early married life, ballad collecting, lay of the last minstrel, marmion
the scotts, at edinburgh, dwelt first in george street, then in south castle street, and finally in the house in north castle street, where he resided till the time of his misfortunes. the rooms were soon full of old pikes and guns and bows, of old armour, and of old books. already scott’s library was considerable. he had read enormously, and it is curious that a man of his unrivalled memory made so many written notes of his reading. “reading makes a full man,” but gillies, an intelligent if unpractical bore, says that, when in the full tide of authorship later, scott read comparatively little. his summers were passed in a cottage at lasswade, in the society of his early friends, and of the families of melville, of the historian, patrick fraser tytler, woodhouselee, and of buccleuch. his early friends were around him—william erskine, a good man and fastidious critic, william
{28}
clerk, of penicuik, fergusson (sir adam), and many others. gillies says that scott lived “alone,” and doubts “whether there was any one intimately connected with sir walter scott whose mind and habits were exactly congenial.” but it is a commonplace that we all “live alone,” and certainly scott seems to have believed that he found, especially in “will erskine,” all the sympathy, literary and social, that he could expect or desire. in 1798 he made a new acquaintance, mat lewis, famous then for his romance, the monk, and busy with his tales of wonder.
early married life
lewis, though no poet, was a neat metrist, and tutored scott in the practical details of prosody. to lewis scott offered versions of german ballads, and other materials from his increasing store of original or traditional volkslieder. he entered the realm of poetry, not by the usual gate of “subjective” lyrics about his own emotions, but through the antiquarian and historical gate of old popular ballads, newly opened by bishop percy, herd, ritson the excitable antiquary, and others. sir philip sidney had loved these songs of “blind crowders,” addison had praised them, lady wardlaw had imitated them, burns had expressed but a poor opinion of them, but german research and imitation had given a new vogue to the ballads, which scott, in boyhood, had collected when
{29}
ever he possessed a shilling to buy a printed chant. the simplicity and spirit of the narrative folk songs did much to inspire and give vogue to wolf’s theory that the homeric poems were, in origin, a kind of highly superior long ballads, handed down by oral tradition. in this theory scott had no interest, about its truth he had no opinion, sitting silent and bored when it was debated by coleridge and morritt. “i never,” he says, “was so bethumped with words.” the vogue of the ballads lent a new blow at the poetical theories of the eighteenth century, and at the poetry of pope. but scott would not have it said that pope was no poet, a poet he was, but he dealt with themes that were no longer so much appreciated as they had been in the age of anne. though a literary innovator sir walter was not a literary iconoclast, and he loved no poetry better than the stately and manly melancholy of dr. johnson’s imitations of juvenal.
mat lewis’s ballads were delayed in publication, but in january 1799 he negotiated with a mr. bell for the issue of scott’s version of goethe’s goetz von berlichingen, “a very poor and incorrect translation;” so a former owner of my copy of lockhart has pencilled on the margin. goetz, at all events, made no impression on coleridge’s detested “reading public,” and though scott carried to london, in 1799, an original drama, the
{30}
house of aspen, which was put in rehearsal by kemble, it never saw the footlights. in later life he expressed disgust at the idea of writing for “low and ignorant actors” (who may be supposed to know their own business); perhaps he had been mortified by the ways of managers. at this time his father died of paralysis; says lockhart, “i have lived to see the curtain rise and fall once more on a similar scene.” the glenfinlas ballad was written at this time, founded on a legend of the murderous fairy women of the woods, which i have heard from the lips of a boatman on loch awe, and which mr. stevenson found, unmistakably the same, among the natives of samoa. a more important ballad, the first in which he really showed his hand, was the eve of st. john, a legend of smailholme tower. here we find the true border spirit, the superstitious thrill, the galloping metre, the essence of the lay of the last minstrel. cadyow, a ballad of the murder of the regent moray, is also of this period, and though not in the traditional manner, is most spirited.
beginning of ballantyne
scott’s destiny was now clear enough, the country had in him a new “maker.” but he had no idea of a life of authorship, agreeing with kerr of abbotrule that “a lord president scott might well be a famous poet—in the vacation time.
