SCOTT'S QUALIFICATIONS AS CRITIC
Wide reading Scott's first qualification--Scott the
antiquary--Character of his interest in history--His
imagination--His knowledge of practical affairs--Common-sense in
criticism--Cheerfulness, good-humor, and optimism--General aspect of
Scott's critical work.
Wide and appreciative reading was Scott's first qualification for
critical work. A memory that retained an incredible amount of what he
read was the second. One of the severest censures he ever expressed was
in regard to Godwin, who, he thought, undertook to do scholarly work
without adequate equipment. "We would advise him," Scott said in his
review of Godwin's _Life of Chaucer_, "in future to read before he
writes, and not merely while he is writing." Scott himself had
accumulated a store of literary materials, and he used them according to
the dictates of a temperament which had vivid interests on many sides.
We may distinguish three points of view which were habitual to Scott,
and which determined the direction of his creative work, as well as the
tone of his criticism. These were--as all the world knows--the
historical, the romantic, the practical.
He was, as he often chose to call himself, an antiquary; he felt the
appeal of all that was old and curious. But he was much more than that.
The typical antiquary has his mind so thoroughly devoted to the past
that the present seems remote to him. The sheer intellectual capacity of
such a man as Scott might be enough to save him from such a limitation,
for he could give to the past as much attention as an ordinary man could
muster, and still have interest for contemporary affairs; but his
capacity was not all that saved Scott. He viewed the past always as
filled with living men, whose chief occupation was to think and feel
rather than to provide towers and armor for the delectation of future
antiquaries.[7] A sympathetic student of his work has said, "There is
... throughout the poetry of this author, even when he leads us to the
remotest wildernesses and the most desolate monuments of antiquity, a
constant reference to the feelings of man in his social condition."[8]
The past, to the author of _Kenilworth_, was only the far end of the
present, and he believed that the most useful result of the study of
history is a comprehension of the real quality of one's own period and a
wisdom in the conduct of present day affairs.[9]
The favorite pursuits of Scott's youth indicate that his characteristic
taste showed itself early; indeed it is said that he retained his boyish
traits more completely than most people do. We can trace much of his
love of the past to the family traditions which made the adventurous
life of his ancestors vividly real to him. The annals of the Scotts were
his earliest study, and he developed such an affection for his
freebooting grandsires that in his manhood he confessed to an
unconquerable liking for the robbers and captains of banditti of his
romances, characters who could not be prevented from usurping the place
of the heroes. "I was always a willing listener to tales of broil and
battle and hubbub of every kind," he wrote in later life, "and now I
look back upon it, I think what a godsend I must have been while a boy
to the old Trojans of 1745, nay 1715, who used to frequent my father's
house, and who knew as little as I did for what market I was laying up
the raw materials of their oft-told tales."[10] What attracted him in
his boyhood, and what continued to attract him, was the picturesque
incident, the color of the past, the mere look of its varied activity.
The philosophy of history was gradually revealed to him, however, and
his generalizing faculty found congenial employment in tracing out the
relation of men to movements, of national impulses to world history. But
however much he might exercise his analytical powers, history was never
abstract to him, nor did it require an effort for him to conjure up
scenes of the past. An acquaintance with the stores of early literature
served to give him the spirit of remote times as well as to feed his
literary tastes. On this side he had an ample equipment for critical
work, conditioned, of course, by the other qualities of his mind, which
determined how the equipment should be used.
