Chapter D: M. Moir (2)

The plot of _The Inheritance_, of which the above is a sketch, is a model of its kind, whilst from first to last the conduct of the narrative is perfect. Indeed the _form_ of the story could not be improved--a rare merit even in a masterpiece of British fiction; and though the book is a long one, it contains not a superfluous page. Among the numerous authors quoted in the course of it are Shakespeare and the Greek dramatists, and perhaps, without stretching probability too far, we may assume that the authoress had studied the latter as well as the former. In any case _The Inheritance_ in its own degree unites principal characteristics of the Greek and the Shakespearian drama, for the web of circumstance inexorably woven about the innocent and unconscious heroine is entirely in the manner of the first, whilst the indifferent, life-like alternation of tragic and ludicrous incident in the narrative is of a piece with Shakespeare's irony. No finer example of the latter could be cited than the impressive scene in which Lord Rossville, looking blankly from his window one snowy afternoon, is amazed to see a hearse approaching the Castle. Out of the vehicle, when it has reached the door, steps his lordship's pet aversion and the reader's delight--the undaunted and ubiquitous Miss Pratt. The voluble lady has a long story to tell of the circumstances which have compelled her to resort to this unconventional mode of conveyance, whilst the pompous Earl is scandalised at the general impropriety of the proceedings, and especially at thought of the hearse of Mr McVitae, the Radical distiller, putting up for the night at the Castle. However there is no help for it; nor as it turns out is the visit so ill-timed as had seemed, for the next morning Lord Rossville is discovered dead upon his bed.

But if the book is remarkable for its admirable story, certainly not less remarkable is it for the extraordinary wealth of character which it portrays. Probably few 'novels of plot' are so rich in character, few 'novels of character' so strong in plot. It may be that some carping critic of the ungentle sex will be found to object to Lyndsay and to Delmour, the contrasted lovers of the heroine, as to 'a woman's men'--to urge that their demeanour is too consistently emotional, too demonstrative, to be founded upon any very solid base of character or of disposition. But supposing (which I am far from granting) that there were some truth in this, here at any rate all ground even for hypercriticism must end. And where in fiction is there a heroine more charming and more lovable than Gertrude St Clair--gentle yet high-spirited as she is, natural, and the soul of truth? Her pretended mother--ambitious and worldly-minded, violent, embittered by the slights and mortifications of her youth and bent vindictively upon retaliation--rises to the dignity of tragedy. Then we have the inimitable rattle and busybody, Miss Pratt, at home everywhere except in her own house, and incessantly referring to the sayings and doings of an invisible 'Anthony Whyte'--a very masterpiece of humorous delineation; and old Adam Ramsay, the cross-grained, misanthropic, Indian uncle, who yet compels our sympathy by his sentimental attachment to the home of his boyhood, and his constancy to the memory of his ill-starred love. Miss Bell Black, afterwards Mrs Major Waddell, is delightful in her perfect inanity and fatuity; and though her creator may not yet have learned to suffer fools gladly, she certainly has by this time mastered the art of portraying 'as though she loved' them. The Earl of Rossville, puffed up by a sense of his own importance, long-winded, sesquepedalian and null; Miss Lilly, the poetess, her Cockney lover and her brothers; gentle Anne Black; Miss Becky Duguid, the accommodating poor relation; Mrs Fairbairn, the materfamilias; and the peasant-woman whose misguided foresight leads her to prepare betimes her ailing husband's dead-clothes,--all of them are admirable, and all bear evidence of being freshly observed from the life. But the writer has learnt the lesson of substituting poetic for local truth; and if any portraits appear in this gallery--and it is stated that Adam Ramsay to some extent represents the authoress's father--they are such as can no longer rightly give offence to anyone. Miss Ferrier had reached middle life when she wrote _The Inheritance_, and perhaps the laughter which it provokes is less boisterous than that aroused by the first essays of her youth. But for a scene of high comedy--to select one from many--the first conversation of Miss Pratt and Uncle Adam would certainly be difficult to surpass. Finally, we have abundant evidence that in all that she wrote our authoress was actuated by a genuine desire for the moral and religious welfare of her reader; but in comparison to that of _Marriage_, her _tone_ in this book is as is the influence of a well-guided life to a sententious homily delivered from a pulpit. In one word, there is no single point in her art in which she has not risen from what is crude and tentative to what is finished and masterly.

As it well deserved to be, _The Inheritance_ was a great success, and amongst those from whom it elicited warm commendation the names of Jeffrey and Sir Walter Scott may be particularised. Some of the chief comic actors of the day wished to have it produced upon the stage, with which object the manager of Covent Garden Theatre applied to Mrs Gore, the novelist, for a dramatic version of the story. But that lady's intentions were anticipated by one Fitzball, a purveyor of transpontine wares in the kind, to whose unfitness for his task the complete failure of the play, when it came to be produced, may probably be ascribed. For in its strong, well-developed plot, and diversified characterisation, the story possesses in a high degree the chief requisites of a successful stage-play. _The Inheritance_ has also the distinction of having furnished to Tennyson the outline of his beautiful ballad of _Lady Clare_.

