Margaret Ball - Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature

M >> Margaret Ball >> Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature

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Scott's temperamental aversion to revising what he had once written was
evidently sanctioned by his literary creed. Near the end of his life he
recalled how he had submitted one of his earliest poems to the criticism
of several acquaintances, with the consequence that after he had adopted
their suggestions, hardly a line remained unaltered, and yet the changes
failed to satisfy the critics.[375] He said: "This unexpected result,
after about a fortnight's anxiety, led me to adopt a rule from which I
have seldom departed during more than thirty years of literary life.
When a friend whose judgment I respect has decided and upon good
advisement told me that a manuscript was worth nothing, or at least
possessed no redeeming qualities sufficient to atone for its defects, I
have generally cast it aside; but I am little in the custom of paying
attention to minute criticisms or of offering such to any friend who may
do me the honour to consult me. I am convinced that, in general, in
removing even errors of a trivial or venial kind, the character of
originality is lost, which, upon the whole, may be that which is most
valuable in the production." This position appears doubly significant
when we remember that it was assumed by a man who had only the slightest
possible amount of paternal jealousy in regard to his writings.[376]

Scott did not always adhere to this resolution, for he did accept
criticism and make alterations, more in compliance with the wishes of
James Ballantyne, his friend and printer, than to meet the desires of
anyone else. He considered that Ballantyne represented the ordinary
popular taste, and he was ready to make some sacrifice of his own
judgment in order to satisfy his public. He sent the conclusion of
_Rokeby_ to Ballantyne with this note: "Dear James,--I send you this out
of deference to opinions so strongly expressed, but still retaining my
own, that it spoils one effect without producing another."

When one of his books was adversely criticised by the public he received
the judgment with open mind, and often analyzed it with much acuteness.
The introduction to _The Monastery_ is a good example of frank, though
not servile, submission to the decree of public opinion. That he was
deeply impressed with his blunder in managing the White Lady of Avenel
may be surmised from the fact that in several later discussions of the
effect of supernatural apparitions in novels, he emphasized the
necessity of keeping them sufficiently infrequent to preserve an
atmosphere of mystery. Of _The Monastery_ he said: "I agree with the
public in thinking the work not very interesting; but it was written
with as much care as the others--that is, with no care at all."[377] But
sometimes he felt inclined to rebel against a popular verdict, as when
Norna, in _The Pirate_, was said to be a mere copy of Meg
Merrilies.[378]

In his later days he grew more and more unsure of himself, as he felt
compelled to work at his topmost speed. His _Journal_ for 1829 has the
following record in regard to a review he was writing: "I began to warm
in my gear, and am about to awake the whole controversy of Goth and
Celt. I wish I may not make some careless blunders."[379] The criticisms
of "J.B." became more frequent and more irritating to him as he felt a
growing inability to achieve precision in details.[380] When Lockhart
pointed out some lapses in his style, he wrote in his _Journal_, "Well!
I will try to remember all this, but after all I write grammar as I
speak, to make my meaning known, and a solecism in point of composition,
like a Scotch word in speaking, is indifferent to me."[381] Until he
felt his powers failing, he was for the most part at once good-natured
and independent in his manner of receiving criticism. Whether or not he
agreed with the opinion expressed, he usually thought that what he had
once written might best stand, though he might be influenced in later
work by the advice that had been given.[382]

"I am sensible that if there be anything good about my poetry or prose
either," Scott wrote, in a passage that has often been quoted, "it is a
hurried frankness of composition which pleases soldiers, sailors and
young people of bold and active disposition."[383] I have tried to show
that this quality was one which he not only enjoyed, in his own work and
in that of other writers, but that as a critic he very seriously
approved of it.

