THE VERSE ROMANCES
Although Scott was hard upon his thirty-fifth year when the _Lay_
appeared, and although he had already a considerable literary reputation
in Edinburgh, and some in London, the amount of his original
publications was then but small. Indeed, on the austere principles of
those who deny 'originality' to such things as reviews, or as the essays
in the _Minstrelsy_, it must be limited to a mere handful, though of
very pleasant delights, the half-dozen of ballads made up by
'Glenfinlas,' 'The Eve of St. John,' the rather inferior 'Fire King,'
the beautiful 'Cadzow Castle' (not yet mentioned, but containing some of
its author's most charming _topic_ lines), the fragment of 'The Grey
Brother,' and a few minor pieces.
With the _Lay_ he took an entirely different position. The mere bulk of
the poem was considerable; and, putting for the instant entirely out of
question its peculiarities of subject, metre, and general treatment, it
was a daring innovation in point of class. The eighteenth century had,
even under its own laws and conditions, distinctly eschewed long
narrative poems, the unreadable epics of Glover, for instance, belonging
to that class of exception which really does prove the rule. Pope's
_Rape_ had been burlesque, and his _Dunciad_, satire; hardly the ghost
of a narrative had appeared in Thomson and Young; Shenstone, Collins,
Gray, had nothing _de longue haleine_; the entire poetical works of
Goldsmith probably do not exceed in length a canto of the Lay; Cowper
had never attempted narrative; Crabbe was resting on the early laurels
of his brief _Village_, etc., and had not begun his tales. _Thalaba_,
indeed, had been published, and no doubt was not without effect on Scott
himself; but it was not popular, and the author was still under the sway
of the craze against rhyme. To all intents and purposes the poet was
addressing the public, in a work combining the attractions of fiction
with the attractions of verse at considerable length, for the first time
since Dryden had done so in his _Fables_, a hundred and five years
before. And though the mastery of the method might be less, the stories
were original, they were continuous, and they displayed an entirely new
gust and seasoning both of subject and of style.
There can be no doubt at all, for those who put metre in its proper
place, that a very large, perhaps the much larger, part of the appeal of
the _Lay_ was metrical. The public was sick of the couplet--had indeed
been sickened twice over, if the abortive revolt of Gray and Collins be
counted. It did not take, and was quite right in not taking, to the
rhymeless, shortened Pindaric of Sayers and Southey, as to anything but
an eccentric 'sport' of poetry. What Scott had to offer was practically
new, or at least novel. It is universally known--and Scott, who was only
too careless of his own claims, and the very last of men to steal or
conceal those of others, made no secret of it--that the suggestion of
the _Lay_ in metre came from a private recitation or reading of
Coleridge's _Christabel_, written in the year of Scott's marriage, but
not published till twenty years later, and more than ten after the
appearance of the _Lay_. Coleridge seems to have regarded Scott's
priority with an irritability less suitable to his philosophic than to
his poetical character.[16] But he had, in the first place, only himself,
if anybody, to blame; in the second, Scott more than made the loan his
own property by the variations executed on its motive; and in the third,
Coleridge's original right was far less than he seems to have honestly
thought, and than most people have guilelessly assumed since.
For the iambic dimeter, freely altered by the licences of equivalence,
anacrusis, and catalexis, though not recently practised in English when
_Christabel_ and the _Lay_ set the example, is an inevitable result of
the clash between accented, alliterative, asyllabic rhythm and
quantitative, exactly syllabic metre, which accompanied the
transformation of Anglo-Saxon into English. We have distinct approaches
to it in the thirteenth century _Genesis_; it attains considerable
development in Spenser's _The Oak and the Brere_; anybody can see that
the latter part of Milton's _Comus_ was written under the breath of its
spirit. But it had not hitherto been applied on any great scale, and the
delusions under which the eighteenth century laboured as to the syllabic
restrictions of English poetry had made it almost impossible that it
should be. At the same time, that century, by its lighter practice on
the one hand in the octosyllable, on the other in the four-footed
anapaestic, was making the way easier for those who dared a little: and
Coleridge first, then Scott, did the rest.
We have seen that in some of his early ballad work Scott had a little
overdone the licence of equivalence, but this had probably been one of
the formal points on which, as we know, the advice of Lewis, no poet but
a remarkably good metrist, had been of use to him. And he acquitted
himself now in a manner which, if it never quite attains the weird charm
of _Christabel_ itself at its best, is more varied, better sustained,
and, above all, better suited to the story-telling which was, of course,
Scott's supremest gift. It is very curious to compare Coleridge's
remarks on Scott's verse with those of Wordsworth, in reference to the
_White Doe of Rylstone_. Neither in _Christabel_, nor in the _White
Doe_, is there a real _story_ really told. Coleridge, but for his fatal
weaknesses, undoubtedly could have told such a story; it is pretty
certain that Wordsworth could not. But Scott could tell a story as few
other men who have ever drawn breath on the earth could tell it. He had
been distinguished in the conversational branch of the art from his
youth up, and though it was to be long before he could write a story in
prose, he showed now, at the first attempt, how he could write one in
verse.
Construction, of course, was not his forte; it never was. The plot of
the _Lay_, if not exactly non-existent, is of the simplest and loosest
description; the whole being in effect a series of episodes strung
together by the loves of Margaret and Cranstoun and the misdeeds of the
Goblin Page. Even the Book supplies no real or necessary _nexus_. But
the romance proper has never required elaborate construction, and has
very rarely, if ever, received it. A succession of engaging or exciting
episodes, each plausibly joined to each, contents its easy wants; and
such a succession is liberally provided here. So, too, it does not
require strict character-drawing--a gift with which Scott was indeed
amply provided, but which he did not exhibit, and had no call to
exhibit, here. If the personages will play their parts, that is enough.
