“Health to the Chieftain from his clansman true! From her true minstrel health to fair Buccleuch! Health from the isles, where dewy Morning weaves Her chaplet with the tints that Twilight leaves; Where late the sun scarce vanished from the sight, And his bright pathway graced the short-lived night, Though darker now as autumn’s shades extend, The north winds whistle and the mists ascend. Health from the land where eddying whirlwinds toss The storm-rocked cradle of the Cape of Noss; On outstretched cords the giddy engine slides, His own strong arm the bold adventurer guides, And he that lists such desperate feat to try, May, like the sea-mew, skim ’twixt surf and sky, And feel the mid-air gales around him blow, And see the billows rage five hundred feet below.

‘Here by each stormy peak and desert shore, The hardy islesman tugs the daring oar,

280

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Practised alike his venturous course to keep Through the white breakers or the pathless deep, By ceaseless peril and by toil to gain A wretched pittance from the niggard main. And when the worn-out drudge old ocean leaves, What comfort greets him and what hut receives? Lady! the worst your presence ere has cheered (When want and sorrow fled as you appeared) Were to a Zetlander as the high dome Of proud Drumlanrig to my humble home. Here rise no groves, and here no gardens blow, Here even the hardy heath scarce dares to grow; But rocks on rocks, in mist and storm arrayed, Stretch far to sea their giant colonnade, With many a cavern seam’d, the dreary haunt Of the dun seal and swarthy cormorant. Wild round their rifted brows with frequent cry, As of lament, the gulls and gannets fly, And from their sable base, with sullen sound, In sheets of whitening foam the waves rebound.

“Yet even these coasts a touch of envy gain From those whose land has known oppression’s chain; For here the industrious Dutchman comes once more To moor his fishing craft by Bressay’s shore; Greets every former mate and brother tar, Marvels how Lerwick ’scaped the rage of war, Tells many a tale of Gallic outrage done, And ends by blessing God and Wellington. Here too the Greenland tar, a fiercer guest, Claims a brief hour of riot, not of rest; Proves each wild frolic that in wine has birth, And wakes the land with brawls and boisterous mirth. A sadder sight on yon poor vessel’s prow The captive Norse-man sits in silent wo, And eyes the flags of Britain as they flow. Hard fate of war, which bade her terrors sway His destined course, and seize so mean a prey; A bark with planks so warp’d and seams so riven, She scarce might face the gentlest airs of heaven: Pensive he sits, and questions oft if none Can list his speech and understand his moan;

LETTERS TO THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH.

281

In vain—no islesman now can use the tongue Of the bold Norse, from whom their lineage sprung. Not thus of old the Norse-men hither came, Won by the love of danger or of fame; On every storm-beat cape a shapeless tower Tells of their wars, their conquests, and their power; For ne’er for Grecia’s vales, nor Latian Land, Was fiercer strife than for this barren strand— A race severe—the isle and ocean lords, Loved for its own delight the strife of swords— With scornful laugh the mortal pang defied, And blessed their gods that they in battle died.

“Such were the sires of Zetland’s simple race, And still the eye may faint resemblance trace In the blue eye, tall form, proportion fair, The limbs athletic, and the long light hair— (Such was the mien, as Scald and Minstrel sings, Of fair-haired Harold, first of Norway’s Kings); But their high deeds to scale these crags confined, Their only warfare is with waves and wind.

“Why should I talk of Mousa’s castled coast? Why of the horrors of the Sumburgh Rost? May not these bald disjointed lines suffice, Penn’d while my comrades whirl the rattling dice— While down the cabin skylight lessening shine The rays, and eve is chased with mirth and wine?— Imagined, while down Mousa’s desert bay Our well-trimm’d vessel urged her nimble way— While to the freshening breeze she leaned her side— And bade her bowsprit kiss the foamy tide—?

“Such are the lays that Zetland Isles supply; Drenched with the drizzly spray and dropping sky, Weary and wet, a sea-sick minstrel I.— W. Scott.”

“Postscriptum.

“Kirkwall, Orkney, Aug. 13, 1814.

