Scott as a Critic of Literature

Appendix II

1. Bibliographies of Scott

Allibone, S.A. Dictionary of British and American Authors and Literature. 3 vols. Phil., 1870.

Anderson, J.P. Bibliography of Scott, in the Life of Scott by C.D. Yonge (Great Writers Series). London, 1888.

Lockhart’s Life of Scott; the Centenary Catalogue (see above, p. 171); the British Museum Catalogue; the Dictionary of National Biography.

2. A partial list of the books used in the preparation of this Study, aside from those given in the bibliography of Scott’s works. (See particularly the list of books which contain letters written by Scott: Appendix I. 3.)

Adolphus, J.L. Letters to Richard Heber, Esq., containing critical remarks on the series of novels beginning with “Waverley,” and an attempt to ascertain their author. Second edition. London, 1822. Aitken, G.A., ed. Romances and Narratives by Daniel Defoe. 16 vols. London, 1895. Arnold, Matthew. Byron. In Essays in Criticism. Second series. London, 1889. Carlyle, Thomas. Sir Walter Scott. In Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. 4 vols. London, 1857. Chambers, E.K. The Mediaeval Stage. 2 vols. Oxford, 1903. Chesterton, G.K. Varied Types. New York, 1903. Child, Francis J. English and Scottish Popular Ballads. 5 vols. Boston, 1882-96. English and Scottish Popular Ballads, edited from the collection of Francis James Child by Helen Child Sargent and George Lyman Kittredge. Boston, 1904. Clemens, S.L. (Mark Twain). Life on the Mississippi. Boston, 1883. Cockburn, Henry. Memorials of His Time. Edinburgh, 1874. Coleridge, S.T. Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 2 vols. London, 1835. Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by E.H. Coleridge. 2 vols. Boston, 1895. Collins, J. Churton. Ephemera Critica. London, 1901. Courthope, W.J. A History of English Poetry. 4 vols. New York, 1895-1903. The Liberal Movement in English Literature. London, 1885. Cunningham, Allan. Life of Scott. Boston, 1832. Dowden, Edward. Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 2 vols. London, 1886. Fitzgerald, Percy. New History of the English Stage, from the Restoration to the liberty of the theatres, in connection with the patent houses. 2 vols. London, 1882. Forster, John. Walter Savage Landor, a biography. 2 vols. London, 1869. Freeman, E.A. The History of the Norman Conquest of England. 5 vols. New York, 1873. Gates, L.E. Three Studies in Literature. New York, 1899. Gillies, R.P. Recollections of Sir Walter Scott. (Republished in book form from Fraser’s Magazine, Sept., Nov., Dec. 1835, and Jan., 1836.) Hazlitt, William. Collected Works, edited by A.R. Waller and Arnold Glover. 12 vols. London, 1902-4. (Spirit of the Age, Vol. IV; Plain Speaker, Vol. VII; Dramatic Essays, Vol. VIII.) Herford, C.H. The Age of Wordsworth. (Handbooks of English Literature.) London, 1905. Hogg, James, ed. Jacobite Relics of Scotland, being the songs, airs, and legends of the adherents of the House of Stuart. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1819-21. Domestic Manners and Private Life of Sir Walter Scott. Glasgow, 1834. Hudson, W.H. Sir Walter Scott, London, 1901. Hunt, J.H. Leigh. Autobiography; with reminiscences of friends and contemporaries. 2 vols. New York, 1850. Feast of the Poets. London, 1814. Lord Byron and some of his contemporaries. Second edition. 2 vols. London, 1828. Hutton, R.H. Sir Walter Scott. (English Men of Letters.) New York, 1878. Irving, Washington. Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey. (First volume of the “Crayon Miscellany.”) London, 1835. Lang, Andrew. Sir Walter Scott (Literary Lives). New York, 1906. Border edition of the Waverley Novels, 48 vols. London, 1892-1894. Laing, Malcolm, ed. Poems of Ossian, containing the poetical works of James MacPherson in prose and verse. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1805. Legaré, H.S. Writings.... Edited by his sister. Charleston, S.C., 1846. Lounsbury, T.R. James Fenimore Cooper. (American Men of Letters.) Boston, 1882. Maigron, Louis. Le Roman Historique à l’Époque Romantique: essai sur l’influence de Walter Scott. Paris, 1898. Masson, David. British Novelists and Their Styles. Cambridge, Eng., 1859. Matthews, Brander. The Historical Novel, etc. New York, 1901. Meteyard, Eliza. A Group of Englishmen (1795-1815), being records of the younger Wedgwoods and their friends. London, 1871. Millar, J.H. The Mid-Eighteenth Century. (Periods of European Literature.) New York, 1902. Moore, Thomas. Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with notices of his life. 2 vols. London, 1830. Myers, F.W.H. Wordsworth. (English Men of Letters.) New York, 1881. Newman, J.H. Apologia Pro Vita Sua. London, 1892. Nichol, John. Byron. (English Men of Letters.) New York, 1880. Palgrave, F.T. Biographical and Critical Memoir of Sir Walter Scott. (In Poetical Works of Scott. London, 1866, Macmillan and Company.) Paris, Gaston. La Littérature Française au Moyen Age. Paris, 1890. Percy, W. Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, consisting of old heroic ballads, songs, and other pieces of our earlier poets (chiefly of the lyric kind) together with some few of later date. 3 vols. London, 1765. Pierce, E.L. Memoirs and Letters of Charles Sumner. 2 vols. Boston, 1877. Ruskin, John. Modern Painters. New edition, 5 vols. London, 1897. Saintsbury, George. Life of Scott. (Famous Scots Series.) New York. [1897.] A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe.... 3 vols. New York, 1900-1904. Scott, Temple, ed. The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. (Bohn’s Standard Library.) London, 1898-1905. Southey, Robert. Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, edited by John Wood Warter. 4 vols. London, 1856. Stephen, Leslie. English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century. (Ford Lectures, 1903.) London, 1904. Swift. (English Men of Letters.) New York, 1882. Taine, H.A. Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise. 4 vols. Paris, 1863-64. Ticknor, George. Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor. Sixth edition. 2 vols. Boston, 1877. White, A.D. Autobiography. 3 vols. New York, 1905. Wylie, L.J. Studies in the Evolution of English Criticism. Boston, 1894.

3. Periodicals and articles referred to, aside from the articles written by Scott.

The Bibliographer: Notes for a Bibliography of Swift, by Stanley Lane-Poole. Vol. VI, pp. 160-71. The Edinburgh Review: Review of The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. I, pp. 395-406; Review of Sir Tristrem, Vol. IV, pp. 427-43; Review of Scott’s edition of Swift, Vol. XXVII, pp. 1-58; Border Ballads, Vol. CCIII, pp. 306-26. The English Historical Review: Dean Swift and The Memoirs of Captain Carleton, by Col. the Hon. Arthur Parnell, R.E. Vol. VI, pp. 97-151. Fraser’s Magazine: Review of Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, Vol. II, pp. 507-519. The Knickerbocker Magazine: Review by J. Fenimore Cooper of Lockhart’s Life of Scott, Vol. XII, pp. 349 ff. Macmillan’s Magazine: The Historical Novel: Scott and Dumas, by Prof. Saintsbury, Vol. LXX, pp. 321-330. The Nineteenth Century: Defoe’s “Apparition of Mrs. Veal,” by G.A. Aitken, Vol. XXXVII, pp. 95 ff. The Quarterly Review: Review of Dunlop’s History of Fiction, Vol. XIII, pp. 384-408; Review of Frankenstein, Vol. XVIII, pp. 37-385; Review of The Lives of the Novelists, Vol. XXXIV, pp. 349-378.

Footnotes

1 Mr. Hutton’s Life of Scott, in the English Men of Letters series, contains no chapter nor any extended passage on Scott’s critical and scholarly work, though there is a chapter on “Scott’s Morality and Religion,” and one on “Scott as a Politician.” This, like the other short biographies of Scott, is professedly a compilation, so far as its facts are concerned, from Lockhart’s book. The Lives of Scott by Gilfillan and by Mackenzie, published about the time of the Scott centenary in 1871, are longer than Hutton’s, but contain no more extended references to the critical writings. Mackenzie’s book out of nearly five hundred pages gives only one to a discussion of the edition of Dryden, and half a page to an account of the establishment of the Quarterly Review. Gilfillan characterizes the critical work in almost as short a space, but with a good deal of judgment. The German biography of Scott contemporary with these, by Dr. Felix Eberty, is concerned with the man rather than his works. Of later Lives of Scott, Prof. Saintsbury’s gives, in proportion to its length, more space than any other to Scott’s critical work, but the book has only a hundred and fifty-five pages in all. Another recent biographer, Mr. W.H. Hudson, says of Scott’s editorial and critical work, “these exertions, though they call for passing record, occupy a minor place in his story”; and he gives them only “passing record.” Mr. Andrew Lang’s still more recent and briefer Sir Walter Scott devotes only a few lines here and there to comment on Scott as a critic, and contains hardly even a reference to the little-known volumes that he edited.

2 Ten of Scott’s twenty-seven novels (counting the first series of Chronicles of the Canongate as one) have scenes laid in the eighteenth century. They are as follows, arranged approximately in the order of their periods: The Bride of Lammermoor, The Pirate, The Black Dwarf, Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian, Waverley, Guy Mannering, Redgauntlet, Chronicles of the Canongate (First series), The Antiquary. The long poems all found their setting in earlier periods.

3 British Novelists and their Styles, pp. 167-8.

4 Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 9.

5 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 194.

6 See particularly Paul’s Letters; Provincial Antiquities; and the Histories of the years 1814 and 1815, each a respectable volume, written for the Edinburgh Annual Register.

7 Ruskin’s remark that “The excellence of Scott’s work is precisely in proportion to the degree in which it is sketched from present nature,” should not necessarily lead on to the condemnation which follows: “He does not see how anything is to be got out of the past but confusion, old iron on drawing-room chairs, and serious inconvenience to Dr. Heavysterne.” (Modern Painters, Part IV, ch. 16, § 32.)

8 Letters to Richard Heber, etc. (by J.L. Adolphus), pp. 136-137.

9 Mr. Herford distinguishes two lines of romantic sentiment—“the one pursuing the image of the past as a refuge from reality, the other as a portion of it: the mediaevalism of Tieck and the mediaevalism of Scott.” The Age of Wordsworth, Introduction, p. xxiv, note.

10 Letters of Lady Louisa Stuart, p. 249.

11 Journal, Vol. I, p. 333; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 81. The edition of Lockhart’s Life of Scott to which reference is made throughout this study is that in five volumes, published by Macmillan & Co. in the “Library of English Classics.”

