University of Virginia Library

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Time does indeed “roll his ceaseless course,” and
Sir Walter Scott is at length “blotted from the
things that be!” The great leveller, death, has
achieved one of his mightiest triumphs. Yet even
now, when turning over the fresh and glowing
pages of him who is no more, it is difficult to bring
the truth home to the mind that the “author of
Waverley” is really mouldering away amid the withered
leaves of winter in Dryburgh kirk-yard! and
that the dullest brain in Europe is now more prolific
than that which called Meg Merrilies and Marmion,
Rob Roy and Roderick Dhu, and hundreds,
thousands of the finest creations since Shakspeare,
into life and action. Truly, never was the equalization
of the grave made more manifest. Long as

this mournful event had been anticipated, it still
startled men to hear that all was over. They
paused, and looked aghast, and then strode silently
away to marvel how such a thing could be; and
since the death of Byron, no single event has created
such an overpowering—such an enduring
sensation among those who think and feel. Both
these great characters died as became them, calmly
and bravely; and the circumstances connected with
their respective deaths, are not a little characteristic
of the men. Byron perished as he had lived, lonely
and deserted, on a foreign shore, in a fruitless attempt
to right the wrongs of that land whose glories
and sufferings he has embalmed in his undying
numbers; while the death of Scott was probably
accelerated by his unquenchable desire to gaze once
more upon “the scenes he loved and sung,” and to
make his final resting-place in “his own, his native
land!” This feeling seems to have amounted to a
passion. The garden of the world displayed her
charms for him; but he gazed with a dull and filmy
eye on the luxuriant beauties of nature, and the
magnificent triumphs of art, ennobled, too, by association
with all that was grand and mighty in a bypast
age. How would all this have stirred his spirit
at another period! But the time was past. The
hand of the destroyer was upon him; the blood was
fast curdling around his noble heart, and the soft
and balmy odors of a southern clime came all too
late to infuse health and vigor into his decaying
frame. He turned sickeningly away, yearning
once again
and on his return, the nearer he approached his
country, the stronger this desire became, until, on
his arrival in London, he would scarcely brook the
necessary—the indispensable delays which his situation
required. His only thought and cry was to
reach Scotland; thus giving his dying testimony to
the truth of that fine apostrophe written in his
prime, showing the deep and rooted feelings of the
man, as well as the inspiration of the poet:

Mankind owes Scott a debt of gratitude which it
can never liquidate. The untiring admiration of
succeeding generations may cancel the interest, but
he must ever remain creditor for the principal until

the language in which he has written shall have
become a forgotten tongue. I would fain pay a
portion of my tribute of thankfulness for the many,
many hours of pure pleasure his works have afforded
me, in a few scattered remarks, though it almost
looks like presumption to do so. Criticism, is out of
the question. Criticism, as far as Scott is concerned,
should now, methinks, go to sleep, at least for a
while. Eulogies—rhapsodies, (absurd or otherwise,)
may be tolerated; but formal, frigid criticism, especially
from those “whose names are written on the
roll of common men,” now that the manes of the
great magician are scarcely cold, would be little
better than sacrilege.

I shall never forget the first time I read Marmion.
I was just then emerging from Jack-the-giant-killerism,
and similar juvenile portions of the belles-letters—a
mere lad, with an “ogre-like appetite” for
books of all descriptions, which I despatched with
most uncritical precipitancy. Marmion came in my
way one summer evening. I read it half through,
thought and dreamed of it the rest of the night, and
finished it before leaving my bed the next morning.
This was certainly devouring a six-canto poem with
a most unsophisticated appetite, and without the
slighest attempt to make an epicurean selection of
tit-bits; good and bad, faults and beauties, were

