Chapter V.

So soon as they arrived at the princely mansion of Boteler, the Lady Emma craved permission to retire to her chamber, that she might compose her spirits after the terror she had undergone. Henry St. Clere, in a few words, proceeded to explain the adventure to the curious audience. “I had no sooner seen my sister’s palfrey, in spite of her endeavours to the contrary, entering with spirit into the chase set on foot by the worshipful Gregory than I rode after to give her assistance. So long was the chase that when the greyhounds pulled down the knobbler, we were out of hearing of your bugles; and having rewarded and coupled the dogs, I gave them to be led by the jester, and we wandered in quest of our company, whom, it would seem, the sport had led in a different direction. At length, passing through the thicket where you found us, I was surprised by a cross-bow bolt whizzing past mine head. I drew my sword and rushed into the thicket, but was instantly assailed by two ruffians, while other two made towards my sister and Gregory. The poor knave fled, crying for help, pursued by my false kinsman, now your prisoner; and the designs of the other on my poor Emma (murderous no doubt) were prevented by the sudden apparition of a brave woodsman, who, after a short encounter, stretched the miscreant at his feet and came to my assistance. I was already slightly wounded, and nearly overlaid with odds. The combat lasted some time, for the caitiffs were both well armed, strong, and desperate; at length, however, we had each mastered our antagonist, when your retinue, my Lord Boteler, arrived to my relief. So ends in my story; but, on my knighthood, I would give an earl’s ransom for an opportunity of thanking the gallant forester by whose aid I live to tell it.”

“Fear not,” said Lord Boteler; “he shall be found if this or the four adjacent counties hold him. And now Lord Fitzosborne will be pleased to doff the armour he has so kindly assumed for our sakes, and we will all bowne ourselves for the banquet.”

When the hour of dinner approached, the Lady Matilda and her cousin visited the chamber of the fair Darcy. They found her in a composed but melancholy posture. She turned the discourse upon the misfortunes of her life, and hinted that having recovered her brother, and seeing him look forward to the society of one who would amply repay to him the loss of hers, she had thoughts of dedicating her remaining life to Heaven, by whose providential interference it had been so often preserved.

Matilda coloured deeply at something in this speech, and her cousin inveighed loudly against Emma’s resolution. “Ah, my dear Lady Eleanor,” replied she, “I have to-day witnessed what I cannot but judge a supernatural visitation, and to what end can it call me but to give myself to the altar? That peasant who guided me, to Baddow through the Park of Danbury, the same who appeared before me at different times and in different forms during that eventful journey,—that youth, whose features are imprinted on my memory, is the very individual forester who this day rescued us in the forest. I cannot be mistaken; and connecting these marvellous appearances with the spectre which I saw while at Gay Bowers, I cannot resist the conviction that Heaven has permitted my guardian angel to assume mortal shape for my relief and protection.”

The fair cousins, after exchanging looks which implied a fear that her mind was wandering, answered her in soothing terms, and finally prevailed upon her to accompany them to the banqueting-hall. Here the first person they encountered was the Baron Fitzosborne of Diggswell, now divested of his armour; at the sight of whom the Lady Emma changed colour, and exclaiming, “It is the same!” sunk senseless into the arms of Matilda.

“She is bewildered by the terrors of the day,” said Eleanor; “and we have done ill in obliging her to descend.”

“And I,” said Fitzosborne, “have done madly in presenting before her one whose presence must recall moments the most alarming in her life.”

While the ladies supported Emma from the hall, Lord Boteler and St. Clere requested an explanation from Fitzosborne of the words he had used.

“Trust me, gentle lords,” said the Baron of Diggswell, “ye shall have what ye demand, when I learn that Lady Emma Darcy has not suffered from my imprudence.”

At this moment Lady Matilda, returning, said that her fair friend, on her recovery, had calmly and deliberately insisted that she had seen Fitzosborne before, in the most dangerous crisis of her life.

“I dread,” said she, “her disordered mind connects all that her eye beholds with the terrible passages that she has witnessed.”

“Nay,” said Fitzosborne, “if noble St. Clere can pardon the unauthorized interest which, with the purest and most honourable intentions, I have taken in his sister’s fate, it is easy for me to explain this mysterious impression.”

He proceeded to say that, happening to be in the hostelry called the Griffin, near Baddow, while upon a journey in that country, he had met with the old nurse of the Lady Emma Darcy, who, being just expelled front Gay Bowers, was in the height of her grief and indignation, and made loud and public proclamation of Lady Emma’s wrongs. From the description she gave of the beauty of her foster-child, as well as from the spirit of chivalry, Fitzosborne became interested in her fate. This interest was deeply enhanced when, by a bribe to Old Gaunt the Reve, he procured a view of the Lady Emma as she walked near the castle of Gay Bowers. The aged churl refused to give him access to the castle, yet dropped some hints, as if he thought the lady in danger, and wished she were well out of it. His master, he said, had heard she had a brother in life, and since that deprived him of all chance of gaining her domains by purchase, he, in short, Gaunt wished they were safely separated. “If any injury,” quoth he, “should happen to the damsel here, it were ill for us all. I tried, by an innocent stratagem, to frighten her from the castle by introducing a figure through a trap-door and warning her, as if by a voice from the dead, to retreat from thence; but the giglet is wilful, and is running upon her fate.”

Finding Gaunt, although covetous and communicative, too faithful a servant to his wicked master to take any active steps against his commands, Fitzosborne applied himself to old Ursely, whom he found more tractable. Through her he learned the dreadful plot Gaston had laid to rid himself of his kinswoman, and resolved to effect her deliverance. But aware of the delicacy of Emma’s situation, he charged Ursely to conceal from her the interest he took in her distress, resolving to watch over her in disguise until he saw her in a place of safety. Hence the appearance he made before her in various dresses during her journey, in the course of which he was never far distant; and he had always four stout yeomen within hearing of his bugle, had assistance been necessary. When she was placed in safety at the lodge, it was Fitzosborne’s intention to have prevailed upon his sisters to visit, and take her under their protection; but he found them absent from Diggswell, having gone to attend an aged relation who lay dangerously ill in a distant county. They did not return until the day before the May-games; and the other events followed too rapidly to permit Fitzosborne to lay any plan for introducing them to Lady Emma Darcy. On the day of the chase he resolved to preserve his romantic disguise and attend the Lady Emma as a forester, partly to have the pleasure of being near her, and partly to judge whether, according to an idle report in the country, she favoured his friend and comrade Fitzallen of Marden. This last motive, it may easily be believed, he did not declare to the company. After the skirmish with the ruffians, he waited till the baron and the hunters arrived, and then, still doubting the further designs of Gaston, hastened to his castle to arm the band which had escorted them to Queen-Hoo Hall.

Fitzosborne’s story being finished, he received the thanks of all the company, particularly of St. Clere, who felt deeply the respectful delicacy with which he had conducted himself towards his sister. The lady was carefully informed of her obligations to him; and it is left to the well-judging reader whether even the raillery of Lady Eleanor made her regret that Heaven had only employed natural means for her security, and that the guardian angel was converted into a handsome, gallant, and enamoured knight.

The joy of the company in the hall extended itself to the buttery, where Gregory the jester narrated such feats of arms done by himself in the fray of the morning as might have shamed Bevis and Guy of Warwick. He was, according to his narrative, singled out for destruction by the gigantic baron himself, while he abandoned to meaner hands the destruction of St. Clere and Fitzosborne.

“But, certes,” said he, “the foul paynim met his match; for, ever as he foined at me with his brand, I parried his blows with my bauble, and closing with him upon the third veny, threw him to the ground, and made him cryrecreant to an unarmed man.”

“Tush, man!” said Drawslot, “thou forgettest thy best auxiliaries, the good greyhounds, Help and Holdfast! I warrant thee that when the humpbacked baron caught thee by the cowl, which he hath almost torn off, thou hadst been in a fair plight, had they not remembered an old friend and come in to the rescue. Why, man, I found them fastened on him myself; and there was odd staving and stickling to make them ‘ware haunch!’ Their mouths were full of the flex, for I pulled a piece of the garment from their jaws. I warrant thee that when they brought him to ground, thou fledst like a frighted pricket.”

“And as for Gregory’s gigantic paynim,” said Fabian, “why, he lies yonder in the guard-room, the very size, shape, and colour of a spider in a yewhedge.”

“It is false!” said Gregory; “Colbrand the Dane was a dwarf to him.”

