Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott Volume IV Part 2

TO THE REV. GEORGE CRABBE, MUSTON, GRANTHAM.

MY DEAR SIR,--I was favored with your kind letter some time ago. Of all people in the world, I am least ent.i.tled to demand regularity of correspondence; for being, one way and another, doomed to a great deal more writing than suits my indolence, I am sometimes tempted to envy the reverend hermit of Prague, confessor to the niece of Queen Gorboduc, who never saw either pen or ink. Mr. Brunton is a very respectable clergyman of Edinburgh, and I believe the work in which he has solicited your a.s.sistance is one adopted by the General a.s.sembly, or Convocation of the Kirk. I have no notion that he has any individual interest in it; he is a well-educated and liberal-minded man, and generally esteemed. I have no particular acquaintance with him myself, though we speak together. He is at this very moment sitting on the outside of the bar of our Supreme Court, within which I am f.a.gging as a clerk; but as he is hearing the opinion of the Judges upon an action for augmentation of stipend to him and to his brethren, it would not, I conceive, be a very favorable time to canva.s.s a literary topic. But you are quite safe with him; and having so much command of scriptural language, which appears to me essential to the devotional poetry of Christians, I am sure you can a.s.sist his purpose much more than any man alive.

I think those hymns which do not immediately recall the warm and exalted language of the Bible are apt to be, however elegant, rather cold and flat for the purposes of devotion. You will readily believe that I do not approve of the vague and indiscriminate Scripture language which the fanatics of old and the modern Methodists have adopted, but merely that solemnity and peculiarity of diction, which at once puts the reader and hearer upon his guard as to the purpose of the poetry. To my Gothic ear, indeed, the _Stabat Mater_, the _Dies Irae_, and some of the other hymns of the Catholic Church, are more solemn and affecting than the fine cla.s.sical poetry of Buchanan; the one has the gloomy dignity of a Gothic church, and reminds us instantly of the worship to which it is dedicated; the other is more like a Pagan temple, recalling to our memory the cla.s.sical and fabulous deities.[10] This is, probably, all referable to the a.s.sociation of ideas--that is, if the "a.s.sociation of ideas" continues to be the universal pick-lock of all metaphysical difficulties, as it was when I studied moral philosophy--or to any other more fashionable universal solvent which may have succeeded to it in reputation. Adieu, my dear sir,--I hope you and your family will long enjoy all happiness and prosperity. Never be discouraged from the constant use of your charming talent. The opinions of reviewers are really too contradictory to found anything upon them, whether they are favorable or otherwise; for it is usually their princ.i.p.al object to display the abilities of the writers of the critical lucubrations themselves. Your Tales are universally admired here. I go but little out, but the few judges whose opinions I have been accustomed to look up to, are unanimous. Ever yours, most truly,

WALTER SCOTT.

TO WALTER SCOTT, ESQ., EDINBURGH.

_MY DEAR SIR_,--Law, then, is your profession--I mean a profession you give your mind and time to--but how "f.a.g as a _clerk_"? Clerk is a name for a learned person, I know, in our Church; but how the same hand which held the pen of Marmion holds that with which a clerk f.a.gs, unless a clerk means something vastly more than I understand, is not to be comprehended. I wait for elucidation. Know you, dear sir, I have often thought I should love to read _reports_--that is, brief histories of extraordinary cases, with the judgments. If that is what is meant by _reports_, such reading must be pleasant; but, probably, I entertain wrong ideas, and could not understand the books I think so engaging. Yet I conclude there are _histories of cases_, and have often thought of consulting Hatchard whether he knew of such kind of reading, but hitherto I have rested in ignorance.... Yours truly,

GEORGE CRABBE.

TO THE REV. GEORGE CRABBE.

