CHAPTER V
SCOTT AND MISS AUSTEN
In 1816 Sir Thomas Bernard, baronet, barrister, and philanthropist,published, having it is said written it three years previously, anagreeable dialogue on _Old Age_, which was very popular, and reached itsfifth edition in 1820. The interlocutors are Bishops Hough and Gibsonand Mr. Lyttleton, the supposed time 1740--the year, by accident ordesign, of _Pamela_. In this the aged and revered "martyr of Magdalen"is mildly reproached by his brother prelate for liking novels. Houghputs off the reproach as mildly, and in a most academic manner, bysaying that he only admits them _speciali gratia_. This was in fact thegeneral attitude to the whole kind, not merely in 1740, but after allthe work of nearly another life-time as long as Hough's--almost in 1816itself. Yet when Sir Thomas published his little book, notice to quit,of a double kind, had been served on this fallacy. Miss Austen's lifewas nearly done, and some of her best work had not been published: butthe greater part had. Scott was in his actual hey-day. Between them,they had dealt and were dealing--from curiously different sides and inas curiously different manners--the death-blow to the notion that thenovel was an inferior if not actually discreditable kind, suitable forweak intellects only, and likely to weaken strong ones, frivolous whennot positively immoral, giving a distaste for serious reading, implyingin the writer an inability to do anything more serious, and generallypresenting a glaring contrast to real "literature."
Interesting as each of these two great novelists is individually, theinterest of the pair, from our present historical point of view, isalmost greater; and the way in which they complete each other is hardlyshort of uncanny. Before their time, despite the great examples of prosefiction produced by Bunyan, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, andSterne, and the remarkable determination towards the life of ordinarysociety given, or instanced, by Miss Burney; despite the immensenovel-production of the last half of the eighteenth century and thefirst decade of the nineteenth--it is hardly too much to say that "thenovel," as such, had not found its proper way or ways at all. Bunyan'swas an example of genius in a peculiar kind of the novel: as, in a verydifferent one, was Sterne's. Defoe, possessing some of the rarest giftsof the novelist, was quite lacking in others. Richardson was not only_exemplar vitiis imitabile_ and _imitatum_, but it might be doubtedwhether, even when not faulty, he was not more admirable thandelightful. Smollett, like Defoe, was not much more than part of anovelist: and Miss Burney lacked strength, equality, and range. Thereremained Fielding: and it certainly is not here that any restrictions orallowances will be insinuated as to Fielding's praise. But Fielding'snovels are a circle in which no one else save Thackeray has ever beenable to walk. And what we are looking for now is something ratherdifferent from this--a masterpiece, or masterpieces, which may not onlyyield delight and excite admiration in itself or themselves, but maybring forth fruit in others--fruit less masterly perhaps, but of thesame or a similar kind. In other words, nobody's work yet--save in thespecial kinds--had been capable of yielding a novel-_formula_: nobodyhad hit upon the most capital and fruitful novel-ideas. And nearlyeverybody had, in the kind, done work curiously and almostincomprehensibly faulty. Of these faults, the worst, perhaps, wereclassable under the general head of inverisimilitude. Want of truth tonature in character and dialogue, extravagant and clumsy plotting,neglect of (indeed entire blindness to) historic colour, unreal andunobserved description--all these things might be raised to a height orsunk to a bathos in the work of the Minerva Press--but there was far toomuch of them in _all_ the novel work of these sixty or seventy years.
Although the facts and dates are well enough known, it is perhaps notalways remembered that Miss Austen, while representing what may, using arather objectionable and ambiguous word, be called a more "modern" styleof novel than Scott's, began long before him and had almost finished herwork before his really began. If that wonderful Bath bookseller had notkept _Northanger Abbey_ in a drawer, instead of publishing it, it wouldhave had nearly twenty years start of _Waverley_. And it must beremembered that _Northanger Abbey_, though it is, perhaps, chieflythought of as a parody-satire on the school of Mrs. Radcliffe, is, asthese parody-satires have a habit of being, a great deal more. IfCatherine had not made a fool of herself about the _Orphan of the BlackForest_ and _Horrid Mysteries_ (or rather if everything relating to thiswere "blacked out" as by a Russian censor) there would still remain theadmirable framework of her presentation at Bath and her intercourse withthe Tilneys; the more admirable character-sketches of herself--thetriumph of the ordinary made not ordinary--and the Thorpes; the mostadmirable flashes of satire and knowledge of human nature, not"promiscuous" or thrown out _apropos_ of things in general, but actingas assistants and invigorators to the story.
