Sir Walter Scott was the Luther of literature. He reformed and he
regenerated. To say that he founded a new school is not saying the whole truth; for
there is something narrow in the idea of a school, and his influence has been
universal. Indeed, there is no such thing as a school in literature; each great
writer is his own original, and "none but himself can be his parallel."² We hear of the school of Dryden and of Pope, but where are the imitators?
Parnassus is the very reverse of Mont Blanc.³ There the summit is gained by treading closely in the steps of the
guides; but in the first, the height is only to be reached by a pathway of our own.
The influence of a genius like Scott's is
shown by the fresh and new spirit he pours into literature.

No merely literary man ever before exercised the power over his age exercised by Scott. It is curious to note the wealth
circulated through his means, and the industry and intelligence to which he gave the
impetus. The innkeepers of Scotland ought to have no sign but his head. When
Waverley appeared, a tour through Scotland was an achievement: now,
how few there are but have passed an autumn at least amid its now classic scenery.
I
own it gave my picturesque fancies at first a shock, to hear of a steam-boat on Loch
Katrine; but I was wrong. Nothing could be a more decisive proof of the increased
communication between England and Scotland—and communication is the regal road to
improvement of every kind. How many prejudices have floated away on the tremulous
line of vapour following the steam-vessel; and what a store of poetical enjoyment
must the voyagers have carried home! More than one touch of that sly humour, which
seems to me peculiarly and solely marking the Scotch,
has been bestowed on the cockney invaders of the "land of brown heath and shaggy
wood."⁴ May I, a Londoner bred, say a word in
defence of the feeling which takes such to the shore of "Lovely Loch Achray! Where shall they find on foreign land,So lone a lake, so sweet a strand?"⁵ space between stanzas

But the dwellers in the country have little understanding of, and therefore little
sympathy with, the longing for green fields which haunts the dweller in towns. The
secret dream of almost every inhabitant in those dusky streets where even a fresh
thought would scarcely seem to enter, is to realise an independence, and go and live
in the country. Where is every holiday spent but in the country! What do the smoky
geraniums, so carefully tended in many a narrow street and blind alley attest, but
the inherent love of the country! To whom do the blooming and sheltered villas, which
are a national feature in English landscape, belong, but to men who pass the greater
part of their lives in small dim counting-houses! This love of nature is divinely
given to keep alive, even in the most toiling and world-worn existence, something
of
the imaginative and the apart. It is a positive good quality; and one
d 2[Page 36]good quality has some direct, or indirect tendency to produce another. It
were an unphilosophical creation, that of a human being— "Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes."⁶ space between stanzas That virtue would have been a sweet lure to better companions. Schiller is nearer truth when he
says— "Never, believe me, appear the immortals—Never alone."⁷ space between stanzas

Scott has a peculiar faculty of awakening
this love of the country, and of idealising it into a love of the picturesque. Who
can wonder then, that when such descriptions came accompanied with all the
associations of romance—all the interest of stirring narrative—that a visit to
"Caledonia, stern and wild,"⁸ became the day-dream of all who looked
to their summer excursion as the delight and reward of the year. I have never visited
Scotland—in all human probability I never shall; but were a fairy, that pleasant
remover of all ordinary difficulties, to give me the choice of what country I wished
to see, my answer would be—Scotland; and that solely to realise the pictures, which
reading Scott has made part of my
memory.

Another noticeable fact is, the number of books which have grown out of the
Waverley novels.⁹ How many local and antiquarian tomes have brought forth a world of
curious and attractive information, in which no one before took an interest! And here
I may be allowed to allude to the prejudice, for such it is, that the historical
novel is likely to be taken for, and to interfere with history. Not such novels as
Scott wrote, certainly. In the first
place, his picture of the time is as exact as it is striking: the reader must
inevitably add to his stock of knowledge, as well as of amusement: he must acquire
a
general notion of the time; its good and its evil are brought in a popular shape
before him; while the estimate of individual character is as true as it is forcible.
Secondly, there must be something inherently vacant and unproductive in the mind
which his pages stimulate to no further inquiry.

