SIR WALTER SCOTT
More than a century has passed since Walter Scott was born--a poet
destined to exercise a profound, far-reaching, permanent influence
upon the feelings of the human race, and thus to act a conspicuous
part in its moral and spiritual development and guidance. To the
greatness of his mind, the nobility of his spirit, and the beauty of
his life there is abundant testimony in his voluminous and diversified
writings, and in his ample and honest biography. Everybody who reads
has read something from the pen of Scott, or something commemorative
of him, and in every mind to which his name is known it is known as
the synonym of great faculties and wonderful achievement. There must
have been enormous vitality of spirit, prodigious power of intellect,
irresistible charm of personality, and lovable purity of moral nature
in the man whom thousands that never saw him living,--men and women
of a later age and different countries,--know and remember and love
as Sir Walter Scott. Others have written greatly. Milton, Dryden,
Addison, Pope, Cowper, Johnson, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Landor,--these are only a few of the imperial names that cannot
die. But these names live in the world's respect. The name of Scott
lives also in its affection. What other name of the past in English
literature,--unless it be that of Shakespeare,--arouses such a deep and
sweet feeling of affectionate interest, gentle pleasure, gratitude, and
reverential love?
[Illustration: _Sir Walter Scott._]
The causes of Sir Walter Scott's ascendency are to be found in the
goodness of his heart; the integrity of his conduct; the romantic
and picturesque accessories and atmosphere of his life; the fertile
brilliancy of his literary execution; the charm that he exercises, both
as man and artist, over the imagination; the serene, tranquillising
spirit of his works; and, above all, the buoyancy, the happy freedom,
of his genius. He was not simply an intellectual power; he was also
a human and gentle comforter. He wielded an immense mental force,
but he always wielded it for good, and always with tenderness. It
is impossible to conceive of his ever having done a wrong act, or
of any contact with his influence that would not inspire the wish
to be virtuous and noble. The scope of his sympathy was as broad as
the weakness and the need are of the human race. He understood the
hardship, the dilemma, in the moral condition of mankind: he wished
people to be patient and cheerful, and he tried to make them so. His
writings are full of sweetness and cheer, and they contain nothing that
is morbid,--nothing that tends toward surrender and misery. He did not
sequester himself in mental pride, but simply and sturdily, through
years of conscientious toil, he employed the faculties of a strong,
tender, gracious genius for the good of his fellow-creatures. The
world loves him because he is worthy to be loved, and because he has
lightened the burden of its care and augmented the sum of its happiness.
Certain differences and confusions of opinion have arisen from the
consideration of his well-known views as to the literary art, together
with his equally well-known ambition to take and to maintain the rank
and estate of a country squire. As an artist he had ideals that he
was never able to fulfil. As a man, and one who was influenced by
imagination, taste, patriotism, family pride, and a profound belief
in established monarchical institutions, it was natural that he
should wish to found a grand and beautiful home for himself and his
posterity. A poet is not the less a poet because he thinks modestly of
his writings and practically knows and admits that there is something
else in the world beside literature; or because he happens to want
his dinner and a roof to cover him. In trying to comprehend a great
man, a good method is to look at his life as a whole, and not to
deduce petty inferences from the distorted interpretation of petty
details. Sir Walter Scott's conduct of life, like the character out of
which it sprang, was simple and natural. In all that he did you may
perceive the influence of imagination acting upon the finest reason;
the involuntary consciousness of reserve power; habitual deference
to the voice of duty; an aspiring and picturesque plan of artistic
achievement and personal distinction; and deep knowledge of the world.
If ever there was a man who lived to be and not to seem, that man was
Sir Walter Scott. He made no pretensions. He claimed nothing, but he
simply and earnestly earned all. His means were the oldest and the
best; self-respect, hard work, and fidelity to duty. The development
of his nature was slow, but it was thorough and it was salutary. He
was not hampered by precocity and he was not spoiled by conceit. He
acted according to himself, honouring his individuality and obeying the
inward monitor of his genius. But, combined with the delicate instinct
of a gentleman, he had the wise insight, foresight, and patience of a
philosopher; and therefore he respected the individuality of others,
the established facts of life, and the settled conventions of society.