12 Chesterton, Varied Types, pp. 161-2.

13 The fact that Scott was a Clerk of the Court of Sessions is remembered less frequently than the fact that he had business complications. But this employment of his, which could be undertaken only by a lawyer, occupied a large proportion of his time during twenty-four years. He once wrote, “I cannot work well after I have had four or five hours of the court, for though the business is trifling, yet it requires constant attention, which is at length exhausting.” (Constable’s Correspondence, Vol. III, p. 195.) Again he wrote, “I saw it reported that Joseph Hume said I composed novels at the clerk’s table; but Joseph Hume said what neither was nor could be correct, as any one who either knew what belonged to composing novels, or acting as clerk to a court of justice, would easily have discovered.” (Memoirs of Sir William Knighton, p. 252.)

14 Journal, Vol. I, p. 60; Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 390.

15 See the Memoir prefixed to the Globe Edition of Scott’s poems.

16 Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 217.

17 Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 447.

18 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 122.

19 Cooper measured his own success by the same test. At the conclusion of the Letter to the Publisher with which The Pioneers originally opened he said he should look to his publisher for “the only true account of the reception of his book.” (Lounsbury’s Life of Cooper, pp. 43-4.)

20 Napoleon, Vol. I, ch. 2.

21 “He fixed his attention on his employments without the slightest consideration for his own feelings of whatever kind, either in regard to state of health or domestic sorrows.” (Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, by R.P. Gillies, Vol. III, p. 141.)

22 Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 365.

23 Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 112.

24 Journal, Vol. 1, p. 303; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 68.

25 Letters to Heber, p. 69.

26 Irving’s Abbotsford.

27 Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor, Vol. I, p. 282. See also Scott’s review of the Life of Home; and Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 304.

28 Cockburn’s Memorials, p. 181.

29 Ticknor, Vol. I, p. 280.

30 Letters to Heber, p. 63; Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 496.

31 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 177.

32 Review of Poems of William Herbert, Edinburgh Review, October, 1806.

33 Lockhart, Vol. I, pp. 275-6.

34 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 333.

35 In 1830.

36 Ritson’s principal works were as follows: Select Collection of English Songs (1783); Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry from Authentic Manuscripts and Old Printed Copies (1791); Ancient Songs from the Time of Henry III. to the Revolution (1792); Scottish Songs with the Genuine Music (1794); Poems by Laurence Minot (1795); Robin Hood Poems (1795); Ancient English Metrical Romances (1802).

37 Ellis published his Specimens of the Early English Poets in 1790, and it was reissued with the addition of the Introduction in 1801 and 1803. He edited also Way’s translations of the Fabliaux (1796), and Specimens of Early English Romances in Metre (1805).

38 Review of Dunlop’s History of Fiction, July, 1815.

39 The Magnum Opus of Robert Surtees was his History of Durham, published 1816-1840.

40 Douce published Illustrations of Shakespeare in 1807. Later he edited Arnold’s Chronicle; Judicium, a Pageant; and a metrical Life of St. Robert. The two latter, which appeared in 1822 and 1824, were done for the Roxburghe Club. In 1824 he also wrote some notes for Warton’s History of English Poetry.

41 Age of Wordsworth, p. 39.

42 A number of volumes containing old ballads together with modern imitations had been published both before and after the appearance of Percy’s Reliques, but Ritson’s collections were the first, except Percy’s, to treat the material in a scholarly way.

43 The discussion centered upon the social and literary position of minstrels. The first edition of the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, published in 1765, contained an essay on the History of Minstrelsy, and one on the Origin of the Metrical Romances, which, taken together, says Mr. Courthope, “may be said to furnish the first generalized theory of the nature of mediaeval poetry.” (History of English Poetry, Vol. I, p. 426.) Percy considered the minstrels as the authors of the compositions which they sang to the harp, and as holding a dignified social position similar to that of the Anglo-Saxon scôp or the old Norse scald. This theory was vigorously attacked by Joseph Ritson in the preface of his Select Collection of English Songs in 1783, and again in his Ancient English Metrical Romances in 1802, and in his essay On the Ancient English Minstrels in Ancient Songs and Ballads (1792). Ritson contended that minstrels were musical performers of a low class, or even acrobats, and that they were not literary composers. Scott used his knowledge of ballads and romances and the customs depicted in them to reinforce his own decision that the truth lay somewhere between the two extremes. He pointed out that the word may have covered a wide variety of professional entertainers. A modern comment (by E.K. Chambers, in The Mediaeval Stage, Vol. I, p. 66) seems like an echo of Scott: “This general antithesis between the higher and lower minstrelsy may now, perhaps, be regarded as established. It was the neglect of it, surely, that led to that curious and barren logomachy between Percy and Ritson, in which neither of the disputants can be said to have had hold of more than a bare half of the truth.”

44 Scott’s theory as to the authorship of ballads is even now held by Mr. Courthope. At the end of his chapter on Minstrelsy, in The History of English Poetry, he thus sums up the matter: “All the evidence cited in this chapter shows that, so far from the ballad being a spontaneous product of popular imagination, it was a type of poem adapted by the professors of the declining art of minstrelsy, from the romances once in favour with the educated classes. Everything in the ballad—matter, form, composition—is the work of the minstrel; all that the people do is to remember and repeat what the minstrel has put together.” This statement represents a position which is actively assailed by the adherents of the communal origin theory. Another critical idea which originated in Germany, and in which Scott had no interest, though he knew something about it, was the Wolffian hypothesis in regard to the Homeric poems. He once heard Coleridge expound the subject, but failed to join in the discussion. (Journal, Vol. II, p. 164; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 193.) He said the theory could never be held by any poet. See a note by Lockhart on the essay on Popular Poetry. Henderson’s edition of Minstrelsy, Vol. I, p. 3.

45 Review of Cromek’s Reliques of Burns. Quarterly Review, February, 1809.

46 “No one but Burns ever succeeded in patching up old Scottish songs with any good effect,” Scott wrote in his Journal (Vol. II, p. 25). And in his review of Cromek’s Reliques of Burns he said on the same subject of Scottish songs: “Few, whether serious or humorous, past through his hands without receiving some of those magic touches which, without greatly altering the song, restored its original spirit, or gave it more than it had ever possessed.” (Quarterly, February, 1809.)

47 Remarks on Popular Poetry, Henderson’s edition of Minstrelsy, Vol. I, p. 46.

48 Henderson’s edition of Minstrelsy, Vol. I, p. xix.

49 Henderson’s edition of Minstrelsy, Vol. I, pp. 167-8.

50 The matter may be traced in Child’s collection of ballads, or more easily in the latest edition of the Minstrelsy, edited by T.F. Henderson and published in four volumes in 1902. Mr. Henderson’s views of ballad origins are quite in accord with Scott’s own, but he notes the points at which Scott failed to follow any originals. There seems to be some reason to believe, however, though Mr. Henderson does not say so, that Scott wrote Kinmont Willie without any originals at all, except the very similar situations in three or four other ballads. See the introduction by Professor Kittredge to the abridged edition of Child’s ballads, edited by himself and Helen Child Sargent.

It is unnecessary to give here any detailed account of Scott’s procedure, as the matter has been thoroughly worked out by students of ballads. A few examples may be given as illustrations, however. In The Dowie Dens of Yarrow (Henderson’s edition, Vol. III, p. 173) 28 lines out of the 68 are noted by Mr. Henderson as either changed or added by Scott. Scott writes (beginning of fifth stanza), “As he gaed up the Tennies bank” for “As he gaed up yon high, high hill,” and we find from a note of Lockhart’s that The Tennies is the name of a farm belonging to the Duke of Buccleuch. In the sixth stanza Scott changes the lines,

“O ir ye come to drink the wine

As we hae done before, O?” to

“O come ye here to part your land,

The bonnie forest thorough?”

In the seventeenth stanza he changes,

“A better rose will never spring

Than him I’ve lost on Yarrow?” to

“A fairer rose did never bloom

Than now lies cropp’d on Yarrow.”

In Jellon Grame (Vol. III, p. 203), Mr. Henderson notes changes in 15 different lines, and points out 2 whole stanzas, out of the 21, that are interpolated. In the Gay Goss-hawk (Vol. III, p. 187) 6 stanzas out of 39 are noted as probably wholly or mainly by Scott, and 30 stanzas were changed by him. Sometimes his alterations occurred in every line of a stanza. It is probable that Scott changed Jamie Telfer enough to make the Scotts take the place of prominence that had been held by the Elliotts in the original form of the story. See The Trustworthiness of Border Ballads as Exemplified by ‘Jamie Telfer i’ the Fair Dodhead’ and other Ballads; by Lieut.-Col. the Hon. Fitzwilliam Elliott. Reviewed in Edinburgh Review, No. 418, p. 306 (October, 1906).

51 See the examples given in the preceding note. Most of the changes there spoken of were made without annotation.

52 This extraordinary young man was poet and scholar on his own account by 1800, though he was four years younger than Scott. His erudition in many fields was remarkable, and he was as enthusiastic as Scott himself about Scotch poetry, and was the chief assistant in gathering ballads for the Minstrelsy. He also collected the material for the essay on Fairies in the second volume, which was especially praised by the reviewer in the Edinburgh Review (January, 1803). Leyden’s chief fame was derived from his wonderfully varied activities in India, from 1803 to his early death in 1811. Any reader of Lockhart’s Life of Scott or of Scott’s delightful little memoir, published first in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1811, and included in the Miscellaneous Prose Works, must feel that the uncouth young genius is a familiar acquaintance.

53 The Ettrick Shepherd, who, after reading the first two volumes of the Minstrelsy, sought an acquaintance with Scott, and offered assistance which was gladly made use of in the preparation of the third volume. Scott in his turn provided much of the material for Hogg’s Jacobite Relics, published in 1819. The following note on one of the songs in that work adds to the reader’s doubts concerning the accuracy of Scott’s texts: “I have not altered a word from the manuscript, which is in the handwriting of an amanuensis of Mr. Scott’s, the most incorrect transcriber, perhaps, that ever tried the business.” (Jacobite Relics, Vol. I, p. 282. Note on song lxiii.)

54 Henderson’s edition of the Minstrelsy, Vol. I, p. 284.

55 Quarterly, May, 1810.

56 Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 514.

57 Still more striking evidence that Scott lacked an infallible sense of the difference between genuine and spurious ballad material is afforded by his comments on Peter Buchan’s collection, which is now considered particularly untrustworthy. He thought that with two or three exceptions the pieces in the book were genuine, and said: “I scarce know anything so easily discovered as the piecing and patching of an old ballad; the darns in a silk stocking are not more manifest.” (Correspondence of C.K. Sharpe, Vol. II, p. 424.)

58 Scott’s manuscript collections of ballads dropped partially out of sight after his death, and it was only about 1890 that their magnitude and importance became known. Professor Child and later editors have found them of very great service. (On Child’s use of the Abbotsford materials, see the Advertisement to Part VIII of his collection, contained in Volume IV.) In 1880 appeared a reprint of the Ballad Book of C.K. Sharpe, “with notes and ballads from the unpublished manuscripts of C.K. Sharpe and Sir Walter Scott,” but the contributions from Scott’s papers did not amount to much. Scott’s materials were at the service of his friend for use in the original edition of the Ballad Book, published in 1823. See Sharpe’s Correspondence, Vol. II, pp. 264, 271 and 325, for letters from Scott on this subject.