Yet in spite of his belief that the greatest literature is not the
result of slow and painful labor, it was probably the ease with which he
wrote which led him to undervalue his own work. However we may account
for it, he found difficulty in regarding himself as a great author.[384]
When this modesty of his came into conflict with the other opinion that
he had always been inclined to hold--that the popularity of books is a
test of their merit--the result is amusing. He was impelled at times to
utter contemptuous words about the foolishness of the public, and of
course he could not help being moved also in the other direction--to
believe there was more in his writings than he had realized. In one mood
he said, "I thank God I can write ill enough for the present
taste";[385] and "I have very little respect for that dear _publicum_
whom I am doomed to amuse, like Goody Trash in _Bartholomew Fair_, with
rattles and gingerbread; and I should deal very uncandidly with those
who may read my confessions were I to say I knew a public worth caring
for, or capable of distinguishing the nicer beauties of composition.
They weigh good and evil qualities by the pound. Get a good name and you
may write trash. Get a bad one and you may write like Homer, without
pleasing a single reader."[386] Looking back from the end of his career
to the time when _The Lady of the Lake_ was in the height of its
success, he wrote: "It must not be supposed that I was either so
ungrateful or so superabundantly candid as to despise or scorn the value
of those whose voice had elevated me so much higher than my own opinion
told me I deserved. I felt, on the contrary, the more grateful to the
public as receiving that from partiality which I could not have claimed
from merit; and I endeavoured to deserve the partiality by continuing
such exertions as I was capable of for their amusement."[387] The
perfect respectability of these remarks tempts the reader to set over
against them this earlier observation by the same writer in the guise of
Chrystal Croftangry, "One thing I have learned in life--never to speak
sense when nonsense will answer the purpose as well."[388]

Whatever Scott might think of the worth of public admiration, he frankly
attempted to write what would be popular. He had none of the feeling
which has characterized many very interesting men of letters, that the
desire for self-expression is the one motive of the author; his personal
literary impulse, on the contrary, was always guided by the thought of
the audience whom he was addressing. "No one shall find me rowing
against the stream," says the "Author" in the Introductory Epistle to
_Nigel_. "I care not who knows it--I write for general amusement; and
though I will never aim at popularity by what I think unworthy means, I
will not, on the other hand, be pertinacious in the defence of my own
errors against the voice of the public." Of his last "apoplectic books,"
he wrote, "I am ashamed, for the first time in my life, of the two
novels, but since the pensive public have taken them, there is no more
to be said but to eat my pudding and to hold my tongue."[389] Early in
his career he seems to have felt that he could make a good deal of money
by writing, if he should wish.[390] Towards the end he said, "I know
that no literary speculation ever succeeded with me but where my own
works were concerned; and that, on the other hand, these have rarely
failed."[391]

The popularity of his own books was so great that they required a
special category. He seemed to be incapable of ascribing their success
to extraordinary excellence, and he settled down to the opinion that it
was simply their novelty that the public cared for. The enthusiastic
welcome given him by the Irish when he visited Dublin caused him to say
in one of his letters, "Were it not from the chilling recollection that
novelty is easily substituted for merit, I should think, like the booby
in Steele's play,[392] that I had been kept back, and that there was
something more about me than I had ever been led to suspect."[393]

He assumed that he had studied popular taste enough to have some
knowledge of its shiftings, so that he might "set every sail towards the
breeze."[394] "I may be mistaken," he once wrote, "but I do think the
tale of Elspat M'Tavish in my bettermost manner, but J.B. roars for
chivalry. He does not quite understand that everything may be overdone
in this world, or sufficiently estimate the necessity of novelty. The
Highlanders have been off the field now for some time."[395] His comment
on _Ivanhoe_ was still more emphatic. "Novelty is what this giddy-paced
time demands imperiously, and I certainly studies as much as I could to
get out of the old beaten track, leaving those who like to keep the
road, which I have rutted pretty well."[396]

Believing from the beginning of his career that novelty was the chief
merit of his work, he was prepared to live up to his principles. So it
was that when he was "beaten" by Byron in metrical romances, he dropped
with hardly a regret, so far as we can judge, the kind of writing in
which he had attained such remarkable popularity, and turned to another
kind. "Since one line has failed, we must just stick to something else,"
he remarked, calmly.[397] This was when the small sales of _The Lord of
the Isles_ as compared with the earlier poems warned Scott and his
publisher in a very tangible way that the field had been captured by
Byron. At this time _Waverley_ was in the market and _Guy Mannering_ was
in process of composition. Though it was to his poetry that he chose to
give his name, Scott had little reason to feel forlorn, as the sale of
the novels from the very beginning was a pretty effective consolation
for any possible hurt to his vanity. He could have owned them as his at
any moment, had he chosen to do so. He did not read criticisms of his
books, but was satisfied, as one of his friends observed, "to accept the
intense avidity with which his novels are read, the enormous and
continued sale of his works, as a sufficient commendation of them."[398]
In the case of Byron, as always when the public approved the works of
one of his brother authors, he considered the popular judgment right.

