Mrs. Oliphant

“ THE SHAKSPEARE OF SCOTLAND
There are many variations in degree of the greatest human gifts, but they are few in kind. The name we have ventured to place at the head of this chapter is one not so great as that of Shakspeare, not so all-embracing—though widely-embracing beyond any other second—not so ideal, not so profound. Walter Scott penetrated with a luminous revelation all that was within his scope, the most different kinds and classes of men, those whom he loved (and he loved all whom it was possible to love) and the few whom he hated, with the same comprehension and power of disclosure. ”

“ He lingered out a weary year in sickness and sorrow, and when the anniversary of his son's loss came round again, died at Rothesay, in Bute, amid the lovely lakes and islets of western Scotland—a scene of natural peace and tranquillity, which, let us hope, shed some little balm upon the heart of the helpless superseded sovereign. Perhaps he loved the place because it had given his title to his murdered boy, the hapless David, so gallant and so gay. There is something more than ordinarily pathetic and touching in the misfortunes of the feeble in an age of iron. ”

“ Walter Scott belongs to all Scotland. He was, no man more, a lover of the woods and fields, of mountain-sides and pastoral braes, of the river and forest, Ettrick and Tweed and Yarrow, and Perthshire—that princely district, half Highland, half Lowland—and the chain of silvery lochs that pierce the mountain shadows through Stirling and Argyle: every league of the fair country he loved. From the Western Isles and the Orkneys to the very fringe of debatable land which parts the northern and the southern half of Great Britain—is his, and has tokens to show of his presence. ”

“ Torn asunder by rival influences, by intrigues incessant and profound, by that struggle between the old and the new which was never more desperate than in her bosom, and which, being a religious change chiefly, was one of life and death: and with a monarch no longer native, but of foreign training and thoughts, even if she had not been a woman and half a Tudor, the little ship of State, the gallant little nation, plunged amid waves and billows, not unfamiliar, indeed, but fiercer and wilder than ever before, with winds so much increased in force as they raged over wider seas. ”

“ It was perhaps the swelling pride and exaltation of a man who had all Scotland at his command, and felt himself to have reached the very pinnacle of greatness, which suggested the singular expedition to France and Rome upon which Douglas set forth, in the mere wantonness of ostentation and pride, according to the opinion of all the chroniclers, to spread his own fame throughout the world, and show the noble train and bravery of every kind with which a Scottish lord could travel. It was an incautious step for such a man to take, leaving behind him so many enemies ”

“ One can imagine the breathless excitement and delight of the long ride, with the fresh breeze in his face, and one of the richest valleys in Scotland coming softly into sight in the midst of the morning, as the young King full of spirit, ambition, and all the rising impulses of manhood, left behind him the gentle shadow of the Lomond hills, and swept round the base of the Ochils towards the castle, high-standing on its rock, where freedom and his crown and all the privileges of royal life and independence were awaiting him. ”

“ James's, the ploughmen and shepherds, the churchmen, the Border reivers and Highland caterans, the broad country lying under a natural illumination, without strain or effort, large and temperate as the day. Neither in the greatest poet nor the great romancer is there any force put upon the natural fulness of life to twist its record into a narrow circle with one motive only. It is the round world and all that it inhabits, the grandeur and divinity of a universe, that delights them. ”

“ To all appearance she had honestly intended to keep peace in the kingdom, to permit as much as she could without committing herself to views which she did not share. And nothing could be more touching than such an end to a life never too brilliant or happy. She had gone through many alternations of gladness and of despair, had stood bravely by her sensitive husband when the infant sons who were his hope had been taken one after another, had discharged, as faithfully as circumstances and the accidents of a tremendous crisis would let her, her duties as Regent. ”

“ While this heydey of life lasted and all was bright around and about the chivalrous James, there was a certain suitor of his Court, a merry and reckless priest, more daring in words and admixtures of the sacred and the profane than any mere layman would venture to be, whose familiar and often repeated addresses to the King afford us many glimpses into the royal surroundings and ways of living, as also many pictures of the noisy and cheerful mediæval town which was the centre of pleasures, of wit and gay conversation, and all that was delightful in Scotland. ”

