Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

MY DEAR SIR,--I give you heartily joy of the success of the
Tales, although I do not claim that paternal interest in
them which my friends do me the credit to assign me. I
assure you I have never read a volume of them until they
were printed, and can only join with the rest of the world
in applauding the true and striking portraits which they
present of old Scottish manners. I do not expect implicit
reliance to be placed on my disavowal, because I know very
well that he who is disposed not to own a work must
necessarily deny it, and that otherwise {p.126} his secret
would be at the mercy of all who choose to ask the question,
since silence in such a case must always pass for consent,
or rather assent. But I have a mode of convincing you that I
am perfectly serious in my denial--pretty similar to that by
which Solomon distinguished the fictitious from the real
mother--and that is, by reviewing the work, which I take to
be an operation equal to that of quartering the child. But
this is only on condition I can have Mr. Erskine's
assistance, who admires the work greatly more than I do,
though I think the painting of the second Tale both true and
powerful. I knew Old Mortality very well; his name was
Paterson, but few knew him otherwise than by his nickname.
The first Tale is not very original in its concoction, and
lame and impotent in its conclusion. My love to Gifford. I
have been over head and ears in work this summer, or I would
have sent the Gypsies; indeed I was partly stopped by
finding it impossible to procure a few words of their
language.

Constable wrote to me about two months since, desirous of
having a new edition of Paul; but not hearing from you, I
conclude you are still on hand. Longman's people had then
only sixty copies.

Kind compliments to Heber, whom I expected at Abbotsford
this summer; also to Mr. Croker and all your four o'clock
visitors. I am just going to Abbotsford to make a small
addition to my premises there. I have now about 700 acres,
thanks to the booksellers and the discerning public. Yours
truly,

Walter SCOTT.

P. S.--I have much to ask about Lord Byron if I had time.
The third canto of the Childe is inimitable. Of the last
poems, there are one or two which indicate rather an
irregular play of imagination.[48] What a pity that a man of
such exquisite genius will not be contented {p.127} to be
happy on the ordinary terms![49] I declare my heart bleeds
when I think of him, self-banished from the country to which
he is an honor.[50]

[Footnote 48: _Parisina_--_The Dream_--and the "Domestic
Pieces," had been recently published.]

[Footnote 49: (On November 27 Scott had written to
Joanna Baillie, who had just returned from a tour on the
Continent:--

"All I ever longed for on the Continent was their light
wines, which you do not care about, and their fine
climate, which we should both value equally; and to say
truth, I never saw scene or palace which shook my
allegiance to Tweedside and Abbotsford, though so
inferior in every respect, and though the hills, or
rather braes, are just high enough 'to lift us to the
storm' when the storms are not so condescending as to
sweep both crest and base, which, to do them justice, is
seldom the case. What have I got to send you?... Alas,
nothing but the history of petty employments and a
calendar of increasing bad weather. The latter was much
mitigated by enjoying for a good portion of the summer
the society of John Morritt, of Rokeby, who has so much
of that which is delightful, both in his grave and gay
moods, that he can make us forget the hillside while
sitting by the fireside. His late loss has cast a
general shade of melancholy over him, which renders him
yet dearer to his friends, by the gentle and unaffected
manner in which his natural gayety of temper gleams
through it and renders it still more interesting....

"A far different object of interest, yet still of
interest, checkered with pity and disapprobation, is
Lord Byron, whose present situation seems to rival all
that ever has been said and sung of the misfortunes of a
too irritable imagination. The last part of _Childe
Harold_ intimates a terrible state of mind, and with all
the power and genius which characterized his former
productions, the present seems to indicate a more
serious and desperate degree of misanthropy. I own I was
not much moved by the scorn of the world which his first
poems implied, because I know it is a humor of mind
which those whom fortune has spoilt by indulgence, or
irritated by reverses, are apt to assume, because it
looks melancholy and gentlemanlike, and becomes a bard
as well as being desperately in love, or very fond of
the sunrise, though he lies in bed till noon, or anxious
in recommending to others to catch cold by visiting old
abbeys by moonlight, which he never happened to see
under the chaste moonbeam himself; but this strange poem
goes much deeper, and either the Demon of Misanthropy is
in full possession of him, or he has already invited ten
guests, equally desperate, to the swept and garnished
mansion of Harold's understanding."--_Familiar Letters_,
vol. i. p. 369.)]

[Footnote 50: [This is probably the "expression of
kindness" which encouraged Murray to beg Scott to review
in the _Quarterly_ Byron's recently published volumes,
_Childe Harold, Canto III._, and _The Prisoner of
Chillon, a Dream, and Other Poems_. The request was
promptly complied with, and the article appeared in the
next number issued (_dated_ October, 1816),--a review
full of generous, and also judicious, appreciation. For
some reason, hard now to discover, unless it were the
kindliness of the writer's tone towards the younger
poet, some of Lady Byron's friends, among whom was
Joanna Baillie, seem to have taken strong exception to
the paper, and Miss Baillie wrote to Scott at some
length on the matter, even animadverting upon the purely
literary criticism of the reviewer. Much of the
correspondence which ensued, including a characteristic
letter from Lady Byron, can be found in the _Familiar
Letters_ (vol. i. pp. 413-422).

