Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott Volume IV Part 20

There are very few who have had the opportunities that have been presented to me, of knowing how very elevated is the admiration entertained by the Author of Waverley for the genius of Miss Edgeworth. From the intercourse that took place betwixt us while the work was going through my press, _I know_ that the exquisite truth and power of your characters operated on his mind at once to excite and subdue it. He felt that the success of his book was to depend upon the characters, much more than upon the story; and he entertained so just and so high an opinion of your eminence in the management of both, as to have strong apprehensions of any comparison which might be inst.i.tuted betwixt his picture and story and yours; besides, that there is a richness and _navete_ in Irish character and humor, in which the Scotch are certainly defective, and which could hardly fail, as he thought, to render his delineations cold and tame by the contrast. "If I could but hit Miss Edgeworth's wonderful power of vivifying all her persons, and making them live as _beings_ in your mind, I should not be afraid:"--Often has the Author of Waverley used such language to me; and I knew that I gratified him most when I could say,--"Positively this _is_ equal to Miss Edgeworth." You will thus judge, Madam, how deeply he must feel such praise as you have bestowed upon his efforts. I believe he himself thinks the Baron the best drawn character in his book--I mean the Bailie--honest Bailie Macwheeble. He protests it is the most _true_, though from many causes he did not expect it to be the most popular. It appears to me, that amongst so many splendid portraits, all drawn with such strength and truth, it is more easy to say which is your favorite, than which is best. Mr. Henry Mackenzie agrees with you in your objection to the resemblance to Fielding. He says you should never be forced to recollect, _maugre_ all its internal evidence to the contrary, that such a work is a work of fiction, and all its fine creations but of air. The character of Rose is less finished than the author had at one period intended; but I believe the characters of humor grew upon his liking, to the prejudice, in some degree, of those of a more elevated and sentimental kind. Yet what can surpa.s.s Flora, and her gallant brother?

I am not authorized to say--but I will not resist my impulse to say to Miss Edgeworth, that another novel, descriptive of more ancient manners still, may be expected erelong from the Author of Waverley.

But I request her to observe, that I say this in strict confidence--not certainly meaning to exclude from the knowledge of what will give them pleasure, her respectable family.

Mr. Scott's poem, The Lord of the Isles, promises fully to equal the most admired of his productions. It is, I think, equally powerful, and certainly more uniformly polished and sustained. I have seen three cantos. It will consist of six.

I have the honor to be, Madam, with the utmost admiration and respect,

Your most obedient and most humble servant,

JAMES BALLANTYNE.

Footnotes of the Chapter x.x.xIII.

[96: The Scotts of Scotstarvet, and other families of the name in Fife and elsewhere, claim no kindred with the great clan of the Border--and their armorial bearings are different.]

[97: Lord Byron writes to Mr. Moore, August 3, 1814: "Oh! I have had the most amusing letter from Hogg, the Ettrick Minstrel and Shepherd. I think very highly of him as a poet, but he and half of these Scotch and Lake troubadours are spoilt by living in little circles and petty coteries. London and the world is the only place to take the conceit out of a man--in the milling phrase. Scott, he says, is gone to the Orkneys in a gale of wind, during which wind, he affirms, the said Scott, he is sure, is not at his ease, to say the least of it. Lord! Lord! if these home-keeping minstrels had crossed your Atlantic or my Mediterranean, and tasted a little open boating in a white squall--or a gale in 'the Gut,'--or the Bay of Biscay, with no gale at all--how it would enliven and introduce them to a few of the sensations!--to say nothing of an illicit amour or two upon sh.o.r.e, in the way of Essay upon the Pa.s.sions, beginning with simple adultery, and compounding it as they went along."--_Life and Works_, vol. iii. p. 102. Lord Byron, by the way, had written on July the 24th to Mr. Murray, "_Waverley_ is the best and most interesting novel I have redde since--I don't know when,"

etc.--_Ibid._ p. 98.]

[98: Mr. Grieve was a man of cultivated mind and generous disposition, and a most kind and zealous friend of the Shepherd.]

[99: Major Riddell, the Duke's Chamberlain at Branksome Castle.]

[100: See letter to Mr. Morritt, _ante_, p. 120.]

[101: This alludes to some mummery in which David Hinves, of merry memory, wore a Caliban-like disguise. He lived more than forty years in the service of Mr. W. S. Rose, and died in it last year. Mr. Rose was of course extremely young when he first picked up Hinves--a bookbinder by trade, and a preacher among the Methodists.

