Scott

“ Scott wanders over every land with the same proud, elastic tread---free as the mountain breeze, and majestic as the bird that bathes in the sunbeams. He must always stand alone---a high and solitary shrine, before which minds of humbler mould are compelled to bow down and worship. ”

“ Station, power, wealth, beauty, and genius, strove with each other in every demonstration of respect and worship, and—a few political fanatics and envious poetasters apart—wherever he appeared in town or country, whoever had Scotch blood in him, "gentle or simple," felt it move more rapidly through his veins when he was in the presence of Scott.' But in the midst of this blaze of glory, and while he was dreaming dreams of fortune and family pride, what was it that struck the most keen-eyed of critics when he first saw his hero? ”

“ Then appeared the gorgeous but manly and natural historical novels of Scott, too prone to flatter "blood," wealth, and noble lineage, but wearing an air of the most genial bonhommie, and looking with a brotherly eye upon humanity in its humblest forms. About the time that Scott was beginning his Waverley, came the piquant and beautiful stories of Miss Edgeworth and Mrs. Opie, to be followed by those of Miss Mitford and Mrs. Hall, who, whether painting life and manners in the cottages of the lowly or the drawing-rooms of the great, place virtue and philanthropy in the foreground of the picture. ”

“ These lines were given to Sir Walter Scott, at the gate of Abbotsford, in the summer of 1829. He was then apparently in the vigour of an existence whose energies promised long continuance; and the glance of his quick, smiling eye, and the very sound of his kindly voice, seemed to kindle the gladness of his own sunny and benignant spirit in all who had the happiness of approaching him. ”

“ But in the days of Scott's boyhood, it was possible to enjoy a quiet, meditative stroll in these still suburban fields. And the great learned and legal luminaries made the Meadows their resort for talk or for quiet meditation. The lofty yet simple character of the men of this great generation, but still more their strong nationality, combined with their graceful manners and extraordinary benevolence, made a strong impression on the imagination of Scott. The brilliance of the succeeding era, which he himself created, never quite made up to his mind for what was lost. ”

“ 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 immense energy of mind and body Scott united patience and methodical habits of work, as he added to a romantic imagination keen interest in the business of life and in the smallest detail of practical affairs. His appetite for facts was as marked as his capacity for sentiment. Scott had breadth and vigor rather than delicacy of imagination; that is one reason why he is out of fashion at a time when men want to know not only what people do but why and how they do it. ”

“ He prefers plain, breezy men who admit him to the common humanities rather than those who remind him of his splendid isolation. He would have had no emotion of pride when Scott, who, with all his great qualities, was a deplorable tuft-hunter, solemnly put the wine glass that had touched the Royal lips into the tail pocket of his coat, but he would have immensely enjoyed the moment when he inadvertently sat on it. ”

“ He has enriched our experience, through imaginative contact with beings who are ever afterwards more intimately distinct and real for us than the people we daily meet. None could surpass and few equal Scott in clothing a historical fact or fossil with the pulsing blood and radiant bloom of life, compelling it to stand forth in resurrection of power. Scott thus surely possesses the final test of greatness, in his ability to impress our imagination, while haunting our minds with figures and events that seem to have life even more abundantly than mortal beings who are our neighbors. ”

“ THE causes of Sir Walter Scott's ascendancy are to be found in the goodness of his heart, the integrity of his conduct, the romantic and picturesque accessories and atmosphere of his life, the fertile brilliancy of his literary execution, the charm that he exercises, both as man and artist, over the imagination, the serene, tranquilizing spirit of his works, and, above all, the buoyancy, the happy freedom of his genius. ”

“ Scott ought to have been content with Ashestiel; or, since every man wishes to own his home, he should have been satisfied with the comfortable cottage which he built at Abbotsford, and the modest improvements that his love for trees and shrubs enabled him to make. But his aspirations led him into serious difficulties. With all his sagacity and good sense, Scott never seemed to know when he was well off. It was a fatal mistake both for his fame and happiness to attempt to compete with those who are called great in England and Scotland,--that is, peers and vast landed proprietors. ”

“ And to similar effect in his Memorials he testifies that scarcely even in his novels was Scott more striking or delightful than in society; where his halting limb, the bur in the throat, the heavy cheeks, the high Goldsmith-forehead, the unkempt locks, and general plainness of appearance, with the Scotch accent and stories and sayings, all graced by gaiety, simplicity, and kindness, made a combination most worthy of being enjoyed. ”

“ The years at Lasswade were marked by one of the most momentous decisions of Scott's life. He had reached the parting of the ways; one leading to the practice of the law; the other—and the more alluring one—to literature as a profession. Had his father been alive, it is probable that a high sense of duty and loyalty would have determined him to continue in the law, for the old gentleman had set his heart upon that, and Scott would have submitted to almost any irksome requirement rather than wound the feelings of his parent. ”

“ I left the Scotts this morning with deep regret. Mr. Scott has not been well during this last visit I have paid them, and I was much shocked to hear that he is threatened with disease of the heart, sudden death at any moment. His wife and her sisters are excellently kind to me; she has but two faults, an excessive humility and an excessive conscientiousness; they wouldn't be bad for virtues, would they?
Mr. Scott's intercourse is delightful to me; his mind is deep and high, logical and practical, humorous and tender, and he is as nearly good as a man can be. ”

“ To a man of Scott's disposition, happy in his new home life, with every incentive to improve his opportunities, his mind steeped from infancy in the rude ballads of the border country and his heart bounding with delight at the beauties of nature, this new environment seemed all that was needed to turn his whole thought to poetry. ”

