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THE

EDINBURGH LITERARY JOURNAL;

OR,

WEEKLY REGISTER OF CRITICISM AND BELLES LETTRES.

No. 78.

LITERARY CRITICISM.

SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1830.

The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. 11 vols. 18mo. New Edition. Edinburgh. Cadell and Co. 1830.

(Unpublished.)

PRICE 6d.

along with them. Even if I should be mistaken in thinking that the secret history of what was once so popular may still attract public attention and curiosity, it seems to me not without its use to record the manner and circumstances

under which the present, and other Poems on the same plan, attained, for a season, an extensive reputation.

"I must resume the story of my literary labours at the period at which I broke off in the Essay on the Imitation first gleam of public favour, by the success of the first ediof Popular Poetry, vol. iii. p. 82, when I had enjoyed the tion of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. The second edition, published in 1803, proved, in the language of the trade, rather a heavy concern. The demand in Scotland had been supplied by the first edition, and the curiosity of the English was not much awakened by poems in the rude garb of antiquity, accompanied with notes referring to the obscure feuds of barbarous clans, of whose very names civilized history was ignorant.

"At this time I stood personally in a different position from that which I occupied when I first dipped my desperate pen in ink for other purposes than those of my profession. In 1796, when I first published the translations from Bürger, I was an isolated individual, with only my own wants to provide for, and having, in a great measure, my own inclinations alone to consult. In 1803, when the seperiod of life when men, however thoughtless, encounter duties and circumstances which press consideration and plans of life upon the most careless minds. I had been for some time married-was the father of a rising family, and, though fully enabled to meet the consequent demands upon me, it was my duty and desire to place myself in a situation which would enable me to make honourable provision against the various contingencies of life.

THERE are several interesting features in the new edition of Sir Walter Scott's Poetical Works now in the press, concerning which we have it in our power to give the public information before any of our contemporaries. To the ten volumes formerly published, is to be added an eleventh, which will contain "Macduff's Cross," "The Doom of Devorgoil," and "Auchindrane." The two last of these, which have also been published separately, we spoke of a fortnight ago. The first, to which is prefixed a short Introduction, appeared in a Miscellany, published in the year 1823, by Mrs Joanna Baillie. It is a short dramatic sketch of only one scene, and as we believe it is not generally known in this country, owing to the limited circulation of the volume for which it was originally written, we may probably pre sent it to our readers next Saturday. It is not, how-cond edition of the Minstrelsy appeared, I had arrived at a ever, this eleventh volume which constitutes the most interesting feature of the new Edition. It contains, besides, a set of Introductions, which precede the different Poems to which they refer, and which enter into a minute and highly satisfactory explanation of the circumstances under which they were composed, and through which they attained so extensive a popularity. All these Introductions we have read with nearly unalloyed pleasure. They are written in a delightful and truly philosophical spirit; and they teem with good sense, admirable advice to youthful poets, and the most perfect kindliness of feeling towards every body. We are sorry we have it not in our power to present our readers with the whole series, but we are certain that we could not furnish them with an hour's more valuable reading than they will find in the Introductions to the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," and "The Lady of the Lake," both of which we shall extract entire, the more willingly that it will be some little time before they can meet with these compositions anywhere else. It is always painful for us to have to find fault in any way with such a man, let us say proudly such a SCOTCHMAN, as the Author of Waverley; and nothing makes us happier than to see him in the greenness of his age, with all his intellectual faculties as vigorous as ever, looking calmly back upon the glories of his youth, and talking of them in that fine vein of matured wisdom which characterises the following pieces:

INTRODUCTION TO THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL.

