copying done by him, and in this 
 way many a ready penman contrived to keep himself 
 in pocket money. Scott seized the opportunity. 
 " When actually at the oar, no man could pull it harder 
 than I," he writes, and recalls on one occasion 
 copying "upwards of 120 folio pages with no interval 
 either for food or rest." The money thus earned 
 "furnished a little fund for the menus plaisirs of 
 the circulating library and the theatre," helped him 
 to the purchase of a book or old coin, which had 
 otherwise been beyond his reach, 1 and paid for the 
 Italian lessons already mentioned. 
 
 1 Among the volumes thus acquired by him were Evans's then 
 recently published Old Ballads > Historical and Narrative^ with Some of 
 
COLLEGE, PROFESSION, AND MARRIAGE 33 
 
 An idle apprentice, Scott says, he was not, or one 
 given to penning stanzas "when he should engross." 
 Diligent in his task-work, however, he threw himself 
 with only the greater ardour into the interests of his 
 leisure hours. His desk, proper receptacle we may 
 suppose for literature of very different character, 
 usually contained " a store of most miscellaneous 
 volumes," especially works of fiction (not legal) which 
 remained his supreme delight. The ordinary novel 
 of the day, indeed, found no favour with him, and 
 it required all the art of a Burney or a Mackenzie 
 to engage his interest in a domestic tale. But every- 
 thing connected with knight-errantry was as accept- 
 able as ever, and his widening knowledge of languages 
 daily opened up for him fresh fields of adventure and 
 research. 
 
 Among the Edinburgh youth of that time, debating 
 societies enjoyed great popularity, and of several of 
 these, during the period of his apprenticeship and later 
 legal studies, Scott was an active member. At the 
 " Literary Society " he spoke frequently, with good 
 sense and humour, but he acquired no reputation for 
 special brilliancy or promise. Both here, however, and 
 at a smaller fraternity called "The Club," his extra- 
 ordinary fund of historic and antiquarian information 
 gave him a certain standing among his colleagues ; 
 though, lacking as yet the power of arranging his 
 material to advantage, he cut no very successful 
 figure in debate. Strict methods of parliamentary 
 
 Modern Date. A kind of supplement to Percy's work, these were eagerly 
 read and re-read. See Introductory Remarks to 1830 edition of the 
 Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. 
 
 C 
 
34 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 procedure in these learned bodies did not prevent 
 the development of that species of good fellowship 
 which finds a natural outlet in nicknames, and Scott 
 was known in the one association as Duns Scotus, 
 and in the other as Colonel Grogg. The former 
 sobriquet he owed, honourably enough, to his ac- 
 knowleged supremacy in mediaeval lore ; the latter, 
 it would appear, to a famous pair of corduroy breeches 
 which, about this time, formed a conspicuous, if not 
 very elegant portion of his apparel. But far more 
 important than either of these organisations was the 
 " Speculative Society," in which candidates for the 
 Bar were accustomed to train themselves in rhetoric 
 and debate, and to which Scott was elected in 1791. 
 The minutes show that he took a regular part in the 
 ordinary discussions on such inevitable questions as 
 State Religion, the Slave Trade, and the Execution of 
 Charles I. ; but while he was thus trying his skill on 
 whatever topics came uppermost, his own essays on 
 the origin of the feudal system, the authenticity of 
 Ossian, Scandinavian mythology, and similar subjects, 
 revealed the trend of his interests and the lines of his 
 study. 
 
 Into the proceedings of this society Scott entered 
 with such characteristic zeal that, shortly after his ad- 
 mission to the Bar, he was appointed first its librarian, 
 and later its secretary and treasurer. It was while 
 he held this double office, that Francis Jeffrey, then 
 a youth of nineteen, was initiated into the Club ; 
 and well did the famous critic afterwards recall the 
 strange, not to say grotesque, appearance of the 
 secretary, " who sat gravely at the bottom of the 
 
COLLEGE, PROFESSION, AND MARRIAGE 35 
 
 table, in a huge woollen night-cap, and when the 
 president took the chair, pleaded a bad toothache 
 as an apology for coming into that worshipful 
 assembly in such a ' portentous machine.' " Before 
 dismissing this amusing incident we may add that 
 the suffering official happened that night to read a 
 paper on ballads, which so struck the new member 
 that he sought an immediate introduction to him. 
 The next evening Jeffrey called on Scott, and found 
 him surrounded by dingy books, in his little den, " on 
 the sunk floor of his father's house," whence the two 
 young men presently adjourned to a neighbouring 
 tavern to celebrate their acquaintance with a supper. 
 
 In later life Scott spoke of the use these debating 
 societies had been to him in making some amends 
 for the irregularity of his education. He recognised 
 their drawback in a tendency to encourage that 
 disputatiousness to which, according to Franklin, 
 the good people of Edinburgh are naturally only too 
 prone ; but he felt that they had helped him to a 
 practical mastery of himself and his resources, and to 
 a certain readiness and savoir faire. Their greatest 
 benefit, however, was on the social side, inasmuch 
 as it was mainly through them that he now re-opened 
 that intercourse with men of his own age and station 
 which ill-health in High School and early college 
 days had unfortunately interrupted. 
 
 In the set with which Scott now passed much of 
 his leisure time, and in which he must have found 
 a welcome relief from the narrowness and austerity 
 of his home-life, the interests of law and letters were 
 combined with others of a less intellectual character. 
 
 i 
 
36 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 They were a jovial, warm-hearted, high-spirited lot 
 of young fellows, fond of fore-gatherings at oyster- 
 tavern and ale-house, and with a love of conviviality 
 it should be remembered that we are here dealing 
 with the social habits of more than a century ago 
 which sometimes led to downright hard drinking 
 Generally abstemious as he was in maturer years, 
 Scott took his full part in their bacchanalian revelries, 
 though it is worthy of remark that he was recognised 
 by his comrades as the most temperate man among 
 them, and that, in the quarrels which occasionally 
 followed their festive bouts, he often exerted the 
 influence which his strength of character and charm 
 of personality had given him, in the cause of inter- 
 necine peace. At the same time their superabundant 
 vitality found vent in another and less objectionable 
 way in long rambles into the country, in quest of 
 romantic scenes and spots of historic interest. At 
 first the pace set by his companions, some four miles 
 an hour, proved rather too much for Scott's lameness, 
 and three miles was accordingly agreed upon as the 
 legal measure. At this rate they would often tramp 
 along, from five in the morning till eight in the 
 evening, halting for their midday repast at some 
 roadside inn, and picking up what other refreshments 
 they could at cottages on the way. Sometimes the 
 excursions were so protracted that the family in 
 George's Square grew alarmed for the wanderer's 
 safety. But they presently became accustomed to 
 Walter's nomadic habits, and felt no concern about 
 his absence, even though it extended to the better 
 part of a week. " I only wish/' he said on one 
 
COLLEGE, PROFESSION, AND MARRIAGE 37 
 
 occasion to his father, " I had been as good a player 
 on the flute as poor George Primrose in the Vicar of 
 Wakefield. If I had his art, I should like nothing 
 better than to tramp like him from cottage to cottage 
 over the world." " I doubt/' returned his father, 
 drily, " I greatly doubt, sir, you were born for nae 
 better than a gangrel scrapeguf." 1 
 
 One incident belonging to the period of Scott's law 
 studies must not be omitted. As a lad of fifteen or 
 thereabouts he saw and met " the boast of Scotland," 
 Robert Burns. It was in the rooms of Professor 
 Fergusson that the two came face to face the man 
 who was soon to relinquish the sceptre of national 
 song, and the boy who was presently to take it up. 
 Scott was struck by the poet's strong and robust 
 person ; the mingled sense and shrewdness of his 
 expression; his large, dark, glowing eyes; 2 the 
 dignified plainness and simplicity of his manners. 
 In the course of the evening, a print representing a 
 soldier dead in the snow, with his dog and wife 
 beside him, affected Burns to tears. He asked whose 
 the lines were that were written beneath the picture. 
 Scott alone of the company could answer the question, 
 and Burns rewarded him with a look and a word 
 " which, though of mere civility," he then received, and 
 always afterwards remembered, with pleasure. The 
 episode recalls the story we hope not apocryphal 
 of Pope's one glimpse of Dryden at Will's. 
 
 1 Surely this is the origin of Darsie Latimer's fiddle-scraping expedi- 
 tion with Wandering Willie in Redgauntlet. 
 
 2 The peculiar glow in Burns's eye struck Scott greatly. He emphasised 
 it in his recollection of this meeting (Lockhart, p. 37), and spoke of it 
 again in St Ronaii's Well, chap. vii. 
 
38 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 Scott's indentures of apprenticeship with his father 
 were for the regular period of five years, and before 
 their expiration in 1791 it became necessary that he 
 should decide to which department of the law he was 
 to attach himself. He finally elected the Bar, and with 
 his intimate friend, William Clerk the painter's model 
 of Darsie Latimer, as Scott is himself of Alan 
 Fairford, in Redgauntlet applied himself to the 
 required course of study with what, little given as he 
 was to boast of his diligence, he was fain to admit to 
 have been " stern, steady, and undeviating industry." 
 Together the two young men attended the civil and 
 municipal law classes at the University ; read syste- 
 matically, morning after morning in carrying out 
 which arrangement, Scott rose, during two summers, 
 in time to be at his friend's house, two miles distant 
 from George's Square, before seven o'clock, a pretty 
 fair feat for one afflicted with constitutional indolence 
 passed the ordeals imposed by the Faculty of 
 Advocates, and in July 1792, "assumed the gown 
 with all its duties and honours." Those who would 
 know something at first hand of Scott's feelings on 
 this momentous occasion, cannot do better than to 
 turn to the early letters in Redgauntlet. Alan 
 Fairford's thesis was on the title De periculo et 
 commodo rei venditae ; Scott's on the grim, if perhaps 
 more thrilling subject, Concerning the Disposal of the 
 Dead Bodies of Criminals. Before the Court rose that 
 day a friendly solicitor gave the new advocate a 
 guinea fee. The money as such money will 
 burnt his pocket. Passing a hosier's shop in the High 
 Street, he said to Clerk : " This is a sort of a wedding- 
 
COLLEGE, PROFESSION, AND MARRIAGE 39 
 
 day, Willie ; I think I must go in and buy me a new 
 night-cap." Lockhart opines that this may have been 
 the " portentous machine " in which shortly afterwards 
 he held forth on ballads at the " Speculative " on the 
 evening of Jeffrey's first appearance there. 
 
 The contents of a couple of note-books, bearing*' 
 date the year of Scott's call to the bar, show that his 
 legal studies, and such anxieties as naturally attend 
 preparation for examinations, had by no means driven 
 literary and antiquarian interests from his mind. 
 Lockhart summarises these exceedingly miscellaneous 
 collections. " We have now an extract from the author 
 he happened to be reading ; now a memorandum of 
 something that had struck him in conversation ; a 
 fragment of an essay ; transcripts of favourite poems ; 
 remarks on curious cases in the old records of the 
 Justiciary Courts ; in short, . . . whatever might have 
 been looked for, with perhaps the single exception " 
 and this may certainly be considered an odd one 
 " of original verse. One of the books opens with : 
 ' Vegtams Kvitha, or the Descent of Odin, with the 
 Latin of Thomas Bartholine, and the English poetical 
 version of Mr Gray ; with some account of the death 
 of Balder, both as narrated in the Edda, and as 
 handed down to us by the Northern historians. 
 Auctore Gualtero Scott! The Norse original, and the 
 two versions, are then transcribed, and the historical 
 account appended, extending to seven closely written 
 quarto pages, was, I doubt not, read before one 
 or other of his debating societies. Next comes a 
 page, headed 'Pecuniary Distress of Charles the 
 First,' and containing a transcript of a receipt for some 
 
40 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 plate lent to the King in 1643. He then copies 
 Langhorne's Owen of Carron ; the verses of Canute 
 on passing Ely ; the lines to a cuckoo, given by 
 Warton as the oldest specimen of English verse ; 
 a translation ' by a gentleman in Devonshire/ of the 
 Death-Song of Regner Lodbrog ; and the beautiful 
 quatrain omitted in Gray's Elegy, ' There scattered 
 oft, the earliest of the year/ etc. After this we have 
 an Italian canzonet, on the praises of blue eyes 
 (which were much in favour at this time) ; several 
 pages of etymologies from Ducange ; some more of 
 notes on the Morte Arthur ; extracts from the books 
 of adjournal, about Dame Janet Beaton, the Lady of 
 Branxome of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, and her 
 husband, ' Sir Walter Scott of Buccleugh, called 
 Wicked Watt* ; other extracts about witches and 
 fairies ; various couplets from Hall's satires ; a passage 
 from Albania; notes on the Second Sight, with 
 extracts from Aubrey and Glanville ; a ' List of 
 Ballads to be Discovered or Recovered ; ' extracts 
 from Guerin de Montglave, and, after many more 
 similar entries, a table of the Mseso-Gothic, Anglo- 
 Saxon, and Runic alphabets ; with a fourth section, 
 headed German, but left blank." x The wonder is that 
 any student for the Bar to say nothing of one con r 
 stitutionally indolent should have found leisure to 
 get through the amount of miscellaneous reading to " 
 which such jottings bear witness, and the energy" 
 and perseverance necessary to keep up such a record 
 of results no easy matter at the best of times, as 
 those of us who have tried to maintain a common- 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 55. 
 
COLLEGE, PROFESSION, AND MARRIAGE 41 
 
 place book know to our cost. But Scott's way of 
 work had always, and even to his closest friends, 
 something of the miraculous about it. 
 
 Admitted to the Faculty of Advocates, Scott seems 
 to have devoted himself to "the ambidexter ingenuity 
 of the bar," l with reasonable industry and determina- 
 tion. Through his father and his father's friends he 
 already had the advantage of a small practical con- 
 nection, and he was clearly not the man to be 
 frightened of drudgery or soured by occasional 
 disappointment. Yet his career as an advocate did 
 not open brilliantly. His powers as a speaker were 
 not such as to make any immediate impression upon 
 the court, or to attract the eyes of solicitors and 
 clients towards him ; and though his knowledge and 
 insight were respectable, they led no one to imagine 
 that in him a Daniel had come to judgment. The 
 question as to whether or not he might ultimately 
 have secured one of the high prizes of his profession, 
 had his energies not been gradully drawn off into other 
 channels, is one which, though natural enough, can be 
 answered by conjecture only. That his legal learning 
 and ability were in later years recognised as out of 
 the common, is shown by the fact that a Baronry of 
 the Exchequer was regarded by him in the light of a 
 possible promotion, and seems at one time to have 
 been within his reach. 2 But his early experiments 
 gave little promise. He had plenty of opportunity to 
 study life and character, and a multitude of side- 
 interests to fill up the spare time that might otherwise 
 
 1 Bride of Lammermoor^ chap. v. 
 a Lockhart, pp. 342, 611. 
 
 
42 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 have been spent in useless fretting over the chances 
 that did not come ; and so far, judged from the 
 point of view of subsequent achievement, things were 
 well enough. But in the fifth year of practice 
 that is, between November 1796 and July 1797 he 
 made but 144, ios., of which ,50 were fees from 
 his father's chambers ; l and this is evidence that 
 professional progress was depressingly slow. I do 
 not mean to say that Scott had not in him the 
 making of a very successful lawyer, had he chosen to 
 give himself whole and single-hearted to the service 
 of his calling. But from the very start his allegiance 
 was a divided one, and before he got far on his way 
 it was manifest that, while he might for the time 
 being consider advocacy as his business, his dominant 
 interests were to be sought elsewhere. 
 
 While Scott was endeavouring to find a footing in 
 the " dusty purlieus of the law/' and was incidentally 
 gaining high repute in Parliament House and Covenant 
 Close as an inimitable teller of good stories, Europe 
 was passing through the fierce excitements of the 
 great revolutionary upheaval. Far as it was from the 
 centre of disturbance, the northern capital felt the 
 strain of the time ; for while adherents of French 
 principles were numerous enough to fill its atmosphere 
 with elements of unrest, among its steadier citizens 
 hatred of Jacobinism in the abstract was intensified 
 by the general belief that that Phoenix of the ages, 
 the British Constitution, was itself seriously threatened 
 from the other side of the Channel. It was not in 
 Scott's nature to stand aside, at such a time, an inert 
 
 Lockhart, p. 74. 
 
COLLEGE, PROFESSION, AND MARRIAGE 43 
 
 spectator of events that might well have stirred 
 the most sluggish imagination. His patriotism was 
 aroused and kindled. In the spring of 1794, he wrote 
 with great satisfaction of the "good spirit" which was 
 manifesting itself among the upper classes of Edin- 
 burgh ; and when, in the course of the same year, 
 largely it would appear through the exertions of 
 Scott himself, it was determined to raise a corps of 
 light-horse volunteers as a local defence against 
 possible invasion, he eagerly threw himself into the 
 enterprise, begged his uncle to find him a "strong 
 gelding, such as would suit a stalwart dragoon," and 
 announced his intention, if necessary, to sacrifice his 
 collection of Scottish coins, in order to be mounted to 
 his mind. 1 The Edinburgh Light Dragoons were, 
 however, not organized for some time after this, and 
 Scott's ebullient enthusiasm had to find expression in 
 a less dignified way. It happened that about this 
 period a party of Irish medical students made a 
 practice of mustering in the pit of the Edinburgh 
 Theatre, where they rendered themselves obnoxious 
 by insulting the occupants of the boxes, calling for 
 revolutionary tunes, drowning the national anthem in 
 hoots and hisses, and giving other unmistakable 
 evidence of their political sympathies. All this was 
 too much for the Tory youth of the town. Minor 
 disturbances served only to increase bad feeling, and 
 at length Loyalists and Jacobins met in terrific conflict 
 
 1 Scott afterwards, while quarter-master of the corps, wrote for it a war 
 song " To horse ! to horse ! the standard flies " which was presently 
 printed in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. For a reference to 
 Edinburgh at the time of the dreaded French invasion, see Marmion 
 Introduction to Canto V. 
 
44 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 in the front of the pit. Scott, says a participant in 
 the riot, " signalised himself splendidly ;" and having 
 " no less than three broken heads laid to his charge 
 by as many Democrats," was bound over to keep 
 the peace, and obliged to present sureties for good 
 behaviour. He enjoyed the affair hugely at the time, 
 and afterwards delighted to dramatize its exciting 
 incidents ; but it may be readily supposed that, 
 joined with his explosions of military ardour, it did not 
 help him much professionally. Courage in combat, 
 agility with the cudgels, regularity at early morning 
 drill, may be excellent qualities in a young advocate, 
 but they are hardly such as to inspire confidence 
 among those upon whose patronage he has to depend 
 if he is to make headway in his career. No wonder 
 that his friends and relatives should have expressed a 
 desire to see him distinguish himself in a different 
 field. 
 
 These occurrences have their biographical value ; 
 yet too much might easily be made of them. It is 
 necessary to add, therefore, that the influence of the 
 European cataclysm on Scott is not for a moment to 
 be compared with that which it exerted on many of 
 his great English contemporaries. In the lives of 
 Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, for example, the 
 revolution represents nothing less than a spiritual 
 crisis. In Scott's case it was merely an incident. 
 It strengthened his loyalty, his patriotism, his hatred 
 of democracy in every form ; it prevented any possible 
 expansion of political ideas ; it forced him back more 
 strongly than ever upon the feudalism of the past. 
 But it would be a mistake to assume that it did more 
 
COLLEGE, PROFESSION, AND MARRIAGE 45 
 
 than this. Scott was born a Tory ; and the move- 
 ments of the last decade of the eighteenth century, 
 like the movements of later years, left him precisely 
 at the same social point of view as he had naturally 
 and spontaneously taken up at the start. 
 
 Postponing for the present such matters as are 
 more or less directly connected with the growth of 
 Scott's literary interests during the period with which 
 we are here concerned, and which it will be more 
 convenient, even at the risk of some chronological 
 confusion, to deal with by themselves, we have now 
 to turn to the most personal, and in some respects the 
 most enigmatical, part of his early career. A youth's 
 first love-passion is not ordinarily important enough 
 to engage more than the passing attention of the 
 serious biographer ; it comes into his life with a 
 vague stirring of the senses, and disappears, leaving 
 behind it nothing beyond a few faint memories, half- 
 pathetic, half -grotesque. Scott's one romance was 
 not of this common kind, and it had an influence 
 upon his character profound and lasting enough to 
 demand for it due presentation in his story. Like 
 the strong, brave man that he was, he would willingly 
 have had it drop altogether into oblivion. But he 
 knew this could not be. " What a romance to tell," 
 he wrote many years later in his diary, " and told 
 it will be some day. And then my three years' 
 dreaming, and my two years of wakening will be 
 chronicled doubtless." 1 Alas, yes ! The biographer, 
 however much he might incline to reticence, has 
 now really no choice left in the matter, and 
 
 1 Journal, pp. 476-77- 
 
46 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 must comfort himself as he may with Scott's own 
 consolatory thought : " the dead will feel no 
 pain." i 
 
 It was about 1790 that, according to the testimony 
 of his friend, William Clerk, Scott " was observed to 
 lay aside that carelessness, not to say slovenliness, as 
 to dress," which had theretofore furnished matter for no 
 little jesting among his companions, and to pay some 
 attention to the details of the toilette. At eighteen, 
 such a change may be commonly taken to indicate 
 that the unsophisticated boy, who regarded girls as 
 bores, has now blossomed out into a highly self- 
 conscious youth with a marked fondness for female 
 society. With Scott it meant something more than 
 this. If from this time on, his powerful yet comely 
 figure was familiar in Edinburgh drawing-rooms and 
 assemblies, it was not because of any special desire 
 to shine in the new part of squire of dames, but on 
 account of one particular magnet which drew him 
 thither with a force that he neither could nor would 
 resist. 
 
 The lady who had taken his heart by assault was 
 Williamina, only child of Sir John and Lady Jane 
 Belches, afterwards Stuart, of Fettercairn. 2 He had 
 
 1 Lockhart dealt with the episode very briefly, and, in his desire to 
 give n ) pain to relatives then surviving, suppressed the lady's name. 
 For a connected and detailed narrative, see Adam Scott's The Story 
 of Sir Walter Scoffs First Love (1896). 
 
 a It may be interesting to note that James Mill, then a student at the 
 University of Edinburgh, was for a time the tutor of Williamina, and 
 " spoke of her in later years with some warmth " See Alexander Bain's 
 fames Mill, p. 24. "Some warmth" in the case of a man like 
 Mill, not given to bursts of feeling, may be taken to mean a good 
 deal. 
 
COLLEGE, PROFESSION, AND MARRIAGE 47 
 
 first met her so the pretty story runs one Sunday 
 morning, when the congregation of Greyfriars Church 
 was dispersing ; a sudden shower had come on, and 
 Scott proffered his umbrella, and with it his escort 
 home. It was presently discovered that Mrs Scott 
 and Lady Jane had been companions in girlhood, a 
 circumstance that naturally made it easier for the 
 infatuated youth to improve the acquaintance which 
 his courtesy and address had so auspiciously com- 
 menced. For some years after this, Scott lived in 
 the full enjoyment of love's young dream. In winter 
 he met his charmer frequently in Edinburgh society ; 
 in summer, when she was away with her parents in 
 the Highlands, the relationship was maintained by 
 correspondence, and by his occasional visits to her 
 country home. Yet his wooing must have been 
 carried on with astonishing discretion, for we do not 
 find that the girl's parents were at all concerned 
 about the issue. The mother, indeed, may have 
 realised the drift of affairs and been willing at least 
 to put no obstacle in the way. But Sir John was 
 so little suspicious that anything unusual was happen- 
 ing, that even when the elder Scott presently felt 
 in duty bound to warn him of the existence of 
 an intimacy which " might involve the parties in 
 future pain and disappointment," he thanked him 
 graciously enough, but added that he saw no cause 
 for alarm. 
 
 Lockhart is probably right in believing that the 
 romantic affection thus nourished with chivalrous 
 ardour through the most critical period of adoles- 
 cence, had a marked and beneficial effect on Scott's 
 
48 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 character at the time. We recall Arthur's noble 
 
 words to Guinevere : 
 
 " For indeed I knew 
 Of no more subtle master under heaven, 
 Than is the maiden passion for a maid, 
 Not only to keep down the base in man, 
 But teach high thought, and amiable words, 
 And courtliness, and the desire of fame, 
 And love of truth, and all that makes a man." 
 
 His friends thought him cold, and were inclined to 
 refer his Quixotic ideas about women to tem- 
 peramental indifference. It was only by degrees 
 " they discovered that he had, from almost the dawn 
 of the passions, cherished a secret attachment, which 
 continued, through all the most perilous stage of life, 
 to act as a romantic charm in safeguard of virtue." 1 
 
 Five years went by, during which there existed 
 between the young people at most nothing more than 
 a tacit understanding. Scott, now settled at the Bar, 
 may well have felt, with the natural ambition of a 
 man of four-and-twenty having in immediate prospect 
 an income of, say, eighty pounds a year, that the time 
 had come when he should plead for an engagement 
 of more formal character. He seems for some reason 
 or another, possibly, however, only from a lover's 
 failure of courage before the crisis, to have an- 
 ticipated a rebuff; what actually happened must have 
 been that the lady, though friendly and on the whole 
 encouraging, counselled delay. In March 1795, Scott 
 wrote to a friend : 
 
 " It gave me the highest satisfaction to find, by the receipt of 
 your letter of the I4th current, that you have formed precisely 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 44. 
 
COLLEGE, PROFESSION, AND MARRIAGE 49 
 
 the same opinion with me, both with regard to the interpreta- 
 tion of Miss Stuart's letter as highly flattering and favourable, 
 and to the mode of conduct I ought to pursue for, after all, 
 what she has pointed out is the most prudent line of conduct for 
 us both, at least till better days, which I think myself now 
 entitled to suppose she, as well as myself, will look forward to 
 with pleasure." 
 
 Had Miss Stuart at this time any immediate 
 reason for not committing herself? Did she desire, 
 in thus urging prudence, to leave a loophole of 
 escape ? These questions remain without answer. 
 Scott, at least, seems to have remained assured of her 
 fidelity, until he learned suddenly of the presence of 
 a favoured rival in the field. Then came the com- 
 plete collapse of his long-cherished hopes. Miss 
 Stuart became engaged to Mr, afterwards Sir William, 
 Forbes, of Pitsligo, in the autumn of 1796, and was 
 married in the January of the following year. 1 
 
 At this distance of time, and with the scanty 
 materials at our disposal, it is impossible to offer any 
 satisfactory explanation of Scott's failure in the one 
 passionate love-episode of his life. There is much 
 about it that is, and will probably always remain, 
 shrouded in mystery. Could he have misjudged 
 entirely the kind of impression he was making during 
 these five years of intimate intercourse? Had she 
 ever loved him truly ? Or was the encouragement she 
 had most certainly given him an outcome of girlish 
 fancy and caprice? Was her marriage a union of 
 affection ? Or did it represent a " line of conduct " 
 
 1 Of this marriage one child rose to distinction the late Principal 
 Forbes of St Andrews. See J. C. Shairp's Life and letters of /. D. 
 Forbes* 
 
 D 
 
50 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 dictated by the prudence with which she appears to 
 have been quite amply endowed ? We cannot tell. 
 But we know that Scott was so shaken and crushed 
 by the blow that had fallen upon him, that friends 
 who had thought him cold now shuddered "at the 
 violence of his most irritable and ungovernable 
 mind/' doubting for a while what the results might be. 
 To them, perhaps to himself, the episode was a 
 revelation of the passionate depths of his sturdy and 
 virile nature. Yet it is significant that while he reeled, 
 stunned, beneath the shock, he indulged in no 
 Byronic outbursts or windy sentimentalisms. He 
 " digested his agony " during a solitary ride in the 
 Highlands, among the scenes he loved so well ; and 
 returned, heart-broken as he was, to take up without 
 murmuring, the burden of common life. " I hate red 
 eyes and blowing of noses," he once wrote in his 
 Journal, " of all schools, commend me to the Stoics." 
 A man made of such stuff was not likely to take the 
 world into his secrets, or sit down in solitude to 
 indulge the luxury of woe. 
 
 Curious in various ways, this love story was in no 
 respect more curious than in the unwonted relation- 
 ship of the successful and the unsuccessful suitor. 
 Forbes was not the hated rival of popular fiction, but 
 a man whose fine parts Scott was generous enough 
 to appreciate at the time, and whose friendship he 
 was proud to retain through circumstances that might 
 very naturally have opened a permanent breach 
 between them. Long afterwards, when the woman 
 who had been lost and won was in her grave, and the 
 master of Abbotsford stood amid the wreck of his 
 
COLLEGE, PROFESSION, AND MARRIAGE 51 
 
 fortunes, Sir William was untiring in offers of 
 sympathy and practical help. "The same kind 
 honest friend as ever," l Scott wrote of him ; " a noble 
 fellow," 2 " full of the generosity of ancient faith and 
 early friendship." 3 
 
 Yet who can wonder? a dash of bitterness was 
 in the cup. " It is fated our planets should cross, 
 though, and that at periods most interesting for me. 
 Down down a hundred thoughts ! " 4 Even then 
 the old love was not dead. Despite a singularly 
 happy domestic life, and all the marvellous activities 
 and distractions of his career, this " healthiest of the 
 sons of men" would sometimes allow his mind to 
 linger over the memories of what had been. " Broken- 
 hearted for two years" so runs one of his con- 
 fessions " my heart handsomely pieced again ; but 
 the crack will remain to my dying day." 5 In June 
 1827, he made an expedition to St Andrews, and 
 records how, sitting on a gravestone, he thought 
 of his first visit there, thirty- four years previously. " I 
 remembered the name I then carved in Runic 
 characters in the turf beside the castle-gate, and I 
 asked why it should still agitate my heart." That 
 such recollections should have haunted the man of 
 threescore shows how deeply his early tragedy must 
 have eaten into his life. Several of the most touch- 
 ing entries of his diary refer to interviews with Lady 
 Jane Stuart, then, of course, a woman of very 
 advanced age. " I went to make another visit," he 
 writes on one such occasion, "and fairly softened 
 
 1 Journal, p. 86. 2 Ibid., p. 476. * Ibid., p. 96. 
 
 4 Ibid., pp. 96-97. 5 Ibid., pp. 56-57. 
 
52 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 myself, like an old fool, with recalling old stories, till 
 I was fit for nothing but shedding tears and repeat- 
 ing verses for the whole night. This is sad work. 
 The very grave gives up its dead, and time rolls back 
 thirty years to add to my perplexities." l 
 
 In a writer of more subjective nature than Scott, 
 so powerful a passion must have left the strongest 
 traces in his work. As it is, it is open to question 
 how far its influences are to be detected even by 
 minute investigation. There is, of course, little 
 doubt that the Lady Green mantle in Redgauntlet, 
 and the heroines of Rob Roy, The Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel, and Rokeby women who specially engage 
 the reader's attention of the personal sympathy 
 shown in their presentation are all reminiscences of 
 " one and the same haunting dream of manly adoles- 
 cence." But beyond this it seems to me that criticism 
 tends to become over-speculative. 2 It has been 
 suggested, for example, that "imaginative regret" 
 for an unattained ideal was "the true well-spring" 
 of Scott's inspiration "in all his minstrelsy and 
 romance ; " that the pain of loss and the sacredness of 
 sorrow prompted him to that extraordinary reticence 
 which certainly marks all his love scenes and episodes ; 
 and that the purity of his conception of female 
 character, and his "inherent and consistent melancholy," 
 had their roots in the same youthful experience. 3 
 
 1 Journal, pp. 476-77- 
 
 2 For two obviously autobiographical passages, see Peveril of the 
 Peak, chap. xii. (on the course of true love), and Redgauntlet, chap, 
 xviii (on marriages of reason contrasted with those of passion). 
 
 8 See John Keble's Essay on Scott, and Adam Scott's Story of Sir 
 Walter Scott's First Love, passim. 
 
COLLEGE, PROFESSION, AND MARRIAGE 53 
 
 But all such theories must be dismissed as un- 
 satisfactory in that they seek to explain by refer- 
 ence to a single incident idiosyncrasies and habits 
 which really go deep down into the subsoil of 
 temperament and character, and therefore throw 
 upon it a burden of interpretation which it is not 
 necessary that it should be made to bear. Scott's 
 love-passage may very probably have strengthened 
 his natural tendencies ; but knowing him as we do 
 in his life and writings, we do not find in it any 
 master-key to the secrets of his genius and work. 
 
 We have said that Scott's friends felt alarm over 
 the possible consequences of his disappointment. 
 It was probably not without surprise, therefore, 
 that they learned in the autumn of the same year, 
 that he had entrusted his happiness to the keeping 
 of another mistress. We may speculate as we will 
 upon the share that pique and pride may have had 
 in this new engagement ; his letters remain to prove 
 beyond controversy that it was, at bottom, an affair 
 of genuine affection. He had learned a lesson from 
 his late trial, and acted with proper caution. " I 
 cannot express to you," he writes to his mother, " the 
 anxiety I have that you will not think me flighty in 
 this business. Believe me, that experience, in one 
 instance you cannot fail to know to what I allude 
 is too recent to permit my being so hasty in my 
 conclusions as the warmth of my temper might have 
 otherwise prompted." Sudden as the step might 
 seem, the lover was careful to have it understood 
 that it was not ill-considered. 1 
 
 1 Letter to Miss Carpenter, Sept. 1797, Letters, I, 5. 
 
54 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 Charlotte Margaret Charpentier, or Carpenter, 
 whom he met in the summer of 1797 during a 
 tour of the English lakes, was the daughter of Jean 
 Charpentier. a royalist of Lyons. Educated a 
 Protestant, she had been brought, a mere child, 
 after her father's death, to England, where she and 
 her brother Charles had found a warm friend and 
 guardian in the Marquis of Downshire. " Without 
 the features of a regular beauty," Lockhart tells us, 
 " she was rich in personal attractions ; * a form that 
 was fashioned as light as a fay's ; ' a complexion of 
 the clearest and brightest olive ; eyes large, deep-set, 
 and dazzling, of the finest Italian brown ; and a 
 profusion of silken tresses, black as the raven's wing." 
 In her character she combined English reserve and 
 an archness and gaiety according well with the slight 
 accent that betrayed her foreign birth. A woman 
 of strong personality she was not, nor one in all 
 respects the helpmeet a sagacious matchmaker would 
 have picked out for a man like Scott. Intellectual 
 companionship she could not offer him ; while, with- 
 out the perfect sympathy that springs from thorough 
 identity of interest, it is clear that, though she 
 enjoyed his success and kept a brave heart during 
 his reverses, she failed to enter very deeply into 
 either his ambitions or his sorrows. But as Scott 
 wrote of her to his mother, on the eve of his engage- 
 ment, she was "sweet and cheerful," a woman of 
 "very good sense," "uncommon good temper," and 
 " very serious " religious principles. Such qualities 
 are apt to wear better than others of a more showy 
 kind, and in Mrs Scott's case they stood the supreme 
 
COLLEGE, PROFESSION, AND MARRIAGE 55 
 
 test of a long married life. She was a good wife, 
 and Scott, barely touching on the elements in which 
 her character may have been deficient, held her to 
 the last at her true woman's worth. When death 
 had removed her from his side he wrote of her as 
 " the creature that was so long the dearest on earth 
 to me," l " the faithful and true companion of my 
 fortunes, good and bad ; " 2 and in more than one 
 touching passage in his diary recorded the terrible 
 effect of her loss upon him. 
 
 It would be a fatal mistake to suppose that Miss 
 Stuart's rejected lover had nothing to give Miss 
 Carpenter beyond the remnants of a " blighted affec- 
 tion," and a heart which had been turned sour by 
 disappointment. Sentimental moralists are fond of 
 proclaiming that a man can love once only. The 
 theory is attractive enough, but the facts of life are 
 against it. Scott was haunted to the end by the 
 phantom of an unrealised hope. But the affections, 
 like all else human, are curiously complex things ; 
 and the lingering memory of the woman he had lost, 
 touched though it was with tenderest melancholy, did 
 not render him for a moment, even in secret thought, 
 unfaithful to the woman he had won. To her he gave 
 for nearly thirty years a love as warm and as con- 
 stant as any wife could desire. 
 
 But we have run ahead of our story, and must 
 return. In October 1797 Lord Downshire, "in the 
 most flattering terms," gave his consent to Scott's 
 suit, and the marriage took place on Christmas Eve 
 of that year, in St Mary's Church, Carlisle. The 
 
 1 Journal, p. 197. 2 Ibid., p. 159. 
 
56 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 young couple at once returned to Edinburgh, and 
 after remaining a short time in lodgings in George 
 Street, moved first to South Castle Street, and thence 
 to North Castle Street, in the New Town. Scott now 
 determined to cultivate law " with double assiduity." l 
 His professional position was far from brilliant, but 
 he already had the Sheriffdom of Selkirkshire in pros- 
 pect, and his bride possessed a small income, settled 
 on her by her brother, which would serve to tide over 
 any temporary difficulties. Mr and Mrs Scott there- 
 fore began housekeeping happy at the moment and 
 with firm faith in the future. 
 
 1 Letter to Patrick Murray, 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 LITERARY BEGINNINGS THE BORDER MINSTRELSY 
 (1792-1803). 
 
 DURING the period of his apprenticeship and 
 early practice at the Bar, Scott varied the 
 monotony of professional routine by long vacation 
 rambles in the Border country and the Highlands. 
 Of these excursions the inspiring purpose of which 
 was always romantic and antiquarian, and which 
 furnished rich stores of material for future use the 
 most important were those which, for seven successive 
 years, he made into Liddesdale, with Robert Shortreed, 
 of Jedburgh, as his guide. So wild and inaccessible 
 was that part of Roxburghshire at the time, that until 
 August 1800, when Scott himself appeared there, to 
 the great astonishment of the inhabitants, with a little 
 open carriage, no vehicle had ever ventured along Its 
 heavy half-made roads ; 1 while in default of inns, the 
 travellers had to depend upon the hospitality now of 
 
 1 Notes to Guy Manneringz. novel in which Scott utilised these 
 Liddesdale experiences, as he had already turned his Highland journey- 
 ings to use in Waverley, 
 
58 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 shepherd's hut and now of manse. The first of these 
 Liddesdale "raids," as Scott was wont to call them, 
 was undertaken with a view to the examination 01 
 Hermitage Castle, and the collection of such ancient 
 " riding ballads " as were still to be found among the 
 descendants of the stalwart moss-troopers of the 
 Border. Afterwards Scott made it his business to 
 follow every rivulet to its source, and investigate 
 every fortress from battlement to foundation. Where- 
 ever he went he picked up songs and ballads, and 
 now and then became the proud and happy possessor 
 of some " nicknack " or the other a Border war-horn 
 or an ancient bridle bit to add to his growing 
 museum of curiosities at home. "He didna ken 
 maybe what he was about till years had passed," said 
 Shortreed. " At first he thought o' little, I daresay, 
 but the queerness and the fun." Yet then, as 
 through all that youthful period of seemingly aimless 
 reading and wandering, he was in reality "makin' 
 himsell" to good purpose. Much of the material 
 for the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border was thus 
 gathered together ; and with it, a fund of knowledge 
 concerning men and manners in an unsophisticated 
 society, which was presently to go to the composition 
 of some of the greatest of his prose works. 
 
 Queerness and fun there were in plenty, to be sure, 
 and many a strange adventure to be met with by 
 the way. " Folk were na very nice in those days," as 
 we can well believe ; and often enough the wanderers' 
 accommodations for the night left much to be desired 
 in decency and comfort. But for all such deficiencies 
 ample compensation was afforded by true Scottish 
 
LITERARY BEGINNINGS 59 
 
 generosity in the matter of "mountain dew" and 
 punch-bowl. Sometimes, indeed, it must have been 
 difficult to keep the mental balance. One morning 
 to quote a single example of their experiences " they 
 seem to have ridden a long way for the express pur- 
 pose of visiting one ' Auld Thomas o' Twizzlehope ' 
 . . who was celebrated for his skill on the Border 
 pipe, and in particular for being in possession of the 
 real lilt of Dick c? the Cow. Before starting, that is, 
 at six o'clock, the ballad-hunters had, 'just to lay the 
 stomach, a devilled duck or twae, and some London 
 porter/ Auld Thomas found them, nevertheless, well 
 disposed for * breakfast 1 on their arrival at Twizzle- 
 hope ; and this being over, he delighted them with one 
 of the most hideous and unearthly of all the specimens 
 of ' riding music/ and, moreover, with considerable 
 libations of whisky-punch, manufactured in a certain 
 wooden vessel, resembling a very small milk-pail, which 
 he called ( Wisdom/ because it ' made ' only a few spoon- 
 fuls of spirits though he had the art of replenish- 
 ing it so adroitly, that it had been celebrated for fifty 
 years as more fatal to sobriety than any bowl in the 
 parish. Having done due honour to ' Wisdom/ they 
 again mounted, and proceeded over moss and moor 
 to some other equally hospitable master of the pipe." 
 A strong head, a steady purpose, and a tireless en- 
 thusiasm were, it will be seen, among the not least 
 important conditions of success in these antiquarian 
 expeditions. But Scott was generally equal to the 
 occasion. " Eh, me ! " exclaims Shortreed, " sic an 
 endless fund o' humour and drollery as he then had 
 wi' him. Never ten yards but we were either laughing 
 
60 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 or roaring and singing. Wherever we stopped, how 
 brawlie he suited himsel' to everybody ! He aye did 
 as the lave did ; never made himsel' the great man, or 
 took on ony airs in the company " as a city advocate 
 in those days might very well have done. " I've seen 
 him in a' moods in these jaunts, grave and gay, daft 
 and serious, sober and drunk this, however, even in 
 our wildest rambles, was but rare but, drunk or sober, 
 he was aye the gentleman. He looked excessively 
 heavy and stupid when he wasfou, but he was never 
 out o' gude humour." l 
 
 Had Scott's development at this time continued 
 uncomplicated by any fresh influences of a specifically 
 literary character, there is still little doubt that his 
 long devotion to Percy's Reliques would ultimately 
 have led him to put the results of these Wander- 
 jahre into the form which the Border Minstrelsy 
 presently assumed in his hands. But beyond this, it 
 is idle to conjecture what may or may not have 
 happened. For his approach to his destined work 
 was now precipitated by a stimulus which came from 
 an entirely new direction. 
 
 On the 2ist April, 1788, Henry Mackenzie, the 
 author of The Man of Feeling, read before the 
 Royal Society of Edinburgh, an essay on the German 
 theatre. 2 Mackenzie himself did not know German 
 at the time, and had to depend on French translations 
 of the works which he subjected to analysis and 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 54. 
 
 * Not on German literature in general, as Scott and Lockhart, and 
 most writers on the subject after them, have stated or implied. The 
 paper is printed in the Transactions of the Society, vol. ii. 
 
LITERARY BEGINNINGS 61 
 
 criticism. Nevertheless, the paper "made much 
 noise" at the moment, and "produced a powerful 
 effect," for it served to turn the attention of the 
 northern literati to a race of writers, then hardly 
 known to them by name, in whom the most superficial 
 inquiry enabled them to feel the stir and potency 
 of a very fresh and vigorous life. A generation which 
 was already in revolt against the critical canons of 
 the Augustans, and which now listened with ever- 
 decreasing interest to the chilling rhetoric of Darwin, 
 the tedious banalities of Hayley, and the namby- 
 pamby absurdities of the " excellent " Pye, was 
 naturally prepared to hail with delight productions 
 which, with all their occasional extravagance and 
 irruptions of bad taste, were eloquent of manly 
 strength and high poetic ideals. At home, the 
 literary movements of nearly half a century had been 
 making towards the repudiation of the repressive 
 traditions of Boileau and Pope, and the revival, in 
 form and spirit, of mediaeval inspirations ; and here, as 
 it seemed, these aims were already realised. Hence 
 the enthusiasm with which Mackenzie's revelations 
 were received. 
 
 Of the general influence of German literature upon 
 the development of English romanticism, it is un- 
 necessary here to speak. We will, therefore, confine 
 ourselves to the part which the new interests played 
 directly in determining the course of Scott's life. 
 
 The curiosity which Mackenzie had aroused had 
 a practical result when, about Christmas, 1792, a few 
 young men of Edinburgh Scott (now free from the 
 burden of law examinations) and his friends, William 
 
62 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 Clerk, William Erskine, and Thomas Thomson, being 
 among the number formed themselves into a class 
 for the study of the German language and its litera- 
 ture. It is to be feared that they did not address 
 themselves to their self-imposed task very seriously. 
 Their tutor, Dr Willich, a medical gentleman of much 
 sensibility, who had himself attended the lectures of 
 Kant, endeavoured to interest them in the tearful 
 pages of the Death of Abel. But his irreverent 
 pupils laughed when they should have wept, voted 
 Abel a bore, and openly proclaimed their sympathy 
 with Lucifer and Cain. Loud grew their mirth, too, 
 "over the unutterable sounds manufactured by. a 
 Frenchman" a fellow student "who, with the 
 economical purpose of learning two languages at 
 once," set out to acquire German " of which he knew 
 nothing," by means of English, " concerning which he 
 was nearly as ignorant." Nevertheless, unruly as 
 they were, they did succeed in making some progress 
 with their work. Scott himself, more suo, took his 
 own course in the matter. Hating grammar and rules, 
 he fought his way into a reading acquaintance with the 
 language, by the help of Anglo-Saxon and Scottish ; 
 and though the results, scholastically considered, were 
 not highly satisfactory, they served his immediate 
 purpose, which was to plunge, without unnecessary 
 delay, into the current of the new literature. 
 
 In the autumn of I/94, 1 the then celebrated Mrs 
 
 1 This appears to be the correct date, though Lockhart gives, con- 
 jecturally, 1795. Scott himself (Essay on Imitations of the Ancient 
 Ballads] refers the incident to " about the summer of 1793 or J 794 > " 
 but in a note to William and Helen implies that it occurred in 1795. 
 
LITERARY BEGINNINGS 63 
 
 Barbauld visited Edinburgh, and " electrified " a party 
 at Dugald Stewart's, by the reading of a manuscript 
 version by William Taylor of Norwich, of Burger's 
 ballad, Lenore. Scott was not present on the occasion, 
 but soon learned of the extraordinary effect which 
 the performance had produced, and getting from a 
 friend a "broken account" of the ballad, with the 
 stirring refrain which, by reason of its singularity and 
 frequent repetition, had clung to his informant's 
 memory, he at once made up his mind to secure 
 a copy of the original. When, after some difficulty 
 he succeeded in doing this, the poem worked like a 
 weird charm upon him. The result was, that one 
 night after supper he sat down to translate it, and 
 finished his task about daybreak the next morning ; by 
 which time he had discovered that the ideas which 
 such an all-night sitting " had a tendency to summon 
 up " were of " rather an uncomfortable character." 
 
 This was Scott's real introduction to the " feverish 
 trade of poetry." He had, of course, hammered out 
 the required number of metrical translations at school, 
 and had, moreover, been guilty, when a mere boy, of 
 some Verses on a Thunderstorm. But such experi- 
 ments as these so far failed to encourage him to try 
 his powers in a larger field, that for ten years before 
 this Lenore incident, with the exception of the " usual 
 tribute to a mistress's eyebrow," he had felt no desire 
 " to couple so much as love and dove." l Accident 
 
 1 Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballads. Among the pro- 
 ductions thus slightingly referred to, however, were the beautiful stanzas 
 " The violet in her greenwood bower," evidently occasioned by his 
 reverse in love, and, in virtue of their delicacy and grace, holding an 
 unique place in his poetry. 
 
64 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 now fired his fancy. He had just been reading 
 Lewis's ballads in The Monk, and with Lenore 
 before him, felt suddenly impelled "to attempt the 
 style by which he had raised himself to fame." 
 
 So little, however, was he even now actuated by any- 
 thing like literary ambition, that he did not scruple 
 to utilise in his version two lines from the particular 
 stanza in Taylor's which had fastened itself in his 
 friend's mind a license he would scarcely have 
 permitted himself had he taken his work very 
 seriously at the time, or harboured a thought of 
 publication. But by a change in the last two lines of 
 the quatrain he showed a master's unmistakable touch. 
 Taylor had written : 
 
 " Tramp ! tramp ! across the land they speed, 
 Splash ! splash ! across the sea ! 
 Hurrah ! the dead can ride apace ! 
 Dost fear to ride with me ?" 
 
 In Scott's translation the stanza is made to run 
 
 " Tramp ! tramp ! across the land they speed ; 
 Splash ! splash ! across the sea ! 
 The scourge is red, the spear drops blood, 
 The flashing pebbles flee ! " 
 
 in the substituted lines in which we have a sudden 
 combination of vivid descriptive power and verbal 
 magic, of which the good Norwich gentleman had not 
 given a hint. Scott afterwards apologised for appro- 
 priating Taylor's verses ; but Taylor himself had the 
 good sense to see, and the courtesy to acknowledge, 
 the poetic value of the modified refrain. 
 
 " Upon my word," wrote Miss Cranstoun, to whom 
 the manuscript was carried by the author, the 
 
LITERARY BEGINNINGS 65 
 
 morning after completion, "Walter Scott is going 
 to turn out a poet something," she adds, rather 
 surprisingly, considering the evidence, "something 
 of a cross, I think, between Burns and Gray." 
 Knowing well what at the moment lay nearest his 
 heart, this romantic woman had a few copies of the 
 ballad struck off " in the most elegant manner," and 
 sent one to Miss Stuart in the vain hope that it 
 might further the lover's suit to be seen "in the 
 character of a printed author." Perhaps it was partly 
 owing to the fact that the course of his love was not 
 running as smoothly as might have been wished, at 
 that time, that the " uncomfortable " ideas generated 
 by Burger's poem took such a firm hold upon him. 
 After reading his version to his friend Alexander 
 Wood, one day, and dilating in a "high strain of 
 enthusiasm " on " the wild unearthly imagery of the 
 German bard," he suddenly burst out with " I wish 
 to Heaven I could get a skull and two cross-bones ! " 
 Wood, apparently not so much astonished as one 
 might have expected at so extraordinary an utter- 
 ance, took him to the house of John Bell, the surgeon, 
 and there " from a well - furnished museum of 
 mortality," he was allowed to select the hand- 
 somest skull and cross-bones he could find. The 
 story is worth repeating because it is so entirely out 
 of keeping with the healthy character of the normal 
 Scott, in whose make-up there was little place for such 
 graveyard fancies. Yet Wood afterwards discovered 
 these self-same relics in the master's dressing-room at 
 Abbotsford. 
 
 Scott's first ambitious experiments as a versifier 
 E 
 
66 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 gained him so much fame in the private circle of his 
 acquaintances, that he was tempted to further enter- 
 prise in the same direction, and threw off during 1796 
 and 1797 a number of translations in poetry and 
 prose. In the meantime he was urged by various 
 friends to take the decisive step of sending at least a 
 selection of these productions to the press, on the 
 ground that he would thus be spared the trouble of 
 responding to the " numerous applications which were 
 made for copies." When, asks Scott, was ever author 
 deaf to such entreaties? In October 1796 he accord- 
 ingly published, anonymously, through a local firm, 
 a thin quarto volume containing The Chase^ and 
 William and Helen : Two Ballads from the German 
 of Gottfried A ugustus Burger } 
 
 The fate of this slight venture was such as to have 
 damped a nature less buoyant than his, for, deduct- 
 ing the copies which the author himself distributed 
 among his friends, the bulk of the edition went " to 
 the service of the trunkmaker." Indeed, no maiden 
 effort could well have resulted in a more complete 
 failure. But Scott was not cast down. He had found 
 a new source of pleasure in these literary labours, and 
 little heeding the indifference of the general public, 
 continued his translations with unabated vigour. Nor 
 did he now rest contented with this somewhat thank- 
 less kind of work. By degrees, as he tells us, he 
 acquired sufficient confidence to imitate what he 
 so greatly admired; and the striking ballads of 
 Glenfinlas, and The Eve of St John gave evidence 
 
 1 The first-named is the title chosen by Scott for his very free version 
 of Der wildejdger ; the second, for that of Lenore. 
 
LITERARY BEGINNINGS 67 
 
 that he was at length beginning to realise his own 
 powers. 
 
 All these activities had prepared him to take 
 advantage of an opening which now occurred in an 
 unexpected quarter. 
 
 One of the most prominent figures in London 
 literary society at this time was Matthew Gregory 
 Lewis, a young man who had won extraordinary 
 success which was indeed to some extent a succes de 
 scandale by a violent and ill-concocted but rather 
 powerful romance, The Monk. While Scott was 
 busy between his briefs and his ballads, Lewis was 
 enjoying the heyday of his fame. He was an odd 
 creature, whom it was impossible to take too seriously 
 small of stature, with " queerish eyes " projecting 
 like those of some insects and "flattened at the 
 orbits," school-boyish in appearance and manner, a 
 good deal of a dandy and a snob, and very much of 
 a bore, yet withal, kindly, open-hearted, and bene- 
 volent. His reputation is completely exploded 
 now, The Monk alone securing for his name a 
 sort of shadowy immortality. But, historically, he 
 holds a very important place. An extremely clever 
 and facile man, who in early youth had drunk deep 
 of the new inspiration in The Sorrows of Werther 
 and The Robbers, he was largely responsible for the 
 introduction into England of the crude supernatural- 
 ism and rather material horrors of German romance. 
 He was fortunate enough to hit the public taste, and 
 though his own absurdities and those of his imitators 
 presently called up Nemesis in the shape of ridicule 
 and parody, he gave an impulse to the " raw head 
 
68 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 and bloody bones " kind of sensationalism, which did 
 not soon wear itself out. Moreover, he had a capital 
 ear for rhythm, and in the freedom of his ballad 
 verse, pointed the way for greater men than he. We 
 may, therefore, with Scott, fairly regard him as 
 having helped in no slight way to inaugurate an 
 epoch in our literature. 
 