59 Note on The Raid of the Reidswire, in the Minstrelsy.

60 Henderson’s edition of the Minstrelsy, Vol. III, p. 232.

61 Henderson’s edition of the Minstrelsy, Vol. II, p. 57.

62 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 360.

63 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 332.

64 First edition of the Minstrelsy, Vol. II, pp. 156-7.

65 Edinburgh Review, January, 1803.

66 The Minstrelsy is arranged in three parts: I., Historical Ballads; II., Romantic Ballads; III., Imitations of the Ballad. The first part is preceded by the Introductory Remarks on Popular Poetry, and by the historical introduction. The second part is preceded by the essay on The Fairies of Popular Superstition; and the third by the essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad. The poems by Scott given in this third part are as follows: Thomas the Rhymer (parts 2 and 3), Glenfinlas, The Eve of St. John, Cadyow Castle, The Gray Brother, War Song of the Royal Edinburgh Light Dragoons. Besides these there are three poems by John Leyden (and he has also an Ode on Scottish Music preceding the Romantic ballads), two by C.K. Sharpe, three by John Marriott, who was tutor to the children of the Duke of Buccleuch, and one each by Matthew Lewis, Anna Seward, Dr. Jamieson, Colin Mackenzie, J.B.S. Morritt, and an unnamed author. In the other parts of the book there are a few imitations, notably the three by Surtees—Lord Ewine, the Death of Featherstonhaugh, and Barthram’s Dirge, which Scott supposed were old; and one or two like the Flowers of the Forest, which he noted as largely modern, or which he had found, after arranging his material, to be wholly modern. Nearly forty old ballads were published in the Minstrelsy for the first time.

67 Remarks on Popular Poetry, conclusion.

68 Review of the Poems of William Herbert. Edinburgh Review, October, 1806.

69 Stanzas 10-12, and 31, are noted by Child as particularly suspicious. “Basnet,” which occurs in stanza 10, is not a very common word in ballads. It is used in The Lay, Canto I., stanza 25, and in Marmion, Canto VI, st. 21.

70 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 221.

71 Memoir of William Taylor, Vol. I, pp. 98-99, and see Sharpe’s Correspondence, Vol. I, pp. 146-7, for a letter to Sharpe on a similar point.

72 Minstrelsy, Introduction to Lord Thomas and Fair Annie.

73 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 101.

74 Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 35-6.

75 Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 244. See also Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 408.

76 Sometime before 1821 (probably a good while before, but the date cannot be fixed), Scott began a translation of Don Quixote, and afterwards gave the work over to Lockhart, who completed it. See Constable’s Correspondence, Vol. III, p. 161.

77 Louis-Elizabeth de la Vergne, Comte de Tressan, was born in 1705 and died in 1783. In early life he was sent to Rome on diplomatic business, and it is said that in the Vatican library he acquired his taste for the literature of chivalry. His chief works were Amadis de Gaules (1779); Roland furieux (translated from the Italian, 1780); Corps d’extraits romans de chevalerie (1782). His translations were partly adaptations, and were far from being rendered with precision.

78 See particularly his article on Ellis’s and Ritson’s Metrical Romances (Edinburgh Review, January, 1806), the essay on Romance, and Remarks on Popular Poetry in the Minstrelsy.

79 Edinburgh Review, July, 1804. Ellis and Scott had had much correspondence on Sir Tristrem, and it was Ellis’s queries that first led Scott into the detailed investigation which resulted in the separate publication of the work. He had intended to print it in the Minstrelsy (Lockhart, Vol. I. p. 289). The letters are given in Lockhart, Vol. I.

80 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 381.

81 Die nordische und die englische Version der Tristan-sage—II. Sir Tristrem. Heilbronn, 1882. Mr. George P. McNeill’s edition of Sir Tristrem was printed for the Scottish Text Society, Edinburgh, 1886.

82 Kölbing thinks Scott probably hired a transcriber who knew nothing of Middle English—a usual method of procedure in the beginning of the nineteenth century. In later editions more errors were introduced by the carelessness of printers, until, after 1830, when the book was included in the complete editions of Scott’s poems, the text was collated with the manuscript. But it was still far from correct. Kölbing enumerates about a hundred and thirty mistakes (see his Introduction, p. xvii). Of these I took twenty-one at random, and found that eight of them did not occur in the 1806 edition—in other words, the person who collated the text nearly thirty years after Scott or his hired transcriber had done it was far from infallible. A few illustrations may be given of mistakes that occur in both the 1806 and the 1833 editions: l. 117, send is given for sent; l. 846, telle for tel; l. 863, How for Hou; l. 912, mak for make; l. 1212, leuedi for leuedy; l. 1580, wende sche weren for whende sche were; l. 1334. have for han; l. 1514, as for als.

83 Review of Johnes’s Translation of Froissart, Edinburgh Review, January, 1805.

84 Waverley, and Claverhouse in Old Mortality.

85 Lockhart, Vol. I, pp. 480 and 482. Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 147.

86 Essay on Romance.

87 See Gaston Paris, La Littérature Française au Moyen Age, 1^ère partie, ch. IV.

88 Review of Metrical Romances, Edinburgh Review, January, 1806.

89 Journal, Vol. II, pp. 258-259.

90 Essay on Romance.

91 Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 46.

92 Memoir in the Globe edition of Scott’s poems.

93 Scott adopted the conclusions of Malcolm Laing, who edited Macpherson’s poems and adduced parallel passages from “a mass of poetry, enough to serve any six gentle readers for their lifetime,” as the reviewer says. The most of these parallels were found in “Homer, Virgil, and their two translators; Milton, Thomson, Young, Gray, Mason, Home, and the English Bible.” Although he was convinced by the argument, Scott saw that the editor was in some cases misled by his own ingenuity.

94 Later, however (in the essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad, 1830), he said: “In their spirit and diction they nearly resemble fragments of poetry extant in Gaelic.” By this time he was probably reverting to the earlier opinion which had made the more vivid impression.

95 For the Northern Antiquities, edited by Robert Jamieson and published in 1814, Scott wrote an abstract of the Eyrbyggja Saga, using, as one would conclude from his introductory words, the Latin version made by Thorkelin, who published the saga in 1787. The purpose of the publication required the historical and antiquarian rather than the literary point of view, and accordingly we find Scott’s notes occupied with historical comment.

96 In 1804 Weber came to Edinburgh in a deplorable condition of poverty, and was employed and assisted in literary work by Scott during the following nine years. In 1813 he was seized with insanity, and challenged Scott, across the study table, to an immediate duel with pistols. Scott supported Weber during the remaining five years of his life in an insane hospital. He was much liked by the Scott family. Scott rated his learning very highly, and gave him valuable assistance in various literary projects. Weber’s chief publications were: Metrical Romances of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Sixteenth Centuries, with Introduction, Notes and Glossary (1810); Dramatic Works of John Ford, with Introduction and Explanatory Notes (1811); Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, with Introduction and Explanatory Notes (1812): to this Scott’s notes were the most valuable contribution; Illustrations of Northern Antiquities (1814), with Jamieson and Scott.

97 See his essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad.

98 Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, translated by the Vicar of Batheaston. Conybeare had died two years before the publication of the book.

99 Review of Ellis’s Specimens, Edinburgh Review, April, 1804.

100 Bletson and Richard Ganlesse.

101 But see the dictum quoted by Scott in a somewhat over-emphatic way from Ellis’s Specimens of the Early English Poets, to the effect that Chaucer’s “peculiar ornaments of style, consisting in an affectation of splendour, and especially of latinity,” were perhaps his special contribution to the improvement of English poetry. (Edinburgh Review, April, 1804.) Scott said of Dunbar, “This darling of the Scottish muses has been justly raised to a level with Chaucer by every judge of poetry to whom his obsolete language has not rendered him unintelligible.” (Memoir of Bannatyne, p. 14.) After naming the various qualities in which Dunbar was Chaucer’s rival, he pronounces the Scottish poet inferior in the use of pathos. The relative position here assigned to the two poets seems to be rather an exaltation of Dunbar than a degradation of Chaucer.

102 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 408.

103 Dryden, Vol. XI, p. 245.

104 Dryden, Vol. XI, p. 396.

105 Ibid., Vol. VI, p. 243.

106 Ibid., Vol. XI, p. 338.

107 The discussion of popular superstitions given in the introduction to the Minstrelsy and in the Essay on Fairies, which is prefixed to the ballad of Young Tamlane, suggests comparison with the Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft which Scott wrote in the year before he died. He collected a remarkable library in regard to superstition, and thought at various times of making a book on the subject, but the project was pushed aside for other matters until 1831. The Letters which he wrote then are full of pleasant anecdote and judicious comment, and though they lack the vigor of his earlier work they have remained fairly popular. An edition of Kirk’s Secret Commonwealth of Elves and Fairies, published in 1815, has been attributed to Scott. (See below, the Bibliography of books edited by Scott.) Reviews of his which have not been mentioned in this chapter, but which naturally connect themselves with the subjects here discussed, are the following: The Culloden Papers—an account of the Highland clans, largely narrative (Quarterly, January, 1816); Ritson’s Annals of the Caledonians, Picts and Scots—an article of more than forty pages, discussing the early history of Scotland and the historians who have written upon it (Quarterly, July, 1829); Tytler’s History of Scotland—an article similar to that on Ritson’s book (Quarterly, November, 1829); Pitcairn’s Ancient Criminal Trials—a long article, which begins with an extended digression on booksellers and collectors and on the Roxburghe and Bannatyne clubs (Quarterly, February, 1831); Sibbald’s Chronicle of Scottish Poetry—merely a series of notes on special points (Edinburgh Review, October, 1803); Southey’s Chronicle of the Cid (Quarterly, February, 1809). For the Encyclopædia Britannica Scott wrote an essay on Chivalry, as well as the one on Romance to which reference has been made.

108 Review of Kelly’s Reminiscences and the Life of Kemble, Quarterly Review, June, 1826.

109 Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 97.

110 Terry had been educated as an architect, and his knowledge and taste were of assistance to Scott in connection with the building and furnishing of Abbotsford. After 1812 he played chiefly in London. In 1816 his version of Guy Mannering, the first of his adaptations from Scott, was presented. Before this he had taken the part of Roderick Dhu in two dramatic versions of The Lady of the Lake. In 1819 he was the first David Deans in his adaptation of The Heart of Midlothian. Six years later he became manager of the Adelphi theater, in association with F.H. Yates. At this time Scott became Terry’s security for £1280, a sum which he was afterward obliged to pay with the addition of £500 for which the credit of James Ballantyne was pledged. When financial embarrassment caused Terry to retire from the management his mental and physical powers gave way, and he died of paralysis in 1829. Terry admired Scott so much that he learned to imitate his facial expression, his speech and his handwriting.