“ There might have been better plots or more carefully constructed stories; as indeed in life, heaven knows, all our stories might be much better constructed; but could we conceive it possible that these, our country-folk and friends, could be dismissed again off the face of the earth, how impoverished, how diminished, would Scotland be! The want of them is more than we could contemplate, and we can well understand how our country must have appeared to the world a poor little turbulent country, without warmth or wealth, before these representatives of a robust and manifold race were born. ”

“ George Square—with its homely and comfortable old-fashion, which has nothing to do with antiquity, the first breaking out of the Edinburgh citizens into large space and air outside the strait boundaries of the city, with the Meadows and their trees beyond, and all the sunshine of the south side to warm the deep corps de logis, the substantial and solid mansions which are so grey without yet so full of warmth and comfort within—was the first home he knew, and his residence up to manhood. No boy could be more an Edinburgh boy. ”

“ Thus old Edinburgh rises before us, beautiful and brave as she is no longer, yet thronged about the Netherbow Port, and up towards the Tron, the weighing-place and centre of city life, with fishwives and their stalls, with rough booths for the sale of rougher food, and with country lasses singing curds and whey, as they still did when Allan Ramsay nearly four hundred years after succeeded Dunbar as laureate of Edinburgh. Notwithstanding, however, these defects the Scottish capital continued to be the home of all delights to the poet-priest. ”

“ And after a moment in which the country was paralysed with woe and every house full of mourning, Scotland plunged once more into the angry waves, among the lions of ever-recurring anarchy and strife.
Nothing in all this turbulent and terrible history has ever been so tragic as Flodden. The nation which had lost the very flower and strength of its fighting men, its defenders and champions, the families which had lost their chiefs, their breadwinners—often father and son together, the master and his heir—were struck dumb with dismay and anguish. ”

“ Johnnie Armstrong had the folly to come into the King's presence with such a train, his men so completely armed and so many in number, as to compete with royal magnificence, not very great in Scotland in those days. "What wants yon knave that a king should have?" said the young James, who had certainly had enough of such powerful subjects: and he would not listen to either excuse or explanation from the Borderer, whose defiance as he was led to his execution, and the wail of his wild followers after him, sounds still in the stirring strains of song and ballad. ”

“ Then, as now, we think, there are few even of those who are forced to believe that the after-accusations against Queen Mary were but too clearly proved, who will not look back with a compunctious tenderness upon that early and bright beginning of her career. So strong a sense of remorseful pity, and the intolerableness of such a fate, overcomes the spectator, that he who stands by and looks on, knowing all that is coming, can scarcely help feeling that even he, unborn, might send a shout from out the dim futurity to warn her. ”

“ The position of Queen Jane in the circumstances in which her husband left her, a woman still young, with a band of small children, and no authority in the turbulent and distracted country, is as painful a one as could well be imagined. Her English blood would be against her, and even her beauty, so celebrated by her chivalrous husband, and which would no doubt increase the immediate impulse of suitors, in that much-marrying age, towards the beautiful widow who was of royal blood to begin with and still bore the title of Queen. ”

“ On the south at the foot of the hill, the burghers' suburb, where the merchants, lawyers, and even some of the nobles had their houses and gardens, lay outside the walls in the sunshine, protected only by the soft summits of the Braid and Pentland hills: what is now the Cowgate, not a savoury quarter, being then the South Side, the flowery and sheltered faubourg in which all who could afford the freedom of a country residence while still close to the town, expanded into larger life, as the wealthy tradesfolk of all ages, and persons bound to a centre of occupation and duty, always love to do. ”

“ It is full of delightful descriptions of nature and love and youth: the fresh morning as it rises upon the castled heights, the singing of the birds and fluttering of the leaves, the impulse of a young heart even in the languor of imprisonment to start up and meet the sun, with all the springs of new life which at that verdant season come with every new day—the apparition of the beautiful one suddenly appearing in the old immemorial garden with all its flowers, herself the sweetest and the fairest of flowers, all are set before us, with a harmony and music not to be excelled. ”