Miss Ferrier was a very careful craftswoman--a fact to which much of her success has been attributed--and it was not until 1831 that her next book, _Destiny_, appeared. Much of it was written at Stirling Castle, while she was on a visit to the wife of the Governor of the garrison. The new novel was dedicated to Sir Walter Scott, to whom the authoress had good reason to feel obliged, for it was largely in consequence of his skilful bargaining that she had received for it the large sum of L1700 from Cadell. The prices paid to her by Blackwood for her two previous books had been L150 and L1000 respectively.

As _The Inheritance_ represents the meridian of the writer's powers, so _Destiny_ represents their decline--not because there are not some as good things, or very nearly as good things, in the latter as in the former, but because the whole is very much less good. The construction of _Destiny_ is loose and inartificial, and almost from the outset the want of a strong frame-work which shall hold the contents together and keep them in place makes itself felt. Properly speaking, there are two stories in the story,--namely, that which centres in the disposal of the Inch Orran property and the adventures of Ronald Malcolm, and that which concerns itself with the development of the relations between Edith and her recalcitrant lover. In itself of course this would be no defect, but instead of being interwoven, or subordinated one to the other, the two stories are allowed to run parallel and distinct until near the end of the book. Thus their interest is dissipated--an effect which diffuseness of treatment materially increases. Idle pages and straggling incidents abound, and in fact the sense of form which was so conspicuous in _The Inheritance_ is in _Destiny_ conspicuous only by absence.

If we judge it as an essay in character-painting, rather than as a story, no doubt the novel comes off better. Again, as in _The Inheritance_, we have a gallery of masterly portraits--though this time the collection is smaller, and the paintings less highly-finished; and again we feel that these portraits are drawn, not from some conventional limbo of the novelist's, but from observation of life itself, backed up by true imagination. Among the group, the Reverend Duncan M'Dow bears off the palm from all competitors. This insufferable person, imperturbable in his own conceit--with his horse-laugh over his own jocularity, his grossness of manners, his greed for 'augmentation,' and his wounded self-love mingling with overweening vanity at the end of the book--is a piece of life itself, and the description of his luncheon-party is as good as anything accomplished by the authoress. The incarnation of fashionable selfishness and frivolity in the person of Lady Elizabeth Malcolm runs him close; but she is probably a less entirely original creation than the Minister--not that she is in any sense a copy, but that the same sort of model has been oftener studied. If we seek for something pleasanter to contemplate, the simple warm-hearted Molly Macauley, the dreamer of dreams, and the devoted adherent of the Chief who snubs her, is an endearing figure. The Chief himself, who loves good eating, and does not disdain to truckle to his rich childless kinsman, is a conspicuous example of materialisation and degeneracy, though the dotage of his 'debilitated mind and despotic temper' becomes almost as tiresome to the reader as it became to Edith and Sir Reginald. The key to the character of Benbowie, Glenroy's echo, is not quite apparent, and we should have liked to be assured (as we believe) that it was mere ineptitude, and not meanness, which caused him to disappear so hastily on an important occasion when money was required, and to return bringing it with him when it could no longer be of use. The vignettes of Inch Orran, the 'particular man,' and his wife, also stand out in the memory, as does that of the odious Madame Latour. And from this it will be seen that, with one or two exceptions, the more disagreeable personages of the book remain the most in evidence, for the Conways and the family of Captain Malcolm fade into insignificance beside those whose names are enumerated above. And, though the crux is an old one, where the high purpose of the writer is so much insisted on, perhaps it may not be unfair to enquire how far exactly she can be held to succeed in her aims, when even the regenerate reader is ill at ease in the company of her good characters and enjoys himself among her awful examples. The artificiality of some of its dialogues and the triteness of some of its reflections are further symptoms of the enervation which has begun to invade the book.

Miss Ferrier's history is the history of her books, and to these remarks upon her final literary production little need be added. Her mother being dead, and her three sisters married, it fell to her lot to keep house for her father, to whom she was devotedly attached, and with him she continued to reside until his death in January 1829. Her life, which was divided between Morningside House and Edinburgh, and varied by occasional visits to her sisters, is described as a very quiet one, and if we may accept the Adam Ramsay of _The Inheritance_ as at all a close portrait of Mr Ferrier, it must have had its grim side too. She had long suffered from her eyes, and in 1830 she paid her final visit to London, in order to consult an oculist. From his treatment, however, she seems to have derived little benefit; her eyesight failed, and it became necessary for her to spend much of her time in a darkened room; and though she still continued occasionally to receive a few friends at tea in the evening, her life from henceforth was a very retired one. She died in Edinburgh, on the 5th November 1854, at the house of her brother, Mr Walter Ferrier, and was interred in St Cuthbert's Churchyard.

Her dislike of publicity characterized her to the last. It was not until 1851, when a new edition of her works was published, that she consented to allow her name to appear upon the title-page, whilst her unwillingness to be made the subject of a biography led her to destroy all letters which might have been used for such a purpose, and in particular a correspondence with one of her sisters, which contained much biographical matter. The records of her life are consequently few, but the following testimony of an intimate friend is interesting:--

'The wonderful vivacity she maintained in the midst of darkness and
pain for so many years, the humour, wit, and honesty of her
character, as well as the Christian submission with which she bore
her great privation and general discomfort, when not suffering acute
pain, made everyone who knew her desirous to alleviate the
tediousness of her days; and I used to read a great deal to her at
one time, and I never left her darkened chamber without feeling that
I had gained something better than the book we might be reading,
from her quick perception of its faults and its beauties, and her
unmerciful remarks on all that was mean or unworthy in conduct or
expression.'

