The advent of genius is
the most striking, and will, in time, be perceived to be the most
important species of circumstance which can befal society. When, as
in the case of Scott, it manifests itself, not only in a highly
popular form, but in a peculiarly healthy state, it becomes equally
interesting to analyse it as an object of psychological research,
and a duty to inquire into the process of education by which it has
been brought to sound maturity. Such an inquiry may 6eem as an
instrument wherewith to measure the achievements of genius in this
particular instance of its manifestation, and also as an indication
how most wisely to cherish any future revelation of the same kind
with which the world may he blessed. This is a social service
enjoined upon survivors by departing genius; a service which may not
be refused, though emotions of grief must be largely mingled with
the awe and hope which arise out of the contemplation of the past
and future influences of the high presence which has become hidden.
We, therefore, proceed, first, to inquire into the discipline of the
genius of Scott, and the characteristics of its maturity; and, next,
to attempt an estimate of the services that genius has rendered to
society.—Walter Scott was happy in his parentage and condition in
life. His father had good sense, benevolence, and sincerity ; his
mother added to these virtues vigorous and well-cultivated talents.
The experience of pain which appears to be essential to the
deepening and strengthening of genius, was not, in his case, derived
from hardships which infuse bitterness with strength, and corrupt
while they expand. There was neither the domestic oppression under
which Byron grew restive, nor the over-indulgence which prepares its
victim for finding the world an oppressor. Scott was, it appears,
surrounded with a kindly moral atmosphere from his birth. There was
no thwarting of his early tastes; his young sayings were laid up in
his piother’s heart; his brothers were his friends; and we have his
own word for the tenderness with which he was regarded in his second
home—his grandfather’s farm at Sandyknow.
“For I was wayward,
bold, and wild,
A self-willed imp, a grandame’s child;
But half a plague, and half a jest,
Was still endured, beloved, carest."
Neither was his
experience of pain derived from poverty, from a baffling of desires,
from a deprivation of means to an earnestly-desired end, from the
irksomeness of his occupations, or a sense of the unfitness of his
outward condition to his inward aspirations. He was spared all that
sordid kind of suffering which irritates while it excites, and even
while communicating power, abstracts its noblest attribute,—its
calmness.
Of this class of evils, from which genius has extensively suffered,
Walter Scott knew nothing; and, happily for him, it did not
therefore follow that he was raised above that experience of real
life, which is the most nourishing aliment of intellectual power. It
is a rare thing, and happier than it is rare, to lay hold of reality
under a better impulse than that of hardship, and with sufficient
power to make it serve its true end. The lordling knows nothing of
reality. What he is told he believes, be it what it may. What he is
commanded he does, or leaves undone, according to a will which is
not the more genuine for being perverse ;—a will which springs out
of convention, and is swayed by artificial impulses. His very
ailments are scarcely teachers of reality, for they are not only
artificially beguiled, but are made the building materials of a
spurious experience. The fever of a lordly infant leaves its victim
less wise than the fever of a cottage child, which is to the latter
an evil felt in its full force, but uncompounded with other evils.
On recovery, the cottage child knows best what sickness is; and,
yet, bodily affections are the least susceptible of admixture of
any: they afford to the lordling the best means of gaining genuine
experience. All else is with him passive reception or conventional
action, though he may travel in his own country and abroad, and
learn to play trap-ball at Eton. As for those who have to do only
with what is real, the hewers of wood and drawers of water, they are
too generally unprepared to make use of reality. Their power, as far
as it goes, is superior to the lordling’s; but it is a scanty and
unfruitful power. They are for ever laying a foundation on which
nothing is seen to arise. This is better than building pagodas of
cards on a slippery surface like the lordling; but it is not the
final purpose for which the human intellect was made constructive.
It is not enough for the little cotton-spinner, or ploughboy, to
know what the lordling only believes,—of the qualities of twist, and
the offices of machinery, and the economy of the nests of larks and
field-mice. They should be led beyond cotton-spinning and field
labours by such knowledge; but it as seldom happens that they are so
as that the lordling exchanges his belief for knowledge; which is
the same thing as saying, that genius is as rare in the one class as
in the other; being, in the one, overlaid with convention ; in the
other, benumbed by want. The most efficacious experience of reality
must be looked for in the class above the lowest, and in individuals
of higher classes still, fewer and fewer in proportion to the
elevation of rank, till the fatal boundary of pure convention be
reached, within which genius cannot live except in the breasts of
one here and there, who is stout-hearted enough to break bounds, and
play truant in the regions of reality. The individuals who may thus
come out from the higher ranks (where all efficacy is supposed to
reside in teaching, instead of enabling to learn) may generally be
observed to bear some mark of providence, which they themselves may
endure with humiliation, which their companions regard with ignorant
compassion; but in which the far-sighted recognise, not only a
passport to the select school of experience, but a patent of future
intellectual nobility. What this mark may be, signifies little. The
important point is, that there should be pain,—inevitable pain,—not
of man s infliction,—natural pain, admitting of natural solace, so
that it may produce its effects pure from the irritation of social
injury, and be bearable for a continuance in silence. Whether the
infliction be orphanhood, leading to self-reliance ; whether it be
the blindness which has exalted the passion of many bards, or the
deafness which deepened the genius of Beethoven, or the lameness
which agonized the sensibilites of Byron, or mere delicacy of health
(which has often, after invigorating genius, been itself invigorated
by genius in its turn;) whether the infliction be any of these or of
the many which remain, matters little; its efficacy depends on the
de gree in which it is felt; that is, on the degree of the knowledge
of reality which it confers.
To pain thus inflicted, to a knowledge of reality thus conferred,
was Scott, in a great measure, indebted for the prodigious
overbalance of happiness which afterwards enriched himself, and the
world through him. He suffered in childhood and youth from ill
health and privation.
His ill health caused his removal into the country, where, from
circumstances of situation, &c. those tastes were formed which
predominated in him through life, while the passion with which they
were cherished must have been deepened by the one affliction which
he had to bear alone, —his lameness. Few have any idea of the
all-powerful influence which the sense of personal infirmity exerts
over the mind of a child. If it were known, its apparent
disproportionateness to other influences would, to the careless
observer, appear absurd; to the thoughtful, it would afford new
lights respecting the conduct of educational discipline; it would
also pierce the hearts of many a parent who now believes that he
knows all, and who feels so tender a regret for what he knows, that
even the sufferer wonders at its extent.' But this is a species of
suffering which can never obtain sufficient sympathy, because the
sufferer himself is not aware till he has made comparison of this
with other pains, how light all others are in comparison. Be the
infirmity what it may, as long as it separates, as long as it causes
compassion, as long as it exposes to the little selfishness of
companions, to the observation of strangers, to inequality of terms
at home, it is a deep-seated and perpetual wo; one which is, in
childhood, never spoken of, though perpetually brooded over; one
which is much and universally underrated, because it is commonly
well borne; and, again, well borne, because under-rated, and,
therefore, unsympathized with. That this was the case with Walter
Scott, is certain. His lameness in childhood was, no doubt, thought
much less of by every one, even his mother, than by himself. Not an
hour of any day, while with his young companions, could this pain of
infirmity have been unfelt. In all sports, in all domestic plans,
iit all schoolboy frolics, he either was, or believed himself to be,
on unequal terms with his playmates; and though he happily escaped
the jealousy which arises too often from a much less cause, he
suffered enough to drive him to a solace, whose pure and natural
pleasures might best counterbalance his peculiar and natural pain.
We have notices of these things from himself; a touching recurrence
in one of his lightest pieces, to the days when the little lame boy
lagged behind with the nurse-maid, while his brothers were running
wild; when he was painfully lifted over the stiles which others were
eager to climb. More at large we have tidings of the opposite
pleasures, in which he found the best repose from his
mortifications. His worship of Smailholm Tower, amidst the green
hills; his quest of wallflowers and honeysuckles, and of the
blossoms of traditionary verse which adorn the retreats where he
sought his pleasures. The immediate enjoyment arising from the study
of nature, is probably as much less in childhood than in mature
years, as the pain arising from personal infirmity is greater—the
pleasure being enhanced and the pain alleviated, by the variety and
complexity of associations with which each becomes mingled; and
Walter Scott, therefore, gained in pleasure with every year of his
youth. But yet there was a sufficient balance of enjoyment, even in
these e*rly days, to render his genius of that benignant character
which proves its rearing to have been kindly. He not only gained
power by vicissitude, (which is the most rapid method of knowing
realities,) but pleasure fast following upon pain, the pain was
robbed of its irritation, and the pleasure was enhanced by a sense
of freedom, the welcome opposite of the constraint which any species
of infirmity imposes in society. Scott's childhood was, in short,
spent in feeling, the best possible preparation for after thinking.
His limbs were stretched on the turf, his hands grasped the rough
crags, and wallflower scents reached him from crumbling ruins, and
streams ran sparkling before his eyes; and these realities mingled
with the no less vivid ones which he had just brought with him from
society.
Nor were these the only vicissitudes he knew. His tastes thus form,
ed, suited little with his school pursuits; and hence arose
wholesome and strengthening exercises of fear and love. It seems
strange, contemplating Walter Scott in his after life, as firm as
mild, to think that he could either experience or cause fear ; but
there is no doubt whatever that this formed part of the discipline
of his genius. He was a naughty schoolboy, as far as learning
lessons went. He tells us of disgraces and punishments fbr being
idle himself and keeping others idle,—and of the applause of his
schoolfellows for his tale-telling being a sort of recompense for
what he thus underwent. Since he felt this applause a recompense,
the evil of punishment was feared and felt. Since he continued to
incur punishment, his love of nature and romance was yet stronger
than his fear. This alternation went on for years, for he never
gained credit as a learner of languages, and finished in possession
of “ little Latin and less Greek.*' For a long continuance then,
there was disgrace in school, and honour in the playground; fear in
school, and a passion of love among the green hills; slavery between
four walls, and rapturous liberty when rambling with a romancing
companion amidst the wildest scenery that lay within reach. A
glorious discipline this for a sensibility which could sustain and
grow under it!
