Margaret Ball - Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature

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[Transcriber's note: All footnotes have been gathered at
the end of the text.]

SIR WALTER SCOTT

AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE

BY

MARGARET BALL, PH.D.

New York
THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
1907

Copyright, 1907
BY THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Printed from type November, 1907

PRESS OF
THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY
LANCASTER, PA.

PREFACE

The lack of any adequate discussion of Scott's critical work is a
sufficient reason for the undertaking of this study, the subject of
which was suggested to me more than three years ago by Professor Trent
of Columbia University. We still use critical essays and monumental
editions prepared by the author of the Waverley novels, but the
criticism has been so overshadowed by the romances that its importance
is scarcely recognized. It is valuable in itself, as well as in the
opportunity it offers of considering the relation of the critical to the
creative mood, an especially interesting problem when it is presented
concretely in the work of a great writer.

No complete bibliography of Scott's writings has been published, and
perhaps none is possible in the case of an author who wrote so much
anonymously. The present attempt includes some at least of the books and
articles commonly left unnoticed, which are chiefly of a critical or
scholarly character.

I am glad to record my gratitude to Professor William Allan Neilson, now
of Harvard University, and to Professors A.H. Thorndike, W.W. Lawrence,
G.P. Krapp, and J.E. Spingarn, of Columbia, for suggestions in
connection with various parts of the work. From the beginning Professor
Trent has helped me constantly by his advice as well as by the
inspiration of his scholarship, and my debt to him is one which can be
understood only by the many students who have known his kindness.

MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE,
June, 1907.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.

Introduction: An Outline of Scott's Literary Career 1

CHAPTER II.

Scott's Qualifications as Critic 9

CHAPTER III.

Scott's Work as Student and Editor in the Field of Literary History

1. The Mediaeval Period
(a) Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border 17
(b) Studies in the Romances 32
(c) Other Studies in Mediaeval Literature 40

2. The Drama 46

3. The Seventeenth Century: Dryden 59

4. The Eighteenth Century
(a) Swift 65
(b) The Somers Tracts 70
(c) The Lives of the Novelists, and Comments on other
Eighteenth Century Writers 72

CHAPTER IV.

Scott's Criticism of His Contemporaries 81

CHAPTER V.

Scott as a Critic of His Own Work 108

CHAPTER VI.

Scott's Position as Critic 134

APPENDICES

I. Bibliography of Scott, Annotated 147
II. List of Books Quoted 174
Index 179

A DATED LIST OF SCOTT'S BOOKS, ASIDE FROM THE POEMS AND NOVELS, AND OF
THE PRINCIPAL WORKS WHICH HE EDITED (PERIODICAL CRITICISM NOT INCLUDED).

1802-3 Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (edited).

1804 Sir Tristrem (edited).

1806 Original Memoirs written during the Great Civil War; the Life of
Sir H. Slingsby, and Memoirs of Capt. Hodgson (edited).

1808 Memoirs of Capt. Carleton (edited).

1808 The Works of John Dryden (edited).

1808 Memoirs of Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth, and Fragmenta Regalia
(edited).

1808 Queenhoo Hall, a Romance; and Ancient Times, a Drama (edited).

1809 The State Papers and Letters of Sir Ralph Sadler (edited).

1809-15 The Somers Tracts (edited).

1811 Memoirs of the Court of Charles II, by Count Grammont (edited).

1811 Secret History of the Court of James the First (edited).

1813 Memoirs of the Reign of King Charles I, by Sir Philip Warwick
(edited).

1814 The Works of Jonathan Swift (edited).

1814-17 The Border Antiquities of England and Scotland.

1816 Paul's Letters.

1818 Essay on Chivalry.

1819 Essay on the Drama.

1819-26 Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of Scotland.

1820 Trivial Poems and Triolets by Patrick Carey (edited).

1821 Northern Memoirs, calculated for the Meridian of Scotland; and
the Contemplative and Practical Angler (edited).

1821-24 The Novelists' Library (edited).

