THE GREATEST NOVELIST THE WORLD HAS KNOWN--HE MADE HISTORY
REAL AND CREATED CHARACTERS THAT WILL NEVER DIE.
It is as difficult to sum up in a brief article the work and the
influence of Sir Walter Scott as it is to make an estimate of
Shakespeare, for Scott holds the same position in English prose
fiction that Shakespeare holds in English poetry. In neither
department is there any rival. In sheer creative force Scott stands
head and shoulders above every other English novelist, and he has no
superior among the novelists of any other nation. He has made Scotland
and the Scotch people known to the world as Cervantes made Spain and
the Spaniards a reality for all times.
But he did more than Cervantes, for his creative mind reached over the
border into England and across the channel to France and Germany, and
even to the Holy Land, and found there historical types which he made
as real and as immortal as his own highland clansmen. His was the
great creative brain of the nineteenth century, and his work has made
the world his debtor. His work stimulated the best story teller of
France and gave the world _Monte Cristo_ and _The Three Guardsmen_. It
fired the imaginations of a score of English historical novelists; it
was the progenitor of Weyman's _A Soldier of France_ and Conan Doyle's
_Micah Clarke_ and _The White Company_.
Scott's mind was Shakespearean in its capacity for creating characters
of real flesh and blood; for making great historical personages as
real and vital as our next-door neighbors, and for bursts of sustained
story telling that carry the reader on for scores of pages without an
instant's drop in interest. Only the supreme masters in creative art
can accomplish these things. And the wonder of it is that Scott did
all these things without effort and without any self-consciousness. We
can not imagine Scott bragging about any of his books or his
characters, as Balzac did about Eugenie Grandet and others of his
French types. He was too big a man for any small vanities. But he was
as human as Shakespeare in his love of money, his desire to gather his
friends about him and his hearty enjoyment of good food and drink.
[Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT THIS PORTRAIT IS TAKEN FROM
CHANTREY'S BUST NOW AT ABBOTSFORD, WHICH, ACCORDING TO LOCKHART,
"ALONE PRESERVES FOR POSTERITY THE EXPRESSION MOST FONDLY
REMEMBERED BY ALL WHO EVER MINGLED IN HIS DOMESTIC CIRCLE"]
It has become the fashion among some of our hair-splitting critics to
decry Scott because of his carelessness in literary style, his
tendency to long introductions, and his fondness for description.
These critics will tell you that Turgeneff and Tolstoi are greater
literary artists than Scott, just as they tell you that Thackeray and
Dickens do not deserve a place among the foremost of English
novelists. This petty, finical criticism, which would measure
everything by its own rigid rule of literary art, loses sight of the
great primal fact that Scott created more real characters and told
more good stories than any other novelist, and that his work will
outlive that of all his detractors. It ignores the fact that
Thackeray's wit, pathos, tenderness and knowledge of human nature make
him immortal in spite of many defects. It forgets that Dickens' humor,
joy of living and keen desire to help his fellow man will bring him
thousands of readers after all the apostles of realism are buried
under the dust of oblivion.
Scott had the ideal training for a great historical novelist. Yet his
literary successes in verse and prose were the result of accident. It
is needless here to review his life. The son of a mediocre Scotch
lawyer, he inherited from his father his capacity for work and his
passion for system and order. From his mother he drew his love of
reading and his fondness for old tales of the Scotch border. Like so
many famous writers, his early education was desultory, but he had the
free run of a fine library, and when he was a mere schoolboy his
reading of the best English classics had been wider and more thorough
than that of his teachers.
Forced by boyish illness to live in the country, he early developed a
great love for the Scotch ballads and the tales of the romantic past
of his native land. These he gathered mainly by word of mouth. Later
he was a diligent student and collector of all the old ballads. In
this way his mind was steeped in historical lore, while by many
walking tours through the highlands he came to know the common people
as very few have ever known them.
[Illustration: WHITE HORSE INN FROM AN ILLUSTRATION TO "WAVERLEY"
DRAWN BY G. CATTERMOLE AND ENGRAVED BY E. FINDEN]
Thus for forty years, while he was a working lawyer and a sheriff of
his county, he was really laying up stores of material upon which he
drew for his many novels. His literary tastes were first developed by
study of German and by the translation of German ballads and plays.
