It would be difficult to assign any good reason why the author of
Ivanhoe, after using, in that work, all the art he possessed to remove
the personages, action, and manners of the tale, to a distance from
his own country, should choose for the scene of his next attempt the
celebrated ruins of Melrose, in the immediate neighbourhood of his own
residence. But the reason, or caprice, which dictated his change of
system, has entirely escaped his recollection, nor is it worth while to
attempt recalling what must be a matter of very little consequence.
The general plan of the story was, to conjoin two characters in that
bustling and contentious age, who, thrown into situations which gave
them different views on the subject of the Reformation, should, with the
same sincerity and purity of intention, dedicate themselves, the one to
the support of the sinking fabric of the Catholic Church, the other to
the establishment of the Reformed doctrines. It was supposed that some
interesting subjects for narrative might be derived from opposing two
such enthusiasts to each other in the path of life, and contrasting the
real worth of both with their passions and prejudices. The localities
of Melrose suited well the scenery of the proposed story; the ruins
themselves form a splendid theatre for any tragic incident which might
be brought forward; joined to the vicinity of the fine river, with all
its tributary streams, flowing through a country which has been the
scene of so much fierce fighting, and is rich with so many recollections
of former times, and lying almost under the immediate eye of the author,
by whom they were to be used in composition.
The situation possessed farther recommendations. On the opposite bank of
the Tweed might be seen the remains of ancient enclosures, surrounded by
sycamores and ash-trees of considerable size. These had once formed the
crofts or arable ground of a village, now reduced to a single hut, the
abode of a fisherman, who also manages a ferry. The cottages, even the
church which once existed there, have sunk into vestiges hardly to
be traced without visiting the spot, the inhabitants having gradually
withdrawn to the more prosperous town of Galashiels, which has
risen into consideration, within two miles of their neighbourhood.
Superstitious eld, however, has tenanted the deserted groves with aerial
beings, to supply the want of the mortal tenants who have deserted it.
The ruined and abandoned churchyard of Boldside has been long believed
to be haunted by the Fairies, and the deep broad current of the Tweed,
wheeling in moonlight round the foot of the steep bank, with the
number of trees originally planted for shelter round the fields of
the cottagers, but now presenting the effect of scattered and detached
groves, fill up the idea which one would form in imagination for a scene
that Oberon and Queen Mab might love to revel in. There are evenings
when the spectator might believe, with Father Chaucer, that the
--Queen of Faery,
With harp, and pipe, and symphony,
Were dwelling in the place.
Another, and even a more familiar refuge of the elfin race, (if
tradition is to be trusted,) is the glen of the river, or rather brook,
named the Allen, which falls into the Tweed from the northward, about a
quarter of a mile above the present bridge. As the streamlet finds its
way behind Lord Sommerville's hunting-seat, called the Pavilion, its
valley has been popularly termed the Fairy Dean, or rather the Nameless
Dean, because of the supposed ill luck attached by the popular faith of
ancient times, to any one who might name or allude to the race, whom our
fathers distinguished as the Good Neighbours, and the Highlanders called
Daoine Shie, or Men of Peace; rather by way of compliment, than on
account of any particular idea of friendship or pacific relation which
either Highlander or Borderer entertained towards the irritable beings
whom they thus distinguished, or supposed them to bear to humanity.
[Footnote: See Rob Roy, Note, p. 202.]
In evidence of the actual operations of the fairy people even at this
time, little pieces of calcareous matter are found in the glen after a
flood, which either the labours of those tiny artists, or the eddies of
the brook among the stones, have formed into a fantastic resemblance of
cups, saucers, basins, and the like, in which children who gather them
pretend to discern fairy utensils.
Besides these circumstances of romantic locality, _mea paupera regna_
(as Captain Dalgetty denominates his territory of Drumthwacket) are
bounded by a small but deep lake, from which eyes that yet look on the
light are said to have seen the waterbull ascend, and shake the hills
with his roar.
