uninvited, who came from all parts of Great Britain, from America, and
even from continental Europe, to do homage to his genius, or to gratify
their curiosity. Sometimes as many as thirty guests sat down to his
banqueting-table at once. He entertained in baronial style, but without
ostentation or prodigality, and on old-fashioned dishes. He did not
like French cooking, and his simple taste in the matters of beverage we
have already noted. The people to whom he was most attentive were the
representatives of ancient families, whether rich or poor.
Scott was very kind to literary men in misfortune, and his chosen
friends were authors of eminence,--like Miss Edgeworth, Joanna Baillie,
Thomas Moore, Crabbe, Southey, Wordsworth, Sir Humphry Davy, Dr.
Wollaston the chemist, Henry Mackenzie, etc. He was very intimate with
the Duke of Buccleuch, Lord Montagu, and other noblemen. He was visited
by dukes and princes, as well as by ladies of rank and fame. George IV.
sent him valuable presents, and showed him every mark of high
consideration. Cambridge and Oxford tendered to him honorary degrees.
Wherever he travelled, he was received with honor and distinction and
flatteries. But he did not like flatteries; and this was one reason why
he did not openly acknowledge his authorship of his novels, until all
doubt was removed by the masterly papers of John Leycester Adolphus
in 1821.
Scott's correspondence must have been enormous, for his postage bills
amounted to £150 per annum, besides the aid he received from franks,
which with his natural economy he made no scruple in liberally using.
Perhaps his most confidential letters were, like Byron's, written to his
publishers and printers, though many such were addressed to his
son-in-law Lockhart, and to his dearest friend William Erskine. But he
had also some admirable women friends, with whom he corresponded freely.
Some of the choicest of his recently-published Letters are to Lady
Abercorn, who was an intimate and helpful friend; to Miss Anna Seward, a
literary confidant of many years; to Lady Louisa Stuart, daughter of the
Earl of Bute, and granddaughter of Mary Wortley Montagu, one of the few
who knew from the first of his "Waverley" authorship; and to Mrs. John
Hughes, an early and most affectionate friend, whose grandson, Thomas
Hughes, has made famous the commonplace name of "Tom Brown" in our
own day.
Scott's letters show the man,--frank, cordial, manly, tender, generous,
finding humor in difficulties, pleasure in toil, satisfaction in
success, a proud courage in adversity, and the purest happiness in the
affection of his friends.
How Scott found time for so much work is a mystery,--writing nearly
three novels a year, besides other literary labors, attending to his
duties in the Courts, overlooking the building of Abbotsford and the
cultivation of his twelve hundred acres, and entertaining more guests
than Voltaire did at Ferney. He was too much absorbed by his legal
duties and his literary labors to be much of a traveller; yet he was a
frequent visitor to London, saw something of Paris, journeyed through
Ireland, was familiar with the Lake region in England, and penetrated to
every interesting place in Scotland. He did not like London, and took
little pleasure in the ovations he received from people of rank and
fashion. As a literary lion at the tables of "the great," he
disappointed many of his admirers, since he made no effort to shine. It
was only in his modest den in Castle Street, or in rambles in the
country or at Abbotsford, that he felt himself at home, and appeared to
the most advantage.
It would be pleasant to leave this genuinely great man in the full flush
of health, creative power, inward delight and outward prosperity; but
that were to leave unwritten the finest and noblest part of his life. It
is to the misfortunes which came upon him that we owe both a large part
of his splendid achievements in literature and our knowledge of the most
admirable characteristics of the man.
My running record of his novels last mentioned "The Monastery," issued
in 1820, in the same year with perhaps the prime favorite of all his
works, "Ivanhoe," the romantic tale of England in the crusading age of
Richard the Lion-Hearted. In 1821 he put forth the fascinating
Elizabethan tale of "Kenilworth." In 1822 came "The Pirate" (the tale of
sea and shore that inspired James Fenimore Cooper to write "The Pilot"
and his other sea-stories) and "The Fortunes of Nigel;" in 1823,
"Peveril of the Peak" and "Quentin Durward," both among his best; in
1824, "St. Ronan's Well" and "Redgauntlet;" and in 1825, two more Tales
of the Crusaders,--"The Betrothed" and "The Talisman," the latter
probably sharing with "Ivanhoe" the greatest popularity.
