Sir Walter Scott's love of the country induced him, after his
marriage in 1797, to settle in a cottage at the pretty village of
Lasswade, near Edinburgh. Four years after leaving this district he
took Mr. Morritt of Rokeby to see the little dwelling, telling him
that, though not worth looking at, 'it was our first house when
newly married, and many a contrivance it had to make it
comfortable.' He then enumerated various devices, by which he had
secured for Mrs. Scott and himself what seemed to both, at the time,
additional convenience and elegance in and about their home. His
reminiscences culminated in an account of an arch over the gate-way,
which he had constructed by fastening together the tops of two
convenient willows and placing above them 'a cross made of two
sticks.' This is very beautiful and characteristic; and there is
much freshness and charm in the further picture of the young
cottagers rejoicing over the success of the arrangements. 'To be
sure,' Scott concluded, 'it is not much of a lion to show a
stranger; but I wanted to see it again myself, for I assure you
after I constructed it, Mamma (Mrs. Scott) and I both of us thought
it so fine, we turned out to see it by moonlight, and walked
backwards from it to the cottage-door in admiration of our own
magnificence and its picturesque effect.' It was his way to invest
his circumstances with an interest over and above what intrinsically
belonged to them, and to prompt his friends to a share in his
delight.
When, in 1804, Scott was appointed Sheriff of Selkirkshire, a
condition attaching to his post was that he should reside during
part of the year within the bounds of his sheriffdom. He then
removed from Lasswade, and settled at Ashestiel on the Tweed, seven
miles from Selkirk. This is his own account of the new home:--
'We found a delightful retirement, by my becoming the tenant of my
intimate friend and cousin-german, Colonel Russell, in his mansion
of Ashestiel, which was unoccupied during his absence on military
service in India. The house was adequate to our accommodation, and
the exercise of a limited hospitality. The situation is uncommonly
beautiful, by the side of a fine river, whose streams are there very
favourable for angling, surrounded by the remains of natural woods,
and by hills abounding in game. In point of society, according to
the heartfelt phrase of Scripture, we dwelt "amongst our own
people"; and as the distance from the metropolis was only thirty
miles, we were not out of reach of our Edinburgh friends, in which
city we spent the terms of the summer and winter Sessions of the
Court, that is, five or six months in the year.'
The functions of the Sheriff of Selkirkshire admitted of
considerable leisure, and Scott settled at Ashestiel full of
literary projects, as well as heartily prepared to meet his new
responsibilities and to add to his numerous and valuable
friendships. An enterprise that early engaged his attention was a
complete edition of the British poets, but the deliberations on the
subject came to nothing except in so far as they helped towards the
preparation of Campbell's 'Specimens of the British Poets,' which
appeared in 1819. Writing Scott regarding his project of a complete
edition of the poets, his friend George Ellis said, 'Much as I wish
for a corpus poetarum, edited as you would edit it, I should like
still better another Minstrel Lay by the last and best Minstrel; and
the general demand for the poem seems to prove that the public are
of my opinion.' The work of editing, however, he seemed at the time
determined on having, and he finally abandoned the idea of an
exhaustive issue of the British poetry previous to his own time and
settled down to edit Dryden. This was a work much needed, and Scott
did it extremely well, as may be seen by comparing his own issue of
Dryden's Life and Works in 1808 with the recent reproduction of it,
admirably edited by Mr. George Saintsbury.
He had likewise, as he mentions in the General Preface to the
Novels, begun Waverley 'about 1805,' and other literary engagements
received their share of attention. He wrote articles for the
Edinburgh Review, besides doing such minor if useful literary
service as editing for Constable 'Original Memoirs written during
the Great Civil Wars,' and so on. At the same time, there were
prospects of professional advancement, an account of which he gives
in the following terms, in the 1830 Introduction to 'Marmion':--
'An important circumstance had, about the same time, taken place in
my life. Hopes had been held out to me from an influential quarter,
of a nature to relieve me from the anxiety which I must have
otherwise felt, as one upon the precarious tenure of whose own life
rested the principal prospects of his family, and especially as one
who had necessarily some dependence upon the favour of the public,
which is proverbially capricious; though it is but justice to add,
that, in my own case, I have not found it so. Mr. Pitt had
expressed a wish to my personal friend, the Right Hon. William
Dundas, now Lord Clerk Register of Scotland, that some fitting
opportunity should be taken to be of service to me; and as my views
and wishes pointed to a future rather than an immediate provision,
an opportunity of accomplishing this was soon found. One of the
Principal Clerks of Session, as they are called, (official persons
who occupy an important and responsible situation, and enjoy a
considerable income,) who had served upwards of thirty years, felt
himself, from age, and the infirmity of deafness with which it was
accompanied, desirous of retiring from his official situation. As
the law then stood, such official persons were entitled to bargain
with their successors, either for a sum of money, which was usually
a considerable one, or for an interest in the emoluments of the
office during their life. My predecessor, whose services had been
unusually meritorious, stipulated for the emoluments of his office
during his life, while I should enjoy the survivorship, on the
condition that I discharged the duties of the office in the
meantime. Mr. Pitt, however, having died in the interval, his
administration was dissolved, and was succeeded by that known by the
name of the Fox and Grenville Ministry. My affair was so far
completed, that my commission lay in the office subscribed by his
Majesty; but, from hurry or mistake, the interest of my predecessor
was not expressed in it, as had been usual in such cases. Although,
therefore, it only required payment of the fees, I could not in
honour take out the commission in the present state, since, in the
event of my dying before him, the gentleman whom I succeeded must
have lost the vested interest which he had stipulated to retain. I
had the honour of an interview with Earl Spencer on the subject, and
he, in the most handsome manner, gave directions that the commission
should issue as originally intended; adding, that the matter having
received the royal assent, he regarded only as a claim of justice
what he would have willingly done as an act of favour. I never saw
Mr. Fox on this, or on any other occasion, and never made any
application to him, conceiving that in doing so I might have been
supposed to express political opinions contrary to those which I had
always professed. In his private capacity, there is no man to whom
I would have been more proud to owe an obligation, had I been so
distinguished.
