| 160 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
Before Marmion was published, a heavy task, begun earlier than the poem and continued
throughout its progress, had been nearly completed; and there appeared in the last week of
April, 1808, “The Works of John Dryden, now
first collected; illustrated with notes historical, critical, and explanatory, and a
Life of the Author. By Walter Scott, Esq.
Eighteen volumes, 8vo.” This was the bold speculation of William Miller of Albemarle Street, London; and the editor’s fee, at
forty guineas the volume, was L.756. The bulk of the collection, the neglect into which a
majority of the pieces included in it had fallen, the obsoleteness of the party politics
which had so largely exercised the author’s pen, and the indecorum, not seldom
running into flagrant indecency, by which transcendant genius had ministered to the
appetites of a licentious age, all combined to make the warmest of
Scott’s friends and admirers doubt whether even his skill
and reputation would be found sufficient to ensure the success of this undertaking. It was,
how
| EDITION OF DRYDEN 1808. | 161 |
This edition of Dryden was criticised in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1808, with great ability, and,
on the whole, with admirable candour. The industry and perspicacity with which Scott had carried through his editorial researches and
annotations were acknowledged in terms which, had he known the name of his reviewer, must
have been doubly gratifying to his feelings; and it was confessed that, in the life of his
author, he had corrected with patient honesty, and filled up with lucid and expansive
detail, the sometimes careless and often naked outline of Johnson’s masterly Essay on the same subject. It would be superfluous to quote in this place a
specimen of critical skill which has already enjoyed such wide circulation, and which will
hereafter, no doubt, be included in the miscellaneous prose works of Hallam. The points of political
faith on which that great writer dissents from the editor of Dryden,
would, even if I had the inclination to pursue such a discussion, lead me far astray from
the immediate object of these pages; they embrace questions on which the best and wisest of
our countrymen will probably continue to take opposite sides, as long as our past history
excites a living interest, and our literature is that of an active nation. On the poetical
character of Dryden I think the editor and his critic will be found to
have expressed substantially much the same judgment; when they appear to differ the battle
strikes me as being about words rather than things, as is likely
| 162 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
I wish I could believe that Scott’s labours had been sufficient to recall Dryden to his rightful station, not in the opinion of those who make literature the business or chief solace of their lives—for with them he had never forfeited it—but in the general favour of the intelligent public. That such has been the case, however, the not rapid sale of two editions, aided as they were by the greatest of living names, can be no proof; nor have I observed among the numberless recent speculations of the English booksellers, a single reprint of even those tales, satires, and critical essays, not to be familiar with which would? in the last age, have been considered as disgraceful in any one making the least pretension to letters. In the hope of exciting the curiosity, at least, of some of the thousands of young persons who seem to be growing up in contented ignorance of one of the greatest of our masters, I shall transcribe what George Ellis, whose misgivings about Scott’s edition, when first undertaken, had been so serious, was pleased to write some months after its completion.
“I must confess that I took up the book with some
degree of trepidation, considering an edition of such a
| ELLIS ON THE EDITION OF DRYDEN. | 163 |
To return for a moment to Scott’s Biography of
Dryden—the only life of a great poet which he has left us, and also his only
detailed work on the personal
| 164 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
There are grave lessons which that story was not needed to enforce upon
his mind; he required no such beacon to make him revolt from paltering with the dignity of
woman, or the passions of youth, or insulting by splenetic levities the religious
convictions of any portion of his countrymen. But Dryden’s prostitution of his genius to the petty bitternesses of
political warfare, and the consequences both as to the party he served, and the antagonists
he provoked, might well supply matter for serious consideration to the author of the Melville song. “Where,”
says Scott, “is the expert swordsman that does
not delight in the flourish of his weapon? and a brave man will least of all withdraw
himself from his ancient standard when the tide of battle beats against it.”
But he says also,—and I know enough of his own then recent experiences, in his intercourse
| LIFE OF DRYDEN. | 165 |
It is curious enough to compare the hesitating style of his apology for
that tinge of evanescent superstition which seems to have clouded occasionally Dryden’s bright and solid mind, with the open avowal
that he has “pride in recording his author’s decided admiration of old
ballads and popular tales;” and perhaps his personal feelings were hardly
less his prompter where he dismisses with brief scorn the sins of negligence and haste,
which had been so often urged against Dryden.
