Margaret Ball - Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature

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Aside from the familiar knowledge of ancient manners which he thought
enabled him to give his tales the necessary touch of novelty, and from
the "hurried frankness," or spontaneity of style which endowed them with
vitality, Scott believed that his talents included a special knack at
description. He felt, however, that a sense of the picturesque in action
was a different thing from a similar perception in regard to scenery,
and that though the first was natural to him, he was obliged to use
effort to develop the second.[440] Some study of drawing in his youth
helped him to comprehend the demands of perspective, and he endeavored
to carry out the principle of describing a scene in the way in which it
would naturally strike the spectator, neither overloading with confused
detail nor over-emphasizing what should be subordinate.[441] That his
plan was consciously adopted may be seen from his discussion of Byron's
skill in description and from his comments on the descriptive passages
of the mediaeval romances.[442]

At the same time he understood the advantages of the realistic method.
On one occasion he stated as his creed, "that in nature herself no two
scenes were exactly alike, and that whoever copied truly what was before
his eyes would possess the same variety in his descriptions, and exhibit
apparently an imagination as boundless as the range of nature in the
scenes he recorded; whereas, whoever trusted to imagination would soon
find his own mind circumscribed and contracted to a few favourite
images, and the repetition of these would sooner or later produce that
very monotony and barrenness which had always haunted descriptive poetry
in the hands of any but the patient worshippers of truth."[443]
Wordsworth disapproved of Scott's method in description. He is quoted as
having said: "Nature does not permit an inventory to be made of her
charms! He should have left his pencil and note-book at home [and] fixed
his eye as he walked with a reverent attention on all that surrounded
him."[444] Somewhat like a rejoinder sounds another remark of Scott's,
in phrases that Wordsworth would have detested. Scott said cheerfully,
"As to the actual study of nature, if you mean the landscape gardening
of poetry ... I can get on quite as well from recollection, while
sitting in the Parliament house, as if wandering through wood and
wold."[445] At another time he said, "If a man will paint from nature,
he will be likely to amuse those who are daily looking at it."[446]

Though Scott prided himself somewhat on his descriptive powers he
realized that he could not do his best work on minute canvases. We have
already seen how he contrasted himself with Jane Austen. "The exquisite
touch," he said, "which renders ordinary commonplace things and
characters interesting from the truth of the description and the
sentiment, is denied to me."[447]

Of Scott's opinion in regard to the ethical effect of novels, I have
already spoken.[448] The fact that he refused to use the conventional
plea of a desire to improve public morals, and that he understood how
little a reader is really influenced by the exalted sentiments of heroes
of fiction, gave Carlyle a fit of righteous indignation;[449] but it is
futile to say that Scott "had no message to deliver to the world." He
might have retorted, in the words which he once used about
Homer,--"Doubtless an admirable moral may be often extracted from his
poem; because it contains an accurate picture of human nature, which can
never be truly presented without conveying a lesson of instruction. But
it may shrewdly be suspected that the moral was as little intended by
the author as it would have been the object of an historian, whose work
is equally pregnant with morality, though a detail of facts be only
intended."[450] It was a comfort to Scott at the end of his life to
reflect that the tendency of all he had written was morally good,[451]
and we can well believe that he was pleased by the enthusiastic tribute
of his young critic, J.L. Adolphus, who said of his books: "There is not
an unhandsome action or degrading sentiment recorded of any person who
is recommended to the full esteem of the reader."[452]

That Scott considered poetical power very important for a writer of
novels, he made evident in his _Lives of the Novelists_. Mr. Herford has
said, but surely without good reason, that Scott wholly lacked the sense
of mystery, and that in this respect Mrs. Radcliffe was more modern than
he.[453] Yet it was Scott who censured Mrs. Radcliffe for explaining her
mysteries. He had a vein of superstition in his nature, too, about which
he might have said, using the words given to a character in one of his
stories,--"It soothes my imagination, without influencing my reason or
conduct."[454] A liking for the wonderful and terrible, which he felt
from his earliest childhood, was one manifestation of a poetical
temperament which is so apparent that there is no need of reciting the
evidence. The poetical qualities in the Waverley novels gave Adolphus
one of his favorite arguments in the attempt to prove that Scott was the
author.