MY DEAR SIR,--I have too long delayed to thank you for the most kind and acceptable present of your three volumes. Now am I doubly armed, since I have a set for my cabin at Abbotsford as well as in town; and, to say truth, the auxiliary copy arrived in good time, for my original one suffers as much by its general popularity among my young people, as a popular candidate from the hugs and embraces of his democratical admirers. The clearness and accuracy of your painting, whether natural or moral, renders, I have often remarked, your works generally delightful to those whose youth might render them insensible to the other beauties with which they abound. There are a sort of pictures--surely the most valuable, were it but for that reason--which strike the uninitiated as much as they do the connoisseur, though the last alone can render reason for his admiration. Indeed our old friend Horace knew what he was saying when he chose to address his ode, "_Virginibus puerisque_," and so did Pope when he told somebody he had the mob on the side of his version of Homer, and did not mind the high-flying critics at b.u.t.ton's. After all, if a faultless poem could be produced, I am satisfied it would tire the critics themselves, and annoy the whole reading world with the spleen.

You must be delightfully situated in the Vale of Belvoir--a part of England for which I entertain a special kindness, for the sake of the gallant hero, Robin Hood, who, as probably you will readily guess, is no small favorite of mine; his indistinct ideas concerning the doctrine of _meum_ and _tuum_ being no great objection to an outriding Borderer. I am happy to think that your station is under the protection of the Rutland family, of whom fame speaks highly. Our lord of the "cairn and the scaur," waste wilderness and hungry hills, for many a league around, is the Duke of Buccleuch, the head of my clan; a kind and benevolent landlord, a warm and zealous friend, and the husband of a lady--_comme il y en a peu_. They are both great admirers of Mr. Crabbe's poetry, and would be happy to know him, should he ever come to Scotland, and venture into the Gothic halls of a Border chief.

The early and uniform kindness of this family, with the friendship of the late and present Lord Melville, enabled me, some years ago, to exchange my toils as a barrister, for the lucrative and respectable situation of one of the Clerks of our Supreme Court, which only requires a certain routine of official duty, neither laborious nor calling for any exertion of the mind; so that my time is entirely at my own command, except when I am attending the Court, which seldom occupies more than two hours of the morning during sitting. I besides hold _in commendam_ the Sheriffdom of Ettrick Forest, which is now no forest; so that I am a pluralist as to law appointments, and have, as Dogberry says, "two gowns, and everything handsome about me."[11]

I have often thought it is the most fortunate thing for bards like you and me to have an established profession, and professional character, to render us independent of those worthy gentlemen, the retailers, or, as some have called them, the midwives of literature, who are so much taken up with the abortions they bring into the world, that they are scarcely able to bestow the proper care upon young and flourishing babes like ours. That, however, is only a mercantile way of looking at the matter; but did any of my sons show poetical talent, of which, to my great satisfaction, there are no appearances, the first thing I should do would be to inculcate upon him the duty of cultivating some honorable profession, and qualifying himself to play a more respectable part in society than the mere poet. And as the best corollary of my doctrine, I would make him get your tale of The Patron by heart from beginning to end. It is curious enough that you should have republished The Village for the purpose of sending your young men to college, and I should have written The Lay of the Last Minstrel for the purpose of buying a new horse for the Volunteer Cavalry. I must now send this scrawl into town to get a frank, for, G.o.d knows, it is not worthy of postage. With the warmest wishes for your health, prosperity, and increase of fame--though it needs not--I remain most sincerely and affectionately yours,

WALTER SCOTT.[12]

The contrast of the two poets' epistolary styles is highly amusing; but I have introduced these specimens less on that account, than as marking the cordial confidence which a very little intercourse was sufficient to establish between men so different from each other in most of the habits of life. It will always be considered as one of the most pleasing peculiarities in Scott's history, that he was the friend of every great contemporary poet: Crabbe, as we shall see more largely in the sequel, was no exception to the rule: yet I could hardly name one of them who, manly principles and the cultivation of literature apart, had many points of resemblance to him; and surely not one who had fewer than Crabbe.