It may be readily supposed that the attempts which I had made in literature had been unfavourable to my success at the bar. The goddess Themis is, at Edinburgh, and, I suppose, everywhere else, of a peculiarly jealous disposition. She will not readily consent to share her authority, and sternly demands from her votaries not only that real duty air of business shall be observed, even in the midst of total be carefully attended to and discharged, but that a certain idleness. It is prudent, if not absolutely necessary, in a young barrister, to appear completely engrossed by his profession; however destitute of employment he may be, he ought to preserve, if possible, the appearance of full occupation. He should at least seem perpetually engaged among his law-papers, dusting them, as it were; and, as Ovid advises the fair,

Si nullus erit pulvis tamen excute nullum. Perhaps such extremity of attention is more especially required, considering the great number of counsellors who are called to the bar, and how very small a proportion of them are finally disposed, or find encouragement, to follow the law as a profession. Hence the number of deserters is so great, that the least lingering look behind occasions a young novice to be set down as one of the intending fugitives. Certain it is, that the Scottish Themis was, at this time, pɛ"A poem of nearly thirty years' standing may be supposed culiarly jealous of any flirtation with the Muses, on the hardly to need an Introduction, since, without one, it has part of those who had ranged themselves under her banners. been able to keep itself afloat through the best part of a ge- This was probably owing to her consciousness of the supeneration. Nevertheless, as in the edition of the Waverley rior attractions of her rivals. Of late, however, she has Novels now in course of publication, I have imposed on relaxed, in some instances, in this particular; an eminent inyself the task of saying something concerning the purpose example of which has been shown in the case of my friend and history of each, in their turn, I am desirous that the Mr Jeffrey, who, after long conducting one of the most inPoems for which I first received some marks of the public fluential literary periodicals of the age with unquestionable favour, should also be accompanied with such scraps of ability, has been, by the general consent of his brethren, retheir literary history as may be supposed to carry interestcently elected to be their Dean of Faculty, or President,—

being the highest acknowledgment of his professional talents which they had it in their power to offer. But this is an incident much beyond the ideas of a period of thirty years' distance, when a barrister, who really possessed any turn for lighter literature, was at as much pains to conceal it, as if it had in reality been something to be ashamed of; and I could mention more than one instance in which literature and society have suffered loss that jurisprudence might be enriched.

Such, however, was not my case; for the reader will not wonder that my open interference with matters of light literature diminished my employment in the weightier matters of the law. Nor did the solicitors, upon whose choice the counsel takes rank in his profession, do me less than justice by regarding others among my contemporaries as fitter to discharge the duty due to their clients, than a young man who was taken up with running after ballads, whether Teutonic or national. My profession and I, therefore, came to stand nearly upon the footing on which honest Slender consoled himself with having established with Mistress Anne Page. "There was no great love between us at the beginning, and it pleased Heaven to decrease it on farther acquaintance! I became sensible that the time was come when I must either buckle myself resolutely to the toil by day, the lamp by night,' renouncing all the DeJilahs of my imagination, or bid adieu to the profession of the law and hold another course.

were those from which Horace has bestowed upon authors the epithet of the Irritable Race. It requires no depth of philosophic reflection to perceive that the petty warfare of Pope with the Dunces of his period, could not have been carried on without his suffering the most acute torture, such as a man must endure from musquitoes, by whose stings he suffers agony, although he can crush them in his grasp by myriads. Nor is it necessary to call to memory the many humiliating instances in which men of the greatest genius have, to avenge some pitiful quarrel, made themselves ridiculous during their lives, to become the still more degra ded objects of pity to future times.

"Upon the whole, as I had no pretension to the genius of the distinguished persons who had fallen into such errors, I concluded there could be no occasion for imitating them in these mistakes, or what I considered as such; and in adopting literary pursuits as the principal occupation of my future life, I resolved, if possible, to avoid those weaknesses of temper, which seemed to have most easily beset my more celebrated predecessors.

"With this view, it was my first resolution to keep as far as was in my power abreast of society, continuing to maintain my place in general company, without yielding to the very natural temptation of narrowing myself to what is called literary society. By doing so, I imagined I should escape the besetting sin of listening to language, which, from one motive or other, ascribes a very undue degree of consequence to literary pursuits, as if they were indeed the business rather than the amusement of life. The opposite course can only be compared to the injudicious conduct of one who pampers himself with cordial and luscious draughts, until he is unable to endure wholesome bitters Like Gil Blas, therefore, I resolved to stick by the society of my commis, instead of seeking that of a more literary cast, and to maintain my general interest in what was going on around me, reserving the man of letters for the desk and the library.