Half the work was now done. Through the exercise of the sensibility
the faculties were strengthened. There was yet little knowledge, but
there was power,—power which would* soon have preyed upon itself, if
objects had not, by a new set of circumstances, been presented for
it to employ itself upon. An illness confined him long to his bed,
in a state which admitted of no other amusements than chess and
reading. He read ravenously, and, as he himself says, idly; that is,
he devoured all the poems and novels which a large circulating
library afforded, till he was satiated, and then took to memoirs,
travels, and history. He continued this practice of desultory
reading, when afterwards removed once more into the country on
account of the state of his health; and thus was he initiated into
the second of the three great departments of knowledge, which it was
necessary to traverse in preparation for the work of his later
years. He had now made acquaintance with nature in her aspects,
though not in her constitution, and with man as he is displayed in
books. History showed him man in his social capacity; tales of real
and fictitious adventure showed him man in contest with natural
difficulties, and passing through the diversified scenery of various
climates and nations; memoirs showed him man going through the
experience of human existence, but all this was at second-hand. The
third great study which remained was, man as he appears in actual
life. It remained to verify what man seems in books by what he is
before the eyes. And for this also opportunity was afforded by
another change of circumstance. Walter Scott recovered his health,
or rather became, for the first time, vigorous in body, and able to
enter the world on the same terms with others. He studied law in
college as well as under his father, and mixed in society far more
than ever before ; and though looked upon rather as an abstracted
young man, very fond of reading, than as a particularly sociable
personage, he was actually at this time, and for some years
afterwards, making acquaintance with human nature under a great
variety of forma, whether in the courts, or in his own rank of
society, or wandering, as was still his wont, among the vales of
Tweeddale, gathering legends from the shepherds, or domesticating
himself by the farmer's fireside. During this stage of his
preparation, it was an important circumstance that he became
enrolled in a cavalry regiment, formed under the apprehension of an
invasion from France. Here he was far from being considered “ an
abstracted young manbeing highly popular, from his good humour and
his extraordinary powers of entertainment, which probably were
exercised in a somewhat different way from the goblin romancing,
which made him a favourite among his school-fellows. He now probably
communicated the results of his observation of actual life, while he
no doubt improved them at the same time.
During the next few years he continued to enlarge his knowledge in
all these three departments, by travelling, by the study of German
literature, and by the performance of the active duties imposed upon
him by his office of Sheriff of Selkirkshire ; an office which, no
less than his travels, brought him into communication with human
nature under a variety of modifications. The study of German
literature alone,— (we say nothing of the language, as, by Sir
Walter's own confession, he only used it as a means of scrambling
into the literature)—this new acquisition alone might serve, to a
mind so prepared as his, as a sufficient stimulus to the work he
afterwards achieved; and to it we cannot but attribute much of that
richness of moral conception, much of the transparent depth of his
philosophy of character, which is, to merely £nglish readers, the
most astonishing of his excellencies.
Here, then, we have gained some faint insight into the process by
which an organization (probably of great original excellence) was
made the most of, and rendered the constituent of a genius as kindly
as it was powerful; that is to say, as healthy as it wa9 rare. Such
an organization may not be rare. We cannot tell; so little do we
know of its mysteries, and so complicated is the machinery of
education and of society by which it may be ruined or impaired. As
probable as that there might be a Milton or a Hampden in Gray's
presence, when he pondered his elegy, is it that there may be many
Scotts in our regal halls, in our factories, in our grammar or dame
schools; one weakened in the hot-b%d of aristocracy, another
withered by want and toil, a third choked with what is called
learning, a fourth turned into a slave under the rod. It seems that
some light is thrown upon the matter of education by such a case as
the one before us. Here is a discipline diametrically opposite to
received notions of what is fitting. Here is a boy,— not so unlike
other boys in the outset as to make this case an exception to all
rules,—here is a boy lying about in the fields when he should have
been at his Latin grammar; romancing when he should have been
playing cricket; reading novels when he should have been entering
college ; hunting ballads when he should have been poring over
parchments; spearing salmon instead of embellishing a peroration;
and, finally, giving up law for legends, when he should have been
rising at the bar. Yet this personage came out of this wild kind of
discipline, graced with the rarest combination of qualifications for
enjoying existence, achieving fame, and blessing society; with
manners which were admitted by a king to ornament a court, although
his accomplishments were to be referred solely to intellectual
culture, and in no degree impaired the honesty of his speech and
action; deeply learned, though neither the languages nor the
philosophy of the schools made part of his acquisitions; robust as a
ploughman, able to walk like a pedlar, and to ride like a
knight-errant, and to hunt like a squire; business-like as a
bailiff; industrious as a handicraftsman; discreet and frank to
perfection at the same time; gentle as a woman ; intrepid as the
bravest hero of his own immortal works. Here is an extraordinary
phenomenon, to result from an education which would give most people
the expectation of a directly contrary issue. Here is enough to put
us, on inquiring, not whether learning, and even Bchool- discipline,
be good things, but whether the knowledge usually thought most
essential, the school discipline, which is commonly esteemed
indispensable, be in fact either the one or the other; whether the
study of nature, in her apparent forms, may not be found a much more
powerful stimulus to thought than it is at present allowed to be,
let the study be pursued among the hills of Tweed-dale, or in the
laboratory, Botanic Garden, or Observatory: whether again, the
discipline of pain and pleasure, appointed by Providence, may not
effect more by being less interfered with than it is under our
present educational methods, which leave scarcely any experience
pure from artificial admixture. Many parents will say that they do
not wish their children to become poets and romance writers, and
will plead that Walter Scott was but little of a lawyer after all.
But it should be remembered, that the generation and direction of
power are very different things. It was the discipline of natural
vicissitude which generated power in Walter Scott; its direction was
owing to local and individual circumstances. The example might be
followed exactly in the first particular, and only analogically in
the other. This might be done without any apprehension ; for no one
will deny the practicability that there was for turning Sir Walter's
genius in some other direction, if it bad been thought desirable.
There was such a practical character about all his undertakings,
such good sense pervading his conversation and views of life, that
there can be no doubt of his power being of that highest kind, which
is as flexible as it is strong; which can change its aims as readily
as it can pursue them perseveringly. The question is, bow to obtain
this power, much more than how to direct it. The movements of
society must not, it seems, be trusted to originate it; but the
pressure of society may probably be trusted to direct it.
While few inquiries can be more interesting than tha% of how the
genius of Scott grew up, few contemplations can be more pleasurable,
more animating, than that of the same genius in its matured 6tate.
It is difficult to decide where to begin in reviewing the qualities
which serve as tests of its healthfulness; but perhaps the most
striking, not from its predominance, (where none can be said to
predominate,) but from its importance, is its purity.
This purity is not solely to be ascribed to the purity of the
aliment on which the genius was nourished. All the aliment presented
to genius is pure in itself, whether it be the tranquil beauty of
blue skies and verdant hills, or the mournful beauty which
sanctifies the relics of things passed away, or the idealized beauty
of works of art, or the suggestive beauty of passing circumstances,
or that moving pageant in which many see no beauty, that display of
society, in which crime, littleness, and wo, are mixed up with
whatever is more honourable to humanity. All these things are pure,
in as far as their action upon genius is concerned, as stimulants of
sensibility, and provocatives to thought; and there can be little
doubt that Scott would, if placed, without Byron's training, in
Byion’s position, amidst the licentious intrigues of fashionable
life, have painted that life in all its hideous truth, with perfect
purity of spirit. There is no more reasonable doubt of this than
that Byron would have carried his stormy passions with him into the
stillest nooks of Tweed, dale, and wakened the echoes of Smailholm
Tower with his bitter mock, ery of certain of his race. It is not
the material on which genius employs itself that can ever be impure;
since genius has nothing conventional in its constitution, and the
purity or impurity which is thought to reside in objects, is wholly
conventional. All depends upon how the material is received; whether
as the food of appetite, or of the affections, chastened by
philosophy. It is not true genius which defrauds its own aliment for
its own pleasure ; and where depravity exists in combination with
genius, it is by a forced connexion, and the depravity goes to feed
the appetites, while the genius finds its nourishment elsewhere.
Such a combination exhibits the two-headed monster of the moral
world, one of whose countenances may be regarding the starry
heavens, while the other is gloating over the garbage of impurity
beneath it. The employment of the one has nothing whatever to do
with the contemplation of the other. The genius of an artist is no
more answerable for his gluttony or drunkenness, than his gluttony
and drunkenness for his genius. Where genius is somewhat less
unfortunate in its connexion, where it is linked with the
licentiousness of caste and custom, rather than with that of
brutality, it is supposed to be nourished by this licentiousness,
and Don Juan is appealed to as a proof; but it is not the
licentiousness, but the knowledge of human passions, gained by its
means, (a knowledge which might be much better gained by a thousand
higher means,) by which the genius is enriched. Genius accepts the
knowledge, and rejects the poison amidst which it is conveyed. The
more the experience savours of impurity, the less is there for
genius to appropriate; the more there is of philosophic
investigation, (and this was at the bottom of much of Byron’s
pursuit of experience,) the more is genius profited, and the less
base are the excesses with which it is mixed up. Where, with this
philosophical investigation, is united that chastened affection for
humanity which makes the observer far-sighted, and connects him with
his race by generous sympathies instead of selfish instincts, no
impurity can attend any knowledge whatever of the doings of the
race, no more than pollution could dim the brightness of an angelic
presence passing through a Turkish harem, or kindle unholy fires in
the eyes of the Lady while watching the rabble-rout of Comus. The
genius of Scott was not onjy innocent as the imagination of a
child—all genius is so in itself—it was also pure ; that is. it did
not bring into combination with itself any thing which could
deteriorate its power, or defile its lustre. His purity of thought
and feeling was not of the still and cold, but of the active and
genial character. It was not like the mountain snow, which is all
whiteness under common circumstances, but which, if by chance
melted, may be found to have held many dark specks congealed within
it; but rather like the running stream, which catches light, warmth,
and colouring, from all substances through which it passes, and
sweeps away, or buries, all with which it has no affinity. No one
can dispute Walter Scott’s knowledge of life, and his insight into
the mysteries of society. He could have told, more than most men, of
the intrigues of courts, the licentiousness of nobles, the secret
revels of divers classes of men, and the excesses which follow close
on both the gratification and the disappointment of all the stronger
passions. No one had a warmer sympathy with the stirrings in men’s
bosoms, or could make larger allowance for frailty, or feel more
genially the pleasures of conviviality and other social excitement;
yet no man was ever more remarkable for combining perfect purity of
conception with truth and freedom of delineation. He was himself
temperate in his habits as genial in his temperament; and his works
are like himself. The Templar, Varney, Mike Lambourne, Christian
Dalgarno, find each their place in his pictures of life—they are not
made the text of a sermon, but rather allowed to speak for
themselves in a not very sermonlike style; and the issue is, that
they leave on the mind of the reader not a single impression which
can defile, but instead, a conviction that, as respects the mind of
the author, they came and went, leaving no spot or stain behind. .
Closely allied with the purity of Scott's genius was its modesty—a
modesty as astonishing to his distant admirers as it ever was
amusing to his near friends. It is scarcely possible to imagine how,
with his quick sense of the good and the beautiful, he should have
remained so innocent of all suspicion of how much there was of both
in his own works. If the ingenuousness of his mind had been less
remarkable than it was, there would have been a pretty general
suspicion that he was not above the common affectation of pretending
to dispute the decision of the public; but the entire simplicity of
his speech and conduct place his ingenuousness beyond question. It
is certain that he alone failed to perceive or to bear in mind the
power and richness of his own conceptions and delineations, while it
is no less certain that, if he had met with the most insignificant
of his characters in any other novel, or had (like Dr. Priestley)
stumbled upon a forgotten odd volume of his own, without the
titlepage, and had not known whither to refer it, he would have
fallen into an enthusiasm of admiration upon it, as, to the great
amusement of his friends, he was wont to do about productions of
much inferior merit. Credulous as he was where merit was to be
ascribed, here only he declined taking every body's word.
