Chapter III: Scott's Work as Student and Editor in the Field of Literary History (3)

The motive of the novel is a subject which naturally engages the attention of the novelist-critic. Romantic fiction, he thinks may have sufficient justification if it acts as an opiate for tired spirits. A significant antithesis between his point of view in this matter and the more common attitude taken by critics in his time is illustrated by two reviews of Mrs. Shelley's _Frankenstein_, to which we may refer, though the book was later than those included in the _Novelists' Library_. Scott wrote in _Blackwood's_: "We ... congratulate our readers upon a novel which excites new reflections and untried sources of emotion."[217] The _Quarterly_ reviewer took the opposite and more conservative attitude and expressed himself thus: "Our taste and our judgment alike revolt at this kind of writing, and the greater the ability with which it may be executed the worse it is--it inculcates no lesson of conduct, manners, or morality; it cannot mend, and will not even amuse its readers, unless their taste has been deplorably vitiated--it fatigues the feelings without interesting the understanding; it gratuitously harasses the heart, and wantonly adds to the store, already too great, of painful sensations."[218] In general Scott minimizes the effect of any moral that may be expressed in the novel, but occasionally he seems inconsistent, when he is talking of sentiments that are peculiarly distasteful to him.[219] But his thesis is that "the direct and obvious moral to be deduced from a fictitious narrative is of much less consequence to the public than the mode in which the story is treated in the course of its details."[220] In the _Life of Fielding_ he says of novels: "The best which can be hoped is that they may sometimes instruct the youthful mind by real pictures of life, and sometimes awaken their better feelings and sympathies by strains of generous sentiment, and tales of fictitious woe. Beyond this point they are a mere elegance, a luxury contrived for the amusement of polished life."

He conceived that his prefaces might be useful to warn readers against any ill effects that might otherwise result from the reading of the accompanying texts; and our comments on the _Lives of the Novelists_ may fitly close with a quotation which shows the writer's attitude toward the novels and his own criticisms upon them. The passage is taken from the _Life of Bage_. "We did not think it proper to reject the works of so eminent an author from this collection, merely on account of speculative errors.[221] We have done our best to place a mark on these; and as we are far from being of opinion that the youngest and most thoughtless derive their serious opinions from productions of this nature, we leave them for our reader's amusement, trusting that he will remember that a good jest is no argument; that the novelist, like the master of a puppet-show, has his drama under his absolute authority, and shapes the events to favour his own opinions; and that whether the Devil flies away with Punch, or Punch strangles the Devil, forms no real argument as to the comparative power of either one or other, but only indicates the special pleasure of the master of the motion."

Scott was deeply in sympathy with the literature of the century within which he was born. To the evidence of his _Swift_ and of the _Lives of the Novelists_ it may be added that he contemplated making a complete edition of Pope, and that he professed to like _London_ and _The Vanity of Human Wishes_ the best of all poems. James Ballantyne said, rather ambiguously, "I think I never saw his countenance more indicative of high admiration than while reciting aloud from those productions."[222] In one of his letters Scott spoke of the "beautiful and feeling verses by Dr. Johnson to the memory of his humble friend Levett, ... which with me, though a tolerably ardent Scotchman, atone for a thousand of his prejudices."[223] Not only did he admire the great biography, but he called Boswell "such a biographer as no man but [Johnson] ever had, or ever deserved to have."[224] But he once said that many of the _Ramblers_ were "little better than a sort of pageant, where trite and obvious maxims are made to swagger in lofty and mystic language, and get some credit only because they are not understood."[225]

Among other eighteenth century writers, Addison is distinguished by high praise in a few casual references,[226] but Scott once admitted that he did not like Addison so much as he felt to be proper.[227] A collection of Prior's poems Scott calls "an English classic of the first order."[228] He speaks of Parnell as "an admirable man and elegant poet,"[229] and mentions "the ponderous, persevering, and laborious dullness of Sir Richard Blackmore."[230] But these observations are of little importance except as they indicate that Scott had read the authors of the eighteenth century and acquiesced in the conventional judgments upon them. It is seldom in his brief and casual comments that Scott is particularly interesting as a critic, except when he is speaking of living writers, for he lacked the gift of conciseness. When he has a large canvas he is at his best, and this he has in the principal works described in this chapter:--_The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, the _Works of Dryden_, the _Works of Swift_, and the _Lives of the Novelists_.