"My second resolution was a corollary from my first. I determined that, without shutting my ears to the voice of true criticism, I would pay no regard to that which assumes the form of satire. I therefore resolved to arm myself with the triple brass of Horace, against all the roving warfare of satire, parody, and sarcasm; to laugh if the jest was a good one, or, if otherwise, to let it hum and buzz itself to sleep.

"I confess my own inclination revolted from the more severe choice, which might have been deemed by many the wiser alternative. As my transgressions had been numerous, my repentance must have been signalised by unusual sacrifices. I ought to have mentioned that, since my fourteenth or fifteenth year, my health, originally delicate, had been extremely robust. From infancy, I had laboured under the infirmity of a severe lameness, but, as I believe is usually the case with men of spirit who suffer under personal inconveniences of this nature, I had, since the improvement of my health, in defiance of this incapacitating circumstance, distinguished myself by the endurance of toil on foot or horseback, having often walked thirty miles a-day, and rode upwards of a hundred, without stopping. In this manner I made many pleasant journeys through parts of the country then not very accessible, gaining more amusement and instruction than I have been able to acquire since I have travelled in a more commodious manner. I practised most silvan sports also with some success and with great It is to the observance of these rules (according to my delight. But these pleasures must have been all resigned, best belief) that, after a life of thirty years engaged in lite or used with great moderation, had I determined to regainrary labours of various kinds, I attribute my never having my station at the bar. It was even doubtful whether I been entangled in any literary quarrel or controversy; and, could, with perfect character as a jurisconsult, retain a si- which is a more pleasing result, that I have been distintuation in a volunteer corps of cavalry which I then held. guished by the personal friendship of my most approved The threats of invasion were at this time instant and me- contemporaries of all parties. nacing; the call by Britain on her children was universal, and was answered by many who, like myself, consulted rather their will than their ability to bear arms. My ser vices, however, were found useful in assisting to maintain the discipline of the corps, being the point on which their constitution rendered them most amenable to military criticism. In other respects, the squadron was a fine one, consisting of handsome men, well mounted and armed, at their own expense. My attention to the corps took up a good deal of time; and while it occupied many of the happiest hours of my life, it furnished an additional reason for my reluctance again to encounter the severe course of study indispensable to success in the juridical profession.

"On the other hand, my father, whose feelings might have been hurt by my quitting the bar, had been for two or three years dead, so that I had no control to thwart my own inclination; and my income being equal to all the comforts, and some of the elegancies, of life, I was not pressed to an irksome employment by necessity, that most powerful of motives; consequently, I was the more easily seduced to choose the employment which was most agreeable. This was yet the easier, that in 1800, I had obtained the preferment of Sheriff of Selkirkshire, about £300 a-year in value, and which was the more agreeable to me, as in that county I had several friends and relations. But I did not abandon the profession to which I had been educated, without certain prudential resolutions, which, at the risk of egotism, I will here mention; not without the hope that they may be useful to young persons who may stand in circumstances similar to those in which I then stood.

"In the first place, upon considering the lives and fortunes of persons who had given themselves up to literature, or to the -task of pleasing the public, it seemed to me that the circumstances which chiefly affected their happiness and character,

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"I adopted at the same time another resolution, on which it may doubtless be remarked that it was well for me that I had it in my power to do so, and that, therefore, it is a line of conduct which can be less generally applicable in other cases. Yet I fail not to record this part of my plan, convinced that though it may not be in every one's power to adopt exactly the same resolution, he may nevertheless, by his own exertions, in some shape or other attain the object on which it was founded, namely, to secure the means of subsistence, without relying exclusively on literary talents. In this respect, I determined that literature should be my staff, but not my crutch, and that the profits of my labour, however convenient otherwise, should not become necessary to my ordinary expenses. With this purpose, I resolved, if the interest of my friends could so far favour ine, to retire upon any of the respectable offices of the law, in which persons of that profession are glad to take refuge, when they feel themselves, or are judged by others, incompetent to as pire to its higher offices and honours. Upon such an office an author might hope to retreat, without any perceptible alteration of circumstances, whenever the time should arrive that the public grew weary of his endeavours to please, or he himself should tire of the occupation of authorship. At this period of my life, I possessed so many friends ca pable of assisting me in this object of ambition, that I could hardly overrate my own prospects of obtaining the mode rate preferment to which I limited my wishes; and in fact, I obtained in no long period the reversion of a situation which completely met them.