Of the review, Byron writes to Murray (March 3, 1817):--

... "It seems to me (as far as the subject of it may be
permitted to judge) to be _very well_ written as a
composition, and ... even those who may condemn its
partiality, must praise its generosity. The temptations
to take another and less favorable view of the question
have been so great and numerous, that, what with public
opinion, politics, etc., he must be a gallant as well as
a good man, who has ventured in that place and at this
time to write such an article even anonymously. Such
things, however, are their own reward; and I even
flatter myself that the writer, whoever he may be (and I
have no guess), will not regret that the perusal of this
has given me as much gratification as any composition of
that nature could give, and more than any other has ever
given,--and I have had a good many in my time of one
kind or the other. It is not the mere praise, but there
is a tact and a delicacy throughout, not only with
regard to me, but to others, which, as it has not been
observed elsewhere, I had till now doubted, whether it
could be observed anywhere." He writes a few weeks
later, on learning that Scott wrote the article: ... "It
cannot add to my good opinion of him, but it adds to
that of myself."--_Letters and Journals of Lord Byron_
(1900), vol. iv. pp. 63, 85.]]

{p.128} Mr. Murray, gladly embracing this offer of an article for his journal on the Tales of my Landlord, begged Scott to take a wider scope, and dropping all respect for the idea of a divided parentage, to place together any materials he might have for the illustration of the Waverley Novels in general; he suggested in particular, that, instead of drawing up a long-promised disquisition on the Gypsies in a separate shape, whatever he had to say concerning that picturesque generation might be introduced by way of comment on the character of Meg Merrilies. What Scott's original conception had been I know not; he certainly gave his reviewal all the breadth which Murray could have wished, and, _inter alia_, diversified it with a few anecdotes of the Scottish Gypsies. But the late excellent biographer of John Knox, Dr. Thomas M'Crie, had, in the mean time, considered the representation of the Covenanters, in the story of Old Mortality, as so unfair as to demand at his {p.129} hands a very serious rebuke. The Doctor forthwith published, in a magazine called the Edinburgh Christian Instructor, a set of papers, in which the historical foundations of that tale were attacked with indignant warmth; and though Scott, when he first heard of these invectives, expressed his resolution never even to read them, he found the impression they were producing so strong, that he soon changed his purpose, and finally devoted a very large part of his article for the Quarterly Review to an elaborate defence of his own picture of the Covenanters.[51]

[Footnote 51: Since I have mentioned this reviewal, I
may as well, to avoid recurrence to it, express here my
conviction, that Erskine, not Scott, was the author of
the critical estimate of the Waverley Novels which it
embraces--although, for the purpose of mystification,
Scott had taken the trouble to transcribe the paragraphs
in which that estimate is contained. At the same time I
cannot but add that, had Scott really been the sole
author of this reviewal, he need not have incurred the
severe censure which has been applied to his supposed
conduct in the matter. After all, his judgment of his
own works must have been allowed to be not above, but
very far under the mark; and the whole affair would, I
think, have been considered by every candid person
exactly as the letter about Solomon and the rival
mothers was by Murray, Gifford, and the "four o'clock
visitors" of Albemarle Street--as a good joke. A better
joke, certainly, than the allusion to the report of
Thomas Scott being the real author of Waverley, at the
close of the article, was never penned; and I think it
includes a confession over which a misanthrope might
have chuckled: "We intended here to conclude this long
article, when a strong report reached us of certain
Transatlantic confessions, which, if genuine (though of
this we know nothing), assign a different author to
these volumes than the party suspected by our Scottish
correspondents. Yet a critic may be excused seizing upon
the nearest suspicious person, on the principle happily
expressed by Claverhouse, in a letter to the Earl of
Linlithgow. He had been, it seems, in search of a gifted
weaver, who used to hold forth at conventicles: 'I sent
for the webster (weaver), they brought in his _brother_
for him: though he, maybe, cannot preach like his
brother, I doubt not but he is as well-principled as he,
wherefore I thought it would be no great fault to give
him the trouble to go to jail with the
rest!'"--_Miscellaneous Prose Works_, vol. xix. pp. 85,
86.]

Before the first Tales of my Landlord were six weeks old, two editions of 2000 copies disappeared, and a third of 2000 was put to press; but notwithstanding this rapid success, which was still further continued, and the friendly relations which always subsisted between the {p.130} author and Mr. Murray, circumstances erelong occurred which carried the publication of the work into the hands of Messrs. Constable.