Deferential as he was to the voice of society, here only he evaded
its decision. Sometimes he seemed scarcely aware what was
comprehended in the words of its laudatory decrees: sometimes he
ascribed his success to novelty, sometimes to fashion; now to one
temporary infiuence, now to another—to any thing rather than his own
merit. This modesty so verges upon excess as to cause some passing
feelings of regret, that it was impossible to inspire him with a due
sense of what he had done, with that virtuous complacency which is
the fair reward of such toils as his; till we remember that he could
not but have had his private raptures over {he beauties of his own
creation; his thrillings of pleasure in converse with the divine
*Die Vernon, and of lofty emotion when winding up his most solemn
scenes; and his paroxysms of mirth after calling up a Friar Tuck, or
a Triptolemus Yellowley; till, reminded by the world that all these
bore the closest connexion with himself, they, with the pride of
pleasure they had afforded, were swallowed up and forgotten in his
modesty. That they should be thus forgotten or lightly esteemed,
still seems unfair, however the fact may be accounted for; and it is
a positive relief to meet with a notice here and there, in Sir
Walter's notes and prefaces, which indicate that he did derive some
gratification from his success, that he did consent to taste a
little of the delicious brimming cup which his brethren of the craft
are usually all too ready to drain before it is half full. "I have
seldom," he says, “felt more satisfaction than when, returning from
a pleasure voyage, I found Waverley in the zenith of popularity, and
public curiosity in full cry after the name of the author. The
knowledge that I had the public approbation, was like having the
property of a hidden treasure, not less gratifying to the owner than
if all the world knew that it was his own/' We thank him for having
let us know this. It is one of the most precious passages in his
writings, though, if occurring in those of almost any other of the
genus trritabile, it is probably one to which we should have given
little attention. The delicacy of his modesty appears in the
following passage, which, coming from a man who had Btood as severe
a trial of his humility as was ever afforded by the sudden
acquisition of unbounded fame, bears a very high value, and ought to
be taken to heart by many who are more frail, though less tempted
than himself. Our readers have all pro. bably seen it before; but a
second, or even a twentieth, reading can do them no harm.
“I may perhaps be thought guilty of affectation, should I allege, as
one reason of my silence [as to the authorship of the novels,] a
secret dislike to enter on personal discussions concerning my own
literary labours. It is in every case a dangerous intercourse for an
author to be dwelling continually among those who make his writings
a frequent and familiar subject of conversation, but who must
necessarily be partial judges of works composed in their own
society. The habits of self-importance which are thus acquired by
authors are highly injurious to a well-regulated mind; for the cup
of flattery, if it does not, like that of Circe, reduce men to the
level of beasts, is sure, if eagerly drained, to bring the best and
the ablest down to that of fools. The risk was in some degree
prevented by the mask which I wore ; and my own stores of
self-conceit were left to their natural course, without being
enhanced by the partiality of friends, or adulation of flatterers!'
It may, however, be observed, that this degree of discretion is
desirable, perhaps practicable, only where the authorship relates to
light literature, and that it would be an injustice to works of a
grave and scientific character, to deprive them of whatever
advantage the author may gain by the discussion of his subject
duripg its progress. In these cases, however, the discussion should
be of the topics, not of the authorship ; of the work, not of the
writer. Simplicity is the true rule, as in all other cases so in
this: the simplicity which was exemplified in the Author of
Waverley, and which is equally far removed from the jealous unsocial
secresy of Newton respecting his scientific researches, and the
prattling vanity of those weak-minded literati and philosophers who
do all that in them lies to bring contempt on their calling.
In fairness, it should be added, that the genius of Sir Walter owed
some of its modesty to his Toryism, which prescribed other objects
of ambition than literary fame. To his aristocratic taste it was
more agreeable to be ranked among the landed proprietors than among
the authors of his country. He was better pleased to be looked up to
as the local dispenser of justice than as the enchanter of £urope.
He wrote a score of matchless romances for the sake of improving a
patch of bad land; and while apparently insensible to flattery on
the score of his works, and unable to account for even reasonable
praise, he exhibited a gratified complacency in his title of “ the
Shirra,” and in his rank as a country gentleman of Roxburghshire. So
much for the variety in men's estimates of good!
This, his modesty, guarded by his Toryism, partly accounts for the
extraordinary union of frankness and discretion in' his character.
It could only be by lightly valuing his achievements, by thinking
little of
himself and his doings, that a man of his sincerity could have been
such a Becret-keeper. It was not by measures of precaution as
regarded his own conduct; it was not by plot and underplot, that the
public was misled as to the authorship of the novels. It was by the
coolness of his manner, and the simplicity of his speech and
demeanour, that inquirers were baffled; and this coolness could
scarcely have been preserved by one so ardent and simple, if he had
thought his achievements as marvellous as they appeared to others,
or if they had been the objects of his principal interest. In what
light he regarded them may be gathered from a passage in which he
offers us his views of the duties of those who are entering on a
literary life. “Upon the whole, as I had no pretension to the genius
of the distinguished persons who had fallen into such errors,
[vanity and irascibility," I concluded there could be no occasion
for imitating them in such mistakes, or what I considered as such.
With this view, it was my first resolution to keep as far as was in
my power abreast of society; continuing to maintain my place in
general company, without yielding to the very natural temptation of
narrowing myself to what is called literary society. By doing so, I
imagined I should escape the besetting sin of listening to language
which, from one motive or another, ascribes a very undue degree of
consequence to literary pursuits, as if they were indeed the
business rather than the amusement of life.”
Whatever may be conjectured as to how much Sir Walter included under
the term “literary pursuits,” and as to how differently he might
have estimated them if he had beheld another in his own position,
the above passage vindicates the truth, that “out of the abundance
of the 'heart the mouth speaketh.” The abundance of his heart did
not consist of that of which he did not speak—of himself and his
fame. He spoke of politics, of other men’s literature, of
antiquities, of planting and farming, of law and justice, of fishing
and shooting; “of man, of nature, of society;” and of these things
his heart was full. He did not speak or encourage others to speak of
his labours of the desk, and of their rewards; and of these things
his heart was not full.
It seems rather strange that he should have spoken thus lightly of
literature, when he himself applied its forces to some of the
gravest purposes in which they can be employed,—in the delineation
of the working of the darker passions. If the inquiry had been
brought home to him he would scarcely have persisted that there was
mere amusement to himself in the conception, or to his readers in
the contemplation of such characters as his Dirk Hatteraick,
Front-de-Boeuf, the Templar, Tony Forster, Varney and Leicester, and
Rasleigh Osbaldistone, and many more, whose dark thoughts and deeds
it would be as wrong as it is impossible to allow to pass before us
as a mere spectacle, and be forgotten. There is too solemn a
character belonging to the sufferings of Amy Robsart, and of the
Master of Ravenswood, to permit their having no permanent effect on
philosophy and morals, aiid too much depth in the genius which
delineated them to justify the speaking lightly of such of its
efforts as those in question. If the office of casting new lights
into philosophy, and adding new exemplifications and sanctions to
morals, be not the "business” of literary genius, we know not what
is. It is the “business,” the first business of every man, to deduce
these very lessons from actual lifeand we can conceive of no more
important occupation than his who does the same thing for many,
while doing it for himself; presenting the necessary materials, and
their issues, unravelled from the complications, and separated from
the admixtures which may impair their effect in real life, but no
less palpably real than if they had passed under actual observation.
This is the task, the real “business* of moral philosophers of all
ranks and times; of Socrates, Zeno, and picurus, in the temple and
the garden ; of the Fathers of the Church in their twilight cells of
learning; of the philosophers and bards of the middle ages; and, in
the present, of Scott in his study, no less than of the divine in
his pulpit. How much more conscious Scott really was than he seemed,
of the importance of his office as an exhibitor of humanity, can
probably never now be known; but that that office did, in fact,
constitute the real business of his life, is as certain as it will
be evident, when not one stone of Abbotsford shall be left upon
another, when the last tree of his planting shall have tottered to
its fall, and the last relic of the man shall have been lost, except
that which is enshrined in his works.
It may be said, that he had little to do with the darker passions,
and proved that there are but few villains among the host of
characters; but these dark passions cast their shade far and wide,
and one villain modifies the fortunes of many innocent persons.
Rashleigh is at the bottom of all that happens in Rob Roy, and
ambition gives its entire colouring to the romance of Kenilworth.
These dark passions cause the predominant impression left by moral
pictures ; as a thunder cloud characterises the summer landscape,
though the streams of sun-light may far outnumber the flashes of the
lightning. That dark passions are introduced, and have excited an
interest, is a sufficient basis for the argument, that their
exhibition constituted an important part of the business of his
life, who conceived and portrayed their workings.
The world, at least that part of it which knows what it is talking
about, has ceased to be astonished at the union of mirth and pathos
in the effusions of genius. That mirth is often found without
pathos, and pathos without mirth, is no argument against their
co-existence; as there have been some in every age to prove,
beginning (at the nearest) from Solomon, when writing the Proverbs
and Ecclesiastes, and finishing with Sir Walter Scott. Indeed, as an
acute discrimination of analogies is the basis equally of poetry and
wit, and as the same discrimination, applied to the workings of
human emotion, is the chief requisite to pathos, the wonder is
rather, that Milton should have been able to keep ludicrous
combinations of ideas always out of sight, than that Shakspeare
should have been profuse in them; that the Man of Feeling should
never have been moved to mirth, than that Uncle Toby should have
brushed away his tears with a laugh. The power produced by this
union has seldom been more fully shown than in the Abbot Boniface of
Scott. While the Abbot of the Monastery, he is little better than
contemptible. The man moves no sympathy, and is regarded as a fine
satirical sketch; as a representation of an obsolete class, and in
nowise interesting as an individual. How miraculously he comes out
as the old gardener, grown innocent in his tastes, and crossed in
his sole desire,—their harmless indulgence ! The comic aspect of his
official character is preserved, while we are made •to feel a
respectful compassion for the individual; and his last words sink
deep into the heart, and return for ever upon the memory and the
ear.
“The Ex-Abbot resumed his spade. c I could be sorry for these men,*
he said; "ay, and for that poor Queen; but what avail earthly
sorrows to a man of fouttecore? and it is a rare dropping morn for
the early cole-wort.”