111 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 94.

112 The phrase, which was a favorite one of Scott’s, is spoken not by Tony Lumpkin, but by one of his tavern companions. Scott’s use of it is an indication of the way in which he was familiar with the drama. Very likely he never reread the play after his youth, but his strong memory doubtless retained a pretty definite impression of it.

113 Review of the Life and Works of John Home, Quarterly, June, 1827.

114 Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 143.

115 Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 427. It may be noted that this criticism does not show much dramatic insight.

116 Lockhart, Vol. III, pp. 445-6.

117 Journal, Vol. I, p. 117; Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 447.

118 Journal, Vol. I, p. 94; Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 419.

119 Advertisement to Halidon Hill. When the publisher Cadell closed a bargain with Scott in five minutes for Halidon Hill, giving him £1000, he wrote as follows to his partner: “My views were these: here is a commencement of a series of dramatic writings—let us begin by buying them out.” (Constable’s Correspondence, Vol. III, p. 217.)

120 “That well-written, but very didactic ‘Old Play’,” as Adolphus calls it. (Letters to Heber, p. 55.)

121 Introductory epistle to Nigel.

122 Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 414.

123 Fitzgerald’s New History of the English Stage, Vol. II, p. 404.

124 Dramatic Essays, Hazlitt’s Works, Vol. VIII, p. 422.

125 Lockhart, Vol. III. p. 176.

126 Ibid., Vol. III. p. 265.

127 Ibid., Vol. III. p. 332.

128 Essay on the Drama.

129 In 1808 he wrote to a friend: “We have Miss Baillie here at present, who is certainly the best dramatic writer whom Britain has produced since the days of Shakspeare and Massinger.” (Fam. Let., Vol. I. p. 99.) But Wilson also put Joanna Baillie next to Shakspere, and quite seriously. The article in the Dictionary of National Biography, on Joanna Baillie says that when the first volume of Plays on the Passions was published anonymously in 1798, Walter Scott was at first suspected of being the author. But as Scott had done nothing to give him a literary reputation in 1798, the assertion is incredible. It seems to be based on the following very inexact statement in Chambers’s Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen. (Vol. V, Art. Joanna Baillie.) “Rich though the period was in poetry, this work made a great impression, and a new edition of it was soon required. The writer was sought for among the most gifted personages of the day, and the illustrious Scott, with others then equally appreciated, was suspected as the author.”

130 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 380.

131 Life of Dryden, ch. I. In Guy Mannering and The Antiquary, the first two novels in which Scott habitually used mottoes to head his chapters, most of the selections are from plays. Eighteen plays of Shakspere are represented by twenty-nine quotations. Other mottoes are from The Merry Devil of Edmonton, from Jonson, from Fletcher (The Little French Lawyer, Women Pleased, The Fair Maid of the Inn, The Beggar’s Bush), from Brome, Dekker, Middleton and Rowley, Cartwright, Otway, Southerne, The Beggar’s Opera, Walpole’s Mysterious Mother, The Critic, Chrononhotonthologos, Joanna Baillie. For the latter part of The Antiquary many of the mottoes were composed by Scott himself. Kenilworth presents a similar list, with some variations: Jonson’s Masque of Owls was used, more than one play by Beaumont and Fletcher, Waldron’s Virgin Queen, Wallenstein, and Douglas. In St. Ronan’s Well there is a larger proportion of non-dramatic mottoes, as in most of the later novels, but we find represented nine of Shakspere’s plays and one of Beaumont and Fletcher’s. The Legend of Montrose (chapter XIV) has a motto from Suckling’s Brennoralt. In Anne of Geierstein ten of Shakspere’s plays were drawn upon, and Manfred was twice used. Scott made his chapters much longer in these later novels, and used fewer mottoes, but the evidence of the selections would seem to indicate that he had lost something of his early familiarity with dramatic literature.

132 Hazlitt’s Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays appeared in 1817; his Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Queen Elizabeth in 1821.

133 Scott first began to fabricate occasional mottoes for his chapters during the composition of The Antiquary in 1816.

134 Saintsbury in Macmillan’s Magazine, lxx: 323. Scott’s style in many sages is strongly colored by the influence of Shakspere.

135 Introduction by Lang to The Fortunes of Nigel.

136 It is possible that among the various jobs of editing undertaken by Scott with a view to keeping the Ballantyne types busy, were certain collections of dramas. Ancient British Drama, in three volumes, and Modern British Drama, in five volumes, published in 1810 and 1811, are sometimes attributed to Scott in library catalogues, but on what authority it seems impossible to discover. There is almost no commentary in the Ancient British Drama, but the Modern British Drama contains three brief introductions which I believe were written by Scott. They show a striking likeness to some parts of the Essay on the Drama written several years later, and it is not probable that Scott took his criticism ready-made from another author. In the preface to the Ancient British Drama we find this statement: “The present publication is intended to form, with The British Drama and Shakspeare, a complete and uniform collection in ten volumes of the best English plays.” The Shakspeare here referred to is doubtless that of which Constable the publisher afterwards spoke in his correspondence with Scott as “Ballantyne’s Shakespeare,” and Scott had no hand in the editorship. (Constable’s Correspondence, Vol. III, p. 244.)

It is true, however, as R.S. Mackenzie says in his Life of Scott, that Scott “had not only meditated, but partly executed an edition of Shakespeare.” The work was suggested by Constable in 1822, was begun in 1823 or 1824, and three volumes of the proposed ten were printed by the time of Constable’s financial crash in the beginning of 1826. The project was sometime afterwards abandoned, and the printed sheets, which apparently were not bound up, disappeared from view. The first volume was to be a life of Shakspere by Scott, and this was probably not begun at all. Of the commentary in the other volumes, Scott was to have the oversight but Lockhart was to do most of the work. It was not designed that the critical apparatus should to any great degree represent original ideas furnished by Lockhart or Scott, but the book was to be “a sensible Shakespeare, in which the useful and readable notes should be condensed and separated from the trash.” (See the discussion of the matter in letters between Scott and his publisher given in the third volume of Constables Correspondence. See also Lang’s Life of Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 409, and Vol. II, p. 13, and Mackenzie’s Life of Scott, pp. 475-6.) The Boston Public Library contains three volumes which are thought to be a unique copy of so much of the Scott-Lockhart Shakspere as was printed. (See below, the Bibliography of books edited by Scott.)

Scott’s notes on Beaumont and Fletcher, which he had wished in 1804 to offer to Gifford, were actually used by Weber in his Beaumont and Fletcher, published about 1810, an edition which was characterized by Scott as “too carelessly done to be reputable.” (Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 472.)

137 He seems to have connected heroic plays too closely with “the romances of Calprenède and Scudéri.” See his introduction to The Indian Emperor, Dryden, Vol. II, pp. 317-20; also Vol. I, p. 56, and Vol. VI, p. 125. On his opinion in regard to the relation between novels and plays see below, pp. 75-6.

138 See his comment on Corneille’s Oedipe, Dryden, Vol. VI, p. 125 and Mr. Saintsbury’s note.

139 Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 446.

140 Hutchinson’s Letters of Scott, p. 224.

141 That Scott admired Sackville greatly is evident from more than one comment. Of Ferrex and Porrex he says, “In Sackville’s part of the play, which comprehends the two last acts, there is some poetry worthy of the author of the sublime Induction to the Mirror of Magistrates.” (Dryden, Vol. II, p. 135.) Elsewhere Scott calls Sackville “a beautiful poet.” (Fragmenta Regalia, p. 277. Secret History of the Court of James I., Vol. I, p. 278, note.)

142 Dryden, Vol. II, p. 136.

143 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 229. See also Vol. III, p. 223.

144 Ibid., Vol. V, p. 322.

145 See, for example, Hawthornden, in Provincial Antiquities.

146 Dryden, Vol. XV, p. 337.

147 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 10.

148 Note on Sir Tristrem, Fytte II., stanza 56.

149 See Middleton’s Plays in the Mermaid edition: Introduction, Vol. I, pp. viii-ix.

150 Ticknor, in Allibone’s Dictionary, Vol. II, p. 1968.

151 Journal, Vol. I, p. 234; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 23.

152 See Scott’s article on Molière, Foreign Quarterly Review, February, 1828.

153 Essay on Drama; Dryden, Vol. I, p. 101 ff., Vol. II, pp. 317-20, Vol. IV, p. 4.

154 Dryden, Vol. IV, p. 4.

155 Article on Molière, Foreign Quarterly Review, February, 1828.

156 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 431.

157 Review of Kelly’s Reminiscences and the Life of Kemble, Quarterly Review, June, 1826.

158 Ibid.

159 Dryden, Vol. VI, p. 128.

160 In Provincial Antiquities (Borthwick Castle). Scott cites parallels from Sir John Oldcastle, The Pinner of Wakefield, and one of Nash’s pamphlets, for a curious incident in Scottish history.

161 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 431. This search among seventeenth century pamphlets may have suggested to Scott the need of a new edition of Somers’ Tracts. Apparently he arranged with the publishers in 1807 to undertake this task, but the first volume did not appear till 1809. (Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 10, and see below, pp. 89-90, for an account of Scott’s edition of the Tracts.) Some of his materials for the Dryden were taken from this collection, but more from the Luttrell collection, to which he refers in the Advertisement.

162 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 433. Scott’s Dryden appeared in 1808, and with some slight changes in 1821; as reëdited by Mr. Saintsbury it was published in 1882-1893. It was the first complete and uniform edition of Dryden’s works, and it remains the only one. The dramatic works had appeared in folio in 1701. They were edited by Congreve in 1717, and Scott used Congreve’s text. The non-dramatic poems were also published in 1701 in folio. They appeared in more convenient forms in 1741, 1743, and 1760, but of these editions only the last was reasonably complete. In 1800 the Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works were edited by Malone, who added a Life of Dryden which has furnished a large part of the material used by biographers since his time. This biography was badly written, but with Johnson’s brilliant essay it was the only Life of Dryden before Scott’s that was worth considering. An edition of Dryden’s poems, with notes by Joseph Warton and others, appeared in 1811, but seems to have been prepared before Scott’s edition was published. The text of this is very incorrect. Since then the non-dramatic poems have been published several times. Mr. Christie said in his preface to the Globe edition: “Sir Walter Scott’s is the last important edition of Dryden, as it is indeed still the only general collection of his works; and it is to be regretted that that distinguished man did not give as much pains to the purification of Dryden’s text as he did to his excellent biography and to the notes which enrich the edition.”

163 Editor’s Preface.

164 Dryden, Vol. IX, p. 226.

165 Ibid., Vol. IX, p. 2.

166 In this connection Scott’s review of Todd’s edition of Spenser is interesting. He takes exception to the lack of an appearance of continuity in the biography, caused by the long quotations included in the body of the narrative; and censures the editor for not having used the history of Italian poetry in elucidating Spenser’s work. (Edinburgh Review, October, 1805.)

