Let us turn from Southey to a better man, to the author who, building
on the groundwork of national character and history, originated the
distinctively British type of Romanticism. This man did not, like
his contemporaries of the Lake School, require to play the renegade
in order to become conservative in religion and politics; he was
conservative from his earliest youth, but without animosity to men of
the opposite tendency. Pure-minded and gentle by nature, of a noble,
resolute character, richly endowed with the creative gift, he for
twenty years provided all the countries of Europe with wholesome,
entertaining literature; and so original was his conception of
race-character and history, that his influence in every civilised
country upon the writing of history was not less great than his
influence on fiction.
Walter Scott, the ninth child of a family "of gentle blood," was born
in Edinburgh on the 15th of August 1771. His father, a lawyer by
profession, resembled Goethe's father in his severe sense of order;
the old merchant in _Rob Roy_ is said to be a portrait of him. Ardent
loyalty, displaying itself in devotion, first to the Stuarts, then to
the house of Hanover, was one hereditary quality in the family; and
orthodox piety was another. In his earliest infancy Walter was healthy
and strong, but in his second year he suddenly became lame in the
right leg. The sweet temper with which throughout life he bore this
physical infirmity, presents a remarkable contrast to the resentful
impatience which his great English rival displayed with regard to a
similar affliction. The boy grew up an ardent Jacobite and a lover of
the old songs and ballads which tell of the Scottish wars and raids,
Highland and Lowland. When he was little more than an infant, he could
repeat most of that ballad of Hardicanute with which in 1815 he drew
tears from Byron's eyes. Anything of the nature of a story, especially
if it was in rhyme, he learned with ease, but--a fact significant of
the character of his future productions--dates and _general principles_
were things which he assimilated with difficulty. The little lame boy,
who rode about on a pony not much bigger than a Newfoundland dog, was
an admirer of Percy's collection of old poems and fragments; and,
what is more remarkable, himself collected old ballads and songs,
as other children collect coins or seals. At the age of ten he had
several volumes of them; and he continued to be a ballad-hunter all
his life. Keen observation of his surroundings was another thing that
developed early in Scott; he had an eye for every ruin, every monument
of antiquity, every curious old stone; but he had not Wordsworth's
intensity of regard for nature as simply nature; it was its historical
and poetic interest that attracted him. A group of old trees which
had grown together was not in itself capable of arousing in him the
devotional spirit which it did in Wordsworth; but if he was told: Under
this tree Charles II. rested; or: That tree was planted by Mary Queen
of Scots--he broke a twig to keep in memory of his visit to the place,
and never forgot these trees.
[Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT]
At the age of fifteen he made acquaintance with the picturesque
Scottish Highlands, which were ere long to be of such importance to
him, as providing his fictitious characters with a background of
scenery as yet totally unknown to Europe. From the moment when he
became conscious of his poetic calling, he studied nature in the manner
of the painter who takes sketches. Before describing any district he
took a special journey there, made a minute record of the appearance
of the hills, of the lie and shape of the woods, even of the nature
and outlines of the clouds at a given moment. He actually noted single
flowers and bushes by the road-side or at the entrance to a cave.
Though he had, in common with the Romanticists of Germany and Denmark,
the poetic eye for nature, this did not stand in the way of vigorous,
exact realism in description. Whilst Oehlenschläger long contented
himself with "speedwell" and roses, Scott, as he himself said, knew
hill, brook, dell, rock, and stone, and the whole flora of his country.
Before the young man's true vocation was revealed to him, he had made
of himself a reliable, industrious lawyer, who engrossed his legal
documents in the typical law hand in which he was afterwards to write
so many famous books. In spite of his lameness he was healthy, active,
and strong, and so well-trained in manly exercises that he was able
to defend himself with his stick for a whole hour against three men
who attacked him one day on a lonely road. It is of interest, in the
case of such a man, to note the fact that this perfect health was not
accompanied by any corresponding perfection of the sensual organs.
Scott had hardly any sense of smell, and his Homeric appetite was the
opposite of dainty; he never learned to distinguish good wine from bad,
or well-cooked from badly-cooked food--in both of these points forming
the antipodes of his younger contemporary, Keats. His feelings towards
the other sex were so cold that his companions were always teasing
him on the subject. Nevertheless he had, in his youth, a romantic
attachment to a lady who chose another mate. Scott controlled his
feelings so perfectly that no one suspected this attachment. He soon
recovered from his disappointment, and, at the age of twenty-six, with
a chaste, tranquil youth behind him, married Miss Carpenter, a lady
of French Protestant family, whose father had died at the time of the
Revolution. Most of the winter of 1796-97, during which an invasion of
Scotland by the French was expected, he spent in assisting to raise
regiments of volunteers. In his enthusiasm he himself undertook the
duties of quartermaster, paymaster, and secretary of one of these
regiments.
