[Footnote 27: Irving's Abbotsford and Newstead, 1835, p. 40.]

The good Duke of Buccleuch's solitary exemption from these heats of Carterhaugh might read a significant lesson to minor politicians of all parties on more important scenes. In pursuance of the same peace-making spirit, he appears to have been desirous of doing something gratifying to the men of the town of Selkirk, who had on this occasion taken the field against his Yarrow tenantry. His Grace consulted Scott about the design of a piece of plate to be presented to their community; and his letter on this weighty subject must not be omitted in the memoirs of a Sheriff of Selkirk:—

TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH, ETC., BOWHILL.

EDINBURGH, Thursday.

MY DEAR LORD,—I have proceeded in my commission about the cup. It will be a very handsome one. But I am still puzzled to dispose of the birse[28] in a {p.089} becoming manner. It is a most unmanageable decoration. I tried it upright on the top of the cup; it looked like a shaving-brush, and the goblet might be intended to make the lather. Then I thought I had a brilliant idea. The arms of Selkirk are a female seated on a sarcophagus, decorated with the arms of Scotland, which will make a beautiful top to the cup. So I thought of putting the birse into the lady's other hand; but, alas, it looked so precisely like the rod of chastisement uplifted over the poor child, that I laughed at the drawing for half an hour. Next I tried to take off the castigatory appearance, by inserting the bristles in a kind of handle; but then it looked as if the poor woman had been engaged in the capacities of housemaid and child-keeper at once, and, fatigued with her double duty, had sat down on the wine-cooler, with the broom in one hand, and the bairn in the other. At length, after some conference with Charles Sharpe, I have hit on a plan, which, I think, will look very well, if tolerably executed,—namely, to have the lady seated in due form on the top of the lid (which will look handsome, and will be well taken), and to have a thistle wreathed around the sarcophagus and rising above her head, and from the top of the thistle shall proceed the birse. I will bring a drawing with me, and they shall get the cup ready in the mean time. I hope to be at Abbotsford on Monday night, to stay for a week. My cat has eat two or three birds, while regaling on the crumbs that were thrown for them. This was a breach of hospitality; but oportet vivere—and micat inter omnes—with which stolen pun, and my respectful compliments to Lord Montagu and the ladies, I am, very truly, your Grace's most faithful and obliged servant,

Walter SCOTT.

[Footnote 28: A birse, or bunch of hog's bristles, forms the cognizance of the Sutors. When a new burgess is admitted into their community, the birse passes round with the cup of welcome, and every elder brother dips it into the wine, and draws it through his mouth, before it reaches the happy neophyte, who of course pays it similar respect.]

{p.090} P. S.—Under another cover, which I have just received, I send the two drawings of the front and reverse of the lid of the proposed cup. Your Grace will be so good as understand that the thistle—the top of which is garnished with the bristle—is entirely detached, in working, from the figure, and slips into a socket. The following lines are humbly suggested for a motto, being taken from an ancient Scottish canzonetta,—unless the Yarrow committee can find any better:—

"The sutor ga'e the sow a kiss: Grumph! quo' the sow, it's a' for my birss."

Some weeks before the year 1815 closed, Mr. Morritt sustained the heaviest of domestic afflictions; and several letters on that sad subject had passed between Rokeby and Abbotsford,[29] before the date of the following:—

[Footnote 29: [A touching letter from Morritt, written shortly before his wife's death, and one of Scott's, written after that event, will be found in Familiar Letters, vol. i. pp. 352-354.]]

TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., M. P., ROKEBY PARK.

EDINBURGH, 22d December, 1815.

MY DEAR MORRITT,—While you know what satisfaction it would have given me to have seen you here, I am very sensible of the more weighty reasons which you urge for preferring to stay at Rokeby for some time. I only hope you will remember that Scotland has claims on you, whenever you shall find your own mind so far at ease as to permit you to look abroad for consolation; and if it should happen that you thought of being here about our time of vacation, I have my time then entirely at my own command, and I need not say, that as much of it as could in any manner of way contribute to your amusement, is most heartily at yours. I have myself at present the melancholy task of watching the declining health of my elder brother, Major Scott, whom, I think, you have seen.

{p.091} My literary occupation is getting through the press the Letters of Paul, of whose lucubrations I trust soon to send you a copy. As the observations of a bystander, perhaps you will find some amusement in them, especially as I had some channels of information not accessible to every one. The recess of our courts, which takes place to-morrow, for three weeks, will give me ample time to complete this job, and also the second volume of Triermain, which is nearly finished,—a strange rude story, founded partly on the ancient northern traditions respecting the Berserkers, whose peculiar habits and fits of martial frenzy make such a figure in the Sagas. I shall then set myself seriously to The Antiquary, of which I have only a very general sketch at present; but when once I get my pen to the paper it will walk fast enough. I am sometimes tempted to leave it alone, and try whether it will not write as well without the assistance of my head as with it. A hopeful prospect for the reader. In the mean while, the snow, which is now falling so fast as to make it dubious when this letter may reach Rokeby, is likely to forward these important avocations, by keeping me a constant resident in Edinburgh, in lieu of my plan of going to Abbotsford, where I had a number of schemes in hand, in the way of planting and improving. I believe I told you I have made a considerable addition to my little farm, and extended my domains towards a wild lake, which I have a good prospect of acquiring also. It has a sort of legendary fame; for the persuasion of the solitary shepherds who approach its banks is, that it is tenanted by a very large amphibious animal called by them a water-bull, and which several of them pretend to have seen. As his dimensions greatly exceed those of an otter, I am tempted to think with Trinculo, "This is the devil, and no monster." But, after all, is it not strange, that as to almost all the lakes in Scotland, both Lowland and Highland, such a belief should prevail? and that the description popularly given {p.092} uniformly corresponds with that of the hippopotamus? Is it possible, that at some remote period, that remarkable animal, like some others which have now disappeared, may have been an inhabitant of our large lakes? Certainly the vanishing of the mammoth and other animals from the face of the creation renders such a conjecture less wild than I would otherwise esteem it. It is certain we have lost the beaver, whose bones have been more than once found in our Selkirkshire bogs and marlmosses. The remains of the wild bull are very frequently found; and I have more than one skull with horns of most formidable dimensions.

About a fortnight ago we had a great football match in Selkirkshire, when the Duke of Buccleuch raised his banner (a very curious and ancient pennon) in great form. Your friend Walter was banner-bearer, dressed, like a forester of old, in green, with a green bonnet, and an eagle feather in it; and, as he was well mounted, and rode handsomely over the field, he was much admired by all his clansmen.

I have thrown these trifles together, without much hope that they will afford you amusement; but I know you will wish to know what I am about, and I have but trifles to send to those friends who interest themselves about a trifler. My present employment is watching, from time to time, the progress of a stupid cause, in order to be ready to reduce the sentence into writing, when the Court shall have decided whether Gordon of Kenmore or MacMichan of Meikleforthhead be the superior of the lands of Tarschrechan and Dalbrattie, and entitled to the feudal casualties payable forth thereof, which may amount to twopence sterling, once in half a dozen of years. Marry, sir, they make part of a freehold qualification, and the decision may wing a voter. I did not send the book you received by the Selkirk coach. I wish I could have had sense enough to send anything which could afford you consolation. I think our friend {p.093} Lady Louisa was likely to have had this attention; she has, God knows, been herself tried with affliction, and is well acquainted with the sources from which comfort can be drawn. My wife joins in kindest remembrances, as do Sophia and Walter. Ever yours affectionately,

Walter SCOTT.

This letter is dated the 22d of December. On the 26th, John Ballantyne, being then at Abbotsford, writes to Messrs. Constable: "Paul is all in hand;" and an envelope, addressed to James Ballantyne on the 29th, has preserved another little fragment of Scott's playful doggerel:—

"Dear James—I'm done, thank God, with the long yarns Of the most prosy of Apostles—Paul; And now advance, sweet Heathen of Monkbarns, Step out, old quizz, as fast as I can scrawl."



{p.094} CHAPTER XXXVII.

Publication of Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk. — Guy Mannering "Terry-fied." — Death of Major John Scott. — Letters to Thomas Scott. — Publication of the Antiquary. — History of 1814 for the Edinburgh Annual Register. — Letters on the History of Scotland Projected. — Publication of the First Tales of My Landlord by Murray and Blackwood. — Anecdotes by Mr. Train. — Quarterly Review on the Tales. — Building at Abbotsford Begun. — Letters to Morritt, Terry, Murray, and the Ballantynes.

1816.

The year 1815 may be considered as, for Scott's peaceful tenor of life, an eventful one. That which followed has left almost its only traces in the successive appearance of nine volumes, which attest the prodigal genius, and hardly less astonishing industry of the man. Early in January were published Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk, of which I need not now say more than that they were received with lively curiosity, and general, though not vociferous applause. The first edition was an octavo, of 6000 copies; and it was followed, in the course of the next two or three years, by a second and a third, amounting together to 3000 more. The popularity of the novelist was at its height; and this admitted, if not avowed, specimen of Scott's prose must have been perceived, by all who had any share of discrimination, to flow from the same pen.

