Waverley; Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since. Lang Andrew
“I am told one of the English reviews gives these works by name and upon alleged authority to George Forbes, Sir William’s brother; so they take them off my hands, I don’t care who they turn to, for I am really tired of an imputation which I am under the necessity of confuting at every corner. Tom will soon be home from Canada, as the death of my elder brother has left him a little money. He may answer for himself, but I hardly suspect him, unless much changed, to be Possessed of the perseverance necessary to write nine volumes.” Scott elsewhere rather encouraged the notion that his brother Thomas was the author, and tried to make him exert himself and enter the field as a rival. Gossip also assigned the “Scotch novels” to Jeffrey, to Mrs. Thomas Scott, aided by her husband and Sir Walter, to a Dr. Greenfield, a clergyman, and to many others. Sir Walter humorously suggested George Cranstoun as the real offender. After the secret was publicly confessed, Lady Louisa Stuart reminded Scott of all the amusement it had given them. “Old Mortality” had been pronounced “too good” for Scott, and free from his “wearisome descriptions of scenery.” Clever people had detected several separate hands in “Old Mortality,” as in the Iliad. All this was diverting. Moreover, Scott was in some degree protected from the bores who pester a successful author. He could deny the facts very stoutly, though always, as he insists, With the reservation implied in alleging that, if he had been the author, he would still have declined to confess. In the notes to later novels we shall see some of his “great denials.”
The reception of “Waverley” was enthusiastic. Large editions were sold in Edinburgh, and when Scott returned from his cruise in the northern islands he found society ringing with his unacknowledged triumph. Byron, especially, proclaimed his pleasure in “Waverley.” It may be curious to recall some of the published reviews of the moment. Probably no author ever lived so indifferent to published criticism as Scott. Miss Edgeworth, in one of her letters, reminds him how they had both agreed that writers who cared for the dignity and serenity of their characters should abstain from “that authors’ bane-stuff.” “As to the herd of critics,” Scott wrote to Miss Seward, after publishing “The Lay,” “many of those gentlemen appear to me to be a set of tinkers, who, unable to make pots and pans, set up for menders of them.” It is probable, therefore, that he was quite unconcerned about the few remarks which Mr. Gifford, in the “Quarterly Review” (vol. xl., 1814), interspersed among a multitude of extracts, in a notice of “Waverley” manufactured with scissors and paste. The “Quarterly” recognized “a Scotch Castle Rackrent,” but in “a much higher strain.” The tale was admitted to possess all the accuracy of history, and all the vivacity of romance. Scott’s second novel, “Guy Mannering,” was attacked with some viciousness in the periodical of which he was practically the founder, and already the critic was anxious to repeat what Scott, talking of Pope’s censors, calls “the cuckoo cry of written out’!” The notice of “Waverley” in the “Edinburgh Review” by Mr. Jeffrey was not so slight and so unworthy of the topic. The novel was declared, and not unjustly, to be “very hastily, and in many places very unskilfully, written.” The Scotch was decried as “unintelligible” dialect by the very reviewer who had accused “Marmion” of not being Scotch enough. But the “Edinburgh” applauded “the extraordinary fidelity and felicity” with which all the inferior agents in the story are represented. “Fastidious readers” might find Callum Beg and Mrs. Nosebag and the Cumberland peasants “coarse and disgusting,” said the reviewer, who must have had in his imagination readers extremely superfine. He objected to the earlier chapters as uninteresting, and – with justice – to the passages where the author speaks in “the smart and flippant style of modern makers of paragraphs.” “These form a strange and humiliating contrast with the force and freedom of his manner when engaged in those dramatic and picturesque representations to which his genius so decidedly inclines.” He spoke severely of the places where Scott explains the circumstances of Waverley’s adventures before he reaches Edinburgh; and Scott himself, in his essay on Mrs. Radcliffe, regrets that explanatory chapters had ever been invented. The reviewer broadly hints his belief that Scott is the author; and on the whole, except for a cautious lack of enthusiasm, the notice is fair and kindly. The “Monthly Review” differed not much from the Blue and Yellow (the “Edinburgh Review”).
“It is not one of the least merits of this very uncommon production that all the subordinate characters are touched with the same discriminating force which so strongly marks their principals; and that in this manner almost every variety of station and interest, such as existed at the period under review, is successively brought before the mind of the reader in colours vivid as the original.
“A few oversights, we think, we have detected in the conduct of the story which ought not to remain unnoticed. For example, the age of Stanley and Lady Emily does not seem well to accord with the circumstances of their union, as related in the commencement of the work; and we are not quite satisfied that Edward should have been so easily reconciled to the barbarous and stubborn prejudices which precluded even the office of intercession for his gallant friend and companion-in-arms.
“The pieces of poetry which are not very profusely scattered through these volumes can scarcely fail to be ascribed to Mr. Scott, whatever may be judged of the body of the work. In point of comparative merit, we should class them neither with the highest nor with the meanest effusions of his lyric minstrelsy.”
Lord Byron’s “Grandmother’s Review, the British,” was also friendly and sagacious, in its elderly way.
“We request permission, therefore, to introduce ‘Waverley,’ a publication which has already excited considerable interest in the sister kingdom, to the literary world on this side the Tweed.
“A very short time has elapsed since this publication made its appearance in Edinburgh, and though it came into the world in the modest garb of anonymous obscurity, the Northern literati are unanimous, we understand, in ascribing part of it, at, least, to the pen of W. Scott.
“We are unwilling to consider this publication in the light of a common novel whose fate it is to be devoured with rapidity for a day, and afterwards forgotten forever, but as a vehicle of curious and accurate information upon a subject which must at all times demand our attention, – the history and manners of a very large and renowned portion of the inhabitants of these islands. We would recommend this tale as faithfully embodying the lives, the manners, and the opinions of this departed race, and as affording those features of ancient days which no man probably, besides its author, has had the means to collect, the desire to preserve, or the power to portray.
“Although there are characters sufficient to awaken the attention and to diversify the scenes, yet they are not in sufficient number to perplex the memory or to confuse the incidents. Their spirit is well kept up till the very last, and they relieve one another with so much art that the reader will not find himself wearied even with the pedantic jargon of the old Baron of Bradwardine.
“Of Waverley himself we shall say but little, as his character is far too common to need a comment; we can only say that his wanderings are not gratuitous, nor is he wavering and indecisive only because the author chooses to make him so. Every feature in his character is formed by education, and it is to this first source that we are constantly referred for a just and sufficient cause of all the wandering passions as they arise in his mind.
“The secondary personages are drawn with much spirit and fidelity, and with a very striking knowledge of the peculiarities of the Scotch temper and disposition. The incidents are all founded on fact, and the historical parts are related with much accuracy. The livelier scenes which are displayed are of the most amusing species, because they flow so naturally from the personages before us that the characters, not the author, appear to speak. A strong vein of very original humour marks the whole: in most instances it is indeed of a local and particular nature, but in many cases it assumes a more general appearance.
“Of the more serious portions we can speak with unqualified approbation; the very few pathetic scenes which occur are short, dignifed, and affecting. The love-scenes are sufficiently contracted to produce that very uncommon sensation in the mind, – a wish that they were longer.
“The religious opinions expressed in the course of the tale are few, but of those few we fully approve.
“The humorous and happy adaptation of legal terns