167 Review of Todd’s Spenser.

168 Dryden, Vol. I, p. 6.

169 Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 229; and Dryden, Vol. I, p. 6.

170 Dryden, Vol. I, pp. 402-3.

171 Dryden, Vol. I, p. 403.

172 Ibid., p. 404. Mr. Saintsbury thinks that Scott’s prefatory introductions to the plays are often “both meagre and depreciatory”; also that Scott’s judgment on Dryden’s letters is rather harsh, for him, and that after he had begun to write novels he would not have been so impatient of remarks on “turkeys, marrow-puddings, and bacon.”

173 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 405.

174 Ibid., Vol. X, p. 307 ff.

175 Ibid., Vol. XIV, pp. 136 and 146.

176 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 405.

177 In order to give a more specific view of Scott’s methods, two or three of the introductions to well-known poems may be briefly analysed. The introduction to Absalom and Achitophel occupies 111/2 pages, of which about 21/2 are given to quotation from a tract which Scott thought furnished the argument to Dryden, and which was unnoticed by any former commentator. Scott’s remarks follow this outline: Position of the poem in literature, and history of its composition; origin of the particular allegory as applied to modern politics; a parallel use of the allegory (with a quotation from Somers’ Tracts in illustrations); aptness of the allegory; merits of the satire—treatment of Monmouth and other main characters; changes in the second edition to mitigate the satire; characterization of the poem as having few flights of imagination but much correctness of taste as well as fire and spirit; other objections by Johnson refuted; success of the poem; history of the first publication and of the replies and congratulatory poems; editions, and Latin versions. The notes on this poem are historical and very full, but the introduction contains as much literary as historical comment. Religio Laici is prefaced by 8 pages of introduction, in which are discussed the motive of the writing, the argument, the title, the purpose of the poem, and its reputation. Dryden’s style in didactic poetry is compared with Cowper’s, to the disadvantage of the later poet. The introduction to The Hind and the Panther is 20 pages long, and discusses the history of the period as well as the argument of the poem, its style, the subject of fables in general, and the effects the poem produced. The notes on this poem are copious. As he discussed the Fables in the Life of Dryden, Scott gave them no general introduction, and for each poem he wrote only a slight preface, telling something of the source and pointing out special beauties. His notes vary greatly in abundance. Those on Palamon and Arcite, e.g., are brief, explaining terms of chivalry and heraldry, but not giving literary or linguistic comment.

178 Dryden, Vol. XIII, p. 324.

179 Ibid., Vol. XII, p. 20.

180 Ibid., Vol. X, p. 213.

181 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 411.

182 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 98. See also St. Ronan’s Well, Vol. I, p. 105, and various mottoes in the novels. The edition of the novels used for reference is that published in Edinburgh (1867) in 48 volumes.

183 Dryden, Vol. X, p. 26.

184 For example see Anne of Geierstein, Vol. II, p. 307.

185 Letters to Heber, p. 292.

186 The price offered for the Swift was £1500. This must have been a rather rash speculation on the publisher’s part, as there had been several editions of Swift’s works published. The first appeared in twelve volumes in 1755, edited by Hawkesworth. Deane Swift, Hawkesworth, and others, added thirteen more volumes in the course of the next twenty-five years, and when the whole was completed it was reissued in three different sizes. In 1785 an edition in seventeen volumes was published, edited by Thomas Sheridan. In 1801 the edition by Nichols was published, and it reappeared in 1804 and in 1808. Hawkesworth and Thomas Sheridan supplied biographies which Leslie Stephen characterized by saying that Hawkesworth’s gave no new material and that Sheridan’s was “pompous and dull.” (Preface to Leslie Stephen’s Life of Swift.)

187 Correspondence of C.K. Sharpe, Vol. II, p. 178.

188 This correspondence consisted of 28 letters from Swift, and 16 “Vanessa.”

189 A comparison of the index with the bibliography in the Dictionary of National Biography and with Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole’s Notes for a Bibliography of Swift (Bibliographer, vi: 160-71) shows that Scott was usually right in his judgment on the main articles. But since Mr. Lane-Poole ends his list thus: “And numerous short poems, trifles, characters and short pieces,” it is evident that one cannot carry the investigation far without undertaking to make a complete bibliography of Swift. Mr. Temple Scott says, in the Advertisement of his edition of Swift’s Prose Works, begun in 1897, that since Sir Walter’s edition of 1824 “there has been no serious attempt to grapple with the difficulties which then prevented and which still beset the attainment of a trustworthy and substantially complete text.”

190 Swift, Vol. IV, p. 280. Two more of Scott’s comments may be given, further to illustrate his method. “This piece [William Crowe’s Address to her Majesty, Swift, Vol. XII, p. 265] and those which follow, were first extracted by the learned Dr. Barrett, of Trinity College, Dublin, from the Lanesborough and other manuscripts. I have retained them from internal evidence, as I have discarded some articles upon the same score.” “The following poems [poems given as “ascribed to Swift,” Vol. X, p. 434] are extracted from the manuscript of Lord Lanesborough, called the Whimsical Medley. They are here inserted in deference to the opinion of a most obliging correspondent, who thinks they are juvenile attempts of Swift. I own I cannot discover much internal evidence in support of the supposition.”

191 Colonel Parnell, writing in the English Historical Review on “Dean Swift and the Memoirs of Captain Carleton,” has spoken of the biography as “this most partial, verbose, and inaccurate account of the dean’s life and writings.” He says also that in editing Carleton’s Memoirs Scott adopted, without investigation and in the face of evidence, Johnson’s opinion that the memoirs were genuine; that Scott was mistaken about the date of the first edition and misquoted the title page; and that his “glowing account” of Lord Peterborough, in the introduction, was amplified (without acknowledgment) from a panegyric by Dr. Birch in “Houbraken’s Heads.” (English Historical Review, January, 1891; vi: 97. For a further reference to the article see below, p. 144.)

192 Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 20.

193 September, 1816.

194 Swift Vol. XVII, p. 4, note.

195 Life of Swift, conclusion.

196 Swift, Vol. XI, p. 12.

197 Vol. IX, p. 569. The tract had already been correctly assigned. A similar note on another tract indicates more careful research on the part of the editor. The paper is A Secret History of One Year, which had commonly been attributed to Robert Walpole. Scott says: “This tract in not to found in Mr. Coxe’s list of Sir Robert Walpole’s publications, nor in that given by his son, the Earl of Oxford, in the Royal and Noble Authors.... It does not seem at all probable that Walpole should at this crisis have thought it proper to advocate these principles.” (Vol. XIII, p. 873.) The piece is now attributed to Defoe.

198 See above, p. 4.

199 Horace Walpole, in Lives of the Novelists.

200 Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 512.

201 Quarterly, September, 1826.

202 See his explanation, in the articles themselves.

203 The Mid-Eighteenth Century, by J.H. Millar, p. 143, note.

204 Ibid., p. 159. Scott compares Fielding and Smollett at some length in the Life of Smollett.

205 Life of Le Sage.

206 Life of Richardson.

207 Life of Fielding.

208 Life of Goldsmith. As we might expect, Scott speaks rather too favorably of Goldsmith’s hack work in history and science.

209 Life of Sterne.

210 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 35.

211 See above, p. 53, note.

212 See also the Introductory epistle to Ivanhoe; and the Review of Walpole’s Letters. “In attaining his contemporary triumph,” says Mr. Brander Matthews, “Scott owed more to Horace Walpole than to Maria Edgeworth.” The Historical Novel, p. 10.

213 Scott uses the word.

214 Mr. G.A. Aitken has given convincing evidence that the story was not invented by Defoe. Mr. Aitken also shows the falsity of Scott’s statement that Drelincourt’s book was in need of advertising, as William Lee, in his Life of Defoe, had previously done. (See The Nineteenth Century, xxxvii: 95. January, 1895; and also Aitken’s edition of Defoe’s Romances and Narratives, Vol. XV, Introduction.) A passage from Defoe’s History of the Church of Scotland is quoted in the review of Tales of My Landlord, by Scott, who says that it probably suggested one of the scenes in Old Mortality. Scott there speaks of Defoe’s “liveliness of imagination,” and says he “excelled all others in dramatizing a story, and presenting it as if in actual speech and action before the reader.” (Quarterly Review, January, 1817.)

215 See also The Fortunes of Nigel, Vol. II, pp. 88-9.

216 Life of Clara Reeve.

217 Blackwood, March, 1818.

218 Quarterly, May, 1818.

219 See a reference to Voltaire and other French authors; Napoleon, Vol. I, ch. 2.

220 Life of Richardson.

221 We gather from Scott’s article that he considered the following to be the chief “speculative errors” of Bage: he was an infidel; he misrepresented different classes of society, thinking the high tyrannical and the low virtuous and generous; his system of ethics was founded on philosophy instead of religion; he was inclined to minimize the importance of purity in women; he considered tax-gatherers extortioners, and soldiers, licensed murderers.

222 Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 132.

223 Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 192. In his George the Third, Thackeray said: “Do you remember the verses—the sacred verses—which Johnson wrote on the death of his humble friend Levett?” (Biographical edition of Thackeray, Vol. VII, p. 671.)

224 Life of Johnson.

225 Introduction to Chronicles of the Canongate.

226 Dryden, Vol. XI, p. 81, note; Review of the Life and Works of John Home, Quarterly, June, 1827.

227 Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 44.

228 Swift, Vol. XVI, p. 275, note. On one of the last sad days before Sir Walter left Scotland for his Italian journey he quoted in full Prior’s poem on Mezeray’s History of France. (Lockhart, Vol. V, pp. 339-40.)

229 Swift, Vol. III, p. 36.

230 Ibid., Vol. XIII, p. 24.

231 Correspondence of C.K. Sharpe, Vol. II, p. 194.

232 Journal, Vol. I, p. 67; Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 401.

233 Allan Cunningham’s Life of Scott, p. 96.

234 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 483.

235 See the satirical paragraph in his review of Gertrude of Wyoming, on the habits of reviewers in general. “We are perfectly aware,” he says, “that, according to the modern canons of criticism, the Reviewer is expected to show his immense superiority to the author reviewed, and at the same time to relieve the tediousness of narration, by turning the epic, dramatic, moral story before him into quaint and lively burlesque.” (Quarterly, May, 1809.) In his review of the Life and Works of John Home he speaks of “the hackneyed rules of criticism, which, having crushed a hundred poets, will never, it may be prophesied, create, or assist in creating, a single one.” (Quarterly, June, 1827.)

236 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 363.

237 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 501. For a further comparison of Scott and Jeffrey as critics see below, pp. 134-5.

238 Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 204.