"Thus far all was well, and the author had been guilty perhaps of no great imprudence, when he relinquished his forensic practice with the hope of making some figure in the field of literature. But an established character with the public in my new capacity still remained to be acquired.

I have noticed that the translations from Bürger had been unsuccessful, nor had the original poetry which appeared under the auspices of Mr Lewis, in the Tales of Wonder,' in any great degree raised my reputation. It is true, I had private friends disposed to second me in my efforts to obtain popularity. But I was sportsman enough to know, that if the greyhound does not run well, the halloos of his patrons will not obtain the prize for him.

"Neither was I ignorant that the practice of ballad-writing was for the present out of fashion, and that any attempts to revive it, or to found a poetical character upon it, would certainly fail of success. The ballad measure itself, which was once listened to as to an enchanting melody, had become hackneyed and sickening, from its being the accompaniment of every grinding hand-organ; and besides, a long work in quatrains, whether those of the common ballad, or such as are termed the elegiac, have an effect on the sense like that of the bed of Procrustes on the human body; for, as it must be both awkward and difficult to carry on a long sentence from one stanza to another, it follows that the meaning of each period must be comprehended within four lines, and equally so, that it must be extended so as to fill that space. The alternate dilation and contraction thus rendered necessary, is singularly unfavourable to narrative composition; and the Gondibert' of Sir William D'Avenant, though containing many striking passages, has never become popular, owing chiefly to its being told in this species of elegiac verse.

"In the dilemma occasioned by this objection, the idea occurred to the author of using the measured short line, which forms the structure of so much minstrel poetry, that it may be properly termed the romantic stanza, by way of distinction; and which appears so natural to our language, that the very best of our poets have not been able to pro tract it into the verse properly called heroic, without the use of epithets which are, to say the least, unnecessary.* But, on the other hand, the extreme facility of the short couplet, which seems congenial to our language, and was, doubtless for that reason, so popular with our old minstrels, is, for the same reason, apt to prove a snare to the composer who uses it, by encouraging him în a habit of slovenly composition. The necessity of occasional pauses often forces the young poet to pay more attention to sense, as the boy's kite rises highest when the train" is loaded by a due counterpoise. The author was therefore intimidated by what Byron calls the fatal facility of the octo-syllabic verse, which was otherwise better adapted to his purpose of imitating the more ancient poetry.

story of Gilpin Horner, a tradition in which the narrator,
and many more of that county, were firm believers. The
young countess, much delighted with the legend, and the
gravity and full confidence with which it was told, enjoin-
ed it on me as a task to compose a ballad on the subject. Of
course, to hear was to obey; and thus the goblin story, ob-
jected to by several critics as an excrescence upon the poem,
was, in fact, the occasion of its being written.
"A chance similar to that which dictated the subject,
gave me also the hint of a new mode of treating it. We had
at that time the lease of a pleasant cottage, near Lasswade,
on the romantic banks of the Esk, to which we escaped
when the vacations of the court permitted so much leisure.
Here I had the pleasure to receive a visit from Mr Stod-
dart, (now Sir John Stoddart, judge-advocate at Malta,)
who was at that time collecting the particulars which he
afterwards embodied in his Remarks on Local Scenery in
Scotland. I was of some use to him in procuring the
information he desired, and guiding him to the scenes which
he wished to see. In return, he made me better acquainted
than I had hitherto been with the poetic effusions which
have since made the lakes of Westmoreland, and the authors
by whom they have been sung, so famous wherever the
English tongue is spoken.

