English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History Part 39

In 1799 he was so fortunate as to receive the appointment of Sheriff of Selkirkshire, with a salary of 300 per annum. His duties were not onerous: he had ample time to scour the country, ostensibly in search of game, and really in seeking for the songs and traditions of Scotland, border ballads, and tales, and in storing his fancy with those picturesque views which he was afterwards to describe so well in verse and prose. In 1802 he was thus enabled to present to the world his first considerable work, _The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, containing many new ballads which he had collected, with very valuable local and historical notes.

This was followed, in 1804, by the metrical romance _of Sir Tristrem_, the original of which was by Thomas of Ercildoune, of the thirteenth century, known as _Thomas the Rhymer_: it was he who dreamed on Huntley bank that he met the Queen of Elfland,

And, till seven years were gone and past, True Thomas on earth was never seen.

The reputation acquired by these productions led the world to expect something distinctly original and brilliant from his pen; a hope which was at once realized.

THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL.--In 1805 appeared his first great poem, _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, which immediately established his fame: it was a charming presentation of the olden time to the new. It originated in a request of the Countess of Dalkeith that he would write a ballad on the legend of Gilpin Horner. The picture of the last minstrel, "infirm and old," fired by remembrance as he begins to tell an old-time story of Scottish valor, is vividly drawn. The bard is supposed to be the last of his fraternity, and to have lived down to 1690. The tale, mixed of truth and fable, is exceedingly interesting. The octo-syllabic measure, with an occasional line of three feet, to break the monotony, is purely minstrelic, and reproduces the effect of the _troubadours and trouveres_.

The wizard agency of Gilpin Horner's brood, and the miracle at the tomb of Michael Scott, are by no means out of keeping with the minstrel and the age of which he sings. The dramatic effects are good, and the descriptions very vivid. The poem was received with great enthusiasm, and rapidly pa.s.sed through several editions. One element of its success is modestly and justly stated by the author in his introduction to a later edition: "The attempt to return to a more simple and natural style of poetry was likely to be welcomed at a time when the public had become tired of heroic hexameters, with all the buckram and binding that belong to them in modern days."

With an annual income of 1000, and an honorable ambition, Scott worked his new literary mine with great vigor. He saw not only fame but wealth within his reach. He entered into a silent partnership with the publisher, James Ballantyne, which was for a long time lucrative, by reason of the unprecedented sums he received for his works. In 1806 he was appointed to the reversion--on the death of the inc.u.mbent--of the clerkship of the Court of Sessions, a place worth 1300 per annum.

OTHER POEMS.--In 1808, before _The Lay_ had lost its freshness, _Marmion_ appeared: it was kindred in subject and form, and was received with equal favor. _The Lady of the Lake_, the most popular of these poems, was published in 1810; and with it his poetical talent culminated. The later poems were not equal to any of those mentioned, although they were not without many beauties and individual excellences.

_The Vision of Don Roderick_, which appeared in 1811, is founded upon the legend of a visit made by one of the Gothic kings of Spain to an enchanted cavern near Toledo. _Rokeby_ was published in 1812; _The Bridal of Triermain_ in 1813; _The Lord of the Isles_, founded upon incidents in the life of Bruce, in 1815; and _Harold the Dauntless_ in 1817. With the decline of his poetic power, manifest to himself, he retired from the field of poetry, but only to appear upon another and a grander field with astonishing brilliancy: it was the domain of the historical romance. Such, however, was the popular estimate of his poetry, that in 1813 the Prince Regent offered him the position of poet-laureate, which was gratefully and wisely declined.

Just at this time the new poets came forth, in his own style, and actuated by his example and success. He recognized in Byron, Moore, Crabbe, and others, genius and talent; and, with his generous spirit, exaggerated their merits by depreciating his own, which he compared to cairngorms beside the real jewels of his compet.i.tors. The mystics, following the lead of the Lake poets, were ready to increase the depreciation. It soon became fashionable to speak of _The Lay_, and _Marmion_, and _The Lady of the Lake_ as spirited little stories, not equal to Byron's, and not to be mentioned beside the occult philosophy of _Thalaba_ and gentle egotism of _The Prelude_. That day is pa.s.sed: even the critical world returns to its first fancies. In the words of Carlyle, a great balance-striker of literary fame, speaking in 1838: "It were late in the day to write criticisms on those metrical romances; at the same time, the great popularity they had seems natural enough. In the first place, there was the indisputable impress of worth, of genuine human force in them ...