“In respect that your grace has commissioned a Kraken, You will please be informed that they seldom are taken;

282

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

It is January two years, the Zetland folks say, Since they saw the last Kraken in Scalloway bay; He lay in the offing a fortnight or more, But the devil a Zetlander put from the shore, Though bold in the seas of the North to assail The morse and the sea-horse, the grampus and whale. If your Grace thinks I’m writing the thing that is not, You may ask at a namesake of ours, Mr Scott— (He’s not from our clan, though his merits deserve it, But springs, I’m inform’d, from the Scotts of Scotstarvet);* He questioned the folks, who beheld it with eyes, But they differed confoundedly as to its size. For instance, the modest and diffident swore That it seemed like the keel of a ship, and no more— Those of eyesight more clear, or of fancy more high, Said it rose like an island ’twixt ocean and sky— But all of the hulk had a steady opinion That ’twas sure a live subject of Neptune’s dominion— And I think, my Lord Duke, your Grace hardly would wish To cumber your house such a kettle of fish. Had your order related to night-caps or hose, Or mittens of worsted, there’s plenty of those. Or would you be pleased but to fancy a whale? And direct me to send it—by sea or by mail? The season, I’m told, is nigh over, but still I could get you one fit for the lake at Bowhill. Indeed, as to whales, there’s no need to be thrifty, Since one day last fortnight two hundred and fifty, Pursued by seven Orkney men’s boats and no more, Betwixt Truffness and Luffness were drawn on the shore! You’ll ask if I saw this same wonderful sight; I own that I did not, but easily might— For this mighty shoal of leviathans lay On our lee-beam a mile, in the loop of the bay,’ And the islesmen of Sanda were all at the spoil, And flinching (so term it) the blubber to boil; (Ye spirits of lavender drown the reflection That awakes at the thoughts of this odorous dissection). To see this huge marvel, full fain would we go,

* The Scotts of Scotstarvet, and other families of the name in. Fife and elsewhere, claim no kindred with the great clan of the Border and their aruiorial bearings are entirely different.

LETTERS TO THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH.

283

But Wilson, the wind, and the current said no. We have now got to Kirkwall, and needs I must stare When I think that in verse I have once called it fair; ’Tis a base little borough, both dirty and mean— There is nothing to hear, and there’s nought to be seen, Save a church, where, of old times, a prelate harangued, And a palace that’s built by an earl that was hanged. But farewell to Kirkwall—aboard we are going, The anchor’s a-peak, and the breezes are blowing; Our Commodore calls all his band to their places, And ’tis time to release you—good night to your Graces!”

The following letter was addressed to Scott by the Duke of Buccleuch, before he received that which the Poet penned on landing at Glasgow. I present it here, because it will give a more exact notion of what Scott’s relations with his noble patron really were, than any other single document which I could produce; and to set that matter in its just light is essential to the business of this narrative. But I am not ashamed to confess that I embrace with satisfaction

286

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

the opportunity of thus offering to the readers of the present time a most instructive lesson. They will here see what pure and simple virtues and humble piety may be cultivated as the only sources of real comfort in this world and consolation in the prospect of futurity,𔃊among circles which the giddy and envious mob are apt to regard as intoxicated with the pomps and vanities of wealth and rank; which so many of our popular writers represent systematically as sunk in selfish indulgence𔃊as viewing all below them with apathy and indifference𔃊and last, not least, as upholding, when they do uphold, the religious institutions of their country, merely because they have been taught to believe that their own hereditary privileges and possessions derive security from the prevalence of Christian maxims and feelings among the mass of the people.

Before I pass from the event which made August 1814 so black a month in Scott’s calendar, I may be excused for once more noticing the kind interest which the Duchess of Buccleuch had always taken in the fortunes of the Ettrick Shepherd, and introducing a most characteristic epistle which she received from him a few months before her death. The Duchess—“fearful” (as she said) “of seeing herself in print” did not answer the Shepherd, but forwarded his letter to Scott, begging him to explain that circumstances did not allow the Duke to concede what he requested, but to assure him that they both retained a strong wish to serve him whenever a suitable opportunity should present itself. Hogg’s letter was as follows:—

Though the Duke of Buccleuch would not dismiss a poor tenant merely because Hogg called him “a mean fellow,” he had told Scott that if he could find an unappropriated “pendicle,” such as this letter referred to, he would most willingly bestow it on the Shepherd. It so happened, that when Scott paid his first visit at Bowhill after the death of the Duchess, the Ettrick Shepherd was mentioned: “My friend,” said the Duke, “I must now consider this poor man’s case as her legacy;” and to this feeling Hogg owed, very soon afterwards, his establishment at Altrive, on his favourite Braes of Yarrow.