His mind was neither embittered by revolt nor sickened by delusion.
Having had the good fortune to be born in a country in which a right
plan of government prevails,--the idea of the family, the idea of the
strong central power at the head, with all other powers subordinated to
it,--he felt no impulse toward revolution, no desire to regulate all
things anew; and he did not suffer perturbation from the feverish sense
of being surrounded with uncertainty and endangered by exposure to
popular caprice. During the period of immaturity, and notwithstanding
physical weakness and pain, his spirit was kept equable and cheerful,
not less by the calm environment of a permanent civilisation than by
the clearness of his perceptions and the sweetness of his temperament.
In childhood and youth he endeared himself to all who came near him,
winning affection by inherent goodness and charm. In riper years that
sweetness was reinforced by great sagacity, which took broad views of
individual and social life; so that both by knowledge and by impulse he
was a serene and happy man.
The quality that first impresses the student of the character and the
writings of Sir Walter Scott is truthfulness. He was genuine. Although
a poet, he suffered no torment from vague aspirations. Although once,
and miserably, a disappointed lover, he permitted no morbid repining.
Although the most successful author of his time, he displayed no
egotism. To the end of his days he was frank and simple,--not indeed
sacrificing the reticence of a dignified, self-reliant nature, but
suffering no blight from success, and wearing illustrious honours with
spontaneous, unconscious grace. This truthfulness, the consequence
and the sign of integrity and of great breadth of intellectual
vision, moulded Sir Walter Scott's ambition and stamped the practical
results of his career. A striking illustration of this is seen in
his first adventure in literature. The poems originally sprang from
the spontaneous action of the poetic impulse and faculty; but they
were put forth modestly, in order that the author might guide himself
according to the response of the public mind. He knew that he might
fail as an author, but for failure of that sort, although he was
intensely ambitious, he had no dread. There would always remain to him
the career of private duty and the life of a gentleman. This view of
him gives the key to his character and explains his conduct. Neither
amid the experimental vicissitudes of his youth, nor amid the labours,
achievements, and splendid honours of his manhood, did he ever place
the imagination above the conscience, or brilliant writing above
virtuous living, or art and fame above morality and religion. "I have
been, perhaps, the most voluminous author of the day," he said, toward
the close of his life; "and it is a comfort to me to think that I have
tried to unsettle no man's faith, to corrupt no man's principles,
and that I have written nothing which, on my deathbed, I should wish
blotted." When at last he lay upon that deathbed the same thought
animated and sustained him. "My dear," he said, to Lockhart, "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." The mind which thus
habitually dwelt upon goodness as the proper object of human ambition
and the chief merit of human life was not likely to vaunt itself on
its labours or to indulge any save a modest and chastened pride in its
achievements.
[Illustration: _Edinburgh Castle._]
And this view of him explains the affectionate reverence with which the
memory of Sir Walter Scott is cherished. He was pre-eminently a type of
the greatness that is associated with virtue. But his virtue was not
decorum and it was not goodyism. He does not, with Addison, represent
elegant austerity; and he does not, with Montgomery, represent amiable
tameness. His goodness was not insipid. It does not humiliate; it
gladdens. It is ardent with heart and passion. It is brilliant with
imagination. It is fragrant with taste and grace. It is alert, active,
and triumphant with splendid mental achievements and practical good
deeds. And it is the goodness of a great poet,--the poet of natural
beauty, of romantic legend, of adventure, of chivalry, of life in
its heyday of action and its golden glow of pageantry and pleasure.