“It is as true,” returned Fabian, “as that the Tasker is to be married on Tuesday to pretty Margery. Gregory, thy sheet hath brought them between a pair of blankets.”

“I care no more for such a gillflirt,” said the Jester, “than I do for thy leasings. Marry, thou hop-o’-my-thumb, happy wouldst thou be could thy head reach the captive baron’s girdle.”

“By the Mass,” said Peter Lanaret, “I will have one peep at this burly gallant;” and leaving the buttery, he went to the guard-room where Gaston St. Clere was confined. A man-at-arms, who kept sentinel on the strong studded door of the apartment, said he believed he slept; for that after raging, stamping, and uttering the most horrid imprecations, he had been of late perfectly still. The falconer gently drew back a sliding board, of a foot square, towards the top of the door, which covered a hole of the same size, strongly latticed, through which the warder, without opening the door, could look in upon his prisoner. From this aperture he beheld the wretched Gaston suspended by the neck, by his own girdle, to an iron ring in the side of his prison. He had clambered to it by means of the table on which his food had been placed; and in the agonies of shame and disappointed malice, had adopted this mode of ridding himself of a wretched life. He was found yet warm, but totally lifeless. A proper account of the manner of his death was drawn up and certified. He was buried that evening in the chapel of the castle, out of respect to his high birth; and the chaplain of Fitzallen of Marden, who said the service upon the occasion, preached, the next Sunday, an excellent sermon upon the text, “Radix malorum est cupiditas,” which we have here transcribed.

[Here the manuscript from which we have painfully transcribed, and frequently, as it were, translated this tale, for the reader’s edification, is so indistinct and defaced that, excepting certain “howbeits,” “nathlesses,” “lo ye’s!” etc. we can pick out little that is intelligible, saving that avarice is defined “a likourishness of heart after earthly things.”] A little farther there seems to have been a gay account of Margery’s wedding with Ralph the Tasker, the running at the quintain, and other rural games practised on the occasion. There are also fragments of a mock sermon preached by Gregory upon that occasion, as for example:—

“Mv dear cursed caitiffs, there was once a king, and he wedded a young old queen, and she had a child; and this child was sent to Solomon the Sage, praying he would give it the same blessing which he got from the witch of Endor when she bit him by the heel. Hereof speaks the worthy Dr. Radigundus Potator. Why should not Mass be said for all the roasted shoe souls served up in the king’s dish on Saturday? For true it is that Saint Peter asked father Adam, as they journeyed to Camelot, an high, great, and doubtful question: ‘Adam, Adam, why eated’st thou the apple without paring?’”[*]

[* This tirade of gibberish is literally taken or selected from a mock discourse pronounced by a professed jester, which occurs in an ancient manuscript in the Advocates’ Library, the same from which the late ingenious Mr. Weber published the curious comic romance of the “Limiting of the Hare.” It was introduced in compliance with Mr. Strutt’s plan of rendering his tale an illustration of ancient manners. A similar burlesque sermon is pronounced by the Fool in Sir David Lindesay’s satire of the “Three Estates.” The nonsense and vulgar burlesque of that composition illustrate the ground of Sir Andrew, Aguecheek’s eulogy on the exploits of the jester in “Twelfth Night,” who, reserving his sharper jests for Sir Toby, had doubtless enough of the jargon of his calling to captivate the imbecility of his brother knight, who is made to exclaim: “In sooth, thou wast in very gracious fooling last night when thou spokest of Pigrogremitus, and of the vapours passing the equinoctials of Quenbus; ’t was very good, i’ faith!” It is entertaining to find commentators seeking to discover some meaning in the professional jargon of such a passage as this.]

With much goodly gibberish to the same effect, which display of Gregory’s ready wit not only threw the whole company into convulsions of laughter, but made such an impression on Rose, the Potter’s daughter, that it was thought it would be the jester’s own fault if Jack was long without his Jill. Much pithy matter concerning the bringing the bride to bed, the loosing the bridegroom’s points, the scramble which ensued for them, and the casting of the stocking, is also omitted, from its obscurity.

The following song, which has been since borrowed by the worshipful author of the famous “History of Fryar Bacon,” has been with difficulty deciphered. It seems to have been sung on occasion of carrying home the bride.

_To the tune of “I have been a Fiddler,” etc._

And did you not hear of a mirth befell The morrow after a wedding-day, And carrying a bride at home to dwell? And away to Tewin, away, away!

The quintain was set, and the garlands were made,— ’T is pity old customs should ever decay; And woe be to him that was horsed on a jade, For he carried no credit away, away.

We met a consort of fiddle-de-dees; We set them a cockhorse, and made them play The winning of Bullen, and Upsey-fires, And away to Tewin, away, away!

There was ne’er a lad in all the parish That would go to the plough that day; But on his fore-horse his wench he carries, And away to Tewin, away, away!

The butler was quick, and the ale he did tap, The maidens did make the chamber full gay; The servants did give me a fuddling cup, And I did carry ’t away, away.

The smith of the town his liquor so took That he was persuaded that the ground looked blue; And I dare boldly be sworn on a book Such smiths as he there’s but a few.

A posset was made, and the women did sip, And simpering said they could eat no more; Full many a maiden was laid on the lip,— I’ll say no more, but give o’er (give o’er).

But what our fair readers will chiefly regret is the loss of three declarations of love: the first by St. Clore to Matilda, which, with the lady’s answer, occupies fifteen closely written pages of manuscript. That of Fitzosborne to Emma is not much shorter; but the amours of Fitzallen and Eleanor, being of a less romantic cast, are closed in three pages only. The three noble couples were married in Queen-Hoo Hall upon the same day, being the twentieth Sunday after Easter. There is a prolix account of the marriage-feast, of which we can pick out the names of a few dishes, such as peterel, crane, sturgeon, swan, etc., with a profusion of wild-fowl and venison. We also see that a suitable song was produced by Peretto on the occasion, and that the bishop, who blessed the bridal beds which received the happy couples, was no niggard of his holy water, bestowing half a gallon upon each of the couches. We regret we cannot give these curiosities to the reader in detail, but we hope to expose the manuscript to abler antiquaries, so soon as it shall be framed and glazed by the ingenious artist who rendered that service to Mr. Ireland’s Shakspeare manuscripts. And so (being unable to lay aside the style to which our pen is habituated), gentle reader, we bid thee heartily farewell.

No. III.

It is well known in the South that there is little or no boxing at the Scottish schools. About forty or fifty years ago, however, a far more dangerous mode of fighting, in parties or factions, was permitted in the streets of Edinburgh, to the great disgrace of the police, and danger of the parties concerned. These parties were generally formed from the quarters of the town in which the combatants resided, those of a particular square or district fighting against those of an adjoining one. Hence it happened that the children of the higher classes were often pitted against those of the lower, each taking their side according to the residence of their friends. So far as I recollect, however, it was unmingled either with feelings of democracy or aristocracy, or, indeed, with malice or ill-will of any kind towards the opposite party. In fact, it was only a rough mode of play. Such contests were, however, maintained with great vigour with stones and sticks and fisticuffs, when one party dared to charge, and the other stood their ground. Of course mischief sometimes happened; boys are said to have been killed at these “bickers,” as they were called, and serious accidents certainly took place, as many contemporaries can bear witness.

The Author’s father residing in George Square, in the southern side of Edinburgh, the boys belonging to that family, with others in the square, were arranged into a sort of company, to which a lady of distinction presented a handsome set of colours. Now this company, or regiment, as a matter of course, was engaged in weekly warfare with the boys inhabiting the Crosscauseway, Bristo Street, the Potter Row,—in short, the neighbouring suburbs. These last were chiefly of the lower rank, but hardy loons, who threw stones to a hair’s-breadth, and were very rugged antagonists at close quarters. The skirmish sometimes lasted for a whole evening, until one party or the other was victorious, when, if ours were successful, we drove the enemy to their quarters, and were usually chased back by the reinforcement of bigger lads who came to their assistance. If, on the contrary, we were pursued, as was often the case, into the precincts of our square, we were in our turn supported by our elder brothers, domestic servants, and similar auxiliaries.

