The Life of Sir Walter Scott: A Biography. S. Fowler Wright
unnoticed; and the first line of the second requires careful accenting, if it is to be read well, but their melody is still of the highest order, with subtle uses of assonance and alliteration and accenting which it would require a chapter to analyse. And defects are as significant as excellences. They show Scott, not as a laborious artificer, but a careless master. It is the distinction which we recognise when we attempt to differentiate between talent and genius. And yet careless is a word which may imply more than the fact. It is Scott’s distinctive quality as a poet that he would always put what he had to say before how he said it. He would paint a scene as he saw it to be. Parkhead was one of the two who were closest to Murray when he was shot (the bullet that killed the Regent went on at a downward slant into Parkhead’s horse), and the stanza had to put up with the accenting of the man’s name as best it could.
Scott approached the temple of song by the ballad-path. All his life he wrote ballad-poetry, in which the subject matter was the first consideration. What has to be said must be said, and you must dress it, however roughly, in the best garments that its shape will wear. But he brought to their composition an understanding and control of the music of words which raised such poetry to the highest technical level. Miss Cranston judged well when she foretold a cross between Burns and Gray. Gray himself, most patient of craftmen, and most severe in self-criticism, never produced anything more flawless than were the lyrics which Scott would write for the ornamentation of his longer poems.
Cadyow Castle, though it was not immediately printed, obtained a prompt circulation in manuscript form. It came into the hands of Thomas Campbell (who, like everyone else, had met Scott in Edinburgh, two years earlier). Campbell, (it is his own witness) could not get it out of his head.
“Where, mightiest of the beasts of chase
That roam in woody Caledon,
Crashing the forest in his race,
The mountain bull came thundering on.”
He recited audibly in his morning walks, and with such gesticulations that the line of coachmen he passed regarded him as an entertaining lunatic.
Has the art of verbal music reached new heights in the subsequent century, or is it a cause for satisfaction that we are less alert to hear it?
CHAPTER XXIV.
The first two volumes of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border appeared in January 1802, and were an instant success. The literary public were quick to appreciate a work of comprehensive character, the editing of which had been done by one who had mastered the subject with which he dealt. Those who knew most of the traditional ballad poetry of the Scottish borders were the readiest to recognise its quality. In the lucid authoritative prose of the introductions and notes, they admitted a knowledge that surpassed their own. The volumes were, indeed, the product of almost twenty-five years research and labour, in which the aid of scores of others had been enlisted, and ungrudgingly given. Scott was to overshadow himself more than once in the coming years, and, looking back, these volumes seem a minor incident in his literary career. But, had he done no more, they would have stood out in a different light, and been sufficient to give him an enduring reputation, which he himself was to convert to a relative obscurity.
The ready sale of the first edition was not caused, but was certainly assisted, by the manner in which the volumes had been produced by Ballantyne at his Kelso press. It was fitting that a book of this kind should be printed in its own district, though it was expedient that it should be published in London. But such a production might reasonably have been expected to be inferior to that which would have been issued by a London firm. Such a difference would have needed little apology. Deficiencies of plant, and lack of experience, would have been valid in explanation. But there was no need for excusing anything. Instead of that, there was praise. So far, Scott had made no mistake. He had chosen his printer well. Lockhart is so frequently unfair to James Ballantyne, and (by an implication which he was far from intending) to Scott also, through the whole course of the development of this printing business, that the point deserves emphasis.
Scott chose a small country printer, one of his boyhood friends, in preference to an established Edinburgh firm, and his judgement was justified by the result. Ballantyne had an opportunity to show that he was capable of good work on a large scale, and he rose to take it.
When he heard of the success of the book, and that not only the editor but the printer had won praise in the capital city, he went himself to London to discuss the possibility of obtaining orders from publishers there. He must have been well received, for he wrote a letter of warm gratitude to Scott on his return to Kelso. He regarded the opportunity which Scott had given him to print the Minstrelsy as “one of the most fortunate circumstances” of his life. He added, “I can never be sufficiently grateful for the interest you unceasingly take in my welfare.” He mentioned that he was now sure of a profit on the enterprise, which implies that he had agreed to take some share of what must, in its inception, have been an adventurous risk for all concerned.
Mr. Longman, an enterprising London bookseller, journeyed to Edinburgh. He came to negotiate for the copyright. The edition which had been first printed at Scott’s or Ballantyne’s risk appears to have been one of 500 copies. Scott’s agreement with the publishers provided that he should receive half the net profit on the venture. They ultimately paid him £78 10. 0. in settlement of this obligation. Longman came to terms with Scott for the copyright, including the volume which had yet to be issued. He paid him £500. He gave Ballantyne an order for a further 1,000 copies, and for 1,500 of the third volume when it should be ready.
Editor and printer had good cause to be satisfied with the result of their first venture together. Scott looked ahead, planning boldly, with the confidence which success gives. Ballantyne’s letters to him show that the project of moving his business to Edinburgh was becoming more definite. It was ‘when’ now rather than ‘if ‘.
It is a general experience that we are more pleased by a small success in an art for which we have no natural genius than by a much greater in one at which we are really proficient. Scott had wished the Minstrelsy to include a sketch of the sombre ruins of Hermitage. There was no drawing in existence, nor any artist who would be willing to take the journey which would be necessary to make one. Scott thought (or wished) he could draw, and when his mind was resolved he was hard to turn. Shortreed and he had made an expedition to Hermitage to get the drawing. It was a time of deep snow on the hills. Scott said that he stood sketching for an hour ‘up to his middle’ in snow. He may have been a few inches wrong about that. Anyway, it was not too deep for him to move his arms.
He took the result back to William Clerk, who made from it another drawing of a more conventional kind. This went to the artist who was illustrating the book, and he made a third.
When the book appeared, those who knew the ruins said they could have guessed right without the help of the name which was printed beneath the sketch. Scott felt the pride of a child who has drawn a quadruped on a slate and finds it recognised for the cow which he had meant it to be. As a poet, he was well aware of his own deficiencies: even as a lawyer, it might be possible that he had his defects, though they were less obvious: but as an artist he was justified by the sketch he made when he was ‘up to his middle’ in snow.
With the encouragement he had received, it may be supposed that the summer of 1802 saw the third volume of the Minstrelsy) and other literary projects, pushed rapidly on. Seeking fresh materials, he made a journey into the remotest districts of the Ettrick forest, this time with John Leyden for company. Charlotte stayed at home, which was well for her. They slept on peat-stacks. They were fed on mutton which had died from such a cause as is commonly called an “act of God”, but in which no butcher had intervened. They came back no worse for that, and with results which they regarded as sufficient compensation for these experiences.
Before this time, John Leyden had confided to Scott his desire to get out to the East, and to add a study of Oriental languages and literatures to his omnivorous learning. By the beginning of the year, the interest of Scott and his friends had been active on his behalf, and William Dundas had ‘obtained the promise of some literary appointment in the East India Company’s service’. At midsummer he had the disconcerting news that the patronage possibilities of the season had