{31}
” literature, he said, was a good staff, but a bad crutch, and he looked to advance his worldly prospects and secure his livelihood by the profession of the bar. our other poets, as a rule, have meditated the muse in perfect leisure, with no professional distractions. but scott’s literary work was all done in hours stolen from an active official life. “i can get on quite as well from recollection of nature, while sitting in the parliament house, as if wandering through wood and wold,” he said to gillies, “though liable to be roused out of a descriptive dream, if balmuto, with a fierce grunt, demands, ‘where are your cautioners?’” shelley composed while watching “the bees in the ivy bloom;” keats, while listening to the nightingale; scott, in the parliament house, under the glare of lord balmuto. the difference in method is manifest in the difference of the results. but marmion was composed during gallops among the hills of tweedside.
at this date, the winter of 1799, scott met his school friend james ballantyne, then publishing a newspaper at kelso, and ballantyne printed twelve copies of the new ballads. scott liked the typography, thought of a small volume of the old border ballads, to be executed by his friend, and the die was cast. the success of the border minstrelsy made him an author, association with the
{32}
printer helped him on the long road to financial ruin.
ballad collecting
the same date, december 1799, saw scott made sheriff depute of selkirkshire, “the shirra of the forest.” he at once invited ballantyne to settle as a printer and publisher in edinburgh, while in the forest, when ballad hunting, he made the acquaintance of leyden, scholar and poet, of william laidlaw, his lifelong friend, and of james hogg, then an ettrick swain, “the most remarkable man who ever wore the maud of a shepherd.” hogg had none of the education of burns. “self taught am i,” he might have said, like the minstrel of odysseus, “but the muse puts into my heart all manner of lays.” hogg was indeed the survivor of such borderers as, writes bishop lesley (1576), “make their own ballads of adventures for themselves.” he has left a graphic account of his first meeting with scott. “oh, lad, the shirra’s come,” said scott’s groom. “are ye the chap that makes the auld ballads?” hogg replied, “i could not say that i had made ony very auld ballads,” but did james tell the truth? he is under suspicion of having made the “very auld ballad” of auld maitland, which his mother at once chanted to the shirra. scott was as happy as his own monkbarns, when he overheard elspeth of the burntfoot crooning the ballad of harlaw. the old lady told
{33}
the shirra that she had learned auld maitland “frae auld andrew moor, and he learned it frae auld baby metlin” (maitland) “wha was housekeeper to the first” (anderson) “laird of tushilaw. she was said to have been another than a gude ane....”
baby metlin having this character, i sought for her, aided by the kindness of the minister of ettrick, in the records of the kirk session of ettrick, hoping to find her under church censure for some lawless love. but there is no documentary trace of baby, and the question is, could hogg, then ignorant of libraries, above all of the maitland mss., have forged the ballad of auld maitland, and made his mother an accomplice in the pious fraud? it is to be remarked that scott himself says that he obtained auld maitland in manuscript, from a farmer (laidlaw), and that the copy was derived from the recital of “an old shepherd” (1802). none the less mrs. hogg may also have recited it, having learned it from the old shepherd, auld andrew moor. it is a delicate point in ballad criticism. such a hoax, at this date, by the wily shepherd, appears to me to be impossible, and i lean to a theory that auld maitland, and the outlaw murray, are literary imitations of the ballad, compiled late in the seventeenth or early in the eighteenth century, on some maitland and
{34}
murray traditions. in any case, hogg had won the interest of scott, whose temper he often tried but whose patience he never exhausted. for leyden, a more trustworthy collector of ballads, scott secured an appointment in the east, “a distant and a deadly shore.”
“lay of the last minstrel”
in 1802, the first two volumes of the border minstrelsy, later added to and emended, were published in london, with all the treasures of ancient lore in prefaces and notes; the first fruits, and noble fruits they are, of scott as an historian and writer in prose. ballantyne, still at kelso, was the printer. scott remarks that “i observed more strict fidelity concerning my originals,” than bishop percy had done. to what extent he altered and improved his originals cannot be known. he confesses to “conjectural emendations” in kinmont willie, which he found “much mangled by reciters.” mr. henderson credits him with verses ix-xii, “mainly,” and with “numerous other touches.” i do not think that in the ballad of otterbourne he interpolated a passage bestowed on him by mr. henderson, for he twice quoted the lines in moments of great solemnity, and he was not the man to quote himself. the texts, though they passed the scrutiny of the fierce ritson, are much more scientifically handled (with the aid of the abbotsford and other mss.) by professor
{35}
child, in his noble collection. he notes over forty minute changes, in one ballad, from the ms. copy of mrs. brown. but the border minstrelsy gives the texts as the world knows them, as far as it does know them, while the prose elevates “a set of men whose worth was hardly known” to a pinnacle of romance. in their own days the border riders were regarded as public nuisances by statesmen, who only attempted to educate them by the method of the gibbet. but now they were the delight of “fine ladies, contending who shall be the most extravagant in encomium.” a blessing on such fine ladies, who know what is good when they see it!