And they all play them very well here, though the hero and heroine do
certainly exhibit something of that curious nullity which has been
objected to the heroes nearly always, the heroines too frequently, of
the later prose novels.
But even those critics who, as too many critics are wont to do, forgot
and forget that 'the prettiest girl in the world' not only cannot give,
but ought not to be asked to give, more than she has, must have been,
and must be, very unreasonable if they find fault with the subject and
stuff of the _Lay_. Jeffrey's remark about 'the present age not
enduring' the Border and mosstrooping details was contradicted by the
fact, and was, as a matter of taste, one of those strange blunders which
diversified his often admirably acute critical utterances. When he
feared their effects on '_English_ readers,' he showed himself, as was
not common with him, actually ignorant of one of the simplest general
principles of the poetic appeal, that is to say, the element of
_strangeness_. But we must not criticise criticism here, and must only
add that another great appeal, that of variety, is amply given, as well
as that of unfamiliarity. The graceful and touching, if a little
conventional, overture of the Minstrel introduces with the truest art
the vigorous sketch of Branksome Tower. The spirits of flood and fell
are allowed to impress and not allowed to bore us; for the quickest of
changes is made to Deloraine's ride--a kind of thing in which Scott
never failed, even in his latest and saddest days. The splendid Melrose
opening of the Second Canto supports itself through the discovery of the
Book, and finds due contrast in the description (or no-description) of
the lovers' meeting; the fight and the Goblin Page's misbehaviour and
punishment (to all, at least, but those, surely few now, who are
troubled by the Jeffreyan sense of 'dignity'), the decoying and capture
of young Buccleuch, and the warning of the clans are certainly no
ungenerous provision for the Third; nor the clan anecdotes (especially
the capital episode of the Beattisons), the parley, the quarrel of
Howard and Dacre, and the challenge, for the Fourth. There is perhaps
less in the Fifth, for Scott seems to have been afraid of another fight
in detail; but the description of the night before, and the famous
couplet--
'I'd give the lands of Deloraine
Dark Musgrave were alive again'--
would save it if there were nothing else, as there is much. And if the
actual conclusion has no great interest (Scott was never good at
conclusions, as we shall find Lady Louisa Stuart telling him frankly
later), the Sixth Canto is full, and more than full, of brilliant
things--the feast, the Goblin's tricks, his carrying-off, the
pilgrimage, and, above all, the songs, especially 'Rosabelle' and the
version of the 'Dies Irae.'
The mention of these last may fairly introduce a few words on the formal
and metrical characteristics of the poem, remarks which perhaps some
readers resent, but which must nevertheless be made, inasmuch as they
are to my mind by far the most important part of poetical criticism.
Scott evidently arranged his scheme of metre with extreme care here,
though it is possible that after this severe exercise he let it take
care of itself to some extent later. His introduction is in the strict
octosyllable, with only such licences of slur or elision--
'The pi | _tying Duch_ | ess praised its chime,'
'_He had played_ | it to King Charles the Good'--
as the greatest precisians might have allowed themselves. But the First
Canto breaks at once into the full licence, not merely of
equivalence,--that is to say, of substituting an anapaest or a trochee
for an iamb,--but of shifting the base and rhythm of any particular
verse, or of set batches of verses, between the three ground-feet, and,
further, of occasionally introducing sixes, as in the ballad metre, and
even fours--
'Bards long | shall tell
How Lord Wal | ter fell,'
instead of the usual eights.
In similar fashion he varies the rhymes, passing as the subject or the
accompaniment of the word-music may require, from the couplet to the
quatrain, and from the quatrain to the irregularly rhymed 'Pindaric';
always, however, taking care that, except in the set lyric, the quatrain
shall not fall too much into definite stanza, but be interlaced in sense
or sound sufficiently to carry on the narrative. The result, to some
tastes, is a medium quite unsurpassed for the particular purpose. The
only objection to it at all capable of being maintained, that I can
think of, is that the total effect is rather lyrical than epic. And so
much of this must be perhaps allowed as comes to granting that Scott's
verse-romance is rather a long and cunningly sustained and varied ballad
than an epic proper.
The _Lay_, though not received with quite that eager appetite for poetry
which Scott was 'born to introduce,' and of which he lived long enough
to see the glutting, had a large and immediate sale. The author, not yet
aware what a gold mine his copyrights were, parted with this after the
first edition, and received in all rather less than L770, a sum trifling
in comparison with his after gains; but probably the largest that had as
yet been received by any English poet for a single volume not published
by subscription. It is curious that, at the estimated rate of three for
one in comparing the value of money at the end of the seventeenth and
the beginning of the nineteenth century, the sum almost exactly equals
that paid by Tonson for Dryden's _Fables_, the last book, before the
_Lay_ itself, which had united popularity, merit, and bulk in English
verse. But Dryden was the acknowledged head of English literature at the
time, and Scott was a mere beginner. He was probably even better pleased
with the quality of the praise than with the quantity of the pudding.
For though professional criticism, then in no very vigorous state, said
some silly things, it was generally favourable; and a saying of Pitt
(most indifferent, as a rule, of all Prime Ministers to English
literature) is memorable not merely as summing up the general
impression, but as defining what that impression was in a fashion quite
invaluable to the student of literary history. The Pilot that Weathered
the Storm, it seems, said of the description of the Minstrel's
hesitation before playing, 'This is a sort of thing I might have
expected in painting, but could never have fancied capable of being
given by poetry.' To the present generation and the last, the reverse
expression would probably seem more natural. We say, of Mr. Watts or of
Sir Edward Burne-Jones, that they have put, in 'Love and Death' or in
'Love among the Ruins,' what we might have expected from poetry, but
could hardly have thought possible in painting. But a hundred years of
studious convention and generality, of deliberate avoidance of the
poignant, and the vivid, and the detailed, and the coloured in poetry
had made Pitt's confession as natural as another hundred years of
contrary practice from Coleridge to Rossetti have made ours.