The author's answer to Dr. M'Crie, and his Introduction of 1830, have exhausted the historical materials on which he constructed his Old Mortality; and the origin of The Black Dwarf--as to the conclusion of which story he appears on reflection to have completely adopted the opinion of honest Blackwood--has already been sufficiently illustrated by an anecdote of his early wanderings in Tweeddale. The latter tale, however imperfect, and unworthy as a work of art to be placed high in the catalogue of his productions, derives a singular interest from its delineation of the dark feelings so often connected with physical deformity; feelings which appear to have diffused their shadow over the whole genius of Byron--and which, but for this single picture, we should hardly have conceived ever to have passed through Scott's happier mind.[52] All the bitter blasphemy of spirit which, from infancy to the tomb, swelled up in Byron against the unkindness of nature; which sometimes perverted even his filial love into a sentiment of diabolical malignity; all this black and desolate train of reflections must have been encountered and deliberately subdued by the manly parent of The Black Dwarf. Old Mortality, on the other hand, is remarkable as the _novelist's_ first attempt to repeople the past by the power of imagination working on materials furnished by books. In Waverley he revived the fervid dreams of his boyhood, and drew, not from printed records, but from the artless oral narratives of his _Invernahyles_. In Guy Mannering and The Antiquary he embodied characters and manners familiar {p.131} to his own wandering youth. But whenever his letters mention Old Mortality in its progress, they represent him as strong in the confidence that the industry with which he had pored over a library of forgotten tracts would enable him to identify himself with the time in which they had birth, as completely as if he had listened with his own ears to the dismal sermons of Peden, ridden with Claverhouse and Dalzell in the rout of Bothwell, and been an advocate at the bar of the Privy Council, when Lauderdale catechised and tortured the assassins of Archbishop Sharp. To reproduce a departed age with such minute and lifelike accuracy as this tale exhibits, demanded a far more energetic sympathy of imagination than had been called for in any effort of his serious verse. It is indeed most curiously instructive for any student of art to compare the Roundheads of Rokeby with the Bluebonnets of Old Mortality. For the rest--the story is framed with a deeper skill than any of the preceding novels: the canvas is a broader one; the characters are contrasted and projected with a power and felicity which neither he nor any other master ever surpassed; and, notwithstanding all that has been urged against him as a disparager of the Covenanters, it is to me very doubtful whether the inspiration of romantic chivalry ever prompted him to nobler emotions than he has lavished on the re-animation of their stern and solemn enthusiasm. This work has always appeared to me the Marmion of his novels.[53]

[Footnote 52: [On reading _The Black Dwarf_, Mrs. Leigh
believed her brother to be the author, and wrote to him
to that effect. Byron had not yet seen the book, and
says in his reply: "I am not P. P. [Peter Pattieson], I
assure you on my honor, and do not understand to what
book you allude, so that all your compliments are quite
thrown away."--Byron's _Letters and Journals_ (1900),
vol. iv. p. 56.]]

[Footnote 53: [Lady Louisa Stuart, whose approbation
Scott writes he values "beyond a whole wilderness of
critics," says in a letter of December 5, 1816:

"[Old Mortality] is super-excellent in all its points;
it breaks up fresh ground, and has all the raciness of
originality. I cannot help thinking it will bear down
the world before it triumphantly. As usual it makes its
personages our intimate acquaintance, and its scenes so
present to the eye, that, last night, after sitting up
unreasonably late over it, I got no sleep, from a kind
of fever of mind it had occasioned. It seemed as if I
had been an eye and ear witness of all the passages, and
I could not lull the agitation into calmness. Mause and
Cuddie hurried my spirits in another way; they forced me
to laugh out aloud, which one seldom does alone. On a
second slower reading I expect to be still better
pleased, and then also I suppose I shall find out the
faults. At present it has, in the Scotch phrase, 'taken
me off my feet,' and I do not criticise, though I think
you will believe me when I say I do not and will not
flatter. One thing I regret, that like the author of
_The Antiquary_, Jedediah did not add a glossary;
because even I, a mongrel, occasionally paying long
visits to Scotland, and hearing Girsy at Bothwell gate
and Peggy Macgowan hold forth in the village,--even I,
thus qualified, have found a great many words absolute
Hebrew to me, and I fear the altogether English will
find many more beyond their comprehension or conjecture.
But this may be remedied in another edition. I have as
yet only one great attack to make, and that upon a
single word; but such a word! such an anachronism!
Claverhouse says he has no time to hear _sentimental_
speeches. My dear sir! tell Jedediah that Claverhouse
never heard the sound of those four syllables in his
life. We are used to them; but _sentiment_ and
_sentimental_ were, I believe, first introduced into the
language by Sterne, and are hardly as old as I am. Let
alone the Covenanters' days, I am persuaded you would
look in vain for them in the works of Richardson and
Fielding. Nay, the French, from whom they were borrowed,
did not talk of _le sentiment_ in that sense till long
after Louis XIV.'s reign. No such thing is to be found
in Madame de Sévigné, la Bruyère, etc., etc., etc. At
home or abroad I defy Lord Dundee ever to have met with
the expression. Mr. Peter Pattieson had been reading the
_Man of Feeling_, and it was a slip of his tongue, which
I am less inclined to excuse than Mause's abstruse
Scotch, which I duly reverence, as she did
Kettledrummle's sermons, because I do not understand it.
Once more I shall be much disappointed if this work does
not quickly acquire a very great reputation. I fancy Mr.
Morritt is in the secret; yet, as I am not certain, I
will keep on the secure side and not mention it when I
write to him, however one may long to _intercommune_ on
such subjects with those likely to hold the same faith."

At the close of his reply, Scott says: "I must not
forget to thank your Ladyship for your acute and
indisputable criticism on the application of the word
_sentimental_. How it escaped my pen I know not, unless
that the word owed me a grudge for the ill will I have
uniformly borne it, and was resolved to slip itself in
for the express purpose of disgracing me. I will
certainly turn it out the first opportunity." This was
done in the second edition.--_Familiar Letters_, vol. i.
pp. 394, 400.]]