In the winter of 1825-1826, a widespread area of commercial distress
resulted in the downfall of many firms; and among others to succumb were
Hurst & Robinson, publishers, whose failure precipitated that of
Constable & Co., Scott's publishers, and of the Ballantynes his
printers, with whom he was a secret partner, who were largely indebted
to the Constables and so to the creditors of that house. The crash came
January 16, 1826, and Scott found himself in debt to the amount of about
£147,000,--or nearly $735,000.
Such a vast misfortune, overwhelming a man at the age of fifty-five,
might well crush out all life and hope and send him into helpless
bankruptcy, with the poor consolation that, though legally responsible,
he was not morally bound to pay other people's debts. But Scott's own
sanguine carelessness had been partly to blame for the Ballantyne
failure; and he faced the billow as it suddenly appeared, bowed to it in
grief but not in shame, and, while not pretending to any stoicism,
instantly resolved to devote the remainder of his life to the repayment
of the creditors.
The solid substance of manliness, honor, and cheerful courage in his
character; the genuine piety with which he accepted the "dispensation,"
and wrote "Blessed be the name of the Lord;" the unexampled steadiness
with which he comforted his wife and daughters while girding himself to
the daily work of intellectual production amidst his many distresses;
the sweetness of heart with which he acknowledged the sympathy and
declined the offers of help that poured in upon him from every side (one
poor music teacher offering his little savings of £600, and an anonymous
admirer urging upon him a loan of £30,000),--all this is the beauty that
lighted up the black cloud of Scott's adversity. His efforts were
finally successful, although at the cost of his bodily existence.
Lockhart says: "He paid the penalty of health and life, but he saved his
honor and his self-respect.
"'The glory dies not, and the grief is past.'"
"Woodstock," then about half-done, was completed in sixty-nine days, and
issued in March, 1826, bringing in about $41,000 to his creditors. His
"Life of Napoleon," published in June, 1827, produced $90,000. In 1827,
also, Scott issued "Chronicles of the Canongate," First Series (several
minor stories), and the First Series of "Tales of a Grandfather;" in
1828, "The Fair Maid of Perth" (Second Series of the "Chronicles"), and
more "Tales of a Grandfather;" in 1829, "Anne of Geierstein," more
"Tales of a Grandfather," the first volume of a "History of Scotland,"
and a collective edition of the Waverley Novels in forty-eight volumes,
with new Introductions, Notes, and careful corrections and improvements
of the text throughout,--in itself an immense labor; in 1830, more
"Tales of a Grandfather," a three volume "History of France," and Volume
II. of the "History of Scotland;" in 1831, and finally, a Fourth Series
of "Tales of My Landlord," including "Count Robert of Paris" and "Castle
Dangerous."
This completes the list of Scott's greater productions; but it should be
remembered that during all the years of his creative work he was
incessantly doing critical and historical writing,--producing numerous
reviews, essays, ballads; introductions to divers works; biographical
sketches for Ballantyne's "Novelist's Library,"--the works of fifteen
celebrated English writers of fiction, Fielding, Smollett, etc.; letters
and pamphlets; dramas; even a few religious discourses; and his very
extensive and interesting private correspondence. He was such a marvel
of productive brain-power as has seldom, if ever, been known
to humanity.
The illness and death of Scott's beloved wife, but four short months
after his commercial disaster, was a profound grief to him; and under
the exhausting pressure of incessant work during the five years
following, his bodily power began to fail,--so that in October, 1831,
after a paralytic shock, he stopped all literary labor and went to Italy
for recuperation. The following June he returned to London, weaker in
both mind and body; was taken to Abbotsford in July; and on the 21st
September, 1832, with his children about him, the kindly, manly, brave,
and tender spirit passed away.
At the time of his death Sir Walter had reduced his great indebtedness
to $270,000. A life insurance of $110,000, $10,000 in the hands of his
trustees, and $150,000 advanced by Robert Cadell, an Edinburgh
bookseller, on the copyrights of Scott's works, cleared away the last
remnant of the debt; and within twenty years Cadell had reimbursed
himself, and made a handsome profit for his own account and that of the
family of Sir Walter.