The publication of the _Lay_ immediately preceded, and perhaps its
success had no small share in deciding, the most momentous and
unfortunate step of Scott's life, his entry into partnership with James
Ballantyne. The discussion of the whole of this business will best be
postponed till the date of its catastrophe is reached, but a few words
may be said on the probable reasons for it. Much, no doubt, was the
result of that combination of incalculable things which foolish persons
of one kind call mere chance, of which foolish persons of another kind
deny the existence, and which wise men term, from different but not
irreconcilable points of view, Providence, or Luck, or Fate. But a
little can be cleared up. Scott had evidently made up his mind that he
should not succeed at the Bar, and had also persuaded himself that the
very success of the _Lay_ had made failure certain. The ill success of
his brother Thomas, with the writer's business inherited from their
father, perhaps inconvenienced and no doubt frightened him. In fact,
though his harsher judges are wrong in attributing to him any undue
haste to be rich, he certainly does seem to have been under a dread of
being poor; a dread no doubt not wholly intelligible and partly morbid
in a young man still under thirty-five, with brilliant literary and some
legal prospects, who had, independently of fees, literary or legal, a
secured income of about a thousand a year. He probably thought, and was
right in thinking, that the book trade was going to 'look up' to a
degree previously unknown; he seems throughout to have been under one of
those inexplicable attractions towards the Ballantynes which now and
then exist, as Hobbes says, 'in the greater towards the meaner, but not
contrary'; and perhaps there was another cause which has not been
usually allowed for enough. Good Christian and good-natured man as he
was, Scott was exceedingly proud; and though joining himself with
persons of dubious social position in mercantile operations seems an odd
way of pride, it had its temptations. I do not doubt but that from the
first Scott intended, more or less vaguely and dimly, to extend the
printing business into a publishing one, and so to free himself from any
necessity of going cap-in-hand to publishers.
However, for good or for ill,--I think it was mainly for ill,--for this
reason or for that, the partnership was formed, at first indirectly by
way of loan, then directly by further advance on security of a share in
the business, and finally so that Scott became, though he did not
appear, the leading partner. And the very first letter that we have of
his about business shows the fatal flaw which he, the soul of honour,
seems never to have detected till too late, if even then. The scheme for
an edition of Dryden was already afloat, and the first editor proposed
was a certain Mr. Foster, who 'howled about the expense of printing.' 'I
still,' says Scott to Ballantyne, 'stick to my answer that _I know
nothing of the matter_, but that, settle it how he and you will, _it
must be printed by you or be no concern of mine. This gives you an
advantage in driving the bargain._' Perhaps; but how about the advantage
to Mr. Foster of being advised by Ballantyne's partner to employ
Ballantyne, while he was innocent of the knowledge of the identity of
partner and adviser, and was even told that Scott 'knew nothing of the
matter'?
Even before the quarrel which soon occurred with Constable established
the Ballantynes--nominally the other brother John--as publishers, Scott
had begun, and was constantly pressing upon the different publishing
houses with which he was connected, a variety of literary schemes of the
most ambitious and costly character. All these books were to be printed
by Ballantyne, and many of them edited by himself; while, when the
direct publishing business was added, there was no longer any check on
this dangerous proceeding. It is most curious how Scott, the shrewdest
and sanest of men in the vast majority of affairs, seems to have lost
his head wherever books or lands were concerned. Himself both an
antiquary and an antiquarian,[15] as well as a lover of literature, he
seems to have taken it for granted that the same combination of tastes
existed in the public to an extent which would pay all expenses, however
lavishly incurred. To us, nowadays, who know how cold a face publishers
turn on what we call really interesting schemes, and how often these
schemes, even when fostered, miscarry or barely pay expenses,--who are
aware that even the editors of literary societies, where expenses are
assured beforehand, have to work for love or for merely nominal fees,
simply because the public will not buy the books,--it is not so
wonderful that some of Scott's schemes never got into being at all, and
that others were dead losses, as that any 'got home.' His _Dryden_, an
altogether admirable book, on which he lavished labour, and great part
of which appealed to a still dominant prestige, may just have carried
the editor's certainly not excessive fee of forty guineas a volume, or
about L750 for the whole. But when one reads of twice that sum paid for
the _Swift_, of L1300 for the thirteen quartos of the _Somers Papers_,
and so forth, the feeling is not that the sums paid were at all too much
for the work done, but that the publishers must have been very lucky men
if they ever saw their money again. The two first of these schemes
certainly, the third perhaps, deserved success; and still more so did a
great scheme for the publication of the entire _British Poets_, to be
edited by Scott and Campbell, which indeed fell through in itself, but
resulted indirectly in Campbell's excellent _Specimens_ and Chalmers's
invaluable if not very comely _Poets_. Even another project, a _Corpus
Historicorum_, would have been magnificent, though it could hardly have
been bookselling war. But the _Somers Tracts_ themselves, the _Memoirs_
and papers of Sadler, Slingsby, Carleton, Cary, etc., were of the class
of book which requires subvention of some kind to prevent it from being
a dead loss; and when the preventive check of the unwillingness of
publishers was removed by the fatal establishment of '_John_ Ballantyne
& Co.,' things became worse still. There are few better instances of the
eternal irony of fate than that the author of the admirable description
of the bookseller's horror at Mr. Pembroke's Sermons[14] should have
permitted, should have positively caused, the publishing at what was in
effect his own risk, or rather his own certainty of loss, not merely of
Weber's ambitious _Beaumont and Fletcher_, but of collections of _Tixall
Poetry_, _Histories of the Culdees_, Wilson's _History of James the
First_, and the rest.
