A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century

r Sco

nfluence reach a focus in Scott. It is true that his delineation of feudal society is not final. There were sides of mediaeval life which he did not know, or understand, or sympathize with, and some of these have been painted in by later artists. That his pictures have a coloring of modern sentiment is no arraignment of him but of the genre. All romanticists are resurrectionists; their art is an elaborate make-believe. It is enough for their purpose if the world which they re-create has the look of reality, the verisimile if not the verum. That Scott's genius was in extenso rather than in intenso, that his work is largely improvisation, that he was not a miniature, but a distemper painter, splashing large canvasses with a coarse brush and gaudy pigments, all these are commonplaces of critic

ere early determined, and it remained to the end wonderfully constant to its object. At the age of twelve he had begun a collection of manuscript ballads. His education in romance dated from the cradle. His lullabies were Jacobite songs; his grandmother told him tales of moss-troopers, and his Aunt Janet read him ballads from Ramsay's "Tea-table Miscellany," upon which his quick and tenacious memory fastened eagerly. The ballad of "Hardiknute," in this collection, he knew by heart before he could read. "It was the first poem I ever learnt-the last

s Seat or Salisbury Crags, where they read together books like "The Castle of Otranto" and the poems of Spenser and Ariosto; or composed and narrated to each other "interminable tales of battles and enchantments" and "legends in which the martial and the miraculous always predominated." The education of Edward Waverley, as described in the third chapter of Scott's first novel, was confessedly th

d with military events." He interested himself, for example, in the art of fortification; and when confined to his bed by a childish illness, found amusement in modelling fortresses and "arranging shells and

ry of Buchanan." In our examination of Scott's early translations from the German,[5] it has been noticed how exclusively he was attracted by the romantic department of that literature, passing over, for instance, Goethe's maturer work, to fix upon his juvenile drama "G?tz von Berlichingen." Similarly he learned Italian just to read in the original the romantic poets Tasso, Ariosto, Boiardo, and Pulci. When he first went to London in 1799, "his great anxiety," reports Lockhart, "was to examine the antiquities of the Tower and Westminster Abbey, and to make some researches among the MSS. of the British Museum." From Oxford, which he visited in 1803, he brought away only "a grand but indistinct picture of towers and chapels and oriel

h brake

rude, of ba

c on classical lines, he good-naturedl

ne, nay-On

th-bell[7] flour

s cloud, as s

ow unrestraine

peculative Society on "The Origin of the Feudal System," "The Authenticity of Ossian's Poems," "The Origin of the Scandinavian Mythology." Lockhart describes two note-books in Scott's hand-writing, with the date 1792, containing memoranda of ancient court records about Walter Scott and his wife, Dame Janet Beaton, the "Ladye" of Branksome in the "Lay"; extracts from "Guerin de Montglave"; copies of "Vegtam's Kvitha" and the "Death-Song of Regner Lodbrog," with Gray's

s poems and novels are even overburdened with learning. But this, though important, was but the lesser part of his advantage. "The old-maidenly genius of antiquarianism" could produce a Strutt[11] or even perhaps

t had struck his roots deep into native soil. His absorption in the past and reverence for everything that was old, his conservative prejudices and aristocratic ambitions, all had their source in this feeling. Scott's Toryism was of a different spring from Wordsworth's and Coleridge's. It was not a reaction from disappointed radicalism; nor was it the result of reasoned conviction. It was inborn and was nursed into a sentimental Jacobitism by ancestral traditions and by an early prepossession in favour of the Stuarts-a Scottish dynasty-reinforced by encounters with men in t

t his books, that the expenses of Abbotsford and the hospitalities which he extended to all comers wasted his time and finally brought about his bankruptcy. Leslie Stephen and others have even made merry over Scott's Gothic,[14] comparing his plaster-of-Paris 'scutcheons and ceilings in imitation of carved oak with the pinchbeck architecture of Strawberry Hill, and intimating that the feudalism in his romances was only a shade more genuine than the feudalism of "The Castle of Otranto." Scott was imprudent; Abbotsford was his weakness, but i

o the imagination; but it is only when the chord of national feeling is touched that the verse grows lyrical, that the heart is reached, and that tears come into the reader's eyes, as they must have done

