James Scott

“ To James at Stirling let us go, When, if thou wilt be still his foe, Or if the King shall not agree To grant thee grace and favor free, I plight mine honor, oath, and word That, to thy native strengths restored, With each advantage shalt thou stand That aids thee now to guard thy land.' XIV. Dark lightning flashed from Roderick's eye: 'Soars thy presumption, then, so high, Because a wretched kern ye slew, Homage to name to Roderick Dhu? He yields not, he, to man nor Fate! Thou add'st but fuel to my hate;— My clansman's blood demands revenge. ”

“ Border Ballad.
James Scott was the lightest man who won the head prize in the Carlisle ring about his own time; and what is much more curious, the only Scotchman who ever accomplished the same feat. Indeed, it seems up to Scott's time, and since, too, that the borderers on the Scotch side did not take as much pleasure in the pastime as those dwelling on the English side. ”

“ At this distance of time it is difficult either to understand or to condone the wilful delusion in which Scott persisted to regard the two reckless adventurers, James and John Ballantyne. They were lowborn and vulgar: his deep-seated aristocratic feelings should have kept them at a distance. They were utterly devoid of business capacity: his natural shrewdness ought to have seen through them. They were neglectful of duty: his own tireless devotion to work ought to have made him despise them. But they were friends of his boyhood, and he loved them. ”

“ I stanched thy father's death-feud stern With stout De Vaux and gray Glencairn; And Bothwell's Lord henceforth we own The friend and bulwark of our throne.— But, lovely infidel, how now? What clouds thy misbelieving brow? Lord James of Douglas, lend thine aid; Thou must confirm this doubting maid.' XXVIII. Then forth the noble Douglas sprung, And on his neck his daughter hung. The Monarch drank, that happy hour, The sweetest, holiest draught of Power,— When it can say with godlike voice, Arise, sad Virtue, and rejoice! Yet would not James the general eye On nature's raptures long should pry ”

“ Getting communicative with those around, he threw out some broadish hints that he thought he could dance a hornpipe or jig better than the dancing-master himself. To such a belief as this the teacher entirely demurred; and the difference of opinion thus set forth paved the way for a friendly contest. Notwithstanding being a good deal fatigued with travelling, Jamie managed to trip about with so much gracefulness and agility, that he was acknowledged by all present to have quite outrivalled the professor of the calisthenic art.
James Scott died at Oarnlee in the year 1854, aged sixty-six years. ”

“ Hope vanished from Fitz-James's eye, But not with hope fled sympathy. He proffered to attend her side, As brother would a sister guide. 'O little know'st thou Roderick's heart! Safer for both we go apart. O haste thee, and from Allan learn If thou mayst trust yon wily kern.' With hand upon his forehead laid, The conflict of his mind to shade, A parting step or two he made; Then, as some thought had crossed his brain He paused, and turned, and came again. XIX. 'Hear, lady, yet a parting word!— It chanced in fight that my poor sword Preserved the life of Scotland's lord. ”

“ The goldsmith, who had complied with great accuracy with all the prescribed points of the ceremonial, here completed it, to James's no small astonishment, by placing in his hand the petition of the Lord of Glenvarloch. “What means this, ye fause loon?” said he, reddening and sputtering; “hae I been teaching you the manual exercise, that ye suld present your piece at our ain royal body?—Now, by this light, I had as lief that ye had bended a real pistolet against me, and yet this hae ye done in my very cabinet, where nought suld enter but at my ain pleasure.” ”

“ Many of the Scottish nobles were disaffected, and the army was disorganized. At Solway Moss, James was openly defied by his nobility. Scott says regarding this bitter humiliation, “He shut himself up in the palace of Falkland, and refused to listen to any consolation. A burning fever, the consequence of his grief and shame, seized on the unfortunate monarch. They brought him tidings that his wife had given birth to a daughter; but he only replied, ‘Is it so?’ reflecting on the alliance which had placed the Stuart family on the throne. ‘Then God’s will be done. ”