Still more interesting is the sentence in Scott's diary which describes her as 'A gifted personage, having, besides her great talents, conversation the least _exigeante_ of any author-female, at least, whom I have ever seen among the long list I have encountered; simple, full of humour, and exceedingly ready at repartee, and all this without the least affectation of the blue-stocking.' Of her considerate kindness to the author of _Waverley_, then in failing health, on the occasion of her last visit to Abbotsford, Lockhart gives this pleasing description:--

'To assist in amusing him in the hours which he spent out of his
study, and especially that he might make these hours more frequent,
his daughter had invited his friend the authoress of _Marriage_ to
come out to Abbotsford; and her coming was serviceable. For she knew
and loved him well, and she had seen enough of affliction akin to
his to be well skilled in dealing with it. She could not be an hour
in his company without observing what filled his children with more
sorrow than all the rest of the case. He would begin a story as
gaily as ever, and go on, in spite of the hesitation in his speech,
to tell it with highly picturesque effect; but before he reached the
point, it would seem as if some internal spring had given way. He
paused and gazed around him with the blank anxiety of look that a
blind man has when he has dropped his staff. Unthinking friends
sometimes gave him the catchword abruptly. I noticed the delicacy of
Miss Ferrier on such occasions. Her sight was bad, and she took care
not to use her glasses when he was speaking, and she affected also
to be troubled with deafness, and would say, "Well, I am getting as
dull as a post, I have not heard a word since you said so and so,"
being sure to mention a circumstance behind that at which he had
really halted. He then took up the thread with his habitual smile of
courtesy, as if forgetting his case entirely in the consideration of
the lady's infirmity.'

In conclusion, if Miss Ferrier's work lacks the sweetness and delicacy of Miss Austin's, it has at its best a strength to which her English sister's makes no pretension. The portraits of the former are _bitten in_ with a powerful acid unknown in the chemistry of the latter. But if she was sometimes _downright_ to the verge of cruelty, Miss Ferrier's view of life was a sound one. She strikes unsparingly at the rawness and self-sufficiency which are characteristic defects of such large numbers of our countrymen; yet she remains without rival as a painter of Scottish society, and one at least of her novels deserves to rank with the masterpieces of British fiction.

MICHAEL SCOTT

There used to be a tradition at Cambridge to the effect that an undergraduate, being called on in examination to give some account of John the Baptist, returned the answer, 'Little or nothing is known of this extraordinary man,'--a reply which probably did not go far enough to satisfy the examiner. Scarcely more satisfying, however, must be the response of the biographer who is called on to gratify natural curiosity regarding the author of _Tom Cringle's Log_--scarcely more satisfying, though with apparently so much less of excuse. For it is only a little over sixty years since the death of Michael Scott. Neither was his a case of posthumous reputation, or of rehabilitation after long neglect, which might have accounted for the obscuring of biographical detail--his work, though it has lost nothing of popularity, or certainly of readableness in the interim, having been received with acclamation on its first appearance. And yet, after diligent and eager enquiry, the present writer finds himself forced to acknowledge that all but a meagre outline of the facts of Scott's life is lost. This is the more remarkable in that he was obviously no bookworm or literary recluse, and that all who know his writings will feel instinctively that one so characterised by humour and the love of good company--to say nothing of practical joking--should have strewn anecdote thick behind him wherever he went. But if this was so, his traces have been most effectually expunged. The sort of find which now rewards, or mocks, his would-be biographer is, for example, such a tradition as that which records that he was fond of whisky punch--a solitary survival in the mind of one who remembers him in Glasgow, but a trait which, considering the times and the society in which Scott lived, can scarcely be held as individual. This, however, is not the worst. The writer has reason to believe that the glorious sea masterpiece with which Scott's name is chiefly associated was written, or at least partly written, in a house now belonging to himself--namely, the secluded cottage of Birseslees, situated on the banks of Ale, in Roxburghshire. Such, at least, is the tradition which he received from his father, one constitutionally averse to random statement, who had himself occupied the cottage within ten years of Scott's decease, and who, as an enthusiastic yachtsman, familiar with the West Indies, had special reasons for being interested in his writings. Such testimony--as Mr Mowbray Morris, Scott's biographer, remarks--is at least as good as that on which rest most of the statements regarding his life, and no apology is made for adducing it here. Yet, in despite of this testimony, a careful search, recently conducted among the oldest inhabitants of the neighbourhood, has failed to bring to light any but the vaguest and most uncertain references to the author of the _Log_. Under these conditions, what is left for a biographer to do? He has no choice but to content himself with a recapitulation of the few facts already current. One person, indeed, there is in whose power it almost certainly lies, by enlightening our ignorance, to gratify our by no means unkindly curiosity; but it is generally understood that, for reasons which we have no right to challenge, and which at least in no wise concern the fair fame of the author, that person's lips are sealed. It therefore now only remains to consider whether the darkness which surrounds Scott's life is the result of intention or of accident, and in support of the former conclusion it may be stated that, among men-of-letters of the time, taking their cue from the author of _Waverley_, and the practice of Maga, there existed an undoubted taste for mystification; whilst that the younger Scott shared in it is proved by the facts that his true name was never known to his publisher otherwise than by hearsay, and that in his own family circle and that of his immediate acquaintances the identity of Tom Cringle was unknown. One suggestion is that these measures were taken from a prudential point of view, in the interest of his business as a merchant, which might possibly have suffered had it been known to receive but divided attention. But as he avoided publicity in authorship, he may also have chosen to do so in other things. Otherwise, if internal evidence counts for anything, we should certainly suppose him to have been the least self-conscious of men, and one of the last in the world to trouble his head--unless he did it as a joke--as to what might be known, or not known, about himself.

