‘abstracted speculations,’ ‘cobwebs of the unintelligible brain.’ Above
all minds, his had the Baconian propensity to work upon ‘stuff.’ At
first sight, it would not seem that this was a defect likely to be very
hurtful to the works of a novelist. The labours of the searching and
introspective intellect, however needful, absorbing, and in some degree
delicious, to the seeker himself, are not in general very delightful
to those who are not seeking. Genial men in middle life are commonly
intolerant of that philosophising which their prototype, in old times,
classed side by side with the lisping of youth. The theological novel,
which was a few years ago so popular, and which is likely to have a
recurring influence in times when men’s belief is unsettled, and persons
who cannot or will not read large treatises have thoughts in their minds
and inquiries in their hearts, suggests to those who are accustomed to it
the absence elsewhere of what is necessarily one of its most distinctive
and prominent subjects. The desire to attain a belief, which has become
one of the most familiar sentiments of heroes and heroines, would have
seemed utterly incongruous to the plain sagacity of Scott, and also to
his old-fashioned art. Creeds are _data_ in his novels; people have
different creeds, but each keeps his own. Some persons will think that
this is not altogether amiss; nor do we particularly wish to take up the
defence of the dogmatic novel. Nevertheless, it will strike those who
are accustomed to the youthful generation of a cultivated time, that
the passion of intellectual inquiry is one of the strongest impulses in
many of them, and one of those which give the predominant colouring to
the conversation and exterior mind of many more. And a novelist will not
exercise the most potent influence over those subject to that passion, if
he entirely omit the delineation of it. Scott’s works have only one merit
in this relation: they are an excellent rest to those who have felt this
passion, and have had something too much of it.
The same indisposition to the abstract exercises of the intellect
shows itself in the reflective portions of Scott’s novels, and perhaps
contributes to their popularity with that immense majority of the world
who strongly share in that same indisposition: it prevents, however,
their having the most powerful intellectual influence on those who have
at any time of their lives voluntarily submitted themselves to this acute
and refining discipline. The reflections of a practised thinker have a
peculiar charm, like the last touches of the accomplished artist. The
cunning exactitude of the professional hand leaves a trace in the very
language. A nice discrimination of thought makes men solicitous of the
most apt expressions to diffuse their thoughts. Both words and meaning
gain a metallic brilliancy, like the glittering precision of the pure
Attic air. Scott’s is a healthy and genial world of reflection, but it
wants the charm of delicate exactitude.
The same limitation of Scott’s genius shows itself in a very different
portion of art—in his delineation of his heroines. The same blunt
sagacity of imagination, which fitted him to excel in the rough
description of obvious life, rather unfitted him for delineating the
less substantial essence of the female character. The nice _minutiæ_
of society, by means of which female novelists have been so successful
in delineating their own sex, were rather too small for his robust and
powerful mind. Perhaps, too, a certain unworldliness of _imagination_
is necessary to enable men to comprehend or delineate that essence:
unworldliness of _life_ is no doubt not requisite; rather, perhaps,
worldliness is necessary to the acquisition of a sufficient experience.
But an absorption in the practical world does not seem favourable to a
comprehension of anything which does not precisely belong to it. Its
interests are too engrossing; its excitements too keen; it modifies the
fancy, and in the change unfits it for everything else. Something, too,
in Scott’s character and history made it more difficult for him to give a
representation of women than of men. Goethe used to say, that his idea of
woman was not drawn from his experience, but that it came to him before
experience, and that he explained his experience by a reference to it.