“Nothing,” he says, “is so easily attained as the power of
presenting the extrinsic qualities of fine painting, fine music, or fine poetry; the
beauty of colour and outline, the combination of notes, the melody of versification,
may be imitated by artists of mediocrity; and many will view, hear, or peruse their
performances, without being able positively to discover why they should not, since
composed according to all the rules, afford pleasure equal to those of Raphael, Handel, or Dryden. The deficiency lies in the
vivifying spirit which, like alcohol, may be reduced to the same
principle in all the fine arts. The
| 166 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
I conclude with a passage, in writing which he seems to have anticipated
the only serious critical charge that was ever brought against his edition of Dryden as a whole—namely, the loose and
irregular way in which
| LIFE OF DRYDEN. | 167 |
On the whole it is impossible to doubt that the success of Dryden in rapidly reaching, and till the end of a long life holding undisputed, the summit of public favour and reputation, in spite of his “brave neglect” of minute finishing, narrow laws, and prejudiced authorities, must have had a powerful effect in nerving Scott’s hope and resolution for the wide ocean of literary enterprise into which he had now fairly launched his bark. Like Dryden, he felt himself to be “amply stored with acquired knowledge, much of it the fruits of early reading and application;” anticipated that, though, “while engaged in the hurry of composition, or overcome by the lassitude of continued literary labour,” he should sometimes “draw with too much liberality on a tenacious memory,” no “occasional imperfections would deprive him of his praise;” in short, made up his mind that “pointed and nicely-turned lines, sedulous study, and long and repeated correction and revision,” would all be dispensed with, provided their place were supplied, as in Dryden, by “rapidity of conception, a readiness of expressing every idea, without losing any thing by the way,” “perpetual animation and elasticity of thought;” and language “never laboured, never loitering, never (in Dryden’s own phrase) cursedly confined.”
| 168 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
Scott’s correspondence, about the time when his Dryden was published, is a good deal occupied with a wild project of his friend Henry Weber—that of an extensive edition of our Ancient Metrical Romances, for which, in their own original dimensions, the enthusiastic German supposed the public appetite to have been set on edge by the “Specimens” of Ellis, and imperfectly gratified by the text of Sir Tristrem. Scott assured him that Ellis’s work had been popular, rather in spite than by reason of the antique verses introduced here and there among his witty and sparkling prose; while Ellis told him, with equal truth, that the Tristrem had gone through two editions, simply owing to the celebrity of its editor’s name; and that, of a hundred that had purchased the book, ninety-nine had read only the preface and notes, but not one syllable of True Thomas’s “quaint Inglis.” Weber, in reply to Ellis, alleged that Scott had not had leisure to consider his plan so fully as it deserved; that nothing could prevent its success, provided Scott would write a preliminary essay, and let his name appear in the title-page, along with his own; and though Scott wholly declined this last proposal, he persisted for some months in a negotiation with the London booksellers, which ended as both his patrons had foreseen.
“But how is this?”—(Ellis writes)—“Weber tells
me he is afraid Mr Scott will not be able to do any
thing for the recommendation of his Romances, because he is himself engaged in no less
than five different literary enterprises, some of them of immense extent. Five? Why, no
combination of blood and bone can possibly stand this; and Sir John Sinclair, however successful in pointing out the best modes of
feeding common gladiators, has not discovered the means of training minds to such
endless fatigue. I dare not ask you for an account of these projects, nor even for a
letter during the continuance of this
| WEBER’S ROMANCES, ETC.—1808. | 169 |
The poet answers as follows:—“My giving my name to
Weber’s Romances is out of the
question, as assuredly I have not time to do any thing that can entitle it
to stand in his titlepage; but I will do all I can for him in the business.