The most remarkable circumstance attending Scott's opposite powers
of moving is, not their co-existence, but their keeping one another
in check, as they ever did, except in the one (repented?) instance
in which he allowed his wit to run riot—in his sketches of the
Covenanters in Old Mortality. None probably deny, that fanaticism is
a most tempting subject for wit to divert itself upon, and that
there may be little exaggeration in the reports given of Mause
Headrigg's conversation and achievements ; but there are also few to
defend a needless outrage upon the religious prejudices of a nation,
at the risk of disturbing something better than prejudices. Sir
Walter did not excuse himself for this single indiscretion, or
probably intend to do so, by his subsequent exposition of the
absurdity of men of the present day clinging to the letter of the
faith and practice of their forefathers. In all other instances his
mirth was as discreet and innocent as his pathos was deep and true.
£ach enhanced, while it controlled the other; and their union
afforded an infallible test of the power of the genius whose healthy
development it characterised.
In no respect has the character of genius been more importantly
vindicated by Sir Walter than in his habitual cheerfulness. There
may be, and ought to be, an end for ever to the notion, that
melancholy is an attribute of genius; for Sir Walter was as little
given to melancholy as any whistling ploughboy within the realm of
Scotland. If it be true, that genius dives deep into the recesses
where pain shrouds itself from the light, it is also true, that
genius opens up new and everspringing sources of joy; while the
common and wearing troubles of life are thrown off by its
elasticity, and its own light sheds beauty on all that surrounds
it.' That many geniuses have been moody men, is not owing to their
genius, but to habit of body or mind, which their genius was not
powerful enough to overcome. If the mind be its own place the
highest mind must hold the happiest place; the wider its ken the
more numerous the objects of good within the circle; the more
various its powers the more harmonious the creation of which those
powers take cognizance. Thus was it with Sir Walter Scott; his
internal cheerfulness breathing music through the fiercest storms
that gathered at his spell, and forming the basis of all the varied
melodies which he drew from the chords of the human heart. It is
never lost—not in the darkest scenes where his personages are
raging, suffering, sinking under violence and wo: there is even here
a principle of vigour in the humanity displayed,—a tacit promise,
that there are better things beyond, which, without any obtrusion of
the author’s individuality, supports the reader's spirits upon the
buoyancy of the writer's. We will not flatter even the dead. We will
not say that this cheerfulness appears to us to spring so much from
a lofty faith in humanity as from other causes, equally pure, but
with which it is a pity that the faith we speak of should not
co-exist. Walter Scott had a perpetual spring of joy within him from
his love of nature, from his secret sense of power, from his wise
regulation of his tastes and desires, and from the kindliness of
disposition which endeared him to every one, and every one to him;
but there are no traces of that long clear foresight of the issues
of social struggles, no evidences that he caught the distant echoes
of that harmony into which all the jarrings of social interests must
subside; no aspirations after a better social state than the
present; no sympathy beaming through its tears, for the sacrifices
of patriotism, and the patient waiting of the oppressed for redress.
No one showed more respect for opinion as the basis of practice, or
more sympathy for individual sorrows: no one could put a more
benevolent construction on what passed before his eyes, or was more
disposed to make the best of whatever is; but his perpetual, fond
recur, rence to the past, his indisposition to change; in a word,
his Toryism prevented his recognising the ultimate purposes of
society, and reposing amidst that faith in man which is next to
trust in God, (of which indeed it forms a part,) the best resting
place of the spirit amidst the tumults and vicissitudes of life. It
was from a deficiency of support of this kind that his spirit once
quailed: that once, that will never cease to be mourned, when
multitudes, far his inferiors in all besides, were enabled to
rejoice while he suffered, trembled, supplicated, all the more
keenly, all the more urgently, from the might of the heart within
him. The fear of change perplexed him, and he warned and petitioned
against it ineffectually, and to his own great injury; when, if he
could but have seen that change was inevitable, and might be
directed to the most magnificent achievements, he might have been
one of the adored leaders of a heroic nation, instead of being made
a spectacle to the people while offering his affecting farewell—>“
Mori turns vos salutat” He had vigour to support his own
misfortunes, and to set about repairing them with unflinching
heroism. But he had not faith in man collectively as he had in
individual man, and could not resist the sadness with which
political change inspired him, and which, more than any private
sorrows, were thought to accelerate his decline. From the
hopefulness which springs out of faith in man's progression, he was
cut off. It was a great misfortune. Far be it from us to taunt his
memory with it, or to ascribe it to any thing but the outward
circumstances of his training. If the world lost something by it, he
lost more, and moreover suffered by infliction as well as
deprivation: and all this makes the depth and continuity of his
cheerfulness the more remarkable. This cheerfulness, this tendency
to put a kindly construction on all which has been and is, accounts
for his popularity notwithstanding his Toryism, and is, in its turn,
partly accounted for by his industry,—another test of the
healthiness of his genius. On this industry little can be said. Its
achievements are before every one's eyes, and are, we suppose,
nearly as unaccountable to most people as to ourselves. We give up
the attempt to settle how he did all, and when he did it. We have
his own word for his works (except during an interval of two years)
being all written by his own hand ; and if we had not had this
unquestionable word, we should have dissented from Goethe's
supposition, that he sketched and touched up, and left it to
inferior hands to compose the bulk of his works. There is such a
character of unity amidst all the diversity; the dullest scenes are
so evidently enjoyed by the author, however little they may be so by
the reader; there is such gusto, such an absence of all sense of
drudgery throughout, that we could (as we said at the time) have
staked our character for penetration upon the fact, before the
disclosure was made, that every chapter in this library of novels
was written by the same hand. How it was done is another matter. How
he wrote for years together, sixteen pages of print per diem, on an
average, while discharging his official duties in town, or before
beginning his daily occupations and pleasures of hospitality in the
country,—sixteen pages of historical, as well as fictitious,
narrative, including all the research which either required, is to
us matter of pure astonishment. We must be content with it as a
fact; and taking it thus, we can understand how so perpetual a flow
of fresh ideas, so animating a consciousness of power, so
ever-present an evidence of achievement must have fed the springs of
his cheerfulness, and have given that character of luxury to his
intellectual refreshments which bodily toil gives to the meal and
the couch of the labourer. There is a delight appertaining to earned
pleasures which is common to all classes in the intellectual and
social world ; and herein was Sir Walter least of all aristocratic.
His example of this truth is so valuable, his sanction so
impressive, that we must be excused the triteness of our morality.
If there be any in whose eyes industry has not hitherto been
majestic, they may now perhaps be led to appreciate her dignity. All
others will dwell thankfully on every new testimony to her
congeniality with genius.
It is not easy to see how it can ever be tolerable to genius to be
idle. To conceive achievements, and not attempt them; to
discriminate beauty, and not reach after it; to discern that action
is necessary to further contemplation, and not to act;—these things
seem, if not contradictory, unnatural; and the impulses arising from
them are quite sufficient, without any help from the ambition of
which Sir Walter had a very small share, to account for any degree
of exertion that physical and mental energy can sustain. They are
enough to render the spirit willing; and where the spirit is
willing, the might is strong; and this willingness and might
together constitute industry ; an indispensable grace of the lofty,
(whatever some who are great in their own eyes may think,) as well
as the most ennobling virtue of the humble. Genius implies toil,
both as its cause and its consequence; and the example of Walter
Scott (unnecessary as a proof, though welcome as a sanction to some)
will open the eyes of many as to a new truth. And herein we
recognise another of his mighty services as a vindicator of genius.
The practical character of his conduct and conversation was another
of his valuable characteristics,—implied in his industry, indeed,
but remarkable apart from that. Good sense is as remarkable a
feature of his most imaginative writings as illustration and humour
were of his homeliest conversation. He had a considerable degree of
worldly sagacity, not only of that which, being worked out in the
study, makes a good show upon paper, but of that shrewdness which is
ready for use in all the rapid turns of life, and sudden occasions
of daily business. This is evident, not only in his portrait, and in
his exposition of the system of Scotch banking, but in his most
delicate delineations of his fairest heroines; in his records of the
conversation of the glorious Die Vernon, in the t$te-d-tetes of
Minna and Brenda, and conspicuously in the interview between Rebecca
and Rowena. It is the practical character, t. e. the reality which
pervades his loftiest scenes, that gives to them their permanent
charm : in the same manner as the writer himself was respected as a
man of superior rationality, and beloved as an endearing companion,
instead of being regarded as a wayward dreamer, merely tolerated on
account of supposed genius.
Here we must stop for the present. In pursuing this inquiry into the
education and characteristics of his genius, we seem to have done
little towards expressing the emotions which his name awakens,
exalted as it is amidst the coronach of a nation. We shall hereafter
attempt some estimate of his achievements, and of his services to
his race—services of whose extent he was himself nearly as
unconscious as his contemporaries are proud.
THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF
THE GENIUS OF SCOTT
BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.
Having already (in
No. IX. p. 301.) tendered our homage to the memory of Scott In his
capacity of vindicator of the character of Genius, we proceed to
discuss his other claims to the veneration and gratitude of society.
In doing this, we shall not etiter into any elaborate criticism of
hi9 compositions as works of art. This has been done a hundred times
before, and will be done a hundred times again, to the great benefit
of literature and the fine arts, and to the exalted entertainment of
both those who lead and those who follow in the discrimination of
the manifold beauties and graces with which Scott has adorned the
realms of taste. We apply ourselves to the contemplation of the
works of Scott, in their effects as influences, rather than to an
analysis of their constitution as specimens of art. If we include in
our inquiry the services which he rendered to society, negatively as
well as positively, unconsciously as well as designedly, it may
appear that the gratitude of one age and one empire is but a sample
of the reward which his achievements deserve and will obtain.
