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LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 178.-9 OCTOBER, 1847.

From Fraser's Magazine.

among them men of the most various bents, dandy

WALTER SCOTT-HAS HISTORY GAINED BY HIS littérateurs like Rose; cool, clear-sighted analysts

WRITINGS?

We have been informed by our elders, that the present generation, brought up under the shadow of a Bulwer and a Disraeli, a Mr. James, and a | Mrs. Trollope, is quite incapable of appreciating the particular kind of success which the early novels of Scott obtained. Every one of us has, probably, a distinct idea of what a novel is;-a book, which in the embryotic state of preliminary puff and advertisement is of neither good nor evil name, but which must be finally brought up for sentence before every man who belongs to a book-club, or subscribes to a circulating library. But thirty years ago, neither had the machinery which diffuses Mr. Colburn's publications over the face of the country come into existence, nor was this primâ facie character of theirs, or rather this absence of character, at all acknowledged. In fact, every novel came into the world with a brand upon it. The trail of the "Minerva Press" was over all. In writings intended more especially for the lower and middle classes, the good old cottage tracts, which used to enforce order and morality with edifying stories of rustic worthies and their miraculous success in life, we remember to have seen the respectable and decorous effusions of Mrs. Barbara Redgauntlet, and such small deer, denounced in language which one would, now-a-days, think strong if applied to Paul de Kock or Pigault le Brun; while essayists, the forcible-feebles of higher pretension, over whose dreary pages many of our readers have doubtless yawned in the countless editions and imitations of the Elegant Extracts, sneered magnificently at fiction, as unworthy to occupy the time which a man of intellect must spend in reading, much more in writing it. A few might still cling to a belief in Fielding and Smollett, and the world did actually make clear exceptions in favor of Miss Edgeworth and Mackenzie; but, in glancing at the contemporary criticisms on these last writers, one can hardly help being amused by the evident anxiety shown to separate them from the class to which they belonged, and the undaunted chivalry with which the critic insisted on saving his author's fair fame, at the expense of a total abandonment for the nonce of the common meaning of the most common words. In short, to the largest part of the reading public, including, perhaps, the worthiest portion of it, it must be confessed that the novel, like the pole-cat, was known only by name and a reputation for bad odor.

like Jeffrey-who set themselves energetically to speculate on the strange vicissitude in taste through which that department of literature, which was of late shunned by all, had now become the resort and delight both of the undiscerning public and of their critical selves. We must remember that but slender count was taken of Scott's peculiar meritsthat few would admit his strength to lie in the liberality with which he had drawn on the common and patent stock of every-day life. No break in the continuity of fiction was discerned; the novel was the novel still; and accordingly the change from disgust to admiration looked very much like an impeachment of former tastes and preferences.

The device lighted upon to reconcile the contradiction was characteristic of the day-characteristic of that school of criticism, which, professing the keenest relish for the new-born literature it had undertaken to review, persisted meanwhile in the constant endeavor to explain its excellence by a reference to recognized standards, generally but slightly applicable-frequently governed by conditions of thought and feeling entirely different. The process seems to have been something like this. There is apparent on the face of the Waverley Novels a certain connection with and dependence on history; that is, in many instances the characters introduced are the representatives of men who in their day existed-of what are called historical personages; and the dramatic action and business of the plot frequently profess to proceed in periods, whose chronicles it is the province of history to examine, explain, and develop. This gave rise to the presumption, that it was the deliberate design of Scott to create a literature which should be strictly ancillary to history, and, though filling a subordinate office, should promote the same philosophy and contribute to the same ends. Accordingly, the term "Historical Novels" was invented-an appellation which Scott himself, who certainly was not igno rant of the real character of history, never, (such is our impression,) in one instance, countenanced. Now, history was a good thing; for had it not been so said by them of old and a Waverley Novel was a good thing, in virtue of one of those facts on which it was impossible to reason. It followed, therefore, that Scott's merits were exactly measured by the degree in which the inherent value of history overbalanced the intrinsic worthlessness of novel. We are here inventing no imaginary paradox. In proof of what we have stated, we might refer our readers to the Critical, Monthly, and QuarThis state of things was completely changed in less terly Reviews-in short, to almost all the constituthan two years by the irresistible popularity of Scott. ents of contemporary criticism. There is now open Alike intelligible to all, and appreciable by all, he be- before us an article in the Quarterly, the writer of came at once as much the darling of the milliner's which-supposed to have been Lord Dudley-cites apprentice as of the bas bleu; and the overflowing in proof of this identical position, not without much stream of refreshment found a thousand channels, jubilant exultation, an edition of Philippe de Comconducting it to regions where nothing so exhilar-ines which appeared soon after the publication of ating, so fertilizing, had been known or felt before. Quentin Durward. But men's prepossessions, though easily enough overruled by a sense of new gratification, do yet, in some degree, demand to be explained and accounted for. There were not wanting personsVOL. XV. 4