His first translations from the German have already been noticed. He
had long been a living repertory of songs, ballads, and tales; in 1803
he published, under the title of _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_,
a collection of ballads, which he dedicated to his native land, the
"dearest half of Albion." Part Third of this book, _Modern Imitations_,
contains poems by Scott himself.[1] In one of the criticisms of the day
occurred the prophetic remark, that the book "contained the elements of
a hundred historical romances."
With all his loyalty to the English royal family, Scott never felt
himself anything but the thoroughbred Scotchman; indeed, there can
be no doubt that what lies at the very root of his originality is
his Scottish character. His strong interest in the poetry of history
is a Scottish interest. One of the most pronounced characteristics
of Scotchmen in every age has been an intense spirit of nationality.
The phrase _Perfervidum ingenium Scotorum_, used centuries ago on
the Continent to express the idea of the Scottish character then
universally current, had originally no other meaning than this. If
we for a moment overlook the many internal dissensions, which do not
really undermine the feeling of community, we feel how difficult it
would be to match in any other country the solidarity of this small
nation placed on the frontier of one so much larger and more powerful,
which speaks the same language. The Englishman, too, has an intense
spirit of nationality, but it is much less salient and active; it is
purely of a corroborative nature--corroboration of the claim advanced
by his country to the possession of many and various attributes. The
Scotchman's spirit of nationality is continuously active, constantly on
the alert, because it is essentially of a negative character. When the
Englishman says: I am an Englishman--he means exactly what he says; but
when the Scotchman says or thinks: I am a Scotchman--it is tantamount
to: I am not an Englishman.[2]
To understand this feeling properly, we must remember the smallness
of the nation in comparison with its great neighbour. When we learn
that in the year 1707 the entire population of Scotland did not
exceed a million, we understand what concord, what determination,
what defensive pugnacity, were imperative in the less numerous race
if its individuality was not to be flooded out or stamped out by the
other. Thus it came about that bleak and rugged Scotland, as compared
with verdant, fertile England, was the object of a very special love
and admiration; its hills, its moors, its mists, inspired an almost
martial patriotism. And it is therefore not surprising that, at the
period when the spirit of nationality was breaking forth into poetry
all over Europe, this country should produce a great descriptive,
great narrative, poet--that it should be Scotland which brings forth
the first and the most vigorous fruits of historical, ethnological
Romanticism. What more natural than that an author in such a country
as Scotland should be deeply interested in the peculiar customs of the
Highlanders, and take pleasure in describing them in their picturesque
garb! What more natural than that the man whose very name seemed to
stamp him as a personification of his country, should endeavour, by
recalling its great historical achievements in the past, to efface, as
it were, the impression of its smallness and present insignificance!
Scottish national feeling was, then, in the first instance,
distinguished by its solidarity; the subordinate nation felt itself
more one than the greater nation; there were fewer conflicting
interests at work within it. Scott frequently describes this strong
feeling of kinship among his countrymen--nowhere more beautifully than
in the _Heart of Midlothian_ the poor peasant heroine of which is
encouraged by it to apply for help to the Duke of Argyle almost as if
he were a relative. But Scottish national feeling possessed another
distinguishing feature; being, in its character of attachment to an
ancient; once entirely independent, state, itself a tradition, it was
related to every other old tradition. This explains Scott's exaggerated
reverence for royalty, its emblems and appurtenances. When he was a
member of the Commission entrusted to institute a search after the
ancient regalia of Scotland, the discovery of it filled him with such
reverential emotion that, when one of the other Commissioners proposed
to try the crown on a young lady's head, he could not help shouting:
"By God, no!"
The first great feeling of separate nationalism brought in its train a
whole host of new separative feelings. If there were not many nations
that rivalled the Scotch in the way they held together as a people,
there were still fewer that could show such inward division into
parties and camps. The individual's feeling of his public duty did not
begin with the nation, but with the tribe, the clan, nay, the family.
Hence we find Scott, the true Scotchman, showing preference, as a
ballad-writer, for the legends which treat of the exploits of his own
ancestors or kin, and in his private life exhibiting strong family
feeling. He was a model son and husband; he was, as his letters to his
eldest son show, a devoted father; in the education of his children
he neglected neither body nor soul--though his chief requirements of
them seem to have been the ancient Persian ones, that they should
ride well and speak the truth; but his conception even of these
relations was not modern. In his private life as in his poetry, the
family was more to him than the individual. He had a brother, Daniel
by name, who fell into bad habits, and, though he never did anything
actually dishonourable, was a disgrace to the family. Scott procured
a small appointment in the West Indies for this brother, but in his
correspondence about him never called him anything but "relation,"
and also required of him that he should never divulge the nearness of
the relationship. He refused to see Daniel when the latter returned
to Scotland, never mentioned his name, and would neither attend his
funeral nor wear mourning for him. Such behaviour as this shows the bad
side of the society-preserving virtues. It is not surprising that the
man who, with all his tender-heartedness, could sacrifice so much on
the altar of "family," was unable to become the poet of personality,
and was stamped as of the past the moment Byron appeared.
