Beacon Lights of History, Volume 13: Great Writers. John Lord
of this labor of love occupied the editor a year, assisted by John Leyden, a man of great promise, who died in India in 1811, having made a mark as an Orientalist. About this time began Scott's memorable friendship with George Ellis, the most discriminating and useful of all his literary friends. In the same year he made the acquaintance of Thomas Campbell, the poet, who had already achieved fame by his "Pleasures of Hope."
It was in 1802 that the first and second volumes of the "Minstrelsy" appeared, in an edition of eight hundred copies, Scott's share of the profits amounting to £78 10 s., which did not pay him for the actual expenditure in the collection of his materials. The historical notes with which he elucidated the value of the ancient ballads, and the freshness and vigor of those which he himself wrote for the collection, secured warm commendations from Ellis, Ritson, and other friends, and the whole edition was sold; yet the work did not bring him wide fame. The third and last volume was issued in 1803.
The work is full of Scott's best characteristics,–wide historical knowledge, wonderful industry, humor, pathos, and a sympathetic understanding of life–that of the peasant as well as the knight–such as seizes the imagination. Lockhart quotes a passage of Scott's own self-criticism: "I am sensible that if there be anything good about my poetry, or prose either, it is a hurried frankness of composition, which pleases soldiers, sailors, and young people of bold and active dispositions." His ability to "toil terribly" in accumulating choice material, and then, fusing it in his own spirit, to throw it forth among men with this "hurried frankness" that stirs the blood, was the secret of his power.
Scott did not become famous, however, until his first original poem appeared,–"The Lay of the Last Minstrel," printed by Ballantyne in 1805, and published by Longman of London, and Constable of Edinburgh. It was a great success; nearly fifty thousand copies were sold in Great Britain alone by 1830. For the first edition of seven hundred and fifty copies quarto, Scott received £169 6 s., and then sold the copyright for £500.
In the meantime, a rich uncle died without children, and Scott's share of the property enabled him, in 1804, to rent from his cousin, Major-General Sir James Russell, the pretty property called Ashestiel,–a cottage and farm on the banks of the Tweed, altogether a beautiful place, where he lived when discharging his duties of sheriff of Selkirkshire. He has celebrated the charms of Ashestiel in the canto introduction to "Marmion." His income at this time amounted to about £1000 a year, which gave him a position among the squires of the neighborhood, complete independence, and leisure to cultivate his taste. His fortune was now made: with poetic fame besides, and powerful friends, he was a man every way to be envied.
"The Lay of the Last Minstrel" placed Scott among the three great poets of Scotland, for originality and beauty of rhyme. It is not marked by pathos or by philosophical reflections. It is a purely descriptive poem of great vivacity and vividness, easy to read, and true to nature. It is a tale of chivalry, and is to poetry what Froissart's "Chronicles" are to history. Nothing exactly like it had before appeared in English literature. It appealed to all people of romantic tastes, and was reproachless from a moral point of view. It was a book for a lady's bower, full of chivalric sentiments and stirring incidents, and of unflagging interest from beginning to end,–partly warlike and partly monastic, describing the adventures of knights and monks. It deals with wizards, harpers, dwarfs, priests, warriors, and noble dames. It sings of love and wassailings, of gentle ladies' tears, of castles and festal halls, of pennons and lances,–
"Of ancient deeds, so long forgot,
Of feuds whose memory was not,
Of forests now laid waste and bare,
Of towers which harbor now the hare."
In "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" there is at least one immortal stanza which would redeem the poem even if otherwise mediocre. How few poets can claim as much as this! Very few poems live except for some splendid passages which cannot be forgotten, and which give fame. I know of nothing, even in Burns, finer than the following lines:–
"Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well!
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,–
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung."
The favor with which "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was received, greater than that of any narrative poem of equal length which had appeared for two generations, even since Dryden's day, naturally brought great commendation from Jeffrey, the keenest critic of the age, in the famous magazine of which he was the editor. The Edinburgh Review had been started only in 1802 by three young men of genius,–Jeffrey, Brougham, and Sydney Smith,–and had already attained great popularity, but not such marvellous influence as it wielded ten years afterwards, when nine thousand copies were published every three months, and at such a price as gave to its contributors a splendid remuneration, and to its editors absolute critical independence. The only objection to this powerful periodical was the severity of its criticisms, which often also were unjust. It seemed to be the intent of the reviewers to demolish everything that was not of extraordinary merit. Fierce attacks are not criticism. The articles in the Edinburgh Review were of a different sort from the polished and candid literary dissections which made Ste.-Beuve so justly celebrated. In the beginning of the century, however, these savage attacks were all the fashion and to be expected; yet they stung authors almost to madness, as in the case of the review of Byron's early poetry. Literary courtesy did not exist. Justice gave place generally to ridicule or sarcasm. The Edinburgh Review was a terror to all pretenders, and often to men of real merit. But it was published when most judges were cruel and severe, even in the halls of justice.
The friendship between Scott and Jeffrey had been very close for ten years before the inception of the Edinburgh Review; and although Scott was (perhaps growing out of his love for antiquarian researches and admiration of the things that had been) an inveterate conservative and Tory, while the new Review was slashingly liberal and progressive, he was drawn in by friendship and literary interest to be a frequent contributor during its first three or four years. The politics of the Edinburgh Review, however, and the establishment in 1808 of the conservative Quarterly Review, caused a gradual cessation of this literary connection, without marring the friendly relations between the two men.
About this time began Scott's friendship with Wordsworth, for whom he had great respect. Indeed, his modesty led him to prefer everybody's good poetry to his own. He felt himself inferior not only to Burns, but also to Wordsworth and Campbell and Coleridge and Byron,–as in many respects he undoubtedly was; but it requires in an author discernment and humility of a rare kind, to make him capable of such a discrimination.
More important to him than any literary friendship was his partnership with James Ballantyne, the printer, whom he had known from his youth. This in the end proved unfortunate, and nearly ruined him; for Ballantyne, though an accomplished man and a fine printer, as well as enterprising and sensible, was not a safe business man, being over-sanguine. For a time, however, this partnership, which was kept secret, was an advantage to both parties, although Scott embarked in the enterprise his whole available capital, about £5000. In connection with the publishing business, soon added to the printing, with James Ballantyne's brother