A sermon heard casually under a tree in the New Forest had such touches of good feeling and broad humor, that the young gentleman promoted him to be his valet on the spot. He was treated latterly more like a friend than a servant by his master, and by all his master's intimate friends. Scott presented him with a copy of all his works; and Coleridge gave him a corrected (or rather an altered) copy of _Christabel_, with this inscription on the flyleaf: "DEAR HINVES,--Till this book is concluded, and with it '_Gundimore_, a poem, by the same author,' accept of this _corrected_ copy of _Christabel_ as a _small_ token of regard; yet such a testimonial as I would not pay to any one I did not esteem, though he were an emperor. Be a.s.sured I shall send you for your private library every work I have published (if there be any to be had) and whatever I shall publish. Keep steady to the FAITH. If the fountain-head be always full, the stream cannot be long empty. Yours sincerely,

S. T. COLERIDGE."

11th November, 1816--Muddeford.

Mr. Rose imagines that the warning, "keep steady to the faith," was given in allusion to Ugo Foscolo's "supposed license in religious opinions."--_Rhymes_ (Brighton, 1837), p. 92.--(1839.)]

[102: Garrick's Epilogue to _Polly Honeycombe_, 1760.]

[103: ["Except the first opening of the _Edinburgh Review_, no work that has appeared in my time made such an instant and universal impression. It is curious to remember it. The unexpected newness of the thing, the profusion of original characters, the Scotch language, Scotch scenery, Scotch men and women, the simplicity of the writing, and the graphic force of the descriptions, all struck us with an electric shock of delight. I wish I could again feel the sensations produced by the first year of these two Edinburgh works. If the concealment of the authors.h.i.+p of the novels was intended to make mystery heighten their effect, it completely succeeded. The speculations and conjectures, and nods and winks, and predictions and a.s.sertions were endless, and occupied every company, and almost every two men who met and spoke in the street. It was proved by a thousand indications, each refuting the other, and all equally true in fact, that they were written by old Henry Mackenzie, and by George Cranstoun, and William Erskine, and Jeffrey, and above all by Thomas Scott.... But 'the great unknown'

as the true author was then called, always took good care, with all his concealment, to supply evidence amply sufficient for the protection of his property and his fame; in so much that the suppression of the name was laughed at as a good joke not merely by his select friends in his presence, but by himself. The change of line, at his age, was a striking proof of intellectual power and richness. But the truth is that these novels were rather the outpourings of old thoughts than new inventions."--Lord c.o.c.kburn's _Memorials of His Time_.]]

[104: [Miss Edgeworth wrote from Edgeworthstown, October 23, 1814, addressing her letter to the Author of _Waverley_ (see _Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth_, vol. i. pp. 239-244):--

_Aut Scotus, aut Diabolus._

We have this moment finished _Waverley_. It was read aloud to this large family, and I wish the author could have witnessed the impression it made--the strong hold it seized of the feelings both of young and old--the admiration raised by the beautiful description, of nature--by the new and bold delineations of character--the perfect manner in which every character is sustained in every change of situation from first to last, without effort, without the affectation of making the persons speak in character--the ingenuity with which each person introduced in the drama is made useful and necessary to the end--the admirable art with which the story is constructed and with which the author keeps his own secrets till the proper moment when they should be revealed, whilst in the mean time, with the skill of Shakespeare, the mind is prepared by unseen degrees for all the changes of feeling and fortune, so that nothing, however extraordinary, shocks us as improbable; and the interest is kept up to the last moment. We were so possessed with the belief that the whole story and every character in it was real, that we could not endure the occasional addresses from the author to the reader.

They are like Fielding; but for that reason we cannot bear them, we cannot bear that an author of such high powers, of such original genius, should for a moment stoop to imitation. This is the only thing we dislike, these are the only pa.s.sages we wish omitted in the whole work; and let the unqualified manner in which I say this, and the very vehemence of my expression of this disapprobation, be a sure pledge to the author of the sincerity of all the admiration I feel for his genius.