In the few words just used lies, as far as it can be comprehended in anyfew words, the secret both of Miss Austen and of Scott. It has beensaid--more than once or twice, I fear--that hardly until Bunyan andDefoe do we get an interesting story--something that grasps us andcarries us away with it--at all. Except in the great eighteenth-centuryFour the experience is not repeated, save in parts of Miss Burney andMiss Edgeworth later--it is simulated rather than actually brought aboutby the Terror-novel--except in the eternal exception of _Vathek_--forMaturin did not do his best work till much later. The absence of it ismainly due to a concatenation of inabilities on the part of the writers.They don't know what they ought to do: and in a certain sense it mayeven be said that they don't know what they are doing. In the worstexamples surveyed in the last chapter, such as _A Peep at OurAncestors_, this ignorance plumbs the abyss--blocks of dull seriousnarrative, almost or quite without action, and occasional insertions offlat, insipid, and (to any one with a little knowledge) impossibleconversation, forming their staple. Of the better class of books, fromthe _Female Quixote_ to _Discipline_, this cannot fairly be said: butthere is always something wanting. Frequently, as in both the books justmentioned, the writer is too serious and too desirous to instruct.Hardly ever is there a real _projection_ of character, in the round andliving--only pale, sketchy "academies" that neither live, nor move, norhave any but a fitful and partial being. The conversation is, perhaps,the worst feature of all--for it follows the contemporary stage inadopting a conventional lingo which, as we know from private letters asearly as Gray's and Walpole's, if not even as Chesterfield's and thoseof men and women older still, was _not_ the language of well-bred,well-educated, and intelligent persons at any time during the century.As for the Fourth Estate of the novel--description--it had rarely beenattempted even by the great masters. In fact it has been pointed out asperhaps the one unquestionable merit of Mrs. Radcliffe that--followingthe taste for the picturesque which, starting from Gray and popularisedby Gilpin, was spreading over the country--she did attempt to introducethis important feature, and did partly, in a rococo way, succeed inintroducing it. As for plot, that has never been our strong point--weseem to have been contented with _Tom Jones_ as payment in full of thatdemand.[17]
[17] The frankness of the ingenious creator of Mr. Jorrocks should be imitated by 99 per cent. of English novelists. "The following story," says he of _Ask Mamma_, "does not involve the complication of a plot. It is a mere continuous narrative."
Now, this was all changed. It is doubtful whether if _Northanger Abbey_had actually appeared in 1796 it would have been appreciated--MissAusten, like other writers of genius, had, not exactly as the common butincorrect phrase goes, to create the taste for her own work, but toarouse the long dormant appetite which she was born to satisfy. Yet,looking back a hundred years, it seems impossible that anybody of witsshould have failed at once to discover the range, the perfection, andthe variety of the new gift, or set of gifts. Here all the elements comein: and something with them that enlivens and intensifies them all. Theplot is not intricate, but there is a plot--good deal more, perhaps,than is generally noticed, and more than Miss Austen herself sometimesgave, as, for instance, in _Mansfield Park_. It is even rather artfullyworked out--the selfish gabble of John T
horpe, who may look tosuperficial observers like a mere outsider, playing an important part_twice_ in the evolution. There is not lavish but amply sufficientdescription and scenery--the Bath vignettes, especially the Beechencliffprospect; the sketch of the Abbey itself and of Henry's parsonage, etc.But it is in the other two constituents that the blowing of the new windof the spirit is most perceptible. The character-drawing is simplywonderful, especially in the women--though the men lack nothing. JohnThorpe has been glanced at--there had been nothing like him before, savein Fielding and in the very best of the essayists and dramatists.General Tilney has been found fault with as unnatural and excessive: butonly by people who do not know what "harbitrary gents" fathers offamilies, who were not only squires and members of parliament, butmilitary men, could be in the eighteenth century--and perhaps a littlelater. His son Henry, in common with most of his author's _jeunespremiers_, has been similarly objected to as colourless. He really has agreat deal of subdued individuality, and it _had_ to be subdued, becauseit would not have done to let him be too superior to Catherine. JamesMorland and Frederick Tilney are not to be counted as more than "walkinggentlemen," Mr. Allen only as a little more: and they fulfil their law.But Isabella Thorpe is almost better than her brother, as being nearerto pure comedy and further from farce; Eleanor Tilney is adequate; andMrs. Allen is sublime on her scale. A novelist who, at the end of theeighteenth century, could do Mrs. Allen, could do anything that shechose to do; and might be trusted never to attempt anything that shecould not achieve. And yet the heroine is perhaps--as she ought tobe--the greatest triumph of the whole, and the most indicative of thenew method. The older heroines had generally tried to be extraordinary:and had failed. Catherine tries to be ordinary: and is an extraordinarysuccess. She is pretty, but not beautiful: sensible and well-natured,but capable, like most of us, of making a complete fool of herself andof doing complete injustice to other people; fairly well educated, butnot in the least learned or accomplished. In real life she would besimply a unit in the thousands of quite nice but ordinary girls whomProvidence providentially provides in order that mankind shall not bealone. In literature she is more precious than rubies--exactly becauseart has so masterfully followed and duplicated nature.
Precisely to what extent the attractive quality of this art is enhancedby the pervading irony of the treatment would be a very difficultproblem to work out. It is scarcely hazardous to say that irony is thevery salt of the novel: and that just as you put salt even in a cake, soit is not wise to neglect it wholly even in a romance. Life itself, assoon as it gets beyond mere vegetation, is notoriously full of irony:and no imitation of it which dispenses with the seasoning can be worthmuch. That Miss Austen's irony is consummate can hardly be said to bematter of serious contest.
It has sometimes been thought--perhaps mistakenly--that the exhibitionof it in _Northanger Abbey_ is, though a very creditable essay, _not_consummate. But _Pride and Prejudice_ is known to be, in part, little ifat all later than _Northanger Abbey_: and there can again be very littledispute among judges in any way competent as to the quality of the ironythere. Nor does it much matter what part of this wonderful book waswritten later and what earlier: for its ironical character isall-pervading, in almost every character, except Jane and her lover whoare mere foils to Elizabeth and Darcy, and even in these to some extent;and in the whole story, even in the at least permitted suggestion thatthe sight of Pemberley, and Darcy's altered demeanour, had something todo with Elizabeth's resignation of the old romantic part of _Belle damesans merci_. It may further be admitted, even by those who protestagainst the undervaluation of _Northanger Abbey_, that _Pride andPrejudice_ flies higher, and maintains its flight triumphantly. It isnot only longer; it is not only quite independent of parody or contrastwith something previous; but it is far more intricate and elaborate aswell as more original. Elizabeth herself is not merely an ordinary girl:and the putting forward of her, as an extraordinary yet in no singlepoint unnatural one, is victoriously carried out. Her father, in spiteof (nay, perhaps, including) his comparative collapse when he is calledupon, not as before to talk but to act, in the business of Lydia'sflight, is a masterpiece. Mr. Collins is, once more by common consent ofthe competent, unsurpassed, if not peerless: those who think himunnatural simply do not know nature. Shakespeare and Fielding were theonly predecessors who could properly serve as sponsors to "this younglady" (as Scott delightfully calls her) on her introduction among theimmortals on the strength of this character alone. Lady Catherine is notmuch the inferior (it would have been pleasing to tell her so) of her_protege_ and chaplain. Of almost all the characters, and of quite thewhole book, it is scarcely extravagant to say that it could not havebeen better on its own scale and scheme--that it is difficult toconceive any scheme and scale on which it could have been better. And,yet once more, there is nothing out of the way in it--the only thing notof absolutely everyday occurrence, the elopement of Lydia, happens onso many days still, with slight variations, that it can hardly be calleda licence.