Scott continued, this year, his care for the Edinburgh Annual Register--the historical department of which was again supplied by Mr. Southey. The poetical miscellany owed its opening piece, the Ballad of Polydore, to the readiness with which Scott entered into correspondence with its author, who sent it to him anonymously, with a letter which, like the verses, might well have excited much interest in his mind, even had it not concluded with stating the writer's age to be _fifteen_. Scott invited the youth to visit him in the country, was greatly pleased with the modesty of his manners and the originality of his conversation, and wrote to Joanna Baillie, that, "though not one of the crimps for the muses," he thought he could hardly be mistaken in believing that in the boyish author of Polydore he had discovered a true genius. When I mention the name of my friend William Howison of Clydegrove, it will be allowed that he prognosticated wisely. He continued to correspond with this young gentleman and his father, and gave both much advice, for which both were most grateful. There was inserted in the same volume a set of beautiful stanzas, inscribed to Scott by Mr. Wilson, under the t.i.tle of The Magic Mirror, in which that enthusiastic young poet also bears a lofty and lasting testimony to the gentle kindness with which his earlier efforts had been encouraged by him whom he designates, for the first time, by what afterwards became one of his standing t.i.tles, that of The Great Magician.

"Onwards a figure came, with stately brow, And, as he glanced upon the ruin'd pile A look of regal pride, 'Say, who art thou'

(His countenance bright'ning with a scornful smile, He sternly cried), 'whose footsteps rash profane The wild romantic realm where I have willed to reign?'

"But ere to these proud words I could reply, How changed that scornful face to soft and mild!

A witching frenzy glitter'd in his eye, Harmless, withal, as that of playful child.

And when once more the gracious vision spoke, I felt the voice familiar to mine ear; While many a faded dream of earth awoke, Connected strangely with that unknown seer, Who now stretch'd forth his arm, and on the sand A circle round me traced, as with magician's wand," etc.

Scott's own chief contribution to this volume was a brief account of the Life and Poems (hitherto unpublished)[13] of Patrick Carey, whom he p.r.o.nounces to have been not only as stout a Cavalier, but almost as good a poet as his contemporary Lovelace. That Essay was expanded, and prefixed to an edition of Carey's Trivial Poems and Triolets, which Scott published in 1820; but its circulation in either shape has been limited: and I believe I shall be gratifying the majority of my readers by here transcribing some paragraphs of his beautiful and highly characteristic introduction of this forgotten poet of the seventeenth century.

"The present age has been so distinguished for research into poetical antiquities, that the discovery of an unknown bard is, in certain chosen literary circles, held as curious as an augmentation of the number of fixed stars would be esteemed by astronomers. It is true, these 'blessed twinklers of the night' are so far removed from us, that they afford no more light than serves barely to evince their existence to the curious investigator; and in like manner the pleasure derived from the revival of an obscure poet is rather in proportion to the rarity of his volume than to its merit; yet this pleasure is not inconsistent with reason and principle. We know by every day's experience the peculiar interest which the lapse of ages confers upon works of human art. The clumsy strength of the ancient castles, which, when raw from the hand of the builder, inferred only the oppressive power of the barons who reared them, is now broken by partial ruin into proper subjects for the poet or the painter; and as Mason has beautifully described the change,

'Time Has mouldered into beauty many a tower, Which, when it frowned with all its battlements, Was only terrible.'

"The monastery, too, which was at first but a fantastic monument of the superst.i.tious devotion of monarchs, or of the purple pride of fattened abbots, has gained by the silent influence of antiquity the power of impressing awe and devotion. Even the stains and weather-taints upon the battlements of such buildings add, like the scars of a veteran, to the affecting impression:--

'For time has softened what was harsh when new, And now the stains are all of sober hue; The living stains which nature's hand alone, Profuse of life, pours forth upon the stone.'--_Crabbe._