 In the spring of 1798, Erskine was in London, 
 and there met Lewis, to whom he showed Scott's 
 versions of Lenore and The Wild Huntsman. Lewis 
 was then engaged in collecting material for his 
 Tales of Wonder^ and at once bespoke Scott's aid 
 in the undertaking. Shortly after this he visited 
 Edinburgh, and Scott, highly flattered of course to 
 find himself in such request, was elated as he had 
 never been before, when the " Monk " invited him to 
 dine with him at his hotel. He more than willingly 
 put several pieces Glenfinlas and The Eve of 
 St John among the number at Lewis's disposal, 
 and awaited the results with some anxiety, which, 
 as time went on, came to be mingled with not a little 
 disgust. Owing to various unforeseen delays, the 
 volumes did not appear till 1801, and then fell flat, 
 partly, Scott thought, because of the disappointment 
 which often follows " protracted expectation," partly 
 because the passion for ballads and ballad-mongers 
 was at the time on the wane, and partly again 
 because of the exorbitant price charged for the 
 work. Once more conditions seemed hostile to 
 Scott's success. Owing to the failure of this new 
 vehicle of publicity, he says, his efforts to present 
 himself to the reading world as an original ^writer 
 
LITERARY BEGINNINGS 69 
 
 proved as vain as those by which he had previously 
 endeavoured to distinguish himself as a translator. 1 
 
 In preparing his ballads for Lewis's " hobgoblin 
 repast," however, Scott gained something from his 
 editor's extreme severity in all matters connected 
 with the mechanical part, or technique, of poetry. A 
 careless writer to the last, he had in these early days 
 curiously lax notions of rhyme and measure, and 
 on these points Lewis was a veritable martinet. This 
 is the way in which the " Monk," while dealing with 
 William and Helen, undertook to belecture his 
 contributor : " Crusade and sped are not rhymes 
 in the 2nd (stanza) ; 3rd, mode and shed are not 
 rhymes, and if they were, come too close to the 
 rhyme in the 2nd. In the 4th, joy and victory are 
 not rhymes;, 7th, the first line wants a verb, other- 
 wise is not intelligible; I3th, grace and bliss are not 
 rhymes; I4th, bale and hell are not rhymes; i6th, 
 vain an&fruitless is tautology . . . 23rd, O'er and star 
 are vile rhymes; 3ist, if wight means, as I conjecture, 
 enchanted, does not this let the cat out of the bag ? 
 Ought not the spur to be sharp rather than bright"*" 
 and so on, and so on. Discipline of this kind, how- 
 ever unpalatable, is not apt to harm an untried writer, 
 and certainly not one whose tendency did not lie in 
 the direction of over-fastidiousness, and whose ear 
 had undoubtedly been damaged by much study of 
 Scottish ballads. 
 
 In one other way Lewis was of service to Scott. 
 While the Tales of Plunder (as, in allusion to their 
 price, they were waggishly called), were still hanging 
 
 1 Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad. 
 
70 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 fire, he performed the friendly office of intermediary 
 between him and a London publisher, with the result 
 that in 1799 the young Edinburgh advocate once 
 more tried his luck as a translator this time of 
 Goethe's dramatic chronicle, Goetz von Berlichingen. 
 The work, though respectfully received by the critics, 
 failed to attract any great attention, for the simple 
 reason that, as Lockhart points out, it came some ten 
 years too late. Popular interest in the productions 
 of the Sturm und Drang school of German dramatists, 
 though keen for a time, had faded before the com- 
 bined influences of feeble imitation and unsparing 
 ridicule ; and little as Goetz itself may have deserved 
 the treatment, it was not unnaturally classed by 
 ordinary readers among the high-pressure absurdities 
 which the authors of The Rover had covered with 
 contempt. For Scott, however, the study of Goethe's 
 play did much. It revealed to him the possibility 
 of dealing in a large way with the characters and 
 manners of the feudal past, and of combining in their 
 representation imaginative freedom of handling with 
 historic accuracy of detail. What Goethe had here 
 done for the turbulent life of mediaeval Germany, 
 there was surely an opportunity of doing for the no 
 less wild and interesting life of the Scottish clans. 
 It is only the narrowest kind of criticism which, 
 ignoring all other factors in the story of Scott's 
 mental development, would venture to trace back 
 to Goetz alone the poetic romances of later days. 
 But we may well agree with Lockhart in doubting 
 whether, but for the model thus presented, there 
 would ever have flashed upon his mind the thought 
 
LITERARY BEGINNINGS 71 
 
 that in the Border ballads he knew and loved so well, 
 there were " materials for more works of high art than 
 the longest life could serve him to elaborate." l 
 
 In the autumn of the year which saw the publica- 
 tion of Goetz, Scott met his old schoolfellow, James 
 Ballantyne, now editor and printer of an anti- 
 democratic weekly at Kelso, and, in the course of a 
 conversation over plans and prospects, urged him to 
 try to get some bookseller's work to " keep his types 
 in play " during the intervals of newspaper publica- 
 tion. Ballantyne replied that he had no acquaintance 
 with the Edinburgh trade, whereupon Scott suggested 
 that he should print off a dozen copies or so of his 
 ballad-translations as a kind of advertisement to 
 show what the Kelso press could do. Ballantyne 
 complied, and Scott's appreciation of his friend's 
 work at once led to his making him another proposal. 
 " I have been for years," he told him, " collecting old 
 Border ballads, and I think I could, with little trouble, 
 put together such a selection of them as might make 
 a neat little volume to sell for four or five shillings. 
 I will talk to some of the booksellers about it when I 
 get to Edinburgh, and if the thing goes on, you shall 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 82. To about the period of Goetz may be referred 
 Scott's attempt, in The House of Aspen, at a free adaptation or 
 rifacimento of another German play. At first entertained, and after- 
 wards rejected, by Kemble, at Drury Lane, and not printed till many 
 years later in The Keepsake, this seems to have been useful in con- 
 vincing Scott of his total lack of aptitude for the Drama. His few other 
 experiments in play- writing The Doom of Devorgail (1817), Halidon 
 Hill (1822), Macduffs Cross (1823), and Auchindrane (1830) form an 
 inconsiderable and quite unimportant portion of his work, and in a 
 sketch like the present call for nothing more than incidental mention 
 in a note. 
 
72 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 be the printer." Here was the first hint of the 
 Border Minstrelsy^ and with it, the beginning of 
 that association of author and printer which was 
 distined to bring such tragic changes into the lives 
 of both. 
 
 Scott devoted himself with a will to his new enter- 
 prise, and the proposed "neat little volume" soon grew 
 upon his hands. He was fortunate enough to arouse 
 the interest of a number of scholars whose assistance 
 was of great service to him, among whom special 
 mention may be made of the learned bibliophile, 
 Richard Heber, brother of the now better known 
 Reginald Heber, afterwards bishop of Calcutta ; the 
 brilliant and eccentric John Leyden ; the half-crazy 
 vegetarian, Joseph Ritson, the virulent critic of Percy ; 
 and that fine scholar and polished gentleman, George. 
 Ellis, then himself at work on his Specimens of 
 Early English Romances in Metre. His humbler 
 friends, William Laidlaw, and James Hogg, the 
 Ettrick Shepherd, also gave him their aid. The first 
 two volumes of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish 
 Border were published in 1 802 ; a third appeared, 
 with a reprint of the original two, in the following 
 year. The editor's name, though not in the title- 
 page, was appended to the dedication to the Duke of 
 Buccleugh. Ballantyne's part in the performance 
 came in for a full share of success. Amateurs were 
 astonished to note the imprint of Kelso a place of 
 which many of them had never even heard on 
 volumes which were characterised, as one reviewer 
 remarked, by " the singular beauty of the type." * On 
 1 Edinburgh Review, vol. i. p. 406. 
 
LITERARY BEGINNINGS 73 
 
 the title-page of the third volume Edinburgh was 
 substituted for Kelso; Ballantyne in the meantime 
 having moved, bag and baggage, to the capital. 
 
 One odd thing in connection with this excellent 
 piece of book-making deserves passing mention. 
 Facing the title-page of the first volume was a view 
 of Hermitage Castle. The rough sketch of this was 
 made by Scott himself who, much to his chagrin, 
 could never learn to draw during the last of his 
 Liddesdale raids. From this, William Clerk made an 
 improved copy, and from this again Hugh Williams, 
 the artist, worked up the picture as it presently 
 appeared. Thus, as Scott used afterwards to say, 
 the engraving was the joint production of three 
 designers, of whom one could not draw a straight 
 line, while the other two had never seen the place 
 depicted. Nevertheless, natives of Liddesdale ac- 
 cepted the frontispiece as giving " a very fair notion 
 of the ruins of Hermitage." An art-critic might find 
 food for thought in this incident. 
 
 As an editor, Scott is generally admitted to have 
 fallen short of the standard of minute we are 
 tempted to say of pedantic accuracy demanded 
 by modern scholarship, more particularly in his 
 failure to provide critical apparatus for the study 
 of texts and variants ; but on the side of fidelity 
 and care his work shows a vast improvement over 
 his immediate model, Percy's Reliques. He had 
 indeed assumed the privilege of selecting from among 
 the numerous and sometimes widely differing versions 
 which his zeal as a collector had brought into his 
 hands, the special form which most fully satisfied his 
 
 UNIVERSITY ) 
 
 r^r .9 
 
74 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 own taste ; but he did not sophisticate his material, 
 as the bishop had done, by changes and interpola- 
 tions in the interest of modern ideas of art and 
 refinement. Recognising that the remains of ancient 
 poetry should be presented so far as possible un- 
 touched and uncorrupted, he had spared himself no 
 pains in his quest for the most authentic texts, amid 
 difficulties which a less sanguine and enthusiastic 
 antiquary would have found appalling; and though 
 he deliberately refrained from giving his pieces an 
 ancient appearance by adopting the clumsy ortho- 
 graphy of the periods to which he supposed them 
 to belong, he made it his object, by the preservation 
 of every characteristic bit of phraseology, no matter 
 how uncouth or barbarous, to keep the peculiar 
 flavour of time and place. His interest, however, 
 was first and last in the human and poetic qualities 
 of his ballads, and philological considerations there- 
 fore played, and rightly played, an insignificant part 
 in his work. 
 
 As announced on the title-page, it was Scott's 
 scheme to include in his volumes, along with a 
 representative selection of historic and romantic 
 ballads, " a few of modern date, founded upon local 
 tradition." In this division of his labours he was 
 helped by Leyden, Lewis, Anne Seward, and other 
 friends and literary acquaintances. But his own 
 contributions are by far the most important. Little 
 attention as they seem to have attracted at the time, 
 it is impossible to read them now without feeling 
 that they sound, in the literature of the opening 
 century, a new and characteristic note. Glenfinlas 
 
LITERARY BEGINNINGS 75 
 
 by itself would indeed have meant but little ; it is 
 still redolent of the eighteenth century, and with all 
 its occasional vigour really belongs to the class 
 of mock-antique well represented by Scott's old 
 favourite, Cumnor Hall. But in Cadyow Castle, 
 finished just before the last sheets of the Minstrelsy 
 had passed through the press, and still more, I think, 
 in The Eve of St John (rescued, like Glenfinlas, 
 from the Tales of Wonder], the depth and potency 
 of the mediaeval inspiration are indubitable. In the 
 former, the poet adheres strictly to the regular metrical 
 cadences to which the ear of the time was attuned ; 
 but throughout the latteras, for example, in such a 
 stanza as this 
 
 " He lighted at the Chapellage, 
 He held him close and still ; 
 And he whistled thrice for his little foot-page, 
 His name was English Will " 
 
 we can feel that from his own study of ballad metres, 
 and before, as yet, he knew anything of Christabel, 
 he was on the high road to discovering for himself the 
 secret of that varied movement of octosyllabic verse 
 of which The Lay of the Last Minstrel was soon 
 to offer a signal example. But the terseness and 
 rapidity of movement, the simplicity and abounding 
 strength of both these fine ballads, are prophetic of 
 the great verse-romances which were presently to 
 come. 
 
 We should be doing scanty justice to the im- 
 portance of the Border Minstrelsy in Scott's career 
 if we did not give a word of special mention to the 
 
76 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 introduction, dissertations, and critical notes, since 
 it was in these that he first revealed, though in the 
 secondary character of editor and commentator, his 
 rich and curious learning, his vein of genial and virile 
 humour, and the ease and vigour of his prose style. 
 It was said by an unusually prescient critic that the 
 Minstrelsy contained " the elements of a hundred 
 historical romances." The work may indeed be 
 considered as so much stored-up capital, afterwards 
 drawn upon with free hand. " No person who has 
 not gone through its volumes," says Lockhart, " for 
 the express purpose of comparing their contents with 
 his great original works, can have formed a conception 
 of the endless variety of incidents and images now 
 expanded and emblazoned by his mature art, of 
 which the first hints may be found either in the text 
 of those primitive ballads, or in the notes, which the 
 happy rambles of his youth had gathered together 
 for their illustration." * When, a dozen years later, 
 Waver ley was a new book, and all the world was 
 puzzling over the problem of its authorship, John 
 Wilson is reported to have exclaimed, with character- 
 istic impatience : " I wonder what all these people 
 are perplexing themselves with. Have they forgotten 
 the prose of the Minstrelsy ? " 
 
 In looking back, from the point of view of subse- 
 quent successes, at the fate of these early volumes, 
 Scott gives us to infer that their reception was cold. 
 He was not discouraged at the time, however, nor 
 had he any reason to be so. The first edition went 
 off in six months with a profit to the editor of ;ioo; 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 104. 
 
LITERARY BEGINNINGS 77 
 
 after which he sold the copyright to the Longmans 
 for ^500 more. Considering the nature of the 
 publication, and his own position in the world of 
 letters, these results could surely have offered no 
 reasonable ground of complaint. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 FROM "THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL " TO 
 "THE VISION OF DON RODERICK" 
 
 (l804-l8ll) 
 
 WHEN the Border Minstrelsy was published, 
 Scott had been ten years at the Bar. His 
 work during that period had never risen above the 
 merest drudgery of the profession, and his chances 
 of ultimate success seemed now to be growing more 
 and more remote. He felt, and probably not without 
 reason, that his known interest in letters was likely 
 to tell seriously against progress in his career ; for 
 Themis, in the Edinburgh of those days, was a 
 specially jealous goddess, and would ill brook in her 
 devotees any tendency towards flirtation with one of 
 her gayer sisters. Moreover, his feelings towards his 
 calling were like those which honest Slender enter- 
 tained for Mistress Anne Page there had been no 
 great love between them at the beginning, and it had 
 pleased heaven to decrease it on further acquaintance. 
 The time, therefore, was fast approaching when, as he 
 realised, it would become necessary that he should 
 
 78 
 
"LAST MINSTREL" TO "DON RODERICK" 79 
 
 either buckle himself down resolutely to the lawyer's 
 " toil by day " and " lamp by night," or just as 
 resolutely strike out in another direction. 
 
 Fortunately for him, his decision in so important 
 a matter was not precipitated by immediate need, 
 for he was by no means dependent on the proceeds 
 of his practice. In December 1799, through the 
 kindly offices of the Duke of Buccleugh, he had 
 obtained the appointment, which he had then for 
 some time past had in view, to the sheriffship of 
 Selkirkshire, an office which not only combined the 
 advantages of light duties and a salary of ^300 a year, 
 but also served to knit closer his association with his 
 favourite Border country. His father had died, after 
 a long period of failing health, some months before 
 this, leaving him a small patrimony, and from his 
 uncle, Robert Scott, who followed in 1804, he also 
 inherited some property. Adding to his revenue 
 from these sources the interest on his wife's settle- 
 ment from her brother, Scott found himself with a 
 fixed income of about 1000 a year, irrespective of 
 any forensic gains. 
 
 With his usual attractive candour he has made 
 us the confidants of his ambitions and fears at this 
 time ; yet it is far from easy to understand his feelings. 
 His position and prospects were, one would suppose, 
 despite his want of success in advocacy, the reverse 
 of disquieting. A man still in the early thirties, with 
 a thousand a year to rely upon, robust health, and, to 
 say nothing of possible openings at the Bar, the 
 promise of small but steadily increasing profits from 
 his pen, might surely have been satisfied. But Scott 
 
8o SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 was anything but satisfied. " I had arrived," he writes, 
 " at a period of life when men, however thoughtless, 
 encounter duties and circumstances which press con- 
 siderations and plans of life upon the most careless 
 minds. I had been for some time married, was the 
 father of a rising family, and, though fully enabled to 
 meet the consequent demands upon me, it was my 
 duty and desire to place myself in a situation which 
 would enable me to make honourable provision 
 against the various contingencies of life." x As these 
 words, though not written till nearly the close of his 
 career, may unquestionably be taken as a correct 
 analysis of his early reasonings and motives, they 
 show us already at work those extravagant and almost 
 fantastic ideas concerning money and worldly place 
 which were, in the sequel, to be largely responsible 
 for the tragedy of his life. Scott would have been 
 a happier man, and his story an easier and even a 
 nobler one to tell, could he have stifled at the start 
 his restless cravings for vast wealth, and have been 
 contented to lay his plans on a less princely scale. 
 But at the moment it is our business, not to moralise, 
 but to understand his position, as he himself saw it, 
 in the days which just preceded the establishment 
 of his poetic fame. 
 
 He had not yet, it is clear, finally decided to 
 abandon the law, and certainly had no idea of trusting 
 himself to literature. In 1802 we find him writing 
 to Miss Seward : " Providence having, I suppose, 
 foreseen that rny literary qualifications, like those of 
 many more distinguished persons, might not par 
 1 Introduction to The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1830). 
 
"LAST MINSTREL" TO "DON RODERICK" 81 
 
 hazard, support me exactly as I would like, allotted 
 me a small patrimony, which, joined to my profes- 
 sional income, and my appointments in the char- 
 acteristic office of Sheriff of Ettrick Forest, serves to 
 render my literary pursuits more a matter of amuse- 
 ment than an object of emolument." l And when, 
 before this, a friend had counselled him to stick to 
 his briefs and reserve his poetic activities for vacation 
 time, he had only given utterance to what then, and 
 even to the end, Scott would have acknowledged as 
 the one wise and sound view of the relation of liter- 
 ature to practical life. But whatever theories he may 
 have formed of the matter were destined to be 
 dissipated by stress of circumstance. The Border 
 Minstrelsy soon led indirectly to consequences which 
 brought the problem of his career before him under 
 an entirely new light. 
 
 In putting together his materials for this collection, 
 Scott had for a time purposed to include the romance 
 of Sir Tristrem which, in the face of much critical op- 
 position, he persisted in regarding as beyond question 
 the work of Thomas of Erceldoune, otherwise known as 
 Thomas the Rhymer. The poem, however, threaten- 
 ing, along with the editor's dissertations and notes, 
 to become disproportionately long, it was finally 
 decided to make a separate volume of it, and it was 
 accordingly published, in a very limited, high-priced 
 edition, in 1804. While the preparation of this was 
 engaging much of his attention, he also began his 
 connection with the Edinburgh Review, which had 
 been started in 1802 under the editorship of Sydney 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 97. 
 l F 
 
82 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 Smith, but had been shortly afterwards transferred 
 to Francis Jeffrey. His first contributions, on 
 Southey's Amadis of Gaul, and Sibbald's Chronicles 
 of Scottish Poetry appeared in the number for Octo- 
 ber 1803, and were followed at brief intervals by 
 articles on Godwin's Life of Chaucer, Ellis's Specimens 
 of the Early English Poets, and the life and writings 
 of Chatterton. But these exertions, though they call 
 for passing record, occupy a minor place in his story. 
 Full as his hands must have been, he none the less 
 found time for the prosecution of another piece of 
 work. " I am at present busy," he writes to Miss 
 Seward, in November 1802, "with the second edition 
 of the Minstrelsy, and preparations for the third 
 volume, particularly a sort of Romance of Border 
 Chivalry and Enchantment, which will extend to 
 some length." x When the second edition appeared, 
 this promised romance was not included, but in its 
 place was an advertisement to the effect that there was 
 then in the press The Lay of the Last Minstrel, by 
 Walter Scott, Esq., editor of the Minstrelsy of the 
 Scottish Border. 
 
 The history of the origin and growth of this epoch- 
 making poem, though often retold, must here once 
 more be given in brief. The Countess of Dalkeith 
 " the lovely young Countess," as Scott enthusiastically 
 calls her, with " more of the angel in face and temper 
 than any one alive " had heard with delight the wild 
 old Border tradition of Gilpin Homer, the goblin 
 page, and knowing well Scott's own interest in all 
 such scraps of legend lore, she asked him, half in 
 1 Letters, I. 17. 
 
"LAST MINSTREL" TO "DON RODERICK" 83 
 
 sport and half in earnest, to turn it into a ballad for 
 her. Scott, more than pleased to regard himself as 
 the chosen bard of his clan, loyally accepted this 
 request from the beautiful wife of his chieftain's heir 
 as tantamount to a command, and forthwith set him- 
 self to obey. If she had asked him to write a ballad 
 on a broomstick, he admits that he would have 
 attempted it. Thus, it will be seen, the goblin story, 
 which critics afterwards objected to, and Scott him- 
 self freely acknowledged as an excrescence upon his 
 poem, was in reality its nucleus and cause of being. 
 
 At first he contemplated nothing beyond a lengthy 
 ballad, " in a light-horse sort of stanza," which might 
 find a place in the third volume of the Minstrelsy, 
 then taking shape. But he soon outgrew this 
 relatively unambitious design, and with the model of 
 a long metrical romance before him in Sir Tristrem 
 and a mass of splendid material for poetic purposes 
 in his collections for the Minstrelsy, he was led to 
 expand his theme, until out of the single scene of 
 knightly festivity in Branksome Hall, with which he 
 seems to have begun, there gradually grew a narra- 
 tive poem illustrative of Border life and manners in 
 ancient feudal times. He ^ad the opening stanzas, 
 as soon as written, to his friends Erskine and Cran- 
 stoun, and, disappointed with their reception of them, 
 threw the manuscript into the fire ; but finding some 
 time afterwards that they had not forgotten his 
 verses, he took courage to renew his task. In the 
 autumn of 1802 a kick from a horse, in yeomanry 
 drill, confined him to his lodgings for three days, and 
 during that period of enforced leisure he wrote out 
 
84 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 the first canto of The Lay, very nearly, it appears, 
 " in the state in which it was ultimately published." 
 Once well started, the story went of itself, not a little 
 to the surprise of the poet, who presently confessed 
 that he knew no more than the man in the moon how 
 it was to end. 1 When it did at length come to a close, 
 he found that the Goblin Page, whom he had intended 
 to be his principal character, "had contrived (from 
 the baseness of his natural propensities, I suppose) to 
 slip downstairs into the kitchen," and that the tale, 
 as a whole, was sadly lacking in continuity. But he 
 had struck it out at white heat, and was wise enough 
 to leave it as it stood. 
 
 Writing to Miss Seward, Scott explained the frame- 
 work of the poem by saying that the story, when 
 finished, appeared to him " so uncouth " that he was 
 fain to put it into the mouth of his wandering 
 minstrel, lest the nature of it should be misunder- 
 stood, and he should be suspected of setting up a 
 new school of poetry, instead of making a feeble 
 attempt to imitate the old. Other accounts amplify- 
 ing or supplementing this, were elsewhere given by 
 him. In one place he tells us that the harper 
 was devised " as an appropriate prolocutor by whom 
 the lay might be sung or spoken, and the introduction 
 of whom betwixt the cantos might remind the reader 
 at intervals of the time, place, and circumstances of 
 the recitation ; " 2 while on another occasion he argues 
 that, by referring the poem to such a character an 
 aged bard who had long enough outlived his com- 
 
 1 Letter to Miss Seward (Lockhart, p. 121). 
 
 2 Introduction (1830) to The Lay. 
 
"LAST MINSTREL" TO "DON RODERICK" 85 
 
 panions to feel the influence of new poetic ideals 
 he could show cause for the blending in his work of 
 the simplicity of ancient with the refinement of 
 modern song. 1 Even when taken together, however, 
 these explanations are not final, since Scott clearly 
 intended the Duchess of The Lay to represent his 
 beloved " chieftainess," and the minstrel's loyalty and 
 gratitude to express his own ; while it is more than 
 probable that he may have seen in him also a symbol 
 of himself singing the heroic songs of the past to a 
 more delicate and sophisticated age. But whatever 
 reason or reasons may be assigned for it, the cadre 
 or setting of his Border picture was certainly due to 
 the happiest inspiration. The dignified and touching 
 figure of the old harper, wandering in poverty and 
 solitude, and cheered by the hospitality of the great 
 Buccleughs, was such as to make an instant and 
 powerful appeal to the imagination. Tastes change, 
 and the reader of to-day may not only fail to take 
 much interest in the diablerie of the goblin episodes, 
 but may also find other parts of the story a trifle 
 tedious. But the simple and unforced pathos of the 
 . Introduction remains as effective as ever. 
 
 It will be seen that The Lay is thus the outcome 
 and efflorescence of Scott's long years of labour on 
 the legends and ballads of the Scottish Border. It is, 
 as Jeffrey said of it, a romance of chivalry " composed 
 by a minstrel of the present day." 2 The vast know- 
 ledge of feudal antiquities which had once been 
 poured out in the form of commentaries and notes, 
 
 1 Preface to original edition. 
 
 2 Edinburgh Review >, April, 1805. 
 
86 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 was now touched by a creative hand, and changed 
 from a mass of dry learning into sudden and splendid 
 life. The crude, if energetic old tales of fighting, and 
 enchantment, and love, were transformed in the 
 crucible of his genius into a new fashion of poetic 
 art. To imitate the ancient ballad, and in imitating, 
 to deprive it of all its characteristic vigour and 
 directness, had been a favourite amusement of a 
 generation of amateurs who, after their own dull 
 and pedantic manner, had thus prepared the way 
 for a fresh outburst of song. But Scott created a 
 new school of poetry out of the materials yielded by 
 the old. The Lay of the Last Minstrel was, in reality, 
 the Lay of the First Minstrel the one poem in 
 which, while recognising to the full all that the later 
 decades of the eighteenth century had done, we may 
 still mark distinctly the renaissance of the romance 
 as a recognised form of modern verse. 
 
 Accident, which had signally favoured Scott 
 throughout the growth of this work though it may 
 be worth while to remark incidentally that the happy 
 chance comes only to those who are prepared to turn 
 it to account furnished him at just the right moment 
 with the verse-form which, unquestionably, had not 
 a little to do with its immediate success. We have 
 noted that, in his early ballads, he had shown that 
 he already understood the effectiveness of intro- 
 ducing metrical variations upon the regular iambic 
 theme. It happened that shortly after Lady Dalkeith 
 had enlisted the service of his muse, he received a 
 visit from Mr (afterwards Sir John) Stoddart, who 
 recited to him from memory ^some portions of 
 
"LAST MINSTREL" TO "DON RODERICK" 87 
 
 Coleridge's then unpublished Christabel^ Scott was 
 enchanted with " the singularly irregular structure of 
 the stanza, and the liberty which it allowed the author 
 to adapt the sound to the sense;" and at once it 
 struck him that here was an instrument "exactly 
 suited to such an extravaganza" as he then had in 
 mind. Coleridge's principle, as that poet afterwards 
 explained, was that which is now technically known 
 as the equivalence of metrical feet. The lines are 
 counted by accents, and not by syllables, so that, 
 "though the latter may vary from seven to twelve, 
 yet in each line the accents will be found to be only 
 four." 2 " As applied to comic and humorous poetry," 
 Scott writes, in his account of the incident, "this 
 mescolanza of measures had been already used by 
 Anthony Hall, Anstey, Dr Wolcott, and others ; but it 
 was in Christabel that I first found it used in serious 
 poetry, and it is to Mr Coleridge that I am bound 
 to make the acknowledgment due from the pupil to 
 his master." 3 Nothing could be handsomer than 
 this. Coleridge, for his part, seems still to have felt a 
 certain annoyance to see himself publicly anticipated 
 in a matter of such importance, and this was natural 
 enough to the man, if not altogether dignified in the 
 transcendental philosopher. But here, as elsewhere, 
 he had dreamily allowed the chances of life to slip 
 by him unutilised, and he knew and admitted that 
 
 1 Written in 1797-1800, and known in manuscript to the poet's 
 friends, this remarkable fragment was not printed till 1816. 
 
 2 Preface to Christabel, 1816. The principle in question was not so 
 entirely novel as Coleridge imagined ; but that is a point of literary 
 history which need not detain us here. 
 
 3 Introduction to The Lay (1830). 
 
88 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 after all he had only himself and his indolence to 
 blame. 
 
 Published in January 1805, The Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel was hailed with a chorus of applause, and 
 Scott, though he had felt from the beginning that his 
 " attempt to return to a more simple and natural 
 poetry " was likely to be welcomed by a public tired 
 of hexameters and the stilted phraseology so long in 
 vogue, was astonished by his immediate and brilliant 
 success. The first and expensive quarto edition of 
 750 was soon exhausted, and an octavo impression of 
 twice that number had run out before the close of the 
 year. These were rapidly followed by other editions. 
 " In the history of British Poetry," says Lockhart, 
 " nothing had ever equalled the demand for The Lay" 
 The work was published on the half-profits plan, by the 
 Longmans, of London, and Archibald Constable and 
 Co., of Edinburgh, but the Longmans bought up the 
 copyright on the second edition for ^500, afterwards 
 raised to 600. This sum, with the 169, 6s. already 
 received as his moiety on the original edition, made 
 Scott's profits on The Lay, 769, 6s. And while the 
 public bought, the leaders of literary opinion were, 
 on the whole, on the side of popular taste. Jeffrey, 
 who had given his imprimatur to the poem while still 
 in manuscript, spoke highly of it in the Edinburgh 
 Review ; and George Ellis and William Stewart Rose 
 wrote warmly to its author in its praise. Pitt and 
 Fox, too, " smiled on the adventurous minstrel/' and 
 the former was moved to remark, " that it would give 
 him pleasure to find some opportunity of advancing 
 the fortunes of such a writer." Another observation 
 
"LAST MINSTREL" TO "DON RODERICK" 89 
 
 of his is well known, but must bear repetition. After 
 reciting the lines in which the poet has described the 
 harper's embarrassment when asked to sing, he said 
 " This is a sort of thing which I might have expected 
 in painting, but could never have fancied capable of 
 being given in poetry." As criticism, the dictum 
 strikes one as exceedingly curious, since the play of 
 the old man's feelings is exactly what we should look 
 to the poet, and not to the painter, to portray. But 
 the anecdote is significant as serving to show the 
 impression made by The Lay upon the mind of a busy 
 man, immersed in practical affairs, and without literary 
 interests or proclivities. 
 
 The success of The Lay at once made it clear that 
 literature was henceforth to be the main business of 
 Scott's life. Yet even now prudential considerations 
 forbade him to cut adrift from his more settled 
 sources of income, and trust entirely to the caprices 
 of popular favour. No matter how great its attractions 
 and rewards, literature for him, he determined, was to 
 be a staff and not a crutch. So far from relinquishing 
 his shrievalty, therefore, he decided if possible to 
 supplement it, by obtaining some one of the " respect- 
 able offices of the law " high professional promotion 
 he no longer regarded as within the range of achieve- 
 ment upon which he might presently retreat in 
 security if, as he puts it, the public should grow 
 weary of his endeavours to please, or he himself 
 should tire of the occupation of authorship. At the 
 same time, he registered a couple of resolutions which 
 throw great light on his character: first, never to 
 confine himself to what are called literary circles 
 
90 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 but to keep in touch with the world at large, and 
 abreast of general society ; and secondly, while pay- 
 ing proper attention to the voice of true criticism, 
 to shut his ears entirely to that spurious sort which 
 finds expression in parody and satire. To his strict 
 observance of these rules he afterwards attributed his 
 wonderful freedom, during thirty years of ceaseless 
 productivity, from all those heart-aches, jealousies, 
 and petty annoyances, which, unfortunately, fill so 
 large a place in the biographies of literary men. 
 
 In pursuance of his determination to make 
 assurance doubly sure, Scott accordingly applied for 
 a Clerkship in the Court of Session, the reversion of 
 which he secured in 1806, through the Buccleugh 
 interest, by an arrangement with George Home, the 
 then incumbent. Home, an old friend of the Scott 
 family, had served as Clerk of Session for upwards 
 of thirty years, and was now becoming infirm and 
 deaf; but as there was then no system of retiring 
 pensions, he could ill afford to give up his post. 
 Scott, therefore, became his associate in office, the 
 understanding being that Home should continue to 
 receive all the fees so long as he lived, while the 
 younger colleague should do all the work for him, 
 and on his death step into his shoes. This arrange- 
 ment did not, of course, bring any immediate 
 addition to Scott's exchequer indeed, as it turned 
 out, he was not to touch a penny for his labours for 
 something like six years ; but it gave him what he 
 desired, the practical certainty of a solid provision 
 for the future. The duties of the position, though 
 not exactly arduous, made considerable demands 
 
"LAST MINSTREL" TO "DON RODERICK" 91 
 
 on time and energy. His attendance at court, it is 
 estimated, amounted on the average to from four to 
 six hours a day, for four days a week, during six 
 months of the year, and while much of the actual 
 work was merely mechanical, and some of it in 
 the nature of "base drudgery," there was, on the 
 other hand, ample opportunity for the exercise of 
 learning, acumen, and patience. Altogether it would 
 be quite a mistake to imagine that the office was by 
 any means a sinecure. Yet even during the most 
 active and brilliant period of his literary career, Scott 
 devoted himself with characteristic industry and 
 conscientiousness to the discharge of the duties 
 which it entailed upon him. 
 
 Through some clerical inadvertence, his appoint- 
 ment to this clerkship was so drawn up as to read 
 entirely in his favour, no recognition of the claims of 
 Mr Home appearing in the patent ; and to complicate 
 matters, Pitt just then died, and a Whig cabinet was 
 formed under Fox and Grenville. Scott was, oddly 
 enough, alarmed lest the new administration might 
 ungenerously take advantage of an official blunder 
 to annul the arrangement, and hurried up to London 
 for the purpose of getting things put straight. Of 
 course, despite his forebodings, his pursuit of " fortune's 
 slippery ball," ended to his entire satisfaction ; and the 
 incident might have been passed over in silence but 
 for the fact that it brought about his first appearance 
 in the English metropolis in the character of acknow- 
 ledged literary lion. He had paid a brief visit there 
 three years before, and had been kindly received by 
 Heber and Mackintosh, Samuel Rogers, and William 
 
92 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 Stewart Rose. But as the editor of the Border 
 Minstrelsy^ he had naturally attracted but little 
 attention outside a very limited circle. Now his 
 position was changed, and as the most famous poet 
 of the day, he found society everywhere anxious to 
 do him honour. He took the homage offered him 
 with the easy, good-tempered, humorous acquiescence 
 which he was wont to exhibit in later years, and with 
 a delightful readiness to turn his marvellous powers 
 as a conversationalist and raconteur to the entertain- 
 ment of the company. " All this is very flattering," 
 he would say, " and very civil ; and if people are 
 amused at hearing me tell a parcel of old stories, or 
 recite a pack of ballads to lovely young girls and 
 gaping matrons, they are easily pleased, and a man 
 would be very ill-natured who would not give 
 pleasure so cheaply conferred." 1 With his shrewd 
 insight and admirable sound sense, he was saved 
 at once from the affectation of despising popular 
 applause, and from the danger of rating it at one 
 particle above its true worth. It was on this brief 
 trip that he met and dined with the ill-starred 
 Princess of Wales, and induced her to subscribe for 
 a copy of the Ettrick Shepherd's proposed volume of 
 ballads. It was then, too, that he made the acquaint- 
 ance, which soon ripened into warm friendship, of 
 Joanna Baillie " our immortal Joanna Baillie," as he 
 called her of whose works he was always an exceed- 
 ingly enthusiastic, and, most of us would be likely to 
 think, a somewhat uncritical admirer. 
 
 All this time Scott had not allowed the editing 
 1 Jlockhart, p. 179. 
 
"LAST MINSTREL" TO "DON RODERICK" 93 
 
 of Border ballads and ancient romances, and the 
 inditing of original verse, to sap his military ardour ; 
 indeed, as we have already noted, it is to a lucky 
 accident in yeomanry exercise that we owe the 
 beginning of The Lay of the Last Minstrel. But ere 
 this, his devotion to the interests of the Edinburgh 
 Light Horse, of which he was now quarter-master, 
 had been the indirect part-cause of an important 
 change in his domestic life. The Lord-Lieutenant of 
 Selkirkshire had seen fit to complain that incessant 
 drills and musterings at Musselburgh and Portobello 
 were interfering seriously with proper attention to 
 shrieval affairs, pointing out, moreover, that the law 
 requiring every sheriff to reside four months of the 
 year within his jurisdiction had in the case of the 
 Sheriff of Selkirk never yet been complied with. 
 Scott, who was not conscious of having neglected 
 any of his official duties, and who was well aware 
 that the rule of residence was not commonly 
 enforced, at first regarded the Lord-Lieutenant's 
 communication with some displeasure, but after a 
 little delay he concluded that it would be, on the 
 whole, both wise and convenient to yield. 
 
 At the time of his marriage he had taken a small 
 cottage at Lasswade, on the Esk, about six miles 
 from Edinburgh, and there his summers had been 
 spent in Arcadian simplicity and happiness. Many 
 pleasant memories clustered about the spot in 
 after years he tenderly thought of the dining-table 
 he had made for it with his own hands, and the 
 willow arch he had twined over the garden gate ; 
 and it was with natural regret, therefore, that he 
 
94 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 found himself compelled to seek a new country home. 
 For a short time he seems to have indulged in the 
 characteristic day-dream of taking the tower of Auld 
 Watt of Harden, and fitting it up as a residence. 
 But this notion had to be abandoned, and he 
 presently found a place that promised to suit 
 him in every particular the house called Ashestiel, 
 then vacant through the death of Colonel Russell, who 
 had married one of his maternal aunts. The Colonel's 
 son was absent in India, and from him he took a 
 lease of house, grounds, and adjoining farm lands, 
 entering into possession in the summer of 1804. 
 
 Scott's new abode was situated in Yarrow parish, 
 on the southern bank of the Tweed, some seven 
 miles from Selkirk, the nearest town. 
 
 "You approached it," says Lockhart, "through an old- 
 fashioned garden, with holly-hedges, and broad, green, terrace- 
 walks. On one side, close under the windows, is a deep ravine, 
 clothed with venerable trees, down which a mountain rivulet is 
 heard, more than seen, in its progress to the Tweed. The river 
 itself is separated from the high bank on which the house stands 
 only by a narrow meadow of the richest verdure. Opposite 
 and all around are the green hills. The valley there is narrow, 
 and the aspect in every direction is that of perfect pastoral 
 repose. The heights immediately behind are those which 
 divide the Tweed from the Yarrow ; and the latter celebrated 
 stream lies within an easy ride, in the course of which the 
 traveller passes through a variety of the finest mountain scenery 
 in the south of Scotland." x 
 
 Such was the ideal poet's home which Scott has 
 made familiar to all of us by the dedicatory epistles 
 of Marmion. For him, moreover, the neighbourhood 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 115. 
 
"LAST MINSTREL" TO "DON RODERICK" 95 
 
 had the additional charm of family association, for as 
 most of the country round belonged to the Buccleugh 
 estate, he could feel happy in having struck root on 
 the territory of his clan. The house itself was a small 
 one, but compared with the Lasswade cottage, which 
 he began to realise that his family had outgrown, its 
 accommodations seemed more than adequate. 
 
 The years which Scott now passed between Edin- 
 burgh and Ashestiel were perhaps the happiest of 
 his life : he was in the first flush of success ; his 
 health was unbroken ; no cloud of misfortune had yet 
 appeared on the horizon threatening enough to disturb 
 his peace. At his Tweedside farm, in particular, his 
 active open-air nature found its fullest satisfaction. 
 There he lived, as he loved best to live, combining 
 strenuous intellectual toil with physical exertions 
 which of themselves would have sufficed to tax to the 
 uttermost men of less energetic temper and robust 
 frame. He rode much, and, as always, with a fear- 
 lessness which often alarmed his companions : " The 
 de'il's in ye, Shirra," one of these would sometimes 
 say to him, " ye'll never halt till they bring ye hame 
 with your feet foremost." To field-sports, for which 
 the neighbourhood afforded ample opportunity, he 
 gave himself, too, with his accustomed ardour: by 
 day there was coursing with the greyhounds or 
 random riding over the hills ; and at night, salmon- 
 spearing by torchlight an amusement which seemed 
 to derive much of its zest from the prospect of 
 duckings and broken shins. All these activities, 
 together with the concerns of his own farm and the 
 care of his cousin's woods, gave him plenty to do ; 
 
96 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 yet he found time, summer after summer, to renew the 
 " raids " of earlier days. Accompanied by his friend, 
 Skene, he little by little explored all the scenes 
 celebrated in Border history and tradition, and Skene 
 did not fail to notice the extraordinary popularity of 
 the " Shirra " among the farmer-folk of Ettrick and 
 Yarrow. Altogether, life at Ashestiel fulfilled Scott's 
 ideal of combined simplicity and comfort. There 
 was nothing grand about his establishment ; but he 
 was happy to invite his friends to take a scamper with 
 him over the hills in the morning, and return, with 
 appetites whetted by fresh air and exercise, to a clean 
 table-cloth, a leg of forest mutton, and a blazing 
 hearth. 1 
 
 His family by this time had reached its limit. His 
 first child had died within a few hours of birth, and now 
 he had an evenly divided quartette : Charlotte Sophia 
 (born October 1799), Walter (born October 1801), Anne 
 (born February 1803), and Charles (born December 
 1805). As his children grew up, he made them his 
 companions, entering with all the hearty frankness of 
 his nature into their little joys and troubles. So in- 
 different was he to the petty interruptions which are 
 commonly regarded as fatal to literary labours, that 
 he allowed them at all times the freedom of his study, 
 where they came and went as they pleased ; and even 
 when he was busiest, he would cheerfully lay down 
 his pen to tell them a story, or repeat a ballad. 
 Despite the regret he so often expressed concerning 
 his own early disadvantages, he seems never to have 
 been seriously troubled about the systematic regula- 
 1 Letter to Leyden, July 1806 (Letters, I. 35). 
 
"LAST MINSTREL" TO "DON RODERICK" 97 
 
 tion of their education. He thought most of 
 quickening the imagination and the sympathies, of 
 strengthening the memory, and arousing the interest, 
 and he turned to poetry and history as the best 
 means by which these results were to be attained. 
 Upon what are ordinarily called polite accomplish- 
 ments he set but little value, and though he liked 
 well enough to hear one of his daughters sing an old 
 ditty or a song of his own making, he was not at all 
 exacting in the matter of technical execution. But, 
 like the ancient Persians, he held that after the love 
 of truth, a love of horsemanship is the prime point of 
 early education. Boys and girls alike, his children, 
 as soon as they could sit on a pony, were made 
 the regular attendants of his mountain rides. " He 
 taught them," says Lockhart, " to think nothing of 
 tumbles, and habituated them to his own reckless 
 delight in perilous fords and flooded streams." 
 " Without courage," he would say, " there cannot be 
 truth ; and without truth, there can be no other 
 virtue." l 
 
 -Our sketch of the Ashestiel circle would be incom- 
 plete if we omitted the servants and the animals, who 
 formed no unimportant part of it. Of the former, 
 two shine with reflected glory in the pages of literary 
 history Peter Mathieson, the coachman, and the 
 even more famous factotum^ Thomas Purdie. Tom, 
 indeed, was a character after Scott's own mind. He 
 was first brought before him, in his capacity of 
 sheriff, on a charge of poaching, and gave such an 
 account of himself and his circumstances, blending 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 165. 
 G 
 
98 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 genuine pathos with a sly, dry kind of humour, that 
 the official heart was touched, and instead of punish- 
 ing him, Scott took him into his employ, first as 
 superintendent of the sheep farm a position which 
 he had had some thought of giving to James Hogg 
 and afterwards as wood-forester and bailiff. He 
 never found cause to regret the step, for Tom served 
 him faithfully to the end. Scott had laughingly 
 threatened for his epitaph " Here lies one who 
 might have been trusted with untold gold, but not 
 with unmeasured whisky." But when he died in 
 1829, he had inscribed on his modest monument at 
 Melrose, a few touching words of heartfelt sorrow 
 for the loss of a tried servant and a trusty friend. 
 Mathieson outlived his master, cherishing his memory 
 to the last. Peculiarly happy in all his relationships 
 with men of this humble type, Scott was emphati- 
 cally an exception to the cynic's rule : he was a hero 
 to those who knew him most intimately in the 
 common and disillusionising routine of domestic life. 
 
 Of this broad and genial humanity, Scott's passion- 
 ate love of animals, one of the most strongly marked 
 traits of his character, was only another expression. 
 His horses, like the charger of the redoubtable Captain 
 Dalgetty, liked to be fed by no one but by him, and 
 Brown Adam, one of his favourites at Ashestiel, 
 would, when the stable-door was opened, trot round 
 of his own accord to the leaping-stone, and stand 
 silent and motionless till his rider was fairly in the 
 seat, after which he would show his joy by triumphant 
 neighings. With his dogs, he lived on terms of 
 equally intimate friendship. Camp, who is often 
 
"LAST MINSTREL" TO "DON RODERICK" 99 
 
 affectionately mentioned in his master's letters, was 
 the chosen companion of hill and hearth during the 
 Ashestiel days, but a couple of lively greyhounds 
 answering to the significant names of Douglas and 
 Percy, came in for their full share of attention. Like 
 the children, these faithful creatures were allowed at 
 all times and under all circumstances in the study* 
 where indeed, no matter what the weather, one 
 window was kept always open, that they might leap 
 in and out as canine fancy prompted. It was on the 
 occasion of Camp's death that Scott wrote giving up 
 a dinner-engagement on the plea of the loss of " a 
 dear old friend," and his eldest daughter long 
 remembered the scene about the old dog's grave 
 the whole family in tears, and her father smoothing 
 down the turf "with the saddest expression of face 
 she had ever seen in him." Before leaving a 
 subject upon which we would willingly write 
 more, we may add that when Mr Adolphus was 
 discussing the identity of the " Great Unknown," he 
 referred to " the importance given to the canine 
 race " in both the verse-romances and the Waverley 
 Novels as a point of evidence in favour of his 
 thesis that the poet and the novelist were one. 
 
 With his removal to Ashestiel, Scott made a 
 fundamental change in his plan of life. Hitherto he 
 had done his literary work mainly at night, with the 
 result that his tendency to nervous headaches had 
 been aggravated by the strain. Now he adopted a 
 habit which, with slight variation, he ever afterwards 
 adhered to when living in the country. He rose at 
 five, lighted his own fire when the mornings were 
 
ioo SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 chilly, and made a careful toilet for little as he 
 inclined to dandyism, he hated what he called the 
 " bed-gown and slipper tricks," in which literary men 
 are apt to indulge. 
 
 " Arrayed in his shooting-jacket, or whatever dress he meant 
 to use till dinner-time, he was seated at his desk by six o'clock, 
 all his papers arranged before him in the most accurate order, 
 and his books of reference marshalled around him on the floor, 
 while at least one favourite dog lay watching his eye, just 
 beyond the line of circumvallation. Thus by the time the 
 family assembled for breakfast between nine and ten, he had 
 done enough (in his own language) ' to break the neck of the 
 day's work. 5 After breakfast, a couple of hours more were 
 given to his solitary tasks, and by noon he was, as he used to 
 say, ' his own man.' " L 
 
 When the weather was so bad as to make outside 
 exercise impossible, he would remain the entire day 
 at his desk, thus creating a fund to his credit, upon 
 which he felt himself at liberty to draw sometimes 
 when the sun shone with unusual brightness. 
 
 It was by faithful adherence to these methodical 
 arrangements that, despite the multitudinous demands 
 upon his time, Scott was still able to regard his work 
 in literature as the principal business of his life. 
 
 At first he does not seem to have contemplated 
 another long poem. 
 
 " As for riding on Pegasus," he wrote to Ellis, in 1805, "depend 
 upon it, I will never again cross him in a serious way, unless I 
 should by some strange accident reside so long in the High- 
 lands, and make myself master of their ancient manners, so as 
 to paint them with some degree of accuracy in a kind of 
 companion to the Minstrel Lay." 2 
 
 For a year following the publication of this romance, 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 130. 2 Ibid., p. 127. 
 
"LAST MINSTREL" TO "DON RODERICK" 101 
 
 he was occupied mainly with an edition of Dryden, 
 which he had undertaken for William Miller of 
 London, for a fee of forty guineas a volume, or 756 
 for the eighteen volumes of the entire work. He 
 expended enormous labour on this task, but his high 
 admiration for " glorious John " made it one of love. 
 At the same time he wrote pretty steadily for the 
 Edinburgh Review, and edited anonymously a mis- 
 cellany entitled Original Memoirs written during 
 the Great Civil Wars ; being the Life of Sir Henry 
 Slingsby, and Memoirs of Captain Hodgson. Then 
 came the beginning of an experiment which, had he 
 met at the moment with sufficient encouragement, 
 might have hastened by several years one of the 
 most important crises in his career. Perhaps with 
 some idea of testing the value of the hint he had 
 thrown out in the letter to Ellis, from which we have 
 just quoted, he began a tale of Highland life, using 
 for it, however, the medium of prose instead of verse. 
 This was the commencement of Waverley. Some 
 seven chapters were written and shown to Erskine, 
 whose verdict was unfavourable. The manuscript 
 was therefore cast aside and practically forgotten, 
 to turn up, however, with momentous consequences 
 at a later date. 1 
 
 1 He must have seriously contemplated a companion-piece to his 
 Border picture. ' ' I have a grand work in contemplation, but so 
 distant, so distant, that the distance between Edinburgh and Stanmore 
 is nothing to it. This is a Highland romance of Love, Magic, and 
 War, founded upon the manners of our Highlanders . . . My great 
 deficiency is that, being born and bred not only a Lowlander but a 
 Borderer, I do not in the least understand the Gaelic language, and 
 therefore am much at a loss to find authentic materials for my under- 
 taking." Letter to Lady Abercorn, 9th June 1806. (Letter s t I. 46.) 
 
102 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 By the end of 1806, however, he was already at 
 work on his second long poem, which by the opening 
 of the new year he had decided* to christen Marmion : 
 A Tale of Flodden Field. Before he had seen a line 
 of it, while as yet indeed it was hardly more than 
 begun, Constable offered him a thousand guineas for 
 the copyright, a proposal that was readily accepted, 
 the more so as he was in need of money at the time 
 to help his brother Thomas, who had taken over the 
 father's practice as Writer to the Signet, and whose 
 affairs were in a very unsatisfactory state. Scott, like 
 Southey, was fond of having several different kinds of 
 work on hand together : he found intellectual rest in 
 passing from one to another. Thus Marmion and 
 Dryden went on pleasantly side by side. Before 
 beginning the poem, he had determined to bestow on 
 it a little more labour than he had before given 
 to his verse ; but though particular passages were 
 elaborated with a good deal of care, the work 
 was after all finished in hot haste. Much of it was 
 written in the saddle, in the wild country about 
 Ashestiel, while parts and among them, the 
 splendid description of Flodden Field were com- 
 posed amid the clatter of arms, in cavalry quarters 
 at Portobello. 
 
 Marmion was eagerly awaited by a public which 
 was still enthusiastic over the Lay, and when it 
 appeared, in July 1808, it scored a brilliant success. 
 In popular favour it did not, indeed, at once 
 take a place beside the Minstrel wonder-tale. 
 Southey, Wordsworth, and Ellis, writing quite inde- 
 pendently, substantially agreed that the earlier poem 
 
"LAST MINSTREL" TO "DON RODERICK" 103 
 
 remained first favourite, and admitted that on the 
 whole they were not surprised. But the critics with 
 the notable exception of Jeffrey, who handled it with 
 considerable severity in the Edinburgh were generally 
 better pleased, recognising immediately, as the public 
 at large came gradually to recognise, that if not the 
 fresher of the two works,Marmion is by all odds superior 
 in strength of narrative, interest of dramatic situation, 
 range of character portrayal, and sustained resonance 
 of martial verse. Concerning the great closing scenes 
 there was never a moment's doubt. The death of 
 Marmion not only gained Southey's most emphatic 
 approval " there is nothing finer in its conception 
 anywhere" but even extorted praise from the un- 
 willing Jeffrey. He had devoted pages of minute 
 criticism to the exposure of faults of plan and 
 execution, but when he came to the last canto, 
 he brushed all his scruples aside. "Certainly/' he 
 declared, " of all the poetical battles which have been 
 fought, from the days of Homer to those of Mr 
 Southey, there is none, in our opinion, at all com- 
 parable, for interest and animation, for breadth of 
 drawing and magnificence of effect, with this of Mr 
 Scott's." 
 
