The Book-Hunter
of Charles I., was sold on account of expenses incurred by the loyalty
of the proprietor, the immediate ancestor of Sir Matthew Ridley. Will o'
the Wa' seems to be William Ridley of Walltown, so called from its
situation on the great Roman wall. Thirlwall Castle, whence the clan of
Thirlwalls derived their name, is situated on the small river of
Tippell, near the western boundary of Northumberland. It is near the
wall, and takes its name from the rampart having been _thirled_--that
is, pierced or breached--in its vicinity."
In the Life of Surtees, the evidence of the crime is thus dryly set
forth, in following up a statement of the transmission of the
manuscript, and of its publication: "Yet all this was a mere figment of
Surtees's imagination, originating probably in some whim of ascertaining
how far he could identify himself with the stirring times, scenes, and
poetical compositions which his fancy delighted to dwell on. This is
proved by more than one copy among his papers of this ballad, corrected
and interlined, in order to mould it to the language, the manners, and
the feelings of the period and of the district to which it refers. Mr
Surtees no doubt had wished to have the success of his attempt tested by
the unbiassed opinion of the very first authority on the subject; and
the result must have been gratifying to him."
In Scott's acknowledgment of the contribution, printed also in the Life
of Surtees, there are some words that must have brought misgivings and
fear of detection to the heart of the culprit, since Scott, without
apparently allowing doubts to enter his mind, yet marked some
peculiarities in the piece, in which it differed from others. "Your
notes upon the parties concerned give it all the interest of authority,
and it must rank, I suppose, among those half-serious, half-ludicrous
songs, in which the poets of the Border delighted to describe what they
considered as the _sport of swords_. It is perhaps remarkable, though it
may be difficult to guess a reason, that these Cumbrian ditties are of a
different stanza and character, and obviously sung to a different kind
of music, from those on the northern Border. The gentleman who collected
the words may perhaps be able to describe the tune."
There is perhaps no system of ethics which lays down with perfect
precision the moral code on literary forgeries, or enables us to judge
of the exact enormity of such offences. The world looks leniently on
them, and sometimes sympathises with them as good jokes. Allan
Cunningham, who, like Ramsay, was called "honest Allan," did not lose
that character by the tremendous "rises" which he took out of Cromek
about those remains of Nithsdale and Galloway song--a case in point so
far as principle goes, but differing somewhat in the intellectual rank
of the victim to the hoax. The temptation to commit such offences is
often extremely strong, and the injury seems slight, while the offender
probably consoles himself with the reflection that he can immediately
counteract it by confession. Vanity, indeed, often joins
conscientiousness in hastening on a revelation. Surtees, however,
remained in obdurate silence, and I am not aware that any edition of
the Minstrelsy draws attention to his handiwork. Lockhart seems not only
to have been ignorant of it, but to have been totally unconscious of the
risk of such a thing, since he always speaks of its author as a
respectable local antiquary, useful to Scott as a harmless drudge.
Perhaps Surtees was afraid of what he had done, like that teller in the
House of Commons who is said by tradition to have attempted to make a
bad joke in the division on the Habeas Corpus Act by counting a fat man
as ten, and, seeing that the trick passed unnoticed, and also passed the
measure, became afraid to confess it.
The literary history of "The Death of Featherstonhaugh" naturally
excited uneasiness about the touching ballad of "Barthram's Dirge," also
contributed to the Minstrelsy as the fruit of the industrious
investigations of Surtees. Most readers will remember this:--
"They shot him dead at the Nine-Stone Rig,
Beside the headless cross,
And they left him lying in his blood,
Upon the moor and moss."
After this stanza, often admired for its clearness as a picture, there
is a judicious break, and then come stanzas originally deficient of
certain words, which, as hypothetically supplied by Surtees, were
good-naturedly allowed to remain within brackets, as ingenious
suggestions:--
"They made a bier of the broken bough,
The sauch and the aspine grey,
And they bore him to the Lady Chapel,
And waked him there all day.
A lady came to that lonely bower,
And threw her robes aside;
She tore her ling [long] yellow hair,
And knelt at Barthram's side.
She bathed him in the Lady Well,
His wounds sae deep and sair,
And she plaited a garland for his breast,
And a garland for his hair."
A glance at the reprint of the Life of Surtees for the book club called
after his name, confirms the suspicions raised by the exposure of the
other ballad--this also is an imposition.[75]
[Footnote 75: The editor of the Life prints the following note by Mr
Raine, the coadjutor of Surtees in his investigations into the history
of the North of England: "I one evening in looking through Scott's
Minstrelsy wrote opposite to this dirge, _Aut Robertus aut Diabolus_.
Surtees called shortly after, and, pouncing upon the remark, justified
me by his conversation on the subject, in adding to my note, _Ita, teste
seipso_."--P. 87.]