Indeed, the country around Melrose, if possessing less of romantic
beauty than some other scenes in Scotland, is connected with so many
associations of a fanciful nature, in which the imagination takes
delight, as might well induce one even less attached to the spot than
the author, to accommodate, after a general manner, the imaginary scenes
he was framing to the localities to which he was partial. But it would
be a misapprehension to suppose, that, because Melrose may in general
pass for Kennaquhair, or because it agrees with scenes of the Monastery
in the circumstances of the drawbridge, the milldam, and other points of
resemblance, that therefore an accurate or perfect local similitude
is to be found in all the particulars of the picture. It was not the
purpose of the author to present a landscape copied from nature, but a
piece of composition, in which a real scene, with which he is familiar,
had afforded him some leading outlines. Thus the resemblance of the
imaginary Glendearg with the real vale of the Allen, is far from being
minute, nor did the author aim at identifying them. This must appear
plain to all who know the actual character of the Glen of Allen, and
have taken the trouble to read the account of the imaginary Glendearg.
The stream in the latter case is described as wandering down a romantic
little valley, shifting itself, after the fashion of such a brook,
from one side to the other, as it can most easily find its passage, and
touching nothing in its progress that gives token of cultivation. It
rises near a solitary tower, the abode of a supposed church vassal, and
the scene of several incidents in the Romance.
The real Allen, on the contrary, after traversing the romantic ravine
called the Nameless Dean, thrown off from side to side alternately, like
a billiard ball repelled by the sides of the table on which it has been
played, and in that part of its course resembling the stream which pours
down Glendearg, may be traced upwards into a more open country, where
the banks retreat farther from each other, and the vale exhibits a
good deal of dry ground, which has not been neglected by the active
cultivators of the district. It arrives, too, at a sort of termination,
striking in itself, but totally irreconcilable with the narrative of
the Romance. Instead of a single peel-house, or border tower of defence,
such as Dame Glendinning is supposed to have inhabited, the head of the
Allen, about five miles above its junction with the Tweed, shows three
ruins of Border houses, belonging to different proprietors, and each,
from the desire of mutual support so natural to troublesome times,
situated at the extremity of the property of which it is the principal
messuage. One of these is the ruinous mansion-house of Hillslap,
formerly the property of the Cairncrosses, and now of Mr. Innes of Stow;
a second the tower of Colmslie, an ancient inheritance of the Borthwick
family, as is testified by their crest, the Goat's Head, which exists on
the ruin; [Footnote: It appears that Sir Walter Scott's memory was not
quite accurate on these points. John Borthwick, Esq. in a note to the
publisher, (June 11, 1813.) says that _Colmslie_ belonged to Mr. Innes
of Stow, while _Hillslap_ forms part of the estate of Crookston. He
adds--“In proof that the tower of Hillslap, which I have taken measures
to preserve from injury, was chiefly in his head, as the tower of
_Glendearg,_ when writing the Monastery, I may mention that, on one of
the occasions when I had the honour of being a visiter at Abbotsford,
the stables then being full, I sent a pony to be put up at our tenant's
at Hillslap:--'Well.' said Sir Walter, 'if you do that, you must trust
for its not being _lifted_ before to-morrow, to the protection of
Halbert Glendinning: against Christie of the Clintshill.' At page 58,
vol. iii., the first edition, the '_winding_ stair' which the monk
ascended is described. The winding stone stair is still to be seen in
Hillslap, but not in either of the other two towers” It is however,
probable, from the Goat's-Head crest on Colmslie, that that tower also
had been of old a possession of the Borthwicks.] a third, the house of
Langshaw, also ruinous, but near which the proprietor, Mr. Baillie of
Jerviswood and Mellerstain, has built a small shooting box.
All these ruins, so strangely huddled together in a very solitary spot,
have recollections and traditions of their own, but none of them bear
the most distant resemblance to the descriptions in the Romance of
the Monastery; and as the author could hardly have erred so grossly
regarding a spot within a morning's ride of his own house, the inference
is, that no resemblance was intended. Hillslap is remembered by the
humours of the last inhabitants, two or three elderly ladies, of the
class of Miss Raynalds, in the Old Manor House, though less important by
birth and fortune. Colmslie is commemorated in song:--
Colmslie stands on Colmslie hill.