It followed, from our frequent opposition to each other, that though not knowing the names of our enemies, we were yet well acquainted with their appearance, and had nicknames for the most remarkable of them. One very active and spirited boy might be considered as the principal leader in the cohort of the suburbs. He was, I suppose, thirteen or fourteen years old, finely made, tall, blue-eyed, with long fair hair, the very picture of a youthful Goth. This lad was always first in the charge, and last in the retreat,—the Achilles, at once, and Ajax of the Crosscauseway. He was too formidable to us not to have a cognomen, and, like that of a knight of old, it was taken from the most remarkable part of his dress, being a pair of old green livery breeches, which was the principal part of his clothing; for, like Pentapolin, according to Don Quixote’s account, Green-Breeks, as we called him, always entered the battle with bare arms, legs, and feet.

It fell that once upon a time, when the combat was at the thickest, this plebeian champion headed a sudden charge so rapid and furious that all fled before him. He was several paces before his comrades, and had actually laid his hands on the patrician standard, when one of our party, whom some misjudging friend had intrusted with a _couteau de chasse_, or hanger, inspired with a zeal for the honour of the corps worthy of Major Sturgeon himself, struck poor Green-Breeks over the head with strength sufficient to cut him down. When this was seen, the casualty was so far beyond what had ever taken place before that both parties fled different ways, leaving poor Green-Breeks, with his bright hair plentifully dabbled in blood, to the care of the watchman, who (honest man) took care not to know who had done the mischief. The bloody hanger was flung into one of the Meadow ditches, and solemn secrecy was sworn on all hands; but the remorse and terror of the actor were beyond all bounds, and his apprehensions of the most dreadful character. The wounded hero was for a few days in the Infirmary, the case being only a trifling one. But though inquiry was strongly pressed on him, no argument could make him indicate the person from whom he had received the wound, though he must have been perfectly well known to him. When he recovered, and was dismissed, the author and his brothers opened a communication with him, through the medium of a popular gingerbread baker, of whom both parties were customers, in order to tender a subsidy in name of smart-money. The sum would excite ridicule were I to name it; but sure I am that the pockets of the noted Green-Breeks never held as much money of his own. He declined the remittance, saying that he would not sell his blood, but at the same time reprobated the idea of being an informer, which, he said, was “clam,” i.e., base or mean. With much urgency, he accepted a pound of snuff for the use of some old woman—aunt, grandmother, or the like—with whom he lived. We did not become friends, for the _bickers_ were more agreeable to both parties than any more pacific amusement; but we conducted them ever after under mutual assurances of the highest consideration for each other.

Such was the hero whom Mr. Thomas Scott proposed to carry to Canada and involve in adventures with the natives and colonists of that country. Perhaps the youthful generosity of the lad will not seem so great in the eyes of others as to those whom it was the means of screening from severe rebuke and punishment. But it seemed, to those concerned, to argue a nobleness of sentiment far beyond the pitch of most minds; and however obscurely the lad, who showed such a frame of noble spirit, may have lived or died, I cannot help being of opinion, that if fortune had placed him in circumstances calling for gallantry or generosity, the man would have fulfilled the promises of the boy. Long afterwards, when the story was told to my father, he censured us severely for not telling the truth at the time, that he might have attempted to be of use to the young man in entering on life. But our alarms for the consequences of the drawn sword, and the wound inflicted with such a weapon, were far too predominant at the time for such a pitch of generosity.

Perhaps I ought not to have inserted this schoolboy tale; but besides the strong impression made by the incident at the time, the whole accompaniments of the story are matters to me of solemn and sad recollection. Of all the little band who were concerned in those juvenile sports or brawls, I can scarce recollect a single survivor. Some left the ranks of mimic war to die in the active service of their country. Many sought distant lands, to return no more. Others, dispersed in different paths of life, “my dim eyes now seek for in vain.” Of five brothers, all healthy and promising in a degree far beyond one whose infancy was visited by personal infirmity, and whose health after this period seemed long very precarious, I am, nevertheless, the only survivor. The best loved, and the best deserving to be loved, who had destined this incident to be the foundation of literary composition, died “before his day,” in a distant and foreign land; and trifles assume an importance not their own, when connected with those who have been loved and lost.

“Under which King, Bezonian? Speak, or die!” Henry IV., Part II.

“What is the value of a reputation that probably will not last above one or two generations?” Sir Walter Scott once asked Ballantyne. Two generations, according to the usual reckoning, have passed; “’T is Sixty Years since” the “wondrous Potentate” of Wordsworth’s sonnet died, yet the reputation on which he set so little store survives. A constant tide of new editions of his novels flows from the press; his plots give materials for operas and plays; he has been criticised, praised, condemned: but his romances endure amid the changes of taste, remaining the delight of mankind, while new schools and little masters of fiction come and go.

Scott himself believed that even great works usually suffer periods of temporary occultation. His own, no doubt, have not always been in their primitive vogue. Even at first, English readers complained of the difficulty caused by his Scotch, and now many make his “dialect” an excuse for not reading books which their taste, debauched by third-rate fiction, is incapable of enjoying. But Scott has never disappeared in one of those irregular changes of public opinion remarked on by his friend Lady Louisa Stuart. In 1821 she informed him that she had tried the experiment of reading Mackenzie’s “Man of Feeling” aloud: “Nobody cried, and at some of the touches I used to think so exquisite, they laughed.”[*] His correspondent requested Scott to write something on such variations of taste, which actually seem to be in the air and epidemic, for they affect, as she remarked, young people who have not heard the criticisms of their elders.[**] Thus Rousseau’s “Nouvelle Héloïse,” once so fascinating to girls, and reputed so dangerous, had become tedious to the young, Lady Louisa says, even in 1821. But to the young, if they have any fancy and intelligence, Scott is not tedious even now; and probably his most devoted readers are boys, girls, and men of matured appreciation and considerable knowledge of literature. The unformed and the cultivated tastes are still at one about Scott. He holds us yet with his unpremeditated art, his natural qualities of friendliness, of humour, of sympathy. Even the carelessness with which his earliest and his kindest critics—Ellis, Erskine, and Lady Louisa Stuart—reproached him has not succeeded in killing his work and diminishing his renown.

[* Abbotsford Manuscripts.]

[** See Scott’s reply, with the anecdote about Mrs. Aphra Behn’s novels, Lockhart, vi. 406 (edition of 1839).]

It is style, as critics remind us, it is perfection of form, no doubt, that secure the permanence of literature; but Scott did not overstate his own defects when he wrote in his Journal (April 22, 1826): “A solecism in point of composition, like a Scotch word, is indifferent to me. I never learned grammar. . . . I believe the bailiff in ‘The Goodnatured Man’ is not far wrong when he says: ‘One man has one way of expressing himself, and another another; and that is all the difference between them.’” The difference between Scott and Thackeray or Flaubert among good writers, and a crowd of self-conscious and mannered “stylists” among writers not so very good, is essential. About Shakspeare it was said that he “never blotted a line.” The observation is almost literally true about Sir Walter. The pages of his manuscript novels show scarcely a retouch or an erasure, whether in the “Waverley” fragment of 1805 or the unpublished “Siege of Malta” of 1832.[*] The handwriting becomes closer and smaller; from thirty-eight lines to the page in “Waverley,” he advances to between fifty and sixty in “Ivanhoe.” The few alterations are usually additions. For example, a fresh pedantry of the Baron of Bradwardine’s is occasionally set down on the opposite page. Nothing can be less like the method of Flaubert or the method of Mr. Ruskin, who tells us that “a sentence of ‘Modern Painters’ was often written four or five times over in my own hand, and tried in every word for perhaps an hour,—perhaps a forenoon,—before it was passed for the printer.” Each writer has his method; Scott was no stippler or niggler, but, as we shall see later, he often altered much in his proof-sheets.[**] As long as he was understood, he was almost reckless of well-constructed sentences, of the one best word for his meaning, of rounded periods. This indifference is not to be praised, but it is only a proof of his greatness that his style, never distinguished, and often lax, has not impaired the vitality of his prose. The heart which beats in his works, the knowledge of human nature, the dramatic vigour of his character, the nobility of his whole being win the day against the looseness of his manner, the negligence of his composition, against the haste of fatigue which set him, as Lady Louisa Stuart often told him, on “huddling up a conclusion anyhow, and so kicking the book out of his way.” In this matter of _dénouements_ he certainly was no more careful than Shakspeare or Molière.

[* A history of Scott’s Manuscripts, with good fac-similes, will be found in the Catalogue of the Scott Exhibition, Edinburgh, 1872.]