The moneyed details of Scott's literary life have been made a part of
this brief sketch, both because his phenomenal fecundity and popularity
offer a convenient measure of his power, and because the fiscal
misfortune of his later life revealed a simple grandeur of character
even more admirable than his mental force. "Scott ruined!" exclaimed the
Earl of Dudley when he heard of the trouble. "The author of Waverley
ruined! Good God! let every man to whom he has given months of delight
give him a sixpence, and he will rise to-morrow morning richer than
Rothschild!" But the sturdy Scotchman accepted no dole; he set himself
to work out his own salvation. William Howitt, in his "Homes and Haunts
of Eminent British Poets," estimated that Scott's works had produced as
profits to the author or his trustees at least £500,000,--nearly
$2,500,000: this in 1847, over fifty years ago, and only forty-five
years from Scott's first original publication. Add the results of the
past fifty years, and, remembering that this gives but the profits,
conceive the immense sums that have been freely paid by the intelligent
British public for their enjoyment of this great author's writings.
Then, besides all this, recall the myriad volumes of Scott sold in
America, which paid no profit to the author or his heirs. There is
no parallel.
Voltaire's renown and monetary rewards, as the master-writer of the
eighteenth century, offer the only case in modern times that approaches
Scott's success; yet Voltaire's vast wealth was largely the result of
successful speculation. As a purely popular author, whose wholesome
fancy, great heart, and tireless industry, has delighted millions of his
fellow-men, Scott stands alone; while, as a man, he holds the affection
and respect of the world. Even though it be that the fashion of his
workmanship passeth away, wonder not, lament not. With Mithridates he
could say, "I have lived." What great man can say more?
LORD BYRON.
1788-1824.
POETIC GENIUS.
It is extremely difficult to depict Lord Byron, and even presumptuous to
attempt it. This is not only because he is a familiar subject, the
triumphs and sorrows of whose career have been often portrayed, but also
because he presents so many contradictions in his life and
character,--lofty yet degraded, earnest yet frivolous, an impersonation
of noble deeds and sentiments, and also of almost every frailty which
Christianity and humanity alike condemn. No great man has been more
extravagantly admired, and none more bitterly assailed; but generally he
is regarded as a fallen star,--a man with splendid gifts which he
wasted, for whom pity is the predominant sentiment in broad and generous
minds. With all his faults, the English-speaking people are proud of him
as one of the greatest lights in our literature; and in view of the
brilliancy of his literary career his own nation in particular does not
like to have his defects and vices dwelt upon. It blushes and condones.
It would fain blot out his life and much of his poetry if, without them,
it could preserve the best and grandest of his writings,--that
ill-disguised autobiography which goes by the name of "Childe Harold's
Pilgrimage," in which he soars to loftier flights than any English poet
from Milton to his own time. Like Shakespeare, like Dryden, like Pope,
like Burns, he was a born poet; while most of the other poets, however
eminent and excellent, were simply made,--made by study and labor on a
basis of talent, rather than exalted by native genius as he was,
speaking out what he could not help, and revelling in the richness of
unconscious gifts, whether for good or evil.
Byron was a man with qualities so generous, yet so wild, that Lamartine
was in doubt whether to call him angel or devil. But, whether angel or
devil, his life is the saddest and most interesting among all the men of
letters in the nineteenth century.
Of course, most of our material comes from his Life and Letters, as
edited by his friend and brother-poet, Thomas Moore. This biographer, I
think, has been unwisely candid in the delineation of Byron's character,
making revelations that would better have remained in doubt, and on
which friendship at least should have prompted him to a
discreet silence.
Lord Byron was descended from the Byrons of Normandy who accompanied
William the Conqueror in his invasion of England, of which illustrious
lineage the poet was prouder than of his poetry. In the reign of Henry
VIII., on the dissolution of the monasteries, a Byron came into
possession of the old mediaeval abbey of Newstead. In the reign of James
I., Sir John Byron was made a knight of the Order of the Bath. In 1784
the father of the poet, a dissipated captain of the Guards, being in
embarrassed circumstances, married a rich Scotch heiress of the name of
Gordon. Handsome and reckless, "Mad Jack Byron" speedily spent his
wife's fortune; and when he died, his widow, being reduced to a pittance
of £150 a year, retired to Scotland to live, with her infant son who had
been born in London. She was plain Mrs. Byron, widow of a "younger son,"
with but little expectation of future rank. She was a woman of caprices
and eccentricities, and not at all fitted to superintend the education
of her wayward boy.
