Hamilton Wright Mabie

“ The conversation of Scott was frank, hearty, picturesque, and dramatic. He had a great sense of humor, and a rare gift for story telling. He was an accomplished mimic, and he lighted up his narratives and anecdotes with appropriate dialect and graphic description. And, as a near friend once observed, "The chief charm of his conversation, he being a man of such eminence, was its perfect simplicity and the entire absence of vanity and love of display." ”

“ To know men who had known Rob Roy, to hear the story of the two risings which had shaken Scotland like an earthquake, to be a guest in remote and lonely castles, to be guided through wild defiles and over vast mountain ranges by kilted clansmen whose speech was only Gaelic and whose claymores were still at the service of their chiefs—this was the real education of the writer who was to be the scribe of his country, the truest of her historians. ”

“ It is a poem of scenery as well as of action, its descriptions are both exact and living; it tells a story with clear and compelling vigor, and it shows at their best two of Scott's really great qualities: simplicity and energy. It lacked the delicate shading of the verbal music which gave some later English poetry a magical charm; but it had a fine strength of outline, a noble ruggedness. He said later that he loved the sternness and bold nakedness of the Border landscape, and that if he did not see the heather at least once a year he believed he would die. ”

“ Scott did not command the constructive skill of even the second-rate novelist of today; he was often an awkward builder and clumsy in putting his materials together in a coherent whole; his style is often loose and diffuse; he dealt largely with the outside of the spectacle of living; his women have no magic of loveliness, no mystery of temperament, though they sometimes stand out with great distinctness; his heroes are rarely heroic, they are often commonplace. ”

“ Men who had taken part in the rising of 1745 were still living, and Scott was fortunate enough to be the guest of one of them. He was to write the stories of wild Scotland as no historian had or could write them, and on this memorable visit he was to hear the tales of stirring and romantic deeds from one who had played a part in them, and he was to see with the eyes of youth the landscape on which they had been enacted. ”

“ Scott was the chronicler of feudalism, the primitive social order of the clan, of an aristocratic society. He was as little interested in Democracy as was Shakespeare; and largely for the same reason: his age was not anti-democratic, it had not reached the democratic stage. Bagehot, the famous English critic, put his limitations under two heads: he gives us the stir of the world but not its soul, and he leaves the abstract intellect unreported. ”

“ In the meanwhile Leicester, who really loved Amy, and soon discovered the injustice of his suspicions, confessed everything to Queen Elizabeth. The queen, feeling herself insulted, treated him with scorn and contempt; but she immediately dispatched Tressilian and Sir Walter Raleigh to bring Amy back to Kenilworth. They arrived just too late. Amy, decoyed from her room, stepped on a trap-door prepared by Varney, and plunged to her death. After her tragic taking off, Tressilian fell into profound melancholy and died soon after, "young in years, but old in grief." ”

“ He was a Tory in politics, a strong adherent of an ordered society; a good, sound man not haunted by misgiving and questioning about the general order of things.
Scott's novels were literally poured out during fifteen wonderful years; and even 10 then the broken man could still apply the whip to his exhausted and crippled brain. The popular success of the novels was unprecedented in the history of literature. It is estimated that Scott earned with his pen not less than three-quarters of a million dollars. ”

“ Mountains and wild landscapes generally, which had been shunned for generations, were coming into fashion, so to speak. They have been "in fashion" ever since, and today their appeal to city folk, to tired people, to men and women of imagination and active temperament, is irresistible. To Dr. Johnson Scotland was a wild and dreary waste, to Scott 7 it was a wonderland ”

“ Lucy covered her face with her hands, and the tears, in spite of her, forced their way between her fingers. 'Forgive me,' said Ravenswood, taking her right hand, which, after slight resistance, she yielded to him, still continuing to shade her face with the left. 'I am too rude—too rough—too intractable to deal with any being so soft and gentle as you are. ”

“ The Boyhood of Scott
At school he was noted as a daring climber, a pertinacious fighter, an irregular student, and a teller of fascinating tales. In the High School he was "more distinguished in the yards than in the class." In 1783 he entered the Humanity and Greek classes in the University of Edinburgh, but his education was directed by his genius rather than by the school and college curriculum. He began on his grandfather's farm, Sandy-Knowe, in a landscape that runs to the Cheviot Hills and the slopes of Lammermoor, where he lay, a "puir lame laddie," on the turf among the sheep. ”

“ His vital interest in the moving spectacle of life has given us an almost unrivalled report of that world, and of a great group of men and women whose careers, as Scott reports them, have the reality of fact and the dramatic interest of fiction. Jeanie Deans, Madge Wildfire, Diana Vernon, Meg Merrilies, Wandering Willie, Andrew Fairservice, and a crowd of their companions, are more alive today, after a century has passed, than most of the people whose names are in the telephone directories.
THE GRAVE OF SCOTT
At Dryburgh Abbey, Scotland
Scott was a man of the kind men love to remember. ”

