Chapter XII
Topics of Talk—Religion—Scott’s Freedom from Fanaticism—Dilettantism of the ‘liberal young Men’—Politics—Basis of Scott’s Toryism—Cockburn’s Anecdote of Table-talk—Men of the Old School—Robertson the Historian—His History of Charles V.—His noble Generosity—Closing Years—Anecdotes.
In all probability Walter Scott was not very greatly interested or influenced by the general conversation. Neither by nature nor by circumstances was he ever in danger of being seduced into fanaticism of any kind. As regards religion, his was the simple faith of one who reverenced God as the Omnipotent whose power meant justice, goodness, truth and love, and who loved his fellow-men, content to be happy himself and to try to pour out happiness on all around him. His mind did not hanker after theories on the mystery of existence. In fact, he was a ‘moderate’ of the best kind, whose only anxiety was that his life should be in the right. They seek in vain who search his volumes for philosophical wisdom or prophetic gleams. He never posed as preacher or as sage. He accepted the religion of his time, and felt himself at home in the Episcopal Church of Scotland rather than in the Calvinistic temples, whose services always repelled him by their gloom and dryness. Still less was he attracted by anything intellectually fanatical. His mind naturally rejected humbug. He was not one of the dilettante young gentlemen whose talk was of chemistry because Lavoisier had made it fashionable. Nor was he one of Cockburn’s ‘liberal young men of Edinburgh,’ who lived upon Adam Smith, a sound enough, but for them apt to be windy, diet. I have no doubt he appreciated the greatness and good sense of the author of the Wealth of Nations, and the value of the brilliant work of Lavoisier, but the direction of his intellectual interests was determined by his heart. And his heart was in the story of the Past, glowing over the old ballads, songs, and romances of the age of chivalry and glory. He was not a party politician any more than he was a chemist or an economist. He was a Tory only because his sympathies were with the kind of people who composed that party. He identified the party with the gallantry and loyalty of the Cavalier, with the free, wholesome life of the country as opposed to the grasping selfishness and coarse materialism of the town, and with the generous sense of honour which made himself the truest and sweetest of gentlemen. His Toryism was a sentiment as far above the actual existing politics of his party as Milton’s ideal republicanism was above the practice of his Puritan contemporaries, whom he styles ‘owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs.’ Scott’s saving gift of humour saved him from sharing the painful impression of which Lord Cockburn speaks. He was not so easily pained. When worthy people talk nonsense in the bosom of the family, they should not be taken too seriously even by boys. ‘My father’s house (Lord Cockburn says) was one of the places where the leaders and the ardent followers of the party in power were in the constant habit of assembling. I can sit yet, in imagination, at the small side-table, and overhear the conversation, a few feet off, at the established Wednesday dinner. How they raved! What sentiments! What principles! Not that I differed from them. I thought them quite right, and hated liberty and the people as much as they did. But this drove me into an opposite horror; for I was terrified out of such wits as they left me at the idea of bloodshed, and it never occurred to me that it could be avoided. My reason no sooner began to open, and to get some fair-play, than the distressing wisdom of my ancestors began to fade, and the more attractive sense that I met with among the young men into whose company our debating societies threw me, gradually hardened me into what I became—whatever this was.’ Fortunately Cockburn, though he became a Whig and a political lawyer, did not let his mind become narrowed against the larger human interests. His sketches of some of the representative men of the older generation are as warm and appreciative as could be wished. He speaks of the pleasure he felt in having seen them, though it was at a time when he could only judge of their qualities from the respect which they commanded even among the young. One of these was Dr. William Robertson, described in Guy Mannering by Mr. Pleydell, with some pride, as ‘our historian of Scotland, of the Continent, and of America.’ Robertson’s long and illustrious career was almost wholly connected with Edinburgh. He was educated at the University there, and about 1760 became minister of Old Greyfriars, which had been his father’s charge before, and where Pleydell conducts Colonel Mannering to hear him preach. He was greater as a church leader and a man of letters than as a preacher. Lord Brougham, who was his grand-nephew, says that he preferred moral to gospel subjects, in order to discountenance the fanaticism of the evangelicals. As a church leader, he may be called the Lord North of the Church of Scotland. The ‘moderatism’ of Robertson led, after other secessions, eventually to the Disruption of 1843. But in spite of his professional activities, Robertson was essentially a literary artist. Conscientious and prolonged research gave a value to his historical works, which largely atoned for the monotony of his somewhat too ornate and dignified style. He has the glory—and that too, when Samuel Johnson was at his zenith—of having established a record in literary remuneration. For his history of Charles V. he received £4500, the largest sum which had till then been paid for a single work. No one will grudge the reward to the man who, at the age of twenty-two, with a country clergyman’s income of less than £100 a year, took into his charge his orphaned brother and six sisters, and postponed his marriage for several years that he might give them education. In the last two years of his life, 1791-93, he was taken to reside at Grange House, a rare old mansion, the seat of the family of Dick Lauder, of Grange and Fountainhall. Here the enfeebled old man, quite broken down by disease of the liver, spent his time as much as possible in the garden. The Cockburn family, who lived close by at Hope Park, were intimate friends, and thus young Henry came to see a great deal of the Principal in the last summer of his life. He describes the historian as ‘a pleasant-looking old man, with an eye of great vivacity and intelligence, a large projecting chin, small hearing-trumpet fastened by a black ribbon to a button-hole of his coat, and a rather large wig, powdered and curled.’ For all his feebleness, with deafness superadded, he seems up to the last to have been able to take an animated part in conversation, whenever a favourite subject happened to be started at his table.