The water it flows round Colmslie mill;
The mill and the kiln gang bonnily.
And it's up with the whippers of Colmslie.
Langshaw, although larger than the other mansions assembled at the head
of the supposed Glendearg, has nothing about it more remarkable than the
inscription of the present proprietor over his shooting lodge--_Utinam
hane eliam viris impleam amicis_--a modest wish, which I know no one
more capable of attaining upon an extended scale, than the gentleman who
has expressed it upon a limited one.
Having thus shown that I could say something of these desolated towers,
which the desire of social intercourse, or the facility of mutual
defence, had drawn together at the head of this Glen, I need not add any
farther reason to show, that there is no resemblance between them
and the solitary habitation of Dame Elspeth Glendinning. Beyond these
dwellings are some remains of natural wood, and a considerable portion
of morass and bog; but I would not advise any who may be curious in
localities, to spend time in looking for the fountain and holly-tree of
the White Lady.
While I am on the subject I may add, that Captain Clutterbuck, the
imaginary editor of the Monastery, has no real prototype in the village
of Melrose or neighbourhood, that ever I saw or heard of. To give some
individuality to this personage, he is described as a character which
sometimes occurs in actual society--a person who, having spent his life
within the necessary duties of a technical profession, from which he
has been at length emancipated, finds himself without any occupation
whatever, and is apt to become the prey of ennui, until he discerns some
petty subject of investigation commensurate to his talents, the study of
which gives him employment in solitude; while the conscious possession
of information peculiar to himself, adds to his consequence in society.
I have often observed, that the lighter and trivial branches of
antiquarian study are singularly useful in relieving vacuity of such a
kind, and have known them serve many a Captain Clutterbuck to
retreat upon; I was therefore a good deal surprised, when I found the
antiquarian Captain identified with a neighbour and friend of my own,
who could never have been confounded with him by any one who had read
the book, and seen the party alluded to. This erroneous identification
occurs in a work entitled, “Illustrations of the Author of Waverley,
being Notices and Anecdotes of real Characters, Scenes, and Incidents,
supposed to be described in his works, by Robert Chambers.” This work
was, of course, liable to many errors, as any one of the kind must be,
whatever may be the ingenuity of the author, which takes the task of
explaining what can be only known to another person. Mistakes of place
or inanimate things referred to, are of very little moment; but the
ingenious author ought to have been more cautious of attaching real
names to fictitious characters. I think it is in the Spectator we
read of a rustic wag, who, in a copy of “The Whole Duty of Man,” wrote
opposite to every vice the name of some individual in the neighbourhood,
and thus converted that excellent work into a libel on a whole parish.
The scenery being thus ready at the author's hand, the reminiscences of
the country were equally favourable. In a land where the horses remained
almost constantly saddled, and the sword seldom quitted the warrior's
side--where war was the natural and constant state of the inhabitants,
and peace only existed in the shape of brief and feverish truces--there
could be no want of the means to complicate and extricate the incidents
of his narrative at pleasure. There was a disadvantage, notwithstanding,
in treading this Border district, for it had been already ransacked by
the author himself, as well as others; and unless presented under a
new light, was likely to afford ground to the objection of _Crambe bis
cocta_.
To attain the indispensable quality of novelty, something, it was
thought, might be gained by contrasting the character of the vassals of
the church with those of the dependants of the lay barons, by whom they
were surrounded. But much advantage could not be derived from this.
There were, indeed, differences betwixt the two classes, but, like
tribes in the mineral and vegetable world, which, resembling each other
to common eyes, can be sufficiently well discriminated by naturalists,
they were yet too similar, upon the whole, to be placed in marked
contrast with each other.
Machinery remained--the introduction of the supernatural and marvellous;
the resort of distressed authors since the days of Horace, but whose
privileges as a sanctuary have been disputed in the present age, and
well-nigh exploded. The popular belief no longer allows the possibility
of existence to the race of mysterious beings which hovered betwixt
this world and that which is invisible. The fairies have abandoned
their moonlight turf; the witch no longer holds her black orgies in the
hemlock dell; and
Even the last lingering phantom of the brain,
The churchyard ghost, is now at rest again.