By the by, I wish he would be either more chary in his communications on
the subject of my employments, or more accurate. I often employ his
assistance in making extracts, &c., and I may say to him as Lord Ogleby does to Canton, that he never sees me badiner a little with a subject, but he suspects mischief—to wit,
an edition. In the mean time, suffice it to say, that I have done with
poetry for some time—it is a scourging crop, and ought not to be hastily
repeated. Editing, there-
| 170 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
This letter is dated Ashestiel, October 8, 1808; but it carries us back
to the month of April, when the Dryden was
completed. His engagements with London publishers respecting the Somers and the Sadler, were, I believe, entered into before the end of 1807; but Constable appears to have first ascertained them, when he
accompanied the second cargo of Marmion to
the great southern market; and, alarmed at the prospect of losing his hold on Scott’s industry, he at once invited him to follow up
his Dryden by an Edition
of Swift on the same scale,—offering, moreover, to double the rate of payment
which he had contracted for with the London publisher of the Dryden;
that is to say, to give him L.1500 for the new undertaking. This munificent tender was
accepted without hesitation; and as early as May, I find Scott writing
to his literary allies
| EDITIONS OF SWIFT, CARLETON, ETC. | 171 |
But these were not his only tasks during the summer and autumn of 1808; and if he had not “five different enterprises” on his hands when Weber said so to Ellis, he had more than five very soon after. He edited this year, Strutt’s unfinished romance of Queenhoo-Hall, and equipped the fourth volume with a conclusion in the fashion of the original;* but how little he thought of this matter may be guessed from one of his notes to Ballantyne, in which he says, “I wish you would see how far the copy of Queenhoo-Hall, sent last night, extends, that I may not write more nonsense than enough.” The publisher of this work was John Murray, of London. It was immediately preceded by a reprint of Captain Carleton’s Memoirs of the War of the Spanish Succession, to which he gave a lively preface and various notes; and followed by a similar edition of the Memoirs of Robert Cary Earl of Monmouth,—each
* See General Preface to Waverley, pp. xiv-xvii. and Appendix No. II. p. lxv. |
| 172 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
The republication of Carleton,* Johnson’s eulogy of which fills a pleasant page in Boswell, had probably been suggested by the lively interest which Scott took in the first outburst of Spanish patriotism consequent on Napoleon’s transactions at Bayonne. There is one passage in the preface which I must indulge myself by transcribing. Speaking of the absurd recall of Peterborough, from the command in which he had exhibited such a wonderful combination of patience and prudence with military daring, he says:—“One ostensible reason was, that Peterborough’s parts were of too lively and mercurial a quality, and that his letters showed more wit than became a General;—a commonplace objection, raised by the dull malignity of commonplace minds, against those whom they see discharging with ease and indifference the tasks which they themselves execute (if at all) with the sweat of their brow and in the heaviness of their hearts. There is a certain hypocrisy in business, whether civil or military, as well as in religion, which they will do well to observe who, not satisfied with discharging their duty, desire also the good repute of men.” It was not long before some of the dull malignants of the Parliament House began to insinuate what at length found a dull and dignified mouthpiece in the House of Commons—that if a Clerk of Session had any real business to do, it could not be done well by a man who found time for more literary enterprises than any other author of the age undertook—“wrote more
* I believe it is now pretty generally believed that Carleton’s Memoirs were among the numberless fabrications of Defoe; but in this case, as in that of his Cavalier, he no doubt had before him the rude journal of some officer who had really served in the campaigns described with such an inimitable air of truth. |
| EDITORIAL PROJECTS, ETC.—1808. | 173 |
The eager struggling of the different booksellers to engage Scott at this time, is a very amusing feature in the voluminous correspondence before me. Had he possessed treble the energy for which it was possible to give any man credit, he could never have encountered a tithe of the projects that the post brought day after day to him, announced with extravagant enthusiasm, and urged with all the arts of conciliation. I shall mention only one out of at least a dozen gigantic schemes which were thus proposed before he had well settled himself to his Swift; and I do so, because something of the kind was a few years later carried into execution. This was a General Edition of British Novelists, beginning with De Foe and reaching to the end of the last century; to be set forth with biographical prefaces and illustrative notes by Scott, and printed of course by Ballantyne. The projector was Murray, who was now eager to start on all points in the race with Constable; but this was not, as we shall see presently, the only business that prompted my enterprising friend’s first visit to Ashestiel.