 It should be remembered that Jeffrey and Scott 
 were on terms of personal intimacy when this article 
 was written ; that Jeffrey had the highest regard for 
 Scott personally, and that Scott was one of the main- 
 stays of the Edinburgh. It will, therefore, be under- 
 stood that the critic, who judged fairly according to 
 his lights (which were not the lights of romanticism), 
 showed some pluck in his outspoken attack on his 
 
104 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 friend's work. He was, moreover, as frank as he was 
 courageous. He wrote to Scott, calling his attention 
 to the review, acknowledging that he had said of the 
 poem exactly what he thought an admission which 
 is not necessarily consolatory and hoping that the 
 incident would make no difference in their relations. 
 It happened that he was engaged to dine with the 
 Scotts on the evening of the day when this note was 
 sent. Scott immediately wrote back that the article 
 had not disturbed his digestion, though he hoped 
 that neither booksellers nor readers would agree with 
 it, and that his friend was to come to dinner just the 
 same. We now know that Scott felt the review more 
 than he allowed it to appear ; that he was hurt, not 
 so much by what had been said, as by Jeffrey s tone 
 and manner. 1 But he received his critic with his 
 customary cordiality, and so far as the two men were 
 concerned, all went well. Mrs Scott's feminine 
 sensibilities were not, however, so easily set at rest. 
 She behaved with studied but distant politeness till 
 the close of the evening came, and then sped the 
 parting guest. " Well, good-night, Mr Jeffrey ; dey 
 tell me you have abused Scott in de Review, and I 
 hope Mr Constable has paid you very well for writing 
 it." 
 
 In regard to the poetic introductions, or familiar 
 epistles to intimate friends, which Scott prefixed to 
 the several cantos of Marmion, critical opinion was 
 divided at the time, and remains divided still. Care- 
 fully wrought, and rich in biographical interest, they 
 are entitled to be placed among the most perennially 
 1 See letter to Joanna Baillie, in Letters, I. 127-28. 
 
"LAST MINSTREL" TO "DON RODERICK" 105 
 
 delightful of his writings in verse. On the other 
 hand, it has frequently been urged, from Jeffrey's day 
 downward, that they do not properly form any part 
 of the story, the movement of which they serve only 
 to impede. It appears that it was at one time Scott's 
 intention to publish these poems separately under 
 the title of Six Epistles from Ettrick Forest, and my 
 own judgment is that he would have been better ad- 
 vised to have done so. But the question, like so many 
 points over which the critics squabble, is of trifling 
 moment after all. The reader is at perfect liberty to 
 take his own course, which will probably be to follow 
 Marmion uninterruptedly to the end, and then enjoy 
 the introductions by themselves. 
 
 Marmion was written, Scott tells us, amid " graver 
 cares." These were connected in part with the affairs 
 of his brother Tom, in part with preparation for a 
 Parliamentary Commission for the Improvement of 
 Scottish Jurisprudence, to the secretaryship of which 
 he had recently been appointed, and in part again 
 with financial questions of his own, of which we shall 
 speak hereafter. Notwithstanding such serious dis- 
 tractions, he plodded on with his Dry den, which 
 appeared two months after Marmion. Sound in 
 scholarship, and ripe in critical judgment, this is a 
 work which deserves the high praise of being worthy 
 of both the great names which stand on its title-page. 
 Scott did not indeed show the modern editor's 
 laborious care in the establishment of an authoritative 
 text, but he brought vast learning to bear on the 
 elucidation of his author, and the Life, which fills the 
 first volume, is at once substantial and interesting. 
 
io6 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 It should be noted that he emphatically refused to 
 produce an " expurgated " edition of Dryden's writings. 
 Fully as he realised, and deeply as he deplored the 
 gross, and often stupid and gratuitous indecency of 
 the comedies, he took the ground that in editing the 
 works of an acknowledged classic for the shelves of a 
 library, he had no business to tamper with a line. 
 
 Scarcely was Dryden well off his hands before Scott 
 was deep in other projects. Besides a number of 
 minor enterprises the editing of the State Papers of 
 Sir Ralph Sadler, the Tracts collected by Lord Somers, 
 the Memoirs of Carleton and Gary, and Strutt's 
 unfinished Romance of Queenhoo-Hall he under- 
 took, for what seems to us the enormous sum of 
 1500, an edition of Swift, to correspond, in plan 
 and completeness, with his Dryden. " I have done 
 with poetry for some time," he announces to Ellis, 
 " it is a scourging crop, and ought not to be hastily 
 repeated. Editing, therefore, may be considered as 
 a green crop of turnips or peas, extremely useful for 
 those whose circumstances do not admit of giving 
 their farm a summer fallow." * To fill in the time, he 
 had now also an interest of a somewhat different 
 kind. His personal relations with Jeffrey, despite 
 some temporary soreness, had stood the test of the 
 Marmion episode ; but he had become estranged from 
 the Edinburgh Review by the growing violence of its 
 Whiggism. An article by Brougham on Peninsular 
 affairs served to render his alienation complete, and 
 when, just at this juncture, John Murray made a 
 journey to Ashestiel, and unfolded his scheme for 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 159. 
 
"LAST MINSTREL" TO "DON RODERICK" 107 
 
 the establishment of the Quarterly Review, as a 
 political and literary counterblast to Jeffrey's organ, he 
 found in Scott a ready and zealous ally. He, indeed, 
 very wisely and very naturally declined Canning's 
 suggestion that he should take the editorship ; but 
 he entered with great spirit into all the preliminary 
 arrangements, wrote long letters of advice, and helped 
 materially in beating up recruits. When the Quarterly 
 at length appeared, he felt himself in duty bound 
 to do all he could to insure its success. The first 
 number, which was issued in March 1809, during a 
 visit to London which he made partly in the 
 interests of the new enterprise, contained four articles 
 from his pen ; and from that time onward he con- 
 tinued to be for some years a very active contributor. 
 But whatever may have been his theory concerning 
 rotation of crops, he was soon at work on another 
 long verse - romance, the scene of which he had 
 decided to lay in the Perthshire Highlands, dear to 
 him from the memories of his youth. There were 
 not wanting friendly counsellors to warn him against 
 tempting fortune again ; but it is not in the nature 
 of many authors, and it was certainly not in Scott's, 
 to rest content with applause already won. Un- 
 deterred by chances of failure, and inspired by his 
 favourite lines from Montrose 
 
 " He either fears his fate too much, 
 
 Or his deserts are small, 
 Who dares not put it to the touch, 
 To gain or lose it all " 
 
 he worked away in a spirit of special buoyancy and 
 hopefulness, and in May 1810, gave to the world 
 
io8 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 The Lady of the Lake. Rapidly as he always wrote, 
 he was never careless about essential details. In 
 the present case he notes that he took " uncommon 
 pains to verify the accuracy of the local circumstances 
 of the story," and that in particular, he went into 
 Perthshire to satisfy himself by actual test that King 
 James could have ridden from Loch Vennachar to 
 Stirling Castle within the time he had allowed for 
 the journey in the poem. 
 
 Judged in the light of immediate returns, The Lady 
 of the Lake marks high-water in Scott's career as a 
 poet. Twenty thousand copies were sold before the 
 end of the year, and for once there was practical 
 unanimity of opinion, not only between critics and 
 public, but even among the critics themselves. 
 Jeffrey made handsome amends for his attack on 
 Marmion, though he confessed himself more certain 
 that the new poem had fewer faults than that it had 
 greater beauties than its predecessors ; while Ellis 
 in the Quarterly tempered eulogy only with an un- 
 favourable reference to Scott's persistence in the, to 
 him, objectionable octosyllabic metre. But perhaps 
 the most curious and striking sign of the success of 
 the poem is to be found in the sudden enthusiasm 
 for Highland scenery aroused by it. In the very 
 summer following its appearance there was a rush 
 of tourists to Loch Katrine and the Trossachs ; every 
 inn and house in the neighbourhood was crammed 
 during the season ; and post-horse duty is said to 
 have risen "in an extraordinary degree." 
 
 Jeffrey prophesied that The Lady of the Lake woulcT] 
 be oftener read than either of its author's earlier 
 
"LAST MINSTREL" TO "DON RODERICK" 109 
 
 verse-romances. If not oftener read, it is on the 
 whole, I am inclined to think, more generally enjoyed 
 by readers of the present day. It lacks, of course, 
 some of their special qualities ; it has neither the 
 spontaneous freshness nor the romantic glamour of 
 The Lay, neither the virile force nor the tragic in- 
 tensity of Marmion. But its plot is handled with 
 admirable skill ; it is full of felicitous descriptions of 
 scenes and manners ; there is a tenderness in its 
 love-episodes which will always commend it to the 
 fairer half of the reading public, and its principal 
 characters Ellen Douglas and her father, Malcolm 
 Graeme, Roderick Dhu, and the gallant, masquerad- 
 ing King are drawn with wonderful sympathy and 
 power. Between Marmion and The Lady of the Lake 
 it is admittedly hard to make a final award, and not 
 being of the class of critics who feel bound to range 
 writers and their works in a fixed order of merit, I 
 am willing to allow my own judgment to be swayed 
 by mood and circumstance. But it is probably safe 
 and being safe, it is perhaps commonplace to say, 
 that while Marmion exhibits the greater power, The 
 Lady of the Lake tells a more interesting story with 
 finer art and more persuasive charm. 
 
 The reception of The Lady of the Lake filled Scott 
 with exhilaration, inducing him " for the moment to 
 conclude" that he had a at last fixed a nail in the 
 proverbially inconstant wheel of Fortune." 1 Resolved 
 to take advantage of the " gale " of public favour, he 
 began at once to look about him for another subject, 
 and after relinquishing a dream of visiting the British 
 1 Introduction to Edition of 1830. 
 
i io SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 army in the Peninsula in quest of new material, he 
 turned back to his own country, and, on the invita- 
 tion of the Laird of Staffa, made a journey into the 
 Hebrides. Here he projected The Lord of the Isles, 
 which was not, however, seriously taken up until some 
 three years later. Meanwhile, though his expedition to 
 the scene of action had been abandoned, he remained 
 a deeply interested spectator of events in the Peninsula, 
 the sufferings of the victims of Napoleon's ruthless 
 career of conquest arousing his fullest sympathy. Out 
 of a desire to help the committee of relief, which had 
 been formed in London, sprang the idea of The Vision 
 of Don Roderick, the proceeds of which he offered 
 them as his contribution to their fund. The poem, 
 which is an elaborate political fantasia on the story of 
 the descent of the last Gothic king of Spain into the 
 enchanted cavern of Toledo, was hastily written, and 
 appeared in July 1811. As a piece d occasion it was 
 well received, though, of course, extra-literary con- 
 siderations tended at once to give it vogue and to 
 obscure critical judgment regarding it. For us, one 
 of the most interesting things about it is Scott's 
 employment of the Spenserian stanza ; a choice 
 which was undoubtedly dictated, in large part, by 
 the nature of his subject-matter, though it may have 
 been also in some measure due, as Lockhart believed, 
 to Ellis's repeated suggestions that he should try 
 something besides his ordinary octosyllabic verse. 
 About this time, it is certain, he was making experi- 
 ments in different measures, one of which, The 
 Poacher, written in heroic couplets in imitation of 
 Crabbe, received the high praise of Crabbe himself. 
 
"LAST MINSTREL" TO "DON RODERICK" in 
 
 But for whatever reasons he may have adopted the 
 Spenserian stanza, he found that it did not suit him ; 
 he complained of its lumbering weight and tendency 
 to monotony. 1 In point of fact, so involved and 
 difficult a verse-scheme demands an artistic patience 
 which Scott did not possess. He could manage it 
 with admirable results in short efforts, as in the 
 superb close of The Lady of the Lake, which fully 
 merits the eulogium which Landor pronounced upon 
 it. But for lengthy narrative it was an instrument 
 entirely unsuited to his genius and temper. 
 
 A few months after the publication of Don Roderick, 
 Scott entered upon the enjoyment of the income of 
 his clerkship. He had often during those years of 
 profitless labour referred in humorous fashion to his 
 colleague's tenacity of life. Even now Mr Home did 
 not die, but, in accordance with a new arrangement, 
 he retired upon a pension. The post had formerly 
 been paid by fees ; now a fixed annual salary of ,1300 
 was substituted. By the opening of 1812, therefore, 
 Scott found himself in receipt, as Clerk of Session 
 and Sheriff of Selkirkshire, of a professional income 
 of 1600 a year. 
 
 By this time, however, the lease of Ashestiel had 
 run out. Years before he had fixed his mind on the 
 small mountain farm of Broadmeadows, on the banks 
 of the Yarrow, and had indulged a dream of settling 
 there and becoming laird of the cairn and the scaur. 
 Well would it have been for him could the dream 
 have been realised. But the money derived from his 
 uncle's bequest was turned at the moment to another 
 
 1 Letter to Morritt, Letters^ I. 229. 
 
112 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 purpose, of which we shall have to speak shortly, and 
 the opportunity went by. He now returned, however, 
 to the idea of buying a place of his own, and by the 
 early summer of 181 1 had fixed upon the estate which 
 was soon to become famous in literary history as 
 Abbotsford. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD SCOTT AND THE 
 BALLANTYNES " WAVERLEY " 
 
 (I8I2-I8I4) 
 
 SCOTT'S original acquisition, as landed proprietor 
 the nucleus of what afterwards became the 
 great Abbotsford estate was an unimproved farm, 
 about five miles down the Tweed from Ashestiel. 
 It was, when he first fixed an ambitious and prophetic 
 eye upon it, a most unpromising property, consisting 
 as it did of a hundred or so acres of undrained 
 ground, much of which was still covered with heath, 
 a small dilapidated farm-house, and a dirty duck- 
 pond, from which the homestead had derived its 
 uneuphonious name of Clarty Hole. To turn this 
 unattractive territory into a gentleman's residence 
 would have seemed to any disinterested outsider one 
 of the most hopeless of tasks. But it had advantages 
 which, if not of the kind to cut much figure in an 
 auctioneer's prospectus, meant a great deal to Scott : 
 the estate contained the reputed haunt of Thomas 
 the Rhymer ; the surroundings were rich in historic 
 
 H 113 
 
114 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 and legendary associations ; and the beautiful Tweed, 
 the river of his love, flowed by, to gladden his 
 vision and mingle with all his dreams. From the 
 first he saw his opportunity, and never doubted of 
 results. 
 
 His initial concern in taking possession, was to 
 rid the place of its unpleasantly suggestive name ; 
 so he rechristened it from the shallow near by, across 
 which the Melrose Abbots had driven their cattle 
 from bank to bank. Then he began in earnest to 
 plant and improve. "I have got nature in a very 
 naked state to work upon," he wrote to a friend, " but 
 a brae, a haugh, and a fine river, furnish good com- 
 ponent parts, and the very trial of exertion necessary 
 to make out the rest is happiness." l 
 
 The " flitting " to Abbotsford, which took place in 
 May 1812, strongly appealed to Scott's sense of 
 humour. " It baffled all description," he reports to 
 his actor-friend, Daniel Terry, " we had twenty-four 
 cart-loads of the veriest trash in nature " in which, it 
 appears from another letter, old swords, bows, targets, 
 and lances, made a conspicuous show " besides dogs, 
 pigs, ponies, cows, calves, bare-headed wenches, and 
 bare-breeched boys," fit subject, the master thought, 
 for the pencil of a Callot. In respect of domestic 
 accommodations, he was fain, not having Aladdin's 
 lamp, to go slowly, and decided to begin with a 
 cottage " in the style of the old English vicarage- 
 house." But this, he realised, was only a beginning. 
 He had at length entered upon the road which in 
 time would lead him to the practical achievement 
 1 Letter to Morritt Letters^ I. 243. 
 
REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD 115 
 
 of his patriarchal ideal. And meanwhile he con- 
 fesses that he was " not a little proud " to find himself 
 and Mrs Scott addressed as the " Laird and Lady of 
 Abbotsford." 
 
 Thus did Scott unwittingly allow himself to be 
 drawn into the swift current of an ambition which 
 was presently to sweep him to disaster. To plant 
 and beautify his estate ; to add to it by fresh 
 purchases of land, made always at extravagant and 
 often at fancy prices ; to raise, little by little, a home 
 that should be worthy of the family it was the dream 
 of his life to found ; such was henceforth his ruling 
 purpose and his chief delight. Personal considerations 
 went for nothing against this cherished object of his 
 thoughts ; and risks, before which any man might well 
 have faltered, were willingly undertaken did he but see 
 the chances of advancing thereby a step nearer his goal. 
 Thus acre was joined to acre, the cottage grew into a 
 mansion, the mansion was transformed into a baronial 
 hall ; and while these vast changes were in progress, 
 Scott's financial condition was such as to give to his 
 conduct the character of recklessness, and even of 
 fatuity. 
 
 Scott paid ^"4000 for the Clarty Hole property, one 
 half of which was borrowed from his eldest brother, 
 Major Scott, while the other half was advanced by 
 the Ballantynes on an as yet unwritten poem. To 
 the proceeds of this projected work he had also to 
 look for the means of making the first improvements 
 on his estate. "I want to build my cottage a little 
 better than my limited finances will permit out of my 
 ordinary income/' he writes to Morritt ; and, shortly 
 
ii6 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 after: "Rokeby does and must go forward, or my 
 trees and enclosures might perchance stand still." 
 Rokeby the scene of which was laid at Morritt's 
 beautiful Yorkshire seat did indeed go forward, but 
 under the most unfavourable conditions. All the 
 autumn following the removal to Abbotsford, the 
 workmen were busy hammering away at the cottage, 
 and the poet had to write amidst their din and 
 tumult in the only sanctum he could yet secure for 
 himself that is, in one corner, screened off by an old 
 bed-curtain, of the room which for the present did 
 duty as dining-room, drawing-room, school-room 
 and study. Scott did not complain few authors 
 have ever possessed his powers of concentration or 
 been so happily free from any irritable craving for 
 privacy. Yet it is significant of a failure in spontaneity 
 and certainty of touch, that in this poem, for the first 
 time, he made a false start. He reports that, after 
 making some progress, he " threw the whole into the 
 fire," convinced that he had " corrected the spirit out 
 of it ; " after which he began again in the " old Cossack 
 manner/' and proceeded rather more to his satisfac- 
 tion. 1 But it was still task-work throughout. He 
 wrote because he felt he had to write, with an uneasy 
 sense that the public eye was upon him, and that 
 practical results hung on his success ; and his letters 
 of the time contain ample evidence that his labours 
 grew irksome long before they were finished. Late 
 in the autumn he went to Rokeby to refresh himself 
 on the scenery and surroundings, and on his return 
 hastened the poem to a conclusion " as fast as my 
 1 Letter to Lady Abercorn, Letters, I. 258. 
 
REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD 117 
 
 hand could write it," he says in obedience to the 
 Ballantynes' wish to have it out by Christmas. The 
 last proofs did not actually leave his hands till the 
 closing day of the year, and the work appeared in 
 January 1813. 
 
 There was no reason to be dissatisfied with the 
 immediate returns ; the entire quarto edition of 
 3250 went off within a week, and in a few months 
 10,000 copies had been disposed of. But Scott soon 
 realised that he had fallen very far short of repeating 
 the success of Marmion and The Lady of the Lake. 
 For this comparative failure he afterwards suggested 
 a variety of explanations : he had chosen an unpoetic 
 period, that of the Civil War, and had produced 
 nothing but " a pseudo-romance of pseudo-chivalry ; " 
 his style, which had at first attracted attention by its 
 novelty, had grown stale through his own repeated 
 efforts and those of his numerous imitators ; and he 
 had suddenly found a formidable rival for popular 
 favour in the author of Childe Harolds Pilgrimage. 
 These considerations, indeed, go far to account for 
 the decreased enthusiasm with which the new work 
 was received. But to find reason for the relatively 
 slight esteem in which Rokeby is commonly held 
 among modern readers of Scott's poetry, we must 
 turn to the poem itself. It had cost him more pains 
 than any of his former romances, and it gives us the 
 impression of greater strain and labour. The descrip- 
 tions are more conventional ; the narrative, though 
 it certainly does not lack a rather melodramatic kind 
 of interest, is conducted with less freedom and natural 
 fire ; we miss in the verse the old swing and vigour. 
 
ii8 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 Scott himself regarded the pivotal interest in Rokeby as 
 a fresh one in his writings : the force in The Lay, he 
 says, is thrown on style ; in Marmion, on description ; 
 in The Lady of the Lake on incident, and in Rokeby on 
 character. 1 It would be difficult to say exactly what 
 he means by this analysis, so far, at any rate, as the 
 three earlier poems are concerned ; but it may, I 
 think, be taken to point to an important change in 
 his method and plan. Bertram of Risingham and 
 Oswald Wycliffe are handled more realistically than 
 any figures he had hitherto attempted ; the atmosphere 
 in which they move is, we feel, less suitable to poetry 
 than to prose. " It seems to me," wrote Joanna Baillie 
 to him, " you are hankering after and nearing to the 
 drama prodigiously." 2 In truth he was gravitating not 
 towards the stage, but towards the novel ; and Rokeby, 
 carefully scrutinised, has the interest of foreshadowing 
 his transition from the romance in verse to the 
 romance in prose. 
 
 We have said that Rokeby was task-work. That 
 he grievously felt it to be so is shown, not only by 
 direct allusions in his letters, but also by the fact that 
 during its progress he sought relief in the composition 
 of a shorter and slighter narrative poem, The Bridal 
 of Triermain. This was undertaken at the sugges- 
 tion of William Erskine, and Scott, determining to 
 publish anonymously, contrived a trap for the critics 
 by endeavouring to lay the suspicion of authorship at 
 his friend's door. Erskine, to aid the hoax, wrote a 
 preface for the poem, well sprinkled with Greek ; 
 while Scott did his best to throw " the knowing ones " 
 1 Lockhart, p. 233. 2 Letter s> I. 273. 
 
REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD 119 
 
 off the scent by mixing with his verse something 
 which might resemble the supposed author's feeling 
 and manner. 1 Issued in modest octavo two months 
 after Rokeby's appearance in all 'the majesty of 
 quarto, The Bridal was received with much suspicion 
 by the sagacious, but was still pretty widely accepted 
 as a successful imitation of Scott's style. Jeffrey, for 
 whom especially the snare was prepared, was away in 
 America at the time, and therefore escaped ; but 
 Scott had the curious satisfaction of deceiving the 
 Quarterly reviewer, who was probably none other than 
 his friend, Ellis. Two editions were soon sold ; 
 but when the third was called for, Erskine felt that 
 his silent deception had already gone further than he 
 either expected or desired, and the real writer's name 
 was divulged. 
 
 In the interests of his practical joke, Scott en- 
 deavoured, he tells us, to write in the " Italian style," 
 and The Bridal of Triermain is marked rather by 
 airiness and grace than by the strength and virility 
 which we usually associate with his work. Though 
 affiliated upon the Arthurian legend-cycle, the story 
 of the great king's love for a fairy maiden, and its 
 sequel in the wooing of the bold Sir Roland de Vaux, 
 is the poet's own devising ; and a very charming story 
 it is, and one told with admirable delicacy and verve. 
 On tMe metrical side, the poem presents an interesting 
 contrast with the more ambitious, but to our thinking 
 far less successful, Rokeby. The latter work represents 
 the culmination of that tendency to increasing 
 regularity in versification which we observe in 
 1 Introduction to The Lord of the Isles. 
 
120 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 ) and still more in The Lady of the Lake. 
 In The Bridal, on the other hand, the author returns 
 to the freedom of movement and metrical variety of 
 The Lay of the Last Minstrel. 
 
 In this jocular attempt on Scott's part to gain 
 another man credit for work of his own, we may note, 
 in passing, the beginning of that strange practice of 
 mystification of which we shall have more to say 
 later on. Hitherto he had been wonderfully open 
 about his undertakings, talking freely of his plans, 
 and handing his manuscripts about while they were 
 in various stages of incompleteness. Now he began 
 to grow secretive, and to withhold his confidence not 
 only from critics and public, but even from close 
 personal friends. For this first step in his long course 
 of ingenious and often perverse deception, Scott 
 boasts of a " hundred good reasons," x chief among 
 which were the desire to test public opinion, and the 
 dread of making, on his own acknowledged responsi- 
 bility, what might turn out to be a false move. " The 
 truth is, that this sort of muddling work amuses me, 
 and I am something in the condition of Joseph 
 Surface, who was embarrassed by getting too good 
 a reputation ; for many things would please people 
 well enough anonymously, which, if they bore me on 
 the title-page, would just give me that sort of ill-name 
 which precedes hanging." It cannot be said that these 
 samples of his " hundred good reasons " are very con- 
 vincing, but they seem to have been the best he had to 
 offer at the time. Put into the plainest English, they 
 appear to mean that Scott desired to make another 
 1 Letter to Morritt, Letters, I, 320. 
 
REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD 121 
 
 bid for public favour, but preferred to do so under 
 disguise from a dread of failure. 
 
 It is true that when these sentences were penned 
 he had good cause to be anxious, not so much, how- 
 ever, about his poetic reputation as about his pecuniary 
 affairs. We have now reached the point when it 
 becomes necessary to open the story of Scott's un- 
 fortunate relations with his printers and publishers. 
 
 When, in 1802, upon Scott's advice, James Ballantyne 
 moved from Kelso to Edinburgh, and started his 
 Border Press, he was suffering rather seriously from 
 that common complaint, the lack of funds. Scott 
 had a little loose money, and always ready to help a 
 struggling friend, lent Ballantyne 500. Ballantyne 
 was an artist in types, and his enterprise throve, 
 largely, however, through the instrumentality of Scott, 
 who exerted himself to put legal and literary printing 
 in his way, and whose own growing success naturally 
 reacted in favour of his protege. But, unfortunately, 
 Ballantyne was still hampered by want of capital, and 
 in 1805, shortly after the publication of The Lay of 
 the Last Minstrel, he again applied to Scott. It was 
 just at this time that Scott was contemplating the 
 purchase of Broadmeadows ; but he took the money 
 designed -for this and handed it over to Ballantyne, not 
 however as a loan, but as an investment. In other 
 words, he became a partner, though a secret one, to 
 the extent of a third interest in Ballantyne's business. 
 This most ill-advised step is undoubtedly in large 
 measure to be referred to the strange uneasiness of 
 feeling which seems always to have troubled Scott 
 where questions of money were concerned, and to an 
 
122 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 unfortunate instinct which led him thus early to seek 
 to add to his otherwise large earnings by dabblings 
 in commercial speculation. A paradoxical combina- 
 tion of practical shrewdness and visionary unwisdom, 
 morbidly anxious about the future, yet at the same 
 time absurdly over-sanguine as to the issue; of his 
 multifarious schemes, he embarked upon his long 
 course of error and miscalculation in the belief that 
 he was insuring himself against possible mischances 
 by establishing in his own person a sort of reciprocally 
 beneficial alliance between literature and trade. " It 
 is easy no doubt," he wrote to Lockhart, after the 
 final crash had come, " for any friend to blame me for 
 entering into connection with commercial matters at 
 all. But I wish to know what I could have done 
 better, excluded from the Bar, and then from all 
 profits for six years by my colleague's prolonged life. 
 Literature was not in those days what poor Constable 
 has made it ; and, with my little capital, I was too 
 glad to make commercially the means of supporting 
 my family. I got but ^600 for The Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel^ and it was a price that made men's hair 
 stand on end 1000 for Marmion" 1 In literature, 
 by itself, he means, and the principle was one which 
 he was never tired of emphasising, no one should 
 seek his mainstay, not even when he is obtaining 
 what seem to be fabulous prices for his work ; and it 
 therefore behoved a man like himself, of expansive 
 temper, with growing family and costly tastes, to 
 secure if possible a more stable source of income in 
 commerce. It never appears to have occurred to 
 
 1 Lockhart, pp. 601-602. 
 
REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD 123 
 
 him that, uncertain as the rewards of literature may 
 be, commerce, too, has its perils and its reverses. In 
 Ballantyne's concern, then, he saw a double advantage : 
 a ready opening for the profitable investment of 
 such capital as he had at his disposal, and a chance 
 of turning his literary powers to better practical 
 account than might otherwise be possible. To these 
 considerations another of much importance must be 
 added. Scott was a proud man, jealous of his stand- 
 ing in society, and in the Edinburgh of those days 
 any acknowledged connection with trade meant in- 
 evitable loss of caste. His personal relations with 
 Ballantyne enabled him to keep his connection a 
 secret one. He could thus reap the benefits of 
 commercial enterprise without sacrificing his status 
 as a gentleman. 
 
 The growing prosperity of the printing business, 
 thus fed directly by Scott's efforts and indirectly 
 through his influence, soon led to the introduction 
 of a third element, in the person of James Ballantyne's 
 younger brother, John. This young man's career had 
 been thus far one of varied failure. He had been a 
 bank clerk in London, and the air of the metropolis 
 had proved unfavourable to his morals, and he had 
 afterwards gone to pieces in an attempt to establish 
 himself as general dealer in his native town, Kelso. 
 In 1806, he entered his brother's employ at a salary 
 of 200 a year, bringing with him some taste in 
 literature, and what Lockhart describes as a " great 
 apparent dexterity in book-keeping and accounts." l 
 
 Shortly after this fresh importation of doubtful 
 1 Lockhart, p. 166. 
 
124 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 talent, Scott proceeded to forge another link in the 
 chain in which he was gradually getting himself 
 bound. He had at that time extensive dealings 
 with the most prominent of the Edinburgh publishers, 
 Archibald Constable. It was he, w r e remember, who 
 had offered a thousand guineas for the unwritten 
 Marmion^ and he, again, for whom the edition of 
 Swift had been undertaken. Now the back-bone of 
 Constable's business was the Edinburgh Review^ from 
 which, as we have seen, Scott had been alienated by 
 a combination of personal and political considerations. 
 Almost simultaneously with this rupture occurred 
 a quarrel between him and Constable's partner, 
 Alexander Gibson Hunter, whom Scott accused of 
 gross incivility towards him, and this rendered his 
 breach with the firm complete. Impelled at once by 
 pique, political feeling, and the prospect of furthering 
 his own commercial aims, Scott conceived a larger 
 development of the original scheme. To the estab- 
 lishment of James Ballantyne, printer, was now 
 added the firm of John Ballantyne & Co., book- 
 sellers, avowed rivals of Constable & Co. on their 
 own ground. 
 
 The financial basis of the new company was in 
 the last degree unsatisfactory. Scott supplied his 
 own share of the capital, and advanced that of James ; 
 while John appears to have been taken in without 
 contributing at all, on a contract to limit himself to 
 300 a year salary for his management, until such 
 time as there should be a surplus of profits. But 
 while, as this arrangement shows, John was to figure 
 as the managing director of the concern, its real 
 
REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD 125 
 
 heart and brain was, it needs hardly be said, the 
 moneyed, though still secret partner, Scott. 
 
 The Ballantyne brothers were very dissimilar in 
 character. James was a perfectly upright man, rather 
 pompous and indolent, with a fine taste in typography, 
 but without the training or qualifications essential to 
 success as a master-printer. Later on he became of 
 great service to Scott as proof-reader and general 
 adviser ; but he was too careless in his money trans- 
 actions, and too much taken up with the purely 
 literary and artistic sides of his work, to keep his 
 business on a steady commercial footing. John, on 
 the other hand, was a mercurial individual, vivacious 
 and clever, full of amusing whims and antics, a lover 
 of the bottle, and an admirable story-teller, but shifty, 
 improvident, and irresponsible. Scott's judgment of 
 the two men may be inferred from the nick-names he 
 gave them he called the elder brother Aldiboronti- 
 phoscophornio, and the younger Rigdumfunnidos. 1 Of 
 his relations with them, had the intercourse been con- 
 fined to social life, there would, of course, have been 
 little to say. Scott was not exactly discreet in his 
 choice of associates ; the Ballantynes amused him, and 
 he had a strong feeling of friendship for them, for it was 
 not in his large and generous nature to be over-critical 
 respecting the foibles and absurdities of those he liked; 
 while they, on their part, both loved and revered him. 
 But as the intercourse was not merely a social one, 
 as, on the contrary, it involved large and serious 
 commercial relationships, it is natural that we should 
 
 1 These appellations come, of course, from Carey's burlesque 
 Chrononhotonthologos. 
 
126 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 regard the Scott-Ballantyne combination with more 
 than a little surprise. Scott was a shrewd judge of 
 character, and prided himself, though not always with 
 good reason, on being a clear-headed man of the 
 world. How, then, could he have chosen a reckless 
 ne'er-do-well like "jocund Johnnie " for his confidential 
 ally and representative? How could he ever have 
 dreamed of setting him up against the astute and able 
 Constable? Such questions are hard to answer. It 
 may indeed be suggested that, till events proved it 
 beyond all controversy, Scott was not fully aware of the 
 extent of his partners' inaptitude for their positions. 
 But this touches only the fringe of the difficulty. The 
 real explanation is, I am afraid, to be sought in Scott's 
 perception of the fact that, by having James and his 
 brother for partners, or more correctly speaking, for 
 humble and willing subordinates, he would be able, 
 in his own phrase, to lay down the law, and in all his 
 literary projects pursue his own way unchecked. If 
 this view of the matter be sound, it serves only to show 
 how terribly fraught with danger for all parties con- 
 cerned the association necessarily was. Scott's pride 
 rebelled against the ordinary negotiations between 
 author and publisher; they savoured to him of 
 servitude, and he would be no man's slave. To con- 
 stitute himself his own publisher was to secure the 
 means of escape from relations which were at once 
 unpleasant and undignified. But to gain the full benefit 
 of his plan, he must have a free hand ; and with men 
 like the Ballantynes, who were only too ready to look 
 up to him as in all things their leader, a free hand 
 was possible. 
 
REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD 127 
 
 We cannot here undertake to assign the respective 
 shares of responsibility for failure to the partners 
 in this ill-fated concern. The whole Ballantyne 
 business became, after the publication of Lockhart's 
 Life of Scott, the subject of an acrimonious quarrel 
 between the biographer and the trustees of James 
 Ballantyne's will, with the result that many bitter 
 words were exchanged, and the confusion of the 
 financial issues involved grew darker than ever. 1 
 Into the merits of the controversy we must not now 
 enter, or, so vast and intricate is the theme, we should 
 find ourselves writing a chapter ludicrously out of 
 proportion to the rest of our sketch. It must suffice 
 for the present to say for unfortunately we shall have 
 to take the matter up again by-and-by that if John's 
 carelessness and negligence had much to do with 
 bringing about the catastrophe by which Ballantyne 
 and Co. was presently overwhelmed, Scott's amazing 
 errors of judgment as a publisher were certainly 
 quite as fully to blame. Cleverly as he gauged the 
 public taste where his own productions were con- 
 cerned, he seems to have lost his head entirely when 
 it came to be a question of the productions of other 
 people. He was misled by an odd notion that the 
 books in which he was personally interested must 
 necessarily prove good paying investments ; his 
 generosity constantly interfered with his critical 
 
 1 See Refutation of the Mis-statements and Calumnies contained in 
 Lockharfs Life of Scott respecting the Messrs Ballantyne^ by the 
 Trustees and Son of the late James Ballantyne ( 1 838) ; The Ballantyne 
 Humbug Handled [by Lockhart] (1839) ; and Reply to Mr Lockharfs 
 Pamphlet, The Ballantyne Humbug Handled (1839). Also Andrew 
 Lang's Life and Letters of 'Lockhart ', ii. 126-172. 
 
128 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 acumen ; and his desire to help every struggling 
 author who appealed to him caused him to take up 
 a good many indifferent works. The witty saying 
 that it is the chief business of a publisher to prevent 
 books from being published was certainly never laid 
 to heart by him. That John Ballantyne & Co. did 
 not thrive will hardly appear remarkable when we 
 recall the character of some of their enterprises : a 
 ponderous History of the Culdees, by Scott's " worthy 
 old friend," Dr Jamieson ; a wretched edition of 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, by a drudging German 
 protege, named Henry Weber, who had helped him 
 as amanuensis, and who presently went mad ; a 
 bulky collection of Tixall Poetry, interesting only 
 to a few antiquaries ; the Poems of Anne Seward, 
 to whom, as one of his early admirers, Scott felt 
 indebted, and by whose will he had been entrusted 
 with the task of editing her verse ; and, worse than 
 all, The Edinburgh Annual Register, for which Scott 
 did giant's work, but which left the firm with ;iooo 
 a year on the wrong side of the account. Before 
 long, the shelves of the publishing house were groan- 
 ing beneath the weight of cartloads of such unsaleable 
 stuff the result of projects undertaken in many 
 cases, it is only fair to say, against James Ballantyne's 
 advice. At the same time, Scott was spending 
 money freely in getting Abbotsford into shape, while 
 John, himself a man of extravagant habits, could 
 never be prevailed upon to give his partners a full, 
 complete, and honest statement of the actual con- 
 dition of the firm's affairs. Under these circumstances, 
 things naturally went from bad to worse. Hard 
 
REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD 129 
 
 times came to add to their difficulties ; rumours 
 of their instability began to get afloat ; and by May 
 1813, they were on the verge of bankruptcy. 
 
 In this emergency Scott took the only course that 
 seemed open to him : he appealed to Constable. 
 Luckily the way was clear. By this time, Hunter, 
 the offending partner, was dead, Scott's ill-feeling 
 had subsided, and Constable, on his side, was only 
 too happy to renew friendly relations with the most 
 prolific and popular author of the day. Arrange- 
 ments for temporary relief were concluded on the 
 1 8th May, upon which Scott declared that "for the 
 first time these many weeks I shall lay my head on 
 a quiet pillow ; " and after a long period of anxiety 
 and suspense a basis for permanent settlement was 
 established. Scott obtained from the Duke of 
 Buccleuch, to whom, after his curious fashion of 
 mixing the feudal and the commercial, he turned as 
 the chief of his clan, a guarantee which enabled him to 
 raise ^4000 to meet immediate demands ; the affairs 
 of John Ballantyne & Co., publishers, were presently 
 wound up, and the company was ultimately dissolved. 
 Thus, through the irony of fate, Scott was for the time 
 being rescued by the rival against whom, as he said, he 
 had prepared his bombs. He and James Ballantyne to- 
 gether kept on the printing business, while John set up 
 for an auctioneer, though Scott foolishly continued to 
 employ him as his agent in his dealings with publishers. 
 
 Scott's conduct in this crisis and the events which 
 followed revealed both the strength and the weakness 
 of his character. He faced his difficulties with ad- 
 mirable energy and courage, and it was due to his 
 
 I 
 
130 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 exertions alone that the firm weathered the storm. 
 On the other hand, he was too good-natured and too 
 sanguine to take the opportunity now offered him 
 of shaking himself entirely free from all personal 
 responsibility in the Ballantynes' affairs. He loudly 
 complained that John had been guilty of " shutting 
 his own eyes, or blinding those of others " to the true 
 state of the Company's accounts, and, plagued to 
 desperation by his partner's everlasting demands for 
 money, begged that he might be treated " as a man, 
 and not as a milch-cow." But when the sudden 
 burst of anger was over, he apologised to that same 
 partner for his own hastiness and irritability, ex- 
 pressed the fullest confidence in his honesty and 
 business capacity, and allowed things to slip back 
 into the old uncertain condition. " I had a lesson in 
 1814 which should have done me good," he afterwards 
 confessed in his diary. That lesson unfortunately 
 was never properly learned. Nor, on his own part 
 did he appear to realise that, for a time at least, it 
 behoved him to be more circumspect in regard to 
 his personal expenditure. Barely had the " hard 
 skirmishes " of the spring of 1813 terminated in what 
 had the aspect of temporary victory, before Scott 
 was negotiating with Constable for the sale for ^5000 
 of an unwritten poem, his object being the purchase 
 of more lands at Abbotsford. The negotiations fell 
 through, but the lands were bought none the less, 
 with, about the same time, " a splendid lot of ancient 
 armour" for his museum. In this way, with one 
 crash narrowly averted, Scott began at once to lay 
 up embarrassments for the future. 
 
REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD 131 
 
 It is a relief to turn from such matters to other 
 occurrences of this period. In the midst of all his 
 worry and excitement, Scott received from the Prince 
 Regent an offer of the poet laureateship, a position 
 which he had at first a half-thought of taking for 
 the income he understood to be attached to it, but 
 eventually declined from the feeling that the office 
 was "a ridiculous one," and that he might very justly 
 be censured for standing in the way of some really 
 needy " brother of the Muses." The honour, such as 
 it was, was afterwards accepted by Southey, to whom 
 it was tendered at Scott's suggestion. He had mean- 
 while written two articles, on chivalry and the 
 drama, for Constable's supplement to the Encyclopedia 
 Britannica, and had completed his Swift^ a worthy 
 pendant to the Dryden. But these events sink into 
 insignificance compared with one now to be recorded. 
 Almost simultaneously with the Swift appeared 
 W aver ley ; or> 'Tzs Sixty Years Since ; and with this 
 we reach another turning-point in Scott's career. 
 
 It has been mentioned that as far back as 1805 
 Scott had written some chapters of a prose tale of 
 Highland life, and that, discouraged by the criticism 
 of Erskine, he had thrown the manuscript aside. In 
 the autumn of 1810 he took the story up again, and 
 this time sought the opinion of James Ballantyne. 
 The printer wrote favourably, but not enthusiastically. 
 He was much entertained, he said, but he found, 
 as many thousands of readers since have found, the 
 account of Waverley's studies " unnecessarily minute " ; 
 reflection was too much mixed up with the narrative ; 
 and, upon the whole though he did not say this in 
 
132 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 so many words, this is pretty much what he meant 
 he thought that, since poetry was paying so well, 
 Scott should stick to poetry rather than hazard a 
 new adventure. Once more the manuscript was left 
 uncompleted, and this time actually mislaid. In 1813, 
 while he was turning over the drawers of an old 
 cabinet in search of some fishing tackle, Scott came 
 "by the merest accident'' across the fragment, read 
 it through, was far more pleasantly impressed than 
 he had expected, and "took the fancy of finishing 
 it," which he did so rapidly, that the last two volumes, 
 or two-thirds of the story, were written in three weeks. 
 Surely the stars in their courses conspired in this 
 man's favour ! The vein of poetic romance, rich as 
 it had been, was now well-nigh exhausted ; com- 
 mercial reverses and entanglements compelled him 
 to look anxiously over the field of literary enterprise 
 for some fresh opening. And behold, just at the 
 critical moment, he found a new opportunity ready 
 to hand, and entered forthwith upon a course of 
 success which was to throw even the brilliant triumphs 
 of his former life altogether into the shade. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 FROM "WAVERLEY" TO " IVANHOE " 
 (1814-1819) 
 
 VERLEYwas published on the ;th July, and 
 on the 29th Scott started, as a guest of the 
 Commissioners of Northern Lights, on a yachting 
 excursion to Orkney, Shetland, the Hebrides, and 
 the coast of ^Ireland. The diary which he kept on 
 board shows the wide range of his interests, and 
 makes very delightful reading. 1 Looking back, Scott 
 spoke of his six weeks 1 cruise as a "sunny portion" 
 of his life ; 2 but his enjoyment was interrupted by 
 the news, which overtook him at the Giant's Cause- 
 way, of the sudden death of his friend, the Duchess 
 of Buccleuch. To this beautiful and accomplished 
 woman, who as Countess of Dalkeith had been the 
 inspirer of his first long poem, he had intended to 
 dedicate what he more than half expected was to be 
 his last; and, deeply moved by her loss, he closed 
 The Lord of the Isles with some tender lines to her 
 memory. 
 
 1 It is printed in full in Lockhart, chapters xxviii. -xxxii. 
 
 2 Introduction to The Pirate (1831). V 
 
 133 
 
134 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 He had not lingered to learn the fate of Waverley 
 before starting on his trip, nor had any account of it 
 reached him during his absence. On getting back to 
 Edinburgh he found that his new venture was already 
 an assured success ; 3000 copies had been sold in a 
 couple of months, and Constable was eager to treat 
 for another edition. Of course this showing seemed 
 poor compared with that of the poems ; but in the 
 then existing condition of prose fiction, it easily broke 
 the record. 
 
 Scott was not yet prepared, however, to quit the 
 poetic field ; like the wrestler in As You Like //, he 
 felt that he had still to try another throw for his 
 reputation. Before beginning Rokeby he had con- 
 ceived the idea of writing a poem having Bruce as 
 its central figure, and part of his object in undertaking 
 the journey to the Hebrides had been to re-visit the 
 scenes he had chosen for his story. He had already 
 contracted with Constable for a sale of half the copy- 
 right for ^1500. The completion of his design occu- 
 pied him, among many other matters, during the late 
 autumn, the last three cantos being written with 
 " fiery rapidity " ; and The Lord of the Isles made its 
 appearance in January 1815. 
 
 The best that Scott afterwards found to say of the 
 reception accorded to this last of his great poetic 
 efforts was, that the sale ran into such figures as 
 enabled him to retreat from the field with the honours 
 of war. There was indeed nothing ignominious about 
 this final onset, or its results. If, from the publisher's 
 side, the record seemed unsatisfactory, it was, after all, 
 because the vogue of Marmion and The Lady of the 
 
FROM "WAVERLEY" TO "IVANHOE" 135 
 
 Lake was still accepted as the standard of comparison; 
 and if to-day the poem is adjudged a failure, it is 
 mainly in reference to these works that it is so 
 adjudged. Defects of structure it undoubtedly has ; 
 it lacks central story, and its characters, with few ex- 
 ceptions, fail to stir the interest. But such passages as 
 the scene of the Abbot's blessing, and the description 
 of the Battle of Bannockburn, suffice to redeem it 
 from flatness ; while, forced as it is in places, it gives 
 otherwise little sign of the weariness and exhaustion 
 for which we might have looked. The coolness with 
 which readers of poetry at large treated The Lord 
 of the Isles was, however, the result of a powerful cause 
 altogether unconnected with any question of the value 
 or interest of the work itself. Byron, who had sprung 
 into sudden fame with the first instalment of Childe 
 Harold's Pilgrimage in 1812, was now, with lavish 
 prodigality, pouring out his brilliant and highly- 
 coloured romances of the East. He had taken the 
 public by storm, and the favourite of ten years' 
 standing sank into second place. It is odd to 
 observe the good-natured readiness with which now, 
 as at other times, Scott acquiesced in the judgment 
 of the public and the booksellers. But, perhaps, in 
 this instance the readiness was in no small measure 
 due to the consciousness that he had already found 
 an opening for new success in another direction. 
 
 One evening, soon after the poem was published, 
 Scott sent for James Ballantyne, and the printer found 
 him alone in his library, writing. "'Well, James/" 
 said he " the account of the incident is reproduced 
 by Lockhart from Ballantyne's own memoranda 
 
 f > or THT * \ 
 
 { UNIVERSITY 
 
 or 
 
 ITY 
 
 J 
 
136 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 " * I have given you a week ; what are people saying 
 about The Lord of the fstes?' I hesitated a little, 
 after the manner of Gil Bias, but he speedily brought 
 the matter to a point. ' Come/ he said, ' speak out, 
 my good fellow ; what has put into your head to be 
 on so much ceremony with me all of a sudden ? But 
 I see how it is, the result is given in one word 
 Disappointment! My silence admitted his inference 
 to the fullest extent. His countenance certainly did 
 look rather blank for a few seconds ; in truth, he had 
 been wholly unprepared for the event ; for it is a 
 singular fact that, before the public, or rather the 
 booksellers, gave their decision, he no more knew 
 whether he had written well or ill, than whether a 
 die thrown out of a box was to turn up a size or an 
 ace. Hov/ever, he instantly resumed his spirits, and 
 expressed his wonder rather that his poetic popularity 
 should have lasted so long, than that it should now 
 at last have given way. At length he said with 
 perfect cheerfulness : * Well, well, James, so be it ; 
 but you know we must not droop, for we can't afford 
 to give over. Since one line has failed, we must just 
 stick to something else ; * and so he dismissed me, 
 and resumed his novel." l 
 
 This novel was Guy Mannering, which, as a tour 
 de force surprising even with him, Scott wrote in the 
 six weeks of the Christmas vacation, and which was 
 published in February 1815, only a month after The 
 Lord of the Isles. He thus finished off a twelvemonth 
 of almost unparalleled activity ; for notwithstanding an 
 absence of nearly two months on his yachting cruise 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 309. 
 
FROM "WAVERLEY" TO "IVANHOE" 137 
 
 and even for this he had a lengthy diary to show he 
 had, within that year, written almost the whole of his 
 life of Swift; two volumes of Waverley ; the whole 
 of The Lord of the Isles ; a considerable part of 
 Guy Mannering ; and two essays for the Encyclopedia 
 Britannica ; he had edited the Memorie of the 
 SomervilleS) in two volumes, and Rowland's satires, 
 The Letting of Humours Blood in the Head Vaine ; 
 he had kept up with his customary punctuality an 
 enormous private correspondence ; he had attended 
 to his professional duties as Clerk of Session and 
 Sheriff; and, to complete the chapter, he had all the 
 while been busy with the affairs of the Ballantynes 
 and the improvement of his estate. Such exertions 
 were more than any brain or physique could stand 
 without disaster ; the evil results might be postponed, 
 but in the long run they were sure to come. Scott 
 found the keenest enjoyment in such hard work. 
 " It was enough to tear me to pieces," he once told Lock- 
 hart, " but there was a wonderful exhiliration about 
 it ; my blood was kept at fever pitch." The enormous 
 drafts which he was thus making upon his superb 
 constitution were not noticed at the time ; but they 
 were duly entered against him in the books of Nature's 
 bank, where, despite much seeming carelessness, 
 men's accounts are, on the whole, pretty strictly kept. 
 If any doubt about his new venture had been left 
 in Scott's mind by the reception of Waverley, it was 
 at once dispelled by Guy Mannering. Written under 
 pressure of renewed business anxieties, and for 
 the immediate purpose of preventing the necessity 
 of another appeal to private friends, this delightful 
 
138 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 novel turned out to be " something more permanent 
 than a mere accommodation." Finding himself with 
 money to spare, he of course bought more land. He 
 also determined to " refresh the machine " by a trip 
 to London, where he had not been for six years. 
 
 Among the occurrences of his two months' stay 
 in the metropolis, the greatest interest attaches to his 
 meeting with Byron. The relations of the two poets 
 had begun inauspiciously enough with Byron's attack, 
 in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, upon the 
 " venal " author of Marmion an attack which Scott 
 undoubtedly felt and resented at the moment, and 
 which he never quite forgot. Not long afterwards, 
 however, through the intervention of Murray, the 
 publisher, a correspondence sprang up between them, 
 in which Byron apologised for lines written when he 
 was " very young and very angry," and Scott warmly 
 praised Childe Harold. The way was thus smoothed 
 for a personal introduction. Scott himself had some 
 misgivings, but he found Byron "in the highest 
 degree courteous and even kind " ; and so long as he 
 remained in town they were much in each other's 
 society, agreeing, on the whole, remarkably well, 
 except of course on questions of politics and religion. 
 Afterwards, several letters passed between them ; like 
 the Homeric heroes, they exchanged gifts ; and 
 presently Byron inscribed to Scott his Mystery of 
 Cain. Even had circumstances favoured further in- 
 tercourse, they could hardly have been friends. But 
 their feelings for one another were those of admiration 
 mingled with genuine personal liking, and on each 
 side there was magnanimity enough to prevent any- 
 
FROM "WAVERLEY" TO "IVANHOE" 139 
 
 thing resembling jealousy. Scott expressed, often 
 and generously, his enthusiasm for Byron's work, while 
 his heart was touched with pity by the tragic failure 
 of his life ; and Byron spoke of Scott, as he spoke 
 of few men, with invariable kindliness and respect. 
 
 One other event of this London visit has to be 
 chronicled, not because it is so important to the 
 reader, but because, it is to be feared, it left an even 
 profounder impression on the mind of Scott. Among 
 his professed admirers he was already gratified to 
 reckon the Prince Regent, whose interest in The Lay 
 and Marmion took practical shape as soon as it was 
 known at Carleton House that their author was in 
 town. After formal presentation at the levee, he was 
 invited to a " snug little dinner," at which it appears 
 His Royal Highness and "Walter" capped one 
 another's good stories, to the intense satisfaction of 
 the rest of the company, and finally parted enchanted 
 with one another's social parts. Three years later, 
 the Prince showed that he had not forgotten his 
 favourite poet by the offer of a baronetcy, which was 
 duly ratified and gazetted in proper form, when, in 
 1820, the Regent became King. Scott was George 
 IV.'s first baronet, and the new monarch may well 
 have felt proud of the fact. But why Scott himself 
 should have been elated because the honour was 
 conferred upon him "not in consequence of any 
 ministerial suggestion " that is, not on the initiative 
 of such a man as Lord Sidmouth or Canning " but 
 by the King personally," is a very different question. 
 It has, I hope, by this time been made clear that we 
 can understand Scott only and so long as we remember 
 
140 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 how completely his imagination was saturated by the 
 sentiments of the feudal past. Whenever these 
 sentiments came into play, they coloured his judg- 
 ments, and disturbed his otherwise sturdy common- 
 sense. It is by reference to this fact that we must 
 interpret the attitude of reverential respect which, in 
 face of better knowledge and saner counsels, he 
 always maintained towards the Fat Adonis of Fifty. 
 But, unfortunately, the smiles of princely favour 
 turned his head enough to make him forget for once 
 the chivalrous ideals which formed the nobler part of 
 his Tory creed. In earlier years he had espoused the 
 cause of Princess Caroline ; now, his warm feelings 
 for "beauty afflicted" 1 underwent a rather remark- 
 able change. Her vices were animadverted upon 
 with severity ; those of her liege lord were protected 
 from the breath of criticism by the divinity that doth 
 hedge a king. In fact, Scott's undeviating loyalty to 
 George IV. a man about as little worthy of such a 
 poet's homage as any that ever wore crown would 
 strike us as grossly farcical if sometimes it did not 
 rather call for a harsher description. 
 