“ Scott's good taste and her husband's enthusiasm soon converted the house and grounds into a veritable bower of delight. Unfortunately, the rustic archway of ivy, which Scott took so much pleasure in fashioning, has disappeared. But the vale of the Esk still remains, to thrill the souls of the romantic. Not even in lovely Scotland is there a river or glen to surpass it. ”

“ So absorbed was he in this soothing occupation that he paid no heed to the patter of approaching footsteps, until a voice fell on his ears.
"Cry-baby!" the voice chirped, in the high key which, to the youthful mind, is expressive of disdain. And then it added even more disdainfully, "Dirty-face!"
Dazed by this two-fold attack upon him, Scott took down his smudgy fists and displayed to the intruder's view his smudgy countenance. ”

“ And yet Scott's novels have ample and admirable excellencies. In his expansive and digressive fashion he can give his characters—especially the older and the more idiosyncratic among them—a surprising and convincing verisimilitude.
He can create a plot which, though not dramatically flawless, has movement and energy and stir. The sweetness and modesty of his disposition lends itself to his portrayal of the more gracious aspects of human life, especially as seen in the humours and oddities of very simple and naïve persons. ”

“ Till calamity came, Scott appeared to be a nearly complete natural man, and no more. Then first was perceived in him something above nature, something which could endure though every end in life for which he had fought so boldly should be defeated,—something which could endure and more than endure, which could shoot a soft transparence of its own through his years of darkness and decay. ”

“ Scott passed almost half a century with nothing of the stimulus which comes from intellectual rivalry, with few of the legitimate helps of intellectual association, unspurred by any species of competition, working wholly under the promptings of his own impulses and his own fine sense of manly obligation, I marvel at the record.
***
Generations of clean-blooded, wholesome-living, right-minded forbears gave Mr. Scott a towering frame and a constitution of mighty vitality. A youth of manual labor and untouched by vices had toughened every fibre of the physical man. ”

“ When one has read the stirring Marmion or the more enduring Lady of the Lake, felt the heroism of the Crusaders in The Talisman, the picturesqueness of chivalry in Ivanhoe, the nobleness of soul of a Scotch peasant girl in The Heart of Midlothian, and the quality of Scotch faith in Old Mortality, then his own opinion of Scott's genius will be of more value than all the criticisms that have ever been written. ”

“ Indeed, in all I have ventured to say of Scott, I have a feeling of its impertinence—as if I were telling you about your next-door neighbor: we all know that swift, brilliant, clouded career so well! But are those novels of his to live, and to delight coming generations, as they have the past? I do not know what the very latest critics may have to say ”

“ Throughout his school days and afterwards when he was apprenticed to his father, attended university classes, read for the bar, took part in academical and professional debating societies, Scott steadily and ardently pursued his own favourite studies. His reading in romance and history was really study, and not merely the indulgence of an ordinary schoolboy's promiscuous appetite for exciting literature. ”

“ Scott was now at ease in his circumstances. He had a pleasant house in Edinburgh, No. 39 Castle Street—‘dear 39,’ as he affectionately called it—where he enjoyed the best society in the Scottish capital. Then, for recreation, he had that fanciful but costly domain on the Tweed. His ordinary and assured income sufficed for any domestic expenditure he chose to indulge in; the recent embarrassments were at an end; and he might calculate on easily adding a few occasional thousands, for the sake of posterity, by no very great exertion of his ever-fertile brain. ”

“ Scott, meanwhile, is the incomparable painter of the sturdy race which he loved so well—a race high-spirited, loyal to its principles, surpassingly energetic, full of strong affections and manly spirits, if crabbed, bigoted, and capable of queer perversity and narrow self-conceit. ”

“ Loving every local peculiarity, painting every class from the noble to the peasant, loving the old traditions, and yet sharing the great impulses of the day, Scott was able to interest the world at large. ”

“ So by the tendencies of his mind, by the gravity of his character, by the guides of wisdom, dignity, courage and taste—Mr. Scott planted on high ground and sustained for nearly half a century standards of journalism which must for all time be a pattern for the worthy and rebuke to the vicious. *** For myself whose fortune it was to live long in association with this rare man, to share in many of the influences and in a sense to inherit the inspirations of his life, there seems now a mighty void in the immediate world in which he lived. ”

“ Nothing more conclusively shows the genuineness of Scott's romantic feeling than his willingness to undergo severe mental drudgery in pursuit of knowledge concerning the old storied days which had enthralled his imagination. It was no moonshine sentimentality which kept him hour after hour and day after day in the Advocate's Library, poring over musty manuscripts, deciphering heraldic devices, tracing genealogies, and unraveling obscure points of Scottish history. ”

“ These simple anecdotes may serve to show the delightful play of Scott’s humors and feelings in private life. His domestic animals were his friends; everything about him seemed to rejoice in the light of his countenance; the face of the humblest dependent brightened at his approach, as if he anticipated a cordial and cheering word. I had occasion to observe this particularly in a visit which we paid to a quarry, whence several men were cutting stone for the new edifice; who all paused from their labor to have a pleasant “crack wi’ the laird.” ”

“ But, with such ludicrous exceptions, Scott was the one object of the Abbotsford pilgrims; and evening followed evening only to show him exerting, for their amusement, more of animal spirits, to say nothing of intellectual vigor, than would have been considered by any other man in the company as sufficient for the whole expenditure of a week's existence. Yet this was not the chief marvel; he talked of things that interested himself, because he knew that by doing so he should give most pleasure to his guests. ”