Mr. Terry produced, in the spring of 1816, a dramatic {p.095} piece, entitled Guy Mannering, which met with great success on the London boards, and still continues to be a favorite with the theatrical public. What share the novelist himself had in this first specimen of what he used to call "the art of Terryfying," I cannot exactly say; but his correspondence shows that the pretty song of the Lullaby[30] was not his only contribution to it; and I infer that he had taken the trouble to modify the plot, and rearrange, for stage purposes, a considerable part of the original dialogue. The casual risk of discovery, through the introduction of the song which had, in the mean time, been communicated to one of his humble friends, the late Mr. Alexander Campbell,[31] editor of Albyn's Anthology—(commonly known at Abbotsford as, by way of excellence, The Dunniewassal,)—and Scott's suggestions on that difficulty will amuse the reader of the following letter:—

[Footnote 30: See Scott's Poetical Works (Ed. 1834), vol. xi. p. 317 (Cambridge Ed. p. 425).]

[Footnote 31: This Mr. Campbell was the same whom the poet's mother employed to teach her boys to sing, as recorded in the Autobiographical Fragment—ante, vol. i. p. 44. I believe he was also the "litigious Highlander" of a story told in Irving's Abbotsford and Newstead, p. 57.

(In the November of this year, Scott writes to Lady Abercorn: "The only thing I have been doing of late is to write two or three songs for a poor man called Campbell.... He has made an immense collection of Highland airs, and I have given him words for some of them. One of them is the only good song I ever wrote—it is a fine Highland Gathering tune called Pibroch an Donuil Dhu, that is, the Pibroch of Donald the Black."—Familiar Letters, vol. i. p. 374.)]

TO D. TERRY, ESQ., ALFRED PLACE, BLOOMSBURY, LONDON.

ABBOTSFORD, 18th April, 1816.

MY DEAR TERRY,—I give you joy of your promotion to the dignity of an householder, and heartily wish you all the success you so well deserve, to answer the approaching enlargement of your domestic establishment. You will find a house a very devouring monster, and that the purveying for it requires a little exertion, and a great {p.096} deal of self-denial and arrangement. But when there is domestic peace and contentment, all that would otherwise be disagreeable, as restraining our taste and occupying our time, becomes easy. I trust Mrs. Terry will get her business easily over, and that you will soon "dandle Dickie on your knee."—I have been at the spring circuit, which made me late in receiving your letter, and there I was introduced to a man whom I never saw in my life before, namely, the proprietor of all the Pepper and Mustard family,—in other words, the genuine Dandie Dinmont. Dandie is himself modest, and says, "he b'lives it's only the dougs that is in the buik, and no himsel'." As the surveyor of taxes was going his ominous rounds past Hyndlea, which is the abode of Dandie, his whole pack rushed out upon the man of execution, and Dandie followed them (conscious that their number greatly exceeded his return), exclaiming, "The tae hauf o' them is but whalps, man." In truth, I knew nothing of the man, except his odd humor of having only two names for twenty dogs. But there are lines of general resemblance among all these hill-men, which there is no missing; and Jamie Davidson of Hyndlea certainly looks Dandie Dinmont remarkably well. He is much flattered with the compliment, and goes uniformly by the name among his comrades, but has never read the book. Ailie used to read it to him, but it set him to sleep. All this you will think funny enough. I am afraid I am in a scrape about the song, and that of my own making; for as it never occurred to me that there was anything odd in my writing two or three verses for you, which have no connection with the novel, I was at no pains to disown them; and Campbell is just that sort of crazy creature, with whom there is no confidence, not from want of honor and disposition to oblige, but from his flighty temper. The music of Cadil gu lo is already printed in his publication, and nothing can be done with him, for fear of setting his tongue a-going. Erskine and {p.097} you may consider whether you should barely acknowledge an obligation to an unknown friend, or pass the matter altogether in silence. In my opinion, my first idea was preferable to both, because I cannot see what earthly connection there is between the song and the novel, or how acknowledging the one is fathering the other. On the contrary, it seems to me that acknowledgment tends to exclude the idea of farther obligation than to the extent specified. I forgot also that I had given a copy of the lines to Mrs. Macleod of Macleod, from whom I had the air. But I remit the matter entirely to you and Erskine, for there must be many points in it which I cannot be supposed a good judge of. At any rate, don't let it delay your publication, and believe I shall be quite satisfied with what you think proper.

I have got from my friend Glengarry the noblest dog ever seen on the Border since Johnnie Armstrong's time. He is between the wolf and deer greyhound, about six feet long from the tip of the nose to the tail, and high and strong in proportion: he is quite gentle, and a great favorite: tell Will Erskine he will eat off his plate without being at the trouble to put a paw on the table or chair.[32] I showed him to Mathews, who dined one day in Castle Street before I came here, where, except for Mrs. S., I am like unto

{p.098} "The spirit who bideth by himself, In the land of mist and snow"—[33]

for it is snowing and hailing eternally, and will kill all the lambs to a certainty, unless it changes in a few hours. At any rate, it will cure us of the embarrassments arising from plenty and low markets. Much good luck to your dramatic exertions: when I can be of use, command me. Mrs. Scott joins me in regards to Mrs. Terry, and considers the house as the greatest possible bargain: the situation is all you can wish. Adieu! yours truly,

Walter SCOTT.

[Footnote 32: [In the letter accompanying his gift, Glengarry says: "His name is Maida, out of respect for that action in which my brother had the honor to lead the 78th Highlanders to victory." Writing to Joanna Baillie, April 12, Scott describes his new friend as "the finest dog of the kind in Scotland.... He is between the deer greyhound and mastiff, with a shaggy mane like a lion; he always sits beside me at dinner, his head as high as the back of my chair; yet it will gratify you to know that a favorite cat keeps him in the greatest possible order, and insists upon all rights of precedence, and scratches with impunity the nose of an animal who would make no bones of a wolf, and pulls down a red deer without fear or difficulty. I heard my friend set up some most piteous howls, and I assure you the noise was no joke, all occasioned by his fear of passing puss, who had stationed himself on the stairs."—Familiar Letters, vol. i. p. 358.]]

[Footnote 33: Coleridge—Ancient Mariner.]

P. S.—On consideration, and comparing difficulties, I think I will settle with Campbell to take my name from the verses, as they stand in his collection. The verses themselves I cannot take away without imprudent explanations; and as they go to other music, and stand without any name, they will probably not be noticed, so you need give yourself no farther trouble on the score. I should like to see my copy: pray send it to the post-office, under cover to Mr. Freeling, whose unlimited privilege is at my service on all occasions.

Early in May appeared the novel of The Antiquary, which seems to have been begun a little before the close of 1815. It came out at a moment of domestic distress.

Throughout the year 1815, Major John Scott had been drooping. He died on the 8th of May, 1816; and I extract the letter in which this event was announced to Mr. Thomas Scott by his only surviving brother.

TO THOMAS SCOTT, ESQ., PAYMASTER OF THE 70TH REGIMENT, CANADA.

EDINBURGH, 15th May, 1816.

MY DEAR TOM,—This brings you the melancholy news of our brother John's concluding his long and lingering illness by death, upon Thursday last. We had {p.099} thought it impossible he should survive the winter, but, as the weather became milder, he gathered strength, and went out several times. In the beginning of the week he became worse, and on Wednesday kept his bed. On Thursday, about two o'clock, they sent me an express to Abbotsford—the man reached me at nine. I immediately set out, and travelled all night—but had not the satisfaction to see my brother alive. He had died about four o'clock, without much pain, being completely exhausted. You will naturally feel most anxious about my mother's state of health and spirits. I am happy to say she has borne this severe shock with great firmness and resignation, is perfectly well in her health, and as strong in her mind as ever you knew her. She feels her loss, but is also sensible that protracted existence, with a constitution so irretrievably broken up, could have been no blessing. Indeed I must say, that, in many respects, her situation will be more comfortable on account of this removal, when the first shock is over; for to watch an invalid, and to undergo all the changes of a temper fretted by suffering, suited ill with her age and habits. The funeral, which took place yesterday, was decent and private, becoming our father's eldest son, and the head of a quiet family. After it, I asked Hay Donaldson and Mr. Macculloch[34] to look over his papers, in case there should be any testamentary provision, but none such was found; nor do I think he had any intention of altering the destination which divides his effects between his surviving brothers.—Your affectionate

W. S.

[Footnote 34: The late Mr. Hay Donaldson, W. S.,—an intimate friend of both Thomas and Walter Scott,—and Mr. Macculloch of Ardwell, the brother of Mrs. Thomas Scott.]

A few days afterwards, he hands to Mr. Thomas Scott a formal statement of pecuniary affairs; the result of which was, that the Major had left something not much under L6000. Major Scott, from all I have heard, was {p.100} a sober, sedate bachelor, of dull mind and frugal tastes, who, after his retirement from the army, divided his time between his mother's primitive fireside, and the society of a few whist-playing brother officers, that met for an evening rubber at Fortune's tavern. But, making every allowance for his retired and thrifty habits, I infer that the payments made to each of the three brothers out of their father's estate must have, prior to 1816, amounted to L5000. From the letter conveying this statement (29th May), I extract a few sentences:—

DEAR TOM,—... Should the possession of this sum, and the certainty that you must, according to the course of nature, in a short space of years succeed to a similar sum of L3000 belonging to our mother, induce you to turn your thoughts to Scotland, I shall be most happy to forward your views with any influence I may possess; and I have little doubt that, sooner or later, something may be done. But, unfortunately, every avenue is now choked with applicants, whose claims are very strong; for the number of disbanded officers, and public servants dismissed in consequence of Parliament turning restive and refusing the income-tax, is great and increasing. Economy is the order of the day, and I assure you they are shaving properly close. It would, no doubt, be comparatively easy to get you a better situation where you are, but then it is bidding farewell to your country, at least for a long time, and separating your children from all knowledge of those with whom they are naturally connected. I shall anxiously expect to hear from you on your views and wishes. I think, at all events, you ought to get rid of the drudgery of the paymastership—but not without trying to exchange it for something else. I do not know how it is with you—but I do not feel myself quite so young as I was when we met last, and I should like well to see my only brother return to his own country and settle, without thoughts {p.101} of leaving it, till it is exchanged for one that is dark and distant.... I left all Jack's personal trifles at my mother's disposal. There was nothing of the slightest value, excepting his gold watch, which was my sister's, and a good one. My mother says he had wished my son Walter should have it, as his male representative—which I can only accept on condition your little Walter will accept a similar token of regard from his remaining uncle.—Yours affectionately,

W. S.

The letter in which Scott communicated his brother's death to Mr. Morritt gives us his own original opinion of The Antiquary. It has also some remarks on the separation of Lord and Lady Byron—and the "domestic verses" of the noble poet.

TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., M. P., LONDON.

EDINBURGH, May 16, 1816.

MY DEAR MORRITT,—I have been occupied of late with scenes of domestic distress, my poor brother, Major John Scott, having last week closed a life which wasting disease had long rendered burthensome. His death, under all the circumstances, cannot be termed a subject of deep affliction; and though we were always on fraternal terms of mutual kindness and good-will, yet our habits of life, our taste for society and circles of friends, were so totally different, that there was less frequent intercourse between us than our connection and real liking to each other might have occasioned. Yet it is a heavy consideration to have lost the last but one who was interested in our early domestic life, our habits of boyhood, and our first friends and connections. It makes one look about and see how the scene has changed around him, and how he himself has been changed with it. My only remaining brother is in Canada, and seems to have an intention of remaining there; so that my mother, now upwards of eighty, has now only one child left to her {p.102} out of thirteen whom she has borne. She is a most excellent woman, possessed, even at her advanced age, of all the force of mind and sense of duty which have carried her through so many domestic griefs, as the successive deaths of eleven children, some of them come to men and women's estate, naturally infers. She is the principal subject of my attention at present, and is, I am glad to say, perfectly well in body and composed in mind.

Nothing can give me more pleasure than the prospect of seeing you in September, which will suit our motions perfectly well. I trust I shall have an opportunity to introduce you to some of our glens which you have not yet seen. But I hope we shall have some mild weather before that time, for we are now in the seventh month of winter, which almost leads me to suppose that we shall see no summer this season. As for spring, that is past praying for. In the month of November last, people were skating in the neighborhood of Edinburgh; and now, in the middle of May, the snow is lying white on Arthur's Seat, and on the range of the Pentlands. It is really fearful, and the sheep are perishing by scores. Jam satis terrae nivis, etc., may well be taken up as the song of eighteen hundred and sixteen.

So Lord Byron's romance seems to be concluded for one while—and it is surely time, after he has announced, or rather they themselves have announced, half-a-dozen blackguard newspaper editors, to have been his confidants on the occasion. Surely it is a strange thirst of public fame that seeks such a road to it. But Lord Byron, with high genius and many points of a noble and generous feeling, has Childe Harolded himself, and outlawed himself, into too great a resemblance with the pictures of his imagination. He has one excuse, however, and it is a sad one. I have been reckoned to make a good hit enough at a pirate, or an outlaw, or a smuggling bandit; but I cannot say I was ever so much enchanted with my {p.103} work as to think of carrying off a drift of my neighbor's sheep, or half a dozen of his milk cows. Only I remember, in the rough times, having a scheme with the Duke of Buccleuch, that when the worst came to the worst, we should repair Hermitage Castle, and live, like Robin Hood and his merry men, at the expense of all round us. But this presupposed a grand bouleversement of society. In the mean while, I think my noble friend is something like my old peacock, who chooses to bivouac apart from his lady, and sit below my bedroom window, to keep me awake with his screeching lamentation. Only I own he is not equal in melody to Lord Byron, for Fare-thee-well—and if for ever, etc., is a very sweet dirge indeed. After all, C'est genie mal loge, and that's all that can be said about it.

I am quite reconciled to your opinions on the income-tax, and am not at all in despair at the prospect of keeping L200 a year in my pocket, since the ministers can fadge without it. But their throwing the helve after the hatchet, and giving up the malt-duty because they had lost the other, was droll enough. After all, our fat friend[35] must learn to live within compass, and fire off no more crackers in the Park, for John Bull is getting dreadfully sore on all sides when money is concerned.

[Footnote 35: Shortly after Beau Brummell (immortalized in Don Juan) fell into disgrace with the Prince Regent, and was dismissed from the society of Carlton House, he was riding with another gentleman in the Park, when the Prince met them. His Royal Highness stopt to speak to Brummell's companion—the Beau continued to jog on—and when the other dandy rejoined him, asked with an air of sovereign indifference, "Who is your fat friend?" Such, at least, was the story that went the round of the newspapers at the time, and highly tickled Scott's fancy. I have heard that nobody enjoyed so much as the Prince of Wales himself an earlier specimen of the Beau's assurance. Taking offence at some part of His Royal Highness's conduct or demeanor, "Upon my word," observed Mr. Brummell, "if this kind of thing goes on, I shall be obliged to cut Wales, and bring the old King into fashion."]

I sent you, some time since, The Antiquary. It is not so interesting as its predecessors—the period did not {p.104} admit of so much romantic situation. But it has been more fortunate than any of them in the sale, for 6000 went off in the first six days, and it is now at press again; which is very flattering to the unknown author. Another incognito proposes immediately to resume the second volume of Triermain, which is at present in the state of the Bear and Fiddle.[36] Adieu, dear Morritt.

Ever yours,

Walter SCOTT.

[Footnote 36: See Hudibras.]

Speaking of his third novel in a letter of the same date to Terry, Scott says: "It wants the romance of Waverley and the adventure of Guy Mannering; and yet there is some salvation about it, for if a man will paint from nature, he will be likely to amuse those who are daily looking at it."

After a little pause of hesitation, The Antiquary attained popularity not inferior to Guy Mannering; and though the author appears for a moment to have shared the doubts which he read in the countenance of James Ballantyne, it certainly was, in the sequel, his chief favorite among all his novels. Nor is it difficult to account for this preference, without laying any stress on the fact, that, during a few short weeks, it was pretty commonly talked of as a falling off from its immediate predecessors—and that some minor critics reechoed this stupid whisper in print. In that view, there were many of its successors that had much stronger claims on the parental instinct of protection. But the truth is, that although Scott's Introduction of 1830 represents him as pleased with fancying that, in the principal personage, he had embalmed a worthy friend of his boyish days, his own antiquarian propensities, originating perhaps in the kind attentions of George Constable of Wallace-Craigie, and fostered not a little, at about as ductile a period, by those of old Clerk of Eldin, and John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, had by degrees so developed themselves, that he {p.105} could hardly, even when The Antiquary was published, have scrupled about recognizing a quaint caricature of the founder of Abbotsford Museum, in the inimitable portraiture of the Laird of Monkbarns. The Descriptive Catalogue of that collection, which he began towards the close of his life, but, alas, never finished, is entitled "Reliquiae Trottcosianae—or the Gabions of the late Jonathan Oldbuck, Esq."

But laying this, which might have been little more than a good-humored pleasantry, out of the question, there is assuredly no one of all his works on which more of his own early associations have left their image. Of those early associations, as his full-grown tastes were all the progeny, so his genius, in all its happiest efforts, was the "Recording Angel;" and when George Constable first expounded his "Gabions" to the child that was to immortalize his name, they were either wandering hand in hand over the field where the grass still grew rank upon the grave of Balmawhapple, or sauntering on the beach where the Mucklebackets of Prestonpans dried their nets, singing,—

"Weel may the boatie row, and better may she speed, O weel may the boatie row that wins the bairns' bread"—

or telling wild stories about cliff-escapes and the funerals of shipwrecked fishermen.

Considered by itself, without reference to these sources of personal interest, this novel seems to me to possess, almost throughout, in common with its two predecessors, a kind of simple unsought charm, which the subsequent works of the series hardly reached, save in occasional snatches: like them it is, in all its humbler and softer scenes, the transcript of actual Scottish life, as observed by the man himself. And I think it must also be allowed that he has nowhere displayed his highest art, that of skilful contrast, in greater perfection. Even the tragic romance of Waverley does not set off its Macwheebles and Callum Begs better than the oddities of {p.106} Jonathan Oldbuck and his circle are relieved, on the one hand, by the stately gloom of the Glenallans, on the other, by the stern affliction of the poor fisherman, who, when discovered repairing the "auld black bitch o' a boat" in which his boy had been lost, and congratulated by his visitor on being capable of the exertion, makes answer,—"And what would you have me to do, unless I wanted to see four children starve, because one is drowned? It's weel wi' you gentles, that can sit in the house wi' handkerchers at your een, when ye lose a friend; but the like o' us maun to our wark again, if our hearts were beating as hard as my hammer."

It may be worth noting, that it was in correcting the proof sheets of this novel that Scott first took to equipping his chapters with mottoes of his own fabrication. On one occasion he happened to ask John Ballantyne, who was sitting by him, to hunt for a particular passage in Beaumont and Fletcher. John did as he was bid, but did not succeed in discovering the lines. "Hang it, Johnnie," cried Scott, "I believe I can make a motto sooner than you will find one." He did so accordingly; and from that hour, whenever memory failed to suggest an appropriate epigraph, he had recourse to the inexhaustible mines of "old play" or "old ballad," to which we owe some of the most exquisite verses that ever flowed from his pen.