Yet Scott seemed to feel that his position as a writer of popular
fiction, however much the novel is capable of being the vehicle of
imagination and poetical power, was not a really high one. James
Ballantyne persuaded him to omit from one of his introductions a passage
that seemed to belittle the occupation of his life,[455] but in the
introduction to _The Abbot_ he wrote: "Though it were worse than
affectation to deny that my vanity was satisfied at my success in the
department in which chance had in some measure enlisted me, I was
nevertheless far from thinking that the novelist or romance-writer
stands high in the ranks of literature." The ideal which he set for
himself is indicated in the following passage of his article on _Tales
of My Landlord_: "If ... the features of an age gone by can be recalled
in a spirit of delineation at once faithful and striking ... the
composition is in every point of view dignified and improved; and the
author, leaving the light and frivolous associates with whom a careless
observer would be disposed to ally him, takes his seat on the bench of
the historians of his time and country." He once expressed the opinion
that the historical romance approaches, in some measure, when it is
nobly executed, to the epic in poetry.[456] When a medal of Scott,
engraved from the bust by Chantrey, was struck off, he suggested the
motto which was used:

"Bardorum citharas patrio qui reddidit Istro,"

and said, "because I am far more vain of having been able to fix some
share of public attention upon the ancient poetry and manners of my
country, than of any original efforts which I have been able to make in
literature."[457] The following commendation, which he wrote for a book
of portraits accompanied by essays, might be made to apply to his
novels: "It is impossible for me to conceive a work which ought to be
more interesting to the present age than that which exhibits before our
eyes our 'fathers as they lived'"[458] He felt strongly the value and
importance of past manners, faiths and ideals for the present, and from
this point of view took satisfaction in the social and ethical teaching
of his novels.

On the whole, Scott's opinions about his own work fitted well with his
general literary principles, except that his modesty inclined him to
discount his own performance while he overestimated that of others. With
this qualification we may remember that he always spoke sensibly about
his work, without affectation, and with abundant geniality. We are
reminded of the comment on Moliere quoted by Scott from a French
writer,--"He had the good fortune to escape the most dangerous fault of
an author writing upon his own compositions, and to exhibit wit, where
some people would only have shown vanity and self-conceit."[459]

CHAPTER VI

SCOTT'S POSITION AS CRITIC

Comparison of Scott with Jeffrey and with the Romantic critics--His
criticism largely appreciative--Romantic in special cases and
Augustan in attitude--Comparison with Coleridge--Scott's respect for
the verdict of the public--His opinion that elucidation is the
function of criticism--Use of historical illustration--Hesitation
about analysing poetry--Political criticism--Verdict of his
contemporaries on his criticism--Influence as a critic--Literary
prophecies--Character of his critical work as a whole--His attitude
towards it--Lack of system--Broad fields he covered--His greatness a
reason for the importance of his criticism.

Important as Scott's poetry was in the English Romantic revival, as a
critic he can hardly be counted among the Romanticists. His attitude,
nevertheless, differed radically from that of the school represented by
Jeffrey and Gifford. We have already seen that he disliked their manner
of reviewing, and that he was conscious of complete disagreement with
Jeffrey in regard to poetic ideals. Of Jeffrey Mr. Gates has said: "[He]
rarely _appreciates_ a piece of literature.... He is always for or
against his author; he is always making points."[460] That Scott was
influenced in his early critical work by the tone of the _Edinburgh
Review_ is undeniable, but temperamentally he was inclined to give any
writer a fair chance to stir his emotions; and he did not adopt the
magisterial mood that dictated the famous remark, "This will never do."
Scott's style lacked the adroitness and pungency which helped Jeffrey
successfully to take the attitude of the censor, and which made his
satire triumphant among his contemporaries. Scott declined, moreover, to
cultivate skill in a method which he considered unfair. Compared with
Jeffrey's his criticism wanted incisiveness, but it wears better.