{p.132} I have disclaimed the power of farther illustrating its historical groundworks, but I am enabled by Mr. Train's kindness to give some interesting additions to Scott's own account of this novel as a composition. The generous Supervisor visited him in Edinburgh in May, 1816, a few days after the publication of The Antiquary, carrying with him several relics which he wished to present to his collection; among others a purse that had belonged {p.133} to Rob Roy, and also a fresh heap of traditionary gleanings, which he had gathered among the tale-tellers of his district. One of these last was in the shape of a letter to Mr. Train from a Mr. Broadfoot, "schoolmaster at the clachan of Penningham, and author of the _celebrated song_ of the Hills of Galloway"--with which I confess myself unacquainted. Broadfoot had facetiously signed his communication _Clashbottom_,--"a professional appellation derived," says Mr. Train, "from the use of the birch, and by which he was usually addressed among his companions,--who assembled, not at the Wallace Inn of Gandercleuch, but at the sign of the Shoulder of Mutton in Newton-Stewart." Scott received these gifts with benignity, and invited the friendly donor to breakfast next morning. He found him at work in his library, and surveyed with enthusiastic curiosity the furniture of the room, especially its only picture, a portrait of Graham of Claverhouse. Train expressed the surprise with which every one, who had known Dundee only in the pages of the Presbyterian Annalists, must see for the first time that beautiful and melancholy visage, worthy of the most pathetic dreams of romance. Scott replied, "that no character had been so foully traduced as the Viscount of Dundee; that, thanks to Wodrow, Cruickshanks, and such chroniclers, he, who was every inch a soldier and a gentleman, still passed among the Scottish vulgar for a ruffian desperado, who rode a goblin horse, was proof against shot, and in league with the Devil." "Might he not," said Mr. Train, "be made, in good hands, the hero of a national romance as interesting as any about either Wallace or Prince Charlie?" "He might," said Scott, "but your western zealots would require to be faithfully portrayed in order to bring him out with the right effect."[54] "And what," resumed {p.134} Train, "if the story were to be delivered as if from the mouth of _Old Mortality_? Would _he_ not do as well as _the Minstrel_ did in the Lay?" "Old Mortality!" said Scott--"who was he?" Mr. Train then told what he could remember of old Paterson, and seeing how much his story interested the hearer, offered to inquire farther about that enthusiast on his return to Galloway. "Do so by all means," said Scott; "I assure you I shall look with anxiety for your communication." He said nothing at this time of his own meeting with Old Mortality in the churchyard of Dunnottar--and I think there can be no doubt that that meeting was thus recalled to his recollection; or that to this intercourse with Mr. Train we owe the whole machinery of the Tales of my Landlord, as well as the adoption of Claverhouse's period for the scene of one of its first fictions. I think it highly probable that we owe a further obligation to the worthy Supervisor's presentation of Rob Roy's _spleuchan_.

[Footnote 54: [Scott's old friend, John Richardson, who
was from the first in the secret of the Waverley Novels,
was a stanch Whig, as beseemed the descendant of an old
Covenanting family. Some of his ancestral traditions
suggested certain passages in _Old Mortality_, and he
has recorded that during a visit to Abbotsford Scott
gave him the proof sheets of the first volume to read,
and how he lost a night's sleep in doing it. Twelve
years later, in writing to Scott regarding _The Tales of
a Grandfather_, he says that in this work,--"You have
paid a debt which you owed to the manes of the
Covenanters for the flattering picture which you drew of
Claverhouse in _Old Mortality_."

Scott says in his reply (December, 1828): "As to
Covenanters and Malignants, they were both a set of
cruel and bloody bigots, and had, notwithstanding, those
virtues with which bigotry is sometimes allied. Their
characters were of a kind much more picturesque than
beautiful; neither had the least idea either of
toleration or humanity, so that it happens that, so far
as they can be distinguished from each other, one is
tempted to hate most the party which chances to be
uppermost for the time."--See _Journal_, note, vol. ii.
p. 404.]]

The original design for the First Series of Jedediah Cleishbotham was, as Scott told me, to include four separate tales illustrative of four districts of the country, in the like number of volumes; but, his imagination once kindled upon any theme, he could not but pour himself out freely--so that notion was soon abandoned.

{p.135} CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Harold the Dauntless Published. -- Scott Aspires to Be a
Baron of the Exchequer. -- Letter to the Duke of Buccleuch
Concerning Poachers, etc. -- First Attack of Cramp in the
Stomach. -- Letters to Morritt, Terry, and Mrs. Maclean
Clephane. -- Story of the Doom of Devorgoil. -- John
Kemble's Retirement from the Stage. -- William Laidlaw
Established at Kaeside. -- Novel of Rob Roy Projected. --
Letter to Southey on the Relief of the Poor, etc. -- Letter
to Lord Montagu on Hogg's Queen's Wake, and on the Death of
Frances, Lady Douglas.

1817.

Within less than a month, The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality were followed by "Harold the Dauntless, by the author of The Bridal of Triermain." This poem had been, it appears, begun several years back; nay, part of it had been actually printed before the appearance of Childe Harold, though that circumstance had escaped the author's remembrance when he penned, in 1830, his Introduction to The Lord of the Isles; for he there says, "I am still astonished at my having committed the gross error of selecting the very name which Lord Byron had made so famous." The volume was published by Messrs. Constable, and had, in those booksellers' phrase, "considerable success." It has never, however, been placed on a level with Triermain; and though it contains many vigorous pictures, and splendid verses, and here and there some happy humor, the confusion and harsh transitions {p.136} of the fable, and the dim rudeness of character and manners, seem sufficient to account for this inferiority in public favor. It is not surprising that the author should have redoubled his aversion to the notion of any more serious performances in verse. He had seized on an instrument of wider compass, and which, handled with whatever rapidity, seemed to reveal at every touch treasures that had hitherto slept unconsciously within him. He had thrown off his fetters, and might well go forth rejoicing in the native elasticity of his strength.

