Modern Painters Volume III Part 21

Scott does not dwell on the grey stubbornness of the thorn, because he himself is at that moment disposed to be dull, or stubborn; neither on the cheerful peeping forth of the rowan, because he himself is that moment cheerful or curious: but he perceives them both with the kind of interest that he would take in an old man, or a climbing boy; forgetting himself, in sympathy with either age or youth.

"And from the gra.s.sy slope he sees The Greta flow to meet the Tees, Where issuing from her darksome bed, She caught the morning's eastern red, And through the softening vale below Rolled her bright waves in rosy glow, All blushing to her bridal bed, Like some shy maid, in convent bred; While linnet, lark, and blackbird gay Sing forth her nuptial roundelay."

Is Scott, or are the persons of his story, gay at this moment? Far from it. Neither Scott nor Risingham are happy, but the Greta is; and all Scott's sympathy is ready for the Greta, on the instant.

-- 37. Observe, therefore, this is not _pathetic_ fallacy; for there is no pa.s.sion in _Scott_ which alters nature. It is not the lover's pa.s.sion, making him think the larkspurs are listening for his lady's foot; it is not the miser's pa.s.sion, making him think that dead leaves are falling coins; but it is an inherent and continual habit of thought, which Scott shares with the moderns in general, being, in fact, nothing else than the instinctive sense which men must have of the Divine presence, not formed into distinct belief. In the Greek it created, as we saw, the faithfully believed G.o.ds of the elements: in Dante and the mediaevals, it formed the faithfully believed angelic presence; in the modern, it creates no perfect form, does not apprehend distinctly any Divine being or operation; but only a dim, slightly credited animation in the natural object, accompanied with great interest and affection for it. This feeling is quite universal with us, only varying in depth according to the greatness of the heart that holds it; and in Scott, being more than usually intense, and accompanied with infinite affection and quickness of sympathy, it enables him to conquer all tendencies to the pathetic fallacy, and, instead of making Nature anywise subordinate to himself, he makes himself subordinate to _her_--follows her lead simply--does not venture to bring his own cares and thoughts into her pure and quiet presence--paints her in her simple and universal truth, adding no result of momentary pa.s.sion or fancy, and appears, therefore, at first shallower than other poets, being in reality wider and healthier. "What am I?" he says continually, "that I should trouble this sincere nature with my thoughts. I happen to be feverish and depressed, and I could see a great many sad and strange things in those waves and flowers; but I have no business to see such things. Gay Greta! sweet harebells!

_you_ are not sad nor strange to most people; you are but bright water and blue blossoms; you shall not be anything else to me, except that I cannot help thinking you are a little alive,--no one can help thinking that." And thus, as Nature is bright, serene, or gloomy, Scott takes her temper, and paints her as she is; nothing of himself being ever intruded, except that far-away Eolian tone, of which he is unconscious; and sometimes a stray syllable or two, like that about Blackford Hill, distinctly stating personal feeling, but all the more modestly for that distinctness and for the clear consciousness that it is not the chiming brook, nor the cornfields, that are sad, but only the boy that rests by them; so returning on the instant to reflect, in all honesty, the image of Nature as she is meant by all to be received; nor that in fine words, but in the first that come; nor with comment of far-fetched thoughts, but with easy thoughts, such as all sensible men ought to have in such places, only spoken sweetly; and evidently also with an undercurrent of more profound reflection, which here and there murmurs for a moment, and which I think, if we choose, we may continually pierce down to, and drink deeply from, but which Scott leaves us to seek, or shun, at our pleasure.

-- 38. And in consequence of this unselfishness and humility, Scott's enjoyment of Nature is incomparably greater than that of any other poet I know. All the rest carry their cares to her, and begin maundering in her ears about their own affairs. Tennyson goes out on a furzy common, and sees it is calm autumn sunshine, but it gives him no pleasure. He only remembers that it is

"Dead calm in that n.o.ble breast Which heaves but with the heaving deep."