As Scott passed through Edinburgh on his return from his voyage, the negotiation as to the Lord of the Isles, which had been protracted through several months, was completed—Constable agreeing to give fifteen hundred guineas for one half of the copyright, while the other moiety was retained by the author. The sum mentioned had been offered by Constable at an early stage of the affair, but it was not until now accepted, in consequence of the earnest wish of Scott and Ballantyne to saddle the publisher of the new poem with part of their old “quire stock,”—which, however, Constable ultimately persisted in refusing. It may easily be believed that John Ballantyne’s management of money matters during Scott’s six weeks’ absence had been such as to render it doubly convenient for the Poet to have this matter settled on his arrival in Edinburgh—and it may also be supposed that the progress of Waverley

296

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

during that interval had tended to put the chief parties in good humour with each other.

In returning to Waverley, I must observe most distinctly that nothing can be more unfounded than the statement which has of late years been frequently repeated in Memoirs of Scott’s Life, that the sale of the first edition of this immortal Tale was slow. It appeared on the 7th of July, and the whole impression (1000 copies) had disappeared within five weeks; an occurrence then unprecedented in the case of an anonymous novel, put forth, at what is called among publishers, the dead season. A second edition, of 2000 copies, was at least projected by the 24th of the same month,*—that appeared before the end of August, and it too had gone off so rapidly, that when Scott passed through Edinburgh, on his way from the Hebrides, he found Constable eager to treat, on the same terms as before, for a third of 1000 copies. This third edition was published in October, and when a fourth of the like extent was called for in November, I find Scott writing to John Ballantyne:—“I suppose Constable won’t quarrel with a work on which he has netted L.612 in four months, with a certainty of making it L.1000 before the year is out:” and, in fact, owing to the diminished expense of advertising, the profits of this fourth edition were to each party L.440. To avoid recurring to these details, I may as well state at once that a fifth edition of 1000 copies appeared in January 1815; a sixth of 1500 in June 1816; a seventh of 2000 in October 1817; an eighth of 2000 in April 1821; that in the collective editions, prior to 1829, 11,000 were disposed of; and that the sale of the current edition, with notes, begun in 1829, has already reached 40,000 copies. Well might Constable

* See letter to Mr Morritt, ante, p. 129.

WAVERLEY.

297

regret that he had not ventured to offer L.1000 for the whole copyright of Waverley!

I must now look back for a moment to the history of the composition. The letter of September 1810 was not the only piece of discouragement which Scott had received, during the progress of Waverley, from his first confidant. My good friend, James Ballantyne, in his death-bed memorandum, says,—“When Mr Scott first questioned me as to my hopes of him as a novelist, it somehow or other did chance that they were not very high. He saw this, and said—‘Well, I don’t see why I should not succeed as well as other people. At all events, faint heart never won fair lady—’tis only trying.’ When the first volume was completed, I still could not get myself to think much of the Waverley-Honour scenes; and in this I afterwards found that I sympathized with many. But, to my utter shame be it spoken, when I reached the exquisite descriptions of scenes and manners at Tully-Veolan, what did I do but pronounce them at once to be utterly vulgar! When the success of the work so entirely knocked me down as a man of taste, all that the good-natured author said was—‘Well, I really thought you were wrong about the Scotch. Why, Burns, by his poetry, had already attracted universal attention to every thing Scottish, and I confess I couldn’t see why I should not be able to keep the flame alive, merely because I wrote Scotch in prose, and he in rhyme.’”—It is, I think, very agreeable to have this manly avowal to compare with the delicate allusion which Scott makes to the affair in his Preface to the Novel.