Under existing circumstances, to write the life of Scott is to reproduce the narrative of Mr Mowbray Morris. Born at Cowlairs, near Glasgow, on the 30th October 1789, he was his father's fifth and youngest son. To that father, Allan Scott by name, the estate of Cowlairs had come from an elder brother, Robert, described as a Glasgow merchant of good family, who had purchased it in 1778,--at which time the house stood in the country, though its site has long since been swallowed up by the encroachments of the town. Young Scott was sent first to the Grammar School, as the High School of Glasgow was then called, and afterwards to the University, where he matriculated when just twelve years of age. Aird states that he was at school with John Wilson. At the University he remained four years, during the latter part of which he had as his inseparable companion the future author of _Cyril Thornton_, a fellow-student of tastes akin to his own, who has furnished in that novel a picture of the college life of the time. At the University Scott does not appear to have gained distinction. Perhaps, like many another author in embryo, he preferred miscellaneous reading to the college course; at any rate, the few literary allusions scattered over the pages of his books are generally apt and appreciative. However his taste seems to have been for active life, spiced if possible by adventure, and accordingly, in 1806, we find him leaving Scotland for the West Indies.

At this point Mr Morris, our authority, makes a digression in order to describe the magnitude and antiquity of the Clyde shipping-trade, and the effect exercised upon it by the revolt of our American colonies, which, by diverting it from Virginia to the West Indies, had changed its staple from tobacco to sugar. It happened that a family friend of the Scotts, Bogle by name--a Glasgow merchant and the descendant of Glasgow merchants--had at that time a nephew resident in Jamaica, where he was occupied as an estate-agent, and on his own account as a trader. To the care of this gentleman young Scott is now supposed to have been consigned, that he might be taught an estate-agent's duties. The agent's name was George William Hamilton, and one feels sure that no admirer of the _Log_ will hear with indifference that in him Scott found the original of the most individual of his many droll planter portraits--the portrait of Aaron Bang.

After profiting for three or four years by the instructions of Hamilton, who combined with his humorous propensities a very decided talent for business, in the year 1810 Scott entered a mercantile house at Kingston, in the employment of which he continued for seven years more. 'These years,' says Mr Morris, 'were the making of the _Log_. His business, coupled with Hamilton's friendship, not only brought him into contact with every phase of society in Jamaica, but sent him on frequent voyages among the islands and to the Spanish Main; and certainly few travellers can have carried a more curious pair of eyes with them than Michael Scott, or entered more heartily into the spirit of the passing hour.' In 1817 he returned to Scotland, and in the year following married Margaret, daughter of the Mr Bogle previously referred to, and consequently first cousin to Hamilton. He was soon back in Jamaica, however, and it was presumably at this time that he occupied the house--situated high up among the Blue Mountains, in midst of some of the finest scenery in the world--which is still shown to visitors as his. He remained in Jamaica till 1822, when he finally returned to his native land to start business on his own account. This he seems to have combined with a share in other mercantile concerns, being at the time of his death a partner in a commission-house in Glasgow, as well as in a Scottish commercial house in Maracaybo, on the Spanish Main.

It was in 1829 that he first appeared as an author, in which year--again to quote Mr Morris--'the _Log_ began to make its appearance in Blackwood's Magazine as a disconnected series of sketches, published intermittently as the author supplied them, or as the editor found it convenient to print them. The first five, for instance, appeared in September and November, 1829, and in June, July and October, 1830, under the titles of "A Scene off Bermuda," "The Cruise of H.M.S. _Torch_," "Heat and Thirst--a Scene in Jamaica," "Davy Jones and the Yankee Privateer," and the "Quenching of the _Torch_"; and these five papers now constitute the third chapter.' But shrewd Mr Blackwood, who greatly admired the sketches, persuaded the author to give them some sort of connecting link, 'which, without binding him to the strict rules of narrative composition, would add a strain of personal and continuous interest in the movement of the story. The young midshipman accordingly began to cut a more conspicuous figure; and in July, 1832, the title of "Tom Cringle's Log" was prefixed to what is now the eighth, but was then called the eleventh chapter. Henceforward the _Log_ proceeded regularly each month, with but one intermission, to its conclusion in August, 1833'; and a few months later, after some final touches, it made its appearance as a book. Its success was immediate. It was hailed with applause in particular by Coleridge, Christopher North, and Albany Fonblanque--the first-named of whom pronounced it 'most excellent.' Lockhart in the _Quarterly Review_, in an article on 'Monk' Lewis's West Indian travels, also speaks of it as the most brilliant series of magazine papers of the time; whilst the _Scottish Literary Gazette_ for November 1833 concludes a glowing notice by adjuring the writer, whatever he may undertake next, to remember that he is the author of _Tom Cringle's Log_.