[** While speaking of correction, it may be noted that Scott, in his “Advertisement” prefixed to the issue of 1829, speaks of changes made in that collected edition. In “Waverley” these emendations are very rare, and are unimportant. A few _callidæ juncturæ_ are added, a very few lines are deleted. The postscript of the first edition did not contain the anecdote about the hiding-place of the manuscript among the fishing tackle. The first line of Flora Macdonald’s battle-song (chapter xxii.) originally ran, “Mist darkens the mountain, night darkens the vale,” in place of “There is mist on the mountain and mist on the vale.” For the rest, as Scott says, “where the tree falls it must lie.”]

The permanence of Sir Walter’s romances is proved, as we said, by their survival among all the changes of fashion in the art of fiction. When he took up his pen to begin “Waverley,” fiction had not absorbed, as it does to-day, almost all the best imaginative energy of English or foreign writers. Now we hear of “art” on every side, and every novelist must give the world his opinion about schools and methods. Scott, on the other hand, lived in the greatest poetical age since that of Elizabeth. Poetry or the drama (in which, to be sure, few succeeded) occupied Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, Crabbe, Campbell, and Keats. Then, as Joanna Baillie hyperbolically declared, “The Scotch novels put poetry out of fashion.”[*] Till they appeared, novels seem to have been left to readers like the plaintive lady’s-maid whom Scott met at Dalkeith, when he beheld “the fair one descend from the carriage with three half-bound volumes of a novel in her hand.” Mr. Morritt, writing to Scott in March, 1815, hopes he will “restore pure narrative to the dignity from which it gradually slipped before it dwindled into a manufactory for the circulating library.” “Waverley,” he asserted, “would prevail over people otherwise averse to blue-backed volumes.” Thus it was an unconsidered art which Scott took up and revived. Half a century had passed since Fielding gave us in “Tom Jones” his own and very different picture of life in the “’forty-five,”—of life with all the romance of the “Race to Derby” cut down to a sentence or two. Since the age of the great English novelists, Richardson and Fielding and Miss Burney, the art of fiction had been spasmodically alive in the hands of Mrs. Radcliffe, had been sentimental with Henry Mackenzie, and now was all but moribund, save for the humorous Irish sketches of Miss Edgeworth. As Scott always insisted, it was mainly “the extended and well-merited fame of Miss Edgeworth” which induced him to try his hand on a novel containing pictures of Scottish life and character. Nothing was more remarkable in his own novels than the blending of close and humorous observation of common life with pleasure in adventurous narratives about “what is not so, and was not so, and Heaven forbid that it ever should be so,” as the girl says in the nursery tale. Through his whole life he remained the dreamer of dreams and teller of wild legends, who had held the lads of the High School entranced round Luckie Brown’s fireside, and had fleeted the summer days in interchange of romances with a schoolboy friend, Mr. Irving, among the hills that girdle Edinburgh. He ever had a passion for “knights and ladies and dragons and giants,” and “God only knows,” he says, “how delighted I was to find myself in such society.” But with all this delight, his imagination had other pleasures than the fantastic: the humours and passions of ordinary existence were as clearly visible to him as the battles, the castles, and the giants. True, he was more fastidious in his choice of novels of real life than in his romantic reading. “The whole Jemmy and Jessamy tribe I abhorred,” he said; “and it required the art of Burney or the feeling of Mackenzie to fix my attention upon a domestic tale.” But when the domestic tale was good and true, no man appreciated it more than he. None has more vigorously applauded Miss Austen than Scott, and it was thus that as the “Author of ‘Waverley’” he addressed Miss Edgeworth, through James Ballantyne: “If I could but hit Miss Edgeworth’s wonderful power of vivifying all her persons, and making them live as _beings_ in your mind, I should not be afraid.” “Often,” Ballantyne goes on, “has the Author of ‘Waverley’ used such language to me; and I knew that I gratified him most when I could say, ‘Positively, this _is_ equal to Miss Edgeworth.’”

[* Abbotsford Manuscripts. Hogg averred that nobody either read or wrote poetry after Sir Walter took to prose.]

Thus Scott’s own taste was catholic: and in this he was particularly unlike the modern novelists, who proclaim, from both sides of the Atlantic, that only in their own methods, and in sharing their own exclusive tastes, is literary salvation. The prince of Romance was no one-sided _romanticiste;_ his ear was open to all fiction good in its kind. His generosity made him think Miss Edgeworth’s persons more alive than his own. To his own romances he preferred Mrs. Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”[*] As a critic, of course, he was mistaken; but his was the generous error of the heart, and it is the heart in Walter Scott, even more than the brain, that lends its own vitality to his creations. Equipped as he was with a taste truly catholic, capable in old age of admiring “Pelham,” he had the power to do what he calls “the big bow-wow strain;” yet he was not, as in his modesty he supposed, denied “the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment.”[**]

[* Scott reviewed “Frankenstein” in 1818. Mr. Shelley had sent it with a brief note, in which he said that it was the work of a friend, and that he had only seen it through the press. Sir Walter passed the book on to Mr. Morritt, who, in reply, gave Scott a brief and not very accurate history of Shelley. Sir Walter then wrote a most favourable review of “Frankenstein” in “Blackwood’s Magazine,” observing that it was attributed to Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley, a son-in-law of Mr. Godwin. Mrs. Shelley presently wrote thanking him for the review, and assuring him that it was her own work. Scott had apparently taken Shelley’s disclaimer as an innocent evasion; it was an age of literary superscheries.—_Abbotsford Manuscripts_.]

[** Journal, March 14, 1826.]

The letter of Rose Bradwardine to Waverley is alone enough to disprove Scott’s disparagement of himself, his belief that he had been denied exquisiteness of touch. Nothing human is more delicate, nothing should be more delicately handled, than the first love of a girl. What the “analytical” modern novelist would pass over and dissect and place beneath his microscope till a student of any manliness blushes with shame and annoyance, Scott suffers Rose Bradwardine to reveal with a sensitive shyness. But Scott, of course, had even less in common with the peeper and botanizer on maidens’ hearts than with the wildest romanticist. He considered that “a want of story is always fatal to a book the first reading, and it is well if it gets a chance of a second.” From him “Pride and Prejudice” got a chance of three readings at least. This generous universality of taste, in addition to all his other qualities of humour and poetry, enabled Scott to raise the novel from its decadence, and to make the dry bones of history live again in his tales. With Charles Edward at Holyrood, as Mr. Senior wrote in the “Quarterly Review,” “we are in the lofty region of romance. In any other hands than those of Sir Walter Scott, the language and conduct of those great people would have been as dignified as their situations. We should have heard nothing of the hero in his new costume ‘majoring afore the muckle pier-glass,’ of his arrest by the host of the Candlestick, of his examination by the well-powdered Major Melville, or of his fears of being informed against by Mrs. Nosebag.” In short, “while the leading persons and events are as remote from ordinary life as the inventions of Scudéry, the picture of human nature is as faithful as could have been given by Fielding or Le Sage.” Though this criticism has not the advantage of being new, it is true; and when we have added that Scott’s novels are the novels of the poet who, next to Shakspeare, knew mankind most widely and well, we have the secret of his triumph.

For the first time in literature, it was a poet who held the pen of the romancer in prose. Fielding, Richardson, De Foe, Miss Burney, were none of them made by the gods poetical. Scott himself, with his habitual generosity, would have hailed his own predecessor in Mrs. Radcliffe. “The praise may be claimed for Mrs. Radcliffe of having been the first to introduce into her prose fictions a beautiful and fanciful tone of natural description and impressive narrative, which had hitherto been exclusively applied to poetry. . . . Mrs. Radcliffe has a title to be considered the first poetess of romantic fiction.” When “Guy Mannering” appeared, Wordsworth sneered at it as a work of the Radcliffe school. The slight difference produced by the introduction of humour could scarcely be visible to Wordsworth. But Scott would not have been hurt by his judgment. He had the literary courage to recognize merit even when obscured by extravagance, and to applaud that in which people of culture could find neither excellence nor charm. Like Thackeray, he had been thrilled by Vivaidi in the Inquisition, and he was not the man to hide his gratitude because his author was now out of fashion.

Thus we see that Scott, when he began “Waverley” in 1805, brought to his labour no hard-and-fast theory of the art of fiction, but a kindly readiness to be pleased, and to find good in everything. He brought his wide knowledge of contemporary Scottish life “from the peer to the ploughman;” he brought his well-digested wealth of antiquarian lore, and the poetic skill which had just been busied with the “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” and was still to be occupied, ere he finished his interrupted novel, with “Marmion,” “The Lady of the Lake,” “Rokeby,” and “The Lord of the Isles.” The comparative failure of the last-named no doubt strengthened his determination to try prose romance. He had never cared much for his own poems, he says, Byron had outdone him in popularity, and the Muse—“the Good Demon” who once deserted Herrick—came now less eagerly to his call.