The only other friends originally intrusted with his secret appear to have been Mr Erskine and Mr Morritt. I know not at what stage the former altered the opinion which he formed on seeing the tiny fragment of 1805.

298

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

The latter did not, as we have seen, receive the book until it was completed; but he anticipated, before he closed the first volume, the station which public opinion would ultimately assign to Waverley. “How the story may continue,” Mr Morritt then wrote, “I am not able to divine; but, as far as I have read, pray let us thank you for the Castle of Tully-Veolan, and the delightful drinking-bout at Lucky Mac-Leary’s, for the characters of the Laird of Balmawhapple and the Baron of Bradwardine: and no less for Davie Gellatly, whom I take to be a transcript of William Rose’s motley follower, commonly yclept Caliban.* If the completion be equal to what we have just devoured, it deserves a place among our standard works far better than its modest appearance and anonymous titlepage will at first gain it in these days of prolific story-telling. Your manner of narrating is so different from the slipshod sauntering verbiage of common novels, and from the stiff, precise, and prim sententiousness of some of our female moralists, that I think it can’t fail to strike any body who knows what style means; but, amongst the gentle class, who swallow every blue-backed book in a circulating library for the sake of the story, I should fear half the knowledge of nature it contains, and all the real humour, may be thrown away. Sir Everard, Mrs Rachael, and the Baron, are, I think, in the first rank of portraits for nature and character; and I could depone to their likeness in any court of taste. The ballad of St Swithin, and scraps of old songs, were measures of danger, if you meant to continue your concealment; but, in truth, you

* Of David Hinves, Mr Rose’s faithful and affectionate attendant, here alluded to, the reader will find some notices hereafter; for when he appeared at Abbotsford in my time he seemed to be considered by Scott, not in the light of an ordinary servant, but as the friend of his master, and consequently as his own friend too.

LETTERS ON WAVERLEY—1814.

299

wear your disguise something after the manner of Bottom, the weaver; and in spite of you the truth will soon peep out.” And next day he resumes,—“We have finished Waverley, and were I to tell you all my admiration, you would accuse me of complimenting. You have quite attained the point which your postscript-preface mentions as your object—the discrimination of Scottish character, which had hitherto been slurred over with clumsy national daubing.” He adds, a week or two later,—“After all, I need not much thank you for your confidence. How could you have hoped that I should not discover you? I had heard you tell half the anecdotes before some turns you owe to myself; and no doubt most of your friends must have the same sort of thing to say.”

Monk Lewis’s letter on the subject is so short, that I must give it as it stands:

Another friend (and he had, I think, none more dear), the late Margaret Maclean Clephane of Torloisk, afterwards Marchioness of Northampton, writes thus from Kirkness, in Kinross-shire, on the 11th October:—“In

300

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

this place I feel a sort of pleasure, not unallied to pain, from the many recollections that every venerable tree, and every sunny bank, and every honeysuckle bower occasions; and I have found something here that speaks to me in the voice of a valued friend—Waverley. The question that rises, it is perhaps improper to give utterance to. If so, let it pass as an exclamation.—Is it possible that Mr Erskine can have written it? The poetry, I think, would prove a different descent in any court in Christendom. The turn of the phrases in many places is so peculiarly yours, that I fancy I hear your voice repeating them; and there wants but verse to make all Waverley an enchanting poem—varying to be sure from grave to gay, but with so deepening an interest as to leave an impression on the mind that few very few poems could awaken.—But, why did not the author allow me to be his Gaelic Dragoman? Oh! Mr ——, whoever you are, you might have safely trusted M. M. C.”

There was one person with whom it would, of course, have been more than vain to affect any concealment. On the publication of the third edition, I find him writing thus to his brother Thomas, who had by this time gone to Canada as paymaster of the 70th regiment:—“Dear Tom, a novel here, called Waverley, has had enormous success. I sent you a copy, and will send you another, with the Lord of the Isles, which will be out at Christmas. The success which it has had, with some other circumstances, has induced people

‘To lay the bantling at a certain door, Where laying store of faults, they’d fain heap more.’