It found expression, and it wields invincible and immortal power,
through an art whereof the charm is the magic of sunrise and sunset,
the sombre, holy silence of mountains, the pensive solitude of dusky
woods, the pathos of ancient, ivy-mantled ruins, and ocean's solemn,
everlasting chant. Great powers have arisen in English literature; but
no romance has hushed the voice of the author of _Waverley_, and no
harp has drowned the music of the Minstrel of the North.
The publication of a new book by Sir Walter Scott is a literary event
of great importance. The time has been when the announcement of such
a novelty would have roused the reading public as with the sound of
a trumpet. That sensation, familiar in the early part of the present
century, is possible no more. Yet there are thousands of persons all
over the world through whose hearts the thought of it sends a thrill
of joy. The illustrious author of _Marmion_ and of _Waverley_ passed
away in 1832: and now (1890), at the distance of fifty-eight years,
his private _Journal_ is made a public possession. It is the bestowal
of a great privilege and benefit. It is like hearing the voice of a
deeply-loved and long-lamented friend, suddenly speaking from beyond
the grave.
In literary history the position of Scott is unique. A few other
authors, indeed, might be named toward whom the general feeling was
once exceedingly cordial, but in no other case has the feeling entirely
lasted. In the case of Scott it endures in undiminished fervour. There
are, of course, persons to whom his works are not interesting and to
whom his personality is not significant. Those persons are the votaries
of the photograph, who wish to see upon the printed page the same
sights that greet their vision in the streets and in the houses to
which they are accustomed. But those prosy persons constitute only a
single class of the public. People in general are impressible through
the romantic instinct that is a part of human nature. To that instinct
Scott's writings were addressed, and also to the heart that commonly
goes with it. The spirit that responds to his genius is universal and
perennial. Caprices of taste will reveal themselves and will vanish;
fashions will rise and will fall; but these mutations touch nothing
that is elemental and they will no more displace Scott than they will
displace Shakespeare.
The _Journal_ of Sir Walter Scott, valuable for its copious variety of
thought, humour, anecdote, and chronicle, is precious, most of all,
for the confirmatory light that it casts upon the character of its
writer. It has long been known that Scott's nature was exceptionally
noble, that his patience was beautiful, that his endurance was
heroic. These pages disclose to his votaries that he surpassed even
the highest ideal of him that their affectionate partiality has
formed. The period that it covers was that of his adversity and
decline. He began it on November 20, 1825, in his town house, No.
39 Castle street, Edinburgh, and he continued it, with almost daily
entries,--except for various sadly significant breaks, after July
1830,--until April 16, 1832. Five months later, on September 21, he
was dead. He opened it with the expression of a regret that he had
not kept a regular journal during the whole of his life. He had just
seen some chapters of Byron's vigorous, breezy, off-hand memoranda,
and the perusal of those inspiriting pages had revived in his mind
the long-cherished, often-deferred plan of keeping a diary. "I have
myself lost recollection," he says, "of much that was interesting, and
I have deprived my family and the public of some curious information
by not carrying this resolution into effect." Having once begun the
work he steadily persevered in it, and evidently he found a comfort
in its companionship. He wrote directly, and therefore fluently,
setting down exactly what was in his mind, from day to day; but, as
he had a well-stored and well-ordered mind, he wrote with reason and
taste, seldom about petty matters, and never in the strain of insipid
babble that egotistical scribblers mistake for the spontaneous flow
of nature. The facts that he recorded were mostly material facts,
and the reflections that he added, whether serious or humorous, were
important. Sometimes a bit of history would glide into the current
of the chronicle; sometimes a fragment of a ballad; sometimes an
analytic sketch of character, subtle, terse, clear, and obviously true;
sometimes a memory of the past; sometimes a portraiture of incidents
in the present; sometimes a glimpse of political life, a word about
painting, a reference to music or the stage, an anecdote, a tale of
travel, a trait of social manners, a precept upon conduct, or a
thought upon religion and the destiny of mankind. There was no pretence
of order and there was no consciousness of an audience; yet the
_Journal_ unconsciously assumed a symmetrical form; and largely because
of the spontaneous operation of its author's fine literary instinct
it became a composition worthy of the best readers. It is one of the
saddest and one of the strongest books ever written.