There is little reason to question that Scott has done more for the
morals of society, taking the expression in its largest sense, than
all the divines, and other express moral teachers, of a century
past. When we consider that all moral sciences are best taught by
exemplification, and that these exemplifications produce tenfold
effect when exhibited unprofessionally, it appears that dramatists
and novelists of a high caliber have usually the advantage, as
moralists, over those whose office it is to present morals in an
abstract form. The latter are needed to. systematize the science,
and to prevent its being lost sight of as the highest of the
sciences; but the advantage of practical influence rests with the
for* mer. When we, moreover, consider the extent of Scott's
practical influence, and multiply this extent by its force, there
will be little need of argument to prove that the whole living
phalanx of clergy, orthodox and dissenting, of moral philosophers,
of all moral teachers, except statesmen and authors of a high order,
must yield the sceptre of moral sway to Scott. If they are wise,
they will immediately acknowledge this, estimate his achievements,
adopt, to a certain extent, hi3 methods, and step forward to the
vantage ground he has gained for them. If they be disposed to
question the fact of the superiority of his influence, let then*
measure it for an instant against their own. Let them look to our
universities, and declare whether they have, within a century, done
much for the advancement of morals at home, or to bring morals into
respect abroad. Let them look to the weight of the established
clergy, and say how much they actually modify the thoughts and guide
the conduct of the nation ; taking into the account, as a balance
against the good they do, the suspicion there exists against them in
their character of a craft, and the disrepute which attaches itself
to what they teach, through an admixture of abuses. Let them look to
the dissenting clergy,—far more influential as they are than the
established,—and say, whether they operate as extensively and
benignantly upon the human heart, as he who makes life itself the
language in which he sets forth the aims and ends of life; who not
only uses a picture-alphabet, that the untutored and the truant may
be allured to learn, but imparts thereto a hieroglyphic character,
from which the most versed in human life may evolve continually a
deeper and yet deeper lore. Let our moral philosophers (usefully
employed though they be in arranging and digesting the science, and
enlightened in modifying, from time to time, the manifestations of
its eternal principles,)—let our moral philosophers declare whether
they ex. pect their digests and expositions to be eagerly listened
to by the hundred thousand families, collected, after their daily
avocations, under the spell of the northern enchanter; whether they
would look for thumbed copies of their writings in workshops and
counting-houses, in the saloons of palaces, and under many a pillow
in boarding schools. Our universities may purify morals, and extend
their influence as far as they can; their importance in this case
runs a chance of being overlooked; for Scott is the president of a
college where nations may be numbered for individuals. Our clergy
may be and do all that an established clergy can be and do; yet they
will not effect so much as the mighty lay preacher who has gone out
on the highways of the world, with cheerfulness in his mien and
benignity on his brow; unconscious, perhaps, of the dignity of his
office, but as much more powerful in comparison with a stalled
priesthood as the troubadour of old,—firing hearts wherever he went
with the love of glory,—than the vowed monk. Our dissenting
preachers may obtain a hold on the hearts of their people, and
employ it to good purpose; but they cannot send their voices east
and west to wake up the echoes of the world. Let all these classes
unite in a missionary scheme, and encompass the globe, and still
Scott will teach morals more effectually than them all. They will
not find audiences at every turn who will take to heart all they
say, and bear it in mind for ever; and if they attempt it now, they
will find that Scott has been before them everywhere. He has
preached truth, simplicity, benevolence, and retribution in the
spicy bowers of Ceylon, and in the verandahs of Indian bungalowes,
and in the perfumed dwellings of Persia, and among groups of
settlers at the Cape, and amidst the pinewoods and savannahs of the
Western world, and in the vineyards of the Peninsula, and among the
ruins of Rome, and the recesses of the Alps, and the hamlets of
France, and the cities of Germany, and the palaces of Russian
despots, and the homes of Polish patriots. And all this in addition
to what has been done in his native kingdom, where he has exalted
the tastes, ameliorated the tempers, enriched the associations, and
exercised the intellects of millions. This is already done in the
short space of eighteen years; a mere span in comparison with the
time that it is to be hoped our language and literature will last.
We may assume the influence of Scott, as we have described it, to be
just beginning its course of a thousand years; and now, what class
of moral teachers, (except politicians, who are not too ready to
regard themselves in this light,) will venture to bring their
influence into comparison with that of this great lay preacher ?
If they do so, it will be on the ground, not of disputing the extent
of his influence, but its moral effect; which, therefore, we proceed
to investigate; beginning with his lesser, and going on to consider
his greater achievements.
His grateful countrymen, of all ranks, acknowledge that he has
benefited Scotland, as much morally as in respect of her worldly
prosperity. Not only has he carried civilization into the retreats
of the mountains-and made the harmonious voices of society float
over those lakes where the human war-cry once alternated with the
scream of the eagle; not only has he introduced decency and comfort
among the wilder classes of his countrymen, a full half century
before they could have been anticipated, and led many thousands more
into communion with nature, who would not, but for him, have dreamed
of such an intercourse ; not only has he quickened industry and
created wealth, and cherished intelligence within the borders of his
native land; he has also exercised a direct moral influence over the
minds of those on whom Scotland's welfare largely depends; softening
their prejudices, widening their social views, animating their love
of country while drawing them into closer sympathy with men of other
countries. It may be said,—it is said,— that his country is not
sensible of his having done all this; that she cannot be sensible of
it, since she suffered his latter days to be overclouded by sorrows
which she could have removed, and his mighty heart and brain to be
crushed by a weight of care and toil of which she could have
relieved him. The fact is undeniable; and it is on record forever,
with a thousand similar facts, from which it is to be hoped that men
will in time have philosophy enough to draw an inference, and
establish a conclusion in morals to which Walter Scott has failed to
lead them, even by the mute eloquence of his own sufferings. They
may in time perceive that the benefactor of a nation should be the
cherished of a nation, before he has become insensible of their
affection; and that it is a small thing to make splendid the narrow
home of him who was allowed to perish unsheltered in the storm. It
is not enough to abstain from the insult which aggravated the
sufferings of Lear;—to be innocent of inflicting his woes. It is not
enough for the subjects of this intellectual being to have honoured
him equally when his train was shortened, and to have uncovered
their heads as he passed, in respectful compassion for his reverses:
they ought to have felt that in having been made their king, he had
become their charge; and that whencesoever adversity arose, it was
their duty to avert it from his honoured head. It is folly to talk
of the evil of a precedent in such a case. The line of intellectual
sovereigns is not so long as to make the maintenance of their
prerogative a burdensome imposition; and we ask no loyalty to
pretenders. As for the present case, bitterly as we feel the
crudeness of the world's morality of gratitude, we are as far as was
the illustrious departed from imputing blame to individuals,—to any
thing but the system under which he suffered. He was too humble—too
little consci. ous of his own services to apply to himself the
emotions with which the lot of other social benefactors were
regarded by him, and with which his own is too late regarded by
us—the emotions of grief and shame that society has not yet learned
to prize the advent of genius; that the celestial guest is still
permitted to tread, solitary and unsheltered, the nigged highways of
the world, however eagerly its deeds of power and beneficence may
have been accepted. That the countrymen of Scott feel truly grateful
to their benefactor, we doubt not. We implore them to strengthen
this gratitude from a sanction into a principle of conduct; that, if
it should please Heaven again to bless them with such a guest, they
may duly cherish him while yet in the body, delay his departure till
the latest moment, and be disturbed by no jarring mockeries of shame
and remorse while chanting their requiem at his tomb.
To do his next work of beneficence, this great moralist stepped
beyond the Border, and over continents and seas. He implanted or
nourished pure tastes, not only in a thousand homes, but among the
homeless in every land. How many indolent have been roused to
thought and feeling, how many licentious have been charmed into the
temporary love of purity, how many vacant minds have become occupied
with objects of interest and affection, it would be impossible to
estimate, unless we could converse with every Briton, from the
Factory Terrace at Canton round the world to the shores of the
Pacific, and with every foreigner on the Continent of Europe whose
countenance lights up at the name of Scott. If one representative
only of every class which have been thus benefited were to repair to
his grave, the mourning train would be of a length that kings might
envy. There would be the lisping child, weeping that there should be
no more tales of the Sherwood Foresters and the Disinherited Knight;
there would be the school-boy, with his heart full of the heroic
deeds of Coeur de Lion in Palestine ; and the girl, glowing with the
loyalty of Flora, and saddening over the griefs of Rebecca; and the
artisan who foregoes his pipe and pot for the adventures of Jeanie
Deans; and the clerk and apprentice, who refresh their better part
from the toils of the counting-house amidst the wild scenery of
Scotland ; and soldier and sailor relieved of the tedium of barracks
and cabin by the interest of more stirring scenes presented to the
mind's eye; and rambling youth chained to the fireside by the links
of a pleasant fiction; and sober manhood made to grow young again;
and sickness beguiled, and age cheered, and domestic jars forgotten,
and domestic sympathies enhanced;—all who have thus had pure tastes
gratified by the creations of his genius, should join the pilgrim
train which will be passing in spirit by his grave for centuries to
come. Of these, how many have turned from the voice of the preacher,
have cast aside “ good books," have no ear for music, no taste for
drawing, no knowledge of any domestic accomplishment which might
keep them out of harm's way, but have found that they have a heart
and mind which Scott could touch and awaken ! How many have thus to
thank him, not only for the 6olace of their leisure, but for the
ennobling of their toils !
Another great service rendered is one which could be administered
only by means of fiction—a service respecting which it matters not
to decide whether it was afforded designedly or unconsciously. We
mean the introduction of the conception of nature, as existing and
following out its own growth in an atmosphere of convention; a
conception of very great importance to the many who, excluded from
the regions of convention, are apt to lose their manhood in its
contemplation. There is little use in assuring people of middling
rank, that kings eat beef and mutton, and queens ride on horseback :
they believe, but they do not realize. And this is the case, not
only with the child who pictures a monarch with the crown on his
head, on a throne, or with the maidservant who gazes with awe on the
Lord Mayor's coach; but, to a much greater degree than is commonly
supposed, with the father of the child, the master of the maid,—with
him whose interests have to do with kings and courts> and who ought,
therefore, to know what is passing there. It would be impossible to
calculate how much patriotism has lain dormant, through the
ignorance of the plain citizen of what is felt and thought in the
higher regions of society, to which his voice of complaint or
suggestion ought to reach, if he had but the courage to lift it up.
The ignorance may be called voluntary : it may be truly said that
every one ought to know that human hearts answer to one another as a
reflection in water, whether this reflection be of a glow-worm on
the brink, or of the loftiest resplendent star. This is true ; but
it is not a truth easy in the use; and its use is all-important. The
divine preaches it, as is his duty, to humble courtly pride, and to
remind the lowly of their manhood: but the divine himself realizes
the doctrine better while reading Kenilworth, or the Abbot, than
while writing his sermon; and his hearers use this same sermon as a
text, of which Nigel and Peveril are the exposition. Is this a
slight service to have rendered?—to have, perhaps unconsciously,
taught human equality, while professing to exhibit human
inequality?—to have displayed, in its full proportion, the distance
which separates man from man, and to have shewn that the very same
interests are being transacted at one and the other end of the line
? Walter Scott was exactly the man to render this great service ;
and how well he rendered it, he was little aware. A man, born of the
people, and therefore knowing man, and at the same time a Tory
antiquarian, and therefore knowing courts, he was the fit person to
show the one to the other. At once a benevolent interpreter of the
heart, and a worshipper of royalty, he might be trusted for doing
honour to both parties; though not, we must allow, equal honour. We
cannot award him the praise of perfect impartiality in his
interpretations. We cannot but see a leaning towards regal
weaknesses, and a toleration of courtly vices. We cannot but
observe, that the same licentiousness which would have been rendered
disgusting under equal temptation in humble life, is made large
allowance for when diverting itself within palace walls. Retribution
is allowed to befall; but the vices which this whip is permitted to
scourge are still pleasant vices, instead of vulgar ones. This is
not to be wondered at; and perhaps the purity of the writer’s own
imagination may save us from lamenting it; for he viewed these
things, though partially, yet too philosophically, to allow of any
shadow of an imputation of countenancing, or alluring to vice, with
whatever wit he may have depicted the intrigues of Buckingham, or
whatever veil of tenderness he may have cast over the crimes of the
unfortunate Mary. His desire was to view these things in the spirit
of charity; and he was less aware than his readers of a humble rank,
that he threw the gloss of romance over his courtly scenes of every
character, and that, if he had drawn the vices of the lower classes,
it would have been without any such advantage. Meanwhile, we owe him
much for having laid open to us the affections of sovereigns,—the
passions of courtiers, —the emotions of the hearts,—the guidance of
the conduct,—the cares and amusements,—the business and the jests of
courts. He has taught many of us how royalty may be reached and
wrought upon; and has therein done more for the state than perhaps
any novelist ever contemplated. That he did not complete his work by
giving to courts accurate representations of the people, seems a
pity; but it could not be helped, since there is much in the people
of which Walter Scott knew nothing. If this fact is not yet
recognised in courts, it soon will be; and to Walter Scott again it
may be owing (as we shall hereafter show) that the true condition
and character of the people will become better known in aristocratic
regions than they are at present.