Its successor, _The Cruise of the Midge_, made a more regular progress, from its commencement in March 1834, to its conclusion in June of the following year, though it also required some final overhauling before its appearance as a volume. These two books constitute the literary output of their author, and the completion of the _Cruise of the Midge_ brings us within a short distance of his death, which occurred at his house in Glasgow[9] on the 7th November 1835, when he had just completed his forty-sixth year. A large family survived to mourn his loss. He is buried in the Necropolis, where an unpretending monument marks his resting-place and that of his wife and several of their children. In the inscription which it bears, no allusion whatever is made to his literary achievements. I have been told that in private life Scott was a quiet easy-going man, of modest and retiring disposition, and also, on the authority of an old lady who remembers his death, that great was the surprise in Glasgow when it became known that he had been the author of thrilling tales of adventure by sea and land. It is said, by the way, that certain of Cringle's adventures were drawn from the experiences of a Captain Hobson, father of the Arctic explorer of that name, who when a lieutenant, about the year 1821, was engaged in putting down piracy in the West Indies. The character of Paul Gelid can likewise be traced to an original.

Here ends what is to be known about Scott's life, and if it is with regret that we accept this fact as inevitable, there is at least a certain consolation to be derived from reflecting that, in this prying age, at least one gallant literary figure stands secure from the mishandling of meddlers. But--the author himself having evaded the biographer--it is scarcely less remarkable that the popularity of his works seems to have won them no adequate eulogy. For, so far as I know, we may search in vain among critical essays for an appreciation of these masterpieces. Possibly their character as books of adventure relegated to the boys' shelf may be in part accountable for this; whilst doubtless the frequent roughness and homeliness of their style--whether casual, or introduced for the purpose of fitting the speech to the speaker--may have scared off many such pedants and wiseacres as have yet to learn that mere _correctness_ is one of the very humblest of literary qualities, or at least that genius--so it _be_ genius--is like King Sigismund, above the grammar-books. At an age when most boys are still puzzling over syntax and orthography, Mr Thomas Cringle and Lieutenant Benjamin Brail had already brought stout hearts and ready hands to bear upon the work of men, and it is quite true that in the records of their experiences not only do we find foreigners talking their own languages very imperfectly, but also the authors themselves from time to time making use of faulty constructions and of novel spelling. Now had their business been mainly an affair of words and phrases, this had been serious indeed; but as, instead, it happens to be one of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and the art of communicating them, the case is very different. And we may add that had any man composed ten times as loosely as Cringle sometimes chose to do, whilst still retaining Cringle's power to make us see and feel with him, that man had still remained a most remarkable writer. However already more than enough has been said on the subject of these few and very trifling errors, which in fact interfere not at all with a style which is usually clear, nervous and straightforward.

As has been already indicated, Scott's principal literary gift lay in his power of presentation--his power, that is, of putting simply, sufficingly, and without redundancy, a scene or person before the reader, so that he shall see the one and hear the other speak. From the days of Homer to those of the world-wide success of the youngest of our distinguished novelists, this gift has been recognised as quintessential in the story-teller. In the two broad classes of temperaments, it is wont to assume two separate forms, which differ from one another--in class-room terms--as the objective from the subjective. Of the latter of these--by virtue of which a reader is compelled so completely to identify himself with scenes depicted that he not only seems to witness them, but actually for the time being to participate and play the leading part in them--the works of Currer Bell, and perhaps especially _Villette_, the most highly-finished of her novels, afford notable examples. The converse side of the gift is displayed by the virile and active temperament of Michael Scott; and, of this particular quality, many a writer of far higher reputation has possessed greatly less than he. In illustration of this, the example of his greater namesake may be quoted, for with all his many other excellences, Sir Walter's pictorial or mimetic effects are seldom, or never, perfectly 'clean'--direct, and free from surplusage or alloy. Michael Scott's, on the other hand, are about as direct as it is possible to be. Illustrations might be quoted at will, for if there is one thing more surprising than the gift itself, it is the lavish use made of it by its possessor on page after page of his writings. The following characteristic scene may serve as an example, and it must be borne in mind that all Scott's fine scenes are incidental: he never, so to speak, makes a point of them.