As the beginning of 1805 saw the first birth of his real books, so the
end of it saw that of the last of his children according to the flesh.
His firstborn, as has been said, did not live. But Walter (born November
1799), Sophia (born October 1801), Anne (born February 1803), and
Charles (born December 1805) survived infancy; and it is quite probable
that these regular increases to his family, by suggesting that he might
have a large one, stimulated Scott's desire to enlarge his income. As a
matter of fact, however, the quartette of two boys and two girls was not
exceeded. The domestic life at Castle Street and Ashestiel, from the
publication of the _Lay_ to that of _Marmion_ in 1808,--indeed to that
of _The Lady of the Lake_ in May 1810,--ran smoothly enough; and there
can be little doubt that these five years were the happiest, and in
reality the most prosperous, of Scott's life. He had at once attained
great fame, and was increasing it by each successive poem; his immense
intellectual activity found vent besides in almost innumerable projects,
some of which were in a way successful, and some of which, if they did
himself no very great good pecuniarily, did good to more or less
deserving friends and _proteges_. His health had, as yet, shown no signs
whatever of breaking down; he was physically in perfect condition for,
and at Ashestiel he had every opportunity of indulging in, the field
sports in which his soul delighted at least as much as in reading and
writing; he had pleasant intervals of wandering; and, to crown it all,
he was, during this period, established in reversionary prospect, if not
yet in actual possession, of an income which should have put even his
anxieties at rest, and which certainly might have made him dissociate
himself from the dangerous and doubtful commercial enterprises in which
he had engaged. This reversion was that of a Clerkship of Session, one
of an honourable, well-paid, and by no means laborious group of offices
which seems to have been accepted as a comely and comfortable set of
shelves for advocates of ability, position, and influence, who, for this
reason or that, were not making absolutely first-rate mark at the Bar.
The post to which Scott was appointed was in the possession of a certain
Mr. Hope, and as no retiring pension was attached to these places, it
was customary to hold them on the rather uncomfortable terms of doing
the work till the former holder died, without getting any money. But
before many years a pension scheme was put in operation; Mr. Hope took
his share of it, and Scott entered upon thirteen hundred a year in
addition to his Sheriffship and to his private property, without taking
any account at all of literary gains. The appointment had not actually
been completed, though the patent had been signed, when the Fox and
Grenville Government came in, and it so happened that the document had
been so made out as to have enabled Scott, if he chose, to draw the
whole salary and leave his predecessor in the cold. But this was soon
set right.
In the visit to London which he paid (apparently for the purpose of
getting the error corrected), he made the acquaintance of the unlucky
Princess of Wales, who was at this time rather a favourite with the
Tories. And when he came back to Scotland, the trial of Lord Melville
gave him an opportunity of distinguishing himself by a natural and very
pardonable partisanship, which made his Whig friends rather sore.
Politics in Edinburgh ran very high during this short break in the long
Tory domination, and from it dates a story, to some minds, perhaps, one
of the most interesting of all those about Scott, and connected
indelibly with the scene of its occurrence. It tells how, as he was
coming down the Mound with Jeffrey and another Whig, after a discussion
in the Faculty of Advocates on some proposals of innovation, Jeffrey
tried to laugh the difference off, and how Scott, usually stoical
enough, save in point of humour, broke out with actual tears in his
eyes, 'No, no! it is no laughing matter. Little by little, whatever your
wishes may be, you will destroy and undermine until nothing of what
makes Scotland Scotland shall remain!' He would probably have found no
great reason at the other end of the century to account himself a false
prophet; and he might have thought his prophecies in fair way of
fulfilment not in Scotland only.
During 1806 and 1807 the main occupations of Scott's leisure (if he can
ever be said to have had such a thing) were the _Dryden_ and _Marmion_.
The latter of these appeared in February and the former in April 1808, a
perhaps unique example of an original work, and one of criticism and
compilation, both of unusual bulk and excellence, appearing, with so
short an interval, from the same pen.
As for _Marmion_, it is surely by far the greatest, taking all
constituents of poetical greatness together, of Scott's poems. It was
not helped at the time, and probably never has been helped, by the
author's plan of prefixing to each canto introductions of very
considerable length, each addressed to one or other of his chief
literary friends, and having little or nothing at all to do with the
subject of the tale. Contemporaries complained that the main poem was
thereby intolerably interrupted; posterity, I believe, has taken the
line of ignoring the introductions altogether. This is a very great
pity, for not only do they contain some of Scott's best and oftenest
quoted lines, but each is a really charming piece of occasional verse,
and something more, in itself. The beautiful description of Tweedside in
late autumn, the dirge on Nelson, Pitt, and Fox (which last, of course,
infuriated Jeffrey), and, above all, the splendid passage on the _Morte
d'Arthur_ (which Scott had at this time thought of editing, but gave up
to Southey) adorn the epistle to Rose; the picture of Ettrick Forest in
that to Marriott is one of the best sustained things the poet ever did;
the personal interest of the Erskine piece is of the highest, though it
has fewer 'purple' passages, and it is well-matched with that to Skene;
while the fifth to Ellis and the sixth and last to Heber nobly complete
the batch. Only, though the things in this case _are_ both rich and
rare,
'We wonder what the devil they do there';
and Lockhart unearthed, what Scott seems to have forgotten, the fact
that they were originally intended to appear by themselves. It is a pity
they did not; for, excellent as they are, they are quite out of place as
interludes to a story, the serried range of which not only does not
require but positively rejects them.