CLXXVIII.

LIVING AGE.

We believe it may be shown to demonstration, that in these views, frequently urged on a public completely enslaved to the periodical critics, originated this belief in Scott's services to history. We

need scarcely add, that the same theory, advanced many ordinary men. But the development in Scott by abler, or at least more unprejudiced, men, and was enormous. He had strong prejudices, so supported by better arguments, has, in our own strong, that it is sometimes hard to distinguish him day, obtained so widely as to have almost passed from the fossil tory of the October Club; though in into a literary canon. It is, for instance, a lead- no instance did his dislikes weaken his appreciation ing tenet of Macaulay, who, in several passages, has of the beauty and reasonableness, or, to speak more contrasted the meagreness of history, as long as it correctly, of the fitness and self-consistency, of his was entombed in chronicles, with its vivacious ener- adversary's views. He was the most catholic adgy after Scott had breathed into the dead bones the mirer one can conceive. Witness his Balfours and breath of life. At the same time it is necessary to Macbriars, who, in the hands of a man equally prejremark, that this question of Scott's furtherance of udiced, and less singularly organized, would inevi history is quite distinct from that of his influence on tably have become mere caricatures. And this acute it. The first we are heretical enough to doubt, but relish for the beautiful extended to immaterial obwe think that no one can reasonably hesitate as to jects, if indeed it was not especially whetted by them. the last. For good or for evil, it was an important To whatever thing there attached a chain of assoday for history when Walter Scott first decided on ciations, however slight and meagre, and however translating from the German, Götz with the Iron imperceptible to most men, that thing was endeared Hand, the prolific origin of a world-famous progeny. to Scott. Of this sort is the vertù with which his It is true that, properly speaking, there is not at house at Abbotsford is crowded; but, unlike most present in England anything like systematic history virtuosi, he prized nothing that was simply rare or written; at the same time, the ground, which in an curious, while all that bore the faintest relation to age more earnest and less accustomed to loose habits persons or events he loved as the apple of his eye. of thinking would be filled by the historian, is now And this idiosyncrasy embraced all existences, occupied by a swarm of essayists, article-writers, which are really the subjects of antiquarian zeal, and inditers of historic fancies-which last term words, sentiments, and tunes. Like the Florentine shall at present only tempt us to remark, that it in-academicians, who were said to mix disguised with dicates great confusion of idea in the era which the market-people for the purpose of collecting the countenances its adoption. The whole of this scat-riboboli, the rounded idiomatic sayings of the Tuscan tered literature presents, more or less, the charac- peasantry, so of words, phrases, and turns of exteristic peculiarity of Scott's influence, the substi- pression, indicative of the smallest peculiarity in tution of life-like portraiture and clear, intelligible the speaker or the class to which he belonged, description, for philosophical comparison and anal- Scott was an indefatigable collector and chronicler. ysis. Look abroad, too, to the schools of literary Further, he was a subtle observer of human nature production which are rising on the Continent. In -as are many provincial attorneys. But here again France, which up to the Revolution was singularly his special singularity lay in degree. Indeed, his barren of historians, the new generation has applied retentiveness of personal peculiarities seems almost itself to vigorous labor in the unoccupied field, and to have amounted to disease. It was not that he a school of writers has arisen which looks to Scott, had great power of looking into the deeper springs principally, if not solely, as its teacher and master. and sources of character-here certain individual The avowed ambition of Michelet is to write deficiencies obstructed his vision-but looks, moveFrench history as Scott would have rendered it, in ments, singularities, and eccentricities of habit or a series of romances. In the same spirit De Ba- manner he never forgot. And all this can easily be rante has written his History of Burgundy; and all accounted for by the accidental circumstances of the ingenuity displayed in Thierry's History of the his life and education. His physical misfortune Norman Conquest would have been lost to the had from childhood made him a sedentary observer, world if the author's attention had not been rivetted and it had been his lot from his earliest years to by a single passage in Ivanhoe, wherein is delineated reside alternately in Edinburgh, then intensely proin a few bold lines the Saxon hind, Higg, the son vincial, and consequently a mine of character, and of Snell. on the Scottish border, a country where the very scantiness of surrounding objects contributes in a remarkable degree to give clearness and definiteness to the associations connected with them.

