Charles Lamb remains, of all English prose-writers, the one whose
manner is the most beautiful. So rich, so delicate, so imaginative, so
full of surprises, is the style of this seductive writer, that, for
sheer magic and inspiration, his equals can only be found among the
very greatest poets.
It is impossible to over-estimate the value of Charles Lamb's
philosophy. He indicates in his delicate evasive way--not directly,
but as it were, in little fragments and morsels and broken snatches--a
deep and subtle reconciliation between the wisdom of Epicurus and the
wisdom of Christ. And through and beyond all this, there may be felt,
as with the great poets, an indescribable sense of something
withdrawn, withheld, reserved, inscrutable--a sense of a secret,
rather to be intimated to the initiated, than revealed to the
vulgar--a sense of a clue to a sort of Pantagruelian serenity; a
serenity produced by no crude optimism but by some happy inward
knowledge of a neglected hope. The great Rabelaisian motto, "bon
espoir y gist au fond!" seems to emanate from the most wistful and
poignant of his pages. He pities the unpitied, he redeems the
commonplace, he makes the ordinary as if it were not ordinary, and by
the sheer genius of his imagination he throws an indescribable glamour
over the "little things" of the darkest of our days.
Moving among old books, old houses, old streets, old acquaintances,
old wines, old pictures, old memories, he is yet possessed of so
original and personal a touch that his own wit seems as though it were
the very soul and body of the qualities he so caressingly interprets.
56. SIR WALTER SCOTT. GUY MANNERING. BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR. HEART OF
MIDLOTHIAN.
The large, easy, leisurely manner of Scott's writing, its
digressiveness, its nonchalant carelessness, its indifference to
artistic quality, has in some sort of way numbed and atrophied the
interest in his work of those who have been caught up and waylaid by
the modern spirit. And yet Scott's novels have ample and admirable
excellencies. In his expansive and digressive fashion he can give his
characters--especially the older and the more idiosyncratic among
them--a surprising and convincing verisimilitude.
He can create a plot which, though not dramatically flawless, has
movement and energy and stir. The sweetness and modesty of his
disposition lends itself to his portrayal of the more gracious aspects
of human life, especially as seen in the humours and oddities of very
simple and naïve persons.
Under the stress of occasional emotion he can rise to quite noble
heights of feeling and he is able to throw a startling glamour of
romance over certain familiar and recurrent human situations. At his
best there is a grandeur and simplicity of utterance about what his
characters say and an ease and largeness of sympathy about his own
commentaries upon them, which must win admiration even from those most
avid of modern pathology. Without the passion of Balzac, or the
insight of Dostoievsky, or the art of Turgeniev, there is yet, in the
sweetness of Scott's own personality, and in the biblical grandeur of
certain of the scenes he evokes, a quality and a charm which it would
be at once foolish and arbitrary to neglect.