in Great Britain had been not less than 50,000 copies; since which date I understand that, in spite of legal and illegal piracies, the fair demand has been well kept up. In their reception of this work, the critics were for once in full harmony with each other, and with the popular voice. The article in the Quarterly 10 was written by George Ellis; but its eulogies, though less discriminative, are not a whit more emphatic than those of Mr. Jeffrey in the rival Review. Indeed, I have always considered this last paper as the best specimen of contemporary criticism on Scott's poetry. The Lay, if I may venture to state the creed now established, is, I should say, generally 20 considered as the most natural and original, Marmion as the most powerful and splendid, The Lady of the Lake as the most interesting, romantic, picturesque, and graceful of his great poems. Of its success he speaks as follows in 1830: "It was certainly so extraordinary as to induce me for the moment to conclude that I had at last fixed a 30 nail in the proverbially inconstant wheel of Fortune. But, as the celebrated John Wilkes is said to have explained to King George the Third, that he himself was never a Wilkite, so I can with honest truth exculpate myself from having been at any time a partisan of my own poetry, even when it was in the highest fashion with the million." the publication of The Lady of the Lake, and finding Miss Scott, who was then a very young girl, there by herself. I asked her, 'Well, Miss Sophia, how do you like The Lady of 50 the Lake?' Her answer was given with perfect simplicity, 'Oh, I have not read it; papa says there's nothing so bad for young people as reading bad poetry." In fact, his children in those days had no idea of the source of his distinction or rather, indeed, that his position was in any respect different from that of other Advocates, Sheriffs, 60 and Clerks of Session. The eldest boy came home one afternoon about this time from the High School, with tears and blood hardened together upon his cheeks. "Well, Wat," said his father, "what have you been fighting about today?" With that the boy blushed and hung his head, and at last stammered out-that he had been called a lassie. "Indeed!" said Mrs. Scott, 70 "this was a terrible mischief, to be sure." "You may say what you please, mamma," Wat answered roughly, "but I dinna think there's a waufer (shabbier) thing in the world than to be a lassie, to sit boring at a clout." Upon further inquiry it turned out that one or two of his companions had dubbed him "The Lady of the Lake," and the phrase 80 was to him incomprehensible, save as conveying some imputation on his prowess, which he accordingly vindicated in the usual style of the Yards. Of the poem he had never before heard. Shortly after, this story having got wind, one of Scott's colleagues of the Clerks' Table said to the boy, who was in the home circle called "Gilnockie," from his admiration of 90 Johnny Armstrong, “Gilnockie, my 13. rival Review, the Edinburgh Review. 32. John Wilkes, a political agitator (1727-1797) who criticized George III and for some years was kept out of Parliament and even exiled, but who later became lord mayor of London and served in Parliament many years. 91. Johnny Armstrong, a famous Scotch freebooter of the sixteenth century about whom many ballads were composed. man, you cannot surely help seeing that great people make more work about your papa than they do about me or any other of your uncleswhat is it do you suppose that occasions this?" The little fellow pondered for a minute or two, and then answered very gravely, "It's commonly him that sees the hare sitting." 10 And yet this was the man that had his children all along so very much with him. III. SCOTT AT PLAY [In these paragraphs you get a vivid picture of life at Abbotsford. Lockhart married the daughter of Scott.] About the middle of August, my wife and I went to Abbottsford; and we remained there for several weeks, during which I became familiarized to Sir Walter Scott's mode of existence in the country. The humblest person who stayed merely for a short visit 20 must have departed with the impression that what he witnessed was an occasional variety; that Scott's courtesy prompted him to break in upon his habits when he had a stranger to amuse; but that it was physically impossible that the man who was writing the Waverley romances at the rate of nearly twelve volumes in the year could continue, week after week, 30 and month after month, to devote all but a hardly perceptible fraction of his mornings to out-of-doors' occupations, and the whole of his evenings to the entertainment of a constantly varying circle of guests. The hospitality of his afternoons must alone have been enough to exhaust the energies of almost any man; for his visitors did not mean, like those of 40 country-houses in general, to enjoy the landlord's good cheer and amuse each other; but the far greater proportion arrived from a distance, for the sole sake of the Poet and Novelist Conversation is but carving: 80 and he, in his own familiar circle always, and in other circles where it 90 was possible, furnished a happy ex 51. Ferney, a village near Geneva, home of Voltaire. emplification of these rules and regulations of the Dean of St. Patrick's. But the same sense and benevolence which dictated adhesion to them among his old friends and acquaintance rendered it necessary to break them when he was receiving strangers of the class I have described above at Abbotsford; he felt that their coming 10 was the best homage they could pay to his celebrity, and that it would have been as uncourteous in him not to give them their fill of his talk, as it would be in your everyday lord of manors to make his casual guests welcome indeed to his venison, but keep his grouse-shooting for his immediate allies and dependents. Every now and then he received 20 some stranger who was not indisposed to take his part in the carving; and how good-humoredly he surrendered the lion's share to anyone that seemed to covet it-with what perfect placidity he submitted to be bored even by bores of the first water must have