' heart felt

ive his ra

e to his c

d his bri

g demi-vol

the coward tha

for such

ng of the sixth canto in the "Lay

nia! ster

for a poe

n heath and

mountain a

sires! what

ntie the f

e to thy rug

.[15] Scott said to Washington Irving that if he did not se

d best of all sounds was in his dying ear

e field of Bannockburn was the source of more exquisite pleasure than gazing upon the celebrated landscape from the battlements of Stirling Castle. I do not by any means infer that I was dead to the feeling of picturesque scenery. . . . But show me an old castle or a field of battle and I was at home at once." And again: "The love of natural beauty, more especially when combined with ancient ruins or remai

de tale tha

s wild a

perhaps you may fail to interest him; but, to excite his terrors, you assure him it happened on the very heath he usually crosses, or to a man whose

t who, in obedience to a vision and the instructions of an ancient sage "sprung from Druid sires," enters an enchanted castle and frees the Princess Gyneth, a natural daughter of King Arthur, from the spell that has bound her for five hundred years. But true to his instinct, the poet lays his scene not in vacuo, but near his own beloved borderland. He found, in Burns' "Antiquities of Westmoreland and Cumberland" mention of a line of Rolands de Vaux, lords of Triermain, a fief of the barony of Gilsland; and this furnished him a name for his hero. He found in Hutchinson's "Excursion to the Lakes" the description of a cluster of rocks in the Vale of St. John's, which looked, at a distance, like a Gothi

Newark Castle. It is characteristic that in "Yarrow Revisited," which commemorates the incident, the Bard of Rydal should think it necessary to offer an apology for his

that local

e with our

s our tears

iful dej

visions o

he heart

is-our cha

s and kindr

ulantly declared that all Scott's poetry was not worth sixpence. He wrote to Scott, of "Marmion": "I think your end has been attained. That it is not the end which I should wish you to propose to yourself, you will be aware." He had visited Scott

anticism. "Helvellyn" and "Fidelity" were written independently and celebrate the same incident. In 1805 a young man lost his way on the Cumberland mountains and perished of exposure. Three months a

pth of feeling is, as usual, with Wordsworth. Both render, with perhaps equal power, though in characteristically different ways, the impression

f feeling, great Above

d man a more stately funeral than the Church could have given, a comparison se

the fate of the Pe

s dark round the

of silver the c

d mute by the

t deep midnight the

ched chapel the b

g aisle sacred mu

ef of the peopl

eed, agreed that Scott's most imagina

d his garment how o

ect being taken from feudal times has led to its being compared to some of Sir Walter Scott's poems that belong to the same age and state of society. The comparison is inconsiderate. Sir Walter pursued the customary and very natural course of conducting an action, presenting various turns of fortune, to some outs

us upon what points in the action Scott would have laid the emphasis; the muster of the tenantry of the great northern Catholic houses of Percy and Neville; the high mass celebrated by the insurgents in Durham Cathedral; the march of the Nortons to Brancepeth; the eleven days' siege of Barden Tower; the capture and execution of Marmaduke and Ambrose; and-by way of episode-the Battle of Neville's Cross in 1346.[19] But in conformi

nsitory-a step

permanent, ob

e nature o

darkness (infin

e) gracious ope

untain-head of

f a white doe which haunted the churchyard of Bolton Priory. Between this gentle creature and the forlorn Lady of Rylstone he establ

from the vengeance of the Yorkists and reared as a shepherd, is restored to the estates and honours of his ancestors. High in the festal hall the i

usting in

od of Clif

cot,' exclai

the heart

ging of th

if he would-witness the 'Feast at Brougham Castle'-'Song of the Cliffords,' I think, is the name." But the exultant strain ceases and the poet himself speaks, and with the transition in feeling c

