Sir Walter Scott | Page 7

not a triumph, at the very lowest reckoning, of dexterous narrative to bring together in a vivid dramatic scene the humorous character of the Glasgow citizen and the equal and opposite humour of his cousin, the cateran, the Highland loon, Mr. Campbell disclosed as Rob Roy--with the Dougal creature helping him?
Scott's comedy is like that of Cervantes in Don Quixote--humorous dialogue independent of any definite comic plot and mixed up with all sorts of other business. Might not Falstaff himself be taken into comparison too? Scott's humorous characters are nowhere and never characters in a comedy--and Falstaff, the greatest comic character in Shakespeare, is not great in comedy.
Some of the rich idiomatic Scottish dialogue in the novels might be possibly disparaged (like Ben Jonson) as 'mere humours and observation.' Novelists of lower rank than Scott--Galt in The Ayrshire Legatees and Annals of the Parish and The Entail--have nearly rivalled Scott in reporting conversation. But the Bailie at any rate has his part to play in the story of Rob Roy--and so has Andrew Fairservice. Scott never did anything more ingenious than his contrast of those two characters--so much alike in language, and to some extent in cast of mind, with the same conceit and self-confidence, the same garrulous Westland security in their own judgment, both attentive to their own interests, yet clearly and absolutely distinct in spirit, the Bailie a match in courage for Rob Roy himself.
Give me leave, before I end, to read one example of Scott's language: from the scene in Guy Mannering where Dandie Dinmont explains his case to Mr. Pleydell the advocate. It is true to life: memory and imagination here indistinguishable:--
Dinmont, who had pushed after Mannering into the room, began with a scrape of his foot and a scratch of his head in unison. 'I am Dandie Dinmont, sir, of the Charlies-hope--the Liddesdale lad--ye'll mind me? It was for me you won yon grand plea.'
'What plea, you loggerhead?' said the lawyer; 'd'ye think I can remember all the fools that come to plague me?'
'Lord, sir, it was the grand plea about the grazing o' the Langtae-head,' said the farmer.
'Well, curse thee, never mind;--give me the memorial, and come to me on Monday at ten,' replied the learned counsel.
'But, sir, I haena got ony distinct memorial.'
'No memorial, man?' said Pleydell.
'Na, sir, nae memorial,' answered Dandie; 'for your honour said before, Mr. Pleydell, ye'll mind, that ye liked best to hear us hill-folk tell our ane tale by word o' mouth.'
'Beshrew my tongue that said so!' answered the counsellor; 'it will cost my ears a dinning.--Well, say in two words what you've got to say--you see the gentleman waits.'
'Ou, sir, if the gentleman likes he may play his ain spring first; it's a' ane to Dandie.'
'Now, you looby,' said the lawyer, 'cannot you conceive that your business can be nothing to Colonel Mannering, but that he may not choose to have these great ears of thine regaled with his matters?'
'Aweel, sir, just as you and he like, so ye see to my business,' said Dandie, not a whit disconcerted by the roughness of this reception. 'We're at the auld wark o' the marches again, Jock o' Dawston Cleugh and me. Ye see we march on the tap o' Touthoprigg after we pass the Pomoragrains; for the Pomoragrains, and Slackenspool, and Bloodylaws, they come in there, and they belang to the Peel; but after ye pass Pomoragrains at a muckle great saucer-headed cutlugged stane, that they ca' Charlie's Chuckie, there Dawston Cleugh and Charlies-hope they march. Now, I say, the march rins on the tap o' the hill where the wind and water shears; but Jock o' Dawston Cleugh again, he contravenes that, and says that it hauds down by the auld drove-road that gaes awa by the Knot o' the Gate ower to Keeldar-ward--and that makes an unco difference.'
'And what difference does it make, friend?' said Pleydell. 'How many sheep will it feed?'
'Ou, no mony,' said Dandie, scratching his head; 'it's lying high and exposed--it may feed a hog, or aiblins twa in a good year.'
'And for this grazing, which may be worth about five shillings a-year, you are willing to throw away a hundred pound or two?'
'Na, sir, it's no for the value of the grass,' replied Dinmont; 'it's for justice.'
Do we at home in Scotland make too much of Scott's life and associations when we think of his poetry and his novels? Possibly few Scotsmen are impartial here. As Dr. Johnson said, they are not a fair people, and when they think of the Waverley Novels they perhaps do not always see quite clearly. Edinburgh and the Eildon Hills, Aberfoyle and Stirling, come between their minds and the printed page:--
A mist of memory broods and floats, The Border waters flow, The air is full of