239 Ibid., Vol. V, p. 97.

240 Journal, Vol. II, p. 262

241 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 173

242 In general Scott admired Lockhart. “I have known the most able men of my time,” he once wrote, “and I never met any one who had such ready command of his own mind, and possessed in a greater degree the power of making his talents available upon the shortest notice, and upon any subject.” (Life of Murray, Vol. II, p. 222.) But in Lockhart’s earlier days Scott said, “I am sometimes angry with him for an exuberant love of fun in his light writings, which he has caught, I think, from Wilson, a man of greater genius than himself perhaps, but who disputes with low adversaries, which I think a terrible error, and indulges in a sort of humour which exceeds the bounds of playing at ladies and gentlemen, a game to which I have been partial all my life.” (Letters of Lady Louisa Stuart, p. 225.)

243 Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 400.

244 Lang’s Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 406.

245 Life of Murray, Vol. I, pp. 146-7.

246 Quarterly, February, 1809.

247 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 327.

248 Scott wrote a poetical epitaph for the burial place of Miss Seward and her father. See Edinburgh Annual Register, Vol. II, pt. 2. In the introduction to The Tapestried Chamber, Scott said, “It was told to me many years ago by the late Miss Anna Seward, who, among other accomplishments that rendered her an amusing inmate in a country house, had that of recounting narratives of this sort with very considerable effect; much greater, indeed, than anyone would be apt to guess from the style of her written performances.” It must be remembered that Miss Seward was one of the first persons of any literary note, outside of Edinburgh, to show an interest in Scott’s work, and he committed himself to admiration of her poetry when he was still in a rather uncritical stage. In regard to his later feeling about her see Recollections, by R.P. Gillies, Fraser’s, xiii: 692, January, 1836.

249 J.L. Adolphus, in an interesting passage in his Letters to Heber on the Authorship of Waverley, noted many of the references to contemporary poets. See pp. 53-4. See also Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age, art. Sir Walter Scott

250 Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 341. See also a similar anecdote in Forster’s Life of Landor, Vol. II, p. 244.

251 Lockhart, Vol. I, pp. 116-17.

252 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 132.

253 Journal, Vol. I, p. 321.

254 Review of Cromek’s Reliques of Burns, Quarterly, February, 1809.

255 Ibid.

256 Ibid.

257 Crabbe Robinson, in his diary (quoted by Knight in his edition of Wordsworth, Vol. X, p. 189), says that Coleridge and his friends “consider Scott as having stolen the verse” of Christabel. On this point see also a letter by Coleridge, given in Meteyard’s Group of Englishmen, pp. 327-8. In 1807 Coleridge wrote to Southey: “I did not over-hugely admire the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ but saw no likeness whatever to the ‘Christabel,’ much less any improper resemblance.” (Letters of Coleridge, ed. by E.H. Coleridge, Vol. II, p. 523.) Yet Mr. Lang seems to think that in this matter Scott “showed something of the deficient sense of meum and tuum which marked his freebooting ancestors.” (Sir Walter Scott, p. 36.) Apparently Scott never dreamed that the matter could be looked at in this way. In Lockhart’s Scott (Vol. II, pp. 77-8) we find described an occasion on which the two men once met in London, when they were asked, with other poets who were present, to recite from their unpublished writings. Coleridge complied with the request, but Scott said he had nothing of his own and would repeat some stanzas he had seen in a newspaper. The poem was criticised adversely in spite of Scott’s protests, till Coleridge lost patience and exclaimed, “Let Mr. Scott alone; I wrote the poem.” Coleridge’s lines:
“The Knight’s bones are dust

And his good sword rust,

His soul is with the saints, I trust,”

are probably much better known as they appear in Ivanhoe, incorrectly quoted, than in their proper form. Scott also added a note on Coleridge in this connection. (Ivanhoe, Chapter VIII.)

258 But apparently not in any earlier than The Black Dwarf, which was written in 1816, the year in which the poem was published. It was about 1803 that Scott heard Christabel recited. See Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 221.

259 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 356.

260 Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 315.

261 See Letters to Heber, p. 293; On Imitations of the Ancient Ballad; Lockhart, Vol. III, pp. 56 and 264; Quentin Durward, Vol. II, p. 394.

262 Note in The Abbot.

263 Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 223.

264 Note in St. Ronan’s Well. See also the comment on Wallenstein in Paul’s Letters, Letter XV.

265 Review of Childe Harold, Canto III, Quarterly, October, 1816.

266 In 1818 Scott wrote a review of Frankenstein in which it appears that he thought Shelley was the author. Shelley had sent the book with a note in which he said that it was the work of a friend and he had merely seen it through the press; and Scott took this for the conventional evasion so often resorted to by authors. (See Mr. Lang’s note in his Introduction to the Waverley Novels, p. lxxxvi.) Scott praises the substance and style of the book, and advises the author to cultivate his poetical powers, in words which make it evident that he did not know Shelley as a poet, though Alastor had appeared in 1816. Scott also praises Frankenstein in his article on Hoffmann. In reading Scott’s novels I have noted two reminiscences of the line, “One word is too often profaned.” They are to be found in Old Mortality, Vol. II, p. 93, and in Redgauntlet, Vol. I, p. 224.

267 Journal, Vol. II, p. 179.

268 Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 40.

269 Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 97.

270 Journal, Vol. I, p. 333

271 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 190.

272 I quote from the letter as given in Knight’s Wordsworth, Vol. II, p. 105. Prof. Knight says that Lockhart quotes the letter less exactly (Vol. I, p. 489.)

273 Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 428.

274 Even Byron admired Southey. He once wrote, “His prose is perfect. Of his poetry there are various opinions: there is, perhaps, too much of it for the present generation; posterity will probably select. He has passages equal to anything.” (Byron’s Letters and Journals, ed. Prothero, Vol. II, p. 331.) Shelley also had a high opinion of Southey’s work. (Dowden’s Life of Shelley, Vol. I, p. 158, and pp. 471-2.) Landor liked Madoc and Thalaba so much that, when he found Southey hesitating to write more poems of a similar kind because they did not pay, he offered to bear the expense of the publication. Southey refused the assistance, but was stimulated by the kindness and considered Landor’s encouragement responsible for his later work in poetry. (Forster’s Life of Landor, Vol. I, pp. 209-214.)

275 Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 307.

276 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 415.

277 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 477; see also Edinburgh Annual Register for 1809, part 2, p. 588.

278 Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 197.

279 Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 127.

280 In his youth Scott read Dante with other Italian authors, but he did not become well acquainted with him, and later even expressed dislike for his work. (See Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 408.) In 1825 he wrote to W.S. Rose, “I will subscribe for Dante with all pleasure, on condition you do not insist on my reading him.” (Fam. Let., Vol. II, p. 356.)

281 It may be interesting to have Southey’s comment on the same article. (See Southey’s Letters, Vol. II, p. 307.) He says, “Bedford has seen the review which Scott has written of it, and which, from his account, though a very friendly one, is, like that of the ‘Cid,’ very superficial. He sees nothing but the naked story; the moral feeling which pervades it has escaped him. I do not know whether Bedford will be able to get a paragraph interpolated touching upon this, and showing that there is some difference between a work of high imagination and a story of mere amusement.” Either Bedford was mistaken in saying that Scott had ignored the moral aspect of the poem, or else he succeeded in getting a passage interpolated, for the review is sufficiently definite on that point.

282 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 481.

283 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 296.

284 Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 413.

285 Journal, Vol. I, p. 112; Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 429.

286 Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 391.

287 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 211.

288 Introduction to Marmion; Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 82.

289 Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 508.

290 Byron did not altogether approve of Scott’s poetry, but he felt its effectiveness. In his “Reply to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine,” Byron wrote: “What have we got instead [of following Pope]? A deluge of flimsy and unintelligible romances, imitated from Scott and myself, who have both made the best of our bad materials and erroneous system.”

291 Review of Childe Harold, Canto III, Quarterly, October, 1816.

292 Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 182.

293 It should be remembered also that Scott’s first review of Childe Harold appeared at a time when all England was condemning Byron for his treatment of Lady Byron, and that the article was thought by many to be altogether too lenient. Byron wrote to Murray expressing his pleasure in the review before he knew who was responsible for it, and some years later he wrote to Scott as follows: “To have been recorded by you in such a manner would have been a proud memorial at any time, but at such a time... was something still higher to my self-esteem.... Had it been a common criticism, however eloquent or panegyrical, I should have felt pleased, undoubtedly, and grateful, but not to the extent which the extraordinary good-heartedness of the whole proceeding must induce in any mind capable of such sensations.” (Byron’s Letters and Journals, Vol. VI, p. 2.) See Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 510, for quotations from Byron showing his admiration for Scott. An interesting contrast between the characters of the two poets is drawn by H.S. Legaré. (See his Collected Writings, Vol. II, p. 258.)

294 Journal, Vol. I, p. 221

295 Remarks on the Death of Lord Byron.

296 Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 525

297 See Nichol’s Byron (English Men of Letters), p. 205; and Arnold’s essay on Byron.

298 Quarterly Review, May, 1809.

299 Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 341.

300 Journal, Vol. I, p. 9.

301 Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 70.

302 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 306.

303 Byron said, “Crabbe’s the man, but he has got a coarse and impracticable subject.” (Moore’s Life and Letters of Byron, Vol. IV, pp. 63-4.) Leslie Stephen remarks that Crabbe “was admired by Byron in his rather wayward mood of Pope-worship, as the last representative of the legitimate school.” (English Literature and Society in the 18th Century, p. 207.)

304 Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 197.

305 The reader will at once recall the ingenuous remark of Sophia Scott when she was asked, shortly after its appearance, how she liked The Lady of the Lake. She said, “Oh, I have not read it; Papa says there’s nothing so bad for young people as reading bad poetry.” (Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 130. See also the Life of Irving, Vol. I, p. 444.)

306 Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 94.

307 Correspondence of C.K. Sharpe, Vol. I, p. 353.

308 See Marmion, introduction to Canto III, and other passages noted by Adolphus in the Letters to Heber, p. 295. See also Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 198, and the passage in Lockhart (Vol. II, p. 132), in which James Ballantyne reports Scott as saying to him, “If you wish to speak of a real poet, Joanna Baillie is now the highest genius of our country.”

309 Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 306.

310 Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 359; also Vol. I, p. 255; and Constable’s Correspondence, Vol. III, p. 300.

311 Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 117.

312 Ibid., Vol. V, p. 448.

313 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 14.

314 Forster, Vol. I, p. 84, note.

315 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 95.