For here, while Scott had lost little, if anything, of the formal graces
of the _Lay_, he had improved immensely in grip and force. Clare may be
a bread-and-butter heroine, and Wilton a milk-and-water lover, but the
designs of Marmion against both give a real story-interest, which is
quite absent from the _Lay_. The figure of Constance is really tragic,
not melodramatic merely, and makes one regret that Scott, in his prose
novels, did not repeat and vary her. All the accessories, both in
incident and figure, are good, and it is almost superfluous to praise
the last canto. It extorted admiration from the partisan rancour and the
literary prudishness of Jeffrey; it made the disturbed dowagers of the
_Critical Review_, who thought, with Rymer, that 'a hero ought to be
virtuous,' mingle applause with their fie-fies; it has been the delight
of every reader, not a milksop, or a faddist, or a poetical
man-of-one-idea, ever since. The last canto of _Marmion_ and the last
few 'Aventiuren' of the _Nibelungen Lied_ are perhaps the only things in
all poetry where a set continuous battle (not a series of duels as in
Homer) is related with unerring success; and the steady _crescendo_ of
the whole, considering its length and intensity, is really miraculous.
Nay, even without this astonishing finale, the poem that contained the
opening sketch of Norham, the voyage from Whitby to Holy Island, the
final speech of Constance, and the famous passage of her knell, the
Host's Tale, the pictures of Crichton and the Blackford Hill view, the
'air and fire' of the 'Lochinvar' song, the phantom summons from the
Cross of Edinburgh, and the parting of Douglas and Marmion, could spare
half of these and still remain one of the best of its kind, while every
passage so spared would be enough to distinguish any poem in which it
occurred.
The considerable change in the metre of _Marmion_ as compared with the
_Lay_ is worth noticing. Here, as there, the 'introductions' are, for
the most part, if not throughout, in continuous octosyllabic couplets.
But, in the text, the couplet plays also a much larger part than it
does in the _Lay_, and where it is dropped the substitute is not usually
the light and extremely varied medley of the earlier poem, so much as a
sort of irregular (and sometimes almost regular) stanza arrangement,
sets of (usually three) octosyllables being interspersed with sixes,
rhyming independently. The batches of monorhymed octosyllables sometimes
extend to even four in number, with remarkably good effect, as, for
instance, in the infernal proclamation from the Cross. Altogether the
metrical scheme is of a graver cast than that of the _Lay_, and suits
the more serious and tragical colour of the story.
It has been mentioned above in passing that Jeffrey reviewed _Marmion_
on the whole unfavourably. The story of this review is well known: how
the editor-reviewer (with the best intentions doubtless) sent the proof
with a kind of apology to Scott on the morning of a dinner-party in
Castle Street; how Scott showed at least outward indifference, and Mrs.
Scott a not unamiable petulance; and how, though the affair caused no
open breach of private friendship, it doubtless gave help to the
increasing Whiggery of the _Review_ and its pusillanimous policy in
regard to the Spanish War in severing Scott's connection with it, and
determining him to promote, heart and soul, the opposition venture of
the _Quarterly_. Of this latter it was naturally enough proposed by
Canning that Scott should be editor; but, as naturally, he does not seem
to have even considered the proposal. He would have hated living in
London; no salary that could have been offered him could have done more
than equal, if so much, the stipends of his Sheriffship and the coming
Clerkship, which he would have had to give up; and the work would have
interfered much more seriously than his actual vocations with his
literary avocations. Besides, it is quite certain that he would not have
made a good editor. In the first place, he was fitted neither by
education nor by temperament for the troublesome and 'meticulous'
business of knocking contributions into shape. And, in the second, he
would most assuredly have fallen into the most fatal of all editorial
errors--that of inserting articles, not because they were actually good
or likely to be popular, but because the subjects were interesting, or
the writers agreeable, to himself. But he backed the venture manfully
with advice, by recruiting for it, and afterwards by contributing to it.
It so happened, too, that about the same time he had dissensions with
the publisher as well as with the editor of the _Edinburgh_. Constable,
though he had not entered into the intimate relations with Scott and the
Ballantynes that were afterwards so fatal, had made the spirited bid of
a thousand pounds for _Marmion_, and the much more spirited and (it is
to be feared) much less profitable one of fifteen hundred for the
_Swift_. He had, however, recently taken into partnership a certain Mr.
Hunter of Blackness. This Hunter must have had some merits--he had at
any rate sufficient wit to throw the blame of the fact that sojourn in
Scotland did not always agree with Englishmen on their disgusting habit
of 'eating too much _and not drinking enough_.' But he was a laird of
some family, and he seems to have thought that he might bring into
business the slightly hectoring ways which were then tolerated in
Scotland from persons of quality to persons of none or less. He was a
very bitter Whig, and, therefore, ill disposed towards Scott. And,
lastly, he had, or thought he had, a grievance against his distinguished
'hand' in respect of the _Swift_, to wit, that the editor of that
well-paid compilation did not devote himself to it by any means
exclusively enough. Now Scott, though the most good-natured of men and
only too easy to lead, was absolutely impossible to drive; and his blood
was as ready as the 'bluid of M'Foy' itself to be set on fire at the
notion of a cock-laird from Fife not merely treating a Scott with
discourtesy, but imputing doubtful conduct to him. He offered to throw
up the _Swift_, and though this was not accepted, broke for a time all
other connection with Constable--an unfortunate breach, as it helped to
bring about the establishment of the Ballantyne publishing business, and
so unquestionably began Scott's own ruin. It is remarkable that a
similar impatience of interference afterwards broke Scott's just-begun
connection with Blackwood, which, could it have lasted, would probably
have saved him. For that sagacious person would certainly never have
plunged, or, if he could have helped it, let anyone else plunge, into
Charybdis.