'It was eleven o'clock in the forenoon, a fine clear breezy day,
fresh and pleasant, sometimes cloudy overhead, but always breaking
away again, with a bit of a sneezer, and a small shower. As the sun
rose there were indications of squalls in the north-eastern quarter,
and about noon one of them was whitening to windward. So "hands by
the top-gallant clew-lines" was the word, and we were all standing
by to shorten sail, when the Commodore came to the wind as sharp and
suddenly as if he had anchored; but on a second look, I saw his
sheets were let fly. The wind, ever since noon, had been blowing in
heavy squalls, with appalling lulls between them. One of these gusts
had been so violent as to bury in the sea the lee-guns in the waist,
although the brig had nothing set but her close-reefed
main-top-sail, and reefed foresail. It was now spending its fury,
and she was beginning to roll heavily, when, with a suddenness
almost incredible to one unacquainted with these latitudes, the veil
of mist that had hung to windward the whole day was rent and drawn
aside, and the red and level rays of the setting sun flashed at
once, through a long arch of glowing clouds, on the black hull and
tall spars of his Britannic Majesty's sloop, _Torch_. And, true
enough, we were not the only spectators of this gloomy splendour;
for, right in the wake of the moonlike sun, now half sunk in the
sea, at the distance of a mile or more, lay a long warlike-looking
craft, apparently a frigate or heavy corvette, rolling heavily and
silently in the trough of the sea, with her masts, yards, and the
scanty sail she had set, in strong relief against the glorious
horizon.'

Or this--

'The anchorage was one unbroken mirror, except where its glass-like
surface was shivered into sparkling ripples by the gambols of a
skipjack, or the flashing stoop of his enemy the pelican; and the
reflection of the vessel was so clear and steady, that at the
distance of a cable's length you could not distinguish the
water-line, nor tell where the substance ended and shadow began,
until the casual dashing of a bucket overboard for a few moments
broke up the phantom ship; but the wavering fragments soon reunited,
and she again floated double, like the swan of the poet. The heat
was so intense, that the iron stancheons of the awning could not be
grasped with the hand, and where the decks were not screened by it,
the pitch boiled out from the seams. The swell rolled in from the
offing in long shining undulations, like a sea of quicksilver,
whilst every now and then a flying-fish would spark out from the
unruffled bosom of the heaving water, and shoot away like a silver
arrow, until it dropped with a flash into the sea again. There was
not a cloud in the heavens, but a quivering blue haze hung over the
land, through which the white sugar-works and overseers' houses on
the distant estates appeared to twinkle like objects seen through a
thin smoke, whilst each of the tall stems of the cocoa-nut trees on
the beach, when looked at steadfastly, seemed to be turning round
with a small spiral motion, like so many endless screws. There was a
dreamy indistinctness about the outlines of the hills, even in the
immediate vicinity, which increased as they receded, until the Blue
Mountains in the horizon melted into sky. The crew were listlessly
spinning oakum, and mending sails, under the shade of the awning;
the only exceptions to the general languor were John Crow, the
black, and Jacko the monkey. The former (who was an _improvisatore_
of a rough stamp) sat out on the bowsprit, through choice, beyond
the shade of the canvas, without hat or shirt, like a bronze bust,
busy with his task, whatever that might be, singing at the top of
his pipe, and between whiles confabulating with his hairy ally, as
if he had been a messmate. The monkey was hanging by the tail from
the dolphin-striker, admiring what John Crow called "his own dam
ogly face in the water."

'Tail like yours would be good ting for a sailor, Jacko; it would
leave his two hands free aloft--more use, more hornament, too, I'm
sure, den de piece of greasy junk dat hangs from de captain's
taffril.--Now I shall sing to you, how dat Corromantee rascal, my
fader, was sell me on de Gold Coast--

'"Two red nightcap, one long knife,
All him get for Quacko,
For gun next day him sell him wife--
You tink dat good song, Jacko?"

'"Chocko, chocko," chattered the monkey, as if in answer.

'"Ah, you tink so--sensible hominal!--What is dat! shark?--Jacko,
come up, sir: don't you see dat big shovel-nosed fis looking at you?
Pull your hand out of the water--Garamighty!"

'The negro threw himself on the gammoning of the bowsprit to take
hold of the poor ape, who, mistaking his kind intention, and
ignorant of his danger, shrunk from him, lost his hold, and fell
into the sea. The shark instantly sank to have a run, then dashed at
his prey, raising his snout over him, and shooting his head and
shoulders three or four feet out of the water, with poor Jacko
shrieking in his jaws, whilst his small bones crackled and crunched
under the monster's triple row of teeth.'

To this talent for presentation, by a most fortunate coincidence, Scott's experience enabled him to add a command of rich and rare material: his subject-matter was quite worthy of the powers which he brought to bear upon it. Indeed, few literary men have been more favoured by time and place. For, letting alone the fact that the West Indies were in those days virgin soil to the romance-writer, letting alone the glorious opportunities afforded by a familiarity with Nature in the tropics, studied in storm and calm, by land and sea--and especially to a man of Scott's taste for strong effects, one gifted with his eye for atmosphere, whose genius itself has something of tropical grandeur and luxuriance, were these opportunities valuable,--letting alone, also, the rich and varied social order amid which he moved--its quaint and original types of planter and seaman, the picturesqueness of its desperadoes, and the naivete of its coloured people--Scott's sojourn in the islands was timed at a particularly stirring epoch in their history. Warfare, smuggling and piracy, slavery and the suppression of the slave-trade were being carried on before his eyes; and it is even suggested that such scenes as the boarding of the _Wave_, the examination of Job Rumble-tithump, and the trial and execution of the pirates, may very probably have had their foundation in things actually witnessed by the writer. Now I suppose that I am not singular, and that like myself many genuine lovers of romance delight to cherish the belief that what they are reading, if not actually true, is at least in some way related to the author's experience. In this respect Scott satisfies us perfectly. And herein lies his immense advantage over other competitors in the same field. For in reading, for instance (admirable as they are), the pirate scenes of the _Master of Ballantrae_, we cannot but miss this sense,--so that whilst we hear with bated breath of bloody deeds and hairbreadth 'scapes, we are haunted all the while by an uneasy feeling that this is all but a most brilliantly executed _fantasia_, or variation, upon documents.