Altogether, such affairs create an unpleasant uncertainty about the
paternity of that delightful department of literature, our ballad
poetry. Where next are we to be disenchanted? Of the way in which
ancient ballads have come into existence, there is one sad example
within my own knowledge. Some mad young wags, wishing to test the
critical powers of an experienced collector, sent him a new-made
ballad, which they had been enabled to secure only in a fragmentary
form. To the surprise of its fabricator, it was duly printed; but what
naturally raised his surprise to astonishment, and revealed to him a
secret, was, that it was no longer a fragment, but a complete
ballad,--the collector, in the course of his industrious inquiries among
the peasantry, having been so fortunate as to recover the missing
fragments! It was a case where neither could say anything to the other,
though Cato might wonder _quod non rideret haruspex, haruspicem cum
vidisset_. This ballad has been printed in more than one collection, and
admired as an instance of the inimitable simplicity of the genuine old
versions!
It may perhaps do something to mitigate Surtees's offence in the eye of
the world, that it was he who first suggested to Scott the idea of
improving the Jacobite insurrections, and, in fact, writing Waverley. In
the very same letter, quoted above, where Scott acknowledges the
treacherous gift, he also acknowledges the hints he has received; and,
mentioning the Highland stories he had imbibed from old Stewart of
Invernahyle, says: "I believe there never was a man who united the
ardour of a soldier and tale-teller--or man of talk, as they call it in
Gaelic--in such an excellent degree; and as he was as fond of telling as
I was of hearing, I became a violent Jacobite at the age of ten years
old; and even since reason and reading came to my assistance, I have
never got rid of the impression which the gallantry of Prince Charles
made on my imagination. Certainly I will not renounce the idea of doing
something to preserve these stories, and the memory of times and manners
which, though existing as it were yesterday, have so strangely vanished
from our eyes."
So much for certain men of mark whose pursuits or hobbies induced them
to cluster round the cradle of this new literary organisation. When it
was full grown it gathered about it a large body of systematic workers,
who had their own special departments in the great republic of letters.
To offer a just and discriminating account of these men's services would
draw me through an extensive tract of literary biography.
There is a shallow prejudice very acceptable to all blockheads, that men
who are both learned and laborious must necessarily be stupid. It is
best to meet the approach of such a prejudice at once, by saying that
the editors of club books are not mere dreary drudges, seeing the works
of others accurately through the press, and attending only to dates and
headings. Around and throughout the large library of volumes issued by
these institutions, there run prolific veins of fresh literature
pregnant with learning and ability. The style of work thus set agoing
has indeed just the other day been incorporated into a sort of
department of state literature since the great collection called The
Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle
Ages, of which the Master of the Rolls accepts the responsibility, is
carried out in the very spirit of the book clubs, in which indeed most
of the editors of the Chronicles have been trained.
Without prejudice to others, let me just name a few of those to whom the
world is under obligation for services in this field of learned labour.
For England, there are James Orchard Halliwell, Sir Frederic Madden,
Beriah Botfield, Sir Henry Ellis, Alexander Dyce, Thomas Stapleton,
William J. Thoms, Crofton Croker, Albert Way, Joseph Hunter, John Bruce,
Thomas Wright, John Gough Nichols, Payne Collier, Joseph Stevenson, and
George Watson Taylor, who edited that curious and melancholy book of
poems, composed by the Duke of Orleans while he was a prisoner in
England after the battle of Agincourt--poems composed, singularly
enough, in the English language, and at a period extremely deficient in
native vernacular literature.
In Scotland, it was in the earlier issues of the Bannatyne that Thomas
Thomson, too indolent or fastidious to commit himself to the writing of
a book, left the most accessible vestiges of that power of practically
grasping historical facts and conditions, which Scott admired so
greatly, and acknowledged so much benefit from. He was followed by
Professor Innes, who found and taught the secret of extracting from
ecclesiastical chartularies, and other early records, the light they
throw upon the social condition of their times, and thus collected
matter for the two pleasant volumes which have become so popular. The
Bannatyne Club, lately finding no more to do, wound up with a graceful
compliment to David Laing--the man to whom, after Scott, it has been
most indebted. And, lastly, it is in the Scotch book clubs that Joseph
Robertson has had the opportunity of exercising those subtle powers of
investigation and critical acumen, peculiarly his own, which have had a
perceptible and substantial effect in raising archaeology out of that
quackish repute which it had long to endure under the name of
antiquarianism. For Ireland, of which I have something farther to say at
length, let it suffice in the mean time to name Dean Butler, Dr Reeves,
Mr O'Donovan, Mr Eugene Curry, and Dr Henthorn Todd.
There is another and distinct class of services which have been
performed through the medium of the club books. The Roxburghe having
been founded on the principle that each member should print a volume, to
be distributed among his colleagues, an example was thus set to men of
easy fortune and scholarly tastes, which has been followed with a large
liberality, of which the public have probably but a faint idea. Not only
in those clubs founded on the reciprocity system of each member
distributing and receiving, but in those to be presently noticed, where