The Antiquary | Page 8

into his head to elaborate such a tale." He
could not dwell in the unbroken gloom dear to some modern
malingerers. But he could easily have made a tale of common Scotch
life, dark with the sorrow of Mucklebackit, and bright with the mirth of
Cuddie Headrigg. There was, however, this difficulty,--that Scott cared
not to write a story of a single class. "From the peer to the ploughman,"
all society mingles in each of his novels. A fiction of middle-class life
did not allure him, and he was not at the best, but at his worst, as
Sydney Smith observed, in the light talk of society. He could admire
Miss Austen, and read her novels again and again; but had he attempted
to follow her, by way of variety, then inevitably wild as well as
disciplined humour would have kept breaking in, and his fancy would
have wandered like the old knights of Arthur's Court, "at adventure."
"St. Ronan's Well" proved the truth of all this. Thus it happens that, in
"The Antiquary," with all his sympathy for the people, with all his

knowledge of them, he does not confine himself to their cottages. As
Lockhart says, in his admirable piece of criticism, he preferred to
choose topics in which he could display "his highest art, that of skilful
contrast."
Even the tragic romance of "Waverley" does not set off its
Macwheebles and Callum Begs better than the oddities of Jonathan
Oldbuck and his circle are relieved, on the one hand by the stately
gloom of the Glenallans, on the other by the stern affliction of the poor
fisherman, who, when discovered repairing "the auld black bitch of a
boat," in which his boy had been lost, and congratulated by his visitors
on being capable of the exertion, makes answer, "And what would you
have me to do, unless I wanted to see four children starve, because one
is drowned? It 's weel with you gentles, that can sit in the house with
handkerchers at your een, when ye lose a friend; but the like o' us maun
to our work again, if our hearts were beating as hard as ony hammer."
And to his work again Scott had to go when he lost the partner of his
life.
The simple unsought charm which Lockhart notes in "The Antiquary"
may have passed away in later works, when what had been the
amusement of happy days became the task of sadness. But this magic
"The Antiquary" keeps perhaps beyond all its companions,--the magic
of pleasant memories and friendly associations. The sketches of the
epoch of expected invasion, with its patriotic musters and volunteer
drillings, are pictures out of that part in the author's life which, with his
early Highland wanderings ("Waverley") and his Liddesdale raids
("Guy Mannering"), was most dear to him. In "Redgauntlet," again, he
makes, as Alan Fairford, a return on his youth and his home, and in
"Rob Roy" he revives his Highland recollections, his Highland lairds of
"the blawing, bleezing stories." None of the rest of the tales are so
intimate in their connection with Scott's own personal history. "The
Antiquary" has always, therefore, been held in the very first rank of his
novels.
As far as plot goes, though Godwin denied that it had any story, "The
Antiquary" may be placed among the most careful. The underplot of
the Glenallans, gloomy almost beyond endurance, is very ingeniously
made to unravel the mystery of Lovel. The other side-narrative, that of
Dousterswivel, is the weak point of the whole; but this Scott justifies

by "very late instances of the force of superstitious credulity, to a much
greater extent." Some occurrence of the hour may have suggested the
knavish adept with his divining-rod. But facts are never a real excuse
for the morally incredible, or all but incredible, in fiction. On the
wealth and vraisemblance and variety of character it were superfluous
to dilate. As in Shakspeare, there is not even a minor person but lives
and is of flesh and blood, if we except, perhaps, Dousterswivel and Sir
Arthur Wardour. Sir Arthur is only Sir Robert Hazlewood over again,
with a slightly different folly and a somewhat more amiable nature.
Lovel's place, as usual, is among the shades of heroes, and his
love-affair is far less moving, far more summarily treated, than that of
Jenny Caxon. The skilful contrasts are perhaps most remarkable when
we compare Elspeth of the Burnfoot with the gossiping old women in
the post-office at Fairport,--a town studied perhaps from Arbroath. It
was the opinion of Sydney Smith that every one of the novels, before
"The Fortunes of Nigel," contained a Meg Merrilies and a Dominie
Sampson. He may have recognized a male Meg in Edie Ochiltree,--the
invaluable character who is always behind a wall,