“lay of the last minstrel”
scott says, with his usual acuteness, that we “sometimes impute that effect to the poet, which is produced by the recollections and associations which his verses excite.” when a man has been born in the centre of scott’s sheriffdom, when every name of a place in the ballads and the lay is dear and familiar to him, he cannot be the most impartial, though he may be not the least qualified critic of the poet, who, we must remember, wrote for his own people. by 1802, scott announced to ellis that he was engaged on “a long poem of my own ... a kind of romance of border chivalry, in a light horseman sort of stanza.” this poem was the lay of the last minstrel, which borderers
{36}
may be excused for thinking the best, the freshest, and the most spontaneous of all his romances in rhyme. the young countess of dalkeith (later, duchess of buccleuch) had heard from mr. beattie of mickledale a story (known under another form, and as of recent date, in glencoe) of a mysterious being who made his appearance at a farm house, and there resided. the being uttered the cry tint, tint, tint! (lost, lost, lost!), and was finally summoned away by a voice calling to him by the name of gilpin horner. this legend was “universally credited”: lady dalkeith asked scott to write a ballad on the theme, and thus gilpin, though criticized as an excrescence on the lay, was really its only begetter. while he was wondering what he could make of gilpin, scott heard part of coleridge’s christabel, then in manuscript, recited by sir john stoddart. the measure of christabel had previously been used in comic verse, by anthony hall, anstey, wolcott and others, and scott seems to have assumed the right to employ it in a serious work. in this he showed something of the deficient sense of meum and tuum which marked his freebooting ancestors; and coleridge, whose fragment was not published till many years later, resented the appropriation and often spoke of scott’s poetry with contempt. a year passed before scott actually wrote the first stanzas of the
{37}
lay. he read them to erskine and cranstoun, who said little, and he burned his manuscript. but later he found that the critics were too much puzzled by the novelty of the poem to give an opinion, and when one of them, probably erskine, suggested that an explanatory prologue was necessary, scott introduced the last minstrel, chanting to monmouth’s widow, and went on with the work, “at about the rate of a canto a week.”
in this casual manner he “found himself,” and his fame. the lay was not published till 1805, and scott’s energies were being given to an edition of the romance of sir tristrem, and to elucidating the true history of his favourite thomas the rymer, of ercildoune. in later days he purchased the rymer’s glen, so he chose to style it, below eildon tree, with the burn which murmurs by the cottage of chiefswood. but sir tristrem and the rymer were learned and unprofitable subjects. despite his need of money, sir walter was always ready to spend his time and labour in literature which profited not, financially. “people may say this or that of the pleasure or fame or profit as a motive of writing,” he remarks. “i think the only pleasure is the actual exertion and research....”
society and his duties as quartermaster-general of volunteer horse were combined with research and composition. invasion seemed imminent, and
{38}
scott worked both at his cavalry drill and at organizing the infantry militia of his sheriffdom. in september 1803 he met wordsworth and his sister on their scottish tour, when wordsworth prayed for “an hour of that dundee” who drove the army of mackay in rout through the pass of killiecrankie. it is curious to find wordsworth, ruskin and scott united among the friends of claverhouse! wordsworth professed himself “greatly delighted” by scott’s recitation of four cantos of the lay, though “the moving incident is not my trade,” any more than admiration of contemporaries was wordsworth’s foible. later the admiration was mainly on the side of scott, though wordsworth made noble amends in his beautiful sonnet on scott’s final and fated voyage to italy.
ashestiel
matters of finance were now occupying scott. at the bar he had never much more practice than that which came to him from his father’s office. that was little indeed, usually under £200 a year, and grew less when scott’s father died, and his gifted but gay brother, thomas, mismanaged the business. with his sheriffdom, his private resources, and a legacy of about £6,000 from an uncle, scott was at the head of £1,000 a year. he succeeded in obtaining the reversion of a clerkship in the court of sessions, doing the work for nothing while the holder, an old man, lived; and, in
{39}
the end of 1805, he put his £6,000 into the printing business of james ballantyne.