The original manuscript of this remarkable work is contained in two
volumes, bound in vellum, each volume being furnished with a steel
clasp that can be fastened. The covers are slightly tarnished by time.
The paper is yellow with age. The handwriting is fine, cramped, and
often obscure. "This hand of mine," writes Scott (vol. i. page 386),
"gets to be like a kitten's scratch, and will require much deciphering,
or, what may be as well for the writer, cannot be deciphered at all. I
am sure I cannot read it myself." The first volume is full of writing;
the second about half full. Toward the end the record is almost
illegible. Scott was then at Rome, on that melancholy, mistaken journey
whereby it had been hoped, but hoped in vain, that he would recover
his health. The last entry that he made is this unfinished sentence:
"We slept reasonably, but on the next morning----." It is not known
that he ever wrote a word after that time. Lockhart, who had access to
his papers, made some use of the _Journal_, in his _Life of Scott_,
which is one of the best biographies in our language; but the greater
part of it was withheld from publication till a more auspicious time
for its perfect candour of speech. To hold those volumes and to look
upon their pages,--so eloquent of the great author's industry, so
significant of his character, so expressive of his inmost soul,--was
almost to touch the hand of the Minstrel himself, to see his smile,
and to hear his voice. Now that they have fulfilled their purpose, and
imparted their inestimable treasure to the world, they are restored to
the ebony cabinet at Abbotsford, there to be treasured among the most
precious relics of the past. "It is the saddest house in Scotland,"
their editor, David Douglas, said to me, when we were walking together
upon the Braid Hills, "for to my fancy every stone in it is cemented
with tears." Sad or glad, it is a shrine to which reverent pilgrims
find their way from every quarter of the earth, and it will be honoured
and cherished forever.
[Illustration: _The Canongate Tolbooth._]
The great fame of Scott had been acquired by the time he began to
write his _Journal_, and it rested upon a broad foundation of solid
achievement. He was fifty-four years old, having been born August 15,
1771, the same year in which Smollett died. He had been an author for
about thirty years,--his first publication, a translation of Bürger's
_Lenore_, having appeared in 1796, the same year that was darkened
by the death of Robert Burns. His social eminence also had been
established. He had been sheriff of Selkirk for twenty-five years.
He had been for twenty years a clerk of the Court of Session. He had
been for five years a baronet, having received that rank from King
George the Fourth, who always loved and admired him, in 1820. He had
been for fourteen years the owner of Abbotsford, which he bought in
1811, occupied in 1812, and completed in 1824. He was yet to write
_Woodstock_, the six tales called _The Chronicles of the Canongate_,
_The Fair Maid of Perth_, _Anne of Geierstein_, _Count Robert of
Paris_, _Castle Dangerous_, the _Life of Napoleon_, and the lovely
_Stories from the History of Scotland_. All those works, together with
many essays and reviews, were produced by him between 1825 and 1832,
while also he was maintaining a considerable correspondence, doing his
official duties, writing his _Journal_, and carrying a suddenly imposed
load of debt,--which finally his herculean labours paid,--amounting
to £130,000. But between 1805 and 1817 he had written _The Lay of the
Last Minstrel_, _Ballads and Lyrical Pieces_, _Marmion_, _The Lady of
the Lake_, _The Vision of Don Roderick_, _Rokeby_, _The Lord of the
Isles_, _The Field of Waterloo_, and _Harold the Dauntless_,--thus
creating a great and diversified body of poetry, then in a new school
and a new style, in which, although he has often been imitated, he
never has been equalled. Between 1814 and 1825 he had likewise produced
_Waverley_, _Guy Mannering_, _The Antiquary_, _Old Mortality_, _The
Black Dwarf_, _Rob Roy_, _The Heart of Midlothian_, _A Legend of
Montrose_, _The Bride of Lammermoor_, _Ivanhoe_, _The Monastery_, _The
Abbot_, _Kenilworth_, _The Pirate_, _The Fortunes of Nigel_, _Peveril
of the Peak_, _Quentin Durward_, _St. Ronan's Well_, _Redgauntlet_,
_The Betrothed_, and _The Talisman_. This vast body of fiction was also
a new creation in literature, for the English novel prior to Scott's
time was the novel of manners, as chiefly represented by the works of
Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. That admirable author, Miss Jane
Porter, had, indeed, written the _Scottish Chiefs_ (1809), in which the
note of imagination, as applied to the treatment of historical fact
and character, rings true and clear; and probably that excellent book
should be remembered as the beginning of English historical romance.