"I was already acquainted with the Joan of Arc,' the 'Thalaba,' and the Metrical Ballads,' of Mr Southey, which had found their way to Scotland, and were generally admired. But Mr Stoddart, who had the advantage of personal friendship with the authors, and who possessed a strong memory, with an excellent taste, was able to repeat to me many long specimens of their poetry, which had not yet appeared in print. Amongst others, was the striking fragment called Christabel, by Mr Coleridge, which, from the singularly irregular structure of the stanzas, and the liberty which it allowed the author to adapt the sound to the sense, seemed to be exactly suited to such an extravaganza as I meditated on the subject of Gilpin Horner. As applied to comic and humorous poetry, this mescalonza of measures had been already used by Anthony Hall, Anstey, Dr Wolcott, and others; but it was in Christabel that I first found it used in serious poetry, and it is to Mr Cole-, ridge that I am bound to make the acknowledgment due from the pupil to his master. I observed that Lord Byron, in noticing my obligations to Mr Coleridge, which I have been always most ready to acknowledge, expressed, or was understood to express, a hope, that I did not write a parody on Mr Coleridge's productions. On this subject I have only to say, that I do not even know the parody which is "I was not less at a loss for a subject which might admit alluded to; and, were I ever to take the unbecoming freeof being treated with the simplicity and wildness of the an-dom of censuring a man of Mr Coleridge's extraordinary cient ballad. But accident dictated both a theme and mea. talents, it would be for the caprice and indolence with sure, which decided the subject as well as the structure of which he has thrown from him, as if in mere wantonness, the poem. these unfinished scraps of poetry, which, like the Torso of antiquity, defy the skill of his poetical brethren to complete them. The charming fragments which the author abandons to their fate, are surely too valuable to be treated like the proofs of careless engravers, the sweepings of whose studios often make the fortune of some pains-taking collector.

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"The lovely young Countess of Dalkeith, afterwards Harriet, Duchess of Buccleuch, had come to the land of her husband, with the desire of making herself acquainted with its traditions and customs. All who remember this lady will agree, that the intellectual character of her extreme beauty, the amenity and courtesy of her manners, the soundness of her understanding, and her unbounded benevolence, gave more the idea of an angelic visitant than of a being belonging to this nether world; and such a thought was but too consistent with the short space she was permitted to tarry amongst us. Of course, where all made it a pride and pleasure to gratify her wishes, she soon heard enough of Border lore; among others, an aged gentleman of property,+ near Langholm, communicated to her ladyship the Thus it has often been remarked, that in the opening couplets of Pope's translation of the Iliad, there are two syllables forming a superfluous word in each line, as may be observed by attending to such words as are printed in Italics:

Achilles' wrath to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing; That wrath which sent to Pluto's gloomy reign The souls of mighty chiefs in battle slain, Whose bones, unburied, on the desert shore, Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore "This was Mr Beattie of Mickledale, a man then considerably upwards of eighty, of a shrewd and sarcastic temper, which he did not at all times suppress, as the following anecdote will show:-A worthy clergyman, now deceased, with better good will than tact, was endeavouring to push the senior forward in his recollection of Border ballads and legends, by expressing reiterated surprise at his wonderful memory. No, sir,' said old Mickledale, my memory is good for little, for it cannot retain what ought to be preserved. I can remember all these stories about the auld riding days, which are of no earthly importance; but were you, reverend sir, to repeat your best sermon in this drawing-room, I could not tell you half an hour afterwards what you had been speaking about.!"

"I did not immediately proceed upon my projected labour, though I was now furnished with a subject and with a structure of verse which might have the effect of novelty to the public ear, and afford the author an opportunity of varying his measure with the variations of a romantic subject.

"On the contrary, it was, to the best of my recollection, more than a year after Mr Stoddart's visit, that by way of experiment, I composed the first two or three stanzas of The Lay of the Last Minstrel.' I was shortly afterwards visited by two intimate friends, one of whom still survives. They were men whose talents might have raised them to the highest station in literature, had they not preferred exerting them in their own profession of the law, in which they attained equal preferment. I was in the habit of consulting them on my attempts at composition, having equal confidence in their sound taste and friendly sincerity. In this specimen I had, in the phrase of the Highland servant, packed all that was my own, at least, for I had also included a line of invocation, a little softened, from Coleridge,'Mary, mother, shield us well.'

As neither of my friends said much to me on the subject of the stanzas I showed them before their departure, I had no

Two volumes octavo. 1801.

Medwyn's Conversations of Lord Byron, p. 309.