“ The world, thy heart's blood dyes my blade!"—
"Thy threats, thy mercy, I defy!
Let recreant yield, who fears to die."—
Like adder darting from his coil,
Like wolf that dashes through the toil,
Like mountain-cat who guards her young,
Full at Fitz-James's throat he sprung,
Received, but reck'd not of a wound,
And locked his arms his foeman round.—
Now, gallant Saxon, hold thine own!
No maiden's hand is round thee thrown!
That desperate grasp thy frame might feel,
Through bars of brass and triple steel!—
They tug, they strain!—down, down, they go,
The Gael above, Fitz-James below. ”

“ In the meantime, Lord Huntinglen kneeled before James, in his turn, and said—“May it please your Majesty to remember, that upon one certain occasion you did promise to grant me a boon every year of your sacred life?”
“I mind it weel, man,” answered James, “I mind it weel, and good reason why—it was when you unclasped the fause traitor Ruthven's fangs from about our royal throat, and drove your dirk into him like a true subject. We did then, as you remind us, (whilk was unnecessary,) being partly beside ourselves with joy at our liberation, promise we would grant you a free boon every year ”

“ Sir John Scott of Thirlestaine flourished in the reign of James V. and possessed the estates of Thirlestaine, Gamescleugh, &c. lying upon the river of Ettricke, and extending to St Mary's Loch, at the head of Yarrow. It appears that when James had assembled his nobility, and their feudal followers, at Fala, with the purpose of invading England, and was, as is well known, disappointed by the obstinate refusal of his peers, this baron alone declared himself ready to follow the king wherever he should lead. ”

“ According to ancient family tradition, Buccleuch was presented to Elizabeth, who, with her usual rough and peremptory address, demanded of him, "how he dared to undertake an enterprize so desperate and presumptuous." "What is it," answered the undaunted chieftain, "What is it that a man dares not do!" Elizabeth, struck with the reply, turned to a lord in waiting; "With ten thousand such men," said she, "our brother of Scotland might shake the firmest throne of Europe." Luckily, perhaps, for the murtheress of Queen Mary, James's talents did not lie that way. ”

“ I am convinced that the more he works the better his health will be. One or other of you will need to be constantly in the printing-office henceforward,—it is the sheet-anchor.
The allusion in this postscript to James Ballantyne's health reminds me that Scott's letters to himself are full of hints on that subject, even from a very early period of their connection; and these hints are all to the same effect. James was a man of lazy habits, and not a little addicted to the more solid, and perhaps more dangerous, part of the indulgences of the table. ”

“ But it appears he had entered into some communication with Government, as, in the letters quoted, he mentions having obtained a pass from the Lord Justice-Clerk in 1747, which was a sufficient protection to him from the military. The circumstance is obscurely stated in one of the letters already quoted, but may perhaps, joined to subsequent incidents, authorise the suspicion that James, like his father, could look at both sides of the cards. As the confusion of the country subsided, the MacGregors, like foxes which had baffled the hounds, drew back to their old haunts, and lived unmolested. ”

“ Now while it is incontestable that Walter Scott could by no means have brought to the trivial and the commonplace the analytical mind of Henry James, still we venture that the world has lost nothing because of this. The poor plodding world looks downward; so its eyes must again and again be diverted from the trivial and the commonplace, and lifted toward an ideal which, even if overdrawn, is immeasurably better than none. ”

“ Old Beardie died in a house, still standing, at the northeast entrance to the Churchyard of Kelso, about ... [November 3, 1729.]
He left three sons. The eldest, Walter, had a family, of which any that now remain have been long settled in America:—the male heirs are long since extinct. The third was William, father of James Scott, well known in India as one of the original settlers of Prince of Wales Island:—he had, besides, a numerous family both of sons and daughters, and died at Lasswade, in Mid-Lothian, about.... ”

“ Why, that picture's like a Man!" Imagine the effect! Lewis was at his elbow.'
Towards the end of the year 1799 occurred an incident, trifling enough in itself, which was destined by the sport of Fate to bring disaster and sorrow upon the life of Scott. He had paid a short visit to Rosebank, his uncle's house at Kelso, and was preparing to return to Edinburgh for the winter, when an old acquaintance, James Ballantyne, the eldest son of a Kelso shopkeeper, called to see him. James, having failed to establish himself as a solicitor, was now the printer and editor of a weekly newspaper in Kelso. ”