Conversing with Scott, many years
afterwards, about the tumult of engagements in which he was thus involved, he said,
“Ay, it was enough to tear me to pieces, but there was a wonderful
exhilaration about it all: my blood was kept at fever-pitch—I felt as if I could have
grappled with any thing and every thing; then, there was hardly one of all my schemes
that did not afford me the means of serving some poor devil of a brother author. There
were always huge piles of materials to be arranged, sifted, and indexed—volumes of
extracts to be transcribed—journeys to be made hither and thither,
| 174 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
| JOHN STRUTHERS. | 175 |
Every now and then, however, he had the rich compensation of finding that his interference had really promoted the worldly interests of some meritorious obscure. Early in 1808 he tasted this pleasure, in the case of a poetical shoemaker of Glasgow, Mr John Struthers, a man of rare worth and very considerable genius, whose “Poor Man’s Sabbath” was recommended to his notice by Joanna Baillie, and shortly after published, at his desire, by Mr Constable. He thus writes to Miss Baillie from Ashestiel, on the 9th of May, 1808:—
“Your letter found me in this quiet corner, and while
it always gives me pride and pleasure to hear from you, I am truly concerned at
Constable’s unaccountable
delays. I suppose that, in the hurry of his departure for London, his promise
to write to Mr Struthers had escaped; as
for any desire to quit his bargain, it is out of the question. If Mr
Struthers will send to my house in Castle Street, the manuscript
designed for the press, I will get him a short bill for the copy-money the
moment Constable returns, or perhaps before he comes down.
He may rely on the bargain being definitively settled, and the printing will, I
suppose, be begun immediately on the great bibliopolist’s return; on
which occasion I shall have, according to good old phrase, ‘a crow to
pluck with him, and a pock to put the feathers in.’ I heartily
wish we could have had the honour to see Miss
Agnes and you at our little farm, which is now in its glory—all
the twigs bursting into leaf, and all the lambs skipping on the hills. I have
been fishing almost from morning till night; and Mrs
Scott, and two ladies our guests, are wandering about on the
banks in the most Arcadian fashion in the world. We are just on the point of
setting out on a pilgrimage to the ‘bonny bush, aboon
Traquhair,’ which I believe will occupy us all the
| 176 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“P.S. We quit our quiet pastures to return to Edinburgh on the 10th. So Mr Struthers’ parcel will find me there, if he is pleased to intrust me with the care of it.”
Mr Struthers’ volume was unfortunate in
bearing a title so very like that of James
Grahame’s Sabbath, which, though not written sooner, had been published a year or two
before. This much interfered with its success, yet it was not on the whole unsuccessful: it
put some L.30 or L.40 into the pocket of a good man, to whom this was a considerable
supply; but it made his name and character known, and thus served him far more essentially;
for he wisely continued to cultivate his poetical talents without neglecting the
opportunity, thus afforded him through them, of pursuing his original calling under better
advantages. It is said that the solitary and meditative generation of cobblers have
produced a larger list of murders and other domestic crimes than any other mechanical
trade, except the butchers; but the sons of Crispin
have, to balance their account, a not less disproportionate catalogue of poets; and
foremost among these stands the pious author of the Poor Man’s Sabbath; one of the very few that
have had sense and fortitude to resist the innumerable temptations to which any measure of
celebrity exposes persons of their class. I believe Mr Struthers still
survives to enjoy the retrospect of a long and virtuous life. His letters to Scott are equally creditable to his taste and
| JAMES HOGG—1808. | 177 |
James Hogg was by this time beginning to be generally known and appreciated in Scotland; and the popularity of his “Mountain Bard” encouraged Scott to more strenuous intercession in his behalf. I have before me a long array of letters on this subject, which passed between Scott and the Earl of Dalkeith and his brother Lord Montagu, in 1808. Hogg’s prime ambition at this period was to procure an ensigncy in a militia regiment, and he seems to have set little by Scott’s representations that the pay of such a situation was very small, and that, if he obtained it, he would probably find his relations with his brother officers far from agreeable. There was, however, another objection which Scott could not hint to the aspirant himself, but which seems to have been duly considered by those who were anxious to promote his views. Militia officers of that day were by no means unlikely to see their nerves put to the test; and the Shepherd’s—though he wrote some capital war-songs, especially Donald Macdonald—were not heroically strung. This was in truth no secret among his early intimates, though he had not measured himself at all exactly on that score, and was even tempted, when he found there was no chance of the militia epaulette, to threaten that he would “list for a soldier” in a marching regiment. Notwithstanding at least one melancholy precedent, the excise, which would have suited him almost as badly as “hugging Brown Bess,” was next thought of; and the
* I am happy to learn, as this page passes through the press, from my friend Mr John Kerr of Glasgow, that about three years ago Mr Struthers was appointed keeper of Stirling’s Library, a collection of some consequence, in that city. The selection of him for this respectable situation reflects honour on the directors of the institution.—(December, 1836). |
| 178 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
The following is an extract from a letter of Scott’s to his brother Thomas, dated 20th June, 1808.