1822 Chronological Notes of Scottish Affairs from 1680 till 1701
(edited).

1822 Military Memoirs of the Great Civil War (edited).

1824 Essay on Romance.

1826 Letters of Malachi Malagrowther on the Currency.

1827 The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte.

1828 Tales of a Grandfather, first series.

1828 Religious Discourses, by a Layman.

1828 Proceedings in the Court-martial held upon John, Master of
Sinclair, etc. (edited).

1829 Memorials of George Bannatyne (edited).

1829 Tales of a Grandfather, second series.

1829-32 The "Opus Magnum" (Novels, Tales, and Romances, with
Introductions and Notes by the Author).

1830 Tales of a Grandfather, third series.

1830 Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft.

1830 History of Scotland.

1831 Tales of a Grandfather, fourth series.

1831 Trial of Duncan Terig, etc. (edited).

* * * * *

1890 The Journal of Sir Walter Scott.

1894 Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Importance of a study of Scott's critical and scholarly
work--Connection between his creative work and his
criticism--Chronological view of his literary career.

Scott's critical work has become inconspicuous because of his
predominant fame as an imaginative writer; but what it loses on this
account it perhaps gains in the special interest attaching to criticism
formulated by a great creative artist. One phase of his work is
emphasized and explained by the other, and we cannot afford to ignore
his criticism if we attempt fairly to comprehend his genius as a poet
and novelist. The fact that he is the subject of one of the noblest
biographies in our language only increases our obligation to become
acquainted with his own presentation of his artistic principles.

But though criticism by so great and voluminous a writer is valuable
mainly because of the important relation it bears to his other work, and
because of the authority it derives from this relation, Scott's
scholarly and critical writings are individual enough in quality and
large enough in extent to demand consideration on their own merits. Yet
this part of his achievement has received very little attention from
biographers and critics. Lockhart's book is indeed full of materials,
and contains also some suggestive comment on the facts presented; but as
the passing of time has made an estimation of Scott's power more safe,
students have lost interest in his work as a critic, and recent writers
have devoted little attention to this aspect of the great man of
letters.[1]

The present study is an attempt to show the scope and quality of Scott's
critical writings, and of such works, not exclusively or mainly
critical, as exhibit the range of his scholarship. For it is impossible
to treat his criticism without discussing his scholarship; since,
lightly as he carried it, this was of consequence in itself and in its
influence on all that he did. The materials for analysis are abundant;
and by rearrangement and special study they may be made to contribute
both to the history of criticism and to our comprehension of the power
of a great writer. In considering him from this point of view we are
bound to remember the connection between the different parts of his
vocation. In him, more than in most men of letters, the critic resembled
the creative writer, and though the critical temperament seems to show
itself but rarely in his romances, we find that the characteristic
absence of precise and conscious art is itself in harmony with his
critical creed.

The relation between the different parts of Scott's literary work is
exemplified by the subjects he treated, for as a critic he touched many
portions of the field, which in his capacity of poet and novelist he
occupied in a different way. He was a historical critic no less than a
historical romancer. A larger proportion of his criticism concerns
itself with the eighteenth century, perhaps, than of his fiction,[2] and
he often wrote reviews of contemporary literature, but on the whole the
literature with which he dealt critically was representative of those
periods of time which he chose to portray in novel and poem. This
evidently implies great breadth of scope. Yet Scott's vivid sense of the
past had its bounds, as Professor Masson pointed out.[3] It was the
"Gothic" past that he venerated. The field of his studies,
chronologically considered, included the period between his own time and
the crusades; and geographically, was in general confined to England and
Scotland, with comparatively rare excursions abroad. When, in his
novels, he carried his Scottish or English heroes out of Britain into
foreign countries, he was apt to bestow upon them not only a special
endowment of British feeling, but also a portion of that interest in
their native literature which marked the taste of their creator. We find
that the personages in his books are often distinguished by that love of
stirring poetry, particularly of popular and national poetry, which was
a dominant trait in Scott's whole literary career.

With Scotland and with popular poetry any discussion of Sir Walter
properly begins. The love of Scottish minstrelsy first awakened his
literary sense, and the stimulus supplied by ballads and romances never
lost its force. We may say that the little volumes of ballad chap-books
which he collected and bound up before he was a dozen years old
suggested the future editor, as the long poem on the Conquest of
Grenada, which he is said to have written and burned when he was
fifteen, foreshadowed the poet and romancer.