Scott did not altogether stop writing poetry, however, as is sometimes
supposed. _The Field of Waterloo_ and _Harold the Dauntless_ were both
written after this time; and the mottoes and lyrics in the novels
compose a delightful body of verse. The fact seems to be that he lost
zest for writing long poems, partly because of the favor with which
Byron's poems were received, and his own consequent feeling of
inferiority in poetic composition; partly because of his discovery of
the greater ease with which he could write prose, and the greater scope
it gave him. The more ambitious attempts among the poems which he wrote
after 1814 are comparative failures. But the poetry in his nature
prevented him from entirely giving over the composition of verse, and he
found real delight in the occasional writing of short pieces that
required no continued effort. They were usually made to be used in the
novels, for after the publication of _Guy Mannering_ novel-writing
became specifically Scott's occupation.[399]

The price of his success in any direction was that he was unable to keep
his field to himself. Having set a fashion, he was more than once
annoyed by the crowd who wrote in his style and made him feel the
necessity of striking out a new line.[400] It was comparatively easy for
the vigorous man who wrote _Waverley_, but in the end, when through his
losses he was more than ever obliged to hit the popular taste, to feel
that he must find a new style seemed a hard fate. Yet he meant to be
beforehand in the race. This is the record in his _Journal_: "Hard
pressed as I am by these imitators, who must put the thing out of
fashion at last, I consider, like a fox at his last shifts, whether
there be a way to dodge them--some new device to throw them off, and
have a mile or two of free ground while I have legs and wind left to use
it. There is one way to give novelty: to depend for success on the
interest of a well-contrived story. But woe's me! that requires thought,
consideration--the writing out a regular plan or plot--above all, the
adhering to one--which I never can do, for the ideas rise as I write,
and bear such a disproportioned extent to that which each occupied at
the first concoction, that (cocksnowns!) I shall never be able to take
the trouble; and yet to make the world stare, and gain a new march ahead
of them all! Well, something we still will do."[401]

By an easy extension of his principle, he came to believe that novelty
would always succeed for a time. The opinion is expressed often in his
reviews, and in his journal and letters is applied to his own work. So
it was that when any one of his books seemed partially to fail with the
public, his immediate impulse was to look for something new to be
done.[402] One of his schemes was a work on popular superstitions,
projected when _Quentin Durward_ seemed to be falling flat; but the
success of the novel made the immediate execution of the plan
unnecessary.[403]

It was largely his desire to secure variety that encouraged him to
undertake historical writing. He had also a theory about how history
should be written, and so he felt that the novelty would consist in
something more than the fact that the Author of Waverley had taken a new
line. He wished, as Thackeray did later when he proposed to write a
history of the Age of Queen Anne, to use in an avowedly serious book the
material with which he had stored his imagination; and he believed he
could present it with a vivacity that was not characteristic of
professional historians. The success of the first series of _Tales of a
Grandfather_ served to confirm the opinion he had expressed about
them,--"I care not who knows it, I think well of them. Nay, I will hash
history with anybody, be he who he will."[404]

