Into the question whether Scott was a great man or not, we do not
propose to enter deeply. It is, as too usual, a question about words.
There can be no doubt but many men have been named and painted _great_
who were vastly smaller than he, as little doubt moreover that of the
specially _good_ a very large portion, according to any genuine
standard of man's worth, were worthless in comparison to him. He for
whom Scott is great may most innocently name him so; may with
advantage admire his great qualities, and ought with sincere heart to
emulate him. At the same time, it is good that there be a certain
degree of precision in our epithets. It is good to understand, for one
thing, that no popularity, and open-mouthed wonder of all the world,
continued even for a long series of years, can make a man great. Such
popularity is a remarkable fortune; indicates a great adaptation of
the man to his element of circumstances; but may or may not indicate
anything great in the man. To our imagination, as above hinted, there
is a certain apotheosis in it; but in the reality no apotheosis at
all. Popularity is as a blaze of illumination, or alas, of
conflagration kindled round a man; _showing_ what is in him; not
putting the smallest item more into him; often abstracting much from
him; conflagrating the poor man himself into ashes and _caput
mortuum_!
And then, by the nature of it, such popularity is transient; your
"series of years," quite unexpectedly, sometimes almost all on a sudden,
terminates! For the stupidity of men, especially of men congregated in
masses round an object, is extreme. What illuminations and
conflagrations have kindled themselves, as if new heavenly suns had
risen, which proved only to be tar-barrels, and terrestrial locks of
straw! Profane princesses cried out, "One God; one Farinelli!"[53]--and
whither now have they and Farinelli danced? In literature, too, there
have been seen popularities greater even than Scott's, and nothing
perennial in the interior of them. Lope de Vega, whom all the world
swore by, and made a proverb of; who could make a five-act tragedy in
almost as many hours; the greatest of all popularities past or present,
and perhaps one of the greatest men that ever ranked among popularities:
Lope himself, so radiant, far-shining, has not proved to be a sun or
star of the firmament; but is as good as lost and gone out, or plays at
best, in the eyes of some few, as a vague aurora-borealis, and brilliant
ineffectuality.
The great man of Spain sat obscure at the time, all dark and poor, a
maimed soldier; writing his Don Quixote in prison. And Lope's fate
withal was sad, his popularity perhaps a curse to him; for in this
man there was something ethereal too, a divine particle traceable in
few other popular men; and such far shining diffusion of himself, tho
all the world swore by it, would do nothing for the true life of him
even while he lived; he had to creep into a convent, into a monk's
cowl, and learn, with infinite sorrow, that his blessedness had lain
elsewhere; that when a man's life feels itself to be sick and an
error, no voting of by-standers can make it well and a truth again.
Or coming down to our own times, was not August Kotzebue popular?
Kotzebue, not so many years since, saw himself, if rumor and
hand-clapping could be credited, the greatest man going; saw visibly
his "Thoughts," drest out in plush and pasteboard, permeating and
perambulating civilized Europe; the most iron visages weeping with
him, in all theaters from Cadiz to Kamschatka; his own "astonishing
genius," meanwhile, producing two tragedies or so per month; he, on
the whole, blazed high enough: he too has gone out into Night and
_Orcus_, and already is not. We will omit this of popularity
altogether, and account it as making simply nothing toward Scott's
greatness or non-greatness, as an accident, not a quality.
Shorn of this falsifying _nimbus_, and reduced to his own natural
dimensions, there remains the reality, Walter Scott, and what we can
find in him; to be accounted great, or not great, according to the
dialects of men. Friends to precision of epithet will probably deny
his title to the name "great." It seems to us there goes other stuff
to the making of great men than can be detected here. One knows not
what idea worthy of the name of great, what purpose, instinct, or
tendency, that could be called great, Scott ever was inspired with.
His life was worldly; his ambitions were worldly. There was nothing
spiritual in him; all is economical, material of the earth earthy. A
love of picturesque, of beautiful, vigorous and graceful things; a
genuine love, yet not more genuine than has dwelt in hundreds of men
named minor poets: this is the highest quality to be discerned in him.
His power of representing these things too, his poetic power, like his
moral power, was a genius _in extenso_, as we may say, not _in
intenso_. In action, in speculation, _broad_ as he was, he rose
nowhere high; productive without measure as to quantity, in quality he
for the most part transcended but a little way the region of
commonplace.
It has been said, "no man has written as many volumes with so few
sentences that can be quoted." Winged words were not his vocation;
nothing urged him that way: the great mystery of existence was not
great to him; did not drive him into rocky solitudes to wrestle with
it for an answer, to be answered or to perish. He had nothing of the
martyr; into no "dark region to slay monsters for us," did he, either
led or driven, venture down: his conquests were for his own behoof
mainly, conquests over common market labor, and reckonable in good
metallic coin of the realm. The thing he had faith in, except power,
power of what sort soever, and even of the rudest sort, would be
difficult to point out. One sees not that he believed in anything:
nay, he did not even disbelieve; but quietly acquiesced, and made
himself at home in a world of conventionalities: the false, the
semi-false, and the true were alike true in this that they were there,
and had power in their hands more or less. It was well to feel so; and
yet not well! We find it written, "Wo to them that are at ease in
Zion"; but surely it is a double wo to them that are at ease in Babel,
in Domdaniel. On the other hand he wrote many volumes, amusing many
thousands of men. Shall we call this great? It seems to us there
dwells and struggles another sort of spirit in the inward parts of
great men!...