Granting, then, that rarely if ever have more brilliant pictures of more interesting incidents been more lavishly set before a reader than in the pages of _Tom Cringle's Log_, we are impelled to enquire what are the corresponding weaknesses which have debarred the author from taking the highest rank as a writer. The answer is not far to seek; it is a defect of constructive power. If he possessed much genius, Michael Scott had but little art. The effect of his fine pictures is not cumulative; each is alike revealed, as it were, by a powerful flash, and the result is that they obliterate one another. For it is surely needless to point out that every work of high artistic achievement is a whole, and that in that whole, and in relation to that whole, each part has a value greatly exceeding its value when considered separately. But in Scott's stories this is not so. Remove any one incident from one of his stories, and the reader will be the poorer by the loss of an interesting incident, and by no more. And so, with injury only of the same kind, his books might be extended or curtailed, whilst their incidents might be transposed without injury at all. I am aware that to write in this somewhat heavily academic style of a writer than whom no man of equal gifts made ever less pretention, may be to incur the imputation of taking too high a ground, and to draw down criticism upon the critic's head. I can only reply that the extreme excellence, within their own limits, of Scott's literary achievements has provoked me to it, and that had his works shown less surprising merit they should have been treated in a lighter vein.

The same neglect of constructive power which strikes us in the conduct of the tales is apparent in the treatment of the characters. It is the practice of masters of characterisation to make their characters, so to speak, _turn round_ before the reader, so that, ere the end of the book is reached, no aspect of them shall have been left unseen. But with Scott one aspect is exhibited repeatedly, and thus our knowledge is circumscribed. That the characters live we feel assured, but with one or two such exceptions as Aaron and Obed, it is as members of a class that we recognise them, not as _individuals_, whilst again and again as we read we are compelled to turn back would we distinguish from his fellows any particular one among the quaintly-named officers and seamen.

In female portraiture Scott attempts but little, in which he is probably well-advised. For though Cringle's sweetheart is certainly a pleasing sketch enough, in his more ambitious and quasi-Byronic flights--the delineation of the pirate's leman or the bride of Adderfang--the author for the moment leaves nature behind him, and consequently gives us almost the only passages in his books which do not ring true. These passages may perhaps be held to justify the condemnation of Captain Marryat, who pronounced him melodramatic. But--despite the strong nature of the fare which he provides--melodramatic, except in such passages, he certainly is not. For to describe thrilling situations, with the eye not fixed upon the situations themselves but intent on their _effect_, is melodrama in the true sense; and of this the genial author of _The Pirate and Three Cutters_ himself supplies some choice examples.

It strikes a reader as strange that the occasion of Cringle's visit to Carthagena evokes no allusion to Smollett, for it is with Smollett and Marryat that we most naturally think of comparing Cringle's creator. Michael Scott does not rise to the Cervantic heights of humour of the former; but few, indeed, are the writers who have done this. Nor, of course, has he Smollett's style; though, on the other side of the account, with thankfulness we acknowledge that his page is quite free from Smollett's filth and coarseness. Marryat also possessed more of the gifts of the novelist than Scott, or at least had greater opportunities of showing them. But there is one point, and that a most telling one, in which Scott has immeasurably the advantage of the others--he comes far _nearer to the reader_ than either of them. Of course his easy and homely style, his use of the first person, his occasional confidential digressions, are means employed towards this end, but equally of course the secret of his success lies in his personality. Personality, or, in other words, genius it is which gives him his power over the reader--a power which makes even the refractory and fastidious to follow him, as a dog follows its master. Constitutionally a reader may have small relish for farce, and a positive distaste for horse-play; and yet when Scott is in the mood for either, the reader will become so too. And in a higher and sweeter kind of humour, his power is equally in proportion to the demand of the occasion--in support of which I can cite no better evidence than the delightful scenes in which the sailors of the _Midge_ seek to resuscitate the apparently drowned baby boy, afterwards nicknamed Dicky Phantom; and in which their joy is expressed when he gives signs of life; with Dogvane's mission to the officer in command to plead on behalf of his mess-mates for the custody of the child (which shall replace in their affections a parrot blown away in a gale, a monkey washed overboard, and a cat which has died of cold) and the subsequent scenes in which, with a comical shamefaced roundaboutness, one after another, to the admiral himself, puts in his claim for the care of the babe. Scenes more winningly human than these would, I think, be far to seek. In equal degree does this beloved writer hold the key to our manlier enthusiasms. Far distant be the day when amongst generous-minded boys such books as his shall lose their popularity, for it is by these that the best lessons of our history are enforced. It has been said of the playwright Shakespeare that his works are proof that he had it in him to strike a stout blow in a good cause. The spirit of Agincourt was not found wanting at Trafalgar, and the same may be said with truth of the Glasgow merchant, Scott. The voice of Britain's greatness itself speaks in his books, and as we read them we seem brought nearer to the spirit of Drake or of Dundonald.