It is curiously difficult to disentangle the statements about the composition of “Waverley.” Our first authority, of course, is Scott’s own account, given in the General Preface to the Edition of 1829. Lockhart, however, remarks on the haste with which Sir Walter wrote the Introductions to the _magnum opus;_ and the lapse of fifteen years, the effects of disease, and his habitual carelessness about his own works and mode of working may certainly to some extent have clouded his memory. “About the year 1805,” as he says, he “threw together about one third part of the first volume of ‘Waverley.’” It was advertised to be published, he goes on, by Ballantyne, with the second title, “’T is Fifty Years since.” This, obviously, would have made 1755 the date of the events, just as the title “’T is Sixty Years since” in 1814 brought the date of the events to 1754. By inspecting the water-mark of the paper Lockhart discovered that 1805 was the period in which the first few chapters were composed; the rest of the paper was marked 1814. Scott next observes that the unfavourable opinion of a critical friend on the first seven chapters induced him to lay the manuscript aside. Who was this friend? Lockhart thinks it was Erskine. It is certain, from a letter of Ballantyne’s at Abbotsford,—a letter printed by Lockhart, September 15, 1810,—that Ballantyne in 1810 saw at least the earlier portions of “Waverley,” and it is clear enough that he had seen none of it before. If any friend did read it in 1805, it cannot have been Ballantyne, and may have been Erskine. But none of the paper bears a water-mark between 1805 and 1813, so Scott must merely have taken it up, in 1810, as it had been for five years. Now Scott says that the success of “The Lady of the Lake,” with its Highland pictures, induced him “to attempt something of the same sort in prose.” This, as Lockhart notes, cannot refer to 1805, as the “Lady of the Lake” did not appear till 1810. But the good fortune of the “Lady” may very well have induced him in 1810 to reconsider his Highland prose romance. In 1808, as appears from an undated letter to Surtees of Mainsforth (Abbotsford Manuscripts), he was contemplating a poem on “that wandering knight so fair,” Charles Edward, and on the adventures of his flight, on Lochiel, Flora Macdonald, the Kennedys, and the rest. Earlier still, on June 9, 1806, Scott wrote to Lady Abercorn that he had “a great work in contemplation, a Highland romance of love, magic, and war.” “The Lady of the Lake” took the place of that poem in his “century of inventions,” and, stimulated by the popularity of his Highland romance in verse, he disinterred the last seven chapters of “Waverley” from their five years of repose. Very probably, as he himself hints, the exercise of fitting a conclusion to Strutt’s “Queenhoo Hall” may have helped to bring his fancy back to his own half-forgotten story of “Waverley.” In 1811 Scott went to Abbotsford, and there, as he tells us, he lost sight of his “Waverley” fragment.[*] Often looked for, it was never found, till the accident of a search for fishing-tackle led him to discover it in the drawer of an old bureau in a lumber-garret. This cabinet afterwards came into the possession of Mr. William Laidlaw, Scott’s friend and amanuensis, and it is still, the Editor understands, in the hands of Miss Laidlaw. The fishing-tackle, Miss Laidlaw tells the Editor (mainly red hackles, tied on hair, not gut), still occupies the drawer, except a few flies which were given, as relics, to the late Mr. Thomas Tod Stoddart. In 1813, then, volume i. of “Waverley” was finished. Then Scott undertook some articles for Constable, and laid the novel aside. The printing, at last, must have been very speedy. Dining in Edinburgh, in June, 1814, Lockhart saw “the hand of Walter Scott” busy at its task. “Page after page is finished, and thrown on the heap of manuscripts, and still it goes on unwearied.”[**] The book was published on July 7, the press hardly keeping up with the activity of the author. Scott had written “two volumes in three summer weeks” and the printers had not shown less activity, while binders and stitchers must have worked extra tides.

[* Mr. R. P. Gillies says that in 1811 “Waverley, in three volumes, had been announced by John Ballantyne, and a sheet or two set in types” (Recollections of Sir Walter Scott, p 204).]

[** Lockhart, iv, 172.]

“Waverley” was published without the Author’s name. Scott’s reasons for being anonymous have been stated by himself. “It was his humour,”—that is the best of the reasons, and the secret gave him a great deal of amusement. The Ballantynes, of course, knew it from the first; so did Mr. Morritt, Lady Louisa Stuart, and Lord and Lady Montague, and others were gradually admitted. In an undated letter, probably of November, 1816, Scott says to the Marchioness of Abercorn, a most intimate friend: “I cannot even conjecture whom you mean by Mr. Mackenzie as author of ‘The Antiquary.’ I should think my excellent old friend Mr. Harry Mackenzie [author of the ‘Man of Feeling,’ etc.] was too much advanced in years and plunged in business to amuse himself by writing novels; and besides, the style in no degree resembles his.” (Lady Abercorn meant “Young Harry Mackenzie,” not the patriarch.) “I am told one of the English reviews gives these works by name and upon alleged authority to George Forbes, Sir William’s brother; so they take them off my hands, I don’t care who they turn to, for I am really tired of an imputation which I am under the necessity of confuting at every corner. Tom will soon be home from Canada, as the death of my elder brother has left him a little money. He may answer for himself, but I hardly suspect him, unless much changed, to be possessed of the perseverance necessary to write nine volumes.” Scott elsewhere rather encouraged the notion that his brother Thomas was the author, and tried to make him exert himself and enter the field as a rival. Gossip also assigned the “Scotch novels” to Jeffrey, to Mrs. Thomas Scott, aided by her husband and Sir Walter, to a Dr. Greenfield, a clergyman, and to many others. Sir Walter humorously suggested George Cranstoun as the real offender. After the secret was publicly confessed, Lady Louisa Stuart reminded Scott of all the amusement it had given them. “Old Mortality” had been pronounced “too good” for Scott, and free from his “wearisome descriptions of scenery.” Clever people had detected several separate hands in “Old Mortality,” as in the Iliad. All this was diverting. Moreover, Scott was in some degree protected from the bores who pester a successful author. He could deny the facts very stoutly, though always, as he insists, with the reservation implied in alleging that, if he had been the author, he would still have declined to confess. In the notes to later novels we shall see some of his “great denials.”

The reception of “Waverley” was enthusiastic. Large editions were sold in Edinburgh, and when Scott returned from his cruise in the northern islands he found society ringing with his unacknowledged triumph. Byron, especially, proclaimed his pleasure in “Waverley.” It may be curious to recall some of the published reviews of the moment. Probably no author ever lived so indifferent to published criticism as Scott. Miss Edgeworth, in one of her letters, reminds him how they had both agreed that writers who cared for the dignity and serenity of their characters should abstain from “that authors’ bane-stuff.” “As to the herd of critics,” Scott wrote to Miss Seward, after publishing “The Lay,” “many of those gentlemen appear to me to be a set of tinkers, who, unable to _make_ pots and pans, set up for _menders_ of them.” It is probable, therefore, that he was quite unconcerned about the few remarks which Mr. Gifford, in the “Quarterly Review” (vol. xl., 1814), interspersed among a multitude of extracts, in a notice of “Waverley” manufactured with scissors and paste. The “Quarterly” recognized “a Scotch Castle Rackrent,” but in “a much higher strain.” The tale was admitted to possess all the accuracy of history, and all the vivacity of romance. Scott’s second novel, “Guy Mannering,” was attacked with some viciousness in the periodical of which he was practically the founder, and already the critic was anxious to repeat what Scott, talking of Pope’s censors, calls “the cuckoo cry of ‘written out’!” The notice of “Waverley” in the “Edinburgh Review” by Mr. Jeffrey was not so slight and so unworthy of the topic. The novel was declared, and not unjustly, to be “very hastily, and in many places very unskilfully, written.” The Scotch was decried as “unintelligible” dialect by the very reviewer who had accused “Marmion” of not being Scotch enough. But the “Edinburgh” applauded “the extraordinary fidelity and felicity” with which all the inferior agents in the story are represented. “Fastidious readers” might find Callum Beg and Mrs. Nosebag and the Cumberland peasants “coarse and disgusting,” said the reviewer, who must have had in his imagination readers extremely superfine. He objected to the earlier chapters as uninteresting, and—with justice—to the passages where the author speaks in “the smart and flippant style of modern makers of paragraphs.” “These form a strange and humiliating contrast with the force and freedom of his manner when engaged in those dramatic and picturesque representations to which his genius so decidedly inclines.” He spoke severely of the places where Scott explains the circumstances of Waverley’s adventures before he reaches Edinburgh; and Scott himself, in his essay on Mrs. Radcliffe, regrets that explanatory chapters had ever been invented. The reviewer broadly hints his belief that Scott is the author; and on the whole, except for a cautious lack of enthusiasm, the notice is fair and kindly. The “Monthly Review” differed not much from the Blue and Yellow (the “Edinburgh Review”).