this was the beginning of evils. a barrister ought not to be a secret partner in a commercial enterprise. erskine alone knew the fact, and we do not hear that erskine remonstrated. lockhart regretted that scott, who was now obliged to fix on a residence within his sheriffdom, did not buy broadmeadows with his windfall of £6,000. the place is beautifully situated on the wooded left bank of yarrow, between hangingshaw and bowhill, and hard by the cottage of mungo park, the african traveller. here scott might have lived happy and remote, in the heart of his own country. but he was no hermit, he loved society, and he could not give up his military duties. he left lasswade, the gandercleugh of his tales of my landlord, and rented from a russell cousin ashestiel, a small house, in part very old, on a steep cliff overhanging the tweed, above yair. only the hills behind the house severed him from yarrow, the fishing was excellent, hard by is elibank, the tower of his ancestress, “muckle mou’d meg,” and selkirk, where he administered justice, is within an easy ride. the bridge over tweed was not yet built, and scott had the unfading pleasure of risking his life in riding the flooded ford. here scott reclaimed that honest poacher, tom purdie, his
{40}
lifelong retainer and friend, who, with rustic liberality of speech, expressed his high opinion of mrs. scott’s attractions. hard by is sunderland hall, where leslie’s troops bivouacked before they surprised montrose at philiphaugh, and at sunderland hall was an excellent antiquarian library open to the shirra. of him little trace remains at ashestiel, save the huge arm-chair which was borrowed for him in his latest days of paralysis. at the peel, within a few hundred yards, he had an intelligent neighbour, mrs. laidlaw, wife of “laird nippy,” a bonnet laird of an ancient line which lay under an old curse, not unfulfilled. to mrs. laidlaw scott presented all his poems, which, by her bequest, have come into the hands of the present writer. had scott been the owner, not the tenant, of ashestiel, abbotsford would never have existed, “that unhappy palace of his race.”
“lay of the last minstrel”
it was in january 1805 that the lay was published by messrs. longman. to appreciate the lay and its success, we must either have read it in childhood, when “glamour” seems a probable art (as to some unknown extent it really is), and when lamps that burn eternally in tombs present no difficulties to the reason; or we must have imagination enough to understand how perfectly and delightfully novel was the poem. there had been a long interregnum in poetry in england. cowper, as we
{41}
learn from miss marianne dashwood in sense and sensibility, was scott’s only rival, and cowper is not romantic. wordsworth and coleridge were practically unknown to “the reading public,” burns was barred by “the dialect,” the school of pope had dwindled into the triumphs of temper. meanwhile mrs. radcliffe had kindled and fed the sacred lamp of love for all that catherine morland thought “truly horrid,” and had been a favourite of scott himself. in the lay the eager public found mysteries far exceeding in delightfulness those of mrs. radcliffe, found magic genuine, all unlike her spells which are explained away; they found many novel and galloping measures of verse; they found nature; and they found a knowledge of the past such as has never been combined with glowing poetic imagination.
mr. saintsbury says with truth that “a very large, perhaps the much larger, part of the appeal of the lay was metrical.” scott appeared to be as much an innovator in metres as mr. swinburne was, sixty years after him. scott knew nothing at all (nor do i) about “the iambic dimeter, freely altered by the licences of equivalence, anacrusis, and catalexis”: to him these terms were “bonny critic’s greek,” and as unintelligible as, to andrew fairservice, was “bonny lawyer’s latin.” but it does seem that he gave “extreme care” to his
{42}
“scheme of metre” in the lay, not arranging it, as he said of one of his novels, “with as much care as the rest, that is, with no care at all.” the result, to quote mr. saintsbury, is “to some tastes, a medium quite unsurpassed for the particular purpose,” and scott’s later poems are, i venture to think, in metre less exquisitely appropriate, and more monotonous. his rhymed romances are in no sense epic, they are a new kind of composition based on the ballad, but, owing to their length, in need of constant variety of cadence. all these qualities were in the highest degree novel, and never to be successfully imitated, seriously, though susceptible of parody.
