SIR WALTER SCOTT.
IT is not surprising that there should be a general desire at this time to do honour to the memory of Scott,—the healthiest and most humane man of letters which this century has produced. We know little of Chaucer, but can scarcely doubt that he was one of the most genial and loveable of men ; we can but dimly guess at what Shakespeare was, and imagine the charm of his companionship among the fields and lanes of Stratford ; but of the poets or literary men whom we know best, there is not one who is at once so well known and so much loved as Scott. Dr. Johnson, thanks to Boswell, is a perfectly familiar figure. We admire his robust virtue, we are amused at his obstinate prejudices, we revere him for his goodness, and are repelled by his ungainly habits ; but we are still better acquainted with Scott than we are with Johnson, and our knowledge is not wholly derived from books, since there are few men with a tolerably wide circle of acquaintance who have not heard something about Scott from friends who knew him aud loved him. The knowledge was sure to be followed by the love. Scott's heart, to use a common phrase, was always in the right place. Human nature was dear to him not because he was an artist, but because he was a man. He could tolerate people's foibles and appreciate their goodness and enter into their pursuits without a thought or feeling that he was better or cleverer than they. It was truly said by one of his dependents that Sir Walter treated every man as if he were a blood-relation, and he retained thelionest warmth of his heart, the homely simplicity of his ways, when his genius bad gained himwealth and a popularity wholly un precedented. Nothing can be more beautiful or more significant of Scott's manly, wholesome nature, than the friendship that existed between the Lord of Abbotsford and his faithful servant Torn Pudic), unless it be the affection, equally honourable on both sides, that Scott and Laidlaw felt for one another. Who does not remember the pathetic words addressed by the poet to his bailiff when he came back to Ab- botsford to die ? "Ha I Willie Laidlaw I Oh man, how often have I thought of you!" All through life home scenes and home faces were ever the dearest to Scott, and when Abbotsford was crowded with lords and ladies, the owner, although "few men have enjoyed society more," was still happier in his woods with Purdie, among the trees he had planted with his own hands, or while dictating a story to Laidlaw. His thoughtfulness for others, which had been, as Mr. Palgrave points out, "the grace of his life," was evidenced to the last, and we can readily believe that "for the least chill in the affection of any one dear to him he had the sensitiveness of a maiden." It is always so. The most manly nature is ever the most sympathetic and tender. It is beautiful to note also how perfectly free Scott was from all literary jealousy. Indeed his warmth of friendship often led him astray in criticism, as in the opinion he expressed of Joanna Baillie ; and where, as in the CA8C8 of Wordsworth and Lord Byron, high praise was but fitting praise, his thorough appreciation of his
friends' genius was expressed in no measured terms. Scott was a modest man, and seems in some degree to have been unconscious of his powers. He told Crabbe that his poetry formed "a regular evening's amusement" for his children ; but that they had never read any of his own poems ; and it is related of Miss Scott that when asked how she liked the "Lady of the Lake," she replied simply, " Oh, I have not read it I Papa says there's nothing so bad for young people as reading bad poetry." Southey had the impression, and showed that he had it, that he was scarcely second to Milton ; Wordsworth could talk best about him- self, and aoald recite only his own poetry ; but Scott was singularly free from the conceit, or perhaps we should call it the preoccupa- tion, so often exhibited by men of letters. He even prided himself upon being a man of the world, and it appears that he did show considerable worldly sagacity at times, but then it was generally in relation to other people's affairs. His judgment, when it was not overpowered by his imagination, was eminently sound, and there were few men better qualified to preside over a committee or at a public meeting, or whose advice on practical matters was better worth having. Neither fame nor wealth did any injury to Scott's healthy nature ; he was too wise to be proud, too manly and too happy to be puffed up by his marvellous success, and through the great vicissitudes of his career we mark at all times the simplicity and veracity of a noble ntture. Scott's secret connection with Ballantyne cannot indeed be justified. In this he erred, and the folly brought a terrible retribution ; but it proved of how fine a metal the poet was made, and if the picture of Sir Walter in his adversity be one of the most affecting, it is also one of the most beautiful in literary history.
