Yesterday, as the sun was very bright, and there was no wind, I took a
fishing-rod on chance and Scott's poems, and rowed into the middle of St.
Mary's Loch. Every hill, every tuft of heather was reflected in the
lake, as in a silver mirror. There was no sound but the lapping of the
water against the boat, the cry of the blackcock from the hill, and the
pleasant plash of a trout rising here and there. So I read "The Lay of
the Last Minstrel" over again, here, in the middle of the scenes where
the story is laid and where the fights were fought. For when the Baron
went on pilgrimage,
"And took with him this elvish page
To Mary's Chapel of the Lowes,"
it was to the ruined chapel _here_ that he came,
"For there, beside our Ladye's lake,
An offering he had sworn to make,
And he would pay his vows."
But his enemy, the Lady of Branksome, gathered a band,
"Of the best that would ride at her command,"
and they all came from the country round. Branksome, where the lady
lived, is twenty miles off, towards the south, across the ranges of
lonely green hills. Harden, where her ally, Wat of Harden, abode, is
within twelve miles; and Deloraine, where William dwelt, is nearer still;
and John of Thirlestane had his square tower in the heather, "where
victual never grew," on Ettrick Water, within ten miles. These
gentlemen, and their kinsfolk and retainers, being at feud with the Kers,
tried to slay the Baron, in the Chapel of "Lone St. Mary of the Waves."
"They were three hundred spears and three.
Through Douglas burn, up Yarrow stream,
Their horses prance, their lances gleam.
They came to St. Mary's Lake ere day;
But the chapel was void, and the Baron away.
They burned the chapel for very rage,
And cursed Lord Cranstoun's goblin-page."
The Scotts were a rough clan enough to burn a holy chapel because they
failed to kill their enemy within the sacred walls. But, as I read
again, for the twentieth time, Sir Walter's poem, floating on the lonely
breast of the lake, in the heart of the hills where Yarrow flows, among
the little green mounds that cover the ruins of chapel and castle and
lady's bower, I asked myself whether Sir Walter was indeed a great and
delightful poet, or whether he pleases me so much because I was born in
his own country, and have one drop of the blood of his Border robbers in
my own veins?
It is not always pleasant to go back to places, or to meet people, whom
we have loved well, long ago. If they have changed little, we have
changed much. The little boy, whose first book of poetry was "The Lady
of the Lake," and who naturally believed that there was no poet like Sir
Walter, is sadly changed into the man who has read most of the world's
poets, and who hears, on many sides, that Scott is outworn and doomed to
deserved oblivion. Are they right or wrong, the critics who tell us,
occasionally, that Scott's good novels make up for his bad verse, or that
verse and prose, all must go? _Pro captu lectoris_, by the reader's
taste, they stand or fall; yet even pessimism can scarcely believe that
the Waverley Novels are mortal. They were once the joy of every class of
minds; they cannot cease to be the joy of those who cling to the
permanently good, and can understand and forgive lapses, carelessnesses,
and the leisurely literary fashion of a former age. But, as to the
poems, many give them up who cling to the novels. It does not follow
that the poems are bad. In the first place, they are of two kinds--lyric
and narrative. Now, the fashion of narrative in poetry has passed away
for the present. The true Greek epics are read by a few in Greek; by
perhaps fewer still in translations. But so determined are we not to
read tales in verse, that prose renderings, even of the epics, nay, even
of the Attic dramas, have come more or less into vogue. This accounts
for the comparative neglect of Sir Walter's lays. They are spoken of as
Waverley Novels spoiled. This must always be the opinion of readers who
will not submit to stories in verse; it by no means follows that the
verse is bad. If we make an exception, which we must, in favour of
Chaucer, where is there better verse in story telling in the whole of
English literature? The readers who despise "Marmion," or "The Lady of
the Lake," do so because they dislike stories told in poetry. From
poetry they expect other things, especially a lingering charm and magic
of style, a reflective turn, "criticism of life." These things, except
so far as life can be criticised in action, are alien to the Muse of
narrative. Stories and pictures are all she offers: Scott's pictures,
certainly, are fresh enough, his tales are excellent enough, his manner
is sufficiently direct. To take examples: every one who wants to read
Scott's poetry should begin with the "Lay." From opening to close it
never falters:--
"Nine and twenty knights of fame
Hung their shields in Branksome Hall;
Nine and twenty squires of name
Brought their steeds to bower from stall,
Nine and twenty yeomen tall
Waited, duteous, on them all . . .
Ten of them were sheathed in steel,
With belted sword, and spur on heel;
They quitted not their harness bright
Neither by day nor yet by night:
They lay down to rest
With corslet laced,
Pillowed on buckler cold and hard;
They carved at the meal
With gloves of steel,
And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred."
Now, is not that a brave beginning? Does not the verse clank and chime
like sword sheath on spur, like the bits of champing horses? Then, when
William of Deloraine is sent on his lonely midnight ride across the
haunted moors and wolds, does the verse not gallop like the heavy
armoured horse?