Yet on the other hand, the surliest critic must allow that Scott was a
genuine man, which itself is a great matter. No affectation,
fantasticality, or distortion, dwelt in him; no shadow of cant. Nay,
withal, was he not a right brave and strong man, according to his
kind? What a load of toil, what a measure of felicity, he quietly bore
along with him; with what quiet strength he both worked on this earth,
and enjoyed in it; invincible to evil fortune and to good! A most
composed invincible man; in difficulty and distress, knowing no
discouragement, Samson-like, carrying off on his strong
Samson-shoulders the gates that would imprison him; in danger and
menace, laughing at the whisper of fear. And then, with such a sunny
current of true humor and humanity, a free joyful sympathy with so
many things; what of fire he had, all lying so beautifully _latent_,
as radical latent heat, as fruitful internal warmth of life; a most
robust, healthy man! The truth is, our best definition of Scott were
perhaps even this, that he was, if no great man, then something much
pleasanter to be, a robust, thoroughly healthy, and withal, very
prosperous and victorious man. An eminently well-conditioned man,
healthy in body, healthy in soul; we will call him one of the
_healthiest_ of men. Neither is this a small matter: health is a great
matter, both to the possessor of it and to others....
Scott's career, of writing impromptu novels to buy farms with, was not
of a kind to terminate voluntarily, but to accelerate itself more and
more; and one sees not to what wise goal it could, in any case, have
led him. Bookseller Constable's bankruptcy was not the ruin of Scott;
his ruin was that ambition, and even false ambition, had laid hold of
him; that his way of life was not wise. Whither could it lead? Where
could it stop? New farms there remained ever to be bought, while new
novels could pay for them. More and more success but gave more and
more appetite, more and more audacity. The impromptu writing must have
waxed ever thinner; declined faster and faster into the questionable
category, into the condemnable, into the general condemned.
Already there existed, in secret, everywhere a considerable opposition
party; witnesses of the Waverly miracles, unable to believe in them,
but forced silently to protest against them. Such opposition party was
in the sure case to grow; and even, with the impromptu process ever
going on, ever waxing thinner, to draw the world over to it. Silent
protest must at length come to words; harsh truths, backed by harsher
facts of a world-popularity over-wrought and worn out, behoved to
have been spoken;--such as can be spoken now without reluctance when
they can pain the brave man's heart no more. Who knows? Perhaps it was
better ordered to be all otherwise. Otherwise, at any rate, it was.
One day the Constable mountain, which seemed to stand strongly like
the other rock mountains, gave suddenly, as the icebergs do, a
loud-sounding crack; suddenly with huge clangor, shivered itself into
ice-dust; and sank, carrying much along with it. In one day Scott's
high-heaped money-wages became fairy-money and nonentity; in one day
the rich man and lord of land saw himself penniless, landless, a
bankrupt among creditors.
It was a hard trial. He met it proudly, bravely--like a brave proud
man of the world. Perhaps there had been a prouder way still; to have
owned honestly that he _was_ unsuccessful then, all bankrupt, broken,
in the world's goods and repute; and to have turned elsewhither for
some refuge. Refuge did lie elsewhere; but it was not Scott's course,
or fashion of mind, to seek it there. To say: hitherto I have been all
in the wrong, and this my fame and pride, now broken, was an empty
delusion and spell of accursed witchcraft! It was difficult for flesh
and blood! He said, I will retrieve myself, and make my point good
yet, or die for it. Silently, like a proud strong man, he girt himself
to the Hercules task of removing rubbish-mountains, since that was it;
of paying large ransoms by what he could still write and sell. In his
declining years too; misfortune is doubly and trebly unfortunate that
befalls us then. Scott fell to his Hercules' task like a very man, and
went on with it unweariedly; with a noble cheerfulness, while his
life-strings were cracking, he grappled with it, and wrestled with it,
years long, in death-grips, strength to strength; and _it_ proved the
stronger; and his life and heart did crack and break; the cordage of a
most strong heart! Over these last writings of Scott, his Napoleons,
Demonologies, Scotch Histories, and the rest, criticism, finding still
much to wonder at, much to commend, will utter no word of blame, this
one word only, Wo is me! The noble warhorse that once laughed at the
shaking of the spear, how is he doomed to toil himself dead, dragging
ignoble wheels! Scott's descent was like that of a spent projectile;
rapid, straight down; perhaps mercifully so. It is a tragedy, as all
life is; one proof more that Fortune stands on a restless _globe_;
that Ambition never yet profited any man....
And so the curtain falls; and the strong Walter Scott is with us no
more. A possession from him does remain; widely scattered; yet
attainable; not inconsiderable. It can be said of him, "When he
departed he took a Man's life along with him." No sounder piece of
British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of time.
Alas, his fine Scotch face, with its shaggy honesty, sagacity, and
goodness, when we saw it latterly on the Edinburgh streets, was all
worn with care, the joy all fled from it; plowed with labor and
sorrow. We shall never forget it; we shall never see it again. Adieu,
Sir Walter, pride of all Scotchmen, take our proud and sad farewell.