The period was transitional, and Jeffrey did not go so far as Scott in
breaking away from the dictation of his predecessors. But his attitude
was on the whole more modern than the reader would infer from the
following sentence in one of his earliest reviews: "Poetry has this much
at least in common with religion, that its standards were fixed long ago
by certain inspired writers, whose authority it is no longer lawful to
call in question."[461] He considered himself rather an interpreter of
public opinion than a judge defining ancient legislation, but he used
the opinion of himself and like-minded men as an unimpeachable test of
what the greater public ought to believe in regard to literature. We may
remember that the enthusiasm over the Elizabethan dramatists which seems
a special property of Lamb and Hazlitt, and which Scott shared, was
characteristic also of Jeffrey himself. It was Jeffrey's dogmatism and
his repugnance to certain fundamental ideas which were to become
dominant in the poetry of the nineteenth century that lead us to
consider him one of the last representatives of the eighteenth century
critical tradition. Scott praised the Augustan writers as warmly as
Jeffrey did, but he was more hospitable to the newer literary impulse.
"Perhaps the most damaging accusation that can be made against Jeffrey
as a critic," says Mr. Gates, "is inability to read and interpret the
age in which he lived."[462]

Scott's criticism was largely appreciative, but appreciative on a
somewhat different plane from that of the contemporary critics whom we
are accustomed to place in a more modern school: Hazlitt, Hunt, Lamb,
and Coleridge. His judgments were less delicate and subtle than the
judgments of these men were apt to be, and more "reasonable" in the
eighteenth-century sense; they were marked, however, by a regard for the
imagination that would have seemed most unreasonable to many men of the
eighteenth century.

Scott had not a fixed theory of literature which could dominate his mind
when he approached any work. He was open-minded, and in spite of his
extreme fondness for the poetry of Dr. Johnson he was apt to be on the
Romantic side in any specific critical utterance. We have seen also that
he resembled the Romanticists in his power to disengage his verdicts on
literature from ethical considerations. On the other hand he seems
always to have deferred to the standard authorities of the classical
criticism of his time when his own knowledge was not sufficient to guide
him. In discussing Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse he wrote: "It
must be remembered that the rules of criticism, now so well known as to
be even trite and hackneyed, were then almost new to the literary
world."[463]

Perhaps the main reason why one would not class Scott's critical work
with that of the Romanticists is that he had no desire to proclaim a new
era in creative literature or in criticism. Like the Romanticists he was
ready to substitute "for the absolute method of judging by reference to
an external standard of 'taste,' a method at once imaginative and
historical";[464] yet he talked less about imagination than about good
sense. The comparison with Boileau suggests itself, for Scott admired
that critic in the conventional fashion, calling him "a supereminent
authority,"[465] and Boileau also had said much about "reason and good
sense." But Scott had an appreciation of the _furor poeticus_ that made
"good sense" quite a different thing to him from what it was to Boileau.
He did not say, moreover, that the poet should be supremely
characterized by good sense, but that the critic, recognizing the facts
about human emotion, should make use of that quality.

The subjective process by which experience is transmuted into literature
engaged Scott's attention very little: in this respect also he stands
apart from the newer school of critics. The metaphysical description of
imagination or fancy interested him less than the piece of literature in
which these qualities were exhibited. His own mental activities were
more easily set in motion than analysed, and the introspective or
philosophical attitude of mind was unnatural to him. Because of his
adoption of the historical method of studying literature, and the
similarity of many of his judgments to those which were in general
characteristic of the Romantic school, we may say that Scott's criticism
looks forward; but it shows the influence of the earlier period in its
acceptance of traditional judgments based on external standards which
disregarded the nature of the creative process.