“It is not one of the least merits of this very uncommon production that all the subordinate characters are touched with the same discriminating force which so strongly marks their principals; and that in this manner almost every variety of station and interest, such as existed at the period under review, is successively brought before the mind of the reader in colours vivid as the original. “A few oversights, we think, we have detected in the conduct of the story which ought not to remain unnoticed. For example, the age of Stanley and Lady Emily does not seem well to accord with the circumstances of their union, as related in the commencement of the work; and we are not quite satisfied that Edward should have been so easily reconciled to the barbarous and stubborn prejudices which precluded even the office of intercession for his gallant friend and companion-in-arms. “The pieces of poetry which are not very profusely scattered through these volumes can scarcely fail to be ascribed to Mr. Scott, whatever may be judged of the body of the work. In point of comparative merit, we should class them neither with the highest nor with the meanest effusions of his lyric minstrelsy.”

Lord Byron’s “Grandmother’s Review, the British,” was also friendly and sagacious, in its elderly way.

“We request permission, therefore, to introduce ‘Waverley,’ a publication which has already excited considerable interest in the sister kingdom, to the literary world on this side the Tweed. “A very short time has elapsed since this publication made its appearance in Edinburgh, and though it came into the world in the modest garb of anonymous obscurity, the Northern _literati_ are unanimous, we understand, in ascribing part of it, at least, to the pen of W. Scott. “We are unwilling to consider this publication in the light of a common novel whose fate it is to be devoured with rapidity for a day, and afterwards forgotten forever, but as a vehicle of curious and accurate information upon a subject which must at all times demand our attention,—the history and manners of a very large and renowned portion of the inhabitants of these islands. We would recommend this tale as faithfully embodying the lives, the manners, and the opinions of this departed race, and as affording those features of ancient days which no man probably, besides its author, has had the means to collect, the desire to preserve, or the power to portray. “Although there are characters sufficient to awaken the attention and to diversify the scenes, yet they are not in sufficient number to perplex the memory or to confuse the incidents. Their spirit is well kept up till the very last, and they relieve one another with so much art that the reader will not find himself wearied even with the pedantic jargon of the old Baron of Bradwardine. “Of Waverley himself we shall say but little, as his character is far too common to need a comment; we can only say that his wanderings are not gratuitous, nor is he wavering and indecisive only because the author chooses to make him so. Every feature in his character is formed by education, and it is to this first source that we are constantly referred for a just and sufficient cause of all the wandering passions as they arise in his mind. “The secondary personages are drawn with much spirit and fidelity, and with a very striking knowledge of the peculiarities of the Scotch temper and disposition. The incidents are all founded on fact, and the historical parts are related with much accuracy. The livelier scenes which are displayed are of the most amusing species, because they flow so naturally from the personages before us that the characters, not the author, appear to speak. A strong vein of very original humour marks the whole: in most instances it is indeed of a local and particular nature, but in many cases it assumes a more general appearance. “Of the more serious portions we can speak with unqualified approbation; the very few pathetic scenes which occur are short, dignifed, and affecting. The love-scenes are sufficiently contracted to produce that very uncommon sensation in the mind,—a wish that they were longer. “The religious opinions expressed in the course of the tale are few, but of those few we fully approve. “The humorous and happy adaptation of legal terms shows no moderate acquaintance with the arcana of the law, and a perpetual allusion to the English and Latin classics no common share of scholarship and taste.”

The “Scots Magazine” illustrated the admirable unanimity of reviewers when they _are_ unanimous. The “Anti-jacobin” objected that no Château-Margaux sent in the wood from Bordeaux to Dundee in 1713 could have been drinkable in 1745. “Claret two-and-thirty years old! It almost gives us the gripes to think of it.” Indeed, Sir Walter, as Lochhart assures us, was so far from being a judge of claret that he could not tell when it was “corked.” One or two points equally important amused the reviewer, who, like most of his class, detected the hand of Scott. There was hardly a possibility, as Mr. Morritt told Sir Walter, “that the poems in ‘Waverley’ could fail to suggest their author. No man who ever heard you tell a story over a table but must recognize you at once.” To his praise of “Waverley” Mr. Morritt hardly added any adverse criticism, beyond doubting the merit of the early chapters, and denouncing the word “sombre” as one which had lately “kept bad company among the slipshod English of the sentimental school.” Scott, in defence, informed Mr. Morritt that he had “left the story to flag in the first volume on purpose. . . . I wished (with what success Heaven knows) to avoid the ordinary error of novelists, whose first volume is usually their best.”

It must be admitted that if Scott wished to make “Waverley” “flag” in the beginning, he succeeded extremely well,—too well for many modern readers, accustomed to a leap into the midst of the story. “These introductory chapters,” he observes in a note on the fifth of them, “have been a good deal censured as tedious and unnecessary; yet there are circumstances recorded in them which the Author has not been able to persuade himself to retract or cancel.” These “circumstances” are probably the studies of Waverley, his romantic readings, which are really autobiographic. Scott was, apparently, seriously of opinion that the “mental discipline” of a proper classical education would have been better for himself than his own delightfully desultory studies. Ballantyne could not see what Waverley’s reading had to do with his adventures and character. Scott persisted in being of another mind. He himself, writing to Morritt, calls his hero “a sneaking piece of imbecility;” but he probably started with loftier intentions of “psychological analysis” than he fulfilled. He knew, and often said, in private letters, as in published works, that he was no hand at a respectable hero. Borderers, buccaneers, robbers, and humorsome people, like Dugald Dalgetty and Bailie Nicol Jarvie and Macwheeble, whom he said he preferred to any person in “Waverley,” were the characters he delighted in. We may readily believe that Shakspeare too preferred Jacques and the Fat Knight to Orlando or the favoured lover of Anne Page. Your hero is a difficult person to make human,—unless, indeed, he has the defects of Pendennis or Tom Jones. But it is likely enough that the Waverley whom Scott had in his mind in 1805 was hardly the Waverley of 1813. His early English chapters are much in the ordinary vein of novels as they were then written; in those chapters come the “asides” by the author which the “Edinburgh Review” condemned. But there remains the kindly, honourable Sir Everard, while the calm atmosphere of English meadows, and the plump charms of Miss Cecilia Stubbs, are intended as foils to the hills of the North, the shy refinement of Rose, and the heroic heart of Flora Mac-Ivor. Scott wished to show the remote extremes of civilization and mental habit co-existing in the same island of Scotland and England. Yet we regret such passages as “craving pardon for my heroics, which I am unable in certain cases to resist giving way to,” and so forth. Scott was no Thackeray, no Fielding, and failed (chiefly in “Waverley”) when he attempted the mood of banter, which one of his daughters, a lady “of Beatrice’s mind,” “never got from me,” he observes.