It is at least a curious coincidence in literary history, that, as Cervantes, driven from the stage of Madrid by the success of Lope de Vega, threw himself into prose romance, and produced, at the moment when the world considered him as silenced forever, the Don Quixote which has outlived Lope's two thousand triumphant dramas--so Scott, abandoning verse to Byron, should have rebounded from his fall by the only prose romances, which seem to be classed with the masterpiece of Spanish genius, by the general judgment of Europe.

I shall insert two letters, in which he announces the publication of Harold the Dauntless. In the first of them he also mentions the light and humorous little piece entitled The Sultan of Serendib, or the Search after Happiness, originally published in a weekly paper, after the fashion of the old Essayists, which about this time issued from John Ballantyne's premises, under the appropriate name of "The SALE-ROOM." The paper had slender success; and though Scott wrote several things for it, none of them, except this metrical essay, attracted any notice. The Sale-Room was, in fact, a dull and hopeless concern; and I should scarcely have thought it worth mentioning, but for the confirmation it lends to my suspicion that Mr. John Ballantyne was very unwilling, after all his warnings, to retire completely from the field of publishing.

{p.137} TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., M. P., ROKEBY PARK.

EDINBURGH, January 30, 1817.

MY DEAR MORRITT,--I hope to send you in a couple of days
Harold the Dauntless, which has not turned out so good as I
thought it would have done. I begin to get too old and
stupid, I think, for poetry, and will certainly never again
adventure on a grand scale. For amusement, and to help a
little publication that is going on here, I have spun a
doggerel tale called The Search after Happiness, of which I
shall send you a copy by post, if it is of a frankable size;
if not, I can put it up with the Dauntless. Among other
misfortunes of Harold is his name, but the thing was partly
printed before Childe Harold was in question.

My great and good news at present is, that the bog (that
perpetual hobby-horse) has produced a commodity of most
excellent marle, and promises to be of the very last
consequence to my wild ground in the neighborhood; for
nothing can equal the effect of marle as a top-dressing.
Methinks (in my mind's eye, Horatio) I see all the
blue-bank, the hinny-lee, and the other provinces of my poor
kingdom, waving with deep rye-grass and clover, like the
meadows at Rokeby. In honest truth, it will do me yeoman's
service.

My next good tidings are, that Jedediah carries the world
before him. Six thousand have been disposed of, and three
thousand more are pressing onward, which will be worth £2500
to the worthy pedagogue of Gandercleuch. Some of the Scotch
Whigs, of the right old fanatical leaven, have waxed wroth
with Jedediah,--

"But shall we go mourn for that, my dear?
The cold moon shines by night,
And when we wander here and there,
We then do go most right."[55]

[Footnote 55: Joanna Baillie's _Orra_.]

After all, these honest gentlemen are like Queen Elizabeth
{p.138} in their ideas of portrait-painting. They require
the pictures of their predecessors to be likenesses, and at
the same time demand that they shall be painted without
shade, being probably of opinion, with the virgin majesty of
England, that there is no such thing in nature.

I presume you will be going almost immediately to London--at
least all our Scotch members are requested to be at their
posts, the meaning of which I cannot pretend to guess. The
finances are the only ticklish matter, but there is, after
all, plenty of money in the country, now that our fever-fit
is a little over. In Britain, when there is the least damp
upon the spirits of the public, they are exactly like people
in a crowd, who take the alarm, and shoulder each other to
and fro till some dozen or two of the weakest are borne down
and trodden to death; whereas, if they would but have
patience and remain quiet, there would be a safe and speedy
end to their embarrassment. How we want Billie Pitt now to
get up and give the tone to our feelings and opinions!

As I take up this letter to finish the same, I hear the
Prince Regent has been attacked and fired at. Since he was
not hurt (for I should be sincerely sorry for my fat
friend), I see nothing but good luck to result from this
assault. It will make him a good manageable boy, and, I
think, secure you a quiet session of Parliament.--Adieu, my
dear Morritt, God bless you. Let me know if the gimcracks
come safe--I mean the book, etc.

Ever yours,

Walter SCOTT.

TO THE LADY LOUISA STUART, GLOUCESTER PLACE, LONDON.

EDINBURGH, January 31, 1817.