From the discredit attached to the vulgar and more common modes in which
the Scottish superstition displays itself, the author was induced to
have recourse to the beautiful, though almost forgotten, theory of
astral spirits, or creatures of the elements, surpassing human beings
in knowledge and power, but inferior to them, as being subject, after
a certain space of years, to a death which is to them annihilation,
as they have no share in the promise made to the sons of Adam. These
spirits are supposed to be of four distinct kinds, as the elements from
which they have their origin, and are known, to those who have
studied the cabalistical philosophy, by the names of Sylphs, Gnomes,
Salamanders, and Naiads, as they belong to the elements of Air, Earth,
Fire, or Water. The general reader will find an entertaining account
of these elementary spirits in the French book entitled, “Entretiens de
Compte du Gabalis.” The ingenious Compte de la Motte Fouqu? composed,
in German, one of the most successful productions of his fertile
brain, where a beautiful and even afflicting effect is produced by the
introduction of a water-nymph, who loses the privilege of immortality by
consenting to become accessible to human feelings, and uniting her lot
with that of a mortal, who treats her with ingratitude.
In imitation of an example so successful, the White Lady of Avenel was
introduced into the following sheets. She is represented as connected
with the family of Avenel by one of those mystic ties, which, in ancient
times, were supposed to exist, in certain circumstances, between the
creatures of the elements and the children of men. Such instances
of mysterious union are recognized in Ireland, in the real Milosian
families, who are possessed of a Banshie; and they are known among the
traditions of the Highlands, which, in many cases, attached an immortal
being or spirit to the service of particular families or tribes. These
demons, if they are to be called so, announced good or evil fortune to
the families connected with them; and though some only condescended to
meddle with matters of importance, others, like the May Mollach, or Maid
of the Hairy Arms, condescended to mingle in ordinary sports, and even
to direct the Chief how to play at draughts.
There was, therefore, no great violence in supposing such a being as
this to have existed, while the elementary spirits were believed in;
but it was more difficult to describe or imagine its attributes and
principles of action. Shakespeare, the first of authorities in such a
case, has painted Ariel, that beautiful creature of his fancy, as only
approaching so near to humanity as to know the nature of that sympathy
which the creatures of clay felt for each other, as we learn from the
expression--“Mine would, if I were human.” The inferences from this
are singular, but seem capable of regular deduction. A being, however
superior to man in length of life--in power over the elements--in
certain perceptions respecting the present, the past, and the future,
yet still incapable of human passions, of sentiments of moral good and
evil, of meriting future rewards or punishments, belongs rather to
the class of animals, than of human creatures, and must therefore be
presumed to act more from temporary benevolence or caprice, than from
anything approaching to feeling or reasoning. Such a being's superiority
in power can only be compared to that of the elephant or lion, who are
greater in strength than man, though inferior in the scale of creation.
The partialities which we suppose such spirits to entertain must be like
those of the dog; their sudden starts of passion, or the indulgence of a
frolic, or mischief, may be compared to those of the numerous varieties
of the cat. All these propensities are, however, controlled by the
laws which render the elementary race subordinate to the command of
man--liable to be subjected by his science, (so the sect of Gnostics
believed, and on this turned the Rosicrucian philosophy,) or to be
overpowered by his superior courage and daring, when it set their
illusions at defiance.
It is with reference to this idea of the supposed spirits of the
elements, that the White Lady of Avenel is represented as acting a
varying, capricious, and inconsistent part in the pages assigned to her
in the narrative; manifesting interest and attachment to the family with
whom her destinies are associated, but evincing whim, and even a species
of malevolence, towards other mortals, as the Sacristan, and the
Border robber, whose incorrect life subjected them to receive petty
mortifications at her hand. The White Lady is scarcely supposed,
however, to have possessed either the power or the inclination to do
more than inflict terror or create embarrassment, and is also subjected
by those mortals, who, by virtuous resolution, and mental energy,
could assert superiority over her. In these particulars she seems to
constitute a being of a middle class, between the _esprit follet_
who places its pleasure in misleading and tormenting mortals, and the
benevolent Fairy of the East, who uniformly guides, aids, and supports
them.