ge virtue of the

und in huts whe

hers had been

that is in t

is among the

ent between the description of the chase in "Hartleap W

eve had dru

moon on Monan's

s triumph he frames a basin for the spring whose waters were stirred by his victim's dying breath; he plants three stone pillars to mark the creature's hoof-prints in its marvellous leap from the mountain to the springside; and he builds a pleasure house and an arbour where he comes with his paramou

nd our pleasu

the meanest thi

ut to Scott the battle is not far off, but a vivid and present reality. When he visited the Trosachs glen, his thought plainly

pomp or chur

d brow a lo

t vale a la

meadow,

of a cloiste

nough for Scott till his imagination had p

lads historical, legendary, and romantic, with an abundant apparatus in the way of notes and introductions, illustrating the history, antiquities, manners, traditions, and superstitions of the Borderers. Forty-three of the ballads in the "Minstrelsy" had never been printed before; and of the remainder the editor gave superior versions, choosing with sureness of taste the best among variant readings, and with a more intimate knowledge of local ways and language than any previous

a strong tincture of the supernatural; but the first-Scott himself draws the distinction-is a "legendary poem," and the second alone a proper "ballad." "Glenfinlas," [25] founded on a Gaelic legend, tells how a Highland chieftain while hunting in Perths

sought sweet

he tear and h

the lover

ister's wat

ballad stuff, the visit of a murdered

ht hour, when bad s

ree, the bold Buccleuch, and the Battle of Ancram Moor (1545). The exact scene of the tragedy is Smailholme Tower, the ruined keep on the crags above h

ou liest, thou

t thou l

s cold, and low l

the Eild

aelites and other modern balladists, like Rossetti and Morris, is frequently finer, they reproduce more scrupulously the formal characteristics of popular poetry: the burden, the sing-song repetitions, the quaint turns of phrase, the imperfect rimes, the innocent, childlike air of the mediaeval tale-tellers. Scott's v

as saying the

t. Peter

later fall into

apt poet's s

the muse

ty, led by

tell-tale r

spontaneous, and thoroughly alive. Such are, to particularise but a few, "Jock o' Hazeldean," "Cadyow Castle," on the assassination of the Regent Murray; "The Reiver's Wedding," a fragment preserved in Lockhart's "Life"; "Elspeth's Ballad" ("The Red Harlow") in "The Antiquary"; Madge Wildfire's songs in "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," and David Gellatley's in "Waverley"; besides the other scraps and snatches of minstrelsy too numerous for mention, sown through the novels and longer poems. For in spite of detraction, Walter Scott remains one of the for

romance illustrative of the ancient manners of the Border. The pranks of the goblin page run in and out through the web of the tale, a slender and somewhat inconsequential thread of diablerie. Byron had his laugh at it in "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers";[30] and in a footnote on the passage, he adds: "Never was any plan so incongruous and absurd as the groundwork of this production." The criticism

he old warlike life of the Border; that tableau large de la vie which the French romanticists afterwards professed to be the aim of their novels and dramas. The feud of the Scotts and Carrs furnished him with a historic background; with this he enwove a love story of the Romeo and Juliet pattern. He rebuilt Melrose Abbey, and showed it by moonlight; set Lords Dacre

e nervous when the lover and the lady are left alone together. The fair dames in the audience expect a tender scene, but the harper pleads his age, by

n most of the English metrical romances of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It is a form of verse which moves more swiftly than blank verse or the heroic couplet, and is perhaps better suited for romantic poetry.[32] But it is liable to grow monoto

isliked except blank verse; or Gray's delight in it, tempered by a critical disapproval of its loose construction and irregularity. Scott's romances in prose and verse are still so universally known as to make any review of them here individually an impertinence. Their impact on contemporary Europe was instantaneous and wide-spread. There is no record elsewhere in literary hi

as i

e age

g a

above Scott's. Chaucer's disciple, William Morris, has an equal flow and continuity, and keeps a more even level of style; but his story-telling is languid compared with Scott's. The latter is greater in the dynamic than in the static department-in scenes of rapid action and keen excitement. His show passages are such as the figh