MY DEAR LADY LOUISA,--This accompanies Harold the Dauntless.
I thought once I should have made it something clever, but
it turned vapid upon my imagination; and I finished it at
last with hurry and impatience. Nobody knows, that has not
tried the feverish trade of poetry, how much it depends upon
mood and whim. I {p.139} don't wonder, that, in dismissing
all the other deities of Paganism, the Muse should have been
retained by common consent; for, in sober reality, writing
good verses seems to depend upon something separate from the
volition of the author. I sometimes think my fingers set up
for themselves, independent of my head; for twenty times I
have begun a thing on a certain plan, and never in my life
adhered to it (in a work of imagination, that is) for half
an hour together. I would hardly write this sort of
egotistical trash to any one but yourself, yet it is very
true for all that. What my kind correspondent had
anticipated on account of Jedediah's effusions has actually
taken place; and the author of a very good Life of Knox has,
I understand, made a most energetic attack, upon the score
that the old Covenanters are not treated with decorum. I
have not read it, and certainly never shall. I really think
there is nothing in the book that is not very fair and
legitimate subject of raillery; and I own I have my
suspicions of that very susceptible devotion which so
readily takes offence: such men should not read books of
amusement; but do they suppose, because they are virtuous,
and choose to be thought outrageously so, "there shall be no
cakes and ale"?--"Ay, by our lady, and ginger shall be hot
in the mouth too."[56] As for the consequences to the
author, they can only affect his fortune or his temper--the
former, such as it is, has been long fixed beyond shot of
these sort of fowlers; and for my temper, I considered
always, that by subjecting myself to the irritability which
much greater authors have felt on occasions of literary
dispute, I should be laying in a plentiful stock of
unhappiness for the rest of my life. I therefore make it a
rule never to read the attacks made upon me. I remember
being capable of something like this sort of self-denial at
a very early period of life, for I could not be six years
old. I had been put into my bed in the nursery, and two
servant {p.140} girls sat down by the embers of the fire,
to have their own quiet chat, and the one began to tell a
most dismal ghost story, of which I remember the
commencement distinctly at this moment; but perceiving which
way the tale was tending, and though necessarily curious,
being at the same time conscious that, if I listened on, I
should be frightened out of my wits for the rest of the
night, I had the force to cover up my head in the
bed-clothes, so that I could not hear another word that was
said. The only inconvenience attending a similar prudential
line of conduct in the present case is, that it may seem
like a deficiency of spirit; but I am not much afraid of
that being laid to my charge--my fault in early life (I hope
long since corrected) having lain rather the other way. And
so I say, with mine honest Prior,--

"Sleep, Philo, untouch'd, on my peaceable shelf,
Nor take it amiss that so little I heed thee;
I've no malice at thee, and some love for myself--
Then why should I answer, since first I must read thee?"

[Footnote 56: _Twelfth Night_, Act II. Scene 3.]

So you are getting finely on in London. I own I am very glad
of it. I am glad the banditti act like banditti, because it
will make men of property look round them in time. This
country is very like the toys which folks buy for children,
and which, tumble them about in any way the urchins will,
are always brought to their feet again, by the lead
deposited in their extremities. The mass of property has the
same effect on our Constitution, and is a sort of ballast
which will always _right_ the vessel, to use a sailor's
phrase, and bring it to its due equipoise.

Ministers have acted most sillily in breaking up the burgher
volunteers in large towns. On the contrary, the service
should have been made coercive. Such men have a moral effect
upon the minds of the populace, besides their actual force,
and are so much interested in keeping good order, that you
may always rely on them, especially as a corps in which
there is necessarily a common {p.141} spirit of union and
confidence. But all this is nonsense again, quoth my Uncle
Toby to himself. Adieu, my dear Lady Louisa; my sincere good
wishes always attend you.

W. S.

Not to disturb the narrative of his literary proceedings, I have deferred until now the mention of an attempt which Scott made during the winter of 1816-1817, to exchange his seat at the Clerk's table for one on the Bench of the Scotch Court of Exchequer. It had often occurred to me, in the most prosperous years of his life, that such a situation would have suited him better in every respect than that which he held, and that his never attaining a promotion, which the Scottish public would have considered so naturally due to his character and services, reflected little honor on his political allies. But at the period when I was entitled to hint this to him, he appeared to have made up his mind that the rank of Clerk of Session was more compatible than that of a Supreme Judge with the habits of a literary man, who was perpetually publishing, and whose writings were generally of the imaginative order. I had also witnessed the zeal with which he seconded the views of more than one of his own friends, when their ambition was directed to the Exchequer Bench. I remained, in short, ignorant that he ever had seriously thought of it for himself, until the ruin of his worldly fortunes in 1826; nor had I any information that his wish to obtain it had ever been distinctly stated, until certain letters, one of which I shall introduce, were placed in my hands after his death, by the present Duke of Buccleuch. The late Duke's answers to these letters are also before me; but of them it is sufficient to say, that while they show the warmest anxiety to serve Scott, they refer to private matters, which rendered it inconsistent with his Grace's feelings to interfere at the time in question with the distribution of Crown patronage. I incline to think, on the whole, {p.142} that the death of this nobleman, which soon after left the influence of his house in abeyance, must have, far more than any other circumstance, determined Scott to renounce all notions of altering his professional position.

TO THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH, ETC., ETC.

EDINBURGH, 11th December, 1816.

MY DEAR LORD DUKE,--Your Grace has been so much my constant
and kind friend and patron through the course of my life,
that I trust I need no apology for thrusting upon your
consideration some ulterior views, which have been suggested
to me by my friends, and which I will either endeavor to
prosecute, time and place serving, or lay aside all thoughts
of, as they appear to your Grace feasible, and likely to be
forwarded by your patronage. It has been suggested to me, in
a word, that there would be no impropriety in my being put
in nomination as a candidate for the situation of a Baron of
Exchequer, when a vacancy shall take place. The difference
of the emolument between that situation and those which I
now hold, is just £400 a year, so that, in that point of
view, it is not a very great object. But there is a
difference in the rank, and also in the leisure afforded by
a Baron's situation; and a man may, without condemnation,
endeavor, at my period of life, to obtain as much honor and
ease as he can handsomely come by. My pretensions to such an
honor (next to your Grace's countenancing my wishes) would
rest very much on the circumstance that my nomination would
vacate two good offices (Clerk of Session and Sheriff of
Selkirkshire) to the amount of £1000 and £300 a year; and,
besides, would extinguish a pension of £300 which I have for
life, over and above my salary as Clerk of Session, as
having been in office at the time when the Judicature Act
deprived us of a part of our vested fees and emoluments. The
extinction of this pension would be just so much saved to
the public. I am pretty confident also that I should
{p.143} be personally acceptable to our friend the Chief
Baron.[57] But whether all or any of these circumstances
will weigh much in my favor, must solely and entirely rest
with your Grace, without whose countenance it would be folly
in me to give the matter a second thought. _With_ your
patronage, both my situation and habits of society may place
my hopes as far as any who are likely to apply; and your
interest would be strengthened by the opportunity of placing
some good friend in Selkirkshire, besides converting the
Minstrel of the Clan into a Baron,--a transmutation worthy
of so powerful and kind a chief. But if your Grace thinks I
ought to drop thoughts of this preferment, I am bound to
say, that I think myself as well provided for by my friends
and the public as I have the least title to expect, and that
I am perfectly contented and grateful for what I have
received. Ever your Grace's faithful and truly obliged
servant,