In any serious attempt to criticise “Waverley” as a whole, it is not easy to say whether we should try to put ourselves at the point of view of its first readers, or whether we should look at it from the vantage-ground of to-day. In 1814 the dead world of clannish loyalty was fresh in many memories. Scott’s own mother had often spoken with a person who had seen Cromwell enter Edinburgh after Dunbar. He himself knew heroes of the Forty-five, and his friend Lady Louisa Stuart had been well acquainted with Miss Walkinshaw, sister of the mistress of Charles Edward. To his generation those things were personal memories, which to us seem as distant as the reign of Men-ka-ra. They could not but be “carried off their feet” by such pictures of a past still so near them. Nor had they other great novelists to weaken the force of Scott’s impressions. They had not to compare him with the melancholy mirth of Thackeray, and the charm, the magic, of his style. Balzac was of the future; of the future was the Scott of France,—the boyish, the witty, the rapid, the brilliant, the inexhaustible Dumas. Scott’s generation had no scruples about “realism,” listened to no sermons on the glory of the commonplace; like Dr. Johnson, they admired a book which “was amusing as a fairy-tale.” But we are overwhelmed with a wealth of comparisons, and deafened by a multitude of homilies on fiction, and distracted, like the people in the _Eyrbyggja_ Saga, by the strange rising and setting, and the wild orbits of new “weirdmoons” of romance. Before we can make up our minds on Scott, we have to remember, or forget, the scornful patronage of one critic, the over-subtlety and exaggerations of another, the more than papal infallibility of a third. Perhaps the best critic would be an intelligent school-boy, with a generous heart and an unspoiled imagination. As his remarks are not accessible, as we must try to judge “Waverley” like readers inured to much fiction and much criticism, we must confess, no doubt, that the commencement has the faults which the first reviewers detected, and which Scott acknowledged. He is decidedly slow in getting to business, as they say; he began with more of conscious ethical purpose than he went on, and his banter is poor. But when once we enter the village of Tully-Veolan, the Magician finds his wand. Each picture of place or person tells,—the old butler, the daft Davie Gellatley, the solemn and chivalrous Baron, the pretty natural girl, the various lairds, the factor Macwheeble,—all at once become living people, and friends whom we can never lose. The creative fire of Shakspeare lives again. The Highlanders—Evan Dhu, Donald Bean Lean, his charming daughter, Callum Beg, and all the rest—are as natural as the Lowlanders. In Fergus and Flora we feel, indeed, at first, that the author has left his experience behind, and is giving us creatures of fancy. But they too become human and natural,—Fergus in his moods of anger, ambition, and final courageous resignation; Flora, in her grief. As for Waverley, his creator was no doubt too hard on him. Among the brave we hear that he was one of the bravest, though Scott always wrote his battlepieces in a manner to suggest no discomfort, and does not give us particular details of Waverley’s prowess. He has spirit enough, this “sneaking piece of imbecility,” as he shows in his quarrel with Fergus, on the march to Derby. Waverley, that creature of romance, considered as a lover, is really not romantic enough. He loved Rose because she loved him,—which is confessed to be unheroic behaviour. Scott, in “Waverley,” certainly does not linger over love-scenes. With Mr. Ruskin, we may say: “Let it not be thought for an instant that the slight and sometimes scornful glance with which Scott passes over scenes, which a novelist of our own day would have analyzed with the airs of a philosopher, and painted with the curiosity of a gossip, indicates any absence in his heart of sympathy with the great and sacred elements of personal happiness.” But his mind entertained other themes of interest, “loyalty, patriotism, piety.” On the other hand, it is necessary to differ from Mr. Ruskin when he says that Scott “never knew ‘l’amor che move ’l sol e l’altre stelle.’” He whose heart was “broken for two years,” and retained the crack till his dying day, he who, when old and tired, and near his death, was yet moved by the memory of the name which thirty years before he had cut in Runic characters on the turf at the Castle-gate of St. Andrew, knew love too well to write of it much, or to speak of it at all. He had won his ideal as alone the ideal can be won; he never lost her: she was with him always, because she had been unattainable. “There are few,” he says, “who have not, at one period of life, broken ties of love and friendship, secret disappointments of the heart, to mourn over,—and we know no book which recalls the memory of them more severely than ‘Julia de Roubigné.’” He could not be very eager to recall them, he who had so bitterly endured them, and because he had known and always knew “l’amor che move ’l sol e l’altre stelle,” a seal was on his lips, a silence broken only by a caress of Di Vernon’s.[*]

[* In a letter to Lady Abercorn, written when he was busy with the “Lady of the Lake,” Scott complained that he could not draw a lover, in spite of his own experience.]

This apology we may make, if an apology be needed, for what modern readers may think the meagreness of the love-passages in Scott. He does not deal in embraces and effusions, his taste is too manly; he does not dwell much on Love, because, like the shepherd in Theocritus, he has found him an inhabitant of the rocks. Moreover, when Scott began novel-writing, he was as old as Thackeray when Thackeray said that while at work on a love-scene he blushed so that you would think he was going into an apoplexy. “Waverley” stands by its pictures of manners, of character, by its humour and its tenderness, by its manly “criticism of life,” by its touches of poetry, so various, so inspired, as in Davie Gellatley with his songs, and Charles Edward in the gallant hour of Holyrood, and Flora with her high, selfless hopes and broken heart, and the beloved Baron, bearing his lot “with a good-humoured though serious composure.” “To be sure, we may say with Virgilius Maro, ‘Fuimus Troes’—and there’s the end of an auld sang. But houses and families and men have a’ stood lang eneugh when they have stood till they fall with honour.”

“Waverley” ends like a fairy-tale, while real life ever ends like a Northern saga. But among the good things that make life bearable, such fairy-tales are not the least precious, and not the least enduring.

The plan of this edition leads me to insert in this place some account of the incidents on which the Novel of Waverley is founded. They have been already given to the public by my late lamented friend, William Erskine, Esq. (afterwards Lord Kinneder), when reviewing the Tales of My Landlord for the Quarterly Review in 1817. The particulars were derived by the critic from the Author’s information. Afterwards they were published in the preface to the “Chronicles of the Canongate”. They are now inserted in their proper place.

The mutual protection afforded by Waverley and Talbot to each other, upon which the whole plot depends, is founded upon one of those anecdotes which soften the features even of civil war; and, as it is equally honourable to the memory of both parties, we have no hesitation to give their names at length. When the Highlanders, on the morning of the battle of Preston, 1745, made their memorable attack on Sir John Cope’s army, a battery of four field-pieces was stormed and carried by the Camerons and the Stewarts of Appine. The late Alexander Stewart of Invernahylewas one of the foremost in the charge, and observing an officer of the King’s forces, who, scorning to join the flight of all around, remained with his sword in his hand, as if determined to the very last to defend the post assigned to him, the Highland gentleman commanded him to surrender, and received for reply a thrust, which he caught in his target. The officer was now defenceless, and the battle-axe of a gigantic Highlander (the miller of Invernahyle’s mill) was uplifted to dash his brains out, when Mr. Stewart with difficulty prevailed on him to yield. He took charge of his enemy’s property, protected his person, and finally obtained him liberty on his parole. The officer proved to be Colonel Whitefoord, an Ayrshire gentleman of high character and influence, and warmly attached to the House of Hanover; yet such was the confidence existing between these two honourable men, though of different political principles, that, while the civil war was raging, and straggling officers from the Highland army were executed without mercy, Invernahyle hesitated not to pay his late captive a visit, as he returned to the Highlands to raise fresh recruits, on which occasion he spent a day or two in Ayrshire among Colonel Whitefoord’s Whig friends, as pleasantly and as good-humouredly as if all had been at peace around him.

After the battle of Culloden had ruined the hopes of Charles Edward and dispersed his proscribed adherents, it was Colonel Whitefoord’s turn to strain every nerve to obtain Mr. Stewart’s pardon. He went to the Lord Justice Clerk to the Lord Advocate, and to all the officers of state, and each application was answered by the production of a list in which Invernahyle (as the good old gentleman was wont to express it) appeared “marked with the sign of the beast!” as a subject unfit for favour or pardon.

At length Colonel Whitefoord applied to the Duke of Cumberland in person. From him, also, he received a positive refusal. He then limited his request, for the present, to a protection for Stewart’s house, wife, children, and property. This was also refused by the Duke; on which Colonel Whitefoord, taking his commission from his bosom, laid it on the table before his Royal Highness with much emotion, and asked permission to retire from the service of a sovereign who did not know how to spare a vanquished enemy. The Duke was struck, and even affected. He bade the Colonel take up his commission, and granted the protection he required. It was issued just in time to save the house, corn, and cattle at Invernahyle from the troops, who were engaged in laying waste what it was the fashion to call “the country of the enemy.” A small encampment of soldiers was formed on Invernahyle’s property, which they spared while plundering the country around, and searching in every direction for the leaders of the insurrection, and for Stewart in particular. He was much nearer them than they suspected; for, hidden in a cave (like the Baron of Bradwardine), he lay for many days so near the English sentinels that he could hear their muster-roll called. His food was brought to him by one of his daughters, a child of eight years old, whom Mrs. Stewart was under the necessity of entrusting with this commission; for her own motions, and those of all her elder inmates, were closely watched. With ingenuity beyond her years, the child used to stray about among the soldiers, who were rather kind to her, and thus seize the moment when she was unobserved and steal into the thicket, when she deposited whatever small store of provisions she had in charge at some marked spot, where her father might find it. Invernahyle supported life for several weeks by means of these precarious supplies; and, as he had been wounded in the battle of Culloden, the hardships which he endured were aggravated by great bodily pain. After the soldiers had removed their quarters he had another remarkable escape.

