The memory of Sir Walter Scott is dear to this Society, of which he was
for ten years an honorary member. If only as an eminent antiquary who
has shed light on the history of Europe and of the English race, he
had high claims to our regard. But to the rare tribute of a centennial
anniversary of his birthday, which we gladly join with Scotland, and
indeed with Europe, to keep, he is not less entitled—perhaps he alone
among literary men of this century is entitled—by the exceptional debt
which all English-speaking men have gladly owed to his character and
genius. I think no modern writer has inspired his readers with such
affection to his own personality. I can well remember as far back as
when The Lord of the Isles was first republished in Boston, in 1815,—my
own and my school-fellows’ joy in the book.[214] Marmion and The Lay
had gone before, but we were then learning to spell. In the face of the
later novels, we still claim that his poetry is the delight of boys.
But this means that when we reopen these old books we all consent to be
boys again. We tread over our youthful grounds with joy. Critics have
found them to be only rhymed prose. But I believe that many of those
who read them in youth, when, later, they come to dismiss finally their
school-days’ library, will make some fond exception for Scott as for
Byron.
It is easy to see the origin of his poems. His own ear had been charmed
by old ballads crooned by Scottish dames at firesides, and written
down from their lips by antiquaries; and finding them now outgrown and
dishonored by the new culture, he attempted to dignify and adapt them to
the times in which he lived. Just so much thought, so much picturesque
detail in dialogue or description as the old ballad required, so much
suppression of details and leaping to the event, he would keep and use,
but without any ambition to write a high poem after a classic model.
He made no pretension to the lofty style of Spenser, or Milton, or
Wordsworth. Compared with their purified songs, purified of all ephemeral
color or material, his were _vers de société_. But he had the skill
proper to _vers de société_,—skill to fit his verse to his topic, and not
to write solemn pentameters alike on a hero or a spaniel. His good sense
probably elected the ballad to make his audience larger. He apprehended
in advance the immense enlargement of the reading public, which almost
dates from the era of his books,—which his books and Byron’s inaugurated;
and which, though until then unheard of, has become familiar to the
present time.
If the success of his poems, however large, was partial, that of his
novels was complete. The tone of strength in Waverley at once announced
the master, and was more than justified by the superior genius of the
following romances, up to the Bride of Lammermoor, which almost goes back
to Æschylus for a counterpart as a painting of Fate,—leaving on every
reader the impression of the highest and purest tragedy.[215]
His power on the public mind rests on the singular union of two
influences. By nature, by his reading and taste an aristocrat, in a
time and country which easily gave him that bias, he had the virtues
and graces of that class, and by his eminent humanity and his love of
labor escaped its harm. He saw in the English Church the symbol and seal
of all social order; in the historical aristocracy the benefits to the
state which Burke claimed for it; and in his own reading and research
such store of legend and renown as won his imagination to their cause.
Not less his eminent humanity delighted in the sense and virtue and
wit of the common people. In his own household and neighbors he found
characters and pets of humble class, with whom he established the best
relation,—small farmers and tradesmen, shepherds, fishermen, gypsies,
peasant-girls, crones,—and came with these into real ties of mutual help
and good will. From these originals he drew so genially his Jeanie Deans,
his Dinmonts and Edie Ochiltrees, Caleb Balderstones and Fairservices,
Cuddie Headriggs, Dominies, Meg Merrilies, and Jenny Rintherouts, full
of life and reality; making these, too, the pivots on which the plots
of his stories turn; and meantime without one word of brag of this
discernment,—nay, this extreme sympathy reaching down to every beggar
and beggar’s dog, and horse and cow. In the number and variety of his
characters he approaches Shakspeare. Other painters in verse or prose
have thrown into literature a few type-figures; as Cervantes, De Foe,
Richardson, Goldsmith, Sterne and Fielding; but Scott portrayed with
equal strength and success every figure in his crowded company.
His strong good sense saved him from the faults and foibles incident to
poets,—from nervous egotism, sham modesty or jealousy. He played ever a
manly part.[216] With such a fortune and such a genius, we should look to
see what heavy toll the Fates took of him, as of Rousseau or Voltaire, of
Swift or Byron. But no: he had no insanity, or vice, or blemish. He was a
thoroughly upright, wise and great-hearted man, equal to whatever event
or fortune should try him. Disasters only drove him to immense exertion.
What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet
and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities.
Under what rare conjunction of stars was this man born, that, wherever he
lived, he found superior men, passed all his life in the best company,
and still found himself the best of the best! He was apprenticed at
Edinburgh to a Writer to the Signet, and became a Writer to the Signet,
and found himself in his youth and manhood and age in the society of
Mackintosh, Horner, Jeffrey, Playfair, Dugald Stewart, Sydney Smith,
Leslie, Sir William Hamilton, Wilson, Hogg, De Quincey,—to name only some
of his literary neighbors, and, as soon as he died, all this brilliant
circle was broken up.