The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete. Вальтер Скотт
vice in Charles, his foolish Pity and Lenity, in sparing these profane, blasphemous Redcoats, that Providence delivered into his hand, when, by putting them to death, this poor land might have been eased of the heavy burden of these vermin of Hell.” The Auld Leaven swore terribly in Scotland. The atrocious cruelties of Cumberland after Culloden are stated with much frankness and power. The German soldiers are said to have carried off “a vast deal of Spoil and Plunder into Germany,” and the Redcoats had Plays and Diversions (cricket, probably) on the Inch of Perth, on a Sabbath. “The Hellish, Pagan, Juggler plays are set up and frequented with more impudence and audacity than ever.” Only the Jews, “our elder Brethren,” are exempted from the curses of Haldane and Leslie, who promise to recover for them the Holy Land. “The Massacre in Edinburgh” in 1736, by wicked Porteous, calls for vengeance upon the authors and abettors thereof. The army and navy are “the most wicked and flagitious in the Universe.” In fact, the True Blue Testimony is very active indeed, and could be delivered, thanks to hellish Toleration, with perfect safety, by Leslie and Haldane. The candour of their eloquence assuredly proves that Davie Deans is not overdrawn; indeed, he is much less truculent than those who actually were testifying even after his decease.
In “The Heart of Mid-Lothian” Scott set himself to draw his own people at their best. He had a heroine to his hand in Helen Walker, “a character so distinguished for her undaunted love of virtue,” who, unlike Jeanie Deans, “lived and died in poverty, if not want.” In 1831 he erected a pillar over her grave in the old Covenanting stronghold of Irongray. The inscription ends—
Respect the Grave of Poverty,
When combined with Love of Truth
And Dear Affection.
The sweetness, the courage, the spirit, the integrity of Jeanie Deans have made her, of all Scott’s characters, the dearest to her countrymen, and the name of Jeanie was given to many children, in pious memory of the blameless heroine. The foil to her, in the person of Effie, is not less admirable. Among Scott’s qualities was one rare among modern authors: he had an affectionate toleration for his characters. If we compare Effie with Hetty in “Adam Bede,” this charming and genial quality of Scott’s becomes especially striking. Hetty and Dinah are in very much the same situation and condition as Effie and Jeanie Deans. But Hetty is a frivolous little animal, in whom vanity and silliness do duty for passion: she has no heart: she is only a butterfly broken on the wheel of the world. Doubtless there are such women in plenty, yet we feel that her creator persecutes her, and has a kind of spite against her. This was impossible to Scott. Effie has heart, sincerity, passion, loyalty, despite her flightiness, and her readiness, when her chance comes, to play the fine lady. It was distasteful to Scott to create a character not human and sympathetic on one side or another. Thus his robber “of milder mood,” on Jeanie’s journey to England, is comparatively a good fellow, and the scoundrel Ratcliffe is not a scoundrel utterly. “‘To make a Lang tale short, I canna undertake the job. It gangs against my conscience.’ ‘Your conscience, Rat?’ said Sharpitlaw, with a sneer, which the reader will probably think very natural upon the occasion. ‘Ou ay, sir,’ answered Ratcliffe, calmly, ‘just my conscience; a body has a conscience, though it may be ill wunnin at it. I think mine’s as weel out o’ the gate as maist folk’s are; and yet it’s just like the noop of my elbow, it whiles gets a bit dirl on a corner.’” Scott insists on leaving his worst people in possession of something likeable, just as he cannot dismiss even Captain Craigengelt without assuring us that Bucklaw made a provision for his necessities. This is certainly a more humane way of writing fiction than that to which we are accustomed in an age of humanitarianism. Nor does Scott’s art suffer from his kindliness, and Effie in prison, with a heart to be broken, is not less pathetic than the heartless Hetty, in the same condemnation.
As to her lover, Robertson, or Sir George Staunton, he certainly verges on the melodramatic. Perhaps we know too much about the real George Robertson, who was no heir to a title in disguise, but merely a “stabler in Bristol” accused “at the instance of Duncan Forbes, Esq. of Culloden, his Majesty’s advocate, for the crimes of Stouthrieff, Housebreaking, and Robbery.” Robertson “kept an inn in Bristo, at Edinburgh, where the Newcastle carrier commonly did put up,” and is believed to have been a married man. It is not very clear that the novel gains much by the elevation of the Bristo innkeeper to a baronetcy, except in so far as Effie’s appearance in the character of a great lady is entertaining and characteristic, and Jeanie’s conquest of her own envy is exemplary. The change in social rank calls for the tragic conclusion, about which almost every reader agrees with the criticism of Lady Louisa Stuart and her friends. Thus the novel “filled more pages” than Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham had “opined,” and hence comes a languor which does not beset the story of “Old Mortality.” Scott’s own love of adventure and of stirring incidents at any cost is an excellent quality in a novelist, but it does, in this instance, cause him somewhat to dilute those immortal studies of Scotch character which are the strength of his genius. The reader feels a lack of reality in the conclusion, the fatal encounter of the father and the lost son, an incident as old as the legend of Odysseus. But this is more than atoned for by the admirable part of Madge Wildfire, flitting like a feu follet up and down among the douce Scotch, and the dour rioters. Madge Wildfire is no repetition of Meg Merrilies, though both are unrestrained natural things, rebels against the settled life, musical voices out of the past, singing forgotten songs of nameless minstrels. Nowhere but in Shakspeare can we find such a distraught woman as Madge Wildfire, so near akin to nature and to the moods of “the bonny lady Moon.” Only he who created Ophelia could have conceived or rivalled the scene where Madge accompanies the hunters of Staunton on the moonlit hill and sings her warnings to the fugitive.
When the glede’s in the blue cloud,
The lavrock lies still;
When the hound’s in the green-wood,
The hind keeps the hill.
There’s a bloodhound ranging Tinwald wood,
There’s harness glancing sheen;
There’s a maiden sits on Tinwald brae,
And she sings loud between.
O sleep ye sound, Sir James, she said,
When ye suld rise and ride?
There’s twenty men, wi’ bow and blade,
Are seeking where ye hide.
The madness of Madge Wildfire has its parallel in the wildness of Goethe’s Marguerite, both of them lamenting the lost child, which, to Madge’s fancy, is now dead, now living in a dream. But the gloom that hangs about Muschat’s Cairn, the ghastly vision of “crying up Ailie Muschat, and she and I will hae a grand bouking-washing, and bleach our claise in the beams of the bonny Lady Moon,” have a terror beyond the German, and are unexcelled by Webster or by Ford. “But the moon, and the dew, and the night-wind, they are just like a caller kail-blade laid on my brow; and whiles I think the moon just shines on purpose to pleasure me, when naebody sees her but mysell.” Scott did not deal much in the facile pathos of the death-bed, but that of Madge Wildfire has a grace of poetry, and her latest song is the sweetest and wildest of his lyrics, the most appropriate in its setting. When we think of the contrasts to her—the honest, dull good-nature of Dumbiedikes; the common-sense and humour of Mrs. Saddletree; the pragmatic pedantry of her husband; the Highland pride, courage, and absurdity of the Captain of Knockdander—when we consider all these so various and perfect creations, we need not wonder that Scott was “in high glee” over “The