Pictures were actually painted and presented; human emotions conceived and sympathized with. Considering that wretched Dellacruscan and other vamping up of wornout tattlers was the staple article then, it may be granted that Scott's excellence was superior and supreme." Without preferring any claim to epic grandeur, or to a rank among the few great poets of the first cla.s.s, Scott is ent.i.tled to the highest eminence in minstrelic power. He is the great modern troubadour. His descriptions of nature are simple and exquisite. There is nothing in this respect more beautiful than the opening of _The Lady of the Lake_. His battle-pieces live and resound again: what can be finer than Flodden field in _Marmion_, and The Battle of Beal and Duine in _The Lady of the Lake_?

His love scenes are at once chaste, impa.s.sioned, and tender; and his harp songs and battle lyrics are unrivalled in harmony. And, besides these merits, he gives us everywhere glimpses of history, which, before his day, were covered by the clouds of ignorance, and which his breath was to sweep away.

Such are his claims as the first of the new romantic poets. We might here leave him, to consider his prose works in another connection; but it seems juster to his fame to continue and complete a sketch of his life, because all its parts are of connected interest. The poems were a grand proem to the novels.

While he was achieving fame by his poetry, and reaping golden rewards as well as golden opinions, he was also ambitious to establish a family name and estate. To this end, he bought a hundred acres of land on the banks of the Tweed, near Melrose Abbey, and added to these from time to time by the purchase of adjoining properties. Here he built a great mansion, which became famous as Abbotsford: he called it one of his air-castles reduced to solid stone and mortar. Here he played the part of a feudal proprietor, and did the honors for Scotland to distinguished men from all quarters: his hospitality was generous and unbounded.

THE WAVERLEY NOVELS.--As early as 1805, while producing his beautiful poems, he had tried his hand upon a story in prose, based upon the stirring events in 1745, resulting in the fatal battle of Culloden, which gave a death-blow to the cause of the Stuarts, and to their attempts to regain the crown. Dissatisfied with the effort, and considering it at that time less promising than poetry, he had thrown the ma.n.u.script aside in a desk with some old fishing-tackle. There it remained undisturbed for eight years. With the decline of his poetic powers, he returned to the former notion of writing historical fiction; and so, exhuming his ma.n.u.script, he modified and finished it, and presented it anonymously to the world in 1814. He had at first proposed the t.i.tle of _Waverley, or 'Tis Fifty Years Since_, which was afterwards altered to '_Tis Sixty Years Since_. This, the first of his splendid series of fictions, which has given a name to the whole series, is by no means the best; but it was good and novel enough to strike a chord in the popular heart at once. Its delineations of personal characters already known to history were masterly; its historical pictures were in a new and striking style of art. There were men yet living to whom he could appeal--men who had _been out_ in the '45, who had seen Charles Edward and many of the originals of the author's heroes and heroines. In his researches and wanderings, he had imbibed the very spirit of Scottish life and history; and the Waverley novels are among the most striking literary types and expounders of history.

PARTICULAR MENTION.--In 1815, before half the reading world had delighted themselves with _Waverley_, his rapid pen had produced _Guy Mannering_, a story of English and Scottish life, superior to Waverley in its original descriptions and more general interest. He is said to have written it in six weeks at Christmas time. The scope of this volume will not permit a critical examination of the Waverley novels. The world knows them almost by heart. In _The Antiquary_, which appeared in 1816, we have a rare delineation of local manners, the creation of distinct characters, and a humorous description of the sudden arming of volunteers in fear of invasion by the French. _The Antiquary_ was a free portrait or sketch of Mr. George Constable, filled in perhaps unconsciously from the author's own life; for he, no less than his friend, delighted in collecting relics, and in studying out the lines, praetoria, and general castrametation of the Roman armies. Andrew Gemmels was the original of that Edie Ochiltree who was bold enough to dispute the antiquary's more learned a.s.sertions.

In the same year, 1816, was published the first series of _The Tales of my Landlord_, containing _The Black Dwarf_ and _Old Mortality_, both valuable as contributions to Scottish history. The former is not of much literary merit; and the author was so little pleased with it, that he brought it to a hasty conclusion; the latter is an extremely animated sketch of the sufferings of the Covenanters at the hands of Grahame of Claverhouse, with a fairer picture of that redoubted commander than the Covenanters have drawn. _Rob Roy_, the best existing presentation of Highland life and manners, appeared in 1817. Thus Scott's prolific pen, like nature, produced annuals. In 1818 appeared _The Heart of Mid-Lothian_, that touching story of Jeanie and Effie Deans, which awakens the warmest sympathy of every reader, and teaches to successive generations a moral lesson of great significance and power.