In conclusion, Scott's stories have here been considered together, for though the _Log_ is on the whole justly the favourite of the two, in general characteristics they are almost identical. Quite towards the close, both books display some slight tendency to 'drag,' but in this respect the _Cruise_ is the worse transgressor. It is also the more loosely put together, and this despite the fact that in the relations subsisting between Lennox and Adderfang, and the mystery which surrounds young De Walden, the author has obviously been at pains to sustain interest by something in the nature of a plot. Again, if he does not repeat himself in the _Cruise_, Scott at least does not steer quite clear of all danger of doing so; for, in addition to the fact that the general pattern of the two tales is the same, several incidents of the latter have counterparts in the former. And yet, on the whole, such fine books are they both that to criticise either is deservedly to incur the imputation of being spoiled with good things.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] No. 198 Atholl Place. Article in _Glasgow Herald_, 1st May 1895.

THOMAS HAMILTON

The statement--somewhat disquieting to the professed litterateur--that almost any man may if he choose write one good book in a life-time, finds something like confirmation in the case of Thomas Hamilton. Not primarily a writer, and not gifted by nature with any very remarkable talent or grace of the pen, he yet contrived to produce a book for which a few transcripts of military life in peace and war, a few pictures of travel, perhaps a portrait or two drawn from the life, have sufficed to preserve, after seventy years, a portion of the favour with which it was greeted on its first appearance. The materials for a sketch of his career are scanty, but blanks in the narrative may to some extent be filled in from a perusal of _Cyril Thornton_.

Born in the year 1789, he was the younger son of William Hamilton, Professor of Anatomy and Botany in the University of Glasgow, his elder brother becoming in time Sir William Hamilton, the celebrated metaphysician and intellectual luminary of Edinburgh. He was put to school in the south of England, and about the year 1803 entered the Glasgow University, where he studied for three winters, giving evidence, as his brother has borne witness, of ability rather than of application. His taste for a military life was at first opposed, but having satisfied his friends by experiment that he was unsuited for a commercial career, in 1810 he obtained by purchase a commission in the 29th Regiment. He had hardly joined, when the corps was ordered out to active service in the Peninsula, where it bore the brunt of the hardly-won battle of Albuera, in which Hamilton himself was wounded by a musket bullet in the thigh. During his short military career, he was once more on active service in the Peninsula, and also served in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick during the American War, subsequent to which he returned to Europe, his regiment being sent as part of the army of occupation to France. Retiring on half-pay about the year 1818, he came to reside in Edinburgh, and began to turn his attention to literature. He had received a good classical education, and being well introduced, he was hailed as a congenial spirit by the Blackwood circle, and becoming associated with the magazine, threw himself into the spirit of the enterprise, to which he furnished contributions both in verse and prose. In the _Noctes Ambrosianae_ he occasionally figures as 'O'Doherty,' a name, however, which was also applied to Dr Maginn. He is described in _Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk_ as possessing a 'noble grand Spaniard-looking head,' with a very sombre expression of countenance, and a tall graceful person. The natural freedom of his movements seems, however, to have been to some extent impeded by his wound. Carlyle, who knew him later, describes him as a 'pleasant, very courteous, and intelligently talking man, enduring, in a cheery military humour, his old Peninsular hurts,' and altogether it is easy to see that he must have formed an interesting and popular figure in the Edinburgh society of his day.

Having married in 1820, he resided for several summers at the picturesque little dwelling of Chiefswood, near Melrose, where he had an appreciative neighbour in the person of Sir Walter Scott, and where the greater part of the _Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton_ was written. This book appeared in 1827, and at once attracted attention. In 1829, the author followed it up with _Annals of the Peninsular Campaigns, from 1808 to 1814_, and in 1833, after a visit to the New World, by _Men and Manners in America_. In later life, having lost his first wife and married again, he settled at Elleray, in the Lake District, where he saw a good deal of Wordsworth, of whom he had long been an admirer, frequently, as we are told, accompanying the poet upon long mountain walks. His death, occasioned by a shock of paralysis, took place at Pisa, whilst he was travelling with Mrs Hamilton, on the 7th December 1842. He was buried at Florence.

No doubt the novel of _Cyril Thornton_ has in time past owed much of its popularity to its varied action and frequently shifting scene, and if we are to judge it now on literary grounds we have no choice but to acknowledge that great portion of its interest has perished. Still, there remain a few admirable passages, and in this particular instance the lines of cleavage between true and false are marked with peculiar distinctness. For the book may be described as fragments of autobiography embedded in a paste of romance. Now imagination was by no means Hamilton's strong point; his fancy was neither very happy nor very abundant, and when he essays character-painting on an important scale--as in the case of old David Spreull, the conventional eccentric but beneficent uncle of the story, and his faithful servant Girzy, he is as deficient in anything like true insight as he is in lightness of touch. But though his fiction is of this heavy quality, he could present to admiration what he himself had seen and taken part in, and from time to time he has thought fit to do so, with excellent effect.