Between the publication of _Marmion_ and that of _The Lady of the Lake_
Scott was very busy in bookmaking and bookselling projects. It was
characteristic of the mixture of bad luck and bad management which hung
on the Ballantynes from the first that even their _Edinburgh Annual
Register_, published as it was in the most stirring times, and written
by Scott, by Southey, and others of the very best hands, was a failure.
He made some visits to London, and (for the scenery of the new poem) to
the Trossachs and Loch Lomond; and had other matters of concern, the
chief of which were the death of his famous bull-terrier Camp, and two
troublesome affairs connected with his brothers. One of these, the
youngest, Daniel, after misconduct of various kinds, had, as mentioned
above, shown the white feather during a negro insurrection in Jamaica,
and so disgusted his brother that when he came home to die, Scott would
neither see him, nor, when he died, go to his funeral. The other
concerned his brother Thomas, who, after his failure as a writer, had
gone from prudential motives to the Isle of Man, where he for a time was
an officer in the local Fencibles. But before leaving Edinburgh, and
while he was still a practising lawyer, his brother had appointed him to
a small post in his own gift as Clerk. Not only was there nothing
discreditable in this according to the idea of any time,--for Thomas
Scott's education and profession qualified him fully for the
office,--but there were circumstances which, at that time, showed rather
heroic and uncommon virtue. For the actual vacancy had occurred in a
higher and more valuable post, also in Scott's gift, and he, instead of
appointing his brother to this, promoted a deserving subordinate
veteran, and gave the lower and less valuable place to Thomas. The
latter's circumstances, however, obliged him to perform his duties by
deputy, and a Commission then sitting ultimately abolished the office
altogether, with a retiring allowance of about half the salary. Certain
Whig peers took this up as a job, and Lord Lauderdale, supported by Lord
Holland, made in the House of Lords very offensive charges against Scott
personally for having appointed his brother to a place which he knew
would be abolished,[13] and against Thomas for claiming compensation in
respect of duties which he had never performed. The Bill was, however,
carried; but Scott was indignant at the loss threatened to his brother
and the imputation made on himself, and 'cut' Lord Holland at a
semi-public dinner not long afterwards. For this he was and has since
been severely blamed, and his behaviour was perhaps a little
'perfervid.' But everybody knows, or should know, that there are few
things more trying to humanity than to be accused of improper conduct
when a man is hugging himself on having behaved with unusual and
saint-like propriety.
_The Lady of the Lake_ appeared in May 1810, being published by
Ballantyne and Miller, and at once attained enormous popularity. Twenty
thousand copies were sold within the year, two thousand of which were
costly quartos; and while there can be no doubt that this was the
highest point of Scott's poetical vogue, there is, I believe, not much
doubt that the poem has always continued to be a greater favourite with
the general than any other of his. It actually, more than any other,
created the _furore_ for Scottish scenery and touring, which has never
ceased since; it supplied in the descriptions of that scenery, in the
fight between Roderick and Fitz-James, and in other things, his most
popular passages; and it has remained probably the type of his poetry to
the main body of readers.
Yet there are some who like it less than any other of the major
divisions of that poetry, and this is by no means necessarily due either
to a desire to be eccentric or to the subtler but almost equally
illegitimate operation of the want of novelty--of the fact that its best
effects are but repetitions of those of _Marmion_ and the _Lay_. For,
fine as it is, it seems to me to display the drawbacks of Scott's scheme
and method more than any of the longer poems. Douglas, Ellen, Malcolm,
are null; Roderick and the king have a touch of theatricality which I
look for in vain elsewhere in Scott; there is nothing fantastic in the
piece like the Goblin Page, and nothing tragical like Constance. There
is something teasing in what has been profanely called the 'guide-book'
character--the cicerone-like fidelity which contrasts so strongly with
the skilfully subordinated description in the two earlier and even in
the later poems. Moreover, though Ellis ought not to have called the
octosyllable 'the Hudibrastic measure' (which is only a very special
variety of it), he was certainly right in objecting to its great
predominance in unmixed form here.
The critics, however, sang the praises of the poem lustily. Even
Jeffrey--perhaps because it was purely Scottish (he had thought
_Marmion_ not Scottish enough), perhaps because its greater
conventionality appealed to him, perhaps because he wished to make
atonement--was extremely complimentary. And certainly no one need be at
a loss for things to commend positively, whatever may be his comparative
estimate. The fine Spenserian openings (which Byron copied almost
slavishly in the form of the stanza he took for _Harold_), the famous
beginning of the stag, the description of the pass (till Fitz-James
begins to soliloquise), some of the songs (especially the masterly
'Coronach'), the passage of the Fiery Cross, the apparition of the clan
(not perhaps so great as some have thought it, but still great), the
struggle, the guard-room (which shocked Jeffrey dreadfully)--these are
only some of the best things. But I own that I turn from the best of
them to the last stand of the spearmen at Flodden, and the unburying of
the Book in the _Lay_.
It may, perhaps, not be undesirable to anticipate somewhat, in order to
complete the sketch of the verse romances in this chapter; for not very
long after the publication of the _Lady of the Lake_, Scott resumed the
writing of _Waverley_, which effected an entire change in the direction
of his literature; and it was not a twelvemonth later that he planned
the establishment at Abbotsford, which was thenceforward the
headquarters of his life.
The first poem to follow was one which lay out of the series in subject,
scheme, and dress, and which perhaps should rather be counted with his
minor and miscellaneous pieces--_The Vision of Don Roderick_. It was
written with rapidity, even for him, and with a special purpose; the
profits being promised beforehand to the Committee of the Portuguese
Relief Fund, formed to assist the sufferers from Massena's devastations.