In such hands it would be of little consequence whether a fictitious or an actual
chronicle were placed—either would lead to no result. Scott's works have done more towards
awakening a rational curiosity, than a whole world of catechisms and abridgments
would ever have accomplished. History has been read owing to his stimulus.

Prose fiction was at its lowest ebb when Waverley appeared. Scott gives in his preface a most amusing
picture of the supply then in the market: a castle was no castle without a ghost,
or
at least what seemed one till the last chapter, and the heroine was a less actual
creation than the harp which ever accompanied her. These heroines were always
faultless: the heroes were divided into two classes; either as perfect as their
impossible mistresses, or else rakes who were reformed in the desperate extremity
of
a third volume. Waverley must have taken the populace of novel readers
quite by surprise: there is in its pages the germ of every excellence, afterwards
so
fully developed—the description, like a painting; the skill in giving the quaint and
peculiar in character; the dramatic narrative, and above all, that tone of romance
before unknown to English prose literature. Flora M'Ivor is the first conception of
female character in which the highly imaginative is the element.

Perhaps we must except the Clementina of
Richardson—a poetical [Page 37]creation, which only genius could have conceived amid the formal and narrow-motived
circle which surrounded her. Clarissa is more domestic and pathetic; though in the
whole range of our dramatic poetry, so fertile in touching situation, there is
nothing more heart-rending than the visit of her cousin to her in the last volume.
He
finds the happy and blooming girl whom he left the idol of her home circle,
accustomed to affection and attention, surrounded by cheerful pleasures and graceful
duties—he finds her in a miserable lodging, among strangers, faded, heart-broken,
and
for daily employ making her shroud. A French critic says: "Even Richardson himself did not dare hazard
making Clarissa in love with his hero."¹⁰ Richardson had far too fine a
perception of character to do any such thing. What was there in Lovelace that Clarissa should love him? He is
witty; but wit is the last quality to excite passion, or to secure affection. Liberty
is the element of love; and from the first he surrounds her with restraint, and
inspires her with distrust. Moreover, he makes no appeal to the generosity of her
nature; and to interest those generous feelings, so active in the feminine
temperament, is the first step in gaining the citadel of her heart. To have loved,
would not have detracted one touch from the delicate colouring of Clarissa's
character; to have loved a man like Lovelace
would. In nothing, more than in attachment is "the nature subdued to what it works
in."¹¹ But Lovelace is now an
historical picture; it represents a class long since passed away, and originally of
foreign importation. It belonged to the French régime,
when the young men of birth and fortune had no sphere of activity but the camp; all
more honourable and useful occupation shut, and when, as regarded his country, he
was
a civil cipher. The Lovelace or the
Lauzun¹² could never have been more than an
exception in our stirring country, where pursuits and responsibility are in the lot
of all. They may, however, be noted as proofs that where the political standard is
low, the moral standard will be still lower.

Excepting, therefore, the impassioned Italian of Sir Charles
Grandison, Flora M'Ivor is the first female character of our novels in which
poetry is the basis of the composition. She has all Clementine wants; picturesque accessories,
and the strong moral purpose. Generally speaking, the mind of a woman is developed
by
the heart; the being is incomplete till love brings out either its strength or its
weakness. This is not the case with the beautiful Highlander; and Scott is the first who has drawn a heroine,
and put the usual master-passion aside. We believe few women go down to the grave
without at some time or other feeling the full force of the affections. Flora, had
not her career been cut short in the very fulness of its flower, would have loved,
loved with all the force of a character formed before it loved. Scott's picture is, at the time when she is
introduced, as full of truth as of beauty. The strong mind has less immediate need
of
an object than the weak one. Rose Bradwardine falls in love at once, compelled by
"the sweet necessity of loving." Flora M'Ivor feels no such necessity; her
imagination is occupied; her on-lookings to the future, excited by the fortunes of
the ill-fated House to which her best sympathies and most earnest hopes are given.
The House of Stuart¹³ has at once
her sense of justice and of generosity on its side; it is connected with the legends
of her earliest years; she is impelled towards it with true female adherence to the
unfortunate. Moreover, her affections have already an object in her [Page 38]brother. There is no attachment stronger, more unselfish, than the love between
brother and sister, thrown on the world orphans at an early age, with none to love
them save each other. They feel how much they stand alone, and this draws them more
together. Constant intercourse has given that perfect understanding which only
familiarity can do; hopes, interests, sorrows, are alike in common. Each is to either
a source of pride; it is the tenderness of love without its fears, and the confidence
of marriage, without its graver and more anxious character. The fresh impulses of
youth are all warm about the heart.

