Old Mortality | Page 7

that godly
company in "the original edition of the lives of Cameron and others, by
Patrick Walker." The more curious parts of those biographies were
excised by the care of later editors, but they may all be found now in
the "Biographia Presbyteriana" (1827), published by True Jock, chief
clerk to "Leein' Johnnie," Mr. John Ballantyne. To this work the
inquirer may turn, if he is anxious to see whether Scott's colouring is
correct. The true blue of the Covenant is not dulled in the "Biographia
Presbyteriana."
With all these materials at his command, Scott was able almost to dwell
in the age of the Covenant hence the extraordinary life and brilliance of
this, his first essay in fiction dealing with a remote time and obsolete
manners. His opening, though it may seem long and uninviting to
modern readers, is interesting for the sympathetic sketch of the gentle
consumptive dominie. If there was any class of men whom Sir Walter
could not away with, it was the race of schoolmasters, "black cattle"
whom he neither trusted nor respected. But he could make or invent
exceptions, as in the uncomplaining and kindly usher of the verbose
Cleishbotham. Once launched in his legend, with the shooting of the
Popinjay, he never falters. The gallant, dauntless, overbearing Bothwell,
the dour Burley, the handful of Preachers, representing every current of
opinion in the Covenant, the awful figure of Habakkuk Mucklewrath,
the charm of goodness in Bessie McLure, are all immortal, deathless as
Shakspeare's men and women. Indeed here, even more than elsewhere,
we admire the life which Scott breathes into his minor characters,
Halliday and Inglis, the troopers, the child who leads Morton to
Burley's retreat in the cave, that auld Laird Nippy, old Milnwood (a real
"Laird Nippy" was a neighbour of Scott's at Ashiestiel), Ailie Wilson,
the kind, crabbed old housekeeper, generous in great things, though
habitually niggardly in things small. Most of these are persons whom
we might still meet in Scotland, as we might meet Cuddie

Headrigg--the shrewd, the blithe, the faithful and humorous Cuddie. As
to Miss Jenny Dennison, we can hardly forgive Scott for making that
gayest of soubrettes hard and selfish in married life. He is too severe on
the harmless and even beneficent race of coquettes, who brighten life
so much, who so rapidly "draw up with the new pleugh lad," and who
do so very little harm when all is said. Jenny plays the part of a leal and
brave lass in the siege of Tillietudlem, hunger and terror do not subdue
her spirit; she is true, in spite of many temptations, to her Cuddie, and
we decline to believe that she was untrue to his master and friend. Ikuse,
no doubt, is a caricature, though Wodrow makes us acquainted with at
least one Mause, Jean Biggart, who "all the winter over was
exceedingly straitened in wrestling and prayer as to the Parliament, and
said that still that place was brought before her, Our hedges are broken
down!" ("Analecta," ii. 173.) Surely even Dr. McCrie must have
laughed out loud, like Lady Louisa Stuart, when Mause exclaims:
"Neither will I peace for the bidding of no earthly potsherd, though it
be painted as red as a brick from the tower o' Babel, and ca' itsel' a
corporal." Manse, as we have said, is not more comic than heroic, a
mother in that Sparta of the Covenant. The figure of Morton, as usual,
is not very attractive. In his review, Scott explains the weakness of his
heroes as usually strangers in the land (Waverley, Lovel, Mannering,
Osbaldistone), who need to have everything explained to them, and
who are less required to move than to be the pivots of the general
movement. But Morton is no stranger in the land. His political position
in the juste milieu is unexciting. A schoolboy wrote to Scott at this time,
"Oh, Sir Walter, how could you take the lady from the gallant Cavalier,
and give her to the crop-eared Covenanter?" Probably Scott
sympathised with his young critic, who longed "to be a feudal chief,
and to see his retainers happy around him." But Edith Bellenden loved
Morton, with that love which, as she said, and thought, "disturbs the
repose of the dead." Scott had no choice. Besides, Dr. McCrie might
have disapproved of so fortunate an arrangement. The heroine herself
does not live in the memory like Di Vernon; she does not even live like
Jenny Dennison. We remember Corporal Raddlebanes better, the
stoutest fighting man of Major Bellenden's acquaintance; and the lady
of Tillietudlem has admirers more numerous and more constant. The
lovers of the tale chiefly engage our interest by the rare constancy of

their affections.
The most disputed character is, of course, that of Claverhouse. There is
no doubt