then swallowed indiscriminately in the vulgar excitement
caused by an interesting narrative, which
some mature people have had the hardihood to assert,
is, after all, the main excellence of Scott's poetical
compositions. I can only judge for myself. I
have read Marmion many and many a time since
then, (certainly not for the story,) and the flavor
has not yet departed from its pages. Though the
opinion has of late years been rather unfashionable,
I cannot help regarding it as a noble, spirited,
and perfectly original poem—a sort of irregular border
epic, abounding in beauties of the highest order.
It is its misfortune rather than its fault, (like the
rest of Scott's productions,) to have a story of such
intense interest as to absorb, in an undue degree,
the attention of the reader, diverting his mind from
the more unobtrusive beauties of the work. He is so
hurried away by the constant shifting of the scenes
and the rapid introduction of character, that he has
but scant time to note the simple wild-flowers scattered
in his path. The whole poem is a succession
of bold, vivid sketches, rather than of elaborately
finished pictures; all thrown off with an air of
careless freedom that somewhat tempts the reader
to rein in his admiration of what is obviously effected
with so little trouble. Yet it would be difficult to
point out, even in the most deep-wrought efforts of
our best poets, any thing superior or equal to the
trial and condemnation of Constance de Beverley,
the quarrel between Marmion and Douglas, the
battle of Flodden, and the death of Marmion;
though, in fact, it is nonsensical to make such a
challenge, inasmuch as no similar passages are to
be found in any other author, ancient or modern.
They are unique, and must be judged by themselves
alone.

It is characteristic of genius to strike out some
distinctly new path of its own, and for talent to follow
after as it best may. There was no model for
Paradise Lost, or Childe Harold, or Christabel, or
the Lyrical Ballads, or the Lady of the Lake, or the
Waverley novels. All are sui generis; and the
next great poem or work, now engendering in the
womb of time, when it bursts upon the world, will
probably be found as widely different from all these
as they are from each other. Neither have the spiritual
emanations of those who indeed possessed the
“faculty divine,” ever been successfully imitated.
Some, indeed, tempted by the dashing, off-hand, animated
descriptions of Scott, and by the facilities for
composition which his style afforded, have adventured
into the lists, and sung of tilts and tournaments

and gatherings and forays and onslaughts—but it
would not do. Like all imitators, they had caught
the points, the peculiarities, the striking phrases, or
particular modes of expression—in short, the mechanical
tricks of the thing; but the superior and characteristic
touches, which impart life and reality to the
whole, were not to be learnt. The soul was wanting;
and the contests of their plumed knights and
mailed warriors were like those of so many automatons
worked by very palpable and ill-conditioned
machinery. In fact, but for good Sir Walter, the
present race of English and Scotch would have
known but little of their doughty forefathers, or of
the times when it was no derogation for a baron to
pilfer bullocks, or gentlemen of unblemished integrity
to go a sheep-stealing. He has illuminated
history, and made that knowledge as “broad and
general as the casing air,” which was formerly
“cabin'd, cribb'd, confined” in the dusky closet of
the antiquary. And what a charm has he spread
over these larcenious periods! With what unscrupulous
earnestness and self-approving consciences do
his heroes appropriate their neighbors' goods and
chattels to their own individual uses and comforts!
There is no whining, or sentiment, or petty attempts
at self-justification; they are the men of the times,
as they then thought and spoke and acted; and as
different as may be from all other delicate freebooters
from Conrad the Corsair down to Paul Clifford, who,
as has been wittily observed, “have every virtue
under heaven excepting common honesty;” and
we pardon their moral obliquities the more readily,
seeing that they do not insult us by any pretensions
to ultra-refinement at the time they are picking
their neighbors' pockets. But if they lack the high
polish and glitter of sentiment which adorn the
superfine rascals of the Bulwer school, they have
all some redeeming qualities to recommend them,
which possess, at the same time, the slight merit of
not being totally at variance with their actions and
character—glimpses of rude but honorable feeling
which make us love the rogues. Witness, for example,
the graphic sketch of that most accomplished
appropriator, “Sir Walter of Deloraine, good at
need,” and his lament over his fallen enemy.

How felicitously are we occasionally let into the
springs of action of the men, and the manners of
the age, by a single phrase—Sir William never
shed blood “except, as was meet, for deadly feud.”
These few words present us at once with a clearer
and more distinct picture of the matter-of-course
ferocity of the times than could have been drawn
in pages by an inferior hand.

