Sir Walter Scott | Page 2

his sister, and he also remembers
David Deans, a person most intensely and peculiarly Scots.
One may distinguish the Scotch novels, which only their author could
have written, from novels like Peveril of the Peak or Anne of Geierstein,
which may be thought to resemble rather too closely the imitations of
Scott, the ordinary historical novel as it was written by Scott's
successors. But though the formula of the conventional historical novel
may have been drawn from the less idiomatic group, it was not this that
chiefly made Scott's reputation. His fame and influence were achieved
through the whole mass of his immense and varied work; and the Scots
dialect and humours, which make so large a part of his resources when
he is putting out all his power, though they have their difficulties for
readers outside of Scotland, were no real hindrances in the way of the
Scotch novels: Dandie Dinmont and Bailie Nicol Jarvie, Cuddie
Headrigg and Andrew Fairservice were not ignored or forgotten, even
where Ivanhoe or The Talisman might have the preference as being
more conformable to the general mind of novel readers.
The paradox remains: that the most successful novelist of the whole
world should have had his home and found his strength in a country
with a language of its own, barely intelligible, frequently repulsive to
its nearest neighbours, a language none the more likely to win favour
when the manners or ideas of the country were taken into consideration
as well.

The critics who refuse to see much good in Scott, for the most part
ignore the foundations of his work. Thus Stendhal, who acknowledges
Scott's position as representative of his age, the one really great,
universally popular, author of his day, does not recognise in Scott's
imagination much more than trappings and tournaments, the furniture
of the regular historical novel. He compares Scott's novels with La
Princesse de Clèves, and asks which is more to be praised, the author
who understands and reveals the human heart, or the descriptive
historian who can fill pages with unessential details but is afraid of the
passions.
In which it seems to be assumed that Scott, when he gave his attention
to the background and the appropriate dresses, was neglecting the
dramatic truth of his characters and their expression. Scott, it may be
observed, had, in his own reflexions on the art of novel-writing, taken
notice of different kinds of policy in dealing with the historical setting.
In his lives of the novelists, reviewing The Old English Baron, he
describes the earlier type of historical novel in which little or nothing is
done for antiquarian decoration or for local colour; while in his
criticism of Mrs. Radcliffe he uses the very term--'melodrama'--and the
very distinction--melodrama as opposed to tragedy--which is the
touchstone of the novelist. Whatever his success might be, there can be
no doubt as to his intentions. He meant his novels, with their richer
background and their larger measure of detail, to sacrifice nothing of
dramatic truth. La Princesse de Clèves, a professedly historical novel
with little 'local colour', may be in essentials finer and more sincere
than Scott. This is a question which I ask leave to pass over. But it is
not Scott's intention to put off the reader with details and decoration as
a substitute for truth of character and sentiment. Here most obviously,
with all their differences, Balzac and Scott are agreed: expensive both
of them in description, but neither of them inclined to let mere
description (in Pope's phrase) take the place of sense--i.e. of the life
which it is the business of the novelist to interpret. There is danger, no
doubt, of overdoing it, but description in Balzac, however full and long,
is never inanimate. He has explained his theory in a notice of Scott, or
rather in a comparison of Scott and Fenimore Cooper (Revue
Parisienne, 1840), where the emptiness of Cooper's novels is compared

with the variety of Scott's, the solitude of the American lakes and
forests with the crowd of life commanded by the author of Waverley.
Allowing Cooper one great success in the character of Leather-stocking
and some merit in a few other personages, Balzac finds beyond these
nothing like Scott's multitude of characters; their place is taken by the
beauties of nature. But description cannot make up for want of life in a
story.
Balzac shows clearly that he understood the danger of description, and
how impossible, how unreasonable, it is to make scenery do instead of
story and characters. He does not seem to think that Scott has failed in
this respect, while in his remarks on Scott's humour he proves how far
he is from the critics who found in Scott nothing but scenery and
accoutrements and the rubbish of old chronicles. Scott's