"Brother of Homer, and of him
On Avon's banks, by twilight dim,
Who dreamt immortal dreams, and took
From Nature's hand her storied book;
Earth hath not seen, Time may not see,
Till ends his march, such other three,"
—and with all due allowance for national predilection, it may be said that in simplicity and majesty of conception, picturesqueness of description, ardour of narration, rapid recurrence of striking incident, and manly avoidance of false sentiment and affectation, the Scottish poet has only been surpassed by the Bards of Chios and Avon. But these are not qualities in request in these days of spasmodic utterance, rugged diction, affected profundity and false sentiment. "Sir," said Dr. Johnson, speaking of some such atrocities of his own day, "a man might write such stuff for ever, if he could but abandon his mind to it"; and yet some modern critic,—his name is not of much matter,—has positively characterized these "poets "in "schools," and "groups," Romantic, Idyllic and so forth, God save the mark! One's consolation is, that, after drinking awhile at these turbid puddles, one must revert to the pure fount at last, and that Scott, with the older masters, will some day cease to be underrated, merely because they can be understood.
But these metrical poems are but the introduction to the greater achievement of his life,—in which Scott may be truly said to have conquered himself, and eclipsed his own glory,—his prose poems, for such in very truth are his Novels, Tales, and Romances. These may be said to have now passed out of the region of criticism; and need not detailed notice here or elsewhere. Scott created the modern novel. We had Richardson, it is true, and the earlier lucubrations of the Minerva press; but that peculiar form of prose poetry, which in our own day seems an indispensable need, and brings to thousands solace and distraction amid the spiramenta of professional and commercial life, was then unborn. It is Scott, once more, to whom we owe it;— with the assistance, be it remembered, of those charming writers of the softer sex, Edgeworth, Austen and Ferrier, who accompanied the greater light, like moons about a planet. Scott, in this immortal series, has opened to our gaze a new and enchanted world; and the creations of his teeming fancy, like those of Shakespeare, people our waking remembrance with all the vividness of material entities. Moreover, with that perfervid love for his native country which is only comparable with the Florentine nationalism of Dante, he may lay claim to have discovered to the world his own beloved land of mist and mountain,—whose past history he has illuminated, whose lonely glens he has peopled, and which he has invested with a perennial charm for all the nations of the earth.
It is a curious story;—how, desirous of trying his hand at a prose romance, he had written the earlier chapters of Waverley; and how, discouraged by his friends, he consigned the sheets to a slumber in his desk of almost Horatian length;[1] how he finished the book at a heat, and determined on its publication, notwithstanding the adverse opinion of James Ballantyne, who found it dull and vulgar! We all know,—some of us may remember—how the modest story took the world by storm,—with what electrical enthusiasm it was received as the first fruits of a new
- ↑ "Nonum prematur in annum." Herat., De Arte Poët, 388.