"Unchallenged, thence passed Deloraine,
To ancient Riddell's fair domain,
Where Aill, from mountains freed,
Down from the lakes did raving come;
Each wave was crested with tawny foam,
Like the mane of a chestnut steed,
In vain! no torrent, deep or broad,
Might bar the bold moss-trooper's road;
At the first plunge the horse sunk low,
And the water broke o'er the saddle-bow."
These last two lines have the very movement and note, the deep heavy
plunge, the still swirl of the water. Well I know the lochs whence Aill
comes red in flood; many a trout have I taken in Aill, long ago. This,
of course, causes a favourable prejudice, a personal bias towards
admiration. But I think the poetry itself is good, and stirs the spirit,
even of those who know not Ailmoor, the mother of Aill, that lies dark
among the melancholy hills.
The spirit is stirred throughout by the chivalry and the courage of
Scott's men and of his women. Thus the Lady of Branksome addresses the
English invaders who have taken her boy prisoner:--
"For the young heir of Branksome's line,
God be his aid, and God be mine;
Through me no friend shall meet his doom;
Here, while I live, no foe finds room.
Then if thy Lords their purpose urge,
Take our defiance loud and high;
Our slogan is their lyke-wake dirge,
Our moat, the grave where they shall lie."
Ay, and though the minstrel says he is no love poet, and though, indeed,
he shines more in war than in lady's bower, is not this a noble stanza on
true love, and worthy of what old Malory writes in his "Mort d'Arthur"?
Because here Scott speaks for himself, and of his own unhappy and
immortal affection:--
"True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the Heaven.
It is not Fantasy's hot fire,
Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly;
_It liveth not in fierce desire_,
_With dead desire it dock not die_:
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind,
In body and in soul can bind."
Truth and faith, courage and chivalry, a free life in the hills and by
the streams, a shrewd brain, an open heart, a kind word for friend or
foeman, these are what you learn from the "Lay," if you want to learn
lessons from poetry. It is a rude legend, perhaps, as the critics said
at once, when critics were disdainful of wizard priests and ladies
magical. But it is a deathless legend, I hope; it appeals to every young
heart that is not early spoiled by low cunning, and cynicism, and love of
gain. The minstrel's own prophecy is true, and still, and always,
"Yarrow, as he rolls along,
Bears burden to the minstrel's song."
After the "Lay" came "Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field." It is far more
ambitious and complicated than the "Lay," and is not much worse written.
Sir Walter was ever a rapid and careless poet, and as he took more pains
with his plot, he took less with his verse. His friends reproved him,
but he answered to one of them--
"Since oft thy judgment could refine
My flattened thought and cumbrous line,
Still kind, as is thy wont, attend,
And in the minstrel spare the friend:
_Though wild as cloud_, _as stream_, _as gale_,
_Flow forth_, _flow unrestrained_, _my tale_!"
Any one who knows Scott's country knows how cloud and stream and gale all
sweep at once down the valley of Ettrick or of Tweed. West wind, wild
cloud, red river, they pour forth as by one impulse--forth from the far-
off hills. He let his verse sweep out in the same stormy sort, and many
a "cumbrous line," many a "flattened thought," you may note, if you will,
in "Marmion." For example--
"And think what he must next have felt,
At buckling of the falchion belt."
The "Lay" is a tale that only verse could tell; much of "Marmion" might
have been told in prose, and most of "Rokeby." But prose could never
give the picture of Edinburgh, nor tell the tale of Flodden Fight in
"Marmion," which I verily believe is the best battle-piece in all the
poetry of all time, better even than the stand of Aias by the ships in
the Iliad, better than the slaying of the Wooers in the Odyssey. Nor
could prose give us the hunting of the deer and the long gallop over
hillside and down valley, with which the "Lady of the Lake" begins,
opening thereby the enchanted gates of the Highlands to the world. "The
Lady of the Lake," except in the battle-piece, is told in a less rapid
metre than that of the "Lay," less varied than that of "Marmion."
"Rokeby" lives only by its songs; the "Lord of the Isles" by Bannockburn,
the "Field of Waterloo" by the repulse of the Cuirassiers. But all the
poems are interspersed with songs and ballads, as the beautiful ballad of
"Alice Brand"; and Scott's fame rests on _these_ far more than on his
later versified romances. Coming immediately after the very tamest poets
who ever lived, like Hayley, Scott wrote songs and ballads as wild and
free, as melancholy or gay, as ever shepherd sang, or gipsy carolled, or
witch-wife moaned, or old forgotten minstrel left to the world, music
with no maker's name. For example, take the Outlaw's rhyme--
"With burnished brand and musketoon,
So gallantly you come,
I read you for a bold dragoon
That lists the tuck of drum.
I list no more the tuck of drum,
No more the trumpet hear;
But when the beetle sounds his hum,
My comrades take the spear.
And, oh, though Brignal banks be fair,
And Greta woods be gay,
Yet mickle must the maiden dare,
Would reign my Queen of May!"