“Excellent news to-day from Spain—yet I wish the patriots had a
leader of genius and influence. I fear the Castilian nobility are more sunk than the common
people, and that it will be easier to find armies than generals. A Wallace, Dundee, or
Montrose, would be the man for Spain at this
moment. It is, however, a consolation that, though the grandees of the earth, when the post
of honour becomes the post of danger, may be less ambitious of occupying it, there may be
some hidalgo among the mountains of Asturias with all the spirit of the Cid Ruy Diaz, or Don
Pelayo, or Don Quixote if you will,
whose gallantry was only impeachable from the objects on which he exercised it. It strikes
me as
| MISS BAILLIE—MR MORRITT. | 179 |
“James Hogg has driven his pigs to a bad market. I am endeavouring, as a pis aller, to have him made an Excise officer, that station being, with respect to Scottish geniuses, the grave of all the Capulets. Witness Adam Smith, Burns, &c.”
I mentioned the name of Joanna
Baillie (for “who,” as Scott
says in a letter of this time, “ever speaks of Miss
Sappho?”) in connexion with the MS. of the Poor Man’s Sabbath. From Glasgow, where she had
found out Struthers in April, she proceeded to
Edinburgh, and took up her abode for a week or two under Scott’s
roof. Their acquaintance was thus knit into a deep and respectful affection on both sides;
and henceforth they maintained a close epistolary correspondence, which will, I think,
supply this compilation with some of the most interesting of its materials. But within a
few weeks after Joanna’s departure, he was to commence another
intimacy not less sincere and cordial; and when I name Mr
Morritt of Rokeby, I have done enough to prepare many of my readers to
expect not inferior gratification from the still more abundant series of letters in which,
from this time to the end of his life, Scott communicated his thoughts
and feelings to one of the most accomplished men that ever shared his confidence. He had
now reached a period of life after which real friendships are but seldom formed; and it is
fortunate that another English one had been thoroughly compacted before death cut the ties
between him and George Ellis—because his dearest
intimates within Scotland had
| 180 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
Several mutual friends had written to recommend Mr Morritt to his acquaintance—among others, Mr W. S. Rose and Lady Louisa Stuart. His answer to her ladyship I must insert here, for the sake of the late inimitable Lydia White, who so long ruled without a rival in the soft realm of blue Mayfair.
“Nothing will give us more pleasure than to have the
honour of showing every attention in our power to Mr and Mrs Morritt, and
I am particularly happy in a circumstance that at once promises me a great deal
of pleasure in the acquaintance of your Ladyship’s friends, and affords
me the satisfaction of hearing from you again. Pray don’t triumph over me
too much in the case of Lydia. I stood a
very respectable siege; but she caressed my wife, coaxed my children, and made,
by dint of cake and pudding, some impression even upon the affections of my
favourite dog:—so, when all the outworks were carried, the mere fortress had no
choice but to surrender on honourable terms. To the best of my thinking,
notwithstanding the cerulean hue of her stockings, and a most plentiful stock
of eccentric affectation, she is really at bottom a good-natured woman, with
much liveliness and some talent. She is now set out to the Highlands, where she
is likely to encounter many adventures. Mrs
Scott and I went as far as Loch Catrine with her, from which
jaunt I have just returned. We had most heavenly weather, which was peculiarly
favourable to my fair companions’ zeal for sketching every object that
fell in their way, from a castle to a pigeon-house. Did your Ladyship ever
| LETTER TO LADY LOUISA STUART. | 181 |
“It is not with my inclination that I fag for the
booksellers; but what can I do? My poverty, and not my will consents. The
income of my office is only reversionary, and my private fortune much limited.