In 1819 he wrote _The Bride of Lammermoor_, the story of a domestic tragedy, which warns the world that outraged nature will sometimes a.s.sert herself in fury; a story so popular that it has been since arranged as an Italian opera. With that came _The Legend of Montrose_, another historic sketch of great power, and especially famous for the character of Major Dugald Dalgetty, soldier of fortune and pedant of Marischal College, Aberdeen. The year 1819 also beheld the appearance of _Ivanhoe_, which many consider the best of the series. It describes rural England during the regency of John, the romantic return of Richard Lion-heart, the glowing embers of Norman and Saxon strife, and the story of the Templars.

His portraiture of the Jewess Rebecca is one of the finest in the Waverley Gallery.

The next year, 1820, brought forth _The Monastery_, the least popular of the novels thus far produced; and, as Scott tells us, on the principle of sending a second arrow to find one that was lost, he wrote _The Abbot_, a sequel, to which we are indebted for a masterly portrait of Mary Stuart in her prison of Lochleven. The _Abbot_, to some extent, redeemed and sustained its weaker brother. In this same year Scott was created a baronet, in recognition of his great services to English Literature and history. The next five years added worthy companion-novels to the marvellous series. _Kenilworth_ is founded upon the visit of Queen Elizabeth to her favorite Leicester, in that picturesque palace in Warwickshire, and contains that beautiful and touching picture of Amy Robsart. _The Pirate_ is a story the scene of which is laid in Shetland, and the material for which he gathered in a pleasure tour among those islands. In _The Fortunes of Nigel_, London life during the reign of James I. is described; and it contains life-like portraits of that monarch, of his unfortunate son, Prince Charles, and of Buckingham. _Peveril of the Peak_ is a story of the time of Charles II., which is not of equal merit with the other novels. _Quentin Durward_, one of the very best, describes the strife between Louis XI. of France and Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and gives full-length historic portraits of these princes. The scene of _St. Ronan's Well_ is among the English lakes in c.u.mberland, and the story describes the manners of the day at a retired watering-place. _Red Gauntlet_ is a curious narrative connected with one of the latest attempts of Charles Edward--abortive at the outset--to effect a rising in Scotland. In 1825 appeared his _Tales of the Crusaders_, comprising _The Betrothed_ and _The Talisman_, of which the latter is the more popular, as it describes with romantic power the deeds of Richard and his comrades in the second crusade.

A glance at this almost tabular statement will show the scope and versatility of his mind, the historic range of his studies, the fertility of his fancy, and the rapidity of his pen. He had attained the height of fame and happiness; his success had partaken of the miraculous; but misfortune came to mar it all, for a time.

PECUNIARY TROUBLES.--In the financial crash of 1825-6, he was largely involved. As a silent partner in the publishing house of the Ballantynes, and as connected with them in the affairs of Constable & Co., he found himself, by the failure of these houses, legally liable to the amount of 117,000. To relieve himself, he might have taken the benefit of the _bankrupt law_; or, such was his popularity, that his friends desired to raise a subscription to cover the amount of his indebtedness; but he was now to show by his conduct that, if the author was great, the man was greater. He refused all a.s.sistance, and even rejected general sympathy. He determined to relieve himself, to pay his debts, or die in the effort. He left Abbotsford, and took frugal lodgings in Edinburgh; curtailed all his expenses, and went to work--which was over-work--not for fame, but for guineas; and he gained both.

His first novel after this, and the one which was to test the practicability of his plan, was _Woodstock_, a tale of the troublous times of the Civil War, in the last chapter of which he draws the picture of the restored Charles coming in peaceful procession to his throne. This he wrote in three months; and for it he received upwards of 8000. With this and the proceeds of his succeeding works, he was enabled to pay over to his creditors the large sum of 70,000; a feat unparalleled in the history of literature. But the anxiety and the labor were too much even for his powerful const.i.tution: he died in his heroic attempt.