And though this is a German, and not very happy, form of expression, yet
it appears to indicate a very important distinction. Some efforts of the
imagination are made so early in life, just as it were at the dawn of
the conscious faculties, that we are never able to fancy ourselves as
destitute of them. They are part of the mental constitution with which,
so to speak, we awoke to existence. These are always far more firm,
vivid, and definite, than any other images of our fancy; and we apply
them, half unconsciously, to any facts and sentiments and actions which
may occur to us later in life, whether arising from within or thrust upon
us from the outward world. Goethe doubtless meant that the idea of the
female character was to him one of these first elements of imagination;
not a thing puzzled out, or which he remembered having conceived, but a
part of the primitive conceptions which, being coeval with his memory,
seemed inseparable from his consciousness. The descriptions of women
likely to be given by this sort of imagination will probably be the
best descriptions. A mind which would arrive at this idea of the female
character by this process, and so early, would be one obviously of more
than usual susceptibility. The early imagination does not commonly take
this direction; it thinks most of horses and lances, tournaments and
knights; only a mind with an unusual and instinctive tendency to this
kind of thought, would be borne thither so early or so effectually. And
even independently of this probable peculiarity of the individual, the
primitive imagination in general is likely to be the most accurate which
men can form; not, of course, of the external manifestations and detailed
manners, but of the inner sentiment and characteristic feeling of women.
The early imagination conceives what it does conceive very justly; fresh
from the facts, stirred by the new aspect of things, undimmed by the
daily passage of constantly forgotten images, not misled by the irregular
analogies of a dislocated life,—the early mind sees what it does see with
a spirit and an intentness never given to it again. A mind like Goethe’s,
of very strong imagination, aroused at the earliest age,—not of course by
passions, but by an unusual strength in that undefined longing which is
the prelude to our passions,—will form the best idea of the inmost female
nature which masculine nature can form. The difference is evident between
the characters of women formed by Goethe’s imagination or Shakespeare’s,
and those formed by such an imagination as that of Scott. The latter seem
so external. We have traits, features, manners; we know the heroine as
she appeared in the street; in some degree we know how she talked, but
we never know how she felt—least of all what she was: we always feel
there is a world behind, unanalysed, unrepresented, which we cannot
attain to. Such a character as Margaret in _Faust_ is known to us to the
very soul; so is Imogen; so is Ophelia. Edith Bellenden, Flora Macivor,
Miss Wardour, are young ladies who, we are told, were good-looking, and
well-dressed (according to the old fashion), and sensible; but we feel
we know but very little of them, and they do not haunt our imaginations.
The failure of Scott in this line of art is more conspicuous, because he
had not in any remarkable degree the later experience of female detail,
with which some minds have endeavoured to supply the want of the early
essential imagination, and which Goethe possessed in addition to it. It
was rather late, according to his biographer, before Scott set up for
a ‘squire of dames;’ he was a ‘lame young man, very enthusiastic about
ballad poetry;’ he was deeply in love with a young lady, supposed to
be imaginatively represented by Flora Macivor, but he was unsuccessful.
It would be over-ingenious to argue, from his failing in a single
love-affair, that he had no peculiar interest in young ladies in general;
but the whole description of his youth shows that young ladies exercised
over him a rather more divided influence than is usual. Other pursuits
intervened, much more than is common with persons of the imaginative
temperament, and he never led the life of flirtation from which Goethe
believed that he derived so much instruction. Scott’s heroines,
therefore, are, not unnaturally, faulty, since from a want of the very
peculiar instinctive imagination he could not give us the essence of
women, and from the habits of his life he could not delineate to us their
detailed life with the appreciative accuracy of habitual experience.
Jeanie Deans is probably the best of his heroines, and she is so because
she is the least of a heroine. The plain matter of-fact element in the
peasant-girl’s life and circumstances suited a robust imagination. There
is little in the part of her character that is very finely described
which is characteristically feminine. She is not a masculine, but she
is an epicene heroine. Her love-affair with Butler, a single remarkable
scene excepted, is rather commonplace than otherwise.
