Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature | Page 4

writing prose
fiction, since Joseph Strutt's unfinished romance, Queenhoo Hall, for
which Scott wrote a conclusion, is of consequence only on account of
the antiquarian learning which it exhibits.
Having become seriously alarmed over the political influence of the
Edinburgh Review, Scott was active in forwarding plans for starting a
strong rival periodical in London, and 1809 saw the establishment of
the Quarterly Review. By that time he had done a considerable amount
of work in practically every kind except the novel, and he was
recognized as a most efficient assistant and adviser in any such
enterprise as the promoters of the Quarterly were undertaking.
Moreover, his own writings were prominent among the books which

supplied material for the reviewer. He worked hard for the first volume.
But after that year he wrote little for the Quarterly until 1818, and
again little until after Lockhart became editor in 1825. From that time
until 1831 he was an occasional contributor.
1814 was the year of Waverley. Before that the poems had been
appearing in rapid succession, and Scott had been busy with the Works
of Swift, which came out also in 1814. The thirteen volumes of the
edition of Somers' Tracts, already mentioned, and several smaller
books, bore further witness to his editorial energy. The last of the long
poems was published in 1815, about the same time with Guy
Mannering, the second novel, and after that the novels continued to
appear with that rapidity which constitutes one of the chief facts of
Scott's literary career. For a few years after this period he did
comparatively little in the way of editorial work, but his odd moments
were occupied in writing about history, travels, and antiquities.[6]
In 1820 Scott wrote the Lives of the Novelists, which appeared the next
year in Ballantyne's Novelists' Library. By this time he had begun, with
Ivanhoe, to strike out from the Scottish field in which all his first
novels had been placed. The martial pomp prominent in this novel
reflects the eager interest with which he was at that time following his
son's opening career in the army; just as Marmion, written by the young
quartermaster of the Edinburgh Light Horse, also expresses the military
ardor which was so natural to Scott, and which reminds us of his
remark that in those days a regiment of dragoons was tramping through
his head day and night. Probably we might trace many a reason for his
literary preoccupations at special times besides those that he has
himself commented upon. In the case of the critical work, however, the
matter was usually determined for him by circumstances of a much less
intimate sort, such as the appeal of an editor or the appearance of a
book which excited his special interest.
When Scott was obliged to make as much money as possible he wrote
novels and histories rather than criticism. His Life of Napoleon
Buonaparte, which appeared in nine volumes in 1827, enabled him to
make the first large payment on the debts that had fallen upon him in

the financial crash of the preceding year, and the Tales of a
Grandfather were among the most successful of his later books. His
critical biographies and many of his other essays were brought together
for the first time in 1827, and issued under the title of Miscellaneous
Prose Works. The world of books was making his life weary with its
importunate demands in those years when he was writing to pay his
debts, and it is pleasant to see that some of his later reviews discussed
matters that were not less dear to his heart because they were not
literary. The articles on fishing, on ornamental gardening, on planting
waste lands, remind us of the observation he once made, that his oaks
would outlast his laurels.
By this time the "Author of Waverley" was no longer the "unknown."
His business complications compelled him to give his name to the
novels, and with the loss of a certain kind of privacy he gained the
freedom of which later he made such fortunate use in annotating his
own works. From the beginning of 1828 until the end of his life in 1832,
Scott was engaged, in the intervals of other occupations, in writing
these introductions and notes for his novels, for an edition which he
always called the Opus Magnum. This was a pleasant task, charmingly
done. Indeed we may call it the last of those great editorial labors by
which Scott's fame might live unsupported by anything else. First came
the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, then the editions of Dryden and
Swift. Next we may count the Lives of the Novelists, even in the
fragmentary state in which the failure of the Novelists' Library left
them; and finally the Opus Magnum.