 A story has been told of Scott's first dinner at 
 Carleton House to the effect that the Prince devised 
 a snare for his guest with a view to surprising him 
 into a confession of responsibility for Waverley and 
 Guy Mannering. Towards midnight, when the fun 
 ran high, the host called for a bumper, with all 
 honours, to the Author of Waverley -, "and looked 
 significantly" at Scott. After a moment of hesita- 
 
 1 See his boisterous and most injudicious song, written for a banquet, 
 in 1806, to celebrate the acquittal of Lord Melville. 
 
FROM "WAVERLEY" TO "IVANHOE" 141 
 
 tion Scott recovered himself, and, filling his own glass, 
 said, " Your Royal Highness looks as if you thought 
 I had some claim to the honours of this toast. I 
 have no such pretensions, but shall take good care 
 that the real Simon Pure hears of the high com- 
 pliment that has now been paid him." Whereupon 
 he drank off his claret, and joined in the cheering. 
 Then, before the company could resume their seats, 
 the Prince exclaimed : " Another of the same, if you 
 please, to the Author of Marmion ; and now, Walter, 
 my man," alluding to an anecdote Scott had been 
 telling of a hanging judge, " I have checkmated you 
 for ance" This toast Scott, of course, accepted and 
 acknowledged. Though the story lies under some 
 suspicion, it may serve to remind us here of the facts, 
 first, that Scott had neither announced nor avowed 
 the authorship of the two works which were then the 
 talk of the day ; and secondly, that, all his secrecy 
 notwithstanding, they were very commonly connected 
 with his name. 
 
 In his General Preface of 1829, Scott explains that 
 his original motive for publishing anonymously was 
 the consciousness that he was making an experiment 
 which might very probably fail ; while for persevering 
 in the same course after success was assured, he 
 confesses that he could offer little better reason than 
 that, in Shylock's words, such was his humour. He 
 had already, he urges, had more than enough of 
 literary fame ; he was no longer touched by the 
 spur of social ambition ; he was pleased with the 
 thought that by remaining unknown he held open 
 an easy chance of retreat ; mystery piqued curiosity, 
 
142 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 and so helped to maintain interest ; and above all, 
 he was saved by the mask he had chosen to assume, 
 from the necessity of making his writings the subject 
 of personal discussion. I cannot think that, even 
 when they are taken together, these motives are to be 
 regarded as altogether satisfactory. Yet after all the 
 ink that has been shed over the matter, it is more 
 than probable that in a desire to escape the strain of 
 publicity, and in a persistent dread of being thought 
 of primarily as a professional author, the mainspring 
 of Scott's conduct has still to be sought. We have 
 spoken of the low esteem in which he held the trade 
 of book-making. To be Laird of Abbotsford, and 
 " Kinsman to the bold Buccleugh," meant more to 
 him than to be the author of Marmion or Waverley ; 
 and to hold his place as a landed gentleman un- 
 challenged, he may have felt it necessary to keep the 
 two characters, between whose interests his life had 
 to be divided, severely apart. It has been argued, 
 too, though I am not sure that I can see the force of 
 the suggestion, that he may have found he could 
 work with greater freedom when untrammelled by the 
 thought that he might be held to account for every 
 scene he drew and every opinion he expressed. 
 However this may have been, it is tolerably certain 
 that, along with these rather finely-spun considera- 
 tions, we have to reckon one of more mundane 
 character. His connection with the Ballantynes had 
 given him the commercial point of view in regard to 
 his work, and he had been annoyed by whispers that 
 had reached him of a general booksellers' criticism, 
 that he was making his name too cheap. It is, further- 
 
FROM "WAVERLEY" TO "IVANHOE" 143 
 
 more, quite evident that, as his correspondence 
 amply shows, he found a pleasurable excitement in 
 the attempt to mislead the critics and baffle the 
 curiosity of the public. 
 
 But whatever may have been his motives, Scott 
 adhered to his anonymity, and did not make open 
 and formal acknowledgment of his work until the 
 failure of Constable & Co. and the exposure of their 
 account books rendered concealment no longer 
 possible. Various elaborate devices were adopted 
 by him to keep up the mystification, the original 
 manuscripts being copied by confidential persons 
 under the supervision of James Ballantyne, who 
 also transcribed his corrections on a second set of 
 proof-sheets, in order that no scrap of his hand- 
 writing might find its way into the printing office. 
 When put to the test, too, Scott unhesitatingly 
 resorted to evasions and prevarications which seem 
 oddly out of harmony with the essential frankness 
 and honesty of his character. 1 But from the first his 
 secret was so widely known that it appears strange 
 he should have put himself to such useless trouble 
 about it From his immediate friends he had 
 admittedly never expected to keep it ; his casual 
 acquaintances were soon convinced that he, and 
 
 1 Worse than this, he even denied the authorship, categorically, 
 and "upon honour," though he takes credit for usually qualifying his 
 denial by a statement that if he had written the books in question, he 
 would have denied it all the same. General Preface of 1829. See also 
 Memoirs of Moore, II. 199, etc., the Table Talk of Samuel Rogers; 
 and, in the preface to Samuel Warren's Miscellanies, a letter in which 
 Scott says: "I am not the author of those novels which the world 
 chooses to ascribe to me." 
 
144 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 none other, was the writer of books filled to over- 
 flowing with his personality and his experiences ; 
 men like Southey and Sydney Smith never even 
 pretended to be in any doubt about the fact ; and 
 the leader of critical opinion in the North, Jeffrey, 
 closed his review of Waverley with a virtual declara- 
 tion of belief in Scott's authorship. In literary 
 circles outside, there was, of course, plenty of specula- 
 tion and discussion and controversy, for gossip 
 attributed the Scotch novels, as they were called, to 
 a Dr Greenfield, to Jeffrey himself, and to sundry 
 other people. But speculation, discussion, and con- 
 troversy led for the most part to one result 
 the identification of the "Great Unknown" with 
 the poet of Marmion and The Lady of the Lake. 
 Thus when, in 1821, John Leycester Adolphus 
 published his letters on the authorship of the novels, 
 and with remarkable acumen and ingenuity fastened 
 the responsibility on Scott, he did little more than 
 formulate evidence for a conclusion that had long 
 been accepted by all competent judges. 1 
 
 1 On the publication of Waverley a rumour got started that it was 
 the work of Thomas Scott, then in Canada. Walter wrote him that 
 he need be at no pains to deny it "look knowing when Waverley is 
 spoken of," he said. He encouraged the idea because it took sus- 
 picion from himself. He himself reviewed The Tales of my Landlord^ 
 first series, in the Quarterly (though he apparently incorporated a 
 critical estimate by Erskine in the article), and in his closing paragraph 
 referred to a "strong report" of "certain Transatlantic confessions, 
 which, if genuine (though of this we know nothing), assign a different 
 author to these volumes than the party suspected by our Scottish 
 correspondents." For a presentation of the full-blown theory that this 
 * ' strong report " was actually correct, and that a considerable number 
 of the Waverley Novels were really the work of Thomas Scott and his 
 wife, see Notes and Queries, 1st series, vol. xii. ; Who Wrote the Earlier 
 
FROM "WAVERLEY" TO "IVANHOE" 145 
 
 Scott returned home from London in May, but 
 could not rest there. He was thrilled by the tre- 
 mendous events of that most memorable summer, 
 and when these were at length crowned by 
 Wellington's great victory, he was thrown into a 
 fever of excitement, and determined to start at 
 once for the continent. The first object of his 
 flying trip was to visit the scene of Napoleon's 
 downfall ; thence he went on to Paris, where, at a 
 dinner given by the Earl of Cathcart, he met the 
 Czar of Russia and the Iron Duke. In the latter's 
 presence Scott confesses to have felt, for the first 
 time in his life, " awed and abashed." He was back 
 at Abbotsford in September, and the literary re- 
 sults of his excursion soon made their appearance 
 in The Field of Waterloo, published in October, and 
 Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk, which followed in 
 January 1816. Arrangements for the latter volume 
 had been made before Scott started, and his letters 
 home had been written with an eye to their production 
 in this form, though of course they were in places 
 "somewhat cobbled," as James Ballantyne elegantly 
 expressed it, before being sent to press. For The 
 Field of Waterloo Scott offered the apology that 
 the poem " was written for the purpose of assisting 
 the Waterloo subscription." The aim was laudable ; 
 
 Waverley Novels, by W. J. Fitzpatrick, and An Inquiry into the 
 Authorship of some of the Earlier Waverley Novels, by G. J. French. 
 We commend these instructive lucubrations to people who believe that 
 Bacon wrote Shakespeare, merely adding that Scott deliberately and 
 emphatically claimed the whole and sole authorship at the dinner in 
 February, 1827, at which his acknowledgment was publicly made, and 
 again in the General Preface of 1829. 
 
 K 
 
146 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 but literature knows nothing of the doctrine of im- 
 puted righteousness ; and this occasional piece, which 
 will not bear comparison with Sou they 's Pilgrimage, 
 and is not to be mentioned in the same breath with 
 Byron's few splendid stanzas in the third canto of 
 Childe Harold, reflects no great credit on either the 
 poet or his theme. 
 
 After his usual habit, Scott allowed himself no 
 breathing space. Having dismissed the Letters he 
 at once settled down in earnest to his third novel. 
 A scrap of playful doggerel, sent to the elder 
 Ballantyne on the 29th December, announces the 
 beginning of the new work : 
 
 * Dear James, I've done, thank God ! with the long yarns 
 
 Of the most prosy of apostles Paul ; 
 And now, advance sweet Heathen of Monkbarns ! 
 Step out, old quizz, as fast as I can scrawl." 
 
 The " sweet heathen " was, of course, the immortal 
 Jonathan Oldbuck, who, as The Antiquary, made his 
 old-fashioned bow to a delighted world in May 1816. 
 Speaking of this work at the time, Scott pronounced 
 it " not so interesting as its predecessors ; " it wanted, 
 he felt, " the romance of Waverley and the adventure 
 of Guy Mannering? * But he afterwards came to 
 prefer it to all his other novels, a judgment in 
 which the present writer is not a little inclined to 
 concur. 2 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 332. 
 
 2 It may be worthy of record, in a footnote, that it was in The 
 Antiquary that Scott first fell back on the device of inventing mottoes 
 from "old plays" and "old ballads," where memory or research 
 failed him, for the headings of his chapters. On one occasion he had 
 set John Ballantyne to hunt for a particular passage in Beaumont 
 
FROM "WAVERLEY" TO "IVANHOE" 147 
 
 It should be noted that these first three novels 
 represent three different lines of experiment in fiction 
 the historical romance, the romance of adventure, 
 and the novel of character and manners, and that 
 thus, from the very start, Scott took possession of the 
 entire field in which his subsequent work was to be 
 done. But though they differ from one another in 
 theme and treatment, they have this in common, that 
 in each case the writer was dealing at first hand with 
 material which he knew intimately well. The scenes 
 witnessed, the characters observed, the legends and 
 anecdotes gathered together in his early wanderings, 
 now in the Perthshire Highlands, and now in the 
 Border country it is out of such vital elements that 
 his first stories were made. It is not surprising, there- 
 fore, that none of his after- productions quite equalled 
 these in the undefinable but undeniable quality of 
 personal charm, and that we should find in them 
 pages of description and characterisation which he 
 never surpassed in their kind. 
 
 A month before the appearance of The Antiquary, 
 Scott was already busy with the scheme of two more 
 novels, which in the December of the same year were 
 published together under the general title of The 
 Tales of My Landlord^ Collected and Arranged by 
 Jedediah Cleishbotham^ Schoolmaster and Parish Clerk 
 of Gandercleugk. Partly under the influence of John 
 Ballantyne, who seems to have had personal reasons 
 
 and Fletcher, which, after the manner of particular passages, 
 obstinately refused to be found. "Hang it, Johnnie," he cried, "I 
 believe I can make a motto sooner than you will find one." In these 
 scraps we have some of Scott's most thoughtful lines. 
 
148 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 for the change, and partly no doubt from his rooted 
 dislike to give any one firm a monopoly in his works, 
 these Tales were issued through Murray and his 
 Edinburgh agent, Blackwood ; and at the same time, 
 mainly perhaps from mere caprice (for the trick 
 amused him, and he wished to see how far it w r ould 
 go), but perhaps also from a certain desire not to 
 wound Constable's feelings, the words " by the Author 
 of Waverley" were omitted from the title-page. But 
 notwithstanding this blind, the clumsy machinery of 
 the introduction, and the writer's attempt to vary his 
 style of characterisation and diction, the new disguise 
 was soon pentrated. " This, we think, is beyond all 
 question a new coinage from the mint which produced 
 Waverley, Guy Mannering, and The Antiquary" wrote 
 Jeffrey, the oracle ; and readers who had not percep- 
 tion to find this out for themselves, saw it clearly 
 enough the moment it was pointed out to them. 
 
 The two Tales are singularly unequal. The Black 
 Dwarf, though it opens in excellent style, finishes 
 miserably, and must be placed, a creature unshapely 
 as its hero, among the very poorest of Scott's pro- 
 ductions. He himself " quarrelled " with it before he 
 had got half through, and " bungled up a conclusion," * 
 though he was very angry with Blackwood for 
 suggesting, through Ballantyne, that he should recast 
 the closing chapters. " Tell him and his coadjutors," 
 he wrote, "that I belong to the Black Hussars of 
 Literature, who neither give nor receive criticism." 2 
 Old Mortality, on the other hand, stands well up 
 
 \S l Letter to Lady Louisa Stuart, Letters^ i. 376. 
 2 Lockhart, p. 335. 
 
FROM "WAVERLEY" TO "IVANHOE" 149 
 
 towards the top of his long list of novels, and in 
 respect of sustained dramatic power, perhaps deserves 
 to be pronounced his greatest. It is, moreover, in- 
 teresting as containing his initial attempt to impart 
 vitality to scenes and figures that he had derived 
 altogether from books. In writing Waverley, his first 
 historical romance, he was still, through his association 
 with men who had taken part in the affair of '45, in 
 personal contact with his subject. Here he threw his 
 imagination back on chronicle and memoir, and made 
 the long-gone past give up its dead. 
 
 With his insatiable appetite for work, Scott filled 
 up his spare time during the production of these early 
 novels with tasks which would have absorbed the un- 
 divided energy of any ordinary man. Of principal 
 importance among these were the two long Historical 
 Sketches, of 1814 and 1815, written for the Edinburgh 
 Annual Register, which was still pursuing its brilliant 
 career, and, a little later, the Introduction for a splendid 
 quarto volume on Border Antiquities. Nor had he yet 
 quite laid aside verse, in which he found a good deal 
 of real amusement. He took up and finished a poem 
 in six cantos, entitled Harold the Dauntless, which, 
 published early in 1817 as the work of " the Author 
 of The Bridal of Triermain" was very commonly 
 ascribed not to Erskine, but to Hogg. And he 
 presently contributed a capital little doggerel tale, 
 The Search after Happiness, to John Ballantyne's 
 short-lived weekly, The Sale Room. 
 
 In the midst of these unremitting activities, how- 
 ever, a danger-signal was unexpectedly thrown out 
 in the shape of a sudden attack of cramp of the 
 
ISO SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 stomach. The illness, which was accompanied by 
 agonising pain, was traced, in part at least, to his 
 unwise change in the .habits of life when he passed 
 from the open-air freedom of Abbotsford to the close 
 confinement of town ; but it undoubtedly owed its 
 origin in part also to over-work and constant worry 
 in connection with the affairs of the Ballantynes. 
 Though controlled for a time, the seizures recurred 
 frequently and in a most distressing form during the 
 next two years, undermining his splendid physical 
 strength and changing his appearance so sadly that 
 his friends were shocked and alarmed ; for he grew 
 thin and haggard, and his hair hitherto only touched 
 with grey, turned white. Once, in 1819, a fatal result 
 was threatened, and Scott called his family about his 
 bed, and took a tender leave of them. The solemnity 
 of the scene was somewhat damaged by the ludicrous 
 behaviour of the eccentric Earl of Buchan, who en- 
 deavoured to force himself into the sick-room, with a 
 view to relieving the sufferer's mind as to the arrange- 
 ments of his funeral, the whole conduct of which he 
 had generously taken upon himself. But the illness 
 took a turn for the better, and the poor Earl's trouble 
 went for nothing after all. Scott was still in the very 
 prime of life, and nature was on his side. But from 
 that time on he was never the same man again. 
 
 With magnificent courage Scott struggled against 
 the pains of sickness and the lassitude engendered by 
 opium, and before the year 1818 ended was ready 
 with Rob Roy y on the title-page of which he once more 
 made his appearance as "the Author of Waverley" 
 He did not himself care much for the book at first ; 
 
FROM "WAVERLEY" TO "IVANHOE" 151 
 
 to him it " smelt of the cramp." But Constable fore- 
 saw its success, and began with an edition of 10,000 
 copies, which, within a fortnight, he was obliged to 
 supplement with 3000 more. A public that failed to 
 rise to the Bailie and Di Vernon the former one of 
 Scott's most humorous creations, the latter, perhaps, 
 in personal fascination the very first of all his women 
 would surely have been a bookseller's despair. 
 
 As soon as the end of Rob Roy was in sight, Scott 
 negotiated, this time with Constable, for a second 
 series of The Tales of my Landlord, a chief item in the 
 contract being that Constable should take over the 
 whole of the remaining unsold stock of John 
 Ballantyne & Co. rubbish to the amount of over 
 5000. At last relieved from an incubus that had 
 tormented him so long, he was now able to discharge 
 his bond to the Duke of Buccleugh, and turned to 
 his work with a lighter heart. The new Tale was 
 The Heart of Midlothian, published in June 1818. 
 If any proof were needed of the wonderful range of 
 Scott's powers, it might be found in the fact that the 
 lovely and attractive figure of "the heath-bell of 
 Cheviot, and the blossom of the Border," was now 
 offset by that type of plain, simple, and heroic woman- 
 hood, Jeanie Deans. Local interest favoured the 
 immediate success of this work in Edinburgh ; but 
 it is in virtue of its broad and varied human interest, 
 and the strong grip of its pathetic story, that it still 
 holds its high place among Scott's masterpieces. 
 Had he written nothing else, Landor declared, "it 
 would have stamped him the most illustrious author 
 of the age." 
 
152 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 While busy with The Heart of Midlothian, and 
 with a vast amount of miscellaneous work in the 
 way of reviews, Scott found time to devote himself 
 to the interests of a commission which the Prince 
 Regent, at his solicitation, had appointed, to make 
 search for the lost Regalia of Scotland. His 
 imagination invested this rather childish proceeding 
 with a "profound seriousness," and great was his 
 joy when the exertions of the commissioners were 
 at length rewarded by the discovery of the objects 
 of their quest in a chest which had not been opened 
 for more than a hundred years. But this was only 
 pastime ; his real work meantime went on uninter- 
 ruptedly. In June 1819, under his second pseudonym 
 of Jedediah Cleishbotham, he published together, as a 
 third series of The Tales of my Landlord, The Bride 
 of Lammermoor and A Legend of Montrose. The 
 conditions under which these stories were written 
 might justly have been urged in favour of critical 
 clemency, had such a measure seemed called for, 
 since they were produced in the midst of a desperate 
 struggle with death, and in a state of brain so extra- 
 ordinary, that when the first named was put into 
 his hands as a printed book, Scott assured James 
 Ballantyne that he could not "recollect a single 
 incident, character, or conversation it contained/' 
 But no reference to extenuating circumstances was 
 necessary, for the two novels were perfectly able to 
 stand on their own merits, revealing as they did no 
 symptoms of decay in their author's powers. The 
 blended humour and pathos of the one entitle it 
 to the proud name of the most Shakespearian thing 
 
FROM "WAVERLEY" TO " IVANHOE'' 153 
 
 that Scott ever did ; while the other, though far 
 less admirable as a piece of art, is more than re- 
 deemed by Dugald Dalgetty, a character conceived 
 in his richest vein of humour, and one which, by 
 itself, would have made the reputation of any smaller 
 man. 
 
 By the summer of 1819 Scott was able to boast 
 that his health seemed "in a fair way to being 
 restored," under the new regime of calomel. During 
 many months past he had, indeed, "endured more 
 pain" than he could have thought "consistent with 
 life," but he won the battle by sheer force of will, and 
 even when his seizures were at their severest, he had 
 persevered with his work. Few readers of Ivanhoe 
 ever pause to remember that its brilliant descriptions 
 and dramatic scenes were for the most part dictated 
 in the intervals of paroxysms of agony so intense that 
 the sufferer's screams could occasionally be heard not 
 only in the house, but even by passers-by along the 
 road. It is to be doubted whether the history of 
 literature offers any parallel example of such work 
 triumphantly accomplished under such conditions. 
 Published in December 1819, the new novel instantly 
 leaped into its place as the most universally popular of 
 all Scott's works. But public enthusiasm is not to be 
 taken as any criterion of absolute merit. It is hard to 
 speak disinterestedly of a book which held our own 
 boyhood spell-bound, and will undoubtedly open the 
 magic realms of romance to hundreds of thousands 
 of readers yet unborn. But I am bound to confess 
 that in the recent chronological re-perusal of the 
 Waverley Novels, Ivanhoe was the first I came to that 
 
154 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 left me with a distinct feeling of disappointment. 
 I remembered it as rapid, passionate, full of breathless 
 incident, and of enthralling interest ; I found it a 
 superb piece of stucco-work, melodramatic and wholly 
 unreal. Scott had abandoned his old field of Scottish 
 life and character, and the result, in the higher 
 interests of his art, was the reverse of satisfactory. For 
 his new departure he had, of course, reasons in plenty, 
 principal among which was the feeling that the time 
 had come when it was needful to avoid any charge of 
 sameness by the choice of an entirely new theme. 
 From the practical standpoint, the issue showed that, 
 for the moment, he was perfectly right ; no book of 
 his had been received, in England at any rate, with so 
 loud and general a burst of applause. But I am one 
 of those who think that Scott, with scarcely an ex- 
 ception, is at his best, not when he is creating impos- 
 sible romance out of bastard history, but when he is 
 dealing with events that lie nearer the actualities of 
 his own age, and with men and women who belong to 
 a world that is not a theatrical Land of Cockaigne, 
 but the Scotland of not so very long ago. 
 
 The publication of Ivanhoe marks the zenith of 
 Scott's popularity and prosperity, and may, therefore, 
 be said to close the first chapter in the history of the 
 works by which he has won for himself an abiding 
 place among the great writers of all time. In six 
 years he had written ten novels, and of nine out of 
 these, for we leave The Black Dwarf out of considera- 
 tion, there is hardly one that is not entitled to rank 
 among the memorable things of English fiction. We 
 do not now lay much stress upon the mere rapidity of 
 
FROM "WAVERLEY" TO "IVANHOE" 155 
 
 composition which once astonished readers and critics. 
 We have become accustomed to business-like methods 
 in our novelists, and can point to not a few recent 
 caterers for public amusement who, bulk for bulk, and 
 time for time, have shown themselves as fertile as 
 the Northern Wizard. The marvellous feature of 
 Scott's productivity is the combined quality and 
 quantity of his out-put. Our modern novelist will 
 often keep for many years, and at the rate of a 
 couple of books a year, on an exceedingly high 
 general level of craftsmanship ; he will, with admirable 
 regularity, turn out work which is neat, clever, and 
 often interesting. But his books, having served to 
 pass away pleasantly an idle hour by the fireside or 
 in the train, are thrown aside and forgotten ; they do 
 not keep any hold upon us ; they are never regarded 
 as contributions to permanent literature ; the best the 
 friendly reviewer is likely to say about them is, 
 that they figure among " the most remarkable novels 
 of the year." Scott's nine novels, on the contrary, 
 to say nothing of their other essential qualities, 
 contain a whole crowd of characters in whom we 
 recognise the potentiality of immortal life. The 
 Baron of Tully-Veolan, Bailie MacWheeble, Dominie 
 Sampson, Dandie Dinmont, Paulus Pleydell, the Laird 
 of Monkbarns, the Mucklebackits, Edie Ochiltree, 
 Colonel Claverhouse, Bailie Jarvie, Andrew Fairservice, 
 Di Vernon, Jeanie Deans, the Laird of Dumbiedykes, 
 Bartoline Saddletree, Caleb Balderstone, Dugald 
 Dalgetty to mention only those who most naturally 
 occur to one's recollection no novelist of our time, 
 no novelist of any time, has, in the space of six 
 
i$6 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 years, enriched the world with such a progeny as 
 this. 
 
 Such rapidity of production manifestly could not 
 be achieved by genius alone ; it demanded enormous 
 industry, regularity, method. Scott had trained him- 
 self never to be doing nothing, and, like Trollope, had 
 the firmest faith in a little beeswax on the seat of his 
 chair. Carlyle complained that his writing was mere 
 improvisation. He forgot that Scott wrote out of a 
 mind full-stored with material that his whole life 
 had been an education for just the work he had now 
 set himself to do. Shakespeare wrote swiftly and 
 well, Carlyle admits ; but then it was because 
 Shakespeare had gone through the necessary pre- 
 paration. Surely as much may be said of Scott. 
 
 It is not argued that this remarkable facility is 
 itself worthy of praise. It is mentioned only as a 
 remarkable fact. The energy, will, concentration, 
 required to produce fifteen, twenty, occasionally 
 thirty pages of print a day, are themselves to be 
 considered as important elements in the man's char- 
 acter. But such results could be attained only by the 
 sacrifice of some of the finer graces of workmanship. 
 For style as style, however, Scott confesses that he 
 cared little or nothing. He wrote to be understood, 
 with an ease, an engaging simplicity, and a racy 
 power, that were his by nature and practice. To the 
 picking of words, the filing of phrases, the balancing 
 of sentences and paragraphs, he was altogether in- 
 different. There are occasional passages even in his 
 best novels which must fill the soul of a teacher of 
 rhetoric, fresh from the admirably correct composition 
 
FROM "WAVERLEY" TO "IVANHOE" 157 
 
 of some promising pupil, with righteous indignation. 1 
 This is inevitable when a man, even if that man 
 be Scott, writes on and on, for hours at a stretch, 
 without blotting a line. The pages of his manu- 
 script, it is said, show scarcely a correction or erasure. 
 The only systematic check on his work was that 
 introduced by James Ballantyne, who read his proofs 
 for him. Ballantyne was a careful and keen-eyed 
 critic, and Scott always paid close attention to 
 his comments and suggestions. In this way he was 
 often saved from some oversight of the moment, 
 inconsistency, solecism, or repetition. 2 
 
 To the outside public at this time, Scott may well 
 have seemed to stand as the symbol of complete 
 success. He had realised his day-dream in becoming 
 a large land-owner, and the head of a kind of feudal 
 establishment ; and the whole civilised world was at 
 his feet. There were dark clouds on the horizon, it is 
 true. His own health was sadly shaken ; his mother, 
 to whom he was tenderly attached, died a few days 
 after the publication of Ivanhoe ; his grief over the 
 loss of his maternal uncle and aunt, and of his friend 
 and chieftain, the Duke of Buccleugh, was then still 
 fresh. In his own family circle, too, a large gap had 
 been made by the departure of his eldest son to join 
 the 1 8th Hussars. But such sorrows as these are 
 
 1 It is no part of my present purpose to give examples of Scott's care- 
 lessness, but opening his works almost at random, my eye was caught 
 by the following characteristic sentence: " Meanwhile, the guests 
 advanced, each full of their own thoughts." The Pirate, -, chapter xii. 
 
 2 For illustrations of Ballantyne's criticisms and Scott's replies, see in ^ 
 Scnbner^s Magazine for February 1889, an interesting article by Prof. * 
 Edwin H. Woodruff, entitled Scott at Work. This study is based on 
 proof-sheets purchased in London by Dr Andrew D. White. 
 
158 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 incidental to every human lot ; and what the world 
 saw at the moment, and what we are most apt to 
 see, looking back, was a life of almost dazzling, and 
 apparently unthreatened, prosperity. 
 
 It is estimated that for several years before 1818 
 Scott's income had reached the splendid figure of 
 1 5,000, of which some 10,000 represented the annual 
 earnings of his pen. Early in 1819 he closed negotia- 
 tions with Constable for the sale to him of all his 
 then existing copyrights 1 his " eild kye," or cows 
 barren from age, as he called them for 12,000. 
 Money was just then needed for building expenses 
 and further purchases of land. This contract, which 
 contained a clause binding Constable not to divulge 
 the author's name during his lifetime, under a penalty 
 of 2000, was twice supplemented, in 1821 and 1823, 
 by fresh transfers of accruing rights, the sum in 
 each instance being 5500. Up to 1823, Scott thus 
 received for his copyrights, after enjoying, in all cases 
 for a time and in many cases for a long time, the 
 original profits of the works, the enormous sum of 
 23,000. Unfortunately, owing to the extreme and 
 ever - increasing intricacy of his business relations 
 with the Ballantynes and Constable, and his own 
 consequent ignorance of the actual state of his 
 affairs, these vast transactions, though they pro- 
 duced a magnificent effect on paper, served mainly 
 to tempt Scott to expenditures which the real facts 
 of the matter would never have justified. Feeling 
 himself a rich man, and enjoying the additional 
 
 1 With the exception of a fourth share in Marmion 9 with which 
 Murray declined to part. 
 
FROM < f WAVERLEY" TO "IVANHOE" 159 
 
 security of the reversion left by Charles Carpenter, 
 who died in 1818, to his sister's children, Scott 
 continued to spend freely right and left, and, as 
 usual, just as freely forestalled his profits, in the 
 development of the Abbotsford estate. 
 
 The little farm of Clarty Hole had now, indeed, 
 through continual additions made always by ex- 
 travagant payments, which Scott's well-known eager- 
 ness to buy encouraged the various holders to 
 demand developed into an extensive domain, which 
 comprised all the Rhymer's haunts, and the whole 
 field of the Battle of Melrose. Year after year he 
 found his chief pleasure in planting and improving, 
 in laying out gardens and woods, in arranging 
 shrubberies and walks. Year after year, too, he 
 worked away at his "large baronial pile," which, 
 however, was not completed externally till 1821, 
 and not finished in respect of upholstery and 
 interior decorations, till three years later. Every 
 detail within and without was ordered under the 
 master's personal superintendence, and no work that 
 he ever did probably gave him half the satisfaction 
 that he obtained from this "romance in stone and 
 lime." With its strange medley of styles, its zigzagged 
 gables, parapets, machicolated eaves, fantastic water- 
 spouts, Elizabethan chimneys, and balconies of divers 
 fashions, this monument of long-cherished ambition 
 may appear to severe taste to be nothing more than a 
 glorified edition of the bastard-Gothic creation at 
 Strawberry Hill. Yet it is perhaps more truly an 
 expression of the personality of its builder than 
 Marmion^ or Guy Mannering, or Ivanhoe. Before 
 
i6o SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 the crash came, he had spent 29,000 on land alone, 
 while his total expenditure on house and grounds is 
 estimated to have reached 76,000. His poems and 
 novels were, after all, incidents of his existence. His 
 life-work was Abbotsford. 
 
 During the sitting of the Courts, Scott lived in the 
 old house at Castle Street, Edinburgh, mixing while in 
 town in two quite different circles with the aristocracy 
 of the city, on the one hand, and on the other, with the 
 less select, if more jovial society which gathered 
 round the well-supplied tables of Rigdum and Aldi- 
 borontiphoscophornio. But it was at Abbotsford 
 that he lived his real life ; and what that life was, 
 how large and genial, how varied in interest, and, 
 from Scott's own point of view, how essentially 
 romantic, the reader may learn on turning to the 
 pages of Lockhart or Washington Irving. It would 
 hardly be too much to affirm, the former declares, 
 that at Abbotsford Scott entertained "during the 
 course of the seven or eight brilliant seasons when 
 his prosperity was at its height, as many persons of 
 distinction in rank, in politics, in art, in literature, 
 and in science, as the most princely nobleman of his 
 age ever did in the like space of time." There he 
 kept open house in the true old baronial style, and 
 there he gave hearty welcome to gentle and simple 
 alike, though once in a while the impudence of some 
 more than usually audacious sight-seer proved too 
 much even for his good-nature. 
 
 And amid all the social demands and distractions 
 which themselves might well have exhausted any 
 man's strength, the Border Chieftain played his 
 
FROM "WAVERLEY" TO "IVANHOE" 161 
 
 generous part without interfering with the hard- 
 working author. The pen had still to be driven, 
 with all the old plodding regularity, that funds might 
 be provided for the maintenance of a great estate, 
 and the hospitality for which Abbotsford had become 
 famous. But the writer of books, whose business it 
 was to keep Ballantyne's presses employed, was an 
 unknown figure to the hundreds of visitors who came 
 from far and near from all over the country, from 
 the continent, from beyond the Atlantic to see his 
 face, and listen to his voice. They met only the 
 Laird, the free, open-hearted country gentleman, who 
 had plenty of time on his hands, after the early 
 dinner, for long rambles to the spots he knew and loved 
 so well, and whole evenings to give to pleasant talk. 
 In reality, the other Scott, the hard-working author, 
 matutinal as ever, had finished his day's task in the 
 undisturbed quietude of the morning, and was thus 
 able to devote the after hours to his guests. It was 
 in this way that, to the ordinary outsider, the most 
 prolific author of his age seemed wholly absorbed 
 in the management of his estate and the entertain- 
 ment of his guests. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 FROM "THE MONASTERY" TO THE "TALES OF THE 
 
 CRUSADERS" THE COLLAPSE OF SCOTT'S 
 FORTUNES. 
 
 (1820-1826.) 
 
 WE have noted that when in Iianhoe Scott 
 removed the scene of his romances from 
 Scotland to England, he did so with ample reason 
 and of set purpose, and that the extraordinary 
 popularity of that novel'fully justified the experiment. 
 It is curious, therefore, that in his next two works, 
 The Monastery, and its rather loosely-called sequel, 
 The Abbot, both published in 1820, he should have 
 returned to Scotland, localizing his plots in the im- 
 mediate neighbourhood of his own estate. It was not, 
 however, in any way owing to this change of plan, for 
 which he himself was unable to assign any particular 
 motive, that the former of these productions fell flat. 
 If it was, with the exception of the unlucky Black 
 Divarf, the first specimen of Scott's fiction to be 
 pronounced a failure, the verdict was fairly passed on 
 the merits of the case ; nor has it since been reversed. 
 
 162 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF SCOTT'S FORTUNES 163 
 
 The story labours under the primary disadvantage of 
 dealing with a rather unattractive period of history. 
 The incidents, as Scott afterwards acknowledged with 
 his usual grace, are for the greater part uninteresting, 
 and are ineffectively put together ; and the character- 
 istic vigour of occasional scenes is not an adequate 
 off-set to the crude supernaturalism of the White 
 Lady, and the tiresome affectations of Sir Piercie 
 Shafton, who, notwithstanding the author's design, 
 of reproducing the language of Lyly, is not really 
 a Euphuist at all. But if admirers of the Great 
 Unknown, on reading The Monastery, were inclined 
 to rush to the conclusion that he was fast writing 
 himself out, 1 the appearance, within a few months, 
 of its successor, must have convicted them of over- 
 hastiness in judgment. In The Abbot, Scott showed 
 that his right hand had not forgotten its cunning, 
 and that his power was as great as ever. Unlike 
 The Monastery, in which attention was too frequently 
 allowed to flag, this second story is full of stirring 
 incident ; the figure of the unfortunate Queen of 
 Scots is drawn with great skill and delicacy ; and 
 in Catherine Seyton the world was quick to recognise 
 a type of noble and fascinating young womanhood 
 worthy to divide affection with Di Vernon herself 
 and where was there to be found a word of higher 
 praise ? 
 
 By reason of their having certain dramatis persons 
 in common, these two novels are ordinarily spoken 
 
 1 "I recommend one novel every year, and more pains," wrote 
 Sidney Smith, after adversely criticising this work. See Archibald 
 Constable and his Literary Correspondents, iii. 135. 
 
164 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 of as connected stories. The real companion-piece 
 to The Abbot is none the less Kenilworth, for we 
 have Scott's own avowal that it was his success in 
 depicting Mary Stuart which led him to attempt 
 the far more difficult character of the Virgin Queen, 
 " his sister and her foe." His own theory was that 
 his best things were those which he wrote off most 
 rapidly, a point of dissimilarity to many authors, who 
 are inclined to rate their works according to the amount 
 of labour they put into them. Kenilworth was pro- 
 duced in four months, and if it is not to be classed 
 among the very best of his novels, it deserves a place 
 among the most thoroughly successful of those the 
 materials and characters of which lie outside Scotland 
 and the eighteenth century. It is, indeed, a great 
 historical romance, not because of the correctness with 
 which it interprets history, for Scott did not scruple to 
 deal with his chronicles with a very free hand, but on 
 account of the sustained brilliancy of its descriptions, 
 and the rare vividness of its portraiture. Amy 
 Robsart's fate offers us, along with the story of Lucy 
 Ashton, the finest example of Scott's tragic power ; 
 and in her case, as in the case of the Bride of 
 Lammermoor, pathos is relieved and heightened by 
 humour. Kenilworth, also, like Ivanhoe^ deserves 
 special mention for the dramatic excellence of its 
 conclusion, a feature in which Scott's novels are, as 
 a rule, sadly open to criticism. 
 
 At this time, poor little John Ballantyne was in 
 failing health, and he had taken it into his head to 
 build a villa at Kelso, as a place for retirement and 
 recuperation. To help him with the required funds, 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF SCOTT'S FORTUNES 165 
 
 Scott of his own free will promised to write for 
 him gratuitously a series of biographical and critical 
 prefaces for a Novelist's Library, or collection of 
 representative English fiction, from Fielding to Bage. 
 The first volume of this rather ambitious work was 
 published in February 1821 ; but in the June of that 
 year, "jocund Johnnie" died. By his will he left 
 his friend and patron, ^"2000. This was thoughtful ; 
 but, unfortunately, he died insolvent. Standing 
 beside his newly-made grave in the Canongate 
 Churchyard, Scott whispered to Lockhart : "I feel 
 as if there would be less sunshine for me from this 
 day forth." 
 
 A fresh gap had meanwhile been made in the 
 Abbotsford circle, for on the 29th April, 1820, Scott's 
 elder daughter, Sophia, became the wife of John 
 Gibson Lockhart. In November of the same year, 
 Sir Walter was elected to an office for which he 
 would have been the last to claim the slightest 
 fitness the Presidency of the Royal Society of 
 Edinburgh ; and about the same time he was obliged, 
 from inability to leave Scotland, to decline the 
 offer of honorary degrees from both the great 
 English universities. These events demand only 
 passing record. A little more space must be given 
 to an heroic drama of that period, in which, greatly 
 to his own satisfaction, Scott played a very important 
 part. 1820, it will be remembered, is noteworthy 
 in the annals of England as the year which saw the 
 accession of Prince Florizel to the throne of his fathers. 
 The coronation ceremony the "Great National 
 Solemnity," as Scott was pleased to style it took 
 
166 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 place in July 1821, and The Poet of Princes went to 
 London to witness it, and wrote a description for the 
 Edinburgh Weekly Journal. The following year, 
 George IV. paid a visit to Scotland, and was received 
 in the capital with a theatrical pomp which was 
 mainly the result of the tireless exertions of "our 
 friend Scott/' The only marvel is that excitement 
 and anxiety did not leave the said friend a physical 
 wreck, when the affair was over. It devolved upon 
 him to attend to everything, from the organisation 
 of a procession to the veriest details of decoration 
 and dress. The local magistrates, altogether unequal 
 to the unwonted demands which the occasion made 
 upon them, appealed to him at every turn for 
 guidance and advice. His aid was besought by 
 every kind of public functionary, from the peer to the 
 porter. He had difficulties to smooth over. He 
 had scruples to over-ride. He had quarrels to settle. 
 He was called upon to decide the delicate question 
 of the precedence of the clans at Bannockburn. He 
 wrote verses for social gatherings and ballads for the 
 street. Three hundred wild Highlanders were drilled 
 and coaxed by him into submission. And through 
 all these Herculean labours he kept his head and his 
 good-temper, buoyed up by the feeling that he was 
 actually participating in a great patriotic demonstra- 
 tion. When the royal squadron cast anchor in the 
 roads of Leith, the weather, despite the intercessions 
 of a loyal clergy, was so unpropitious that His Majesty 
 had to postpone landing until the next day; but 
 Sir Walter, undismayed, rowed out to the Royal 
 George, and in the name of the ladies of Edinburgh, 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF SCOTT'S FORTUNES 167 
 
 presented the king with a silver cross of Saint 
 Andrew. Touched by this delicate recognition of 
 his moral character, the King forthwith called for 
 a bottle of Highland whisky, and the poet and his 
 sovereign quaffed bumpers to each other's health. 
 Several days of wild excitement followed the King's 
 landing, but the climax of absurdity was reached 
 when, at the first levee, His Majesty " diverted many" 
 but " delighted Scott," by arraying his portly figure 
 in full Highland garb, which it is to be charitably 
 supposed he took to be the proper and only apparel of 
 all true Scotsmen. The whole business, which, under 
 Scott's stage-management assumed the form of a 
 fancy-dress revival of mediaeval pageantry, and in 
 which the historic proprieties were magnificently set 
 at nought, was farcical beyond description. But 
 perhaps it gained its final touch of grotesqueness 
 from an incident, which, under any other circum- 
 stances, would have filled Sir Walter with humorous 
 satisfaction. He had begged the glass out of which 
 His Majesty had been graciously pleased to toast him 
 in the national beverage, and bore the precious vessel 
 away, carefully deposited in what, says Lockhart 
 with admirable delicacy, he conceived to be the 
 safest part of his attire. On reaching home, he 
 found to his great surprise that the poet Crabbe, 
 whom he had met in London, had chosen that 
 occasion of all others to pay him a visit. His pleasure 
 and astonishment caused him to forget the royal 
 souvenir, and he promptly sat down upon it, smash- 
 ing it to atoms. From his screams and gestures his 
 wife inferred that he had come into sudden contact 
 
168 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 with a pair of scissors. But little harm was done 
 beyond the breaking of the glass and that loss was, 
 alas ! irreparable. 
 
 While these exciting events were in progress, the 
 pen of the charmer knew scarcely pause or rest. 
 Kenilworth had been published in July 1821 ; in 
 December it was followed by The Pirate, a romance 
 in which he made excellent use of the material he 
 had gathered on his trip to Orkney and Shetland 
 seven years before, and which is full of striking de- 
 scriptions of primitive life among the simple folk 
 of those far-off and little known islands. Hardly 
 had the first interest in this work worn off when, in 
 May 1822, its readers found another feast spread for 
 them in The Fortunes of Nigel. While The Pirate 
 was still on his desk, Scott had amused some leisure 
 hours, after his habit of taking for pastime what 
 would have been another man's toil, with writing a 
 series of private letters, supposed to have been dis- 
 covered among the archives of a noble English 
 family, and giving a general picture of every -day 
 manners in the reign of James I. These effusions 
 were printed as fast as he penned them, and the 
 volume had reached its seventy-second page before 
 Scott allowed himself to be persuaded by Erskine, 
 James Ballantyne, and Lockhart, that he was foolishly 
 throwing away the chances of a splendid romance. Out 
 of this abortive scheme grew The Fortunes of Nigel, 
 in its own way one of the most enjoyable of all Scott's 
 novels. As a story it is very poorly contrived, and no 
 one can take much interest in its hero, whose place is 
 among the least attractive of the author's jeunes 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF SCOTT'S FORTUNES 169 
 
 premiers. But its pages abound with the most vivid 
 pictures of seventeenth-century London the life of 
 the street, the ordinary, the theatre, the Court, Alsatia ; 
 and James, the canny, pedantic, timid, boastful, 
 punning James, is in Scott's happiest style of historic 
 portraiture. 
 
 By this time a long run of almost unbroken success 
 had begun to turn the wits not only of Scott himself, 
 but of every one associated with him, even the cool 
 and sagacious Constable. With an apparently in- 
 exhaustible intellectual capital to draw upon, Scott 
 himself undertook larger and larger expenditures in 
 connection with the building which he was rapidly 
 pushing forward at Abbotsford. Why should he hesi- 
 tate when he saw every prospect of clearing ^30,000 
 by his pen alone in the course of the next two years ? 
 Constable encouraged him by direct advice ; proposed 
 all sorts of literary enterprises an edition of the 
 British Poets, of Shakespeare, and what not and by 
 his own enthusiasm acted as a kind of spur. His 
 sense of the market-value of Scott's productions was 
 shown when through his partner, Cadell, he offered 
 1000 a sum which had been regarded as ex- 
 travagantly large when paid down for Marmion for 
 a slight dramatic sketch called Halidon Hill, the 
 work of a couple of rainy mornings. He even sug- 
 gested that Scott might turn off such a trifle, say once 
 a quarter, by way of remunerative amusement, amidst 
 his more serious labours. We can, perhaps, hardly 
 blame Scott for accepting what a publisher thought it 
 worth his while to give ; yet it is impossible not to 
 feel that there is something wrong when a poet is 
 
 
170 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 willing to print a perfectly worthless piece of 
 scribbling, merely because he finds some one to 
 overpay him for the manuscript, while a publisher is 
 equally ready to risk such overpayment for the 
 prospect of trading on the public with a name. In 
 the summer of 1822, Constable made a memorandum 
 of the works he had then, or was about to put, on 
 the Ballantyne presses, and the figures are startling 
 enough : A new edition of Scott's poetical works, 
 10 volumes, 5000 copies; Novels and Tales, 12 
 volumes, 5000 copies ; Historical Romances, 6 
 volumes, 5000 copies ; Poetry from the Waverley 
 Novels, I volume, 5000 copies ; paper required, 
 7772 reams; volumes in all, 145,000! " No office in 
 the world," wrote the happy bookseller, " could ever 
 before boast of such employment, and I venture to 
 predict that there will be no rival to it in our day/' * 
 No wonder that Constable was intoxicated. He, too, 
 had purchased a landed estate, and had begun to 
 nourish ambitions of founding a family. 
 
 Constable's faith in Scott, and Scott's faith in 
 himself, were thus, it is manifest, hurrying them 
 both headlong into ruinous courses. Before The 
 Fortunes of Nigel had issued from the press, a 
 contract was entered into between them for four 
 more "works of fiction," not even named, and 
 we may suppose unplanned, Scott receiving the 
 publisher's notes in payment for a long series of 
 volumes, not a line of which was yet written. Three 
 of the novels thus bargained for were produced in 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 476 ; Archibald Constable and his Literary Corre- 
 ) iii. 227. 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF SCOTT'S FORTUNES 171 
 
 1823 Peveril of the Peak in January, Quentin 
 Durward in June, and St Ronaris Well in December ; 
 and Redgauntlet brought up the rear in June 1824. 
 Scott thus wiped off his indebtedness in an astonish- 
 ingly short space of time, and on the whole to the 
 satisfaction not only of his publishers, but also of 
 the more discerning part of the reading public. He 
 began badly, it is true ; for Peveril^ terribly over- 
 crowded with uninteresting characters, is the longest 
 and the heaviest of his romances. But in his next 
 effort he recovered himself, and maintained a high 
 average level in the succeeding works. Quentin 
 Durward resembles Ivanhoe in being an historical 
 melodrama of the quite impossible kind, but it has 
 the merit of telling a thoroughly entertaining story, 
 and the characters of Lewis and Charles are drawn 
 with great insight and power. Having thus made 
 a successful excursion into fifteenth-century France, 
 Scott now returned abruptly to the Scotland of his 
 own day, and in St Ronaris Well produced his one 
 novel of contemporary social life. He afterwards 
 apologised for what he felt to be a rather rash ex- 
 periment, and the severe criticism to which he was 
 subjected in many quarters, and particularly in 
 England, may well have deterred him from repeating 
 it, even had he been so inclined. But in my own 
 judgment, this work was then, and is still currently 
 underrated. Its plot is, indeed, at once unpleasant 
 and involved, and the society scenes are painted with 
 far too heavy a hand. But these defects are more 
 than atoned for by the free play of Scott's character- 
 istic humour, while in Meg Dods, the inimitable 
 
172 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 hostess of the Cleikum Inn, we have one of the 
 very best of his low-comedy figures. 1 As for Red- 
 gauntlet, which was rather coldly treated at the 
 time of its appearance, it is one of those novels 
 which we are inclined to like in excess of its actual 
 value of a piece of literary art. For the story itself 
 we cannot say much. But such characters as 
 Saunders Fairford, Cristal Nixon, Benjie, the Blind 
 Fiddler, Peter Peebles, and Nanty Ewart, suffice to 
 make us indifferent to details of plot ; the book 
 possesses a peculiar and keen interest for the lover 
 of Scott, on account of the large amount of auto- 
 biographical material that goes to its making ; and 
 in Wandering Willie's Tale we have perhaps the 
 very finest single specimen of its author's powers as 
 a story-teller. 
 
 Thus the four novels to which Scott had committed 
 himself were cleared off in less than two years, and 
 before the last was published he was already busy 
 with the design of a couple of new stories The 
 Betrothed and The Talisman, which, in June 1825, 
 
 1 Scott's over-complaisance led him to make the unfortunate mistake 
 of altering the original catastrophe of this story in deference to James 
 Ballantyne's notions of propriety, though he had to cancel and re- 
 write about twenty -four pages of print. (Lockhart, p. 513; and see 
 Mr Lang's Border Edition of the Waverley Novels for a corrected 
 statement of the actual changes made, a point upon which Lockhart 
 was in error.) The book received one rather singular compliment. 
 The inhabitants of Innerleithen identified its scene with their own 
 village, and decided that so far as possible St Ronan's should be 
 substituted for the old name ; whereupon the fame of the place re- 
 vived. Waverley Rows and Marmion Hotels grew up, and a yearly 
 festival was instituted for the celebration of The St Ronaris Border 
 Games, at which, for several seasons, the Ettrick Shepherd presided, 
 and Scott was a regular attendant. 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF SCOTT'S FORTUNES 173 
 
 were issued together under the general title of Tales 
 of the Crusaders. We may anticipate a little by 
 saying that these twin works were greeted with a 
 fresh burst of popular applause, and that while the 
 former, over which Scott himself got thoroughly 
 disheartened before it was finished, is properly 
 regarded as one of his poorest works, The Talis- 
 man, on the other hand, has kept the place which 
 was at once assigned to it very near to, if not 
 quite beside, Ivanhoe and Quentin Durward. For 
 the present, then, Scott chose to pay no attention 
 to a warning which had come to him, while Peveril 
 of the Peak was in progress, in the shape of some 
 slight attacks of an apoplectic nature, accompanied 
 by great depression of spirits. But to the counsels 
 of the booksellers he was fain to lend a more willing 
 ear. It began to be more than suspected that Scott 
 was publishing too fast that, as a mere matter of 
 business policy, it would pay better to allow longer 
 periods to intervene between the successive works. 
 " We may gorge the public," wrote Constable's 
 London agents after the appearance of Quentin 
 Durward, " Bank of England notes fall in value 
 by an over-issue." * In other words, there was now 
 a widespread feeling that the great "novel manu- 
 factory" was seriously over-doing its output. Scott 
 was at length persuaded of this, though his publishers, 
 for fear of damping his ardour, had never informed 
 him of the marked falling-off in sales after the record- 
 breaking success of Ivanhoe. For a while, therefore, 
 he gave rather more time than usual to his library, 
 
 1 Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents, iii. 267. 
 
174 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 his museum, and his woods, and presently began to 
 consider how, if he had to slacken speed in the matter 
 of fiction, the mill might most advantageously be 
 kept going with something else. 1 
 
 TTne year which saw the publication of Redgauntlet 
 t's last year of undisturbed prosperity. 
 Abbtsford was at length finished in all its splen- 
 during the Christmas season the great 
 baronial pite-s^s the scene^m-JEe most magnificent 
 festivities, which culminated, on the 7th January 
 1825, in a grand ball given in honour of the 
 approaching marriage of young Walter Scott with 
 Jane Jobson, the pretty and wealthy niece of Sir 
 Adam and Lady Fergusson. "That evening," says 
 Lockhart, " was one of the very proudest and happiest 
 in Scott's brilliant existence ... I myself never 
 again saw the whole range of apartments thrown 
 open for the reception of company except once 
 on the day of Sir Walter Scott's funeral." His son, 
 from the personal no less than from the worldly 
 point of view, was making an excellent match, and 
 the first baronet of Abbotsford saw his dearest 
 hope on the point of realisation the family of the 
 Abbotsford Scotts was to be an accomplished fact. 
 Sir Walter laid out 3500 in purchasing for the 
 young man a captaincy in the King's Hussars, and 
 settled the Abbotsford estates, then valued at 50,000, 
 upon him and his heirs male for ever. 
 