excited the admiration of many besides the daily observers of his proceedings. I have heard a spruce Senior 30 Wrangler lecture him for half an evening on the niceties of the Greek epigram; I have heard the poorest of all parliamentary blunderers try to detail to him the pros and cons of what he called the "truck system"; and in either case the same bland eye watched the lips of the tormentor. But, with such ludicrous exceptions, Scott was the one object of the Abbots40 ford pilgrims; and evening followed evening only to show him exerting, for their amusement, more of animal spirits, to say nothing of intellectual vigor, than would have been considered by any other man in the company as sufficient for the whole expenditure of a week's existence. Yet 2. Dean of St. Patrick's, Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels. this was not the chief marvel: he talked of things that interested himself, because he knew that by doing 50 so he should give most pleasure to his guests. But how vast was the range of subjects on which he could talk with unaffected zeal; and with what admirable delicacy of instinctive politeness did he select his topic according to the peculiar history, study, pursuits, or social habits of the stranger! And all this was done without approach to the unmanly trickery of 60 what is called "catching the tone" of the person one converses with. Scott took the subject on which he thought such a man or woman would like best to hear him speak-but not to handle it in their way, or in any way but what was completely, and most simply, his own; not to flatter them by embellishing, with the illustration of his genius, the views and 70 opinions which they were supposed to entertain-but to let his genius play out its own variations, for his own delight and theirs, as freely and easily, and with as endless a multiplicity of delicious novelties, as ever the magic of Beethoven or Mozart could fling over the few primitive notes of a village air. It is the custom in some, perhaps 80 in many, country-houses, to keep a register of the guests, and I have often regretted that nothing of the sort was ever attempted at Abbotsford. It would have been a curious record-especially if so contrived-as I have seen done that the names of each day should, by their arrangement on the page, indicate the exact order in which the company sat at 90 dinner. It would hardly, I believe, be too much to affirm, that Sir Walter Scott entertained, under his roof, in course of the seven or eight brilliant seasons when his prosperity was at its height, as many persons of dis tinction in rank, in politics, in art, in literature, and in science, as the most princely nobleman of his age ever did in the like space of time. I fancy it is not beyond the mark to add that, of the eminent foreigners who visited our island within this period, a moiety crossed the Channel mainly in consequence of the interest with 10 which his writings had invested Scotland-and that the hope of beholding the man under his own roof was the crowning motive with half that moiety. As for countrymen of his own, like him ennobled, in the higher sense of that word, by the display of their intellectual energies, if any one such contemporary can be pointed out, as having crossed the Tweed, and yet 20 not spent a day at Abbotsford, I shall be surprised. It is needless to add that Sir Walter was familiarly known, long before the days I am speaking of, to almost all the nobility and higher gentry of Scotland; and consequently, that there seldom wanted a fair proportion of them to assist him in doing the honors of his country. He lived meanwhile 30 in a constant interchange of easy visits with the gentlemen's families of Teviotdale and the Forest; so that mixed up with his superfine admirers of the Mayfair breed, his staring worshipers from foreign parts, and his quick-witted coevals of the Parliament-House-there was found generally some hearty homespun laird, with his dame, and the young laird40 a bashful bumpkin, perhaps, whose ideas did not soar beyond his gun and pointer - or perhaps a little pseudo-dandy, for whom the Kelso race-course and the Jedburgh ball were Life and the World. To complete the olla podrida, we must remember that no old acquaintance, or family connections, however remote their actual station or style of manners from his own, were forgotten or 50 lost sight of. He had some, even near relations, who, except when they visited him, rarely if ever found admittance to what the haughty dialect of the upper world is pleased to designate exclusively as "society." These were welcome guests, let who might be under that roof; and it was the same with many a worthy citizen of Edinburgh, habitually moving in an 60 obscure circle, who had been in the same class with Scott at the High School, or his fellow-apprentice when he was proud of earning three-pence a page by the use of his pen. To dwell on nothing else, it was surely a beautiful perfection of real universal humanity and politeness that could enable this great and good man to blend guests so multifarious in one group, 70 and contrive to make them all equally happy with him, with themselves, and with each other. I remember saying to William Allan one morning as the whole party mustered before the porch after breakfast, "A faithful sketch of what you at this moment see would be more interesting a hundred years hence than the grandest so-called historical picture 80 that you will ever exhibit at Somerset House"; and my friend agreed with me so cordially that I often wondered afterwards he had not attempted to realize the suggestion. The subject ought, however, to have been treated conjointly by him (or Wilkie) and Edwin Landseer. It was a clear, bright September morning, with a sharpness in the air that doubled the 90 animating influence of the sunshine, and all was in readiness for a grand coursing match on Newark Hill. The only guest who had chalked out other 34. Mayfair, a particularly fashionable part of London. 46. olla podrida, a sort of stew containing many kinds of meats and vegetables. 74. William Allan, a painter who made several portraits of Scott. |