The Pirate
think he was like his honour, Tom?" "By God, Jack, I believe it was the
very man." (Diary; Lockhart, iv. 222; "The Pirate," vol. ii. ch. xiv.)
The goldless Northern Ophir was also visited--in brief, Scott scarcely
made a remark on his tour which he did not manage to transmute into the
rare metal of his romance. It is no wonder that the Orcadians at once
detected his authorship. A trifling anecdote of the cruise has recently
been published. Scott presented a lady in the isles with a piano, which,
it seems, is still capable of producing a melancholy jingling tune.[5]
Lockhart says, as to the reception of "The Pirate" (Dec. 1821): "The
wild freshness of the atmosphere of this splendid romance, the beautiful
contrast of Minna and Brenda, and the exquisitely drawn character of
Captain Cleveland, found the reception which they deserved." "The wild
freshness of the atmosphere" is indeed magically transfused, and
breathes across the pages as it blows over the Fitful Head, the
skerries, the desolate moors, the plain of the Standing Stones of
Stennis. The air is keen and salt and fragrant of the sea. Yet Sydney
Smith was greatly disappointed. "I am afraid this novel will depend upon
the former reputation of the author, and will add nothing to it. It may
sell, and another may half sell, but that is all, unless he comes out
with something vigorous, and redeems himself. I do not blame him for
writing himself out, if he knows he is doing so, and has done his
_best_, and his _all_. If the native land of Scotland will supply no
more scenes and characters, for he is always best in Scotland, though he
was very good in England the (time) he was there; but pray, wherever the
scene is laid, no more Meg Merrilies and Dominie Sampsons--very good the
first and second times, but now quite worn out, and always recurring."
("Archibald Constable," iii. 69.)
It was Smith's grammar that gave out, and produced no apodosis to his
phrase. Scott could not write himself out, before his brain was affected
by disease. Had his age been miraculously prolonged, with health, it
could never be said that "all the stories have been told," and he would
have delighted mankind unceasingly.
Scott himself was a little nettled by the criticisms of Norna as a
replica of Meg Merrilies. She is, indeed, "something distinct from the
Dumfriesshire gipsy"--in truth, she rather resembles the Ulrica of
"Ivanhoe." Like her, she is haunted by the memory of an awful crime, an
insane version of a mere accident; like her, she is a votaress of the
dead gods of the older world, Thor and Odin, and the spirits of the
tempest. Scott's imagination lived so much in the past that the ancient
creeds never ceased to allure him: like Heine, he felt the fascination
of the banished deities, not of Greece, but of the North. Thus Norna,
crazed by her terrible mischance, dwells among them, worships the Red
Beard, as outlying descendants of the Aztecs yet retain some faith in
their old monstrous Pantheon. Even Minna keeps, in her girlish
enthusiasm, some touch of Freydis in the saga of Eric the Red: for her
the old gods and the old years are not wholly exiled and impotent. All
this is most characteristic of the antiquary and the poet in Scott, who
lingers fondly over what has been, and stirs the last faint embers of
fallen fires. It is of a piece with the harmless Jacobitism of his
festivals, when they sang
Here's to the King, boys!
Ye ken wha I mean, boys.
In the singularly feeble and provincial vulgarities which Borrow
launches, in the appendix to "Lavengro," against the memory of Scott,
the charge of reviving Catholicism is the most bitter. That rowdy
evangelist might as well have charged Scott with a desire to restore the
worship of Odin, and to sacrifice human victims on the stone altar of
Stennis. He saw in Orkney the ruined fanes of the Norse deities, as at
Melrose of the Virgin, and his loyal heart could feel for all that was
old and lost, for all into which men had put their hearts and faiths,
had made, and had unmade, in the secular quest for the divine. Like a
later poet, he might have said:--
Not as their friend or child I speak,
But as on some far Northern strand,
Thinking of his own gods, a Greek
In pity and mournful awe might stand
Beside some fallen Runic stone,
For both were gods, and both are gone.
And surely no creed is more savage, cruel, and worthy of death than
Borrow's belief in a God who "knew where to strike," and deliberately
struck Scott by inducing Robinson to speculate in hops, and so bring
down his Edinburgh associate, Constable, and with him Sir Walter! Such
was the religion which Borrow expressed in the style of a writer in a
fourth-rate country newspaper. We might prefer the frank Heathenism of
the Red Beard to the religion of the author of "The Bible in Spain."
There is no denying that Scott had in his imagination a certain mould of
romance, into which his ideas, when he wrote most naturally, and most
for his own pleasure, were apt to run. It is one of the charms of "The
Pirate" that here he is manifestly writing for his own pleasure, with a
certain boyish eagerness. Had we but the plot of one of the tales which
he told, as a lad, to his friend Irving, we might find that it turned on
a romantic mystery, a clue in the hands of some witch or wise woman, of
some one who was always appearing in the nick of time, was always round
the corner when anything was to be heard. This is a standing
characteristic of the tales: now it is Edie Ochiltree, now
Flibbertigibbet, now Meg Merrilies, now Norna, who holds the thread of
the plot, but these characters are all well differentiated. Again, he
had types, especially the pedantic type, which attracted him, but they
vary as much as Yellowley and Dugald Dalgetty, the Antiquary, and
Dominie Sampson. Yellowley is rather more repressed than some of Scott's
bores; but then he is not the only bore, for Claud Halcro, with all his
merits, is a professed proser. Swift had exactly described the
character, the episodical narrator, in a passage parallel to one in
Theophrastus. In writing to Morritt, Scott says (November 1818): "I
sympathise with you for the _dole_ you are _dreeing_ under the
inflictions of your honest proser. Of all the boring machines ever
devised, your regular and determined story-teller is the most peremptory
and powerful in his operations."