From Coleridge Scott is separated in the most definite way. Coleridge
began at the foundation, building up a set of principles such as the new
impulse in literature seemed to demand. Scott preferred the concrete,
and was stimulated by the particular book to express opinions that would
never have come to his mind as the result of pursuing a train of
unembodied ideas. Coleridge's judgments, moreover, would be unaffected
by public estimation, for he sought to found them on the spiritual and
philosophic consciousness that exists apart from the crowd.[466] Scott,
on the other hand, was ready to use popular judgment as an important
test of his opinions. Coleridge himself pointed out another interesting
contrast. He wrote: "Dear Sir Walter Scott and myself were exact, but
harmonious opposites in this;--that every old ruin, hill, river, or
tree, called up in his mind a host of historical or biographical
associations, ... whereas, for myself, notwithstanding Dr. Johnson, I
believe I should walk over the plain of Marathon without taking more
interest in it than in any other plain of similar features."[467] We
might perhaps say that Coleridge's affection was given to ideas,
Scott's, to objects; hence Coleridge was a critic of literary principles
and theories, Scott a critic of individual books and writers. It follows
that Scott was on the whole an impressionistic critic. A study of his
personality is essential to a consideration of his critical work, for he
was not so much a systematic student of literature, guided by fixed
principles, as a man of a certain temperament who read particular things
and made particular remarks about them as he felt inclined. The
inconsistencies and contradictions which would naturally result from
such a procedure are occasionally noticeable, but they are fewer than
would occur in the work of a less well-balanced man than himself.

His ideas about criticism were influenced by his feeling that the
judgment of the public would after all take its own course, and that it
was in the long run the best criterion. He used his opinion that an
author, even in his own lifetime, commonly receives fair treatment from
the public, as an argument against establishing in England any literary
body having the power of pensioning literary men.[468] On this subject
he said, "There is ... really no occasion for encouraging by a society
the competition of authors. The land is before them, and if they really
have merit they seldom fail to conquer their share of public applause
and private profit.... I cannot, in my knowledge of letters, recollect
more than two men whose merit is undeniable while, I am afraid, their
circumstances are narrow. I mean Coleridge and Maturin."

Scott's whole attitude toward criticism shows that he felt its supreme
function to be elucidation. It should also, he believed, warn the world
against books that were foolish, or pernicious, intellectually or
morally; but unless there were good reason for issuing such warnings the
bad books should be ignored and the good treated sympathetically, not
without such discrimination as should distinguish between the better and
the worse in them, but with emphasis on the better. His literary creed,
though not formulated into a system, was conscious and fairly definite;
but it consisted of general principles which never resolved themselves
into intricate subtleties requiring great space for their development.
Scott could not think in that way, and he felt convinced that such
thinking was useless and worse than useless. A magazine-writer of his
own period who said of him,--"The author of _Waverley_, we apprehend,
has neither the patience nor the disposition requisite for writing
philosophically upon any subject,"[469] was mistaken, for much of
Scott's criticism, without making any pretensions, is really
philosophical. But any fine-drawn analysis seemed to him to serve the
vanity of the critic rather than the need of the public; and he despised
that arrogance in the critic which leads him to assume to direct
literary taste.

Historical illustration was that kind of editorial work which he found
most congenial, and which harmonized best with his critical principles;
for when he could bring definite facts to the service of elucidation he
felt that he was doing something worth while. Among all the
introductions and annotations that we have from his hand, including
those of the _Dryden_ and the _Swift_, this kind of explanation greatly
predominates over the more strictly literary comment; in his reviews,
also, it is evident that he seized every opportunity for turning from
literary to historical discussion. He was in the habit of "embroidering
the subject, whatever it might be, with lively anecdotic
illustration,"[470] as one of his biographers says. We are not to
conclude that in writing on specifically literary subjects he felt ill
at ease. He felt, on the contrary, that the objection lay in the too
great ease with which the critic might become dictatorial. He was fond
enough of details when they were concrete and vital. The facts of
literary history were in this category to him, as distinguished from the
notions of literary theory; and we find that his critical principles are
apt to appear incidentally among remarks on what seemed to him the more
tangible and important facts of literary and social history. The books
he chose to review were chiefly those which gave him a chance to use his
historical information and imagination. His ideas were concrete, as
those of a great novelist must inevitably be. Indeed the dividing line
between creative work and criticism seems often to be obliterated in
Scott's literary discussions, since he was inclined to amplify and
illustrate instead of dissecting the book under consideration. As a
critic he was distinguished by the qualities which appear in his novels,
and which may be described in Hazlitt's words, as "the most amazing
retentiveness of memory, and vividness of conception of what would
happen, be seen, and felt by everybody in given circumstances."[471]