Whatever Scott did, he did with his might, and his might was tremendous. He lived three or four lives in one : the life of an author, of an antiquary, of a sportsman and country gentleman, of a tradesman, and of a wealthy aristocrat who kept open house such as no man of letters had ever kept before. When the in- vasion of England was expected, Scott rode a hundred miles in twenty-four hours to rejoin his regiment ; he was passionately fond of field sports, he was a forester, and knew as much about trees as men who have made them the study of their lives, and a casual observer seeing Scott after one o'clock, when he had "broken the neck of the day's work," might have thought that he had little to do save to enjoy the free open-air life of a Scottish laird. All this time he was performing gigantic feats of literary labour, editing important works, writing articles for the Quarterly., biographies, poems, novels, succeeding in every work he undertook, and answering innumerable correspondents. "My bill for letters,' he once said, "seldom comes under £150 a year ; and as to coach parcels, they are a perfect ruination." Yet Scott, amidst a multi- plicity of labours never before undertaken by one man (we must include in the number the duties of a justice of the peace and a clerk of session), never seemed lacking in the demands made upon him. He was always ready to say a kind word, or to do a kind act, and knew the face and fortunes of every person on his estate. Like Southey, he befriended poor authors, his children always had access to his study, so also had his dogs, and for both he was ready at any time to lay down his pen. What a tender heart, by the way, the man must have had who, when his dog Camp died, excused himself from a dinner engagement on account of the death of a dear old friend
It has been sometimes said that a man's books must be esti- mated apart from his life, that the reader should not consider- what he was, but only what he has done. The critic, no doubt, can estimate with perfect impartiality works which, like the "Analogy of Butler" or the " Trait6 de Mecanique. Celeste " of La Place, are the produce of pure intellect, but it is- impossible to regard thus calmly and judiciously writings that appeal to the imagination and to the heart. We like to know about poets as well as to read their poetry, and it may be questioned whether the fame of Scott has not been considerably enhanced by Lockhart's competent and appreciative biography. The most distinguished of living Scotchmen has done more than any other to detract from the fame of his illustrious countryman. Mr. Carlyle's essay is the severest blow ever inflicted upon Scott, not, we think, because his estimate is just, but because, while one- sided, it is eminently powerful. He has greatly, as we conceive, misinterpreted Scott's character, and overlooked the true source of its weakness as well as of its strength. Scott was never the slave to a low, worldly ambition, and he never became, what too many clever writers of our day have become, a mere manufacturer of books. His ambition. was not of the coarse, vulgar kind. It might? be "a poor passion," as Mr. Carlyle bluntly puts it, that urged him to write daily, "with the ardour of a steam-engine, that he might make £15,000 a year," but the desire that prompted him came from the poetical and not from the worldly side of his nature. The wish to become the founder of a race of Scottish lairds was a foible, but it sprang, as Mr. Palgrave has well pointed out, from the imagination, which in some directions he was able to keep well in hand, while in others it completely mastered him. Mr. Carlyle esteems the man far more highly than the author, and thinks that the Waverley Novels " are altogether addressed to the every-day mind ; that for any other mind there is next to no nourishment in them." Perhaps the best answer to this assertion is the counter-statement that minds of a high order have found delightful nourishment in those healthy, vigorous, picturesque
stories. Statesmen, poets, divines, men of letters have all acknowledged in the heartiest manner their indebtedness to Scott.
