CHAPTER VII. SIR WALTER SCOTT. [Born in Edinburgh, "mine own romantic town," August 15th, 1771. First original poem, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," published 1805. Died at Abbotsford, 21st September, 1832.] A MONG the men who did most to direct the course of literature in the beginning of the nineteenth century the most colossal figure is certainly that of Scott. At the time when Wordsworth had finally renounced the world, and turned northward to the calm retreats of Grasmere, Scott was girding himself for his work. Scott was the lifelong friend of Wordsworth, and there was much in their natures that was akin. We have seen how the great force of the French Revolution acted on Southey and Coleridge, driving the one to fierce reaction, and the other to the maze of philosophic speculation. We have seen that it produced no effect whatever on Keats, and that the only two great spirits who remained true to its daring ideals were Shelley and Byron. Wordsworth turned from its Titanic confusion to the study of nature; Scott to the study of the romantic past. Indeed, it can scarcely be said that Scott even turned from it in the sense in which Wordsworth did, for there is no evidence that he was ever fascinated by it. All that wild outburst, which filled even so calm a nature as Wordsworth's with enthusiasm, and which made every chord of the world's heart vibrate with its intolerable stress and passion, passed over him and left him unmoved. Scott shared with Wordsworth his intense delight in nature, but not his enthusiasm for humanity. It was the splendour of the past rather than the thrilling struggles of the present which fascinated his imagination. There was a sobriety of temperament about Scott which unfitted him for any active sympathy with the great movements of the time in which his lot was cast. Nevertheless, however unconsciously, the strong tide that was flowing did affect him, and the impulse of his age was on him. The result of that impulse of the age working on a nature so deep and sober as his is seen in a species of poetry, which was a magnificent innovation, and a long line of glorious fictions, which have made him the true father of the modern novel. We have seen also that of all the great writers of the dawn of the century, only two made their voices heard in Europe, and achieved a cosmopolitan fame. Those two, dissimilar in almost every respect, were Scott and Byron. Yet few men of really great genius have been so curiously limited in nature as Scott. It was in the year 1805-the year in which Nelson died in the cockpit of the Victory; in which Austerlitz was fought, and Napoleon was crowned King of Italy, amid all the wild storm of trampling hosts and falling kingdoms-that Scott put forth his first poem, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel." As it was something of an accident that led Scott to write novels, so it was what seemed a mere happy chance that produced the celebrated "Lay." Lady Dalkeith had requested Scott to write a metrical sketch of a certain old legend which clung to the district in which she lived. Nothing could have suited the young Sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire better. From childhood his memory had been stored with fantastic relics of a legendary past. Old snatches of ballad-poetry, curious stories of second-sight, all the odds and ends which the literary antiquary loves and cherishes, were the natural heritage of Scott. The grotesque, the heroic, the romantic were the diet upon which his imagination had been fed. Upon the impulse of this request, Scott set to work and composed a spirited sketch of a scene of feudal festivity in the hall of Branksome, disturbed by some pranks of a nondescript goblin. The sketch pleased him so well that there flashed across his mind the idea of extending his simple outline so as to embrace a vivid panorama of that old border-life of war and tumult, and all earnest passions, with which his researches in minstrelsy had by degrees fed his imagination. Gradually the sketch grew until it had expanded into a poem of six cantos. From his friends it won little favour: from the great Scotch critics open rebuke. The subject seemed to them too local to win general attention, and the octosyllabic verse which the poet had employed entirely unsuitable for narrative verse. Both in theme and metre Scott was attempting a daring innovation, and innovations are rarely popular with critics. As regards the metre, Scott pointed out later that it was the one metre perfectly adapted for narrative poetry. He took, as an example, the opening lines of Pope's "Iliad: " Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring and contended that the underlined adjectives were mere expletives, and that the verse would be much stronger and more expressive without them. This is immediately apparent by comparison, and if we want further proof of the adaptability of octosyllabic metre to the most vivacious, terse, and resonant narrative-poetry, we have it in Scott's own work. According to Byron's verdict, Scott had completely triumphed over "the fatal facility of octosyllabic verse," and Byron in his subsequent poems was not slow to profit by the lesson. But Scott had done more than that. He had invented a new style of poetry, and had interested the world in an entirely new theme. The old stories of knight and lady, monastery and castle, tournament and chivalry, had wholly dropped out of view, and amid the immense drama of Europe as it was in 1805 men might well suppose there was no room for their revival. Scott again rekindled the love of chivalry, the old admiration of the troubadour, in the English heart. He brought precisely the gifts needed for his work. He had no philosophic meditativeness, but he knew how to tell a story. He also knew how to paint a picture. The force of his verse lies in its simplicity and vivid directness of phrase. His imagery is seldom very original, but it is always spontaneous, and very frequently is striking. The idea of the wounded day bleeding in the sky, for instance, is not novel in poetry. Alexander Smith speaks of "bright bleeding day;" Shakespeare impressively paints the red dawn of the battle of Shrewsbury when he says, How bloodily the sun begins to peer Above yond' bosky hill! the day looks pale At his distemperature. But Scott has surpassed both in concentration of effect. when he paints the setting sun in "Rokeby;" With disc like battle-target red He rushes to his burning bed, Dyes the wild wave with bloody light, Mr. Ruskin has testified how true was Scott's sense of colour, and with what fidelity he describes the scenery which was familiar to him. In this quality his outdoor life was the secret of his power. He had himself ridden over the hills his heroes scale in mad flight or pursuit. By birth, by natural impulse and character, he was precisely fitted to interpret all this. And he did interpret it, to the immeasurable delight of his readers, in the early days of this century. The freshness and vivacity of his style, the newness of his theme, his obvious enthusiasm for his subject, won for him instant attention and fame. Fox and Pitt both read the "Lay" with intense interest, and Pitt said that the picture it presented was "a sort of thing which he might have expected in painting, but could never have fancied capable of being given in poetry." Before 1805 had ended Scott was universally recognised as the first poet of his day. It is needless for us here to follow the subsequent poems of Scott with minute description. In essential respects there is little difference. In each there is the same romantic interest, the same steady hand producing sound and excellent work, the same freshness and wholesomeness of imagination and sentiment. Never was a poet so entirely free from the slightest trace of the morbid. His verse is like his own Scotch rivers : clear, full, and pleasant, suggestive of the mountains. and the open sky, and filling the ear with simple music. But there Scott's power as a poet ends. There were other and deeper things working in men's hearts which |