 It might almost seem as if Fate were anxious to 
 prepare for Scott's downfall on the most approved 
 methods of melodramatic composition, and to leave 
 
 1 Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents^ iii. 265. 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF SCOTT'S FORTUNES 175 
 
 out no element of contrast that might serve to 
 heighten its effect. The splendours of nuptial 
 festivities were hardly yet things of the past when, 
 in company with his daughter Anne and Lockhart, 
 he made a trip to Ireland, which was throughout a 
 kind of triumphant progress ; while just before he 
 started, the enthusiastic reception of the Tales of 
 the Crusaders had shown him that the power of his 
 spell over the public had suffered little abatement. 
 The events of these few months, then, were such as 
 to fill any man's cup of ambition to overflowing. 
 But the turning - point of his fortunes had been 
 reached, and a change was imminent, as overwhelm- 
 ing as it was unlocked for. Scott returned from 
 Ireland in August, and took up his work with all 
 his old buoyancy and eagerness. Before the end 
 of the year, he knew that he was a ruined man. 
 
 It happens, singularly and fortunately enough, 
 that when he stood unwitting on the very verge 
 of failure, in the November of that glorious and 
 tragic year, Scott began to keep a regular private 
 diary. We have thus access to his innermost 
 thoughts and feelings, as they were day by day 
 set down for no eye but his own, under the strain 
 of circumstances that might well have crushed the 
 strongest manhood. 1 This is what he wrote in 
 Edinburgh, under date i8th December: 
 
 " Ballantyne called on me this morning. Venit ilia suprema 
 dies. My extremity is come. Cadell has received letters from 
 
 1 Lockhart made considerable use of this journal, but it is only since 
 1890 that we have it in our hands complete one of the most fascinating 
 nnrl natiifHr. of antohiopranhic fraprnents. 
 
 lOyJ lllcLL WC 110.VC It 111 WU1 11<3.1H_IJ5 ^UIll JJ1C 
 
 and patnetic of autobiographic fragments. 
 
176 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 London which all but positively announce the failure of Hurst 
 and Robinson, so that Constable & Co. must follow, and I 
 must go with poor James Ballantyne for company. I suppose it 
 will involve my all. But if they still leave me ,500, I can still 
 make it ^1000 or 1200 a year. And if they take my salaries 
 of ; 1 300 and ^300, they cannot but give me something out of 
 them. I have been rash in anticipating funds to buy land, but 
 then I made from .5000 to ,10,000 a year, and land was my 
 temptation. I think nobody can lose a penny ; that is one 
 comfort. Men will think pride has had a fall. Let them indulge 
 their own pride in thinking that my fall makes them higher, or 
 seems so at least. I have the satisfaction to recollect that my 
 prosperity has been of advantage to many, and that some, at least, 
 will forgive my transient wealth on account of the innocence of 
 my intentions, and my real wish to do good to the poor. This 
 news will make sad hearts at Darnick J and in the cottages of 
 Abbotsford, which I do not nourish the least hope of preserving. 
 It has been my Delilah, and so I have often termed it ; and now 
 the recollection of the extensive woods I planted, and the walks 
 I have formed, from which strangers must derive both the 
 pleasure and profit, will excite feelings likely to sober my gayest 
 moments. I have half resolved never to see the place again. 
 How could I tread my hall with such a diminished crest ? How 
 live a poor indebted man where I was once the wealthy, the 
 honoured ? My children are provided ; thank God for that ! I 
 was to have gone there on Saturday in joy and prosperity to 
 receive my friends. My dogs will wait for me in vain. It is 
 foolish but the thoughts of parting from these dumb creatures 
 have moved me more than any of the painful reflections I have 
 put down. Poor things ! I must get them kind masters ; there 
 may be yet those who loving me may love my dog because it 
 has been mine. I must end this, or I shall lose the tone of 
 mind with which men should meet distress." 2 
 
 What a flash-light into the man's life, with its 
 worldly ambition, its pride, its kindliness, and courage ! 
 
 1 A hamlet near Abbotsford, among the inhabitants of which Scott 
 enjoyed the greatest personal popularity. He went among them by the 
 affectionate nickname of the Duke of Darnick. 
 
 2 Journal, pp. 51-52. 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF SCOTT'S FORTUNES 177 
 
 Poor Scott! Land, and what land had stood for, 
 had indeed been his temptation, not to be resisted, 
 not to be quite fully realised, until it was too late. 
 Less than a month before this touching entry was 
 made, he had confided to his Journal a resolution 
 to practise economy : " No more building ; no 
 purchases of land till times are quite safe ; no buying 
 books or expensive trifles I mean to any extent 
 and clearing off encumbrances, with the returns of 
 this year's labour." 1 Yet it was the catastrophe 
 alone which prevented the further expenditure of 
 ^"40,000 for a coveted addition to his estate ! 
 
 For a moment it seemed that the storm might 
 blow over. Encouraging reports were sent from 
 London, and Christmas, though very different from 
 the brilliant Christmas of a year before, brought 
 some assuagement of anxiety. But in a few weeks 
 all hope of recovery had to be abandoned. On 
 the i6th January 1826, came the news of final 
 failure. That evening Scott dined with his friend 
 Skene. 
 
 "I never," wrote Skene in his Reminiscences, "had seen Sir 
 Walter in better spirits or more agreeable. . . . Next morning 
 early I was surprised by a verbal message to come to him as 
 soon as I had got up. Fearful that he had got a fresh attack 
 of the complaint from which he had now for some years been 
 free, or that he had been involved in some quarrel, I went to 
 see him by seven o'clock, and found him already by candle- 
 light seated at his writing-table, surrounded by papers which 
 he was examining. Holding out his hand to me as I entered, 
 he said : * Skene, this is the hand of a beggar. Constable 
 
 1 Journal, p. 19. 
 M 
 
i;8 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 has failed, and I am ruined defend en comble. It's a hard blow, 
 but I must just bear up. The only thing which wrings me is 
 poor Charlotte and the bairns. 5 " 1 
 
 It would, I believe, be impossible for any one not 
 an adept in accounts to disentangle completely the 
 terribly complicated business relationships by which 
 Scott's misfortunes were brought about. I, for one, 
 could certainly not undertake to enter into the details 
 of this part of our story, since, having made more 
 than one heroic attempt to grapple with contested 
 facts and slippery figures, I have been obliged, like 
 better men, to give up the problem in despair. 2 It 
 is well for me, therefore, that I am able to take refuge 
 in the undeniably safe proposition that details would 
 be out of place in a sketch like the present, and that 
 such main outlines as alone concern us here, may, 
 with a little trouble, be made sufficiently clear. 
 
 When the affairs of John Ballantyne & Co., book- 
 sellers, were wound up, their shelf-loads of old stock 
 were gradually bargained off in the various copyright 
 transactions for the Waverley Novels. The final 
 clearance was, as we have seen, achieved in 1818, 
 from which time forward Scott appears to have felt 
 himself entirely free from all embarrassment connected 
 with this most luckless venture. The greatest doubt 
 none the less prevails as to the actual condition of 
 the company's books when they were finally closed, 
 for while John Ballantyne believed that a balance of 
 
 1 A slightly different version of this incident is given by Lockhart 
 (pp. 600-601). 
 
 3 The late Mr Dykes Campbell is said to have given a year to 
 the study of the Scott-Ballantyne-Constable accounts, and with "no 
 apparent results." See A. Lang's J. G. Lockhart, II., 169. 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF SCOTT'S FORTUNES 179 
 
 jiooo was carried over from the publishing business, 
 Lockhart, on the other hand, emphatically states that 
 the printing business of James Ballantyne & Co., 
 assumed its debts to the extent of 10,000. However 
 this may have been, and notwithstanding the fact 
 that the printing business is alleged to have been 
 throughout a stable and profitable concern, its own 
 liabilities had, in 1822, in some way reached 30,000, 
 and had leaped from that figure to ,46,000 before 
 the end of 1825. Concerning the sources of this 
 enormous indebtedness, there has been fierce dispute, 
 Lockhart referring it wholly or mainly to James 
 Ballantyne's shiftlessness and business incapacity ; 
 James Ballantyne's trustees on their side maintain- 
 ing that the fault lay entirely with Scott. That 
 Ballantyne was guilty of oversight and mismanage- 
 ment cannot, I imagine, be denied ; he seems never 
 to have looked facts fairly and squarely in the face, 
 and by his constant practice of staving off every 
 difficulty by extensive and ever-increasing dealings in 
 paper, he did undoubtedly at length involve himself 
 and his associate in such a complicated network of 
 obligations and counter-obligations, that it would have 
 been a miracle if either of them had been able to 
 understand at any given moment how he really stood 
 with the world. At the same time this does not 
 exonerate Scott. Lockhart expresses astonishment, 
 and well he may, that a man as careful as Scott 
 was in even the smallest matters of private finance, 
 who kept a "day-book and ledger as regularly as 
 any cheesemonger in the Grassmarket," and could 
 have given you "the sum total of sixpences that 
 
i8o SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 it had cost him to ride through turnpike gates 
 during a period of thirty years," should have 
 tolerated the pledging of his credit, year after year, 
 "upon sheafs of accommodation paper," without 
 keeping efficient watch over his interests "without 
 knowing any one Christmas, for how many thousands, 
 or rather tens of thousands, he was responsible as a 
 printer in the Canongate /" Had Scott who, indeed, 
 as some one has said, always lived " in a mist about 
 money" been as densely ignorant of Ballantyne's 
 proceedings as Lockhart endeavours to make out, he 
 would still as Ballantyne's partner have been blame- 
 worthy. But the fact seems to be that he did 
 endeavour to keep himself posted upon the firm's 
 transactions, and was aware, so far indeed as any one 
 could be clearly aware of anything in such a financial 
 fog as then hung over the printing establishment, of 
 the elaborate operations of bills and discounts, by 
 means of which their affairs were conducted. I say 
 so far as any one could be clearly aware of anything, 
 because as the books of James Ballantyne & Co. 
 were never balanced, his own knowledge, like that of 
 his partner, must have been practically equivalent to 
 the profoundest ignorance. It is really important to 
 insist upon this, if we would do justice to Scott, since 
 it seems certain that he was in the habit of drawing 
 largely upon James Ballantyne & Co. for buildings 
 at Abbotsford, and other private expenditures, as his 
 personal assumption, in 1822, of the firm's liabilities 
 of ,30,000 may be taken to prove. These drafts 
 would have been unjustifiable had he not at least 
 thought that he knew the state of the Ballantyne 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF SCOTT'S FORTUNES 181 
 
 finances. It is very evident, however, that to the last 
 he was totally unconscious of coming danger, as 
 otherwise we could not imagine him settling Abbots- 
 ford upon his son within a few months of his own 
 collapse. There is only one way, therefore, of 
 accounting for his whole course of conduct. His own 
 transactions, like those of the printing business, had 
 been carried on, not in solid cash, but by bills drawn 
 on this side and on that, and when due replaced by 
 more bills, and more bills ; the result being a muddle 
 of claims and obligations before which even a 
 practised accountant might have stood bewildered, 
 and exclaimed with Dominie Sampson "Prodigious! 
 prodigious ! " 
 
 We have seen that it was the succour and support 
 of Constable which enabled Scott and the Ballantynes 
 to pull through the crisis of 1813-14. From this time 
 on, James Ballantyne carried on a regular traffic in 
 bills and counter-bills with the publisher, while 
 Constable on his part became similarly involved, 
 though on a still larger scale, with his London agents, 
 Hurst, Robinson, & Co. Constable, meanwhile, as 
 sanguine as he was shrewd, stimulated Scott's activity 
 in the hope of larger and larger profits ; while Scott, 
 only too ready to share in the bookseller's dreams 
 of wealth, trusted him implicitly, in the belief that 
 he knew what he was about, and held him to the end 
 for a thoroughly sound and substantial man. But 
 Constable had from the first been carrying on his 
 business on insufficient capital, and the proceeds of 
 his investments had been constantly swallowed up by 
 discounts and interest on loans. To make matters 
 
18* SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 worse, Hurst and Robinson were caught by the 
 speculative fever of the time, and, forsaking their own 
 proper line, took, in the most inexplicable way, to 
 making vast purchases of hops. Then came the 
 financial panic of 1825, and the entire combination 
 went down like a house of cards. Hurst, Robinson, 
 and Co., failed for the neat sum of nearly 300,000 ; 
 Constable's collapse for 256,000 followed as a 
 matter of course ; and this in its turn overwhelmed 
 Ballantyne and Scott. Ballantyne's books showed 
 a deficit of 117,000, against which there was 
 practically nothing. And Scott himself, while 
 involved to this extent as partner in the printing 
 concern, stood further personally indebted in a matter 
 of 10,000 raised on pressure from Constable, and for 
 his (Constable's) support, after the publisher should 
 have known, even if Scott did not, that it was a mere 
 case of throwing good money after bad. 
 
 Thus then, like a bolt out of the blue, the disaster 
 came. The foregoing brief summary, which I have 
 sought to make entirely fair to all the parties con- 
 cerned, leaves Scott undoubtedly under the charge of 
 carelessness and imprudence, for he had lavished 
 money on his land and buildings at Abbotsford at a 
 time when he should rather have been engaged in 
 putting his business undertakings upon a solid 
 foundation. But it is hard in cold blood to deal out 
 blame to a man whose behaviour, when misfortune 
 fell upon him, even if that misfortune were to some 
 extent his own fault, must always remain the 
 admiration of the world. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 LAST YEARS AND DEATH 
 (1826-1832) 
 
 WHATEVER judgment we may form, then, of 
 Scott's conduct in the complicated business 
 relationships which led to his downfall, we can find 
 no praise too high for the superb courage and de- 
 termination with which he met his fate. If the gods 
 love to see a brave man struggling against adversity, 
 then in truth Scott was a sight well-pleasing to the 
 gods. " Something in my breast tells me my evil 
 genius will not overwhelm me if I stand by myself." * 
 " I feel neither dishonoured nor broken down by the 
 bad now really bad news I have received. ... I 
 will not yield without a fight for it. It is odd, 
 when I set myself to work doggedly ... I am 
 exactly the same man that I ever was, neither low- 
 spirited nor distrait . . . Adversity is to me at least 
 a tonic and a bracer." 2 "I will involve no friend, 
 either rich or poor. My own right hand shall do it." 8 
 " For myself, I feel like the Eildon Hills quite firm 
 
 1 Journal, p. 86. a Ibid., p. 89. 3 Ibid., p. 90. 
 
 183 
 
184 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 though a little cloudy." l Such was the heroic 
 temper " I think the Romans call it stoicism " in 
 which Scott set himself to retrieve, so far as might 
 be, his fallen fortunes. " God grant me health and 
 strength," he said to his friends, " and I will yet pay 
 every man his due." 
 
 Had Scott elected and been able to take the usual 
 course in such a crisis, and declare himself bankrupt, 
 things would in the long run have gone more easily 
 with him. His property would have been brought 
 to the hammer; a fair dividend would have been 
 paid on the claims against James Ballantyne & Co. ; 
 the printing business might have started afresh, and 
 he himself, though without doubt he would still have 
 cherished the laudable ambition of clearing his 
 obligations in full, could have taken up his work 
 again as a free man. But personal feeling and 
 family pride revolted against this procedure, though 
 it was one which Scott admitted any lawyer would 
 have advised a client to adopt. " But for this," he 
 wrote, " I would in a Court of Honour deserve to 
 lose my spurs." 2 The matter was, moreover, com- 
 plicated by the unfortunate settlement of Abbotsford, 
 which had in the eyes of many an ugly aspect, and 
 which he naturally looked back upon with feelings 
 of deep regret. At first, an attack upon the legality of 
 this transaction was contemplated by several of his 
 more aggressive creditors, and it is held that, by legal 
 pressure, the transfer might have been set aside. 
 But the proposal was abandoned from a general 
 
 3 Letter to Laidlaw (Abbotsford Notanda^ by R. Carruthers). 
 2 Journal, pp. 93-94. 
 
LAST YEARS AND DEATH 185 
 
 feeling that, by forcing Scott to take advantage of 
 the Bankruptcy Act, it would in the end make 
 seriously against the creditors' interest, since he had 
 determined, if left to himself, to devote the rest 
 of his life to the discharge of all his engagements, 
 even to the uttermost farthing. Accordingly, with 
 the almost unanimous consent of all the parties con- 
 cerned, another way was made out of the difficulty. 
 Scott executed a private deed, vesting the bulk of 
 his property in trustees for the benefit of his creditors, 
 and undertaking to apply the proceeds of all future 
 work to the liquidation of his debts ; receiving mean- 
 while simply a modest allowance for personal expenses 
 and the bare maintenance of the Abbotsford estates. 
 The Edinburgh house "poor 39," as he affection- 
 ately called it : it had been his home for many 
 happy years and most of the furniture belonging to 
 it, were sold, with as little delay as possible ; the 
 family retired to Abbotsford for good ; and Sir 
 Walter henceforth took lodgings when the business 
 of the court necessitated his being in town. All this 
 settled, Scott addressed himself with a vigour and 
 resolution, marvellous even in him, to an undertaking 
 to which the history of literature offers no parallel : 
 the writing off, by his own unaided exertions, of a 
 debt of nearly 1 30,000. The conditions of the 
 trust, as might have been expected, often proved 
 galling, and friction arose from time to time ; but 
 Scott never swerved from his purpose. " Repeatedly 
 in conversation with him," says John Gibson, his 
 friend and active trustee, " I expressed doubts about 
 the possibility of his accomplishing such a gigantic 
 
186 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 task, but his answer generally was, ' Time and I 
 against any two/ " l 
 
 It is a commonplace of the moralists that one of 
 the sweet uses of adversity is to be found in the way 
 in which it unlocks the sympathy of friends. Scott 
 was not the man to receive without emotion the 
 kindly words and generous offers that came to him 
 from every side. Sir William Forbes stood by him, 
 and aided him to an extent which he never fully 
 realised till after his old rival's death. An admirer, 
 whose name he never learned, begged leave to place 
 ^"30,000 to his credit. His son, Walter, and his wife 
 wrote proffering their own fortune. And a Mr Pole, 
 who had taught his daughters the harp, sent him a 
 tender little letter entreating him to accept his whole 
 savings, five or six hundred pounds. "There is 
 much good in the world, after all," wrote Sir Walter, 
 noting this altogether unexpected tribute of affection. 
 But, perhaps, most of all was Scott touched by the 
 simple loyalty of his dependents, whose behaviour in 
 his reverses of fortune might well have reminded 
 him of " the constant service of the antique world." 
 The butler wept, made a scene, absolutely refused 
 to accept dismissal, and was at length pacified by 
 being allowed to remain to do twice his usual 
 work on half his former wages for expenses at 
 Abbotsford had to be cut down in every direction. 
 Old Peter, who, for twenty-five years, had been a 
 dignified whip, turned ploughman-in-ordinary, and 
 even went so far as to assert (and Scott's eyes 
 glistened when he told the story) that a little rough 
 1 Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott ', p. 16. 
 
LAST YEARS AND DEATH 187 
 
 work on the haughs would do both him and the 
 horses good. And as for Tom Purdie, who had now 
 indeed become an indispensable element in his 
 master's comfort, great was his glory, when, owing 
 to changes on the estate, he was released from farm 
 duty, and promoted to the position of Sir Walter's 
 special out-door assistant and companion. Power to 
 hold in this way the love and confidence of dependents 
 is in any man's character a fact not easily over-rated. 
 Harassed as he was by his own affairs, Scott was 
 none the less much concerned during the early 
 months of 1826, over a proposal of the Government 
 to take from private banks the privilege of circulating 
 their own notes, and to suppress the issue of all paper 
 under the denomination of five pounds. The Scotch 
 banks regarded this measure as jeopardising their 
 interests, and outside financial circles, strong opposi- 
 tion was aroused by what, north of the Tweed, 
 appeared an effort on the part of Downing Street to 
 tamper with matters lying beyond its proper field. 
 Scott's patriotism was fired, and he discharged his 
 feelings in three spirited but somewhat acrimonious 
 Letters from Malachi Malagrowther, Esq., on the pro- 
 posed Change of Currency. These were first published 
 in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal, and afterwards 
 reprinted in pamphlet form ; and, by the sensation 
 which they created a sensation which Lockhart does 
 not hesitate to compare with that caused in Ireland 
 by Swift's Drapier Letters they did much to 
 strengthen the popular protest. They were answered 
 with great care and elaboration of argument by 
 Scott's friend, Croker, then secretary of the Admiralty, 
 
1 88 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 But Malagrowther's eloquence was irresistible ; and 
 ultimately, to Sir Walter's great delight, the Scottish 
 portions of the proposed measure were dropped. 
 
 But these occasional productions formed no part 
 of the task-work which they were hardly allowed 
 to interrupt, and to which, having discharged his 
 conscience of a political duty, he returned with 
 powers of labour increased rather than diminished 
 by anxieties which would have paralysed a man 
 of less elastic nature. Before the crash he was 
 already engaged on Woodstock, a tale of the period 
 of the great Civil War. His first business, though 
 not by any means, as we shall see, his only one, 
 was to finish this novel ; and in accomplishing this, 
 he outdid in rapidity of composition even the 
 remarkable feats of his earlier years. With all 
 the regularity of a lawyer's clerk recording folios, 
 he enters in his Journal the pages of print which 
 day by day he carried to his credit, once noting 
 the writing of an entire volume in fifteen days. " A 
 volume, at the cheapest," he adds, " is worth 1000. 
 This is working at the rate of 24,000 a year ; but 
 then we must not make buns faster than people 
 have appetite to eat them." In this way Woodstock 
 was completed in March 1826, and on 3rd April he 
 received " the extraordinary and gratifying news " 
 that it had been sold for 8,228, "ready money" a 
 " matchless sale for less than three months' work." * 
 
 1 Journal, p. 167. Lockhart reminds us that the book was sold for 
 the benefit of the creditors of James Ballantyne & Co., and that 
 therefore the purchase -money included the cost of printing the first 
 edition as well as paper. 
 
LAST YEARS AND DEATH 189 
 
 It is more than probable that the circumstances 
 under which this romance was written and published 
 gave it a factitious interest at the time, and thus 
 stimulated the sales ; at any rate, the booksellers 
 found no cause to repent of their bargain. Judged 
 simply on its merits, it must be pronounced unusually 
 faulty in structural detail, while its central studies of 
 Cromwell and Charles II. are not to be compared 
 with its author's finest achievements in the imagina- 
 tive presentation of great historical characters. Yet 
 it has his redeeming qualities of stirring narrative 
 and vivid description, and the fact that it should be, 
 as a whole, so good as it is, may be taken as a signal 
 illustration of Scott's wonderful powers of self-control 
 and detachment from his own overwhelming troubles. 
 Lockhart suggests that those who read closely may 
 find in various places in the story in the part played 
 by Alice Lee, for example, and in some of the mottoes 
 used for chapter headings covert allusions to the 
 sorrows that were clouding his life. If so, then 
 Woodstock is an exception which proves the rule. 
 Scott's work is eminently personal in the sense that 
 it is largely made out of the stuff of his own experi- 
 ence. But it is seldom subjective it seldom, that is, 
 reflects the mood and temper of the hour. 
 
 His anxieties were no longer of a merely pecuniary 
 character. In the early days of his Diary he had 
 written : 
 
 " I have much to comfort me in the present aspect of my 
 family. My eldest son, independent in fortune, united to an 
 affectionate wife, and of good hopes in his profession ; my 
 second with a good deal of talent, and in the way I trust, of 
 
190 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 cultivating it to good purpose ; Anne, an honest, downright, 
 good Scots lass, in whom I could only wish to correct a spirit 
 of satire ; and Lockhart is Lockhart, to whom I can most 
 willingly confide the happiness of the daughter who chose 
 him, and whom he has chosen. But my dear wife, the partner 
 of early cares and successes, is, I fear, frail in health, though 
 I trust and pray she may see me out." 1 
 
 Before many weeks had passed, Scott came to 
 realise that the trust and the prayer were doomed to 
 be vain. The symptoms which had distressed him 
 at the end of 1825 grew more alarming with the 
 opening of the new year ; and on the isth May 1826, 
 Lady Scott passed peacefully away. It seems 
 almost sacrilege to pry into the pages in which 
 the strong man unburdened his soul. To the loss 
 of worldly fortune he was already growing accus- 
 tomed ; but now in his loneliness, he sometimes felt 
 that his heart must break. 2 Yet he nerved himself 
 to endurance. "Duty to God and to my children 
 must teach me patience," he wrote. 3 
 
 As soon as he could recover himself from the first 
 shock and the numbness which followed, Scott sought 
 relief where many a brave man has found it, in steady 
 toil. He was already busy with an enormous piece 
 of book-making, of a character different from any 
 that he had before undertaken a Life of Napoleon 
 Bonaparte; and if drudgery were to furnish the 
 necessary anodyne, he had now enough and to spare. 
 Originally projected in the summer of 1825, as a 
 brief, popular sketch for Constable's Miscellany, the 
 work expanded as he wrote, and when it was pub- 
 
 fournal, p. 39, 2 Ibid., pp. 193-94. 8 Ibid., p. 197. 
 
LAST YEARS AND DEATH 191 
 
 lished in June 1827, it had swollen to nine closely 
 printed octavo volumes, containing, according to 
 Lockhart's estimate, as much letterpress as Waverley, 
 Guy Mannering, The Antiquary p , and A Legend of 
 Montrose put together. Yet in the midst of pain, 
 financial anxiety, and domestic trouble, this colossal 
 task was accomplished within the space of two years ; 
 the actual composition interruptions in the shape of 
 other work, the journey to Ireland, and a trip to 
 London and Paris for the examination of documen- 
 tary material, being allowed for occupying hardly 
 half that time. As an example of facility, con- 
 centration, and sustained effort, I question whether 
 this feat has ever been equalled ; for it must be 
 remembered that it entailed, besides the mere writing 
 of the narrative, the constant labour of weary and 
 exhausting research. Of course, it would be too 
 much to expect that an historical work manufactured 
 at this high pressure should be a model either of 
 accuracy or of style ; and, in point of fact, the 
 Napoleon is often exceedingly faulty in both these 
 particulars. Had it been very much shorter it might, 
 nevertheless, have still been enjoyed for the vigour 
 and occasional picturesqueness with which it tells a 
 remarkable story. But while it is not authoritative 
 enough for the special student, it is far too long, and 
 too much encumbered with detail, for the general 
 reader. However, it was written with the primary 
 end of making money, and it certainly served its 
 purpose ; for by its first and second editions it 
 produced the astonishing sum of ;i8,ooo. 
 
 One incident in connection with this work threatened 
 
192 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 for a time to have serious results. Scott had had 
 access to, and had very properly used, some docu- 
 ments reflecting discredit on the conduct of a certain 
 General Gourgaud, who had been in attendance on 
 Napoleon at St Helena. At the time of writing 
 Sir Walter scented possible trouble, and in August 
 1827 the matter occupies considerable space in his 
 diary. The general fumed and blustered a good 
 deal, and seemed inclined " to fight himself out " of 
 the scrape, whereupon Scott wrote to his boyish 
 friend, William Clerk, that if " the quarrel should be 
 thrust upon me, why, I will not baulk him, Jackie ; 
 he shall not dishonour the country through my sides, 
 I can assure him." l Fortunately, Gourgaud found an 
 explosion in a newspaper a sufficient safety-valve for 
 his spleen, and the biographer of Scott is spared the 
 humiliation of describing his hero absurdly making 
 himself into a target for an irate Frenchman's aim. 
 But despite its lame and impotent conclusion, the story 
 has to be told for the light that it throws on Scott. 
 He was on the whole "pleasurably excited and 
 stimulated " by the affair. " If," he wrote at the time, 
 " I were capable in a moment of weakness of doing 
 anything short of what my honour demanded, I 
 should die the death of a poisoned rat in a hole, 
 out of mere sense of my own degradation." 2 
 
 Napoleon had been a veritable mill-stone about 
 his neck, and in his anxiety to rid himself of it, 
 he had grudged every moment not spent at his desk. 
 Yet he saved a margin of energy for lighter tasks, 
 which of course went on with increased rapidity when 
 1 Lockhart, p. 665, * Journal, p. 450. 
 
LAST YEARS AND DEATH 193 
 
 the big work was out of the way. The first series 
 of the Chronicles of the Canongate, containing The 
 Highland Widow, The Two Drovers, and The 
 Surgeon's Daughter, together with some introductory 
 chapters in Scott's happiest style, was published in 
 November 1827, and during that autumn and winter 
 he also superintended a collection of his prose 
 miscellanies, wrote papers on the Planting of Waste 
 Lands and Ornamental Gardening, and gave his 
 friend Gillies a lift with the present of an essay 
 on Moliere. 1 Nor does all this close the record of 
 his activities. He had not yet quite done with 
 " Boney " when a " good thought " struck him " to 
 write stories for little Johnnie Lockhart 2 from the 
 history of Scotland." This was the origin of the 
 delightful and exceedingly popular Tales of a Grand- 
 father. The first series, bringing the narrative down 
 to James I.'s accession to the English throne, was 
 published in December 1827. This was followed 
 by a second series in 1828, a third in 1829, and a 
 fourth, dealing with the history of France, in 1830. 
 In all this ceaseless labour Scott found reward 
 
 1 Even in the midst of his own troubles, Scott was always ready to 
 give a helping hand to any one in distress. During the crisis of 1813 
 he had sent ^50 to the clever and unfortunate Maturin, and now, 
 when his immediate need was so great, he allowed a young prottgt, 
 named Gordon, to pocket the .250 offered by the publishers for a 
 couple of Discourses by a Layman, which he had written for him when 
 he (Gordon) was training for the ministry, several years before. 
 
 2 This was Lockhart's eldest child, and the Hugh Littlejohn of the 
 charming dedication prefixed to the first series of the Tales. His early 
 death, after a life of suffering, was a great blow to Scott. The stories 
 were actually told before being reduced to writing, and retain much of 
 the ease and raciness of simple oral narration. 
 
 N 
 
194 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 and encouragement in the consciousness of making 
 practical progress with the mighty task to which 
 he had set his hand. Just before Christmas 1827 a 
 dividend of six shillings in the pound was paid on 
 all claims to the no small surprise of the creditors, 
 "who unanimously passed a vote of thanks for the 
 indefatigable industry which had achieved so much 
 for their behoof." l Their astonishment and gratitude 
 are explicable when we remember that the results 
 of two years' toil amounted to nearly ^"40,000. " So 
 far so good," wrote Scott in his Journal. " Heaven 
 grant the talisman break not." 2 To conclude this 
 sad part of our story, we may add that a second 
 dividend of three shillings in the pound was paid 
 on 1 7th December 1830, when Scott was much 
 soothed and comforted by the following resolution 
 of the creditors : " That Sir Walter Scott be re- 
 quested to accept of his furniture, plate, linens, 
 paintings, library, and curiosities of every description, 
 as the best means the creditors have of expressing 
 their very high sense of his most honourable conduct, 
 and in grateful acknowledgment for the unparalleled 
 and most successful exertions he has made, and 
 continues to make, for them." Henceforth, for the 
 brief period of life that was still left him, he had at 
 least the satisfaction of reading his own books and 
 eating with his own spoons. 3 
 
 Scott was so much discouraged by the reception of 
 the first series of the Chronicles of the Canvngate, that 
 he was with difficulty persuaded by Ballantyne and 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 675. 2 Journal, p. 491, 
 
 8 Lockhart, p. 714. 
 
LAST YEARS AND DEATH 195 
 
 Cadell to return to the field of fiction. When he at 
 length consented to do so, he made a false start with 
 a couple of stories called My Aunt Margaret's 
 Mirror and the Death of the Lairtfs Jock^ and 
 destined to form part of a second Canongate series. 
 He threw these aside in deference to his advisers' 
 sharp criticism, and instead, began a long novel 
 which, at first entitled St Valentine's Eve, was 
 published in April 1828 as The Fair Maid of Perth. 
 This was highly popular at the time, and so served 
 to exorcise for the moment the gloomy fancies in the 
 midst of which its closing chapters were written. It 
 is a rambling and rather incoherent romance, with 
 scenes which are almost on the level of the 
 author's best, and lengthy, intervening passages in 
 which the interest altogether fails. But while open 
 to attack on the side of plot, it contains a number 
 of admirably drawn characters, among which special 
 mention may be made of Conachar, the Glover, Oliver 
 Proudfute, and the Glee-maiden, Louise. The first 
 named of these has a personal and pathetic signifi- 
 cance that should not be overlooked. Years before, 
 Scott's brother, Daniel, the black sheep of the family, 
 had returned from Jamaica, dishonoured by the 
 cowardice which had marked his conduct during a 
 negro rising there, and Walter had not only refused 
 to see him again, but when he died, still a young 
 man, had neither attended the funeral nor donned 
 mourning for his loss. In his sympathetic study of 
 Conachar, a youth cursed by nature with an unmanly 
 sensibility to danger, he acknowledged to Lockhart 
 that it was his purpose "to perform a sort of ex- 
 
196 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 piation " to his " poor brother's manes." l Age had 
 taught him to pity a weakness for which in the 
 strength of early manhood he had nothing but 
 contempt. 
 
 Before the Fair Maid was published, Scott had 
 undertaken a work to which he commonly refers in 
 his diary as the Opus Magnum, or, even more 
 succinctly, as the Magnum. This was nothing less 
 than a complete uniform re-issue of all his novels, 
 with explanatory introductions and historical and 
 personal notes. The re-purchase from Constable's 
 trustees of all the outstanding Waverley copyrights, 
 at the price of ^8,500, of which one half was paid 
 by Scott's trustees, and one half advanced for Cadell, 
 rendered this enterprise possible. It had been 
 suggested some time previously by Constable him- 
 self, but he and Cadell had separated after the smash, 
 and as Scott, who was justly incensed against 
 Constable on account of his behaviour in the early 
 days of the panic, had thrown in his lot with Cadell, 
 it was Cadell who now carried the undertaking to a 
 highly profitable issue. The success of the Magnum 
 was, indeed, greater than either Scott or his publisher 
 had anticipated. Before the close of 1829 the sales 
 of the monthly volumes had reached 35,000; and 
 despite the pressure of political affairs at the time, 
 public interest showed little abatement to the very 
 end. The autobiographical prefaces, with all their 
 frankness, geniality, and wealth of illustrative anecdote, 
 may be fairly considered, perhaps, as the most 
 charming things in all Scott's prose works, and their 
 1 Lockhart, p. 68 1, 
 
LAST YEARS AND DEATH 197 
 
 value for the student of his character and writings is 
 simply beyond exaggeration. 
 
 During the latter half of 1828, Scott's "locked 
 book," the Journal, remained a blank ; he had become 
 so much the mere " writing automaton " that the 
 happenings and experiences of his days and weeks 
 might have been summarized in a single entry 
 work, work, work. When the record opens again, 
 we find him well advanced with a romance of the 
 fifteenth century Anne of Geierstein ; or The Maiden 
 of the Mist. This gave Scott more than usual trouble, 
 for Ballantyne was difficult to please, and the book 
 had to undergo a good deal of patching and boggling 
 before it was considered in a fit state for publication. 
 The result was that Sir Walter, who intensely disliked 
 the labour of altering and re-organising, dismissed 
 his heroine in disgust ; " as I do not like her myself," 
 he wrote to Lockhart, " I do not expect she will be 
 popular." But the Maiden of the Mist was received 
 at least as well as the Maid of Perth had been, and 
 has kept an equal place in public affection. To 
 Anne of Geierstein attaches a melancholy interest 
 as the last imaginative production of its author 
 in which the pervasive presence of his genius is to 
 be distinctly felt ; and in no unworthy fashion does it 
 bring the long list of his novels to a close. 
 
 Scott wrote the concluding pages of this romance 
 before breakfast on the 2Qth April. Immediately after 
 breakfast he began a Compendium of Scottish History, 
 which he had contracted to furnish for Lardner>s 
 Cyclopcedia. He entered upon this new undertaking 
 with some dread, but when he had once made a fair 
 
198 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 start, he found that the story ran trippingly off the 
 pen. The first volume was published in 1829, the 
 second in 1830. But by this time we are reaching the 
 beginning of the end. During the summer of 1829, 
 while the History was dividing his attention with the 
 third series of the Tales of a Grandfather and the Opus 
 Magnum, he suffered much from headache and nervous 
 irritation. Though these symptoms were temporarily 
 relieved by hemorrhages, they pointed to the recurrence 
 of a danger by which he had already been threatened ; 
 they were, in a word, the precursors of apoplexy. On 
 the afternoon of the isth February following, he was 
 seized by a species of fit which for a time deprived him 
 of the power of speech. By submitting to the severest 
 regimen, he so far recovered that people in general saw 
 but little change in him, while he himself, though at 
 first alarmed, more than half made up his mind that 
 the trouble arose only from stomachic disturbance. 
 None the less, he had to admit that it looked un- 
 pleasantly like apoplexy. 1 
 
 Even in face of this warning, Scott was still un- 
 daunted. " Do not suppose," he wrote to Lockhart, 
 " that I am either low-spirited or frightened ... I 
 feel, thank God, no mental injury." They had told 
 him to drop all work, he adds, "but that is not so 
 easily managed, for I would be driven mad with 
 idleness." Rest was what he needed, but rest he 
 would not and could not take. He was soon in 
 the old mill again, grinding away, 2 and during 1830 
 covered almost as many manuscript sheets the 
 comparative estimate must unfortunately be based 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 741. -Journal, p. 740. 
 
LAST YEARS AND DEATH 199 
 
 on quantity of production only as in the foregoing 
 twelve months. A volume of Letters on Demonology 
 and Witchcraft, the fourth series of the Tales of a 
 Grandfather, and an excellent review of Southey's 
 Bunyan, were all published before the end of the 
 year; by which time, greatly to the distress of his 
 friends, who, hoping in this way to keep his mind 
 from more serious tasks, did their best to induce him 
 to occupy himself with a catalogue of his library 
 and museum, he had also made a determined start 
 on a fresh romance, Count Robert of Paris. But in 
 another direction he curtailed his engagements by 
 resigning his post as Clerk of Session. In doing 
 this, he refused, with his creditors' approval for 
 he held it necessary to lay the matter before them 
 to avail himself of the Home Secretary's offer 
 of his full salary instead of the usual retiring 
 pension. Shortly afterwards he also declined a 
 Privy Councillorship, on the ground that such an 
 honour ill befitted one who was old and poor. 
 
 The opening of the new year was gloomy enough. 
 Notwithstanding his splendid resolve to look always 
 on the bright side of things, Scott was now obliged 
 to acknowledge that he was suffering from the 
 sequentice of a "paralytic touch." He "seemed to 
 speak with an impediment ; " his head was " strangely 
 confused ; " even his handwriting appeared " to 
 stammer ; " while increasing lameness and pain re- 
 minded him every moment of his mortality. All 
 this he confessed to himself without flinching or 
 repining. He knew that the end was approaching, 
 and only dreaded lest, like Swift, he might linger 
 
200 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 long enough to become "a driveller and a show." 
 Meanwhile, those about him his faithful daughter 
 Anne, Lockhart, and his loyal friend, Willie Laidlaw, 
 in particular watched sadly day by day the gradual 
 breaking up of his wonderful intellect. 
 
 " The faculties were there, and each of them was every now 
 and then displaying itself in its full vigour ; but the sagacious 
 judgment, the brilliant fancy, the unrivalled memory, were all 
 subject to occasional eclipse. . . . Ever and anon he paused 
 and looked round him, like one half waking from a dream, 
 mocked with shadows. The sad bewilderment of his gaze 
 showed a momentary consciousness that, like Samson in the 
 lap of the Philistine, 'his strength was passing from him, and 
 he was becoming weak like unto other men.' Then came the 
 strong effort of aroused will the cloud dispersed as if before 
 an irresistible current of purer air all was bright and serene as 
 of old ; and then it closed again in yet deeper darkness." 1 
 
 Political anxieties combined with personal affliction 
 to add to the depression of this dismal winter. Up- 
 heavals abroad were accompanied by agitation and 
 change at home, and Scott felt that his worst fears 
 were on the point of realization. Patriotic as ever, 
 according to his lights, and strengthened in his 
 Toryism by what he considered as the apostasy of 
 many of his own party, he determined to make one 
 more appeal to the public, and late in 1830 wrote a 
 fourth Letter of Malachi Malagrowther, attacking the 
 whole principle of Parliamentary Reform. This 
 production he was, however, most fortunately per- 
 suaded to burn before it got into print. But he found 
 another way of asserting himself. In the following 
 March, he persisted, in the teeth of friendly remon- 
 
 1 Lockhart, pp. 711-712. 
 
LAST YEARS AND DEATH 201 
 
 strance, in attending an election meeting at Jedbtirgh, 
 and in making a speech against the new radical ideas. 
 Party feeling ran so high at the time, that scenes of 
 violence were matters of almost daily occurrence ; 
 but it is sad to read of the old man hissed and hooted 
 down by a mob of riotous artisans, too angry at the 
 moment to remember the character, courage, and age 
 of the enemy whom they attacked. An incident of 
 an even more disgraceful kind happened some two 
 months later, when showers of stones followed groans 
 and execrations, and Scott's party with difficulty 
 escaped the frenzy of the crowd. The cries of 
 " Burke Sir Walter " haunted him ever afterwards, 
 even when he lay on his death-bed. 
 
 A second, but very slight attack of apoplexy had 
 occurred in November 1830; a third, much more severe 
 in character, prostrated him in the following April. Yet 
 he plodded on with Count Robert of Paris, dictating 
 to Laidlaw when he was unable to hold the pen, and 
 actually recasting the last volume in deference to the 
 "formal remonstrances" of Ballantyne and Cadell. 
 That they should have fault to find with his work was 
 a " stunning " blow to him ; it forced the terrible 
 thought upon him that his mind was decaying with 
 his body. Still he would not give way. In vain did 
 friends and physicians protest against such exertions ; 
 in vain renew their warnings when, before Count 
 Robert was finished, he began Castle Dangerous. He 
 persevered with both his tasks, and the two romances 
 were issued together, as the fourth series of the Tales 
 of my Landlord, in November 1831. But at the close 
 of the latter story he took a graceful and dignified 
 
202 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 farewell of the public which for so many years had 
 waited almost breathlessly for every fresh production 
 of the Great Unknown. 
 
 At length he had yielded to advice so far as to 
 consent to abandon his work and seek the benefit of 
 warmer climes. Learning of his determination to 
 spend the winter in the South, the First Lord of the 
 Admiralty placed a Government frigate at his disposal, 
 and Scott gratefully accepted the courtesy which the 
 Whig ministry extended towards him. He started 
 from Abbotsford, with his eldest son, on the 23rd 
 September, leaving with William Laidlaw a paper of 
 instructions, the last article of which cautioned him to 
 be "very careful of the dogs." A couple of days 
 before his departure, Wordsworth and his sister came 
 to wish him God-speed. Every reader will recall the 
 tender stanzas and the stately sonnet in which the 
 great English poet embodied his feelings on that sad 
 occasion. 
 
 During his short stay in London, en route for 
 Portsmouth, where the Government vessel awaited 
 him, Sir Walter again met Washington Irving, who 
 had been his guest during the golden days of Abbots- 
 ford hospitality. 
 
 " When I entered the room," says Irving, " Scott grasped 
 my hand, and looked me steadfastly in the face. 'Time has 
 dealt gently with you, my friend, since we parted,' he exclaimed 
 he referred to the difference in himself since we had met. 
 At dinner I could see that Scott's mind was failing. He was 
 painfully conscious of it himself. He would talk with much 
 animation, and we would listen with the most respectful 
 attention ; but there was an effort and an embarrassment in 
 his manner : he knew all was not right. . . . After dinner 
 
LAST YEARS AND DEATH 203 
 
 he took my arm to walk upstairs, which he did with difficulty. 
 He turned and looked in my face, and said : 'They need not 
 tell a man his mind is not affected when his body is as much 
 impaired as mine.' " 
 
 Scott gained at first from the rest and change 
 afforded by his trip, but the improvement was only 
 temporary. At Malta he seemed to recover some- 
 thing of his old vigour and ambition, and there and 
 at Naples, he talked of returning to poetry, and 
 actually began and nearly finished a new novel, The 
 Siege of Malta, and a shorter tale entitled // Bizarro. 
 It is to be hoped that the manuscripts of these, if 
 still extant, are somewhere safely out of the reach 
 of the pestilential race of prying editors who delight 
 in thrusting every scrap of a great writer's dotage 
 before the eyes of a world which is only too well 
 pleased with the spectacle of genius in decay. At 
 Naples, too, he busied himself with the formation 
 of a collection of Neapolitan and Sicilian ballads. 
 Thence he turned northward to Rome, where, though 
 he had little energy for ordinary sight-seeing, he was 
 specially interested in the house which had belonged 
 to Cardinal York, and in the tomb of the last of the 
 Stuarts in St Peter's. But before this, a resistless 
 home-sickness had come upon him, and he grew 
 anxious at all costs to get back to Scotland. The 
 news of the death of Goethe, whom he had hoped 
 to visit at Weimar, deeply affected him. " Alas, for 
 Goethe!" he exclaimed, "but he at least died at 
 home. Let us to Abbotsford." He left Rome on 
 the nth May, and his impatience increased so much 
 when he found himself on the homeward way, that 
 
204 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 he would hardly tolerate breaking the journey even 
 for rest, and no matter what the weather, repeatedly 
 desired to travel all night as well as all day. In 
 this hurried manner he reached London on the I3th 
 June, but in a state of such utter collapse, that he 
 had to be detained there, in a condition between 
 stupor and consciousness, till the beginning of July. 
 At length his often-reiterated request was granted, 
 and with the consent of the physicians, who by this 
 time were, of course, thoroughly aware of the absolute 
 hopelessness of the case, he was taken to Abbotsford. 
 During the greater part of the journey he lay 
 prostrate and torpid, apparently unaware of what 
 was happening. But as his carriage descended the 
 vale of the Gala, and the well-known and long-loved 
 scene unrolled itself before him, a marked change 
 took place. 
 
 " He began," says Lockhart, who was with him, 
 " to gaze about turn, and by degrees it was obvious 
 that he was recognising the features of that familiar 
 landscape. Presently he murmured a name or two 
 1 Gala Water, surely Buckholm Torwoodlee.' As 
 we rounded the hill at Ladhope, and the outline of 
 the Eildons burst on him, he became greatly excited, 
 and when turning himself on the couch his eye 
 caught at length his own towers at the distance of a 
 mile, he sprang up with a cry of delight." The scene 
 of the home-coming was very touching. " Mr Laidlaw 
 was waiting at the porch/' Lockhart continues, "and 
 assisted us in lifting him into the dining-room, where 
 his bed had been prepared. He sat bewildered for a 
 few moments, and then resting his eye on Laidlaw, 
 
LAST YEARS AND DEATH 205 
 
 said : ' Ha, Willie Laidlaw ! O man, how often have 
 I thought of you ! ' By this time his dogs had 
 assembled about his chair. They began to fawn 
 upon him and lick his hands, and he alternately 
 sobbed and smiled over them, until sleep oppressed 
 him." 1 
 
 To be home again meant so much to him that for 
 the moment his spirits and strength revived. At first 
 ,he was wheeled about daily in a bath-chair, now 
 through his "ain house," now in the grounds. He 
 loved to be placed at the central window of the 
 library, whence he could look down upon the Tweed. 
 He enjoyed listening to reading, especially to the 
 Bible and Crabbe. Flashes of the old hope came 
 to him, too, from time to time, though they were 
 soon swallowed in darkness. Once he tried to write, 
 but the fingers refused to close upon the pen, and 
 he burst into tears. " Sir Walter has had a little 
 repose," said Laidlaw to him that same afternoon, 
 when he woke from a nap. "No, Willie," he said, 
 " no repose for Sir Walter but in the grave." The 
 tears again started from his eyes. " Friends," he 
 said, "don't let me expose myself; get me to bed 
 that's the only place." 
 
 From that time he sank daily. He seemed to 
 suffer no pain, but his mind wandered among the 
 things of the past. One fine afternoon, when the 
 sun was shining bright into the bed-room, but he 
 was very low, Laidlaw said to him, "Cheer up, Sir 
 Walter; you used to say, 'Time and I against 
 any two/ " Scott raised himself on his elbow 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 751. 
 
 or THE 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
2o6 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 for a moment, and merely murmured " Vain 
 boast." 1 
 
 On the morning of the i/th September, Sir 
 Walter's man-servant entered Lockhart's room, as 
 he was dressing, and told him his master c( had 
 awoke in a state of composure and consciousness," 
 and wished to see him immediately. 
 
 " I found him," says Lockhart, in whose words the scene may 
 best be described, " entirely himself, though in the last extreme 
 of feebleness. His eye was clear and calm every trace of 
 the wild fire of delirium extinguished. ' Lockhart,' he said, ' I 
 may have but a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good 
 man be virtuous be religious be a good man. Nothing else 
 will give you any comfort when you come to lie here.' He 
 paused, and I said, ' Shall I send for Sophia and Anne ?' ' No,' 
 said he, ' don't disturb them. Poor souls ! I know they were up 
 all night. God bless you all ! ' With this he sunk into a very 
 tranquil sleep, and, indeed, he scarcely afterwards gave any 
 sign of consciousness, except for an instant on the arrival of 
 his sons." 2 
 
 The end came on the 2ist " It was a beautiful day, 
 so warm, that every window was wide open, and 
 so perfectly still, that the sound, of all others most 
 delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed 
 over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt 
 around the bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed 
 his eyes." 3 
 
 Scott's remains were laid beside those of his 
 wife in the family vault at Dryburgh Abbey. For 
 many months before his death, he was possessed by 
 the delusion, sometimes but fortunately not often 
 
 1 Gibson's Reminiscences, p. 46. 2 Lockhart, p. 753, 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 753- 
 
LAST YEARS AND DEATH 207 
 
 disturbed, that all his financial obligations had 
 been discharged. He left, in fact, an indebtedness, 
 commercial and personal, of about ^"64,000 a sum 
 which was, however, at once paid off by life in- 
 surances and an advance from Cadell on the security 
 of the Magnum. He did not, therefore, die, as he 
 had hoped and dreamed that he might die, a free 
 man. But he had strained every nerve to achieve 
 this object, and if he failed, he reached in one other 
 and more important respect the high mark which 
 he had set before himself at the very beginning of 
 his long and splendid struggle he left his name 
 unstained. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 THE story of any man's career, if at all adequately 
 told, will always furnish the best revelation of 
 the man himself. Indeed, to write the record of 
 facts and experiences, in however plain and straight- 
 forward a fashion, without making it in some sort a 
 commentary and a criticism, would be a feat of 
 perverted ingenuity so difficult as to be well-nigh 
 impossible. It may fairly be hoped, therefore, that 
 the foregoing narrative, condensed as it has necessarily 
 been, will have given a clear, general impression of 
 the powerful and attractive individuality whose life- 
 story we have now followed, through its good and ill 
 fortunes, to its pathetic close. It remains for us only, 
 before passing on to the consideration of Scott's works, 
 to supplement the picture thus incidentally outlined 
 by a brief but more systematic analysis of the salient 
 points of his personality and character. 
 
 Every one who ever came, even in the most casual 
 way, into contact with Scott, seems to have felt 
 immediately the man's rare and persuasive charm. 
 High and low, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 209 
 
 irrespective altogether of their own mental and 
 moral differences, he fascinated all alike. Men so 
 radically dissimilar as Lockhart and Hogg, as 
 Wordsworth and Byron, as Erskine and Tom Purdie, 
 were equally touched by the spell. This broad fact 
 is itself sufficient to show how vain it would be to 
 seek to resolve Scott's personal influence and ascend- 
 ancy into any merely intellectual components. His 
 power over all kinds arid classes of people, over the 
 cultivated woman in the drawing room, and the un- 
 lettered shepherd on the hill-side, was of a sort that 
 we are constrained to describe, in default of a better 
 name, as magnetic. We ourselves experience some- 
 thing of this in reading his letters or following 
 Lockhart's minute record of his life experience 
 enough, I fancy, to enable us to understand the 
 peculiar attraction which, living, he exerted over 
 strangers and friends. Those who could best 
 appreciate his genius and knew the meaning and 
 value of his fame, were, of course, impressed by 
 qualities which others would care little or nothing 
 about. But his secret, at bottom, is to be sought, not 
 in gifts and achievements which the few only could 
 properly recognise and estimate, but in an individu- 
 ality which all were drawn to love. In this way, 
 Scott, the man, gained nothing and lost nothing from 
 his identity with Scott, the writer of books. No one 
 who has done so much ever remained so entirely in- 
 dependent of what he had done. Detached altogether 
 from his performances, he was no less the object of 
 admiration and affection. We have noted how his 
 dependents clung to him in his reverses. Children 
 
 O 
 
210 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 instinctively responded to the unsophisticated boyish- 
 ness of his character. The very animals, which, 
 thank Heaven, do not rate us in accordance with 
 our talents or worth, attached themselves to him as 
 a friend. Horses and dogs took to him at once. 
 There is even a well-authenticated anecdote of his 
 inspiring a sentimental attachment in a pig. 
 