Walter SCOTT.

[Footnote 57: The late Right Honorable Robert Dundas of
Arniston, Chief Baron of the Scotch Exchequer; one of
Scott's earliest and kindest friends in that
distinguished family.]

The following letter, to the same noble friend, contains a slight allusion to this affair of the Barony; but I insert it for a better reason. The Duke had, it seems, been much annoyed by some depredations on his game in the district of Ettrick Water; and more so by the ill use which some boys from Selkirk made of his liberality in allowing the people of that town free access to his beautiful walks on the banks of the Yarrow, adjoining Newark and Bowhill. The Duke's forester, by name Thomas Hudson, had recommended rigorous measures with reference to both these classes of offenders, and the Sheriff was of course called into council:--

TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH, ETC., ETC., ETC.

ABBOTSFORD, January 11, 1817.

MY DEAR LORD DUKE,--I have been thinking anxiously about the
disagreeable affair of Tom Hudson, {p.144} and the impudent
ingratitude of the Selkirk rising generation, and I will
take the usual liberty your friendship permits me, of saying
what occurs to me on each subject. Respecting the shooting,
the crime is highly punishable, and we will omit no
inquiries to discover the individuals guilty. Charles
Erskine, who is a good police-officer, will be sufficiently
active. I know my friend and kinsman, Mr. Scott of Harden,
feels very anxious to oblige your Grace, and I have little
doubt that if you will have the goodness to mention to him
this unpleasant circumstance, he would be anxious to put his
game under such regulations as should be agreeable to you.
But I believe the pride and pleasure he would feel in
obliging your Grace, as heading one of the most ancient and
most respectable branches of your name (if I may be pardoned
for saying so much in our favor), would be certainly much
more gratified by a compliance with your personal request,
than if it came through any other channel. Your Grace knows
there are many instances in life in which the most effectual
way of conferring a favor is condescending to accept one. I
have known Harden long and most intimately--a more
respectable man, either for feeling, or talent, or knowledge
of human life, is rarely to be met with. But he is rather
indecisive--requiring some instant stimulus in order to make
him resolve to do, not only what he knows to be right, but
what he really wishes to do, and means to do one time or
other. He is exactly Prior's Earl of Oxford:--

"Let that be done which Mat doth say."
"Yea," quoth the Earl, "_but not to-day_."

And so exit Harden, and enter Selkirk.

I know hardly anything more exasperating than the conduct of
the little blackguards, and it will be easy to discover and
make an example of the biggest and most insolent. In the
mean while, my dear Lord, pardon my requesting you will take
no general or sweeping resolution as to the Selkirk folks.
Your Grace lives near {p.145} them--your residence, both
from your direct beneficence, and the indirect advantages
which they derive from that residence, is of the utmost
consequence; and they must be made sensible that all these
advantages are endangered by the very violent and brutal
conduct of their children. But I think your Grace will be
inclined to follow this up only for the purpose of
correction, not for that of requital. They are so much
beneath you, and so much in your power, that this would be
unworthy of you--especially as all the inhabitants of the
little country town must necessarily be included in the
punishment. Were your Grace really angry with them, and
acting accordingly, you might ultimately feel the regret of
my old schoolmaster, who, when he had knocked me down,
apologized by saying he did not know his own strength. After
all, those who look for anything better than ingratitude
from the uneducated and unreflecting mass of a corrupted
population, must always be deceived; and the better the
heart is that has been expanded towards them, their wants
and their wishes, the deeper is the natural feeling of
disappointment. But it is our duty to fight on, doing what
good we can (and surely the disposition and the means were
never more happily united than in your Grace), and trusting
to God Almighty, whose grace ripens the seeds we commit to
the earth, that our benefactions shall bear fruit. And now,
my Lord, asking your pardon for this discharge of my
conscience, and assuring your Grace I have no wish to
exchange my worsted gown, or the remote _Pisgah_ exchange of
a silk one, for the cloak of a Presbyterian parson, even
with the certainty of succeeding to the first of your
numerous Kirk-presentations, I take the liberty to add my
own opinion. The elder boys must be looked out and punished,
and the parents severely reprimanded, and the whole
respectable part of the town made sensible of the loss they
must necessarily sustain by the discontinuance of your
patronage. And at, or about the same time, I {p.146} should
think it proper if your Grace were to distinguish by any
little notice such Selkirk people working with you as have
their families under good order.