My poetical success fairly destroyed my prospects of professional success, and
obliged me to retire from the bar; for though I had a competent share of
information and industry, who would trust their cause to the author of the
Lay of the Last Minstrel? How,
although I do allow that an author should take care of his literary character,
yet I think the least thing that his literary character can do in return is to
take some care of the author, who is unfortunately, like Jeremy in Love for Love,
furnished with a set of tastes and appetites which would do honour to the
income of a Duke if he had it. Besides, I go to work with Swift con
amore; for, like Dryden, he is an early favourite of mine. The Marmion is nearly out, and I have
made
| 182 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
Mr and Mrs Morritt reached Edinburgh soon after this letter was written. Scott showed them the lions of the town and its vicinity, exactly as if he had nothing else to attend to but their gratification; and Mr Morritt recollects with particular pleasure one long day spent in rambling along the Esk by Roslin and Hawthornden,
“Where Jonson sat in Drummond’s social shade,” |
“When we approached that village,” says the Memorandum
with which Mr Morritt favours me,
“Scott, who had laid hold of my arm,
turned along the road in a direction not leading to the place where the carriage was to
meet us. After walking some minutes towards Edinburgh, I suggested that we were losing
the scenery of the Esk, and, besides, had Dalkeith Palace yet to see.
‘Yes,’ said he, ‘and I have been bringing you where there
is little enough to be seen—only that Scotch cottage’ (one by the road
side, with a small garth); ‘but, though not worth looking at, I could not pass
it. It was our first country house when newly married, and many a contrivance we
had to make it comfortable. I made a dining-table for it with my own hands. Look at
these two miserable willow-trees on either side the gate into the enclosure; they
are tied together at the top to be an arch, and a cross made of two sticks over
| MR MORRITT—1808. | 183 |
“We passed a week in Edinburgh, chiefly in his society and that
of his friends the Mackenzies. We were so far on
our way to Brahan Castle, in Ross-shire. Scott
unlocked all his antiquarian lore, and supplied us with numberless data, such as no
guide-book could have furnished, and such as his own Monkbarns might have delighted to give. It would be idle to tell how
much plea-
| 184 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“At this period his conversation was more equal and animated
than any man’s that I ever knew. It was most characterised by the extreme
felicity and fun of his illustrations, drawn from the whole encyclopædia of life
and nature, in a style sometimes too exuberant for written narrative, but which to him
was natural and spontaneous. A hundred stories, always apposite, and often interesting
the mind by strong pathos, or eminently ludicrous, were daily told, which, with many
more, have since been transplanted, almost in the same language, into the Wa-
| MR MORRITT—1808. | 185 |
| 186 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
The farmer at whose annual kirn Scott and all his
household were, in those days, regular guests, was Mr
Laidlaw, the Duke of Buccleuch’s
tenant on the lands of Peel, which are only separated from the eastern terrace of Ashestiel
by the ravine and its brook. Mr Laidlaw was himself possessed of some
landed property in the same neighbourhood, and being considered as wealthy, and fond of his
wealth, he was usually called among the country people Laird
Nippy; an expressive designation which it would be difficult to
translate. Though a very dry, demure, and taciturn old presbyterian, he could not resist
the Sheriff’s jokes, nay, he even gradually subdued his scruples so far, as to become
a pretty constant attendant at his “English printed
prayers” on the Sundays; which, indeed, were by this time rather more popular
than quite suited the capacity of the parlour-chapel. Mr
Laidlaw’s wife was a woman of superior mind and manners—a great
reader, and one of the few to whom Scott liked lending his books; for
most strict and delicate was he always in the care of them, and indeed, hardly any trivial
occurrence ever seemed to touch his temper at all, except any thing like irreverent
treatment of a book. The intercourse between the family at Ashestiel and this worthy woman
and her children, was a constant interchange of respect and kindness; but I remember to
have heard Scott say that the greatest compliment he had ever received
in his life was from the rigid old farmer himself; for, years after he had left Ashestiel,
he disco-
| LAIRD NIPPY OF THE PEEL. | 187 |
And here I must set down a story which, most readers will smile to be
told, was often repeated by Scott; and always with an
air that seemed to me, in spite of his endeavours to the contrary, as grave as the usual
aspect of Laird Nippy of the Peel. This neighbour was a distant
kinsman of his dear friend William Laidlaw;—so