In 1802 the _Edinburgh Review_ was founded. Scott was a contributor
to it from the beginning. Its editor was his fellow-countryman,
Jeffrey, a man whose critical pronouncements were regarded as of the
utmost importance by the authors of the day, though his only gift
as a critic was a kind of untrained, straightforward common-sense.
Scott's contributions ceased in 1809, when, dissatisfied with the
liberal-minded attitude assumed by the _Edinburgh Review_ in the
Catholic question, and annoyed by Jeffrey's disparaging notice of
_Marmion_, he founded the _Quarterly Review_.
Scotts first narrative poem, _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, appeared
in 1805. It was a remarkable success. The reading public rejoiced
at this return to nature and to national poetry. Pitt expressed the
opinion that in several passages Scott had succeeded in producing
the effect of a fine painting, and his opponent Fox was for once of
the same opinion with him. Scott's personal amiability as Sheriff
of Selkirkshire had, ere this, made him such a favourite that, as
Wordsworth wrote in 1803, his name acted as _an open sesame_ throughout
the Border country; now he became equally beloved as a poet. In a very
short time 30,000 copies of his work were sold. In it he introduced
his readers, with something approaching historical accuracy, to the
Scotland of the sixteenth century. The acceptance with which his
descriptions of the Border customs were received, suggested the idea
of writing something of the same kind in prose, an idea which in its
embodiment received the name of _Waverley_. In the meantime interest
had been aroused in the Middle Ages, chivalry, feudal conditions, and
Scottish national characteristics generally. English tourists began to
make romantic pilgrimages to the ruins of the old castles, and to the
battle-field of Killiecrankie, where their countrymen had been defeated
by the bare-legged, tartan-clad monsters.
Until this time Scott had been in the habit of writing in the evening,
and far on into the night; but after he devoted himself entirely to
authorship, the early morning became his working time. He rose before
five, went first to the stables to visit his horses and favourite dogs
and other domestic animals, then seated himself at his desk and wrote
so easily and fast that by the time the family assembled for breakfast,
between nine and ten, he had, to use his own words, "broken the neck of
the day's work." He left his study at twelve, and spent the rest of the
day with his family and his guests. Scott's works were, thus, written
in the fresh morning hours, whilst Byron, characteristically enough,
wrote his at night. And we seem, even when the two poets are likest
each other, to feel the influence of the bright, and the influence of
the dark, hour of conception.
It is in the poem which he began in November 1806, _Marmion, a Tale
of Flodden Field_, that Scott is most like Byron. As far as the plot
is concerned, this work is quite in Scott's usual style; the scene is
laid in sixteenth-century Scotland, and it is the life of the castle
and the court that is described. But the hero's character makes him
an unmistakable forerunner of the Byronic heroes, and the whole poem
is written in the easy-flowing, but somewhat monotonous, four-footed
iambics which Byron employed in most of his poetical narratives.
Marmion is a proud and brave, but also wicked knight. A young,
beautiful nun, Constance of Beverley, whom he has abducted, follows
him everywhere, disguised as a page; but he grows tired of her, and is
determined to compel a young girl of high birth to marry him, though he
knows that she loves another. In her jealous despair, Constance makes
an attempt on Marmion's life; and he, indifferent and cruel, gives her
up to the convent to suffer punishment as a runaway nun. The abbess
pronounces sentence; and, in a Romantic scene of horror of the kind
which Byron painted frequently, and with much less consideration for
his readers' nerves, we see Constance immured alive in an underground
vault.
There is not much psychology in Scott's poem. The gorgeousness of the
knight's armour, the gloom of the convent crypt, the architecture
of the old castle, are of more importance to him than complicated
emotions. Nevertheless he has given us in _Marmion_ something very like
a first sketch of _The Giaour_ and of _Lara_. The Giaour's mistress
suffers a terrible death; Lara's follows him everywhere, in the
disguise of a page; and the scene in _Marmion_, in which the hero is
publicly put to shame, has a certain resemblance to the scene in which
Lara's past is brought to mind. Is there not something almost Byronic
in the lines?--
"Marmion, whose steady heart and eye
Ne'er changed in worst extremity;
Marmion, whose soul could scantly brook,
Even from his king, a haughty look;
Whose accent of command controlled,
In camps, the boldest of the bold--
Thought, look, and utterance failed him now,
Fallen was his glance, and flushed his brow;
For either in the tone,
Or something in the Palmer's look,
So full upon his conscience strook
That answer he found none."