A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century | Page 6

local sympathy. Tell a peasant an ordinary tale of robbery and
murder, and perhaps you may fail to interest him; but, to excite his
terrors, you assure him it happened on the very heath he usually crosses,
or to a man whose family he has known, and you rarely meet such a
mere image of humanity as remains entirely unmoved. I suspect it is
pretty much the same with myself."
Scott liked to feel solid ground of history, or at least of legend, under
his feet. He connected his wildest tales, like "Glenfinlas" and "The Eve
of St. John," with definite names and places. This Antaeus of romance
lost strength, as soon as he was lifted above the earth. With Coleridge it
was just the contrary. The moment his moonlit, vapory enchantments
touched ground, the contact "precipitated the whole solution." In 1813
Scott had printed "The Bridal of Triermain" anonymously, with a
preface designed to mislead the public; having contrived, by way of a
joke, to fasten the authorship of the piece upon Erskine. This poem is
as pure fantasy as Tennyson's "Day Dream," and tells the story of a
knight who, in obedience to a vision and the instructions of an ancient
sage "sprung from Druid sires," enters an enchanted castle and frees the
Princess Gyneth, a natural daughter of King Arthur, from the spell that
has bound her for five hundred years. But true to his instinct, the poet

lays his scene not in vacuo, but near his own beloved borderland. He
found, in Burns' "Antiquities of Westmoreland and Cumberland"
mention of a line of Rolands de Vaux, lords of Triermain, a fief of the
barony of Gilsland; and this furnished him a name for his hero. He
found in Hutchinson's "Excursion to the Lakes" the description of a
cluster of rocks in the Vale of St. John's, which looked, at a distance,
like a Gothic castle, this supplied him with a hint for the whole
adventure. Meanwhile Coleridge had been living in the Lake Country.
The wheels of his "Christabel" had got hopelessly mired, and he now
borrowed a horse from Sir Walter and hitched it to his own wagon. He
took over Sir Roland de Vaux of Triermain and made him the putative
father of his mysterious Geraldine, although, in compliance with Scott's
romance, the embassy that goes over the mountains to Sir Roland's
castle can find no trace of it. In
Part I. Sir Leoline's own castle stood
nowhere in particular. In Part
II. it is transferred to Cumberland, a mistake in art almost as grave as if
the Ancient Mariner had brought his ship to port at Liverpool.
Wordsworth visited the "great Minstrel of the Border" at Abbotsford in
1831, shortly before Scott set out for Naples, and the two poets went in
company to the ruins of Newark Castle. It is characteristic that in
"Yarrow Revisited," which commemorates the incident, the Bard of
Rydal should think it necessary to offer an apology for his
distinguished host's habit of romanticising nature--that nature which
Wordsworth, romantic neither in temper nor choice of subject, treated
after so different a fashion.
"Nor deem that localised Romance Plays false with our affections;
Unsanctifies our tears--made sport For fanciful dejections: Ah no! the
visions of the past Sustain the heart in feeling Life as she is--our
changeful Life, With friends and kindred dealing."
The apology, after all, is only half-hearted. For while Wordsworth
esteemed Scott highly and was careful to speak publicly of his work
with a qualified respect, it is well known that, in private, he set little
value upon it, and once somewhat petulantly declared that all Scott's

poetry was not worth sixpence. He wrote to Scott, of "Marmion": "I
think your end has been attained. That it is not the end which I should
wish you to propose to yourself, you will be aware." He had visited
Scott at Lasswade as early as 1803, and in recording his impressions
notes that "his conversation was full of anecdote and averse from
disquisition." The minstrel was a raconteur and lived in the past, the
bard was a moralist and lived in the present.
There are several poems of Wordsworth's and Scott's touching upon
common ground which serve to contrast their methods sharply and to
illustrate in a striking way the precise character of Scott's romanticism.
"Helvellyn" and "Fidelity" were written independently and celebrate
the same incident. In 1805 a young man lost his way on the
Cumberland mountains and perished of exposure. Three months
afterwards his body was found, his faithful dog still watching beside it.
Scott was a lover of dogs--loved them warmly, individually; so to
speak, personally; and all dogs instinctively loved Scott.[18]
Wordsworth had a sort of tepid, theoretical benevolence towards the
animal creation in general. Yet