Scott himself said that it was the parent, in his mind, of the Waverley
Novels. But he surpassed it. Another and perhaps a deeper impulse to
the composition of those novels was the consciousness, when Lord Byron,
by the publication of _Childe Harold_ (the first and second cantos,
in 1812), suddenly checked or eclipsed his immediate popularity as a
poet, that it would be necessary for him to strike out a new path. He
had begun _Waverley_ in 1805 and thrown the fragment aside. He took it
up again in 1814, wrought upon it for three weeks and finished it, and
so began the career of "the Great Unknown." The history of literature
presents scarce a comparable example of such splendid industry
sustained upon such a high level of endeavour, animated by such
glorious genius, and resultant in such a noble and beneficent fruition.
The life of Balzac, whom his example inspired, and who may be accounted
the greatest of French writers since Voltaire, is perhaps the only life
that drifts suggestively into the scholar's memory, as he thinks of the
prodigious labours of Sir Walter Scott.
During the days of his prosperity Scott maintained his manor at
Abbotsford and his town-house in Edinburgh, and he frequently migrated
from one to the other, dispensing a liberal hospitality at both. He was
not one of those authors who think that there is nothing in the world
but pen and ink. He esteemed living to be more important than writing
about it, and the development of the soul to be a grander result
than the production of a book. "I hate an author that's all author,"
said Byron; and in this virtuous sentiment Scott participated. His
character and conduct, his unaffected modesty as to his own works, his
desire to found a great house and to maintain a stately rank among
the land-owners of his country, and as a son of chivalry, have, for
this reason, been greatly misunderstood by dull people. They never,
indeed, would have found the least fault with him if he had not become
a bankrupt; for the mouth of every dunce is stopped by practical
success. When he got into debt, though, it was discovered that he ought
to have had a higher ambition than the wish to maintain a place among
the landed gentry of Scotland; and even though he ultimately paid
his debts,--literally working himself to death to do it,--he was not
forgiven by that class of censors; and to some extent their chatter
of paltry disparagement still survives. While he was rich, however,
his halls were thronged with fashion, rank, and renown. Edinburgh,
still the stateliest city on which the sun looks down, must have been,
in the last days of George the Third, a place of peculiar beauty,
opulence, and social brilliancy. Scott, whose father was a Writer to
the Signet, and who derived his descent from a good old Border family,
the Scotts of Harden, had, from his youth, been accustomed to refined
society and elegant surroundings. He was born and reared a gentleman,
and a gentleman he never ceased to be. His father's house was No.
25 George Square, then an aristocratic quarter, now somewhat fallen
into the sere and yellow. In that house, as a boy, he saw some of the
most distinguished men of the age. In after years, when his fortunes
were ripe and his fame as a poet had been established, he drew around
himself a kindred class of associates. The record of his life blazes
with splendid names. As a lad of fifteen, in 1786, he saw Burns,
then twenty-seven, and in the heyday of fame; and he also saw Dugald
Stewart, seventeen years his senior. Lord Jeffrey was his contemporary
and friend, only two years younger than himself. With Henry Mackenzie,
"the Addison of Scotland,"--born in the first year of the last Jacobite
rebellion, and therefore twenty-six years his senior,--he lived on
terms of cordial friendship. David Hume, who died when Scott was but
five years old, was one of the great celebrities of his early days;
and doubtless Scott saw the Calton Hill when it was, as Jane Porter
remembered it, "a vast green slope, with no other buildings breaking
the line of its smooth and magnificent brow but Hume's monument on one
part and the astronomical observatory on the other." He knew John Home,
the author of _Douglas_, who was his senior by forty-seven years; and
among his miscellaneous prose writings there is an effective review of
Home's works, which was written for the _Quarterly_, in March 1827.
