Sir Walter Scott | Page 9

flute in order to earn a
meal by the way, old Mr. Scott, catching grumpily at the idea, replied,
"I greatly doubt, sir, you were born for nae better then a gangrel
scrape-gut,"--a speech which very probably suggested his son's
conception of Darsie Latimer's adventures with the blind fiddler,
"Wandering Willie," in Redgauntlet. And, it is true that these were the
days of mental and moral fermentation, what was called in Germany
the Sturm-und-Drang, the "fret-and-fury" period of Scott's life, so far as
one so mellow and genial in temper ever passed through a period of fret
and fury at all. In other words these were the days of rapid motion, of
walks of thirty miles a day which the lame lad yet found no fatigue to
him; of mad enterprises, scrapes and drinking-bouts, in one of which
Scott was half persuaded by his friends that he actually sang a song for
the only time in his life. But even in these days of youthful sociability,
with companions of his own age, Scott was always himself, and his
imperious will often asserted itself. Writing of this time, some
thirty-five years or so later, he said, "When I was a boy, and on foot
expeditions, as we had many, no creature could be so indifferent which
way our course was directed, and I acquiesced in what any one
proposed; but if I was once driven to make a choice, and felt piqued in
honour to maintain my proposition, I have broken off from the whole
party, rather than yield to any one." No doubt, too, in that day of what
he himself described as "the silly smart fancies that ran in my brain like
the bubbles in a glass of champagne, as brilliant to my thinking, as
intoxicating, as evanescent," solitude was no real deprivation to him;
and one can easily imagine him marching off on his solitary way after a
dispute with his companions, reciting to himself old songs or ballads,
with that "noticeable but altogether indescribable play of the upper lip,"
which Mr. Lockhart thinks suggested to one of Scott's most intimate
friends, on his first acquaintance with him, the grotesque notion that he
had been "a hautboy-player." This was the first impression formed of
Scott by William Clerk, one of his earliest and life-long friends. It

greatly amused Scott, who not only had never played on any instrument
in his life, but could hardly make shift to join in the chorus of a popular
song without marring its effect; but perhaps the impression suggested
was not so very far astray after all. Looking to the poetic side of his
character, the trumpet certainly would have been the instrument that
would have best symbolized the spirit both of Scott's thought and of his
verses. Mr. Lockhart himself, in summing up his impressions of Sir
Walter, quotes as the most expressive of his lines:--
"Sound, sound the clarion! fill the fife! To all the sensual world
proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth a world without a
name."
And undoubtedly this gives us the key-note of Scott's personal life as
well as of his poetic power. Above everything he was high-spirited, a
man of noble, and, at the same time, of martial feelings. Sir Francis
Doyle speaks very justly of Sir Walter as "among English singers the
undoubted inheritor of that trumpet-note, which, under the breath of
Homer, has made the wrath of Achilles immortal;" and I do not doubt
that there was something in Scott's face, and especially in the
expression of his mouth, to suggest this even to his early college
companions. Unfortunately, however, even "one crowded hour of
glorious life" may sometimes have a "sensual" inspiration, and in these
days of youthful adventure, too many such hours seem to have owed
their inspiration to the Scottish peasant's chief bane, the Highland
whisky. In his eager search after the old ballads of the Border, Scott
had many a blithe adventure, which ended only too often in a carouse.
It was soon after this time that he first began those raids into
Liddesdale, of which all the world has enjoyed the records in the
sketches--embodied subsequently in Guy Mannering--of Dandie
Dinmont, his pony Dumple, and the various Peppers and Mustards
from whose breed there were afterwards introduced into Scott's own
family, generations of terriers, always named, as Sir Walter expressed it,
after "the cruet." I must quote the now classic record of those youthful
escapades:--
"Eh me," said Mr. Shortreed, his companion in all these Liddesdale

raids, "sic an endless fund of humour and drollery as he had then wi'
him. Never ten yards but we were either laughing or roaring and
singing. Wherever we stopped, how brawlie he suited himsel' to
everybody! He aye did as the lave