“lay of the last minstrel”
we do not now appreciate the charm of all this freshness. we live a century later, “the gambol has been shown,” the pegasus of romance has been put through all his paces before generations of blasés observers; witches, goblins, and reivers are hackneyed, and only the young (for whom scott, like theocritus, professedly sang) can recapture the joy with which the world hailed the lay. we have, moreover, what our ancestors of 1805 had not, the verse of shelley, wordsworth, tennyson, keats, and coleridge present in our memories, verse deeply meditated, rich in thought, delicate in expression, “every reef loaded with gold.” scott has these great rivals now, in 1805 he had no rivals
{43}
save those who filled the times, already remote, of great elizabeth. thus only the young, and they who have in their hearts every name and memory of scott’s hills and waters, can offer to the lay, or to his other narrative poems, the welcome that the country gave in 1805. only we, old borderers, or fresh boys and girls, are at the point of view. others may style the lay “a thirdrate waverley novel in rhyme,” “let ilka man rouse the ford as he finds it”; it is a ford which i have many times ridden with pleasure during many years. out of the romance i choose an episodic passage, in essence, though not in numbers, a ballad: it tells, traditionally, how the clan of scott won fair eskdale. probably they obtained it on the forfeiture of a liege lord far from “tame,” that maxwell who, on the execution of the red regent, took the morton title, dared the douglas feud, and supported the catholic cause to his ruin. but tradition speaks otherwise.
“lay of the last minstrel”
scotts of eskdale, a stalwart band,
came trooping down to todshawhill;
by the sword they won their land,
and by the sword they hold it still.
hearken, ladye, to the tale,
how thy sons won fair eskdale....
earl morton was lord of that valley fair,
the beattisons were his vassals there.
{44}
the earl was gentle, and mild of mood,
the vassals were warlike, and fierce, and rude;
high of heart and haughty of word,
little they reck’d of a tame liege lord
the earl into fair eskdale came,
homage and seignory to claim:
of gilbert the galliard a heriot he sought,
saying, “give thy best steed, as a vassal ought.” ...
“dear to me is my bonny white steed,
oft has he help’d me at pinch of need;
lord and earl though thou be, i trow,
i can rein bucksfoot better than thou.” ...
word on word gave fuel to fire,
till so highly blazed the beattison’s ire,
but that the earl the flight had ta’en,
the vassals there their lord had slain.
sore he plied both whip and spur,
as he urged his steed through eskdale muir;
and it fell down a weary weight,
just on the threshold of branksome gate.
the earl was a wrathful man to see,
full fain avenged would he be,
in haste to branksome’s lord he spoke,
saying—“take these traitors to thy yoke:
for a cast of hawks, and a purse of gold
all eskdale i’ll sell thee to have and hold
beshrew thy heart, of the beattisons’ clan
if thou leavest on eske a landed man;
but spare woodkerrick’s lands alone,
for he lent me his horse to escape upon.”
a glad man then was branksome bold,
down he flung him the purse of gold;
{45}
to eskdale soon he spurred amain,
and with him five hundred riders has ta’en.
he left his merrymen in the mist of the hill,
and bade them hold them close and still;
and alone he wended to the plain,
to meet with the galliard and all his train.
to gilbert the galliard thus he said: ...
“know thou me for thy liege-lord and head;
deal not with me as with morton tame,
for scots play best at the roughest game.
give me in peace my heriot due,
thy bonny white steed, or thou shalt rue.
if my horn i three times wind,
eskdale shall long have the sound in mind.” ...
loudly the beattison laugh’d in scorn;
“little care we for thy winded horn.
ne’er shall it be the galliard’s lot
to yield his steed to a haughty scott.
wend thou to branksome back on foot,
with rusty spur and miry boot.”...
he blew his bugle so loud and hoarse,
that the dun deer started at fair craikcross;
he blew again so loud and clear,
through the gray mountain-mist there did lances appear;
and the third blast rang with such a din
that the echoes answered from pentoun-linn,
and all his riders came lightly in.
then had you seen a gallant shock,
when saddles were emptied, and lances broke!
for each scornful word the galliard had said,
a beattison on the field was laid.
his own good sword the chieftain drew,
and he bore the galliard through and through;
{46}
where the beattisons’ blood mix’d with the rill,
the galliard’s haugh men call it still.
the scots have scatter’d the beattison clan,
in eskdale they left but one landed man.
the valley of eske, from the mouth to the source,
was lost and won for that bonny white horse.