Hence the childhood and youth of Byron were sad and unfortunate. His
temper was violent and passionate. A malformation of his foot made him
peculiarly sensitive, and the unwise treatment of his mother, fond and
harsh by turns, destroyed maternal authority. At five years of age, he
was sent to a day-school in Aberdeen, where he made but slim
attainments. Though excitable and ill-disciplined, he is said to have
been affectionate and generous, and perfectly fearless. A fit of
sickness rendered his removal from this school necessary, and he was
sent to a summer resort among the Highlands. His early impressions were
therefore favorable to the development of the imagination, coming as
they did from mountains and valleys, rivulets and lakes, near the
sources of the Dee. At the age of eight, he wrote verses and fell in
love, like Dante at the age of nine.
On the death of the grandson of the old Lord Byron in 1794, this
unpromising youth became the heir-apparent to the barony. Nor did he
have to wait long; for soon after, his grand-uncle died, and the young
Byron, whose mother was struggling with poverty, became a ward of
Chancery; and the Earl of Carlisle--one of the richest and most powerful
noblemen of the realm, a nephew by marriage of the deceased peer--was
appointed his guardian. This cold, formal, and politic nobleman took but
little interest in his ward, leaving him to the mismanagement of his
mother, who, with her boy, at the age of ten, now removed to Newstead,
the seat of his ancestors,--the government, meanwhile, for some reason
which is not explained, having conferred on her a pension of £300
a year.
One of the first things that Mrs. Byron did on her removal to Newstead
was to intrust her son to the care of a quack in Nottingham, in order to
cure him of his lameness. As the doctor was not successful, the boy was
removed to London with the double purpose of effecting a cure under an
eminent surgeon, and of educating him according to his rank; for his
education thus far had been sadly neglected, although it would appear
that he was an omnivorous reader in a desultory kind of way. The
lameness was never cured, and through life was a subject of bitter
sensitiveness on his part. Dr. Glennie of Dulwich, to whose instruction
he was now confided, found him hard to manage, because of his own
undisciplined nature and the perpetual interference of his mother. His
progress was so slow in Latin and Greek that at the end of two years, in
1801, he was removed to Harrow,--one of the great public schools of
England, of which Dr. Drury was head-master. For a year or two, owing to
that constitutional shyness which is so often mistaken for pride, young
Byron made but few friendships, although he had for school-fellows many
who were afterwards distinguished, including Sir Robert Peel. Before he
left this school for Cambridge, however, he had made many friends whom
he never forgot, being of a very generous and loving disposition. I
think that those years at Harrow were the happiest he ever knew, for he
was under a strict discipline, and was too young to indulge in those
dissipations which were the bane of his subsequent life. But he was not
distinguished as a scholar, in the ordinary sense, although in his
school-boy days he wrote some poetry remarkable for his years, and read
a great many books. He read in bed, read when no one else read, read
while eating, read all sorts of books, and was capable of great sudden
exertions, but not of continuous drudgeries, which he always abhorred.
In the year 1803, when a youth of fifteen, he formed a strong attachment
for a Miss Chaworth, two years his senior, who, looking upon him as a
mere schoolboy, treated him cavalierly, and made some slighting allusion
to "that lame boy." This treatment both saddened and embittered him.
When he left school for college he had the reputation of being an idle
and a wilful boy, with a very imperfect knowledge of Latin and Greek.
Young Byron entered Trinity College in 1805, poorly prepared, and was
never distinguished there for those attainments which win the respect of
tutors and professors. He wasted his time, and gave himself up to
pleasures,--riding, boating, bathing, and social hilarities,--yet
reading more than anybody imagined, and writing poetry, for which he had
an extraordinary facility, yet not contending for college prizes. His
intimate friends were few, but to his chosen circle he was faithful and
affectionate. No one at this time would have predicted his future
eminence. A more unpromising youth did not exist within the walls of his
college. He had a most unfortunate temper, which would have made him
unhappy under any circumstances in which he could be placed. This
temper, which he inherited from his mother--passionate, fitful, defiant,
restless, wayward, melancholy--inclined him naturally to solitude, and
often isolated him even from his friends and companions. He brooded upon
supposed wrongs, and created in his soul strong likes and dislikes. What
is worse, he took no pains to control this temperament; and at last it
mastered him, drove him into every kind of folly and rashness, and made
him appear worse than he really was.
