Thus Scotts 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 Edgeworths persons more alive than his own. To his own romances he preferred Mrs. Shelleys Frankenstein.
[Scott reviewed Frankenstein in 1818. Mr. Shelley had sent it with a brief note, it, 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 hook on to Mr. Murritt, 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 Blackwoods 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 Shellers disclaimer as an innocent evasion; it was an age of literary superscheries. Abbotsford Manuscripts.]
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 torch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment.
The letter of Rose Bradwardine to Waverley is alone enough to disprove Scotts 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 hint 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 Scudery, 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 Scotts 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 Rurnev, 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 Scotts 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 Ballantvne, 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 Ballantynes 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 Strutts Queenloo 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, Scotts 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.
Waverley was published without the Authors name. Scotts 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 plugged 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 Williams brother; so they take them off my hands, I dont 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. Scotts 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 Popes 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 Waverleys 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 Byrons Grandmothers 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.