Scott had a very just sense of the value of his great stores of
information. He did say that he would give one half his knowledge if so
he might put the other half upon a well-built foundation,[405] but as
years went on he learned to use with ease the accumulations of knowledge
which in his youth had proved often unwieldy; and more than once he
congratulated himself that he beat his imitators by possessing
historical and antiquarian lore which they could only acquire by
"reading up."[406] Though he testified that in the beginning of his
first novel he described his own education, he could hardly apply to
himself what is there said of Waverley, that, "While he was thus
permitted to read only for the gratification of his amusement, he
foresaw not that he was losing forever the opportunity of acquiring
habits of firm and assiduous application, of gaining the art of
controlling, directing, and concentrating the powers of his mind for
earnest investigation."[407] It was otherwise with Scott himself. The
result of the wide and desultory reading of his youth, acting upon a
remarkably strong memory, was to put him into the position, as he says,
of "an ignorant gamester, who kept a good hand until he knew how to play
it."[408] So it was that he said of those who followed his lead in
writing historical novels, "They may do their fooling with better grace;
but I, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, do it more natural."[409] His
knowledge of history and antiquities was that part of his intellectual
equipment in which he seemed to take most pride. He had the highest
opinion of the value of historical study for ripening men's judgment of
current affairs,[410] and indeed there were few relations of life in
which an acquaintance with history did not seem to him indispensable.

But he felt that historical writing had not been adapted "to the demands
of the increased circles among which literature does already find its
way."[411] Accordingly he resolved to use in the service of history that
"knack ... for selecting the striking and interesting points out of dull
details," which he felt was his endowment.[412] The original
introduction to the _Tales of the Crusaders_ has the following burlesque
announcement of his intention, in the words of the Eidolon Chairman: "I
intend to write the most wonderful book which the world ever read--a
book in which every incident shall be incredible, yet strictly true--a
work recalling recollections with which the ears of this generation once
tingled, and which shall be read by our children with an admiration
approaching to incredulity. Such shall be the _Life of Napoleon_, by the
_Author of Waverley_." He wished to controvert "the vulgar opinion that
the flattest and dullest mode of detailing events must uniformly be that
which approaches nearest to the truth."[413] There is no doubt that his
histories are readable, yet we feel that Southey was right in his
comment on the _Life of Napoleon_,--"It was not possible that Sir Walter
could keep up as a historian the character which he had obtained as a
novelist; and in the first announcement of this 'Life' he had, not very
wisely, promised something as stimulating as his novels. Alas! he forgot
that there could be no stimulus of curiosity in it."[414] A recent
critic has said, "Scott lost half his power of vitalizing the past when
he sat down formally to record it--when he turned from his marvellous
recreation of James I. to give a laboured but very ordinary portrait of
Napoleon."[415] His partial failure in this instance may have been due
to an unfortunate choice of subject. Only a few years before he wrote
the book Scott had been thinking of Napoleon as a "tyrannical
monster,"[416] a "singular emanation of the Evil Principle,"[417] "the
arch-enemy of mankind,"[418]--phrases which, in spite of their
vividness, hardly seem to promise a life-like portrayal of the man.[419]

In one notable respect, Scott's conception of how history should be
written was very modern: he would depict the life of the people, not
simply the actions of kings and statesmen. His historical novels, said
Carlyle, "taught all men this truth, which looks like a truism, and yet
was as good as unknown to writers of history and others, till so taught:
that the bygone ages of the world were actually filled by living men,
not by protocols, state-papers, controversies, and abstractions of
men."[420] One who has the academic notion that a novel, to be great,
must be written with no ulterior purpose, is almost startled to observe
how definitely Scott considered it the function of his novels to portray
ancient manners. Speaking of old romances as a source which we may use
for studying about our ancestors, he said: "From the romance, we learn
what they were; from the history, what they did: and were we to be
deprived of one of these two kinds of information, it might well be made
a question, which is most useful or interesting."[421] He wished to make
his own romances serve much the same purpose as those written in the
midst of the customs which they unconsciously reflected. Of _Waverley_
he said, "It may really boast to be a tolerably faithful portrait of
Scottish manners."[422] He interrupts the story of _The Pirate_ to
describe the charm of the leaden heart, and offers this excuse: "As this
simple and original remedy is peculiar to the isles of Thule, it were
unpardonable not to preserve it at length, in a narrative connected with
Scottish antiquities."[423] His comment on _Ivanhoe_ was as follows: "I
am convinced that however I myself may fail in the ensuing attempt, yet,
with more labour in collecting, or more skill in using, the materials
within his reach, illustrated as they have been by the labours of Dr.
Henry, of the late Mr. Strutt, and above all, of Mr. Sharon Turner, an
abler hand would have been successful."[424]

