The Life of Sir Walter Scott: A Biography. S. Fowler Wright
while I live, no foe finds room,”
the real battle has been fought and won.
After the death of Scott, the pursuit of physical science led mankind into a pit of materialism from which it is scarcely emerging, bewildered as from an evil dream, and the majority of our novelists, and some self-called poets, have followed it into a darkness from which they assure us, quite truthfully, they can see no stars.
It is in estimation of the relative importance of spiritual and physical or material issues that Scott is out of sympathy with modern fiction and modern criticism. Generous and tolerant though he was, he would have dismissed most of the “sex” novels which Mr. Gerald Gould reviews each week with such portentous solemnity, as too trivial and shallow, if not too base, for the wasting of a word upon them.
“Sexual” is a harmless necessary word, but it is not necessary, nor without significance, that it should be used in contemporary literature (and contemporary journalism) perhaps a hundred times more frequently than in any previous period. The novelists of our time, and some who have professed to be our own poets also, have concentrated on the degradations of physical passion, and observing that the older novelists painted on a wider canvas, and with a different perspective, they bring a humourless accusation against them that they portrayed only half of the panorama of life. The accusation is untrue; but were it of a literal accuracy, the honour would still be theirs, for how many of their successors could claim a breadth of view which would extend to such percentage of the total area?
Scott was of the tradition of Homer, who saw that there was a higher poetic value in the despairing sorrow of Helen over the dead Hector, than in the way in which she had previously surrendered herself to the arms of his younger brother.
Like Dante, he would have sorrowed over the tragedy of Francesca—and placed her in the hell to which she belonged.
We could trust most modern novelists that they would go wrong in either of these instances, and some of those who call themselves our poets would be lost on the same road. To them, the poetic value of Helen and Francesca would be in contemplation of their adulteries, but, like Homer and Dante, Scott preferred greater things....
The enthusiasm with which the Lay was received is easy to understand. It was not only that it was a very beautiful thing. It was beauty in a new form—new both to the popular mind, and to the student of literature of any time, or in any tongue.
Beyond that, it was alive; and, being alive, it had the qualities of living matter. It was not carved out of stone, but built of living cells. It was not fashioned, it grew. It had the qualities of its spontaneity; and the defects, if we will. There were those who criticised its structure when it first appeared, and these depreciations have never been entirely silenced, nor are they entirely groundless. A work of outstanding originality is almost always assailed by such criticism. It will differ from the requirements of ordered form, as a river differs from a canal, and for the same reasons. It has not been carved; it has flowered.
And yet the accusation of defective form cannot be left without qualification. The six-cantoed structure, with its breaking interludes, was regular enough—regular, indeed, as the severest form of the classical epic. And it, also, like the substance of the poem, had the charm of a new thing. It was its author’s invention, admirably adapted to his own genius, and which he was to repeat several times to successful ends, though no subsequent poet would be able to give it the same vitality. It was of the content that the charge of lack of balance and structural unity could be most plausibly urged. It might be compared to a plant which the gardener confines to limited boundaries, within which it can grow at its random will.
In its final form, it had a well-defined plot, well handled, and reaching a sufficient climax. To a close examination, it may appear that the goblin-dwarf is a needless intrusion, or even an excrescence upon it. In its first form, it had been no more than a ballad of diablerie, in which the dwarf had been a central figure. To have ejected him at a later stage, and made the poem a more literal account of one of the major raids which periodically devastated the Borders in the Middle Ages, would have involved such radical changes that it would have been a different poem, and whether the gain would have outweighed the loss must be hard to guess. But if the excision of the supernatural element had involved that of Deloraine’s midnight ride, and the opening of the wizard’s grave, probably most lovers of English poetry will be well-content that Scott used his genius for the blending of the various elements that he drew together as the years passed, and the poem lengthened, rather than to discard that to which a more prosaic standard of criticism might object as having become incongruous to the poem in its final form.
CHAPTER XXXI.
The first edition of the Lay had consisted of 750 quarto copies, elaborately printed. The bulk of this quantity went to Longmans, in London, and was sold immediately. The publication in Scotland was entrusted to Constable, who had a similar experience. The basis of the agreement with Scott was that the profits of this edition should be shared equally, the copyright remaining his property. Ultimately he received £169 as his share of the proceeds of these 750 volumes.
But the reception of the book showed Mr. Longman that he had found a poem which could be largely—no one could do more than guess how largely—sold. Again, he hurried to Edinburgh. He proposed to bring out a larger and less expensive edition in octavo size. He offered Scott £500 for the outright sale of the copyright, which was accepted, and was one of the worst bargains Scott ever made. A subsequent present of £100 to buy a horse to replace one that went lame when publisher and author were riding together, did little to adjust the balance of advantage, for the sales of this book, during Scott’s own lifetime, approached 50,000 copies. But, indirectly, the Lay was the source of some further profit in which Scott participated, for the printing orders were to be placed with the Ballantyne Press.
Up to this time, Scott had had no proprietary interest in Ballantyne’s printing business, though it was on his own persuasion that it had been brought to Edinburgh, and he had assisted that migration with a substantial loan. Since then, he had been able to place so much work in its way that the growth of its prosperity could be attributed directly to his own patronage. On the other hand, Ballantyne had done his part well. The event has justified Scott’s encouragement of the migration, both by orders which had been secured, and the manner in which they had been discharged.
Now Ballantyne approached Scott with a statement of his financial position. He was embarrassed by his own success. He was not in a position to execute the amount of orders he was receiving, both for the Lay, and from other directions, unless further capital were available. Scott had a large sum of money awaiting investment. His heart was in the Ballantyne business, and he had the responsibility of those who give advice which is taken. Friends who looked to him for help under any circumstances were not sent empty away. He agreed to invest about a third of the money which Captain Robert had left him. There is no reason to suppose that he did this with reluctance. But he declined to go further as a mere creditor. He required a partnership, to which Ballantyne agreed very willingly. A deed was signed, under which the profit was to be divided into three parts. One was to be paid to James Ballantyne in recompence of his work as manager, the others were to be drawn by the two partners equally. Scott, it will be noticed, had no responsibilities of management at this time. He was to be a sleeping partner. The division of profits may be considered equitable if Ballantyne’s capital were substantially equal to that of Scott, or generous if it were less. Lockhart failed to find that any Balance Sheet was drawn up as a foundation for this partnership, and suggests that it was arranged so loosely that there was no such document, which has been assumed as a fact by some later writers. The negative evidence that no such document could be found thirty years later is not convincing, and the improbability that it was not drawn, if the nature of the agreement required it, is extreme, as any accountant will recognise. What basis, in the absence of such a document, could there be for the calculations of future profits, which were certainly made? But the financial circumstances of this partnership, even from its inception, have been the subject of acute controversy, and must be treated in a separate chapter.
It was subsequently suggested that Scott’s action, as a practising barrister, in entering a commercial partnership, was a breech of etiquette, if not of honour, and that