Unlike, I believe, most men, whenever Scott neared the end of one composition, his spirits seem to have caught a new spring of buoyancy, and before the last sheet was sent from his desk, he had crowded his brain with the imagination of another fiction. The Antiquary was published, as we have seen, in May, but by the beginning of April he had already opened to the Ballantynes the plan of the first Tales of my Landlord; and—to say nothing of Harold the Dauntless, which he began shortly after The Bridal of Triermain was finished, and which he seems to have kept before him for two years {p.107} as a congenial plaything, to be taken up whenever the coach brought no proof sheets to jog him as to serious matters—he had also, before this time, undertaken to write the historical department of the Register for 1814. Mr. Southey had, for reasons upon which I do not enter, discontinued his services to that work: and it was now doubly necessary, after trying for one year a less eminent hand, that if the work were not to be dropped altogether, some strenuous exertion should be made to sustain its character. Scott had not yet collected the materials requisite for his historical sketch of a year distinguished for the importance and complexity of its events; but these, he doubted not, would soon reach him, and he felt no hesitation about pledging himself to complete, not only that sketch, but four new volumes of prose romances—and his Harold the Dauntless also, if Ballantyne could make any suitable arrangement on that score—between the April and the Christmas of 1816.

The Antiquary had been published by Constable, but I presume that, in addition to the usual stipulations, he had been again, on that occasion, solicited to relieve John Ballantyne and Co.'s stock to an extent which he did not find quite convenient; and at all events he had of late shown a considerable reluctance to employ James Ballantyne and Co. as printers. One or other of these impediments is alluded to in a note of Scott's, which, though undated, has been pasted into John Ballantyne's private letter-book among the documents of the period in question. It is in these words:—

DEAR JOHN,—I have seen the great swab, who is supple as a glove, and will do ALL, which some interpret NOTHING. However, we shall do well enough.

W. S.

Constable had been admitted, almost from the beginning, into the secret of the Novels—and for that, among {p.108} other reasons, it would have been desirable for the Novelist to have him continue the publisher without interruption; but Scott was led to suspect, that if he were called upon to conclude a bargain for a fourth novel before the third had made its appearance, his scruples as to the matter of printing might at least protract the treaty; and why Scott should have been urgently desirous of seeing the transaction settled before the expiration of the half-yearly term of Whitsunday is sufficiently explained by the fact, that though so much of the old unfortunate stock of John Ballantyne and Co. still remained on hand—and with it some occasional recurrence of commercial difficulty as to floating bills was to be expected—while James Ballantyne's management of the pecuniary affairs of the printing-house had continued to be highly negligent and irregular[37]—nevertheless, the sanguine author had gone on purchasing one patch of land after another, until his estate at Abbotsford had already grown from 150 to nearly 1000 acres. The property all about his original farm had been in the hands of various small holders (Scottice cock-lairds;) these persons were sharp enough to understand, erelong, that their neighbor could with difficulty resist any temptation that might present itself in the shape of an offer of more acres; and thus he proceeded buying up lot after lot of unimproved ground, at extravagant prices,—his "appetite increasing by what it fed on," while the ejected yeomen set themselves down elsewhere, to fatten at their leisure upon the profits—most commonly the anticipated profits—of "The Scotch Novels."

[Footnote 37: In February, 1816, when James Ballantyne married, it is clearly proved by letters in his handwriting, that he owed to Scott more than L3000 of personal debt.—(1839.)]

He was ever and anon pulled up with a momentary misgiving,—and resolved that the latest acquisition should be the last, until he could get rid entirely of "John Ballantyne and Co." But John Ballantyne was, {p.109} from the utter lightness of his mind, his incapacity to look a day before him, and his eager impatience to enjoy the passing hour, the very last man in the world who could, under such circumstances, have been a serviceable agent. Moreover, John, too, had his professional ambition: he was naturally proud of his connection, however secondary, with the publication of these works—and this connection, though subordinate, was still very profitable; he must have suspected, that should his name disappear altogether from the list of booksellers, it would be a very difficult matter for him to retain any concern in them; and I cannot, on the whole, but consider it as certain that, the first and more serious embarrassments being overcome, he was far from continuing to hold by his patron's anxiety for the total abolition of their unhappy copartnership. He, at all events, unless when some sudden emergency arose, flattered Scott's own gay imagination, by uniformly representing everything in the most smiling colors; and though Scott, in his replies, seldom failed to introduce some passing hint of caution—such as "Nullum numen abest si sit prudentia"—he more and more took home to himself the agreeable cast of his Rigdum's anticipations, and wrote to him in a vein as merry as his own;—e. g.—"As for our stock,

"'T will be wearing awa', John, Like snaw-wreaths when it's thaw, John," etc., etc., etc.

I am very sorry, in a word, to confess my conviction that John Ballantyne, however volatile and light-headed, acted at this period with cunning selfishness, both by Scott and by Constable. He well knew that it was to Constable alone that his firm had more than once owed its escape from utter ruin and dishonor; and he must also have known, that had a fair straightforward effort been made for that purpose, after the triumphant career of the Waverley series had once commenced, nothing could have been more easy than to bring all the affairs of his "back-stock," etc., to a complete close, by entering {p.110} into a distinct and candid treaty on that subject, in connection with the future works of the great Novelist, either with Constable or with any other first-rate house in the trade. But John, foreseeing that, were that unhappy concern quite out of the field, he must himself subside into a mere clerk of the printing company, seems to have parried the blow by the only arts of any consequence in which he ever was an adept. He appears to have systematically disguised from Scott the extent to which the whole Ballantyne concern had been sustained by Constable—especially during his Hebridean tour of 1814, and his Continental one of 1815—and prompted and enforced the idea of trying other booksellers from time to time, instead of adhering to Constable, merely for the selfish purposes,—first, of facilitating the immediate discount of bills;—secondly, of further perplexing Scott's affairs, the entire disentanglement of which would have been, as he fancied, prejudicial to his own personal importance.

It was resolved, accordingly, to offer the risk and half profits of the first edition of another new novel—or rather collection of novels—not to Messrs. Constable, but to Mr. Murray of Albemarle Street, and Mr. Blackwood, who was then Murray's agent in Scotland; but it was at the same time resolved, partly because Scott wished to try another experiment on the public sagacity, but partly also, no question, from the wish to spare Constable's feelings, that the title-page of the Tales of my Landlord should not bear the magical words "By the Author of Waverley." The facility with which both Murray and Blackwood embraced such a proposal, as no untried novelist, being sane, could have dreamt of hazarding, shows that neither of them had any doubt as to the identity of the author. They both considered the withholding of the avowal on the forthcoming title-page as likely to check very much the first success of the book; but they were both eager to prevent Constable's acquiring {p.111} a sort of prescriptive right to publish for the unrivalled novelist, and willing to disturb his tenure at this additional, and, as they thought it, wholly unnecessary risk.

How sharply the unseen parent watched this first negotiation of his Jedediah Cleishbotham will appear from one of his letters:—

TO MR. JOHN BALLANTYNE, HANOVER STREET, EDINBURGH.

ABBOTSFORD, April 29, 1816.

DEAR JOHN,—James has made one or two important mistakes in the bargain with Murray and Blackwood. Briefly as follows:—

1stly, Having only authority from me to promise 6000 copies, he proposes they shall have the copyright forever. I will see their noses cheese first.

2dly, He proposes I shall have twelve months' bills—I have always got six. However, I would not stand on that.

3dly, He talks of volumes being put into the publisher's hands to consider and decide on. No such thing; a bare perusal at St. John Street[38] only.

[Footnote 38: James Ballantyne's dwelling-house was then in this street, adjoining the Canongate of Edinburgh.]

Then for omissions—It is NOT stipulated that we supply the paper and print of successive editions. This must be nailed, and not left to understanding.—Secondly, I will have London bills as well as Blackwood's.

If they agree to these conditions, good and well. If they demur, Constable must be instantly tried; giving half to the Longmans, and we drawing on them for that moiety, or Constable lodging their bill in our hands. You will understand it is a four-volume touch—a work totally different in style and structure from the others; a new cast, in short, of the net which has hitherto made miraculous draughts. I do not limit you to terms, because I think you will make them better than I can do. {p.112} But he must do more than others, since he will not or cannot print with us. For every point but that, I would rather deal with Constable than any one; he has always shown himself spirited, judicious, and liberal. Blackwood must be brought to the point instantly; and whenever he demurs, Constable must be treated with; for there is no use in suffering the thing to be blown on. At the same time, you need not conceal from him that there were some proposals elsewhere, but you may add, with truth, I would rather close with him. Yours truly,

W. S.

P. S.—I think Constable should jump at this affair; for I believe the work will be very popular.

Messrs. Murray and Blackwood agreed to all the author's conditions here expressed. They also relieved John Ballantyne and Co. of stock to the value of L500; and at least Mr. Murray must, moreover, have subsequently consented to anticipate the period of his payments. At all events, I find, in a letter of Scott's, dated in the subsequent August, this new echo of the old advice:—

TO MR. JOHN BALLANTYNE.

DEAR JOHN,—I have the pleasure to enclose Murray's acceptances. I earnestly recommend to you to push, realizing as much as you can.

"Consider weel, gude man, We hae but borrowed gear; The horse that I ride on, It is John Murray's mear."