A similar criticism might be applied to Scott’s heroes. Everyone feels
how commonplace they are—Waverley excepted, whose very vacillation
gives him a sort of character. They have little personality. They are
all of the same type;—excellent young men—rather strong—able to ride
and climb and jump. They are always said to be sensible, and bear out
the character by being not unwilling sometimes to talk platitudes. But
we know nothing of their inner life. They are said to be in love; but
we have no special account of their individual sentiments. People show
their character in their love more than in anything else. These young
gentlemen all love in the same way—in the vague commonplace way of this
world. We have no sketch or dramatic expression of the life within. Their
souls are quite unknown to us. If there is an exception, it is Edgar
Ravenswood. But if we look closely, we may observe that the notion which
we obtain of his character, unusually broad as it is, is not a notion
of him in his capacity of hero, but in his capacity of distressed peer.
His proud poverty gives a distinctness which otherwise his lineaments
would not have. We think little of his love; we think much of his narrow
circumstances and compressed haughtiness.
The same exterior delineation of character shows itself in his treatment
of men’s religious nature. A novelist is scarcely, in the notion of
ordinary readers, bound to deal with this at all; if he does, it will be
one of his great difficulties to indicate it graphically, yet without
dwelling on it. Men who purchase a novel do not wish a stone or a sermon.
All lengthened reflections must be omitted; the whole armoury of pulpit
eloquence. But no delineation of human nature can be considered complete
which omits to deal with man in relation to the questions which occupy
him as man, with his convictions as to the theory of the universe and
his own destiny; the human heart throbs on few subjects with a passion
so intense, so peculiar, and so typical. From an artistic view, it is
a blunder to omit an element which is so characteristic of human life,
which contributes so much to its animation, and which is so picturesque.
A reader of a more simple mind, little apt to indulge in such criticism,
feels ‘a want of depth,’ as he would speak, in delineations from which
so large an element of his own most passionate and deepest nature is
omitted. It can hardly be said that there is an omission of the religious
nature in Scott. But, at the same time, there is no adequate delineation
of it. If we refer to the facts of his life, and the view of his
character which we collect from them, we shall find that his religion was
of a qualified and double sort. He was a genial man of the world, and had
the easy faith in the kindly _Dieu des bons gens_ which is natural to
such a person; and he had also a half-poetic principle of superstition in
his nature, inclining him to believe in ghosts, legends, fairies, and
elves, which did not affect his daily life, or possibly his superficial
belief, but was nevertheless very constantly present to his fancy, and
which affected, as is the constitution of human nature, through that
frequency, the undefined, half-expressed, inexpressible feelings which
are at the root of that belief. Superstition was a kind of Jacobitism in
his religion; as a sort of absurd reliance on the hereditary principle
modified insensibly his leanings in the practical world, so a belief
in the existence of unevidenced, and often absurd, supernatural beings
qualified his commonest speculations on the higher world. Both these
elements may be thought to enter into the highest religion; there is a
principle of cheerfulness which will justify in its measure a genial
enjoyment, and also a principle of fear which those who think only of
that enjoyment will deem superstition, and which will really become
superstition in the over-anxious and credulous acceptor of it. But in a
true religion these two elements will be combined. The character of God
images itself very imperfectly in any human soul; but in the highest it
images itself as a whole; it leaves an abiding impression which will
justify anxiety and allow of happiness. The highest aim of the religious
novelist would be to show how this operates in human character; to
exhibit in their curious modification our religious love, and also our
religious fear. In the novels of Scott the two elements appear in a state
of separation, as they did in his own mind. We have the superstition
of the peasantry in the _Antiquary_, in _Guy Mannering_, everywhere
almost; we have likewise a pervading tone of genial easy reflection
characteristic of the man of the world who produced, and agreeable to
the people of the world who read, these works. But we have no picture
of the two in combination. We are scarcely led to think on the subject
at all, so much do other subjects distract our interest; but if we do
think, we are puzzled at the contrast. We do not know which is true, the
uneasy belief of superstition, or the easy satisfaction of the world; we
waver between the two, and have no suggestion even hinted to us of the
possibility of a reconciliation. The character of the Puritans certainly
did not in general embody such a reconciliation, but it might have been
made by a sympathising artist the vehicle for a delineation of a struggle
after it. The two elements of love and fear ranked side by side in their
minds with an intensity which is rare even in minds that feel only one
of them. The delineation of Scott is amusing, but superficial. He caught
the ludicrous traits which tempt the mirthful imagination, but no other
side of the character pleased him. The man of the world was displeased
with their obstinate interfering zeal; their intensity of faith was an
opposition force in the old Scotch polity, of which he liked to fancy
the harmonious working. They were superstitious enough; but nobody likes
other people’s superstitions. Scott’s were of a wholly different kind.