It consists of rather less than a hundred Spenserian stanzas, the story
of Roderick merely ushering in a magical revelation, to that too-amorous
monarch, of the fortunes of the Peninsular War and its heroes up to the
date of writing. The _Edinburgh Review_, which hated the war, was very
angry because Scott did not celebrate Sir John Moore (whether as a good
Whig or a bad general it did not explain); but even Jeffrey was not
entirely unfavourable, and the piece was otherwise well received. The
description of the subterranean hall beneath the Cathedral of Toledo is
as good as we should expect, and the verses on Saragossa and on the
forces of the three kingdoms are very fine. But the whole was something
of a _torso_, and it is improbable that Scott could ever have used the
Spenserian stanza to good effect for continuous narrative. Even in its
individual shape, that great form requires the artistic patience as well
as the natural gift of men like its inventor, or like Thomson, Shelley,
and Tennyson, in other times and of other schools, to get the full
effect out of it; while to connect it satisfactorily with its kind and
adjust it to narrative is harder still.
The true succession, however, after this parenthesis, was taken up by
_Rokeby_, which was dated on the very last day of 1812. Its reception
was not exceedingly enthusiastic; for Byron, borrowing most of his
technique and general scheme from Scott, and joining with these greater
apparent passion and a more novel and unfamiliar local colour, had
appeared on the scene as a 'second lion.' The public, a 'great-sized
monster of ingratitudes,' had got accustomed to Scott, if not weary of
him. The title[12] was not very happy; and perhaps some harm was really
done by one of the best of Moore's many good jokes in the _Twopenny
Postbag_, where he represented Scott as coming from Edinburgh to London
'To do all the gentlemen's seats by the way'
in romances of half a dozen cantos.
The poem, however, is a very delightful one, and to some tastes at least
very far above the _Lady of the Lake_. Scott, indeed, clung to the
uninterrupted octosyllable more than ever; but that verse, if a poet
knows how to manage it, is by no means so unsuited for story-telling as
Ellis thought; and Scott had here more story to tell than in any of his
preceding pieces, except _Marmion_. The only character, indeed, in which
one takes much interest is Bertram Risingham; but he is a really
excellent person, the cream of Scott's ruffians, whether in prose or
verse; appearing well, conducting himself better, and ending best of
all. Nor is Oswald, the contrasted villain, by any means to be despised;
while the passages--on which the romance, in contradistinction to the
classical epic, stands or falls--are equal to all but the very best in
_Marmion_ or the _Lay_. Bertram's account of the first and happier
events at Marston Moor, as well as of his feelings as to his
comradeship with Mortham; the singularly beautiful opening of the
second canto--
'Far in the chambers of the west';
with the description of Upper Teesdale; Bertram's clamber on the cliff,
with its reminiscences of the 'Kittle Nine Steps,'--these lead on to
many other things as good, ending with that altogether admirable bit of
workmanship, Bertram's revenge on Oswald and his own death. Matilda is
one of the best of Scott's verse-heroines, except Constance--that is to
say, the best of his good girls--and she has the interest of being
avowedly modelled on 'Green Mantle.' Nor in any of the poems do the
lyrics give more satisfactory setting-off to the main text. Indeed, it
may be questioned whether any contains such a garland as--to mention
only the best--is formed by
'O, Brignall banks are wild and fair';
the exquisite
'A weary lot is thine, fair maid,'
adapted from older matter with a skill worthy of Burns himself; the
capital bravura of Allen-a-Dale; and that noble Cavalier lyric--
'When the dawn on the mountain was misty and grey.'
_The Bridal of Triermain_ was published in 1813, not long after
_Rokeby_, and, like that poem, drew its scenery from the North of
England; but in circumstances, scale, and other ways it forms a pair
with _Harold the Dauntless_, and they had best be noticed together.
_The Lord of the Isles_, the last of the great quintet, appeared in
December 1814. Scott had obtained part of the scenery for it in an
earlier visit to the Hebrides, and the rest in his yachting voyage (see
below) with the Commissioners of Northern Lights, which also gave the
_decor_ for _The Pirate_. The poem was not more popular than _Rokeby_ in
England, and it was even less so in Scotland, chiefly for the reason,
only to be mentioned with all but silent amazement, that it was 'not
bitter enough against England.' Its faults are, of course, obvious
enough. Central story there is simply none; the inconvenience that
arises to the hero from his being addressed by two young ladies cannot
awake any very sympathetic tear, nor does either Edith of Lorn or Isabel
Bruce awaken any violent desire to offer to relieve him of one of them.
The versification, however, is less uniform than that of _Rokeby_ or
_The Lady of the Lake_, and there are excellent passages--the best
being, no doubt, the Abbot's extorted blessing on the Bruce; the great
picture of Loch Coruisk, which, let people say what they will, is
marvellously faithful; part of the voyage (though one certainly could
spare some of the 'merrilys'); the landing in Carrick; the rescue of the
supposed page; and, finally, Bannockburn, which even Jeffrey admired,
though its want of 'animosity' shocked him.
The two last of the great poems--there was indeed a third, _The Field of
Waterloo_, written hastily for a subscription, and not worthy either of
Scott or of the subject--have not by any means the least interest,
either intrinsic or that of curiosity. Indeed, as a matter of liking,
not quite disjoined from criticism, I should put them very high indeed.
Both were issued anonymously, and with indications intended to mislead
readers into the idea that they were by Erskine; the intention being, it
would seem, partly to ascertain how far the author's mere name counted
in his popularity, partly also to 'fly kites' as to the veering of the
public taste in reference to the verse romance in general. By the time
of the publication of _Harold the Dauntless_ in 1817, Scott could hardly
have had any intention of deserting the new way--his own exclusive
right--in which he was already walking firmly. But the _Bridal of
Triermain_ appeared very shortly after _Rokeby_, and was, no doubt,
seriously intended as a test.
