English Literature
ballad, like the "Boat Song" and "Lochinvar," which are among the best
known in our literature.
In his novels Scott plainly wrote too rapidly and too much. While a genius
of the first magnitude, the definition of genius as "the infinite capacity
for taking pains" hardly belongs to him. For details of life and history,
for finely drawn characters, and for tracing the logical consequences of
human action, he has usually no inclination. He sketches a character
roughly, plunges him into the midst of stirring incidents, and the action
of the story carries us on breathlessly to the end. So his stories are
largely adventure stories, at the best; and it is this element of adventure
and glorious action, rather than the study of character, which makes Scott
a perennial favorite of the young. The same element of excitement is what
causes mature readers to turn from Scott to better novelists, who have more
power to delineate human character, and to create, or discover, a romantic
interest in the incidents of everyday life rather than in stirring
adventure.[225]
Notwithstanding these limitations, it is well--especially in these days,
when we hear that Scott is outgrown--to emphasize four noteworthy things
that he accomplished.
(1) He created the historical novel[226]; and all novelists of the last
century who draw upon history for their characters and events are followers
of Scott and acknowledge his mastery.
(2) His novels are on a vast scale, covering a very wide range of action,
and are concerned with public rather than with private interests. So, with
the exception of _The Bride of Lammermoor_, the love story in his novels is
generally pale and feeble; but the strife and passions of big parties are
magnificently portrayed. A glance over even the titles of his novels shows
how the heroic side of history for over six hundred years finds expression
in his pages; and all the parties of these six centuries--Crusaders,
Covenanters, Cavaliers, Roundheads, Papists, Jews, Gypsies, Rebels--start
into life again, and fight or give a reason for the faith that is in them.
No other novelist in England, and only Balzac in France, approaches Scott
in the scope of his narratives.
(3) Scott was the first novelist in any language to make the scene an
essential element in the action. He knew Scotland, and loved it; and there
is hardly an event in any of his Scottish novels in which we do not breathe
the very atmosphere of the place, and feel the presence of its moors and
mountains. The place, morever, is usually so well chosen and described that
the action seems almost to be the result of natural environment. Perhaps
the most striking illustration of this harmony between scene and incident
is found in _Old Mortality_, where Morton approaches the cave of the old
Covenanter, and where the spiritual terror inspired by the fanatic's
struggle with imaginary fiends is paralleled by the physical terror of a
gulf and a roaring flood spanned by a slippery tree trunk. A second
illustration of the same harmony of scene and incident is found in the
meeting of the arms and ideals of the East and West, when the two champions
fight in the burning desert, and then eat bread together in the cool shade
of the oasis, as described in the opening chapter of _The Talisman_. A
third illustration is found in that fascinating love scene, where Ivanhoe
lies wounded, raging at his helplessness, while the gentle Rebecca
alternately hides and reveals her love as she describes the terrific
assault on the castle, which goes on beneath her window. His thoughts are
all on the fight; hers on the man she loves; and both are natural, and both
are exactly what we expect under the circumstances. These are but striking
examples of the fact that, in all his work, Scott tries to preserve perfect
harmony between the scene and the action.
(4) Scott's chief claim to greatness lies in the fact that he was the first
novelist to recreate the past; that he changed our whole conception of
history by making it to be, not a record of dry facts, but a stage on which
living men and women played their parts. Carlyle's criticism is here most
pertinent: "These historical novels have taught this truth ... unknown to
writers of history: that the bygone ages of the world were actually filled
by living men, not by protocols, state papers, controversies, and
abstractions of men." Not only the pages of history, but all the hills and
vales of his beloved Scotland are filled with living characters,--lords and
ladies, soldiers, pirates, gypsies, preachers, schoolmasters, clansmen,
bailiffs, dependents,--all Scotland is here before our eyes, in the reality
of life itself. It is astonishing, with his large numbers of characters,
that Scott never repeats himself. Naturally he is most at home in Scotland,
and with humble people. Scott's own romantic interest in feudalism caused
him to make his lords altogether too lordly; his aristocratic maidens are
usually bloodless, conventional, exasperating creatures, who talk like
books and pose like figures in an old tapestry. But when he describes
characters like Jeanie Deans, in _The Heart of Midlothian_, and the old
clansman, Evan Dhu, in _Waverley_, we know the very soul of Scotch
womanhood and manhood.
Perhaps one thing more should be said, or rather repeated, of Scott's
enduring work. He is always sane, wholesome, manly, inspiring. We know the
essential nobility of human life better, and we are better men and women
ourselves, because of what he has written.