You will guess for yourself how far such a report has credibility; but by no means give the weight of your opinion to the Transatlantic public; for you must know there is also a counter-report, that you have written the

LETTERS ON WAVERLEY—1814.

301

said Waverley. Send me a novel intermixing your exuberant and natural humour, with any incidents and descriptions of scenery you may see particularly with characters and traits of manners. I will give it all the cobbling that is necessary, and, if you do but exert yourself, I have not the least doubt it will be worth L.500; and, to encourage you, you may, when you send the MS., draw on me for L.100, at fifty days’ sight so that your labours will at any rate not be quite thrown away. You have more fun and descriptive talent than most people; and all that you want—i. e. the mere practice of composition—I can supply, or the devil’s in it. Keep this matter a dead secret, and look knowing when Waverley is spoken of. If you are not Sir John Falstaff, you are as good a man as he, and may therefore face Colville of the Dale. You may believe I don’t want to make you the author of a book you have never seen; but if people will, upon their own judgment suppose so, and also on their own judgment give you L.500 to try your hand on a novel, I don’t see that you are a pin’s-point the worse. Mind that your MS. attends the draft. I am perfectly serious and confident, that in two or three months you might clear the cobs. I beg my compliments to the hero who is afraid of Jeffrey’s scalping-knife.”

In truth, no one of Scott’s intimate friends ever had, or could have had, the slightest doubt as to the parentage of Waverley: nor, although he abstained from communicating the fact formally to most of them, did he ever affect any real concealment in the case of such persons; nor, when any circumstance arose which rendered the withholding of direct confidence on the subject incompatible with perfect freedom of feeling on both sides, did he hesitate to make the avowal.

Nor do I believe that the mystification ever answered

302

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

much purpose, among literary men of eminence beyond the circle of his personal acquaintance. But it would be difficult to suppose that he had ever wished that to be otherwise; it was sufficient for him to set the mob of readers at gaze, and above all, to escape the annoyance of having productions, actually known to be his, made the daily and hourly topics of discussion in his presence. Mr Jeffrey had known Scott from his youth and, in reviewing Waverley, he was at no pains to conceal his conviction of its authorship. He quarrelled, as usual, with carelessness of style, and some artificialities of plot, but rendered justice to the substantial merits of the work, in language which I shall not mar by abridgement. The Quarterly was far less favourable in its verdict. Indeed, the articles on Waverley, and afterwards on Guy Mannering, which appeared in that journal, will bear the test of ultimate opinion as badly as any critical pieces which our time has produced. They are written in a captious, cavilling strain of quibble, which shows as complete blindness to the essential interest of the narrative, as the critic betrays on the subject of the Scottish dialogue, which forms its liveliest ornament, when he pronounces that to be “a dark dialogue of Anglified Erse.” With this remarkable exception, the professional critics were, on the whole, not slow to confess their belief that, under a hackneyed name and trivial form, there had at last appeared a work of original creative genius, worthy of being placed by the side of the very few real masterpieces of prose fiction. Loftier romance was never blended with easier, quainter humour, by Cervantes himself. In his familiar delineations, he had combined the strength of Smollett with the native elegance and unaffected pathos of Goldsmith; in his darker scenes, he had revived that real tragedy which appeared to have left our stage with the age of Shakspeare; and elements

JAMES BALLANTYNE TO MISS EDGEWORTH.

303

of interest so diverse had been blended and interwoven with that nameless grace which, more surety perhaps than even the highest perfection in the command of any one strain of sentiment, marks the master-mind cast in Nature’s most felicitous mould.

Scott, with the consciousness avowed long afterwards in his General Preface that he should never in all likelihood have thought of a Scotch novel had he not read Maria Edgeworth’s exquisite pieces of Irish character, desired James Ballantyne to send her a copy of Waverley on its first appearance, inscribed “from the author.” Miss Edgeworth, whom Scott had never then seen, though some literary correspondence had passed between them, thanked the nameless novelist, under cover to Ballantyne, with the cordial generosity of kindred genius; and the following answer, not from Scott, but from Ballantyne—(who had kept a copy, now before me)—is not to be omitted:—