, and "The Lady of the Lake" (1810), like "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," had to do with the sixteenth century, but the poet imported mediaeval elements into all of these by the frankest anachronisms. He restored St. Hilda's Abbey and the monastery at Lindisfarne, which had been in ruins for centuries, and peopled them again with monks and nuns, He revived in De Wilton the figure of the palmer and the ancient custom of pilgrimage to Palestine. And he transferred "the wondrous wizard, Michael Scott" from the thirteenth century to the end of the fifteenth. But, indeed, the state of society in Scotland might be described as mediaeval as late as the middle of the sixteenth

s to get itself born, but all its attempts had been abortive. "Waverley" is not only vastly superior to "Thaddeus of Warsaw" (1803) and "The Scottish Chiefs" (1809); it is something quite different in kind.[34] The Waverley Novels, twenty-nine in number, appeared in the years 1814-31. The earlier numbers of the series, "Waverley," "Guy Mannering," "The Antiquary," "Old Mortality," "The Black Dwarf," "Rob Roy," "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," "The Bride of Lammermoor," and "A Legend of Montrose," were Scotch romances of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In "Ivanhoe" (1819) the author went to England for his scene, and back

of the latter . . . we become suddenly conscious of the background. . . . It is curious enough to think that 'Tom Jones' is laid in the year '45, and that the only use he makes of the rebellion is to throw a troop of soldiers in his hero's way." [35] And it is this background which is, after all, the important thing in Scott-the leading impression; the broad canvas, the swarm of life, the spirit of the age, the reconstitution of an extinct society. This he was able to give with seeming ease and without any appearance of "cram." Chronicle matter does not lie about in lumps on the surface of his romance, but is d

o play his knowledge of men, his humour, observation of life, and insight into Scotch human nature. Scott knew these people; he had to divine James I., Louis XI., and Mary Stuart. The historical novel is a tour de force. Exactly how knights-templars, burgomasters, friars, Saracens, and Robin Hood archers talked and acted in the twelfth century, we cannot know. But it is just because they are strange to our experienc

" writes Prosper Mérimée, "j'étais romantique. Nous disions aux classiques; vos Grecs ne sont pas des Grecs, vos Romains ne so

and arrows, but it is more picturesque to the modern imagination just for that reason. Why else do the idiots in "MacArthur's Hymn" complain that "steam spoils romance at sea"? Why did Ruskin lament when the little square at the foot of Giotto's Tower in Florence was made a stand for hackney coaches? Why did our countryman Halleck at Alnwick Towers rese

he long run, by being men. Buff belts and all manner of jerkins and costumes are transitory; man alone is perennial." [38] Carlyle's dissatisfaction with Scott arises from the fact that he was not a missionary nor a transcendental philosopher, but simply a teller of stories. Heine was not troubled in the same way, but he made the identical criticism, "Like the works of Walter Scott, so also do Fouqué's romances of chivalry[40] remind us of the fantastic tapestries known as Gobelins, whose rich texture and brilliant colors are more pleasing to our eyes than edifying to our souls. We behold knightly pageantry, shep

tish in crediting its invention to Scott. "It is an error," says Heine, "not to recognise Walter Scott as the founder of the so-called historical romance, and to endeavour to trace it to German imitation." He adds that Scott was a Protestant, a lawyer and a Scotchman, accustomed to action and debate, in whose works the aristocratic and democratic elements are in wholesome balance; "whereas our German romanticists eliminated the democratic element entirely from their novels, and returne

torians were incurious of life. Their spirit was general and abstract; they were in search of philosophical formulas. Gibbon covers his subject with a lava-flood of stately rhetoric which stiffens into a uniform stony coating over the soft surface of life. Scott is primarily responsible for that dramatic, picturesque treatment of history which we find in Michelet and Carlyle. "These historical novels," testifies Carlyle, "have taught all men this truth, which looks like a truism, and yet was as good as unknown to writers of history and others, till so taught; tha