"If such is the effect of Time in adding interest to the labors of the architect, if partial destruction is compensated by the additional interest of that which remains, can we deny his exerting a similar influence upon those subjects which are sought after by the bibliographer and poetical antiquary? The obscure poet, who is detected by their keen research, may indeed have possessed but a slender portion of that spirit which has buoyed up the works of distinguished contemporaries during the course of centuries, yet still his verses shall, in the lapse of time, acquire an interest, which they did not possess in the eyes of his own generation. The wrath of the critic, like that of the son of Ossian, flies from the foe that is low. Envy, base as she is, has one property of the lion, and cannot prey on carcases; she must drink the blood of a sentient victim, and tear the limbs that are yet warm with vital life. Faction, if the ancient has suffered her persecution, serves only to endear him to the recollection of posterity, whose generous compa.s.sion overpays him for the injuries he sustained while in life. And thus freed from the operation of all unfavorable prepossessions, his merit, if he can boast any, has more than fair credit with his readers. This, however, is but part of his advantages. The mere attribute of antiquity is of itself sufficient to interest the fancy by the lively and powerful train of a.s.sociations which it awakens. Had the pyramids of Egypt, equally disagreeable in form and senseless as to utility, been the work of any living tyrant, with what feelings, save those of scorn and derision, could we have regarded such a waste of labor? But the sight, nay, the very mention of these wonderful monuments, is a.s.sociated with the dark and sublime ideas which vary their tinge according to the favorite hue of our studies. The Christian divine recollects the land of banishment and of refuge; to the eyes of the historian's fancy, they excite the shades of Pharaohs and of Ptolemies, of Cheops and Merops, and Sesostris drawn in triumph by his sceptred slaves; the philosopher beholds the first rays of moral truth as they dawned on the hieroglyphic sculptures of Thebes and Memphis; and the poet sees the fires of magic blazing upon the mystic altars of a land of incantation. Nor is the grandeur of size essential to such feelings, any more than the properties of grace and utility. Even the rudest remnant of a feudal tower, even the obscure and almost indistinguishable vestige of an altogether unknown edifice, has power to awaken such trains of fancy. We have a fellow interest with the 'son of the winged days,' over whose fallen habitation we tread:--

'The ma.s.sy stones, though hewn most roughly, show The hand of man had once at least been there.'--_Wordsworth._

"Similar combinations give a great part of the delight we receive from ancient poetry. In the rude song of the Scald, we regard less the strained imagery and extravagance of epithet, than the wild impressions which it conveys of the dauntless resolution, savage superst.i.tion, rude festivity, and ceaseless depredation of the ancient Scandinavians. In the metrical romance, we pardon the long, tedious, and bald enumeration of trifling particulars; the reiterated sameness of the eternal combats between knights and giants; the overpowering languor of the love speeches, and the merciless length and similarity of description--when Fancy whispers to us that such strains may have cheered the sleepless pillow of the Black Prince on the memorable eves of Cressy or Poictiers. There is a certain romance of Ferumbras, which Robert the Bruce read to his few followers, to divert their thoughts from the desperate circ.u.mstances in which they were placed, after an unsuccessful attempt to rise against the English. Is there a true Scotsman who, being aware of this anecdote, would be disposed to yawn over the romance of Ferumbras? Or, on the contrary, would not the image of the dauntless hero, inflexible in defeat, beguiling the anxiety of his war-worn attendants by the lays of the minstrel, give to these rude lays themselves an interest beyond Greek and Roman fame?"

The year 1812 had the usual share of minor literary labors--such as contributions to the journals; and before it closed, the Romance of Rokeby was finished. Though it had been long in hand, the MS. sent to the printer bears abundant evidence of its being the _prima cura_: three cantos at least reached Ballantyne through the Melrose post--written on paper of various sorts and sizes--full of blots and interlineations--the closing couplets of a despatch now and then encircling the page, and mutilated by the breaking of the seal.