Among the actors his especial friends were John Philip Kemble, Mrs.
Siddons, the elder Charles Mathews, John Bannister, and Daniel Terry.
He knew Yates also, and he saw Miss Foote, Fanny Kemble, and the
Mathews of our day as "a clever, rather forward lad." Goethe was his
correspondent. Byron was his friend and fervent admirer. Wordsworth
and Moore were among his visitors and especial favourites. The aged
Dr. Adam Ferguson was one of his intimates. Hogg, when in trouble,
always sought him, and always was helped and comforted. He was the
literary sponsor for Thomas Campbell. He met Madame D'Arblay, who was
nineteen years his senior, when she was seventy-eight years old; and
the author of _Evelina_ talked with him, in the presence of old Samuel
Rogers, then sixty-three, about her father, Dr. Burney, and the days
of Dr. Johnson. He was honoured with the cordial regard of the great
Duke of Wellington, a contemporary, being only two years his senior.
He knew Croker, Haydon, Chantrey, Landseer, Sydney Smith, and Theodore
Hook. He read _Vivian Grey_ as a new publication and saw Disraeli as a
beginner. Coleridge he met and marvelled at. Mrs. Coutts, who had been
Harriet Mellon, the singer, and who became the Duchess of St. Albans,
was a favourite with him. He knew and liked that caustic critic William
Gifford. His relations with Sir Humphry Davy, seven years his senior,
were those of kindness. He had a great regard for Lord Castlereagh
and Lord Melville. He liked Robert Southey, and he cherished a deep
affection for the poet Crabbe, who was twenty-three years older than
himself, and who died in the same year. Of Sir George Beaumont, the
fond friend and wise patron of Wordsworth, who died in February 1827,
Scott wrote that he was "by far the most sensible and pleasing man I
ever knew." Amid a society such as is indicated by those names Scott
passed his life. The brilliant days of the Canongate indeed were gone,
when all those wynds and closes that fringe the historic avenue from
the Castle to Holyrood were as clean as wax, and when the loveliest
ladies of Scotland dwelt amongst them, and were borne in their chairs
from one house of festivity to another. But New street, once the home
of Lord Kames, still retained some touch of its ancient finery. St.
John street, where once lived Lord Monboddo and his beautiful daughter,
Miss Burnet (immortalised by Burns), and where (at No. 10) Ballantyne
often convoked admirers of the unknown author of _Waverley_, was still
a cleanly place. Alison Square, George Square, Buccleuch Place, and
kindred quarters were still tenanted by the polished classes of the
stately, old-time society of Edinburgh. The movement northward had
begun, but as yet it was inconsiderable. In those old drawing-rooms
Scott was an habitual visitor, as also he was in many of the contiguous
county manors,--in Seton House, Pinkie House, Blackford, Ravelstone,
Craigcrook, and Caroline Park, and wherever else the intellect, beauty,
rank, and fashion of the Scottish capital assembled; and it is certain
that after his marriage, in December 1797, with Miss Charlotte Margaret
Carpenter, the scenes of hospitality and of elegant festival were
numerous and gay, and were peopled with all that was brightest in the
ancient city, at first beneath his roof-tree in Castle street and later
beneath his turrets of Abbotsford.