Either, however, the author executed his purpose indifferently, or the
public did not approve of it; for the White Lady of Avenel was far from
being popular. He does not now make the present statement, in the view
of arguing readers into a more favourable opinion on the subject, but
merely with the purpose of exculpating himself from the charge of having
wantonly intruded into the narrative a being of inconsistent powers and
propensities.
In the delineation of another character, the author of the Monastery
failed, where he hoped for some success. As nothing is so successful a
subject for ridicule as the fashionable follies of the time, it occurred
to him that the more serious scenes of his narrative might be relieved
by the humour of a cavaliero of the age of Queen Elizabeth. In every
period, the attempt to gain and maintain the highest rank of society,
has depended on the power of assuming and supporting a certain
fashionable kind of affectation, usually connected with some vivacity of
talent and energy of character, but distinguished at the same time by
a transcendent flight, beyond sound reason and common sense; both
faculties too vulgar to be admitted into the estimate of one who claims
to be esteemed “a choice spirit of the age.” These, in their different
phases, constitute the gallants of the day, whose boast it is to drive
the whims of fashion to extremity.
On all occasions, the manners of the sovereign, the court, and the time,
must give the tone to the peculiar description of qualities by which
those who would attain the height of fashion must seek to distinguish
themselves. The reign of Elizabeth, being that of a maiden queen,
was distinguished by the decorum of the courtiers, and especially
the affectation of the deepest deference to the sovereign. After the
acknowledgment of the Queen's matchless perfections, the same devotion
was extended to beauty as it existed among the lesser stars in her
court, who sparkled, as it was the mode to say, by her reflected lustre.
It is true, that gallant knights no longer vowed to Heaven, the peacock,
and the ladies, to perform some feat of extravagant chivalry, in which
they endangered the lives of others as well as their own; but although
their chivalrous displays of personal gallantry seldom went farther in
Elizabeth's days than the tilt-yard, where barricades, called barriers,
prevented the shock of the horses, and limited the display of the
cavalier's skill to the comparatively safe encounter of their lances,
the language of the lovers to their ladies was still in the exalted
terms which Amadis would have addressed to Oriana, before encountering a
dragon for her sake. This tone of romantic gallantry found a clever but
conceited author, to reduce it to a species of constitution and form,
and lay down the courtly manner of conversation, in a pedantic book,
called Euphues and his England. Of this, a brief account is given in the
text, to which it may now be proper to make some additions.
The extravagance of Euphuism, or a symbolical jargon of the same class,
predominates in the romances of Calprenade and Scuderi, which were read
for the amusement of the fair sex of France during the long reign of
Louis XIV., and were supposed to contain the only legitimate language of
love and gallantry. In this reign they encountered the satire of Moliere
and Boileau. A similar disorder, spreading into private society, formed
the ground of the affected dialogue of the _Praecieuses_, as they were
styled, who formed the coterie of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and afforded
Moliere matter for his admirable comedy, _Les Praecieuses Ridicules_. In
England, the humour does not seem to have long survived the accession of
James I.
The author had the vanity to think that a character, whose peculiarities
should turn on extravagances which were once universally fashionable,
might be read in a fictitious story with a good chance of affording
amusement to the existing generation, who, fond as they are of looking
back on the actions and manners of their ancestors, might be also
supposed to be sensible of their absurdities. He must fairly acknowledge
that he was disappointed, and that the Euphuist, far from being
accounted a well drawn and humorous character of the period, was
condemned as unnatural and absurd. It would be easy to account for this
failure, by supposing the defect to arise from the author's want of
skill, and, probably, many readers may not be inclined to look farther.
But as the author himself can scarcely be supposed willing to acquiesce
in this final cause, if any other can be alleged, he has been led to
suspect, that, contrary to what he originally supposed, his subject was
injudiciously chosen, in which, and not in his mode of treating it, lay
the source of the want of success.