Yours truly,

W. SCOTT.

I know not how much of the tale of The Black Dwarf had been seen by Blackwood, in St. John Street, before he concluded this bargain for himself and his friend Murray; but when the closing sheets of that novel {p.113} reached him, he considered them as by no means sustaining the delightful promise of the opening ones. He was a man of strong talents, and, though without anything that could be called learning, of very respectable information—greatly superior to what has, in this age, been common in his profession; acute, earnest, eminently zealous in whatever he put his hand to; upright, honest, sincere, and courageous. But as Constable owed his first introduction to the upper world of literature and of society in general to his Edinburgh Review, so did Blackwood his to the Magazine, which has now made his name familiar to the world—and at the period of which I write, that miscellany was unborn; he was known only as a diligent antiquarian bookseller of the old town of Edinburgh, and the Scotch agent of the great London publisher, Murray. The abilities, in short, which he lived to develop, were as yet unsuspected—unless, perhaps, among a small circle; and the knowledge of the world, which so few men gather from anything but painful collision with various conflicting orders of their fellow-men, was not his. He was to the last plain and blunt; at this time I can easily believe him to have been so to a degree which Scott might look upon as "ungracious"—I take the epithet from one of his letters to James Ballantyne. Mr. Blackwood, therefore, upon reading what seemed to him the lame and impotent conclusion of a well-begun story, did not search about for any glossy periphrase, but at once requested James Ballantyne to inform the unknown author that such was his opinion. This might possibly have been endured; but Blackwood, feeling, I have no doubt, a genuine enthusiasm for the author's fame, as well as a just tradesman's anxiety as to his own adventure, proceeded to suggest the outline of what would, in his judgment, be a better upwinding of the plot of The Black Dwarf, and concluded with announcing his willingness, in case the proposed alteration were agreed to, that the whole expense of cancelling {p.114} and reprinting a certain number of sheets should be charged to his own account. He appears to have further indicated that he had taken counsel with some literary person, on whose taste he placed great reliance, and who, if he had not originated, at least approved of the proposed process of recasting. Had Scott never possessed any such system of inter-agency as the Ballantynes supplied, he would, among other and perhaps greater inconveniences, have escaped that of the want of personal familiarity with several persons, with whose confidence,—and why should I not add?—with the innocent gratification of whose little vanities—his own pecuniary interests were often deeply connected. A very little personal contact would have introduced such a character as Blackwood's to the respect, nay, to the affectionate respect, of Scott, who, above all others, was ready to sympathize cordially with honest and able men, in whatever condition of life he discovered them. He did both know and appreciate Blackwood better in after-times; but in 1816, when this communication reached him, the name was little more than a name, and his answer to the most solemn of go-betweens was in these terms, which I sincerely wish I could tell how Signior Aldiborontiphoscophornio translated into any dialect submissible to Blackwood's apprehension:—

DEAR JAMES,—

I have received Blackwood's impudent proposal. G—— d—— his soul! Tell him and his coadjutor that I belong to the Black Hussars of Literature, who neither give nor receive criticism. I'll be cursed but this is the most impudent proposal that ever was made.

W. S.[39]

[Footnote 39: May, 1839. Since this book was first published, I have received from the representatives of Mr. Blackwood several documents which throw light on the transaction here mentioned. It will be apparent from one of those I am about to quote, that Blackwood, before he sent his message to Jedediah Cleishbotham, had ascertained that no less a person than Mr. Gifford concurred in his opinion—nay, that James Ballantyne himself took the same view of the matter. But the reader will be not less amused in comparing the "Black Hussar's" missive in the text, with the edition of it which actually reached Blackwood—and which certainly justifies the conjecture I had ventured to express.

TO WILLIAM BLACKWOOD, ESQ.

EDINBURGH, 4th October, 1816.

MY DEAR SIR,—Our application to the author of Tales of my Landlord has been anything but successful; and in order to explain to you the reason why I must decline to address him in this way in future, I shall copy his answer verbatim:—

"My respects to our friends the Booksellers. I belong to the Death-head Hussars of Literature, who neither take nor give criticism. I am extremely sorry they showed my work to Gifford, nor would I cancel a leaf to please all the critics of Edinburgh and London; and so let that be as it is: They are mistaken if they think I don't know when I am writing ill, as well as Gifford can tell me. I beg there may be no more communications with critics."

Observe—that I shall at all times be ready to convey anything from you to the author in a written form, but I do not feel warranted to interfere farther.

Yours very truly,

J. BALLANTYNE.

TO JAMES BALLANTYNE, ESQ.

EDINBURGH, 5th October, 1816.

MY DEAR SIR,—I am not a little vexed at having ventured to suggest anything to the author of the Tales of my Landlord, since I find he considers it in the light of sutor ultra crepidam. I never had for one moment the vanity to think, that from any poor remark of mine, or indeed of any human being, he would be induced to blot one line or alter a single incident, unless the same idea occurred to his own powerful mind. On stating to you what struck me, and finding that your opinion coincided with mine, I was induced to request of you to state it to the author, in order that he might be aware that the expense of cancelling the sheets was no object to me. I was the more anxious to do this, in case the author should have given you the MS. of this portion of the work sooner than he intended, in order to satisfy the clamoring for it which I teased you with. I trust the author will do me the justice to believe that it is quite impossible for any one to have a higher admiration of his most extraordinary talents; and speaking merely as a bookseller, it would be quite unnecessary to be at the expense of altering even one line, although the author himself (who alone can be the proper judge) should wish it, as the success of the work must be rapid, great, and certain.

With regard to the first volume having been shown to Mr. Gifford, I must state in justification of Mr. Murray, that Mr. G. is the only friend whom he consults on all occasions, and to whom his most secret transactions are laid open. He gave him the work, not for the purpose of criticism, but that as a friend he might partake of the enjoyment he had in such an extraordinary performance. No language could be stronger than Mr. Gifford's, as I mentioned to you; and as the same thing had occurred to Mr. G. as to you and me, you thought there would be no harm in stating this to the author.

I have only again to express my regret at what has taken place, and to beg you will communicate this to the author in any way you may think proper.

Yours, etc.,

W. BLACKWOOD.

(A much fuller and more accurate knowledge of this whole transaction, than that possessed by Lockhart, can be gathered from the annals of the two great publishing houses concerned in it;—Smiles's Memoir of John Murray (vol. i. chap. xviii.), and Mrs. Oliphant's William Blackwood and his Sons (vol. i. pp. 56-92), especially from the latter work, in which the whole incident is set in its proper light. Notwithstanding the heavy preliminary tax for unsalable books from the Ballantynes' "wretched stock," neither publisher seems to have had a moment's doubt as to the acceptance of the offer of the ostensibly anonymous Work of Fiction, though they were much fretted by the delays, uncertainties, and mysteries attending the matter. "One in business must submit to many things, and swallow many a bitter pill, when such a man as Walter Scott is the object in view," writes Blackwood to Murray,—the bitterness being largely the dealing with James Ballantyne. "John I always considered as no better than a swindler, but James I put some trust and confidence in. You judged him more accurately." ... And on another occasion,—"Except my wife, there is not a friend whom I dare advise with. I have not ventured to mention the business to my brother on account of the cursed mysteries and injunctions of secrecy connected with it. I know he would blame me for engaging in it, for he has a very small opinion of the Ballantynes." Apart from the vexations attending their office as intermediaries, for which the Ballantynes were only partially responsible, this shrewd, if irritated, observer appears to have formed opinions of the brothers as business men, in some respects not differing greatly from those held by Lockhart in later days.

The delight of the two publishers in at last receiving the MS. of The Black Dwarf and the manner in which it passed into the hands of Constable, even before the stipulated 6000 copies were disposed of,—it must be owned he treated his rivals somewhat unhandsomely, finally severing them from Scott's literary career,—are fully set forth by the historian of the House of Blackwood. With her "one cannot but feel that this was one of those tragically insignificant circumstances which so often shape life apart from any consciousness of ours. Probably ruin would never have overtaken Sir Walter had he been in the steady and careful hands of Murray and Blackwood, for it is unlikely that even the glamour of the great Magician would have turned heads so reasonable and sober.")]

{p.115} While these volumes were in progress, Scott found time to make an excursion into Perthshire and Dumbartonshire, {p.116} for the sake of showing the scenery, made famous in The Lady of the Lake and Waverley, to his {p.117} wife's old friends, Miss Dumergue and Mrs. Sarah Nicolson,[40] who had never before been in Scotland. The account which he gives of these ladies' visit at Abbotsford, and this little tour, in a letter to Mr. Morritt, shows the "Black Hussar of Literature" in his gentler and more habitual mood.

[Footnote 40: The sister of Miss Jane Nicolson.—See ante, vol. i. p. 248. Vol. ii. p. 82.]

TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., M. P., ROKEBY PARK.

ABBOTSFORD, 21st August, 1816.