There came a time, however, when the fabric of Scott's fortunes was to
be shattered and his imperial genius bowed into the dust. He had long
been a business associate with Constable, his publisher, and also with
Ballantyne, his printer. The publishing business failed and they were
ruined together. It has long been customary to place the blame for
that catastrophe on Constable alone. Mr. Douglas, who has edited the
_Journal_ with characteristic discretion and taste, records his opinion
that "the three parties, printer, publisher, and author, were equal
sharers in the imprudences that led to the disaster;" and he directs
attention to the fact that the charge that Constable ruined Scott was
not made during the lifetime of either. It matters little now in what
way the ruin was induced. Mismanagement caused it, and not misdeed.
There was a blunder, but there was no fraud. The honour of all the men
concerned stands vindicated before the world. Moreover, the loss was
retrieved and the debt was paid,--Scott's share of it in full: the
other shares in part. It is to the period of this ordeal that Scott's
_Journal_ mainly relates. Great though he had been in prosperity, he
was to show himself greater amid the storms of disaster and affliction.
The earlier pages of the diary are cheerful, vigorous, and confident.
The mind of the writer is in no alarm. Presently the sky changes and
the tempest breaks; and from that time onward the reader beholds a
spectacle, of indomitable will, calm resolution, inflexible purpose,
patient endurance, steadfast industry, and productive genius, that is
sublime. Many facts of living interest and many gems of subtle thought
and happy phrase are found in his daily record. The observations on
immortality are in a fine strain. The remarks on music, on dramatic
poetry, on the operation of the mental faculties, on painting, and on
national characteristics, are freighted with suggestive thought. But
the noble presence of the man overshadows even his best words. He lost
his fortune in December 1825. His wife died in May 1826. On the pages
that immediately follow his note of this bereavement Scott has written
occasional words that no one can read unmoved, and that no one who has
suffered can read without a pang that is deeper than tears.
But his spirit was slow to break. "Duty to God and to my children,"
he said, "must teach me patience." Once he speaks of "the loneliness
of these watches of the night." Not until his debts were paid and his
duties fulfilled would that great soul yield. "I may be bringing on
some serious disease," he remarks, "by working thus hard; if I had once
justice done to other folks, I do not much care, only I would not like
to suffer long pain." A little later the old spirit shows itself: "I
do not like to have it thought that there is any way in which I can be
beaten.... Let us use the time and faculties which God has left us, and
trust futurity to His guidance.... I want to finish my task, and then
good-night. I will never relax my labour in these affairs either for
fear of pain or love of life. I will die a free man, if hard working
will do it.... My spirits are neither low nor high--grave, I think, and
quiet--a complete twilight of the mind.... God help--but rather God
bless--man must help himself.... The best is, the long halt will arrive
at last and cure all.... It is my dogged humour to yield little to
external circumstances.... I shall never see the three-score and ten,
and shall be summed up at a discount. No help for it, and no matter
either." In the mood of mingled submission and resolve denoted by these
sentences (which occur at long intervals in the story), he wrought at
his task until it was finished. By _Woodstock_ he earned £8000; by the
_Life of Napoleon_ £18,000; by other writings still other sums. The
details of his toil appear day by day in these simple pages, tragic
through all their simplicity. He was a heart-broken man from the hour
when his wife died, but he sustained himself by force of will and
sense of honour, and he endured and worked till the last, without a
murmur; and when he had done his task he laid down his pen and so ended.
The lesson of Scott's _Journal_ is the most important lesson that
experience can teach. It is taught in two words: honour and duty.
Nothing is more obvious, from the nature and environment and the
consequent condition of the human race, than the fact that this world
is not, and was not intended to be, a place of settled happiness. All
human beings have troubles, and as the years pass away those troubles
become more numerous, more heavy, and more hard to bear. The ordeal
through which humanity is passing is an ordeal of discipline for
spiritual development. To live in honour, to labour with steadfast
industry, and to endure with cheerful patience is to be victorious.
Whatever in literature will illustrate this doctrine, and whatever in
human example will commend and enforce it, is of transcendent value;
and that value is inherent in the example of Sir Walter Scott.