'By this arrangement I obtained the survivorship of an office, the
emoluments of which were fully adequate to my wishes; and as the law
respecting the mode of providing for superannuated officers was,
about five or six years after, altered from that which admitted the
arrangement of assistant and successor, my colleague very handsomely
took the opportunity of the alteration, to accept of the retiring
annuity provided in such cases, and admitted me to the full benefit
of the office.'
At Ashestiel Scott systematically planned his day. He had his
mornings for his multifarious work, and the after part of the day
was given to necessary recreation and to his friends. He was an
ardent member of the Edinburgh Light Horse, at a time when
volunteers of a practical and energetic character seemed likely to
be needed, and at Ashestiel he combined a certain military routine
with his legal and literary arrangements. James Skene of Rubislaw,
one of his best friends and most frequent visitors, mentions that
'before beginning his desk-work in the morning he uniformly visited
his favourite steed, and neither Captain nor Lieutenant, nor the
Lieutenant's successor, Brown Adam (so called after one of the
heroes of the Minstrelsy), liked to be fed except by him.' Skene is
the friend to whom Scott addresses the Introduction to Canto IV,
charged with touching and beautiful reminiscences of earlier days.
They were comrades in the Edinburgh Light Horse Volunteers, Scott
being Quartermaster and Skene Cornet. Their friendship had been one
of eleven years' standing when the dedicatory epistle was written:--
'Eleven years we now may tell,
Since we have known each other well;
Since, riding side by side, our hand
First drew the voluntary brand.'
With regard to the Introductions, it may now be said that they are
better where they are than if the poet had published them
separately, as at one time he seems to have intended (see Notes, p.
187). It is sometimes said by those anxious to learn the story that
these introductory Epistles should be steadily ignored, and the
cantos read in strict succession. In answer to an assertion of
opinion like this, it is hardly necessary to say more than that
probably those interested in the narrative alone could not do better
than avoid the Introductions. But it will be well for them to miss
various other things besides: will they, for example, care for the
impassioned address of Constance to her judges, for the landlord's
tale of grammarye, for Sir David Lyndsay's narrative, or even for
the many descriptive passages that interrupt the free progress of
the tale? Their reading would appear to be done on the plan of
those who get through novels, or other works of imagination, by
carefully omitting the dialogue and all those passages in which the
author pauses to describe or to reflect. It is needless to say that
this is not the spirit in which to approach 'Marmion' as it stands.
Scott wrote with his friends about him, and it was part of his own
enjoyment of his work to interest them in what for the time was
receiving the main part of his attention. His talk with Mr. Morritt
in front of the little cottage at Lasswade is highly significant as
illustrative of his attitude towards his friends. His healthy,
humorous, happy nature wanted sympathy, appreciation, sociality, and
good cheer for its complete normal development, and this alone would
explain the writing of the Introductions. But there is more than
this. He talked over his subject and his progress with friends
competent to discuss and advise, and he showed them portions of the
poem as he advanced. There are indications in the Introductions of
certain discussions that had arisen over his conception and
treatment, and surely few readers would like to miss from the volume
the clever and humorous apology for his own method which the poet
advances in the Introduction to the third canto. William Erskine,
refined critic and life-long friend, is asked to be patient and
generous while the poet proceeds in his own way:--
'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 unrestrain'd, my Tale!'
Further, the Introductions do not in any case interrupt the progress
of the Poem. Scott was dealing with a great national theme--a cause
he and his friends could understand and appreciate--and both before
starting and at every pause he has something to say that is apposite
and suggestive. His country's wintry state is the key-note of the
first Introduction, which is an appropriate prelude to a great
national tragedy; weird Border legends and the touching and
mysterious silences of lone St. Mary's Lake fitly introduce the
'mysterious Man of Woe'; the third and the fourth Introductions,
with their features of personal interest and their bright
reminiscences of 'tales that charmed' and scenes on 'the field-day,
or the drill,' are easily connected with the Hostel and the Camp;
Spenser's 'wandering Squire of Dames,' the vigorous description of
the 'Queen of the North,' and the tribute to the notes that 'Marie
translated, Blondel sung,' all tell in their due place as
preparatory to the canto on The Court; while the ominous record,
emanating from a Yule-tide retreat, could not be more fitly
interrupted than by a battle of national disaster. Scott, then, may
have thought of publishing the Introductions separately, but it is
well that he ultimately allowed his better judgment to prevail. It
is not necessary to dwell on their special descriptive features,
which readily assert themselves and give Scott a high and honoured
place among Nature-poets. His quick and minute observation, his
sense of colour and harmonious effects, and his skill of arrangement
are admirable throughout.