" All is great in the Waverley Novels," said Goethe, " material, effect, characters, execution." And at another time he remarked, " Walter Scott is a great genius, be has not his equal. He gives me much to think of, and I discover in him a wholly new art, with laws of its own." " When I am very ill indeed," said Coleridge, " Scott's novels are almost the only books I can read." How Keble loved Scott's writings has been told in his biography, and in the British Critic he wrote of him in the warmest language of praise. In two recent biographies of clergymen, the lives of Dr. Hampden and Bishop Cotton, we read of the joy Scott yielded in leisure hours ; and Robertson, of Brighton, who assuredly had not
an every-day mind," said, when suffering from illness, that in a literary point of view he found Sir Walter Scott the most health- ful restorative of any. Statements like these, from men of large culture or unquestionable genius, might be multiplied by scores, They prove that the high and pure pleasure we derive from Scott is the same in kind that all noble imagination affords. It is quite true, as Mr. Carlyle observes, that " Literature has other aims than that of harmlessly amusing indolent, languid men ; but it is not true, as he suggests, that this is what Scott has done, and all he has done. One more point, did space permit, we should be inclined to contest with Mr. Carlyle. He sneers somewhat at Scott's ex- tempore style of writing, observing that such a style is sure to be rather useless reading, and that if Shakespeare wrote rapidly, it was no doubt after due energy of preparation. Exactly ; and Sir Walter had been amassing his stores of legendary and historical knowledge, and had observed men for years before he wrote any of his great works. He was thirty-four years old when he published the "Lay," he was forty-three on the publication of " Waverley." Since the death of Scott, literary art has been ex- ercised in a direction which may seem at times to have been adverse to the fame of an objective poet like the author of " Marmion." lie is a minstrel, and writes with the freedom of &Rhapsodist ; the Poets of highest place amongst us in the present day belong to an entirely different order. Their beauties of language and of thought are wanting in Scott, and so alien is his genius to the psychological school of poetry, that we have heard it said more than once—Mr. Robert Buchanan has not hesitated to assert it in one of his essays that Sir Walter was no poet. We dissent altogether from this opinion, but can understand in a measure the feeling that has given birth to it. Happily there is ample space in the world for poets of very different orders, and a catholic taste can find exquisite delight in Pope as well ti B in Wordsworth, in Scott as well as in Browning. In his own line of poetry—we admit readily it is not the highest line—Sir Walter is inimitable. He has made his country.familiar to the whole civilized world, he stands almost alone as a colourist, hie descriptions of scenery bring the scene before the mind's eye more vividly than the land- scapes of any other writer, no one in modern poetry has succeeded in describing more felicitously the rush, and clash, and tumult of battle, and as a song-writer many of his lyrical snatches can scarcely be surpassed. The energy of his verse reminds one of a mountain stream dashing impetuously over rocks, and thundering over falls ; but as the most impetuous river will sometimes find its way into tranquil pools, that mirror in their calm depths the blue Bky and overhanging trees, so in Scott's poetry we are able to rest at times in sweet retired nooks, to gaze upon the clear heavens, and to enjoy the peaceful soma of rural life. Wordsworth said that nine-tenths of his verse was murmured in the open air, but much of Scott's has in it such a freshness and ilan that it would not be difficult to imagine it had been conceived in the saddle during a rapid ride across country.
As a novelist, Scott's unparalleled popularity fifty years ago has been perhaps in some degree diminished by the achievements of more recent writers of fiction. When our fathers were enjoying the humour of the "Antiquary" or the pathos of the "Bride of Lammermoor," there was no Dickens, no Thackeray, no Lytton, no Trollope, no Charles
Reacle, no Charlotte Bront6, no George Eliot. Some of these writers have surpassed Scott in breadth of humour, in profound knowledge of the human heart, in subtle analysis, in exquisite perfection of style. One sees almost at a glance how in- ferior he is in one direction to Dickens, in another to Thackeray, in another to George Eliot ; but taken as a whole, we think that Scott is still, as in his lifetime, though not by far the greatest writer of fiction in its highest form, the greatest of all modern writers of romance, the novelist who has given the multitude the largest measure of delight, and that of the purest kind ; who has told the best stories, and has ennobled what he has written with the charm of the liveliest imagination. Ami that this charm is still powerfully exercised is evident from the fact that there are seven or eight editions of the Waverley Novels always upon sale and selling rapidly. Mr. Carlyle antici- pates the time when they will cease to amuse. It is pos- sible that new egos may require a new literature, but Scott's works have lost no popularity in fifty years. No wonder that Scotland is glad to celebrate the birth of her worthiest son, but Sir Walter is the "world's darling" also, and it has rarely happened that the world's applause has been bestowed so worthily.
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