The manners of a rude people are always founded on nature, and therefore
the feelings of a more polished generation immediately sympathize with
them. We need no numerous notes, no antiquarian dissertations, to
enable the most ignorant to recognize the sentiments and diction of
the characters of Homer; we have but, as Lear says, to strip off our
lendings--to set aside the factitious principles and adornments which we
have received from our comparatively artificial system of society, and
our natural feelings are in unison with those of the bard of Chios and
the heroes who live in his verses. It is the same with a great part of
the narratives of my friend Mr. Cooper. We sympathize with his Indian
chiefs and back-woodsmen, and acknowledge, in the characters which he
presents to us, the same truth of human nature by which we should feel
ourselves influenced if placed in the same condition. So much is this
the case, that, though it is difficult, or almost impossible, to reclaim
a savage, bred from his youth to war and the chase, to the restraints
and the duties of civilized life, nothing is more easy or common than
to find men who have been educated in all the habits and comforts of
improved society, willing to exchange them for the wild labours of the
hunter and the fisher. The very amusements most pursued and relished
by men of all ranks, whose constitutions permit active exercise, are
hunting, fishing, and, in some instances, war, the natural and necessary
business of the savage of Dryden, where his hero talks of being
--“As free as nature first made man,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.”
But although the occupations, and even the sentiments, of human beings
in a primitive state, find access and interest in the minds of the more
civilized part of the species, it does not therefore follow, that the
national tastes, opinions, and follies of one civilized period, should
afford either the same interest or the same amusement to those of
another. These generally, when driven to extravagance, are founded, not
upon any natural taste proper to the species, but upon the growth of
some peculiar cast of affectation, with which mankind in general,
and succeeding generations in particular, feel no common interest or
sympathy. The extravagances of coxcombry in manners and apparel are
indeed the legitimate and often the successful objects of satire, during
the time when they exist. In evidence of this, theatrical critics
may observe how many dramatic _jeux d'esprit_ are well received every
season, because the satirist levels at some well-known or fashionable
absurdity; or, in the dramatic phrase, “shoots folly as it flies.” But
when the peculiar kind of folly keeps the wing no longer, it is reckoned
but waste of powder to pour a discharge of ridicule on what has ceased
to exist; and the pieces in which such forgotten absurdities are made
the subject of ridicule, fall quietly into oblivion with the follies
which gave them fashion, or only continue to exist on the scene, because
they contain some other more permanent interest than that which connects
them with manners and follies of a temporary character.
This, perhaps, affords a reason why the comedies of Ben Jonson, founded
upon system, or what the age termed humours,--by which was meant
factitious and affected characters, superinduced on that which was
common to the rest of their race,--in spite of acute satire, deep
scholarship, and strong sense, do not now afford general pleasure, but
are confined to the closet of the antiquary, whose studies have assured
him that the personages of the dramatist were once, though they are now
no longer, portraits of existing nature.
Let us take another example of our hypothesis from Shakspeare himself,
who, of all authors, drew his portraits for all ages. With the whole
sum of the idolatry which affects us at his name, the mass of readers
peruse, without amusement, the characters formed on the extravagances of
temporary fashion; and the Euphuist Don Armado, the pedant Holofernes,
even Nym and Pistol, are read with little pleasure by the mass of the
public, being portraits of which we cannot recognize the humour, because
the originals no longer exist. In like manner, while the distresses of
Romeo and Juliet continue to interest every bosom, Mercutio, drawn as
an accurate representation of the finished fine gentleman of the period,
and as such received by the unanimous approbation of contemporaries, has
so little to interest the present age, that, stripped of all his puns,
and quirks of verbal wit, he only retains his place in the scene, in
virtue of his fine and fanciful speech upon dreaming, which belongs
to no particular age, and because he is a personage whose presence is
indispensable to the plot.
We have already prosecuted perhaps too far an argument, the tendency of
which is to prove, that the introduction of an humorist, acting like Sir
Piercie Shafton, upon some forgotten and obsolete model of folly, once
fashionable, is rather likely to awaken the disgust of the reader,
as unnatural, than find him food for laughter. Whether owing to this
theory, or whether to the more simple and probable cause of the author's
failure in the delineation of the subject he had proposed to himself,
the formidable objection of _incredulus odi_ was applied to the
Euphuist, as well as to the White Lady of Avenel; and the one was
denounced as unnatural, while the other was rejected as impossible.