That Scott was not a dull digger in heaps of ancient lore was owing to
his imaginative power,--the second of the qualities which we have
distinguished as dominating his literary temperament. "I can see as many
castles in the clouds as any man," he testified.[11] A recent writer has
said that Scott had more than any other man that ever lived a sense of
the romantic, and adds that his was that true romance which "lies not
upon the outside of life, but absolutely in the centre of it."[12] The
situations and the very objects that he described have the power of
stirring the romantic spirit in his readers because he was alive to the
glamour surrounding anything which has for generations been connected
with human thoughts and emotions. The subjectivity which was so
prominent an element in the romanticism of Shelley, Keats, and Byron,
does not appear in Scott's work. Nor was his sense of the mystery of
things so subtle as that of Coleridge. But Scott, rather than Coleridge,
was the interpreter to his age of the romantic spirit, for the ordinary
person likes his wonders so tangible that he may know definitely the
point at which they impinge upon his consciousness. In Scott's work the
point of contact is made clear: the author brings his atmosphere not
from another world but from the past, and with all its strangeness it
has no unearthly quality. In general the romance of his nature is rather
taken for granted than insisted on, for there are the poems and the
novels to bear witness to that side of his temperament; and the
surprising thing is that such an author was a business man, a large
landowner, an industrious lawyer.[13]
Scott's imaginative sense, which clothed in fine fancies any incident or
scene presented, however nakedly, to his view, accounts in part for his
notorious tendency to overrate the work of other writers, especially
those who wrote stories in any form. This explanation was hinted at by
Sir Walter himself, and formulated by Lockhart; it seems a fairly
reasonable way of accounting for a trait that at first appears to
indicate only a foolish excess of good-nature. This rich and active
imagination, which Scott brought to bear on everything he read, perhaps
explains also his habit of paying little attention to carefully worked
out details, and of laying almost exclusive emphasis upon main outlines.
When he was writing his _Life of Napoleon_, he said in his _Journal_:
"Better a superficial book which brings well and strikingly together the
known and acknowledged facts, than a dull boring narrative, pausing to
see further into a mill-stone at every moment than the nature of the
mill-stone admits."[14] Probably his high gift of imagination made him a
little impatient with the remoter reaches of the analytic faculties. Any
sustained exercise of the pure reason was outside his province,
reasonable as he was in everyday affairs. He preferred to consider
facts, and to theorize only so far as was necessary to establish
comfortable relations between the facts,--never to the extent of trying
to look into the center of a mill-stone. It was not unusual for him to
make very acute observations in the spheres of ethics, economics, and
psychology, and to use them in explaining any situation which might seem
to require their assistance; but these remarks were brief and
incidental, and bore a very definite relation to the concrete ideas they
were meant to illustrate.
Scott was a business man as well as an antiquary and a poet. Mr.
Palgrave thought Lockhart went too far in creating the impression that
Scott could detach his mind from the world of imagination and apply its
full force to practical affairs.[15] Yet the oversight of lands and
accounts and of all ordinary matters was so congenial to him, and his
practical activities were on the whole conducted with so much spirit and
capability, that after emphasizing his preoccupation with the poetic
aspects of the life of his ancestors, we must turn immediately about and
lay stress upon his keen judgment in everyday affairs. To a school-boy
poet he once wrote: "I would ... caution you against an enthusiasm
which, while it argues an excellent disposition and a feeling heart,
requires to be watched and restrained, though not repressed. It is apt,
if too much indulged, to engender a fastidious contempt for the ordinary
business of the world, and gradually to render us unfit for the exercise
of the useful and domestic virtues which depend greatly upon our not
exalting our feelings above the temper of well-ordered and well-educated
society."[16] He phrased the same matter differently when he said: "'I'd
rather be a kitten and cry, Mew!' than write the best poetry in the
world on condition of laying aside common-sense in the ordinary
transactions and business of the world."[17] "He thought," said
Lockhart, "that to spend some fair portion of every day in any
matter-of-fact occupation is good for the higher faculties themselves in
the upshot."[18] Whether or not we consider this the ideal theory of
life for a poet, we find it reasonable to suppose that a critic will be
the better critic if he preserve some balance between matter-of-fact
occupation and the exercise of his higher faculties. Sir Walter's maxim
applies well to himself at least, and an analysis of his powers as a
critic derives some light from it.