HIS MANLY PURPOSE.--More for money than for reputation, he compiled hastily, and from partial and incomplete material, a _Life of Napoleon Bonaparte_, which appeared in 1827. The style is charming and the work eminently readable; but it contains many faults, is by no means unprejudiced, and, as far as pure truth is concerned, is, in parts, almost as much of a romance as any of the Waverley novels; but, for the first two editions, he received the enormous sum of 18,000. The work was accomplished in the s.p.a.ce of one year. Among the other _task-work_ books were the two series of _The Chronicles of the Canongate_ (1827 and 1828), the latter of which contains the beautiful story of _St. Valentine's Day_, or _The Fair Maid of Perth_. It is written in his finest vein, especially in those chapters which describe the famous Battle of the Clans. In 1829 appeared _Anne of Geierstein_, another story presenting the figure of Charles of Burgundy, and his defeat and death in the battle with the Swiss at Nancy.

POWERS OVERTASKED.--And now new misfortunes were to come upon him. In 1826 he had lost his wife: his sorrows weighed upon him, and his superhuman exertions were too much for his strength. In 1829 he was seized with a nervous attack, accompanied by hemorrhages of a peculiar kind. In February, 1830, a slight paralysis occurred, from which he speedily recovered; this was soon succeeded by another; and it was manifest that his mind was giving way. His last novel, _Count Robert of Paris_, was begun in 1830, as one of a fourth series of _The Tales of My Landlord_: it bears manifest marks of his failing powers, but is of value for the historic stores which it draws from the Byzantine historians, and especially from the unique work of Anna Comnena: "I almost wish," he said, "I had named it Anna Comnena." A slight attack of apoplexy in November, 1830, was followed by a severer one in the spring of 1831. Even then he tried to write, and was able to produce _Castle Dangerous_. With that the powerful pen ended its marvellous work. The manly spirit still chafed that his debts were not paid, and could not be, by the labor of his hands.

FRUITLESS JOURNEY.--In order to divert his mind, and, as a last chance for health, a trip to the Mediterranean was projected. The Barham frigate was placed by the government at his disposal; and he wandered with a party of friends to Malta, Naples, Pompeii, Paestum, and Rome. But feeling the end approaching, he exclaimed, "Let us to Abbotsford:" for the final hour he craved the _grata quies patriae_; to which an admiring world has added the remainder of the verse--_sed et omnis terra sepulchrum_. It was not a moment too soon: he travelled northward to the Rhine, down that river by boat, and reached London "totally exhausted;" thence, as soon as he could be moved, he was taken to Abbotsford.

RETURN AND DEATH.--There he lingered from July to September, and died peacefully on the 21st of the latter month, surrounded by his family and lulled to repose by the rippling of the Tweed. Among the noted dead of 1832, including Goethe, Cuvier, Crabbe, and Mackintosh, he was the most distinguished; and all Scotland and all the civilized world mourned his loss.

HIS FAME.--At Edinburgh a colossal monument has been erected to his memory, within which sits his marble figure. Numerous other memorial columns are found in other cities, but all Scotland is his true monument, every province and town of which he has touched with his magic pen.

Indeed, Scotland may be said to owe to him a new existence. In the words of Lord Meadowbank,--who presided at the Theatrical Fund dinner in 1827, and who there made the first public announcement of the authorship of the Waverley novels,--Scott was "the mighty magician who rolled back the current of time, and conjured up before our living senses the men and manners of days which have long since pa.s.sed away ... It is he who has conferred a new reputation on our national character, and bestowed on Scotland an imperishable name."

Besides his poetry and novels, he wrote very much of a miscellaneous character for the reviews, and edited the works of the poets with valuable introductions and congenial biographies. Most of his fictions are historical in plot and personages; and those which deal with Scottish subjects are enriched by those types of character, those descriptions of manners--national and local--and those peculiarities of language, which give them additional and more useful historical value. It has been justly said that, by his masterly handling of historical subjects, he has taught the later historians how to write, how to give vivid and pictorial effects to what was before a detail of chronology or a dry schedule of philosophy.

His critical powers may be doubted: he was too kind and genial for a critic; and in reading contemporary authors seems to have endued their inferior works with something of his own fancy.

The _Life of Scott_, by his son-in-law, J. G. Lockhart, is one of the most complete and interesting biographies in the language. In it the student will find a list of all his works, with the dates of their production; and will wonder that an author who was so rapid and so prolific could write so much that was of the highest excellence. If not the greatest genius of his age, he was its greatest literary benefactor; and it is for this reason that we have given so much s.p.a.ce to the record of his life and works.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY: BYRON AND MOORE.

Early Life of Byron. Childe Harold and Eastern Tales. Unhappy Marriage.