"With what perfect placidity he submitted to be bored even by bores of
the first water!" says Lockhart. The species is one which we all have
many opportunities of studying, but it may be admitted that Scott
produced his studies of bores with a certain complacency. Yet they are
all different bores, and the gay, kind _scald_ Halcro is very unlike
Master Mumblasen or Dominie Sampson.
For a hero Mordaunt may be called almost sprightly and individual. His
mysterious father occasionally suggests the influence of Byron,
occasionally of Mrs. Radcliffe. The Udaller is as individual and genial
as Dandie Dinmont himself; or, again, he is the Cedric of Thule, though
much more sympathetic than Cedric to most readers. His affection for his
daughters is characteristic and deserved. Many a pair of sisters, blonde
and brune, have we met in fiction since Minna and Brenda, but none have
been their peers, and, like Mordaunt in early years, we know not to
which of them our hearts are given. They are "L'Allegro" and "Il
Penseroso" of the North, and it is probable that all men would fall in
love with Minna if they had the chance, and marry Brenda, if they could.
Minna is, indeed, the ideal youth of poetry, and Brenda of the practical
life. The innocent illusions of Minna, her love of all that is old, her
championship of the forlorn cause, her beauty, her tenderness, her
truth, her passionate waywardness of sorrow, make her one of Scott's
most original and delightful heroines. She believes and trembles not,
like Bertram in "Rokeby." Brenda trembles, but does not believe in
Norna's magic, and in the spirits of ancient saga. As for Cleveland,
Scott managed to avoid Byron's Lara-like pirates, and produced a
freebooter as sympathetic as any _hostis humani generis_ can be, while
"Frederick Altamont" (Thackeray borrowed the name for his romantic
crossing-sweeper) has a place among the Marischals and Bucklaws of
romance. Scott's minute studies in Dryden come to the aid of his local
observations, and so, out of not very promising materials, and out of
the contrast of Lowland Scot and Orcadian, the romance is spun. Probably
the "psychological analysis" which most interested the author is the
double consciousness of Norna, the occasional intrusions of the rational
self on her dreams of supernatural powers. That double consciousness,
indeed, exists in all of us: occasionally the self in which we believe
has a vision of the real underlying self, and shudders from the sight,
like the pair "who met themselves" in the celebrated drawing.
"The Pirate" can scarcely be placed in the front rank of Scott's novels,
but it has a high and peculiar place in the second, and probably will
always be among the special favourites of those who, being young, are
fortunate enough not to be critical.
Scott's novels at this time came forth so frequently that the lumbering
"Quarterlies" toiled after them in vain. They adopted the plan of
reviewing them in batches, and the "Quarterly" may be said to have
omitted "The Pirate" altogether. About this time Gifford began to find
that the person who spoke of a "dark dialect of Anglified Erse" was not
a competent critic, and Mr. Senior noticed several of the tales in a
more judicious manner. As to "The Pirate," the "Edinburgh Review"
found "the character and story of Mertoun at once commonplace and
extravagant." Cleveland disappoints "by turning out so much better
than we had expected, and yet substantially so ill." "Nothing can
be more beautiful than the description of the sisters." "Norna is
a new incarnation of Meg Merrilies, and palpably the same in the
spirit ... but far above the rank of a mere imitated or borrowed
character." "The work, on the whole, opens up a new world to our
curiosity, and affords another proof of the extreme pliability,
as well as vigour, of the author's genius."
ANDREW LANG.
_August 1893._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Lockhart, vi. 388-393. Erskine died before Scott, slain by a silly
piece of gossip, and Mr. Skene says: "I never saw Sir Walter so much
affected by any event, and at the funeral, which he attended, he was
quite unable to suppress his feelings, but wept like a child." His
correspondence with Scott fell into the hands of a lady, who, seeing
that it revealed the secret of Scott's authorship, most unfortunately
burned all the letters. (Journal, i. 416.)
[2] Scott's Diary, July 29, 1814. Lockhart, vi. 183.
[3] See Author's Note No. I.
[4] Diary; Lockhart, iv. 223.
[5] "Atalanta," December 1892.
INTRODUCTION TO THE PIRATE.
"Quoth he, there was a ship."
This brief preface may begin like the tale of the Ancient Mariner, since
it was on shipboard that the author acquired the very moderate degree of
local knowledge and information, both of people and scenery, which he
has endeavoured to embody in the romance of the Pirate.
In the summer and autumn of 1814, the author was invited to join a party
of Commissioners for the Northern Light-House Service, who proposed
making a voyage round the coast of Scotland, and through its various
groups of islands, chiefly for the purpose of seeing the condition of
the many lighthouses under their direction,--edifices so important,
whether regarding them as benevolent or political institutions. Among
the commissioners who manage this important public concern, the sheriff