The Life of Sir Walter Scott: A Biography. S. Fowler Wright

James Hogg.

      He came on the Laidlaw household when he was making; one of the sojourns in Selkirkshire that his office required, and rode out from his lodgings at the inn in Clovenford to explore the upper part of the Yarrow valley. Up Douglas-burn, fifteen miles or more from Clovenford, at the further end of the county, he halted at Blackhouse farm, and was well received by its in-mates. Among them was William Laidlaw, the son of the house, little more than a youth at that time, but one of kindred tastes to his own, of exceptional intellectual abilities, united to a very gentle and loveable character. Scott’s genius for choosing and making friends asserted itself again, and a few weeks of meeting and correspondence laid the firm foundations of a life long intimacy.

      William Laidlaw introduced him to a shepherd who had been in his father’s employment for nine previous years, but had recently left to take service with a neighbouring farmer, and to the man’s aged mother, Mrs. Hogg (herself a Laidlaw), whose mind proved to be another of those wells of ballad-treasure which Scott’s ceaseless diligence was continually discovering. Her son, James, was a ballad-maker in his own right. Like Leyden he was self-educated, but, unlike him, he cared little for knowledge: for its own sake, and he was content with a very elementary standard of scholarship, which was probably all that he was mentally fitted to reach. But he was an exceptional poet, who never became more than half articulate; though, under the influence of praise and patronage, he became voluminous at a later time. He was of the Burns order, but without the coarse vitality or exuberance of that more popular poet. After a life-time of effort, he was to leave one poem, Kilmeny, which, had he not written it, no one would have believed that he could ever write. He was an incomparably better lover than Burns, and a worse farmer. His father’s methods had been to save money penuriously as a shepherd, which was difficult, and lose it as a sheep-farmer, which was quite easy to do. James pursued this sequence with the regularity of routine. At this time he was saving carefully for the first disaster.

      He was about nine months older than Scott, and had already got some occasional magazine publicity. His contact with Scott at this time, and the generous recognition of his ability which he received from him, may have their shares of responsibility for the hurried publication of a first volume of his verses a few months later, which was admittedly premature. Later, he did better. With childlike vanity, he professed that his birthday was that of Burns, which was a mistake. He gradually rose to the opinion that his poetry was equal to that of Scott, which was another. But there are many worse and smaller men in the records of Scottish poetry, in which his own place is one of honour, and stands secure.

      CHAPTER XXIII.

      The winter of 1800-1 saw the belated appearance of Lewis’s Tales of Wonder, to which Scott had made substantial contribution. It fell flat, having been talked about too much in advance, and published a year too late. In fact, Lewis was a setting star. But it is unlikely that Scott was greatly concerned about a book that was not his. He was too fully and hopefully occupied with his own affairs. The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border was now something more than a dream. It took shape. Two volumes were in an advanced state of preparation. Arrangements were made with Ballantyne to print it at Kelso. A London firm of publishers, Cadell and Davies, were to bring it out. It was first intended to include an old mutilated metrical romance, Sir Tristrem, attributed to Thomas of Erchildoune, and certainly of Border origin, but the accumulation of material had been too great. Something must go overboard. Sir Tristrem, if flung out, would make space for a dozen ballads. Scott decided to complete it in imitation of the old form, and print it later as a separate book.

      In this and similar work, the result of which was to be seen later, the first year of the new century passed.

      There is little record of summer wanderings for this year, which may be explained by the fact that in October Charlotte had a second child, a boy this time, to add another to the many generations of Walters that the Scott family showed.

      It was in this year also that Scott’s sister died, after a twenty-five-year struggle to maintain courage and sanity of spirit in the body which fire had disfigured and injured, “living in an ideal world,” as he recorded, “which she had framed to herself by the force of imagination”.

      The Scotts spent Christmas in Lanarkshire, on the invitation of the Duke of Hamilton. It gave an opportunity of inspecting the ruins of Cadyow Castle, and the remains of the old Caledonian forest, which are in the neighbourhood of Hamilton Palace. The Ballad of Cadyow Castle was a result of this visit. Lockhart implies that Scott was anxious to include it in the two volumes of Border Minstrelsy which were now in the press, but that Ballantyne vetoed it, on the ground that the volumes were already full enough. The possibility of this seems doubtful. The ballad could not have reached Kelso much before January 1st, 1802, and that date is improbably early. The two volumes were published in London during that month. They had to be printed, and Ballantyne’s machinery was limited, and its processes would seem slow today. He had done his work well, which does not suggest haste. After printing, binding must follow. Delivery to London would take about a week at that time. That Scott proposed an insertion of additional matter at such a stage, simply to include something that he had just written, is an improbable thing. The point is of no great importance, except as showing how careless in assertion Lockhart can be, and that is of some moment, in view of more seriously controversial matters which are before us. ‘Does it matter?’ he might have asked, as he did when he was convicted of a worse inaccuracy. But, if not, why say it at all?

      That it would have been politic to include the ballad there can be no doubt. It had a right to be there, for its author was certainly a Border minstrel. But it was a Clydeside ballad, glorifying the House of Hamilton. It would have called on Glasgow and Paisley, and all the Hamilton interests, to support the book. There may possibly have been a promise to Lady Anne Hamilton that it should be included. But the third volume remained.

      Apart from such arguments, the thing was good in itself. There were points—there were stanzas—in which it surpassed any of Scott’s published, if not any of his written work.

      The Hamilton estate included a fragment—perhaps the only remaining fragment—of the old forest of Caledon. The enormous girth of its dying oaks showed that they had flourished when that forest extended unbroken from the Atlantic to the North Sea. Up to ten years ago (about 1790) the ancient wild white cattle had still roamed in its shade.

      The ballad begins, as it ends, with a graceful compliment to the peaceful beauty of the present scene, and to her who had asked that it should be written:

      “For chiefs intent on bloody deed,

      And vengeance shouting o’er the slain,

      Lo, Highborn Beauty rules the steed,

      Or graceful guides the silken rein.”

      And then it proceeds very skilfully to call up the past in such a way that the chase of one of the great white mountain bulls in the sixteenth century and the assassination of the Regent Murray at the same period are blended into a single tale.

      The description of Murray’s entrance into Linlithgow, when,

      “From the wild Border’s humbled side,

      In haughty triumph marched he,”

      is ballad poetry, but it is ballad poetry raised to a new plane of artistry:

      Dark Morton, girt with many a spear,

      Murder’s foul minion, led the van;

      And clashed their broadswords in the rear,

      The wild Macfarlanes’ plaided clan.

      Glencairn and stout Parkhead were nigh,

      Obsequious at their Regent’s rein,

      And haggard Lindesay’s iron eye,

      That saw fair Mary weep in vain.

      ’Mid pennoned spears, a steely grove,

      Proud Murray’s plumage floated high;

      Scarce could his trampling charger move,

      So close the minions crowded nigh.”

      These stanzas are