t, not of the monk, that appealed to him. He felt the awfulness and the beauty of Gothic sacred architecture and of Catholic ritual. The externalities of the mediaeval church impressed him, whatever was picturesque in its ceremonies or august in its power. He pictured effectively such scenes as the pilgrimage to Melrose in the "Lay"; the immuring of the renegade nun in "Marmion"; the trial of Rebecca for sorcery by the Grand Master of the Temple in "Ivanhoe." Ecclesiastical figures abound in his pages, jolly friars, holy hermits, lordly prelates, grim inquisitors, abbots, priors, and priests of all descriptions, but all somewhat conventional and viewed ab extra. He could not draw a saint.[47] Significant, therefore, is his indifference to D

an ballad period-they affected his imagination with a "pleasing horror." But as he

wn management of such themes, however, though much superior to Walpole's or Mrs. Radcliffe's, has not the subtle art of Coleridge. The White Lady of Avenel, e.g., in "The Abbot," is a notorious failure. There was too much daylight in his imagination for spectres to be quite at home. "The shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses"; the "night side of things"; the real shudder are not there, as in Hawthorne or in Poe. Walter Pater[51] says that Meinhold's "Amber Witch" has more of the true romantic spirit than Tieck, who was its professional representative. On the contrary, it has less of the romantic spirit, bu

ess imperfect than his apprehension of the spirit of mediaeval

cavalier, l'a

l'audaci impr

love poems; or selecting for treatment the story of Heloise or Tristram and Iseult, or of "Le Chevalier de la Charette"; or such a typical mediaeval life as that of Ulrich von Liechtenstein.[53] These were quite as truly beyond his sphere as a church legend like the life of Saint Margaret or the quest of the Sangreal. In the "Talisman" he praises in terms only less eloquent than Burke's famous words, "that wild spirit of chivalry which, amid its most extravagant and fantastic nights, was still pure from all selfish alloy-generous, devoted, and perhaps only thus far censurable, that it proposed objects and courses of action i

END

e chose. . . . Il doit nous suffire pour l'instant d'affirmer que l'influence de Walter Scott est à la racine même des grandes oeuvres qui ont donné au nouveau genre tant d'éclat dans notre littérature; que c'est elle qui les a inspirées, suscitées, fait éclore; que sans lui nous n'auri

uvert, la cathédrale gothique restaurée, l'art chretien remis à la place éminente d'où il aurait fallu ne jamais le laisser choir. Mais où sont les oeuvres exécutées d'après ce modèle et ces principes? S'il est facile d'apercevoir et de déterminer la cathédrale religieuse de Chateaubriand, est il donc si aisé de distinguer sa cathédrale poétique? . . . Un courant vigoureux, que le 'Genie du Christianisme' et les 'Martyrs' ont puissamment contribué à detérminer, fait dériver les imaginations vers les choses gothiques; volontiers, l'esprit fran?ais se retourne alors vers le passé comme vers la seule source de poésie; et voici qu'un étranger vient se faire son guide et fait miroiter, devant tous les yeux éblouis, la fantasmagorie du m

END

tment prepared for any one who looks in the greater romantic authors of the twelfth century for the music of 'The Faery Queene' or 'La Belle Dame sans Merci.' . . . The greater authors of the twelfth century have more affinity to the 'heroic romance' of the school of the 'Grand Cyrus' than to the dreams of Spenser or Coleridge. . . . The magic that is wanting to the clear and elegant narrative of Benoit and Chrestien will be found elsewhere; it will be found in one form in the mystical prose of the 'Queste del St.

eenth Century." Incidental mention of Scott occurs throughout the same volume; and a few of the things there said are repeated, in sub

the English Novel," by

l. i.,

h a few lines translated from the "Dies Ira

i., pp.