Yet Scott's career as an author began rather late. He published a few
translations when he was twenty-five years old, but his first notable
work, the _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, did not appear until
1802-3, when he was over thirty. This book, the outgrowth of his early
interest in ballads and his own attempts at versifying, exhibited both
his editorial and his creative powers. It led up to the publication of
two important volumes which contained material originally intended to
form part of the _Minstrelsy_, but which outgrew that work. These were
the edition of the old metrical romance _Sir Tristrem_, which showed
Scott as a scholar, and the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, the first of
Scott's own metrical romances. So far his literary achievement was all
of one kind, or of two or three kinds closely related. In this first
period of his literary life, perhaps even more than later, his editorial
impulse, his scholarly activity, was closely connected with the
inspiration for original writing. The _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ was the
climax of this series of enterprises.

With the publication of the _Minstrelsy_, Scott of course became known
as a literary antiquary. He was naturally called upon for help when the
_Edinburgh Review_ was started a few weeks afterwards, especially as
Jeffrey, who soon became the editor, had long been his friend. The
articles that he wrote during 1803 and 1804 were of a sort that most
evidently connected itself with the work he had been doing: reviews, for
example, of Southey's _Amadis de Gaul_, and of Ellis's _Early English
Poetry_. During 1805-6 the range of his reviewing became wider and he
included some modern books, especially two or three which offered
opportunity for good fun-making. About 1806, however, his aversion to
the political principles which dominated the _Edinburgh Review_ became
so strong that he refused to continue as a contributor, and only once,
years later, did he again write an article for that periodical.

In the same year, 1806, Scott supplied with editorial apparatus and
issued anonymously _Original Memoirs Written during the Great Civil
War_, the first of what proved to be a long list of publications having
historical interest, sometimes reprints, sometimes original editions
from old manuscripts, to which he contributed a greater or less amount
of material in the shape of introductions and notes. These were
undertaken in a few cases for money, in others simply because they
struck him as interesting and useful labors. It is easy to trace the
relation of this to his other work, particularly to the novels. He once
wrote to a friend, "The editing a new edition of _Somers's Tracts_ some
years ago made me wonderfully well acquainted with the little traits
which marked parties and characters in the seventeenth century, and the
embodying them is really an amusing task."[4] Among the works which he
edited in this way the number of historical memoirs is noticeable. After
the volume that has been mentioned as the first, he prepared another
book of _Memoirs of the Great Civil War_; and we find in the list a
_Secret History of the Court of James I._, _Memoirs of the Reign of King
Charles I._, Count Grammont's _Memoirs of the Court of Charles II._, _A
History of Queen Elizabeth's Favourites_, etc. Such books as these,
besides furnishing material for his novels, led Scott to acquire a mass
of information that enabled him to perform with great facility and with
admirable results whatever editorial work he might choose to undertake.

These labors Scott always considered as trifles to be dispatched in the
odd moments of his time, but the great edition of _Dryden's Complete
Works_, which he began to prepare soon after the _Minstrelsy_ appeared,
was more important. This, next to the _Minstrelsy_, was probably the
most notable of all Scott's editorial enterprises. It was published in
eighteen volumes in 1808, the year in which _Marmion_ also appeared.
When the poet was reproached by one of his friends for not working more
steadily at his vocation, he replied, "The public, with many other
properties of spoiled children, has all their eagerness after novelty,
and were I to dedicate my time entirely to poetry they would soon tire
of me. I must therefore, I fear, continue to edit a little."[5] His
interest in scholarly pursuits appears even in his first attempt at
writing prose fiction, since Joseph Strutt's unfinished romance,
_Queenhoo Hall_, for which Scott wrote a conclusion, is of consequence
only on account of the antiquarian learning which it exhibits.

Having become seriously alarmed over the political influence of the
_Edinburgh Review_, Scott was active in forwarding plans for starting a
strong rival periodical in London, and 1809 saw the establishment of the
_Quarterly Review_. By that time he had done a considerable amount of
work in practically every kind except the novel, and he was recognized
as a most efficient assistant and adviser in any such enterprise as the
promoters of the _Quarterly_ were undertaking. Moreover, his own
writings were prominent among the books which supplied material for the
reviewer. He worked hard for the first volume. But after that year he
wrote little for the _Quarterly_ until 1818, and again little until
after Lockhart became editor in 1825. From that time until 1831 he was
an occasional contributor.