He made no difficulty as to the observance of Christmas-day, and would
have eaten potatoes without the faintest scruple, although their name
does not occur in Scripture. Doubtless also his residence in the land
of Puritanism did not incline him to give anything except a satirical
representation of that belief. You must not expect from a Dissenter a
faithful appreciation of the creed from which he dissents. You cannot be
impartial on the religion of the place in which you live; you may believe
it, or you may dislike it; it crosses your path in too many forms for
you to be able to look at it with equanimity. Scott had rather a rigid
form of Puritanism forced upon him in his infancy; it is asking too much
to expect him to be partial to it. The aspect of religion which Scott
delineates best is that which appears in griefs, especially in the grief
of strong characters. His strong _natural_ nature felt the power of
death. He has given us many pictures of rude and simple men subdued, if
only for a moment, into devotion by its presence.
On the whole, and speaking roughly, these defects in the delineation
which Scott has given us of human life are but two. He omits to give us
a delineation of the soul. We have mind, manners, animation, but it is
the stir of this world. We miss the consecrating power; and we miss
it not only in its own peculiar sphere, which, from the difficulty of
introducing the deepest elements into a novel, would have been scarcely
matter for a harsh criticism, but in the place in which a novelist
might most be expected to delineate it. There are perhaps such things
as the love affairs of immortal beings, but no one would learn it from
Scott. His heroes and heroines are well dressed for this world, but not
for another; there is nothing even in their love which is suitable for
immortality. As has been noticed, Scott also omits any delineation of the
abstract side of unworldly intellect. This too might not have been so
severe a reproach, considering its undramatic, unanimated nature, if it
had stood alone; but taken in connection with the omission which we have
just spoken of, it is most important. As the union of sense and romance
makes the world of Scott so characteristically agreeable,—a fascinating
picture of this world in the light in which we like best to dwell on it;
so the deficiency in the attenuated, striving intellect, as well as in
the supernatural soul, gives to the ‘world’ of Scott the cumbrousness
and temporality—in short, the materialism—which is characteristic of the
world.
We have dwelt so much on what we think are the characteristic features of
Scott’s imaginative representations, that we have left ourselves no room
to criticise the two most natural points of criticism in a novelist—plot
and style. This is not, however, so important in Scott’s case as it would
commonly be. He used to say, ‘It was of no use having a plot; you could
not keep to it.’ He modified and changed his thread of story from day
to day,—sometimes even from bookselling reasons, and on the suggestion
of others. An elaborate work of narrative art could not be produced in
this way, every one will concede; the highest imagination, able to look
far over the work, is necessary for that task. But the plots produced,
so to say, by the pen of the writer as he passes over the events are
likely to have a freshness and a suitableness to those events, which
is not possessed by the inferior writers who make up a mechanical plot
before they commence. The procedure of the highest genius doubtless is
scarcely a procedure: the view of the whole story comes at once upon its
imagination like the delicate end and the distinct beginning of some long
vista. But all minds do not possess the highest mode of conception; and
among lower modes, it is doubtless better to possess the vigorous fancy
which creates each separate scene in succession as it goes, than the
pedantic intellect which designs everything long before it is wanted.
There is a play in unconscious creation which no voluntary elaboration
and preconceived fitting of distinct ideas can ever hope to produce. If
the whole cannot be created by one bounding effort, it is better that
each part should be created separately and in detail.