distant, that elsewhere in that condition they would scarcely have remembered any community
of blood; but they both traced their descent, in the ninth degree, to an ancestress who, in
the days of John Knox, fell into trouble from a
suspicion of witchcraft. In her time the Laidlaws were rich and
prosperous, and held rank among the best gentry of Tweeddale; but in some evil hour, her
husband, the head of his blood, reproached her with her addiction to the black art, and
she, in her anger, cursed the name and lineage of Laidlaw. Her only
son, who stood by, implored her to revoke the malediction; but in vain. Next day, however,
on the renewal of his entreaties, she carried him with her into the woods, made him slay a
heifer, sacrificed it to the power of evil in his presence, and then, collecting the ashes
in her apron, invited the youth to see her commit them to the river. “Follow
them,” said she, “from stream to pool, as long as they float
visible, and as many streams as you shall then have passed, for so many generations
shall your descendants prosper. After that they shall like the rest of the name be
poor, and take their part in my curse.” The streams he counted, were nine;
and now, Scott would say, “look round you in this country,
and sure enough the Laidlaws are one and all landless men, with
the single exception of Auld Nippy!” Many times had I
heard both him and William Laidlaw tell
| 188 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
Mr Morritt’s mention of the “happy young family clustered round him” at Laird Nippy’s kirn, reminds me that I ought to say a few words on Scott’s method of treating his children in their early days. He had now two boys and two girls;—and he never had more.* He was not one of those who take much delight in a mere infant; but no father ever devoted more time and tender care to his offspring than he did to each of his, as they successively reached the age when they could listen to him and understand his talk. Like their mute playmates, Camp and the greyhounds, they had at all times free access to his study; he never considered their tattle
* I may as well transcribe here the rest of the record in Scott’s family Bible. After what was quoted in a former chapter it thus proceeds: “24to die Octobris 1799. Margareta C. Scott, filiam apud Edinburgum edidit 15o Novembris 1799, in Ecclesiam Christianam recepta fuit per baptismum dicta filia, nomenque ei adjectum Charlotte Sophia, per virum reverendum Danielem Sandford; sponsoribus prænobili Arthuro Marchione de Downshire, Sophia Dumergue, et Anna Rutherford matre mea. “Margareta C. Scott puerum edidit 28vo Octobris A.D. 1801 apud Edinburgum; nomenque ei adjectum Gualterus, cum per v. rev. Doctorem Danielem Sandford baptizatus erat. “M. C. Scott filiam edidit apud Edinburgum 2do die February 1803, quæ in Ecclesiam recepta fuit per virum reverendum Doctorem Sandford, nomenque ei adjectum Anna Scott. “24to Decem: 1805. M. C. Scott apud Edinburgum puerum edidit; qui baptizatus erat per virum reverendum Joannem Thomson, Ministrum de Duddingstone prope Edinburgum, nomenque Carolus illi datum.” |
| DOMESTIC LIFE—EDUCATION—1808. | 189 |
Of the irregularity of his own education he speaks with considerable
regret, in the autobiographical fragment written this year at Ashestiel; yet his practice
does not look as if that feeling had been strongly rooted in his mind;—for he never did
show much concern about regulating systematically what is usually called education in the
case of his own children. It seemed, on the contrary, as if he attached little importance
to any thing else, so he could perceive that the young curiosity was excited̬the
intellect, by whatever springs of interest, set in motion. He detested and despised the
whole generation of modern children’s books, in which the attempt is made to convey
accurate notions of scientific minutiæ: delighting cordially, on the other hand, in
those of the preceding age, which, addressing themselves chiefly to
| 190 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
| DOMESTIC EDUCATION. | 191 |
By many external accomplishments, either in girl or boy, he set little store. He delighted to hear his daughters sing an old ditty, or one of his own framing; but, so the singer appeared to feel the spirit of her ballad, he was not at all critical of the technical execution. There was one thing, however, on which he fixed his heart hardly less than the ancient Persians of the Cyropædia; like them, next to love of truth, he held love of horsemanship for the prime point of education. As soon as his eldest girl could sit a pony, she was made the regular attendant of his mountain rides; and they all, as they attained sufficient strength, had the like advancement. He taught them to think nothing of tumbles, and habituated them to his own reckless delight in perilous fords and flooded streams; and they all imbibed in great perfection his passion for horses as well, I may venture to add, as his deep reverence for the more important article of that Persian training. “Without courage,” he said, “there cannot be truth; and without truth there can be no other virtue.”