The fictions of Scott have done more towards exposing priestcraft
and fanaticism than auy influence of our own time short of actual
observation ; and this actual observation of what is before their
eyes is not made by many who see the whole matter plainly enough in
the characters and doings of Boniface, Eustace, and the monks in
Ivanhoe,—of Balfour, Warden, and Bridgenorth. It is, we allow, no
new thing to meet with exposures of spiritual domination ; but the
question is, not of the newness, but of the extent of the service.
These things are condemned in the abstract by books on morals; they
are disclaimed from the pulpit, aud every Christian church
demonstrates its odiousness by the example of every other; but these
exposures do not effect half so much good as exemplification from
the hand of a philosophical observer, And disinterested peace-maker.
Men may go on for centuries bandying reproaches of priestcraft and
superstition on the one hand, and irreligion on the other;—men may
go on long pointing out to those who will not see, the examples of
all which may be seen at every turn,—of priest, craft nourishing
superstition, and superstition inducing irreligion; and less will be
done by recrimination towards finding a remedy, than by the
illustrations of a master-hand, choosing a bygone age for the
chronology, orders long overthrown for the instruments, and
institutions that have passed away, for the subjects of his satire.
Many who take fire at any imputation against their own church, have
become aware of its besetting sins by pictures of a former church,
and will easily learn to make the application where it may be
serviceable. Many who look too little to the spirit through the
forms of religion, are duly disgusted with the foibles of the
puritans; and, perceiving how much the vices of the cavaliers were
owing to the opposite vices of the contrary party, acquire a
wholesome horror of spiritual pride and asceticism in the abstract,
and become clear-sighted to the existence of both, in quarters where
they had not before been recognised. Sir Walter says, in one of his
prefaces, u I am, I own, no great believer in the moral utility to
be derived from fictitious compositions;'* but, in saying this, he
either meant that sermons are not commonly found to produce so good
an effect when intro-duced into a novel as when offered from the
pulpit, or he was thinking at the moment of his own fictitious
compositions, which, he, was singularly apt to imagine, could have
little influence to any good purpose. If he had looked at his own
writings as those of any other man, he would have thought, as others
think, that his vivid pictures of the effects of a false religion
are as powerful recommendations of that which is true, to those who
will not read divinity, (and they are many,) as works of divinity to
those who will not read Scott's novels, (and they are few.) When to
such a picture as that of his Louis XI. is added such a commentary
as is found in the preface, we have a fine exposition of an
important point of morals, and a satire upon every species of
profession which rests in forms.
“The cruelties, the perjuries, the suspicions of thiB prince, were
rendered more detestable, rather than amended, by the gross and
debasing superstition which he constantly practised. The devotion to
the heavenly saints, of which he made such a parade, was upon the
miserable principle of some petty deputy in office, who endeavours
to hide or atone for the malversations of which he is conscious, by
liberal gifts to those whose duty it is to observe his conduct, and
endeavours to support a system of fraud, by an attempt to corrupt
the incorruptible. In no other light can we regard his creating the
Virgin Mary a countess, and colonel of his Guards, or the cunning
that admitted to one or two peculiar forms of oath the force of a
binding obligation, which he denied to all others; strictly
preserving the secret, which mode of swearing he really accounted
obligatory, as one of the most valuable of state mysteries. It was
not the feast singular circumstance of this course of superstition,
that bodily health and terrestrial felicity seemed to be his only
objects. Making any mention of his sins when his bodily health was
in question, was 6trictly prohibited ; and when, at his command, a
priest recited a prayer to St. Eutropius, in which he recommended
the king's 'welfare, both in body and soul, Louis caused the two
last words to be omitted, saying, it was not prudent to importune
the blessed saint by too many requests at once. Perhaps he thought,
by being silent on hi3 crimes, he might suffer them to pass out of
the recollection of the ce-lestrial patrons whose aid he invoked for
the body.”
It may be said, that all this may be found in history. True; but how
many have been impressed with this and all other instances, from the
rise of popery to the decline of puritanism, in comparison with the
numbers who have received, and will receive, a much stronger
impression to the same effect from Scott's novels?
Another important moral service, which belongs almost exclusively to
fiction, is that of satirizing eccentricities and follies, commonly
thought too insignificant to be preached against, and gravely
written about; but which exert an important influence on the
happiness of human life. The oddities of women he has left almost
untouched; but we have a brave assemblage of men who are safe from
pulpit censure; (unless another Henry Warden should rise up to
preach against the sixteen follies of a Roland Graeme under sixteen
heads;) but who may be profited by seeing their own picture, or
whose picture may prevent others becoming like them. Is it not
wholesome to have a Malagrowther before us on whom to exhaust our
impatience, instead of venting it on the real Malagrowthers of
society? Shall we not have fewer and less extravagant Saddletrees,
and Shaftons, and Halcroes, and Yellowleys, for these novels? and
will not such bores be regarded with more good humour? Will not some
excellent Jonathan Oldbuck now and then think of the Antiquary, and
check his hobby?—and many a book-worm take a lesson from Dominie
Sampson? Whether such a direct effect be, or be not produced, such
exhibitions are as effectual as comedy ought to be on the stage, and
mirthful raillery in real life, in enforcing some of the
obligations, and improving the amenities of society. The rich
variety of Scott's assemblage of oddities, and the exquisite mirth
and good-humour with which they are shown off, are among the most
remarkable particulars of his achievements. There is not only a
strong cast of individuality (as there ought to be) about all his
best characters; but his best characters are none of them
representatives of a class. As soon as he attempted to make his
personages such representatives, he failed. His ostensible heroes,
his statesmen and leaders, his magistrates, his adventurers, his
womankind, whether mistresses or maids, leave little impression of
individuality; while his sovereigns, real heroes, and oddities, are
inimitable. The reasons of this failure of success may be found
under our next head. The result is, that Walter Scott is not only
one of the most amiable, but one of the most effective satirists
that eVer helped to sweep the path of life clear of the strewn
follies under which many a thorn is hidden.
In ascending the scale of social services, for which gratitude is
due to the illustrious departed, we next arrive at one which is so
great that we cannot but mourn that it was not yet greater. There
can be no need to enlarge upon the beauty and excellence of the
spirit of kindliness which breathes through the whole of Scott's
compositions; a spirit which not only shames the Malagrowthers of
society, just spoken of, but charms the restless to repose,
exhilarates the melancholy, rouses the apathetic, and establishes a
good understanding among all who contemplate one another in these
books. It is as impossible for any one to remain cynical, or moody,
or desponding, over these books, as for an infant to look dismally
in the face of a smiling nurse. As face answers to face, so does
heart to heart; and as Walter Scott's overflowed with love and
cheerfulness, the hearts of his readers catch its brimmings. If any
are shut against him, they are not of his readers; and we envy them
not. They may find elsewhere all imaginable proofs and illustrations
of the goodliness of a kindly spirit; but w hy not add to these as
perfect an exemplification as ever was offered? It may be very well
to take' one abroad in the grey dawn, and tell him that the hills
have a capacity of appearing green, the waters golden, and the
clouds rose-coloured, and that larks sometimes sing soaring in the
air, instead of crouching in a grassy nest; but why not let him
remain to witness the effusion of light from behind the mountain,
the burst of harmony from field and copse? Why not let him feel, as
well as know, what a morn of sunshine is ? Why not let him view its
effects from every accessible point, and pour out his joy in
snatches of song responsive to those which he hears around him, as
well as his thankfulness in a matin hymn ? If it be true, as no
readers of Scott will deny, that it exhilarates the spirits, and
animates the affections to follow the leadings of this great
Enchanter, it is certain that he has achieved a great moral work of
incitement and amelioration. The test of his merits here is, that
his works are for the innocent and kindly-hearted to enjoy; and if
any others enjoy them, it is by becoming innocent and kindly for the
time, in like manner as it is for the waking flocks and choirs to
welcome the sunrise: if the fox and the bat choose to remain abroad,
the one must abstain from its prey, and the other hush its hootings.
This kindliness of spirit being of so bright a quality, makes us
lament all the more, as we have said that it had not the other
excellence of being universally diffused. We know how unreasonable
it is to expect every thing from one man, and are far from saying or
believing that Walter Scott looked otherwise than benignantly on ail
classes and all individuals that came under his observation. What we
lament is, that there were extensive classes of men, and they the
most important to society, that were secluded from the light of his
embellishing genius. His sunshine gilded whatever it fell upon, but
it did not fall from a sufficient height to illuminate the nooks and
vallies which he found and left curtained in mists. What is there of
humble life in his narratives? What did he know of those who live
and move in that region? Nothing. There is not a character from
humble life in all his library of volumes; nor had he any conception
that character is to be found there. By humble life we do not mean
Edie Ochiltree's lot of privileged mendicity, nor Dirk Ilatteraick’s
smuggling adventures, nor the Saxon slriVery of Gurth, nor the
feudal adherence of Dougal, and Caleb Bal-derstone, and Adam
Woodcock, nor the privileged dependence of Caxon and Fairservice.
None of these had anything to do with humble life; each and all
formed part of the aristocratic system in which Walter Scott's
affections were bound up. Jeanie Deans herself, besides being no
original conception of Sir Walter's, derives none of her character
or interest from her station in life, any farther than as it was the
occasion of the peculiarity of her pilgrimage. We never think of
Jeanie as poor, or low in station. Her simplicity is that which
might pertain to a secluded young woman of any rank; and it is
difficult to bear in mind—it is like an extraneous circumstance,
that her sister was at service, the only attempt made throughout at
realizing the social position of the parties. We do not mention this
as any drawback upon the performance, but merely as saving the only
apparent exception to our remarks, that Sir Walter rendered no
service to humble life in the way of delineating its society.