This notorious influence exerted by Scott on the whole productive intellect of our period, must necessarily give importance, as his vast celebrity must always give interest, to any inquiry like the present. To exhaust the subject would call for an effective definition of the province and offices of history, as well as a critical examination of Scott's merits and method. We will not even endeavor to answer these demands. It will be enough for us, if the few considerations which we throw out serve to clear the ideas of our readers respecting the real bearing of the question we propound, namely-Did History gain by the writings of Walter Scott?

These, then, were the qualifications which Scott brought to the exercise of his art-common ones enough, but in him almost preternaturally developed. Against these available excellencies we must set various deficiencies, which, were his character as a novelist only in question, it would be mere cavilling to mention. We allude to charges which have of late years been not unfrequently urged against him; as, for instance, that his perception of moral right was not extremely vividthat his personal and peculiar ambitions marred the growth of many of the higher and finer aspirations

We shall, perhaps, be pardoned for saying a few words regarding the sources from which Scott's iind derived its nourishment, and the artistic treat--that his memory and imagination often, and esment, in conformity with which he developed the results of his mental experience. His intellectual capacities had, we think, this peculiarity, that their difference from those of men in general was not one of kind but of degree. He had a genuine love of the beautiful-not, perhaps, of moral beauty, but of that lower form which we denominate the picturesque-a love which he possessed in common with

pecially as he grew an older man, were allowed to confuse each other-that he was not accurate, and that he was quite incapable of philosophical analysis or combination. But though his reflective powers were, comparatively speaking, weak, his perceptions and sympathies were preeminently strong; and when to all this is added the charm of his style, we need not wonder at the witchery he exercises

over us, and indeed over the age. The unreflective Now if this is partially true of an individual life, it reader he never tasks, the most cultivated critic he is certainly true of periods and generations. Each never disgusts; and then all is conveyed in language generation can only be the same with itself. Myriclear, flowing and coherent, sometimes most racy and ads of coöperating agencies-law-custom-literaoriginal. It is a free, bold, decided handling, which ture-have joined to make it what it is, nor could is and must be delightful, as long as men are men. the same result be obtained except under a perfect The whole process is eminently what Carlyle has identity of conditions. Let us test the truth of this called "intellectual shampooing:" and beside this, by looking to our own characters. Their growth we must allow that his artistic method, when con- has been determined by circumstances which only fined to its legitimate sphere, is almost perfect. a miracle can enable us to recall and enumerate. What was this method, and how it has affected his- Every book we read, every conversation we hold, tory, it is full time for us to inquire. modifies us in some way; and there must be some men whose characters, like coral islands, are built on the foregone labors of millions of their kind. Can we, then, by any effort of thought, suppose ourselves existing wholly in a period other than the present? Scott transported bodily the men of the nineteenth century into the fifteenth. Can we do the same with ourselves? We can easily imagine ourselves placed among all the external peculiarities of the feudal age. We can picture ourselves blessed by the priest or unhorsed by the knight with a vividness almost sufficient to rival truth; but no strain of the imagination can transform us into men, accepting all this in the light of common everyday incident and accident; living continually under the influence of the universal church, and looking on the iron circle of feudality as the unquestionable dispensation of nature. It is just as impossible for the most imaginative among us to substitute for his own the sympathies and antipathies of a past age, as it was evidently then for the most resolute and advanced thinker to exhibit conclusions, tallying even distantly with the views we are in the habit of accepting as common-places. They can never come to us, and we can never return to them.