This inborn tendency to moodiness, pride, and recklessness should be
considered in our estimate of Byron, and should modify any harshness of
judgment in regard to his character, which, in some other respects, was
interesting and noble. He was not at all envious, but frank,
warm-hearted, and true to those he loved, who were, however, very few.
If he had learned self-control, and had not been spoiled by his mother,
his career might have been far different from what it was, and would
have sustained the admiration which his brilliant genius called out
from both high and low.
As it was, Byron left college with dangerous habits, with no reputation
for scholarship, with but few friends, and an uncertain future. His
bright and witty bursts of poetry, wonderful as the youthful effusions
of Dryden and Pope, had made him known to a small circle, but had not
brought fame, for which his soul passionately thirsted from first to
last. For a nobleman he was poor and embarrassed, and his youthful
extravagances had tied up his inherited estate. He was cast upon the
world like a ship without a rudder and without ballast. He was aspiring
indeed, but without a plan, tired out and disgusted before he was
twenty-one, having prematurely exhausted the ordinary pleasures of life,
and being already inclined to that downward path which leadeth to
destruction. This was especially marked in his relations with women,
whom generally he flattered, despised, and deserted, as the amusements
of an idle hour, and yet whose society he could not do without in the
ardor of his impulsive and ungoverned affections. In that early career
of unbridled desire for excitement and pleasure, nowhere do we see a
sense of duty, a respect for the opinions of the good, a reverence for
religious institutions, or self-restraint of any kind; but these defects
were partly covered over by his many virtues and his exalted rank.
Thus far Byron was comparatively unknown. Not yet was he even a
favorite in society, beautiful and brilliant as he was; for he had few
friends, not much money, and many enemies, whom he made by his scorn and
defiance,--a born aristocrat, without having penetrated those exclusive
circles to which his birth entitled him. He was always quarrelling with
his mother, and was treated with indifference by his guardian. He was
shunned by those who adhered to the conventionalities of life, and was
pursued by bailiffs and creditors,--since his ancestral estates, small
for his rank, were encumbered and mortgaged, and Newstead Abbey itself
was in a state of dilapidation.
Within a year from leaving Cambridge, in 1807, Byron published a volume
of his juvenile poems; and although they were remarkable for a young man
of twenty, they were not of sufficient merit to attract the attention of
the public. At this time he was abstemious in eating, wishing to reduce
a tendency to corpulence. He could practise self-denial if it were to
make his person attractive, especially to ladies. Nor was he idle. His
reading, if desultory, was vast; and from the list of books which his
biographer has noted it would seem that Macaulay never read more than
Byron in a given time,--all the noted historians of England, Germany,
Rome, and Greece, with innumerable biographies, miscellanies, and even
divinity, the raw material which he afterwards worked into his poems.
How he found time to devour so many solid books is to me a mystery.
These were not merely European works, but Asiatic also. He was not a
critical scholar, but he certainly had a passing familiarity with almost
everything in literature worth knowing, which he subsequently utilized,
as seen in his "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." A college reputation was
nothing to him, any more than it was to Swift, Goldsmith, Churchill,
Gibbon, and many other famous men of letters, who left on record their
dislike of the English system of education. Among these were even such
men as Addison, Cowper, Milton, and Dryden, who were scholars, but who
alike felt that college honors and native genius did not go hand in
hand,--which might almost be regarded as the rule, but for a few
remarkable exceptions, like Sir Robert Peel and Gladstone. And yet it
would be unwise to decry college honors, since not one in a hundred of
those who obtain them by their industry, aptness, and force of will can
lay claim to what is called genius,--the rarest of all gifts. Moreover,
how impossible it is for college professors to detect in students, with
whom they are imperfectly acquainted, extraordinary faculties, more
especially if the young men are apparently idle and negligent, and
contemptuous of the college curriculum.