Faithful butlers and barbers, tricky ladies' maids, eccentric
falconers and gamekeepers, are not those among whom we should look
for the strength of character, the sternness of pas. sion, the
practical heroism, the inexhaustible patience, the unassuming
self-denial, the unconscious beneficence—in a word, the true-heartednes*
which is to be found in its perfection in humble life. Of all this
Walter Scott knew nothing. While discriminating, with the nicest
acumen, the shades of character, the modifications of passion, among
those whom he did understand, he was wholly unaware that he bounded
himself within a small circle, beyond which lay a larger, and a
larger; that which he represented being found in each, in a more
distinct outline, in more vivid colouring, and in striking and
various combinations, with other characteristics of humanity which
had never presented themselves to him. He knew not that the strength
of soul, which he represents as growing up in his heroes amidst the
struggles of the crusade, is of the same kind with that which is
nourished in our neighbours of the next alley, by conflicts of a
less romantic, but not less heroic cast. He knew not that the
passion of ambition, which he has made to contend with love so
fearfully in Leicester's bosom, is the same passion, similarly
softened and aggravated, with that which consumes the high-spirited
working man, chosen by his associates to represent and guide their
interests, while his heart is torn by opposite appeals to his
domestic affections. He knew not that, however reckless the vice of
some of his courtly personages, greater recklessness is to be found
in the presence of poverty; that the same poverty exposes love to
further trials than he has described, and exercises it into greater
refinement; and puts loyalty more severely to the test, and inspires
a nobler intrepidity, and nourishes a deeper hatred, and a wilder
superstition, and a more inveterate avarice, and a more
disinterested generosity, and a more imperturbable fortitude, than
even he has set before us. In short, he knew not that all passions,
and all natural movements of society, that he has found in the
higher, exist in the humbler ranks; and all magnified and deepened
in proportion as reality prevails over convention, as there is less
mixture of the adventitious with the true. The effect of this
partial knowledge is not only the obliteration to himself and to his
readers, as far as connected with him, of more than half the facts
and interests of humanity, but that his benevolence was stinted in
its play. We find no philanthropists among his characters; because
he had not the means of forming the conception of philanthropy in
its largest sense. He loved men, all men whom he knew; but that love
was not based on knowledge as extensive as his observation was
penetrating; and it did not therefore deserve the high tide of
philanthropy. We have no sins of commission to charge him with, no
breaches of charity, not a thought or expression which is tinged
with bitterness against man, collectively individually; but we
charge him with omission of which he was unconscious, and which he
would, perhaps, scarcely have wished to repair, as it must have been
done at the expense of his Toryism, to which the omission and
unconsciousness were owing. How should a man be a philanthropist who
knows not what freedom is ?—not the mere freedom from foreign
domination, but the exemption from misrule at home, the liberty of
watching over and renovating institutions, that the progression of
man and of states may proceed together. Of this kind of freedom Sir
Walter had no conception, and neither, therefore, are there any
patriots in his dramatis persona. There ore abundance of soldiers to
light up beacona and fly to arms at the first notice of invasion;
many to drink the healths and fight the battles of their chiefs, to
testify their fidelity to their persons, and peril life and liberty
in their cause; plenty to vindicate the honour of England abroad,
and to exult in her glory at home. But this is not patriotism, any
more than kindliness is philanthropy. We have no long-sighted views
respecting the permanent improvement of society,—no extensive
regards to the interests of an entire nation; and therefore, no
simple self-sacrifice, no stedfastness of devotion to country and
people. The noble class of virtues, which go to make up patriotism,
are not even touched upon by Scott. The sufferings of his heroes are
represented to arise from wounded pride, and from the laceration of
personal, or domestic, or feudal feelings and prepossessions; and in
no single instance from sympathy with the race, or any large body of
them. The courage^of his heroes is, in like manner, compounded of
instincts and of conventional stimuli; and in no one case derived
from principles of philanthropy, or of patriotism, which is one
direction of philanthropy. Their fortitude, howsoever stedfast, when
arising from self-devotion at all, arises only from that unreasoning
acquiescence in established forms, which is as inferior to the
self-sacrifice of philanthropy as the implicit obedience of a child
is inferior to the concurrence of the reasoning man. None of Scott's
personages act and suffer as members and servants of society. Each
is for his own; whether it be his family, his chief, his king, or
his country, in a warlike sense. The weal or woe of many, or of all,
is the only consideration which does not occur to them—the only
motive to enterprise and endurance, which is not so much as alluded
to. There is no talk of freedom, as respects any thing but brute
force,—no suspicion that one class is in a state of privilege, and
another in a state of subjugation, and that these things ought not
to be. Gurth, indeed, is relieved from Saxon bondage, and Adam
Woodcock is as imperious and meddling as he pleases, and the ladies'
maids have abundant liberty to play pranks; but this sort of freedom
has nothing to do with the right of manhood, and with what ought to
be, and will be, the right of womanhood— it is the privilege of
slavery, won by encroachment, and preserved by favour. Gurth got rid
of his collar, but in our days he would be called a slave; and Adam
Woodcock and Mistress Lilias lived by the breath of their lady's
nostrils, in the same manner as the courtiers of Cceur de Lion
gained an unusual length of tether from their lord's knightly
courtesy, and those of the second Charles from his careless
clemency. There is no freedom in all this. Slave is written on the
knightly crest of the master, and on the liveried garb of the
servitor, as plainly as even on the branded shoulder of the negro.
But it must be so, it is urged, when times, and scenes of slavery,
are chosen as the groundwork of the fiction. We answer, Nay: the
spirit of freedom may breathe through the delineation of slavery.
However far back we may revert to the usages of the feudal system,
there may be,—there must be, if they exist in the mind of the
author,—aspirations after a state of society more worthy of
humanity. In displaying all the pomp of chivalry, the heart ought to
mourn the woes of inequality it inflicted, while the imagination
revels in its splendours. But this could not be the case with Scott,
who knew about as much of the real condition and character of the
humbler classes of each age as of the Japanese; perhaps less, as he
was a reader of Basil Hall. Beyond that which seemed to him the
outermost circle, that of the domestics of the great, all was a
blank; save a few vague outlines of beggar-women with seven small
children, and other such groups that have by some chance found their
way into works of fiction. His benignity, therefore, alloyed by no
bitterness of disposition in himself, was so far restricted by the
imperfection of his knowledge of life, as to prevent his conveying
the conception of philanthropy in its largest sense. His services to
freedom are of a negative, rather than a positive character ;
rendered by showing how things work in a state of slavery, rather
than how they Bhould work in a condition of rational freedom; and it
follows, that his incitements to benevolence are also tendered
unconsciously. Through an exhibition of the softening and
brightening influence of benignity shed over the early movements of
society, he indicates what must be the meridian splendour of
philanthropy, penetrating everywhere, irradiating where it
penetrates, and fertilizing, as well as embellishing whatever it
shines upon.
Much has Walter Scott also done, and done it also unconsciously, for
woman. . Neither Mary Wollstonecraft, nor Thompson of Cork, nor any
other advocate of the rights of woman, has pleaded so eloquently to
the thoughtful,—and the thoughtful alone will entertain the
subject,—as Walter Scott, by his exhibition of what women are, and
by two or three indications of what they might be. He has been found
fault with for the poverty of character of the women of his tales; a
species of blame against which we have always protested. If he had
made as long a list of oddities among his women as his men, he would
have exposed himself to the reproach of quitting nature, and
deserting classes for extravagant individualities; since there is
much less scope for eccentricity among women, in the present state
of society, than among men. But, it is alleged, he has made so few
of his female characters representatives of a class. True; for the
plain reason, that there are scarcely any classes to represent. We
thank him for the forcible exhibition of this truth: we thank him
for the very term womankind ; and can well bear its insulting use in
the mouth of the scoffer, for the sake of the process it may set to
work in the mind of the meditative and the just. There is no saying
what the common use of the term canaille may in time be proved to
have effected for the lower orders of men; or in what degree the
process of female emancipation may be hastened by the slang use of
the term womankind, by despots and by fools. It may lead some
watchful ’intellects—some feeling hearts—to ponder the reasons of
the fact, that the word mankind calls up associations of grandeur
and variety,—that of womankind, ideas of littleness and
sameness;—that the one brings after it conceptions of lofty destiny,
heroic action, grave counsel, a busy office in society, a dignified
repose from its cares, a stedfast pursuit of wisdom, an intrepid
achievement of good;—while the other originates the very opposite
conceptions,—vegetation instead of life, folly instead of counsel,
frivolity instead of action, restlessness in the place of industry,
apathy in that of repose, listless accomplishment of small aima, a
passive reception of what others may please to impart; or, at the
very best, a halting, intermitting pursuit of dimly, discerned
objects. To some it may be suggested to inquire, Why this contrast
should exist?— why one-half of the rational creation should be so
very much less rational?—and, as a consequence, so much less good,
and so much less happy than the other? If they are for a moment led
by common custom to doubt whether, because they are less rational,
they are less happy and less good, the slightest recurrence to
Scott's novels is enough to satisfy them, that the common notion of
the sufficiency of present female objects to female progression and
happiness is unfounded. They will perhaps look abroad from Scott
into all other works of fiction—into all faithful pictures of
life—and see what women are; and they will finally perceive, that
the fewer women there are found to plead the cause of their sex, the
larger mixture of folly there is in their pleadings; the more
extensive their own unconsciousness of their wrongs, the stronger is
their case. The best argument for Negro Emancipation lies in the
vices and subservience of slaves: the best argument for female
emancipation lies in the folly and contentedness of women under the
present system—in argument to which Walter Scott has done the
fullest justice; for a set of more passionless, frivolous,
uninteresting beings was never assembled at morning auction, or
evening tea-table, than he has presented us with in bis novels. The
few exceptions are made so by the strong workings of instinct, or of
superstition, (the offspring of strong instinct and weak reason
combined,) save in the two or three instances where the female mind
had been exposed to manly discipline. Scott's female characters are
easily arranged under these divisions:—Three-fourths are womankind
merely: pretty, insignificant ladies, with their pert waiting maids.
A few are viragoes, in whom instinct is strong, whose souls are to
migrate hereafter into the she-eagle or bear,—Helen M'Gregor, Ulrica,
Magdalen Greeme, and the Highland Mother. A few are
superstitious,—Elspeth, Alice, Norna, Mother Nicneven. A few exhibit
the same tendencies, modified by some one passion; as Lady Ashton,
Lady Derby, and Lady Douglas. Mary and Elizabeth are womankind
modified by royalty. There only remain Flora M‘Ivor, Die Vernon,
Rebecca, and Jeanie Deans. For these four, and their glorious
significance, womankind are as much obliged to Walter Scott, as for
the insignificance of all the rest; not because they are what women
might be, and therefore ought to be; but because they afford
indications of this, and that these indications are owing to their
having escaped from the management of man, and been trained by the
discipline of circumstance. If common methods yield no such women as
these; if such women occasionally come forth from the school of
experience, what an argument is this against the common
methods,—what a plea in favour of a change of system! Woman cannot
be too grateful to him who has furnished it. Henceforth, when men
fire at the name of Flora M'lvor, let woman say, “There will be more
Floras when women feel that they have political power and duties."