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON (1788-1824)
There are two distinct sides to Byron and his poetry, one good, the other
bad; and those who write about him generally describe one side or the other
in superlatives. Thus one critic speaks of his "splendid and imperishable
excellence of sincerity and strength"; another of his "gaudy charlatanry,
blare of brass, and big bow-wowishness." As both critics are fundamentally
right, we shall not here attempt to reconcile their differences, which
arise from viewing one side of the man's nature and poetry to the exclusion
of the other. Before his exile from England, in 1816, the general
impression made by Byron is that of a man who leads an irregular life,
poses as a romantic hero, makes himself out much worse than he really is,
and takes delight in shocking not only the conventions but the ideals of
English society. His poetry of this first period is generally, though not
always, shallow and insincere in thought, and declamatory or bombastic in
expression. After his exile, and his meeting with Shelley in Italy, we note
a gradual improvement, due partly to Shelley's influence and partly to his
own mature thought and experience. We have the impression now of a
disillusioned man who recognizes his true character, and who, though
cynical and pessimistic, is at least honest in his unhappy outlook on
society. His poetry of this period is generally less shallow and
rhetorical, and though he still parades his feelings in public, he often
surprises us by being manly and sincere. Thus in the third canto of _Childe
Harold_, written just after his exile, he says:
In my youth's summer I did sing of one,
The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind;
and as we read on to the end of the splendid fourth canto--with its poetic
feeling for nature, and its stirring rhythm that grips and holds the reader
like martial music--we lay down the book with profound regret that this
gifted man should have devoted so much of his talent to describing trivial
or unwholesome intrigues and posing as the hero of his own verses. The real
tragedy of Byron's life is that he died just as he was beginning to find
himself.
LIFE. Byron was born in London in 1788, the year preceding the French
Revolution. We shall understand him better, and judge him more charitably,
if we remember the tainted stock from which he sprang. His father was a
dissipated spendthrift of unspeakable morals; his mother was a Scotch
heiress, passionate and unbalanced. The father deserted his wife after
squandering her fortune; and the boy was brought up by the mother who
"alternately petted and abused" him. In his eleventh year the death of a
granduncle left him heir to Newstead Abbey and to the baronial title of one
of the oldest houses in England. He was singularly handsome; and a lameness
resulting from a deformed foot lent a suggestion of pathos to his make-up.
All this, with his social position, his pseudo-heroic poetry, and his
dissipated life,--over which he contrived to throw a veil of romantic
secrecy,--made him a magnet of attraction to many thoughtless young men and
foolish women, who made the downhill path both easy and rapid to one whose
inclinations led him in that direction. Naturally he was generous, and
easily led by affection. He is, therefore, largely a victim of his own
weakness and of unfortunate surroundings.
At school at Harrow, and in the university at Cambridge, Byron led an
unbalanced life, and was more given to certain sports from which he was not
debarred by lameness, than to books and study. His school life, like his
infancy, is sadly marked by vanity, violence, and rebellion against every
form of authority; yet it was not without its hours of nobility and
generosity. Scott describes him as "a man of real goodness of heart, and
the kindest and best feelings, miserably thrown away by his foolish
contempt of public opinion." While at Cambridge, Byron published his first
volume of poems, _Hours of Idleness_, in 1807. A severe criticism of the
volume in the _Edinburgh Review_ wounded Byron's vanity, and threw him into
a violent passion, the result of which was the now famous satire called
_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, in which not only his enemies, but
also Scott, Wordsworth, and nearly all the literary men of his day, were
satirized in heroic couplets after the manner of Pope's _Dunciad_. It is
only just to say that he afterwards made friends with Scott and with others
whom he had abused without provocation; and it is interesting to note, in
view of his own romantic poetry, that he denounced all masters of romance
and accepted the artificial standards of Pope and Dryden. His two favorite
books were the Old Testament and a volume of Pope's poetry. Of the latter
he says, "His is the greatest name in poetry ... all the rest are
barbarians."
In 1809 Byron, when only twenty-one years of age, started on a tour of
Europe and the Orient. The poetic results of this trip were the first two
cantos of _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, with their famous descriptions of
romantic scenery. The work made him instantly popular, and his fame
overshadowed Scott's completely. As he says himself, "I awoke one morning
to find myself famous," and presently he styles himself "the grand Napoleon
of the realms of rhyme." The worst element in Byron at this time was his
insincerity, his continual posing as the hero of his poetry. His best works
were translated, and his fame spread almost as rapidly on the Continent as
in England. Even Goethe was deceived, and declared that a man so wonderful
in character had never before appeared in literature, and would never
appear again. Now that the tinsel has worn off, and we can judge the man
and his work dispassionately, we see how easily even the critics of the age
were governed by romantic impulses.
The adulation of Byron lasted only a few years in England. In 1815 he
married Miss Milbanke, an English heiress, who abruptly left him a year
later. With womanly reserve she kept silence; but the public was not slow
to imagine plenty of reasons for the separation. This, together with the
fact that men had begun to penetrate the veil of romantic secrecy with
which Byron surrounded himself and found a rather brassy idol beneath,