I have not yet said half we felt in reading the work. The characters are not only finely drawn as separate figures, but they are grouped with great skill, and contrasted so artfully, and yet so naturally, as to produce the happiest dramatic effect and at the same time to relieve the feelings and attention in the most agreeable manner. The novelty of the Highland world which is discovered to our view excites curiosity and interest powerfully; but though it is all new to us it does not embarra.s.s or perplex, or strain the attention. We never are hara.s.sed by doubts of the probability of any of these modes of life; though we did not know them, we are quite certain they did exist exactly as they are represented. We are sensible that there is a peculiar merit in the work which is in a measure lost upon us, the dialects of the Highlanders and Lowlanders, etc. But there is another and a higher merit with which we are as much struck and as much delighted as any true-born Scotchman could be: the various gradations of Scotch feudal character, from the high-born chieftain and the military baron, to the n.o.ble-minded lieutenant Evan Dhu, the robber Bean Lean, and the savage Callum Beg. The Pre--the Chevalier is beautifully drawn,--

"A prince: aye, every inch a prince!"

His polished manners, his exquisite address, politeness, and generosity, interest the reader irresistibly, and he pleases the more from the contrast between him and those who surround him. I think he is my favorite character; the Baron Bradwardine is my father's. He thinks it required more genius to invent, and more ability uniformly to sustain, this character than any one of the masterly characters with which the book abounds. There is indeed uncommon art in the manner in which his dignity is preserved by his courage and magnanimity, in spite of all his pedantry and his _ridicules_.... I acknowledge that I am not as good a judge as my father and brothers are of his recondite learning and his law Latin, yet I feel the humor, and was touched to the quick by the strokes of generosity, gentleness, and pathos in this old man, who is, by the bye, all in good time worked up into a very dignified father-in-law for the hero....

Jinker, in the battle, pleading the cause of the mare he had sold to Balmawhapple, and which had thrown him for want of the proper bit, is truly comic; my father says that this and some other pa.s.sages respecting horsemans.h.i.+p could not have been written by any one who was not master both of the great and little horse.

I tell you without order the great and little strokes of humor and pathos just as I recollect, or am reminded of them at this moment by my companions.... Judging by our own feeling as authors, we guess that he would rather know our genuine first thoughts, than wait for cool second thoughts, or have a regular eulogium or criticism put in the most lucid manner, and given in the finest sentences that ever were rounded.

Is it possible that I have got thus far without having named Flora or Vich Ian Vohr--the last Vich Ian Vohr! Yet our minds were full of them the moment before I began this letter; and could you have seen the tears forced from us by their fate, you would have been satisfied that the pathos went to our hearts. Ian Vohr from the first moment he appears, till the last, is an admirably drawn and finely sustained character--new, perfectly new to the English reader--often entertaining--always heroic--sometimes sublime. The gray spirit, the Bodach Glas, thrills us with horror. _Us!_ What effect must it have upon those under the influence of the superst.i.tions of the Highlands?...

Flora we could wish was never called Miss MacIvor, because in this country there are tribes of vulgar Miss Macs, and this a.s.sociation is unfavorable to the sublime and beautiful of your Flora--she is a true heroine.... There is one thing more we could wish changed or omitted in Flora's character.... In the first visit to her, where she is to sing certain verses, there is a walk, in which the description of the place is beautiful, but too long, and we did not like the preparation for a scene--the appearance of Flora and her harp was too like a common heroine; she should be far above all stage effect or novelist's trick.

These are, without reserve, the only faults we found or can find in this work of genius. We should scarcely have thought them worth mentioning, except to give you proof positive that we are not flatterers. Believe me, I have not, nor can I convey to you the full idea of the pleasure, the delight we have had in reading _Waverley_, nor of the feeling of sorrow with which we came to the end of the history of persons whose real presence had so filled our minds--we felt that we must return to the flat realities of life, that our stimulus was gone, and we were little disposed to read the "Postscript, which should have been a Preface."

"Well, let us hear it," said my father, and Mrs. Edgeworth read on.

Oh! my dear sir, how much pleasure would my father, my mother, my whole family as well as myself have lost, if we had not read to the last page! And the pleasure came upon us so unexpectedly--we had been so completely absorbed that every thought of ourselves, of our own authors.h.i.+p, was far, far away.

Thank you for the honor you have done us, and for the pleasure you have given us, great in proportion to the opinion we had formed of the work we had just perused--and believe me, every opinion I have in this letter expressed was formed before any individual in the family had peeped to the end of the book or knew how much we owed you.

Your obliged and grateful MARIA EDGEWORTH.]

END OF VOLUME FOUR