He sees a thundercloud in the evening, and _would_ have "doted and pored" on it, but cannot, for fear it should bring the ship bad weather. Keats drinks the beauty of Nature violently; but has no more real sympathy with her than he has with a bottle of claret. His palate is fine; but he "bursts joy's grape against it," gets nothing but misery, and a bitter taste of dregs out of his desperate draught.

Byron and Sh.e.l.ley are nearly the same, only with less truth of perception, and even more troublesome selfishness. Wordsworth is more like Scott, and understands how to be happy, but yet cannot altogether rid himself of the sense that he is a philosopher, and ought always to be saying something wise. He has also a vague notion that Nature would not be able to get on well without Wordsworth; and finds a considerable part of his pleasure in looking at himself as well as at her. But with Scott the love is entirely humble and unselfish. "I, Scott, am nothing, and less than nothing; but these crags, and heaths, and clouds, how great they are, how lovely, how for ever to be beloved, only for their own silent, thoughtless sake!"

-- 39. This pure pa.s.sion for nature in its abstract being, is still increased in its intensity by the two elements above taken notice of,--the love of antiquity, and the love of color and beautiful form, mortified in our streets, and seeking for food in the wilderness and the ruin: both feelings, observe, instinctive in Scott from his childhood, as everything that makes a man great is always.

"And well the lonely infant knew Recesses where the wallflower grew, And honeysuckle loved to crawl Up the long crag and ruined wall.

I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade The sun in all its round surveyed."

Not that these could have been instinctive in a child in the Middle Ages. The sentiments of a people increase or diminish in intensity from generation to generation,--every disposition of the parents affecting the frame of the mind in their offspring: the soldier's child is born to be yet more a soldier, and the politician's to be still more a politician; even the slightest colors of sentiment and affection are transmitted to the heirs of life; and the crowning expression of the mind of a people is given when some infant of highest capacity, and sealed with the impress of this national character, is born where providential circ.u.mstances permit the full development of the powers it has received straight from Heaven, and the pa.s.sions which it has inherited from its fathers.

-- 40. This love of ancientness, and that of natural beauty, a.s.sociate themselves also in Scott with the love of liberty, which was indeed at the root even of all his Jacobite tendencies in politics. For, putting aside certain predilections about landed property, and family name, and "gentlemanliness" in the club sense of the word,--respecting which I do not now inquire whether they were weak or wise,--the main element which makes Scott like Cavaliers better than Puritans is, that he thinks the former _free_ and _masterful_ as well as loyal; and the latter _formal_ and _slavish_. He is loyal, not so much in respect for law, as in unselfish love for the king; and his sympathy is quite as ready for any active borderer who breaks the law, or fights the king, in what Scott thinks a generous way, as for the king himself. Rebellion of a rough, free, and bold kind he is always delighted by; he only objects to rebellion on principle and in form: bare-headed and open-throated treason he will abet to any extent, but shrinks from it in a peaked hat and starched collar: nay, politically, he only delights in kingship itself, because he looks upon it as the head and centre of liberty; and thinks that, keeping hold of a king's hand, one may get rid of the cramps and fences of law; and that the people may be governed by the whistle, as a Highland clan on the open hill-side, instead of being shut up into hurdled folds or hedged fields, as sheep or cattle left masterless.

-- 41. And thus nature becomes dear to Scott in a threefold way: dear to him, first, as containing those remains or memories of the past, which he cannot find in cities, and giving hope of Praetorian mound or knight's grave, in every green slope and shade of its desolate places;--dear, secondly, in its moorland liberty, which has for him just as high a charm as the fenced garden had for the mediaeval:

"For I was wayward, bold, and wild, A self-willed imp--a grandame's child; But, half a plague, and half a jest, Was still endured, beloved, caressed.

For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask The cla.s.sic poet's well-conned task?

Nay, Erskine, nay. On the wild hill Let the wild heathbell flourish still; Cherish the tulip, prune the vine; But freely let the woodbine twine, And leave untrimmed the eglantine;"

--and dear to him, finally, in that perfect beauty, denied alike in cities and in men, for which every modern heart had begun at last to thirst, and Scott's, in its freshness and power, of all men's, most earnestly.