In both pieces the author fell back upon his earlier scheme of metre,
the _Christabel_ blend of iambic with anapaestic passages, instead of the
nearly pure iambs of his middle poems. The _Bridal_, partly to encourage
the Erskine notion, it would seem, is hampered by an intermixed
outline-story, told in the introductions, of the wooing and winning of a
certain Lucy by a certain Arthur, both of whom may be very heartily
wished away. But the actual poem is more thoroughly a Romance of
Adventure than even the _Lay_, has much more central interest than that
poem, and is adorned by passages of hardly less beauty than the best of
the earlier piece. It is astonishing how anyone of the slightest
penetration could have entertained the slightest doubt about the
authorship of
'Come hither, come hither, Henry my page,
Whom I saved from the sack of Hermitage';
still more of that of the well-known opening of the Third Canto, one of
the triumphs of that 'science of names' in which Scott was such a
proficient--
'Bewcastle now must keep the Hold,
Speir-Adam's steeds must bide in stall,
Of Hartley-burn the bowmen bold
Must only shoot from battled wall;
And Liddesdale may buckle spur,
And Teviot now may belt the brand,
Tarras and Ewes keep nightly stir,
And Eskdale foray Cumberland!'
But these are only the most unmistakable, not the best. The opening
specification of the Bride; the admirable 'Lyulph's Tale,' with the
first appearance of the castle, and the stanza (suggested no doubt by a
famous picture) of the damsels dragging Arthur's war-gear; the
courtship, and Guendolen's wiles to retain Arthur, and the parting; the
picture of the King's court; the tournament; all these are good enough.
But I am not sure that the description of Sir Roland's tantalised vigil
in the Vale of St. John, with the moonlit valley (itself a worthy
pendant even to the Melrose), and the sudden and successful revelation
of the magic hold when the knight flings his battle-axe, does not even
surpass the Tale. Nor do I think that the actual adventures of this
Childe Roland in the dark towers are inferior. The trials and
temptations are of stock material, but all the best matter is stock, and
this is handled with a rush and dash which more than saves it. I hope
the tiger was only a magic tiger, and went home comfortably with the
damsels of Zaharak. It seems unfair that he should be actually killed.
But this is the only thing that disquiets me; and it is impossible to
praise too much De Vaux's ingenious compromise between tasteless
asceticism and dangerous indulgence in the matter of 'Asia's willing
maids.'
_Harold the Dauntless_ is much slighter, as indeed might be expected,
considering that it was finished in a hurry, long after the author had
given up poetry as a main occupation. But the half burlesque Spenserians
of the overture are very good; the contrasted songs, 'Dweller of the
Cairn' and 'A Danish Maid for Me,' are happy. Harold's interview with
the Chapter is a famous bit of bravura; and all concerning the Castle of
the Seven Shields, from the ballad introducing it, through the
description of its actual appearance (in which, by the way, Scott shows
almost a better grasp of the serious Spenserian stanza than anywhere
else) to the final battle of Odin and Harold, is of the very best
Romantic quality. Perhaps, indeed, it is because (as the _Critical
Review_, the Abdiel of 'classical' orthodoxy among the reviews of the
time, scornfully said), 'both poems are romantic enough to satisfy all
the parlour-boarders of all the ladies' schools in England,' that they
are so pleasant. It is something, in one's grey and critical age, to
feel genuine sympathy with the parlour-boarder.
The chapter has already stretched to nearly the utmost proportions
compatible with the scale of this little book, and we must not indulge
in very many critical remarks on the general character of the
compositions discussed in it. But I have never carried out the plan
(which I think indispensable) of reading over again whatever work,
however well known, one has to write about, with more satisfaction. The
main defects lie on the surface. Despite great felicities of a certain
kind, these poems have no claim to formal perfection, and occasionally
sin by very great carelessness, if not by something worse. The poet
frankly shows himself as one whose appeal is not that of 'jewels five
words long,' set and arranged in phrases of that magical and unending
beauty which the very greatest poets of the world command. His effect,
even in description, is rather of mass than of detail. He does not
attempt analysis in character, and only skirts passion. Although
prodigal enough of incident, he is very careless of connected plot. But
his great and abiding glory is that he revived the art, lost for
centuries in England, of telling an interesting story in verse, of
riveting the attention through thousands of lines of poetry neither
didactic nor argumentative. And of his separate passages, his patches of
description and incident, when the worst has been said of them, it will
remain true that, in their own way and for their own purpose, they
cannot be surpassed. The already noticed comparison of any of Scott's
best verse-tales with _Christabel_, which they formally imitated to some
extent, and with the _White Doe of Rylstone_, which followed them, will
no doubt show that Coleridge and Wordsworth had access to mansions in
the house of poetry where Scott is never seen. But in some respects even
their best passages are not superior to his; and as tales, as romances,
his are altogether superior to theirs.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] It is fair to him to say that he made no public complaints, and
that when some gutter-scribbler in 1810 made charges of plagiarism from
him against Scott, he furnished Southey with the means of clearing him
from all share in the matter (_Lockhart_, iii. 293; Southey's _Life and
Correspondence_, iii. 291). But there is a suspicion of fretfulness even
in the Preface to _Christabel_; and the references to Scott's poetry
(not to himself) in the _Table Talk_, etc., are almost uniformly
disparaging. It is true that these last are not strictly evidence.
[13] The objection taken to this word by precisians seems to ignore a
useful distinction. The _antiquary_ is a collector; the _antiquarian_ a
student or writer. The same person may be both; but he may not.
[14] _Waverley_, chap. vi. It owes a little to Smollett's Introduction
to _Humphry Clinker_, but as usual improves the loan greatly.
[15] Inasmuch as he himself was secretary to the Commission which did
away with it.
[16] Taken from the name of his friend Morritt's place on the Greta.