Scott felt that there was especial danger of futile theorizing in the
criticism of poetry. In writing about _Alexander's Feast_ he discussed
for a moment the possibility of detecting points at which the author had
paused in his work, but almost immediately he stopped himself with the
characteristic remark--"There may be something fanciful ... in this
reasoning, which I therefore abandon to the reader's mercy; only begging
him to observe, that we have no mode of estimating the exertions of a
quality so capricious as a poetic imagination."[472] Early in his career
he gave this rather over-amiable explanation of the fact that he had
never undertaken to review poetry: "I am sensible there is a greater
difference of tastes in that department than in any other, and that
there is much excellent poetry which I am not nowadays able to read
without falling asleep, and which would nevertheless have given me great
pleasure at an earlier period of my life. Now I think there is something
hard in blaming the poor cook for the fault of our own palate or
deficiency of appetite."[473] We have seen that he did review poetry
afterwards, but that he was inclined to do it with the least possible
emphasis on the specifically aesthetic elements. On the subject of
novel-writing he developed a somewhat fuller critical theory, but here
also his discussions concerned themselves rather with the kind of ideas
set forth than with the manner of presentation.

It does indeed seem as if Scott's feelings were more easily aroused to
the point of formulating "laws" in the field of political criticism than
in that which appears to us his more legitimate sphere. He has his
fling, to be sure, at Madame de Stael, because she "lived and died in
the belief that revolutions were to be effected, and countries governed,
by a proper succession of clever pamphlets."[474] But in proposing the
establishment of the _Quarterly Review_ he made no secret of the fact
that his motives were political. The literary aspect of the periodical
was thought of as a subordinate, though a necessary and not unimportant
phase of the undertaking. The _Letters of Malachi Malagrowther_ contain
some very definite maxims on the subject of political economy, and just
as decided are the remarks made in the last of _Paul's Letters_, as well
as in the _Life of Napoleon_ and elsewhere, as to how Louis XVIII. ought
to set about the task of calming his distracted kingdom of France. But
however emphatic Scott may be in the comments on government which appear
throughout his writings, he was as strongly averse in this matter as in
literary affairs to any separation of philosophy from fact: his maxims
are always derived from experience. The following statement of opinion
is typical: "In legislating for an ancient people, the question is not,
what is the best possible system of law, but what is the best they can
bear. Their habitudes and prejudices must always be respected; and,
whenever it is practicable, those prejudices, instead of being
destroyed, ought to be taken as the basis of the new regulations."[475]

It was Scott's political creed that roused the ire of such men as
Hazlitt and Hunt, though they may also have been exasperated at the
unprecedented success of poetry which seemed so facile and so
superficial to them as Scott's. Leigh Hunt calls him "a poet of a purely
conventional order," "a bitter and not very large-minded politician," "a
critic more agreeable than subtle."[476] But Scott's politics may be
looked at in another way. "In his patriotism," says Mr. Courthope, "his
passionate love of the past, and his reverence for established
authority, literary or political, Scott is the best representative among
English men of letters of Conservatism in its most generous form."[477]

Though it seems to have been a common opinion among the literary men of
his own time that Scott's criticism was superficial, his knowledge of
mediaeval literature was, as we have seen, recognized and respected.
Favorable comments by his contemporaries on other parts of his critical
work are not difficult to find. For example, Gifford wrote to Murray in
regard to the article on _Lady Suffolk's Correspondence_: "Scott's paper
is a clever, sensible thing--the work of a man who knows what he is
about."[478] Isaac D'Israeli made the following observation on another
of Scott's papers: "The article on Pepys, after so many have been
written, is the only one which, in the most charming manner possible,
shows the real value of these works, which I can assure you many good
scholars have no idea of."[479] A more recent verdict may be set beside
those just quoted, and it is in perfect agreement with them. "His
critical faculty," says Professor Saintsbury, "if not extraordinarily
subtle, was always as sound and shrewd as it was good-natured."[480]

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