As he now ventured to his own house at night and left it in the morning, he was espied during the dawn by a party of the enemy, who fired at and pursued him. The fugitive being fortunate enough to escape their search, they returned to the house and charged the family with harbouring one of the proscribed traitors. An old woman had presence of mind enough to maintain that the man they had seen was the shepherd. “Why did he not stop when we called to him?” said the soldier. “He is as deaf, poor man, as a peat-stack,” answered the ready-witted domestic. “Let him be sent for directly.” The real shepherd accordingly was brought from the hill, and, as there was time to tutor him by the way, he was as deaf when he made his appearance as was necessary to sustain his character. Invernahyle was afterwards pardoned under the Act of Indemnity.

The Author knew him well, and has often heard these circumstances from his own mouth. He was a noble specimen of the old Highlander, far descended, gallant, courteous, and brave, even to chivalry. He had been _out_, I believe, in 1715 and 1745, was an active partaker in all the stirring scenes which passed in the Highlands betwixt these memorable eras; and, I have heard, was remarkable, among other exploits, for having fought a duel with the broadsword with the celebrated Rob Roy MacGregor at the clachan of Balquidder.

Invernahyle chanced to be in Edinburgh when Paul Jones came into the Firth of Forth, and though then an old man, I saw him in arms, and heard him exult (to use his own words) in the prospect of “drawing his claymore once more before he died.” In fact, on that memorable occasion, when the capital of Scotland was menaced by three trifling sloops or brigs, scarce fit to have sacked a fishing village, he was the only man who seemed to propose a plan of resistance. He offered to the magistrates, if broadswords and dirks could be obtained, to find as many Highlanders among the lower classes as would cut off any boat’s crew who might be sent into a town full of narrow and winding passages, in which they were like to disperse in quest of plunder. I know not if his plan was attended to, I rather think it seemed too hazardous to the constituted authorities, who might not, even at that time, desire to see arms in Highland hands. A steady and powerful west wind settled the matter by sweeping Paul Jones and his vessels out of the Firth.

If there is something degrading in this recollection, it is not unpleasant to compare it with those of the last war, when Edinburgh, besides regular forces and militia, furnished a volunteer brigade of cavalry, infantry, and artillery to the amount of six thousand men and upwards, which was in readiness to meet and repel a force of a far more formidable description than was commanded by the adventurous American. Time and circumstances change the character of nations and the fate of cities; and it is some pride to a Scotchman to reflect that the independent and manly character of a country, willing to entrust its own protection to the arms of its children, after having been obscured for half a century, has, during the course of his own lifetime, recovered its lustre.

Other illustrations of “Waverley” will be found in the Notes at the foot of the pages to which they belong. Those which appeared too long to be so placed are given at the end of the chapters to which they severally relate. [Footnote: In this edition at the end of the several volumes.]

To this slight attempt at a sketch of ancient Scottish manners the public have been more favourable than the Author durst have hoped or expected. He has heard, with a mixture of satisfaction and humility, his work ascribed to more than one respectable name. Considerations, which seem weighty in his particular situation, prevent his releasing those gentlemen from suspicion by placing his own name in the title-page; so that, for the present at least, it must remain uncertain whether WAVERLEY be the work of a poet or a critic, a lawyer or a clergyman, or whether the writer, to use Mrs. Malaprop’s phrase, be, “like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once.”

The Author, as he is unconscious of anything in the work itself (except perhaps its frivolity) which prevents its finding an acknowledged father, leaves it to the candour of the public to choose among the many circumstances peculiar to different situations in life such as may induce him to suppress his name on the present occasion. He may be a writer new to publication, and unwilling to avow a character to which he is unaccustomed; or he may be a hackneyed author, who is ashamed of too frequent appearance, and employs this mystery, as the heroine of the old comedy used her mask, to attract the attention of those to whom her face had become too familiar. He may be a man of a grave profession, to whom the reputation of being a novel-writer might be prejudicial; or he may be a man of fashion, to whom writing of any kind might appear pedantic. He may be too young to assume the character of an author, or so old as to make it advisable to lay it aside.

The Author of “Waverley” has heard it objected to this novel, that, in the character of Callum Beg and in the account given by the Baron of Bradwardine of the petty trespasses of the Highlanders upon trifling articles of property, he has borne hard, and unjustly so, upon their national character. Nothing could be farther from his wish or intention. The character of Callum Beg is that of a spirit naturally turned to daring evil, and determined, by the circumstances of his situation, to a particular species of mischief. Those who have perused the curious Letters from the Highlands, published about 1726, will find instances of such atrocious characters which fell under the writer’s own observation, though it would be most unjust to consider such villains as representatives of the Highlanders of that period, any more than the murderers of Marr and Williamson can be supposed to represent the English of the present day. As for the plunder supposed to have been picked up by some of the insurgents in 1745, it must be remembered that, although the way of that unfortunate little army was neither marked by devastation nor bloodshed, but, on the contrary, was orderly and quiet in a most wonderful degree, yet no army marches through a country in a hostile manner without committing some depredations; and several, to the extent and of the nature jocularly imputed to them by the Baron, were really laid to the charge of the Highland insurgents; for which many traditions, and particularly one respecting the Knight of the Mirror, may be quoted as good evidence.[*]

[* A homely metrical narrative of the events of the period, which contains some striking particulars, and is still a great favourite with the lower classes, gives a very correct statement of the behaviour of the mountaineers respecting this same military license; and, as the verses are little known, and contain some good sense, we venture to insert them.]

Now, gentle readers, I have let you ken My very thoughts, from heart and pen, ’Tis needless for to conten’ Or yet controule, For there’s not a word o’t I can men’; So ye must thole.

For on both sides some were not good; I saw them murd’ring in cold blood, Not the gentlemen, but wild and rude, The baser sort, Who to the wounded had no mood But murd’ring sport!

Ev’n both at Preston and Falkirk, That fatal night ere it grew mirk, Piercing the wounded with their durk, Caused many cry! Such pity’s shown from Savage and Turk As peace to die.

A woe be to such hot zeal, To smite the wounded on the fiell! It’s just they got such groats in kail, Who do the same. It only teaches crueltys real To them again.

I’ve seen the men call’d Highland rogues, With Lowland men make shangs a brogs, Sup kail and brose, and fling the cogs Out at the door, Take cocks, hens, sheep, and hogs, And pay nought for.

I saw a Highlander, ’t was right drole, With a string of puddings hung on a pole, Whip’d o’er his shoulder, skipped like a fole, Caus’d Maggy bann, Lap o’er the midden and midden-hole, And aff he ran.

When check’d for this, they’d often tell ye, Indeed _her nainsell’s_ a tume belly; You’ll no gie’t wanting bought, nor sell me; _Hersell_ will hae’t; Go tell King Shorge, and Shordy’s Willie, I’ll hae a meat.

I saw the soldiers at Linton-brig, Because the man was not a Whig, Of meat and drink leave not a skig, Within his door; They burnt his very hat and wig, And thump’d him sore.

And through the Highlands they were so rude, As leave them neither clothes nor food, Then burnt their houses to conclude; ’T was tit for tat. How can _her nainsell_ e’er be good, To think on that?

And after all, O, shame and grief! To use some worse than murd’ring thief, Their very gentleman and chief, Unhumanly! Like Popish tortures, I believe, Such cruelty.

Ev’n what was act on open stage At Carlisle, in the hottest rage, When mercy was clapt in a cage, And pity dead, Such cruelty approv’d by every age, I shook my head.

So many to curse, so few to pray, And some aloud huzza did cry; They cursed the rebel Scots that day, As they’d been nowt Brought up for slaughter, as that way Too many rowt.

Therefore, alas! dear countrymen, O never do the like again, To thirst for vengeance, never ben’ Your gun nor pa’, But with the English e’en borrow and len’, Let anger fa’.

Their boasts and bullying, not worth a louse, As our King’s the best about the house. ’T is ay good to be sober and douce, To live in peace; For many, I see, for being o’er crouse, Gets broken face.

Volume I.