“ Flora, like every beautiful woman, was conscious of her own power, and pleased with its effects, which she could easily discern from the respectful yet confused address of the young soldier. But as she possessed excellent sense, she gave the romance of the scene and other accidental circumstance full weight in appreciating the feelings with which Waverley seemed obviously to be impressed ”

“ Lameness did not daunt him; he learned to climb with great agility and to keep his saddle with the best of them. At the age of six he was reciting ballads with zest and fire, and he showed very early the spirit which made him a story-teller and a man of dauntless courage. ”

“ He was large hearted, frank, generous, honorable; he made life seem more noble by the richness of his nature and his splendid courage. His career was as romantic in achievement and vicissitude as his most striking novel. In 1826, when he was fifty-five years old, the two business houses in which he was a partner failed, with obligations amounting to nearly six hundred thousand dollars. Scott had recently spent large sums on the enlargement of Abbotsford, in settling his sons in life, and for other people; and he held the bills of Constable for four novels to be written in the future ”

“ He was recognized as an able man, and he was interested in the historical aspects of Scotch law, in its "quips and quiddities," and his knowledge of its processes was shown in his novels; but he was an impatient and uninterested practitioner, and long before he formally gave up the profession he was writing poetry. While poetry and law have often been on good terms they have never been happy partners.
THE STUDY, ABBOTSFORD
This room is lined with Scott's favorite books and works of reference. The bedroom that he used opens directly into the study. ”

“ Scott set himself to draw his own people at their best. The real heroine of the book is Jeanie Deans, whose character was drawn from that of Helen Walker, the daughter of a farmer in Scotland. With a few variations Jeanie's story was hers.
Effie Deans, the sister of Jeanie, was doomed to death for child murder. Jeanie might have saved her on the witness stand by lying; but this she could not do even to save her sister. However, she showed the depth of her love by going on foot all the way to London and getting a pardon from the king. ”

“ In fact, each hoped that he might wed her; and, therefore, Leicester did not want his marriage to Amy made public.
Edmund Tressilian, who had been engaged to Amy, discovered her hiding place, and, not knowing that she was married, tried in vain to induce her to return home. Then he appealed to the queen; and when a disclosure of the truth seemed inevitable, Richard Varney, Leicester's closest friend, affirmed that Amy was his wife. Varney was then ordered to appear with her at the approaching revels at Kenilworth Castle, which belonged to the Earl of Leicester. ”

“ MEG MERRILIES DIRECTS BERTRAM TO THE CAVE—"guy mannering"
WALTER SCOTT
Guy Mannering TWO
GUY MANNERING, a young Englishman traveling through Scotland, stopped one night at the home of the Laird of Ellangowan. When the Laird learned that the young man had studied astrology, he begged him to cast the horoscope of his son, who had been born that night. What was Mannering's dismay to find that two catastrophes overhung the lad, one at his fifth, and the other at his twenty-first year! He told the father, however, that he might be warned; and later went his way. ”

“ It is impossible to conceive of his ever having done a wrong act, or of any contact with his influence that would not inspire the wish to be virtuous and noble. The scope of his sympathy was as broad as are the weakness and need of the human race. ”

“ But the land alone cost more than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars!
A GLIMPSE OF ABBOTSFORD
In 1805 Scott was the most popular poet in Great Britain. He had opened a fresh field, he had command of the magic of romance which always has and always will, in spite of temporary changes of taste, cast a spell over the imagination of men; his style was simple and his method plain; all classes of readers could understand him. During the next ten years he published six or seven long poems of varying merit. ”

“ The purpose of The Mentor Association is to give its members, in an interesting and attractive way, the information in various fields of knowledge which everybody wants to have. The information is imparted by interesting reading matter, prepared under the direction of leading authorities, and by beautiful pictures, produced by the most highly perfected modern processes. ”

“ The Waverley Novels have so long stood in the forefront of Scott's literary achievements that it is difficult to put them out of view and remember that in 1814, when Scott was forty-four 8 years old, he was known to the world as a poet who had laid a spell on the imagination of his generation. He had "broken the record" so far as monetary returns for poetry were concerned. Milton received about one hundred dollars for "Paradise Lost" and Dr. ”

“ Fergus MacIvor was the chief of the band which stole the cattle. Waverley met his sister, Flora, and fell in love with her, but she discouraged him.
Later Waverley was wounded by a stag; and the rebellion having started in the meanwhile, one of the Highlanders, assuming Waverley to be a sympathizer, used his name and seal to start a mutiny in Waverley's troop. For this reason Waverley was dismissed from his regiment for desertion and treason. Indignant at this unjust treatment, Waverley joined the rebellion, first, however, returning home in an attempt to justify himself. ”

“ The Waverley Novels
At the moment when ruin faced him he found himself suddenly in the possession of a great income from an unexpected source. In 1805 he had written, almost at a sitting, an instalment of a story of the uprising of 1745 in a futile attempt to restore the exiled Stuart, Charles Edward, to the throne. In 1814 he completed the story and published it anonymously under the title of "Waverley." The novel was written in what the oarsmen call a "spurt" ”