. i., p

e. He was strictly a Goth and a Scot, and his sphere of sensation may be almost exa

m Epic, the former comprehends a fictitious narrative, framed and combined at the pleasure of the writer; beginning and ending as he may judge best; which neither exacts nor re

given in the preface to the General Edition of the Waverley Novels (1829). This old legendary poet and prophet, who flourished circa 1280, and was believed to have been carried off by the Queen of Faerie into Eildon Hill, fascinated Scott

vol. i.

ey Novels for some remarks on "Queenhoo Ha

vol. i.

name I have made to ring in many a ditty, and from his fair dam

of Gothic architecture because it was dark, picturesque, old and like nature; but could not tell the worst from the best, and built for h

vol. i.

levant to Wordsworth.-Herford. "Th

up in his mind a host of historical or biographical associations; . . . whereas, for myself . . . I believe I should walk over the pla

rmed an immediate attachment to Sir Walter. Wordsworth was far from being an acrid quack, or even a solemn prig-another genus h

he figure of the Queen of Scots, to insure whose marri

Doe" the reader should consult Princi

t Wordsworth offended

artist. He was indeed no stylist: least of all a precieux. There are no close-set mosaics in his somewhat slip-shod prose, and he did not seek for the right word "with moroseness," like Landor. But, in his large fashion, he was skilful in inventi

Song" in his continuat

ords and

ntain dawn

l. i., pp.

en of the G

I thought that

st work of

led as the

ange tale bew

who, with he

trength had spur

hern rapin

distant Che

turning, fil

rout and brawl."-"Ma

ockhart for a descrip

of the stanza in "T

sat in mo

ver hill

air flood, and

down Tev

ol. i., pp

was steeped, and with the meretricious phraseology of the later eighteenth century, which he was to

her" in vol. iii. o

brats, of Gilpi

rder-nobles th

ery step, Lord

lish babes, the

e we Margaret

approaching fight."

"had lost his ear by laying it down on lo

ilip in "The Talisman" remind one irresisti

on before Scott, consult Professor Cross' "De

d Books," by R. L. Stevenson. Ar

rconstances peuvent apporter aux sentiments et aux passions des hommes, d'atteindre à ce que ces passions et ces sentiments conservent de permanent, d'immuable et d'éternel, c'est au contraire à l'expression de l'accidentel et du relatif que les novateurs devaient les efforts d

ecian, and a ruin than an entire building. Hovels, cottages, mills, interiors of old barns are picturesque. "In mills particularly, such is the extreme intricacy of the wheels and the wood work: such is the singular variety of forms and of lights and shadows, of mosses and weather stains from the constant moisture, of plants springing from the rough joints of the stones-that, even without the addition of water, an old mill has the greatest charm for a painter" (i., 55). He mentions, as a striking example of picturesque beaut

ay on Wal

nly numbers of the series that have to do with the Middle Ages: "Count Robert of Paris," circa 1090 A.D.; "The Betrothed," 1187

lumes de la 'Princesse de Clèves,' prenez dix pages au hasard, et ensuite comparez les aux dix pages d'Ivanhoe' ou de 'Quentin Durward': ces derniers ouvrages ont un mérite historique. Ils apprennent quelques petites choses sur l'histoire aux gens qui l'ignorent ou qui le savent mal. Ce mérite historique a causé un grand plaisir: je ne le nie pas, mais c'est ce mérite historique qui se fanera le premier. . . . Dans 146 ans, Sir Walter Scott ne sera pas à la hauteur où Corneille nous apparait 146 ans après sa mort." "To write a modern romance of chivalry." says Jeffrey, in his review of "Marmion" in the E

s work will be found at the end of the present chapter. For English imitators and successors of the Waverley Novels, see Cross, "Development of the English Novel," pp. 136-

ine et Sh

Don Qu

r Walter

'études histori

and harsh barbarism. "Every boy has heard of tournaments and has a firm persuasion that in an age of tournaments life was thorough

think there is a single study in all his romances of what may be fairly called

ual and solemnities. Still it is an awful risk. The world is in fact as silly as eve

must of necessity yield their place before the increase of knowledge, like shadows at the advance of morn." ("Demonology." p. 183). "Tales of ghosts and demonology are out of date at forty years of age and upward. . . . If I were to write on the subject at all, it should have been during a period of life when I could have treated i

l. i., pp.

ript" to "Ap

te in mediaeval writers see vol. i., pp. 26

al Life and Literature," by