Part 60 (2/2)

The first series of romances then, above named, are all that exhibit the emphasis of his unharmed faculties. The second group, composed in the three years subsequent to illness all but mortal, bear every one of them more or less the seal of it.

They consist of the _Bride of Lammermuir_, _Ivanhoe_, the _Monastery_, the _Abbot_, _Kenilworth_, and the _Pirate_.[167] The marks of broken health on all these are essentially twofold--prevailing melancholy, and fantastic improbability. Three of the tales are agonizingly tragic, the _Abbot_ scarcely less so in its main event, and _Ivanhoe_ deeply wounded through all its bright panoply; while even in that most powerful of the series, the impossible archeries and axestrokes, the incredibly opportune appearances of Locksley, the death of Ulrica, and the resuscitation of Athelstane, are partly boyish, partly feverish. Caleb in the _Bride_, Triptolemus and Halcro in the _Pirate_, are all laborious, and the first incongruous; half a volume of the _Abbot_ is spent in extremely dull detail of Roland's relations with his fellow-servants and his mistress, which have nothing whatever to do with the future story; and the lady of Avenel herself disappears after the first volume, 'like a snaw wreath when it's thaw, Jeanie.' The public has for itself p.r.o.nounced on the _Monastery_, though as much too harshly as it has foolishly praised the horrors of _Ravenswood_ and the nonsense of _Ivanhoe_; because the modern public finds in the torture and adventure of these, the kind of excitement which it seeks at an opera, while it has no sympathy whatever with the pastoral happiness of Glendearg, or with the lingering simplicities of superst.i.tion which give historical likelihood to the legend of the White Lady.

But both this despised tale and its sequel have Scott's heart in them.

The first was begun to refresh himself in the intervals of artificial labour on _Ivanhoe_. 'It was a relief,' he said, 'to interlay the scenery most familiar to me[168] with the strange world for which I had to draw so much on imagination.'[169] Through all the closing scenes of the second he is raised to his own true level by his love for the queen. And within the code of Scott's work to which I am about to appeal for ill.u.s.tration of his essential powers, I accept the _Monastery_ and _Abbot_, and reject from it the remaining four of this group.

The last series contains two quite n.o.ble ones, _Redgauntlet_ and _Nigel_; two of very high value, _Durward_ and _Woodstock_; the slovenly and diffuse _Peveril_, written for the trade; the sickly _Tales of the Crusaders_, and the entirely broken and diseased _St. Ronan's Well_.

This last I throw out of count altogether, and of the rest, accept only the four first named as sound work; so that the list of the novels in which I propose to examine his methods and ideal standards, reduces itself to these following twelve (named in order of production): _Waverley_, _Guy Mannering_, the _Antiquary_, _Rob Roy_, _Old Mortality_, the _Heart of Midlothian_, the _Monastery_, the _Abbot_, the _Fortunes of Nigel_, _Quentin Durward_, and _Woodstock_.[170]

It is, however, too late to enter on my subject in this article, which I may fitly close by pointing out some of the merely verbal characteristics of his style, ill.u.s.trative in little ways of the questions we have been examining, and chiefly of the one which may be most embarra.s.sing to many readers, the difference, namely, between character and disease.

One quite distinctive charm in the Waverleys is their modified use of the Scottish dialect; but it has not generally been observed, either by their imitators, or the authors of different taste who have written for a later public, that there is a difference between the dialect of a language, and its corruption.

A dialect is formed in any district where there are persons of intelligence enough to use the language itself in all its fineness and force, but under the particular conditions of life, climate, and temper, which introduce words peculiar to the scenery, forms of word and idioms of sentence peculiar to the race, and p.r.o.nunciations indicative of their character and disposition.

Thus 'burn' (of a streamlet) is a word possible only in a country where there are brightly running waters, 'la.s.sie,' a word possible only where girls are as free as the rivulets, and 'auld,' a form of the southern 'old,' adopted by a race of finer musical ear than the English.

On the contrary, mere deteriorations, or coa.r.s.e, stridulent, and, in the ordinary sense of the phrase, 'broad' forms of utterance, are not dialects at all, having nothing dialectic in them, and all phrases developed in states of rude employment, and restricted intercourse, are injurious to the tone and narrowing to the power of the language they affect. Mere breadth of accent does not spoil a dialect as long as the speakers are men of varied idea and good intelligence; but the moment the life is contracted by mining, millwork, or any oppressive and monotonous labour, the accents and phrases become debased. It is part of the popular folly of the day to find pleasure in trying to write and spell these abortive, crippled, and more or less brutal forms of human speech.

Abortive, crippled, or brutal, are however not necessarily 'corrupted'

dialects. Corrupt language is that gathered by ignorance, invented by vice, misused by insensibility, or minced and mouthed by affectation, especially in the attempt to deal with words of which only half the meaning is understood, or half the sound heard. Mrs. Gamp's 'aperiently so'--and the 'undermined' with primal sense of undermine, of--I forget which gossip, in the _Mill on the Floss_, are master- and mistress-pieces in this latter kind. Mrs. Malaprop's 'allegories on the banks of the Nile' are in a somewhat higher order of mistake: Miss Tabitha Bramble's ignorance is vulgarised by her selfishness, and Winifred Jenkins' by her conceit. The 'wot' of Noah Claypole, and the other degradations of c.o.c.kneyism (Sam Weller and his father are in nothing more admirable than in the power of heart and sense that can purify even these); the 'trewth' of Mr. Chadband, and 'natur' of Mr.