MY DEAR MORRITT,—I have not had a moment's kindly leisure to answer your kind letter, and to tell how delighted I shall be to see you in this least of all possible dwellings, but where we, nevertheless, can contrive a pilgrim's quarters and the warmest welcome for you and any friend of your journey;—if young Stanley, so much the better. Now, as to the important business with the which I have been occupied: You are to know we have had our kind hostesses of Piccadilly upon a two months' visit to us. We owed them so much hospitality, that we were particularly anxious to make Scotland agreeable to the good girls. But, alas, the wind has blown, and the rain has fallen, in a style which beats all that ever I remembered. We accomplished, with some difficulty, a visit to Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond, and, by dint of the hospitality of Cambusmore and the Ross, we defied bad weather, wet roads, and long walks. But the weather settled into regular tempest, when we settled at Abbotsford; and, though the natives, accustomed to bad weather (though not at such a time of year), contrived to brave the extremities of the season, it only served to increase the dismay of our unlucky visitors, who, accustomed only to Paris and London, expected fiacres at the Milestane Cross, and a pair of oars at the Deadman's Haugh. Add to this a strong disposition to commerage, when there was no possibility of gratifying it, and a {p.118} total indisposition to scenery or rural amusements, which were all we had to offer—and you will pity both hosts and guests. I have the gratification to think I fully supported the hospitality of my country. I walked them to death, I talked them to death, I showed them landscapes which the driving rain hardly permitted them to see, and told them of feuds about which they cared as little as I do about their next-door news in Piccadilly. Yea, I even played at cards, and as I had Charlotte for a partner, so ran no risk of being scolded, I got on pretty well. Still the weather was so execrable, that, as the old drunken landlord used to say at Arroquhar, "I was perfectly ashamed of it;" and, to this moment, I wonder how my two friends fought it out so patiently as they did. But the young people and the cottages formed considerable resources. Yesterday they left us, deeply impressed with the conviction, which I can hardly blame, that the sun never shone in Scotland,—which that noble luminary seems disposed to confirm, by making this the first fair day we have seen this month—so that his beams will greet them at Longtown, as if he were determined to put Scotland to utter shame.

In you I expect a guest of a different calibre; and I think (barring downright rain) I can promise you some sport of one kind or other. We have a good deal of game about us; and Walter, to whom I have resigned my gun and license, will be an excellent attendant. He brought in six brace of moor-fowl on the 12th, which had (si fas est diceri) its own effect in softening the minds of our guests towards this unhappy climate. In other respects things look melancholy enough here. Corn is, however, rising, and the poor have plenty of work, and wages which, though greatly inferior to what they had when hands were scarce, assort perfectly well with the present state of the markets. Most folks try to live as much on their own produce as they can, by way of fighting off distress; and though speculating {p.119} farmers and landlords must suffer, I think the temporary ague-fit will, on the whole, be advantageous to the country. It will check that inordinate and unbecoming spirit of expense, or rather extravagance, which was poisoning all classes, and bring us back to the sober virtues of our ancestors. It will also have the effect of teaching the landed interest, that their connection with their farmers should be of a nature more intimate than that of mere payment and receipt of rent, and that the largest offerer for a lease is often the person least entitled to be preferred as a tenant. Above all, it will complete the destruction of those execrable quacks, terming themselves land-doctors, who professed, from a two days' scamper over your estate, to tell you its constitution,—in other words its value,—acre by acre. These men, paid according to the golden hopes they held out, afforded by their reports one principal means of deceiving both landlord and tenant, by setting an ideal and extravagant value upon land, which seemed to entitle the one to expect, and the other to offer, rent far beyond what any expectation formed by either, upon their own acquaintance with the property, could rationally have warranted. More than one landed gentleman has cursed, in my presence, the day he ever consulted one of those empirics, whose prognostications induced him to reject the offers of substantial men, practically acquainted with the locale.

Ever, my dear Morritt, most truly yours,

Walter SCOTT.

In October, 1816, appeared the Edinburgh Annual Register, containing Scott's historical sketch of the year 1814—a composition which would occupy at least four such volumes as the reader has now in his hand.[41] Though executed with extraordinary rapidity, the sketch is as clear as spirited; but I need say no more of it here, as the author travels mostly over the same ground again in his Life of Napoleon.

[Footnote 41: [Referring to the edition of 1839, in ten volumes.]]

{p.120} Scott's correspondence proves, that during this autumn he had received many English guests besides the good spinsters of Piccadilly and Mr. Morritt. I regret to add, it also proves that he had continued all the while to be annoyed with calls for money from John Ballantyne; yet before the 12th of November called him to Edinburgh, he appears to have nearly finished the first Tales of my Landlord. He had, moreover, concluded a negotiation with Constable and Longman for a series of Letters on the History of Scotland: of which, however, if he ever wrote any part, the MS. has not been discovered. It is probable that he may have worked some detached fragments into his long-subsequent Tales of a Grandfather.[42] The following letter shows likewise that he was now busy with plans of building at Abbotsford, and deep in consultation on that subject with an artist eminent for his skill in Gothic architecture,—Mr. Edward Blore:—

[Footnote 42: [Scott says in a letter to John Murray, written October 20, 1814: "In casting about how I might show you some mark of my sense of former kindness, a certain MS. History of Scotland in Letters to my Children has occurred to me, which I consider as a desideratum; it is upon the plan of Lord Lyttelton's Letters, as they are called." Nearly a year later he returns to the subject, and says: "I intend to revise my letters on Scottish History for you, but I will not get to press till November, for the country affords no facilities for consulting the necessary authorities. I hope it may turn out a thing of some interest, though I rather intend to keep to its original purpose as a book of instruction to children." These references seem to show that the work may have been further advanced than Lockhart supposed. The announcement of the proposed book by Constable and Longman naturally excited the indignation of Blackwood and Murray, as is shown in a vigorous letter from the Edinburgh to the London publisher, blaming equally the Ballantynes and Constable.—See Memoirs of John Murray, vol. i. pp. 245, 246, 462.]]

TO DANIEL TERRY, ESQ.

November 12, 1816.

MY DEAR TERRY,—I have been shockingly negligent in acknowledging your repeated favors; but it so happened, that I have had very little to say, with a great {p.121} deal to do; so that I trusted to your kindness to forgive my apparent want of kindness, and indisputable lack of punctuality. You will readily suppose that I have heard with great satisfaction of the prosperity of your household, particularly of the good health of my little namesake and his mother. Godmothers of yore used to be fairies; and though only a godfather, I think of sending you, one day, a fairy gift—a little drama, namely, which, if the audience be indulgent, may be of use to him. Of course, you will stand godfather to it yourself: it is yet only in embryo—a sort of poetical Hans in Kelder—nor am I sure when I can bring him forth; not for this season, at any rate. You will receive, in the course of a few days, my late whereabouts in four volumes: there are two tales—the last of which I really prefer to any fictitious narrative I have yet been able to produce—the first is wish-washy enough. The subject of the second tale lies among the old Scottish Cameronians—nay, I'll tickle ye off a Covenanter as readily as old Jack could do a young Prince; and a rare fellow he is, when brought forth in his true colors. Were it not for the necessity of using Scriptural language, which is essential to the character, but improper for the stage, it would be very dramatic. But of all this you will judge by and by. To give the go-by to the public, I have doubled and leaped into my form, like a hare in snow: that is, I have changed my publisher, and come forth like a maiden knight's white shield (there is a conceit!) without any adhesion to fame gained in former adventures (another!) or, in other words, with a virgin title-page (another!)—I should not be so light-hearted about all this, but that it is very nearly finished and out, which is always a blithe moment for Mr. Author. And now to other matters. The books came safe, and were unpacked two days since, on our coming to town—most ingeniously were they stowed in the legs of the very handsome stand for Lord Byron's vase, with which our {p.122} friend George Bullock has equipped me. I was made very happy to receive him at Abbotsford, though only for a start; and no less so to see Mr. Blore, from whom I received your last letter. He is a very fine young man, modest, simple, and unaffected in his manners, as well as a most capital artist. I have had the assistance of both these gentlemen in arranging an addition to the cottage at Abbotsford, intended to connect the present farmhouse with the line of low buildings to the right of it. Mr. Bullock will show you the plan, which I think is very ingenious. He has promised to give it his consideration with respect to the interior; and Mr. Blore has drawn me a very handsome elevation, both to the road and to the river. I expect to get some decorations from the old Tolbooth of Edinburgh, particularly the cope-stones of the doorway, or lintels, as we call them, and a niche or two—one very handsome indeed! Better get a niche from the Tolbooth than a niche in it, to which such building operations are apt to bring the projectors. This addition will give me: first, a handsome boudoir, in which I intend to place Mr. Bullock's Shakespeare,[43] with his superb cabinet, which serves as a pedestal. This opens into the little drawing-room, to which it serves as a chapel of ease; and on the other side, to a handsome dining-parlor of 27 feet by 18, with three windows to the north, and one to the south,—the last to be Gothic, and filled with stained glass. Besides these commodities, there is a small conservatory or greenhouse; and a study for myself, which we design to fit up with ornaments from Melrose Abbey. Bullock made several casts with his own hands—masks, and so forth, delightful for cornices, etc.

[Footnote 43: A cast from the monumental effigy at Stratford-upon-Avon—now in the library at Abbotsford—was the gift of Mr. George Bullock, long distinguished in London as a collector of curiosities. This ingenious man was, as the reader will see in the sequel, a great favorite with Scott.]

Do not let Mrs. Terry think of the windows till little {p.123} Wat is duly cared after.[44] I am informed by Mr. Blore that he is a fine thriving fellow, very like papa. About my armorial bearings: I will send you a correct drawing as I can get hold of Blore; namely—of the scutcheons of my grandsires on each side, and my own. I could detail them in the jargon of heraldry, but it is better to speak to your eyes by translating them into colored drawings, as the sublime science of armory has fallen into some neglect of late years, with all its mascles, buckles, crescents, and boars of the first, second, third, and fourth.

[Footnote 44: Mrs. Terry had offered the services of her elegant pencil in designing some windows of painted glass for Scott's armory, etc.]

