SCOTT, MICHAEL, -- From the nature of
the authorship of the present day, as well as its exuberant abundance, the
desire of literary fame has undergone a striking change. Formerly, to write
a book was equivalent to achieving the conquest of a kingdom; and no one
ventured upon the feat except upon the principle of do or die, Aut Caesar
aut nihil. The general diffusion of intelligence and equalization of
talent, have produced a change in this respect that constitutes the chief
intellectual distinction of the present age. Able writers are now produced
by the hundred, and that too, not for a century, but a single year; while
their productions appear, not in ponderous tomes, but in reviews, magazines,
and newspapers, the readers of which, however delighted they may be with the
perusal, never trouble themselves with the anonymous source from which their
gratification has proceeded. In this fashion, authors of first-rate
excellence appear and pass away with no other designations than some
unmeaning letter of the alphabet, and are only known, even at their
brightest, as alpha or omega. From such a fate, so common to
thousands amongst us, Michael Scott escaped by a mere hair’s-breadth.
This talented writer was born at
Glasgow, on the 30th October, 1789. He was educated first at the
high school, and afterwards at the university of that great emporium of
Scottish merchandise and manufacture. As he as destined for business, and
obliged to betake himself to it at an early period, his stay at college was
a brief one; for, in October, 1806, when he had only reached the age of
seventeen, he sailed for Jamaica, and was there employed in the management
of several estates till 1810, when he joined a mercantile house in Kingston,
Jamaica. As he was much employed in the active business of this
establishment, his avocations led him often to the adjacent islands and the
Spanish main; and it was in that rich tropical climate, and in his
peregrinations by land and water, that he acquired his knowledge of West
India scenery and character, as well as of sea-life, which he afterwards so
richly and powerfully delineated. Mr. Scott returned home in 1817, and was
married in the following year, after which he went back to Jamaica; but
after remaining there till 1822, he finally bade adieu to the West Indies,
and became permanently a settler in his native Scotland. He does not appear
to have been particularly successful as a merchant; but the buoyant
imagination and restless love of adventure which his writings betoken, were
perhaps scarcely compatible with that plodding persevering spirit for which
his countrymen are so generally distinguished, especially in mercantile
enterprise abroad and in the colonies. It is difficult, indeed, if not
impossible, at one and the same time to establish a goodly rich mansion on
terra firma, and build bright castles in the air.
It was not till 1829 that Michael
Scott appears to have ventured into authorship, by the publication of "Tom
Cringle’s Log." The first specimens, which he sent to "Blackwood’s
Magazine," were fragmentary productions, under the name of "Tom Cringle;"
but the sharp, experienced eye of "Old Ebony" was not long in detecting
their merit, and he therefore advised the anonymous author to combine them
into a continuous narrative, even though the thread that held them together
should be as slender as he pleased. This advice Mr. Scott adopted; and when
the papers appeared as a "Log," detailing the eventful voyage of a strange
life through calm and hurricane, through battle and tempest, as they
successively occurred to his fancy, the "Quarterly Review" characterized
them as the most brilliant series of magazine papers of the time, while
Coleridge, in his "Table Talk," proclaimed them "most excellent." The
magazine reading public was of the same opinion, and accordingly the
question was circulated through every class, "Who is the author of ‘Tom
Cringle’s Log?’" But no one could answer; no, not even Blackwood himself, so
well had Scott preserved his incognito; and this eminent publisher descended
to the grave without knowing assuredly by whom the most popular series in
his far-famed magazine had been written. Afterwards the chapters were
published as an entire work, in two volumes, and so highly was it prized,
that it was generally read upon the Continent, while in Germany it has been
repeatedly translated. After Michael Scott had thus led a life almost as
mythic as that of his wondrous namesake, he died in Glasgow, on the 7th
of November, 1835, and it was only through this melancholy event that the
full fact of his authorship was ascertained by the sons of Mr. Blackwood.