Scott's early reading was only the basis for the research that he
undertook afterwards.[425] Much of this later study was accomplished
when he was engaged upon such books as _Somers' Tracts_, _Dryden's_ and
_Swift's Works_, and the other historical publications that make the
bibliography of Scott so surprising to the ordinary reader; but some of
his investigations were undertaken specifically for the novels. The
_Literary Correspondence_ of his publisher, Archibald Constable,
contains many evidences of Scott's efforts, assisted often by Constable,
to get antiquarian and topographical details correct in the novels. In
1821 Constable suggested that Sir Walter write a story of the time of
James I. of England, and was told, "If you can suggest anything about
the period I will be happy to hear from you; you are always happy in
your hints."[426] Some years earlier the author and the publisher had a
correspondence concerning a series of letters on the history of Scotland
which the former was planning to write, and which he wished to publish
anonymously for the following reason: "I have not the least doubt that I
will make a popular book, for I trust it will be both interesting and
useful; but I never intended to engage in any proper historical labour,
for which I have neither time, talent, nor inclination.... In truth it
would take ten years of any man's life to write such a History of
Scotland as he should put his name to."[427] He called his _Napoleon_
"the most severe and laborious undertaking which choice or accident ever
placed on my shoulders."[428]

More than once Scott expresses the opinion that though novels may be
useful to arouse curiosity about history, and to impart some knowledge
to people who will not do any serious thinking, they may, on the other
hand, work harm by satisfying with their superficial information those
who would otherwise read history.[429] It seems as if he designed the
_Life of Napoleon_ and the _History of Scotland_ for a new reading class
that the novels had been creating, and as if he wished to make the step
of transition not too long. We can almost fancy them as a series of
graded books arranged to lead the people of Great Britain up to a
sufficient height of historical information. The _Tales of a
Grandfather_ were intended for the beginners who had never been infected
by the common heresy concerning the dulness of history, and who were
blessed with sufficiently active imagination to make the sugar-coating
of fiction superfluous.[430]

But great as was the interest that Scott took in the historical aspect
of his work, his artistic sense guided his use of materials, and he was
well aware of the danger of over-working the mine. The principles on
which he chose periods and events to represent are illustrated in many
of the introductions. Of _The Fortunes of Nigel_ he said: "The reign of
James I., in which George Heriot flourished, gave unbounded scope to
invention in the fable, while at the same time it afforded greater
variety and discrimination of character than could, with historical
consistency, have been introduced if the scene had been laid a century
earlier."[431]

His first published attempt at fiction-writing was a conclusion to the
novel, _Queenhoo-Hall_,[432] of which his opinion was that it would
never be popular because antiquarian knowledge was displayed in it too
liberally. "The author," he says, "forgot ... that extensive neutral
ground, the large proportion, that is, of manners and sentiments which
are common to us and to our ancestors, having been handed down unaltered
from them to us, or which, arising out of the principles of our common
nature, must have existed in either state of society."[433] Scott's
practice in regard to the language of his historical novels was based on
much the same theory. He intended to admit "no word or turn of
phraseology betraying an origin directly modern,"[434] but to avoid
obsolete words for the most part; and he never attempted to follow with
fidelity the style of the exact age of which he was writing. The
translation of Froissart by Lord Berners seemed to him a sufficiently
good model to serve for the whole mediaeval period.[435] In his review
of _Tales of My Landlord_ he says of the proem to his book: "It is
written in the quaint style of that prefixed by Gay to his _Pastorals_,
being, as Johnson terms it, 'such imitation as he could obtain of
obsolete language, and by consequence, in a style that was never written
or spoken in any age or place.'"

His _Journal_ contains observations on several historical novels which
were of little consequence, as, for example, on one by a Mr. Bell,--"He
goes not the way to write it; he is too general, and not sufficiently
minute";[436] and on _The Spae-Wife_, by Galt,--"He has made his story
difficult to understand, by adopting a region of history little
known."[437] On the other hand he remarked, when someone had suggested a
number of historical subjects to him,--"People will not consider that a
thing may already be so well told in history, that romance ought not in
prudence to meddle with it";[438] and at another time he spoke of "the
usual habit of antiquarians," to "neglect what is useful for things that
are merely curious."[439]

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