The same qualities appear throughout the other books, whether in more orless quintessence and with less or more alloy is a question rather ofindividual taste than for general or final critical decision. _Sense andSensibility_, the first actually to appear (1811), is believed to havebeen written about the same time as _Pride and Prejudice_, whichappeared two years later, and _Northanger Abbey_, which did not see thelight till its author was dead. It is the weakest of the three--perhapsit is the weakest of all: but the weakness is due rather to an error ofjudgment than to a lack of power. Like _Northanger Abbey_ it has acertain dependence on something else: the extravagances of Mariannesatirise the Sensibility-novel just as those of Catherine do theTerror-story of the immediate past. But it is on a much larger scale:and things of the kind are better in miniature. Moreover, the author'ssense of creative faculty made her try to throw up and contrast herheroine with other characters, in a way which she had not attempted in_Northanger Abbey_: and good as these are in themselves, they make aless perfect whole. Indeed, in the order of thought, _Sense andSensibility_ is the "youngest" of the novels--the least self-criticised.Nothing in it shows lack of power (John Dashwood and his wife are of thefirst order); a good deal in it shows lack of knowledge exactly how todirect that power.
_Mansfield Park_ (1814), though hardly as brilliant as _Pride andPrejudice_, shows much more maturity than _Sense and Sensibility_. Muchof it is quite consummate, the character of Mrs. Norris especially: andfor subtly interwoven phrase without emphasis, conveying knowledge andcriticism of life, it has few equals. But it has an elopement. _Emma_,which has perhaps on the whole been the most general favourite, maychallenge that position on one ground beyond all question, thoughpossibly not on all. It is the absolute triumph of that reliance on thestrictly ordinary which has been indicated as Miss Austen's title topre-eminence in the history of the novel. Not an event, not acircumstance, not a detail, is carried out of "the daily round, thecommon task" of average English middle-class humanity, upper and lower.Yet every event, every circumstance, every detail, is put _sub specieeternitatis_ by the sorcery of art. Few things could be moreterrible--nothing more tiresome--than to hear the garrulous Miss Batestalk in actual life; few things are more delightful than to read herspeeches as they occur here. An aspiring soul might feel disposed to"take and drown itself in a pail" (as one of Dickens's characters says)if it had to live the life which the inhabitants of Highbury arerepresented as living; to read about that life--to read about it overand over again--has been and is always likely to be one of the chosendelights of some of the best wits of our race. This is one of theparadoxes of art: and perhaps it is the most wonderful of them,exceeding even the old "pity and terror" problem. And the discovery ofit, as a possible source of artistic success, is one of the greatesttriumphs and one of the most inexhaustible discoveries of that artitself. For by another paradox--this time not of art but of nature--theextraordinary is exhaustible and the ordinary is not. Tragedy and themore "incidented" comedy, it is well known,
run into types and reproducesituations almost inevitably. "All the stories are told." But the storyof the life of Highbury never can be told, because there is reallynothing in it but the telling: and here the blessed infinity of Artcomes in again.
Miss Austen's last book, like her first, was published posthumously andshe left nothing else but a couple of fragments. One of these, _LadySusan_, does not, so far as it extends, promise much, though it is sucha fragment and such an evident first draft even of this, that judgmentof it is equally unfair and futile. The other, _The Watsons_, has somevery striking touches, but is also a mere beginning. _Persuasion_--whichappeared with _Northanger Abbey_ and which, curiously enough, has, likeits nearly twenty years elder sister, Bath for its principal scene--hasalso some pretensions to primacy among the books, and is universallyadmitted to be of its author's most delicate, most finished, and mostsustained work. And this, like _Emma_, resolutely abstains from even theslightest infusion of startling or unusual incident, of "exciting"story, of glaring colour of any kind: relying only on congruity ofspeech, sufficient if subdued description, and above all a profusion ofthe most delicately, but the most vividly drawn character, made tounfold a plot which has interest, if no excitement, and seasonedthroughout with the unfailing condiment--the author's "own sauce"--ofgentle but piquant irony and satire.