It would have been an impossibility for Flora to have attached herself to Edward
Waverley. A woman must look up to love: she may deceive herself, but she must
devoutly believe in the superiority of her lover. With one so constituted as
Flora—proud, high-minded, with that tendency to idealise inseparable from the
imagination, Flora must have admired before she could have loved. The object of her
attachment must have had something to mark him out from "the undistinguishable
many."¹⁴ Now, Edward Waverley is just like nine-tenths of our acquaintance, or
at least what they seem to us—pleasant, amiable, and gentlemanlike, but without one
atom of the picturesque or the poetical about them. Flora is rather the idol of his
imagination than of his heart, and it might well be made a question whether he be
most in love with the rocky torrent, the Highland harp, the Gaelic ballad, or the
lovely singer. They would have been unhappy had they married. Flora's decision of
temper would have deepened into harshness, when placed in the unnatural position of
exercising it for a husband; while Edward would have had too much quickness of
perception not to know the influence to which he submitted—he would have been
mortified even while too indolent to resist. Respect and reserve would have become
their household deities; and where these alone reign, the hearth is but cold.

Rose Bradwardine is just the ideal of a girl—simple, affectionate, ready to please
and to be pleased—likely to be formed by her associates, ill-fitted to be placed in
difficult situations; but whose sweet and kindly nature is brought out by happiness
and sunshine. She would be content to gaze on the plans her husband drew for
"ornamental grottoes and temples,"¹⁵ and, content that they were his, ask not if his
talents did not need a more useful range and a higher purpose. Rose would have kept
her husband for ever at Waverley Honour—Flora would have held "Shame to the coward thought that ere betrayedThe noon of manhood to a myrtle shade.¹⁶ space between stanzas But, alas! to such—the decided and the daring—Fate deals a terrible measure
of retribution. I know nothing in the whole range of fiction—that fiction whose truth
is life—so deeply affecting as "Flora in a large gloomy apartment, seated by a
latticed window, sewing what seemed to be a garment of white flannel."¹⁷ It is the shroud of her brother—the last of
his ancient line—the brave—the generous—the dearly-loved Fergus! How bitter is her
anguish when she exclaims, "The strength of mind on which Flora prided herself has
murdered her brother! Volatile and ardent, he would have divided his energies amid
a
thousand objects. It was I who taught him to concentrate them. Oh! that I could
recollect that I had but once said to him 'He that striketh with the sword shall die
by the sword!'"¹⁸

[Page 39]It is a fearful responsibility, the exercise of influence: let our own
conduct bring its own consequences—we may well meet the worst; not so when we have
led another to pursue any given line of action: if they suffer, how tenfold is that
suffering visited on ourselves! For Flora life could offer nothing but the black veil
of the Benedictine convent. There are no associations so precious as those of our
earlier years. It is upon them that the heart turns back amid after-cares and
sorrows:—the nursery, the old garden, the green field, remain the latest things that
memory cherishes. They keep alive something of their own freshness and purity; and
the affections belonging to those uncalculating hours have a faith and warmth unknown
to after-life. To this ordinary but most sweet love Flora had added the ideal and
the
picturesque—and love, to reach its highest order, must be worked up by the
imagination. She saw in her brother the chieftain of their line—the last descendant
of Ivor. He was the support of the cause whose loyalty to its ill-fated adherents
was
as religion—their lofty enthusiasm was as much in common as their daily habits; they
looked back and they looked forward together. When the last Vich Ian Vohr had
perished on the scaffold, there remained for his lonely and devoted sister but the
convent—a brief resting-place before the grave.

L. E. L.