for the rest, from fair margaret, the lost love,
lovelier than the rose so red,
yet paler than the violet pale,
to wat tinnlin, and
the hot and hardy rutherford
whom men called dickon-draw-the-sword,
“lay of the last minstrel”
the characters are all my ancient friends, and the time has been when the romance was history to me. the history, of course, is handled with all scott’s freedom. michael scott had been dead for several centuries, not for some seventy years, and the approximate date of the tale must be the year of the religious revolution, 1559-1560; “the regent” must be mary of guise. men no longer made their vows to st. modan and st. mary of the lowes, whose chapel the scots burned in 1557: it had become fashionable to wreck churches, thanks to preaching bakers and tailors, paul methuen and harlaw. be these things as they may, and let critics be critics as of old,
{47}
still yarrow, as he rolls along
bears burden to the minstrel’s song.
the lay, as scott wrote to wordsworth, “has the merit of being written with heart and good will, and for no other reason than to discharge my mind of the ideas which from infancy have rushed upon it. i believe such verses will generally be found interesting, because enthusiastic.” whoso reads the lay as it was written, “with heart and goodwill,” is not likely to complain of its lack of interest. the opening dialogue of the spirits of river and hill, the ride of william of deloraine through the red spate of ail water, the scene of fair melrose beheld aright, the opening of the wizard’s tomb, in the splendour of the lamp that burns eternally; the fluttering viewless forms that haunt the aisles; the tilting between cranstoun and deloraine; the pranks of the page; the courage of the young buccleuch; his bluff english captors; the bustle of the warden’s raid; the riding in of the outlying mosstroopers; the final scene of the wizard’s appearance and the passing of the page; with the beautiful ballads of the minstrels, make up a noble set of scenes, then absolutely fresh and poignant.
“waverley” begun
while the public, unlike sir henry eaglefield, did not need three readings to convince them of the excellence of the lay, the critics were as wise
{48}
as usual. it is never easy to keep one’s temper in reading jeffrey’s criticisms. if not “the ideal whipper-snapper,” at least he was always thinking, not of the natural appeal of a poet “to the simple primary feelings of his kind,” but of what mr. jeffrey could say to the abatement of the poet’s merits. ellis thought jeffrey’s review “equally acute and impartial,” and it was impartial compared with his critique of marmion. the poem should have been something else, not what it was. it should have “been more full of incident,” as if it could be more full of incident! the goblin was “a merely local superstition,” to which scott, of all men, could most easily have replied by proofs that the superstition, practically that of the brownie, is universal. for example froissart gives us, in orthon, a goblin page, though not a malevolent specimen of the genus. jeffrey said, and one would “like to have felt mr. jeffrey’s bumps”—as charles lamb said of a less famous dullard—that “mr. scott must either sacrifice his border prejudices, or offend his readers in the other parts of the empire!” jeffrey writes like the snappish pedant of a provincial newspaper. when marmion appeared, jeffrey found, on the other hand, that it was not scottish enough! pitt and fox equally admired the work, the public bought it as poetry is no longer bought, and scott sold his copy
{49}
right at the ransom of £500, which, with a royalty of £169 6s. on the first edition, and a present of £100 to buy a horse, from messrs. longman, made up his whole literary profits on the transaction.
the money probably went into his printing business, with ballantyne & co., and already (1805) we find that firm “receiving accommodation from sir william forbes,” the banker. they were always receiving or being refused “accommodation”; scottish business had a paper basis; its bills represented fairy gold that turned to withered leaves; though scott, as an editor (of dryden’s works at this time), put large quantities of business in the way of his printing firm. his practice at the bar was a thing of the past: he was waiting for dead men’s shoes as a clerk of the court of session; and, while toiling over dryden’s works, he began waverley, hoping to publish it by christmas 1805. he purposely did not make a brilliant start, though the description of edward waverley’s studies is a copy of his own, and william erskine did not think highly of the first seven chapters. so scott threw the manuscript aside, to his admirers a misfortune. waverley would have been as great a success as it was nine years later: scott would have worked the new vein, the “bonanza mine,” and for eighteen new waverley nov
{50}
els (at the rate of two yearly) we would cheerfully give up marmion, the lady of the lake, rokeby, and the lord of the isles. dis aliter visum.