316 Haydon’s Correspondence, Vol. I, p. 356.

317 Hunt says Scott was interested in reading The Story of Rimini. See Hunt’s Autobiography, Vol. I, p. 260.

318 Journal, Vol. I, p. 22. Scott wrote as follows to Lockhart after the appearance of Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries: “Hunt has behaved like a hyena to Byron, whom he has dug up to girn and howl over him in the same breath.” Mr. Lang makes this comment: “Leigh Hunt... had gone out of his way to insult Sir Walter and to make the most baseless insinuations against him. Scott probably never mentioned Leigh Hunt’s name publicly in his life, and he refers to the insults neither in his correspondence nor in his Journal.” (Lang’s Life of Lockhart, Vol. II, pp. 22 and 24.) Hunt evidently thought that Scott was partly responsible for the articles in Blackwood on the Cockney School. He says, “Unfortunately some of the knaves were not destitute of talent: the younger were tools of older ones who kept out of sight.” (Hunt’s Lord Byron, etc., Vol. I, p. 423.) In his Autobiography, Hunt says, “Sir Walter Scott confessed to Mr. Severn at Rome that the truth respecting Keats had prevailed.” (Vol. II, p. 44.) Mr. Lang points out that though Colvin said of Scott (in his Life of Keats) “that he was in some measure privy to the Cockney School outrages seems certain,” he afterwards recanted the statement. (In his edition of Keats’s Letters, p. 60, note. See Lang’s Lockhart, Vol. I, pp. 196-8.) Scott invited Lamb to Abbotsford when Lamb was looked upon as a leader of the Cockney School. (Lang’s Scott, p. 52.)

319 Journal, Vol. I, p. 155; Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 476, and Vol. V, p. 380.

320 Quarterly, October, 1815.

321 Postscript to Waverley, and General Introduction.

322 For references to the group of women novelists who were so successful in depicting manners, see the Life of Charlotte Smith; the Postscript to Waverley; the Introduction to St. Ronan’s Well; Journal, Vol. I, p. 164.

323 Journal, Vol. II, p. III.

324 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 116.

325 Lockhart, Vol. IV, 164.

326 Journal, Vol. I, p. 299; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 65.

327 Journal, Vol. I, p. 295; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 62.

328 The reference as given by Lockhart is as follows: “This man, who has shown so much genius, has a good deal of the manners, or want of manners, peculiar to his countrymen.” (Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 62.) Cooper observes in regard to this point: “The manners of most Europeans strike us as exaggerated, while we appear cold to them. Sir Walter Scott was certainly so obliging as to say many flattering things to me, which I, as certainly, did not repay in kind. As Johnson said of his interview with George the Third, it was not for me to bandy compliments with my sovereign. At that time the diary was a sealed book to the world, and I did not know the importance he attached to such civilities.” It is a pity that the transcriber of the passage in the Journal changed “manner,” which was the word Scott wrote, to the more objectionable “manners.” (Journal, Vol. I, p. 295.)

329 Scott’s letter was substantially as follows: “I have considered in all its bearings the matter which your kindness has suggested. Upon many former occasions I have been urged by my friends in America to turn to some advantage the sale of my writings in your country, and render that of pecuniary avail as an individual which I feel as the highest compliment as an author. I declined all these proposals, because the sale of this country produced me as much profit as I desired, and more—far more—than I deserved. But my late heavy losses have made my situation somewhat different, and have rendered it a point of necessity and even duty to neglect no means of making the sale of my works effectual to the extrication of my affairs, which can be honorably and honestly resorted to. If therefore Mr. Carey, or any other publishing gentleman of credit and character, should think it worth while to accept such an offer, I am willing to convey to him the exclusive right of publishing the Life of Napoleon, and my future works in America, making it always a condition, which indeed will be dictated by the publisher’s own interest, that this monopoly shall not be used for the purpose of raising the price of the work to my American readers, but only for that of supplying the public at the usual terms....

“At any rate, if what I propose should not be found of force to prevent piracy, I cannot but think from the generosity and justice of American feeling, that a considerable preference would be given in the market to the editions emanating directly from the publisher selected by the author, and in the sale of which the author had some interest.

“If the scheme shall altogether fail, it at least infers no loss, and therefore is, I think, worth the experiment. It is a fair and open appeal to the liberality, perhaps in some sort to the justice, of a great people; and I think I ought not in the circumstances to decline venturing upon it. I have done so manfully and openly, though not perhaps without some painful feelings, which however are more than compensated by the interest you have taken in this unimportant matter, of which I will not soon lose the recollection.” (Knickerbocker Magazine, Vol. XI, p. 380 ff., April, 1838.)

330 Knickerbocker, Vol. XII, p. 349 ff., October, 1838.

331 In a letter written in January, 1839, Sumner said, speaking of Cooper’s article, “I think a proper castigation is applied to the vulgar minds of Scott and Lockhart.” (See Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, by Edward L. Pierce, Vol. II, p. 38; and Lounsbury’s Cooper, p. 160.)

332 Lockhart, Vol. IV, pp. 163-4.

333 Ibid., Vol. III, p. 262.

334 Ibid., Vol. III, p. 131, note; Fam. Let., Vol. I, p. 440. “Walter Scott was the first transatlantic author to bear witness to the merit of Knickerbocker,” wrote P.M. Irving in his Life of Washington Irving. Henry Brevoort presented Scott with a copy of the second edition in 1813, and received this reply: “I beg you to accept my best thanks for the uncommon degree of entertainment which I have received from the most excellently jocose history of New York. I am sensible that as a stranger to American parties and politics I must lose much of the concealed satire of the piece, but I must own that looking at the simple and obvious meaning only, I have never read anything so closely resembling the style of Dean Swift, as the annals of Diedrich Knickerbocker.... I think too there are passages which indicate that the author possesses powers of a different kind, and has some touches which remind me much of Sterne.” (Life of Irving, Vol. I, p. 240.) When, in 1819, Irving needed money, he wrote to Scott for advice about publishing the Sketch Book in England. “Scott was the only literary man,” he says, “to whom I felt that I could talk about myself and my petty concerns with the confidence and freedom that I would to an old friend—nor was I deceived. From the first moment that I mentioned my work to him in a letter, he took a decided and effective interest in it, and has been to me an invaluable friend.” (Vol. I, p. 456.) At this time Scott asked Irving to accept the editorship of a political newspaper in Edinburgh, an offer which Irving of course refused. (Fam. Let., Vol. II, p. 60; Life of Irving, Vol. I, pp. 441-2, and Vol. III, pp. 272-3.) Scott called the Sketch Book “positively beautiful.” He was by some people supposed to be the author. In this connection it was said of him that his “very numerous disguises,” and his “well-known fondness for literary masquerading, seem to have gained him the advantage of being suspected as the author of every distinguished work that is published.” (Letter by Lady Lyttleton, in Life of Irving, Vol. II, p. 21.)

335 Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 131; Life of Irving, Vol. I, p. 240.

336 Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 161.

337 Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, Letter II.

338 Constable’s Correspondence, Vol. III, p. 199.

339 Lockhart, Vol. V, pp. 100-104.

340 Vol. I, p. 371.

341 Journal, Vol. I, p. 359; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 100. See also Journal, Vol. II, pp. 483-4.

342 Review of Hoffmann’s novels, Foreign Quarterly Review, July, 1827.

343 Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 19.

344 M. Maigron says, speaking of the vogue of Scott in France: “On peut affirmer mème que, de 1820 à 1830, aucun nom français ne fut en France aussi connu et aussi glorieux.” (Le Roman Historique à l’Époque Romantique, p. 99. See also pp. 100-133.)

345 The phrase is quoted from Scott’s article on the Life and Works of John Home, in which it is applied to Home’s critical work. The same idea occurs frequently in Scott’s books, as indicating one of the finest graces of life. It was one which Sir Walter was foremost in practicing in all his social relations.

346 He was talking about Pope. See the Recollections, by R.P. Gillies, Fraser’s, xii: 253 (Sept., 1835).

347 Review of The Battles of Talavera, Quarterly, November, 1809.

348 Editor’s Introduction to Montrose, Border edition of the Waverley Novels.

349 Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 125.

350 Quarterly, January, 1817. Scott evidently wrote this article chiefly for the purpose of defending the historical accuracy of Old Mortality. He also wished to show that The Black Dwarf was founded on fact; and he devoted some space, as will appear in the passage quoted below (pp. 111-112), to a discussion of the artistic aspects of these and the earlier Waverly novels.

351 Journal, Vol. II, p. 269.

352 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 276.

353 Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 96.

354 Introductory epistle to Nigel; Fam. Let., Vol. I, p. 28.

355 Introduction to the Monastery.

356 Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 258.

357 Rokeby, Canto VI, stanza 26; Waverley, Vol. II, pp. 399-400; Journal, Vol. 1, p. 117; Lockhart, Vol. IV, pp. 447-8.

358 Review of the Life and Works of John Home, Quarterly, June, 1827.

359 Review of Southery’s Life of Bunyan, Quarterly, October, 1830.

360 Quarterly, January, 1817.

361 Lockhart, Vol. II, pp. 7-8.

362 Quarterly, November, 1809.

363 Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 128.

364 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 129.

365 Epistle prefixed to Canto V.

366 Epistle prefixed to Canto III.

367 Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age, art. Sir Walter Scott; see Letters to Heber, p. 75 ff.

368 It is hard to say just how much he accomplished by the proof-reading, which, to judge by his Journal, he habitually performed. He wrote to Kirkpatrick Sharpe in 1809, after seeing a new number of the Quarterly: “I am a little disconcerted with the appearance of one or two of my own articles, which I have had no opportunity to revise in proof.” (Sharpe’s Correspondence, Vol. I, p. 370.) Lockhart gives an interesting sample of a sheet of Scott’s poetry tentatively revised by Ballantyne and reworked by the author. (Lockhart, Vol. III, pp. 32-5.) It is certain that Ballantyne made many suggestions, some of which Scott accepted and some of which he summarily rejected. In Hogg’s Domestic Manners of Scott we find the following account of what the printer said when Hogg reported that Sir Walter was to correct some proofs for him: “He correct them for you! Lord help you and him both! I assure you if he had nobody to correct after him, there would be a bonny song through the country. He is the most careless and incorrect writer that ever was born, for a voluminous and popular writer, and as for sending a proof sheet to him, we may as well keep it in the office. He never heeds it.... He will never look at either your proofs or his own, unless it be for a few minutes amusement” (pp. 242-3). When he wrote to Miss Baillie that he had read the proofs of a play of hers which was being published in Edinburgh, he added, “but this will not ensure their being altogether correct, for in despite of great practice, Ballantyne insists I have a bad eye.” (Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 173.)

369 Journal, Vol. II, p. 79; also 234 and 239; Lockhart, Vol. V, pp. 116 and 240.

370 Journal, Vol. I, p. 117; Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 448.

371 Lockhart, Vol. IV, pp. 2 and 391.

372 Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 72.

373 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 101.

374 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 113.

375 Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad.

376 A friend of Scott’s once wrote to him, “You are the only author I ever yet knew to whom one might speak plain about the faults found with his works.” (Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 282.) He took great pains, contrary to his usual custom, in revising and correcting the Malachi Malagrowther papers, but these were argumentative and in an altogether different class from his poems and novels; and besides he felt a special responsibility in writing upon a public matter “far more important than anything referring to [his] fame or fortune alone.” (Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 460.)

377 Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 379.

378 Introduction to the Pirate.

379 Journal, Vol. II, p. 250.

380 This was, of course, an effect of overwork and disease. Irving quotes Scott as saying: “It is all nonsense to tell a man that his mind is not affected, when his body is in this state.” (Irving’s Life, Vol. II, p. 459.)