It is not to be supposed or inferred that Miss Austen's methods, or herresults, have appealed to everybody. Madame de Stael thought her_vulgaire_--meaning, of course, not exactly our "vulgar" but"commonplace"; Charlotte Bronte was not much otherwise minded; her ownMarianne Dashwood would doubtless have thought the same. Readers withoutsome touch of letters may think her style old-fashioned: it has evenbeen termed "stilted." Not merely may amateurs of blood and thunder, ofpassion and sensation, think her tame, but the more modern devotees of"analysis" may consider her superficial. On the other hand, it isnotorious that, from her own day to this, she has never wantedpartisans, often of superlative competence, and of the most strikinglydifferent tempers, tastes, and opinions. The extraordinary quietness ofher art is only matched by its confidence: its subtlety by its strength.She did not try many styles; she deliberately and no doubt wiselyrefused to try the other style which was already carrying all before itin her own later days. She seems to have confined herself (with whatseems to some high-flying judges an almost ignoble caution) to thestrata of society that she knew most thoroughly: and the curious havenoted that she seldom goes above a baronet, and hardly even descends toa butler, in her range of personages who are not mere mutes. It is notat all unlikely--in fact it is almost certain--that she might haveenlarged this range, and that of her incident, with perfect safety andto the great profit and delight of her readers. But these actual thingsshe knew she could do consummately; and she would not risk theproduction of anything not consummate.
The value of her, artistically, is of course in the perfection of whatshe did; but the value of her historically is in the way in which sheshowed that, given the treatment, any material could be perfected. Itwas in this way, as has been pointed out, that the possibilities of thenovel were shown to be practically illimitable. Tragedy is not needed:and the most ordinary transactions, the most everyday characters,develop into an infinite series of comedies with which the novelist canamuse himself and his readers. The _ludicrum humani seculi_ on the onehand, and the artist's power of extracting and arranging it on theother--these two things supply all that is wanted. This Hampshireparson's daughter had found the philosopher's stone of the novel: andthe very pots and pans, the tongs and pokers of the house, could beturned into novel-gold by it.
But even gold is not everything: and only a fanatic, and a ratherfoolish fanatic, would say that this style of fiction summed up andexhausted all the good that fiction could give and do. Miss Austen's artexcludes (it has been said) tragedy; it does not let in much pureromance; although its variety is in a way infinite, yet it is notvarious in infinite ways, but rather in very finite ones. Everybody whodenies its excellence is to be blamed: but nobody is to be blamed forsaying that he should like some other excellences as well. The desire isinnocent, nay commendable: and it was being satisfied, at practicallythe same time, by the work of Sir Walter Scott in a kind of novel almostas new (when we regard it in connection with its earlier examples) asMiss Austen's own. This was the Historical novel, which, in a way, notonly subsumed many though not quite all varieties of Romance, but alsosummoned to its aid not a little--in fact a very great deal--of themethods of the pure novel itself.
It is not very long since a critic, probably not very old, sentenced thecritical opinions of another critic, certainly not very young, to "gointo the melting pot" because they were in favour of the historicalnovel: and because the historical novel had for some time past donegreat harm (I think the phrase was stronger) to the imaginativeliterature of England. Now there are several things which might be saidabout this judgment--I do not say "in arrest" of it, because it is ofitself inoperative: as it happens you cannot put critical opinions inthe melting pot. At least, they won't melt: and they come out againlike the diabolic rat that Mr. Chips tried to pitch-boil. In the firstplace, there is the question whether the greater part by far of theimaginative and other literature of _any_ time does not itself "go intothe melting pot," and whether it much matters what sends it there. Inthe second, if this seems too cynical, there is the very large and gravequestion whether a still larger proportion of the novel of manners, inEngland, France, and all other countries during the same time, has notbeen as bad as, or worse than, the romantic division, historical orother. But the worst faults of the judgment remain. In the first placethere is the fatal shortness of view. It is with the literature of twothousand, not with the literature of twenty, years that the true critichas to do: and no kind which--in two thousand, or two hundred, ortwenty--has produced literature that is good or great can be eventemporarily put aside because (as every kind of literature withoutexception has been again and again) it is for a time barren or fruitfulonly in weeds. And any one who does not count Scott and Dumas andThackeray among the makers of good literature must really excuse othersif they simply take no further count of him. The historical novel is agood kind, good friends, a marvellous good kind: and it has theadvantage over the pure novel of manners that it is much less subject toobsolescence, if it be really well done; while it can practically annexmost of the virtues of that novel of manners itself.