 So far as such magnetism is to be explained at all, 
 it is in Scott's case to be referred to the vitality, open- 
 heartedness, geniality, and simplicity, of an essentially 
 fresh and virile nature. He was not one of that 
 unfortunately large class of great writers who are 
 to be worshipped afar off, and who, let the biographers 
 say what they will, are most pleasantly, if not (or 
 perhaps because not) most completely known in 
 their books. Altogether free from the haunting self- 
 consciousness which hampers many a man of wide 
 sympathy and thorough good-nature, free, too, from 
 priggishness, egoism, morbid sensitiveness, and every 
 species of affectation, he lived in the frankest in- 
 tercourse with a world in which he enjoyed greatly 
 all the prosperity the gods sent him, and in which 
 his healthiness of mind and buoyancy of temper 
 enabled him to see even the varied ills of existence 
 upon the sunnier side. Even Carlyle has to admit 
 that the power, reputation, and wealth which came 
 to him affected him less than they would have done 
 almost any other man. Raised to a pinnacle on which 
 the steadiest head might have turned giddy, he 
 remained the same generous, noble, lovable man, 
 unwarped by ambition, unspoilt by adulation. When 
 he consented to play the lion at great London dinner 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 211 
 
 parties, he did so, as we have seen, in a half-humorous 
 fashion, and more because it gave satisfaction to 
 the lionizers than because it brought any special 
 pleasure to himself. " His simplicity and naturalness 
 after all his fame," were, Lord Cockburn thought, 
 " absolutely incredible." l The strength and courage 
 of his nature are qualities which may well fill us 
 with wonder and admiration as we read his story, 
 but it was this engaging simplicity, this perfect 
 naturalness, which appealed to all who knew him, 
 and won an easy way to every heart. 
 
 Scott's personal appearance was not such as to 
 attract particular attention. Tall and, save for his 
 lameness, well and powerfully made, with a face 
 which struck most observers as rather heavy and 
 vacant when in repose, though it lighted up marvel- 
 lously at a fine thought or ludicrous fancy, he looked 
 for all the world like an ordinary country gentleman 
 or well-to-do farmer. A good judge, the artist 
 Leslie, thought that his predominant expression was 
 that of strong sense. 2 Certainly no one, not knowing 
 him, would have picked him out as a poet. His 
 most striking features were the shrewd and penetrating 
 grey eyes, which trembled beneath eyebrows of extra- 
 ordinary shagginess, and the enormously high cylin- 
 drical head, which in later years gained for him the nick- 
 name of Peveril of the Peak. A reader of Marmion 
 or Ivanhoe might be forgiven for expressing dis- 
 appointment on first meeting a great man of letters 
 whose whole build and manners were so little in 
 
 1 Memorials of His Own Time> p. 454. 
 
 2 Autobiographic Recollections. 
 
212 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 keeping with the traditional conception of that char- 
 acter. But he had not to listen long to the exuberant 
 talk, the spontaneous flow of racy humour, the stores 
 of anecdote and poetry which poured out, with 
 no apparent effort, from that prodigious memory, 
 before he felt himself convinced that he was actually 
 in the presence of Walter Scott. 
 
 Modern upholders of the intimate connection be- 
 tween genius and insanity would find it difficult to 
 discover in this splendid, sound piece of manhood 
 any support of their theories. No clodhopper on the 
 village green, with mind altogether untouched by the 
 " malady of thought," ever revealed a healthier play 
 of emotion, a more thoroughly hale and hardy nature. 
 His robustness and absolute sobriety are conspicuous, 
 at large, through all his writings ; but they manifest 
 themselves in an exceedingly significant way in one 
 very noteworthy point in his character his entire 
 freedom from all the so-called eccentricities of genius. 
 It was considered the proper thing in Scott's day, 
 and it is so considered in many quarters still, for 
 a man endowed with poetic yearnings and given to 
 the exercise of rhyme, to mark himself off from the 
 common herd of everyday practical mortals by 
 differences in dress, speech, bearing ; to assert his 
 kinship with great souls by disregarding in countless 
 little ways the accepted conventions of his society 
 and time. No one could justly have accused Scott 
 of conventionalism in his own circle of friends and 
 acquaintances ; but, on the other hand, he had no 
 sympathy whatsoever with lax bohemianism, and 
 would have repudiated as childish the notion that 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 213 
 
 poetic inspiration finds either expression or warrant 
 in long hair and collars of unusual cut. The 
 mannerisms, affectations, and uneasy contortions of 
 our present-day poetasters and would-be critics, would 
 have been as wholly foreign to his good sense and 
 ingenuous simplicity, as their aesthetic jargon and 
 narrowly bookish views of men and things would 
 have been repulsive to his manly taste. He has 
 himself spoken of his dread of becoming entangled 
 in the " literary " society of his epoch. What would 
 he have thought, we may wonder, of the " literary " 
 society of ours ? 
 
 We are thus led to return once more to a point 
 which, in one and another way, has already been 
 several times touched upon : the attitude of Scott 
 towards literature and literary fame. That he held 
 very lightly by efforts and results to which most men 
 of letters attach supreme importance, has been made 
 sufficiently clear. The pursuits of the desk and the 
 closet were, he considered, to be properly regarded as 
 ^belonging to the amusements, and not to the serious 
 ^business of life. The most voluminous writer of his 
 day, and the most successful, he was perpetually 
 emphasizing his belief that, after all, the making of 
 books is no great matter, and that to the glory which 
 is to be won thereby, we are very apt to ascribe an 
 "undue degree of consequence." His talk was of 
 men and events, rather than of books and criticism. 
 Literary reputation, he was fond of saying, while a 
 bright enough feather in one's cap, is no substantial 
 covering for the head. 1 He marked with sorrow 
 
 1 JLockhart, p. 163. 
 
214 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 the baneful influence of London celebrity on weaker 
 minds, and the unfortunate results, in particular, 
 of that succes de salon after which so many strive. 1 
 
 That Scott himself carried his own immense fame 
 with an ease which bordered on indifference that he 
 took himself and his work with a quiet modesty, in 
 startling contrast with the fuss which every one who 
 has written a book now thinks it necessary to make 
 over the fact, is amusingly shown by various incidents 
 in his home-life. One day, for example, his eldest 
 son returned from school, blushingly announcing that 
 he had been called a " lassie " by his companions. It 
 presently turned out that they had nick-named him 
 the " Lady of the Lake," an allusion which he could 
 not understand at its value, because, though like 
 all Scott's children, he lived in the greatest intimacy 
 with his father, he had never even heard of a poem 
 by that name. Shortly afterwards, the story having 
 got wind, a friend asked the boy how he explained 
 the amount of consideration which on all sides 
 was shown his father. The little fellow, after some 
 thought, answered : " It's commonly him that sees 
 the hare sitting." He was well aware of his father's 
 success in the field, but of his literary achievements, so 
 little did they enter into household talk, he knew 
 nothing. " Miss Sophia," asked James Ballantyne of 
 Scott's elder daughter, about this time, " how do you 
 like The Lady of the Lake!" "Oh, I have not read 
 it," answered Miss Sophia, with perfect simplicity ^1 
 " papa says there's nothing so bad for young people 
 as reading bad poetry." 2 
 
 1 Lockhart, pp. 179-80, 2 Ibid., p. 196. 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 215 
 
 Scott's general view of literature was perhaps 
 brought out most seriously and strongly in a con- 
 versation which, when in Ireland, he had with 
 Maria Edgeworth. Lockhart, who was of the 
 party, had let fall a remark to the effect that 
 many poets and novelists seemed to regard life 
 and the world merely as material for art. 
 
 "A soft and pensive shade came over Scott's face as he said: 
 ' I fear you have some very young ideas in your head : are you 
 not too apt to measure things by some reference to literature 
 to disbelieve that anybody can be worth much care, who has no 
 knowledge of that sort of thing, or taste for it ? God help us ! 
 what a poor world this would be if that were the true doctrine ! 
 I have read books enough, and conversed with enough of eminent 
 and splendidly cultured minds, too, in my time ; but I assure 
 you, I have heard higher sentiments from the lips of poor un- 
 educated men and women, when exciting the spirit of severe 
 yet gentle heroism under difficulties and afflictions, or speaking 
 their simple thoughts as to circumstances in the lot of friends 
 and neighbours, than I ever yet met with out of the pages of the 
 Bible. We shall never learn to respect our real calling and 
 destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything 
 as moonshine compared with the education of the heart.' " 1 
 
 No sensible man, be his special conceptions of 
 literature what they may, is likely, I think, to question 
 the soundness and importance of these remarks. The 
 habit of regarding life, with all its passions and 
 sorrows, its realities and possibilities, simply as the 
 stuff out of which books may be made or theories 
 evolved, is part of our absurd and deadly modern 
 theory of " Art," and we rejoice when we find a 
 man like Scott unhesitatingly recording his con- 
 demnation of it, and his belief that there are better 
 1 Lockhart, p. 560, 
 
216 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 and nobler things in the world than philosophy 
 and culture. Yet , on the other hand, we can 
 hardly fail to feel that, throughout his career, he 
 took too low and mercantile a view of the aims, 
 opportunities, and responsibilities of his vocation. 
 He was not so thoroughly convinced as he should 
 have been we may go further, and say that he 
 was not convinced at all that the pen is mightier 
 than the sword, that song is divine, that, as his 
 own great countryman has taught us, the hero as 
 poet stands only just below the hero as prophet, 
 and above the hero as priest. Recounting the 
 incidents of his introduction to the Duke of Well- 
 ington in Paris, he told Ballantyne that he had 
 felt awed and abashed as he had never felt before, 
 in the presence of the man whom he regarded not 
 only as the greatest soldier but also as the greatest 
 statesman of the age. Ballantyne suggested that, on 
 his part, the Duke had seen before him a great 
 poet and novelist. Scott smiled. " What," said he, 
 "would the Duke think of a few bits of novels, which, 
 perhaps, he had never read, and for which the 
 strong probability is, that he would not care six- 
 pence if he had?" Commenting on this reply, 
 Lockhart reminds us that Scott "never considered 
 any amount of literary distinction as entitled to be 
 spoken of in the same breath with mastery in the 
 higher departments of practical life, least of all, 
 with the glory of a first-rate captain. To have 
 done things worthy to be written, was, in his eyes, 
 a dignity to which no man made any approach 
 who had only written things worthy to be read. 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 217 
 
 He on two occasions, which I can never forget, 
 betrayed painful uneasiness when his works were 
 alluded to as reflecting honour on the age that 
 had produced Watt's improvement of the steam- 
 engine, and the safety-lamp of Sir Humphrey Davy. 
 Such was his modest creed." Too modest altogether, 
 would be our judgment ; for while a man is hardly 
 to be blamed for the excessively rare peculiarity of 
 not thinking enough of his own productions, it is 
 surely the duty of one who gives himself and his 
 life to a calling, to regard that calling seriously, and 
 to be jealous of its honour. We must leave it to 
 the debating societies to settle the relative claims of 
 Wellington and Scott to the admiration and gratitude 
 of mankind, and to decide on the delicate question 
 whether the safety-lamp or Old Mortality has been of 
 the greater benefit to the world. Discounting a good 
 deal of nonsense which is talked about such matters, 
 we must still regard it as a weakness much to be 
 regretted in Scott's character that, notwithstanding 
 his life -long devotion to literature, and his intense 
 love of it, he failed so signally to grasp its larger and 
 deeper meaning. 
 
 Yet if Scott's way of treating literature smacks 
 unpleasantly of the Philistine, even this blemish was 
 not without its compensations. Lacking the higher 
 ideals and sentiments, he lacked also the special 
 failings and weaknesses of the literary character. 
 Moore sought to palliate if not excuse Byron's mani- 
 fold offences against the moral code on the plea that 
 faithful discharge of ordinary domestic and social 
 duties is incompatible with the poetic temperament. 
 
218 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 It is to be hoped that this sort of apology will 
 presently be thoroughly discredited ; at any rate, it is 
 always a relief when we come to a great poet for whom 
 it does not need to be advanced. Scott was exempt 
 from the larger vices to which the artistic character 
 is supposed to be especially prone, and managed to 
 combine immense genius and a love of romance with 
 temperate habits, respect for common decency, and 
 a pure and peaceful home-life. In the same way, he 
 was happily uncursed by those minor literary sins of 
 vanity, caprice, and jealousy, which make up so 
 large a part of the story of the quarrels and calamities 
 of authors, and offer so extraordinary an illustration 
 of the benign influence of humane letters on those who 
 have most to do with them. His generosity and 
 rare good-nature, while they made him tolerant of 
 failings which his better judgment would have con- 
 demned, led him to over-rate the writings of others 
 as much as his modesty caused him to under-rate his 
 own ; his indulgence to young authors and his con- 
 stant readiness to help the struggling and dis- 
 appointed were always charming, if sometimes rather 
 injudicious ; his relations with all his great contem- 
 poraries were singularly, perhaps uniquely, amicable. 
 No man of great fame probably ever suffered less 
 from jealousy or detraction. " I have many friends," 
 he wrote, towards the close of life, " and I think no 
 enemies." While, therefore, we may feel dissatisfied 
 with Scott as a representative and exponent of 
 literature, because he shows so little of the character- 
 istics of the vates or seer, we may at the same time 
 respect and admire him for his superiority to sins and 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 219 
 
 peccadilloes from which even the vates and seers of 
 the world have not always been free. 
 
 A certain robust common-sense, then, a kind of 
 plain and simple sagacity, as of an eminently sane 
 and reasonable man of the world, may be taken 
 as the foundation principles of Scott's character. 
 Romantic as he was, his romance had always a 
 strong hold on every-day fact. He was no subtle- 
 souled visionary, astray among the things of ordinary 
 existence, and dwelling by preference in a mystical 
 realm apart. " A thread of the attorney was in him," 
 he said ; the shrewdness of the lawyer blended with 
 the fancy of the poet ; a vigorous mother-wit controlled 
 and gave direction to his ideas. A capital illustration 
 of the sharp distinction which he habitually made 
 between his imaginative life and his practical life 
 may be found in his treatment of the entire subject 
 of superstition. Spectres, witches, horoscopes, omens 
 all the varied aspects of the supernatural, the 
 weird, the uncanny delighted him, as child and 
 man, in legend and history. He lived familiarly, 
 as poet and romancer, in the mediaeval world of 
 marvel and mystery. As poet and romancer only, 
 however ; for in his every-day attitude towards what 
 we are now pleased to call " psychic phenomena," and 
 what not, no sceptic could well have been more calm 
 and self-contained. His fancy revelled in ghosts, but 
 we do not read that he ever saw one. As a man among 
 men, he belonged, after all, to the century which had 
 given him birth. Unlike Gray, he could doubtless 
 have read the Castle ofOtranto late at night, and gone 
 to bed without a suggestion of trepidation. Lockhart 
 
220 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 records his belief that had Scott " sat on the judicial 
 bench a hundred years before he was born " which, 
 by the way, with all due deference to Lockhart's 
 English, would have been a matter of some difficulty 
 " no man would have been more certain to give 
 juries sound direction in estimating the pretended 
 evidence of supernatural occurrences of any sort." 1 
 This will hardly be questioned if we recall a passage 
 from Captain Basil Hall's reminiscences : 
 
 " In the course of a conversation about ghosts, fears in the 
 dark, and such matters, Sir Walter mentioned having once 
 arrived at a country inn, when he was told there was no bed 
 for him. ( No place to lie down at all ? ' said he. ' No,' said 
 the people of the house, * none, except a room in which there 
 is a corpse lying.' * Well,' said he, ' did the person die of any 
 contagious disorder ? ' * Oh no, not at all,' said they. * Well, 
 then,' continued he, ' let me have the other bed. So,' said Sir 
 Walter, ' I laid me down, and never had a better night's sleep in 
 my life.' " 2 
 
 Another incident is very much to the point. On 
 his way out of Italy, Scott decided to leave Rome 
 on a certain day, which happened to be Friday. He 
 was reminded that he ought not to set out on an 
 unlucky day. He answered, laughing, " Superstition 
 is very picturesque, and I make it at times stand me 
 in good stead ; but I never allow it to interfere with 
 interest or convenience." 8 
 
 There was, however, one large and important part 
 of the practical life where Scott allowed the invasion, 
 and even the domination of imagination and feeling 
 the whole area of politics. It would doubtless be a 
 mistake to assume that his ardent Toryism was made 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 758. 2 Ibid., p. 531. 3 Ibid., p. 748. 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 221 
 
 up of nothing beyond mere sentiment and romantic 
 affection for the feudal past; but it can hardly be 
 questioned that these were the most considerable and 
 potent elements in its composition. He did indeed 
 believe, as a matter of course, that he had good and 
 sufficient reasons for his faith, and on occasion, he 
 would set forth his ideas with no slight show of logic 
 and learning ; but, as Macaulay said of Southey, what 
 he called his opinions were, after all, really his tastes. 
 He developed his political creed outward from 
 his prejudices from emotional data and preposses- 
 sions. His fundamental argument, in nearly all cases, 
 was the argument from the status quo the thing 
 existed ; it had worked well, and only a reckless 
 spirit of innovation would prompt any one to tamper 
 with it. This was the inevitable result of his de- 
 pendence on the past, and "the wisdom of our 
 ancestors." Hence, the mere suggestion of change 
 was always sufficient to fire his impulse of opposition, 
 for his jealous regard of the Constitution, of the 
 social and political order into which he had been 
 born, would brook no investigation or experiment, 
 however wisely or cautiously conducted. Even when, 
 in 1806, certain exceedingly mild proposals were 
 made for the reform of the Scottish legal procedure, 
 he saw the national glory threatened, and gave voice 
 to his alarm in a long speech full of " the energy of 
 eloquence." Jeffrey and another friend afterwards 
 complimented him on the rhetorical powers he had 
 displayed, treating the occasion playfully. But Scott 
 was in deadly earnest. "No, no," he said, "'tis no 
 laughing matter ; little by little, whatever your wishes 
 
222 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 may be, you will destroy and undermine, until 
 nothing of what makes Scotland Scotland shall 
 remain." He turned away to conceal his agitation, 
 but not before Jeffrey had seen the tears " gushing 
 down his cheeks." l This was poetic Toryism with a 
 vengeance. Only one in whom, politically, feelings 
 were allowed to usurp the place of ideas, could have 
 detected in a simple attempt to get rid of a few 
 abuses in the law courts the ominous beginnings of 
 a vast and far-reaching national calamity. 
 
 In connection with one question which, as no 
 longer a vital one, did not obscure from Scott the 
 real nature of his own mental processes, he knew as 
 well as any one that sentiment was always strong, 
 and sometimes dangerously so, and that the dis- 
 crepancy between what he clearly saw to be right, 
 and what gave him imaginative pleasure, might, had 
 the issue been of practical importance, have been the 
 cause of some disturbance. Jacobitism he freely 
 acknowledged to be " indefensible in common-sense 
 and ordinary policy ; " yet he admitted a linger- 
 ing affection for it because of its " high-spirited 
 Quixotry ; " 2 a valiant Jacobite at ten, he had never 
 been quite able to get the gallantry of Prince Charles 
 out of his fancy. 3 We can well understand that Scott 
 could never have achieved his remarkable success in 
 depicting certain phases of historic movement and 
 character, had it not been for this emotional sympathy 
 with conditions and ideals upon which the intellect, 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 143. 
 
 2 Letter to Jeffrey (Letters, I., 430). 
 
 3 Letter to Surtees (Letters , I., 67). 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 223 
 
 unbiassed by feeling, would have passed an adverse 
 judgment. At the same time, it is evident that to 
 accept such emotional sympathy as our principal 
 guide, or even to permit it to deflect the current 
 of our thoughts, must practically disqualify us for 
 dealing with matters of " common-sense and ordinary 
 policy." And, to a large extent, Scott was so dis- 
 qualified. 
 
 It would be unnecessary, and perhaps undesirable, 
 to inquire further into Scott's political creed. Yet it 
 must be added that, however far we may agree with 
 that creed or dissent from it, it still remains true that 
 his connection with politics gave rise to the few in- 
 cidents recorded in his life which we could well wish 
 away. His attitude towards George IV. has already 
 been commented upon ; it is only needful, then, to say 
 further, that though there was not to Scott himself 
 anything of conscious flunkeyism about it, it is 
 unpleasantly and absurdly suggestive of flunkeyism 
 to those who cannot share his view of kingly pre- 
 rogative and prestige. The song which he wrote on 
 the acquittal of Lord Melville, in 1806, full as it is 
 of vulgar personalities and music-hall bravado, natur- 
 ally alienatecl many among his Whig friends ; and 
 Lockhart himself, despite his personal and political 
 bias, wisely enough makes no attempt to defend it. 
 Even worse than this, however, is the story of his 
 insult to Lord Holland. In 1810 he secured for his 
 brother, Tom, a minor appointment under himself as 
 Clerk of Session, which was worth annually about 
 250. Almost immediately after this, the Com- 
 mission on Scotch Jurisprudence recommended the 
 
224 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 abolition of the post, with the suggestion that the 
 then incumbent should be allowed a pension of ^"130 
 a year. Scott, who chose to regard the proposal in 
 the light of a personal affront, was exceedingly angry, 
 and vented a good deal of his wrath upon Lord 
 Holland, who had supported Lord Lauderdale in his 
 argument that the pension should not be given, since 
 it meant that Thomas Scott was to receive a life 
 indemnity for an office the duties of which he had 
 never performed. When, a little later, Scott met 
 Lord Holland at a public party in Edinburgh, he 
 deliberately cut him, as he boasted "with as little 
 remorse as an old pen." Jeffrey declared that this 
 was the only rudeness he had ever, in the course of a 
 life-long intimacy, known Scott to be guilty of. He 
 afterwards became reconciled to Lord Holland ; but 
 Lockhart admits that this incident proves " how even 
 his mind could at times be unhinged and perverted 
 by the malign influence of political spleen." 
 
 On the whole, however, Scott's noble nature and 
 masculine good sense swept away all social limita- 
 tions and partisan prejudices. His theories were 
 aristocratic and exclusive ; but no advocate of 
 universal brotherhood and equality could have had 
 broader sympathies or a wider range of friendships. 
 He hated the mob as mob "the rascal and un- 
 instructed populace," as he called it; but his easy 
 and genial intercourse with all sorts and conditions 
 of people, showed that he could discern and prize 
 wherever he found them, those essential elements of 
 character which dignify the lowest, and lend lustre to 
 the highest, rank. It is sometimes foolishly said that 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 225 
 
 Scott did not understand or care for what we are 
 accustomed, rather snobbishly, to describe as "the 
 people." Mr Whipple gives a short and effective 
 answer to the accusation if he did not, then he was 
 certainly not the author of the Waverley Novels! 
 Shortreed, we may remember, remarked how " brawlie 
 he suited himself to everybody ; " and Johnnie Bower, 
 the old keeper of Melrose, told Irving how the 
 Laird would " stand and crack and laugh " with him, 
 "just like an auld wife," adding, "and to think that of 
 a man that has such an awfu' knowledge of history." 2 
 " Sir Walter," an old retainer declared, " speaks to 
 every man as if he were his blood relation." We may, 
 perhaps, meet with professed radicals whose practical 
 democracy would not bear comparison with Scott's; 
 and it is this practical democracy, this comprehensive 
 sympathy of a large manhood, that we feel in nearly all 
 Scott's writings. Keen, and sometimes violent, as he 
 was in politics, he kept his politics out of literature, deal- 
 ing generously, and with almost Shakespearian charity, 
 with men of all classes and shades of opinion, and never 
 giving up to party " what was meant for mankind." 
 
 " The candour of Sir Walter's pen," wrote a contemporary, 
 who soundly hated Sir Walter's Toryism, " levels our bristling 
 prejudices . . . and sees fair play between Roundheads and 
 Cavaliers, between Protestant and Papist. He is a writer 
 reconciling all the diversities of human nature to the reader. 
 He does not enter into the distinctions of hostile sects o 
 parties, but treats of the strength or the infirmity of the human 
 mind, of the virtues or vices of the human heart, as they are 
 to be found blended in the whole of mankind." 3 
 
 1 Essays and Reviews , I., 323. 
 
 2 Lockhart, p. 353. 
 
 3 Hazlitt, Spirit of the Age, pp. 147-48. 
 
 P 
 
226 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 We have said thus much of Scott's political ideas, 
 because they demand special attention from any one 
 who would understand his character and work. Pass- 
 ing from them to his religion, we reach a subject upon 
 which, on the other hand, a very few words will suffice. 
 " The only Scottish thing that Scott had not in him," 
 says Professor Masson, " was Scotch metaphysics." 1 
 He had, to put the point a little more broadly, no 
 capacity for philosophic speculation or tendency 
 towards it ; the problems of the world, which pressed 
 so heavily upon the consciousness of his generation, 
 and give ours but little peace, interested him in the 
 slightest possible degree ; he hardly felt the " burden 
 of the mystery," and certainly never found himself 
 compelled to cast out the line of his thought into 
 the ocean of nescience around us in the hope of 
 sounding its immeasurable depths. In the case of a 
 man of this entirely unspeculative temper, who has 
 flashed no light for us into the darkness of life and 
 destiny, and who himself never brooded over the 
 everlasting questions of the whence, why, and whither 
 of our race, it would be idle to spend time in 
 analyzing the bases and results of religious thought. 
 The faith by which Scott lived was a faith which he 
 had accepted without trials, or wrestlings, or wringings 
 of the heart ; and though it had for him vitality and 
 meaning, he never set himself up as its special ex- 
 ponent or apostle. He was no theologian or religious 
 teacher, but a plain, simple, orthodox Christian, with 
 a wholesome eighteenth-century horror of too much 
 " enthusiasm," and a characteristic dread of allowing 
 
 1 British Novelists, p. 20 j. 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 227 
 
 the mind to dwell too long or too intently on spiritual 
 themes. " It is an awful sensation," he wrote in his 
 Journal, respecting a fluttering weakness of the heart, 
 "and would have made an enthusiast of me, had I 
 indulged my imagination on religious subjects." Such 
 a declaration not only marks certain most important 
 limitations in Scott's intellectual nature, but also en- 
 ables us to see why, amid all the countless characters 
 in his novels, he never drew a man or woman of 
 the deeply devout, introspective type, or, in his 
 revival of medievalism, gave us any picture of 
 passionate Christianity or the inner life of the 
 Catholic Church. 
 
 And as in his religion, so in his ethics, Scott 
 nowhere rises above the conventional thoughts and 
 feelings of his time. His morality, as we may see 
 very clearly in his letters to his eldest son, on his 
 making a start in life, was largely touched with the 
 shrewdness of the man of the world, who indeed loves 
 truth and virtue, but has still an eye for the main 
 chance. "To have lived respected and regarded by 
 some of the best men in our age," he once wrote to 
 his friend Morritt, " is enough for an individual like 
 me ; the rest must be as God wills, and when He 
 wills." * This may be a fair enough ideal so far as it 
 goes, but it certainly does not go very far. Scott was 
 willing, no man more so, to do his duty as he saw 
 it ; but his theory of duty was nowhere pitched too 
 high for the work-a-day world, and his leaning was 
 habitually towards social usage and the established 
 customs of life. His view of conduct was, indeed, to 
 1 Lockhart, p. 352. 
 
228 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 some extent coloured, as was always inevitable, by 
 his sympathies with the chivalrous past, as we may 
 note in his behaviour towards his scapegrace brother, 
 Daniel, and in his readiness, though he thoroughly 
 believed that duelling was inconsistent with the 
 Christian code, to give General Gourgaud the satis- 
 faction which "honour" was supposed to demand. 
 But if Scott's ethical theory and practice strike one 
 as a little too stereotyped and worldly, if he showed 
 a trifle too much respect for public opinion and the 
 fashions of the day, and has to be classed among 
 those who are quite at their ease in Zion, his life 
 may none the less be tried by severer tests than 
 we should care to apply to some who indulge in 
 constant posturings and heroics. There was nothing 
 of spiritual aloofness or puritan asceticism about him ; 
 he struggled against no overwhelming sense of sin ; 
 he lived frankly in and for the world, enjoying its 
 good things without raising any torturing questions 
 about them, or doubting for a moment his perfect 
 right to use them at their fullest worth. Thus he 
 will necessarily make, for some minds, an unimpressive 
 figure beside Wordsworth, or Coleridge, or Carlyle. 
 But his conduct was characterised throughout by rare 
 generosity, charity, a practical sympathy with all men; 
 he respected the sanctities of the domestic hearth ; he 
 never stooped to slander, meanness, or backbiting ; 
 and when his fortunes failed, he set a brave face 
 against trouble, and hastened death in the determined 
 effort to pay off his debts. Perhaps these may seem 
 old-fashioned and commonplace virtues to an age 
 which loves to talk about personal responsibility and 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 229 
 
 high ideals ; but then a good many rather admirable 
 things are old-fashioned and commonplace. 
 
 There is, however, one fundamental question in 
 connection with Scott's life it may almost be called 
 the fundamental question which has still to be 
 considered under the general head of his morality. 
 Scott's otherwise fine character is terribly marred, 
 and his whole career degraded for us, it is sometimes 
 said, by a spirit of " vulgar worldliness " not the less 
 contemptible, though very much the more surprising, 
 in that it is combined with splendid gifts and many 
 of the noblest qualities of sturdy manhood. This 
 is the gravamen of Carlyle's famous charge. To 
 Carlyle it seemed that Scott had prostituted mar- 
 vellous talents in the pursuit of a low aim ; that his 
 whole strength had been wasted in turning out 
 " impromptu novels " for the realisation of a paltry 
 ideal the purchase of land and the building of a 
 showy mansion. The accusation is harshly worded 
 it is whispered that personal reasons had something 
 to do with the petulance of the Sage and it is 
 seriously weakened by a thorough misapprehension 
 of the meaning to Scott himself of the worldly 
 ambitions which led to his downfall. At the same 
 time it does touch a point of vital interest, and, 
 properly supplemented by considerations which 
 Carlyle overlooked, enables us to realise the intimate 
 blending in Scott's nature of weakness and strength. 
 
 Scott loved wealth, and he toiled for it ; but his 
 love was not sordid, his toil not that of the mere 
 money-grubber, intent only on making haste to be 
 rich. The worldly ambitions, which to his stern 
 
230 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 censor seemed altogether petty and reprehensible, 
 were linked to a poetic dream, and Abbotsford itself 
 was an expression of his romanticism. The sense 
 of blood and family, the pride of birth and name, 
 lay at the very root of his genius. He/// his ancestry 
 and kinship as few can feel such things, and by the 
 study of deeds and contracts and memorials, in 
 which no one else would have taken the smallest 
 interest, he sought to realise them to his imagination. 
 He loved his country with an intense and absorbing 
 patriotism ; but even " the Scotland of his affections 
 had the clan Scott for her kernel." l The clan Scott, 
 and all that it stood for in his imaginative nature, 
 was the central principle of his career. Personal 
 fame, fortune, social success, were all subservient 
 to this, and derived their value from it. It is only 
 a very superficial or unsympathetic student of Scott 
 who would see in a simple desire to become lord 
 of many acres, and the master of a brand-new 
 baronial castle, the inspiring and controlling purpose 
 of his vast exertions. Scott would have found no 
 pleasure in the most magnificent dwelling-place in 
 Piccadilly or Park Row the humblest cottage in 
 Liddesdale would have been far more to his taste. The 
 most gorgeous vision of vast possessions, as Lockhart 
 rightly says, " would have had little charm for him 
 unless they were situated in Ettrick or Yarrow, or, 
 
 ' Pleasant Teviotdale, 
 Fast by the river Tweed ' 
 
 somewhere within the primeval territory of the 
 4 Rough Clan.'" 2 We may smile at these feudal 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 755. 2 Ibid., p. 755. 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 231 
 
 notions, which to most of us to - day, will appear 
 bizarre and far-fetched ; we may even go further, 
 and doubt, if we will, whether they are essentially 
 wiser and nobler than those of the retired grocer, 
 who makes up his mind to get into society, and 
 marry his daughter to a title. But at least it must 
 be admitted that Scott's ambitions were something 
 very different from this. Abbotsford itself, with its 
 "every outline copied from some old baronial edifice 
 in Scotland," and its roof and windows "blazoned 
 with clan bearings, or the lion rampant gules, or 
 the heads of the ancient Stuart kings," may seem 
 to us a strange object to have lived and wrought 
 for. But to Scott it was the materialisation of his 
 aspirations and his dreams the translation into 
 the concrete and tangible of a romance which was 
 nourished by his feeling for family, his patriotism, 
 his love of the past, and all that was deepest in 
 his character. It symbolised his own connection 
 with the great historic traditions of his country 
 and his clan, and it promised to carry his own 
 life forward through the long generations of those 
 who, flesh of his flesh, and blood of his blood, 
 should thereafter dwell in the halls he had built, 
 and wander in the woods he had planted. 
 
 " Should your heirs-male not exist," he wrote to his second 
 son, on the settlement of the property, " there will be an end 
 of the baronets of Abbotsford, as there has been of the four 
 monarchies of the world, and the estate may go, for me, where 
 the law will carry it." 1 
 
 1 Letters^ II. 229. It is pathetic to note the failure of Scott's ambition 
 to found a family. Charles died unmarried, and Walter without issue, 
 and thus there was an end of the baronets of Abbotsford. 
 
232 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 His passion for wealth and territory had thus an end 
 beyond itself, and one which no other achievement 
 or success was for a moment allowed to obscure. 
 Certainly, no defence of Scott on this point will be 
 undertaken by the present writer. But a compre- 
 hension of the real nature of his aims, and some 
 amount of provisional sympathy with them, are 
 necessary, if we would be just in our treatment 
 of him. 
 
 "Biography," wrote Scott in one of his letters, 
 "the most interesting, perhaps, of any species of 
 composition, loses all its interest with me, when 
 the shades and lights of the principal character are 
 not accurately and faithfully detailed." The Devil's 
 Advocate may do his worst, and the lover of Scott 
 will still be assured that here for once is a man 
 who has little to lose and much to gain from 
 accurate and faithful portraiture. He was tried by 
 the double test of adversity and prosperity, and 
 our common nature may well feel proud of the 
 results. u God bless thee, Walter, my man," said 
 his aged uncle Thomas, when the master of Abbots- 
 ford was at the very height of his fame, " thou hast 
 risen to be great, but thou wast always good." 
 Posterity has endorsed that homely verdict. And 
 let it be remembered that we know Scott as we 
 know no other great writer, except Johnson, and 
 that the minute and candid record given by Lock- 
 hart leaves us with an abiding impression of the 
 man's goodness and personal charm. As Mr Glad- 
 stone said of him Scott " has left us a double 
 treasure the memory of himself and the possession 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 233 
 
 of his works ; " and it is safe to say that the 
 memory will prove as enduring as the works. 
 Closing Lockhart's massive volume, we may all 
 echo the words of Tennyson : 
 
 " O great and gallant Scott, 
 True gentleman, heart, blood, and bone, 
 I would it had been my lot 
 To have seen thee, and heard thee, and known ! " 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 SCOTT AS A POET 
 
 WHAT is commonly called the English romantic 
 revival, at the close of the eighteenth century, 
 was, as may be seen from the simple fact that men 
 of such dissimilar theories and aims in poetry as 
 Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, and Byron, are to be 
 reckoned as its principal leaders, a movement of 
 extreme and almost bewildering complexity. It is 
 too often forgotten that any body of imaginative 
 literature, depending as it does upon the entire 
 intellectual and social life of the generation out of 
 which it springs, can never be properly understood 
 until it is dealt with in immediate and vital con- 
 nection with that life until it is investigated as a 
 function of its many conflicting forces. It is a usual 
 habit, therefore, to treat romanticism as a trans- 
 formation of literary ideals and fashions merely, 
 and to identify it as a whole with some one or two 
 of its more conspicuous aspects to describe it, for 
 example, as at bottom, the reaction from pseudo- 
 classicism, or the renaissance of wonder and mystery, 
 or a return to nature. But such a view is, of course, 
 exceedingly superficial. Romanticism, like every 
 other great literary development, is to be considered 
 
SCOTT AS A POET 235 
 
 as one expression of deep and far-reaching spiritual 
 changec ; and all its many-sided experiments and 
 intricate ramifications the break-up of the formal 
 traditions of the so-called Augustan school, the 
 growth of a fresh admiration for the older masters of 
 English song, the return to the mood and outlook of 
 the middle ages, the love of nature and of rural life, 
 the spread of sentimentalism, and of the temper of 
 individual and social revolt have to be affiliated 
 upon the central facts of eighteenth-century life, 
 and in terms of these must find their ultimate 
 interpretation. 
 
 Complex, then, on account of the extraordinary 
 complexity of the causes at work, the slowly 
 growing romantic movement of the second half of 
 the eighteenth century undoubtedly was; yet it is 
 possible to simplify our study of it by marking out 
 one or two of its broader and swifter currents. The 
 most important of these were the tendency towards 
 naturalism, or the direct and unconventional handling 
 of the simple facts of ordinary life, and the tendency 
 towards what is specifically called romance, or the 
 free and imaginative treatment of the unusual, the 
 remote, and the supernatural. Both of these move- 
 ments may be traced far back into the century, and 
 both had reached a high stage of development 
 the one, for instance, in the poetry of Blake, Cowper, 
 and Crabbe, the other in the romances of Horace 
 Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, and Matthew Gregory Lewis 
 before they were exemplified, side by side, in that 
 epoch-marking little volume, the Lyrical Ballads. In 
 what way these apparently unrelated and even opposed 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 236, 
 
 tendencies were in reality allied efforts to escape 
 from the characteristic eighteenth-century view of life, 
 it does not fall within our present purpose to discuss. 
 It is sufficient to have pointed out this double trend 
 in the literary movements of the opening of the 
 nineteenth century, since our object is simply to 
 understand the historic position of the author of The 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel. 
 
 Scott's place, then, in the evolution of English 
 poetry, is perfectly clear. He is the first great 
 modern exponent of all 
 
 medievalism and romance. The Gothic revival 
 the gradual awakening of interest in the life and 
 literature of what had long been passed over 
 as the dark ages may be followed, faintly at 
 first, but with ever-increasing distinctness, in the 
 writings of Parnell, Thomson, Collins, Gray, the 
 Wartons, Beattie, Chatterton, Walpole, Percy, and 
 many another man of minor note. Scott sums up 
 their efforts and completes their work ; and coming 
 with a strength and genius, which none of them had 
 possessed, into a ^ world which they had largely pre- 
 pared for him, he made feudalism and chivalry and 
 knightly adventure the popular rage. And he did 
 this, as men of supreme power are apt to do things : 
 without any conscious or set attempt to overthrow 
 established critical ideals, or to bring them into line 
 with his particular achievements. His personal taste 
 in poetry inclined him a good deal to productions of 
 an entirely different class from his own, for he loved 
 Dryden, greatly enjoyed Crabbe, and regarded The 
 Vanity of Human Wishes as one of the noblest 
 
SCOTT AS A POET 237 
 
 possessions of English verse. Goethe somewhere 
 profoundly says that a man's philosophy is often the 
 supplement, rather than the expression, of his 
 character. Perhaps the same may be true of a man's 
 critical theories, since it is evident that we may 
 frequently admire most the very things which it is 
 not in our power to produce, and for no other reason 
 than because we know it is not in our power to produce 
 them. At any rate, Scott, unlike Wordsworth, never set 
 out to accomplish a poetic revolution. But as the fore- 
 runner of Byron, and the real popularizer of the romantic 
 movement, he did accomplish one none the less. 
 
 To understand how Scott came to occupy his place 
 in the history of English poetry, we must remember 
 that, however far his critical taste may have been 
 coloured by the academic surroundings of his youth 
 in Edinburgh, the roots of his genius ran deep down 
 into the romantic past. It is altogether a mistake to 
 seek, as Carlyle and others after him have done, the 
 principal moulding forces of Scott's work in German 
 literature. In a general way, his German studies, and 
 the experiments to which they led, helped him, as we 
 have seen, to a realisation of his own powers, while 
 Goetz must certainly be counted among the direct 
 impulses which carried him to the Border Minstrelsy. 
 But after all, the true formative influences of his life 
 were of no such merely bookish or second-hand 
 character. Like the minstrel in Beattie's poem, he 
 was nourished from the first by legend and story, and 
 breathed an atmosphere surcharged with memories of 
 the wild old Border days. It is needful to emphasize 
 again all we have said in our earlier chapters of his 
 
238 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 childhood at Sandy Knowe, the Highland wanderings 
 of his young manhood, and the later Liddesdale raids 
 in which, unconsciously, he was " making himself all 
 the time." It is in these experiences that we mark 
 the real line of his growth. They brought him face 
 to face with the heroic past, with men and women 
 who were the repositories of traditions which had not 
 yet been stereotyped as literature, and with customs, 
 feelings, and ideals which, though already things of 
 mere history to dwellers in London, or even in 
 Edinburgh, had still somewhat of their ancient vitality 
 in the lives of the primitive country-folk among 
 whom his lot was largely cast. His relation to that 
 past which gave at once the matter and the inspira- 
 tion of his song, was not the relation of mere scholar- 
 ship or of intellectual curiosity not the relation of 
 the dilettante or the outsider. The blood of the old 
 fighters, with whose deeds the Border ballads rang, 
 was in his own veins ; he felt himself an offshoot of 
 their strong, heroic stock ; he knew every spot 
 associated with the stories which had clustered about 
 their names. 
 
 " O Caledonia ! stern and wild, 
 Meet nurse for a poetic child ! 
 Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, 
 Land of the mountain and the flood, 
 Land of my sires ! what mortal hand 
 Can e'er untie the filial band, 
 That knits me to thy rugged strand ! " 
 
 The writer of these glowing lines, like the old 
 minstrel into whose mouth they are put, was filled 
 with passionate devotion to the rich part of his 
 country, and felt on every side his near connection 
 
SCOTT AS A POET 
 
 with it. He knew it, and realised it, in all its wide 
 and deep and vital significance, with a vividness 
 impossible to those who touch the life of bygone 
 generations only through their books. 
 
 ^And. as Srot-fc-s- genius-was fed by the romantic . 
 past, so it was the literature of that past which gave 
 his own work its very form and pressure. Critics of 
 a certain school have been much exercised over the 
 question whether his verse-romances are properly to 
 be classed as " epics," and even Matthew Arnold, who 
 should have known better, insisted on applying to 
 the style of these productions the " highest standards " 
 of epic composition standards, that is, derived by 
 analysis from the study of works totally different in 
 their origin and general structure, and then established 
 as final and permanent criteria of taste. Scott him- 
 self, wiser in this matter than his academic censors, 
 has deprecated any such test, and speaks of Marmion 
 as simply a " romantic tale." This definition is sub- 
 stantially correct. For all that was most essential 
 and characteristic in his poetry was the direct 
 outgrowth, not of classic literatures or the modern 
 literatures which have been founded upon them, but 
 of the popular ballad and mediaeval romance. He 
 had what Arnold called the "balladist's mind," and 
 being himself pre-eminently the minstrel, the trouvere^ 
 the story-teller in verse, his work was, from the 
 start, the natural development and expansion of the 
 ballad type. Thus he gave us, as we have said, 
 a new poetry fashioned out of the old a poetry 
 which combined the strength, simplicity, and direct- 
 ness of ancient song with something of the grace 
 
24 o SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 and refinement of modern art. 1 His friend, William 
 Erskine, himself a careful student of the Greek and 
 Latin poets, had done his utmost to turn his attention 
 to classic models. " Oft hast thou said," writes Scott 
 paraphrasing the argument, 
 
 " If, still misspent, 
 Thine hours to poetry are lent, 
 Go, and to tame thy wandering course, 
 Quaff from the fountain at the source ; 
 Approach those masters o'er whose tomb 
 Immortal laurels ever bloom ; 
 Instructive of the feebler bard, 
 Still from the grave their voice is heard ; 
 From them, and from the paths they show'd, 
 Chose honour'd guide and practised road ; 
 Nor ramble on through brake and maze 
 With harpers rude of barbarous days." 
 
 But such, with all their rudeness, were, Scott protests, 
 his rightful and pre-destined masters ; and glancing 
 back, in the delightful autobiographical passage 
 already quoted, 2 over the scenes and incidents of 
 his childhood, he replies that nature and training 
 have given him his direction, and that it is useless 
 now to interfere : 
 
 " For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask 
 The classic poet's well-conn'd task ? 
 Nay, Erskine, nay on the wild hill 
 Let the wild heath-flower flourish still ; 
 Cherish the tulip, prune the vine, 
 But freely let the woodbine twine, 
 And leave untrimm'd the eglantine." 3 
 
 1 Reference may be made here to the exceedingly interesting and 
 suggestive comparison between Homer and Scott, instituted by Prof. 
 R. C. Jebb, in his Homer^ chap. i. 
 
 2 See ante, chap. i. 3 Marmion ; Introduction to Canto III. 
 
SCOTT AS A POET 
 
 We have spoken of Scott as the first great modern 
 exponent of mediae valism and romance, as the man 
 who, of all others, was mainly responsible for that 
 enthusiasm for the Gothic past, for that imaginative 
 idealisation of the regime of chivalry, which were 
 characteristic of the early years of the present 
 century, and have long remained potent forces in 
 European literature. Yet his own work inevitably 
 exhibits the well-marked limitations of his character 
 and outlook upon the world. His martial spirit 
 gave quick and sympathetic response to the martial 
 spirit of the feudal ages ; he sang their wars, their 
 knightly adventures, their daring deeds, their loves 
 and enchantments. But a large and exceedingly 
 important to many of us to-day by far the most 
 important aspect of their life was altogether shut 
 off from his view. He felt nothing of their passion- 
 ate, emotional craving, their religious fervour, their 
 spiritual self-torture, their mysticism, asceticism, and 
 other-worldness. The secret of Dante and the 
 early Italian painters was a secret he had never 
 penetrated ; the faith which built the cathedrals of 
 Europe was a faith he could not understand ; his 
 very love of mediaeval ruins was the love of the 
 poetic antiquary, and had in it no element of 
 warm reverence or devotion. He utilises, of course, 
 the forms and ceremonies of the church, and many 
 of the practical manifestations of religious feeling. 
 But he handles such things as he handles the 
 vagaries of superstition, for picturesque and dramatic 
 purposes only ; he makes no attempt to break 
 through them with the view of laying bare their 
 
 Q 
 
242 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 essential meanings; they are to him what the gods 
 and goddesses of the- Homeric world were to the 
 poets and critics of the eighteenth century the 
 "machinery" of his stories. Properly to define 
 Scott's position we must, therefore, add that he 
 represents the great Gothic renaissance on its ob- 
 jective side alone ; his work, in other words, contains 
 the rehabilitation of the external life, but does not 
 lead us into the inner struggles and experiences, of 
 the chivalrous past. Here, manifestly, we touch the 
 fundamental difference between the spirit of Scott 
 and the spirit which, shortly after his death, pro- 
 duced the Oxford movement, and the Catholic 
 reaction of Newman and his followers, and wrought 
 with such startling results in the entire Pre-Raphaelite 
 revival. It is more than doubtful whether he would 
 have taken the slightest interest in the work of 
 Holman Hunt or Burne Jones, and certainly he 
 could never have appreciated, or even understood, 
 such esoteric outbreathings of mystical faith as The 
 Blessed Damozel, Ave, or World's Worth. We have 
 said before, and more than once, that Scott was in 
 many respects a man of the eighteenth century and 
 of the practical every-day world, and it is important 
 to lay stress upon the fact again in this place. With 
 the mediaeval movement as a spiritual force he would 
 have had nothing whatever to do, except perhaps 
 to oppose it where he saw it tending towards the 
 Catholicism he thoroughly despised. That indirectly 
 he gave it an impulse in this direction, is only an 
 illustration of the obvious but unpleasant fact, that 
 the work men do is frequently fraught with con- 
 
SCOTT AS A POET 243 
 
 sequences of which they never for a moment 
 dreamed. 
 
 In recognising these large and important limitations 
 in Scott's character and production, we are brought 
 back again to the point already made. Dealing as he 
 does with the external life only of the feudal past, 
 with its varied picturesqueness and romance, he has to 
 be considered as essentially what Hazlitt, forgetting 
 of how small a number the class of successful trouveres 
 is actually composed, deprecatingly describes as a 
 "mere narrative and descriptive poet." On this ground, 
 however, it is safe to say that, whatever changes literary 
 fashions may hereafter undergo, he will hold his place 
 secure. His powers are perhaps shown at their highest 
 in some of his ballads, a fact interesting in itself as 
 indicating the true affiliations of his genius ; and for 
 this reason that, while no poet has ever managed 
 certain kinds of isolated incidents with finer effect, he 
 rarely succeeds in bringing his materials together into 
 a compact and well-balanced whole. The Lady of 
 the Lake, indeed, is the only one of his verse-romances 
 which, structurally, is to be pronounced at all satis- 
 factory ; Rokeby^ which, perhaps, in this respect may 
 be put second in the list, exhibits no clear movement 
 of events towards a natural climax ; in The Lay of the 
 Last Minstrel and The Lord of the Isles, there is no 
 firm backbone of plot at all ; and in Marmion the 
 story is so confused that only a very careful reader is 
 likely, on first perusal, to understand exactly what it 
 is all about. His ideal, therefore, would seem to have 
 been the production of a series of brilliant scenes 
 threaded on just so much of a continuous narrative 
 
244 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 as would serve to hold them together. Into such 
 components, at any rate, his poems, under analysis, 
 readily resolve themselves. But with what marvellous 
 force and vividness these separate scenes are brought 
 before the imagination ! Only abnormally conscien- 
 tious people, I suspect, are likely to trouble themselves 
 very much about the part which the Goblin Page does 
 or does not play in the old minstrel's rambling tale. 
 But every one remembers the opening description of 
 Branksome Hall, and Deloraine's night-ride to Melrose, 
 and the simple but graphic verses which tell us how, 
 from the battlements, Lady Margaret caught sight of 
 the beacon-fires of war : 
 
 " Is yon the star, o'er Penchryst Pen 
 That rises slowly to her ken, 
 And, spreading broad its wavering light, 
 Shakes its loose tresses on the night ? 
 Is yon red glare the western star? 
 Oh ! 'tis the beacon blaze of war ! 
 Scarce could she draw her tightened breath, 
 For well she knew the fire of death ! 
 The warder view'd it blazing strong, 
 And blew his war-note loud and long, 
 Till at the high and haughty sound, 
 Rock, wood, and river rung around. 
 The blast alarm'd the festal hall, 
 And started forth the warriors all ; 
 Far downward in the castle yard, 
 Full many a torch and cresset glared ; 
 And helms and plumes confusedly toss'd 
 Now in the blaze half-seen, half-lost ; 
 And spears in wild disorder shook, 
 Like reeds beside a frozen brook." 1 
 
 Akin to this narrative power, and forming indeed 
 
 1 Lay of the Last Minstrel, III, 25-26. 
 
 
SCOTT AS A POET 245 
 
 an essential element in it, is the power of rapid and 
 vivid description of scenery and people a power 
 concerning which there has never been any serious 
 question even among critics who do not care in the 
 least for Scott's poetry as a whole, and are disposed 
 to deny it almost every other poetic excellence. 
 His pictures of still-life, both in his full-drawn 
 landscapes and in his hasty and incidental sketches 
 by the way, furnish unsurpassed examples of the 
 broad and simple treatment of nature which is more 
 characteristic of earlier ages than of the self-involved 
 and sophisticated modern world. It should be noted 
 that Scott's handling of scenery is thoroughly suc- 
 cessful only when he is on his own familiar soil, 
 wandering among the grey hills, which he loved for 
 their very nakedness, or treading the heather, of 
 which he said to Irving, that, could he not see it at 
 least once a year, he thought he should die ; and if 
 the Southern reader is occasionally inclined to com- 
 plain of the superabundance of topographical detail, 
 he will hardly urge the objection when he realises, in 
 passing, for instance, from The Lady of the Lake to 
 Rokeby, how the landscape assumes a got-up and guide- 
 book character as the writer leaves the spots endeared to 
 him by ties of birth and tradition. It is not easy for 
 us, to-day, I am afraid, to rate Scott as a nature-poet 
 quite at his actual worth, because we are attracted 
 and held by a method of treating the external world 
 altogether different from his. He was straight- 
 forward, direct, objective ; he loved nature for its 
 beauty of form and colour ; he took a kind of primi- 
 tive delight in the fresh air, the mountains, the clouds 
 
246 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 and the sunshine ; and if these feelings were some- 
 times blended with others of a more reflective sort, 
 it was when his habit of looking at all things in 
 the light of the past, led him to steep his scenes in 
 historical associations and memories. We, on the 
 other hand, have been taught by Wordsworth and his 
 followers to regard Nature mystically, as in some 
 way the garment and symbol of the Divine ; to 
 brood over it in a mood of spiritual contemplation, 
 lay ourselves open to its soothing and uplifting 
 influences, and force it to become both the recipient 
 and the exponent of our own human joys and sorrows. 
 Nothing of this is in Scott ; he sees with the sensual 
 eye and hears with the sensual ear alone. And as 
 over his landscape there lingers none of the 
 
 "Light that never was on sea or land, 
 The consecration, and the poet's dream " 
 
 as he gives us nowhere any sense of the Divine 
 Soul in outward things, that 
 
 Something far more deeply interfused, 
 Who, dwelling in the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man 
 
 as, in a word, he paints his scenes from the exterior 
 only, and as simple backgrounds to dramatic action, 
 it is inevitable that we should fail to respond to his 
 touch as we respond to the touch of Wordsworth, or 
 Arnold, or Tennyson. But all this need not interfere 
 with our recognition of the high pictorial power 
 displayed, for instance, in the almost too familiar 
 Melrose night-piece, or in such passages as those 
 
SCOTT AS A POET 247 
 
 describing Loch Katrine, in The Lady of the Lake> 
 Edinburgh as seen from Blackford Hill in Marmion^ 
 and the barren glen in The Lord of the Isles ; or, 
 again, in the following sketch of the ruder and harsher 
 aspects of a northern winter : 
 
 " When red hath set the beamless sun, 
 Through heavy vapours dark and dun ; 
 When the tired ploughman, dry and warm, 
 Hears, half asleep, the rising storm 
 Hurling the hail, and sleeted rain, 
 Against the casement's tinkling pane ; 
 The sounds that drive wild deer and fox 
 To shelter in the brakes and rocks, 
 Are warnings which the shepherd ask 
 To dismal and to dangerous task. 
 Oft he looks forth, and hopes in vain, 
 The blast may sink in mellowing rain ; 
 Till, dark above, and white below, 
 Decided drives the flaky snow, 
 And forth the hardy swain must go. 
 Long, with dejected look and whine, 
 To leave the hearth his dogs repine ; 
 Whistling and cheering them to aid, 
 Around his back he wreathes the plaid ; 
 His flocks he gathers and he guides, 
 To open downs and mountain sides, 
 Where fiercest though the tempest blow, 
 Least deeply lies the drift below. 
 The blast, that whistles o'er the fells, 
 Stiffens his locks to icicles ; 
 Oft he looks back, while streaming far 
 His cottage window seems a star, 
 Loses its feeble gleam, and then 
 Turns patient to the blast again, 
 And, facing to the tempest's sweep, 
 Drives through the gloom his lagging sheep. 
 If fails his heart, if his limbs fail, 
 Benumbing death is in the gale ; 
 
248 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 His paths, his landmarks all unknown, 
 Close to the hut no more his own, 
 Close to the aid he sought in vain, 
 The morn may find the stiffen'd swain 
 The widow sees, at dawning pale, 
 His orphans raise their feeble wail ; 
 And, close beside him in the snow, 
 Poor Yarrow, partner of their woe, 
 Crouches upon his master's breast, 
 And licks his cheek to break his rest." * 
 
 It may be said that this passage is in more than one 
 place reminiscent of the eighteenth-century style 
 that it reminds us. for example, of Akenside and 
 Thomson, both of whom have depicted a precisely 
 similar scene. But in the massing of effective detail, in 
 the extraordinary truthfulness and felicity of occasional 
 touches, and in the sense of reality which the whole 
 picture leaves, it need hardly be said that here we 
 have an achievement altogether beyond their range. 
 