it was now that scott adopted the system of rising from bed to write at five in the morning. on one occasion he had the cruelty to return and awake mrs. scott, with the tidings, which he knew to be wholly uninteresting to her, that he had discovered the meaning of the name of a burn that passes through his estate. while taking brief holiday at gilsland, he was summoned to mount and ride to dalkeith, the rendezvous of the forest, by the beacon fire which proved to be a false alarm. the story is told in the antiquary. scott met the forest men pouring in down every water, and i have heard, from my own people, that the inhabitants of the little border towns meant to burn them, if napoleon landed, drive their flocks into the hills, and fight it out in the old border way, a burnt country and a guerilla foe. it was during his ride of a hundred miles in twenty-four hours that scott composed the lines beginning—
the forest of glenmore is dree,
it is all of black pine and the dark oak tree.
party spirit
the april of 1806 saw scott in london; already a “lion,” he was presented at the tiny court of caroline, princess of wales, who at this time was
{51}
taken up by the tories, as the prince of wales was then of the whig party; much as another prince of wales, frederick, was something of a jacobite. he found that the princess had an exaggerated freedom of manner, and presently “it came to be thought so.” she called him “a faint-hearted troubadour,” and he had no mind for the part of chastelard. in town he met joanna baillie, whose plays he appreciated with more of generosity than critical faculty. his instalment as clerk of session was not welcomed by the whigs, and, in irritation, “he for the first time put himself forward as a decided tory partisan.” the tories, at all events, were not pro-french. it would have been well if scott could have taken the advice of lord dalkeith (feb. 20, 1806), “go to the hills and converse with the spirit of the fells, or any spirit but the spirit of party, which is the fellest fiend that ever disturbed harmony and social pleasure.”
on june 27, 1806, scott wrote his “health to lord melville,” the tory governing spirit of scotland, whom the whigs were impeaching. james ballantyne sang this lay at a public dinner on lord melville’s acquittal. the princess of wales was saluted in this song, which contained the words “tally ho to the fox” (c. j. fox). this does not appear an amazing indiscretion, in a parcel of party verses, but the whigs were greatly shocked.
{52}
if a briton must be a party man, he may as righteously belong to one party as the other. but the whigs ever cherished the belief that they were the righteous. the worst effect of scott’s politics was his connexion with journals, from the stately quarterly to the inglorious beacon, which carried political rancour into literary criticism. it is true that hazlitt wrote as furiously and vilely against coleridge in the edinburgh review, which was whig, as any one ever did against keats in the quarterly, which is tory. but whig offences, in history as in literature, are condoned by historians, and forgotten by most people, while gifford, of the quarterly, and the conductors of blackwood remain in the pillory. in any case, with the brutal outrages of criticism scott had nothing to do. he was foremost to praise frankenstein, supposing it to be by shelley, when shelley was the target of tory insults; and he invited charles lamb to abbotsford, when lamb was being attacked as a leader of the cockney school.[3] lamb missed the chance of coursing and salmon fishing with a scot who would not have aroused in him “an imperfect sympathy.”
however lamb and shelley were not known in scotland in 1806, when the affairs of scott’s brother thomas made it necessary for walter to
“marmion
{53}
”
earn money by his pen. he received £1,000 from constable for the copyright of an unwritten poem, marmion, and mortgaged his time and genius to help a brother. constable was then rather a dealer in rare old books than a publisher, but he foresaw scott’s success, and outbid messrs. longman, if, indeed, they made any bid at all. to his brother thomas he wrote a series of letters, still, i think, unpublished, and mainly noteworthy for the goodness of head, the wisdom, the benevolence and tact of the writer. by the end of 1807 he was finishing at once his life of dryden, and his marmion; who, as he wrote to lady louisa stuart in january 1808, is “gasping upon flodden field,” though scott hoped, that day, “to knock him on the head with a few thumping stanzas.” when we remember that, by his brother’s failure, the whole affairs of the estates of the marquis of abercorn were thrown on his hands “in a state of unutterable confusion,” and at his own responsibility, we may estimate his industry. describing the research needed by his dryden he writes—
from my research the boldest spiders fled,
and moths retreating trembled as i read,
while at the same time he was leading marmion from disgrace to death, and was passing the heart of the day in his official duties (1807). but by
{54}
the end of february 1808, marmion was in the hands of the public, equipped with the charming epistles to friends which precede the cantos.