Squeers, are examples of the corruption of words by insensibility: the use of the word 'b.l.o.o.d.y' in modern low English is a deeper corruption, not altering the form of the word, but defiling the thought in it.

Thus much being understood, I shall proceed to examine thoroughly a fragment of Scott's Lowland Scottish dialect; not choosing it of the most beautiful kind; on the contrary, it shall be a piece reaching as low down as he ever allows Scotch to go--it is perhaps the only unfair patriotism in him, that if ever he wants a word or two of really villainous slang, he gives it in English or Dutch--not Scotch.

I had intended in the close of this paper to a.n.a.lyse and compare the characters of Andrew Fairservice and Richie Moniplies for examples, the former of innate evil, unaffected by external influences, and undiseased, but distinct from natural goodness as a nettle is distinct from balm or lavender; and the latter of innate goodness, contracted and pinched by circ.u.mstance, but still undiseased, as an oak-leaf crisped by frost, not by the worm. This, with much else in my mind, I must put off; but the careful study of one sentence of Andrew's will give us a good deal to think of.

I take his account of the rescue of Glasgow Cathedral at the time of the Reformation.

Ah! it's a brave kirk--nane o' yere whigmaleeries and curliewurlies and opensteek hems about it--a' solid, weel-jointed mason-wark, that will stand as lang as the warld, keep hands and gunpowther aff it. It had amaist a douncome lang syne at the Reformation, when they pu'd doun the kirks of St. Andrews and Perth, and thereawa', to cleanse them o' Papery, and idolatry, and image-wors.h.i.+p, and surplices, and sic-like rags o' the muckle hure that sitteth on seven hills, as if ane wasna braid eneugh for her auld hinder end. Sae the commons o' Renfrew, and o' the Barony, and the Gorbals, and a' about, they behoved to come into Glasgow ae fair morning, to try their hand on purging the High Kirk o' Popish nicknackets. But the townsmen o'

Glasgow, they were feared their auld edifice might slip the girths in gaun through siccan rough physic, sae they rang the common bell, and a.s.sembled the train-bands wi' took o'

drum. By good luck, the worthy James Rabat was Dean o' Guild that year--(and a gude mason he was himsell, made him the keener to keep up the auld bigging), and the trades a.s.sembled, and offered downright battle to the commons, rather than their kirk should coup the crans, as others had done elsewhere. It wasna for luve o' Paperie--na, na!--nane could ever say that o' the trades o' Glasgow--Sae they sune came to an agreement to take a' the idolatrous statues of sants (sorrow be on them!) out o' their neuks--And sae the bits o' stane idols were broken in pieces by Scripture warrant, and flung into the Molendinar burn, and the auld kirk stood as crouse as a cat when the flaes are kaimed aff her, and a'body was alike pleased. And I hae heard wise folk say, that if the same had been done in ilka kirk in Scotland, the Reform wad just hae been as pure as it is e'en now, and we wad hae mair Christian-like kirks; for I hae been sae lang in England, that naething will drived out o'

my head, that the dog-kennel at Osbaldistone-Hall is better than mony a house o' G.o.d in Scotland.

Now this sentence is in the first place a piece of Scottish history of quite inestimable and concentrated value. Andrew's temperament is the type of a vast cla.s.s of Scottish--shall we call it '_sow_-thistlian'--mind, which necessarily takes the view of either Pope or saint that the thistle in Lebanon took of the cedar or lilies in Lebanon; and the entire force of the pa.s.sions which, in the Scottish revolution, foretold and forearmed the French one, is told in this one paragraph; the coa.r.s.eness of it, observe, being admitted, not for the sake of the laugh, any more than an onion in broth merely for its flavour, but for the meat of it; the inherent constancy of that coa.r.s.eness being a fact in this order of mind, and an essential part of the history to be told.

Secondly, observe that this speech, in the religious pa.s.sion of it, such as there may be, is entirely sincere. Andrew is a thief, a liar, a coward, and, in the Fair service from which he takes his name, a hypocrite; but in the form of prejudice, which is all that his mind is capable of in the place of religion, he is entirely sincere. He does not in the least pretend detestation of image wors.h.i.+p to please his master, or any one else; he honestly scorns the 'carnal morality[171] as dowd and fusionless as rue-leaves at Yule' of the sermon in the upper cathedral; and when wrapt in critical attention to the 'real savour o'

doctrine' in the crypt, so completely forgets the hypocrisy of his fair service as to return his master's attempt to disturb him with hard punches of the elbow.

Thirdly. He is a man of no mean sagacity, quite up to the average standard of Scottish common sense, not a low one; and, though incapable of understanding any manner of lofty thought or pa.s.sion, is a shrewd measurer of weaknesses, and not without a spark or two of kindly feeling. See first his sketch of his master's character to Mr.

Hammorgaw, beginning: 'He's no a'thegither sae void o' sense, neither;'

and then the close of the dialogue: 'But the lad's no a bad lad after a', and he needs some carefu' body to look after him.'

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