He had a horror of boarding-schools; never allowed his girls to learn
any thing out of his own house; and chose their governess—(Miss
Miller)—who about this time was domesticated with them, and never left them
while they needed one,—with far greater regard to her kind good temper and excellent moral
and religious principles, than to the measure of her attainments in what are called
fashionable accomplishments. The admirable system of education for boys in Scotland
combines all the advantages of public and private instruction; his carried their satchels
to the High-School, when the family was in Edinburgh, just as he had done before them, and
shared of course the evening society of their happy home. But he rarely, if ever, left them
in town, when he could himself be in the country; and at Ashestiel he was, for
| 192 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
The following letter will serve, among other things, to supply a few more details of the domestic life of Ashestiel:—
“The law, you know, makes the husband answerable for
the debts of his wife, and therefore gives him a right to approach her
creditors with an offer of payment; so that, after witnessing many fruitless
and broken resolutions of my Charlotte, I am
determined, rather than she and I shall appear longer insensible of your
goodness, to intrude a few lines on you to answer the letter you honoured her
with some time ago. The secret reason of her procrastination is, I believe,
some terror of writing in English—which you know is not her native language—to
one who is as much distinguished by her command of it as by the purposes she
adapts it to. I wish we had the command of what my old friend Pitscottie calls ‘a blink of the sun
or a whip of the whirlwind,’ to transport you to this solitude
before the frost has stripped it of its leaves. It is not, indeed (even I must
confess), equal in picturesque beauty to the banks of Clyde and Evan; but it is
so sequestered, so simple, and so solitary, that it seems just to have beauty
enough to delight its inhabitants, without a single attraction for any visitor,
except those who come for its inhabitants’ sake. And in good sooth,
whenever I was tempted to envy the splendid scenery of the lakes of
Westmoreland, I always endeavoured to cure my fit of spleen by recollecting
that they attract as many idle, insipid, and indolent gazers as any
| LETTER TO JOANNA BAILLIE—SEPT. 1808. | 193 |
“Time has lingered with me from day to day in expectation of being called southward; I now begin to think my journey will hardly take place till winter, or early in spring. One of the most pleasant circumstances attending it will be the opportunity to pay my homage to you, and to claim withal a certain promise concerning a certain play, of which you were so kind as to promise me a reading. I hope you do not permit indolence to lay the paring of her little finger upon you; we cannot afford the interruption to your labours which even that might occasion. And ‘what are you doing?’ your politeness will perhaps lead you to say: in answer,—Why, I am very like a certain ancient King, distinguished in the Edda, who, when Lok paid him a visit,—
‘Was twisting of collars his dogs to hold, And combing the mane of his courser bold.’ |
| 194 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“P.S. I have had a visit from the author of the Poor Man’s Sabbath, whose affairs with Constable are, I hope, settled to his satisfaction. I got him a few books more than were originally stipulated, and have endeavoured to interest Lord Leven,* and through him Mr Wilberforce, and through them both the saints in general, in the success of this modest and apparently worthy man. Lord Leven has promised his exertions; and the interest of the party, if exerted, would save a work tenfold inferior in real merit. What think you of Spain? The days of William Wallace and the Cid Ruy Diaz de Bivar seem to be reviving there.”
|
* The late Earl of Leven had married a lady of the English family of Thornton, whose munificent charities are familiar to the readers of Cowper’s Life and Letters; hence, probably, his Lordship’s influence with the party alluded to in the text. |
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