THE LYRICS AND BALLADS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.*
Mn. ANDREW LANG should hardly have termed this little book "The " Lyrics and Ballads of Sir Walter Scott without making it complete, which he certainly has not done. Nor has he even said a word in his interesting introduction as to the principle of his selections or omissions. Why, for instance, in his selections from the songs and lyrics of Rokeby has he omitted both- " Summer eve is gone and past, Summer dew is falling fast ;" and also the still more popular " Cypress wreath " ? Here are two of the lyrics from a single poem omitted, and omitted without any cause assigned or even suggested, for Mr. Lang has said nothing at all in his preface to indicate that he was not giving us a complete collection of the shorter poems of Sir Walter. And even if the little book had been confessedly a selection, we do not think that either of these lyrics from Rokeby should have been omitted. We would not say that they rank with " Brignall Banks " or "Allen-a-Dale," both of which are to be found here, but sure'y they are quite the equals of " A weary lot is thine, fair maid" or "The Farewell," both of which are also taken. Again, Mr. Lang gives us no hint at all as to the principles of the order in which he has arranged his songs, which seems to us somewhat arbitrary. Why, for instance, has he inserted that most characteristic of all Scott's songs, on which he passes a most just panegyric, "Bonnie Dundee," between two of the Cavalier songs in Rokeby, and put the Cavalier ballad taken from Woodstock, at so great a distance from them ? We do not catch what Mr. Lang's principle of arrangement has been, or whether, indeed, he has had any.
In his interesting introduction, Mr. Andrew Lang almost apo- logises for taking Sir Walter Scott's poetry at something like his own estimate of it, rather than at that which Mr. Lang's own love for it would have suggested. But though we fully agree with Mr. Lang that there are a great number of chords, and those most lofty and sweet, which Sir Walter Scott never struck, and never even tried to strike, we do not think that his own depreciation of his own poetry is at all a good reason for too modest an estimate of it. On the contrary, though a man of great genius may, and often does, know very well what he cannot do, he very seldom knows the exact merit of that which he can do; and surely Sir Walter entirely ignored his own singular power to stir the blood with a sort of ecstasy of wayward enthusiasm ; and yet he possessed this in a perfection that no other English poet has ever displayed. He is described as having had at times a kind of hare-brained light in his eye, the sign of the rebellion of his spirit against that sound and sober sense which is at the heart of his sagacious historical judgments ; and it is this hare-brained light which sparkles in such songs as " Young Lochinvar," " Brignall Banks," " Allen-a-dale," and in such ballads as " Cadyow Castle," or Elspeth's ballad,-
" The herring loves the merry moonlight, The mackerel loves the wind."
There is a motion and a buoyancy in Scott's best passages which lifts the heart and fires the imagination as no other poet can manage to do ; and surely that was a sort of merit which Scott possessed in far too high a perfection to recognise how singular and exceptional it was. For giving you the very heart of human waywardness, there is no poetry like his. He himself says that he could never help idealising a bandit, and taking a robber-chieftain for his hero. And yet there was a sort of innocence and gaiety in the fashion in which he did it, which took all the poison out of the lawlessness, and transformed it into the mere escape of high spirits. For there is never any real sympathy with the criminal side of lawlessness in Sir Walter Scott. He loves to make his favourite freebooters represent a sort of wild justice which is practically a reaction against the despotism and the pedantry of the law, and not an apology for the selfishness and greed of those who have revolted against the law. His spirit was rather impatient of the organised injustice of conventional obligations than favourable to the rapacity of the ordinary bandit. It was the spontaneousness and natural justice of the outlaw that he loved, not his indifference to moral obligations.
• The Lyrics and Ballads of Sir Walter Scott. Edited, with an Introduction, by Andrew Lang. London : J. M. Dent and Co. 1894.
The daring and gallantry of Robin Hood and Rob Roy attracted his admiration, not their violence and bloodthirstiness. And surely no other poet ever sang of high daring in the loyal followers of a hereditary chief or King with so much of that passionate fervour which makes the blood boil and the eye glisten. Nothing can be better than Mr. Andrew Lang's description of the force and vivacity of "Bonnie Dundee ":—
"It was in dejection,' in the first anguish of his ruin, that he composed the most gallant of all cavalier songs, Bonnie Dundee, wondering if it were good or not, and wishing that Will Erskine was alive to tell him sooth. The song has all the gladdest and gayest elements of his genius, a buoyant scorn of what is grey and sour,--of `the cowls of Kilmarnock '— a splendid audacious loyalty;. so he parts from a hero, and strikes his last stroke for Claverhouse. Here is the essence of Sir Walter's songs ; here, in a clatter of hoofs on the causeway, a flutter of ribbons and scented love-locks, a clash of claymores on the target of harkened bull's hide, and, above it all, beyond is all, the shade of Montrose,' and a foreboding of that darkest hour when low lies the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee.' These are almost the first verses I remember, and they rang in the memory of a child who did not know their author's name, who knew not what event they celebrated, who had never heard of Walter Scott. They are parts of a dead world, but to enrich our days with the very life blood of the past is the gift of Scott as of Homer. These, then, were his essential qualities as a lyrist ; he storms our hearts with a reveitlez, from dewy woods where the hart has been tracked ; he makes us art and part with outlaws, ` where mavis and merle are singing '; he enlists us in a company of cavaliers who fight for the king ; he harps for us in hall among fair ladies. He is obedient to the past, and loyal to the dead, and he risks the future bravely."
But Mr. Lang hardly does justice, we think, to the great rarity of the gift which enabled Scott to write such ballads as " Cadyow Castle," or such war-songs as "Bonnie Dundee." We know no other poet who could have written anything approaching to the rapture of these stirring poems.
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