381 Journal, Vol. I, p. 181.

382 See Lockhart, Vol. II, pp. 265-6.

383 Journal, Vol. I, pp. 212-13; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 13.

384 See Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 309; Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 216; Vol. IV, pp. 128 and 498; Vol. V, pp. 128, 412, 448.

385 Correspondence of C.K. Sharpe, Vol. I, p. 352.

386 Journal, Vol. II, p. 276. In the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1808 (published 1810) is an article on the Living Poets of Great Britain, which if not written by Scott was evidently influenced by him. Speaking of Southey, Campbell and Scott, the writer says: “Were we set to classify their respective admirers we should be apt to say that those who feel poetry most enthusiastically prefer Southey; those who try it by the most severe rules admire Campbell; while the general mass of readers prefer to either the Border Poet. In this arrangement we should do Mr. Scott no injustice, because we assign to him in the number of suffrages what we deny him in their value.” He once wrote to Miss Baillie, “No one can both eat his cake and have his cake, and I have enjoyed too extensive popularity in this generation to be entitled to draw long-dated bills upon the applause of the next.” (Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 173.) But in the Introductory Epistle to Nigel he said, “It has often happened that those who have been best received in their own time have also continued to be acceptable to posterity. I do not think so ill of the present generation as to suppose that its present favour necessarily infers future condemnation.”

387 Introduction to the Lady of the Lake; Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 130.

388 Introduction to Chronicles of the Canongate.

389 Journal, Vol. II, p 473.

390 Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 355.

391 Ibid., Vol. V, p. 164.

392 See speech of Humphry Gubbin, in The Tender Husband, Act I, Sc. 2.

393 Lockhart, Vol. IV, p 297; see also Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 55.

394 Lockhart, Vol. II, pp. 104 and 124.

395 Journal, Vol. I, p. 222; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 18.

396 Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 350.

397 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 508.

398 Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 229.

399 When Constable was proposing to publish the poetry of the novels separately, Scott wrote to him that it was beyond his own power to distinguish what was original from what was borrowed, and suggested the following Advertisement for the book:

“We believe by far the greater part of the poetry interspersed through these novels to be original compositions by the author. At the same time the reader will find passages which are quoted from other authors, and may probably debit more of these than our more limited reading has enabled us to ascertain. Indeed, it is our opinion that some of the following poetry is neither entirely original nor altogether borrowed, but consists in some instances of passages from other authors, which the author has not hesitated to alter considerably, either to supply defects of his own memory, or to adapt the quotation more explicitly and aptly to the matter in hand.” (Constable’s Correspondence, Vol. III, pp. 222-3.)

400 “I have taught nearly a hundred gentlemen to fence very nearly, if not altogether, as well as myself,” he said. (Journal, Vol. I, p. 167. See also pp. 273-5.)

401 Journal, Vol. I, pp. 275-6; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 45.

402 Lockhart, Vol. IV, pp. 322 and 492; Vol. V, p. 186.

403 Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 110.

404 Journal, Vol. II, p. 106, and Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 162.

405 Lockhart, Vol. I, pp. 33-4.

406 Ibid., Vol. III, p. 259.

407 Waverley, Vol. I, pp. 112-3. See also Mackenzie’s Life of Scott, p. 364.

408 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 29.

409 Journal, Vol. I, pp. 274-5; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 44. See also his review of Godwin’s Life of Chaucer.

410 Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 103.

411 Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 260.

412 Journal, Vol. II, p. 96.

413 Review of Tytler’s History of Scotland, Quarterly, November, 1829.

414 Southey’s Letters, Vol. IV, p. 62.

415 Herford’s Age of Wordsworth, pp. 39-40.

416 Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 60.

417 Paul’s Letters, Letter XVI.

418 Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 320.

419 On Goethe’s favorable opinion of the Napoleon, see a letter given in the appendix to Scott’s Journal (Vol. II, pp. 485-6 and note).

420 Carlyle’s Essay on Scott. See also Taine’s History of English Literature, Introduction, I.

421 Review of Metrical Romances, Edinburgh Review, January, 1806.

422 Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 333.

423 The Pirate, Vol. II, p. 138.

424 Introductory Epistle to Ivanhoe. Freeman, in his Norman Conquest, vigorously attacks Ivanhoe for its unwarranted picture of the relations between Saxons and Normans in the thirteenth century. (Vol. V, pp. 551-561.)

425 Mr. Lang points out that he made many written notes of his reading, as we should hardly expect a man of his unrivalled memory to do. (Life of Scott, p. 27.)

426 Constable’s Correspondence, Vol. III, p. 161.

427 Constable’s Correspondence, Vol. III, pp. 93-4.

428 Letters of Lady Louisa Stuart, p. 247.

429 Mr. Lang’s theory that Scott was responsible for a decline in serious reading cannot be either proved or refuted completely, but more than one man has given personal testimony concerning the stimulating effect of the Waverley novels. Thierry’s Norman Conquest was directly inspired by Ivanhoe, and with Ivanhoe is condemned by Freeman for its mistaken views. Mr. Andrew D. White says in his Autobiography that Quentin Durward and Anne of Geierstein led him to see the first that he had ever clearly discerned of the great principles that “lie hidden beneath the surface of events”—“the secret of the centralization of power in Europe, and of the triumph of monarchy over feudalism.” (Vol. I, pp. 15-16.)

430 Scott had theories as to what children’s books ought to be. They should stir the imagination, he said, instead of simply imparting knowledge as certain scientific books attempted to do. (Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 27.) But he seriously objected to any attempt to write down to the understanding of children. Of the Tales of a Grandfather he said: “I will make, if possible, a book that a child shall understand, yet a man will feel some temptation to peruse, should he chance to take it up.” (Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 112. See also ib., Vol. I, p. 19.) Anatole France has expressed ideas about children’s books which are practically the same as those of Scott. (See Le Livre de Mon Ami, 3^me partie: “A Madame D * * *.”)

431 Introduction to The Fortunes of Nigel.

432 See the Introduction to Waverley.

433 Introductory Epistle to Ivanhoe.

434 Ibid. In Old Mortality, Claverhouse was made to use the phrase “sentimental speeches,” but when Lady Louisa Stuart pointed out to Scott that the word “sentimental” was modern, he struck it out of the second edition.

435 Introductory Epistle to Ivanhoe. For other references to the use of a moderately antique diction see the essays on Walpole and Clara Reeve in Lives of the Novelists, and the review of Southey’s Amadis de Gaul, Edinburgh Review, October, 1803.

436 Journal, Vol. II, p. 226.

437 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 319.

438 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 216.

439 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 323.

440 Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 40.

441 Introduction to Chronicles of the Canongate. See also Letters to Heber, pp. 128-32, and 154; and Ruskin’s analysis of Scott’s descriptions: Modern Painters, Part IV, ch. 16, § 23 ff.

442 See particularly his reviews of Childe Harold, Canto III, Quarterly, October, 1816; and of Southey’s translation of the Amadis de Gaul, Edinburgh Review, October, 1803.

443 Lockhart, Vol. II, pp. 232-3.

444 Quoted in Wordsworth (English Men of Letters) by F.W.H. Myers, p. 143.

445 Recollections of Scott, by R.P. Gillies. Fraser’s, xii: 254.

446 Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 62.

447 Journal, Vol. I, p. 155, and Vol. II, p. 37; Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 476, and Vol. V, p. 380.

448 In the discussion of Lives of the Novelists.

449 See his Essay on Scott.

450 Dryden, Vol. XIV, p. 136.

451 Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 415, and Introductory Epistle to Nigel.

452 Letters to Heber, p. 44.

453 Op. cit., p. 120.

454 My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror.

455 Journal, Vol. II, p. 8.

456 Review of Hoffmann’s Novels, Foreign Quarterly Review, July, 1827.

457 Letters to R. Polwhele, etc., p. 102.

458 Lodge’s Illustrious Personages, Preface.

459 Article on Molière, Foreign Quarterly Review, February, 1828.

460 Three Studies in Literature, p. 12.

461 Edinburgh Review, No. 1, October, 1802: review of Thalaba.

462 Three Studies in Literature, p. 38.

463 Dryden, Vol. XI, p. 26.

464 Herford, op. cit., pp. 51-2.

465 Essay on the Drama.

466 Wylie, Studies in Criticism, pp. 107-8.

467 Table Talk, August 4, 1833. Works, Vol. VI, p. 472.

468 Familiar Letters, Vol. II, p. 402.

469 Article on Scott’s Demonology and Witchcraft, Fraser’s, December, 1830.

470 Mackenzie’s Life of Scott, p. 118.

471 The Plain Speaker, Hazlitt’s Works, Vol. VII, p. 345.

472 Dryden, Vol. I, p. 342. See above, pp. 136-7.

473 Familiar Letters, Vol. I, p. 84.

474 Life of Bage, in Novelists’ Library.

475 Essay on Judicial Reform, Edinburgh Annual Register, Vol. I, pt. 2, p. 352. Everyone knows that Scott was a decided Tory, and it is commonly supposed that he was an extremely prejudiced partisan. But he closes a political passage in Woodstock with these words: “We hasten to quit political reflections, the rather that ours, we believe, will please neither Whig nor Tory.” (End of Chapter 11.) From the definitions of Whig and Tory given in the Tales of a Grandfather, no one could guess his politics. (Chapter 53.)

476 Leigh Hunt’s Autobiography, Vol. I, p. 263. See also pp. 258-260, and the notes on his Feast of the Poets.

477 Courthope’s Liberal Movement, p. 122.

478 Life of Murray, Vol. II, p. 159.

479 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 232

480 Macmillan’s Magazine, lxx: 326.

481 Newman’s Apologia, pp. 96-97. Mark Twain thinks the influence of the novels was pernicious. He says: “A curious exemplification of the power of a single book for good or harm is shown in the effects wrought by Don Quixote and those wrought by Ivanhoe. The first swept the world’s admiration for the mediaeval chivalry-silliness out of existence; and the other restored it.... Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war.” (Life on the Mississippi, ch. xlvi.)

482 Familiar Letters, Vol. I, pp. 216-17. See also his remarks upon booksellers in his review of Pitcairn’s Ancient Criminal Trials, Quarterly, February, 1831.

483 Fraser’s, xiii: 693.

484 Essay on Dunbar in Ephemera Critica.

485 English Historical Review, vi: 97.

486 Life, Letters and Journals of George Ticknor, Vol. I, p. 283.

487 Carlyle’s Essay on Scott.

488 Lockhart, Vol. II, p. 9.

489 Journal, Vol. II, p. 259; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 248.

490 Dryden, Vol. I, conclusion.

491 British Novelists and their Styles, p. 204.

492 Journal, Vol. II, p. 173; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 99.

493 History of Criticism, Vol. I, p. 156.

494 Recollections of Scott by R.P. Gillies, Fraser’s, xii: 688.