We conceive it will be admitted that Scott's treatment of a subject was very much as follows :He drew on his own stores of observation for the characters he required; these characters, so obtained, he transferred bodily into the scene and action of the novel, generally unaltered, sometimes slightly modified by an interchange of individual peculiarities then he arrayed them in the costume necessary to perfect the illusion, and arranged and disposed them according to his own exquisite appreciation of grace and fitness. In thus stating the case, we have included in the term costume, not only dress, but also language and other adventitious appliances; for in the Waverley Novels the trick of speech, borrowed from contemporary chronicles or ballads, is as thoroughly adventitious as the buffcoat or the cuirass. The propriety of this treatment is on most occasions unimpeachable. When Scott depicted the Lowland Scotch and his scene was laid in comparatively modern times, the result of his method was full of natural and artistic truth; for in his younger days real Jacobites were not extinct the Edinburgh lawyer, and the Lowland laird, were what they had been in the beginning of the century; and at this very moment the Scotch Presbyterian We are aware that it may be urged, in reply to peasantry have altered surprisingly little from the these arguments, that, although we have not gained typical Cameronian and Covenanter. But then, by Scott's treatment in the way of absolute truth, when his rapid exhaustion of old ground had forced we are yet gainers by the removal of absolute him to change the field of his labors, and he was error; and that though his tableaux do not give us tempted to thrust his characters further back into the real men of the age they present, they have yet the past, he continued precisely the same process. a sort of negative reality, in that they serve to Scott's early acquaintance, Janet Gordon, not only weaken a besetting tendency to look on historical figures as Meg Merrilies, but also passes into Nor- characters as mere names and abstractions. There na of the Fitful Head, and beyond into the prophetess is weight, no doubt, in this reasoning; and, so far of Front-de-Bouf's castle; and the adventurous as it goes, we gladly acquiesce in it; but we are Scotchman, who is the staple of his heroes, goes not the less convinced that Scott engendered a large through the separate avatars of an advocate of amount of new error to be set against that he George the Second's reign, a cavalier of the Revo- removed. The novelist will almost necessarily, lution, a courtier in the time of James I., a Borderer in the spirit of his art, depict scenes and characters of the reign of Henry VIII., and a preux chevalier | which, although for the sake of verisimilitude there of the era of the Crusades. But we need not stay to discuss facts so notorious.

must be in them some admixture of error, will yet, on the whole, be interesting and attractive. The That a great and romantic effect was thus pro- consequence is the introduction of a kind of roseduced, is evident. There is all the semblance of a colored medium which, by harmonizing all objects, genuine historical tableau; the elementary charac-produces deception just as much as if it distorted ters are living, breathing men, and they offend us by no discrepancies of manner or costume. But is historical truth preserved? We confidently answer that it is not, and that there is no surer way of contravening the realities of history.

We know no more difficult branch of historical science than that which professes to determine the action of an individual on his age, and the reaction of his age on him. The investigation is infinitely complicated, since the character of its subject varies constantly with the varying influences exerted on it the man of this year is not necessarily the man of last year, any more than the events of this year are those of the last. The lord-protector Oliver is not the same with the parliamentary general, nor the parliamentary general with Colonel Cromwell.

them. We are the more anxious to insist on this, because we are convinced that what are called Young England views have originated in these falsifications of history; and, indeed, the birth of these theories is in itself sufficient to prove that no one can tamper innocently with historical truth. Representations, purely and avowedly imaginative, are not without a peculiar danger of their own, and much more dangerous are those but partially so. Fiction cannot border on reality without creeping under its robe: indeed, men will do violence to themselves for the purpose of investing the first with the dress of the last, in much the same spirit as that in which the English yacht-voyagers to Copenhagen have determined the position of Ophelia's grave, and of the pool in which she drowned