-- 42. And in this love of beauty, observe, that (as I said we might except) the love of _color_ is a leading element, his healthy mind being incapable of losing, under any modern false teaching, its joy in brilliancy of hue. Though not so subtle a colorist as Dante, which, under the circ.u.mstances of the age, he could not be, he depends quite as much upon color for his power or pleasure. And, in general, if he does not mean to say much about things, the _one_ character which he will give is color, using it with the most perfect mastery and faithfulness, up to the point of possible modern perception. For instance, if he has a sea-storm to paint in a single line, he does not, as a feebler poet would probably have done, use any expression about the temper or form of the waves; does not call them angry or mountainous. He is content to strike them out with two dashes of Tintoret's favorite colors:

"_The blackening wave edged with white_; To inch and rock the seamews fly."

There is no form in this. Nay, the main virtue of it is, that it gets rid of all form. The dark raging of the sea--what form has that? But out of the cloud of its darkness those lightning flashes of the foam, coming at their terrible intervals--you need no more.

Again: where he has to describe tents mingled among oaks, he says nothing about the form of either tent or tree, but only gives the two strokes of color:

"Thousand pavilions, _white as snow_, _Chequered_ the borough moor below, Oft giving way, where still there stood Some relics of the old oak wood, That darkly huge did intervene, _And tamed the glaring white with green_."

Again: of tents at Flodden:

"Next morn the Baron climbed the tower, To view, afar, the Scottish power, Encamped on Flodden edge.

The white pavilions made a show, Like remnants of the winter snow, Along the dusky ridge."

Again: of trees mingled with dark rocks:

"Until, where Teith's young waters roll Betwixt him and a wooded knoll, That graced the _sable_ strath with _green_, The chapel of St. Bride was seen."

Again: there is hardly any form, only smoke and color, in his celebrated description of Edinburgh:

"The wandering eye could o'er it go, And mark the distant city glow With gloomy splendor red; For on the smoke-wreaths, huge and slow, That round her sable turrets flow, The morning beams were shed, And tinged them with a l.u.s.tre proud, Like that which streaks a thundercloud.

Such dusky grandeur clothed the height, Where the huge castle holds its state, And all the steep slope down, Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky, Piled deep and ma.s.sy, close and high, Mine own romantic town!

But northward far with purer blaze, On Ochil mountains fell the rays, And as each heathy top they kissed, It gleamed a purple amethyst.

Yonder the sh.o.r.es of Fife you saw; Here Preston Bay and Berwick Law: And, broad between them rolled, The gallant Frith the eye might note, Whose islands on its bosom float, Like emeralds chased in gold."

I do not like to spoil a fine pa.s.sage by italicizing it; but observe, the only hints at form, given throughout, are in the somewhat vague words, "ridgy," "ma.s.sy," "close," and "high;" the whole being still more obscured by modern mystery, in its most tangible form of smoke. But the _colors_ are all definite; note the rainbow band of them--gloomy or dusky red, sable (pure black), amethyst (pure purple), green, and gold--a n.o.ble chord throughout; and then, moved doubtless less by the smoky than the amethystine part of the group,

"Fitz Eustace' heart felt closely pent, The spur he to his charger lent, And raised his bridle hand.

And making demivolte in air, Cried, 'Where's the coward would not dare To fight for such a laud?'"

I need not multiply examples: the reader can easily trace for himself, through verse familiar to us all, the force of these color instincts. I will therefore add only two pa.s.sages, not so completely known by heart as most of the poems in which they occur.

"'Twas silence all. He laid him down Where purple heath profusely strown, And throatwort, with its azure bell, And moss and thyme his cushion swell.

There, spent with toil, he listless eyed The course of Greta's playful tide; Beneath her banks, now eddying dun, Now brightly gleaming to the sun, As, dancing over rock and stone, In yellow light her currents shone, Matching in hue the favorite gem Of Albin's mountain diadem.

Then tired to watch the current play, He turned his weary eyes away To where the bank opposing showed Its huge square cliffs through s.h.a.ggy wood.