This excellent kind, however, had been wandering about in thewilderness--had indeed hardly got so far even as that stage, but hadbeen a mere "bodiless childful of life in the gloom"--for more than twothousand years before _Waverley_. Of its earlier attempts to get intofull existence we cannot say much here:[18] something on the morerecent but rather abortive birth-throes has been promised, and is nowdue. It is not improbable that considerable assistance was rendered tothe kind by the heroic romance of the seventeenth century in prose andverse, which often attempted historic, and almost alwayspseudo-historic, guise. As has been seen in regard to such collectionsas Croxall's, historical stories were freely mingled with fictitious:and it could not be for nothing that Horace Walpole, the author of the_Castle of Otranto_, was a rather ardent and even to some extentscholarly student of the romance and the gossip of history. Muchearlier, Fielding himself, in his salad days, had given something of anhistoric turn to the story of _A Journey from this World to the Next_.And when history itself became more common and more readable, it couldnot but be that this inexhaustible source of material for the new kindof literature, which was being so eagerly demanded and so busilysupplied, should suggest itself. Some instances of late eighteenth andearly nineteenth century experiments have been given and discussed inthe last chapter: and when Scott (or "the Author of _Waverley_") hadachieved his astonishing success, some of the writers of these put inthe usual claim of "That's _my_ thunder." This was done in the case ofthe Lees, it was also done in the case of Jane Porter, the writer ofthe once famous and favourite _Thaddeus of Warsaw_ (1803) and _ScottishChiefs_ (1810): while,
as we have seen, there had been historical colourenough in Godwin's novels to make suggestion of _his_ "authorship of_Waverley_" not absolutely preposterous. Even Mrs. Radcliffe had touchedthe style; and humbler persons like the egregious Henrietta Mosse hadattempted it in the most serious spirit.
[18] Those who are curious about the matter will find it treated in a set of Essays by the present writer, which originally appeared in _Macmillan's Magazine_ during the autumn of 1894, and were reprinted among _Essays in English Literature_, Second Series, London, 1895.
But with their varying degrees of talent--with, in one or two cases,even a little genius--all these writers had broken themselves upon onefatal difficulty--that of anachronism: not in the petty sense of thepedant, but in the wide one of the critic. The present writer is notprepared, without reading _A Peep at Our Ancestors_ again (which hedistinctly declines to do), to say that there are, in that remarkableperformance, any positive errors of historic fact worse than, or as bad,as those which pedantry has pointed out in _Ivanhoe_. But whereas youmay be nearly as well acquainted with the actual history of the time asthe pedants themselves, and a great deal better acquainted with itsliterature, and yet never be shocked, disgusted, or contemptuouslyamused in _Ivanhoe_ by such things as were quoted from the _Peep_ a fewpages back--so, to those who know something of "the old Elizabeth way,"and even nowadays to those who know very little, and that little atsecond hand, Miss Lee's travesty of it in _The Recess_ is impossible andintolerable. When Mrs. Radcliffe, at the date definitely given of 1584,talks about "the Parisian opera," represents a French girl of thesixteenth century as being "instructed in the English poets," and talksabout driving in a "landau," the individual blunders are, perhaps, notmore violent than those of the chronology by which Scott's Ulrica isapparently a girl at the time of the Conquest and a woman, not too oldto be the object of rivalry between Front de Boeuf and his father, notlong before the reign of Richard I. But this last oversight does notaffect the credibility of the story, or the homogeneity of the manners,in the least. Mrs. Radcliffe jumbles up two (or more than two) utterlydifferent states and stages of society, manners, and other things whichconstitute the very atmosphere of the story itself. Perhaps (we havevery few easy conversations of the period to justify a positivestatement) a real Bois-Guilbert and still more a real Wamba might nothave talked exactly like Scott's personages: but there is no insistentand disturbing reason why they should not. When we hear an Adelaise ofthe mid-twelfth century asking whether she does not receive hereducation from her mamma, the necessary "suspension of disbelief"becomes impossible.