This practice led him to write _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, and its
success was responsible for _Marmion_, and _The Lady of the Lake_. But
great as was his triumph in verse, he dropped the writing of poems
when Byron's work eclipsed his own.
Then, in his forty-third year, he turned to prose and began with
_Waverley_; that series of novels which is the greatest ever produced
by one man. The success of his first story proved a great stimulus to
his imagination, and for years he continued to produce these novels,
three of which may be ranked as the best in English literature. The
element of mystery in regard to the authorship added to Scott's
literary success. It was his habit to crowd his literary work into the
early hours from four to eight o'clock in the morning; the remainder
of the day was given up to legal duties and the evening to society.
His tremendous energy and his power of concentration made these four
hours equal to an ordinary man's working day. His mind was so full of
material that the labor was mainly that of selection. Creative work,
when once seated at his desk, was as natural as breathing. Scott came
to his desk with the zest of a boy starting on a holiday, and this
pleasure is reflected in the ease and spontaneity of his stories.
But much as he liked his literary work, Scott would not have produced
so great a number of fine novels had he not been impelled by the
desire to retrieve large money losses. His old school friend,
Ballantyne, forced into bankruptcy the printing firm in which Scott
was a secret partner. The novelist was not morally responsible for
these debts, but his keen sense of honor made him accept all the
responsibility, and it drove him to that unceasing work which
shortened his life. He paid off nearly all the great debt, and he gave
in this task an example of high courage and power of work that has
never been surpassed and seldom equaled. You may read the record of
those last years in Lockhart's fine _Life of Scott_. Get the one
volume edition, for the full work is too long for these busy days, and
follow the old author in his heroic struggle. It will bring tears to
your eyes, but it will make you a lover of Scott, the man, who was as
great as Scott, the poet and novelist.
Ruskin, when he was making up a list of great authors, put opposite
Scott's name, "Every line." That bit of advice cannot be followed in
these strenuous times, but one must make a selection of the best, and
then, if he have time and inclination, add to this number. To my mind,
the four great novels of Scott are _Ivanhoe_, _Quentin Durward_, _The
Talisman_ and _The Heart of Midlothian_. The first gives you feudal
England as no one else has painted it, with a picture of Richard the
Lion-Hearted which no historian has ever approached. It contains some
of the most thrilling scenes in all fiction.
James Payn, who was a very clever novelist, relates the story that he
and two literary friends agreed to name the scene in all fiction that
they regarded as the most dramatic. When they came to compare notes
they found that all three had chosen the same--the entry of the
unknown knight at Ashby de la Zouch, who passes by the tents of the
other contestants and strikes with a resounding clash the shield of
the haughty Templar. This romance also contains one of Scott's finest
women, the Jewess Rebecca, who atones for the novelist's many insipid
female characters. Scott was much like Stevenson--he preferred to draw
men, and he was happiest when in the clash of arms or about to
undertake a desperate adventure.
_Quentin Durward_ is memorable for its splendid picture of Louis XI,
one of the ablest as well as one of the meanest men who ever sat on a
throne. The early chapters of this novel, which describe the
adventures of the young Scotch soldier at the court of France, have
never been surpassed in romantic interest. _The Talisman_ gives the
glory and the romance of the Crusades as no other imaginative work has
done. It stands in a class by itself and is only approached by Scott's
last novel, _Count Robert of Paris_, which gives flashes of the same
spirit.
Of the Scotch novels it is difficult to make a choice, but it seems to
me _The Heart of Midlothian_ has the widest appeal, although many
would cast their votes for _Old Mortality_, _The Antiquary_ or _Rob
Roy_ because of the rich humor of those romances. Scott's dialect,
although true to nature, is not difficult, as he did not consider it
necessary to give all the colloquial terms, like the modern "kailyard"
writers.
If you read three or four of Scott's novels you are pretty apt to read
more. It is an easy matter to skip the prolix passages and the
unnecessary introductions. This done, you have a body of romance that
is far richer than any present-day fiction. And their great merit is
that, though written in a coarse age, the _Waverley_ novels are sweet
and wholesome. One misses a great source of enjoyment and culture who
fails to read the best of Scott's novels. Take them all in all, they
are the finest fiction that has ever been written, and their continued
popularity, despite their many faults, is the best proof of their
sterling merit.