The style of Scott would deserve the highest praise if M. Thiers could
establish his theory of narrative language. He maintains that an
historian’s language approaches perfection in proportion as it aptly
communicates what is meant to be narrated without drawing any attention
to itself. Scott’s style fulfils this condition. Nobody rises from his
works without a most vivid idea of what is related, and no one is able
to quote a single phrase in which it has been narrated. We are inclined,
however, to differ from the great French historian, and to oppose to
him a theory derived from a very different writer. Coleridge used to
maintain that all good poetry was untranslatable into words of the same
language without injury to the sense: the meaning was, in his view, to
be so inseparably intertwined even with the shades of the language,
that the change of a single expression would make a difference in the
accompanying feeling, if not in the bare signification: consequently, all
good poetry must be remembered exactly,—to change a word is to modify
the essence. Rigidly this theory can only be applied to a few kinds
of poetry, or special passages in which the imagination is exerting
itself to the utmost, and collecting from the whole range of associated
language the very expressions which it requires. The highest excitation
of feeling is necessary to this peculiar felicity of choice. In calmer
moments the mind has either a less choice, or less acuteness of selective
power. Accordingly, in prose it would be absurd to expect any such
nicety. Still, on great occasions in imaginative fiction, there should be
passages in which the words seem to cleave to the matter. The excitement
is as great as in poetry. The words should become part of the sense. They
should attract our attention, as this is necessary to impress them on
the memory; but they should not in so doing distract attention from the
meaning conveyed. On the contrary, it is their inseparability from their
meaning which gives them their charm and their power. In truth, Scott’s
language, like his sense, was such as became a bold, sagacious man of
the world. He used the first sufficient words which came uppermost, and
seems hardly to have been sensible, even in the works of others, of that
exquisite accuracy and inexplicable appropriateness of which we have been
speaking.
To analyse in detail the faults and merits of even a few of the greatest
of the Waverley Novels would be impossible in the space at our command on
the present occasion. We have only attempted a general account of a few
main characteristics. Every critic must, however, regret to have to leave
topics so tempting to remark upon as many of Scott’s stories, and a yet
greater number of his characters.
_CHARLES DICKENS._[10]
(1858.)
It must give Mr. Dickens much pleasure to look at the collected series of
his writings. He has told us of the beginnings of _Pickwick_.
‘I was,’ he relates in what is now the preface to that work,
‘a young man of three-and-twenty, when the present publishers,
attracted by some pieces I was at that time writing in the
_Morning Chronicle_ newspaper (of which one series had lately
been collected and published in two volumes, illustrated by
my esteemed friend Mr. George Cruikshank), waited upon me
to propose a something that should be published in shilling
numbers—then only known to me, or I believe to anybody else,
by a dim recollection of certain interminable novels in that
form, which used, some five-and-twenty years ago, to be
carried about the country by pedlars, and over some of which
I remember to have shed innumerable tears, before I served my
apprenticeship to Life. When I opened my door in Furnival’s Inn
to the managing partner who represented the firm, I recognised
in him the person from whose hands I had bought, two or three
years previously, and whom I had never seen before or since, my
first copy of the magazine in which my first effusion—dropped
stealthily one evening at twilight, with fear and trembling,
into a dark letter-box, in a dark office, up a dark court in
Fleet Street—appeared in all the glory of print; on which
occasion, by the bye,—how well I recollect it!—I walked down to
Westminster Hall, and turned into it for half-an-hour, because
my eyes were so dimmed with joy and pride, that they could not
bear the street, and were not fit to be seen there. I told my
visitor of the coincidence, which we both hailed as a good
omen; and so fell to business.’
After such a beginning, there must be great enjoyment in looking at
the long series of closely printed green volumes, in remembering their
marvellous popularity, in knowing that they are a familiar literature
wherever the English language is spoken,—that they are read with
admiring appreciation by persons of the highest culture at the centre of
civilisation,—that they amuse, and are fit to amuse, the roughest settler
in Vancouver’s Island.