One, prominent above the rest, Reared to the sun its pale grey breast; Around its broken summit grew The hazel rude, and sable yew; A thousand varied lichens dyed Its waste and weather-beaten side; And round its rugged basis lay, By time or thunder rent away, Fragments, that, from its frontlet torn, Were mantled now by verdant thorn."

-- 43. Note, first, what an exquisite chord of color is given in the succession of this pa.s.sage. It begins with purple and blue; then pa.s.ses to gold, or cairngorm color (topaz color); then to _pale grey_, through which the yellow pa.s.ses into black; and the black, through broken dyes of lichen, into green. Note, secondly,--what is indeed so manifest throughout Scott's landscape as hardly to need pointing out,--the love of rocks, and true understanding of their colors and characters, opposed as it is in every conceivable way to Dante's hatred and misunderstanding of them.

I have already traced, in various places, most of the causes of this great difference: namely, first, the ruggedness of northern temper (compare -- 8. of the chapter on the Nature of Gothic in the Stones of Venice); then the really greater beauty of the northern rocks, as noted when we were speaking of the Apennine limestone; then the need of finding beauty among them, if it were to be found anywhere,--no well-arranged colors being any more to be seen in dress, but only in rock lichens; and, finally, the love of irregularity, liberty, and power, springing up in glorious opposition to laws of prosody, fashion, and the five orders.

-- 44. The other pa.s.sage I have to quote is still more interesting; because it has _no form_ in it _at all_ except in one word (chalice), but wholly composes its imagery either of color, or of that delicate half-believed life which we have seen to be so important an element in modern landscape.

"The summer dawn's reflected hue _To purple changed Loch Katrine blue_; Mildly and soft the western breeze Just kissed the lake; just stirred the trees; _And the pleased lake, like maiden coy_, _Trembled, but dimpled not, for joy_; The mountain-shadows on her breast Were neither broken nor at rest; In bright uncertainty they lie, Like future joys to Fancy's eye.

The water-lily to the light Her chalice reared of silver bright: The doe awoke, and to the lawn, Begemmed with dew-drops, led her fawn; The grey mist left the mountain side; The torrent showed its glistening pride; Invisible in flecked sky, The lark sent down her revelry; The blackbird and the speckled thrush Good-morrow gave from brake and bush; In answer cooed the cushat dove Her notes of peace, and rest, and love."

Two more considerations are, however, suggested by the above pa.s.sage. The first, that the love of natural history, excited by the continual attention now given to all wild landscape, heightens reciprocally the interest of that landscape, and becomes an important element in Scott's description, leading him to finish, down to the minutest speckling of breast, and slightest shade of attributed emotion, the portraiture of birds and animals; in strange opposition to Homer's slightly named "sea-crows, who have care of the works of the sea," and Dante's singing-birds, of undefined species. Compare carefully a pa.s.sage, too long to be quoted,--the 2nd and 3rd stanzas of canto VI. of Rokeby.

-- 45. The second, and the last point I have to note, is Scott's habit of drawing a slight _moral_ from every scene, just enough to excuse to his conscience his want of definite religious feeling; and that this slight moral is almost always melancholy. Here he has stopped short without entirely expressing it--

"The mountain shadows ...

... lie Like future joys to Fancy's eye."

His completed thought would be, that those future joys, like the mountain shadows, were never to be attained. It occurs fully uttered in many other places. He seems to have been constantly rebuking his own worldly pride and vanity, but never purposefully:

"The foam-globes on her eddies ride, Thick as the schemes of human pride That down life's current drive amain, As frail, as frothy, and as vain."

"Foxglove, and nightshade, side by side, Emblems of punishment and pride."

"Her dark eye flashed; she paused and sighed;-- 'Ah, what have I to do with pride!'"

And hear the thought he gathers from the sunset (noting first the Turnerian color,--as usual, its princ.i.p.al element):

"The sultry summer day is done.

The western hills have hid the sun, But mountain peak and village spire Retain reflection of his fire.