I am taking leave of Abbotsford _multum gemens_, and have
been just giving directions for planting upon _Turn-again_.
When shall we eat a cold luncheon there, and look at the
view, and root up the monster in his abyss? I assure you
none of your numerous vassals can show a finer succession of
_distant_ prospects. For the home-view--ahem!--We must wait
till the trees grow.

Ever your Grace's truly faithful

W. SCOTT.

While the abortive negotiation as to the exchequer was still pending, Scott was visited, for the first time since his childish years, with a painful illness, which proved the harbinger of a series of attacks, all nearly of the same kind, continued at short intervals during more than two years. Various letters, already introduced, have indicated how widely his habits of life when in Edinburgh differed from those of Abbotsford. They at all times did so to a great extent; but he had pushed his liberties with a most robust constitution to a perilous extreme while the affairs of the Ballantynes were laboring, and he was now to pay the penalty.

This first serious alarm occurred towards the close of a merry dinner-party in Castle Street (on the 5th of March), when Scott suddenly sustained such exquisite torture from cramp in the stomach, that his masculine powers of endurance gave way, and he retired from the room with a scream of agony which electrified his guests. This scene was often repeated, as we shall see presently. His friends in Edinburgh continued all that spring in great anxiety on his account. Scarcely, however, had the first symptoms yielded to severe medical treatment, than he is found to have beguiled the intervals of his suffering by planning a dramatic piece on a story supplied to him by one of Train's communications, which he desired to {p.147} present to Terry, on behalf of the actor's first-born son who had been christened by the name of Walter Scott.[58] Such was the origin of the Fortunes of Devorgoil--a piece which, though completed soon afterwards, and submitted by Terry to many manipulations with a view to the stage, was never received by any manager, and was first published, towards the close of the author's life, under the title, slightly altered for an obvious reason, of The Doom of Devorgoil. The sketch of the story which he gives in the following letter will probably be considered by many besides myself as well worth the drama. It appears that the actor had mentioned to Scott his intention of _Terryfying_ The Black Dwarf.

[Footnote 58: This young gentleman is now an officer in
the East India Company's army.--(1837.) Mr. W. S. Terry
lived to distinguish himself as a soldier, and fell in
action against the Afghans.--(1848.)]

TO DANIEL TERRY, ESQ., LONDON.

EDINBURGH, 12th March, 1817.

DEAR TERRY,--I am now able to write to you on your own
affairs, though still as weak as water from the operations
of the medical faculty, who, I think, treated me as a
recusant to their authority, and having me once at
advantage, were determined I should not have strength to
rebel again in a hurry. After all, I believe it was touch
and go; and considering how much I have to do for my own
family and others, my elegy might have been that of the Auld
Man's Mare,--

"The peats and turf are all to lead,
What ail'd the beast to die?"

You don't mention the nature of your undertaking in your
last, and in your former you spoke both of the Black Dwarf
and of Triermain. I have some doubts whether the town will
endure a second time the following up a well-known tale with
a dramatic representation--and there is no _vis comica_ to
redeem the Black Dwarf, as in the case of Dominie Sampson. I
have thought of {p.148} two subjects for you, if, like the
Archbishop's homilies, they do not smell of the apoplexy.
The first is a noble and very dramatic tradition preserved
in Galloway, which runs briefly thus: The Barons of Plenton
(the family name, I think, was ---- by Jupiter, forgot!)
boasted of great antiquity, and formerly of extensive power
and wealth, to which the ruins of their huge castle,
situated on an inland loch, still bear witness. In the
middle of the seventeenth century, it is said, these ruins
were still inhabited by the lineal descendant of this
powerful family. But the ruinous halls and towers of his
ancestors were all that had descended to him, and he
cultivated the garden of the castle, and sold its fruits for
a subsistence. He married in a line suitable rather to his
present situation than the dignity of his descent, and was
quite sunk into the rank of peasantry, excepting that he was
still called--more in mockery, or at least in familiarity,
than in respect--the Baron of Plenton. A causeway connected
the castle with the mainland; it was cut in the middle, and
the moat only passable by a drawbridge which yet subsisted,
and which the poor old couple contrived to raise every night
by their joint efforts, the country being very unsettled at
the time. It must be observed that the old man and his wife
occupied only one apartment in the extensive ruins, a small
one adjoining to the drawbridge; the rest was waste and
dilapidated.

As they were about to retire one night to rest, they were
deterred by a sudden storm which, rising in the wildest
manner possible, threatened to bury them under the ruins of
the castle. While they listened in terror to the complicated
sounds of thunder, wind, and rain, they were astonished to
hear the clang of hoofs on the causeway, and the voices of
people clamoring for admittance. This was a request not
rashly to be granted. The couple looked out, and dimly
discerned through the storm that the causeway was crowded
with riders. "How many of {p.149} you are there?" demanded
John.--"Not more than the hall will hold," was the answer;
"but open the gate, lower the bridge, and do not keep the
_ladies_ in the rain."--John's heart was melted for the
_ladies_, and, against his wife's advice, he undid the
bolts, sunk the drawbridge, and bade them enter in the name
of God. Having done so, he instantly retired into his
_sanctum sanctorum_ to await the event, for there was
something in the voices and language of his guests that
sounded mysterious and awful. They rushed into the castle,
and appeared to know their way through all its recesses.
Grooms were heard hurrying their horses to the
stables--sentinels were heard mounting guard--a thousand
lights gleamed from place to place through the ruins, till
at length they seemed all concentrated in the baronial hall,
whose range of broad windows threw a resplendent
illumination on the moss-grown court below.