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

though its echoes have not yet died.

      In textbooks of literature, it had become the fashion to say that he was not Homer or Shakespeare, which is obviously true. Neither was Homer Shakespeare, nor Shakespeare Scott. But of what other figures in modern literature would it occur to any mood of criticism to make either of such comparisons? still less, to make both of the same man? The fact is that, even while they disparage his stature, they are aware of a giant form, as their comparisons prove. Homer—Dante—Shakespeare—Scott—we may give precedence as we will, but they are names that are at home together, and there are no others with which to compare them except themselves.

      Each of these great poets took the material that lay around him to weld it into forms of immortal beauty. Each of them would surely have done the same, with whatever differences, had they been born in each other’s places. Scott had his first material in the traditions of Border chivalry, and it is hard to imagine that any poet could have transformed it to a greater thing.

      Something (though not the most) of the novelty of the Lay came from the metre in which it was written, for which Coleridge had a responsibility of unintentional suggestion, and must have his recognition or praise.

      It will be remembered that Sir John Stoddart called at Lasswade Cottage in the summer of l800, and had a reception that pleased him well. Sir John was a friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge. He was an admirer of the latter poet, and in the course of conversation he mentioned a narrative poem, unpublished and incomplete, which Coleridge had written. It was in octosyllabic lines, instead of the decasyllabic which were usual for such poetry—indeed, for any which was beyond lyric length. He quoted from memory of the manuscript he had read.

      The Lay of the Last Minstrel is written in the same metre. Its first canto contains one line which is almost identical with one in Christabel.

      The Lay has:

      Jesu Maria, shield us well!

      Christabel has:

      Jesu, Maria, shield her well!

      Beyond that, there is no similarity in subject, idea, or context.

      Christabel has:

      The night is chill; the forest bare;

      Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?

      The Lay has:

      Is it the roar of Teviot’s side,

      That chafes against the scaur’s red side?

      Is it the wind that swings the oaks?

      Again, there is no similarity of theme or treatment. The two poems approach verbally at these points, and then go their separate ways.

      Neither are they of comparable qualities. There is magic in Christabel, but the narrative is hesitant, unsure of itself. It wanders blindly about, and that it should have been left unfinished seems a most natural thing. Some suppose that Coleridge had no idea, any more than anyone else, what the end should be. He said he did, and he was in the best position to know. Yet, in fact, he did not finish it. His difficulty probably was that his conclusion lacked substance. He could have ended it in a few lines, but he failed to end it in as many hundreds, which he had intended to do. The thought was too thin.

      Neither will the two poems endure comparison on the prosodic level on which they meet. Christabel, again, has its magic lines, and to praise the Lay does not require their depreciation. But they have not the richness, the profuse variety, of the new verbal melodies that the Lay contains. Neither Coleridge nor Scott originated the octosyllabic metre. Yet comparing the cadences of the early lines of the two poems, and the verbal similarities mentioned, it is bare justice to recognise that the seed of the Lay came from the mind of the English poet. It grew, in its new sowing, to such foliage and flower as it could never have produced in its native soil...

      It is difficult to write of the Lay without enthusiasm. Criticism which is unenthusiastic must be unintelligent also.

      Its originalities and varieties of verbal music are alone sufficient to lift it into the front rank of the poetic literature of the world. In this aspect of its originality only Spenser with The Fairie Queen, and Swinburne with the first series of Poems and Ballads, the one before and the one after, made a comparable addition to the cadences of English song.

      There is a curious illumination in these comparisons, because these three poets are the three great solitary peaks in the procession of English poetry. They are of separate grandeurs, without ancestry or descendants. The continuous stream of English literature can be traced intelligently without noticing them at all. And, however separate and different from each other they may appear, they have their deep-rooted affinities. Spenser and Swinburne approach closely to Scott, though from opposite sides, and Scott reaches out to both of them, filling the great space between....

      It is one of the comedies of pedantic criticism that this poem which abounds in lyrical ornament should have been used to support an argument that Scott had a defective ear for the elementary metrical patterns which do not constitute the beauty of poetic form, but are the looms on which its colours are woven. The line usually quoted on this inditement is:

      “Saw a terrier and lurcher pass out.”

      This line is obviously experimental, and does not succeed, because it needs to be read with a change both of time and inflexion of the concluding syllables.

      The only subsequent attempt to establish it of which I am aware is that of Mr. Chesterton in the Ballad of the White Horse.

      “His fruit trees stood like soldiers

      Drilled in a straight line.”

      In this ballad, the construction is repeated several times, showing that it must be deliberate, but its defect is still that it is too unexpected for its rhythm to be recognised at a first reading.

      A full slow equal value may be given to two sequent monosyllables at the commencement of a line of English verse, but the idea will not readily be caught by a reader if the construction be at the end of a line in which the cadence falls. So we may allow that the line first quoted is no better than an experimental failure, because, for reasons too technical to analyse here, it cannot be used in English verse with sufficient regularity to render it an expected thing. But for those who can read the Lay without being intoxicated by its verbal melodies, there is no more to be said—to them.

      The instantaneous success of the poem was not won by its lyric beauty only, nor by the glamour of its reconstruction of a rudely-chivalrous manner of life which had then left the world more recently than it has today. It had the vigour of sympathetic imagination which would vitalise all that Scott would write in whatever form; and with it there was a bias towards nobility which is like the constant tug of an undercurrent, drawing us to the contemplation of “whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report”.

      It was the poetry of action, written as it had never been written before, and perhaps will never be written again; but it was not of the order of imagination which exalts the physical. It was occupied with spiritual issues continually. Conduct is not three parts of life; it is the entire whole. As Scott said to his son-in-law on his death-bed, “nothing else matters”.

      It is not by supremacy of strength, but “through good heart, and our Lady’s grace,” that horse and man struggle upward from the midnight ford. Valour, in Scott’s romances, never achieves impossible physical feats. Having been up all night, Deloraine goes down before Cranston’s lance, as a weary man on a weary horse might be expected to do, but he does not become smaller by the fall, for we had been made aware of the spirit which forgets its weariness “when he marked the crane on the Baron’s crest”.

      The vital issue of the poem is not whether the kidnapped child will be carried away, or the castle stormed, but in what spirit the Lady of Branksome will meet the threats which are made against her: whether she will barter her honour to regain her child. When she has replied

      “For the young heir of Branksome’s line,

      God be his aid and God be mine;

      Through me no friend