According to the recollection of Mr. Cadell, though James Ballantyne read the poem, as the sheets were advancing through the press, to his usual circle of literary _dilettanti_, their whispers were far from exciting in Edinburgh such an intensity of expectation as had been witnessed in the case of The Lady of the Lake. He adds, however, that it was looked for with undiminished anxiety in the south. "Send me _Rokeby_," Byron writes to Murray on seeing it advertised,--"Who the devil is he? No matter--he has good connections, and will be well introduced."[14] Such, I suppose, was the general feeling in London. I well remember, being in those days a young student at Oxford, how the booksellers' shops there were beleaguered for the earliest copies, and how he that had been so fortunate as to secure one was followed to his chambers by a tribe of friends, all as eager to hear it read as ever horse-jockeys were to see the conclusion of a match at Newmarket; and indeed not a few of those enthusiastic academics had bets depending on the issue of the struggle, which they considered the elder favorite as making, to keep his own ground against the fiery rivalry of Childe Harold.

The poem was published a day or two before Scott returned to Edinburgh from Abbotsford, between which place and Mertoun he had divided his Christmas vacation. On the 9th and 10th of January, 1813, he thus addresses his friends at Sunning Hill and Hampstead:--

TO GEORGE ELLIS, ESQ.

MY DEAR ELLIS,--I am sure you will place it to anything rather than want of kindness that I have been so long silent--so very long, indeed, that I am not quite sure whether the fault is on my side or yours--but, be it what it may, it can never, I am sure, be laid to forgetfulness in either. This comes to train you on to the merciful reception of a Tale of the Civil Wars; not political, however, but merely a pseudo-romance of pseudo-chivalry. I have converted a l.u.s.ty buccaneer into a hero with some effect; but the worst of all my undertakings is, that my rogue always, in despite of me, turns out my hero. I know not how this should be. I am myself, as Hamlet says, "indifferent honest;" and my father, though an attorney (as you will call him), was one of the most honest men, as well as gentlemanlike, that ever breathed. I am sure I can bear witness to that--for if he had at all _smacked_, or _grown to_, like the son of Lancelot Gobbo, he might have left us all as rich as Croesus, besides having the pleasure of taking a fine primrose path himself, instead of squeezing himself through a tight gate and up a steep ascent, and leaving us the decent competence of an honest man's children. As to our more ancient pedigree, I should be loath to vouch for them. My grandfather was a horse-jockey and cattle-dealer, and made a fortune; my great-grandfather a Jacobite and traitor (as the times called him), and lost one; and after him intervened one or two half-starved lairds, who rode a lean horse, and were followed by leaner greyhounds; gathered with difficulty a hundred pounds from a hundred tenants; fought duels; c.o.c.ked their hats,--and called themselves gentlemen. Then we come to the old Border times, cattle-driving, halters, and so forth, for which, in the matter of honesty, very little I suppose can be said--at least in modern acceptation of the word. Upon the whole, I am inclined to think it is owing to the earlier part of this inauspicious generation that I uniformly find myself in the same sc.r.a.pe in my fables, and that, in spite of the most obstinate determination to the contrary, the greatest rogue in my canvas always stands out as the most conspicuous and prominent figure. All this will be a riddle to you, unless you have received a certain packet, which the Ballantynes were to have sent under Freeling's or Croker's cover, so soon as they could get a copy done up.

And now let me gratulate you upon the renovated vigor of your fine old friends the Russians. By the Lord, sir! it is most famous, this campaign of theirs. I was not one of the very sanguine persons who antic.i.p.ated the actual capture of Buonaparte--a hope which rather proceeded from the ignorance of those who cannot conceive that military movements, upon a large scale, admit of such a force being acc.u.mulated upon any particular point as may, by abandonment of other considerations, always insure the escape of an individual. But I had no hope, in my time, of seeing the dry bones of the Continent so warm with life again, as this revivification of the Russians proves them to be. I look anxiously for the effect of these great events on Prussia, and even upon Saxony; for I think Boney will hardly trust himself again in Germany, now that he has been plainly shown, both in Spain and Russia, that protracted, stubborn, unaccommodating resistance will foil those grand exertions in the long run. All laud be to Lord Wellington, who first taught that great lesson.