But these now most obvious truths were not obvious at all between 1780and 1810: and it is perhaps the greatest evidence of Scott's genius thathalf, but by no means quite, unconsciously he saw them, and that he hasmade everybody see them since. It was undoubtedly fortunate that hebegan novel-writing so late: for earlier even he might have been caughtin the errors of the time. But when he did begin, he had not onlyreached middle life and matured his considerable original criticalfaculty--criticism and wine are the only things that even the "kind calmyears" may be absolutely trusted to improve if there is any originalgoodness in them--but he had other advantages. He had read, if not withminute accuracy, very widely indeed: and he possessed, as Lord Morleyhas well said, "the genius of history" in a degree which perhaps nomerely meticulous scholar has ever reached, and which was not exceededin _quality_ even by the greatest historians such as Gibbon. He had analmost unmatched combination of common sense with poetic imagination, ofknowledge of the world with knowledge of letters. He had shown himselfto be possessed of the secret of semi-historical narrative itself inhalf a dozen remarkable verse romances, and therefore had less to do inengineering the prose romance. Last of all, he had seen what toavoid--not merely in his editing of Strutt's _Queenhoo Hall_ (a valuableproperty-room for the novel, but nothing of a real novel), but in hisreading of the failures of his predecessors and contemporaries. The verybeginning of _Waverley_ itself (which most people skip) is invaluable,because it shows us that at the time he wrote it (which, it need hardlybe said, was a long time before its completion) he had not the knowledgeor the courage to strike straight out into the stream of action andconversation, but troubled himself with accumulating bladders andarranging ropes for the possible salvation of his narrative if it gotinto difficulties. Very soon he knew that it would not get intodifficulties: and away he went.
It ought not to be necessary, but from some symptoms it may bedesirable, to point out that Scott is very far from being an historicalnovelist only. An acute French critic, well acquainted with bothliteratures, once went so far as to say that there were a good manyprofessed "philosophical" novels which did not contain such keenpsychology as Scott's: and I would undertake to show a good deal ofcause on this side. But short of it, it is undeniable that he can doperfectly well without any historical scaffolding. There is practicallynothing of it in his second and third novels, _Guy Mannering_ and _TheAntiquary_, each of which good judges have sometimes ranked as his verybest: there is as little or less in _St. Ronan's Well_, a very finething as it is, and one which, but for James Ballantyne's meddling follyand prudery, would have been much finer. The incomparable littleconversation--scenes and character-sketches scattered among theIntroductions to the novels--especially the history of CrystalCroftangry--show that he could perfectly well have dispensed with allout-of-the-way incident had he chosen. But, as a rule, he did not sochoose: and, in the majority of cases, he preferred to take hisout-of-the-way incident from historical sources. Not here,unfortunately, can we allow ourselves even a space proportionate to thatgiven above in Miss Austen's case to the criticism of individual novels:but luckily there is not much need of this. The brilliant overture of_Waverley_ as such, with its entirely novel combination of thehistorical and the "national" elements upon the still more novelbackground of Highland scenery; the equally vivid and vigorous narrativeand the more interesting personages of _Old Mortality_ and _Rob Roy_;the domestic tragedy, with the historical element for little more than aframework, of the _Heart of Midlothian_ and the _Bride of Lammermoor_;the little masterpiece of _A Legend of Montrose_; the fresh departure,with purely English subject, of _Ivanhoe_ and its triumphant sequels in_Kenilworth, Quentin Durward_, and others; the striking utilisation ofliterary assistance in the _Fortunes of Nigel_; and the wonderfulblending of autobiographic, historical, and romantic interest in_Redgauntlet_:--one cannot dwell on these and other things. The magiccontinued even in _Woodstock_--written as this was almost between theblows of the executioner's crow-bar on the wheel, in the tightening ofthe windlasses at the rack--it is not absent, whatever people may say,in _Anne of Geierstein_, nor even quite lacking in the better parts of_Count Robert of Paris_. But we must not expatiate on its effects; wemust only give a little attention to the means by which they areachieved.