“ To leave a repulsive theme, in 1809 Scott visited the Highlands, he began The Lady of the Lake, which had long “simmered” in his mind, and he{66} rode Fitz James’s ride from Loch Vennachar to Stirling, finding it practicable, though the ground, to be sure, must have been very different in the days of James V, when lochs occupied what is now arable land. At Buchanan House, on this tour, he read English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, and briefly spoke of the author as “a whelp of a young Lord Byron ... abusing me for endeavouring to scratch out a living with my pen. ”

“ But what is it that thy master expects from us in reward of good service; for I esteem him one of those who are not willing to work without their hire?'
'Nay, that I can tell you flatly; for Lord James had promised him, in case he would be of his faction in these parts, an easy tack of the teind-sheaves of his own Barony of Avenel, together with the lands of Cranberry-moor, which lie intersected with his own. And he will look for no less at your hand.'
'But there is old Gilbert of Cranberry-moor,' said the sub-prior, 'what are we to make of him? ”

“ Mareschal rushed out, and immediately re-entered the chapel.
“By Heaven! it is true, Sir Frederick; the house is filled with armed men, and our drunken beasts are all disarmed. Draw, and let us fight our way.”
“Binna rash—binna rash,” exclaimed Hobbie; “hear me a bit, hear me a bit. We mean ye nae harm; but, as ye are in arms for King James, as ye ca’ him, and the prelates, we thought it right to keep up the auld neighbour war, and stand up for the t’other ane and the Kirk; but we’ll no hurt a hair o’ your heads, if ye like to gang hame quietly. ”

“ These prejudices were, of course, most inveterate during the reign of King James. The English subjects accused him of partiality to those of his ancient kingdom; while the Scots, with equal injustice, charged him with having forgotten the land of his nativity, and with neglecting those early friends to whose allegiance he had been so much indebted.
The temper of the king, peaceable even to timidity, inclined him perpetually to interfere as mediator between the contending factions, whose brawls disturbed the Court. ”

“ The plot of Woodstock was unconsciously annexed by Thackeray in Esmond. His charming but historically absurd James III is Charles II, laughing and running after every girl, and making love to the sister and mistress of the two good Royalists who protect him. Lockwood and his sweetheart, in Esmond, are Jocelyn and his sweetheart in Woodstock. James III is a more favoured lover than his uncle, and Beatrix outshines all the women of Scott, but Scott’s is the invention of the situation, down to the King’s offer of a duel. ”

“ The author had, only a month before, brought out his last great poem, The Lord of the Isles, which met with a reception so cool as to convince him that he must now resign the top of the poetical walk to his young rival, Lord Byron. He heard the report of the public decision on this point from James Ballantyne, was disconcerted for a few minutes, and then, recovering his usual spirits, tranquilly resumed the writing of his novel. How much it would tell to the happiness of literary men in general, if they had but a tithe of the equanimity of Scott about the success of their exertions! ”

“ Like James the First, however, the present possessor of this authority was more pleased in talking about prerogative than in exercising it; and, excepting that he imprisoned two poachers in the dungeon of the old tower of Tully-Veolan, where they were sorely frightened by ghosts, and almost eaten by rats, and that he set an old woman in the JOUGS (or Scottish pillory) for saying 'there were mair fules in the laird's ha' house than Davie Gellatley,' I do not learn that he was accused of abusing his high powers. ”

“ In order to remove the unfortunate impression of myself which I have given you, I will confess that I have only read three of Scott's novels, and begun, but never finished, two of Henry James'. I will also confess —and here I am by way of restoring that unfortunate impression—that I do quite well in Scottish and Jacobean circles on those five books. For, if a question arises as to which is Scott's masterpiece, it is easy for me to suggest one of my three, with the air of one who has chosen it, not over two others, but over twenty. Perhaps one of my three is the acknowledged masterpiece ”