Charlotte is with me just now at this little scrub habitation, where we weary ourselves all day in looking at our projected improvements, and then slumber over the fire, I pretending to read, and she to work trout-nets, or cabbage-nets, or some such article. What is Canning about? Is there any chance of our getting him in? Surely Ministers cannot hope to do without him. Believe me, dear Ellis, ever truly yours,

W. SCOTT.

ABBOTSFORD, 9th January, 1813.

TO MISS JOANNA BAILLIE.

ABBOTSFORD, January 10, 1813.

Your kind encouragement, my dear friend, has given me spirits to complete the lumbering quarto, which I hope has reached you by this time. I have gone on with my story _forth right_, without troubling myself excessively about the development of the plot and other critical matters--

"But shall we go mourn for that, my dear?

The pale moon shines by night; And when we wander here and there, We then do go most right."

I hope you will like Bertram to the end; he is a Caravaggio sketch, which, I may acknowledge to you--but tell it not in Gath--I rather pique myself upon; and he is within the keeping of Nature, though critics will say to the contrary. It may be difficult to fancy that any one should take a sort of pleasure in bringing out such a character, but I suppose it is partly owing to bad reading, and ill-directed reading, when I was young. No sooner had I corrected the last sheet of Rokeby, than I escaped to this Patmos as blithe as bird on tree, and have been ever since most decidedly idle--that is to say, with busy idleness. I have been banking, and securing, and diking against the river, and planting willows, and aspens, and weeping-birches, around my new old well, which I think I told you I had constructed last summer. I have now laid the foundations of a famous background of copse, with pendent trees in front; and I have only to beg a few years to see how my colors will come out of the canvas. Alas, who can promise that? But somebody will take my place--and enjoy them, whether I do or no. My old friend and pastor, Princ.i.p.al Robertson (the historian), when he was not expected to survive many weeks, still watched the setting of the blossom upon some fruit-trees in the garden with as much interest as if it was possible he could have seen the fruit come to maturity, and moralized on his own conduct, by observing that we act upon the same inconsistent motive throughout life. It is well we do so for those that are to come after us. I could almost dislike the man who refuses to plant walnut-trees, because they do not bear fruit till the second generation; and so--many thanks to our ancestors, and much joy to our successors, and truce to my fine and very new strain of morality.

Yours ever,

W. S.

The following letter lets us completely behind the scenes at the publication of Rokeby. The "horrid story" it alludes to was that of a young woman found murdered on New Year's Day in the highway between Greta Bridge and Barnard Castle--a crime, the perpetrator of which was never discovered. The account of a parallel atrocity in Galloway, and the mode of its detection, will show the reader from what source Scott drew one of the most striking incidents in his Guy Mannering:--

TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., ROKEBY PARK.

EDINBURGH, 12th January, 1813.

DEAR MORRITT,--Yours I have just received in mine office at the Register-House, which will excuse this queer sheet of paper. The publication of Rokeby was delayed till Monday, to give the London publishers a fair start. My copies, that is, my friends', were all to be got off about Friday or Sat.u.r.day; but yours may have been a little later, as it was to be what they call a picked one. I will call at Ballantyne's as I return from this place, and close the letter with such news as I can get about it there. The book has gone off here very bobbishly, for the impression of 3000 and upwards is within two or three score of being exhausted, and the demand for these continuing faster than they can be boarded. I am heartily glad of this, for now I have nothing to fear but a bankruptcy in the Gazette of Parna.s.sus; but the loss of five or six thousand pounds to my good friends and school-companions would have afflicted me very much. I wish we could whistle you here to-day. Ballantyne always gives a christening dinner, at which the Duke of Buccleuch, and a great many of my friends, are formally feasted. He has always the best singing that can be heard in Edinburgh, and we have usually a very pleasant party, at which your health as patron and proprietor of Rokeby will be faithfully and honorably remembered.