 The most obvious faults of Scott's descriptions of 
 nature, places, and people, are due to his antiquarian 
 zeal and instinct of historic association qualities which 
 lead him occasionally to the accumulation of so many 
 minutiae of architecture, local allusion, and dress, that 
 what he intends for a picture becomes a mere inventory 
 or catalogue. But it is very rarely that such defects 
 are to be noted in his scenes of movement and action, 
 in which Scott is almost always at his best. When 
 once his blood is up, he troubles himself about nothing 
 but essentials, and these he moulds and fuses in the 
 white heat of imagination. There is no undigested 
 matter to clog the rapid, rushing verses in Deloraine's 
 
 1 Marmion : Introduction to Canto IV. 
 
SCOTT AS A POET 249 
 
 headlong ride, already referred to, in the splendid 
 gallop to Stirling, 1 in the speeding of the Fiery 
 Cross, 2 or the burning of Rokeby Castle. And in 
 concentrated dramatic power, it would be hard, in 
 narrative poetry, to beat the well-known scene of the 
 sudden appearance of Clan Alpine. Fitzjames, it will 
 be remembered, has been telling his unknown com- 
 panion on the mountain journey how he longed to 
 meet the rebel chief, Roderick Dhu, and his band. 
 " Have then thy wish," the other replies 
 
 " He whistled shrill, 
 And he was answered from the hill; 
 Wild as the scream of the curlew 
 From crag to crag the signal flew. 
 Instant, through copse and heath, arose 
 Bonnets, and spears, and bended bows; 
 On right, on left, above, below, 
 Sprung up at once the lurking foe. 
 From shingles grey their lances start, 
 The bracken bush sends forth the dart, 
 The rushes and the willow wand 
 Are bristling into axe and brand, 
 And every tuft of broom gives life 
 To plaided warrior arm'd for strife. 
 That whistle garrison'd the glen 
 At once with full five hundred men, 
 As if the yawning hill to heaven 
 A subterranean host had given. 
 Watching their leader's beck and will, 
 All silent there they stood, and still. 
 Like the loose crags, whose threatening mass 
 Lay tottering o'er the hollow pass, 
 As if an infant's touch could urge 
 Their headlong passage down the verge, 
 
 1 The Lady of the Lake, V. 18, 19. 2 Ibid., III. 3, 24. 
 
250 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 With step and weapon forward flung, 
 Upon the mountain side they hung. 
 The mountaineer cast glance of pride 
 Along Benledi's living side, 
 Then fix'd his eye and sable brow 
 Full on Fitzjames l How say'st thou now ? 
 These are Clan Alpine's warriors true ; 
 And, Saxon, I am Roderick Dhu I'" 1 
 
 But it is, of course, in his battle-pieces that Scott 
 shines forth supreme. Whenever there is fighting 
 forward, he is certain to rise to the occasion. He is 
 pre-eminently the great modern poet of war, not of 
 its horrors and its ghastliness, but of its pomp and 
 circumstance, its stir, its heroisms, its gallantries. 
 The fight upon the hill-side which follows the passage 
 just transcribed, the skirmish of Beal' an Duin, 2 
 Bannockburn, 3 and half a dozen other scenes which 
 are thrown into the shade only by Flodden Field 
 itself, mark him out as the one latter-day inheritor 
 of Homer's martial lyre. " His poetry," as John 
 Wilson declared, " might make a very coward fear- 
 less/' 4 Nowhere else do we get the same vigour 
 and breadth, the same thrill of excitement, the same 
 realisation of the " stern joy" of combat ; by no other 
 such verse, and this in spite of Scott's habit of 
 slurring over or omitting altogether the harsher 
 features of his picture, are we given a more vivid 
 feeling of the rush and turmoil of the field. This 
 much may be freely admitted even by those of us 
 to whom the war-sentiment itself is thoroughly 
 
 1 The Lady of the Lake, v. 9. 2 Ibid., vi. 15-21. 
 
 3 The ord of the Isles. * Blackwood 1 * Magazine, July 1818. 
 
SCOTT AS A POET 251 
 
 abhorrent, and who would be delighted if they could 
 only believe in a coming reign of universal peace. 
 And our admission, which may perhaps mean little, 
 and which may even be rather grudgingly made, is 
 sustained by the testimony of those who, having 
 themselves smelt gunpowder, would be quick to 
 detect the artificiality of any merely drawing-room 
 heroics. The episode of BeaP an Duin, just alluded 
 to, was read by Sir Adam Fergusson to his soldiers, 
 while they were occupying a point of country " ex- 
 posed to the enemy's artillery ; somewhere no doubt 
 on the line of Torres Valles." Lying prostrate on 
 the ground, they listened intently to the description, 
 interrupting their commander only "by a joyous 
 huzza, when the French shot struck the bank close 
 above them." l It is not often that a poet's account 
 of a battle is put to such a practical test as this ; 
 and the cheers of the soldiers, lying unprotected 
 under the peltering fire of the foe, is worth reams 
 of condescending eulogy from critics in their studies. 
 Scott's narrative and descriptive powers would, in 
 themselves, have been sufficient to account for the 
 astonishing success of his verse-romances in their 
 own day, and for the vogue they have long enjoyed 
 among the many who otherwise pay little regard to 
 poetry. But his wide and immediate appeal to the 
 general and uncritical public, to the public which 
 had turned a deaf ear to Wordsworth and Coleridge, 
 also depended in part upon what, with no necessarily 
 disparaging intention, we can only describe as the 
 
 1 Lockhart, p. 207, 
 
252 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 thoroughly commonplace character of his material. 
 He carries us away with him into the far-off 
 domains of romance and chivalry, but it is not the 
 dream-country of Christabel or The Bride's Prelude, in 
 which we find ourselves when we yield to his spell. 
 The average reader is surprised to discover that the 
 soil of his Fairyland is solid beneath the feet he 
 does not have to stamp about, as Jowett is said to 
 have done while studying Kant, to convince himself 
 that the world is real. Nor, in order to appreciate 
 Scott, have we to go through any intellectual contor- 
 tions to get at his point of view. It is a point of 
 view perfectly natural to the natural man. He has 
 no idiosyncrasies to bewilder us, no strange theory 
 of things to confuse, no odd bias of mind for which 
 constant allowance has to be made. He deals with 
 events and feelings which everybody can understand, 
 uses a familiar vocabulary, indulges in nothing 
 beyond the most stereotyped moralisings, and draws 
 his imagery from a range of experiences and ideas 
 open to all. Learned as he is, there is absolutely 
 nothing bookish about him no literary airs or 
 mannerisms, no habit of remote suggestion or allusion. 
 The only qualification he demands is ability to read 
 his printed page. Thus it comes about that he is not 
 the poet's poet, or the critic's poet, or the poet of the 
 thinker and the scholar ; but a poet whose " hurried 
 frankness of composition " the words are his own 
 endears him to " soldiers, sailors, and young people 
 of bold and active disposition." 
 
 Every one who writes on Scott is bound to point 
 out though the thing has been done by dozens 
 
SCOTT AS A POET 253 
 
 before him that he has the inevitable faults of 
 his qualities. His poetry is full of banality, of 
 commonplace, in the narrow acceptation of the 
 word, as well as in the broad sense in which we 
 have just used it. He is the most remorseless of 
 improvisatores. He turns out yards of the flattest 
 stuff, which is only not prose because it is 
 chopped into " eights " and tagged with more or less 
 successful rhymes. Often enough the good Homer 
 not only nods but snores outright. His "hurried 
 frankness " means absence of apparent effort, strain, 
 self-consciousness, and the smell of the lamp. But 
 it means also the adoption of the first word that 
 comes handy, and all the slovenliness resulting from 
 that " fatal facility" which was Scott's bane. Not 
 indeed that he is to be lightly condemned for just 
 letting himself go. His own way of work was un- 
 doubtedly for him the best way ; as he realised in 
 the case of Rokeby, he must be spontaneous, or fail 
 utterly, since correction and elaboration with him 
 signified not improvement, but coldness and sterility. 
 But the fact remains that the " Cossack manner " told 
 from the beginning, and must always tell sadly 
 against him in the high court of criticism. No 
 poet can live by art alone; but it is art, after all, 
 which puts the seal of immortality upon his work. 
 
 But more serious than the defects inseparable from 
 hurry and consequent carelessness, is Scott's total 
 lack of distinction, of verbal magic, of the curiosa 
 felicitas of expression, and of the power to flash a 
 sudden new meaning into things by the inspired turn 
 of a line or unerring choice of an epithet. He is 
 
254 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 the least rememberable of poets in all his many 
 thousands of verses there is scarcely one that clings. 
 Even though we may not agree with certain older 
 critics in believing that a writer is to be judged mainly 
 by the " elegant extracts " that may be culled from his 
 books, or with a modern school of smart novelists and 
 essayists who appear to imagine that the manufacture 
 of epigrams is the chief end of literature, this point is 
 still to be reckoned one of supreme importance. 
 Scott has given us none of those 
 
 "Jewels, five words long, 
 That on the stretch'd forefinger of old Time 
 Sparkle for ever " 
 
 none of those haunting snatches of melody which 
 make music for us as we walk the crowded streets ; 
 none of those unforgettable phrases in which " all the 
 charm of all the muses " flowers in a single word. 
 How many of his lines have wrought themselves into 
 our common language, and become the current coin 
 of thought ? How many, in point of fact, deserve a 
 place in the most comprehensive dictionary of 
 quotations ? It is not simply that his moralising was 
 of the tritest. So was Pope's ; but then Pope 
 succeeded in giving such terse and final expression 
 to the commonplace that he made the most ordinary 
 ideas his own, re-minting them, so to speak, with his 
 image and superscription. Scott possessed the power 
 neither to enter into and reveal the unusual aspects of 
 things, nor to give the usual in a new and striking 
 form. He is often and very justly compared with 
 Shakespeare. But here is one fundamental point o 1 
 
SCOTT AS A POET 255 
 
 contrast between them. Scott carries no weight of 
 thought with him, and his phrasing is singularly 
 uninspired. Shakespeare is master of the whole 
 wisdom of life, and often crystallises an essay into 
 a couple of pregnant lines. 
 
 All this means that Scott can never be the 
 companion poet, the guide, counsellor, and friend of 
 mature and thoughtful men and women in this 
 generation or the generations to come. He offers us 
 minstrel song and story, stirring ballads, picturesque 
 incidents, and glimpses of fresh, breezy, out-of-doors 
 life. Such things are excellent in themselves ; they 
 please us from time to time, but we cannot rest in 
 them ; and more than these Scott has not to give. 
 He had not " the vision and the faculty divine ; " he 
 was not in touch with the deeper passions, the 
 perennial aspirations of human nature ; as Words- 
 worth is reputed to have said of him in con- 
 versation, he never addressed himself to the 
 immortal part of man. In his poetry, as Carlyle 
 complains, the sick heart will find no healing, the 
 struggling heart no guidance, the heroic that is in all 
 men no divine, awakening voice. The " riddle of the 
 painful earth " remains untouched by him ; the great 
 facts and problems of the spiritual life all but 
 unrecognised. For these reasons he is not to be 
 placed among the really great poets of the world. It 
 has become a habit to sneer at the kind of criticism 
 which demands a " message " from poetry ; and such 
 criticism undoubtedly tends to a puritan narrowness 
 of sympathy and hardness of judgment. But to 
 require, not necessarily a message, but a large and 
 
256 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 serious grasp of the deep-lying essentials of conduct 
 and character, is surely justifiable ; and this large and 
 serious grasp is nowhere to be found in the poetry of 
 Scott. 
 
 But what there is to be found there is of the best 
 in its kind, and so far as it goes. There is in it vigour, 
 strength, sincerity, manhood. Even Carlyle, to whom 
 it was as a whole hardly more than sounding 
 brass and tinkling cymbal, was forced to admit that 
 it carries the reader back to rough, strong times 
 to the ages of brawny fighters, who devoted them- 
 selves heart and hand to the day's practical busi- 
 ness without sickly doubt or morbid introspections. 
 Perhaps the indirect ethical effect of such an achieve- 
 ment is too often overlooked. And at least, if we 
 accept Carlyle's generally adverse criticism to the 
 full, and acknowledge that it touches the fatal defect 
 in Scott's voluminous outpourings in verse, we may 
 still be grateful to the minstrel who offers us a 
 temporary way of escape from the vexed issues and 
 cross-questionings of the modern world. With Scott, 
 as with the poet of The Earthly Paradise, we may find 
 occasional refuge from the storm and stress of our own 
 life in the romantic past, only Scott actually does leave 
 the burden of the present behind him, while Morris 
 merely promises to do so. To have delighted boy- 
 hood, to have given it a pure and manly taste for 
 pure and manly things, this is surely something ; 
 and Scott himself might well be gratified it is said 
 he was moved almost to tears to hear of the hold 
 which he won over the youthful heart. And if in 
 later years, though we remember the old charm with 
 
SCOTT AS A POET 257 
 
 a kind of subdued pleasure, we find it impossible to 
 renew it, we may rejoice to feel that those who come 
 after us unless, indeed, we are going to educate our 
 children out of all childhood, as seems at the moment 
 more than likely will find the magic as potent, the 
 cup of romance as wholesome and stimulating as 
 ever. 
 

 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 IT is a common and not altogether an unnatural 
 mistake to regard Scott's prose romances as the 
 direct outgrowth and expansion of his romances in 
 verse. This error arises from our habit of seeking 
 out and emphasizing the qualities which the novels 
 and the poems exhibit in common, and, having noted 
 how striking these are, of thereupon .concluding that 
 all their dissimilarities may, with a little trouble, be 
 traced back to the underlying difference of medium 
 and style. But in reality the elements of likeness are 
 less important than the elements of contrast. That 
 Marmion, The Lady of the Lake, and Rokeby afforded 
 Scott an opportunity of training himself in the manage- 
 ment of incident and the delineation of character is, 
 of course, not to be denied. But the conditions of 
 the verse-romance were thoroughly unfavourable to 
 the free growth of his genius ; and when, through 
 one of the happiest combinations of circumstances 
 recorded in literary history, he was led to drop the 
 narrative-poem and take up the narrative in prose, 
 he was able at once, and for the first time, to give 
 unchecked play to those very powers of character- 
 
 258 
 
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 259 
 
 isation, humour, and dialogue, which have placed 
 him high among the great creative writers of the 
 world. 
 
 By fixing our attention wholly upon the points 
 of contact between the poems and the novels, we 
 miss, moreover, those special features of the novels 
 themselves which render them, historically considered, 
 so significant and so interesting. It is a familiar fact 
 that Scott contributed in two most important ways to 
 the development of English prose fiction : by raising 
 the novel once and for all to a place of equality with 
 the other kinds of imaginative literature ; and by per- 
 fecting that large division of it which we call the 
 Historical Romance. But it is not so generally re- 
 membered that in yet another way he made a fresh 
 departure in fiction, and that was, by blending romance 
 with realism the story of chivalry and adventure with 
 the story of character and manners. . ,.,,. 
 '"" Much had been done in the English novel before 
 Waverley saw the light ; but this had not been done. 
 On the one hand, there had been writers who, like 
 Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith, Mackenzie, 
 Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen, 
 in varying ways kept close to the present world of 
 fact, and thus, with all their enormous differences of 
 standpoint and method, represented, roughly speaking, 
 the realistic trend in the prose fiction of their time. 
 On the other hand, under the powerful influences of 
 the mediaeval revival, there grew up an antagonistic 
 school of romancers, who forsook the solid ground of 
 actuality and the present altogether, and either, like 
 Walpole, " Monk " Lewis, Maturin, and Mrs Radcliffe, 
 
2 6o SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 fed the public with a crude but stimulating super- 
 naturalism, or, like Clara Reeve, Sophia Lee, Jane 
 Porter, and others hardly known even by name to 
 any but the special student of literature, began, in 
 the novel, the systematic exploitation of the feudal 
 past. But no one before Scott had woven together 
 the interest of history and romance, and the interest 
 of a broad and humorous representation of manners 
 and character. And when we come to consider the 
 matter a little attentively, we can see that it needed 
 just so rare and admirable a blend of diverse qualities 
 as went to the making of Scott's genius, to take this 
 large and difficult step in advance. It was because 
 he was at once a shrewd, clear-sighted, sane, and 
 observant man of the world, trained as an Edinburgh 
 attorney, and having the strongest hold on practical 
 things, and the offshoot of a Border family, thrown 
 as child and youth into the most romantic of surround- 
 ings, and nourished on wild legends of fighting and 
 diablerie y that he was able, as no one before him had 
 been able, to lift the materials of the realistic novelist 
 into an atmosphere of romance, and give to the dreams 
 of the romancer a solidity and unexpected charm by 
 mingling them with the stuff of actual life. 
 
 As we trace the lines of his approach to Waverley, 
 we can note how these separate influences came to 
 converge in his work. In early life, he tells us, he 
 had entertained " the ambitious desire of composing 
 a tale of chivalry, which was to be in the style of 
 The Castle of Otranto, with plenty of border characters 
 and supernatural incident." The success of the verse 
 romances, however, caused the abandonment of this 
 
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 261 
 
 scheme, and the tale, of which a few pages only had 
 been written, was never resumed. 1 Sometime after this 
 he wrote a conclusion to Joseph Strutt's unfinished 
 Queen/wo Hall, and while so doing, satisfied himself 
 for the time being that the middle ages did not 
 furnish as good material for prose-fiction as he had 
 supposed an extraordinary discovery on the part 
 of a man who was presently to write Ivanhoe, and 
 that " a romance founded on a Highland story, and 
 more modern events, would have a better chance of 
 popularity than a tale of chivalry," His thoughts 
 thereupon reverted to the fragment of Waverley, the 
 mislaid manuscript of which lucky accident by-and- 
 by threw in his way ; and at the same time, being 
 greatly impressed by Miss Edgeworth's Irish stories, 
 he came to feel that something of what she had 
 done for her countrymen, he might do for his. 
 
 " I thought, also," he adds, "that much of what I wanted in 
 talent, might be made up by the intimate acquaintance with 
 the subject which I could lay claim to possess, as having 
 travelled through most parts of Scotland, both Highland and 
 Lowland ; having been familiar with the elder, as well as more 
 modern race ; and having had from my infancy free and un- 
 restrained communication with all ranks of my countrymen, 
 from the Scottish peer to the Scottish ploughman." 
 
 That Strutt, the learned antiquary, and Maria 
 Edgeworth, the delicate painter of domestic character 
 and incident, 2 should thus be together referred to 
 
 1 So much as was ever completed Scott published in the Appendix 
 to his General Preface to the Waverley Novels (1829). 
 
 2 As people do not in these days condescend to pay much attention 
 to Maria Edgeworth, it may not be out of place to recall the fact that 
 another great novelist, of more recent times, has followed Scott in 
 
262 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 by Scott as giving the immediate impulse to his own 
 work, is sufficient of itself to show the double strand 
 of influence upon which we desire to insist. He 
 might well boast that he knew the Scotland of his 
 own time intimately well ; and we have already 
 spoken of the way in which the roots of his sympathy 
 and genius ran down into the rich soil of the Scottish 
 past. He realised that he was thoroughly prepared 
 to write the novel of direct observation, and with 
 this, in fact, he began. But the historical romance as 
 he afterwards established it, is simply the novel of 
 direct observation moved back into the past, and 
 supplemented by learning, a quick feeling for the 
 life of bygone generations, and re-creative power. 
 And all these qualities, too, he possessed. 
 
 Approaching Scott's prose-fiction in this way, we 
 are placed at the proper point of view to appreciate 
 the full significance of the work with which the series 
 opened. Waverley is an historical romance. But 
 while, owing to the isolation and backward condition of 
 the Highlands, the scenes, manners, and characters 
 described in it had to the visitant of Edinburgh 
 or London all the charm of distance and strange- 
 ness, the epoch with which it deals lay only just 
 behind the author's own age, and its thrilling in- 
 cidents were still fresh in the memories of men and 
 women who had taken personal part in them. In 
 other words, the history in Waverley was, for Scott, 
 scarcely yet history ; it was rather reminiscence ; the 
 
 acknowledging indebtedness to her. According to his own statement, 
 the exquisite early work of Turgenev was directly inspired by her Irish 
 stories. 
 
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 263 
 
 " age of our fathers " was seized and utilized by him 
 just at the critical moment when it was passing from 
 the talk of living men into the pages of dead books. 
 As Scott himself phrased it, his purpose in writing 
 this first novel was to embody the last remnants of 
 a social life which had disappeared during his own 
 early manhood, and which, under the rapidly spread- 
 ing influence of new ideas, seemed to the rising 
 generation as remote as the reign of Queen Anne 
 or the period of the Restoration. This strikes the 
 keynote of the story, and indicates its vital re- 
 lationship with all that was most fundamental and 
 characteristic in Scott's genius. He \vent back to 
 the past ; but he was still in close personal touch with 
 that past ; his romantic world was a world of reality 
 which 'had grown romantic because it had slipped 
 into the twilight of vanishing things. Waverley, 
 therefore, may be regarded as exactly the kind of 
 novel with which we should, on general principles, 
 have expected him to begin. It occupied the 
 Borderland between actuality and romance, between 
 present and past, and thus furnished an admirable 
 starting-point from which henceforth he could move 
 forward towards his own day, carrying his poetic 
 power with him, or, keeping a firm hold upon 
 reality, could push his way further and further into 
 history. 
 
 If we now, in the light of these considerations, turn 
 to the novels and stories of which the Waverley 
 series is composed, we shall find that analysis brings 
 to light certain highly suggestive facts. In the first 
 place, regarding the series on the historic side, we 
 
2 6 4 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 note the relatively large proportion of important 
 works of which the scenes are laid in the eighteenth 
 century. Waverley itself, Guy Mannering, The 
 Antiquary ', Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian, and 
 Redgauntlet, all belong to this period ; and to these 
 must be added the unimportant Black Dwarf, High- 
 land Widow, Two Drovers, Tapestried Chamber, My 
 Aunt Margarets Mirror, and Surgeon's Daughter. 
 Of the remaining romances, one, St Ronans Well, 
 deals with the nineteenth century; seven, Old 
 Mortality, A Legend of Montrose, The Pirate, 
 Woodstock, The Fortunes of Nigel, The Bride of 
 Lammermoor, and Peveril of the Peak, take us back 
 to the seventeenth century ; four, The Monastery, 
 The Abbot, Kenilworth, and The Death of the Lairds 
 Jock, to the sixteenth ; three, The Fair Maid of 
 Perth, Quentin Durward, and Anne of Geierstein, 
 to the fifteenth; one, Castle Dangerous, to the 
 fourteenth ; three, Ivanhoe, The Talisman, and The 
 Betrothed, to the twelfth; and one, Count Robert of 
 Paris, to the eleventh century. Examination thus 
 makes it clear that though Scott was perfectly 
 willing to go far afield through the ages in quest 
 of fresh material, he kept by choice to a period 
 not very distant from his own a period in 
 dealing with which he could most successfully 
 combine history and romance with that kind of 
 solid human interest which is usually sought for 
 only in the novel of present life. In the second 
 place, changing the historical for the geographical 
 basis of classification, we observe that, while the 
 eighteenth and seventeenth centuries are his 
 
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 265 
 
 favourite ground in point of time, Scotland is 
 even more conspicuously so in point of locality. 
 No fewer than twenty-one out of his thirty-two 
 novels and stories have their scenes laid wholly or 
 in part in Scotland ; and of those left over, three, 
 The Fortunes of Nigel, Quentin Durward, and The 
 Talisman, have Scotsmen for their leading figures, 
 and are marked by distinctively Scottish feeling. 
 Combining, then, the two methods of classification, 
 and remembering at the same time the order in which 
 the novels were published, we can see very clearly, 
 as Professor Masson says, "that Scott began with 
 those which were Scottish in their subjects, and lay 
 nearest his own age, and that only after he had 
 pretty well exhausted that ground and that time, 
 did he work far backwards chronologically, and away 
 from Scotland geographically. Ivanhoe, which was 
 his first novel not Scottish in subject, and also the 
 first thrown farther back in time than the seventeenth 
 century, was the tenth novel of the series in the 
 order of composition." l The meaning of all this in 
 connection with what has already been said about 
 Scott's nationalism and intense personal feeling for 
 a past more living to him than the past of books, 
 is so manifest that the point calls for no further 
 elaboration. It needs only to be added that, if we 
 look over the Waverley Novels with the view of 
 picking out those which show the greatest grasp of 
 character, vitality, and spontaneous power, our choice 
 will be found, I think with hardly an exception, to 
 fall upon some of those which belong, not only to 
 
 1 British Novelists and their Styles, pp. 192-193. 
 
266 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 Scotland, but also to the Scotland of the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries. 
 
 It is none the less true that, though Scott is at his 
 best only in this comparatively small area, the wide 
 historic range of his romances must be reckoned one 
 of their most remarkable features, when we consider 
 them in the mass, as we may realise more fully if we 
 remember the narrow limitations of our more recent 
 great novelists Dickens, Thackeray, Bulwer Lytton, 
 George Eliot, and Kingsley, for example in their 
 dealings with the past. Scott's work, from Count 
 Robert of Paris to St Ronaris Well, covers a period 
 of about eight centuries a period, that is, extending 
 from the time of the first crusade to almost the end 
 of the Napoleonic power. No other writer has under- 
 taken the enormous task of revivifying so many 
 different epochs of European history, or, at any rate, 
 has undertaken it with even the semblance of 
 success. 
 
 This fact leads us directly to the question, about 
 which so much has been written on one and the other 
 side, as to whether or not Scott's reproduction of the 
 life of the past, and of the distant past particularly, 
 is to be considered historically satisfactory. My own 
 judgment has already been suggested in brief, in 
 what I have said about one or two of the most 
 famous of the feudal romances. But the matter is 
 one that is not to be dismissed without a little more 
 careful consideration. 
 
 Let us see, to begin with, what was Scott's own 
 view of the historical novel. In the first place, he 
 makes a large claim in its behalf; it is, he insists, a 
 
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 267 
 
 form of fiction higher in kind than the ordinary novel 
 of every-day manners, If, he writes, " the features of 
 an age gone by can be recalled in a spirit oi delinea- 
 tion at once faithful and striking, the composition itself 
 is in every point of view dignified and improved ; 
 and the author, leaving the light and frivolous 
 associates with whom a careless observer would be 
 disposed to ally him, takes his seat on the bench of 
 the historians of his time and country." 1 This is 
 tantamount, I suppose, to saying that the historical 
 novel belongs as much to history as it does 
 to fiction, a view which, it seems to me, it would 
 be altogether impossible to sustain. But, in the 
 second place, though it deals seriously with history, 
 it must, he admits, deal with it under certain con- 
 ditions which are inseparable from fiction as fiction. 
 u It is necessary," he says and this, indeed, he lays 
 down as a fundamental principle " for exciting 
 interest of any kind, that the subject assumed should 
 be, as it were, translated into the manners, as well as 
 the language, of the age we live in." But is not this 
 in itself, we are forced to ask, to abandon all attempt 
 at accuracy and local colour? If we modernise the 
 manners of the ages of chivalry, for example, what 
 shall we have left of the historic reality except the 
 mere costumes and external trappings ? Scott finds 
 fault with Queenhoo Hall, and the general reader 
 will readily echo his criticism, because it is over- 
 done with antiquarian knowledge, and written in a 
 language too ancient to be easily comprehensible. 
 But where, then, shall we find the via media between 
 1 Quarterly Review^ xvi. 467. Cf. Epistle Dedicatory to Ivanhoe. 
 
268 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 dry-as-dust pedantry and such a complete making- 
 over of our material as shall render our work valueless 
 as history, however interesting it may be as literature ? 
 In dealing with one of his predecessors, the author 
 of The Old English Baron, Scott sets forth his own 
 theory of the necessary compromise: 
 
 " He that would please the modern world, yet present the 
 exact impression of a tale of the middle ages, will repeatedly 
 
 fd that he will be obliged, in despite of his utmost exertions, 
 to sacrifice the last to the first object, and eternally expose him- 
 self to the just censure of the rigid antiquary, because he must, 
 to interest the readers of the present time, invest his characters 
 with language and sentiments unknown to the period assigned 
 in his story ; and thus his utmost efforts only attain a sort of 
 composition between the true and the fictitious, just as the dress 
 of Lear, as performed on the stage, is neither that of a modern 
 sovereign, nor the cerulean painting and bear-hide with which 
 the Britons, at the time when that monarch is supposed to 
 have lived, tattooed their persons, and sheltered themselves from 
 cold. All this inconsistency is avoided by adopting the style 
 of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, sufficiently anti- 
 quated to accord with the antiquated character of the narrative, 
 yet copious enough to express all that is necessary to its 
 interest, and to supply that deficiency in colouring which the 
 more ancient times do not afford." x 
 
 Baldly formulated in this way as a theory, all this 
 may seem exceedingly unsatisfactory and even 
 fantastic. But a moment's thought will convince us 
 that Scott is here only laying down the lines of his 
 own practice, and that the course which he advocates 
 has been followed since his time by most writers of 
 historical fiction, and by all who can be said to have 
 scored any popular success. He understood quite as 
 well as his numerous critics, that in order to produce a 
 1 Memoir of Clara Reeve, in Ballantyne's Novelists' Library. 
 
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 269 
 
 thoroughly interesting romance dealing with the past, 
 some amount of anachronism and false colouring, and 
 a good deal of distortion of thought and feeling, if 
 not of external fact, must be accepted as inevitable, 
 and that it is altogether out of the question to portray 
 any early stage of culture in away at once to entertain 
 the ordinary reader and to satisfy a society of anti- 
 quaries. And since Queenhoo Hall will not do for 
 the one, and Ivanhoe is sneered at by the other, the 
 problem arises whether in the nature of things we 
 can ever expect to have a novel which will be com- 
 pletely accurate as history, and at the same time com- 
 pletely successful as fiction. 
 
 For my own part, I believe that no such novel will 
 ever be written. I do not now discuss the question 
 whether even the most erudite of students could be 
 trusted to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
 but the truth ; whether, to suggest a single illustra- 
 tion, Mr Freeman himself could have put together a 
 story of life at the time of the Norman Conquest 
 which would have been regarded by other authorities as 
 entirely beyond criticism. My point is a different one. 
 Historic accuracy of detail, I would insist the pains- 
 taking and exact reproduction of the thoughts and 
 feelings of the middle ages, or the Athens of Pericles 
 or Egypt under the Pharaohs is for the specialist, 
 and for the specialist alone ; its presence in any 
 story would simply ruin it as a story for those of us 
 who are not specialists, that is, for the general reading 
 public. And let us remember that, strictly speaking, 
 and we may as well push the matter at once to its 
 logical issue, if we were to accept the dry-as-dust 
 
2 ;o SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 standard at all, we should be forced to go a great deal 
 further than even the most conscientious theorist 
 would be likely to wish ; for instead of inditing our 
 dialogues in modern English, or in a jargon which is 
 confessedly pseudo-archaic, we should have to employ 
 Norman-French, or Greek, or Egyptian, as the case 
 might be. Here, again, the specialist might enjoy the 
 results of our learning and ingenuity ; but what about 
 those who are totally at sea in regard to Norman- 
 French, and have forgotten most of their Greek, and 
 would not know a page of Egyptian if they saw it ? 
 Are we grieved over the undeniable fact that Wamba 
 and Gurth would never have talked as they talk 
 outside the castle of Cedric the Saxon ? Into what 
 more acceptable tongue, then, shall we translate 
 their admittedly impossible speech ? To make them 
 employ the idiom that swineherds and jesters actu- 
 ally used at the end of the twelfth century would 
 be to prevent all but a few professors of philology 
 from taking the smallest interest in their delectable 
 conversation ; and it is not for professors of philology 
 that such a book as Ivanhoe is written. We are 
 manifestly obliged, then, whether we like it or not, 
 to adopt in practice the device of Mr W. B. Yeats, 
 who appends to the list of dramatis persona prefixed 
 to one of his plays the naive note " the characters 
 are supposed to speak Irish," while in point of fact, 
 they speak remarkably good English. The fact that 
 so true a poet as Mr Yeats should think it necessary 
 to offer such a preliminary explanation is a pathetic, if 
 rather grotesque, testimony to the ravages of realism. 
 Of course they are " supposed " to speak Irish ; but 
 
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 271 
 
 if they spoke it in good earnest very few of us would 
 be able to understand them ; and of course Gurth and 
 Wamba are " supposed " to enjoy nothing beyond the 
 range of ideas possible to a couple of unlettered bar- 
 barians in the reign of the Lion- Hearted king ; but if 
 this were anything more than a supposition, a figment 
 tacitly agreed upon between author and reader, how 
 many people would ever have paid the slightest atten- 
 tion to them or their doings? And so with every 
 issue involved in this interminable controversy about 
 historic fidelity in fiction. Sooner or later we come 
 to the point where fidelity is obviously impracticable. 
 Anachronism and false colouring, in a greater or less 
 degree, appertain, let us repeat, to the very conditions 
 of success in our work. Otherwise we may, with 
 infinite labour, produce a pedantic Queenhoo Hall y or 
 a Gallus requiring voluminous disquisitions to make 
 it, not entertaining, but intelligible. But no one, I 
 imagine, would include these among standard examples 
 of the historical novel. And if we come to novels 
 which deserve to be so classed, is Salammbo, after all, 
 really more accurate in essential detail than The 
 Talisman ? 
 
 All that is possible, therefore, is in a broad way to 
 give the spirit and life of the age into which our story 
 is thrown. It is needless, then, to insist that there is 
 a constant suggestion of the fancy-dress ball or the 
 transpontine theatre about Scott's reproductions of the 
 past ; that his antique costumes and upholstery are of 
 Wardour Street make ; that, as Ruskin says, he really 
 knew nothing about Gothic architecture, and was wrong 
 in all he thought he knew ; that he is careless in matters 
 
272 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 of time and place taking Amy Robsart to Kenihvorth, 
 where I believe she never was, bringing Prince Charlie 
 back to Scotland after Culloden, and making Shake- 
 speare the author of A Midsummer Nights Dream 
 when he was perhaps eleven years of age ; and that 
 his dialogues are conceived (as Johnson said of Gay's 
 Pastorals) " in a style that never was written or spoken 
 in any age or place." All this admitted and dismissed, 
 the really important question remains : Was he or was 
 he not true to large facts in his representations of the 
 essential characteristics of the past ? 
 
 The answer, I am afraid, must be in the negative 
 in a modified negative, it is true, but still in the 
 negative. The matter, perhaps, may be best put in 
 this way. If we already know the history of the 
 twelfth century, and of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 
 and of the period of struggle between the Roundheads 
 and the Cavaliers, we shall find in Ivanhoe^ and Kenil- 
 worth, and Woodstock^ a delightful, though idealised 
 representation of those stirring times ; dry facts will 
 be vivified for us by being brought into the currents 
 of life ; we shall feel the thrill and the movement ot 
 an actual world. What Scott does for us, therefore, 
 is, as Macaulay put it, to supplement the plain 
 narrative of the historians by a series of brilliant 
 pictures composed out of materials which the 
 chronicler habitually throws aside. But more than 
 this can hardly be said. To depend on Scott for 
 our history would be to obtain a ludicrously in- 
 adequate and often even a totally erroneous idea 
 of the past. But to read him as a companion to 
 history is none the less as profitable as it is delightful. 
 
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 273 
 
 The principal thing to remember, when we go to 
 him in the hope that he will vitalise our study of 
 treatise and chronicle is, that he will never help us to 
 get at the psychology of the past at the " climate 
 of opinion" or way of thinking, characteristic 
 of this or that period of civilisation. As in his 
 poems, so again in his novels, the whole inward life 
 of bygone ages is altogether unrevealed by him ; 
 he has much to tell us of their costumes and manners, 
 of their fightings and schemings, but little or nothing 
 of the real faith by which they lived, the great 
 passions upon which their spiritual evolution de- 
 pended. He writes of the crusades, of chivalry, of 
 Catholicism and the Reformation, but he does not 
 take us to the heart and brain of these mighty forces 
 in human development. We remain moderns, out- 
 siders. The very best things in his historical 
 romances are not the kings, and queens, and 
 representative figures, admirably as these are 
 sometimes portrayed, but the homely, every-day 
 characters who are boldly transplanted from his 
 own time, and in their new environment, despite a 
 few changes in dress, bearing, and speech, are still 
 the men and women he had himself met with and 
 known. On the other hand the feature most severely 
 to be criticised in his novels is their constant con- 
 fusion of antique externals with the sentiments and 
 ideas of the present-day world. What makes his 
 presentation of chivalry so objectionable is not its 
 obvious stageyness, the "big bow-wow" style and 
 "buff-jerkin business" which play so large a part 
 in it, but the fact that the mediaeval regime is 
 
 S 
 
274 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 painted by him against a background of modern life, 
 and is touched up for effect, with modern colours. 
 The nineteenth century may be delighted and edified 
 to see a Christian knight rescuing an infidel maiden 
 by challenging another Christian knight to mortal 
 combat; as the eighteenth century, with its 
 growing feelings of tolerance, was delighted and 
 edified by the "happy family" picture offered to it 
 in Nathan der Weise. But the whole episode in 
 which Ivanhoe, Rebecca, and the Templar figure 
 with such extraordinary results, is from first to last 
 impossible ; and it is against this glaring and 
 avoidable sort of impropriety that we have a right 
 to protest. It was not Scott's knowledge which was 
 at fault. He is careful to throw in the dark shadows, 
 to show how the Jews were actually thought of and 
 treated in the good old times. But he does not 
 pause to think that his brilliant bit of melodrama, 
 ending with Sir Brian's death in the lists, practically 
 falsifies the whole romance. We lay the book down 
 with the commentary that it belongs to rfo historic 
 middle ages ; and to understand something of the 
 social tragedy of Judaism, turn to The Merchant of 
 Venice and The Jew of Malta. 
 
 Yet even if we should go to the length of insisting 
 with Scott's severest critics that his romances leave 
 us with a totally wrong impression of history, that, 
 like " a sad fellow called Will Shakespeare," he has 
 turned the things of the past " upside down, or rather 
 inside out," we must still temper censure with praise 
 when we remember what yeoman service he did in 
 spreading a genuine historic spirit. As Carlyle says, he 
 
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 275 
 
 helped to teach this truth, " which looks like a truism, 
 and yet was as good as unknown to writers of history 
 and others, till so taught, that the bygone ages of 
 the world were actually filled by living men, not 
 by protocols, state-papers, controversies, and ab- 
 stractions of men." It was Scott, more than any 
 other single writer, who made the modern world 
 feel the substantial reality of the past, and who in 
 this way aided the development of that historical 
 sense to which we now appeal so confidently when 
 we pass our sweeping judgment upon his works. , 
 If he has not given us exactly the men and women 
 of the twelfth, and the fifteenth, and the sixteenth 
 centuries, he has peopled these periods for us with 
 men and women in whom we can believe, and with 
 whom we can sympathise ; and in so doing, he has 
 shown us, amidst manners and ideals so remote 
 from those of our own time, the touches of nature 
 which make the whole world kin. Only when we try 
 to form some conception of the wonderful growth of 
 the historic spirit during the present century, can 
 we properly appreciate the debt we owe to Scott in 
 this one most important respect. 
 
 The upshot of this enquiry, therefore, is, that 
 despite Scott's own claim to " sit on the bench of the 
 historians of his time and country," his historical 
 novels are rightly to be regarded as belonging to 
 the department of fiction, and not to the department 
 of history. We have certainly not said the last word 
 about Ivanhoe or Old Mortality when we have settled 
 whether they give us a correct picture, the one of 
 English life in the reign of Richard Cceur-de-Lion, the 
 
27 6 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 other of the Scottish Covenanters of the seventeenth 
 century. We have still to consider, be their historical 
 truth or falsehood what it may, how they are to be 
 judged as novels. 
 
 Analysed critically, Scott's work must, as a whole, 
 be pronounced extremely defective on the side of 
 structure or plot. Neatness of workmanship in 
 putting a tale together has, since his day, become 
 an accepted tradition in the craft, and Coleridge's 
 too-often quoted saying about the perfection of the 
 fable in Tom Jones sounds extravagant to those who 
 have admired the far greater mechanical dexterity 
 displayed by writers like Wilkie Collins and Miss 
 Braddon. But even Scott's contemporaries found 
 fault with, and he himself freely acknowledged, his 
 carelessness in the conduct of his stories. The unity 
 which we note as remarkable in such books as Caleb 
 Williams and The Woman in White is nowhere to 
 be found among his plots. In three of his novels 
 only Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, and The Bride of 
 Lammermoor does he appear to have troubled him- 
 self about any question of regularity of composi- 
 tion ; in the rest, the narrative is, to quote his 
 own description, in " the loose and incoherent 
 style." i 
 
 " His stories," he declares in his anonymous critique of 
 himself, "are so slightly constructed as to remind us of the 
 showman's thread with which he draws up his pictures and 
 presents them successively to the eye of the spectator. He 
 seems seriously to have proceeded on Mr Bays's maxim 
 
 1 Quarterly Review, xvi. 431. 
 
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 277 
 
 ' What the deuce is a plot good for, but to bring in fine things ? ' 
 Probability and perspicuity of narrative are sacrificed with the 
 utmost indifference to the desire of producing effect ; and 
 provided the author can but contrive to * surprise and elevate,' 
 he appears to think that he has done his duty to the public. 
 Against this slovenly indifference we have already remonstrated, 
 and we again enter our protest. It is in justice to the author 
 himself that we do so, because, whatever merit the individual 
 scenes and passages may possess (and none have been more 
 ready than ourselves to offer our applause), it is clear that 
 their effect would be greatly enhanced by being disposed in 
 a clear and continued narrative. We are the more earnest 
 in this matter, because it seems that the author errs chiefly 
 from carelessness." 1 
 
 With this remarkably honest, as well as remarkably 
 sound bit of self-criticism before us, we may turn to 
 a much later passage in which Scott undertakes both 
 explanation and defence. 
 
 " Believe me," says the author of Waverley to his shadowy 
 confidant, Captain Clutterbuck, " I have not been fool enough 
 to neglect ordinary precautions. I have repeatedly laid my 
 future work to scale, divided it into volumes and chapters, and 
 endeavoured to construct a story which I meant should evolve 
 itself gradually and strikingly, maintain suspense, and stimulate 
 curiosity ; and which, finally, should terminate in a striking 
 catastrophe. But I think there is a demon who seats himself 
 on the feather of my pen when I begin to write, and leads it 
 astray from the purpose. Characters expand under my hand ; 
 incidents are multiplied ; the story lingers, while the materials 
 increase ; my regular mansion turns out a Gothic anomaly ; 
 and the work is closed long before I have attained the point I 
 proposed." 
 
 Like Smollett, Lesage, and later novelists who eman- 
 cipated " themselves from the strictness of the rules " 
 
 1 Quarterly Review ', xvi. 431. 
 
278 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 laid down by Fielding, Scott further explains his aim 
 was to write " rather a history of the miscellaneous 
 adventures which befall an individual in the course 
 of life, than the plot of a regular and connected 
 epopeia, where every step brings us a point nearer to 
 the final catastrophe." 1 Due partly, then, to the 
 haste with which he wrote, but partly also, we cannot 
 doubt, to a lack of organising power and an in- 
 difference to the demands of art, the structural 
 weakness of Scott's stories is strikingly shown in the 
 contrast between the large place which he often gives 
 to incidents and characters when they are first intro- 
 duced, and the relatively slight and unimportant part 
 which they play in the subsequent development of 
 events. With Wilkie Collins we know exactly that 
 if great emphasis is laid upon a scene or person, it is 
 for some sufficient reason ; if attention is called to 
 the fact that, when a certain thing happens, the 
 hands of the clock point to ten minutes past six, we 
 may make up our minds that this is a circumstance to 
 remember, since a tale will hang thereby. Nothing 
 of this nice sense of proportion is to be found in 
 Scott. He is capable of writing pages of descrip- 
 tion about an occurrence that leads nowhither, or a 
 character who forthwith drops into a second or third 
 place. But in no one respect are his carelessness and 
 indifference more conspicuous than in the winding up 
 
 1 Introductory Epistle to The Fortunes of Nigel. After this, we may 
 well open our eyes when we find Flaubert telling George Sand " I 
 have just read Dickens's Pickwick. . . There are superb passages in it ; 
 but what a grotesque composition ! All the English writers have this 
 fault, except Walter Scott ; they want plan." Not an inspired utterance, 
 surely. 
 
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 279 
 
 of his plots. " Damn the man who invented fifth 
 acts ! " Fielding once exclaimed ; and Scott might 
 have echoed the unholy sentiment. Sometimes, as 
 in The Heart of Midlothian, he dawdles over unim- 
 portant matters after the main interest has come to a 
 close ; but more often he is guilty, as Lady Louisa 
 Stuart put it, of " huddling up a conclusion anyhow, 
 and so kicking the book out of his way." The 
 exceptionally effective catastrophes of Ivanhoe and 
 Kenilworth have already been noted. But any tyro 
 in criticism could pick holes in the denouements of 
 The Antiquary, or Rob Roy, or Woodstock. 
 
 But while Scott's plots are, as plots, crude, and 
 frequently clumsy, they deserve this praise, that they 
 are often, like Shakespeare's, admirably adapted for 
 the exposition of character. And it was this that 
 Scott always cared most about. 
 
 "Alas, my dear sir," says the Eidolon of the Author of 
 Waverley in the course of the conversation from which we have 
 just quoted, " you do not know the force of paternal affection. 
 When I light on such a character as Bailie Jarvie, or Dalgetty, 
 my imagination brightens, and my conception becomes clearer 
 with every step which I take in his company, although it leads 
 me many a weary mile away from the regular road, and forces 
 me to leap hedge and ditch to get back into the route again." x 
 
 Every reader will feel at once that this confession 
 explains Scott's system, or lack of system, in the con- 
 struction of his stories. A very natural way of 
 classifying novels is to divide them, roughly, into two 
 large groups ; those in which the interest of plot is 
 subordinate to the interest of character ; and those in 
 
 1 Introductory Epistle to The Fortunes of Nigel. 
 
2 go SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 which the interest of character is subordinate to the 
 interest of plot Scott's novels belong without ex- 
 ception to the former category. 
 
 I am the more anxious to lay stress on this point 
 because Scott's method of drawing his characters 
 with a few bold strokes has now given place to the 
 method of elaborate and detailed analysis, and those 
 who are accustomed to the more pretentious style of 
 the modern school are, in consequence, very apt to 
 overlook or depreciate his claims to critical attention. 
 When the tragedy of Hetty Sorrel's life is unfolded 
 to us, page after page is devoted to the task of laying 
 bare her motives and feelings ; when Effie Deans 
 resolves never to see Robertson again, the struggle, 
 the determination, and the result, are presented in 
 a few simple lines. The contrast between these two 
 ways of treating the same delicate theme is mentioned 
 to illustrate the general difference between Scott and 
 our so-called psychological writers. It was never 
 part of his plan " to analyse the complications of the 
 causes which influence actions ; " he presented 
 motives and feelings mainly through conduct and 
 circumstance ; and perhaps of set purpose avoided 
 entering the field against those women novelists of 
 "exquisite touch" Miss Edgeworth, Miss Austen, 
 and Miss Ferrier whose work he admired so much 
 and praised so generously. This would not be 
 the place to consider the relative advantages and 
 drawbacks of his method and of theirs. It must 
 suffice to insist that when Scott is upon his own 
 proper ground, his achievements in life-like portraiture 
 
 1 The Antiquary, chap. i. 
 
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 281 
 
 may be boldly set against anything in prose fiction 
 against anything but Shakespeare's creations in the 
 drama. 
 
 When Scott is upon his own proper ground, I 
 repeat ; for he is by no means uniformly successful in 
 his characterisations, nor is it into all his figures that 
 he has breathed the breath of life. His nominal 
 heroes, as he himself confessed, are generally " very 
 amiable and very insipid young men," l who are 
 rarely prime movers in their own destinies, and are 
 principally useful in bringing out the subordinate 
 characters who surround and act upon them. Scott 
 almost invariably fails, too, whenever he enters the 
 region of any of the higher passions, except loyalty 
 and patriotism ; of the tragic intensity of love he 
 gives us, save in The Bride of Lammermoor, hardly a 
 glimpse ; while his women, though we reckon some 
 fascinating figures among them, are, as a rule, rather 
 shadowy and conventional. Moreover, he falls 
 infinitely short of Shakespeare in those fantastic 
 creations in which he has sometimes been compared 
 with the Master. Madge Wildfire, for example, 
 though so highly praised by Coleridge, is only a 
 disturbing element in the touching story of Jeanie 
 Deans ; and Meg Merrilees, Dame Urfried, Norna of 
 Fitful Head, Fenella, and the rest of them, belong 
 wholly to melodrama and the old Surrey boards. 
 Grasp of such abnormal characters was denied him 
 by the limitations of his genius ; and with this 
 the power possessed by several of his contempor- 
 aries and many of his successors, of catching the 
 
 1 Quarterly Review, xvi, 431. 
 
282 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 flickering lights and shadows of ordinary and even 
 commonplace minds. 
 
 But when from these strictures we pass to the 
 sweeping charge, first distinctly enunciated by 
 Carlyle, and since repeated by various critics, 
 great and small', that Scott does not really under- 
 stand character at all that he has nothing more 
 than a clever trick of hitting off externals, costumes, 
 manners, style of speech, leaving the individual 
 himself untouched it is certainly time to protest. 
 Shakespeare, says Carlyle, " fashions his characters 
 from the heart outwards ; " Scott his " from the skin 
 inwards, never getting near the heart of them." 
 His men and women, therefore, while they have an 
 uncanny way of looking and talking "like what 
 they give themselves out for," are not really " created 
 and made poetically alive," but are only "deceptively 
 enacted as a good player might do." In regard to 
 such a point as this, I do not know that there is a 
 much better course open to one than just to meet 
 dogmatic assertion with equally dogmatic denial ; 
 for it is of the essence of this kind of transcendental 
 criticism that it gives one no handle for argument. 
 When, therefore, the Sage informs me that Scott's 
 " Bailie Jarvies, Dinmonts, Dalgettys," are not 
 really alive, but only deceptively enacted and made 
 to look and talk like real people, I think I am 
 perfectly justified in saying that I do not in the 
 least agree with him. If these people are not truly 
 flesh and blood to us, it is doubtful where, in all 
 imaginative literature, flesh and blood are to be 
 found. And oddly enough, Carlyle backs up his 
 
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 283 
 
 theory by reference to precisely that class of 
 characters in which Scott's power is shown at its 
 very best ; the fact being, I suppose, that it was a 
 class which Carlyle himself could not in the least 
 understand. For, when Scott is moving among the 
 strong, homely, humorous people of his own country- 
 side among Scottish lawyers, peasant folk, soldiers, 
 farmers, and old-fashioned serving-men he is 
 altogether unrivalled ; his hand is that of the 
 supreme master, and his every touch tells. There are 
 many types of character, then, which he essayed with 
 only partial success, and some with which he did 
 not succeed at all. But the range of his effort, it 
 must be remembered, was an enormously wide one ; 
 and when all possible deductions are made, there 
 remains an astonishingly long list of inimitable crea- 
 tions, of whom we can only say that they are 
 triumphs of insight and power perfect in conception, 
 perfect in execution. 
 