1814 was the year of _Waverley_. Before that the poems had been
appearing in rapid succession, and Scott had been busy with the _Works
of Swift_, which came out also in 1814. The thirteen volumes of the
edition of _Somers' Tracts_, already mentioned, and several smaller
books, bore further witness to his editorial energy. The last of the
long poems was published in 1815, about the same time with _Guy
Mannering_, the second novel, and after that the novels continued to
appear with that rapidity which constitutes one of the chief facts of
Scott's literary career. For a few years after this period he did
comparatively little in the way of editorial work, but his odd moments
were occupied in writing about history, travels, and antiquities.[6]

In 1820 Scott wrote the _Lives of the Novelists_, which appeared the
next year in Ballantyne's _Novelists' Library_. By this time he had
begun, with _Ivanhoe_, to strike out from the Scottish field in which
all his first novels had been placed. The martial pomp prominent in this
novel reflects the eager interest with which he was at that time
following his son's opening career in the army; just as _Marmion_,
written by the young quartermaster of the Edinburgh Light Horse, also
expresses the military ardor which was so natural to Scott, and which
reminds us of his remark that in those days a regiment of dragoons was
tramping through his head day and night. Probably we might trace many a
reason for his literary preoccupations at special times besides those
that he has himself commented upon. In the case of the critical work,
however, the matter was usually determined for him by circumstances of a
much less intimate sort, such as the appeal of an editor or the
appearance of a book which excited his special interest.

When Scott was obliged to make as much money as possible he wrote novels
and histories rather than criticism. His _Life of Napoleon Buonaparte_,
which appeared in nine volumes in 1827, enabled him to make the first
large payment on the debts that had fallen upon him in the financial
crash of the preceding year, and the _Tales of a Grandfather_ were among
the most successful of his later books. His critical biographies and
many of his other essays were brought together for the first time in
1827, and issued under the title of _Miscellaneous Prose Works_. The
world of books was making his life weary with its importunate demands in
those years when he was writing to pay his debts, and it is pleasant to
see that some of his later reviews discussed matters that were not less
dear to his heart because they were not literary. The articles on
fishing, on ornamental gardening, on planting waste lands, remind us of
the observation he once made, that his oaks would outlast his laurels.

By this time the "Author of Waverley" was no longer the "unknown." His
business complications compelled him to give his name to the novels, and
with the loss of a certain kind of privacy he gained the freedom of
which later he made such fortunate use in annotating his own works. From
the beginning of 1828 until the end of his life in 1832, Scott was
engaged, in the intervals of other occupations, in writing these
introductions and notes for his novels, for an edition which he always
called the _Opus Magnum_. This was a pleasant task, charmingly done.
Indeed we may call it the last of those great editorial labors by which
Scott's fame might live unsupported by anything else. First came the
_Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, then the editions of Dryden and
Swift. Next we may count the _Lives of the Novelists_, even in the
fragmentary state in which the failure of the _Novelists' Library_ left
them; and finally the _Opus Magnum_. When, in addition, we remember the
mass of his critical work written for periodicals, and the number of
minor volumes he edited, it becomes evident that a study of Scott which
disregards this part of his work can present only a one-sided view of
his achievement. And the qualities of his abundant criticism, especially
its large fresh sanity, seem to make it worthy of closer analysis than
it usually receives, not only because it helps to reveal Scott's genius,
but also on account of the historical and ethical importance which
always attaches to the ideals, literary and other, of a noble man and a
great writer.

CHAPTER II

SCOTT'S QUALIFICATIONS AS CRITIC

Wide reading Scott's first qualification--Scott the
antiquary--Character of his interest in history--His
imagination--His knowledge of practical affairs--Common-sense in
criticism--Cheerfulness, good-humor, and optimism--General aspect of
Scott's critical work.