I was very sorry I had no opportunity of showing attention to your friend Mr. Abbot, not being in town at the time. I grieve to say that neither the genius of Kean nor the charms of Miss O'Neill could bring me from the hillside and the sweet society of Tom Purdie. All our family are very well—Walter as tall nearly as I am, fishing salmon and shooting moor-fowl and blackcock, in good style; the girls growing up, and, as yet, not losing their simplicity of character; little Charles excellent at play, and not deficient at learning, when the young dog will take pains. Abbotsford is looking pretty at last, and the planting is making some show. I have now several hundred acres thereof, running out as far as beyond the lake. We observe with great pleasure the steady rise which you make in public opinion, and expect, one day, to hail you stage-manager. Believe me, my dear Terry, always very much yours,

W. SCOTT.

P. S.—The Counsellor and both the Ballantynes are well and hearty.

On the first of December, the first series of the Tales of my Landlord appeared, and notwithstanding the silence of the title-page, and the change of publishers, and {p.124} the attempt which had certainly been made to vary the style both of delineation and of language, all doubts whether they were or were not from the same hand with Waverley had worn themselves out before the lapse of a week.—The enthusiasm of their reception among the highest literary circles of London may be gathered from the following letter:—

TO WALTER SCOTT, ESQ., EDINBURGH.

ALBEMARLE STREET, 14th December, 1816.

DEAR SIR,—Although I dare not address you as the author of certain "Tales" (which, however, must be written either by Walter Scott or the Devil), yet nothing can restrain me from thinking it is to your influence with the author that I am indebted for the essential honor of being one of their publishers, and I must intrude upon you to offer my most hearty thanks—not divided, but doubled—alike for my worldly gain therein, and for the great acquisition of professional reputation which their publication has already procured me. I believe I might, under any oath that could be proposed, swear that I never experienced such unmixed pleasure as the reading of this exquisite work has afforded me; and if you could see me, as the author's literary chamberlain, receiving the unanimous and vehement praises of every one who has read it, and the curses of those whose needs my scanty supply could not satisfy, you might judge of the sincerity with which I now entreat you to assure him of the most complete success. Lord Holland said, when I asked his opinion—"Opinion! We did not one of us go to bed last night—nothing slept but my gout." Frere, Hallam, Boswell,[45] Lord Glenbervie, William Lamb,[46] all agree that it surpasses all the other novels. Gifford's estimate is increased at every reperusal. Heber says there are only two men in the world—Walter Scott and Lord Byron. Between you, you have given existence to a third—Ever your faithful servant,

John MURRAY.

[Footnote 45: The late James Boswell, Esq., of the Temple—second son of Bozzy.]

[Footnote 46: The Honorable William Lamb—now Lord Melbourne.]

To this cordial effusion Scott returned the following answer. It was necessary, since he had fairly resolved {p.125} against compromising his incognito, that he should be prepared not only to repel the impertinent curiosity of strangers, but to evade the proffered congratulations of overflowing kindness. He contrived, however, to do so, on this and all similar occasions, in a style of equivoque which could never be seriously misunderstood:[47]—

[Footnote 47: [Even such keen observers as Murray and Blackwood had their intervals of doubt regarding the authorship of the Novels. In June, 1816, Blackwood writes: "There have been various rumors with regard to Greenfield being the author, but I never paid much attention to it; the thing appeared to me so very improbable.... But from what I have heard lately, and from what you state, I now begin to think that Greenfield may probably be the author." And only a month after the date of his letter to Scott, here given, Murray writes to Blackwood:—

"I can assure you, but in the greatest confidence, that I have discovered the author of all these Novels to be Thomas Scott, Walter Scott's brother. He is now in Canada. I have no doubt but that Mr. Walter Scott did a great deal to the first Waverley Novel, because of his anxiety to save his brother, and his doubt about the success of the work. This accounts for the many stories about it. Many persons had previously heard from Mr. Scott, but you may rely upon the certainty of what I have told you." By this time Blackwood is firm in the faith of Scott's authorship; but Bernard Barton writes to Murray that he has heard that James Hogg is the author of Tales of my Landlord, and that he has had intimation from himself to that effect; while Lady Mackintosh is informed on excellent authority that the writer is Mrs. Thomas Scott. Writing to Blackwood in February, 1817, Murray avers,—"I will believe, till within an inch of my life, that the author of Tales of my Landlord is Thomas Scott."—See Smiles's Memoir of John Murray, vol. i. pp. 461, 473, 474.]]

TO JOHN MURRAY, ESQ., ALBEMARLE STREET, LONDON.

EDINBURGH, 18th December, 1816.

MY DEAR SIR,—I give you heartily joy of the success of the Tales, although I do not claim that paternal interest in them which my friends do me the credit to assign me. I assure you I have never read a volume of them until they were printed, and can only join with the rest of the world in applauding the true and striking portraits which they present of old Scottish manners. I do not expect implicit reliance to be placed on my disavowal, because I know very well that he who is disposed not to own a work must necessarily deny it, and that otherwise {p.126} his secret would be at the mercy of all who choose to ask the question, since silence in such a case must always pass for consent, or rather assent. But I have a mode of convincing you that I am perfectly serious in my denial—pretty similar to that by which Solomon distinguished the fictitious from the real mother—and that is, by reviewing the work, which I take to be an operation equal to that of quartering the child. But this is only on condition I can have Mr. Erskine's assistance, who admires the work greatly more than I do, though I think the painting of the second Tale both true and powerful. I knew Old Mortality very well; his name was Paterson, but few knew him otherwise than by his nickname. The first Tale is not very original in its concoction, and lame and impotent in its conclusion. My love to Gifford. I have been over head and ears in work this summer, or I would have sent the Gypsies; indeed I was partly stopped by finding it impossible to procure a few words of their language.

Constable wrote to me about two months since, desirous of having a new edition of Paul; but not hearing from you, I conclude you are still on hand. Longman's people had then only sixty copies.

Kind compliments to Heber, whom I expected at Abbotsford this summer; also to Mr. Croker and all your four o'clock visitors. I am just going to Abbotsford to make a small addition to my premises there. I have now about 700 acres, thanks to the booksellers and the discerning public. Yours truly,

Walter SCOTT.

P. S.—I have much to ask about Lord Byron if I had time. The third canto of the Childe is inimitable. Of the last poems, there are one or two which indicate rather an irregular play of imagination.[48] What a pity that a man of such exquisite genius will not be contented {p.127} to be happy on the ordinary terms![49] I declare my heart bleeds when I think of him, self-banished from the country to which he is an honor.[50]

[Footnote 48: Parisina—The Dream—and the "Domestic Pieces," had been recently published.]

[Footnote 49: (On November 27 Scott had written to Joanna Baillie, who had just returned from a tour on the Continent:—

"All I ever longed for on the Continent was their light wines, which you do not care about, and their fine climate, which we should both value equally; and to say truth, I never saw scene or palace which shook my allegiance to Tweedside and Abbotsford, though so inferior in every respect, and though the hills, or rather braes, are just high enough 'to lift us to the storm' when the storms are not so condescending as to sweep both crest and base, which, to do them justice, is seldom the case. What have I got to send you?... Alas, nothing but the history of petty employments and a calendar of increasing bad weather. The latter was much mitigated by enjoying for a good portion of the summer the society of John Morritt, of Rokeby, who has so much of that which is delightful, both in his grave and gay moods, that he can make us forget the hillside while sitting by the fireside. His late loss has cast a general shade of melancholy over him, which renders him yet dearer to his friends, by the gentle and unaffected manner in which his natural gayety of temper gleams through it and renders it still more interesting....

"A far different object of interest, yet still of interest, checkered with pity and disapprobation, is Lord Byron, whose present situation seems to rival all that ever has been said and sung of the misfortunes of a too irritable imagination. The last part of Childe Harold intimates a terrible state of mind, and with all the power and genius which characterized his former productions, the present seems to indicate a more serious and desperate degree of misanthropy. I own I was not much moved by the scorn of the world which his first poems implied, because I know it is a humor of mind which those whom fortune has spoilt by indulgence, or irritated by reverses, are apt to assume, because it looks melancholy and gentlemanlike, and becomes a bard as well as being desperately in love, or very fond of the sunrise, though he lies in bed till noon, or anxious in recommending to others to catch cold by visiting old abbeys by moonlight, which he never happened to see under the chaste moonbeam himself; but this strange poem goes much deeper, and either the Demon of Misanthropy is in full possession of him, or he has already invited ten guests, equally desperate, to the swept and garnished mansion of Harold's understanding."—Familiar Letters, vol. i. p. 369.)]

[Footnote 50: [This is probably the "expression of kindness" which encouraged Murray to beg Scott to review in the Quarterly Byron's recently published volumes, Childe Harold, Canto III., and The Prisoner of Chillon, a Dream, and Other Poems. The request was promptly complied with, and the article appeared in the next number issued (dated October, 1816),—a review full of generous, and also judicious, appreciation. For some reason, hard now to discover, unless it were the kindliness of the writer's tone towards the younger poet, some of Lady Byron's friends, among whom was Joanna Baillie, seem to have taken strong exception to the paper, and Miss Baillie wrote to Scott at some length on the matter, even animadverting upon the purely literary criticism of the reviewer. Much of the correspondence which ensued, including a characteristic letter from Lady Byron, can be found in the Familiar Letters (vol. i. pp. 413-422).