contrasting the over full life of scott, and all his innumerable distractions, with the “day long blessed idleness” of tennyson, we cannot expect from marmion the delicate finish of the idylls of the king. on the other hand, if scott had enjoyed the leisure of tennyson, his rhymed romances would not have been better or other than they are.
in the introduction to canto third, written to erskine, he tells us that criticism was wasted on him—
then wild as cloud, or stream or gale,
flow on, flow unconfined, my tale.
he will not imitate
those masters, o’er whose tomb
immortal laurels ever bloom,
instructive of the feeble bard
as the murmurs from the tomb may be. he will not even desert the fabled past to chant the glories of the “red cross hero” (sir sidney smith), nor of sir ralph abercromby. but he foresees and predicts
the hour of germany’s revenge,
sir walter scott, 1830.
from the painting by sir john watson gordon, r.a.
sir walter scott
from a painting by sir david wilkie, r.a.
“marmion”
{55}
and that then
when breathing fury for her sake,
some new arminius shall awake,
her champion, ere he strike, shall come,
to whet his sword on brunswick’s tomb.
in few years the hour and the champion came, field-marshal von blücher. a poet has seldom been a better prophet.
the plot of marmion is in one way strangely akin to the plot of ivanhoe. in both we have a hard-bitten, hard-hearted, and unscrupulous knight, marmion and the templar. in both we have a pilgrim guide, who is no pilgrim, but a knight in disguise, returned from exile, with a deep grudge against the templar, or marmion (wilfred, wilton). both sets of partners are rivals in love, at least if wilfred, as we believe, loved rebecca. in both we have a tourney between the rivals, in which marmion and the templar are defeated by wilton and wilfred. but marmion’s behaviour, both in regard to his lady page, and in the matter of the forgery, is much worse than that of the templar at his worst, though, amidst his infamy, he is a knight as bold and haughty as the traitor ganelon in the chanson de roland. the high revenge of the lady page, constance, as she goes to her death by hunger, stirred even jeffrey. “the scene of
{56}
elfin chivalry” in which marmion tilts with the phantom knight, was suggested by a latin legend, forged and sent to scott by surtees of mainsforth, who several times palmed off on the sheriff ballads of his own making. pitscottie, the candid old fifeshire chronicler, supplied the omens which, as in the odyssey, lead up to the catastrophe of flodden field. marmion was made to travel to edinburgh by a path that mortal man never took, scott desiring to describe the castles on the way, and a favourite view of edinburgh from blackford hill. this passage of landscape has been elaborately and justly praised by mr. ruskin. for poetical purposes lady heron is brought to holyrood, though she was at her castle beneath flodden edge, and the artifice is justified by her song of young lochinvar. but it is the closing battle piece that makes the fortune of marmion.
jeffrey
“all ends in song,” and in song end scotland’s sorrows for that fatal unforgotten fight, in which all was lost but honour. scarce a great family but lost her sons, the yeomen and peasants died like paladins, and the strongest of the stuart kings made the best end of all of them, rushing forth from the fighting “schiltrom” and falling, pierced with arrows and hacked with bills, not a lance’s length from the english general. for this we have surrey’s own word, and true it is that if the scots
{57}
were never led with less skill, they never did battle with more indomitable courage. had not every leader fallen, save home, the next day would have seen a renewal of the battle—
where shivered was fair scotland’s spear,
and broken was her shield.
flodden secured the success of marmion, and gave the laurels to the brow of scott. but it is certain that our age could dispense with clara and her lover! the fiend of party, detested by lord dalkeith, moved the whigs to take umbrage because more moan was made for pitt than for fox in one of the introductory pieces, where by an error of the press several lines of the lament for fox were omitted in early copies. “all the whigs here are in arms against marmion,” wrote scott (march 13, 1808). jeffrey now complained of “the manifest neglect of scottish feelings,” which had been so injuriously flattered in the lay, to the indignation of the rest of the empire! lockhart justly remarks that it was the british patriotism which vexed jeffrey, whose edinburgh review did its best to throw cold water on the spirit of national resistance to napoleon. he professed that his stupid criticism was a well meant effort to draw scott from “so idle a task” as that in which he displayed his “pedantry.” scott could bear the
{58}
spite till jeffrey charged him with want of patriotism, and that arrow rankled. jeffrey dined with him on the day when scott read the critique, and was cordially received, but his host ceased to write in the edinburgh review, and raised up another like unto it, a rival, the tory quarterly.