When men worship the image of Die Vernon, let them be reminded, that
there will be other Die Vernons when women are impelled to
self-reliance. When Jeanie is spoken of with tender esteem, let it
be suggested, that strength of motive makes heroism of action; and
that as long as motive is cenfined and weakened, the very activity
which should accomplish high aims must degenerate Into puerile
restlessness. When Rebecca is sighed for, as a lofty presence that
has passed away, it should be' asked, how she should possibly remain
or reappear in a society which alike denies the discipline by which
her high powers and sensibilities might be matured, and the objects
on which they might be worthily employed? As a woman, no less than
as a Jewess, she is the representative of the wrongs of a degraded
and despised class: there is no abiding-place for her among foes to
her caste; she wanders unemployed (as regards her peculiar
capabilities) through the world; and when she dies, there has been,
not only a deep injury inflicted, but a waste made of the resources
of human greatness and happiness. Yes, women may choose Rebecca as
the representative of their capabilities: first despised, then
wondered §at, and involuntarily admired; tempted, made use of, then
persecuted, and finally banished—not by a formal decree, but by
being refused honourable occupation, and a safe abiding place. Let
women not only take her for their model, but make her speak for them
to society, till they have obtained the educational discipline which
beseems them; the rights, political and social, which are their due;
and that equal regard with the other sex in the eye of man, which it
requires the faith of Rebecca tor assure them they have in the eye
of Heaven. Meantime, while still suffering under injustice, let them
lay to heart, for strength and consolation, the beautiful commentary
which Walter Scott has given on the lot of the representative of
their wrong9. If duly treasured, it may prove by its effects, that
our author has contributed, in more ways than one, to female
emancipation; by supplying a principle of renovation to the
enslaved, as well as by exposing their condition; by pointing out
the ends for which freedom and power are desirable, as well as the
disastrous effects of withholding them. He says,—
“The character of the fair Jewess found so much favour in the eyes
of some fair readers, that the writer was censured, because, when
arranging the fates of the characters of the drama, he had not
assigned the hand of Wilfred to Rebecca, rather than the less
interesting Rowena. But, not to mention that the prejudices of the
age rendered such an union almost impossible, the author may, in
passing, observe, that he thinks a character of a highly virtuous
and lofty stamp, is degraded rather than exalted by an attempt to
reward virtue with temporal prosperity. Such is not the recompense
which Providence has deemed worthy of suffering merit; and it is a
dangerous and fatal doctrine to teach young persons, the most common
readers of romance, that rectitude of conduct and of principle are
either naturally allied with, or adequately rewarded by, the
gratification of our passions, or attainment of our wishes. In a
word, if a virtuous and self-denied character is dismissed with
temporal wealth, greatness, rank, or the indulgence of such a
rashly-formed or ill-assorted passion as that of Rebecca for
Ivanhoe, the reader will be apt to say, Verily, virtue had its
reward. But a glance on the great picture of life will show, that
the duties of self-denial, and the sacrifice of passion to
principle, are seldom thus remunerated ; and that the internal
consciousness of their high-minded discharge of duty, produces on
their own reflections a more adequate recompense, in the form of
that peace which the world cannot give or take away."
These, then, are the moral services,—many and great,—which Scott has
rendered, positively and negatively, consciously and unconsciously,
to society. He has softened national prejudices; he has encouraged
innocent tastes in every region of the world; he has imparted to
certain influential classes the conviction that human nature works
alike in all; he has exposed priestcraft and fanaticism; he has
effectively satirized eccentricities, unamiablenesses, and follies;
he has Irresistibly recommended benignity in the survey of life, and
indicated the glory of a higher kind of benevolence; and finally, he
has advocated the rights of woman with a force all the greater for
his being unaware of the import and tendency of what he was
saying.—The one other achievement which we attribute to him, is also
not the few magnificent for being overlooked by himself.
By achieving so much within narrow bounds, he has taught how more
may be achieved in a wider space. He has taught us the power of
fiction as an agent of morals and philosophy; "and it shall go hard
with us but we will better the instruction.'' Every agent of these
master spirits is wanted in an age like this; and he who has placed
a new one at their service, is a benefactor of society. Scott might
have written, as he declared he wrote, for the passing of his time,
the improvement of his fortunes, and the amusement of his readers :
he might have believed, as he declared he believed, that little
moral utility arises out of works of fiction: we are not bound to
estimate his works as lightly as he did, or to agree in his opinions
of their influences. We rather learn from him how much may be
impressed by exemplification which would be rejected in the form of
reasoning, and how there may be more extensive embodiments of truth
in fiction than the world was before thoroughly aware of. It matters
not that the truth he exemplified was taken up at random, like that
of all his predecessors in the walks of fiction. Others may
systematise, having learned from him how extensively they may
embody. There is a boundless field open before them; no less than
the whole region of moral science, politics, political economy,
social rights and duties. All these, and more, are as fit for the
process of exemplification as the varieties of life and character
illustrated by Scott. And not only has he left the great mass of
material unwrought, but, with all his richness of variety, has made
but scanty use of the best instruments of illustration. The grandest
manifestations of passion remain to be displayed; the finest
elements of the poetry of human emotion are yet uncombined; the mo3t
various dramatic exhibition of events and characters is yet
unwrought; for there has yet been no recorder of the poor; at least,
none but those who write as mere observers; who describe, but do not
dramatize humble life. The widest interests being thus still
untouched, the richest materials unemployed, what may not prove the
ul timate obligations of society to him who did so much, and pointed
the way towards doing infinitely more; and whose vast achievements
are, above all, valuable as indications of what remains to be
achieved? That this, his strongest claim to gratitude, has not yet
been fully recognised, is evident from the fact, that though he has
had many imitators, there have been yet none to take suggestion from
him; to employ his method of procedure upon new doctrine and other
materials. There have been many found to construct fiction within
his range of morals, character, incident, and scenery; but none to
carry the process out of his range. We have yet to wait for the
philosophical romance, for the novels which shall relate to other
classes than the aristocracy ; we have yet to look for this
legitimate offspring of the productions of Scott, though wearied
with the intrusions of their spurious brethren.
The progression of the age requires something better than this
imitation;—requires that the above-mentioned suggestion should be
used. If an author of equal genius with Scott were to arise
to-morrow, he would not meet with an equal reception; not only
because novelty is worn off, but because the serious temper of the
times requires a new direction of the genius of the age. Under the
pressure of difficulty, in the prospect of extensive change, armed
with expectation, or filled with determination as the general mind
now is, it has not leisure or disposition to receive even its
amusements unmixed with what is solid and has a bearing upon its
engrossing interests. There may still be the thoughtless and
indolent, to whom mere fiction is necessary as a time; but these are
not they who can guarantee an author's influence, or secure his
popularity. The bulk of the reading public, whether or not on the
scent of utility, cannot be interested without a larger share of
philosophy, or a graver purpose in fiction, than formerly; and the
writer who would effect most for himself and others in this
department must take his heroes and heroines from a different class
than any which has yet been adequately represented. This difference
of character implies, under the hands of a good artist, a difference
of scenery and incident; for the incidents of a fiction are worth
nothing unless they arise out of the characters ; and the scenery,
both natural and moral, has no charm unless it be harmonious with
both. Instead of tales of knightly love and glory, of chivalrous
loyalty, of the ambition of ancient courts, and the bygone
superstitions of a half-savage state, we. must have, in a new
novelist, the graver themes—not the less picturesque, perhaps, for
their reality—which the present condition of society suggests. We
have had enough of ambitious intrigues; why not now take the
magnificent subject, the birth of political principle, whose advent
has been heralded so long? What can afford finer, moral scenery than
the transition state in which society now is? Where are nobler
heroes to be found than those who sustain society in the struggle;
and what catastrophe so grand as the downfal of bad institutions,
and the issues of a process of renovation ? Heroism may now be
found, not cased in helm and cuirass, but strengthening itself in
the cabinet of the statesman, guiding the movements of the unarmed
multitude, and patiently bearing up against hardship, in the hope of
its peaceful removal. Love may now be truly represented as
sanctified by generosity and self-denial in many of the sad majority
of cases where its course runs not smooth. All the virtues which
have graced fictitious delineations, are still at the service of the
novelist; but their exercise and discipline should be represented as
different from what they were. The same passions still sway human
hearts; but they must be shown to be intensified or repressed by the
new impulses which a new state of things affords. Fiction must not
be allowed to expire with Scott, or to retain only that languid
existence which is manifest merely in imitations of his works : we
must hope,—not, alas! for powers and copiousness like his,—but for
an enlightened application of his means of achievement to new aims :
the higher quality of which may in some measure compensate for the
inferiority of power and richness which it is only reasonable to
anticipate.
It appears, then, from the inquiry we have pursued, that the
services for which society has to be eternally grateful to Walter
Scott are of three distinct kinds. He has vindicated the character
of genius by the healthiness of his own. He has achieved marvels in
the province of art, and stupendous benefits in that of morals. He
has indicated, by his own achievements, the way to larger and higher
achievements.*— What a lot for a man,—to be thus a threefold
benefactor to his race ! to unite in himself the functions of
moralist, constructor, and disco verer ! What a possession for
society to have had ! and to retain for purposes of amelioration,
incitement and guidance! He can never be lost to us, whatever rival
or kindred spirit may be destined to arise, or whether he is to be
the last of his class. If the latter supposition should prove
true,—which, however, appears to us impossible,—he will stand a
fadeless apparition on the structure of his own achievements,
distanced, but not impaired by time: if the former, his spirit will
migrate into hit successors, and communicate once more with us
through them. In either case, we shall have him with us still.
But, it will be said, the services here attributed to Scott, were,
for the most part, rendered unconsciously. True; and why should not
the common methods of Providence have place here as in all other
instances? Scott did voluntarily all that he could; and that he was
destined to do yet more involuntarily, is so much the greater honour,
instead of derogating from his merit. That some of this extra
service was of a nature which he might have declined if offered a
choice, is only an additional proof that the designs of men are
over-ruled, and their weakness not only compensated for by divine
direction, but made its instruments. Great things are done by
spontaneous human action: yet greater things are done by every man
without his concurrence or suspicion; all which tends, not to
degrade the character of human effort, but to exemplify the purposes
of Providence. Scott is no new instance of this, nor deserves less
honour in proportion to his spontaneous efforts than the sages of
Greece, or the historians of Rome, and the benefactors of every age,
who have been destined to effect more as illustrators than even as
teachers and recorders. He was happy and humbly complacent in his
creative office: it is so much pure blessing that we can regard him
with additional and higher complacency as a vindicator of genius,
and an unconscious prophet of its future achievements. |