Wide and appreciative reading was Scott's first qualification for
critical work. A memory that retained an incredible amount of what he
read was the second. One of the severest censures he ever expressed was
in regard to Godwin, who, he thought, undertook to do scholarly work
without adequate equipment. "We would advise him," Scott said in his
review of Godwin's _Life of Chaucer_, "in future to read before he
writes, and not merely while he is writing." Scott himself had
accumulated a store of literary materials, and he used them according to
the dictates of a temperament which had vivid interests on many sides.

We may distinguish three points of view which were habitual to Scott,
and which determined the direction of his creative work, as well as the
tone of his criticism. These were--as all the world knows--the
historical, the romantic, the practical.

He was, as he often chose to call himself, an antiquary; he felt the
appeal of all that was old and curious. But he was much more than that.
The typical antiquary has his mind so thoroughly devoted to the past
that the present seems remote to him. The sheer intellectual capacity of
such a man as Scott might be enough to save him from such a limitation,
for he could give to the past as much attention as an ordinary man could
muster, and still have interest for contemporary affairs; but his
capacity was not all that saved Scott. He viewed the past always as
filled with living men, whose chief occupation was to think and feel
rather than to provide towers and armor for the delectation of future
antiquaries.[7] A sympathetic student of his work has said, "There is
... throughout the poetry of this author, even when he leads us to the
remotest wildernesses and the most desolate monuments of antiquity, a
constant reference to the feelings of man in his social condition."[8]
The past, to the author of _Kenilworth_, was only the far end of the
present, and he believed that the most useful result of the study of
history is a comprehension of the real quality of one's own period and a
wisdom in the conduct of present day affairs.[9]

The favorite pursuits of Scott's youth indicate that his characteristic
taste showed itself early; indeed it is said that he retained his boyish
traits more completely than most people do. We can trace much of his
love of the past to the family traditions which made the adventurous
life of his ancestors vividly real to him. The annals of the Scotts were
his earliest study, and he developed such an affection for his
freebooting grandsires that in his manhood he confessed to an
unconquerable liking for the robbers and captains of banditti of his
romances, characters who could not be prevented from usurping the place
of the heroes. "I was always a willing listener to tales of broil and
battle and hubbub of every kind," he wrote in later life, "and now I
look back upon it, I think what a godsend I must have been while a boy
to the old Trojans of 1745, nay 1715, who used to frequent my father's
house, and who knew as little as I did for what market I was laying up
the raw materials of their oft-told tales."[10] What attracted him in
his boyhood, and what continued to attract him, was the picturesque
incident, the color of the past, the mere look of its varied activity.
The philosophy of history was gradually revealed to him, however, and
his generalizing faculty found congenial employment in tracing out the
relation of men to movements, of national impulses to world history. But
however much he might exercise his analytical powers, history was never
abstract to him, nor did it require an effort for him to conjure up
scenes of the past. An acquaintance with the stores of early literature
served to give him the spirit of remote times as well as to feed his
literary tastes. On this side he had an ample equipment for critical
work, conditioned, of course, by the other qualities of his mind, which
determined how the equipment should be used.

That Scott was not a dull digger in heaps of ancient lore was owing to
his imaginative power,--the second of the qualities which we have
distinguished as dominating his literary temperament. "I can see as many
castles in the clouds as any man," he testified.[11] A recent writer has
said that Scott had more than any other man that ever lived a sense of
the romantic, and adds that his was that true romance which "lies not
upon the outside of life, but absolutely in the centre of it."[12] The
situations and the very objects that he described have the power of
stirring the romantic spirit in his readers because he was alive to the
glamour surrounding anything which has for generations been connected
with human thoughts and emotions. The subjectivity which was so
prominent an element in the romanticism of Shelley, Keats, and Byron,
does not appear in Scott's work. Nor was his sense of the mystery of
things so subtle as that of Coleridge. But Scott, rather than Coleridge,
was the interpreter to his age of the romantic spirit, for the ordinary
person likes his wonders so tangible that he may know definitely the
point at which they impinge upon his consciousness. In Scott's work the
point of contact is made clear: the author brings his atmosphere not
from another world but from the past, and with all its strangeness it
has no unearthly quality. In general the romance of his nature is rather
taken for granted than insisted on, for there are the poems and the
novels to bear witness to that side of his temperament; and the
surprising thing is that such an author was a business man, a large
landowner, an industrious lawyer.[13]

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