Philh.e.l.lenism and Death. Estimate of his Poetry. Thomas Moore.

Anacreon. Later Fortunes. Lalla Rookh. His Diary. His Rank as Poet.

In immediate succession after Scott comes the name of Byron. They were both great lights of their age; but the former may be compared to a planet revolving in regulated and beneficent beauty through an unclouded sky; while the latter is more like a comet whose lurid light came flashing upon the sight in wild and threatening career.

Like Scott, Byron was a prolific poet; and he owes to Scott the general suggestion and much of the success of his tales in verse. His powers of description were original and great: he adopted the new romantic tone, while in his more studied works he was an imitator and a champion of a former age, and a contemner of his own.

EARLY LIFE OF BYRON.--The Honorable George Gordon Byron, afterwards Lord Byron, was born in London on the 22d of January, 1788. While he was yet an infant, his father--Captain Byron--a dissipated man, deserted his mother; and she went with her child to live upon a slender pittance at Aberdeen.

She was a woman of peculiar disposition, and was unfortunate in the training of her son. She alternately petted and quarrelled with him, and taught him to emulate her irregularities of temper. On account of an accident at his birth, he had a malformation in one of his feet, which, producing a slight limp in his gait through life, rendered his sensitive nature quite unhappy, the signs of which are to be discerned in his drama, _The Deformed Transformed_. From the age of five years he went to school at Aberdeen, and very early began to exhibit traits of generosity, manliness, and an imperious nature: he also displayed great quickness in those studies which pleased his fancy.

In 1798, when he was eleven years old, his grand-uncle, William, the fifth Lord Byron, died, and was succeeded in the t.i.tle and estates by the young Gordon Byron, who was at once removed with his mother to Newstead Abbey.

In 1801 he was sent to Harrow, where he was well esteemed by his comrades, but was not considered forward in his studies.

He seems to have been of a susceptible nature, for, while still a boy, he fell in love several times. His third experience in this way was undoubtedly the strongest of his whole life. The lady was Miss Mary Chaworth, who did not return his affection. His last interview with her he has powerfully described in his poem called _The Dream_. From Harrow he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he lived an idle and self-indulgent life, reading discursively, but not studying the prescribed course. As early as November, 1806, before he was nineteen, he published his first volume, _Poems on Various Occasions_, for private distribution, which was soon after enlarged and altered, and presented to the public as _Hours of Idleness, a Series of Poems Original and Translated, by George Gordon, Lord Byron, A Minor_. These productions, although by no means equal to his later poems, are not without merit, and did not deserve the exceedingly severe criticism they met with from the _Edinburgh Review_.

The critics soon found that they had bearded a young lion: in his rage, he sprang out upon the whole literary craft in a satire, imitated from Juvenal, called _The English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, in which he ridicules and denounces the very best poets of the day furiously but most uncritically. That his conduct was absurd and unjust, he himself allowed afterwards; and he attempted to call in and destroy all the copies of this work.

CHILDE HAROLD AND EASTERN TALES.--In March, 1809, he took his seat in the House of Lords, where he did not accomplish much. He took up his residence at Newstead Abbey, his ancestral seat, most of which was in a ruinous condition; and after a somewhat disorderly life there, he set out on his continental tour, spending some time at Lisbon, Cadiz, Gibraltar, Malta, and in Greece. On his return, after two years' absence, he brought a summary of his travels in poetical form,--the first part of _Childe Harold_; and also a more elaborated poem ent.i.tled _Hints from Horace_.

Upon the former he set little value; but he thought the latter a n.o.ble work. The world at once reversed his decision. The satire in the Latin vein is scarcely read; while to the first cantos of _Childe Harold_ it was due that, in his own words, "he woke up one morning and found himself famous." As fruits of the eastern portion of his travels, we have the romantic tale, _The Giaour_, published in 1811, and _The Bride of Abydos_, which appeared in 1813. The popularity of these oriental stories was mainly due to their having been conceived on the spots they describe. In 1814 he issued _The Corsair_, perhaps the best of these sensational stories; and with singular versatility, in the same year, inspired by the beauty of the Jewish history, he produced _The Hebrew Melodies_, some of which are fervent, touching, and melodious. Late in the same year _Lara_ was published, in the same volume with Mr. Rogers's _Jacqueline_, which it threw completely into the shade. Thus closed one distinct period of his life and of his authorship. A change came over the spirit of his dream.