Of the review, Byron writes to Murray (March 3, 1817):—

... "It seems to me (as far as the subject of it may be permitted to judge) to be very well written as a composition, and ... even those who may condemn its partiality, must praise its generosity. The temptations to take another and less favorable view of the question have been so great and numerous, that, what with public opinion, politics, etc., he must be a gallant as well as a good man, who has ventured in that place and at this time to write such an article even anonymously. Such things, however, are their own reward; and I even flatter myself that the writer, whoever he may be (and I have no guess), will not regret that the perusal of this has given me as much gratification as any composition of that nature could give, and more than any other has ever given,—and I have had a good many in my time of one kind or the other. It is not the mere praise, but there is a tact and a delicacy throughout, not only with regard to me, but to others, which, as it has not been observed elsewhere, I had till now doubted, whether it could be observed anywhere." He writes a few weeks later, on learning that Scott wrote the article: ... "It cannot add to my good opinion of him, but it adds to that of myself."—Letters and Journals of Lord Byron (1900), vol. iv. pp. 63, 85.]]

{p.128} Mr. Murray, gladly embracing this offer of an article for his journal on the Tales of my Landlord, begged Scott to take a wider scope, and dropping all respect for the idea of a divided parentage, to place together any materials he might have for the illustration of the Waverley Novels in general; he suggested in particular, that, instead of drawing up a long-promised disquisition on the Gypsies in a separate shape, whatever he had to say concerning that picturesque generation might be introduced by way of comment on the character of Meg Merrilies. What Scott's original conception had been I know not; he certainly gave his reviewal all the breadth which Murray could have wished, and, inter alia, diversified it with a few anecdotes of the Scottish Gypsies. But the late excellent biographer of John Knox, Dr. Thomas M'Crie, had, in the mean time, considered the representation of the Covenanters, in the story of Old Mortality, as so unfair as to demand at his {p.129} hands a very serious rebuke. The Doctor forthwith published, in a magazine called the Edinburgh Christian Instructor, a set of papers, in which the historical foundations of that tale were attacked with indignant warmth; and though Scott, when he first heard of these invectives, expressed his resolution never even to read them, he found the impression they were producing so strong, that he soon changed his purpose, and finally devoted a very large part of his article for the Quarterly Review to an elaborate defence of his own picture of the Covenanters.[51]

[Footnote 51: Since I have mentioned this reviewal, I may as well, to avoid recurrence to it, express here my conviction, that Erskine, not Scott, was the author of the critical estimate of the Waverley Novels which it embraces—although, for the purpose of mystification, Scott had taken the trouble to transcribe the paragraphs in which that estimate is contained. At the same time I cannot but add that, had Scott really been the sole author of this reviewal, he need not have incurred the severe censure which has been applied to his supposed conduct in the matter. After all, his judgment of his own works must have been allowed to be not above, but very far under the mark; and the whole affair would, I think, have been considered by every candid person exactly as the letter about Solomon and the rival mothers was by Murray, Gifford, and the "four o'clock visitors" of Albemarle Street—as a good joke. A better joke, certainly, than the allusion to the report of Thomas Scott being the real author of Waverley, at the close of the article, was never penned; and I think it includes a confession over which a misanthrope might have chuckled: "We intended here to conclude this long article, when a strong report reached us of certain Transatlantic confessions, which, if genuine (though of this we know nothing), assign a different author to these volumes than the party suspected by our Scottish correspondents. Yet a critic may be excused seizing upon the nearest suspicious person, on the principle happily expressed by Claverhouse, in a letter to the Earl of Linlithgow. He had been, it seems, in search of a gifted weaver, who used to hold forth at conventicles: 'I sent for the webster (weaver), they brought in his brother for him: though he, maybe, cannot preach like his brother, I doubt not but he is as well-principled as he, wherefore I thought it would be no great fault to give him the trouble to go to jail with the rest!'"—Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. xix. pp. 85, 86.]

Before the first Tales of my Landlord were six weeks old, two editions of 2000 copies disappeared, and a third of 2000 was put to press; but notwithstanding this rapid success, which was still further continued, and the friendly relations which always subsisted between the {p.130} author and Mr. Murray, circumstances erelong occurred which carried the publication of the work into the hands of Messrs. Constable.

The author's answer to Dr. M'Crie, and his Introduction of 1830, have exhausted the historical materials on which he constructed his Old Mortality; and the origin of The Black Dwarf—as to the conclusion of which story he appears on reflection to have completely adopted the opinion of honest Blackwood—has already been sufficiently illustrated by an anecdote of his early wanderings in Tweeddale. The latter tale, however imperfect, and unworthy as a work of art to be placed high in the catalogue of his productions, derives a singular interest from its delineation of the dark feelings so often connected with physical deformity; feelings which appear to have diffused their shadow over the whole genius of Byron—and which, but for this single picture, we should hardly have conceived ever to have passed through Scott's happier mind.[52] All the bitter blasphemy of spirit which, from infancy to the tomb, swelled up in Byron against the unkindness of nature; which sometimes perverted even his filial love into a sentiment of diabolical malignity; all this black and desolate train of reflections must have been encountered and deliberately subdued by the manly parent of The Black Dwarf. Old Mortality, on the other hand, is remarkable as the novelist's first attempt to repeople the past by the power of imagination working on materials furnished by books. In Waverley he revived the fervid dreams of his boyhood, and drew, not from printed records, but from the artless oral narratives of his Invernahyles. In Guy Mannering and The Antiquary he embodied characters and manners familiar {p.131} to his own wandering youth. But whenever his letters mention Old Mortality in its progress, they represent him as strong in the confidence that the industry with which he had pored over a library of forgotten tracts would enable him to identify himself with the time in which they had birth, as completely as if he had listened with his own ears to the dismal sermons of Peden, ridden with Claverhouse and Dalzell in the rout of Bothwell, and been an advocate at the bar of the Privy Council, when Lauderdale catechised and tortured the assassins of Archbishop Sharp. To reproduce a departed age with such minute and lifelike accuracy as this tale exhibits, demanded a far more energetic sympathy of imagination than had been called for in any effort of his serious verse. It is indeed most curiously instructive for any student of art to compare the Roundheads of Rokeby with the Bluebonnets of Old Mortality. For the rest—the story is framed with a deeper skill than any of the preceding novels: the canvas is a broader one; the characters are contrasted and projected with a power and felicity which neither he nor any other master ever surpassed; and, notwithstanding all that has been urged against him as a disparager of the Covenanters, it is to me very doubtful whether the inspiration of romantic chivalry ever prompted him to nobler emotions than he has lavished on the re-animation of their stern and solemn enthusiasm. This work has always appeared to me the Marmion of his novels.[53]

[Footnote 52: [On reading The Black Dwarf, Mrs. Leigh believed her brother to be the author, and wrote to him to that effect. Byron had not yet seen the book, and says in his reply: "I am not P. P. [Peter Pattieson], I assure you on my honor, and do not understand to what book you allude, so that all your compliments are quite thrown away."—Byron's Letters and Journals (1900), vol. iv. p. 56.]]

[Footnote 53: [Lady Louisa Stuart, whose approbation Scott writes he values "beyond a whole wilderness of critics," says in a letter of December 5, 1816:

"[Old Mortality] is super-excellent in all its points; it breaks up fresh ground, and has all the raciness of originality. I cannot help thinking it will bear down the world before it triumphantly. As usual it makes its personages our intimate acquaintance, and its scenes so present to the eye, that, last night, after sitting up unreasonably late over it, I got no sleep, from a kind of fever of mind it had occasioned. It seemed as if I had been an eye and ear witness of all the passages, and I could not lull the agitation into calmness. Mause and Cuddie hurried my spirits in another way; they forced me to laugh out aloud, which one seldom does alone. On a second slower reading I expect to be still better pleased, and then also I suppose I shall find out the faults. At present it has, in the Scotch phrase, 'taken me off my feet,' and I do not criticise, though I think you will believe me when I say I do not and will not flatter. One thing I regret, that like the author of The Antiquary, Jedediah did not add a glossary; because even I, a mongrel, occasionally paying long visits to Scotland, and hearing Girsy at Bothwell gate and Peggy Macgowan hold forth in the village,—even I, thus qualified, have found a great many words absolute Hebrew to me, and I fear the altogether English will find many more beyond their comprehension or conjecture. But this may be remedied in another edition. I have as yet only one great attack to make, and that upon a single word; but such a word! such an anachronism! Claverhouse says he has no time to hear sentimental speeches. My dear sir! tell Jedediah that Claverhouse never heard the sound of those four syllables in his life. We are used to them; but sentiment and sentimental were, I believe, first introduced into the language by Sterne, and are hardly as old as I am. Let alone the Covenanters' days, I am persuaded you would look in vain for them in the works of Richardson and Fielding. Nay, the French, from whom they were borrowed, did not talk of le sentiment in that sense till long after Louis XIV.'s reign. No such thing is to be found in Madame de Sevigne, la Bruyere, etc., etc., etc. At home or abroad I defy Lord Dundee ever to have met with the expression. Mr. Peter Pattieson had been reading the Man of Feeling, and it was a slip of his tongue, which I am less inclined to excuse than Mause's abstruse Scotch, which I duly reverence, as she did Kettledrummle's sermons, because I do not understand it. Once more I shall be much disappointed if this work does not quickly acquire a very great reputation. I fancy Mr. Morritt is in the secret; yet, as I am not certain, I will keep on the secure side and not mention it when I write to him, however one may long to intercommune on such subjects with those likely to hold the same faith."