There was little in the story to atone for these failures in two
principal points. The incidents were inartificially huddled together.
There was no part of the intrigue to which deep interest was found to
apply; and the conclusion was brought about, not by incidents arising
out of the story itself, but in consequence of public transactions,
with which the narrative has little connexion, and which the reader had
little opportunity to become acquainted with.
This, if not a positive fault, was yet a great defect in the Romance.
It is true, that not only the practice of some great authors in this
department, but even the general course of human life itself, may be
quoted in favour of this more obvious and less artificial practice of
arranging a narrative. It is seldom that the same circle of personages
who have surrounded an individual at his first outset in life, continue
to have an interest in his career till his fate comes to a crisis. On
the contrary, and more especially if the events of his life be of a
varied character, and worth communicating to others, or to the world,
the hero's later connexions are usually totally separated from those
with whom he began the voyage, but whom the individual has outsailed,
or who have drifted astray, or foundered on the passage. This hackneyed
comparison holds good in another point. The numerous vessels of so many
different sorts, and destined for such different purposes, which are
launched in the same mighty ocean, although each endeavours to pursue
its own course, are in every case more influenced by the winds and
tides, which are common to the element which they all navigate, than by
their own separate exertions. And it is thus in the world, that, when
human prudence has done its best, some general, perhaps national, event,
destroys the schemes of the individual, as the casual touch of a more
powerful being sweeps away the web of the spider.
Many excellent romances have been composed in this view of human life,
where the hero is conducted through a variety of detached scenes, in
which various agents appear and disappear, without, perhaps, having any
permanent influence on the progress of the story. Such is the structure
of Gil Blas, Roderick Random, and the lives and adventures of many other
heroes, who are described as running through different stations of life,
and encountering various adventures, which are only connected with each
other by having happened to be witnessed by the same individual, whose
identity unites them together, as the string of a necklace links the
beads, which are otherwise detached.
But though such an unconnected course of adventures is what most
frequently occurs in nature, yet the province of the romance writer
being artificial, there is more required from him than a mere compliance
with the simplicity of reality,--just as we demand from the scientific
gardener, that he shall arrange, in curious knots and artificial
parterres, the flowers which “nature boon” distributes freely on hill
and dale. Fielding, accordingly, in most of his novels, but especially
in Tom Jones, his _chef-d'oeuvre_, has set the distinguished example
of a story regularly built and consistent in all its parts, in which
nothing occurs, and scarce a personage is introduced, that has not some
share in tending to advance the catastrophe.
To demand equal correctness and felicity in those who may follow in
the track of that illustrious novelist, would be to fetter too much the
power of giving pleasure, by surrounding it with penal rules; since of
this sort of light literature it may be especially said--_tout genre est
permis, hors le genre ennuyeux_. Still, however, the more closely and
happily the story is combined, and the more natural and felicitous the
catastrophe, the nearer such a composition will approach the perfection
of the novelist's art; nor can an author neglect this branch of his
profession, without incurring proportional censure.
For such censure the Monastery gave but too much occasion. The intrigue
of the Romance, neither very interesting in itself, nor very happily
detailed, is at length finally disentangled by the breaking out of
national hostilities between England and Scotland, and the as sudden
renewal of the truce. Instances of this kind, it is true, cannot in
reality have been uncommon, but the resorting to such, in order to
accomplish the catastrophe, as by a _tour de force_, was objected to as
inartificial, and not perfectly, intelligible to the general reader.
Still the Monastery, though exposed to severe and just criticism, did
not fail, judging from the extent of its circulation, to have some
interest for the public. And this, too, was according to the ordinary
course of such matters; for it very seldom happens that literary
reputation is gained by a single effort, and still more rarely is it
lost by a solitary miscarriage.
The author, therefore, had his days of grace allowed him, and time, if
he pleased, to comfort himself with the burden of the old Scots song,
“If it isna weel bobbit.
We'll bob it again.”
ABBOTSFORD, _1st November_, 1830.
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