Another of the common errors about Scott is to represent--perhaps reallyto regard--him as a hit-or-miss and hand-to-mouth _improvisatore_, whobundled out his creations anyhow, and did not himself know how hecreated them. The fallacy is worse than a fallacy: for it is down-rightfalse witness. We have numerous passages in and out of the novels--thechief of them being the remarkable conversation with Captain Clutterbuckin the Introduction to the _Fortunes of Nigel_ and the reflections inthe _Diary_ on _Sir John Chiverton_ and _Brambletye House_--showing thatScott knew perfectly well the construction and the stringing of hisfiddle, as well as the trick of applying his rosin. But if we had notthese direct testimonies, no one of any critical faculty could mistakethe presence of consciously perceived principles in the booksthemselves. A man does not suddenly, and by mere blind instinct, avoidsuch a pitfall as that of incongruous speech and manners, which has beennoticed above. It is not mere happy-go-lucky blundering which makes himinvariably decline another into which people still fall--the selectionof historical personages of the first importance, and elaborately known,for the _central_ figures of his novels. Not to believe in luck is amark of perhaps greater folly
than to over-believe in it: but luck willnot always keep a man clear of such perils as that unskilful wedging ofgreat blocks of mere history into his story, which the lesser historicalnovelists always commit, or that preponderance of mere narrative itselfas compared with action and conversation from which even Dumas, evenThackeray, is not free.
That he knew what he was doing and what he had to do is thus certain;that he did it to an astounding extent is still more certain; but itwould not skill much to deny that he did not always give himself time todo it perfectly in every respect, though it is perhaps not mere paradoxor mere partisanship to suggest that if he had given himself more time,he would hardly have done better, and might have done worse. Theaccusation of superficiality has been _already_ glanced at: and it ispretty certain that it argues more superficiality, of a much morehopeless kind, in those who make it. The accusation of careless andslovenly style is not much better: for Scott had, perfectly, the stylesuited to his own work, and you cannot easily have a better style thanthat. But there are two defects in him which were early detected by goodand friendly judges: and which are in fact natural results of theextraordinary force and fertility of his creative power. One--the lessserious, but certainly to some extent a fault in art and a point inwhich he is distinguished for the worse from Shakespeare--is that he israther given to allow at first, to some of his personages, anelaborateness and apparent emphasis of drawing which seems to promise animportance for them in the story that they never actually attain. MikeLambourne in _Kenilworth_ is a good example of this: but there are manyothers. The fact evidently was that, in the rush of the artist's plasticimagination, other figures rose and overpowered these. It is an excuse:but it is hardly a justification. The other and more serious is atendency--which grew on him and may no doubt have been encouraged by theastonishing pecuniary rewards of his work--to hurry his conclusions, to"huddle up the cards and throw them into the bag," as Lady Louisa Stuarttold him. There is one of the numerous, but it would seem generic andclassifiable, forms of unpleasant dream in which the dreamer's watch, tohis consternation, suddenly begins to send its hands round at double andten-fold speed. Scott is rather apt to do this, towards the close of hisnovels, in his eagerness to begin something else. These defects,however, are defects much more from the point of view of abstractcriticism than from that of the pleasure of the reader: while, even fromthe former, they are outweighed many times by merits. And as regards ourpresent method of estimation, they hardly count at all.
For, in that calculus, the important thing is that Scott, like MissAusten, at once opened an immense new field to the novelist, and showedhow that field was to be cultivated. The complement-contrast of the paircan need emphasising only to those on whom no emphasis would be likelyto impress it: but it may not be quite so evident at once that betweenthem they cover almost the entire possible ground of prose fiction. Themore striking and popular as well as more strictly novel style of Scottnaturally attracted most attention at first: indeed it can hardly besaid that, for the next thirty years, much attempt was made to follow inMiss Austen's steps, while such attempts as were made were seldom verygood.[19] But there is no need to hurry Time: and he generally knowswhat he is about. At any rate he had, in and through these twoprovided--for generations, probably for centuries, to come--patterns andprinciples for whoso would to follow in prose fiction.
[19] Some work of distinction, actually later than hers in date, is older in kind. This is the case not only with the later books of her Irish elder sister. Miss Edgeworth (see last chapter), but with all those of her Scotch younger one, Miss Ferrier, who wrote _Marriage_ just after _Sense and Sensibility_ appeared, but did not publish it (1818) till after Miss Austen's death, following it with _The Inheritance_ (1824) and _Destiny_ (1831). Miss Ferrier, who had a strong though rather hard humour and great faculty of pronounced character-drawing, is better at a series of sketches than at a complete novel--only _The Inheritance_ having much central unity. And there is still eighteenth-century quality rather than nineteenth in her alternations of Smollettian farce-satire and Mackenziefied sentiment. She is very good to read, but stand a little out of the regular historic succession, as well as out of the ordinary novel classes.
The English Novel Page 5