The thing that is waiting to be said is of course that his criticism is
distinguished by common-sense. Whether common-sense should really
predominate in criticism might perhaps be debated; the quality
indicates, indeed, not only the excellence but also the limitations of
his method. For example, Scott was rather too much given to accepting
popular favor as the test of merit in literary work, and though the
clamorously eager reception of his own books was never able to raise his
self-esteem to a very high pitch, it seems to have been the only thing
that induced him to respect his powers in anything like an appreciative
way.[19] His instinct and his judgment agreed in urging him to avoid
being a man of "mere theory,"[20] and he sought always to test opinions
by practical standards.
More or less connected with his good sense are other qualities which
also had their effect upon his critical work,--his cheerfulness, his
sweet temper and human sympathy, his modesty, his humor, his
independence of spirit, and his enthusiastic delight in literature. That
his cheerfulness was a matter of temperament we cannot doubt, but it was
also founded on principle. He had remarkable power of self-control.[21]
His opinion that it is a man's duty to live a happy life appears rather
quaintly in the sermonizing with which he felt called upon to temper the
admiration expressed in his articles on _Childe Harold_, and it is
implicit in many of his biographical studies. His own amiability of
course influenced all his work. Satire he considered objectionable, "a
woman's fault,"[22] as he once called it; though he did not feel himself
"altogether disqualified for it by nature."[23] "I have refrained, as
much as human frailty will permit, from all satirical composition,"[24]
he said. For satire he seems to have substituted that kind of "serious
banter, a style hovering between affected gravity and satirical
slyness," which has been pointed out as characteristic of him.[25]
Washington Irving noticed a similar tone in all his familiar
conversations about local traditions and superstitions.[26]
He was really optimistic, except on some political questions. In his
_Lives of the Novelists_ he shows that he thought manners and morals had
improved in the previous hundred years; and none of his reviews exhibits
the feeling so common among men of letters in all ages, that their own
times are intellectually degenerate. It is true that he looked back to
the days of Blair, Hume, Adam Smith, Robertson, and Ferguson, as the
"golden days of Edinburgh,"[27] but those golden days were no farther
away than his own boyhood, and he had felt the exhilaration of the
stimulating society which he praised. One of his contemporaries spoke of
Scott's own works as throwing "a literary splendour over his native
city";[28] and George Ticknor said of him, "He is indeed the lord of the
ascendant now in Edinburgh, and well deserves to be, for I look upon him
to be quite as remarkable in intercourse and conversation, as he is in
any of his writings, even in his novels."[29] But he could hardly be
expected to perceive the luster surrounding his own personality, and
this one instance of regret for former days counts little against the
abundant evidence that he thought the world was improving. Yet of all
his contemporaries he was probably the one who looked back at the past
with the greatest interest. The impression made by the author of
_Waverley_ upon the mind of a young enthusiast of his own time is too
delightful to pass over without quotation. "He has no eccentric
sympathies or antipathies"; wrote J.L. Adolphus, "no maudlin
philanthropy or impertinent cynicism; no nondescript hobby-horse; and
with all his matchless energy and originality of mind, he is content to
admire popular books, and enjoy popular pleasures; to cherish those
opinions which experience has sanctioned; to reverence those
institutions which antiquity has hallowed; and to enjoy, admire,
cherish, and reverence all these with the same plainness, simplicity,
and sincerity as our ancestors did of old."[30]
By temperament, then, Scott was enthusiastic over the past and cheerful
in regard to his own day; he was imaginative, practical, genial; and
these traits must be taken into account in judging his critical
writings. These and other qualities may be deduced from the most
superficial study of his creative work. The mere bulk of that work bears
witness to two things: first that Scott was primarily a creative writer;
again, that he was of those who write much rather than minutely. It is
obvious that to attack details would be easy. And since he was only
secondarily a critic, it is natural that his critical opinions should
not have been erected into any system. But while they are essentially
desultory, they are the ideas of a man whose information and enthusiasm
extended through a wide range of studies; and they are rendered
impressive by the abundance, variety, and energy, which mark them as
characteristic of Scott.