Scott has become as deservedly celebrated for
his battle pieces as Wouvermans. They possess
all the freedom, force, and energy of that great
master; while the irregular structure of his metre,
owning or submitting to no check but the ear, is
singularly well adapted to portray the varied fortunes
of a changeful fight. Some may have equalled
him in depicting “battle's magnificently stern
array:” some may have surpassed him in painting
the wreck and desolation war leaves in its track;
but for the fight itself—for placing vividly before
you all the alternations between defeat and victory
in a hard fought field—for hurrying the reader
breathlessly along with the current of events, so
that he fancies himself a spectator of, almost an
actor in the scene, and feels a personal interest in
the fate of the several combatants—for seizing instinctively
on the strongest and most picturesque
points of the combat—for placing fair in view the
wheeling, advancing, and retreating of the several
squadrons and bodies of troops—the dread closing
and deadly strife of the mortal foes—the charge,
the rally, the rout, the flight, and the pursuit—in
all of these Scott has never been approached. Verily
his muse had no sinecure when his spirit was
once fairly up in arms, and he sung of Flodden
Field or Bannockburn. It is curious and interesting

to observe the marked difference between the
master minds of Scott and Byron, when employed
upon a similar subject—the advance of soldiers to
the field of battle—

What a fine contrast to this most animating
description are the following surprisingly beautiful
lines of Byron. They come full and round upon
the ear, like the distant and solemn tones of the
organ after the shrill and spirit-stirring clangor of the
trumpet—

But Scott's claims to admiration rest not, even in
a principal degree, on fiery description or impetuous
narrative. His sketches of scenery have a truth and
vividness, and, above all, a healthy cheerfulness
about them, that is especially delightful, and which
ought to annihilate (by contrast) at once and for
ever, the morbid, bilious, and dyspeptic school of
poetry, of which Byron is most falsely assumed to
be the head and founder; as if the grand and
melancholy solemnity of his strains had any thing
in common with the puling complaints and sickly
fancies of those who obscure the sun, and divest
nature of her glory, because they happen to be
troubled with debt or indigestion; or because their
lady-love may have judiciously responded in the
negative to their connubial overtures. Here is one
of a hundred similar pictures—

There are few things more agreeable than to
peruse passages similar to this in Scott, after reading
some of Moore's rich and luxurious descriptions
of Persian scenery. Both are true poets—both
delightful in their way—but the effect caused by
their different manner of handling nature, is something
like walking from a highly perfumed chamber
into the pure air of heaven, impregnated with
the fainter but more healthful odor of the thousand
common wild-flowers that are for ever mingling
their essences with its freshening currents.

In creative power, too—in the formation and
delineation of character, (judging him by his poems
alone,) Scott is perfectly wonderful; and in this
essential attribute of genius, double-distances all his
contemporaries. The excellence of his poetical
compositions in this particular, was acknowledged
at the time of their appearance; but he has since
rendered the world rather oblivious on this point by
his splendid series of creations and resuscitations in
the Waverley novels. The Waverley novels! What

a host of pleasurable recollections throng upon the
mind at the mere mention of their name! It would
be folly here to attempt to enter upon their merits.
The analysis of a single romance would, of itself,
suffice for the covering of many pages; but when
the mind glances in rapid succession from Waverley
to Guy Mannering—from Guy Mannering to
the Antiquary—thence to Rob Roy, Old Mortality,
Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, and the long succeeding trail
of glories, it is perfectly astounded at the immensity
of intellect therein displayed. Fielding, Smollett,
Richardson, Laurence Sterne, Godwin, hide their
diminished heads; and as for the present race of
novelists—what the middling or indifferent amongst
them may fancy is not easily to be imagined,
(for there is no limit to ignorant vanity,) but
surely the best would feel sorrowful and ashamed
to see their claims, for a moment, irreverently
placed in comparison with those of Walter Scott.
Long after their effusions have been literary curiosities,
the Waverley novels will be regarded as the
grand portrait gallery into which the successive generations
who tread upon our graves will look for
the kings, queens, courtiers, knights, chieftains, and
freebooters proper to the times of old! and when
the exact sciences have perfected a more systematic,
methodical, and, it may be, more decent and respectable
state of existence, they will remain almost the
only records of a bloder, stormier, and more picturesque
state of society that has gradually faded
away into the dim and misty past. It is not anticipating
too high a destiny for them to say that
they will bring a tear to the eye, and the smile to
the cheek, and infuse the germs of knowledge and
feeling into the minds of millions and millions yet
unborn. How many sick-beds will they cheer! and
what stores of innocent pleasure and quiet enjoyment
will be gleaned from their pages throughout
the far-stretching future! This is to have lived.
This is fame, to which that of the mightiest conqueror
that ever reigned and destroyed is but a drop
of water to the illimitable ocean; and this fame is
Walter Scott's.