 Of the characters we should in all probability most 
 readily recall in support of this statement, the majority 
 would be found, I suspect, to belong to the domain of 
 comedy ; but it is not in the domain of comedy alone 
 that Scott's finest achievements are to be sought. Is 
 Jeanie Deans to be set aside as a " mechanical case," 
 a mere " painted automaton ? " Do we know any 
 woman in fiction better, and is there any woman in 
 fiction better worth the knowing? A critic whose 
 self-opinionated " modernity " is shown by the way 
 in which he dismisses Dickens as " in many respects 
 the most worthless of all novelists," and appears to 
 doubt whether Fielding and George Eliot will bear 
 
284 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 comparison with Balzac and Flaubert, gravely lays it 
 down that the interest attaching to Jeanie is, after 
 all, " adventitious," since it arises merely " out of her 
 association with her sister Effie," apart from which 
 she would be " not interesting but commonplace." l 
 As if the measure of the author's power and skill is 
 not to be found exactly in this fact, that a simple, 
 plain, commonplace woman is made interesting and 
 even romantic, " adventitiously " by circumstances 
 which draw out her pure, womanly heroism and 
 devotion. Or, to take a different case, what study 
 of character could be truer or finer in its kind than 
 that of Saunders Mucklebackit, when the strong, 
 silent man is rudely shaken by his son's death. 
 Take the scene in which he is visited by Jonathan 
 Oldbuck. When the antiquary came up to his 
 hut 
 
 " he observed a man working intently, as if to repair a shattered 
 boat which lay upon the beach, and, going up to him, was 
 surprised to find it was Mucklebackit himself. * I am glad, 3 he 
 said, in a tone of sympathy, * I am glad, Saunders, that you feel 
 yourself able to make this exertion. 1 ' And what would ye have 
 me to do,' answered the fisher gruffly, ' unless I wanted to see 
 four children starve because ane is drowned? It's weel wi' you 
 gentles, that can sit in the house wi' handkerchers at your een 
 when ye lose a friend ; but the like o' us maun to our wark 
 again, if our hearts were beating as hard as my hammer.' With- 
 out taking more notice of Oldbuck, he proceeded in his labour, 
 and the Antiquary, to whom the display of human nature under 
 the influence of agitating passions was never indifferent, stood 
 beside him, in silent attention, as if watching the progress of the 
 work. He observed more than once the man's hard features, as 
 if by the force of association, prepare to accompany the sound 
 
 1 D. F. Hannigan in Westminster Review -, July 1885. 
 
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 285 
 
 of the saw and hammer with his usual symphony of a rude tune 
 hummed or whistled, and as often, a slight twitch of convulsive 
 expression showed, that ere the sound was uttered, a cause for 
 suppressing it rushed upon his mind. At length when he had 
 patched a considerable rent, and was beginning to mend another, 
 his feelings appeared altogether to derange the power of attention 
 necessary for his work. The piece of wood which he was about 
 to nail on was at first too long ; then he sawed it off too short, 
 then chose another equally ill - adapted for the purpose. At 
 length, throwing it down in anger, after wiping his dim eye with 
 his quivering hand, he exclaimed : ' There is a curse either on 
 me, or on this auld black bitch of a boat, that I have hauled up 
 high and dry, and patched and clouted sae mony years, that 
 she might drown my poor Steenie at the end of them, an' be 
 damned to her ! " and he flung his hammer against the boat, as 
 if she had been the intentional cause of his misfortunes. Then 
 recollecting himself, he added : * Yet what needs ane be angry 
 at her, that has neither soul nor sense ? though I am no that 
 muckle better my sell. She's but a rackle o' auld rotten deals 
 nailed thegither, and warped wi' the wind and the sea, and I am 
 a dour carle, battered by foul weather by sea and land, till I'm 
 maist as senseless as hersell. She maun be mended, though, 
 again the morning tide that's a thing o' necessity.' " 1 
 
 If this is what Carlyle means by fashioning " from 
 the skin inwards" and "never getting near the 
 heart," I am afraid that I cannot rise to the height 
 of his criticism. 
 
 But Scott's humour is perhaps, after all, the most 
 precious of his gifts, and the one for which we should 
 be most profoundly thankful. A quality altogether 
 personal and of itself, never bitter or unkindly, never 
 mordant, harsh, ungenerous, or impure, it plays like 
 sunshine over his world of men and things, lighting 
 up in unexpected ways the dark crannies of life, 
 
 1 The Antiquary , chap, xxxiv. 
 
286 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 touching the harder facts of character with momen- 
 tary radiance, and keeping everything fresh, and 
 clean, and sweet. It is the man's beneficent spirit, 
 his wide tolerance and catholic sympathies, and the 
 natural buoyancy of his temperament, which combine 
 to give, in Washington Irving's phrase, such a delight- 
 ful air of bonhomie to much of his fun-making. But 
 like all true humorists, Scott felt, and makes his 
 readers feel, the intimate connection between the 
 ludicrous and the pathetic ; and while he dwells with 
 irresistible raillery upon the little oddities and foibles, 
 the old-fashioned whims and prejudices of his char- 
 acters, he often blends these with a tragic purpose, 
 and by a sudden turn lifts them into an atmosphere 
 of poetry. For rich and full-blooded comedy there 
 is nothing that I can remember, outside Shakespeare, 
 equal to some of the scenes and much of the dialogue 
 in the early Scottish novels in Waverley, for ex- 
 ample, or Guy Mannering, or The Antiquary. The 
 last-named work, in particular, would in itself suffice 
 to set up half-a-dozen of our present-day humorists 
 for life. Unfortunately it is just the kind of comedy 
 that needs, if it is to be illustrated at all, to be 
 illustrated at greater length than would here be 
 possible ; and for this reason the reader must be 
 sent back to the books themselves. It seems, indeed, 
 almost foolish to reproduce any single scene when 
 we could mention off-hand a dozen others every whit 
 as good. But here is one which I am tempted to 
 quote, partly because it is brief and easily detached, 
 but even more, because, dealing as it does with a 
 minor character, and an incident merely by the way, 
 
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 287 
 
 it may perhaps serve to exhibit better than any of 
 the more famous passages, that natural and spon- 
 taneous flow of humour which is characteristic of the 
 entire group of novels to which special reference has 
 just been made. The scene is from The Antiquary ; 
 the letters have been distributed, amid much gossip 
 and speculation, in the little back parlour of the 
 post-mistress's house at Fairport, and Davie Mail- 
 setter is despatched, an unwilling semi-official carrier, 
 with missives to Monkbarns : 
 
 " Meanwhile the progress of the packet which occasioned so 
 much speculation towards its destined owner at Monkbarns, 
 had been perilous and interrupted. The bearer, Davie Mail- 
 setter, as little resembling a bold dragoon as could well be 
 imagined, was carried along towards Monkbarns by the pony, so 
 long as the animal had in his recollection the crack of his usual 
 instrument of chastisement, and the shout of the butcher's boy. 
 But feeling how Davie, whose short legs were unequal to 
 maintain his balance, swung to and fro upon his back, the 
 pony began to disdain further compliance with the intimations 
 he had received. First then he slackened his pace to a walk. 
 This was no point of quarrel between him and his rider, who 
 had been considerably discomposed by the rapidity of his 
 former motion, and who now took the opportunity of his abated 
 pace to gnaw a piece of gingerbread, which had been thrust 
 into his hand by his mother, in order to reconcile this youthful 
 emissary of the post-office to the discharge of his duty. By- 
 and-by the crafty pony availed himself of this surcease of 
 discipline to twitch the rein out of Davie's hands, and apply 
 himself to browse on the grass by the side of the lane. Sorely 
 astounded by these symptoms of self-willed rebellion, and afraid 
 alike to sit or to fall, poor Davie lifted up his voice and wept 
 aloud. The pony, hearing this pudder over his head, began 
 apparently to think it would be best both for himself and 
 Davie to return from whence they came, and accordingly 
 commenced a retrograde movement towards Fairport. But, as 
 all retreats are apt to end in utter rout, so the steed, alarmed 
 
288 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 by the boy's cries, and by the flapping of the reins which 
 dangled about his fore-feet finding also his nose turned home- 
 ward, began to set off at a rate which, if Davie kept his saddle 
 (a matter extremely dubious), would soon have presented him 
 at Heukbane's stable door, when, at a turn of the road, an 
 intervening auxiliary, in the shape of old Edie Ochiltree, caught 
 hold of therein, and stopped his farther proceeding. 
 
 " l Wha's aught ye, callant ? whaten a gate's that to ride ? ' 
 
 1 1 canna help it,' blubbered the express ; ' they ca' me little 
 Davie.' 
 
 1 And where are ye gaun ? ' 
 
 4 I'm gaun to Monkbarns with a letter.' 
 
 ' Stirra, this is no the road to Monkbarns.' 
 
 But Davie could only answer the expostulation with sighs 
 and tears." 1 
 
 An imaginative world penetrated and permeated 
 by a humour so racy, so genial, so hearty as Scott's 
 a humour which carries no sting, and leaves no 
 unpleasant taste after it is certain to be a pure and 
 wholesome world, and one it is both pleasant and 
 good to live in. And to such a world, in fact, Scott 
 gives us free access; in saying which, I have said 
 all that I think of any great importance about the 
 moral tendency of his fiction. Many hard things 
 have been written about his failure to give us any 
 well-considered and definite " philosophy of life ; " 
 and there are plenty of readers who complain with 
 Carlyle who, by the way, found morality, and depth, 
 and all sorts of desirable things in the philanderings 
 of Wilhelm Meister's " menagerie of tame animals " 
 that his romances are not profitable for doctrine, for 
 reproof, for edification. For my own part, I very 
 cordially agree with Browning's friend, M. Milsand, 
 
 1 The Antiquary, chap. xv. 
 
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 289 
 
 when he protests that there is really more philosophy 
 in the writings of Scott " que dans bon nombre de 
 romans philosophiques." But I do not press this 
 point, because I regard it as being really wide of the 
 mark, since the business of the novelist is not to 
 theorise and to preach, but to portray life and the 
 world as he has seen and known them. And it is 
 because Scott saw and knew life and the world in 
 a large and generous and manly way, that, moralist 
 or no moralist, he had given us books full of large 
 and generous and manly qualities, and of what 
 Boswell called " steel and bark for the mind." The 
 atmosphere which we breathe in his pages is fresh 
 stimulating, health-giving ; we fill our lungs with 
 it, and feeling ourselves all the better for the inhala- 
 tion, care nothing whether or not we carry away with 
 us any new scheme of doctrine, or cut-and-dried 
 maxims of the schools. Dean Stanley was guilty 
 of little rhetorical extragavance when he spoke of 
 "the far-seeing toleration, the profound reverence, 
 the critical insight into the various shades of thought 
 and feeling, the moderation which turns to scorn the 
 falsehood of extremes, the lofty sense of Christian 
 honour, purity, and justice," which form all Scott's 
 romances. It is needless, then, to discuss their 
 special ethics it is their whole tone and tendency 
 which count. But there is one fact of importance 
 often lost sight of, upon which special emphasis 
 should be laid. With Scott, as with Shakespeare, 
 but as with few other writers, we get into larger 
 touch with the world, and gain a sense of its wider 
 movements and relationships. His heroes are not 
 
 T 
 
290 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 dealt with as members of narrow social groups 
 alone ; they belong to a nation rich in historical 
 traditions ; l private characters are involved in great 
 national issues; the dramas are played out upon 
 the world's broad stage. It is for this reason that, 
 though we may read him with the greatest intensity 
 of interest while we are young, it is only when we 
 have come to possess riper knowledge and maturer 
 judgments that we can understand him to the full. 
 In the Waverley Novels, let us remember, Scott wrote 
 the ep6s of his country ; henceforth Scotland, revealed 
 to the world by his pen, is for all of us the Land of 
 Scott. This one fact illustrates the wide sweep of 
 his work. In his books we enter as it were upon 
 the broad highways of existence. " Oh, this litera- 
 ture that smells of literature," exclaimed Turg^nev, 
 in one of his letters. The modern schools talk more 
 than enough about what they choose to consider 
 "life;" but the misfortune is, that the more they 
 talk, the stronger the pervading smell of literature 
 becomes. With Scott, who spent little time in 
 discussing the articles of his literary creed, we are 
 not in the study theorising about life ; we are among 
 men and women, and in the stir of great events. 
 The novelist and the dramatist, it can hardly be 
 too often repeated, must be judged, not by their 
 philosophical disquisitions and formulated teachings, 
 but by the actual character of the world which they 
 have called into being. Is it a sane world, a pure 
 and manly world, a world which somehow or other 
 seems to rest firmly and squarely on moral founda- 
 
 1 Leslie Stephen, Hours in a Library, III., 89. 
 
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 291 
 
 tions ? Or is it a world in which the moral founda- 
 tions are broken up ; in which the rights and wrongs 
 of conduct are darkened and confused ; a world in 
 which we can detect no order or purpose, no 
 conscience or aim ? There lies the final and all- 
 embracing question. Scott may have nothing to 
 teach us about life or its mysteries. But to have 
 lived in his world is to have enjoyed a splendid 
 moral education. 
 
 Scott's fame during the later years of his life was 
 world-wide, and for a quarter of a century after his 
 death his writings continued to exercise a powerful 
 force not only in England, but also in France, Germany, 
 Italy, and America. Coming as he did at a time 
 when men yearned for something fresh, he revealed 
 to them " that new world which is the old," and gave 
 them the novelty they demanded by reviving the things 
 which had been overlooked or forgotten. The moment 
 of his appearance was one of rarest opportunity, and 
 by the strength of his wonderful genius he rose to the 
 level of the great occasion. In range and depth of in- 
 fluence, therefore, he is to be regarded as, after Goethe, 
 the most important single figure in the imaginative 
 literature of his time. But to follow the vast current 
 of romantic inspiration which flowed from his novels 
 until at length it sank into the earth, or merged 
 with other streams of tendency, would be to write 
 a large chapter in the history of modern European 
 letters a task which manifestly could not properly 
 be undertaken in this place. A word only may 
 be ventured about the position of Scott at the present 
 day. 
 
39 2 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 Time, which tarnishes so many a reputation which 
 it cannot altogether destroy, has not left his untouched. 
 The impulse which he gave to romance has long since 
 died away ; other generations have arisen with other 
 manners and ideals, and the novel, upon which for a 
 while he had set his mark, has in the hands of later 
 masters undergone vast expansion and change. It 
 was inevitable, therefore, that a reaction in taste should 
 presently set in inevitable, too, that this reaction 
 should be a sweeping one. So far as the great body 
 of readers is concerned, indeed, if there were at any 
 period signs that Scott's popularity was on the wane, 
 they are not now to be observed ; for it appears that, 
 in Great Britain at any rate, his romances are bought 
 and read as widely as ever as widely as the novels 
 of Dickens, and more widely than those of Thackeray. 
 But while readers are thus still loyal to the favourites 
 of seventy and eighty years' standing, a few adverse 
 critics have been busy proclaiming Scott's manifold 
 faults, and proving to their own satisfaction, if to no 
 one else's, that his methods are all wrong, and his 
 books entirely out of date. Well, if power to discern 
 and avoid the errors and weaknesses of a great writer 
 implied at the same time power to imitate his virtues 
 and reproduce his strength, the world would to-day 
 be so full of geniuses that ordinary mortals would 
 have no room to breathe. But greatness depends, 
 not on the absence of error and weakness, but on the 
 presence of virtue and strength. Of Scott's countless 
 shortcomings, of his carelessness, lack of style, historic 
 inaccuracy, false archaeology, prolixity of description, 
 occasional heaviness of hand, and so forth, we have 
 
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 293 
 
 now heard more than enough, and will readily admit 
 that " many men, many women, and many children " 
 of our highly-cultured and hypercritical generation, 
 if (to refer to an anecdote from the Wordsworth 
 Apocrypha) they had " only the mind " to write his 
 novels at all, could write them without the con- 
 spicuous blemishes by which, as it is, they are only 
 too frequently marred. But meanwhile the striking 
 fact of the matter is, that, all these blemishes notwith- 
 standing, they remain, amid far-reaching changes of 
 taste and the fierce conflict of critical theories, pretty 
 much where they stood at the start, acknowledged by 
 all save a few dissentients to belong to the permanent 
 masterpieces of our literature. 
 
 Scott himself, as we know, made no extravagant 
 claims for his work. To cause one reader to forget 
 his bodily pain, to relieve temporarily another's 
 trouble of mind, to "unwrinkle a brow bent with 
 the furrows of daily toil," to " fill the place of bad 
 thoughts, or to suggest better," to induce an idler 
 here and there " to study the history of his country," 
 in short, to furnish harmless amusement, 1 these were 
 his express objects ; and on his achievement of these 
 he based his title to kindly recollection. But while 
 he wrote with such modest aims only in view, and 
 cared little or nothing for the possibility of immortal 
 fame, he none the less produced a body of work 
 upon which " Death, the ravager of all things, 
 will not lay his hands." Old-fashioned in many 
 ways he already is, as Homer and Shakespeare 
 are old-fashioned. But old-fashioned and obsolete 
 1 Introductory Epistle to The Fortunes of Nigel. 
 
294 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 are not synonymous ; and obsolete it is certain 
 Scott will never become till men have ceased 
 to understand in literature the difference between 
 the real and the factitious, the true and the 
 false. 
 
 THE END 
 
INDEX 
 
 ABERCORN, Lady, letter of Scott 
 to, 101 
 
 Abbot, The, published, 162-3 
 
 Abbotsford, evolution of, 112, 113, 
 128, 130, 159, 160, 169, 182, 230, 
 completion of, 174, price paid for, 
 115, Scott's brilliant life at, 157, 
 settled on his eldest son, 174, 
 184, Scott's life at, after the 
 failure, 186, 187, last days at, 
 204-7, what it was to Scott, 
 230, 231 
 
 Adam, Dr, Rector of Edinburgh 
 High School, 16 
 
 Adolphus, J. L., on the authorship 
 of the Waverley Novels, 31, 99, 
 144 
 
 Animals, Scott's love for, 9, 98, 
 
 176, 2IO 
 
 Anne of Geier stein published, 197 
 
 Antiquary, The, published, 146, 147 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, criticisms of 
 Scott, 239 
 
 Ashestiel, Scott's life at, 94, 96, 99, 
 loo, the servants and animals at, 
 97-9, end of Scott's tenancy of, 
 in 
 
 Auld Thomas of Twizzlehope enter- 
 tains Scott at breakfast, 59 
 
 Austen, Miss, Scott's admiration 
 for, 280 
 
 Autobiographical fragment cited I, 
 et passim 
 
 BAILLIE, Joanna, first acquaintance 
 of Scott with, 92 
 
 on Rokeby, 118 
 
 Ballantyne, James, fellow-scholar 
 with Scott at Kelso, 20, begin- 
 ning of the business connection 
 between them, 71, 72, removal 
 of to Edinburgh, 121, character 
 of, 125 ; re-arrangement of busi- 
 ness relations with Scott, 129, 
 his opinion of Waverley, 131, 
 cited on public opinion of The 
 Lord of the Isles, 236; subsequent 
 business relations with Scott, 142, 
 146, 150, 157, 180, 181, the 
 bankruptcy, 175, 176, and after, 
 182, 1 88, 194 
 
 and John, their joint 
 
 business relations with Scott, 115, 
 121, 123, 124, 126, 127, disso- 
 lution of partnership between, 129 
 
 John, 123, 124, 128, 129, 149, 
 
 character of, 126; his stock taken 
 over by Constable, 151, death of, 
 164, 165 
 
 Co., affairs of in 1818, 
 
 178, 179 
 
 Barbauld, Mrs, effect on Scott of 
 hearing her recite Lenore, 63 
 
 Baronetcy conferred on Scott, 139 
 
 Bath, early visit to, and recollections 
 of, 12 
 
 Beardie of Teviotdale, 2 
 
2 9 6 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Belches, see Stuart 
 Bell, John, surgeon, 65 
 Betrothed, The, published, 172, 173 
 Black Dwarf, The, published, 147- 
 
 8; 154 
 
 Blacklock, Dr, introduces Scott to 
 the poems of Ossian and Spenser, 
 17 
 
 Blackwood, Dr, business relations 
 with Scott, 148 
 
 Books read to and by Scott in early 
 . life, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 25-28 
 
 Border Antiquities, Scott's Intro- 
 duction to, 149 
 
 Heroes, 8 
 
 Bridal of Triermain published, 
 1 18-9 
 
 Bride of Lammermoor, The, pub- 
 lished, 152, 164 
 
 Broadmeadows, afterwards Abbots- 
 ford, in, purchase money for, 
 how raised, 115, 123 
 
 Brown, Adam, Scott's horse, 98 
 
 Lucky, of Kelso, 20 
 
 Buccleugh, Duchess of (see also 
 
 Countess of Dalkeith), death of, 
 
 133 
 
 Duke of, gives a bond for 
 
 Scott, 129, later discharged, 151 
 
 family, the, its connection 
 
 with Scott, 2, 79, 90, 129 
 
 Buchan, Earl of, his eccentric kind- 
 ness, 150 
 
 Burns, Robert, Scott's meeting with 
 and impressions of, 37 
 
 Byron, Lord, poetic rivalry of with 
 Scott, 117, 135, his attack on 
 him, 138, and subsequent friend- 
 liness between them, 138, 139; 
 Moore's plea for, 217 
 
 CADELL, Mr Constable's partner, 
 169, his relations with Scott after 
 the failure, 195, 196, 207 
 
 Cadyow Castle, ballad published, 
 
 Camp, Scott's favourite dog, 98-9 
 Carlyle, Thomas, his admission con- 
 cerning Scott, 210; his criticisms 
 on the novels, 156, 229, 237, 282, 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas continuea. 
 
 283, 285, 288, and on the poems, 
 
 255, 256 
 
 Castle Dangerous published, 2OI 
 Cathcart, Earl of, 145 
 Chambers, Robert, on Scott's orderly 
 
 habits, 31 
 Carpenter, Charles, brother of 
 
 Lady Scott, 54, death of, and 
 
 reversion from, 159 
 Charpentier, Charlotte Margaret, 
 
 Scott's second love, their marriage, 
 
 Jean, father of Lady Scott, 54 
 
 Chase, The, and William and Helen, 
 translated from the German of 
 Burger, published, 66, 68-9 
 
 Chronicles of the Canongate pub- 
 lished, 193 
 
 Clarty Hole (Abbotsford), 113 
 
 Clerk, William, intimacy of, with 
 Scott, 38, 46, shares his German 
 studies, 62, letter of Scott to, 
 cited, 192 
 
 Clerkship of Sessions Court, reversion 
 of secured by Scott, 90, 91, office 
 entered upon, in, resigned, 199 
 
 "Club, The," Edinburgh, Scott's 
 nicknames at, 34 
 
 Cockburn, Mrs, 12, her impressions 
 of Scott as a child, 13 
 
 Lord, on Scott's simplicity of 
 
 character, 21 1 
 
 Coleridge, his metrical principles 
 followed by Scott, 87-8 
 
 Collins, Wilkie, his plots contrasted 
 with Scott's, 278 
 
 Compendium of Scottish History 
 published, 197-8 
 
 Constable, Archibald, business re- 
 lations of, with Scott, 88, 124- 
 131, 151, 158, 169, 170, 173, 181 
 et seq., the failure of the firm, 143, 
 176; his social ambitions, 182, rup- 
 ture of relations with Scott, 196 
 
 Count Robert of Paris, 199, pub- 
 lished, 20 1 
 
 Crabbe, visit of, to Scott, 167 
 
 Cranstoun, Miss, on Scott's trans- 
 lation of Lenore, 64-5 
 
INDEX 
 
 297 
 
 Cranstoun, Mr, disapproves of The 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel, 83 
 
 Creditors of Scott make acknow- 
 ledgment of his honourable con- 
 duct, 194 
 
 Croker, Mr, Secretary of the Admir- 
 alty replies to The Malagrowther 
 Letters, 187 
 
 Cumnor Hall, ballad published, 
 75 
 
 DALKEITH, Countess of (see also 
 Buccleugh, Countess of), inspires 
 The Lay of the Last Minstrel, 
 82, 86 
 
 Darnick hamlet, 176 
 
 Darwin, writings of, 6 1 
 
 Death of the Laird's Jock published, 
 
 195 
 
 Dogs, Scott's pets and love of, 
 
 98-9, 100, 176, 202, 205 
 Douglas, one of Scott's pet grey- 
 hounds, 99 
 Downshire, Marquis of, guardian of 
 
 Scott's wife, 54, consents to the 
 
 marriage, 55 
 
 Dramas by Scott (note), 71 
 Dryburgh Abbey, burial-place of 
 
 Scott and of his wife, 206 
 Dry den, Scott's life of, 101, 102, 
 
 106, 131 
 Duncan, Rev. Dr, of Sandy Knowe, 
 
 on Scott as a child, 9 
 
 EDGEWORTH, Maria, 215, Scott's 
 opinion of her novels, 261, 280 
 
 Edinburgh, Scott's flying visit to, 
 12, return to from Sandy Knowe 
 and life in, 13, his early and later 
 homes in, 36, 160, 185 
 
 college, Scott's life at, 23 
 
 debating societies in, 33, and 
 
 disputatiousness of the inhabitants, 
 
 High School, its masters and 
 
 scholars, 16 
 
 Light Horse or Dragoons, 
 
 Scott's connection with, 43, in- 
 direct results, 93 
 
 society, exclusiveness of, 123 
 
 Edinburgh Annual Register, Scott's 
 contributions to, 128, 149 
 
 Edinburgh Review, first and second 
 editors of, 82 ; Scott's connection 
 with, 81, 101-3, an d its close, 
 1 06 
 
 Edinburgh Weekly Journal, Scott's 
 contributions to, 187 
 
 Editorial work done by Scott, IOI, 
 1 06, 131, 137; its faults, 73 
 
 Ellis, George, 72, approves of The 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel, 88 
 
 criticism of, on The Lady of the 
 
 Lake, 108, letters of Scott to, 
 cited, 101 
 
 Encyclopedia Britannica, Scott's 
 work in, 131, 137 
 
 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 
 Byron's attack on Scott in, 138 
 
 English novelists before and con- 
 temporary with Scott, 259, 260 
 
 romantic revival in poetry and 
 
 its leaders, 234, evolution of, 235, 
 236 
 
 Epistle to Erskine, cited on the in- 
 fluence of the childish days at 
 Sandy Knowe on Scott, 10 
 
 Erskine, William, attempts to lead 
 Scott to classic models, 240; 
 German studies of, 62 ; he meets 
 Lewis, 68, disapproves of The 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel, 83, and 
 of the first sketch for Waverley, 
 101, aids in^the mystification con- 
 nected with the Bridal of Trier- 
 main, 1 1 8, 119 
 
 Essay on Imitations of the Ancient 
 Ballads referred to, (note), 62, 63 
 
 Eve of St John, ballad published, 
 66, 68, 75 
 
 FAIR Maid of Perth, published, 
 real persons sketched in, 195 
 
 Fergusson, Prof., 37 
 
 Sir Adam and Lady, 174 
 
 reading The Lady of the 
 
 Lake to his soldiers in Spain, 251 
 
 Ferrier, Miss, Scott's admiration 
 for, 280 
 
 Field of Waterloo published, 145 
 
298 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Forbes, Sir William, of Pitsligo, 
 married to Miss Stuart, Scott's 
 first love, 49, fine character of, 
 and constant friendliness to Scott, 
 50-1, 186 
 
 Fortunes of Nigel published, 1 68, 
 169 
 
 Fox, C. J. , approval of The Lay of 
 the Last Minstrel, 88 
 
 Fraser, Luke, master at Edinburgh 
 High School, 16 
 
 French Revolution, effects of, in 
 Edinburgh, and on Scott, 42-4 
 
 Friends helped by Scott, (note), 193 
 
 GEORGE IV. (see also Prince Regent), 
 accession and coronation of, 165, 
 1 66, visits of, to Edinburgh, stage- 
 managed by Scott, 166-8 ; Scott's 
 attitude towards, 223 
 
 German studies of Scott and his 
 friends, 62 
 
 translations by Scott (see Goetz 
 
 von Berlichingen, etc.), 63, 66, 
 
 71 
 
 Gibson, J., cited on Scott's deter- 
 mination to retrieve his fallen 
 fortunes, 185 
 
 Gilpin Horner, the Goblin Page, 
 the real nucleus of The Lay of the 
 Last Minstrel, 82-3, 84, 85 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., cited on Scott's 
 character, and works, 232 
 
 Glenfinlas ballad published, 66, 
 68,74 
 
 Goethe, influence of, on Scott, 70, 
 effect of his death on him, 203 
 
 Goetz von Berlichingen translated 
 by Scott, 70, 71 
 
 Gourgaud, General, proposed duel 
 with, 192, 228 
 
 Guy Mannering published, 136; 
 success of, 137 ; real places and 
 persons sketched in (note), 57 
 
 HA LI DON Hall, poem, price paid 
 
 for, 169 
 Harold the Dauntless published, 
 
 149 
 Hayley's writings, 61 
 
 Heart of Midlothian, The, published, 
 
 i$i J 52 
 Heber, Richard, friendship of, with 
 
 Scott, 72, 91 
 Hebrides, Scott's journey to, no, 
 
 its object, 134, second visit to, 
 
 133, literary results, 168 
 Hermitage Castle, drawing of, 73 
 Highland Widow, The, published, 
 
 193 
 
 Historical novels of Scott properly 
 classed as fiction, 275, his own 
 view of such works, 266-8, justi- 
 fication of his mode of writing, 
 268 et seq. 
 
 Hogg, James, the Ettrick Shepherd, 
 72, his poems, 92, 98 
 
 Holland, Lord, Scott's attitude to, 
 223, 224 
 
 Home, " Douglas," Scott's meeting 
 with as a child, 12 
 
 George, his agreement with 
 
 Scott as to the Clerkship of 
 Sessions, 90-1, he vacates the 
 post, in 
 
 Hunter, Archibald Gibson, Con- 
 stable's partner, Scott's disagree- 
 ment with, 124, 129 
 
 Hurst and Robinson, Constable's 
 town agents, 181, their failure, 
 results of, to Scott, 176, 182 
 
 INNERLEITHEN adopts the name of 
 
 St Ronan's (note), 172 
 Ireland, visit of Scott to, 175, 191 
 Irving, John, on Scott in his college 
 
 days, 27 
 
 Mrs, ballad lore of, 28 
 
 Washington, on the dying 
 
 Scott, 202 
 
 Ivanhoe published, circumstances 
 under which it was written, 
 J 53-4> J 57> the speech of the 
 peasants in, 270 
 
 JEDBURGH, Scott hooted at an 
 election at, 201 
 
 Jeffrey, Francis, first acquaintance 
 with Scott, 34-5, becomes editor 
 of the Edinburgh Review, 82, 
 
INDEX 
 
 299 
 
 Jeffrey, Francis continued, 
 
 his adverse criticism of Mar- 
 mion, 103, 104, favourable criti- 
 cism of The Lady of the Lake, 
 1 08, comment on The Lay of the 
 Last Minstrel, 85, and approval 
 thereof, 88 ; on the authorship of 
 Waver ley, 144 ; on Scott's one 
 act of rudeness, 224 
 
 Jobson, Jane, marriage of, to Scott's 
 eldest son, 174 
 
 Journal of Scott, cited and referred 
 to, 45> 5i> 55, 175-7, 188-9, 
 197, 227 
 
 KELSO, Ballantyne's publishing 
 works at, 7i> his removal thence 
 to Edinburgh, 73, Scott's school- 
 days at, 1 8, influence on him of 
 its surroundings, 19 
 
 Kenilworth, 164, published, 1 68 
 
 LADY of the Lake, The, criticism 
 of, 243, family incidents con- 
 nected with, 214 ; published, 
 success and results of, 108-9; 
 in ; read to British soldiers in 
 Spain, 251 
 
 Laidlaw, William, his friendship 
 with Scott, 72, 200-2 
 
 Lake Poets, the, contemporaries of 
 Scott, 4 
 
 Lardner's Cyclopedia, Scott's con- 
 tribution to, 197-8 
 
 Lasswade, early country home of 
 Scott, 93 
 
 Lauderdale, Lord, 224 
 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel, The, 40, 
 origin and evolution of poem, 
 82-5, 86, 93, faulty plot of, 243, 
 metre of, 75, published, success 
 of, 88, real persons sketched in, 
 52, results to Scott, 89, returns 
 in money, 88, 122 
 
 Legend of Montrose, The, published, 
 
 152 
 
 Lenore, Btirger's ballad of, Scott's 
 translation of, 63-5, 68 
 
 Letters on Demonology and Witch- 
 craft published, 199 
 
 Letters from Malach i Malagrowther, 
 Esq. published, 187, the fourth 
 not published, 201 
 
 Lewis, Matthew Gregory ('Monk' 
 Lewis), 64, 67, his connection 
 with Scott, 68-70, severe technique 
 of, 69 
 
 Leyden, John, 72, 74 
 
 Liddesdale in 1800, 57 
 
 Life higher than Literature, Scott's 
 remarks on, 215-16 
 
 Life of Dry den, 101, 102, 106, 131 
 
 Life of Napoleon Bonaparte pub- 
 lished, 190, price paid for, 101, 
 incident connected with, 192, 228 
 
 Life of Swift, edited by Scott, 
 
 131 
 
 "Literary Society, The," of Edin- 
 burgh, 33 
 
 Lockhart, J. G. (cited passim}, 175, 
 200, marriage with Scott's eldest 
 daughter, 165, Scott on his char- 
 acter, 190 
 
 Johnnie, his little son, for 
 
 whom the Tales of a Grandfather 
 were composed, 193 
 
 London visits made by Scott, and 
 London acquaintances met, 91, 
 107, 138, 166, 191, 202, 204 
 
 Longman's purchase of copyright of 
 \he Minstrelsy from Scott, 77, and 
 of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, 
 88 
 
 Lord of the Isles, The, its faulty plot, 
 242, projected, no, 133, 137, 
 published, 134, poorly received, 
 135, 136 
 
 MACKENZIE, Henry, influence of his 
 essay on the German drama on 
 Scott, 60- 1 
 
 Mackintosh, , friend of Scott, 9 1 
 
 Marmion, 43, faulty plot of, 243, 
 poetic introductions to cantos of, 
 104, 105, published, 102, and 
 successful, 1 02, 103, Jeffrey's 
 criticism of, 103-4, Scott's 
 personal opinion of, 1 1 ; price 
 paid for, 102, 122, 169; real 
 places sketched in, 94 
 
INDEX 
 
 Masson, Prof., on the one Scottish 
 characteristic lacking in Scott, 
 226, cited on Scott's novels, 265 
 
 Mathieson, Peter, Scott's coachman, 
 96, 97, his faithfulness in evil 
 days, 187 
 
 Melville, Lord, Scott's attitude to, 
 223 
 
 Memories cf the Somervilles, edited 
 by Scott, 137 
 
 Mill, J. S., his opinion of Miss 
 Stuart (note), 46 
 
 Miller, William, 101 
 
 Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 
 The, 29, 58, 60, 78, inception of, 
 71, 72, other editions of, 82; 
 German inspiration of, 237, im- 
 portance of, in Scott's literary 
 career, 75, sales of, 76, 77 ; 
 Scott's contributions to, 43, 74-5, 
 76, 81, his collaborators, 72-4 
 
 Mitchell, Mr, tutor to the Scott 
 family, 21 
 
 Monastery, The, published, 162-3 
 
 Morris, William, his poems com- 
 pared with Scott's, 256 
 
 Morritt, Mr, 116, letter of Scott to, 
 on Abbotsford, 115, another 
 letter to, on his religious attitude, 
 227 
 
 Mottos to chapters invented by 
 Scott, (note] 146-7 
 
 Murray, John, establishes the Quar- 
 terly Review, 106, 107, Scott's 
 business relations with, 148, (note) 
 158 
 
 My Aunt Margaret's Mirror, 195 
 
 OLD Mortality published, 148, 149 
 Opus Magnum, the see Waverley 
 
 Novels, re-issue of 
 Original Memoirs anonymously 
 
 edited by Scott, 101 
 Orkneys, Shetland, etc., Scott's 
 
 visits to, 133, 1 68 
 Ossian, Scott's poor opinion of, 
 
 17 
 Oxford and Cambridge Universities 
 
 offer Honorary Degrees to Scott, 
 
 165 
 
 PARIS, Scott's visits to, 145, 216, 
 191 
 
 Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk, pub- 
 lished, 145 
 
 Peninsular War, its effect on Scott's 
 poetry, no 
 
 Percy, a pet greyhound of Scott's, 
 
 99 
 
 Percy's Reliques, part played by, in 
 Scott's poetic career, 18, 19, 60, 
 
 73 
 Peveril of the Peak, autobiographical 
 
 passages in, 52, published, 
 
 171 
 Pirate, The, sources of materials 
 
 used in, and publication of, 168 
 Pitt, W., approval of, and comment 
 
 on The Lay of the Last Minstrel, 
 
 88-9 
 Planting and Gardening, papers 
 
 written on, by Scott, 193 
 Plots of Scott s novels criticised, 
 
 276-9, his own criticism on, 277 
 Poet Laureateship offered to Scott, 
 
 131 
 Poetic Introductions to Cantos of 
 
 Marmion, 104 
 Pole, Mr, music teacher to Scott's 
 
 family, offers assistance after the 
 
 crash, 1 86 
 Pope's triteness compared with 
 
 Scott's, 254 
 Prestonpans, 12 
 Prince Regent, the (see also George 
 
 IV.), his admiration for Scott, how 
 
 shown, 131, 139, 199, and re- 
 ciprocated, 139, 140, 152 
 Privy Councillorship declined by 
 
 Scott, 199 
 Prose romance, writers of the late 
 
 Eighteenth and early Nineteenth 
 
 centuries, 235 
 Purdie, Thomas, Scott's factotum, 
 
 97, his faithfulness in the dark 
 
 days, 187 
 Pye, writings of, 6 1 
 
 QUARTERLY REVIEW, Scott's 
 connection with, 107 ; deceived 
 as to the writer of The Bridal of 
 
INDEX 
 
 301 
 
 Quarterly Review continued. 
 Trier-main, 119, Scott's critique 
 of his own novels in, 276, 277 
 
 Quentin Durward published, 171 
 
 REDGA U NT LET, autobiographical 
 passages in, 52, published, 171, 
 172, 174, real persons and places 
 sketched in, 3, 37, 38, 52 
 
 Regalia of Scotland, Scott's interest 
 in the search for, 152 
 
 Resolutions on his literary attitude 
 formed and kept by Scott, 89, 
 90 
 
 Ritson, Joseph, 72 
 
 Rob Roy published, 150, real 
 persons sketched in, 52 
 
 Rogers, Samuel, 91 
 
 Rokeby, faulty plot of, 243, pub- 
 lished, 116-17, poor success of, 
 1 1 6, real persons sketched in, 
 52, Scott's own opinion of, 115-18 
 
 Rose, William Stewart, 92, approval 
 of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, 
 
 00 
 
 oo 
 
 Rowlands Satires edited by Scott, 
 
 137 
 
 Royal Society of Edinburgh elects 
 
 Scott its president, 165 
 Russell, Col., owner of Ashestiel, 
 
 94 
 
 Russia, Alexander I. , Czar of, Scott's 
 meeting with in Paris, 145 
 
 Rutherford, Anne, mother of Scott, 
 2-4 
 
 Dr John, maternal grandfather 
 
 of Scott, 3, 5 
 
 ST Ro NAN'S Well, Scott's one 
 novel of contemporary Social Life, 
 published, 171 
 
 Sandy Knowe, home of Scott's 
 paternal grandparents, 7? ro ~ 
 mantic country near, 9, influences 
 of, on Scott's works, 233 
 
 Scotland's epos, the Waverley 
 Novels, 290 
 
 Scott, Anne (see Rutherford, Anne), 
 second daughter of Scott, 96, 175, 
 200, 206, character of, 190 
 
 Scott, Charles, second son of Scott, 
 96, 231, character of, 189, joins 
 the army, 157, death, 231 
 
 Charlotte Sophia, eldest 
 
 daughter of Scott, 96, married 
 to J. G. Lockhart, 165, 190 
 
 Daniel, brother of Scott, his 
 
 portrait sketched in The Fair 
 Maid of Perth, 195-6 
 
 Janet, aunt of Scott, 8, 13, 18 
 
 Major, eldest brother of Scott, 
 
 "5 
 
 Mrs, afterwards Lady (see 
 
 Charpentier, Charlotte Margaret), 
 104, death of, 190, buried at 
 Dryburgh Abbey, 206 
 
 SCOTT, Sir Walter, ancestry and 
 parentage, 1-4, 7, 8, birth, early 
 years and ill-health, 4, 5, lame- 
 ness, 5, effects of on after life, 
 6, 7, 14, 1 8, 19, 26, early sur- 
 roundings and memories, 7-10, 
 marvellous power of his memory, 
 8, 15, love of Nature and of 
 animals (see Dogs), 9, 19, 176, 
 210, early self-restraint, 14, 
 education, 16, and school-days, 
 characteristics of, 20, college 
 days, 23, out-of-class studies, 25, 
 26, legal studies, 29-31, debating 
 society membership, 33-5, friend- 
 ships formed, 35, meeting with 
 Burns, 37 ; call to the Bar, 38, 
 notebook of that year, 39, 40; 
 early work as advocate, 41-60; 
 his vacation rambles, 57, volun- 
 teer exertions of, 43, 93, his love 
 affair with Miss Stuart, 45-52, 
 its end, 49-51, influence of, on 
 his writings, 52, 53 ; engagement 
 to Miss Charpentier, 53, marriage 
 and married life, 55 ; he comes 
 under German influence, 60-63, 
 meeting with, and influence of 
 * Monk ' Lewis, 68, 74, his 
 translations of Goethe, etc., 70, 
 71, his connection with the 
 Ballantynes (q.v.), 71, his justifi- 
 cation of these relations, 122 ; the 
 Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border 
 
302 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter continued. 
 published, 72 } his own contribu- 
 tions to, 74-76, editorial work 
 of, 73-4, period of poetic publi- 
 cation, 78, 1804, et seq.\ financial 
 position in, 79, connection with 
 the Edinburgh Review begins, 
 81, severance of, 106; Lay of 
 the Last Minstrel the starting- 
 point of definite literary career, 
 89, resolutions adopted in regard 
 to that career, ib.\ reversion to 
 Clerkship of Sessions arranged 
 for, 90-1, office entered on, 
 in, resigned, 199; London 
 visits, 91, 107, 138, 166, 191, 
 202, 204 ; three country homes 
 of, Lasswade and Ashestiel, 93- 
 
 99, Abbotsford, in, his popu- 
 larity at, 96, his children and 
 their education, 96, 97, his 
 servants and animals, 97-9, 176, 
 186-7 ; methods of work, 99, 
 
 100, 161, Marmion published, 
 102, Jeffrey's criticism on, 103-4, 
 connection with the Quarterly 
 Review begins, 106 - 7, Lady 
 of the Lake published, 108, 
 Vision of Don Roderick published, 
 no, Abbotsford purchased, 
 111-15, Rokeby published, 117, 
 Bridal of Triermain published, 
 119, mystifications as to his 
 authorship, 118, 120, 141-3; his 
 relations with Constable, 124, 129, 
 151, 169, 170, the failure, 143, 
 181-2, the rupture between, 
 196 ; causes of Scott's financial 
 embarrassments (see Abbotsford), 
 1 22 - 30 ; Waverley published, 
 131-3, Lord of the Isles pub- 
 lished, 134, Guy Mannering 
 published, 136, literary out-put 
 in 1815, and overwork, 137, 
 attack on by, and meeting with 
 Byron, 138-9; relations with 
 the Prince Regent, 139-41, 152, 
 and with him when George IV., 
 165, created a baronet, 139; 
 visits to London and Paris, and 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter continued. 
 
 their literary results, 145, 191, 
 216, The Antiquary published, 
 146, Tales of my Landlord 
 published, 147, relations with 
 Murray and Black wood, 148, 
 literary work, other than novels 
 and poems, of this period, 149, 
 Harold the Dauntless, Bridal of 
 Triermain , etc.> published, 149, 
 first and subsequent warnings of 
 the results of overwork, 149, 150, 
 153, Rob Roy published, 150, 
 Tales of my Landlord^ second 
 series, published, 151, third 
 series published, 152, fourth 
 series published, 201, Heart 
 of Midlothian published, 151, 
 Ivanhoe published, conditions 
 under which it was written, 
 153, 154, extraordinary out-put 
 and high level of work up to 
 this date, 154-6, zenith of his 
 career, 154, and gathering clouds, 
 157, financial difficulties, 158; 
 social life in Edinburgh, 160, 
 and at Abbotsford, 1 60, 161, 
 Monastery and Abbot> published, 
 162-4, Kenilworth) 164, pub- 
 lished, 1 68, marriage of his eldest 
 daughter, and honours proffered 
 him, 165 ; attends coronation of 
 George IV., 165, his attitude 
 towards, 223, organises Edin- 
 burgh reception of, 166-8 ; Pirate 
 published, 168, Fortunes of Nigel 
 published, ib. y huge earnings of, 
 169, Peveril of the Peak, Quentin 
 Dtirward, St Ronan's Well, 
 and Redgauntlet published, 171, 
 Tales of the Crusaders published, 
 173, hints of over - publication 
 and overwork, 173, culmination 
 of his prosperity, and marriage of 
 his eldest son, 174, Irish journey, 
 175 ; his own statement as to the 
 collapse of his fortunes, 176-8, 
 sketch of his affairs at this period, 
 178, et seq. ; splendid efforts to pay 
 his creditors in last years, 183, et 
 
INDEX 
 
 303 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter continued, 
 seq.; loyalty of friends, family, 
 and servants, 186-7 > Letters of 
 Malagrowther published, 187, 
 Woodstock published, 188 - 9, 
 death of Lady Scott, 190, Life 
 of Napoleon Bonaparte published, 
 and other work, 193, Tales of 
 a Grandfather published, 193, 
 198-9, his generosity with his liter- 
 ary work (note], 193 ; results of 
 his literary exertions, 194, Fair 
 Maid of Perth published, 195, 
 re-issue, with notes, of the Waver - 
 ley Novels, financial results, 196, 
 Anne of Geier stein published, 
 197, Compendium of Scottish 
 History published, 198, attacks 
 of illness, 198-200, Count Robert 
 of Paris and Castle Dangerous 
 published, 201 ; insults to, at 
 Jedburgh elections, 201 ; journey 
 to Italy, 202, return to Abbots- 
 ford, 204, 205, last days, 205, 
 death and burial, 206 
 
 Personal Appear- 
 ance, 211, and characteristics, 
 210-12, his charm, 208-11, com- 
 mon-sense, 21 1,219, ethics, 227-8, 
 feudal notions, 231, freedom from 
 superstition, 219-20, generosity, 
 193 (note], 218, genuine goodness, 
 232, good nature, 218, humour, 
 285, love of wealth, 229-40, 
 orderliness, 31, 136, 161, 179, 
 politics and Jacobite leanings of, 
 8, 21, 45, 140, 221, 223-4, 
 practical democracy, 57, 60, 
 224 - 5, religion, 226 - 7, self- 
 restraint, 14, strong sanity, 65, 
 
 212 
 
 Poetical and other 
 
 literary work of, 234, character 
 drawing, 280-5, defects of, 253, 
 et seq., fame of, in life and after, 
 290, et seq. , his own views of his 
 Historical novels, 266-9, limita- 
 tions of his work, 241, 243-5, 
 literary modesty of, 213-7, place 
 in the evolution of English poetry, 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter continued. 
 
 2 35 > objects in writing, 293 ; 
 Poetical work of, critically con- 
 sidered, 234, et seq. ; sound quali- 
 ties of his poetry, 236 ; his view 
 of Nature, 246 ; wholesomeness of 
 his work, 288-91 
 
 Robert, of Sandy Knowe, 
 
 rternal grandfather of Scott, 7, 
 , his wife, 8 
 
 uncle of Scott, legacy 
 
 from, 79 
 
 Thomas, brother of Scott, 
 
 aided by his brother, 105, 223-4, 
 letter to, from Scott, on the 
 authorship of Waverley, 144 
 
 Walter, father of Scott, 2, 
 
 his wife, 3, and children, 4, his 
 legal practice, 30, death of, 79 
 
 elder son of Scott, 96, 
 
 206, 214, 231, character of, 189, 
 marriage of, 1 74, offers from him 
 and his wife to Scott after the 
 crash, 186, death, 231 
 
 Scott's family, extinction of, 231 
 
 Search after Happiness, The, pub- 
 lished, 149 
 
 Selkirkshire, Sheriffship of, held by 
 Scott, 79 
 
 Seward, Miss Anne, 74, letter to 
 from Scott on his financial posi- 
 tion in 1802, 80, letter of Scott 
 to, on the plot of The Lay of the 
 Last Minstrel, 84, poems of, 
 128 
 
 Shortreed, Robert, Scott's guide in 
 his Border excursions, 57, cited 
 on Scott, journeys and character- 
 istics, 58-60, on his adaptability 
 to his company, 225 
 
 Skene's Reminiscences, cited on 
 Scott's failure, 177 
 
 Skull and crossbones desired and 
 obtained by Scott, 65 
 
 Smith, Sidney, first editor of the 
 Edinburgh Review, 82 
 
 Southey's view of Marmion, 102, 
 103 
 
 u Speculative Society, Edinburgh," 
 Scott's connection with, 34 
 
304 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Spenser's poems, their influence on 
 Scott, 17 
 
 Stoddart, Sir John, 86 
 
 Stuart, Lady Jane, mother of Scott's 
 first love, 46, 47, 51 
 
 Miss Williamina, Scott's court- 
 ship of, 46-9, her marriage to 
 Sir William Forbes, 49 
 
 Sir John, of Fettercairn, 46 
 
 Surgeon's Daughter, The, published, 
 
 193 
 
 Swift, Life of, edited by Scott, 131 
 Swinton family, its connection with 
 Scott, 2 
 
 TALES of a Grandfather, origin 
 and publication of series, 193, 
 199 
 
 Tales of my Landlord published, 
 147, second series published, 
 151, third series published, 152, 
 fourth series published, 201 
 
 Tales of the Crusaders published, 
 172-3, well received, 175 
 
 Talisman, The, published, 172, 173 
 
 Taylor, William, translator of 
 Burgers Lenore, 63-4 
 
 Tennyson cited on Scott's character, 
 
 233 
 
 Thomas the Rhymer, 81, his re- 
 puted haunt, 113 
 
 Thomson, Thomas, German studies 
 of, 62 
 
 Translations by Scott. See Goethe, 
 Lenore, etc. 
 
 Turgenev cited on literary literature, 
 290, influenced by Miss Edge- 
 worth's novels (note], 262 
 
 Twizzlehope, Auld Thomas of, 59 
 
 Two Drovers, The, published, 193 
 
 UNPUBLISHED last writings of Scott, 
 203 
 
 VISION of Don Roderick, The, 
 origin and publication of, no, 
 in 
 
 Volunteering in Edinburgh, 43, 93 
 
 WALES, the Princess of, Scott's 
 meeting with, 92, his changed 
 views concerning, 140 
 
 War, as described by Scott, 250-1 
 
 Waterloo, Scott's visit to, 145 
 
 Waver ley, commencement of, 101, 
 131, publication of, 131, 133, 
 137, success of, 134, question of 
 its authorship, 76, the Prince 
 Regent's interest in, 139-41, real 
 places sketched in, 57, sources 
 of, 149 ; a fresh departure in 
 fiction, 259, 262, 263, influences 
 acting on, 260, 261 
 
 Waverley Novels, The, 27, 30-2, 76, 
 99, 178; critically considered, 
 251, 258, grouped as to period, 
 264, and place, 265, 266, mysti- 
 fication as to their authorship, 
 140, Scott on his reasons for 
 maintaining, 143, 144 ; re-issue of, 
 with notes, its great success, 196, 
 207, 225 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, Scott's meet- 
 ing with, 145, 216 
 
 \Vhipple, Mr, on Scott's relations 
 with the peasantry, 225 
 
 Willich, Dr, German teacher of 
 Scott and his friends, 62 
 
 Wilson, John, on the authorship of 
 Waverley, 76, on the fighting 
 spirit in Scott's poems, 250 
 
 " Wisdom," Thomas of Twizzle- 
 hope's Punch-bowl, 59 
 
 Women novelists admired by Scott, 
 280 
 
 Wood, Alexander, friend of Scott, 
 
 65 
 
 Woodstock, publication of, and cir- 
 cumstances under which it was 
 written, 188, 189 
 
 Wordsworth's farewell to Scott, 
 202, reputed criticism on Scott's 
 poetry, 255, view of Marmion, 
 102 
 
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